Movie reviews

Project Hail Mary softens much of its hard science, landing closer to Oppenheimer than the problem-solving rigor of Interstellar or The Martian, and its back half slows more than I wanted. None of that prevented me from enjoying the central relationship: an alien and a human risking everything to save their respective planets and becoming best friends in the process. It is essentially an interspecies buddy comedy smuggled into an extinction-level mission—Men in Black 5 with considerably more heart. Sandra Hüller also deserves a supporting-actress campaign based on one song alone.

Visually, Hoppers is everything I want modern Pixar to be: inventive, polished and built with the studio’s extraordinary command of animated movement and world design. The story is perfectly fine, and children should enjoy it. What is missing is the old Pixar alchemy that made “fine” premises feel intimate, surprising and emotionally inevitable. The craftsmanship remains; the particular charm that once seemed effortless does not. Take the kids if they want to go, but if they have not seen GOAT yet, I would buy that ticket first.

Forbidden Fruits promises a stylish, vicious, funny and witchy mean-girl movie, then consistently delivers less of every ingredient. The characters lack the bite, the jokes rarely land and the whole production trudges along until Gabrielle finally supplies a little life. By then, the screening had become an exercise in waiting for a better movie that never arrived. There is almost certainly something else playing in your theater with more personality, energy or purpose. Choose that.

Pegasus 3 offers handsome landscapes and impressive-looking races, then undermines both by leaning so heavily on CGI that neither the vehicles nor the driving feels physical. The thin characters, poor performances and weaker writing leave spectacle with nothing to support, while the film’s two-hour boys’ club barely makes room for a meaningful woman at all. Viewers who want glossy automotive imagery may find enough to admire. Anyone looking for believable people, dramatic momentum or racing that feels connected to real machinery should keep driving.

Undertone turns the quiet ritual of recording a paranormal podcast into one of the year’s most effective horror setups. A skeptical host, alone overnight in her childhood home while caring for her comatose mother, listens through headphones to increasingly disturbing recordings of a woman speaking in her sleep. Nina Kiri carries almost the entire film through attention and reaction, while sound, silence and familiar household darkness do more than expensive monsters could. It understands the instant when an unexplained noise stops being dismissible and your imagination takes over. Watch this alone, late and with the lights off—if you actually want it to work.

Sirāt reaches a moment when restraint, negotiation and softer possibilities have apparently left the building. A woman makes her position unmistakably clear, and the film answers with bleak, explosive finality. My reaction landed somewhere between weary recognition and genuine dismay: 😮‍💨 followed immediately by 😕. Saying more would explain the very turn the review should preserve. The movie makes its choice. So it was.

Redux Redux respects its premise enough to begin telling the story instead of spending twenty minutes apologizing for how its universe works. There is no pseudoscientific lecture, expensive explanatory CGI or dialogue built solely to connect imaginary mechanics; the movie establishes rules and trusts us to follow them. That confidence creates room for momentum and fun, even if the ending invites a few notes. Genre stories rarely become smarter by explaining every impossible thing. This one understands that clarity and explanation are not the same, then runs with the distinction.

Scare Out reduces institutional paranoia to an endless conference-room loop: someone announces there is a mole, everyone asks everyone else whether they are the mole, ordinary biography becomes suspicious and the process eventually treats its own confusion as insight. The most revealing possibility is that the mole is not any employee but the investigation itself—a system capable of sealing the building while congratulating itself for getting somewhere. That imagined scene captures the movie more efficiently than the movie captures its own conspiracy. Consider the time saved.

O’Romeo is a fun, knife-forward piece of mayhem that nearly talks itself out of its own pleasures. The pacing would improve considerably if someone trimmed twenty minutes of conversation and trusted the action to do more of the communicating. For the sequel: fewer speeches, more blades, and perhaps a basic firearms lesson for the lady hitman before cameras roll. Maybe my standards were low, but the movie cleared them with enough style and energy to make the excess forgivable. 😆

H Is for Hawk produced an unusually complete critical response in me: no. Not “interesting but flawed,” not “perhaps for another audience,” and not “I respect what it attempted.” None of this. I do not want to revisit it, unpack it or watch anything that recreates the experience. Sometimes elaboration lends a movie more dignity than the reaction honestly contains. This one receives the concise answer it earned.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is built for people who already love these characters, recognize its young-Gen-X/older-millennial references and share its highly specific comic rhythm. Those viewers are giving it five stars and probably mean every one. Anyone outside that circle may find the same experience unbearable. It is not a bad movie so much as a cultural sorting mechanism, producing unusually intense reactions in both directions. My rating lands deliberately in the middle: the fairest answer for something whose audience will either feel completely seen or wonder why everyone else is laughing.

This Dracula is perfectly serviceable, which becomes a serious disadvantage one year after Nosferatu demonstrated how visually overwhelming and atmospherically specific the same gothic territory can be. Nothing here inspired outrage, but very little escaped the comparison or established a compelling identity of its own. “Fine” is not fatal for every movie. For Dracula, arriving behind a much better-looking version of the story, it feels bloodless.

Back to the Past looks cool and clearly means a great deal to viewers who arrived with a relationship to the television series. I did not, and the movie offers very little independent footing for anyone meeting these characters and this world for the first time. Watching the audience around me have their moment was more affecting than anything happening on screen. My three stars belong partly to them: existing fans appear to have received the reunion they wanted, while newcomers should probably begin with the show—or skip the movie entirely.

A Private Life reveals that Jodie Foster speaks French, then uses that discovery in a mostly French American movie whose psychiatrist, patient suicide, suspicion of murder, private investigation and psychological unraveling closely mirror a 2018 French film with the same title. Nobody appears willing to call it a remake or explain why a French story in French required an American version also largely in French. It may not be a shot-for-shot duplicate, but the shared narrative engine is too specific to ignore. The mystery inside the movie is less strange than the one surrounding its existence.

GOAT improved when I saw it again with a larger crowd. Their laughter and enthusiasm changed the energy in the room, and I found myself buying into the movie more completely than I had the first time. That is not charity; audience response is part of what theatrical comedy and family entertainment are designed to create. The second viewing revealed how much communal momentum the movie carries when people are ready to meet it. I am giving it the extra half star the bigger room earned.

Magellan feels like a documentary made by a time traveler allowed to place one camera at a major historical event. The premise sounds fascinating until you discover that witnessing history from a fixed position can involve very little that is inherently dramatic or revealing. I kept waiting for observation to become insight, but the movie remained a record of things happening without making those things interesting. I am logging it because I saw it, not because I recommend anyone repeat the experience.

Two Sleepy People gets a great deal from a modest budget: an excellent story, persuasive performances and two charismatic leads who make an intimate premise feel complete. Its dreamscape offers the appealing possibility that years of childhood trauma might be worked out with your work spouse while asleep, avoiding all that expensive and inconvenient counseling. Most of us would choose that plan if available. 😆 The concept is playful, but the acting gives it emotional credibility, and I enjoyed the movie far more than its scale suggested I might.

Mercy is being treated online like a cinematic emergency, complete with half-star ratings and endless War of the Worlds comparisons, and I simply do not see the disaster everyone else apparently watched. It is not extraordinary, but it moves well enough and looks impressive on an IMAX screen—already more than many reputation-assisted three-star movies manage. If you have free time and access to the format, the visual presentation provides a perfectly reasonable night out. The backlash is more dramatic than the film.

I am withholding a rating until my friends have seen The Testament of Ann Lee, but one urgent question cannot wait: why does Christopher Abbott keep accepting roles in which women will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid having sex with him? Founding a religion and presenting yourself as Jesus for the purpose is particularly bold, even by the standards of his unhappy dramatic history. 🤣 Consider this a placeholder rather than a verdict, although the recurring Abbott problem may already deserve its own scholarly field.

The Choral is pleasant diversion undermined by the sense that Ralph Fiennes is merely passing through a role that never demands his full ability. Jacob Dudman and Amara Okereke provide the real reason to listen: both can genuinely sing, and Dudman gives the story’s returning soldier enough emotional weight to survive several astonishingly uncomfortable conversations. Coming immediately after seeing Fiennes command Bone Temple, his disengagement here feels especially wasteful. Three stars, largely for the younger performers whose voices and commitment keep the production alive.

No Other Choice became stronger on a second viewing, when the shape of its dark turn felt less like a surprise to process and more like the essential commitment that gives the film its force. I had withheld half a star the first time, uncertain whether the escalation genuinely worked or had merely shocked me. Revisiting it settled the question. The movie knew exactly how far it wanted to go, and understanding that design made the entire experience richer. The missing half star has been restored.

Greenland 2 imagines post-comet civilization losing roads, stability and the knowledge required to build a rope bridge while somehow maintaining electrical grids in London and Paris. Gerard Butler confronting a bridge over the evaporated English Channel becomes a fifteen-minute medieval TikTok challenge, after which the movie escalates to a second bridge made from lashed-together ladders. “You’ve got to be kidding me” is both his dialogue and the correct review. I walked out unrated, wishing the survivors luck reaching the “crater of life,” dying on the way or doing whatever this movie eventually decided.

Primate resembles a stripped-down Planet of the Apes with the heart, social commentary and intelligence removed, leaving eighty minutes of an animatronic-looking monkey tearing through people trapped in a house. Death of a Unicorn built comparable creature chaos into dark fantasy, satire and actual jokes; this is the joyless version, all blood and no personality. By its midpoint, survival horror has curdled into something closer to a snuff film, with brutality serving neither an idea nor even much fun. There is nothing edifying or interesting enough here to justify sitting through it.

Timothée Chalamet turns Marty Supreme’s hustler into the ideal lovable, hateable protagonist, surrounded by sharp performances, confident writing and cinematography worthy of the film’s awards ambitions. Even Mr. Wonderful shows up and delivers. This is stronger from beginning to end than several titles being treated as immovable Oscar favorites, particularly One Battle After Another, and I would happily see it again. Awards narratives harden early and often survive contact with better work; I hope voters remain flexible enough to let this one into the real Best Picture conversation.