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.

Film Review - Other Mommy (2026)

Other Mommy is the new horror movie that stars Jessica Chastain as Ursula, a working mom who lives with her husband (Jay Duplass) and daughter Bella (Arabella Olivia Clark) and Bella keeps seeing a strange creature she calls Other Mommy (also played by Chastain) who wants to go into her heart and protect her from bad things and horror ensues.

Other Mommy was a movie I was looking forward to seeing as we are in October and I’m in the mood for some horror films and I’ll happily watch Jessica Chastain do just about anything as she is one of those actresses who rarely puts a foot wrong,

Sadly, however this is the case but she herself does the best that she can with the dual roles she plays but the script is awful,

It seems more concerned in jumping frm one horror jump scare and set piece to the next without any real sense of storytelling connection, dread building or proper payoff, you’re in one jump scare set piece and then a few moments later your right into the next one and because of that the film feels very messy as if all involved just wanted to go from set piece to set piece to set piece,

I will say however that Arabella Olivia Clark is very good here and so much of this movie rests on her little shoulders and it’s a shame she and Chastain aren’t in a better movie because they both deserved so much better than this,

As for the horror moments their not really that scary or thrilling and like Primate from the beginning of the year a lot of them take place at night in dimly lit rooms where you can barely see what’s happening on screen and boy is that tiresome as well,

And lastly Karen Allen shows up for one segment of the film and the entire time I kept thinking “why doesn’t she get the Ark of the Covenant from her attic” along with other Indiana Jones jokes and that too feels like a waste of great talent,

And so that was Other Mommy and what a letdown then again that feels like 2026 in film for me at the moment, talented and capable people reduced to making forgettable “content” to make ends meet, how sad it all is, 1 out of 5.

Film Review - The Social Reckoning (2026)

The Social Reckoning is the new film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin and stars Mikey Madison in her first role since her Oscar win for Anora as Frances Haugen who works at Facebook but is uncomfortable with the changes to the platform the company is making and works with a Wall Street Journal reporter (Jeremy Allen White) to blow the whistle on the company’s wrong doings.

The Social Reckoning is not a bad movie, but it is also a flat, dull and boring film to sit through and the first issue I have with it is that it feels like this movie just doesn’t really understand what makes a good journalism story tick,

The key to a good journalism movie like All the President’s Men or The Post is the inherent ticking clock at their centre, much like reporters for real life there is a deadline to meet and that creates a sense of “we have to get this story done and quickly” and this movie doesn’t have that, it all feels too leisurely and slack to have any real bite to it,

And part of the problem is Sorkin himself, his direction just feels very by the book and uninspired for the most part and his writing also feels old fashioned and I couldn’t help but think that he himself is partially responsible for the mess he’s trying to depict in this movie,

As Sorkin’s biggest claim to fame was the TV show The West Wing which starred Martin Sheen as President Jeb Bartlett, and it feels like ever since that show’s idealistic portrait of Democratic party politics in terms of not really putting up much of a fight has helped to plant some sort of seed for how we got to where we are in 2026 and to now have Sorkin try and pin the blame elsewhere doesn’t really work as he himself also needs to reflect on his role in all of this,

As for the performances both Madison and White do what they can but the film just treats their characters with little to no urgency and in some scenes Madison is dressed as if she’s doing her Anora character again, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckberg firstly cannot fill the huge hole Jesse Eisenberg’s absence has left and secondly he just felt like he was doing a riff on his character in Obsession (in fact more than once I thought of “I’M THE ELDEST BOY”),

Far better are Billy Magnussen (who gets a role that highlights his inherent smugness and up himself personality well), Betty Gilpin and Bill Burr as those 3 at least feel like real people as opposed to thinly written characters who talk like people from the 1990’s,

And so that was the Social Reckoning and it’s not awful but it’s not much of a movie either, 1.5 out of 5.

Film Review - Resident Evil (2026)

Resident Evil is the new film by Zach Cregger and is based off of the Playstation Video Game series and stars Austin Abrams as Bryan a medical courier who is given a medical crate to transport to Raccoon City General Hospital but en route he comes across people acting strange and his car breaks down due to the snow and he must make his way there on foot and in freezing cold weather while also avoiding zombie like people running after him.

Resident Evil is a lot of fun and really shows Cregger’s growth as a director as the blood and gore on show here is done well and he keeps the pace tight and the tension on a tight leash ready to deploy it at any time plus the film looks great with the ice and snow all around that also is used really well to heighten the horrors that Bryan sees,

And Abrams is very effective as Bryan as well and on a couple of occasions he reminded me a little of Bruce Willis in Die Hard and by that I mean he has that every man quality to him that Bruce had and he handles both the horror and humour very well, Paul Walter Hauser also shows up in a small role and he does good work as well

But where this film does fall down a little is the ending, when it was over I thought “is that it” and it felt a little anti-climactic, no doubt this was done on purpose so Cregger and Co can rattle the penny tin and ask the audience for a sequel down the line and that pisses me off, if you all want a damn sequel how about making the first film work first, it’s not that fucking hard YEESH,

And so that was Resident Evil and it’s a lot of fun despite the ending, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Heart of the Beast (2026)

Heart of the Beast is the new movie by David Ayer and stars Brad Pitt as a retired army sergeant who is travelling around the countryside with his combat support dog Odie when he suffers a heart attack and his plane crashes in the wilderness leaving them both stranded to find a way home and avoid perils such as wolves and bears and logs.

Heart of the Beast is a perfectly fine and enjoyable survival action film that is well anchored by Brad Pitt who brings a calm steadiness to his role while also selling the pain and loss of his army years and the battles he and Odie saw in their time in uniform, JK Simmonds is also good here but his role is really only in 2 scenes at most,

The real star here is Uber the dog who plays Odie and he is a very good boy, every time he came on screen with those beautiful doggo eyes, I was like “Awww look at the doggy” and he and Pitt are great together on screen and this movie wouldn’t work without Uber being as good as he is,

And so that was Heart of the Beast, an enjoyable survival thriller that is well made and has a good boy doggo at its centre, 3 out of 5

Film Review - Digger (2026)

Digger is the new movie by Alejandro Inarritu and stars Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell a successful Oil Tycoon who is tasked with preventing an environmental catastrophe when an iceberg linked to one of his energy projects breaks free and is headed towards Europe and as the President (John Goodman) says “Digger got us into this mess and he’s gonna dig us out of it”

Digger is not a good movie despite some standout moments and the main reason for that is to me it takes what is a very serious issue (in this case a climate and environmental catastrophe) and instead of treating it with seriousness and a sense of anger it plays it mostly for laughs and I didn’t find myself laughing really at all while watching this movie,

Now I understand that satirical/comedic movies have been made about serious real world issues but the thing about good satire (and good comedy for that matter) is that the people making that satire have a fundamental understanding of the person and/or issue that their satirizing but this movie does not have that, it wants to instead just point and laugh at the issue and of the silly accents and over the top parodies that might have worked on The Late Show Australia or Saturday Night Live but at 2 hours it more than wears out its welcome,

What I wanted instead was a film full of righteous fury and anger at not only those responsible for the mess but also us as audience members for letting it happen and prioritizing the short term ahead of the greater good and the person I kept thinking of after I saw it and I was digging through it in my head was a young Oliver Stone,

For when you look back at the movies that made his name as a director such as Platoon/Wall Street/Talk Radio and JFK (I haven’t seen Born on the Fourth of July which is why I haven’t listed it here) those films had that anger that fury at their core in regards to how the greed and hubris of a few left only devastation for the many in its wake and Platoon and JFK in particular highlight this in terms of how one event led to a devastating war in Vietnam (one that Stone himself took part in and informed Platoon as a movie) and how in both Wall Street and Talk Radio he showed how charismatic individuals be they talk show hosts or businessmen can ruin almost everything they touch and sometimes simply because they can,

And that was what I wanted from Digger, that sense of “THIS IS THE MESS YOU ALL CREATED WHEN YOU GOT GREEDY, ALL OF THIS IS YOUR DOING”, “The Land is Undeveloped but Rich with Raw Energy and Job Creation” and “YOU’RE A WEAK LEADER, YOU CAVED WHEN YOU SHOULD FIGHT” funnily enough there is one scene in this movie where Digger is addressing what looks like the European Parliament (this scene is in the trailers) and he does point the finger and I sat there thinking “he’s not wrong, they have to take their share of responsibility for what’s happening as well” and if the film had more of that as well as more anger and fury and seriousness instead of bad laughs and satire it would’ve worked much better,

As for Tom Cruise, he’s fine but his wacky accent gets grating after a while and when I was watching it I thought to myself “I wish the Tom Cruise that was recorded yelling at his crew members on the Mission: Impossible set during Covid was in this movie” as that Cruise could’ve done wonders with this role but instead it just feels like another show off performance by a big star, as for the other actors such as John Goodman/Jesse Plemons/Sandra Hueller/Riz Ahmed their okay but felt one note,

And lastly I had this thought as well, if there was someone out there who had the power of a Super Saiyan from Dragon Ball flowing through their veins and they really knew how to use it with the precision of a surgical tool as opposed to a blunt instrument, people like Digger and others would find their prestige to be nothing more than an empty title and their wealth wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s printed on,

And so that was Digger and its another 2026 movie that I just wish was better than it is because there is a great film full of sound of fury at its heart in here but instead it feels more like a tale told by idiots and what is instead said with irony should’ve been said with conviction, what a piece of work is man, 1 out of 5.

Film Review - Coyote vs Acme (2026)

Coyote vs Acme is the second Looney Tunes movie to be released by Ketchup Entertainment after buying it from Warner Brothers and concerns Wile E. Coyote deciding to sue the Acme corporation for faulty equipment after the constant attempts to catch the Road Runner blow up in his face so he enlists the help of a local law firm (Will Forte and Lana Condor) but they’ll have to take on Acme’s top lawyer (John Cena) to win the case.

Coyote vs Acme is a mixed bag for me, firstly the blending of live action and animation works really well and the animated characters blend in seamlessly and the Looney Tunes characters are used fairly well here (I particularly liked the use of Foghorn Leghorn as the Governor) and the film has some great visual gags reminiscent of the classic Looney Tunes shorts,

But for me this movie just isn’t a patch on those classic shorts mainly because the story of the film began to bother me a little after a while, the whole point of the classic Road Runner cartoons was that the Coyote was foiled in attempting to catch the Road Runner and to take that and do this “what if” type scenario with the Acme corporation bothered me the more this movie went on,

And also, I don’t quite know if these Looney Tunes characters work as well in feature length form, the classic cartoons were 7-8-minute-long shorts and worked beautifully in that format whereas here and in the past, they have struggled to sustain a feature film long story and I’m someone that is still fond of 1996’s Space Jam despite it being as much about Michael Jordan as it was the Looney Tunes characters,

As for the cast their okay, Condor and Cena fare the best here as they clearly understand what movie their in and play to its strengths well, as for Forte his down on his luck lawyer character also bothered me after a while and his sad sack type performance dragged the film down after a while,

And so that was Coyote vs Acme and it has its moments but in the end wore out its welcome for me and just made me want to appreciate the classic cartoons even more which have been popular sellers for Warner Home Video over the years and maybe that’s where it should stay for me at least, 2 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom (2026)

Shaun the Sheep the Beast of Mossy Bottom is the new Aardman animation film and concerns Shaun’s farmer wanting to impress the local Vet but he’s also lost most of his hair and due to a mix up with a scientific experiment Shaun has been conducting to restore their damaged Pumpkin crop the Farmer is turned into a hairy Bigfoot esque creature and so Shaun, the other sheep and the Farmdog must work together to save the day.

The Beast of Mossy Bottom is a pure delight of a film and the first reason for that is the animation, it is stop motion animated and it really shows on screen, there’s a tactile quality to what your watching that makes it feel real and tangible as opposed to some CG animated films that can at times look very computer-ish,

Also the film brims with heart and character, Shaun tries to do the right thing in this movie and when it all goes sideways and he has to try and fix it you are invested in him wanting to fix the Pumpkin crop as well as trying to avoid the Sheep Dog on the Farm plus you want to see the Farmer succeed in winning the heart of the local Vet.

And lastly the film is very funny, there are a lot of times where I not only smiled but laughed a lot out loud in my cinema seat and Aardman Animation are very good at using humour in their films without it undercutting or undermining the more serious moments in their storytelling and this movie is no exception,

And so that was Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom and I loved every minute of it, it has great animation, a warm heart and is very funny, 4 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Fall 2: Deadpoint (2026)

Fall 2: Deadpoint is the sequel to the 2022 film Fall and sees Shiloh’s sister Jax (Harriet Slater) struggling to deal with the death of her sister and her friend Luce (Arsema Thomas) decide to go to Thailand to trek across a deadly mountain trail full of wooden planks but soon they get trapped up on the mountain they must find a way down.

I enjoyed Fall in 2022 more than I thought I would, it had a good premise (especially for a horror esque franchise) and was well made and happily this sequel was enjoyable as well, I prefer the first film overall but it’s not by a wide margin,

Firstly, the mountain trail in Thailand is well filmed with some nice shots of the view from that high up, the rusty bolts and chains that could break or come loose at any moment and the perilous plans the characters must take to try and call for help,

The two leads are also appealing as well as Slater and Thomas work well together as a pair like the pair in the first film did and they support each other well, also delivering good work as directors are the Sperig brothers who make the most of the heights and tension of the moments,

But where this movie does fall down is in its storytelling, there is a side plot regarding drugs here that feels totally unnecessary and could’ve been removed without it affecting the main “we’re stuck really high up, HELP US PLEASE” story one little bit and that is why I do prefer the first film to this sequel as that stuck to core premise and didn’t deviate from it whereas here the drugs storyline bogs it down.

And so that was Fall 2: Deadpoint and it’s an enjoyable sequel and I would happily watch some more of these but next time lean into the horror of heights more okay, 3 out of 5

Film Review - Practical Magic 2 (2026)

Practical Magic 2 is the sequel to the 1998 film Practical Magic and once again stars Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as Gillian and Sally Owens, sisters who are also witches but when Sally’s Daughter Kylie (Joey King) falls in love and the family curse hits her boyfriend she travels to England to try and break it.

Practical Magic 2 is not a terrible film by any means but its also not that great either and the main reason for that is the screenplay which takes so long to tell its story and at times feels so slow to get moving that by the time you get to England and everything that takes place there feels a little anticlimactic and the climax in particular felt like a bit of a letdown,

The other main issue here is that the story setup for the film is built around Kylie’s relationship with her boyfriend that is barely developed and because of that I didn’t find myself feeling all that invested in whether that was going to work out or not,

And what makes this feels worse is the cast here is good, Kidman bounces around this movie with the energy and vitality of someone half her age and it feels like that if she takes over this movie’s plot then you could easily shave 20 minutes off of the runtime and the movie would’ve benefited from it, Lee Pace (aka Brother Day in the Apple TV series Foundation and the main reason I went to see this movie) is also good as a Professor of Black Magic while Joey King and Maisie Williams are okay as the two daughters but they don’t get as much screen time together as they deserved.

As for Sandra Bullock I did not like her in this movie mainly because Sally is written as a buttoned up nagger who denies her magical heritage and after a while it not only gets boring but drags on for too long and Bullock is at her best when she gets to play warm and energetic characters like she did in Demolition Man, Speed and Minions whereas here it felt like she was playing against her natural strengths and it didn’t work,

And lastly the film is simply too long, it goes for over 2 hours, and it shows especially by the end and if a good 20-25 minutes was cut out of this movie it would not only have worked a whole lot better and made the story not feel so dragged out that it almost overstays its welcome.

And so that was Practical Magic 2 and with this cast you wish for a better movie than this one as I certainly did, oh well you win some you lose some, 2 out of 5.