Tag: Reviews

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: When a mobster uses a time machine to save his best friend from a deadly night, two versions of himself, a dangerous criminal conspiracy, and the woman they both love collide in a chaotic race to rewrite fate.

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (or M&N&N&A, pronounced *deep breath* Mandnandnanda) is a weird movie. Mainly because of how normal it is. You’d expect an action-comedy based around time travel would be weird and feature set-pieces and moments which you’ve never seen before, but it doesn’t. So whilst it is original, it does feel kind of like it’s wasted the premise. 90% of what happens in M&N&N&A could happen in any other film, and most of the remaining 10% could be very quickly rewritten to make sense in a standard film. I mean, this is a time travel action movie, and my first draft didn’t even mention the time travel aspects; that’s how little they actually matter. There’s very little discussion of paradoxes or any of the other stuff you expect from movies about the subject.

Wasted potential aside, it is fun. Vince Vaughn is clearly having a blast, but he is hampered by there only being a six-month gap between the two Nicks, so in terms of personality they’re very similar. I also have another issue with Nick’s character. The film states that he and Mike used to be really close. But the way they interact before we’re told that wouldn’t lead you to think that. They interact almost like strangers, and not in a “we have nothing to say to each other anymore, and it’s awkward” way.

On the subject of cast, James Marsden is good at what he does, but he does need to start adding a few more tools to his arsenal, or at the very least take on more diverse roles than what he’s currently doing. He’s not helped by how bland Mike is as a character. Nick, you can imagine Nick outside of this movie; there’s enough there to base a short story around him. Mike? You’ve got nothing to go on. He’s so bland he feels like the default protagonist in a poorly made GTA clone. Eiza González is good (but Alice is sorely underused, often treated more as a prop than a character), with great chemistry with Marsden and Vaughn. Keith David? Well, it’s always nice to see Keith David in things. He elevates everything he’s in.

Using Sheena Easton to soundtrack a fight scene is a great touch. It’s playful, unexpected, and fits the film’s offbeat sense of humour perfectly. That being said, the “action scene set to a country song” has become a bit of a cliché. It feels like every other crime film or action comedy has one now, and the novelty has definitely worn off. It’s the action version of “Horror film trailer set to a slowed-down female vocal cover of a pop song”. At this point, I’d happily support a moratorium on country-song action montages for a few years until they start feeling fresh again.

One thing that stood out was the conversation about Gilmore Girls. It’s such an oddly specific topic for characters to get into in the middle of a dangerous situation, and that’s exactly why it works. It’s almost Tarantino-esque; all it’s missing is superfluous n-words and shots of the actresses’ bare feet. I can understand why some viewers might find scenes like this frustrating, arguing that the characters are too nonchalant considering there’s a mob boss actively trying to kill them. But I never got that impression. The threat is always lingering beneath the surface, influencing their decisions even when they’re talking about something completely mundane (well, as mundane as the end of a relationship can be). It feels less like they’re ignoring the danger and more like they’re coping with it however they can. These are also characters who’ve spent a lot of time around violence and death, so the possibility of being murdered isn’t exactly a new concept to them. Their casual conversations feel like a believable defence mechanism rather than a lapse in the writing.

The playful dialogue doesn’t always work, though. There’s a scene in a convenience store that’s ridiculously dumb, featuring a store clerk dismissing the very notion of “sugar-free candy”. Even if, technically, candy has sugar, you’d know what they meant. It’s like saying, “Vegan sausage rolls can’t exist because sausage is meat. Idiot”, technically right, but overly pedantic, and you’d have to be an idiot to argue it. Mike not being aware of what chloroform is also feels like something that a real person wouldn’t say, especially considering his line of work.

The action scenes are fine, occasionally bloody, sometimes fun. But there’s nothing that stands out, nothing that you’d look at and think “oh, now that’s cool”. Not everything has to be John Wick, but I saw this film less than a week ago, and no action scenes have stuck with me.

The emotional high point is the group singing Oasis to a dying Nick. It’s an unexpectedly sincere moment in a film that’s otherwise full of jokes and criminal chaos, and it’s genuinely quite touching. Unfortunately, the scene slightly undercuts itself because Nick’s death takes just a little too long. The emotional impact starts to fade as the moment stretches on, and what begins as heartfelt edges towards awkward. Had it been trimmed, it probably would have landed much more effectively.

That sums up this movie. It keeps showing glimpses of greatness. With clever dialogue, flashes of invention, and occasional bursts of inspired action. But then it walks back that greatness with jokes that rely on inexplicable stupidity, or scenes that take one good idea and stretch it just a little too far (again, the sugar-free candy bit). Ultimately, it feels like a blockbuster. By which I mean, a movie you’d rent from Blockbuster back when they were still a thing.

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.

Pizza Movie (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Two friends need food to counteract the drugs they’ve just taken. All they need to do is get downstairs.

Sometimes you see a synopsis and the only thought in your head is “Wait, doesn’t that movie already exist?” Usually it’s because a movie is incredibly popular, so studios rush to release something similar. With that in mind, it’s hard to read the plot for this and not think “wait, isn’t that basically 2004’s Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle/Get The Munchies?” It’s an easy comparison to make. Two friends take drugs and try to find food. One of them is a nervous guy working up the courage to talk to a woman, the other being more impulsive, encouraging adventures and drug-taking. I thought that too; that was actually the first line I wrote in my notes while watching it.

But then the film revealed itself, and it’s more than the comparisons would suggest. For one thing, the female characters have more agency. They’re no longer just prizes or props; they’re fully formed characters with their own flaws and weirdness. The main characters have more depth too. Unlike Harold and Kumar, whose defining trait is essentially “they smoke weed”, Jack and Montgomery feel like people who happen to take drugs rather than characters entirely built around them.

Sadly, adept character writing doesn’t always make a good film. The drug trips themselves are superb: imaginative, creative, and a lot of fun. By comparison, the bits between them aren’t quite as good. There are also a few moments where it seems to suggest the drugs are not just affecting the characters, but are changing reality itself, with time loops, levitation, etc. There’s a cute moment at the end where we see the hallucination from an outsider’s perspective: the characters believe they’ve formed into Juan giant person (not a typo, an in-movie joke). From their point of view, they’re seamlessly moving as one person. From the viewpoint of others, it’s just the three characters tightly hugging each other and struggling to move. That’s fun. But then you have the time loop sequence, where there’s no obvious real-world explanation. Are bystanders genuinely watching these people scream, run back down a corridor, and repeat the process? If so, why does nobody react?

That being said, the time loop section is one of my favourite parts, so it’s not really a criticism. It’s more of a warning that to enjoy this film there’s a lot of “don’t think about it too hard, just go with it”. It’s not just the story, the comedy is like that too. The jokes don’t come quite as thick and fast as they do in something like Fackham Hall or The Naked Gun, but there’s certainly a variety. Some are quite smart, some are among the dumbest things you’ll see all week (even if you watch the trailer for the new Minions movie), and some exist purely because some guy thought “wouldn’t it be funny if….”

The willingness to embrace absurdity helps sell some of the weirder concepts. How many other films would have the villain be defeated by overdosing on drugs and realising they’re part of a low-budget indie movie? Or feature one of the writers joking that “my granddad wants to be in this movie”, only for a suspiciously elderly student to appear a few minutes later, played with deliberately amateurish enthusiasm? For such a gloriously stupid film, it’s surprisingly smart.

The visuals, however, are merely fine. A premise like this should give its directors licence to get truly weird, to push the visuals as far as their imagination will allow. Instead, everything feels rather restrained. There’s nothing wrong with how the film looks, but it rarely feels ambitious. The modest budget undoubtedly imposed limitations, yet there’s little here to suggest what these filmmakers might paint with a larger canvas.

The performances? They’re fine. Gaten Matarazzo does just enough to distinguish himself from his Stranger Things character. Sean Giambrone is slightly closer to his television role (Adam in The Goldbergs), but that’s more due to writing than performance. The two share a chemistry that makes you believe they’re actually friends. On the downside, the two are so good together that the traditional third-act split doesn’t land because you don’t truly believe these two would drift apart so easily. Lulu Wilson is the third part of the friendship group, and if there’s a third Ready Or Not movie, she wouldn’t be the worst choice as another relative to Kathryn Newton and Samara Weaving (she’d actually be the second best choice, first being Margot Robbie, obviously). Peyton Elizabeth Lee also leaves a strong impression despite limited material, and I’d happily watch her in a larger role.

The standout, though, is Sarah Sherman. She barely appears, yet completely owns every scene she’s in. She’s wonderfully odd, but never in a way that feels forced or performative. Instead, she gives the impression of someone who would happily spend an evening sitting alone in a dark room doing weird things regardless of whether anyone else was watching. It’s a fascinating performance, and one that makes me even more excited for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which is rapidly becoming one of my most anticipated films of the year.

This won’t finish near the top of anyone’s Best Films of the Year list. But it’s well worth seeking out. It starts off looking like a Harold & Kumar clone (Harold and Two-mar?) before carving out its own identity through inventive ideas, likeable characters and an appealing willingness to embrace utter nonsense. At the very least, it’s funny, imaginative, and exactly the kind of film you’d have rented from a video shop back in the day, then ended up watching two or three times over the same weekend.

Dolly (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Macy, a young woman who fights for survival after she is abducted during a hike by a monstrous figure intent on raising her as its child.

I was looking forward to this. Max the Impaler is my kind of person, and I like horror movies, so this should be right up my street. It’s not; it definitely took a wrong turn and ended up on a street with the same name but in a different town. That said, it could be just that Dolly and I aren’t speaking the same horror language. I know that certain people will absolutely love this. Dolly has an 80’s throwback aesthetic. The colours and presentation make you feel like you’ve stumbled across a hidden 80’s slasher. Specifically, one on a cheap VHS that isn’t legally available in this country, so you had to get it from a dodgy tape trader, watched so often that the defects become part of the cinematography.

There are moments where Dolly has its creepy moments (the film, not the character. Wait, no, the character too). The trouble is that it isn’t quite good enough to sustain them. Several moments felt repetitive. Horror films often recycle scares, kills, or visual motifs; that’s part of the genre. But when you’re already feeling that sense of déjà vu before the protagonist and antagonist have even properly crossed paths, something has gone wrong in the script. At one point, I genuinely checked to make sure I hadn’t accidentally rewound the film. The overly artistic editing doesn’t help matters either. Rather than enhancing the experience, it often feels like it’s actively getting in the way.

The editing creates some practical problems, too. Characters reach for an object, and the cuts are so rapid that we don’t actually see what that object is. That’s an issue when the object is about to be used as a weapon. It’s difficult to fear someone being hit by an object if we don’t know what the object is. Is it a smoked haddock, in which case it will hurt but not likely kill the person (the fish, on the other hand, that’s probably gonna die). Or is it a wrench, in which case, yeah, that might kill a mofo.

That same uncertainty extends to Dolly as a character. The mask obscures so much of their face that we rarely get a clear read on what they’re thinking or feeling. This becomes particularly noticeable when the protagonist starts fighting back. Is Dolly frightened? Angry? Offended that somebody has stopped playing along? Excited because things have become more interesting? We don’t know. I know, similar horror films also have characters wear masks, such as Texas Chainsaw. But this isn’t Texas Chainsaw, no matter how much the ending desperately wants to make you think otherwise.

The good news is that when it comes to violence, the film absolutely commits. Rod Blackhurst understands gore and, more importantly, understands impact. The violence here isn’t stylish or glamorous. It’s ugly, messy and unpleasant in exactly the way real violence should be. The injuries look painful, the deaths feel convincing, and the kills strike that sweet spot between inventive and deeply uncomfortable. These aren’t deaths that the audience cheers or goes “woooo” to; they’re deaths that are made to sicken you.

I also found Dolly surprisingly compelling as a character. They’re simultaneously terrifying and tragic, which is a difficult balancing act to pull off. It’s the kind of horror villain that future sequels would almost certainly ruin by explaining too much. As they stand here, though, they’re fascinating. You could even imagine a sequel where Dolly somehow ends up becoming the protagonist. I hope not, but you can see it happening.

Ultimately, Dolly felt like a Rob Zombie movie, and that’s not a compliment.

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.

Balls Up (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Two marketing executives end up public enemy number one in Brazil after ruining the world cup final they were invited to because they invented a condom that goes over your balls.

Weird timing. There’s a World Cup this year; in fact, that’s why I actually watched it, so I can have a somewhat topical review for once. But it’s now June; this movie was released in April. 15 days away from the final teams qualifying, two months before the first game. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to release it closer to the tournament?

The World Cup in Balls Up takes place in Brazil. That country hosted a World Cup in 2014. So is this film saying it takes place in 2014? Or is it marketed at people who want to watch a film based around the World Cup, but don’t actually like the World Cup? Why make a movie to capitalise on an event if you get all the facts wrong? It kind of feels like they wanted to make this movie, but realised the World Cup final this year is in the US, and a film that makes the US look bad isn’t likely to get funded in modern times. And they couldn’t go to Qatar or Russia due to US interest in those territories.

Also, Balls Up describes the event as the “2025 World Cup”, which doesn’t exist. For Americans: this would be like making a Super Bowl movie that says the event takes place every few months and features international teams. I’m not saying you need to know absolutely everything about something before writing a script. God knows, I dislike when people use esoteric expert knowledge to insult a film. If the cloud formation in the sky of a historical film annoys you because that’s not what the weather was like on that particular day, that’s on you, not the film. But if the entire central premise of your film is based on bullshit, then I have a problem. It would be like making a film about George Washington and having him grow up a poor black child in southern Lagos.

Also, I didn’t buy the general concept. “A condom that also goes over the balls”, that’s apparently a million-dollar idea. It’s not, stupid. It’s also not really explained WHY this would be wanted in the first place, or how it works. There’s not even a scene of someone trying to put the condom on and it snapping painfully on their balls, even when a character is about to have sex. That being said, it is possible there WAS a brief scene of that; I was just unable to watch it because my eyes were blinded by the sheer volume of shit.

It’s not all bad. Larry David being the voice of a translator app is funny. There are one or two other very brief moments that almost caused a smile. Plus, Daniela Melchior is pretty damn good at what she does. Also, watching it won’t cause a ghost to crawl out of the screen and say you’ll die in 7 days. It also hasn’t been shown to increase the risk of death by plane crash. As you can tell, I’m really struggling to find positive things to say about it. So I won’t.

It’s not just research which is missing from the script. There’s also not really a story. There’s no cohesive narrative that depends on you knowing these characters and their situation, where their characters gradually change and those changes effect behaviour. It’s just a series of long sketches and skits. They’re not scenes, they’re video game worlds. You have drugs party world, jungle world etc.

Maybe it’s saved by the characters being likeable? Nope. These characters are written as if we’re supposed to hate them and be annoyed by them. But they end up getting everything they want, so I think we were supposed to like them. They’re not easy to like, though. They’re juvenile, annoying, dumb, and are written as if they’re constantly drunk as fuck. It baffles me that this was written by the same people as Now You See Me 3, Zombieland, and the three Deadpool movies. But I suppose they did also write GI Joe: Retaliation and Ghosted, which makes more sense.

A film like this is usually released to capitalise on current events. I’m assuming this was made because Amazon isn’t showing the World Cup, so they needed to make something so bad that it would make people hate football.

And if it wasn’t for the Spain-Cabo Verde game, almost mission accomplished.

We Bury The Dead (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: During a zombie outbreak, a woman travels across a devastated Australia to find her missing husband and confront the unresolved fractures in their marriage.

It’s weird to say about someone so famous, but Daisy Ridley is underrated. Much like R-Patz after Twilight, she’s still shaking off the stink from starring in a franchise that wasn’t well received. It’s a shame as she’s really good. She is consistently excellent, gravitates towards interesting projects, and usually nails her performance. I’ll be upfront, this isn’t as good as Sometimes I Think About Dying (a film I’ve come to appreciate more and more over time, and one I definitely underrated when I first saw it). But it is worth a watch.

That recommendation comes with a relatively sizeable “but”.

If your ideal zombie movies are fast-paced, violent, and intense, you will absolutely despise this. The zombies aren’t the focus; the characters are. We Bury The Dead (WBTD: pronounced Woo-bah-ted) isn’t a zombie movie; it’s a movie that just happens to be set during one. It’s mainly about a woman travelling to meet her stranded husband in the aftermath of a social apocalypse. Much like society, their marriage is also on the rocks; damaged by infidelity, dismissiveness, and resentment. The end of the world hasn’t solved or caused their problems; it’s just meant that every excuse and distraction that they had is no longer there.

Obviously, there are zombies, but they’re not traditional lumbering monsters awaiting destruction. They’re more like a manifestation of pain, regret, and grief, physical reminders of things that refuse to stay buried. And if that sentence repels you, WBTD isn’t the movie for you. It’s not a film about survival; it’s about what happens when people lack closure; what happens when they have unsaid conversations and unfinished business. The relationships they assumed they’d have time to fix, the apologies they wished they made, and the lifetime they assumed was still ahead of them. You could tell pretty much the exact same story by having Daisy Ridley die at the start and have her character be a ghost. She spends most of the time just wandering, coming to terms with the sudden change, carrying the weight of her damaged relationship. The end of the world doesn’t make her problems disappear. If anything, it exacerbates them. WBTD asks whether reconciliation is possible when time has effectively run out. It also highlights how, when the world has gone to shit, sometimes the most important part of your life are the friends you’ve made along the way. That’s an oddly optimistic and hopeful approach, but it is one you have to dig among the grief to find.

Like I’ve said (many times, and will say many more), this isn’t for everyone. The pacing is glacial (enjoy that metaphor while you can, because in 5 years time, global warming will render it nonsensical). There are stretches where it feels like nothing happens, and then nothing continues to happen, only to be interrupted by, you guessed it, nothing happening. The characters aren’t fighters; they’re traumatised victims trying to come to terms with what’s happened. Personally, I liked it. But I understand how it would be divisive to some. The pace gives the emotions time to breathe, reinforcing the isolation the characters find themselves in.

Not to say it isn’t brutal when it needs to be. But it doesn’t enjoy its brutality. Characters don’t whoop and cheer when they are face to face with decaying corpses; they throw up and refuse to continue. Death isn’t entertaining; it’s tragic. The characters recognise that every zombie they approach isn’t an anonymous monster to be killed; they were humans, every single one had a life full of hope, potential, and family. They were neighbours, friends, eaters of cheese. The violence has an uncomfortable feel to it. There’s no triumph when zombies die. Relief, but not triumph. The characters aren’t becoming badass with every kill; they’re becoming more emotionally exhausted.

As a zombie film, WBTD is unconventional to the point you could argue it barely counts as one. As a meditation on grief, regret, forgiveness, and the possibility of reconciliation when time has effectively run out, it’s far more successful. I recognise I may have repeated myself a lot during this review. Truth is, there’s not that much to say about it. That’s not because it’s not interesting; it’s because it’s so atmosphere-based, it’s not a film to watch, it’s an experience to get lost in.

It’s slow, sombre, occasionally frustrating, and absolutely not for everyone. I liked it. But didn’t love it. It did sometimes feel like it was so desperate to be understood, it wouldn’t move on after it made its point; instead it would repeat them. There’s not a lot in this 95-minute film that couldn’t be said in a 30-minute one. The supporting characters are underutilized to the point of almost being invisible.

Plus, the fact that it’s caused by America accidentally detonating a weapon is uncomfortably realistic in 2026, where wars are threatened on a whim. And more importantly, I can finally get “Bury Our Friends” by Sleater-Kinney out of my head whenever I see this film in my “to-watch” list.

Scary Movie (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Lol, as if you give a shit about the plot

Scary Movie 6 (which is how I’ll refer to it during this review, just for the sake of clarity and because “new movie shares same title as the original” trend annoys me) has been rumoured for a long time, and people have been weirdly excited for it. It feels like people assume the Wayans brothers haven’t made a similar film since Scary Movie 2. Like there’s a delusion that they made two successful movies, then went into a 20-year coma.

They’ve made multiple parody movies since then; two of them have been horror-based, and NONE have entered popular culture. Really, the closest they’ve got to it is White Chicks, otherwise known as the number one defence for blackface on the internet. It would be like if a band/singer announced a sequel album to their biggest hit, and it caused fans to negate that it’s the same band that’s been putting out shit music for 20 years. The same people are making it. They never went away. You just stopped paying attention.

I didn’t see a trailer for this until only a few weeks ago, so I didn’t know much about it. When I saw the poster, I made this post on Bluesky:

The following will be jokes in this movie:
1) A horror movie villain does some drugs and pulls a silly face.
2) Gay sex references.
3) “Remember this thing? Reference!”
4) “Did you just assume my gender?”
5) Someone getting murdered in a safe space.

The funny thing is I didn’t even need to watch the film to find out whether I was right. The trailer arrived a week later and immediately confirmed all five. Not only that, it was needlessly confrontational. There was a weird amount of “there are no safe spaces here” energy (by which I mean, I’m pretty sure they actually used that exact phrase) radiating from the trailer, as if the filmmakers genuinely believed they were producing some dangerous act of artistic rebellion rather than a sequel to the sixth entry in a parody franchise.

It’s a bit weird because the original Scary Movie wasn’t really famous for being offensive. Crude, certainly. Juvenile, almost definitely. But it wasn’t some culture-war lightning rod that stuck it to the man. The only reason to market this one that way is that it provides a convenient shield. Any criticism can and will be dismissed as people being too sensitive or too woke rather than confronting the possibility that the jokes just are lazier than I am after I finish work.

Let me be clear; I don’t hate this film because it’s offensive or not PC. I hate this film because it’s lazy. I love the first film; some of the scenes were so spot-on that it’s difficult to take Scream seriously. Nothing in this movie will have the same effect. Mainly because none of the jokes have any point to them. Take the Weapons parody. The joke is that somebody accidentally hands out weed gummies to children, who then run around the street until one gets hit by a car. That’s it. That’s the entire concept.

Watching Weapons doesn’t improve the joke. Knowing the source material doesn’t add another layer. If you have no idea of Weapons (the film, not the concept), it just looks like random nonsense happening for no reason. That’s because most of the film isn’t parodying actual movies; it’s parodying movie trailers. The best parody films take apart the logic, style and clichés of the thing they’re mocking. This mostly points at something recognisable and waits for applause.

The story doesn’t help much either. There technically is one, but it feels like it exists purely to transport characters between references. Every time the plot threatens to establish momentum, somebody takes a detour because another horror character needs to walk through the frame. The jokes come before the narrative, every time.

The internal logic is….well it’s not there. One character can be fired into a wall of barbed wire at motorway speeds and suffer little more than mild inconvenience, while another dies from something considerably less dramatic. Consequences fluctuate depending entirely on whether a joke requires them. So nothing has stakes or consequences. When nothing has stakes, it’s hard to give a shit about the characters. I know, it’s a comedy, but even the characters in Airplane took the situation they were in seriously; they didn’t jump out of the plane from thousands of feet up and walk away. Here, everyone exists in a universe where the rules are rewritten every thirty seconds.

The boyfriend being blatantly, impossibly suspicious throughout the film is a genuinely enjoyable running gag, even if it overstays its welcome. The Final Destination-themed fairground where every ride appears specifically designed to massacre its passengers is inspired. Two legacy characters comparing their respective “what are you waiting for?” moments is exactly the sort of self-aware horror joke the film should have been built around. The refusal to do an It Follows flashback is surprisingly clever.

Even the ending lands a couple of strong punches. The second motive reveal is excellent. The first one is idiotic, but the second almost tricks you into believing the film has been secretly smarter than it appeared.

Almost.

The music is better than I thought it would be, to the point where I’m pretty sure I’d buy the soundtrack before the dvd.

As for the performances, they’re a mixed bag. Olivia Rose Keegan occasionally pushes things into that exaggerated sketch-comedy territory where every line sounds like somebody signalling that they’re delivering a joke. Then again, when she finds the right rhythm, she’s one of the better parts of the film. It feels less like a talent issue and more like a performer trying to navigate a script that doesn’t always know where its own punchlines are.

I love silly comedies; two of my favourite films from last year were The Naked Gun and Fackham Hall, which were some of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. So I have no objections to comedy, but I do object to “look, here’s a thing from a film” as a substitute for humour. This was sold as a return to the spirit of the original Scary Movie. In reality, it feels much closer to those dreadful Friedberg and Seltzer parody films that spent the 2000s convincing studio executives that references could replace comedy.

Scary Movie mocked horror films. Scary Movie 6 mostly just reminds you that horror films exist.

The Rip (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A group of cops find a fortune in cartel cash, and almost immediately start wondering which one of them is going to betray the others first

I’m not going to lie; I went into this with low expectations. It was a Netflix original, which doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence anymore. Plus, it was from the writer of Bad Boys for Life (which I still maintain should have been the fourth movie), 2018’s Death Wish, and 2010’s The A-Team. And as much as I love Affleck and Damon, they do occasionally choose quite poorly. For every Gone Girl or The Martian, there’s a Hypnotic or Downsizing.

So I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. To the point where I wish it got a cinema release. A huge part of that is the chemistry between Matt and Ben. Seeing them on-screen like this is like watching your favourite band reuniting; you can tell they’re relying on old tropes, but they are both bringing a more mature energy than they have before. Sure, they may not be hitting every note perfectly, but the chemistry leaps off the screen. It would be nice if the other characters were given time to shine or, God forbid, actual characterisation. But you can’t have everything.

The plot? If you ever wanted to see a more American version of the supremely underrated Shallow Grave, you’re in luck. The pacing is surprisingly quick for a film where not a lot happens. The opening is kind of dull, and full of “people are investigating cops for corruption? How dare they!” weirdness which I’ve always been uncomfortable with seeing on screen; why is the idea of police being held accountable seen as a bad thing? Thankfully, it moves past those moments quicker than Obsession moved past Ian’s billion-dollar windfall. Once the money appears, shit gets real. Relationships disintegrate like cake in the rain. Trust withers down, and suspicion grows quicker than those toys that were tiny but then expanded when you doused them in water. It’s less action-heavy than you’d expect, being more interested in metaphorical explosions than real ones. There are still some action scenes, but they’re not the things you’ll remember most.

The action scenes themselves are fine, but nothing special. It feels like they’re there just because its expected of them, almost as if netflix had certain script stipulations that meant it needed a big action scene in the first 5 minutes so people would stay tuned in, and *checks the script of a Matt Damon interview from January 2026* if the plot needed to be reiterated three or four times so that people on their phones could still understand whats going on. The best way to describe the action? Competent. It won’t blow you away, but it won’t bore you either. They’re just there.

In terms of other technical aspects: there are some weird lighting choices. It looks artistic, but it makes the film less comprehensible than it would be otherwise. It’s like they want to show off technical prowess and cinematography rather than whether it’s the best thing for the story. As cliché as it sounds (and if there’s one thing The Rip is familiar with, it’s clichés), sometimes the simple option is the best one (“Go For The Simple Option” is also the tagline on my dating profile).

There’s nothing in The Rip that you haven’t seen before, but most attempts at it won’t be as good. It’s a film you’ll be glad you watched, but not one you’ll be in a hurry to see again. It’s not big, it’s not clever, it’s not original, but it is entertaining. Maybe that’s all that’s needed now.

Before I go, fun fact: two police officers tried to sue the makers of this movie because they said it made them look like they stole stuff. No characters are named after the police officers, so it kind of seems like a guilty conscience, right?