Some of these reviews are cracking me up. It’s clear they have never played the game and have no idea what the fans want or ANY of the rules/ canon of Mortal Kombat. One reviewer was mad that a guy “had a laser eye!” Why the fuck do we still allow people that don’t have any love…
— Todd Garner (@Todd_Garner) May 6, 2026
Movie Reviews
'Afire' movie review: The flame of love
Express News Service
It is likely that a lot of writers would see their own reflection, however unflattering, in Leon (Thomas Schubert), the protagonist of Christian Petzold’s Afire. I did. At times, I can be like him—living inside one’s own head, shunning human company, preoccupied with thoughts, agonizing for not being able to put them on paper, being self-obsessed yet wound up about one’s own creativity and creation.
Equally real is the oft-held perception by people around us, something that the film also shows, that writing is not “work”, as though it emerges magically, without an effort, from thin air.
However, despite there being a lot to empathise with Leon, he ends up inviting our scorn. On a visit to his friend Felix’s (Langston Uibel) holiday home by the Baltic Sea, he is in search of some peace, quiet, and isolation to dive deep into work and wrap up his second book. While fussing about it, he gets distracted by another occupier of the house, Nadja (Paula Beer), and her nightly dalliances with her lovers. Dissatisfied at his lack of productivity and mindful of his growing attraction for her, he is abrasive and annoying to others for their holiday fun and cheer, something he can’t afford. Meanwhile, the oppressive heat, lack of rain, and forest fires ensure that nature is also in an agitated state, like him.
Afire is as French as a German film can get. It is an eloquent reflection on relationships, friendships, and love navigated, formed and unformed amid creative enterprise with Wallners’ hypnotic and melodious assertion of freedom, the song “In My Mind”, playing oftentimes in the background. The film won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at Berlinale last year and was recently showcased at the Singapore International Film Festival.
In Afire, Petzold turns the typical holiday narrative (he wrote the film when down with COVID and watching Eric Rohmer movies) into an amusing and caustic character study of Leon—egotistical, self-absorbed, and self-centred, resentful, and jealous—with Schubert in great form, living the role from within. Beer is luminous as Nadja, and extremely likeable, unlike Schubert’s annoying Leon. Uibel is charming as Felix, working on his art portfolio on photos of people staring at the sea and, in the process, getting more than friendly with Nadja’s lifeguard lover Devid (Enno Trebbs). The film pivots on and moves along the interactions of the foursome. It is as much about the irritants that define Leon, as the reactions they elicit from the three.
As the forest fires get more intense, so does the mood of the film and of Leon as well. The turning point comes with his disparagement of Nadja (without quite realising who she is for real) for working at an ice cream cart, later allowing her to read his manuscript and then getting upset at her dismissal of it. It gets worse with his publisher Helmut (Matthias Brandt) rejecting it as well.
Petzold gradually replaces the fluid tone with a more uneven narrative, driving the funny towards the steadily darker, unsettling, and harrowing. A bear burnt to death, an emergency visit to the hospital, and tragic loss, is what it takes for Leon to start looking at, acknowledging, and understanding the world around him and find true creativity beyond the confines of his selfish persona. Too heavy a price to pay, perhaps, to get a life amid mortality, appreciate the bioluminescence at the sea in the throes of darkness, learn to smile in melancholy, and embrace life when a lot of time has regrettably slipped by. It’s eventually about Leon rising, metaphorically, from the ashes falling from the sky.
What was my takeaway from Afire? WH Davies’ poem Leisure: “What is this life, if full of care; We have no time to stand and stare.” A good film to end or begin a year with, one that reminds us to hit the pause button every now and then between the play modes and never say no to anything because “work won’t allow it”.
Cinema Without Borders
In this weekly column, the writer introduces you to powerful cinema from across the world
Film: Afire
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Billie Eilish fans prepare yourself, the much talked about secret project has finally arrived on the big screens!
Billie Eilish has always been about intimacy over artifice, but her latest concert film takes that to a visceral new level. Co-directed by Eilish and James Cameron, Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) manages to bridge the gap between a massive stadium show and the quiet grit of life backstage.
The film starts 18 minutes out from the show and builds the tension until audiences are literally folded into a box with her. Being taken under the stage, passing fans who have no idea she’s inches away, sets a tone of total immersion. What makes this film different is the balance between the spectacle and the behind-the-scenes reality. We see the creative shorthand between Billie and James Cameron as they chase what she calls the “best kind of sensory overload”.
The film is very much fan focussed, with the sound mix being so specific that you can hear individual fans singing along in sync with the visuals.
There are so many standout moments, the handheld camera work during “Bad Guy” that gives a dizzying POV of the band, and the chilling minute of silence Billie requests from the crowd to record a vocal loop.
The film captures her unique stage presence. Influenced by rap culture, Billie refuses to have anyone else on stage, unlike many female artists that use back up dancers. Billie can hold the entire stadium in awe by herself which is incredible to witness, until Finneas joins her for a beautiful, emotional piano set.
Between the high-tech visuals and the “Puppy Room” (where she keeps rescue dogs for staff to decompress), the film feels incredibly personal. While the film doesn’t give us any new insights into Billie, Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) is an enjoyable experience that elevates the tradition concert film.
Movie Reviews
Mortal Kombat 2 film producer asks ‘why the f**k’ critics who ‘have never played the game’ were allowed to review it | VGC
The producer of the Mortal Kombat 2 movie has called out critics who gave it a negative review.
At the time of writing, Mortal Kombat 2 has a score of 73% on film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, and a score of 48 on Metacritic.
While this means reviews have generally been mixed, the film’s producer Todd Garner took to X to criticise those who wrote negative reviews, suggesting that some of them were written by critics who aren’t familiar with the source material.
“Some of these reviews are cracking me up,” Garner wrote. “It’s clear they have never played the game and have no idea what the fans want or any of the rules/canon of Mortal Kombat.
“One reviewer was mad that a guy ‘had a laser eye’! Why the fuck do we still allow people that don’t have any love for the genre review these movies! Baffling.”
When questioned on this viewpoint by some followers, Garner explained that while he doesn’t have an issue with negative reviews in general, his problem is specifically reviewers who don’t appear to be familiar with Mortal Kombat.
“My comment was very squarely directed at a couple of reviewers that did not like the ‘zombies’ and the fact that there was a ‘guy with a laser eye’, etc,” he said. “Those are elements that are baked into the Mortal Kombat IP and therefore we were dead in the water going in.
“There is no way for that person to review how it functioned as a film, because they did not like the foundational elements of the IP. I just wish when something is so obviously fan leaning in its DNA, that critics would take that into consideration.”
One follower then countered Garner’s complaint by arguing that he shouldn’t be criticising people who don’t know the games, when the films themselves take creative license with the IP.
“Bro to be fair, you invented Cole Young, Arcana and couldn’t even get the simple lore of Mileena and Kitana correct,” said user Dudeguy29. “I’d say you shouldn’t be tossing any stones here.”
“Fair,” Garner replied.
Garner previously criticised the cast of the Street Fighter movie when, during The Game Awards last year, comedian Andrew Schulz – who plays Dan in the Street Fighter film – claimed that the Mortal Kombat 2 movie cast were also in attendance, before joking: “I’m just kidding, they didn’t come, they don’t care about you, they only care about money.”
The jibe didn’t go down well with Garner, who stated on X at the time: “I don’t climb over others to get ahead”. When recently asked how he felt about the cast vs cast rivalry, however, Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon laughed and said he had no issue with it at all.
Mortal Kombat 2 is released in cinemas this Friday, May 8, while Street Fighter arrives later in the year on October 16.
Within the family at the center of Blue Heron, the black sheep is a blond. Fair-skinned teenager Jeremy (Edik Beddoes) is an outlier among his siblings, two jostling preteen boys and watchful, 8-year-old Sasha (Eylul Guven), who are all darkly featured and take after their Hungarian parents (Iringó Réti and Ádám Tompa). Jeremy’s hair color doesn’t really matter, of course, but the contrast makes a useful shorthand for Jeremy’s otherness.
If “other” sounds inexact, that’s the point. To the frustration of his devoted but exhausted parents, there’s been no straightforward diagnosis for what ails Jeremy – for the mood swings, the “acting out.” A move at the beginning of the film to a new home is hopeful but short-lived: The mystery of Jeremy, to himself and to others, persists.
Much of Blue Heron is set over the course of one summer on Vancouver Island in the late Nineties, mirroring filmmaker Sophy Romvari’s own backstory, though the film shouldn’t be confused for straight autobiography. (Her 2020 short film, “Still Processing,” explored her family’s struggles with mental health through first-person documentary.) Still, the remarkable texture of these family scenes and how they favor Sasha’s childlike perspective – her small hands as they handle a potato peeler for the first time, the easy smiles as her mother dabs sunscreen on her face – feels intensely personal. There’s a hushed, dreamy quality to these scenes, mimicking memory itself, that plays into Blue Heron’s remarkable ability to hold two seemingly contradictory things to be true. Sasha can resent her brother and love him. Jeremy can be terrifying and in pain. A film can be whisper-quiet and still trip the wires in your brain that scream “danger.”
With very little dialogue and no cookie-cutter story beats, this fraught family life is vividly, tenderly rendered by Romvari and her naturalistic cast. That makes it all the more disorienting when, at arguably the moment of highest drama, Romvari shifts to a different vantage point. Boldly, she is asking the audience to look anew at what we’ve seen: to acknowledge what we saw was not the whole picture (how could it be, from an 8-year-old’s eye line?). The effect for me – and I suspect for you too, if you’re the kind of person who likes to take a movie apart and understand how it ticks – is exhilarating.
But not entirely effective – and in this reservation I gather I’m the outlier; Blue Heron has been rapturously received at festivals and by critics. This second half (of which I’m loath to spoil the specifics) becomes at once more experimental and more documentary-like, and revolves around a muted performance stranded in the in-between of drama and docudrama. Nothing ruinous, but a hangnail nonetheless on a film that otherwise had me in its thrall.
Blue Heron
2026, NR, 90 min. Directed by Sophy Romvari. Starring Eylul Guven, Edik Beddoes, Amy Zimmer, Iringó Réti, Ádám Tompa, Liam Serg, Preston Drabble.
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This article appears in May 8 • 2026.
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