Movie Reviews

Cosmic Circus has been covering movies and TV/streaming series for over five years now. Please take some time to read through some of our movie reviews below to find out what the writers think of past and new films.

Refer to the Stellar Picks archive to find some of our top-rated movies, shows, books, games, and more!


 

Movie ReviewsReviews

‘The Weight’ Review: Rock Solid and Thrilling Period Drama

The Weight is an ideal version of a “meat-and-potatoes flick” with both strongly developed character depth and absolutely visceral sequences properly spaced out within its runtime. But director Padraic McKinley plays at his clear inspirations of other films with a similar riveting grit and setup while making the most of its historical backdrop. This film is the vehicle for another great lead

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‘Resident Evil’ Review: A Masterful Adaptation | Fantastic Fest 2026

Resident Evil does not follow the video game’s exact plot. This has been a frequent complaint online. While that’s true, none of Paul W. S. Anderson’s movies followed the exact plotline. For the most part, almost none of the movies follow the story, and the only one that came close flopped two years ago. So what is a filmmaker to do? Zach

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‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ is an Absolute Masterpiece | TIFF 2026 Film Review

After Marvel Studios fumbled the production of Bassam Tariq’s vision for Blade with Mahershala Ali, the director and actor both left the long-gestating MCU project to do Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. The action movie then used Ali’s training for Eric Brooks to instead put him in a tormented character study about a single Muslim father trying to do right

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‘The Last House’ Review: Netflix’s Locked In Film Should Be A Last Resort

French producer and director Louis Leterrier and screenwriter Matthew Robinson’s The Last House is flawed in its storytelling. The problems don’t just lie in setting a narrative in Seattle, Washington, but in believing that its populace feels alone. I remember visiting the area in late July and seeing how a beautiful community can coexist. That is, until the shooting in Seattle

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‘Fjord’ is a Necessary Exercise of Introspection | TIFF 2026 Film Review

The metaphor is heard loud and clear in Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord, this year’s Palme d’Or-winning picture, as the evangelical, conservative Gheorghiu family moves into a highly progressive (and liberal) neighborhood in Norway. If you didn’t click it because you didn’t meet Mungiu’s latest at its terms, it’s an apt parallel for the return of conservatism, which has become more prominent around

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‘Hope’ is Cinema at Its Purest | TIFF 2026 Film Review

There isn’t a better way to open the 51st edition of the Toronto International Film Festival than with a special screening of Na Hong-jin’s Hope. This is the South Korean genre artist’s first feature in ten years, following the masterful The Wailing in 2016. It’s been a while, which made the prospect of a Cannes premiere all the more special for

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‘Mayday’ Review: Daley & Goldstein’s Fresh Take on the Action-Comedy

In Apple TV’s Mayday, writer-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein take us back to 1980’s Russia in the midst of the Cold War, a markedly harsher and more grounded backdrop than the two have explored before. Daley and Goldstein are no strangers to the action comedy genre: both 2018’s Game Night and 2023’s Dungeons and Dragons – Honor Among Thieves

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‘By Any Means’ Review: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II Shines in Uneven Drama

After an incredible feature directorial debut with The Inspection, Elegance Bratton returns with a more politically charged drama by recounting the unlikely alliance between the FBI and the mob in By Any Means. While this partnership has never been officially confirmed by the bureau, historical records indicate that the agency hired notorious mob enforcer Gregory Scarpa Sr. (Mark Wahlberg) to perform

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‘Buddy’ Movie Review: A Twisted, Violent ‘Barney’ Satire

The 2026 horror film Buddy acknowledges a point about Barney the Dinosaur that we’ve all been quietly thinking about for the past thirty years: The purple behemoth is a low-key narcissist. The film by Casper Kelly cleverly unwraps the pop culture craziness of the time period when every child became fixated on a character that ended on a song about “loving”

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