Martinez Tribune The website of the Martinez Tribune.
BY TYLER HENSON
Two movies about uncanny creatures opened this weekend. Other Mommy features a family battling a supernatural entity invading their home while The Social Reckoning has journalists going up against the powers of Mark Zuckerberg. The fantasy scares of Other Mommy drew some audience attention, while few turned up for the real-world frights of Social Reckoning. Neither movie really lives up to its potential. Read more below.
A big weekend of new releases is coming up. The scuba-diving nightmare scenario Whalefall, about a man literally trying to escape the belly of a whale, looks to provide some anxious excitement. Street Fighter, the latest screen adaptation of a classic video game franchise, aims to deliver a more over-the-top kind of comic action extravaganza. And Sense and Sensibility offers a new interpretation of the Jane Austin classic. One final word to the curious, before it’s too late; Tom Cruise’s historic flop Digger is almost certain to depart theaters this week, so be sure to see this divisive and astonishing film while you can, and read our full Digger review on this site if you want to learn more about what makes it such an original piece of work.
The Social Reckoning (112mins)
Writer Aaron Sorkin returns for a follow up to The Social Network (2010), the Oscar-winning and era-defining film about the founding of Facebook. The Social Reckoning takes place about a decade and a half later, and explores the evolving influence and unprecedented impact of the social media platform on our lives and perceptions. Leaping back and forth through time, Sorkin follows two story threads, one portraying the efforts of journalist Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) to expose the company’s role in fostering political and social strife with the help whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), and the other Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) himself as he prepares for a speech before congress that may decide his company’s future.
Director David Fincher is a no show, leaving Sorkin to direct his own script this time. Sorkin’s abilities as a writer are on full display. The dialogue is sharp and intelligent, set at a quick and captivating pace. There’s a considerable amount of technical jargon and related detail, which Sorkin handles with deft expertise. As in his scripts for Moneyball (2011), Molly’s Game (2017), and others, he does an excellent job laying out a complicated story and dense information in a way that is entertaining, accessible, and comprehensible to a non-expert. The cast is uniformly good, demonstrating Sorkin’s other great strength; writing characters that are extremely knowledgeable, possessed of intimidating self-confidence, and almost single-mindedly devoted to their jobs. Actors like Madison and White are able to soften these machine-like creations into characters of humorous and engaging humanity. Even Strong conveys human feeling beneath Zuckerberg’s robotic exterior.
Where Sorkin falls short is in his direction. The Social Reckoning opens with a tense and remarkably effective prologue, setting up how it will examine what one piece of technology can do to an average person, and throughout the rest of its runtime it will maintain dramatic interest, but most of the tension will have dissipated by the end. Sorkin does not have Fincher’s capacity for maintaining a hypnotic hold on his audience. Nor is this script truly revelatory. It does a good job laying out the info and turning it into a narrative. It does not bring the same amount of human insight to its subject as The Social Network did. Sorkin also makes an incongruous choice to end the film on a Frank Capra-esque note of optimism and victory. But considering this film is about how technology has divided us by exploiting our anger, perhaps his motives can be understood. The Social Reckoning is a merely a good film, and that makes it feel quite small compared to the quality and influence of its predecessor.
Other Mommy (93mins)
An uninvited guest is living in the Martin household and it looks an awful lot like the mom of young Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark). This ‘other mommy’ talks to her at night, plays games, and begs Bela, “let me into your heart.” Something’s definitely not right here… Her real Mommy (Jessica Chastain) and Daddo (Jay Duplass) are loving parents, but Bela can sense something has come between them. Mommy and Daddo are drifting apart, causing Bela to grow closer to Other Mommy. Once they learn of Other Mommy’s existence, Mommy and Daddo are going to have a heck of a time freeing their daughter from its insidious grasp.
For its first half hour or so, Other Mommy is quite a creepy and exciting tale. It begins without a great deal of setup or exposition, relying mostly on subtext to establish its concept, characters and relationships. Some excellent performances help to clarify everything. Duplass and Chastain exchange some loaded looks that speak volumes, child actor Clark accomplishes the impressive feat of carrying entire sections of the story on her own, and Chastain’s unblinking stare and unnaturally wide smile as Other Mommy bring a palpable chill to the screen.
The film moves fast. Unsustainably fast, as it turns out. By about the one hour mark, it’s all too obvious that we’ve run out of story to tell. The movie is simply lurching from one special effects set piece to another and setting off elaborate scare sequences under the flimsiest pretenses, attempting to draw itself out to feature length runtime. There was a good idea here. The doubled parent and alienated child bring to mind the dark fairy tale ambiance of Coraline (2009) and Other Mommy’s reality-bending supernatural powers are reminiscent of Pennywise in It (2017), her games a mixture of innocent play and deadly menace. But the film neither invests nor frightens as effectively as its inspirations, and its potential is exhausted long before the credits roll.
Verity (114mins)
This latest Colleen Hoover adaptation stars Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired by best-selling author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) to ghostwrite the remaining books in a popular series after an accident leaves her unable to write. Lowen heads out to Verity’s imposing home in Vermont, where she grows close with Verity’s seemingly devoted husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), and uncovers some twisted and shocking secrets from Verity’s past.
Hoover adaptations have been coming like clockwork these past couple years – It Ends with Us (2024), Regretting You (2025), and Reminders of Him (2026) – and they show no signs of stopping. Like Hoover’s books, they’ve proven popular in spite of widespread criticism. Verity is darker, more violent, and sexier than her previous stories of romantic tragedy. The characters indulge in some very bad behavior and the story treats it with perverse enthusiasm. Nobody is likely to argue that Hoover is great literature, but there is always enjoyment to be had with good trash that delivers the dirt. The appetite for material like this goes all the way back to books and movies like Valley of the Dolls (1967), and beyond.
Verity, unfortunately, struggles to deliver the dirt. It has a few nicely nasty moments, mainly involving Hathaway and Hartnett, who have some heat together, but the movie seems to be holding most of the illicit excitement in check. Too few things happen in too long a runtime. Dakota Johnson, who has proven herself a fine actress in movies like Suspiria (2018) and A Bigger Splash (2015), seems to have reverted back to the mannequin-like state of inexpressive dullness she used for the Fifty Shades of Grey movies. Verity is finally so hare-brained and preposterous, with several third act twists that lack any coherent motivation or logic (let alone a satisfying payoff), that it collapses into complete inanity. This is the kind of movie best enjoyed with a few friends, a lot of drinks, and a running commentary.
Primetime (110mins)
Robert Pattinson continues an outstanding year of acting in Primetime. We’ve already seen him this year in The Drama and The Odyssey, we’ll be seeing him again in December in Dune: Part Three, and every performance has demanded interest because each has been so different from the last. Pattinson pulls off another chameleon-like transformation here playing Chris Hansen, in a film that dramatizes Hansen’s tumultuous rise to prominence in 2006 as creator and host of To Catch a Predator, the infamous show where Hansen lured sex offenders into incriminating hidden camera confrontations.
Pattinson plays the compulsive and neurotic Hansen almost as an alien working to mimic human behavior. There’s an element of subversive comedy. Many period pop culture signifiers, like Lost and Inside the Actor’s Studio, are deployed in ways that inspire laughter, almost asking “remember what a big deal this used to be?” But Primetime also pulls no punches. It is by turns horrifying and disquieting, not just because of the subject matter of Hansen’s show. The movie looks at the production of Predator as a dubious and exploitative enterprise. Hansen is seen, over the course of the story, falling into a kind of a delirium caused by personal demons and his driven, singleminded pursuit of ratings. Director Lance Oppenheim, a documentarian making his narrative debut, renders Hansen’s state of mind through the techniques of a horror movie. The world around him grows more frightening as his perspective becomes increasingly fractured, desperate, and fueled by self-delusion.
Primetime offers no easy summation or simple morality message. It is a film that leaves you feeling a little dirty. Its provocations are meant to inspire discussion. What does it mean to live in a world where it is more important that our media entertain instead of inform? How much does that shape, or distort, our reality? Pattinson’s crazed performance is bolstered by crucial supporting roles. Merrit Wever plays his ruthless producer and Skyler Gisondo plays a naive young actor who becomes the show’s star ‘decoy,’ his job essentially to pretend to be underage and seduce predators. Both these characters suffer pangs of conscience and shame, aware the show is corrupting them, but better instincts are not enough to override their hunger for fame and success. All three of these performances give the film its disturbing power.
Heart of the Beast (101mins)
Retired Special Forces officer James Belmont (Brad Pitt) becomes stranded in the Alaskan wilds following a plane crash, and attempts a hazardous trek back to civilization with his loyal combat dog Odin. James and Odin, both of them scarred physically and emotionally by their wartime experiences, share an intimate, unbreakable bond. Together, they will brave dangerous storms, deadly rapids, ferocious wolves, and more, each surviving to ensure the safety of the other.
There are few actors who could lead a film solo as effortlessly as Brad Pitt. There is not much here to challenge him, at least from an acting standpoint, but even when he’s coasting his star charisma lets him hold the screen with ease. However, it’s his canine co-star that’s the real hero of the film, and Pitt seems comfortable letting Odin be the center of attention. Their relationship is believable, and many of their scenes together are quite touching.
There is nothing fatally wrong with this film. It’s adequate. Some things are superfluous, like an oddly brief appearance by J.K. Simmons (in kooky old man autopilot), but nothing stands out as terrible. Its only real problem is that nothing is done particularly well. The major sequences are standard survivalist fare, handled without much imagination or panache. Only one or two moments, such as a scene where James must set a broken bone with Odin’s help, offer any kind of interesting variation on the formula. Great dog performance aside, there’s a much better wilderness survival film playing right now, called The Weight, and compared to that film, Heart of the Best presents no compelling reason to be seen.
Resident Evil (95mins)
This latest adaptation of the Resident Evil video game franchise stars Austin Abrams as Bryan, a medical courier tasked with delivering a mysterious and important package to Raccoon City Hospital. On route through dark snowbound backwoods, he accidentally runs into a woman not altogether human. The obvious clues that something is wrong elude Bryan for a comically long time. Fans of the games will know where his night is heading; a virus has escaped the labs of the Umbrella Corporation and is turning the population into ravenous zombies.
Writer/director Zach Cregger, who scored big with last year’s Weapons (2025), has another hit on his hands. Resident Evil has a spotty record on film, but Cregger’s version has been made with a savvy understanding of both video game and horror movie convention. Bryan’s mission is video game-like in its simplicity, and his journey is filled with the expected roadblocks and detours, including stubborn padlocks and quick scavenger hunts for ammo. Cregger builds high anticipation for each scare by making his zombies unpredictably mutating creatures, always springing a nasty new surprise on Bryan in every major scene.
The only thing the movie needed was more sincerity. It’s funny and scary, but it doesn’t have an emotional core. Bryan’s only dimension as a person comes through occasional phone conversations with his pregnant girlfriend, and these scenes only ever feel like screenplay devices. The story is hollow, and the ending leaves one feeling slightly cheated. This might be a more fatal issue in a film with loftier ambitions, but Resident Evil only wants to provide scares, laughs, and a fun night at the movies. On that front, it is a success.
Forgotten Island (109mins)
DreamWorks Animation, and the directing team behind Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), dip into Philippine mythology for this hyperactive comedy adventure. Two trouble-making best friends, the rambunctious Jo (H.E.R.) and bookish, responsible Raissa (Liza Soberano), fall through a magical portal and become trapped on a mystical island populated by folk tale creatures. They make friends with a misfit dog-boy named Raww (Dave Franco), get chased by a menacing vampire called Manang (Lea Salonga), and discover the memory demon Batiba (Jenny Slate), who can return them home provided they’re willing to sacrifice their most precious memories together.
The impact of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) can be felt all over this movie. Spider-Verse borrowed the visual techniques of comic books and translated them into fast and colorful 3D motion. Forgotten Island does the same with Japanese sources. Most of its manic stylization comes from the pages of manga and the 2D world of anime. The lively visuals are combined with comedic cultural reference points that include 80’s action movies and 90’s hip hop. Since this is a DreamWorks film, aimed primarily at teens and twenty-somethings, it goes a little farther with its adult content. The humor is slightly more suggestive, and some of the action is scarier than would be allowed in an all-ages Disney production.
There is clearly a youthful target audience for this movie, and based on the reaction heard by this critic in the theater, it seems to play well to that audience. But you must know a shocking fact; you’re reading the opinion of someone who didn’t like Spider-Verse. The problems I had with that film are repeated in Forgotten Island. The characters have charm and personality, but the animation is too busy and the story is overwrought with action climaxes. After a certain point, it becomes exhausting and repetitive. Maybe it’s age. The visual overstimulation probably works better on younger eyes.
All of the above movies are currently playing at the Contra Costa Cinema. You can visit https://contracostacinema.com for both current and upcoming showtimes.
