(Variously available via streaming and/or digital rental or purchase)

THE SMASHING MACHINE
123 minutes; R; directed by Benny Safdie
Critic’s grade: B+

The showiest aspect of “The Smashing Machine,” by far, is its ubiquitous star’s downright startling physical transformation: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, as mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Mark Kerr, is practically unrecognizable, thanks to extensive facial prosthetics and other varieties of makeup magic. Yes, his inner Rock-ishness comes out during those few times when he flashes those choppers, but this time out it’s more of a 100k-watt smile than the million-watt smile that’s his trademark.

As advertised, Johnson foregoes the oversized charisma and good cheer of many of his likable turns as a bona-fide movie star for something that’s more actorly, more interior, the opposite of showboating. He’s the lead, obviously, but his work here suggests that Johnson could have successfully worked as a character actor had his celebrity as a WWE fake wrestler and imposing bodily heft not enabled him to jump to the top of the bill practically from the start, with 2002’s “The Scorpion King.”

Johnson nails the part of a driven, physically intimidating athlete who is tough as nails in the ring but struggles with personal psychological demons and, eventually, an addiction to opioids. Not to mention the joys and stresses of an up-and-down relationship with his similarly complicated wife, Dawn Staples, brashly but sympathetically portrayed by Emily Blunt.

Kerr, in the hands of Johnson, is soft spoken, gentle and almost childlike, but able to switch to killer mode in a flash. His emotional eruptions, particularly during a marital argument when he simmers quietly before erupting in anger and ripping a door in two, can be terrifying.

Director-writer Benny Safdie, drawing heavily from the 2002 HBO documentary on Kerr, takes on the period in the late ‘90s leading up to Kerr’s participation in Tokyo’s PRIDE Fighting Championship, where he hopes to bag a trophy and bring home $200k. Complicating things, his close friend Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader) is among the 15 other fighters vying for the big payday.

Kerr is pushed hard by his trainer, Bas Rutten (playing himself), who worries, with justification, that Kerr’s volatile relationship with Dawn could doom the fighter’s ability to focus on the task at hand.

Safdie, helming his first movie without the benefit of his brother Josh (“Marty Supreme”) as a filmmaking partner, handily relays the personal and professional ups and downs of an obscure niche celebrity whose story is intriguing if less than particularly fascinating.

Johnson’s measured, engaging performance nevertheless makes it all worth a watch and suggests the actor’s future could involve something beyond he-man action figure roles.

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AMERICANA
107 minutes; R; directed by Tony Tost
Critic’s grade: B-

I’m a sucker for the influences — Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino — worn prominently on the flannel shirtsleeves of “Americana,” poet and TV writer Tony Tost’s feature directorial debut. And the look of Southwestern sunsets, mountains and highways; while set in South Dakota, “Americana” was filmed entirely in and around Albuquerque, NM.

Tost’s rambling narrative involves a young mom (pop singer Halsey) with an abusive villain of a boyfriend (Eric Dane) and an 11-year-old son (Gavin Maddox Bergman) who insists that he’s the (white) reincarnation of Sitting Bull; a waitress and would-be country singer (Sidney Sweeney) in like with a lumpy Regular Joe who’s desperate to be married (Paul Walter Hauser); an antiquities dealer who comes off as a used-car salesman (Simon Rex); and a radicalized Native American militant (Zahn McClarnon, of TV’s “Longmire”).

Did we mention the family of crazed Far Right gun fetishists whose male-dominated women are forced to dress like leftovers from “Little House on the Prairie”?

All of these folks are variously on the hunt for an enormously valuable “ghost shirt,” an object that’s viewed as sacred to the Lakota people. It’s this movie’s version of a MacGuffin, not unlike the glowing briefcase in Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction.” There will be blood.

So far, so quirky, in a manner that’s alternately likable and bordering on annoying. Several performances here are above average, too, if the characters are underwritten by Tost. The tonal shifts seem unjustified, and the story ultimately goes nowhere, slowly. The scrambled-chapters gimmick doesn’t do the thing any favors, either.

Call it a textbook example of the whole not being greater than the sum of its parts.

And yet, and yet, there are one-liners and quips that are chuckle worthy, and some fun to be had. Nice vistas. And Hauser’s reasons-you-should-marry-me speech is a hoot, and kinda’ sweet.

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EDEN
129 minutes; R; directed by Ron Howard
Critic’s grade: C+

“Swiss Family Robinson” meets “Survivor,” on an island where nearly all the cool kids are dysfunctional. And at least half of the inhabitants are relentlessly annoying; if reborn circa now, they’d probably prosper as reality stars and/or influencers or podcasters.

“Eden” is a period piece inspired by the true story of a group of intellectuals, dreamers and grifting slackers who left an increasingly turbulent Europe in the early ‘30s for the wilds of a remote would-be Edenic paradise in the Galápagos Islands. It has to count as the grimmest outing yet from Ron Howard.

Same guy helmed “Apollo 13” and “Cocoon” Really?

As a side note: The men in the movie, including an eccentric self-styled German genius physician-philosopher (Jude Law, an aging golden god) who asserts his dominance by preening in the buff, think they’re in charge of life on Floreana. But it’s the women played by Sidney Sweeney, Ana de Armas and Vanessa Kirby who ultimately pull the levers of the goings-on.

“Eden” benefits from sturdy performances all around, and impressive world-building of a world that the doctor believes is his alone to build, and Howard illuminates an intriguing bit of nearly forgotten left-field history.

But the narrative loses steam pretty early on. It’s hard to care much about the fate of characters as (largely) unlikable as these.

Stick around to see vintage b/w footage of the real-life people. Its inclusion is a predictable convention for truth-based pics these days, yet I still found it fascinating.

Copyright 2026 by Philip Booth. All rights reserved.
Follow me at Philip’s Flicks on Letterboxd.