CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 3-20-26

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My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review six new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, March 20th, 2026.

1) PROJECT HAIL MARY

There are certain movies that work so well that you almost sit there wondering how the hell they pulled it off. Not because the filmmaking isn’t impressive (it absolutely is) but because the premise sounds like something that should collapse under its own weight. Something that, on paper, feels like it could easily become corny or ridiculous or overly sentimental.

And yet somehow the filmmakers pull it off and you walk out of the theater thinking, “Well…that shouldn’t have worked as well as it did, but man, that was terrific.”

That’s exactly how I felt about Project Hail Mary.

I’ll say this right up front: I have not read the novel by Andy Weir. I know plenty of people who have, and they swear it’s fantastic. Of course Weir also wrote The Martian, which Ridley Scott turned into a reasonably entertaining Matt Damon movie a few years back.

I remember liking that film, and mostly I remember the potatoes. Lots and lots of potatoes. That’s the image that stuck with me.

So I came into Project Hail Mary knowing the reputation of the book but without any real attachment to it. And what I discovered is that this movie is shamelessly, gloriously entertaining.

The story centers on Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, who wakes up on a spacecraft millions of miles from Earth with absolutely no memory of who he is or how he got there. He’s got a giant beard, long hair, severe muscle atrophy from extended hypersleep, and two dead crewmates beside him. Not exactly the ideal way to start your day.

As the movie unfolds, Grace slowly pieces together his identity and the mission that brought him there. Through a series of flashbacks we learn that he’s actually a middle-school science teacher and former molecular biologist who has been recruited (somewhat reluctantly) by an international task force led by the formidable Eva Stratt, played by Sandra Hüller.

The crisis facing Earth is massive. A mysterious alien organism called Astrophage is draining energy from the sun, which means the planet is slowly freezing and humanity is heading toward extinction within a few decades.

The only star in the neighborhood unaffected by this parasite is Tau Ceti, and the Hail Mary spacecraft has been sent there on what is essentially a suicide mission to figure out why.

Grace eventually realizes he is the sole surviving crew member tasked with saving humanity.

But he also learns something else. He’s not alone.

While investigating the Tau Ceti system, Grace encounters another spacecraft piloted by a lone alien engineer named Rocky, who turns out to be on the exact same mission: trying to save his own planet from the same astrophage threat. And that’s where the movie really takes off.

Now look, if you want to reduce this thing to a really simple elevator pitch, you could say it’s kind of like E.T. meets Interstellar. That’s the obvious comparison. But honestly that description doesn’t really capture what makes the movie special, because there’s a lot more going on here than that.

The film is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who most people associate with animation, particularly the Spider-Verse movies and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

Their only previous live-action films were the 21 Jump Street comedies, which are very funny but not exactly the kind of movies that make you think, “Yeah, these are the guys who should direct a massive epic science-fiction adventure.” And yet that’s exactly what they deliver here.

This is a big, sweeping, old-school space epic. The kind of movie that clearly demands the biggest screen possible. I saw it in IMAX and I strongly recommend doing the same because the scale of this thing is incredible.

The visuals are spectacular. The practical and digital effects blend beautifully. When the film takes you to other worlds, you really feel like you’re there.

You’ll think of other great space movies while watching it: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Contact, even Gravity. That last one comes to mind especially because, like that movie, this is essentially a one-person show for long stretches. For much of the film, it’s just Ryan Gosling alone in space…with an alien.

And that alien, Rocky, is an extraordinary creation. The character is a five-legged, spider-like creature made of rock, brought to life through a combination of puppetry and visual effects with James Ortiz providing the voice and puppeteering.

The design is weird, the movement is strange, the communication is musical (literally musical) since Rocky speaks in tones and chords that Grace eventually learns to translate.

And somehow, against all odds, this character becomes one of the most endearing and fully realized personalities you’ll see on screen this year.

The scenes where Grace and Rocky figure out how to communicate are wonderful. There’s a hilarious sequence where they experiment with computer-generated voices for Rocky (including one that sounds suspiciously like Meryl Streep) and Gosling plays the comedy beautifully. He’s got impeccable timing and a natural charm that makes you instantly root for him.

That’s something Gosling has been doing his entire career.

I’ve been a fan of his since the early days when he was taking smaller roles. Over the years he’s given incredible performances in movies like Half Nelson, Blue Valentine, The Nice Guys, Barbie, La La Land, and a whole bunch of others. He’s done comedy, drama, musicals, big Hollywood spectacle, indie character studies, you name it. And here he proves again that he can carry a movie.

Because Project Hail Mary puts an enormous amount of weight on his shoulders. This is a huge multi-million-dollar production and for large stretches it’s literally just him on screen reacting to situations, solving problems, talking to an alien, and trying to keep the audience engaged.

And he absolutely pulls it off.

Grace is not your typical action hero. He’s a slightly awkward science nerd who would much rather be teaching middle-school kids than saving the world. He doesn’t see himself as heroic. He’s failed at a lot of things in life. He’s comfortable in his quiet little existence as a teacher. That’s exactly why the character works.

The movie takes the idea of an ordinary guy being forced into an extraordinary situation very seriously, and Gosling plays that beautifully.

Sandra Hüller is also terrific as Eva Stratt, the uncompromising leader of the Hail Mary project. She brings authority and intelligence to the role but also a surprising amount of warmth.

There’s a fantastic scene set in a karaoke bar where she sings Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” while trying to convince Grace to join the mission. It’s funny, strange, and oddly touching all at once.

The screenplay by Drew Goddard is another huge asset. Goddard is one of the most reliable writers working today. He wrote The Martian, he created The Cabin in the Woods, he directed the criminally underrated Bad Times at the El Royale, and he’s written for shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Alias. The guy knows how to tell a story.

And he does something very difficult here: he makes you emotionally invested in a friendship between a goofy human science teacher and a rock spider from another solar system. That relationship is the heart of the film.

This isn’t some cute gimmick like E.T. where the alien is designed purely to manipulate your emotions. In fact, one of the reasons I hesitate to compare the movie to E.T. is that Spielberg’s film is incredibly manipulative and sentimental. Project Hail Mary doesn’t feel like that.

The friendship between Grace and Rocky feels genuine. They depend on each other, they save each other’s lives, they worry about each other’s families and home worlds. The stakes are enormous—not just for Earth but for Rocky’s civilization as well. And the movie earns those emotional moments.

There are sequences here that are thrilling, suspenseful, and genuinely scary. There’s a moment where Grace is slammed into the ship’s controls during a violent maneuver and nearly dies.

There are complicated scientific experiments that could go horribly wrong. There are sacrifices made by both characters that hit you harder than you might expect.

Yes, the film is long, and yes, it probably ends about three different times. But honestly, I didn’t care.

It reminded me a little of The Return of the King, where people complained about the number of endings but if you’re invested in the characters you don’t mind spending more time with them.

Every time Project Hail Mary seemed like it might wrap up, the story found another interesting emotional beat to explore. And I stayed hooked the entire time.

From the spectacular space sequences to the humor to the genuine emotion at the center of the story, this is one of those big Hollywood science-fiction adventures that reminds you why the genre can be so exciting in the first place.

It’s funny. It’s thrilling. It’s moving.

It’s got amazing visual effects, fantastic sound design, terrific direction, and a smart, engaging script. And at the center of it all is Ryan Gosling proving once again that he’s one of the most talented and charismatic actors working today.

When you can carry a giant movie like this on your shoulders and make it work, that’s the definition of a movie star.

And Project Hail Mary is the kind of big, bold, exciting sci-fi spectacle that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

It’s one of the most purely entertaining movies of the year. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

2) READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME

I was never particularly crazy about the original Ready or Not from 2019. That movie, directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (the guys who call themselves Radio Silence) had a few small charms. The premise was simple and kind of fun: rich weirdos hunting a human as part of a twisted family ritual.

That’s a concept that’s been around forever, and if you handle it right it can be entertaining. The original had a little humor, a little energy, and Samara Weaving gave a spirited central performance that kept it watchable.

But it was never a great movie.

And whatever modest charm the first film had is completely demolished by the sequel, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which is an absolutely terrible film.

This is one of those sequels that takes a simple concept and bloats it into something so unnecessarily complicated that the whole thing collapses under its own weight. The original movie worked (if you liked it at all) because the setup was straightforward: a bride has to survive a deadly game of hide-and-seek with her new in-laws. That’s it. Simple.

This sequel turns that simple premise into a giant mess of rules, factions, secret families, conspiracies, mythology, and endless exposition explaining why all of this nonsense is happening.

The film picks up right after the first movie. Grace, played again by Samara Weaving, has survived the massacre at the Le Domas mansion and is rescued by authorities. She ends up at the hospital where she’s reunited with her estranged younger sister Faith, played by Kathryn Newton.

Of course they haven’t spoken in years, there’s tension between them, and the movie wants us to care deeply about this sisterly reconciliation. But before anything can settle down, they’re kidnapped.

Because apparently Grace surviving the first “game” has triggered some kind of global clause among a secret council of ultra-rich families who all worship the same demonic power structure.

Now Grace (and by extension her sister) must be hunted again. This time multiple powerful families from around the world are involved, competing to control something called the “High Seat,” which basically means whoever wins this insane bloodsport gets to run the world.

Yes. That’s the premise.

A character called “The Lawyer,” played by Elijah Wood, shows up to explain the rules of this new game in a massive exposition dump that goes on forever and somehow still doesn’t make any sense.

Meanwhile the head of one of the most powerful families is played by none other than David Cronenberg, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

If you’re excited to see Cronenberg act in this movie, temper your expectations. He’s in the film for maybe three minutes and has about five lines of dialogue before disappearing.

His children, the Danforth twins, are played by Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy, who take over the operation and lead the hunt for Grace and Faith across a huge estate where everybody is trying to kill everybody else. And that’s basically the movie.

Lots of people running around. Lots of fights. Lots of people exploding in showers of blood. Bodies bursting apart the way they did in the first film, only bigger and louder and much more obnoxious.

This is sequel-itis at its worst. Everything is bigger, louder, more complicated—and far less effective.

And unfortunately this is par for the course with the Radio Silence guys. These are the same filmmakers responsible for Scream 5 and Scream VI, both dreadful entries in that once-great franchise.

They also made Abigail, which was one of the worst movies of 2024, and they’ve contributed some truly awful shorts to the V/H/S series. The first Ready or Not might actually be the best thing they’ve made... and even that wasn’t very good. This sequel is significantly worse.

The script is overloaded with characters, most of whom are written as one-note stereotypes. Different international families are introduced, and almost every single one of them is portrayed through the most simplistic cultural clichés imaginable.

One character is obsessed with video games. Another is a spoiled rich brat. A Middle Eastern family arrives accompanied by loud stereotypical music and over-the-top behavior. It's lazy writing. Borderline offensive at times. And none of it is funny.

The movie keeps trying to land jokes through excessive gore and chaotic action scenes, but the humor never works. The fight choreography is sloppy, the action scenes drag on forever, and there’s an extended battle sequence set to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”—one of those painfully obvious ironic music choices that filmmakers seem to think is still clever...it isn’t.

Samara Weaving, who was the best thing about the first film, gives an absolutely dreadful performance here. She’s wildly over-the-top, making choices that don’t work in comedy, don’t work in horror, and don’t work in action scenes either.

Kathryn Newton is a talented actress who has somehow ended up in a string of bad movies lately, and this one doesn’t help.

Sarah Michelle Gellar shows up looking stiff and completely uninterested. Shawn Hatosy alternates between cartoonishly over-the-top and genuinely disturbing, especially during a scene where he violently beats Faith in what begins as a comedic moment but quickly becomes uncomfortable in a way the movie clearly didn’t intend.

Elijah Wood does the best he can with the material. His deadpan performance as the Lawyer occasionally comes close to being funny because he plays the absurdity so straight. But even he can’t salvage the nonsense happening around him.

At one point I gave up caring about the characters entirely and just hoped the over-the-top violence might at least be entertaining. It isn’t.

There’s also an attempt here to satirize the ultra-rich and the idea that oligarchs secretly run the world. In theory that could be interesting. There’s certainly plenty of real-world material to work with. But the film’s commentary is as deep as an ashtray. It gestures vaguely toward satire without ever actually saying anything meaningful.

Frankly, the Three Stooges definitely handled the subject of rich idiots better in some of their old shorts.

By the time the movie reaches its chaotic final stretch (with dozens of characters running around shooting each other and spraying blood everywhere) you’ve long since stopped caring.

Although I will say this: during the last ten minutes a goat wanders into the scene and completely steals the movie from everyone else on screen. The goat is easily the best performer in the film.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is bigger than the original. It’s longer. It’s louder. It’s far more complicated. None of that makes it better.

It’s an overstuffed, incoherent, painfully unfunny sequel that takes a modestly entertaining premise and buries it under layers of stupid mythology and chaotic action. Whatever small charm the first movie had is completely gone.

Just another terrible entry from the Radio Silence guys, and one of the worst films I’ve seen in a while. - ⭐️

3) VAMPIRES OF THE VELVET LOUNGE

Wow. Every once in a while you see a movie that is so aggressively, spectacularly bad that you almost have to admire the commitment.

Not because there’s anything admirable about the filmmaking (there isn’t) but because you’re sitting there thinking, “How did this even happen? How did this get made, finished, and then actually released into theaters?”

That’s Vampires of the Velvet Lounge.

And I’m not exaggerating when I say this is an absolute train wreck of biblical proportions. One of the most inept, misguided, downright idiotic movies I’ve seen in years. A movie that fails on literally every level it attempts to operate on... which is a lot of levels, because it tries to do everything and succeeds at none of it.

Written and directed by Adam Sherman, this is a comedy-horror vampire satire set in the American South, centered around the legendary Elizabeth Báthory (yes, that Elizabeth Báthory, the historical figure who supposedly bathed in blood) now reimagined as a modern-day vampire running an absinthe lounge.

Mena Suvari plays her, presiding over this bar where she and her coven of vampires use dating apps and social media to lure in victims. The idea, I guess, is to satirize modern dating culture, social media obsession and influencer nonsense, all wrapped up in a grindhouse-style vampire comedy with lots of blood and outrageous behavior.

That’s the idea. The execution is a disaster.

The story, if you can even call it that, involves this coven targeting a group of guys (played by people like Lochlyn Munro, Tyrese Gibson, and Stephen Dorff) while also crossing paths with a supposed vampire hunter played by Dichen Lachman, who narrates the film in what is clearly meant to be a parody of film noir voiceover.

And let me tell you something: that narration is one of the worst things I’ve heard in a movie in a long time.

It’s stiff, lifeless, painfully delivered, and completely misunderstands what makes that kind of voiceover work. If you’re going to parody noir, you have to understand the rhythm, the tone, the wit.

There is none of that here. It just sounds like someone reading bad lines off a page with no idea what they’re supposed to be doing. And unfortunately, that pretty much sums up the entire cast. Every single performance in this movie is bad.

Mena Suvari is trying something (sometimes playing it straight, sometimes going over the top) but nothing lands.

Stephen Dorff gives what might be one of the most embarrassing performances of his career, and that is saying something. At one point, after being turned into a vampire, he runs around screaming “I am Ramsey, the devil!” while doing these bizarre dance moves, and it is as painful and unfunny as it sounds.

Tyrese Gibson shows up, gets one extended scene where he’s pinned under a car bleeding out for what feels like ten minutes, delivering dialogue about his failed marriage while blood sprays everywhere, and it’s clearly meant to be darkly comedic.

It isn’t. It’s just tedious.

Rosa Salazar is completely wasted, doing what seems to be her worst Aubrey Plaza imitation. Mark Boone Jr. pops up for no good reason.

And Dichen Lachman (who is supposed to anchor the whole thing as the badass vampire hunter) is shockingly bad.

This is one of the stiffest, most lifeless lead performances I’ve seen in years. It’s almost hard to believe this is someone who has worked steadily in film and television, because here she looks like she’s never acted before.

And then there’s the tone. Or rather, the complete lack of one.

The movie wants to be a satire of modern dating and social media. It wants to be a grindhouse gore fest. It wants to be a stylish vampire film. At times it even veers into weird fantasy territory where the vampires transform into glowing green fairy-like creatures with wings for no reason whatsoever.

None of it fits together. It's like three or four different bad movies mashed into one.

Yes, there’s a lot of gore. Buckets and buckets of blood. Heads exploding, bodies bursting, limbs flying, blood spraying across the screen in every possible direction.

And if you think that might at least make it fun on a purely visceral level…no. It doesn’t. Because the gore has no context, no timing, no humor. It's just there.

There’s also an attempt at social commentary (about dating apps, about online personas, about how people document everything) but it’s so shallow and poorly executed that it barely registers. It feels like the script was written by someone who has heard of these ideas but doesn’t actually understand them.

And speaking of the script, it genuinely feels like it was written by someone who has no grasp of storytelling, satire, or even basic character development.

Nothing connects. Nothing builds. Nothing pays off.

There’s even a baffling inclusion of Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” which is so closely associated with The Hunger that hearing it here just makes you think about a much better movie. You spend more time wondering how they got the rights to the song than paying attention to what’s happening on screen.

And maybe that’s the best way to describe the experience of watching this thing: you’re constantly distracted. Not because it’s interesting, but because you can’t believe how bad it is.

This is a movie that makes you think about every other vampire movie that did it better. What We Do in the Shadows, which is a brilliant satire. The Hunger, which is stylish and atmospheric. Even lesser-known stuff like Bloodsucking Bastards or Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, movies that understand tone and character and actually commit to their ideas.

This doesn’t. This is a stunning achievement in ineptitude.

It doesn’t work as a horror movie. It doesn’t work as a comedy. It doesn’t work as a satire. It doesn’t work as a vampire story.

It barely works as a movie.

And the biggest mystery of all is how this thing is getting a theatrical release. This is the kind of movie that feels like it should have been buried on some obscure streaming platform at three in the morning where no one would accidentally stumble across it. Instead, it’s out there.

And I sat through the whole thing, shaking my head, genuinely not believing what I was watching.

Vampires of the Velvet Lounge is astonishingly awful.

One of the worst movies of the year. And that’s not even a close call. - Zero Stars

4) THE POUT-POUT FISH

I had never read The Pout-Pout Fish before walking into this movie, and I’ll be honest, I don’t have any built-in affection for the source material. From what I understand, the book is beloved by kids, hugely popular, one of those bedtime staples.

So I went into this thing completely cold, which in some ways is probably the best way to approach it. No expectations, no nostalgia, no built-in goodwill. And after seeing it, I can’t tell you how faithful it is to the book, but I can tell you this: as a movie, it’s pretty underwhelming. Mild, derivative, and ultimately kind of forgettable.

The setup is simple and familiar. Mr. Fish, voiced by Nick Offerman, is this grumpy, isolated, pouty guy living in a busted-up shipwreck, convinced that being miserable is just who he is.

Along comes Pip, this hyperactive little sea dragon who barges into his life, destroys his home in the process, and suddenly the two of them are off on a journey to find this mystical wish-granting fish named Shimmer so they can fix everything.

Along the way, they run into rivals, including a cuttlefish named Benji and his ambitious mother, and they bounce from one underwater set piece to another, learning lessons about friendship, community, and, you know, not being a miserable jerk all the time.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is. This is one of those animated movies that feels like it’s assembled from parts of about ten better animated movies.

You’re watching it and thinking about Finding Nemo, you’re thinking about The Little Mermaid, you’re thinking about a dozen other undersea adventures that did this stuff with more personality, more humor, and frankly, better animation.

There’s even a musical opening that sounds so much like “Under the Sea” that you kind of do a double take, like, “Wait a minute…are they really doing this?”

And that’s kind of the problem with the whole thing. It never finds its own identity. It’s a copy of a copy of a copy. The story beats, the character types, even some of the jokes feel lifted or heavily inspired by other, better movies.

The infamous "Cute Eyes" bit, in which a character suddenly uses big, watery, adorable eyes to charm everyone and get what they want (used most famously by Puss In Boots in the Shrek franchise) is recycled here unsuccessfully.

There’s a whole gag with the word “fin” that’s basically doing a Mean Girls riff, and it’s not subtle. It’s the kind of thing where you’re not laughing at the joke, you’re just recognizing where it came from. So, stop trying to make "fetch" happen.

The voice work is…fine. Nick Offerman is doing his Ron Swanson thing, the deadpan, grumpy, no-nonsense delivery that he can do in his sleep. And honestly, it feels like he kind of does.

There’s not a lot of energy there, not a lot of variation. It’s just that same voice, that same cadence, plugged into an animated fish.

Jordin Sparks shows up as Shimmer and doesn’t really make much of an impression, and a lot of the supporting performances are serviceable but pretty anonymous, especially for American audiences who may not recognize the mostly Australian cast.

Now, the one standout (and I mean the one real standout) is Amy Sedaris as this trio of pink dolphins. She comes in, has basically one big sequence, and completely steals the movie.

She’s funny, she’s weird, she brings some actual personality to the thing, and the animation in that sequence suddenly gets a little more interesting, even a little bit creepy in spots.

It’s the one time the movie feels alive, like it’s doing something different instead of just coasting on recycled ideas. Even then, though, a lot of the humor in that scene feels borrowed, but at least it lands.

Visually, the movie is just kind of…flat. I saw it on a big screen, and it doesn’t pop the way you want an animated movie to pop. It looks like mid-level animation, the kind of thing that might play better on a smaller screen at home.

There are a couple of moments (especially near the end) where they experiment with different animation styles, even dipping into some 2D, hand-drawn stuff, and for a few minutes you perk up and go, “Oh, okay, this is interesting.” But it’s too little, too late, and it doesn’t fix the larger problems.

And the story itself just never really clicks. It’s choppy, it detours into subplots that pull you away from the main characters, and it builds to a climax that feels like every other “we must all come together to save our home” finale you’ve seen a hundred times.

In fact, it’s almost eerily similar to other recent animated movies that are doing the exact same thing (uuum, Hoppers anyone?). So instead of feeling timely or relevant, it just feels redundant.

I watched this with a small crowd, and the reaction was pretty telling. The kids seemed restless, the adults seemed checked out, and I can’t imagine anyone over the age of seven really getting much out of it.

There are a couple of decent gags early on (some funny PA announcements in an underwater hardware store that actually got a chuckle out of me) but those moments are few and far between.

So yeah, it’s not terrible. It’s not offensively bad. But it’s not special either, and for a movie based on a beloved book, you’d hope for something a little more memorable, a little more inspired.

Instead, it feels like something that was always destined to end up on a streaming service, quietly playing in the background while kids half-watch it and adults scroll on their phones.

Aside from Amy Sedaris, a couple of quick visual flourishes, and a handful of minor laughs, there’s just not much here.

And the whole time you’re watching it, you’re thinking about better movies you could be watching instead. Which is never a good sign. - ⭐️⭐️

5) MR. BURTON

I wasn’t entirely sure we needed an origin story about Richard Burton before seeing Mr. Burton. And after watching it, I’m still not convinced we needed one.

That’s essentially what this movie is: an origin story about one of the most legendary actors of the 20th century before he was Richard Burton, when he was still a kid named Richard Jenkins growing up in the Welsh town of Port Talbot during the early 1940s.

The film follows young Richie Jenkins, played by Harry Lawtey, a working-class kid from a massive family whose life is shaped by poverty, a largely absent coal-miner father who drinks too much, and a home environment that’s chaotic at best.

Richie is mostly looked after by his protective sister Cis and her husband, and like a lot of kids from that background he doesn’t exactly seem destined for greatness. Then he meets Philip Burton, his English teacher, played by Toby Jones.

Philip Burton recognizes something in the kid almost immediately: raw talent, intelligence, a voice, a presence. And what follows is the classic mentor-apprentice story. The teacher takes the rough, undisciplined kid under his wing, trains him, pushes him, and slowly begins transforming Richard Jenkins into the actor who will eventually become Richard Burton.

That’s the movie.

It’s the story of a young man from a working-class background being molded by a demanding teacher who sees potential and decides to nurture it, sometimes gently and sometimes pretty aggressively.

If that dynamic sounds a little familiar, that’s because it occasionally plays like a Welsh variation on Pygmalion or My Fair Lady—the rough kid being taught how to speak properly, project his voice, understand literature, and navigate a world that feels far removed from the coal mines and cramped houses he came from.

And to be fair, the two central performances carry a lot of the film.

Toby Jones, as usual, is excellent. He’s one of those actors who rarely gives a bad performance. He’s capable of bringing nuance and intelligence to almost anything, and here he plays Philip Burton as a mixture of stern disciplinarian, frustrated artist, and surrogate father figure. You can see the teacher’s ambition, not just for the boy but for himself as well.

Harry Lawtey has some strong moments as the young Burton too. As the film progresses he occasionally slips into something closer to the recognizable voice and presence of the actor we all know, and those moments are interesting. But there are also stretches where the film feels a bit flat.

One of the issues some viewers (particularly in Wales) may have with the film is the casting. Both Jones and Lawtey are not Welsh, and their accents, while serviceable, aren’t exactly spot-on. When you’re making a film about someone as iconic to Welsh identity as Richard Burton, that’s probably going to bother some people.

The movie also has a tendency to lean into familiar biopic territory.

You get the scenes of the strict mentor pushing the student harder and harder. The emotional confrontations about identity and class. The inevitable tension between the old life and the new one as Richie begins speaking in a more refined accent and pursuing a different future.

At one point the film even touches on the traits Burton would later become famous for (the drinking, the stubborn personality, the complicated relationships with women) but these elements are mostly presented in a very surface-level way.

Nothing here is particularly surprising.

If you’ve read any biographies about Richard Burton or seen documentaries about him, there’s very little in Mr. Burton that will feel new or revelatory. The movie sticks to the broad strokes of the story rather than digging deeply into the psychology or contradictions of the man.

There are some supporting performances that help keep things interesting, particularly Lesley Manville as Ma Smith, the landlady where Philip Burton lodges. Manville is one of the best actresses working today, and every time she appears the movie immediately gets more engaging. She brings warmth and humor to the story and gives the film some of its liveliest moments.

Visually the film is nicely mounted. Director Marc Evans (who is Welsh and has done quite a bit of television and film work in the UK) clearly respects the material and the historical setting. The cinematography captures the industrial atmosphere of Port Talbot and the sense of place is convincing.

But the film never really rises above the feeling of a well-made television drama.

At over two hours, it occasionally drags. And because the story follows such a familiar “mentor shapes a prodigy” arc, you can often see the emotional beats coming long before they arrive. That doesn’t make it a bad movie.

In fact, it’s perfectly watchable. The performances are solid, the craftsmanship is respectable, and there are moments where the central relationship between teacher and student genuinely works.

But when you’re telling the story of someone as fascinating and complicated as Richard Burton, you kind of hope for something a little deeper, a little more daring, something that digs into the contradictions of the man who became one of the most magnetic and self-destructive stars of his generation.

Mr. Burton doesn’t quite get there.

Instead it settles for being a respectful, sometimes engaging but ultimately fairly generic biopic about the early years of a legendary actor.

Not terrible by any means. Just not nearly as special as its subject deserved. - ⭐️⭐️1/2

6) TOW

Tow is one of those movies where you walk in thinking, “Okay, this is going to work.” It’s based on a true story that feels tailor-made for a movie: an unhoused woman in Seattle, living out of her car, has that car stolen, then towed, and then spends more than a year fighting a completely broken, bureaucratic system to get it back.

It’s her home, it’s her lifeline, it’s the one thing connecting her to any kind of stability and to her daughter. You hear that premise and you think, this is compelling, this is emotional, this has teeth. This could be something really special.

And it should have been. It really should have been. But it isn’t.

The movie follows Amanda Ogle, played by Rose Byrne, who is terrific here (really terrific) as a recovering addict trying to get her life together while living out of her car. She’s trying to land a job, trying to reconnect with her daughter, trying to just exist with some dignity.

And then the car is gone. It’s impounded. The fees are astronomical (over twenty grand) and suddenly she’s thrown into this nightmare of paperwork, legal nonsense, shelters, and waiting…endless waiting.

She teams up with a young, very green lawyer, played by Dominic Sessa, who’s excellent, and together they try to fight this towing company and its slick, dismissive attorney, played by Corbin Bernsen, who clearly understands the assignment and is having a great time being the smarmy villain.

You’ve also got Octavia Spencer running the shelter, Demi Lovato and Ariana DeBose as fellow residents, Simon Rex as a conflicted employee at the towing company, so this is a loaded cast. A really, really good cast.

And there are moments where you see the movie this could have been. The first twenty minutes are strong. Really strong. Byrne is locked in, the desperation feels real, the situation is set up beautifully.

There’s a terrific scene later in the movie during an AA meeting where Byrne just breaks down and finally gives you some insight into Amanda’s past, and it’s raw, it’s honest, it’s the kind of scene you wish the whole movie had more of.

But the problem is everything around those moments.

Stephanie Laing directs this like she’s toggling between two completely different movies. One is a grounded, character-driven drama about addiction, homelessness, and systemic failure.

The other is this weird, sitcom-y, almost made-for-TV melodrama filled with clichés, montages, and heavy-handed speeches. And those two tones never reconcile.

The worst of it happens in the shelter scenes. And that’s a shame, because that should be the emotional core of the movie. Instead, it turns into this parade of stereotypes and on-the-nose dialogue.

Octavia Spencer, who is a phenomenal actress, is stuck delivering speech after speech that feels like it was written for a PSA. Ariana DeBose, another incredibly talented performer, is given almost nothing but cliché.

Demi Lovato has a subplot that leads to scenes that are just painfully written and awkwardly performed. There’s an ultrasound scene in particular that just lands with a thud—it’s supposed to be emotional, maybe even profound, and it’s just…bad.

And the movie keeps doing this. It’ll give you a really nice, grounded scene (something between Byrne and Sessa, who have terrific chemistry, by the way) and then it’ll cut to a montage or a preachy monologue or some tonal shift that completely undercuts whatever momentum it had.

There are also these little oddities that you can’t help but notice. The timeline stretches over more than a year, and the movie makes a point of showing you that with day counts and transitions, some of which are actually clever, like the recurring shots of dogs at the vet dressed up for different holidays.

But then you’ve got stuff like Simon Rex’s character constantly holding a puppy that never ages. And you’re sitting there going, “Wait a minute…hasn’t it been like 300 days?” It’s a small thing, but it’s indicative of the overall lack of attention to detail.

That said, there is a lot of good acting here. Byrne carries the movie. She gives Amanda texture, volatility, humor, anger, and you believe her even when the script isn’t helping her.

Dominic Sessa is really charming and grounded as the young lawyer. Simon Rex is terrific, as he usually is, bringing a kind of low-key humanity to a character who could have easily been a throwaway.

And Corbin Bernsen is just having a blast, basically doing a knowing riff on the kind of slick legal shark he’s played before, and it works. His L.A. Law fans should be absolutely delighted.

But performances can only carry you so far.

The script is all over the place. It withholds key information about Amanda’s past for too long, so you spend a big chunk of the movie not fully understanding her situation. When it finally does reveal more, it’s effective, but it comes late, and by then the movie has already lost some of its emotional grip.

The relapse storyline feels rushed and a little too neat. The relationship with her daughter is mostly conveyed through texts and phone calls and never quite lands the way it should.

And then there’s the overall tone, which just keeps slipping into this kind of schmaltzy, made-for-TV territory. The score leans too hard into the emotional beats, the direction leans too hard into the obvious moments, and what should feel like a raw, lived-in story ends up feeling polished in all the wrong ways.

It’s frustrating, because you can see the better movie in there. You can see it in Byrne’s performance, in some of the quieter scenes, in the core story itself, which is genuinely compelling. But it’s buried under inconsistent writing, uneven direction, and a reliance on clichés that this material absolutely did not need.

So I can’t recommend it. And I say that reluctantly, because there’s a lot of talent here and a story that deserves to be told.

Maybe it’s worth a look when it hits streaming, just to see the performances and a handful of strong moments. But as a whole, it never comes together.

And that’s the most frustrating thing about Tow. It’s not a disaster. It’s not a train wreck. It’s just…a missed opportunity.

And given what it had going for it, that might be even worse. - ⭐️⭐️1/2

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