Nate At The Movies

The actor-turned-director career arc has long fascinated me, especially because we’ve been blessed with a couple really great new directors like Greta Gerwig and Bradley Cooper. I’ve enjoyed Jonah Hill as an actor on numerous occasions, and I also liked his directorial debut, mid90s, but I was less sold on everything I saw happening in the trailer for Outcome. The premise had potential, but then the negative reviews started rolling in, and I settled in for what I imagined would be a rough movie today. I’m not quite sure what this was, but it wasn’t a good movie. Not a super bad one, either. Let me explain.

While a story about a huge celebrity navigating extortion and cancellation could’ve been interesting, there were a few decisions that made that difficult to achieve. I haven’t seen a lot of Keanu Reeves’ work, but I found him really boring and dry here. The apology scenes were the only moments of real acting prowess from him, in my opinion. The rest of the cast was pretty hit-or-miss, too, especially Jonah Hill, who was sometimes funny but mostly doing too much or being kind of problematic with his humor. I enjoyed what Cameron Diaz was bringing to the table, though, and I’m also shocked at how good Scorsese was. I don’t think he missed his calling or anything, but he gave the best performance in the movie, which is great for him and terrible for the career actors beside him.

Even at 83 minutes, the movie was a slog to get through and had absolutely no momentum. “Talking movies” like these need to have something else driving them—maybe Hill thought the humor would get it done—but this never really got going. Again, some of those apology scenes kind of hit, especially Scorsese’s, but I needed more from this story.  I can commend Outcome for being the most saturated and colorful live action movie of 2026 so far, though, but it was a lot at times, and it didn’t do anything for the story. Outcome was a real nothing movie—even as I’m writing my review just 15 minutes after finishing the movie, I’m having trouble coming up with things to say about it. This will sit as the worst movie of my 2026 for now, but I bet it won’t still be at the bottom by year’s end.