Grow Omaha Flicks

★ ★ ½ Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is the next in line for a new trend in musician biographies—the expanded micro-biopic. A typical micro-biopic focuses on a brief, sharply defined moment in someone’s life rather than their full story. Last year’s A Complete Unknown focused…

★ ★ ★ Good Fortune is written and directed by comedian Aziz Ansari, who also stars as down-on-his-luck Arj. Ansari explores a concept similar to Trading Places where a Wall Street commodities broker named Louis (Dan Aykroyd) trades places with a street hustler named Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) as part…

★ ★ ★ Black Phone 2 is a throwback to 1980s horror, calling up a new kind of terror that fuses the nightmares of A Nightmare on Elm Street with the brutality of Friday the 13th. While both are arguably slasher films, here we’re treated to a far more effective psychological version that dives into the lingering PTSD of horrific childhood trauma. In some ways, this film bests its original…

★ ★ ½ Tron: Ares, the latest in Disney’s neon-lit series, once again zaps users into The Grid—a sleek, digital battleground where light trails and nostalgia collide. It’s the second sequel and we’re familiar with the premise—yet we’re given a convoluted, confusing opening that dumps flashbacks on what’s happened since Tron: Legacy. From the start, that backstory acts like a boat anchor…

★ ★ ★ ½ Roofman is based on the true story of Jeffrey “Jeff” Manchester, a Charlotte, N.C., man who notoriously robbed an unknown number of McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants by breaking in through the roof. As an underemployed, divorced Navy veteran and struggling father, he needed a way to support his family. The film opens with Jeff breaking into…

★ ★ ½ Bone Lake is a thriller that explores temptation in a relationship already being tested—with metaphors so on the nose even Pinocchio would be jealous. This is a film with a great deal of missed opportunities with intriguing ideas that, had they been more thoroughly explored, could have succeeded at making us feel uncomfortable while entertaining us at the same time…

★ ★ ★ Good Boy took more than three years to film. It was shot in director Ben Leonberg’s home. It’s a haunted house horror film that doesn’t show us anything new or redefine the genre—except for one astounding choice. The main protagonist is a dog , and it’s told from the canine’s perspective. The unwritten rule in Hollywood…

★ ★ The Strangers: Chapter 2 is a much more entertaining film than its predecessor. If you’re willing to turn off your brain, leave logic and reason at the concession counter, munch your popcorn and enjoy the ride, you might actually have a decent time. Unlike last year’s insufferable Chapter 1, this is…

★ ★ ★ ★ The Smashing Machine tells the biographical story of wrestler and mixed martial artist Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson). The title is based on his nickname, given because of his brutal ground-and-pound striking and vicious wrestling takedowns. Raw and visceral, the film shows Mark as a man in mental torment—a self-saboteur in his personal life. In the ring…

★ ★ ½ The Senior is a film based on a true story about Mike Flynt, a 59-year-old who finds himself still eligible to play one last season of football at his alma mater. In his senior year, he was kicked off the football team and expelled after one too many fights off the field. He was technically qualified to complete his final year of eligibility at Sul Ross State University…