Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025)

It turns out that I am not much for spectagular CGI pomp and circumstance, and that I need less in the way of family dramas and more in the way of a story, even for a movie that is all about the visual. I read several reviews, and I can see that I am in the minority when it comes to this, and while I thought the first movie was good and also visually stunning, I am not one for dragging the story out, and there seemed to be a lot of that her. For example, while this is the final installment in a trilogy, it would surprise me not if there was another one in the works. So why did I even bother? That is an excellent question, and it is really a matter of filling out my bingo card--there were only four movies that were nominated for the 2026 Oscars that I had not seen (Cutting Though Rocks, Children No More, and THe Ugle Stepsister remain), and it was available on a long flight that got me to the table, and while I am not sorry I saw it, it probably deserved the win in Visual Effects (although a little sad about that), and no, I would not seek out another, but would probably watch if it were again nominated--which is how I ended up seeing the first two. My favorite for visual effects was Sinners, with The Lost Bus as my second choice. So in summary, if you like lush visuals with lots of action, this is a good one.

Cold Storage (2026)

My spouse and I have developed a ritual of watching very light weight action moview when we are starting an international vacation. We are usually going over water and facing a significant time change, which also involves cocktails and trying to get some sleep--not so this time however. We were Mexico City bound and not a drop of intoxicating liquid on board. In our defence, while this is a very silly movie that leans into horror heavily, it stars a favored action hero (Liam Neeson--although his last movie I was also not a fan of, so maybe not) and it has a good IMDB rating (go figure). What I did not know in advance of this is that it is adapted from a 2019 novel and is based on a real-life event. The breakup and descent of the NASA space station Skylab in 1979 and the space agency’s diligent recovery of the orbiter’s debris did happen. What did not happen is that starting in Western Australia, the movie depicts an uncollected piece of debris emitting the aforementioned gnarly, green, tendrilly fungus, which almost instantly infects all the humans in the immediate vicinity and causes their bodies to explode. Gross. After a small NASA contingent (led by Neeson and the incompable Lesley Manville) manages to trap, freeze, and contain the rampaging green stuff, we cut to the government warehouse where the fungus lies dormant in, yes, cold storage. Only the government warehouse is shut down, the building goes up for sale, and decades later, in the present day, it’s a self-storage emporium. So there are some excellent actors, but this is basically a gory film with a thin plot line and nothing can save it.

Wrecking Crew (2026)

My spouse and I have a penchant for watching extremely llght movies when we are on our way to a vacation. We have leaned toward action movies that lack much in the way of depth or message, and then on the way home we might dip our toes into more meaningful and message driven fare. This is definitely of the going on vacation genre. The two stars of this are quite likable actors playing at odds siblings. Dave Bautista plays the rock-solid family man, James Hale, a former Navy SEAL turned drill instructor who has a house near Honolulu, a beautiful and charming child psychologist wife, Leila (Roimata Fox), and two adorable kids. Jason Momoa plays the loose cannon partner, James’ half-brother Jonny, a long-haired, hard-drinking, impetuous cop on an Oklahoma reservation. hey’ve been estranged for more than 20 years. But when their father, Walter, a sleazy private eye, gets killed in a hit-and-run accident while working a case in Honolulu, Jonny swallows his pride and flies to Hawaii for the funeral, setting up the inevitable reconciliation, plus lots of skillfully choreographed, sometimes slyly funny action sequences. They untangle the demise of their parents as well as some rampant corruption, all the while looking like they spend way more time in the gym than their characters spend throwing their weight around.

The Lost Bus (2025)

I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that this movie was nominated in the area of special effects for the 2026 Academy Awards and it certainly fits that bill. It is a "telling the story of a disaster" movie, which adheres largely to the facts even if some of the people and their circumstances are changed. This is about the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, which went from a small fire to a devestating fire in no time at all, aided and abetted by dry conditions and very high wind. Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey) is a relatively new school bus driver, back in Paradise for a number of reasons and struggling. He answers a call from his dispatcher to pick up 23 kids at an elementary school and get them to safety. At first, it doesn’t seem that difficult, but everyone in the area of Paradise, California, underestimated how quickly this blaze would move and how hard it would be to evacuate as it did. Stuck in traffic with enough smoke in the air to block the sun, Kevin and a teacher named Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera) do their best to keep the kids calm, even as their own panic rises. Cutting through traffic, trying shortcuts, and blocking the children from seeing people literally on fire. The actual action of is white-knuckle riveting. It’s powerfully immersive stuff, so much so that while there isn’t a bus of children actually avoiding a deadly blaze, the viewer gets so caught up in the immediacy of what they are facing that it is hard to watch and hard to look away. There’s a scene where Mary actually gets off the bus to find water that will had me wanting to yell at her to get back to the bus--NOW. THe bad news is that the beginning of the movie is completely unnecessary and clunky. We do not need to know Kevin's backstory to care about whether he gets these kids, himslef and the teacher to safety. Instead of glossing over that we spend quite a bit of time learning Kevin recently underwent a bitter divorce, his teenage son hates him, his mother is cognitively declining, and icing on the life stressor cake, his dog died. Ugh, really? Maybe it even describes the real story but wow, not needed. Overall this was a good edge of your seat action movie, and if you haven't seen it, you should watch the short documentary, Campfire, which shows actual footage of the Camp Fire and how it unfolded in real life to see just hoe true to form this rendition is.

Anaconda (2026)

Let's start off by acknowledging that this movie is really awful. I watched it on a Transatlantic flight, which is the ideal setting for slightly less than spectacular movies whose main goal is to pass the time--so even in an ideal detting the end result is that this movie was terrible. It is billed as a meta-reboot of the original Anaconda, and aims to trade earnest horror for goofy self-aware comedy. It stars Jack Black as Doug and Paul Rudd as Griff and with their down-on-their-luck friends who set out to make an indie reboot of the 1997 classic, only to get trapped in the jungle with a real, giant CGI snake. Their partners in this endeavor are film making friends from their high school days, also with star power (Thandie Newton and Steve Zahn) and nothing, not even them, can save this. The original was (reportedly) a silly movie that knew it was silly. This new Anaconda begins life as a silly movie but then turns less silly and more absurd, and that’s when it becomes even less compelling than wehre is started. When the focus is on the scrappy movie within the movie, it’s good for the occasional laugh. However, throughout the movie the dialogue is terrible, and the acting is unable to save it, despite the presense of actors that I usually find entertaining.

The Accountant (2016)

My spouse and I watched the most recent interation of this character, a combination wizard of an accountant combined with a highly skilled killer. Luckily you do not need to see this one first, but we were on a Transatlantic flight and watched it with dinner and before trying to get a few winks in before landing. There are quite a few threads at work here, one of which is the back story on why a combination of autism and a pretty sadistic father might have combined to bring him to who he is today, and why his brother, who had to both suffer with the same parent and watch his brother struggle might have gone into security work for the bad guys. As alluded to, there’s quite a bit of stuff going on here, and for a good while the moviepercolates on its multiplicity of plot threads even as it keeps adding to them. As it happens, the “accountant” that Treasury agents are looking for is up to quite a bit more than providing tax relief for rural dwellers (which is the opening scene). He uncooks the books for a slew of deadly bad guys. Deadly bad guys who aresubsequently busted by the Treasury Department. Despite his proximity to some of the most dangerous criminals in the known universe, this man of dozens of aliases stays alive. How? Part of the answer is provided by the recurring flashbacks, in whichhis father provides young Christian with his more militaristic cure, which later manifests itself in sharpshooting and martial arts skills. While some of the material seems a bit insensitive and not altogether in keeping with mental health awareness, and does not characterize autism as an illness in any way accurately, it is a very decent action movie.

The Smashing Machine (2025)

The true story of mixed martial arts and UFC fighter Mark Kerr, whose obsession with greatness drove him to be a legend, and he ehlped create what the sport became. He is also largely unknown, and this is an attempt to rectify that. Let me start off by saying two things--I am not a fan of MMA and I did not like this movie. The two might be related, so I am putting that on the table up front. That said, this is kind of the antithesis of a sports legend movie. It is gritty and it doesn't step away from the hard stuff. A couple of reviews that I read pointed out things that make it different. Whereas most films about sports icons reach for immersion, this film takes an observational approach. Notice that almost every fight scene in this film is shot from outside the ring, the ropes often breaking the image into chunks, or from above, giving us the POV of a camera instead of putting us into the action. The music is either pop/rock tunes or a non-stop jazzy score, both serving to remind you consistently that you’re watching a movie. Dwayne Johnson plays Kerr with some heavy make-up—which both hides The Rock nd draws attention to its setting in the years 1997 to 2000. Fans of the currently robust sport will marvel at the lack of structure and profile it had in its early days, known more for its brutality than its athleticism. The UFC wasn’t popular, and there is what happened, which is that Kerr's coach became a figher again in order to pay the bills and they came close to fighting each other. The film also highlights the steroids, the recreational drugs, the risk of opiate addiction in a sport that invovles a lot of pain, and the chaos both in and out of the ring.

One Battle After Another (2025)

This is the movie of the year so far. It opens with the kind of momentum usually reserved for the climax of an action film and barely slows down from there. A revolutionary group known as French 75 is initiating an operation on the Mexico-U.S. border, where they take the officers hostage and release the immigrants awaiting processing. The group is led by Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), a confident force of rageful nature who finds the leader, Colonel Steven J. Lockja, and sexually humiliates him before walking him out of the base. The encounter launches a psychosexual obsession with Perfidia, someone whom he sees as beneath him because he’s a racist monster, but someone who he also wants to sexually control him. He essentially stalks Perfidia as she continues to lead the resistance with her partner Bob Ferguson. When the two eventually have a child named Willa, Bob sees that they have to get out to protect the baby and Perfidia instead stays, gets caught, and burns everybody after Bob is safely put away in a small town. Cut to 16 years later, Willa is a teenager, and Bob is a single father, still doing what he can for the revolution but equally worried about taking care of his daughter. Lockjaw remains obsessed with the pair, initiating a series of raids and operations on French 75 members that forces Perfidia’s former ally Deandra into action, exfiltrating Willa from a high school dance. The end becomes a kind of chase scene, with excellent cinematography and a score to match. There is a lot to unpack here in terms of the culture clashes in present day, which seem remarkably similar to the days of old, and it is very well done.

F1 (2025)

Brad Pitt is not someone that I am hankering to have dinner with, and his love life seems messy at best, but I have enjoyed him as an actor over the years, and this is no exception. Sonny Hayes was a Formula One driver with talent and the right amount of nerves of steel and talent to make it big, until he was in a devestating accident that still haunts him. After that he quit, and while he races often, it is never with an eye to join a team and get back in the game. That is up until he’s recruited by his former rival Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) to make one last run at it. With most of the racing season finished, Ruben’s ramshackle APXGP racing team hasn’t earned a point because their talented but conceited young driver Joshua Pearce lacks the experience necessary to grind out wins. His manager is more of a hindrance than a help to him, and he is irritatingly juvenile about his role in the woes of the team. Even worse, their cars, designed by their technical director Kate McKenna, lack innovation and endurance and can’t compete with the likes of Ferrari and McLaren. Ruben hopes Sonny can shape up APXGP and Joshua enough to eke out one win out of the team’s final nine races, thereby holding off squeamish investors from taking away Ruben’s ownership. Sonny does several things besides driving like a crazy man. He thinks outside the box as a driver and he gets the team to start thinking that way too. He builds teamwork where it didn't exist before he got there, and he gives Kate the driver input on her car that help her to make it better. It is a feel good race movie that even if you have zero interest in Formula One specifically or racing in general, it is enjoyable.

Naked Gun (2025)

I guess I should have thought twice before watching this movie on a recent Trans Pacific flight. If I thought the original was dumber, what made me think that this wouldn't be dumber? Don't let me dissuade you though, because reading through reviews, I am pretty much alone on this. Liam Neeson plays Det Lt Frank Drebin Jr, who is the son of the LA cop once played by Leslie Nielsen, and haunted in a rather Freudian way by his late father’s reputation. He is given to making yearning monologues addressed to Drebin Sr’s presence, begging him to send a sign that he is there in spirit if not in person. Paul Walter Hauser plays his stolid partner Capt Ed Hocken Jr, son of Drebin Sr’s partner who was once played by George Kennedy. The new Drebin (who is old, BTW) investigates the possible murder of a man found dead at the wheel of a hi-tech electric car, and must confront the sinister plutocrat who invented this vehicle (sound like anyone we know?). There is a love interest, which I will not go into because even though this harken's back to an earlier sensibility, it is exaggeratedly offensive--and no where near far enough back for the likes of the current autocratic misogynist administration would like to go--Make Suffregettes relevant again kind of stuff--it is still beyond the pale. The new Naked Gun has the look and feel of an 80s LA action movie, with sense-memories of Beverly Hills Cop and Terminator, but not in a good way, at least for me. It did make me think i should not rewatch Beverly Hills Cop but rather leave it safely in my memory as not nearly as offensive as this.

Thunderbolts (2025)

Ok, finally a Marvel movie that I can follow. Admittedly, I watched it on a plane (so not on the big screen by any means, but also with an eye towards passing the time. In my mind, this is the very best conditions to view marvel under because I am giving it more attention than I would at home but I am satisfied with so much less because of where I am). In any case, I agree with one review I read--this is the best Marvel movie in quite some time, and for an impressive stretch, it actually looks and feels like a real movie, with solid action, vivid emotional stakes and characters memorable enough that you won't mind seeing them again in the inevitable sequel. Part of the attraction is that the star is the terrific Florence Pugh, who was introduced several movies back as Yelena Belova, the younger sister of Scarlett Johansson's now-deceased Natasha Romanoff. Like Natasha, Yelena is the product of a top-secret Russian program that turned innocent children into spies and assassins. Years later, Yelena still can't shake off the grim memories of her indoctrination, or her grief over Natasha's death. Yelena now works as undercover muscle for the malevolent CIA director, Valentina, who is bad news, and before long, Yelena is betrayed and trapped in a deadly lair in the middle of nowhere. To get out alive, she must join forces with a few other similarly betrayed and trapped operatives, some of whom have special powers. Basically, you know the rest, but it is good fun.

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025)

I read a review that called this "repetative and pretentious to the point of parody", which I think sums it up perfectly. It is a long running series of movies with a very solid line up of actors, and much like what I felt happened in the Marvel series', at some point there is just no hype there and it all seems both unbelievable and derivative. So yes, the danger is real, and in this case it was realized. To be fair, if anyone has earned valorization in the action franchise sphere, it’s Hunt. Ethan Hunt isn’t a superhero; he’s the guy who gets the job done, the one who chooses to accept the assignment, and the mythologizing about all that does seem overblown but on the other hand, that is where the series has been headed over time. So all that said, am I sorry to have watched this installment? No. Would I watch another should it be made? Probably. You know what you are getting in to from the get go, and it goes there. The fate of the world is left in Hunt's hands and he delivers.

The Accountant 2 (2025)

This is a buddy hit man movie, and I have to say I enjoyed it, more than the last buddy hit man movie I watched on a plane (Wolfs) by a long shot. Ben Affleck almost literally plays the accountant to Jon Bernthal’s straight ahead hit man vibe, and the pair of likable performers have fantastic chemistry, conveying that love-hate thing that is exclusively a sibling dynamic and the movie hums off their energy just enough to sustain it. According to reviews, the movie is actually linked to The Accountant 1, which i haven't seen (there is a trend on over water flights to have the whole ouevre of a series available, but the original of this series was not on the menu). Raymond King left FinCEN for P.I. work and has followed the clues around the disappearance of a family of three to some very dark and dangerous places. He’s meeting with a mysterious woman named Anaïs, but she’s not the problem: the armed men in the building and outside it are. Are they there for King? Anaïs? Both? After a well-staged bathroom fight, King ends up the victim of a sniper shot in the street, but not before he has time to scrawl something on his arm: “Find the accountant.” Which is exactly what Marybeth Medina, a Treasury agent who is hunting King's killer does, and the three of them go about figuring out what happened and why.

Black Bag (2025)

This is a smart espionage thriller that feels like an update to Cold War-era stories like “Bridge of Spies”,that adds in the modern complexities of drone strikes, satellite surveillance, and AI-powered eavesdropping as well as a hint of Mr. and Mrs. Smith with more allure and less tension. Here is the set up. Within a week, George will have to find the source of the security leak in his intelligence organization or tens of thousands of people will die. The short list of suspects includes his equally talented wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), a hotheaded subordinate he passed over for promotion named Freddie Smalls, Freddie's younger date who also works in surveillance, Clarissa Dubose , the hotshot go-getter who did nab the promotion, Colonel James Stokes , and his current date, one of the organization’s therapists, Dr. Zoe Vaughan. George invites them over for dinner for something of a truth-telling session, but little is revealed other than cracks in the other couples’ relationships--there is a stabbing at the dinner table, which is more drama than is usual, and George is kind of an arrogant spy who is sure he can tell what is what by what is said and what is left unsaid. The game is afoot, and he has just a few more days left before the shadowy operation known as Severus wreaks real-world havoc. Worse yet, his wife is being set up, he is sure of it. This is well worth watching. The tensions are well played, and the dialogue volley's back and forth, more like a comedy than a thriller. Every conversation is a test of wills and smarts, a tennis match between players who think they’re each at the top of their game. But as we’ve seen many times, only one player goes home the winner.

Wolfs (2025)

This movie thrives on the camraderie and sharp banter between the two main characters played by George Clooney and Brad Pitt. It is ultra light in content, but we watched it at the front end of a red eye flight to South America and it was perfect. Clooney and Pitt are once again criminals, this time they are the guys that you call to clean up a crime scene and get rid of the body. They are both getting long in the tooth to be doing this work yet they are each eager to demonstrate to the other that they still have what it takes. They manage to maneuver their way through a few tight situations with only the bad guys being the worse for wear, and they tee it up perfectly for a surprise at the end. Classic reparte with two veterans who seem to like working with each other.

Fall Guy (2024)

This is a lovely confection that combines action with romance, with a heavy theme--someone is dead and someone else is missing--and a light hearted undertone. I love both Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling--this is not the deepest characters they have played, but then again, they came off a year of promoting Barbenhiemer, and maybe they just needed a break. It is a movie designed to entertain above all else. It stands out from the crowd as a movie where you don't need to take notes or have seen the ones that came before it. Ryan Gosling plays Colt Seavers, a stunt double who had a bad accident and retreated into himself--until he was called back into action by "the one who got away" (turns out it wasn't her, but that's for you to find out when you see it). Gosling has such an easy-going charm that makes it hard not to smile when he is on screen. I read a review that accentuated this point, that when he was watching the Oscars and Gosling was singing “I’m Just Ken”, the man sitting next to him said, “I’m almost annoyed at how that guy can do anything.” Yes. That is it, and this movie is all about how fun that can feel. A lot goes wrong before it goes right, there are tons of stunts, because Colt is a stunt man, and so is the director, and it all gets wrapped up in a neat bow at the end. Not one for the ages, but a crowd pleaser for both genders.

The Beekeeper (2024)

This is classically Jason Statham, from the get go to the very end. Full out action, with he as the lone ranger seeking vengeance against a far more numerous and better armed opponent. He is a total bad as with a certain elegance to his killing machine. Statham's character is named Adam Clay, a modern upgrade to Clint Eastwood's The Man with No Name. We don't know anything about Adam except that he lives out in the country raising bees and selling their honey, and that he's played by Statham, which means he's no ordinary beekeeper. His best friend is an older woman named Eloise Parker, who lives in the farmhouse near his and rents him space in her barn. According to Adam, Eloise is the only person who ever took care of him. Eloise makes the terrible mistake of responding to a phishing scam from a data mining company that empties her bank account as well as the account of a nonprofit she helped found, leading to tragedy. Adam trades his beekeeper uniform for commando gear and disguises, and works his way up the criminal food chain, doing what the law won't--seeking vengeance on people who pray in the elderly and less fortunate. There is no confusion about who the good guys and the bad guys are, and while this is definitely not a good movie, we are all rooting for Adam Clay.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (Part One) (2023)

Part One? Is it really necessary to have a plot for an action adventure movie that cannot be resolved within one 180 minute movie> Apparently it is. Other than that this entirely met my expectations. One reviewer points out that Tom Cruise has been doing this series, which now numbers seven films, for 30 years. When he started, Bill Clinton was president. Once again, the ever determined IMF (Impossible Mission Force) agent Ethan Hunt is fighting against forces much greater than himself (including his own government) to keep the world from imploding. We get a mix of familiar characters—Ving Rhames’s computer hacker Luther Stickell, ever the voice of sturdy reason since the very first film; Simon Pegg’s technician and communications expert Benji Dunn, who has long since outgrown his initial role as comic relief into a reliable dramatic mainstay; and Rebecca Ferguson’s supposed deceased spy/potential love interest Ilsa Faust. There is the return of Vanessa Kirby’s nefarious arms dealer The White Widow and the introduction of a new villain, the brutal Gabriel (Esai Morales), who has a tragic link back to Ethan’s pre-IMF past. We also get a new character in Grace (Hayley Atwell), a professional thief who is Ethan’s antagonist, then his partner, then his antagonist again. All through out there are thrilling escape sequences that as always dazzle the viewer and there while there are many unexpected twists and turns in the action, the outcome is never in doubt.

Indiana Jones: Dial of Destiny (2023)

This is a bit of a conundrum. One reviewer noted that it is somehow both never boring and never really entertaining. It walks a line of modest interest in what’s going to happen next thanks in equal parts to the story transitions and the foundation of nostalgia that everyone brings to any sequel. The movie opens in the waning days of WWII. The Nazis, everybody's bad guys, have stumbled upon half of the Antikythera, or Archimedes’ Dial. This is an object based on a real Ancient Greek item that could reportedly predict astronomical positions for decades, but had none of the supposed powers it is embued with here. Flash forward to 1969. An elderly Indiana Jones is retiring from Hunter College, unsure of what comes next in part because he’s separated from Marion after the death of their son Mutt in the Vietnam War. He quickly gets reacquainted with Helena Shaw, the daughter of Basil and goddaughter of Indy. It turns out that Basil became obsessed with the dial after their encounter with it a quarter-century ago, Helena is committed to reunited the halves, some bad guys want it as well, and we are off to the races. It’s an alternating series of frustrating choices, promising beats, and general goodwill for a legendary actor donning one of the most famous hats in movie history yet again. It should be better. It could have been worse.

Spiderman: Far From Home (2019)

This year, where we are all quite used to the pandemic and staying home--has us watching the movies leading up to new movies in a series. The latest Spiderman was nominated for visual effects (and did not win) and so we went back to this movie, which we had somehow overlooked. I find the Marvel universe vaguely confusing at the best of times, and so for me, this was essential. Spiderman is still in high school and is on his senior trip to Eurpoe when the trip takes an unexpected turn when Nick Fury shows up in his hotel room to recruit him for a mission. The world is in danger as four massive elemental creatures -- each representing Earth, air, water and fire -- emerge from a hole torn in the universe. Parker soon finds himself donning the Spider-Man suit to help Fury and fellow superhero Mysterio stop the evil entities from wreaking havoc across the continent. The plot line is almost secondary to the non-stop action, although it is fun to see Jake Gylenhaal, who will forever be Donnie Darko for me, as a Marvel character.