Movie Reviews from Chris

★★ 1/2  out of ★★★★ Warfare (2025) Runtime: 95 minutes MPAA: Rated R for intense war violence and bloody/grisly images, and language throughout. It surprised me a little when the first thing that appeared in Alex Garland's Warfare was Call on Me by Eric Prydz, which made me wonder whether I even opened the correct movie in the first place. This cuts to platoon members watching the video enthusiastically and mimicking the moves in the next scene. Was it really necessary, huh? Former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza was deployed to Iraq admist the then-ongoing Iraq War which would eventually end in 2011. Drawing from his experiences and the testimonies of platoon members, Warfare depicts an encounter on 19 November 2006 after the Battle of Ramadi. He rounds up an ensemble cast of D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Finn Bennett, Joseph Quinn and Charles Melton. True to its story, Warfare is essentially narratively non-existent, yet focused on the group of soldiers...

★★★  out of ★★★★ Iron Lung (2026) Runtime: 125 minutes MPAA:  Rated R for language, bloody images and some gore. Anyone reading this would think that I'm losing my mind at this point, with another connection to, yes, Five Nights at Freddy's. I discovered these indie point-and-click games through popular youtube playthroughs, especially those from Markiplier (real name Mark Fischbach). Several years later, he posted a video gameplay of David Szymanski's horror game Iron Lung. This fascinated him enough for him to adapt it into a film of the same name, his writing and directorial debut, also starring himself. Even more so than Project Hail Mary, this one-man show is clearly a personal project, the whole film giving off-kilter vibes, but surprisingly in a good way. Iron Lung is more of a mood piece, one that has zero jumpscares throughout its entire runtime, instead building and sustaining dread, while simultaneously peeling the psychological deterioration of his character Sim...