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The Love Hypothesis (2026)
This may have been my wife’s most anticipated movie of 2026. Ali Hazelwood is one of her can’t-miss favorite authors, and 2021’s The Love Hypothesis was her debut published work that cemented Hazelwood as a romance genre giant. The film adaptation is further evidence just how familiar formulas can be enlivened when the filmmakers recognize what is important to get right. The setup seems initially contrived, with PHD-student Olive Smith (Riverdale‘s Lili Reinhart) needing to find a fake boyfriend so her bestie will finally date the guy she once crushed over, and Dr. Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman) needing to find a fake girlfriend so he receives his missing grant funds. Together, they will have to fool their friends and colleagues and maybe, just maybe, these opposites might find some real chemistry of their own. While being predictable, you simply won’t care because the fun of the whole combustible coupling is infectious. The bickering and eventual softening is a tried-and-true winning formula. Both of the actors have plenty of humor they get to showcase through awkward cover stories and improved physicality. It helps that the movie is directed by Claire Scanlon, who has a long history directing TV comedies like The Office and Kimmy Schmidt. The comedy bits feel natural to the story while giving the right berth for the actors to really hit their potential. The movie might be predictable as any genre formula can, but it’s the charming actors and their interaction that provides the right amount of swoon. I don’t know if it’s been confirmed in the Hazelwood fan-base but the male lead is definitely giving autism spectrum vibes, with his literal manner, rigid system of expectations, misunderstanding of social cues, and tonal affect. He’s more than a ball of tics, or dismissively a prickly Mr. Darcy stand-in, and Olive is more than an adorakable flibbertigibbet of a young woman. They are more than just facile genre archetypes, and the actors have genuine flinty-flirty chemistry that makes every interaction worth watching. The writing is clever without being self-consciously preoccupied with pithy banter or set pieces, instead drawing humor more from the characters, conflicts, and personalities in clash. There’s even a dash of satirical nods, like when Olive bemoans all the improbable scenarios that force people to share a bed. The Love Hypothesis is a sweet, funny, and ultimately satisfying example of the enduring appeal and comforts of rom-coms when they get the basics right.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Primetime (2026)
The mass media landscape of the early 2000s is a wince-inducing memory-hole of scandalized fearmongering and celebrity navel-gazing, much of which we’re still living through today considering our second-term with a tabloid president. The bending of reality TV and documentary subjects into confined, pre-fab identities to play to our baser levels of entertainment was hyper-accelerated from the rise in Internet gotcha journalism that looked to scrape the bottom of the barrel as a means of pride. “We’re giving the people what they want,” the slop-artists of the world justified themselves. Part of that peak slop was the television series To Catch a Predator. It began as a more leering segment on the Dateline news magazine show before it spun off into its own primetime specials, with journalist Chris Hansen trying to uncover some sort of psychological insight into grown men who drove long distances to meet up with children they had deeply inappropriate online conversations with. It wasn’t news-worthy but it was pure spectacle and Americans couldn’t get enough. What exactly is this show’s legacy? That’s what Primetime is here to explore in a Lynchian fever dream of style, bold swings, and definite creative license. Amongst all the grotesquerie, there’s an actual sad and haunting perspective here to helpfully measure the depravity, which can become a bit too much of the same muck.
It’s 2006, and Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) is trying to reach new heights of success. His Dateline segment is becoming insatiably popular with the American public, enough that NBC is putting it in primetime opposite ABC’s Lost. It’s a bigger stage and Hansen has to meet the raised scrutiny, with many peers in TV journalism looking down on his exploitation hidden camera show, as well as the National Enquirer extorting him with pictures of Hansen having an affair. The TV show is a hit but nobody feels good about it, and Hansen has to wonder how far he can ride this popularity to greater credibility. How far will the show go, and Hansen with it, to chase the best predators to chase the highest ratings?
First things first, by exploring the failings of the people behind the TV show, Primetime is not equivocating nor mitigating the harm of the pedophiles caught in these televised busts. It’s not excusing their behavior but it does question how much these men would have done on their own without someone on the other line reeling them in for exposure. It’s not like these men were fully entrapped. They made the choice to engage in sexually lascivious dialogue online with children, and they made the choice to meet in person with the strictly stated purpose of sexual activity with minors. They drove the distance, they stashed their vehicles with condoms and lube, and they entered the house with an underage decoy. These men are certainly guilty, but the clarity of their wrongdoing does not wash away the moral queasiness of the TV crew transforming their predatory behavior into righteous vigilante justice for mass consumption. Examining our own darker impulses does not cancel out or minimize the darkness of others.
Director Lance Oppenheim (Spermworld, the forthcoming You Can See Everything) makes his narrative debut from the realm of documentaries and definitely brings a heightened sense of reality to the production. Camera angles are all over the place, sometimes so close to the actors you can see their pores; sets will take on extra surreal layers like the central Predator stage that always has an island in the middle of the house, with lighting that feels like a hellish furnace; the movie is shot on many different video and film formats with different aspect ratios, intermingling the slippery sense of what is real and what is staged. It’s a sensationalized approach that encourages the actors to go big, and the biggest of all is Pattinson (The Drama, The Odyssey). I was spellbound by the man’s performance, a combination of darkly comic neediness and desperately serious intonation. Watching him insist on more takes to nail the right line reading of the perverted text exchanges is hilarious but also a perfect minor detail about who this guy is and what he sees this show as, coming down to a grandiose battle between the cosmic forces of good and evil. I’m not kidding. There’s a lengthy anecdote Hansen reveals about discovering real evil in the world on an international assignment. The movie leaves it open whether Hansen is a true believer or is just using this personal story as a flimsy rationalization for his show. There are plenty of characters who have no such illusions about the kind of show they are part of, particularly Merritt Weaver as Hansen’s producer and chief enabler. Much of Primetime feels like we’re trapped in a room full of ghouls, each subsisting off of human misery and finding ways to assuage their personal guilt and accountability.
Every salacious second of Primetime feels elevated with the filmmakers underlining how exactly they want you to feel. The insights are going to be rather limited as we watch person after person compromise their morals for ratings or money or acceptance. It’s not a very deep look at the show, more of a jumping off point to condemn in every direction. I doubt the real Chris Hansen was as contemptuous or self-involved as the film version, a man who wakes his boys up to watch the latest taping of To Catch a Predator, you know, a show for the whole family. He seems more like a satirized cardboard stand-in of a media figure than a real person. I’m not complaining about the lack of subtlety for such an unsubtle TV series, though it doesn’t degenerate into a facile “who’s really exploiting who?” question of moralizing blame-shifting. I appreciate the overt grandiosity and operatic sense of style that Oppenheim displays throughout, lending the movie a hypnotic and nightmarish quality that would have made David Lynch proud. While watching Primetime might not educate you much as an outsider to the ways of the show, it does convey the grimy anxiety of the moment and its cumulative effect. You might want to take a lengthy shower afterwards to make yourself feel clean.
Fortunately, the movie plays its own narrative bait-and-switch game, a rug-pull Hansen might tacitly approve. The real heart of this movie is the character of Daniel “Dan” Plum (Skyler Gisondo), an aspiring actor looking for his big break. His audition video features him singing a song from Rent before the casting director cuts him off to ask, incredulously, “Do you know what kind of show you’re here for?” He doesn’t, and his complex process of discovering just what will be expected of him, and his response to that pressure, is the missing emotional core of this surreal hyperbolic cartoon of media satire. This young man’s dream is to be an actor and he now has an opportunity that will pay him handsomely, provide accommodations for his travel, and present a primetime showcase that millions will watch. It feels like he’s come far. His more dismissive friend rationalizes, “Yeah, but people watching won’t remember you.” He’s the decoy. He tries to view the role as a character, thinking of back-story and motivation and all the acting techniques he’s learned, but he’s only just the bait. He’s there to be believably underage to lure in the lustful targets, requiring Dan to raise the pitch of his voice or dress more childish. He thinks he’s an important part of the show, and he even gets to have a catch with Hansen like he’s some surrogate father figure, but he’s just another person being exploited. The awkward acclimation of Dan to his work environment produces a rise-and-fall narrative that allows us to witness the changes and harm this job is taking on his soul. The accumulated cost of the moral degradation of the show is exemplified by this man’s journey and how normal it all becomes. It becomes an ongoing question of how much he’s willing to accept and where his breaking point may be. The Hansen performance will get the attention, but it’s this character that provides the unexpected tragedy. As much as Pattinson’s gonzo performance is the draw, Gisondo’s performance is the lasting power.
Primetime is disturbing and darkly comic, satirical and broad while also being dismissively insightful for a drama about a group of people taking it upon themselves to root out pedophiles. It’s got two killer performances, intoxicating style that can also be insufferable for many, and an overall elevated and surreal tone that makes the movie feel bizarre and superficially connected to its topic. There’s plenty to be entranced with here but also a lingering feeling, much like from those who watched To Catch a Predator, that there could have been a better presentation for this material that would catch more than headlines.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Resident Evil (2026)
I’ve never played any of the popular Resident Evil video games but I have watched every movie, at least the ones starring Milla Jovovich, as I consider them the right kind of entertaining trash. In no way will I argue that any of the six movies from 2002 to 2017 are defensibly good by traditional standards (I’m purposely ignoring the 2021 failed reboot Welcome to Racoon City). I will, however, gladly sit and watch any of them if they are on TV because they are, at their best, gloriously ridiculous and silly spectacles. My interest dramatically increased in a new Resident Evil movie when writer/director Zack Cregger’s name was attached. The man behind twisty genre-benders Barbarian and Weapons helming a video game franchise best known for schlocky genre filmmakers like Paul W.S. Anderson? Weapons won an Oscar for a performance, a rarity for a horror movie, and now that same filmmaker wants to revive Resident Evil? My interest increased even further when Cregger confirmed it would be an original story and not really beholden to the established characters and plots of the many games (many fans did not agree with me). It felt like a fresh start with an exciting filmmaker on the rise, and having seen Resident Evil, I can declare it a gory blast, a brilliantly-calculated thrill ride to make you laugh and scream in good fun.
The entire 90-minute movie follows one character’s hellish night into the madness of the early signs of a deadly outbreak. We follow Bryan (Austin Abrams) as a medical courier delivering organs to hospitals. He’s ready to head home when he gets a special urgent delivery needed in Racoon City up in the snowy mountains. It will pay double and so he snatches the opportunity. It might be the allure of more money or it might be another chance to think about something other than the frightening reality that his girlfriend (Sara Paxton, off-screen) is pregnant. Along the dark and snowy drive up the mountains, a woman walks into his path and Bryan strikes her with his car. The rest of his night is about to get so much worse.
Considering its basis as a survival horror game, at least until it became a bombastic action-movie opera that better resembles the Jovovich screen spectacles, I think a streamlined approach by Cregger is smart. It narrows down the universe to this one guy’s very bad night, and it presents an immediately immersive experience, akin to playing a game and thinking through what is your best option out of a bunch of very bad options. From the very beginning, we are in Bryan’s frantic perspective. What he knows and experiences are what we know and experience. The clarity of focus provides a satisfying line of escalation as he gets into more and more danger. Cregger allows the audience to think through Bryan’s predicaments along with him, and there isn’t much he does that seems out of question, considering the extreme circumstances. I appreciated how once things really start going sideways that Bryan doesn’t miraculously transform into like an action movie hero. He’s just a normal guy relentlessly in over his head like any of us would be confronting monstrous horrors. I loved how bad he is with guns. Just because Bryan has some experience playing video games doesn’t mean he knows how to operate real firearms, and that doesn’t mean that the weapons of the real world perform like they do in games. There’s an ongoing joke about how he keeps trying to shoot off padlocks and failing that made me smirk every time. These little touches of realism in an elevated space made Resident Evil feel more engaging. It made it feel like even the little things mattered. This guy felt vulnerable, and sometimes his impulsive solutions only serve to get him into more trouble. The screenwriting plotting of A-to-B-to-C has a satisfying logic that manages to ground the mayhem on its own terms. He often has to think through an obstacle.
Cregger’s command of a scene is so enjoyable and assured, and he knows when he wants to make you squirm and when he wants to make you laugh. He can draw out a scene with excellent sound design for chills, like when a figure is quickly advancing on Bryan and clamoring up stairs while he desperately tries to reload a shotgun. The pacing of the moment is terrific. The resignation of desperation can also lead to many dread-fueled moments, like venturing into dark tunnels to sewers to blood-soaked halls. You don’t want to go down there, but you also kind of want to see. There’s also a heightened level that naturally draws mordant laughs, like when he’s being chased around a flipped-over police vehicle and sloppily shooting behind him. The movie wants you to laugh at the absurdity of trying to make sense of this nightmare scenario. It’s the release to get ready for more. Much of the humor is drawn from subverting our expectations of genre movies, like trying to ram open a locked gate, and particularly Bryan’s response to the madness. His panicked, befuddled reactions and clumsy physicality, accompanied with often high-pitched scream, serve as a reminder that he is a normal guy in unusual circumstances (I’d like to try and see you do any better). One of the biggest laughs for me was just a joke about stairs.
This is also a great looking movie. Cregger has the enviable talent of cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, the man who photographed The Crow, the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, and nine (!) Ridley Scott movies since 2012. The man knows how to frame striking contrasts, so the whites of the snow-covered landscapes in the first half visually pop with the dark blacks of the silhouettes and the blood trails. The movements of the camera and compositions add such a charged sense of energy that reminded me of the best of Sam Raimi without feeling like a derivation in Cregger’s overall sense of style. The movie also doesn’t bend over backwards to bring to life the visual dynamic of the game, though there are more than a few passing gun barrel POV shots to sate the faithful.
This is also a very messy movie in the best/worst way. For gore-hounds, there is some impressively gnarly gore, which isn’t surprising considering the viral outbreak is turning residents into split-faced, multi-tentacled monsters. The body horror is gruesomely inventive. There’s one monster that reminded me of a different video game, 2004’s Katamari Damacy, a Japanese game where you start with a small sticky ball and roll it around, collecting more and more items and people, growing in size to the point that you attach the whole world. Imagine that but a snowman of men, and you can only see limbs moving at angles that limbs shouldn’t do. It’s quite unnerving to glimpse. I also found myself audibly wincing during a sequence where zombies are throwing themselves off the roofs of buildings while Bryan runs down an alley, bodies exploding all around him in eruptions of viscera. There’s another sequence of zombie rats that makes me shake my head in disbelief even now remembering it. Credit to Cregger, the man is unafraid to go places other horror movies fear to tread. Whether it’s animals or children, nobody is safe in this disturbing universe. There was one moment in a mutated maternity ward where I cautiously decided to shut my eyes to avoid poisoning my brain with fresh nightmare fuel to review when I came home and embraced my almost two-year-old son. There are some things I just don’t need to see presently.
At a brisk 90 minutes, this is one of those rare movies I think would have benefited from another ten to fifteen minutes, especially with its abrupt ending. The final act loses some of the momentum accumulated beforehand, which isn’t a deal-breaker considering the film was moving like a runaway freight train up until that point. It also feels like a slightly different movie, both in approach and tone, going bigger and not exactly better. There’s also a question over what is gained from giving Bryan a characterization starting point. Over the course of the movie, he certainly re-examines his perspective on being a prospective father (and that’s before the mutated maternity ward). I thought this was going to climatically lead to a significant deliberation over making a selfish versus selfless decision, but Cregger doesn’t go there. The ending is kind of a cinematic middle finger to anyone expecting that character arc to come to something more meaningful, which is fine, but then why include the thread at all unless it’s just intended to be another deliberate rug-pull of your expectations? While the last ten minutes doesn’t quite live up to the amazing alacrity of the prior 80 minutes, it doesn’t ruin the good fun Cregger has earned in excess.
For many years, I thought it was impossible to make a good video game movie. This was because of the interactive nature of games versus the more passive medium of movies, but it was also a statement borne of the adaptations of the time, many of which had Uwe Boll’s name attached. I’m here to say times have changed but also so have the games. Over the last two decades, video games have reached new creative heights and that includes dramatic storytelling depth as well. Playing a game like Red Dead Redemption II is like burning through seven seasons of an epic and invigorating TV series. That’s not the intent of a movie like Cregger’s Resident Evil, a more streamlined and specifically designed contraption that is like riding a perfectly engineered ride. By the end credits, you might just have to catch your breath. While I have some minor quibbles about the ending and some dangling plot threads, Resident Evil is such a nasty, squishy, gruesomely entertaining movie, that I’m thankful for the privilege of watching Cregger operate at B-movie studio level (will Cury Barker be able to find similar results with his looming Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot?). If we can give artists with a vision the berth to see it through, we might be able to turn around every moribund video game franchise. Look out for Ari Aster’s Doom next, and it will still be three hours and a metaphor for penises.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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The Runner (2026)
Can we all agree at this point that Gal Gadot is pretty limited as a performer? There’s no shame in acknowledging a limit of range for actors, as many beloved actors have their bandwidths that allow them to excel, even if they are narrow (I’m thinking actors like Harrison Ford or Rami Malek). Placing Gadot in constant motion seems like a possible solution, and The Runner looks like somebody combined Phone Booth and Run Lola Run, except it’s not nearly as good as either of those two predecessors. The problem with this movie is that it’s a concept that makes little sense the more you consider it. Gadot plays Maia Martin, a prosecutor leading a case against a mob boss. It just so happens the villain has hired the Chatty Assassin to kidnap Maia’s son, put him into a diabetic coma, and coerce her into murdering the lead witness in the case. She’ll have to make this happen in real-time during her morning run while the Chatty Assassin hacks her phone and teases her about her past. If you’re a crime boss, why are you paying an assassin to go to improbable lengths to engineer someone else to kill the target when the assassin could just kill them? Just because it’s revealed that Maia killed her abusive father as a young child doesn’t mean she knows what she’s doing as a would-be assassin. This family back-story seems artlessly intrusive, with the Chatty Assassin using it to try and pick at Maia’s delicate psyche. Maybe that’s why he also shames her for taking lingerie photos for her boyfriend on her phone. Much of the movie is watching a heavy-breathing Gadot run through the streets and alleys of London, terrorizing the local citizens, snatching phones, trying to find some communication end-around but really just looking like a criminal nuisance. Director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland, The Mauritanian) tries to liven up the proceedings with a lively camera and docu-drama quick edits and obtrusive inserts, but it’s all trying to dress up such an un-involving and unintentionally hilarious ticking-clock thriller scenario. There’s so much downtime because the killer’s is requiring Maia to run to her location. Could she not have taken a taxi? It all leads to a preposterous ending that is trying to be clever but is so convoluted to be laughable. Especially when you consider the Chatty Assassin’s back-up plan is to blow up the whole building, why even bother with Plan A with all its damning variables to go wrong? There isn’t one great sequence that feels built out of this premise and the plot events. This movie just doesn’t work, and while Gadot doesn’t improve it, no actor could have saved this mess. Not even porting over the entire pulse-pounding soundtrack to Run Lola Run could have saved this limp 75-minute workout video.
Nate’s Grade: D+
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One Night Only (2026)
What if you could only have sex one night a year unless you were legally married? That’s the bizarre premise of the even more bizarre rom-com One Night Only, nick-named the “sex Purge movie.” Directed by Will Gluck (Anyone But You, Easy A), here is a mainstream studio rom-com with a dystopian sci-fi twist, and I cannot stop thinking about what a weird miscalculation this whole movie is. Rather than worrying whether down-on-his-luck, recently dumped nice guy pizzeria man Owen (Callum Turner) will find a rebound, or whether struggling singer and sexually frustrated Allie (Monica Barbaro) will find a man worthy of her desires, instead I just kept wondering more about this nightmare world.
Given that the setting is a fascist government state where those in power are regulating people’s bodily autonomy, it feels really strange to take this scenario and turn it into a breezy rom-com. It’s not that you can’t set comedies across any landscape of tone, but significant work needs to be ably handled to make that work. As an extreme example, imagine a meet-cute between a star-crossed couple of crazy kids that just can’t get enough of each other, complete with wise-cracking gay best friends, set in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Hopefully you just winced reading that. It feels like a miscalculation to tell this kind of story with this tone and with this setting. Frustratingly, the movie rarely engages with the larger implication of its fascist state, and that’s exactly where all of my thinking went. I didn’t so much care about the characters as I did this scary world they seemed too blithe to contemplate. If this totalitarian government is so against premarital sex, why do they even allow for one available night? Wouldn’t having no available time force more people into marriages? Why would they even allow a “sex purge night?” Along those lines, what is the divorce rate in this universe? I would assume numerous very determined and very horny singles would be shacking up for many a weekend marriage that they could then annul. Once you’ve got the official matrimonial ring on that finger, does that thwart extra-marital sex? Can you cheat on your spouse, as long as the person you’re cheating with is also married? If that’s the case, what’s stopping every person at the age of early adulthood from getting married to the first agreeable person, shaking hands, and going about their business for the rest of their lives until they actually may want to settle down with a legitimate partner? How exactly is masturbation covered? Why does the conservative fascist government look the other way when it comes to non-heterosexual activity? That seems certainly out of character for repressive regimes policing people they despise. Wouldn’t there be a seismic exodus of unmarried people to other countries that permit premarital sex? Wouldn’t there be a natural brain drain of young professionals leaving the American work force? It’s a world that doesn’t make sense and the more you pull at the edges, the more it all unravels, and that’s all I wanted to do, because this setup was so bizarre and unique, I just wanted to keep exploring this alternate world.
There’s another aspect that the sex during this one night of physical freedom must be used with a contraceptive. Much of the movie becomes a chase to find a condom, strangely like a 1997 Jennifer Love Hewitt sex comedy The Trojan War. This didn’t make sense to me. First off, wholesalers should be selling out of condoms and up-charging them all week leading up to this event considering the incredible rise in demand approaching. How does the government know whether or not someone’s genitals have a thin latex barrier over them? Even if that stopped your traditional hetero sexual congress, you’re going to tell me enterprising and horny people are going to limit themselves to only one option? More so, if this is indeed a conservative American government, and considering they’re oppressively dictating people’s bodily activities, I’d say that’s clear, then they also likely subscribe to the panic that not enough Americans are having enough babies. The insistence of contraceptives would seem antithetical to their larger goals of a higher birthrate. Imagine a government office making sure certain people get condoms and others don’t. I did laugh at Owen trying to improvise a condom in desperation. Imagine baby booms every nine months after this sex purge. It seems believable given the circumstances. Again, all I want to do with this movie is pick apart its strange cracked-mirror world-building, which we don’t often get in rom-coms.
I’ll say that this premise could have worked but it needed a different setting. It needed to be in a more fantastical and altered version of a near-future world, something akin to 2009’s Timer or a Black Mirror episode. It can be recognizable but it shouldn’t be too recognizable given the fantastical nature of its premise. Maybe it’s about a couple trying to go through the bureaucratic hoops and hurdles and paperwork to apply to have a sexual relationship, something more akin to runaway regulation and satire than merely a fascist police state that wants to make unmarried people second-class citizens.
The problem with releasing this movie with this premise with this setting in 2026 is that the United States is already undergoing the starts and stops of a government more politically aligned with fascism than democracy. For many, especially those in vulnerable communities, it’s not hard to imagine a universe where government-controlled sexual health is a reality when the current administration is stripping people of rights, protections, and especially bodily autonomy for women and the trans community. It’s harder to brush this daunting and terrifying reality aside to sit in a theater and giggle at familiar meet-cute antics and rom-com plot devices when this world seems too close to our own. And when the movie is so resolutely incurious about analyzing its universe, then it becomes even worse. Rather than being some kind of revolutionary act of defiance, an exploration of the forces being oppressed by this regime and their refusal of acceptance of this absurd status quo, it demonstrates a myopic acceptance, rolling over and trying to live one’s life while ignoring the ills of society. Again, you could fashion a rom-com happening during Nazi Germany where a charming boy meets beautiful girl and their whirlwind courtship just happens to be while the neighborhood is being evacuated of specific minorities, with the characters shrugging and going about their days without larger comment. Does that seem enchanting? Does that seem like a good idea? I hope you would say no.
Can you turn off your brain and enjoy One Night Only? Every person is unique, so perhaps, but I might judge you a little for it, if I’m being honest. The comedy for me never rose above the occasional chuckle. It’s less a sex comedy and more a rom-com set in a fascist universe of puritanical repression. The comedy never rose above the questions for me, and the lingering bad taste of the movie’s universe and especially its characters’ attitudes to their world left me befuddled. There’s some pushback, which feels obligatory to check a box of red flag atonement, but the entire enterprise feels built upon such a drastic tonal miscalculation that it approaches in-universe propaganda. As so many of the randy characters eager for a physical contact are wont to hear, reader, you could certainly do better than this.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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Buddy (2026)
What if Barney the friendly dinosaur was really a murderous monster? That’s the catchy premise of co-writer/director Casper Kelly’s surreal horror fantasy Buddy, a crazy yet admirably committed exploration of kids TV tropes to their fullest extent. Considering Kelly might be best known for his insane yet brilliant deconstruction of sitcom opening theme songs, the Adult Swim short film Too Many Cooks, this makes sense. My first question was whether the pastel-colored, stagey world of Buddy the Unicorn (voiced by Keegan Michael-Key) was supposed to be literally real or was simply a TV set. The universe of Buddy, while adhering to the tropes and mechanics of children’s TV storytelling, is indeed its own reality. I enjoyed how Buddy knows he must gather the children to sing the closing theme song because then “the words appear” (he means end credits) and everything resets, which would allow him to heal from his injuries or perhaps have the children forget witnessing his horrors. The puppet-heavy world of Buddy is interesting, as are the subversive and disturbing edges glimpsed like Buddy trying to explain the disappearance of a child and the strange “red paint” on his outfit. Short of twenty minutes, the entire movie takes place in this strange fantasy setting, so I kept wondering about the lore and workings of this universe, especially how Buddy is capturing kids from the real world. The last ten minutes fulfilled that but I wanted more. That’s because the Buddy set itself, modeled after PeeWee’s Playhouse and Barney, feels a little too closed-off, the building threat of Buddy being rather redundant. I became frustrated at how limited the movie was settling with its subversive satire, at several points feeling like an overextended skit going off the rails rather than a complete movie. Then again that structural gambit might appeal to other viewers who are on the same twisted wavelength of Kelly. It held my interest, but I kept wondering if this was all there was, and whether maybe Buddy was a little too much of the same.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)
Despite being arguably the most beloved superhero of our era, once again proven by its vaunted box-office performance, it sure does seem like it sucks to be Spider-Man. The fourth film with Tom Holland as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man examines the fallout from 2021’s No Way Home, with the whole world having forgotten about poor Peter Parker. He’s lost his friends, he’s lost his love, and he’s lost his Avengers allies, but he keeps on plugging along, working alongside the police and the Department of Damage Control, tasked with housing super threats that prisons cannot contain. There’s a mysterious new threat, a person with the powers to control minds through proximity but has to leap from person to person like psychic tag. The movie excels at the action-adventure shenanigans, with new director Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi) providing the visual fireworks, including slow-mo splash page imagery taken from the pages of Spider-Man’s famous comic covers. There’s fun to be had as Hulk and the Punisher (Jon Bernthal) are mixed into the story, especially when they have to battle each other. You don’t introduce a ninja clan in Act One without knowing there will be a ninja fight in Act Three (I think Chekhov said that once). The best parts of this movie are not the Spider-Man heroics and action but the Peter Parker moments, which are somber, sincere, and nicely felt by the young cast that has grown into their characters over a decade. There’s a rich emotional investment built up, and Brand New Day takes its time to dwell in Peter’s downturn before setting him on a better path. There’s one moment with Mary Jane (Zendaya) that caused me to gasp out loud. I really enjoyed how there isn’t a sleight-of-hand secondary antagonist; it’s who we follow, and they have an interesting connection/parallel to Peter, and I especially liked that the climax of the movie is about a division over mercy and forgiveness rather than punching an army of faceless robots or stopping a giant sky beam of world annihilation. These modern Spider-Man movies are consistently very entertaining but also emotionally engrossing, and they do something unique with their villains, providing more surprises and nuance and perspective-shifts than just about any other superhero franchise. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is not so much a reinvention of the character or the series but further confirmation that we have the right people making these movies matter.
Nate’s Grade: A-
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Run (2025)
I’m going to do something I rarely if ever do, and that’s requesting a bit of homework before you delve further into this specific review. If you haven’t, please read my review for writer/director Uwe Boll’s 2026 grisly thriller Citizen Vigilante first. I’ll even provide the link. It doesn’t even have to be my review, though it would be appreciated of course. Familiarize yourself with this surprise xenophobic hit of a movie and then come back here to read about Boll’s 2025 effort, the generically-titled Run. It’s fair to gather an unfavorable opinion of Boll’s views on immigrants from Citizen Vigilante, which posits that thousands upon thousands of Europeans are being killed by merciless immigrants who refuse to assimilate with their poisonous cultures and attitudes, the kind of movie where a guy just slices a mother’s throat in the opening seconds while walking because why not? It’s a vile, disgusting movie that panders to the worst elements of the worst people, glorifying a racist vigilante that massacres an entire family for the sins of their teenage son. But I don’t need to remind you because, of course, you read that review. The discourse turned into an examination on Boll himself, appropriate since he was the writer and director and even dedicated the movie to the “countless victims of immigrant violence.” The most obvious interpretation was that Boll was beholden to this rotten anti-immigrant ideology. Perhaps he is. However, after having reviewed 29, now 30, of this man’s movies and written extensively about them and him, I had some doubts. It turns out Run is exactly why, as it stands as a stark refutation of the worst of Citizen Vigilante.
Forgive me, but I’ll be comparing Run and Citizen Vigilante throughout this review because I feel they are insightful mirrors for one another and demanding the comparative treatment. So, once again, if you haven’t yet, please read a Citizen Vigilante review so you’re caught up, dear reader. Thank you kindly.
Run opens in a harrowing if familiar situation ripped from years of human interest headlines. We open on a boat heading out to sea. It’s filled with migrants from all countries looking to escape their home countries to avoid political persecution, imminent violence, or simply to start anew in a better place. They’re desperate people. They’re scared. They’re being exploited by the men in charge of the boat, whom we’ll learn later are charging up to $20,000 a person for their clandestine services. These men are also brutal when questioned and stab several of the people on the boat and throw them overboard. It’s grim and upsetting and this is Boll’s introduction for the audience to the plight of the immigrants. It already begs further questions of what they’re escaping if they’re willing to endure this terrifying trip.
The boat eventually does arrive onto the Italian coast (though really scenic Croatia) and from there the movie is split among an ensemble of storylines: 1) Anna (Amanda Plummer) is an ex-pat American who stumbles upon a pregnant immigrant, Selena (Hannah Balogun), hiding in the bushes after fleeing from the local police, and offers her refuge; 2) Ismael (Oscar-nominee Barkhad Abdi) is a Somali immigrant who has given everything to seeking political asylum and a new life; 3) Eddie (James Russo) and his daughter Julia (Kristen Retton) are American ex-pats and have run a business in town that has been going downhill and they’re running low on options to salvage their impending financial ruin; 4) a local police officer, Cappi (Daniel Sauli), struggling to do his best, watches over his aging mother who lives with him, and keeps up with the influx of immigrants in town; and 5) the pair responsible for the boat ferrying (Sammy Sheik, Michel Qissi) who are looking to get in good with a local mobster (Costas Mandylor).
From its opening scene amidst the boat, I found myself leaning a little closer to the screen, eager to see if this more empathetic approach would be met with sincerity throughout. It was! Run is a consistently compassionate examination about the modern-day immigrant experience, especially upon trying to work through the often byzantine system of bureaucracy to be counted and approved for asylum or migration status. It’s an open-hearted look that refuses to view these people as “invaders” or “vermin,” and instead looks at them as the desperate and vulnerable human beings they are. I thought that Run might follow a similar plot trajectory of 2007’s The Visitor, where our lonely, older, white American befriends an illegal immigrant, grows as a person, then has that person ripped away from the cruel indifference of the immigration and asylum system, only to learn a larger lesson through their personal experience. Run kind of follows that path but not as closely as I would have predicted. Selena gets taken by Officer Cappi around the 40-minute mark, not really enough time to fully develop the unexpected relationship between her and Anna. From there, the rest of her storyline is Anna trying to negotiate for the release of Selena by scrounging up thousands of dollars to bribe the local officials into letting her loose. There’s an engaging urgency and desperation there that can mirror what some of the immigrants experience as forces with more entrenched power, and the ability to abuse that power, are placed in opposition to freedom.
The American family is the mouthpiece for our more xenophobic perspective, but over the course of the movie Boll always showcases them as being in the wrong, as the angry assholes who have lost sight that even they were immigrants too. The cranky father figure, Eddie, says he served thirty years in the military and knows firsthand how “these people” behave. Anna calls him out, saying he should then acknowledge the potential culpability the U.S. government/military and other larger bodies could have in supplanting civil order/local autonomy for profit. The second half of the movie completely dumps all over Eddie’s worldview and refutes so much of Citizen Vigilante, down to its racist core premise, that I almost wanted to stand up and applaud. Spoilers ahead, but it’s worth it, trust me. At one point, a man hiding along the shore is discovered and in his panic he grabs a teen boy and holds him hostage, placing a machete under his chin. He just keeps screaming “I want free” in English and he looks completely spooked. He is also dangerous, as he slashes a guy in the face for getting too close. Sitting out to sea is the American family, and Julia gets an idea. She takes her speargun and swims out to the shore, coming up from behind the machete-wielding hostage scenario. She takes it upon herself to intervene and fires the speargun, which goes right through the immigrant’s chest, killing him. However, it also injures the boy being held hostage… and the boy dies. Julia is shaken up from the results, never intending to kill the boy, and yet her vigilante act caused an innocent boy to get killed. Then she’s taken by the police, ostensibly for a witness statement, but she’s arraigned instead for manslaughter. Beforehand, she’s been viewed as the more level-headed of her family, the one trying to assess their problems and deal with them. Boll sets her up as, for lack of a better term, “the good one” of her family, and then she does this, and not only that, she’s offended that she would even be charged with a crime. Her blithe entitlement and dismissal of her actions and responsibility is truly telling. Boll is indicting her sense of privilege at being able to float above consequences because she was white and well-intentioned even when it came to vigilantism. She tried her hand at being a vigilante and made the matter worse. Check that, Citizen Vigilante.
It gets even more explicit in the tragic finale (still spoilers, but it’s worth it). Eddie’s response to his daughter being arraigned for manslaughter is further evidence of his reactionary projections to scapegoat immigrants for all the ills of the world. Rather than legally disputing her arraignment or finding money for bail, he and his compadre fashion a stockpile of Molotov cocktails and ammo. They drive to the immigration/refugee shelter, and they mercilessly unload, killing innocent human beings for the crime of being on the other side of a fence. They murder dozens, and this murder isn’t covered in glory or tacit approval from Boll, it’s treated as an act of terror and doom. They even kill the local cops who are trying to put an end to their massacre, which shows how far their allegiance to law and order actually goes. I was reminded of Citizen Vigilante where the protagonist (Armie Hammer) also mows down room after room of police officers doing their job, bringing a killer to justice, though he at least says, “I know you’re just doing your jobs but please let me murder others with impunity.” It’s fascinating to me that the presented hero of one movie could just as easily be the presented villain of another movie without a change in their ideology. The fact that these movies are released a year apart from one another is stunning.
Lest you think I’m going to give Boll a pass because his film falls closer to a political ideology that matches my own way of thinking, there are still myriad issues plaguing Run. The storylines can feel arbitrary with how abrupt we jump from one to another and they don’t interconnect as much as they could, allowing for a wider berth of perspective shifting. The attention paid on the pair who steered the boat and them getting into the mob is completely underwritten to the point that they could have been eliminated. Some of the character choices can equally be arbitrary, like when Anna ushered Selena out of her home mere minutes before her brother is going to arrive and pick her up. Why not wait for confirmation before leaving the sanctity of the indoors? The local officer is initially presented as a down-to-Earth figure but then takes a villainous turn, being the one holding Selena hostage and insisting on the thousands of dollars as ransom. If he’s going to take this dramatic heel turn, we should spend more time with him dwelling on his actions, trying to justify them to himself, or even simmering in guilt and fear over how far he may have gone and can he salvage his integrity. The political commentary isn’t subtle in the least, though this does not bother me as we live in extremely unsubtle times. Still, having characters utter dialogue that’s clearly underlining the messages can be a bit much, like when a local official ruefully shakes her head and says, “I’m sorry. You did everything right but you’re going back home.” I also think it ends about three minutes later than it should. There’s a rather perfect ending moment that echoes the beginning of the movie and shows genuine character changes. Boll continues past that for questionable reasons, perhaps trying to establish the point that even if these immigrants find employment, they’ll still be looking over their shoulders in paranoia for potentially ever. Even so, the very ending scene is confounding.
I wouldn’t quite qualify Run as a good movie, or at last a traditionally good movie, but it’s actually okay, especially given the filmography of its writer/director. It serves as a possible eye-opener for audiences about the troubled experience many immigrants face in their desperate dash for a better life, and while giving voice to a plurality of political viewpoints and frustrations, Boll’s movie is always siding with the side of the poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. In a minor way, he has done justice to their stories. Now, that brings up a salient question regarding Citizen Vigilante. I concluded my review of that film theorizing that perhaps the movie was indeed a grift of Boll’s, serving up wish-fulfillment agitprop to despicable people who see the world through its hateful lens. I think Run is perhaps compelling evidence that my theory might be right. Here’s the rub: whether you’re genuinely racist or merely pretending to be, when you make racist propaganda, it still exists. You’ve still created harmful art that comforts the horrid beliefs of racists, and you don’t get a pass for that because you don’t actively believe in that ideology. You have still contributed to it. Boll doesn’t get a pass merely because I doubt he favors the xenophobic dogma of his vigilante murderer. He didn’t have to make it in the first place, or he could have made it a more explicit critique of the right-wing zealot who demonizes immigrants for any crime real or imagined. He could have done a lot more movies like Run. So, congrats Uwe, on making a fairly cogent and resonant political drama about immigrants. It’s a shame that your other movie about immigrants will overshadow this one completely. Enjoy that money.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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First Shift (2024)
Notorious film director Uwe Boll is back, baby, from his semi-retirement. Not only that, he has stumbled upon a hit, something decidedly uncommon in the man’s multi-decade independent filmmaking career, especially since he faded from the outer rings of the studio system in the late 2000s. I’m writing this after the release of 2026’s Citizen Vigilante, another surprisingly popular movie for Boll, though popular with the worst people and for the worst reasons. I was unaware that Boll had shed his retirement, so now I’m catching up with some of his latest films, and 2024’s First Shift was his return splash. It’s a cop drama actually filmed in New York City, a bit of a change for the more threadbare and mercenary director. However, when this little movie debuted on streaming for Paramount Plus, it opened as the number two movie and stayed in the streamer’s top ten for an astonishing twenty weeks, nearly half a year. Clearly, this movie caught on with audiences and Boll has already planned two more installments, as well as a potential First Shift TV series. When I read this information I pumped my fist, not necessarily cheering for Boll’s success, not that I have anything against the man’s fortunes improving, but because all through my watch of First Shift I kept remarking, “This feels like Boll’s attempt at a cop show.” Lo and behold, that might have just been the plan all along, and considering Paramount is the home of a plethora of CBS long-running crime procedurals with little variation in their formula comforts, he might have struck gold.
The plot is fairly simple. Veteran cop Detective Deo Russo (Gino Anthony Pesi) likes to be alone, and then he gets assigned a new partner, Angela Dutton (Kristen Renton). He’s grumpy and cynical and she’s sunshine and optimism. He likes to keep to himself and she’s an open book, to go with her non-stop chatter. Over the course of their first shift, they’ll spend twelve hours traversing New York City, resolving various crimes including a mob hit and a personal episode of violence with Dutton’s family.
After 29 Boll movies and counting under my watch, I must say that, to my full academic analysis, First Shift is actually mostly enjoyable. To a point. I’ll get to that later with some significant spoilers over the last twenty minutes. However, this is a crime thriller that eschews a sense of gritty realism for something far more breezy and light-hearted without being too flip or glib. The pervading feeling of the movie is just something familiar and nice, a soothing balm that tells you even when the officers are confronting a literal knife-wielding maniac, that things aren’t going to get too heavy. This is a world of cops and officials that seems ripped from the cozy confines of the network TV procedural, the world of NCIS, Bones, In Plain Sight, Castle, Hawaii Five-O, Monk. The crimes are never too grisly and the overall tone of the show is mirthful and suffused with bickering and snappy banter (“This city is my new home,” with the ready reply, “Your new home smells like piss.”) from a bunch of professionals more prone to rolling their eyes than getting into fistfights. It’s a distorted reality that’s ready-made for comfort viewing, and it mostly works. I enjoyed the introduction of the team from the typically been-there-seen-it-all boss, Lieutenant Walden (Tia Dionne Hodge), whose wisecracks actually got me to chuckle. I appreciated the unpredictable areas the banter could head, including both officers trying their best to define what a sexual act was named after a particularly popular Little Debbie treat could be. Most of all, I appreciated that Boll understood the tone he wanted and implemented it from the start. It’s such a light, pleasant feeling that I found my attention drifting, not because I was bored but because it was a familiar sensation that put me at ease.
That doesn’t mean everything snapped together with precision. For a movie just under 90 minutes, it feels a little stretched to get to that running time. The opening three minutes are devoted to watching Russo’s morning routine including making a protein shake. I kept waiting for some added detail, like he’s sneaking booze into his shake’s recipe, but alas, it was just a protein shake. There’s plenty of moments in the car with the cops that just feel like Boll was riding in the back and said, “Go on and improv,” and they just riffed for ten minutes and he cobbled together his favorite bits. It’s an ongoing impression throughout the movie, with scenes feeling a bit more loping in their rhythms, allowing certain scenes to feel aimless, drifting past the point being established. I didn’t mind so much because the stakes were low and the vibes were pleasant, but it did feel padded. Do we need to see an old man walking down the store aisles so extensively before he’s ultimately attacked? If this was designed in the TV procedural format, there would be a brevity to some of these plot points. I did find the behavior of Dutton to be a bit of a reach at points. Her posting of TikToks live from the station seemed rather unprofessional and something she’d be dinged for. It gives the impression of someone unfamiliar with the restraints of police work, which made me initially think Dutton wasn’t a transplanted cop from Atlanta but some civilian riding along for research, like with Castle, before that show long exhausted the premise of why a mystery novelist would be so indispensably integrated in the L.A. police force. The larger mob plot is also muddled, as there is an introductory scene establishing our Bad Guy getting back against an underling who betrayed him. However, before the end of the movie, this Bad Guy is hastily removed to introduce a different Bad Guy Boss. If this was the case, why didn’t we just begin with the man at the top if he’s the one who actually matters?
Unfortunately, the last twenty minutes of First Shift are a sharp tonal disconnect that seriously harms the good vibes of the movie, and one that requires extensive spoilers, so if you seriously care about whether or not a Uwe Boll movie experience will be pure for you, skip ahead to the next paragraph, dear reader. Earlier in the movie we get a couple quick flashes of a bearded man growing in agitation. He seems to have some substance abuse issues and the deterioration of his marriage. It isn’t until the final act that his storyline really surfaces with clarity. This man happens to be Dutton’s brother, an Iraq War veteran suffering from PTSD and drinking. His wife is preparing to leave him and take away her son, his stepson, so what’s a mentally unstable man to do? He blames the stepson for poisoning the relationship with his wife, pushing her to leave, and he throttles the child and suffocates him with a pillow. He then also kills his wife and himself. Take a minute to catch your breath, reader. That’s a lot, and especially for a movie that had an entire storyline about taking care of an elderly man’s dog while he recuperates and tricking their commanding officer into buying the dog’s lavish lunch. This murder-suicide family annihilator plot is far too dark and serious for a movie that, thus far, had been more whimsical and light. It completely crashes the tone of the movie. It’s an attempt by Boll to trauma-bond his two lead characters, but it really feels more like a trauma dump for the audience. Both of the cops just blurt out their feelings and personal failings at high volume, speeding over the character development that should unite them. It’s clunky. It’s also an unwelcomed and miserably dour turn for a movie that cannot support that level of dire realism.
In the final minutes of First Shift, it cuts to additional footage and promises a Part Two, kind of like the end of Kevin Costner’s Horizon: Part One previewing a trailer for its forthcoming Part Two. We still have never gotten Horizon: Part Two and it’s been two years and counting since it was pulled from the release calendar. I don’t know if this was always the plan or Boll was adding an additional tease to capitalize on the unexpected groundswell of audience interest. In October 2025, Boll had officially wrapped New York City filming for the two sequels, titled First Shift: Vengeance and First Shift: Redemption, which seems a shame because Second Shift and Third Shift were right there. The TV series is still in development. In replicating the familiar, low-stakes, ensemble character workplace cop procedural, Boll might have stumbled upon a new echelon of success for his career. If he can reassert the tone that made the movie a successful if disposable innocuous cop procedural in movie form, then I think the First Shift sequels could be modestly entertaining. However, if the shocking downturn that the film takes in its climax is an indication of the direction ahead, then the good vibes might be dead after all. Still, for the man’s return to the world of cinema, First Shift is a cut above for Dr. Boll.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2026)
It’s been nearly a decade since director Gore Verbinski’s last movie, 2016’s A Cure for Wellness, and his dynamic visual style, impish sense of humor, and general prevailing oddness have been sorely missed in mainstream Hollywood. Here comes the creatively titled Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, which is accompanied by cheering children shouting he title whenever it appears onscreen. It’s a satirical sci-fi parable with its tongue firmly planted in its cheek. At 134 minutes, it plays like an entire season of Black Mirror episodes hung together with a wacky time travel adventure caper. Sam Rockwell plays The Man From the Future, actually his character name, though he looks like a scraggly hobo when he stumbles into a diner wrapped in trash and what appears to be a bomb. He uncorks a hyperactive speech informing the patrons he is from the future, that future is very bad thanks to technology, and he has come to this diner over 100 times previously because he is convinced within this eatery is some combination of the right people that will help him ensure this nightmare future never comes to be. Immediately, the screenplay by Matthew Robinson (The Invention of Lying, Love & Monsters) grabs you and refuses to let go, bouncing off the walls with ideas, gags, and manic energy mixed with trenchant commentary about the perils of technology in our crushing age of doom scrolling and diversion. Even better, the movie keeps shifting and surprising every so often. The structure is broken into a series of extended vignettes showcasing different members of the team and their personal back-stories, each treated like its own Black Mirror episode covering some different nefarious aspect of modern technology, from a school of student zombies addicted to their cell phones to a secret program that clones deceased children for the right price, though the government foots the bill if your kid was a victim in a school shooting. You can see the mordant tone and perspective of the movie. It gets dark but at no point is it suffocated by that darkness. Instead, Verbinski keeps things sure-footed and breezy, relying upon slapstick, goofy humor, sudden bloody violence, and layered revelations to maintain a consistent sense of entertainment. I don’t think there’s an emotional investment in the movie, and a very late revelation feels like a hasty attempt to force some in when that ship has sailed. I don’t mind that the film’s tone can be rather snide because its aim is strident anti-A.I. satire. It’s also easy to feel that many of the supporting players don’t get as much to do as they’re dragged along on this quest, especially after Zazie Beetz showed how capable she was as a formidable action heroine with They Will Kill You. Still, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a gonzo, violent, inventive, macabre whirlwind that invites the audience to laugh at the chaos and downturn of modern society. Hey, watching this screen is actually part of the solution, not the problem.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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