Release Date – 9th January 2026, Cert – 12, Run-time – 1 hour 50 minutes, Director – Hikari

Small-time American actor Phillip (Brendan Fraser) gets a job working for a Tokyo-based company which sends people out to play small, often unknown, roles in strangers lives.

Because of the way in which UK awards releases still tend to work Rental Family finds itself with an early-January release date. That almost seems to be the perfect place for it. Not because it’s bad or a faded awards contender, or an abandoned studio horror, but because it feels like the perfect way to start the new year, with a warming hopeful tone.

The film is as gentle and soft-spoken as Brendan Fraser’s lead character, Phillip Vandarpleog. A kind, mild-mannered small-time American actor living in Japan, occasionally recognised for starring in a toothpaste advert. While waiting for a big opportunity Phillip is invited for a small role as ‘Sad American’, being thrown in to a funeral with no script or idea what’s happening. It’s not long until he’s hired by Rental Family company owner Shinji (Takehiro Hira) as the ‘token white guy’, being sent out to play small roles in people’s lives, often unknown to them after having been hired by a friend or family member. Whether it be interviewing a forgotten actor (Akira Emoto) for a pretend magazine or spending an hour or two playing video games with someone “sometimes all we need is for someone to look us in the eye and remind us we exist.”

The main role we see Phillip take on is as a father figure for young girl Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman) in order to help her mother (Shino Shinozaki) get her into an esteemed school. However, as a bond starts to form between Phillip and Mia – creating some truly wonderful, thoughtfully-scripted interactions, including at a Monster Cat Festival – he starts to question the moral side of the work he’s been doing – as does colleague Aiko (a likable, if slightly underseen, Mari Yamamoto) who’s largely sent out to cover up affairs for cheating husbands. Co-writer (alongside Stephen Blahut) and director Hikari, with the help of editors Alan Baumgarten and Thomas A. Krueger, manages to take us from joy to disappointment and empathy to wonder-induced emotion seamlessly. The emotional course of Rental Family is consistently fluid and the run-time itself passes by quickly and with ease, in part because of the gentleness on display.

There’s a genuine heartfelt nature to everything we see, much of which is caught in Fraser’s wonderful, restrained central performance. It’s through him that most of the relationships and lives touched are seen, and the balance between the different characters and ‘roles’ Phillip takes on is well maintained whilst keeping the focus on Mia, who creates the most confliction in the lead as to what his temporary roles are actually doing.

Yet, even during these questions and the more emotional sequences I still found myself with a warm smile on my face simply from the joy of the film as a whole. The embrace that it creates for both the characters and the audience is close and comforting. Holding engagement and bringing in a number of good-natured laughs along the way. Not only is this a film that’s heart is in the right place, but it’s one that manages to do something with that, to. With the on-screen cast pushing the positive sides of the work we see the Rental Family group do in the core ideas of the film.

Rental Family was shown towards the end of this year’s London Film Festival. After over a week tiredness had well and truly started to settle in. By this stage it’s difficult to not find your head slightly nodding even at the best, and sometimes loudest, of films. Rental Family held me from start to finish with no risk of tiredness at all. Simply from the heartful emotion and gentleness that’s on display. It’s a positive, welcoming note to open the year on when the film finally releases in January. One to simply make us feel something, including a bit less alone whilst in its company.

Gentle and genuinely heartfelt, Rental Family flows through its emotions with ease and without feeling overcrowded. Brendan Fraser leads perfectly with a soft-spoken performance that captures so much of the films infectious warmth and positivity, even amongst the moral questions that the characters face.

Release Date – 9th January 2026, Cert – 12, Run-time – 2 hours 6 minutes, Director – Chloé Zhao

The marriage between William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley) is put under consistent strain as he goes away to stage his plays, especially in the wake of familial tragedies where the pair struggle to communicate and express their grief with each other.

Jessie Buckley’s Agnes has pushed her way to the front of the audience at the Globe Theatre to watch the debut performance of her husband’s new play Hamlet. The pair have had little conversation for weeks as he flies to London to work on his latest production while she stays at home building up sadness, grief, anger and pain. As the performance begins we’re not watching Hamlet, or just Hamnet. We’re seeing Agnes relive the film’s events over again through a new lens.

While much of their relationship is seen as close, starting off with frequently running off into the woods, or nearest barn, together in the wake of familial struggles and tragedy communication begins to break down. Expression, especially loss and grief, isn’t present between the pair as Shakespeare (an excellent Paul Mescal, who could be a quiet threat in next year’s Supporting Actor Oscar race) consistently flies off to work – “that place in your head is now more real to you than anywhere else” – leaving Agnes even more alone to look after her children. Buckley’s overboiling emotion comes to the fore in an excellent turn that lands multiple punches. The biggest of which sees co-writer (alongside Maggie O’Farrell) and director Chloé Zhao use silence as extended and pronounced as Buckley’s traumatised scream that breaks it up.

After spending time seeing Will and Agnes’ relationship form and develop into a family over the years, once the most emotional course starts to be defined the film as a whole is better established and in turn more compelling. It allows for the subtleties in the performances, particularly Buckley’s quietly commanding turn, to land even more of an effect in just how personally rooted the characters are in everything that happens. The effect and communicative abilities of art is quietly explored through the lens of the couple’s reactions, and interactions, with it. Framed with equal strength from the various visual elements at play. It makes for the extended finale to surround you in the emotions on display – and translate the dialogue of Hamlet in multiple ways at once without having to change the words.

Emotions in Hamnet are given time and space, both to swell and be unfurled, and in the end confronted and experienced. Throughout the film is quietly engaging, and for a good while throughout and afterwards I couldn’t quite put my finger on why that was the case, but perhaps it is because of the emotions dwelling within the characters, hidden in the performances whilst going largely unspoken between the couple – although starting to overflow rather than leak out. There are many moments throughout which deliver an impactful punch, especially in the perfectly involved performances in the finale.

A film led by its overflowing emotions, with a brilliantly affecting conclusion, while gradually establishing itself Hamnet’s strong central performances shine.

Release Date – 5th December 2025, Cert – TBC, Run-time – 1 hour 57 minutes, Directors – Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus

Documentary looking at the work of political journalist Seymour Hersh, who uncovered and reported on some of the biggest cover-ups and exposés of the last 60 years.

Seymour Hersh appears to want to focus on his work more than anything else, even then he’s somewhat hesitant. “It’s hard to know who to trust. I barely trust you guys” he tells directors Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus, and in turn their cameras. Hersh has spent his life working on some of the biggest, most shocking, exposés of modern history. We see him still working today, communicating with sources over the phone about the war in Gaza. This insight into his continuing work and the ways in which he’s engaged are among the closest we get to the personal side of Hersh – “I was very happy not talking about myself” – who is still kept largely quiet as Cover-Up focuses on key stories from his life’s work.

Cover-Up isn’t quite a whistle-stop tour. We spend a good deal of time with only a handful of major uncoverings that Hersh was involved in, but there’s still a lot of ground covered meaning that things aren’t always as in-depth as they perhaps could be. That doesn’t mean there’s not a sense of shock at some of what the subject has been behind. Images and details from the Abu Ghraib tortures still provoke a sense of horror. Each story and the various elements that crop up within them creates interest, but I never found myself fully engaged over the near-two-hour run-time.

Perhaps that came from wanting to know a bit more about the man behind all of the discussed exposés, even if just seeing more of him at work and his thoughts whilst learning about what was happening. But, perhaps that’s wanting the film to be something it’s not. Especially, again, with Hersh seeming to intentionally put focus onto his work and being wary of the cameras and what he’s saying about himself.

The ways in which he talks about trust and the ways in which he communicates with people certainly bring something to the film and add a layer to the man and what he’s done throughout his career – Hersh is currently 88 and continues to fight through his reporting. A layer which certainly brings more to the interest in what the film covers, but also feels like something which could be explored just that bit more, even through the many details we hear about the various stories at hand. Again, perhaps I was wanting Cover-Up to be a different film to what it actually is, but it does feel as if it could have a bit more about the man that leads it to bring more engagement to his work.

While certainly interesting, especially when seeing work and communication in progress, Cover-Up’s look at the career of Seymour Hersh means that the man doesn’t always come through meaning that the documentary is more interesting than fully engaging.

Release Date – 28th November 2025, Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 40 minutes, Director – Richard Linklater

Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) leaves the premiere of Oklahoma! to visit his trusted bar, knowing the afterparty is imminent there, alongside his former creative partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott).

“Do you ever feel like you’re entire life is a play?” was the question Blue Moon asked after I’d already asked myself if it was based on a stage production. Songwriter Lorenz Hart’s (Ethan Hawke) life is condensed into a New York City bar as he escapes the Broadway premiere of Oklahoma! early. Hurt by his creative partner Richard Rodgers’ (Andrew Scott) decision to team-up with Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney) on the musical, he’s trying to find encouragement in alcohol and those who serve it. The bar is quiet and much of the conversation comes from Hawke, with occasional input from bartender Bobby Cannavale and pianist Morty (Jonah Lees).

The piano naturally accompanies the flow of Lorenz’s monologues as he looks back on what he views as a long and illustrious career where he, as a writer, is now an antique. Hawke perfectly sets the tone with his performance (even if occasionally the 5’10” actor’s performance does look like he’s walking with bent knees to play the 5’5″ central character), capturing a sentimentality in what his character says with a layer of tragedy to what it actually means, and where it comes from. He avoids bringing a sense of bitterness to Robert Kaplow’s dialogue, but a feeling of loss and uncertainty – someone desperate to prove himself to everyone around him and not be forgotten. The tragedy of his pursuits heightened by the fact that the film opens with him falling into a puddle, dead – “sometimes I think that even God is finished with me.” It all makes for an intimate opening 20 minutes.

As the Oklahoma! afterparty makes its way into the same bar Lorenz makes his way through a series of gradually repeating conversations – especially with Scott’s Rodgers. The cycles are emphasised by a feeling that when away from the bar the various scenes feel longer, in some instances more drawn out. The individual moments are more noticeable than when at the bar where things flow with more ease, and humour, due to simply feeling more alive as the elements work better together, and the central figure is in higher, more jubilant, spirits.

Blue Moon as a whole does feel overlong, not always helped by its pacing. And as additional characters, including Margaret Qualley as Elizabeth, the 20-year-old woman the 47-year-old Hart hopes to finally win the love of over the course of the night, pop in and out of the action the film proves the hit-and-miss nature of each conversation had. And when they don’t hit that’s when they truly feel drawn out. There are still retreats to the safety of the bar, for both Hart and the audience, there there’s less busyness, a more relaxed feeling although a line trod between acceptance and custom.

When straying away from the spirits of the bar there’s a hit-or-miss nature to the conversations and monologues which start to draw Blue Moon out, however there’s still a likable wit and flow to the sentimentality and tragedy of Hawke’s well-performed central character.

Release Date – 28th November 2025, Cert – 18, Run-time – 1 hour 47 minutes, Director – Harry Lighton

Quiet parking officer Colin (Harry Melling) becomes the submissive partner of tough-exterior biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), however while the relationship allows Colin to discover more of himself a lack of communication and expression from his partner causes tensions.

‘The annual gay BDSM bikers’ skinny dipping and fishing expedition’ easily sounds like it could be a Python sketch. Pillion sees no element of humour or mocking in the day out between biking enthusiast friends and their submissive/ dominant partners. While the film is refreshing and original in its normalised, unjudging view of the kinks of the characters, including protagonist Colin’s (Harry Melling) “aptitude for devotion,” this scene is also refreshing for Colin as he is brought further into a world where he’s less alone.

The quiet, unsure parking officer meets near-silent, hard-staring, leather-clad biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) at a pub on Christmas Eve, the next night their first date is a quick, seemingly unintimate blow job in an alley in the town centre. Yet, Colin’s intrigued, and much like him we’re drawn in to the mystery of Ray. However, as the pair move in together and their sub-dom relationship takes place, with Colin starting to find himself and his expressions of love within it, the reasons for Ray’s mystery start to cause tensions between the pair.

Skarsgård is great at turning the uncommunicative biker from a tough-edged enigma to a character clearly holding something in, making it hard for Melling’s continuously tender performance to start conversations about his want for more expression and conversation between the pair, more intimacy. There’s clearly a connection between the two, but it feels, successfully, divided because of their different views, and wants, from the relationship. Caught in the contrast between the brave and compelling performances, both, like the film, unflinching, totally committed and unshakably sensitive.

While many films may try to find humour around Pillion’s basis the laughs that are present, and there are a good few, come from the surroundings. Interactions Colin has with his colleagues and family as his looks start to change – although his mum (Lesley Sharp) starts to grow increasingly concerned the more distanced her son appears to become, especially when he reveals that Ray’s told him to go to the shop to buy ingredients for his special birthday dinner, that he has to cook himself. Even still, the enigmatic sense that hangs around Ray and what draws Colin too him is still understood and in place.

Yet, the humour never gets in the way of the growing strain the pair face due to the lack of dialogue they share. It’s a point that, like many others throughout the film, is looked at thoughtfully, bringing out the emotional side of things in a relationship that often lacks direct, verbal emotional expression – wonderfully conveyed as Melling starts to overflow and leak out his wants and feelings. He may sometimes hold in his emotions and feelings, yet the film manages to get them across with ease to keep us emotionally engaged and connected with Colin and the journey he goes on.

Everything in Pillion comes together not for a film that can be best described as bold or raw, but simply refreshing. An original love story that manages to gently and naturally flip over its themes to show the other, more difficult side of things in the wonderfully-performed central relationship. Mysterious and compelling, this is a tender look at discovery of self in love and communicating in the wake of that, even if they might seem to contrast.

Tender, compassionate and enigmatic, Pillion is a refreshing love story about self-discovery and trying to communicate. Sensitively performed by Melling and Skarsgård, the central relationship is utterly compelling as the film easily communicates the emotions the characters can’t.

Release Date – 28th November 2025, Cert – 15, Run-time – 2 hours 15 minutes, Director – David Michôd

Christy Martin (Sydney Sweeney) rises through the ranks of 90s boxing, establishing a stronger place for women in the sport, however is held back and undermined by her family and abusive husband (Ben Foster).

Christy certainly shows the flaws of its titular figure in her attitude to facing opponents. Maybe she’s playing up for the press and cameras, but there’s something about Christy Martin’s (Sydney Sweeney) comments which demonstrate an unlikable ego and cockiness. During fights which may not go as hoped as she rises through the ranks of 90s boxing it’s hard to feel a full degree of sympathy.

Where sympathy does come through though is in her personal life outside of the ring. While her career appears to excel, making for a more prominent place for women in the sport, Christy finds herself facing regular abuse from her husband (an increasingly unsettling, and to some degree unrecognisable, Ben Foster), Jim, also acting as her coach. He tells her that if she leaves him he’ll kill her, there’s no doubt that he means it. In dealing with this the film goes to some truly unexpected, and hard to watch places; especially in the third act where the drama and fear are ramped up beyond anything you’d imagine from the trailers. A conversation over the phone between the two is full of threatening tension.

Since its first festival screenings the biopic has been subject to some very sniffy reviews, and I’d argue quite unfairly. While in the first half it might be quite difficult to fully connect with the central figure there’s still an effective nature to the drama. One focusing on events outside of the ring as opportunities start to dry up in the wake of Jim holding Christy back, and her family only appearing to listen to his manipulative side of things, particularly patronising and ignorant mother Joyce (Merritt Wever) – who you just want to see get lamped like one Christy’s boxing rivals.

Over time the film certainly becomes more engaging, and a selection of good performances help to bring in consistency amongst the growing threat that Sweeney’s character faces. There’s engagement and a likable nature to much of the first half, but as the film gets closer to its third act it turns into something quite unexpected, and truly effective. The tone and push of a number of sequences that don’t hold back on detail or the levels of abuse Christy faces are quite something when it comes to the emotional reaction they earn. Through this lens Christy becomes a film about someone finding themselves, discovering their identity and what they’re good at different stages in life. Wrecked by those around her. When delving into that, and it does grow as a core theme, this slightly-sold-as-boxing-drama film, and there are elements of direct boxing drama in here that work and have a likable nature to them, is at its best.

A film with surprises in the intensity of the drama, with a good deal of threat and tension, Christy is a well-performed surprise that might not always connect you to the central figure in the first half but still has engagement in the more straightforward boxing beats.

Release Date – 26th November 2025, Cert – 12, Run-time – 2 hours 24 minutes, Director – Rian Johnson

Arriving in a small, New England town, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is called to assist in investigating an unexplainable murder in a closed-off church, could the cause actually be spiritual?

Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) describes himself as a “proud heretic – I kneel at the altar of the rational.” To challenge his belief Rian Johnson throws him into his most personally challenging case yet, an unexplainable murder that may well have been a divine, or demonic, act. A body tucked away in a rural New England church with nobody near it at the time of death, during a service.

The congregation (including Glenn Close, Cailee Spaeny, Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Daryl McCormack and Jeremy Renner – no references to Renning Hot, unfortunately) is assembled at the time of the murder and we see them gathering a number of times throughout. Generally, we see them more as a starry collective rather than individual figures. Johnson’s screenplay is still full of fun and clever details, but it seems to focus more on the challenge at hand for Blanc rather than the suspects, who don’t appear to have as much time spent with than in the delicious mysteries of the previous two Knives Out features.

Where we see these characters most is in the flashbacks to the days building up to the murder, and the different perspectives that surround these events. There certainly seems to be more jumping back and forth between times in this third film for Craig and Johnson’s detective and while the film is slower-paced with a more intense edge to the dramatic confrontations and heated exchanges – largely headed by the local Monsignor (Josh Brolin – often made to look like he’s just walked out of The Ten Commandments) whose sermons are less about the word of God and more fiery attacks on newcomers to the church, including recently-placed Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor).

It’s Jud who we follow throughout the film, alongside Blanc, as the newcomer accused by the congregation of stirring trouble and committing the murder. O’Connor gives a strong performance as the determined yet increasingly nervous priest still dealing with a church that appears to have decided to clash with and challenge him before he even arrived. He pairs well with the battle that Craig’s consistently entertaining Blanc finds himself in with the impossible crime at hand – a point which creates some of the most interesting beats of the film that could be expanded on more.

For all the drama unfolding in the investigation there’s still the familiar comic relief present in the previous two films, and more than you’d perhaps expect from all the promotion and interviews making it seem as if Wake Up Dead Man will be a deadly serious affair. There are still plenty of chuckles throughout which don’t distract from the overall tone and slower pace, and further highlight the audience aspect of watching a mystery such as this. Even if the slower pace means that the overall film feels less tight than before.

Yet, Johnson and Craig are still clearly having a great deal of fun making these films, and it comes across in the detail of the clues, reveals and investigation. Still involving and intriguing, even if the suspects aren’t quite glimpsed as much on an individual basis this time around. The characters who lead, and the mystery around the mystery, are the biggest draws here and create the most engagement and entertainment. Bringing out the sharper edges of the intense dramatic exchanges and personal battles which surround the murder and those near to it. While Blanc may struggle to suspect foul play this time, it’s easy for everyone else to suspect another finely executed Knives Out mystery.

While it might not quite be as tight as previous entries due to less time spent focusing on the suspects, Wake Up Dead Man is still an investing mystery that turns up the drama with personal battles for the well-performed leads of Blanc and O’Connor. This is another slice of gloriously detailed fun from Johnson and Craig.