The post Screening Room: Best Movies So Far in 2026, PLUS Minions & Monsters, Enola Holmes 3, Lockbox/Winthrop & More appeared first on Maddwolf.

No, really! The horror of the first half of this year has been amazing! Bloody, original, meaningful, fun, terrifying—it has it all! So much, actually, that we’re obligated to run through a quick list of honorable mentions.

If you have not caught these fine films, do so post haste: Heresy, Faces of Death, The Mortuary Assistant, Exit 8, Saccharine, and Passenger.

10. Over Your Dead Body

On Prime

Writers Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, fresh off the hilariously unhinged Pizza Movie, adapt the 2021 Norwegian film The Trip with a healthy scoop of witty cynicism atop one good ol’ American mean streak.

Jason Segel and Samara Weaving make an excellent pair of frassasins (friendly assassins), he of the emasculated man child and she of the exasperated younger wife wondering what she saw in this guy. Neither is blameless in the demise of the marriage, and the two actors make the deadly bobbing and weaving (pun intended) a surprising, squirm-inducing delight. Over Your Dead Body is an entertaining genre blast that’s pretty hard to ignore. And by pretty, I mean pretty funny.

And pretty gross.

9. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

On Prime Premium

If you enjoyed Ready or Not, I’m hard pressed to believe its sequel won’t also leave you smiling. Weaving is back for the sequel. This time, Grace is paired with her sister and reluctant sidekick Faith (Kathryn Newton), as both are forced to endure Round 2. And what this game teaches us is that the entire world is run by a bunch of billionaires, each of whom is unspeakably, irredeemably evil. Just like real life!

Weaving and Newton share a fun, funny, bickering chemistry. Their backstory becomes the spine of a film that, like the original, delivers series of entertaining, bloody set pieces.

8. They Will Kill You

On Disney+, Hulu, HBOMax, and Prime

Zazie Beetz is Asia. She takes a gig as a maid in old school, elite Manhattan high rise, The Virgil. Asia has ulterior motives. The Virgil has ulterior motives. It’s a home for Satanists and she is to be their sacrifice. But Asia has mad skills and the best hair in action hero history, so The Virgil’s residents don’t have such an easy time of it.

What follows is room after crawlspace after room of absolute carnage. They Will Kill You definitely bears a resemblance to Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. But this film is more hard-core, the stakes are higher, and the confined, goretastic action is superior.

7. Crazy Old Lady

On Shudder, Prime

Crazy Old Lady traps us in a home with a dementia sufferer who’s stopped taking medication and has embraced a violent unreality. But Martín Marengui, an Argentinian filmmaker, is less interested in what the future holds as what the past hides. He takes a Death and the Maiden approach to much of the film. The result is a profoundly uncomfortable, breathtakingly performed exhumation of the kind of dark past that refuses to stay buried in the garden.

Mauregui builds tension, delivers unexpected shocks, and lets his exceptional cast compel your attention. Despite its exploitation title, Crazy Old Lady delivers a gripping tale.

6. Leviticus

In theaters

Writer/director Adrian Chiarella’s heartbreaking, aching coming-of-age horror deposits Naim (Joe Bird, wonderful) in an Australian backwater with his widowed mom (Mia Wasikowska). She’d been struggling but has found strength in a small community church. That community is less supportive of Naim and Ryan (Stacy Clausen), the boy he loves.

Leviticus turns into a supernatural horror story, but its themes are as true as they can be. Those who seek to save you are the danger, and that which they would save you from is your only salvation. The film is fearless, tender, aching, frightening, and a must see.

5. The Bride!

On Disney+, Hulu, HBOMax

One part Metropolis, one part Bonnie & Clyde, just a touch of Bride of Frankenstein and yet somehow entirely writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s own, The Bride! deserves that exclamation point. Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in a dual role—sort of a triple role, really: an unhappy Chicago gangster’s moll; Mary Shelley, silenced far too soon; and a monster, chaotic, unruly, unburdened by memory and guided by peculiar fury.

The Bride! delights with an anarchic energy, but its underlying plot is tight, its characters clearly drawn and beautifully performed, and its aesthetic wondrous. In just her second feature, after 2021’s sublime The Lost Daughter, Gyllenhaal’s cemented her spot as one of the most exciting filmmakers working.

4. Hokum

On Prime

Damian Mc Carthy is doing something right. The Irish filmmaker writes original stories, invests time and attention to visual storytelling, and produces eerie, memorable horror. There’s an elegance to his movies, but his tales are not meant simply to provoke thought or to elevate the genre. Caveat, Oddity, and now Hokum draw from a long tradition of Irish horror storytelling and love a jump scare as much as anybody.

Scene after scene balances a funhouse vibe with Irish folktale spookiness, and the vintage horror beauty of every frame beguiles you. Caviat offered quietly claustrophobic terror. Oddity delivered clever, melancholy horror. Hokum feels more polished yet more old school. It is perhaps less terrifying than Mc Carthy’s previous features, but it’s a haunting good time.

3. Backrooms

In theaters

Twenty-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons adapts a series of shorts that made him a YouTube force, all of it based on online Twenty-teens creepypasta dread of being trapped eternally in an endless, yellow, moistly carpeted maze of empty rooms with no hope of escape. The fact that Parsons turned this concept into a compelling feature essentially about our own labyrinthine minds and psychiatry’s impotence is pretty impressive for a teenager!

The endlessly talented Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve play two disillusioned adults lost in the maze. Here are two actors who’ve built careers on understated, natural performances that ground every moment onscreen in something honest. Which makes them a magnificent choice for a film where nothing makes sense, and that’s the whole point.

2. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

On Netflix

There is more visceral horror in the first three scenes of Nia DaCosta’s film than in the entire hour and fifty-five minutes of 2025’s 28 Years Later. She delivered the first great horror film of the year with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, also written by Alex Garland. It picks up the most intriguing threads left untied last time: those of the band of Clockwork Orange-esque marauders who saved young Spike (Alfie Williams) from the infected, and the beautiful soul covered in iodine and living amongst the bones, Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes).

The filmmaker (Little Woods, Candyman, The Marvels, Hedda) returns to horror with aplomb, expertly weaving from the grimmest horrors the sadistic, bewigged Jimmys can muster to the tender bromance blossoming over at the bone temple. And the climactic musical number she stages there is a thing for the ages.

1. Obsession

In theaters

Obsession is a film about consent. Sad by Bear (Michael Johnston) can’t bring himself to confess his feelings for coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). He’s so desperate after one cringy missed chance that he breaks open a One Wish Willow he’d purchased as a joke and—without reading any of the warnings printed all over the box—wishes that she would love him more than anyone else on earth. And she does.

The themes writer/director Curry Barker mines are incredibly of-the-moment. Bear wants what he wants, but he wants it to be true. It isn’t, but that’s not good enough. Make it be true. But you can’t make something be true if it isn’t true, no matter how sad the boy is who wants it. Male entitlement masquerading as loneliness leads to violently self-centered behavior. Barker’s story, however jump-scary or genre friendly it becomes, never forgets this central, relevant concept.

The post Best Horror, First Half of 2026 appeared first on Maddwolf.

But not before you catch these gems:

10. The Bride!

On Disney+, Hulu, HBOMax

One part Metropolis, one part Bonnie & Clyde, just a touch of Bride of Frankenstein and yet somehow entirely writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s own, The Bride! deserves that exclamation point. Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in a dual role—sort of a triple role, really: an unhappy Chicago gangster’s moll; Mary Shelley, silenced far too soon; and a monster, chaotic, unruly, unburdened by memory and guided by peculiar fury.

The Bride! delights with an anarchic energy, but its underlying plot is tight, its characters clearly drawn and beautifully performed, and its aesthetic wondrous. In just her second feature, after 2021’s sublime The Lost Daughter, Gyllenhaal’s cemented her spot as one of the most exciting filmmakers working.

9. The Drama

On Prime

Writer/director Kristofer Borgli continues his social provocateur-ing with look inside a couple thrown waaay off course by a shocking confession. The aftermath – affecting not only the couple involved but other couples in their orbit – becomes a darkly funny and intentionally cringe-worthy dissection of intimacy.

The thought experiment here isn’t just about Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson). Borgli, even more-so than he did with 2023’s Dream Scenario, invites you to imagine yourself in several roles (and, of course, to judge the choices of those around you). The script is crisp, the humor is coal black, and the pacing (aided by some nifty editing and visual cues) keeps you invested at every turn.

8. Tuner

In theaters

His first narrative feature may focus on busting into safes, but Oscar-winning documentation Daniel Roher shows some fine natural instincts for cracking the code that makes “romantic thriller” a crowd-pleasing genre ride.

The slightly contrived, crowd-serviced turns that come in Act Three would elicit a few eyes rolls in lesser films. But by then, Tuner has carved out its own safe space, as a pitch-perfect example of how to make an audience want exactly what you’re going to deliver.

7. Hokum

On Prime

Damian Mc Carthy is doing something right. The Irish filmmaker writes original stories, invests time and attention to visual storytelling, and produces eerie, memorable horror. There’s an elegance to his movies, but his tales are not meant simply to provoke thought or to elevate the genre. Caveat, Oddity, and now Hokum draw from a long tradition of Irish horror storytelling and love a jump scare as much as anybody.

In HokumI, scene after scene balances a funhouse vibe with Irish folktale spookiness, and the vintage horror beauty of every frame beguiles you. Caviat offered quietly claustrophobic terror. Oddity delivered clever, melancholy horror. Hokum feels more polished yet more old school. It is perhaps less terrifying than Mc Carthy’s previous features, but it’s a haunting good time.

6. Backrooms

In theaters

Twenty-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons adapts a series of shorts that made him a YouTube force, all of it based on online Twenty-teens creepypasta dread of being trapped eternally in an endless, yellow, moistly carpeted maze of empty rooms with no hope of escape. The fact that Parsons turned this concept into a compelling feature essentially about our own labyrinthine minds and psychiatry’s impotence is pretty impressive for a teenager!

The endlessly talented Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve play two disillusioned adults lost in the maze. Here are two actors who’ve built careers on understated, natural performances that ground every moment onscreen in something honest. Which makes them a magnificent choice for a film where nothing makes sense, and that’s the whole point.

5. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

On Netflix

There is more visceral horror in the first three scenes of Nia DaCosta’s film than in the entire hour and fifty-five minutes of 2025’s 28 Years Later. She delivered the first great horror film of the year with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, also written by Alex Garland. It picks up the most intriguing threads left untied last time: those of the band of Clockwork Orange-esque marauders who saved young Spike (Alfie Williams) from the infected, and the beautiful soul covered in iodine and living amongst the bones, Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes).

The filmmaker (Little Woods, Candyman, The Marvels, Hedda) returns to horror with aplomb, expertly weaving from the grimmest horrors the sadistic, bewigged Jimmys can muster to the tender bromance blossoming over at the bone temple. And the climactic musical number she stages there is a thing for the ages.

4. Toy Story 5

In theaters

Do we need another Toy Story? Actually, it appears we do. The miraculous thing about this franchise is that it’s never just about the toys or about the kids they love. It’s about a recognizable phase in a life. Which episode is your favorite depends entirely on how old you were when you started watching.

Episode 5 delivers an honest assessment of the way screens have invaded childhood and looks with clear eyes at the impact on children. Simultaneously, as Jessie (the genius Joan Cusack) chases down destiny, the film recognizes that, eventually, we all need to let go. Plus Woody has a poncho!

3. I Love Boosters!

In theaters

Boots Riley and a remarkable cast tell a wild, boldly colorful, sometimes Claymation, often surreal, occasionally demonic, fantastical, consistently smart, regularly hilarious, and shockingly personal tale about the individual’s need for community. And, of course, the inescapable evils of capitalism.

Underneath the metaphysical science fiction banter, beneath the scathingly comical evisceration of fast fashion, at the heart of the wacky heist flick, is a lonesome story that resonates. It’s all one struggle.

2. Is God Is

On Prime

Writer/director Aleshea Harris may be pulling from folklore and road movies, revenge flicks and historical dramas, noir and arthouse, exploitation and even horror. But the result of those inspirations is one of the most boldly original films of 2025. The filmmaker shows great affection for so many types of movies, and the way she bends these tropes and styles to the will of this narrative is fresh, unpredictable, and fascinating.

Violence and destiny, family trauma, classism and misogyny, and rage—Is God Is finds poetry and honesty and blood in all of it. Her cast, including Kara Young, Mallorie Johnson, Vivica A. Fox, and Sterling K. Brown, impress in every frame. But the star of Is God Is has to be the storyteller herself. Harris’s command of the audience and of cinema deliver the summer’s most daring and satisfying adventure.

1. Obsession

In theaters

Obsession is a film about consent. Sad boy Bear (Michael Johnston) can’t bring himself to confess his feelings for coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). He’s so desperate after one cringy missed chance that he breaks open a One Wish Willow he’d purchased as a joke and—without reading any of the warnings printed all over the box—wishes that she would love him more than anyone else on earth. And she does.

The themes writer/director Curry Barker mines are incredibly of-the-moment. Bear wants what he wants, but he wants it to be true. It isn’t, but that’s not good enough. Make it be true. But you can’t make something be true if it isn’t true, no matter how sad the boy is who wants it. Male entitlement masquerading as loneliness leads to violently self-centered behavior. Barker’s story, however jump-scary or genre friendly it becomes, never forgets this central, relevant concept.

The post Best Films, First Half of 2026 appeared first on Maddwolf.

by George Wolf

The air of Enola Holmes has only gotten fresher since the franchise debut in 2020. While more and more star-studded streamers carry the obvious stench of algorithm engineering, the formula at work in these Netflix installments seems perfectly suited to keeping the attention of home viewers.

First off, EH3 presents a headline-grabbing mystery: Enola’s legendary brother Sherlock (Henry Cavill) has been kidnapped! And the timing couldn’t be worse, as Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) is trying to fight off serious doubts about her upcoming marriage to Lord Earnest Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge).

“Yes, he has a first name,” Enola tells us. “I was surprised, too!”

Brown’s ease with the fourth wall is just one part of her irresistible embodiment of this role. The personal invitation into Enola’s life and adventures is welcome, and Brown gives us a heroine that is endlessly fun to root for as we follow along.

Sherlock’s kidnapping means the dashing-as-always Cavill is more out of sight than last time, allowing Brown the focus she more than deserves. Her Enola wants to get married, yes, but she also wants to keep the name and standing she’s worked hard to attain. Enola is smart, heroic, flirty and romantic, a pretty super girl in her own right.

Director Phillip Baratini and writer Jack Thorne (both from Netflix’s Adolescence) make sure Brown gets the chance to show all those sides of Enola. And while the mystery may play out a tad too conveniently, the visual aesthetic bursts with interactive sleuthing and multimedia pop-ups that are consistently engaging.

The returning support cast (including Helena Bonham Carter, Himesh Patel, and Hattie Morahan) adds to the wonderfully frisky chemistry of the entire ensemble. Part three also allows some nostalgia for how these characters (especially our engaged couple) have grown, giving the film some sweet moments of emotion.

Forget about Sherlock’s kidnapping, Enola Holmes may be solving the mystery of holding a streaming audience without condescension or spoon-feeding. And once again, that’s a formula worth repeating.

The post Shotgun Wedding appeared first on Maddwolf.

by Hope Madden

There are six films now in the Minion-verse. Most of these are Gru movies, but honestly, without the minions, where would the Despicable Me features be?

Still, without a single, clear antagonist, the 2015 standalone film Minions felt adrift. Cute and goofy but pointless. To avoid the same trouble this go-round, Minions & Monsters pins the adventure on one creative little dude: James.

Centuries ago, when an early tribe of Minions searched the earth for a villain to assist, James drew pictures. These pictures told funny stories that entertained exactly one other Minion: Henry. (Henry, James and all other Minions are voiced by co-writer/co-director Pierre Coffin.)

The Minions’ quest to find their villain leads them eventually to 1920s Hollywood. Here is where Coffin unveils a love for classic moviemaking. Sure, every film in this franchise charms with hidden sight gags and funny Easter eggs. But Minions & Monsters drips with them. There’s a classic movie reference in nearly every frame of the film, beginning in the intro, where a tour guide (Allison Janney) explains to bored tourists the very important role James and Henry played in saving Hollywood and, indeed, the world.

Janney is not the only Oscar winner lending her voice, either. Christoph Waltz is Max, the harried director who discovers James, and Jeff Bridges plays twin studio heads Frank and Elwood. Plus, Jesse Eisenberg (no slouch!) voices Dort, an unlikely yet somehow perfect Minion ally.

With James in the hero seat, Minions & Monsters follows a more tightly scripted chaos. James decides to conjure some monsters so he can make a creature feature and conquer Hollywood. (If you think Goomi, the first monster conjured, sounds weirdly like Eric Cartman, there’s a reason for that. South Park co-creator and Cartman vocalist Trey Parker lends his voice to the wee green Cthulu cub.)

Characteristic of the franchise, the film is goofball anarchy. Minions & Monsters is quickly paced, brightly colored, silly, good-natured fun. The sheer amount of story sometimes causes the movie to drag. This is not helped by Janney’s lengthy first act exposition. But as a mash note to filmmaking and a goofy, family-friendly adventure, it’s a delightful reason to sit in the air conditioning this weekend with your kids.

The post Minion Monster Mash appeared first on Maddwolf.

Touch Me

About a decade ago, filmmaker Amat Escalante made a movie about sexual frustration, bad decisions and tentacle sex. The Untamed grounded the fantasy in a profoundly ordinary and relatable human drama, limiting the absurdity and amplifying the horror.

Addison Heimann leans far more absurd with his tentacle sex horror Touch Me, a potent drug metaphor that speaks to a modern malaise.

In a lengthy and surprisingly effective opening monologue, Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley, exceptional) explains her situation to her psychiatrist. A weirdly good-looking alien in a tracksuit (Lou Taylor Pucci) came to save the planet from climate change and convinced Joey to have cross-species intercourse. His touch made her mind go quiet for the first time in her life, but she fled because she nearly died.

Still the lure of a quiet mind proves too much and soon Joey and her best friend Craig (Jordan Gavaris) cave into temptation and find themselves hooked.

Which doesn’t sound funny, but Heimann’s delightfully accepting glimpse at modern slackerism paired with Pucci’s wide-eyed narcissism and hip hop moves keep things light despite a lot of truly dark turns. At its core, Touch Me is about deeply damaged people struggling to face a reality that cannot make them happy and the incessant temptation of hard drugs to silence that anxiety.

For that reason, the silliness sometimes seems tone deaf. That, or the dramatic turns seem maudlin. But only briefly, mainly because of the commitment of Heimann’s small but talented cast.

Dudley and Gavaris affect a believable co-dependence, their banter a familiar and humorous cadence of self-loathing and support. Dudley is particularly impressive in a role that holds the metaphor, horror and silliness together. And Pucci hits a perfect tone for oblivious track-suited narcissist.

The writing does not always serve the actors as well as they serve it. There are holes in logic that Touch Me laughs off by pointing them out—a fun tactic, but not a solution. And the whole feels slight given the deeper ideas sewn throughout. But the film is an enjoyable, sloppy, relatable mess with insight and fun to spare.

The post Comfortably Numb appeared first on Maddwolf.

The post Screening Room: Supergirl, Jackass: Best and Last, Lucky Strike, Couture & More appeared first on Maddwolf.

by Hope Madden

Fashion Week in Paris—the only word in that phrase I entirely understand is “in”. Well, I know what a week is, but in Alice Winocour’s drama Couture, Angelina Jolie plays Maxine, an indie horror director with zero interest in fashion who’s tasked with creating a short film to introduce the diva hullabaloo.

They probably called it something different that I should know, but at least there was a character I could grasp.

Maxine is out of her element, under pressure from the event organizers, struggling to communicate with her Stateside 15-year-old, and told by her doctor that she needs to see a specialist immediately.

Meanwhile, Ada (Anyler Anei) is this year’s “new face.” She’ll star in Maxine’s short film and be the first model on the runway. But she’s never modeled before. She’s an 18-year-old South Sudanese refugee living in Kenya and studying pharmacy. Like Maxine, Ada is in over her head.

Winocour, who writes as well as directs, braids these two stories with a third strand. Ella Rumpf is a make-up artist and observer, someone who runs almost undetected in all the Fashion Week circles.

What the three tales have in common, what Winocour explores without exploring, is what each woman keeps to herself. Choosing Fashion Week for this exploration seems fitting. Models are stand-ins, lovely images to hang an idea or a frock on, but not humans. No emotions, no turmoil, no war-torn country to preoccupy them. At least, that’s the role the industry requires them to perform.

Jolie’s gently understated stoicism offers the film an emotional center while Anei’s sweetly awkward vulnerability keeps it tender. Although Winocour’s transitions from one tale to the next are almost magical in their grace, the third storyline with Rumpf feels underdeveloped and a little heavy handed.

Wincour can’t bring the story full circle. The fashion industry still seems superficial and unnecessary by film’s end, which leaves the film feeling less powerful than what the individual heroines deserve.

The post Dressed to Impress appeared first on Maddwolf.

by George Wolf

Look, Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) isn’t some goody-goody like her cousin Superman, okay? She’s a hard partying rock chick rockin’ a Blondie t-shirt and a wiseass attitude on her 23rd birthday, so F-you! She’s not about go and join young Ruthye’s (Eve Ridley) quest to avenge her parents’ death at the cold-blooded hands of space villain Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts).

But then Krem shoots Krypto full of a slow-acting poison, and suddenly Kara’s got 72 hours to find Krem, get the antidote, and save her beloved dog from back home.

There’s also a sex trafficking ring to bust up, so add Fury Road to John Wick, Star Wars, Alien, multiple Westerns and various other inspirations you may spot. And while at this point, finding an entirely original stylistic angle for your superhero film may be damn near impossible, this familiarity is one of the things keeping a pretty satisfying adventure from reaching the stratosphere.

Director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya, Lars and the Real Girl, The Finest Hours) overcomes some occasionally wonky CGI to craft several winning sequences of action, backstory and world building, but often undercuts the growing momentum by bailing out too soon. The surprising dive into the demise of Krypton adds narrative heft, but dropping it between the grimness of The Dark Knight and the giddy excess of Birds of Prey keeps any distinct tone elusive.

Through all of it, Alcock (House of the Dragon) keeps our titular hero wonderfully grounded. Writer Ana Nogueira’s debut screenplay may be filled with familiar themes of grief, destiny, revenge and female rage, but Kara has specific reasons to be wounded. Alcock makes sure we appreciate the character arc that turns Kara’s defense mechanisms into Supergirl’s defense of truth, justice, and…you know.

Alcock finds a way to make us care about the girl, whether hunting down Krem (Schoenaerts is a wonderful, facially-studded psycho), fighting alongside Lobo (Jason Mamoa, gleefully hamming it up) or feeling sweetly big sisterly to the resourceful Ruthye.

And more importantly, Alcock’s scenes with David Corenswet’s Superman cement the film’s biggest win: giving Kara the agency for her hero to stand as more than just a sidekick. This girl’s truth is separate from her famous cousin. Supergirl makes no apologies for making that clear, with an uneven but ultimately effective introduction.

The post Fight the Pain Away appeared first on Maddwolf.

by George Wolf

The song that plays over the closing credits of Lucky Strike couldn’t be a more appropriate choice. Co-written by Rod Lurie, who also co-wrote and co-directed the movie, the theme is passionate and well meaning. It is also overwrought and heavy handed.

So again, perfect for this film.

By all accounts, Lurie (The Outpost), co-director Todor Kotzev, co-writer Marc Frydman and their fellow producers have gone to great lengths to ensure this film gets the thumbs up from WWII historians. From the jeeps to the artillery, the terrain and beyond, the clear aim of the production was to create an authentic bridge between recorded history and battlefield reality.

And on the note, Lucky Strike hits the mark. An authentic feel for the characters being developed proves a much harder target.

Scott Eastwood takes the lead as Capt. John Castle, who in December 1944 is ordered by his superior (Colin Hanks in a brief cameo) to oversee the blockade of a road in the Ardennes forest often used by German soldiers.

Castle and his team come under heavy fire, eventually leaving John and his invaluable radio “Lassie” – which will become even more valued later on – alone behind enemy lines.

Based on true events from the legendary Battle of the Bulge, the film becomes one man’s journey of commitment and survival, as Castle sets out on the 30km trek to safety in Elsenborn, Belgium.

As correct as all the details may be, the writing and direction never miss the opportunity to overplay a hand. Despite some tense and well orchestrated one-shot action sequences, much of the dialog lacks nuance, the editing and reaction shots continually aim for the back row, a third act twist isn’t hard to see coming, and there’s even the inclusion of an actual pale horse (apparently ridden by subtlety).

Eastwood shoulders a big load but doesn’t show the family gift of understatement, and cannot elevate any of this material. Only the great Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, as a grieving mother in some touching bookend scenes with Eastwood, can give the film a fleeting layer of humanity.

Lucky Strike needed more of that. There’s plenty to respect here on a technical and historical level, but any true emotional connection is lost in the wilderness.

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