Director: Grant Singer
Writers: Grant Singer, Benjamin Brewer, and Benicio del Toro
Stars: Benicio del Toro, Justin Timberlake, Eric Bogosian

Synopsis: Nichols, a hardened New England detective unflinching in his pursuit of a case where nothing is as it seems, one that begins to dismantle the illusions in his own life.

Reptile is an atmospheric Southern crime thriller dripping with an ominous and obsessive style that gradually seeps under the skin, keeping the viewer on edge and making them uneasy. Grant Singer’s haunting tale excels when the script delves into fear and explores how good people create a moral gray area to unburden themselves of the guilt of doing very bad things.

The story follows Tom Nichols (Benicio del Toro), a once-celebrated Philadelphia detective who has taken a job in a small township. His wife, Judy (former del Toro Excess Baggage co-star Alicia Silverstone), arranged the position, and his uncle, who suffers from multiple sclerosis (Eric Bogosian), secured the job after a scandal back east left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. That move pays off when Nichols is assigned to investigate the scandalous murder of a local real estate agent.

Her name was Summer (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz), and she was separated but dating a wealthy real estate magnate, Will Grady (Justin Timberlake), who discovered her brutally murdered body in a house they were both preparing to put on the market. Summer was stabbed so brutally that the murder weapon was left behind, lodged in the victim’s pelvis with sheer force. Assisting in the investigation is Nichols’s partner, Detective Dan Cleary (Ato Essandoh), another officer with aspirations beyond the police department (Domenick Lombardozzi, exceptional here), and a mysterious sleuth (Michael Pitt) with an agenda.

This is Singer’s directorial debut after directing music videos for some of the industry’s mega-stars, including The Weeknd, Sky Ferreira, Lorde, Sam Smith, and Skrillex. In short, the man knows style. Still, what makes his debut feature so surprising is its autonomy. From an ominous climb up a dark staircase to a shadowy figure trapping its prey, minimalist symmetry is clean and conveys a visual sense of order and balance. Yet, this is all an act to give the appearance of order when what is happening around the characters is nothing but sinister.

The film’s title refers to the cold-blooded nature of people. In the first few minutes, a character finds a snake that has shed its skin, a metaphor for how some can shed their covers, exposing their cruel nature. Singer co-wrote the script with del Toro, and Benjamin Brewer has infused this discerning story with that sentiment, loading the frames with the subtlest of symbolic imagery. By the time the third act rolls around, the smallest revelations are enhanced by the carefully meticulous plot, the unsettling cinematography of Mike Gioulakis, and the sinister musical score by Yair Elazar Glotman and Arca.

Generally, I never have an issue with a movie’s running time because movies have to be as short or long as they need to be. As Roger Ebert would say, no great film is long enough, and no bad film is short enough. While this review is very positive, Reptile has a longer-than-expected run time, but upon a second watch, most of it was needed to understand the plot. With the exception of the puzzling beginning dinner scene (and the divisive ending sequence), the film’s visual and pitch-perfect pacing hardly make the 132-minute running time barely noticeable and never drags along. While some subplots within the first two acts seem like filler, everything works out in the end.

Even at Reptile’s weakest moments, the film never fails to entertain, even if the ending has a giant plot hole involving witnesses looking through a window, which can be maximized based on how you interpret the conclusion, which is meant to create discussion points.

Regardless of the perspective, Reptile can gracefully navigate the viewer with a steady hand thanks to del Toro’s magnetic performance, which effortlessly seizes your attention. Disregard those critics intent on comparing Reptile to the king of underbelly crime thrillers, David Fincher, which is an unnecessarily high standard. Movies deserve to be evaluated on their own merits, and they have entirely missed the point because they were not carefully paying attention.

Grade: B

Director: Gareth Edwards
Writers: Gareth Edwards and Chris Weitz
Stars: John David Washington, Ken Watanabe, Gemma Chan

Synopsis: Against the backdrop of a war between humans and robots with artificial intelligence, a former soldier finds the secret weapon, a robot in the form of a young child.

Let’s get some housecleaning out of the way immediately. The Creator is not the original film that many outlets have claimed it to be. Let’s face it; it’s the classic cliche, most notably lifted from Dances with Wolves, where a member of the powerful military trades sides for the greater good. And that’s not to say Gareth Edwards’s visionary science fiction epic isn’t worthy of its praise. It’s bold and affecting, emotional, and even profoundly spiritual. Ultimately, it’s an action-packed movie with more on its mind than meets the eye. 

In the sometime-distant future, an uprising of artificial intelligence will form a rebellion against the world. Mainly, it’s against the United States after the AI soldiers set off a bomb, killing thousands and leaving a crater the size of SoFi Stadium teeming with a deadly amount of radiation. Of course, the government powers cannot look themselves in the mirror, taking responsibility for their hand in the civil war and choosing to blame China for its blatant disregard for AI and the overproduction of robots worldwide.

That’s where Joshua (John David Washington), an undercover special forces agent, comes into play. He’s been tasked with locating the mysterious architect known as The Creator, who, rumor has it, is developing a war to end humankind, leaving Earth to itself. After infiltrating one of the leaders of the uprising, Harun (Ken Watanabe), complicating matters is Joshua’s relationship with Maya (Gemma Chan), a human whom the AI race took in when she was a child (sound familiar?). Complicating things even further, Maya and Joshua are married and are expecting a child.

Yes, we’re pretty sure that’s against protocol. Still, this plot device gives the script its juice because Joshua’s cover is blown. The military begins peppering the rebel compound with a weapon called “Heaven,” which drops military-grade weapons from space, leaving Joshua with emotional scars that run deeper than his physical pain.

However, Joshua gets a second chance at happiness when military officers Andrews (Ralph Ineson) and Howell (a terrific Allison Janney) show a recording that holds special meaning to him and ask his help in infiltrating the facility, holding the weapon everyone is searching for.

Edwards wrote the script with his Rogue One scribe, Chris Weitz, an Academy Award nominee for About a Boy. Their focus is on a girl, an AI named Alphie, whom Joshua locates and who is the secret weapon. (The trailer reveals this within the first minute.) The plot is well-crafted, allowing the viewer to invest in the universal story of lost love, with Joshua going rogue with Alphie because he may have been the last person to see Maya alive. 

Janney’s Howell leads the chase and plays a ruthless badass (she has one of the film’s most poignant moments talking about her sons), making tough business decisions and continuously putting her soldiers in harm’s way. Her character is easily one of the best villains of the year. Ken Watanabe continues to bring his usual brand of gravitas to the role. His character is the moral counterpoint to Howell, but he has no qualms about doing what needs to be done. Both these performances further enrich the poignant nature of the film’s underlying subject matter.

While The Creator cannot truly be called original, the plot is essentially rebranded for issues today. However, the script’s basic structure is borrowed from past movies but now feels fresh and new because it taps into timeless themes that, unfortunately, have not changed. These themes revolve around the spawning of oppression leading to conflict and a lack of cultural understanding and tolerance. All of this is wrapped in an enthralling sci-fi saga elevated by the ideals of a mindful heart.

None of this would be possible without John David Washington’s enthralling portrayal of Joshua. It’s a performance that resonates deeply and can be felt, as Washington possesses his uber-famous father’s soulful gaze, enhancing the high-stakes relationship with Alphie. It’s a performance that may be underappreciated, but Washington has the charisma and ability to connect with the audience that few possess, which is often considered the nature of stardom.

The Creator is stunning, a beautiful piece of escapist cinema. It’s a visionary epic that relates more to our current world than any doomed future because we are already there.

Grade: A-

Director: Monia Chokri
Writer: Monia Chokri
Stars: Magalie Lépine-Blondeau, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, Micheline Lanctôt

Synopsis: Sophia’s life is turned upside down when she meets Sylvain. She comes from a wealthy family, while Sylvain comes from a family of manual workers. Sophia questions her own values after abandoning herself to her great romantic impulses.

There isn’t a single more extraordinary filmmaker working in Québec today than Monia Chokri (some will say Denis Villeneuve, but he’s out here making large-scale Hollywood blockbusters, so it may or may not count, depending on who you ask). Her first feature, A Brother’s Love (La femme de mon frère), is one of the most revelatory debuts this province has seen, perhaps since Villeneuve’s August 32^nd on Earth (Un 32 août sur terre). And her sophomore feature, Babysitter, takes parts of A Brother’s Love’s anxiety-fueled ultra-absurd scenes and cranks it up to a thousand. For some, it was too much. For me, it was 88 glorious minutes I will gladly watch again (and again), and one of the boldest productions Québec has seen during this new decade.

Not even a year after Babysitter’s release, Chokri premiered her latest movie, The Nature of Love (Simple Comme Sylvain), at the Cannes International Film Festival – and now the film has finally hit our screens after months of anticipation. In this feature, Chokri dials down on the absurdity and instead offers a poignant, often lyrical, mediation on humanity’s desire to love. It may very well be the best film released in Québec this year, but it’s also one of the best dramedies of the year. Period.

If we want to analyze a director’s recurring motifs, Chokri’s fascination with philosophy is a good place to start. It plays a significant role in A Brother’s Love but is even more prominent in The Nature of Love. Heh, and the English titles for both films end with LOVE, and both main characters are named Sophia, who study/teach philosophy. In The Nature of Love, Sophia (Magalie Lépine Blondeau), teaches a philosophy class for seniors focused on…love but has difficulty communicating with her partner, Xavier (Francis-William Rhéaume). The biggest visual sign that they aren’t in love is apparent from the beginning: the two don’t sleep in the same room, even if they tell themselves they love each other before bed.

Sophia has to go to the summer cottage to supervise its renovations, where she meets Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), an independent construction worker with an outlook on life that feels so freeing for Sophia that they immediately lock arms and have sex. Of course, you probably know where the movie will go from there, but there’s something in Chokri’s picture that makes it stand out amongst the rest of most clichéd romantic comedies. 

For instance, she teams up with cinematographer André Turpin (best known for his collaborations with Xavier Dolan) and gives the movie a visual palette that’s so unlike anything we’ve seen before, it’s almost indescribable. Some of the visual cues feel evident, splashes of Michel Brault, François Truffaut, Jacques Demy, John Cassavetes, and even shots that feel plucked out of Denis Héroux’s Valérie are found. Turpin frequently uses crash-zooms to enhance the intimacy, not only in Sophia and Sylvain’s relationship but in visually representing how the characters evolve as the movie continues to morph from light-hearted romantic comedy to absurd mumblecore, to then finish with an intimate drama examining not only “the nature of love,” but the nature of life itself.

How Chokri frames her actors is the key The Nature of Love holds. Some shots don’t feel as well-stitched together as others, particularly in a sequence where Sylvain and Sophia engage in primal screams, but that’s by design. There isn’t a single visual moment in this film that doesn’t feel important, whether it’s setting the locations or representing Sophia’s internal monologues, which the audience tries to examine as she sits alone outside, smoking a cigarette, only for the movie to interrupt her moments of solitude with an unexpected event, or character, appearing in the frame.

Even the background noise feels essential and enhances our understanding of the world Sophia inhabits (and Émile Sornin’s score is impeccable). Family conversations with the different parents she encounters throughout the film, whether her mother (Micheline Lanctôt), Sylvain’s (Linda Sorgini) or Xavier’s parents (Marie Ginette-Guay & Guy Thauvette), show different facets of the nature of love –and life: whether it’s heated family discussions at the dinner table (lord knows Quebecois love to talk loudly about anything and anyone) or brief, fleeting glimpses of a love that once existed, but is no longer there as disease progresses. It’s equal parts hilarious and devastating, striking a rare balance between comedy and drama that feels integral to how the film is shaped.

But it’s also bolstered by incredible acting – Lépine Blondeau gives the best performance of her career. She shares electric chemistry with Cardinal, who is equally charming and funny. The supporting cast is also excellent, with Chokri herself appearing alongside Babysitter’s Steve Laplante in some of the movie’s funnier – and more awkward – scenes. Without spoiling anything, one of the film’s final scenes is The Nature of Love’s most integral and encapsulates its entire message.

Everyone will have a different definition of what “The Nature of Love” is, and Chokri smartly leaves room for interpretation. Those who are expecting the same level of absurdity found in A Brother’s Love and Babysitter may be disappointed, but there’s no denying how massively ambitious this picture is, not only for Chokri’s incredible career as an artist but also for Québec cinema as a whole. It’s one of the funniest and most heartbreaking movies you’ll see all year, and it cements Chokri as one to watch as a daring auteur who never made the same film twice and will seemingly continue pushing the boundaries of what modern Québec cinema can – and should – be.

Grade: A+

Director: Brian Duffield
Writer: Brian Duffield
Stars: Kaitlyn Dever, Elizabeth Kaluev, Zack Duhame

Synopsis: An exiled anxiety-ridden homebody must battle an alien who’s found its way into her home.

What I enjoyed about Hulu’s No One Will Save You is that it gets right to the point. By the end of the first act, writer/director Brian Duffield stops pussyfooting around and immerses the viewer in a monster in the house picture that feels fresh and remarkably alive because of its anxiety-ridden plot and lead performance. A chiller where the horror isn’t just lurking around the corner but in the deepest parts of our brain.

That’s because of the performance from Kaitlyn Dever, who has no more than a few dozen words in the entire image and who’s not afraid to look rough, messy, and sweaty like any of us would be as we give chase to something that ranges from looking like a cute E.T. to a giraffe-sized praying mantis with ease. 

Very early on, Duffield’s script has the viewer on edge, as Dever’s Brynn Adams seems more isolated than most early twenty-something pretty twenty something to be. Brynn gets snide looks, and she hides at the sight of a middle-aged couple (Geraldine Singer and Dae Rhodes) pushing their way into their golden years. The poor girl seems to have no family, even friends, and, in particular, is alienated (remember that word) by the entire community. 

What did Brynn do? Well, that is half the suspense and mystery that lay the foundation. The morning before, Brynn found a small burnt-out circle in her yard, thinking she had to water it because the grass must have died. Later that night, she sees something inhuman outside her door just after her house loses power (including even the phone). The first thirty minutes are as obsessively intense and nail-biting as any thriller you will find this year.

Duffield is a master of alienation, creating dread with every single creak, shadow, light, and pin-sized nail drop from a windowsill. Along with the help of director of photography Aaron Morton, Duffield’s film showcases his keen eye for evocatively ominous visuals, such as the beautiful overhead shot tracking a bus and revealing numerous front lawns with the same circle that Brynn has in her front yard. Each image is meticulously integrated, nicely avoiding your standard cliche jump scares.

While No One Will Save You does delve into some tropes—running from a monster in a house and finding yourself stuck, hiding under the bed, others being overtaken by something unexplainable—they are executed well. It’s a thriller meant to entertain. While we can complain about the generic use of film techniques in mainstream films nowadays, you cannot deny the seamless tone, tension, and suspense that the team of Duffield and Dever build with each passing scene.

Credit should also go to Dever, who excels in film and television and must carry the movie’s weight on her shoulders for the entire 90-plus minutes. With limited dialogue, she skillfully portrays her character’s thoughts and emotions in a way that feels entirely authentic, compelling, and convincing. Yes, before you start rolling your eyes and screaming out loud about this being a horror picture, you should acknowledge that carrying a film by yourself with virtually no one else to play off of or support you is no easy task.

Yet, the ending is so weird that there’s no other word to describe it—the Stepford Wives-inspired moment surprisingly works. The entire film is a giant metaphor for Brynn’s lot in life: being “alienated” by her community, fighting her inner demons, the inner turmoil of acceptance, moving towards self-compassion, practicing mindfulness, taking responsibility, and letting go.

No One Will Save You is such an unrelenting, arm-rest-grabbing, psychological chilling banger that you’ll forgive almost any artistic choice Duffield wants to embrace. His film is a minimalist thriller, virtually dialogue-free, brilliantly simple, and deftly poignant. It has a wickedly satisfying ending that breezes by while leaving the viewer on the edge of their seat.

Grade: B+

Director: Janis Pugh
Writer: Janis Pugh
Stars: Louise Brealey, Annabel Scholey, Emily Aston

Synopsis: Helen lives with her ex-husband, his 20-year-old girlfriend, their new baby – and his dying mother Gwen. Her life is a grind, and like all the other women she toils with at the local chicken factory, is spent in service of the clock. She lives only for laughing with her friends at work, caring for Gwen, and music. When Joanne, the girl she secretly loved at school, comes back to town, Helen’s world is turned upside down.

Chuck Chuck Baby explores the lives of its characters in the present moment and one in particular who is incapable of it. The film’s main protagonist, Helen, is in a challenging situation. She’s divorced but still living with the man raising another woman’s infant child, which is magnified because she cannot have any of her own. Living in North Wales, she cares for Gwen, a mother figure who lives with her. Even her ex-husband’s girlfriend resides there, and none of them work. Everywhere she turns, Helen is reminded that she’s living a life she never wanted. 

However, that’s all about to change with the return of her high school crush, Joanne (Annabel Scholey), who hardly acknowledges her existence as if she’s going out of her way to ignore Helen. Yet, her return reawakens something inside her. This is a noticeable change because, up to this point, her factory friends have had to drag her along in life practically without her consent. She’s the sad sack of her clan, a group of women working the overnight shift at a local chicken processing plant who break out into song at the sight of some chicken feathers or even a grocery cart.

Despite the joy her friends try desperately to infuse into her everyday comings and goings, life has beaten Helen down, causing her to lose some of her thirst and the joy it can bring. Through self-healing methods involving alcohol, laughter, and music, these women find solace. That doesn’t mean life will immediately turn around for Helen, a woman with fiery red hair who is anything but a spitfire; she’s stuck in an eternal melancholy state. 

Chuck Chuck Baby, which refers to the company where the women work. Headlining the cast is Louise Breasle, who portrays Helen, delivering a stoic yet brave performance that rediscovers some of the joy life can offer. The screenplay, and direction come from Janis Pugh, who previously worked on the The Befuddled Box of Betty Buttifint. That film deals with the fragile nature of living in the past with fractured memories and exploring the theme of healing in Chuck Chuck Baby. This underlying theme runs throughout the film beneath all the whimsical musical numbers.

While the women in the film frequently break out into song, it serves as a symbolic shield to cope with the challenges in their lives. They need some form of creative (or perhaps even self-medicating) outlet to stay in the present moment so they don’t dwell on what lies ahead or what they may have left behind. Pugh’s film is as far outside the box as you can get from your traditional musical, evoking something much more grounded, joyful, and sad.

If anything, this is a modernized British working-class comedy with LGBTQ+ themes, and comparable, in my opinion, to The Full Monty, obviously, minus the work up to the big reveal, pun intended, in which the musical numbers replace their practice sessions. These dames, particularly Beverly Rudd’s Paula, ground the film’s whimsical nature into something grounded and relatable. 

There is something oddly refreshing about the Chuck Chuck Baby experience, besides characters being unkempt and virtually all being free of cynicism. For one, many films try to capture that person of a certain age and reignite their zest for life and love, with mixed results because it’s overflowing with melodrama that targets young adult and teen dramas. Somehow, Pugh captures that youthful exuberance in a middle-aged romance that leaves cynicism on the chicken processing plant floor.

That’s what makes Chuck Chuck Baby so effective, in how Pugh has her film remarkably comfortable in its skin. The story is not necessarily about finding love or purpose, but looking at your lot in life not too far in the future, or even wallowing about situations from past years but finding something in the present moment that makes life worth living. 

For example, when someone professes their love for you while white chicken feathers fall around you like freshly fallen snow, and that one person comes back and declares something passionate. 

There’s joy there, no matter how much chicken crap rests at your feet.

Grade: B-

Director: Sébastien Marnier
Writers: Fanny Burdino and Sébastien Marnier
Stars: Laure Calamy, Doria Tillier, Dominique Blanc

Synopsis: A woman on the verge of financial collapse attempts to reconnect with her wealthy, estranged father and his new family.

On the international festival circuit, American filmgoers are typically exposed to sophisticated, highly experimental arthouse fare. The likes of Philippe Garrel, Jacques Doillon, and Luc Moullet attract passionate followings within the relatively closed off world inhabited by dedicated cinephiles. However, these films generally struggle to reach a wider audience in the United States. Your average non-cinephile is quick to stereotype foreign films as artsy fartsy, pretentious nonsense. This means that it’s exceedingly rare for genuine commercial blockbusters to gain a foothold in the American market. For every A Man and a Woman (1966), there are dozens of hit films that fail to strike a nerve outside of a domestic setting. This contradiction often comes into play when one surveys the landscape of modern French cinema. There are plenty of great potboilers and romantic comedies being churned out in France but you wouldn’t know it if you walked into your local multiplex.

Sébastien Marnier’s The Origin of Evil (2022) is the sort of film that gets pushed out of the American market because arbitrary labels get attached to any and all foreign language films. It tells the twisty tale of the wealthy Dumontet family, which is headed by Serge (Jacques Weber), a commanding patriarch who regards his family members as vultures circling around his increasingly frail body. He will leave behind a valuable estate and when his secret lovechild Stéphane (Laure Calamy) appears on his doorstep, claiming that she wants to get close to her long lost father, it puts everyone on edge. His wife Louise (Dominique Blanc) and daughter George (Doria Tiller), regard her as an avaricious interloper who will try to steal their share of the inheritance left behind by Serge. While attempting to endear herself to Serge, Stéphane begins to wonder whether his relatives are actively plotting his downfall and comes to understand that she has unwittingly placed herself in the line of fire. 

As in any good thriller about morally vacuous rich people who are driven to commit increasingly perverse acts in their quest to increase their social status, the cast serves as a big selling point. Everyone from Calamy to Blanc goes big and with good reason. The film’s plot is so preposterous that the characters need to operate on a slightly heightened plane, where everyone lives their life as though they’re performing a farce on stage. It’s a real joy to see Calamy, who has already proven herself to be a masterful comedienne, return to her roots. In recent years, she has become better known for her work in gritty character studies and crime dramas, and while it’s gratifying to see her display her full range, it’s pleasant to see her weaponize the feisty charm that so endeared her to audiences back in the early 2010s. This slightly ditzy quality also allows her to play off against the hard-nosed, severe Weber in an effective manner. 

Beyond its ensemble cast, The Origin of Evil also boasts delightfully ostentatious production design and a rhythmic score that sets the tone for the entire film. The filmmakers work to immerse you in the nerve-racking situation that Stéphane finds herself trapped in, while also throwing in a couple of unexpected grace notes. However, the screenplay is guilty of under-developing many of the juicy plot points that get doled out over the course of the film’s first hour. As it hurtles into its third act, Marnier’s handling of tone and pacing gets a bit shakier. All of a sudden, it feels as though thorny, difficult subplots are being wrapped up rather too neatly. Perhaps this points to the fact that this sort of plot-heavy thriller is better suited to the needs of long-form storytelling. One can easily imagine a three hour cut of this film that has more time to linger on the high points in the film’s plot. As it is, the film ends up concluding right at the point when it seemed like things were really starting to heat up. Unfortunately, it comes as a real disappointment at the end of two hours of cracking entertainment.

Grade: B-

Director: Alejandra Márquez Abella
Writers: Alejandra Márquez Abella, Bettina Gilois, and Hernán Jiménez
Stars: Michael Peña, Rosa Salazar, Julio Cesar Cedillo

Synopsis: A biopic about Jose Hernandez and his path from a farm worker to becoming an engineer and an astronaut. A tale of perseverance, community and sacrifice to accomplish a seemingly impossible dream.

The Prime Video film, A Million Miles Away, is akin to those beloved Disney live-action sports films based on true stories like The Rookie, Miracle, and Remember the Titans. The Michael Peña vehicle is a pure crowd-pleaser designed to have you stand up and cheer. For the most part, it does so because the film fully showcases the American dream and is there for the taking. You must have the will and determination to grab it but never let your dreams fall by the wayside. If you don’t stand up and cheer or at least give Jose M. Hernandez a Judd Nelson fist pump in the air, you may be dead inside.

Peña plays Mr. Hernandez, the son of Mexican immigrant parents who helped them pick the fields of American food every morning at four before he had to go to school. His parents, Salvador (Julio Cesar Cedillo) and Julia (Veronica Falcón), keep pulling their children out of school to migrate with the seasons to pick up work, despite the pleas of Jose’s teacher, Miss Young (Michelle Krusiec), who sees the immense potential in young Jose.

However, Salvador and Julia sacrificed their plans, even selling their home, to support Jose’s dream of an excellent education and achieving what they could not. After graduation, Jose lands a job at NASA, becoming an engineer, even though the receptionist hands over a large set of keys, thinking he must be the janitor who cleans their floors. At first, he is given menial tasks like making copies and forcing their hands to respect him by pointing out a flaw in their algorithms. His persistence pays off in many ways, as he meets a beautiful car saleswoman, Adela (Rosa Salazar), who is the opposite of the usual men she dates—a nerdy Chicano who aspires outside the bubble society has planned for them in those buzzing central California farmlands.

Director Alejandra Márquez Abella wrote the script along with Bettina Gilois and Hernán Jiménez, based on the biography written by Hernández. While the movie has your usual genre tropes and clichés, especially regarding Salazar’s Adela supporting her husband practically unconditionally, the film is exceptionally well-made and executed for family viewing. The first act is set up beautifully, with one of my favorite character actors (I know I’m using that term liberally), Cedillo’s Salvador, having a heart-wrenching revelation in the car with his family about the opportunity he has for his family.

The second act of A Million Miles Away is held up by Peña’s charming performance, showcasing his knack for disarming humor and folding in an endearing stoic poignancy. The actor also has exceptional chemistry with Salazar, with a romance that does not necessarily feel swooning but infectious. The writers also do an outstanding job showing the struggle of not only Hernandez achieving his dream but also the struggle it puts on the film’s subject and the family as a whole.

A Million Miles Away boasts a great cast that reflects an accurate cultural representation of the people and setting. This contributes to the beautiful sense of community that has their hopes pinned on Jose, who not only represents himself or his family but an entire community of people. I have been a massive fan of Salazar since her remarkable turn in the rotoscope animated series Undone and a devoted supporter of Cedillo since being Tommy Lee Jones’ travel companion in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. You also have Ozark’s Veronica Falcón bringing authentic mothering to the role, and even Bobby Soto does good work here, trying to shrug off the infamous film The Tax Collector, playing Jose’s younger brother.

Frankly, this film feels like one of those stories that live up to that “incredible true story” tagline, while at the same time, showing us that anyone can achieve anything they put their minds to. However, Abella’s movie hits differently. The sense of wonderment and achievement of living the dream through someone else’s eyes through a cinematic experience that only the movies can bring. 

A Million Miles Away is the year’s best family film. The kind of film that inspires you to reach for the stars and park there, if not just for a short while

Grade: B+

Director: Sebastián Silva
Writers: Pedro Peirano and Sebastián Silva
Stars: Jordan Firstman, Rob Keller, Vitter Leija

Synopsis: Follows social media celebrity Jordan Firstman as he starts a search for filmmaker Sebastian Silva who went missing in Mexico City. He suspects that the cleaning lady in Sebastian’s building may be involved in his disappearance.

In Sebastián Silva’s Rotting in the Sun, the writer/director/actor plays a fictionalized version of himself dealing with a variety of struggles. As the Emil Ciroan novel he’s reading succinctly puts it, Sebastián is dealing with The Trouble with Being Born. HBO is turning down every pitch he throws at them as he finds himself living in a friend’s barely-held-together apartment. At no point in the film do we see Sebastián, the auteur of this meta-layered film, in a glamorous light. Instead, it’s a rather upsetting depiction of what it can mean to be an artist. To give and give and give, and everything is either taken for granted or cast aside into a pile of garbage due to a simple accident. It’s this depiction of artistry that makes the sudden turning point in Rotting in the Sun very intense and scary. But before that, Silva’s film has a ton of fun, indicating an interesting dichotomy to the filmmaker. 

As Mateo, Sebastián’s friend, finds the filmmaker disappearing deep within a K-hole losing his way in life, he pokes fun. Rather than sit down one-on-one, he takes light jabs in a way that may seem similar to how people typically treat relationships. As humans, we acknowledge when times are tough, but it usually takes quite a while to get to that point. Instead, it seems like society as a whole has found it easier to simply look past it and assume the storm will blow over soon. All will turn out okay if we simply ignore the warning signs and push them down with a beach trip. And that’s exactly what Sebastián does. Finding himself on the nude beach of “Zicatela”, one might think Sebastián is looking to get away from the darker thoughts brewing within. Yet, with book in hand, things don’t turn out nearly the way he, or the audience, might have assumed.

From there, Silva’s Rotting in the Sun takes a two-pronged attempt at showing how society grapples with mental health. More specifically, it deals with the consequences of society ignoring it; or at least it attempts to. On the surface, Rotting in the Sun is a clever film in how it goes about addressing its core themes. But its final two-thirds feels far too dull to resonate with viewers all that well. As three distinct parties try to cope and/or deal with the culpability of their actions, there’s no question that Silva knows exactly what he wants his film to say. It’s all there, captured in moments via handheld camerawork that feel not just worrisome, but damning. Yet, the finale involving Vero, arguably the most dense role of the film, from Catarina Saavedra, feels like it gives up on itself when all is said and done. A bow is put on the film and all its characters’ issues before either a palpable resolution is felt or a purposeful non-resolution is apparent. It’s a frustrating end to an otherwise solid house of cards being built.

Rotting in the Sun may squander its potential as a meaningful commentary on society dealing with mental health, but it doesn’t miss the mark when it comes to one of its central characters. Playing a fictionalized version of himself, every word out of comedian/influencer Jordan Firstman’s mouth is incredible. Taking a meta approach to comedy can be hit-or-miss nowadays, but Firstman handles it very well. He’s often laugh-out-loud funny without having a hint of tackiness to it. It’s impressive the levels at which this performance works when very little of it actually feels performative. What’s most ironic is his entire character feels like a commentary on performative Internet behavior in and of itself, so there’s just many comedic layers to enjoy here. While Rotting in the Sun certainly has issues thematically, it’s great that a distributor like MUBI is around to showcase the talents both in front of and behind the camera. While the commentaries within the film are rather broad overall, Silva’s film is one that’s entertaining and forces you to, at times, question a wide range of topics from social media and mental health to classism and nude beaches. The film is at its strongest when it plays out like a full-fledged beach comedy, but Silva must at least be applauded for not relying solely on this setting. Instead of stripping that beach of all its comedic potential, Silva rips his characters, and in turn, himself, back to reality in an attempt to make a film that speaks to a specific moment in time: the present many of us find ourselves in.

Grade: C-

Director: Vanessa Caswill
Writers: Katie Lovejoy and Jennifer E. Smith
Stars: Haley Lu Richardson, Ben Hardy, Rob Delaney

Synopsis: Hadley and Oliver begin to fall for each other on their flight from New York to London. The probability of ever finding each other again seems impossible, but love – and London – may have a way of defying the odds.

The Netflix film Love at First Sight is exactly what you think it will be. It’s wholly manipulative, dripping with sentimentality, and overflowing with romantic drama cliches. Not to mention casting the most talented and completely adorable actress of her generation, Haley Lu Richardson, who can blind your eyes to all of these staples if you allow it. Then you cast a hunky guy with some vulnerability and an accent that weakens a good portion of viewers’ knees, and you have a crowd-pleasing streaming hit that keeps Netflix subscribers returning for more.

The problem is you cannot help smiling and feeling anything but genuine affection for the picture. 

The story follows a young woman traveling to England for the first time for her estranged father’s wedding. Hadley (Haley Lu Richardson) has yet to talk to her dad (Rob Delaney) since he left for a professorship in literature at Oxford. To make matters worse, Hadley missed her flight and will arrive just a few hours before the nuptials instead of the day before. Thankfully, she meets a handsome young man her age, who ever so charmingly drops the fact he’s studying mathematics at Yale as they bond over the one condiment both of them detest (it’s mayonnaise, in case you were wondering).

As “fate” (played by Jameela Jamil), as we will explain later would have it, Oliver (Ben Hardy) is bumped into business class and right next to this generation’s next Meg Ryan. As the night in the friendly sky progresses, they begin to connect on a deeper level. Naturally, after spending the night sleeping side by side in seats with an exceptional amount of legroom, they wake up beside one another.

It hardly matters, but they both wake up looking immaculate. Their hair is perfectly in place, and no one thinks they must brush their teeth or swig some mouthwash. When Hadley and Oliver deplane, they get separated at customs and work through their own personal demons and impending tragedies before their paths cross again.

Love at First Sight is based on the best-selling novel The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith and adapted for the streaming screen by Katie Lovejoy (To All the Boys: Always and Forever). Directed by Vanessa Caswill (Gold Digger), her film is an utterly charming romance that hits the right notes of laughter, sweetness, and poignancy to captivate viewers who love their films with a light touch.

The script is broken up into three parts, with the first thirty minutes being the most effective as the viewer is swept up in their flirtations because of the exceptional chemistry between the leads. The first act flies by, and you’ll appreciate the efforts not to overindulge the viewer in the romance. The script then moves into both leads dealing with their family situations, with Hadley experiencing a Neal Page moment that Hardy’s Oliver is going through something far more significant than he led on.

That storyline is not as entertaining and does drag slightly at times going forward. For example, this leads to Oliver and Hadley having your typical romantic cliché with a slight fight or disagreement. However, the film bucks the trend of your usual subterfuge, which is refreshingly different yet still unabashedly pulls at the heartstrings without regret. (I should also mention solid work by Sally Phillips and Dexter Fletcher in cameos). Even the storytelling tool of Jamil’s narrator, who represents “fate” that all stories like this depend on, is so different that you won’t mind that the character is overplayed.

Yes, Love at First Sight is a genre movie, so you will have your usual redundancy across the board regarding a film like this. However, this romance is quirky, soulful, and well-designed compared to other movies of its ilk, like the lazy and dull Ellie Kemper vehicle Happiness for Beginners that came out last month on the streaming giant. It’s a romance film that hits the right not all, but most of the right notes for fans of the genre and newcomers alike. 

And sometimes, that’s all you need, but just make sure you have Haley Lu Richardson as your lead. 

Grade: B-