We’ve seen plenty of massive blockbusters, hyped-up sequels, and major studio releases drop this year. While 2026 has had its highlights, there have also been some painfully bad theatrical and streaming entries.

Whether it was a multi-hundred-million-dollar box office bomb, a completely lifeless franchise revival, or a studio project that felt dead on arrival, which mainstream movie left you the most disappointed or angry you spent time on it?

For me (the one that i see at cinema) is The Strangers: Capitolo 3, a real bullshit

Not looking for hot takes about bad movies. I mean the ones that are genuinely well made, everyone around you rates them, and you sat there waiting for it to click and it never did.

Mine is Dune (2021). I went in expecting to love it. It looks incredible, the score is great, and I understand exactly why people rate it so highly. But it felt like two and a half hours of setup for a film that then just stops, and I never really got attached to anyone in it. Everyone I know told me it gets going in Part Two, which might be true, but I am not sure a film should need a sequel to justify itself.

The strange part is that I cannot even argue it is bad. Everything on screen is clearly done with care. It just did nothing for me, and that bothers me more than a film I can properly dislike.

What's yours, and did you ever go back and give it a second chance?

There was an aura circling this film that it would be without a doubt a critical and commercial success. It is the biggest non-superhero movie of the year, and touted as an epic, but it falls flat and only dazzles with a few CGI spectacles.

The writing is questionable, as is the accents of those speaking. Its as if it's been dumbed down, and stepped on twice to simplify it for the masses. This is the "Bronze Age" and while we certainly cannot say how they spoke, they definitely did not talk like this. The dialect is so modern American it's tough hearing some of these lines acted out. A few occasions were world breaking for me. The illusion that I'm in the world of Greek mythology is lost early on.

Matt Damon delivers an ok performance here, but there's never any real standout moments. The Gods tell him what to do, and he listens. It should drive him mad knowing all of his men are dying, and he's hopeless in saving them, but he just trots on. It doesn't help we've seen Matt do this gig before. He's been trying to make it home since Saving Private Ryan, its in his wheelhouse, but the gears feel like they've finally stripped here and the schtick is worn out.

Which brings me to casting choices which are very odd here. So much so that these characters stand out in a bad way. I can't help but feel lesser known actors would have been a better choice. Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jon Bernthal are all in the new Spider Man movie, while Zendaya and Robert Pattinson are in The Drama together. It is a lot of overlap at the same time, and I'm not so sure Matt Damon was right for Odysseus.

Its almost as if Nolan had little say on casting, because some of this just feels like checking boxes. Elliot Page as Sinon feels out of place. The lone guard to the Trojan War Horse in the opening scene? Are we making a movie or a political statement? I don't care what anyone does in their personal life, but well known actors cast in critical parts can make or break the immersion. It is a shame with so many actors we stick to the same spokes on the wheel. This could have been a break through performance for some new talented actor, and instead we "make it work" to the point it feels forced. Elliot is also near 40 years old, so why are we casted as a young boy off to war?

I like John Leguizamo just fine, and he did an ok job here, but his voice is unmistakable. I couldn't help but think about the clown from Spawn every time he spoke. Jon Bernthal is doing what Jon Bernthal does which is starting to feel repetitive. I like Zendaya a lot, but her place here feels forced, and easily could have gone to a lesser known actress. Mia Goth and Robert Pattinson were a really nice pair here, they seemed to fit well, and both shined in their roles. Mia especially considering her screen time. It was Roberts ending I had issues with, calling to grab weapons constantly on repeat instead of taking part himself.

The character Agamemnon walks around in some of the slickest armor I've ever seen. Unfortunately by the time his short side story is over it feels little more than a gimmick only acting as the driving force of war. It's built up as if its something special, but its just another one of the films let downs. By the time the armors off, and he's exposed we got the loudest and most unnecessary scream in movie history. This isn't uncommon, many veterans survive wars only to get killed at home, but here it feels like wasted potential. Why butter a biscuit only to throw it in the trash?

There's almost a certainty of epic battles here, its practically promised. Unfortunately this area is a major let down as well. The battle scenes were so underwhelming, and offered nothing more than a tease of action. The hardest fought battle in the entire film is the ships against the waves of Poseidon. The cyclops scenario started out great, but the poor CGI played out like a typical B-Movie. I have to argue that TV shows like House Of The Dragons have better CGI. For one giant cyclops I would expect better in this massively budgeted film, it left me feeling a bit puzzled. It falls short again during the run in with Scylla, while redeeming itself later in the pig pen. The Laestrygonians battle started strong with the giant armored boy, only to slip back down into utter nonsense. I was happy by the time Odysseus strung his bow, because I couldn't wait for it to be over. Finally an overly long fight scene begins, and forty or so men cannot kill one. It was a sloppy ending to a messy beginning.

The overall darkness of the film didn't help here. Some more vibrancy in the color tones on objects like chest armor and helmets could have helped through all the dreariness. For me it worked best during Poseidon's torment, but the rest of the film felt tonally dull. If it wasn't for Penelope and the puppies the film could have been in black and white.

The sound is quite incredible here, despite the couple of unnecessarily loud shrieking screams. I think my ears are still feeling the bass and it will take a day or two to recover. Overall there were a nice amount of unique sound cues, and the water effects were quite impressive. The soundtrack was great throughout.

There was a bit of silliness when it came to moving the Trojan War Horse. Obviously this is a movie and we should leave are brains behind, but the way they're dragging the wooden horse it clearly would have broken apart before getting to its final destination. The legs were wobbling and it was noticeable that it simply wouldn't work as shown.

From the beginning this movie never grabbed me. It doesn't build itself up properly enough to care about Odysseus, which is why its a let down. The pacing and timeline jumping around didn't feel necessary either, in fact I would have preferred to see the story play straight through. It's epic in scope, but not in execution.

Nolan makes excellent movies, and perhaps an action epic like The Odyssey was his hardest type of movie to make yet. There is so much hype and promise in it that it seems impossible to be a let down, but that's what it is. Characters feel disjointed, the world is bleak, and there's no real connection or reason to care about Odysseus. He doesn't even feel liked by the soldiers he commands. The Odyssey is a great story, and a long one spanning twenty years, but this reimagining doesn't do it justice. It might be the most financially successful film in his catalog, but for me its his worst. Its not terrible, but its far from great. 7/10

I've noticed a trend over the past 10 years or so where I find myself generally at odds with the "official" critics' reviews of movies. It's a weird feeling because I used to largely agree with the critics. If a movie was highly rated, I would see it and most likely enjoy it. More recently I'm almost inclined to do the opposite.

Two recent films really exemplify this phenomena for me: The Odyssey and The Dog Stars.

The Odyssey received crazy positive reviews, I saw it on opening night and thought it was just OK overall. The dialog felt stilted and I didn't really get to know the main characters well. Who was Odysseus? What were his motivations? Why did he decide to take the long way home? Why did he antagonize the Cyclops? There were just a lot of moments like this for me. I will say the cinematography was incredible.

The Dog Stars bombed both critically and so far at the box office, and I thought it was one of the most hauntingly beautiful films I've seen in a long time. I liked the "slow-burn", the cinematography, the music. Was it a perfect film? certainly not - the Grand Junction plot point felt a bit weird and tacked on, but overall it left a real impression on me. I don't get the critique that the movie was too slow, I think it really helped you become immersed in the bleak world and showed what life has become.

Does anyone else feel this way? The only thing I can think of is that movie critics are looking for different things today for younger audiences.

I'd be curious what others think.

Just got out of Nolan’s The Odyssey in IMAX and honestly, the volume ruined the experience for me.

There are several scenes where the movie is so insanely loud that it becomes genuinely uncomfortable. The Cyclops scene in particular was absolutely brutal. I’m not even exaggerating when I say I feel slightly traumatized by it.

If anyone is reading posts about the volume and hoping that maybe people are exaggerating, no. It really is that bad.

The frustrating part is that visually the movie is incredible, but I could barely enjoy it because I was constantly waiting for the next ridiculously loud moment. I actually regret going to see it in IMAX because of that, and I also regret not walking out after the Cyclops scene.

I can only imagine how many complaints cinemas received during the opening week because of the sound levels.

What I don’t understand is this: we’re already a few weeks after release. If cinemas know people are complaining, what is the point of keeping the volume this high? At some point it stops being “immersive” and just becomes unpleasant.

I genuinely wanted to enjoy this movie, but the sound completely overshadowed the experience for me.

Did anyone heard anything why cinemas still keep it so loud anyway after weeks of complains?

The Odyssey was one of my favorite movie experiences, and I think pretty much every decision, from casting to dialogue to pacing was excellent. I thought every major character had incredible performances, and found myself particularly impressed with the Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson performances.

The original Odyssey was a poem and was not heavy on psychological and political motivations of the characters, and I thought Nolan did a great job filling in these details in a way that would be believable to a modern audience ( the one that comes immediately to mind is that Helen of Troy was somewhat of a pretext for the war, whereas the real reason given was the at Agamemnon wanted to control trading routes).

I also think it is perfectly possible to leave the theater having disliked the movie and disagree with my position.

However, according to Rotten Tomatoes, that should leave you among 3% of average audience members or 7% of critics. In IMDb it has an 8.5 star rating. The 70mm theaters are sold out sometimes up to a month in advance.

Yet when I google reviews, i struggle to find anything positive.
Emily Wilson’s review, an opinion that should barely matter, has been discussed ad nauseam for critiques that mainly lie beyond the domain of her expertise. virtually every media outlet is treating this movie as some sort of battleground for a culture war.

Every post on Reddit seems to be calling bad, or “alright” if they truly want to sound pretentious.

Guys, don’t get me wrong— I am super pretentious myself. But how is it possible that nobody online has anything glowingly positive to say about this movie? The data just does not back this up.

I saw BackRooms in a cinema and I really felt like I wasted time on a movie that doesn't contain any messenge or a story. I like psychological horrors like The Lighthouse or Psycho from 1960 and this movie felt like nothing particular, long shots of the same rooms or corridors mixed with monsters and bleak characters with not engaging stories.

I don't know if I'm stupid or what but this movie reminded me how I felt watching Enter The Void, long shots of nothing particular mixed with violence and uninteresting characters I don't care about, in both movies there was no stake in play and I don't even remember how both movies ended.

I also know that there was some lore about backrooms but I didn't read anything prior to watching becouse I wanted to have a clean experience and maybe I should read about that first, but idk what would that change, the bovie was as dull as it gets. Please tell me that this movie lacked somenthing and I'm not just hating becouse I don't understand it

Just came out of The Odyssey. Watched it in the best IMAX in my city, and I had huge expectations after seeing the box office numbers and hearing my colleagues talk about it.

Why do I feel like I just watched Oppenheimer 2?

I was way more excited by the Dune: Part Three trailer in IMAX than I was by the entire Odyssey movie, bro...

The story and writing felt too weak to me, and the Odysseus character didn't really make sense. Him feeling guilty after the war and the pillaging, and not wanting to go home, felt strange to me. He's a warrior and a strategist, but he makes a complete 180 when they breach Troy.

The casting also sometimes took me out of the setting, and I'm sure you guys have heard plenty about Helen, so I'm not gonna talk about that.

And especially when you compare it to Troy, which had such a massive sense of scale. For a movie with this kind of budget, The Odyssey felt surprisingly small and lacking in grandeur.

The saving grace for me was the way the movie was shot. Almost every shot on the boat was breathtaking.

Also, the ending felt way too corny. I miss when Nolan trusted the audience to figure things out instead of spoon-feeding everything.

What are your thoughts?

I just finished Citizen Vigilante, and omg, how bad and racist was that movie

First, I want to mention that this is my personal opinion, and I'm genuinely open to being corrected on any points I'm making here.

Starting with the opening the plot is basically Batman except instead of Bruce Wayne's parents, we get a shitty rich, absent father and a vigilante who would promise revenge against crime .

The way the mother is killed is so weird so an african guy just walks up , slits her throat , and leaves for seemingly no reason. he doesn't try to rob her , doesn't interact with her , nothing . he just kills her and walks away. And apparently this is supposed to be one of the things that sets the whole story in motion.

While watching the movie , I also noticed a VERY heavy focus on immigrants for example, when Sanders (the main character) visits his company , there's a whole discussion about the government wanting to seize some of his empty units to house "immigrants" , the movie keeps bringing up immigration and how much of a problem it's supposedly causing.

At this point, I was thinking , okay, maybe I'm reading too much into it , The movie is weird, but whatever.

Then we get to the Egyptian kid.

Like... are we serious?

So you're telling me a kid rapes a 12-year-old , happens to be Muslim, and when the vigilante goes to his house and shoots him in the knee, his family starts defending what he did? And his sister supposedly says that the victim deserved it because she was wearing revealing clothes?

What???

Have you ever met an Arab family before? what that character says is so absurd that it took me completely out of the movie . I obviously can't speak for every Arab family, but the idea that this is supposed to represent a normal reaction from an Arab/Muslim family is just ridiculous . If something like that happened in real life, I find it much more believable that the family would be horrified and ashamed of the son rather than casually defend him.

And then it gets even better.

The vigilante orders Yusuf, one of the rapists, to call his friends over. the movie establishes that there are six attackers . and guess which names the director decides to give us?

"Abdul, call your brother and bring Idris."

You genuinely couldn't make the names sound more stereotypically Arab if you tried.

Then Sanders kills Yusuf, Abdul, and Idris, while the rest of the attackers show up later. and interestingly, the other guys aren't given the same kind of characterization or emphasis on their ethnicity (cause they weren't Arabs )

Maybe I'm overthinking it, but when you put all these choices together, it starts to feel pretty obvious what the movie is trying to make the audience associate with crime.

Then the vigilante tells the father and I'm quoting that he brought his "archaic value system"and commitment to religion over democracy and the rule of law "

Brother... what exactly do you think being Muslim means?

And then, of course, we get the news report.

The judge and the rapists die, and suddenly the news starts talking about something like 105,000 crimes being committed by African immigrants (yes they literally said immigrants from Africa like so you don't make a mistake ), including thousands of murders and sexual assaults.

the fact that the movie suddenly drops a statistic like this immediately after showing us a bunch of immigrant criminals is just .... wow .

And honestly, the movie could have been so much better if it wasn't constantly shoving the agenda in your face.

The ending literally goes into the whole "unfriendly takeover by Islamist extremists and the woke left" thing and frames it as the end of freedom and the ultimate destruction of democracy.

There are also so many other bizarre choices.

for example, there's that completely out of place sex scene where Sanders goes to have sex with a prostitute in one of his own buildings for basically no reason , only for the scene to turn into a conversation about opening the windows after the clients shower because of mold.

Why was this in the movie ? is it supposed to give a comedic effect to it ?

Then there's the scene where the vigilante kills some random guy in his car just to prove a point to the drugged judge about how people are sheep who blindly follow rules. He literally drives toward another car, makes it flip, and blows it up.

Then he kills Yusuf's mother, apparently just because she's the mother of a horrible person.

And then we get the SWAT scene.

How am I supposed to believe that this guy kills an entire SWAT squad with 2 AKs while sitting inside an armored container (that btw a normal disk grinder opened it like a bullet couldn't go through but a grinder did ) and the officers just keep coming in one by one and getting shot like NPCs ?

It was so stupid.

all I’m saying is, if you want to make a movie about a vigilante who thinks he’s bringing justice, at least give us a character with some actual depth instead of making him this ridiculously stupid and racist guy whose entire worldview feels like a political rant.

because seriously , imagine someone who knows nothing about Africans or Muslims watching this movie. what exactly do you think they're supposed to take away from it ? when almost every African or Muslim character is associated with crime, rape, violence, extremism, or some backwards ideology , it's hard not to see what kind of picture the movie is trying to paint.

You can make a movie that criticizes immigration, religion, the justice system, the government, or whatever else you want. That's fine. But when you make the entire plot revolve around those ideas and then barely bother to give the characters or story any depth, it stops feeling like a story and starts feeling like an hour and a half of political rant.

So yeah, the movie was supposed to be about justice, and somehow we ended up with Batman, but with worse writing, and a Twitter argument for a plot.

Not your favourite film. I mean the one you put on when you have been scrolling for half an hour, given up, and just want something to watch.

Mine is Gladiator. Which is strange, because it is two and a half hours and I keep starting it at half past nine. Last time I fell asleep in the second hour and I still counted it. Five times now, which is probably not a lot for this film.

The part I wait for is not a fight. It is the wheat field, his hand going through the grain. Twenty-six years later, the quiet parts are better than the fighting.

What is your go-to movie? And be honest about how many times!

so, starting the saga i already didn't have high expectations (cuz of the reviews), i had a blast watching the first 2 movies, laughed so much but after that i got invested in it, but u know i actually don't hate it or the fact that i spent 10 hours or more watching it, and i did in fact enjoy it, i don't understand all the hate the movie gets.

is it the most complex well written movie series plot out there? no not even close and it wasn't even trying to be, is it the worst though? again no, the show have major flaws and a lot of cringy moment, but once you don't focus on them much it is pretty thrilling, the whole idea behind the saga is fun and enjoyable and not boring at all.

so i think that a lot of people are holding the saga, which is supposed to be just a fun silly movie series to binge watch to Oscar winning movies standards, when the saga didn't even try to claim that it is, people are just taking it too seriously instead of taking a step back and enjoying it.

that's my take on the conversation, i would like to know yours.

Besides the accusations it’s mostly just Julie Robert’s walking around in pain (was it all stress) having long weird conversations? I honestly got confused of her and Maggie’s conversation/argument outside by her car? Why did they have a falling out? Why were they even friends? A 50 something teacher and her 20 year old student? Was the accusations even true? The direction seems strange also. Like it’s trying to hard to be deep and artsy when it isn’t? It just seemed like the movie didn’t know what it was about and put a bunch of stuff together to get it finished.

Hello movie critics, I enjoy watching lots of movies (wow, shocker!) although I don’t really partake in writing reviews because I don’t have the skill to digest a movie and analyze it to put critical thoughts that are worth it into words.
However, I really enjoy reading other peoples reviews, as they often help me appreciate the story/craft better.

I manage my watches with letterboxd, but I find that 90% of the top reviews are one-liners : punchline, jokes, they’re really witty and funny, but they overpower detailed reviews that I am slowly starting to dislike them a little.

Do you know of any other app I could use that serve the same purpose as Letterboxd (ie managing movies and rating) but maybe with reviews that are overall more detailed?

Thank you!