MICHAEL : Tuesday 7th July 2026

I finally got around to seeing the PG Rated 'MICHAEL' which was released here in Australia on 23rd April. This American biographical musical drama film is Directed by Antoine Fuqua, whose previous feature film credits take in the likes of his debut in 1998 with 'The Replacement Killers' which he would follow up with 'Training Day' in 2001, 'Tears of the Sun' in 2003, 'Shooter' in 2007, 'Olympus Has Fallen' in 2013, 'Southpaw' in 2015, 'The Magnificent Seven' in 2016, and 'The Equalizer' trilogy in 2014, 2018 and 2023. He has also helmed a number of documentaries over the years including 'What's My Name : Muhammad Ali' in 2019. This film Premiered in Berlin on 10th April having cost in the region of US$200M to produce, but has since gone on to gross US$992M at the global Box Office despite fairly negative critical reviews. It is the highest grossing biographical film of all time, and the second highest grossing film of 2026 at the time of writing. In late May this year it was announced that a sequel was already in development. 

In 1966 in Gary, Indiana, steel factory worker Joseph Jackson (Colman Domingo) assembles his sons Jackie (Nathaniel Logan McIntyre), Tito (Judah Edwards), Jermaine (Jayden Harville), Marlon (Jaylen Lyndon Hunter), and his youngest son Michael (Juliano Krue Valdi), aged eight, into the musical band the Jackson 5, with Michael on lead vocals. 

After months of grueling rehearsals, involving corporal punishment from Joseph when their routine doesn't go according to his strict guidelines, the Jackson 5 perform at gigs until Suzanne De Passe (Laura Harrier) discovers them in Chicago in 1968, and they are signed with Motown a year later. 

Their albums top the charts, and they sell out concerts across the US, allowing them to move from their small house to the Hayvenhurst mansion in Encino, California, in 1971. Motown founder Berry Gordy (Larenz Tate) believes Michael has the potential to make it big as a solo artist - a notion that Joseph won't even entertain, for his focus sits squarely on the Jackson 5.

We then fast forward to 1978, and Michael (Jaafar Jackson) signs with Epic Records for his first solo album as an adult, 'Off the Wall' produced by Quincy Jones (Kendrick Sampson). Despite its success, Michael's solo career is held back by Joseph, who believes he is solely responsible for his children's success and fortunes. Michael is forced to continue touring with his brothers on the Triumph Tour (from July to September 1981 in the US and Canada). 

Feeling insecure about his appearance and developing vitiligo (a chronic autoimmune disorder that causes patches of skin to lose pigment or colour), Michael undergoes rhinoplasty surgery to alter the size and shape of his nose. Following an argument with Joseph, he takes advice from his bodyguard, driver and close friend, Bill Bray (KeiLyn Durrel Jones) to create his own path in life. In 1981, he hires John Branca (Miles Teller) as his lawyer and manager, and has him fire Joseph by fax.

Michael visits sick children in hospitals and experiments with ideas for his next album, which is set for release in 1982. After watching a news report on the Crips/Bloods gang war in his home studio, he hires members of both gangs to appear in his music video for 'Beat It'. 

'Thriller', the album, is released and breaks worldwide sales records while Michael delivers a groundbreaking performance of 'Billie Jean' at Motown 25. Michael and Branca head to New York to ask the CBS Records president, Walter Yetnikoff (Mike Myers), to have MTV play Michael's music videos, despite the network not playing videos by black artists, for fear of upsetting their largely white middle class American audience. MTV agrees to give him airtime after Yetnikoff threatens to pull the CBS Records catalogue out of the network, including such famed artists as Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper and Bob Dylan.

While Michael basks in the limelight of his global success, Joseph has a private meeting with the boxing promoter Don King (Deon Cole) and proposes the 1984 Victory Tour to reunite his sons. King offers Joseph a PepsiCo sponsorship deal, provided that Michael tours with the Jacksons, to which Michael objects. While the Jacksons film a Pepsi commercial in late January 1984, a spark from the staged pyrotechnics sets Michael's hair on fire, resulting in third-degree burns and nerve damage to his scalp. 

He was rushed to Brotman Medical Centre for extensive medical treatments. Instead of suing, he reached an out-of-court settlement with Pepsi for US$1.5M, which he donated the entire sum to Brotman Medical Centre to fund a newly established burns unit. In the hospital, comforted by his mother Katherine (Nia Long), Michael, when he is well enough, meets with the other patients as he considers his options on whether to get involved with the Victory Tour.

Once Michael recovers, he agrees to tour with his siblings. During the final show at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on 9th December 1984, they perform 'Human Nature' and 'Working Day and Night'. Michael announces it is the last time the Jacksons will perform together, much to the surprise of his siblings and severing his ties finally with Joseph—much to his fathers horror. Michael performs his first solo tour, the Bad World Tour (from mid-September 1987 through until the end of January 1989, and takes in 123 shows), and at Wembley Stadium in July 1988 to an ecstatic crowd, and over the course of seven sold out concerts he promotes his seventh studio album 'Bad' released in 1987. 

Also starring Jamal R. Henerson, Tre Horton, Rhyan Hill, Joseph David-Jones and Jessica Sula as Jermaine, Marlon, Tito, Jackie and La Toya - Michael's older siblings respectively. 

Charting the early life and the golden era of Michael Jackson, the self proclaimed 'King of Pop' is here offered up in a sanitised version of his life that is a celebration of his music, his dance, and perhaps to a lesser extent his mark on fashion, and his desire to make the world a better place through the power of his music. And on that level this film succeeds, backed up by top notch performances from Juliano Valdi and Jaafar Jackson as the younger and older Michael respectively, Colman Domingo as the controlling and seemingly never satisfied Joseph Jackson, and first rate production values in recreating his song and dance routines, and some of the most iconic performances from his early solo career. For fans of Michael Jackson, this film is sure to please, but if your are looking for more of what made MJ really tick and the truth behind the legend, then you will be left wanting. This film doesn't tell us anything that we didn't already know about the man, and on that front the film is a let down. Having said that, a title card before the end credits roll tells the audience that 'His Story Continues' and as we now know a sequel is in the works which you would like to believe will hopefully answer all of those unanswered questions and address the big elephant in the room. 

'Michael' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

DISCLOSURE DAY : Tuesday 16th June 2026.

I saw the M Rated 'DISCLOSURE DAY' earlier this week at my local multiplex, and this American Science Fiction film is based on an original story, Co-Produced and Directed by Steven Spielberg, who I'm sure needs no introduction. Spielberg is no stranger to the world of Sci-Fi having helmed 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' in 1977, then 'E.T.' in 1982, 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence' in 2001, 'Minority Report' in 2002, 'War of the Worlds' in 2005 and 'Ready Player One' in 2018. This film saw its Premiere screening in Paris early this month, went on world wide release last week, has generated positive critical reviews and has so far recovered US$121M at the global Box Office from a production budget of US$115M.

The film begins with a staged wrestling match, and in the audience sits Dr. Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor) watching nonchalantly, while the rest of the crowd rise to their feet enthusiastically to cheer on the champion. From behind a man pulls a revolver and jabs it into Kellner's side, telling him to stand up and release his back pack next time the crowd stands and cheers. He does so, the back pack is removed and he is taken outside. It is quickly revealed that Kellner is a cybersecurity specialist who up until that day had spent the prior eight years working for the Wardex Corporation, a secret arm of the US government, and that he had stolen a piece of extraterrestrial technology and dozens of related files, detailing various events of human and alien contact dating back to the Roswell incident, some 79 years ago, and right up to the very recent past. Wardex CEO Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) discovers the theft and has Daniel branded a foreign spy, making him the target of federal authorities. Once outside, Scanlon and Kellner come face to face, but Kellner is able to thwart his would be captors by revealing that he is in possession of one of three very powerful alien devices, and so Scanlon reluctantly chooses to let him go. He goes into hiding at a convent with his girlfriend, Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson), a former noviciate of the convent before she lost her calling three years earlier. 

Meanwhile, in Kansas City, television meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is preparing for work at home when a cardinal bird flies in through her kitchen window, briefly observes her, and is then chased away through the window by Margaret's boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell), a jobbing musician. The incident awakens latent psychic abilities, so giving Margaret the ability to understand the thoughts and emotions of others, and unconsciously converse in foreign languages she has never learned. 

After the two news anchors have finished their story of an imminent World War III currently unfolding, they cross to Margaret's live weather broadcast, during which she unexpectedly begins speaking in an unknown language, and then collapses on the studio's stage. Footage of the broadcast goes viral and draws the attention of Wardex, which identifies the language as extraterrestrial in origin. After being hospitalised and nearly captured by Scanlon's agents, Margaret also goes into hiding with Jackson in tow.

Having been extracted from the convent by Dave Santiago (Tommy Martinez) and taken to a remote safe house, Kellner reveals the stolen files to Jane, explaining that Wardex has been experimenting on live alien captives and reverse engineering their technology for years, and states his intention to make the information public, and how the world deserves to know the truth. Jane while horrified by the footage seen on the laptop, is reluctant to broadcast this news to the world because of her religious beliefs. Kellner learns of Margaret and discovers that he is the only one who can understand the alien language she spoke in the broadcast. 

Through one of the three alien devices that grants him telepathic capabilities, Scanlon forms a psychic bond with Jane and uses it first to make her attempt to kill Daniel and to track them to the remote safe house, and then to track them to a hotel. Jane escapes with the alien device in Kellner's possession, but Kellner is captured. Meanwhile, as her abilities evolve, Margaret has visions of him and follows them to a black site where he is being held. 

They escape when Margaret learns how to use her abilities to empathetically influence their pursuers into standing down. Scanlon's head of security Casper Boyd (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), intentionally rams their car into the side of a passing speeding freight train, and the pair are dragged along in their vehicle by the train into the path of an oncoming train. Kellner pulls Margaret out just in time for them to climb onto the train and make their way to safety. Margaret has a panic attack once inside the safety of a carriage, and Kellner calms her down. 

Margaret and Kellner are rescued by a team of a dozen or so Wardex employees who have become whistleblowers. Their leader, Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), who has been working with Kellner and in regular communication with him, shelters them in a warehouse containing a near exact reconstruction of Margaret's childhood home and encourages her to recover suppressed memories connected to the extraterrestrial phenomenon. 

Inside, Margaret remembers that she and Kellner were both abducted by extraterrestrials as ten year old children and subjected to experiments that gave them their powers. Kellner was given almost superhuman mathematical capabilities which made him a shoe-in for his cyber security role at Wardex recruited by Wakefield. And Margaret was bestowed with the ability to speak and understand any language and taps into people's minds. She also learns that the unusual animals that have appeared throughout their lives are extraterrestrials, assuming harmless forms to observe them, such as a moose, a fox, a racoon and that cardinal bird. 

Margaret and Kellner, accompanied by Wakefield and the other whistleblowers, return to Margaret's television studio to make a public broadcast they name 'Disclosure Day'. Scanlon and his team arrive en masse and attempt to halt their broadcast, disabling the power grid and the station's backup generator, but Jane arrives and gives her device to Margaret, who uses it to restore the power. Defeated, Scanlon decides to watch instead of continuing to stop them, but Boyd leaves in anger, with most of his team leaving with him. The transmission reveals to the stunned world historical evidence of alien encounters and the ensuing government cover-ups. As the broadcast reaches a global audience, halting the imminent war, the whistleblowers reveal one of the extraterrestrials, whom they freed. The alien privately communicates a message to Kellner, who is the only one who understands their language as though it is English, who in turn relays it to Margaret. With the world transfixed to their TV screens and their phones and computers, Margaret prepares to deliver the alien message, saying, 'Listen'.

With 'Disclosure Day' here Director Spielberg has delivered his audience another masterful story that could act as a companion piece to his seminal 1977 movie 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. While this film doesn't quite reach those same lofty heights, what it does deliver is a thrilling chase movie laced with plenty of expertly choreographed action sequences, conspiracy theories, emotional heft, and perhaps a career best performance from Emily Blunt, and while we're at it Josh O'Connor puts in a convincing turn too. Make no mistake, this is a blockbusting effort from the master storyteller, that will have pondering over that timeless question of whether we are alone in the infinite universe, and if ever, or whenever, the truth does eventually come out, will we be prepared for it and what will the consequences be? See it on the big screen, you won't be disappointed, and at a run time of 145 minutes it doesn't outstay its welcome. 

'Disclosure Day' warrants four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

THE RUNNING MAN : Tuesday 18th November 2025

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'THE RUNNING MAN' this week at my local multiplex cinema, and this American dystopian action thriller film is Co-Written for the screen, Co-Produced and Directed by Edgar Wright, and is based on the 1982 novel written by Stephen King under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. It is also the second big screen adaptation following the 1987 film of the same name that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Directed by Paul Michael Glaser. Edgar Wright's previous feature film output takes in his feature debut with 1995's 'A Fistful of Fingers' and then 'Shaun of the Dead' in 2004, 'Hot Fuzz' in 2007, 'Scott Pilgrim vs. the World' in 2010, 'The World's End' in 2013, 'Baby Driver' in 2017, and 'Last Night in Soho' in 2021. The film was released here in Australia, the UK and the US last week, cost US$110M to produce, has so far grossed US$31M and has garnered mixed critical acclaim.

In the near future, the USA is a dystopian authoritarian state ruled over by a major media Network, where the majority of the population live in poverty with little access to even basic healthcare. The Network appease people with their trashy, violent reality and game shows through their FreeVee TV's, which are literally everywhere. The Network's most popular show is 'The Running Man', where three 'Runners' are selected from literally hundreds of other wannabes, and can win US$1B if they survive for thirty days while the Network's 'Hunters', led by the mysterious Evan McCone (Lee Pace), and ordinary citizens try to hunt and kill them, by any means possible. Given US$1K and a twelve-hour headstart, Runners are required to film themselves for ten minutes every day and post in their recoded message which is then played on air the next day, or else they'll forfeit the contest. 

Ben Richards (Glen Powell), is a blue-collar worker living in the slums of Co-Op city, is unable to afford influenza medicine for his two year old daughter, Cathy, after being fired from several of his former jobs for insubordination and is blacklisted. Over his wife, Sheila's (Jayme Lawson), objections, Ben tries out for the Network and following exhaustive physical and mental testing is selected for 'The Running Man'. 

Ben agrees to participate when Executive Producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), who can be very persuasive, offers him an advance for Cathy's medication and a safe house for his family. As the show begins with great fanfare, Ben acquires fake IDs and two disguises - one as an Executive Manager and the other as a Priest, from his associate Molie (William H. Macy). Ben travels to New York, where he watches live coverage on his TV from his hotel room where is is holed up as Runner Tim Jansky (Martin Herlihy) is found seemingly flaunting the rules and is gunned down in the street and killed by the Hunters.

He then flees to Boston and hides out at a hostel, but is soon afterwards located by the Hunters. An intense firefight ensues, which leads to an explosion that takes out the entire hostel block and kills eight network soldiers. Ben escapes through a sewer and is found and sheltered by Bradley Throckmorton (Daniel Ezra) and his family. Bradley, an anti-network activist, teaches Ben about the network's propaganda and deceit, which Ben relays in his next recording. Instead, the Network replaces him with a foul-mouthed deepfake, resulting in Ben being kicked out of the house by Bradley's mother. Bradley then directs Ben to a fellow activist in Derry, Maine, where he says he'll be safe. 

During his journey, he learns that second runner Jenni Laughlin (Katy O'Brian) has been killed having narrowly escaped from a casino in a pink convertible car but then crashing it into a barn whereupon she was torched by two flamethrower wielding young kids. Ben is now the sole remaining runner, and he has earned the support of the poor and working-class who plaster the slogan 'Ben Lives' on walls and placards, almost everywhere. On the fourteenth day, Ben arrives at the home of Bradley's friend, Elton Parrakis (Michael Cera), who believes Ben's survival can help fuel a rebellion against the Network. Elton gives Ben a map to a bunker built by his late father, where he can survive the full thirty days, even though its designed to sustain a life for three years. 

As he tries to leave early one morning, Ben is alerted by Elton's aged mother Victoria (Sandra Dickinson) who recognises Ben from her ardent watching of his TV programme and wants to alert the Network. He successfully averts her from doing so, but Elton alerts them anyway and within under five minutes the property is swarming with Hunters. However, Elton has booby trapped the entire house and successfully dispatches many of them. Ben and Elton escape in a buggy filled with explosives, but McCone kills Elton with a single shot to the head from a helicopter above, and another Hunter confronts Ben on a bridge. Driving towards each other at speed, Ben crashes the buggy into the Hunter which erupts in a ball of flame, while he escapes by jumping into the river below.

Traveling north as per the map provided by Elton, Ben discovers that the location of the bunker has been covered over by a new housing development still under construction. Ben is later caught on surveillance but escapes using the car of upperclass woman Amelia Williams (Emilia Jones), taking her hostage. Amelia initially believes the propaganda about the Hunters being there to safeguard her kind from Ben's violent unruly kind, until she witnesses on her in-car TV screen how the show's content differs from reality. They travel to an airfield guarded by McCone and the Network, where Killian instructs McCone to let them pass. Ben commandeers a plane on the pretext that he is wearing a suicide vest of Black Irish high explosive that would incinerate everyone within a half mile radius. and he want's it to take him and Amelia across the border into Canada. On the flight, Killian calls Ben to offer him a contract for his own network show and to become Hunter 6. When Ben refuses, Killian shows footage of McCone and the Hunters murdering Sheila and Cathy, which is played on the show to give him the audience's sympathy.

Ben realises the flight crew are McCone's remaining Hunters and fights them in the cockpit eventually killing them. When he fights McCone, he learns that the latter is a former runner who survived 29 days during the show's first season, having taken Killian's deal. After a violent fight, Ben kills McCone and gives a parachute to Amelia so she can escape. Killian again offers Ben his own show and a chance to speak on live TV, but Ben refuses again and tries to convince viewers to turn off their FreeVee. The Network redirects the plane to their headquarters and runs a deepfake of Ben threatening to crash into the building. The plane is shot down by a missile before it hits the building. Ben survives the attack by escaping in the plane's auto-eject pod, and later reunites with Sheila and his daughter, whose deaths were faked by Killian.

Sometime later, Amelia recovers the plane's black box flight recorder and leaks the uncensored recordings to the public. This turns public opinion against the Network and ultimately leads to a rebellion. As the next season of The Running Man begins, host Bobby Thompson (Colman Domingo) senses the hostility in the audience and quits on the spot after leading the show for twenty years, leaving Killian to very reluctantly take over as host - to which he lasts less than a minute after the a riot breaks out among the audience. Running to get away, Killian looses his way during the audience frenzy and crashes through a screen backdrop onto the main stage. Lying flat on the ground watching the melee unfolding before him, Ben emerges from the crowd, and points McCoon's gun (inscribed with word 'Destiny' in block capitals) at him. Counting down 5-4-3-2-1 and Action, Ben shoots Killian, whom he had sworn at their very first meeting that he would fuck him over.

My two other movie buddies and I came away from 'The Running Man' having enjoyed Edgar Wright's apparently more faithful adaptation of the Stephen King novel, and praising Glen Powell's performance as the put-upon but nonetheless undefeated Ben Richards. This movie has something to say about out of control corporate capitalism, society's insatiable appetite for in your face and outlandish media offerings, and the great divide that exists between the wealthy and those living on or below the poverty line. Throw into the mix a good dose of well executed action sequences, a strong supporting cast, a fast paced thrill ride that will not leave you wanting, and the charm and charisma of the film's leading man, and you have a movie that is well worth the price of cinema entry, and is an improvement on the 1987 original. 

'The Running Man' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-