Film Review - Wildwood (2026)

Wildwood is the new film by Laika Animation and concerns Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) who witnesses her baby brother being kidnapped by a flock of crows and chases them into a deep dark forest on the outskirts of the city she and her family lives in and so her and her friend Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) must venture into it to save him.

Wildwood is another well made animated film by Laika and that starts with their stop motion animation work which is simply superb here, more than once part of me thought I was looking at live action photography as it looked so smooth and moved like live action actors would that it gave me that feeling and the final battle in this movie is a triumph to observe especially on a cinema screen as it felt big, had genuine stakes in it and was well worth the time and effort to animate it,

The voice cast is also good here as well, Lee and Tremblay are good in their roles as the main kids of the story but they are also backed up by Carey Mulligan as the main villain (and she is excellent in the role), Mahershala Ali as a local bandit leader who becomes a key ally to our heroes, Awkafina as a rat who reminded me a couple of times of Abu the monkey from Aladdin, Richard E Grant/Angela Bassett and Jemaine Clement are also good and their voice work is that good I had no idea it was any of them in those roles until I saw their names in the credits,

The storytelling on the other hand reminded me a little bit of George Lucas and Ron Howard’s Willow at times plus the film is a little long but when the animation and voice work are this good I didn’t care all that much and I hope this movie wins Best Animated Feature at the Oscars next year as it’s the best animated movie I’ve seen this year,

And so that was Wildwood and it’s a highlight of the year movie wise for me, 4 out of 5.

Film Review - Wild Horse Nine (2026)

Wild Horse Nine is the new movie by Martin McDonagh and stars John Malkovich as Chris an dying CIA operative who goes to the Easter Islands with his friend Lee (Sam Rockwell) in 1973 Chile which is on the verge of a coup against its communist president.

Wild Horse Nine bored me senseless and one reason for that is John Malkovich’s character who just goes on and on and on about everything and after a while I just wanted him to shut the fuck up because I just got so sick of him talking all the time,

Another reason is that I just didn’t find the humour in the film very funny, so much of it felt like people saying “fuck” in a lot of the dialogue and going on and on about things that just didn’t make me laugh but did others I saw the film in the cinema with,

And lastly a lot of the storytelling which is based around a real world event didn’t really feel it was about anything, something I really liked about The Banshees of Inisherin (McDonagh’s previous film) was that it felt like it was about Ireland at its core and the bitter divisions that permeated throughout that country over the decades whereas here you get some nice scenery and endless monologues but it all went nowhere for me,

And so that was Wild Horse Nine and this is a pile of horse poo for me, 1 out of 5.

Film Review - Pressure (2026)

Pressure concerns the critical reporting of the weather forecast for D Day and stars Andrew Scott as the Chief Meteorological Officer for General Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) who is leading the mission to send the largest invasion force in history to liberate Europe from the Nazi’s but if the weather isn’t on their side, then the war could be lost as well.

Pressure is very good and combining both weather reports and a historical story was something that worked really well for me, rarely was I bored and at the end I was happy it delivered the goods as it was a movie I was looking forward to seeing,

The cast are also very good as well, Scott is very convincing as the CMO who ends up with the weight of the free world on his shoulders while also having to deal with issues in his own life, Fraser is also quite good as Eisenhower even though at times some of his yelling scenes feel a little too over the top, Damian Lewis and Kerry Condon are also good in their scenes as well,

If there is one drawback it’s that we know when the D-Day date is and because of that it robbed the film of a little bit of tension as to whether they launch or postpone and you wait for the film to get to that point of the particular date but it didn’t rob the film of any enjoyment for me in a large way,

And so that was Pressure and it’s very enjoyable despite that minor quibble, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Crawlers (2026)

Crawlers’ stars Matilda Lutz as Serena a maintenance worker in her apartment building which finds itself overrun by venomous spiders after another resident comes back with an infected spider bite and dies after the bite hatches and so Serena must help rescue her other apartment residents to safety.

Crawlers is good fun but if anyone has even the remotest level of fear of spiders, please do not watch this movie for you will be hyperventilating and/or turning white and fainting due to the scenes of spiders in this movie which for me were great fun as they were properly gooey and gross but also fun enough if you don’t have a fear of spiders,

Where this movie does sadly fall down is in its characters as they too often feel like archetypes, there’s the single mom and her daughter, the mysterious older woman who’s more sophisticated, there’s the asshole landlord, the young financial wiz and the young father with a newborn baby as well as the pain in the ass neighbour thrown in for good measure and after a while I stopped caring about them and wanted them all to get eaten by the spiders,

And so that was Crawlers and its good gooey fun unless you have a fear of spiders in which case stay away, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Klara and the Sun (2026)

Klara and the Sun is the new film by Taika Waititi and is based off of the novel and stars Jenna Ortega as Klara an Artificial Friend who talks to the Sun and thinks of it as a God like being who is one day bought by a young girl named Josie (Mia Tharia) even though her mother (Amy Adams) doesn’t trust it at first but Josie and Klara quickly become friends.

I did not have a lot of high hopes for this movie mainly because of Taika Waititi who let me down badly with JoJo Rabbit and Thor Love and Thunder and while Next Goal Wins wasn’t bad it wasn’t good enough to overcome the poor quality of those 2 films,

Luckily this movie was good enough to do so and a lot of that is due to Jenna Ortega’s performance and she is so loveable and charming that if she wasn’t in the movie it wouldn’t work as well, her and Tharia also have good chemistry together in their scenes while Amy Adams is fine as the mother but boy does she a good role again,

The film also has a nice and whimsical feel to it that won me over for the most part,

And so that was Klara and the Sun and it’s a perfectly enjoyable watch that I liked more than I thought I would, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Clayface (2026)

Clayface is the new DC Studios movie and stars Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen an actor who gets on the wrong side of a Gotham City gangster and has his faced horribly scared as a result, struggling to deal with the loss of his looks and career he goes for an experimental surgery that uses nanotech to repair broken skin cells but the aftereffects can be devastating.

Clayface is fine but it’s also part of a trend that I’ve become so tired of with these comic book shared universe movies and that is where what are traditionally side characters such as villains like Clayface or Morbius or Kraven the Hunter get their own movie primarily because we have a universe to build and also it will prove to be a popular plug for the studios streaming service,

And that sort of thing might work in the world of comic books, but this is a movie and throughout most of this movie I kept thinking to myself “Where’s Batman?” because Batman and Bruce Wayne are as part of Gotham City as its villains are and one without the other as we saw with Columbia’s attempts with their Spider-man villains just does not work as well,

That said however this is nowhere near as bad as Morbius or Madame Web or Kraven the Hunter were and part of that is due to Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, he does a good job selling both the rising star actor and the grief and trauma of losing his face and career to finally embracing the changes the procedure undergoes does to him, hopefully he gets to go up against either Robert Pattinson’s Batman or someone like Brandon Sklenar from 1923 as the DCU’s Dark Knight,

The film also has some good horror effects reminiscent of 2024’s The Substance although that film did have more of a willingness to embrace its body horror more effectively than this movie does and Naomi Ackie and Eddie Marsan are good as well in their roles plus the film does a good job showing what a rotten city Gotham can be and has been before Batman showed up,

And so that was Clayface and its fine but the days of the shared universe need to end, it doesn’t work anymore and the movies and shows can feel very same same after a while but when your studio becomes part of a new SkyMount Empire anything goes I guess, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Verity (2026)

Verity is based off of the novel by Colleen Hoover and stars Dakota Johnson as Lowen an up and coming novelist who is asked to finish the new novel by Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) after she is paralyzed in a car accident but when she goes to her house to start work on the book she meets Verity’s husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) and son Crew (Brady Wagner) and starts to suspect something is wrong.

Verity is not a terrible movie but its yet another movie this year that I wish was better than it is and the main problem is that it feels like the movie tips its hand as to who the bad guy is and because of that you sit there in the cinema watching the movie and waiting for it to catch up to you and that is death in a thriller,

What also doesn’t help is how silly this movie gets, movies can have twists and turns that surprise audiences (hell M Night Shymalan has built his career on such a thing) but this one throws some real doozy’s at you and I sat there thinking “what the fuck is this” and also Michael Showalter’s direction feels bland and it made me wish for someone like Paul Verhoeven or the late great Richard Marquand to direct this,

Because when you look back at Basic Instinct (which this movie clearly wants to be like) or Eye of the Needle or Jagged Edge those films were thrillers but had a sense of style to them, a sense of dread in them and in the case of Basic Instinct a genuine sexiness and kinkiness to it that this movie desperately needs but feels afraid to properly embrace the way Verhoeven did in that film,

And speaking of Verhoeven and Marquand, Dakota Johnson could’ve used either of them in the director’s chair as so many of her line readings here feel flat and are said in this soft voice that has little to no emotion in it and Johnson has been good elsewhere such as in the Materialists which Celine Song made but Song could get a good performance out of here but Showalter cannot and it further hurts this movie,

As for Hartnett and Hathaway, Hartnett is fine but is not as fun to watch as he was in Trap in 2024 but again M Night Shymalan directed that film and got a great villain performance out of him whereas here you look in his eyes and you can see that he’s the bad guy and it also hurts this movie but Anne Hathaway is easily the best thing about this movie as she clearly understands what movie this is and commits to it 115% and she’s so good here I wish she got to play a Catherine Tremell type character in a Basic Instinct esque film,

And so that was Verity and again it’s not terrible but I wish it was better than it is and in better hands it could’ve been, 2 out of 5.