Weekly

Liam Neeson Floors It and Ali G Wants His Old Life Back

This week in movies and TV: The Mongoose opens in theaters, Ali G returns on Prime Video, Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes documentary is the best-rated new release around, plus what's airing for Halloween, the new releases coming next week, and what everyone is talking about.

Friday, October 30, 2026 · By MoviesPack

Halloween is tomorrow, and the movie business forgot to bring a costume. Of this week's notable new releases in our database, the only horror film is a Colombian jungle thriller that doesn't reach American screens until November. What we got instead is a strange little cluster of people who have outlived their moment and refuse to accept it.

A decorated soldier, framed and out of options, turns a police chase into live television. A pickpocket discovers that nobody carries cash anymore. A man in a yellow tracksuit wakes up twenty years after his catchphrases stopped being funny and decides the world still owes him a career. And the best-reviewed release of the month is a three-hour documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, who spent her last weeks of freedom letting a camera crew follow her around.

That's not a scary weekend. It's a weekend about the fear of becoming irrelevant, which might be scarier.

The one going very fast

The Mongoose (2026)

I previewed this one last week, so here's what matters now that it's actually here. The Mongoose opens in US theaters today, and the hook is simple enough to fit on a napkin: a war hero, wrongly accused, leads the police on a cross-country chase that gets broadcast live, while his old Special Forces buddies run interference and the audience at home quietly roots for him to get away. That premise is older than it looks. The 1970s were full of movies where the car chase was the whole point and the public sided with the guy being chased, and Smokey and the Bandit is the cheerful version of that fantasy. The Mongoose seems to want the angrier version, closer to The Fugitive with the TV cameras turned on. Liam Neeson leads, with Marisa Tomei, Ving Rhames and Michael Chiklis around him, and Mark Vanselow directs from a script by Thompson Evans. It runs 99 minutes, which is the correct length for a movie whose entire plot is "keep driving." The honest caveat: there are seven votes on the board, and a 6.7 on seven votes tells you nothing. What I'd tell a friend is that Neeson's late-career action run works best when the gimmick is tight and physical, like the plane in Non-Stop or the train in The Commuter. A car that can't stop moving is the same trick on wheels. If that's your kind of night, you're covered. If the reviews turn, Prime Video already has it dated for early November in Brazil and France, so a streaming landing in the US probably won't be far behind. Keep an eye on where to watch The Mongoose.

The one you won't stop thinking about

You Can See Everything (2026)

This is the best thing on the list, and almost nobody is talking about it outside of film nerds yet. Thirty-four days before Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison, the Theranos founder invited a skeptical film crew to document her life. The story starts as a close-up portrait of a famous fraud and, according to its own description, turns into a three-year descent into something much stranger. The directors are the reason to pay attention. One is Lance Oppenheim, the documentarian. The other is Nathan Fielder, the man behind Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, who has spent a decade building elaborate fake realities to see how real people behave inside them. Pointing that brain at a woman who built an elaborate fake reality and sold it to investors is either the most natural pairing in documentary history or a recipe for a very uncomfortable three hours. Probably both. Fielder himself shows up in the cast list. So, intriguingly, does Amanda Seyfried, who won an Emmy for playing Holmes in The Dropout. It runs 174 minutes, and it sits at a 9.0 on 58 votes, the highest score of any notable release from the past two weeks. That's still a small sample, but it isn't the usual handful of fans. And the industry is arguing about it: r/movies picked up a trade story this week in which Fielder defends his unconventional methods while members of the Academy's documentary branch weigh in on whether they cross a line. That's an awards conversation forming in real time. It opened in limited US release on October 16, so if it's playing near you, go. If you want the straight version of the Theranos story first, The Dropout is the place to start, and for the broader genre of founders who believe their own myth, The Social Network still sets the bar.

The one who never grew up

Ali G: Who Iz I? (2026)

Sacha Baron Cohen directs and stars, and the setup is the joke: after two decades of doing absolutely nothing, Ali G learns his longtime girlfriend Julie is eight months pregnant. Faced with an actual responsibility, he does what every washed-up star does and flies to America to win back his fame. It doesn't go smoothly, and soon he's dealing with people who threaten him and the baby on the way. This is the most interesting comeback of the week, because Ali G was always a character built for a specific moment. In Da Ali G Show, the comedy came from real people not realizing they were being pranked. That trick stopped working once everyone knew the face, which is why Baron Cohen moved on to Borat and then to disguises nobody could recognize in Who Is America?. Bringing Ali G back as a scripted story about a man who is out of date is a smart way around the problem. The character's irrelevance is the plot. Early viewers are split. It sits at 5.9 on 45 votes, which is roughly where the first movie, Ali G Indahouse, has landed after more than two decades. So the new one is about as divisive as the old one, which for this character is almost a compliment. It's 88 minutes, it had a small theatrical run on October 23, and it landed on Prime Video in the US on October 28. TMDB's credits list both A$AP Rocky and Rihanna, so expect some cameo spotting.

Also out, briefly

John Turturro's The Only Living Pickpocket in New York expands across the country today after its New York and Los Angeles run. I covered it last week, but it belongs even more in this week's company: Turturro plays Harry, an aging thief whose wallets have been replaced by credit cards that get cancelled in minutes, and who lifts a USB stick that a crime family very much wants back. It's a small, sad, funny idea, and it's worth seeking out if the multiplex feels too loud this weekend.

The most popular new film in our database this week isn't American at all. Drive - The Pretenders is a German romantic thriller that arrived on Prime Video on October 28. A young race car mechanic agrees to a fake engagement with the most notorious driver on the circuit. Publicly it's about cleaning up his image. Privately it's her only route into a cockpit. The lie, of course, starts to cost more than either expected. It's at 7.8 on 22 votes, and if you like the paddock drama of F1 or Rush with a fake-dating twist bolted on, it's an easy stream.

And the horror movie I mentioned at the top? It's The Awakening (El despertar), which opened in Colombia this week. An elite military unit on a jungle mission runs into something ancient that doesn't let people leave. That's Predator territory, and it reaches US digital platforms on November 10.

What's worth your couch time

If Halloween is a night in, television has you covered better than the theaters do. American Horror Story is on the air right in time for the holiday, which is either perfect scheduling or the only scheduling that makes sense. The Simpsons, the show that made a Halloween special an annual event, is still one of the biggest titles on TMDB's current on-air list. If you want something actually frightening, IT: Welcome to Derry is the obvious binge for anyone who hasn't caught up.

Away from the spooky stuff, Disney+'s VisionQuest has drifted down again, from about 8.8 last week to 8.6, which is what happens when the people who loved it first are joined by everybody else. MobLand and Tulsa King are still running side by side for gangster fans. Anime is having a genuinely strong fall: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is back on the air, The Apothecary Diaries sits at a sturdy 8.7, and Dragon Ball Super: Beerus is still somehow holding above 9.6.

Coming next week

Next week is the loudest of the fall, and I previewed most of it last Friday, so here are just the new details. Ramayana: Rise of a Legend opens in US theaters on Wednesday, November 4, and runs 195 minutes, so book a late dinner. Godzilla Minus Zero gets early IMAX screenings on November 3 ahead of its full US release on November 6. If you haven't seen Godzilla Minus One, this weekend is the time. November 6 also brings Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine and the animated The Cat in the Hat.

Two smaller films join them in limited release that day. I Play Rocky tells the true story of a young, unknown Sylvester Stallone refusing to sell his Rocky script unless he got to play the lead himself. It goes wide on November 20. And Club Kid follows a hard-partying New York club promoter whose life is upended when the 10-year-old son he never knew about turns up. Further out, November 20 is the day the Hunger Games prequel Sunrise on the Reaping arrives, and Jennifer Lawrence talking about Katniss again was enough to make r/movies very excited this week.

What everyone's talking about

The biggest story of the week was a sad one. Patrick Stewart died at 86, and it dominated both r/movies and r/television. The tributes spanned his whole range, which is the point of him: Captain Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation and in Star Trek: First Contact, Professor X from X-Men all the way to his farewell in Logan, and, in one of the most-shared clips, a gravely serious Shakespearean performance about the letter B on Sesame Street. Few actors could be that funny precisely by refusing to be. The forums also marked the deaths of Barbara Barrie at 95 and Elke Sommer at 85.

The rest of r/movies was in full Halloween mode, with people asking for horror comedies and defending their seasonal picks. The Guest got pitched as a perfect Halloween movie, Possession (the 1981 one) got its usual round of stunned first-time reactions, and Ghostbusters got its annual reminder that it's a comedy classic. If you're in the horror-comedy camp, I'd add Shaun of the Dead and What We Do in the Shadows. In news, Scott Derrickson and Karyn Kusama are adapting the horror video game Mouthwashing, Ken Russell's NC-17 cut of The Devils has been extended in theaters indefinitely, and a new Avengers: Doomsday poster made the rounds.

On r/television, Walton Goggins wrapped season three of Fallout, The Diplomat got a fifth season at Netflix, and Alfonso Cuarón's Apple horror series Ascension added Amanda Plummer to a cast that already includes Bill Nighy. Doctor Who fans marked sixty years since the first time the Doctor regenerated, back on October 29, 1966, a twist that became the reason the show could outlive every actor in it. In a week about people who can't let go of their old selves, that one fits. And if you'd rather not argue about any of this, our Discover tool will pick something for tonight in about ten seconds.

The bottom line

Going out? The Mongoose is the straightforward choice, and You Can See Everything is the one you'll actually be talking about next week. Staying in, Ali G is either a nostalgia trip or a reminder of why some jokes belong to their era, and you'll know which within ten minutes. For Halloween itself, skip the new releases and put on something old and scary. Next Friday, Godzilla is back, and he doesn't care about any of this.

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