Movie Review: Mercy

There is a term well known to experienced moviegoers, known as "A January Movie", where production companies have stored movies that have been marked as either low quality, unlikely to make money, or too bad to even release, and have been shelved. January is the time of year when these movies are dumped in movie theaters in an attempt to at least make some of the money back that has already been booked as a financial loss because of a low-quality film idea that just did not work.

The new movie "Mercy" is a great example of a January movie and stars Chris Pratt as police officer Chris Raven and Rebecca Ferguson, who plays an AI Judge named Judge Maddox. In this story, Chris Raven is on trial in front of an AI judge, trying to prove that he is innocent of killing his wife, and he has only 90 minutes. If Raven fails to prove himself innocent, he is immediately put to death.

This entire movie has Chris Raven tied to a chair, sitting in front of Judge Maddox, with hundreds of different videos shown around them in a darkened room. The first thing that you realize is how much money must have been saved producing this film because there is no reason for movie sets or high-quality action scenes - just snippets of low-grade videos. This film was probably greenlighted despite the B-movie script because of a money decision where Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson would make enough box office because the production costs are so low. While the futuristic idea is a good one, with AI taking over the legal system in this country, unfortunately, this screenplay is not up to the task of successfully bringing this idea home.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this movie are a very low and correct 22%. I agree with this rating and rank this movie as a big-time January movie miss.

Movie Review: The Secret Agent

After watching about 1 hour and 40 minutes of this boring and subpar movie, the only secret I could uncover is how this film was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Actor and Best Picture. At the 1-hour and 40-minute mark, I made the rare decision to leave this movie early, as I could no longer sit through it.

As I left the theater, I tried to figure out how a movie this bad could be nominated for best picture and the actor for best actor. According to ChatGPT, the possible reasons for this movie receiving two Oscar nominations include: Voters often confuse relevance with quality, intent frequently outweighs results. What would be called boring or unfocused in an American thriller becomes “artful restraint” when it’s international. Movies like this get nominated because the Oscars often reward: Prestige over pleasure, Intent over execution, Message over storytelling. Unfortunately, for all these reasons and others, I was tricked into seeing this boring and mostly bad movie mainly because it was nominated for best picture.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 98% suggest payoffs to make this bad foreign film eligible for Oscar consideration; this is also true of the other bad-nominated film this year, "Bugonia". My rating is 10%, and a suggestion to "put this film on your must-miss list".

Oscar Nominations 2026

Some comments about the Oscar nominations, released today, January 22, 2026. Bugonia is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It's all about being different and has nothing worthy of any nomination. For a movie about Vampires, "Sinners", to break the all-time Oscar nomination record by two, with 16 nominations, is as insane as the current trend of bad movies being honored by movie award shows. Sinners was at best an average Vampire movie.

Best Picture Bugonia F1 Frankenstein Hamnet Marty Supreme One Battle After Another The Secret Agent Sentimental Value Sinners Train Dreams

Best Actor Timothee Chalamet, Marty Supreme Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon Michael B. Jordan, Sinners Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

Best Actress Jessie Buckley, Hamnet Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value Emma Stone, Bugonia

Best Supporting Actor Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein Delroy Lindo, Sinners Sean Penn, One Battle After Another Stellan Skarsgard, Sentimental Value

Best Supporting Actress Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value Amy Madigan, Weapons Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

Best Director Chloe Zhao, Hamnet Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value Ryan Coogler, Sinners

Best Original Screenplay Blue Moon It Was Just an Accident Marty Supreme Sentimental Value Sinners

Best Adapted Screenplay Bugonia Frankenstein Hamnet One Battle After Another Train Dreams

Best Casting Hamnet Marty Supreme One Battle After Another The Secret Agent Sinners

Best Original Song “Dear Me,” Diane Warren: Relentless “Golden,” KPop Demon Hunters “I Lied to You,” Sinners “Sweet Dreams of Joy,” Viva Verdi! “Train Dreams,” Train Dreams

Best Original Score Bugonia Frankenstein Hamnet One Battle After Another Sinners