YNOT at the Movies

There is something admirably earnest about "Hoppers" (USA 2026 | 105 min.), directed by Daniel Chong. It wants to be big hearted, big tented, and big on fur texture. It wants to believe that if we just listen closely enough, the beavers will draft a constitution and the sharks will file polite complaints. What it ends up delivering is a fairy tale so featherlight it might float away in a stiff breeze, pleasant enough for toddlers, less so for anyone craving narrative gravity.

In this animated eco adventure, animal loving teen Mabel Tanaka (voiced by Piper Curda) discovers that her beloved glade is slated to be bulldozed for a new highway by reelection hungry Mayor Jerry Generazzo (voiced by Jon Hamm). To save the natural environment, Rather than waiting for permission, Mabel barges into her professor's top secret lab and impulsively transfers her consciousness into a robotic beaver. Now navigating the pond from the inside, she befriends the relentlessly upbeat King George (voiced by Bobby Moynihan) and attempts to unite the animal kingdoms against the looming human threat.

The film spends some time explaining the mechanics of "hopping," the key fantasy about the lab equipment function invented by the anxious professor and ecological research team. It wants us to understand the rules. That insistence on plausibility makes the later flights of absurdity feel even stranger. When a shark suddenly soars through the sky to chase a moving car, physics is tossed aside for a gag. The careful scaffolding collapses into cartoon logic, and the tonal balance wobbles.

The characters are undeniably cute. King George radiates genial optimism, a beaver who believes in Pond Rules and communal aerobics. Mabel is all righteous spark and skateboard grit. Mayor Jerry has a polished comic rhythm that keeps him from becoming a complete caricature. They are likable in the way plush toys are likable. Soft edges, bright eyes, easy smiles. What they lack is magnetism. No one quite transcends their function in the script.

The central conflict feels similarly lopsided. The film preaches harmony between people and animals, hammering home Pond Rule number three: we are all in this together. Yet the human threat boils down to building a highway through this fragile glade, an almost cartoonishly blunt metaphor. The moral math is so simple it barely qualifies as arithmetic. Development is bad, nature is good. The nuance that might have made Mayor Jerry's dilemma genuinely thorny is smoothed away like one of those digitally painted leaves.

Like most Pixar animations, the movie is often lovely to watch. The aspen groves glow in autumnal yellows, night scenes shimmer with carefully calibrated exposure. There is craft here, and plenty of it. But craft without coherence becomes decoration.

Ultimately, this movie feels like a bedtime story told with a megaphone. Sweet, brightly colored, intermittently funny, and determined to reassure us that the world can be mended if we just listen to the beavers. For very young viewers, that may be enough. For everyone else, the leap of faith might be a bit too long, even for a hopping machine.

"Hoppers" opens in theaters on Friday, March 6, 2026.

The moors have rarely looked this wet, this cruel, or this inviting to ruin. Director Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" (UK/USA 2026 | 136 min.) is another adaptation of Emily Brontë's novel that has been made into films many times, and this version treats the story less as heritage drama and more as an emotional battlefield where love, jealousy, revenge, and regret are pushed to their breaking points.

The film follows Cathy Earnshaw (Margot Robbie), a headstrong and volatile young woman raised in isolation at the crumbling Wuthering Heights, and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi), the orphan her father brings home who becomes her closest companion and eventual obsession. As they grow older, Cathy is seduced by the wealth and refinement of Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), while Heathcliff disappears and later returns transformed. Their once-inseparable bond fractures, and the consequences ripple outward, poisoning friendships, marriages, and loyalties. Watching from the edges is Nelly (Hong Chau), Cathy's childhood companion, whose presence hovers over much of the drama.

The film strikingly incorporates the Yorkshire landscape to full effect, with rain lashing against faces, fog swallowing bodies, and wind scouring the moors. There are an extraordinary number of close-ups, faces filling the frame, skin gleaming with rain or tears, breath and texture magnified to utmost intimacy. The result is frequently breathtaking, a tactile, immersive experience where emotion feels carved into stone and mud.

But the film's emphasis on provocation sometimes interferes with its storytelling. The flirtations with BDSM imagery feel more designed to shock or provoke a chuckle than to deepen our understanding of the characters. The central romance, despite committed performances from Robbie and Elordi, never fully convinces. Heathcliff is initially presented as disheveled and almost vagrant in appearance, which makes his later transformation into a wealthy, well-groomed gentleman feel not just dramatic but strategic. One cannot help but wonder: if he had not returned rich and polished, would Cathy's passion have reignited with the same force? The film never quite grapples with that uncomfortable question.

More crucially, the transition from childhood friendship to adult, all-consuming love is never convincingly realized. We are told their bond is elemental, that they are halves of the same being, but the emotional evolution between those stages feels abrupt rather than inevitable. The film insists on epic passion; it does not always earn it.

Hong Chau's Nelly, meanwhile, is given frustratingly little to do. For such a pivotal figure in the novel's architecture, and for an actor of Chau's depth, the role feels reduced to a peripheral observer, a wasted opportunity in a film otherwise so attentive to aesthetic detail.

After more than two hours of running time, the film is most persuasive as a spectacle. It is filled with beautiful images and a charged atmosphere, a storm you can almost taste. As a love story, however, it remains more impressive than persuasive, its emotional thunder rumbling loudly without ever quite striking home.

"Wuthering Heights" opens in theaters on Friday, February 13, 2026.

There are films that announce their importance loudly, and others that move with the authority of lived memory. "The President's Cake" (مملكة القصب | Iraq/Qatar/USA 2025 | in Arabic | 105 min.) belongs firmly to the latter. It is a film of hushed dread and luminous tenderness, one that understands how terror often enters daily life disguised as routine. A school assignment. A celebration. A cake.

Set in 1990s Iraq under sanctions, the film follows nine-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmed Nayyef) after she is selected in her class to provide a cake in honor of the President's birthday, a task that sends her across the city in search of ordinary yet nearly impossible-to-find ingredients. What begins as a child's errand quickly becomes a test of survival, as Lamia navigates markets and police checkpoints alongside her grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat), her loyal friend Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), and her pet rooster Hindi. Eggs, flour, sugar: each item carries risk, and each step forward tightens the film's grip.

Director Hasan Hadi tells an arresting story that draws deeply from personal memory. The film feels neither schematic nor didactic, but shaped by recollection and observation. Elements of myth and lived reality intertwine, allowing innocence and danger to coexist without ever canceling each other out. The world is never explained to Lamia, only endured, and that perspective gives the film its devastating power.

What makes the film so affecting is its refusal to flatten experience into political messaging. The politics are unavoidable, yet never preached. Instead, the film is devoted to ordinary endurance: how children absorb danger without fully naming it, how adults shield them imperfectly, how love and friendship persist under pressure. The cake itself becomes a fragile vessel for hope under tyranny, something almost too delicate to survive the weight placed upon it.

The performances, drawn from non-actors, feel astonishingly alive. Faces register fear, resolve, and fleeting joy with unguarded honesty. Lamia's journey unfolds as both adventure and ordeal, shaped by a sense of destiny that feels inescapable. And yes, Hindi the rooster deserves special mention: a scene-stealing presence whose perfectly timed cries puncture the tension like a living alarm bell.

Shot entirely in Iraq, the film carries the gravity of place in every frame. Locations do not serve as backdrops but as witnesses, holding history in their walls and dust. The images find beauty without softening reality.

Winner of the Directors' Fortnight Audience Award and the Camera d'Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, and shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best International Feature representing Iraq, this film is one of my top ten films of 2025: heartbreaking, mesmerizing, and indelible.

"The President's Cake" opens in the San Francisco Bay Area on Friday, February 13, 2026.

Faces lacquered in white, bodies trained into discipline, emotions sealed beneath centuries of tradition: Sang-il Lee's epic "Kokuho" (国宝 | Japan 2025 | in Japanese | 174 min.) is a film that moves first through ritual and gesture before it turns to inner life. A box office hit in Japan, the film was Japan's official submission and shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, and has also received an Oscar nomination for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. It carries the weight of cultural representation on its elaborately costumed shoulders.

Set in Nagasaki in 1964, the film begins with new year celebration when the life of Kikuo Tachibana (Soya Kurokawa), the 14-year-old son of a yakuza boss, is abruptly rerouted after his father's violent death. Recognized for his talent, Kikuo is taken in by the head of a prestigious Kansai kabuki household and raised alongside Shunsuke Ogaki (Keitatsu Koshiyama) of his age, the household's biological son and presumed heir. What begins as shared training and mutual dependence slowly curdles into a volatile bond of rivalry, resentment, and fragile loyalty, as the two boys come of age—Kikuo Tachibana (Ryô Yoshizawa) anointed to assume the mantle of the kabuki house and condemned as an interloper who seized it, and Shunsuke Ogaki ( Ryûsei Yokohama) fleeing the lineage meant for him, only to return and reclaim it.

Unfolding across half a century, the film traces their parallel rises and diverging fates through discipline, scandal, exile, and fleeting triumphs. Its operatic scale and tragic view of artistic devotion inevitably recall Chen Kaige's "Farewell My Concubine" (1993), another sweeping chronicle of performance and identity stretched across decades. The comparison flatters "Kokuho" in ambition, but it also exposes its limitations. While Chen's film binds personal tragedy tightly to emotional and historical consequence, Lee's narrative often feels more episodic, its time jumps serving scope rather than accumulation.

The film is at its strongest on the kabuki stage. The performances are filmed with grandeur and intimacy, capturing both the ceremonial beauty of the art form and the punishing physical control demanded of onnagata performers. Makeup, hairstyling, and costume are not ornamental but transformational, essential to how identity is constructed and dissolved before the audience's eyes. Both the adult and younger actors portraying Kikuo and Shunsuke are superb, sustaining continuity through posture, movement, and presence rather than overt imitation.

Offstage, however, the storytelling grows uneven. Several subplots remain underdeveloped or unresolved. The presence of Kikuo's daughter and lover never meaningfully reshapes his inner life, Shunsuke's exile from the stage and eventual return are treated more as narrative checkpoints than lived experiences, and how Kikuo survives the fallout of a failed act of revenge against a gangster remains frustratingly opaque. These omissions blunt what should have been the most devastating turns in an already tragic saga.

The handling of time further complicates the emotional impact. Major transitions arrive abruptly, with temporal markers that feel arbitrary rather than dramatically necessary. As a result, the characters' transformations, so meticulously rendered in performance and appearance, sometimes lack equivalent narrative weight.

Still, this arresting film remains a formidable cinematic achievement. Even when its storytelling falters, its devotion to kabuki and to the idea of performance as a consuming way of life is unmistakable. The film mesmerizes through spectacle, discipline, and craft, offering a rare and immersive window into a classical art form, even as it leaves lingering questions about the human cost hidden beneath the makeup, the gestures, and the applause.

"Kokuho" opens on Friday, February 20, 2026.

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In collaboration with The Roxie, New People Cinema reopens in historic San Francisco's Japantown with a special weekend celebrating Japanese cinema. "Kokuho" screens on Saturday, February 14, 2026 at 6 pm.

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Stranded far from civilization, with nothing but old grudges and raw instinct for company, this is a survival story that understands the most dangerous thing on the island is not the wildlife. Sam Raimi turns a sun-drenched paradise into a psychological trap in "Send Help" (USA 2025 | 113 min.), blending gnarly horror and dark comedy with a wicked sense of timing. The film keeps tightening its grip, finding humor in cruelty and shock in moments that almost feel like punchlines.

After a plane crash strands two colleagues on a remote island near Thailand, Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) and Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien) emerge as the only survivors, forced into an uneasy partnership to stay alive. What begins as a stripped-down tale of endurance quickly mutates into a battle of wills shaped by unresolved office politics and long-simmering resentment. When Linda finally states, "no help is coming," it states less as a discovery than a chilling confirmation, sealing the fact that the old rules of hierarchy, civility, and office politics have long since evaporated in this film.

The film largely operates as a focused two-character survival duel, with Rachel McAdams and (Dylan O'Brien carrying the tension without ever letting it sag.

Linda, initially presented as an overlooked, slightly nerdy employee, proves to be resourceful, adaptable, and unnervingly smart. Her job in strategic planning turns into a survival blueprint and, eventually, a tool for control. Rachel McAdams charts the character's evolution with unsettling precision, letting competence slide into calculation and then into something colder and more deliberate.

Bradley, by contrast, steadily unravels. Dylan O'Brien plays him as a smug, entitled boss whose authority evaporates the moment hierarchy disappears. His confidence collapses into panic and cruelty, and there is a grim, darkly comic pleasure in watching him discover just how useless charm and corporate posturing are without power to back them up.

Director Sam Raimi keeps the tone dancing on a razor's edge. The few jump scares are not only effective but mischievously funny, snapping into place with timing that turns fear into laughter. The violence can be gruesome, but it is staged with a heightened, almost elastic sensibility, while Danny Elfman's score nudges the madness forward, amplifying the uneasy blend of menace and amusement.

When the film reaches its final stretch, it has fully embraced its twisted identity. Part survival thriller, part workplace revenge fantasy, and part horror comedy, it delivers a savage amount of entertainment while proving that when escape is impossible and "no help is coming," the real spectacle is watching civility fall apart.

"Send Help" opens in theaters on Friday, January 30, 2026.

There are only so many places an ex-MI6 operative can hide before his own agency finds him, and this film telegraphs that reckoning almost immediately. The story of a hyper-capable agent forced into isolation by internal betrayal is one we have seen countless times, and "Shelter" (UK/USA 2026 | 107 min.) follows that template with little interest in surprise. From its opening stretch, the trajectory feels locked in place, the ending visible on the horizon long before the characters reach it.

Mason (Jason Statham), an ex-special MI6 agent living in isolation on a remote coastal island, is inevitably drawn back into danger after rescuing Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) from a violent storm at sea. Their encounter sets off a chain reaction, forcing Mason out of hiding and back into the orbit of enemies tied to his past. The setup is serviceable but deeply familiar, moving him toward confrontation with an efficiency that feels pre-programmed rather than discovered.

Where the film does deliver is in its action. Director Ric Roman Waugh stages the set pieces with muscular clarity, favoring physical impact over digital excess. The storm rescue, close-quarters fights, and shootouts are cleanly choreographed and easy to follow, making it very clear who is attacking and who is defending at any given moment. As a vehicle for Statham's bruising screen presence, the film works as intended, functioning smoothly as no-frills popcorn entertainment.

That clarity, however, doesn't prevent moments of unintentional comedy. A nightclub sequence stretches credibility when multiple operatives enter dressed in nearly identical suits and ties, visually clashing with the rest of the clubgoers. Rather than blending in, they announce themselves as targets and enforcers alike, as if the film is politely highlighting who exists solely to fight or be fought.

To add emotional seasoning, the film leans on the protective bond between Mason and Jessie. Breathnach brings genuine sincerity to the role, even if the dynamic itself feels prefabricated. Suspension of disbelief is further tested when Mason shrugs off stab wounds and gunshots, only to continue fighting with near-superhuman endurance. By the time the credits roll, the action has done its job, but the larger stakes feel disposable, leaving this movie as a competently assembled genre entry that satisfies in the moment and fades quickly from memory.

"Shelter" opens in theaters on Friday, January 30, 2026.

If you wonder what AI might become in three years, here is a glimpse of it in the justice system. "Mercy" (USA/Russia 2026 | 100 min.) takes that anxiety and inflates it into a glossy, self-serious thriller that wants to feel urgent and provocative, yet rarely earns either. Set in 2029 where algorithms have replaced human judges, the film imagines a court system that tries, convicts or exonerates, and executes if convicted, all while claiming emotional neutrality with machine precision in a speedy manner. It is a premise loaded with moral landmines, but the movie approaches them less as questions to explore than as bullet points to flash on screen.

The story centers on Los Angeles detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt), who wakes up strapped into the Mercy Chair, accused of murdering his wife and given 90 minutes to prove his innocence before the AI judge, Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson), reaches a final verdict. Raven is assumed guilty from the start, forced to argue against an ever-rising probability meter fed by omnipresent surveillance footage, body cams, phone records, and social media data. As the trial unfolds, he attempts to reconstruct the missing hours of his memory while appealing to the cold logic of a system that claims to value facts over feelings. In theory, this setup should generate mounting dread. In practice, it mostly highlights how little agency the film gives its protagonist. Chris Pratt spends the majority of the runtime literally locked in place, reacting to screens and disembodied voices, with scant opportunity to shape the drama or reveal anything new about his character.

The film leans hard into director Timur Bekmambetov's screenlife language, filling the frame with overlapping windows, scrolling data, and digital overlays that never let the viewer's eye rest. At first, the design has a sleek, controlled rhythm, echoing the film's obsession with systems and efficiency. But the constant visual noise soon becomes numbing, less a storytelling tool than a stylistic reflex. Like an endlessly animated slideshow, the movie confuses motion with momentum, assuming that more information on screen automatically means higher stakes.

As the plot progresses, logic gives way to narrative desperation. Revelations arrive not because the story has earned them, but because it needs to keep escalating. The eventual explanation of the crime's motive strains credibility to the breaking point, tipping the film from implausible into outright preposterous. Twists are piled on with such force that they feel less like organic turns and more like emergency patches applied to a script riddled with holes. For a film so invested in the rhetoric of rationality and data-driven truth, this movie is surprisingly indifferent to coherence.

The film's themes about AI ethics and surveillance are timely, but they are treated superficially, gestured at rather than interrogated. Maddox, the AI judge, is framed as morally complex, yet the movie never fully commits to exploring that ambiguity. Instead, it relies on familiar warnings about technology run amok without adding much insight to the conversation. By the end, "Mercy" feels less like a cautionary tale than a hollow demonstration of its own concept.

Despite the push to experience the film in IMAX and 3D, there is little here that benefits from that scale. The spectacle is largely confined to screens within screens, and the emotional impact remains flat regardless of format. Stripped of its marketing gloss, this film plays like a middling streaming thriller, the kind of movie that fades into background noise while your attention drifts elsewhere. For a film obsessed with the future of justice, it delivers a verdict that feels rushed, overdesigned, and ultimately unsatisfying.

"Mercy" opens in theaters on Friday, January 23, 2026.

The Mostly British Film Festival returns to the Vogue Theatre for a week-long run from February 5-12, 2026, presenting 26 films drawn primarily from the UK while also embracing voices from across the Commonwealth and beyond. Blending recent releases with classic titles, the festival offers both discovery and rediscovery, giving audiences a chance to see acclaimed films on the big screen even if they have already played theatrically or on the festival circuit. Several selections are also upcoming releases, making the festival an early opportunity to see films before their wider U.S. theatrical runs. The festival also serves as a fundraiser for the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation, whose work has helped preserve neighborhood movie houses, including the Vogue itself.

The festival opens on Thursday, February 5 with "Mr. Burton" (UK 2025 | 124 min.), a British drama that traces the early life of Richard Burton and the mentorship that shaped one of the great acting careers of the 20th century. Closing Night on Thursday, February 12, features "Inside" (Australia 2024 | 104 min.) and "I Swear" (UK 2025 | 120 min.), followed by a Valentine-themed dessert after-party at the theater, bringing the week to a warm and communal close.

Recent films form the backbone of this year's program, many of them award winners and festival standouts from events such as Cannes and other major international showcases. Here are a few highlights (click on a film's title for showtime and ticket information).

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• The History of Sound (USA/UK/Sweden/Italy 2025 | 128 min.)

  "The History of Sound" unfolds as a profoundly sad and tender queer love story set in the early 20th century, following two men brought together by a shared devotion to music and the act of listening. As they travel to collect folk songs, their connection deepens into a romance shaped by circumstance, distance, and the unspoken limits of their era. The mesmerizing music becomes both a shared language and a vessel for memory, while the gorgeous cinematography captures landscapes and faces with a hushed, elegiac beauty. Brought to life by terrific performances from Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor, the film lingers on love, longing, and what survives after separation.

  

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• Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (South Africa 2024 | 98 min. | My review)

  Through the eyes of a child raised in a broken system, the film shows how the personal and political become inseparable, and how understanding begins when inherited narratives start to crack. One of my top ten films of 2025, "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" is not a coming-of-age tale in the traditional sense, it's a confrontation with legacy. Through the narrow lens of a child, it paints a vast canvas of colonialism, displacement, and identity.

  

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• My Father's Shadow (UK/Nigeria/Ireland 2025 | in English/Yoruba | 93 min.)

  As the UK's submission for the Best International Feature Oscar, "My Father's Shadow" is a terrific and deeply moving film set against the turmoil of Nigeria's 1993 presidential election, seen through the eyes of two young brothers who believe their father is larger than life. Sope Dirisu delivers a commanding performance as a man who takes his sons, played by real-life siblings Godwin Egbo and Chibuike Marvelous Egbo, on what they think will be a simple day trip to Lagos, only for fragments of adult reality to intrude. As the boys encounter strangers, they begin to sense that their father may be involved in dangerous political activity. The children's natural presence gives the story of family and political uncertainty an intimate, human scale, and as myth finally gives way to truth, the film lands with devastating force.

  

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• Urchin (UK/USA 2025 | 100 min.)

  Winning the FIPRESCI Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, with Frank Dillane also taking Best Actor, "Urchin" is an impressive directorial debut from the multi-talented Harris Dickinson, offering a bracing yet compassionate portrait of life on the margins in contemporary Britain. Focusing on Mike (Frank Dillane), a homeless addict drifting through East London, Dickinson refuses the easy distance we often keep from people like Mike, fixing the film's attention on his desperation, volatility, and daily fight to survive. Frank Dillane is exceptional, drawing us in with a performance that balances raw vulnerability with flashes of charm beneath violence, deceit, and cycles of self-destruction. The film feels urgent and unflinching, even if its depiction of homelessness appears more contained than the harsher realities visible on the streets.

  

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• Grand Tour (Portugal/Italy/France/Germany/Japan/China 2024 | in Portuguese/Burmese/Vietnamese/English/Thai/Mandarin/French/Spanish/Japanese | 129 min.)

  "Grand Tour" offers a unique cinematic experience, traveling across Asia in both time and space, unfolding as much through mood, rhythm, and movement as through narrative. Written and directed by Miguel Gomes, whose boundary-pushing work earned him Best Director at Cannes in 2024, the film starts in 1917 Rangoon under British rule. Englishman Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), a remarkably swift runner, flees from his fiancée Molly (Crista Alfaiate), carrying him through Singapore, Burma, Vietnam, Thailand, China, the Philippines, and Japan. In the film's second movement, Molly follows his trail with equal determination. Visually enchanting, the film reflects on human longing, persistence, and the forces that drive us forward, reinforcing Miguel Gomes's reputation as one of contemporary cinema's most adventurous storytellers.

  

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• Call Me Dancer (USA 2023 | in English/Hindi | 84 min. | Documentary)

  The documentary "Call Me Dancer" offers an intimate portrait of Manish, a young Indian dancer driven by discipline and raw talent. The film is engaging in its close access to his daily grind, but it stops short of fully reckoning with a harder truth: without money and institutional support, talent alone rarely leads anywhere. Manish's breakthrough comes only after financial backing from arts organizations and a private patron, and his success is ultimately measured by entry into a Western dance company. The documentary gestures toward systemic barriers, but its uplifting spirit softens the reality that access, not just ability, determines who gets to move forward.

  

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• I Swear (UK 2025 | 120 min.)

  "I Swear" is a profoundly moving portrait of John Davidson, a man ostracized in his Scottish town for behavior no one understands, including himself. Based on a true story, the film traces his life before Tourette syndrome had a name, when involuntary outbursts and tics led him to be dismissed as dangerous or insane. Robert Aramayo delivers a magnificent performance, capturing John's confusion, shame, and resilience as bewilderment gives way to despair and, eventually, hard-won dignity. Often uncomfortable and charged with tension, the film ultimately proves deeply affirming, culminating in John's public recognition and the honor of receiving the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) from the Queen.

  

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In retrospect, the festival turns to landmark works that reward being revisited in a theatrical setting. Screenings of "Tom Jones" (UK 1963 | 129 min.) and "Chariots of Fire" (UK 1982 | 125 min.), both Academy Award winners for Best Picture, highlight different eras of British cinema while reminding audiences of their lasting cultural impact. The pairing of "Girl with Green Eyes" (UK 1964 | 91 min.) with the documentary "Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story" (UK 2024 | 99 min.) creates a thoughtful dialogue between classic fiction and contemporary reflection, underscoring the festival's interest in context, legacy, and artistic lineage rather than nostalgia alone.

Tickets can be purchased at Mostly British Film Festival Web Site or at the Vogue Theatre box office, located at 3290 Sacramento Street, San Francisco.

What's more frightening at the end of the world: the monsters who no longer think, or the people who still do? "28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" (UK/USA 2026 | 109 min.) picks up exactly where the previous film left off, plunging back into a dystopia where survival depends less on avoiding infection than on enduring the cruelty of those who exploit it.

As fractured communities struggle to hold themselves together, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) works obsessively toward a discovery that could alter humanity's understanding of the virus. Meanwhile, Spike (Alfie Williams) falls in with Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell), the leader of a roaming zombie-killing squad not unlike the group that rescued him at the end of the previous film. What initially appears to be a necessary, even heroic, means of survival quickly reveals a darker underside, as the squad's violence turns inward and Spike's sense of safety gives way to entrapment.

The film offers only partial logic for how uninfected communities manage to persist. The infected are portrayed as unnervingly strong and feral, yet residents rely on wire fencing to keep them out, a defense that feels more symbolic than credible. The barriers don't truly protect so much as isolate, and the film never fully clarifies why they work at all. What actually destabilizes life inside the settlement isn't the threat beyond the fence, but the trauma inflicted by Jimmy Crystal's gang.

Jimmy is no visionary tyrant. He's a nasty, street-level thug who preys on the weak and unprotected. His menace lies not in physical dominance or appearance, but in the ease with which he commands others to carry out violence on innocents. Within the guise of a zombie-hunting unit, his authority thrives on intimidation and obedience rather than purpose, making his cruelty feel disturbingly plausible and, ultimately, more terrifying than the infected themselves.

Director Nia DaCosta stages the horror with unapologetic intensity, transforming gore into spectacle. The grotesque is treated with near-reverence. Dr. Kelson, coated in iodine to ward off infection, looks like a walking wound. His efforts to recover traces of humanity in the infected, particularly in Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), gesture toward hope, yet his intentions and methods remain frustratingly unclear. Even if one soul could be reached, the film makes clear that the apocalypse itself cannot be reversed.

The film closes on an exhilarating finale that offers a measure of release, delivering a sharp, visceral payoff that feels earned. In a world defined by suffering and moral collapse, that final surge of momentum provides a rare, hard-won satisfaction, a brief sense that the scales have shifted.

"28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" opens in theaters on Friday, January 16, 2026.

"Dad Genes" (USA 2025 | 65 min. | Documentary) is one of those stories that feels almost implausible until you remember the quiet reach of modern technology. What begins as a footnote from the mid-1990s, Aaron Long's casual stint as a sperm donor, snowballs decades later into a redefinition of family built from DNA tests, curiosity, and a willingness to say yes. It is an incredible story to tell, not because it courts scandal, but because it uncovers an unexpected, even gentle, way human connections can form in the 21st century, where biology, chance, and choice intersect in ways that would have been unthinkable not long ago.

The film traces Aaron's journey from a happily unmarried Seattle bachelor to the unlikely center of a newly formed family after he registers with a DNA ancestry site and discovers he has multiple biological children, with the possibility of dozens more. He invites several of them to a "Meet My Kids" gathering, a gesture that soon escalates into shared living arrangements involving two of his children, the mother of one of them, and Aaron's own aging mother.

As these genetically related strangers attempt to build a family from scratch, a romantic relationship develops between Aaron and Jess, the mother of one of his biological children. Media attention follows after Aaron's story reaches The New York Times, bringing both visibility and complications as the boundaries of privacy begin to erode.

Much of the film's success lies in its terrific editing, which keeps the story engaging, intriguing, and refreshingly concise despite the density of interviews. Aaron appears frequently on screen and speaks openly, yet he remains somewhat elusive. At times he seems to be performing for the camera, as if aware of the narrative gravity surrounding him, while deeper motivations or doubts stay carefully contained. The film lets this ambiguity exist without pressing too hard, which is both a strength and a limitation.

Given the extraordinary premise, one might expect sharper conflicts or tensions to emerge, moments that demand resolution or force uncomfortable reckonings. Instead, the film unfolds in an atmosphere of remarkable goodwill. Everyone is kind, agreeable, and easy to like, which lends the film warmth but also flattens its dramatic contours.

Aaron's personal evolution is genuinely jaw-dropping, a man single well into middle age who suddenly opens himself to intimacy, cohabitation, and romance. Yet the film stops short of examining why this shift happens now, or how fully it can be taken at face value. That unanswered question lingers as a shadow over the story, but it does not eclipse the film's achievement. Even with this reservation, the documentary remains a thoughtfully crafted work that expands our understanding of what family can look like today.

"Dad Genes" plays at the Dances with Films Festival on Friday, Janurary 16, 2026 in New York City.