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Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 5/30/2026

Upcoming Movies

I usually talk about movies in the past. Movies in the long past most of the time.

But, I do keep abreast of current day movie news, and there have been some upcoming films that have intrigued me in certain ways.

But before I get to these specific examples, I wonder if I should be excited about movies in the future, movies that are sometimes not even in production yet and literally no one has seen (rough cuts aren't the film), or about movies from decades past that have existed for years and actually have great reputations but I just haven't seen yet.

Of course, online discourse trends towards the unseen. We know a movie is coming for months, even years, but no one can slam the door shut on the film in any way. Casting news, spy shots of set, rumors of story beats...it's just an endless stream of possibilities to grab onto for endless articles and videos whereas if you go and watch an old movie, well, that's it. You've seen it. You know if you like it or not, if you agree with the long-held generalized opinion, and it's done. It's a lot less fun than picking apart clues to try and come to a conclusion about if something is going to be good or not.

It's a game, a play in the zeitgeist, an effort to be part of an on-going conversation. It's not really about the movies themselves, but about connecting with other people. That's fine, but my concern is always about the movies themselves. So, I tend to be more excited about old movies I haven't seen than new movies that literally no one has seen (again, rough cuts without finished sound, effects, or music are not the film, they are rough cuts).

However, that being said, there are some movies I've heard about that have piqued my interest.

Paradise Lost

Roger Avary has been in the movie business for decades, mostly as a writer. He cowrote Pulp Fiction with Quentin Tarantino, for which he won an Oscar. He's apparently had a dream of making a big-budget movie production of John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost for a long time.

And he's recently signed an agreement with Ex Machina Studios studio to make it. The twist is that Ex Machina is an AI production house. They use AI tools to make videos. The studio frames themselves this way: that they endeavor to create “expansive worlds to be realized at a responsible budget while preserving the primacy of real actors, human-authored narratives, and guild-aligned production practices.”

Avary, who wrote Robert Zemeckis' film Beowulf says that he is “taking a more faithful approach at a fraction of the cost, using cutting-edge generative AI to bring Milton's vision to life in ways unimaginable just a few years ago.” Beowulf, for comparison's sake, had a reported budget of $150 million. A fraction of $150 million could mean nine-tenths, or it could mean one-tenth. It's not specified, but I imagine something along the lines of $30-50 million.

Why does this excite me?

Well, Avary may not be a premiere creative voice in American cinema (he wrote Silent Hill for pete's sake), but the ambition of the film interests me. The poem of Paradise Lost is large, includes a lot of weird sights, angelic and demonic battles, all told in that Middle English patois. It's...unusual for movies to take on something this big, this Biblical, and this strange on this scale. If Avary can find good uses of AI generated assets to bring down costs so that we can see more extremely ambitious projects that don't require the funding of a major Marvel movie to accomplish, then that's a potential beginning of a general trend that interests me.

Maybe even the movie will be good.

Elden Ring


Alex Garland is an interesting filmmaker. He started as a writer, mostly working with Danny Boyle on movies like 28 Days Later, he started as a director on the set of Dredd where, according to just about everyone on set, he took over directing duties for credited director Pete Travis. He then went off to make movies like Ex Machina, Annihilation, Civil War, and Warfare (which he codirected with Ray Mendoza, his military advisor on Civil War). Even Men, while it might not be successful overall, is interesting, especially when it comes to mood.

Elden Ring is a video game from the company From Software, written by George R.R. Martin, and part of a genre of games called Souls-like that have spare, implied stories, and are extremely difficult to play, focusing on very tough boss battles. I haven't played it, but I have played other From Software games (the first two Dark Souls games).

And A24, the art house horror studio is funding Alex Garland to make an adaptation of the game with the highest budget the studio has ever fronted at over $100 million.

The tone that Garland commands, the ever-increasing control of large budgets, and the fact that Garland is...interesting (he wrote the new 28 Years Later movies which, again, are interesting), even if not always successful makes the upcoming project just seem like it could be a unique tale. I think of the weird sense of unease through Annihilation, the body horror of Men, the moral quandaries of Ex Machina, and awesome action of Dredd, and the strong sense of story from the 28 movies, and I see a combination of factors that will just go well with the kind of worlds that From Software make.

Should be fun.

Citizen Vigilante


I went through a handful of Uwe Boll movies a few years ago, and I was done fairly quickly. He's a bad filmmaker with a terrible sense of humor who was using an exploit in German tax law to fund his films. Once that exploit got closed, he stopped making movies and became a restauranteur.

Armie Hammer is the son of an entertainment executive who became a decent-sized movie star through the 2010s, starring in films like The Social Network and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. His career completely derailed in 2018 when recordings of him playing out some weird cannibal fetish leaked, women accused him of abuse, and he lost all ability to get work in Hollywood. Reportedly, he sold timeshares for a little while to make ends' meet.

Well, both have come back with what looks like an absolutely awful vigilante movie. Trailer below.


I'm looking forward to this because it looks like an absolute trainwreck. Dialogue is bad and poorly delivered. Everything's too brightly lit and flat. The action looks unengaging. Should be fascinating to witness.

But, then again, I could just watch some other Uwe Boll film I haven't seen before and get the same experience without having to wait for it. Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

Looking Ahead


I tried to find some movies ahead that I am both looking forward to in some what (yeah, Citizen Vigilante looks very bad), but that aren't actually being talked about much. Discussion of Elden Ring will go up next year closer to its release. Paradise Lost should go up once production actually starts.

In the near term, I have some hope for Disclosure Day because the early word is that it's good (early word is often wrong), and some leaking that it was some kind of secret sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (probably not true). Still, Spielberg walking away from pseudo-serious stuff to do some more suspense and scif-fi is something to look forward to.

In the Hand of Dante, which was bought by Netflix off the festival circuit, looks like it could be interesting, though I've heard it's something of a mess.

Young Washington is a movie by Angel Studios about George Washington in the French and Indian War that I'm mostly hoping stole the monster idea from my book Colonial Nightmare. I imagine the movie isn't going to be very good, but we'll see.

The End of Oak Street is the third film by It Follows director David Robert Mitchell, and the story of a neighborhood suddenly transported to a place with dinosaurs, and it could be fun.

The Uprising is the latest movie from Paul Greengrass, this time about a peasant revolt in England in 1381. No trailer or anything so far, but Greengrass interests me. He's like a less iconoclastic Costa-Gavras.

Wildwood is the latest stop motion movie from LAIKA studios, and the trailer looks good. The biggest letdown from LAIKA was The Box Trolls, but otherwise they've captured a bit of magic in a world that's largely forgotten that stop-motion animation can be wonderful.

Oh, and Robert Eggers has a new movie at the end of the year, Werwulf, which is going to be all Middle English monster movie. I'm not the biggest Eggers fan. I kind of find him frustrating (technically polished and intelligent while kind of empty emotionally), but he's unique and talented. I hope it does well.

What are you looking forward to?

Movies of Today

Opening in Theaters:

Backrooms

The Breadwinner

Movies I Saw This Fortnight:

The Revenge of Frankenstein (Rating 3/4) Full Review "I don't think the film is great. The drama isn't spectacular. It's mostly functional, but the effort is there and I think it all does come together in the end fairly well." [Roku]

I Only Arsked! (Rating 0.5/4) Full Review "Really, this is just kind of dreary. There's no anchor, no core, and no laughs. " [YouTube]

The Hound of the Baskervilles (Rating 3/4) Full Review "It's a solid little murder mystery with a good amount of flare to make it interesting. " [Prime]

The Man Who Could Cheat Death (Rating 3/4) Full Review "It's a small and pleasant little surprise." [Kanopy]

Ten Seconds to Hell (or, The Phoenix) (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "This is a small triumph from Hammer, though it feels like something of a happy accident." [Prime]

Yesterday's Enemy (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "I did not expect this little bit of WWII detour to be the real height of Hammer artistically, but that's what it's ending up being." [YouTube]

The Mummy (Rating 2.5/4) Full Review "Still, that final act is really fun, Fisher flexing some genre muscles to bring some quality entertainment at the right time." [Library]

Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (Rating 3/4) Full Review "So, I think the end saves the film, in a weird way. It shouldn't. It's kind of horrible. But it's the right kind of horrible the story needs." [YouTube]

Please check out my videos from the last few weeks:

David Lean: The Directors Series
David Lean: The Definitive Ranking
Sam Peckinpah: The Directors Series
Sam Peckinpah: The Definitive Ranking
Memorial Day
Contact

Email any suggestions or questions to thejamesmadison.aos at symbol gmail dot com.
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My next thread will be on 6/20.