Supergirl (2026)

I will be honest and say that I know very little about Supergirl or Kara Zor-El. I was aware but have not seen the 1984 movie or the TV series that ran for several seasons. All I had seen of Supergirl was her appearance in The Flash and Milly Alcock’s cameo in last years Superman. 

The premise is that Kara (Milly Alcock) is going from place to place getting drunk with her cute dog Krypto when the dog is shot by evil villainous Krem and Kara has three days to find Krem and get the antidote. Meanwhile she is travelling with Rutheye (Eve Ridley) who has lost her family at the hands of Krem and wants revenge. Every so often Lobo (Jason Mamoa) pops up from attending a KISS cosplay event to be the quirky funny character.

It may seem like I am being dismissive of the film but I thought that the film was ok. Nothing more. Milly Alcock is a good choice for Supergirl and the best thing about the film. Kara is a strong character but has flaws and the film doesn't try to hide them which is what would have been the tendency in previous years. I don't want to be horrible to Eve Ridley who is 15 at the time of writing this review but she was quite bland in this and the the film needed someone with a bit of personality and someone who we can buy having genuine anger at the loss of her family but unfortunately this wasn't the case with Ridley. She did have a good sisterly bond with Alcock but that was about it. Jason Mamoa just seems to wander in, say his part and then leave before returning and seems to be there to add the personality that is severely lacking in this film. Despite doing his best, Matthias Schoenaerts does his best with Krem. He does mean things but as the main villain of the film the character doesn't quite have the gravitas that a villain in one of these films should have. I’m not expecting Thanos everytime but something approaching that would be good. The whole sex trafficking aspect of the character would have been a better main point but it seemed that Kara was more interested in helping her dog.

The main issue from this film is that it comes across as mediocre. It has the vibe of a James Gunn film with a great soundtrack yet it doesn't have the magic that you would expect so it just comes across as aimless. I thought that the director of Cruella would be able to do a better job of instilling some energy but that seems to be lacking from the movie. 

I doubt that this is the last time we have seen Kara/Supergirl but if we do get a standalone Supergirl film then hopefully they will do a better job of making this cinematic world seem important because we are two films into the James Gunn DCU and it does seem to be stuttering a little bit. This film is directed with very little enthusiasm and whilst its nowhere near the terrible mess that some seem to be saying, neither is it the home run that other are saying. 

Jackass: Best and Last (2026)

Back in 2002, I went to see the first Jackass movie being a fan of the TV show. Over the course of 24 years we have had many more Jackass films but then I felt that I had moved on and so if this is the last then it will have gone out on a relatively high note.  The film is basically a best of from the other films and some moments that have never been shown before so there is enough ‘new’ material to justify this being a movie.

The film does start with a segment that reminded me of that Jamiroquai video Virtual Insanity. It was really well done and that is something all these films have in common (from what I can remember) is that they have great openings. The ending is also quite good as well. To be fair the highlights are quite good and they have chosen wisely. 

My main issue with the stuff with the poo. I just can’t cope with poo and there are way too many examples of poo related humour for my liking. Another issue is that as there are so many members of the team not all of them get much screen time. Rachel being the only woman in the group does pretty much nothing apart from stand with the group. I don't know if there is going to be an extended version cause otherwise there is no point having her in the film.

Normally I would be sceptical about this being the last one but I do think that this might be the case here because they are all way too old to be doing this sort of stuff. I enjoyed this film but I think that there are better films in the series. There was enough in this that made it worth coming out to the cinema but its going to lose anything by waiting for it come out on streaming.

Toy Story 5 (2026)

I remember the seeing the first Toy Story in the cinema 31 years ago. It feels slightly weird that after all these years I am back in a cinema watching the latest Toy Story film. There is a valid question as to whether they should make any more but as they keep making money they will keep being made. Seven years after the fourth instalment Jessie has now become the head of the group but things start to go wrong when Bonnie gets a tablet called Lilypad who is forcing her to make friends via the tech instead of in person.

There are aspects of the plot which do feel like they are borrowed from the first Toy Story film. A new toy comes into the establish world of the toys already there and as the film progressed they learn t put their differences to one side. It’s not the most blatant reuse of a plot but it was an interesting observation. I do like how the message about being mindful with tech is quite relevant in today’s world and the film manages to not go overboard with the message and instead of saying tech is bad it says that tech could be bad. 

I thought that Smarty Pants was the best character in the film. There were a lot more jokes aimed at the adults that there seems to have been recently and they were quite funny. All the tech toys were quite good and used in the story well enough to justify being there. The romance between Buzz and Jessie was nicely done in the story and added a bit of romance to the story. The story itself was probably the main issue with the film. It felt like there was a lot of baggage to what was going on. The first one was quite simple in comparison but this one felt like there was a bit too much going on and the whole bit with all the buzz’s felt like that could have been reduced to 60 seconds instead of cut and spread through the first half of the film.

It is weird to see Woody reduced to an almost cameo role in the film given how integral to the series but I suppose its the gradual progression in this series to keep the films interesting. It would have been nice to have Duke Caboom in it a bit more. Any excuse to have more Keanu Reeves in a movie is always good and its a shame that he is tagged with Bo Peep cause he gets about 10 words in the entire film. A lot of the characters were reduced to cameo roles which is a shame but inevitable when you have the bloated plot and a high number of characters with a lot of them quite popular.

I thought that with the fourth one, they got away with it and that there shouldn’t be any more and with this they just about got away with it and i hope that they dont do anymore but with Disney being short of hits nowadays its seems like sooner or later we will get a sixth outing. It’s not a terrible film by any means but it certainly lacks the magic that the original gave us and even the second and third ones. I think when the sixth one comes out, they need to try and inject the story with the magic that has made this franchise as loved as it has.

500 Miles (2026)

500 Miles was a mystery showing and was one of the rare ones where I hadn’t managed to guess. The clue they gave was….

‘The Lone Wolf dies but the pack survives’

This was one that I knew nothing about and didn’t even know it existed. Usually there are films that I am aware of because I have made a guess but with 500 Miles I didn’t even see a trailer. 

The set up of the film is that we follow Finn and Charlie as they sneak out of their house and go on a 500 mile trek to see their estranged grandfather. The mom and dad are separating which is what seems to spur Finn and Charlie on their adventure. Along the way they meet Kait and the reason for the estrangement is that Charlie died in an accident on the granddads boat and the mom and dad blame him for it. I will be honest that I didn’t see the twist coming. I always think this is a good thing because if the film is keeping my attention then I don't have enough time to figure out what the twist is. I suppose you could say it's obvious when it's revealed and there are moments which would give this away but as I was involved in the story, there wasn't enough time for me to think about this.

This is another film where the scenery is stunning. If it were just a standard road trip movie then I would have been happy cause the locations were stunning. Even drab city centres were made to look nice but once they get into Ireland and closer to the granddad's home the landscape just gets more and more pretty. 

Performance wise, no one lets the side down. Saying Bill Nighy gives a great performance is like saying Tuesday follows Monday or night follows day. As the grandfather, I liked him immediately and when it is revealed the guilt that he is carrying, I liked him even more. It was an accident and he didn’t know that Charlie had undone the life jacket but then its easy to understand why the mom and dad feel the way they do. That is the skill that Bill Nighy has as an actor. It’s great to see Roman Griffin Davis in something again. I (like most) first saw him in Jojo Rabbit and its great to see him take on this sort of role. I last saw him in The Long Walk and he seems to be able to pick out great roles. As Finn, he is a likeable big brother and I think that he does a great job of not giving the twist away too soon. Once the twist is revealed, his performance becomes heartbreaking because you know he blames himself for Charlie’s death. I don't think I have seen Maisie Williams in anything since Game of Thrones ended so it was nice to see her pop up as Kait and she is the support that Finn needs in the story with her own issues. She did get to deliver a line about everything being in Irish because 800 years of imperial rule did make me chuckle. 

Despite not being in the film as much, I thought that Clare Dunne and Michael Socha were very good as the mum and dad. From the beginning there is something off about their relationship besides the dad moving out and when the twist happens it is nice to see them come together to try and get to Finn. Considering he is just a ghost, Dexter Sol Ansell gives a great performance as Charlie. He is the charming little brother and his death is made all the more powerful when you think about the friendship that Finn and Charlie have.

Had the film just been a road trip movie then I would have still liked this movie but with the twist I liked the film even more. This was genuinely one of the best surprises of the year. What also made the experience good was that there weren’t any walkouts like there usually are in a mystery screening. I think that whilst I enjoyed the movie very much, this is going to be one of those films where I would have to be in a certain mood to want to watch it. The second half is too downbeat to want to watch this with your mates on a Friday night.

Disclosure Day (2026)

This is the first Steven Spielberg film I have seen at the cinema since 2018’s Ready Player One. Spielberg is one of the greatest directors of all time and with the cinema landscape changing in this post COVID world, it was exciting to see what Spielberg could come up with. The cinema experience didn’t get off to the best start when there was a very long ‘film’ featuring all the players taking part at this summer's World Cup. It seemed to go on and on and on to the point where it really bothered me. I don't mind football but I didn’t go to the cinema on a Sunday afternoon to watch a football advert. 

From a plot point of view, the film is somewhat standard. It seems like there is a big mystery and the hunt for Daniel is fairly standard but I think that it was just lacking something that made it seem epic. The reveal that Margaret and Daniel were experimented on and that is how they are connected comes quite late in the film and the revelation is left quite late in the film and yet its never made to feel important. It’s just made to feel like it answered a question that people may have had. 

Emily Blunt play Margaret who at the start of the film is a weather anchor and soon becomes the anchor of the film as she seems to be able to speak the alien language and has to find Daniel. There is a nice sense of mystery as to how she can suddenly speak languages she never knew she could speak and how she seems to know everything about someone the moment she looks at them. Josh O’Connor is Daniel who is the one instantly on the run and I thought that his character was the more interesting of the two but because the focus is really on Margaret, Daniel is made to be important because Margaret needs to find him. Together they have very good chemistry so its a shame that it seems to take quite a long time for them to share a scene together. Eve Henson has a rather thankless role as Jane. Her best portion of the film comes when they arrive at the monastery and when Jane is talking to Noah. The rest of the time she is just the love interest of Daniel.

Colman Domingo spends most of the film walking around a fake house and is the one dispensing information to Margaret and Daniel. Now I like Domingo and thought his performance in Michael was really good but felt like despite this not being a particuarly great role, Domingo’s sheer charisma makes you forget about this whilst the film is on. Colin Firth spends 90% of his time in the film sat down. Every chance he gets to sit down he takes it and it was more noticeable when he was walking because it didn’t happen very often. He plays Noah who is the boss of a sinister government organisation and it seems like their motivation is to get the information that Daniel has stolen.

The whole fake house thing baffles me. The film spends a good portion of the film and when it comes to being part of the film, its just one room that is used. It felt like the making of the house was just to give Colman Domingo’s character something to walk around in until he was needed with Daniel and Margaret. Also the whole idea of people watching the news feed on their phones felt very cliched although the moment where people are catching the bus, stand up and then sit down did make me chuckle. There is also the part when they are throwing over to the other news stations and someone says ‘BBC News’ which is absolutely silly cause there is no way that the BBC would just throw over to this feed. It would take several hours for them to have the courage to show this stuff.                                 

Spielberg managed to drag his long-time composer John Williams out of retirement to do this score. My question is WHY? It is perhaps the most underwhelming score from one of the greatest composers of all time. I suppose if you are going to phone it in, when you are in your early nineties is the perfect time to do it. It’s not terrible but lacked something that is normally baked into his scores. 

 

If Disclosure Day were made by anyone else then this would be a good effort but because its a Steven Spielberg film then I have to say that I found the film somewhat underwhelming. There are things to like but it felt like it missed the mark. This felt like an old fashioned film and if this has been made in the 90’s then I probably would have liked it very much but given where the sci-fi genre is nowaways, it feels like its slightly dated shows that Spielberg probably needs to leave this sort of film alone cause he doesn't seem to have the energy or creativity to be able to pull it off anymore.

The Silence of the Lambs (1992)

The Silence of the Lambs is a film that I have only seen once before and to be honest I was slightly underwhelmed by it. I thought it was ok but was hoping to get a different reaction seeing it on the big screen after six hours in a cinema and it being half three in the morning, the film was struggling to improve. The set up of the film is that FBI Academy student Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is tasked with interviewing Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) to try and get information regarding a serial killer known as Buffalo Bill.

The first encounter between Clarice and Lecter is really well done and comes surprisingly early in the film. I think if this were made today then they would have waited 40 minutes or so to build up the scene but by having it in the first few minutes means that we are thrown off guard with the encounter. I thought that Jodie Foster does a very good job of making Clarice confident yet slightly insecure given that she is thrown into this situation with no experience or warning. Anthony Hopkins gives one of his best performances in this film. There is something slightly unnerving about the fact that he never raises his voice. It’s not monotone but it never seems to go up in pitch. I would have liked more scenes with them together. Even at the end when they are talking on the phone they seem to have a great dynamic together and just made me wish we had gotten more from them.

Given that Lecter is synonymous with the movie, it is somewhat surprising that he basically disappears for the last third of the movie. This is perhaps a plot necessity so that they can tie up the important subplot of getting Buffalo Bill. The character of Buffalo Bill wasn't really given as much screen time as he perhaps should have been and I don't think that Ted Levine was the right choice for Gumb. He doesn't come across as psychotic enough and its hard to believe him to be this scary menace.

I still like The Silence of the Lambs but I don't love it. I think that it has some great central performances but I think the pacing is a little slow and I don't think you can blame the fact it was an early 90’s film. I think that at two hours the film slightly outstays its welcome and could probably have lost 15-20 minutes. I can see why people might rate it quite highly as a horror and there are good moments in it but it just didn't connect with me in the way that I thought it would and it didn't have anything to do with the fact it was quarter past five in the morning when it finished. This is the second time that I have seen this film and feel the same overall. Not sure if its one that I will be watching a third time but time will tell I suppose. 

The Thing (1982)

The Thing was the highlight of my movie marathon (having already seen The Shining in the cinema a couple of months ago). The Thing is one of those films that I avoided growing up cause my tolerance of gore was quite low in the early 90’s when I would have watched this. Thankfully I put this right and was glad to be able to see it on the big screen. I think this might actually be John Carpenter’s best film although there are other films that deserve to be involved in that particular discussion.

The special effects are glorious and show why practical effects will always be better than CGI (something the 2011 version should have realised). They look really good on my TV at home but on the big screen you can appreciate the effort that went into them. They all look disgusting and are just as effective today as they did in 1982. There is one stop motion shot which doesn't quite work towards the end but apart from that the effects that Stan Winston created here are some of the best ever.There is one matte painting shot which is designed to show the where the spaceship was buried and it does look like a matte painting on the big screen but that is one of the few dated things that is in the movie.

One of the things that I love about this film is the isolated setting. I always like isolated settings because they mean that the cavalry isn't going to come over the nearest horizon or help our main characters out. The characters have to use their heads to try and get them out of the situation and the way that the characters are written means that you can see them working together even if they are at odds some of the time. I do think that there are too many characters for too much of the film so it means that we have to put up with some characters that don't really connect with me. The only ones that do are MacReady, Blair & Childs and that is because they are played by Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley & Keith David. To be fair, they are really good as Kurt Russell is at the peak of his career and the thing to like about MacReady is he doesn't start off as the tough guy but is sort of forced into it by the actions of the film. Wilford Brimley is distracting at first by not having a moustache.

I like the fact that we don't know for a long period of time who the ‘thing’ is. The shadow doesn't look like any of the cat so there is no way of knowing until the big reveal. The Thing is not in any rush to show itself and that is another thing that the 2011 version fails to understand. You don't have to have everything spoonfed to you and apart from the opening shot, we don't know anything about what the Thing is and how it got here. 

The Ennio Morricone credited score sounds an awful lot like a John Carpenter score and that is probably because it is. Carpenter views his score like wallpaper which is a bit dismissive but in the context of this film and a lot of films around this period, that attitude works to the film's benefit. There is something alien sounding about the score and when there is an alien hiding in plain sight it does what a score should do and that is compliment what is going on.

I have always thought that this film was very good but seeing it on the screen has made me appreciate it even more. The story is simple, the setting is perfect, the way that suspense is used is brilliant and the gore/horror is some of the best of this era. I have changed my rating which isn't something I tend to do with films that I have seen before. This is a five start film in my opinion and one of the best horror films of all time.