After loving Superman, I went into Supergirl hoping DC had found its footing. Instead, I mostly found myself bored. That is the biggest criticism I can make. I was not angry or offended. I was simply struggling to stay engaged.

There are good ideas here. Kara remembers Krypton in a way Clark never could, and the movie presents her as someone carrying enormous trauma. Milly Alcock is an excellent actress and has the potential to become a great Supergirl, but the script too often mistakes trauma for personality. The emotional arc never fully landed for me.

The movie also struggles with the usual problem of writing an overpowered Kryptonian. Kara’s abilities feel inconsistent, the interstellar settings are surprisingly small and drab, and Krypto is underused. I still want this DC Universe to succeed, which is probably why I walked away disappointed rather than angry. It is not a bad movie. It is just mid.

Maa Inti Bangaram is not merely a good Telugu movie or a good Indian movie with an asterisk. It is simply a good movie.

The story centers on a woman trying to earn her place in her husband’s traditional family while carrying a past she has never disclosed. The movie blends family comedy, questions of class and caste, and action without wasting the quieter first half. The time spent with the family gives the later conflict emotional weight because you understand what belonging to these people means to her.

Samantha Ruth Prabhu carries the film. She has to be funny, awkward, vulnerable, and completely convincing when the movie shifts gears, and I bought all of it. The story uses a familiar hidden-past structure but puts a woman at the center and makes it work remarkably well. If you are open to foreign-language films, I recommend it. If you already watch Telugu cinema, this is an easy call.

Young Washington follows George Washington before he became the figure history remembers, and it works best as an adventure movie set against real events. The film is interested in an ambitious young man learning through failure rather than presenting him as a born leader.

What I appreciated most is that this is not a hagiography, a sermon, or a political lecture. Washington is overconfident, makes poor decisions, and has to earn whatever greatness he eventually achieves. The frontier setting and military expeditions give the movie enough momentum that I never found myself checking my watch.

William Franklyn-Miller does a solid job in the lead, and veterans including Ben Kingsley, Andy Serkis, Kelsey Grammer, and Mary-Louise Parker add credibility without taking over the movie. I walked in knowing the broad history and left wanting to learn more. That is about the highest compliment I can give a historical drama. I hope this is the first chapter rather than the last.

This is a positive review, I promise. I am simply experiencing some franchise fatigue after thirty years and five Toy Story movies.

The premise is genuinely clever. Instead of pretending children still play exactly as they did in 1995, Pixar asks what happens when toys are competing with screens. The movie understands that technology is part of how children socialize now and avoids turning the story into a simple “technology bad” lecture. It is really about balance, imagination, and unstructured play.

The direction is strong, the pacing works, and Jessie steps naturally into a larger leadership role. I still missed Woody, and not every Buzz Lightyear subplot felt necessary, but the movie modernizes the franchise without betraying it. I am probably not the ideal audience anymore because I am not a child and do not have children. Parents may connect with this more strongly than I did. Even with my fatigue, it does exactly what it sets out to do.

The Death of Robin Hood is beautifully shot, Hugh Jackman gives a terrific performance, and the cast generally does excellent work. My problem is the script.

This is a grim, violent meditation on guilt, mortality, and redemption that uses the Robin Hood name while barely engaging with the mythology. If the characters had different names, I am not sure anyone would identify it as a Robin Hood story. The movie understands the aging-killer territory it wants to explore, but it never develops enough story or emotional momentum to justify the length.

Jodie Comer is very good, and the cinematography is gorgeous, but the characters spend too much time trapped in discussions of death and regret without giving me a compelling reason to care. If you enjoy bleak, ultraviolent medieval dramas, there is an audience for this. If you want a Robin Hood movie, I do not think this is one. I hope somebody makes another good Robin Hood movie soon. This is not it.

I have seen The Furious twice now, and I enjoyed it just as much the second time. This is one of those rare action movies you immediately want to watch again because you are still processing the choreography.

Comparisons to The Raid are inevitable, especially with Joe Taslim involved, but I think the fights here are even more varied and inventive. Xie Miao is an outstanding physical lead, Taslim is every bit his equal, and the villains are dangerous enough to make the heroes work for every victory. Every major set piece feels designed to top the one before it.

What impressed me most is that the movie never forgets what people came to see. It gives us heroes worth rooting for, villains we genuinely want to see lose, and some of the best martial artists working today. It is raw, vicious, and unapologetically violent, so this is absolutely not for children. If you want a great martial-arts movie, stop looking. This is the best pure action film I have seen this year.

Disclosure Day is a strange experience because I enjoyed watching it and liked it less the more I thought about it afterward.

Spielberg is still Spielberg. The direction is confident, the visuals are gorgeous, John Williams delivers exactly the score you want from a Spielberg alien movie, and the theatrical experience works. Emily Blunt has the most memorable role, and Josh O’Connor is solid. On a technical level, the movie is immaculate.

The problem is the script. The film wants to make a grand statement about disclosure, religion, empathy, and humanity’s place in the universe, but it treats its own moral assumptions as established facts. I never believed the story had earned its confidence about the intentions of the visitors, and it does not seriously engage with questions of consent, power, or accountability. The plotting also depends on intelligent people repeatedly behaving like idiots.

I liked the spectacle and the experience. I also think the movie is morally confused, intellectually one-sided, and not something I want to watch again.

Stop! That! Train! was really funny. It is a successful attempt to revive the David Zucker and Mel Brooks style of rapid-fire farce, and it does that kind of comedy better than several recent movies that tried the same thing.

There is a tremendous amount of humor and charm packed into the runtime, along with original songs and dance routines that fit the tone rather than interrupt it. RuPaul understands exactly what kind of movie this is and helps hold the whole ridiculous thing together.

I had no intention of seeing it and ended up there only because I arrived too late for another movie. I am glad I did. I would happily watch a sequel if the same people return. Easy recommendation for anyone looking for a few laughs.

Pressure is perfectly competent and completely unnecessary.

The movie focuses on the meteorologists trying to determine whether the D-Day invasion can proceed. That is an interesting corner of history, but everyone watching already knows the broad outcome. The drama therefore has to come from the characters, and I never became invested in them.

Andrew Scott and Chris Messina are fine, the production values are solid, and the film is professionally made. Brendan Fraser may even be giving an accurate Eisenhower performance, but I spent the entire movie feeling like I was watching Brendan Fraser in an Eisenhower costume. The attempts to create emotional stakes through the supporting characters also felt synthetic.

World War II movies have to clear a very high bar because there are so many of them. This one does not clear it. It is not bad. It is simply the kind of movie I would rather stream on a lazy weekend afternoon than pay to see in a theater.

I loved Tuner.

This is a heist movie wrapped inside a warm slice-of-life drama about music, loss, and finding a purpose when life does not go as planned. Leo Woodall is incredibly charismatic, and the supporting characters are funny, likable, and easy to spend time with. The romance also develops naturally rather than feeling like another box the screenplay needs to check.

Music is central to everything. Classical music, jazz, arguments about music, and people connecting through music give the film a warmth that carries it even when the plot is not especially surprising. Herbie Hancock showing up was a particularly nice surprise.

There is nothing revolutionary about the structure, and you can anticipate many of the developments. That did not matter to me. Sometimes a movie simply needs to be charming, funny, well made, and emotionally honest. If you enjoy heist movies, New York movies, jazz, classical music, or likable characters, I highly recommend it.

Backrooms is a weird movie, and I am not entirely convinced it cares whether the audience completely understands it.

The film feels like wandering through someone else’s damaged psyche. The spaces are wrong, the logic is wrong, and the visuals create a constant feeling that reality has slipped slightly out of alignment. This is not primarily a jump-scare movie. Most of the horror comes from atmosphere, and at least one sequence felt like pure nightmare fuel.

I knew very little about the internet phenomenon behind the movie, so people familiar with that material may get more from it than I did. As a newcomer, I found it interesting but frequently confusing. It also suffers from arriving close to Obsession, which works in similar territory and is a significantly stronger film.

I do not think Backrooms fully works or entirely makes sense. It did stick with me, though, and that is more than I can say for many horror movies.

I was primarily there for Naomi Ackie and Keke Palmer, and they carried I Love Boosters on pure charisma. They are funny, effortlessly watchable, and have the kind of chemistry that could sustain another two hours of nonsense. Poppy Liu and Taylour Paige fit naturally into the crew, while LaKeith Stanfield arrives looking like Prince playing some kind of vampire.

This is unmistakably a Boots Riley movie. The anti-capitalist absurdism is not subtle, and expecting ideological restraint would be missing the point. The movie commits completely to its strange, comic worldview.

I do not think the actual narrative fully comes together, and the political logic gets shaky if you think about it for more than thirty seconds. Still, the vibe worked for me. I had a lot of fun, even if I am not in a hurry to revisit it. That is what keeps it at three and a half rather than four.

The Mandalorian and Grogu feels like several episodes of the television series stitched together and expanded for an IMAX screen. Luckily, The Mandalorian is a good show, so the movie still works more often than it does not.

It looks great, the action is fun, and the production values are exactly what modern Star Wars audiences expect. The problem is that the story feels held back by the need to reintroduce the characters to casual viewers. After a long runtime, Mando and Grogu have not developed very much.

Grogu also feels increasingly limited by the gimmick that made audiences love him. His noises and head tilts remain cute, but they restrict how much the character can grow. I enjoyed the movie and would watch it again. It simply never justified being a feature film instead of another half-season of television.

In the Grey is the kind of Guy Ritchie movie that feels less like a film than an elaborate accounting strategy.

The tagline promises professionals stealing back billions. I spent the runtime wondering who gets the money back when Guy Ritchie steals a studio’s budget to make something this thin. Honestly, I had more fun imagining Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal as an odd-couple pair of accountants, Eiza González as a fast-talking tax attorney, and Jason Statham as an insurance adjuster with a particular set of skills.

That imaginary movie has about as much plot development as the one we actually received. Call it Operation: Ruse de Première. I would watch that before sitting through In the Grey again.

Obsession starts with the shape of a romantic comedy and gradually reveals itself as something much darker. The basic idea is pure Twilight Zone: someone finds a supernatural way to get exactly what he wants and discovers that desire is not the same thing as love.

By the end, my heart was pounding. The movie is disturbing, genuinely suspenseful, and far more effective than most horror films are for me. I am usually the person laughing at horror movies rather than being scared by them. I was not laughing here.

There are jump scares, graphic violence, and upsetting material involving animals, so do not walk in expecting a casual good time. I came out feeling both traumatized and exhilarated. This is excellent horror, but I do not need to experience it again anytime soon. If you like the genre on any level, go see it. It will not disappoint.

Hokum is another horror movie from this year that deserved a much bigger audience than it got. There have been a surprising number of really good horror movies in 2026, and I would put this one right up there with the better entries.

Adam Scott is the main reason it works. I have never really seen him play this kind of character before. Instead of the lovable, awkward guy you naturally root for, he gets to go full asshole. He is arrogant, condescending, and convinced that he is the smartest person in every room. The movie does not make excuses for him or work especially hard to make him likable. That is simply the person we are following through the nightmare.

Scott completely commits to the role. Watching someone so smug and hyper-rational gradually lose confidence in his own understanding of what is happening gives the movie much of its tension. The supporting cast is also strong, especially the collection of strange people around him who always seem as though they may know more than they are saying.

Damian McCarthy, who also directed Oddity, creates a creepy atmosphere without immediately showing his hand. The Irish setting and folklore hang over the entire movie, and it keeps you uncertain about exactly what kind of horror story you are watching. There are jump scares, disturbing images, and enough mystery to keep the movie moving without explaining everything too early.

People who have watched a lot of horror may recognize some familiar ideas, but the fun is in the execution and the way the uncertainty builds. It is fascinating, well made, and much better than a movie that quietly disappeared into video-on-demand deserved to be.

If you are into horror, I definitely recommend it.

Two things work in Michael. Jaafar Jackson is phenomenal, and the music is still Michael Jackson’s music. His dancing, physicality, and embodiment of his uncle are genuinely uncanny. He deserves recognition even if the movie around him does not.

The problem is that the film plays like a greatest-hits playlist with no liner notes, insight, or interior life. It moves through major events without helping us understand the human being at the center. Relationships remain shallow, the brothers are mostly props, Janet Jackson is effectively erased, and the estate’s fingerprints are visible everywhere.

This is a biopic designed to protect a legacy rather than illuminate a person, and those goals are fundamentally incompatible. Watch it for Jaafar. Then go watch Thriller, Billie Jean, Beat It, Smooth Criminal, and Remember the Time. Michael Jackson’s own work offers far more insight into the superstar than this carefully managed production does.

Pegasus 3 looks good for the most part. The landscapes and racing sequences are impressive, and that is about where the praise ends for me.

The acting is poor, the writing is poor, and the characters are paper-thin. The movie relies so heavily on CGI that neither the vehicles nor the driving ever feels real. It is spectacle without substance.

It is also essentially a two-hour boys’ club centered on cars. I cannot remember a meaningful female character or much female presence at all. If all you want is pretty scenery and racing footage, you may get more from it than I did. If you want believable performances, strong characters, or an engaging story, this does not deliver.

This is another horror movie from this year that somehow slipped under the radar despite having A24 behind it, and that is a shame because I think it is one of the better horror films I have seen this year. What makes it work is how little it needs. The movie relies on sound, silence, darkness, and the audience’s imagination rather than elaborate monsters or enormous effects. It understands that hearing something you cannot explain can be far more disturbing than being shown exactly what is there. Everybody has been alone in a quiet house at night, heard something strange, and wondered whether it was real or whether their mind was filling in the silence. This movie lives inside that feeling. It lets the tension build slowly and trusts you to become unsettled without constantly jumping out and screaming at you. Nina Kiri does an excellent job carrying nearly the entire movie, and Adam DiMarco works well opposite her even though much of his performance is vocal. Their chemistry helps ground a movie that could easily have felt like a technical exercise. People who enjoy paranormal podcasts, true-crime shows, or found-footage horror are the target audience for this one. The movie understands the appeal of sitting alone in the dark listening to disturbing stories and turns that experience into the horror itself. If you are a horror fan, I definitely recommend it, just not in the middle of the afternoon. Watch it alone, in the dark, and I think it will hit a lot differently.

Scare Out is essentially a long meeting in which everyone suspects everyone else of being the mole.

People ask one another whether they are the mole, explain that denying being the mole is exactly what a mole would do, review increasingly meaningless connections, and eventually begin to suspect that the investigation itself may be the mole. The process becomes so circular that my imagined parody of the movie was more entertaining than the movie.

There is probably a sharp political or bureaucratic thriller buried somewhere inside the premise. What reached the screen feels repetitive, self-serious, and unintentionally absurd. By the time the characters begin again from the same question, I had already checked out.

The first surprise in A Private Life is learning that Jodie Foster speaks French. The second is realizing how closely the movie resembles a 2018 French film with the exact same title and essentially the same narrative engine.

This is not a shot-for-shot copy, but the similarities are difficult to ignore. That leaves the strange question of why a French film in French needed to be remade as an American production that is also mostly in French.

The movie itself is perfectly watchable, and Foster is always interesting. I simply spent much of the runtime distracted by the unacknowledged relationship between the two films. Weird as hell.

The Choral was diverting, and that is about it.

Ralph Fiennes feels like he is going through the motions, which is a waste of his talent. The stronger impression comes from Jacob Dudman and Amara Okereke, both of whom can genuinely sing and give the musical material more life than the surrounding drama consistently earns.

There are emotional situations here that should hit much harder than they do, but the movie rarely develops enough urgency or intimacy to make them land. I am giving it three stars mostly for Dudman, Okereke, and the singing. Perfectly respectable, quickly forgotten.

I did not finish Greenland 2: Migration, so I am not assigning it a rating.

The post-apocalyptic world-building became so illogical that I stopped caring about the danger. Civilization has allegedly collapsed, yet some complex systems continue functioning while basic engineering appears to have disappeared. The movie keeps escalating physical obstacles without making the world around them feel remotely believable.

At a certain point I realized I was no longer watching to see whether the characters survived. I was watching adults struggle through another implausible disaster set piece and wondering why I was still there. So I left. I hope they eventually reach whatever destination the movie has promised them, or do not, or whatever.

Primate feels like someone tried to make a stripped-down Planet of the Apes story and removed the heart, social commentary, and intelligence, leaving only brutality.

This is a bare-bones survival movie about people trapped with a rage-driven animal. The setup never develops into anything more interesting. It reminded me of Death of a Unicorn, which also embraces killer-creature chaos but at least brings satire, dark humor, and personality to the concept. Primate is the joyless version: all blood and no brains.

By the midpoint, the movie felt less like horror than a snuff film. I found nothing edifying, clever, or enjoyable in watching the violence continue. I would not recommend it.

I really enjoyed After the Hunt despite the mixed reviews.

Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, and Ayo Edebiri all do outstanding work. What makes the movie compelling is its refusal to tell the audience exactly who is right, who is wrong, or even what happened with complete certainty. Luca Guadagnino lays out competing perspectives and lets us sit inside the discomfort.

I think some of the negative reaction comes from people interpreting that ambiguity as a political position. I read it as the point. Situations involving accusation, memory, power, and loyalty are often messy, and the movie refuses to simplify them into a clean moral lesson.

That uncertainty will frustrate viewers who need the film to choose a side. I thought it made the story stronger. This is a good film, and I think people should watch it.

Soul on Fire is one of the better faith-motivated movies I have seen.

The story is heartfelt, life-affirming, and genuinely moving. It had me tearing up at points, but it never felt as though it was manipulating the audience simply to deliver a sermon.

What I appreciated most is that the religious message remains present without becoming heavy-handed. The ideas about suffering, survival, and redemption grow out of the character’s experience rather than being placed on top of it. It feels grounded and sincere.

This is the best movie of its type I have seen since I Can Only Imagine. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an uplifting story who does not mind a light touch of religious messaging.

I enjoyed A House of Dynamite overall. Kathryn Bigelow’s direction is controlled, the tone is exactly right, and tension is built into nearly every moment.

My problem is the structure. The movie repeatedly revisits the same crisis from different perspectives, a conceit that has been used more effectively elsewhere. After a while, repetition begins to replace escalation, and the suspense loses force because the story refuses to move beyond the same boundary.

The ending raises the stakes without delivering the emotional payoff those stakes require. If the goal was to leave the audience shaken by nuclear stockpiles and weapons policy, the movie misses an opportunity to make that dread fully tangible. There is still something fascinating in what it attempts. It simply never detonates the way it could have.

The title One Battle After Another is accurate. The movie keeps moving from one confrontation to the next, often with more energy than clarity.

The film appears to contrast narcissistic, performative revolutionary politics with activism rooted in community, but I am not convinced that idea is clearly delivered by the end. The political message becomes especially muddy when characters repeat the patterns the story seems to be criticizing.

The white-supremacist characters are also played so broadly that they undermine the danger they are meant to represent. Satire can make evil look ridiculous, but here the farce sometimes weakens the stakes rather than sharpening them.

There is plenty to watch and discuss, but I found the underlying conflict less compelling than the movie’s reputation suggested. Three stars.

Billy Zane does a wonderful job bringing Marlon Brando back to life. Almost everything else about Waltzing with Brando made me uncomfortable.

The movie presents Brando’s dream of a sustainable island paradise as noble and eccentric while gliding past the realities of a wealthy celebrity pouring millions into a private project on a colonized Third World island. The local people often function as a friendly, exotic backdrop to a story about privileged men discovering themselves.

The film treats the resulting escapades as charming bromance and visionary idealism, but much of it felt like champagne liberalism at its most indulgent. Zane’s performance makes the movie watchable. As an actual film project, it is a miss.

I do not understand why people like The Long Walk as much as they do.

The premise is promising, but the movie is boring and never develops into anything more interesting. The characters spend an enormous amount of time moving through dull terrain, complaining about their fascist rulers, and waiting for the next act of violence. It would help if they had anything especially thoughtful or memorable to say.

One of the lead performances is also undermined by a distracting fake American accent. By the time the movie narrows its focus, the characters who remain are among the least interesting ones.

I do not like Stephen King’s books, and I usually do not like adaptations of his writing. Somehow I convinced myself this one would be different. It was not.

Tinā is a deeply moving drama about grief, resilience, and the power of music to heal.

Anapela Polataivao gives an outstanding performance as a Samoan teacher rebuilding her life while helping students at an elite private school find their own voices. The choir scenes are the heart of the movie, and Antonia Robinson’s singing is a particular highlight. The result feels like a tearjerking Samoan variation on Sister Act, and I mean that as a compliment.

I did wish the cast included more Samoan representation and that the movie explored more interaction between Samoan and Māori communities. Those omissions do not erase the film’s emotional impact, but they leave some of the cultural setting less developed than it could have been.

Anyone who appreciates a well-crafted emotional journey or has a soft spot for choral music should see it.

Madharaasi is a fun watch with plenty of good action, but the plot relies on a very shallow understanding of psychological trauma.

The protagonist’s motivations are reduced to a convenient reaction to past pain rather than developed as believable psychology. A central relationship then asks the audience to accept behavior that I found emotionally indefensible, all because the script needs the hero to keep placing himself in danger.

That problem does not destroy the movie. The action works, the pace is lively, and I was entertained. I simply could not stop thinking about how lazily the writing used trauma as a switch that could be turned on whenever the story needed motivation. Three stars for the fun, with a major reservation about the script.

Twinless is one of the best smaller films I have seen this cycle.

The movie is not fundamentally about sex or sexuality, even though the opening material may lead some viewers to expect otherwise. It is about grief, loneliness, platonic male friendship, and brotherhood emerging under unlikely circumstances.

Dylan O’Brien plays two very different twins and makes both of them believable. One is outgoing, intelligent, and gay; the other is introverted, simpler, and straight. The performances feel like separate people rather than an actor showing off a technical trick.

I think O’Brien will receive awards recognition for this, even if it is not necessarily from the biggest organizations. I really liked the film and would recommend it to anyone willing to follow a strange, emotionally complicated friendship.

Splitsville is definitely not a romantic comedy. My main takeaway was that everyone is incredibly mean to everyone else.

Every marriage, friendship, and interpersonal relationship in the movie is toxic. None of these people should be together, and the film never gives us even one character who feels emotionally safe or easy to root for.

It plays a little like a Judd Apatow comedy from a decade or two ago, except it is not as funny or charming. I still enjoyed parts of it, and the actors commit to the ugliness of the relationships. The movie would have been far more enjoyable if the writers had given the audience at least one person to empathize with.

Shoshana is an interesting historical drama set in British Mandatory Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s. The central romance gives the movie an emotional anchor, while the political violence and pursuit of militant groups provide real tension.

The period settings and cinematography are strong, and the film explains parts of the conflict with welcome clarity. Irina Starshenbaum and Douglas Booth carry the personal side of the story effectively.

My main reservation is the limited scope. Arab Muslim and Christian perspectives are largely absent, leaving a one-sided portrait of an already complicated conflict. I also wanted more attention given to the competing Zionist movements and their motivations rather than so much emphasis on the romance.

This is visually striking, well acted, and emotionally engaging. It is a good film that stops short of greatness because the broader history remains underexplored.

Everything has a pace, and Cloud is slow.

I was warned that this would be a slow burn. The problem is that it feels like a slowly burning fuse with no explosive at the end. It continues to build atmosphere and delay explanation until the story simply fizzles out.

I struggled to understand the motivations of nearly everyone except the protagonist, and even his motivations were clear only in a narrow part of his life. I found myself nodding off and checking the time more than once.

The movie often feels like an extended setup for a more interesting story involving the surviving characters, a story we will probably never see. I know other people have responded strongly to it. I did not find what they found.

She Rides Shotgun is a gritty action thriller with a strong father-daughter premise.

Taron Egerton and Ana Sophia Heger are convincing as an estranged pair forced into survival together, and their developing bond carries most of the movie’s emotional weight. The cinematography captures the tense, rough-edged atmosphere well, and the central setup is gripping enough to hold attention.

The movie is less successful when it slows down. The two-hour runtime feels stretched, several supporting characters remain flat, and the plot turns are easier to predict than they should be. The themes of family, survival, and redemption are present without being explored very deeply.

I enjoyed it, and it met the expectations created by the trailer. I would not revisit it. This is a solid one-and-done action movie with a distinctive father-daughter angle.

Kingdom is a long, visually impressive action thriller that exceeded my expectations.

The central undercover mission is easy to follow, the motivations are clear, and the first half establishes a genuinely strong premise. The cinematography and effects give the action real scale, while the soundtrack supports the momentum without overwhelming it.

The lead characters are developed well enough to keep the story engaging, even if I did not find them especially relatable. The second half is less disciplined than the first, and the franchise-minded ending frustrated me, but the bloody final stretch still delivers the catharsis the movie has been building toward.

At roughly 150 minutes, it earns most of its length. If you enjoy intense, visually striking Indian action thrillers, Kingdom is an easy recommendation.

Together is a haunting and surprisingly effective body-horror thriller.

Dave Franco and Alison Brie are convincing as a couple whose move to the country exposes the weaknesses already present in their relationship. The movie is well paced, easy to follow, and unsettling without relying entirely on gross-out imagery. That mattered to me because body horror is usually not a genre I enjoy.

The twists genuinely surprised me, the special effects are integrated convincingly, and the story balances horror with enough emotional investment to keep the characters from becoming disposable. The supporting cast and soundtrack are less memorable, but neither weakness seriously hurts the film.

Friends convinced me to give this a chance, and I am glad they did. This is a creepy, character-driven thriller that manages to be disturbing without becoming exhausting.

Maareesan feels like getting two different but satisfying movies for the price of one.

The first half is a funny and surprisingly warm character piece built around an unlikely traveling pair. Their chemistry gives the movie humor and heart, and I found myself rooting for them even when their relationship remained messy.

The story later moves into much darker territory and becomes more intense, controlled, and morally direct. That tonal change may not work for everyone because the two halves have very different energy. It worked for me. The central relationship gives the lighter material emotional weight, while the darker material provides a sense of purpose and payoff.

I was fully invested in both versions of the movie. Worth watching.

Junior survives much of its first half on the young lead’s personal charisma. He smiles, dances, and carries a relatively light story until that approach begins to wear thin.

The movie then changes tone and becomes a more traditional family drama about an independent young man confronting responsibility and learning to show proper respect for the people who have supported him. Oddly, after seeing the heavier second half, I found myself missing the simpler stretch when the movie was mostly smiling and dancing.

I did appreciate the way the different strands eventually come together. The songs are decent, and Kireeti’s dancing is excellent. The movie is uneven, but the lead has enough presence to suggest better things ahead.

Tanvi the Great is somewhat charming, and it is genuinely exciting to watch a young autistic woman achieve more as she is finally given opportunities to learn and prove herself.

The movie’s relationship with the Indian military is more complicated. It often plays like an advertisement for the institution even though that same institution represents the largest obstacle in the protagonist’s path. Everyone except her understands that the dream being encouraged may not actually be available to her, and the film never fully resolves that contradiction.

I enjoyed watching her progress, and the positivity is difficult to resist. I do not think I would watch it again, but it is an agreeable and uplifting experience.

I wanted to like Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight more than I did. I am interested in the fall of Rhodesia, the rise of Zimbabwe, and the decision to present that history through a child’s limited perspective.

The problem is that I found the young protagonist irritating and the adults around her superficially drawn. The movie provides little insight into what either Black or white characters are thinking, how the politics shape their choices, or what roles the adults play in the conflict.

That may be faithful to the perspective of a child who did not understand those events while living through them. Faithfulness to limited understanding, however, does not automatically make a compelling film. I kept waiting for more historical, political, or emotional depth. Somehow the movie makes an extraordinary period feel boring.