Film Review - One Night Only (2026)

One Night Only is directed by Will Gluck and stars Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro as 2 Single people (Turner plays Owen and Barbaro plays Ally) who live in a dystopian future where the US Government has outlawed Premarital Sex and single people can only have sex on one night of the year (talk about throwing the bare minimum of bones to people) and Owen and Ally keep running into each other while trying to get it on with others but the clock is ticking and will they/won’t they keep from falling in love.

One Night Only has the ideas for 2 good movies in it, one about the outlawing of Premarital Sex in the US and how society might push back against that and see it overturned and the other a fun breezy “night on the town” esque rom com with 2 appealing leads but instead this movie throws both of those ideads together into the screenwriting blender and neither is done very well at all.

Which is a shame because Mr Dua Lipa-sorry-Callum Turner and Barbaro make for an appealing pair and have good chemistry in their scenes together and throughout the movie I kept waiting for them to get together already so we can just have many scenes of them walking around/looking into each other’s eyes/keeping Dua Lipa away from the set when Turner has to do kissing scenes (I’m sorry I kept making Dua Lipa jokes in my head while watching the movie) but nope the movie has to have the two of them running breathlessly around New York City avoiding each other while the audience is sitting there going “JUST GET TOGETHER ALREADY”

And as for the “Mandate” as the movie depicts it well that’s a whole other comedy right there but its just there in the background and most people in this world just go about their life as if its just accepted and yet in real life we would see HUGE push back/protests/marches/resistance against such an idea as anyone could end up in that ban through a separation or a divorce and there’s nothing they could do about it.

There are also some fun cameos one of which made me smile big time knowing the show they starred in.

And so that was One Night Only and there’s 2 great movies in here but this 1 movie uses both ideads poorly but it’s not that terrible thanks to its charming leads, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - The End of Oak Street (2026)

The End of Oak Street stars Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as a couple living with their kids in their local neighbourhood when one night some strange lights go off outside their house and when they go to investigate, they find dinosaurs roaming the streets and the race is on to try and survive to Dino Mash (The Dino Mash).

The End of Oak Street is a mixed bag for me movie wise, the best thing about it easily is Anne Hathaway who is having a great year with this, The Odyssey and the Devil Wears Prada 2 and here is no exception, she not only does a great job with the warm motherly moments but she also finds to be an effective horror heroine as her expressive eyes and face are put to great effect in that part of the film, in fact while watching her in this movie I thought to myself “I hope she does a horror film role soon as she would be great at it”

I also thought the film was well made and made good use of its suburban neighbourhood setting which was framed very well with its houses on hills and big backyards and slightly annoying neighbours and the dinosaur parts of the story were merged well into that location.

But as for the film overall it wasn’t for me, I’m sorry to say as throughout most of the movie I found myself feeling bored while watching it as this movie so desperately wants to be an Amblin/Spielberg type of films (hell this movie has JJ Abrams as its lead producer) and instead it feels like an Amazing Stories (which was a TV series created by Spielberg in the 1980’s) segment stretched out to a feature film and while it isn’t a long film it was also one that didn’t engage me all that much.

What also doesn’t help is that the Amblin feel is one that many many others have tried to replicate since the 1980’s and a lot of them have failed and I think I am now at a point where these recreations have grown tiresome for me, I really would like something that speaks to now in 2026 where we’re 6 years on from a real life pandemic that fundamentally upended how we understood the world and led to us as a society becoming more insular and distrusting and I feel that has to be addressed in media at some stage as it can’t be ignored forever.

And so that was the End of Oak Street and it has its moments but it did very little for me in the end, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Holy Days (2026)

Holy Days takes place in 1970’s New Zealand and concerns Brian (Elijah Tamati) who is mourning the loss of his mother and is struggling to accept her loss, he also likes to visit a nearby convent that has only 3 Sisters left in it (Judy Davis, Jacki Weaver and Miriam Margolyes) but when they hear of a plan to sell the convent to a property developer they race to find the deeds so they can save it.

Holy Days is good fun and a movie I chuckled at a fair bit while watching it, first of all the film has a good natured sense of humour to it and veteran talents such as Davis, Weaver and Margolyes who know how to time the laughs to get a good laugh out of the cinema audience watching it, Tamati is also a good young lead as Brian and sells both the humour and tragedy of his character well.

The film also has fun using clay animation for some of the films montage moments as the group are travelling New Zealand to save their home and it serves as a good reminder that people make these movies and not machines.

And so that was Holy Days it’s a good fun romp that has good humour and good performances, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - The Wizard of the Kremlin (2026)

The Wizard of the Kremlin stars Paul Dano as Vadim Baranov a Russian TV producer who is recruited in the 1990’s to help Vladimir Putin (Jude Law) rise to power in a post Cold War Russia.

The Wizard of the Kremlin is the kind of movie that feels like catnip for me, a historical drama about a real life figure and the history they create as well as the history we can learn from but this movie while it has some good archival footage simply does not tell that story very well.

Firstly this movie feels so episodic that title cards literally come up on the cinema screen and after a while I started to think that perhaps this should’ve been a streaming series for Netflix or Stan or Prime Video because there you could have taken the time to really dive into the history of post Cold War Russia, the drinking years of Boris Yeltsin (I still remember the news headlines about him as well as shows like the Simpsons making jokes about him) and how someone like Putin could rise to power and hold it with an iron grip because he is a fascinating figure for better or worse.

And Jude Law does a great job as Putin in this movie and I had my doubts about him in that role after seeing the trailer but happily I was wrong, he has the facial expressions down pat and shows off the ruthlessness and the drive of the man very well but sadly he is in so little of the film that he feels like an afterthought and we don’t really see any of the ruthlessness that he in real life is known for apart from a tiny bit towards the end of the film.

Instead we get many scenes of Paul Dano as Vadim talking in a slow voice and very softly and at 2 and a half hours it just feels like it goes on and on and on and I wanted more of Jude Law in the film, Jeffrey Wright and Alicia Vikander are good in their roles but they like Law come and go.

And in the end what should be a thrilling and compelling story with parallels of history running through its veins ends up a dull slog to sit through and there is a far far better movie here waiting to get out.

And so that was the Wizard of the Kremlin and this spell did not work for me, it should be one of my favourites of the year and instead its one of the worst especially with a fascinating person at the heart of this story that ends up feeling sidelined and to the movies detriment, 1 out of 5.

Film Review - The Invite (2026)

The Invite is the new film by Olivia Wilde and she and Seth Rogen play a married couple who are hosting their neighbours (Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz) for a dinner party one night but when people sit around having had too much to eat and drink some dinner parties can go badly wrong.

I was looking forward to this movie because I really like Olivia Wilde as a director, Booksmart in 2019 was a very enjoyable while 2022’s Don’t Worry Darling was well directed and had great visuals but was let down by a bad script that didn’t really commit to its ideas as well as I had hoped but could she get back on form or was Don’t Worry Darling a sign to Worry about her as a director.

Well sadly this movie was a disappointment for me but Wilde’s work once again did not, she is a woman of many talents and does a great job both in front of and behind the camera, the way she uses the camera to frame the characters, make the apartment setting feel lived in and like a character in and of itself is really good and Wilde does a great job with her staging and camerawork as well as playing Angela the hostess who is clearly not happy with how things have gone.

Plus Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz deliver good work as the upstairs neighbours invited to the dinner party and Cruz in particular is really good in her moments as well plua the film has a lot of good laughs in it throughout that made me laugh more than once.

But the big problem for me was that I hated these people, Angela and Joe (Rogen’s character) spend a lot of the movie arguing with each other which is never a good sign when you have guests coming over and all 4 of these people felt like the kind of guests you visit at their dinner party (perhaps Angela and Joe needed the Australian sketch comedy The Late Show’s guide to hosting a dinner party) but after a while (and a few drinks) the whole thing descends into a slanging match between the guests and you just want to leave and go home and that was how I began to felt as the film went on.

What also didn’t help is that Seth Rogen once again plays an insufferable bastard that you just get sick of watching after a while and I just don’t like him as an actor I’m sorry to say, it just feels like he plays the same loser type character who smokes joints over and over again and I just got sick of it as the film went on and when it was over I was happy to leave the cinema.

And so that was the Invite and like Backrooms this was a letdown for me, it has good laughs/good performances and good direction by Wilde but this is one dinner party I was happy to leave, 2 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Spiderman Brand New Day (2026)

Spiderman Brand New Day is the fourth Marvel Studios/Columbia Pictures Spiderman film and the fourth solo movie with Tom Holland in the role, this story takes place after the events of No Way Home where Peter Parker has been living a lonely life now that the world has forgotten who he is while fighting crime as Spiderman but when a mysterious new enemy emerges just as his powers begin to malfunction he faces a difficult challenge ahead.

Spiderman Brand New Day is a mixed bag for me, don’t get me wrong this isn’t a terrible movie but it also has some big flaws, for me this movie works best when its just a Spiderman movie where Peter has to bear the burden of great power and great responsibility alone and cannot share that burden with others lest they be put in danger and Holland is as good as ever in this role and does the heroic and emotional sides of the character very well, Zendaya has felt wasted as MJ in these movies but this time she is given a proper character arc and some good emotional moments and it feels like a relief that her great talents are given good use here.

The film is also well directed by Destin Daniel Cretton who did Shang Chi in 2021 and was to direct Avengers the Kang Dynasty before that film fell apart and he got this movie instead and one thing I like about his camerawork here is the sense of height when Peter is atop a tall building in NYC as you really feel like your up there with him that high and it looks good on a big cinema screen though during those moments I did think of the recent Insomniac games (the first of which I played and enjoyed doing so.)

But where this movie falls over is in its ties to the broader Marvel universe and for me it took away from that core feeling you should have when watching a Spiderman movie which is that the burden of Peter Parker as a hero is one he can only bear on his own and when there are other heroes in that world for him to share with it takes away a little from that core idea and makes it feel less impactful.

And also some of those characters either get very little to do or I just downright resented them being here in this movie, Mark Ruffalo is great as Dr Banner/The Hulk but he’s in so little of the film it feels like a waste of his great talent and that role could easily have been Dr Curt Connors/The Lizard without changing the storytelling a great deal, Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle/The Punisher is okay but really only serves as a comic relief foil for Peter and that didn’t work well for me.

As for the other 2 characters one of them is in it so little I find myself wondering “why are you here” and the other just made me mad in the cinema primarily because of the road that led to that person being here to begin with.

And lastly I think I’m starting to tire of the shared universe concept for these characters as it makes so tiring to try and follow in terms of the storytelling and the characters, a slog to have to sit down and watch all of these movies and shows so you don’t sit there in a cinema seat feeling lost as to who’s who and where’s where and how did they get here and it also cheapens the stakes of the storytelling and lessens the emotional connection to the characters because nothing bad can really happen to them because they have to be alive for the next film or others can come in and help them share their burden in the case of Spiderman and it makes Peter’s struggle in that role feel weightless.

And so that was Spiderman Brand New Day and it is well directed and the 2 leads are great but if this had been a standalone Spiderman film with no ties to the MCU I would like it a lot more than I do, 2 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Evil Dead Burn (2026)

Evil Dead Burn is the newest entry in the series and concerns Will (George Pullar) who is killed in a car accident and his family comes together at an old family home to pay their respects but unbeknownst to them evil lurks in this family and their old home so can they prevent being dead before dawn or wind up in a gooey end.

Evil Dead Burn like Evil Dead Rise is great fun in a cinema and gooey groovy fun that put a big smile on my face, during many of the films horror moments I sat there soaking up every blood soaked moment of it and I’m sure it was probably digital blood I was watching but I didn’t really think about that very much and thankfully the cast here are better than they were in Rise where it was meant to be a NYC apartment tower but everyone sounded either Australian or Kiwi.

And speaking of the cast they step up and do good work, Souheila Yacoub makes for an effective horror heroine in Alice who has some dark secrets of her own about Will and I also enjoyed Erroll Shand, Hunter Doohan, Tandy Wright and Luciane Buchanan as the other family members stuck inside the old secluded house.

And so that was Evil Dead Burn and I had a lot of fun with this one and I hope others do too though if your squeamish at the sight of blood maybe sit this one out, 3 and a half out of 5.