Just two absolute bangers to kick off 2026 (aka No Other Choice & Hamnet)
January has historically been a motivational lowpoint for me. Vocationally lost, physically rotund and still reeling from the sins of Christmas past, I find myself in a familiar position: searching for meaning and escapism on the big screen.
If you’re facing similar existential crises then fret not, for Park Chan-wook and Chloé Zhao have graciously provided two absolute bangers to start 2026 off strong.
NO OTHER CHOICE
What if Michael Scott took ‘murder the competition’ literally?
Such is the premise of No Other Choice, the new film from director Park Chan-wook about a paper company manager and victim of corporate redundancy who takes increasingly unhinged measures to secure the top spot at his former employer’s main competitor. The result is a brilliantly funny and twisted satire of the corporate grind and an immediate (if premature) contender for Best Film of 2026.
Lee Byung-hun (I Saw The Devil, Squid Game) plays Yoo Man-su, a man who seems to have it all. ‘It’ includes a wife, two children, two golden retrievers named after those children, a gorgeous house in the country (his family home) and some primo eel that he’s received from his employer, Solar Paper. Unfortunately for Man-su, it’s not Work Anniversary eel but Corporate Redundancy eel and after 25 years of dedicated service (and despite his Pulp Man of the Year 2019 award), he finds himself without a job.
And he’s not the only one. Paper, like many industries, is going full AI and replacing the majority of its workers with (no apologies for the slur) clankers, thus Man-su faces fierce competition for remaining human-led roles. He attends the closest thing he can get in Korean culture to therapy sessions to process the shock but what he really needs now is a new job. The most coveted one is a senior position at Moon Paper, his former employer’s main competitor. But winning this position will require ingenuity, cunning and a strong stomach for cutthroat practices.
With his house at stake and his pride as a Paper Man too strong to just get a job in a different industry, Man-su crafts a diabolical plan to take out (i.e. murder) his rivals one by one. He’s got CEO written all over him, but will he get the job?
I like to imagine that the legendary director of Oldboy, The Handmaiden and Decision to Leave is a fan of The Office but No Other Choice is actually an adaptation of the 1997 novel The Ax by Donald E. Westlake, realised in present-day South Korea. The material works impossibly well in its setting, a topical comment on the corporate layoffs that make global news each week and the ever worsening cost of living and housing crises that continue to erode the middle class.
And it’s this erosion at the heart of No Other Choice that makes it so successful as a satirical dark comedy. Man-su is the last of his kind and his fight against the inevitable is ultimately futile; who’s to say he’ll even last a year in the job before being axed again, and that’s IF he gets the role and doesn’t end up in jail? His desperation and drive are perfectly portrayed by star Lee Byung-hun, whose bone structure and flair for black comedy remind me of my boyfriend (Mads Mikkelsen) and make watching him for 139 minutes a pleasure.
Park Chan-wook handles the pessimistic themes with his usual tonal mastery; the film is dark but without the overt gore of something like Oldboy and it’s as thrilling as The Handmaiden and Decision to Leave in its storytelling. And then there’s the title, a nod to the excuses we give for bad behaviour (like firing someone, or murdering someone) and the surrender of agency in the face of huge societal change. If ever there was an argument for a universal basic income, it’s this film.
No Other Choice is simply a joy to watch in the cinema. It had me locked in and howling with laughter and it made the return to work on January 5th that tiny bit more tolerable. Park Chan-wook has set the bar for 2026 and I look forward to watching others try to vault over it.
Verdict
☆☆☆☆☆
No Other Choice is in cinemas January 15th, with First Look screenings on sale now.
HAMNET
There are certain names with such weight that, when they appear on a film’s poster, I don’t need to watch its trailer to be on board. It's just as well that Hamnet features names like Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal and Chloé Zhao because the trailer makes it look like Bill Shakespeare biopic Oscar-bait; had I seen it before seeing the film, I might’ve given Hamnet a miss and in doing so, missed out on one of the most moving films of the year.
Interestingly, certain names are how the film starts. The opening prologue states that in Stratford, ‘Hamnet’ and ‘Hamlet’ were considered to be the same name. This is perhaps to cover the fact that the film is an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name, a fictional tale inspired by some allegedly real events (I’m not sure how conclusive this is so just assume that Hamnet is mostly a fictional account). I’m not going into those events here because the impact of Hamnet hinges on your own discovery and knowing them beforehand spoils the emotional wallop that comes from watching it.
What you’ll get (if you manage to avoid the trailer and the book synopsis) is an emotionally rich, thoughtful depiction of grief within a family and the function of art in processing that grief.
Hamnet’s really focuses on Agnes (Jessie Buckley), a free spirited woman who loves walking around in the forest, practices herbal healing and divination and has her own hawk. Had the Eagles been around back then, she’d surely be the inspiration for ‘Witchy Woman’. Naturally, she catches the eye of local tutor Will Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and he woos her with the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. They bang in a shed and a seed is planted.
Agnes is a woman of the woods and Chloé Zhao knows just how to film her. Like an absolute legend she heeds the call of nature and retreats to her favourite tree root to give birth, writhing around animalistically before delivering her first child, Susanna, completely unassisted.
For her next birth, however, her mother-in-law Mary (a stellar Emily Watson) insists that she deliver indoors like a civilised person. William is working in London so Agnes, against her own wishes, delivers twins Hamnet and Judith in his childhood home. It seems a traumatic, more clinical birth and while it ultimately goes well there are concerns for Judith’s health, exacerbated by the fact that the plague is spreading through the country.
It couldn’t come at a more inconvenient time for a splintered family. Agnes loves that William is an artist but, like many FIFO wives that would come after her, supporting his career means that she is essentially a single mother, left to domestic life in Stratford as he enjoys immense critical and commercial success in the city. Their closeness wanes and her individuality suffers as she can no longer see the future. And just as she’s at her most isolated, the worst happens.
Hamnet has many strengths – Zhao’s and O’Farrell’s dreamy storytelling, Łukasz Żal’s (Loving Vincent, The Zone of Interest) breathtaking cinematography, the second best use of Max Richter’s ‘On the Nature of Daylight’ – but its emotional impact really comes down to its performances.
That is to say, Jessie Buckley is so good that you forget you’re watching a film but rather, shadowing a woman who goes through every possible emotional stage a mother could go through. As a childfree woman, this is the closest a film has come to making me truly empathetic to a mother’s plight; to love so deeply and equally, to grieve so painfully.
Paul Mescal is excellent as her foil, processing his grief the only way Shakespeare knows how: on the page. The child performances are also strong, particularly Jacobi Jupe as Hamnet and his real life older brother Noah Jupe as Hamlet. Emily Watson is incredible in everything and Hamnet is no exception; her scenes with Jessie Buckley are the most grounded of the film and I’d love to see them work together again.
By the end of Hamnet I’d had multiple lumps in my throat and a face of makeup tracked by tears. But since they were well earned and willingly given, I didn’t mind at all.
Verdict
☆☆☆☆½
Hamnet is in cinemas January 15th, with First Look screenings on sale now.
