Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Writer: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Stars: Wagner Moura, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Gabriel Leone

Synopsis: In 1977, a technology expert flees from a mysterious past and returns to his hometown of Recife in search of peace. He soon realizes that the city is far from being the refuge he seeks.

There may come a point in the first act of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, celebrating its New York premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival, where the viewer will question what is going on. It’s honestly quite the confounding experience. Going into this film knowing nothing might lead one to believe it will be 160 minutes of Marcelo (Wagner Moura) meandering through the streets of Recife. In many ways, that’s exactly what the film is. But with an undeniably cinematic verve, Mendonça Filho crafts one of the most flat-out exciting filmgoing experiences of the year. The Secret Agent is full of countless quirks throughout its runtime. But these distinct traits slowly reveal themselves to be integral features of the film. It’s indicative of the immaculately stylized and boldly confident film Mendonça Filho has pulled together. The multitides within The Secret Agent represent such exciting possibilities for everything that cinema can contain. This is a film wrought with tragedy and evil, yet at its core, one could argue that it presents countless reasons why life can be seen as beautiful and worth fighting for despite the existence of such forces trying to snuff out joy and beauty.

We first meet Marcelo as he’s pulling into a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Mendonça Filho drops a context card letting the viewer know the film takes place in Brazil, 1977, or as its also put, “a period of great mischief.” We come to fully grasp what the filmmaker means within the context of the story, but it’s also quite an apt description for a film so playfully constructed. Despite the immediately off-putting and tragic situation Marcelo finds himself in, there’s a freeform element immediately present from the opening scene of The Secret Agent. There’s a spontaneous quality to Mendonça Filho’s direction that keeps us, as viewers, consistently on our toes. We are never fully aware of the exact path Mendonça Filho is planning to take his audience down. This makes for an inherent excitement baked into the foundation of the film. Admittedly, there may be a fair amount of time necessary for the film to find its footing because of these stylistic sensibilities. But in retrospect, Mendonça Filho’s commitment to such varied tones and styles is both deeply commendable and wildly exciting. It perfectly paves the way for what The Secret Agent is hoping to achieve by the time its credits begin rolling.

As Marcelo makes his way towards the northern city of Recife, he can’t help but chuckle at the various catchphrases he notices on passing vehicles. His eye wanders while driving, and it’s here that the wondrous editing (from Matheus Farias and Eduardo Serrano) of The Secret Agent first begins to rear its head. There’s a kineticism to the edit of this film which feels as if it’s placing the viewer within Marcelo’s actively working thought process. As he sees a reminder of something from the past, it flashes back into the frame with an often startling jolt. Nightmare sequences take on a heavy weight to them. Moura is incredible in moments such as these, working in tandem with a post-production process which makes for a more enriching and three-dimensional character all around. His eyes can be read with such distinct clarity, whether they need to convey a haunted look or an adoring gaze. It’s one of the many reasons Moura will hopefully be in the awards conversation for Best Actor. But this editing, and Moura’s interplay with it, also allow for the other half of The Secret Agent to shine brightly. So much of this film is wrestling with the notion that evil not only exists, but isn’t worried about shying away from the light. Yet Mendonça Filho still captures such beauty in between the moments of tension and evil. Marcelo is retelling a story at one point, and the dynamic edit makes it feel as if he is actively recalling the proper order of events in real time. This proves the runway for a line reading so tenderly delivered by Carlos Francisco which perfectly sums up the balance Mendonça Filho keeps illustrating through all the script decisions he is making in this film: there’s an unflinching focus on the moments in life we must cherish.

Upon arriving in Recife, Marcelo is taken around his temporary lodging while being introduced to various neighbors. It’s such an extended sequence, and is only the first of many. Mendonça Filho clearly has no worries about runtime and the film is all the better for it. This embrace of slowing everything way down and allowing the period elements and these characters to speak for themselves is part of the beauty pouring off the screen. It creates a real sense of community within this apartment complex; in turn, this not only highlights the stakes of the film, but shines a light on the real-world implications of what a military dictatorship so cruelly wanted to remove from history. It makes each moment of character-building integral to the emotional core of The Secret Agent. The villainous forces of this film are all portrayed as disrespectful, disgusting, and unashamed of their depravities. Shapeshifting for the sake of appearing normal is clearly a posturing act. There is so much dehumanizing in this film at the hands of those benefitting from dictatorship. Mendonça Filho rarely shies away from the cruelties doled out. But by that same token, he also fills this film with an undeniable humanity amongst his cast of characters. It serves as a reminder to protect what we still have. Perhaps that’s what matters most.

It’s this sort of delicate tonal balance which displays a willingness to look evil in the eyes and live fully in spite of its existence. As Dona Sebastiana (a wonderful Tânia Maria) outright states in the film, “Life has bad things but also good things!” It’s a perfect distillation as to why Mendonça Filho spends so much of this film focusing on the minute human experiences which can become forgotten or overlooked when looking back through history. We tend to see history through the largest contextual scope. But it’s in the images and stories and lives that exist in between the lines of large moments in history that matter just as much. The Secret Agent implores its audience to recognize the essential nature of honoring and remembering parts of the past we may not even be aware of. History is constantly being written, and it’s important to not let it unfold in a way that removes the countless individual voices that filled a time before our own. And what’s so ridiculously impressive about The Secret Agent is simply how much movie there is to be found in it. Yet for all its cinematic vigor, shifting from drama to B-movie slasher to pulsing thriller with little warning, The Secret Agent never allows a voice or a character to fall to the wayside. Each one matters to Mendonça Filho, and it’s as touching as it is cinematically fulfilling.

The Secret Agent is celebrating its New York premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival as part of the Main Slate section.

Grade: B+

Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Writer: Yeon Sang-ho
Stars: Kwon Hae-hyo, Shin Hyeon-bin, Shin Hyun-been

Synopsis: A man investigates the truth behind his long-lost mother’s death.

A few months after Yeon Sang-ho released his best-ever movie, Revelations, it’s only natural that he follows it up with his worst-ever movie. Why natural, you say? Well, to put it simply: an auteur has to miss eventually to reveal, like us, their most human nature. Rian Johnson delivered his first miss – in the form of a contractual obligation – at TIFF with Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, and now Sang-ho gives us The Ugly, an investigative thriller that is, as the title suggests, ugly in form and spirit.

Ugly not in its subject matter, although it treats many difficult themes in the time periods it depicts within South Korea, but in the manner in which they’re treated. This is a deeply distasteful, contemptuous piece of work that barely contains anything of note in a cyclical story that never justifies its framing device, if only to build up to a reveal that most will already see coming by the time all the pieces are laid out in the movie’s first ten minutes. Instead of smartly subverting expectations, as he has done so many times in his career, or bathing in genre pleasures like Revelations, Psychokinesis, or his most well-known and acclaimed work, Train to Busan, Sang-ho stays in minimalist platitudes that make his follow-up to the most outstanding and aesthetically exciting movie of his career devoid of any genuine interest. 

The movie immediately grabs our attention with a crash-zoom on a stamp, the only aesthetic flourish we’ll see from a staunch formalist who decides to focus all his attention on characters and dialogue instead of showcasing his most treasured hallmarks. That said, this feels like a refreshing change of pace for Sang-ho, who, after Train to Busan, has expanded his aesthetic sensibilities and given us many psychologically twisted and profoundly nihilistic works, both in film and television (notably, all of his collaborations with Netflix). On paper, stripping a film down to its primal elements and crafting a chamber piece where the truth slowly unfolds through “interviews” that essentially act as interrogations regarding the protagonist’s mother, feels compelling. However, unlike one of his previous misfires, JUNG_E, which held our attention with staggering visual effects and a dreamlike sense of aesthetics worthy of The Wachowskis’ most cerebral pictures, The Ugly never justifies this minimalist framing device, nor its “interviews,” in which the movie is broken into.

The interviews themselves aren’t bad and progressively provide the audience with enough information to understand precisely what happened to Lim’s mother, Jung Young-hee (Shin Hyun-been), who, we learn, was consistently objectified and demeaned due to her appearance (hence the title of the film). The problem lies in how this information is treated, and then repeated through extended flashbacks that attempt to posit the movie as a groundbreaking denunciation of the absurd body standards women had to face in South Korea in the past, but end up being profoundly ill-conceived in its depiction of heavy-handed material, such as objectification, and eventually, assault. 

In those segments, The Ugly feels more like torture porn than a drama that wants to uncover the secrets that caused the death of Lim’s mother, who sadly lived a life of misery until the very end. Astute audience members know exactly how a story like this will end, no matter the multiple twists and turns Sang-ho throws at us. As much as it tries to destabilize and overthrow all pre-conceived storytelling norms, anyone who pays attention knows precisely how the filmmaker will wrap it up. It’s almost laughable that he thinks such a reveal will repurpose the movie and blow audiences away. Anyone who pays a modicum of attention to the film quickly realizes that the bulk of The Ugly’s story is not about Lim trying to obtain more information about his mother, but actively tracking the sole photo that proves her existence. 

At the time, there were no photos of her mother, because she allegedly “looked like a monster,” and the only one she took was in her job recruitment file to ensure she was who she said she was. Without me saying anything else, and the title priming you to think one way, what do you think is in the picture? Yeah, it’s exactly what you think. There’s no mystery,  suspense, or thrills to be had in a drama that takes itself far more seriously than other bleak Sang-ho projects, which almost always have points of dark humor inside their dark stories to alleviate the tension slightly. Moreover, Sang-ho always had fun with how he would shoot multiple sequences and found different ways to blow us away, visualizing some of his most ambitious stories. 

Sang-ho wanted to experiment with making a low-budget film, which is commendable. It can usually examine the director at his most open and vulnerable. No flashy aesthetics will distract him. All he can do is shoot his actors with only the camera acting as the artifice between the audience and the film’s diegesis. However, a low budget doesn’t mean “no creativity,” and this dour affair is so devoid of anything that made him a household name within South Korean cinema and genre aficionados as a whole that it feels relatively weightless. The characters aren’t interesting, the film is lethargically paced, and it offers nothing visually to set it apart. Worse yet, the staging of sequences involving extreme abuse is repugnant. Of course, feeling uncomfortable and disturbed at the sight of these sections is the point. However, there is a difference between trying to raise awareness of a real and urgent issue and exploitation, which The Ugly falls into the latter. 

It is a profoundly unpleasant movie that has no idea what it wants to say about the treatment of women in South Korea, other than shocking audiences with a bevy of disturbing sequences, both physical and psychological. And the twist, which should theoretically surprise you, doesn’t shock, nor make us realize exactly what went down the way the filmmaker hoped. The movie, however, does deliver on its title, but not in its intended effect. The Ugly possesses ugly intentions, and the resulting 102 minutes that follow are some of the most ill-advised cinema of the year.

Grade: D+

Director: Ronan Day-Lewis
Writers: Daniel Day-Lewis, Ronan Day-Lewis
Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Bean, Samuel Bottomley

Synopsis: In Northern England, a man heads out on a journey into the woods to reconnect with the estranged hermit brother with whom he shared a complicated past that was altered by life-changing events decades ago.

When screen legend Daniel Day-Lewis wasn’t going viral on Film Twitter for getting immaculate workwear fits off, many wondered whether or not he would ever grace the big screen again with his presence. One of the greatest to ever do it, with 3 Best Actor Oscars under his belt, Day-Lewis has earned enough acclaim for several lifetimes over. So upon the announcement of Anemone, cinephiles everywhere burst out with excitement at the return of the king. But could anybody be blamed for accepting the news with a tinge of curiosity as well? Excluding Anemone, Day-Lewis has turned in six performances this century: four of which were at the hands of some of the greats; Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Paul Thomas Anderson twice. For co-writer/debut feature director Ronan Day-Lewis, that company surely must have felt incredibly daunting. Anemone is additionally celebrating its world premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival. This is all to say that the weight of Anemone had proven itself quite lofty before ever screening for audiences. And the result of this feature debut is a story riddled with emotion, and indicative of a sweet creative partnership between father and son. For all that baggage it carried, Anemone remains pared-back and seemingly free of its contextual weight. It’s quite telling as to how both Day-Lewis men seem to consider the essential nature of small-scale stories.

The actual story of Anemone may be fairly surface-level; but the way the film goes about portraying this story links itself to the emotional depths it hopes to have mined by the time the credits roll. Many of the most emotional sequences are operating in a capacity that sees emotional outbursts and resonance captured as larger-than-life. It’s a film which can often entrance or leave its viewer mesmerized. Take, for example, the opening sequence of the film. The camera slowly pans across the drawings of a child. As the music builds louder and louder, the crayon images become more disturbing and intriguing. We then see Jem (Sean Bean) sadly informing his son, Brian (Samuel Bottomley), that he must take an unexpected trip. There’s little warning of his sudden departure, and even less explanation as to why Brian is so distraught. And after an isolating road trip through Northern England via motorcycle, Jem finds himself on foot and all but vanishes amongst the thick greenery of a beautifully captured woodscape. There’s little to no dialogue throughout the first act, and we’ve only caught flashes of Ray (Day-Lewis) thus far, with the film opting to hold back its biggest hand for as long as possible. Anemone revels in this sort of evocative, drip-fed storytelling. By the time we see Ray in side-profile, still having not said a word and fully shying away from the camera, a radiant light shines into the secluded cabin he appears to be living in, heralding the on-screen return of the legend himself.

Yet this blinding light is also one that speaks to the subtextual elements present in the film. In some ways based on body language, it’s as if Ray is being taunted by the shining beauty. Despite being devoid of any context whatsoever, Ray has clearly been in these woods long enough to form a routine. It’s also been long enough for him that, upon hearing the slightest hint of company, he grabs an axe and prepares to strike without hesitation. Before we know it, Jem and Ray are face-to-face, making way for a reunion devoid of emotion, perhaps with the exception of bewilderment at the other’s presence. Jem’s arrival at Ray’s cabin signifies a shift in Anemone. Whereas the first act borders on a silent mystery, the second act shifts into a chamber-piece drama with comedic elements. Its dry humor is exemplified in the deeply uncomfortable sibling sleepover occurring. Ray has space for one: there’s no extra bed, no extra table setting, nor even an extra seat. Despite that, Ray extends a quiet kindness to Jem that comes across as rather touching. It also raises so many additional questions about what could have possibly happened between the two. There’s the obviously massive elephant in the room as to why Ray is in a seemingly self-imposed exile where he finds himself actively haunted at night. It’s in these sequences, where Ronan tinkers with some genre elements and more fantastical imagery, that Anemone extends itself beyond its grounded narrative. This is a film rooted in realism, but that doesn’t mean it can’t toy with depicting ideas through dream-like visuals. It’s in choices like these that find evoking emotion more important than highlighting literal reality. These moments arguably allow the most emotionally bare sequences to work so effectively in the film’s favor. 

Two pivotal moments surrounding emotional breakthroughs come in the form of elite Daniel Day-Lewis monologues. The first of two is almost maddening in how well it works; to reveal its substance would feel criminal. But the fact that Day-Lewis can take its ridiculousness and instantly morph it into something which acutely conveys Ray’s barely-contained pain and simmering rage is nothing short of brilliant. There’s simply nobody else who has it figured out quite like Daniel Day-Lewis has. It’s so easy to get lost in Ray’s eyes, in which Ronan sometimes captures literal fire within. But of course, there’s the flip side to everything and everyone. It’s something highlighted in the second monologue Day-Lewis delivers as Ray. Much like an earlier juxtaposed smash-cut from beautiful, frigid ocean waves to that of an all-consuming, blazing hot fire, wildly opposing emotions can be equally conveyed with a mesmerizing quality by Daniel. The duality of man is present throughout Ray’s expressions of pain. Having kept it all in for so long, how he unravels his character from within is deeply heartbreaking. The dual relationships between pain and sadness and anger and loneliness is what fuels so much of both this performance and this film. It’s no surprise Anemone is operating at its very peak when Daniel Day-Lewis is allowed to do what he does best. But that’s not to say Ronan takes the easy way out with his film by relying on his powerhouse father.

On the contrary, there’s a handful of elements which stand out in Anemone that speak to a potentially exciting career from Ronan. First and foremost, directing Bean against Day-Lewis is a wondrous thing to see play out. It is a deeply quiet performance, but works very well against the brashness of Daniel’s Ray. Jem silently absorbs everything occurring around him, and you can see him actively reckoning with accepting his brother for who he has become in the years which have passed since last seeing him. Despite its scale, Anemone is a film which understands the vast burden emotional weight can place onto an individual. For the family at the center of this film, there’s much more at stake than the story as it reads plainly on paper. This is shown by Ronan through the more fantastical elements of the script. Anemone has no problem allowing itself some rather bold liberties in the face of its grounded reality. It makes viewing the film that much more compelling, allowing us to imbue our own ideas onto its often beautiful, ethereal imagery and strange occurrences. Anemone may be indicative of a filmmaker actively finding his footing, but the bold liberties it takes in telling such a grounded story speaks to the possibility of another exciting Day-Lewis family member entering the world of cinema.

Anemone is celebrating its world premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival as part of the Spotlight section.

Grade: C+

Director: Kelly Reichardt
Writer: Kelly Reichardt
Stars: Josh O’Connor, Sterling Thompson, Alana Haim

Synopsis: In 1970, Mooney and two cohorts wander into a museum in broad daylight and steal four paintings. When holding onto the art proves more difficult than stealing them, Mooney is relegated to a life on the run.

Kelly Reichardt often tells stories about outsiders—people at different points in time and across various states in America—who live on the fringes of society. The characters she writes are lonely, facing emotional and psychological hardships that hinder their lives from further displacement. As the world moves around them, they remain adrift, disconnected from reality. In most cases, it isn’t their fault. The injustices of the world around them construct their circumstances. Reichardt finds a way for the viewer to understand and dissect the characters and their respective situations through her usual quiet observation and breathing spaces–allowing room for empathy and compassion during their struggles. Her last two features, First Cow and Showing Up, feature outsiders in an artistic and commercial context, with Reichardt also exploring the value of the creative process and those who shape the person you are.

The Mastermind (screening at the 2025 New York Film Festival in the Main Slate) is another entry into that dissection of art and life intertwined, yet without the sympathetic note that accompanied the aforementioned. It is colder and with a character that is hard to root for, as Josh O’Connor’s James Blaine, or J.B., is a schemy and selfish fellow. But his worries and anguish, alongside the root cause of his egocentrism, strike a chord with the viewer. This is her version of a heist picture, rid of flash–but with a jazzy score by Rob Mazurek–and less talky, although tricky and with moments of tension. Amidst this “slight” change of genre, Reichardt remains her contemplative and acute self with many notions about the feeling of unfulfillment in life and the hunger for change in a crumbling society post-Vietnam war. 

James Blaine is a father of two sons (Sterling and Jasper Thompson) and husband to Terri (Alana Haim, finally in a film after her excellent turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza). In their family gatherings and outings, Blaine wanders about without aim, while the rest of them enjoy their time together. He’s quite a mysterious person, who thinks plenty but does not express his mind as often as he could. O’Connor is no stranger to playing characters who are adrift, seen primarily in Alice Rohrwacher’s excellent La Chimera. The difference between his character there and in Reichardt’s film is that in the former, he has a goal in mind, a person he seeks out to reach any means possible. Meanwhile, in the latter, there is little vision. 

Blaine does not know where he’s headed and is not bothered by it at all. This aligns with Reichardt’s array of lonely souls traversing America’s outskirts, yet Blaine has a look in his eyes that expels an internal wounding that doesn’t seem to heal. In one outing to the Framingham Museum of Art, Blaine steps away from his family for a while, and something drives him to steal an ancient totem from an installation and place it in his glasses case. The petty thief does not stop there. When he notices that it was too easy, and security wasn’t tight, he hatches a plan to steal a couple of paintings by Arthur Dove, with a team forged by loaned money from his mother (Hope Davis). 

Reichardt gives you some of the heist movie sensibilities during the first section of The Mastermind, not to get it out of the way, but because it isn’t her focus or goal to delve into these conventions in any regard. She wants to explore more about what happens after these events, the mental states and consequences that occur once the deed is done. Blaine sacrifices everything–his livelihood, loving family, and freedom–for his selfish, vague reasons that he can’t seem to come up with an answer for. The few people in his life often ask him about why he did what he did, some more sympathetic than others. However, Blaine does not offer insight; it remains internal. 

O’Connor bolsters that internal struggle to give the goalless character he portrays some life, even in the moments where it seems that he is a completely lost soul. That is Reichardt’s trademark in her characters: lonely souls scavenging the world for meaning and connection. However, Blaine differs from the rest because he isn’t given a resolution, or at least the one the audience expects. Blaine believes he is meant for greater things, but he feels stuck in an endless cycle of something impeding his progress, which is one reason for his behavior. It does not justify him, but desolation has stripped away the love and joy he once knew–the years that precede the events of The Mastermind. The early 1970s saw a social upheaval, marked by disillusionment and trauma for many Americans. 

Distrust in the government created even greater helplessness, making it difficult to adjust to this new world and succumbing to collective sorrow. That is where Blaine’s mental state lies, right in the middle of it all, feeling the weight of that piercing feebleness economically and psychologically. In a single glance, you see Blaine’s shallow vessel of a soul; there is no drive, no desires in the man’s heart. Even when you see him interacting with people, you can’t seem to sense Blaine, almost as if he were turning into a shadow of his own self. And in today’s society, with everything seemingly going downhill one year after the next, you recognize that person–man, woman, parent, teacher, student, etc.–all wondering what is next and if it will get worse for all of us. 

This drives them to self-interested propositions and inquiries, where ideals must serve one’s own interests; if not, they can be compromised. It is tragic; Blaine is one of the most sorrowful characters that Reichardt has ever created. You don’t want to be near Blaine and his selfishness, yet you feel that you have seen that person before. Reichardt does not offer him clarity, but instead leaves us with the haunting reminder that his emptiness is not unique. It is a reflection of a broader despair that continues to echo in our own time. The Mastermind begins as a distinct take on the heist picture, and evolves into an exploration of a collective mentality from the past that makes its way into the present.

Grade: A-

Director: Hong Sang-soo
Writer: Hong Sang-soo
Stars: Kwon Hae-hyo, Park Mi-so, Ha Seong-guk

Synopsis: A young poet drops his girlfriend off at her parents’ house and is amazed by its size. He bumps into her father, meets her mother and sister, and they all end up spending a long day together; fueled by conversation, food and libations.

Hong Sang-soo, one of the hardest-working directors today, has spent the past decade delivering one film after another–sometimes even presenting two pictures at festivals in the same year–without the quality diminishing in the slightest. How does he do it? I’m not sure, but I am glad that he continues to bring us these gems year after year. Look at his work from afar. You might think that his storytelling method is minimalist and straightforward, relying on many scenes where characters converse in cafes, apartments, restaurants, or bars. However, upon closer examination, you see all the details and intricacies that Sang-soo incorporates into his stories and characters, resulting in rich experiments that depict domestic life in South Korea from various angles. Each time around, there’s something different lingering in his stylistic approach. 

In a way, he is this generation’s Eric Rohmer, a director who ventures into realism through the mundanity of life and a series of conveniences, yet with beautiful and truthful touches in the dialogue, which makes the stories have their magical spark. Much like Rohmer, Sang-soo is thematically consistent and has a set storytelling structure, yet remains non-repetitive. As the years have gone by, Sang-soo’s work has become more personal, implementing real-life happenings into his stories: an actress and a film director meeting by chance in The Novelist’s Film, the reflection of what it means to create art in By the Stream, or the blurry lens of In Water, meant to reflect the South Korean director’s slowly declining vision. His most recent work, What Does That Nature Say to You (screening at the 2025 New York Film Festival in the Main Slate), is no departure from his late-career self-reflection and autobiographical storytelling. 

What Does That Nature Say to You is about acceptance, with a comedic tone in some moments and tense in others, from the discomfort of Sang-soo’s blunt honesty. The tonal balance might take you off guard at first, but Sang-soo smooths it out nicely to create a touching examination of the family dynamic. We follow a young couple, Ha Dong-hwa (Ha Seong-guk) and Kim Jun-hee (Kang So-yi), who have been dating for a couple of months and live a simple life. Even though they have been together for quite a while, Dong-hwa has never met Jun-hee’s parents. The story begins on the day of his first encounter, where Dong-hwa converses with and later confronts her family. The first family member he meets is her father, Kim O-ryeong (Kwon Hae-hyo), whom he unexpectedly encounters while driving Jun-hee back home. 

Kim invites Dong-hwa to dinner, which he accepts, albeit with a hint of reluctance in his tone. This begins a series of scenarios that will force Dong-hwa to face up to the secrets behind his wealthy family, ideals, and life decisions. As Dong-hwa meets the rest of Jun-hee’s family, her mother Choi Sun-hee (Cho Sun-hee) and sister Kim Neung-hee (Park Mi-so), between cigarettes and drinks, Hong Sang-soo’s usual conversation starters, things shift from smooth sailing to contentious, awry waters, with a bottle of bourbon being the catalyst for the mood changes at dinner. The conversations that arise are intended for Jun-hee’s family to learn more about Dong-hwa. Mostly, it comes across as scrutiny and judgment. This gives way to tension with each word spoken, with light touches of comedy interspersed here and there. Sang–soo’s expertise in balancing seriousness with occasional breeziness shines through.

As the drinks flow, it becomes clear that Dong-hwa’s comfortable life is less idyllic than he first claimed. Some of his expressions contain a hint of fallacy, amounting to small white lies that subtly alter how others perceive him. The slightness of Sang-soo’s previous pictures dwindles upon the confrontations by Jun-hee’s family, which are, as it goes, for the means of finding an identity for Dong-hwa. Is it the one he wants or the one that Jun-hee’s family envisions for him? Not only is his mental state explored in these talks about famous fathers, art, and poetry (with a recital of one of Dong-hwa’s many unpublished works), ways of life, and acceptance of a person’s decisions, but the rest of the family has themselves tied up in this tricky web rooted in dialogue and understanding, or the lack thereof. 

They put their own perspective on his situation and lifestyle, responding first with skepticism and later sympathy, with a closing segment that is superbly crafted and carefully observed. It becomes clear that these characters are all, in some way, inspired by Sang-soo’s own experiences–the talk circles around a singular topic for a long time, like a recurring memory the director can’t shake. On a personal level, What Does That Nature Say to You also employs the low-res, blurry lens that In Water contained. While the 2023 film utilized it to depict the world as Sang-soo sees it, this latest one has the South Korean director showing you how he sees the character of Dong-hwa, an adrift soul whose ignorance and creativity take him through the woes of adulthood. The hazy aesthetic only mirrors its thematic weight. Sang-soo refuses to provide clarity where life itself does not. Identity is never fixed, but constantly shifts. Our desires might shape it, but those around us do forge a significant part of it. It is in this understanding at the finale that Sang-soo offers his touching way into the complexities of understanding those around us.

Grade: B+

Director: Noah Baumbach
Writer: Noah Baumbach, Emily Mortimer
Stars: George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern

Synopsis: Famous movie actor Jay Kelly embarks on a journey of self-discovery, confronting his past and present with his devoted manager Ron. Poignant and humor-filled, pitched at the intersection of regrets and glories.

There have been many cinematic portraits of artists who have sacrificed a great deal to achieve the successful life they’ve attained through their work. These lives come with a significant amount of burdens that can drown the soul of the artist as they age. Yes, riches and fame are all there, but at what cost? A legacy for a heart. In Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, we witness the tragic fate of silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), whose career has faded due to the introduction of sound into motion pictures. She tries to exploit a young writer for a role that can revive her career–have the opportunity to shine in the medium’s evolution–but the Hollywood ruthless machine, obsessed with young faces, which serves as commodities until they are worthless, drives her to self-destruction and severe obsession.

Another example is All That Jazz, the semi-autobiographical musical by Bob Fosse, which utilizes the director’s own experiences to tell a story about the addictive nature of show business, mortality, and the struggle to cling to what’s slipping away – love, family, health, fame, and career. Through surrealist musical numbers and personal elements, Fosse uncovers his fears, motivations, and worries, culminating with a damning tune that’s memorable (and catchy) as it is haunting. What these films, and other noteworthy examples like Stardust Memories and Pain and Glory, have in common is the sincerity and honesty that lies beneath the fiction, taken from real emotions and experiences. You can’t have a story that chronicles a person’s late-stage grievances without that candor which arises from the sacrifices done for, or by, art in any sense. That key facet is missing from the latest legacy portrait, Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly (screening at the 2025 New York Film Festival in the Main Slate). 

In the aforementioned film, Noah Baumbach attempts a similar approach. He uses George Clooney’s public image as an A-list movie star and storied career as a gateway for a reflection on the costs of stardom and the shadows cast by a life lived in front of the camera. At the same time, it wants to honor Clooney and all of his on-screen achievements, most evident in a tribute scene that features clips from Clooney’s films and cuts to the audience wiping away tears. This dishonest and manipulative move greatly irritates in its attempt to elicit an emotional response. However, unlike Fosse’s raw confrontation of his own demons or Wilder’s dissection of the delusions of grandeur and sharp critique of the Hollywood system, Baumbach’s film struggles to locate that same emotional truth beneath the surface of fiction. The established legacy of a class act and concept is there, but the heartbeat that makes such portraits resonate remains elusive, leaving an experience that often feels egotistical. 

George Clooney is Jay Kelly, a renowned movie star who has graced the screen with numerous classics that audiences worldwide love and adore. He is, in the film’s universe, in the heights of James Stewart, Steve McQueen, and Marlon Brando–the stature of the greats, an actor who defines a generation. Kelly is about to film his next motion picture when he gets the notice that the director who gave him his first break has passed. Melancholy and nostalgia begin to consume the man as he looks back to a life long gone, or what could have been. At the funeral, Kelly comes across the thought that he must give more of his time to the people he loves before it’s too late. So, he packs his bags and rounds up his rag-tag team of associates–manager Ron (Adam Sandler), publicist Liz (Laura Dern), hairstylists, make-up artists, and other crew members–to find his estranged daughter, Daisy (Grace Edwards), who has been backpacking through Europe. He uses his career award ceremony at a film festival in Tuscany as an excuse for the encounter. 

There are more than a handful of moments in Jay Kelly where we see the titular character trying to confront his reality, feeling burdened by the grievances of missed time and opportunities. Of course, he has everything he’s ever wished for; the thousand-dollar suits and watches provide a glimpse into the many riches he’s attained that none of us could ever afford. Yet, what has been taken from him comes from within. His soul is tainted and his heart broken. This multi-million-dollar life is just a facade, every gift matched by an equal loss. As Kelly tries to reach out for his daughter’s connection, Baumbach and co-writer Emily Mortimer avoid any real self-realization and reflection. When you think the film will finally give us a way into the broken man, it shies away from the darker and more confrontational, personal territories in exchange for overly dramatic and comedic dialogue, and no actual repercussions. 

During the film’s runtime, I had one question in mind: Why should I care about Jay Kelly, the famed actor? I spent the entire duration of the film trying to come up with an answer, yet never could. After a few days, I finally have an answer: I shouldn’t–because it is a disingenuous and romanticized portrait of false grievances from the privileged one percent. The film insists on sympathy for a man cushioned by wealth and adoration. Baumbach and Mortimer never present Kelly with any deeply existential or reflective scenario that prompts him to reflect on his life decisions; it is all contemplative window shopping. Kelly isn’t painted as troubled or a bad guy. He is just confronted with a few tame foibles, which have already been explored in other (and better) pictures. The reunion with his estranged daughter. The hope that his father will finally see the worth of his acting career, which he was against him pursuing. A discussion with the man in which Kelly stole his breakout role keeps perturbing him. 

These are troubling issues that, if properly dissected, could yield some interesting insights into the actor-father double role and Clooney’s own thoughts on the Hollywood non-stop treadmill. However, in Jay Kelly, they are seen through a glossy, advantaged lens that distances me from the story being told. On a few occasions, Baumbach makes a point of this detachment, as most of Kelly’s crew are somewhat annoyed by him and his uberrich demeanor. He creates debacles within the close circle through the characters of Adam Sandler and Laura Dern, the only two grounded characters in the bunch. The former is saddened that Kelly views him as a commodity, rather than a friend, even though they’ve spent decades together working to elevate the actor’s career to the top. This angle is the key to clawing into the griminess and arrogance of a person who has it all, except proper connection. Nevertheless, like the rest of the interesting ideas in the film, they are dismissed to honor Clooney’s career or ease up the tension by having moments of levity. 

A few years ago, Alejandro González Iñárritu released Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, to a very hostile reception, to the point where the Mexican filmmaker had to re-edit the picture before its theatrical release. Personally, I’m not fond of Iñárritu. In fact, I despise most of his pictures, except his excellent feature debut, Amores Perros. But I adored Bardo, which caught me by surprise. The film is a self-portrait of the artist and documentary director Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), exploring his struggles with the balance between life and art. It explores his Mexican identity, with which he struggles the most to find his place in the world after many years away from his native country and living in America, where he has never dealt with the issues that have arisen during his absence, all of which are the subject of his work. 

I felt that, for the first time, in a lengthy career filled with pretentious and disingenuous works, Iñárritu was being truthful. Iñárritu was speaking his mind, body, and soul out rather than preaching to the choir. It still had some pretentiousness as garnish, and it was narcissistic in some parts. Yet it was bracingly honest, even brutal. The issues tackled in Bardo are rooted in real-life grievances and things that truly hinder Iñárritu’s daily living. Many Spanish-speaking viewers connected with that film deeply. The opposite has happened to Baumbach. After many years of delivering sincere and emotional works, not all of which have been successful yet forthright, such as Marriage Story and Frances Ha, he responds to a career overview and dissection with a faux response. 

Baumbach wants to celebrate Clooney while exploring the wounds of Jay Kelly. In attempting to do both simultaneously and sporadically, when it is convenient, Baumbach creates a contradiction–half-tribute, half-confession–that collapses into shallow self-adoration. The goal with Jay Kelly was to be empathetic with character and understand how isolated, even through wealth, the life of a movie star can be. Jay Kelly fails miserably because Baumbach wants to graft the struggles of genuinely tormented artists onto someone like Kelly, who’s insulated by privilege. This undermines the authenticity of the portrait in every way possible, and no empathy is shown towards the subject at the center.

Grade: D-

Director: Luca Guadagnino
Writer: Nora Garrett
Stars: Julia Roberts, Ayo Edibiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny

Synopsis: A college professor finds herself at a personal and professional crossroad when a star student levels an accusation against one of her colleagues, threatening to expose a dark secret from her own past.

Post-screening press conferences tend to be a mixed bag – a mishigas, if you will, to steal a term that Andrew Garfield used to describe the many conversational aspects about the films of Luca Guadagnino, particularly the one he co-stars in and is speaking about on this particular afternoon on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Gathered in Film at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, the home for Friday’s press and industry screening of the 63rd New York Film Festival’s Opening Night selection, After the Hunt, are Guadagnino, his screenwriter, Nora Garrett, and the principal players in his new film’s cast. Garfield is just one of the few; to Guadagnino’s left is Julia Roberts, and to Garfield’s sits Ayo Edibiri, and to hers, Michael Stuhlbarg. Somehow or some way, this press conference keeps coming back to the idea of provocation. Theoretically, it’s a fitting topic when it comes to After the Hunt, a glossy drama that centers on the fallout over a campus scandal involving a high-profile PhD candidate (Edibiri’s Maggie Resnick) and one of the philosophy department’s most beloved professors, Garfield’s Hank Gibson. “it happened at Yale,” lowercase “it” and all, reads the film’s opening text, though the “happened” isn’t solely referring to the sexual assault that Maggie has accused Hank of committing. As the audience came to learn as the film unfolded, what “happened” also points at the effects these allegations have had on Maggie’s relationship with her mentor, Alma Imhoff (Roberts), a revered member of the philosophy faculty who is up for tenure; the impact the incident has had on Alma’s marriage to Frederik (Stuhlbarg) and her friendship with Dr. Kim Sayers (Chloë Sevigny), the university’s psychiatrist; and Alma’s status at the school overall. 

Everything here, it stands to reason, is cause for provocation, and the cast and crew are willing to talk. “He’s a provocateur in a lot of ways, and I think he’s very conscious of what he’s doing a lot of the time, and deeply unconscious of what he’s doing a lot of the time as well,” Garfield shared. “[Guadagnino] wants all of your nuance, all of your humanity, no matter how dignified or undignified it is.” A bit later in the discussion, after this idea has been raised again, the filmmaker felt the need, albeit jokingly, to defend himself: “I think I’m a kind guy,” he mumbled, receiving a healthy supply of laughs that only a beloved filmmaker could receive, and are a part of the typical standard operating procedure at festival Q&As. “I don’t like to scandalize for the sake of it,” he noted. “I think that’s a little bit childish and I hope I’m not… Before I’m anything else, I am a spectator. Film, for me, is obviously an experience that transformed me, that changed me. That made me want to become something else, that maybe changed my mind on things that could have also provoked me in a way that made me uncomfortable, and then I’d ask myself, ‘Why was I uncomfortable?’”

After the Hunt’s inherent discomfort isn’t much of a “needle in a haystack” situation; this heap is all needles, and there’s no way to avoid being pricked, no matter how careful you are as you reach for the quill of your choosing. It’s a film about sexual assault that is wearing #MeToo-colored glasses, those with a prescription to fit viewers of all qualities of vision – no matter how hard the picture’s preeminent voices try to tell us it’s not. (It would be cheap to shove the film under a “Cancel Culture Cinema” umbrella, but to insist that that isn’t one of its few hats would be a wardrobe violation.) It’s a film about campus politics, the sociopolitical gamut of race and gender and sexuality and privilege, the kind of movie in which the starring faculty hold lavish parties at their ridiculous and garish private residence, a movie in which “TART!” is yelled at to the entire soiree in an attempt to distract from the debate at hand, as if the presence of a strudel the size of a Scrabble board is a regularity at these post-work convocations. Maggie is a queer Black girl who comes from money; her partner (Lío Mehiel) is a nonbinary transgender person studying to become a lawyer, and offers “professional” counsel whenever possible. Hank is a celebrated educator who came from nothing; Alma and Frederik are intellectuals who have everything. This isn’t a melting pot as much as it is a meticulous and obvious gumbo of personified tropes who have been created explicitly with the aim of making a point. 

But is the point in the room with us now? And, better yet, is it worth searching for a point when the characters lobbing it back and forth like a hot potato are, for the most part, unlikable ingredients in a modern serving of duck soup? The answer to the latter question is simple: Yes, and when Stuhlbarg was asked about these rather detestable additives, he put it plainly: “They are all so focused, and so busy, so preoccupied, and so brilliant individually that I don’t think they have time for likability and, frankly, I don’t think they think about it either,” he said. “And I think how they’re judged says as much about the people judging as it does about the individuals being judged.” The crux here, though, is a thinner, mishandled, uninvasive probe that postures as though it is provoking but barely manages to poke. If the needle does, in fact, make contact with the skin, it sure as hell doesn’t produce any blood.

Perhaps that’s the cause of a script that is attractive on its surface but not promotable, and though the two tend to be mutually exclusive, Guadagnino seems intensely interested in doing both at once. The director brings his singular panache here, much of which is a credit to his trust in his collaborators, specifically those below the line, including He Got Game cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed and his now-regular composers, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Sayeed’s photography, when paired with a fine-toothed edit from Marco Costa, who has now cut five Guadagnino projects, including Challengers, Queer, and Bones and All), doesn’t so much resemble Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s work on Challengers and Queer in 2024 – what could? – as it finds the director adhering to an individual visual sensibility, one that has been remarkably refined from 2017’s Call Me By Your Name on. Thus it seems to be the pages he’s been handed by first-time screenwriter Nora Garrett that lack in real verve, instead opting to revel in the idea of mimicking it. This material is punching the air, believing it’s knocked out a heavyweight, and strutting about the ring in triumph, knowing not that its opponent has yet to exit the tunnel. 

Everything about After the Hunt feels like cosplay, to the point where it’s even difficult to believe that Roberts, Edibiri, and co. would ever dress the way they do throughout the proceedings. One recurring nugget that works is Maggie’s evident reverence for Alma, to the point where she dons similar blazers, pants, and even lengthy necklaces with a single ornament on the end to those her object of professional (?) adoration sports like a second layer of skin. The rest of the theatrics feel as dull as the lamp-lit yet still greyed-out surroundings of the film’s Ivy League setting, a location that feels utilized for the sake of emphasizing its populace’s privilege, or at least the sense of the quality that they posit like a badge of honor. In reality, it’s barely armor. Roberts (predictably terrific) and her castmates have been saddled with nothing but a baseline prompt that watching them squirm to create something real and radical is akin to watching a baby deer take its first steps. Only this calf has no footing to find. It’s been doled out under the assumption that it should be easy to locate and master, but the necessary guidance is nowhere to be found. 

Is that Garrett’s doing? A blasé direction of performances by Guadagnino, who routinely pulls revelatory turns out of his stars, no matter their preexisting reputations? Perhaps it’s both, as aside from Roberts, only Stuhlbarg and Sevigny have anything particularly captivating to conjure, and they’re sixth men here. Stuhlbarg’s clever schtick as an unofficially-cuckolded husband (thanks to Roberts and Garfield’s chemistry, and the unsubtle hinting at an unspoken amorous connection between their characters) between  persists throughout the film and provides a necessary humor that is otherwise dry – not in style, but to the touch and taste – but this critic’s opinion will not be a universal one. His spell, like that of the film’s dramatics, cannot possibly have the same impact on every single audience member. In fact, there’s bound to be an interpretation of his performance as an obvious curveball in a movie that aspires to a fastball-like fervor, but carries the ferocity of a meatball. Just watch Hank deny the claims levied against him only to swiftly rip off his knit sweater (you’ll never guess what color… it’s grey) in agitation and attempt to wrangle with another viewer over its subtext. You’ll end up muddy, exhausted, and wondering why you ever bothered.

Therein lies the true tragedy of After the Hunt, such a rare misfire from the otherwise-steady Guadagnino that its lone cause for optimism is, in fact, its failure: That it warrants little to no discussion regarding its substance, its goals, even its slightly recommendable qualities, of which there are precious few. “Every time I’ve left the cinema [after one of Guadagnino’s films], I need somebody to talk to,” Edibiri told a packed theater on Friday, likely full of patrons aplenty whose opinions coincide with hers. “I can’t see one of your movies alone. If I do, I feel crazy. I need somebody to talk to about this thing that I’ve seen, or this image that I’ve somehow never seen but feels so familiar. Or if I am upset or frustrated, I need somebody to talk to about it.” After the Hunt inspires no such feelings, to the point where it’s not two-plus hours wasted, but time spent thinking about what went wrong. For all of its on-paper promise and its talk of a pursuit, there’s a giant, red X marking not just one spot, but hundreds of them, each hiding not red herrings, but no buried treasure either. It makes you wonder what the hunt was ever for. To a blunter point: Is the “hunt” in the room with us now?

After the Hunt opened the 63rd edition of the New York Film Festival. Amazon MGM Studios will release it in theaters on October 10.

Grade: C-