Directors: Max Gershberg, Jacob Rogal

Synopsis: A young hockey team enters the 1980 Olympics as underdogs and emerges as heroes. Their iconic upset unfolds with new footage and firsthand reflections.

Before 1980, American hockey existed largely in the shadow of its international rivals. While the sport thrived at collegiate and regional levels, the United States was not considered a global powerhouse, particularly when measured against the Soviet Union’s state-sponsored machine. At the height of the Cold War, when sport doubled as symbolic warfare, hockey became a proxy for ideology, discipline, and national pride. Telling the story of the “Miracle on Ice” now matters not because it flatters nostalgia, but because it revisits a moment when belief briefly outpaced power, and collective effort unsettled inevitability.

Miracle: The Boys of ’80 doesn’t just re-litigate the game’s most famous moments beat by beat, it brings to life the victory as lived experience rather than legend. Built around never-before-seen 16mm footage and present-day reflections, the film strips away some of the varnish that has accumulated over four decades, revealing the human texture beneath the myth.

The documentary’s most effective choice is its return to place. By bringing the surviving players back to the Olympic rink where history was made 45 years ago, the film allows memory to surface organically. The players are taken back to being young men who were still figuring themselves out when history found them. Their interviews, with faces filled with doey eyes and smile lines, are honest, sweet and heartwarming. 

Audiences are taken through the history of Hockey, from times where you wouldn’t get paid, how hard it was to get sponsors, the nervous excitement about making the Olympic team. Grainy archival footage shows intense practices, cheering fans and, of course, the historical game. This texture works against the overproduced mythology that has often surrounded the event, grounding the achievement in exhaustion, discipline, and doubt. The documentary reminds viewers that the win was not destiny; it was the result of preparation, comradery, and determination. 

During the interviews with the team, they talk very candidly about coach Herb Brooks, who was a hard man to work for, under and with, but there’s still a high level of respect for him. Each player gets their time to talk about their childhood, how they became involved in the sport and how it affected their lives. There’s side-by-side shots of them now as older men, with their young headshots, helping show how much time has passed, but they can talk about it as if it were yesterday. Their teary reactions to re-watcing game clips is wholesome. As a critic who isn’t a fan of hockey, the game play is exhilarating and audiences are given something most aren’t – commentary about the emotions and feelings in that moment.

The Cold War backdrop is present and does give this game its power. Political stakes are acknowledged without overwhelming the personal story, allowing the documentary to avoid triumphalism. The Soviet team is treated with respect rather than caricatured villainy, reinforcing the idea that the miracle mattered precisely because of the opponent’s excellence. Some viewers might have wanted a little more from the USSR perspective – more juicy gossip or political interest. 

Some thematic threads, particularly the long-term psychological cost of instant myth-making, are touched on but not fully explored. A deeper engagement with what it means to live inside such an impactful and powerful story might have added complexity. Still, the film’s refusal to inflate its own importance feels intentional, even principled.

Miracle: The Boys of ’80 resonates because it resists easy symbolism. It does not argue that sports can fix political rifts or resurrect lost unity. Instead, it suggests something smaller and more honest: that shared belief, briefly aligned, can disrupt systems that seem immovable. In a world where the news feels like one bad thing after another, and the threat of war is on doorsteps, many are struggling to come together. This documentary is a reminder that sport is something that unites us all. Exciting, engaging and quietly moving, Miracle: The Boys of ’80 isn’t just a documentary celebrating winning as much as about remembering. Why it’s important to remember historical events, celebrate them, and the importance around how they are told.

Grade: B

Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Writer: Ward Parry
Stars: Jason Statham, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Bill Nighy, Naomi Ackie

Synopsis: Mason lives in recluse at a remote setting by the sea. When he chooses to rescue a young girl from drowning in a terrible storm, he unwittingly sets off a chain reaction that soon brings violence his way, forcing him to confront choices from his past.

It might be a bit of hyperbole to describe Jason Statham as an enigma, but he’s been on a steady path over the past few decades as an action star and franchise regular with Fast and Furious and The Meg. In terms of standalone films, Statham has essentially made a brand of himself playing what seems to be the same loner character with a hidden past as an assassin in nearly every recent film of his, and they’ve had an extremely varied success rate over the years. For every bland boiler plate action flick that only barely gets the job done there’s a genuine one that seems to roll with its absurdity like The Beekeeper or the two Crank films; unfortunately this time around Shelter is one of the most generic Statham releases in recent memory.

The plights of the film are somewhat saved by some solid action choreography amidst the occasional shoddy visual effects, but Shelter’s central flaw is its lack of anything meaningful emotionally. The film clearly wants its audience to take the central relationship of our two main characters, Michael and Jesse, seriously as the movie’s core, and it’s hard when we are rarely given any reason to care about either of them besides the broadest of strokes. Simple narratives and beat ’em up action is never a bad thing, especially with a star like Statham at the lead, but Shelter is a largely dull affair that will evaporate from your consciousness as soon as the credits roll.

We start the film with Michael Mason (Statham), a lonely man residing on an island that’s off-grid from the world except for the occasional times when he gets supply drop-offs from Jesse (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), a girl who is perplexed by the mysterious man as she delivers essentials to him week by week. After an incident where Jesse’s uncle topples his boat in the middle of a storm, Mason sees it from afar and decides to save Jesse and care for her as she recovers. While stepping foot off the island for the first time in years to gather medical aid for Jesse, a camera catches Michael, and we learn that he was a former MI6 Assassin who spared an innocent life and went against orders, leading to him being completely disowned by the agency. 

Now knowing where he’s located, Michael’s former commander, Manafort (Bill Nighy), has started a resilient hunt to finish him and Jesse off, tying up all the loose ends he left behind years ago. With an assassin now tracking them and Jesse growing attached to him, Michael must protect her at all costs and finally bury his past.

If there’s one aspect of Shelter that keeps it from being even more unmemorable, it’d be that director Ric Roman Waugh is pretty solid at staging most of his action here. There’s never a scene that’s truly incredible or anything, but it’s clear Waugh knows how to format the choreography in pleasing ways. It mainly shines in scenes of hand-to-hand combat where the physicality from Statham is greatly appreciated. There’s a tight flow to watching him mow down goons that will satisfy genre fans that just want some quick fights, even without much pizazz to them; the issues lie in the repetitive structure at hand and the overly serious tone the film never earns.

The connection between Jesse and Michael is where the film wants to bring in emotion and resonance with the leads, and it simply just isn’t compelling in the slightest. The drama between the two of them and how they relate to each other is either incredibly predictable or just too repetitive to ever leave any impact. Many times when the action stops, it just feels like they have the same conversations over and over. Statham even looks bored in a few scenes.

That’s without even mentioning characters that would be completely inconsequential if their sections were removed entirely from the film, like Naomi Ackie’s intelligence unit character, who is completely underutilized here. These issues would be less of a problem if the film’s tone was just lighter and had a little more fun with itself, but the grittiness of the story works for and against the film, and the lack of substance is often more of a hindrance. 

If you’re looking for the most basic of action thrills, then Shelter will provide on that front, but it does little of anything else on any level besides being average. Despite the film’s solid action, it never rises above being middling due to its generic character beats that make any seriousness or emotions that the film wants to convey feel unearned. It’s about on par with a TNT classic dad movie you’d watch on cable TV, but unfortunately, in a derogatory sense.

Grade: C

Director: Gore Verbinksi
Writer: Matthew Robinson
Stars: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Zazie Beetz

Synopsis: A “Man From the Future” arrives at a diner in Los Angeles where he must recruit the precise combination of disgruntled patrons to join him on a one-night quest to save the world from the terminal threat of a rogue artificial intelligence

The time travel movie may be one of the most entertaining and frustrating subgenres in science fiction. As Looper taught us, if you don’t think too hard about the ins and outs, you might be fine. But it does cause some infinitely troubling loops. Ok, sure, the murderous AI sent a Terminator back to kill the would-be mother of the leader of the resistance. It didn’t work, so why not just go back and try it again? The real answer, of course, is that it would make a really boring sequel. But it still makes for an interesting thought experiment. What if the time traveler simply learned from their mistakes and just tried different versions of the same plan to figure out what the correct combination might be. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die takes a look at this idea, at least in its introductory scene.

It should be noted that, like many Gore Verbinski (Welcome back!) films, it is about much more than this, but we must begin at the beginning. That opening, headed by The Man From The Future (Sam Rockwell), quickly informs us that, due to the preponderance of Artificial Intelligence, everything has gone wrong. Verbinski points his finger at a number of targets here (AI, phone usage, school shootings), but rest assured, the world in the future is terrible. In order to combat this in the past, he arrives at Norm’s Diner looking part-time-traveler and part-living on the streets. He dons a plastic raincoat and what appears to be bombs strapped to his vest. But he assures us that this is the height of fashion in his time. More importantly, he has returned to this diner, yet again, because he knows that the right combination of people are there to help him stop the AI from getting too powerful. Again, don’t think too hard about how he knows this. Even though he sounds off his rocker, he quickly proves that he knows many things he should not about the individuals in said diner, and Rockwell’s charms shine through. Truly, only Sam Rockwell could play this part and not turn us all off to his supposedly important mission.

This is an old trope, but a good one. He must choose his team, like a much more pedestrian Fellowship of the Rings. Unsurprisingly, after he chooses his compatriots (under some amount of duress), the film branches off into different timelines. First, Mark (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz) as schoolteachers dealing with disaffected, disconnected students at a high school, where the zombie parallels are quite obvious. We are also introduced to Susan (Juno Temple), who has lost her son in a school shooting. Finally,  we are shown Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), dressed in a princess outfit whom Future Man doesn’t want along, but he relents. There is also a Boy Scout troop leader, an Uber driver, and a woman who has had a hard day at work and simply came to Norm’s for a slice of pie. This motley crew is certainly an odd one, though it becomes clear who will be important to the story and who will vanish in one way or another.

As the backstories start to reveal themselves, it is clear that Verbinski has a lot to say. His (and screenwriter Matthew Robinson) aim is not exactly pinpoint, but at least there is never a dull moment. Despite the fact that there are a few pacing issues and odd special effects choices (especially near the climax), I can guarantee you will never be bored. There is one particular creature design that nearly led me to shout in excitement. This moment (I will not ruin it) leads to the biggest laughs and reactions of the long runtime. Of course, all of this is to be expected from the director of A Cure For Wellness. Verbinski is a bit of a kitchen sink, maximalist director and that is fully on display here, for both better and worse. There are seemingly a thousand references one might notice, from Toy Story to just about any video game you might think of. On the other hand, some of the background story plotlines are surprisingly inspired.

The highlight features Susan who, after losing her child in that shooting, is given the opportunity to clone her son. But we no longer live in the world of high tech cloning facilities that look foreign to us. Here, she meets with essentially an Apple store employee who guides her through the process. Using the streamlined look that we are all familiar with is a stroke of genius that helps us connect to a story that can be excessive. This  process includes the good and bad quirks of her son’s personality, should she want to make changes. It is expensive, but luckily the government subsidizes the cost, given that they seem to be uninterested in gun control issues. Susan is given a cheaper option that includes her son spouting advertisements once per day. None of this is subtle in the least, but it is darkly funny. Despite that darkness, it is actually a gentler version of the reaction to school shootings than our current reality, so kudos to Robinson and Verbinski.

Even if the script takes on much more than it can handle, the cast is well up to the task. Besides Rockwell, the standout (as usual) is Haley Lu Richardson. She is given a lot to carry on her shoulders as far as the emotional arcs and also is saddled with what is described as an allergic reaction to technology. Of course, this allergy involves bleeding from the nose because…well because it looks cool, I suppose. But nevertheless, she manages humor, emotional depth. and a sense of reality in a film that desperately needs it. 

Frankly, the film is most interested in accusing our world of, if not deserving of its horrible fate, than needing to make drastic changes to avoid it. It certainly helps that there are jokes around every corner to soften the blow and a completely game cast who is clearly down for anything. The messages may not be subtle, or even new, but it all comes together well enough to be a pretty easy recommendation. Sure, it could use a streamlined story and move quicker in some moments, but having Gore Verbinksi back to create audacious images on screen is a net positive for all of us.

Grade: B

Director: Phillipa Lowthorpe
Writer: Emma Donoghue, Phillipa Lowthorpe, Helen MacDonald
Stars: Claire Foy, Brendan Gleeson, Denise Gough

Synopsis: After losing her beloved father, Helen finds herself saved by an unlikely friendship with a stubborn hawk named Mabel.

“The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life.” – Helen Macdonald H is for Hawk (2014).

Director Philippa Lowthorpe and writer Emma Donoghue (author of Room and The Wonder, both made into films) take Helen Macdonald’s extraordinary multi-award-winning 2014 cross-genre memoir and render it mostly silent as the protagonist, Helen (Claire Foy), spends much of the film refusing to speak or interact with almost everyone in her* life. Cinema is, of course, a different narrative medium and visual information is provided as a key interpretive and communicative mode. On the visual side, H is for Hawk is beautifully shot as it encompasses the Cambridge environs and the natural spaces Helen rewilds herself in with her goshawk Mabel. However, if ever a film would have benefitted from some internal narration, H is for Hawk is it.

Set in 2007 and covering a year of Helen’s life with occasional flashbacks, H is for Hawk is a journey of profound grief. Helen is a research fellow at Cambridge and teaching the history and philosophy of science to a group of students she feels aren’t interested. The person she cares most about is her father, Alisdair (Brendan Gleeson) who is a renowned photojournalist with eclectic interests – one of which is ornithology which he passed on to Helen. A gentle, patient, good humored and curious man who refused to retire. A man who always dressed in a suit. A man who dies suddenly of a heart attack leaving Helen feeling completely unmoored. 

Helen’s first reaction is dissociated shock. Her mother (Lindsay Duncan), brother (Josh Dylan), and her best on-campus friend, Christina (Denise Gough doing a remarkably good Australian accent) are there, but more often than not Helen reacts to them like they’re spectres. The only thing real is her grief and the dreams that haunt her. One dream in particular, that of a goshawk.

Experienced with falconry although not with the raptor goshawk, perhaps one of the least “friendly” birds of prey, Helen goes to her friend, Stuart (Sam Spruell), for advice and from there buys a goshawk from a trader in Scotland. The basic and animalistic connection Helen thinks she feels for the goshawk that she wants is communicated with a series of gazes. Helen looks at the hawk, the hawk looks back. “This is my hawk,” she insists and with Christina driving takes her back to Cambridge where she will begin training the young and deadly bird.

Helen’s need for the goshawk is infinite because she desires something that gives her little choice. An animal who demands patience, obeisance, and obedience from her more than she can demand from it. Mabel (meaning loveable) fills in a blank space for Helen as something utterly wild that she can project a kinship on to while letting everything else in her life fall away. Gone is the notion of applying for another fellowship. Gone is the urgency of facing that her Cambridge fellowship will be ending and she will be homeless. Gone is her commitment to research and teaching. Helen lives on the hawk’s timetable and every success she has “taming” Mabel is a substitute for the human life she is supposed to be leading. Instead, there is only “the perfectly evolved psychopath” who must hunt to be what she is.

Charlotte Bruus Christensen captures the beauty and fierceness of the goshawk especially when hunting. Swooping through the woods and grasses for her prey with Helen hoping she has earned enough trust that she will return. Sometimes it’s deliberately difficult to define Helen’s point of view when dealing with other people, such as a walk through Cambridge town with Mabel on her arm, from Mabel’s point of view. Humans begin to make noise, unclear noise, that Helen wants to turn away from – as if she needs a falconry hood over her own head to protect her from confusing babble.

Although Claire Foy and especially Brendan Gleeson give excellent performances, H is for Hawk holds itself at a distance from the audience by relying mostly on Foy’s frustrated silences and gradual withdrawal from “humanity” and its illogical insistence that one moves on and keeps living after a loss that has to be dealt with in a tradition of clean and dignified politeness. Lowthorpe does pay tribute to Alisdair throughout the film in the form of recent flashbacks and some from when Helen was a child so it becomes clearer why Helen would find her father a “mythic” presence. Yet, the pure literary majesty of Helen Macdonald’s memoir doesn’t translate on to the screen with Helen speaking so little to the people around her. When Christina says to her, “I think you’re over-identifying with Mabel,” Helen curtly replies, “I know that’s what you think.” It isn’t until the end of the film when Helen is speaking at Alasdair’s memorial service that she’s given a space to truly verbally express herself and why she has lost someone irreplaceable to her. It seems a touch confounding that Emma Donoghue would allow the impeccable poetics of the real Helen Macdonald’s memoir to be spread so thin. Take, for example the following taken from the book:

“The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten. Surprising things come to light: not simply memories, but states of mind, emotions, older ways of seeing the world… There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps.”

Foy’s Helen goes into deep depression, which is communicated in a strikingly mundane way beyond her hunting with Mabel. The kind of transcendent and wise prose Macdonald shared with the world can’t be communicated in the language of visuals or performance. H is for Hawk is a good film, but it feels like it has too many “holes and absences” to be a great one.

Grade: C+

Director: Robert Sarkies
Writer: Fiona Samuel
Stars: Melanie Lynskey, Robyn Malcolm, Lucy Lawless

Synopsis: In the aftermath of an explosion that rocked the Pike River Mine and took 29 lives, two women step up to fight for accountability.

The justice system in many nations is more about stamina than justice. It’s about having the strength to go on and on without any progress or without any guarantees of success. Film simplifies the process quite a bit. It gives us the quickest route, but it’s not always the most fulfilling. In many court room dramas, there are blustering speeches, shocking testimonies, and showboating attorneys on both sides. We often see the people involved through the lens of their case and not as people in the worst situations of their life. This is what makes Pike River a far more compelling narrative.

Writer Fiona Samuel’s script eschews the lawyers and the big courtroom scenes to instead focus entirely on the people affected by the case. The way Pike River unfolds is through the eyes of Anna (Melanie Lynskey) and Sonya (Robyn Malcolm). We watch as they helplessly watch. We feel their frustration at the double speak and the unfulfilled promises. We feel heartened by the drastic actions they take. All they seek is closure, which shouldn’t be that hard to come by.

Pike River can lag between bouts of legal and protest actions. There are some scenes that feel as if they could have been played out in a phone call or a quick expository conversation. The resolution that the real life Anna and Sonya were finally granted took about eight years, so it’s understandable that there would be waiting in film time as well. It just feels as if this waiting also becomes a rehashing of information that is already established. Though, the time does have an extraordinary outcome for the narrative of the film and that is the friendship between Anna and Sonya.

Friends are often made in the trials we face as humans. It’s a prickly start for their relationship, but they see each other in the grief they share. They understand each other and build something strong between them. There’s a phenomenal scene that director Robert Sarkies builds that shows the friendship at its best. It’s a simple setup, just a cafe scene with cuts between Anna on one side and Sonya on the other. As they attempt to understand the legalese they’ve been subject to that day a misspoken phrase leads to a memory of their men and the flatulence they let off. It’s a funny scene in the midst of a tough time. It’s a shorthand for camaraderie and it fits so well because talking about cutting the cheese is a great way to cut the tension of the constant striving for justice.

Scenes like the one above wouldn’t work without the incredible acting of both leads. Melanie Lynskey is always good because she’s the woman you never suspect. She’s the woman who looks like she takes what she’s given, but she surprises you every time. She’s able to be fiery, but she has a delicate vulnerability to her. As Anna, she has a tremendous timing for biting remarks and yet is able to break your heart with a simple glance.

Robyn Malcolm is an actress who understands that balance is that everything is happening all at once. She’s adept at the blistering put downs and the issues with self-confidence. Her face is so alive and expressive that it’s a joy to watch her emote. She carries Sonya’s outward toughness, but never hides her inner softness. It’s a perfect expression of grief and tenacity.

Pike River is a film that takes its time. In some ways that makes for a difficult film to sit through, in others it makes for a more compelling and fulfilling narrative to be with. It’s a film that keeps its eyes on the humans at the heart of the legal battle and is all the better for it. Add into that two powerful and stellar performances and you’ve got a very intriguing watch that will keep you glued just to see what possible wriggling these corporate and political goons will come up with to leave their promises unfulfilled.

Grade: B

Director:  Christophe Gans
Writers: Christophe Gans, Sandra Vo-Anh, Will Schneider
Stars: Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson, Evie Templeton

Synopsis: When a man receives a mysterious letter from his lost love, he is drawn to Silent Hill, a once familiar town now consumed by darkness.

Twelve years after readapting Beauty and the Beast with Léa Seydoux and Vincent Cassel, French genre auteur Christophe Gans returns to the world that made him a known figure within video game adaptations in Return to Silent Hill, promising to audiences a “faithful” adaptation of Konami’s Silent Hill 2, highly regarded as one of the greatest video games of all time. Whether or not these words are true (almost) doesn’t matter, since Gans is a highly interesting (and underappreciated) figure within genre cinema. He’s only made five films in his thirty-year career, each brimming with jaw-dropping images and unwieldy ideas that consistently make us rethink the way we watch movies and the art we consume. 

Return to Silent Hill is no different, although it doesn’t reach the level of his two masterpieces, Crying Freeman and Brotherhood of the Wolf. It’s also probably not a faithful adaptation of Silent Hill 2, which has made fans angry with the fury of a thousand thunders, with some even sending death threats to Gans for allegedly “ruining” the video game. While those threats are totally uncalled for, since the game stands on its own two feet, one can’t entirely dismiss Return to Silent Hill as a “bad” video game adaptation when Gans himself thinks about his place within post-digital cinema in an era where textures are becoming more artificial and images no longer hold meaning within the moviegoing public. 

It may lack the verve of Dan Laustsen’s photography, but the visual poetry of a decaying world that dies with James Sunderland (Jeremy Irvine) is still present here. In any event, it is a step above – both visually and thematically – from MJ Bassett’s dreadful Silent Hill: Revelations 3D, because Gans holds reverence for Konami’s game and is at least curious in further expanding his conception of what he believes some of Silent Hill 2’s themes are. It may not be a “definitive” interpretation of the urtext, but it’s far more interesting than the dreadful attempts to blatantly steal gamers’ money with the nearly unwatchable A Minecraft Movie and Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. 

As a meditation on grief and the lengths one will go to bring someone “back” from the dead, Return to Silent Hill is an imperfect, but frequently moving piece of work. It represents James’ tormented psyche inside a labyrinthine story that consistently blurs the line between the harsh reality he lives in and the harsh nightmares he can’t fully wake up from. Gans’ writing may not be as sharp as in the first time he took a crack at the world of Silent Hill in 2006, with frequent bouts of clunky and unintentionally hilarious, indigestible expository exchanges between James and the various figures he meets, either in Silent Hill or the Otherworld, but his visual compositions remain unmatched, and perhaps more compelling when we put his two approaches side-by-side, twenty years removed from the first installment. 

Dolly shots are no longer frequent – this thing is erratic and always in the face of his tormented protagonist, who lives an internal (and external) torture he can’t fully extinguish, even by diving deeper into the quasi-post-apocalyptic Hellscape of Silent Hill. Sadly, though, Irvine’s hair game is the most unconvincing aspect of his (and anyone’s) performance, but some musical juxtapositions are so good that one can easily overlook some of the production’s cheaper traits, compared to the refined visual palette of the original. Again, though, Gans collaborated with Dan Laustsen, and that cinematographer is one of the greatest to have ever done it. 

Comparing that film to Return to Silent Hill feels a bit like an apples-to-oranges situation, though Gans repeats some of its best sequences with less thrilling effect. Pyramidhead makes his grand return and feels less imposing than when Laustsen’s baroque compositions highlighted him, while a sequence with “Dark Nurses” is the exact same as the first installment, sans the palpable tension we felt when Rose Da Silva (Radha Mitchell) explored the film’s titular ghost town. That said, Gans compensates for this repetition by offering different stylistic considerations in his Return to Silent Hill, with the camera being more handheld and nervous than in the first go-around, when we spent time understanding the town’s mechanics through its visuals alone. 

The most exhilarating aspect of Gans’ Silent Hill transpositions is how we’re able to comprehend how this universe works – and what the protagonist feels – by simply making its visual language an intrinsic part of the viewing experience, and trusting the audience to put two and two together. Again, the dialogues aren’t that refined, but what’s on screen still remains profoundly affecting by the end, neatly tying the different parallel stories in a way that reads as emotionally intimate and genuinely earnest. Irvine is particularly good as Sunderland, though he may not be the “definitive” version of the character fans wanted to see, which could limit the emotional attachment to the protagonist. 

Is it a bad thing that Gans takes so many liberties with the material to deliver his conception of the video game? To be honest, I don’t have the answer to this question, but his love of Silent Hill can’t be denied, and the aesthetic impulse he brings to his pictures can’t entirely be shunned. Considering that Emerald Fennell is about to desecrate Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, I can understand the frustrations from the fans who want to see their favorite game adapted on screen. However, there are a few auteurs who are as earnest in their image-making as is Gans, and the fact that he’s only made five films in his longstanding career feels a bit criminal. 

For better or worse, Return to Silent Hill is Christophe Gans’ Megalopolis. It’s filled with brain-melting imagery and unwieldy themes that are only somewhat developed. However, the sincerity behind it is so powerful that any perceived “flaw” I had didn’t matter by the time it reached its final scene and gave Sunderland a sense of peace and finitude that few protagonists who dared enter Silent Hill ever managed to have…

Grade: B+

Director:  Brad Anderson
Writer: Joshua Rollins
Stars: Billie Boullet, Luke Evans, Milla Jovovich

Synopsis: A father hides his daughter on an island to keep her safe while he equips her for survival and the battles ahead.

There are movies that attempt big concepts like cataclysms and society crumpling in a macrocosm, but there is something genuinely gripping when that catastrophe is brought into the focus of a small group. It’s how we relate to the characters and are able to emotionally connect to the situation. Often films with smaller budgets are able to pull off this emotional connection much better than their mega budget counterparts because the smaller films can’t hide behind CGI. They have to arrest us with characters that can sell us on the world they live in. In some ways Worldbreaker is able to pull off this emotional feat.

The film, written by Joshua Rollins, has just enough heady sci-fi themes to keep us interested in the survival of Willa (Billie Boullet) and Dad (Luke Evans). The world is broken, literally, by creatures that lived under the earth and now want to live on top of it without pesky humans around. It’s a solid basis and when new details emerge the reason for Dad’s superstition or cagey behavior becomes clearer. Where the screenplay and the story falter is in how much exposition is given. At one point in the beginning of the narrative, there are two different narrator streams that are, thankfully, abandoned, but still don’t give us everything we really need.

Much of the downfall of Worldbreaker is that it needs more. Not more monsters, not more people, not more battle scenes, but it needs more to it. It’s a very straightforward narrative. It would work much better had Rollins chosen a more interesting thread to follow. Mom (Milla Jovovich) is a far more compelling character than Dad. It’s obvious why Dad is chosen to safeguard Willa as is established in the worldbuilding he’s more dangerous if he stays and fights, but there are just not enough details of interest about him and he becomes an archetype and not a real character. The questions that are unanswered by the lack of information in Rollins’ script aren’t completely important, but they could have added more emotional heft and more desire on our part to fully appreciate the solid basis for the story.

What works in Worldbreaker‘s favor is its effects. The CGI creatures are limited, which is a very good thing as they aren’t particularly interesting. They feel and sound like creatures in dozens of these types of films. Yet, the sound of the humans that the creatures infect is where the film sets itself apart and has something really scary. The sound from these human creatures, called hybrids, is like a guttural, mirthless laugh. It announces their proximity like a hunting call. It’s a pattern of sounds and then silence. Sound designer Matt Severin has created something otherworldly and truly terrifying.

What never makes sense is that this is a story about a world fought for, protected, and kept safe by women, but the most central figure of that world is sidelined. Milla Jovovich eats up every scene she’s in, but those scenes are sadly few. Her hero moment at the beginning of the film is never lived up to. Director Brad Anderson and cinematographer Daniel Aranyo have a tracking shot behind Jovovich as she carries a lit torch and surveys her troops who alternately call her mother and commander. It’s a great scene followed by a tense, and a, tragically, cut short charge into battle, but she’s never given much more than that. Worldbreaker is Willa’s story, of course, but there was room for more than that.

Worldbreaker follows a familiar pattern. It’s a post-apocalyptic epic that has an intriguing world and not much more. It’s short enough and tense enough that it will keep your attention. There are good scenes and some lush scenery when Willa and Dad are on the island. Yet, it’s never trying to be more than it is. It really could have been, but something holds it back. It’s not a bad watch, but it’s a bit of junk food and not a full meal.

Grade: C

Director: Hlynur Pálmason
Writer: Hlynur Pálmason
Stars: Saga Garðarsdóttir, Sverrir Guðnason, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir, Grímur Hlynsson

Synopsis: Captures a year in the life of a family as the parents navigate their separation. Through intimate vignettes and strange occurrences, the film explores the complexities of family, love, and the impact of shared memories.

Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason is no stranger to making wholly singular pieces of work, and his latest, The Love That Remains (Ástin sem eftir er), is no exception. I can’t recall the last time I felt so absorbed watching a film, even though I found the structure to be often at odds with the poignant message at the heart of the picture. The story is relatively simple, but Pálmason’s formal approach is anything but. Instead of chronologically recounting a year in the life of a family whose parents (played by Saga Garðarsdóttir and Sverrir Guðnason) are going through a separation, the Godland director portrays this twelve-month journey through fragmented memories. 

Some are, of course, positive and loving; others are not as uplifting. Then there are the mundane, but funny slice-of-life sequences that recall the work of Yasujiro Ozu (Good Morning, in particular) and the esoteric, otherworldly bits that come out of nowhere and shock your soul into complete bewilderment. It’s a totally singular artistic object, and one that demands your attention even if Pálmason’s structure is more alienating than commercially crowd-pleasing. Many may not appreciate the way he frames his story, but anyone who consistently has memories flashed back in front of their very eyes in jumbled, often imprecise succession (so, essentially, everyone), it’s not hard to like what’s shown on screen. 

Life is, after all, a collection of fleeting memories. We go through a day, and what’s in the past cannot be fixed. They’re only stored in our minds until our ultimate voyage. The way Pálmason captures these memories is the same way we think about our past in relation to the future. Our recollections rarely linger, and if they do, it’s always the worst – and most embarrassing – parts of our past we don’t want to relive. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll also remember some of our darkest actions that will haunt us in our worst nightmares and make us feel the brunt of our gestures. In that case, Pálmason stages a sequence that feels plucked straight out of Jean-Claude Lauzon’s Léolo (or my worst nightmares, you decide!), but to say anything about it would rob you of the pleasures of discovering this unique object for yourself. 

What’s most impressive here, though, is how Pálmason’s visual language informs the viewer of the fractures that caused the family to eventually separate without them uttering many words. As (purposefully) disjointed as the movie could get, even its juxtapositions gave many of its jaw-dropping images (shot by Pálmason himself) intense meaning. The performances are also excellent, with Garðarsdóttir being a major highlight, conveying a litany of repressed emotions through only her eyes. The two children, played by Þorgils Hlynsson and Grímur Hlynsson, are nice comedic counterpoints to a story that isn’t necessarily purely comedic, but represents a year in the life of an ordinary family grappling with an uncertain future, none of whom are sure how it will be shaped. 

It’s just a shame that, at the end of the day, the emotional attachment between the audience and the protagonists feels rather limited in scope because of the fragmented nature of the project. However, there’s no denying Pálmason’s imprint within world cinema, as an artist who continues to break the very foundations of the medium for the better, one project at a time, and forces all of us to think differently about how film – as a work of art – should operate and showcase what are the most profoundly human aspects in our lives. In a world that feels less human by the day, films like The Love That Remains are worth cherishing.

Grade: B+

Director: Sam Raimi
Writers: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift
Stars: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Bruce Campbell

Synopsis: Two colleagues become stranded on a deserted island, the only survivors of a plane crash. On the island, they must overcome past grievances and work together to survive, but ultimately, it’s a battle of wills and wits to make it out alive.

With Send Help, Sam Raimi demonstrates what he does best, expertly toeing the line between horror and comedy. The horror master returns with his first feature since the wildly overrated Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, delivering his strongest film since Drag Me to Hell. 

This is Raimi’s reentry into the genre that made him a household name is an exhilarating horror-thriller, featuring a terrific performance from Rachel McAdams. Yes, with Send Help, Sam Raimi reminds us why he’s a horror master – suspenseful, vicious, and wickedly funny. 

The film follows Linda Liddle (Academy Award-nominee McAdams), an employee in the planning and strategy division of a Fortune 500 company. Her work is so highly regarded that her boss is preparing to promote her to Vice President. However, things take a downturn when he dies and his yuppie, silver-spoon-fed son, Bradley (Twinless’s Dylan O’Brien), is handed the CEO position.

Of course, Bradley promptly surrounds himself with his frat-boy buddies, proving the boys’ club is alive and well. Among them are Chase (Seagrass’s Chris Pang) and Donovan (Blonde’s Xavier Samuel), the latter of whom steals Linda’s work and is handed the promotion meant for her, simply because she doesn’t present herself as the kind of corporate shark who wheels and deals as a power broker on the golf course.

Bradley wants to show Linda the door, but the COO (Far from Heaven’s Dennis Haysbert, underutilized here) insists on keeping her on board, warning that the Bangkok merger could fall apart without her. Linda is forced to join the boys on a private jet, where, while she’s hard at work, they discover an old online audition video of her trying to land a spot on the latest season of Survivor. 

The joke, however, is on them when the plane crashes in a sequence so steeped in dark comedy it might as well be Vantablack, killing everyone on board except Linda, who washes ashore on a deserted island. While searching her new home for food and supplies, she stumbles upon an injured Bradley and nurses him back to health, leaving the two of them to fight for survival.

Raimi’s Send Help is a viscerally felt horror flick with a savage original script from Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. The experience begins to work on many levels, like watching the love child of Cast Away, Swimming with the Sharks, and Misery. A survivalist desperation character study that doubles as a razor-sharp corporate satire. No, there are no boardrooms to swing an ax of corporate cruelty, or to make deals with handshakes on the golf course. 

Here, a smarmy O’Brien is psychologically dismantled by McAdams’ Linda, who proves that her kindness is not a weakness. The result is a tropical oasis-style chess match that’s deeply unnerving. Raimi builds tension into a power struggle that becomes a wild, darkly funny ride. Here, power is valued over empathy, with kindness seen as a strategy rather than a virtue.

By refusing to let either character be fully trusted, the script creates a diabolically entertaining viewing experience in which every interaction feels like a psychological ploy, and the outcome is never predictable. Just as compelling is the way both characters evolve, crossing each other like passing ships, one sliding from good to bad, the other discovering a measure of their own humanity.

Send Help is worth watching because it does what the very best horror-thrillers do: it elevates a psychological two-hander in which so much is revealed that you’re never quite sure who to root for. Raimi’s precise control of the camera, paired with sharp thriller mechanics and impeccable comedic timing, is just as effective as the film’s bitter, razor-edged back-and-forth dialogue. 

While the ending may feel a touch too clean, the larger themes of knowledge, competence, and emotional control come vividly alive through Rachel McAdams’ thrilling performance. Raimi understands that their fate isn’t a prison, it’s an opportunity. Survival is no longer the temptation.

Power is.

You can watch Send Help only in theaters starting January 30th!

Grade: B+