Film Review - You, Me and Tuscany (2026)

You, Me and Tuscany stars Halle Bailey as Anna a house sitter struggling to cope after the death of her mother who then decides to go to Italy after meeting an Italian man at a bar one night, while there she meets Michael (Rege-Jean Page) and sparks begin to fly.

You, Me and Tuscany is a perfectly fine and charming movie that works firstly because you can’t help but love the Italian countryside with its beautiful sunrises and sunsets, roaming hills, generous amounts of food and wine and lots of old towns and buildings to explore and like with Equalizer 3 a couple of years ago it will make you want to visit there on your next holiday.

This movie also works because of the chemistry between its leads, Bailey got a lot of muck and mud and sludge thrown at her for being Ariel in the live action Little Mermaid a couple of years ago and she didn’t deserve it (she was the only thing that interested me in seeing that pointless live action remake) and here she makes for a likeable romantic lead and Jean-Page is good as well and the two have nice chemistry together.

And so that was You, Me and Tuscany and its perfectly fine and charming for a rainy Sunday afternoon in a cold winter, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Michael (2026)

Michael is the musical biopic about the late Michael Jackson and his own nephew Jafaar Jackson plays Michael in this movie which concerns his initial rise to fame as part of the Jackson Five all the way up to the release of the album Bad in 1988.

Michael was at the start of this year one of my most anticipated movies of the year primarily because of the strength of the first trailer and how much it had me thinking I was looking at remastered archival footage instead of dramatized recreations but as the year has gone on it began to fade from that list and I started anticipating Mortal Kombat II and Minions and Monsters a whole lot more plus musical biopics can be very hit and miss but would this be a thriller, thrilling time at the movies or would it be bad, be bad, be pretty pretty bad.

Well actually it was neither, its not a terrible movie to watch but its also a movie that dramatically and storytelling wise falls flat and when it all ends you sit there feeling “Is that It?” but before I delve more into that I want to mention the main positive I have and that is Jafaar Jackson who does a great job bringing his late uncle back to life with his vocals, his dance moves and his physical acting, Michael was a man who brought a sense of movement to his music and when you listened to it you wanted to move your body to it and Jafaar captures that very well.

I also loved the Billie Jean segment in this movie but there is where I want to start mentioning the negatives and sadly that has to start with the musical numbers, again they aren’t terrible but only during Billie Jean did I want to move my body and sing along in my cinema seat (respectfully of course) the Thriller recreation (one of the most iconic music videos of all time) fell flat due to its bad editing (and trying to hide who that clip’s now infamous director is) and the concert scenes after a while started to feel repetitive.

Not to mention that during 2 of the films songs I was wanting to sing the Weird Al Yankovic parodies of those songs instead which is not a good sign for a movie of this kind.

And then there’s the films overall storytelling which feels flat and emotionless, so much of the dramatic weight of this movie is centred on Michael’s relationship with this domineering father Joe played by Coleman Domingo and Domingo’s performance is so one note at times you can almost see the scenery being chewed in his mouth and it all felt like a waste of a great talent who rarely gives a bad performance and this is one of the rare times and that story of the son learning to defy his father so he can go his own way felt very predictable.

And when its all over you just sit there thinking “was that it?” because it all ends in a very anti-climatic way that doesn’t feel earned in any way and say what you want about Bohemian Rhapsody from 2018 (also produced by Graham King) at least that film earnt its Live Aid climax that had you leaving that film on a real high note and also this is now the second musical biopic he’s helped to produce that has resulted in a messy production and while I’m sure he’s a nice guy I can’t help but question his judgement given this has now happened twice.

First was not cracking the producers whip on Bryan Singer after the first time he allegedly went MIA during the filming of Bohemian Rhapsody to pull him into line (Singer was later fired from that production with only 2-2.5 weeks left on the schedule) and now it’s the well documented mess regarding the production of this movie where scenes were filmed but then had to be scrapped because of a situation involving MJ’s estate now that part isn’t entirely his fault but its also a situation that could’ve been avoided much earlier than it was.

And so that was Michael and it isn’t a bad movie but its also a flat one with hit and miss musical scenes, a anti-climatic ending and a predictable storyline that feels like a waste of a great talent, 1.5 out of 5.

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.