Sonja (Chelsea Gilligan) and her husband Jason (Steven Good) are going through some rough times, so she’s been sexting and getting close to her boss Robert (Austen Jaye). When that man is found dead in a hotel room — where he was waiting for her — Sonja decides to go back to their marriage.

Mia (Sydney Cole Alexander) was Robert’s wife and she’s just learned that he was having an affair. She smells another woman’s perfume in the room where he died — of autoerotic asphyxiation during phone sex! — and recognizes it when she passes by Mia in Robert’s office.

As for Sonja and Jason, they decide to move to a remote cabin and reconnect, even if that’s been difficult since the death of their child. A neighbor named Clare soon introduces herself to Jason and if you haven’t guessed that she’s Mia, well, you’ve never watched a Lifetime movie before.

Directed and written by Rainy Kerwin, this hits all the expected spots of the erotic thriller, even if most of the erotic is in the beginning with Mia’s husband sending some pretty racy — even for Tubi — texts to his new lover. Spoiler warning but these Tubi movies love having the villain get away with their plans, unless this is a set up for A Neighbor’s Vendetta 2 and you know, I think that’s totally what’s about to happen.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Tubi excels at finding movies that would have once been cable or even network made for TV movies and presenting them to you whenever you want to watch them. Like Frankie Meets Jack, which has Frankie (Samantha Cope) giving up guys and becoming a dog mom for Tucker when she meets veterinarian Jack and his dog Dakota. They keep running into one another, like Jack becoming her vet and her writing his wedding announcement. But you know, with a title like Frankie Meets Jack, they’re going to end up together.

Directed by Andrew Lawrence — yes, Joey’s brother — from a script by Cope, Joey and Groundling Jen Bashian, this is also the final film of Anne Heche even if she’s in it so briefly that you may not spot her. This led my to wonder, are Cope and Joey married? Yes. The answer is yes. And you know, that’s cool, as they’re making movies together and Tubi is paying for the innocuous and cute results. It’s predictable, but some people on Letterboxd  and IMDB reviewed this as if it beat up their elderly mother and it’s just a romcom on a free streaming service. At least the dogs are cute.

You can watch this on Tubi.

As a kid, I read and re-read Marvel Premiere #47, which showed how Scott Lang became Ant-Man. Written by David Michelinie and drawn by X-Men team of teams John Byrne and Terry Austin, it was a story I read and re-read and if you have ever seen the way I draw comic books, so much of it comes from this issue.

So when it comes to that whole “Are comics cinema?” back and forth argument, I think you can figure out what side I’m on. Are there too many comic book movies? Were there too many giallo from 1970-1975? Did Italy make too many Westerns? Were there too many slashers in 1981? Can there be too much of something that you love?

Alright, now that I have gotten past the legally required nod to serious criticism, let me tell you why I enjoyed this movie about humanoid broccoli.

After the Avengers save everything from Thanos, former criminal and current Avenger Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) has settled down from being Ant-Man, instead enjoying life as a writer, husband of Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) and father of Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), who is upset that her father isn’t fighting for people any longer, instead enjoying the fruits of his hard work and resting on his laurels. There’s a moment that’s interesting here, as she discusses all the people who were displaced in the time where Thanos killed half of reality and now are homeless. Yes, it’d be great to explore this but this is a popcorn movie that soon moves past that; I’m not suggesting a popcorn movie delve into that, but hey, if there ends up being a Disney+ D-Man series that does, I’d watch that. Also, the fact that I just casually namedropped D-Man should explain why I never went to the prom.

Anyways, Cassie has been working with her stepmother Hope and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) to communicate with the Quantum Realm, the place where Hank’s wife Janey Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) spent thirty years of her life and has no interest in going back, particularly when it comes to explaining her past or unleashing new Marvel Cinematic Universe big bad Kang the Conquerer (Jonathan Majors, who is quite frankly amazing in this movie and brings a real sense of big drama to his role, not to mention all the various — oh yeah, SPOILER WARNING, I forgot that legal disclaimer –versions of Kang that he shows off, including Immortus, Rama-Tut, Scarlet Centurion and Victor Timely).

Everyone soon gets pulled into that Quantum Realm and becomes part of the war between its inhabitants, with good rebels Jentorra (Katy O’Brian, who was already part of the MCU as Kimball in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as Major Sarah Grey in the DC superhero TV series Black Lightning and a comms officer on The Mandalorian; if you really want me to go full geek, she’s a member of former Micronauts leader Commander Arcturus Rann’s Enigma Force alongside other non-Mego owned characters Marionette and Bug; one more semicolon but man, this movie is as close as we’re ever getting to a Michael Golden-era Micronauts movie), telepathic Quaz (William Jackson Harper; he’s not Quasar, as many Marvel fans thought, but when he does pull a password out of someone’s mind at one point, it’s 18147, which would be Avengers #181, Scott Lang’s first appearance, and a shout out to the aforementioned Marvel Premiere #47), the slime creature with no holes named Veb (David Dastmalchian, who was Kurt in the last two Ant-Man movies, Abra Kadabra on The Flash and Polka Dot Man in Suicide Squad), the flashlight head Xolum (James Cutler) and oh yeah, there’s Bill Murray as Lando Calrissian (I kid, he’s Lord Krylar, another of the characters like Jentorra who come from K’ai, the microplanet where the Hulk met one of the loves of his life Jarella) battling Kang and his Tron: Legacy-looking soldiers like he’s Baron Karza or something.

Anyways, yes, this all feels rather like Star Wars but then again — I invite you to check out this piece I wrote about where that movie’s influences came from — isn’t Star Wars influenced if not ripped off from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World? Kirby invented most of the MCU and rebelling against a dark authority is pretty much an archetype. Where this gets kind of operatic is that Ant-Man is, well, an ant against space god Kang and that’s a battle that I never saw coming.

I also never thought I’d see MODOK (Machine Organism Designed Only for Killing) in a movie, much less one that fully embraces the absolutely goofy idea of a giant head in a chair with weapons and baby legs. Also, this ends up being former Yellowjacket Darren Cross from the first movie and every time his real face shows up, it breaks the movie but it’s a welcome break in the movie.

You can imagine — and you’d be right — that the good guys win but this movie brings up an interesting idea that you can’t just punch Kang, who lives his life across multiple timelines that are not linear and that this Kang may not be the worst of the many Kangs. Then Scott brushes it off and tries to enjoy some Baskin-Robbins ice cream cake (the fact that the ice cream chain has no tie-in flavor and yet had a Condorman flavor back in the 80s is kind of upsetting; you can see a list of even more movie flavors here).

In the same way that politics — nice socialism shoutout with the ants in this — just leads to people not listening to one another, a lot of folks have their minds made up about comic book movies which are really just mythology and should be seen as such. That said, this movie did what all popcorn films should: it entertained me. I think it’s hilarious that one of the film’s writers, Jeff Loveness, said that this movie is “Jodorowsky’s Dune within Marvel” and there are not enough drugs in the world to show you what Alejandro Jodorowsky would do with a Marvel film but hey, he also did The Incal in comics form, so when you denigrate comics, keep in mind that a hero of cinema spent so much of his time there.

I explained to my wife tonight that as a kid, there I never really wanted to get involved in human drama or how stressful some extended family members could be, so I just filled my life with comic books. Often when we talk on the phone, my mom will say, “Do you remember this person,” and the answer is no, I do not remember this person. However, if she asked, “Was Wolverine really in World War 2?” I could give her several anecdotes and explain how Black Widow could be young and yet still saved by Logan and Captain America in 1941.

So yeah, I liked this movie.

One of the things I had to learn when I got married was who was who in the true crime stories of not just the headlines, but going back for decades. My wife and her father used to watch these stories unfold in real time and had the same kind of language about them that I do about my obsessions like Jess Franco movies, Steve Ditko self-published Ayn Rand-inspired superheroes and mid-90s Japanese independent pro wrestling.

Tubi gets their audience and while they have an Italian horror and giallo category for me, they also are producing true crime docs for my wife. Like Love You to Death: The Jodi Arias Story, which gets into the real story — as written by Savannah Lucas, who has worked on Snapped and Tubi’s Suburban Nightmare: Jon Benét Ramsey — of Jodi, her relationship with Travis Victor Alexander and how he ended up with a bullet in the head and 27 knife wounds.

This was one of the first social media trials and this gets into everything, including how Jodi was selling artwork on eBay, which is pretty wild. Who wants that?

Today, Arias is jailed at the Arizona State Prison Complex – Perryville in the medium security section. That hasn’t stopped Lifetime from making Bad Behind Bars: Jodi Arias. This documentary does have several of the real officers involved in the case, as well as several bloggers and media people, all to give the full picture and generally, that picture is that Jodi was wrong and that every step of the way, they knew she was wrong and that she’s still wrong.

If you know true crime at the heights that my wife does, there’s nothing new here for you. But for husbands who need to do some homework, well, this is pretty quick and you’ll have something to talk to your wife about.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Max McGuire (who like any director of the streaming era has a split between horror and holiday movies in his resume) and written by Ellen Huggins (The Ex Obsession), this is the story of Kate Kelsey (Nola Martin) whose husband Matt (Liam Toobin) is killed and because she has a popular vlog — A Good Wife’s Guide to Murder — she becomes the prime suspect that the police are investigating. After all, they owned a restaurant called Mendaville together, he may have been having an affair and, yes, every episode of her show she breaks down her ten rules for killing your husband and getting away with it.

Adding to the conflict is the fact that Lenore (Tenille Read), the wife of investigating detective Peter Thompson (R Austin Ball), is more than just best friends with the Kelseys. She might have been getting even closer to Matt than she’s letting on.

Matt was getting around, also sleeping with an employee named Lisa (Zenna Davis-Jones) who is killed moments after that secret is let out. Can Kate and her assistant Brit (Bukola Ayoka) figure out who did it? And was it someone close to her, like Brit? Or her former best friend who had a whole trunk of sex toys that she was using with her husband? What about her combination lawyer and PR guy who was bullied by her husband in high school?

Or is it…someone else?

Of all the recent Tubi movies, I think this is one of the better ones I’ve seen. I loved how it played with the conventions of true crime. Also: I live with someone who watched Forensic Files on an endless 24 hour repeating cavalcade of dead husbands, so I fully know there is no way I will survive any of this. So I relate as I laugh and enjoy what I watched.

You can watch this on Tubi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Anyone who has ever dealt with an irate person while working at a call center or other customer service related jobs should find the premise of writer/director Richard Anthony Dunford’s U.K. horror thriller Minacious highly relatable. The film starts off with a call center employee being consoled by fellow staff members because she was the target of someone who threatened to kill her. Before she can even leave work early as she was given permission to do, the enraged caller makes good on his threat. It seems that this person may make a habit of that behavior, as he (voiced by Eric Roberts) targets amiable bank call center employee Izzy (Sarah Alexandra Marks), who is working from a relative’s home, when she cannot immediately transfer money into his account. 

Minacious is, for the most part, a single-location film that depends on one on-screen actor to carry the bulk of the film on her shoulders, with assistance from a voice actor. Thankfully, Marks is well up to the task, giving a terrific performance as a protagonist who viewers can get behind. The film does spend a good deal of time showing the human side of call-center employees — it’s no easy job — but that helps make Izzy a more sympathetic character. 

Eric Roberts’ voice acting here is solid work and helps drive the film, giving Marks plenty with which to work. It’s quite obvious that the person playing the on-screen villain isn’t Roberts, so viewers will have to willingly suspend disbelief whenever that double appears.

Dunford has crafted a nifty thriller and the production values belie the film’s being shot on a microbudget. Aside from a question I have regarding the opening scene and another quibble about the climax that would give away a spoiler, Minacious worked quite well for me.

Minacious screened as part of Horror-on-Sea Film Festival, which was held in Southend-on-Sea, U.K. January 12–14 and 19–21, 2023.

Dr. Raven Fields (Erica Mena) is a busy always working medical professional that could use an assistant to help her with getting even more done. Normally, I would say that the person she’s picked, Annie Dotson (Parker McKenna Posey), seems nice and would really be a great person to hire, but I am also watching this story on Tubi and know that nothing good is going to come of any of this.

Annie systematically destroys Raven’s life, first by moving in with her, then blocking Raven’s cheating boyfriend Shawn on her boss’s phone, which leads to her dumping him. But once they work it out, Annie starts getting really strange to the point that Raven starts to wonder what’s wrong with her and why she keeps talking to Heather, someone who isn’t there, and why the story of how Raven delivered a baby despite being only a nurse upsets her so much.  As if that’s not enough, Annie starts going all 90s erotic thriller and dressing exactly like her boss.

The truth? Annie is the baby that Raven delivered. When her drug addicted mother Daniella went into shock, she had to choose between saving either the mother or Heather, who was Daniella’s twin. She still tried to save both but it wasn’t enough. After a lifetime of being abused by her mother, who blamed her for Heather’s death, she snapped and decided to come after Raven, who ended up being a better mother to her than she’d ever known. That said, she still wants to kill Shawn.

This was directed by Chris Stokes, who keeps putting movies on Tubi and I keep watching them. Examples include The Stepmother, The Stepmother 2 and Howard High. It was co-written by Stokes and Marques Houston, who was in both of the Stepmother movies and was Roger Evans on Sister, Sister.

You can watch this on Tubi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

If you are in the mood for a quirky action comedy with offbeat elements and terrific fight choreography, writer/director Reiki Tsuno has you covered with his feature film directorial debut Mad Cats (Japan, 2023).

Nebbish Taka Kurosawa (Sho Mineo) goes searching for his missing brother Mune (So Yamanaka), who — unbeknownst to him but the audience is made aware of this early — has been taken captive by a group of “monster cats” bent on killing naughty pet shop owners in vicious manners. Along his journey he meets homeless man Takezo (Yuya Matsuura) and a mysterious young girl (Ayane), named, fittingly, Mysterious Young Girl in the film’s credits. He’ll need their help as his destination is the lair of the aforementioned felines, and members of that group do their best along the way to make sure that the reluctantly heroic trio doesn’t make it that far. Oh, and some esoteric catnip is involved.

Tsuno is no stranger to unconventional cinema, having appeared as a cast member in Lloyd Kaufman’s Troma features Return to Nuke ‘Em High and Return to Return to Nuke ‘Em High AKA Vol. 2. Mad Cats may be a lower budget independent effort, but Tsuno has crafted a winner, as the film looks great, has fine production values, and a big heart. 

The main cast members all acquit themselves well with fun performances, and the monster cat actors show great physical chops in their mostly silent roles. Ayane especially impresses with her martial arts choreography skills, and there is some solid work with weapons by her on-screen rivals.

From impressive fight scenes and action sequences to off-center but accessible humor — a pet store commercial will remind some viewers of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! — to sweet drama, Mad Cats delivers.

Mad Cats screens as part of Slamdance Film Festival, which takes place in-person from January 20–26 in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah and virtually from January 23–29, 2023.

Directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield (who has a ton of PR thanks to his movie Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey; he also made The Area 51 Incident) and Scott Jeffrey (Escape from Death Block 13, Exorcist Vengeance) and writer Tom Jolliffe, Firenado starts when Devlin (Toby Wynn-Davies) learns how to control a tornado. But then, as these things happen, that tornado catches on fire and you can only imagine what happens next. Actually, you don’t have to imagine because they made this movie.

This is why you come to this site, because when I had to decide what movie to be my first of 2023, it was a movie with a tornado that’s not just on fire but one that looks like one of those neon lights from Spencer’s that you’d put in your first apartment.

You know what else this movie needs? A mob accountant, thieves breaking into his home and me wondering if there are really tornadoes in the United Kingdom. Some short research later and I can tell you that there are about thirty a year and none of them are burning.

This movie understands what it is: a great concept, a better name and a good poster. I can only imagine how many people are looking at what to watch tonight, see something with the title Firenado and fork over their cash. Well done, filmmakers.

As for me: less crime, more raving firenadoes wiping out humanity.

Firenado is available on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment.