Tag / Film

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Oscar 2026

I’ve not seen the whole Best Picture shortlist, but I’ve seen most.

  • Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2025)

The least interesting of the Lanthimos films I’ve seen – apparently a remake of Jigureul jikyeora! (Save the Green Planet!, 2003) in which Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) kidnap medical CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), convinced she is an alien. Your allegiances waver and like all of the films I’ve seen from the shortlist it needs a trim. There’s a rather inevitable left turn and we fall into camp.

  • Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro, 2025)

Steven Spielberg is a lover of Peter Pan and yet Hook (1991) seemed to suggest he didn’t get it. del Toro seems to fall into the same flaws here – Shelley’s classic and abused novel, although the Universal and Hammer versions create a mythos that is tangential to the novel. Here we shift the action to the mid-19th century (and yet dynamite has been invented already), add an abusive back story for Victor (Oscar Isaac), shuffle Victor’s relatives and the syphilitic Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz). Jacob Elordi is watchable as ever as the Creature – he’s clearly rehearsing Heathcliff – but his ability to push a ship free of ice strains credibility rather than his muscles. The Arctic setting is just a fingers up at purists.

  • F1 (Joseph Kosinski, 2025)

Best Tony Scott tribute act, judging by the trailers, but an advert for a sports industry rather than the US military. Not seen, so I could be missing some subtlety.

  • Hamnet (Chloé Zhao, 2025)

Overrated adaptation, in which a neglected historical figure is shown how to feel by William Shakespeare.

  • Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie, 2025)

A rather fun screwball comedy, in which Marty (Timothée Chalamet) attempts to raise the money that will allow him to attend and win the world table tennis championship. The sport is mostly a metaphor, as Marty faces setback after setback. Abel Ferrara gives great cameo and it’s worth pondering the universe where this was called Wiff-Waff and directed by Ken Loach.

  • One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)

I’ve largely avoided Anderson after Magnolia (1999) – which my memory tells me I saw the same day as either The Green Mile or Eyes Wide Shut and left me vowing never to see another film. So, this came as a pleasant surprise. “Ghetto”  Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) has long since retired from a career of revolutionary crime and has been left to look after a daughter Charlene (Chase Infiniti) – but now Col. Steven K. Lockjaw is on his trail This goes to unexpected places – not least being a Thomas Pynchon adaptation (ish).

  • O Agente Secreto (The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025)

Another film about confronting the past – former academic Armando (Walter Moura) returns home to reconnect with his son and to search for details of his late mother. But there is soon a bounty on his head. There’s a complicated time structure – which I’m not sure adds up – and some surreal moments of black comedy. Definitely a contender.

  • Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier, 2025)

Possibly Trier’s least interesting film to date but I’d be happy for it to win – probably my favourite on the short list. Stage actress Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve) refuses her father Gustav’s (Stellan Skarsgård) offer of a starring role in a quasi autobiographical film and he goes all Vertigo in casting an American starlet (Elle Fanning).

  • Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)

It feels a long time since I saw this – Michael Jordan as twins sets up a Deep South bar and makes some enemies who are even more dangerous than the local White community. Some beautiful set pieces and stay for the credits – shame the Native American subplot didn’t go as far as it could have done.

  • Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, 2025)

I blinked and missed this – in part because the blurb didn’t sound like what I wanted to see. I’ll catch some time, maybe.

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A Bishop is Born

Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper, 2025)

I saw John Bishop a few times at the Carbuncle — when he didn’t have to postpone for TV double bookings — and he was fine, if not in my top ten lives comedians. There was a backstory even then — he had abandoned some kind of sales job for another role on the road. The deeper story is that he had become estranged from his wife, inadvertantly did a comedy open mic in Manchester and realised he was good at it. One night, his soon to be ex-wife was in the audience and was someone shocked — but like what she saw and they were reconciled.

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The Dead Don’t Do Subtext

The Dead Don’t Die (Jim Jarmusch, 2019)

Jim Jarmusch is evidently one of those low budget indie auteur who both builds an ensemble around him and persuades A-List stars in search of artistic credibility to work for him (presumably for scale). A couple of years ago he cast the divine Tilda Swinton in a misjudged vampire film, Only Lovers Left Alive and now he shifts to the zombie film to pastiche.

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Scandifantastique

Border (Gräns, Ali Abbasi, 2018)

A couple of times I’ve taught Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of John Avjide Lundqvist’s Let the Right One In, an intriguing vampire film with a nod to The Tin Drum. There’s been a remake and a TV series and now a short story has been adapted, billed as horror but maybe is better seen as a fantasy or a dark romance.
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Mary Queen of Poppins

Mary Queen of Scots (Josie Rourke, 2018)

Having just seen a rather mixed version of Richard II, with Simon Russell Beale, this felt rather theatrical, albeit without the poetry. There’s the Meaningful Looks from ensemble dignitaries, many of whose names escape me, brandishing of papers, condensation of time (oh, is that the same day or twenty years later?)… the climactic encounter between the two two leads which seems to be staged amidst indoor washing lines. And there’s Simon Russell Beale, in a brief cameo. There’s also race blind casting — yes, there were people of colour in Elizabethan England (and presumably Marian Scotland), but Bess of Hardwick (Gemma Chan) and the English ambassador (Adrian Lester)? It comes as no surprise that Rourke comes from the theatre — the Donmar Warehouse — and is better at tableaux than action.
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