"Ballad" has good moments, but doesn't live up to Carney's standards

 

Few filmmakers know how to tell a cinematic tale of musicians yearning to sing their hearts out as John Carney. After such moving efforts as Once, Sing Street, Begin Again and Flora and Son, he returns with Power Ballad, a tale of a has been/never was wedding band musician, Rick Power (Paul Rudd), whose lyrics and song idea are stolen by a more famous singer, Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas). What is a nice guy to do with such a conundrum?

The movie is charming, often funny, and well acted. But the song at the heart of it, How to Write a Song (Without You), is a true stinker, a melodramatic, hokey boy band ballad that outwears its welcome early on; sadly, we end up hearing it so many times I nearly became nauseous by the end.  Also, Rick claims to be struggling with money, and on the brink of going broke, yet is easily capable of buying a Dublin-to-Los Angeles flight at the spur of a moment. The movie's characters behave like real people, but their actions are often those of fictional characters - unfortunately

John Carney has done better work, and - I hope - will do great work again. Power Ballad is his most forgettable effort yet - and it's easy to see why: a movie about music should contain better tunes than this one does.

☆☆

"Michael" does for biopics what Melania did for documentaries: nada

 

Is there a more exhausted biopic trope than that of a singer or some sort of musical prodigy? It feels as if we get several each year, and outside of What's Love Got To Do With it?, Ray and Rocketman (to name a few that instantly come to mind), they are typical standard fare that highlight the highs, without focusing much on the person's lows. But perhaps no biopic in recent memory succumbs to glorifying its protagonist as Antoine Fuqua's Michael.

Other than focusing on young Michael Jackson's struggles to stand up to his overbearing father, Joe (Colman Domingo), the movie is basically a glorification of King of Pop's love for animals, his infatuation to 'perfect' his face via numerous plastic surgeries, and his incredible singing and dancing talent. The movie fails to mention Jackson's strange infatuation with spending an unusually long periods of time with underage boys; there's not a whisper of either of his heavily publicized 1993 nor the 2005 trials. All in all, the lead actor, Jaafar Jackson, is perfect as can be in the lead role. He captures not only Michael's (his real-life uncle) voice, but the dancing prowess as well. 

If you're a fan of Michael Jackson's music, you will smile through scenes where so many legendary songs were conceived and recorded. But other than that, Michael is not unlike 2026's most redundant documentary, Melania. It exists merely to tell us what we already know, without attempting to be daring in the least. 

☆☆

Unsettling atmosphere adds to "Hokum's" dreaded ambience

 

As an alcoholic writer (an original concept, eh?) struggling to complete his latest novel, Adam Scott is Ohm Bauman (personally, I'd be mad at my parents for naming me). Still, the actor is well cast in the role. He travels to an isolated hotel in rural Ireland, to scatter his mother's ashes. But he soon discovers that one of the rooms is haunted by a mysterious witch. The ensuing disappearance of the hotel bartender (Florence Ordesh) sets the plot in motion, and turns Bauman into a type of a 'sleuth.' 

The movie's plot is at times engaging, at other times derivative. There are several good scares, scenes where Bauman sees an apparition in the mirror, only to turn around and find nothing and no one. The violence is wisely kept off screen, and the final act is thrilling in all the right ways. 

But, ultimately, I found Hokum to be just too little, too late. Despite some decent production design, it feels a bit cheap, bordering on good amateurism, rather than poor professionalism. There are those who consider writer/director Damian McCarthy a talented horror auteur. Alas, I am not among them. Hokum is ways better than his previous outings - especially than the grossly overrated Oddity (2024). If he's to reach the prestige levels of Ari Aster and Robert Eggers, he's got a little further to go.

☆☆1/2

Misguided "God" is neither here nor there

 

Debut filmmaker Aleshea Harris' Is God Is comes across as a thoroughly misguided affair. A story of two sisters, Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson) who search for their long lost father (Sterling K. Brown) in order to kill him for past wrongs. When they were little, father burned their mother (Vivica A. Fox), and when the girls tried to help her, the flame scarred them as well.

Is God Is starts off as an off-kilter, adult dramedy, before switching gears into a tale of inauthentic vengeance (early on, Racine's demeanor from not wanting to commit violence to agreeing to kill her father occurs within three seconds, without convincing the audience of its credibility). In its second half, the movie turns into a poorly acted, poorly written splatterfest, where the 'guilty' are punished in awkwardly staged murders that may as well have been directed by a second year film-student. 

The final act, in which the women face their father, is plain laughable. T father discovering the dead bodies of his twin sons leaves him so unaffected that he even makes himself a sandwich. Minutes later, he's crying (or pretending to; whether or not his acting is deliberately poor I'll leave for you to decide). When he dies, it is with an insignificant whimper. For all its hype on Rotten Tomatoes (currently standing at a whopping 98% - go fucking figure), the movie's tone, its dramatic narrative, is flatter than a pancake. How anyone can think this is more than an absolute amateur trash is beyond me.

☆

"Normal" is ultimately, anything and everything - but never boring

 

A small Minnesota community is turned upside down when an interim sheriff, Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk), discovers the town's mayor (and other accomplices) have made a pact with the Japanese Yakuza to hold their gold in one of their vaults. When the said bank is raided, the previous order is shattered, and Ulysses finds himself battling practically the whole town while standing on the side of justice. 

Ben Wheatley's Normal starts off like an updated Fargo spinoff, slowly evolves into a blood soaked mayhem that borders on the loony and the comical, and ends with a random accident involving a loaded shotgun that spawns another shootout, equally bizarre but just as much fun. This is a movie for adults who know how to appreciate over-the-top gore, instead of cringing at the sight of every severed limb.

Odenkirk has managed to follow up his Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad legacies with some finely tuned, ninety minutes-esque movies (also see Nobody franchise), and Normal is his best effort yet. If he follows it up with a sequel, I'll be the first in line.

☆☆☆1/2

Flatness of this "Fuze" resonates into the end credits

 

The most disappointing thing about Fuze - and there are several - is that its director, David Mackenzie, helmed the superb 2016 crime drama, Hell or High Water. How did the same person succumb to such dull mediocrity a decade later? Despite the star studded cast featuring Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Sam Worthington, this urban London thriller, where a newly discovered bomb from WW2 evacuates large portion of the city, never quite comes together. Even the explosion (I'm not really giving much away here, btw) comes across as half-assed flatulence.

The movie has the feel, and the setting, of a post-modern Guy Ritchie movie. There are twists and double crosses, and a flashback after the final act that reveals something - which, if you find the entire narrative dry and pointless, is actually nothing at all. Regardless, no twist or revelation can save this blandness from its most unforgivable sin: for all the gunfire and explosions its poster promises, the entire thing is, simply, boring as fuck. Such a shame.

☆1/2

Lowery's pretentiousness is loud and proud in cold "Mary"

David Lowery, at least for me, is a polarizing filmmaker. I loved his A Ghost Story (2017), a poetic, beautiful examination of the loneliness of the dead. On the other hand, I found his Green Knight (2021) grossly overrated, and just plain old exhausting to sit through. It is with a heavy heart that I report his new feature, Mother Mary, shares many characteristics with the latter. 

The movie looks good, has a unique feel and tone, the dark cinematography and music enchanting us right off the bat. But Lowery soon wastes the talents of Anne Hathaway (playing a famous pop-star) and Michaela Cole (playing her costume designer) - one displaying heartfelt anguish, the other possessing a face worthy of an enigmatic statue - but providing them with an expository tale, where much is said, and little ultimately shown. Not even the most patient viewer is likely to be rewarded with a memorable climax. The narrative eventually succumbs to the psychological and the supernatural, involving a red ghost. When you realize he's trying to mimic an Ingmar Bergman melodrama, you'll stop caring (chances are).

Mother Mary is a beautiful misfire, and it proves that Lowery is a gifted director, even if he's erred here.  I hope he goes back to making movies for audiences, instead of just for himself.

☆1/2

Cronin's "Mummy" continues where his overrated "Evil Dead" remake left off

 

For the past 27 years, there have been numerous movies about mummies. Stephen Sommers' franchise spawned a few sequels, injecting humor and light action into its dark supernatural storyline. Tom Cruise failed miserably in 2017, in his effort to resurrect the Dark Universe's bandaged corpse. And now, in 2026, we've been blessed with Lee Cronin's The Mummy (far be it for me to question, but has this dude actually earned the swag to have his name attached to a big budget picture's title?) a horror film that fuses The Exorcist and Evil Dead into an overlong, splattery, sometimes disgusting mess.

Right from the opening scene, the convoluted narrative already does too much too soon. A man is murdered by a mysterious object before we know what's what. Then, a young girl, Katie, is abducted. Her parents (Jack Reynor and Laia Costa) resort to an Egyptian detective (May Calamawy) to help them find her. The search ends up fruitless for eight years, when Katie is finally found inside a mysterious sarcophagus. She is alive, but isn't well. Not by a long shot.

The second hour of The Mummy involves excessive vomiting, peeled flesh, and strange fluids leaking out of people's wounds. I chuckled a few times at its over-the-top boldness, but mostly cringed at the repulsive violence that failed to scare me in the least. The villain - a dark, demonic force within the girl - is also too theatrical and performative, just like the demon in The Exorcist. I never cared for that so-called horror classic, but it was at least brazenly ahead of its time. Lee Cronin's The Mummy feels like a party taking place two decades past its thematic prime.

☆☆

"Exit 8" outlasts its welcome early on, and never recovers

 

Genki Kawamura's Exit 8 is a mind-fuck of a movie. This isn't necessarily a good thing. A ninety-plus minute surrealist ride into an underground subway's intricate hallways, in which its protagonist, played by Kazunari Ninomiya, struggles to locate the titular exit is intriguing for ten, maybe 15 minutes. After that, its repetitive nature, where he circles back around so many times that the only sensible option is to check one's watch, ad nauseam. 

Add to the mix the walking man (Yamato Kochi), a lost child (Naru Asanuma) and a woman whose infant's cries cause an impatient man to scream at her, and the result is a weak examination of a coward who learns that he should stand up to injustice, even when it's not directed at him personally.

Allegedly based on a video game, Exit 8 is bound to give foreign films (most notably the Asian ones) a bad name on the international stage. Those who had to pay to watch this theatrically surely must've demanded their money back. Either that, or they were as brain-dead as the filmmakers who thought this is a compelling cinematic narrative.

☆