VOD: Roofman (dir: Derek Cianfrance, 2025)

"He's a very smart individual.  Super-intelligent, probably.  But he's also an absolute idiot."

In this quirky and surprisingly gentle drama/comedy, based on real events, Channing Tatum plays Jeffrey Manchester, a nice-guy low-level criminal who escapes jail and lives surreptitiously in a Toys'R'Us store while laying low from the police, as he tries to win back his estranged family and unexpectedly falls for one of the store's employees.  The oft-underrated Channing Tatum here invests Jeffrey with a clumsy likeability that is impressive, Kirsten Dunst plays the church-going recently-divorced love interest with a delightfully understated dignity and openness and Peter Dinklage plays the spiky store manager precisely in a strong supporting role.  The film's gentle whimsical tone - largely driven by Tatum and Dunst pushing charm to the max together with a wonderful musical score by Christopher Bear - makes the film very appealing, and Roofman is a winning, warm and easy-going but very engaging watch.  Real-life photos and interviews play out as the end credits roll.
 

VOD: Thrash (dir: Tommy Wirkola, 2026)

"Does this mean we have to get new foster parents?"

Norwegian director/writer Tommy Wirkola brings his off-beat dark humour and violence of the hugely fun Dead Snow movies and The Trip to the American shark-attack genre, as a small coastal town is flooded by a huge hurricane, and the few remaining trapped residents find themselves having to contend with the ever-rising water level and a few hungry sharks in this Netflix high-concept survival thriller.  Telling its story with a well-realised mix of CG/practical effects real-life footage - the storm's landfall sequence is particularly effective - the film is designed to torture its usual eclectic mix of characters to the max, with echoes of Jaws and 2019's Crawl in particular.  With a game cast (led by Phoebe Dynevor, Whitney Peak and Djimon Hounsou), Wirkola's penchant for silly comedy moments deflates stoic disaster movie tropes and may not play well with all viewers, but nevertheless Thrash is a disposable but fairly entertaining if daft romp.
 

VOD: Five Nights At Freddy's 2 (dir: Emma Tammi, 2025)

"People are obsessed with that old pizzeria..."

The somewhat moribund Five Nights At Freddy's movie clearly drummed up enough business to spawn this unnecessary early-2000s-set sequel one year on from the events of the first film which - somewhat inevitably - sees Mike (Josh Hutcherson), troubled Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) and young Abby (Piper Rubio) drawn to the original abandoned fast-food joint for Round 2, along with an expendable reality-TV crew and a suspiciously creepy security guard, and this time unleashing the animatronic killers on the local community.  With an unwarrantedly long running time, the film crawls along, mostly in darkness, with general dullness nullifying the occasional attempt at generating shock or suspense.  Apart from Josh Hutcherson outclassing the material once again, it all feels rather forced and half-hearted - even Sembello's Maniac appears in the 1982-set opening flashback one year before it was released, and the returning Matthew Lillard joined by a Skeet Ulrich cameo (though not appearing together) feels like simple genre stunt-casting.  Perhaps the mixing of a largely children-led story with more adult horror is awkward and neuters the scenario of potential scares, and as a gateway horror it may employ some classic Scooby-Doo period genre tropes and has a fair throwback music score, but overall this sequel offers little of interest and has a mid-credits scene that threatens a trilogy-closer.  

 

VOD: Wicked For Good (dir: Jon M. Chu, 2025)

"Your very own vehicular spherical globule!"
"So, like, a bubble?"
 

Picking up soon after the closing moments of the first film, the sequel kicks off with the construction of the yellow brick road, Elphaba out to expose The Wizard and Glinda and Fiyero newly-engaged, and the general opinion that the second half of the original stage show does not quite live up to the first half more-or-less applies to this filmic version as well.  Many of the elements  that made the first film work are still present, from its killer lead cast to the huge-scale world-building/staging and the powerhouse performances of Erivo, Grande, Yeoh and Bailey (the latter two perhaps rather underserved this time round).  Elements of The Wizard Of Oz - partly blunted by copyright - are used sparingly and integrated smartly in order to service this story.  The songs this time are rather non-descript with more big-Broadway yelling but they are generally pleasant enough and well-orchestrated.  It treads a very fine line between expansion and padding out, the big set-piece musical numbers occasionally feeling stretched and attempts at more down-to-earth moments not quite hitting the mark.  With some dark character arcs and grim reveals, Wicked For Good is a solid but hardly fun wrapping up of this remarkable project.

VOD: B.O.Y.-Bruises Of Yesterday (dir: Soren Green, 2025)

"Why don't you say anything?"

In this much-lauded Danish coming-of-age drama, teen Tobias is sent to the countryside for the Summer to stay with his grandparents, where his desperation for connection and affection leads him down some dangerous paths.  Very big teenage issues are all thrown into the mix - parental separation, mental health, mortality, bereavement, body image, sexuality and self-harm - but for most of the film they are handled without histrionics and with a gentleness that is effective and considered throughout.  The film - and indeed the story- is shot with a quiet and simple clarity as shots linger beautifully, doing an excellent job of showing the young man struggling to connect with the world in which he finds himself.  It has three clear acts, the first act melancholy but with moments of optimism, the second  dealing with profound family tragedy and worrying red flags popping up in Tobias's behaviour, and the third showing the realities and consequences of his choices that is both harsh and brutal compared with what has come before.  The film is carried by a wonderfully sensitive performance by Noa Risbro Hjerrild as Tobias, with a notable supporting turn by Jens Jorn Spottag as his caring grandfather.  This is a gentle and fragile movie that plays well with its sad restraint until it moves into the frank, gritty cautionary territory of the final act.
 

VOD: Mercy (dir: Timur Bekmambetov, 2026)

"Mercy does not make mistakes."

In this high-concept near-future crime thriller, an L.A. crime epidemic and civil unrest leads to offenders being speedily tried and - if necessary - executed by AI, and the film follows Chris Pratt as Chris Raven, a robbery/homicide cop accused of murdering his wife versus Rebecca Ferguson as his advanced AI courtroom judge.  Told through a patchwork of digital/camera/internet sources, to which the accused is given access to mount his defence, the reliable Pratt and the usually-excellent Ferguson (plus a largely weak but negligible supporting cast) do as much as they can with the limitations imposed upon them as the film turns into what is essentially a hi-tech game of electronic Clue(do).  Bekmambetov has long been a good and creative director, but here the film's flashy gimmicks - a ninety-minutes real-time trial, relentless CG visual overload, rapid-fire editing - do not distract from its odd mix of painful melodrama and dull court procedural that proves ultimately unsatisfying.  With the bulk of the drama having Pratt sitting in a chair and Ferguson framed in immovable Medium/Close-Up Shots, it is not quite Ice Cube in a cupboard in War Of The Worlds, but there is some good-looking and purposeful aerial/drone footage used and it takes a rather bizarre U-turn into action movie territory for the finale.

 

VOD: I Swear (dir: Kirk Jones, 2025)

"They could deliver it to my house."
"John, it's an M.B.E., not a pizza!"
 

This delightful biopic of Tourette's Syndrome campaigner John Davidson is both educational as well as a profoundly moving personal study, from 1983 and his childhood years in Galashiels as a likeable typical lad (paper round, fishing, football) starting secondary school, developing uncontrollable tics and behaviours that were undiagnosed and recognised at the time which had a profound effect on his family, then jumping forward over a decade to life as a young adult, when he meets two adults who have a profound impact on his life that ultimately leads to him reaching out and helping others with the condition.  As the adult John, Robert Aramayo does a remarkable job, matched by a wonderfully sensitive performance by Scott Ellis Watson as his teenage counterpart, and Maxine Peake (as John's best friend's understanding mother who takes him in) and Peter Mullan (as the caretaker who takes John under his wing) are simply delightful to watch.  The film succeeds not only in showing people's/society's responses and attitudes to Tourette's but also the impact it has on a person having to deal with it personally, mining the real difficulties with warmth and humour but also an unflinching look at the real-life difficulties created by the condition.  Extremely well-crafted, utterly heartwarming and heartbreaking, I Swear is a great addition the canon of exceptional small-scale homegrown British true-life-story movies.

VOD: Sisu - Road To Revenge a.k.a. Sisu 2 (dir: Jalmari Helander, 2025)

"No need to say anything."

This sequel to 2022's unexpected and entertaining Sisu is a solid continuation of Aatami's story (Jorma Tommila), offering more of the same but with a slightly lighter tone that weighs more into the outrageousness of this one-man killing machine as he tries to rebuild after the war ends, going into occupied territory to transport his family home back to Finland, but the release of Dragunov (Stephen Lang in full nemesis mode) - the man who killed Aatami's family - sees Aatami on a revenge vendetta and Druganov tasked with finishing off this unstoppable force of nature.  It does not take long for the familiar mash-up of Western/MacGuyver/Terminator mayhem  kicks in, and the devastating personal and national after-effects of war weigh heavily, with short comic-book-style 'chapters' following Aatami as he tries to get back to Finland through Russian-occupied territory and driving the narrative purposefully.  The lack of dialogue cleverly intensifies the depth of Aatami's feelings, and there is plenty of squelch, explosions and dark humour that would keep Tommy Wirkola and Takashi Miike very happy indeed.  It all leads to an outrageous final face-off and a charmingly moving final pay-off that makes Road To Revenge an effective mix of offering more of the familiar whilst moving forward.

 

VOD: Zootropolis 2 a.k.a. Zootopia 2 (dirs: Jared Bush and Byron Howard, 2025)

"Is there a reason why you don't take anything seriously?"
"Jokes are a classic defence mechanism for someone with a traumatic childhood."
"Would you like a traumatic adulthood?"
"I would not."

Disney's sequel to its massive 2016 animated hit sees Judy (the rabbit) and Nick (the fox) as mismatched rookie cops on the trail of supposed criminal mastermind Gary De'Snake, but they fall foul of corrupt Zootropolis bosses (the lynxes) and find themselves on the run, trying to expose the bad guys and restoring the status of the outcasts.  The film delivers more of the same that made the first film so successful (right down to a final rousing speech and concluding musical number), with a busy and frenetic scattershot energy that mostly lands - the Ratatouille and The Shining gags are particularly fun.  The strong and often recognisable voice cast delivers well, its gorgeously vibrant colours, madcap cartoon energy and appealingly anthropomorphised cute animal characters will appeal hugely to its young target audience, and the insane level of CG-animated detail is impressive.  It may lack the witty freshness of the original, it is a tad overlong and the pacing is a little uneven, but Zootropolis 2 has enough visual and comic inventiveness to stand up as an acceptable first sequel.  A brief post-end-credits scene alludes to an (inevitable) third entry.

 

VOD: War Machine (dir: Patrick Hughes, 2026)

"Who's the full-fledged moron responsible for this clusterf**k?"
"Who's the meathead calling me a moron?"

The elevator pitch for this in-your-face Netflix sci-fi actioner was probably 'It's Predator...but with an extra-terrestrial killing machine!', as a band of trainee elite army rangers at a remote Colorado training camp, led by '81' (the formidable Alan Ritchson), are on a final recon-and-rescue test mission where they unexpectedly find themselves up against a relentless alien murder-bot (think love-child of an AT-AT and ED-209).  With a thunderous soundtrack, training montages and a haunted veteran hero, the first act offers all the military genre conventions it can muster, before turning into a straightforward cat-and-mouse survival thriller.  The scenery/location settings looks spectacular (shot beautifully and used well), the violence is unflinching with well-executed stunt work, and the excellent sparingly-used effects work is integrated into the action well.  Ritchson's committed presence sells the fast-moving story, with the rest of the thinly-drawn troupe likeable if disposable.  War Machine is a familiar and straightforward but slick, well-executed and entertaining enough ride.