Film Roundup 24/09/2026

Hello and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Film Roundup! Each week we take you through the biggest new cinema releases and why you should be excited for them. This week: puppy trauma and period drama…

Usual disclaimer: unless otherwise stated, I haven’t seen these movies yet so all of my opinions are based on trailers, early reviews and other rumours and buzz.

Heart of the Beast

Special Forces veteran James Belmont (Brad Pitt) and his dog Odin, both suffering from PTSD after years of combat, have to fight to survive in the wilds of Alaska after their helicopter crashes. But nature, and their own trauma, are a very different enemy to the soldiers they’re used to facing.

First thing’s first: there’s one character that we’re all here for, and it ain’t played by Brad Pitt. Odin has to be one of the goodest of good boys in cinema history, already dealing with PTSD and a prosthetic leg and teeth even before he’s thrown into the wild to help save his owner from river rapids, wolves and goodness knows what else. They’ve found a gorgeous dog for the role with a really appealing little face, and the flashbacks of him as a puppy just make him more loveable.

That being said, Brad Pitt is a safe pair of hands too, and the cast also includes a brief appearance from the brilliant JK Simmons (probably mostly there as someone for Brad to discuss some exposition with). Pitt also starred as a soldier in director David Ayer’s tank drama Fury, arguably his best film to date. The story of man (and dog) against the wild has been told many times before, but it’s a good story and hard to get too wrong. Heart of the Beast’s sub-plot about its heroes healing from the mental scars of their past adds a little extra to the survival plot.

This looks like a great film and a proper cinematic experience.

• Heart of the Beast on IMDB
• Heart of the Beast on Rotten Tomatoes

Sense and Sensibility

In this latest adaptation of the classic Jane Austen novel, sisters Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Marianne Dashwood (Esmé Creed-Miles), having lost access to any of their late father’s inheritance, find heartbreak and love with a succession of potential suitors including Edward Ferrars (George Mackay), Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum) and John Willoughby (Frank Dillane).

If you’re an Austen fan, or even if you’ve seen any adaptations of any other Austen novels, then you probably know what to expect here. There are lots of period costumes, grand houses, big declarations of love and discussions of marriage, balls, swooning and drama. It looks beautifully shot and well acted – Edgar-Jones and Mackay in particular look very well cast. The reviews have been slightly mixed, with critics generally favouring earlier adaptations but still finding plenty to like about this one.

One to watch for fans of the book or anyone looking for a good date night movie.

• Sense and Sensibility on IMDB
• Sense and Sensibility on Rotten Tomatoes

Hope

On the outskirts of a remote harbour town in Korea, something is attacking and killing the residents. A police chief leads a group of hunters to track it down, only to find themselves up against something out of this world. Could this be the prologue to the end of the world?

From the brief glimpses we get in the trailers, there are some wonderfully alien creature designs in Hope – gangly, sinewy dog-like monsters with mouths that open far wider than they should be able to, and gigantic humanoid figures that still look horrifically inhuman. The action scenes built around hunting, and being hunted by, these things look thrilling, whether they are flat out chases through the forest or suspense-filled stealth missions in the ruins of the town. There’s a definite sense that the trailer is holding back on a lot of plot, so expect the monsters to get bigger and badder as the film goes on.

Most intriguingly (at least for Western audiences) is the inclusion of Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander in the cast list. There’s no recognisable sign of them in the trailers, which is odd for such big names. I wouldn’t put it past either of them to be playing the humanoid aliens, in which case it will be interesting to see how much of their acting skills they get to bring to those roles. This should be a very enjoyable bit of sci-fi action.

• Hope on IMDB
• Hope on Rotten Tomatoes

Her Private Hell

Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn, Her Private Hell follows Elle (Sophie Thatcher), a troubled young woman who is searching for her father in a futuristic metropolis. A mysterious mist has engulfed the city, masking the appearance of a dangerous killer called Leatherman. Elle’s search crosses paths with Private K (Charles Melton), an American GI on a quest to rescue his daughter from hell.

There’s a gorgeous neon sci-fi aesthetic to this film that somehow feels modern whilst also hearkening back to classic ’80s sci-fi movies. NWR (as he’s styled himself on the advertising) has a knack for picking actors on the rise whose cool credentials complement the style of the films – in Drive it was Ryan Gosling, in Neon Demon it was Elle Fanning, and here it’s Sophie Thatcher. She’s had a great couple of years with Heretic and Companion (which have just about erased her role as an incongruous Tattooine teen biker in The Book of Boba Fett from people’s memory). The cast also includes Havana Rose Liu, whose recent appearances in Tuner and Power Ballad have also marked her as a name to watch out for.

Unfortunately the reviews for this one have not been kind – the visuals are getting a lot of praise but it doesn’t sound like there’s much substance below that glossy exterior. One commenter on Rotten Tomatoes (where this has a 42% critics’ rating) said they would rather stare at a single frame for 109 minutes than sit through the actual movie again, which seems to sum up the general consensus quite well. Still, if you’re not in the mood for a challenging plot but want something pretty to look at, you could do a lot worse than this one.

• Her Private Hell on IMDB
• Her Private Hell on Rotten Tomatoes

If you only see one film this week…

Connect with the Heart of the Beast

Still in cinemas and worth a watch

• Bad Apples – With a predictably fantastic central performance from Saoirse Ronan and a believably ridiculous plot, Bad Apples is a lot of fun. Ronan’s character Maria’s desperate attempts to please everyone lead to pretty much every other character manipulating her in some way over the course of the film, leading to a gradual, tragic moral decline that elicits both sympathy and horror. There are also great performances from the two lead kids – Eddie Waller’s Danny, all unbridled rage and resentment, and Nia Brown’s Pauline, a tiny psychopath whose obsession with her teacher should have raised some red flags long before the events of the film. The ending is left slightly open, which sort of works, but in a cast of awful people it would have been nice to see someone get some comeuppance.
• Resident Evil
• Pressure

Trailer of the Week

It’s been seven years since Quentin Tarantino’s last feature-length movie, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, told the story of actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt-man/ body double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Now Tarantino has passed on the director’s baton to David Fincher to pick up Booth’s story, with Pitt returning to the role that won him his only acting Oscar (his second Oscar was as a producer on Best Film winner 12 Years a Slave). It’s fair to say Cliff has been having a better time of it than Pitt’s character in Heart of the Beast, working in a bar and on the side as a fixer for Hollywood’s film stars and gangsters. The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth also stars Elizabeth Debicki, Carla Gugino, Timothy Olyphant and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and will be coming to Imax screens in November before hitting Netflix in December.