Shows of 2026

This movie is a strange dream that follows a hazy logic, tempo, and visual language. The story follows a dream logic that makes an emotional sense, but doesn't translate to normalcy. The titular boat vanished from a Cornish fishing village 30 years ago, with its small crew all lost at sea. In modern day, the boat drifts into harbor crewless and worse for wear. The town is a dead end with an empty pub, dilapidated houses, a run-down harbor, and a small population sleepwalking through gloomy days. The boat's owner fixes it up and finds a crew of two locals to get back into business. When they return from their fishing trip, they find themselves transported back 30 years, and the village recognizes them as the original crew. Most time travel movies love to show the differences: clothing styles, slang, out-of-date tech. Rose of Nevada's present day is devoid of obvious signifiers. No iPhones, flat-screen TVs. The acid-wash dad jeans, trainers, and T-shirt look the same in 1993 as they do in 2026. Instead, we are shocked by a bustling village. The pub is full, and the people lively. Is it a movie of better times? It isn't political. But it does tell what it feels like to know that the life that was possible 30 years ago will never be in reach for them today. One of the crew jumps at the opportunity to escape the present and have a chance at better times. The other wants to return to the present and his wife and child, facing the bleak facts that the future seems to be as inescapable as the past.

This quiet film belies a swirl of complex emotions. Michaela is an artist turned art restorator by circumstances. Ian is a once famous artists who know is a reclusive curiosity, His children have hired Michaela to act as his assistant, with the goal of forging a long unfinished series in his attic with the hope of selling them as orignals upon his death. What unravels is the emotional connections between the characters, their motivations, art, and broken dreams. Michaela faces Mckellen with spinx like silence, giving him space to McKellen to fill with elegant rants and dramatic tantrums. Like a patient parent, she waits for him to run out of steam before engaging. They confuse, betray, and reveal. Through the unfinished art, their own unfinished lives are reflected and through that they find a common connection. The movie is a quiet yet driving story about cartharsis and coming to terms.

What if I tried to get you to come see a modern dance troupe interpret daily activities of living in London through dance and mime? What if I told you they would be flesh? The cheeky tactic brought in the crowds, but the delightful and clever mix of high and lowbrow humor, amazing choreography, and immediately relatable human moments kept us all laughing and stomping at all the right times. 

See posters for the remake, I craved seeing the ludicrously hypervillant, over the top, cringey punned original. A world where everyone lives under an increasingly dishonest and authoritarian regime? A world where people stoppped caring about civil society and loose themselves in reality TV? A world where the public is so gulliable that they follow whatever they see on TV as news? A world where even kindly grandmother's celebrate cruelty and violance againsts people they have all accepted as less than human? Come on, it's all too far-fetched! Then throw in a cameo by Mick Fleetwod and an opera signing killer dressed as a discount Tron video game warrior, and away we go!

I once heard an interesting article about how The Simpsons morphed from a voice of counter culture to part of the corporate and commercial mainstream. In a way, this did the reverse. The original movie was a high-energy youthquake of optimism and finding your place while finding your truth. We reveled in fashion montages and slick dialogue. It was the NYC of Sex in the City, but for up and comming millinials who were going to do things on their own terms. Before smart phones. Before the 2008 once in a lifetime crash. We come back 20 years later to find a more nuanced world. Everyone still looks great, but where no one in fashion would participate in the original; you couldn't count the cameo and labels who squeezed their way into this version. The movie gives us a plausible version of the main characters and their reasonings for finding themselves back together. Everyone get's a redemption. The fans get lots of service. But where the original spoke of hustle of optimism, this movie speaks to exhaustion and broken promises. Multiple times is bluntly calls out the evils of capitalism, while celebrating multi-thousand dollar handbags. It portrays tech bros and investors of somewhere between hapless to vile. They have a whole seen calling out McKinsey consultants as vultures who destroy value. The sad reality is that even fashion has lost the fantasy and the aspiration to be just another aquisition. Was it worth it is what the movie asks us? Was the hustle and optimism of 2006 misplaced?

It read as a watered down version of Mad Max: Fury Road. Aesthetically, it read as part of the post apocalyptic Mad Max world and used a lot of monochromatic and "bleach washed" film style to give a similar visual grit. The story is a fantasty story, not supriing from the author of Game of Thrones. Milla is good as always as a leading action lady. It is funny how much we think of action films as male dominated, but Milla Jovovich, Angelina Jolie, and Charlize Theron have thrown themselves into some huge action and high concept franchises. This film is in the lower middle of that group. At times, it feels budget. The plot is a very thin fairy tale without much depth and leaves the characters as archetypes. Milla does an action scene like few others can and I can imagine a few people cosplaying her role.

A science fiction movie for people who are not science fiction fans. Like the Martian, Andy Wier gives us a good space-castaway drama that explores what a human does in isolation. It is compentency porn, where everyone seems to be smart and the drama is from the situation and not from interpersonal dynamics. The space part of the story almost falls flat, because we are so used to it. We all know what space ships are supposed to look like, thanks to years of high budget sci-fi; so the space wow factor doesn't hit. However, the story stays grounded with very human emotions and a fair amount of humor and pathos. It makes it a good watch, but not a challanging one.

Calling this Tim Burton's best film in years tells you how bad he must have been doing for a while. This is a tediuous discount X-Men meets Brigadoon. Unlike the X-Men, you never come to care for the wayward misfits or get any understanding of their found family. Apparently "preculiar" children are just whisked away from society to live for ever as children in time loops; seperated from anything else – and these are the good guys? Samuel Jackson does the same character from King's Men, but now with a fright wig and fake teeth.

On a Myrna Loy kick aftet The Thin Man, I was lured by the pre-code intrigue. The movie needs trigger warnings from racism to being just plan awful. It is over the top and underbaked in so many ways. It doesn't even accomplish a campy charm. It pivots being too abrupt, too slow, and too pointless. It has everything: snakes, black slaves, yellow menace, drugs, sex; just not entertainment. It is a kitchen blender movie of comic book tropes and whatever was hot on the weekly reels. The only thing of interest is you can imagine a yound Steven Spielberg watching this, and seeing the elements that would make it to his retro-heroic Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

The chemistry between William Powel and Myrna Loy is hard to deny. The plot is an overly convaluted mystery which really is just a vehical for the two leads to strut around in impossible outfits, kick back cocktails, and make for wise cracking chin music. The dated material takes a light hearted look at an alcholholic couple that seems to border on domestic abuse. It was adult fair for the time and its charm helps gloss over a lot of its sins.

This piece of chaos landed at the King's Head Theater. The local translation of a fringe show kept the low budget charm and insanity. With a core crew of three, a bunch of conscripts from the audience with a teleprompter, a host of pre-recorded minor celebs, and the juicious use of puppets; a cast of dozens take you on a whirlwind tour of Snowdonia, our beloved neighbor to the north. Nothing makes sense, everything is stupid, and the whole show was hysterical.

Cole Escola's Oh, Mary tells us about a wife, trapped in a loveless marriage, deperate to get back to the one place in the world where she felted loved: cabaret! I was excited to see Masion Alexander Park after watching the Sandman, unaware of how established they are. This absurdist stupidity was the perfect vehical for their high strungantics, giving Mary Todd the brat summer she deserved.

They don't call it London's guiltiest pleasure for nothing. This is a total crowd pleaser. Notning too challanging or avant guarde for sure; but a solid Christie for Christmas thriller with twists, turns, femme fetals, misdirections, period drama, an murder!