Kokuho (2025)

Gorgeous and epic, Kokuho is set in the world of Kabuki and the film makers revel in the pagentry and spectacle of it. Within that is the story of ambition and loss as we follow the life of a performer, Kikuo, as he moves from ingenue to celebrity to inheritor to disgrace to redemption and come back. It is a grand life story and operatic in style. 

Its runtime is as grand as well but Kokuho manages to keep every moment vibrant so the time passes quickly. As a westerner I was worried about long Kabuki sequences but the director makes them riveting and powerful. It often felt like the opera scenes in a Godfather movie. It is no wonder why the films design, costumes, and make-up have received international attention. 

The film's style is dramatic and emotional which sometimes felt a bit heavy handed. Yet it fits for this story so it's hard to fault it for that. It is about actors and their drama so the fact that they are overtly melodramatic felt authentic even if its not my preferred narrative style. 

Kokuho, despite its runtime, begs to be seen on the big screen and it worth the time spent. 

Kokuho

Starring: Ryo Yoshizawa, Ken Watanabe

Director: Lee Sang-il

Writer: Satoko Okudera

How to Make a Killing (2026)

Great premise. Wonderful cast. Snoozer of a movie. At one point I was even asking myself how it was possible to screw this up. All the pieces seemed to be there but the film amounts to little to nothing. It really feels like it comes down to not finding any style. When you watch it you can imagine a director with a more flashy style taking this and really turning it into something amazing... all while you are realizing how not amazing this film is. 

The plot of How to Make a Killing is cinematic gold (it's loosely based on the 1949 classic Kind Hearts and Coronets) but it is a bit on the, let's be generous, over-the-top side and requires a bit of suspension of disbelief. But so are many of cinema's greatest films. The film needed to find a sense of style, storytelling, which would bring us into this world and get us on board. But the characters are all cardboard cutouts, the circumstances of the movie rather unbelievable most of the way through. It never finds anything solid for the audience to feel connected to or even care about. 

I could imagine a different version of this movie where each character's backstory is fleshed out, each given some fascinating bio to build up to their ultimate demise (which all could have been more fun BTW), all while the tension builds as to whether or not he's going to get away with it. But instead How to Make a Killing seems more interested in racing through each plot point so fast we blink and miss em which does nothing for the suspension of disbelief problem. The central character didn't even get a fair shake. I never once felt his relationship had any chemistry but if the film had found a way to parallel building his love story with the string of deaths, perhaps the film could have found a groove to build to an ending we could be on the edge of our seats for. The film's framing sequence spoils more than it helps and the final "twist" is just not as cool or bleak as the film thinks it is. I really wish the film had gone with what it hints at all along, that Qualley's character is a figment of Powell's imagination, but *spoiler* it doesn't and has a much more average ending that feels like its trying to be a gotcha instead of actually having something to say about our world. It can't even commit to it, leaving Powell to seem ambiguous about how things turned out. 

How to Make a Killing may not be as much the director's fault as the editor's. It does feel like it's been hacked to death like the villain in an episode of Dexter. Maybe the original vision was for this to be a more robust and richer story, but maybe the studio didn't have the confidence and went with cutting everything out until there are only 105 minutes left. Whatever the reasons How to Make a Killing just doesn't...

How to Make a Killing

Starring: Glen Powell, Margaret Qualley, Jessica Henwick, Bill Camp, Zach Woods, Topher Grace, Ed Harris, Raff Law, Motsi Tekateka

Writer/Director: John Patton Ford

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2026)

When a movie can keep me guessing, doesn't do what I think it's going to, and manages to completely entertain me, I can be all in. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is its own beast and will take you on an adventure that you aren't expecting, even up to the ending (is it an ending?). This is just a thoroughly good time, despite having some extremely profound themes and some dark twists, the film manages to remain optimistic in spite of...*gestures everywhere* It is a bleak film about how horrible humanity and the world is that is extremely funny and down right hopeful. Verbinski has pulled off a little miracle with this film. 

If I had to compare it to anything, I'd say it has Everything Everywhere All At Once Vibes, but it's a completely different experience. What it shares with that film is a high concept, mind bending plot devices, and an unpredictability that makes watching it a joy (I mean for those of us who don't want to feel safe watching a story pretty much knowing what is going to happen next). But the ideas its explores, its tone, and its point of view are completely different. It's the sort of film I would normally say "just go see it knowing as little as possible about it." Then after you see it you'll want to see it again to make more sense of it... or less. 

This cast rocks. Rockwell is always a joy in pretty much every movie he's in and Temple plays against type in surprisingly rewarding ways. I could go through everyone cause they each earn their keep but for it was Richardson, who I think truly shines here. Many are saying that this is a return to form for director Verbinbski but my hot take is that this film maker has shown a lot of potential but never really made a film I felt lived up to that potential... until now! This is pretty much the best thing he's ever done and he manages it with both style and restraint. The film, despite its wild swings, is grounded in a reality that gives it more pathos that you might expect. 

But the real star is writer Robinson who has dreamt up this nightmare and we are all lucky to get to go along for the ride. His ideas just keep tumbling out in the least predictable ways. Despite him foreshadowing so much, he always keeps us on our toes and rarely do we understand something before he needs us to. 

It isn't very often a film comes along that catches me off guard as much as this one does and I love it when it does!

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

Starring: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Juno Temple, Tom Taylor, Riccardo Drayton, Dino Fetscher, Anna Acton 

Director: Gore Verbinski

Writer: Matthew Robinson

Crime 101 (2026)

Documentary director Layton makes his narrative debut with this tight and rather intelligent caper drama. The cast is strong and Layton impresses with his film making style. He finds wonderful little flourishes which remain on the subtle side but add to the power of his story telling. Sometimes the script has a few weak moments but all together this is an impressive debut that makes me hope he'll do more fiction films in the future. 

The cast all do well even if they are all playing exactly to type. Hemsworth is the loveable anti-hero, Keoghan is reigned in psychopath, Berry is the career woman being passed over for her gender and age, and Ruffalo is the beaten down cop with integrity. They all do what they can with the roles but the main weakness of the film is how archetypal each are. Still the cast brings a power to their scenes together. Barbaro is a scene stealer, proving that her Oscar nomination wasn't a fluke.  

What impressed me most was Layton's ability to toggle between his well filmed and gripping action sequences and the emotional punch of his dramatic scenes. His set pieces are well thought through, and they keep you on the edge of your seat while also grounding you in the moment and the impact the incidents are having on the characters. And when he transitions into the personal moments you feel like it is cohesive so we don't feel the adrenaline is a distraction. 

Layton paints LA as rather dystopian, never pushing this idea into our faces too hard but making it clear there is something rotten in paradise. He is commenting on the American dream and its failures without wearing these ideas on his sleeve. So while the story may not have completely held together Crime 101 is a very watchable and moving film and the promise of a film maker with something to say and a beautiful way to say it. 

PS. perhaps if you are going to cast Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nick Nolte you should them more to do. 

Crime 101

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Halle Berry, Barry Keoghan, Monica Barbaro, Corey Hawkins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nick Nolte, Tate Donovan, Devon Bostick, Payman Maadi

Writer/Director: Bart Layton

"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

Arco (2025)

I wish Hollywood made more hand drawn animation. Thank goodness it's still prevalent in other parts of the world. The gorgeous French film Arco is an example of why the push towards GCI in mainstream western animation is such a loss. Arco is a true thing of beauty, capturing a visual story telling style that CGI just cannot touch. 

It may call to mind Studio Ghibli films or even the Iron Giant. Arco is the story of being lost through time and finding connection. The story is bittersweet and will literally make you cry. It is a reminder of the power of fantastic story telling and all it can accomplish. 

But I can't get over just how beautiful it is to watch and how much I want more of this sort of animation. Arco is best seen on a big screen but can be fully appreciated at home as well. It is the sort of story that is accessible for almost all ages offering something rich to whomever approaches it.

Arco

Starring: Romy Fay, Juliano Krue Valdi, Mark Ruffalo, Natalie Portman, Will Farrell, Andy Samberg, America Ferrera, Flea

Director: Ugo Bienvenu

Writers: Félix de Givry, Ugo Bienvenu

The Voice of Hind Rijab (2025)

Director Kaouther Ben Hania has taken the audio from a real distress call to the Red Crescent, as well as some social media video of the responders taking the call, and crafted a film dramatization of the event. It is harrowing and powerful because of its literalness. What we are watching is actors playing real responders in a moment of real crisis. We even sometimes hear their voices. The one voice we really do hear is that of a little girl named Hind Rijab. 

Film has been a medium to very effectively bring to light the horrors of war and The Voice of Hind Rajab joins a long legacy of powerful indictments of political violence. This is the story of just one family killed at the alter of armed conflict and yet it in many ways is the story of all. 

It is also the story of those trying to save lives. What we watch in this film is the experience of those attempting to intervene to rescue those caught in the middle. They are heroes and they often fail. The Voice of Hind Rajab is not only a testament to the dead but to those who attempt to keep as many people alive as possible.  

The Voice of Hind Rajab is heartbreaking yet in its way inspiring, as it brings into focus those real heroes of war. The helpers.

The Voice of Hind Rijab

Writer/Director: Kaouther Ben Hania