In Sender, writer-director Russell Goldman’s high-anxiety debut, the filmmaker expands on his 2022 short Return to Sender, in which Allison Tolman starred as a woman who receives packages she didn’t order. That may not sound like a premise that would result in a paranoid, darkly comedic thriller, much less a feature. But in extending his story from 18 minutes to just over 90, Goldman follows a maddening scenario involving an online retailer called Smirk, a fictionalized Amazon counterpart. More significantly, he captures the frenzied mindset of his protagonist, who grapples with staying sober and several other major life changes—all compounded by a layer of justifiable paranoia brought on by the endless packages. Goldman’s tweaky style and elusive scripting create a peculiar, out-of-whack presentation that destabilizes the viewer, firmly placing us in his main character’s perspective. However, by the end, the journey through this cine-manic headspace doesn’t add up to much, and the potential character study at the center feels somewhat lost in the mechanics of the conspiracy. 

Britt Lower (AppleTV’s Severance) stars as Julia, who has just lost her job and moved into a rental home to get her life on track. She is backed financially by her overbearing sister Tatiana (Anna Baryshnikov), who occasionally comes nosing around to verify that Julia doesn’t backslide. And she doesn’t. Julia attends regular Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, where she meets the steely Whitney (Rhea Seehorn), who isn’t interested in being her sponsor. But at home, Julia receives a Smirk package with her brand of lipstick. The problem? She didn’t order it. She calls customer service, and the representative doesn’t help much before telling her, “Be sure to stay alert and aware.” Wait, what? Sender is loaded with nagging, unplaceable details like this. They’re often amusing, intriguing, and exasperating in the same moment. But these pieces don’t complete a whole picture, at least not a narratively satisfying one. 

The Smirk packages, delivered by the outwardly helpful, nice-guy driver Charlie (David Dastmalchian), contain a random assortment of objects, from drum kits to protein powder. The squirrelly Julia, already coming apart at the seams from her recent drama, doesn’t know what to make of it. She’s convinced there’s some plot against her, perhaps by someone at Smirk. To what end, she doesn’t know. But Goldman gives us a glimpse of the long-term consequences of her ordeal in the prologue, which features Jamie Lee Curtis (also a producer) as Lisa, a woman in circumstances similar to Julia’s. Lisa’s response to receiving a box of soil with a broken shin pad (with “Can’t Can’t Can” scrawled on it) entails an attempt to suffocate herself with the bubble wrap, only to do far worse with a sharp edge of the shin pad. To show Lisa’s fate, Goldman’s imagery becomes twisted and surreal but also cryptic. 

Sender’s disorienting mood is matched by a skewed formal presentation. Cinematographer Gemma Doll-Grossman’s wide-angle lenses and arch angles might feel at home in a Ken Russell or Terry Gilliam feature such as The Devils (1971) or 12 Monkeys (1996). Julia’s half-remembered drinking binges, accented by blurry close-ups, suggest she may have slept with any number of coworkers. She can’t remember, and it embarrasses her. Her rental is dressed in simple if shabby décor, which gives way to Julia’s erratic collage-like overhaul. Melisa Myers’ stuffed production design makes the most of heightened colors and banal, cluttered rooms that lend a normality to the bizarre, ever more disturbing predicament. Nathan Ruyle’s erratic music delivers what must be described as a soundscape rather than a traditional score, with collusive sound effects and tones driving our certainty that Julia is onto something. Along with Marco Rosas’ discordant editing, Goldman’s technical approach effectively reflects Julia’s fragmented, sleep-deprived mind. But his work as a writer hasn’t done enough to justify this level of technique. 

After Julia makes a revelatory discovery that small cameras have been embedded in the products from those mysterious packages, the eventual explanation about what has been happening and why strains logic and underwhelms. It also raises even more unanswered questions. Although well-made and acted—Lower and Seehorn should be on track to movie stardom—Goldman’s script could have used another draft to better work through what unfolds. Sender doesn’t give us enough of its characters’ inner lives beyond the situation at hand, so Julia, Charlie, Tatiana, and Whitney feel like devices in a scenario rather than well-drawn human beings. Even so, Goldman fills his film with deeply broken people who try to gain control of their lives by controlling others, exposing and preying on their weaknesses. Despite the material’s potential resonance, Goldman’s style is overpowering. Still, his kernel of an idea and the way he explores it demonstrate his clear skill, and for much of Sender, its sheer oddball energy earns admiration.

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So I took my Dad to go and see the new Supergirl movie – and we both loved it;

And when we left the cinema, I broke the News to him that critics had absolutely panned it and predicted it was on its way to being a box office flop;

And my Dad joined me in being totally and utterly baffled by this response, and wondering if we’d just seen a totally different film to the seeming majority of reviewers!?

Oddly enough, a few reviewers banged the same drum asking if Supergirl had come out just as audiences were putting away childish things, like Superheroes;

To that last point; sure Scorsese hates superhero movies, but he also endorses the use of AI in filmmaking calling it “creatively freeing” – so I dunno, if a douche canoe declares superhero movies aren’t “real cinema” but seems totally fine letting broligarchy robots become filmmakers using stolen artwork, does anyone care? No. No we do not.

And mind you too – everyone is excited for the new Spider-Man: Brand New Day (including me, and my Dad) and not decrying it’s come out just as Superheroes are dying. So once again; this seems an odd argument to make.

And then lots also took the opinion that it missed the feminist mark;

I mean … sigh – there’s no real valid points to them, and when Coleman Spilde decries the “infantilisation” of Superigrl in one paragraph (WHAT?!) and then – with a straight-face – writes;

As always, I return to a perfect example: 2004’s “Catwoman.” That film was ingeniously enterprising, weird, stylish, sexy, and most importantly, totally singular. Moreover, it was entirely separate from the character’s source comics, with no mention of Batman to be found. Although “Catwoman” didn’t quite recoup its budget in theaters and was largely reviled among audiences and critics, it looks and feels a hell of a lot more thrilling 22 years on than anything DC Studios has cooked up in the time since.

I’m sorry but I can’t take you seriously. Sit down.

ALSO: the reviewers pointing to a slumped box office as proof that Supergirl is dud are being disingenuous, but few are willing to admit it;

Waner Bros. and DC’s “Supergirl” did the best of the newcomers on Friday, landing in second place with $18 million domestically from 3,602 theaters. Through the weekend, it should collect about $50 million. For context, James Gunn’s “Superman,” which cost $225 million, debuted to $125 million last summer and ended its run with $618 million. “Supergirl” was a bit cheaper to produce at $170 million, but will still need to stick around in theaters to justify the pricetag.

So here’s the truth; Supergirl has a fairly gritty storyline – we follow newcomer, young girl Ruth (Eve Ridley) who witnesses the murder of her parents and sibling at the hands of patriarchal space pirates – the Brigands – and specifically their leader Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts) who struck the killing blows against her kin. Her father was a master sword-maker, so when Ruth is the only one left alive she vows to take her father’s last remaining sword and use it to seek vengeance and kill Krem. She goes seeking a champion to help her in this goal.

But what Ruth stumbles across in the Red Sun galaxy is a bar-hopping Supergirl (played brilliantly by Aussie Milly Alcock) – who is seeking the neutralisation of the red sun to allow her to exist in a boozey state of forgetting … she has her canine companion Crypto, her cousin Kal-El back on the rejuvenating yellow-sunned earth (who she is avoiding) but not much else until Ruth and her problems stumble into her life.

When Crypto’s life is endangered by one and the same Krem, Supergirl reluctantly joins the fight – and along the way discovers that the Brigands trade in kidnapped girls from across the galaxy, to continue populating their all-male line.

Ah.

Suddenly the throughly disinterested Supergirl is drawn into a Shakespearean web of Ruth’s revenge plot, her own desperate three-day bid to save Crypto, and breaking up an inter-galactic slave trade smuggling ring.

It’s definitely got darkness at its centre. And decent enough story-echoes to two more films from established franchises that put female leads front-and-centre in their new outings, and saw great success. Namely; Rogue One which has the avenge-my-family subplot similar to Ruth’s, and Mad Max; Fury Road for the rescued brides of pirate psychopaths plot.

Along the way Supergirl and Ruth bump into Lobo (Jason Momoa) who is seeking his own bounty from one of the heads of the Brigands. He’s not so interested in helping Ruth and Supergirl in their loftier ambitions, but proves a useful hammer when their fights align;

Overall I found the plot to be quite moving and decently big enough in scope. It’s hard to watch and not see connections to the here and now – that no matter the planet or galaxy, women and girls are traded and abused at the hands of men;

Why shouldn’t Supergirl but a version of this story front and centre?

James Gunn’s 2025 Superman raised similar lines of enquiry about the echoes to modern conflicts to be found in its fiction;

That last one undoubtedly hits closest to the truth – but it’s still an interesting practice on how Art is Indeed Political, and amazingly when you give audiences colonial war-mongers as villains they’re going to see parallels to real-world apartheid and genocidal states, whether studios wanted them to or not.

I am not the biggest Superman fan, truth be told. But I did really enjoy David Corenswet’s 2025 take (and far more than all of the Zack Snyder’s poorly written nonsense … I mean; MARTHA!! – really? Dud).

Superman has always been a little too cheery and optimistic for me. I far more gravitate to Batman (millionaire he may be, eat them!) and Chris Nolan’s films remain the definitive superhero franchise for me – especially because they lean into violence and a more Jekyll-Hyde struggle.

I am probably also more of a Marvel gal (X-Men and Kitty Pryde being my definitive favourites of all time!) and again – I think there’s more complexity and shades of light and dark to be found there, that I am more drawn to. I am a millennial child raised on the X-Men cartoon and The Dark Phoenix Saga in particular, really shaped my comic-book/superhero arc outlook.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find more grit and dark in this 2026 Supergirl, and new dimensions to the character whom I’d last encountered in the squeakier CW universe (which only tangentially touched on domestic violence against women, when its star –Melissa Benoist – admitted to her own experiences in an abusive relationship, with a fellow actor on the CW show).

Superman is a tale of immigration, and always has been – Superman is a refugee;

Critically though; Superman migrated to America and found asylum with the Kent family, as a baby. He has little to no memory of Krypton, only the acquired memories of his parent’s imperfect messages in his Fortress of Solitude.

Supergirl is not the same – as she explains in the film; “Krypton did not die in a day, the Gods are not that kind.” She was born eight years after Krypton’s core could not sustain the planet anymore. Her uncle and Kal-El’s father sent Superman away immediately as the planet started to disintegrate, but Supergirl’s own father was instrumental in creating a forcefield around the city to sustain it while the rest of the planet fell away. Supergirl was born in a domed and doomed piece of the Krypton planet, and it was only in her teenage years when her father admitted this bandaid-on-a-bullet-wound was unsustainable, that he sent her away to Earth, to follow her cousin to safety and a new life. In this, there’s of course allusions to climate catastrophe that any viewer can – and should – relate to, living on a similarly dying planet.

Supergirl did not want to leave though, because that dying planet was all she had ever known. It was home. Imperfect as it was.

She is the embodiment of a different refugee and migration story. She is closer to the Warsan Shire poem;

That’s Supergirl’s experience.

She does not integrate into Earth as seamlessly as Kal-El. She is not the perfect refugee, desperate to assimilate.

How interesting, that we’re having these ridiculous conversations in Australian politics – prompted by that feckless and cruel bootlicker, Pauline Hanson – about migrants assimilating. A deadening and dulling of their culture to a ‘mono’ smooth-brained nothingness of acquiescence to an ill-defined “Australian” identity.

I found Supergirl’s struggles refreshing, in this light. She is not the perfect immigrant – there is no such thing. She struggles with Superman’s goodness and wholesome Kansas-boy persona, his Clark Kent assimilation that she cannot relate to or emulate. She carries the death and destruction she witnessed on Krypton with her, the grief for what she left behind – all that she had ever known. It has shaped her in a way that Superman wasn’t similarly moulded, and so she feels alone and lonely. One of two surviving Kryptonians and one of them has no memory of what they even survived.

This is fascinating to me, and brilliantly wrought in the film.

Especially for how Supergirl sees in Ruth a similar yearning for a place that no longer exists, and she can never go back to … a place before her family was murdered. Ruth is hellbent on vengeance to try and cure her of her grief, but Supergirl knows all too well that nothing can change the past.

I loved it.

My Dad loved it.

Milly Alcock was brilliant – snarky and ragged, but a girl willing to go to great lengths for her dog (hard relate).

Maybe the character of Krem was rendered in costume and design a little too Mad Max, and lost some of the comic-book commentary around him just being an ordinary-looking guy bordering on dastardly dashing pirate; maybe keeping him looking so norm-core would’ve added to commentary on bad men looking completely ordinary as opposed to the villainous ball-bearings-embedded-in-his-forehead version of the film? But I’m honestly not that mad at it.

I thought it was suitably dark in places, funny in others, with tough but necassary commentary on the safety of women in every galaxy. A film for young girls to come to and appreciate, but equally millennial me and my younger boomer dad also got a lot out of it.

5/5, frankly – and now I am keen for a Superman and Supergirl pair-up movie, as these two refugees swap light and dark and learn to live in the imperfect complexity of their migrant stories.