Weekly visions - week 31, 2026

貞子3D / Sadako 3D, directed by Tsutomu Hanabusa, co-written with Yoshinobu Fujioka, based on Kōji Suzuki’s novel S, Japan, 2012 - ⭐⭐

Also known as, the film with the cursed 404 error page.

It seems that after finishing my Saw rewatch last week, I’ve found another series of bad films to punish myself with.

The last couple of weeks pushed me irrevocably down the path of Sadako completionism, even though the stories get farther and farther away from what made Ringu interesting.
Anyway, it’s the fault of Kōji Suzuki, who kept going back to the - ahem - well for his books, and the film studios that followed through after each novel or short story collection.

This movie starts in the worst possible way, with a very digital-looking scene and unimpressive CGI, which also reminds you that there is a reason why “3D” is in the title. The kind of thing that makes you stop and think: ‘Do I really want to watch this?’.
Have we learnt nothing from Saw 3D and The Final Destination?
Luckily, it goes quickly back to more traditional filmmaking.

Faithful to her intentions from Rasen/Spiral, Sadako has found a new way to go viral: a new cursed video to spread on (the equivalent of) YouTube. Word of mouth is enough to make phone-addicted people curious to web-search for ’the video that kills you’, only to run into a 404 page.
Disappointment ensues, but when they are alone, the dead page activates and shows the fatal clip, causing the viewer to immediately end their life.
Gone are the days of VHS, and the patience of waiting seven days for an appointment with death. Not with today’s attention span.

This time, our heroine is Akane Ayukawa (in line with the usual naming convention), teacher of one of the victims and blessed with the power of a glass-shattering scream. Since her boyfriend is affectionate but not very adventurous, she pairs up with the lead detective on the case.
Then you know the drill: bad things happen and in the third act we get to the well. But what lurks there is not what we expect. Look how they massacred my girl.

It’s all quite nonsensical, in service of the 3D gimmick, and the screenplay seems to deviate considerably from the novel.
I can’t really find any positive point about this film, but I somehow felt sorry considering a lower rating.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, written by Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna, US, 2026 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

If last week’s visit to the cinema counted less than 12 people in the screening for Hokum, this was a very different experience: the biggest screen of the same multiplex was packed with very enthusiastic twenty-something-year-old young adults, ready to cheer and occasionally sigh in unison, fully invested in the feelings of the twenty-something-year-old young adults on the screen.

Yours truly, who has been twenty-something-year-old twice, was equally engaged with the heartbreak of Peter Parker having to watch his former friends from a distance. I don’t know what it is about these characters that makes them so sympathetic even for my old cold heart; sure, they are really good-looking actors, and have amazing chemistry and a real life partnership. But there must be very good screenwriting craft to make us so affectionate towards them.
Or maybe it’s just me having a soft spot for this incarnation of Spider-Man: together with Doctor Strange, he’s the character that brought me back to the MCU after the flat and repetitive Phase 2.
But enough about me.

With the same screenwriting duo as the Jon Watts trilogy, but a new director, this may be my favourite of the four MCU Spider-Man films (full disclosure: as much as I appreciate the idea, I’ve never bought the gimmicky nature of No Way Home).

So much so that I even considered a higher rating, despite the quantity and size of the film’s flaws: when I looked at my watch after an hour or so, I was glad that there was still so much of the movie to go, but I wondered how much story would be crammed into it. The Hulk sections specifically are integral to the plot, but feel like padding - much more than the fun unannounced appearance of another character (remember the time when, director Cretton was forced to add to Shang-Chi a completely extraneous fighting scene between Wong and The Abomination, for reasons that I still fail to understand?).
Frank Castle striking a friendship with Peter Parker is also a bit perplexing, but Tom Holland and Jon Bernthal are longtime friends themselves, so, ok, why not bring in the whole clan.
And the plot… highly predictable (except for one very predictable moment that I was so stupidly emotionally invested in that I didn’t see coming), with a conflict resolution that’s very similar to another recent Marvel movie.

So… why four stars?
Two main reasons: first, we haven’t had Spider-Man swinging through New York for a while, and this film takes a lot of care in giving a sense of the place (although it was mostly shot around London), and returning to a comic book feeling that was previously lost. It brought me back to seeing Raimi’s Spider-Man and the enthusiastic approval of a dear, Spidey-fanatic friend.
Second, whenever Holland, Zendaya and Jacob Batalon are together on screen, it’s like being with friends. It’s a kind of magic, and the film closes on a final scene that is just perfect in its simplicity.
Or maybe I just have a soft spot for Destin Daniel Cretton (more on that later).

Vie privée / A Private Life, directed by Rebecca Zlotowski, co-written with Anne Berest and Gaëlle Macé, France, 2025 - ⭐⭐⭐

Jodie Foster in a French-speaking role, except when she swears, in English. So relatable, and I’m not surprised at all that one of my favourite actresses is so good at languages.

She plays Lilian, an American psychiatrist in Paris, amused by the fact that one of her patients is abandoning treatment after seeing a hypnotist, but then very shaken when another person she’s been treating for years (Virginie Efira) dies suddenly, apparently having taken her own life. While the woman’s husband (Mathieu Amalric) blames her for not preventing the suicide, Lilian has a different opinion on the cause of death, and enlists her former partner (Daniel Auteuil) to help her investigate.

What starts as an intriguing, Hitchcockian mystery, turned for me into a dissatisfying exploration of the protagonist’s own attitude, leading to a series of events and actions that undermine her whole status as a lead we can root for.
The solution of the whodunnit may be ingenious, or at least thematically coherent, but by then I had lost most interest.

Frederick Wiseman has a cameo as Lilian’s old mentor.

Short Term 12, written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, US, 2013 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐½ (up from ⭐⭐⭐⭐)

I first ‘met’ Cretton at a screening at the Cinematek in 2014, followed by a Q&A with the director. I’m not sure why I joined this event: I probably heard about Short Term 12 through Filmspotting.

I absolutely loved the film, which introduced me to a promising young actress called Brie Larson (whom I had actually encountered before, without noticing her, in Scott Pilgrim). Twelve years later, aside from the general feeling and a scene on a bike, I didn’t remember much about the actual story.

Despite buying the Blu-Ray several years ago (in a German edition, which means no English or French editions were available - giving an idea of how popular this film is), I had not mustered the courage to rewatch it, fearing it would somehow disappoint me.
Brand New Day convinced me this was the right moment.

Twelve years ago, the only actor I knew in the cast was Magnolia’s Melora Walters.
This time, after top-billed future Oscar winner and Captain Marvel, the names appearing told a different story: John Gallagher Jr… Rami Malek… Stephanie Beatriz… Kaitlyn Dever… LaKeith Stanfield (credited as ‘Keith Stanfield’).
Granted, some or even most of them, or at least their faces, were probably already known to American audiences (Stanfield was the only one debuting with this film, and the only actor reprising his role from Cretton’s short film of the same name). But not to me.
And it’s difficult to find any fault in their acting. Even Malek (wait, he’s in The Master?!) delivers a perfectly natural performance as newbie Nate.

That is the strong point of Short Term 12: as we slowly discover what’s motivating Grace (Larson) in leading the team of young adults helping at this foster care facility, everything looks so natural that, even if most of the plot is quite predictable - with some rather unbelievable swings -, it doesn’t matter.
It’s touching, it’s funny, it’s rewarding.
I hope Cretton doesn’t get stuck in the Marvel machine for the rest of his career.