4 stars

dir: Kate Dolan

2026

I’ll be honest with you: Every time I review a movie that has a word in its title that has a number within it, it hurts. It hurts me deeply, in my core. I can joke about it, because I’m a trooper, someone who soldiers on regardless, but it really does carve off a section of my soul whenever I do it.

I loathe the practice to an admittedly unhinged degree. Other people are like “whatever” about it or roll their eyes, seeing it as innocuous as vanity number plates, but to me it’s another signal that society not only is deeply corrupted but large parts of if need to be cauterised in order to save the rest.

It didn’t start with M3GAN, but worst of all it didn’t end there either. The concept of a computer based whatever also going crazy and trying to kill people after falling in love with them is as old as the hills. How old are the hills? Oh, at least a few thousand years old, according to the Creationists.

M3GAN also represented the resurgence in the murder bot genre that perhaps spoke to deeper fears within the audience, not just of the ‘bad seed’ variety, but of our fear that we, the audience, are weak, and we, as the audience, are just as corruptible, as vulnerable as our protagonists.

Soulm8te *ugh* taps in to at least two contemporary tech-based fears, which are “what happens when we confuse our conversations with AI-bots with actual relationships?” and “what happens after you have sex with a sex bot?” The first connects to the second, but we’ve seen so many variations of these concepts that a new movie has to either differentiate itself with an intelligent and novel take on these hot takes, or degenerate into a stupid gory shlockfest.

Guess which path they take with this flick?

I’ll give you a hint: if you were expecting a film like Her, or Ex Machina, you’re in the wrong theatre. Back in the day a flick like this would have played in the type of cinema that had sticky seats and even stickier floors, so it’s not even pretending to be art house fare or anything that’s trying to be remotely cerebral.

dir: Max Minghella

2024

When I randomly found out about a film I’d never heard of, that was made around the same time as The Substance, with similar themes and a body horror aesthetic, only starring Elisabeth Moss and released without much if any fanfare, I was surprised. Astounded, even.

I mean, she’s a pretty big star, maybe not in movies, but she’s been in pretty well known tv series, from Mad Men to Handmaid’s Tale to Shining Girls to some incomprehensible spy series on Amazon whose name escapes me. She’s a somebody, probably better known than Demi Moore was when their two rival films came out. So I was still a bit perplexed.

And then I watched the flick. Now I understand why it was buried.

It’s pretty shit.

That explains it.

Actor Max Minghella, somewhat known, and son of acclaimed director Anthony Minghella, didn’t inherit any of his father’s directorial abilities, because this flick is poorly directed, poorly constructed, poorly shot and put together and not well thought out. It’s a real shame.

Once I realised just how crappy this was going to be, I wondered if they were going to go the “so bad it’s secretly good / deliberately bad because we want it to be a camp classic!” route, but it’s not a camp anything. It’s just unironically bad – bad.

Films and tv series that focus on the insanity of businesses that profit from tormenting women based on their insecurities is a rich, fertile, endlessly renewable resource. We know this because films keep telling us how society only values women for their beauty and their youth, and once they lose those they’re less than worthless and they’re a burden on society. Instead of interrogating the underpinning misogyny inherent in the patriarchal systems that force these expectations upon women, most flicks are content to just go down the “ain’t they vain bitches?” path and blame them for what comes next, which is usually body horror stuff to emphasise the fear of the monstrous feminine.

The Substance was hardly a feminist masterpiece, but what it did do is use its strong visuals to tell a bonkers story not about how far someone will go to stay youthful, but more so how idiotic it would be to create a younger version of yourself through technology and then turn into a hideous mound monster that shoots milk everywhere.

Shell isn’t even as clever as that. The premise here is, an aging actress is bullied into starting a regimen / undergoes genetic manipulation, and for a minute it makes her look a bit younger, but then she starts mutating. Did you ever think there would be side effects to remaining forever young? That never occurred to nobody ever!

Moss plays an actress who’s not getting the roles anymore. She was on a series when she was younger, but now struggles to even get auditions.

It’s because she’s not in her thirties anymore, okay? And maybe she’s not as slender as her heyday on the show Hannah Has a Heart, but she’s still putting herself out there!

What is additionally funny, or at least funny to me, is Elisabeth Moss, multi-talented, multi-awarded actor is actually pregnant playing a role in a movie where agents, casting people, random people on the street are telling her she looks like shit, and she pretty much agrees with them in order to make it believable that she’d undergo this bizarre procedure.

dir: Akiva Schaffer

2025

I was a fool to think that just because some people said this was funny, that I would find it funny. ‘Funny’ is more subjective than beauty, sleaze or profundity. Cuteness, hotness, cringe – now they’re universal.

There’s also the factor that seeing something on your own is never the same experience as watching something funny with other people. The collective energy makes a big difference. The involuntary, unconscious group dynamics can take you out of yourself and deliver you a very different experience. Duh, I know you’re thinking, no shit, Sherlock.

I didn’t have the luxury of watching this flick in a cinema. And no-one else at my place was awake to watch this with. So alone I trudged through this relatively brisk 85 minute movie, not laughing at what I am told is a steady stream of gags in the style of the classic Zucker – Abrams – Zucker movies like Kentucky Fried Movie, Flying High, Top Secret, Hot Shots and all those other pieces of shit, including the original Naked Gun movies with Leslie Nielsen.

Nah, that’s not fair, I take that back. I laughed at plenty of those when I was a child. I’ll laugh at anything. Finding stuff funny isn’t some elitist, rarefied pursuit like fox hunting or snorting caviar. Everyone laughs at fart jokes. Not all fart jokes, but the right ones, the most unexpected?

I laughed at some stuff here. Just not that often.

This was less like watching a modern version of those specific films from the past, and more like watching a couple of episodes of Family Guy back to back. I’ve seen plenty of episodes of that animated show, and I probably chuckled a few times, but it’s pretty mediocre in the scheme of things. The New Naked Gun does benefit from having Liam Neeson in the lead role, because you don’t expect him to be funny, and when he is, it’s surprising! I’ve seen him be funny in things (intentionally), including guest roles in The Simpsons and in Derry Girls, and in some other cameos here or there. But putting the whole flick on his massive shoulders, well, now that’s risky.

dir: Gareth Evans

2025

It’s… it’s not good.

Why, yes, I did have sky high expectations based on this chap’s previous work. So if anyone’s at fault, it’s me. Certainly not the director or the star of this misbegotten amalgamation of every action film from the last forty years.

I can see what he was going for, I honestly can. Before I even read a word of an interview where Evans specifically says he wanted to capture the feel and the energy of John Woo flicks from the late 80s early 90s (more A Better Tomorrow, The Killer and Hard Boiled rather than his Hollywood flicks), I could tell.

But that’s not what we’ve got. What we’ve got is Tom Hardy playing a corrupt cop who mumbles his way through a flick constructed with city scenes that are, honest to goodness, computer generated rather than filmed on a city street. Like, I could have recorded that same kind of second unit filler footage on my phone, and it would have looked better, and no-one would be able to tell it was downtown Melbourne if I got the angle right.

This film tries to transpire in a generic American city, and yet it was made in Wales. In fucking Wales! Why aren’t there Welsh people talking about being The Only Gay in the Village or saying elaborate pronunciations of Welsh names like Myfanwy or Owain Glyndwr out loud?