Sense & Sensibility (2026)

With five television adaptations ranging from the 1950 version starring Cloris Leachman to the BBC’s 2008 miniseries and Hallmark’s 2024 holiday interpretation, not to mention Ang Lee’s near-perfect, Oscar-winning 1995 theatrical masterpiece, do we really need another Sense and Sensibility?

In short, filmmaker Gregory Oakley provides an earthy new version that unfortunately does not compare to Lee’s masterpiece. I won’t stop you from comparing; that’s for sure. You can't help it, really. Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones is the Emma Thompson role as Elinor. Esme Creed- Miles is Kate Winslet as Marianne. George MacKay as Hugh Grant and Edward Herbert Nordrum is Alan Rickman‘s Colonel Brandon. Frank Dillane is Greg Wise as Willoughby.

The result? No hot take, no particularly fresh perspective, certainly nothing approaching the reinvention Greta Gerwig brought to Little Women. And compared with Lee’s film, it's not even close. Yet somehow, it's equally swooning and still enormously enjoyable.

So what's new? Shakier camerawork? Darker lighting? A slightly earthier atmosphere? To truly justify its existence, perhaps this version needed a more modern perspective. But that presents a problem of its own. Jane Austen’s 1811 novel is so deeply rooted in the social constraints placed upon women of the period that updating its sensibility risks undermining the very circumstances that give the story its meaning. 

Perhaps that's why this adaptation is being marketed as a story of sisterhood. I'm not convinced it entirely succeeds on those terms. Yes, the bond between Elinor and Marianne is central, but their lives are inseparable from questions of social class, financial security and the limited choices available to women. 

Money may ultimately be passed over in favor of love, but the narrative remains overwhelmingly concerned with finding a suitable man. The sisters have always been there for each other, yet it's the romantic matchmaking that the film embraces as the definitive happy ending.

And happy endings are never a bad thing with popcorn. This is a great time at the movies. If something feels missing, perhaps it's because Ang Lee’s 1995 version remains so vivid in the memory, or because you keep wishing this new adaptation had found a genuinely fresh way into such familiar territory.

There is plenty of sense here, and certainly no shortage of sensibility. What’s missing is a reason for this particular retelling to exist beyond the simple pleasure of experiencing Austen’s story all over again.

In a nutshell: Austen fans will be pleased. It’s sensibly good, just not necessary.

Where to see it: In theaters, starting Friday, October 16.

Would it be better with Olivia Colman? Colman as Mrs. Jennings would have justified all of this.

Award Potential: Esme Creed-Miles is a standout that may find a place in award season, but this film has the tall task of being compared to the Oscar-winning 1995 version.

The Ten Buck Review: This is a good fall film, despite the comparison and still worth ten bucks.

The Social Reckoning

The Social Network (2010) regularly appears on lists of the best films of the 21st century, sometimes even at number one. It had a force to be reckoned with, David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en) directing, Aaron Sorkin (Moneyball, A Few Good Men, The Newsroom, The West Wing) writing, Trent Reznor (Challengers) and Atticus Ross providing the score, and Jesse Eisenberg (A Real Pain, Zombieland) starring as Mark Zuckerberg. 

For The Social Reckoning, Sorkin returns, this time in the director’s chair as well as behind the screenplay. His directing credits include The Trial of the Chicago 7, Molly’s Game and a contender for worst film of the 21st century, Being the Ricardos.

None of the rest of the original creative team has returned in the same capacity for this next chapter of the Zuckerberg story. Perhaps that’s because The Social Network was a perfect standalone tale of betrayal, ambition, power, class and the delicious irony of a man who connected the world only to find himself profoundly isolated. Or perhaps everyone simply realised how much the world has changed since then.

The first film arrived just three years after Facebook opened to the general public. Nearly two decades later, Zuckerberg is no longer the scrappy upstart fighting his way into the big leagues. He’s Goliath.

This time, the focus isn’t on startups, romance, fractured friendships or even Zuckerberg himself. It’s on how social media companies have both rewired our brains,and threatened American democracy. There’s a great film to be made here. Unfortunately, Sorkin doesn’t quite make it.

To enjoy it, you'll have to look away from some glaring missteps, including a slider-timeline gimmick and an almost comically overexplained subplot about why the film’s female lead needs to glam up. But the bigger problem is that Sorkin falls back only to what he knows best: procedural storytelling. He’s a master of the form, but here it feels like a step backwards. As a cinematic follow-up to its predecessor, the film falls short. It's lie a prestige HBO movie that happens to be showing in cinemas.

Speaking of that, Sorkin has assembled two of TV's finest performers in Jeremy Strong and Jeremy Allen White. Following their respective turns in The Social Reckoning and last year's Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, there’s something frustrating about watching two of my favourite TV actors in a film that feels so much like television. 

Strong plays Zuckerberg, while Allen White is a Wall Street Journal journalist who connects with Facebook employee Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison of Anora), the whistleblower who would eventually land on the cover of Time magazine. 

What does work, even if not always cinematically, is the old-fashioned pleasure of a Sorkin script, plus  this is all true stuff and fascinating. What happens when a profitable algorithm learns that people respond more enthusiastically to hate than to harmony? What happens when the platform’s business model rewards that behaviour by feeding users more of what makes them angry? A company ironically created to bring people together has helped drive them apart, with consequences we’re already living through and others we can only begin to imagine. 

Ultimately, the film frames the whistleblower’s success as a triumphant victory. But as the credits approach, you’re left wondering what, exactly, has changed. The company is still a Goliath. There is no reckoning.

In 2010, people wondered why make a movie about something so new. It turns out the original film wasn't too early to tell Facebook's story and the sequel was too late.

In a nutshell: More a TV version in the classic style of All the President’s Men than a proper cinematic sequel, The Social Reckoning is equally fascinating and frustrating, yet still needs to be seen.

Where to see it: In theaters. Obviously, it will hold up well on TV later.

Would it be better with Olivia Colman? Of course.

Award potential: This one is not going to make the list for Picture, Director, Actors, and in a surprise, should be looked over for screenplay. Shoulda be an Emmy contender.

The Ten Buck Review: Worth ten bucks (or stream it in near future).

Digger

Famously starring Tom Cruise under a mountain of makeup as a Texas oil tycoon who unleashes a disaster, Digger is the kind of satire we haven’t seen since, maybe, Don’t Look Down (2021). Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons also star in this dark comedy — although, really, “parable” may be the better word.

The question is: Will you dig Digger?

Digger is the kind of film you can barely review without ruining it. Its parlor trick — and much of its appeal — depends on what the audience discovers along the way. That creates a problem for a reviewer: How do you warn someone away from a movie they might hate while also telling the right person that they absolutely need to see it?

So, without spoiling anything, I'll try to help you decide whether Digger is an A or an F for you.

In other words: Will you dig Digger?

• If you’ve enjoyed the films of Alejandro G. Iñárritu — Birdman, Babel, Biutiful — you’ll surely dig this, too.

• If you loved Iñárritu’s The Revenant, then you’re capable of liking just about anything. You’ll dig Digger.

• If Risky Business, Top Gun, Cocktail or Days of Thunder is your favorite Tom Cruise movie, you probably won’t dig Digger.

• If Magnolia is one of your five favorite Cruise films, you’ll probably appreciate his over-the-top performance here as well.

• If you think Dr. Strangelove and Citizen Kane belong in the top 50 films ever made — you’ll dig Digger.

• If you believe the climate crisis is fake news, skip Digger.

• If you can follow the dialogue in His Girl Friday, you’ll be able to keep up with Digger.

• And if you’re intrigued by Iñárritu’s description of the film — “This film is a disaster movie, but the disaster is us,”  you’ll dig Digger.

The film unsurprisingly bombed at the box office. Some great films weren’t appreciated when they were released. I wish I could say more, but I suspect that, in time, once audiences discover it on television and warm to its story and its parable, Digger will move from the “failure” shelf to the “classic” shelf. I know which side I’m on.

In a nutshell: It’s the end of the world as we know it — in a fine satire that is as divisive as it is brilliant.

Where to watch it: In theaters now.

Would it be better with Olivia Colman? Of course. But not by much. It already has Sandra Hüller, and her talents are barely uitlized.

Awards potential: Time will tell, but it’s a contender for Best Picture, Director, Cinematography, Actor and Screenplay — and it will be the film to beat for Production Design. If there's a most-acting award, oh yeah, The Golden Globes, Cruise will take it. 

The Ten Buck Review: Worth ten bucks.