VOD: Playdate (dir: Luke Greenfield, 2025)

"...and he said there's a tree in his backyard that looks just like Mark Ruffalo!"

MGM/Amazon presents this big daft action comedy in which two binary opposite dads (think Daddy's Home) - put-upon Brian (Kevin James) and powerhouse Jeff (Alan Ritchson) - are thrown together through their son's fast friendship and find themselves on the run from just about everyone including a shady organisation from Jeff's past.  The collision of the action-thriller genre with suburbia  proves fruitful, and the occasional subversion of genre tropes is fun.  It feels episodic with some good set-ups, including a nicely-delivered sequence in which the boys get pumped up on energy drinks and terrorise passers-by.  Kevin James downplays his usual schtick to good comedic and sympathetic effect, but the main saving grace of this whole enterprise is Reacher's Alan Ritchson, who demonstrates a laid-back comedic ease and excellent comedic timing that is consistently very funny, especially in his dour delivery of unexpected comeback lines.  Whilst loosely pondering the themes of fatherhood and family, the film wears a little thin by the halfway mark, but if you are in the mood for weapons-grade silliness, Playdate will prove to be chucklesome fun, otherwise it will come across as disposable nonsense.
 

VOD: A Very Jonas Christmas Movie (dir: Jessica Yu, 2025)

"We are three extremely exhausted dads in our thirties.  How epic could this be?"

Disney+ kicks off their 2025 festive season with this very strange movie that is clearly designed as a gift for the Jonas Brothers' young and devoted fans.  It starts at the end of a long tour at their gig in London (and a cameo from Will Ferrell as an uber-fan) and finds the brothers tired and their differences surfacing, until a magical intervention by 'Santa'  leaves them stranded when their private plane explodes, and trying to get home for the holidays sets them on an improbable trip that takes in Amsterdam and Germany in an attempt to heal the brothers' relationship.  The film trades on the brothers' clearly tight and professional bonhomie and their slickly pleasant throwaway pop stylings, following a familiar semi-musical-film format with a few largely-forgettable songs music-video-style linking some very weird scenarios,  Trapped awkwardly between an examination of the pop/entertainment industry machine, their sibling relationship and a deconstruction of the Christmas movie genre whilst simultaneously trying to deliver a feel-good festive offering (and even KJ Apa pops in to take off his shirt and crash an aeroplane) all makes for a very bizarre and inconsistent mix that makes it hard to comprehend what you have just been watching for a brief eighty minutes.
 

VOD: Frankenstein (2025) (dir: Guillermo del Toro, 2025)

"With a simple step, I entered a different world."

Another of Guillermo del Toro's long-gestating projects finally reaches the screen, and this ambitious take on Mary Shelley's classic novel is both striking and very satisfying.  After a lively and very engaging Prelude, Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) then recounts the events that led to the final tragedy, followed by The Creature's story.  This take on The Creature (Jacob Elordi) shows him as agile and fearsomely strong, with Frankenstein driven but maniacally haunted by what he ultimately has created, the product of privilege and a cruel father (which plays into the Frankenstein/Creature relationship to very good effect).  As a del Toro film, it is of course visually creative and stunningly beautiful right from the start, with a gorgeously elegant Alexandre Desplat score that creates a rich and sumptuous experience both as a period piece and as a sci-fi/horror epic.  The language of del Toro's script is absorbing, Oscar Isaac is great as Frankenstein, Christoph Waltz is strong as his patron, Mia Goth makes Frankenstein's sister-in-law aloofly interesting, and Jacob Elordi fuses the contemporary and classic to strong effect as |The Creature, navigating its brutality and sensitivity very well indeed.  It all leads to a different and unexpected ending that is fitting and devastatingly beautiful.  This is a fine film, and it shows that now is perhaps the time for Netflix to let del Toro have the resources to realise his cherished H.P. Lovecraft project.

 

VOD: Ballad Of A Small Player (dir: Edward Berger, 2025)

"All I need is one big win, Kai, and they'll be throwing limousines at me!"

Colin Farrell takes centre stage as Lord Doyle, a compulsive gambler in Macau with real money problems, a three-day deadline to pay his considerable hotel debts and being pursued by a curious P.I. (Tilda Swinton) to fulfil his UK debts.  Macau is presented as a gorgeously-shot vision of bright and sharp neon juxtaposed with the ancient and tradition in a fascinating fusion, an intoxicating place of anonymity and reinvention.  Farrell is utterly compelling in this bravura character performance, guiding the viewer through his madcap life of mayhem, compulsion and even deeper secrets and a possible shot at redemption, from the relentless brutal close-ups to the already-infamous gluttony scene.  With strong supporting character work from Tilda Swinton and Alex Jennings, Ballad Of A Small Player is an intriguing, exquisite and beautiful film to experience.
 

VOD: A Merry Little Ex-Mas (dir: Steve Carr, 2025)

"Seriously, it's like he grew up in a Yankee Candle!"

Netflix's opening salvo for the 2025 festive family film season follows two divorcing parents (the reliable Alicia Silverstone and Oliver Hudson) as they try to deliver one last family Christmas in snowy Vermont with their grown-up children and new partners.  The film boasts proper picture-postcard snowy small-town scenery, with every setting drenched in as many Christmas lights and decoration as possible.  The film takes a knowing swipe at so-called friendly uncouplings but is also somewhat twee, yet it offers plenty of idiosyncratic characters and comedy of awkward embarrassment.  Silverstone strides through the film with her usual sheer professional force, with the rest of the cast chipping in valiantly.  With a reasonable number of good jokes and set-ups amongst the general seasonal nonsense, A Merry Little Ex-Mas is mildly entertaining seasonal fare.

 

VOD: M3GAN 2.0 (dir: Gerard Johnstone, 2025)

"We don't know how ugly these things are until it is too late."

This messy sequel to the disposable but fun 2023 hit finds aunt Gemma as an AI regulation crusader, sassy young Cady still haunted by the events of the first film and a new rogue killer military robot A.M.E.L.I.A. on the loose, necessitating the rebuilding of a vengeful and upgraded M3GAN to take it down.  In deliberately trying to broaden audience appeal owing to the zeitgeist popularity of the titular character, the violence is largely muted and tepid, disposable characters feel underdeveloped and there is plenty of self-important padding in some unnecessarily long scene.  The first act is largely an odd attempt at being a talky cyber-thriller, the second act is a convoluted introduction of a hidden and even bigger threat alongside the rebuilding of M3GAN, before the film finally evolves into a couple of sub-Mission: Impossible infiltration exercises with surprisingly little interaction between the two starring robots.  With a lacklustre script and lacking the simplicity and knowing cheesiness of the original film, M3GAN 2.0 fails to deliver on both fun and thrills and is largely disappointingly dull.