Fantasia 2026: 'Attack On Paradise' Movie Review

“This is really bad timing, babe.” For Suleyman (Said Boumazoughe), the protagonist of Bob Colares's new action-thriller, Attack on Paradise, this is easily the understatement of a lifetime, considering he’s about to embark on a day that plays out like a mix of The Raid and Walking Tall. 

Fantasia 2026: 15 Movies To See

Every year I scale back a little more and a little more on reviews and movie coverage. At this point, I barely cover wide, mainstream releases, and I’ve scaled film festival coverage down to a bare minimum. But like clockwork, when this time of year rolls around, I can’t escape the allure of Fantasia. 

'Man Of War' (2026) Movie Review

In writer/director William Kaufman’s new action film, Man of War, we meet our protagonist, Connor (LaMonica Garret), an elite spec-ops veteran, like we always meet this character in movies. He’s shirtless, so we can see both his muscles and his scars from a lifetime of combat, drinking straight from a bottle of booze, staring at a photo of a lost or distant loved one, a loaded gun on the table in front of him. He’s a man lost, adrift, uncertain of how to live in a world beyond the bounds of warfare. 

'Kraken' (2026) Movie Review

A remote Norwegian fjord. A legacy of strange occurrences. Disappearing tourists. Environmental degradation. A corrupt business using questionable technology with unexpected side effects. All of this adds up to a big old mess in director Pal Oie’s new creature feature, Kraken, with mixed results. On one hand, it can be a thrilling adventure about human meddling waking up an unforeseen natural threat from the chilly depths of the ocean. On the other, it’s awash in cliches and a slow burn to the point where the fuse almost goes entirely out.

'Hungry' (2026) Movie Review

When we think about hippos, a lot of us think of them as big, cute, cuddly goofs. They make excellent stuffed animals for a reason, after all. The reality, however, is they are actually ornery, territorial, startlingly fast on land and in water, and dangerous as all hell. There is no shortage of terrifying hippo videos on the internet; they are straight up scary. And now they are getting their due in the fun new hippos-on-a-rampage movie, Hungry. 

SIFF 2026: 'Body Blow' Capsule Review

Imagine if Greg Araki or Alice Maio Mackay made Cruising and you have an idea of Dean Francis’s Body Blow. Lo-fi and neon-drenched, it follows a sex-addicted, non-masturbating cop (Tim Pocock) as he gets in too deep with a ruthless drag queen crime boss.

'Fuze' (2025) Movie Review

A massive, unexploded bomb left over from World War II is discovered at a construction site in the middle of a busy London neighborhood. The authorities evacuate the area and call in a bomb disposal unit. A crew of thieves use this cover to stage a daring heist. So goes Fuze, the new thriller from director David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water). What unfolds is a taut, fast-paced ticking-clock thriller full of twists and turns, with a few more twists and a handful of extra turns thrown in for good measure.

'Normal' (2025) Movie Review

Because it’s an action movie starring Bob Odenkirk as a seemingly regular guy pushed to extreme violence and was written by Derek Kolstad, Normal is going to get compared to 2021's Nobody, for good and ill. (Honestly, the similar title doesn’t help in that regard.) While there are definite parallels, Ben Wheatley’s new movie is more average-Joe-in-extraordinary-circumstances than it is secret-badass-hiding-in-plain-sight. Quite a bit of Normal is a total blast, but just as much, if not more, sags under curious, often baffling choices. It’s a weird, mixed bag of a film.

'The Forbidden City' (2025) Movie Review

Gabriele Mainetti’s The Forbidden City is a strange movie. It presents as a throwback martial arts actioner about a Chinese woman, Mei (badass stunt performer Yaxi Liu), single-mindedly battling her way through Rome’s criminal underworld in search of her missing sister. And it is that. The Italian picture comes out swinging and plays like a kung-fu movie greatest hits collection: Mei fights her way up many flights of stairs; there’s a kitchen fight, complete with using pots and pans as improvised weapons, boiling oil, and flaming stovetops; and even a red-light brothel fight. This all happens in the first few minutes. From there, it’s an odd assemblage of a face-pummeling action movie, gangster saga, melodramatic rom-com, operatic tragedy, and more. It’s an unexpected mixture and doesn’t seem like it should work, but it does, combining into something singular and unique.

'Hellfire' (2026) Movie Review

According to author and famed writing teacher, John Gardner, all fictional stories can be boiled down to one of two plots: someone leaves town, someone comes to town. (OR maybe you subscribe to Christopher Booker’s Seven Basic Plots approach, or one of the many other theories, but for our purposes today, we’ll stick with Gardner.) Hellfire, the latest from direct-to-video action auteur Isaac Florentine (Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, Undisputed 2 and 3), follows this formula to a tee. 

The 50 Most-Anticipated Movies Of 2026

Hot on the heels of another great year of movies, it’s time to flip the calendar. Which around these parts also means it’s time to look to the future and see what cinema has to offer us this year. With that in mind, here are my 50, or at least 50-ish most anticipated movies coming our way in 2026.

'Wildcat' (2025) Movie Review

Before he wraps up his single-take action franchise next year (the third installment, One Last Shot, is reportedly already in the can), James Nunn is back to grace us with the Kate Beckinsale-fronted DTV offering, Wildcat. And tactical action fans have a great deal to be thankful for.

'Affinity' (2025) Movie Review

Marko Zaror’s DNA is all over the movie Affinity. And not just because, at one point, he says, “Here’s your DNA, motherfucker,” then flings his own blood all over a dude’s face. He’s a producer, the creative team features many of his frequent collaborators (for example, Fist of the Condor director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza edited the movie), he has a story-by credit and a screenwriting credit, and he’s the fight/action director. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, he’s also the star. The fights are, as expected in his capable hands, excellent, Zaror has the chance to do some different things, acting wise, and there’s a big, wild swing at the end that I don’t think entirely lands, and that is kind of nonsense, but that I freaking love. All in an 80-minute package.

'The Furious' (2025) Movie Review

Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious is the action movie of the year. It may be the action movie of a few years, because holy hell does it go hard. If having the legendary stunt coordinator and action director in the big chair didn’t already pique your interest, he also enlisted the great Kensuke Sonomura—director of Ghost Killer, Hydra, and Bad City, as well as all around stunt badass—as his action director. Add to this mix a cast fronted by Miao Xie (An Eye For an Eye) and Joe Taslim (The Night Comes For Us), and that heavily features Joey Iwanaga (Baby Assassins 2), Brian Le (Everything Everywhere All at Once), Yayan Ruhian (The Raid), and even an appearance by Jeeja Yanin (Chocolate), and this is action-movie-fan-Christmas.

'Under Fire' (2025) Movie Review

On the heels of last fall’s Aftermath, the better of the two armored-car-robbery-on-a-bridge movies that came out within a week of one another (the less said about Sylvester Stallone’s abysmal Armor, the better), Mason Gooding (Scream) and Dylan “Not Jughead” Sprouse are back for another team up. This time they team up for Under Fire, a throwback action comedy that is itself a follow up to director Steven C. Miller’s 2024 Werewolves, which if you haven’t seen, is a fine time.

'Red Sonja' (2025) Movie Review

There’s been talk of a new Red Sonja movie for what feels like forever. Multiple stars and high-profile filmmakers have been attached in one form or another, until it seemed like it was destined to languish just out of reach in development hell. But here we are, in the year of our lord 2025, and M.J. Bassett, the director behind Solomon Kane and Rogue, among others, has finally delivered the goods. 

'Holy Night: Demon Hunters' (2025) Movie Review

I say this every time I review one of his movies, but watching Ma Dong-seok (aka Don Lee) clobber dudes is one of modern action cinema’s purest pleasures. What director Lim Dae-hee’s new film, Holy Night: Demon Hunters, proposes is, what if, instead of dudes, there were demons, and Ma punched them in the face, too? That sounds like a match made in heaven. Or hell, as the case may be.

Fantasia 2025: 'Blazing Fists' Movie Review

Blazing Fists is a much more manageable title for prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike’s new film, which is also known as Blue Fight: The Breaking Down of Young Blue Warriors. That’s a mouthful. Whatever you call it, this is a fairly straightforward action drama about young men using sports, mixed martial arts in this case, to rise above meager circumstances. But don’t worry, this is still Miike, so it also has biker gangs, violence, oddball flourishes, and a sardonic crime boss bored with the world in a casual, terrifying way.

'Osiris' (2025) Movie Review

Coming off back-to-back bangers Shrapnel and The Channel, William Kaufman is back with more of that sweet DTV tactical action that’s so popular amongst a certain segment of moviegoers. This time, however, he’s splashing around in the genre pool with Osiris. It’s not his first foray into genre, Daylight’s End has vampires, after all, but this one involves aliens and spaceships and all the associated sci-fi accoutrements.

'Ghost Killer' (2024) Movie Review

Fumika (Akari Takaishi, Baby Assassins) is your average college student. She has a crappy job, constantly fends off creepy men pestering her, and she’s very clumsy. Seriously, she falls down. A lot. Things change a wee bit, however, when she meets the ghost of a vicious hitman, Kudo (Masanori Mimoto, First Love), who occasionally possesses her and takes control of her body. It’s like Upgrade or even Venom at times as the two consciousnesses occupy the same space. (Or All of Me with fisticuffs?) After some coaxing, she agrees to help him exact revenge against the people who killed him. So goes the plot of Kensuke Sonomura’s new action-oriented ghost story Ghost Killer.