I FREAKING LOVED 'TUNER'
#365: "Tuner," "Ladies First," "The Alamo," "Widow's Bay"
Edition 365:
Hey movie lovers!
This week: Less than a week later, I’ve got a new favorite movie of 2026…and this one might stick. Then a new Netflix comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen, not in costume! I take a little time to remember the Alamo, and recommend the current TV show I’m watching. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” our official newsletter Villain returns.
Tuner
There are many qualities that are implicit when we say a phrase like, “they don’t make movies like they used to.” Maybe it means the use of practical effects, a really clever high concept premise that hooks a viewer immediately, or a traditional three-act structure with a good ol’ fashioned plot twist. Maybe it’s that earnest going for it feeling, or the appearance of Dustin Hoffman.
All I know is, Tuner has it all. It’s a very conventional movie, and I certainly don’t mean that as an insult. There’s an undeniable premise—what if a piano tuner who needs money to support his mentor’s (Hoffman) medical bills discovers he can use his rare hearing disorder as a superpower to crack safes? And we’re off!
It’s a crime movie. It’s a romance movie. It’s a music movie. It’s even a superhero movie (of sorts). It’s funny, and intense, and emotional. Back in the day, quote-unquote, it would not seem quite so remarkable to think you could mold these disparate parts into the kind of balanced story that can appeal to many different kinds of viewers. But in 2026 it feels extraordinary.
Add to that the modern sound design technology, which allows audio to become an equal or perhaps even more important part of the storytelling as the visuals, not as a gimmick like in A Quiet Place (I love that movie, no shade), but as a tool that opens up an entirely new set of objects and challenges. Fire alarms, dance clubs, barking dogs, and an airhorn take on entirely new meaning when your protagonist is hypersensitive to noise. Not sure I’ve ever seen them presented in this way before.
If you can’t tell, Tuner is my new favorite movie of 2026 (apologies to Obsession, whose reign lasted less than a week). And this one is likely to stick. It’s the kind of success story that will permanently change how I think about director Daniel Roher, who before this was a documentarian who made one of the best docs of the past few years in Navalny. The same goes for lead actor Leo Woodall, who plays equal parts sweet and cool and vulnerable, and his romantic costar Havana Rose Liu.
I’ll always be a sucker for a great plot (#PlotWhore), and if this weren’t a newsletter that guarantees no spoilers, I’d love to walk through the subtle layering and groundwork that make this seemingly predictable narrative constantly surprising. That includes a couple late plot twists that really instill confidence in a viewer that he or she is in great hands, and give the story enough juice to race triumphantly to the finish line.
At the end of the year, I know it’s going to be hard to compare this relatively modest indie to both the behemoth blockbusters like The Odyssey or Dune 3, or the super ambitious Oscars movies that plum the existential depths of humanity. But I can say with absolute certainty that this is the kind of super entertaining and well-rounded hidden gem that I’ll be finding myself recommending dozens of times to people in the years to come. In the end…maybe that’s more valuable?
Something New
Ladies First (Netflix): Even this many years after Borat, Bruno and Ali G, it’s still kind of bracing to see Sacha Baron Cohen performing as a regular-looking Englishman. But Cohen’s penchant for provocation remains, starring in this movie about a misogynistic corporate bossman who slips and hits his head, only to wake up in a matriarchal mirror society. Even though the jokes are obvious and on-the-nose, they have the desired effect when put into this new context (i.e. what if women were pigs!). Rosamund Pike plays his foil, surrounded by a ridiculously overqualified supporting cast: Emily Mortimer, Charles Dance, Richard E. Grant and Fiona Shaw…it’s amazing what Netflix money can do.
While you’d hope that maybe the world would be a different or better place if the ladies were in charge, or at the very least their sexism would come through in different ways, this movie (written and directed by women, it must be said) subjects men to the exact same objectification in the exact same ways. After an hour, it’s tiresome (I know I know, that’s the point). And like many comedies, there really isn’t enough there there to sustain momentum, limping to a finish line where we can all hug it out and all problems are solved.
Unless this is some high level satire about how male-directed movies think they can solve big issues in an hour and a half—and I don’t think it is—then the movie is relegated to the category of streaming movies that are just entertaining enough to justify themselves.
Something Old
The Alamo (2004): Of course this is just an excuse to once again talk about this Thunder-Spurs NBA playoff series, which is going to a deciding Game 7 on Saturday in OKC after the Spurs…ehem…defended the Alamo on Thursday night. Even though the games have been kind of ugly in both directions, the final one this weekend will be one of the most anticipated basketball games in a couple of years. The stress will surely take years off my life span.
That said, I do remember watching this movie in high school, back when my history-obsessed brother was knocking out seemingly every docudrama about heroic military encounters he could find. Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob Thornton star as Sam Houston and Davy Crockett, in an old school war movie with the kind of straightforward plot and moral clarity you might expect from director John Lee Hancock, who made The Rookie, The Blind Side and The Founder. Let’s just hope the hometown Spurs suffer a similar fate on Saturday.
Something To Stream
Widow’s Bay (AppleTV): As I said last week, horror can no longer be ignored—not on the big screen, and not at home on your TV. The best show on right now is AppleTV’s horror-comedy genre mishmash that basically sets up a “Parks and Rec” style local government sitcom on a haunted island.
I know that sounds kooky, and it is actually funny (especially in a special E5 appearance from my favorite stand-up of the moment, Chris Fleming!), but the show is best at suspense and subtle lore-building. It’s got a kind of mystery-of-the-week thing going while also building out characters you come to care about, and a season arc that I can’t wait to see finished.
Trailer Watch: Enola Holmes 3
The first movie caused me to have an existential meltdown. The Electric State made me to want to perform the Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind procedure on myself to erase it from my memory. And yet Millie Bobby Brown, our official newsletter Villain, keeps failing upward.
She’s certainly not beating the allegations that she’s using movies to gain social media clout with a plotline about getting married too young (only a few years after the real MBB got married at age 20). Prepare yourselves for her western bridal era!