 Milly Alcock in Supergirl (2026), directed by Craig Gillepsie Cape drear: Supergirl (2026, dir. Craig Gillespie) Review by Connor McLaughlin Superhero movies are going extinct. For nearly twenty or so years, comic book movies were Hollywood’s predominant genre and a surefire ace in the hole to turn a profit. They were revolutionary, exciting, and sometimes even radical movies that presented good vs. evil archetypes clearly. Nobody can deny the success of what Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige achieved with his Infinity Saga. It will be remembered as one of the great cinematic achievements. However, the times have changed. The audiences have grown up, but the studio shareholders do not want these profitable stories to end. Films are harder and more expensive to make than ever, and studios need to make safer bets on their colorful heroes, with perhaps less artistic direction. This unfortunately marks Supergirl as just another nail in the coffin. It may be coming hot off the heels of James Gunn’s Superman reboot, this project from director Craig Gillepsie is essentially dead on arrival. The story follows Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El/Supergirl, cousin to Superman/Clark Kent, travelling across the galaxy on a quest for revenge after being personally wronged by a warlord. If the plot sounds familiar, it is because this film is essentially the reheated nachos of past superhero glories. Despite Alcock and a scene-stealing Jason Momoa's (as an undead bounty hunter) best efforts, the film feels like it barely has a reason to exist. It is simply one tired trope after another, executed without clear enthusiasm or intrigue. Notwithstanding wacky costume design and great SFX makeup, the visuals are unforgivably bad and might be a contender for the brownest, muddiest movie of 2026 (with one of the worst needledrops in a comic book movie to boot). Alcock is an innocent party here, and she gamely attempts to bring some fresh energy to the project, but I found it barely watchable as a tentpole summer blockbuster. If anything, Supergirl is a reminder of how much audiences are over both superhero movies and dejected antiheroes that spend the runtime figuring out how to care about people again. Household heroes like Spider-Man, Batman, and members of The Avengers may maintain success in their upcoming films, but the future looks grim for others, especially the female heroes that Hollywood keeps failing. Supergirl is playing at cinemas across the city  Backrooms (2026), directed by Kane Parsons A room with askew: Backrooms (2026, Dir, Kane Parsons) Review by Paul Oswell Horror and its related genres (in this case intense psychological drama with horror elements) has always served as a metaphor for real life anxieties. Dracula tells on Victorian England’s fears of reverse colonization and repressed sexuality, while Frankenstein has unchecked scientific ambition and the isolation of ‘the outsider’ as themes. Kane Parsons – a YouTuber tapped by A24’s cinematic distribution juggernaut – has created something that is genuinely unsettling, which is impressive given how desensitized we all are to, well, everything. Mr Parsons was born in 2005, and already has years of lore about The Backrooms concept online. It’s largely a Gen Z phenomenon, so we can perhaps extract data as to their generationally-specific demons. Backrooms is a dreamlike experience, abstraction and surrealism featuring heavily. David Lynch may have approved. The plot, such as it is, is ostensibly about Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a failed architect in the early '90s who's separated, alcoholic, and managing a tatty discount furniture store called 'Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire'. He makes humiliating TV ads dressed as a pirate, aware that he should be a sultan for the pun to work. He sees a therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve), a morose woman hawking self-help tapes. Both are broken in their own ways. One day, Clark finds an impossibly porous section of wall in the store's basement that leads to an infinite network of backrooms, like a portal. These rooms are uncanny, installation-style areas showing snapshots of different realities. It's like someone took every beige corridor, every fluorescent-lit waiting room, every soulless corporate space you've ever been trapped in and the physical reality matches your memory of them a week later. Clark begins to warily explore the rooms, mapping them as best he can amid half chairs in the walls, narrowing corridors, stairs that go nowhere and nonsensical masonry. Noises and shadows hint at a hidden population that inhabit the rooms. Clark’s young media team - Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and Bobby (Finn Bennett) - and eventually Mary are also drawn into the space. The less you know about what comes next, the more your appreciation for it will be. It's not really the supernatural horror that gets to you. This is a film about Gen Z’s most pressing existential terrors dressed up as found video footage. It's about being lost in systems designed as traps. These aren't haunted mansions or cursed graveyards, they're waiting rooms and office buildings. Dead yellowish light leaks from strip lighting, and what you feel is the dread of being one of millions of people stuck in the same beige nightmare, unable to escape. We're all just wandering through the backrooms, looking for a way out. But it probably doesn't exist. Backrooms is playing at cinemas across the city  Is God Is (2026, directed by Aleshea Harris) Review by Lauren Malara Is God Is tells the story of twins Racine and Anaia. As children, they were disfigured in a fire started by their father. As adults struggling to find their place in the world, they receive a message directly from God, their mother. Vengeance is mine, said the Lord. With that, the twins set out on a pilgrimage to murder their father. Holy opening sequence. From the start, it is clear we are in for a wild ride. The fast-paced storytelling is complemented by screenwriter and director Aleshea Harris’ visual risk-taking. The film, like the stage play it is adapted from, is poetic and visceral. Most refreshing of all, every character is Black, yet there is not a single mention of racism. Thank God! The story is dark, but at the forefront is Black joy and beauty. Think Bill Gunn. The film is delightfully Black, from Janelle Monáe singing Prince’s Thunder to unforgettable dialogue like “YOooooooU AIN’T SH*T DEVIL!” Then there are the gorgeous images of Blackness. Talking about waist beads, box braids, and drip. Filmed in New Orleans, the twins are serving looks on the levees, beneath the Crescent City Connection, and surrounded by Spanish moss hanging from old oaks in City Park. Ultimately, this is a story about what is seen and unseen. Acts of violence are hidden from the audience, until they aren’t. Much like the twins, we are allowed to turn away from the horrors of the past. We are given permission to overlook that which is too painful to see. But how do we heal scars if we ignore them? Is God Is asks us to face ourselves, accept the ugly truths, keep faith and hold on to hope for a happy ending. Is God Is is playing at theaters across the city  The theatre of politics
The Wizard of the Kremlin (2025, Olivier Assayas): review I’ve long been fascinated by the real life figure of Vladislav Surkov, sometimes luridly known as ‘Putin’s Rasputin’. He emerged from Moscow’s avant-garde theater scene, and in the late 1990s was elevated to powerful senior roles, dramatically shaping Russia’s domestic politics. From 2011 to 2013, he was also the Russian Deputy Prime Minister. One of Surkov’s ploys was what came to be known as “non-linear warfare”. This involved using ideas from conceptual art to stage social campaigns, publicity events and even armed conflicts that superficially did not make sense. For example, the government would publicly support opposing political factions with the sole intent of confusing any opposition: the modern western concept of ‘flooding the zone’ is like a (less sophisticated) version of this. I was looking forward to this dramatization, then. I’ve been a fan of director Olivier Assayas’ films before (Personal Shopper, Wasp Network), and was equally intrigued by the leads: Jude Law as Putin and the excellent Paul Dano as ‘Vadim Baranov’ (i.e. Surkov). It’s a straight telling of Baranov/Surkov’s unlikely rise. We meet Baranov in grungy underground parties as Boris Yeltsin's government crumbles, the collapse of communism over an electro soundtrack. Baranov meets bohemian artists and becomes a TV producer, soon feted by the oligarchs as someone who can brandish social influence. Putin is chosen as a malleable civil servant to replace Yeltsin. He was head of the FSB secret service but was seen as bland, something of a stuffed suit. Jude Law plays him brilliantly as an initially reluctant, endlessly put-upon bureaucrat, regularly disappearing into beige suits and bad comb-overs. Dano, meanwhile, I found an uncomfortable presence. He speaks in a consistent low monotone and his intentions and motivations are never really made clear. He flits between theater and TV and politics and business seamlessly, but all we see is surface. Maybe the real Surkov is also inscrutable, but it doesn’t make for great cinema. Real life global events occur. Some are dramatized (Yeltsin’s drunken antics, his public downfall) and some are shown through actual news footage (the Kursk submarine disaster, revolt in Ukraine). It all helps explain the socio-political context and Putin and Baranov rising to consolidate power. In terms of actual dramatic scenes in the film, though, I have to say it isn’t gripping. It almost feels like two and half hours of exposition, especially if you don’t gel with some of the directorial choices. Wizard goes the Chernobyl route of not affecting Russian accents, and while it doesn’t seem jarring with Jude Law, Paul Dano’s voice and inflection are more distracting. Their relationship is perhaps an interesting story if you don’t know much about it, but the slow pacing here is problematic. There’s much about the Surkov/Putin relationship to explore, but at this snail’s pace and with little characterization, I feel like this isn’t the ideal medium. For a short version, I would recommend this primer on non-linear warfare, or for a very thorough analysis and lots about this, then the documentary ‘Hypernormalisation’ by Adam Curtis could be a more edifying and even entertaining use of your time (PO). The Wizard of the Kremlin is streaming now  Soul crushing: Obsession (2025, dir. Curry Barker) The premise announces itself with disarming simplicity: a lovesick retail worker buys a New Age store novelty 'wishing stick' to win over his friend and colleague. What follows is a meditation on corrosive desire and modes of control dressed up as genre cinema. Bear (Michael Johnston) works alongside Nikki (Inde Navarette) in the deadened environment of a strip mall music shop. They're best friends, and it’s purgatory for him. When Nikki’s talismanic gem necklace falls into a drain, Bear seizes the moment to employ a strategy, stumbling into the shop and leaving with a replacement stone and his occult geegaw. The wish, delivered half jokingly to himself, is granted, and immediately delivers a romantic payload with algorithmic precision. Nikki becomes utterly, consumingly his. Her behavior – sexual, social, even spatial – knows no bounds. The dream inserts itself into Bear’s life with such thoroughness that it begins to collapse under its own weight. Proximity becomes suffocation; devotion curdles into psychosis. Nikki’s personality has been eradicated - like a zoomer Nosferatu, she is appetite. Director Curry Barker, emerging from YouTube into feature-length narrative, demonstrates no little ability, but this is Inde Navarrette's film. Her transformation – vocal, physical, psychological – charts the dissolution of selfhood with uncomfortable precision. We see personality become pathology, person become possession. Her occasionally-heard screams from the ‘beyond’ suggest something clawing its way up from some hellish ethereal substrata. In among the personalities is character work matching the maturity of Jessie Buckley or Anya Taylor-Joy. The violence, when it arrives, is brutal, but much more devastating even are the implications that we’re left with as the heft of the aftermath sits on us. Obsession is a parable about consent and love's totalitarian impulses. It's nasty, effective, and deeply uncomfortable. I can't say I completely enjoyed it, but I couldn't look away (PO). Obsession is playing in cinemas across the city  A rock and a far place
Review: Project Hail Mary I met Ryan Gosling once. He’s not a real gosling. I say “met”, it was more that we coincidentally checked into a hotel in Thailand at the same time. He was there to film the action movie Only God Forgives, and I was there for much less glamorous holiday reasons. We stood next to each other and signed forms. I caught his eye for a second, we politely nodded to each other, and then he went to his enormo-suite with hot and cold running caviar, and I to my basement utility cupboard. I’ve since forgiven him for making me feel very insecure about my looks and general levels of success for about two weeks, and though I didn’t know much about PHM going in, I had an open mind. I’m a perennial fan of the Sad Space Boy™ genre and honestly they’re my in-flight go-tos if there’s a Big Chris Nolan or Ridley Scott astral odyssey I can whack on for a few hours. A lot of this film hit that spot for me. All of the hype you’ve read about the cinematography is justified, and if you think you might like this film, then - trust me - get to a big screen before it leaves cinemas. Greig Fraser’s visuals (under the direction of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller) are magical, decking the spacecraft out in cosy earth tones and warm lights as our hero is forced to leave home comforts behind. Gosling (again, he’s not a real gosling) is scientist-turned-teacher Ryland Grace, who wakes up on said spaceship light years from home with no immediate recollections. As his memory returns, he remembers his mission: Earth’s sun is dying out. He must use his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save the planet. You know. The usual 'hopecore' set up. The story is told in parallel timelines, the flashbacks standing in for Grace’s memories returning while also deftly delivering exposition. Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of Fall) is a quasi-covert government spook who recruits Grace to train her team, promoting him against his will to crew as disaster strikes. I was fully engaged with this strand of the film. Gosling’s duck-(goose?) out-of-water goofiness (goosiness?) (sorry) is a great vehicle for his obvious natural charisma. The rest…well, your mileage may vary. Grace encounters and makes contact with an alien, who it transpires is on an identical assignment. Things dumb down quite a lot. Imagine if some people at Pixar watched Interstellar, Arrival and 2001: A Space Odyssey and then made a mash-up of those plots, but aimed at six year olds. Quite a large chunk of the story is this. Listen, Grace and Rocky (the name given to this stony crab-like creature) getting to know each other and working out their tactics to overcome an existential threat isn’t without charm. It’s cute, even. I just personally felt that this made for such tonal whiplash that - for me - it was like watching two different movies. We cut between quite adult and emotionally-heavy death scenes in one timeline to, essentially, a man playing with a plush toy - I just found it jarring, is all. In short, your enjoyment will probably rest on how tolerant you are to blatant pandering to a child audience. If you have young ones and already watch a lot of kids’ TV, then it might not even register. Even if you’re not on board for this element, there’s a lot to like here, particularly the visuals. Bask in a cinematic celebration of aesthetics and the pitch-perfect Gosling (he’s not a real gosling) and Hüller performances. You might have a rockier time with the rest of it. Project Hail Mary is playing at cinemas across the city  Michaela Cole and Ian McKellen in Steven Soderbergh's 'The Christophers' Movie Review: The Christophers (Steven Soderbergh, 2025) Steven Soderbergh returns to London after his recent spy caper Black Bag, although here the city recedes into the background, the scope being much more personal. Whereas Black Bag reveled in its Guy Ritchie-adjacent high jinx, The Christophers is a more delicate, intimate proposition. The film is held together by two very different, complementary performances. Ian McKellen is Julian Sklar, an aging artist who was lauded in his heyday, but who has darkened his name with misanthropic behaviour that became his trademark. Lori (Michaela Coel) is a younger art restorer currently employed at a food truck. Sklar is entering his final years, beset by ill health and bouncing around his crumbing townhouse. His two children (so one-dimensional that they could have been played by anyone, but are Baby Reindeer’s Jessica Gunning and, I’m so sorry to report, James Corden) have an eye on their inheritance, including some potentially valuable unfinished works from a series dedicated to Sklar senior’s old love: works collectively called The Christophers. The works have gained a near-mythical reputation in the art world. Sklar’s daughter - who formerly went to art school with Lori - concocts a scheme for Lori to become Julian’s new assistant. She would then have access to the unfinished paintings and could finish them herself for a cut of the inheritance. Lori tentatively agrees and is installed in the chaotic Sklar household. What follows is a touching two-hander; a talkative, play-like film that examines artistic life, what ownership of artworks or what ownership of ideas looks like, and the nature of family and the art world in general. McKellen is in his element, turning up the bitchiness and camp but with a script that is intelligent enough to dodge tackiness. Cole - who I have not seen since her incredible TV show I May Destroy You - is more nuanced and reserved. She moves with canny instincts through a moral quagmire, and the multiple twists in their relationship keep you engaged in the story. The Christophers shows us that Soderbergh, even at this stage of his career, isn’t out of tricks or new directions. If he can still pull off pseudo-camp spy thrillers as well as deft character studies like this, then we can hopefully look forward to a solid couple of decades of unpredictable but loveable work. (PO) The Christophers is showing at Prytania Theatres at Canal Place  Movie review: The Drama (Kristoffer Borgli, 2026) Just to be clear, right off the bat: I really liked Kristoffer Borgli’s previous English-language movie (Dream Scenario, starring Nicolas Cage), and I’ve enjoyed performances by Zendaya (Challengers, Dune) and Robert Pattinson (Good Time, The Lighthouse). I’ve also loved and rewatched various recent films in the ‘high-stress caper’ genre, such as Uncut Gems, and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (plus the aforementioned Good Time). I was, therefore, algorithmically inclined to like The Drama, with director, cast and genre all right up my alley. Perhaps this was the problem. The movie I watched right before The Drama was Die My Love (2025, Lynne Ramsay), yet another tense ride, as R-Patt and Jennifer Lawrence navigate rural isolation and marital discord to sometimes violent ends. It’s raw and visceral, and it stayed with me. I hate to say it, but personally, The Drama felt tame in comparison. It has some engaging framing devices: the meet-cute, with Zendaya’s Emma having deafness in one ear, and Charlie (Pattinson) being a bumbling academic, all good fun stuff. The inciting incident - a game of confession gone awry, alienating their best friends when a shocking revelation about Emma’s past is uncovered - makes for an interesting set-up, on a par with everyone dreaming about Nick Cage’s character in Dream Scenario. The pieces are all there. The ticking time bomb of the wedding, the fresh doubts that sow unease in the relationship, the increasingly desperate measures that our protagonists take to iron things out before the big day…it should have been a dramatic home run for me. But I just didn’t click with this film. I think part of it is that the lead characters - to me, at least - get less likeable as the plot progresses. They manipulate their best man and maid of honor (Mamoudou Athie and Alana Haim respectively, both doing solid jobs as support), lie to each other, and are generally unsympathetic. I tried to relate, to the circumstances of Emma’s former life, to the betrayal that Charlie must have been feeling, but I just couldn’t muster anything. I don’t feel like Borgli delved deep enough into what should be the abyssal ethical mire of Emma’s past. We kind of skip along the surface of it, with comedic (sometimes slapstick) reactions, from its introduction, to how it affects Charlie’s feelings (shown by his constant rewriting of his wedding speech). But it all felt a bit lighthearted, in the vain of Bridget Jones’ Diary or similar romcom fare. Our increasingly-unhinged couple don’t reveal any hidden depths as chaos ensues, and the characters felt one dimensional to me. There’s some rich, dark comedy in the positions that they put their friends in, and I loved Haim’s snark and Athie’s exasperation. I wish they’d both been on screen more, as Charlie and Emma continue apace with their self-absorbed wedding prep, becoming more judgmental and unforgiving as they careen towards the big day. To me, this felt like a Safdie Brothers-style romp, but designed by committee. The script hits a fair amount of the right notes, but it feels like it’s done so too knowingly. I felt this from the purposely-disorienting editing, to the now-well-used trope of a single-note score that is used like an aural second hand to create suspense. Maybe a rewatch that’s NOT after a more extreme version of the same general premise would mean I could enjoy it more, but for me - and again, I love the idea of this movie on paper - I would have been happy to see these two just walk away from each other long before the nuptials. (PO) The Drama is playing in movie theaters across the city  Heist and diced: Crime 101 (Bart Layton, 2026) Heist movies are so trope-laden these days that it’s become something of a weary format. Seven years ago, since when any number of such movies have darkened our screens, the TV cartoon Rick and Morty savagely lampooned the limping genre. “The only perfect heist is one that was never written,” is one relatable summary of the episode. In the year of Our Lord 2026, Director Bart Layton is in for one last job, though. Well, a job, anyway. Pleasingly, Layton takes the DNA of such capers and adapts this LA thriller (from a novella by Don Winslow) with originality enough to avoid cliche. It also helps that his assembled cast has the charisma to avoid a slide into mediocrity. Mike (Chris Hemsworth) is a lone conman/thief, working for a craggy old cove, and his mentor, known as Money (Nick Nolte). Disheveled, divorce-strewn, Detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), the only LAPD cop with any integrity, takes note of his jewellery store robbery patterns, and starts investigating in his puppy-dog, Columbo-esque style. Meanwhile, Mike is having doubts after a botched job and is replaced for a big diamond score by Money with an unpredictable, motorcycle-riding maniac Ormon (Barry Keoghan). Mike has also met a woman (Monica Barbaro) that he can only romance by faking normalcy. This situation is strained by his new plan: persuade put-upon insurance agent Sharon (Halle Berry) to give him inside info about a high-worth individual that he can rob, take the money, win the girl and become daddy’s, sorry Money’s, special boy again. The less we reveal about the twists and turns, the better. The plot is pacey enough, replete with equal parts action, emotion and an engaging rivalry (unheated) that pitches Mike’s tempered control against Ormon’s feral lunacy. Listen, any expansion on the ‘Barry Keoghan playing a weird little freak’ universe is alright by me. I might have misread things, but I thought that Mike was heavily autism-coded for the first hour (straightening cutlery, multiple mentions of his lack of eye contact, etc), but that element seemed to be weirdly dropped. Not that important, I just felt a slight shift in his character that added to the more uneven aspects of the plot. Ruffalo and Berry especially have great chemistry, and their half of the story was more engaging to me as they wade through the mire of low pay and abusive disrespect from their bosses. Crime 101 felt to me like a Michael Mann film, but directed by Steven Soderberg (can we call it a Steven Fauxderberg? Probably not, right?). It’s slick, but with a heart. OK, OK, FINE, Bart Layton. I’m in. But this is the last time. (PO) Crime 101 is playing at cinemas across the city.  The Sudbury Devil
(2023, Directed by Andrew Rakich) New Orleans local Andrew Rakich's debut feature premiered in 2023. Melding folk and historical horror, it’s an evocatively harsh, unfiltered experience that sits with you like a jolting mug of rotgut wine. I mean this as a compliment. There’s a cinematic earthiness to this story, marinated as it is in a steaming rural mire that almost wafts off the screen, stewing viewers in the ongoing discomfort. A fully-realised feature film (and a convincing period drama at that) from New Orleans talent is always an exciting feat, the production levels and practical effects here even more impressive once you consider the challenges of creating a film that looks this good on a $25k budget. The production admirably operated as a cooperative project, cast and crew working for profit share rather than upfront pay. Rakich cannily harnesses any aesthetic roughness, folding it into a vivid fever dream. Set in 1678 Massachusetts, it’s two years after King Philip's War left the colonies soaked in trauma and indigenous blood. The story follows Puritan witch hunters Fletcher (Benton Guinness) and Cutting (Josh Popa), who arrive to investigate the woods outside the village of Sudbury. Together with their guide, Goodenow (Matthew van Gessel), they soon encounter chaotic spiritual forces that are hostile to their pious, righteous certainty. Directorial references might include Robert Eggers, Ben Wheatley or even Peter Strickland. Rakich dives into a visceral experience, grabbing you by the collar and rubbing your face in the rotting undergrowth. The period detail is thorough, and even the Early Modern English vernacular is rendered with linguistic integrity. I especially admired the cinematography when it adhered to a distancing, objective discipline; when it’s at its most Protestant, if you will. Some of the still shots of interiors and the woods put me in mind of the uneasy aesthetic calm of Paul Shrader’s masterful First Reformed. Even the ever-looming 4:3 aspect ratio seems fittingly Calvinistic. The reassurance of simple religious tradition is thrown into disarray by mysterious, ethereal landowner’s wife Patience Gavett (Linnea Gregg), and the primordial presence of former slave Flora (Kendra Unique). These women channel magical powers and a feral sexuality that torments the investigators even as it hints at a more sinister, larger evil. Rakich puts up the ritualistic violence of devil worship against the bloody genocide of so-called Christian colonizing and asks…are they so morally different, actually? Empires are built on curses, and we shouldn't show surprise at the devils that are summoned. (PO) WATCH The Sudbury Devil online MORE: Louisiana Movies: The Apostle (1997, dir Robert Duvall) More movie reviews |
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