MOVIE REVIEW: THE MOMENT

 

A rising pop star navigates the complexities of fame and industry pressure while preparing for her arena tour debut.

Director: Aidan Zamiri

Cast: Charli XCX, Rosanna Arquette, Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou, Hailey Benton Gates, Isaac Powell, Alexander Skarsgård

Release Date: January 30, 2026 

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Thriller

Rated R for language throughout and some drug material

Runtime: 1h 43m

Review:

The Moment is a fun mockumentary that plays like a pop starlet’s Spinal Tap and functions as a sort of anxiety driven confessional about the instant massive fame hits.  Aidan Zamiri does a solid job behind the camera in his debut film and there’s clear sense that Charli XCX trust him implicitly which shouldn’t be a surprise since he’s directed a handful of her recent videos.  The film opens with an aggressive barrage of strobe and images that might induce A Clockwork Orange style seizure in more than a few people before settling into its more vérité documentary approach.  Once the film moves into the meat of its story Charli XCX takes center stage and brings her magnetic personality to the screen with impressive ease.  The real treat is that she’s more than willing to make fun of herself and is more than willing to make herself look incredibly unglamourous and uncool.  The corporate label head, played by Rosanna Arquette, and cheese ball director, played with inspired gusto by Alexander Skarsgard, serves as her primary antagonist as they continually try to monetize and bottle her zeitgeist capturing moment.  It makes for a series of hilarious situations that are outlandish on the surface but not terribly detached from reality either, especially if you’ve ever watched the evolution of a pop star.  Charli XCX has been a well-established niche artist for the last decade before her explosion onto the mainstream last summer.  It’s an impressive bit of foresight to take hold of the moment and create a faux version of her experience that’s peppered with threads of truth and vulnerability that shines through in two singular moments where you feel she’s speaking from the heart.  It’s something she’s broached in the past during her real documentary, Charli XCX: Alone Together from 2021, which only hardcore fans saw but carries similar themes.  The Moment may become a nice time capsule for those same hardcore fans later down the road but for the general public there is still plenty to appreciate here thanks to Charli XCX’s honest self-reflection on display.  

B+

MOVIE REVIEW: SEND HELP

 

A woman and her overbearing boss become stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash. 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.

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast:  Rachel McAdams, Dylan O'Brien, Edyll Ismail, Dennis Haysbert, Xavier Samuel 

Release Date: January 30, 2026 

Genre: Horror, Thriller

Rated R for strong/bloody violence and language

Runtime: 1h 54m

Review:

Send Help boast a deceptively simple set up that finds Sam Raimi embracing his old school love of horror comedy paired with fun, over the top turns from its central duo of Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien.  Raimi uses a slick script from Mark Swift and Damian Shannon to deliver a fun office/gender role reversal by setting up the toxic environment O’Brien’s nepo baby takes over.  Everything is overblown but strangely familiar to anyone who’s worked in those environments.  Rachel McAdams is the “ugly” socially inept workhorse who was promised a promotion before having the rug swiftly taken out from under her.  McAdams fully embraces the role adding in layers to the character that slowly reveal themselves over the course of the film.  Sporting overly baggy clothes and greasy hair still isn’t quite enough to hide the fact that she’s an attractive woman, but she makes it work thanks to her excellent comedic timing and fully committed turn.  She fully embraces the character’s blossoming transformation once the action moves onto the island coming to a bloody zenith when she hunts a wild boar.  Dylan O’Brien plays up the faux alpha office male as the new crowned prince of his company topped off with an off-putting laugh.  Their back and forth on the island is fun and the script keeps things interesting by moving in unexpected direction and switching up tones along the way.  The battle of wits is slowly revealed along the way although some elements are easier to figure out than others.  Send Help’s story is simple but there’s a fun undercurrent of the Stanford prison experiment as we watch the power dynamic shift which leaves plenty of food for thought long after the film ends.  

B+

MOVIE REVIEW: GRIZZLY NIGHT

On 12 August 1967, in Montana's Glacier National Park, the unthinkable happened: On the same night, nine miles apart, there were not one, but two fatal grizzly bear attacks.

Director: Burke Doeren

Cast: Brec Bassinger, Lauren Call, Jack Griffo, Charles Esten, Ali Skovbye, Oded Fehr

Release Date: January 30, 2026 US/February 2, 2026UK

Genre: Drama

Rated R for grisly images and brief language.

Runtime: 1h 27m

Review:

Grizzly Night, Burke Doeren directorial debut, is a solid but uneven fact-based creature feature that steadily finds its footing as it goes along.  Doeren takes full advantage of shooting on location to establish a sense of the landscape where the ensemble cast of characters find themselves on this fateful night.  Inspired by a true event known as the "Night of the Grizzlies,” there’s an unsteady sense of what kind of tone they are shooting for especially early on as its verges on schlocky creature feature thanks to thinly written characters and performances that vary wildly in terms of quality.  It gives the false impression that the film is going to be an all-out carnage machine which it never actually becomes as we are witness only to early moments of the attacks with some of the gorier elements taking place offscreen.  The focus here is much more on the rescue efforts that happen after the fact with a handful of familiar character actors balancing out some of the younger, less experienced performers.  Oded Fehr, Charles Esten and Brec Bassinger bring some dramatic weight to the production with each delivering solid work in limited screentime.  Lauren Call, who plays botanist Ranger Joan Devereaux, starts off a bit shaky but settles into the role over the course of the film which gives us a sense of the character’s emotional journey through the traumatic events.   Oded Fehr brings the right amount of calm and empathy as Dr. John Lindberg, who is trust into a lifesaving situation with a moment between him and Bassinger serving as an emotional highlight in the film.  There’s a steep drop off from there as the final act feels rushed, giving very little time to the unfortunate effects that nearly wiped out the grizzly bear.  Grizzly Night ends up being a passable docudrama that could have done a bit more with the subject matter if it had taken a more thoughtful approach to its scripting and overall themes at play.  

C

MOVIE REVIEW: THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE

 

Revered by her followers, Ann Lee preaches gender and social equality as the founder of the devotional sect the Shakers.

Director: Mona Fastvold

Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Stacy Martin, Tim Blake Nelson, Christopher Abbott

Release Date: December 25, 2025

Genre: Biography, Drama, History, Musical

Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence and bloody images

Runtime: 2h 10m

Review:

Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee is a fascinating curiosity of a film that’s powered by a fully committed turn from Amanda Seyfried and painstakingly constructed to elicit a sense of the religious fervor that drove Ann Lee but outside of the arresting musical numbers the film keeps the audience at a frustrating arm’s length from her psyche.  Fastvold’s directs her film with a steady hand as we follow the course of Ann Lee’s life, narrated by Thomasin McKenzie’s Sister Mary, and her journey to self-discovery after the loss of four infants to her transformation into religious leader.  The movie moves at a methodical pace with the musical numbers sprinkled throughout giving it a distinctive look and feel with those moments bringing a palpable sense of energy that the film struggles to maintain once those sequences end.  Seyfried is fantastic across the board with the film giving her ample time for her talents to shine but the film takes the focus off her at regular intervals which dulls the impact of her performance.  Lewis Pullman gets a hefty amount of screentime as her missionary brother tasked with growing their following which is fine, but his character is never as interesting or engaging as Seyfried’s Ann Lee.  Their journey together into the new world feels like it should be far more riveting and engaging than it ultimately is onscreen.  Seyfried’s character is further removed from the spotlight in the film’s final act which doesn’t give the audience a lot of insight into what made her so attractive to her followers or her general mindset as a self-proclaimed vessel of God.  Her position as the rare female preacher also seems like fertile ground to explore but the film never delves too much into it until a violent encounter near the end of the film that is rather jarring thanks to the viciousness of the violence.  After that point, the film fast tracks towards its finale in a rather rushed manner which just closes the story out as quickly as possible.  It makes The Testament of Ann Lee feel like a missed opportunity since you get the sense that Seyfried could have brought so much more emotional texture and nuance that would have made her character connect on a more personal level that extended beyond her emotional damage.

C

MOVIE REVIEW: MERCY

 

In the near future, an advanced AI judge tells a captive detective that he's on trial for the murder of his wife. If he fails to prove his innocence within 90 minutes, he'll be executed on the spot.

Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Cast: Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis, Annabelle Wallis, Chris Sullivan, Kylie Rogers

Release Date: December 25, 2025

Genre: Action, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Rated PG-13 for violence, bloody images, some strong language, drug content and teen smoking.

Runtime:  1h 41m

Review:

Mercy is one of those speculative science fiction films that thinks is a lot smarter than it is but behind the glossy screen life production there’s a preposterous idea that can’t decide what it’s actually trying to say pair with enough plot holes to run a dump truck through.  Timur Bekmambetov knows how to direct a sleek-looking film so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this is one of the better-looking screen life films out there.  Even though the film technically occurs in a single room with Rebecca Ferguson’s AI Judge and Chris Pratt’s defendant there’s plenty of action thrown at the screen by way of some serious Big Brother style surveillance which the film leads you to believe that nearly everyone signed up for.  There’s a set up where sections of city have been sectioned off, ala Escape from New York, but almost by design this ultra police state is just presented as being readily accepted by the general populace.  It’s an odd bit of world building since it begs more questions than anything outside of the general conceit of the 90-minute timed AI murder court.  Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson do the best they can with what they have to work with since neither role is all that well written with each character suffering from wild changes throughout the film, particularly the supposably infallible, emotionless AI Judge Maddox.  Ferguson looks the part with her Star Trek villain black robe and slicked back hair, but the character goes from preeningly omnificent to strangely helpful and confused by the time it’s all said and done since they apparently created this program and never beta tested it before allowing it start doling out executions.  It doesn’t mean that the central mystery isn’t all that interesting since it plays like a low rent redux of The Fugitive which isn’t all that hard to figure out since the film gives you plenty of clues beforehand.  It all makes Mercy a forgettable bit of sci-fi shlock that could have been more interesting if the script had given the kind of care the visuals were.   

D+

MOVIE REVIEW: NO OTHER CHOICE

 

Abruptly laid off after 25 years at the same company, a desperate man goes to extreme lengths to eliminate the competition for the job he wants.

Director: Park Chan-wook

Cast: Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, Cha Seung-won

Release Date: December 25, 2025

Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama, Thriller

Rated R for violence, language and some sexual content.

Runtime:  2h 19m

Review:

Park Chan-wook’s latest film is a stylish dark comedy satire that provides some laugh out loud moments with its over-the-top dissection of the rat race and its dehumanizing effects on people.  Chan-wook film is visually striking, leaving a series of indelible images etched on your memory once the film wraps up.  He switches between tones fairly effortlessly as the film starts more pensive and reflective about the level of humiliation that Lee Byung-hun’s, Yoo Man-soo suffers through after being fired from his job after more than two decades of service.   There’s plenty of subtext that can be mined from his career in the paper industry which can be seen as a dying, archaic product that doesn’t require the talents of specified careermen any longer.  There’s something incredibly relatable to anyone who’s suffered through a layoff as we get a clear sense that Yoo Man-soo’s mooring has been untethered as his career was something he took pride in and made up a large part of his sense of self.  Lee Byung-hun delivers a wonderfully nuanced turn by giving his characters a real sense of desperation which takes him to extremes measures to achieve his goals.  He manages to keep his character empathic through most of it as you never get a sense that he’s actually a bad guy just in a horrible situation which he can’t seem to find his way out of.  It leads to a series of misadventures which boils to a madcap bit of insanity halfway through the film during a murder gone hilariously wrong.  His desperation seeps into his marriage with his emasculation damaging his relationship with his wife played impressive ease by Son Ye-jin.  They have wonderful chemistry together as they play off each other with a live in authenticity that makes their moments work far more realistically even as things get more outlandish.  Ye-jin initially comes off as affluent and aloof, but she slowly reveals her smarts and knowledge of her husband and his strange behavior.  It’s a fascinating dance to watch, especially as she comes to the revelation of the extent of her husband’s actions to get a new job.  There are a few moments where the film meanders a bit, leaving you with the feeling that there’s a tighter more streamlined version in there somewhere as its methodical pacing takes small amount of shine off the central conceit.  That being said, No Other Choice, still manages to leave a lasting impression over the course of its runtime thanks to its strong direction and performances.   

A-