Wild Horse Nine — Montclair Film Festival Review
I’ve seen more than 100 new releases in 2026 so far, and Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine is easily the funniest film I’ve seen all year. By the time I walked out of the theater, my face genuinely hurt from laughing so much. Normally, a second viewing can’t quite recapture the laughs of the first, but after catching it again as the opening-night selection at the Montclair Film Festival, I found myself laughing just as hard. McDonagh has mastered the art of the black-comedy crime thriller, crafting stories that are as bleak as they are hysterical, often anchored by complicated male friendships. From his feature-length debut, In Bruges, to 2022’s The Banshees of Inisherin, he excels at finding humor in humanity’s darkest moments. With Wild Horse Nine, the award-winning writer-director crafts one of his finest screenplays yet, resulting in a film that’s riveting, consistently hilarious, and deeply heartbreaking.
Ray Gunn — Review
Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn has been over 30 years in the making. It’s a film he’s wanted to make since before 1999’s The Iron Giant. Audiences are likely to walk in with lofty expectations because of that. Clearly, Bird is very passionate about this story. However, the film itself ultimately doesn’t feel as special as that passion suggests. Ray Gunn is a solid animated adventure, but it lacks the feeling of personal investment you might expect from a project a filmmaker has spent decades trying to bring to the big screen. What makes Ray Gunn stand out from the myriad of animated films is that it’s essentially an animated film noir, which is a genre hybrid we seldom see. However, that combination also comes with some drawbacks, because anyone who’s seen at least one classic film noir from the 1940s will be able to recognize exactly where Ray Gunn is headed.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die — Review
Gore Verbinski's Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is so ambitious, audacious, and unconcerned with being accessible or appealing to mainstream audiences that I can't help but admire it, even if it ultimately collapses under the weight of its own ambitions. Matthew Robinson's screenplay attempts to do so much in a single film that the final product is more than a mixed bag, it's a piñata—but instead of just candy inside, occasionally you'll find random objects like a rubber duck, a paper clip, maybe some money scattered in there, and every once in a while you'll stumble upon a dead rat or two. It’s a chaotic, kooky, madcap adventure full of relevant social commentary.