{"id":2194995,"date":"2025-12-11T14:24:34","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T14:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2194995"},"modified":"2025-12-11T14:24:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T14:24:34","slug":"a-political-dramedy-military-satire-and-dark-whimsy-in-theaters-this-week-kgou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/a-political-dramedy-military-satire-and-dark-whimsy-in-theaters-this-week-kgou\/","title":{"rendered":"A political dramedy, military satire, and dark whimsy \u2014 in theaters this week | KGOU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>A stellar cast can&#8217;t save James L. Brooks&#8217; dramedy in theaters this week. Luckily, there are other choices, including an Alia Shawkat-led military satire and a horror fantasy from the creator of <i>Pushing Daisies<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>\nThey&#8217;re joining <i>Five Nights at Freddy&#8217;s 2<\/i>, <i>Fackham Hall<\/i>, <i>Hamnet<\/i>, <i>Wake Up Dead Man<\/i>, <i>Wicked: For Good<\/i> and more at cineplexes. Here&#8217;s our movie roundup from <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2025\/12\/05\/nx-s1-5626783\/in-theaters-five-nights-at-freddys-2-fackham-hall-merrily-we-roll-along\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\">last week<\/a>, and <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2025\/11\/27\/nx-s1-5621789\/movies-out-in-theaters-thanksgiving-weekend-zootopia-2-knives-out-wicked\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\">the week before<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\nHere&#8217;s what&#8217;s new.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"\"><b>Ella McCay<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><i>In theaters Friday\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<div class=\"Enh\" data-align-center=\"\">\n<div class=\"jeg_video_container jeg_video_content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ella McCay | Official Trailer | In Theaters December 12\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hJYPGhJDjaU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>85-year-old James L. Brooks has such an enviable track record as a TV creator (<i>The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, The Simpsons),<\/i> and movie writer\/director (<i>Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, As Good as It Gets<\/i>), that it&#8217;s hard not to hope for the best when he makes his first feature film in 15 years. Alas, this treacly, tone-deaf dramedy centered on the travails of its titular idealist will be nobody&#8217;s idea of a good time. Ella (<i>Sex Education<\/i>&#8216;s Emma Mackey) is lieutenant governor of an unnamed state, who becomes governor when her avuncular mentor (Albert Brooks) resigns to take a cabinet position.<\/p>\n<p>\nButtressed by a supportive aunt (Jamie Lee Curtis) and a wisdom-spouting driver (Kumail Nanjiani), while being undercut by a neglectful dad (Woody Harrelson) and opportunistic hubby (Jack Lowden), she embarks on a singularly inept attempt to do public good while also counseling her agoraphobic little brother (Spike Fearn) on how to win back his girlfriend (Ayo Edebiri). That is an indisputably impressive cast, which makes it all-the-more remarkable that not one of them manages to make the film&#8217;s dialogue or motivations either plausible or comic. <i>\u2014 Bob Mondello<\/i><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"\"><b>Atropia<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><i>In limited theaters Friday\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<div class=\"Enh\" data-align-center=\"\">\n<div class=\"jeg_video_container jeg_video_content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Atropia | Official Trailer (HD) | Vertical\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ikcywFRq0nk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>We begin in a bustling Iraqi village, with teenaged American soldiers confronting villagers in turbans and hijabs who look as if they&#8217;re going about everyday life in \u2026 oh never mind, it&#8217;s all fake. Atropia is a town constructed in the California desert to train green troops before they&#8217;re sent off to fight in the Middle East. These towns evidently exist in real life, though they&#8217;re presumably not put to uses as goofy as they are in Hailey Gates&#8217; scattered satirical romp. Alia Shawkat (<i>Arrested Development<\/i>) plays an aspiring actress who still nurtures dreams that this gig will further her acting career. Callum Turner (a handsome inexpressive lug in <i>The Boys in the Boat<\/i>) is now a marginally more expressive lug as a returning vet playing an Iraqi insurgent to exorcise his own demons and maybe give a few green soldiers some pointers. The setup&#8217;s fun, the payoff less, but it&#8217;s amusing. <i>\u2014 Bob Mondello\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"\"><b>Dust Bunny\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><i>In theaters Friday<\/i><\/p>\n<div class=\"Enh\" data-align-center=\"\">\n<div class=\"jeg_video_container jeg_video_content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"DUST BUNNY | Official Trailer | December - Only In Theaters\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lQqmOjPDlWg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Where do you stand on the notion of &#8220;dark whimsy?&#8221; Because that&#8217;s what the horror\/fantasy film <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=lQqmOjPDlWg\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Dust Bunny<\/i><\/a> will be serving up \u2014 in a big way \u2014 in select theaters. It&#8217;s writer\/director Bryan Fuller&#8217;s feature debut, although he&#8217;s put in plenty of time on the small screen (he&#8217;s the guy behind <i>Wonderfalls<\/i>, <i>Pushing Daisies <\/i>and <i>Hannibal)<\/i>. The premise is simple \u2014 a young girl (Sophie Sloan) is terrified of a monster under her bed, and recruits an assassin for hire (Mads Mikkelsen) to kill it. It&#8217;s the execution (heh) that matters, though \u2014 and that execution is stylized to a fare-thee-well, in a mode reminiscent of the go-for-broke fabulism of films like <i>Delicatessen<\/i>, <i>The City of the Lost Children<\/i> and, yes, <i>Am\u00e9lie<\/i>. If you like that sort of approach, it&#8217;s whimsical; if you hate it, it&#8217;s twee. (Me, in this case I lean more to the former, because the film features Sigourney Weaver as a kind of executive assassin. There is nothing twee about my girl Sigourney goddamn Weaver, and there never has been.) <i>\u2014 Glen Weldon\u00a0<\/i>\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2025 NPR<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script>\n  window.fbAsyncInit = function() {\n      FB.init({\n              appId : '130719443711',\n          xfbml : true,\n          version : 'v2.9'\n      });\n  };\n  (function(d, s, id){\n     var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];\n     if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}\n     js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;\n     js.src = \"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\";\n     fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);\n   }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.kgou.org \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A stellar cast can&#8217;t save James L. Brooks&#8217; dramedy in theaters this week. Luckily, there are other choices, including an Alia Shawkat-led military satire and a horror fantasy from the creator of Pushing Daisies. They&#8217;re joining Five Nights at Freddy&#8217;s 2, Fackham Hall, Hamnet, Wake Up Dead Man, Wicked: For Good and more at cineplexes. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2194996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2194995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/A-political-dramedy-military-satire-and-dark-whimsy-\u2014-in.com2Fdims32Fdefault2Fstrip2Ffalse2Fcrop2F6240x351020020.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2194995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2194997,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194995\/revisions\/2194997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2194996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2194995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2194995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2194995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}