Mercy (2026)

Having a narrative unfold on screen in real time takes a lot of planning and coordination to pull off properly, which may be why it’s rare enough to be notable. Even more difficult is carrying that through an entire film or TV episode, with notable early examples being Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 thriller Rope and Robert Wise’s 1949 boxing drama The Set-Up. When I first heard about the recent 2026 film named Mercy, the premise sounded vaguely interesting, but I wasn’t sure about seeing it until confirming that it unfolds in real time, which made me thinks of the aforementioned films that I had been exposed to when I was younger. Though I missed the theatrical window, it being an Amazon MGM distribution meant I was able to watch it for free on Amazon Prime Video (now with ads after the introduction of Prime Video Ultra). While I enjoyed it and thought critic reviews were a little harsh, I feel like I might have felt differently had I watched it outside of a streaming platform.

The Suicide Squad

Of the DCEU films that I’ve seen, the Academy Award winning 2016 film Suicide Squad is easily one of the worst, which was sort of a misguided attempt to emulate Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, only with a haphazard and forgettable story thanks to heavy executive meddling. When I heard the announcement of a sequel known as The Suicide Squad, I already wasn’t sure about it since I had been burned the first time, however my hopes were raised when I learned James Gunn himself was attached to direct, during the brief period in which he was not working for Disney (I will not get into why). Though it was one of several movies affected by the ongoing pandemic, I awaited this movie as the release date approached in the hopes that Gunn would be able to salvage the original film. After watching it on HBO Max as part of their day-and-date programming, I found the movie to exceed my expectations, even being a vast improvement over the original.

Zack Snyder's Justice League

If there’s one thing Warner Bros.’ Justice League is known for, it’s its troubled production. During its original post-production period in 2017, director Zack Snyder stepped down due to the untimely death of his daughter, Autumn. At that point, Joss Whedon took over and went through two months of reshoots, resulting in a bifurcated mess of a movie. Though we thought nothing more of the film after its original release, diehard Zack Snyder fans started the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement, which eventually actually worked when the studio formally announced a release of the “Snyder Cut” of Justice League for the HBO Max streaming service. Shortly after the HBO Max release, we sat down to watch it and generally agreed with the sentiment that it surpassed the original theatrical cut of the film, but found that its runtime of just over four hours held it back in places.

Scooby-Doo

Note: This review contains spoilers for Scooby-Doo.

As we delved into other animated Scooby-Doo movies, we decided to also take a look at the 2002 live-action film, Scooby-Doo. One major aspect of this decision was the knowledge that James Gunn wrote the screenplay years before he got big with Guardians of the Galaxy. I remember the advertising not clicking with me when I was a kid, plus I also wasn’t that into Scooby-Doo at the time, but we decided to take advantage of a free Amazon Prime stream to actually watch it. As it turns out, nine-year-old me was smarter than 27-year-old me.