Movie review: Kudos to PRESSURE

Pressure

2026

As a historian with an interest in Dwight Eisenhower, I had to give this one a watch.

Kudos to the makers of Pressure. First, for simply making the film. War films are normally about action: the studio probably approved a film about decisions and character only because it was previously lauded as a play.

The cast is excellent, especially Andrew Scott as James Stagg. Brendan Fraser is good but not great as Ike: he conveys the tension of the man with the heaviest responsibility in the world at that moment, although he never disappears into the role the way George C. Scott did into Patton (granted, that's one hell of a high bar). Also kudos for showing the frank, open connection between Ike and Kay Summersby (a perfect Kerry Condon) without delving into the alleged romance.

The film messes with history only as much as it needs to to sharpen the timeline. I would have liked to learn a little more about forecasting in those days, and the budget seemingly ran out at Utah Beach where the German defense was basically one machine gun. But those quibbles are minor set beside the central point of the film: the struggles of people making decisions with incomplete information and impossibly high stakes.

Matt Bille is a science writer, novelist, naturalist, and historian living in Colorado Springs. His next book, the scientific thriller Apex Predator, wil be out from Blackstone in February 2027.

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Fiction: The Jellyfish Problem

The Jellyfish Problem

by Tessa Yang

Berkley, 2026 (384pp.)

I'm always curious about novels that elevate cryptofiction - the use of an unknown or unclassified creature - above the "monster" genre into something more ambitious. No one can accuse Tessa Yang of lacking ambition, nor talent. For a first novel, this is amazing.

The Jellyfish Problem is cryptofiction in the sense of having an unknown species as the propelling core of the story. And it's a fascinating species, even though the novel drifts early on away from plausible science and at the end we don't know how the creature does the psychic or possibly magical things it does. Marine biologist (and jellyfish specialist) Jo Ness answers a call from a long-ago ex to investigate a giant jellyfish plaguing a Maine island. From there the novel is a bit hard to describe. The creature is fascinating and the reader will learn interesting jellyfish facts. Past that, the novel includes Japanese folklore, ghosts, psychic creature-human connection, the complexities of human-to-human connection, and the good and bad of how communities work under stress.

I was not sure at times what this novel aspired to be - a love story? A tale of community? A pean to the connectedness of all things? It is all that. I'm impressed the author was able to get it published given the industry's current focus on easily described novels that fit into a marketing niche. Her writing, surely, is what carried the day. She is superb. This is not a story easy to classify, but it's certainly one worth reading.

Matt Bille is a writer and historian living in Colorado Springs. His most recent novel, Death by Legend, is a gripping tale of horrors loose in modern-day Los Angeles.  The next, the scientific thriller Apex Predator, will be out from Blackstone this time next year. 

See www.mattbilleauthor.com