Tag: writing

Ice Cream Man (2026)

  • Director: Eli Roth
  • Screenplay: Eli Roth, Noah Belson
  • Story: Eli Roth
  • Producer: Eli Roth, Kate Harrison Karman, Christopher Woodrow, Raj Singh
  • Cast: Ari Millen, Charlie Zeltzer, Shiloh O’Reilly, Kiori Mirza Waldman, Sarah Abbott, Benjamin Byron Davis
  • Cinematography: Simon Shohet
  • Editing: Matt Lyon
  • Score: Brandon Roberts
  • Genre: Slasher
  • Runtime: 86 minutes

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

Eli Roth serves up a scoop of luridness, topped with sprinkles of dark humour and drizzled with sheer bizarrity.

In the town of Bayleen Bay, the children are acting awfully peculiarly. The local ice cream man (the chilling Ari Millen) is to blame. One mouthful of his sweet treats puts the kids in a zombified state. In the middle of the night, the ice cream truck drives through the neighbourhood, awakening those who’ve scoffed the confectionery. They embark upon a grisly killing spree, slaughtering their respective parents and any adults in their path. It falls on our lactose intolerant hero (Charlie Zeltzer) and his friends to save the day.

There’s something so absurdly amusing about a horde of homicidal kids on a rampage, the colourful remnants of ice cream still stuck to their mouths. The whole thing is one supremely gory, campy, over-the-top sugar rush.

As much as I enjoyed it, there’s an aspect of ‘Ice Cream Man‘ that leaves me cold: Roth has employed the use of AI in Fleischer Studios-style sequences where traditional animation could’ve been used instead. I’m disappointed by the laziness of this decision. Real living artists are out of a job because of this corner-cutting. I don’t cone-done this practice whatsoever.

The movie won’t be to everyone’s tastes. If blood and guts isn’t your favourite flavour, then be glad the runtime is short and sweet, clocking in at 86 minutes. A sugary ending is not guaranteed.

My rating: 6 / 10

Office Romance (2026)

  • Director: Ol Parker
  • Screenplay: Brett Goldstein, Joe Kelly
  • Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Brett Goldstein, Betty Gilpin
  • Cinematography: Robert Yeoman
  • Editing: Peter Lambert
  • Score: Michael Andrews
  • Genre: Romantic comedy
  • Runtime: 115 minutes

Never mix business with pleasure. That’s the mistake Jackie Cruz (Lopez), an airline CEO, makes when she meets Daniel Blanchflower (Goldstein), a lawyer hired as the company’s legal counsel. The corporation is beset by legal issues so the two will be seeing quite a bit of each other. Sparks fly and there’s palpable chemistry between the pair, so much so that an off-screen romance was speculated about yet was denied by Lopez herself.

A courtship is off the cards as there’s a strict ‘no dating’ policy in the organisation. Jackie keeps things by the book…for a while at least. A jaunt to the Dominican Republic for a deposition provides the perfect backdrop to give in to temptation. Jackie and Daniel have a one-on-one and get down to business. That’s me being subtle – something the film never attempts to be.

Daniel’s nationality (he’s British) is referred to so often it gets tedious quickly. It’s as if the characters haven’t ever met a Brit in the wild before. I thought it might be a jab at ‘Ted Lasso‘ star Goldstein’s English gentility until I discovered he actually had a hand in scripting the movie. Is he mocking himself? We get it, you’re a bloody Brit!

Anyway, you’d think he would bring a more sophisticated writing quality to the table but the whole thing smacks of your standard poor American rom-com; kooky side characters serving absolutely no purpose, humour that doesn’t land and a cheesy happy ending. It’s formulaic to the point of inducing boredom. A comedy on cruise control.

‘Office Romance‘ is NSFW – by which I mean not safe for watching.

My rating: 4 / 10

Marching Powder (2025)

  • Director: Nick Love
  • Screenplay: Nick Love
  • Cast: Danny Dyer, Stephanie Leonidas, Calum MacNab
  • Cinematography: Simon Stolland
  • Editing: Pani Scott
  • Score: Alfie Godfrey
  • Genre: Comedy
  • Runtime: 96 minutes

Ah, the ‘c word’. Not ‘cocaine’, on display in copious amounts here. Nor is it ‘cockney’. Or ‘cringe’, though that fits best. I shan’t spell out the real word – if you want to hear it fired in quick succession like a machine gun with Tourette’s, go see ‘Marching Powder‘; it’s about an absolute sod, Jack Jones (Danny Dyer), who has an addiction to drugs and zero self-control. He has a wife too, treated like an afterthought. What she sees in him is anyone’s guess.

Following a brawl with rival football supporters, Jack faces a prison sentence unless he can prove to the court he can turn his life around. What does he do? He picks another fight. He snorts another line of crack. Every time he comes within a 5 mile radius of cleaning up his act, he self-sabotages, paying his old friend nose candy a visit. So much coke was inhaled, I was worried he’d end up resembling Danniella Westbrook.

Danny Dyer is definitely no actor, his fourth wall breaks make it seem as if he’s presenting his life story, if it were the most pathetic biography ever told. A Wikipedia entry doesn’t even exist (at time of writing), as if to say ‘we don’t wish to soil our site with this filth’.

This movie didn’t do anything for me. Wait, that’s not strictly true – it polluted my ears with its incessant swearing. It’s the type of thing that would appeal to a certain ilk; the beer swigging, non-woke men you’d find chanting and cheering their favourite footy team at the pub with the lads.

The short runtime of 96 minutes felt like a stretch; we get it – he’s a loser beyond the point of redemption. It reminded me of something I flushed down the toilet. Did not leave me in ‘high spirits’.

My rating: 3 / 10