The End Of Oak Street (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A family’s suburban neighbourhood has been transported from 1982 into the age of dinosaurs.

In 2014, David Mitchell (not that one) released It Follows. I consider it one of the finest horror movies of modern times. Not just because it’s tense and full of pitch-perfect scares, but because it inspired questions and debate: did she sleep with the people in the boat? If so, does that really make her any better than Hugh/Jeff? And if you moved abroad and just waited for it to cross the ocean, could you theoretically outrun it? With The End Of Oak Street (TEOOS), the big question I had was this: can Ewan McGregor act? I mean, he must be able to; it’s his job. He’s been in some really good films, usually alongside people who we know can act, without seeming like he’s out of place. And he’s not cheap, so if he couldn’t act, you’d think studios would eventually stop hiring him. Yet I can’t think of a memorable performance, one where he really sold the role. I only ask because he has some of the worst line delivery I’ve ever heard. One line, in particular, robbed the scene of any tension because I assumed he was being sarcastic.

Maybe that’s harsh. He is performing in an accent that’s not his. Evidently, the studio believes audiences will buy into a town disappearing through a wormhole into a prehistoric land, but having someone live in America and use a Scottish accent is a step too far. He’s also not helped by acting alongside Anne Hathaway, who is one of the best performers on the planet. Even the child actors are strong in this. Maisy Stella and Christian Convery both give performances beyond their years. So his performance looks weaker by comparison.

I’ve been accused of being too picky with my criticisms sometimes. If you believe that, you should probably avoid this, because I’m about to make one of my weirdest criticisms in a while. Here goes: this didn’t need to be set in the 80s. It felt like it was done like that because it was based on a book from the 80’s and they wanted to be accurate. But nope, original concept. This wasn’t hinted at in the trailer, and it doesn’t have much impact on the plot. The only change it would have made is the method Denise uses to do research. And I suppose the kids would have recorded videos of the dinosaur on their phones, but that wouldn’t have helped because they wouldn’t have had a signal to send them with. None of those changes would have been major. Did they do it because it’s slightly Spielberg-esque and they wanted to make the most of that? They don’t even make the most of the time period by filling the film with wave after wave of 80s bangers. I’m not saying every film set in 1982 needs to pay out for Under Pressure, but I can’t imagine Goody Two Shoes by Adam Ant would have taken a massive chunk out of the budget.

Thankfully, there is quite a lot to like about TEOOS. The dinosaurs look fantastic. I assume they took a lot of work and money to create, which is why the film cuts away from them at certain times. Or perhaps it was to stop the film getting an 18 because of the blood and violence. Either way, it’s frustrating. There’s never a point where you don’t buy them as real (unless you’re a palaeontologist, in which case you tear your hair out with frustration at the inaccuracies, none of which I know enough about dinosaurs to notice). They’re also constantly a threat. You can’t imagine someone throwing a saddle on one of the dinosaurs and using it to herd the others in like cattle. Usually, films like this treat the smaller creatures as mere nuisances, with only the bigger ones being a threat. TEOOS leaves you in no doubt that the smaller ones can still fuck your shit up.

It’s also weirdly funny, in a dark way. Believably so. Characters don’t sneak past a dinosaur, then say “do you think he saw us?” and wink at the camera because they just made a dinosaur pun. But there’s something oddly funny about some of the violence; people being killed should not be this funny. Yet the dinosaurs attack with expert comedic timing, akin to a Three Stooges skit with decapitations. That humour means that the characters feel like actual people rather than disposable bodies waiting to die or kill. They sometimes do stupid shit, but that can be explained by the fact that they don’t have much experience dealing with stuff like this. This means when characters are in danger, you want them to survive. At no point do you cheer the dinosaurs.

The core of TEOOS is the family dynamic. They’re not perfect; the relationship between the parents is strained, with alcoholism playing a role in the present and almost certain divorce in the future. These aren’t the “I will do anything to save you, my love” type; these are the “can barely stop arguing even when they might die soon” type. That being said, there’s one major death (that I won’t name for spoiler reasons) that isn’t really given enough time to breathe. They die, the plot immediately moves on, and we don’t get much time to experience the world without them. I get what they were going for, but it didn’t quite land with me. The same could be said for the mystery at the centre of the film. It doesn’t spend as much time exploring it as some people might want. It does provide an explanation, but it’s very quick and easy to miss.

There’s a good film hiding in here; play up the 80s nature or set it in modern day, aim for a higher age rating so you can show the blood, and let McGregor speak in his natural accent. Yes, they’re small problems. But together, they hamper the film more than they should. It’s a solid 7/10, and it annoys me that it’s not higher. Watch it at the cinema while you can, because I doubt the streaming services are going to be fighting over the rights.

Over Your Dead Body (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A married couple go to a remote cabin, both with plans to kill each other.

I like Samara Weaving. She’s developed a real reputation as a scream queen, but a very versatile one: being able to be both a villain and a final girl. It makes sense for her to be in this film. Jason Segel? Not so much. Best known for comedies such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Muppets, and HIMYM. The closest he’s got to something like this would be his bit part in Dead Man On Campus. He’s not someone you’d think about if you were casting this. That’s why it works. You expect him to play his usual role of “sad dog turned into sad human, with occasional bursts of excitement”, so when we see that he’s planned this holiday to kill his wife, it’s a genuine shock (unless you’ve read the synopsis or seen a trailer). The two have weirdly good chemistry. They make sense as a couple with the way they interact with each other, albeit a strained couple; both waiting for the other one to be the first one to instigate intimacy. It helps that they both take this film seriously; they’re not looking for laughs, mugging for the camera, and that’s what makes it funny.

As for the film itself. I’m slightly disappointed by it, but only because Jorma Taccone also directed MacGruber and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, and I love both of those movies. This is tonally different, and not quite as entertaining. That doesn’t mean it’s not good. It’s absolutely hilarious at times, not just the dialogue, but also the violence. The violence never feels cruel or gratuitous. The gore could be slightly better, looking slightly cheap and fake at times, but it kind of works. Over Your Dead Body (OYDB, pronounced Oi Deb!) knows that it is ridiculous. It doesn’t try to turn the relationship into some deeply serious examination of a marriage falling apart. Instead, it takes the petty frustrations and resentments between the two characters and pushes them to their most extreme conclusion. Every argument, awkward interaction and moment of suspicion has the potential to become a matter of life and death. The plot is pure farce, but OYDB is careful not to make it silly to the point of parody. The characters take the situation very seriously, so the threat feels real. So when the characters do slightly humorous things, it’s funnier because we buy into them as people.

The villains are probably where the film’s balancing act works best. They’re not just generic obstacles for Dan and Lisa to overcome; they all have their own personalities and quirks, which makes them feel like actual people rather than characters who exist solely to move the plot along. I’m not too familiar with Keith Jardine, but he’s a lot of fun here, bringing exactly the sort of physical presence you’d expect from someone with a history of getting paid for punching people in the face, while also showing a surprising amount of vulnerability. He’s basically a more vocal Lurch from Hot Fuzz (the “yar” guy). Timothy Olyphant continues to be Hollywood’s secret weapon, seemingly incapable of being anything other than entertaining even when he’s playing a relatively straight role. And it’s nice to see Juliette Lewis transition from hostage in From Dusk Till Dawn to hostage taker here.

I think that’s ultimately why I enjoyed OYDB more than I expected to, despite the slight disappointment. It isn’t as relentlessly funny as MacGruber or Popstar, and I don’t think it’s going to replace either of those in my list of favourite Jorma Taccone films. But it doesn’t need to. It’s doing something different, and for the most part it does it well. The mixture of relationship comedy, thriller and violence works surprisingly well. That premise has been done before in films like Keeping Up With The Joneses, Mr & Mrs Smith, and others that surely exist but I can’t be bothered to look up. Of course, there’s a more obvious comparison than either of those: this is a remake of the Norwegian film The Trip. I haven’t seen the original, so I can’t really comment on how the two compare, which is probably something I should have thought about before writing a review of a remake. But I suppose at least this way it means I’m judging OYDB on its own merits rather than making comparisons like, “In the original the person wore a blue t-shirt, in this they wear a red one. Film ruined!” The characters in Keeping Up With The Joneses and Mr & Mrs Smith were professional assassins. These characters aren’t. They’re an actress and a filmmaker who are both unsatisfied in their careers. It kind of reminded me of Game Night (damn, that was a fun movie).

That Game Night comparison is probably the best way of describing the action. There’s a similar satisfaction in watching relatively normal people get caught up in something completely ridiculous and having to improvise their way through it. Dan and Lisa aren’t Jason Bourne; they don’t have a special set of skills that makes them particularly well equipped for what they’re doing. They’re just two people who have decided that murder is the solution to their problems, much like how I deal with poor customer service in restaurants (my editor has told me to let you know that’s a joke; I don’t leave the house to go to restaurants). That amateurism makes the fights much more entertaining. There isn’t the slickness you’d get from a traditional action movie, but it would be weird if these untrained fighters suddenly became action heroes; this isn’t Shang-Chi. They’re grabbing whatever happens to be nearby, throwing themselves at each other and generally doing whatever they can to survive. It gives the violence a scrappy, unpredictable quality, and it also creates some of the film’s funniest moments. You can believe that these people are actually fighting for their lives rather than watching two stunt performers execute perfectly choreographed moves.

It also helps that the film never forgets that they’re an unhappily married couple. Even when they’re fighting for their lives against hostage-takers, they still argue and bicker, desperate to win points against the other. It’s childish, silly, and believable. When they start getting on with each other again, it’s weirdly sweet, much more than a film like this should be.

Not that OYDB is without its problems. It’s a solid 7/10, but it feels like it could be a 9 with some changes. But I’m not sure what. I can’t quite identify why I only really liked this rather than loved it. It’s not the reliance on flashbacks, which really bothered me in This Is Not A Test; I liked the way OYDB utilised flashbacks, as it provided us with setups to jokes where all we knew was the punchline. Maybe it’s just because it seems to lack visual ambition. Nothing really stands out as incredible or memorable. That’s fine with silly films like MacGruber or Popstar, but OYDB is slightly more serious, so standards are higher for it. If something looks cheap or fake in MacGruber, then you can get away with that being part of the joke. You can’t do that in OYDB; it needs to have a certain level of spectacle.

That’s not to sound too discouraging; OYDB is still definitely worth a watch. Prime hasn’t exactly been overflowing with great films this year, and this is definitely among the best they’ve done so far. And if nothing else, I now want to see Samara Weaving in more films where somebody spends two hours trying to kill her. She really does take a beating remarkably well. To make a wrestling comparison: she’s 90’s HBK, or 2010’s Dolph Ziggler, only she occasionally wins.

This Is Not A Test (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: A teenage girl who has spent years enduring abuse finds herself trapped inside her high school with five other teenagers when a mysterious outbreak turns people into violent, flesh-eating monsters

This Is Not A Test (TINAT) is not a new idea. I’ve seen 2 full-on zombie movies this year (TINAT, and We Bury The Dead, as reviewed here), and two zombie-adjacent (Cold Storage, as reviewed here, and Evil Dead Burn, as reviewed here), that’s just this year. In my lifetime I’ve seen a multitude of movies about them; Zombieland, Shaun Of The Dead, Warm Bodies. I’ve seen every iteration; fast, slow, comedic, serious, dumb fun, sharp social commentary. When you see an idea that many times, you do get a bit familiar with the tropes and ideas. So it’s not enough to just do a zombie movie. It needs to stand out. Either by being overly stylized, or having a gimmick.

TINAT does none of those things. It has a few ideas but not enough to carry the film. The closing credits being presented like a high school yearbook is pretty clever, and genuinely inventive. But nothing else is as new as that. For most of the run-time, it’s just a movie that exists. For long periods of time, it doesn’t even feel like a zombie movie. And unlike my review of We Bury The Dead, I don’t mean that as a compliment. That movie used zombies as a way of exploring humanity. TINAT doesn’t do that, instead it uses zombies because the writer wanted to make a zombie movie.

Some of my reviews are very easy to write, the one for Minions And Monsters basically wrote itself. This is much harder to write because, at some point, I just stopped giving a shit

It’s not helped by the characters. We’re locked in with these people for quite a while, and it’s not a particularly pleasant experience. It’s not that they’re unlikeable or annoying, they’re just bland. There’s nothing about them that stands out. No unique traits, no hints that there’s unexplored backstory between them. They’re not people, they’re character outlines and sketches. They’re first drafts just waiting for an editor to expand them. This lack of characterisation makes it difficult to become invested in what happens to them. And then there’s the swearing. I love swear words in movies. But it feels like this film has too many of them, and uses them badly. They make the whole thing feel slightly immature. It’s not adult language being used as punctuation; it’s adult language being used as sprinkles on a narrative ice cream, sprinkled haphazardly without care or finesse.

The film also doesn’t seem to understand that there’s a difference between tension and simply being slow. A slow scene can build tension, but being slow doesn’t automatically create tension. There are stretches here where I was waiting for something to happen rather than feeling suspense about what was going to happen. And when there are dynamic scenes, TINAT turns to the handheld shaky-cam style. When that technique is used well, it helps showcase high energy and panic. When it’s used badly it makes everything confusing and makes it feel like the film is using it to hide something such as poor effects or the lead actor is actually in his 70s.

On the subject of action scenes, there’s also a strange inconsistency in what the film seems comfortable showing. It’s perfectly happy to show people being killed, but draws the line at a dad beating a teenager. Obviously, the latter is still horrible, but I’d argue death is worse.

Another example of the film utilising story-telling techniques but not in a way that really helps the story is the use of flashbacks. They didn’t feel like flashbacks, they felt like “and here’s what you missed before the commercial break” recaps from sports shows. Their placement in the narrative is ineffective, to the point where it feels like they were originally all at the start and then edited into later on because the film wanted to get to the main story quickly. It does kick off the story quickly, I’ll give it that. Another positive aspect is the cast. Olivia Holt is great as lead character Sloane, showcasing enough trauma to make her believable. Also, the make-up effects are spectacular for a low-budget movie. And I liked the character using temperature to gauge whether someone has been turned or not, very clever from that character.

Ultimately, TINAT isn’t terrible. There are some interesting ideas and a few clever touches, but I found it increasingly difficult to care about the story or its characters. For a zombie movie to stand out these days, it needs to give me a reason to care beyond the fact that there are zombies. Unfortunately, this one never quite found that reason. It’s not “the zombie movie told from the POV of the undead”, it’s not “the zombie movie with incredible action scenes”, it’s just “the zombie movie that has zombies in”. There’s nothing new. Nothing to convince you to watch THIS specific zombie movie over all the others.

Side note: For some reason, the opening scene made me think the film was set in England. Maybe that’s because I recently listened to the Anna and the Apocalypse soundtrack, but there was something about the opening that gave me that impression. Not at all relevant, just wanted to mention it.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A forgotten Peter Parker lives completely isolated four years after No Way Home. While working as a full-time, anonymous hero, he faces a bizarre crime wave tied to a psionic threat while dealing with a dangerous physical mutation and reconnecting with a memory-wiped MJ

Online discourse states that superheroes are used as the ideal male fantasy. A strong man who single-handedly defeats evil, gets the girl, and is admired by society, and sometimes he’s rich. In a way, that’s pretty accurate. The male gaze is generally used to discuss how female characters are viewed, but it definitely applies to male ones too. They’re people we’re supposed to envy, people we’re supposed to want to be. So with that in mind, it’s somewhat sweet how one of the most highly regarded superheroes on the big screen began as a teenager full of sarcasm and anxiety. Not including television films, there have been 11 Spider-Man films, and only three of them have really fallen out of favour with audiences or critics. On the other hand, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in a slump, with recent films not reaching the commercial, critical, or pop culture-penetrating heights of some of the previous. It’s into this pit of uncertainty that SM: BND (Pronounced Sum Bond) steps. The highs of the character and the lows of the MCU mean that expectations are uneven: you can go into this expecting either the next great Spider-Man film or another symptom of Marvel’s current decline

In the end, it’s pretty damn good. Firstly, it feels less gimmick-dependent than the previous three movies. There’s no expectation of a twist or unexpected-but-actually-expected-by-everyone characters. So it’s standing on its own legs for the first time in a while. Much like Peter himself, the franchise has matured into something worthy. Holland and Zendaya have incredible chemistry; even an idiot could guess they’re dating in real life. This is the best work the two have pulled off in this franchise; both giving their characters inner depth and turmoil.

I’ve always rated Tom Holland as Spider-Man; he’s always been the right performer for this iteration, playing him with just the right balance between anger and lightheartedness. BND adds a new level of weariness to his performance. You have the suspicion that his version of Peter Parker does not want to be Spider-Man anymore; he doesn’t get any sense of pride or joy from it. It’s not even a societal need; he does it because he feels he has nothing else to his life now that he no longer has MJ. He feels he has no life outside of Spider-Man. BND doesn’t give us much sense of what he does when he isn’t Spider-Man. We don’t really see a job, a social circle, or much of a life at all. Spider-Man is all he has right now. There’s a real sense of hopelessness to the character that is refreshing to see. Yes, he still makes jokes (this is an MCU film after all; if Stalin was a character in this universe, he’d be making quips as he kills people), but they mask a sense of sadness.

On the downside, the villain is underwhelming. BND does the same thing that a lot of superhero films have done lately; the person you thought was the villain turns out to not be a villain, and they end up teaming up with the hero to defeat a bigger, supposedly more important villain (who was usually someone we thought was a hero). Narratively, that’s risky, because it could mean the actual villain ends up feeling superfluous and defeated too quickly. That’s the case here. I can’t even remember their name; I can’t even remember what happened to them at the end. Were they killed? Arrested? Not a clue. Their impact on this movie is the same as a wasp flying into a cruise ship.

That’s a shame, as there’s a lot of villains they could have worked into this. I’m surprised they haven’t turned Ned into a villain. The mind-wipe would have been the perfect opportunity. It’s established he’s good at science; it would have been easy enough to give him a grudge against Spider-Man. The moment where Peter realises that he has to fight Ned could have been one of the most powerful moments in the franchise, and could have allowed Jacob Batalon to show a bit more range than he’s been allowed to show. It would mean the villain isn’t just someone for Spider-Man to fight; he’s someone Peter has a deeply personal history with. It would also give Peter something he desperately lacks in this film: someone who knows him. Peter has lost MJ, Aunt May is gone, his identity has been erased, and his former best friend doesn’t know him. Making Ned the villain would turn that loneliness into the actual dramatic conflict. Plus, it would write your closing shot for you: Ned and Peter are friends again, Ned unaware that Peter is Spider-Man, they’re joking and having fun, then there’s a look of slight distrust from both of them to the other; MJ sits unaware of the potential problem brewing in front of her.

A smaller issue is the time jump. There’s a montage of Spidey defeating low-level foes, but there’s not enough variety in it to make it feel like years have passed. We see him stopping a few crimes, beating up a few interchangeable villains, and generally doing the same thing Spider-Man has always done, but there’s no real sense of time passing. If you removed that montage and one or two lines of dialogue, you could pitch this film as happening a few months after the events of the previous one and very little would need to change. That’s particularly strange because the film has apparently decided that several years have passed, which should mean Peter has fundamentally changed. Instead, everyone feels more or less frozen in place. Peter has become more miserable, but that’s a development the film could have established without telling us several years have passed. MJ hasn’t meaningfully changed, and the world around them doesn’t feel substantially different. A time jump can be a really useful storytelling device because it allows you to skip the less interesting parts of a character’s life and show us the consequences of that time passing, but here it feels more like the filmmakers wanted the novelty of saying “years later” without actually doing anything with those years. It’s not a huge problem, but it does make the film’s timeline feel strangely artificial.

BND exists in a slightly strange position. As a Spider-Man film, it doesn’t really need to care about the wider MCU. As an MCU film, however, it’s impossible to completely ignore what comes next, especially when what comes next is supposed to be one of the biggest films in the franchise. The problem is that Marvel has spent years training audiences to look for the bigger picture. We’re supposed to notice the references, remember the post-credit scenes and speculate about what everything is building towards. When that build-up suddenly disappears, it becomes noticeable. Especially when they’re still doing the post-credit scenes, only they’re not building towards anything. Vulture still hasn’t reappeared, the beacon sent out by the Ten Rings hasn’t been answered, and Charlize Theron’s cameo in the last Doctor Strange film still appears to have led absolutely nowhere. Side note: that list was originally MUCH longer, but my editor said it was too tiring to read, which kind of proves my point about the MCU’s lack of follow-up.

Obviously, Doomsday could be incredible as a film and as a villain. Maybe the lack of set-up is the point. To be honest, after the Kang issue, I can see why they’d be reluctant to throw everything into one basket. Marvel’s response to that has been weird. It hasn’t really been to course-correct; it’s been to quietly remove the things that were supposed to lead somewhere. But there’s a difference between not revealing your villain and not establishing the world in which your villain exists. Thanos wasn’t properly explained until Infinity War, but we’d already been given reasons to know he was important. The Infinity Stones had been introduced, the Avengers had encountered his influence, and the universe had gradually been moving towards him. If Doomsday is going to be the new centre of the MCU, Marvel has some catching up to do.

Still, that’s a problem for the next film, not necessarily this one. And I think it’s important to separate the two. I’ve spent a lot of this review talking about the state of Marvel, but that’s because BND is arriving at a particularly awkward point in the franchise’s history. It would be unfair to judge it entirely on whether Marvel has a coherent five-year plan, especially when the film itself is actually quite good. When BND is focused on Peter, it works. When it’s asking me to think about where the MCU is going next, it reminds me of everything that’s gone wrong with the franchise.

And ultimately, that’s why Spider-Man has endured. He isn’t the ideal male fantasy I talked about at the beginning. He’s not a rich, confident man who gets everything he wants and is universally admired. He’s a lonely, sarcastic idiot who has been given incredible powers and somehow ended up with even more problems. He loses people, makes mistakes, gets beaten up, and still gets up the next morning and puts the suit back on. There’s something much more appealing about that than watching another superhero who seems to have everything figured out.

That’s what BND gets right. It doesn’t need to make Peter the most powerful person in the MCU, or give him another universe-ending threat to defeat. It just needs to make me care about the miserable bastard underneath the mask. And for the most part, it does. It’s not the best Spider-Man film we’ve had, and it certainly isn’t going to rescue the MCU single-handedly. But it doesn’t need to. Spider-Man has survived three different actors, multiple reboots, a cinematic universe, several attempts at making everything connected, and at least one film where the villain was a man made entirely of sand. He’ll probably survive Marvel’s current existential crisis too.

That being said, I’d still rather have another Spider-Verse movie.

Outcome (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A beloved Hollywood star embarks on a desperate redemption tour after a blackmail threat forces him to confront the mistakes that could destroy both his career and his sense of self.

I’m going to start this review off in a manner which I can almost guarantee no review of this movie has done, by talking about OJ Simpson. The murder of his wife (and the accusations of his involvement in her murder) haunted him to the point he felt compelled to write a book entitled “If I Did It”, which was essentially him insisting he was innocent while describing how he would have committed the crime if he had been guilty. It’s generally regarded as a really stupid and crass idea. Similarly, in 2018, in the midst of a sexual abuse scandal that would end up with him being imprisoned for 31 years, R.Kelly released a song called “I Admit”, where he “confessed” to things such as not going to church enough, with the only mention of his crimes being a denial. Which makes sense, the only evidence the world had that he was a paedophile was a rape tape he made with a minor in 2002 (which the world knew about, by the way, so fuck EVERY musician who worked with him after that date). Now, art is art, and I’m not saying musicians, writers and filmmakers should be arrested or punished for doing this. But it is in bad taste. Certain people should not make art and attempt to make money from certain subjects. That’s my big issue with Outcome. Jonah Hill should not have been involved. It feels like this may have been his way of dealing with the accusations of emotional abuse levelled at him, when he told his partner who was a surf instructor, not to surf with men, post pictures online of her in a swimsuit, or spend time with friends he didn’t approve of. I’m fully on board with people using pain and trauma for art, but it feels like he’s using other people’s trauma that involved him, rather than his own trauma. That fact overshadows everything else about the film, especially when it discusses how “the best thing to be is a victim.” If he wasn’t involved, you could look at those moments as the film mocking them, but with his involvement, it’s not difficult to view it somewhat cynically.

So, outside of that, how is Outcome? Honestly, it’s fine. It’s not horrendously bad, but it’s nothing special. Its streaming release feels appropriate. It’s the sort of film that’s worth watching on a quiet evening, but not one compelling enough to justify a trip to the cinema. It’s an interesting idea, but all it is is an idea, nothing more. The conversations between Reef and the people he may have wronged are genuinely compelling; emotive, introspective, and full of sharp characterisation. But everything connecting those scenes is surprisingly bland.

The casting of Reeves, generally known as one of the nicest people in the world, is perfect. The rest of the cast? They’re okay. You wouldn’t have guessed by watching this that Cameron Diaz was once one of the world’s biggest stars; she no longer has the effortless screen presence that once made it impossible to look away. I don’t know if it’s the performer or the character, but Reef’s assistant Sammy doesn’t suit the style, feeling like a deliberately kooky Deschanel-type, all quirks and forced performative behaviour. Martin Scorsese gives a surprisingly good performance. Everybody is aware of his talent behind the camera, but his work as a performer in this is to be admired, giving a lot of depth to what could be a pathetic character. His almost-monologue is full of pathos, emotion, and regret. You could build entire stories around that.

Ultimately, the film never quite figures out what it wants to be. Is it attempting to be a character study about someone realising he’s kind of a dick? Is it a satire about how fame is based more around PR than actual behaviour? Is it about how our expectation that celebrities should be perfect is a doomed endeavour? Or is it about how cancel culture ruins the lives of famous people? It feels like it is aiming to be all of them, so never fully commits to anything. All of those ideas are good ideas worth studying, but they never fully mesh in Outcome. Every time it looks like it’s getting deep into something, it pulls out (sex reference unintentional but I’m keeping it).

Visually, it’s fine. There are no shots which are ugly or distracting, but nothing that will make you appreciate it. When I was younger, I used to think the director’s job was very easy; you just point a camera at what’s happening and press record. That’s the approach it seems was taken to Outcome. The camera isn’t assisting the story or themes in any way. There’s very little sense that the camera is being used to tell the story, rather than simply record it. It’s just watching from nearby. This restrained approach to directing means that the weaker stretches have nothing to lean on. When the conversation dries up, there’s nothing carrying you to the next scene.

Under different circumstances, I think I’d have come away describing Outcome as an above-average streaming drama with some genuinely compelling scenes surrounded by a lot of filler. But art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, especially when it’s so easy to draw parallels between the story being told and the person telling it. Whether that’s fair or not, it’s impossible for me to separate the two, and the film never gives me enough to overcome that discomfort. It asks you to empathise with a flawed man trying to navigate the consequences of his actions, but because of who’s making that argument, it never feels like simple fiction. It feels like self-defence.

Outcome isn’t a disaster. There are moments of genuine insight, some excellent performances, particularly from Martin Scorsese, and conversations that linger long after the credits roll. But the film never develops beyond its central premise, and Jonah Hill’s involvement hangs over every scene like an elephant in the room. Maybe that’s unavoidable. Maybe that’s the point. Either way, it’s a film whose most interesting discussion happens outside the film itself.

The Odyssey (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, undergoes a long and perilous journey home after the Trojan War and encounters mythical beings as he attempts to reunite with his wife Penelope

I don’t think I need to see another Nolan film ever again. My problems with Nolan are well documented: his scripts often lack emotion, while his dialogue somehow manages to both overexplain everything and leave you wondering what anyone actually means (as perfectly encapsulated in this video). Of course, actually hearing that dialogue has always been another challenge thanks to Nolan’s sound mixing (a problem that’s cropped up throughout his career, but reached its peak with Tenet). The result has always been films I admire more than I actually connect with.

None of that is why I don’t want to see another Nolan film. I just wanted to lull you into a false sense of security. I don’t want to see another Nolan film because The Odyssey feels like what his career has been building towards. The fragmented timelines in Dunkirk, the sense of foreboding that hangs over Oppenheimer, the manipulation of geography in Inception, his exploration of mythic heroes from Batman. Everything has been building towards this moment. Seen in retrospect, the rest of his filmography feels like practice for The Odyssey. Homer’s epic demands a filmmaker obsessed with time, perspective, spectacle and impossible journeys, qualities Nolan has spent twenty-five years refining

The internet has spent an impressive amount of time arguing about the historical accuracy of a film based on a myth. Some of it has simply been misinformation, claims that Elliot Page is playing Achilles, despite actually playing Sinos. Some of it has been uglier, with people claiming Lupita Nyong’o is “too black” to play Helen of Troy (despite being one of the most strikingly beautiful actors working today, which feels rather relevant when casting Helen). Then there’s the debate over accents, with complaints that everyone speaks in historically inaccurate American accents, rather than the obviously much more historically accurate British ones. I didn’t invent that last argument, by the way. James Hibberd of The Hollywood Reporter was so annoyed by the accents that he wrote an entire article about it, arguing that the modern British accent is “traditionally considered universally pleasing and ‘just foreign enough'” to create a timeless quality. Apparently, the ancient Greeks were just waiting for actors to discover Received Pronunciation.

However, there is one criticism that does deserve to be taken seriously: Emily Wilson’s. Especially because her 2017 translation of The Odyssey formed the basis of Nolan’s adaptation. She argues that the film simplifies Odysseus, stripping away much of the complexity of the character and leaving little to say about the major themes of Homer’s work.

From the perspective of someone who has spent years studying the text, it’s a difficult criticism to dismiss. However, there is also a difference between experiencing The Odyssey as a scholar and experiencing it as a general audience member. Wilson has pored over every word of the original, examining it through historical context and the work of other translators and academics. A filmgoer is approaching the story very differently. They are not necessarily looking for every character, or comparing every choice against centuries of interpretation; they are experiencing the story Nolan has chosen to tell.

Let’s be honest, most audience members won’t leave the cinema wondering where Queen Arete is or which elements of the poem have been omitted. As historian Tom Holland (not the actor who appears in this film) has pointed out, there is no historically accurate version of Odysseus to recreate. He is a mythical figure. An “impressionist” interpretation of ancient history is arguably more valuable than a painstaking attempt to recreate every historical detail, because such accuracy is impossible. So with that in mind, how is the film itself? As you can guess from my second paragraph, I loved it. It’s long, you can’t deny that, but every scene feels like it earns its place. There is so much mythology packed into this story that removing anything risks making the journey feel incomplete. Some stuff you’ll be familiar with (the Trojan horse, the sirens, Circe), some you won’t (I can’t say because I don’t know what you’re familiar with). The impressive thing isn’t that Nolan includes these famous moments; it’s the way he reinterprets them. The Trojan horse isn’t simply a giant wooden structure waiting to be wheeled into Troy. The song of the sirens is not a beautiful melody, but a haunting lament for everything you’ve left behind. Circe’s transformation of men into pigs is one of the most disturbing versions of that event you could hope for, helped enormously by another excellent performance from Samantha Morton. Surely an Academy Award for one of her performances is only a matter of time?

The cast is one of the film’s biggest strengths. There are no real weak links. Robert Pattinson gives a deliciously sleazy performance that will make your skin crawl, somehow making every appearance both entertaining and deeply uncomfortable. Matt Damon is perfectly cast, and not just because this is another film where he spends the story desperately trying to get home. Somehow, that has become his very specific niche. As said earlier, Samantha Morton is excellent as Circe, bringing a genuinely unsettling quality to a character who could easily have become just another stop on Odysseus’ journey. The only criticism you can really make of Tom Holland is that his babyface means he doesn’t quite look like a 30-year-old, but that is hardly a fault with his performance.

Visually, this might be Nolan at his most impressive. Polyphemus the cyclops looks genuinely monstrous; the way he kills Odysseus’ soldiers brings to mind Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son, not simply because of the violence, but because of the sense of something ancient and unstoppable consuming something helpless. The Laestrygonians are similarly nightmarish, not only because of their size, but because of the way they manipulate the landscape itself to trap and kill their victims.

This makes it the perfect opportunity to talk about one of Nolan’s greatest strengths: his understanding of scale. A low angle alone does not make something feel enormous; the audience needs something familiar beside it for comparison. This is partly why I think Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire did not work as well as it could have. The monsters were huge, but the films rarely gave us a true sense of that size. Nolan understands that difference. Here, everything that is supposed to feel massive actually does, from the mythological creatures to the buildings, landscapes, and entire worlds they inhabit.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about The Odyssey is not what Nolan builds, but what he allows us to see. The film takes us across coastlines, mountains and islands that feel almost untouched by time, and Nolan is confident enough to simply let them exist. The scenery becomes almost another character, shaping the journey as much as the people within it. Each location represents another stage of Odysseus’ journey, not just geographically but emotionally, giving the entire film a sense of scale and reality that artificial environments often struggle to replicate.

These are not historical places recreated for the camera. They are places that existed before the film and will continue to exist afterwards. Every mountain, coastline and cave has texture and history, making the journey feel less like a series of movie sets and more like an actual voyage across an ancient world.

For all Nolan’s strengths, emotion remains his greatest weakness. There is emotion here, but it comes mainly from the performances rather than the writing. The actors create feelings that the script itself rarely manages to reach. There are moments that should be devastating, but they are presented with such clinical precision that you end up more impressed than affected by what you are seeing. You understand what the characters are feeling, but you remain outside the experience rather than being pulled into it. There is an emotional distance between the audience and both the characters and the story.

The closest the film gets is near the end, when the fall of Troy is presented not as the glorious conclusion of an epic, but as what it actually was: the destruction of a city and a war crime. Even then, however, it does not have quite the impact it should. It is brutal, but in a film where soldiers are killed by living trees, transformed into pigs, or have their heads bitten off by monsters, the human horrors of war somehow feel strangely tame in comparison. You cannot present something as the tragedy that reshaped a civilisation if the audience does not feel its weight more than the fantastical violence surrounding it.

I meant what I said at the beginning: I don’t need to see another Nolan film. Not because I have lost interest, but because I genuinely cannot see how he could top this. The Odyssey feels like the culmination of everything he has spent his career working towards. Every other film now feels like a filmmaker refining the tools he would eventually need for this. Every obsession, every stylistic quirk, and every technical innovation finds the perfect material to justify itself.

I cannot imagine another Nolan film topping this because I cannot imagine another story that suits him quite this perfectly. But I hope I’m wrong. Because if Nolan somehow manages to surpass this, then we will have another one of my favourite films to add to the list.

Enola Holmes 3 (2026) Review

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Quick synopsis: Enola is in Malta about to be married when Sherlock goes missing, leaving a mystery to be solved.

I didn’t see them the year of release, so I didn’t review them, but I have seen the other two Enola Holmes films and enjoyed both of them. But I’d definitely fail a quiz on them. I’d be able to answer the names of a few of the actors, and even fewer of the characters (I know Susan Wokoma was in the first two, but can’t remember who she was). I could remember the essence of the movies; a spirited Holmes sister, Sherlock as the more respected older brother, etc. I did enjoy them, but nothing was that memorable. It may not be the case at the moment due to how recently I’ve watched it, but I’m guessing Enola Holmes 3 will continue that tradition.

Enola herself remains a great character. I almost wrote that she feels like the kind of character I would write, but then realised how unbearably smug and self-indulgent that would sound, so instead I just threw in this sentence explaining it, which is definitely much less smug. There’s just something about her that clicks. Intelligent without being annoying, resourceful without coming off as McGuyver, and with a sense of curiosity that is endearing in the extreme. We’re so used to intelligent people being dickheads in media that it’s refreshing to see a character who balances their intelligence with warmth.

A lot of that comes down to Millie Bobby Brown. She has a sense of playfulness that’s more infectious than COVID, elevating every scene she’s in. There’s a charm to her performance that’s almost impossible to dislike. I had a weird thought whilst watching this; she belongs in either the Paddington movies or Doctor Who. She has the sense of sincerity and weirdness for the former, and the eccentric wit for the latter. She must have been asked, surely? If not, then I wonder what the hell the writers of those franchises are doing besides counting their money. That comes off really negative now I think about it. Truthfully, I love the Paddington franchise, and I really enjoyed Doctor Who up to a point.

One structural decision I wasn’t entirely convinced by concerns Enola’s own history. The recurring “who we are” reflections about her identity and upbringing feel like they belong at the beginning rather than emerging later. As an opening narration, they would have grounded both returning viewers and newcomers, establishing the emotional framework before the mystery begins. Instead, they arrive piecemeal, making them feel slightly less impactful than they might otherwise have been.

Where the movie surprised me most, though, was its politics. The spectre of colonialism hangs over almost every aspect of the story, and to the film’s credit it never treats that history as background decoration. Instead, it confronts Britain’s imperial legacy directly. This isn’t one of those adventure films that borrows exotic locations while politely ignoring how Britain came to be there in the first place. It repeatedly forces its characters, and by extension the audience, to reckon with uncomfortable truths. If this were part of a gigantic blockbuster franchise with an even larger online profile, I suspect it would become the latest target for the usual culture-war bullshit. You can almost imagine certain public figures dismissing it as “woke” simply because it acknowledges historical reality. But the film isn’t preaching so much as recognising that these conversations are impossible to avoid when telling stories rooted in the British Empire.

One line in particular genuinely stopped me.

“We saw it as advanced reparations.”

It’s an astonishing sentence because it sounds simultaneously absurd and entirely believable. It’s exactly the kind of bureaucratic moral gymnastics that powerful institutions have always employed to justify exploitation. The horror isn’t that someone says it; it’s that history (and the present) is full of people who almost certainly would have. Another line lands with equal force:

“The Empire cannot admit guilt.”

For me, that’s the film’s thesis. It’s not simply a statement about Victorian Britain but one that echoes into the present day. Britain still struggles to have an honest national conversation about empire. Public memory often celebrates exploration, trade and victory while quietly stepping around conquest, extraction and violence. The refusal to acknowledge wrongdoing isn’t confined to history books; it’s woven into parts of the national psyche. Whether audiences agree with that interpretation or not, the film deserves credit for provoking the discussion instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.

That’s perhaps what impressed me most about Enola Holmes 3. Beneath its lively detective story, witty dialogue and charismatic performances lies a willingness to engage with genuinely difficult ideas. It never forgets that it’s an entertaining mystery, but neither does it shy away from asking what Britain inherited alongside its myths.

I still don’t know whether this franchise will become one I’ll revisit endlessly, but unlike its predecessors, this instalment has stayed with me for a little while. Not because of a particular mystery or plot twist, but because of the questions it asks and the confidence with which it asks them.

That’s a far more lasting achievement than simply solving another case.

Little Brother (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Rudd Landry (played by John Cena) has a thriving real estate career, a wife/kids, a killer physique, and a chance to be on a reality TV show. But he has two problems: Josh (Christopher Meloni), his actual brother, who overshadows him. And Marcus (Eric Andre), his “little brother”, someone he mentored as part of a Big Brother program in college.

I’ll start with performances. I will always love seeing Sherry Cola and John Cena in films. Cena, in particular, has quietly become a really dependable comedic lead. For someone who was known in his wrestling career for showing his work (often shouting instructions so loudly that people in the back row could hear) and for being unable to take things seriously, it’s weird that his film comedy style is based mainly on being the straight man. He’d be great in an action movie parody in the style of Naked Gun. Christina Catechis gives a fun performance, reminds me of Grace Parra. No idea who the woman who is territorial about her window is, but I love her. Eric André can be brilliant, but he can also be exhausting.

That’s definitely the case here. He’s the central part of the emotional story arc, yet his personality makes that emotional arc far less effective than it should be. The audience doesn’t buy into him as someone worth the emotion. He’s not misunderstood, or troubled, or someone who’s a bit rough around the edges but is generally a lovely person. He’s kind of a selfish dick with no idea of societal expectations. Not in a “With multiple options for cutlery, move from the outside in as you go through the meal” way, this is “don’t piss out of a car window, dent someone’s car, or swear at strangers”. This isn’t Jack Black in most films; this is Jack Black in School of Rock. Someone you’re supposed to support, but is too immature and self-destructive to really care about.

That’s ultimately the film’s biggest problem. We’re supposed to care about Marcus, but it never does the work to make him someone you’d actually want to spend time with. Chaotic energy isn’t a substitute for likeability, no matter what the parents of toddlers tell you. You absolutely can build a comedy around an abrasive protagonist, but the audience needs to understand where that abrasiveness comes from. Otherwise, he’s just a dick. I never felt sorry for Marcus. I felt sorry for everyone who had to deal with him.

Rudd’s older brother Josh is a more believable character, but arguably an even less likeable one. He seems completely oblivious to Rudd’s admiration and feelings of inadequacy, yet there are moments where he almost appears to go out of his way to antagonise him. And the voice box gag at the end is simply too stupid for words.

Thankfully, Cena’s Rudd keeps everything grounded. He could easily have become the sort of bland straight man who exists purely to react while everyone else gets the jokes. Instead, the writing gives him enough warmth and frustration that he feels like a real person. The emotional core only works because Rudd behaves like a human being rather than a plot device. He gets annoyed, he occasionally snaps, but he keeps trying. Cena has become surprisingly adept at playing characters whose defining trait is patience rather than charisma, and that’s a much harder job in comedy than simply being the loudest person in the room.

The important question, though, is whether it’s funny.

Yes. It is.

There are plenty of genuine laughs throughout. Nothing groundbreaking or unforgettable, but enough to keep the film entertaining. Although it leans heavily on Eric André’s trademark chaos, it also has the good sense to avoid some of the more obvious, low-hanging dialogue jokes.

The ending, though, is bizarre. I’m used to films continuing the story during the credits, showing where the characters end up. I’m also used to films filling the credits with bloopers and outtakes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film try to do both simultaneously. Not one after the other, either. Instead, it constantly cuts between story epilogues and behind-the-scenes outtakes, forcing your brain to keep recalibrating whether what you’re watching is part of the narrative or just the cast messing around. It feels oddly amateurish and neatly sums up my biggest issue with the film: the comedy keeps getting in its own way.

That’s a strange criticism to level at a comedy. I’m not saying it shouldn’t have jokes. I’m saying it’s so desperate to remind you it’s a comedy that it often sabotages itself. Whenever the film starts building a genuinely engaging scene, it feels compelled to interrupt it with another improvised tangent or burst of randomness. Sometimes that works. Just as often, it kills the momentum and undercuts whatever emotional weight the scene was beginning to build.

That’s a shame, because there’s a better film buried underneath. The central relationship is strong enough to carry the story without constantly winking at the audience. None of that makes it a bad watch. It’s breezy, consistently entertaining, and never feels like it’s wasting your time. It just never quite figures out when to stop chasing the next laugh and let the ones it’s already earned breathe. Ironically, by trying so hard to be funny, it sometimes undercuts the humour that’s already there.

It’s an enjoyable comedy rather than a memorable one. You’ll laugh, you’ll probably forget most of it by next week, but for nearly one hundred or so minutes it does enough to justify its existence. Plus, it contains more Hoobastank than any other film released this year.

Apex (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Mourning the death of her partner, Sasha travels around the Outback, finding herself being hunted by Ben, a cannibalistic serial killer.

Four years ago, I reviewed Beast, another film by Baltasar Kormákur that was about someone being hunted in a landscape. In that review, I specifically mentioned how great it looked, and how great a cinema experience it was. So I was sceptical that this was released straight to Netflix, doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. I mean, it still looks pretty. But that might be due to the landscape doing half the work for him.

I need to open this review by talking about Australian actors. I mean, they must exist otherwise Home and Away wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did, so why cast a Welsh actor to play Ben? To be fair, they do touch on it, making it clear he wasn’t born there. But he tries an accent for most of it, so he’s supposed to be, at the very least, naturalised. It almost feels like the “You’re not from here, are you?” line was added after someone noticed the accent slipping. The only way it works is if it’s his gimmick, that he’s overexaggerating his Australian nature as part of his “public persona” for some reason, I dunno, because it’s “crazy” and wacky? That would suit the rest of his character. He is definitely supposed to be crazy. But it doesn’t work. It’s like the character isn’t sure if he’s supposed to be Heath Ledgers Joker, or the villain from a 90’s Saturday morning kids cartoon, and not even a good one. Every scene has him narratively screaming, “Look at how crazy I am!” rather than simply letting him be frightening. It’s annoying and kind of distracting, feeling like the character itself is going overboard, rather than the actor. The best screen killers don’t need to constantly advertise their insanity. Michael Myers barely emotes. Anton Chigurh speaks almost conversationally. Even Mick Taylor (watching the Kill Count video for Wolf Creek as I write this), another Australian outback killer, is terrifying because he feels like someone who could actually exist. The villain in Apex feels like someone doing an impression of what a movie psychopath is supposed to look like.

That’s not the only thing harming him as a character. For a serial killer, he doesn’t do much killing. Two people (I think) died in this movie; both died in the exact same way, killed by the protagonist. The antagonist apparently has a history of murdering people, but the audience barely gets to see him do it. We’re told he’s dangerous, but storytelling generally works better when you show these things. By the end, gravity has claimed more victims than the serial killer.

That’s a problem.

It’s like making a Friday The 13th movie where everyone dies in a bus crash. Eventually you stop worrying about the villain and start keeping an eye on the terrain. There’s an obvious rewrite staring the film in the face. Make him an Outback tour guide. It’s perfect. Tourists trust him. He knows the landscape better than anyone else. He can separate people from the group without raising suspicion. Better still, we get to see him operating before the protagonist becomes his target. We understand why he’s dangerous because we’ve watched him be dangerous. So, when he meets someone who refuses to become another victim, we’ve already bought into him as a threat.

Instead, the film spends most of its running time trapped in a hostage scenario rather than delivering the hunt it advertises. The premise promises a predator tracking prey across the Australian wilderness. What we actually get is people being stuck somewhere while the plot periodically remembers there’s supposed to be danger involved.

This is a shame, because buried under the clichés is a genuinely interesting premise. Imagine spending your life preying on easy victims, only to discover this one keeps surviving everything you throw at them. The hunter slowly becomes frustrated. The prey grows more confident. Suddenly the balance of power shifts. That’s a film. Instead, Apex never really commits to that dynamic. Scenes happen, and large stretches of the film simply wash over you. Rather than a tense game of cat and mouse, it often feels like everyone is just waiting for the next location. Also, because the cast is so small, narrative convention tells you neither character is going anywhere until the climax.

The result is a thriller that never quite finds its pulse. It’s never aggressively bad. It’s too well-shot for that, and the scenery genuinely is spectacular. But almost every interesting idea feels like it’s sitting in the draft immediately underneath the one that got filmed.

You can see the better version peeking through the cracks. But I don’t want to spend my time peering at cracks, I risk getting put on a list for that.

Moana (Live-Action) (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: The island of Motunui is struck by blight, leaving the inhabitants at risk of extinction. It’s left to future chief Moana to try to find demigod Maui and get him to restore the heart of Te Fiti. That’s a lot of names thrown at you, trust me, it’s much simpler than it sounds.

It’s rare for a BBFC certificate to fill me with a strong sense of foreboding. It normally happens when I watch a horror film and realise it’s rated 12A. But it’s what happened with this movie. It’s not called Moana; you may think it is because that’s how everyone talks about it, and it’s how it’s listed on the poster and the trailer, etc. It’s not even called Moana (2026). According to the certificate at the start, its official title is actually Moana (Live-Action). So from now on, when I talk about Moana (Live-Action), I will constantly give it its full title of Moana (Live-Action). Yes, it will get annoying and sound clunky the more I talk about my thoughts on Moana (Live-Action), but that just illustrates my point that it’s a terrible title.

I’ll admit, that was a longer discussion about the name of the film than I do in most reviews. I suppose I should talk about the film itself. Which is going to be difficult, because there’s nothing new to talk about. Annoyingly, I didn’t review the original; otherwise I could just copy and paste that review. I could probably get away with copying my How To Train Your Dragon review though. Much like that movie, I had memories of the original, but not enough to recognise subtle differences. But I did pick up on similarities. Of which there are a lot. I get it, Moana is fantastic, and people hold it in high regard, so you don’t want to mess with what worked. But the repetition of scenes, shots, jokes, etc, means that Moana (Live-Action) never feels like its own movie. It feels like what it is; an imitation.

If you haven’t seen the original, then you will love Moana (Live-Action). Okay, I’m gonna stop that running joke now because it’s really annoying me. Plus my editor told me to. What worked about the original still works here. It’s still funny, it’s still stunning to look at, and the music is still incredible. But if you have seen the original, then you can’t help but feel a little disappointed. This movie has a writer who wasn’t involved in the original, which is baffling, as there’s certainly not enough changes to justify paying someone. There’s a new song, and a few tweaks, but nothing major. Now that Moana 2 exists, it could have easily put the characters from that movie into this one. I’m not saying they should be new leads or massively affect the story, but would it have hurt to have them referenced? It also could have fixed a few problems with the original story; it really should have focused more on the island whilst Moana wasn’t there. At the moment, the film is so focused on WHAT she’s doing that it doesn’t demonstrate WHY effectively enough. What has happened on the island whilst she’s gone? Are they worried? Is the food situation getting worse? Do they think she’s dead?

None of these accusations of laziness can be levied at the technical crew and the performers. The Rock is still the perfect casting for his character. Catherine Laga’aia is scarily good considering her lack of big-screen experience. I have faith that her career will survive this; she has an electric presence and can only go up from here. While he wasn’t on screen much, when he was, I couldn’t help but notice how much John Tui resembled professional wrestler/nose-biter offer/mace survivor/all-round very scary man Haku. Turns out he has already played another wrestler; Afa Anoi’a, who was cousins with The Rock’s dad. Huh, small world. Anyway, he’s great in this too. Rena Owen and Frankie Adams also play their parts well. But again, none of the three islanders gets much of a chance to show what their characters are once Moana gets to sea.

It still looks breath-taking. Considering how much of it is blue sky and blue water, it would be easy for the visuals to be muddled and make it difficult to see what happens. That never happens here. Everything is clear, visible, and stunning. There’s almost nothing at all that looks fake; even the dancing tattoo looks real. Nothing about the visuals takes you out of the story.

The music still slaps. New song Along The Way slips so perfectly into it that you’d be forgiven for not realising it’s a new song. That sounds harsher than I intend it to. The Rock has improved his vocals slightly from the original film, but not enough to justify the internet becoming obsessed with You’re Welcome again.

Moana is not a bad film. On its own merits, in a vacuum, it’s superb. But it’s not released in a vacuum, is it? It’s released not only with the original existing, but with the entire success of this movie depending on people remembering the original existing and wanting to see it again.

In summary, it’s not bad, but it is disappointing. Disney need to stop remaking films like this. Either remake films which were badly received (and improve them), or remake films from decades ago which people will want to see live action versions of. Basically, Disney need to do a live-action remake of 1973’s Robin Hood (1973? Really? Wow. I assumed it was 80s). Not only will it look different from the original (the original Moana looked so life-like already, which is another reason a live-action remake is pointless), it will also make a shitload of money for two reasons:

  1. People LOVE the original.
  2. Furries.