Let’s try something new. Given the large swath of films that come out every month, and such limited space to write per paper, I have decided to experiment with a collection of movies worthy of conversation, but not something I could expand for the full 1,000-word look-over
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (Released January 2026)
After half a year of waiting, we finally get the second of three planned films as part of the strangest modern franchise revival now, continuing right where the last one left off but with a new director and focus. Instead of purely focusing on the nightmarish post- Brexit coming of age of the first film, “The Bone Temple” reconfigures the story around two characters; Jimmy, a satanist cult leader who runs around dressed like the British Bill Cosby, and Dr. Ian, an atheist humanist in charge of the tribute to the dead the film’s subtitle comes from. Because of scheduling conflicts, the first film’s director, Danny Boyle, has been replaced with Nia DaCosta, who wisely pulls back from the postmodern digital Brechtian chaos of the first for an oddly spiritual experience. It’s still a rather odd-ball story, with the giant zombie penis man playing a bigger role and the human flaying being A Choice. However, I do find the thematic movement growing from the long-term trauma of Britan’s past and its effects on politics, masculinity, and religion and into trying to find a humanist future as extraordinarily touching coming from the usually cold screenwriter Alex Garland.
Hamnet (Released November 2025)
Due to the shameless Oscar Bait trailer that shows how the death of William Shakespeare’s boy, Hamnet, influenced the creation of his iconic play Hamlet, I despised the energy bleeding from this film. However, I became interested with director Chloé Zhao’s fascinating interview cycle, where interviews about art become derailed by diatribes about Jungian philosophy, her neurodivergence, and her fear of death. With that in mind, I came into “Hamnet” considering the film’s artistic merits first, which are fascinating. Essentially, this is a movie about artistic communication being a key part of human identity. Our need to create art in order to rationalize the absurdism of existence that is within our own physical connection with nature. This is emphasized with Shakespeare’s wife Agnes’ connection with her mother’s legacy as an herbal witch and the forests surrounding Stratford, as much as Shakespeare’s issues with direct communication and familiar trauma being pushed out through his art. The film unpacks death as a natural process of nature that individuals must go through but understands art as a form of communication and communal healing in a way I did find very considerate.
Send Help (Released January 2026)
SAM. RAMI. IS. BACK! God knows how wonderful those words are to type proper. After 18 long years, the man who directed “Evil Dead 2,” one of my top five favorite movies of all time, has finally made an original film! A rather simple one at that, a sort of battle of the sexes and classes involving an overworked female corporate strategist with an obsession with survivalist exploration, and a rather privileged male Nepo-baby boss being shipwrecked on an island. This is one of those films I would make fun of as a weaker “No Other Choice” in its exploration of economic class divide and maintaining a middle-class position, but Sam is here, baby! Cartoonish hyper-violence, whiplash inducing camera moves, wild emotional swerves into terror, nebbish losers thrown into the heroic. It really is a three-star movie thrown into the four-star category due to having one of the last great adventure directors at the wheel. At least one bit involving disembowing was so funny, laughter ping ponged for a minute straight in the theatre.
The Secret Agent (Released November 2025)
Perhaps the most personally fascinating of the big critic’s darlings of last year due to its mammoth scope. An lame version of this would have been an overlong thriller using 70’s Brazilin politics as a structuring hook for a story about family or something (hey “One Battle After Another”), but Kleber Mendonça Filho is clearly going through a lot of feelings about the long term effects of far right totalitarian government has had on Brazilian culture and seems to grab a number of filmmaking tricks, from thriller, to horror, to ensemble piece, to noir mystery, to history spanning epic, to magical realism, and even to sociological study to understand how a corrupt government destroys people and the long term effect that has throughout history. That alone would make it one of the most emotionally rich films of the 2020’s, but it’s particularly poignant to me given that a lot of the conversation is based around education and media. The lead character is a teacher fired and hunted down for disagreeing with new management limiting the freedoms of their work and abilities, something I find particularly eerie to the now.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (Released February 2026)
Can a film be “Boomer” as heck (or really gen x nihilistic) and still be good? “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is one of those films whose contempt for modern technology burns through your skull with its acid-soaked satire. After an opening involving a homeless looking dude recruiting adventurers to stop the a.i. singularity happening at midnight, the film then structures itself as a series of “Black Mirror” style episodes exploring why the people in the collective accepted such a weird offer. The biggest issue the film has is its contempt for the youth, spending the entire first episode being a lame “teens and their phones” joke that feels nasty for the wrong reasons. Thankfully, the film’s psychotically wild tone that builds into systemic, and even media criticism sharpens the message towards the right subjects. It benefits it greatly the director is Gore Verbinski, one of the great weird genre directors of his generation back after “A Cure for Wellness” a decade ago to remind people he knows how to direct weird high-concept scripts that has school shootings, cloning, and princesses without it feeling like a pile-up car crash. While I adore the film greatly for its ambition and style, a lot of people will have legitimate grievances with its thematic execution.