Contemporary 2026 – The Magnificent 60s

Wicker (2026) **** – Seen at the Cinema

I’ve been duped so many times before by well-meaning critics giving rave reviews to British pictures in a forlorn bid to support the domestic industry that I came at this with some trepidation. Maybe this is a taste of what we can expect when the biggest of the best-selling “romantasy” novels, the most successful genre in publishing at the moment, hits the screen and women take a fancy to all sorts of strange creatures. And in that context, a bit of harmless wood may be mild in comparison to what awaits us when the first romantasy hits the screen.

Think Grimm’s Fairy Tales before they were edited down for children’s consumption or perhaps Angela Carter whose The Company of Wolves (1984) certainly fell into the sexy romantasy category.

What’s particularly satisfying here is that the story develops. The initial concept doesn’t just sit there in the standard Hollywood tradition of wronged person winning out maybe after having to spend some time with a handful of dwarves or relegated to grimy kitchen duties.

And also, there’s a very contemporary feel to it, in that everyone is obsessed with sex, the men whether they are getting enough, the women with satisfaction issues.

The medieval setting is also purpose-built. All the characters are known simply by their occupation or their relationship to a male with an occupation. There are some clever twists on wedding rituals, for example, the bride fitted with a metal collar, and instead of a thrown bouquet indicating who might next walk down the aisle it’s a lovingly crafted wooden egg created by The Basketmaker (Peter Dinklage) who otherwise can commune with the supernatural and create The Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgard) to satisfy the desires of the lonely middle-aged Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman).

She’s something of an outcast, an orphan, living outside the village, only connecting with the villagers to sell her fish or be made fun of, especially by the snooty, condescending Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki) who rules the roost.

Malice will out. Everyone is susceptible to suspicion. And lust? Well you can certainly hang your hat on that. So despite the wooden man’s gallantry and gentle nature, his actions stir deep emotions in the village. Whoever heard of a man saying romantic things to his wife? Or of fulfilling her night after night with such endeavor that he’s constantly breaking their bed?

The Tailor’s Wife sows the seeds of suspicion. She tells the Fisherwoman that her husband is unfaithful, that he’s been fixing the sexual problems of other lonely wives. Initially, she’s able to dismiss this as jealousy but when a married woman turns up on her doorstep bearing a Willow Baby she loses it. And in the grand tradition of The Wicker Man she sets him afire. But there’s a very satisfying sting in the tale, orchestrated by The Basketmaker where domestic truths are outed and relationships sundered.

Subsidiary characters are well observed. The young maritally inexperienced Bottlewasher (Gustav Lindh) feels distinctly unloved when he solicits little response from his wife (Marli Siu) during lovemaking and hence to show how much he loves her he takes a leaf out of The Wicker Husband’s book and sets to mending the roof. When he falls through it and breaks his ankle that stirs in her the reaction he desires. Another couple improve their sex life by playing at wife and wickerman.

But none of this is delivering in the snigger-snigger Carry On style suggested by the trailer though certainly the sexual taunts are coarse and there’s an odd premarital ritual where a man with a carrot for a penis has it gobbled off by a goat. There’s a terrific dance routine that may well be resurrected in the manner of cult for movie lovers to perform at some function or other.

Olivia Colman adds a genuine comedic string to her bow, underplaying rather than overplaying as in The Roses (2025). Britain is surprisingly rich in female actors who can get films green lit – Helen Mirren (another new picture just coming up) and until recently Judi Dench and Maggie Smith being the others. Elizabeth Debicki (Maxxxine, 2024) is the other standout here along with Alexander Skarsgard (Lee, 2023) whose performance is anything but wooden, quite an achievement given his physical restrictions.

Directed by the double act of Alex Huston Fischer (Save Yourselves, 2020) and wife Eleanor Wilson (Save Yourselves) who also wrote the screenplay from the fable by Ursula Wills. How refreshing to discover new directing talent that can just put all the pieces together in the correct order without resorting to the gimmicky of the “visionary” now so ubiquitous.

Approach without trepidation.

Pressure (2026) **** – Now Streaming

The producers sure misread the public for this one. As every moviegoer knows, weather is for chaos and destruction. We’re talking cyclones, hurricanes, twisters, roaming icebergs, ships in distress, cities swamped or frozen. The clue is in the title – Twister (1996), Twisters (2024), The Perfect Storm (2000), Hurricane (1979). The clue in the title here would have driven audiences away. We’ve spent half our lives listening to weather forecasters talk about pressure, low or high apparently, without having a clue what they’re on about.

Which is a shame because the title here is dual purpose. Yes, it’s about the weather front that could wreck D-Day but it’s also about the mental gymnastics undergone by all the generals, admirals and backroom staff as the Allies prepare for the greatest invasion ever known. Key to a successful landing is the weather. Too much weather, i.e. waves a few feet higher, and the landing troops will be swept away.

The Yanks involved are unfamiliar with the English concept of the stiff upper lip so they just verbally let loose on anyone getting in their way, including Scottish weather kingpin James Stagg (Andrew Scott). He’s been drafted in as a counterbalance to the gung-ho American weather expert Irving Krick (Chris Messina) who has made any number of crucial interventions weather-wise, including not just the North African campaign but the filming of Gone with the Wind (1939).

Krick relies on history to make his calculations. If this happened in 1913 and 1931 with these conditions the consequences would be the same in 1944. James Stagg is not convinced. So that’s the first head-to-head battle. Luckily, Stagg isn’t the hapless kind of the backroom boy, and asserts his authority from the get-go.

But when Stagg’s calculations don’t go the way Allied Commander General Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) wants then he’s got a raging boss to deal with not to mention an arrogant General Bernard Montgomery (Damian Lewis) who somewhere along the way lost his stiff upper lip and lets it all hang out rather than, like his countrymen, reining it in.

So it’s the lowly (in comparative terms) weatherman sticking to his guns in the face of a roomful of Army and Navy chiefs, on top of which his wife is in hospital dangerous ill after a German bombing raid.

Krick isn’t above sneaky manoeuvres to attempt to put Stagg in his place, and the Scot might as well have had a target pinned to his back for all the verbal abuse he takes. But his refusal to give way ranks with all the resilient greats over the centuries who had resisted taking the easy route and stood up for his principals and incessant belief that he is right and that if the bosses take any other action Germany will win the war. The stakes, let’s just say, couldn’t be higher.

Luckily, Eisenhower isn’t one to be persuaded by self-serving charlatans. He’s an interesting study here, well aware that he’s in charge of the greatest military show on earth while never having led an army into battle before. He is plagued with doubt as well. And his adulterous relationship with his assistant Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon) isn’t glossed over either, nor, interestingly, is he inclined to let romance get in the way of hard decisions.

In fairness, this is more of a chamber piece and opening up what began as a stage play to show ships in battle and the other actionable elements of D-Day isn’t really required and it might well have been better to scale down its ambitions because the inherent drama is more than enough.

Andrew Scott (Ripley TV series, 2024) comes out on top precisely because he’s got to rein it all in but Brendan Fraser (Rental Family, 2025) is convincing and, luckily, Kerry Condon (F1 The Movie, 2025) is giving more to do than just mop Eisenhower’s brow.

So, basically, it’s a very well-written and very well-acted drama. Directed by Andrew Maras (Hotel Mumbai, 2018) and co-written by him with David Haig, better known as an actor, who wrote the original play.

I saw this on the big screen but didn’t review it at the time. It’s not taken long to get into streaming. You can catch it on Apple and Amazon and others.

In the Shadows (2026) *** – Seen at the Cinema

Sometimes you just get bushwhacked at the cinema. Turn up for one of these Secret Screenings at your local multiplex and you’ve no idea what’s going to be shown. I’d never even heard of this picture, much less seen a trailer (and it’s due for release on Oct 30) and never heard of the main character, a female Muslim refugee in Britain who turns into a world champion boxer and represents her country of origin, Somalia, at the Olympics.

In truth, the tale would have been much better told as a documentary because a) it is at least 20 minutes too long b) often relapses into airy fairy artistic shots and c) ain’t half as dramatic as the material could be. There’s a Chariots of Fire moment when our boxer beats the odds with a clever use, but otherwise it doesn’t seem to get beneath the skin of the main characters.

Ramla Ali (Jasmine Jobson) takes up boxing to lose weight. Her parents are kept in the dark because they’ll most likely object and are intent on marrying her off to a nice Muslim boy. She’s taken on at a gym by coach Clinton (Gershwyn Eustache Jr) and also meets Richard (Finn Cole) who takes a shine to her, though romance is off the table given he is white and non-Muslim. Interestingly, she’s not as dedicated to the sport as Clinton would like, in part because she’s ducking and diving to avoid her parents and strict older brother, but also in part because…we don’t know why. Eventually, however, she starts to get bouts and wins enough to come to the attention of the Team GB Olympics Boxing team. But she doesn’t make the grade there because…we don’t know why.

Anyways, Richard decides to convert to Islam and marries her, much to the fury of her family. And then in a Chariots of Fire moment she decides to set up a one-person boxing team for Somalia to compete in the Olympics which is where the film ends, family and community finally coming round. She doesn’t win an Olympic medal it has to be said so it’s not as triumphant as it might be. In fact, it’s not triumphant at all, how her career pans out ends up in the credits.

There are two main problems. Firstly, it’s too long and therefore too slow with too much time spent on artistic compositions that don’t have any impact on the narrative. But, more importantly, because Ramla comes across as a Jekyll and Hyde character. In the big wide world she can more than handle herself, ready with a barbed quip to deter anyone taking her for granted. But in her home she’s a mouse, never challenging parents or strict brother, just sneaking out in the early mornings and evenings to go training. Eventually, she’s rumbled because one of her fights is shown on television, to family outrage.

Films about female boxers have generally tanked at the box office and this looks as if it’s scarcely going to get a release in this country. Nobody wanted to see Sydney Sweeney as Christy (2025) or Michelle Rodriguez in Girlfight (2001) although Clint Eastwood made a bundle on Hilary Swank as the Million Dollar Baby (2004), which also scooped Oscars for Eastwood and Swank. So it’s a tough call to find a story that resonates enough to become a fulfilling drama.

And Ramla Ali wasn’t in fact the world’s first female Muslim boxing champ – that honor went to Australian Bianca Bam Bam Emir, born in Lebanon.

It’s definitely attempting to win the inspirational gold and in pure biopic terms that’s fine but as a proper drama comes up short.

Jasmine Jobson (Bird, 2024) is okay but her part is underwritten as is that of Finn Cole (Last Breath, 2025). Gershwyn Eustache Jr (The Man in My Basement, 2025) has the meatiest part.

Director Anthony Wonke is best known for documentaries so can be forgiven for padding this out with artistic flourishes. Written by Ursula Rani Sarma (A Beautiful Imperfection, 2024).

You’ll probably be able to catch this on streaming sometime soon.

Whalefall (2026) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Sea beast smorgasbord – whale, squid, orcas. Even the tinier specimens like a jellyfish and a sea urchin have their own vicious defences. A whale of a ride though without an anatomy book to hand I’d be hard put to tell you what’s going on. A big-budget B-picture, heavy on the thrills and edge-of-the-seat tension but suffers from the need to put on airs and graces and lecture us on ecology and the final piece of mumbo-jumbo lacks the satisfying clarity of, say, Ryan Gosling’s scientific explanations in Project Hail Mary (2026).

After a terrific hour of immersion in the belly of the whale, which involves tangling with the aforementioned squid and sea urchin and being sucked into the hard-core digestive part of the mammal, the ending suddenly switches to the maudlin, with our hero being given advice by his dead father and somehow, apparently, communing with the whale. And it’s okay, also apparently, to blow a whale to smithereens because in ecological terms a dead whale provides a mountain of nutrients for other sea creatures and whatever grows on the seabed in what is known as a “whalefall.”

But until then it’s pure pedal-to-the-metal. For reasons that don’t make much sense college student Jay (Austin Abrams) decides to go hunting for his father’s remains, even though they had a very difficult relationship, a year after Mitt (Josh Brolin) committed suicide by dropping into the sea with the metal equivalent of a block of cement attached. Kitted out in scuba gear, Jay no sooner has reached the trench where he reckons his dad fell than he gets snagged by a squid whose tentacles are sticking out of the mouth of a sperm whale and he’s dragged inside.

Turns out, if I’m reading this right, a whale has two stomach sections, the first where his prey just sit like in a waiting room, and the second where the prey is consumed into the digestion system. So landing initially in the first section, the squid decides he might as well enjoy a bit of lunch before he meets his maker. Jay is almost crushed to death and the squid it transpires also has a very small mouth with very sharp teeth.

He only escapes because the squid is the first to be swallowed into the digestive system. But Jay is next and the most of his time battling for a way out of the maze of the whale’s stomach. There’s virtually no dialog, obviously, and mostly all Jay can do is scream and gasp for breath and watch as his oxygen supply runs down. He nearly escapes through the whale’s mouth as it surfaces for air and to provide tourists with the opportunity for selfies but soon slithers back down.

The whale, it turns out, is not entirely immune. While its size might deter smaller mammals it has little defense against a shoal of ravenous orcas which take chunks out its tail and body. There’s some hocus pocus that I couldn’t get a handle on that permitted Jay to make his escape, some kind of chemical lesson that created an explosion.

I could have done without the father-son relationship because it became too much a part of the later narrative. It didn’t matter how Jay ended up in the whale’s stomach, to be honest, and, as I said, we didn’t need pontificating about ocean ecology.

But the central section, the trap, is terrific. Unusually, Austin Adams, as he proved in Resident Evil (2026), can carry a film where he’s the entire narrative conduit and there’s not much interaction between characters, much of the picture relying on his reactions to a given situation. Josh Brolin (Weapons, 2025) seems to have inherited all those grizzled old guy roles that used to fall to the likes of Nick Nolte. I haven’t seen Elizabeth Shue (she was Oscar-nominated for Leaving Las Vegas, 1995) in a long time. This is her first movie in three years and the last one I remembered her in was the Death Wish (2018) remake.

Directed by Brian Duffield (Cocaine Bear, 2023) who wrote the screenplay with Daniel Kraus, author of the source novel.

I tell you I was on the edge of my seat all the time Jay was in the belly of the beast, but, unfortunately the tension dissipated once he started imagining his dead father giving him instruction.

Deep Water (2026) ****- Seen on Amazon Prime

In my mind there is a special category for the well-made B-picture that cuts itself no slack, doesn’t indulge in airs and graces, and doesn’t spend valuable screen time pontificating on the world’s woes or weighing the picture down with romance or some mawkish drama. Little time is wasted here, either, on providing characters with any depth, in fact we don’t even find out what’s bugging First Officer Ben (Aaron Eckhart) till literally the final scene of the movie. And as you know I’m pretty keen on sharks or any other ferocious beast from the deep sea, so my tendency is always to err on the side of praise.

But for a B-picture this goes three ways. First we’re in disaster movie territory with an incredible airplane crash, then we’re in survival mode as the disparate group of passengers are adrift in the ocean, buoyed up by what remains of the sinking plane, and finally you realize this has all just been bait-and-switch because actually what we’re headed for is a shark movie.

This is not just in very safe hands, director Renny Harlin having been here before (terrors of the deep wise) in Deep Blue Sea (1999) and he’s no stranger to racking the tension up to 11 what with Die Hard 2 (1990) and Cliffhanger (1993) in his locker. And it’s a pretty confident director who uses elegiac music to undercut the scenes of horror on a plane falling out of the sky, with passengers battered by all sorts of missiles, not to mention a plane on fire, and huge holes being torn through the fuselage and people being sucked out.

It’s not a hijack thank goodness and the plane doesn’t land in a country riven with civil war or endangered by terrorists. Instead, calamity is caused by a faulty mobile phone that sets fire to a piece of luggage in the cargo hold which subsequently engulfs the plane. Karaoke king Rich (Ben Kingsley) is the captain, but he doesn’t last long, trapped in the cockpit after the crash and waiting with stiff upper lip for death.

There’s nothing original about the passengers and there’s no actor in a breakout role here. There’s a small child (Molly Belle Wright) who’s obnoxious to her brother, their parents caught in the middle of a conjugal exercise in the toilet when the plane goes down, a couple of odious characters – one a bully, the other just the kind of rude entitled guy (Angus Sampson) always stirring up trouble – and a younger couple struggling to commit. And then it’s just perm a dozen hazardous situations from the aftermath of the crash, whether it’s the bits of the plane that are still afloat beginning to be swallowed up by the sea, or those trapped in the part that’s stuck upside down on the seabed, or those being picked off by a posse of sharks, plus the usual tension between the survivors.

There’s a nod to The Italian Job (1969) when to keep the plane wreck on an even keel some passengers have to go into watery back. And while you can’t get away from Jaws (1975) or the wild Under Paris (2024), the sharks here don’t need much of an ominous introduction, either via musical motif or scientific mumjo-jumbo explaining their unlikely presence (hardly required since they’re just where you’d expect to find them). No sooner has the first fin appeared than they’re lopping off body parts. They’re more athletic than I’ve seen from the breed, liable to heave themselves out of the water onto a life raft and even capable of downing a helicopter.

And our Ben isn’t the commanding hero one usually requires in a movie like this. He’s clearly as traumatized as the rest of them, and getting a sock in the mouth (literally) from passengers slagging him off for crash-landing in the first place. It does play kinda safe where the death toll is concerned. The two kids ain’t going to be anybody’s lunch any time soon and the commitment-phobic couple are too sweet to knock off. But after that any one is game for death.

Some excellent twists including a rescue boat that can’t come close enough to rescue the survivors because the water is too shallow around a dangerous reef.

The scenes on board the aircraft as it starts to come apart, engines falling off, the shell of the plane sprung loose, and passengers killed by falling luggage or anything else loose in the air, are just horrific.

This was actually a movie that flopped so badly on U.S. release that it didn’t make it to our shores and while it’s a good fit for Amazon as a streamer, it’s had more thought put into the production than is normal for the streamers.

Hugely enjoyable.

Verity (2026) **** – Seen at the Cinema

The Housemaid set a very high bar for the glossy, slick, twisty, female-led thriller. With the same background of wealth and privilege – and the underdog staring through the shop window – this terrific three-hander more than meets the bill. (I saw this on the same day as Digger and there was scarcely a seat left).

Given the twistiness of the genre now, the audience is aware nothing is what it seems and like me from the outset starts to wonder what the reality really is behind the glitzy façade. When you begin to out-think yourself, you know the movie has done its job.

I had a different scenario in mind, one where impoverished ghost writer Lowen (Dakota Johnson) has set it all up, inveigled herself into the household of bestselling crippled author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) and conspired to write a tale, purportedly an autobiography, that would make husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) want to kill her. I was wrong, as it turned out, but the screenwriter’s line was just as twisty. In the end the pun on the author’s name, Verity, ensures that we can never know the entire truth.

Given Verity has made fortune imagining villainous heroines, it’s not long before the apparently innocent Lowen begins to fall under some kind of villainous spell, or the self-justification that amounts to the same thing.

The stunning meet-cute sets the tone. When Jeremy comes across Lowen her face is dripping with blood, the result of being too close to a city center car crash. He’s the ultimate gentleman, gives her his shirt in place of her despoiled top, and just as well because she’s going in to interview for the job of a lifetime. Verity needs someone to write three books, based on her voluminous notes, and learn to write in her distinctive style.

I should point the meet-cute between Verity and Jeremy is equally accomplished, Jeremy commandeering someone else’s limousine to make out with Verity.

Lowen is little more than a literary wannabe, published but without commercial success. She’s emotionally raw, too, having just buried her mother and inclined to self-medicate on a combination of her mother’s medication and alcohol. .

Naturally, with the wife out of action and confined to bed, paralyzed, unable to communicate, a romantic vacuum has opened up, a romantic job opportunity if you like, a sort of bonus to the writing gig, and maybe even an opening for a new wife. Kicking off the it’s-not-what-it-seems business, Lowen by accident discovers a memory stick containing, ironically, too much memory, the retelling of Verity’s life minus the fairy tale aspects that appears to cast Verity as a calculating mother resentful of her two children, fearing they are coming between herself and her husband. There’s a tragic accident in which one of the children dies. But is it an accident or convenient murder?

Meanwhile, either Lowen is going barmy with guilt, what with playing around with the husband, or going mad, because she begins to see the paralyzed woman watching her. There’s a terrific scene where Lowen sticks a pin in Verity’s hand, drawing blood, hoping to force the wife out of her stupor and admit her supposed paralysis is all part of some kind of sadistic plan, the aim of which is unclear, unless, like her villainous heroines, this is just the kind of fun Verity enjoys.

Thanks to the autobiography, Verity very much comes alive in flashback. But whose version of her life are we seeing? By the time Lowen and Jeremy had made their own judgements, they have already devised a construct which permits villainous action under the guise of self-justification.

You’ll find a few plot holes if you look hard enough, but I doubt if anyone will be anything but swept along in the dazzling tale with convincing characters. This wouldn’t be a twisty thriller if it didn’t come with a couple of dynamite twists at the end.

This is the fourth adaptation of novels by Colleen Hoover (It Ends With Us, 2024) and I’ve enjoyed every one, and each quite different from the other. Nick Antosca (Cape Fear mini series, 2026) wrote the screenplay while Michael Showalter (The Idea of You, 2024 – also with Hathaway) directed but I reckon they followed Hoover’s guidelines.

This is turning out to be the Year of Anne Hathaway, with two big hits – The Devil Wears Prada 2 and The Odyssey – in the bag. All three actors are superb. I’ve not been that impressed with Dakota Johnson (Madame Web, 2024) before – although admittedly I skipped the Shades movie series – but this works for me, and Josh Hartnett’s delicious turn in Trap (2024) turned my preconceptions of him on their head.

Thoroughly enjoyable.

Unabomber (2026) **** – Seen on Netflix

I’ve got mixed feelings about this one because it’s effectively two films in one, the sections separated by 38 years. The first part, set in 1958, explores the early life at Harvard of the Unabomber, the second part, set in 1996, the investigation leading to his arrest. The first part is superb, with Russell Crowe, devoid of his usual bombast, in superb form and telling as cruel a tale as you’ll ever come across.

The second part is the kind of True Crime drama which has become a Netflix trademark. And interesting though it is, it’s pretty much standard for the genre, but gets itself into trouble by establishing Joanne Miller (Shailene Woodley) as the FBI investigator who effectively tracks down the criminal, battling the department and male misogyny to do so. And although this is too reminiscent of Clarice Starling from Silence of the Lambs (1991), the big problem is that Joanne Miller didn’t exist, she’s a figment of someone’s imagination, and the gender switch comes off first of all as an insult to the guy who actually did the solving and a crude attempt to inject unnecessary feminism into the tale.

And once you learn that, you start to question the truth of the first section. Which I very much hope has not been fictionalized because it’s just terrific.

Theodore (Ted) Kacynski, son of a butcher, is a pretty smart guy to get into Harvard in the first place, but he’s your standard misfit nerd, doesn’t feel he fits into society, reacts badly to women coming on to him, falls out with his dominant father and meek mother. He’s meant to be studying maths but has taken a class in philosophy taught by eminent professor Henry Murray (Russell Crowe) who uses, unusually, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to introduce students to his subject, and takes a fancy to young Ted, on account purportedly of his brainpower (I should point now there are no sexual undertones) and invites him to take part in an unique experiment, ostensibly to discover how well people can perform in a debate. Murray is a kind, warm, character who empathizes with Ted’s travails at home, explaining that he, too, was victimized as a child, called defective by his father because he didn’t fit in. Murray also has an alluring sidekick, Christiana (Annabelle Wallis), who is both a high-up assistant for the experiments and his girlfriend.

But the debate is a two-person affair in a private room, a lab of some kind because Ted is harnessed up to all sorts of electronic equipment to measure how he responds during the exercise. It’s not the usual kind of debate, his opponent, known only as Mr C, is cruel, vindictive, arrogant, and whose main weapon is not argument but character assassination. It’s not a debate but a tongue-lashing. But Ted constantly comes back for more. But no matter how much he stands up to his opponent, the stakes are always tilted against him.

Eventually, we discover that Professor Murray is working for the Government, conducting a brain-washing experiment. He’s already headed up an investigation into the U.S. soldiers brainwashed by the Chinese in Korea and now the men in black want to understand how to use brainwashing themselves. Murray is under some pressure to deliver results and it turns out that Ted, initially viewed as an ideal candidate for brainwashing, becomes an impediment. So Murray decides to “break him” himself. Except our supposedly submissive student turns the tables and we get a glimpse of his devious criminal mind.

I know nothing about the Unabomber but I suspect the producers know too much and probably feared the tale of how Ted terrorized America for 15 years using bombs through the post is already too well known to make an intriguing thriller, especially as the older Ted is only seen as a heavily bearded fellow living in a cabin in the woods.

For people like me, ignorant of the facts of the case, which is ancient history by now, and this serial killer downgraded in the public eye by far worse serial killers, I was pretty taken by the investigation which centered on one agent, Miller, standing up to the rest of the department as she follows a different clue, using linguistics to catch the killer. Effectively, the person who uncovered the link between Ted and the Unabomber was Ted’s younger brother’s wife who noted the connection between the written language Ted used in general correspondence to the killer’s manifesto published in the newspapers.

Anyway, even with my reservations about the clumsy gender switch, I found this totally engrossing. Russell Crowe (Nuremberg, 2025) is very much back on mild-mannered form. Shailene Woodley (Ferrari, 2023) is at last given a leading role to do her talents justice, Jacob Tremblay (The Life of Chuck, 2024) sizzles as the troubled student and Annabelle Wallis (Mutiny, 2026) shows how easy it is to switch from the horror movies with which she made her name.

Directed by Dane Janus Metz (All the Old Knives, 2022) from a screenplay by debutant Sam Chelson and Nelson Greaves (Unfriended, 2014).

All told, compelling stuff.

De Gaulle: Resistance (2026) ***** – Seen at the Cinema

As far as the Brits and Americans were concerned the North African campaign of World War Two consisted of the former’s Field Marshal Montgomery knocking hell out of German General Rommel at El Alamein and the latter’s General Patton demolishing Panzer divisions at will. The fact that the British victory would not have occurred except for one largely forgotten battle has been completely ignored. The Brits were holed up in Tobruk with even less chance of escaping the combined German and Italian armies than at Dunkirk, no fleets of small boats likely to come to the rescue in the Mediterranean.

It took an incredible stand-off at a tiny desert post called Bir Hakeim to buy the British enough time to escape to Tobruk and regroup and eventually conquer Rommel at El Alamein.

Who inhabited this outpost and sacrificed thousands of lives? The nascent Free French Army of around 4,000 men, commanded by veteran General Koenig (Benoit Magimel,) with neither tanks nor airplanes holding out against the vastly superior forces of Rommel fully equipped with both tanks and airplanes.

Just one of the many nuggets in this totally absorbing film about the titular French general, exiled in London, who became the voice of French Resistance after Marshall Petain had surrendered to the invaders and set up the collaborative Vichy government.

It was a heck of a feat for De Gaulle because even in France nobody had a clue who he was. At the start of the war he was an insignificant colonel way down the pecking order and I doubt if any of the French people knew of his courageous counter-attack against the Germans. The Brits had even less of a clue about him and his arrogance certainly didn’t endear him to the British upper classes who were running the country.

Support for him among the various French officials living in London was negligible and for a good while he looked like a raving madman with his insistence that France had not surrendered. After the war, he was famously a thorn in the British side, and from this film you can see why as he was subjected to personal humiliation and betrayal by his supposed Allies. But he did have panache, chutzpah, and that was something Churchill, an old soldier himself, admired.

He launched what appeared the most bizarre offensive against the Germans, aiming to set off a tinderbox of revolt among the French colonies in Africa, beginning with Chad and Cameroon, hoping that such insurrection would spread to Dakar and Algiers on the North African coast and thus make it easier for the Allies to attempt a landing. Given that his forces on the ground numbered between one and six, this was either strategic genius or the work of a deluded lunatic.

Luckily, the colonies, thousands of miles away from the Germans, could ignore Petain and raise up the French flag in defense. The plan fell to pieces, however, when De Gaulle shot himself in the foot by refusing to allow the British Navy to attack Dakar since it was being held by French troops and he didn’t want to kill his own countrymen, as the British had done when it destroyed the French fleet to avoid it falling into German hands.

At various points, De Gaulle is stabbed in the back by Churchill and his own group in England, betrayed, exiled even in his exile, routinely treated as a nobody. He should have salvaged his reputation at Bir Hakeim, given the murderous action permitted the Brits to escape Tobruk, and while he was feted in the streets and praised in the British newspapers, he was still distrusted by the Allies and when Algiers was liberated it was collaborator Admiral Darlan (Mathieu Kassovitz) who was put in charge of all the French forces in Africa.

Luckily, there was a deus ex machine to hand, a young man called Fernand (Florian Lesieur), who appeared to interrupt general proceedings in the movie from time to time and whose sole role, it would appear, was to prove that there was resistance on the ground in Paris although at that point it merely took the form of demonstrations. Fernand was in many ways an echo of De Gaulle. When he first called upon Parisians to rise up in civil disobedience, only a handful responded. Later, he, too, entered exile, in Algiers. Fortunately, he was at hand to assassinate the French commander, leaving the way open for De Gaulle to regain command.

You’ll have to wait till Part Two of this epic epic (we’re talking nearly six hours in total) to discover what happened next.

You’ll find me in that audience. We’re familiar with Churchill’s struggles in World War Two, but although I knew De Gaulle was the self-proclaimed leader of the Free French, I had no idea who he was and what he actually did. In truth, the image most fixed in my mind about the man who later became the French President was that he was the guy who ducked to avoid an assassin’s bullet but that was merely a fiction – The Day of the Jackal.

A ton of this is just politics, but it’s the nerve-shredding politics of trying to hold your ground when you’re being hammered on all sides.

Simon Abkarin (Casino Royale, 2006) is superb in the title role, given the opportunity to express all sides of the General’s character – petulance, arrogance, cunning, loyalty, stoicism, determination, willpower, self-belief – and the moments when he realizes he is condemning his valiant Free French troops to death by insisting they do not attempt to escape Bir Hakeim, but fight a rearguard action to the bitter end (or until the British evacuated Tobruk), is immensely moving.

Simon Russell Beale (The Magic Faraway Tree, 2026) portrays the hard-drinking British leader, perplexed by De Gaulle’s behavior that threatens to ruin his relationship with the President Roosevelt (Campbell Scott). Florian Lesieur (Cassandre, 2024) has to touch on as many emotions as Abkarin. With Abkarin and Lesieur hogging the dramatic high notes, there’s not much room for another breakout performance but I suspect we’re going to see more of Anamaria Vartolomei (The Count of Monte Cristo, 2024) who plays Livia, the Jewish friend of Fernand.

Superbly directed by Antonin Baudry in only his second movie after The Wolf’s Call (2019). As much as we are looking in the direction of young bucks who can turn a million-dollar budget into sheer gold in horror pictures like Backrooms (2026), we should also be acknowledging someone who can handle a bigger-budgeted effort with such aplomb. He co-wrote the screenplay with Berenice Vale in her movie debut based on a book by Julian T. Jackson.

Exceptional. Highly recommended.

Insidious: Out of The Further (2026) **** – Seen at the Cinema

I can hardly keep up with the endless permutations of the MCU never mind keeping up with the various iterations and side hustles of horror series such as The Conjuring and this. So I tend to come at these fresh, as if they are an entirely new movie and I don’t have to spare a thought for how this ties in with what’s gone before. It was only when it was over I realized I had been tensed up the entire time, my heart constantly in my mouth, such was the dexterity with which the material was handled.

And while this isn’t in the same league as this year’s horror breakouts Backrooms and Obsession, it follows a similar line in that threat rather than gore is the keyword. Perhaps the one stroke of genius is to set parts of this in a dentist’s surgery, a place where our incipient fear never goes away, probably the only medical professional whose attentions we desperately try to avoid, whether that’s because, regardless of any soothing words, treatment is accompanied by pain, or whether, mouth willingly or reluctantly open, we are inviting invasion.

Momentarily in the middle of the picture it gets stuck in low gear as exposition takes center stage and we transition from haunted house to what was previously known as the “astral plane” but here is known as “The Further”, a kind of limbo where the dead, with the right guide, can return to Earth. And they’re not planning, having regained life, to subsist on blood so that’s a mercy, and they’re not, either, the sexy teenagers who abound in the genre. They’re old and decrepit, might require tanks of oxygen to survive.

Single mom Gemma Hall (Amelia Eve) still lives in the house where her mother went mad and seemingly committed suicide in conspicuously violent fashion 20 years before. The neighbourhood is beginning to be occupied by odd types, three old crones wheeling oxygen tanks. Gemma is beset by nightmares, one of which echoes the Backrooms notion of crawling further and further into intimidating confined space, entered not through a mysterious door in a wall as with Backrooms, but in something as un-mysterious as the makeshift den concocted by daughter Maya (Island Austin).

There’s another door in the proceedings, the Red Door that formed the title of the previous episode, but to be honest, I couldn’t recall its purpose in the prequel, and fact, here, it turns out (cue another IP involving other doors denoted by other colors) not to be the only one.

One awful crone turns up at the surgery and from his mouth Gemma draws a long string of human hair and various other bits of gunge from his decrepit teeth before discovering he has two sets of gnashers. Gradually, she realizes she is a conduit to this other world, with the help of tattooist-cum-mystic Claire (Maisie Richardson-Sellers).

The exposition, always a bit dodgy, leads her to believe that she can enter The Further and get back out of it without much ado, but that’s a misconception and in quick succession three generations of Halls are caught up in the scary proceedings with the steel-fingered monster leading a gang of trapped people back to life. Gemma’s boyfriend Nick (Brandon Perea), a cop, is on hand mainly to prove that you can’t trust a man to do a woman’s job.

All told, I found this riveting stuff, especially the nightmares that turned into supernatural reality and the gradual encroaching on the normal by every shade of abnormality. There were a number of standout sequences, including the long crawl behind the sofa, the excavation of the terrible mouth and the onslaught of creatures from The Further.

Sometimes in horror films, just as the main criteria of presenters of cookery shows is too ooh and aah convincingly, all the heroine has to do is provide a varied register of screams but like the main characters in Backrooms and Obsessions, Amelia Eve (The Blind, 2023) is several levels above the basic.

Director and co-writer Jacob Chase (Come Play, 2023) helps make this a banner year for horror.

Stomach-clutching.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026) * – Seen at the Cinema

Pretentious rubbish. An almighty bore masquerading as a) a spoof on slash horror films and b) having something important to say while c) not coming anywhere close to achieving either. Another of the dumb propositions foisted upon us by the connivance of the film festival industry to chuck at the general public movies that hoity-toity festival progammers and audiences believe deserve wider attention.

The most annoying element of this is that the subtext is merely a variation of the Dracula hypothesis that women are sexually drawn to dangerous men who can drive them into ecstasies of fear and penetrate them with sharp weapons. Here, this is spelled out in more detail, “the heroine” only able to achieve orgasm through terror and after running terrified with her breasts bouncing around and her erect nipples visible through translucent material.

And if you can work out how anyone can walk around with a slab of metal stuck to their head, you’re better than me. Oh, and to keep the woke element happy, the killer transforms from male to female.

And while we’re at the barking mad end of the horror subgenre let’s ensure that it’s the monster who’s creating the movies from his lair deep under a lake and that everyone who appears in the movies are his creations.

This is in the Anora (2024) league for repetition. Where that was sex, sex, sex, until we got the point, and way after we had got the point, this is blood, blood, blood, gushing literally like fountains or explosions from what’s left of a body once the monster, known as Little Death (which as you’ll no doubt be aware is a sly nod to “le petit mort”, the French description of orgasm), has finished chopping off select body parts.

Too much of this film is bits of the Camp Miasma series of films, initially big hits but then fading to direct-to-video flops, and which contain little more than variations of blood, blood, blood and people being impaled or chopped up.

If there is any emotional element it’s frigid lesbian Kris (Hannah Einbinder), technically in a polyamory relationship but that’s only because she permits her female bisexual partner to regularly have sex with a male, finally managing to overcome her inhibitions, helped along by Billy (Gillian Anderson), the original star of the Camp Miasma picture who bowed out after the first episode, and now lives on an abandoned tourist attraction based on the original or the original set (I couldn’t work out which).

In between making eyes at Gillian and watching the old movies in a cinema at Camp Miasma, the full-of-herself Kris is pitching her barmy notion for a horror picture where all the characters are figments of the monster’s imagination. Actually, the movie business section is the only bit that works, although Kris fails to note the negative response from potential stars.

Given that blood is the dominant color scheme, it’s not surprising that Kris and Billy end up soaked in blood and wandering, in surreal splendour, around a service station where, with equal surreality, kids are more interested in shooting each other with water guns than any stray adults who haven’t bothered to change out of their blood-soaked Halloween costumes.

This has come at us with the glow of critical approval, but, actually beyond the very repetitive obvious and some smartass intellectual dialog, this is an over-inflated mess.

I felt sorry for Hannah Einbinder (Seekers of Infinite Love, 2026) who clearly can act but less so for X-Files star Gillian Anderson who draws too much on Sunset Boulevard (1950). Written and directed Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw The TV Glow, 2024) who should stop believing her own publicity.

Truly awful.