Synopsis: A visionary architect flees post-war Europe in 1947 for a brighter future in the United States and finds his life forever changed by a wealthy client.
“America. The land of the free, the home of the brave.” A statement that is often said by anyone looking to come to the country and make a name for themselves, a statement filled with promise and potential that has transcended generations of immigrants. Everyone in pursuit of some variation of “the American Dream,” and all its limitlessness. It is with this thinking that many looked for a way to flee to America during/after the events of World War II, and make a better life for themselves and their families.
The Brutalist, directed by Brady Corbet, explores these themes through the eyes of László Tóth (Adrien Brody), an architect of Jewish descent from Hungary and Holocaust survivor who, after World War II, arrives in America separated from his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), but with hopes of bringing them to the country as well. Over the course of several years, the movie chronicles Tóth’s journey from initially working with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) to eventually working for Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who finds out about Tóth’s work as an architect and commissions him to build a community center in memory of Harrison’s late mother. Throughout the movie, Tóth is tested, as the pressure to build the center and bring his family to a prosperous future in America continues to grow and potentially break him entirely, challenging the very notion of the American Dream and how attainable it really is.
Throughout its gargantuan runtime of 3 hours and 35 minutes (with a 15-minute intermission), The Brutalist builds the concept of the American Dream up to extraordinary heights, only to bring them crashing down upon its characters and expose the dark reality behind those aspirations, and how devastatingly the lives of immigrants are given little credence even as the world potentially opens its arms to them. At every turn, as it looks like Tóth may have found his big break, it is marred with caveats upon caveats, as even those people who claim to do nothing but respect his vision look down upon him as a second-rate human. Yet, he keeps on, knowing what he is capable of through his work, so that he can make enough to send for Erzsébet and Zsófia and see them once again. Brody is phenomenal in the role, providing an emotional backbone to László and providing a glimpse into his potential for the audience. Early on, when he is commissioned to build a library for Van Buren, the gears that begin shifting in his head as he comes up with ideas and unique concepts to make it stand out make for an engrossing watch, mirrored later as the community center begins to take some shape.
Every performance in The Brutalist is firing on all cylinders, from Brody’s terrific portrayal to Felicity Jones as Erzsébet adding an emotional center to the story. Her, at times, devastating presence impacts the second half considerably, as well as Guy Pearce as Harrison Van Buren, whose more charismatic public personality masks his more monstrous nature (to a point), and leads to career best work from him. A solid supporting cast comprised of Cassidy, Joe Alwyn, Nivola, Emma Laird, and Stacy Martin back the proceedings, with particularly exceptional work from Cassidy, who spends a major chunk of the movie without dialogue and conveys entire storylines through just her eyes.
From its incredible opening sequence to its final scene, Corbet directs the movie to perfection, accompanied by magnificent cinematography from Lol Crawley–shot in VistaVision–and a booming score from Daniel Blumberg engulfing its bigger and quieter moments. The production is massive in scale, and when taken into consideration that the movie was made for just under $10 million, the work done in The Brutalist is made even more impressive. The script from Corbet and co-writer (and real life partner) Mona Fastvold keeps the movie moving at a brisk pace, and realizes its characters as perfectly as it can, given the world that they inhabit, even in its bolder second half where choices are made that potentially could polarize viewers. The answers we receive are not always satisfying, the payoffs are not always worth it, but these moments are what define our legacy.
Through thick and thin, László Tóth continues to keep going, wanting to cut through the limitations and discrimination in his path for himself and his family, and leads him to a finale that asks if the journey to the destination may be for nought or worth it all, and understanding and holding on to what really matters in the end. All things said and done, however, one thing is clear: The Brutalist is a new American epic that deserves all the recognition it gets and hopefully will receive as the years go by.
Directors:Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou Writers:Danny Philippou, Bill Hinzman Stars: Sally Hawkins, Billy Barratt, Sora Wong
Synopsis: A brother and sister uncover a terrifying ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother.
Are Danny and Michael Philippou OK? I’m asking because, in interviews, they’re the biggest goofballs around, having the time of their lives promoting their latest movie, Bring Her Back, with their fellow cast members. Then, you sit down in the cinema and watch as they inflict massive amounts of psychological damage, simply by crafting some of the most harrowing, traumatizing scenes of violence you will ever find in a mainstream movie. Though some will argue that Bring Her Back is as independently produced as their first film, Talk to Me, A24’s status as an Oscar-winning distributor puts it in the mainstream conversation.
I can count on one hand the horror films I’ve seen in a cinema, in the past two years, that did some active damage to me, where I couldn’t do anything but sit and feel deeply unwell after having seen them: Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms, David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, and now RackaRacka’s Bring Her Back. It’s a deeply unpleasant experience that, in many cases, will likely alienate audiences more than their crowd-pleasing, but terrifying, 2023 directorial debut. The audience is forced to watch characters do some of the most irredeemable things, all in the name of love.
And while it may not be as narratively and aesthetically strong as Talk to Me, (which I loved even more after having the chance of seeing it in IMAX earlier this year), it’s definitely far more disturbing, and you won’t be able to shake off some of the images you’ve seen long after you’ve driven back from the movie theater and are forced to ruminate on what you’ve seen. How in the hell do you expect me to drive back home after being a witness to the imagery the Philippou brothers make a reality in this film? If that doesn’t sell you on the tantalizing prospect of a feel-bad time at the movies, I don’t know what will. Yet, the intended effect has definitely worked on me, and it’ll be hard to even think about anything else for some time.
Here’s an even more important question: How does one even approach writing on a movie like this, where each screenwriting decision is meant to disturb the audience so violently that they may be unable to sleep at night? Let’s start with this: this is an entirely different beast than Talk to Me, which makes it interesting, right from the get-go. Formally, it’s far more confrontational than RackaRacka’s previous film, especially when it comes to crafting some of the most harrowing sequences of violence you may see all year. The taller aspect ratio leans us closer to the characters, as they get to experience profound, destabilizing terror, which the Philippou brothers, alongside cinematographer Aaron McLisky, linger on for as long as they possibly can and force the audience to watch, as they gasp in pure shock at what they’re looking at.
One scene in particular made a usually quiet audience at a press screening yell and gasp in absolute bewilderment, as McLisky’s camera showcases one of the most agonizing examples of gore you may see all year, and he rarely cuts away from the violence to get a reaction shot out of the protagonist, which most Hollywood films do. All of these scenes work incredibly well because the practical effects are nail-bitingly lifelike, and the close-ups of each severed body part are as detailed as you can get. Closing your eyes won’t do you any good, especially if you’re squeamish, as the note-perfect sound design ensures you’ll be able to see what you’re shielding away from.
There’s another sequence that juxtaposes The Veronicas’ “Untouched” with brutal, demented imagery. I won’t describe it for the squeamish people reading this article, but let’s just say you’ll never be able to hear this popular song the same way again, because you’ll now always associate it with this scene from Bring Her Back. It’s an unforgivingly traumatic cinema experience that no one, and I mean no one, is ready for.
The problem, though, lies in the fact that RackaRacka seems to be staging these insane (and they are insane) sequences of gore to mask the lack of substance in its story, which follows siblings Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong), who, after the death of their father, are sent to a foster home, run by Laura (Sally Hawkins). Things seem innocuous enough at first, but the directing duo plants clues that inform us that perhaps Laura isn’t the nice foster parent she makes herself out to be, as she has recently lost her daughter and will do anything to…bring her back. That’s about as far as I’ll go in describing the plot for you, because the best part of seeing a film like this is to know as little as possible and hope that it will enthrall – or traumatize – you.
I’ll say that, as shocked as I was at some of the violence shown on screen, and as attuned I am to RackaRacka’s sense of mordant humor in earlier sequences of the film (or even during its climax), as a fan of their work on YouTube, I found that, when removing all of the shocking moments Bring Her Back has, the story itself can often be lacking in purpose, beyond the sickening gore, which Talk to Me had, in capturing a profoundly human relationship between Mia and her friends.
Thematically, Bring Her Back shares similarities with their 2023 film, notably when discussing grief, but it does so in a far more distressing way than the duo’s previous effort. This will undoubtedly divide some audience members, particularly when the film reaches its denouement and makes decisions that are simultaneously disturbing and nonsensical, clearly done for shock value, and with little to no thought put into the why of it all. Again, it’s difficult to talk about the movie without spoiling a thing, but some key moments as the plot develops are bound to rub you the wrong way and leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.
Initially, we do attach ourselves to Andy and Piper’s relationship. Amidst their flaws and the horrifying experiences they share, the two love each other deeply. However, Danny and Michael do not want us to attach ourselves to their plight, because what Laura has in store for them will test them in ways they’ve never once imagined as soon as they step foot in her home. It results in an ending that seems telegraphed, but doesn’t fall prey to the pitfalls that most movies in this sub-genre of films do, where the foster parent holds a dark secret, and no one around the people who are victimized believes them. In fact, the Philippou brothers don’t do what most filmmakers sadly perpetuate during the climax, which gives them an edge over most horror directors who present their characters constantly making stupid decisions and being victims of their own ignorance.
Adam wants to break free from Laura’s shackles, but can’t do it without hard evidence that something is wrong. He doesn’t make a single shortsighted decision and does the right thing every time, regardless of how unfortunate the story turns. I appreciated this from a genre that usually talks down at the characters they write, as if they’re incapable of acting intelligently and resourcefully, regardless if they are facing events their minds can’t process. It proves to me that the Philippou brothers will go a long way in making horror cinema that’s not only playful and inventive, but will contain intelligently-written human characters who will always showcase the most vulnerable parts of themselves, even if the situation they are stuck in becomes extremely supernatural.
It’s in those vulnerable moments where Barratt and Wong’s acting shines the most, but the real star of the picture is Sally Hawkins, who gives one of the best performances of her career as the mysterious Laura. Her love for her late daughter knows no bounds, to the point that she’ll do anything (literally) to “bring her back.” What that entails, I’ll let you figure that out as the film progresses, but there’s an air of melancholy in her portrayal of the character that’s fascinating to dissect, even when she takes irreparable actions. It makes the film’s coda all the more heartbreaking, even if no one can condone what she does. We fully understand the lengths she will go to bring her daughter back, because the love she has for her is unconditional and will never end.
That alone made the movie compelling, even if I’m a bit miffed at some of the decisions Danny and Michael make along the way. You’re better off experiencing this profoundly deranged, evil movie on your own and coming up with your own opinion of this complete nightmare. Perhaps a distanced rewatch, like Talk to Me, will reward attentive viewers in catching details they likely missed, and could make their viewing experience different if they know the narrative twists and turns RackaRacka has in store for them. However, I have no desire to watch Bring Her Back ever again, and I mean this as the highest possible compliment, even if I believe Danny and Michael Philippou aren’t OK…
Director: Trey Edward Shults Writer:Reza Fahim, Trey Edward Shults, The Weeknd Stars: The Weeknd, Jenna Ortega, Barry Keoghan
Synopsis: An insomniac musician encounters a mysterious stranger, leading to a journey that challenges everything he knows about himself.
At some point in every major musician’s career, they tried their hand at acting. From Michael Jackson, Prince and Cher, to Selena Gomez, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, the list goes on and on of singers who have appeared on screen to expand their reach as artists. It only makes sense then that Abel Tesfaye, more famously known as The Weeknd, would want to try his hand at the craft as well. After a brief appearance in 2019’s Uncut Gems, Abel went on to be in 2023’s The Idol, an HBO series from Sam Levinson, the creator of Euphoria, and was reportedly set in the same universe as that show. Unfortunately, The Idol was poorly received by both critics and audiences, and is considered by many to be one of the worst HBO shows to be included in the network’s prestigious 9PM Sunday night slot. However, one misstep doesn’t mean the journey is over, and that leads us to 2025’s Hurry Up Tomorrow.
Yes, for those who might be wondering, the movie is in fact named after The Weeknd’s most recent album, and acts as a companion piece to it. Directed by Trey Edward Shults (It Comes at Night, Waves), the movie stars Tesfaye as a fictionalized version of himself, as he is currently on tour and performing songs from the new album to hordes of fans who have gathered to hear his music. Accompanied by his manager, Lee (Barry Keoghan), and the rest of his team, the tour is a great success and selling well. However, Abel feels emotionally distraught, having recently been through a breakup and is now addicted to drugs and alcohol to a potential point of no return. This begins to affect his performances as he loses his voice on stage. It is at this moment that he meets Anima (Jenna Ortega), a young woman who seems to be escaping her own past life, and finds a connection in Abel.
Being a companion piece to the album, Hurry Up Tomorrow may benefit some from a listen to the source material, as some of the lyrics do, in fact, tell a story that mirrors the plot described in the above paragraph, and it makes some of the choices the movie makes have a bit more backing to them. Conceptually, as a result, it wants to be an adaptation of the album, while also acting as a retrospective look at The Weeknd’s career and his shattered inner psyche that forms more cracks as the movie progresses. It’s a dichotomy of an artist that’s definitely interesting to explore, and there are glimmers in Hurry Up Tomorrow where it does exactly that. When Abel meets Anima, the two go out and have fun at an amusement park, leaving the rest of the world behind. It’s a moment that looks at an escape from the misery and addictions that plague Abel.
Unfortunately for Hurry Up Tomorrow, it also does a lot of this in a very maligned manner that is more concerned with how it looks than what it is actually saying, leading to a scatterbrained movie that ends up being a huge mess by the end. While there is undeniably a lot of talent on display, from its actors to Shults’s direction and use of flashy visuals and aspect ratios to differentiate sections–a few visual tricks of his going back to It Comes at Night and Waves–to an often thunderous sound design courtesy of Johnnie Burn (coming off an Oscar win for The Zone of Interest), it squanders much of it on a sense of self-indulgence and unsubtle hammering of its messages, both visually and narratively, that only render much of Abel’s dilemma as hollow and empty, and even, at times, unintentionally funny.
For his part, Tesfaye as a singer is effective enough, similar to the real-life artist; but, as an actor, he often comes up short emotionally, particularly in the movie’s more dramatic moments. This is especially noticeable when he’s alongside Ortega, who practically chomps the scenery in the movie’s latter half and delivers one of her more heightened performances to date, and Keoghan, who isn’t given much to do beyond constantly reminding Abel that he has fans who love him and that he needs to keep going for them no matter what, but still maintains a level of charisma over the proceedings. This is further affected by a thinly written script that doesn’t give their characters much more context beyond just the few moments we get early on. Anima is shown to be someone on the run after burning her house down, avoiding her mother and a superfan of The Weeknd who is about to attend his concert, but the allusions made to who she represents in the movie and what she means to Abel are less effective as they are given little to no backing besides anything you heard in the actual album.
Perhaps there is a possibility that superfans of The Weeknd will appreciate Hurry Up Tomorrow a lot more than others. This reviewer is in fact a fan of a lot of his music as well. However, the potential here does not match the final movie’s execution of said elements, with the third act being a bizarre look into Abel’s career to this point and practically spelling out what it wants to say after two acts of very surface level glimpses into its more poignant themes, and then ending on an extremely abrupt note that leaves more questions than it answers. What could have been a very scathing look into an egotistical lifestyle and its repercussions ends up overall shortchanged and lacking. Will it eventually develop a cult following with The Weeknd’s fanbase and listeners of Hurry Up Tomorrow the album? Time will tell, but as of right now, people will probably want the movie to hurry up and end instead.
Synopsis: When a titan music mogul is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma
Few filmmakers depict Brooklyn, New York like Spike Lee, from his underseen debut feature Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads to Do the Right Thing, his magnum opus, and, in my opinion, one of the best films ever made. He may not be originally from the area, born in Atlanta, Georgia, but Spike grew up there, lives and breathes the area, and knows it by heart, expelling his love for it in all of his New York-set pictures, no matter the narrative or genre. Spike captures the city and its always-moving people with pure authenticity; the specificity of his lens–the way the characters speak and interact, the look and feel, the locations, and the music utilized–makes his works so vivid, making everything come alive instantly.
For his latest work, Highest 2 Lowest (screening out of competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival), Spike Lee wants to honor the city of New York, and specifically Brooklyn and Bed Stuy, once again with a reimagined canvas, originally painted by Japanese maestro Akira Kurosawa in his 1963 feature High and Low. The last time he attempted to remake an Asian cinema staple was in 2013 with the Josh Brolin-led Oldboy, and it was (expectedly) terrible. If you ask him today, he might tell you the same thing. But the difference between that film and Highest 2 Lowest is that Spike does not want to remake a Kurosawa picture; he has learned from his mistakes. Instead, he uses it as inspiration to create something new and akin to his style and sensibilities–celebrating New York, exploring today’s music industry, and honoring his bond with Denzel Washington, who has reunited for the first time in nearly twenty years.
Ray Charles’ version of ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin,’ from the musical ‘Oklahoma!,’ is the first track on Spike’s latest jukebox, accompanied by drone shots of the New York skyline. In those first shots, the director encapsulates the beauty behind the non-stop craze of the city. Soon after, we meet David King (Washington), known for once having the “best ears in the business” and the founder of a Rock-a-Fella Records-type label called Stackin’ Hits. On top of his penthouse, King looks at the city from above, like royalty observing their kingdom from their castle. But he isn’t on top of the world as he once was, and the events that transpire will have him fight a bout of morality that will either plunge him deeper into a worse spot or cement his legacy once again.
With utmost success comes some sacrifices, and King’s comes in the loss of connection with his wife, Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera), and son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), as well as losing control of the label he built from the ground up. After decades of blood, sweat, and tears being spilled to create hit records and launch successful artists, King is being asked to sell his past with the label, effectively removing him entirely from the music scene he helped forge. If you look back at the ‘80s and ‘90s, those were times when many labels were created. You’d see plenty of them have their array of eclectic artists and have great moments of success. Of course, the industry was way different from what it is now.
Once a dominant force, record labels are currently struggling to stay afloat, adapting to the digital age of streaming. Music might be at an even closer reach than before, with Spotify and Apple Music having a vast catalogue available by downloading an app and a monthly subscription. However, that does not necessarily translate to increased sales. Instead, there is a rapid decline in the relevance of labels and physical media. Spike Lee, who has been a part of the industry as a music-video director and soundtrack curator, saw these changes first-hand. He knows how bad things have become, both in cinema and elsewhere. And so he dedicates a part of Highest 2 Lowest to converse about the current landscape through the erasure of record labels and the dissipating relevancy of art in general. It is one of the many aspects that give the film personality and separate it from the Kurosawa picture.
One day, King gets an unexpected call from a mysterious man, later revealed to be an aspiring rapper named Yung Felon (A$AP Rocky), saying that he kidnapped his son and wants 17.5 million dollars in return for him. However, the rapper does not realize that he has taken the wrong child; instead, he grabs the son of King’s driver and old friend, Paul (Jeffrey Wright). But the kidnapper still wants the money, in cash. This forms the High and Low-style narrative framework, a pressure-cooker setup that tests the characters’ values. Will David King pay the amount he is being asked? Will he help his friend and leave behind his family’s well-being in exchange? King has much to think about as he searches New York, while Paul is worried and urges him to help.
Kurosawa delved into the class divide, using his imagery to create striking metaphors of capitalist societies and governments in the post-war era of economic upheaval. Spike Lee’s vision is slightly different; he leads more toward entrepreneurship and perseverance, emphasizing the importance of grinding until you succeed, with some modern conceptualizations of moral quandaries, such as cancel culture and the constant scrutiny of every move in the public eye. The latter is more referred to than examined, as King’s backstory is up to the viewer to interpret via Washington and Wright’s solid, convincing performances. Lee doesn’t offer remarkably fresh insights on the topics he raises, nor does he present his comedic sensibilities with the flair or subtlety seen in his earlier work–the inclusion of mockish memes (many anti-Boston sports team tabloids) placed during the film takes some of the seriousness away from the project.
The Do the Right Thing director is also less experimental than Kurosawa with his imagery, with many sequences during the first half of Highest 2 Lowest, the weakest part of the film overall, feeling flat. They contain Spike Lee’s touch and energy without the verve that made his early work so fascinating, like his double dolly shots and 360 degree-rotating shots. Things tend to pick up right when we switch from King’s apartment room in the skies to the streets of New York–hitting the local spots and riding the subway for some of the film’s most kinetic (and best) moments. He basks in the vibrancy and constant alert of the city to drive the film into its thrills.
Highest 2 Lowest is uneven and occasionally frustrating, giving you the best of both worlds–the highest in the latter half set-pieces and the lowest in the bland, annoying score and cheap comedy and camp. But when it finds its rhythm, the film becomes a gripping showcase of what Spike Lee does best: telling New York stories with a pulse and point of view. It is one of the many projects that veteran filmmakers have produced lately where legacy, both cinematic and cultural, is at the forefront. However, in this case, this isn’t about him entirely; it is more about New York, the music that shaped the city, and the collaboration with his good friend Denzel Washington, who was honored with an honorary Palme d’Or before the world premiere. Highest 2 Lowest may stumble, but its love for the city—and the enduring power of collaboration—rings true.
Director: Mascha Shilinski Writers:Louise Peter, Mascha Shilinski Stars: Hanna Heckt, Lena Urzendowsky, Susanne Wuest
Synopsis: A remote German farm harbors generations of secrets. Four women, separated by decades but united by trauma, uncover the truth behind its weathered walls
Every story is a ghost story in one way or another, with stories being hauntings of the past and characters being the ghosts of real people. They let us feel the presence of what isn’t there, no matter if it was thirty years or two months ago. Things cannot be changed, so we tend to tell tales to uncover the uncovered, live what hasn’t been lived, or remember what has been lost. In the case of Mascha Schilinski’s sophomore feature, Sound of Falling (screened in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it tied for the Jury Prize), we venture through four generations of young women and their traumas living on the same German farm. In this highly experimental and melancholic exploration of guilt, shame, yearning, and repression, Schilinski offers us a poetic ghost story that unfolds through time and memory, evoking all its ominous sensations.
Guided by mood and emotion, the film is carefully pieced together. Schilinski invites the audience to fully immerse themselves in the sensory experience to marinate in its motifs. Through inspired filmmaking, Schilinski leaves her mark on the Cannes competition with adept tact, a distinctive visual language, and a resounding voice. In Sound of Falling, there are numerous characters, each represented in a separate chapter, following one of the central women in their respective eras. At the same time, they struggle on the family farm. They are all young, with Schilinski commenting that the patriarchal abuse begins right from the start, deconstructing the person without the chance of building their own identity. The film begins in the early 20th century, with Alma (Hanna Heckt) at its center.
Alma has seen many troubling things in her young life, all of which she describes with great detail during her narration, starting with her uncle losing a leg through amputation and her aunt’s intrigue with him and his injury. Her descriptions are delivered as if Heckt was reciting poetry, with each memory told in prose, but dark and brooding. Many existentialist and contemplative comments are shared by Alma, as well as the other narrators that you hear. These voices, and the images that accompany them, gave me goosebumps, making me quite anxious and dreading an escape. But there isn’t one; you must let it take over you until Schilinski decides to open the door. Alma worries about her mortality, questioning what happens when we die, and she’s answered: “Nothing.”
A sense of despondency consumed me from this response; cinematographer Fabian Gamper lingers in the shadows surrounding the farm. What Schilinski wants to do with these existentialist parables is not create a crisis in the same vein as Lars von Trier’s Melancholia; she wants to say that even with death, there is no finality. The pain and suffering continue to linger for generations, sometimes being transferred from one vessel to another–the burden of life is imprinted on the ones who haven’t even begun to live yet. There is a lucidity to these retellings; even at a young age, Alma understands the rigor of what she has seen or heard. That despondency and suffering plagues the farmhouse, and it goes through Alma and is passed down to her daughter, Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky), who experiences some horrid things.
Each generation inherits the pain of the last, their suffering accumulating like dust in the farmhouse walls. Their lives are intertwined through cruelty, with things never seeming to change as time passes. The setting changes due to modernization, but the delicate lining of the farmhouse remains static, its walls built on the sadness and fear these women face daily. This feeding shapes the ghost story–consuming the women’s once-lucky spirits and turning them into specters that haunt the farm day by day, year by year. Time is fractured, so is the structure of Sound of Falling, as it jumps between different periods to present a variety of perspectives and hear the accounts of a broken soul navigating the seas of melancholy, which makes the experience very disorienting. You feel astray, disconnected from your world, and voyaging through the sadness. You never know where you are or what time it is.
It is not the guided travels in the form of Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void, where we follow the spirit of a recently deceased man as he searches for the afterlife, inspired by the scriptures in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. But we enter the women’s encapsulation of the void, which is equally (and even more so) hauntingly entrancing. At first, you don’t know what Schilinski wants to do with Sound of Falling. The first array of images evokes an eerie feeling from a scene of liveliness: the image of a young girl with a shadowy presence, as everything goes quiet, is preceded by that of her sisters laughing as their maid chases them after they prank her. The audience is presented with two tones in a matter of seconds, and one is curious about the cause of this shift.
Later on, you get a grasp on the reason “why” of this change during the introduction. Innocence is taken away for tragic clarity. Laughter drowns in the woes of others–a thing of nightmares becomes reality through subtle reverberations of surrealism. A sound, a voice in the background, or a photograph invokes dread in simple, imaginative ways. Schilinski never opts to over-style her film because it might rid her film of its grounded yet ghostly atmosphere. Her focus is more on building an ominous atmosphere and creating a sense of being in a constant loop, without sensationalizing the characters’ suffering to the point of exploitation. Schilinski trusts the viewer to sit with discomfort and recognize the echoes of trauma not just in dialogue or expression but in the air, silence, and repetition. The film does not offer answers or catharsis. We are left unsettled and wandering through this emotional fog during and after the movie, where Schilinski turns pain into poetry and memory into myth.
Director: Guy Ritchie Writer:James Vanderbilt Stars: John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Eiza González
Synopsis: Two estranged siblings join forces to seek the legendary Fountain of Youth. Using historical clues, they embark on an epic quest filled with adventure. If successful, the mythical fountain could grant them immortality.
Usually, I enjoy nothing more than an old-fashioned, swashbuckling family adventure film—one where people search for fabled lost treasure and the goal is simply to immerse yourself in B-movie bliss. That’s exactly what I was hoping for with Apple TV+’s Fountain of Youth, anyway. This is where I risk sounding a bit pretentious with a mini film history lesson—specifically, about how Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford got it right over forty years ago with Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The team behind the Indiana Jones franchise understood the assignment: a proper, pulpy homage to the serial films of the 1930s and 1940s. Those stories reveled in characters throwing themselves into what felt like tangible adventure, rather than being drowned in CGI effects that yank you out of the experience. Ironically, the two most recent films featuring the iconic fedora-wearing archaeologist have nearly become parodies of themselves, hampered by an overreliance on modern filmmaking technology that stunts the character’s charm and growth.
Like the later entries in a once-great franchise, Fountain of Youth is the unintended consequence of incalculable success. The filmmakers aren’t crafting a film—they’re producing streaming content, banking on a tried-and-true concept and a cast of likable (and recognizable) actors to distract from the fact that everything about the movie is so vain, shallow, and meaningless, you’re left with no reason to care about the outcome.
The story follows Luke Purdeu (A Quiet Place’s John Krasinski), a disgraced former archaeologist known for his, let’s say, unorthodox methods of searching for lost treasures. We first meet Luke in Thailand, where the tall, gawky-looking American is riding a moped while carrying a painting he has clearly obtained illegally. His suspicions are confirmed when he is ambushed by henchmen from a crime syndicate.
Though he manages to escape, he is soon confronted on a train by a mysterious and striking woman named Esme (Eiza González). It’s unclear who Esme works for or what organization she represents, but she’s after the stolen painting, and her reasons go beyond its monetary value. Meanwhile, we meet Charlotte (Academy Award winner Natalie Portman, taking a paycheck here), who lives abroad in London and is going through a contentious divorce from her husband.
Together, they co-parent their eleven-year-old son, a musical prodigy named Thomas (Benjamin Chivers). Charlotte is currently working a dull 9-to-5 museum curating job—a far cry from the adventurous life Thomas’s father once led as an Indiana Jones–like figure traveling the world searching for evidence of the Sun God. Later, Luke shows up uninvited at Charlotte’s workplace, using his sister to help steal a painting containing clues pointing to the adventure of a lifetime.
Fountain of Youth was directed by Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels), a man known for highly distinctive action films with a flair for, depending on your mood, ear-pleasing dialogue and unusual characters. In the past decade, he has focused on bloated, big-budget films that are too obsessed with style over substance. The same concept applies here, but now relies on cookie-cutter cutout characters that borrow from better adventure fare and classic themes of mythical locations.
That is also the fault of the script from James Vanderbilt, who wowed us with the script for Zodiac, but then made us question our love for movies in the first place with Independence Day: Resurgence. Vanderbilt goes back to the old trope of a rich man, Owen (Ex Machina’s Domhnall Gleeson), who is funding Luke’s team, which consists of the tech muscle Patrick (The Boys’ Laz Alonso) and security brains (The Penguin’s Carmen Ejogo), on the search for the Fountain of Youth. This spring reportedly will give anyone everlasting life if they drink it.
There is a heaping amount of exposition in the film, in all three acts, including an atrociously bad one that was nothing more than to add a recognized name and face, Stanly Tucci, setting up a franchise for the streamer. When Ritchie is obsessed with style, plot points go out the window and care for the story, like law enforcement being killed in the background during what was supposed to be a fun sequence, that does away with the concept of family fare.
Then there’s the additional old trope of breaking a child out of their shell. Now, I know it’s a film, but it always baffles me when an adult brings a child on a life-or-death adventure—bullets flying past their heads, people literally dying around them—and somehow thinks, “Yes, this will help the child grow into a well-adjusted, fully functioning adult.” And then there’s the matter of the real villain, which is so painfully obvious as Vanderbilt’s script keeps hammering the point home from the second act onward, leaving no room for surprise or suspense.
Don’t get me wrong—Fountain of Youth is pleasant enough as a mindless distraction to pass the time. The characters are likable, with Krasinski delivering a buffed-up, charming version of his Jim Halpert persona. I couldn’t tell if Portman’s character was meant to be the stereotypically annoyed female caricature, or if it was just an unconscious passive-aggressiveness, churning out the same “voice of reason” dialogue every five minutes. Frankly, the film would have been much more enjoyable if it had focused on the friction between González’s Esme and Luke. Still, that dynamic is undercut by the film’s insistence on maintaining a family-friendly storyline.
Ultimately, this is just another Indiana Jones wannabe that merely passes the time. Honestly, watching it made me wonder why anyone wouldn’t just turn it off and put on a real Indy adventure—watching him globe-trot with his famous friends like the big-hearted Sallah, the lovably befuddled Marcus, the fiery Marion, or the ever-adorable Short Round. And you should—right now—even if you’ve seen it before. Because this? This is just a Ritchie-Krasinski-Portman knockoff of Spielberg-Ford-Allen, anyway.
You can stream Fountain of Youth only on Apple TV+ May 23rd!
On this episode, JD and Brendan are joined by a very special guest (JD’s son Sam!) as we review Disney’s latest live-action remake Lilo & Stitch! We are biased, but this is one of our favorite episodes to date. Sam was so excited and we had a great time getting his perspective on Lilo, Stitch and all the fun they have in the movie. It might not be a masterwork, but it’s also not nearly as egregious as others make it out to be.
Review: Lilo & Stitch (4:00) Director: Dean Fleischer Camp Writer: Chris Kekaniokalani Bright, Mike Van Waes Stars: Maia Kealoha, Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Chris Sanders
Synopsis: After losing his beloved mother, a man risks everything to honor her by opening an Italian restaurant with actual grandmothers as the chefs.
It’s their attention to detail. Very rarely does a film that uses food as a canvas for storytelling suffer from losing the audience’s attention. Think about it—the unveiling of the great timpano in Big Night, the way Jon Favreau’s Carl Casper carefully crafts a beautiful meal before confronting Oliver Platt’s food critic in Chef, or even in animation, how Anton Ego takes his first bite of Remy’s titular dish in Ratatouille. Even the smallest scenes, like the meticulous way Paul Sorvino thinly slices garlic with a razor blade in Goodfellas, show how food can ground a story in texture, memory, and meaning.
I felt the same warmth in Netflix’s new film Nonnas when they invited Joey to the counter to watch his Nonna make the gravy. You can almost smell the basil and taste the sweetness of the tomatoes, and watching piles of food being devoured by happy family members is a delight to behold. (I especially relate to the guy who took four slices of lasagna with a single spatula.) Nonnas bring the feeling of nostalgia, and how good it is to tell a story, and have the power to bring back overwhelming memories, good or bad, all that matters is that you relive them without regrets.
The story of Nonnas follows Joe (Vince Vaughn), who is grieving the recent loss of his mother. To make matters worse, he misses his grandmother, his beloved “Nonna,” as well. In an effort to reconnect with his roots, Joe turns to generations-old recipes for solace, comfort, and, frankly, the kind of direction only the elder women in a strong family can provide. He’s not alone—he has a support system, including his best friend Bruno (Magic Mike’s Joe Manganiello) and his wife Stella (Drea de Matteo), who bring him food and invite him over for dinner.
Joe also visits his mom’s best friend, Roberta (The Sopranos’ Lorraine Bracco), at her care facility. She gives him a letter, telling him to read it “when the time is right.” As the nights grow longer and his sense of purpose drifts, Joe finds closure by using his mother’s insurance money to open a restaurant. With the help of her lifelong friends, he launches Enoteca Maria—a kitchen staffed by four “nonnas,” each representing a different region of Italy and bringing their own culinary traditions and nostalgia to every plate.
Nonnas was directed by Stephen Chbosky, best known for helming one of the greatest coming-of-age films of the 21st century, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, as well as the unfairly maligned Dear Evan Hansen. Working from a script by his wife, Liz Maccie (Siren), the film is based on the true story of American chef Joe Scaravella—a restaurateur best known for establishing the real-life restaurant featured in the film in 2007, where rotating “nonnas” regularly prepare traditional home-cooked meals.
Before you start questioning if this is a way for Mr. Scaravella to get around child labor laws by “hiring” older adults to chain them to a kitchen island to keep them working for free, Nonnas is delightful, filled with heartfelt messaging, and makes for a good family film about honoring those we’ve lost and celebrating the wisdom of our elders. The film is poignant, while yes, being a little bit manipulative, but never crossing that line fully. In fact, it’s warm, bubbly, and affirming in a way that most streaming films lose the concept of quickly in order to fit an algorithm narrative.
Nonnas is rich in meaning, wanting to honor the way one was raised and shaped, which happens through not just one, but multiple generations. It’s the equivalent of a warm family dinner that has trouble closing the distance when it comes to themes of grief, loss, and mindfulness. The script is a highly fictionalized take on the true story, but that is most films, clearly slanted for crowd-pleasing viewing with comedic takes, like when Bracco refers to Craigslist as “The List of Craig.” Of course, it could be all true, how would I know? I hope two old nonnas started a food fight, using tomatoes and garlic as grenades in the name of team building.
The cast is the ticket here, including Bracco, Susan Sarandon (Thelma & Louise), Talia Shire (The Godfather), Brenda Vaccaro (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), and Linda Cardellini (Green Book). They hit the right notes, along with classic feel-good tropes, that make this a nostalgia machine for any age, group, or family. Everything about those dinner scenes, the banter, laughs, arguments, and camaraderie on screen, is mouth-watering entertainment, even though the film is not as authentically meaningful in themes as the dishes they present.
With the Palme d’Or win for his latest movie, It Was Just An Accident, Iranian director Jafar Panahi joins an elite class of directors who’ve won the big three festival prizes at Cannes, Berlin, and Venice. Frenchman Henri-Georges Clouzot, Italian Michelangelo Antonioni, and American Robert Altman all won the Palme d’Or, Golden Lion, and Golden Bear as well, and they are legends in their own right. Panahi may not be a major standout from Iran compared to Asghar Farhadi and Abbas Kiarostami, but Panahi has been in the business long enough that his name now has to be considered among the elites from the notoriously censorious nation. Winning the Palme d’Or is probably the best middle finger Panahi could give to the authorities at home, who have banned him from filmmaking, yet he continues to defy.
Panahi’s filmmaking experience came from his days in the military when he was conscripted into the army during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. He was their cinematographer, capturing footage on the ground as part of the propaganda for the newly established Islamic Republic, and was a Prisoner of War for 76 days. After his discharge, Panahi enrolled in film school, where his exposure to Western films influenced his style going into narrative filmmaking during the ’90s. After a series of short documentaries and serving as Kiarostami’s assistant for his film, Through the Olive Trees, Panahi made his narrative feature debut in 1995 with The White Balloon.
The film follows a young girl who wants to buy a goldfish but is unable due to her mother’s refusal to give her the money. She tries to trick her way into getting the money, but manages to lose it twice and tries to get it back. Worldwide acclaim for The White Balloon won numerous awards for Panahi and was submitted by Iran as the country’s nominee for Best International Film at the Oscars. However, the government attempted to withdraw the nomination, which was refused; this would start a series of interferences between the government and Panahi. In 2000, Panahi released The Circle, winning the Golden Lion at Venice. The drama, which was critical of Iran’s treatment of women, was later banned by the authorities, and so was his next feature, Crimson Gold.
Iran’s strict rules on what can be depicted about Iranian society, as well as formal permission from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, have always clamped down on certain dissents made by artists. His next film, Offside, was even a more direct attack on the government, the story about a group of girls who disguise themselves as boys to watch a soccer game. Iran prohibits women and girls from attending certain sporting events to prevent women from hearing crude language and seeing men in shorts and t-shirts; again, Panahi refused to change the story and filmed in secret. He was able to set up outside distribution and sneak the film out of Iran before the authorities banned and confiscated it. By then, authorities moved to crush open dissent harder after the Green Movement in 2009, which Panahi supported, and he was arrested.
Along with fellow director Mohammad Rasoulof, Panahi was convicted of “intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic,” and sentenced to six years imprisonment plus a twenty-year ban from any work in media. The international response was massive, with many organizations, filmmakers, actors, and other public figures condemning the sentences. Panahi was later allowed to serve his sentence under house arrest, where he continued to make movies in secret. This Is Not A Film follows him over ten days, talking to his lawyers while appealing his sentence and reflecting on his career up to then. Closed Curtain was filmed secretly at his home about two people in hiding from the police – a docufiction mirroring Panahi’s situation. In 2015, Taxi, which won Panahi the Golden Bear in Berlin, follows the director while working as a cab driver, talking to his passengers about daily life in Tehran, who speak openly about how they feel about what is happening in their country.
By the time he made It Was Just An Accident, also shot secretly and without permission due to his filmmaking ban, Panahi was officially free and allowed to travel out of the country. At the Cannes Film Festival for the first time in years, Panahi presents a story about how a man who accidentally runs over a dog snowballs into a much serious conflict that challenges all the characters involved. Again, it challenges Iranian authority with women being shown not wearing their hijab, a law Iranian officials have taken a hardline stance on. Panahi gave tribute to other artists at home who remain banned from working or travelling, and his victory at Cannes solidifies Panahi as one of the most important filmmakers in the world. Neon has the rights to the film, which means it’s an immediate Oscar contender later in the year.
Iran is a country that has produced an incredible wealth of amazing movies, but is also challenged by theocratic rule, which demands obedience and following of Islamic law. Many Iranian artists have now gone on to live in exile so they can openly criticize the government and demand change. Panahi, however, has refused to go into exile, continuing to make movies in his homeland in defiance of the law. “Those who are making their first films are forced to do whatever they are told; they allow the censors to mutilate their films,” said Panahi in an interview. “If we do not stand up to the censors, the conditions will be worse for the young filmmakers.” His daring storytelling makes him a hero to everyone who stands for freedom of expression and the refusal to compromise against a restrictive machine.
This week on the InSession Film Podcast, with The Final Reckoning maybe being the end, we do a consensus ranking of the Top 5 stunts in the Mission: Impossible franchise! We also discuss the weekend box office and the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
– More on The Final Reckoning (0:34) Despite having a cathartic conversation with Griffin Schiller of FilmSpeak in our review of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, it turns out we had more to say on the film. We love this franchise and there’s something about these last two and its hard right turn with how they treat Ethan that left us quite frustrated.
– Dumb Twitter Discourse / 2025 Cannes (26:29) The discourse around Lilo & Stitch has been nothing short of dumb and disingenuous. We felt inspired to not only address it, but specifically talk about why parents would take their kids to see *checks notes* a kids movie. Of all the movies out right now, it turns out there’s only one option appropriate for young kids. And you guys are never going to guess which one it is. After losing our minds, we end the segment celebrating the great films to come out of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The fall season looks to be really exciting.
– Mission: Impossible Stunts Ranking (1:04:57) Instead of doing a traditional Top 5 this week, we thought it would be more fun to do a consensus ranking of the best Mission: Impossible stunts. We started off by aiming for the five stunts that we loved the most, and ended up discussing thirteen because we just couldn’t help ourselves. There’s just so many absurd and incredible stunts to talk about, with some of them changing Hollywood filmmaking as we know it. With that said, what would be your Top 5 Mission: Impossible stunts?
If you want to help support us, there are several ways you can help us and we’d absolutely appreciate it. Every penny goes directly back into supporting the show and we are truly honored and grateful. Thanks for your support and for listening to the InSession Film Podcast!
Director:Stanley Kubrick Writers:Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson Stars: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd
Synopsis: A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter, where a sinister presence influences the father into violence. At the same time, his psychic son sees horrifying forebodings from both the past and the future.
Is Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining a horror movie? Perhaps in the modern sense, but if you make that determination, you’d have to believe it was the only one he’d ever made. It’s certainly scary, but now 45 years post-release, it may be more aptly placed in a genre all its own. The Shining would be one of the greatest horror movies of all time, but what it actually is has transcended any such definition. In simpler terms, the movie is “its own thing”.
Evidence for the film’s existence on a higher plane than just about any other can be found, much like other great works of art, in just how many copies, and copies or copies of it, that there are. Take It Chapter Two, for example, which releases four decades after The Shining. That one is a horror movie, no doubt, yet far less scary than the former. It also directly references the former in a way completely irrelevant to the plot, wherein a character shouts “Here’s Johnny!” towards the film’s climax.
Yes, Stephen King wrote both books, but for movies so far apart and otherwise completely unrelated, such a focused inclusion only nods to the overwhelming impact The Shining has had on the horror genre, whether or not it meant to. Kubrick’s film is one that you’ve got to be patient with; it’s a prodding narrative that seeps into your psyche with painstaking precision. It sneaks up on you, like a car you can’t hear running, and before you know it you, too, are running from an axe-wielding Jack Torrance. From that teal title card accompanied by an irreplaceable, natural film grain, the film’s eventual mania is immediately felt in a kind of encapsulated, instant vision.
Notoriously, King didn’t like this adaptation of his book at all, preferring a made for television version that would come a little later down the line. But that one didn’t have Jack Nicholson, so… why bother? It goes without saying, but Nicholson’s performance in The Shining is the driving core that makes the entire thing tick. It’s the same general impact that an action star may make on a big movie franchise, but on a much smaller scale and in one singular instance — and he isn’t just good towards the end, when he’s shouting and chasing and losing his mind.
Nicholson plants Torrance’s seed of unease very early on in the film, well before any of the characters around him care to recognize the potential evils that outline him. When he takes the job to care for the Overlook Hotel, his eventual descent appears to be faintly visible in the look he gives the man who makes the offer. It’s a life yet to be lived by a man who may not mentally be there just yet, but the writing’s on the wall. Just a brilliant performance that enough can’t possibly be said about.
That goes for the whole film, really. It’s one of those that you’re forced to turn your brain off for in the best way possible; could you nitpick it and find something to complain about? Sure, but why would you when what’s present is so passionately crafted that it puts most everything being released today to shame? Whether in the horror genre or elsewhere, this is the sort of once in a lifetime cinematic experience that permanently changed the way people saw the medium back in 1980. In fact, it hasn’t been the same since. A trip to the Overlook is the perfect antidote to any film buff who may feel bummed out after another mediocre trip to the movies; if all else fails, this is one you can boot up in any mood, at any time, for any reason, and it’ll do the trick and then some.
Director:Dean Fleischer Camp Writers:Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes Stars: Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders, Sydney Agudong
Synopsis:The story of a Hawaiian girl meeting a fugitive alien who helps mend her broken family
For well over a decade now, Disney has been sucking their well of classic animated films dry to make a quick buck by creating live-action versions of the same material. Some are completely different takes on the material like 2020’s Mulan, and others are lifeless photocopy jobs like 2019’s The Lion King. Their latest attempt at this tried and true formula with Lilo & Stitch (2025) ends up lying somewhere in between these two types. The original Lilo & Stitch film from 2002, despite coming out at a time when Disney Animation was in a slump, proved to last through multiple generations as a heartwarming story about the meaning of family. Unfortunately, considering the quality of all of their others, it’s no surprise that Disney’s latest live-action revamp misses the core, the heart from the original.
The new Lilo & Stitch, despite running 20 minutes longer than the original film, has so much less thematic substance than the original that it’s utterly confounding. When it’s not just following the beat-by-beat strokes of the original, it makes some of the most bizarre and haphazard changes and additions to the story that either add nothing to the film but fluff or actively harm what the remake is trying to accomplish. Young actress Maia Kealoha, as Lilo, seems to be the only aspect of this remake that the movie captures with the warmth of the original. Still, Lilo & Stitch appears to yet again render these remakes as pointless, sludgy-looking cash grabs for the company’s benefit.
The narrative of this remake mostly remains the same with mad scientist Jumba (Zach Galifianakis) being put on trial for the creation of experiment 626, aka Stitch (voiced by Chris Sanders, co-director and voice of Stitch in the original film). Still, Stitch goes on to escape his capture and lands on planet Earth in the state of Hawaii where he is adopted by Lilo and Nani (Sydney Agudong). However, the issues with this remake are apparent from the start with a weirdly breakneck pace through its first 20 minutes of introducing us to the characters while trying to hit beats that the movie knows its audience will remember. The main problem is that this is yet another case where the lack of these moments in the remake will be filled in with the nostalgia that many have for the original film, which is the laziest way to tell this story to both newer and older audiences.
As stated previously, it’s very apparent that the only performance here that manages to capture even an iota of the original’s charm is Maia Kealoha, who brings a similar likability to the character that is present in the original. She manages to find a nice connection to Stitch even though the CG creature is not there with her on set, an incredibly impressive feat for such a young first-time performer. Unfortunately, performance-wise there isn’t much else to talk about other than the shockingly awful performance from Zach Galifianakis. From the opening minutes, it is so obvious that his type of voice and mannerisms as an actor do not fit the character whatsoever, and it doesn’t help matters when they entirely shift Jumba as the villain of this film. This haphazard change ruins the dynamic he is supposed to form with Stitch later in the film, when he realizes the creature has greater purpose than destruction.
Even though the central focus of the original surrounds Lilo and Nani’s family, there are a shocking amount of changes and new additions to the human cast of the film, as well. The most apparent of them is the inclusion of Tūtū (Amy Hill) as a neighbor who lives next to Nani and Lilo, but as with the other remakes, it comes off as an inclusion whose presence makes no difference to the film. Courtney B. Vance plays this film’s version of Cobra Bubbles who is also bizarrely changed to be a CIA agent who decides to be a social worker in disguise instead of the reverse; yet another unneeded fluff change that somehow doesn’t even compare how different Sydney Agudong’s Nani is in this version of the story. Here, she is made to be an aspiring marine biologist who can’t achieve that career because of her little sister. Not only does this change barely add anything new to the core of the story, but it forgets that what made Nani’s smaller regular life conflicts so important was that it could relate so much more to the struggles of the average person. It’s an utterly confounding change that takes so much more away than it adds.
The truth is, I wish I could say Disney’s Live-action Lilo and Stitch was even just mildly better than the bottom of the barrel quality we’ve been getting from these kinds of movies for years now, but that would just be a swerve further away from the truth than imaginable. It’s yet another limp reincarnation of such an lively 2D animated film that fails to even remotely capture the same sort of magic that was present in that 2002 film. Lilo & Stitch (2025) is an empty husk that will leave the brains of those who watch it immediately after the fact.
Synopsis: With her mother’s diary in hand, Marina’s search for official documents for university leads her to her biological family on the Atlantic coast. What starts as an administrative quest reveals long-buried family secrets.
Since her directorial debut, Summer 1993, Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón has been crafting a loose trilogy centered around family relationships and identity, where she draws inspiration from her own life to create poignant, nuanced stories that play with her memory in poetic ways. Each film covers a different time and place. Simón takes her experiences as a kid, whether in the rural area or farming region of the Catalan countryside, and sends us on a journey through remembrance, without drowning too much in the overly sentimental nostalgia trips that many directors adopt during their retellings. She looks at these moments through a new lens, capturing what might have passed her mind when younger.
The things that children don’t understand in adult situations are presented with the innocence of the kid at the center of the story and a maturity from the now older filmmaker. But the trilogy is now coming to a close. Following her excellent Golden Bear-winning Alcarràs, Simón presents Romería (screening in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival), the third and final installment of this series of films about family, memory, and coming of age. Switching scenarios from the Catalan countryside to the Galician seaside towns, Simón’s latest is her most personal work, covering a period in her life that has made a mark on her–one that still hurts her to some degree. It was a period of fragmented remembering, during which portraits deemed incomplete turned into beautiful paintings.
People who were once estranged were brought back into your life to guide you during this reminiscence. Romería is set during the summer of 2004, in the town of Vigo, Galicia, and follows an eighteen-year-old girl, Marina (Llúcia Garcia, Simón’s surrogate), who travels from Barcelona to Spain’s Atlantic coast in order to get her parents’ death certificates from her biological grandparents needed for a film school grant. The scholarship Marina is applying for requires a document acknowledging her bloodline. Marina’s parents passed away from AIDS–the second film at the festival about the topic, alongside Julia Ducournau’s Alpha–during the ‘90s epidemic, hence her being taken care of by adoptive parents. Like Ducournau, Simón reflects on a time that was deeply affected by drugs and the transmission of this disease, with many people losing their loved ones via overdose, AIDS, and other related incidents.
It was a troubling time that Ducournau and Simón lived through and they felt those pains firsthand, specifically the Spanish filmmaker. But the two have different approaches to discussing the time and the people affected by it. Ducournau is broader (and more mournful) in her dissection, utilizing the collective community’s fears, melancholy, and worries to shape her story about an ostracized family. She brilliantly basks in the darkness. But Simón embraces the light that kisses the Galician terrains and coasts–the places where her parents fell deeply in love–without shying away from the coldness that emerges from the recollections of her family. The two films are polar opposites, yet connected at their hearts, with pain and resilience holding them together.
From here, very early in the film, you sense Simón’s openness; her willingness to share personal details about her youth and disconnected family has always been present in all her projects, including her shorts. However, in Romería, since it is a point in her life when she finally knew who her parents were, it feels like a topic she would’ve kept hidden previously during her early years. But now, with three feature films in her portfolio and having reconciled with all those thoughts during the filming process, she invites us to hear the complete story–completing the picture of what made her parents the people they were. Upon arrival, Marina is met with open arms from her aunts, uncles, and cousins, all happy to know everything about her.
The only person with a different approach towards her is Uncle Iago (Alberto Gracia), a sidelined member of the family who refuses to bury the past of those who have passed. Iago is the only member of this family who is willing to talk about Marina’s parents and their turmoil, like her father’s heroin addiction, which ultimately led to the contraction of the disease, and his bond with her mother. Curious as a teenager always is, Marina converses with Iago and learns the secrets that lingered in her parents’ lives. Even though they have been dead for many years, these conversations and the trip to Galicia have helped her grow closer to them–her fractured memories slowly being repaired as they unfold in a new light that shines their double-edged personalities.
Simón then plays with these retellings from Iago and the rest of the family in a fleeting manner, with tons of poetic nuances and her usual swift delicacy. From a single instance where her grandmother tells Marina that she has a keen resemblance to her mother, Simón takes the viewer from the 2000s to the ‘80s, where we see a young couple deeply in love. Those are Marina’s parents, played by Llúcia Garcia and Mitch Martin. It is a daring swing (Simón’s most daring swing in her filmmaking career, if you ask me) into the mystical, where Garcia not only is a stand-in for Simón, but her mother as well. Simón’s trust in Garcia must be enormous, as she is tasked with not only the role of playing her, but also the caretaker who left her life way too soon. Simón also has another actor playing dual roles in Mitch Martin, who plays Marina’s father (and in counterpart Simón’s) as well as her eldest cousin, Nuno.
A spectral element blossoms from these scenes of cinematic remembrance; they capture the haunting beauty of memory and time–the displacement of recollection. Using her mother’s diary as a framing device helps us navigate these moments as if it were Simón reading it for the first time. And in a festival where cinematic poetry has been vast and seen in various effective forms (Sirât, Alpha, Resurrection, Sound of Falling, amongst other excellent examples), Simón finds a way to make her wistfulness stand out in the competition and in her filmography too. As we travel from the past to the present, and vice versa, Marina connects with the rest of the family members, each revealing a small yet intricate detail about her parents. But that means that the depicted retellings do take a darker turn.
What begins as a love story from these visions later descends into addiction, where the heroin takes control of them and ultimately separates the two emotionally. Dashes of the late Carlos Saura’s Deprisa, Deprisa (Faster, Faster) are noticed in Romería not only in the story itself but in the actors’ characteristics too–Garcia and Martin resemble the two leads from the film, Berta Socuellamos Zarco and José Antonio Valdelomar, who, rather tragically, passed away from a heroin overdose. The excellent and tragic 1981 film follows Angela (Zarco) and Pablo (Valdelomar) as they fall in love and into the hands of drugs. A cinematic circle begins to shape itself, where Simón and Saura, a significant influence on her work, connect with reverence, adding an equally touching and saddening splendor that is easy to be moved by.
Like Saura, Simón takes time to talk about people succumbing to the periphery of drugs in ‘80s Spain. Although Romería does not expand on the impossibility of escape during the post-Franco urban margins as much as Deprisa, Deprisa, there is a heartfelt commentary on youth and love during a period of uncertainty. The Spanish filmmaker questions: Why do people pick and choose the stories they keep secret and decide to tell? And she comes up with Romería as an answer to such a question. What I love about the film, and Simón’s approach, is that even if this is a story based on her experiences, she concocts a universal portrait, not explicitly related to losing your parents (and the things we never knew about them), but the search for clarity and lucidity in the blurred, melancholic moments of our lives.
Director:Wes Anderson Writer:Wes Anderson Stars: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera
Synopsis:Wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists, and determined assassins.
“Myself, I feel very safe.” That’s what Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) tends to tell himself moments before potential disaster, when everyone around him has reason to panic. A ticking time bomb that was covertly hidden under his private plane’s lunch trolley? No bother, it shouldn’t go off before he and his companions reach the tarmac. A catastrophic engine failure that requires a forced landing, one that his pilot is reasonably anxious about performing? Good thing Korda, an infamous international businessman and one of the richest men in Europe, is a capable aviator himself. (Perhaps it’s no coincidence that a number of these crises unfold while he floats among the clouds.) A global project that he has been nurturing for years and could feasibly set the wheels of global commerce in motion anew is suddenly in jeopardy of losing its financing? More complicated than a plane crash – he has survived six – but for a master negotiator such as himself, Korda’s ability to convince his financiers to fork over a bit more dough should be as easy as taking candy from a baby. He’s a man of endless means, after all, despite the fact that practically everyone he’s ever communicated with wants him dead. “I’m still in the habit of surviving,” he notes following the first aerial accident we see him escape with but a few minor-ish injuries, despite the fact that, in his glib phrasing, he keeps getting assassinated. If anyone should feel safe in times of trouble, it’s probably the man with this much luck on his side.
This idea of feeling safe amidst logical uncertainty also happens to make a lot of sense for audiences taking in a new film from Wes Anderson, the auteur whose style has become more recognizable with every passing feature, arguably to the point of being overdone. He strokes a familiar, comforting brush when he paints, making art that you might feasibly say you’ve seen before, only what you really mean is that you’ve seen something only slightly similar. While each of Anderson’s films look, sound, and feel analogous on their surface – singularly and intricately designed by a mad diaramist with an infinite toolbox – there’s newfound magic aplenty to what Anderson achieves in each work of art, and the fresh stories he tells while maintaining his elegant, orderly technique.
Zsa-zsa Korda, the main character in his latest journey, The Phoenician Scheme, is the ideal Andersonian archetype, a wealthy, idiosyncratic man who has a complicated relationship with his many children and a particular goal in mind, one that serves as the film’s engine. This objective, one that quickly transforms from an ambitious business venture into a madcap caper, fits squarely in the narrative realm its writer-director has been operating within for the better part of three decades. Its thematic dressing is a slightly newer presence in Anderson’s filmography, though viewers of his two most recent films – 2021’s The French Dispatch and 2023’s Asteroid City – will clock The Phoenician Scheme’s poignancy from a mile away and still appreciate the trip that is required to get to its heart. Most, if not all of his films are cut from the same cloth, but every individual creation exists unto itself.
The Phoenician Scheme is no exception, and not only because it feels as though Anderson saw the heartfelt responses to his two preceding features and asked, “What if that tone, but funnier and bloodier?” Of course, that simply means that there will be a bounty of sight gags, glorious quips, and gunfire aplenty, but it’s Scheme’s heartwarming spirit that should still be the primary draw. The film doesn’t fully set off on its globe-trotting excursion until Korda is reunited with his only daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), who he hasn’t seen in six years, not since sending her to a convent where she would become a nun. He didn’t necessarily want her to become religious; he just figured it was safer than living in his chaotic transactional world.
Korda has sent for her in order to will his estate to her in the event of his inevitable, albeit untimely death, a prospect that comes with a fortune as sizable as Liesl’s doubts, given she and her father’s self-induced estrangement. Nothing a quick prayer can’t fix, though, and after confiding in the Lord, Liesl agrees to work with Zsa-zsa on a trial basis, one that she intends to use as proof that she belongs in the convent. Thus, their adventure begins, and because Anderson is nothing if not a filmmaker who loves to employ a vast ensemble, Korda’s entomology tutor, Bjørn (Michael Cera), tags along.
As the trio’s travels ensue, so, too, does the United Nations’ concerted effort to bring Korda down once and for all, as his dealings in international markets have caused a great deal of turmoil between a number of international countries. Led by Rupert Friend, this U.N. task force has been fudging prices for the materials Korda requires to complete his next enterprise, a collection of profit-maximizing channels across six separate locations in the territory formerly known as Phoenicia. In order to balance the cost, Korda (with Liesl and Bjørn’s assistance) has to negotiate the reduction of “the gap” with the other involved parties: the mousy Prince Farouk (Riz Ahmed), railroad barons Leland and Reagan (Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston, respectively), the nightclub-owning Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric), the fast-talking ship captain Marty (Jeffrey Wright), and Korda’s cousin, Hilda (Scarlett Johansson), who has been tasked with heading up construction of a dam at the center of the whole operation. Uncle Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch, sporting one hell of a beard) is the biggest obstacle of all, and is a significant figure in Korda’s past to boot. But the numbers they’re all negotiating don’t matter nearly as much as the journey to each destination, as The Phoenician Scheme is as much a road movie as it is an action-comedy, and combining those two genres makes for a blissfully entertaining romp that only Anderson could devise.
And while said romp tends to get a bit distracted by the plethora of schemes hiding within its titular one, it’s a fitting quality, given its protagonist’s own inability to handle one thing at a time, and certainly his struggles with keeping it all in order. “If something gets in your way, flatten it,” Korda tells Liesl, nevermind that it was the advice his own father gave him before he cut Zsa-zsa out of his will. That’s not an idea that one might typically associate with Anderson, though maybe that’s because “flatten” is the term used and not “escape.” The latter has been far more present throughout his career, from 1996’s Bottle Rocket to his masterpiece, 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, and beyond. In each, someone (or multiple someones) spend a great deal of time running from something, attempting to evade capture and narrowly succeeding.
The same happens in The Phoenician Scheme, but with another obsession of Anderson’s working its way into the foreground: How these dire straits bring people closer together. Who better to pair in this particular scenario than a father and a daughter –The Royal Tenenbaums, anyone? – with del Toro delightfully inhabiting the role of the pompous puppet master who softens up over time, and Threapleton turning in a breakout performance as the kid he once left behind for bigger and better things. Her understanding that emotions need not always be plastered on an actor’s face is the smartest casting-related revelation, perhaps only surpassed by how at home the Anderson first-timing Cera is in this quirky world. He’s a riot and a natural, and is thankfully given a part that expands far beyond the trappings that Bjørn’s accent might suggest.
In terms of its action, The Phoenician Scheme’s violence serves as Anderson’s most overt use of combat to date, but it’s treated with a slickness that is at home here as it would be in a Monty Python tale. (Gunshot wounds tend to be met with “Tis just a flesh wound” type responses.) Yet the scales are always cleverly balanced out by how other characters look at Zsa-zsa after he’s thrown himself in harm’s way on their behalf. Furthermore, when Korda is severely wounded, Anderson alters his aspect ratio to Academy and shifts to heavenly tableaus where his main character dreams of God (Bill Murray) and others from his past, as if he’s briefly ascended to the afterlife. Shot in black and white (which cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel previously mastered in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth), these brief departures from the reality Anderson has molded are among his deepest constructions to date, and allow for real-time introspection about what exactly he might be getting at with this particular piece.
They occur infrequently and are relatively brief, but these interludes feel more in line with Phoenician’s grand scheme than they appear at first blush. “Somewhere along the line, we realize this guy is being confronted with his own death so aggressively and overtly that it’s actually starting to change his view of the world,” Anderson told Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri in a recent interview. “Which is not something he’s ever been open to. And what he’s learning in those moments I guess he’s learning from himself.” As the audience learns along with Korda – about life, death, legacy, regret, and love – there’s a chance they’ll be hesitant, given what much of The Phoenician Scheme has presented itself to be. It would be a mistake. Like Asteroid City and the rest of Anderson’s body of work before it, something deeper is at play. You just have to look beyond the pristine scenery to find it.
I still remember the first time I saw Pam Grier in a movie.
It was my early cinephilia days, I was on a Quentin Tarantino marathon, a.k.a. keeping up with releases before “Inglorious Basterds,” which was probably the first QT movie I ever saw. I had seen Pulp Fiction at a film criticism workshop screening before; it was a required viewing as part of our “curriculum,” but it still hadn’t grown on me as a film lover.
Jackie Brown was the penultimate Tarantino film I watched. I remember how back then I finished the marathon with a sense of euphoria that, of course, left me back in 2017 with the illusion of “Here’s to many Tarantino movies to come!” only to get one only in 2019 and be faced with the epic Tarantino drought ever since.
But the experience of watching Jackie Brown for the first time, to me, was incomparable. There’s always a magical moment when I watch a movie, then I get fascinated by a particular actor in it, so I isolate them from the entire movie and start fantasizing about them for a long time afterward, hunting them down as people, not just the characters in the movie I watched. It happened to me most recently with Austin Butler in Elvis, but way before that there was Maggie Cheung in In the Mood For Love, and Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita.
Pam Grier here took my breath away, although this wasn’t even the Pam Grier of her heyday as the Blaxploitation bombshell. But there was something about her performance here that spoke to me on strange levels, ones I couldn’t comprehend when I was watching this masterpiece at the time. Grier plays Jackie Brown with such fluidity; earthy toned and calm, serene, despite playing a scary woman living in a scary world. There is something about a tired, aging woman who carries her sexuality and independence with grace and pride, but also feels wary of the burden she’s been carrying all her life. I can’t imagine any actor other than her to play this woman. To me, she embodies the experience of a Black woman over forty, a non-White woman with zero privilege, growing older, and tired of chasing life and the dream of a luxurious retirement. Her street smart and her coy seduction of Max Cherry (Robert Forster), but also that sultry voice that she uses to deliver her lines in the perfect tone and rhythm, that’s why she stands out in every scene she’s in, even opposite major actors and mega movie stars.
After Jackie Brown, I was expectedly blown away by the dazzling Grier. I searched for her every other project, and opened the Blaxploitation goldmine, consuming one hit after the other; Coffy, Sheba, Baby, and Foxy Brown. Blaxploitation is a fun genre, and no one can imagine it without Grier, whose athleticism, eroticism, and beauty have helped carve those movies into the hearts and souls of fans for many years. She has been a passionate advocate for the genre, and rightly so. It was likely the first time Black people had a distinct voice in American art, despite the negative criticism associated with it, particularly regarding the reinforcement of stereotypes about Black individuals. In every Blaxploitation film she is in, Grier plays an action star. She handles guns like a pro. She kicks men to the curb and she does that in heels. She’s smart, she’s energetic, and she’s seductive. Her afro and her wigs, as well as her form-fitting dresses make it difficult to keep your eyes off her anytime she’s on screen. I adored Grier’s Blaxploitation performances. I saw her as a badass, brave, tall, sexy, and violent, unafraid of committing whatever visceral act of depravity to save herself. Admittedly, the sexual violence was at times too much, but seeing her coming on the other side strong and avenging the men who wronged her was so cathartic.
I see Grier as an icon. A form of sexuality on screen mixed with a physical presence unlike any action star pre the sexy sultry action star of the late ‘90s and aughts. But how she plays it in those films; unabashed, sexual, violent, and sometimes sadistic, gives her an aura of fearlessness and intensity that are usually preserved for other more “airbrushed” stars, favored by Hollywood while the big execs have tried to not-so-coyly shove her accomplishments under the rug, delusionally thinking they can shove her into the pit of forgetfulness.
But no one forgets a face like Pam Grier, or the sweltering, intense performances she has given in every role she plays. Happy 76th birthday to this icon and hopefully we get to see a Grieraissance sometime soon.
On this episode, JD and Brendan are joined by the great Griffin Schiller of FilmSpeak to discuss Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise’s latest (and last?) mission with Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning! This is one of the most cathartic reviews we’ve maybe ever had on the show. Mission: Impossible is a franchise we love, but these last two films disappointed in ways that left us frustrated and we purged those emotions in a way that ended up therapeutic.
Review: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (4:00) Director: Christopher McQuarrie Writer: Christopher McQuarrie, Erik Jendresen Stars: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Angela Bassett
This week on Women InSession, we discuss the legendary costume designer Edith Head and her astounding career that includes a record eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design! Renowned for her impeccable eye for detail and ability to enhance a character through costume, Head worked for some of the best filmmakers and actors in her era, helping shape some of the most iconic images ever put to film. Which is to say, we had a really fun time with this conversation.
On that note, check out this week’s show and let us know what you think in the comment section. Thanks for listening and for supporting the InSession Film Podcast!
Synopsis: Alpha, 13, is a troubled teenager who lives alone with her mother. Their world comes crashing down the day she comes home from school with a tattoo on her arm.
It is fair to say, and has been said many times at this point, that the pandemic was a cursed time for all of us, brooding in enclosed rooms, dealing with our unshielded minds, and fear lingering in the possibility of being infected with this disease that took the lives of many around the world. All of us were scared; it was a time nobody wants to repeat. At Cannes this year, there is a blatantly obvious (and outright trepid) film about said time, in all of its political madness and societal hysteria, in Ari Aster’s Eddington. But there is another picture about a disease that consumes people inside and out in Julia Ducournau’s Alpha (screening in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival), the follow-up to her Palme d’Or-winning Titane.
From the director who brought us touching pictures from bloody, brutal, and strange canvases–a father-daughter story intertwined with John Carpenter’s Christine in the aforementioned 2021 picture and a story about sisters and their sins of the flesh in Raw–you never know what to expect, which is a testament to her visionary artistry and brilliance. And so her next move is completely unexpected: a very personal and mournful rumination on the AIDS crisis, the loss of loved ones, our fear of death, and the succumbing nature of grief and loneliness. This is not feral or as violent as her previous features, but Alpha is equally tantalizing in its observations of the flesh and how it taints the soul, and vice versa. Ducournau switches from the Cronenbergian style of body horror. However, this is in a more poetic manner rather than visceral, to the existentialism of the works of Clive Barker and the dark poems of Edgar Allen Poe.
“This shift redefines Ducournau’s voice in horror—now steeped in vulnerability and emotional risk, rather than just visceral shock. It proposes the question: “How are you born into the world when everything around you is dying,” as she stated in an interview before the film’s world premiere. The answer to that question is not easily decipherable, even after seeing Alpha, since it is a very tricky picture to pick apart. However, Ducournau ensures that her response comes from within–her deepest fears and worries rooted in her past experiences. The film has a bruised heart, beating slowly, yet at a pace where one can still sense each ounce of pain and sincerity Ducournau felt then and still does. But it is a heart, and whether bruised or not, the cast and crew care for it, to the point you feel moved, vastly so.
Alpha follows the titular character, played by newcomer Mélissa Boros (another excellent addition to Ducournau’s talented selection of young lead actresses), a thirteen-year-old girl going through the growing pains of adolescence. Alpha shows signs of the atypical behavior a teenager goes through, rage, defiance, and everything in between. Ducournau’s protagonists have had this angst and terror inside them, whether from the beginning (Agathe Rouselle’s Alexia) or gradually (Garance Marillier’s Justine). But no matter which one of these it is, they have an innocence to them–a search for nurture and care in the moments of darkness. And the young Alpha is no different, with discontent on the outside while vulnerable on the inside. She sees her life in disarray and disrepair, just like the classrooms and bathrooms in her school, all deteriorated and torn apart.
The film’s color palette matches the brooding deterioration with desaturated colors, emphasizing greys and blacks, that diverges from cinematographer Ruben Impens’ more lively lens in his previous Ducournau collaborations. Still, the feeling in the atmosphere remains palpable, even if it is a feeling one wouldn’t want to be in the presence of for far too long. As this disrepair in the school is not noticed by her classmates, you get the feeling that this sensation the film basks on–the grey color-tainted lens covering, and eating, the scenery whole–is seen through the eyes of Alpha. The young girl envisions this dystopian world through freezing-cold glasses of decay. Later, this perception becomes more collective, where Ducournau exhibits her most mature and moving storytelling in her directorial career.
At this point in the narrative, it is all on Alpha, who wanders through this world in this saturated state of mind. In one of her acts of teenage defiance, Alpha gets a tattoo–a giant capitalized letter A on her arm–alongside some other classmates, all sharing the same dirty needle. The tattoo does not look good and isn’t healing properly. Once she gets home, and her mother (Golshifteh Farahani) finds out about it, panic amongst the household occurs not because of her rebellious ways specifically, but of what the needle might have transmitted to her. There is a possibility that Alpha has contracted a deadly blood-related disease that turns people into marble statues, stone cadavers with a sand-ish color that causes chills down your spine once you see them.
It reminded me of the burial shrouds in David Cronenberg’s latest work, The Shrouds. Instead of seeing a body in a bag, with a screen as an attachment to see your loved one decompose, it is people turning into raw material–both being monuments for the dead, their headstone. These are two creative ways of having filmmakers explore their fears of death and the grieving process. In the Cannes press conference for Alpha, Ducournau elaborated plenty on her references, particularly the small easter eggs she placed about Edgar Allen Poe in the film, saying plenty about that specific image of the statues and how it reflects her existential dread. And it is curious, and utmost fascinating, how Cronenberg and Ducournau–the labeled king and queen of body horror by many (including me)–made poetic films that, on one side of their multilayered story, reflect their mortality and fears of one day venturing into the void.
When those scenes appear, whether the shrouds or marble statues, there’s a coldness that strips the films of any amount of life for a few seconds and feels the worries of the auteurs, the darkness overcoming the light–drowning in the pool of existence. It is just not a coincidence, as also at last year’s Cannes there were many other features, from veteran directors specifically, that talked about memory and existence in different ways, shapes, and forms: Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me, Jean-Luc Godard’s Scenarios, etc. The pandemic caused them to reflect. Time was running out, or at least it seemed like that to many; as Schrader said during the Q&As for his film: “If I’m going to make a film about death, I’d better hurry up.”
These filmmakers were in a “rush” to make a picture that channeled their own lives; we watched and traversed through their memories, experiences, woes, and joys via a uniform canvas, being distinct compared to the rest of their work, and very personal. While Ducournau does not explore legacy like the rest of the aforementioned projects, as she is still young in the medium, she does present herself in a new light with an unexpected swing towards the mature, without the shock. She utilizes her dark memories from her time as a kid during the ‘80s and ‘90s, the time of the AIDS crisis, and adds in the trepidation of the COVID pandemic to paint a portrait of the melancholy waves both periods were riding on. She saw many people pass away during these times, which left a mark on her, leading to the creation of Alpha, a film that wants to remember those we lost.
This is only one angle of the film’s narrative. As it develops, Ducournau constructs a touching brother-sister story amidst the terror boiling from the effects of a rebellious tattoo. That part of the story is also rooted in a needle, used by a past addict. Alpha’s estranged uncle, Amin (Tahar Rahim, in a Machinist-like role), re-enters her life after many years, with flashbacks to when she was five years old, where she draws with a marker the scars on his arm, a symbolic, quick image of the beauty in destruction, and vice versa. He comes back, a ghost from the past. And Alpha fears death is knocking at her door, waiting to collect. The last image of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal started to appear in my mind. Her bones go cold; her body gets numb. The greys become greyer, and the shadows loom heavily.
Everybody in her class set her to the side, with the belief that they’ll get infected. The community ostracizes her entire family. And Amin helps her navigate this life of distress and adversity. The two of them, affected by a needle, find mutual understanding in pain and melancholy. Alpha begins to care for Amin, even as his emotions fluctuate from this withdrawal. Her mother cares for the two connected, misguided souls, as the worries grow stronger, a resistance to fixing what has been broken for years. This is where Ducournau, alongside editor Jean-Christophe Bouzy, breaks the canvas and plays with time, memory, and dreams to create a new abstract mural that unites the wounds, literally and metaphorically, of the past, present, and possible futures. It is an uncanny presentation, often rich in poetic prose and vivid imagery, focusing on the nature of reality.
The messy fractures of lineage and genre work for and against the film, with Ducournau often placing the viewer in between the thin line of distance and closeness, yet always with a sense of compassion shining through the darkness, even at its most mournful scenes, which there are plenty of. Ultimately, Ducournau basks in the dread that consumes the people who lose someone they love, finding beauty in passing from one plain to another. Alpha is contrived with abstractions and despair, never letting go until you do; like grief, you must let go to stop the emotional bleeding. But it is a maneuver so personal and pensive that you can’t help but accept this dance with death for two hours.
Director:Matt Palmer Writers:Matt Palmer, Donald McLeary Stars: India Fowler, Fina Strazza, Katherine Waterston
Synopsis:When the “it” girls competing for prom queen at Shadyside High start to disappear, a gutsy outsider discovers she’s in for one hell of a prom night.
After an experimental release strategy with the initial trilogy, the Fear Street franchise has now returned on Netflix for a new installment, specifically adapting R.L. Stine’s The Prom Queen. While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel of slasher pictures, the movie still solidifies itself as a welcome return for one of Netflix’s best series, ensuring they can make as many installments as they can every couple of years. Why not have a lean, meat-and-potatoes, 89-minute-long slasher that has a well-defined beginning, middle, and go-for-broke conclusion that’s perfectly attuned to the sensibilities of 80s filmmaking, where the subgenre blew up, not only in cinemas, but on VHS? Sometimes, that’s all you need in a movie to be entertained.
Director Matt Palmer takes over the reins from Leigh Jeniak and presents a relatively easy going time where you fully know how the story will pan out. However, in this case, it almost doesn’t matter, even if it rips heavily from the Prom Night franchise. If you’ve seen any of these films, Prom Queen has virtually no surprises. One knows exactly who the masked assailants who attack Shadyside High’s prom are, and you don’t even need to put two and two together to figure it out. As soon as the moving pieces are all introduced, we know who the killers will murder first, and who will end up as the movie’s final girl.
Though for the benefit of this review, and for the people who want to check it out, I will not reveal a thing. Let’s just say that, even with a giallo-like twist, worthy of Dario Argento, that occurs as five minutes are left to the movie which caught me completely off-guard and actively improved upon who the telegraphed killers were, the movie goes through the motions and offers little to no excitement in the storytelling department.
Even the characters are as paper-thin as it gets, including the protagonist, Lori Granger (India Fowler), who vies to become the school’s prom queen after a traumatic event in her family made her Sunnyside High’s laughing stock, notably to its pack of popular girls, with leader Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza) constantly finding ways to humiliate Lori.
Lori, of course, gets the most development, but it’s not as interesting as in the first Fear Street installment, when we actively spent as much time as possible with the characters to solidify their dynamic before many of them were killed off in gratuitous, often cartoonishly violent ways. That’s why, for Prom Queen, the main attraction isn’t the relationship (or lack thereof) between the characters, but the kills, alongside another incredible, synth-heavy score from The Newton Brothers, which, in many ways, recalls the work of John Carpenter, without feeling like a blatant carbon copy.
Seeing masked killers exact their blood-soaked plan in motion through often hilariously perverse slaughters is what makes slashers like these so unabashedly fun. The retro aesthetic from cinematographer Márk Györi frequently combines the emulsion of 35mm film with the sheen of a VHS camcorder brilliantly, adding some verve and texture to a movie that desperately needs one, especially in how it stages its practical kills. Utilizing weapons at their disposal, including a paper trimmer for the movie’s funniest sequence, Palmer showcases how schools are filled with as many dangerous objects as possible that, in the wrong hands, can lead to our gory demise. This ensures Prom Queen always has some forward momentum and never stops delivering on what we want to see out of such a movie like this, even if it stumbles along the way.
When it eventually reaches its denouement and throws at us an unexpected reveal, it solidified the deal for me that Prom Queen may be the best installment in the Fear Street franchise since Part One: 1994. It’s fully aligned with the sensibilities that have made giallo stand the test of time for genre aficionados, and delivers a lean, but fiendishly good time at the movies. And if you’re watching it with friends, the experience may be even better, though one hopes Netflix comes out of their “streaming or nothing” shell and finally embraces the potentialities that theatrical can have for some of their titles like this one. Here’s hoping their tune will change when Greta Gerwig shows them what they’ve been missing next year…
Director: Mark O’Connor Writers: Luke McQuillan, Mark O’Connor Stars: Luke McQuillan, Aidan Gillen, Daniel Fee
Synopsis: Danny, an ex-soldier homeless in Dublin, meets Will, a teen fleeing a drug gang. Their encounter forces them to confront their pasts while navigating the harsh realities they face.
Everyone has experiences in their lives that leave scars. Whether those scars are visible to others or not, they alter our lives, challenging us in new ways. When misfortune leads to desperation, those seeking to prey on others at their lowest make themselves known. Amongst the Wolves weaves a narrative that attempts to blend a thrilling crime tale with a psychological journey for the film’s lead. Life becomes bleak for Danny (Luke McQuillan) when his life takes a downward turn that is seemingly impossible to reverse. There’s a lot packed into this film, leaving the most compelling moments with more to say.
We first meet Danny in the shroud of night, rummaging through trash bags outside of a clothing donation drop-off. Cleaning off a pair of children’s cleats he has found, he’s confronted by a group of young men whose intentions are anything but kind. Amongst The Wolves quickly shows just how down on his luck Danny is; without a home or his family by his side, he reflects on his life and the choices he has made to get to where he is. A veteran who is haunted by flashbacks of his past, he keeps to himself until he stumbles upon Will (Daniel Fee), a young man hiding in the woods from dangerous drug lords. The film is at its best while it is exploring Danny’s dark and often muddled past; moments where he must face his mistakes make for the most tragic and memorable bits of the story.
Danny and Will form an unlikely pairing; one is an ex-soldier at the lowest point of his life, and the other made one small mistake that will end up costing him something money can’t buy. They both bond over their situations; Danny sees himself as someone who needs to redeem himself for his past, which isn’t fully revealed to the audience outside of flashbacks that give just enough insight to show his flaws. Will needs Danny’s help to fend off crime boss, Power (Aidan Gillen) and his band of violent thugs. It’s easy to get lost in Amongst The Wolves with Danny constantly on the move, and new plot lines popping up with each new character that is introduced. Danny’s life is almost too chaotic to believe, leading the film to a resolution that takes away from the more important conversations this film attempts to create.
Where Amongst The Wolves hooked me was its leading performance from McQuillan, fully embracing his character’s shortfalls and playing him with just enough empathy. Danny is a character that you root for even when he gives you all the reasons not to. McQuillan’s best work is in the subtleness of his approach to the character; he has a quiet demeanor and often only makes eye contact when it’s absolutely needed. But he’s able to ramp up his performance during action sequences or when he’s holding someone up that owes his new friend, Will, some money. The rest of the cast is serviceable; Fee, who has his feature film debut here, has few moments outside of his scenes with McQuillan to showcase his acting abilities that unfortunately don’t leave much of a lasting impression. Gillen gives a rather on-the-nose performance as the main villain and feels like characters he’s played already in his filmography.
Writer and director Mark O’Connor juggles a lot of themes in Amongst The Wolves, tying into the culture of the land whether it be through the court systems with Danny’s ongoing child custody battle or how homelessness is viewed and treated. When O’Connor is exploring the societal impacts of losing all that you love and care for is where the film shines, showing a man who is imperfect but still worthy of a better life. It shows how untreated PTSD chips away at all aspects of life. Sadly, the film loses its focus with its attempt to be some kind of high-stakes action thriller, and the touching story of a man trying to redeem himself gets lost. O’Connor gives the female cast, Danny’s wife Gill (Jade Jordan), and charity worker love interest Kate (Louise Bourke), little to do outside of being obstacles for Danny or showing his more tender side.
The film’s visuals crank up the bleakness of Danny, and even Will’s circumstances, with its gloomy backdrop of Ireland. Everything is either drowned out by the nonstop rain or caked in grime and dirt. Danny can often be seen with dried blood in his hair from a previous tussle, or hands filthy from sleeping on the soaked ground. Power and his band of punch-happy followers don a mask at the end of the film that, although it is completely out of place next to the modest clothing each character wears, showcases sleek design. Ignas Laugalis, the film’s cinematographer, captures the mundane beauty in the smaller details of the film, the way the sun peeks through the windows of a charity shop, or the quiet sadness of Danny watching his son through a barred fence just out of reach of his old life. At times, you can almost smell the rain or the fresh dewy morning of the forest through Laugalis’ visuals.
Overall, there’s enough to enjoy within Amongst The Wolves from its lead performance to its often scenic visuals that make the film worth a watch. Its refusal to stick with one genre over another is ambitious, and although it doesn’t completely pay off, there’s a conversation to be had about mental health and the treatment of those society deems unworthy, and its impact on all aspects of life.
Every performance in The Brutalist is firing on all cylinders, from Brody’s terrific portrayal to Felicity Jones as Erzsébet adding an emotional center to the story. Her, at times, devastating presence impacts the second half considerably, as well as Guy Pearce as Harrison Van Buren, whose more charismatic public personality masks his more monstrous nature (to a point), and leads to career best work from him. A solid supporting cast comprised of Cassidy, Joe Alwyn, Nivola, Emma Laird, and Stacy Martin back the proceedings, with particularly exceptional work from Cassidy, who spends a major chunk of the movie without dialogue and conveys entire storylines through just her eyes. 
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