Movie Reviews from Chris

★★ ★ ☆ Rental Family (2025) Runtime: 109 minutes MPAA: Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, some strong language, and suggestive material. There's an extremely interesting phenomenon in Japan where rental family services are offered, providing clients with actors who portray friends, family members, coworkers for social events and companions for individuals. Mental health issues have always been stigmatised there, perceived as a lack of willpower, resilience and self-control. Due to deep-rooted cultural beliefs, there has been widespread underreporting of mental health struggles and low rates of people seeking professional help. What if they're instead messing with people's lives, making the situation even more volatile and worse? How do we blur the line between what's real and fake? Hikari's (real name Mitsuyo Miyazaki) film, Rental Family, centers on a struggling American actor in Tokyo Phillip Vanderploeg (Brendan Fraser). Once recognised for a toothpaste commercia...

★★⯪☆ Backrooms (2026) Runtime: 110 minutes MPAA:  Rated R for language and some violent content/bloody images. Liminal spaces are a fascinating thing to the human mind. These are ordinary environments - think of a hallway, room or even outdoor park - but strip it of humans, activity and context. Sometimes, it's nostalgic and cozy. Other times, it becomes eerie, even creepy. In 2002 at a former furniture store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the new tenant was renovating the place and snapped a picture, showing a large and empty room with a yellow atmosphere. This was enough to spawn an internet meme called the Backrooms, a fictional location that consists of an endless maze of complex rooms, accessible by exiting reality. Eventually, lore was developed to the point where YouTuber Kane Parsons made a short film on it, later expanding into a 24-episode web series. He directs the film adaptation of Backrooms, distributed by A24. In found-footage style, Backrooms opens with a first-person recor...

★⯪☆ ☆ How to Make a Killing (2026) Runtime: 105 minutes MPAA:  Rated R for language and some violence/bloody images. Maybe I just don't get it. A person who plans and commits murders of all his family members to inherit a fortune seems like an interesting idea, and I did go in expecting a ton of fun in its action, satire, wit and dialogue. I walked out thinking it was plain dull.  Written and directed by John Patton Ford, Glen Powell plays Becket Redfellow, the son of disgraced member Mary (Nell Williams). The patriach Whitelaw (Ed Harris) kicked her out because of her teenage pregnancy, and when Mary fell sick and eventually died, leaving Becket alone, the family didn't bother to support or even reach out to Becket. In the present day, he's a luxury suit salesman in New York City, where he bumps into his childhood friend Julia (Margaret Qualley) who's married. Demoted from his current job because of store politics (nepotism!), he decides to go on a killing spree, elimi...

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ Scary Movie (2026) Runtime: 96 minutes MPAA: Rated R for crude sexual content, graphic nudity, strong violence, and drug content and language throughout. There's a scene about halfway into the newest Scary Movie, directed by Michael Tiddes, where a character says, "it's like a reboot in a sequel, mixing legacy characters with new characters, in an attempt to feed into bullshit nostalgia and bring more fans to the theaters." That couldn't be a more apt description for the movie as a whole. With the Wayans brothers back in control, Scary Movie reunites Marlon, Shawn, Anna Faris and Regina Hall in a supposedly self-aware parody that references newer films while updating it with modern political and social topics. I say supposed, because they throw in all the ingredients and proceed to do nothing with it. As usual, it's crude and ridiculous, filled to the brim with pop culture, yet it's never funny nor has any sort of payoff. One doesn't expect muc...

★ ★ ★⯪ Obsession (2025) Runtime: 108 minutes MPAA: Rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, sexual content, pervasive language, and brief graphic nudity. Obsession may be one of the only films where I desperately wished for it to end because of how deeply distressing it was. I'm not exaggerating when I put this on the table. Almost everyone would be familiar with the wish-granting Genie in Aladdin, who states that (other than not being able to grant more than 3 wishes) there are three restrictions: he cannot kill anyone, cannot make anyone fall in love and cannot bring anyone back from the dead. Obsession, written, directed, and edited by Curry Barker, precisely shows you why granting a love wish is anything but a good idea in the most gritty and horrifying way possible. Tackling an emotionally prickly premise, he explores psychological possession and violation of free will in unsettling fashion. I don't normally consider this the fundamental component of a film, but ...

★★ ★ ☆ Mickey 17 (2025) Runtime: 137 minutes MPAA: Rated R for violent content, language throughout, sexual content and drug material. Parasite made history by being the first non-English language film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Its legacy is still being actively discussed up to this day, and it's easy to see why. A seemingly light and breezy story descended into madness, then bleakness, as the film subtly provided a scathing commentary on the socioeconomic status and privilege of people in this cruel system of capitalism. While I'll admit that subtlety isn't my biggest strength - I tend to have slight trouble interpreting points - it's packed with so many details, twists and turns in the best way possible. Mickey 17, Bong Joon Ho's follow-up work, is anything but subtle, as it spells out the themes of immigration, colonisation and makes broad political statements in its somewhat caricatured figures. A co-production with Hollywood, it's more talk...

★★ ★★ Parasite (2019) Runtime: 132 minutes MPAA: Rated R for language, some violence and sexual content. "Parasite", according to the Merriam-Websiter Dictionary, is defined as "an organism living in, on, or with another organism in order to obtain nutrients, grow, or multiply often in a state that directly or indirectly harms the host". Scroll a little lower and the second definition reads "someone or something that resembles a biological parasite in living off of, being dependent on, or exploiting another while giving little or nothing in return". The latter, as is title of the film, precisely describes the newly formed symbiotic relationship between the wealthy Park family and the impoverished Kim family. When Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik) meet up with his friend Min-hyuk (Park Seo-joon), he convinces Ki-woo to become an English tutor for Da-Hye (Jung Ji-so), the daughter of the Park family. With the help of his sister Gi-jeong's (Park So-dam) knowledge...

★★ ☆ ☆ Masters of the Universe (2026) Runtime: 140 minutes MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence/action, some suggestive material, and language. The planet Eternos which was once at peace is now in chaos, as Skeletor (Jared Leto) ravages the place in hopes of attaining the Sword of Power. Prince Adam Glenn, as a kid, is handed the sword and sent to Earth, but he loses it on the way there. As an adult (Nicholas Galitzine), he desperately searches for it, getting in contact with someone who claims to have found the sword. Subsequently, an old friend of his, Teela (Camila Mendes), locates him and brings him back to Eternos. Adam wields the sword which gives him newfound powers, loses a parent during the journey, gets locked up with his other mates, and they form a rebellion, ultimately triumphing over Skeletor and his army. A standard chosen one versus villain with a generic motive, Masters of the Universe intends to inject self-deprecating humour while winking at the audience, but ...

★ ★ ★⯪ Send Help (2026) Runtime: 114 minutes MPAA:  Rated R for strong/bloody violence and language. Linda Liddle's (Rachel McAdams) life is mundane and quite frankly, miserable. She's in the strategy and planning department, but also socially awkward and unappealing. The company's boss recently passed, and the CEO position has been passed down to his son Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien). You see, Linda's expecting a promotion as promised by her former boss, but Bradley awards the promotion to his former fraternity brother and new employee Donovan Murphy (Xavier Samuel), which causes Linda to confront Bradley. Impressed by her boldness, he invites her on a business trip to Bangkok via a company private jet, so that they can seal a company merger. Even on the plane, Bradley and his close colleagues laugh at Linda's audition tape for Survivor, which Donovan discovered. Before anything further can happen, in a dramatic sequence, the plane's engine fails, causing...

★⯪☆ ☆ Snow White (2025) Runtime: 109 minutes MPAA: Rated PG for violence, some peril, thematic elements and brief rude humor. A small peek into my thinking process: I normally know how to structure and write reviews of movies which I clearly liked or disliked, and always find myself struggling to compile my thoughts together for those that are a mixed bag. At the end of the first paragraph in my earlier review of James Gunn's Superman, I noted, "looking at what I've typed...it's such a huge mess that I don't even know if I can coherently compile this. The same can also be said about what I feel right now: I don't even know what to say. So here goes trying to synthesise all of my thoughts." Marc Webb's Snow White, a modern-day reimagining of the classic fairy tale, exceeds this confusion threshold. Yet, this shouldn't be the case, given the star rating assigned at the top of this review. Hence a rare exception. So, what to make of this Snow White, w...