Movie Reviews
‘Project Hail Mary’ review: Ryan Gosling’s $248 million Amazon movie is an outer-space blast
movie review
PROJECT HAIL MARY
Running time: 157 minutes. Rated PG-13 (thematic material and suggestive references). In theaters March 20.
Now entering the pantheon of lost-and-alone movies is “Project Hail Mary,” a hugely entertaining — and just plain huge — surprise during a depressing month that’s typically Hollywood’s dumping ground for wince-worthy trash.
It hits you like an asteroid, watching what amounts to a bona fide summer blockbuster smack dab in the middle of March, just when we’re sick of hearing about the same 10 Oscar movies over and over again.
Wiping the cinematic slate clean, Amazon’s big swing is an old-school outer-space adventure with a contemporary attitude and enough creative touches to lend it a new-car smell.
It’s a lovably weird story with hopelessly stranded hints of “The Martian,” “Life of Pi” and “Cast Away.” And, yes, there’s a Wilson — albeit an actually alive one.
The wizards of odd here are directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller of “The Lego Movie” and the “Spider-Verse” series. I’ve never met them, but their work suggests they’re the sort of guys you’d wanna meet in the William Shatner autograph line at a “Star Trek” convention.
Their quirky latest has heart, sci-fi thrills, funny jokes and stupendous special effects worthy of its staggering price tag — reportedly $248 million. That’s more than some island nations’ GDPs. Yet even though it ranks among the most expensive movies ever made, “Mary” is cozy and genuinely adorable.
The film’s enormous appeal starts with star Ryan Gosling.
Not that Gosling needs to be sold as a leading man at this stage in his career, but this is the first time I’ve been convinced he really is one.
He’s funny, obviously. The actor always comes prepared with that Paul Rudd prankster energy. Or, rather, Ken-ergy. And while he’s been plenty emotional in the past in films such as “The Notebook,” “La La Land” and “Blade Runner 2049,” gravitas hasn’t been his forte. He’s a goof.
His “Project Hail Mary” character, Ryland Grace, finally lets Gosling explore the full palette of his abilities. The stakes for Grace are much greater than sky-high. He has the unenviable task of saving humanity from an existential threat while solo in the vast cosmos far from home.
At the film’s start, he wakes up from a medically induced coma on a spaceship — like Ripley in “Alien” only with fewer exploding abdomens — shaggy, confused and years away from Earth. The other two crewmen are dead.
Flashbacks throughout show how Grace was plucked from obscurity as a high school physics teacher to help on a top-secret government effort — Project Hail Mary, run by Sandra Hüller’s Eva.
The German actress is the movie’s secret sauce. Her role isn’t giant, but she gives Eva more mystery and moral complexity than most other actresses could manage.
Eva’s mission is to stop some unexplained organisms called astrophage from “eating” the sun. The “red dots’” appetite has given humans about 30 years left to live. Tops. But the group has discovered a unique planet 13 lightyears away from Earth that’s somehow immune to their devastation.
Clearly that’s where Grace has been sent to figure out how this world is surviving, but the circumstances of why he’s actually there are blurry till the end. The twist is a meaty one.
This is when things get cute. While attempting to complete his research mission, Grace makes contact with an alien.
When the two species have their initial encounter, Lord and Miller mine Spielbergian chills that bring to mind “E.T.” But they also treat it as an intergalactic Tinder date. It’s silly.
The second half of “Project Hail Mary” becomes a man-and-alien buddy comedy that will have the upcoming “Mandalorian and Grogu” sweating.
His extraterrestrial pal is Rocky, a spider-like rock creature whose world is also being ravaged by the astrophage. Together, maybe they can stop the infestation.
Rocky is the lovechild of R2-D2 and the Grand Canyon; a clay-colored, curious, beep-boop rascal whose speech Grace eventually is able to translate. Before we get to know him, Rocky is a little freaky. Good on the designers for making a movie and not just a lucrative Christmas stocking stuffer.
The little guy is, I’ll admit, somewhat farfetched. As is how fast Grace figures how to interpret his clicky language, as are the rapidly rattled off scientific explanations for astrophage and the experiments the duo conduct. “Project Hail Mary” makes “The Martian” look like a Scientific American cover story.
I didn’t really mind the ridiculousness, though. The film is so much fun. It tugs at the heartstrings often, and Rocky is so brilliantly animated to the point of complete believability. Gosling is great.
And, during a moment in which movies tend to be either cynically corporate or bleaker than a black hole, “Project Hail Mary” dares to be about that once-great driver of drama: friendship.
Movie Reviews
Super Duperr Movie Review: A wild ride filled with laughter and emotion
The Times of India
Apr 07, 2026, 3:24 PM IST
3.0
Super Duperr is a riot in all senses of the word. A wild ride filled with laughter and emotion it presents an unusual matchup of traditional and modern values.Rohit (Lalit Prabhakar) and Isha (Vidula Chougule) are a young couple trying to make their mark in the entertainment industry. They take their relationship to the next level and purchase a flat in Mumbai with their savings. It is here that they realise that they have fallen for a scam when the same house is sold to and currently occupied by a rural family. What follows is a series of clashes and learning moments that test the morality of both parties. The story is a fun take on a series of real world scams and as such has a very interesting premise. The Sameer Asha Patil film however chooses to take a detour in favour of certain stretched out gags and slow motion shots. What could have been a deep exploration of the two worlds colliding, ends up being a formulaic checklist of a wedding song, an action sequence and a few slapstick gags. These are passable of course, but the ho-hum nature of the story’s progression feels under utilized. Super Duperr does offer impactful emotional sequences, notably the equation between the parents (Shashank Shende and Nirmiti Sawant) and his eldest son (Hrishikesh Joshi). The music and cinematography are well executed and add abundantly to the viewing experience. Super Duperr set a rich tapestry only to ultimately doodle in a corner. While it could have benefitted from adding more inter-family interactions, it remains a good watch for this weekend.
Movie Reviews
Why Critics Despise The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (But Audiences Love It)
The verdict is in, and critics have widely panned The Super Mario Galaxy Movie while audiences have universally praised the family-friendly sequel. This follow-up to the fan-favorite The Super Mario Bros. Movie has been in theaters for about a week since its debut on April 1, and it has already had the best box office opening in 2026, earning more than $190 million over its 5-day domestic weekend. Worldwide, it has amassed $372 million, making it the fifth largest global opening ever for an animated film. Despite the movie being a massive box office hit, however, the review scores are terribly low for the video game adaptation, and there are several reasons why.
Fans vs. critics on The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
As of April 6, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has a mediocre 42% Tomatometer score from a total of 175 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes while holding a fantastic 89% Popcornmeter score from over 5,000 verified user ratings. That’s a stark 47-point difference between critics and users.
A similarly wide disparity can be found on Metacritic as well, where the sequel has a “generally unfavorable” Metascore of a 37 based on 45 reviews, despite it earning a “generally favorable” user score of a 7.9 (basically, a 42-point difference).
This gulf between professional reviews and user reviews for this sequel likely isn’t too surprising by fans of the original 2023 Super Mario Bros. movie. That film earned a 59% Tomatometer but a 95% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes, and it has “mixed or average” 46 Metascore but a “universal acclaim” user score of 8.1.
To be fair, the range of critic scores for the film is vast on Metacritic, with about seven reviews above a 60 and fifteen reviews below a 40. ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim give it a “Good” 7 out of 10 rating, noting that “it doesn’t necessarily deepen the emotional or narrative complexity of the franchise, but it refines what worked before amplifies it on a grander scale.” However, many other reviews are far less kind, particularly the 0 out of 5 rating from The Times that calls the film “ugly, overbranded, lifeless digital marketing vomit” and a review from Vulture that says it’s like being “asphyxiated in a ball pit filled with candy.”
Meanwhile, multiple user reviews on Metacritic are shocked at the reviews. One called the low Metascore “absolutely ridiculous,” while another asked readers to ignore the critics altogether. A different user wrote, “It’s wild to see professional critics giving this a zero. It feels like they’ve never actually picked up a controller.” And to that person’s credit, we did find that a few critics who gave low scores admitting that the film wasn’t meant for them or that they had never played a Mario game before. Indeed, the movie is chock full of Nintendo references and easter eggs, something that Mario fans will appreciate far more than anyone who doesn’t know or care about the difference between a Super Mushroom and a Fire Flower.
More broadly speaking, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has more than several traits that critics tend to dislike but that audiences enjoy. The first is that it’s a quick-paced, action-packed film, which features a handful of battles with Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Princess Peach, Toad, Fox McCloud, Bowser, Bowser Jr., and Wart. Another is that it’s a comedic adventure with cartoonish gags that are age-appropriate for kids and humorous to Mario fans who are in on the joke. On top of that, the film is a family-friendly video game adaptation, a genre that doesn’t usually score well from critics. A Minecraft Movie, another box office smash that earned $960 million worldwide (and also starred Jack Black), was equally slammed by critics with a 47% Tomatometer but lauded by audiences with an 84% Popcornmeter.
Taken altogether, the movie was almost made in a lab for reviewers to despise and for audiences to praise as a nostalgic love letter to Nintendo. Regardless, despite how critics feel, they’ll need to brace themselves for more, since the Nintendo Cinematic Universe is looking like it will come sooner than later.
Movie Reviews
I Know Exactly How You Die – Review | Indie Slasher | Heaven of Horror
Watch I Know Exactly How I Die on VOD
The director of I Know Exactly How I Die is Alexandra Spieth, who ensures a tight pace and some gorgeous shots. She previously directed Stag and created and starred in the web-series [Blank] My Life. The screenplay comes from Mike Corey, and I do really like the plot and evolution of this story.
As already mentioned, the star Rushabh Patel is the executive producer. As a result, this movie is billed as “Rushabh Patel’s I Know Exactly How I Die“, which I am not a fan of. Unless Rushabh Patel is famous in ways I am not familiar with – nor is IMDb, as this is his first and so far only credit there.
This is like people wondering if Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is connected to Stranger Things, because the media keeps referring to it as a new show from The Duffer Brothers. Sure, they produced it, but Haley Z. Boston created the original story and wrote the screenplay. And she’s not even a newcomer.
Okay, rant over, but I just don’t understand the marketing and press decisions of it all.
Anyway, as already mentioned, the practical effects in I Know Exactly How I Die are gorgeous. Any slasher fan should enjoy the concept of the plot as well as those amazing practical effects. And yet, you will have to endure a little terrible CGI, but this is an indie production, so budget restraints come into play. Of course, so does choosing the best talent, and that did not happen for CGI here!
I Know Exactly How You Die is out on VOD from April 7, 2026. You can rent it on Digital HD from your preferred platform, including Prime Video and Fandango at Home. The film will also be available on DVD.
-
Atlanta, GA2 days ago1 teenage girl killed, another injured in shooting at Piedmont Park, police say
-
South-Carolina1 week agoSouth Carolina vs TCU predictions for Elite Eight game in March Madness
-
Movie Reviews5 days agoVaazha 2 first half review: Hashir anchors a lively, chaos-filled teen tale
-
Vermont1 week ago
Skier dies after fall at Sugarbush Resort
-
Politics1 week agoTrump’s Ballroom Design Has Barely Been Scrutinized
-
Politics1 week agoJD Vance says he was ‘obsessed’ with UFOs, believes aliens are actually ‘demons’
-
Politics1 week agoJeffries declines to break with indicted Democrat after ethics panel’s guilty verdict
-
Entertainment5 days agoInside Ye’s first comeback show at SoFi Stadium