The British-Irish playwright and director Martin McDonagh is interested in the contours of male friendship. Specifically, he’s interested in men who are thrust together, whether they like it or not. In In Bruges, it was two hitmen on the lam. In The Banshees of Inisherin, it was two men who became friends by default—the island they lived on was so insular and small they had few other options.

Now, with Wild Horse Nine, he gives us two colleagues from the CIA—Chris (John Malkovich), on the verge of retirement, and the much younger Lee (Sam Rockwell), who may at one point have been a protegee but is now his supervisor.

Do they like each other?
It’s hard to like Chris (it’s also hard to not like Chris, if that makes any sense), as old age has given him what doctors might diagnose as diarrhea of the mouth. One suspects that Chris was always garrulous—too garrulous for a CIA agent. But now that’s he (slightly) losing his faculties and has a fatalistic approach to his life and work, the man literally won’t shut up.

It’s 1973 and Chris and Lee have just left Santiago, Chile and are on their way to Easter Island. (Chris had been yammering on about seeing the big heads.)

Lee is frustrated with his older colleague—especially when he casually tells two pretty Chilean students that they’re CIA agents in town to destabilize the Chilean democracy—but he’s patient, too.

We soon find out that Chris is dying of cancer and that seeing Easter Island is his final wish (well, one of them). They’re not on a job; Lee is accompanying him out of love.

Or is he? Chris has two notes tucked into his jacket pocket. One reads: “Remember You’re Dying.” The other says, “Don’t Trust Lee.”

Everything we’ve seen of Lee shows him to be loyal to the old man. But could something else be up his sleeve?

His department in the CIA, led by the irritable MJ (Steve Buscemi), is positively freaking out that Chris is planning on writing his memoirs, especially since he was directly involved the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jr. (The film takes it on faith that the CIA killed JFK and who am I to argue?) MJ wants Lee to retrieve the tapes that Chris has been dictating his memoir into and also confiscate the gun that was possibly used for the hit. Is Lee just pretending to be a friend?

McDonagh wrote Wild Horse Nine with Malkovich in mind for the lead and it feels like a valentine to the singular actor. It’s hard to explain what a phenomenon Malkovich was back in the ’90s—a serious actor, an unlikely sex symbol, a fascinating weirdo. (Indeed, the whole film is studded with Gex X icons: not just Buscemi but Parker Posey as Lee’s casually unfaithful wife and Tom Waits as Chris’ off-the-grid brother.) I still maintain that Malkovich’s Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons is the best I’ve ever seen—just consider the many ways he repeats “It is beyond my control” to a devasted Michelle Pfeiffer. And of course, his iconic status was cemented by Being John Malkovich, a brilliant work of meta wizardry by Spike Jonze.

He still looks cool in the way Bill Murray will always look cool (Murray is the only other actor I can imagine pulling off this part)—his hair wispy now, the bags under his eyes, always a bit prominent, now deeper. He still has the slightest lisp. Costume designer Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh dresses him sharply, in straw porkpie hats, suspenders, and patterned shirts. (Lee favors giant belt buckles and cowboy hats.)

Malkovich is extremely funny and touching in this role—with McDonagh’s profane, clever, seemingly off-the-cuff dialogue pairing well with his mirthful, off-kilter delivery. His Chris is a jokester, a raconteur, and a gleeful asshole, but he’s also having a crisis of conscience. He worries about whether or not he’ll go to heaven. He’s killed people. Lots of them. So now he saves the moths that he finds in his closet, gently ushering them outside. He finds solace in the wild horses that roam Easter Island. (He’s less impressed with the Moai, or big heads. They all look the same to him.)

Wild Horse Nine is yet another installment of McDonagh’s “Men Bickering in Beautiful Settings” series. The film looks stunning, the wisecracks are razor sharp, the violence comes in unexpected bursts, and as always, there is much beauty and depth behind the banter.

What exactly is Nathan Fielder? He’s not a documentarian, as the TV shows he creates often have a script or at least a heavily mapped out structure. He’s not a prankster, although he does dupe people—luring unsuspected marks into his elaborate schemes with his keen listening skills and earnest, almost sheepish demeanor—because his productions are often as sad as they are funny.

Mockumentarian doesn’t do it either—he’s not making fun of documentaries, he’s using their loose structure to create his own unique genre, something more akin to absurdist performance art than anything Frederick Wiseman (or Christopher Guest, for that matter) was up to.

So when I found out that Fielder was doing a documentary on Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos who was convicted of conspiracy and fraud, I wondered what on earth she was thinking.

Holmes gave Fielder nearly unfettered access to her and her family (a husband, two small children) in the 34 days leading up to her 11-year sentence in a federal prison. But why allow the most slippery of directors into your home? Why sign up to be interviewed by a man who is literally famous for messing with people?

Once the documentary started, it all clicked for me. Fielder and Holmes are, in fact, alike. Both feign sincerity. Both are impossible to read. Of course, Fielder’s inscrutability is a schtick. But is it entirely? I think there’s a real part of him that is exactly like his “character”—socially awkward, neurotic, and seeking real answers about what makes humans tick.

One of the great questions of the documentary involves a quote that Holmes allegedly gave The New York Times in a 2023 interview. “They’re not playing me,” she said, of various depictions of her on television, including Amanda Seyfried in the critically acclaimed miniseries, The Dropout. “They’re playing a character I created.”

The same quote could apply to Fielder. Is he playing himself? Is he playing a simulacrum of himself? Or has he created a fully unique persona just for us?

And the plot thickens. Holmes claims she never gave that quote to the Times. What she maintains she said was, “They’re playing a character they created.”

To be precise, it’s not Holmes who makes that defense, it’s her husband, Billy. “You must’ve said ‘they’ created,” he instructs Holmes, and she nods emphatically.

There was a controlling older man, Sunny Balwani, at the heart of the Theranos scandal. Holmes was romantically involved with him, too, and they started the company together. By some accounts, he was the mastermind of the too-good-to-be-true universal blood test. Whatever the case, it’s clear she is easily manipulated by a certain kind of man—equal parts doting and domineering.

Billy is the third main character in You Can See Everything. Indeed, you might call it the documentary as throuple. Often the three of them sit around a table, or on a couch, or, in one incredible scene, in an actual bed.

Fielder, who co-directed the film with his partner, Lance Oppenheim, likes to film faces in extreme closeup. This is both a way of getting at deeper truths and highlighting the awkwardness of the scenarios he constructs. (He’s also a weaponizer of awkward silences.)

Sometimes Fielder and Holmes’ faces get so close, you wonder if they might kiss. In one scene, we see Fielder and Holmes side by side on the couch, their faces filling the frame. A hand is stroking Holmes’ shoulder and, for a second, we actually think it’s Fielder. Then we realize it’s Billy, out of frame, on the other side of couch.

At other times, Fielder acts as creeper, peeping Tom—lurking in doorways and peering through windows. He follows Billy to the gym and then, gratuitously, films him naked in the shower. Sometimes, he records Holmes and Billy when they don’t realize they’re being recorded. And he occasionally wears an earpiece and headphones, as though he’s a member of the German Stasi.

The whole thing is equally surreal and riveting, a Fielder specialty. It’s impossible to tell who’s lying and when. Holmes, for her part, insists she never lies. She still maintains her innocence. But when she tries to explain that she never claimed her blood device worked, she merely claimed it had the potential to work, her words become tangled, obscure.

Later, Fielder says her confusing wordplay reminded him of the Abbott and Costello skit, “Who’s on First?” Neither Holmes nor Billy had ever heard of Abbott and Costello, let alone the famous routine (excuse me while I fill out my AARP card). When Fielder plays it for them, something curious happens—Holmes laughs but doesn’t fully get it.

Why did you laugh, Fielder presses.

Because they were all talking at once, she replies.

When he explains the play on the word “Who,” she nods, finally comprehending.

Billy, with his habit of filling in the blanks for both Holmes and, seemingly, everyone else in the room, says that Fielder’s analogy was brilliant. (Fielder had not made an analogy.)

“You’re saying that Liz thinks differently!” he says.

(We eventually find out that Holmes and Billy specifically selected Fielder as their documentarian because he “thinks outside the box” just like they do.)

It turns out control freak Billy, who in many ways is a genuinely doting husband and father, is just as fascinating a figure as his famous wife. Is he a conman? A protector? Or both?

The Abbott and Costello bit leaves room for the fact that Holmes is neurodivergent. Is it possible she really didn’t comprehend her own grift? When she says she never lies, does she believe that lie?

Even if you think that Holmes is nothing more than a skilled con artist, you have to feel a bit sorry for her. She has two young children. The youngest is still breastfeeding. They’ll only be able to see her in the prison yard. (And through the AI avatar she has created of herself…don’t ask.)

And then time is up and she has to go to prison. A minimum security federal prison in Texas.

This should be the end of the film, but it still has an hour to go.

Trust me when I say the final hour is every bit as riveting and off-the-rails as the first two. If you have any fear of getting bored during a three-hour film, I assure you, you won’t.

Fielder has made something wholly original here. And for all its sleight of hand, it somehow brings us closer to the truth than any conventional documentary could.

This is, indeed, the greatest trick that Nathan Fielder ever pulled.

There is a lot of yelling in Digger. Chief yeller is our star, Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise), a good ol’ boy oil baron who yells when he doesn’t get what he wants—which is certainly the case here, as he’s just discovered that his oil tanker in Greenland has set off a possible global catastrophe. Cruise, with a straggly gray combover, a paunch, and a pound of prosthetics, is actually great in this role: Funny, bellicose, narcissistic—but somehow never quite unlikable. Cruise demonstrates his true movie star chops here, establishing once and for all that it was never just about the million-dollar grin and the all-American handsomeness; the man really does command a screen.

If only Cruise were the only one yelling in Digger. But he has partners in volume: Sandra Hüller as his sister, Ellen, who owns an oxymoron: a “green” oil company that has been bought up by Digger. (Hüller, one of our most gifted actresses, has never given anything close to a bad performance. There’s a first time for everything.) Michael Stuhlbarg, as a fretful U.S. vice president, yells—generally out of fear. And then there’s John Goodman, playing the president, who happens to be dying of “cancer of the ass,” as he repeatedly informs us, who does the most yelling of them all.

The director, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, is wearing his influences on his sleeve here. The orderly, drolly funny sets and a mid-film plot twist (more on that in a bit) feel cribbed from Wes Anderson; the puffed up idiots in charge feel like Stanley Kubrick, and perhaps a touch of Terry Gilliam. The characters he creates are supposed to be over-the-top, grotesque— but I found the whole thing a bit exhausting. Vulgarity can come in many different forms. It doesn’t always have to go to eleven.

Indeed, if it weren’t for Cruise’s bravura and Riz Ahmed as the mild-mannered (hooray!) environmental scientist Ganesh, who is perhaps too stunned by the impending global disaster to raise is voice, a lot of the film’s first 40 minutes or so would be unbearable.

But then something is revealed that changes our perspective on what we are watching. Spoilers ahead so stop reading here if you want to go into the film cold.

Everything we’re seeing on screen is in fact a play—or a tech dress rehearsal for a play they’ll be doing tonight. (Props to the internet sleuths who guessed Digger was a musical. They were close!) This revelation is a bit absurd—even with a James Cameron-level budget, they wouldn’t be able to pull off the elaborate, ever-changing sets. But it is an interesting wrinkle. Suddenly, we’re meant to ask: Was all that overacting intentional? Cruise, now playing the actor Curtis Markson, certainly thinks so. He complains that some of the dialogue is too much. He’s also a bit frantic because his daughter is flying in from Jamaica to see the show and her plane has gone off the radar (there have been terrible storms). We also meet Kenny (Jesse Plemons), one of the show’s mysterious producers, with a haircut that answers the question “what if Anton Chigurth was a ginger?” and offers to help Markson find his daughter.

But then Iñárritu takes us right back into the action of the “play”—which is a bit jarring at first. The artifice of it all becomes even more glaring—how are we supposed to get lost in the story? Still, powered by Cruise and a few splendid set pieces—one involving Digger addressing a European assembly and giving his version of Jack Nicholson’s “You can’t handle the truth!” speech from A Few Good Man, this time in relation to crude oil (cinephile Iñárritu knew exactly what he was doing there)—it manages to be watchable.

And then, gird your loins, there is yet another twist that I won’t spell out here but that does bring the disparate pieces together in an intriguing way. Suddenly, the purpose of this meta structure is revealed and it’s clear the film has a lot on its mind—not just the powerful oil fascists who feel they have God-like power to ruin the planet but about our desire to consume the kind of cathartic work of art that shows these bad guys getting their just desserts. Nothing changes. We laugh and point at their ridiculousness and feel better about ourselves. And the world continues to burn.

Still, what can be said about a film that doesn’t reveal its true intentions until the final act? Is it worth slogging through to get there? I think maybe…yes? I spent a lot of Digger waiting for it end and now I actually want to see it again. Well played, Iñárritu. Well played.

Cinephiles in Baltimore have some reason to complain—we often get first-run indie films weeks after they premiere in New York or L.A.—but then again, we have the New/Next Film Festival and they don’t.

First with his tenure at the Maryland Film Festival and now with New/Next, festival programmer Eric Hatch has a remarkable record of finding rising talent just before they’re about to break into the mainstream.

Catch as many films as possible from October 1-4 (or better still, get an all-access pass) at The Charles in Station North so you can be on the leading edge of what’s happening in the world of cinema—both locally and beyond.

Here are some reviews to get you started.

ETERNITY ONE
Baltimore-based documentarian Marnie Ellen Hertzler immersed herself on the small Chesapeake Bay island of Tangier, getting to know its people, its rhythms, its way of life. Mostly, she focused on a girl named Ella—11 when we first meet her and about 14 by the film’s end. Ella lives with her good-hearted mother, Brandi, and, later, with her stepfather and new baby brother.

She’s a precocious kid, a worrier, a self-critic, and a budding artist. In the beginning, with her oversized glasses and earnest face, she resembles the little girl from Little Miss Sunshine, which adds to her charm.

Right away, she tells us about her biggest concern: “I live on an island that is slowly eroding away,” she says. That is not an exaggeration. Thanks to climate change, Tangier is literally receding and this ever-present threat hangs over the town like a dark cloud. Or like an asteroid, a recurring motif.

There’s a second part to this film, where Hertzler spends time with people who are transhumanists—they are seeking singularity between man and AI, so that a human can live forever as some sort of man/machine hybrid. (Or at least stay alive long enough for medical technology to make the human body more efficient.)

I confess the parts with the transhumanists felt a bit shoe-horned, although I suppose Hertzler is contrasting the simplicity of island life with the kinds of solipsistic concerns the islanders would scoff at. They want to fish, they want to eat what they catch, they want to spend time together, often in a church rec room that looks like it was frozen in the 1970s.

But both the transhumanists and the folks of Tangier are staring into an unknown future, albeit from very different perspectives.

There is also a robot named Grace, who serves as both a kind of uncanny valley and comic relief. Her creator, boasting about Grace’s human facial expressions, asks Grace to show angry, then sad, then surprised. All three faces are the same—a kind of contorted gawp. We’re not there yet (although the film was finished a couple of years ago…we’re much closer now).

Eternity One is best when it stays in Tangier, and especially with Ella. The passage of time gives the film a kind of poignancy, a la Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. And the dreamy score, by local indie darlings Beach House, adds to the elegiac mood. Ella’s art gets better. She starts to care enough about boys to at least call them “weird.” For now, the existential threat is at bay. But for how much longer?

Eternity One is Opening Night feature of the New/Next Festival on Oct. 1. It has an encore screening on Oct. 4. Director Marnie Ellen Hertzler is expected to attend both screenings. 

HERE I’M ALIVE
New York remains the city that never sleeps, but it probably looks a lot different from the image of dance clubs, strip bars, and all-night diners that you have in mind. Instead, much of New York’s nightlife is carried out online, or at least driven by online activity.

In his neorealist “urban epic,” director Joshua Z. Weinstein follows a series of characters living on the edges of New York City. Their stories are told in snapshots—we glimpse at their lives periodically over the course of one night.

There’s a Door Dasher Eddie (Eddie Torrenegra), getting yelled at by customers (“You forgot my Diet Coke!”) and trying to save enough to bring his kids over from an unspecified Latin country. There’s Felix (Caleb Zuzga), who uses Chat GPT to compose the perfect message to a would-be Sugar Daddy on an online dating site. (Later, he uses a photo app to give himself smoother skin and more pronounced cheekbones.)

We meet Krystaly (Krystaly Figeuroa), who lives in a shelter and tries to create a reality dating show, casting herself as the star. (Inevitably, the filming devolves into dirty talk and chaos.) And, most touchingly, there’s Majora (Cheyenne Gallagher), an agoraphobic who plays video games, watches interviews with tech titans, and chats with strangers on a message board.

One of those strangers is a young man, Luffy9 (Alex Fox) threatening to kill himself. Over a video call, Majora actually gives him good advice. Find things worth living for—even if it’s just things you like to do online. And most people who try and fail at suicide are glad they lived. Hang on, he suggests. But Luffy9 wants Majora to come over, which is a nearly impossible ask.

Filled with a cast of mostly non-actors playing fictionalized version of themselves, Here I’m Alive, is funny and sad in equal measure. The characters have dreams shaped by social media: Felix wants that perfect sugar daddy who will give him everything he wants and ask for nothing in return. Eddie posts someone else’s fancy sports car, claiming it’s his. Krystaly wants to be a reality TV star.

Social media has shown that people can get rich quick, just by posting online. But when will their time come?

Here I’m Alive screens Friday, Oct 2.

THE LORRAINE
The Lorraine Motel in Memphis will forever be marked by a grim event: It is the site where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. But The Lorraine had a full life, if you will, both before and after that ill-fated day. And acclaimed local documentarian Sam Pollard (Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes) lovingly tells its story in his new film, The Lorraine.

The motel/hotel was opened by Walter and Loree Bailey during the Great Migration. Memphis was, as the film tells us, a gateway for African Americans traveling from the south to the north—and both passengers and train staff alike would stay at the lodge. The motel, which had one of those iconic mid-century signs that you could see from the highway, was eventually put in the famous Green Book for Black travelers—and became the de rigueur stop for Black musicians, athletes, and civil rights activists who passed through town.

Muddy Waters stayed The Lorraine. So did Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and members of the Negro League and the Harlem Globetrotters. Aretha Franklin apparently liked their catfish. And Isaac Hayes would winkingly tell motel staff that he “wasn’t here” when he came to the pool surrounded by beautiful women—his wife nowhere in sight.

Pollard has a knack for sharing history in a lively and vivid way. He uses archival footage, spirited period music, as well as extensive interviews to bring history to life. Here, he talks to the daughter and granddaughter of the Baileys, as well as historians, civil rights activists, politicians, musicians, and many others.

Poignantly, he talks to a woman who worked at The Lorraine for essentially her entire life. As a young woman, she got off the train in Memphis, saw The Lorraine, applied for a job as a maid, and never left. She was there the night MLK Jr. was killed. She tears up, recounting that night. “It was a sad day,” she says, sniffling. “I’m sorry.”

After King’s death there was some uncertainly about what to do with the motel. People came to pay respects but didn’t want to stay there. At the same time, other hotels in Memphis were now integrated and the neighborhood around The Lorraine fell into disrepair.

There’s a surprising second act to The Lorraine that you’ll have watch the film to discover (or perhaps you already know). And now there is this film, a fitting tribute to a place that spread a lot of joy, that defied injustice, offered a safe haven, and was much more than just the site of tragedy.

The Lorraine screens on Saturday, Oct 3.

MACKENZIE
Juniper (Lucya Yusimov), the 11-year-old protagonist of Mylissa Fitzsimmons’ Mackenzie, is bored. Her single mother works multiple jobs and when she’s home, she’s usually sound asleep. The house they live in is small and squat—so squat in fact that when Juniper is lying on her back in her bed, her feet can touch the ceiling (she props a book between her toes and reads it in that L position).

She also has a crush on a TV actor—as many 11-year-olds do. In this case, it’s Mackenzie Astin from The Facts of Life. (Fun fact: Astin has spent a fair amount of time in Baltimore as his father, the actor John Astin, taught theater at Johns Hopkins.)

When her mother is awake, she reminds Juniper to pack—they are moving from Utah to Idaho. Juniper doesn’t want to go. She loves Utah—and what’s more, she has a plan to meet Mackenzie in L.A., which is a bus ride from Salt Lake City. So she packs a knapsack—money she’s stolen from her mother’s nightstand, a Teen Beat magazine with Mackenzie’s picture, some candy, a map, a tape recorder—and heads out to Salt Lake City on her bike. She doesn’t tell her mother. She doesn’t say goodbye.

Most of Mackenize is simply following Juniper on her trek through the Utah desert. She climbs rocks, she swims, she bikes. Watching her, with her floral shorts and pigtails, we sense how vulnerable she is. But she seems completely unbothered. She uses her tape deck to record messages to Mackenzie and sometimes, documentarian-style, to capture the sounds of being outside—a flag whipping in the wind, an electric pole that is hissing. She talks to herself too—a kind of ongoing narration of her day—she’s clearly a kid who is used to being alone.

I confess, I had to interrogate my own reaction to Juniper’s isolation. I was scared for her, but then I wondered if I would be equally scared if a fearless 11-year-old boy were on his own? Yes, but not quite as scared.

There are very few people in this film other than Juniper, but those who see her assume she’s just fine. And why wouldn’t they—she seems fine.

Mackenzie is not a film for people who demand plot or dialogue in their films. It’s mostly just Juniper, on her journey—shot beautifully, often poetically in the Utah desert.

Her certainty that Mackenzie Astin will be waiting for her with open arms reminded me a bit of Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, with Bruce Dern’s Woody setting out to claim a sweepstakes prize that he’s sure he’s won. But just as Woody secretly wanted to spend time with his adult son, we wonder if Juniper really thinks Mackenzie Astin will be waiting for her. Or is she just looking to have an adventure, to take in the desert terrain she loves one last time, and most importantly, to find out if she will be missed.

Mackenzie screens on Saturday, Oct. 3.

HUMAN THEORIES
I laughed during the opening credits of Jess Zeidman’s Human Theories, as dozens upon dozens of cast member names spooled across the screen as though I was about to watch Ben-Hur. And I laughed even harder when the final two cast members were revealed: “Martini: The Dog” and “Chanel: The Bodega Cat.”

But all was about to come clear. Human Theories is a story of young New Yorkers as told through a series of fleeting vignettes. One person will be a minor or even background character in one scene and they will step forward in the next. But each scene is a snap shot, a microfiction account of life as a twenty-something in the city.

There are some thematic elements that recur: Cringy hookups, mansplainers, complicated dreams, idiosyncratic philosophies—but the sense I got is that Zeidman has been collecting her friends’ stories, maybe on the Notes app, and she’s sharing them with us here. Turns out there are lots of funny, awkward, poignant stories to be told.

So we see a girl at an outdoor café bump into an old acquaintance from her hometown and her boyfriend. Then the girl’s own boyfriend shows up—and she neglects to introduce him. The camera stays trained on his anticipatory and ultimately annoyed/hurt face. When the couple walks away, he confronts his girlfriend about the snub. They’re still arguing when we move to the next scene where the other couple shows up a dim sum place for dinner with friends.

“I’m freezing,” one skinny friend says, shivering in his scarf. “Is anyone else freezing?” No one else is. He stands up, saying he’s going to alert the manager. A joke follows, but I won’t ruin it here.

Every vignette feels true to life—two guys arguing over whether Wally Shawn says “inconsolable” or “inconceivable” in The Princess Bride; a guy who says “yum” when he’s hooking up, much to the disgust of his date; a bad roommate who doesn’t realize she’s the bad roommate; a girl who won’t stop sneezing at the bookstore; a guy who lives in a shithole but insists you “remove your shoes” when you come in.

It’s all funny and relatable—like the way an extremely good standup set can be. Men definitely get the worst of it. But hey, such is life in one’s 20s. The film zips by at a brisk 70 minutes. I could’ve easily watched 70 minutes more.

Human Theories screens Sunday, Oct 4.

Primetime starts with a creepy voice reading a chat message to an underage girl and describing, in graphic detail, what he plans to do with her. “It’s going to hurt the first time,” the voice says. “I’ll bring lubricant.”

We think the voice is of a predator, but then the camera focuses on the speaker. It’s To Catch a Predator’s Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson), his hair neatly combed, dressed in a tan suit, practicing his entrance. He’s a different kind of predator—the reality TV sort. The more lurid the crime, the better.

And right now, he’s in his dressing room, waiting for his call time.

Downstairs, in a staged house, a teenage girl (Phoebe Bridgers)—actually a paid, of-age actress—lets a sheepish looking guy (Tony Revolori) inside. “Your parents aren’t home?” he says, his eyes darting around. She offers him homemade cookies, which he considers, then doesn’t take.

And then Chris Hansen—he always introduces himself as Chris Hansen, never just Chris—pops out and recites the messages he had memorized from the chat. “Have a seat,” he tells the now petrified suspect. It’s one of his famous catchphrases. Then, with a flourish, he delivers the other: “You see how this looks, right?”

In moments the cops are tackling the suspect to the ground, as Hansen and his crew celebrate.

Presiding over all of this is Hansen’s producer, Andie (Merritt Wever), who takes an efficient and unsentimental approach to the work. Her job is to lure and catch sexual predators and then film the moment they are caught. She’s not one to traffic in self-doubt or recrimination. She just gets shit done. And maybe she’s slightly in love with Hansen.

As for Hansen, he’s a narcissist, who loves seeing himself on TV. In one scene, he awakens his sleeping young sons, just so they can see daddy’s segment on television. In their pajamas, rubbing sleep from their eyes, they watch the predator get apprehended. Hansen has no sense of how inappropriate this content is for his children—he’s too high on self-regard.

The film largely focuses on Hansen’s attempts to snag a prominent person—the White Whale, they call him—which he hopes will bring ratings and glory and, possibly even beat the ABC competition, Lost.

Some of the crew discuss this White Whale at a Subway, as a poster of pitchman Jared smiles down at them. (The film has a twisted sense of humor—Jared, of course, was eventually arrested for child pornography and illicit sexual conduct with a minor.)

The crew recruits a starry-eyed young actor, Dan Plumb (Skyler Gisondo) to be one of the marks. He thinks this is big break but, as a jealous friend reminds him, no one remembers the decoy. In Dan’s first staged sting, a perpetrator whips out his penis. The shocked look on Dan’s face is not acting.

Primetime is directed by Lance Oppenheim with a kind of sinister finesse. It’s a tightly made film—darkly funny, compelling, and archly self-aware. But it doesn’t say anything new. Reality TV is exploitative. We know that. Ambition makes people amoral—we know that too. The film feels more like a clever, entertaining exercise than anything else.

Pattinson is great at Hansen—particularly nailing Hansen’s puffed up vanity (“This is Dateline’s Chris Hansen,” he says, calling the number on the vending machine when his Rice Krispies Treat gets stuck)—but perhaps he’s too interesting? The avuncular TV anchor blandness of Hansen’s face allowed Americans to feel safe in his presence. Pattinson is simply too weird, too intriguing to ever be called bland.

Still, he nails the Tucker Carlson-esque voice and the near glee Hansen experiences when he describes these sordid acts. Much like Dateline’s Keith Morrison who looks like a Founding Father and seems to really love murder—Hansen reveled the “gotcha” moment. Though he’s clearly doing it for the money and status, he buys into his own mythology. “We are cleansing the world of an ancient evil,” he tells Dan.

And poor Dan, a fan of musicals, who sings “Seasons of Love” in auditions (he prefers the film version of Rent to the Broadway one), is the heart of the film—the Dorothy in this sinister Oz. Freckle-faced Dan, who really does look like a kid—especially when they dress him in board shorts and striped tee shirts—just wants to act, to get a SAG card, to be famous. Instead he’s recruited into this dark underbelly. And he eventually gets good at it. Because that’s how the moral quagmire works. We go from shock to acceptance to complicity.

There has been much talk lately of something called a “Performative Male”—namely a guy who conspicuously reads, say, The Bell Jar on the subway and wears a “Believe Women” tee-shirt. There are performative young men at the center of Kent Jones’ Late Fame, but of a different sort. They dress like they just did a stint at the Algonquin Roundtable and they have a strangely formal way of talking—no “likes” and “you knows” for them. But their metaphors are a bit mixed, as they worship the Beat Generation writers like William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, who probably had disdain for those Algonquin sharpies.

All of them are rich and living off their daddy’s money in New York; they assemble at a bar and call themselves The Enthusiasm Society. (Whether the name is ironic or not is left unclear.)

They have also recently discovered a new poet. Well, a new old poet. His name is Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe). He wrote a book of Beat-adjacent poetry that made a minor splash in the early ’70s and he never wrote again. He now leads a quiet, somewhat unremarkable life—he works for the post office and plays pool and shoots the shit with a group of old friends at an East Village bar.

One day he is approached by the leader of The Enthusiasm Society, Meyers (an amusing Edmund Donovan), dressed in an overcoat and the sort of hat you might expect to see in the film Reds. “Are you the Ed Saxberger?” he asks, in awe. He explains that he and his buddies read Way Past Go, the poetry book, and loved it. They think Saxberger is way overdue for a reassessment and a revival. Saxberger for his part is baffled by this young man’s enthusiasm. Is this a joke? His book is out of print. (Meyers found it at a used bookstore.)

“Call me Ed,” he tells Meyers, who objects. “We use last names,” he says. The affectation is strong with this group.

Saxberger half-heartedly agrees to meet with Meyers’ crew, a self-styled group of playwrights, essayists, and poets, at their preferred bar. (They are much more into calling themselves writers than, you know, actually writing.)

Across from them at a different table, like a rival gang of sorts, are a group of influencers, whom they disdain (except for when they want to get in their pants).

“They’re addicts,” says Meyers (Edmund Donovan), with disgust.

“Heroin?” asks Saxberger.

“No, their phones.”

(I loved that little exchange because it shows that Saxberger emerged from a truly dangerous and underground culture. These pampered boys think a phone addiction is a serious problem.)

I was amused by the first part of the film—it reminded me a bit of Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan—as these self-serious young men courted their new idol.

But then Greta Lee’s Gloria, an aspiring actress, shows up and the film shifts rather significantly, because she’s such an outsized presence. Unlike the boys, she doesn’t come from money. And it’s hard to fully describe her schtick (they all have schtick). She sports a flapper haircut, black cat-eye makeup, and a fur stole. She demands that everyone kisses her hand and when she luxuriously flops into a chair, she loudly orders an absinthe.

All the boys are apparently in love with her, but she sets her attention on Saxberger, perhaps thinking he’ll be easy to manipulate or maybe because she’s always drawn to the shiny new thing.

Saxberger is abashed, flattered, and, yes, a bit turned on. He had reluctantly joined this crew but now he must admit he likes it. He and Gloria even begin hanging out.

But eventually something begins to gnaw at him. He feels tokenized. Like a novelty act.

“You must’ve been so beautiful when you were young,” Gloria says to him. Later, Meyers spins a romanticized fantasy of Saxberger arriving in New York with a “duffel bag and 7 dollars.” (“It wasn’t like that,” Saxberger replies.) A group of young people calls him “grandpa.”  What he wants to do is revisit the promise, the excitement, the possibility of his youth—but these young people just keep reminding him how old he is.

Late Fame is the kind of small, smart, and specific indie film that I can never get enough of. I didn’t agree with all its choices—again, Gloria is just too much, and I wasn’t always sure how we were supposed to feel about her. Is she really a talented actress? Does she really have feelings for Saxberger? And what’s up with that cabaret act she does for a small group of horny old men? Is she…a prostitute? Just a down-on-her-luck actress who enjoys slipping into the genteel world these Enthusiasm Society boys have created? Her presence is so large, loud, and over-the-top, she derails the film. (I’m not criticizing Lee, who is a fine actress. The script just does her no favors.)

Dafoe, however, is remarkable—not afraid to show how quickly the sheepish Saxberger gets swept up in the fantasy of him as this dashing raconteur leading a group of young men to greatness. He quietly yearns for things, almost as if he’s forgotten how, and it’s touching. The film shows how easy it is to mythologize yourself and others. But reality has this stubborn habit of getting in the way.

Late Fame opens Friday at the Charles Theatre.

It’s only slight hyperbole to say that The End of Oak Street is the greatest film Steven Spielberg never made. This is not just because it’s set in 1982 and features remarkably life-like dinosaurs chasing around a nuclear family. It’s because writer-director David Robert Mitchell takes the time—but not too much time—to allow us to get to know this family. We know that mom, Denise (Anne Hathaway, who is apparently legally obligated to be in all the films that come out in 2026), is unhappy in her marriage and fantasizes about running away. She expresses this desire through a novel she’s been secretly hammering away at (on a manual typewriter, no less) in the basement. Meanwhile, dad Greg (Ewan McGregor, likeable enough that we tolerate his attempt at an American accent) is strapped for cash and makes extra money delivering pizzas. Every night, he dutifully removes the pizza cartop from his sedan because, as he tells his son, “Mom is embarrassed.”

Then there are the kids, Brian and Audrey (Christian Convery and Maisy Stella). Brian is crushing on the new girl and running away from a bully. He’s also the one who’s most devoted to the family dog, Starbuck—a somewhat brilliant narrative devise because it answers the question, “Why would a kid leave his home in the middle of a dinosaur uprising?” (Answer: To look for his dog.) And Audrey rather conveniently is obsessed with space travel and Carl Sagan. Her knowledge of black holes and portals comes in handy under the circumstances.

So what are the circumstances? There are lights. Weird objects that show up out of nowhere—a prehistoric plant that suddenly appears in the backyard of kindly Mrs. Huddleston (Anne Gee Byrd) and a giant pile of manure (at first we assume it’s cow manure) that has landed on the front lawn of tetchy neighbor, Mel (P.J. Byrne)—he blames the kids. Then, a giant light flash, a thunderous noise, fierce wind, and the power goes out. But it’s more than that—eventually the family realizes they are surrounded by dinosaurs including pterodactyls, triceratops, and these giant snake like things that can slither around hallways and have a mouthful of spiky teeth. What the hell is actually going on? Is it some sort of alien invasion? Has nature reclaimed the burbs? Have the dinosaurs time traveled? Or…has the neighborhood?

Because we like and care about this family, the stakes are particularly high. And the action is great—family members jumping through cars with shattered windows, using inadequate guns and bows and arrows, getting separated, coming together in emotional reunions. And of course, through it all, Denise and Greg are going to realize how much they love each other.

I was all in.

The fact that it’s set in the 80s makes for a nice Spielberg homage and raises the stakes. No cell phones, no internet, no AI (“Hey Claude, how could a human survive a dinosaur apocalypse?”). A pay phone ends up playing a prominent role.

And the film is funny—not quite as sharp as Spielberg at his best—but the script gets in a few good ones. As far as I know, Spielberg never showed us two T-Rexes getting it on.

There is one deeply disturbing and gory scene that suggests that director Mitchell was raised on a slightly more gnarly version of horror. But his heart is in the right place—he loves these characters and so we do. And as scary as it can be, there’s that comforting Spielbergian feeling that mom and dad are going to make everything okay. Gulp, we hope.

There’s a reason why Christopher Nolan keeps suggesting that you see his The Odyssey on the largest screen possible—ideally, in IMAX. If nothing else, the film is a spectacle—a technical triumph that brings all the magic, bloodshed, and mythology of Homer’s epic to life.

Ever wondered what it was like inside the Trojan Horse? Wonder no more. Ever asked yourself what it felt like for the soldiers of Ithaca to take on a Cyclops? It was apparently terrifying (and a little sad). We see it all—the depths of Hades, the deadly allure of the Sirens, and, in one remarkable scene, the witch Circe (Samantha Morton) turning Odysseus’ army into a pack of grunting hogs.

We have the technology. And we also have a master of action who can choreograph all of these elaborate set pieces with intensity, clarity, and awe.

I confess I’ve never read The Odyssey (I did my thesis on James Joyce’s Ulysses, if that counts (it doesn’t)). But we’ve all learned the story through cultural osmosis. We know one of its major themes is a primal desire for home, which happens to be an obsession in many Nolan films—from Interstellar to Inception to Dunkirk. Here, Nolan also grapples with the Golden Rule—in the film it’s called Zeus’ Law. The idea is to be kind to strangers, lest they be gods in disguise.

But are the gods even real? In the film, they are depicted as real—although Athena (Zendaya) only comes to Odysseus (Matt Damon) as an apparition. But the Cyclops—massive, with a one enormous eye and a nose twisted to its side to make him look like a giant Picasso painting—is real. As is the righteous magic of Circe, the omniscience of the denizens of the underworld (here called Hades), the power of goddesses, and so on.

But Nolan also leaves room for the idea that gods were conjured to explain the horrors and mysteries of nature. When Odysseus’ ship is wracked with deadly storms and waves, his crew believes it’s because he has angered Poseidon. There’s an angry god to explain every natural disaster, every tragedy that befalls man.

So, the plot: Odysseus leads an army into Troy, knowing the mission is possibly futile, if not doomed completely. Meanwhile, his devoted wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), waits for him for 20 years, fending off dozens of would-be suitors, who stay in her castle like it’s a gilded Holiday Inn. Odysseus’ son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), was just a baby when Odysseus left for war—he doesn’t know his father, but he idolizes him all the same. He hears wonderful stories of Odysseus’ decency, bravery, and honor, from not just his mother, but from his father’s loyal servant, the now blind and enfeebled Eumaeus (John Leguizamo). Like many blind men of mythology, Eumaeus can “see” what other men can’t. There is also Odysseus’ bedraggled, loyal hunting dog, half dead, waiting for his master to come home. (Nolan is laying it on a little thick here, but who am I to grumble over a cute dog.)

Of the would-be suitors, the most attractive—and malevolent—is Antinous (Robert Pattinson), who sees young Telemachus as a threat to the throne and plots to kill him.

The film toggles back and forth between life with devoted Penelope and the many trials of Odysseus and his crew. Penelope insists she will pick a suitor once she finishes the funeral shroud she has been weaving for years. However, every night, she unravels the work of that day. When he’s old enough, Telemachus travels to Sparta to learn something—anything—about the whereabouts of his father, a trip that will imperil both him and his mother.

By now, the war is essentially over. Odysseus is presumed dead, but in fact, has been a captive, of sorts, of the goddess Calypso (Charlize Theron), who healed his wounds and has been feeding him lotus flower to cloud his memory for seven long years.

Is it spoiler to say that Odysseus eventually makes his way home? (This is less a spoiler alert and more of a “know your classic literature” alert.) He disguises himself as a beggar—and we get a little Good Will Hunting action. Never underestimate Matt Damon, especially if you think he’s beneath you.

Damon, I should say, is an excellent Odysseus. The 55-year-old actor got jacked for the role and he seems powerful, even as an old man with a white beard wandering around in a tattered toga on Calypso’s island. Importantly, he manages to convey the wisdom, kindness, and practicality of Odysseus. Like all great leaders, he must make difficult choices. Sometimes a few men need to be sacrificed to save the rest.

Most of the acting is solid, with Hathaway able to do some enjoyable scenery chomping as Penelope, ever imperious and regal but nearly driven mad with grief. In their few scenes together, she and the mustache-twirling Pattinson get to fight over who can devour the scenery more greedily. Go off, you two. Holland is fine as Telemachus—he brings an earnestness and sturdy physicality to the role. He’s likeable, as ever, but just not that interesting? (Or maybe that’s just compared to the histrionics of Hathaway and Pattinson.)

Other standouts in the cast include Leguizamo, Morton—the film really comes to life once her Circe appears—and Himesh Patel as Odysseus’ faithful (to a point) deputy.

Again, I’m not able to point out discrepancies between the film and the original text, but there is one element to Nolan’s Odyssey that feels very modern, very much him: Odysseus’ guilt over the destruction of Troy, which mirrors Oppenheimer’s guilt when he sees what his atom bomb has wrought. I’m not sure Odysseus was that in touch with his feelings back in 1200 BCE.

Still, it’s Nolan’s party and he can do what he wants with it. He’s succeeded in many ways—bringing a classic epic poem to life, modernizing it, but certainly not in a thoughtless way, and utilizing the full range of his prodigious cinematic toolkit. Did I love it? Not quite. I prefer more a little more character development and a little less spectacle. But it’s going to be a lot of people’s favorite film (okay, mostly dudes). And yeah, it’s more than good enough to earn that honor.

The Invite starts with an Oscar Wilde quote that perfectly sets up what we’re about to see: “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.”

Enter Angela (Olivia Wilde, who also directed) and Joe (Seth Rogen). They were in love once, allegedly, when he was an aspiring indie musician (his band had one minor hit and dissolved) and she was an art student. (She no longer practices her art.) They used to have a lot of sex, too, Angela claims. Great sex. But now they are living lives of quiet disappointment, if not quite desperation.

They no longer have sex. They have a 12-year-old daughter they love—she is the glue that keeps them together. He retreats to his home “studio,” to smoke pot and zone out. She redecorates the house—searching for creative fulfillment anywhere she can get it. The nice apartment they live in? It was the house Joe grew up in; he doesn’t even own it—a source of constant shame for him.

It is Angela who invites the mysterious and glamorous upstairs neighbors for dinner. When Joe comes home from work—he teaches music at a small college in the shadow of Berkley—he’s tired from biking up San Francisco’s hills. His back hurts, as usual. But Angela has been fussing. She has put out a spread—cheese, ham, bread, flowers—and is making a soufflé.

“Are we expecting company?” he says, mortified.

Yes, she says, the neighbors. I told you yesterday they were coming.

No you didn’t, Joe rebuts.

You never listen to me, Angela replies.

There’s something else about these neighbors—they have absurdly loud sex in the middle of the night. Joe and Angela always talk about them—like all long-married couples, some of their best conversations involve speculating about the private lives of others. Joe thinks their noises are selfish at best and performative at worst.

So Joe is pissed. Not just because the boisterous sex keeps him up at night but because he thinks the male in the relationship is creepy and makes too much eye contact in the elevator. If they’re coming, Joe says, I’m going to confront them about the loud sex.

They’re arguing over this when Hawk (Edward Norton) and Piña (Penélope Cruz, in a blonde wig) arrive.

Piña, of course, is gorgeous, preternaturally confident, sexy—she is played by Penélope Cruz, after all. Hawk (his ridiculous name is a source of cruel amusement for Joe) is, as advertised, a bit smarmy. The couple believes in radical honesty. We heard you arguing, they say. Angela tries to demur, “No…we….”

We were having a fight, Joe admits, adding, things are a bit contentious between us right now.

“We like contentious,” Hawk says.

“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” Joe cracks.

The guests take in the decorating that Angela has done—complimenting her taste and the “energy” she created. Joe rolls his eyes—he hates this kind of New Age bullshit—but Angela is overwhelmed. She starts to cry. “I was going for energy,” she sniffs. It’s clear that Angela wants to be seen—by Joe, of course, but by anyone. This is why the couples’ approbations overcome her like that.

The dinner party commences—well, to an extent. Angela has burned the soufflé. Piña is a gluten-free, dairy-free vegetarian, so she can’t eat the Jamón or the cheese Angela has put out (she picks at olives instead). And they are forced to break into their special occasion wine—and later tequila—to have something to drink.

Meanwhile, Joe keeps threatening to bring up the loud sex. In one hilarious scene, he tries to mention it several times but Angela keeps shoving the flan that Piña has made into his mouth to shut him up.

Wilde directs this inflamed dinner party with a swirling camera as though we are witnessing a mating/domination ritual. And the film’s string score combines playful jauntiness with elements of caustic and disruptive staccato. The film is extremely funny—at one point, Angela shows Hawk the three paint shades she is considering for the bedroom and it’s clear they’re all exactly the same—a white-ish gray. Hawk, pretentiously, suggests that one color feels like a walk on the beach, one feels like a hot morning on a Southern veranda, and one feels like a date with a stranger in Copenhagen. Angela’s mouth drops open. He gets it. “Joe thinks they’re all the same,” she says, shaking her head.

Things are relatively harmonious for a while, but we keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yes, the verbal sparring and tension recalls Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? but this is as much a sex comedy as it an exploration of power dynamics among the couples.

Piña and Hawk, who occasionally converse in Spanish, who have a natural (or performative) physical intimacy, and who sometimes regard Joe and Angela like they are amusing children, clearly have the upper hand. But the power dynamics will shift throughout the night. And maybe, just maybe, Piña and Hawk aren’t as perfectly content as they seem.

Olivia Wilde, working off a script by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, has hit a home run here. The film is uproariously funny and sexy but more than a little sad, too. Is it too late for Joe and Angela to find their way back to each other? Or is their marriage the very thing that has doomed their love?

The cast is note perfect, with Rogen evoking cranky, funny, neurotics like Albert Brooks and Woody Allen and Wilde—emotional, frazzled, unaware of her own beauty— evoking Diane Keaton. Cruz has the sexual confidence of Anne Bancroft in The Graduate and the self-satisfied Norton is reminiscent of Alan Alda in Crimes and Misdemeanors. Yes, there’s a reason I’m recalling stars of yore. The Invite feels like a throwback to the grown up films of the ’70s and early ’80s. What an absolute pleasure. Grownups are back, baby!

If you haven’t noticed, things aren’t all that great out there. I mean, just in general, with wars raging in the Middle East, divisiveness roiling at home, AI poised to take all our jobs—you get the gist. So it makes sense that Steven Spielberg, the great American auteur of optimism, awe, and childlike wonder, would once again look to the skies. He generally sees aliens not as a destructive or frightening force, but benevolent creatures filled with curiosity, kindness, and wisdom. (His take on H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds being a notable exception.)

Disclosure Day is a film that suggests we should all be kinder to each other and listen to each other and lead with our “greatest evolutionary advantage”: empathy. And honestly, who could argue with that? The problem is, I found the final third of the film, when it rather explicitly spells out its themes, a bit moist. The more sentimental it got and the more John Williams’ soaring score all but begged for our tears, the less I enjoyed it.

But man, before that it’s a heckuva ride.

The film starts in medias res, with one of our heroes, Daniel (Josh O’Connor), rescuing his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), from a secretive government agency. (This all takes place at a pro wrestling match because if there’s one thing Spielberg can do it’s shoot the hell out of a set piece.) Daniel has something they need—a remote control-like doohickey that gives you access to other people’s brains and a whole lot more. And because Josh O’Connor has that expressive, gently handsome, sad-clown face, we never doubt for a second that he is the good guy and the men in black cars—led by a spectacularly bearded Colin Firth—are the baddies. Daniel grabs Jane, threatens them all with the doohickey, and escapes to a nunnery. Literally. Turns out Jane was studying to become a nun before she had a crisis of, well, it’s not totally clear. She still clutches her large cross necklace when she’s afraid, at one point, digging it into her palm and creating a kind of Spielbergian stigmata.

Meanwhile, in Kansas City, a perky TV weatherwoman named Margaret (Emily Blunt) sees a cardinal (the bird, not the religious figure) and suddenly just knows things. She speaks to her befuddled boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell, perfectly cast as the kind but clueless dudebro) in Russian. On the way to the television station, she is stopped by a cop for speeding and she knows things about him, too, intuitively. She gives him advice on how to fix things with his wife. (Buy her that red velvet cupcake she likes, she says.) He’s so shocked, he lets her drive away without a ticket. At the station, she speaks perfect Korean to a visiting dignitary—I should mention that while all this is happening, World War III is looming ominously in the background—and then, once on air, starts speaking in clicks and gulps, until she collapses.

Jackson takes her to the hospital but, of course, she doesn’t have a brain tumor or Parkinson’s and she’s pretty sure the men in black lurking outside her hospital room are not there to help.

She escapes and somehow, through a kind of telepathy/shared grokking of the universe, she meets up with Daniel.

There’s another key figure in this film and that’s Colin Firth’s good guy counterpart, Hugo, swathed in professorial tweed and played with paternal warmth by Colman Domingo.

Hugo, if you will, is Team Disclosure—he believes humans would benefit from knowing about the aliens in their midst.

Firth’s Scanlon is Team Concealment—he thinks mankind can’t handle the truth. Let the grownups in the room handle the aliens.

One of the film’s actually interesting philosophical musing has to do with Jane’s faith. If aliens exist, what becomes of God? Is a divine entity no longer necessary? An intriguing premise worked out a bit too patly by Jane’s beloved Mother Superior (Elizabeth Marvel) who notes that God wouldn’t be so selfish as to let all that vast space go to waste.

As mentioned, the first two-thirds of the film absolutely rips. Nobody can do genre better than Spielberg—hell, he invented a bunch of them. Part of that means inserting welcome bits of humor in the midst of the chaos. At one point, Hugo instructs Margaret to ditch her cell phone. She throws it out of the car and tells Jackson to back up over it, but he keeps screwing up—backing up again and again, missing the phone entirely. It’s not quite DiCaprio’s Bob desperate to plug in his phone in One Battle After Another, but it’s the sort of touch that elevates the film.

Because there are few directors who can orchestrate an action scene better than Spielberg, the chase scenes are unsurprisingly electrifying—including one involving a half-crushed car dangling from the side of a train and another one involving a car stopping on a dime at the edge of a cliff.

The acting across the board is exemplary, with Blunt a standout as a woman who suddenly knows everything—and isn’t sure she wants to.

In general, Disclosure Day is rollicking entertainment until that dewy-eyed bit in the end. I understand that Spielberg wants to appeal to our better angels but I wish he had done it in a more subtle way. But for better or for worse—mostly for better— Spielberg’s gotta Spielberg.

(Before signing off, there is one depressing thought I have to get off my chest: Spielberg treats the “disclosure” as a seismic event—a game changer, the kind of thing that would make everyone pause, listen, and rethink their relationship to the planet. But did you know that Donald Trump recently declassified the government’s database about UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) and it was met with a collective shrug? In fairness, there were no cool aliens in the file, but I can’t help but wonder if Spielberg’s premise is outmoded. If CNN broke into programming to tell us there were aliens in our midst, would we even bother to look up from our screens? Would it change a thing?)

When contemplating a sequel, especially one that comes out two decades after the original, you must ask yourself the following questions:

• Is it better than the original?
• Is it even in the same league as the original?
• Does it make a good case for its own existence?
• Does it give us a chance to spend time with some characters we’ve grown attached to over the years?

Regarding The Devil Wears Prada 2, my answers are, in order: No. Also no. Not really. And yes.
The original The Devil Wears Prada, which came out in 2006 and followed the adventures of the hopelessly unstylish (at first) young journalist Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) facing off against the formidable Anna Wintour proxy, Runway magazine editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), has turned into one of the quintessential comfort films. It’s the kind of film you can watch over and over again—and probably recite some parts by heart. It’s aspirational in a variety of ways: A young woman finding her voice. A formidable woman softening a bit, while demonstrating why she’s so formidable. A snooty but loving guncle (everyone’s favorite heterosexual gay man, Stanley Tucci). An arch nemesis turned reluctant ally (Emily Blunt). And fashion, all that glorious fashion.

Much has happened in the ensuing 20 years. Everyone agrees that Andy’s boyfriend (Adrian Grenier, who doesn’t appear in the sequel) was a dud. Miranda Priestly’s “cerulean blue” monologue—this film’s answer to A Few Good Men’s “you can’t handle the truth”—has gone viral. Oh, and print media is, let’s just say, not the powerhouse it used to be.

As the sequel starts, Andy is an award-winning investigative journalist whose newspaper has just folded. Meanwhile, Miranda has a crisis of her own—she wrote glowingly about a fashion brand that was revealed to use sweat shops and is now the subject of memes that vilify her, depicting her with a Pinocchio nose or dressed as a fast food worker with a speech bubble that reads, “You want lies with that?” (Films notoriously have a hard time replicating meme culture.)

Somehow, Andy is hired to be a feature writer at Runway magazine in the hopes that her famous journalistic integrity will send the right message to readers.

When Andy bounds into Miranda’s office on her first day back at Runway, she’s excited to finally be on the same footing as her old boss—indeed, she assumes that it was Miranda who put in the good word for her. Instead, Miranda turns to Tucci’s Nigel and says, “Who is this?…Do I know her?” (It’s a funny, albeit lazy joke.) And just for a second, all of Andy’s poise and confidence is out of the door. Briefly, she’s that gawky college grad wearing Marshalls sweater sets.

Part of the fun of the original was witnessing Andy’s makeover, but in this film, she’s fabulous from the jump, dressed in fitted blazers, oversized sunglasses, and stiletto heels. (Nigel quips, “Oh, look what TJ Maxx dragged in,” when he first sees her, but no one’s buying it.)

As mentioned, the dud of a boyfriend is out of the picture, but they give Andy an almost insultingly perfunctory love interest, an architect played by Patrick Brammall. (If anyone can explain his overarching role in the film, other than to remind us that Andy is still a catch—duh—please let me know.)

The film’s crisis, essentially, is how can they save Runway in a world of venture capitalists who buy up publications just to cut staff, reduce coverage, or worse. If in the original film Runway was all-powerful in its influence, reputation, and glamour—now it’s just a little sad.

Justin Theroux has a funny turn as Benji Barnes, a Jeff Bezos type who is dating Blunt’s Emily. He’s depicted as a big nerd who has been given the glam treatment by his stylish new girlfriend (who can’t get enough of his money but clearly despises him).

All the leads are still in good form—both in terms of performance and appearance (they are remarkably well preserved). Streep, in particular, makes great hay of Priestly having to cut back on things—how dare they make Miranda hang up her own coat (sacré bleu!) and fly coach (the horror!).

This is clearly one of those cases where all the famous people were game to do a sequel so they built a script to make it happen. Although only two writers are credited—Aline Brosh McKenna and Lauren Weisberg—it has the distinct feel of having been written by committee. The film is competently directed by David Frankel, who also did the original, although there are a few too many shots of Andy striding quickly through New York traffic for my taste.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a chance to hang out with our old friends and see some great clothing—and little else. For some, that will be enough.

Sometimes you’re glad a film was made simply because it allows a great actor to be great. Such is the case for The Christophers, Steven Soderbergh’s film about the relationship between an aging art icon and a forger, starring a wonderfully game Ian McKellen as disgraced painter Julian Sklar.

Julian is a feast of a character—prideful, scabrous, witty, and performatively cruel—and McKellen leaves no crumbs. It’s hard to distinguish between Julian’s public persona—first he was an enfant terrible of the art world, then a universally acknowledged master, then a canceled “Great Man,” and finally a professional grouch—and his private one. The lines have clearly blurred.

After his cancelation, which is alluded to but never specified (although hardly shocking since Julian says and does all sorts of inappropriate things), he retreated to his home studio—a massive duplex in London filled with canvases (some empty, some half-finished, some complete), palates, books, empty clawfoot bath tubs, dress forms, lamps, tapestries, and all manner of clutter (kudos to production designer Antonia Lowe for creating this exquisitely lived in and character-revealing home). He stopped painting, instead earning a (disreputable) living by doing Cameos (slapping on a beret, dropping a bon mot or two, and saying “happy birthday” or what have you) and acting as the Simon Cowell of the art world on a reality TV competition show called Art Fight. He pretends to be disdainful of it all—the consumerism of the art world, the shallowness of reality TV, the ludicrousness of those Cameos—but clearly part of him delights in those things, too.

Julian has two adult children—Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Gunning)—whom he despises. Understandably so, they’re insufferable, but it’s hard to tell which came first—his disdain or their awfulness.

It’s their idea to hire a forger named Lori (Michaela Coel) to complete a series of paintings called the “Christophers.” These were Julian’s most successful works, made when he came out of the closet and fell in love with a young man, who eventually broke his heart. The third series of the Christophers has remained unfinished. Knowing that their father is old and in poor health, the siblings concoct a plan: Lori will apply for a job as Julian’s assistant while secretly finding and completing the unfinished works; then they will be “discovered” in the attic and sold for millions upon Julian’s death.

The gimlet-eyed Lori has a relationship with both Sallie and Julian. She was a classmate of Sallie’s at art school—we find out that Sallie made one feeble attempt herself to complete the Christophers and failed (we eventually see the laughably bad work)—and knows of her mediocrity. She also has an aversion to Julian, but we don’t find out why until later. She reluctantly accepts the gig.

Making her way through the (intentionally) complicated front door of Julian’s home and up the noisy staircase, she applies for the job as assistant. Mostly, she just listens as Julian holds court—“if you’re an artist I don’t want to know about it,” he says, while getting her name wrong (he calls her Lisa) and going off on a series of tangents. Lori’s skill is stillness, for the most part. She lets him monologue and pays close attention, missing nothing. Finally, impressed (mostly with himself), he hires her. One of her tasks will be to destroy the unfinished Christophers, which gives her perfect access to the works.

One day, Julian finds an article she published in an art journal that was brutally critical of him and his latter stage work. (She calls him bloviating.) He’s deeply offended, but he gains a new respect for her, even more so when she comes clean about his children and their plan for the Christophers. “What makes you think you could do [the forgery]?” he asks pointedly. She somewhat defiantly breaks down his work—describing how the thickness of his paint and the use of light conveys his moods, his feelings about Christopher. Her insight is undeniable. Suddenly, he seems to want to impress her and maybe even know her, although she remains intentionally opaque.

And this is my biggest problem with The Christophers—which I generally liked: Lori is a cryptic character to a fault. Does she hate Julian? Does she want his approbation? Is she growing fond of him through their work? Is this all some elaborate form of revenge? And why did she choose forgery? Yes, it’s hard to make a living as an artist—she works part time at a food truck—but not all struggling artists turn to forgery. Is it merely a skill she has, or does it say something about her as a person that she has not found her own artistic voice? The film never explores this.

As an actress, the brilliant Coel is a formidable foil to McKellen. It’s fun to watch them face-off, even as I did yearn to know more about her.

Additionally, the film feels a bit ambivalent about this once great man. Julian is clearly an asshole. His cruelty toward his children is inexcusable no matter how awful they are (casting Corden was a deft, if slightly nasty, touch). And Julian’s whole schtick is cruelty—discouraging and publicly humiliating the artists who earnestly share their work with him on TV. But he is undeniably entertaining, too. And, of course, there’s a good deal of vulnerability and even self-loathing just beneath the surface. I guess we’re supposed to feel that he deserves it all—the fame, the respect, but also the infamy and the subsequent isolation.

The Christophers is a great film-club-discussion type movie. I hosted a screening of it this weekend and there were lots of disagreement over Lori’s true feelings for Julian and vice versa—had she grown to love him? Did he see her as the daughter he wished he had? And what of the art of forgery? One clever audience member suggested that Soderbergh—the anti-auteur, who calls himself a cinematic “shapeshifter”—might have genuine respect for such powers of mimesis. Is there inherent value in excellent forgery? Insights into cancel culture and the commodification of the art world are less compelling. But I must say, I had a blast with The Christophers. In the end, it’s a script worthy of McKellen’s gifts—which, in turn, makes it a gift to us all.

The region’s OG film festival is back for its 27th year, from April 8-12 at the Parkway Theatre and other venues in Station North. As ever, the fest includes both original and revival features, shorts, and docs, with an emphasis on local and marginalized voices. Here are three reviews to whet your appetite.

HONEYJOON

This bittersweet comedy by Lilian T. Mehrel resists the urge to lapse into sentimentality at every turn. June (Ayden Mayeri) has traveled to a resort on the romantic Azorean Island with her mother, Lela (Amira Casar), a Persian expat living in England, to honor the one-year anniversary of her father’s death. When he was a young man, her father had traveled to the island and loved it. They have a picture of him on the shore looking pensive and handsome that they carry with them on the trip.

Lela is still grieving more explicitly—she had envisioned the trip as a time to cry and hug—whereas June wants the tenor to be more celebratory. The dynamic between the two is established quickly. Lela complains that June hasn’t unpacked yet, then urges her to cover up, her dress is too skimpy—a recurring theme.

One of the seemingly interchangeable handsome young resort workers that June flirts with takes their picture and remarks that they look like sisters. Lela smiles for the first time in a while; June’s face drops. June thinks Lela, who is obsessively following Iran’s “Women. Life. Freedom” movement and wants to tell everyone about her late husband, is a buzzkill. On a cliff, they encounter a couple on their honeymoon and take their picture. Then Lela begins unloading about her dead husband. “Don’t ruin their honeymoon!” June scolds.

June is right about this and a few other things—you can’t celebrate the brave women of the Persian uprising while simultaneously telling your (hot) daughter to cover up. Bodily autonomy is much of what they’re fighting for. But Lela is right too. The trip can’t just be fun—grieving is baked into the mix—and June can run from her grief but she can’t truly escape it.

A classic example of the film’s sly way of avoiding mawkishness: Lying in bed together—they are awkwardly stuck in one of the resort’s many honeymoon suites—Lela asks June to spoon her.

“I’m not dad,” June grumbles, but then, looking at her mother, so vulnerable, she yields. She hugs her mother from behind. As the camera pulls back, Lela farts.

The film is filled with bits of silliness like this—most work, a few feel a little cutesy (Lela has a habit of of mangling English idioms: “You were the Adam’s apple of [your father’s] eye” or “like apple, like tree.”)

The second half of the film is dominated by João (José Condessa), a chill and sneakily wise surfer dude who takes them on a tour of the island. June, of course, falls for him (and he for her). But the film is generous about acknowledging Lela’s sexuality, too. She misses her husband—she misses sex with her husband. And when one of the resort workers explicitly flirts with her, you can see she’s flattered, if not slightly tempted.

Honeyjoon is a smart, closely observed film about mothers and daughters and grief. It’s funny and sad in equal measures—just like life.

HONEYJOON screens on April 8 at 9 p.m. and April 9 at 5 p.m. at the Parkway Theatre. Director Lilian Mehrel will be in attendance for post-screening conversations. 

BARBARA FOREVER

Before Instagram and TikTok recorded our every waking move, there was the lesbian artist Barbara Hammer. Her films and art pieces were radical acts of self-exploration and transparency. To watch her films is to know every nook and cranny of her body and mind—literally. She was experimental in many ways—as both an avant garde artist and a queer artist whose work spanned decades.

As a young woman, she married a man and, already showing signs of her rebellious spirit, joined him on a cross country motorcycle trip. They landed in an artist’s community on the west coast, where she found herself “serving coffee” to her husband’s friends. She left him.

At that point, she was already carrying around a Super 8 camera and playing with different exposures and perspectives. Later, she met a lesbian couple—she claims she had never even heard the word “lesbian” before—and realized, hey, that’s me.

From there, her work became inextricably tied to her sexual identity. She filmed the bodies of naked women, often her own, and interviewed her many lovers, even those who were reluctant to be on camera.

Barbara Forever, directed by Brydie O’Connor, is a loving, even reverential, portrait of this remarkable artist, who wanted to leave a literal legacy of herself and those she loved, as captured on film.

The film opens with Barbara, probably in her mid-50s, fit and strong, flexing naked in front of the camera. Then we cut to a different Barbara—still naked, but bald from chemo, looking frail. And soon we see Florrie R. Burke, Hammer’s longtime partner, watching clips of her lover on film, a wistful look on her face.

Then we’re back to Hammer, now vital and young and fearless. With her spiky hair and round glasses, she resembles the artist Laurie Anderson (or perhaps vice versa). She takes another motorcycle trip around the world. She goes on the NY subway and interviews strangers. She roller skates. She disrobes, again and again—talking about what it is to be an artist, a sexual being, a human.

At nearly two hours, I found Barbara Forever a bit on the indulgent side. Then again, there were thousands of hours of source material to choose from—I’m sure whittling it down was a herculean challenge. And, much like her contemporary, Andy Warhol—an obvious corollary, though he is never mentioned in the film—Hammer was not afraid to bore her audience. She wanted her work to be poetic, hypnotic, transcendent. So perhaps this slightly too-long work makes sense. It’s immersive—just as Hammer would want it to be.

At the film’s end, we see Florrie Burke standing in front of a giant installation of and by her partner, who we understand has left this mortal coil. Hammer is naked, bald, seemingly walking through a kaleidoscopic pool of water, like an aquarium. It gives off the uncanny feeling that she’s being reborn—or has somehow transcended her human form. She’s not here anymore. And yet she will always be here. Barbara Forever.

BARBARA FOREVER screens April 11 at 5 p.m. MICA’s Fred Lazarus IV Auditorium and April 12 at 3 p.m. at the Parkway Theatre. Director Brydie O’Connor, producer Claire Edelman, and editor Matt Hixon will be in attendance for post-screening conversations.

MISPER

In the poker-faced Misper, our sad sack hero, Leonard (Samuel Blenkin), a clerk at a desiccated seaside hotel in the English countryside, does his daily rounds at a snail’s pace, methodically walking the halls as the camera patiently follows him. The hotel, called The Grand, is clearly on its last legs.

One guest compares it to The Shining. Another guest notes that the walls smell of bacon—but not, they clarify, in a good way. A new employee cheerfully calls it “a waiting room to the afterlife.” But there is, as director Harry Sherriff makes clear, a certain grandeur to its decaying beauty.

Leonard is an enervated character somewhat in the vein of Harold from Harold and Maude. On top of wandering morosely around the hotel, he sits morosely at the front desk and then spends time morosely in his spartan room. Indeed, the most avid thing he does is pine after a fellow Grand employee, Elle (Emily Carey). But even that is done somewhat tepidly.

“There’s that worried face again,” Elle says to him.

“That’s…just my face,” Leonard replies.

The film dabbles in David Lynch style surrealism—out of nowhere, Leonard stumbles upon the hotel manager, Gary (Daniel Ryan) singing karaoke to a tiny delighted audience—their smiles too wide, bordering on grotesque. (The hotel’s few guests are senior citizens, many of whom get a perverse satisfaction in complaining about its decline.)

Another member of the tiny staff seems to refuse to do work. She starts her day with a 45-minute cigarette break and sleeps in an empty room, snapping at Leonard not to bother her.

One night, Leonard gets up the nerve to ask Elle what she’s doing after work.

“Nothing,” she says expectantly. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” he replies.

But that’s the extent of his nerve. They stare at each other for a painfully long minute and then she leaves. The next day, Elle has disappeared. The film is about how Leonard, and the rest of the Grand staff, deal with her mysterious absence.

Leonard becomes depressed. In a scene that incapsulates the film’s dark humor, he calls a mental health hotline. “If you need help, press the star key,” a voice intones. He looks at the phone in dismay: There is no star key.

The jokes are funny, but few and far between, and we are treated to many wide shots of people sitting around in awkward silence. The film flirts with all sorts of great ideas: how inaction can lead to crippling regret and how horrible the Missing Girl Industrial Complex can be—while all of England is luridly asking, “What Happened to Elle?” real people are hurt and suffering.

I wish the film had developed those ideas even more. That said, there’s certainly enough here for to me recommend, especially if you’re a fan of the deadpan and the exceedingly droll. But I confess I wanted to give Leonard, and indeed the entire film, a shot of adrenalin.

MISPER is set for closing night, April 12, at 7:30 p.m. at the Parkway Theatre. Director Harry Sherriff and writer/producer Laurence Tratalos will be in attendance for a post-screening conversation.

The Drama is a psychological horror film masquerading as a romcom. From the jump, something feels a little off about the “meet-cute.” At a coffee shop, Charlie (Robert Pattinson) sees Emma (Zendaya) reading a novel (The Damage by Harper Ellison, a truly excellent fake title and author). Taken with her, he does a quick google search of the book and approaches her.

“I love that book,” he says.

She ignores him. All of a sudden, he feels like all eyes in the coffee shop are on him, judging him for this hapless pick-up attempt. Time seems to freeze.

Finally, she removes her single earbud and looks at him. She explains that she’s deaf in one ear and had no idea he was even talking to her. They decide to have a do-over, a cute practice that is repeated throughout their romance. He sits back down and tries again.

Later, over dinner, he continues the ruse when she asks him for his thoughts on the ending of the novel.

“Is she dead?” Emma asks.

“Um, yeah, I think she’s dead,” Charlie says.

“And what about the mirrors?”

“Uh…the mirrors?…I think they’re, um, metaphors,” he sputters.

She stares at him, quizzically, until he finally comes clean: He hasn’t read the book. He just wanted to talk to her.

That lie, while seemingly innocent, was actually pretty dark: He wooed her under false pretenses, pretending to be something he wasn’t. Not necessarily a dealbreaker, but a red flag to be sure. What else would he lie about to get his way?

But here’s the thing: This film isn’t actually about Emma’s safety or whether or not Charlie can be trusted. It’s the opposite. You see, Charlie has told a tiny lie. Emma has been hiding a whopper.

IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED COME BACK AND READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW AFTER YOU’VE SEEN THE FILM!

Okay, so Emma and Charlie get engaged. They’re in love—and they’re happily planning their wedding. Over a tasting dinner of mushroom risotto and too much wine with Charlie’s best man, Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and his wife, Emma’s maid of honor, Rachel (Alana Haim), they play an ill-advised game of “What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?” (I can’t emphasis enough how much you should never play this game.)

They go around the table, admitting some genuinely messed up things, until they get to Emma, who is quite drunk at this point.

“I planned a school shooting,” she says.

Charlie laughs nervously.

Then, with mounting horror, everyone around the table realizes she’s serious.

“I didn’t do it, of course,” Emma says quickly. But the damage has been done.

It’s Rachel, played with exquisite haughtiness by Haim, who storms away in disgust. As far as she’s concerned, Emma is canceled. The wedding is obviously off. And a freaked out Mike essentially agrees with her.

It’s up to Charlie to navigate his conflicting emotions. In the wedding speech he was writing, he extols Emma’s unimpeachable character, but now he thinks, does he ever know her? (There’s a wonderful scene where he begins editing out words like “kindness” and “empathy” in the speech.) He can’t reconcile the woman he thinks he is marrying with a person who would plan such an evil act.

So yes, The Drama is about the impossibility of really knowing someone. And I like the idea of a romcom morphing into a kind of “hell is other people” horror film.

But something about this film really put me off. It’s reminiscent of Tár, a film I actually loved that nonetheless had one glaring flaw. As we know, most so-called “geniuses” who get away with sexual predation are men, but Tár dared to ask the question: What if it was a woman? Flipping that paradigm seemed like provocativeness for its own sake.

It’s worse with The Drama, mostly because it’s not nearly the film Tár is. The majority of school shooters are boys. More specifically, white boys. Why on earth have a movie about a Black woman who considered such violence?

The answer is simple: It’s to center Charlie’s dilemma, his pain, his confusion. I knew without even checking that the film had been written by a man, writer/director Kristopher Borgli (Dream Scenario). The film is entirely from Charlie’s perspective as he drives himself slightly mad with uncertainty.

Pattinson, who burst on the scene playing a heartthrob vampire, has spent the rest of his career trying to undo that fact. He specializes in men on the verge of a nervous breakdown—I feel like I’ve almost never seen him in a film where he doesn’t twitch and sweat—so this is right in his wheelhouse. He’s good at playing Charlie’s increased agitation. Should he go through with the wedding or not?

The ever-captivating Zendaya has the trickier part because her inner life is intentionally opaque—that’s part of the puzzle of the film. We’re supposed to at least entertain the notion that Emma could actually be psychopath, not just a woman who had a troubled adolescence who briefly lost her way.

Zendaya does the best she can with this cryptic character, but I found the whole premise of The Drama off-putting.

Yes, the otherness of our lovers is rich material to mine. But the shock value of this film overpowered its ideas. (It’s like that old fashion insult: “You’re not wearing the jacket. The jacket is wearing you.”) By embracing an outlier and taking the premise to such an extreme, the film lost its grip—both on reality and my interest.

A mere two weeks ago, the Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress were veritable locks.

Jessie Buckley was going to win for her earthy and primal depiction of Agnes Shakespeare in Hamnet and Timothée Chalamet was assured a win for playing a live-wire ping pong hustler in Marty Supreme.

But it seems that being the frontrunner, with its attendant extreme scrutiny, is not the safest place these days.

In the past two weeks, Buckley’s The Bride opened to decidedly mixed reviews, with many critics calling her performance over-the-top and even a bit “cringe.” (I’ll believe it when I see it. She’s never given a bad performance in my estimation.)

Then, to add insult to injury, an interview with her resurfaced where she said that she forced her then boyfriend (now husband) to choose between her and his vindictive cat. (He chose her, smart man.) “I’m going to get canceled,” she said, prophetically. The claws came out, if you will. Hell hath no fury like a pissed off cat lover.

And then there’s Timmy. When Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor at “The Actor” (the annoying new name for the Screen Actors Guild award), a palpable sense of joy, even relief, filled the theater. The talented Jordan is universally beloved, an unproblematic king, as the kids say. Meanwhile, Chalamet has raised hackles by dating a Jenner and campaigning rather brazenly for the Oscar. Still, his work was undeniable in Marty Supreme. And for a while there, it did seem like the Oscar was his for the taking.

Then, in a conversation with Matthew McConaughey for Variety magazine, he said that ballet and opera are art forms “no one cares about” and that he much preferred to work in the medium of film.

Here’s my theory: The disappointment over his dating a Jenner and the disappointment over his remarks about these classical art forms are variations of the same thing. We want to see Chalamet as a sensitive artist, a Byronic poet, a deep thinker. We basically want him to be Elio in Call Me By Your Name.

Dating one of the world’s biggest influencers, a woman with 390 million Instagram followers, doesn’t quite jibe with that persona. The crack about no one caring about opera or ballet has a similar effect. Wait, isn’t Chalamet supposed to be the kind of soulful man who cries at the opera? (Elio would!)

I feel like people feel personally betrayed by Chalamet. But honestly, folks, he’s just a dude—and an undeniable product of the 21st century. He loves sports, hot women, video games, hip-hop and, yeah, he also happens to be a great actor. His off-hand joke about opera should not have set off an international crisis. But that’s what it did.

And the backlash to the remarks has had surprising legs—primarily because dance and opera performers and companies are seizing the moment to promote themselves. (Cleverly, the Seattle Opera offered a 14 percent discount to their production of Carmen with the code TIMOTHEE.)

Is this backlash enough to lose Chalamet and Buckley their Oscars? Well, it’s time to roll out my predictions of select categories.

BEST PICTURE
Who will win: One Battle After Another
Who might win: Sinners
Who should win: One Battle After Another
Anyone else have a shot? Hamnet has a very slim chance
Final thoughts: One Battle After Another and Sinners were my two favorite films of the year, so I’m good either way. Sinners is riding high on momentum after winning the Screen Actors Guild Award—ugh, I mean, “The Actor”—but it’s a genre film and those rarely take home the big prize.

Of course, it’s a sneaky genre film, a film about cultural vampirism masquerading as one about actual vampires, but still. In the end, I think the political urgency of One Battle After Another, coupled with the fact that people really like it (it’s great!), gives it the slight edge.

BEST ACTOR
Who will win: Michael B. Jordan
Who could win: Timothee Chalamet (It’s a very close race!)
Who should win: Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent
Anyone else have a shot? Nah, it’s a two-man race unless Jordan and Chalamet cancel each other out, in which case I suppose Moura could slip in.
Final thoughts: Love me some Chalamet, but he has been VERY overexposed this year. Meanwhile, Jordan has kept his head down, done great work, and looked incredibly dashing while doing so. I think that The Actor win gave voters permission to choose Jordan.

BEST ACTRESS
Who will win: Jessie Buckley
Who could win: Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Who should win: Buckley
Anyone else have a shot? Not really.
Final thoughts: I think Buckley was such a frontrunner her recent stumbles haven’t hurt her. Plus, lots of people secretly hate cats. (I kid, I kid…)

BEST DIRECTOR
Who will win: Paul Thomas Anderson
Who could win: Ryan Coogler
Who should win: PTA
Anyone else have a shot? Nope
Final thoughts: Much of Oscar night will basically come down to Sinners vs. One Battle After Another and Best Director is no different. Both these men are generational talents. It’s just that Paul Thomas Anderson is 55 and has never won an Oscar. Meanwhile, Coogler is 39 and, presumably, has many gold guys in his future.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Who will win: Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Who could win: Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value
Who should win: The great Skarsgård gave the performance of a lifetime in Sentimental Value.
Anyone else have a shot? Honestly? Literally anyone but Jacob Elordi could win. I particularly think the beloved Delroy Lindo could ride the Sinners momentum all the way to gold. And Benicio del Toro almost stole the show in One Battle After Another with his particular brand of insouciant cool.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Who will win: Amy Madigan, Weapons
Who could win: Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
Who should win: Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value
Anyone else have a shot? Teyana Taylor from One Battle After Another, for sure. It’s almost a three-woman race.
Final thoughts: I almost can’t believe that Madigan is the frontrunner. Like I said, the Academy hates genre films. But she’s a beloved longtime actress and gave a hilariously iconic performance in Weapons that will be imitated by drag queens for decades to come. And running onto the stage, arms outstretched, a la the zombified children in Weapons, when she won The Actor just might have sealed her the win.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Who will win: Sinners
Who might win: Sentimental Value
Who should win: Sinners
Anyone else have a shot? I doubt it. This is Sinners’ lock of the night.
Final thoughts: In every sense of the phrase, Ryan Coogler can’t miss.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Who will win: One Battle After Another
Who might win: Hamnet
Who should win: One Battle After Another
Anyone else have a shot? I don’t think so!
Final thoughts: Sorry, this is getting boring. But One Battle After Another and Sinners are going to be trading wins all night.

A FEW MORE PREDICTIONS:
Best Cinematography: Sinners
Best Casting (new category!): Sinners
Best Editing: One Battle After Another
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Frankenstein (huzzah, not Sinners or One Battle After Another)
Best Production Design: Frankenstein
Best Score: Sinners
Best Song: “Golden,” KPop Demon Hunters
Best Animated Feature: KPop Demon Hunters
Best Documentary Feature: The Perfect Neighbor
Best International Film: Sentimental Value

If you were to tell me that you watched Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights and found it to be overwrought, obvious, and absurdly heavy-handed, I would have no choice but to agree you. Also, I kinda loved it.

Fennell is the kind of director who takes big swings; she risks embarrassment—of herself and her actors (who could forget Barry Keoghan masturbating on a grave in Saltburn?)—and yields big emotions.

You could watch Wuthering Heights and laugh at how over-the-top it is, bordering on camp. Or you could give in to those big emotions and gorgeous, extravagant backdrops.

It’s safe to say that Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is a novel that lives in our collective imaginations. Even if you haven’t read it, you’ve probably seen one of the adaptations. And even if you’ve done neither, you understand the archetype of Heathcliff—powerful, masculine, smoldering, and untamed. What’s more, the book’s depiction of all-consuming love has created countless imitators (mostly to the detriment of young women, but I digress). Of course, there was much more to the novel than the love story—Brontë was making trenchant points about racism, classism, misogyny, and generational trauma. But that’s not what we all conjure when we think about Wuthering Heights. We see fog and rocks and fields of moorland grass; we see Cathy in tightly corseted dresses; we see Heathcliff atop a horse, with a billowing black cape. (Another thing we don’t see? The second half of the book, which has been all but ignored by the film and television adaptations.)

So Emerald Fennell has made it clear that is the Wuthering Heights of her imagination, the way she felt about the book when she first read it at the age of 14. That’s why she puts the title in quotes—it’s an interpretation, a sense-memory, a vibe. Her movie is much dirtier than the book—I don’t remember Healthcliff sucking on Cathy’s fingers after she masturbated in the novel—but not as dirty as some hoped/feared. Even if Fennell is too smart not to recognize that there’s something toxic and destructive about Cathy and Healthcliff’s all-consuming love, she is still trying to create a timeless romance, something 14-year-old Emerald would’ve swooned over. (The picture above is Cathy and Heathcliff after a funeral. He raises her black veil to kiss her, like she is some sort of cursed bride.)

A plot recap, if it’s been a while: Cathy (played by Charlotte Mellington as a girl) is a motherless child being raised in the moors by her alcoholic, gambling addict father (Martin Clunes, excellent). One night, he impulsively brings home an illiterate boy (Owen Cooper) who was being beaten on the street by his caregiver. The maids and cooks in the modest home are irritated by the foundling’s presence—one more mouth to feed—but Cathy is delighted. She immediately dubs him “Heathcliff”—she has essentially named and claimed him. “I’ll never leave you!” she says. They run in the moors, play on the rocks, and Heathcliff endures beatings to shield Cathy from her father’s rage. They grow into hot young adults, now played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and soon their preternatural connection becomes an all-consuming sexual and romantic passion. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” says Cathy. Then the obscenely wealthy Mr. Linton (Shazad Latif) moves in next door and Cathy, understanding that her father is destitute and there’s no future with Heathcliff, agrees to marry him. Heathcliff, taking this as a personal rebuke, rides away on horseback and returns five years later, a wealthy man. Their five years apart have only intensified their love.

Fennell directs Linton’s home with what can only be called Baz Luhrmann-esque fury. It’s a garish and grotesque display of wealth and Cathy is stuffed into bright red dresses, dripping with heavy jewels. The contrast between the gilded mansion and the wild, natural world of the moors is, well, one of those slightly embarrassing things I was talking about. It’s like, girl, we get it. Nonetheless, Fennell knows how to the direct the hell out of a shot, whether Cathy is standing next to the wallpaper Linton made to eerily emulate her flesh or sitting on the edge of a cliff, waiting for her beloved to return.

Let’s address the controversy over the casting. It’s quite clear, in my mind at least, that the Heathcliff of the novel is a POC. He’s literally described as a “dark-skinned gypsy” and a “little Lascar” (slang for sailors from the Indian subcontinent). And yet, in film and television he has been depicted by no less than Laurence Olivier, Ralph Fiennes, and Tom Hardy. Only director Andrea Arnold chose to cast a Black man as Heathcliff in her 2011 adaptation, and good for her, but it didn’t stick.

Fennell maintains that Elordi looks the Heathcliff from the cover of her worn paperback—and I can believe it. It says a lot about whose stories get told and passed on in our culture that most of us assumed Heathcliff was a dark-haired white man.

Putting the racial blunder aside, Elordi is, indeed, a magnificent Heathcliff. He’s a physical specimen—otherworldly handsome and brutish, even (or perhaps especially) with Heathcliff’s long hair and straggly beard. When he comes back from his self-imposed exile, his hair is short and his beard is shaved; he’s wearing fancy clothing (including a hoop earring and an anachronistic gold tooth), but he’s still something of a gorgeous brute. (Why do you think Guillermo Del Toro cast him as a hot Frankenstein’s monster?)

Some have suggested Margot Robbie, in her mid-30s, is too old to play Cathy, who is supposed to be a teenager. They downplay her age in the film, at one point calling her “nearly a spinster” (although, I imagine that would be, like, 21 in 1847) but it doesn’t really matter. Robbie, in fact, does have the kind of beauty men fight over, and she’s a great actress, expressive and keen. Crucially, Cathy and Heathcliff are both kind of dicks, so it’s important that they are played by charismatic movie stars, otherwise their love affair would be unwatchable. And the chemistry between them is, as the kids would say, straight fire.

So there you have it. Wuthering Heights is not faithful to the book, but it is faithful to what the film aroused in young Emerald Fennell’s imagination. It’s a remarkable thing to be able to evoke the passions of a young female bibliophile. The resulting film is a bit silly, very sexy, visually decadent, and, yes, wonderful.

In Albert Birney’s new film, OBEX, set in 1987, the Baltimore-based filmmaker plays Connor, an agoraphobic of sorts, who spends his days petting his dog, Sandy, and interacting with his many screens. There are TVs in every room, including three stacked on top of each other in the living room, as well as a bookshelf filled with VHS tapes, a dot matrix printer, and a bulky Macintosh computer.

His life is orderly and not without pleasure. He really loves Sandy and sings karaoke to her at night. And he has a job, promoted via classified ad in a computer magazine, where he offers to “Draw you on my computer.” All the while, the cicadas are making a racket outside and driving him a little batty.

But everything changes when he buys an “interactive” computer game called OBEX, featuring a light demon named Ixaroth. At first, the game seems hopelessly rudimentary—he trashes it after a few minutes of play. But then the “interactive” aspect kicks in and Ixaroth enters his home and steals Sandy, forcing Connor to venture out to save his best friend.

With OBEX, Birney has created a bewitching, Alice in Wonderland-like fairy tale about a mild-mannered man forced to step away from the computer screen—and become the star of his own hero’s journey.

We recently chatted with Birney about the film’s inspiration and themes, as well as his dog Dorothy’s big debut.

OBEX is shot in black and white. Were you thinking of The Twilight Zone when you made it?
Yeah, Twilight Zone was a very important show for me. I’d watch it every day when I got home from school on the Syfy Channel. So that’s definitely very deep in the well of my influences. The other big one, which is a film I revisit every couple years and get inspired by, is David Lynch’s Eraserhead. And then the other inspiration, for the second half of the film [when Connor goes on his quest], was Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man with Johnny Depp—the psychedelic Western. Both films are black and white. Certain projects, when they start to take shape in your head, they just tell you what they look like.

The film is essentially about us “living in our computers,” which is very much the reality now. So why set it in 1987?
In 1987, I was five years old, which is kind of the age when you become aware of films and computer games. So I had all these very formative experiences. Of course, today, we have so many screens, we’re constantly looking at them, but this [era] felt like the origin of that. Also, I’ve often found inspiration from old objects and strange artifacts. I love going to thrift stores and junk shops. So I went to a local junk shop and I found two old Macintosh computers, just sitting in a box. And they were priced to move. I didn’t think twice. I just bought them.

And then, a friend had one of these old printers, so I borrowed that. Another friend was getting rid of some TVs, so I grabbed those. And same with the VHS tapes. There were all these things that were just discarded because, you know, they’re obsolete, and I started putting all those things together, and the character and the story came through them. That’s how I usually work.

The star of the movie is obviously Sandy, played by your rescue, Dorothy. Did you know she was such a great actress?
Everyone says I should get her in commercials or other movies. And I’m always like, she is not trained at all. I think this was just the perfect vehicle for her, because we shot it at my house and what she loves to do more than anything else is sit next to me on the sofa or on my lap. If we needed her to bark, we would just knock on the door. If we needed her to look a certain way, we would squeak a squeaky toy. I think, at some point she sensed that she was part of this little team, and we were moving through it together.

She’s insanely cute. What kind of dog is she?
She’s a bulldog, chihuahua, pug—we call her a bull chug.

The cicadas are another major character. You started filming in 2021 when they were out in full force.
Yeah, at that time, I didn’t even have the idea of the movie yet, but I knew, okay, if I want to use these bugs, I need to film them now, because it’ll be another 17 years before they come back. And in our neighborhood—we’re just a little north of Hampden—you’d be walking down the street and they would land on you, just dive bombing.

The shot where Connor takes the garbage out and looks at the garbage and there are cicadas in there? That was just because there were actual cicadas in my garbage can. I started filming it. It was like, I don’t know what this is yet, but I should document it. And then that laid the groundwork for the stuff we filmed a year later.

And that constant cicada buzz? Is that real or a special effect?
I recorded that sound in 2021. It’s real. It was kind of deafening.

Speaking of which, you’re known for your MacGyver-like special effects. What were some of your favorites from the film?
The simplest one is stop motion. So when the cicada crawls underneath the door and Sandy comes over and eats it, that’s just me moving a dead cicada along the floor, inch by inch. Another moment was when Ixaroth is moving through the house and the walls are oscillating a little bit.

My friend, Matt, figured out this thing where, if you had a TV screen laying on its back playing footage from the movie and put a fish tank on top of it and then vibrate the water with something like a speaker, the footage would kind of undulate. And I love that, because it was done very organically and analog. People might think, oh, that must be some sort of modern effect. But it was literally just us filming the footage through moving water.

This is your first time starring in one of your own films. What made you decide to play Connor?
There was definitely a thought of trying to find someone else to play him, but I just kept coming back to the idea that, this is my house, my dog, and it was inspired by all these memories of mine. And it just felt like, if I found someone else to do it, I would always be a little bit annoyed, or nitpicking the performance, or just wishing that I was doing it.

I’m also not like Connor in some ways, but there’s definitely some overlap: I love being at home with my dog and watching movies and being on the computer. And some people, when they watch the movie, they’re like, you know, Connor’s all alone, but he doesn’t necessarily seem too lonely. He’s got a routine that he seems kind of happy with. And I think that’s often how I feel, where I can go days or even weeks sometimes just in my own little world here, and, you know, that’s okay.

Putting the dog in peril was a masterful stroke.
Adopting Dorothy changed my life—just having this dog and this love that suddenly flows out of you. It felt like this would be something that would make sense for Connor, because then he’s not totally alone, and he can talk to her. And then, of course, that becomes the major plot point of like, okay, now she’s the reason he needs to get out of the house and go on this mission to rescue her—this classic quest to rescue the one you love.

OBEX will open locally on Jan. 23, at The Rotunda’s Warehouse Cinemas.

Sure, high school can be a minefield, but real ones know that middle school (or junior high school as they called it back in my day) is where the true horror lies. This is the case for both genders, but it might even be worse for boys, who have the looming threat of physical violence to go along with those surging hormones and fear of social ostracization.

If you look at any bunch of 12 and 13 year old boys, you’ll see all shapes and sizes, some still looking very much like rosy-cheeked children who get tucked into bed at night, and others looking like small men, having sprouted up after puberty, with underarm hair, pimples, deeper voices, and a confusing new preoccupation with sex.

Director Charlie Polinger takes this tumultuous time and turns it into actual body horror in his new film, The Plague. The action takes place at a camp for water polo, which seems less like an actual camp and more like somebody’s nightmare version of one. It’s set at a cold, almost Soviet-like school, with long, empty hallways, military-style sleeping quarters, and a sauna that the boys, oddly, share with the occasional adult. The water polo coach (Joel Edgerton) is kind and a little dumb and in no way ready to handle the physical and emotional destruction his young charges are capable of.

The film’s first shot, a beaut, is underwater—a series of squirming and pumping legs, looking more like sea creatures than boys. Polinger leans into the rowdy, even feral nature of these children—it’s Lord of the Flies Goes to Camp. Our hero is Ben (Everett Blunck), a sensitive child, still baby-faced, but already lanky and tall. His sensitivity makes him a natural target for bullies, but he’s lucky—at first at least. He’s not the lowest kid on the social pecking order. That distinction belongs to the stoic Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), who is accused of having “the plague,” causing the rest of the boys to squirm and scatter when he comes too close.

The inventor of this plague—a precision tool of social ostracization—is a pint-sized sociopath named Jake (Kayo Martin), who is cute and confident and casually cruel. “It’s similar to leprosy,” Jake explains, pointing out that Eli’s rash goes beyond mere teenage acne. “It’s some plague shit. Turns your brain into baby food.”

Jake is cordial enough with Ben, but he immediately clocks him as a potential object of prey.

“Say ‘stop’!” he demands of Ben, in front of the other 7^th graders.

“Sop,” lisps Ben cautiously, as the boys howl.

From that instant forward, Ben is nicknamed “Soppy.” (A 7^th grader’s ability to find the thing you are most insecure about and mock it remains undefeated.)

Ben is all too aware of Jake’s capacity for social ruination and he regards Eli as a cautionary tale.

But, admirably, Eli manages to remain true to himself—dancing and singing along with a cardboard Betty Boop doll he has made and quoting science fiction films in funny voices. He’s precocious, genuinely odd, and exists somewhere between accepting his fate and believing he might actually deserve it.

“Don’t come near me,” he whispers to Ben. “You might catch it.”

As for Ben, he intellectually knows that the plague is made up but also fears he might catch it. He keeps inspecting his body in the mirror. Is that a pimple or…?

For a while, things go on like this until Ben can’t take it anymore—the cruelty toward Eli is simply too much for his tender heart. So he tentatively befriends Eli, even slathering on Eli’s rash cream, and you can guess what happens next.

The Plague is a clever film, utilizing a horror-film score (human voices chanting, gasping, and moaning in eerie fashion) and directed with cold polish by Polinger. The three lead boys are remarkable. As Ben, Blunck is so pained by the cruel world around him, he will positively crush you. Rasmussen is both off-putting and strangely heroic, bent but not broken by his tormentors. (Here is where Polinger’s lack of sentimentality shines through—sometimes the unpopular kids were, in fact, weirdos). And Kayo Martin’s Jake might be the best of them all—a mop-topped imp with a rakish grin, a natural leader whose charm can turn to menace on a dime.

I admired The Plague but I confess that after a while it got repetitive, having run out of things to say. Still, it’s a slick and nasty piece of work—and I mean that in the best possible way.

The Plague is opening at AMC Columbia on Friday January 2.

Timothée Chalamet has been acting a bit strangely lately. It started last year, when he won the SAG Award for A Complete Unknown and said in his acceptance speech that he wasn’t just aiming to be good, but wanted to be one of the all-time greats. This behavior continued during his press tour for Josh Safdie’s ping pong odyssey, Marty Supreme. “I’m doing top-level shit,” he said during one interview. “It’s been seven, eight years I’ve been handing in top-of-the-line performances.”

There is something off-putting about this level of bravado and ambition especially when it’s applied to an art form which isn’t—or at least shouldn’t be—about scoring wins and besting your competition. On the other hand, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it was kind of refreshing, too. False humility is as bad—hell, it’s worse—than Chalamet’s WWE-style boasting. The actors who pretend to rise above it all, the ones who say, “Oh gosh, I didn’t even realize I got an Oscar nomination; I was in my garden when I got the call from my manager”—truly work my nerves. (Girl, please. You were glued to your TV surrounded by your publicist, your dietician, and your glam squad.)

That said, at some point, I began to wonder if what Chalamet was doing was merely schtick. He’s proven himself to be an incredible self-promoter—remember when he turned up to the Timothée Chalamet Look-a-Like Contest? (He lost.) Could all of this bragging and grandstanding be some sort of meta promotion for the film? Might he be the first actor to take The Method all the way through the press tour?

I think the answer is yes and no—which is possibly what makes Chalamet the perfect actor to depict Josh Safdie’s patented brand of manic New York city hustler.

In a way, Chalamet has always been this nervy, hopped up kid from Manhattan. He’s street smart, like all New York kids (yes, even the privileged ones) and he absorbed a lot of New York hustle culture, which is all about perpetual motion and grandstanding and faking it till you make it.

This is Josh Safdie’s first film made separately from his brother, Benny (who made some waves of his own this year with the more conventional sports biopic, The Smashing Machine) but it feels exactly like the brothers’ early work, Good Time and Uncut Gems.

Those films were about strivers and con artists who were also kind of losers. In my capsule review of Uncut Gems, in which Adam Sandler plays a diamond broker who is addicted to gambling, I said: “It’s honestly a nightmare—a nervous breakdown of a movie that never allows you to catch your breath….The Safdie brothers film [Sandler] like a shark that needs to keep moving to survive.”

I honestly could have cut and pasted that review for Marty Supreme, but there are a couple of key differences. For one, it takes place in post-war Manhattan, beautifully and painstakingly recreated by master production designer Jack Fisk. And Marty Mauser (loosely based on real ping-pong legend, Marty Reisman) actually is talented. He is one of the best ping pong players in the world, if not the very best, as he’ll tell anyone within earshot.

When the film starts, he’s peddling loafers and pumps at his uncle’s shoe store. Of course, he’s a good sales person, too—he knows how to lay on the charm. His uncle just wants to promote Marty to manager and be done with it, but Marty explains that he’s only working there to raise money to compete in the upcoming British Open. Marty’s mother (Fran Drescher) also wants him to stop pursuing this ridiculous table tennis dream and settle down like a normal Jewish son. She keeps faking a debilitating illness over the phone in an attempt to get him to come home from whatever tournament he’s playing in. (You can’t con a conman—he never buys it.)

Marty has a girlfriend, of sorts, named Rachel (Odessa A’zion), who is married to a dullard named Ira (Emory Cohen). In the first scene, she and Marty have a quickie in the supply closet and she gets pregnant—a detail that will animate much of the film.

Marty never has enough money to get where he wants, he’s always scheming and stealing and hustling—but he’s monomaniacal. It’s all about ping pong. Even sex and love are secondary to the game he’s obsessed with. (When Rachel tells him she’s pregnant he makes it clear he wants no part of raising a kid.)

I never thought I’d be writing this phrase, but I wish the film had even more ping-pong scenes. Whether he’s at a tournament or hustling some backroom players in a bowling alley with his buddy Wally (Tyler the Creator)—it’s a joy to watch Marty play. Ping-pong players are marvels of speed, hand-eye coordination, and leaping ability and when Marty’s on his game, it’s electrifying. (After months of rigorous training, Chalamet performed all the table tennis scenes himself, without a body double. Top level shit, you might say.) Marty is obnoxious, of course, when he plays—shouting, cursing, crowing—but he’s gracious when he wins, which is most of the time, wrapping his opponent in a bear hug. However, at the London Open, he finally meets his match, a steely-eyed Japanese player named Koto Endo (Koto Kowaguchi) who surprises Marty with his thickly foamed paddle and lightning fast reflexes. (Unsurprisingly, Marty is also a menace when he loses, cursing at the refs and falsely calling out Endo for cheating.)

While in London, staying at a fancy hotel he can’t afford (he charged it to the International Tennis Table Federation, against their express objections), he lays eyes on aging movie star Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow) who’s gearing up for a play (her comeback), and decides to pursue her, just because. He does so with the same dogged determination and unearned confidence with which he does everything else. Somehow it works and they become lovers.

Kay is married to a wealthy businessman named Milton Rockwell, played by Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank fame. (I confess I spent the entire film trying to figure out what movies I’d seen this excellent actor in before—was he in The Irishman? A season of The White Lotus? It was a bit of a head slapper when I finally googled him.) Rockwell offers to sponsor Marty but he’s the kind of man who likes to lord his wealth and privilege over the little guy—and he’s a sadist, as he proves in one particularly memorable scene.

One of the other major plot points involves a gangster’s German Shepherd that Marty has somehow managed to lose—and it’s not clear who will kill Marty first, the dog, the dog’s new gun-toting farmer owner (Penn Jillette, in an amusing cameo), or the gangster himself.

Some have argued that Marty is an asshole and that his quasi-redemption at the end of the film is unearned, but I don’t see it that way. I think Marty is part asshole, part mensch (classic example: He steals a chunk of an Egyptian pyramid…to give to his mother as a gift). His Jewish family, still traumatized by the Holocaust, has lots of love and lots of tsuris—just like Marty himself. Note how Marty always offers a sincere “I love you,” as he rushes out of any room.

In case I wasn’t clear above, Chalamet is fantastic in this role. It may very well be his best work yet, in a career filled with excellent performances. You could make the case that Safdie’s film allowed him to evolve into his purest form—the antsy, quicksilver street hustler who was in there all along.

“I feel like the gift of my life is to focus on this acting thing the way Marty Mauser is locked in on ping pong,” he recently told Vanity Fair.

Mission accomplished, Timothée. Mission accomplished.

At the movies, 2025 was the year of the disappointing, absentee, or otherwise inadequate father.

In One Battle After Another, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Pat Calhoun is too brain fried to be of much use to his kidnapped daughter. In Jay Kelly, George Clooney’s titular movie star all but ignored his children as he doggedly chased his own fame. Ditto for Stellan Skarsgård’s Gustav Borg, a successful director who suddenly rues his lack of closeness with his adult daughters, in Sentimental Value.

There’s also Paul Mescal’s “Will” Shakespeare in Hamnet, too busy writing masterpieces, I guess, to be of any use to his family when catastrophe strikes. The same goes for Joel Edgerton’s lumberjack father in Train Dreams. In The Secret Agent, Wagner Moura’s Armando is hiding from the dictatorial government and therefore incapable of raising his young son. And in 28 Years Later, Aaron-Taylor Johnson’s Jamie is idolized by his boy, until the kid discovers his father is not the man he thought he was.

Draw your own conclusions as to why movies are preoccupied with the lack of strong and moral father figures right now.

Dud dads aside, it was a solid year in film, but not quite a great one. Generally when I write these lists, recency bias takes over and I gush a little too hard (I’ve looked back at a few past year-end lists and cringed over the hyperbole). That’s not the case this year. I admired all these films a lot, but didn’t fall madly in love with any of them. (Maybe the opposite will happen and they will grow in my estimation as the years go on.)

Anyway, with that somewhat uninspiring preamble (sorry!), here are my favorite films of 2025. (In some cases, I excerpted from my own reviews.)

10. 28 Years Later

Danny Boyle’s latest installment of the “28” series is a classic coming of age narrative that just happens to be set in a zombie apocalypse. In this one, an isolated small town lives uneasily in the shadow of the zombie’s turf. Periodically they send out their men into enemy territory to kill zombies and get supplies.

Against the will of his sickly mother (Jodie Comer), young Spike (Alfie Williams) accompanies his father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) on such an expedition. Spike idolizes his father—until he discovers some shattering truths. Eventually Spike and his mother venture into zombie land, hoping to find a cure for her sickness—there, they encounter zombies, of course, but also the eccentric Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who collects human skulls as a way of honoring the dead—or so he says. Part two arrives next month. I can’t wait.

9. The Baltimorons

The Baltimorons was released in September, but real ones know it’s a Christmas film, with a major scene set on our own Miracle on 34th Street. It’s a May-December romance about two misfits who fit perfectly together.

Baltimore native Michael Strassner, who co-wrote the film based loosely on his own life, exudes an everyman, teddy-bear charm and Liz Larsen, as the dentist he falls for, has an earthy, funny sex appeal. The film is directed with heart, humor, and style by Jay Duplass, but it remains clear-eyed about its characters, never succumbing to sentimentality. Baltimore approves. My review.

8. It Was Just An Accident

In the latest offering from Iranian master Jafar Panahi, a mechanic (sad-faced Vahid Mobasseri) overhears the distinctive footsteps of a one-legged man and becomes convinced that he was the notorious jailer, “Peg Leg,” who tortured him when he was a political prisoner. He aims to kill him, but needs to be sure, so he knocks the man out, throws him the back of his grimy old van and tracks down other fellow prisoners to see if they recognize him. He ends up driving around with a motley crew of his fellow dissidents (including one wearing a wedding dress) as they try to hatch a plan.

The prisoners have moved on with their lives, to an extent, but are still easily triggered and haunted by the very thought of Peg Leg. These are good people contemplating doing a terrible thing—and the longer they drive around weighing their options, the more absurd their quandary becomes.

7. Blue Moon

Richard Linklater has given another plum role to his longtime friend and collaborator Ethan Hawke, and it might be the veteran actor’s best performance yet. He plays the lyricist Lorenz Hart, who watches in horror as his longtime collaborator, the composer Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), has an unqualified triumph with Oklahoma!, the musical he wrote with his new librettist, Oscar Hammerstein. It’s not just that Hart’s jealous—although he is. It’s that he finds the Hammerstein work to be lowbrow kitsch—it insults his pride and his sensibilities.

The film, set over the course of one night, shows Hart to be a bitter alcoholic whose rapier wit is still very much intact. Bobby Cannavale is Eddie, the devoted bartender who tries (in vain) to keep Hart away from the hard stuff, and Margaret Qualley plays the beautiful college student Hart is romantically obsessed with, despite the fact that he’s gay. Blue Moon is a melancholy, mordant character study anchored by Hawke’s captivating performance.

6. Lurker

A parasocial relationship runs amok in Alex Russell’s sly psychological thriller, which plays like The Talented Mr. Ripley for the TikTok age. Would-be videographer Matthew (Theodore Pellerin) obsesses over pop star Oliver (Archie Madekwe) but, on a chance meeting, he plays it cool, pretending not to know him. When he gets invited backstage, and then to the star’s sprawling mansion, Matthew is elated—and he’ll do anything to stay in Oliver’s inner sanctum. But Oliver is selective with his attention, wielding it like a weapon.

When Matthew is cast out of Oliver’s entourage, he becomes desperate. The film is a canny exploration of social media and celebrity and the blurring of lines between our private and online lives.

5. Sorry, Baby

Something really bad happened to Agnes (lovable newcomer Eva Victor, who also wrote and directed the film) and she’s trying to keep her shit together, while living in the same college town where it happened. Keeping her grounded is her best friend and confidante (Naomi Ackie)—the film is ultimately an homage to female friendship.

Yes, there’s a bad man at the center of this film, but there are good ones, too. Agnes’ sweet neighbor, who is romancing her in his own sheepish way (Lucas Hedges) and, in one of the most poignant scenes of the year, a kindly cafe owner (John Carroll Lynch) who see Agnes crying in her car and gives her a comforting ear and a sandwich.

4. The Secret Agent

It’s 1977 in Brazil, during the military dictatorship and there is a spirit of bacchanal in the air. People have a lot of sex, often in public, dance like nobody’s watching, and some wear elaborate, even spooky costumes (the film is set during Carnival). But death is everywhere—also in public—and everyone seems to be either corrupt or corruptible.

In this world, we meet a good man (Wagner Moura) just trying to survive. Kleber Mendonça Filho fills his film with beauty, absurdist humor, and despair. My review.

3. Sentimental Value

An estranged father and daughter (Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve) are more alike than they care to admit. They use their art—he’s a director and she’s an actor—as a means to express themselves, but are completely useless when it comes to communicating in real life.

When Skarsgård’s Gustav Borg asks his daughter to star in his latest film, she refuses, despite his supplications. Left with no choice, he hires an American starlet (Elle Fanning), hoping that by filming in the family’s rambling old house—the keeper of the family’s secrets, history, joy, and shame—they will channel some greater truth. My review.

2. Sinners

In Ryan Coogler’s remarkable film, music is a powerful tool. It can make people dance, lust, lose control; it can bring people together, evoke the past and future, and even summon dark forces. When twin bootleggers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan, making it look easy) open their juke joint in 1932 Mississippi, they have no idea what horrors they are about to unleash.

Coogler combines the Southern Gothic vampire film with a reverent and rousing history of Black music—making a film that is scary, propulsive, and unforgettable.

1. One Battle After Another

Leonardo DiCaprio channels his inner “The Dude” as a reluctant revolutionary who must rouse from his drug-addled torpor to find his kidnapped daughter (Chase Infiniti, a star).

Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is filled with political intrigue—and one helluva car chase—but it’s best seen as an absurdist action comedy. The extended sequence of DiCaprio’s Pat Calhoun—frantic, bumbling, in a bathroom and beanie, desperately trying to charge his phone while under attack—is a masterful comic set piece.

Other all-stars: Sean Penn as a crazed and disturbingly pervy military man; Teyana Taylor as Pat’s girlfriend, a committed revolutionary who’s way more badass than he’ll ever be; and Benicio del Doro as the preternaturally cool “Sensei,” who runs an underground network for undocumented immigrants.

One Battle After Another is that rarest of things these days: an auteurist film made with a big studio budget. Savor it. My review.

Honorable mentions: Frankenstein, Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man, The Mastermind, The Plague, Train Dreams

As of press time, I had not yet seen Timothee Chalamet’s much praised Marty Supreme.

If you are the type of moviegoer who spends the first part of any even remotely complicated film whispering, “Wait, I’m confused. Who is that man? Have we met him yet? Am I supposed to know who that is?”—first of all, stop being that guy. Second, perhaps Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent is not for you. For a while, you have to simply luxuriate in the film’s vibes—which are considerable—before its many disparate elements come together.

It’s 1977 in Brazil, during the military dictatorship. The opening credits tell us this was “a time of great mischief.” This may be misleading. Yes, there is a spirit of bacchanal in the air—the film takes place during the week-long celebration of Carnival in Brazil, after all. People have a lot of sex, often in public, dance like nobody’s watching, and some wear elaborate, even spooky costumes. But death is everywhere—also in public, it’s fair to say (at one point a man is shot dead in a barber shop and they immediately light candles around his body as though it’s perfectly routine) and everyone seems to be either corrupt or corruptible.

The film starts with a spectacular set piece. Our hero, the electrical engineer Armando—played by Wagner Moura in a genuine star turn—has arrived at a desolate gas station along a dusty strip of road. As he pulls up in his jellybean-yellow VW Beetle, he sees a dead body decomposing under some cardboard. “Don’t mind him,” nonchalantly says the attendant, a sweaty man in an open shirt. You see, the man tried to steal some gas, was shot by another employee (who immediately fled), and now the attendant has been waiting for the police to come pick up the body. Armando fills up his tank and, lo and behold, the cops arrive. But they’re not here to collect the body, which they regard with only the barest curiosity. They’re here to shake down Armando for whatever he’s worth and are disappointed to discover that he has no violations in his car (a missing fire extinguisher is apparently an easy trap that he doesn’t fall into). He offers them a pack of cigarettes instead and drives away.

Armando is heading to an apartment complex for political refugees in the town of Recife, where he is greeted by one of the film’s most memorable and lovable characters, Dona Sebastiana (scene stealer Tania Maria), a 77-year-old chain smoker, probably 90 pounds soaking wet, and an absolute sparkplug. She brings Armando inside, introduces him around, points out the pretty tenant, a dentist she’s sure he’ll start sleeping with (she’s right), and generally hovers protectively. She’s the matriarch of this house of misfits—including a Somali couple escaping their country’s brutal regime and a young gay boy kicked out of his home—and presides over it with gruff charm.

Armando is in Recife for a reason. His wife has died—under murky circumstances but almost certainly killed by the dictatorship—and Recife is where his kindly in-laws are raising his young son, Dominic, until it’s safe to reclaim him. Dominic’s grandfather is a projectionist at the local theater where, at the moment, The Shining is playing. (On the marquee outside we also see a faded poster for Bob, Carol, Ted, & Alice.) And little Dominic, having seen the poster for Jaws, has become obsessed with sharks, spending his days drawing their massive teeth in his notepad. (Jaws was obviously a childhood favorite of Mendonça Filho’s, too, as sharks play a somewhat outsized role in his film.)

Did I mention the cast of characters is enormous? It’s hard to enumerate them all—but they include a corrupt police chief, an even more corrupt government efficiency expert (think DOGE), as well as hit men of all varieties. There is also the case of the “hairy leg” pulled from a shark, but justice for the shark, who was merely feasting on the remains of some poor victim of a hit. The hairy leg becomes an ongoing bit throughout the film—an urban legend, a surrealist joke, and a character unto itself.

The Secret Agent is a feast of sorts, overstuffed and beautiful, funny and sad. It’s about how life can go on in the midst of brutality—and how that kind of brutality brings out the best and the worst in people. Chill out, adjust to its rhythms, and you will be richly rewarded.

We all know it’s lame for sports fans to complain about refs. Generally speaking, calls go both ways. And if you’re in a position to have a single call make or break you, you haven’t done enough to win the game.

And yet…

The overturned Ravens touchdown on Sunday’s game against the Steelers was a particularly brutal act of referee malfeasance. Even if you never complain about refs, we’ll make an exception and allow you to in this case. Had the refs not reversed that call, the Ravens would have won the game, simple as that.

To recap: With the Ravens down 27 to 22, and with all the momentum on their side, Lamar Jackson threw a 13-yard pass to tight-end Isaiah Likely who caught it, took three steps, and then dropped the ball. Boom. Ravens touchdown. 29-27 Ravens, with 2:47 left to play and our defense on fire.

There was such pandemonium in the stadium that people didn’t even hear—or comprehend—when referee Alex Moore overturned the call. (It didn’t help that his mic was broken due to “technical difficulties,” the NFL said.)

He said no touchdown, because the receiver needed to take a third step and make a “football move”—aka one of the most subjective terms in football.

As many pointed out on social media, why does a player need to make a “football move” when he’s already in the end zone?

Announcers Tony Romo and Jim Nantz were flabbergasted. So were many folks on X. Let it all out, Baltimore!

And to the Steelers fans who admit that we were robbed (not that they’re complaining), mad respect for the solidarity.

They say write what you know, which is probably why there are so many damn films about Hollywood. The latest navel-gazer, Jay Kelly, is about an aging movie star (played, not coincidentally, by aging movie star George Clooney) reflecting on his life and his choices. The film is directed with care and style and generous (if occasionally gimmicky) wit by Noah Baumbach and the performances by both Clooney and Adam Sandler as Ron Sukenick, Jay’s long-suffering manager, are excellent. But a little part of me was like, remind me again why I’m supposed to care about this vain multimillionaire and his extremely niche problems?

Having just wrapped his latest film, the 60-year-old Jay is having an existential crisis, of sorts. It has dawned on him that he spent so much time building his career, his life is empty. He’s neglected the two most important relationships of his life, namely with his daughters. He doesn’t really know who he is beyond the glamorous façade and he has no real friends, other than Ron, who is on the payroll.

If you’re thinking this all sounds a bit familiar that’s because a very similar film came out of Norway earlier this season, Sentimental Value. I’m not going to make broad generalizations about American vs. European films—especially since Baumbach is the spiritual successor to Woody Allen who was deeply influenced by the European greats—but suffice it to say that the Norwegian one, which focused mainly on the inner lives of the abandoned daughters, was better.

The crux of Jay Kelly is that our titular hero is always surrounded by a coterie that includes his manager, a stylist (Emily Mortimer, who co-wrote the script), a bodyguard-cum-butler, a publicist (Laura Dern), and various other hangers on, but he’s supremely lonely. (An on-going joke has Jay complaining he’s always alone just as his bodyguard hands him a cold drink.)

And Ron is beginning to reassess his devotion to Jay. He’s given the better part of his life to this man—willing to drop any other commitment, including to his own children, on a dime to attend to him—but was it all worth it? Are they even friends?

“Friends don’t take 15 percent,” Jay snaps to Ron during one particularly bruising fight.

But at least Ron still has his family—although his wife (Baumbach’s real-life partner Greta Gerwig in what amounts to an extended cameo) blames him for their daughter’s almost debilitating anxiety. Jay, however, is essentially on his own. His oldest daughter, Jessica (Riley Keough), has all but given up on him. “You know how I know you didn’t want to spend time with me?” she asks him bitterly. “Because you didn’t spend time with me.”

Oof.

And he now he finds himself desperate to connect with his younger daughter, Daisy (Grace Edwards), who is about to embark on a European vacation with her friends before she goes to college.

Daisy has more fondness, or at least more patience, with her dad—she finds him amusing—but she isn’t going to suddenly disrupt her life to spend time with him. She heads off on her own.

Jay Kelly occasionally employs an A Christmas Carol-style structure where Jay revisits pivotal scenes of his life. One comes after he finds out that the director who gave him his first big break, Peter Scheider (Jim Broadbent), has died. Jay is indebted to Schneider, or should be, at least—and they’ve remained friends. But one of those flashbacks has Schneider begging Jay to do his latest film, as he needs the money. With a kind of cold efficiency masking as kindness, Jay refuses him. We see this a lot with Jay. He is good at indicating friendship and generosity of spirit, but there’s no substance behind his cheer.

At Schneider’s funeral, Jay reconnects with his old acting school roommate, Timothy (Billy Crudup). Turns out, despite his eagerness to grab a beer, Timothy despises Jay—blames him for stealing his life. It is, in fact, not an exaggeration. In another flashback we see cocky young Jay (now played by Charlie Rowe, not quite convincingly) snatch an audition for Schneider’s film right out from under Timothy (Louis Partridge), even using Timothy’s own improvements to the script that Timothy was too shy to incorporate. (The suggestion here is twofold: Yes, Jay stole from Timothy. But also, Jay had the kind of ballsiness to make those embellishments to the script. When he tells Timothy he didn’t have what it took, was he possibly…right?)

Finding out that his old friend, about whom he has warmly nostalgic feelings, actually hates his guts is another turning point for Jay. He’s more determined than ever to repair his relationship with Daisy—perhaps his last hope for redemption—so decides to track her down in Europe, using a lifetime achievement award he’ll be receiving from the Tuscan Film Festival as his excuse.

In one of the film’s most irritating scenes, he is forced to take a train from Paris to Rome with the actual little people, who are depicted as kindly, salt-of-the-earth types; a train full of Mrs. Clauses and Geppettos. Jay watches them, moist-eyed, thinking this is what he has missed in life. It’s beyond patronizing, although Baumbach adds a small dose of reality when someone points out to Jay that the people are on their best behavior because they’re in front of a movie star. Later in the train ride, Jay pulls a Tom Cruise and catches a purse snatcher—it’s a clear inside joke as Clooney even does Cruise’s intense, arm pumping run to catch up to him. Jay is hailed as a hero, but even that is complicated. The man who stole the purse isn’t a hardened criminal but a family man off his meds. (Again, it felt like Baumbach was fighting against his own impulses in that scene.)

Recently, after watching Jerry Maguire for the first time in years, I complained that they didn’t make middlebrow films like that anymore—that is, smart and satisfying, if somewhat facile, films for grownups. This is definitely that. And there’s excellent here work from Clooney, who gives arguably his best performance ever in this a meta dissection of his own career and of the strange paradox of having a life that belongs to everyone but yourself.

[WARNING: HERE COMES A SPOILER OF SORTS BECAUSE I WANT TO DISCUSS THE FINAL SCENE]

Jay Kelly is ultimately a film about a man living with the consequences of his own narcissism but the final scene, at the Tuscan film festival, does hedge its bets a bit: We see a montage of Jay/Clooney’s films and it brings tears to his eyes. He was great. He did move people. It was a wonderful life, in its own way. He’s so touched by what he sees on screen that he reaches out for the hand of a loved one—but there’s only Ron, so he clutches his hand instead. It’s both sad and kind of beautiful. The film has sneakily been a love story between these two hollow men the whole time.

There’s something about Paul Mescal’s earnest, hopeful face that invariably brings me to tears. In fairness, maybe it’s the residual effect of Aftersun, truly one of the most heart-crushing films I’ve ever seen. But before Aftersun there was Normal People and after it, All of Us Strangers, both equally gutting. The man merely has to cast a sad—or worse still, wistful—look and I’m a total wreck. Damn you, Mescal!

So, despite having not read the Maggie O’Farrell novel it is based on, I went into Hamnet well stocked with Kleenex, expecting a tsunami of emotion. I knew it was about William Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, whose death was the inspiration for what is arguably the playwright’s masterwork, Hamlet. (We learn right away that Hamnet and Hamlet are interchangeable names.) I also knew that it co-starred Jessie Buckley, who may not have quite the instant access to my tear ducts that Mescal does, but is certainly one of the finest actresses of her generation. What’s more, the film is directed by Chloé Zhao, whose soulful films are filled with striking imagery and depth of feeling. (Her Nomadland was my favorite film of 2020.)

So why did Hamnet leave me cold?

I appreciated the film’s pastoral beauty and the two leads are, unsurprisingly, excellent. But I couldn’t really make the connection between the man I was watching on screen and the greatest English-language playwright of all time. Even in Amadeus, the obnoxiously boyish and hyperactive Mozart exudes a kind of manic genius. In Hamnet, Shakespeare—or “Will” as he’s called here—seems more like a simple country school teacher. Early in the film he lays eyes on Agnes (Buckley), who is stomping through the woods with a hawk on her arm, and runs after her—abruptly abandoning the two little boys he is tutoring. He follows her into a barn where she touches his hand in a probing sort of way—turns out she’s a seer of sorts, who can divine the future with her touch—and they kiss. My first thought was: Do they already know each other? Is this a game where they pretend to be strangers? But no, they actually are strangers and we’re supposed to believe that there is something so elemental and inexorable about their love that it can’t be stopped.

The film is thoroughly imbued with that blend of mysticism and naturalism.

Agnes, it turns out, is the half-sister of the two boys he is tutoring (her own doting mother died in childbirth when she was still a little girl and her step mother is basically of the wicked variety). Because of Agnes’ love of nature, her way of communicating with wild creatures, and her ability to make potions and see the future, she is derisively nicknamed “the forest witch”—an outsider in her own home and village. As for Will, we don’t learn much about him other than that he hates his abusive drunkard of a father. But he barely speaks, something that even the quiet Agnes remarks upon. In response, he says he’s better at storytelling than conversation and recites the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, expertly, of course. But that’s it. We hear he’s a writer, but we rarely see him write, nor does he seem consumed by ideas or language. The film is so concerned with the beauty and brutality of nature, it misses the intellectualism and wit that powered Shakespeare.

Agnes and Will have three children—their eldest, Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), and twins Judith (Olivia Lynes) and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). Agnes gives birth to Susanna alone in the woods, near the opening of a cavern, bracing herself against a tree stump during contractions. When she is found by Will, holding the baby, she is smiling, fully content. But the next time she gives birth she is forced to do it inside against her will by Will’s compassionate but no-nonsense mother, played by Emily Watson. The boy comes first and then, surprisingly, comes Judith, his twin, who is nearly stillborn. They wrap the infant up, trying to take her away but Agnes refuses to let her go, virtually willing the child back to life. The twins become inseparable—male and female carbon copies of each other, even occasionally swapping clothes.

It is sickly Judith whom the family frets over and worries about, especially when she is stricken with bubonic plague a disease that has been decimating villages. But in a cruel twist, it is not Judith who dies of the plague, but Hamnet. (Judith tells her mother that, in the ultimate act of sacrifice, Hamnet beseeched the gods to take him instead of her—and I think we’re supposed to take that literally.) At the time of the boy’s death, Will is in London, working on his plays. So Agnes is alone with her surviving children as she wails and begs and curses the gods over the body of her motionless son. When Will comes home, he is too grief-stricken to console Agnes, or even speak. The child’s death creates a wedge between the couple. So Will leaves again and retreats into his art.

Most of Hamnet has been visual and visceral—scenes of nature, scenes of the brutality of childbirth and illness, scenes of a content, pastoral family life. (In this sense, the film is very much like Train Dreams, a similarly swoony if dramatically inert film about a simple homesteader and his idyllic family life.)

However, the film’s final scenes, the ones that take us out of the awe and fury of nature and depict the premiere of Hamlet that Agnes reluctantly attends with her brother, Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn), are its best—stirring and literary and meaningful. The overhead shot of Agnes and Bartholomew pushing their way through the eager crowd to get to the front of the stage is a masterclass of filmmaking. The stage production itself is riveting—Noah Jupe, the real-life brother of Jacobi, plays Hamlet, and Mescal, as Will, plays the ghost of Hamlet’s father, covered in white powder and tattered white robes. Agnes, her body pressed against the stage, reaches out to the dying Hamlet, her eyes filled with ecstatic tears. She’s both healed and transported by this monumental work of art. It’s breathtaking. But I didn’t quite see how we went from that home, that family, and that child’s death to this remarkable play. Yes, I cried. But it felt like an unearned catharsis. I wanted to see the film that warranted this powerful final scene.

After watching Rebecca Miller’s riveting five-part documentary on Martin Scorsese, Mr. Scorsese, I found myself feeling sorry for Scorsese’s eldest daughters, both born when he was still a striving young man. Their father was an obsessive artist, sometimes fueled by cocaine, always fueled by an all-consuming passion for cinema and filmmaking. He was, essentially, an absentee father. His films were his real children. (He’s now long sober and a doting dad to his youngest daughter, Francesca.)

This trajectory tracks in Sentimental Value, the brilliant new film from Joachim Trier (The Worst Person In the World), about a filmmaker who chose moviemaking, and its attendant glory, over his own family. Stellan Skarsgård plays Gustav Borg, a director of some renown (if not quite Scorsese-level renown) who all but abandoned his two daughters to follow his career.

When she was a child, his younger daughter, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), played a role in a WWII drama that he directed. She recalls, poignantly, that it was the best time of her life—never before had her father lavished her with so much attention and praise.

Now Agnes and her older sister, Nora (Renate Reinsve), are adults and essentially estranged from Gustav, who divorced their mother and barely came around after that. Nora, it turns out, was the one who became an actress. She’s a brilliant stage actress but suffers from pre-show anxiety, needing to be coddled, coaxed, and managed before finally delivering a bravura performance. Nora is single—she’s having an unsatisfying affair with a married stage director—and leads a somewhat lonely life. Agnes, a historian, has a richer life with a husband and an adorable tow-haired young son, Erik (Øyvind Hesjedal Loven), whom both she and Nora dote on.

The other character, if you will, is the rambling family home, where generations of Borgs have lived. (We are shown that various eras of Borg kids discovered that, if you poked your head in the upstairs furnace, you could clearly hear the adults talking downstairs.) If Nora and Agnes’ childhood was disrupted by their parent’s constant arguing and eventual divorce, young Gustav had a far worse childhood: His mother was arrested for being a member of the Resistance and taken to prison where she was tortured. She later killed herself.

So while the family home holds much beauty and life and love—Triers makes a point of showing us laughter, and frolicking children, and messy dinners in the kitchen—it also carries trauma. And its four walls become a metaphor for the kind of family legacy that is impossible to escape.

The film’s action really kicks off after Nora and Agnes’ mother—Gustav’s ex-wife—dies. Gustav was a somewhat unexpected (and unwelcome) guest at the reception. Shortly after, he approaches Nora with a proposition. He’s written a film for her. No one but her can star in it, he insists. It’s his first film in 15 years. And because of his age, it is likely to be his last.

But Nora’s resentment runs deep—deeper than Agnes’, as it turns out. And she says no. Indeed, she doesn’t even bother to the read the script, as he pleads with her to do.

At a retrospective of his work, Gustav meets the American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), a fan, who fawns over him. He offers her the role that his daughter turned down. The film is about a mother who commits suicide after her young son goes to school, but Gustav keeps insisting it’s not about his mother. In further blending of life and art, he decides that he will film his swan song in the family home.

Gustav spends lots of time with Rachel, who has insecurities about the role, especially when he suggests she dye her blonde hair brown, like Nora’s. Should she talk in a Norwegian accent, she asks. Is he sure that an American is right for the role? Can he explain why the mother chooses to kill herself? You have to find the answer yourself, he says. There is something distracted in his direction. We can tell his heart is not quite in it.

Meanwhile, Agnes has been letting Gustav come around more. At her mother’s memorial gathering, Agnes had to introduce a shy Erik to his grandfather. Now the little boy runs straight into his grandfather’s arms.

But Nora remains aloof. We can see that she and her father are quite alike. Neither can express their feelings particularly well—they throw their emotions into their art.

Gustav throws himself into his project, perhaps seeking the rush he found as a young man. He insists that only his former cinematographer shoot his new film but when he visits his old partner, he’s shocked to see that he’s an old man now who uses a cane. Gustav mumbles some excuse about the studio wanting to pick the film’s DP and backs away. What he’s really horrified by, of course, is his own mortality.

Sentimental Value is about regret and trauma and the things left unsaid. It also asks some pointed questions about art: Gustav is a great filmmaker. And Nora is a great actress. Was the collateral damage of their hopelessly fractured relationship worth it? And is there a way they can learn to communicate, if not directly, perhaps through their art?

I was a huge fan of Trier’s The Worst Person in the World (I called it “loose-limbed and insightful” while naming it my sixth favorite film of 2021) and I think this film is even better, a masterwork. Clearly, Trier has found a muse in Renate Reinsve, who has a bewitching economy to her work, a way of saying more with less. (Sometimes Scandinavian understatement can be a balm.) And Skarsgård has never been better. There was a time, clearly, when his Gustav was bedding young starlets. Now he is more of a father figure. The irony that he is a better father to Fanning’s Rachel than he ever was to Nora or Agnes is not lost on us. He still shows his mischievous, raconteur side, but now he wears his sadness and regret like a cloak. And Trier, who has two young daughters himself, directs the whole affair with beauty and pathos and wit. His deeply humane film is an object lesson: You don’t need to be monomaniacal to make great art.

Sentimental Value opens this weekend at The Charles.