Director: Tamika Miller
Writers: Anita M. Cal, Tamika Miller
Stars: Wanda Sykes, William Stanford Davis, Bentley Green

Synopsis: A boxing trainer re-connects with the son she abandoned.

The majority of boxing movies focus on the fighters. That’s where the drama is built from, a boxer’s need to win and to prove their worth. They bring everything from their lives into that ring and we watch them work their bodies and lives into shape. The heart of the fighter is what we come to see. Even though the trainer is an important piece of that puzzle, they’re a mentor and a guide and their troubles only serve to motivate the boxer. What the filmmakers of Undercard do to great effect is to show us the complicated life of a person who was in that ring and now teaches others to survive. This film is the inner life of someone who’s no longer in the spotlight and the toll that takes. It’s a hard role to make compelling.

When a comedian makes the shift from comedy to drama there will almost always be a bit of incredulity at first, but as quick and hilarious as Wanda Sykes is, there’s no doubt she has the gravitas for drama. Her performance in Undercard never feels like she’s acting. For the whole film, the actor we know is completely transformed through body language and an imposing presence. Sykes is able to command the screen with her willingness to lay herself bare. It’s a very raw role and one that can’t be hidden behind a large cast. Sykes proves she has the moves to go toe-to-toe with anyone and everyone. This story needed an actress like her to make it compelling.

Undercard is a unique take on a redemption story. Cheryl (Sykes), who earned the fighting nickname “No Mercy,” is not just down on her luck, but battling more demons than just that of the ignominious end to her career. She’s not like other aged fighters who feel their only shot at creating a legacy is fighting for themselves. Cheryl understands her skill is more powerful when she can train others to fight like she does. The conflict lies in keeping her past from encroaching on and debilitating her present. Writers Anita M. Cal and Tamika Miller, who also directed, created a story that has depth and history to it. It’s more than a sports drama. Undercard uses sports as a way to tell a harrowing domestic drama. The layers and twists and turns of the story are as riveting as the way the film plays visually.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the film is the way the boxing scenes are shot. Director Miller and cinematographer Ana M. Amortegui shot most of the action from outside the ring. Not just overhead or at the level of the ring itself, but from below, where the trainers stand. These shots remind us that as much as it is Keith’s (Bentley Green) or Kordell’s (Xavier Mills) fight to win, it’s Cheryl who has everything riding on their success. This combined with the brilliant move to have Cheryl, Baba T (William Stanford Davis), and Hector (Berto Colon) completely audible during the fight, doling out advice, puts us squarely in their perspective.

If the film has a fault, it is in its antagonists. In some ways Hector functions as a bit of comic relief, but his need to refer to himself in the third person is at first confusing, then a little silly, and ends up being kind of annoying. The same goes for the very arch presentation of sleazy all-powerful boxing promoter, Bob Fox (Danny Pardo). He’s so smarmy and moustache twirling that it wouldn’t surprise us to see him lighting his cigar with a hundred dollar bill while laughing maniacally.

Even with these missteps in character, Undercard is a good boxing movie. Not only that, but it is a great domestic drama that uses boxing as a crucial common ground for Cheryl to try and make amends for the worst mistakes of her life. The performances are excellent and the story is very moving. It has a depth and emotional heft that most boxing movies can’t compete with. It’s a film well worth seeing and getting immersed in.

Grade: B

Director: Zhang Yimou
Writer: Liang Chen
Stars: Jackson Yee, Zhu Yilong, Song Jia

Synopsis: Vital intelligence leaked. The national security team vowed to find the traitor, but arrests failed repeatedly. As tension mounted, suspicion turned inward to the team itself. A silent battle unfolded amid trust and betrayal.

There may never be a better example of the sentence “when you find out your goat washed” than in watching Zhang Yimou’s Scare Out, a film whose questionable politics are the least of its problems, because every single aesthetic choice made by one of the most prolific Chinese filmmakers working today completely sinks this entire thing. It’s even baffling to wonder how the same guy who gave us the staggering works of art of Hero, House of the Flying Daggers, and Shadow could ever direct something this incompetent, where every attempt at dazzling the audience through a series of intricate stylistic flourishes goes catastrophically wrong. 

Even Zhang’s most recent works, while imperfect, didn’t look (or feel) this sloppy. This is truly something to behold. One may even be tempted to watch this to see how such a great visual artist could stoop so low, especially a few years after the incredible Full River Red (which also starred Jackson Yee), but I’m here to tell you all to avoid it altogether. Zhang has rarely disappointed, and less so in the visual department (The Great Wall, while terrible, looks immaculate in IMAX 3D). This is a complete disaster right from the get-go, which attempts to blend the digital textures of Michael Mann’s Blackhat and Michael Bay’s Ambulance, alongside a galaxy-brained approach to Tony Scott’s Enemy of the State. Yet, none of its filmmaking inspirations feel earnest in any way, or as exciting as when Zhang meaningfully paints with his camera and crafts tableaux the likes of which you’ve likely never seen anywhere else. 

This is a film where one single artistic choice – hyperactive editing – ruins everything. I don’t want to sound hyperbolic, but Scare Out is likely the worst-edited film I’ve ever seen, trumping Olivier Megaton’s TAK3N by a country mile. In fact, that film is smartly edited and looks coherent compared to this trainwreck. For reasons I can’t explain, which bear no meaning to the paranoia Zhang wants to instill in the story of two security officers (played by Jackson Yee and Zhu Yilong) who are suspected of being a mole after crucial intelligence leaks outside their purview, the movie is edited as if someone wanted to break the world record of most nonsensical cuts during a film. 

Here’s an example: instead of cutting a typical foot chase in a relatively standard fashion, which would mean intercutting between the antagonist running away from the people chasing him, and the point of view of the protagonists, which would create a sense of rhythm within the action, Zhang cuts within the scene. This means that in the middle of a shot where the supposed good guys are running, he’ll cut to nowhere (he’s basically showing the same frame split twice), and often weirdly zoom into a given character, not with his camera, but with the digital tools of his editing software. This creates awkward, unnatural compositions that are always hampered by the most random cuts at any given occasion. It never allows the audience to sit with anyone or anything, because no one can actively discern what’s happening. The lyricism that defines Zhang’s work is completely gone. 

Scare Out moves at a mile-a-minute pace without ever making the threat (or the “scaring out” of who the mole may be) urgent enough for the good guys to find the plant before more information is leaked. Only an inexplicable phone explosion, which comes out of left field, brought me the biggest laugh of any film I’ve seen this year so far. That must be seen to be believed, but should you trudge through at least an hour and a half before you get to this point? That’s debatable…

As far as the rest is concerned, Zhang can’t muster up interest in this thriller devoid of any dramatic tension and political intrigue. It almost feels like you’re watching an extended episode of an elongated soap opera, complete with ridiculous wigs, bludgeoning string-heavy music that tells the audience when a big moment is coming, and twists that make little sense as the movie progresses. Instead of homing in on one specific plot point, which is finding a mole who may be a part of a shadowy organization that could be much vaster than he thinks, Zhang adds several nonsensical reveals that turns this self-serious conspiracy picture into a pure farce, one whose last scene landed with such a thud its almost sold-out crowd laughed at how preposterous the whole thing was. 

That’s also how I would describe the entire viewing experience of this profoundly perplexing motion picture by a once-great artist who has now fully become a mouthpiece for government propaganda. The signs were there in his post-Coming Home films, but they’ve reached their apotheosis inScare Out, a movie that has completely removed the modicum of artistic imprint that was left after Full River Red, as Zhang has now embarked on a “for-hire” era of painfully unremarkable pictures that the Western world will completely ignore, except this critic who longs for the return of his great masterworks. Maybe he’s got one more left in him, but today is not that day.

Grade: F

Director: Morgan Neville
Stars: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon

Synopsis: An intimate portrait of Paul McCartney’s journey after The Beatles, as he and wife Linda form Wings.

When The Beatles splintered in 1970, the cultural aftershock was mighty. Fans mourned, critics circled, and its four members were left to redefine themselves under an unforgiving spotlight. The one who was blamed the most: Sir Paul McCartney. Man on the Run, directed by Morgan Neville, steps into that uncertain terrain with an emotionally attentive lens. Running at 1 hour 55 minutes, the film traces Paul McCartney’s life in the immediate aftermath of the band’s dissolution, foregrounding not only the formation of Wings but the sustaining force of his partnership with Linda McCartney. It is less a conventional rock doc and more a reflective musical odyssey.

McCartney, bruised by legal disputes and the public narrative that painted him as the band’s pragmatic villain, retreats, first emotionally, then physically, to recalibrate. The film makes shrewd use of period footage: scrappy home recordings, pastoral scenes on the Mull of Kintyre, and chaotic early rehearsals. Through this documentary, McCartney is depicted as a man fumbling through uncertainty, desperate to prove he is more than one-quarter of a phenomenon.

McCartney’s voice-over is used throughout, taking audiences through his love of music, how he enjoyed experimenting, and how that led to his albums. He describes music as his freedom and magic. It would have been nice to see him and make that connection to the words stronger, as a multitude of images does become repetitive. At times, it feels like a compilation of Beatles archives that you could watch on YouTube. Other voice overs include Mary, Linda’s daughter, who speaks about her mother. 

Through candid opinions and previously unseen photographs, Linda emerges as both creative collaborator and emotional crutch. The film is at its most moving when exploring how her presence countered the vitriol McCartney faced in the early 1970s. Critics derided his domestic turn; audiences questioned his seriousness. Yet Man on the Run argues persuasively that this retreat into family life was not an abdication of ambition, but a redefinition of it. There are images of Linda’s photography and an insight into how she felt during this time, and the scrutiny she was also under.

There is also a tonal tightrope that Man on the Run occasionally struggles to walk. Neville’s affection for his subject is palpable. While the film acknowledges the lawsuits, the critical maulings, and the perception of McCartney as overly sentimental, it rarely lets audiences sit in the true darkness. The edges are softened. Rivalries are contextualized rather than interrogated. For some viewers, this will feel like a refreshing corrective to decades of caricature; for others, it may register as selective framing. 

Man on the Run wants to be more than a standard post-Beatles chronicle by its insistence on showing the psychology of starting again. And while McCartney was able to salvage a career and build a life, this documentary lacks depth and face-to-camera interviews to feel like anything more than a nostalgia trip. There are times when they occasionally feel indulgent. Certain sequences could have been tightened, and a sharper editorial hand might have drawn clearer contrasts between public perception and private reality. And a little more insight into the lives of the McCartney family – some home tours, some close-ups of guitars, something from the present for audiences to chew on. So, unfortunately, whilst this documentary film is entertaining and interesting, it’s also one you can easily turn off. 

Ultimately, Man on the Run is a tender portrait of resilience. It reframes a turbulent chapter not as a fall from grace, but as a recalibration powered by partnership. By centering the love between Paul and Linda, Neville offers a quietly radical thesis: that survival in the glare of fame may depend less on ego than on intimacy. The film does not dismantle the mythology surrounding McCartney, but it does complicate it. Instead, it reveals a man who ran not from his past, but toward a different future. This documentary will be a nice watch for fans of music and McCartney. 

Grade: C+

Director: Maxime Giroux
Writer: Patrick Whistler
Stars: Maika Monroe, Troy Kotsur, Allan Hawco, Helen Hunt

Synopsis: Ava attempts to go straight after prison, but her twin is murdered and being a witness to the shooting, she is forced to run for her life.

In Cold Light is a crime thriller directed by Maxime Giroux and written by Patrick Whistler. The 96-minute film follows a familiar trajectory: a recently released ex-con is pulled back into the underworld and tries to escape. The film attempts to carve out its own corner of the genre through atmosphere, performance, and an undercurrent of family reckoning, but falls short on drama and action. Starring Maika Monroe, Troy Kotsur, Allan Hawco, and Helen Hunt, the film is a slow burner but with soul.

Ava, played with coiled restraint by Monroe, emerges from prison, realising the world she left behind has shifted. Trust has evaporated, alliances have calcified, and before she can reassert herself, she is framed for the murder of her beloved twin brother. What follows is a tight spiral of pursuit: police on one side, a vindictive crime boss on the other, and Ava trying to navigate through it all. 

Monroe has built a career playing women on the periphery of danger, and here she sharpens that persona into something more commanding. Ava is not a wide-eyed innocent nor a cartoonish antihero. Instead, Monroe presents her as someone perpetually calculating, scanning rooms for exits, measuring people for weakness. Yet the film’s most compelling moments occur when that armor cracks, particularly in scenes opposite Kotsur.

Kotsur’s performance is beautifully modulated; regret flickers across his face without tipping into sentimentality. In these scenes, In Cold Light briefly transcends its genre trappings and becomes a meditation on inherited damage, how cycles of crime and emotional withdrawal echo across generations.

If Monroe and Kotsur provide the heart, Hunt supplies the frost. As the ruthless crime boss tightens the net around Ava, she avoids flamboyance. Even with very little screentime, Hunt underplays beautifully, delivering threats in measured tones that make them more unsettling. It is a smart choice; in a film so attuned to restraint, a scenery-chewing villain would have felt misplaced.

That said, the film’s commitment to leanness is both a strength and a limitation. The secondary characters, including Hawco’s morally ambiguous law enforcement figure, sometimes feel sketched rather than fully realized. The plot mechanics, particularly the framing device that propels Ava into flight, rely on a few conveniences that sharper scripting might have avoided.

There are no operatic shootouts or swaggering montages of excess. This sobriety gives the film a grounded tension; survival feels precarious rather than heroic. Whilst there is a lot of tension, the story does go in directions which feel under-planned and under-explained. Fans wanting more excitement might find the film’s slow pace disengaging. 

The film’s palette is one of its strongest points; from warm tones of the sun and dusty sand from the ranch, to steel blues and washed-out greys that reflect Ava’s emotional state as the film progresses. The dialogue is sparse, so the film really trusts you to pay attention as a viewer. The lack of speech does build some tension, but it never really amounts to anything. The heavy breathing might also wear thin; it even carries over the bulls and cows’ mooing. 

Thematically, the film circles questions of identity and reinvention. Can Ava ever step outside the shadow of her past, or is she doomed to replay it? The narrative suggests that reclaiming power in a corrupt system may be less radical than walking away from it, though the film stops short of offering easy redemption.

Toward the end, audiences might begin to feel a little twitchy as it does begin to feel like a lot of talk and no action. But sit with it, as the ending is more heartfelt than expected. Although maybe a little more action could have helped the last act be memorable. Ultimately, In Cold Light is a controlled, performance-driven thriller that favors mood over momentum. It does not radically reinvent the crime genre, but it refines it with icy discipline. Anchored by Monroe’s steely presence and deepened by Kotsur’s quiet humanity, the film offers a bleak but compelling study of a woman fighting not just external enemies, but the gravitational pull of her own history.

Grade: C

Directors: Kevin McManus, Matthew McManus
Writers: Kevin McManus, Matthew McManus
Stars: Michaela McManus, Stella Marcus, Jeremy Holm

Synopsis: Irene Kelly travels through parallel universes, repeatedly killing her daughter’s murderer. As she becomes consumed by vengeance, her humanity hangs in the balance

There are few things in this life more satisfying than a sci-fi concept done masterfully on a small budget. For example, the 2023 film Aporia beautifully depicts the consequences of making small adjustments in time through in-camera visuals. Redux Redux accomplishes a similar result, only instead of time manipulation, it’s a multiverse of never-ending vengeance. In a cinema landscape where studios throw money at everything to achieve spectacle, Redux Redux is a solid refresher that genuinely great sci-fi can be executed with the smallest of resources, as long as we care about the characters.

Directed and written by Kevin and Matthew McManus, the film centers on Irene (Michaela McManus), a woman who journeys through endless multiverses in search of a universe in which a twisted teenage girl murderer, Neville (Jeremy Holm), has not killed her daughter, Anna (Grace Van Dien). The film sets the stage very clearly for the viewer. Irene is seen visiting the same diner in every universe, and when Neville is not at his day job washing dishes or cooking in the back, she hunts him at his home, typically leading to his death. The filmmakers offer a striking visual in one universe, showing Irene setting Neville on fire in the middle of a desert. It’s the same visual used in the film’s marketing posters. Each time before ultimately killing Neville, she asks the same questions. Where did he put her daughter? Does he remember her?

Irene’s multiverse of death isn’t always the same. She often finds a subtle romance with a charming local named Jonathan (Jim Cummings). It’s implied that Irene met Jonathan before her multiverse spiral, as she knows he attends the same weekly support group for grieving adults. It’s a subplot that is both remarkable and potentially a plothole. The details provide Irene’s history and indicate how long she has been in this vengeful nightmare. At the same time, it’s unclear if time resets after every multiverse jump or if it continually moves forward. Especially because Jonathan almost looks the same in every encounter.

The violent, chaotic world Irene inhabits is disrupted when she finds a living survivor, Mia (Stella Marcus), at Neville’s house. The discovery happens after jumping to a new universe. It’s in this new dynamic that Irene begins to see a possible redemption for herself. By caring for Mia, she could see a second chance at offering protection where she couldn’t for her own daughter. The problem is that Mia is a reckless teenager who wants to see Neville burn. She craves the vengeance Irene has experienced over and over. But the emotions become clouded when Mia is forced to multiverse-jump with Irene, further confusing her state of mind as she enters a new timeline.

The strongest areas of Redux Redux stem from how far it stretches its universe with so little. The multiverse vehicle is shaped like a coffin, with a metallic shell and a personality akin to the Bill and Ted phone booth. With each jump, the in-camera visual effects wonderfully show how the energy explodes inward. For example, one scene shows Irene running from the cops. As she initiates a universe jump in the machine, the device, which sits inside a hotel, pops to a new dimension, and the hotel doors, along with the cops, fly into the hotel room, almost like a bomb popping in reverse.

The film briefly explores the expansive underworld of multiverse jumping. It’s in these details that the screenplay by Kevin and Matthew McManus proves thoughtful in its attempt at world-building. The subplot is brief but depicts the grimy underbelly of multiverse dealers who supply parts and various forms of multiverse machines. Taylor Misiak, best known from the FX series Dave, takes on a surprising role in the film. Her character, Billie, a multiverse trader and transporter, is a role that stretches her talents into dark places, which is a refreshing choice given Misiak’s charm in the Li’l Dicky show.

The dark tone extends to the film’s serial-killer backdrop. While most ofRedux Redux leans into the fun side of telling a multiverse story on the smallest of budgets, various sequences have the flavor of an old-fashioned thriller. Throughout the storyline, Kevin and Matthew McManus weave moments of Fincher-esque dread, providing the audience with an undertone akin to that of Mindhunter or The Silence of the Lambs. One sequence feels eerily reminiscent of Mindhunter Season 2’s  BTK killer opener, showing Irene walking toward the bathroom in Neville’s house as the synth-inspired score from Paul Koch becomes aggressive. As she opens the bathroom door, we can’t see the horror in front of her, but we understand it’s terrible. The story ultimately pays off the serial killer subplot with fantastic suspense. It never becomes a slasher or horror movie, but the characters are in enough peril to make the viewer question the outcome.

It’s the balance between crafting an effective thriller involving a serial killer and providing a multiverse kick that makes the experience gripping. As seen this weekend by the release of Psycho Killer, some filmmakers are unable to satisfy one of these characteristics, much less both. Redux Redux demonstrates how far the imagination can stretch with minimal resources, while delivering a genuinely suspenseful film. The film is far from perfect and potentially has questionable logic in its multiverse mechanics. Regardless, the blending of a vengeance narrative in a multiverse setup is executed wonderfully. Kevin and Matthew McManus are showing tremendous potential here, and it will be exciting to witness what they are capable of with more resources.

Grade: B

Director: Michael Head
Writers: Colin Broderick, Mark McCausland
Stars: Tara Lynne O’Neill, Brenock O’Connor, Owen Colgan

Synopsis: Two music-loving but unlikely friends have two days to travel the length of Ireland to save their record store from closure. For one of them, not having a car is just one of the problems.

There’s a particular kind of film that doesn’t so much demand your attention as invite you to hop in the passenger seat. The Spin, directed by Michael Head, is exactly that sort of ride; a scruffy, warm-hearted Irish road trip comedy that knows the journey matters far more than the destination. Screening as part of Tull Stories’ Joy of Cinema strand and landing in UK and Irish cinemas from 27th February, it’s a modest film with modest ambitions, and, refreshingly, no shame about either. 

Set in Omagh, Northern Ireland, the story follows Dermot (Brenock O’Connor) and Elvis (Owen Colgan), two devoted music obsessives clinging to their struggling record shop like it’s the last vinyl pressing in existence. The shop is behind on rent, their landlord, Sadie (Tara Lynne O’Neill), is circling with sharp impatience, and the future looks as bleak as the moors. Then comes the miracle: a tip-off about rare Robert Johnson records for sale in Cork at a suspiciously low price. Salvation, it seems, lies at the other end of Ireland. They’ve just got to get there in time.

The set-up is classic buddy-movie territory. Two underdogs, a ticking clock, and a rusty blue car that’s seen better decades. But what gives The Spin its personality is its distinctly Irish rhythm. The humor is conversational, observational, and often delightfully daft.

Brenock O’Connor and Owen Colgan’s chemistry is undeniable. Like two old friends who’ve known each other for years, their performances are some of the more genuine I’ve seen in years. Tara Lynne O’Neill’s Sadie is a particular highlight: less pantomime villain than pragmatic operator, she injects just enough bite to keep the stakes from dissolving entirely into whimsy. The script is filled with ridiculous conversations, such as how much a horse costs, and with the Irish accents, the jokes roll off the tongue effortlessly. 

On their journey, the film opts for the scenic route. There’s a handy little map that helps time and distance pass for audiences who might not know how far they’re having to travel. There are plenty of shots of the beautiful, and damp looking, Irish countryside. Along the way, the duo encounter a smattering of locals and cameos, including Kimberley Wyatt and Maura Higgins in her feature debut, as well as blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances from Irish music stalwarts Barry Devlin and Steve Wickham. These moments add texture, but feel more like affectionate nods than fully integrated plot beats. But we do have to give a shoutout to some of the secondary characters who add so much fun and flare, especially the gentleman with the fox called Peter. His accent is very strong so subtitles might be needed.

The film’s strongest asset is its soundtrack. Based on a semi-autobiographical short story by Mark McCausland, who also provides the folk-inflected score, the music gives The Spin a soulful undercurrent. 

Still, The Spin isn’t without its rough edges. The pacing can drift, particularly in the middle act. The stakes, while clear on paper, rarely feel truly perilous. Viewers expecting high-concept twists or sharp narrative turns may find the film’s gentleness bordering on inertia.

Yet there’s a quiet confidence in that restraint. Director Michael Head has described the film as a “feel-good buddy movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously,” and that self-awareness proves its saving grace. The Spin isn’t trying to reinvent the road movie or dissect economic precarity with forensic depth. It simply wants to offer audiences a warm, communal laugh and perhaps a renewed appreciation for the simple pleasures in life.There’s something disarmingly charming about a film content to be small, funny, and heartfelt. The Spin may not change cinema, but it understands the simple magic of sitting in a darkened room with strangers, sharing a story that hums along like a favourite track on an old record player. This is the type of cinema audiences are screaming for – a complete breath of fresh air. With a heartfelt ending, this lovely little film makes for fun, easy viewing.

Grade: B+

Director: John Patton Ford
Writers: John Patton Ford
Stars: Glen Powell, Margaret Qualley, Jessica Henwick

Synopsis: Disowned at birth by his obscenely wealthy family, blue-collar Becket Redfellow will stop at nothing to reclaim his inheritance, no matter how many relatives stand in his way.

It’s hard to pinpoint just what is wrong with the new A24 film How to Make a Killing. The movie boasts an A-list cast, led by what was once supposed to be a megastar in waiting, but who has now delivered two box-office clunkers in a row, a potential star falling back to earth. Frankly, any time I see Glen Powell on screen now, I feel like I have to make a wish. However, at least Powell takes chances in a film that doesn’t know what to do with its wickedly delicious premise.

How to Make a Killing has its moments, but by the time the third act arrives, the execution fumbles and rushes, and the culmination comes across as a film without guts, especially for one with a money-first worldview. The ending never crescendos; instead, it offers a broad overview that panders to audience expectations. That is a strange choice for a studio that cut its teeth on bold, unconventional storytelling.

The Glen Powell vehicle builds toward total chaos and moral decay, only to refuse to enforce consequences and take the easy way out.

The story of How to Make a Killing is as old as time when it comes to Hollywood clichés. The film follows Becket Redfellow (The Running Man’s Glen Powell), a young man who was disowned by his family after his young mother, Mary (Blinded by the Light’s Nell Williams), chose not to have an abortion when her lover ostracized her in an attempt to get rid of the unwanted family scion.

However, not a day goes by that his mom doesn’t tell him stories of his blue-blood lineage to her blue-collar son. Mary made Becket promise to strive for the life he deserves. Unfortunately, Redfellow, shallow pockets and all, takes that too literally, wanting to make sure the heirs of today are gone tomorrow. Becket decides to kill the remaining seven heirs to the $28 billion fortune.

Things begin to get complicated, Byzantine indeed, especially when Ruth (The Royal Hotel’s Jessica Henwick), the girlfriend of one of Becket’s estranged, now-dead cousins, enters the picture. Also throwing her hat into the ring is Redfellow-lite’s best friend, Julia Steinway (Blue Moon’s Margaret Qualley), who wants to be an ivory opportunist and key conspirator in Becket’s plans.

Loosely based on Kind Hearts and Coronets, How to Make a Killing is from John Patton Ford, a critical darling after his feature film debut with Emily the Criminal. His sophomore slump lacks conviction, treating greed as a moral test rather than a behavior that cannot change. This is the moral of the story, something that cannot be turned on and off with ease. Instead, we have a script that rips off several movies as if this were a clean-out-the-fridge meal. 

Powell’s Becket is essentially Patrick Bateman, in a film without the sharp American satire the first act promises. Qualley’s character is a cliché we have seen thousands of times before: a childhood friend returning for that long-awaited, delayed reckoning. Where is the capitalistic pig,  cutthroat cannibalism we have come to know and love in films like Swimming with the Sharks, Glengarry Glen Ross, or even the recent Triangle of Sadness?

You know what I mean, where even a small taste of greed can send the most ethical person into a Wall Street tailspin? I can almost picture Alec Baldwin storming into John Patton Ford’s office, barking about closing, demanding a brass set from a Newton’s cradle as proof of consequence. To make matters worse, the actual murders are uninspired and lack cleverness, failing to push the envelope and matching the bland themes and subtext of Ford’s script.

If, for the love of money, is the root of all evil, especially in the times we live in, the pandering ending to How to Make a Killing is the coward’s way out. 

You can watch How to Make a Killing in theaters starting February 20th!

Grade: C-

Director: Gavin Polone
Writer: Andrew Kevin Walker
Stars: Georgina Campbell, James Preston Rogers, Malcolm McDowell

Synopsis:  A police officer tracks a killer after her husband, a highway patrolman, becomes one of his victims.

Andrew Kevin Walker is a screenwriter well known among cinephiles. His writing perfectly complemented David Fincher’s ambition for Se7en. His new screenplay, Psycho Killer, attempts to recapture the eerie serial killer magic of Walker’s golden years. The ingredients are certainly present. The film has a killer who keeps his face in the shadows. Visually, everything feels BDSM-inspired because Satanists are required to love leather for some reason. And of course, the soundtrack has an industrial kick, with opening credits featuring scribble fonts and grainy textures. The nostalgia should work, but it instead feels like an unintentional parody of a mid-’90s horror/thriller.

Directed by Gavin Polone from a screenplay by Walker, the film centers on a highway patrol officer named Jane Archer (Georgina Campbell). In our first introduction to Jane, we see her husband murdered by a mysterious, long-haired gentleman in a black car. The setup is shot beautifully, with the camera remaining fixed on the reflection of the psycho’s sunglasses. Then the first red flag reveals itself. The mysterious gentleman speaks, and the voice has been ADR-ed to make the character sound cartoonishly menacing. It’s like someone in the production watched  Nathan Explosion from Metalocalypse and thought, “This is the way.”

Following her husband’s death, Jane learns that the man responsible is a serial killer called the Satanic Slasher (James Preston Rogers)—a vicious serial killer who has been leaving a trail of carved-up corpses across multiple states. Unlike Se7en, the latest film from Walker does not shy away from having extensive sequences with the Psycho Killer himself. We spend long moments with the long-haired maniac as he brutalizes victims, scopes the classifieds for other satanists, and sleeps in hotel closets. His ability to hibernate in hotel closets is another head-scratcher, given Rogers’s towering stature at six feet five inches. It shows him curling up in a closet with a gun, which seems impossible since most motel/hotel closets are limited in space. 

The design of the Satan Slasher is incredibly on the nose and lacks nuance. He embodies Maynard James Keenan of Tool, but lacks the rockstar charisma. The overall execution reads like a collection of checkboxes for a mass murderer, such as they must wear black, have hair like Rob Zombie or Alice Cooper, and everything must feel “Metal.” For instance, one sequence sees the Satanic Slasher enter a Catholic Church to give confession, only for the conversation to end with him stabbing the priest in the neck with a giant metal straw and drinking the blood of the priest. The execution should be tense in moments like this, but instead, it accidentally feels like a movie making fun of the genre.

Se7en worked because the screenplay understood the simplicity of John Doe. He was a psychopath who could easily blend into the background because nothing about his presence screams dangerous. The 1995 film brilliantly commented on the expectations of evil as Morgan Freeman’s character, Detective Somerset, explains, regardless of the extremity of his crimes, “He is still just a man.” With Psycho Killer, the movie feels like Walker never escaped the 1994 timeline. One can almost picture Psycho Killer as the screenplay he wrote before Se7en, while sitting in his office listening to “The Downward Spiral” by Nine Inch Nails on repeat. The film desperately wants to relive the industrial rock era of cinema, when bad guys wore leather and rocked out to Stabbing Westward. Movies like Spawn, for example, borrowed heavily from this example. Admittedly, there is something terrifyingly pleasurable about the industrial rock aesthetic of ’90s thrillers. But the visual nature of movies like Se7en was never the draw; it was the exceptional character work and story. And for the most part, the film is completely absent from character development.

Psycho Killer is not a complete disaster. For about ten minutes, the film loosens up and embraces its own absurdity. The Satanic Slasher tracks down a wealthy Satanist through the classifieds. It’s here that we meet Mr. Pendleton, played by the incredible presence of Malcolm McDowell. The sequence has elements of world-building akin to John Wick, hinting at an underworld of ritualistic devil worshippers. The humor is played up because the Satanic Slasher is too weird for even them. However, the sequence is short-lived and follows a massacre, bathed in a distracting amount of CGI blood.

By the time the film concludes, it reveals a major plot twist that raises more questions than it answers. We are given the reasons the Satan Slasher has been on a bloodbath, and the reveal is devoid of emotion. We should feel a sense of emotional dread for Jane and those who may be affected by his master plan, yet we do not. And once the whole climax unfolds, we are offered a tease for a sequel that no one will rightfully beg for. At the end of the day, the film’s quality shouldn’t be surprising. Psycho Killer has been in development hell for years, and at one point, Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit was attached to direct. Even so, the idea that Andrew Kevin Walker wrote this screenplay is baffling.

Grade: D

Director: Werner Herzog
Writer: Werner Herzog

Synopsis: Follows a mysterious herd of ghost elephants in the jungles of Angola.

Werner Herzog is a filmmaker whose voice recalibrates how we look at the natural world. With Ghost Elephants, a lyrical and searching documentary presented by National Geographic Documentary Films, Herzog returns to familiar thematic terrain: obsession, endurance, and humanity’s uneasy relationship with nature. Yet here, in the mist-heavy forests of Angola, his gaze feels unusually tender, attuned not just to the grandeur of the quest but to the fragility of what may already be slipping away.

The film follows conservation biologist and National Geographic Explorer Steve Boyes as he attempts to prove the existence of the so-called “ghost elephants of Lisima”. Rumored survivors, possibly descendants of the largest land mammals ever recorded, are believed to exist only in legend. It’s a premise that fits neatly into Herzog’s long-standing fascination with myths that refuse to die and with humans being compelled to chase them, regardless of the cost. Ghost Elephants teaches its audience how to listen, how to move slowly, and how to trust knowledge systems long dismissed by Western science.

In the one hour and thirty-eight minute runtime, Boyes is joined by fellow National Geographic Explorer Kerllen Costa, and quickly learns that satellites, drones, and data sets are no match for the lived expertise of the KhoiSan master trackers, Xui, Xui Dawid, and Kobus. Their ancestral knowledge forms the film’s quiet backbone. And their tracking skills are incredibly fascinating and inspiring to watch. 

Herzog’s narration reflects on survival, extinction, and the human impulse. His voice is like that of an old university lecturer; someone with so much wisdom you trust and so you hang on every word. He guides audiences through this documentary almost as if he’s holding your hand. 

Visually, Ghost Elephants is striking without being showy. There are some beautiful underwater shots of elephants swimming against orchestral music. The Angolan highlands are captured in muted greens and silvers, their beauty inseparable from their opacity. The bushmen in the desert allow intimate close-ups of their rituals and dancing by the fire under the moon; it’s magical and mesmerizing. Long stretches of landscape unfold, reinforcing the idea that absence, too, is a form of evidence. When traces of the elephants do appear, they are fleeting and ambiguous, resisting the definitive proof that conventional documentaries often demand. There’s supporting evidence in the form of videos, old newspaper articles, and drawings, when discussing the media and how elephants have been treated throughout history, especially hunted for sport. 

There’s an incredibly sad section discussing poaching, game hunting, and even filming, and you’ll want more hope for the future of all animals being destroyed by humans. You’ll want more justice and change. But don’t worry, there’s not a lot of distressing footage used, and it’s not long, so don’t let this put you off watching. 

The documentary is very informative with easy-to-understand language and supporting images. The Smithsonian allowed the film to see elephant tusks up close and personal. Getting a look into these archives feels very special – being privy to something you shouldn’t. Toward the end, we get a glimpse into DNA and how data is used/going to be used in the future. They compare the Ghost elephant’s DNA with that of other species of elephants. 

If the film has a limitation, it’s its smoothing over the harsher political realities of conservation in post-colonial landscapes. The presence of Indigenous knowledge is celebrated, but its ongoing marginalization is only lightly interrogated. Viewers expecting a dramatic reveal might feel frustrated. Audiences will have to be willing to dwell in the unresolved, to accept that some truths exist beyond the reach of cameras and confirmation. 

Ultimately, Ghost Elephants is less a documentary about finding animals than about recovering ways of seeing. It asks whether reconnection with land, with history, with each other, is still possible in a world that prefers a fast pace and instant gratification to patience. Like the elephants it seeks, the film moves quietly, giving you time to absorb the information and learn something. The love and respect for nature, especially elephants, is heartwarming and inspiring. This is a gentle documentary, one for those interested in animals, nature, and adventure.

Grade: B+