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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The Sheep Detectives (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Kyle Balda — Screenplay by Craig Mazin.

Based on the German novel Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann, Kyle Balda’s The Sheep Detectives follows a flock of sheep living peacefully near the English village of Denbrook. Every night, their beloved shepherd, George Hardy (played by Hugh Jackman), reads them murder mystery novels that, unbeknownst to George, they’re hooked on. When one night, the sheep find George lifeless outside his trailer, they are devastated and soon realize that perhaps George was actually murdered. Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), an intelligent sheep who knows murder mysteries particularly well, teams up with the recluse black sheep Sebastian (voiced by Bryan Cranston) — but also Mopple (voiced by Chris O’Dowd), a sheep that, unlike most of the flock, is unable to forget things whenever he feels like it — in an effort to help steer the law enforcement investigation, led by clumsy and inexperienced officer Tim Derry (played by Nicholas Braun), in the right direction.

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Balls Up (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Peter Farrelly (Ricky Stanicky) — Screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

Peter Farrelly’s Balls Up follows product inventor Elijah DeBell (played by Paul Walter Hauser) and salesman Brad Lewison (played by Mark Wahlberg) as the mismatched duo travel to Brazil to pitch their newly developed condom, which is a condom that goes over the testicles. They, and their company, are hopeful that the condom can become ‘the official condom of the World Cup’ that the country is hosting. Even though they initially impress the representatives they meet, an incident at a party leads to them losing the deal that they were working towards. Instead, Elijah and Brad find themselves at the World Cup final, drunk and frustrated over the fact that another lesser company got the role that they had worked hard for. Feeling taunted by the World Cup mascot, Elijah and Brad run onto the pitch in the final moments of the game and are to blame for Brazil ultimately losing the match. Now, they’re stuck in Brazil, where they have become public enemies, and they have to navigate dangerous situations if they are to survive.

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Crime 101 (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Bart Layton — Screenplay by Bart Layton.

Based on a Don Winslow novella of the same name, Bart Layton’s Crime 101 follows a disciplined and lonely thief named Mike (played by Chris Hemsworth), who has done a good job of avoiding capture and planning out his robberies over the years. Now, after having completed a mission in which he stole diamonds (but which almost cost him his life), he’s on the fence about what to do next and is unsure about going straight into the next heist, even though his underworld middleman, Money (played by Nick Nolte), is frustrated by his unwillingness to go straight into the next job. So, while Mike strikes up a romance with a woman he encounters named Maya (played by Monica Barbaro), Money enlists a wild and unpredictable thief called Ormon (played by Barry Keoghan) to do what Mike won’t and possibly cut off the loose end that Mike personifies. Meanwhile, LAPD detective Lou Lubesnick (played by Mark Ruffalo) has managed to connect the crimes Mike committed and has determined that one person committed all of them. While both the criminal underworld and law enforcement are trying to track down Mike, he attempts to juggle a blossoming romantic relationship with getting ‘one last job’ done so that he can put his criminal days behind him for good. That ‘last job’ will involve Sharon Combs (played by Halle Berry), an increasingly disgruntled insurance broker, who may or may not be interested in breaking bad.

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Widow’s Bay – Season One (2026) | TV REVIEW

The following is a review of the complete first season of Apple TV’s WIDOW’S BAY — Show created by Katie Dippold.

Katie Dippold’s Widow’s Bay is a comedy-horror series that follows Tom Loftis (played by Matthew Rhys), the ambitious but nervous mayor of the titular island location, as he tries to get more tourists to visit the place that he and his troublesome son, Evan (played by Kingston Rumi Southwick), call home. Despite evidence to the contrary, Tom is skeptical of the locals who insist that the island is cursed. Chief among the local believers is Wyck Crawford (played by Stephen Root), who is a constant thorn in Loftis’ side. When Tom starts experiencing supernatural events firsthand, he, however, must team up with Wyck and his own assistant, Patricia (played by Kate O’Flynn), a spirited social outcast whose own prior history with the island’s legends becomes the focal point of some of the season’s best episodes.

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2026 TV Review Catch-Up, June Update | Bite-Sized Reviews

We’re right around halfway through 2026, and there have been so many shows to watch that I almost feel a little bit overwhelmed at times. Therefore, I like to do these TV Review Catch-Ups, so as to get my thoughts out there on a wide variety of shows that I watched and perhaps enjoyed, but which didn’t really inspire me to dedicate entire solo reviews for. So, instead, here I’ve collected my thoughts in bite-sized form in a review compilation. This time around, I’m giving you my thoughts on 1) a returning Danish Netflix series, 2) a very odd HBO dramedy, 3) a video-game adaptation whose second season may not have fully blown me away, 4) an underseen period piece spy-dramedy, 5) another Bill Lawrence comedy, and 6) an unsettling Netflix original series from earlier this year.

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Disclosure Day (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Steven Spielberg (Raiders of the Lost Ark; Schindler’s List) — Screenplay by David Koepp (Black Bag).

No one does major motion picture pop blockbusters quite like Steven Spielberg. The septuagenarian (soon-to-be octogenarian) star filmmaker is one of cinema history’s greatest science-fiction storytellers, having made science-fiction greats such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Minority Report, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and War of the Worlds. So, when it was announced that he would be returning to a cinematic genre, our understanding of which he has helped to sculpt, the ears of cinephiles around the world pricked up, their appetites were whetted, and their excitement built up. That new feature is Disclosure Day, a film that aims to grapple with the question of how we would all react to finding out that we are not alone in the universe. For the legendary director, it is thus a return to concepts that are definitely not alien to his oeuvre. While the new film is not without blemishes, it is nonetheless a strong genre effort that speaks to our current moment with a humanist spirit and plea. It also shows, for all to see, that Steven Spielberg still has what it takes to tap into the incredible sense of wonder with which he has become synonymous.

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	Masters of the Unive… on REVIEW: Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
	The Odyssey (2026) \|… on REVIEW: Interstellar (2014)
	The Odyssey (2026) \|… on REVIEW: Tenet (2020)
	The Odyssey (2026) \|… on RETRO REVIEW: El Laberinto del…
	The Odyssey (2026) \|… on Oppenheimer (2023) \| REVIEW