House of the Dragon – Season Three (2026) | TV REVIEW

The following is a review of the eight-episode third season of HBO’s House of the Dragon — Series created by Ryan Condal and George R. R. Martin.

Nowadays, it can be difficult to remember just how big Game of Thrones was back when it aired, especially since the show is most often mentioned online for how frustrated fans were with the final season. But the continued success of the first spin-off show, House of the Dragon, is a testament to the fact that the original adaptation still holds a strong place in the hearts and minds of fantasy nerds (said and meant lovingly) around the world. I remember being wowed by the first season of the spin-off because it made me fall back in love with the world of the show that I had watched for so many years. When the second season finished in 2024, I wasn’t burnt out on it, but I noted the online frustrations and agreed with some of them. It did feel repetitive. It did feel rushed. It did feel like it didn’t actually have a proper season finale. Still, I was hopeful that the third season could win back some of the goodwill that the sensational first season had earned. Having recently finished the third season finale just last night, I can say that while I do think it is, in some respects, still suffering from some of the same issues that plagued it last season, the highest highs of the show keep me hooked. It is a show that can still wow you. It just doesn’t have as steady a hand as the early seasons of the original show did when it comes to building characters patiently, or when it comes to making story build-up feel purposeful rather than laborious. At its worst, it feels like the show is stalling. At its best, it feels like the show is not only delivering on the action but capable of doing something interesting with character focus.

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The Last House (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk; Grimsby; Fast X) — Screenplay by Matthew Robinson.

Louis Leterrier’s The Last House is a sci-fi survival thriller-adjacent film about a family of four — parents Ann (played by Greta Lee) and Jason (played by Wagner Moura) and children Ruth (played by Riley Chung, Emma Ho, and Arden Cho) and Graham (played by Noah Alexander Sosnowski and Gabriel Barbosa) — as they experience a seemingly worldwide supernatural occurrence in which barriers of water form around houses thus blocking anyone from getting out of their homes and making it impossible for any person stuck outside to get in. You can drill holes in the door and try to smash your windows, but then the characters in the world would see water form up and block the holes and prevent the windows from shattering and falling apart. Although the electricity works (for now) and they have air coming in and access to running water, they only have a limited amount of food and medicine, and they have no way of contacting the outer world other than to hold up signs for neighbors to see. Meanwhile, rain often falls outside their windows, and soon they start getting the idea that some creature, or creatures, may be outside and that they may be a serious threat to their lives.

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Interview with the Vampire – The Vampire Lestat (2026) | TV REVIEW

The following is a review of the third season of Interview with the Vampire — Series created by Rolin Jones.

Given my nostalgia for the 1994 Neil Jordan adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire and, in general, my fascination with narratives about vampires (I have opinions on everything from CW’s The Vampire Diaries to Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, and beyond), it probably won’t surprise anyone that I fell head over heels in love with the Rolin Jones and AMC adaptation of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles once I finally got to see it. The first two seasons of the show are impressively sumptuous but also written and acted in ways that change your relationship with the iconic characters at its center. It is an all-around rich-feeling show that I cannot recommend enough to fans of the various subgenres it contains. At the center of the entire series, we have performances from Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid that are genuinely among the best acting on television I’ve seen in quite some time. Given the fact that I am particularly spellbound by Aussie actor Sam Reid’s devilishly complex portrayal of Lestat de Lioncourt, a larger-than-life French vampire that is older than the United States of America, I was so excited to find out what exactly a season all about him would be like, and that is exactly what the third season — titled The Vampire Lestat — was.

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The Devil’s Mouth (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Jeff Wadlow (True Memoirs of an International Assassin) — Screenplay by Aja Gabel and Myung Joh Wesner.

Jeff Wadlow’s The Devil’s Mouth follows a group of friends on vacation in Thailand. Two of the friends, Sara (played by Kathryn Newton) and Max (played by Lana Condor), initially struggle to see eye to eye after the former is left behind in the ocean, while the rest of the group partied and sped off without realizing where she was. Although they did eventually come back for her, the encounter left Sara badly damaged after coming into contact with a school of jellyfish. Sara feels that Max won’t take responsibility for anything, and yet still insists on controlling what to do, so while they try to get over the aforementioned incident, those issues always sit just beneath the surface. When, one day, they decide to tour the titular underwater cave system, chaos ensues as a trapped bull shark attacks and kills their guides. Now, the group must work together if they want to all make it out alive.

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Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton — Screenplay by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers.

It has been five years since the last time we saw Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The interconnected universe of Marvel movies has since changed, and the core cast of the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man films has grown up. To pull off a soft reboot that reflected this — albeit with the same characters and actors — the decision-makers turned to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton, after it became clear that Jon Watts, who had directed the first three Holland-led films, opted not to return. As has become the norm with the Spider-Man films in the world of the MCU, Cretton’s film has to juggle both universe-furthering elements and a relatively standalone Spider-Man-focused narrative that is honest to the journey the character had been on. This juggling act came under even more pressure when it became clear that the superhero films that have come out since the last Spider-Man film haven’t been performing as well as they once did, both at the box office, with audiences, and with critics. Time will tell if Destin Daniel Cretton’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day becomes the film to turn the tide positively for the interconnected universe, but what I can say now is that Cretton’s film is a terrific one that seems to fully understand the titular character, how he works best, and how best to update the style of these films.

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‘Oh, Hi!,’ ‘Is This Thing On?,’ ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,’ and More (2025) | Bite-Sized Reviews

Being a cinephile means that you’re never done trying to catch up. Therefore, I sometimes write these bite-sized review collections of films from recent years that I didn’t get to see at the time but have since seen. Today, I want to share my thoughts on six films from 2025. It is a varied collection of films. There are films here that I really loved, but also films that I have complicated relationships with. It’s a mixed bag of films, a potpourri of movies, or as we say in Denmark, “en blandet landhandel.” Perhaps some of these really worked for you, in which case, don’t be shy. Please comment below with your own thoughts on some of these films. If you follow me on Letterboxd, do know that these bite-sized reviews have previously been posted on my Letterboxd profile (either partially or entirely). Should you wish to get a sneak peek at what films I see, I advise you to follow me on that social media platform.

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Masters of the Universe (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Travis Knight — Screenplay by Chris Butler, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, and David Callaham.

I can’t say that I have much of a prior relationship with the 1980s Mattel toy line or the animated series that were built around it (or, for that matter, a big relationship with the 1987 live-action film adaptation). In fact, even though I’m pretty sure I saw the Dolph Lundgren film when I was young, I mostly know the characters from my father, who, still to this day, quotes Frank Langella’s Skeletor from time to time. Still, I was curious to see what a new film adaptation of the story could be like, especially given the years of development hell it went through. Well, Travis Knight’s Masters of the Universe was recently released on Amazon Prime Video, so I finally got to see the film just the other day. Having now seen it, I will say that I mostly enjoyed the Bumblebee-director’s attempt at giving new life to He-Man and the many characters, but I don’t think this is a complete home run.

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The Odyssey (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Christopher Nolan — Screenplay by Christopher Nolan.

I vividly remember watching Don Chaffey’s Jason and the Argonauts when I was a kid. Images of those Ray Harryhausen practical creature effects on display just burned themselves into my memory, for whatever reason. I’ve heard stories from my mother that she and her siblings once huddled up around the television, when she was young, to watch an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, only to have the TV then break in the middle of it (much to their frustration). Great sword-and-sandal myths and epics just do something to us, and so I was excited to see the latest attempt at making a larger-than-life sword-and-sandal epic with my mother this weekend. The film, of course, is Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. The first film to be filmed entirely with IMAX cameras. It’s one of the biggest films of the year; it has a star-studded cast, and it is made by one of the most popular filmmakers of my lifetime. I don’t think I could be more excited to see the film than I was. Despite all of the weight of anticipation and the challenges of the story, the film is a triumph. It both feels like something that filmmakers and studios don’t try to make anymore and like something that could only be made at this scale today. Christopher Nolan’s latest film is both unlike anything he’s ever done before, concerning genre, myth, and magic, and exactly like so many of the other films in his oeuvre, concerning structure, message, and character goals. It is a daunting and colossal challenge of a project, and a test that the popular auteur has passed with flying colors.

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Evil Dead Burn (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Sébastien Vaniček — Screenplay by Sébastien Vaniček and Florent Bernard.

It has been fascinating to watch how the Evil Dead film series has evolved from being the genre-fluid horror brainchild of auteur Sam Raimi to now being a franchise that essentially offers an opportunity to on-the-rise filmmakers to play around with Raimi’s creations. In 2013, it was Fede Álvarez who made his feature directorial debut with the reboot simply titled Evil Dead, and he has since gone on to make films such as Don’t Breathe and Alien: Romulus. Ten years later, it was The Hole in the Ground director Lee Cronin who got to tell his story with Evil Dead Rise, and earlier this year, Cronin released a The Mummy film that is, essentially, an Evil Dead film in everything but name. Now, in 2026, it is French filmmaker Sébastien Vaniček who has taken hold of the reins of the series of films. The fact that he was attached to the franchise was something that made me quite excited, because I was a big fan of his Arachnophobia-meets-Attack-the-Block spider-horror flick Infested (also titled Vermins). Like Cronin and Álvarez before him, Vaniček has made an entertaining and brutal horror flick. Although it’s not a perfectly smooth ride, Evil Dead Burn is yet another solid entry in the beloved series of films, which is still going strong.

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Outcome (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Jonah Hill — Screenplay by Jonah Hill and Ezra Woods.

Jonah Hill’s Outcome is a black comedy film that follows an A-list actor named Reef Hawk (played by Keanu Reeves), who has won Oscars and is generally very well-liked. As he is returning from a five-year hiatus, in which he struggled with a heroin addiction, he gets word that someone is extorting him with a video that could seriously damage his career. After talking to his crisis lawyer, Ira Slitz (played by Jonah Hill), he sets out to make amends with all of the people that he may have wronged in his career, and now he has to realize that the many positive headlines don’t necessarily make him universally loved.

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