Masters of the Universe (2026)

I genuinely love the 1987 version. I know its terrible by every aspect you would judge a film but for entirely nostalgiac reasons, I love this film and will defend it to anyone. I knew that this film would, on a technical level and creative level, surpass the 1987 version. The setup of the film is that Prince Adam is sent away from Eternia after Skeletor attacks the palace and after spending 15 years trying to track down the sword and is brought back to Eternia to take on Skeletor. As a plot goes its pretty basic but then it doesn't need to be overly complicated when there is so much world building and supporting characters to  introduce.

When I heard that Jared Leto was cast as Skeletor my heart sank because he has managed to be terrible in pretty much everything he is in although he was passable as a soulless character in TRON: Ares but in this he was actually pretty good. I was surprised how much I enjoyed his version of Skeletor. There were a couple of moments where Skeletor was funny and I didn’t know that Leto had that range. It shows how good he can be when he reigns in the pretentious attitude. If you had told me a year ago that I would enjoy a Jared Leto performance then I would have questioned what drugs you were taking. They got the look of Skeletor right and he comes across as appropriately menacing and is close enough to being OTT to get away with it. I thought that Nicholas Galitzine was quite good as Adam. He is believable as HR Adam and then when the story needs him to be he-man then he looks the part. Sadly we do have to spend an hour with him as HR Adam but the moment when he becomes He-man is a great moment and he looks the part whilst still having the charisma to be a strong lead. There is a lovely moment between Galitzine and Dolph Lundgren. It was nice to have Lundgren actually say something instead of just a humorous cameo shot. It doesn't really add anything to the story but it was a nice moment for people like me to appreciate. Idris Elba seemed to be having fun as Duncan who starts off as the tough teacher before becoming the drunk has-been and then back to being the Man-At-Arms that we know him to be and its just nice to see Elba in something other than Sky adverts. He’s a great actor when he decides to actually be in films and TV shows instead of adverts.

There are a couple of things that the 1987 version did better. I thought that Alison Brie made a poor Evil-Lyn. She just wasn't very……evil. She was trying to do humour and it just didn’t work. I thought that Meg Foster did a better job. I also thought Kang was better in the 1987 version. It looked creepy and evil and a genuine threat but in this film with all the characters he is reduced to a couple of shots but even when we saw him on screen it didn’t look as good. I also thought that Tesla was at time annoying because they were determined to try and show her as a strong female and felt that being dismissive to what her drunk father said was the best way to go about it.

There is a Flash Gordon vibe which I wasnt expecting and there are a couple of Highlander references including a song from the 1986 classic and I wondered why they went for this vibe and it was revealed at the end of the film when its revealed the Brian May was involved mainly with the guitar and I thought then that it all made sense. The score from Daniel Pemberton is quite good for the film. I have liked his scores in the past (most recently Project Hail Mary) and thought that it was appropriate for the film. Some of the songs used did make me wonder whether James Gunn was involved but he wasn't (obviously).

The film inevitably has post credit scenes. The first scenes gives up an appearance from Orko which explains the message of the film, the second one hinting at the return of She-ra and the third and final sees Evil-Lyn pick up Skeletor’s Skull which I think everyone saw coming. That didn’t have the impact of the 1987 version but I suppose you can’t have everything. Should we get a sequel it was clear they were going to need a way of getting Skeletor back in the film.

I got the He-Man movie I wanted even with some issues with the script and Alison Brie and whilst it will never diminish my love for the 1987 version, I can honestly say that this film was everything that it needed to be. I’m not sure how this will do given that Mandalorian and Grogu has underperformed at the box office but hopefully it wont be 39 years before we get another He-man film.

Backrooms (2026)

I was genuinely looking forward to this film more than Mandalorian and Grogu. The trailer had a lot of mystery without spoiling too much so was the perfect type of trailer. The film is based on a web series that started on creepypasta and this got picked up by A24. Now I have never seen the YouTube stuff that he did but this film is a continuation of that stuff but I dont feel like i was missing out on not having seen it. There will obviously have been Easter eggs in the film but I never felt like I was missing out but if you have seen the other stuff then you will get the references.

I thought that when Mary is pulled away by the people in the hazmat suits and it fades to black that the film was over would have been a terrible ending but then thankfully it continues but then worried again that we were going to be bombarded with exposition but thankfully we weren’t and what we ended up getting was a satisfying ending that l thought was mysterious but still gave us enough information. The explanation is that a company that started to do work in MRI stopped all that so that they could research this area that seems to go on and on forever. 

The film doesn't have many performances but that two central ones are Chiwetel Ejiofor who plays Clark and Renate Reinsve who plays Mary the psychiatrist. I liked Reinsve in Sentimental Value which was Oscar nominated this year and both of them play flawed people. Clark runs a furniture store that is failing (never see a customer) and his marriage is falling apart and he lives in the store and once Mary finds him, he decides to stay because its where he feels at home and can sort of wallow in his misery. Mary has her own issues, she seems to have a good life by being a psychiatrist but we see that she has a book for sale and we see her eating her dinner on the couch and she had a mother who seemed to have a mental illness. The film ends with her seemingly trapped in this world but it is left ambiguous. Ejiofor is very good as someone who can’t get past the fact things have happened to him and he can’t accept that he is responsible. The scene where Clark is at the dinner table with Mary, the bearded guy and the woman in the red office dress and he grabs chunks of white something and puts it on the plates and it was at this point that the focus shifted to Mary as she is trying to escape from the 8ft Pirate Clark. They dont spend a huge amount of time together so it’s hard to really rate their chemistry but on their own they were both very good.

There is a great sense of claustrophobia when they move into the Backrooms. There were a couple of moments which genuinely did make me jump and this was a rare case of jumpscares actually working because they weren’t earnt so I didn’t mind. The fact that it is brightly lit shows that you can light rooms and things can still be unnerving or scary. The 8ft Pirate Clark looked creepy even when we got to see it which is not what I was expecting but again shows that you can make this stuff work when you reveal things.  

I do think that we are in a strong period for horror films. There is this, there was Obsession, Iron Lung, Exit 8 and this is another film that is made by a YouTuber and it’s shocking and quite frankly soul destroying to know that Kane Parsons is 20 YEARS OLD!!!! This film did have involvement from the likes of James Wan and Osgood Perkins so hopefully they had a positive impact on him and this is the start of a very promising career. Very good stuff.

Power Ballad (2026)

Power Ballad was a mystery screening and I was very disappointed if I am going to be completely honest. I saw the trailer and it looked fairly empty in terms of story and despite having Paul Rudd, it was the idea that he was sharing the screen with one of the Jonas brothers that made me doubtful that this would be a good viewing experience. 

It seems to be a universal impossibility to dislike Paul Rudd. Even in something that isn't perhaps on par with a lot of his other stuff, Paul Rudd has the enviable skill of elevating whatever he is in. As Rick he is someone who is in a band that sings at weddings and uses his skills to help Danny come up with some cool lyrics during a drinking session. They even manage to make it plausible that an American would be living happily in suburban Ireland which isnt as easy to do as you might think but the explanation that Rudd gives worked for me. I think if it had been someone else then it wouldn’t have had the same effect. To be fair to Nick Jonas, he was perfectly fine as Danny. Playing someone who seems desperate for a hit after years in a boy band is perhaps something that he could lean into but despite having made a shed load of money off the back of someone else’s work might normally make me dislike them, Jonas still comes across as likeable. It is perhaps helped by a scene where he suggests giving Rick some money but is stopped by his manager. The pair work well together and even though they spend most of the film separate, they still manage to compliment each others part of the story.

The supporting cast is good as well with Sandy (Peter McDonald) being an unexpected comedic sidekick to Rick. During the LA portion of the film he becomes the most entertaining part of the film. Havana Rose Liu makes her second appearance in a film I have seen this year after appearing in Tuner but this is a smaller role and doesnt really add much to the story.

The early scenes of the singing left me slightly worried that this film would be terrible. It was clear that they singing was added on in dubbing which is perhaps understandable for Paul Rudd but as Nick Jonas is a singer in real life it seems obvious to have Jonas sing live when it was being recorded. That was as bad as it got a the singing later on seemed to either be done at the time or the dubbing was better. 

The ending is slightly absurd. So after spending most of the film making it clear there is no evidence that Rick co-wrote the song, his daughter who just a few days earlier was in a car accident and had her arm in a sling yet it miraculously disappear, comes across a video which shows that he sung the lyrics year ago and literally in the next scene Rick throws a huge wad of notes into a buskers collection basket. It felt like they ran out of money and couldn’t film the ending or at least didn’t have time to film it but it felt like about 20 minutes was reduced into 90 seconds which felt a bit odd.

Whilst Power Ballad isn't as bad as I feared. It isn't the sort of film that I would have seen which is perhaps the point of a Mystery screening. I think that it's a film with its heart in the right place but something was lacking which means that I doubt that its a film that will get a repeat viewing. 

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)

The first Star Wars film at the cinema since 2019 feels like it was the result of chaos after multiple failed attempts to try and make a film which have included a Taika Waititi trilogy and a Rey Skywalker movie which may or may not still be happening. To be honest this is perhaps this is the most unenthusiastic I have been about an upcoming Star Wars film ever. I am genuinely looking forward to Masters of the Universe more than this. That is the state of Star Wars in 2026. I did watch the tv show and got through them in quite a short period of time. Seasons one and two are quite good and whilst there is a dip in the third one it’s not the train wreck most would have you believe. Sometimes when there is a film of a tv series there is a question as to whether you would need to have watch the show to be able to follow what is going on and I don’t think you do. You would be able to better like or dislike the film but I don’t think that there is anything you would be missing. I did think that it was weird that there are no call backs to the three seasons but that might actually be a good thing so that people won’t have had to watch the previous episodes to follow what is going on.

Everyone seems to go gooey eyed about Grogu and despite not saying a word there is something likeable about him. Credit to Pedro Pascal who apart from one scene is under the helmet. I know he took it off (or had it taken off him) a couple of times in the TV series but its only done in one scene and rather than have to go through the rigmarole like they did in the show (which formed a whole episode), they get round it by implying that if he kills them all then that would void it. They put the helmet back on so they avoided the Stallone problem from Judge Dredd. Sigourney Weaver pops up to basically deliver exposition and I think that she deserved better. Jeremy Allen White or his voice heavily distorted plays Rotta who is trying to get out from Jabba’s hefty shadow. The character was fine but it was impossible to tell that it was White so my question would be what was the point in having him if you can’t tell that it's him. The only voice that was entertaining was Martin ‘Marvel films are just theme park rides’ Scorsese. His role is short but it was just fun hearing him in a Star Wars film

The score is really good from three time Oscar winner Ludwig Göransson. There feel like a few nods to John Williams’ score but still enough to feel like it’s part of the Mandalorian series. It’s not the best score from him but it does what it needs to do and make the film seem more epic than it perhaps deserves. Don’t think this is going to win any awards but it is still a banging soundtrack.

This is a fine film. It’s not the disaster that some were predicting and probably wanted because they don’t like what Disney has done to Star Wars but the honest truth is it’s fine which in a normal film would be ok but for a Star Wars film isn’t good enough. It felt like the fourth season that we never got but just squashed into two hours and twenty minutes. Would I want more Mandalorian and Grogu movies? Probably not, but just to have Star Wars back in the cinema is enough to feel like this universe is getting back on track.

Tuner (2025)

This showing of Tuner was a preview which based on the trailer looked interesting. Tuner does remind me of Baby Driver for several reasons. In this the film has someone with a hearing issue who is good at something and uses this skill to commit crimes to raise money. He then falls in love with someone without them knowing of the truth. It might be unfair to compare Tuner to Baby Driver but the similarities are undeniable and then there is the use of Egyptian Reggae at one point.

Things seem to be going on nicely for Niki but then when he is tuning a piano at some fancy house, he comes across people trying to break into a safe and when he helps just to get the noise to stop, they offer him a job to do more work for them. This gang runs a security business but it seems to be a front just so they can sneak into the wealthy houses and nick valuable but small quantities of jewellery.

I thought that Lee Woodall was quite good as Nikki, the last time I saw him was in Nuremberg which he was equally as good at. Niki is a likeable character who seems to have lost his parents at a young age and manages to make a life for himself despite his hearing issue. Havana Rose Liu plays the love interest Ruthie who starts being slightly uninterested with Niki but they soon become a couple but I liked Ruthie because she has career aspirations and is very driven without coming across as unlikeable. This character shows that it can be done to have a female character in a film with ambition and like ability. 

I thought that both Liu and Woodall worked well as a couple and that there was always going to be something that causes an issue otherwise the film wouldn’t happen and the watch that Niki gives Ruthie was always going to be the thing that caused the issue but it was perhaps obvious that someone in the film was going to pop up and be the owner of the watch. 

Jean Reno is the owner of the watch and plays a very important maestro who appears in two scenes (technically three but the first is just a far away shot of him in the crowd). Sadly the final shot of him is of him waddling like he had an accident in the trouser department. I may be being harsh but it was something that just seemed to stand out to me. The brief scenes he is in are really good, although they are so brief you could have given it to someone that isn't as well known as Jean Reno. 

Dustin Hoffman features pretty heavily in the trailer but his involvement is minor. He features at the beginning but once he is admitted to hospital he spends the rest of the film in bed before Harry dies. Perhaps it was purposefully misleading to suggest that Dustin Hoffman’s involvement in the film was greater than it turned out to be. That’s not to say he wasnt good because he was and there was a nice grandfather/grandson relationship between Harry and Niki but it would have been nice to see more of Hoffman.

I liked Tuner but I felt like it didn’t quite have the energy that it needed. I don't think that there was anything that caused the film to be slightly disappointing but I think in the hands of someone like Edgar Wright who is known for his stylistic direction, this film would have gone down better and might find a wider audience. It’s not directed with any particular flashiness but instead its more of a character piece but it still lacks that high note that the film needs.

Obsession (2025)

Obsession is a film that says be careful what you wish for, cause you will get fed your recently deceased cat in a sandwich. Barker’s previous film Milk & Serial got my attention because it was released on YouTube which is a novel way of getting attention and it worked. Aside from the fact that it was a bold move to give a film away for free, it was an enjoyable horror film. The set up of the film is that Bear wishes for someone he works with and fancies to fall in love with him and only him and things go very wrong very quickly.

Michael Johnston is quite good as Bear. He is someone who comes across as somewhat of an introvert and when push comes to shove, he always chickens out. You could argue that he is putting his will onto Nikki but the film manages to make it a bit more ambiguous when there are moments which show the real Nikki trying to get Bear to kill her. Inde Navarrette does a great job as Nikki. Playing someone that crazy and yet still coming across as somewhat grounded is a hard thing to pull off. There is one moment where is she is smiling as Bear leaves the house and it did remind me of the ending of Pearl where Mia Goth’s character has an exaggerated smile and stays like that for what must be a couple of minutes. In this film the smile is slightly made worse by the sight of Nikki wetting herself. Both Navarrette and Johnston work well together which is why the story works as well as it does.

The film has an 18 certificate for gore but to be honest I don't think the film was that gory. I’m not a huge fan of gore and I would never sit and watch stuff like Terrifier or Saw or any of the torture porn genre films but I thought that the gore is elevated because it comes at times of extreme violence such as when Sarah’s head is pummelled against a brick on her steering wheel at the hands of Nikki.

There are a few issues with the film. In no particular order, the moment when Bear realises he is eating his cat in his sandwich was quite an obvious thing and although it is still a screwed up thing to do it is something that I saw coming and I usually see that as a bad sign. If I can spot it then it means that it's either way too obvious or the film isn't working. On this occasion it is the former. Then there is his ‘friend’ who fancies Nikki and I think that aspect of the plot and their relationship is a bit underwhelming. When Bear is trying to get Ian to make the wish to get the curse off of him, Ian decides to wish for a billion dollars and in literally his next scene is killed so it kind of made that money scene pointless.    

I enjoyed Obsession. I thought that it took a pretty simple concept and managed to make it atmospheric and proves that smiling is one of the most horrifying things you can do. We have really been on a great run of horror films over the last few years with Weapons, Bring Her Back, Smile, Barbarian and Nope. This more than deserves its place amongst those films and it was to see what Curry Barker could do with a stronger story and also a bigger budget.

Rose of Nevada (2025)

 Rose of Nevada is one of the those films that I decided to see based purely on the trailer. Two guys arrive on a boat end up back in time and the film follows them as they are trying to cope with their situation. Given that there are some big hitters at the cinema out at the moment and given the trailer, I was surprised and took comfort from the fact that there was a decent number of people in the screening.

George Mackay plays Nick who at the start of the film uses a food bank and when he arrives home, his next door neighbour is standing outside in the pouring rain. In his own home, his wife and daughter are living in a house falling apart. He takes the job on the Rose of Nevada out of desperation. Callum Turner plays Liam who is sleeping at the docks seemingly having no home of his own. He seems to adjust to the change in their circumstances better than Nick. Even though they have nothing in common and have completely different priorities, both Turner and Mackay work well together. Cast wise, the film is pretty much faultless. There isnt a weak performance which everyone managing to walk that fine line of delivering a straight performance but with a hint of the realisation that something is slightly off. 

The town that they are in seems to have seen better days. Normally I hate the allegory of modern society in films but I think that it works very well in this film because its too accurate to a lot of modern towns and cities. There is something clearly off about the town even when they go back to the 1990’s. I did enjoy the surroundings and it added to the mystery. 

The idea that they have ended up 30 years in the past and everyone in the town thinks Nick and Liam are different people is a neat mystery. The two crewmen of the original Rose of Nevada died in tragic circumstances and it allows Nick and Liam to effectively leave their previous lives and take on new personas.

From a technical standpoint, this film looked amazing. It was a bit weird at first that the film must have only occupied 60% of the screen but once I got past that I was able to enjoy the way that the film looked. The grainy look and the light exposure gave the film a look that pretty much hasn’t existed for decades. Even in the 90’s this look was obsolete so choosing to have the film look as rustic and grungy as it does is an unusual thing. I can see some of today’s audience not liking the film purely because it's not filmed in HD. 

Nick and Liam may be working together but they have different priorities. Nick wants to get back to his wife and daughter and Liam is happy in his relationship with Tina. As the film progresses, Nick grows increasingly desperate to return whereas Liam has become acclimatised to his new surroundings.

I will be honest that I didn’t fully understand the finer details of the film but the fact that I still enjoyed shows how good everything on screen was. I dont mind things being spoonfed but it would be nice to have something explained in a way that didn’t come across as exposition but this film doesnt do that and so you are left working things out for yourself. As I write this it has been four days since I saw the film and only know feel like I understand most of the film but I don't know if I will ever understand this film 100%. This was the first Mark Jenkin film that I have seen and on the basis of Rose of Nevada, I am intrigued to see what else he has come up with.