Grow Omaha Flicks

★ ★ ½ Mortal Kombat II is the direct sequel to 2021’s Mortal Kombat and aims to correct some of the biggest complaints about that film. Mortal Kombat is a video game tournament where several planetary realms compete in fantastical one-on-one combat. If a realm loses 10 tournaments in a row, it falls under control of the evil Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford). In these films, Earthrealm has already lost nine straight tournaments. The complaint about…

★ ★ ★ The Devil Wears Prada 2 is the long-awaited sequel to the 2006 smash hit. It’s been 20 years since we checked in with Miranda (Meryl Streep), Andy (Anne Hathaway), Emily (Emily Blunt) and Nigel (Stanley Tucci), along with the happenings at the fictional fashion magazine Runway. When the last film ended, Andy quit Runway and her job as Miranda’s assistant. She chucks her phone in a Paris fountain and pursues her journalism…

★ ★ ★ ½ Hokum is a horror film about Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott), a successful author battling the demons of his past. He sips bourbon as he writes a bleak ending to a book series in his small, dark, concrete-style home while the rain paints water streaks down his windows. He also sees things in the shadows. Ohm travels to the fictional Bilberry Woods Hotel in West Cork, Ireland, to scatter his parents’ ashes. He has a photo of his mom by a distinct-looking tree near the hotel. He carefully scatters her ashes…

★ ★ ½ Michael is a biopic about the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. It’s directed by Antoine Fuqua, a director known for the hard-hitting action thriller Training Day. Jackson’s story is ripe for Fuqua’s storytelling: an iconic rise to fame scarred by late-career scandal. What we’re given is a surface-level treatment of Jackson’s early rise, from his days singing with his older brothers in the Jackson 5 to his struggle to break away from his father, Joseph Jackson. Mostly, the film stays in the ‘80s….

★ ★ ★ ★ Fuze is an action thriller that jumps right into the action and tension immediately and doesn’t loosen its grip until the credits roll. The plot twists and turns as the story unfolds in unexpected ways that come at you from out of nowhere—they’re delightfully surprising when they arrive. It’s a film that develops its characters as the plot unfolds. They’re given little to no backstory as they’re introduced, allowing us to get…

★ ★ Normal stars Bob Odenkirk as small-town sheriff Ulysses Richardson, who temporarily fills the role after the sheriff of Normal, Minn., dies. It’s an action-adventure film that attempts to contrast an absurdly normal, friendly town with Pulp Fiction-type secrets that drive the story toward chaotic violence. Ulysses is just settling into the town as the film starts, taking the lead over his deputies with a cautious approach…

★ Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is not the Brendan Fraser action-adventure mummy film many were expecting when the project was first announced. It attempts to create a darker, scarier monster film than the entries that preceded it. While it succeeds at delving into the darker corners of the monster mythology, it ultimately settles for gross-out horror, blood and gore. It offers little else, and the characters’ motivations are as shallow as the plot is illogical…

★ ★ You, Me & Tuscany is a story about a young woman named Anna (Halle Bailey), who dropped out of culinary school two months before graduation when her mother became deathly ill. Understandably, her mom’s death sent her life spiraling out of whack. When we first meet her, she’s at a crossroads. She wants to get her life back on track but has neither the means nor the deep-seated drive to do so. The film begins with Anna begging her friend Claire for a free room at the hotel she manages…

★ ★ ½ Beast is about a disgraced MMA fighter named Patton James (Daniel MacPherson) on the verge of a middleweight title. As the film opens, he knocks out an opponent in six seconds, then we flash forward 10 years to find him working as a fisherman. In that time, he served prison time for a bar fight, got married and had a daughter. We see none of this and miss a great deal of dramatic setup that could have paid dividends as the film ratchets up the tension. As it is, we get a paint-by-numbers…

★ ★ Faces of Death attempts to ask the same question as the 1978 film that shares its title: Is this real? The original film boasted ‘Banned in 46 Countries’ on its cover. No doubt, that helped propel it to cult classic status. It was also hard to find, likely on purpose. You wouldn’t find the film at Hollywood Video or Blockbuster. If you found it, it would be at a mom-and-pop video store that also had a curtained-off room in the back. Supposedly, someone at my junior high school had a copy and held a watch party…