Weekly Roundup #21, 2026

Welcome back to Joel’s film blog! I had a whole heap of bad jokes about turning 21, but actually I’ve decided that that number has too much relevance in our culture. (And if you’re wondering how many films we’ve reviewed so far, it’s 29! I counted.) So for those of you at home, grab a drink and dive on in to this week’s issue!

Movies

Wednesday 13ᵗʰ May - Big Trouble in Little China (1986, ★★★★★)

This was part of a fun little program at Genesis (still running!) where the tickets are £3.50 and the drinks are even cheaper. I last saw this film when I was about 14, and I think 15-ish year intervals might be about right: that way you’ll forget the amazing melding of the practical and (early! hand-drawn!) special effects, the corny dialogue, and the endlessly charming ways that the film disrupts the white saviour narrative and centres Asian heroes. This film is a damn fun time! Go see it (though it will probably have to be on home video as this was a pretty rare screening).

Thursday 14ᵗʰ May - Mortal Kombat II (2026, ★★★)

There’s probably something wrong with my critical lens that I want to read this as a queer-coded found family movie, and yet it is undeniably a bit gay when Milena and Jade sit down together at the end of the film as queen and queen consort. But there’s also Johnny Cage’s learning to embrace his role and fulfil his true potential... what I’m saying is, I went into this film expecting pure dreck, and I got something that was like a microwave meal: engineered to within an inch of its life to provide the mouthfeel of something much more nourishing.
And the fights were great (well, up until the point where they were intercutting between two fights at once—bit much). One of those fights, Nathaniel pointed out to me, really felt like a Jackie Chan number: all backflipping right at the last moment, blocking attacks with random objects and the pièce de résistance: ending the fight with a well timed kick to the nuts.
But overall, this couldn’t shake off the affect of being franchise dreck; whether it was the constant references to other, better movies (including oddly Big Trouble in Little China, which I saw the day before) or the gratuitous, but sadly mandatory, sequel set-up at the end, I couldn’t bring myself to give this more than three stars.

Friday 15ᵗʰ May - Wake in Fright (1971, ★★★★★)

This went through me like a half pint of bitter goes through our protagonist John Grant. Rarely have I seen a film that was so fucking noisy, an amazing effect that makes the moments of paralytic twilight silence, like the minute’s remembrance for the fallen veterans (all too familiar even on this side of the globe), feel uncanny—and then the noise, the heat, the brutality of it all come rushing in again.
So much of this film feels deeply practical, from the deep sunburn on Grant’s chest to (fortunately or unfortunately) the unsimulated hunting of the kangaroos. One of the things that really made this movie work is its circular form; the protagonist can’t escape the Yabba (as they call the tiny, isolated city), and this is elegantly suggested by a matched pair of crane shots: the first, at the start of the movie, sweeps the barren vista of the outback town he is trying to escape; the second, at the end, rises to lock in the distant horizon of the train tracks–and doesn’t move at all, symbolising Grant’s incarceration.

There’s a lot more that can be said about this film—I especially enjoyed this piece in The Guardian linking the film to Australia’s drinking culture—but I would encourage you to seek this out on as big a screen possible and sink into the madness yourself. Go in as blind as you can, as though your eyes were covered by a pair of coins.

Saturday 16ᵗʰ May - The Conformist (1970, ★★★★★)

I was first made aware of this by a gloss of the source novel by DAVID; then, it was the Garden Cinema member’s pick, and then my pick for a meetup of last week. So, some pedigree to it. I have to say my enjoyment of the film was hard carried by the cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro who has a crazy pedigree: everything from Apocalypse Now to The Sheltering Sky. He attempts–and lands!–some amazing shots, like a vault over a car bonnet to a trapped victim, or an amazing two tone sky where the exterior is blazing blue and the inside has the warm glow of tungsten. Another fun one is where he pans into a painting of the next shot, giving the film an immediate remove from what it represents. Or the little boy running through an orchard of freshly starched sheets... or the shadowy dialogue with a long absent tutor... or the golden sun pouring in to a train couchette. This film is “a triumph of style; the substance is not sufficiently liberated, and one may begin to feel a little queasy about the way the movie left luxuriates in Fascist decadence”. That quote there from Pauline Kael’s review in 1971; still relevant.

Despite the epilogue of the film being set during the fall of Mussolini (but not, alas, the end of fascism), the film’s denouement is a little baffling. Rather than the murdering, cowardly little snipe getting what he deserves at the end of a rope, he begins enthusiastically denouncing those around him; figures from his past, his closest friends, random people he points to on the street.
I found this baffling, and in fact the entire epilogue made me want to withhold top honours from it—but a conversation with an elderly theatre-goer on my left made me change my tune. She said simply that, growing up in apartheid South Africa, she knew of too many figures from the old regime who had continued a new life unimpeded by turning around and accusing their former colleagues. And isn’t it so that the crowd of partisans representing the new Republic pass him by, merely jostling him as he filters through? This is perhaps not a moral ending, or even a satisfying one, but with 30 years of distance maybe it felt like an honest one. I know I’ll be returning to this film when our republic crumbles.

Sunday 17ᵗʰ May - The Third Man (1949, ★★★★★)

Truly the central image of this film is a exaggeratedly wide tunnel with a tiny human figure in it casting a shadow along the length of it. Carol Reed (who is not a woman! Just a popular name in the 40s, apparently) uses it constantly throughout this film, and it comes to symbolise everything about the film; the crumbling romance, the doomed edifice of internationalism in the rubble of WWII, and most of all Orson Welles overshadowing everyone in this picture with just a wink and a “old man”.
The direction manages to convey, in a set of Dutch angles and great casting (especially in the crowd that turns into a baying mob), a real sense of place and situation. And the chiaroscuro that comes from the harsh light bouncing off the rubble and the slurry is beautiful. But really the two extra stars come from Orson Welles’ bravura performance as Harry Lyme; one of his best and well worth the price of admission.

Musings

A lot of change this week, a lot of opportunity. I got to capture my first shoot with my flash gun that’s been in the shop since last Autumn; reader, it performed excellently and I can’t wait to show you the results in the next newsletter. The photos this week are from another first, the first gig that I shot. All of this practice (and the kind encouragement of some of my friends) is making me wonder if I should take this photography thing more seriously... I could certainly use the money! But until I become an even more professional photographer than I already am, let’s meet... at the movies!

Meetups

Because who works a full day on a Friday anyway? This riotous portrait of late-70s NYC is a must see for both fans of genre and gritty, Scorcese-heads. If your name is Alannah you should come to this screening! (And you should come also if your name isn’t Alannah.)

Music

Those of you who know why I chose this song know that I’m kinda going through it at the moment! And in my darkest moments, I think of the closing couplets of the closing line of Deafheaven’s fantastic new album.

With my endless illness
Walking into blackness
With my endless illness
Walking into blackness
With my endless illness
Walking into blackness

I’ll be here until the end. Until next time, dear reader!