© 2025 Lucasfilm Ltd
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)
Pedro Pascal in Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)
Charlie Berens Neighborly
(YouTube/Cripes Media/800 Pound Gorilla)
Milwaukee’s Charlie Berens has mined the Upper Midwest for a rich reservoir of laughter. He’s been something of a (mostly) family-friendly regional superstar and broadly recognized as one of the current greats in his field. He understands, loves and pokes playful, sometimes self-deprecating fun at Wisconsin’s mannerisms and mores in an almost anthropological manner.
Neighborly, shot in 2025 at Appleton Performing Arts Center, finds Berens continuing in the vein that has made him a made him a regional household name. He also peels back much of his character-driven shtick and becomes more overtly autobiographical ... and occasionally political. The special contains none of the “Manitowoc Minute” bits built his reputation as a parodist. It does, however, includes his admission of an ADHD diagnosis, and carefully contextualized mentions of climate change, tech bros' avarice and a topic for which he's becoming an internationally recognized skeptic, AI.
Berens is able to bring lightness to even his heaviest subject matter, including a death in the family and personal injury he sustained without health insurance. Berens goes so far as to leave the stage and find his grandmother in the audience to offer an alternative perspective on a story he told about taking the matriarch and her friends to a casino. And stand-up might not get any more Neighborly than that. (Jamie Lee Rake)
Poppy
(IndiePix DVD)
In a remarkable performance by Libby Hunsdale, Poppy is a teenager with Down Syndrome. She acts like most girls her age, dancing to pop music in her poster-plastered bedroom. Poppy sweeps and mops her brother’s auto repair shop and is generally accepted in her small New Zealand town (a few askance glances aside). She has friends, but is a step removed. When one remarks, “They say there’s someone for everyone,” she feels slightly wounded in a world saturated by media-generated images of romance. And when she wants to learn to drive and become a car mechanic, her otherwise indulgent older brother puts his foot on the breaks. We can be sure director Linda Niccol will steer Poppy to a happy, obstacle surmounting ending. (David Luhrssen)
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
(In Theaters May 22)
While comparatively small in scope, the latest Star Wars movie emphasizes the relationship between, and adventures of, its two central characters. They are bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), known as The Mandalorian, and his adopted child, an insufferably cute Baby Yoda, known as Grogu. Determined to raise the lad while also training him in combat skills, The Mandalorian accepts a mission from the New Republic’s Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver). She hires him to rescue Rotta Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allen White), from an evil Lord (Jonny Coyne), in hopes that Rotta’s twin Hutt cousins will reveal the whereabouts of fugitive Imperial Warlords. Clocking in at over two hours, the film stands on its own but will feel familiar to viewers of the Disney+, space-Western TV series (2019-2023), created by Jon Favreau, who also directs and cowrites here. (Lisa Miller)
