CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 2-20-26
- Nick Digilio
- 7 hours ago
- 26 min read
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My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review seven new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, February 20th, 2026.
I should probably begin this by saying I am not the target audience for I Can Only Imagine 2. Not even close. I didn’t see the first I Can Only Imagine from 2018. I’m not familiar with Bart Millard beyond knowing he’s the lead singer of MercyMe. I don’t listen to Christian rock. I don’t follow contemporary Christian music.
So, walking into this sequel (directed by Andrew Erwin and Brent McCorkle, written by McCorkle), I was already on the outside looking in.
But here’s the thing: I’ve been reviewing films for 40 years. I can separate personal taste from filmmaking competence. And on the simplest, most basic level (structure, direction, performances, storytelling), I Can Only Imagine 2 just isn’t a good movie.
The story picks up with Bart Millard, again played by John Michael Finley, now at the height of MercyMe’s success. He’s dealing with writer’s block, lingering trauma from his abusive father (played in flashbacks by Dennis Quaid), and a strained relationship with his 17-year-old son Sam, who has type 1 diabetes.
Bart is on tour, under pressure to produce another hit, and he’s slowly turning into the very kind of controlling, emotionally distant father he once resented. His wife Shannon (now played by Sophie Skelton) encourages him to take Sam on tour in hopes they can reconnect.
Meanwhile, Milo Ventimiglia shows up as Christian singer Tim Timmons, a charismatic opening act who bonds with Sam. Tim is secretly battling cancer, and his perspective on suffering and faith forces Bart to reassess everything—his fatherhood, his anger, his art, his faith.
The movie leans hard into the idea of “worship with open wounds,” and ultimately, it’s about redemption, generational trauma, disease, grace, and finding inspiration through suffering.
Now, let’s talk about Milo Ventimiglia for a second. If you know me, or if you read my stuff, listen to my podcasts, or have heard me on WGN for decades, you know I am a lunatic about Gilmore Girls.
I watched it from day one. I am a freak about that show. And Milo played Jess, one of Rory’s boyfriends, and I hated Jess. Hated him. So I have carried around this completely irrational chip on my shoulder about Milo Ventimiglia for years because of a fictional character.
And here’s the weird thing: he’s the best thing in this movie.
Yes. Jess Mariano. The guy I couldn’t stand. He’s the most engaging presence in the film. He brings some charisma, some energy, something that resembles a pulse. When the actor I’m predisposed to dislike is the highlight, that tells you something about the rest of the movie.
Now, I will give the film this: it’s not as aggressively heavy-handed as some of the Angel Studios productions. This is a Lionsgate release, and while the Christian messaging is absolutely there (front and center), it’s not the kind of thing where you feel like you have to genuflect in the aisle while watching it.
I get very turned off by movies that bludgeon you with theology. This one doesn’t quite do that. So credit where it’s due.
The problem isn’t that it’s Christian. The problem is that it’s tired.
This movie may have set a world record for the number of clichés crammed into one narrative. You’ve got the struggling artist who can’t write his next big hit. You’ve got the rebellious teenage son with a serious illness.
You’ve got generational trauma from an abusive father. You’ve got the disease-of-the-week TV movie elements... actually, diseases-of-the-week plural.
You’ve got the saintly, suffering friend with cancer who exists largely to teach the protagonist a lesson. You’ve got the “trying to hold the family together while on tour” subplot. You’ve got redemption arcs telegraphed from miles away.
It’s like someone took 27 different melodramas from different genres (musical biopic, family drama, inspirational illness movie, faith-based redemption tale) and tossed them into a blender.
And what comes out is completely indistinguishable.
There’s nothing in the filmmaking that elevates it. The direction is flat. The screenplay checks boxes instead of developing characters. The obstacles keep piling up (diabetes complications, cancer revelations, writer’s block, tour pressures), but they feel mechanical, like plot devices instead of lived-in struggles.
The characters are generic. The emotional beats are manipulative. It plays like a made-for-TV “very special episode” stretched to feature length.
I kept thinking about those old disease-of-the-week movies that used to pop up on network television, where every character had some tragic medical condition designed to wring tears from the audience.
This has that DNA. It wants you to feel inspired. It wants you to cry. It wants you to see God’s grace in the suffering. But dramatically, it never earns those moments. It cues them.
And again, if you are a fan of MercyMe, if the first I Can Only Imagine meant something to you, if Bart Millard’s music is deeply personal for you, you may very well respond to this. I’m not dismissing that. I’m saying I am not that person. I didn’t see the first film. I don’t know the music. I don’t have that built-in connection.
But even removing myself from the equation and looking at it purely as cinema (camera placement, pacing, dialogue, performance, structure) it’s just not well made.
It’s not particularly well directed. It’s not well written. For the most part, it’s not well-acted. Scenes drag. Conflicts feel recycled. Emotional climaxes are telegraphed long before they arrive.
It’s a trudge. It really is. Sitting through it felt like homework.
So yes, I’m probably the wrong demographic. This movie was not made for me. But that doesn’t mean I can’t evaluate it. And as a film critic, and just on the basic fundamentals, I can say confidently: this is not a good movie.
If it inspires you spiritually, great. If you love the band, terrific. But as a piece of filmmaking, stripped of its niche audience and looked at objectively, I Can Only Imagine 2 is a cliché-ridden, manipulative, dramatically inert sequel that never justifies its existence beyond serving an already devoted fan base.
And Jess from Gilmore Girls shouldn’t be the best thing in your movie. That’s all I’m saying. - ⭐️1/2
I have to admit something right up front: I did not know that How to Make a Killing was a loose remake of the 1949 classic Kind Hearts and Coronets when I walked into it. Had I known that, I might have adjusted my expectations. Or maybe I would have lowered them straight into the basement.
Because Kind Hearts and Coronets is a masterpiece. Alec Guinness playing multiple members of the same aristocratic family, all dispatched one by one by a charming sociopath? It’s witty, it’s dry, it’s morally sharp, it’s beautifully constructed. It’s one of the great British black comedies.
Now imagine someone saying, “Let’s remake that… starring Glen Powell.”
That should have set off alarms.
This A24 release, written and directed by John Patton Ford (who previously made Emily the Criminal, a serviceable but pretty generic crime movie elevated almost entirely by Aubrey Plaza’s terrific performance), takes the same basic premise: a disowned heir murders his way up the family tree to claim a massive fortune.
Here, Powell plays Becket Redfellow, the illegitimate grandson of a billionaire patriarch (Ed Harris), who has been cast out from obscene generational wealth but remains technically in line to inherit it—if the seven or eight relatives ahead of him happen to die.
And so he kills them.
The film is structured as a confession. Four hours before his execution, Becket recounts his story to a priest from death row. So right off the bat, there is no suspense. None.
We know where he ends up. We know he’s caught. We know he’s on death row. So every “clever” murder in the flashbacks plays without tension. It’s just a checklist.
And those murders, which are meant to be inventive, darkly comic, and morally twisted, have absolutely no bite. No sting. No real laughs.
The central problem is Glen Powell.
I know he’s having a moment. I know Hollywood is trying very hard to sell him as a leading man. But outside of working with Richard Linklater, I find him insufferable. Smug. Hollow. One-dimensional.
He has that plastic grin and that self-satisfied energy that works in small doses but collapses when you ask him to carry a morally complex black comedy and narrate it in voiceover. Yes, he narrates the entire thing. And he’s bad at it.
You’re supposed to root for him in a perverse way. The whole trick of a story like this is that the audience sides with the antihero. The wealthy family members are grotesques (finance bros, fake pastors, pretentious artists, corrupt elites) and we’re meant to enjoy watching them fall.
But Becket is so profoundly unlikable, so smug and emotionally vacant, that there’s nothing to latch onto. No charm. No sly wit. Just a mannequin in a tailored suit explaining how brilliant he is.
Margaret Qualley plays Julia, the femme fatale figure who eggs him on, mocks his lower-class status, and effectively dares him to kill his way to the top. And Qualley is wildly inconsistent as an actress.
Sometimes she’s terrific. Other times, she’s pure surface—posing, smoldering, delivering lines like she’s testing out different accents in the mirror.
Here, she’s all couture and no interior life. She’s supposed to be layered, dangerous, and manipulative. Instead, she’s a dress rack with an attitude.
So at the center of this morally ambiguous black comedy, you’ve got two very good-looking, very empty leads trying to sell complexity that simply isn’t there.
The screenplay wants to explore class resentment, the corrupting nature of wealth, whether a “good life” means money or love, whether Becket should choose Ruth (the decent woman played by Jessica Henwick) or the cold glamour of Julia and the Redfellow billions.
But the script never earns those ideas. It gestures at them. It name-checks them. It doesn’t dig into them.
Structurally, it’s clumsy. The flashbacks are predictable. The confessional framing device is dead on arrival. There’s never any tension, never any escalation that feels dangerous. It’s a black comedy with no real comedy.
There are a few bright spots, almost entirely thanks to the supporting cast.
Zach Woods gets a couple of funny moments as a pretentious photographer. Topher Grace pops in briefly and, to his credit, manages to wring something mildly entertaining out of very thin material.
Ed Harris shows up late as the patriarch, and when he does, he instantly gives the movie more gravity than it’s had up to that point. He has a monologue near the end that’s delivered with the kind of authority only Ed Harris can bring. For about five minutes, you remember what real screen presence looks like.
But the best performance in the film is Bill Camp as Uncle Warren, the only halfway decent member of this monstrous family. Camp is always good—he’s one of those actors who elevates everything he touches.
Here, he finds actual humanity in a script that doesn’t deserve it. He’s layered. He’s sad. He’s interesting. He’s operating on a different level than the rest of the movie. And that’s the tragedy of it. A talented supporting cast doing their best cannot save a fundamentally hollow film.
One of the reasons Kind Hearts and Coronets works so beautifully is that Alec Guinness plays multiple members of the doomed family. That choice gives the film a wicked satirical unity. It’s part of what makes it a classic.
This remake doesn’t even attempt anything that bold—and frankly, thank God, because watching Glen Powell attempt multiple roles might have been catastrophic.
[WARNING: Spoiler ahead]
But what’s worse is that the film doesn’t understand black comedy. It doesn’t understand that the laughs have to be sharp, uncomfortable, and dangerous. It doesn’t understand moral ambiguity. It doesn’t understand that if you want us to follow a sociopath, you have to make him fascinating.
Instead, it’s empty. It’s hollow. It’s smug without being clever.
By the end, when the final ironic twist lands (Becket having successfully murdered his way to the fortune only to lose it all in a manipulative double-cross), it’s supposed to feel bleak and satirical. Instead, it feels inevitable and dull.
This is a misfire on a pretty high level. Poorly written. Poorly structured. Tonally confused. Anchored by two leads who cannot carry the weight of what’s supposed to be a sharp, morally complex black comedy.
Bill Camp tries. Ed Harris tries. A few supporting players squeeze out moments of life.
But it’s not enough.
This isn’t just a disappointing remake of a classic. It’s a reminder that charm, wit, and moral bite can’t be faked, and they certainly can’t be narrated into existence by a smug guy in a suit. - ⭐️1/2
Pillion is not just a breath of fresh air. It’s a lightning bolt. It’s the kind of debut that makes you sit up in your seat and say, “Okay, who is this filmmaker and what else are they going to do?”
Harry Lighton writes and directs this adaptation of Adam Mars-Jones’ novel Box Hill, and there is not a single frame of this movie that suggests it’s a first feature.
The confidence is staggering. The tone is assured. The performances are beautifully directed. This is the arrival of a serious new British filmmaker.
Now, let me make something very clear right up front: this movie dives headfirst into a world that many people are not familiar with.
It’s about a BDSM relationship between a timid, introverted 36-year-old man named Colin (played magnificently by Harry Melling) and an enigmatic, commanding biker named Ray, played by Alexander Skarsgård.
The film explores dominance, submission, leather culture, the gay biker scene, and the deeply personal mechanics of sadomasochistic relationships. There is explicit sexuality. There is physical intimacy. There are scenes that will absolutely make some viewers uncomfortable.
And Lighton does not apologize for that. Nor should he.
But here’s the thing: Pillion is not just an erotic drama. It is not just a “kinky” movie. It is a transformational character study. It is a deeply human story about maturation, identity, grief, and the process of finding your own voice.
Colin starts the film living at home in Bromley, working as a traffic warden, singing in his father’s barbershop quartet, and caring for his terminally ill mother. He is shy. He is socially awkward. He has not yet figured out who he is.
When he meets Ray, who is a stoic, leather-clad, commanding presence from a gay biker gang, his world explodes open. Ray wordlessly ushers him into a submissive dynamic: cooking, cleaning, sleeping on the floor, obeying commands. And Colin, at first, embraces it fully.
The film does something remarkable here. It portrays this subculture with authenticity and respect. Lighton researched extensively. Real members of the Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club appear in the film and served as advisors.
The result is that this world feels lived-in, textured, and real. You are invited inside, not as a voyeur, but as a participant observing something deeply personal.
And Harry Melling, whom I have admired for years, is extraordinary. This is one of the best performances of the year. Watching Colin evolve, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, is thrilling.
He moves from timid wallflower to someone who begins to understand his own boundaries, his own needs. It’s subtle work. It’s physical work. It’s emotional work. There’s not a ton of exposition here. A lot of this movie lives in glances, posture, and silence.
Alexander Skarsgård is terrific as Ray. He’s imposing, restrained, and deeply charismatic. There’s a fascinating ambiguity to him. Is he emotionally closed off? Is he protective? Is he incapable of deeper intimacy? Skarsgård plays it close to the vest, and it works beautifully.
And then there’s the “pizza moment.” One of my favorite scenes of the year.
After Colin’s mother dies (and Lesley Sharp, by the way, is magnificent as that mother in one of the film’s many quietly devastating performances), Colin breaks down. He burns his hands while cooking Ray’s dinner. Up to this point, Colin has always served. Always cooked. Always slept on the floor.
And then Ray orders pizza.
There’s no speech. No grand gesture. Ray opens the pizza box, splits it, and gently helps Colin take a slice because his hands are burned. That silent act—dividing the pizza, sharing it—is seismic. It’s intimate in a way that is more powerful than any of the film’s explicit sexual scenes. It’s tenderness without commentary. It hit me like a ton of bricks.
From there, the power dynamic subtly shifts. Colin begins to ask for more. A day off from the rules. A night in bed. A little emotional reciprocity. And when Ray ultimately disappears—because sometimes people do that, sometimes they cannot give what you need—the film becomes something else entirely.
It becomes a story about agency.
Colin’s final choice (to seek out a new dynamic, but this time with boundaries and self-awareness) is not tragic. It’s growth. It’s empowerment. The movie refuses a tidy romantic resolution. Instead, it gives us a man who now understands himself better.
Lighton handles tone with astonishing dexterity. The film is very funny at times (there’s real humor in the early submissive training sequences), but it is also deeply erotic, occasionally painful, and sometimes heartbreaking.
The screenplay is tight and elegantly structured. The cinematography is gorgeous. The use of music is sharp and evocative. The editing has rhythm and intelligence.
And again: this is a debut.
Harry Melling anchors the entire thing. He even gets to sing (his barbershop quartet scenes are wonderful), and if you’ve ever seen Please Baby Please, you know the man can sing beautifully. He is not just a character actor anymore. He is a leading man.
Alexander Skarsgård continues to have an extraordinary run. He’s in a creative sweet spot right now, and deservedly so. But this is Melling’s movie.
What makes Pillion special is that you do not need to be part of this subculture to connect with it. You don’t need to ride motorcycles. You don’t need to wear leather. You don’t need to be into kink.
If you’ve ever loved someone more than they loved you… if you’ve ever been in an uneven relationship… if you’ve ever had to grow up after heartbreak… if you’ve ever transformed from a timid version of yourself into something stronger… this movie will hit you.
It’s funny. It’s erotic. It’s heartbreaking. It’s mature. It’s compassionate. It’s specific and universal at the same time.
I absolutely loved Pillion. It’s one of the best films of the year and the announcement of a major new filmmaker. Seek it out. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Well, at least there’s no deception in the title. Psycho Killer is, in fact, about a psycho killer. So points for honesty. Beyond that? Not much.
This horror-thriller, directed by Gavin Polone in his feature debut, is about as inept and boneheaded a slasher as you’re likely to see this year. And that’s saying something.
Let’s start with the oddest credit of all: Gavin Polone. A producer best known for comedy (Curb Your Enthusiasm, among other things) decides to make his directorial debut with a grim, gory, satanic serial killer movie.
That’s like asking a pastry chef to suddenly perform open-heart surgery. His lack of feel for horror is apparent in virtually every frame. There’s no tension, no atmosphere, no rhythm to the scares. Just blood. Lots of blood.
And then there’s the screenwriter: Andrew Kevin Walker.
Yes, that Andrew Kevin Walker. The guy who wrote Se7en. One of the best horror-thrillers ever made. A script so tight, so thematically layered, so morally complex that it’s still studied.
He followed that with 8MM, adapted Sleepy Hollow, worked on The Wolfman, and since then? Let’s just say the track record has been wildly inconsistent. The Killer for Fincher was a slog. And now this.
Psycho Killer plays like someone watched Se7en, misunderstood what made it brilliant, and said, “You know what this needs? More gore and a guy in a mask.” The irony, of course, is that the guy who wrote Se7en wrote this.
The plot is simple: Jane Archer (Georgina Campbell), a Kansas highway patrol officer, loses her state trooper husband during a brutal roadside murder committed by a hulking masked serial killer known as the “Satanic Slasher.”
He leaves occult symbols written in blood at crime scenes and has racked up more than a dozen mutilated bodies across the heartland. Jane goes on a vengeance-fueled manhunt, working—sort of—with the FBI to track him down.
The opening murder sequence? Not bad. Actually, the first ten minutes show some promise. The roadside stop. The tension. The sudden violence. It’s effective.
Campbell, who has firmly planted herself in the horror genre (Barbarian, Bird Box Barcelona, The Watchers, Cold Storage) knows how to handle this material. She’s got presence. She understands how to play fear and resolve.
Unfortunately, she’s trapped in a script that makes no sense.
Her character’s actions are wildly illogical. Is she rogue? Did she quit her job? Is she working with the FBI? The movie never bothers to clarify. A rogue FBI agent just hands her classified files and critical information like she’s passing along a grocery list. These are the worst federal agents in cinematic history.
And then there’s the world-building—or lack thereof. For the first chunk of the film, I couldn’t even tell when this was supposed to take place. The cars look old. The vibe feels vaguely late ’90s.
But then there are cell phones. Internet searches. Tracking devices. Modern tech. And yet this movie features more pay phones than I’ve seen in 30 years.
Pay phones.
The killer constantly finds them. Uses them. Somehow tracks people through them. We’re also treated to newspaper classified ads being used as coded satanic communications.
Yes, classified ads in newspapers are apparently the dark web of this universe. There are entire sequences of Jane decoding newspaper classifieds like she’s cracking the Zodiac cipher. It’s absurd.
The killer himself? A masked brute with a distorted “deep” voice that sounds like a broken voice modulator from a Halloween costume shop. The first time he speaks, it’s laughable. Not chilling. Not menacing. Just ridiculous.
And then we get to Malcolm McDowell.
McDowell plays Mr. Pendleton, a satanic cult leader hosting what can only be described as a goth drug-and-sex party at his estate. The killer infiltrates this orgy by pretending to be some kind of demonic figure, and what follows is a slow-motion axe massacre drenched in blood. Gavin Polone directs it with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
But here’s the thing: Malcolm McDowell knows exactly what movie he’s in.
He hams it up gloriously. He chews the scenery. He does drugs. He delivers absurd satanic dialogue with theatrical glee.
He has about ten minutes of screen time, and for those ten minutes, the movie is watchable. He’s the only person who seems to understand that this material is nonsense and decides to have fun with it.
Then he gets an axe to the head.
And we’re back to dreary, humorless, logic-free carnage.
The final act builds toward a showdown between Jane and the Satanic Slasher that lands with a thud. Any attempt at psychological depth evaporates under the weight of plot holes and idiotic choices. There’s no mystery worth solving. No character is worth investing in. No scares worth remembering.
Technically? It’s loud. Bloody. Heavy-handed. The gore effects are plentiful, but they’re unimaginative. It’s brutality without craft.
What’s most disappointing is Andrew Kevin Walker’s involvement. The man who once wrote one of the smartest serial killer thrillers ever made has now delivered a one-dimensional, derivative slasher that feels like a knockoff of his own better work.
Psycho Killer is exactly what the title promises—but not in a good way. It’s as dumb, as sloppy, and as inept a horror film as you’re likely to see this year.
Aside from ten gloriously over-the-top minutes with Malcolm McDowell having a blast, there is absolutely no reason to see this movie. - ⭐️
After watching This Is Not a Test, I was not remotely surprised to discover it’s based on a 2012 young adult novel by Courtney Summers. Because this thing plays exactly like a YA book that’s been pumped full of blood, gore, and an R-rating and then dropped onto the screen without much thought about who it’s actually for.
Directed by Adam MacDonald and released through IFC and Shudder, it’s essentially The Breakfast Club meets 28 Days Later. Only it’s not as good as either of those movies. Not even close.
The film opens with Sloane Price, played by Olivia Holt (who, yes, came up through Disney Channel fame and has some real presence), sitting in a bathtub, having just written a suicide note to her older sister Lilly. She’s about to kill herself.
That’s how we’re introduced to our protagonist. But before she can go through with it, the zombie apocalypse erupts outside her house.
Sloane lives with an abusive alcoholic father. Her sister has already fled. The outbreak hits hard and fast, with people running through the streets, breaking into homes, and biting each other. These are fast zombies. Angry zombies. The kind we’ve seen since the Danny Boyle school of sprinting undead.
Emergency broadcasts crackle over the airwaves. The film takes place in December 1998 in a town called Cortege—which, yes, means funeral procession. And the high school? Cortege High. Subtlety is not this movie’s strong suit. Let the symbolism begin.
Setting it in 1998 is clearly a practical decision. Fewer cell phones. No advanced tech. A couple of Y2K jokes. That’s about the extent of the period detail. It doesn’t feel like the late ’90s so much as it feels like “we don’t want smartphones complicating the plot.”
Sloane flees and ends up barricaded in her high school with a group of outcast classmates—sensitive Rhys, siblings Trace and Grace, and a few other archetypes you could sketch in about ten seconds.
There’s also an adult presence early on, the mother of two of the teens, but of course, she gets dispatched in a zombie attack, so we can get to the “kids alone against the world” dynamic faster.
Later, a teacher shows up (Luke MacFarlane), and everyone is suspicious. Is he bitten? Is he dangerous? Is he hiding something? You’ve seen this before. You know how this goes.
And that’s the big problem: you’ve seen all of this before.
The movie’s emotional backbone is Sloane’s depression and trauma. She’s suicidal. She’s abused. She feels like the end of the world is almost a relief. The arc is simple: she goes from welcoming death to wanting to live.
She carries that crumpled suicide note in her pocket the entire film, and at the end (after deaths, betrayals, and the revelation that her beloved sister Lilly has been turned into a zombie), will she finally throw it away and drive off into the sunrise?
I won't spoil it, but if you've ever seen a zombie movie, or a teenage angst drama... you know exactly how it ends.
On a technical level, I’ll give it this: the opening outbreak sequence is effective. The sound mix is terrific. The chaos at breakfast when the apocalypse crashes through the front door is well-staged.
Some of the zombie attacks are genuinely tense. The practical makeup effects are solid. There’s good gore. A few sharp jump scares. Some of the kills are nicely executed. But none of it is new.
We’ve seen these zombies before. We’ve seen these survival dynamics before. We’ve seen the power struggles inside the barricaded building. We’ve seen the suspicion of the outsider. We’ve seen the moral debates about who gets to live and who doesn’t.
And the teenage characters? They are clichés on legs.
Their personalities are basically defined by T-shirts. Sloane is depressed because she wears Smashing Pumpkins shirts. Her sister is rebellious because she wears Megadeth shirts. That’s the depth we’re working with here.
The emotional flashbacks (jumping from present day to one day earlier to years earlier) are frustrating and unnecessary. The first 40 minutes bounce around in time like the filmmakers were afraid to just tell the story straight.
It absolutely feels like a book structure awkwardly stapled onto a horror movie.
And here’s the irony: this is based on a YA novel—meaning it’s aimed at readers between, say, 11 and 15. But the movie is R-rated. It’s violent. It’s bloody. No one under 17 is supposed to see it. So you’ve adapted a young adult book into a movie that the target audience technically can’t attend. That’s… not the smartest move.
As a coming-of-age story about a deeply depressed teenager? It doesn’t dig deep enough. It treats trauma as a plot device. As a zombie horror film? It’s derivative and repetitive. As a period piece set in the late ’90s? It barely registers.
As a character drama about teens rediscovering meaning in the face of extinction? It leans on John Hughes-style stereotypes without earning the emotion.
The high school setting could have been interesting. Walking through hallways filled with memories, classrooms echoing with past lives—that’s fertile ground. But it never pays off. It’s just a backdrop.
There are a couple of charismatic young actors in the mix, sure. But the material doesn’t give them anything new to play. The power dynamics, the accusations, the paranoia, it all feels like reheated leftovers from better movies.
And that’s why this is such a disappointment. Shudder is usually the gold standard when it comes to horror streaming. They acquire smart, daring, inventive genre films. They really do. They’ve built a reputation on that.
Every once in a while, though, they misstep.
This Is Not a Test is a misstep.
It’s competently shot. The gore works. The sound design is strong. But dramatically, thematically, structurally—it’s hollow. It’s a YA zombie story that doesn’t fully commit to the psychological depth of its premise and doesn’t bring anything new to the apocalypse.
In the end, it’s not a test. It’s a retread. - ⭐️⭐️
Admittedly, Midwinter Break has problems. It is far from a perfect movie. There are execution issues. There are moments of heavy-handed symbolism. There are flashbacks that don’t entirely work. There are stretches where you can feel the theatrical roots of the material pushing a little too insistently to the surface.
And yet. I was deeply moved by it.
Directed by Polly Findlay (an Olivier Award-winning theatre director making her feature debut) and adapted by Bernard MacLaverty and Nick Payne from MacLaverty’s 2017 novel, Midwinter Break is, on paper, not exactly new territory.
We’ve seen stories about long-married couples confronting the quiet rot of decades-old resentment. We’ve seen films about people reaching their twilight years and realizing they may not know the person they’ve shared a life with. We’ve seen explorations of faith, doubt, alcoholism, displacement, and trauma.
None of that is groundbreaking.
The plot is deceptively simple. Stella (Lesley Manville) and Gerry (Ciarán Hinds), a retired Irish couple now living in Glasgow, take a post-Christmas trip to Amsterdam. It’s meant to be a reset. A change of scenery. A midwinter break in more ways than one.
Instead, the trip cracks open decades of unspoken trauma stemming from a violent incident during the Troubles in Northern Ireland—an attack that forced them to flee Belfast while Stella was pregnant.
That trauma has lingered, calcified, and shaped their marriage in ways neither of them has fully confronted.
Gerry drinks too much. Stella clings to her Catholic faith in ways that have quietly deepened over the years. There’s a secret she’s been carrying, one with spiritual implications she’s never shared with him.
The trip becomes less about sightseeing and more about excavation. Can they survive what comes to the surface? Or have they simply been coexisting for decades, mistaking endurance for intimacy?
There are missteps. The flashback structure, jumping back to the Belfast incident, feels at times a little too on-the-nose. A visit to the Anne Frank House is thematically appropriate but not exactly subtle.
And yes, there’s a moment late in the film involving two black horses at the end of a cobblestone street that, on paper, should not work. It’s the kind of visual metaphor that could easily collapse under its own symbolism.
But here’s the thing: it works.
It works because Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds are two of the greatest actors working today. Full stop.
They are hypnotic to watch. Even when the material edges toward cliché, they elevate it. Even when the symbolism is heavy, they make it human. There’s a scene in which Stella confesses her long-held secret to a friend (played beautifully by Niamh Cusack) that is absolutely devastating.
Manville plays it with such restraint, such quiet spiritual agony, that it’s impossible not to be moved. It’s the kind of scene that reminds you what great acting looks like; there's no fireworks, no melodrama, just truth.
Hinds has his own showcase moment in a small Irish pub in Amsterdam, nursing a stout and a whiskey, talking about the home he lost and the life that veered off course. It’s about displacement. It’s about pride. It’s about a man who doesn’t quite know how to articulate grief.
Hinds brings gravity and vulnerability to a character who could easily have been reduced to “gruff alcoholic husband.”
And then there’s that horse scene. After a night of drinking and awkward attempts at reconnecting, they walk down a quiet Amsterdam street and encounter two black horses.
Each approaches one. There’s no logical reason this moment should carry the weight it does. It’s symbolic. It’s obvious. And yet, because of the performances, it becomes something transcendent. I got choked up. I really did.
The film is slow. Very slow. There are long stretches where it’s just the two of them walking, waiting, sitting, talking. A delayed flight becomes a pressure cooker for buried truths. A hotel room becomes a confessional. An ordinary street becomes a battleground of memory. But I was never bored. I was compelled.
It helps that the film is beautifully shot. Amsterdam is not just a backdrop—it’s a character. The canals, the winter light, the cobblestones, the museums, the pubs. It could feel like a travelogue in lesser hands, but here it reinforces the sense that these are two people out of place. Not home. Not entirely comfortable anywhere. Still searching.
And that’s really what Midwinter Break is about: searching. For home. For meaning. For forgiveness. For some late-in-life version of peace.
Is it perfect? No. There are clichés. The pacing will test some viewers. The flashbacks are occasionally clunky. The symbolism isn’t always subtle.
But when you put two actors of this caliber at the center of a two-person chamber piece and give them room to breathe, something special happens. Watching Manville and Hinds work is a gift.
They are over 65. They have lived-in faces, lived-in voices, lived-in emotional histories. To see a film so unapologetically focused on older characters (on their intimacy, their regrets, their physical closeness, their spiritual unrest) is refreshing.
It’s about 90 minutes long. It takes its time. It’s flawed. But it moved me. I cried. And I admired it. Mostly, I worshipped the performances.
Midwinter Break may not be perfectly executed, but it’s emotionally rich and anchored by two extraordinary actors at the top of their game. And sometimes, that’s more than enough. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’m about to say something I never thought I would say in my life, and I may need to lie down after typing it.
Baz Luhrmann has made a movie I like.
Yes. That Baz Luhrmann. The Australian ringmaster of cinematic migraine headaches. The director of Romeo + Juliet, which plays like a two-hour Mountain Dew commercial. The man responsible for Moulin Rouge!, which I consider one of the worst movies ever made. The guy who gave us the bloated, unwatchable disaster that is Australia. The spectacularly awful The Great Gatsby.
And, most personally offensive to me, the 2022 Elvis, an ego-drenched, historically mangled, stylistically obnoxious insult to one of the greatest performers who ever lived.
I have called Baz Luhrmann one of the worst filmmakers in the history of cinema. I stand by that when it comes to his narrative features. His movies are gargantuan, overwrought, visually hyperactive assaults that mistake volume for artistry. He cannot tell a story cleanly.
His musical numbers play like bad music videos directed by someone who just discovered the zoom function. His worst impulses are on display in every single frame.
And yet.
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is good. Really good.
Now, let me explain.
This documentary-concert hybrid is constructed from over 60 hours of unreleased 35mm, 16mm, and 8mm footage that was literally discovered in salt mines in Kansas. Sixty-eight boxes of film. Outtakes from Elvis: That’s the Way It Is, Elvis on Tour, rare rehearsals, home movies, even the “gold jacket” performance from Hawaii in 1957.
And—this is key—there’s no AI trickery here. The footage was restored and synced the old-fashioned way, by the same team that worked on Peter Jackson’s extraordinary The Beatles: Get Back.
Luhrmann didn’t really “direct” this in the traditional sense. He assembled it. And that distinction matters.
The film opens with a rapid-fire prologue, you know, Elvis’s early life, the rise to fame, the controversy, the military, the Hollywood years. Frankly, it’s unnecessary. It feels like Baz trying to prove he can still do his flashy, hyper-edited thing.
It’s the one section that smells like his usual excess. And it’s slight. If you want a true documentary overview of Elvis’s life, go watch This Is Elvis from 1981. That’s the one that really digs in.
But once the film settles into the 1970 Vegas residency and the 1972 tour material, something remarkable happens.
Baz Luhrmann gets out of the way.
The structure shifts into three movements: rehearsals, performances, and a kind of performance odyssey montage where songs are woven together across multiple nights and years. The film highlights Elvis at the International Hotel in Las Vegas in 1970, then follows him on tour in 1972.
We see him arranging the band, working through songs, joking around, finding the emotional center of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” We see the perfectionist. The goofy guy. The professional. The musician’s musician.
And then we see him onstage.
Look, I’m a huge Elvis fan. I grew up in a house where my mother played Elvis constantly. I’ve been watching the ’68 Comeback Special since I was a kid. I love the Hawaii special. I love the early rock stuff. I love the Vegas years.
I even love the bad movies because at least they’re fun. Elvis was a constant professional. Onstage, he gave 100 percent. Every time.
This movie captures that.
When you see these restored performances in IMAX (with thunderous sound, crystal-clear visuals that look like they were shot yesterday), it’s overwhelming. “Suspicious Minds.” “Burning Love.” “Polk Salad Annie.” “Hound Dog.” “American Trilogy.” Operatic covers. Soul workouts. The man commanding the stage, holding an audience in the palm of his hand. The charisma is nuclear.
There’s also newly uncovered audio of Elvis talking about his life, which is 45 minutes of candid reflection used as narration. That choice is smart. It gives him his voice back. It’s not filtered through Colonel Parker nonsense or revisionist spin.
It’s Elvis talking about fame, pressure, music, and insecurity. The film explores the two sides of him: the confident king onstage and the sensitive, sometimes insecure guy offstage, trying to live up to impossible expectations.
And for once, Luhrmann’s usual bombast actually fits the material. Because Elvis onstage was bombast. He was operatic. He was theatrical. The difference is that this time the spectacle is earned, because it’s real.
As a documentary about Elvis’s full life? It’s slight. The prologue is rushed, and if you’re looking for a deep investigative biography, this isn’t it. But as a concert film? As an immersive theatrical experience? It’s top-notch. Absolutely top-notch.
And I have to give credit where credit is due.
Baz Luhrmann assembled this footage beautifully. He hired the right people. He used the Peter Jackson restoration team. He didn’t slather it with gimmicks. He let Elvis be Elvis. That alone is something I never thought I’d see from him: restraint.
Now, let’s be clear: I still think his 2022 Elvis is a disaster. I still think his narrative filmmaking instincts are wildly undisciplined. I still think his next big fictional epic will probably make me want to claw my eyes out.
But this? This works.
As an Elvis fan, I was thrilled. Genuinely thrilled. Seeing never-before-seen footage on a massive screen, hearing that voice, watching that stage presence in pristine restoration—it’s magnificent.
It reminded me why I fell in love with Elvis in the first place. The humor. The swagger. The vulnerability. The way he worked with his band. The way he could shift from gospel to rock to operatic pop without breaking a sweat.
So yes, I am as astonished as anyone.
Baz Luhrmann has made a good movie.
He didn’t write it. He didn’t fabricate it. He didn’t CGI it into oblivion. He found incredible material, collaborated with enormously talented restoration artists, and assembled something that honors the King.
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is a must-see if you’re an Elvis fan. Absolutely must-see. And see it on the biggest screen possible. IMAX if you can. Let the music swallow you whole. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
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