70 Up (2026)

☆ ☆ ☆

70 Up (2026) – A. Kapadia

Another seven years has gone by but surprisingly not much has really happened in the lives of the 14 children who were initially presented as case studies of the effects of social class in the UK in 1964.  This is surprising because the past 7 years seems to have contained a significant amount of turmoil in the world.  Perhaps stability is more likely than change between ages 63 and 70? Of course, one notable change is that director Michael Apted passed away in 2021, leaving these final two episodes (totalling about 2 ½ hours) to be directed by Asif Kapadia (known primary for sports documentaries, it seems).  I must confess that I was underwhelmed but I suppose the director can only work with the material that has been provided by the subjects.  As usual, there are plentiful clips from the past 9 episodes of the series but not much new material -- one subject suggests about 10 minutes per person ends up in each episode. And that meta-commentary about the series, from the subjects themselves, is perhaps the real draw of this final episode.  Kapadia and team make the decision to include Apted as a focus for discussion and explicitly question his premise (that class makes a difference to lives), his preconceptions and biases, and his relationship with the 14 people whose lives were the focus of his films, prey to his editing choices and sins of omission or commission. Indeed, some of the clips from the past offered this time around may never have been shown before, with Jackie or Tony challenging Michael (and vice versa).  Apted appears to have reflected on the problem himself. We also revisit the decisions by some of the cast to drop out of the series or particular episodes – Charles returns in voiceover only to reveal that he had a career working at the BBC and never felt he belonged to the posh upper class group to which he was originally assigned. The good news from this episode is that many of the characters have found peace and contentment, including Neil whose struggles with his mental health and living arrangements provided the most drama across the years. Sadly, Nick died from cancer three days after being filmed and his appearance is heart-rending, although as with much of the material here, not particularly deep.  Ultimately, this final series feels very much like a missed opportunity. I’m not sure we are treated to sufficient reflection about whether class really does help to determine a person’s life, their opportunities and challenges. As some of the subjects suggest, they just lived their lives and didn’t really think about it.  Perhaps Apted would have probed more deeply or perhaps the analysis is a job for social scientists rather than popular filmmakers. Nevertheless, despite its many weaknesses, the Up series has proven to be an exceptional opportunity for reflection, conversation, vicarious emotion, and anticipation.  I agree with the choice to let the remaining characters sail off into the sunset rather than witness what is inevitably a final stage of cognitive and physical decline, to which most of us will be treated.

Disclosure Day (2026)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Disclosure Day (2026) – S. Spielberg

I’m looking back at the Disclosure Day poster now – the one with Emily Blunt’s blue eye in the centre.  You can see her eye has some unusual aster-like pattern in it.  Only on second glance did I notice that her eye and parts of her face are framed by the outline of a bird, presumably a cardinal.  Cardinals do have some symbolic meaning, having to do with a message from a lost loved one or perhaps hope in hard times or even Christian references to the blood of Jesus.  There are some nuns in this film but I’m not sure that’s the link (or is it? There’s some baked-on theology here, questioning whether the presence of life out there means God doesn’t love only us or maybe doesn’t exist, but it doesn’t take).  Perhaps the cardinal is bringing a message from Spielberg’s own past – specifically, a reminder of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).  In many ways, Disclosure Day feels like a sequel or replay of that earlier film, where Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon are incomprehensibly drawn to Devil’s Tower, Wyoming, just in time for an alien spacecraft to land (and take Dreyfuss inside – oops, spoiler). In this film, Josh O’Connor and Blunt instead are mysteriously and incomprehensibly drawn to each other (and then to a television studio), in the same way.  Maybe it isn’t that far from Escape from Witch Mountain (1975) where kids with supernatural powers are chased by Donald Pleasance and evil millionaire Ray Milland.  Here, evil corporate mastermind Colin Firth is trying to stop O’Connor and Blunt, particularly O’Connor who is poised to release evidence that the government has been suppressing knowledge of extraterrestrial life (and that crash landing in Roswell, New Mexico).  We see some of the video that he shows his girlfriend, Jane.  It looks just like you would think (if you ever watched an alien autopsy video). Firth also has an alien device that allows him to mind-meld with people, if he can see their social media accounts. I started to get some faint echoes of De Palma’s The Fury (1978) here and there. But whereas De Palma never was afraid of going freaky, Spielberg keeps his masterful control even though the plot itself feels pretty schlocky. He is good at directing the action scenes – at times it feels as though the movie is one long car chase -- and there’s even a Jackie Chan-styled leap from a car to a train too.  The lead characters make some inexplicable choices though – or really their choices are being guided by, uh, aliens. (Most other characters don’t really have much to do).  Are aliens the Macguffin here? Knowing that Spielberg and writer David Koepp started with the ending (and that youtube clip where the air force flyers see something inexplicable buzz them) and then moved backwards trying to figure out a plot that gets you there tells you a lot about this film.   

 

Hokum (2026)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Hokum (2026) – D. McCarthy

Irish director Damian McCarthy’s third film – and the first after his breakthrough success with Oddity (2024; streaming everywhere near you) – stars Adam Scott, who I guess is an American TV star, but I’d never heard of him (although his latest Netflix film does seem to star Robert De Niro, so “my bad”).  Scott plays a decidedly unlikeable character, Ohm Bauman, a successful writer but rude and willing to punch down on those less fortunate. He’s come to this remote Irish hotel to bury his parents’ ashes, since this was where they had honeymooned decades earlier. However, the honeymoon suite is locked up and no one is allowed to enter, given that there is supposed to be a witch trapped inside.  Bauman isn’t against breaking in but he’s pretty ambivalent about everything (and haunted, perhaps literally, by events earlier in his life). McCarthy creates a lot of atmosphere in this old hotel, especially once we are actually in the honeymoon suite and its environs, but the characters remain rather thin. Throw in a few jump scares and some folk horror references and you’ve got a solid horror outing – full of dread and spooky without requiring gore -- but not something I need to watch again.   

 

Backrooms (2026)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Backrooms (2026) – K. Parsons

Underwhelmed, I guess, but it isn’t that clear why.  High expectations? As longtime readers know, I’m certainly open to surrealism and weirdness generally.  Backrooms set up its premise well and I was intrigued – when sad/frustrated Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) pushes through the wall of his discount furniture store’s basement into the yellowy maze of hidden fluorescent-lit rooms, I wanted to explore with him.  The shadowy figures in the distance, the possible danger – it was alive with possibilities.  But somehow those possibilities turned from intrigue to tedium and then to incomprehensibility.  Is there a metaphor here about memories (never accurately recalled, only reconstructed via the present), about past traumas (and how they might gather strength and defeat us), about frustrated dead ends? It seems either too glib or too hard to fathom.  The film felt somehow incomplete, less encouraging me to fill in the gaps with my own interpretations and more missing essential information. Perhaps though it is just my awareness that there’s lore galore lurking somewhere on youtube, available to some but not all viewers (certainly not this one), ahead of time.  A connected story featuring Clark’s therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve), holds promise for revealing needed detail but ends abruptly (as does the film). A briefly involved scientist remains unexplained (in the film proper).  Of course, I’ve tried to reflect whether my reaction to the film is unfair – after all, I’ve eventually come round to David Lynch appreciation, even if my initial reaction to Lost Highway was similarly uncomprehending.  (Mulholland Drive, in contrast, was immediately recognisable as a masterpiece).  These Lynch films, while bizarre and without clear explanations, provide more details to let the dream logic kick in. Backrooms seems to require a third act, just to provide more fodder for our imaginations (and not necessarily to provide some sort of explicit explanation).  Otherwise, am I supposed to go to youtube to flesh this out?  Some commentary suggests that this is a Gen Z movie -- possibly because director Kane Parsons is so young, but maybe because this generation faces the kind of disrupted trajectories (career and life) that the characters in Backrooms also face (even if the film might be set in 1990 when my own generation was trying to find their footing in what may have been a more predictable world). Speaking of unpredictability, as the film ended, I couldn’t help thinking that most of the replicas of things in the Backrooms felt like artificial intelligence versions of our reality – not quite right and possibly not really serviceable, if they start to stand in for what used to be there.