Mayday (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley — Screenplay by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley.

The latest straight-to-streaming Apple TV+ film, Mayday, is the third directorial feature for creative duo Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, best known for their hit comedy Game Night. Although their directorial debut, Vacation (a 2015 sequel to the National Lampoon’s Vacation film series), was critically panned (It’s not great, but I think it has its moments), they’ve managed to garner a solid reputation over the years. They bounced back, in a great way, with the aforementioned original comedy Game Night, before they tried their hands with another major franchise, namely Dungeons & Dragons in 2023. Though that fantasy comedy, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, was classified as a box office disappointment, it was a really fun film that deserved a much better fate than it got. So, with such a reputation, and with those films under their belt, I was excited to see what their first straight-to-streaming film would look like. Thankfully, it’s a really effective action-comedy, despite some blemishes.

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‘Cold Storage,’ ‘The Wizard of the Kremlin,’ ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2,’ and More (2026) | Bite-Sized Reviews

In this edition of Bite-Sized Reviews, I want to share my thoughts on six films released this year. This time around, I want to talk about 1) an underseen zombie-adjacent film with a surprisingly strong cast, 2) a political drama about Putin’s rise to power, 3) a genre-blend from the director of Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, 4) Mortal Kombat II, 5) the long-awaited sequel to a beloved fashion-focused film, and 6) John Travolta’s directorial debut. If you follow me on Letterboxd, do know that some of 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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How to Make a Killing (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by John Patton Ford — Screenplay by John Patton Ford.

John Patton Ford’s How to Make a Killing is a black comedy thriller about the wealthy Redfellow family and its inheritance. Before our film’s protagonist, Becket (played by Glen Powell), was born, his mother was disowned for choosing not to end her pregnancy prematurely. When he loses her, the rest of the Redfellows stay as far away from Becket as they had been during his mother’s adult life. After encountering a woman named Julia (played by Margaret Qualley), whom he knew when he was younger, he decides to avenge his mother and fight for the life she deserved by trying to murder the family, one by one, so that he can claim the family inheritance.

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The Whisper Man (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by James Ashcroft — Screenplay by Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer.

Every once in a while, something goes straight-to-streaming that looks the part, so to speak, of something that, once upon a time, would not only go to theaters but also draw a crowd. As The Whisper Man is evidence of, a serial killer movie with an A-list star and an otherwise recognizable cast is now likely to land on a streamer and face the potential sad fate of being buried in a vast and ever-growing content library while the world moves on. Although The Whisper Man is certainly nowhere near as good as the stone-cold classics of the genre that it is clearly inspired by, it is, however, too watchable to deserve being fully ignored or be treated as background noise for your nightly doomscrolling. It definitely won’t wow you, but I suspect that thriller die-hard fans will feel that this is the kind of film that definitely scratches the right itch, even if it isn’t particularly memorable.

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Yndige Mennesker (2025) | REVIEW

Directed by Anders Jon, Michael Kunov, Kasper Juhl, and Michael Panduro.

Yndige Mennesker (or, Adorable Humans) is a Danish horror anthology film from four Danish directors, none of whom are household names in their home country. Each story is loosely inspired by select stories originally written by world-renowned Danish writer and poet Hans Christian Andersen, who is primarily known for his many beloved fairy tales. Although Lars von Trier’s Riget series (int. title: The Kingdom) and Ole Bornedal’s Nattevagten (int. title: Nightwatch) are both beloved titles in Denmark, the country isn’t known for the horror genre, and it is very rare for Danish horror to land well over here. In recent years, the most successful Danish horror title is Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil, which has already gotten an American remake. Indeed, perhaps a new generation of filmmakers is now ready to make the horror genre feel more at home. In any case, Yndige Mennesker shows that some Danish filmmakers are trying to tell stories in the genre.

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The Invite (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Olivia Wilde — Screenplay by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones.

When actress Olivia Wilde burst onto the scene behind the camera with her feature directorial debut, Booksmart, it was quite exciting. It felt like the kind of film that could stand the test of time and become a coming-of-age comedy favorite for a certain generation of moviegoers. So, when her second attempt as a director, Don’t Worry Darling, was widely recognized as an underwhelming and somewhat messy sophomore slump, it was quite disappointing. Well, it’s been four years since Don’t Worry Darling, and now Wilde is back with her third film as a director. The actress-turned-director is pulling double duty, as she’s also one of the stars of the four-hander that is The Invite. This is the latest of multiple remakes of Cesc Gay’s Spanish comedy The People Upstairs from 2020. This adaptation was scribed by screenwriting duo Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, and it is a remarkably strong return to form for director Olivia Wilde.

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The End of Oak Street (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by David Robert Mitchell (It Follows; Under the Silver Lake) — Screenplay by David Robert Mitchell.

I think it’s fair to say that we’ve been treated to an undersupply of dinosaur films since Steven Spielberg and his crew perfected big-screen dinosaur action storytelling with the masterpiece that is 1993’s Jurassic Park. For whatever reason, there haven’t been many attempts to tell new stories with dinosaurs, other than the increasingly threadbare Jurassic sequels. The most notable live-action attempts have been Peter Jackson’s King Kong from the mid-2000s, which I quite like, and Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ quite underwhelming Adam Driver-vehicle titled 65. This summer, we’re treated to another attempt at non-Jurassic World dinosaur-centric cinema. The Warner Bros. picture is the long-awaited fourth feature from It Follows-director David Robert Mitchell, whose last film was the 2018 stoner noir film Under the Silver Lake, which has amassed something of a cult following. I thoroughly enjoyed both his horror breakthrough and his aforementioned cult film, so I can say that I’ve enjoyed every film of his that I’ve seen up to this point. The same goes for The End of Oak Street, which is a terrific crowd-pleaser of a dinosaur summer flick that ticks all the right boxes.

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Die My Love (2025) | REVIEW

Directed by Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar; You Were Never Really Here) — Screenplay by Enda Walsh, Lynne Ramsay, and Alice Birch.

Based on Ariana Harwicz’s novel of the same name, Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love follows a young mother, Grace (played by Jennifer Lawrence), as she struggles with everything from an identity crisis to postpartum depression and an imbalance within her marriage. The film is mostly set in and around a Montana-based home that the couple inherited from her husband’s late uncle. Robert Pattinson plays Jackson, Grace’s feeble husband, who is oblivious to how his behavior (and his being largely uninvolved in the day-to-day challenges) is impacting her. The film also features supporting performances from Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte as Jackson’s parents, as well as LaKeith Stanfield as a mysterious individual with whom Grace has an ambiguous connection.

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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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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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