CritiCarter

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Films Watched in 2026 - (14/???)

Obsession (2026) Curry Barker – (3/5)

Considering the age of everyone involved (never expecting that Laura Cushing from Superman & Lois would give such a great performance) and the fact this is a debut feature, this is incredibly impressive. The biggest of all HOWEVERS:

immediate animal trauma (that also exposes the low budget)

naming your protagonist Bear/Baron despite the current political climate

lack of exposition at the behest of an acclaimed screenwriter via MasterClass

essentially a rehashing of the monkey's paw story and much gorier/swearier than needed (you almost never need the R rating)

And yet, it's the biggest Focus Features film ever ($440+ million off a budget of $750K), currently #8 at the worldwide box office for the year, and now a 27-year-old former YouTuber is getting handed the keys to the reboot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so clearly it's at least working out for someone.

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Films Watched in 2026 - (13/???)

Mr. Monk's Last Case: A Monk Movie (2023) Randy Zisk – (3/5)

Spoilers for the show and movie in this one.

Bringing most of the old crew back together in the name of Trudy's daughter's nuptials isn't the worst idea. Seeing everyone in the airport in the opening scene was probably a high point for me, (as well as a character actor whose appearance triggers the final realization) but this overall disappointed me on so many levels. We never get to feel the relationship between Monk and Molly (the aforementioned daughter) and it's barely 90 minutes, so exposition (flashback and otherwise) wouldn't have been a dealbreaker. Biggest problem has to be the health aspects, though. The character ends the show at such a high point; why bring the real world into it? "Jokes" about the pandemic to the point where our hero restarts his hallucinations and begins hoarding Ativan (which he never took in the first place, but I'll cut them slack there in the name of extenuating circumstances post-2020) in the name of the worst plans, which is a far cry from constant wet wipes on hand and reminders about turning off the stove knobs when out on a case. At least we get a Musk/Bezos/Branson pastiche character so we can all be laughably upset at the villain without the writers risking a lawsuit.

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Films Watched in 2026 - (12/???)

Project Hail Mary (2026) Phil Lord & Christopher Miller – (5/5)

AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE. Statement. Sorry it took six and a half months for me to see a movie from this calendar year...if anyone is actually still out there.

Also, Gosling is finally Ghost Rider (as long as they don't pull a Blade on us with that one).

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Films Watched in 2026 - (11/???)

Train Dreams (2025) Clint Bentley – (2.5/5)

This is a perfectly watchable film...in the vein of Terrence Malick. I have a tough time recommending Malick because of the slow pacing and lack of proper plot, and the same is true here. Opening narration tells us the protagonist lived to be 80, and nearly every other character we encounter shows up for a scene or two and drops out of the narrative for one reason or another before we have adequate time to get attached. The plot also runs about 50 of those 80 years, and Edgerton barely looks older at the end when Americans are in space as opposed to the beginning set during WWI. Really need to go back and watch Sing Sing, because we all love Colman Domingo.

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Films Watched in 2026 - (10/???)

Weapons (2025) Zach Cregger – (3.5/5)

It's a perfectly watchable film, but definitely didn't hit me hard as one of the greats of 2025 like everyone made it out to be. So much of the two hour runtime (which is at least fifteen minutes of scenes being repeated with different perspectives) has nothing to do with the actual plot of the mysterious disappearance of a classrom of students and solving said mystery. Even when we eventually get the how, we don't really get a why for the events.

And aside from the singular performance getting the awards attention (who I'd say is more of a costume than an impressive acting tour de force), this movie manages to have a stacked adult cast that got next to no press ahead of time (aside from maybe Julia Garner as Justine Gandy), including the only two explicitly LGBT+ characters with the most intensely gory deaths.

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Films Watched in 2026 - (9/???)

Eternity (2025) David Freyne – (4/5)

Even though Olsen's character isn't the protagonist as she should be and there's a few minutes of exposition up front that get repeated not too long thereafter that should have been trimmed, Teller does a great great grumpy old man throughout, and he and Olsen have just enough of an accent to ride the line between entertaining and annoying. Why exactly does everyone think Callum Turner is the most attractive man ever, though? I don't see it.

Oh, and five thousand points to the supporting cast (Randolph, Early, and Merediz) for bringing their A-game, as well as the co-writer/director for not only his wholly heartfelt script that makes a great companion to Defending Your Life but also subsequently triumphing over a brain tumor.

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Films Watched in 2026 - (8/???)

Frankenstein (2025) Guillermo Del Toro – (4.5/5)

This film deserves so many awards that I doubt the Academy is going to give it (everything else but the Razzies are over at this point). I never thought I was going to be rooting for Jacob Elordi in a thing, much less that it would be as the Creature (as the latter is often wordlessly grunting onscreen), but if there's ever been someone expected to win that I hope loses for a multitude of reasons, it's Sean Penn in that category this year. A few deviations from the novel here and there (so glad I read it for school way back in the day), but nothing that detracts from the greater themes, and at least one thing that actually helps. Fingers crossed it snags a technical award or two, like Hair & Makeup from Smashing Machine.

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Films Watched in 2026 - (7/???)

The Name of the Rose (1986) Jean-Jacques Annaud – (2/5)

Overly long with a convoluted plot and far more characters than necessary, this film features a nearly mute Christian Slater as a second lead and the lone female "character" with no dialogue or plot significance beyond encouraging Slater to give up his holy orders. I suppose you could do worse for a Sherlock Holmes story in a medieval monastery where all the dialogue is ADR thanks to contant planes overhead...the eighties were certainly a different time.

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Films Watched in 2026 - (6/???)

Is This Thing On? (2025) Bradley Cooper – (3.5/5)

Billed as a film about a man using stand-up to cope with divorce, it's ultimately a two-handed romantic drama that has Cooper paying way too much attention to the character he plays rather than anyone who really matters.

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Films Watched in 2026 - (5/???)

Bugonia (2025) Yorgos Lanthimos – (3/5)

I absolutely love about 95% of what Lanthimos et al gave us this time around (with full acknowledgement it's essentially a direct adaptation of a South Korean film from two decades ago). Stone and Plemons should both be up for all the awards, and newcomer Aidan Delbis makes great use of his screentime as well.; I wasn't a huge fan of Stavros Halkias's police officer character and the associated guilt-ridden, childhood trauma-adjacent backstory, but you could do worse for reasons to manufacture tension. I was fully on board with this being the token "weird English movie" in the mix at the Oscar's this year...and then the last scene happened. I'm not spoiling anything, but you'll know it when you see it. Both the original Korean writer and Will Tracy are trying to have their cake and eat it too, and it didn't work for me.

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Films Watched in 2026 - (4/???)

The Secret Agent (2025) Kleber Mendonça Filho – (2.5/5)

I would love to know what makes this the big awards bait this year. Wagner Moura has been great in other things (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Dope Thief, etc) but there's not a ton here that stood out to me. It Could be just the fact that the plot is convoluted, characters aren't properly explained when they show up, a framing device gets introduced suddenly midway through, and said device ultimately leads to Moura playing a grown-up version of his son modern day (the film is mostly 1977 Brazil). There's also a surreal segment about a disembodied leg kicking people spending time with sex workers and no actual secret agent unless I missed something...so I'd love someone to help make sense of all that.

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Films Watched in 2026 - (3/???)

The Running Man (2025) Edgar Wright – (4/5)

I'm still looking forward to the day when Wright has a movie featuring a well-written female character, and the two bits of blatant product placement were...odd in a film meant to be against blatant ingestion of marketed products. However, the casting is absolutely on point (Cera had a great year between this and Wes Anderson) and Domingo is always the most charismatic man in the room regardless of his company. Great action setpieces without being overly dependent on the original film, and just enough risks taken in the writing to make up for this being the least-Wrightesque film. Maybe now he'd be okay with making a film for the MCU?

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Films Watched in 2026 - (2/???)

Mindhunters (2005) Renny Harlin – (1.5/5)

No, your eyes don't deceive you; before Joe Penhall and David Fincher ran, Harlin, Wayne Kramer, and Kevin Brodbin...trudged in a way only possible when supported by LL Cool J, Christian Slater, the star of Cold Case, and what amounts to a glorified cameo from Val Kilmer. It looks exactly like what you'd expect from a feature debut where the cinematographer came from the world of commercials and music videos and the practical/VFX are nothing short of painful. Not sure where the $27 milion budget went (aside from the pockets of the ensemble cast who gets picked off one by one), but a true shame it only wrangled $21.1 million at the box office when the time came.

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Films Watched in 2026 - (1/???)

Honey Don't (2026) Ethan Coen – (2/5)

You know those movies where the cast is stacked, but the final product ends up hurting a little? It's hard to blame Coen and his wife for wanting to collaborate outside the editing room, but it's looking like diminishing returns after Drive Away Dolls. Horror has also never been my personal favorite genre, so not terribly excited about the end of the saga. The opening credits were pretty inspired, but there were only maybe one or two decent jokes, and Chris Evans in his villain era took quite a step down from the last time around.

If you all wanted to make lesbian Brick, you just needed to take it a tiny bit more seriously and you might have gotten there.

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Like I said to start, there's quite a bit of catching up to do; I wanted to make sure that list was as well-rounded as possible.

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To balance it out with my bad list, I made some sacrifices, which ended up being basically anything with a huge budget. Honorable mentions include Paddington in Peru, Wake Up Dead Man, Wedding Banquet (exception to the rule), Mickey 17, and all superhero movies after Captain America Brave New World.

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Didn't manage to crack 30 releases from 2025 in the calendar year, so these lists are going to be a little...spotty.

Havoc and McVeigh barely scraped by with a star, I've never been a fan of Tim Robinson's brand of humor, and certain other highly anticipated films ended up lackluster in the plotting department, in spite of it all.