Category Archives: 2026 Movies
The Bride! (2026)
Few movies leave you completely dumbfounded, trying to properly assess the miscalculated artistic choices and make sense of what you’ve just witnessed. The Bride! is one of those movies. I found myself asking, “What am I watching?” on more than five occasions. Ostensibly Maggie Gyllenhaal, serving as writer and director, was aiming to retell the Bride of Frankenstein (played by recent Oscar winner Jessie Buckley) as a feminist uprising set amidst a Bonnie and Clyde 1930s backdrop. That sounds like a workable idea, but then did you know that the literal ghost of Mary Shelley serves as our intrusive narrator because even after death she still had a few more things that she wanted to get off her dead chest? Did you know she’s also played by Buckely, so throughout the movie she’ll be talking like a 1930s Chicago dame and then, out of nowhere, she’s talking like a British aristocrat. This is because the literal ghost of Shelley is possessing this woman who looks exactly like her. Also, apparently, the characters Shelley created are… real in the same universe that she is? Did you know there’s a literal song-and-dance number to “Puttin’ on the Ritz” as a strange nod to Young Frankenstein? It’s not some imaginary diversion. It actually happens, I believe, thanks to that ghost of Shelley possessing a whole dance team. Did you know that The Bride inspires an armada of women to follow her supposed self-actualization to smear black crud on their face and rise up, becoming an avenging feminist force that appears to be about firing guns in the air and screaming about their ruined brains? The concept of reanimating The Bride with a healthy dose of feminist rage and re-framing her agency is a fitting vehicle to examine an overlooked perspective for a character better known for her silence and prominent hairdo. However, I don’t think this movie manages to make the character and her plight more universal. There are multiple incidents of sexual violence and predatory men, as well as Buckely screaming “Me too” in repeated emphasis during one scene. This is a big, broad, messy movie stitched together and careening through tone and genre homage. Buckley is unhinged and all over the place, fascinating you at one moment and making you cringe the next, especially when she alternates in and out of Shelley’s possession. There is a lot of style and intriguing ideas and commentary here just trying to find purchase amongst the overwhelming junk. This is an ambitious movie with some bold swings and the risk is that you may miss badly, and The Bride! is all misses.
Nate’s Grade: D
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Melania (2026)
Let’s tackle the reality that reviewing a documentary like Melania is practically beyond the point. This movie wasn’t created by artists who felt they had a compelling and insightful story to tell, a revelatory depiction of the human condition that would cause us all to sit back and reflect on ourselves. No, this movie was created to appease and suck up to one important orange-hued ticket-buyer. Amazon bought the rights to the movie for a staggering $40 million dollars, pledged an additional $35 million in marketing, and put out all the stops to open the documentary on the residing First Lady in 1700 screens nationwide. For those not in the know, documentaries are not big moneymakers; the highest-grossing doc of 2025 was Becoming Led Zeppelin at $16 million. Only thirteen documentaries have ever grossed over $70 million worldwide and only 39 have grossed more than $30 million. It’s hard to fathom that Amazon imagined this would become a runaway hit. They’re not that deluded. Think less of Melania as a documentary and more as a transparent corporate bribe by Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, who sure would like favorable consideration from the current administration that interferes in every facet of media to better protect the ego of a soon-to-be octogenarian who needs everyone to constantly be showering him with effusive adoration (le sigh). Welcome to our new American ecosystem, where all corporations are expected to bend the knee in fealty so as to procure favorable dispensation from a mad king always in need.
What is even the point of reviewing something like this? It’s so obviously manufactured in bad faith. Well, dear reader, I guess it comes back to my own martyr complex: I suffer so that you may be spared the same fate. Unless you’re a diehard MAGA member, Melania will be a torturously facile example of unserious people elevating other unserious people for an audience of the unserious to be patronizingly pat on the head and told that, yes, theirs is the true voice of America’s solemn destiny.
The film follows the 20 days before the second inauguration of Donald Trump as the American president. For those of you, especially in endangered minority communities, wondering what Melania Trump was going through when it came to designing the drapes and White House color patterns, fear not! Most of the movie is listening to Melania’s strained narration while we watch handlers and assistants flit about and primp the soon-to-be First Lady while handing her samples. Never has insider access felt so tedious!
Did I mention that this movie is directed by none other than Brett Ratner, disgraced filmmaker who was jettisoned from Hollywood as a Me Too reckoning following decades of harassment? Ratner has never directed a documentary before and it shows. Opening the doc with the Scorsese-esque notes from the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” feels like sacrilege. It’s even worse when played over the start of Melania strutting through her Mar-a-Lago mansion to a fleet of cars. It plays like self-parody but you know nobody has the awareness for that. Ratner asks her such incisive questions like, “What is your favorite recording artist?” like it’s a Tiger Beat interview. Late in the film, he’s heard on camera wishing the president “sweet dreams” in the most sycophantic voice. Really Ratner’s here like everyone else, seeing the craven opportunity to get into the good graces of the president. Ratner has been pushing to get Rush Hour 4 greenlit, a sequel that I don’t even think Chris Tucker (current age: 54) and Jackie Chan (current age: 72) are eager to launch. Not that it matters to Ratner, but it’s been almost TWENTY YEARS since 2007’s Rush Hour 3, which also featured a cameo by notorious sex pest Roman Polanski. Sure enough, in the wake of Melania’s release, Trump was pushing for a Rush Hour 4, as clearly the man whose brain is always stuck in the 1980s has his finger on the pulse of the cultural zeitgeist. All Ratner had to do was make a 100-minute fluff piece about the president’s third wife and, voila, one sexual predator in the highest office in the land can ensure that another sexual predator can get his dream project, which I repeat is depressingly Rush Hour 4, off the ground. Also recall that Ratner was literally seen canoodling on a couch with pal Jeffrey Epstein and a group of young women who were certainly there by choice. Ugh.
I actually think a figure like Melania could be an interesting subject for a hard-hitting documentary. The Slovenian model becomes the third wife to a notorious philanderer and crook, enough that he was famously having sex with adult film actress Stormy Daniels while Melania was recovering from the birth of their son. From the outside, this relationship appears entirely transactional, with Trump getting a new, younger, more desirable wife, though not desirable enough to stop having affairs with other women (note: this is a condemnation of Trump, not on any perceived shortcoming of Melania). For her, she gets the security of a man of riches and with that security is the tacit understanding that he can do whatever he wants and she will have to accept it. Getting an insider’s account of all the debauchery and debasement of being Trump’s current wife could be extremely insightful and would make Melania genuinely empathetic for one of the rare times in public life. Granted, she’s made her calculation and stood silent while her husband’s regime has terrorized millions at home and endangered the lives of millions abroad, so let’s cap that degree of empathy. Still, she has a perspective that could be very illuminating under the right circumstances. It’s just that we’ll never see that kind of perspective. It’s too off-brand. It goes against her agreement with the money-man. I don’t fault her for wanting to stay in her echelon of riches and comfort any more than I would, say, a duchess who prefers a pampered life to starving on the streets. I get it, but it doesn’t excuse the lasting damage of being the pursed-lip silent partner to a degenerate with total power. Imagine a documentary about Eva Braun but it’s all about her favorite throw pillows. Not exactly the most interesting angle to take for someone so close to such disruptive and systemic abuses of power.
I take particular umbrage with one angle the documentary takes, setting Melania up as a celebration of immigration, a reflection of the American Dream. It’s more than a little hypocritical for this movie to elevate the immigrant story of Melania while the administration of her husband is targeting anyone it deems insufficiently American, namely people of color regardless of their actual citizenship. When the government’s special masked police are rounding up indigenous people to deport to adhere to an unrealistic and damningly racist daily quota, you know they’re not targeting the “worst of the worst.” Are the “worst of the worse” the day care workers? The family-owned pizzeria? The spouses of American soldiers? Those seeking asylum from persecution and death from hostile governments? The immigrants who have navigated the byzantine system of immigration to become official citizens and who are abducted by ICE for appearing at their court appointments? To manufacture Melania as a symbol of the celebration of an immigrant’s journey is farcical when the Trump Administration is built upon the elimination of immigrants from every facet of society. It isn’t a coincidence that the administration has lowered immigration numbers to a paltry 7500 in 2025 and most of those are white South Africans. She’s quoted as saying, “No matter where we come from, we are bound by the same humanity.” Uh huh. Tell that to Stephen Miller and his dogged desire to Make America as Alabaster as Possible Again.
There’s just not enough material here to cover a feature film, which is why the shallow movie often feels like an overly padded infomercial propping up its star. There are long stretches where you’re just watching people walk or listen to performances. It’s filling time. The whole enterprise feels like you’re watching someone else’s lackadaisical wedding video. There are perhaps two or three memorable moments caught on camera. The first is Trump complaining that the college football championship game being held the same day as his presidential inauguration is a conspiracy against him. His reasoning is that they’ve had the inaugural date for “centuries.” The next is Melania turning the funeral of President Jimmy Carter into her own grief about losing her mother. Melania takes reverence walking through the halls of the Capitol, remarking about the military defending the rights of the Constitution, which is quite ironic considering Donald Trump fomented an insurrection that gleefully attacked police officers to try and overturn an election in defiance of the Constitution. There’s also the line from his inaugural speech that is particularly galling in 2026: “My proudest legacy will be that of a peace-maker and unifier.” Yes, surely history will remember Trump as an instrument of peace when he’s not bombing girls’ schools and pledging to annihilate civilizations as well as other blatant war crimes.
Rather than continue to tell you about the many creative and moral shortcomings of this enterprise, why not provide a sampling of some of the best critical hits on this movie? Here you go:
“I’m not even sure it qualifies as a documentary, exactly, so much as an elaborate piece of designer taxidermy, horribly overpriced and ice-cold to the touch and proffered like a medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.” – Xan Brooks, The Guardian
“To say that Melania is a hagiography would be an insult to hagiographies.” – Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter
“Melania the movie isn’t a documentary; it’s a protection racket.” -Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic
“A soothingly looped AI screensaver.” -Amy Noicholson, Los Angeles Times
“Call it a document, instead, of 20 days in the First Lady’s life circa January 2025, with all the weight and depth of a Post-it.” -Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence
“Ratner’s film plays like a gilded trash remake of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest in which a button-eyed Cinderella points at gold baubles and designer dresses, cunningly distracting us while her husband and his cronies prepare to dismantle the Constitution and asset-strip the federal government.” -Xan Brooks cooking again, The Guardian
Anyway, don’t watch Melania. I was never going to appreciate this movie. It was not made for me. It wasn’t made for you either. It wasn’t made for anyone but the First Lady, who had editorial control over the movie, so why would you expect anything other than a stage-managed image-consulted propaganda puff piece on her air of dignified grace and style? Hearing her somnambulant narration over her gilded life and the pageantry of a second inauguration of the most destructive president in American history, it’s enough to make you zone out. While wars are being waged, prices are soaring, neighbors are being rounded up into camps of concentration by masked goons, and corruption and graft reign supreme in a government run by the worst people imaginable, it’s hard not to find a soft-pedaled vanity project like Melania as an offense to the senses. If there are bigger wastes of time at the movies in 2026, it will be a truly hellacious year. This is not being best. This is not being best at all.
Nate’s Grade: F
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Project Hail Mary (2026)
Being stranded for two hours in tight quarters with Ryan Gosling sounds like a dream come true for many. Something tells me I made this same joke except using Matt Damon’s name for the 2015 release of The Martian, another winning mixture of nuts-and-bolts scientific problem-solving and sci-fi exploration from best-selling author Andy Weir. Project Hail Mary is one of those big screen adventures that nourishes your imagination and heart. In short, it’s a rare full-package blockbuster, something to excite the senses as well as appeal to your intelligence to leave you fully satisfied. If you enjoyed the book like myself, then breathe easy, because the film has done this story a great justice. Best of all, it’s the rousing, heart-warming buddy movie you never knew you needed, and it all starts at the end of the world.
In the near future, science discovers an alien microbe that is literally eating the sun. The estimates are that our sun will dim over decades, causing widespread cooling and threatening the lives of billions. The world needs a hero. It got middle school science teacher and disgraced molecular biologist Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) instead, who awakens on a spaceship in a different stretch of the galaxy far, far away from Earth and its dimming sun. He has little memory of what transpired before and must piece together not just his understanding of who he is but also his world-saving mission that he now, unfortunately, is the only one who can accomplish. He’s very literally tasked with saving the world, so no pressure.
I’m going to avoid major spoilers but there is one plot development I feel needs to be discussed as it gets to the core appeal of the movie, so if you want to go into Project Hail Mary completely unspoiled, and I would advise it if you could, then end this review and come back once you’ve enjoyed the movie. For everyone else, let’s proceed ahead. Thankfully, the amnesia setup isn’t dragged out long. The film is structured to alternate between present-day problem-solving in space and flashbacks to Earth when Ryland was contacted by the top levels of the U.S. government to determine the extent of the unusual problem with water-molecule microbes somehow living and consuming the sun. The microbes are termed “astrophage” and release tremendous amounts of energy, enough so that they become the unexpected fuel for this long-shot space mission that Ryland finds himself the only survivor. He was never supposed to be mankind’s only hope (the other astronauts, the professionals, died from the induced comas for travel).
However, Ryland isn’t alone for long in the movie, and that’s where Project Hail Mary reaches a new level of entertainment and imagination. Our sun isn’t the only one affected by the astrophage, and Ryland is greeted by an alien spacecraft that has also traveled the long journey to figure out why this one sun is unaffected by the astrophage. The sense of discovery is greatly entertaining and I appreciated that there is something remarkably alien about our alien. Our intrepid alien will be nick-named “Rocky” because he best resembles a spider made out of rocks. That’s different. It’s not the old Star Trek school of slapping a forehead ridge onto somebody’s head and calling it a day. A significant and very gratifying sequence of the movie is just watching these two different lifeforms interacting and learning from one another. The language barrier has been explored before, most effectively in 2016’s grounded and somber Arrival. If Arrival was more the contemplative indie about conquering the linguistic challenges of first contact, then Project Hail Mary is the feel-good Spielbergian popcorn spectacle about saving the day and having fun. That doesn’t mean it’s a dumbed-down version; it just has different priorities, and chief among them is the winning buddy comedy of Gosling and a cuddly alien, two humble representatives of distant worlds in shared desperation for saviors. The relationship that blossoms between Ryland and our plucky, curious little space spider is naturally funny but also refreshingly serious too. Rocky is treated like an actual character, not some glorified pet or something to sell toys and Happy meals. He has a distinct perspective, learning curve, peculiarities, and determination that makes him feel more fully-developed than many human characters in terrestrial cinema. If you don’t walk away from the movie wanting your own personal huggable rock spider, then you watched a different movie than I did and, frankly, I pity you.
In my review for The Martian, I wrote, “There is an inherent enjoyment watching intelligent people tackle and persevere over daunting challenges, and this sets up The Martian for lots of payoffs and satisfaction. We see both sides of the problem and it provides even more opportunities for challenges and payoffs.” It’s tremendously enjoyable to watch Ryland and Rocky resolve serious scientific problems, whether it be studying the astrophage, the alien sun and its immunity to astrophage, or even just how to interact with one another when there are different systems for breathing and eating. It’s heady without being weighed down by too much scientific jargon, making the analytical discussions accessible and thus engaging. The conflict of Project Hail Mary isn’t quite as realistic as The Martian, given to more convenient cheats with “alien technology,” though the resulting resolutions still felt well-earned and satisfying thanks to the setups and payoffs that screenwriter Drew Goddard (Bad Times at the El Royale, The Martian) has layered throughout. The source material’s author, Andy Weir, has found himself a very profitable and marketable niche, dropping science whiz everymans into impossible scenarios and having them think their way out of them. At least this time the entire world is working in tandem, and spending likely trillions of dollars, to save the entire solar system instead of just retrieving one misplaced American astronaut. Weir will likely be throwing darts at what new setting someone could be stranded in next.
Now, as a film adaptation, Project Hail Mary goes the distance. This is the first live-action movie directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller since 2014’s 22 Jump Street (granted, they were notoriously fired from finishing 2018’s Han Solo prequel). For those worried that the movie might be more anarchic or yuk-heavy like the duo’s animated oeuvre, such as The Lego Movie and the Spider-Verse films, they have adapted their style to best suit the material. There’s plenty of humor in this movie because of the ridiculously high stakes and general odd couple nature of our buddy dynamic, but the movie never feels like it loses its focus on the bigger world-saving picture. For Ryland, he knows this mission is a one-way trip, as the capsule doesn’t have enough fuel to make the return trip to Earth. He knows this is a sacrifice, but the entirety of all living things on the planet are holding out hope that his sacrifice is successful. Lord and Miller are able to balance the comedy and dramatic elements, as well as finding appropriate spaces for the viewer, as well as Ryland, to take in the natural majesty of space in another star system. The cinematography by Greg Frasier (Dune Parts One and Two) is grand and visually sumptuous, mixing in aspect ratios and focus depth to distinguish between timelines and emotional states. The musical score by Daniel Pemberton (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) is remarkably pleasing to the ears, finding room to be rousing and immersive and awe-inspiring, perfectly aiding the gorgeous visuals. At 150 minutes long, there’s the concern about pacing, especially with a movie that has so much to explain on the go as well devoting nearly half its runtime to flashback morsels doled throughout. I never felt lag. I also never felt crushed with the exposition, as the key details are expertly elevated, then as we progress from one challenge to the next, the screenplay keeps us keyed in on what matters in that moment.
And lastly, where this movie really hinges upon is on the relationship and performances of its two leads. I’m not talking about Sandra Huller (Anatomy of a Fall) as the head of the Project Hail Mary mission, assembling cooperation among the world’s countries and experts for this longest of long-shots. Gosling (Barbie, The Fall Guy) is an immensely charming actor, self-effacing and relatably overwhelmed by the faith entrusted to him. Gosling makes us instantly connect with the protagonist, feeling the same nagging pull of his curiosity and excitement when studying something as uniquely fascinating as alien microbes, as well as the mounting trepidation of being out of your depth and having to adapt quickly or else. The film is taken to another level of entertainment thanks to Rocky, who is the clear MVP of the movie. He’s brought to vibrant life through puppeteer James Ortiz, who also provides the computer translation voice, and through the magic of empathy, we’re shedding tears for a creature without a discernible face. The dynamic between the two characters is so enjoyable, so funny, and ultimately so poignant, that it warms your heart while making you feel full by its perfect closing image.
Project Hail Mary is a crowd-pleaser to its very DNA, big yet accessible, brainy but still capable of popcorn thrills and visual fireworks, heartfelt but mordantly funny and even goofy at points, and always engaging and rewarding. It’s also a hopeful movie, something the present world could use more of. In the face of epoch-ending cataclysm, human beings are capable of working together to solve impossible problems, and heroes can emerge from the least likely places. It’s inspirational without falling into sappier, inauthentic maudlin drama, and it’s a celebration not just of teamwork but interstellar teamwork, working across enormous barriers for a common good. It’s invigorating to watch human decency and noble sacrifices prevail but also just an enviable demonstration of competency. What a wonderful world where experts are given deference and praise for their expertise and professionalism (if only this didn’t feel so tragically the stuff of “fiction” in present-day America). Project Hail Mary is a superbly made adventure movie that has a little of everything we’re looking for in mass-appeal blockbusters, and there’s a considerable skill to hold all these parts together into a movie that feels complete and enriching. Fans of heady sci-fi, buddy comedies, disaster movies, and space operas should find plenty to enjoy, but really Project Hail Mary is the kind of movie that all you need is eyes and ears to understand the appeal.
Nate’s Grade: A
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Scream 7 (2026)
For a franchise that began as an ironic commentary on 1980s slasher movies, then sequels, then trilogies, then reboots, then legacy sequels, then franchises, it sure feels like Scream 7 has run out of things to say. There isn’t even a particular emphasis for critical assessment this go-round, perhaps because the entire enterprise feels clunky and rushed. I enjoyed Screams 5 and 6 and found them to be some of the best sequels in the series, so I was genuinely disappointed when the stars and creative team of those two movies left (or pushed out for political solidarity, but who’s to say?). In their place, we get Kevin Williamson as co-writer and director. Williamson was the original writer for the Scream series and has made a name for himself with his hyper-verbose, genre-riffing (The Faculty is underrated) and translated into running successful TV soaps with Dawson’s Creek and The Vampire Diaries. A director he is not, as evidenced by his only credit, 1999’s Teaching Mrs. Tingle. The seventh entry brings back Neve Campbell as Sidney Briscoe attempting to live a “normal life” running a coffee shop in middle America. Wouldn’t you know her teen daughter, Tatum (1883‘s Isabelle May), is being stalked by Ghostface because the terror never ends. There’s a higher body count with this sequel, and the kills are grislier and more cruel, including a guy impaled on a broken beer tap with a flow cascading out of his dead mouth, but this might be the first Scream movie I’d actively cite as boring. Even when the franchise has been at its worst, like 2011’s Scream 4, the last one scripted by Williamson and directed by Wes Craven, the movies still had some bite to them, some snarky genre commentary and twists. There’s none of that with Scream 7. There’s no focal point. It’s just a mechanical slasher with our middle-aged characters being asked yet again to scream and run. There are assorted franchise cameos that don’t make much sense in-universe except as sops to the fanbase to get them to come for the seventh movie in a 30-year horror franchise. The previous movies began to tease an enticing prospect, the idea that Ghostface could be an anonymous fame-seeker or conspiracy-rotted hanger-on. I thought for a while, “Was this movie going to present my suggestion for Scream 6 as Scream 7?” Nope. The eventual reveal of the killer(s) is the biggest shrug of the entire franchise. Beforehand, there’s chase scenes and cowering behind walls and dull genre cliches presented without ironic comment. Characters repeatedly talk about lives of constant trauma, yet they don’t even make a nod to modern elevated horror’s penchant for making everything a metaphor for trauma. Alas, Scream 7 is the kind of empty slasher movie the franchise was satirizing at its start, proving that with enough time, every franchise becomes its own parody.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Mercy (2026)
Detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) wakes up strapped to a chair. An A.I. judge (Rebecca Ferguson) informs him that he has been changed with the murder of his wife, and thanks to the new Mercy program instituted by the Los Angeles justice system, he will have 90 minutes to prove his innocence to a “reasonable doubt” level of 91% guilty (is that all a “reasonable doubt” is going for these days?). If he fails to convince the A.I. judge, then he will be terminated at the end of those 90 minutes. Start the clock.
Mercy is essentially a screen life movie with a high-concept twist, but at no time was I captivated with the mystery or intellectually satisfied by the application of its storytelling angle. We’ve seen similar movies recently, notably 2018’s Searching and far far less notably the 2025 War of the Worlds, where the movie screen is an extension of a computer screen that holds the borders and tools of our storytelling. In a way it reminds me of the found footage boom of the early 2010s, a hot gimmick that could get studio execs to say yes to projects that they would otherwise have passed on. However, there still needs to be careful ingenuity about how to incorporate these elements and, even more importantly, how to work within the limitations of your gimmick. With Mercy, our main character is basically trying to prove his innocence in real time with an A.I. judge who really functions more like an A.I. assistant, granting him access to people and databases even his police position would not have immediate access to. The recreation of the crime scene with the clues and evidence has a very Detroit Become Human feel (that’s a sci-fi video game that plays more like a movie). The A.I. judge is willing to help out this convicted man as long as he doesn’t admit guilt, because then it’s straight to execution time. For ninety minutes, Chris Raven has to crack his own murder case. The real-time element is meant to provide a sense of urgency, a literal ticking clock, but it’s also quite the misstep when your movie isn’t very good. This allows the audience to mentally count down how much time is left before your movie is finally over. The screen life aspects are pretty superficial and visually dull even if the graphics as being pulled around like interactive three-dimensional objects. The fact that this movie was shot for IMAX is astounding.
The problem is that the plot is too predictable at every turn. We have a future criminal justice system made for automation and expediency, so it’s not going to be too much of a leap to suspect it might not be operating at the level of success its proponents profess. There’s a long history of stories presenting a new technological leap that is meant to be fool-proof that, shocker, is proven to be anything but. Right away, the audience is already going to be suspecting that the Mercy system is compromised or at least prone to errors like our present criminal justice system. We can safely assume that our protagonist is innocent, and if that’s the case then the implicit question is how many others who were tried and convicted were also ultimately innocent? Some might call it a death row metaphor but it’s literally the same thing just with a high-tech A.I. spin. The next question becomes is the potential error a sign of the limitations of assigning such power to seemingly infallible computers, or is it being deliberately compromised and manipulated? Are certain powers-that-be using this as an excuse to eliminate undesirable peoples and populations? The case of Chris Raven is meant to unveil a larger, systemic problem of justice not being served. And yet, the movie doesn’t exactly explore this obvious implication.
I’m going to dive into spoilers with this next paragraph because I think it’s worthwhile and also I don’t think you’re missing anything with Mercy. If you already assume that Chris is innocent or set up, there’s only so many other places you can go as a story. So with that warning addressed, the Mercy system is really easy to trick, as evidenced by our eventual culprit who has the know-how to digitally erase and alter security footage. Didn’t know this guy had those kinds of skills but, hey, people can surprise you or, more accurately, when the screenplay calls upon enough coincidences. However, there’s another layer of conspiracy afoot. This one guy is responsible for setting Chris Raven up because his own brother was accused and executed by Mercy even after he gave the police an alibi that was ignored. He wants vengeance for the injustice done to his family. This means there’s also the unraveling of who was responsible for this other guy’s wrongful arrest and execution, and wouldn’t you know it happens to be Chris Raven’s own partner, who needed the Mercy program to be seen as trustworthy. The movie never deals with the implications of this. It doesn’t really confront the moral turpitude of killing an innocent man, and it doesn’t think big picture to ask how many other innocent people have been sacrificed as cover. Amazingly, the last line of the movie involves Chris Raven saying, “Humans and A.I., we all make mistakes. And we learn.” What? Technology shouldn’t make mistakes. Alexander Pope didn’t say, “To err is human, and also these new contraptions. Have you seen these textile factories? Wild.” We don’t expect technology to fail us, especially if we are putting judgement over life and death as one of its tasks. This sounds like dubious excuse-making for a system literally killing innocents in the name of the law, and yet our hero treats the whole revelation like, “Well, you gotta break some eggs for an omelette.” It’s such a callous, incompetent response to an immediate problem that his own police force is exploiting. Yet the movie doesn’t blame the faulty A.I. system, which I repeat even some random guy was able to hack and manipulate, and instead looks at it as a tool, like when people try to separate guns from gun violence. However, in this case, the gun is making its own calculations on who deserves to die, and, again, being manipulated by randos. This gets a little more unseemly when you realize that the movie studio’s release is from Amazon, which would very much like you, dear citizen, to stop villainizing A.I. and accept its omnipresence in your new digital life.
Mercifully, Mercy holds to its countdown, though there’s an extra period of “stoppage time” with an action sequence outside of the chair as climax. The mystery is dull, the plot is predictable (if you don’t suspect who the real killer is after 30 minutes, this might be your first movie, so I’ll tell you now – they get better), the world building is underwritten (who needs an exploration of the large-ranging moral implications of this system when we get police on drone cycles!), and the fun of its creative ingenuity is gasping. It’s forever going to be the Chris-Pratt-stuck-in-a-death-chair movie. This concept could have worked but there needed to be significant revisions, especially unpacking the larger implications for this new system of justice outsourcing justice to all-knowing machines. That’s not this movie. Mercy isn’t even overtly critical of artificial intelligence, instead excusing its faults as “user error” from bad actors. It’s a film too afraid to have any strong sentiments, which makes for a pretty lifeless time at the movies. The machines have won.
Nate’s Grade: D+
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Send Help (2026)
I am grateful for Sam Raimi and I’m even more grateful for Sam Raimi movies. The director began in low-budget gore-fests with a dash of goofy slapstick to balance the gross-out gratuity, and these sensibilities have never left the man. He enlivens any genre he works in, from Western (The Quick and the Dead), to superhero (original Spider-Man trilogy, Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness), and the occasional awards-drama crime tragedy (A Simple Plan). But the man is at his best on his home turf of horror/thrillers with his gonzo style and devilish sense of humor. Send Help is the most unabashedly “Sam Raimi movie” since 2009’s Drag Me to Hell, which already makes it worth your time. It’s basically the schlockier, more condensed and focused version of Triangle of Sadness, even borrowing a similar premise of a put-upon corporate subordinate (Rachel McAdams) and her fussy, misogynist, blowhard of a boss (Dylan O’Brien) stranded on a deserted island and the power dynamics flip. Now she’s the one in charge because she has leaned survivalist skills thanks to her aspirations to being a contestant on the reality TV show Survivor. As the movie progresses, what I really appreciated was the level of nuance given to both of these stranded characters. It would be all-too easy to make her character impossibly noble, and the screenplay adds some intriguing dimensions that make you question some of her motives. It would be all-too easy to make his character irredeemably evil, and while you’re never going to be in danger of switching loyalties, the screenplay provides shades of empathy to him too. I also appreciated how nasty the movie gets, both in lurches of horror comedy zaniness, but also in how nasty the characters get to one another. McAdams is wonderful, though the concerted effort to “ugly up” a Hollywood starlet amounts to frumpy sweaters and a dash of tuna fish at the corner of her mouth. There was no point I wasn’t entertained, especially from the shifting dynamic between the two leads. I may be in a minority here but Send Help is a better developed and more satisfying version of Best Picture-nominee Triangle of Sadness. It made me laugh and cower. May we never be without new Sam Raimi movies.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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People We Meet on Vacation (2026)
I’ll readily confess, I enjoy a good romantic comedy. I’ve even written a few rom-com Web series. Who doesn’t want to be captivated by charming characters, witty, banter,, and a yearning for a romantic coupling? The Sony-by-way-of-Netflix-acquisition People We Meet on Vacation is based on popular author Emily Henry’s 2021 breakthrough novel of the same name. I was expecting lots of fizz and frivolity, which can be had in doses, but I think the adaptation makes a few key mistakes that hampered my rom-com good time vibes. People We Meet on Vacation is not whom I was expecting, and maybe that’s me being too demanding, or maybe my travel companions made me think about switching seats.
I’ll dispense with the exact plot details further into this review, but the story in general is thus: Girl and Guy are friends but maybe also secretly like each other but also sometimes have other people, boyfriends.girlfriends, that they’re supposed to like more instead. Eventually, they grapple with these confusing feelings while also visiting global tourist destinations as “platonic vacation buddies.”
First, I didn’t buy the main characters as close friends. We’re introduced to them as they travel home to small-town Ohio together for the holidays from their freshmen year at Boston College, and they’re immediately bickering and annoying and can’t stand one another. The film is following a friends-to-lovers path, but I guess at first it decided to become an enemies-to-friends storyline. Even as the animosity thaws, I never really bought what compelled these characters to be best friends, so much so that they make a plan to make a trip every summer across the world together (the disposable income these newly indebted college grads have access to blows my mind; he’s a teacher!). The premise is workable, and as you would expect there are feelings that begin to get messy over the years of vacation, but I never felt the core friendship, so whether or not they ruined it with a burgeoning romance never felt like a credible threat for me. What is there to ruin exactly? We’re jumping from vacation to vacation summers apart, the gaps are meant to serve as storytelling glue; we’re meant to just assume, “Oh, they became good friends,” without seeing it for ourselves. I think this misstep could have been avoided simply by making the two of them less acrimonious in their earliest introduction. Make the friendship credible, and even better, make me like them together and see that they bring out other sides in one another that others fail to elicit.
This could also be a factor of my second misstep, namely the casting. I did not feel a flicker of chemistry between Emily Bader (My Lady Jane) and Tom Blythe (young sexy Snow in 2023 Hunger Games prequel), and I think it’s mostly the guy’s fault. I was getting 2011 Oscar hosting flashbacks. Here me out, dear reader. In 2011, Anne Hathaway and James Franco were hired as hosts to have the awards show appeal to a younger demographic (begin knowing laughter). Franco’s energy was so low that critics joked he might have been stoned the whole time. As a result, Hathaway had to overcompensate for his dearth of charisma and energy and was stuck doing far too much. In People We Meet on Vacation, our female lead, Poppy, is a chatterbox extrovert, and our male lead, Alex, is a sullen introverted homebody. Naturally, opposite personality dynamics can make for engaging relationships, but the work needs to be careful. I found Alex to be a bore. The most he gets pushed out of his comfort zone is by skinny dipping and, separately, pretending to be on a honeymoon for free drinks. That’s it. That’s Mr. Wild on Vacation (more on that next). Most of the time he’s just converting oxygen to carbon dioxide on screen. As a result, Bader has to go above and beyond, talking circles around her taciturn scene partner and bowling him over with personality, so much so that her outsized personality begins to flirt from charming to dangerously annoying. The misaligned character dynamics and characterization form a ceiling of my engagement.
Thirdly, I was expecting more of a flirty freedom from the premise. Poppy works as a travel writer and fantasizes about being someone completely new on vacation. With that concept, you would assume the story would explore that dichotomy, the woman who uses these trips to reinvent herself, try on different versions of herself that can be dramatically different, adopting new personas and exploring aspects of herself that she didn’t feel comfortable embracing as regular ole Poppy. This seems like the most obvious direction to take the story with a title like People We Meet on Vacation (the new people we meet are… ourselves). Astonishingly, the movie is not that. There is only one instance of Poppy and Alex leaning into the freedom afforded to them through their vacations to pretend to be different people. While in New Orleans, they pretend to be newlyweds and this grants them free drinks, and this new persona gets Alex to dance provocatively; he even does The Worm. Does this different version of Alex lead to anything more? No. It would make sense with all their free drinks for this to be the moment that Alex and Poppy get even closer, imitating newlyweds, and cross a line of their friendship. Does this happen? No. That’s a whole other international vacation where the characters aren’t pretending to be other people. We can break this down on an even smaller level. Maybe the characters have events in these vacations that push them out of their comfort zones and challenge them in ways that change them as people, like discovering an aspect of themselves they hadn’t given thought to before. If you’re going to Tuscany, do something that’s unique to Tuscany. Do something that matters. It never feels like the travel is actually making an impact on these two characters. Rather, the vistas change but the focus is always on their will they-won’t they, which isn’t dependent on their setting. They could have just gone down the block for the same results. At 118 minutes long, some of these various vacations might have been consolidated if they are so inconsequential.
Lastly, when the movie isn’t separating itself from the pack by embracing its unique story elements, it falls back on the familiar cliches of the genre. I’m talking stuff that even a layman to rom-coms would even know, things like the big kiss in the rain, the big Act Three dash, usually out of an airport. It’s stuff like that, and cliches by themselves are not inherently bad but they have to feel authentic to the characters and stories. It might be a cliche to simply say that you need to make the cliches your own. If I genuinely cared about the characters, and felt their chemistry, then I wouldn’t be nitpicking and noticing the cliches as much. It just so happens that a shaky adaptation can make reliance on genre cliches more noticeable.
Now, I know the majority of this review has been critical of People We Meet on Vacation, and that’s mostly because I think this movie could have been better from some pretty obvious missteps. The version of People We Meet on Vacation is… fine. It’s consistently cute and amusing and harmless, an afternoon movie that can pass the time well enough especially for those predisposed to romantic comedies. It’s a fairly good-looking movie with an impressive war-chest for music licenses, including Ms. Taylor Swift. My middling frustrations with the movie seem to be echoed by many of Henry’s fans, that whatever made this story special seems to have been emptied, replaced with cozy genre cliches. I liked the ending, cliches and all, because it felt fitting for those characters, their different dynamic, and felt it had been sufficiently set up to serve as a payoff. I wanted more moments like this, that felt unique to this story, to these characters, and actually made use of their specific settings. No other characters in this movie matter other than our leads, so it’s a shame that I didn’t feel particularly excited for their eventual coupling. I didn’t find their characters repellent or mean-spirited, just ordinary, lacking a distinct personality. They were blandly likeable but the kind of people you’d meet and forget easily, vacation or no. People We Meet on Vacation is an agreeable movie that had the possibility for more, and that’s what lingers longest for me.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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The Rip (2026)
Director Joe Carnahan (The A-Team, Narc) excels at machismo, and I mean that not as a detriment. He makes muscular action-thrillers, often about corrupted men coming to terms with their ruination. 2012’s The Grey is still one of the best movies I’ve ever seen released in January. Well here comes The Rip, also released in January, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as combustible Miami cops who follow a tip to a cartel stash house that holds a cache of twenty million dollars. The cops are supposed to follow protocol, call it into their superiors, but with that kind of money, much more than what the tip reported, it’s hard to resist the life-altering implications of indulging in that kind of haul. I thought The Rip, named after the seizure of contraband, was going to be a modern-day Treasure of the Sierra Madre, where the power of greed is irresistible and leads to betrayals and murder among our characters. It does that, with each questionable decision going against protocol making us question who might be most susceptible and who might be heading for a collision. The movie, co-written by Carnahan, is strictly genre boilerplate. The characters are never more than archetypes, the dialogue is aggressively expository often reminding us of all the conflicts and characters on the periphery that haven’t been brought back yet, and the majority of the film is a contained thriller awaiting trouble at the stash house. And yet I was entertained from start to finish thanks to the cast and a simmering tension that Carnahan unleashes between his paranoid characters. There are some late plot turns that I don’t know if they’re actually clever, convoluted, or both. It’s the kind of thing that’s meant to excuse bizarre behavior that we’d have no reason to assume differently, so it feels a little bit like being jerked around. However, The Rip is a fairly fun way to blow through two hours built upon movie stars unleashing their swagger.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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