For It Is Man's Number: January 2026

Sunday, 4 January 2026

Netflix And Chill: A House Of Dynamite (2025)

Whatever I end up thinking of them, a new Kathryn Bigelow film is always something I look forward to watching. She tends to make films that refuse to provide easy answers for people. She tends to make films specifically for adult viewers. A House Of Dynamite is very much of a piece with the rest of her filmography.

The plot is quite simple. People in the White House Situation Room are soon made aware of a very worrying situation. There's apparently an ICBM heading towards the USA, due to hit Chicago in about 20 minutes. After figuring out whether it's real or not, everyone is out on high alert as they come up with various scenarios, and maybe even one or two ways to take the missile out of action. The main people involved in some frantic conversations are a duty officer, Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), the Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris), a Deputy National Security Advisor (Gabriel Basso), General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts), and, of course, the President (hidden away for most of the film, but most will be able to recognise the voice before seeing him appear onscreen).

While he was a number of other screenplays under his belt, this is a marked step up in quality for writer Noah Oppenheim, who feels as if he has recently found his sweet spot with fictions based on many real scenarios he would have been very aware of during his tenure as president of NBC News. Teaming up with Bigelow, who has excelled in recent years with films that often feel like docu-fiction, but without ever losing that movie magic, is a win win for both.

It's hard to pick any individual highlights from the fantastic cast assembled here, but the final scene for Jared Harris certainly underlines his emotional turmoil as things look to go from bad to worse. Ferguson is great, as ever, and Letts is superb, seeming to relish the structure of the whole thing (we watch things play out, then jump back about 20 minutes to watch them from another POV, and then jump back again to follow someone else, learning a bit more each time while the missile continues to fly through the air). Basso is fine as the younger man trying to convince everyone to let cooler heads prevail, and there is room for many familiar faces throughout the supporting cast, including Anthony Ramos, Moses Ingram, Greta Lee, Jason Clarke, Willa Fitzgerald, and Kaitlyn Deaver, not to mention the star who plays POTUS.

It may not be as good as her last feature, the phenomenal Detroit, and there will be many who dislike the ending (one designed to keep you discussing the film for some time after it has finished), but this shows Bigelow handling busy and dark material with her usual steady hand and mastery. Whether or not you want to make it a priority on your viewing schedule just depends on whether or not you're in the mood for a drama that looks at what would happen if someone decided to launch a surprise attack on the USA. Considering the recent news cycle, it's hard to decide on just how far-fetched that idea is nowadays.

8/10

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Saturday, 3 January 2026

Shudder Saturday: A Desert (2024)

The feature directorial debut from Joshua Erkman, who also co-wrote the film with Bossi Baker, A Desert is an intriguing blend of neo-noir, horror, and something that should appeal to fans of Rob Zombie (specifically his work showcasing the Firefly family).

Kai Lennox is Alex, a photographer who ends up staying at a motel where he encounters Renny (Zachary Ray Sherman) and Susie Q (Ashley Smith). Things don't go well, which leads to Alex's wife, Sam (Sarah Lind), hires a private investigator, Harold Palladino (David Yow), to retrace his steps and find him.

Interspersed with moments of surrealism, a nightmare atmosphere that keeps the firm with one foot planted in the horror genre while the rest of it stays firmly in thriller territory, A Desert may not be entirely successful with what it's trying to do, but that's only because it's never as focused as it could be. Characters are given some time and space, but still don't get enough. We get to know a bit about Alex, not much though. We get to find out the real faces behind the everyday (thin) masks worn by Renny and Susie Q, but only a glimpse. We feel Sam's worry and frustration in relation to the situation, but she is mostly defined just by that. The closest we get to someone fully fleshed-out is Harold, a mix of past failures and present weaknesses, but somehow still doing the job he was paid for when he gets away from any distractions.

The cast is a very mixed bag, which doesn't help. Sherman and Smith are so good that they show up those who can't match them, which is particularly obvious in the scenes they have with Lennox. Lind isn't given as much to do, although she does okay, and Yow is a bit too low-energy when the third act needs him to work in line with the heightened energy of things spiralling towards a climax. He's not bad though, just never seeming ready to act with any real haste.

For all the faults of the film, in terms of the varied performances, the scenes that seem to bulk out the 103-minute runtime unnecessarily, and the disappointingly vague nature of some key moments, it's a strong enough debut from Erkman to make him someone worth keeping an eye on. He shows a good ability to heighten the darkness and horror of what could have easily been a pedestrian and tame thriller premise, and there's something impressively Lynchian about the details he chooses to focus, as well as the atmosphere he creates in the moments that are building up to a sudden outburst of violence.

It's hard to recommend this to others, it is unlikely to fully satisfy thriller fans or horror fans, but it should definitely work for some people as it worked for me. And I'll be very interested in whatever comes next from Erkman, even if he uses this feature as a connection to some other tale in similar territory.

7/10

Friday, 2 January 2026

A Matter Of Life And Death (1946)

It's been well-established for a long time that we Brits like to talk about the weather. A Matter Of Life And Death actually goes as far as allowing some weather to save the life (or delay the death anyway) of our main character. That's probably the only thing I can say here that might not have been said already in the multitude of reviews and essays telling you how good this film is. It's been hailed as a classic, one of the best British movies of all time, and rightly so.

Peter Carter (David Niven) is a British wartime airman who jumps out of his damaged plane with a parachute pack that he knows won't work. It's very foggy when he jumps though, which is why he isn't immediately scooped up to the afterlife by Conductor 71 (Marius Goring). That should be rectified soon enough, but there's a wrinkle. Carter has fallen in love with the American woman (June, played by Kim Hunter) who spoke to him over the radio when death was imminent. Arguing that he has other responsibilities and context now, Carter doesn't want dragged into the afterlife. He starts an appeal process, but the odds seem stacked against him.

Co-written and co-directed by the mighty Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, two names known to anyone who is a fan of classic cinema, this was another film I had long been meaning to check off my watchlist, but also one I never seemed to be in the mood for. Silly me. The thing about so many films that are spoken so highly of, and with such fondness, is that they actually tend to work their magic on you any time you get around to them.

Powell and Pressburger are rightly regarded as legends of cinema, and this glorious blend of the fantastical and the grounded, showcased by a very effective choice to have the time in our reality shown in Technicolor while the heavenly sequences are in gorgeously crisp black and white, is easy to consider as one of their very best, if not their absolute masterpiece. Like some other titles from this decade I could mention, the magical premise proves to be a great way to deliver a powerful message about the human experience, and all that it encompasses. Everyone deserves praise for bringing this vision to life (especially those who helped to create a giant escalator showcased in the third act), but I must highlight the contributions from editor Reginald Mills, cinematographer Jack Cardiff, and composer Allan Gray.

Despite being about a decade older than the age of his character, Niven is the perfect, and perfectly charming, lead. He delivers one of the all-time great "keep calm and carry on" British performances in cinema history. Hunter is very good opposite him, believably moved by the circumstances and the man to fall in love so quickly and strongly. Goring is a lot of fun in his role, which could have easily been played in a number of different ways (I did wonder if he was going to turn menacing and dangerous at some point), and both Roger Livesey and Raymond Massey relish their scenes in the finale that have them opposing one another in the case to decide Carter's designated date of death.

I can understand people being put off by the unrelentingly stiff-upper-lipped nature of a few of the main characters, one character passes a message along that is literally just "what ho!" at one point, but I would encourage everyone to just accept the language and mannerisms and let themselves be carried along through a cinematic experience that feels both unabashedly epic and also cosy and personal.

10/10

Thursday, 1 January 2026

I Swear (2025)

What's this? It's me starting off 2026 with one of my absolute favourite films from 2025, and I cannot overstate how highly I recommend this to all.

I Swear is a biographical drama that tells the story of John Davidson, a man diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome at a young age. Getting that diagnosis doesn't help much though, especially when so many people were quite ignorant of Tourette's syndrome back when John was trying to just have a normal life. Helped by a friend's mother who ends up essentially adopting John as another son, and a boss/colleague who sees the good-hearted and hard-working young man behind the tics and swearing, John is eventually motivated to share his story with more and more people, aiming to remove the stigma of his condition and educate the masses.

There are a few other features from writer-director Kirk Jones that I would recommend, he generally tends to offer feelgood fare, but I Swear is the best thing that he's done so far, helped by the material and some superb casting. Most viewers will undoubtedly find themselves going through a wide range of emotions (it will certainly make some people laugh and cry in equal measure), but the other main strength of the film is how it encourages empathy and will have people considering the full repercussions of living with a condition that makes every day a battle against the involuntary actions of your own mind and body.

To ensure that I give him due credit, Scott Ellis Watson deserves a good amount of praise for his heart-breaking and brilliant portrayal of Davidson in his childhood years. It would be the performance to talk about, if not for the fact that Robert Aramayo then takes on lead duties with what I consider a flawless performance. Aramayo shows all of the emotions that run through his head, whether his body and mind are in sync, or whether they are at odds with one another, as is more often the case. Aramayo is also easy to like, and does well with the wry humour that is allowed throughout to keep the whole thing entertaining and enjoyable, in between the more difficult scenes. Maxine Peake is also great, playing the surrogate-mum Dottie Achenbach, and Peter Mullan is a treat as the man who gives John his first proper job, as well as the idea to inform others about his condition. Shirley Henderson takes on a tougher role, playing John's actual mother, Heather, a woman at a loss with what she sees as a problem in her son that he won't try hard enough to fix, and it's another performance in line with pretty much every great turn she's given over the past few decades. Others are onscreen, and nobody puts a foot wrong, but those four performances deliver the full heart of the film.

I went into I Swear hoping to like it, but that's nothing new for me. I was wary, however, because of times when the marketing seemed to be making promises that the film itself wouldn't be able to keep. Everyone who saw it was raving about it, and it was being touted as a new beloved jewel in the crown of British cinema. It turns out that all of the praise was absolutely justified. Navigating some treacherous territory, it hops around tonally with a confidence and purpose that helps any individual moments to feel jarring alongside anything else here. It also helps that viewers are reassured by an opening scene set in the modern day that they know will come along eventually, no matter what hardships Davidson endures on his way to a moment of joy (and maybe just one moment of peace).

10/10