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The Imagineering Movie Discussion Thread
- Thread starter PerGron
- Start date
TheOriginalTiki
Well-Known Member
TheOriginalTiki
Well-Known Member
I think the Wuthering Heights trailer has officially hit Argyle/Gran Turismo levels of annoying for me haha.
FALL IN LOVE AGAIN AND AGAIN FALL IN LOVE AGAIN AND AGAIN FALL IN LOVE AGAIN AND AGAIN
FALL IN LOVE AGAIN AND AGAIN FALL IN LOVE AGAIN AND AGAIN FALL IN LOVE AGAIN AND AGAIN
At least that one comes out next month. Cat in the Hat is going to put me in an asylum by the time it comes out.
TheOriginalTiki
Well-Known Member
Sooo, I kind of loved Primate. It's dumb as sin and is not getting anywhere near a top 20, but the practical effects were genuinely awesome and it has one of the most brutal kills I've ever seen in a horror movie.
Dare I say it was...bananas?
Dare I say it was...bananas?
It looks like the type of movie that fundamentally misunderstands what should be its point and I 100% think the reactionary anti-woke people are going to eat this slop up.
I will still be seeing it because I’ve heard only terrible things and I love a good bad movie
AceAstro
Well-Known Member
Oh, absolutely! I went to it expecting it to be bad and it was somehow even worse than I expected
TheOriginalTiki
Well-Known Member
Sinners is officially the most nominated movie in Oscars history!!
When Delroy lindo’s name was called I genuinely screamed.
I’m not gonna say now that sinners is front runner, I still think OBAA is, but I might say Sinners is #2 at this point with how much the academy loved it
TheOriginalTiki
Well-Known Member
VERY glad you talked me into locking him in as an early Golden Tikis nomination!
Can we talk about how absolutely high on his own farts Brady Corbet is. Just saw The Testament of Ann Lee (not directed by him but written and his name is all over it) and just like The Brutalist it’s a beautiful looking film that seems important on first viewing but ends up being this surface level view at something without ever actually diving into WHY any of this is the way it is.
Ann Lee as a historical figure is super interesting and this movie looked like it was really going to delve into it, but the content here is worse than what you’d get in a PBS documentary about the Shakers, except in this you actually have to watch her get SA’d (multiple times) where PBS would spare you the visual.
The movie looks beautiful, I’ll give them that, but the whole “it’s a musical, it’s a feminist piece of art, it’s exploring real history, it’s Americana folk tales,” thing just feels exactly the same sense of inflated self importance that putting an intermission in The Brutalist did.
I do think Amanda Seyfried and Lewis Pullman were both phenomenal here, but everything else about it is so surface level sparknotes analysis of anything since, well, since I had to write a history essay about a topic I was bored by in high school. I was very much not impressed when I went in absolutely wanting to love it. It’s not awful or anything, there is good craftsmanship and performances there, it just feels so pretentious for what amounts to just a straightforward biography without getting into the heads of the characters the way a film should.
Ann Lee as a historical figure is super interesting and this movie looked like it was really going to delve into it, but the content here is worse than what you’d get in a PBS documentary about the Shakers, except in this you actually have to watch her get SA’d (multiple times) where PBS would spare you the visual.
The movie looks beautiful, I’ll give them that, but the whole “it’s a musical, it’s a feminist piece of art, it’s exploring real history, it’s Americana folk tales,” thing just feels exactly the same sense of inflated self importance that putting an intermission in The Brutalist did.
I do think Amanda Seyfried and Lewis Pullman were both phenomenal here, but everything else about it is so surface level sparknotes analysis of anything since, well, since I had to write a history essay about a topic I was bored by in high school. I was very much not impressed when I went in absolutely wanting to love it. It’s not awful or anything, there is good craftsmanship and performances there, it just feels so pretentious for what amounts to just a straightforward biography without getting into the heads of the characters the way a film should.
TheOriginalTiki
Well-Known Member
Of course my art house theater chooses THIS WEEK to drop The Secret Agent (Best Picture/Best Actor nominee) for Ann Lee. Man, I like having an art house theater I can easily get to but their timing for when to screen stuff is really off. Let alone screening Sirat exactly ONE single time randomly in the middle of last week...
TheOriginalTiki
Well-Known Member
I went to a CinemaWest mystery movie last night basically convinced it was going to be Send Help so I was like "cool, I can see it a couple days early." I almost freaking SCREAMED when Gore Verbinski came on screen. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is absolutely WILD and was an awesome surprise! I didn't love it...I think the anti-AI message, while obviously relevant, is extremely on the nose. Some of the humor really didn't land for me and felt very try hard in the same way Everything Everywhere All At Once didn't really land for me.
That being said, the sheer originality of this thing is simply audacious. Sam Rockwell's character has great early Jack Sparrow energy to him (I say that as a compliment). The framing device works really well, and while at first I thought it was throwing too many disparate plot lines at us (phone zombie teens! Dead son literally being in a woman's ear!) it all came together in a surprisingly satisfying way. The third act is absolutely cookoo bananas and the movie features one of the most utterly insane creature designs I've ever seen on film.
So yea, definitely not a perfect movie but I have now experienced that moment where something genuinely unexpected and awesome comes up as a mystery movie, and that alone did a lot to salvage a pretty lousy week in my personal life.
That being said, the sheer originality of this thing is simply audacious. Sam Rockwell's character has great early Jack Sparrow energy to him (I say that as a compliment). The framing device works really well, and while at first I thought it was throwing too many disparate plot lines at us (phone zombie teens! Dead son literally being in a woman's ear!) it all came together in a surprisingly satisfying way. The third act is absolutely cookoo bananas and the movie features one of the most utterly insane creature designs I've ever seen on film.
So yea, definitely not a perfect movie but I have now experienced that moment where something genuinely unexpected and awesome comes up as a mystery movie, and that alone did a lot to salvage a pretty lousy week in my personal life.
TheOriginalTiki
Well-Known Member
Seeing it this weekend. After the Oscar nominations came out my theater was suddenly like "oh, maybe we SHOULD start screening some of these movies..."
On that note, I thought The Secret Agent was freaking fantastic. Really unorthodox, almost Nolan-esque timeline manipulation. You spend a lot of the movie trying to put the pieces together, but once the last ten minutes happens the whole thesis statement of the story hits you like a ton of bricks. Truly magnificent storytelling and I easily thought it was more compelling than I'm Still Here which was already great. Brazil is definitely in a bit of a film Renaissance right now.
Also I realized that Send Help is the first straight horror movie by Sam Raimi I've seen in theaters, which is kind of wild. It definitely hits that Companion late January release "high concept, entertaining as hell, but also pretty disposable" sweet spot. Dylan O'Brien is quickly becoming a favorite of mine after Twinless.
One month into 2026 and Jesus has it felt like a year in and of itself. Between the horrid state of the world right now, multiple personal conflicts, and just January being a rough month to begin with, I'm glad to say it's finally over.
Dumpuary is the name for it, but I won't lie, this January's movie lineup was surprisingly pretty solid. I'm not gonna sit here and say it was perfect, it was far from it and one weekend was especially rough with only Mercy and Return to Silent Hill as the big drops, but overall I'd say January was better overall than some of 2025's latter months which is crazy to see.
I managed to get through 31 movies in 31 days which is a great way to start the year, so let's crank through them. Unfortunately, where we can only include 10 images per post, I'll have to do this with just my #31 of the month in this one. Without further ado: January 2026...
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#31- Mercy
[Watched in theaters]
A movie about a cop being arrested for the murder of his wife and then put through a horrifyingly cruel new justice system involving an AI judge and only 90 minutes to prove your innocence, you'd think you'd know exactly where this movie is going. I'll give the movie this, it did surprise me...
It surprised me by how absolutely horrible the takeaway of this movie is. The whole thing comes down to “AI good actually, police good actually” and that’s a genuinely disgusting take away for a movie that should be a cautionary tale about stripping away the human elements of our justice system. Chris Pratt never has a change of heart or realizes how his creation is stripping his rights away, he just ends up liking the AI judge and then nothing changes. The whole message here is “people make mistakes, so doesn’t AI” and that’s such an insane take for a movie that is so simply there to be a cautionary tale.
The whole thing is just screen life garbage too, it’s basically just last year’s War of the Worlds without being campy. It’s a fully self-serious movie that celebrates two things that really shouldn’t be celebrated and advocates for both of them. It may as well have said “the wife deserved it” with how bad these takes are. I think this easily could end up bottom 5 of the year
Dumpuary is the name for it, but I won't lie, this January's movie lineup was surprisingly pretty solid. I'm not gonna sit here and say it was perfect, it was far from it and one weekend was especially rough with only Mercy and Return to Silent Hill as the big drops, but overall I'd say January was better overall than some of 2025's latter months which is crazy to see.
I managed to get through 31 movies in 31 days which is a great way to start the year, so let's crank through them. Unfortunately, where we can only include 10 images per post, I'll have to do this with just my #31 of the month in this one. Without further ado: January 2026...
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#31- Mercy
[Watched in theaters]
A movie about a cop being arrested for the murder of his wife and then put through a horrifyingly cruel new justice system involving an AI judge and only 90 minutes to prove your innocence, you'd think you'd know exactly where this movie is going. I'll give the movie this, it did surprise me...
It surprised me by how absolutely horrible the takeaway of this movie is. The whole thing comes down to “AI good actually, police good actually” and that’s a genuinely disgusting take away for a movie that should be a cautionary tale about stripping away the human elements of our justice system. Chris Pratt never has a change of heart or realizes how his creation is stripping his rights away, he just ends up liking the AI judge and then nothing changes. The whole message here is “people make mistakes, so doesn’t AI” and that’s such an insane take for a movie that is so simply there to be a cautionary tale.
The whole thing is just screen life garbage too, it’s basically just last year’s War of the Worlds without being campy. It’s a fully self-serious movie that celebrates two things that really shouldn’t be celebrated and advocates for both of them. It may as well have said “the wife deserved it” with how bad these takes are. I think this easily could end up bottom 5 of the year
#30- Killer Whale
[Watched on VOD]
This was a straight to VOD shark movie but instead of a shark it's an orca. That's a fair enough premise, orcas are the apex predator of the ocean and while there's never been a wild orca attack, they have capsized multiple yachts and also obviously there are famous deaths attached to captive orcas like Tilikum at SeaWorld which spawned the "documentary" (a term I use VERY loosely) Blackfish, so it's not the absolute worst idea for a schlocky "when animals attack" kind of movie.
Unfortunately, Killer Whale is not campy or fun, it very much thinks it's a serious movie and it very much takes itself seriously. It begins with one of the outright funniest openings in a movie possibly ever (though it is not aware it's funny, it's supposed to be a very tragic moment) and then spirals into just The Shallows but with an orca. The orca is one raised at a marine park and "abused" (the "abuse" they show is a keeper feeding it and then one character saying "I'm sorry you're imprisoned in there" and that's it. Then the orca escapes somehow (you know, a thing that happens) and then terrorizes *checks notes* the people who empathized with it. I'm sorry but if you're going to take the stance of "orca captivity bad" in your murderer whale movie, maybe don't have the victims be the ones who agree with that statement? These people also deal WAY more damage to this orca than the marine park ever did. Also, the whale's name is "Ceto" and the park's name is CetoWorld so, yeah, subtle.
The worst part here though is the CGI. I can overlook my personal disagreements with a movie's philosophy if it's at least entertaining (hence my issue with Mercy) but this just looks like absolute dogsh*t. The whale looks atrocious and the two girls are so clearly on greenscreen it just hurts to watch. So all in all, it's not fun, not gory, not cheesy, not really anything. I say watch the first ten minutes and turn it off because the opening is genuinely hilarious.
#29- Dolphin Summer
[Watched on Prime Video]
It was a bad month to be a movie about cetaceans I guess, because Dolphin Summer is a pretty atrocious watch. I checked it out because unlike Killer Whale, this one isn't anti-captivity and is made by people who are (seemingly) involved in some sort of dolphin conservation and education at the marine center they filmed at which is pretty neat. It's a simple movie where it's very obviously made on the budget of a Nickel, some pocket lint, and a prayer, and it ends up being a "let's save the sanctuary" movie just like movies of ole like Hoot or Dolphin Tale. But none of that is why this is so low. It's so low because it's borderline unwatchable.
The acting here is clearly done by students or people not at all involved in professional acting because the delivery is straight out of a driver's ed video or the worst p*rno you've ever seen and the writing is just about as bad. There's a scene where a dude is texting and driving and these two teen characters scold him and I swear to God it was ripped right from a driver's ed video because it's the most afterschool special bullsh*t possible. If you look at this poster and see how poorly the heads of these actors are photoshopped onto the wetsuits, that's what you can expect from this movie. It's a rough watch I wish I could've supported, but alas, I cannot.
#28- I Was a Stranger
[Watched in theaters]
This movie was getting some buzz so I was excited to check it out. What I wasn't aware of going in was that it had been picked up for distribution by my personal nemesis Angel Studios. Now, picked up for distribution and produced by are two different things, so figuring that this was a movie about the Syrian Civil War and that there was very little way this could turn in to Christian right wing propaganda that Angel Studios thrives on, I figured I'd check it out.
For the most part, I was right. The movie itself isn't really Christian propaganda beyond the fact that a lot of Christians were pushed out of or killed in the civil war, but it really is just kind of a bad movie. It's an anthology which is already not my favorite structure for a movie to take, and then half of the four segments are just absolutely awful. The segments with the nurse and the soldier are alright, but when it gets to the latter two with the smuggler and the other guy (who I genuinely don't remember his role lol) it just absolutely falls off of a cliff. Then in the credits you have the whitest dude on Earth with his white dude dreads talk about how much money he spent making this movie and how you should all pay more money so he can keep making movies. Very Angel Studios in that way. It just ends up feeling like white guilt as a way to raise money and that just royally sucks. Plus, this movie literally opens on the Chicago Trump Tower despite having NOTHING to do with Chicago or Trump so there's that. Just a clusterf*ck of a movie I'll never think about again.
#27- Return to Silent Hill
[Watched in theaters]
Since I'm such a big gamer I was so excited for Return to Silent Hill /s. Nah, I haven't seen any of the movies nor played any of the games and all of my familiarity with the Silent Hill franchise is some of the iconography like the Pyramid Head and that giant hot vampire lady that took over the internet for a while, but I'm very familiar with the fact Silent Hill 2 is supposed to be a game with a phenomenal story so I was hoping, just hoping, that maybe this would be pretty solid.
It was not.
Return to Silent Hill is kind of unique for a video game movie because the way it's shot and edited and lit actually makes it feel like a video game. Like a lot of these moments, even if they are live action, feel like cutscenes in a game you're playing. I can't say that's particularly a positive, but it is unique and interesting. Beyond that though, you have a very one note character that I really didn't care about in the slightest, some really bad looking CGI monsters, a bunch of side characters who are there but do nothing for me, and some real video gamey moments. The one thing that did get me a bit was the lost love aspect, it's a particularly sensitive topic for me, always has been but moreso right now, and the idea of losing a partner and manifesting these horrors beyond your comprehension is a decent way to depict it. That said, if I want to see this story, I'm just gonna go watch a supercut on YouTube of all the story moments (cuz y'all know I'm not gonna play the game, I can't even lie and say I will).
#26- Night Patrol
[Watched in theaters]
"What if Sinners was about LAPD and what if it f*cking SUCKED" is what happened in this pitch meeting, I swear to God. Whoever Justin Long's agent is, he needs to fire them because he has been in stinker after stinker recently and I'm getting fed up with it. You used to see Justin Long in a movie and think "oh cool, I'll go see that" and now you have to think "is this another Coyotes or Night Patrol?"
This is a police procedural where not only are the police racist, but they're also vampires. So now the evil racist vampire cops are going after a ghetto and the Crips and Bloods unite under ancient Zulu belief to kill Justin Long and his evil white supremacist vampire cop friends. But really the worst part is it's not even fun. If that was the premise but it was at least remotely a good time, c'est la vie, it's a January horror, you get what you pay for, but this drops any and all pretense of being fun carnage candy within the first few minutes where someone is brutally murdered in a police shooting and you realize this is either going to take itself very seriously or it's going to be in really bad taste. Turns out it manages both. Just an overall bad time.
#25- Charlie the Wonderdog
[Watched in theaters]
We've reached the point in the list you're allowed to worry about my mental health because yes, I did go see an animated superhero movie about a dog voiced by Owen Wilson who gets abducted by aliens alongside his neighbor cat who becomes a maniacal corporate overlord in a UFO who unites with the President of the United States (a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton parody mind you) who wants to repurpose her dog food investment into a major presidential cat food brand. All of those words are real, they all happen, they're in this movie, and I did, in fact, watch it in a theater on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I appreciate your concern for my well being... This is, in fact, my cry for help.
Seriously though, this was one of the most "straight to DVD Wal*Mart (back when it had the star specifically) children's animated films" ever. Like remember Khumba, that one zebra movie? That's what I thought about watching this. It's a mostly harmless children's movie that has a cute child-dog dynamic that is soured by the whole superhero thing because I thought that there was an opportunity to do some great messaging about letting go as the dog gets older. But maybe Owen Wilson has a rule that he's only allowed to be in one movie where the dog dies at the end and Marley and Me ate up that quota. Either way, it's a movie I'll literally never watch again and probably shouldn't have watched in general, but I did.
#24- Mother of Flies
[Watched on Shudder]
This is a movie by The Adams Family (not the Addams Family set of characters) that made movies like Hellbender, Hell Hole, and Where the Devil Roams, all movies I've not seen but have heard generally favorable thoughts about them. I will commend this family for financing and writing and directing and starring and everything else, it's super cool to see true blue independent filmmaking, but this movie just wasn't it for me.
It starts as a college-aged girl with terminal cancer seeking to find alternative medicines when she discovers a woman who lives in the woods who tells her she can be healed. Then this girl and her dad go live in the woods for a long weekend as this creepy healer lady does vague witchy things until the movie ends. There's an attempt here to tell an overarching story about this witch lady, but it doesn't come across very cleanly and literally gets info dumped at the end with a random one-off character at a motel just spelling out all of the backstory.
The movie isn't particularly scary or gory or anything, it has a few jump scares, a few moments of blood and one really nasty scene with vomit and snot and stuff I had to look away from, but beyond that it's a pretty tame and slow movie without a ton going on in it. Again, I commend the independent filmmaking here (not the last time I'll say that this post) but it's just not a movie I'll ever be checking out or even thinking about again.
#23- Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart
[Watched on Netflix]
Netflix true crime slop. Next.
#22- Greenland 2: Migration
[Watched in theaters]
I went into this having not actually seen the first Greenland film, but thankfully they recap the entire movie in the first five minutes of this film and then proceed to do just the exact same movie again. This one follows Gerard Butler as a Gerard Butler character where he movies his Gerard Butler family from Greenland which was supposed to be a safe haven after a massive asteroid destroyed civilization, but now they have to leave Greenland as it's been destroyed by a massive asteroid and they have to go to a big crater in France which is supposed to be a safe haven after a massive asteroid destroyed their rebuilt civilization. Can't wait for Greenland 3 when they have to leave that crater for the exact same reason again.
Maybe I'm just not a survivalist, but I genuinely don't understand the urge to survive in these post apocalyptic worlds. Like, why are you trying to rebuild civilization? Just end it. I don't want to be roaming around with raiders and giant terrifying asteroids destroying everything all the time. Just take me behind the barn and give me the Old Yeller. That mindset I have makes it hard for me to really jive with movies like this because they're working so hard for nothing and I just don't get it. This follows all of the same beats of just about every and any disaster movie released since movies existed and if you're into that, then maybe you'll like this, but for me, it was pretty forgettable.
#21- Iron Lung
[Watched in theaters]
So yeah, this was a thing that happened that I am absolutely not going to be on the right side of history for a lot of people, but I absolutely appreciate this movie waaaaaay more than I enjoyed it. I'm just gonna copy my Letterboxd review here because I literally just wrote it and I don't want to rewrite it again. Sorry if some words are missing, just assume they're swears and the WDWMagic filter cut them.
"So I know Markiplier mostly from the Pokemon Smash or Pass TikTok meme than I do any of his actual work, that’s mainly on me not being a gamer and never really going down the gamer YouTuber rabbit hole as a teen like a lot of other people. For that reason, I’m not coming at this from a Stan perspective. If you’re a Markiplier day one fan and all you want out of this is to support your boy, then go have fun with it. For me though, this may have been the most poorly paced movie I’ve seen in a theater in a long time.
I will give props here. Markiplier self funded, wrote, directed, starred in, and edited this movie himself and that’s a really impressive and inspirational thing. Obviously he’s a well-known internet personality and probably has plenty of money laying around to do that kind of thing with, but as someone who would love to one day make a movie, it’s super cool to see people outside of the film world do that. People like The Philippou brothers, Chris Stuckmann, and now Markiplier. Not all these movies are of equal quality, but all of them come from people who had a passion and went for it, and that’s commendable.
Unfortunately, commendations for how awesome it is that you made a movie is not the same thing as enjoying the movie you made, and for me, I really struggled to get through Iron Lung. There are ways to do pressure cooker single location movies, I mean think about 127 Hours and how amazing that movie is, but when you have just one person and one location for a while, you need to understand and balance out the story and runtime to fit with that. This movie did not do that.
It’s obvious Markiplier is a game guy and not a movie guy because this absolutely puts you into the feeling of a video game, with problems popping up, puzzles to solve, and slightly tedious repetitive tasks you have to do to progress the story. In a game, that’s all fine and good, but when your movie consists of one dude in a very drab boring setting who pretty much exclusively pushes buttons and twists knobs, it just becomes too much at a point. I get that’s what you do in the game, but I needed less of it in the movie because it’s not ME doing it, it’s someone I’m watching. Because of how gamified this movie ended up being, I found myself repeatedly checking the time because there was no way this movie still had that much time left.
I will say, the last 20 or so minutes when finally started happening I was really into it. It was bloody (veerrrrry bloody) and gory and full of gross out and tension, but it just took way too long to get to that point. The game only lasts around 90 minutes according to my brief cursory Google search so the fact this movie stretches that to 2 hours is just too much when I can’t imagine much was actually added since the story is really really simple.
I think that a 90 minute cut of this movie would’ve been a lot better because there is genuine talent and craft in this movie. The cinematography is decent if not a bit bland, the costuming, hair and makeup, sound mixing, set design, visual effects and even acting from Markiplier himself are all really solid and they show talent there, but the move just did too much without actually really doing anything at all.
Ultimately, if you’re a Markiplier fan and that’s why you’re checking it out, you’ll probably enjoy it more than I did, but if you’re a person like me who doesn’t have that attachment to him and are just looking for a movie to watch, this was a pretty tough one to get through, I’ve gotta be honest."
[Watched on VOD]
This was a straight to VOD shark movie but instead of a shark it's an orca. That's a fair enough premise, orcas are the apex predator of the ocean and while there's never been a wild orca attack, they have capsized multiple yachts and also obviously there are famous deaths attached to captive orcas like Tilikum at SeaWorld which spawned the "documentary" (a term I use VERY loosely) Blackfish, so it's not the absolute worst idea for a schlocky "when animals attack" kind of movie.
Unfortunately, Killer Whale is not campy or fun, it very much thinks it's a serious movie and it very much takes itself seriously. It begins with one of the outright funniest openings in a movie possibly ever (though it is not aware it's funny, it's supposed to be a very tragic moment) and then spirals into just The Shallows but with an orca. The orca is one raised at a marine park and "abused" (the "abuse" they show is a keeper feeding it and then one character saying "I'm sorry you're imprisoned in there" and that's it. Then the orca escapes somehow (you know, a thing that happens) and then terrorizes *checks notes* the people who empathized with it. I'm sorry but if you're going to take the stance of "orca captivity bad" in your murderer whale movie, maybe don't have the victims be the ones who agree with that statement? These people also deal WAY more damage to this orca than the marine park ever did. Also, the whale's name is "Ceto" and the park's name is CetoWorld so, yeah, subtle.
The worst part here though is the CGI. I can overlook my personal disagreements with a movie's philosophy if it's at least entertaining (hence my issue with Mercy) but this just looks like absolute dogsh*t. The whale looks atrocious and the two girls are so clearly on greenscreen it just hurts to watch. So all in all, it's not fun, not gory, not cheesy, not really anything. I say watch the first ten minutes and turn it off because the opening is genuinely hilarious.
#29- Dolphin Summer
[Watched on Prime Video]
It was a bad month to be a movie about cetaceans I guess, because Dolphin Summer is a pretty atrocious watch. I checked it out because unlike Killer Whale, this one isn't anti-captivity and is made by people who are (seemingly) involved in some sort of dolphin conservation and education at the marine center they filmed at which is pretty neat. It's a simple movie where it's very obviously made on the budget of a Nickel, some pocket lint, and a prayer, and it ends up being a "let's save the sanctuary" movie just like movies of ole like Hoot or Dolphin Tale. But none of that is why this is so low. It's so low because it's borderline unwatchable.
The acting here is clearly done by students or people not at all involved in professional acting because the delivery is straight out of a driver's ed video or the worst p*rno you've ever seen and the writing is just about as bad. There's a scene where a dude is texting and driving and these two teen characters scold him and I swear to God it was ripped right from a driver's ed video because it's the most afterschool special bullsh*t possible. If you look at this poster and see how poorly the heads of these actors are photoshopped onto the wetsuits, that's what you can expect from this movie. It's a rough watch I wish I could've supported, but alas, I cannot.
#28- I Was a Stranger
[Watched in theaters]
This movie was getting some buzz so I was excited to check it out. What I wasn't aware of going in was that it had been picked up for distribution by my personal nemesis Angel Studios. Now, picked up for distribution and produced by are two different things, so figuring that this was a movie about the Syrian Civil War and that there was very little way this could turn in to Christian right wing propaganda that Angel Studios thrives on, I figured I'd check it out.
For the most part, I was right. The movie itself isn't really Christian propaganda beyond the fact that a lot of Christians were pushed out of or killed in the civil war, but it really is just kind of a bad movie. It's an anthology which is already not my favorite structure for a movie to take, and then half of the four segments are just absolutely awful. The segments with the nurse and the soldier are alright, but when it gets to the latter two with the smuggler and the other guy (who I genuinely don't remember his role lol) it just absolutely falls off of a cliff. Then in the credits you have the whitest dude on Earth with his white dude dreads talk about how much money he spent making this movie and how you should all pay more money so he can keep making movies. Very Angel Studios in that way. It just ends up feeling like white guilt as a way to raise money and that just royally sucks. Plus, this movie literally opens on the Chicago Trump Tower despite having NOTHING to do with Chicago or Trump so there's that. Just a clusterf*ck of a movie I'll never think about again.
#27- Return to Silent Hill
[Watched in theaters]
Since I'm such a big gamer I was so excited for Return to Silent Hill /s. Nah, I haven't seen any of the movies nor played any of the games and all of my familiarity with the Silent Hill franchise is some of the iconography like the Pyramid Head and that giant hot vampire lady that took over the internet for a while, but I'm very familiar with the fact Silent Hill 2 is supposed to be a game with a phenomenal story so I was hoping, just hoping, that maybe this would be pretty solid.
It was not.
Return to Silent Hill is kind of unique for a video game movie because the way it's shot and edited and lit actually makes it feel like a video game. Like a lot of these moments, even if they are live action, feel like cutscenes in a game you're playing. I can't say that's particularly a positive, but it is unique and interesting. Beyond that though, you have a very one note character that I really didn't care about in the slightest, some really bad looking CGI monsters, a bunch of side characters who are there but do nothing for me, and some real video gamey moments. The one thing that did get me a bit was the lost love aspect, it's a particularly sensitive topic for me, always has been but moreso right now, and the idea of losing a partner and manifesting these horrors beyond your comprehension is a decent way to depict it. That said, if I want to see this story, I'm just gonna go watch a supercut on YouTube of all the story moments (cuz y'all know I'm not gonna play the game, I can't even lie and say I will).
#26- Night Patrol
[Watched in theaters]
"What if Sinners was about LAPD and what if it f*cking SUCKED" is what happened in this pitch meeting, I swear to God. Whoever Justin Long's agent is, he needs to fire them because he has been in stinker after stinker recently and I'm getting fed up with it. You used to see Justin Long in a movie and think "oh cool, I'll go see that" and now you have to think "is this another Coyotes or Night Patrol?"
This is a police procedural where not only are the police racist, but they're also vampires. So now the evil racist vampire cops are going after a ghetto and the Crips and Bloods unite under ancient Zulu belief to kill Justin Long and his evil white supremacist vampire cop friends. But really the worst part is it's not even fun. If that was the premise but it was at least remotely a good time, c'est la vie, it's a January horror, you get what you pay for, but this drops any and all pretense of being fun carnage candy within the first few minutes where someone is brutally murdered in a police shooting and you realize this is either going to take itself very seriously or it's going to be in really bad taste. Turns out it manages both. Just an overall bad time.
#25- Charlie the Wonderdog
[Watched in theaters]
We've reached the point in the list you're allowed to worry about my mental health because yes, I did go see an animated superhero movie about a dog voiced by Owen Wilson who gets abducted by aliens alongside his neighbor cat who becomes a maniacal corporate overlord in a UFO who unites with the President of the United States (a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton parody mind you) who wants to repurpose her dog food investment into a major presidential cat food brand. All of those words are real, they all happen, they're in this movie, and I did, in fact, watch it in a theater on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I appreciate your concern for my well being... This is, in fact, my cry for help.
Seriously though, this was one of the most "straight to DVD Wal*Mart (back when it had the star specifically) children's animated films" ever. Like remember Khumba, that one zebra movie? That's what I thought about watching this. It's a mostly harmless children's movie that has a cute child-dog dynamic that is soured by the whole superhero thing because I thought that there was an opportunity to do some great messaging about letting go as the dog gets older. But maybe Owen Wilson has a rule that he's only allowed to be in one movie where the dog dies at the end and Marley and Me ate up that quota. Either way, it's a movie I'll literally never watch again and probably shouldn't have watched in general, but I did.
#24- Mother of Flies
[Watched on Shudder]
This is a movie by The Adams Family (not the Addams Family set of characters) that made movies like Hellbender, Hell Hole, and Where the Devil Roams, all movies I've not seen but have heard generally favorable thoughts about them. I will commend this family for financing and writing and directing and starring and everything else, it's super cool to see true blue independent filmmaking, but this movie just wasn't it for me.
It starts as a college-aged girl with terminal cancer seeking to find alternative medicines when she discovers a woman who lives in the woods who tells her she can be healed. Then this girl and her dad go live in the woods for a long weekend as this creepy healer lady does vague witchy things until the movie ends. There's an attempt here to tell an overarching story about this witch lady, but it doesn't come across very cleanly and literally gets info dumped at the end with a random one-off character at a motel just spelling out all of the backstory.
The movie isn't particularly scary or gory or anything, it has a few jump scares, a few moments of blood and one really nasty scene with vomit and snot and stuff I had to look away from, but beyond that it's a pretty tame and slow movie without a ton going on in it. Again, I commend the independent filmmaking here (not the last time I'll say that this post) but it's just not a movie I'll ever be checking out or even thinking about again.
#23- Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart
[Watched on Netflix]
Netflix true crime slop. Next.
#22- Greenland 2: Migration
[Watched in theaters]
I went into this having not actually seen the first Greenland film, but thankfully they recap the entire movie in the first five minutes of this film and then proceed to do just the exact same movie again. This one follows Gerard Butler as a Gerard Butler character where he movies his Gerard Butler family from Greenland which was supposed to be a safe haven after a massive asteroid destroyed civilization, but now they have to leave Greenland as it's been destroyed by a massive asteroid and they have to go to a big crater in France which is supposed to be a safe haven after a massive asteroid destroyed their rebuilt civilization. Can't wait for Greenland 3 when they have to leave that crater for the exact same reason again.
Maybe I'm just not a survivalist, but I genuinely don't understand the urge to survive in these post apocalyptic worlds. Like, why are you trying to rebuild civilization? Just end it. I don't want to be roaming around with raiders and giant terrifying asteroids destroying everything all the time. Just take me behind the barn and give me the Old Yeller. That mindset I have makes it hard for me to really jive with movies like this because they're working so hard for nothing and I just don't get it. This follows all of the same beats of just about every and any disaster movie released since movies existed and if you're into that, then maybe you'll like this, but for me, it was pretty forgettable.
#21- Iron Lung
[Watched in theaters]
So yeah, this was a thing that happened that I am absolutely not going to be on the right side of history for a lot of people, but I absolutely appreciate this movie waaaaaay more than I enjoyed it. I'm just gonna copy my Letterboxd review here because I literally just wrote it and I don't want to rewrite it again. Sorry if some words are missing, just assume they're swears and the WDWMagic filter cut them.
"So I know Markiplier mostly from the Pokemon Smash or Pass TikTok meme than I do any of his actual work, that’s mainly on me not being a gamer and never really going down the gamer YouTuber rabbit hole as a teen like a lot of other people. For that reason, I’m not coming at this from a Stan perspective. If you’re a Markiplier day one fan and all you want out of this is to support your boy, then go have fun with it. For me though, this may have been the most poorly paced movie I’ve seen in a theater in a long time.
I will give props here. Markiplier self funded, wrote, directed, starred in, and edited this movie himself and that’s a really impressive and inspirational thing. Obviously he’s a well-known internet personality and probably has plenty of money laying around to do that kind of thing with, but as someone who would love to one day make a movie, it’s super cool to see people outside of the film world do that. People like The Philippou brothers, Chris Stuckmann, and now Markiplier. Not all these movies are of equal quality, but all of them come from people who had a passion and went for it, and that’s commendable.
Unfortunately, commendations for how awesome it is that you made a movie is not the same thing as enjoying the movie you made, and for me, I really struggled to get through Iron Lung. There are ways to do pressure cooker single location movies, I mean think about 127 Hours and how amazing that movie is, but when you have just one person and one location for a while, you need to understand and balance out the story and runtime to fit with that. This movie did not do that.
It’s obvious Markiplier is a game guy and not a movie guy because this absolutely puts you into the feeling of a video game, with problems popping up, puzzles to solve, and slightly tedious repetitive tasks you have to do to progress the story. In a game, that’s all fine and good, but when your movie consists of one dude in a very drab boring setting who pretty much exclusively pushes buttons and twists knobs, it just becomes too much at a point. I get that’s what you do in the game, but I needed less of it in the movie because it’s not ME doing it, it’s someone I’m watching. Because of how gamified this movie ended up being, I found myself repeatedly checking the time because there was no way this movie still had that much time left.
I will say, the last 20 or so minutes when finally started happening I was really into it. It was bloody (veerrrrry bloody) and gory and full of gross out and tension, but it just took way too long to get to that point. The game only lasts around 90 minutes according to my brief cursory Google search so the fact this movie stretches that to 2 hours is just too much when I can’t imagine much was actually added since the story is really really simple.
I think that a 90 minute cut of this movie would’ve been a lot better because there is genuine talent and craft in this movie. The cinematography is decent if not a bit bland, the costuming, hair and makeup, sound mixing, set design, visual effects and even acting from Markiplier himself are all really solid and they show talent there, but the move just did too much without actually really doing anything at all.
Ultimately, if you’re a Markiplier fan and that’s why you’re checking it out, you’ll probably enjoy it more than I did, but if you’re a person like me who doesn’t have that attachment to him and are just looking for a movie to watch, this was a pretty tough one to get through, I’ve gotta be honest."
TheOriginalTiki
Well-Known Member
Oh dear God, this week's new release lineup sends a cold shiver down my spine
-Angel Studios romantic comedy starring Kevin James
-Random low budget kiddie animated movie I've never heard of
-The freaking Strangers Chapter 3 (god can't this franchise just die already...)
On a brighter note, while I wouldn't call Arco exact one for one genderfluid "representation", there was sure a hell of a lot of genderfluid subtext I was picking up on which felt very validating
Beautiful little movie, the ending is a god damn gut punch. My only minor criticism is that it wore its Ghibli influences a bit too much on its sleeve, specifically with the music cues.
-Angel Studios romantic comedy starring Kevin James
-Random low budget kiddie animated movie I've never heard of
-The freaking Strangers Chapter 3 (god can't this franchise just die already...)
On a brighter note, while I wouldn't call Arco exact one for one genderfluid "representation", there was sure a hell of a lot of genderfluid subtext I was picking up on which felt very validating
Beautiful little movie, the ending is a god damn gut punch. My only minor criticism is that it wore its Ghibli influences a bit too much on its sleeve, specifically with the music cues.
#20- Beast of War
[Watched on Shudder]
Shark movie but make it Australian, make it set during World War II, and make it just completely ignore any and all shark biology and behaviors. I obviously don't expect realistic depictions of sharks at this point in a post-Jaws/Deep Blue Sea/The Shallows/Soul Surfer/Sharknado world, but damn is it disappointing when these movies just mischaracterize sharks entirely and don't get a single thing right about them. In all honesty, I think if this movie had a single shark attack scene (as sharks picking off soldiers in sunken ships is a historically documented occurrence throughout all of seafaring history) and instead just focused on the downed comrades, this would've been a lot higher because those elements were solid.
This takes the brotherhood aspect of fighting together and pushes it to its absolute limits as you see someone with serious head trauma eating more than his share of rations, you see people bleeding out which attracts the shark, you see Japanese fighter planes firing at their survival raft. If this wasn't so focused on being a shark movie and instead focused more on being a survival movie with a shark scene or two, this would've been a hell of a lot better.
The performances are nothing to write home about overall, none stand out to me particularly, but they are all effective for what they are and you do buy these guys having a relationship like they're in the same platoon. The effects, especially the practical effects for the blood and gore, are solid and strong and ultimately it's the best of the two ocean predator movies I saw this month, but not the best "when animals attack" movies of the month.
#19- The Testament of Ann Lee
[Watched in theaters]
I already kind of said my piece about this one but good lord do Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold love the smell of their own farts. This is the most self-indulgent bullsh*t that I've seen in a while. Imagine taking a Wikipedia synopsis of the life of a figure, adapting exactly that into a feature film without adding any personality or emotion to it, and then shoot that Wikipedia synopsis as if it's the single most important thing on Earth, then you'll get this movie.
Ann Lee and the Shakers movement is a really fascinating bit of history that could have absolutely made for a really strong historical movie or even historical fiction if they wanted to go that route, but instead this is the most surface level zero analysis full of obvious in your face metaphors movies shot like it's high art and made a musical for the same exact reason as Joker: Folie a Deux which is "we think it's more important than it is." The music was forgettable as hell too so it's not like they at least got a few good songs out of it.
Amanda Seyfried is phenomenal here, but she's phenomenal in everything she's in so that's not a surprise, and Lewis Pullman is also really solid. Unfortunately, beyond some solid dance numbers and some ridiculous dialogue though, there's really not a lot for either of them to do. The cinematography and set design is gorgeous, I'll never fault the duo of Fastvold and Corbet in that department, but at the same time, good lord it's all they have going for them. I wish I could say this was a masterpiece that got absolutely snubbed for any awards nominations, but no, it's just a slog of a movie.
#18- Tafiti- Across the Desert
[Watched in theaters]
Again, here's another cry for help. This is a German animated production about a meerkat and a bush pig who have to cross the desert to find a magical flower to save the meerkat's dying grandfather. It's VERY clear this is supposed to harken to Timon and Pumbaa and trick grandparents into bringing their grandkids to see it because of that, but ultimately it is a cute little adventure with some genuine moments of peril, some decent laughs, and overall a cute enough story for children.
The animation is fine, it's nothing to write home about but it's also not remotely bad in any way. The character designs are cute and the English voice actors did a pretty good job making what is easily two rip off characters into their own thing. The pig character is definitely pushing Pumbaa, but the meerkat character felt unique and not a full ripoff of Timon. There's also a bunch of side characters like a mouse, an elephant, an eagle, a family of pelicans, etc. who fill out the world nicely. It's far from something I'd check out again or recommend to anyone without children, but it was a fine enough experience for a one time watch.
#17- The Plague
[Watched in theaters]
This was sold to me as a body horror meets Lord of the Flies (it's right there in the pull quote on the poster) but man was that absolutely not what this is. Instead, The Plague is about how much it absolutely sucks to be a pubescent middle school boy trying to fit in. As a former pubescent middle school boy myself, I agree, it was certainly a rough time and one that I'd rather not ever relive and this movie definitely captured that element very well, but it wasn't this gross nasty body horror that I was promised.
The Plague is actually just about a kid trying to fit in at a water polo camp where the whole group of popular kids are bullying another kid who has bad eczema and that's about it. It's a really solid depiction of how awful middle school boys are, sure, but that's really all it ends up being. There is certainly drama here and stress and all of that other good stuff, but I ended up walking out disappointed because it really just didn't deliver on the promises of the marketing and all of the discussions I'd seen about it.
#16- We Bury the Dead
[Watched in theaters]
This was my first movie in theaters this month and for the year and second movie of the year overall, and going into 2026 with a zombie movie was pretty crazy. That said, We Bury the Dead is a really interesting take on the zombie subgenre because it isn't a story about the living dead returning to kill everyone, it's instead about victims of a terrible US weapon that misfired, but some of them are coming back. We then follow the character played by Daisy Ridley as she searches for her husband, hoping to find him alive, even if reanimated.
The movie tackles zombies in a pretty interesting way where they're not really violent. There are a few angry ones who do attack the characters, but for the most part the zombies serve less as a violent threat like in other media, but instead a metaphor for unresolved moments in life. There's a really great scene involving a zombie digging graves for itself and its family who didn't return so that they don't just sit there unburied that actually got me. I was surprised by this one, it's definitely not my favorite movie of the year or even my favorite zombie movie this year, but it was a unique and interesting take on a genre that has otherwise become kind of stale at this point.
#15- Grizzly Night
[Watched on VOD]
This is another "when animals attack" movie, but instead of it being about trying to survive the grizzly attack, it's about the rescue team trying to save the victims which was a nice breath of fresh air. This is also based on a true story which is pretty solid and interesting, especially knowing that two fatal grizzly attacks occurred on the same night, something that just doesn't happen normally.
The movie is made on a small budget and the acting isn't phenomenal but it is serviceable. My favorite elements here are the multitude of practical effects that make the blood and gore feel very lifelike. I love when a movie commits to practical as opposed to overdone CGI blood and gore, and after an animal attack especially it's important to really show the carnage here which they do well. Unfortunately, the movie still vilifies the bears and doesn't do a great job showing why feeding bears can lead to dangerous encounters. There's one moment where they discuss not leaving trash out to attract the bears, but beyond that it very much feels like this is just a monster movie rather than trying to live alongside dangerous animals. Either way though, this was a solid and breezy little movie with a decent setting, cast, and story that I maybe wouldn't rush to watch again, but I wouldn't say no if someone asked.
#14- The Wrecking Crew
[Watched on Prime Video]
The Wrecking Crew is a straight to streaming action movie starring two big actors, so you know exactly what you're getting here. The story does not diverge from the most basic outlined plot that all of these follow from the character dynamics being the same, the action finale being the same, the villains being the same, etc. So why is this so much higher than movies from last year like Play Date or Back in Action ended up being? It's because of the leads. Jason Momoa is charismatic as hell in general and I'm a big Bautista fan, so the duo of them working together was really enjoyable.
This movie also stuffs in just about every single actor with any ties to the Pacific Islands besides The Rock. They have Bautista (Filipino), Momoa (Hawaiian), Jacob Batalon (Filipino/Hawaiian), Temuera Morrison (Maori), Maia Kealoha (Hawaiian), Frankie Adams (Samoan) and it's just really funny to see all of them like the casting director said "I want every remotely Polynesian actor working." They all do a solid job with what they're given but this really is Momoa and Bautista's movie.
It's nothing to write home about, it's not the movie of the year or whatever, but the action was fun, the leads worked really well, and I really enjoyed the Hawaiian cultural touches from use of Hawaiian Pidgin in the movie to things like a really sweet funeral scene. It plussed up a movie I've seen a million times before and will continue to see a million times more.
#13- Primate
[Watched in theaters]
The last "when animals attack" movie on the list, and again I'm just going to copy my Letterboxd review here because I think I said it really well over there.
"I’m going to be so annoying with this review, I apologize in advance.
Primate is the newest horror movie which takes the (admittedly best) scene from Jordan Peele’s Nope and says “what if that was its own movie?” I’m not even going to lie to you, that isn’t a bad premise. People have and do own chimpanzees as pets and people have and do get brutally killed or maimed by said chimpanzees. I’ll never forget the lady who got her face ripped off back in the early 2000s and was on Oprah when my grandma was babysitting me. Just insane stuff. As a zookeeper, I get asked all the time if there’s any animal I’d never work with and consistently my answer is and has been “chimpanzees.”
That said, I think this movie makes a huge mistake and that’s giving the chimp rabies. Why is this a dumb decision? 1. Rabies doesn’t exist in Hawaii, they’re VERY protective against it there. Could it happen? I suppose, but the idea of an invasive mongoose born on the island getting a disease that doesn’t exist there? Basically zero. The idea of that one very specific mongoose encountering the single chimp in the state? Also very unlikely. They do address the whole rabies in the state thing VERY briefly, but it’s more of a joke than anything else.
My bigger issue with the concept though is that rabies actually makes chimps significantly LESS scary than they already are. Rabies as a disease makes animals brains swell and they basically lose their instincts and basic functions like fear which leads to them being more aggressive. That’s all fine and good, chimp is more aggressive, sure, but what it doesn’t account for is how f*cking smart chimps are. This chimp acts very intelligent throughout the movie, plotting and sneaking up on people and solving problems and this just isn’t something a rabid chimp would or could do. You know what animal could? A REGULAR F*CKING CHIMP.
If they cut out the rabies and just made this movie about an animal kept as a pet, treated like a human, and then it just snaps, I think it would’ve made this feel a whole lot less contrived and predictable. There’s a character who gets bit in the leg by a rabid chimp, spends the entire movie in a pool (which remains shockingly lacking blood) and then at the end of the movie the paramedic says “she’ll be just fine” like this animal didn’t have F*CKING RABIES. That’s kind of a big deal, especially on an island that doesn’t normally have the disease meaning it’s less likely they have the treatment readily available.
This is entirely a me thing and I fully understand that, nobody else watching this cares in the slightest, but it just felt contrived that they wanted the characters to have a space where the animal can’t get them, that’s the pool because rabies makes you fear water. But you know what else fears deep water? CHIMPANZEES. They literally don’t swim. Every single facet of this movie would be improved simply by removing the rabies element from it. There’s a moment where the character seems to have a breakthrough with a rabid animal (impossible) but would be possible with a regular f*cking chimp. Everything would be better without the rabies.
As for the rest of the movie, it’s pretty generic characters and a mostly familiar plot, but the strengths here come from the practical effects and the gore. I’m not entirely sure how much of the chimp is CGI, puppetry, costuming, etc. but it all looks solid, and some of the kills look fantastic too. There’s one where a character gets their jaw torn off and it was pretty visceral. I do wish the movie had MORE gore, it was pitched as dark and bloody but the blood was pretty reserved in all honesty, especially in a chimp attack which are not known for being sparing on the gore. Chimps go for the face, hands, and genitals when attacking, they literally know the most weak and vulnerable spots. Sure, we see the face attacked plenty and I don’t expect Terrifier or anything with genital mutilation, but my point here is they’re intelligent and crave blood so it would’ve been nice to get a bit more carnage candy.
The characters are bland and pretty generic and every few bits of character beats are thrown away quickly. There’s one character with a crush but that gets thrown off a ledge pretty quickly. There’s one character who hates another and they don’t get along and yet that also goes nowhere because it’s like the movie forgets that point. There’s also a dead mom who died from “being a mom in a movie” syndrome and a deaf father who does get an unintentionally funny moment in the movie, but none of them stood out and I didn’t find myself rooting for any of them to survive or to be killed, they just kind of were there.
Ultimately, Primate is an above average January horror flick and take that as you will. If you’re in the horror mood, I think it’s serviceable and you probably won’t have the issue I do because you’re likely not spending most of your day answering questions about rabies, but even then it’s just kind of there. It has fun to it and for a January release it’s not awful and has good practical effects, so if you’re itching to hit a movie, you could do worse."
#12- Shelter
[Watched in theaters]
Stop me if you've heard this one before: Jason Statham is a retired special ops assassin who is trying to live a quiet life off the grid but is pulled back into action trying to protect an innocent person from an evil government bureaucrat played by a classically trained British actor. He ends up taking out multiple faceless goons, fights another younger assassin who serves as his replacement, and ends up saving the day without at any point taking any serious punches, stab wounds, or bullets.
Yeah, if you've seen any of David Ayer's movies like The Beekeeper or A Working Man or any of Statham's other works, you know exactly what you're getting. The thing is, I'm such a sucker for a Jason Statham action movie, it's one of my biggest guilty pleasures. I just love this dude, he's so self serious and does not understand that he's doing the exact same thing because he may actually just be this guy in real life. This one follows him and a young girl (very much implied to be his daughter though never actually addressed in the movie) as he tries to protect her from Bill Nighy's assassins who want to take him out and any loose ends who know who he is. If you know these movies, it's just that again, but if you're a fan of a guilty pleasure like I am, then this was a really fun one.
#11- All You Need Is Kill
[Watched in theaters]
I checked this out because I love Edge of Tomorrow or Live Die Repeat or whatever they've decided that movie is called now, and this is an adaptation of the source material that is supposed to be more faithful. Apparently not entirely faithful, but moreso than Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt's version of events.
All You Need Is Kill is a solid animated movie with some really fun and uniquely designed characters, aliens, and world and it follows the Groundhog Day style of events where the characters are facing death and are reborn again after every death. It allows them to learn more and more about their condition and how they can end up defeating this ultimate enemy.
It's a really gorgeous to look at movie that does go on maybe a bit too long with the very repetitive nature of the movie, but there's an amazing fight scene at the end of the movie and a really sweet ending in and of itself and it's one that I do think is worth checking out.
[Watched on Shudder]
Shark movie but make it Australian, make it set during World War II, and make it just completely ignore any and all shark biology and behaviors. I obviously don't expect realistic depictions of sharks at this point in a post-Jaws/Deep Blue Sea/The Shallows/Soul Surfer/Sharknado world, but damn is it disappointing when these movies just mischaracterize sharks entirely and don't get a single thing right about them. In all honesty, I think if this movie had a single shark attack scene (as sharks picking off soldiers in sunken ships is a historically documented occurrence throughout all of seafaring history) and instead just focused on the downed comrades, this would've been a lot higher because those elements were solid.
This takes the brotherhood aspect of fighting together and pushes it to its absolute limits as you see someone with serious head trauma eating more than his share of rations, you see people bleeding out which attracts the shark, you see Japanese fighter planes firing at their survival raft. If this wasn't so focused on being a shark movie and instead focused more on being a survival movie with a shark scene or two, this would've been a hell of a lot better.
The performances are nothing to write home about overall, none stand out to me particularly, but they are all effective for what they are and you do buy these guys having a relationship like they're in the same platoon. The effects, especially the practical effects for the blood and gore, are solid and strong and ultimately it's the best of the two ocean predator movies I saw this month, but not the best "when animals attack" movies of the month.
#19- The Testament of Ann Lee
[Watched in theaters]
I already kind of said my piece about this one but good lord do Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold love the smell of their own farts. This is the most self-indulgent bullsh*t that I've seen in a while. Imagine taking a Wikipedia synopsis of the life of a figure, adapting exactly that into a feature film without adding any personality or emotion to it, and then shoot that Wikipedia synopsis as if it's the single most important thing on Earth, then you'll get this movie.
Ann Lee and the Shakers movement is a really fascinating bit of history that could have absolutely made for a really strong historical movie or even historical fiction if they wanted to go that route, but instead this is the most surface level zero analysis full of obvious in your face metaphors movies shot like it's high art and made a musical for the same exact reason as Joker: Folie a Deux which is "we think it's more important than it is." The music was forgettable as hell too so it's not like they at least got a few good songs out of it.
Amanda Seyfried is phenomenal here, but she's phenomenal in everything she's in so that's not a surprise, and Lewis Pullman is also really solid. Unfortunately, beyond some solid dance numbers and some ridiculous dialogue though, there's really not a lot for either of them to do. The cinematography and set design is gorgeous, I'll never fault the duo of Fastvold and Corbet in that department, but at the same time, good lord it's all they have going for them. I wish I could say this was a masterpiece that got absolutely snubbed for any awards nominations, but no, it's just a slog of a movie.
#18- Tafiti- Across the Desert
[Watched in theaters]
Again, here's another cry for help. This is a German animated production about a meerkat and a bush pig who have to cross the desert to find a magical flower to save the meerkat's dying grandfather. It's VERY clear this is supposed to harken to Timon and Pumbaa and trick grandparents into bringing their grandkids to see it because of that, but ultimately it is a cute little adventure with some genuine moments of peril, some decent laughs, and overall a cute enough story for children.
The animation is fine, it's nothing to write home about but it's also not remotely bad in any way. The character designs are cute and the English voice actors did a pretty good job making what is easily two rip off characters into their own thing. The pig character is definitely pushing Pumbaa, but the meerkat character felt unique and not a full ripoff of Timon. There's also a bunch of side characters like a mouse, an elephant, an eagle, a family of pelicans, etc. who fill out the world nicely. It's far from something I'd check out again or recommend to anyone without children, but it was a fine enough experience for a one time watch.
#17- The Plague
[Watched in theaters]
This was sold to me as a body horror meets Lord of the Flies (it's right there in the pull quote on the poster) but man was that absolutely not what this is. Instead, The Plague is about how much it absolutely sucks to be a pubescent middle school boy trying to fit in. As a former pubescent middle school boy myself, I agree, it was certainly a rough time and one that I'd rather not ever relive and this movie definitely captured that element very well, but it wasn't this gross nasty body horror that I was promised.
The Plague is actually just about a kid trying to fit in at a water polo camp where the whole group of popular kids are bullying another kid who has bad eczema and that's about it. It's a really solid depiction of how awful middle school boys are, sure, but that's really all it ends up being. There is certainly drama here and stress and all of that other good stuff, but I ended up walking out disappointed because it really just didn't deliver on the promises of the marketing and all of the discussions I'd seen about it.
#16- We Bury the Dead
[Watched in theaters]
This was my first movie in theaters this month and for the year and second movie of the year overall, and going into 2026 with a zombie movie was pretty crazy. That said, We Bury the Dead is a really interesting take on the zombie subgenre because it isn't a story about the living dead returning to kill everyone, it's instead about victims of a terrible US weapon that misfired, but some of them are coming back. We then follow the character played by Daisy Ridley as she searches for her husband, hoping to find him alive, even if reanimated.
The movie tackles zombies in a pretty interesting way where they're not really violent. There are a few angry ones who do attack the characters, but for the most part the zombies serve less as a violent threat like in other media, but instead a metaphor for unresolved moments in life. There's a really great scene involving a zombie digging graves for itself and its family who didn't return so that they don't just sit there unburied that actually got me. I was surprised by this one, it's definitely not my favorite movie of the year or even my favorite zombie movie this year, but it was a unique and interesting take on a genre that has otherwise become kind of stale at this point.
#15- Grizzly Night
[Watched on VOD]
This is another "when animals attack" movie, but instead of it being about trying to survive the grizzly attack, it's about the rescue team trying to save the victims which was a nice breath of fresh air. This is also based on a true story which is pretty solid and interesting, especially knowing that two fatal grizzly attacks occurred on the same night, something that just doesn't happen normally.
The movie is made on a small budget and the acting isn't phenomenal but it is serviceable. My favorite elements here are the multitude of practical effects that make the blood and gore feel very lifelike. I love when a movie commits to practical as opposed to overdone CGI blood and gore, and after an animal attack especially it's important to really show the carnage here which they do well. Unfortunately, the movie still vilifies the bears and doesn't do a great job showing why feeding bears can lead to dangerous encounters. There's one moment where they discuss not leaving trash out to attract the bears, but beyond that it very much feels like this is just a monster movie rather than trying to live alongside dangerous animals. Either way though, this was a solid and breezy little movie with a decent setting, cast, and story that I maybe wouldn't rush to watch again, but I wouldn't say no if someone asked.
#14- The Wrecking Crew
[Watched on Prime Video]
The Wrecking Crew is a straight to streaming action movie starring two big actors, so you know exactly what you're getting here. The story does not diverge from the most basic outlined plot that all of these follow from the character dynamics being the same, the action finale being the same, the villains being the same, etc. So why is this so much higher than movies from last year like Play Date or Back in Action ended up being? It's because of the leads. Jason Momoa is charismatic as hell in general and I'm a big Bautista fan, so the duo of them working together was really enjoyable.
This movie also stuffs in just about every single actor with any ties to the Pacific Islands besides The Rock. They have Bautista (Filipino), Momoa (Hawaiian), Jacob Batalon (Filipino/Hawaiian), Temuera Morrison (Maori), Maia Kealoha (Hawaiian), Frankie Adams (Samoan) and it's just really funny to see all of them like the casting director said "I want every remotely Polynesian actor working." They all do a solid job with what they're given but this really is Momoa and Bautista's movie.
It's nothing to write home about, it's not the movie of the year or whatever, but the action was fun, the leads worked really well, and I really enjoyed the Hawaiian cultural touches from use of Hawaiian Pidgin in the movie to things like a really sweet funeral scene. It plussed up a movie I've seen a million times before and will continue to see a million times more.
#13- Primate
[Watched in theaters]
The last "when animals attack" movie on the list, and again I'm just going to copy my Letterboxd review here because I think I said it really well over there.
"I’m going to be so annoying with this review, I apologize in advance.
Primate is the newest horror movie which takes the (admittedly best) scene from Jordan Peele’s Nope and says “what if that was its own movie?” I’m not even going to lie to you, that isn’t a bad premise. People have and do own chimpanzees as pets and people have and do get brutally killed or maimed by said chimpanzees. I’ll never forget the lady who got her face ripped off back in the early 2000s and was on Oprah when my grandma was babysitting me. Just insane stuff. As a zookeeper, I get asked all the time if there’s any animal I’d never work with and consistently my answer is and has been “chimpanzees.”
That said, I think this movie makes a huge mistake and that’s giving the chimp rabies. Why is this a dumb decision? 1. Rabies doesn’t exist in Hawaii, they’re VERY protective against it there. Could it happen? I suppose, but the idea of an invasive mongoose born on the island getting a disease that doesn’t exist there? Basically zero. The idea of that one very specific mongoose encountering the single chimp in the state? Also very unlikely. They do address the whole rabies in the state thing VERY briefly, but it’s more of a joke than anything else.
My bigger issue with the concept though is that rabies actually makes chimps significantly LESS scary than they already are. Rabies as a disease makes animals brains swell and they basically lose their instincts and basic functions like fear which leads to them being more aggressive. That’s all fine and good, chimp is more aggressive, sure, but what it doesn’t account for is how f*cking smart chimps are. This chimp acts very intelligent throughout the movie, plotting and sneaking up on people and solving problems and this just isn’t something a rabid chimp would or could do. You know what animal could? A REGULAR F*CKING CHIMP.
If they cut out the rabies and just made this movie about an animal kept as a pet, treated like a human, and then it just snaps, I think it would’ve made this feel a whole lot less contrived and predictable. There’s a character who gets bit in the leg by a rabid chimp, spends the entire movie in a pool (which remains shockingly lacking blood) and then at the end of the movie the paramedic says “she’ll be just fine” like this animal didn’t have F*CKING RABIES. That’s kind of a big deal, especially on an island that doesn’t normally have the disease meaning it’s less likely they have the treatment readily available.
This is entirely a me thing and I fully understand that, nobody else watching this cares in the slightest, but it just felt contrived that they wanted the characters to have a space where the animal can’t get them, that’s the pool because rabies makes you fear water. But you know what else fears deep water? CHIMPANZEES. They literally don’t swim. Every single facet of this movie would be improved simply by removing the rabies element from it. There’s a moment where the character seems to have a breakthrough with a rabid animal (impossible) but would be possible with a regular f*cking chimp. Everything would be better without the rabies.
As for the rest of the movie, it’s pretty generic characters and a mostly familiar plot, but the strengths here come from the practical effects and the gore. I’m not entirely sure how much of the chimp is CGI, puppetry, costuming, etc. but it all looks solid, and some of the kills look fantastic too. There’s one where a character gets their jaw torn off and it was pretty visceral. I do wish the movie had MORE gore, it was pitched as dark and bloody but the blood was pretty reserved in all honesty, especially in a chimp attack which are not known for being sparing on the gore. Chimps go for the face, hands, and genitals when attacking, they literally know the most weak and vulnerable spots. Sure, we see the face attacked plenty and I don’t expect Terrifier or anything with genital mutilation, but my point here is they’re intelligent and crave blood so it would’ve been nice to get a bit more carnage candy.
The characters are bland and pretty generic and every few bits of character beats are thrown away quickly. There’s one character with a crush but that gets thrown off a ledge pretty quickly. There’s one character who hates another and they don’t get along and yet that also goes nowhere because it’s like the movie forgets that point. There’s also a dead mom who died from “being a mom in a movie” syndrome and a deaf father who does get an unintentionally funny moment in the movie, but none of them stood out and I didn’t find myself rooting for any of them to survive or to be killed, they just kind of were there.
Ultimately, Primate is an above average January horror flick and take that as you will. If you’re in the horror mood, I think it’s serviceable and you probably won’t have the issue I do because you’re likely not spending most of your day answering questions about rabies, but even then it’s just kind of there. It has fun to it and for a January release it’s not awful and has good practical effects, so if you’re itching to hit a movie, you could do worse."
#12- Shelter
[Watched in theaters]
Stop me if you've heard this one before: Jason Statham is a retired special ops assassin who is trying to live a quiet life off the grid but is pulled back into action trying to protect an innocent person from an evil government bureaucrat played by a classically trained British actor. He ends up taking out multiple faceless goons, fights another younger assassin who serves as his replacement, and ends up saving the day without at any point taking any serious punches, stab wounds, or bullets.
Yeah, if you've seen any of David Ayer's movies like The Beekeeper or A Working Man or any of Statham's other works, you know exactly what you're getting. The thing is, I'm such a sucker for a Jason Statham action movie, it's one of my biggest guilty pleasures. I just love this dude, he's so self serious and does not understand that he's doing the exact same thing because he may actually just be this guy in real life. This one follows him and a young girl (very much implied to be his daughter though never actually addressed in the movie) as he tries to protect her from Bill Nighy's assassins who want to take him out and any loose ends who know who he is. If you know these movies, it's just that again, but if you're a fan of a guilty pleasure like I am, then this was a really fun one.
#11- All You Need Is Kill
[Watched in theaters]
I checked this out because I love Edge of Tomorrow or Live Die Repeat or whatever they've decided that movie is called now, and this is an adaptation of the source material that is supposed to be more faithful. Apparently not entirely faithful, but moreso than Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt's version of events.
All You Need Is Kill is a solid animated movie with some really fun and uniquely designed characters, aliens, and world and it follows the Groundhog Day style of events where the characters are facing death and are reborn again after every death. It allows them to learn more and more about their condition and how they can end up defeating this ultimate enemy.
It's a really gorgeous to look at movie that does go on maybe a bit too long with the very repetitive nature of the movie, but there's an amazing fight scene at the end of the movie and a really sweet ending in and of itself and it's one that I do think is worth checking out.