All build up and no payoff mute this "Undertone"

 

A movie that's advertised as a new trope of horror should deliver uncommon scares. Unfortunately, writer/director Ian Tuason's Undertone fails to deliver in its final act. It is all the more disappointing because, for majority of its ninety plus minutes, the movie presents us with a likeable heroine, Evy (Nina Kiri), a nighttime podcaster who spends her days taking care of her aging, ill mother. Throughout, Evy and her off-screen podcaster co-host (voiced by Adam DiMarco) play audio clips on air, some of which have sinister vibes.

Part Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (where the protagonist attempts to make sense of sounds), part 2012's Sinister (a grossly underrated horror movie), Undertone never reaches the climax of either film. It is a good idea, in and of itself, but no more than that. Here's hoping that Tuason's next project is followed all the way through, instead of merely tickling our bones, for the sheer sake of it.

☆1/2

Weaving's charisma solidifies "Here I Come" as a sequel worth waiting for

 

As a splatter friendly, over-the-top horror comedy, Ready or Not franchise works best when its ill fated heroine, Grace (Samara Weaving), is wearing her blood-soaked wedding dress, and dodging death at every turn. In Ready or Not: Here I Come, she is rescued from the first film's scene of crime, only to be pulled back into another ordeal where she has to survive until the following dawn, while merciless assassins howl for her head on a stick. She's not just Uma Thurman nameless Bride: she's her, times six or seven.

This time around, Grace is handcuffed to her younger sister (Kathryn Newton) as she chases the sun's arrival. They are pursued by the Danforth siblings: Titus (Shawn Hatosy) and Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Stylish deaths are aplenty: people will explode like overfilled balloons, betrayals will take place, and the heroine will eventually... well, let's just hope she wears a different dress in any upcoming sequels.

☆☆☆

"The Bride" juggles several genres yet never finds its niche

 

Christian Bale's Frankenstein monster looks oddly appropriate in the bizarre The Bride. Finding himself in early 20th century Chicago, he appeals to Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) about reviving a female corpse for him, to deprive him of the eternal loneliness. When a body of a recently murdered woman (Jessie Buckley, fresh from her Hamnet success) turns up, the new un-dead couple roam the 1930s America as a Bonnie and Clyde/Natural Born Killers types; at first, murdering out of necessity, and later, turning into the hunted.

Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride is a bigger movie than its limited release would suggest. Having cost a reported $90 million, it's a wonder how anyone approved it, provided it still remains unclear as to whom its audience was supposed to be. Tonally, the film fluctuates (a crime drama? a monster movie? a zombie romance?), and despite having some entertaining moments, it still lasts too long, and ends with a whimper, instead of a bang. Ambitious Hollywood failures are a thing, and The Bride falls within that regrettable trope.

☆☆ 

Deeply human characters at front center in "Crime 101"

 

There are movie characters, and then there are real people. The latter are in the forefront of Crime 101, writer/director Bart Layton's ingenious crime drama. The trio of central characters are Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth), a clever thief who rips of dangerous people without succumbing to violence; Sharon (Halle Berry), an aging insurance broker who slowly realizes that the promotion she's been waiting for will be passed on to young talent; and Detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), an honest policeman who insists on carrying out justice, even despite his superiors' insisting he "take it down a notch or two."

Crime 101 is reminiscent of Michael Mann's Heat (1995), another Los Angeles based crime drama whose characters are elevated to intelligent levels of Shakespearean complexity. There are really no bad people here: only men and women struggling to succeed in a world of unfair hierarchies. This is top notch filmmaking, a deeply engaging narrative that's been mostly missing in Hollywood's 21st century output. One of the best films of 2026.

☆☆☆☆

"Fire & Ash" elevate the conflict to include Pandora's own residents' strife

 

The Avatar franchise has always fascinated me with how much emphasis - and money - has been put into the special effects, while the narrative remained a poor man's Pocahontas, at best. In James Cameron's third installment of what will likely define his filmmaking legacy, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri's (Zoe Saldana) Na'vi tribe faces an adversary very much like their own: a tall, skinny warrior-shaman female named Varang (Oona Chaplin). Varan's tribe joins forces with Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang, who seems destined to be this franchise's Darth Vader like re-occurring villain), and together, they put a cramp in Sully's - and the human colonizers' - style.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is the most action packed of the series' movies yet, featuring a final battle on water (reminiscent of the previous installment's finale) and in air that is breathtakingly beautiful in all its clash-filled glory. These movies may go down as the most expensive ever, and it's no wonder: every frame has been rendered and processed countless times, until the final result is primo eye candy. I was less excited about this franchise after 2022's Way of Water, but am more hopeful to see a fourth part in three years' time. Fingers crossed that 20th Century Fox executives still deem its astronomical budget to be worthwhile.

☆☆☆

"Killing" hovers between satire and thriller, without truly being either

 

Glen Powell has been the next star in making for a few years, a sort of poor-man's Ryan Gosling. But, if I'm being honest, other than Richard Linklater's Hit Man (2024), the movies where he was the leading man (The Running Man, Twisters) have been largely underwhelming. In How to Make a Killing, a loose adaptation of 1949's superior dark comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets, he plays Becket Redfellow, a man raised by a single mother, who was banished out of her affluent family for getting pregnant as a teenager. He then decides to murder all members of his family who stand between him and the billions of inheritance he believes are rightfully his.

Writer/director John Patton Ford (whose Emily the Criminal was an excellent social commentary about contemporary unaffordability) struggles to balance the satire with the thriller-drama elements. If Becket could at least establish his cousins as horrible people, then his actions may come across as more acceptable. As is, he murders without remorse, coming across as a depraved sociopath, one whose charm isn't substantial enough to cover up his flaws. Not even the presence of the sexy Margaret Qualley, who pops in and out of the narrative periodically, can salvage Ford's muddled tone.

How to Make a Killing is a missed opportunity. I can only imagine that, perhaps, Sam Raimi or the Coen brothers, would've done the material more justice. I hope Powell soon selects a script worthy of his charm, for if he keeps striking out as he has been, will he even be relevant at the decade's conclusion?

☆☆