Project Hail Mary (2026) [PG13] *****

A film review by James Berardinelli for reelviews.net on March 20, 2026.

I wish there were more  movies like Project Hail Mary – films that tease the intellect while appealing to emotion. A  science fiction tale that focuses primarily on existential elements rather than space opera ones, the film gives a more believable version of space faring than what one finds in standard crowd-pleasing productions. It recognizes that the audience doesn’t need every scientific concept spoon-fed, allowing the logic of the mission to propel the drama rather than stall it. Sure, it has special effects aplenty and at least one white-knuckle action sequence, but it avoids enough of the genre's tropes to feel fresh. And, although not sufficiently grounded to qualify as hard sci-fi, it avoids the turns into fantasy often favored by the biggest blockbusters.

Like all survival stories, this one pits man against nature – in this case, the uncaring universe. There are no villains. There are no enemies to overcome. Project Hail Mary is mostly about navigating the unknown and achieving an unlikely objective. It's about finding a path forward when there's no safety net. When you're 12 light years away from Earth, no one is going to hear you scream. It's about coping with loneliness, finding friendship in the most unlikely of places, and coming to grips with the true meaning of sacrifice. It's about first contact and last rites, examining the heavy burden of being humanity's final representative in the cold dark.



Earth is dying. Not because of anything humanity did but because an anomalous stream of particles has set up shop near Venus and is siphoning off energy from the sun, gradually cooling it. This virus isn't isolated – every other star in the nearby galaxy is showing similar indications… except one. Projections are grim – perhaps 50% of Earth's population will die (mostly of starvation) within 30 years if a solution can't be found. The science-heavy setup is handled with a clarity that ensures the stakes are understood even if the physics are complex. So a group of scientists has devised Project Hail Mary – a long shot concept that will send astronauts to that far-off star to figure out how it is resisting the particles and send that information back to Earth via a probe. It's a suicide mission with a poor likelihood of success. And that's how middle school science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) finds himself a very long way from home when he awakens from a Rip Van Winkle-type induced coma and discovers that the only help he's going to get is from a stony, blocky alien he dubs Rocky (James Ortiz).

If the mission is Project Hail Mary's skeleton, the bond between Grace and Rocky is its heart. This isn't just Cast Away in space, and Rocky is a little more than an animated Wilson, but the parallels are apt. The slow, methodical process of building a shared vocabulary becomes as riveting as any high-stakes repair job. Serious sci-fi movies often address the lonely, isolated aspects of space travel – I'm thinking films like Moon and Gravity (not to mention 2001: A Space Odyssey) – but communicating with Rocky offers Grace not only a challenge but an opportunity to connect.



If there's a structural quibble to be made about Project Hail Mary, it's that this is really two equally compelling movies compressed into one and there are times when the shortcuts necessary to streamline them result in beats that aren't as forceful as they might be. On the one hand, there's the whole first contact aspect – humanity's initial interaction with an intelligent alien species. On the other hand, there's the save-the-world storyline. Both are worthy but, even with a generous 2 1/2-hour running time, there's a sense that the movie occasionally rushes through things that are deserving of a deeper exploration. It is a difficult balancing act to weigh global catastrophe against the intimacy of a two-character drama. Then again, one can understand how co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (the men behind The LEGO Movie and the Spider-Verse franchise) wanted to avoid slipping into Andrey Tarkovsky territory.

To change things up, the narrative is presented non-chronologically, starting with Grace awakening from stasis and discovering that his two experienced co-crew members are dead, then flashing back to the events that led to him being onboard the spaceship. The film follows this back-and-forth approach throughout, avoiding the trap of focusing too great a time on Grace's isolation.

The movie is Ryan Gosling and Gosling is the movie. Just as Buried relied on Ryan Reynolds, Moon fell squarely on the shoulders of Sam Rockwell, and Cast Away was all about Tom Hanks, Project Hail Mary needs Gosling in top form… and that's what Lord and Miller get. Gosling is committed – a little loopy, a little jittery, but always on point. He manages to anchor the premise with a relatable, sometimes humorous vulnerability. He's a nerd on Earth and MacGyver in space. The interactions between him and Rocky recall the Luke/Yoda scenes in The Empire Strikes Back: human actor and puppet (Ortiz not only provided Rocky's voice but also did the Frank Oz-type creature work) dispelling disbelief. Based on the trailers, I had feared that this interaction might be too cute but it's handled much better in long-form than the marketing-driven clips might indicate.



Project Hail Mary is more about the wonder of the unknown and the satisfaction of finding new friends. Star Trek famously stated: …to explore strange, new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go… Those objectives are in evidence here. There are no space battles but the central action sequence (deploying and retrieving the collector) is more exciting and fraught with tension than any ship-to-ship dogfight. Although the overall pace is unhurried, the sense of danger is always percolating and it occasionally bubbles over. This is the first film of 2026 that I have left feeling like I've experienced a movie the way it's meant to be. (Berardinelli's rating: 3.5 stars out of 4)

Labels: adventure, comedy, sci-fi
IMDb 82/100 
MetaCritic (critics=77, viewers=82) 
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=82, viewers=94)
Blu-ray
Berardinelli's review 

Wild Mountain Thyme (2020) [PG-13] ***

A film review by Max Geo for observer.com on Dec 11, 2020.

In a year that has left the world in desperate need of a flight from reality, Wild Mountain Thyme - the long-awaited romantic comedy from Oscar, Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and director John Patrick Shanley - is a welcome, albeit unconventional, love story that will likely delight more nostalgic theatergoers than hard-bitten critics.
 
Set in the beauty of the lush Irish countryside, the film, which is based on Shanley’s hit Broadway play Outside Mullingar, stars Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan as two star-crossed lovers whose neighboring families are caught up in a bizarre feud over a strip of land that separates their two farms. Blunt plays Rosemary Muldoon, a passionate and headstrong farmer who has an unshakeable yearning for her off-kilter neighbor, Anthony Reilly (Dornan). Unfortunately for Rosemary, it’s an enduring love that has gone unrequited - or at least unrealized - by Anthony for nearly three decades.

Dornan’s Anthony is a far cry from his days as billionaire Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades franchise. An eccentric introvert, Anthony’s isolated upbringing in the heart of Ireland leaves him with a sense of self that is both unworldly and unmistakably human. After years of playing dark, brooding men in leading roles, Dornan is able to tap into a different, and perhaps more authentic, side of himself to shine as an endearingly awkward farmer in his mid-30s whose greatest fears - including a belief that he is inherently unlovable after a failed childhood romance - will ultimately transform his melancholic life.

After a series of flashbacks that reveal the origins of Rosemary’s independence and steadfast love for Anthony, the film begins on a rainy night after the funeral of Rosemary’s stubborn, crow-shooting father, Chris Muldoon (Don Wycherley). It is in a candid conversation about death and inheritance with his widowed father, Tony (played by the legendary Christopher Walken), and Rosemary’s newly-widowed mother, Aoife (a role reprised by original Broadway cast member Dearbhla Molloy), that Anthony discovers that he does not stand to take over the Reilly family farm. Despite his years of maintaining and modernizing the property, a blindsided Anthony later learns that his hypercritical father is planning to sell the farm out from under him to his wealthy American cousin, Adam (played by Mad Men’s Jon Hamm), who wants to find a bride and settle down in Ireland.

There is just one complication: Nearly three decades ago, Tony sold a certain strip of land to the departed Muldoon, a patch that runs right through the access route to the Reilly farm, that would make a sale - even to his naïve nephew - more difficult. It’s a plot of land that is inherited not by Chris’s widow, Aoife, but rather by his daughter, Rosemary, who has been smoking in the pouring rain while the trio chats away in the kitchen.

Despite holding a petty grudge against Anthony for pushing her down as a child, Rosemary is visibly disconcerted by the very thought of Tony handing his farm down to Anthony’s cousin. In an explosive exchange with Tony at the contested parcel, which leaves her quick-witted mother smirking with pride, the audience is given their first major clue that lying underneath Rosemary’s iron-clad exterior is a deep-rooted longing for the boy next door - and a Herculean amount of patience.

While she might not have the perfect Irish accent, a fact made abundantly clear by the Irish side of social media, Blunt’s fiery portrayal of Rosemary makes her a force of nature. In the same breath, she is able to masterfully portray the emotional agony that sends Rosemary into a deep state of exasperated desperation. While Rosemary might be a fiercely independent farmer who knows exactly what she wants, Blunt’s nuanced approach illustrates that she is still a hopeless romantic who longs for the basic human connection that has eluded the better part of the world this year.

Anyone who has ever seen a romantic comedy can predict the resolution of Wild Mountain Thyme, but it’s the anticipation - and the eventual execution - of the final showdown that makes the denouement so satisfying. From the time that we first see them standing together in the rain, Blunt and Dornan have a beautiful, natural chemistry that seems to build as tensions rise between their characters. But given that Rosemary and Anthony are both stubborn to the core, it still takes another year before they can break their ridiculous stalemate, with the help of a dark secret from Anthony that is so ludicrous that it will stop any movie know-it-all dead in their tracks.

Nevertheless, it’s a year that is well-spent for Anthony, who is given the chance to reconcile with his aging father in a moving scene from cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt that highlights the complicated relationships between fathers and sons and makes the film worth watching alone. Elevated by the stunning soundtrack of composer Amelia Warner, Shanley’s screenplay seems to take on a fairy-tale charm with its colorful and lyrical dialogue, both in playful and somber scenes, but it must be said that this unique piece, much like his Oscar-winning Moonstruck, will not be everyone’s cup of tea.

While Wild Mountain Thyme might be far from a perfect depiction of the intricacies of central Ireland, it is, at its core, the fabled and beautifully shot love story of two witty and eccentric childhood sweethearts that will have the ability to warm the coldest of hearts this holiday season. [Geo's rating: 3 out of 4 stars]

Labels: comedy, drama, Emily Blunt, romance
IMDb 58/100
MetaCritic (critics=42, viewers=55)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=46, viewers=62)
DVD
Max Geo's 3 out of 4 star review
Netflix