In the back of a bus, Naim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen) sit shoulder to shoulder. As if some force pulls them together, they begin to nestle into each other before softly kissing—and then more than kissing. It’s a moment of tenderness between two gay teens that should send the heart fluttering, but with the rules established in Leviticus, it feels dangerous. Earlier in the movie, the boys are subjected to a kind of religious conversion therapy. However, instead of trying to pray the gay away, a mysterious preacher tries to scare them straight by performing a ritual that attaches what could only be described as a demon to them. And that demon takes the form of their greatest desire: each other.

That’s why on the bus, their act of queer love, a moment any closeted gay teen wishes for, is a risk. It is exactly what first-time director Adrian Chiarella wants you to feel. Whether it was something you experienced or something you’re seeing from the outside, Leviticus preys on the fear and shame that many queer people experience from an early age. It’s refreshing to see a direct exploration gay emotions when horror very often gestures towards queerness but rarely fully embraces it, especially as frankly as Leviticus.

Naim and his mother Arlene (Mia Wasikowska) recently moved to a small industrial town in a rural part Victoria, Australia. Endless power lines and abandoned factories add to the dreariness for Naim, who can’t seem to find much to be excited about in the dusty ruins. It also doesn’t help that a good chunk of the town teeters precariously on the edge of religious fanaticism. That is until his handsome (and sometimes deliquent) classmate Ryan invites him to explore the outskirts of the town.

The pair finds themselves in an abandoned factory. They talk shit, they wrestle around, and then they find themselves kissing like it’s the most natural thing in the world. A virtue of Leviticus is that although it is about a raw and devastating part of the queer experience, it never relies on the teen angst tropes of coming out. Instead it uses presents itself as an allegory of the queer experience that asks you to feel rather than experience. As they’re kissing, Naim notices something out of the corner of his eye that startles the moment and sends them crashing back into reality into their small dreary town once again.

The boys can’t keep their eyes off each other in the small congregation that seems to encompass most of the town. Even before the supernatural elements come in, there is a sense of danger. The pastor (Ewen Leslie) keeps a watchful eye over his flock, and Naim feels it like daggers in his back. Eventually, the paradise that Naim and Ryan created in the ruins of their small town dissipates when their proclivities are discovered and they’re forced to undergo a kind of conversion therapy at the hands of a “deliverance healer”.

At first, the moment is played for laughs.

“What do you feel?” the healer asks.
“It’s a little cold,” responds Ryan.
“There’s divinity at all temperatures.”

But quickly, darkness settles in as the boys see something that forces them to repress their desires deep into themselves. However, these are two boys in the throes of first love and keeping away is like ceasing to breathe. So, the choice is set: choose love or choose death. Perhaps the metaphor is blunt, but it’s effective nonetheless. When Naim watches Ryan follow an invisible specter into a photobooth, he’s at first upset by the sounds of pleasure and then horrified by a sudden violence that sends Ryan reeling away from him.

Chiarella weaponizes that push-pull between love and shame, and fear and joy. How can something that feels so natural be so demonized? There may not be much more to the movie than that, but like It Follows before it, the sense of dread is remarkably effective in fueling the horror for its perfectly-tuned 88-minute runtime. And yes, horrors are sown. It often feels more akin to a possession movie than anything, apt considering it’s Christian connection.

Australian horror, like Talk to Me and The Loved Ones, are known for their dour tone and unflinching violence, something Leviticus has in spades. The paranormal attacks by the entity are equal parts surreal and downright horrifying as the boys are hit, thrown, and maimed and increasingly brutal ways. Once the boys learn that the entity physically looks like the other, there’s always a sense of danger when they’re together. And we’re as tuned into the risk as they are.

However, like Naim and Ryan, we want them to be together as much as they need to stay apart. Which why the scene on the bus holds so much emotional weight. In my heart, I felt so warm and at times jealous at the open display of love at such a young age. But in the back of my mind I kept thinking, “what if this is wrong?” Of course, in the context of the movie it’s the supernatural danger. But I’ve felt it in my real life. The sensation of being watched, perhaps judged, and admonished.

There’s a simplicity to Leviticus that’s refreshing, especially as horror is expected to be deeper and meaner. The scares are effective and visceral, a testament to the star-making performances by Joe Bird and Stacey Clausen, who perform the invisible attacks with an intensity that makes you feel every strike. It is a terrifying film that is unrelenting in its intensity. It is fast paced in a way that other films in the genre aren’t. At times it’s at the expense of further depth, but the film firmly sets itself as an allegory meant to be felt rather than consumed.

The Black Ball, or La Bola Negra in its native Spanish, is about time. While it spans three separate time periods with different characters, their lives are intertwined, both literally and figuratively. The mystery of how those threads interact is compelling enough. War, music, and romance are ingrained in the story and presented with as much grandiose as the highest-budget Hollywood movie. However, writer-directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, affectionately known as “Los Javis”, have more on their minds.

Following a spectacular vaudevillian musical number for the nationalist army, Nené (Penelope Cruz) talks to young soldier Sebastián (musician Guitarricadelafuente in an electrifying film debut). She talks about the freedom in Madrid. The kind of real freedom that the nationalists wouldn’t understand. She talks of the artists and performers and her friend, a trans woman, who said, “Transvestism is the fantasy of possibility. War is its opposite.” You can even see the inspiration from drag culture in Nené’s performance. It’s those small gems of the philosophy of queer freedom hidden in The Black Ball that make it such an overwhelming achievement.

There are harrowing scenes of war, like the riveting opening sequence that catalogues the Italian army’s attack on a small village, despite the citizens’ allegiance to their cause. Bullets rain down on innocent bystanders by fighter planes. Bombs sow carnage on the winding streets. Amid the chaos is trumpeter Sebastián, who makes his way out in a harrowing escape only to be captured and given a choice between death and the army. Once he is in the army, he feels out of place amongst the machismo. That is, until he is tasked with guarding handsome prisoner Rafael (and I mean, movie star dreamboat handsome), whose presence begins to stir new feelings in him.

The Black Ball lives in the juxtaposition of opposing philosophies—creation and war, love and hate, queerness and tradition.

In 1932, Carlos (Milo Quifes), a young man from a wealthy family in Granada, is stunned by being blackballed by a local members-only club. The club’s gatekeepers, a group of politicians and clergymen, vote on a man’s worthiness of joining by choosing a white ball, a yes, or a black ball, a no. The crispness of the sound of each ball rolling down a track to be counted feels like a death march. However, it’s unclear whether it’s a death march because Carlos is afraid of being rejected or afraid of being accepted. He’s ultimately rejected for rumors of his homosexuality, which sends him reeling into a drunken stupor that culminates in a hypnotic dreamlike dance sequence in a local pub captured sumptuously by cinematographer Gris Jordana.

In 2017, gay writer and historian Alberto (Carlos González) receives word that his grandfather, who he thought was already dead, willed him a series of papers. The discovery sends him diving into his family’s history—and butting heads with his complicated mother (Lola Dueñas)—to connect the three threads of the story.

Los Javis stitch the movie together with musicality, allowing each thread to bleed into the next.

The clacking of the white and black balls in 1932 continues to play over scenes of dead bodies hauled from the destruction of war in 1937. Military action is humorously interrupted by the sound of a Grindr message in 2017. It’s a rhythm that makes the movie eminently watchable. Though there are moments of slow tenderness. Sebastián, in a series of encounters with Rafael (played with gravitas by Elité’s Miguel Bernardeau), slowly discovers his sexuality. He begins to see himself in Rafael. Their would-be relationship buds with tension but also tenderness as Rafael begins to understand Sebastián in return.

One of the themes of The Black Ball is recognition. The way, through centuries, queerness can be recognized by queerness. It’s pulled together in a post-script in a surprise appearance by Glenn Close as a visiting author that Alberto seeks out to help him solve the mystery of his grandfather. She helps bring the movie’s ultimate theme to the surface: Who will carry our stories on when we’re gone?

There are vivid scenes of the carnage of war, dazzling musical numbers, and dramatic twists and turns. It is an impressive and engrossing watch that could be a strong movie on those technical merits. However, there’s something at its core that we haven’t seen in a movie of this scale: small acts of queer freedom. Yearning to reach for a lover, kiki-ing with your friend on FaceTime (as Alberto does with his friend in a delightful cameo by Julio Torres), and recognizing yourself in a female icon. Those acts weave themselves into the story’s DNA, transforming it into a moving spectacle we’ve never quite seen before.

The Black Ball is a tragic love story, a historical war epic, a coming-of-age story, and a family drama.

Yet, it feels like every one of those threads is necessary. It’s like a perfectly composed piece of music. Every note has its purpose, and every purpose has a note. Los Javis conduct the piece with the kind of astonishing bravado that we don’t see in our movies anymore. There are monumental full orchestra blares balanced with soft, sentimental moments—like a melancholic trombone trying to drown out the world. When it all comes together in a beautiful finale, it all makes sense. The emotions wash over you all at once, and you understand the gravity of what you’ve just been listening to. It’s our history.

More from Cannes:

Early in The Man I Love, Ira Sachs’ first film in competition at Cannes in seven years, Jimmy George (Rami Malek) is brought on stage by the drag queen emcee to perform a song. Taking the mic in the hazy, dimly lit gay bar, he croons out “The Man I Love” by George and Ira Gershwin. He sings:

He’ll bulid a little home

Just meant for two

From which I’ll never roam

Who would? Would you?

Not far, Jimmy’s partner Dennis (Tom Sturridge) watches on, softly crying. Whether they’re tears of joy or sadness is up to interpretation. What we do know is there’s history and knowing there. To steal a quote from fellow Palme d’Or contender All Of A Sudden (review here), “from the sound of their voices you know they shared something important.” Except here, you see it in their quiet actions.

That’s where much of The Man I Love lives, in the moments between life’s big moments.

It’s like a memory that you can’t quite get a grasp of, but the feelings are there clearly, as conflicted as they may be. But that’s just the truth of Sachs’ detailed and textured rendering of the New York City art scene in the 1980s and the queer people that inhabited it. It’s mesmerizing and messy and joyous and dramatic, just like Jimmy, who’s recently returned to acting after being gone for some unspecified reason.

There’s a mystery about him that’s intriguing, particularly to Vincent (newcomer Luther Ford in a stunning debut), who just moved into the apartment below Jimmy and Dennis. He’s enrapt when he meets Jimmy. First in the stairwell, carrying a mattress up the narrow stairs, and again at a house party where Jimmy demonstrates how to perform masculinity and femininity with body language. It’s like watching a master at work. In the moment, we know he is a man who lives and breathes his craft.

We’re just as enrapt as Vincent and the partygoers thanks to Malek’s performance (atoning for his sins in Bohemian Rhapsody).

It exudes charisma and bravado, but, most importantly, musicality. There’s a rhythm to the way he moves through the world, juxtaposed against the steadiness of Dennis. They complement each other. Jimmy burns bright. Dennis keeps the fire from burning out of control. Vincent, on the other hand, is desperate to join whatever tempo Jimmy is on. To feel that same burn.

The mystery of Jimmy is unraveled a bit when his sister (Rebecca Hall) and brother-in-law (The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach) visit. In private, she says, “It’s tough living, and Jimmy’s doing that. More than anything else, I want my son to see that.” To which he replies, “It’s not gonna last.” And we understand that as well, it’s New York in the 80s after all. Like all of Sach’s movies, The Man I Love is never overt about its themes, even going as far as never using the term “AIDS” at any point. But we know it’s there. So do the characters. It casts a pall over the joyousness of the artists surrounding Jimmy and Dennis.

In one of many marvelous scenes with the artist community, some of whom Jimmy is working with on a play, each person takes a turn singing a song. We know nothing about that, but we feel the warmth and admiration of the room. It is artistic and queer solidarity personified. In the background, Vincent watches on in wonder, wordlessly willing himself into this life. In another, we watch them rehearse the play. We bear witness to the artistic process and collaboration, just like Vincent. It’s intoxicating and something worth fighting for.

The three men, Jimmy, Dennis, and Vincent, are all fighting for that joy in different ways and for different reasons.

Jimmy, facing what could potentially be his final act, desperately wants to continue as he was. Dennis, the devoted lover and perhaps the one person who understands Jimmy, can’t fathom life any differently. And Vincent, new to his freedom, wants to love and be loved. They’re all desperate to hold on to the world, even when it seems like it’s crashing down around them. But Sachs, never one for dramatics, allows us to feel these feelings rather than prescribing to us. He lets them wash over you like a wave of empathy.

Rather than a story, The Man I Love is a mood. It’s a time and place. One with some of the highest highs of queer art and expression and the lowest lows.

The magnificence and melancholy are packaged up in this small story and sliver of time. People we never get to learn much about, but care for and yearn to understand nonetheless, feel like they come into our lives and we (just like them) don’t want to let them go. That’s because in their small touches and stolen glances, we know and we understand. Perhaps we can empathize, but more than anything, we can feel.

Although this time and place existed, it feels like a dream. Underlined by Josée Deshaies’ warm cinematography and Sachs’s gentle direction, The Man I Love builds a world that we wish could have continued to exist in different circumstances. It’s marvelous that in an era of such pain, Sachs finds the warmth, as do Malek, Sturridge, and Ford, who all do sensational work explaining their character’s inner lives, often without a single word. They make you miss them when they leave. They make you hope that they’re still singing and dancing to this day.

At 196 minutes, All of a Sudden seems like it’d be an epic, and in some ways it is.

But Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi simply allows himself the breathing room to let his story to wander (sometimes literally) into every possible corner of its being. It’s a wonder how the movie breathlessly moves between scenes and conversations as Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira), an overworked French nursing home director, and Japanese playwright and director Mari (Tao Okamoto) meet-cute (in a platonic way) at precisely the right time. It’s the kind of fast friendship that feels epic, even if your paths only intersect for a small period of time. But that’s why the title of the movie, at odds with its cozy, meandering pace, makes sense. All of a sudden your life can change.

Hamaguchi is no stranger to this kind of slow but deliberate storytelling. He returns to the competition after his three-hour, slow-burning meditative breakout Drive My Car rode its Cannes acclaim to a surprise Best Picture nomination five years ago. That film, lived completely in its subtext, finds its emotion in the way we do and don’t speak to each other as we connections come in and out of our lives. It challenges all notions of how to hold an audience’s attention in today’s cinematic environment. So what does he do? He makes an even longer epic drama that tries to emotionally murder you.

Trading Drive My Car’s subtext for raw emotion worn on the characters’s sleeves, Hamaguchi asks what if we just spoke rather than remain silent?

All of a Sudden cozily strolls through the pair’s days-long epic conversation and life entanglement covering everything from healthcare to capitalism to art to dying. It’s as detailed and textured as his other work, but he allows himself to simply say the things he, and his characters, feel. Marie-Lou navigates that balance in her daily grind at “Garden of Freedom”, a senior care facility that specializes in dementia patients. Part of her prerogative as the new director is to institute “Humanitude”, a real-life care philosophy that emphasizes a sense of belonging for the patient when it comes to their care.

The movie starts off as a surprisingly familiar drama about a well-meaning do-gooder who meets resistance from those above and below her in her mission to bring better care to the residents of the facility. Her bosses demand efficiency and cost-effectiveness while the nurses and caregivers emphasize the toll from both staff cuts and the implementation of “Humanitude”, which they worry will do more harm than good. Marie-Lou is empathetic to all of those around her, but also stubborn in her beliefs.

“Humanitude” encourages caregivers to wear casual clothes and to look patients in the eye when speaking to them, shirking the belief that dementia patients aren’t aware of their surroundings. It also encourages verticality, whether standing or walking, which veteran staff like nurse Sophie (Marie Bunel) warn as dangerous. Part of her protest is to continue to wear her scrubs, wary of Marie-Lou and her enthusiasm for change.

Marie-Lou, nearly at the end of her rope, finds renewed purpose when she sees Tomoki (Kodai Kurosaki) running joyously, if not a little recklessly, beside her train. She hops off and follows him to a nearby park where his grandfather Gorô (Kyozo Nagatsuka), an acclaimed Japanese stage actor, and Mari find him using a GPS tracker. As if something in her intuition told her to, Mari invites Marie-Lou to see the play she and Gorô are working on about the abolishment of mental institutions in Italy, a cause dear to Gorô as Tomoki’s caretaker.

At the show, Marie-Lou begins to connect the message, “the impossible is impossible, but only until it becomes possible”, to her own mission at “Garden of Freedom.”

While this sounds trite, Hamaguchi doesn’t simply tell us about the connection. During a nearly twenty-minute sequence, we see the play unfold. The audience, who are given various instruments as a way for them to play whenever they feel the urge, sits rapt as Gorô waxes poetic in Japanese about the emotional toll of such institutions. At one point, Tomoki interrupts, which he happily welcomes.

The bare humanity of the performance that welcomes the instinctive interruptions from the audience, and Tomoki, moves Marie-Lou. She’s further intrigued, specifically by Mari, during the Q&A when she asks what drew her to the project. Mari is equally intrigued as Marie-Lou asks this question in perfect Japanese. Mari, responding in Japanese, reveals her terminal cancer diagnosis. When asked by the crowd to translate in French, Gorô steps in to say:

“From the sound of their voices you know they shared something important.”

That’s where All of a Sudden lives. In the mutual understanding between two humans.

Perhaps, it’s not immediately understood or celebrated by the wider collective, but its necessary for survival. After the performance, Mari and Marie-Lou take a walk. It’s one of those walks all of us have had, perhaps with a friend or a stranger, that takes on a life of its own. That never stops, not because the talking doesn’t end, but because you don’t want to sever the connection. Because you don’t want the blossoming to stop. The pair shares their backgrounds. Mari studied philosophy in France and uses it for her work in the theater, and Marie-Lou studied anthropology in Japan, which is why they’re fluent in each other’s tongue. It’s one of the funny coincidences that feels like fate.

As the conversation transitions to “Garden of Freedom”, Mari sees hands on the empathy pouring out of Marie-Lou for her patients. Conversely, Marie-Lou understands how Mari analyses any given situation with an incisive and determined curiosity. The kind of zest for life that makes her cancer diagnosis all the more devastating. At any given point, the illness can return, a fact that she thinks she has come to terms with. At one point, they spend time white-boarding how capitalism naturally leads to the depletion of the human element of society. However, Hamaguchi, along with the charismatic and Okamoto and Efira’s lived-in performances, never makes it feel like you’re being spoken at. Rather, you feel like a third participant in the conversation.

In the ensuing days, their lives intertwine, though a melancholic undertone takes hold.

From the beginning, we know that this friendship can only be temporary, as big as it feels. It feels episodic, the way that we transition between scenarios at “Garden of Freedom”, learning more about the staff and the residents, Mari and Marie-Lou’s never-ending conversation, and how Gokô and Tomoki slot into their lives. There is a warmth and coziness to the leisureliness in which we experience these few weeks of their lives. Remember, life can take a turn all of a sudden. And it does.

All of a Sudden is yet another entry in the “slow cinema as self-care” canon.

As the movie begins to find its way to the darkest parts of our existence, Hamaguchi makes a grab for the heart more direct than he has before and asks you to hold onto your humanity, even when society continually tries to strip us of it. To those in my screening, I apologize for my ugly crying during the final 40 minutes of the film (though, I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a dry eye in the theater), however it’s simply the power of human connection (or lack thereof) that affects you in the end. And despite the pain and grief, you’ll never want it to end. You’ll want every character to go on as they were. At one point, Mari says:

“I was prepared not to let you go when I met you. That means I lived a good life.”

All I can say is that the feeling is mutual, Mari.

All Of A Sudden

Ryusuke Hamaguchi returns to the competition with a tender and sentimental counterweight to his heady and introspective breakout Drive My Car. At 196 minutes, All of a Sudden would seem like an epic, and in some ways it is, but Hamaguchi simply uses the breathing room to allow his story to wander into every facet of its being. Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira), an overworked and underpaid French nursing home director, is near burnout when she has a meet-cute (platonic… perhaps) with Japanese playwright Mari (Tao Okamoto) that will change both of their lives in a fateful month.

All Of A Sudden cozily meanders through the pair’s days-long epic conversation and life entanglement covering everything from healthcare to capitalism to art to dying. Hamaguchi is as detailed and textured as ever, but also more tender and sentimental. The story, potentially cloying in another filmmaker’s hands, is thought-provoking, moving and life-affirming as it grapples with holding onto your humanity in a society that continually tries to strip us of it. It’s long, but every minute feels necessary and urgent. You’ll never want it to end and you’ll miss every single character when they’re gone. A masterpiece. My favorite for the Palme.

La Gradiva

Cannes is really several film festivals in one. One of those offshoot festivals, Semaine De La Critique (or, Critics’ Week for you non-Francophiles), regularly produces some of the best and most interesting films of the festival. One of those is La Gradiva, the feature debut of French filmmaker Marine Atlan. This slow-burning but imminently watchable teen drama cozily meanders through the lives of a group of French students on a field trip to Naples, Italy. They’re rambunctious and full of life, to the amusement and chagrin of their teacher, but under the surface rife with profound depth that Atlan explores with deeply won empathy.

Each character, like the loud and gregarious Toni (Colas Quignard) or shy and sensitive Suzanne (Suzanne Gerin), and the world they inhabit are rendered with such detail and texture that it’s easy to lose yourself in the warm, romantic glow. But it’s only a vehicle to explore their inner lives with the same carefulness. Some wish to be understood. Some wish to avoid it. And some live in the gray area in between. It finds the love and joy in friendship and youth, but also the things that make us feel out of place in the world. In some ways, it’s a hangout movie for the ages. It’s two-and-a-half hours I’d live over and over again.

Hope

Hope is precisely the opposite of what you’d expect from a Cannes film. Korean director Na Hong-jin takes every cinematic rule and throws it out the window with this wacky Korean dark comedy by way of Spielberg-ian sci-fi action. Na intentionally misguides you in the movie’s serious neo-western opening minutes before dovetailing into an hour-long non-stop action sequence as a mysterious creature lays waste to a mountain with just a ragtag group of townies, the local sheriff (Hwang Jung-min) and his deputy (Squid Games’s Jung Ho-yeon, whose iconic entrance in the film drew a rapturous applause) to stand in its path. It’s ridiculous, over-the-top, and thrilling.

However, as if to throw a middle finger up to any storytelling conventions, the movie slows down to unravel as a delightfully peculiar creature feature mystery. With War of the Worlds, Aliens, The Thing, and even, Jaws in its DNA, Hope feels at once feels nostalgic and completely new. Like we’ve been watching it in midnight screenings for years. For the festival to screen this film in competition is refreshing. Who said Cannes can’t have fun?

Clarissa

Clarissa, a quiet but cozily detailed retelling of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway updated to modern day Nigeria, is a reimagined classic done right. It’s miraculous how directors Chuko Esiri and Arie Esiri effortlessly explore the effects of colonialism and oppression on the youth. It feels true to the novel’s heart while bringing a personal angle that fits so well with the current state of Nigerian society. Chuko and Arie’s rendering of Nigeria in two separate time periods is warm, nostalgic, and lived in. The intoxicating youthful summers of the past and how they lead to the stilted structure of the present is engrossing.

That’s also thanks to an ensemble cast that bring their characters to life, but none more than Sophie Okonedo and Nikki Amuka-Bird, and their younger counterparts India Amarteifio and Ayo Edebiri. It’s a challenging movie, much like the book, as it demands your attention and buy-in while promising that if you stick with it you’ll be rewarded. And it you are. Maybe we can just dance through the end of the world.

The Man I Love

The Man I Love lives, in the moments between life’s big moments. It’s like a memory that you can’t quite get a grasp of, but the feelings are there clearly, as conflicted as they may be. But that’s just the truth of Ira Sachs’ detailed and textured rendering of the New York City art scene in the 1980s and the queer people that inhabited it. It’s mesmerizing and messy and joyous and dramatic, just like Jimmy (Rami Malek), who’s recently returned to acting after being gone for some unspecified reason.

Rather than a story, The Man I Love is a mood. It’s a time and place. One with some of the highest highs of queer art and expression and the lowest lows. The magnificence and melancholy are packaged up in this small story and sliver of time. People we never get to learn much about, but care for and yearn to understand nonetheless, feel like they come into our lives and we (just like them) don’t want to let them go. That’s because in their small touches and stolen glances, we know and we understand. Perhaps we can empathize, but more than anything, we can feel.

Minotaur

From the beginning of Minotaur, the Palme d’Or-competing film from Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, business executive Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov) suspects his wife (Iris Lebedeva) of having an affair. Zyvaginstev presents very little mystery in that storyline, but that’s because the story he’s telling is much larger. There’s an air of dread as the early days of the Russo-Ukrainian War take hold. Gleb’s colleague watches footage of missile attacks while some on his team fret about the recent exodus of employees driven by fear of a draft, dissent for the government, or both. It’s the spectre that haunts every frame of the movie.

Yet the characters in the foreground barely acknowledge it and write it off as a conflict that will go away in a matter of weeks. But there’s state-supported propaganda lurking in the background. The domestic drama is familiar, but engrossing. With twists and turns abound as Gleb tries to confirm his suspicions. However, it is all to serve a dread-filled atmosphere of complacency. How do you live through a tragedy? You can grieve with it or ignore it. Minotaur is about how complacency isn’t victimless, much like The Zone of Interest or It Was Just An Accident.

Is God Is is a surreal neo-western revenge thriller about two twin sisters going on an odyssey to get revenge on their estranged father. Obsession, which was my favorite movie out of the Toronto Film Festival last year, is a supernatural horror dramedy that follows a classic “nice guy” who gets more than he bargains for when a wish-gone-wrong makes his crush obsessed with him. Read more below! ♥ Karl

P.S. If you want to stay in, I recommend a couple of similar movies to stream below.

Is God Is

Is God Is is as simple as that. The line, perfectly delivered by the legend Vivica A. Fox, sets our heroines off on a classic western tale of revenge. But the world isn’t as straightforward as it seems. There’s a mythic quality to how writer-director Aleshea Harris presents Ruby (Fox) for the first time. She’s lying on a lush bed surrounded by greenery and lace like an earth goddess, women are braiding her long hair with reverence, and her face is covered with a mask hiding burn scars from a devastating attack that left her twin girls, Racine (Broadway legend-in-the-making Kara Young) and Anaia (newcomer Mallori Johnson), thinking she was long passed. But she’s very much alive, and mad as hell.

Is God Is doesn’t fully fulfill the expectations you have for any one of its genres. Just like the response to trauma—violent or generational—it’s messy, confusing, and sometimes your reactions don’t make any sense. All of those feelings are balled up in a riotous and roaring odyssey that is as funny as it is heartbreaking and incisive as it is thought-provoking. With Young and Johnson’s powerhouse performances keeping you entertained and engrossed, and an assured directorial hand from Harris guiding you like an unseen fate, Is God Is is one of the year’s very best. Read my full review.

Obsession

“Be careful what you wish for” has been a cornerstone of storytelling for ages. From genies to witches to mysterious neon-green serums that birth younger versions of ourselves, we’ve seen countless victims of desire fall prey to wanting more without sacrifice. Often, that premise has paired neatly with body horror—think The Picture of Dorian Gray or, more recently, The Substance. Both turn desire into a weapon against us. Writer-director Curry Barker taps into that tradition for his debut feature Obsession, delivering a film steeped in familiar tropes yet stamped with a singular vision as a lovesick nice guy (Michael Johnston) a “One Wish Willow” to get his crush Nikki (Inde Navarrette) to be obsessed with him.

Obsession feels like part of a new wave of horror. Alongside filmmakers like Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons) and the Philippou brothers (Talk to Me), Barker leaves “prestige horror” behind in favor of something meaner, darker, and more cynical—where the consequences are deserved, brutal, and terrifying in their simplicity: you wanted too much. It’s horror for the post-pandemic age, where nothing is scarier than our own choices. At the same time, it’s devilishly entertaining, laced with dark comedy and kinetic filmmaking that makes it endlessly rewatchable. Remarkably, with every eerie creep and dread-soaked beat, Obsession feels like a classic we’ve been watching for years—less derivative than timeless. It’s unquestionably a horror classic in the making. Guess you could say I’m...

Wanna stay in? Here are movies like Is God Is and Obsession to stream:

• Atomic Blonde. It’s 1989. The Berlin Wall is about to come down, but the Cold War is still in full swing. A British spy (Charlize Theron) is tasked with retrieving an important dossier before her KGB counterparts can get their hands on it. This neon-soaked, synth-driven action thriller has all the twists, double crosses, and suspense you want from an espionage movie—plus some of the best action sequences in recent memory. Streaming on HBO Max.

• Together. A long-term couple’s (played by Alison Brie and Dave Franco) already strained relationship is put to the test when they move to a rural Upstate New York town where supernatural forces force them apart… and well, together. Part relationship drama, part dark comedy, part body horror, but wholly and devilishly entertaining with a plot that will keep you guessing. Stream on Hulu.

Is God Is is a roaring tale of revenge that balances the epicness of a Greek myth and surreal crowd-pleasing antics of a blaxploitation noir with the intimacy of a family drama. The result is a genre and expectations-bending odyssey through trauma and its cascading effects across generations. Hilarious but incisive in its reclamation of female rage in the face of patriarchal violence. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll cheer. You’ll want to rage against the machine. One of the year’s very best. (★★★★)

Is God Is is in theaters Friday.

“Make your daddy dead… real dead.”

Is God Is is as simple as that. The line, perfectly delivered by the legend Vivica A. Fox, sets our heroines off on a classic western tale of revenge. But the world isn’t as straight forward as it seems. There’s a mythic quality to how writer-director Aleshea Harris presents Ruby (Fox) for the first time. She’s laid on a lush bed surrounded by greenery and lace like an earth goddess, there are women braiding her long hair with reverence, and her face is covered with a mask hiding burn scars from a devastating attack that left her twin girls Racine (Broadway legend-in-the-making Kara Young) and Anaia (newcomer Mallori Johnson) thinking she was long passed. But she’s very much alive, and mad as hell.

The incident also left scars on Racine and Anaia’s bodies that led to a life of suffering that has driven Racine to anger and Anaia to introversion. Despite their difference in demeanor, they share a unique emotional and spiritual bond. They even at times talk telepathically, shown to us cheekily as subtitles:

“If I’m dumb, you dumb. If I’m weak, you weak. Because we come from the same fucking cell bitch.”

Even their sisterly bickering comes telepathically, a shared frequency that has kept them alive through years of trauma. But that frequency is abruptly hijacked when they reach their mother’s bedside, where her dying wish transforms their spiritual bond into a singular, violent mission.

As the screen bleeds into a dusty sepia, signaling the film’s shift from surreal comedy into a vivid Spaghetti Western, Ruby tells the girls the real tale of the attack: In their quiet suburban home, Ruby senses a shift in the air. After mounting tension, a voice pierces the silence of the house. We never see the intruder’s full face, though his disconcertingly composed voice is more than enough to gather what we need to know about him. He’s charming. He’s convincing. And deranged. That man, only known as “The Monster”, is the twins’ father. In an act of violence, he sets Ruby ablaze with the twins nearby.

Is God Is is a question and a statement.

“Is God?”, questions the presence and place of powerful deities in our lives. And “God is”, cements our relationship and reaction to those deities. God is kind. God is evil. God is merciful. God is destructive. Racine calls their mother God, because she is their creator. It’s part of the reason she is so motivated to carry out her wish. But if that’s true, doesn’t that also make their father a God? Why, in a world with such a force of good, is there such evil? Harris doesn’t answer these questions, but she posits how that tension manifests itself in the lives of women, specifically Black women, in a patriarchal society.

The twins set out on a journey west to California, tracing The Monster’s movements after the attack by connecting the people left in his wake. The first is Divine the Healer (Erika Alexander), “the lady he took up with” after the attack. Alexander, best known for her comedic roles in Living Single and American Fiction, finds humor and mournfulness in her religious delusion. She sanctifies The Monster and sees him as an imperfect but unimpeachable deity. She testifies in front of a small but, ahem, passionate congregation that throw their bodies around the room with each word of her testimony.

While Divine burns with the flames of religious fervor, Racine and Anaia stand by deeply unimpressed. Their stillness in the face of Divine’s chaos highlights the precarious balancing act between surreal comedy and the deeply real and devastating after effects in violence towards women. This is where Is God Is finds its teeth. The film lives in the uncomfortable space between comedy and tragedy. Divine’s testimony is hilarious right up until you remember she is worshipping a man who set his ex on fire with his children there to witness his brutality.

Harris forces the viewer to navigate that tonal whiplash. She makes your laugh one second and then recoiling the next before asking, “what’s so funny?”

It’s not easy to define Is God Is. In some moments, there’s an intensity to the action that Harris presents like a taut thriller. The movie is gripping when the twins are perused by a motorcycle-helmeted anonymous assailant, who ends up being someone just as impacted by The Monster’s abuse. It makes you forget that the movie was based on Harris’s play of the same name. As a first-time feature director, her ability to make her work cinematic is impressive. The epic, scorched wide shots of the deserts of the west cut with emotive close-ups giving insight to the girls’s unique inner monologues make it hard to discern exactly how any of the movie was mounted on stage.

The closer the twins get to confronting The Monster, the more looming and darker his shadow becomes. However, it also begins to make Anaia question whether their mission is actually a justice or if it makes them as bad as him. She asks,

“We come from a man who tried to kill our mama and a woman that wants to kill him.”

Is God Is directly confronts the trauma cycle that comes with abuse, especially at the hands of the patriarchy. While he’s known as The Monster, what does that mean for the people that come from him—and the people that choose to be around him. In a searing one-scene performance, Janelle Monáe challenges both the twins and our idea of who is to blame for someone’s bad deeds. As his current wife, Monáe finds joy, sadness, and rage in her current situation that is juxtaposed and challenges by their girls’s own experience in the fallout.

Like the shark from Jaws or John Doe Se7en, Harris only ever shows the movie’s villain in extreme close-ups or in quick flashes of his misdeeds. Sterling K. Brown, an actor well-known for his charming and amiable personality, weaponizes that very warmth here. It is a reveal worth the wait, both for Brown’s blazing performance, but for the energy it brings to the movie.

For years, stories felt obsessed with the idea of difficult men: Don Draper, Walter White, Tony Soprano.

But those stories try to find empathy for those men, presenting them as anti-heroes meant to be root for despite their mistakes. Harris makes the bolder choice: she allows The Monster to be a monster. He isn't weak, he isn't misunderstood, and he hasn't “learned his lesson.” By refusing to subvert our expectations of his cruelty, Is God Is allows its characters to full rage against their circumstances, even if at times that rage can, like a fire, burn out of control.

Is God Is doesn’t fully fulfill the expectations you have for any one of it genres. Just like the response to trauma—violent or generational—it’s messy, confusing, and sometimes your reactions don’t make any sense. All of those feelings are balled up in a riotous and roaring odyssey that is as funny as it is heartbreaking and incisive as it is thought-provoking. With Young and Johnson’s powerhouse performances keeping you entertained and engrossed and assured directorial hand from Harris guiding you like an unseen fate, Is God Is is one of the year’s very best.

More movies like Is God Is:

But first, a couple great movies are out this weekend:

• You, Me & Tuscany, a delightful slice-of-Italy romantic-comedy starring Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page, satiated my fill for a hearty comfort watch. Read my review.

• Mother Mary is a relationship drama, gothic ghost story, pop musical, horror, or a genre all its own. It may be undefinable, but it’s definitely is clear-eyed in its search for raw intimacy in creative collaboration (with a side of pop divadom). Read my review.

Streaming on Paramount+

“Strange Darling”

What it’s about: A woman—only credited as “The Lady”—is relentlessly chased by a determined pursuant—credited as “The Devil”. But reader I assure you, nothing is as it seems.

Why you should watch it: The title card for Strange Darling splashes onto the screen paired with the subtitle “a thriller in six chapters” before cheekily jumping to chapter three. From that moment, director J.T. Toller keeps you guessing as he grabs you by your collar and takes you on a frenetic maximalist romp. When you think it is going to zig, it zags. When you think it’s going to jump, it soars. The opening chapters of the movie, shot in glorious 35mm by Giovanni Rabisi, are an assault on the senses. With saturated cinematography bringing a mad technicolor world to life and crisp near-deafening sound underlined by Craig DeLeon‘s discordant bass guitar score thrumming it feels like you’re on the fury road—and you might as well be. Read my full review here.

Recommended if you like: cheeky plot twists, simple suspense, heavy metal thrills

97 mins. Watch the trailer.

Streaming on HBO Max

“Kimi”

What it’s about: Tech worker Angela (Zoë Kravitz) thinks she uncovers a crime while reviewing audio recordings for her job. Suffering from agoraphobia and with the pandemic raging outside, Angela has to face her fears when a deeper conspiracy unveils itself.

Why you should watch it: Few movies have been able to capture the anxiety of the pandemic age quite as viscerally as Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi. While it’s mainly a techno-thriller that’s Rear Window—that is, if the window was actually a smart speaker—by way of The Conversation, the most interesting part of the movie is the subtle flourishes that immerse you. The claustrophobia of lockdown with the eerie omniscience of technology pervades throughout the entire movie. So when it turns into a more classic crime thriller, you’re able to sink yourself deep into the intrigue.

RIYL: classic crime thrillers, surveillance paranoia, corporate intrigue

89 mins. Watch the trailer.

Streaming on Netflix

“Shiva Baby”

What it’s about: Danielle (Rachel Sennott), a college student and seemingly never-good-enough daughter, attends a family shiva where her relatives constantly accost her with questions about her life, her ex-girlfriend looms large, and, oh yeah, her sugar daddy is there with his family. It turns out just as well as you think.

Why you should watch it: Okay, maybe Shiva Baby isn’t quite a thriller, but what is more suspenseful than a family gathering where anything can happen. Still, Shiva Baby takes the same approach as a thriller. The camera creeps around corners and Ariel Marx’s terrific score amplifies the suspense-filled mood with discordant strings where the horrors of family—that aunt that can’t just help but comment on your weight—lurks in the shadows. But director Emma Seligman doesn’t go full-tilt horror. She toes a precarious line between comedy, drama, horror, and tragedy. Let’s be honest. We all know what it feels like to come home for a family gathering. Shiva Baby captures that feeling with a witty sense of humor that will make you laugh through your trauma.

RIYL: melodramas, familial dry humor, cringe thrills

78 mins. Watch the trailer.

That’s all for today. Have a thrilling weekend!
Karl

📽 P.S. You can see every movie I’ve ever recommended right here.
🍅 I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic on Rotten Tomatoes! You can find new movie reviews here and here.
🔗 Find me on Letterboxd and Twitter.

Mother Mary is in theaters Friday.

Director-writer David Lowery isn’t the type to make a movie about a pop star, especially in this era where pop stardom has been taken to a magnitude never seen before. It’s akin to worship. But that’s where the brilliance lies within Mother Mary. The movie pulls you in with bright neon lights, earth-shaking bass, and the grandiose scale of an arena concert with Anne Hathaway, as the eponymous pop star, commanding the screen and your attention. However, like any good pop song, that’s just the hook that Lowery uses as a Trojan horse to tell a much deeper and darker story in a way that’s anything but ordinary.

That’s what Lowery has been doing all his career. He will take a subject or a story like a woman in grief (A Ghost Story) or a boy and his imaginary friend (Pete’s Dragon) and approach it precisely at the angle you don’t expect, which is what makes the grounded and subdued first act of Mother Mary all the more baffling. Not that it isn’t engrossing. The way Mother Mary sweeps into her former creative collaborator Sam Anselm’s (Michaela Coel) brooding gothic home and fashion design studio feels like a storm coming against a mountain. For the less meteorologically inclined, that means kaboom.

Muse vs. Creator

There’s a quiet contrast in the way the pair move in the world. Mother Mary, though stripped down to just a simple sweater and sweatpants, has the volatility of a creative in distress. She has a thousand thoughts in her head, but can’t seem to hold onto one. Her horror is that she can fall apart at any moment. Sam, on the other hand, has an eerie calm to her. Mother Mary explains that her sudden reappearance in Sam’s life is because she needs a dress for her comeback performance where she’ll perform her new song. She explains that the one she has “doesn’t feel like me.” To which, with a steely calm, Sam replies, “Because I, above all others, know you.”

Sam (and Coel’s Shakespearean performance) is beguiling in the way that she seems to be at peace, but can easily throw a barb that cuts straight to the heart. Sam agrees to help Mother Mary despite their animosity that remains shrouded. The film presents as a melodramatic relationship drama, as Sam quickly busies herself picking fabrics and probes Mother Mary for information about this comeback performance (the reason for the comeback is equally shrouded in mystery). We learn that the pair had a deep creative partnership stretching back to Mary’s early days in the industry. Her signature halo, which changes from performance to performance, was Sam’s idea. An idea that is stitched permanently to Mary’s identity as an artist. An identity whose ownership comes into question throughout the encounter.

But they’re both careful to never broach the subject of their separation head-on. There’s an unsettling sense of calm.

Although, there are a few inklings of what’s to come later in this reunion. Sam asks Mother Mary to show her the dance to the song, but without music. In all this time apart, Sam hasn’t listened to Mother Mary’s music. The resulting dance, stripped down to its raw physicality, feels like a demonic possession. The sound of Mother Mary’s strained breath and the violent thuds as she throws herself around the room is visceral and unsettling—especially juxtaposed against the echoing silence of the space. It feels supernatural.

Genre Subversion (From Pop to Possession)

As the day turns into night, there’s a palpable shift in the air of the movie. It becomes darker but more alive, like a lightning bolt shot in the dark. Sam tells Mary of the last time she heard her music. As she watches Mother Mary perform on stage after their split, Sam, overcome by emotion at seeing her own artistry in front of her without credit, bites down splintering her wisdom tooth. Like a storybook, Lowery shows the incident unfold before us like a body horror. Later that night, Sam regales Mary of the tale of a ghost, manifested as a simple tract of red fabric, awakening her that night.

Mary listens on with horror as she realizes that the ghost that Sam saw may be the same the she once saw through a sort of medium played by FKA Twigs. The ensuing scene, the best of the movie, feels more akin to The Exorcist than the pop opera the movie started as. Twigs, contorting herself around the room warning of some being coming for Mother Mary, is otherworldly extraordinary and catapults the movie into a full gothic horror where the feeling of dread pervades laced with the haunting beats of Mother Mary’s music. Her contortions echo Mary’s earlier silent dance, but here the possession becomes literal. It begins help us to unravel exactly what Lowery is trying to communicate with the story.

Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX, and FKA Twigs all contributed music to the soundtrack that becomes the backbone of Mother Mary’s tale of artistic and physical burnout. In an awe-inspiring scene, Mary goes from concert to concert, ushered by a crowd of dancers as we watch the toll of constant touring take hold. The glitchy, abrasive synths underline the visceral toll taken onscreen. The scenes move like a dance but keep the same gothic tone as the rest of the movie. Cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo stays true to the bright lights of a concert, but staying true to the movie’s gothic tone disorients you with the camera’s movements. It’s a body horror, what artists do to keep up pace with their demanding schedule.

These traded stories begin to form a picture of what the movie is about. Though Lowery has never been one to give easy explanations of his work, Mother Mary lays itself threadbare by the end giving a cutting (at times, quite literally) appraisal of artistic relationships and how for all their fruit, can lead to self-destruction. As Mother Mary finds herself falling apart, Sam finds herself building walls. It’s not coincidence that her home and fashion studio looks like a fortress. Lowery, with the horror of the movie, compares partnership with posession, and eventually exorcism. Literally giving someone else control of your body and in return giving some of yours.

Mother Mary is hard to define. It is a relationship drama, a ghost story, a musical, a thriller. Or perhaps, it is a genre all its own. For me, it is a liturgical horror—a film that treats the act of collaboration with the same dread and devotion as a haunted cathedral. What is clear is that David Lowery is clear-eyed in his search for raw intimacy in partnership. And to find that intimacy involves laying your ugliest impulses out in front of your collaborator. Only then can the ghost of all your self doubt, your history, and your baggage be exorcised.

You, Me & Tuscany, or perhaps “My Big Fat Eat, Pray, Love Under the Tuscan Sun”, is like a hearty Italian cheat meal. You know it’s bad for you. You know it’s empty calories. You know the absurd amount of cheese might give you agita. But do you savor every delicious bite? You’re damn right. The mid-budget romantic-comedy has become a rarity in theaters, as most entries in the genre seem to never make it out of streaming purgatory, but the charming pairing of Halle Bailey and Regé Jean-Page (and a cast of lovable characters) more than cover the cost of admission.

RIYL: Enemies-to-lovers, quirky family comedies, Italy (but like stereotypical Italy)

You, Me & Tuscany is in theaters on Friday.

The age of the PG-13 romantic-comedy and the corny romantic splendors of Maid in Manhattan, The Wedding Planner, Monster-in-Law (was J. Lo the only person doing rom-coms?) is long gone.

Or is it? In this era where cynicism seems to rule the tastes of the movie-going public (or at least the people on Film Twitter), You, Me & Tuscany bravely asks, “you want cheese?” And then proceeds to give you five kinds before sprinkling more Parmesan on top for good measure.

The movie, directed by Kat Coiro, speed runs through the greatest hits of romantic-comedy tropes. There’s not just one dead parent, there’s three! Our heroine is an aspiring chef (and culinary school dropout)! She has a sassy best friend! There’s a random animal pet (in this case, a pig)! However, you can’t help but eat up every line of corny banter and wacky side characters because that’s what you want from your cheat cinema. “You, Me & Tuscany” may be empty Italian calories, but like all empty calories, it just tastes so damn good going down.

Halle Bailey’s performance as our down-on-our-luck heroine is the perfect base to this dish.

Anna is a professional house sitter (because those exist!) who can’t seem to catch a break. Her dreams of completing culinary school were dashed when her mother passed away (mothers of rom-com leading ladies, beware), and she bides her time moving on with her life by living other people’s. After being unceremoniously kicked out of her current gig for—checks notes—wearing her client’s lingerie, Anna seeks refuge in the swanky hotel where her bestie (Aziza Scott) works.

Seeking refuge at the bar, Anna has a meet-cute with the impressively gorgeous Matteo, who regales her with tales of his vacant Tuscan villa in the village where he grew up before inviting her upstairs and—less impressively—falling asleep. Inspired by the encounter, Anna decides to take a long-delayed trip meant for her and her late mother. She flies to Tuscany that same day, only to find the town fully booked for a mysterious (but very Italian-sounding) festival and her lunch stolen by another handsome stranger, Michael (Regé-Jean Page). It’s a sandwich-swiping "meet-ugly" she hopes never to repeat. But this movie is called YOU, Me & Tuscany.

With nowhere else to go, Anna hatches a plan to stay in Matteo’s vacant villa.

It’s all gold Italian sunsets and laundry machines in the villa until Anna is caught by Matteo’s—ahem—vocal mother Gabriella (Isabella Ferrari) and Nonna (Stefania Casini), having failed at a hasty escape via pole. Since she’s decided to "take nonna's ring for a spin" earlier, she’s quickly mistaken for Matteo’s secret fiancée and has no choice but to lean into the lie and assimilate into the quirky clan. The plot thickens, however, when she realizes that Matteo's cousin is none other than Michael, the impossibly handsome (but rude) sandwich thief from earlier. As wedding planning commences and Michael and Anna spend quality time together in the family vineyard, the romance of the Tuscan countryside—and Michael’s glistening abs—starts to work its magic.

And that’s when You, Me & Tuscany finds its secret sauce. The Italian countryside (and all its quirks and quirky people) is easy to watch.

For all its cinematic rough edges, Coiro finds a way to capture the dreamlike warmth of the setting. There’s something so nostalgic about the world the movie inhabits. Whether it’s because it reminds you of the rom-coms of the early aughts or makes you yearn for an Italian vacation, it’s as intoxicating as the romance at its core. The wide-ranging cast of oddballs, like adorably loyal taxi driver Lorenzo (Marco Calvani) or Matteo’s hilariously honest sister Francesca (Stella Pecollo), adds to that feeling. It's the perfect setting to lose yourself in for 105 minutes.

You, Me & Tuscany isn’t reinventing the wheel. It plays more like an improvised cobbled-together stew rather than a meticulously assembled dish. But every element just works. Bailey and Page (who gives a fantastic performance even outside his movie star good looks) have the kind of presence that commands a screen. You’re rooting for them to fall in love. Every side character, even ratched up to a hundred, is hilarious and charming. And there’s just enough drama to keep things interesting. It’s a story (and faces) worth putting on the big screen. It’s a love worth watching on the big screen.

Happy Friday and for those reading from the northeast, I’m sorry for your loss. I’m of course talking about the gorgeous 78 degree weather that has been so unceremoniously taken from us and replaced with the cold and dreary rain.

However, that fleeting bit of summer has me thinking of the freedom of warmer weather. So, for today I’m continuing my best movies of the decade series with some recommendations about the intoxicating feeling of freedom. You can see my volume one recs here.

I wrote this newsletter listening to Snail Mail’s terrific and limitless new album “Ricochet”. Have a listen here.

Streaming on Prime Video

“Lovers Rock”

What it’s about: It’s the 80s. West London. A group of teens and twentysomethings scurry about a house making preparations for a party that night. Once the sun goes down and the records come on, they leave the world at the door and give themselves up to the irresistible feeling and emotion of music. Watch the trailer.

Why you should watch it: For most of his career, Steve McQueen has dealt heavily with trauma (“12 Years A Slave, “Blitz”). But with “Lovers Rock”, the standout entry in his “Small Axe” anthology series, he focuses on the visceral weight of joy. Set over the course of a single night at a 1980s house party in West London, the film trades a traditional plot for a sustained, rhythmic mood. It is an all-out sensory immersion: the smell of goat curry wafting through a cramped kitchen, the sight of condensation dripping down wallpaper, and the tactile friction of bodies swaying in a blue-lit room.

In one scene, the party’s DJ is playing Janet Kay’s “Silly Games.” He slowly fades the song out, but like they’re in a trance the people on the dance floor continue to move. With closed eyes they dance, they hold each other, and they sing. It’s a moment you want to live in forever. “Lovers Rock” surrounds and consumes you as you watch the partiers dance, fall in love, and feel unbridled joy. Just bodies in a room moving together making you want to join in.

68 mins.

Streaming on HBO Max

“Flow”

What it’s about: In a near future (or alternate present), a solitary black cat living in the ruins of what seems to be human civilization is faced with a catastrophic flood. Seeking refuge on a drifting sailboat alongside a capybara, a lemur, a dog, and a secretarybird, the unlikely band of misfits have to find a way to survive. Watch the trailer.

Why you should watch it: Not a single word is spoken in Gints Zilbalodis’ extraordinary second feature, and honestly? It doesn’t need any. Built entirely in open-source software by a Latvian director still in his twenties (like show-off much), “Flow” starts, well, flowing and doesn’t stop. The nonstop plot is reminiscent of “Mad Max: Fury Road”. Just trade the post-apocalyptic desert for a post-apocalyptic great ocean and the last survivors of human civilization for a ragtag group of animals.

It has the visual grammar of a dream and the emotional pull of something deeply human. Watching that cat inch toward its fellow survivors, sharing fish, learning to steer, you feel something loosen in your chest. Cinema doesn’t always need language. Sometimes it just needs a cat and its friends on a boat at the end of the world.

85 mins.

Streaming on Hulu

“Thelma”

What’s it about: When 93-year-old grandmother Thelma Post (June Squibb) is conned out of $10,000, she takes matters into her own hands to get her money back. With help from her retirement home friend Ben (Shaft himself, Richard Roundtree) and his motorized scooter, she treks across Los Angeles to reclaim her money and prove she can do it all on her own. Watch the trailer.

Why you should watch it: “Thelma” is one part delightful comedy of manners that only gets wilder and funnier as it goes on. June Squibb’s performance as the headstrong (but sometimes technologically-challenged) Thelma is hilarious as she tries to navigate a dangerous world (and yes, a set of stairs are the danger). Josh Margolin treats Thelma’s journey like an entry in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, except instead of skydiving from the Burj Kalifa she’s trying to get a box from a high shelf.

However, what makes “Thelma” great is the other part of the story. One about resilience, the dignity of getting older and how our family’s underestimation can cut deep at any age. Delightfully mad, surprisingly moving, and constantly entertaining, it’s one of the best movies of the decade.

98 mins.

In Movie News

There were a slew of new trailers this week:

• “Mother Mary”: David Lowery (“A Ghost Story”, “Pete’s Dragon”) returns to with a psychological drama-thriller-horror-musical (forgive me if I left off a genre). Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel with music by Jack Antonoff, Charli xcx, and FKA Twigs. Trailer here.

• “Backrooms”: I guess they’re making 4chan threads into movies now! The infamous “backrooms” internet meme is coming in the form of a horror-thriller starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, and Mark Duplass. Trailer here.

• “Masters of the Universe”: You know that twink from “Red, White, and Royal Blue”? He’s buff now… and playing He-Man. The comic book superhero turned queer TV icon finally has his own movie. And yes, the blonde bob is bobbing. Trailer here.

That’s it for this week. Love you. See you next week!

Karl

📽 P.S. You can see every movie I’ve ever recommended right here.
🍅 I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic on Rotten Tomatoes! You can find new movie reviews here and here.
🔗 Find me on Letterboxd and Twitter.

In addition, we’ve excitingly migrated the entire Smash Cut site to Substack. You can now access all of my (and a few guest writers) reviews, analyses, lists and more at smashcutreviews.com (bear with me while we get the site up-to-date).

To kick off this new era, I’m going to spend the next few weeks recommending some of my favorite movies of the decade available to stream.

You can let me know what you think of the newsletter, any movie recommendations or just to say hello by replying to this email or karl@smashcutreviews.com. Enough yapping, without further ado today’s first recommendation is…

Streaming on HBO Max

“On Becoming a Guinea Fowl”

What it’s about: While driving home from a party, Shula (Susan Chardy) comes across the body of her uncle Fred lying in the middle of the road. There’s no hysterics, she simply calls her dad to let him know as casually as telling him she’s going to be late for dinner. Did I mention she’s dressed like Missy Elliot in the “Supa Dupa Fly” music video? In this surrealistic and darkly comedic family drama, Shula navigates her complicated family dynamics as secrets threaten to interrupt the funeral services. Watch the trailer.

Why you should watch it: Every person from or born to someone from the “worldwide Latina belt” knows the mysterious and mystical force of “aunties” in the family — in my Filipino family they were known as “the titas.” These woman hold the matriarchal power of the family in their tightly knit circles and protect their people with steely (and hilariously sassy) authority. But what happens when the protection of one family member harms another? In Rungano Nyoni’s sophomore feature, she explores that dynamic through a would-be family drama that has a tone closer to offbeat comedy than the movie’s themes would suggest. And while it’s a surprisingly entertaining watch, it digs into the thorny dark truths of Zambian society without holding back.

95 mins.

Streaming on Hulu

“Twinless”

What it’s about: Dennis (James Sweeney) and Rocky (Dylan O’Brien) become fast friends after meeting (perhaps meet-cute-ing?) at a twin grief support group after losing their respective twin brothers. They quickly fall into an intimate friendship, but a secret from Dennis’s past threatens to tear them apart. Watch the trailer.

Why you should watch it: The male loneliness epidemic has manifested itself in media in many ways, but none quite as delightful (and profound) as James Sweeney’s odd couple platonic rom-com. While we delight in the pair’s shenanigans ranging from Hockey games (the players aren’t the only people getting in brawls…) to house parties (featuring a cheeky cameo by “Heated Rivalry” star Francois Arnaud), an early-movie twist that I’ll keep hush hush casts a pall over the pair’s budding friendship. Through all the wry laughs and silly gags, “Twinless” is about finding connection in a world where it seems harder to be yourself, and in that you’ll find yourself falling for both of these characters (especially O’Brien who gives one of the finest performances of the decade).

100 mins.

Streaming on HBO Max

“Godzilla Minus One”

What it’s about: It’s post-World War II Japan and the country is picking up the pieces from the destruction. Sure hope a giant mutant sea creature that breathes fire doesn’t complicate matters. Well… it does. In an origin story for this iconic movie monster, a ragtag group of heroes have to save the country from destruction (again). Watch the trailer.

Why you should watch it: You know him. You love him. You’ve seen hundreds of thousands people (including Matthew Broderick) running from him. It’s Godzilla! With these long-running franchises you come to expect each reinvention to be more epic than the last. But, staying true to its name, “Godzilla Minus One” is one of the finest movies of the decade because it scales things back. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of city-wide destruction rendered in stunning (and Oscar-winning!) CGI. But director Takashi Yamazaki scales things back and presents the movie from human perspective. It feels more akin to “Jaws” than it does the classic black-and-white originals from the 50s. It hits every beat you want a major blockbuster to hit. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll cheer. And at the end you’ll be hoping that the big guy finds a way to rise again.

125 mins.

Watch: The VFX artists behind the movie breakdown the stunning CGI.

In Movie News

“Forgotten Island” brings Filipino culture to Hollywood

There have been plenty of Hollywood animated movies about and featuring Asian culture — “Mulan”, “Turning Red” and, most recently, “Hoppers” — but Southeast Asia hasn’t gotten the treatment… until now. DreamWorks Animation, the studio behind “Shrek” and those annoying yellow things with the overalls, are bringing us to the islands of the Philippines in a colorful and mystical journey through memory. The movie is slated for this fall. Here’s the first trailer:

That’s it for this week. Love you. See you next week!

Karl

📽 P.S. You can see every movie I’ve ever recommended right here.
🍅 I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic on Rotten Tomatoes! You can find new movie reviews here and here.
🔗 Find me on Letterboxd and Twitter.

Leading up to Oscar night, it’s rare for two movies to be so dominant the entire season. Even in years where Best Picture was uncertain, there were signs of weakness whether it was “1917” lacking acting support or “La La Land” missing a key precursor nomination. It always felt like a tale of David and Goliath (appropriately David usually won).

This year, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” and Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” are both goliaths. Here’s my best shot at predicting what will happen Sunday night. And staying true to the newsletter, I’ll tell you where to stream the nominees.

Typically, the ceremony starts with one of the supporting races. Let’s dive into one that perfectly explains the head versus the heart when it comes to Oscar predictions.

Predicted winners are in bold. My preferred winner is in italics.

Best Supporting Actor

Benicio Del Toro, “One Battle After Another” (streaming on HBO Max)
Jacob Elordi, “Frankenstein” (streaming on Netflix)
Delroy Lindo, “Sinners” (streaming on HBO Max)***
Sean Penn, “One Battle After Another”
Stellan Skarsgard, “Sentimental Value” (available to rent)

Since 2010, if a nominee in a supporting category won both the BAFTA and the Actor (formerly Screen Actors Guild) awards they would go on to win the Oscar. Every. Single. Time. That means that Sean Penn should win for his villainous turn in “One Battle After Another”. However, for such an unprecedented year, I think we’re heading for an unprecedented win and see Delroy Lindo win for his equal parts funny and heartbreaking turn in “Sinners”.

Penn has won two Oscars, so there isn’t appetite to award him, especially considering he didn’t even bother showing up to the BAFTAs or Actors. I think that’ll lead a lot of voters to vote with their hearts. Though, that could also benefit Golden Globe winner Stellan Skarsgard.

Best Production Design

“Frankenstein”***
“Hamnet” (streaming on Peacock)
“Marty Supreme” (available to rent)
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”

While I think the re-creation of post-war New York in “Marty Supreme” is the most-deserving winner, “Frankenstein” boasts the scientist’s lab and an entire era-accurate ship.

Best Costume Design

“Avatar: Fire and Ash”
“Frankenstein”***
“Hamnet”
“Marty Supreme”
“Sinners”

“Frankenstein” is the clear frontrunner for its elaborate period costumes. However, Ruth E. Carter is a known name and while “Sinners” has the simplest costumes, I think her period accurate work could be enough to pull the upset. I’m going to go with the stats here, but never rule out the stronger Best Picture in any category.

Best Sound

“F1”
“Frankenstein”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”
“Sirat”

“Sirat” boasts thumping electronic music, desert winds and explosions as a part of its impressive soundscape. And while “F1” matches the typical profile of a winner of this category (“vehicle make loud sound hoorah”), I think the mix of music and sound effects in “Sinners” will take it across the line.

Best Visual Effects

“Avatar: Fire and Ash”
“F1”
“Jurassic World Rebirth”
“The Lost Bus”
“Sinners”

The subtler work in “F1” and “Sinners” is impressive, but not entirely obvious. “Avatar: Fire and Ash” should easily win this for a franchise threepeat. I mean, those blue people look good!

Best Original Score

“Bugonia”
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”

Ludwig Göransson will win his third Oscar in just eight years for his blues-infused score for “Sinners” although I prefer Jonny Greenwood’s off-kilter, jangly score for “One Battle After Another”.

Best Supporting Actress

Elle Fanning, “Sentimental Value”
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, “Sentimental Value”
Amy Madigan, “Weapons” (streaming on HBO Max)***
Wunmi Mosaku, “Sinners”
Teyana Taylor, “One Battle After Another”

Potentially the most competitive race in Oscar history with three contenders splitting the major precursor awards. Teyana Taylor won the Golden Globe for her screen-scorching performance as revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills in “One Battle After Another”, Wunmi Mosaku, the heart of “Sinners”, won the BAFTA and Amy Madigan won the Actor for her villainous turn in “Weapons”.

But for every tick in their favor, each actress has a tick against her. Taylor won neither of the industry awards (the Globes are voted on by journalists), Madigan is the sole nomination for her movie, and since 2010 if a supporting actress only won BAFTA she lost the Oscar every time.

I’m thinking Mosaku and Taylor split the Best Picture frontrunner vote and Madigan ekes out a tight (but well-deserved) win.

Best Original Song

“Dear Me” (“Diane Warren: Relentless”)
“Golden” (“KPop Demon Hunters”)*** (streaming on Netflix)
“I Lied to You” (“Sinners”)
“Sweet Dreams of Joy” (“Viva Verdi!”)
“Train Dreams” (“Train Dreams”)

You’ve probably been unable to escape “Golden” from “KPop Demon Hunters” if you happen to step outside and into any given CVS. Although there’s a chance “I Lied to You” from “Sinners” pulls off a shocking upset.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

“Frankenstein”***
“Kokuho”
“Sinners”
“The Smashing Machine” (streaming on HBO Max)
“The Ugly Stepsister” (streaming on Hulu)

Probably the coolest set of nominees with body horror movie “The Ugly Stepsister”, Japanese epic “Kokuho”, and Dwayne Johnson’s transformation in “The Smashing Machine” nabbing very deserved noms. But rule of thumb is if there is a Best Picture nominee in a category, they’ll likely win. And the work to transform Jacob Elordi into Frankenstein’s monster in “Frankenstein” will be too much for the Academy to pass up.

Best Film Editing

“F1”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
”Sentimental Value”
“Sinners”

“F1” fits the bill for the type of film that wins this category (see: “Ford v Ferrari”). However, the kinetic, heart-racing pace of “One Battle After Another” will and should win here. But don’t count “Sinners” out to pull an upset for it exquisite musical sequences.

Best Cinematography

“Frankenstein”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”
“Train Dreams” (streaming on Netflix)

“One Battle After Another” won all the necessary precursors to point to an easy win. However, Autumn Durald Arkapaw has been strong on the campaign trail and could become the first woman (and person of color) to win in this category for “Sinners” — and the Oscars love to make history. Don’t count out a double upset by “Train Dream” that was basically made for people to screenshot and say “great cinematography” on Twitter.

Best Original Screenplay

“Blue Moon” (streaming on Netflix)
“It Was Just an Accident” (streaming on Hulu)
“Marty Supreme”
“Sentimental Value”
“Sinners”***

Ryan Coogler is all but guaranteed to take home a deserved Oscar for the most highly original screenplay of the year.

Best Adapted Screenplay

“Bugonia”
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“One Battle After Another”***
“Train Dreams”

And the same goes for Paul Thomas Anderson for his adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland”.

Best Casting

“Hamnet”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”***
“The Secret Agent”

For the first time in 25 years, the Oscars introduced a new category. Best Casting awards (1) how well each actor fits into their roles and (2) the discovery of new actors and strong use of established actors. “Sinners” diverse cast put together by legendary casting director Francine Maisler will be an apt inaugural winner. However, the discovery of Chase Infiniti and wide ranging use of massive stars, character actors, up-and-comers and perfectly cast featured roles would make “One Battle After Another” my pick.

Best Actress

Jessie Buckley, “Hamnet”***
Rose Byrne, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” (streaming on HBO Max)
Kate Hudson, “Song Sung Blue” (streaming on Hulu)
Renate Reinsve, “Sentimental Value”
Emma Stone, “Bugonia” (streaming on Peacock)

Since the movie premiered last fall, it seemed ordained that Jessie Buckley would take home her first Oscar for her performance as a grieving mother in “Hamnet”, and after sweeping every award this season it’s all but assured. Shoutout to Rose Byrne’s markedly different take on a mother’s grief in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”, she’s been long overdue for a nomination.

Best Actor

Timothée Chalamet, “Marty Supreme”
Leonardo DiCaprio, “One Battle After Another”
Ethan Hawke, “Blue Moon”
Michael B. Jordan, “Sinners”***
Wagner Moura, “The Secret Agent”

Just a month ago, it felt all but certain that Timothée Chalamet would win his first Oscar for his towering performance in “Marty Supreme”. And then he lost… and then he lost again. It’s incredibly rare for an actor to win without first winning the BAFTA or Actor award. However, he didn’t lose BAFTA to any of his fellow nominees (winner Robert Aramayo will be eligible next year) and the Actor Award’s more populist tastes could have pushed Michael B. Jordan to a win.

However, Chalamet’s polarizing campaign (remember the sphere) and relative young age could scare voters away. And although Wagner Moura could ride a wave of support for “The Secret Agent” to a win or Ethan Hawke could garner votes for his long career for “Blue Moon”, I think it’s more likely that a popular actor in a popular movie wins. Jordan should eke out a win here by the thinnest of margins.

Best Director

Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”
Josh Safdie, “Marty Supreme”
Joachim Trier, “Sentimental Value”
Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet”

Paul Thomas Anderson, who’s given us masterpieces like “Boogie Nights”, “Magnolia”, and “There Will Be Blood”, will finally get his long overdue Oscar regardless of where Best Picture goes later in the night. However, Ryan Coogler could pull off a shocking upset similar to Bong Joon-ho (“Parasite”) if “Sinners” pulls off an upset in Best Picture…

Best Picture

"Bugonia”
”F1”
”Frankenstein”
”Hamnet”
”Marty Supreme”
”One Battle After Another”***
”The Secret Agent”
”Sentimental Value”
”Sinners”
”Train Dreams”

There has been a real and quantifiable surge towards “Sinners” in the last few days before and during Oscar voting. And it’s not without precedent to see the late breaking Actor Award winner for Best Cast to go on to upset the established frontrunner (“Shakespeare in Love” over “Saving Private Ryan”, “Crash” over “Brokeback Mountain”, “Parasite” over “1917”). However, “One Battle After Another” is a more popular movie than any of those losing contenders.

While I think the late surge for “Sinners” will win it a few extra prizes (Supporting Actor, Actor, Cinematography), there are a few reasons I think it will ultimately be “One Battle”":

• American voting bodies have split awards down the middle for both movies, while international voting bodies (about 25% of The Academy is non-American), have broken more decisively for “One Battle”.

• The only Best Picture prize to be determined by preferential ballot is the Producers Guild Award, which went to “One Battle”.

• While “Sinners” mixes genres, horror movies have difficulty winning the top prize.

I won’t be surprised at either film’s name being read when the envelope is opened. It has been a colossal year for cinema and that’s something to be celebrated either way.

RAW, VOLCANIC, AND VITAL

A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

If you’ve ever felt like your emotions were just a little too “loud” for the room, John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence will make you feel better about yourself. This isn’t just a movie; it’s a bruising but beautiful dive into the human psyche. Gena Rowlands gives one of the great performances in American history. It’s a performance that both feels grounded but larger than life. Larger than the universe.

As a cornerstone of the American Indie canon, its importance can’t be overstated. It’s the blueprint for every “kitchen sink” drama that followed, proving there’s power in the machinations of our lives. This new standalone release gives the film the individual spotlight it has long deserved outside of the box-set shadow.

The Technicals:

• The Transfer: A high-definition digital restoration from a 35mm color reversal internegative, preserving the thick, naturalistic film grain of its cinéma vérité roots.

• The Sound: Uncompressed LPCM monaural soundtrack.

• The Supplements: *

  • Audio commentary featuring sound recordist/composer Bo Harwood and camera operator Mike Ferris.

  • Archival conversation between stars Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk.

  • A massive 75-minute archival audio interview with John Cassavetes from 1975.

  • A booklet featuring an essential essay by critic Kent Jones.

EERIE, ELEGANT, & EXQUISITE

Birth (2004)

I’ve spent years shouting from the rooftops that Jonathan Glazer’s Birth is a misunderstood masterpiece, and finally, Criterion has given me the “I told you so” I’ve been waiting for. Following his not-so-mainstream breakthrough with The Zone of Interest, it feels fitting to return to a film that is equally haunting, hypnotic, and heartbreakingly human. Nicole Kidman, delivering a career-best performance, navigates a premise that sounds like tabloid fodder but plays out like an opera.

In the film canon, Birth has moved from a “cult curiosity” to a “pinnacle of 21st-century formalist filmmaking.” The legendary two-minute close-up of Kidman at the opera is worth the price of admission alone. This new 4K UHD transfer is, quite frankly, a religious experience.

The Technicals:

• The Transfer: Director-approved 4K digital restoration supervised by Jonathan Glazer, presented in Dolby Vision HDR for stunning contrast and “inky” black levels.

• The Sound: 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack that perfectly renders Alexandre Desplat’s hypnotic, percussive score.

• The Supplements: * New documentary on the making of the film featuring behind-the-scenes footage and new interviews with Glazer and the cast.

  • New program on the film’s painterly cinematography with the original camera crew.

  • Archival 2004 interview with Glazer and Nicole Kidman.

  • An essay by author Olivia Laing.

GRITTY, GLAMOROUS, & GROUNDBREAKING

Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)

There is something profoundly “electric” about revisiting Héctor Babenco’s Kiss of the Spider Woman in 2026. It’s a landmark of queer cinema that feels more relevant than ever, standing as a visceral and vibrant exploration of how stories save our lives. Oozing with chemistry, William Hurt and Raul Julia dance between the bleak reality of a prison cell and the Technicolor daydreams of a forgotten cinema.

With the recent remake starring Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna, and Tonatiuh, which at times felt like too much of a diversion from the source material, returning to this version feels grounding. While the musical leans into the spectacle, Babenco’s film finds its power in the quiet, transformative intimacy between two men who have nothing left but their imaginations.

The Technicals:

• The Transfer: A brand-new 4K digital restoration presented in Dolby Vision HDR, making the “imagination” sequences pop with a surreal, saturated glow against the gritty prison realism.

• The Sound: 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. Plus, an alternate uncompressed monaural soundtrack for the purists.

• The Supplements:

  • Tangled Web: A feature-length 2008 documentary on the making of the film.

  • New interview with Suzanne Jill Levine, biographer of author Manuel Puig, regarding the adaptation.

  • A short program on the life and work of Manuel Puig.

  • An essay by the legendary critic B. Ruby Rich.

“Marty Supreme” is basically a comedy of errors, and series of unfortunate events, that pits would-be table tennis star Marty against his greatest enemy—failure. And for 149 glorious meteoric minutes, we want nothing more than for Marty to keep going. With a career-best performance by Timothée Chalamet, “Marty Supreme” is messy and maddening, but impossible to turn away from.

“Marty Supreme” is streaming on HBO Max.

After a series of setbacks that leaves a trail of black eyes, smashed cars, and orange ping pong balls, Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) is told by a potential way out, “there are no second chances in life.” To which he responds with an emphatic, “why not?” That’s the attitude in which Marty walks (or perhaps “trounces” is more suitable) through life. He talks a mile a minute, lies like his life depends on it (because sometimes it does) and makes decisions like consequences don’t exist. And for 149 glorious meteoric minutes, we want nothing more than for Marty to keep going. Even if we can’t decide if we want to cheer, cry or hit him upside the head, there’s something intoxicating about the New York playground writer-director Josh Safdie allows Marty to play in.

We get to see this version of 1950s post-World War II New York the way Marty sees it, full of opportunity, danger and people that simply don’t understand if you want something you just have to try harder. Chalamet, sporting wire-framed glasses, greasy hair and even greasier mustache, is devilishly charming as we watch him float through the city trying to shake down his uncle for cash to get to the table tennis championships in London (armed robbery is the solution, of course). When he gets there, we get to understand what drives him: greatness. He doesn’t even say he’s competing in a tournament, which assembles the best table tennis players in the world, he says he’s winning it. Like this is a reality in his mind. The same reality that drives him to rack up a bill in the thousands at the Ritz Carlton, even after he’s told that treatment is reserved for the star players (he is one, in his mind).

After watching him compete through several thrilling rounds of table tennis, which Safdie captures with sweat-dripping intensity, he makes it to the final against Japanese phenom Endo (Koto Kawaguchi. Despite his hard-hitting and running and diving, Marty is no match for Endo’s innovative technique. Marty is enraged, calling the win a sham and accusing him of cheating. There’s no way he lost (again, at least in his mind). It sets him on a course for revenge, if only he can gather the money to get to the next championship in Japan.

“Marty Supreme” is basically a comedy of errors, and series of unfortunate events, that pits Marty against his greatest enemy—failure. As he tears through the city weaponizing his signature charm to try to gather the money for his flight, we see the limits of his own self-deluded confidence. From the Lower East Side to Chelsea to Jersey, Marty leaves a messy path as he storms through. We meet a cast of characters along the way including acclaimed Marty’s old gambling buddy Wally (a hilarious Tyler Okonma aka Tyler, The Creator), his mischievous mistress Rachel (a fabulous Odessa A’zion), and silent movie actress Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow) whose husband Milton (Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank”  giving a surprisingly delightful performance) could hold the key to Marty’s success.

Like his previous movies “Good Time” and “Uncut Gems“, Safdie balances the dark comedy and devastating reality of male hubris to a dizzying effect that is not just hypnotic, but damn entertaining. Marty’s inability to get any part of his plan right is satisfying for an audience that knows exactly who this man is. A man who believes that he is owed success and will do anything to obtain it. Chalamet is so convincing as Marty that it feels like he truly believes his own lies as he switches effortlessly between a charm offensive, machismo, or straight-up violence to get what he wants. It’s masterful and sinfully entertaining. 

However, it is to an end. While “Marty Supreme” could have easily been just another entry in the dirtbag scammer movie, Safdie casts it against a world in flux where there’s nothing but opportunity whether for a Jewish girl from the Lower East Side or a Japanese table tennis player with his country on his shoulder. It is about dreams and who is allowed to chase them. It’s where those opposing forces of hoping Marty will stop ruining his own life and urging him to go on come from. While it is all fun and games (I mean, it’s literally ping pong), it’s also the stuff humanity is made of.

The movie may not be perfect. “Marty Supreme” is messy and maddening, but isn’t life?

"Wicked: For Good" is, much like Act 2 of the stage show, a mixed bag. It highlights the strongest aspects with raw and visceral musical numbers that underline the emotional struggles of the characters. At the same time, however, it emphasizes its weaknesses as it clunkily weaves “The Wizard of Oz” into the story. Still, and most importantly, the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda hits all the emotional notes that made Wicked such an enduring story. Cynthia Erivo continues to captivate on the screen, but it is Ariana Grande’s magnificent performance as an emotionally-torn Glinda that gives the movie the complexity and depth to become greater than the sum of its parts.

"Wicked: For Good" is now streaming on Peacock.

For better (good?) or worse, “Wicked: For Good” is exactly the movie you’re expecting. For fans of the stage show, it highlights its strongest aspects. The musical numbers have the same raw, visceral emotionality just blown up in scale while the characters’ complex journeys are even more deeply felt. With that, however, it emphasizes its notorious weaknesses. In particular, the way the plot twists to tie to “The Wizard of Oz” still feels clunky. Despite its failings, and most importantly, the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda hits all the emotional notes that’s made “Wicked” such an enduring classic. Perhaps even more so in the movie version.

Part one of the Wicked duology has the easier job. Not only is its tie to “The Wizard of Oz” tenuous, the archetypes of the characters are simple and familiar. Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) is the brainy outsider that rails against injustice and Glinda (Ariana Grande) is the self-absorded popular girl with an unexpected heart. “For Good” takes those archetypes, and throws them into a complex situation that mirrors the very real structures of oppression in our society. Structures that director Jon M. Chu emphasizes even more with propaganda against Elphaba flying through the streets of Oz and added scenes of prejudice that could be taken straight out of a Holocaust movie. Yeah, things get a little convoluted.

The story’s clear ties to the darkest instincts of society sometimes rub against the silliness of a world where munchkins co-exist with talking animals. It’s maybe even more stark with the additions to the plot by screenwriters Winnie Holzman (who penned the stage version) and Dana Fox. Among those additions is a new song sung by Elphaba called “There’s No Place Like Home” where she encourages the animals, who are forced into hiding, to fight for their homeland. Like many of the changes to the story, it feels gratuitous and out-of-place in an attempt to emphasize a theme that is already underlined in the source material. Unlike the changes to the first movie that felt in service to the characters’ journeys. Holzman should have trusted her original writing because what works most often in the movie is what is taken directly from the stage. 

The second act of Wicked has always felt like Glinda’s story as she struggles between two truths: that she enjoys the adoration brought to her by working with The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), and the fact that she knows that her friend is a good person. Ariana Grande’s magnificent performance underlines that paradox as she tries to hold on to her newfound power in Oz while protecting her friend. Part of that involves ignoring what is happening around her with the glimmer of hope that it’s not as bad as Elphaba says and that it is not too late to change course. But Grande never lets that hope come off as delusion. For a character as high off the ground as Glinda, she always feels grounded in something real.

As the story progresses and alliances shift or are revealed, the main trio of Elphaba, Glinda and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) circle each other with fiery passion fueled by their histories. Like in “As Long As Your Mine,” which feels even more like a showstopper in the movie. Bailey exchanges his character’s bravado for real bravery as he bares his genuine feelings for the first time. As the camera swirls around the couple, it feels like classic romantic movie magic. That is juxtaposed against “No Good Deed,” which burns with anger and pain as Elphaba, delivered with unrestrained ferocity by Erivo, faces her past and present failings in a desperate attempt to save what she loves. Chu finds the emotional core of each of these numbers and amplifies them to the cinematic proportions they deserve, even as his direction fails in other aspects.

The final act, torn directly from the stage version, finally reaches the levels of greatness set by the first movie. And that is because at its core “Wicked” is a story about two women that in finding compassion in their differences drive each other to be better people. Erivo and Grande seem to understand that as they sing the title number to each other. Somehow they fill the space between the characters with all the hopes, regrets and words unsaid between them. It is movie musical magic. Despite its flaws, the booming crescendo of the piece, which has the characters facing uncertain futures, is deeply felt. It leaves you missing them as the screen fades to black. It is the raw and plain power musical theater captured on film. 

Fans of the first movie will find the expansion of the boundaries of its world and the exploration of its characters' wounds in "Black Phone 2" engaging. Is that enough nightmare fuel to hypnotize anyone else? Perhaps not. 

"Black Phone 2" is streaming on Peacock.

There is a cacophony of influences you can see in Scott Derrickson’s "Black Phone 2", the follow-up to his surprise 2021 horror-thriller hit. The icy, snowstorm-plagued setting on the film harkens directly to Stanley Kubrick’s "The Shining" while the dream-world horror briefly explored in the first film is expanded to reference Freddy Krueger’s sleep-killing demonics in "A Nightmare on Elm Street". There are shades of various camp slashers like "Friday the 13th" and "Curtains" filtered through the lens of Stephen King’s visceral hauntings. And while all these references come together to create a film that is meaner, scarier and more effective than its predecessor, it also emphasizes the fact that it’s not as good as any of these stories.

Trading the quiet of suburbia for the eerie isolation of a winter sleepaway camp, "Black Phone 2" continues the story of siblings Finney (Mason Thames), the only survivor of serial killer The Grabber, and his clairvoyant sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw). This time, however, the nightmare becomes an actual nightmare as the now dead Grabber (Ethan Hawke) turns his murderous sights to Gwen’s dreams that take place in a sort of spirit plane where he now resides. If it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to you, take solace in the fact that the logic never fully adds up.

What is clear is how viscerally terrifying Gwen’s dreams are. Filmed in Super 16 film to create a moody dreamlike quality, the sequences feel like they give "Black Phone 2" a purpose. Haunted by both the souls of boys killed at the sleepaway camp and The Grabber himself, Gwen finds herself at war with the demon. However, those sequences lose their impact with time and the real world scares, mostly surrounding Finney and the eponymous black phone that saved him in the first movie, don’t give the same skin-crawling creeps.

"Black Phone 2" doesn’t ever lose you during its robust 114-minute runtime. But it never blows you away either, except perhaps a dream battle that blurs the line between nightmare and reality. It comes close when Derrickson fully commits to his 80s-tinged homage to horror movies past, but it never truly adds up to something that feels like it has reason to exist. 

If you liked the first movie, the expansion of the boundaries of its world and the exploration of its characters' wounds will be engaging. Is that enough nightmare fuel to hypnotize anyone else? Perhaps not. 

An NFL prospect who falls under the tutelage of an enigmatic star of the game who may have sinister intentions in Jordan Peele-produced “Him”

“Him” has a lot of potential, but mostly disappointment. Though it is teeming with ideas about sport, sacrifice, and legacy, they never become more than just that, ideas. Tyriq Withers, a genuine star-in-the-making, lights up the screen with every moment, but is ultimately let down by a weak screenplay and directorial vision.

“Him” is now streaming on Peacock.

Few things are more terrifying to me than American Football. Pushing the limits of the human body, the toxic levels of testosterone, and the thirst for literal blood, sweat, and tears draw a visceral reaction. It is a culture and industry ripe for a horror movie. Frequently, director Justin Tipping’s “Him” draws comparisons between the sport and the gladiators of ancient times. So much of the way the sport (and business of the sport) is played today is akin to the forced violence of the Colosseum, where men are coerced into a spectacle. When the movie is actively drawing those comparisons, it finds its footing both thematically and narratively. The horrors feel close to reality. However, the movie too frequently strays from those ideas in favor of shock.

Something that Jordan Peele, whose company Monkeypaw produced the movie, has perfected is using terror as a means to an end. Nothing feels gratuitous, and everything has a line back to his ideas. It’s something that “Him” lacks, specifically in its main characters. Cameron Cade (star-on-the-rise Tyriq Withers) has been tapped as the next best thing in football as he ends his college career and begins to weigh his prospects in the NFL. That is, until a devastating attack leaves him with a potential traumatic brain injury that threatens his campaign for greatness.

Not all is lost, however, when his agent (Jim Jeffries) reveals that football legend Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) has invited Cam to train at his sprawling, isolated private compound. Over five days, in the dark, bruatlist passageways, Cam is treated to the highest quality care and training with the hope of reaching the heights of White’s career. And for White, he hopes he leaves a lasting legacy. However, as with all things that seem too good to be true, they often are.

At first, Isaiah’s tutelage seems simply strict—no phones, no outside distractions, and no masturbation. However, very quickly, his instruction becomes increasingly devious as he strips Cam down—at times, literally—to his most animalistic tendencies. In one scene, perhaps the best of the film, Isaiah turns a passing drill into a game of survival. For each hesitation or dropped pass, Isaiah has a football shot into the face of a hapless free agent player desperate to get on his good side. It’s horrifying and forces Cam to be better, faster, and more than human.

However, moments like these feel few and far between as the horror begins to feel formulaic—terrifying training drill, calm tension-building recovery, jump scare to the next day. Wayans is menacing enough as a tormenter, but the screenplay doesn’t allow him to explore all the intricacies of Isaiah as a character. There’s an idea about success and sacrifice percolating in some scenes, but the movie never fully explores them. It is simply terror without meaning.

By the time “Him” reaches its endgame, which is admittedly thrilling and shows flashes of the premise’s potential, there’s a sense of coldness. Unlike the rousing ending of Peele’s “Get Out” that feels like the natural conclusion, the finale of “Him” doesn’t feel earned. Instead, it simply ends because it must. Isaiah’s wife Elsie (a devilishly entertaining Julia Fox) and trainer (Tim Heidecker) add some amount of satisfaction to the conclusion, but you find yourself with more questions rather than answers.

“Him” feels like the outline of a great film. It has the ideas to form into a compelling story about greatness and sacrifice and the aesthetics to derive real terror as you push the human body to its limit, but it never fully combines those things into something that feels complete. Each scene simply feels like it attaches to that last with the thinnest of threads, and the characters all the same. Tyriq Withers is a movie-star-in-the-making and very often when the movie works, it’s because of his performance. But it’s all wasted potential. It’s all greatness gone to waste.

Watch the Trailer for “Him”

"Hamnet" is devastating, but what makes it so powerful is that it is about the living—and what keeps us living. It’s our memories. It’s our art. It’s our stories. It’s our culture. They are why as we leave some behind we persist through grief. Through a vivid dreamlike vision, Chloe Zhao tackles the mysticism and lyricism of a family confronting loss with power and empthy. A cinematic masterpiece.

Hamnet is now streaming on Peacock.

“Hamnet” may be about a death, but what makes it so powerful is that it is about the living—and what keeps us living. In the face of a devastating loss, two parents have to find a way to go on. Writer-director Chloe Zhao, adapting Maggie O’Farrell’s novel of the same name, has an answer for them. It’s our memories. It’s our art. It’s our stories. It’s our culture. It is these pieces of our history and humanity that push us to persist through the pain of grief as we leave some behind. Not in spite of the loss, but in honor of it. To mourn is to remember. And to remember is to love. And “Hamnet” will be remembered as one of the best movies of the decade.

Adapting the novel was no easy task. While the story is simple, there’s a quiet mysticism and lyricism that ebbs and flows to create a tapestry of the family at its center. Not to mention, the Shakespeare of it all. It’s an atmosphere not easily captured on film. Zhao and cinematographer Łukasz Żal allow each frame to speak for the characters. They allow each image to carry all the interiority and emotionality of the characters. When William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal, "Aftersun") and Agnes (Jessie Buckley, "I'm Thinking of Ending Things") meet, it is like a force is driving them together. With few words and gentle touches, the magnitude of their connection is understood and will eventually drive them to marry.

There is a dreamlike quality to the early scenes of “Hamnet.” As we watch William and Agnes grow up out of their families—they both never quite fit in with them anyway—and into their own just the two of them, it’s like we’re watching a prophecy fulfilled in front of us. And in a way, Agnes, who we learn is rumored to be the daughter of a forest witch, has a certainty to her life through an ability to see a person’s true nature (and future) by holding a person’s hand between the thumb and index finger.

Zhao allows the story to unfold without urgency. Vivid visuals and crisp sound carry us through William and Agnes’s lives as they move into their own house, get married, and have children—Susanna and twins Judith and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). Warmth and joy are emanating from the screen, especially thanks to Buckley’s performance, which makes Agnes feel like a character with a past and future and Mescal who allows William’s interior genius to show on the surface. All is well until it isn’t.

Like its namesake play, “Hamnet” is a tragedy. However, because the movie takes its time building this family before our eyes, the death doesn’t simply feel like a piece of a story. It feels like a tragedy happening to us, like we are being robbed of our time with these people. Their loss is our loss. And like all grief, the rest plays in fits and starts as William disappears and Agnes performs the machinations of everyday life, filled with sadness, anger, and questioning. But that isn’t the story’s main focus.

Instead, it strives to give the family and us, the audience, catharsis. In its stunning final act, we watch the story of “Hamnet” transform into the tale we’ve known for centuries. Except now, we have its intention. We can see the grief, anger, and questioning that we watched this family suffer. But we can also see the joy and time that they lost being reclaimed and enshrined in a story that we’re still telling today. That is the magnificent part of “Hamnet” and what makes it a masterpiece. It is cinema as therapy. It holds up a mirror to the audience and asks, “to be or not to be.” And the answer is clear.

With every eerie creep and dread-soaked beat, Obsession feels like a classic we’ve been watching for years—less derivative than timeless. It’s unquestionably a horror classic in the making. (★★★★★)

Obsession is in theaters Friday.

“Be careful what you wish for” has been a cornerstone of storytelling for ages. From genies to witches to mysterious neon-green serums that birth younger versions of ourselves, we’ve seen countless victims of desire fall prey to wanting more without sacrifice. Often, that premise has paired neatly with body horror—think The Picture of Dorian Gray or, more recently, The Substance. Both turn desire into a weapon against us. Writer-director Curry Barker taps into that tradition for his debut feature Obsession, delivering a film steeped in familiar tropes yet stamped with a singular vision. Remarkably, with every eerie creep and dread-soaked beat, Obsession feels like a classic we’ve been watching for years—less derivative than timeless. It’s unquestionably a horror classic in the making.

The setup is simple: Bear (Michael Johnston), a quintessential nice guy with little game, pines for his childhood friend and co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). Despite warnings from his best friend Ian (Cooper Tomlinson), he plans to confess his feelings with a gift. At a crystal shop, he finds a red box straight out of a 1960s infomercial. The “One Wish Willow” promises its owner a single granted wish if they break the branch inside. When Bear chickens out after driving Nikki home, frustration gets the better of him. He wishes for Nikki to love him more than anything in the world—and breaks the branch. Instantly, Nikki appears on her porch, staring. She looks like Nikki, but instead of playful sarcasm, her voice drips with desperate affection. Bear is hooked.

Their whirlwind "romance" escalates fast. Nikki practically moves in overnight, smothering him with affection, buying gifts, and clinging to his every move. Friends, especially Sarah (Megan Lawless), are baffled—after all, she recalls Nikki told her she saw Bear as a little brother. Bear ignores the comments. He finally got what he wanted. But of course, you know how the story goes: be careful what you wish for.

The only red flag, if you will, is Nikki sometimes snaps into another persona—confused, screaming, as if her soul were in torment. She stares at Bear from the dark corners of his bedroom, hyperventilates at the slightest criticism, and, oh, may have cooked his cat into a sandwich. At least she leaves him a cute love note.

The brand of horror that Barker presents isn’t necessarily new, but he employs it brilliantly. Through shadow and light, Nikki becomes a specter (or demon) haunting Bear’s apartment, creating an atmosphere of constant dread. It’s like a haunted house and the ghost is your girlfriend. Her unnatural, unpredictable movements recall Japanese horror like The Grudge and Pulse, or possession films like The Exorcist, where the terror lies in losing control of your body. Subtle hints suggest what happened to the real Nikki, but Obsession wisely never explains everything, making the story all the more horrifying.

Johnston’s endearing performance has an easy charm that would’ve played perfectly in the romantic comedy. Alas, Obsession isn’t one. You feel for Bear. And you’re rooting for him. It makes the horror to come all the more tragic. As Bear finally admits that something may be wrong with Nikki, he starts to distance himself from her. She doesn’t take it well. As she turns from his dream girl to his worst nightmare, a path of blood and destruction follows that will have you glued to your seat and gripping the armrest.

Obsession feels like part of a new wave of horror. Alongside filmmakers like Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons) and the Philippou brothers (Talk to Me), Barker leaves “prestige horror” behind in favor of something meaner, darker, and more cynical—where the consequences are deserved, brutal, and terrifying in their simplicity: you wanted too much. It’s horror for the post-pandemic age, where nothing is scarier than our own choices. At the same time, it’s devilishly entertaining, laced with dark comedy and kinetic filmmaking that make it endlessly rewatchable. Obsession feels like the kind of classic horror you revisit every October—that you fall in love with every moment of. Guess you could say we're...

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