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Latest from Chris Jones

Chris Jones
Entertainment Editor

Chris Jones, from Washington, Illinois, is the Mail Entertainment Editor covering Movies, Television, Books, and Music topics. He is the owner, writer, and editor of Overly Honest Reviews.

Comfort Can Still Be Uncomfortable

Jimpa

What happens when doing the right thing for your child means reopening wounds you never fully processed yourself? JIMPA places the core of its story around that uneasy question, placing a mother, her nonbinary teenager, and her aging gay father in the same emotional sphere and refusing to let any of them escape without consequence. Rather than building toward a single answer, director/co-writer Sophie Hyde’s deeply personal film settles into the discomfort of competing truths, asking how love, autonomy, and responsibility coexist when family history refuses to stay quiet.

The Theatre Still Knows Its Rules

The Muppet Show

What does it mean to bring back a show that shaped generations without letting nostalgia do all the work? THE MUPPET SHOW (2026) enables that question to hang over every joke, musical number, and backstage meltdown, returning to the original Muppet Theatre while fully aware that reverence alone won’t carry it forward. Rather than trying to reinvent itself, the special treats legacy as something to engage with, not tiptoe around, and that confidence becomes its guiding principle.

Vampirism Stripped of Power Fantasy

Nadja

What does immortality look like when it no longer feels like power? NADJA opens inside that question and never allows the audience to escape it. Michael Almereyda’s 1994 vampire film doesn’t treat eternal life as myth, but as a condition shaped by boredom, longing, and misdirected need. Seen now in its newly restored Director’s Cut, the film feels less like an artifact and more like a transmission from a moment when American independent cinema briefly allowed genre to fracture into something personal.

Bloodlines, Branding, and Brutality

Lure

What does it say about modern ‘courtship’ when intimacy becomes a test of endurance rather than connection? LURE doesn’t flirt with that question; it drags it into the open and spills blood around it. Oliver Cox’s feature debut is a deliberately confrontational horror film, one that takes the structure of reality dating television ala THE BACHELORETTE and strips it of any pretense of romance, revealing the transactional cruelty lurking just beneath the surface.

Returning Home Without Pretending It’s Easy

Aída y vuelta (Aida: The Movie)

What happens when a character built for laughter is asked to carry the weight of years that passed without an audience? AÍDA Y VUELTA answers that question without flinching. Rather than presenting itself as a victory lap or a nostalgia grab, Paco León’s film approaches its legacy head-on, acknowledging both the affection people still feel for these characters and the realities that time, grief, and economic pressure impose, whether anyone is watching or not.

Animation As Emotional Translation

The Sounds of Things Ablaze (Le bruit des choses qui brûlent)

How does the body and soul carry the weight of war long after the fighting stops? THE SOUNDS OF THINGS ABLAZE answers that question not through detailed explanation, but through sensation. In just under seven minutes, Hayat Najm’s animated short captures the aftershocks of violence as something lived physically, instinctively, and involuntarily, transforming trauma into movement rather than memory.

When Belonging Becomes a Logistical Question

The Sounds of Things Ablaze (Le bruit des choses qui brûlent)

What does it mean to belong somewhere when even death refuses to make that decision simple? 2m² opens with a deceptively modest premise and steadily reveals itself as one of the more quietly disarming documentaries I’ve seen in some time, using a single profession to examine migration, identity, and the uneasy compromises that define life lived between cultures. There’s something about following along in a process that lets you see those final moments that will make you look at things differently. (‘How Much Land Does a Man Require?’ is the English title of an 1886 short story by Leo Tolstoy. In contemporary terms, the answer could be: 2m² – the size of a grave.)

The Intimacy of Testimony

In the Room

What does resistance look like when survival itself becomes a radical act? IN THE ROOM doesn’t approach that question through historical overview, but through presence, conversation, and an unflinching willingness to sit with discomfort. Directed by Brishkay Ahmed, the documentary brings together five Afghan women whose lives have been shaped by visibility, backlash, exile, and courage, not as symbols, but as people reckoning with what it means to speak when silence is safer.

An Anti-Procedural That Knows Exactly Why

Conrad & Crab – Idiotic Gems (Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines)

What happens when a crime story stops caring whether the crime is solved, or even whether it matters? CONRAD & CRAB – IDIOTIC GEMS opens with the promise of an investigation but dismantles it piece by piece, replacing that push with observation and paying off with patience. Claude Schmitz has no interest in building suspense in the traditional sense; instead, he’s far more invested in what happens when people drift through lives they’re no longer especially good at performing. This is an intentionally loud movie, and it works because it knows that it is.

Nostalgia Without the Sugar Coating

Everything Fun You Could Possibly Do in Aledo, Illinois

What do we owe the people we used to be, and how much of that debt is still unpaid decades later? EVERYTHING FUN YOU COULD POSSIBLY DO IN ALEDO, ILLINOIS builds its entire identity around that question, then refuses to answer it with cynicism, irony, or exaggerated quirk. Instead, it opts for something rarer and riskier in contemporary indie comedy: sincerity without apology. There’s heart, a lot of heart here in this film, and it's clear from start to finish!

A Series Squeezed Into a Feature Frame

Special Unit – The First Murder (Rejseholdet – Det første mord)

How do you dramatize the birth of a police force while confronting the corruption it was created to challenge? SPECIAL UNIT – THE FIRST MURDER tackles that question head-on, positioning itself not simply as a period crime thriller but as a foundational myth shaped by compromise, ambition, and institutional rot. Christoffer Boe’s reimagining of Rejseholdet’s (an actual elite police unit in Denmark tasked with assisting local police in solving serious, complex crimes across the country) origins isn’t concerned with nostalgia or comfort; it’s about the uneasy reality of power forming under pressure.

The Cost of Carrying History

Dark Winds: Season 3

What happens when doing the right thing doesn’t actually set anything right? That question sits at the center of DARK WINDS: SEASON 3, a continuation that refuses to offer the comfort of clean resolutions. Instead of escalating purely through shock, this season turns inward, allowing consequence, memory, and unresolved guilt to shape every decision its characters make. It’s a confident move for a series that already proved its command of atmosphere and cultural specificity, and it results in a season that feels heavier, more reflective, and deliberately restrained.

Education That Doesn’t Feel Like Homework

Why Dinosaurs?

Why do dinosaurs endure when so many other childhood fascinations fade with age? WHY DINOSAURS? doesn’t treat that question as a rhetorical hook; it treats it as a genuine mystery worth unpacking from every angle. From the outset, the film makes it clear that this isn’t a traditional nature documentary concerned with extinction events or anatomical breakdowns. Instead, it positions dinosaurs as a shared cultural language, one that bridges science, imagination, nostalgia, and identity across generations.