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.

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:

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.

“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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"Carolina Caroline" is a fiery blend of romance and crime that crackles with energy, driven by Samara Weaving and Kyle Gallner’s irresistible chemistry. Set against a ‘70s West Texas backdrop, the film turns small-time cons into a stylish, music-fueled crime spree that builds toward an inevitable crash. Director Adam Carter Rehmeier keeps the thrills high while asking whether the love is real or just another beautiful lie. Sexy, daring, and slyly subversive, it’s a crime romance worth taking for a ride.

"Carolina Caroline" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

"Let's rob the whole world." When titular Caroline mutters those words in the passenger seat of a hot-wired muscle car your heart skips a beat. It flutters from the romance of it. After all, she and her bank robbing beau Oliver fell in love over the fiery energy and adrenaline of committing a crime. But in the pit of your stomach you know that it can't last because you've seen this story told countless times. You know that this kind of love and passion needs to have its tragic end. Its those expectations that writer-director Adam Carter Rehmeier relies on. Robbery and romance are just a part great American tale at the end of the day.

Despite the familiar, "Carolina Caroline" constantly feels exciting. It's like being behind the wheel of a vintage sports car. The rumble and purr of the engine gets your adrenaline going because you know the second you hit the gas there's no slowing down. There's a charming rhythm to the way Caroline and Oliver banter from the moment they meet cute over a small-time con he pulls off in the gas station she works at. It's love at first fraud. Samara Weaving ("Ready or Not") and Kyle Gallner ("Strange Darling") ooze with charisma on screen. The 70s West Texas world of the film is built entirely on their backs. Their thick southern drawls, easy charm and instant chemistry immediately transport you.

Their steamy tryst culminates in a proposition. Oliver asks Caroline for 500 dates. An offer Caroline can't quickly refuse seeing as she's never been outside of West Texas. Oliver's easy cool, like a scruffy 70s James Dean, also isn't easily refused. Just like his marks for a swindle, he seems to know what Caroline wants before she does. Thus begins a country music-driven romp through a slice of Americana as Oliver teaches Caroline the art of the grift—pickpocketing, hot-wiring and smooth talking—with the same breezy confidence that made Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's Eleven" a modern classic.

However, petty theft has its limitations and Caroline and Oliver have a hunger for more just as their desire for each other grows. After all, justifying their actions by saying they're stealing back from the corporations stealing from them doesn't exactly work when they're robbing small town gas stations. So, donning a severe black bob, dark sunglasses and a set of killer outfits, they set their sights on something bigger—the banks. Caroline hatches a series of bank robberies across the South with Oliver as getaway driver. Their debaucherous and sexy crime spree is impossible to resist.

But the real brilliance of "Carolina Caroline" becomes obvious when it comes careening towards its inevitable conclusion. When you realize that you were the mark. Because if there's anything more American than robbery, it's lies. Just as Caroline and Oliver lie to themselves, and each other, they also convince us that this wasn't a romanticized dream and that one day they'd drive off into the sunset having done justice. There aren't any easy answers as to what is real and what is just a convincing lie they are telling themselves—or we are telling ourselves.

Rehmeimer isn't interested in guiding us to any sort of conclusions about the characters either. Their motivations are mostly kept close to their chests other than a scintillating one scene barn-burner performance from Kyra Sedgwick that pushes Caroline even further into her debauched decisions. Instead he convinces us of their love story and then asks the same questions Caroline asks herself, "are we good people doing bad things?" Instead of answering that question, "Carolina Caroline" asks us if the love was real or just another way to avoid reality. And what is more American than that?

Aneil Karia’s "Hamlet" fuses Shakespeare’s lyrical verse with Hindu culture and a majority South Asian cast, yielding a fresh, electric retelling. Riz Ahmed commands the screen, from a ferocious BMW-set soliloquy to a reimagined wedding sequence that spirals into chaos. Though shifting the story to corporate intrigue limits its scope and sidelines subplots, Karia’s visceral, emotive filmmaking and Ahmed’s powerhouse performance anchor the film. Not every reinvention lands, but its clarity of vision makes it undeniably compelling.

Hamlet is playing in theaters April 10.

Shakespeare’s rich, lyrical language delivered by a majority South Asian cast already breathes fresh energy into this modern retelling of "Hamlet", giving it a mesmerizing, electric charge. Yet it isn’t simply the infusion of Hindu culture that makes Aneil Karia’s adaptation so compelling. Its strength lies in his bold reimagining of the play’s most iconic moments, rendered with filmmaking that is visceral, muscular, and deeply emotive. These choices elevate both the performances, particularly Oscar winner Riz Ahmed ("Sound of Metal") in the title role, and, at times, the story itself, pushing them beyond their already formidable power.

A gripping reinvented wedding

It is best displayed when the movie reaches its peak in a stunning sequence where "The Murder of Gonzago" scene from the play is reimagined as a choreographed performance at Claudius (Art Malik) and Gertrude’s (Sheeba Chaddha giving a gripping performance) wedding. Hamlet transforms the festivities into an accusation, using the stage to expose what he believes is his uncle’s crime. The dancers begin with a joyous traditional Indian routine, vibrant and full of life. Then, at Hamlet’s direction, the celebration curdles. Movements grow jagged and violent as the performers tear and claw at the main dancer representing the king. The murder is pantomimed in escalating frenzy, while the lighting and editing spiral into chaos, building toward a breathless climax that leaves the wedding suffocated in silence.

Ahmed’s turn in the title role carries the same breathtaking force. Karia stages the “to be or not to be” soliloquy inside a speeding BMW, as Hamlet barrels through London’s midnight streets in a fit of road rage. Ahmed’s face grips the screen, taut with intensity, as he unfurls Shakespeare’s verse in a rhythm that lands with the precision of a freestyle rap. When Hamlet releases the wheel and lets the car drift into oncoming traffic, the monologue explodes into pure cinema: headlights slash across the frame, horns blare, and vehicles swerve in a symphony of chaos. Ahmed and Karia channel fury rather than melancholy, as the character is iconically known for, reframing Hamlet as a man consumed by rage.

A scaled down "Hamlet"

Not every reinvention strikes the same chord. Shifting the action from Denmark to the interal politics of a family-run conglomerate narrows the scope, trading Shakespeare’s sense of epic tragedy for corporate intrigue. The film hints at social commentary in its depiction of the company’s gentrification schemes, but these threads never fully develop, in part because so much dialogue is lifted wholesale from the play. The focus instead tightens on Hamlet’s grief, amplifying Ahmed’s towering performance but diminishing other arcs—his fractured bond with Ophelia (a luminous Morfydd Clark), or the political maneuverings of Polonius (an always terrific Timothy Spall) and his fiery son Laertes (a delightful Joe Alwyn). The result is a portrait of Hamlet that burns brilliantly at the center, even as the world around him flickers at the edges.

Some may argue that Karia never fully justifies why this version of Hamlet needs to exist. And to a degree, the film doesn’t wring every nuance from Shakespeare’s text. Yet the sheer force of weaving Hindu culture and South Asian performers into the fabric of those iconic lines feels like reason enough—even if this isn’t the brooding “sad boy” Hamlet audiences have come to expect. The vision remains clear and intentional, even when the storytelling falters. "To be or not to be"—Karia responds with a defiant answer: "I choose to be myself."

Sinners manages to be a folk horror, western drama, southern gothic, Blaxploitation thriller, quasi-musical and, oh yeah, a vampire movie exploring deeply rooted themes about our society while being one of the most devilishly entertaining movies of the year. With immersive world-building, a memorable cast of characters elevated by a stellar ensemble and musical numbers and action scenes that will take your breath away, writer-director Ryan Coogler may have just given us his magnum opus.

Sinners now streaming on HBO Max.

Although it takes place over a single day, Sinners is about centuries. It’s about the foundations of our culture, our country and our world. It’s about how the trauma of hate and division crosses time, boundaries and races like an illness that can destroy what we love—and how joy is the antidote. That’s a lot of thematic heft for a movie that is in equal parts a folk horror, western drama, Blaxploitation thriller, quasi-musical and, oh yeah, a vampire movie. The most impressive feat director-writer Ryan Coogler (Black Panther, Creed) achieves is finding a balance between genre and meaning—and one begets the other. And in the end, creating something completely singular. Perhaps his masterpiece.

It’s the Southern United States in the 1930s. Jim Crow era. Infamous twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan doing stellar work defining the twins’ separate personalities) return to their small hometown with a dream to fulfill: open the best juke joint in the county in a barn they recently bought from a maybe-Klan member. Hell, maybe even the state. Armed with a truck full of liquor and beer from their time in Chicago crossing (and double crossing) with the Irish and Italian mobs, they trek across the county to put the finishing touches on their new joint. Quite literally getting the band together.

They pick up their young cousin and blue guitar prodigy Sammie (Miles Caton) much to the chagrin of his pastor father who warns him of “temptations” that lurk. Smoke picks up lush but talented pianist Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) by bribing him with real Irish beer to play at their joint instead of his usual gig. Stack picks up his former lover Annie (Wunmi Mosaku)—she serves as a sort of general store for the community though her proclivities for the mystical come in handy—with whom he shares trauma with. He asks her to cater the opening. Chinese storeowners and couple Bo (Yao) and Grace (Li Jun Li) are tasked with making signage for the venue while their old pal Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) is asked to be bouncer.

The first act of the movie has the breezy coolness of Coogler’s other work—like he’s allowing the rhythm of composer Ludwig Göransson’s blues-inspired score to keep us moving. The world building, while a slow burn, is immersive and detailed in a way that is so enjoyable to explore. Like you can feel the dust-filled breeze and summer heat as the twins charm and strongarm their way across town gathering what they need for the opening. The movie could have lazed with these characters for hours and I would’ve been grateful. However, for as enjoyable as it is, it starts to lay the foundation for the southern gothic horror that is rooted in the very real horrors of a Jim Crow-era South.

By the time evening falls, it’s easy to forget that Sinners is a horror movie. Though Coogler maintains a dread-filled atmosphere, the movie is about Black joy, Asian joy and simply the joy of being sure and safe somewhere where your identity is accepted and understood. The successful launching of the juke joint in the barn itself feels momentous because in a short amount of time we’ve grown to know and love the characters. Whether it’s the easy banter between the twins, the warmth of Annie, the humorous drunken quips of Delta and Cornbread, or the seductive allure of Pearline (Jayme Lawson) and Mary (Hailee Steinfeld). It makes the turn to horror all the more entertaining (and heartbreaking)

When it does take the turn, it does so with a devilish grin courtesy of Jack O’Connell as the charming but menacing Remmick who has slowly recruited more people to join his group of undead townsfolk that really want to get in on the action of the party. With the same acute attention to detail and rhythm, Coogler masterfully guides the movie towards full-blown genre in a way that is irresistibly macabre.

However, the heart of Sinners—both figuratively and literally the middle of the movie—is a musical scene that sees eras and people and races and music blending together in the barn. It is an amalgamation of all that makes the movie great. Its eclectic score paired with its warm cinematography swirling around characters we’ve grown to love and will miss when they’re no longer on our screens dancing with nothing but love and joy in their hearts. Meanwhile, the weight of their collective histories and futures join them in the frame to create in a single image a thesis of Sinners. That through all the pain and hate we experience, it is for the love and joy we fight it with that we endure it.

Fire of Love is less a love story between Katia and Maurice Krafft—which is, yes, very much the primary theme of Sara Dosa’s 2022 documentary that chronicles their lives as intrepid adventurers and daredevil volcanologists—and no, the love story isn’t with the volcanoes they research, though they definitely do love them. Their obsession consumes their entire lives—both figuratively and literally—as (spoiler) their lives reach their end at the site of a volcanic eruption.

There’s a moment in the film, mostly composed of illustrations and the Kraffts’ own archival footage, that shows Katia and Maurice’s perfectly chosen red beanies adorning their sunburnt faces as they trek up the side of an active volcano, and I realized—this is a love story to us. They aren’t just volcanologists; they’re artists, perfectly aware of their image in spite of their insane human feats in the pursuit of scientific research. To be a scientist and an artist doesn’t necessarily have to be mutually exclusive—if anything, I think their mission was intricately aligned with what they wanted to express: a sheer love for this planet that most of us struggle to understand, and many have a hard time simply appreciating.

They dedicated their lives to getting as close as humanly possible to an unexplainable force, in an effort to capture its beauty and terror—for us, for you and me—so we begin to love this planet again, or for the first time. So we go beyond our comfort zones and explore a little further each day. So we push the boundaries of what we know about our beautiful world so that we can conserve it, learn from it, and care for it in our role as guardians.

With every perfectly composed shot in this documentary, underscored by Miranda July’s poetic narration, you feel the care they had for their field and for each other—using photos and film as a way to capture the magnificent things they experienced with the rest of the world. They shared a love of storytelling and a love of our shared humanity in the face of something beyond comprehension.

“Look at how small we humans are against this volcanic force. The only thing that will remain of our passage is that we can write, tell stories, and film,” Maurice says toward the end of the film, and he’s right. This footage is what remains of their life’s work and passion.

With every breathtaking, impossible shot—as the vibrant reds and oranges of the magma bleed through the frame, or the gray smoke distorts and envelops the landscape—there is love: in the supernatural scenes they are witnessing, in the sheer effort and bravery it took to document it all, in the companionship Katia and Maurice shared, side by side as they stood at the edge of the abyss. And then there is love for us—the unknown viewers and curious humans they hoped to connect with, to share the thing they loved more than anything else. Like a volcano erupts and changes everything in its wake, there is love in all that they created and all that they left behind.

The Gorge is a wild, genre-blending ride that somehow makes high-concept sci-fi, survival horror, and romance all work together. Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy bring irresistible chemistry to this "love story with sniper rifles," as two lonely souls bond over long-range messages while defending against terrifying, nature-infused zombies. Packed with thrilling action, heartfelt moments, and unexpected humor, it’s an offbeat but utterly charming adventure. If you’re up for something unique, take the leap.

The Gorge is now streaming on Apple TV+.

Yes, “The Gorge” is about a mysterious, gigantic crevasse guarded by multiple countries that, as one character puts it, “is the door to hell, and we’re standing at the gate.” And yet, it is one of the most romantic movies of the year. There isn’t an easy label to slap on director Scott Derrickson’s latest film, which is streaming on Apple TV+ starting (appropriately) on Valentine’s Day. It dips into high-concept science fiction, survival thriller, creature horror, and, yes, romance. Somehow, it never feels like it’s shortchanging any of those genres. It is basically a Hallmark romance… just with tree-like zombies that crawl out of a giant hole in the ground.

Sitting on either side of the steep canyon walls of the eponymous gorge—a giant gash in the Earth nestled in a snowy mountain range—are two watchtowers. In the west tower sits Levi (Miles Teller), a former U.S. Marine sniper suffering from PTSD and feeling all the lonelier because of it. In the east is Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy), a mysterious Lithuanian contract killer who finds herself at the gorge after the death of her father. Their predecessors lay out the rules for their one-year rotation: check in with command once a month, always watch the gorg and no contact with the other watchtower. Their job? To keep whatever is in the gorge inside the gorge.

However, after months, Drasa finally fires her gun to get Levi’s attention and holds up a sign that simply reads, “What is your name?” that he sees through the long-range scope mounted on the balcony. Levi, ever the rule-following Boy Scout, hesitates to break protocol, but Drasa ropes him in by revealing it’s her birthday. Their “meet-cute” conversation—which includes negging about dancing, a sniping contest, and a birthday toast from Levi—is as delightfully cheesy as if they had accidentally grabbed the same coffee order at a café. But the spell shatters when they finally see what they’ve been guarding against.

As wall-climbing zombies that look like humans merged with nature emerge from the shadows, the pair fight for their lives with sniper rifles, land mines, and giant mounted machine guns. You know, the romantic stuff. It’s also the kind of rip-roaring action-horror scene that’s impossible not to be engrossed by—especially when Drasa holds up a sign that says, “Best birthday ever,” finally getting Levi to chuckle. And so begins a Taylor Swift “You Belong With Me” romance, as the two communicate via their signs. It’s like any rom-com montage: they learn about each other’s lives, play chess, and comfort each other during the long, dark nights. The only difference? They’re doing it from opposite sides of a gorge, thousands of feet apart.

The romance between Levi and Drasa could have come off as corny if not for their specific circumstance. But that’s what makes “The Gorge” such a surprising delight. Its mishmash of genres and tones somehow breathes new life into each one. When Levi eventually makes a makeshift grappling-hook gun out of a rocket launcher to zipline to Drasa’s side—because if he wanted to, he would—he effortlessly lets slip, “I’ve been staring at the gorge every day for the last six months, and I’ve got to say, the view is much better over here.” Swoon. It helps, too, that Teller plays the romantic leading man so well. And it’s easy when you have someone as effortlessly charismatic as Taylor-Joy to play off of.

Eventually, “The Gorge” shifts into Lovecraftian action-horror, packed with fight sequences featuring nightmarish creatures straight out of “Annihilation” or “Kong: Skull Island”. It’s like watching the most exciting first-person shooter ever made. Zach Dean’s screenplay gives you just enough exposition to feel the stakes of the story without slowing the pace. It’s sparse, perhaps, but never less effective because of it. On paper, it shouldn’t work—and for some, it may very well not. It’s a delicate formula that, with the wrong balance, could have easily gone awry. However, if you allow yourself to be charmed by it, you’ll find yourself grinning from ear to ear at every new moment between Levi and Drasa—while the action gets your blood pumping. Take the leap.

Luca Guadagnino's “Queer” is a mesmerizing and haunting exploration of desire, loneliness, and the search for connection. Set in 1950s Mexico City, the film follows American expatriate Lee (Daniel Craig) as he navigates a complicated, obsessive relationship with young mysterious Eugene (Drew Starkey). Through stunning cinematography, an evocative score, and an engaging, surreal narrative, Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes deliver a thought-provoking, emotionally raw drama that speaks to queer longing, desire, and the transformative power of intimacy. Bold, challenging, and ultimately moving, Queer is not easily shaken.

Queer is streaming on HBO Max.

Anyone who claims to fully understand what William S. Burroughs is trying to tell us with his writing is either lying or on some really good drugs (and Burroughs was on lots and lots of drugs). Another filmmaker might have tried to smooth out the raw, jarring edges of Burroughs’s trademark sensibilities. But director Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me By Your Name”, Challengers) and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes (“Challengers”) lean wholeheartedly into his idiosyncratic style, transposing his unsettling blend of mesmerizing horror and reality into something deeply affecting. And somehow, it's also an aching romance about longing and desire. Amid the drug-addled maze of Burroughs’s thoughts, Guadagnino and Kuritzkes manage to find a thread that, once pulled, unravels into a beautiful, moving drama that is, at its core, deeply queer.

Set in 1950s Mexico City, the film follows a community of American expatriates, many of whom are queer men, living in a lively enclave of bars where gossip flows as freely as the alcohol. Among them is Lee (Daniel Craig), a man who drifts through the streets in search of something—or someone. Lee’s haggard, drunken appearance and his self-destructive bravado are a stark contrast to Craig’s more notable roles as James Bond and Benoit Blanc. His presence often unsettles those around him. One man who crosses his path later notes to a friend that Lee can never just be friends with someone, it always turns sexual.

Lee’s only friend, Joe (Jason Schwartzman), rambles about his various sexual exploits, most of which end in robbery, but Joe seems grateful for any company. Lee, on the other hand, is searching for something more meaningful. Though he’s clearly lonely, he seems incapable of breaking through his own emotional walls to form a real connection. Even after a one-night fling with a man at a bar (musician Omar Apollo in his film debut), Lee is left feeling empty. He even assumes that the man slept with him for money. It's that insecurity that keeps Lee from experiencing true intimacy. That is, until he spots Eugene Allerton (a sensational Drew Starkey) walking through the sultry streets. In stark contrast to Lee’s disheveled, unkempt appearance, Eugene is effortlessly cool—his tailored polo and well-fitting slacks clinging to his toned physique as passersby steal glances.

Guadagnino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom capture the sweaty heat and energy of Mexico City’s bustling nights, imbuing the scenes with such textural detail that you can practically feel the heat on your skin. Eugene, however, seems impervious to the heat, and to everything else. Lee becomes obsessed with discovering who he is, and after exchanging a few furtive glances, he finally approaches Eugene one drunken night. While their conversations aren’t especially titillating, the tension between them is palpable, as if we’re just waiting for the space between them to collapse. At times, we see Lee’s ghostly hand reach out to touch Eugene, as though he’s willing himself to do so but can’t. As Eugene speaks (or listens to others speak), we catch Lee staring at him as if he's trying to understand what's going on beneath the surface.

The first hour of the film moves at a pleasantly meandering pace as Lee and Eugene oscillate between getting closer and drifting apart—having sex and then completely ignoring each other. It’s as if they both want to turn away from their desires while simultaneously giving in to them. It feels all too relatable to the queer experience—even now. While this dynamic could easily slip into melodrama, Guadagnino maintains a frenetic, sweltering energy, much like the city itself. This is all underscored by a melancholic score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, with energetic needle drops ranging from Nirvana to Prince.

As the story moves into its second half, Lee invites Eugene on a journey through South America in search of a mystical herb called “yage”, which is said to give the consumer telepathic abilities. This is where the film becomes more jumbled, perhaps intentionally, as Lee’s opioid addiction comes to the forefront. While the push and pull between the two men continues, the narrative loses some of its initial focus. Lee’s obsession with the herb seems linked to his desire to understand Eugene, himself, and perhaps his own queerness, but the journey to find it lacks the bite and momentum of the earlier parts of the film. That is, until they finally find the herb.

In the surreal and entrancing third act, the two men encounter Dr. Cotter (Lesley Manville), a kind of mad scientist living in the Amazon who studies indigenous plants, hunts for her and her partner’s food, and apparently trains their guard snake. Here, Lee learns that “yage” is more commonly known as ayahuasca, and he eventually persuades Cotter to let him and Eugene take it. After falling into the drug’s grasp, the pair fall into a feverish, expressionistic dance that finally brings them together in a moment of understanding. As Burroughs’s own words from his journals echo in the scene—“I’m not queer, I’m disembodied”—it adds an additional layer of meaning to this powerful, otherworldly encounter.

At its heart, Queer is about queer loneliness, queer desire, and the queer desire to know we’re not alone. In the final scenes, Lee faces his own loneliness. To borrow a line from Guadagnino’s “Call Me By Your Name”: “Is it better to speak or to die?” In that film, the character chooses to speak. Here, Lee suffers a kind of death—a raw, emotional end that’s deeply impactful. It ultimately makes the film’s challenging journey worthwhile. “Queer” is a call for intimacy: to reach out, make yourself vulnerable, and let the space between you and others collapse. Because, in the end, where there may be rejection, there may also be acceptance.

“Strange Darling” is frenetic maximalist romp that murders your expectations at every turn. With its saturated cinematography bringing a mad technicolor world to life and crisp near-deafening sound underlined by Craig DeLeon‘s discordant bass guitar score rattling, it feels like you’re on the fury road—and you might as well be. A pitch-black devilishly entertaining homage to 70s exploitation thrillers that will have you begging for more.

Strange Darling is streaming on Paramount+. Also available to buy or rent.

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.

While the opening credits roll, our protagonist simply known as The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald) runs across a field. Her blond hair is flattened by sweat, a bloody bandage covers her ear and she looks like she's seen the devil himself. That's apt considering her pursuer is billed as The Devil (Kyle Gallner). Chapter 3 starts with a title card that tells us that the movie is a dramatization of the final string of murders of an infamous serial killer stalking rural America. Every detail of Strange Darling down to the film grain evokes a 70s exploitation thriller—think Quentin Tarantino's own homages like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction—complete with all its glorious bloody violence and action. It isn't until we see a vape and cell phone that we feel like it's within our timeline.

Gallner's silent, motivated and precise characterization gives his character a mystical patina. Not unlike the iconic supernatural inhuman slasher villains of the time period—Michael Myers, eat your heart out. On the other end of his silver shotgun is Fitzgerald's classic-in-the-making scream queen performance that has you genuinely terrified for her. The cat-and-mouse sequence that lasts just ten minutes, but feels like a lifetime, has everything from a car chase and crash, game of hide-and-seek in the woods and a horrifying wound sterilization. The tension is nearly unbearable.

That carries into chapter five that brings the chase into a mountain house before smashing back to chapter one. With each subsequent chapter, Toller gives you just enough information to change the field of play—because at its core Strange Darling is about two people at play with each other even if it is a sadistic game. To talk about Strange Darling without ruining its devilish entertaining magic would be a fool's errand. But know, that nothing is as it seems—even the movie. With shades of an erotic thriller, slasher, crime caper and even satirical comedy, there truly isn't a way to pin it down other than watching it.

Strange Darling is streaming on Paramount+. Also available to buy or rent.