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Pressure review
PRESSURE:
TENSE WAR FILM CONTINUES THE BRENDAN FRASER RENAISSANCE!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: *** ½ out of 4
FOCUS FEATURES
Brendan Fraser in Pressure
Andrew Scott (1917, Blue Moon, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery) and Brendan Fraser (The Mummy trilogy, The Whale, Rental Family) team up to plan the Normandy landings during World War II in Pressure, the new film from Anthony Maras (Hotel Mumbai) and his first film as a director since 2018. Sure, I was down to see this when I saw the trailer, though A24’s Backrooms was a much higher priority, but now that it’s already been reviewed, I can finally talk about the Brendan Fraser WWII movie.
I am so happy that we’re in kind of a Brendan Fraser Renaissance lately. He was in 2022’s The Whale, which won him a Best Actor Oscar, and just last year, he starred in the equally superb Rental Family. Even in the days of George of the Jungle and The Mummy, I’ve always enjoyed Fraser as an actor, but the past few years have really skyrocketed his career back.
So, does Pressure continue his recent streak in the Fraser Renaissance? The answer is yes!
This is a really solid war drama with a lot of tension and strong character moments that are carried by the performances of Scott and Fraser. It’s also a war movie that isn’t exactly about the war itself, but the preparations for what would be known as D-Day.
The film is set in June 1944, 72 hours before D-Day, and follows Scottish meteorologist, James Stagg (Scott), being recruited by General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Fraser) to determine the weather on the day of the Normandy landings. Through clashes and conflicting methodologies between Stagg and American forecaster, Colonel Irving P. Krick (Chris Messina-Julie & Julia, Air, Juror #2), and D-Day getting closer, Stagg and Eisenhower will have to make an impossible decision: launch the largest and most dangerous seaborne invasion in history or risk losing the war.
The film also stars Kerry Condon (Dom Hemingway, The Banshees of Inisherin, F1) as Kay Summersby, Damian Lewis (Band of Brothers, Billions, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) as Bernard Montgomery, Henry Ashton (Creation Stories, My Lady Jane, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder) as John Eisenhower, Con O’Neill (The Last Seduction II, Telstar: The Joe Meek Story, The Batman) as Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Robert Portal (The King’s Speech, My Week with Marilyn, Mr. Turner) as Bertram Ramsay, Daniel Quinn-Toye (Sunny Dancer, Voltron, Cry to Heaven) as Michael Gregory, Toby Williams (Paddington, Sex Education, Death in Paradise) as Bryant, and Max Croes (A Working Man, American Sweatshop) as Private Eugene Shaw.
Overall, Pressure is a powerful and riveting war film that’s more cerebral than an explosive spectacle. This is less Saving Private Ryan and more like The Imitation Game, with the focus being on people strategizing and trying to prepare for a big invasion to win the war, so don’t go in expecting non-stop gunfire, explosions, and carnage.
It’s actually not even about D-Day itself, but instead the entire plot of the film revolves around the weather of D-Day, which is a factor you don’t often think about when going into a war. The driving force of the movie is these two different and conflicting predictions of what kind of weather it will be between Andrew Scott’s Stagg and Chris Messina’s Krick, with the clock ticking closer and closer to D-Day.
It’s a very dialogue-heavy movie with several scenes of people planning the Normandy landings and determining what the weather will be like on that day, and it’s never boring. I was locked in and invested in every single one of these people, trying to figure out how to pull this landing off and win the war.
The performances are stellar, and while I know we’re currently in the Brendan Fraser Renaissance, it’s actually Andrew Scott who steals the show. He is magnificent as James Stagg, this smart, calculating person who isn’t particularly respected amongst Eisenhower’s people because he tells them things they don’t want to hear: “The weather is going to be awful on D-Day” and is butting heads with Chris Messina’s Irving P. Krick over what they’re going to report, he commands the scene every time he’s the central focus.
Brendan Fraser is also great as Dwight D. Eisenhower in probably the most commanding performance in his career, which makes sense considering Eisenhower was a General-turned-President. Like Scott, Fraser owns every scene he’s in, whether he’s barking orders to his troops or confronting his own personal dilemmas. Watching and listening to him interact with Scott, Messina, or any of the other supporting cast members was a blast.
Pressure is an exhilarating, intriguing, and phenomenally acted movie that explores a different, less epic side of World War II, but still just as endearing. It has amazing acting, a smart and engaging plot, and phenomenal acting by Scott and Fraser, all leading up to a war strategy I won’t be forgetting about anytime soon.
Tuner review
TUNER:
THE BABY DRIVER OF MOVIES ABOUT PIANO TUNERS!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: *** ½ out of 4
BLACK BEAR PICTURES
Leo Woodall in Tuner
A gifted piano tuner finds himself wrapped up in a life of crime in Tuner, the new film from director Daniel Roher (Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band, Navalny, The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist) in his first narrative feature outing. Confession time, I actually never saw a single trailer for this movie in theaters, and aside from seeing the poster a few times in theater lobbies, I knew practically nothing about it until I watched the trailer online.
It looked interesting when I finally did watch the trailer on YouTube, and it sort of gave me Baby Driver vibes a bit, except nowhere near as slick as that movie, but definitely similar DNA in certain places. A man with special hearing gets involved with a group of criminals and by the end, has to figure a way out of all this.
We’ve seen that before, but I’m all for it if a film can make something unique out of it, and Tuner does just that. I enjoyed this film and thought it was a really solid crime thriller with an incredible performance by Leo Woodall (The White Lotus, One Day, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy), who absolutely steals the show.
The film follows Niki White (Woodall), a once-promising piano player who, after being diagnosed with hyperacusis, can no longer play the piano and now works as a piano tuner with his mentor, Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman-The Graduate, Kramer VS Kramer, Meet the Parents franchise), trying to get by. One day, while tuning a wealthy person’s piano, his heightened sense of hearing draws the attention of a group of criminals trying to open their safe upstairs, and see his gift as useful for opening safes, which could give Niki the money he needs.
However, the more jobs he gets and a budding romance with a composition student, Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu-Bottoms, Power Ballad, Elden Ring), complicating things, the more dangerous and deadly it gets.
The film also stars Lior Raz (Fauda, 6 Underground, Gladiator II) as Uri, Tovah Feldshuh (Law & Order, Kissing Jessica Stein, The Walking Dead) as Harry’s wife, Marla Horowitz, and Jean Reno (Léon: The Professional, Mission: Impossible, Godzilla (1998)) as Marius Maissner.
Overall, Tuner is a finely tuned and exhilarating crime thriller with Woodall giving a superb performance as the Tuner and Roher showcasing his directing talents outside the documentary genre and doing it very well. Do I think it’s as good as Baby Driver? No, but I was engaged and captivated throughout the film and wanted to know where everything was going.
Like I said in the beginning, it has a similar premise to Baby Driver and hits some of the same beats as that movie, but where Baby Driver was more outlandish and pulpier with Edgar Wright’s fast-paced directing and editing, Tuner is more grounded in reality and not quite as flashy or stylized as that film. I found both films to be very effective in terms of their tone and execution. This one managed to make blowing an air horn at someone look like the most graphic and intense thing ever filmed; that’s definitely an accomplishment.
Baby Driver is a fun, entertaining ride, while Tuner is near-constant tension (I just realized I said that three times over the past few movie reviews I did recently) and uses its sound design to deliver a truly unnerving experience as if loud noises are like something brutal and bloody happening onscreen. The already mentioned air horn, a fire alarm going off, and even people doing extremely mundane stuff is made more intense through Leo Woodall’s Niki’s ears.
As if you couldn’t tell, the sound design is phenomenal in this movie and features an incredible mix that makes even the greatest IMAX releases blush (FYI, this film is not released in IMAX). The way the sound is edited and mixed makes you feel like you’re Niki going through all this and tests the power of your cinema speakers, the movie technically premiered in 2025 and the fact it did not receive an Oscar nomination for Sound Design this year really pisses me off now that I’ve seen it because the sound design here puts Christopher Nolan to shame, yeah, I just fucking said that (BTW still looking forward to The Odyssey)!
Leo Woodall, in his first lead role, is amazing and gives a truly exceptional performance as Niki, a man who had a lot of potential, but those dreams were shattered by a sensitive hearing condition. Woodall perfectly plays a guy who’s reserved and calm, but mentally defeated, and has amusing banter with Dustin Hoffman’s Harry (A cranky old man who doesn’t like wearing his hearing aids) and even stronger chemistry with his love interest, Havana Rose Liu’s Ruthie.
Aside from Bottoms, I haven’t seen Havana Rose Liu in many projects, but she is magnificent in this as an inspiring piano student who’s basically living the dream Niki wishes he could live, and it’s because of that they formed a relationship in the first place. Niki and Ruthie’s romance could have easily been a low point in the movie, but thanks to Woodall and Liu’s charm, it’s actually compelling and gives the film a lot of emotional weight.
Yeah, Tuner was a pleasant surprise and a really solid first narrative film from Daniel Roher and a stellar leading vehicle for Leo Woodall. Through brilliant sound design, outstanding performances, and gripping storytelling, it’s a near-perfect melody you’ll want to hear again and again.
Backrooms review
BACKROOMS:
A CREEPY AND FASCINATING TRIP INTO THE UNKNOWN!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: **** out of 4
A24
Renate Reinsve in Backrooms
A furniture store owner and his therapist discover a mysterious dimension of endless liminal spaces in Backrooms, the new horror film from A24 and directed by YouTuber Kane Parsons in his feature film debut. The film is based on Parsons’ 2022 webseries of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the creepypasta also of the same name.
The movie looked interesting when I saw the trailers, which didn’t show much outside of people discovering the backrooms and something terrifying lurking inside. Also, we’re currently in this sweet spot for horror movies with this, Obsession, and Hokum, which came out earlier this month, and YouTubers making their jumps from computer and phone screens to the big screen.
Bottom line, it got my interest and became a priority watch when it was released, and…damn! Horror fans are eating well between this and Obsession. Backrooms is amazing and as fascinating as it is frightening, I was glued to the screen from start to finish.
The film follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor-12 Years a Slave, Doctor Strange 1 and 2, The Life of Chuck), a down-on-his-luck furniture store owner who discovers a door to a strange dimension in the basement of his store. It turns out, this dimension is an endless liminal space of uncanny hallways and malformed furniture known as the Backrooms, but as Clark and eventually his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve-Sentimental Value), venture deeper into it, the more nightmarish and terrifying it becomes.
The film also stars Mark Duplass (Creep 1 and 2, Safety Not Guaranteed, Tully) as Phil, Finn Bennett (True Detective: Night County, Warfare, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) as Bobby, Lukita Maxwell (Generation, Shrinking, The Young Wife) as Kat, Avan Jogia (Caprica, Zombieland: Double Tap, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City) as Naren Warne, and Krista Kosonen (Jade Warrior, Princess, Blade Runner 2049) as Nora Kline.
Overall, Backrooms is a chilling, surreal, and engaging experience with an interesting premise, some very tense sequences, and even some thought-provoking subject matter. I was locked in during a lot of this movie and was on the edge of my seat, wondering what was going to happen and how everything would come together by the end.
The movie looks incredible in terms of the production design, with much of the film being shot in an empty, maze-like office set with digital effects to enhance, which really gives this sense of claustrophobia and the unknown as you’re watching the film. I can see this film striking a chord with people who are claustrophobic because the way the backrooms look and are filmed is genuinely frightening.
The film also utilizes some found-footage moments where certain scenes are shown from the perspective of a cameraman, and I honestly found these sequences to be the most tense and scariest parts of the whole movie. Despite found-footage being overused to death, Backrooms found a way to inject new life into that filmmaking trope, even if it isn’t 100% the entire film.
For the most part, Backrooms leans into suspense and psychological horror, but there are elements of body horror, and while nowhere near as grotesque as a film like The Substance, it’s pretty unsettling. That’s all I’ll say. There are definitely some weird body horror scenes and images in the movie that will stay with me.
The performances by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve are stellar, especially the former; Ejiofor really sells his performance as a man who’s clearly on edge, not just in the backrooms but events outside the backrooms as well. Even before he discovers this unknown series of rooms in his shop, he’s the kind of person where one little push is enough for him to completely lose his mind, and the backrooms are gonna make things much worse. It's one of the best performances from him I’ve seen in a while.
Renate Reinsve is also magnificent as Clark’s therapist, who ends up in the backrooms later on in the film, just a level-headed therapist trying to help him out, and as he’s explaining what he discovered to her, she rightfully doesn’t believe until she begins experiencing it for herself. Her character also has a past that’s glanced at at certain points in the movie, and ultimately comes to terms with it once she enters the backrooms. She’s easily the most normal character in the film, but the latter half is where she really shines.
I will say, as much as I love this movie, I felt the runtime could have been cut short a little. The film is an hour and 50 minutes, and with constant slow-burning scenes without many straight-up scares. It’s not a huge issue and doesn’t ruin the movie, but I think the film in general would have been better paced had it been trimmed down to 90 minutes with fewer scenes that drag.
Despite some minor runtime issues and a few things about the ending that I’m a little torn on, I enjoyed the hell out of Backrooms and found it to be a genuinely unnerving, clever, and fascinating horror movie. Like I said, this and Obsession are feeding horror movie fans good to the point where I completely forgot that Passenger came out recently.
Thursday, May 21, 2026
Passenger review
PASSENGER:
JUST DRIVE AWAY FROM THIS STANDARD HORROR MOVIE!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: ** out of 4
PARAMOUNT PICTURES
Lou Llobell and Jacob Scipio in Passenger
A couple is about to learn the horrifying lesson to never drive at night in Passenger, the new horror film from director André Øvredal (The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, The Last Voyage of the Demeter). I’ve only seen two of Øvredal’s previously directed projects, those being Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and I liked both. Scary Stories was a solid adaptation of the books that inspired it, and Demeter was a really interesting and epic Dracula film; he clearly puts a lot of craftsmanship into his work.
I didn’t have any expectations with his next film, Passenger, though the teaser trailer definitely got my attention, which only showed two guys driving in the dark, pulling over so one of them can pee, and then some supernatural force terrorizes them. Regardless of how good or bad I think this movie is, that trailer made me want to check it out.
Sadly, despite a few solid scares and decent performances, Passenger is a pretty lousy horror flick and so far the worst film I’ve seen from André Øvredal. It’s certainly not the absolute worst horror film I’ve seen in 2026 (Psycho Killer and Return to Silent Hill are currently my #1 and #2 worst movies of the year), but I cannot believe a film with this much potential and talent could be wasted on standard genre tropes and cheap jumpscares.
The film follows Maddie (Lou Llobell-Voyagers, Foundation) and Tyler (Jacob Scipio-Bad Boys 3 and 4, Without Remorse, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent), a couple on a road trip who witness a terrible highway accident. But when they make the boneheaded decision of stopping and getting out of the car after seeing the accident, Maddie and Tyler become haunted by a demonic entity that has latched itself onto them.
The film also stars Melissa Leo (The Fighter, Prisoners, The Equalizer 2) as Diana Marsh.
Overall, Passenger had the potential of being a truly spine-tingling and creepy movie revolving around driving in the dark, but instead, it wastes its premise on tired horror tropes and predictable storytelling. Of course, the opening scene of this film is the part shown in the teaser, but to give it a little bit of credit, it is an awesome way to start the movie off, as it is a genuinely frightening and effective sequence followed up by a grisly airbag payoff.
There’s another standout moment later on in the movie with Lou Llobell in a parking lot trying to get to the van, and it mysteriously keeps getting farther away from her the more she gets closer. That was probably the best sequence outside of the beginning scene from the teaser, and it was really suspenseful and knew how to time the scares well.
I’ll also say that despite the subpar material, Lou Llobell and Jacob Scipio give decent performances as the couple. They aren’t like the most deep or complex horror protagonists, but I bought their chemistry, and they weren’t annoying as balls like a lot of other standard or downright garbage horror films.
Unfortunately, only a few effective scares and fine performances aren’t enough to make up for Passenger’s shortcomings because this film goes downhill pretty quickly after having so much promise and an amazing opening scene. The movie just hits every tired beat from other horror movies, obligatory jumpscares, lore that makes absolutely no sense, the wise character who knows what’s going on so, you know is going to be killed off by the end, people constantly making stupid decisions and not in a fun way like The Cabin in the Woods or Obsession, it all comes off as lazy even with a creative idea like this.
Even the monster/killer’s design is pretty uninspired; he just looks like some dirty, weird guy who also sometimes has Freddy Krueger powers as a ghost or demonic spirit. I’m not saying it has to be something so outlandish like the Smile demon, but make The Passenger a memorable movie monster and something moviegoers won’t forget, he could have been a new horror movie icon. Sadly, the film surrounding him dropped the ball.
. I don’t know, guys; I’m struggling to even remember and gather cohesive thoughts on Passenger. If you absolutely gotta see this, then I’ll call the film “An A-List or Unlimited Movie,” where if you have AMC A-List or Regal Unlimited and you’ve seen everything else, I guess there’s no hurt in seeing this if you’re the teeniest bit curious.
Me personally, I’d rather drive as far away from this movie as possible and never look back. It’s a generic, tired horror movie that wastes its premise on tropes and recycled storytelling. Also, Passengers starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence was better!
I Love Boosters review
I LOVE BOOSTERS:
BOOTS RILEY’S FRANTIC AND CHAOTIC CRIME FLICK!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: **** out of 4
NEON
Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, and Keke Palmer in I Love Boosters
A group of fashion shoplifting criminals targets the business of Demi Moore (A Few Good Men, G.I. Jane, The Substance) in I Love Boosters, the second film from director Boots Riley (Sorry to Bother You). I saw Sorry to Bother You shortly after it came out in 2018, and I never did a full review of it. I’ll give my quick thoughts on his first film before diving into this.
I initially didn’t get into it when I first saw it and was completely unprepared for how weird it becomes, but I thought more about it and appreciated the themes surrounding its bizarreness and upon rewatching it for the first time since, I freaking love Sorry to Bother You now and consider it one of the most unique comedies in recent years. I mean, a movie about a black telemarketer using a white voice and finding out the company he works for is turning people into genetically enhanced horses as an allegory for slave labor has to get points for originality and absurdness.
Now that I’ve grown to appreciate Riley’s previous film and I have an idea of what to expect with his filmmaking style a little, I was all-in for I Love Boosters. The movie looked pretty wild from the trailers, but surely it wouldn’t be as insane as the film about workers turning into mutant horse people…oh, it is!
I Love Boosters is fucking crazy and does what Sorry to Bother You did for the workplace for the fashion industry. Sure, there aren’t any people transforming into horses in this movie, but there’s still plenty of absolute insanity and surreal ideas to make you laugh, scratch your head, and keep your eyes glued to the chaos-filled screen.
The film follows Corvette (Keke Palmer-Nope, One of Them Days, Good Fortune), Sade (Naomi Ackie-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Blink Twice, Mickey 17), and Mariah (Taylour Paige-Zola, The Toxic Avenger (2023), Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F) better known as the Velvet Gang, a group of criminals who regularly shoplift from the Metro Designers fashion chain run by designer Christie Smith (Moore) and sell the stolen clothes at a discount to make ends meet. But when Christie publicly lambasts the Velvet Gang as “Low class urban bitches”, Corvette, Sade, and Mariah, join forces with Metro Designers employee fighting against poor working conditions, Violeta (Eiza González-Baby Driver, Alita: Battle Angel, Ambulance) and another mysterious clothing criminal known as Jianhu (Poppy Liu-Hacks, iCarly, The Tiger’s Apprentice) to not only steal Christie’s fashion, but take down her entire business.
The film also stars LaKeith Stanfield (Sorry to Bother You, Uncut Gems, Judas and the Black Messiah) as Pinky Ring Guy, Will Poulter (The Revenant, Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3, Warfare) as Grayson, Don Cheadle (Ocean’s trilogy, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Flight) as Dr. Jack, and Kerris Dorsey (Brothers & Sisters, Moneyball, Ray Donovan) as Jamie.
Overall, I Love Boosters is an absolutely wild ride that finds Boots Riley once again subverting audiences’ expectations with what kind of movie he’s making, whether it’s about a black telemarketer or a group of “Boosters” sabotaging the business of a fashion giant. It’s pure, unhinged insanity projected onto the screen…and I was laughing and loving every minute of it, which is crazy considering how I did not fully appreciate Sorry to Bother You until I revisited it recently.
This is a hard movie to talk about without going into spoilers, and I do not want to ruin any of the shocking and weird moments in the film for you because it’s best to just let the movie play out and have you react naturally. It definitely has that Sorry to Bother You tone when it comes to the humor and its commentary with visual gags, bizarre situations, and constantly leaning into the strange and unusual.
One thing I admire about Riley’s filmmaking is that even before he drops the crazy bombshells on us, the worlds he creates are already pretty odd, even when they’re supposed to be a normal setting. Demi Moore’s character has an office that’s literally tilted as if she’s being filmed by the cameraman who shot Battlefield: Earth for absolutely no reason, and keep in mind, this is before all the insane shit goes down, which leads to a lot of great physical and visual gags in a short amount of time.
The plot is about as surreal as Sorry to Bother You, where it starts off being about one thing (In this film’s case, a group of burglars trying to take down a fashion mogul) and, halfway through, it stops trying to be a real movie and goes straight into pure mindfuckery. If this were any other movie from a different director, I would normally see this as a negative, but because Boots Riley himself is such an oddball with an incredibly active imagination, I admire his craftsmanship and how he brings his unhinged and crazy ideas to the screen in ways that could even make Tim Burton blush.
All the performances are great, with Keke Palmer and Demi Moore being absolute scene-stealers, Palmer as a Booster who’s also an aspiring fashion designer, and despite all the insanity that happens, it brings a lot of humanity and sometimes heart to the film. Demi Moore is a lot of fun as a snooty, successful fashion designer who you just want to see have her empire crumble by the end, like an actually evil version of Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestley from The Devil Wears Prada, and just as witty as her to boot.
I Love Boosters continues to surprise me with Boots Riley’s growing filmography as he continues to take simple premises we’ve seen before and completely turn them on their heads in the most chaotic and bonkers ways imaginable. It’s funny, engaging, and still retaining plenty of his signature weirdness, absolutely worth watching if you know what you’re getting into.
I Love Boosters…and I also love this movie!
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