Film Review - Super Mario Galaxy (2026)

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is the follow up to 2023’s Super Mario Brothers movie and concerns Bowser Jr (Benny Safdie) kidnapping the cosmic princess Rosalina (Brie Larson) as he wants to use her to conquer the universe and free his father Bowser (Jack Black) from imprisonment in the Mushroom Kingdom but when Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Toad (Keegan Michael-Key) go missing in the cosmic universe Mario (Chris Pratt), Luigi (Charlie Day) and Yoshi (Donald Glover) go looking for them.

Super Mario Galaxy isn’t a terrible movie but its also not a movie that is going to appeal outside of kids and Nintendo superfans either but firstly it does have some positives and the first of those is the animation it is very bright and colourful and cosmic looking blending 3 dimensional worlds with 2 dimensional looking scenes which nod back to the classic NES games and the various planets the characters go to all have a unique visual style that is very appealing to look at on a big cinema screen.

The voice cast for the most part is also pretty good too, Pratt/Day and Glover play off each other very well and Glover in particular is a highlight as Yoshi even if I suspected that his vocal performance might have been edited that way in post-production much like Frank Welker’s vocals for Soundwave were in the original Transformers Cartoon, Taylor-Joy and Michael-Key are good as well in their roles while Safdie and Black are great as the Bowsers.

But for all of that the movies storytelling is all over the place, going from one planet to the next in one story arc to the next that at times it feels like your watching a speed run of a video game instead of a movie and there are so many fast moving set piece moments in the film that some kids could end up being over stimulated while watching it and because of that it feels like none of our heroes get any kind of proper attention applied to them to make us feel invested in the journey.

And the second problem is the use of Rosalina, Brie Larson is an Academy Award Winner and self-confessed Nintendo nerd playing a fan favourite character but after the opening scene she disappears for a huge part of the film and plays only a minor role in the climax of it that it ultimately felt like a waste of her great talents as an actress and that really annoyed me.

And lastly the more I’ve thought about this movie the more I want to compare it to the Sonic the Hedgehog series which has always been the great rival of the Super Mario Brothers over the years and those films are much better than these and really should have been the template for these Mario animated films as those movies:

-    Have a proper storyline with an emotional core at the centre
-    Know when to use the fan service and when not to
-    Took their time to develop their core heroes over the course of the franchise
-    And make proper use of fan favourite characters from the games and make them feel like the centre of the story

It’s not a hard formula to copy but here it feels ignored and that might please some and give Universal and Illumination and Nintendo that short term sugar hit but it only works for that one time but it doesn’t make me want to go back to them the way I have the Sonic movies.

And so that was Super Mario Galaxy and it has its moments but its really only for kids and Nintendo super fans who will get every reference as for the rest I think it will bore them dizzingly fairly quick, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Hoppers (2026)

Hoppers is the latest Pixar film and concerns a young college student named Mabel (Piper Curda) who is determined to save her favourite forest water glen from her hometown mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm) and his determination to build a new highway bypass through that area but one night she comes across a secret experiment program called “Hopping” which transfers the consciousness of a human body into a robotic body of an animal which in Mabel’s case is a Beaver and she wants to use it to help save her Glen.

Hoppers is the most I have enjoyed a Pixar film since Elemental in 2023 and it is one of the highlights of this movie year so far, it is a more comedic film than most Pixar films but it works very well in the films favor as I laughed quite a bit throughout the film at particular in jokes, comedic gags and well delivered humorous lines.

The film also has a more pleasing animation style, a lot of the recent Pixar films have suffered from a very bland and lifeless animation style that just makes the movie feel dull to watch but here the animals are very well animated and the forest area much of the film takes place in looks good as well.

The film also balances a more serious story about environmental conservation with that comedic element well also and lastly the voice cast are good here as well, Curda and Hamm are good in their roles while Meryl Streep was a nice surprise in a small role as were Dave Franco, Sam Richardson and Bobby Monyihan.

And so that was Hoppers and it is a very enjoyable time at the movies and Pixar’s best in some years, 4 out of 5.

Film Review - Project Hail Mary (2026)

Project Hail Mary is based off of the novel by Andy Weir and stars Ryan Gosling as Dr Grace a middle school science teacher who is recruited by the US Government to help them on a long form mission in space to save Earth from the slow death of the Sun due to a mysterious substance, along his journey he meets another nomad which he names Rocky due to him being an alien rock creature and the two begin working together to save their home worlds from extinction.

Project Hail Mary is a long film but it is also very good and first off credit belongs to Phil Lord and Christopher Miller the talented directorial pair who also gave us The Lego Movie and the 2 Spider-verse films and this movie is as enjoyable and as fun as those movies were, they bring a light sensibility to the film and along with Drew Goddard’s script they balance heart and humour very well.

Speaking of Goddard’s script it is very good also as like he did with the Martian in 2015 (also based off an Andy Weir novel) he seems to understand how to adapt Weir’s novels for the big screen and like the Martian there is a lot of warmth, a lot of comedy and a lot of science here and all 3 elements are blended together well.

The film also has a great central performance by Ryan Gosling as Dr Grace and he is asked to anchor this movie with a rock creature for a lot of the runtime and he steps up to the task very well handling the films comedic and sincere moments with ease while also making us believe in his friendship with Rocky who is no Payakan the Whale from James Cameron’s Avatar sequels but is still a memorable character in his own right.

Where the film does fall down a little for me is the length, the film is 156 minutes in length and I felt it a lot of the time, what also doesn’t help this feeling is the back and forth structure of the screenplay which felt like to me something that works better as a novel than it does a movie as you would get invested in Grace and Rocky saving Stars and then it would cut back to Earth before the mission began and those scenes after a while lost my interest.

And so that was Project Hail Mary a film that I enjoyed very much despite its script issues, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026)

Ready or Not 2 is the sequel to the very enjoyable 2019 Horror film Ready or Not and sees Samara Weaving return as Grace the Bride to be who survived her encounter at the end of the first film but instead of picking up the pieces she’s stuck in a new game regarding the Danforth family (David Cronenberg, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy) who bring Grace and her sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) to their family owned golf resort for a new game of survival.

Ready or Not 2 is not as good as the first film (very few horror sequels are) but I still had a good time watching this movie and first of that is the Radio Silence directing duo who do a good job directing the film and making good use of the golf resort location as they did the mansion in the first film and they also deliver some fun horror kills.

The film also has a pretty good cast, Weaving and Newton as the sisters play off well together and have good chemistry, Kevin Durand is good fun in his small role while Hatosy makes for a good psychotic villain as does Maia Jae and Nestor Carbonello.

But where this movie falls down a little bit is in its storytelling don’t get me wrong it isn’t bad per se but Elijah Wood’s character as a lawyer makes this story feel more complicated than it needs to be at times and Sarah Michelle Gellar’s role feels like a waste of her as a horror icon by the time it was done.

And so that was Ready or Not 2 and it’s a fun horror romp but the first film is better, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - The Bride (2026)

The Bride is written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhall and based off of the Bride of Frankenstein and stars Jesse Buckley as Ida a young woman who falls to her death on a staircase and is reanimated back to life by Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) as a request for Frankenstein the Monster (Christian Bale) who desires a companion after a century of loneliness but their escapades catch the attention of 2 local detectives (Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz) as well as a popular movie star (Jake Gyllenhall)

The Bride is all over the place as a movie, so much so that there would be times while I was watching it where I would have a big smile on my face and then in the very next scene I would be sitting in my cinema seat going “What the Fuck is this” but before I delve more into that I want to talk about the positives as there are some.

Firstly the cinematography by Lawrence Sher, the production design by Karen Murphy and the costumes by Sandy Powell are all top notch, the sets feel real and lived in like a cross between Tim Burton (Bening’s character felt like a character from a Tim Burton movie) and Guillermo Del Toro (who coincidentally just made a Frankenstein movie for Netflix), the costumes feel very authentic to the 1930’s setting so much so that you can almost feel the wool of the uniforms and the fine silk of the suits and the cinematography lights these well including the night scenes.

The film also has a great performance by Jesse Buckley as well and she goes for it 115% ranging from vulnerability to dark humour to sadisticness with ease and if this movie didn’t have her in it it would be nigh on unwatchable.

Because the real problem here is the screenplay and the more I thought about this movie I kept thinking “So What”

Yes this movie has great cinematography,

Yes this movie has great production design,

Yes this movie has great costumes,

And it has a committed performance by an actress who knows what movie she’s making.

But so what without a script that has a firm sense of narrative direction, a consistent tone and a clear structure all of that means nothing and this movie lacks all of those, the narrative direction is absent as it feels like Gyllenhall just throws every idea she had for this movie into the script in the hope that something/anything might stick, the tone ranges from sadness to action to seriousness to black comedy with all the subtlety of a car driving at fast speed and there is no clear structure to the storytelling at all it goes from one plotline to the next without taking the time to develop any of them.

Well except the detective storyline where the woman does all the work like she’s Penny from Inspector Gadget and gets none of the credit and this is a real waste of a world class talent in Penelope Cruz.

As for Christian Bale as Frankenstein well his performance ranges from brooding silence to mumbling his lines and then YELLING HIS LINES LIKE THIS AS IF HE WAS BACK ON THE FUCKING SET OF TERMINATOR SALVATION!!!! and it just got annoying after a while, as for Jake Gyllenhall and Peter Sarsgaard their fine but not in the film enough to be all that memorable.

And so that was the Bride and it has some strong elements but So What without a good script to make it all matter none of it does and as great as Buckley is she can only do so much without a firm script to carry the film, there is a reason so many movie documentaries emphasize the importance of the script and this movie is proof of that in real time, 1 out of 5.

Film Review - How to Make a Killing (2026)

How to Make a Killing stars Glen Powell as Beckett Redfellow who was born into a wealthy family led by Whitelaw Redfellow (Ed Harris) but his mother is disowned by the family after she gives birth so years later he plots to kill the remaining members of his family to take his inheritance and hopefully the love of a childhood friend (Margaret Qualley)

How to Make a Killing is okay but nothing spectacular to watch, the cast does a lot of the heavy lifting here and Glen Powell as the lead is okay but I feel he is a lot like Ryan Gosling than Tom Cruise as many thought he would be after his role in Top Gun Maverick but instead Gosling feels like the more appropriate comparison as both can be great in the right roles but when they aren’t they feel out of step though Powell is better at managing this than Gosling is and here he’s fine and serviceable.

The rest of the cast are good as well mainly Ed Harris as the patriarch of the Redfellow family, Topher Grace as a tele-evangelist esque Pastor that Beckett has to get rid of and Jessica Henwick as Ruth a woman that Beckett falls for during his escapades, as for Margaret Qualley she is good here as well and channels that femme fatale quality pretty well and would be great in that kind of role also.

As for the storyline well that did bother me a little as it felt like a variation of the “Look at the twisted loveless billionaires” motif and that works in todays society but I wish it went further than it does and also some of Beckett’s decisions made me go “He’s going to get easily caught” which pulled me out of the film a little as it went on.

But still I liked this movie enough that I thought it was fine, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Crime 101 (2026)

Crime 101 is based off of the novel by Don Winslow and stars Chris Hemsworth as James, a criminal in LA who is meticulous with his criminal work but when he wants out it after a big heist job sets off a chain reaction that ensares a police detective (Mark Ruffalo) an insurance company worker (Halle Berry) and a rival hitman (Barry Keoghan)

Crime 101 is a solid thriller that I enjoyed watching in the cinema, Hemsworth does a good job in the lead role and he anchors the film reliably well, Nick Nolte is also good in his brief appearance and I also enjoyed Mark Ruffalo as the grizzled detective and Halle Berry as the insurance worker.

But where this film didn’t win me over was the side plot with Monica Barbaro’s character, I loved her in Top Gun Maverick and A Complete Unknown but every time the film cut back to her storyline I lost interest as I felt that it took away from the heist thriller that was unfolding around it and her scenes could’ve gone to Berry’s character without too much retooling of the script for that to happen.

And so that was Crime 101 and it’s a solid thriller with a good cast if a little too long with one sideplot too many, 3 out of 5.