Tag: movie-review

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.

Evil Dead Burn (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: After the loss of her husband, a grieving widow seeks solace with her in-laws in their remote family home, only to find them possessed one by one by Deadites, forcing her into a blood-soaked fight for survival against demonic evil.

I’ve not watched an Evil Dead film since Army Of Darkness. I like to watch series in order, and I didn’t see the original until Halloween 2024. So I’m two movies and a three-season television show behind. There’s quite a fair bit of lore in this franchise, so there was a chance I’d be lost.I was, briefly. At the start, I found myself wondering who certain people were, but truthfully, it didn’t actually matter. I didn’t need to know who it was; the important thing was WHAT they were: deadites.

The franchise is weirdly regarded as comedic, despite that comedy only really coming to the forefront in Army Of Darkness; the rest have had moments of comedy, but first and foremost, they have always been horror (unless you find the idea of a tree sexually assaulting a young woman funny, in which case, ew). In that sense, EDB (EBD, pronounced Ee-deeb) is a huge success. It’s incredibly disturbing. I worried it would mistake cruelty for horror in the same way some horror films have (hello Thanksgiving, and the work of Rob Zombie), but thankfully it doesn’t. For one thing, you never get the sense that you’re supposed to cheer or revel in the violence. It fills you with fear, which is what a horror film should do.

EDB isn’t just violence; it also brings tension to the table, specifically the dinner table, where one of the year’s most tense scenes takes place. I’ve not exactly been quiet in my love of dinner scenes in movies, and EDB has a great one. The tension builds beautifully. You know something will happen. There are too many shots of heavy and/or sharp objects for something not to happen. But what it will do is it will get close, then draw back. So you’re relieved; the nightmare is over. But then it starts again, getting more tense this time, then quiets down. It repeats this until your nerves are at their breaking point. By the time the inevitable explosion of violence arrives, the film has earned every second of it.

It’s helped by having believable characters. These aren’t characters; they feel like real people. You could easily imagine them existing outside of a horror movie. They clearly have a history together. This is great as it means there’s an emotional resonance to the actions. You’re not just watching people die and be physically harmed. You’re watching family relationships get broken, trust be shattered, moments where the emotional pain cuts almost as deep as the physical. When Alice (played brilliantly by Souheilia Yacoub) is being hunted at the end, you’re not bored; you’re nervous. You want her to stop suffering, you want her to survive, not just because she’s the protagonist and that’s what’s supposed to happen, but because you’ve grown so attached to her that she feels like a friend. That’s the case for everybody in this film. Even if you don’t like them (and some are truly despicable), you understand their motivations. They’re all played by good actors too. There’s not a single weak link; everybody is on top form. EDB benefits from an unusually small central cast. Yes, technically the cast list is much larger, but most of those characters only appear in the opening and closing scenes. The overwhelming majority of the film unfolds with just six people trapped inside a single house, giving it an intimate, claustrophobic quality that suits the story perfectly.

In fact, I think you could have set almost the entire film within the grounds of the house. You’d need a few flashbacks and some narrative adjustments to cover what happens around the funeral, but it would work. It would also strengthen the parallels with the original, replacing the isolated cabin with the isolated lakehouse.

Not everything works, though. Susan’s capitulation to Edgar doesn’t quite feel real. By that point, she’s already seen what he’s become, so she has every reason not to open the door. I understand what the film is trying to achieve dramatically, but it makes her seem inexplicably foolish. Narratively, she threw a bag full of knives out a window and expects us to believe she’s shocked that those knives stabbed someone.

That’s not my only criticism. I mentioned earlier how the dinner party kept pulling back the tension only to build it up further. It tries that again near the end of the film, but pushes it a bit too far. There are multiple times where we’re given the film language of “this will end soon”, only to have another scene start. The ending is not bad, but it does definitely feel like the end of a rollercoaster where the thrills are over, and you can feel the brakes being put on.

I was also less enthusiastic about some of the visual choices. None of them looks bad (in fact, the film is consistently gorgeous), but there are moments where it feels as though individual shots were designed to look striking in a trailer rather than serve the story as effectively as they could.

The score is similarly effective without ever becoming particularly memorable. The sound design, however, is exceptional. It works hand in hand with the visuals to make every injury feel revoltingly tangible. Weapons don’t pass silently through flesh; you hear skin tearing, bones cracking and bodies breaking. It’s deeply unpleasant in exactly the way the film intends.

Those are minor quibbles. It’s otherwise a damn solid horror movie. It’s not quite as good as Backrooms, which remains my horror film of the year, but it’s comfortably one of the best genre offerings I’ve seen in 2026. More importantly, it understands what horror is actually supposed to do. Too many modern horror films mistake cruelty for fear, or assume gallons of blood automatically make something intense. EDB knows that gore without context is just noise. Every gruesome moment works because it’s rooted in believable characters and emotionally grounded situations, however supernatural they become. The violence isn’t there to earn applause; it’s there to make you flinch.

Overall, I love it. Even coming into the film without all the intervening lore, EDB reminded me why Evil Dead has endured for over forty years: beneath all the blood and possession is an understanding that horror only works when you care who’s suffering. I’m already excited for the next one (and to catch up on the ones I’ve missed).

Minions And Monsters (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Those annoying little yellow shits that you may know from memes your relatives post on Facebook decide to make a movie.

As I sometimes do with sequels, I’m going to post a segment from my review of the previous movie, this time, 2022’s Minions: The Rise Of Gru:

I was ready to slate this; I was ready to come down on this harder than the next UK Prime Minister comes down on an unemployed person not applying for jobs in their sleep. I was going to use every insult that exists, and a few that I made up just to express my anger at this film.

But then it ruined my plans by having the audacity, the sheer gall, to actually be okay. How very dare you! I mean, it’s not going to end up on my “best of 2021” list, mainly because it’s 2022, but also because the best it ever gets is “okay”. I’ll admit, I’m not a huge fan of the franchise; I think it’s because it’s basically old Buster Keaton skits, but in animation so there’s no sense of danger or risk. There’s also always the sneaking suspicion that it’s a merchandise-driven series rather than a creative one. It’s strange as it’s when this film links to the others in the franchise that it’s at its weakest. The timeline doesn’t line up AT ALL with the first Minions film, and when it makes references to the other films it falls flat, and like every prequel ever made has moments where the audience reacts with “what a useful skill/gadget, that would have been useful in [scene in a film made earlier but chronologically takes place later]”.

I try to keep politics out of reviews unnecessarily, but I have to commend Minions and Monsters (MAM) for allowing me to use less energy by recycling my own review. Hashtag, we only have one planet. Really, the only thing I would change from that review to make it applicable to this is remove the year 2022. Everything else is still accurate. It’s still a franchise that feels like it was conceived as a series of Happy Meal toys rather than a movie, with all the continuity of a drunk person explaining the Halloween franchise. In my review of Black Phone 2, I said: “As a stand-alone film, it’s pretty good, as a sequel, it’s a mess”. MAM is similar; the weakest parts are when it remembers it’s a Minions movie.

One sentence from that earlier review rings a lot more true this time: the Buster Keaton comparisons. Parts of MAM don’t just resemble a Keaton short; there are a few parts where it grabs you by the shoulders and tries to sell you a box set of his greatest hits, so much so that it feels like he should appear in the credits under “special thanks”. I watch a lot of films that people would describe as pretentious, and I can’t remember the last time I saw any film (let alone a mainstream animated film featuring yellow kidney beans) craft such a heartfelt love letter to silent movies. I’m used to animated films putting in references for adults, but even the parents would be too young for a lot of these references. Is there a crossover between “people who watch Minions” and “People who would recognise a reference to the 1902 Georges Méliès A Trip To The Moon”? That fills me with hope. Because it means that there’s a chance a kid will watch those scenes and then catch a glimpse of one of the original works, and be inspired to look into it, and find themselves falling in love with silent cinema.

Don’t worry, though. It doesn’t stay classy for too long.

Much like the introduction of talkies killed silent cinema, the introduction of them into the plot of MAM also kills any sense of originality, and it quickly becomes more of the same. Goomi, the tiny Cthulhu from the trailer, is introduced more than halfway through the movie. So he’s the villain? Nope, after more shtick than you shake a stick at, he gets them to free two sea monsters who are intent on taking over the world and destroying everything. So they’re the big villain? Nope. After more narrative faffing around, the three monsters summon Irene, a large orange blob monster with more eyes than a narcissist’s diary (that joke only works when you say it out loud, but I’m sticking with it). She appears, has one moment of chaos, then is destroyed by an alien who’s flanked by minions in a spacecraft. There are throwaway jokes longer than the villain’s appearance in this movie.

It’s like watching a relay race where every runner immediately hands the baton to someone else because none of them actually want the responsibility of being the antagonist. Every time the film introduces what you think is going to be the threat, it immediately goes, “Actually, no, THIS is the threat.” By the end, it’s burned through more villains than an arsonist superhero; you half expect the closing credits to reveal there was another one waiting in the car park.

I will say this: Minions is very rarely boring. Something is always happening, even if that something doesn’t advance the plot at all and is just the narrative equivalent of jingling keys around. It never builds towards anything; there’s no natural progression, it’s just a series of stuff happening. The closing section is not just bad; it’s disappointing. Worse than that, it’s generic. None of it is unique or memorable.

Which is why the silent cinema sections stand out even more. They feel like they belong to a different film entirely, one made by people passionately paying tribute to the history of cinema rather than fulfilling a contractual obligation to set up the next line of plush toys. If the entire film had committed to that style, this could have been one of Illumination’s most interesting projects. Instead, it eventually remembers it’s supposed to be a Minions movie, panics, and throws every monster, spaceship and glowing MacGuffin it can find at the screen until the credits arrive.

Now onto the closing scene and the credits. The closing scene reveals that the entire movie (including the framing device) is actually a film-within-a-film, directed by James and Henry, two of the minions from this movie. Oh yeah, the minions in this are different from the ones in the previous movies. Same species, different characters, that all happen to look exactly the same, have similar mannerisms, and wear similar clothes. So, none of the events of this movie happened? Fine, I’ll go along with that. But then the closing credits reveal that the magic book is real. It’s less “twist”, and more “different writers took a scene each and didn’t collaborate to make sure their visions lined up”. So did the events happen or not? The film seems to want to have it both ways: if you point out that at no point in this franchise has anybody realised that Gru’s minions look like a similar species that appeared in multiple films from the 20’s, then “it didn’t happen, it’s just a movie”, but for the sake of some mid-credits jokes, it definitely happened.

There’s another small problem I have, not just with this movie, but the franchise as a whole. It doesn’t really feel like they want to help villains. They say they do; they act as if their main motivation is to help evil and enslave humanity. But most of the time their actions don’t align with that. For one thing, they stop the runaway train from running people over. If they were truly evil, wouldn’t they have welcomed it? The franchise never treats them as the villains it tells us they are; they are only ever heroic.

Ultimately, Pierre Coffin’s biggest mistake with this Minions movie was making it a Minions movie. If it belonged to an original franchise, then it wouldn’t have needed to fall apart in the final third to live up to expectations, and it wouldn’t have needed to tie itself in knots to stay in continuity.

I suppose that’s enough about the writing. How about the technical aspects? They’re more difficult to judge. The lighting, colours and character animation are perfectly competent, but there’s never a shot that makes you stop and admire it. There’s nothing visually exciting about it. Also, the music doesn’t stand out at all. It’s not that the visuals or the score are bad, but they both feel as if they had no love put into them. There’s no flair, no style, and no substance. Ironically, the only sections with any visual personality are the ones borrowing techniques from filmmakers working over a century ago. That’s a shame, because the film leaves so much on the table. If it had committed to the silent movie motif, the score could have become one of its strongest assets. There’s a moment where a shark attacks the minions; imagine how much more memorable that sequence would have been with an old-fashioned reimagining of the Jaws theme.

Fans of the franchise will enjoy it, and the section set in old Hollywood is something worth not just admiring, but studying. But it doesn’t matter how delicious a steak meal is if the dessert is a literal steaming pile of shit.

The Invite (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A struggling married couple’s dinner with their free-spirited neighbours spirals into a provocative night of awkward revelations that forces them to confront the cracks in their relationship.

I love dinner parties in movies. They’re so fun to watch because they naturally allow group conversation, and there are certain unspoken etiquette rules that are always entertaining to watch get broken. If you want to expose your characters’ conflicts, put them around a dinner table and let what happens happen. The Invite takes that idea and makes it the entire concept.

It’s an English-language adaptation of the 2020 Spanish film The People Upstairs. It’s fairly obvious this is a remake of a non-American film. There’s something about it that feels slightly unconventional. It’s not just that it’s a summer movie driven by characters and dialogue rather than big action setpieces. It kind of feels like the cinematic equivalent of ordering food in a foreign country by speaking English with an accent. Familiar enough to understand, but just different enough to feel a little strange.

That sense of oddness is backed up by Olivia Wilde’s directing style. It’s incredibly static, with some weird blocking choices. Sometimes it feels like a play that we’re watching from the audience, sometimes it feels like someone just plonked a camera down randomly with no thought or care, and other times there’s a voyeuristic quality, as if we’ve wandered into a private argument we shouldn’t be witnessing. With that in mind, it’s difficult to criticise the film too harshly on a technical level because it’s clearly not trying to impress with flashy filmmaking. It’s aiming for a naturalistic style that occasionally feels awkward, but intentionally so.

What will chiefly inform your opinion on The Invite is the characters and the dialogue. The audience I saw it with loved it, and it’s easy to see why: it’s incredibly funny at times, with some truly incredible dialogue, and a cast who clearly enjoy bouncing off one another. The conversations have an energy that keeps scenes engaging even when very little is happening. That’s the issue, though: very little does happen. There’s almost no narrative progression for most of the runtime. Rather than pushing the characters into new emotional territory, the film spends much of its time having them elaborate on feelings they’ve already expressed. To be honest, it spends most of it catching up with the trailer. I’ve seen the trailer; I know this film involves the neighbours proposing group sex. I assumed that would be the inciting incident and it would lead to things. Instead, it’s the destination, and it’s a destination the film takes far too long getting to.

That lack of progression also affects the central relationship. Joe and Angela don’t feel like real people so much as vehicles for clever dialogue. Every conversation is packed with witty observations, but it rarely feels spontaneous or lived-in. Also, there was no warmth to the relationship between the two main characters. I understand that the point is they’re trapped in a loveless marriage fuelled by resentment, too afraid to admit it’s over. That doesn’t mean spending nearly two hours with them becomes any easier. I kept waiting for just one moment of genuine warmth, some glimpse of why these two people fell in love in the first place. There’s a brief moment where it seems they might unite against the bickering of the other couple, but it disappears almost as quickly as it arrives.

That lack of warmth really hampers the ending. Joe finally returns to the piano, Angela joins him, and they seem to reconcile. It’s a sweet scene in isolation, but after nearly two hours of anger, bitterness and emotional distance, it feels too small to justify such a dramatic shift. It’s like trying to fix a leg amputation with a piece of sellotape.

For all my issues, there is still a lot to enjoy about The Invite. Beneath all the bitterness is an impactful look at people and keeping the spark alive in long-term relationships. For a film that’s so bitter, it just may save the relationship of someone watching. They may see it and be inspired to try more, to treat their partner with love, to keep wooing them and trying to impress them instead of confusing stability for fulfilment. The ensemble also works well as a true four-hander, with every actor getting plenty to do. Although, interestingly, despite having a female director and co-writer, the film subtly privileges Joe’s perspective. He’s the only character we spend meaningful time with alone, and the only one we follow outside the apartment. It’s a small imbalance, but one that makes the supposedly shared story feel slightly weighted towards him.

I won’t begrudge anybody enjoying this. Mainly because being annoyed at someone for their film opinions would be weird. Maybe a younger, more cynical me would have loved this. It will find its audience, of that I’m certain. But I’m not part of that audience. I appreciate what it’s trying to do, but it never quite invited me in.

Saipan (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A recreation of the Saipan incident involving the Republic Of Ireland national team during the 2002 World Cup. If those words mean nothing to you, this film isn’t for you.

The last football movie I watched was Balls Up. That movie was fucking terrible. All Saipan had to do was be better than that. Obviously it managed that; if it hadn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this; you’d be reading a news headline saying “Makers of film attacked by a crazed/idiot reviewer”.

That’s not to say it’s a fantastic watch. For all its faults (of which there were many), at least Balls Up was memorable (except for the title, because I’m still not 100% on whether it’s called Balls Up or Balls Out). Saipan isn’t. It won’t move you, teach you, or linger in the memory. It’s just there. It’s the film equivalent of the 90’s song Save Tonight, by Eagle Eye Cherry. In the moment, you’ll enjoy it, and it’s hard to find many faults. But it won’t take long for memories and warm feelings to fade. That’s both a positive and a negative. Saipan never embarrasses itself. You never sit there bored, or annoyed. But it also never threatens to become anything more than “just okay”.

On the face of it, it rivals Seinfeld for being a piece of media about nothing. I mean, really. “A footballer shouts at his boss and quits mid-tournament” doesn’t sound like the sort of event that legends are built around. Nobody was physically harmed. Nothing was damaged. Ireland came second in their group (eventual finalists Germany topped the group), and ended up going out of the tournament on penalties to a Spain side that were on the cusp of being one of the greatest international teams of all time. There’s no Sliding Doors “but what would have happened if he stayed?” alternate history. All that would have changed is how they played, the final result wouldn’t change.

But that’s missing the point somewhat. It’s not just about that incident. It’s about professionalism, national identity, and personal pride. The reason the incident dominated headlines wasn’t because of what happened; it was because of what people thought it meant. There’s no clear-cut right-and-wrong side. To some people, Roy Keane was a selfish egotist who had no idea how to be part of a team. But to others, he was a perfectionist who refused to lower his standards and was extremely disappointed when it seemed like everybody else wasn’t taking the tournament seriously. To some, Mick McCarthy was a realist, attempting to deal with an egotist (Keane) who was being encouraged by his club manager to treat the international team. Whereas to others, he was woefully out of his depth, weak, and should have never got hired in the first place.

Saipan understands this. It doesn’t portray either side as wrong. They’re both right, but they’re having different arguments. I genuinely have no idea where the writers or directors stand on the issue. The script is impressively neutral. Perhaps that’s because all the principal figures are still alive and theoretically capable of hiring lawyers, but whatever the reason, it works. The film trusts the audience to make up their own minds.

There are a few issues. The main one is that Eanna Hardwicke looks nothing like Roy Keane. That, in of itself, isn’t an issue. Michael Sheen has shown time and time again that it’s more important to capture personality than accuracy. And it wouldn’t be an issue here if it wasn’t for one thing: the film opens with a montage featuring the real Roy Keane multiple times, repeatedly reminding the audience what he actually looks like before cutting to an actor who bears very little resemblance to him. It’s an odd decision. Why not keep Keane at arm’s length at first? Show him from behind, in silhouette, or at a distance. Build up the myth before revealing the actor. Instead, the film practically invites the comparison, and it’s an invitation that you can’t receive well.

The other issue is that it doesn’t do enough to explain why any of this mattered.

The film assumes a certain level of prior knowledge and doesn’t spend much time bringing newcomers up to speed. Non-football fans will still understand the basic facts. They’ll grasp the what and the when. But I’m not convinced they’ll fully understand the why. Which is a shame, as the why is the most important part.

Ultimately, it feels like a TV drama, albeit a very good one. It’s consistently engaging, well-acted, and intelligently written. It’s also surprisingly difficult to feel strongly about. The real incident sparked years of anger, debate, and discussion. I don’t think it’s particularly cruel to suggest that the film probably won’t. That sounds harsher than I intend it to. I’d still recommend it. It’s a solid, thoughtful piece of filmmaking that treats its subject with far more nuance than I expected. I’d say you should watch it, but watch it with someone who remembers the actual event. You might find their talks as every bit as interesting as the film itself.

Passenger (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A travelling couple are haunted by what’s essentially a hitchhiking demon.

The last André Øvredal film I reviewed was Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark back in 2019. I thoroughly enjoyed that, although I was surprised by it because I assumed it would be more kid-friendly/my first horror. I’ve also heard very good things about The Autopsy Of Jane Doe, The Last Voyage Of The Demeter, and Trollhunter, with all three of them being on my list to watch. I didn’t love Passenger, but it didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for his work. The most interesting things about Passenger are the things he brings to it. It’s far more visually interesting than similar films; at times, it’s close to art. Disappointingly, it does dip into the “random face jumps at the camera” scares, which are cliché to the point of boredom. Weirdly, there are times when I think it does a bit too much. Some scares are heavily signposted, and maybe it would have been better if they were a bit more subtle. The perfect example of this is a scene where Maddie (played by Lou Llobell) is trying to get to the van. She hears a noise and turns to look at the source, then turns back, and the van is further away. There are dramatic scare chords accompanying this happening. Personally, I would have liked it to be a bit more subtle, so the audience had to pay attention, putting them in the same place as the character: wondering if it is actually further away, or if her mind is playing tricks on her.

I didn’t know that much about Passenger. I saw the trailer months ago, but for some reason, the trailer wasn’t available online at the time, so I haven’t watched it again. I mainly remember it focusing on someone driving and seeing the same figure again and again by the side of the road. That kind of intrigued me, but I was curious as to how that could extend to a feature-length film. I mean, how can you get 90 minutes of someone driving and NOT picking up a hitchhiker? So I was doubtful it would have enough meat on its narrative bones. Good news, that’s not what the film is about. Bad news, it still doesn’t have enough meat. The main characters are cursed because they decide to stop their car (which kind of seems like this film is saying that stopping to help people is a bad thing and should be avoided, but what do I know?). So it’s somewhat ironic that the film itself keeps stopping. Weirdly, those are the parts of the film I think worked best. There’s an incredible scene where the two are watching Roman Holiday on a projector in the woods. It’s very sweet, the scares are subtle enough that they gradually build, and there’s actual tension. But then they get back into the van, and it turns into visual noise.

In contrast, the dumbest part is when they’re in the van and time suddenly skips forward to night. The set-up for this is that the entity is powerful at night and weakened during the day, so the characters think they’re safe in the day, but that safety is disrupted by the time skip. I would argue that manipulating time in such a manner requires immense supernatural power, much more than it would take to, say, loosen a wheel and cause a car crash. Or did he just make them fall asleep for that long? If that’s the case, why not kill or hurt them then? Also, why wake them up? They’re heading to the church of Saint Christopher, patron saint of travellers and the only place where someone would stand a chance of killing the entity. The characters don’t know where it is, so they have to look out for symbols and clues to try and find it. The characters appear to have travelled in the missing time. Here’s my issue: the demon wakes them up BEFORE they get a sign with a symbol on that tells them where the church is. If he can only timeskip a certain number of hours, why not wait until they’ve travelled a few more hours, THEN jump ahead so that they unknowingly drive past the only clue that’s visible from the roadside? They might have even taken the wrong exit and ended up avoiding it entirely. If anything, he got them closer towards it. He’s a video game boss who just happens to have the only weapon that defeats him in the hallway outside his dungeon.

On the upside, the lore is fantastic. It FEELS like a genuine urban legend. Specifically, an American one. It appears to be based on a few different ones rather than a single one. But when you watch it, it feels real, like the kind of thing travellers will tell each other. I’d have loved to have seen this as part of another movie, where we see new urban legends get told. But as a full movie? There’s just not enough to it to justify it. It says a lot that the best scares and most memorable scenes were all ones that could have come from any movie, not many that are unique to a road trip horror.

War Machine (2026) Review

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Quick synopsis: America fights aliens.

I’m not a complete idiot (that sound you hear is my family and friends laughing), so I am aware of the influence the US military has on films. The US Department of Defense even has an entertainment unit that handles requests when filmmakers want to utilise military equipment or locations. It’s not just “we need to make sure you use the equipment safely”; they denied support to Independence Day because the director refused to remove references to Area 51. The 1954 animated movie Animal Farm was purchased by the CIA and had the ending changed, which is ironically, very Orwellian. It’s not just film; the DoD also has agreements with TV shows such as The Price Is Right, America’s Got Talent, and The Kelly Clarkson Show. So, yeah. I’m used to American media figuratively fellating the US military. But few have done it so obviously as War Machine.

War Machine (WM, pronounced Womb) is not a movie; it’s a recruitment service. To the point where it almost seems like a parody. The villains? Alien machines that land on Earth. Now, and I believe this is very important, they don’t attack first. The machines just sit there. The US military decides to attach explosives to it to blow it up, after which, the machines rise and attack. So to reiterate: the good guys attempt to kill something, then claim to be victims when they get attacked in revenge. If that doesn’t showcase US foreign policy, I don’t know what does. I know Hitler Simpson wants to be heavily involved in the making of Rush Hour 4, but if it turns out he was involved in this, I would not be surprised. That’s how blatant the propaganda is.

WM feels like an early 90’s action movie, and that’s not a compliment. The villains are basic “others”, the characters are ultra masculine to the point of being laughable (the main character refuses to go to therapy after the death of his brother), and it all boils down to “one straight, white, American male will save the entire world”. How does he save the world? By blocking the machine’s ventilation ports. Did the visitors not realise that would be a problem? This keeps happening in movies like this, and it feels like it comes down to writers not understanding the ending of War Of The Worlds, where the aliens were defeated by a random virus. That’s not “invaders will all have one fault we can exploit”, it’s “invaders can be so cocky they neglect to take into account everything”, and that has historical precedent: think of the empires built where the first contact involved a lot of people dying of unknown diseases that their bodies weren’t used to. “Leaving a port open” is not like that; they would know that Earth has dust, rocks, and dirt. It feels slightly cheap to have a big threat defeated by what’s essentially a banana in a tailpipe. What’s weird is that this only happens once. At no point in their invasion of Earth did the alien machines get clogged up with sand in the desert, rocks from a collapsing mountain, or glass bottles full of piss thrown by English football hooligans.

How about the characters? Do they salvage this? Nope. For one thing, they’re all given numbers instead of names. Which strips them of their humanity. I get it, that’s probably the point, the military dehumanises you so you work as part of the machine. But for films? You’re supposed to give a shit about the people you’re seeing. Compare the two sentences:

  1. “It absolutely devastated me when Martha died”
  2. “I still haven’t fully recovered from the death of number 81”.

One sounds reasonable, one sounds stupid. You remember names; they’re unique, they have emotional resonance to them. Numbers don’t. It makes you feel like these characters don’t matter

So yeah, it’s dumb. But you wouldn’t know this by the Wikipedia page, which I feel has been edited by the production company. The top line says “the film received generally positive reviews from critics, praising it as a fun, old-school, throwback action movie despite its familiar, formulaic storyline”. Even the positive reviews are 3 out of 5, etc. The kindest response would be “mixed”

On the upside, it looks good. The action scenes themselves are fine, and the villains look menacing. The performances are fine, but nobody is really given enough to do. I also like the brief insight into survivor’s guilt, especially when 81 mentions how the medal he was given is just a constant reminder of the worst day of his life. That’s a fascinating look into both his character and American culture.

I’ve seen worse films this year. But it’s hard to think of films where I’ve given less of a shit.

Glenrothan (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: After 40 years abroad, Donal returns to Scotland to make amends with his brother, Sandy.

In case you weren’t aware, there’s an app called Runpee. What it does, simply, is tell you the best time to pee during a movie so you don’t miss too much. Some films are so densely packed that they have a few very short windows you can use. Glenrothan would be the easiest film to find peetimes on, because no matter what happens, no matter when you leave, you’re not going to miss much. Sure, you’ll miss some jokes or heartwarming moments, but it’s like falling asleep on a plane. Sure, you missed the in-flight movies, but you know where you are when you land.

That’s a somewhat negative way to start this review, and considering the Rotten Tomatoes score (17% at the time of writing), you’d be forgiven for thinking the rest of this review would be negative. It’s hard to argue against some of the points the negative reviews make. The characters feel like sitcom characters: not in terms of jokes, etc., but because they go through stuff which should change their character, yet for some reason it doesn’t. Donal (played by Alan Cumming) is constantly having his flaws pointed out to him, and he seemingly acknowledges them, but then in the next scene it’s like he’s never been told them. It doesn’t do a good enough job of explaining WHY the two brothers are estranged. The way the flashbacks are lined up, you’d think it’s building up to a revelation that explains and changes everything, but it never comes. There are minor disagreements, but mainly it’s Donal being generally fed up with living there and feeling the need to leave. It’s teenage petulance, but one the character never comes back from. I know sometimes family disagreements happen, but the events we see don’t seem big enough to cause a generational rift like that. It feels like it’s missing ONE scene, one scene that changes everything.

The biggest downside is that you’ve seen this movie before. I know there are not unlimited ideas and concepts in the world, but everything about this is too familiar to be interesting. Two family members are reunited by disastrous health news, a somewhat snobby family member sees the errors of his ways and the importance of home, the notion that “no matter where you go, this will always be home”, which in Western media is limited to a few countries (you never see an American film about how someone really misses their home country of Luxembourg). These are all narrative paths that everyone is familiar with. So it’s hard to get that excited by what we’re seeing.

On the upside, whilst it does have all the originality of a cover song by a tribute band, it is expertly made. Everyone does their job well. At 79 years old, it may be a bit optimistic to say that Brian Cox can transition into a director capable of cinematic genius that will make the works of Hitchcock and Cameron look like warmed up piss on a cold plate, but if there’s a story he’s been pitching for decades, one that’s incredibly personal to him that he would consider his lifes work to complete, Glenrothan does enough to convince studios that they should let him. Alan Cumming has a lot riding on his shoulders, and he manages it. In fact, he’s so good that I finally realised he’s not Michael McDonald of “Killed by a leprechaun” fame. Well, I say “fame”.

The script isn’t good enough for Cox to showcase the story. But what he does showcase is the landscape. The shots are so beautiful that at times it doubles as a tourist advert for Scotland. So whilst I can’t see Glenrothan inspire someone to start film-making or performing. I can see it inspiring someone to finally take that holiday Scotland they’ve been dreaming of. To phone that family member or friend they haven’t spoken to in decades over something stupid. To cherish the time they have. So whilst this won’t be the best film anybody will see (tbh, it’s just a step above “White Male British people do things” fare like Mothers Pride or Fisherman’s Friends), it could end up being one of the most important movies in someone’s life.

And really, it’s hard to muster hate for something that could do that. Plus, it has the balls to have an anti-monarchy song in a pivotal scene. So it has that going for it. It’s not perfect. But it’s nowhere near as bad as the critic score says.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A teenage girl who has been missing for 8 years is suddenly found. But she’s come back a bit more possessed and nonverbal than they remember.

It’s really hard to make a Mummy movie (and in the case of the 2017 version, it can be difficult to watch, too). I think it’s because, well, essentially, what do they do? Especially compared to other similar properties. Look at the intended movies in Universal’s attempted Dark Universe. Dracula. He can fly, bite people, slight hypnotic powers. Wolf Man, animalistically bites and mauls. Invisible Man? His powers are pretty much stated in his name. The Mummy? The powers there depend entirely on who’s writing them. Sometimes they control undead armies, sometimes they have magical powers, and sometimes they’re basically zombies with toilet paper. Also, they’re fairly localised. Vampires can travel, werewolves are usually attached to woods and villages, but there are a lot of them in the world. The mummified corpse of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh? They’re usually only found in Egypt or the British Museum. You’re highly unlikely to see one in Berwick-Upon-Tweed. To the general public, if asked to define a Mummy, they will go to the 1999 Stephen Sommers film. That’s kind of scary, but it’s mostly a fun adventure movie.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (LCTM, pronounced Lick-toom) is DEFINITELY a horror, unashamedly so. But is it a mummy movie? I have no idea. It just feels like an Evil Dead movie with added sand. It’s absolutely disgusting, in the best possible way. There’s a sequence involving a toenail which still makes me wince when I think back to it. The body horror is off the charts and will make you feel uneasy. Cronin is great at making stuff seem like it actually hurts: the sound design, the make-up, etc., it’s all perfectly crafted for maximum efficiency.

The editing? Not so much. At times, it feels like the horror movie version of the Bourne shaky action cam. There’s a moment near the end which is near incomprehensible due to the way it’s edited. I know some people like that; they like the sense of unease that it creates, and how energetic and jumpy it is. I’m not a fan; I like to actually see what’s happening during scenes. Not in a “no, light everything like daylight so I can see the monster before it jumps out”, but if I can’t tell whether a character is on top during an action scene, am I supposed to be pleased the good person is winning, or scared because the villain is? We can’t tell. I had a similar issue with the Transformers movies, which often just felt like car parts rolling around.

It doesn’t feel like a Mummy movie, though. The moments which make it so feel incredibly tacked on. There’s a subplot involving a local expert that could be excised completely, as most of the information provided is given to us by someone else later on. I also felt the ending dragged. The closing moment has to be the shortest part of a film that’s ever dragged. I’d estimate it’s roughly 90 seconds long; it should be 10. I’m not saying every scene has to be quick, but there are so many moments which aren’t necessary, just dragging any momentum to a halt.

Lee Cronin is very good at making you disgusted and freaked out, but what he’s not so great at is giving those moments a reason. The powers are inconsistent, at times seeming only to exist to serve the plot. Characters are possessed, but only to call the teacher a cunt, not to do anything that would be useful. The grandmother’s wake is expertly crafted in terms of horror, but never followed up on. Did none of the people there feel the need to alert the authorities of a feral child bursting through a ceiling and biting a corpse? There’s not really any indication that the events of this movie affect the characters’ day-to-day lives. There’s no intense media pressure on the return of the child. Yes, the police in Egypt didn’t release that information, but SOMEONE would have noticed. Can you imagine if Madeline McCann turned up at her parents’ house? That news would be released VERY quickly, and the fact that the parents hadn’t announced it would then be seen as suspicious. There’s no way the events in this movie happen without some form of media intrusion. The dad works for the local news; you’d think that would be relevant to the plot at some point.

The parents act a bit weird in this. Leaving it WAY too long to attempt to get help or figure out what’s wrong. It wouldn’t take as long as it takes for the parents to question whether the child is possessed. I mean, they’re American, they’d call for an exorcist if their child is left-handed. The hospital staff are a bit weird, too. Sending her home WAY too early. And I’m not sure the police would SHOW parents a video of their child being tortured.

Personally, I don’t think the opening section of them in Egypt before she gets kidnapped was necessary. The kidnapping itself is brilliantly creepy. Okay, when I say “I don’t think it was necessary”, I mean the way it’s done. If it were the pre-credits scene, it would be great. It would also help sell the timeskip. We’re told it’s 8 years she’s been missing, but it never feels like it. Because we go straight from “she is missing” to “8 years later”, we don’t feel the torment and pain the family have gone through, because the audience has only just seen her, and the mother and father look exactly the same. If it were pre-credits, that pause would allow the time jump to sink in. The actual pre-credits scene is a scene of a family coming home and finding out their bird is dead, which leads to the dad dying. It adds NOTHING to the story and is seemingly only there under the misguided notion that every horror pre-credits scene must feature a death. Out of the 4 characters in the opening, only 2 of them are seen or referenced again, and one of them is completely different, so her inclusion in the opening didn’t influence how you saw her later. This also has the effect of making the unseen mummy the focus, when it should be the family. Imagine if The Shining opened with Charles Grady (the former caretaker) murdering his family. Think how that would change the audience’s reactions to Jack, Wendy and Danny.

In summary: a film I didn’t hate, because I respect that Lee Cronin was trying something. It just feels like a waste of an IP. That being said, if anybody ever makes an Eternal Darkness movie (and they should), Cronin is the person I’d want directing it. Also, the people complaining because it’s not the same movie as the 1999 one are stupid.