"Wuthering Heights" (2026)

I often really appreciate adaptations that take big swings. I love Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, Cuaron's Great Expectations, Branagh's Hamlet, so "Wuthering Heights", a film so liberally adapted for the screen it has quotations around the title, is right up my ally, especially from a film maker as bold and self-assured as Fennell. Admittedly she has taken the bare bones of Bronte's novel (taking out many characters) to focus on the doomed and rather toxic love between Heathcliff and Cathy.

Often a modern adaptation of a period novel must take liberties for the story to have the emotional impact the original would have had in its time. What would have been laced with scandal for an 1850s audience might seem quaint to today's crowd. Fennell understands this and injects her story with modern indelicacies designed to resonate in the way Bronte's dark tale might have then. Fennell makes it romantic in that dark and twisted way Bronte's novel reads with a historic lens. Her Cathy and Heathcliff are damaged, emotionally stunted individuals whose flailings at love and sexuality do more harm than good. Her Isabella is looking to be dominated. Her Edgar is less bothered by his cuckolding than protecting his line. These aren't Bronte's versions of these characters, they are Fennell's and she is mixing a smutty fanfic vibe with a class analysis in a similar naughty and subversive style to her film Saltburn. 

There are interesting ideas going on here. In her (at this time) rather short filmography, Fennell shows she is rather deft at subverting our expectations and in so critiquing her subjects effectively. The film starts with a black screen and what we assume are the sounds of sex, only to have it revealed it is the sound of a public hanging and how the crowd enters an almost ecstatic state upon the condemned's death. She is telling us that she is using this story to explore western culture's intersections between cruelty, sex, death, love, and oppression. This isn't a heartwarming love story.  

Much has been made about the casting of Elordi who doesn't fit the "Lascar" description in the book. Maybe this is a mistake. Perhaps this has to do with the film focusing more on the class constructions than the racial ones... at least in the Healthcliff/Cathy relationship. She instead focuses her lens on racism on the character of Nelly, played with wonderful subtlety by Hong Chau. In another change from the book, Nelly's class isn't the issue but her birth as both a "bastard" and a racial minority which sets her in the role of servant to the rest. Her actions are deliciously ambiguous in terms of her motivations and she appears both sympathetic and rightfully resentful of Cathy as well as the Earnshaws and Lintons in general. Often read as a villain from the novel, Chau and Fennell don't allow Nelly to be that simple as she is often one of the most relatable characters in the film. She is quite often portrayed as reading, again a subtle signal to the audience. 

Fennell takes quite a few liberties with the story and characters and narrows the focus of what is a dense and complicated novel. For me she was quite successful in telling the story she wanted to tell about self destructive people (and honestly people with a somewhat repressed desire to destroy others) who were never taught how to love trying to love. It is bold and vivacious filled with innuendo and sexuality, humour and operatic tragedy. "Wuthering Heights" is gorgeous, decorated with incredible art direction and costumes so that the whole film feels light a heightened (pun intended) historical reality, like a dream or a nightmare. It is audacious in its visuals, sexuality, and dialogue, but layered with suggestion and nuance with its more critical themes. While this may not be to many's tastes, it worked for me and I couldn't look away. 

Audiences who wanted to see the novel adapted more religiously may be disappointed as this film goes off on the side quests it wants to, leaving much of the novel behind. But if you can wrap your expectations around a dirty little love tragedy featuring terrible/beautiful people you just want to shelter from their own wretchedness while screaming at them to grow up, then Fennell's adaptation is something truly rich to enjoy. 

"Wuthering Heights"

Starring: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau, Owen Cooper, Charlotte Mellington, Chazad Latif, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, Ewan Mitchell

Writer/Director: Emerald Fennell

 

Eternity (2025)

Did a movie's ending ever piss you off so much it ruins the movie for you generally? That's kinda what happened for me with Eternity a movie I was generally enjoying up to the last 20 minutes. 

The premise, in the afterlife you get to pick an eternity, but only one, that you get to spend... well, eternity in. When a woman dies she finds that both her first husband (who died in a war long ago) and her second husband, who she lived with for decades until both their deaths, are in the afterlife both waiting to spend eternity with her. 

The movie does a really great job of setting up its central problem; that she has to pick which of them to spend eternity with. It sets out very well that her love for both of them is very real and that each is different but both fully love. The film's plot even gets the husbands, who begin the story seeing each other as competitors for some sort of prize, to the point where they understand what the other meant to her and begin to feel grateful to the other for the role they played in the life of the woman they loved. 

So far so good. In addition the script is rather funny and clever, Early and Randolph are more than delightful, and the three leads bring just the right mix of humour and pathos to their roles. There was an awkward pedophilia joke in there that should ended up on the cutting room floor but mostly the script is tight. I really appreciated how well the script makes the complications of this set up feel so real and nuanced. Untill...

*Spoilers*

Eternity, up until it's third act seems to be making the case that the problem is the having to choose, but the final act switches this kinda out of no where. After spending most of its runtime showing us exactly why both her relationships were meaningful and had worth, at the end she very quickly decides that the one (her first husband) just didn't cut the mustard and that she has to choose the second husband. There is no build up to this. Nothing in the character development does anything to imply that her first love wasn't as rich and meaningful as the second. Yet the film just feels fine throwing all that away so that there can be a "winner" and a "loser" or at least a resolution that is comfortable. The final moments play out like a prototypical rom-com with the whole running against time to catch the leaving lover before it's too late shtick instead of the clever quirky film it had been attempting to be up til then. 

Maybe I had hoped too much from a Hollywood comedy. I had hoped the film would present that she, as a fully realized human being, could have a complicated set of emotions and, since it is effin eternity, the time to pursue and explore all the love that she has with the men she loves. But no. I had aimed too high for this sort of thing. 

So yeah, what was originally a fun film with an interesting idea and a great cast that I would recommend to people for a smart and funny watch, ended up being enough of a disappointment I would likely tell people to skip it altogether. 

Eternity

Starring: Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner, John Early, Olga Merediz, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Betty Buckley, Barry Primus

Director: David Freyne

Writer: Pat Cunnane, David Freyne 

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (2025)

For me animation is a way to tell stories in ways that can't be told through live action. In the west we think of these films a being for children but so often they are so much more than that. Little Amelie is a wonderful example of how a film can be so much more because it is animated. It is a wonderfully original and deeply personal exploration of connection, likely through nerodivergency, and simply a gorgeous movie to watch. 

Little Amelie is a movie that would be accessible for children, although it is the sort of movie the is rich in meaning and emotion for people of all ages. It is told through the perspective a a 3 year old, but we experience her world so fully and see perhaps even beyond what she understands. Her story is unique and yet so utterly relatable. 

The visuals are gorgeous. I am so glad hand drawn animation is having such a resurgence in international film making. The world of this child couldn't be captured in live action. Not like this. The film connects the girl to the rain emotionally and etymologically as her French name contains the Japanese word for rain. 

I loved the way the film handled the spaces between cultures (Belgium and Japan, the west and the east) the way it dealt with war, loss, family, and being on the outside of what is considered normal. There is so much beauty to be experienced in this film and I highly recommend you find it and meet Little Amelie on her terms. 

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

Directors: Liane-Cho Han, Maïlys Vallade

Writers: Liane-Cho Han, Aude Py, Maïlys Vallade, Eddine Noël 

The Smashing Machine (2025)

Sports movies, especially those based on real life stories, aren't usually my bag. They follow a formula I find tiresome and they glorify the subject who is usually involved in the making of the film. The Smashing Machine does somewhat fall into these traps a bit but manages to avoid most of the pitfalls by sticking to its story rather tightly and employing a rather straightforward narrative that cuts down on the glory. 

Johnson is really solid in this film and shows us he can handle a dramatic role as well as he does the action comedy. He's a showman for sure but he does restrained work here keeping up with co-star Blunt (who is always strong). 

The Safdies may have gone their separate ways but Bennie's work here, restrained and quietly powerful, is thoughtful, allowing his stars to play out their roles effectively and just tell the damn story. While I will never understand the passion for this sport (watching people fight is not my bag) I could understand where these damaged people were coming from and appreciated seeing them reach some level of personal success in their lives, outside of the sport.

The Smashing Machine

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt 

Writer/Director: Bennie Safdie

Dracula: a Love Tale (2026)

Luc Besson takes a little bit from here and a little bit from there to make his rather sympathetic to the monster adaptation of the legendary novel. By now we've had a million adaptation of Bram Stoker's story so it always takes... something... to breathe new life into the tale but Besson's vision feels like a mishmash of other takes on Dracula and little that is fresh. Much of this film felt like I had seen it before. 

Besson uses the skeleton of the Stoker novel. He moves the action from London to Paris (despite having everyone speak English) and exorcises most of the characters from the plot and reduces many of those that remain to mere shadows of characters. For example Jonathan Harker is really just there to move the plot along and the Lucy stand-in is barely more than that. 

However there are some interesting threads here for the three main central characters that remain. Mina is a woman in a (practically) loveless engagement seeking something more. The Van Helsing stand-in played by Waltz, isn't so much a vampire hunter as a vampire saviour, focusing on saving the souls of the undead. And Dracula himself is one of the most sympathetic versions of the character I have seen (perhaps Luke Evans in Dracula Untold has him beat on that front). If there is something new here it is in how the film treats the vampiric curse as a distance from God out of pain and suffering. Sadly the film just doesn't do enough with that to make it feel very interesting. It is presented as a surface idea only. 

The film aesthetically and plotwise borrows heavily from Coppola's film version. The whole reincarnation/lost love story line and much of the art direction/make-up/costumes feel ripped right from that film. It is a testament to Bram Stoker's Dracula how much of that film's cannon has integrated into our cultural understanding of the legend (a literary Mandela effect). This version keeps getting weighed down in its imitation of that film

Even the usually deranged Caleb Landry Jones feels restrained here in a way that takes away from the film. Both him and Waltz are often scene stealers but the film doesn't give either a chance to truly shine. The film has break out moments of creepy exuberance (eg. a rather disturbing scene in a nunnery) but then always gets back into a more predictable tract. Perhaps the Besson/Jones/Waltz combo made me feel I was going to be in for something more radical set me up for disappointment. While not a bad adaptation, I just never felt it gave me any reason to watch this version over one of the many others. 

Dracula: a Love Tale

Starring: Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz, Zoë Bleu

Writer/Director: Luc Besson

Pillion (2026)

I think what struck me about Pillion, in the context of queer cinema, was how it is reminiscent of the sort of gay films popularized in the 80s in how it explores something the audience and the broader world within the story may be uncomfortable with. But in this case, where in the older films it would have been the same sex relationship itself, here that is not the element that is subversive, it isn't the shock value. In this case its the dom/sub relationship, how those around Colin react to it and are uncomfortable. It isn't a man on man kiss that is transgressive, but the scenes of  domination which make the write ups about the film titillating. 

In Pillion Colin's gayness is supported in a very wholesome way by his family and community. Audiences are used to seeing men be affectionate on film together and no one blinks an eye. It is the commands, the power dynamics, which illicit giggles and squirming. Pillion's strength is in how it brings this to the fore and presents it so that you can feel understand the relationship between Ray and Colin. The film throws a few shock value sex scenes in to push boundaries (not as strongly as I thought they might) but it remains all simulated. Pillion is a solid R not an NC-17. 

By the end it is the scenes of gentle connection which becomes shocking and bring on the real reaction.  In this way it circles back to the queer cinema of the last century. A cuddle in the bed brings gasps, hand holding becomes transgressive, a kiss at the film's climax is monumental. And like so much of the 2SLGBTQ+ cannon there is loss. Colin's journey points towards him finding his way but this isn't the happily ever after story. Pillion feels like it is part of some grand tradition but in ways one wouldn't expect. 

I love it when a new film maker debuts with an exciting feature. Pillion is an example of that, the kind of film that makes you sit up and take notice. Lighton has made something impressive and shows a lot of potential. I'm going to be watching what he does next.

Pillion

Starring: Harry Melling, Alexander Skarsgård, Jake Shears

Writer/Director: Harry Lighton

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (2026)

How does one begin to describe Nirvanna the Band, the Show, the Movie, an absurdist adaptation of an absurdist TV series inspired by an absurdist web series? From the twisted brilliance of Johnson and McCarrol who reached super success with their film BlackBerry, they return to their roots in this passion project bringing bigger ideas and a bigger budget to the loveable fictional versions of the themselves. While it's hard to represent what this movie experience is like (other than saying it is a damn good time) I will say that this is a good example of how you do take a TV project and bring it to the big screen. 

They have taken what works from their seed of a TV show, a couple of lovable losers in their endless quest to get a gig at the Rivoli, and brought it to new heights... literally! In this case the CN Tower. Throw in some time travel, sky diving, and a lot of Back to the Future love and you have what may be the silliest but the most fun movie you'll see in a long time. 

I don't want to say more except just see it. It's nonsense and it isn't logical but it's got heart and a lot of laughs. 

Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie

Written by, Directed by, and Starring: Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol