Winter 2025/2026 Movie Review Roundup: Comedy & Barbarians!
Spring is nigh, so it’s time for my Winter 2025/2026 Movie Review Roundup!
I admit this is a bit shorter than my usual movie roundups, because for a couple of months I didn’t see anything I really felt like writing about. Not in a bad way or a depressed sort of way, but I didn’t see anything I felt interested enough about, whether good or bad. But the New Year brought new movies to watch, and we now have enough for a Movie Review Roundup!
As always, the movies and shows are in order from my least favorite to my most favorite, and the reviews are based on nothing subjective but only my own thoughts and opinions.
OPERATION FORTUNE: RUSE DE GUERRE (2023)
A Guy Richtie action comedy with Jason Statham as the lead, which probably describes all you need to know about it. Like, if you say “Guy Richtie action comedy with Jason Statham in the lead”, this would be the movie that popped into your head.
Statham plays Orson Fortune, an elite special forces operative. When a mysterious device is stolen by terrorists, the UK government sends Fortune to retrieve it. Fortune teams up with a group of specialists, and then sets out to punch bad guys and save the day.
Some good action sequences, some funny bits, and Hugh Grant was hilarious as the evil arms broker billionaire. But definitely a paint-by-numbers action movie. Enjoyable to watch, but nothing deep.
Overall grade: C
LEGEND (1985)
A very weird movie told as sort of an 80s-style dark fairy tale.
The premise is that the Lord of Darkness wants to destroy all light, but to do that he needs to kill a pair of unicorns. So he sends his goblin minions to do the need. Meanwhile, Princess Lili is in love with Jack, a forest child who loves in harmony with various elves and dwarves and other natural creatures. When the goblins kill one of the unicorns and take the other back to Darkness’s subterranean fortress, Jack and Lili have to team up to rescue the last unicorn and defeat Darkness.
The creature work looks amazing, and poor Tim Curry delivered an excellent performance under all those prosthetics. That said, I don’t think Tom Cruise had quite learned how to act yet, and I’m afraid he kind of stood around with a blank expression.
An interesting fantasy classic, but definitely very niche.
Overall grade: B-
ANACONDA (2025)
A very meta, bonkers, and yet nonetheless entertaining comedy movie. It kind of went off the rails while shouting “WHEEEEEE!” the entire time.
College friends Doug, Griff, Claire, and Kenny are entering middle age, and are all dissatisfied with how their lives have gone. Doug wanted to be a director, but makes wedding videos. Griff is a struggling actor, Claire is a divorced lawyer, and Kenny is a “Buffalo drunk” – he only drinks beer and wine and just some (but not all!) of the hard liquors. But when Griff acquires the rights to make the next movie in the ANACONDA series, the four friends jump at the chance to make it as an indie film. Scraping together their savings, they set off for the Amazon to film their snake movie.
However, they find themselves caught in the middle of a fight between illegal gold miners and the Brazilian government, and there is an actual giant anaconda that is hunting both gold miners and idealistic American film makers…
This was very meta, since the characters were making a movie in the ANACONDA series…in a movie in the ANACONDA series. It was very funny and I enjoyed it, though it might be a bit too tongue-in-cheek for some viewers. Comedy is ever subjective.
Overall grade: B-
FACKHAM HALL (2025)
Sometimes a movie is funny but dumb, sometimes a movie is dumb but still funny, and sometimes a movie is just dumb.
However, I am pleased to report that FACKHAM hall is the best of the three, funny but dumb.
It’s a goofy but affectionate parody of DOWNTON ABBEY, and the kind of movie that isn’t afraid to make jokes simply for the sake of jokes. Interestingly, halfway through it takes a right-hand turn and becomes a parody of a Agatha Christie novel. It was pretty funny in the vein of the NAKED GUN or AIRPLANE movies, though a few of the jokes might be too raunchy for some viewers.
Overall grade: B-
WRECKING CREW (2026)
One part buddy cop comedy, one part noir mystery, and one part John Wick style-violence.
When private investigator Walter Hale is killed by a hit-and-run in Hawaii, both his sons (by different mothers) conclude that it was murder. Straight-laced James (Dave Bautista) is a Navy SEAL with a stable family life, while maverick cop Jonny (Jason Momoa) is frequently drunk and on the outs with his girlfriend. Nevertheless, both half-brothers independently realize that shady corporate interests killed their father, and set out to find his killers. They must also deal with their complicated feelings with their father and overcome their deep-seated resentment of each other.
This was a pretty fun action movie, though the violence level is definitely John Wick and might put off some viewers. Honestly, it made me wonder if there’s a “Hawaiian Noir” mystery genre the way “Nordic Noir” novels were popular for a while.
Overall grade: B
THE RUNNING MAN (2025)
Both very dark and very funny. I think this was actually better than the original one from the 1980s.
It explores the same concept – future America is a dystopia ruled by the Network megacorp – and Glen Powell’s character needs to get medicine for his daughter, but he can’t afford it. So he tries out for the Network’s cruel reality shows, and lands a spot on the biggest one of all – the Running Man, where contestants have to stay alive and hidden for thirty days while they’re hunted by mercenaries and the general public gets rewarded for informing on them.
This definitely had strong IDIOCRACY vibes as well, and the satire of contemporary American culture was very cutting.
I do think this deserved better than to flop at the box office, but perhaps it will have a long life in streaming.
Overall grade: B
A FEW GOOD MEN (1992)
A high quality legal thriller carried by Tom Cruise’s and Jack Nicholson’s performances. Today, Tom Cruise is largely famous for 1.) extreme stunts like driving a motorcycle off a cliff (it did make for a good movie), and 2.) various personal eccentricities. But both he and Nicholson really can act, and their scenes together are great. Like, sometime between this and LEGEND (see below) Cruise really figured out how to act on screen.
Anyway, when a Marine is killed during a hazing ritual, Lieutenant Kaffee (Cruise) is called in to investigate, aided by Lieutenant Commander Galloway (Demi Moore). Colonel Jessup (Nicholson), the commander of the Marines in question, wants to cover up what really happened, and Kaffee and Galloway set out to prove that the Marines charged with murder were in fact following orders when the hazing ritual went wrong.
Of course, the movie hinges around Kaffee’s and Jessup’s final confrontation in the courtroom.
I have a theory that all genres are in fact variants of fantasy – like romance is the fantasy of true love, thrillers are the fantasy of violence, and so forth. This would be the fantasy of the legal thriller, where the bad guy cracks on the stand. In Real Life, of course, when generals screw up, the privates and the junior officers get thrown under the bus while the generals go on to cushy gigs at the Rand Corporation or Lockheed Martin.
But the strength of the performances makes the fantasy work.
Overall grade: A
THE PAPER (2025)
I ended up with a month of the Peacock streaming service, so I decided to give THE PAPER a try.
A spin off of the classic THE OFFICE sitcom from the 2000s and the 2010s.
The premise is that failing paper company Dunder Mufflin from THE OFFICE has been purchased by a large conglomerate called Enervate. Enervate’s core business is toilet paper and other paper bathroom products, but they also own the Toledo Truth Teller (TTT) newspaper, and they use paper pulp that isn’t of good enough for toilet paper to print the paper. TTT is a regrettably normal local American newspaper, in that it’s mostly AP wire articles and ads, with one reporter who covers local sporting events.
Things start to change when Ned Sampson takes over as the new editor of TTT. Ned was formerly Enervate’s best toilet paper salesman, but he has a romantic view of journalism and wants to be a reporter, and as a favor to him the CEO lets him take over TTT. There he meets Mare Pritti, an Army vet in charge of the paper’s layout who also wants to be a real journalist, and the two hit it off despite their immediate attraction. Ned has to navigate his coworkers, who range from useless to insane and useless, corporate politics, rival bloggers, and his growing attraction to Mare.
It was a pretty funny first season and I enjoyed it. There’s allegedly going to be a second season, so if that happens I will definitely watch it.
Overall grade: A
CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982)
I actually saw this before like fifteen years ago, but I saw it again at the end of February, so it’s time to write about it!
This is a very specific movie that deserves its status as a cult classic. (I do think it is better than LEGEND.) It wasn’t particularly faithful to any of the Conan stories, but it somehow did a good job of capturing the essence of the character. This was one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first movies (it might even have been his first one, I’m not sure) and he didn’t quite have the whole acting thing down yet, so he played Conan as strong, stoic, and mostly silent, which worked quite well.
James Earl Jones was excellent as Thulsa Doom, the evil wizard and cult leader who is Conan’s nemesis. I guess in the 1980s if you wanted your fantasy or science fiction film to be successful, you need your villain to be an armored figure either played by (or voiced by) James Earl Jones. The Riddle of Steel scene where Conan throws all of Doom’s atrocities in his face and Doom goes “ah!” in the sense of “yeah, I get why you want to kill me” was great.
The fight scenes and stunts are all the more impressive in hindsight, because they’re all practical effects since CGI didn’t exist yet. Especially given the large number of horses in the movie, since horses are notoriously very difficult to work with in film. I once heard an experienced rider say managing a horse is like managing a two year old, albeit a two year old that weighs a thousand pounds and is much stronger than you.
The soundtrack by Basil Poledouris is a classic, and deservedly so. Like, modern day oligarchs come across less as Dark Lords and more like malevolent dorks because they travel by private jet and yachts and so forth. By contrast, Thulsa Doom thunders across the countryside with his Riders of Doom, accompanied by a Basil Poledouris score with trumpets, drums, and choral parts. If you really want to be an intimidating bad guy, your entourage needs to be armored cavalry riders and you need a Basil Poledouris leitmotif.
Conan the character sometimes gets stereotyped or dismissed as a masculine fantasy (erroneously, in my opinion), but the female characters in the movie are pretty good. Conan’s mother faces off against the Riders of Doom by herself, and Thulsa Doom himself has to use his mental magic to kill her. Princess Yasmina is kind of the MacGuffin, but she has a character arc where she turns against Doom and helps Conan to fight him. Compared to many 70s and 80s film heroines, Valeria was very good. Lois Lane in the 1978 and 1980 SUPERMAN movies screams a lot and basically causes Superman to make a lot of bad decisions while being dead weight. By contrast, Valeria kills a bunch of bad guys with her sword, fist fights some evil spirits to save Conan, and then literally comes back from the dead as a Valkyrie to help Conan in the final battle with Thulsa Doom’s goons.
So this is definitely worth watching as a cult classic of the fantasy genre, though it does have a lot of nudity even by the standards of 80s movies.
Overall grade: A
Now for my favorite thing I saw in Winter 2025/2026!
WONDER MAN (2026)
I was surprised by how much I liked this.
Simon Williams is a struggling actor in LA. He’s a good actor, but he’s also an enormous theater nerd with an encyclopedic knowledge of both film and theater, which means he tends to overthink his performance to the exasperation of the director and crew, which gets him fired a lot. One day he meets Trevor Slattery, the highly eccentric British actor who (unknowingly) was recruited to play the fake Mandarin back in IRON MAN 3. Trevor has since kicked drugs and alcohol and returned to his one true love, acting. He ends up taking Simon under his wing, and together they set out to get auditions for “Wonder Man”, a remake of Simon’s favorite superhero movie from when he was a kid.
However, both Simon and Trevor have secrets. Simon is concealing actual superpowers, since superpowered individuals are not allowed in major film and television productions for safety and legal reasons due to a hilarious side story involving Josh Gad. Trevor was actually recruited under the threat of returning to prison by the Department of Damage Control to spy on Simon, since they suspect he has superpowers but can’t prove it, and they want to find enough evidence to bring him in. The tension on all these plot threads keeps ratcheting up until the final episode.
Anyway, this was an excellent self-contained “ground level” Marvel story without a lot off callbacks or cameos or getting lost in the MCU continuity. The friendship between Simon and Trevor, two extremely eccentric actors, was both touching and hilarious.
Overall grade: A+
-JM