Review: 'Coyote vs. Acme' brings Looney Tunes into the courtroom, for a comedy that's relentlessly funny and sometimes sweet

As someone who grew up on Warner Bros. cartoons, it’s an electric experience to see that someone else — namely, the makers of the animated/live-action comedy “Coyote vs. Acme” — are as obsessed and enamored of the Looney Tunes characters as I am.

The movie, inspired by Ian Frazier’s comic short story in The New Yorker, starts with that nonspeaking predator, Wile E. Coyote, in his endless pursuit of the Road-Runner, beep-beeping across the New Mexico desert. Each time, Coyote deploys one of the many products of the Acme Corporation, and each time the device fails miserably. 

After a few thousand of these attempts, Coyote has had enough. He sees an ad for a lawyer in Albuquerque, Kevin Avery (Will Forte), who specializes in getting small settlements from Acme for his ‘toon clients. (His law firm is Avery, Jones and Maltese — named for Tex Avery, Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese, three of the creators of the original Looney Tunes shorts.) Against Kevin’s advice, and spurred by Kevin’s niece and intern, Paige (Lana Condor), Coyote throws every Acme product he’s ever bought into a giant lawsuit.

The size of Coyote’s lawsuit draws the attention of Acme’s slick head lawyer, Buddy Crane (John Cena), who offers a settlement that Kevin accepts but Coyote tears into pieces. Coyote wants to go to trial, for reasons that go beyond the legal. 

Meanwhile, Acme’s CEO wants this case to go away before Kevin and his firm learn too much about the corporation’s less savory practices — particularly a program called Project Sisyphus. The CEO is Foghorn Leghorn, and it’s a stroke of brilliance by screenwriter Samy Burch (an Oscar nominee for writing the Natalie Portman/Julianne Moore drama “May December”) that the rooster is depicted as a cartoon version of John Huston’s character in “Chinatown.”

In the movie’s opening, we learn how far Acme will go to keep secrets, even putting their top scientist, Dr. Lorre (from Jones’ 1946 classic “The Hair-Raising Hare”), in a portable cartoon hole. It’s one of many gags and references running through this cleverly laugh-packed movie, which manages to find a place for most every Looney Tunes character — Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety, and even the more problematic ones. (The movie devises the only joke one could safely make in this day and age about Pepe Le Pew.)

What’s more, “Coyote vs. Acme” shows the heart beneath the endless chase between Wile E. Coyote and the Road-Runner. If you don’t think the relationship between two characters who speak a single word between them (“beep”), you’re in for a beautiful surprise.

It defies belief that we came so close to not getting to see the movie at all. When the movie was finished two years ago, the executives at Warner Bros. — the ones who thought “Space Jam: A New Legacy” was a good idea — planned to shelve “Coyote vs. Acme” as a tax write-off. Thankfully, fans forced the suits to sell off the distribution rights to a smaller company, Ketchup Entertainment, and we get to see this inventive and warm-hearted movie for ourselves. Strap on your rocket skates and get to the theater quickly.

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‘Coyote vs. Acme’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 28, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for cartoon violence. Running time: 103 minutes.

Review: 'The Dog Stars' shows director Ridley Scott's action gifts remain strong, as Jacob Elordi is evolving into a leading man

It’s a reality film fans must face, that the director Ridley Scott, at age 88, will sooner rather than later make his last movie. I can’t say whether his 30th feature film, “The Dog Stars,” will be the last one — but I hope not, because this post-apocalyptic thriller has its moments, but it isn’t Scott’s best work.

Set in the year 2035, a few years after a virus has killed most of humankind, the film starts with Hig (Jacob Elordi), a bush pilot who has managed to survive through his skills as a mechanic He also has been trained by his friend, Bangley (Josh Brolin), a gruff survivalist who lives by the “shoot first, ask questions later” model to anyone who approaches the aircraft hangar they call home. 

His makes flights into the nearest city — which we learn is Denver — to scrounge supplies and steer clear of the Reapers, a maniacal cult that steals whatever it can find. Hig also visits the house where he used to live with his wife, Melissa (played in flashbacks by Sam Bennett). When in the air, Big sometimes hears radio calls out of Grand Junction, which becomes Hig’s symbol of a better and safer life.

At a certain point in the script — by “The Revenant” writer Mark L. Smith, adapted from Peter Heller’s novel — Hig decides he has to see if Grand Junction is real, and leaves Bangley alone to seek it out. He doesn’t get too far, when engine trouble forces a hard landing in a clearing. It’s there he meets a distrusting rancher, Pops (Guy Pearce), and his daughter, Cima (Margaret Qualley), a former medical resident. Hig repairs his plane and earns Pops’ trust, and the three work together to clear the meadow so Hig can take off again.

Parts of Smith’s script work better than others — and the finale, which covers the mythical Grand Junction and features Allison Janney in an odd role, is the part that’s the least successful. Smith’s script takes some interesting detours in parts, but that ending pulls the movie right off the map.

Still, there are smaller joys in Scott’s direction, which is unfussy and straightforward, and reminiscent of Nia DaCosta’s work in the similarly structured “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” And Scott is a good guide for Elordi, who’s coming off his Oscar-nominated performance in “Frankenstein” and continuing his evolution into the strong, silent leading-man roles he seems destined to play. 

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‘The Dog Stars’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 28, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong violence, and language. Running time: 118 minutes. 

Review: 'Buddy' cleverly reimagines an '80s children's show format into something weirder and more terrifying

The premise for the horror thriller “Buddy” is creepily effective because it tries to answer a question any sleep-deprived parent has asked: What if the fuzzy costumed character on your child’s favorite show was, in fact, horribly evil and killing the children on the show?

Here, the show is “It’s Buddy,” an early-‘90s relic in which a plush orange unicorn comes alive as a 6-foot living character who plays with a quartet of children who play, sing and learn lessons about being cooperative or brave. The episodes always end with the kids giving Buddy a big hug and singing about about much they love him.

For the first 25 minutes, that’s the pattern that director Casper Kelly and his co-writer, Jamie King, set up. They also show the cracks in the perfect children’s TV facade when Buddy gets angry or someone — either child performs or grownup actor, like Nurse Nancy (Phuong Kubacki) — doesn’t do what Buddy tells them to do. Then Buddy starts murdering people, and has to go find new cast members. How he does that is a mystery Kelly and King aren’t eager to give away too soon.

The movie cuts away from Buddy’s candy-colored set to a typical suburban home, where Grace (Christin Milioti) lives with her husband, Ben (Topher Grace), and their two sons. On the surface, everything seems fine, but Grace starts feeling uneasy — like there’s something missing in their well-ordered suburban life. 

While Grace is sorting that out, the kids in Buddy’s backyard start having their doubts about Buddy’s motivation for keeping the kids here, and for insisting that all the kids remain happy at all costs. One child, Freddy (Delaney Quinn, from “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”), realizes that the kids have to get out of Buddy’s yard, so they devise a plan to escape to far-off Crystal City. 

How does Freddy’s story within the “It’s Buddy” hellscape and Grace’s suburban drama come together? That would be a major spoiler. Trust that it all makes sense within the stylized universe created here.

Kelly excels at bending a familiar family-friendly video style into something ghastly. He did it on his best known work, the 2014 video “Too Many Cooks,” a dark spoof of ‘80s sitcom credit sequences. Here, he evokes the cardboard and rainbows of the “Barney” genre, then twists it into something monstrous. 

Kelly has help here, particularly in the realization of Buddy, with Sergey Zhuravsky working the character’s body and Keegan-Michael Key providing his voice. The movie also boasts solid voice work from Patton Oswalt and Michael Shannon, and a surprising performance from the king of “B”-movies, Clint Howard.

With a premise like this, the difficulty is in sticking the landing, and “Buddy” delivers with a tense, bloody conclusion that will make you think twice about what you let your little kids watch.

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‘Buddy’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 28, in several theaters. Rated R for bloody violence, some drug content and language - all involving children. Running time: 95 minutes.

Review: 'It Ends' puts rookie director Alexander Ullom and a talented no-name cast on an endless, and inventive, road trip

The supernatural thriller “It Ends,” the debut work of writer-director Alexander Ullom, doesn’t require buckets of blood or awful carnage to scare its audience — just a solid premise carried out to its logical and terrifying conclusion.

Four college-age friends are on a road trip, driving through the backwoods of Florida. After taking a turn into the woods, they can’t find the next turn they’re supposed to take. The GPS tells them to keep going straight, though the driver, Tyler (Mitchell Cole), an Army veteran, thinks they need to turn around.

They turn around, and immediately hit a dead end. So they turn around again and keep driving — and driving and driving and driving, for what seems like forever. The engineer of the group, James (Phinehas Yoon), notices that the gas gauge hasn’t budged since they got on this road. And the more easygoing Fisher (Noah Toth) and the car’s lone woman occupant, Day (Akira Jackson), notice that they’re not getting hungry or needing to stop and pee. 

At one point, they stop the car and get out for a moment. That’s when they learn something else about this road: That there are people in the woods on both sides, who rush the car in a frenzy, hurting anyone who would get in their way. So they hurry back into the car and keep driving.

There’s not a lot of overt violence in “It Ends” — the R rating is for the copious F-bombs — and it’s part of Ullom’s cleverness that he can generate tension and surprise just by showing how far these four characters will go on this nightmare journey. Ullom also adds a healthy dose of humor, as his doomed quartet grow and adjust to the strange new rules of their existence.

The foursome of actors, all unknowns, are a solid ensemble, and smartly enact the easy camaraderie of old friends caught in this “Twilight Zone” scenario. Ullom shows he can take very little money and create something thought-provoking and nail-biting.

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‘It Ends’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 28, at the Cinemark Century 16 (South Salt Lake) and the Cinemark Jordan Landing (West Jordan). Rated R for pervasive language. Running time: 89 minutes.

Review: 'Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma' analyzes the sexual tension of horror movies, then dives into that fear and desire with gusto

Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun starts “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” as a scholarly dissertation on the cultural power of the American slasher film — and that’s not nearly as dry as you might think. But when Schoenbrun shifts from discussing horror movies to diving headlong into one, the excitement and sexual tension become deliciously unbearable.

Schoenbrun’s introduction informs viewers of the existence of one of the longest running horror franchises Hollywood ever made: The “Camp Miasma” series. It began as a typical story of horny teenagers at a sleepaway camp, getting messily cut to ribbons by a mysterious killer called Little Death, identified by a headpiece that resembles the square vent of a swamp cooler. The series produced more than a dozen sequels, each one worse than the last, until the franchise became a gruesome and problematic shadow of its former self.

Young filmmaker Kris Williams (played by Hannah Einbinder) sees it differently. Kris, identified in a trade paper as a “Sundance wunderkind,” is obsessed with the “Camp Miasma” films, and has been picked to resurrect the franchise. She calls it “zombie I.P.,” a piece of the studio’s intellectual property that’s a known name, but so blisteringly transphobic that the only way the suits can save it is to hire a queer filmmaker like Kris.

Before making her pitch to the studio, Kris ventures to the snowy Pacific Northwest to convince someone else: Billy Presley, the actress who played the “final girl” in the first “Camp Miasma” movie, and never acted again. Billy (played by Gillian Anderson) now lives in the old campsite where the first movie was filmed, and  Kris wonders if Billy has become a Norma Desmond, living in the dream world of her movie. Billy tells Kris that she lives at the camp because “someone’s got to be here when Little Death comes back.” When Kris declares that Little Death isn’t real, Billy replies, “Well, not with that attitude, he isn’t.”

Kris has told her agent (Sarah Sherman) that she wants Billy to star in her new “Camp Miasma” movie, not just appear in a fan-service cameo. Billy screens her personal copy of the first “Camp Miasma” for Kris (in which Schoenbrun lovingly copies the low-res style of the genre), and the young filmmaker starts revealing even deeper feelings. 

It’s here that Schoenbrun, who explored similar themes of onscreen sexuality in her 2024 psychological thriller “I Saw the TV Glow,” shifts from mirroring the mechanics of slasher movies and gets to her real game — exploring the combustible mix of fear and desire that feeds the horror genre. It’s something Kris (and, one assumes, Schoenbrun) has thought about since childhood, staying up late in the dark watching movies that evoked feelings they weren’t old enough to process.

As the movie goes on, Schoenbrun bends the narrative, with twisty imagery that David Lynch and David Cronenberg would have recognized as resembling their own. Schoenbrun doesn’t shy away from scenarios where revulsion, horniness and gallows humor bleed (no pun intended) into one, reveling in the odd irony that movies about a camp are loaded with campiness.

Einbinder, as anyone who’s seen her work in “Hacks” already knows, gives a spectacular performance here, holding in the young filmmaker’s roiling emotions until she can’t any more. Anderson has seldom been given a role this juicy, and she shatters all expectations of a horror movie star. And let’s give a special shout-out to the actor playing Little Death, Jack Haven (who starred in “I Saw the TV Glow”), who gives the character what few slasher villains have ever shown: Humanity and vulnerability.

By the final reel, and the reveal of the movie’s true “final girl,” audiences may be torn about “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.” Does it fulfill its promise of reimagining the horror thriller? Does it bring a jagged energy to some well-worn movie tropes? Does it suggest the most passionate love affair ever subjected to buckets of blood? I believe the answer to all three questions is “yes,” so I suggest you pack a bag and get to camp immediately.

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‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 21, at several theaters. Rated R for bloody violence, gore, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and some language. Running time: 112 minutes.

Review: 'Tony' delivers a portrait of a young man as an arrogant jerk, and Dominic Sessa and Antonio Banderas make it delicious

The celebrity chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain was the subject of a lot of mythologizing over his life, some of it self-imposed in his memoir “Kitchen Confidential” and other writings and CNN shows — so it’s no surprise that, eight years after his death, there’s a movie, “Tony,” that tries to do the same.

What makes “Tony” so powerful and downright entertaining is that it captures the chef at the very beginning of his journey, when he found the passion and developed the talent that could match his swagger.

The movie is set in the summer of 1975, when Bourdain was 19 and the idea of preparing great food wasn’t on his mind. Tony (played by Dominic Sessa) had designs on being a writer, and often told professors and girls he wanted to make out with that he was a writer — though he could produce scant evidence yet that he had actually written anything. (Notably, Tony’s last name is not uttered in the film until nearly the end.)

As a student at Vassar College, north of New York City, he applies for a prestigious fellowship and tells his parents it’s practically in the bag. So when he doesn’t get it, he lies and says he did, and then gets out of New York, claiming he’s on a research trip for his proposed novel. Really, he’s heading north to Provincetown, Rhode Island, a summer resort town, to chase after a young woman he fancies, Nancy Putkoski (played by Emilia Jones, in a somewhat fictionalized version of Bourdain’s first wife). 

Tony’s hopes of wooing Nancy hit reality on his first day in Provincetown, which ends with him getting drunk and tossed out of a seafood restaurant, and his cash stolen from his wallet. He wakes up in a hammock on the porch of the chef (Antonio Banderas) who runs the restaurant that ejected him. After a time, the chef (who is not identified until the very end of the movie) and the hotheaded Tony reach an understanding: He can keep sleeping on the hammock if Tony comes and works as a dishwasher at the restaurant.

Tony’s first day is tumultuous, as he burns his hand on a hot pan and is befriended by one of the sous chefs, Sal (Leo Woodall), who introduces Tony to the party-hard life of Provincetown’s summer tourists. Sal also introduces Tony to cocaine, which he takes to immediately, and heroin, which Bourdain wrote he didn’t start using until years later.

Slowly, though, Tony learns that his boss isn’t a typical seaside diner cook, but a classically trained chef with his own dog-eared copy of Auguste Escoffier’s legendary cookbook. Through his boss, Tony learns to appreciate great cooking and the camaraderie of a kitchen staff who can do it. 

Director Matt Johnson (“BlackBerry,” “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie”) and his three co-screenwriters work within the familiar confines of a “portrait of the artist as a young jerk” biopic. Moments of Tony’s arrogance run hard into moments of humiliation, and one of his big triumphs leads directly into a major disaster — which then leads into an even bigger and more redemptive triumph. 

As any chef knows, though, it’s not just the recipe, it’s the quality of the ingredients and the skill of the people preparing it that counts. The ensemble cast is strong, and brilliantly led by Sessa as the headstrong Tony and Banderas as the weathered chef who sparks his protege’s fire. And Johnson deftly captures Bourdain’s contradictory impulses — overconfidence and self-loathing — and shows how the tension between them made Bourdain, even at 19, the person we all recognize.

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‘Tony’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 21, at several theaters. Rated R for pervasive language, drug use, and sexual content/nudity. Running time: 106 minutes.

Review: 'Union County' puts Will Poulter and a cast of nonprofessional actors through an authentic and honest look at recovery from addiction

Most movies about recovery from addiction fall into familiar plot patterns of struggle, relapse and redemption — but what makes writer-director Adam Meeks’ drama “Union County” one of the better examples of this genre is how he digs into the true-life details of such battles.

Will Poulter (“Death of a Unicorn”) plays Cody Parsons, recently out of jail and returned to his Ohio home town, where he’s enrolled in a county-mandated drug court program. He’s required to show up at court every day, keep a daily log of his activities, and take regular drug tests. On his first day, he runs into his foster brother, Jack (Noah Centineo), who’s also in the program.

Getting Cody and Jack back together isn’t the best thing for either man’s recovery efforts. We see them drive up to a house, buy some drugs, and shoot up in Cody’s car. They immediately crash the car, and Cody stumbles into the house where their sister, Kat (Emily Meade), lives with her little girl. The next morning, after finding Cody asleep on her couch, Kat calls the cops.

If there’s a silver lining in this moment, it’s that the judge decided Jack should be sent to a more restrictive rehab program in a nearby town — which opens up a space for Cody, who had been living out his car, to stay in the town’s sober living center. 

Meeks roots the story in the reality of addiction treatment in Bellefontaine, Ohio, about 30 minutes from the filmmaker’s home town of Columbus. The judge and the county clerk who oversee the drug court program, as well as several of its participants, portray themselves, depicting how opioid addiction has devastated this small town and many others like it. 

Poulter gives a grounded and understated performance that shows how hard and how mundane the day-to-day struggle to stay clean can be. Poulter’s portrayal of Cody’s addiction battle feels almost as real as the ones of his nonprofessional castmates.

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‘Union County’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 21, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for drug use and language. Running time: 97 minutes.

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This review previously ran on this site on January 25, 2026, when the movie premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'The Rivals of Amziah King' is an exuberant mix of genres made wonderful by Matthew McConaughey and newcomer Angelina LookingGlass

It’s difficult to get a handle on what kind of movie “The Rivals of Amziah King” is — part musical hang-out movie, part heist caper, part revenge thriller — but easy to love it, because director Andrew Patterson blends ideas so seamlessly and provides Matthew McConaughey with one of his best roles in years.

McConaughey plays Amziah King, a beekeeper who spends his days tending to his hives and his nights playing bluegrass music with his friends wherever they gather — at someone’s home, at the church potluck or outside a drive-in burger joint. 

It’s at Ulysses’ Drive-In where Det. Sunderland (Bruce Davis) finds Amziah, and asks for help solving a mystery. Sunderland has seized barrels of stolen honey, and he wants Amziah’s expertise to identify where they came from. Amziah goes to work in his honey plant, with help from a former employee, Remick (Jake Horowitz). Remick brings along a buddy, Colemar (Tony Revolori), who gets his ponytail caught in Amziah’s honey extraction machine — which results in a moment of bloody comedy in which Amziah and his friends rush Colemar to a hospital to get his scalp reattached.

Amziah’s default mode is energized zen — acting quickly and decisively when needed, but with a laidback attitude that seems pitched perfectly to McConaughey’s “alright, alright” screen persona. In the movie’s first hour, we pick up hints of hard times in Amziah’s younger days, losing his wife to cancer and going through financial struggles with his beekeeping operation. He also mentions casually, in an important bit of foreshadowing, that the honey business “is not full of kind people.”

When Amziah stops at a diner for coffee, he sees that his waitress is a familiar face: Kateri (played by Angelina LookingGlass), for whom Amziah and his wife once served as foster parents. Amziah brings Kateri along to the potluck, where he walks her through the different dishes and teaches her “there’s truth and there’s lies” in what’s served. McConaughey is having a ball chewing through writer James Montague’s dialogue, just as much as he enjoys breaking into song with his pals.

Amziah brings Kateri under his wing, teaching her how the honey business works. Amziah tells her about the three types of bees — the drones, the workers and the queen — and how a bee colony is like a community, where the bees look after each other to ensure their mutual survival. Kateri quickly learns that the community of Amziah’s friends work the same way in their Southern town. (The movie was filmed in Alabama and Oklahoma.)

For the first hour of a movie that’s slightly over two hours long, Patterson — who made a powerful debut with his 2020 radio-based supernatural thriller “The Vast of Night” — introduces us to Amziah and this community, and shows how welcome Kateri becomes. It’s such a pleasant place to visit, with food and music and camaraderie in generous amounts, that you scarcely notice that the plot hasn’t really kicked in. Then it does, with pivotal events for Amziah and his bees that put Kateri on a path toward justice and maybe some revenge.

Amziah’s friends — including Remick, the heavily accented Timmy (Scott Shepherd) and Amziah’s lawyer Rippy (Rob Morgan) — provide Kateri with support and guidance. She’ll need it, because she’s up against a ruthless agriculture tycoon, Dob McCoy (Kurt Russell). 

In a movie loaded with treasures, including a bluegrass soundtrack co-produced by the legendary T-Bone Burnett and featuring the Avett Brothers, McConaughey’s performance is an all-timer. He plays Amziah as a man holding his regrets but not weighed down by them, looking at life with a battered but still open heart. You’d have to go back a decade or more, maybe to “Interstellar” or “Magic Mike,” to find him in better form.

One of the wisest things McConaughey and Patterson do in “The Rivals of Amziah King” is to transfer the dramatic load to young LookingGlass, who makes a compelling movie debut. (She’s an Indigenous actor, with a recurring role last season in “Dark Winds.”) LookingGlass doesn’t say a lot, but within her stillness is a fire that fuels Kateri’s drive to make right what’s gone wrong. 

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‘The Rivals of Amziah King’

★★★★

Opens Friday, August 14, in theaters. Rated R for language and some grisly images. Running time: 130 minutes.