Is This Thing On? (2025)

Is This Thing On? is a film about Alex (Will Arnett) and Tess (Laura Dern) who within 3 minutes of the film starting are about to get a divorce and when Alex walks into a comedy bar he attempts stand up and decides he likes it and the film follows as Alex tries to develop his career whilst trying to navigate his new relationship with Tess.

This film reminded me a bit of The Roses with Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch. In that film Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg play a couple that is supposed to be the opposite to the main couple and their own is slightly dysfunctional and in this film it is Bradley Cooper himself and Andra Day who are the opposite couple. The Cooper/Day couple isn’t as funny as the McKinnon/Samberg couple but it works in the context of this film. 

I really like Will Arnett and Laura Dern in this. I thought that they worked really well as a couple that seemed to have a fun relationship with each other. The film didn’t force them to be horrible to each other or bitchy at certain times. There is a moment where they have a discussion with each other but it never felt like it was going to be a volatile moment. Ciaran Hinds pops up as Alex’s dad Jan who seems to be having fun playing the elderly father figure although he has a lovely moment with Alex after he has just done an angry routine. Hinds is one of those actors who can elevate whatever role he finds himself in. 

This is apparently based on the life of UK comedian John Bishop who had a stint in Doctor Who so that was enough to get me intrigued although based on the trailer the film doesn't really say that its worth coming to the cinema for. For the record this was another mystery screening although unlike my previous cinema encounter ‘Saipan’, there were actually people in the screening with me.

There are only a couple of things that I wasn't as keen on. Firstly is the moment when Tess arrives with her ‘date’ at the same comedy club that Alex is performing at and just at the same time. You could see that coming a mile off. The other thing and this one might be argued as a creative decision but something that I am never keen on and that is the close up. Someone needs to tell Bradley Cooper that camera even 40 years ago had zooms on them. There were a couple of times I wished the camera would take just a couple of steps away from Will Arnett. A final thing which might come across as unfair or harsh is the casting of Peyton Manning. He might be considered one of the greatest of all time in the NFL but in acting terms it's a dud piece of casting. Thankfully he is only in the film for about five minutes but when the rest of the cast is so good, his performance stood out and not in a good way.

Overall I found Is This Thing On? to be charming. This is technically a romcom and does a far better job of keeping me interested unlike Materialists and this film had characters which felt like real people and situations which felt real without coming across as fake. I like Bradley Cooper as a director. I think he is quite underrated because him films aren’t flashy and they don't have a ‘message’ that a lot of films nowadays seem to have. I was genuinely and happily impressed with this film and think that it should be seen because the story is good and the comedy routines are rather good.

Saipan (2025)

Saipan is directed by Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa and it tells the story of the fallout between the coach of the Republic of Ireland Men’s Football team Mick McCarthy (played by Steve Coogan) and the captain of the team Roy Keane (played by Éanna Hardwicke) on the eve of the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan. The film got off to a worrying start literally from the very beginning. There must have been 10 production companies. Now I know that if you put a great deal of money into the film you will want to see your company's name on the big screen but after two or three companies it starts to feel like a gag, which is not the best way to start a movie.

This film does work even if you are a novice to football and obviously wouldn’t be aware of this event. I remember it happening but didn’t know many of the details. I know who Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy are but I was never the biggest fan of Roy Keane and whilst I can understand his frustrations, he never comes across in the film or in real life as a particularly happy individual. This may not have been the intention but  Coogan plays McCarthy well although there were a few Alan Partridge moments. Hardwicke does a good job of playing Roy Keane. Neither man looks similar to their real life people but Hardwicke manages to make you sympathetic to his frustrations even if he doesn't go about it the best way to express it.

The film does a good job of building things up but there aren’t many scenes that really stand out. If you want scenes between McCarthy and Keane then every so often you get what you want. The only really good scene is the final showdown between the two which it feels like it has been bubbling along for quite a while and was inevitable. All the other ‘encounters’ between the two have felt like enough to show they don’t get on and that something bigger was coming so from a story point of view it did what it needed to do and it did it very well.

The film works because of these two. It’s not a particularly action packed movie but the story does ramp up to the inevitable showdown and because of how good Coogan and Hardwicke are you are engrossed when they are on screen together. Everyone else is sort of a supporting character because Roy and Mick are the two most interesting people. One mildmannered and likeable coach and the other is a hot headed and talented footballer.

It was a good film but one that would have worked out perfectly well on streaming. This was the first time in a very long while where I was the only person in the screening. Ok it was 4:40 on a Monday afternoon but I have seen films at this time and there have been a few more people in. The house lights weren’t on so I had to use the light on my phone to find my way to my seat.

Return to Silent Hill (2026)

 I will accept that I am not a Silent Hill fan. I never played the games and now next to nothing about what is going on and what things mean. I went to see it with a mate that has played the games so he would have a better idea of what was going on.  The set up of the film is that James is a painter and is driving along when he meets Mary and they decide to visit Silent Hill. A short time later James wakes up and sometime has gone by when he receives a note from Mary asking him to return to Silent Hill. That is basically the plot and that is basically all that I understood.

There was a worrying sign when I saw the cast list for this film and saw that I didn’t recognise a single name. NO-ONE. Not even someone who used to be a big name 10 years ago and is looking at this film as a quick payday. I am happy to report that despite the lack of star power, the performances were pretty decent. I thought that Jeremy Irvine did a good job especially considering that for a good 20 minutes or so he was the only person in the film if you don't count the CGI monsters. Another good point for the film was the atmosphere. They clearly spent a lot of time making sure that the film felt like the game. Even with my limited knowledge of the games it felt like this was the highlight of the film. 

I understand that things have to happen for the film to happen but they could have been done better in working them into the film. So after James helps Mary get her luggage back in the suitcases, the coach arrives and it is clearly pulling into the side of the road to stop and yet she acts like it is about to drive off. Then moments later one of her suitcases open up and about a second later she tells the driver to move along. It would have only taken 20 seconds (if that) to get the suitcase packed again. I know an argument could be made that it was part of her plan to lure James to Silent Hill but it could have been done in a better way. Then at the end of the film they replay it again just to highlight how dumb it was.

This is by far the worst film of the year (worse than Mercy). It was better than I was expecting but given that my expectations were at rock bottom, it was always going to be easy to beat them. There are things about this film that work very well but the main problem with the film is that very little of it makes any sense. This is definitely a film aimed at fans of the series and it does feel like a standalone film but if you went into the film not knowing anything then you would be completely confused. I went on a Saturday night and there was decent number and I would bet that they were all fans of the game series and i think that if they want to make the films more successful then they need to try and make them more accessible to non-Silent Hill fans.

The History of Sound (2025)

The second Paul Mescal in seven days sees him team up with Josh O’Connor who play Lionel and David who meet in a bar over a love of music and become romantically involved and when they go their separate ways the film focuses on Mescal’s Lionel as he tries to find out what has happened to David.

I am going to be honest and say that I thought the film was ok. The chemistry/dynamic or whatever you want to call it between O’Connor and Mescal was definitely the highlight of the movie and worth seeing for them. I don't think that Mescal’s performance was as good as it was in Hamnet but it was still enjoyable enough. I thought that Josh O’Connor performance was the stronger of the two and I thought his character was the more interesting of the two.

There are some positives apart from the two leading roles and the main one is that it is a beautiful looking film. The film takes place over a few decades and the film does a good job of making the time that has passed feel like it is passing instead of just feeling like it takes place over a few years.

The History of Sound is a perfectly decent film but I do think that it will be forgotten about and probably stumbled across by someone when it goes on streaming in about three weeks. I only discovered afterwards that the film was directed by Oliver Hermanus and a previous effort of his was Living which was the English language modern day remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru. I think if I had to choose then I would say that Living is the better film but this film is definitely worth your time. It just might be slow for some people.  

No Other Choice (2025)

No Other Choice is a Korean film directed by Park Chan-wook who is a director that I am relatively new to. The film follows Man-su who is working at a papermaking company and is laid off and tries to get a job. Man-su is a nice guy but is but he is made redundant by the new American owners and after over a year trying to get a new job, Man-su de goes for a job and after getting humiliated during the interview decides to try and kill the manager but decides against it when he realises that he needs to make sure he is the best candidate to replace him so he fakes a job application and works on the people who are better qualified than him and goes about killing them. 

The film ends with Man-su in his new job, his family home saved with the dogs back home and he is celebrating having his job whereas at the beginning of the film he wanted to stand up for his fellow workers so it is survival of the fittest really in the world of employment when you have a family to feed. The main characters were good. Lee Byung-hun  was very good as Man-su. Even when he is trying to kill people so he gets his job, he still comes across as a likeable person and you want him just to catch a break so he helps support his family in the way that most people would want to. Son Ye-jin plays his wife (Lee Mi-ri) and even though she seems exasperated with her husband's lack of employment she seems like she is willing to support. The children are a mixed bag. The son is fairly bland and doesn't really come into anything substantial when he is arrested. For most of the film the daughter is the stronger child because there seems to be something that stands out about her and she just appears to be doodling random nothing until the end when it looks like music notes that she is playing. 

There were a couple of occasions where the audience were laughing. Fart sounds will always get a chuckle (immature I know but still funny) and the humour doesn't seem out of place and this is a difficult thing to pull off. The film probably needed humour to break up the strangeness and the funniest part for me was when Man-su was running back to his car and there is a long shot where he is running towards the camera before changing direction to the car and a woman is chasing him a humorous distance. Don't know why I found it funny, I just did.

I wanted to like this more than I do. I think it's a fine film but I spent way too much time wondering what to make of it. I think the fact that the film managed to maintain my attention and I wasn't bored showed that the story and the characters were working on me. I would be happy to go back and watch this again because the seats in the screening that I was in for this film weren't very comfortable even though it was supposed to be a premier seat. I went to a different cinema to the one I usually go to and this was one where I saw all the films that meant something growing up like Jurassic Park, The Matrix and Toy Story. This screen was suited to this film but with an action film the result might be different. Anyway ‘No Other Choice’ is definitely worth your time.

Mercy (2026)

Mercy was a mystery screening and the signs weren’t good before I even walked into the cinema when I was asked if I needed 3D glasses. It is 2026 and they are still trying to push 3D films onto us. Another red flag was the fact that this film is directed by Timur Bekmambetov who made Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter and Ben-Hur very boring and seems to prefer style over substance. Chris Pratt struggles in his post Jurassic World/Guardians of the Galaxy career as he finds himself literally sat in a Timur Bekmambetov film. He plays Chris Raven who is accused of killing his wife and has 90 minutes to prove to an A.I. Judge (Rebecca Ferguson) that he didn’t do it. As set ups go, its pretty good and by good I mean simple. It doesn't have much more than that and so the film can just get on with being dumb. 

It turns out that his sponsor killed his wife because Chris Raven and the Mercy programme framed his brother over the death of someone but it turns out that nice cop Jaq was the one that framed the brother because they needed Mercy to be a success might be a bit of an eye roll revelation especially given that a couple points of the film we see a huge neck tattoo which is the films equivalent of saying that there is something not right with her. The film does attempt to throw a few red herrings but to be honest you would only be shocked of the revelation if you were that involved in the story and I wasn't. I was just thinking that this must have been a pretty good and simple payday for spending 90% of the running time sitting down. I felt bad for Rebecca Ferguson. She’s been in Mission: Impossible films and yet is reduced to playing an AI judge.

Using AI as a plot device is already boring and this film does very little to make it interesting. There are some action scenes but they do involve either of the big names so dont have any weight to them. The 3D is completely pointless and is only there to show some of the graphics that are brought close to the screen. Mercy is a B-Movie that happens to have A-List talent. Credit to Pratt and Ferguson who give their best and make this film far more entertaining that it had any right to be but I think I would have waited for this to come to streaming if I was going to watch it at all. 

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026)

The Bone Temple was filmed back to back with the previous part and this film follows Dr Ian (Fiennes) as he encounters Jimmy from the end of the previous film. The film starts with Jimmy making Spike fight someone to the death and this shows that this little cult that he is now a part of isn’t the best thing to be a part of but he has no choice.  Nina DaCosta did the Candyman reboot which I enjoyed a lot and then she did The Marvels which was truly terrible so it's nice that she has come back to horror and showed that The Marvels was a blip. She shows that she manages to make a horror film that doesn't rely on jump scares and despite a few iffy editing moments the film makes this a horror film that manages to be about something.

The scene where the people from the house are being flayed by the Jimmy’s was a truly nauseating moment and made me look away. The film has an 18 certificate from the BBFC and it did deserve that because apart from the flaying, we get a head being pulled from the body which we see up close. This is definitely one of the goriest films in the 28 series.

The idea of making Jimmy a parody (of sorts of Jimmy Saville) was a bold choice. The Jimmy in this film is a monster and Jimmy Saville is a monster but when the virus raged through the world comes a time when the terrible things he did hadn’t come to light

The moment when I knew that I really enjoyed this film was when Ralph Fiennes’ Dr. Ian dancing to Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast. It was such a fantastic moment because it seemed to come out of nowhere. Fiennes seems to be channelling his younger self and doing the sort of things that people wouldn’t expect him to do. I do think it was a shame to kill off his character but he was great in the previous film and was outstanding in this.

I was worried when Ian started dancing with Samson because I thought that  the film was going to undo all the good work of the previous film but it shows why this film works as well as it does because the friendship between them works because of the performances from Fiennes and Chi Lewis-Perry. Lewis Perry doesn't really have much to say but still manages to bring humanity to a role that just grunts and runs around.  

Ralph Fiennes is great as Dr. Ian and he carries the film which is impressive given that for most of the film he only interacts with two people. Jack O’Connell shows that he could play a character more horrible than what he played in Sinners. Alfie Williams is quite central to the plot because it's more about Jimmy and Ian but he is still pretty good and Erin Kellyman is very good as Jimmy Ink and comes across as the more likeable of the Jimmy’s which isn’t really that hard to achieve.

It has been confirmed that we will get the final part of the trilogy after the first two have done so well which I am over the moon about. Not just because we get another installment in this world but the return of Cillian Murphy’s Jim and a young girl who appears to be his daughter return and they spot Spike and Keli. Also I am not convinced that Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal is dead. He is still breathing when we last see him so there is always the chance that he will return in some form. 

I didn’t think that this was going to be as good as the first part but I am happy to say that I was wrong. Weirdly it doesn't seem as downbeat as the previous installment yet there were tough moments throughout but the next part has a lot to live up to and I hope that it can match what has come out of this one.