Film Review - Fuze (2026)

Fuze stars Sam Worthington, Theo James and Aaron Taylor-Johnson and takes place in London where an unexploded bomb from WWII is found in a busy street and the Met Police and Army are called in to evacuate the area but while that is going on a group of thieves decide to take an advantage of the situation and rob a nearby bank but not all robberies go as smoothly as planned.

Fuze is a perfectly fine action heist thriller that will do the job competently enough for those who watch it, Worthington is okay but at times his accent ranges from Cockney to Aussie to Jake Sully (his character in the Avatar films) and his role isn’t as big as I thought it would be, James is okay despite his South African accent not being the best at times while Taylor-Johnson is good as the Army Major overseeing the bomb situation and the film has a good propulsion to it in terms of the tension and ticking clock of the bomb situation.

Where it does fall over a little bit is regarding the heist which goes through a few more twists and turns that I thought it would and some of those worked and some of those didn’t but overall that part of the film wasn’t as interesting to me as the bomb plotline was as that section felt tightly paced, had a good amount of tension and interested in how that type of technology works.

And so that was Fuze and its fine but only worth a watch once, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - The Drama (2026)

The Drama stars Robert Pattinson as Charlie and Zendaya as Emma a young couple who are engaged to be married and are planning their wedding when one night they are invited out with their friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and are asked what’s the worst thing they’ve ever done during a round of drinks and the answers some give will lead to shocking consequences.

The Drama is an awkward watch but in the best possible way as I really enjoyed this movie, firstly the performances by Zendaya and Haim are terrific and both play their parts very well, Zendaya is turning into a great young talent outside of the Spider-man movies which have regrettably not given her a huge amount to work with (hopefully Brand New Day later this year changes that) and she brings a lot to Emma that makes her a compelling character to watch while Haim is a relative newcomer to movies but plays that bitchy jealous girlfriend very well and she has a few memorable moments of her own as well.

The film also has a good performance by Hailey Gates as Mischa one of Charlie’s museum co-workers and she makes the most of her small part while Athie is fine as Mike but doesn’t really stick out amongst the broader ensemble cast.

As for Pattinson’s Charlie he is okay but at times he becomes very insular and withdrawn and that is not really something Pattinson can do all that well as I prefer him in roles like Tenet where he can be charismatic and less insular and I get that his character goes through a lot throughout this movie in regards to what he thought about Emma and how much he felt he really knew about her but some of those scenes didn’t work as well for me and that is primarily because of the soft spoken way Pattinson talks.

As for those feelings well I won’t delve too much into what caused those to come to the surface but it is something bad enough that I felt that things between Emma and Charlie probably would’ve been okay if they had had a chance to properly sit down and talk it all out between each other before they were married or if Emma had told Charlie much much earlier in their relationship say when it was becoming clear to her that Charlie was going to be her husband she should’ve sat him down then and said “Sweetie can you come in here please” and he goes and sits down and asks why and she says “There’s something I have to tell you about me and you might not like it” and then told him what is revealed in the film because the manner in which Emma reveals that about herself so close to her wedding creates a tension that didn’t need to be there if she had come clean sooner as she should have.

That said however The Drama works quite well despite some of those shortcomings and I liked it quite a bit, 3 and a half out of 5.

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.