The Drama (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A happily engaged couple get put to the test when an unexpected revelation sends their wedding week off the rails.

I don’t want to, but I feel I have to give spoilers for The Drama to discuss how I feel about it. Since I’m not a complete dick and don’t want to spoil for people who just click and have wandering eyes that briefly look over the whole page, I’ll add a certain amount of preamble, and won’t spoil anything until I say the words BUTTERED PARSNIPS.

I’m only doing that because it’s clear that a part of the marketing was based on curiosity about what the worst thing she ever did was. It’s a simple strategy: “You want to see what the conflict is about? Buy a ticket”. I was unfortunate enough to accidentally glance at a news headline about it, specifically how controversial it is. To be even more specific, they named the groups opposed to it, which automatically gave a pretty big clue as to what it was. It wasn’t this, but if the article header was “9/11 survivors object to The Drama”, you’d know it was something to do with 9/11.

The Drama was written and directed by Kristffer Borgli, who also made Dream Scenario, a film which I loved the concept of, but felt the execution was deeply flawed. After watching this, I have come to the conclusion that Borgli loves writing arguments and having characters scream and yell at the leads. The Drama has a lot of that, and unlike in Dream Scenario, those moments make sense. It helps that The Drama is much more grounded and has a more focused narrative. It does occasionally veer into dream sequences and imagine spots, which veer from the useless to the great. There are some moments which I’m still not sure if they were real or not, and if they were dreams, to whom did they belong? These moments will put people off.

Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. From the reveal (which I will get to), to the editing, to the scenes of characters loudly talking over each other, The Drama feels designed to make you uncomfortable. It’s not designed to be a lovely life-affirming watch. Sometimes that worked for me, sometimes it didn’t. The way it was edited did feel like it was building towards something huge. Shots of people who were clearly stressed out, staff at the wedding who are angry at being fired, the partner of a woman that Charlie kissed is at the wedding, etc. It all feels like it’s building towards a huge, explosive event that will scar you. Nope. Rude comments are made at the wedding, and Charlie gets headbutted. That’s it. Narratively, it’s like being promised a fireworks display and ending up with a sparkler.

BUTTERED PARSNIPS

The terrible thing she did? She planned a school shooting. She had a gun, trained with it, made videos online that she planned to be released after the event, etc. Truly horrible and unexpected. But pretty brilliant. It allows the film to ask questions about morality: is planning something that’s a 9/10 on a shithead scale worse than actually doing something that’s a 6/10 (locking a mentally challenged boy in a strange vehicle in the woods and not telling people he’s there)? It also talks about America’s obsession with guns, to the point it almost sexualises them (the random cuts of Zendaya posing with guns are artsy as hell). America (and yes, it is a uniquely American problem) focuses so heavily on guns as aspirational things to own, then acts surprised when kids shoot each other.

I mostly liked The Drama. When it was funny, it was laugh-out-loud hilarious. The fact that the thing that stopped her from carrying out the shooting was that another one happened nearby is funnier than it should be. The humour is darker than the POV of someone wearing a blindfold at midnight in a locked casket. I’m someone who has said multiple times that genocide is bad, and racism is the preserve of dickheads, so obviously I’m an easily offended snowflake, but I didn’t find this movie offensive in the slightest. It’s not making light of school shootings. The entire conflict is based on the notion that it’s a terrible thing to do. It’s obvious she’s haunted by her almost actions. All things considered, it’s actually handled relatively tastefully.

Now onto the downside: I didn’t think Alana Haim’s performance was at the level of everybody else’s. Charlie’s characterisation is a bit inconsistent, especially in the final third, where his actions seem to be stuff that drives the plot forward rather than stuff that the character would do. It also has far too many inconsequential moments; it’s as if the film is throwing as many moments at the screen and seeing what sticks. Personally, I don’t think the relationship between them is quite sweet enough for the ending to land. It’s sweet at the start, but they spend a lot of the film’s runtime in conflict with each other, so that’s our main impression of them as a couple. A buildup to a wedding is the perfect opportunity to explore characters’ pasts, so it would have been easy for them to have flashbacks to better times, so we could feel more of the love between the two of them. If the love felt genuine, the ending would have worked. It’s also so heavily tied to the reveal that if you happened to find it out before you watch, it won’t be as good an experience.

In summary, a truly divisive film that I kind of loved. People who love it, will really love it. People who hate it will consider it one of the worst films of the year. It’s 1-2 out of 10, or 8-10 out of 10. Nobody will give this a meh.

Crazy Old Lady a.k.a Vieja Loca (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A man is asked by his ex-girlfriend to care temporarily for her senile mother, Alicia. But Alicia won’t let him leave,

Okay, this is the second film I’ve reviewed in a row which starts with a male character running over a dog. I hope the next film I watch, “Man Runs Over Dog At The Start Of The Movie”, doesn’t start the same way. It’s not even a genre trope as the films have been two different genres. Not localised either, as from two different countries, continents, in fact.

Crazy Old Lady (COL) is a strange watch. For one, it doesn’t open like a horror movie. I love that. It means that people react believably, as real-life people, as opposed to characters in a horror movie. It contextualises actions and behaviours. As it goes on, it does become a more traditional horror movie, but that’s excused because it takes place at night, so of course it’s going to be dark. Otherwise, it is shot in a pretty standard way; there are no shaky-cam jump scares or weird walking towards the camera.

The downside to the traditional horror nature (when it becomes one), it’s sooooo dark. Not tonally (okay, slightly yes tonally), but visually. It makes it difficult to actually see anything. I don’t need to see clearly enough to make out the book titles in the background (I wouldn’t be able to read them anyway, what with them likely being in Spanish), but it would be good to be able to see characters facial expressions, or know where they are in relation to each other, rather than straining to work it out through the shadows.

Alicia is an interesting villain. You get the idea that she’s always been a little of a sociopathic monster; the things she says certainly allude to a past that’s darker than this movie’s visuals. There is always the question about whether her memory is accurate, though. So how much of her actions are due solely to her senility, and how much of it is just her senility leaving her unable to mask her true nature? It’s an interesting question which will leave audiences with their own opinions. The other interesting part is that it’s difficult to see how you personally would escape. Yes, she’s an old woman, so you could just punch her in the face. But she’s also an old woman suffering from senility, so it would be a bit weird to just punch her in the face without it feeling a bit weird. And even if you did, there’s not a Facebook group around that wouldn’t crucify you. The other nice thing about the villain is she’s so out of her mind with random non-sequiturs, blatant falsehoods, and overly sexual creepiness that I feel I don’t need to watch the Melania documentary now.

I respect Crazy Old Lady for having a sexual assault scene as skillfully done as it is, and for having a female-on-male one, which is very rare. The last one I remember is the first Black Christmas remake. This is certainly the first time I’ve seen it where it’s not a villain origin story, so kudos for that. Surprisingly, that’s not the most shocking moment. When Alicia stabs her daughter, it genuinely stuns you despite you somehow knowing it’s coming. It feels like she should have some sort of familial defence clause. “Yes, she’s stabbing this random man, but surely she’d recognise her daughter, and that will bring her back to normality?” Nope.

The performances are fine. Carmen Maura definitely gives a stronger performance. Daniel Hendler occasionally veers into comedic territory with how he portrays fear. It would have been nice to see footage of Alicia when she was a bit younger, maybe in family videos of BBQ’s and Christmases, etc., just to get a taste of what her actual personality is like.

Now for the negative. The ending feels lethargic. There’s a definite sense of “is that it?” It looks like it is intending to end with her getting deliberately hit by a train because she realises what she’s done. Nope, she just walks away as a train rolls nearby, leaving her Granddaughter alone in an unlocked car at night. It’s incredibly anticlimactic. It’s possibly the only moment where the fact it doesn’t feel like a horror movie lets it be down. Because it’s shot and feels like a drama, there’s no tension or fear in that scene. You don’t have that “is she going to now kill a child?” worry. It’s just, I dunno, nothing. It’s as if a rollercoaster ended with a slow, gradual descent into an empty room.

“Crazy Old Lady” is currently available for streaming on Shudder

It Was Just An Accident (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: An unassuming mechanic is reminded of his time in an Iranian prison when he encounters a man he suspects to be his sadistic jailhouse captor

I had a tiny amount of knowledge about the story of It Was Just An Accident (IWJAA, pronounced Eye-woo-jah). I knew it was about a man who comes face-to-face with his former torturer. So when we were introduced to a happy family accidentally running over a dog, I thought that the father might be the innocent person tortured, and he stumbles across his former enemy, who is hiding out as a mechanic. Nope, the mechanic is the victim. Not sure if that makes me an idiot or if it’s just clever writing. Possibly a mixture of both. That being said, we don’t have enough of the torturer (Eghbal) as a normal person to really feel it. We get a very brief moment of him as a normal family man. I feel that if it somehow intercuts it with his domestic life, it would help highlight the notion that the people committing these terrible acts weren’t cartoon villains, they were everyday people, they were neighbours, fathers, people who are known as kind pillars of their community. That being said, it does do a good job of building him up as a symbol of fear. The way characters speak of him, you can tell they’re traumatised by him. The group all responds in different ways too; some are angry and want to kill him, some never want to see him again, and it all feels very realistic.

IWJAA is an interesting watch. This is a story of pain, of trauma, of PTSD, the likes of which most people will never know. How do you cope with coming face-to-face with someone who tortured you? Do you want revenge? Or do you want closure? It’s that inner argument that drives the movie. Really, Eghbal is not a character in this, not really. He’s a story device. It’s not “the group against Eghbal”, it’s “the group against themselves”. It’s akin to other “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves” works, like The Count of Monte Cristo. But it’s about so much more than that; it’s about oppressive governments and the impact they have on their citizens.

Now’s a better time than any to speak about the writer/director, Jafar Panahi. Panahi is badass. He’s been arrested multiple times. He broke the law multiple times whilst making this film, and not in a Victor Salva way (not really relevant, I just think it’s important to recognise that the director of Jeepers Creepers raped a 12-year-old, so fuck that entire franchise). The women involved broke the law by not wearing the hijab in public. Fun fact: Iran isn’t the only country that’s mistreated him; he was also detained by the police in another dystopian hellcape: JFK airport. He’s probably one of the best modern examples of film as protest, and I love him for it.

So how is the film on its own merits, outside of political contexts? It’s pretty impressive. It was nominated for best screenplay at the last Academy Awards. Which is a pretty big deal considering it’s not only not American, it’s not even in English. In terms of narrative, it does lose momentum slightly once they’ve tied him a tree, but it pulls it back for a phenomenally unsettling closing. There’s some interesting shots, with a lot of dialogue happening with the characters backs to the camera. It works, though. It means we’re focusing on the reaction those words are having, and the words being said.

Judging performers in a second language is always difficult because it sometimes feels like you’re not getting the full experience in terms of delivery etc. Mohammad Ali Elyashmeher veers a bit too close to cartoonish overreaction at times, but I feel that behaviour is natural for someone who has suffered like that character has, so it’s difficult to criticise it too harshly. I have to single out Mariam Afshari for her performance. Even in a second language, she has presence that’s difficult to ignore.

In summary: this will not be for everyone, but it was for me. Openly political, and very much needed in modern times. It would be a bit bleak if every film was like this, but I am glad it exists.

They Will Kill You (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz) infiltrates a high-rise building in New York in an attempt to find her sister.

As anybody who has played The Executive – Movie Industry Tycoon can attest, release dates can drastically affect how a movie is received. Some are simple: don’t release Christmas movies in April, for example. But some are more unpredictable: can you imagine how badly an anti-military film would have been received after opening weekend if it were released on September 7, 2001? It’s not quite that unlucky, but my view of They Will Kill You (TWKY, pronounced Twick-ey) has certainly been negatively affected by its release date. 7 days. That’s the difference; if I had watched it 7 days earlier, I’d have liked it more. So what happened in those 7 days? Did I also get a job in a shady building to save my sister, only to find out that the building is full of immortal satanists that pray to a pig’s head? No, nothing like that (the ones I had to kill prayed to a hippo). What happened was I watched Ready Or Not 2. In some ways, there are no similarities at all. This doesn’t involve a game of hide and seek, the villains don’t rule the world, and the racial component of TWKY does add another layer to the satire. But there are spiritual similarities.

When you compare the two, TWKY is found lacking. The characters aren’t as compelling, the satire isn’t as sharp, and it doesn’t look anywhere near as good. The action sequences are fun, with some great fight scenes. But it’s when people get hurt that it doesn’t impress. Limbs are sliced off far too easily; there’s almost no impact to dismemberments and decapitations. It all feels a bit too rubbery for my taste. It’s not helped by not having any memorable music, so the scenes aren’t quite as good as they should be: to be perfectly honest, some of them feel unfinished.

I don’t think it realises how good some of the ideas it introduces are. A character says that each floor is tailored to a different vice, then only shows us two floors. It doesn’t even do the most with the floors it gives us. I remember Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, which had a fantastic action scene that incorporated sex toys; despite having a floor based around sex, this doesn’t attempt anything similar. It also seems to waste the emotional potential of that being the floor where Asia finds her younger sister. I don’t think every female character in fiction has to have sexual assault as a backstory, but if you find a young woman working on a floor dedicated to sex, that question does have to be asked. But again, think of all the fun they could have had with Asia working through multiple floors all dedicated to different vices: her fighting a group of drugged up psychopaths, against people who are much larger than they should be because they spend their entire days eating. To be honest, with the satanic themes, it could have been very unsubtle and have floor be a deadly sin. I’m not sure how you could have action scenes based on Envy, maybe a hall of mirrors, or people focused on destroying the face? I dunno.

It’s a shame, as this could have been great. It’s really just a mix of bad timing in terms of release date, and too low a budget (or a director who doesn’t know how to utilise the budget). On its own, it is pretty fun. Asia is a great character. It’s nice to see Paterson Joseph on the big screen. It is odd that Tom Felton is in a film based around satanists sacrificing people, and it’s still not the most evil franchise he’s been involved in. There’s not a single weak link in the case, and the characters they portray all make sense and are entertaining.

In summary: a solid 6.5/10, that had the misfortune to follow an 8. The scene where Asia sets an axe on fire and attacks a room full of people in the dark is fantastic, and if it kept that energy and invention up, it would have been a 9/10.

Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: After surviving a deadly game of hide-and-seek, Grace is forced into a repeat, this time with her sister.

Sadly, I missed out on the first movie. Not because I didn’t want to see it, but because every year, no matter how many films I watch, I always get a bit burnt out in Autumn, so I end up missing stuff I otherwise would have seen. I am aware of what happened in the first film due to watching the trailer and the Kill Count. Truth be told, I’m not sure you NEED to have seen the first one for this to make sense: it does a pretty good job of catching you up on the essentials, and the stuff it doesn’t tell you is stuff you can figure out yourself. I’m sure there is stuff that I missed or didn’t appreciate fully because I hadn’t seen the first one, but I was never lost, and that’s what you want from a sequel.

But how is it as a film? I loved it. Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come (RON2: HIC, pronounced Ron-two-hick) is ridiculous, but it leans into it so you never sit there thinking “well that’s not realistic”. It’s also much more fun than mass death should be. Everybody is clearly having a blast. Samara Weaving is quickly becoming an icon of modern horror, and she’s joined by someone else who is gaining a similar reputation: Kathryn Newton. The two work well together, but it would be nice if their characters had a few more differences in their personalities. They’re joined by Sarah Michelle Gellar, who seems more comfortable lately going back to horror, and she’s always welcome, especially when she’s chewing the scenery as gleefully as she is here. The weirdest casting choice is David Cronenberg: he’s known for directing incredibly bleak fare like Maps To The Stars, Scanners, and Eastern Promises. So it’s strange he’d be in something as fun as this.

Cronenberg has stated in the past that he views all art as inherently political, and it’s easy to see RON2: HIC as political, it’s not even subtle about it: a group of rich people control the world and kill poor people to increase their power? Too believable. It’s notable that the rich dickheads are forbidden from killing each other, only targeting unwitting players in their game. They’re all deeply unlikeable, but on the bright side, they suffer. The deaths and injuries are brutal. Much like Jaws made people afraid of going in the water, Psycho made people afraid of showers, and 2024’s The Crow made people afraid of watching movies, RON2: HIC could keep you afraid of washing machines: at least that’s what I’m using as an excuse anyway.

It’s not just the deaths; the fights are great too. A lot of films lately are using Bonnie Tyler songs to score action sequences, to the point where it’s almost becoming a cliche. As someone who has openly declared how much he wants to see a car cash set to Total Eclipse Of The Heart, it’s a cliche I very much welcome. The other thing that’s notable about that particular scene is that both characters are blinded for a large portion of it. I love how this film does things like that, adding creative twists to scenes that render them different from what we’ve seen before.

Now for the negative: the split between the two sisters feels fake. The longer the film goes on, the less their relationship feels real. Their relationship with each other isn’t consistent; if it were The Sims, then their relationship meter would be going from 20 to 70 and back again on a whim.

That’s a minor complaint. RON2: HIC is a highly enjoyable way to spend 2 hours. It’s funny, fun, with a great soundtrack. It also features one of my favourite endings in a long time for pure batshit insanity. It could have slightly more memorable needle drops, and it does feel a bit more like the second in a trilogy rather than a finished narrative.

Final note: this will sound weird, but Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton suit the blood-soaked look.

The Bride! (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Frankenstein is fed up with being lonely, so he asks a doctor to give him a bride. A corpse that just so happens to be possessed by Mary Shelley is chosen.

I’m writing this review less than a week removed from Jessie Buckley winning best actress at the Academy Awards for her performance in Hamnet. Personally, I didn’t love that film as much as everybody else seemed to, but I’m glad to see she won because she’s one of my favourite performers at the moment. Her performance as the titular character in this is one of the highlights. Her manic energy is exhilarating and makes you want to see her let loose in films a bit more, rather than being restrained to emotional and high-art pieces; give her the villain role in a slasher movie, and she’ll kill it. Without her in this movie, it would be a lot worse, and that’s saying something.

I should have liked The Bride. I want to look at it and see something lovingly crafted, feminist as fuck, and batshit insane. It is all of those things, but it’s also messy. Not in a “blood and guts everywhere” way, In a “this needs to be better” way. It’s telling that the film it most reminds me of is Joker: Folie A Deux. But whilst that felt like a musical that didn’t want to be a musical, this feels like a film that wants to be a musical but isn’t. It’s horrifically anachronistic, and it feels deliberately so. A film set in 1930’s Chicago that features references to astronauts, and a club that plays modern techno music support the theory that it’s deliberate, but it’s also incredibly annoying as a viewer to have the story break like that in completely inconsequential ways. It would be like if the Starbucks cup in Game Of Thrones was a deliberate choice.

Let’s be honest, though, a lot of the film is inconsequential. The Bride inspires a feminist uprising, where women across the country mimic her style in a show of defiance. Guess how that plays into the plot? The women torture a mobster during the closing credits, or to put it another way, it doesn’t tie into the plot in an important way. It should have. How can you have a Frankenstein movie that involves an angry mob and NOT have a “villagers storming the castle by torchlight” scene? It should have been a big part. Frank and The Bride should have had an argument which led to her leading the group to his home. Maybe not that, but something. The Bride leading a group of women would be an incredibly powerful scene to witness, but we don’t get it.

The Bride! has so many good ideas contained within: the allusions to Old Hollywood, the isolation that the monster feels, a wronged woman seeking revenge against an uncaring society. All of them are perfect ideas for a story like this, yet it tries to do all three and has no idea how to connect the differing threads. So it doesn’t bother to try; instead, it just has the two characters lurch (lol, Addams Family reference) from one scene to the next like two characters in a video game.

The characters don’t even feel consistent. We’re never given a reason for The Bride to like Frank. At one point, she even decries the name Bride of Frankenstein, saying she just wants to be known as The Bride. She is her own person, she is independent, and she doesn’t need to be tied to a man for happiness and fulfilment. Then, a few minutes later, they’re portrayed as soulmates who will spend eternity together. No matter how cool the moments are on their own, there’s no cohesion between them.

Before seeing this, I had one of my friends tell me she thought it was “the worst film of the 2020’s”. Personally, I feel that that’s War Of The Worlds erasure. It’s not quite the worst film of the decade, it’s not even the worst of the year, but it’s probably the biggest gap between potential and result that I’ve seen in a long time. Like I said, it has some great moments, and the story being told is interesting, but it doesn’t make for a good final product. Ultimately, it’s like a really drunk person retelling Paddington 2 who keeps getting distracted by the football results: you can tell there’s a good story underneath the bullshit, but you don’t have a shovel big enough, and all you want to do is tell them to focus the fuck up.

The Good Boy (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A couple try to rehabilitate a teenage criminal, by kidnapping him.

Thoughts Going In/Expectations: None. I didn’t even know this film existed, and considering it was a secret screening I had no idea what type of film it was until at least 5 minutes in.

This could have been terrible. It could have ended up being overly Guardian Newspaper, either going “we just need to teach those ruffians good manners” or “these louts are too low class to fit in. They should be killed”, both of which would have been extremely annoying. In the end, the most annoying part of this movie is the title: released as “Heel” in some locations, “Good Boy” in others, and even more confusingly, being called “The Good Boy” in some publications. I’m just gonna go with “The Good Boy” as it sounds more like a title than Heels, and I already have a film called Good Boy from 2025 reviewed in the archives.

So that’s an entire paragraph about the title, how about the film itself? It’s fine. I don’t regret watching it, but I won’t rush out to see it again. It’s narratively and thematically ambitious. Stephen Graham continues to give a performance that isn’t Oscar-worthy, but you can easily imagine being used as justification for a studio casting him in something that would win him one. Andrea Riseborough is up there with Sally Hawkins as one of the most consistent British performers around. Fun fact, this isn’t the first time the two have played a married couple; appearing together in the film adaptation of the Matilda musical, which I haven’t seen, but I’m guessing is tonally very different from The Good Boy (TGB, pronounced Ta-goob). Without those two performers, TGB would be terrible. It’s anchored by those two, with both giving just enough layers to their performance to make the characters believable.

As I alluded to earlier, I had no idea what kind of film this would be when I sat down to watch it. The opening scene depicts Tommy. Tommy is a dickhead. He starts fights, pisses at bus stops, and is generally the kind of person everybody hates to see walk into a pub. I was concerned he was our lead, and we were going to spend the film watching his everyday life; I was not looking forward to it. I detested this guy, but it turns out that’s what the film wanted us to think: so that when he’s knocked out and chained in a basement, our first thoughts aren’t “oh, that’s terrible”, they’re “oh, he probably deserves this, it’s probably due to something he’s done in the past”. Those thoughts are fleeting because obviously they’re terrible things to think. But they are there, and the film wants those thoughts there. It wants us to be morally conflicted. We have a couple who have kidnapped someone, keeping them locked in their basement, and beating them whenever they feel he gets out of line. That’s all shitty, obviously. But the audience isn’t completely repulsed by them. It’s an incredibly fascinating, morally complex piece of viewing.

Until the closing section. The film hints at a disturbing past for the characters: a past which shapes their motivations. It feels like it’s building up to a revelation, something big that will recontextualise everything we’ve seen: constant mentions of someone called Charlie who used to live there. We see Tommy bullying a child, maybe that child was Charlie and he ended up killing himself. Maybe Tommy drunkenly caused a car accident that killed him. Maybe Charlie took a wrong turn and ended up overdosing, so the couple try to stop others walking that path. Or maybe he wasn’t even their child, but was another hostage who they’ve failed so is now dead to them. But subtle hints towards the past are all we get, and it’s too vague to be satisfying.

That’s not the other way TGB runs out of steam: the Macedonian housekeeper is dispatched with all the narrative efficiency of an Evri parcel. You could excise her subplot completely and it wouldn’t matter that much. The only impact she has is when she’s attacked at the end and Tommy stands up for her. That’s it. Might it have made more sense if it was one of Tommy’s friends, and the moment functioned as a clear divide between his past life and his future?

In summary, a feature film is possibly not the best way to tell this story. A book would have worked; each chapter from the POV of a different member of the household. A play would be intriguing, it already has a limited number of locations so would be easy to do. Even better: an episode of a TV show. Specifically, an episode of Inside Number 9. It does occasionally feel like an extended episode of that show, for better and worse.

TGB is one of the most fascinating and interesting films of the year, and if it sorted out the final 10 minutes it would have stayed as such.

Project Hail Mary (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: In a bid to stop the sun from dying, the Earth launches Project Hail Mary, full of Grace.

Thoughts going in/expectations: This should be good, I’ve been waiting for almost a year since I first saw the trailer.

There’s a moment in Project Hail Mary (PHM, pronounced Pa-ham) which perfectly encapsulates my feelings towards it. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) is walking away from Rocky, both characters having completed their mission and are free to go back home. As Grace walks back to his ship, he keeps pausing and looking back, delaying leaving because he doesn’t want this moment to end. Even through the beauty, both characters drag it out. That’s like this film. It’s so scared of closure that it keeps adding more and more in the closing section. The closing moment itself is good, but the journey could be significantly shorter.

I also have issues with the visuals. For 95% of the time, they are absolutely stunning. But some of the exterior shots of the spaceships look like a kid holding plastic toys in front of a green screen; you can almost hear the “vroom vroom, pow pow pow”.

That’s it. At the time of writing, that’s all the negatives I can think of. Otherwise? This was stunning. It’s one of those films which is better if you haven’t seen the trailer, because some of the plot points heavily focused on in the trailer don’t occur until relatively late. But you won’t mind, because even the moments until those are incredible. Visually, this is incredible. We don’t see much of other planets, but when we do, they’re breathtaking. This is a movie that deserves to be seen on a big screen. The scenes set on Earth are pretty standard, but there are some cool moments at the end where we see the effect the weather has had on the world. T

It’s not just the visuals: the script is interesting enough to keep you invested throughout. Moments of narrative beauty keep you on the edge of your seat, fully buying into what the movie is selling. The relationship that Grace has with Rocky is very sweet. Gosling works best when he has someone to play off, so it’s smart that not only do we have Rocky, but we also have flashbacks of Grace’s time on earth intercut throughout the movie. We see the preparation for the launch and how he reacted to what was happening. If everything took place chronologically, then it would take far too long to get him into space, so the audience will tune out. And without the flashbacks, we’d have long periods where his character is on his own, which would be robbing him of his charm. I’m not often a fan of flashbacks in films which are supposed to be about isolation, but it works here. Slight downside: the way the flashbacks are presented to us makes it look like he’s only just remembering those moments as we see them, and I’m still not 100% certain whether that was the case or not. If it were, then it could have got away with having the flashbacks be a bit more fragmented and non-linear, as memories often are. If they’re not, then they shouldn’t have introduced them just as he’s coming back from a bout of amnesia. Again, a minor flaw.

I’ve criticised 2026 for poor movies, so I am immensely grateful that something like Project Hail Mary exists. This isn’t just storytelling; this is magic. It’s a LONG film, but you won’t want to leave at any point. Genuinely one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time. The characters are great, the visuals are great, plus Sandra Huller delivers an incredible Harry Styles cover. Side note: is Sign Of The Times a modern classic? I think it might be.

The Wrecking Crew (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Two estranged brothers are reunited after the death of their father. Surprisingly, this isn’t a movie from the 80s.

Thoughts going in: I fully expect this to be terrible.

I’m not sure I trust Amazon’s original movies anymore. Yes, they’ve made some good stuff, but they also gave us War Of The Worlds, which I’m pretty sure counts as a human rights violation. And as much as I love Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa, I do question their choices sometimes when it comes to what movies they want to be in. Plus, The Wrecking Crew was written by Jonathon Tropper, who also wrote The Adam Project, which I felt was kind of underwhelming compared to its potential.

So it’s a surprise to me that I didn’t dislike this. As a whole, it’s a fun buddy action movie, with some interesting action scenes and creative choices. That’s a whole, taken scene by scene, there are some weird choices. The script definitely could have used an editor to tie up some small things. The whole “Character says they won’t do something, smash cut to them doing the thing” thing, can we stop that? It’s up there with ending a film with “here we go again” as jokes which are so overplayed they’re almost parody at this point. At one point, Momoa’s character says he’s going after his father’s killer so hard because he feels guilty that he couldn’t catch the person who killed his mother. That’s not so much a revelation as much as it is “pretty much exactly what another character said early in the film”. Can you imagine if The Dark Knight movies had a scene where Alfred told Bruce “you only do this because you’re in pain due to the death of your parents, and you’re weird”, then after a lot of character development, Bruce sat down and told Alfred “I only do this because I’m in pain due to the death of my parents”. You’d expect Alfred to reply, “I know, I’m the one who told you that. Also, you forgot to say you’re weird”. I get the reason for it (I think), it’s him admitting it to himself, but it still comes off as too “written”.

How about the action scenes? They’re mostly fine, but they do seem to happen around people. There’s one set on a busy road, which involves multiple cars crashing, people in helicopters firing at the road, etc. None of the other cars seemed to react. They don’t speed up or take the nearest exits to escape, etc., and there are no signs of panic. It’s like they know there’s no focus on them, so they’re safe.

“Did you at least call your brother in Oklahoma?” feels like clunky exposition. There must have been a better way to tell us the geographical distance between them. I dunno, maybe it was the delivery that made it feel fake, but I doubt that because the performers in here are all pretty damn good. But there are odd choices made in terms of casting. It’s weird they had Danish and New Zealand performers, and had them play English people, especially with the surname “Robichaux”. Just have them do their natural accents, right? At least, I think they’re English. They have English accents, but a character does refer to the male as a “French fuck”. Now he could just be being an idiot, but still. On the upside regarding casting: Miyavi oozes star quality. He doesn’t give the greatest performance, but he has a definite aura about him. I know next to nothing about Japanese music, but I could tell he was somebody just by the way he carries himself. He’d make a great Bond villain.

Really, The Wrecking Crew depends on the chemistry between the two leads, and they have it. I’d love to see them work together again. Without them, this would be a cheap B-movie, but with them? It’s a solid A-. The greatest compliment I can give this is that with a few tweaks here and there, it would feel like a cinema movie. It’s not perfect, but it’s competent and fun enough that it’s hard to dislike. Not a guaranteed watch, not even a recommended watch, but you could do a lot worse.

Mother’s Pride (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A failing pub tries to revive its fortunes by brewing beer.

Thoughts going in: Have I seen a trailer for this? I’m not sure. Also, it’s weird Martin Clunes is doing films now. Wait, did that say Josie Long? Interesting. (spoilers, it did not say Josie Long, it said Josie Lawrence)

This is not the greatest film I’ve seen, but it’s enjoyable. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a piece of toast (I compare films to food way more than most people do, I should look into that). By that, I mean that no matter how perfectly it does what it needs to, it will never be your favourite. It sticks to a formula, and as such is kind of restrained by that. You can guess almost every single plot point in this film from the opening 10 minutes. It won’t surprise you at all. But it doesn’t really need to, this is not a film to analyse and pore over, it’s a film to sit and distract yourself, and it does that well. The dialogue is razor sharp, the characters are loveable (and fully fleshed out, even the background ones have minor details to them which help you know them), and it will make you smile. The whole thing is just massively endearing and charming and, I don’t know, warm I guess is the word I’m looking for. You know how certain films have colours attached to them? I’d say this one is a warm sea blue. It’s just comforting and lovely, the kind of film the whole family gathers and watches on Christmas Day, in that post-dinner haze where you’re all too exhausted to move, and someone inevitably falls asleep on the sofa with their Christmas hat still on. It’s incredibly BBC, and I mean that as positive and a negative.

So yeah, don’t go out of your way to watch this, but if (actually, when) it comes on iPlayer, watch it immediately.

I’m actually genuinely annoyed that the opening paragraph of this review makes sense. Not because of any worries of accuracy, but because I just copied and pasted it from a review from 2022. Okay, the writer/director who made that movie (Fisherman’s Friends: One And All) also made Mother’s Pride, so it could just be said that it’s his style. So making two similar films isn’t too big an issue, right?

Except.

Except the Fisherman’s Friends review wasn’t the first time I used that paragraph, I used it (with minor word adjustments) in a review of Finding Your Feet, back in 2018. So this isn’t even a copy, it’s a copy of a copy. Yes, it’s well-made. But even if this is the first movie you’ve seen, you’ll feel you’ve seen it before. It did make me laugh, and it did make me feel things. So in some aspects, it is a success. It talks more about men’s mental health and depression/anxiety than most films dare, and the fact that even a the “I’m an old man who doesn’t like change” character is sympathetic to those issues is a nice touch. In fact, the film outright states that making light of mental health issues is a villainous activity. Which would hit harder if you didn’t get the feeling that every character is one minor inconvenience away from using ableist slurs.

It’s hard to criticise Mothers Pride, as there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. It just brings nothing new to the table. For a film which has clearly had a lot of effort put into it, it feels spectacularly lazy. Like I said, you won’t regret watching it. It’s too well-made for that. But it won’t inspire any passion in you once it’s finished. For a film about a musician, music really should play a bigger part in it, though.