The CineFiles – Ep. 18
By Brian Eggert | January 30, 2026
Dear readers,
On the latest episode of The CineFiles, journalist Chris Hrapsky joins me for a discussion of three new releases and one classic. Jamie Rogers is sitting out this week.
We open with Sam Raimi’s Send Help, a survival thriller starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien that I found exhilarating—easily the most fun I’ve had at the movies in a long time. The film arrives in theaters on January 30 from 20th Century Studios.
From there, Chris and I share our mutual disappointment with Netflix’s The Rip, a cop thriller that reunites Ben Affleck and Matt Damon but never lives up to its stacked cast. The conversation then shifts to Mercy, a dystopian thriller now in theaters. Chris Pratt plays a detective forced to prove his innocence before an AI judge (Rebecca Ferguson). Here, Chris and I disagreed about the film’s effectiveness as a critique of surveillance and police overreach.
And we close with this week’s CineGift: my pick of John Sturges’ Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), featuring Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Walter Brennan, Ernest Borgnine, and Lee Marvin. Next time, we’ll revisit a very different classic with Chris’s CineGift: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999).
Watch the show below on YouTube or by subscribing to the KARE 11+ app (available on Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, etc.).
Happy viewing!
Brian Eggert
Critic, Essayist, Founder
Deep Focus Review
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Brian Eggert | Critic, Founder
Deep Focus Review
