When escort Anora meets the son of a Russian oligarch it seems like a too-good-to-be-true Cinderella story—and it is.
Anora starts as a kinetic gallivanting-through-New York romp before giving way to a deeply empathetic portrait of a woman on the fringe. With a star-is-born performance by Mikey Madison and an imminently refreshing direction by Sean Baker that toes a tonal line between comedy and drama, Anora is the best of the year.
❖ Best of 2024
Anora premiered in competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Neon will distribute.
After all the roaring debauchery and chaotic slapstick-like comedy in this grittier and meaner sendup of Pretty Woman, the final scenes of Anora are surprisingly quiet. Just two characters occupying the same space saying anything but addressing the tension occupying the room around them—and after the night they had that’s understandable. Then, finally, something breaks and we’re left stunned not because of the shock but because of the catharsis.
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That’s often how auteur Sean Baker’s films end. After moments of joy and sadness and laughs and pain he allows us, and his characters, one final exhale. If the first two hours of Anora’s surprisingly robust 140-minute runtime—surprising because it goes by in a flash—make it a great movie, then the final ten minutes—the exhale—make it the best movie of the year. Even more, it is a masterpiece.
That’s a word that has been thrown around haphazardly, but in the case of Baker it is most apt. After four films that each seemed to build in quality and assuredness, Anora feels like the culmination. It is a perfection of the darkly comedic exploration of human pathos he’s been building his entire career.
Baker’s fascination has always lied with people on the fringes of society particularly exploring the dignity of sex work—Tangerine and Red Rocket, specifically. Here we follow Anora (Mikey Madison), who insists on being called Ani, an exotic dancer at a high-end strip club in midtown Manhattan—her thick Queens accent made me feel like I was back home even while sitting in the premiere screening at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival where the movie is competing for the Palme d’Or. Her flirtatious attitude mixed with an admirable tenacity reminded me of Maris Tomei’s Oscar-winning performance in My Cousin Vinny (if you know you know).
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As she hustles from patron to patron giving a lap dance here and flirty banter there, one thing is certain, she is good at her job. So good that her boss pulls her for a special assignment looking after the young son of a Russian oligarch called Ivan (Mark Eidelstein)—when asked about his father he simply says, “Google him.” It doesn’t hurt that Ani can speak Russian, though she prefers to respond in English. Whether it’s because she doesn’t think her Russian is strong enough or some other reason isn’t immediately apparent, like many things about her.
After a particularly salacious private room session, Ivan invites Ani to his Brighton Beach mansion for more time together—off the clock but still paid. In the dark neon lighting of the club, Ivan came off like a man. However, in the bright sunlight of the window-lined mansion, he looks every bit as much as the kid he is. Eidelstein, with a tall and lanky frame and a spate of black curls that evokes a Timothée Chalamet-Troye Sivan hybrid, plays Ivan with a perfectly measured dweebish physicality that tells you exactly who he is: a spoiled rich kid that was never asked to grow up—and doesn’t want to. His broken English mixed with Russian is essentially a mix of “fuck yeah” and requests for more alcohol.
That’s juxtaposed against Anora’s easy self-assuredness cut with a Queens attitude. Even though she’s just two years older than him, it’s clear that circumstances have helped toughen her to the world. Their interactions have the flow and charm of the best romantic comedies, even if most of it is just posturing. Ivan offers Ani $10k to be his “girlfriend” for a week. She promptly asks for $15k, which he agrees to (though he quickly chides he would’ve given her $30k). After the raucous week and particularly eye-opening sex scene where Ani teaches Ivan the pleasure of restraint, the pair marry in a kitschy Vegas wedding.
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The movie’s first hour is a kinetic gallivanting-through-New York romp. The pair hops from Ivan’s mansion to Coney Island to Vegas with an irresistible fast-paced tempo driven by Madison and Eidelstein’s charming performances. You could live in the movie’s world for hours, but when Bake switches up the tempo it is also a welcome shift.
When Ivan’s parents find out about the pair’s nuptials, they sick no-nonsense Toros (Karren Karagulian) and his cronies snarky oft-injured Garnick (Vache Tovmaysa) and sensitive Igor (Yura Borisov) on the couple. The momentum never ceases, but the subversive romantic comedy transforms into a quasi-chase thriller mixed with a dark slapstick comedy (think Home Alone) that is as delightful as the first part in its unique way. Like when Ani breaks Garnick’s nose and is promptly tied up with a telephone wire by Igor, Toros walks in and questions, “Why did you tie her up?” “She’s dangerous,” Garnick quips.
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The madcap energy draws comparisons to The Safdie Brother’s Good Time or Uncut Gems. Even if the story has grit and bleakness, the series of unfortunate events is devilishly enjoyable to watch unfold. Part of that is because of Baker’s direction that toes a tonal line between comedy and drama that is imminently refreshing. The other is Madison’s performance, which feels like a Hollywood star being born before out eyes. Her charisma holds your attention for every frame she is on screen while her voracity converts you into a fanatic.
But let’s return to the final scenes of Anora, which elevate the film to a masterpiece. Reflecting on the entire movie in the context of these surprising final moments adds a layer of complexity that makes every element even more impressive, especially the performances of Madison and Borisov. While melancholy is woven into the fabric of all of Baker’s films, in Anora, he conceals it until the end, revealing its presence only then. This artistic sleight of hand makes Anora one of the year’s best films and guarantees you won’t forget Mikey Madison’s unforgettable star turn.
While it begins as a cat-and-mouse thriller, Strange Darling evolves (and genre-bends) into a psychological quasi-horror that keeps you guessing.
Strange Darling is frenetic maximalist romp that murders your expectations at every turn. With its saturated cinematography bringing a mad technicolor world to life and crisp near-deafening sound underlined by Craig DeLeon‘s discordant bass guitar score rattling, it feels like you’re on the fury road—and you might as well be. A pitch-black devilishly entertaining homage to 70s exploitation thrillers that will have you begging for more.
Strange Darling is in theaters now.
The title card for Strange Darling splashes onto the screen paired with the subtitle “a thriller in six chapters” before cheekily jumping to chapter 3. From that moment on director J.T. Toller keeps you guessing as he grabs you by your collar and takes you on a frenetic maximalist romp. When you think it is going to zig, it zags. When you think it’s going to jump, it soars. The opening chapters of the movie, shot in glorious 35mm by Giovanni Rabisi, are an assault on the senses. With saturated cinematography bringing a mad technicolor world to life and crisp near-deafening sound underlined by Craig DeLeon‘s discordant bass guitar score thrumming it feels like you’re on the fury road—and you might as well be.
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While the opening credits roll, our protagonist simply known as The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald) runs across a field. Her blond hair is flattened by sweat, a bloody bandage covers her ear and she looks like she’s seen the devil himself. That’s apt considering her pursuer is billed as The Devil (Kyle Gallner). Chapter 3 starts with a title card that tells us that the movie is a dramatization of the final string of murders of an infamous serial killer stalking rural America. Every detail of Strange Darling down to the film grain evokes a 70s exploitation thriller—think Quentin Tarantino’s own homages like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction—complete with all its glorious bloody violence and action. It isn’t until we see a vape and cell phone that we feel like it’s within our timeline.
Gallner’s silent, motivated and precise characterization gives his character a mystical patina. Not unlike the iconic supernatural inhuman slasher villains of the time period—Michael Myers, eat your heart out. On the other end of his silver shotgun is Fitzgerald’s classic-in-the-making scream queen performance that has you genuinely terrified for her. The cat-and-mouse sequence that lasts just ten minutes, but feels like a lifetime, has everything from a car chase and crash, game of hide-and-seek in the woods and a horrifying wound sterilization. The tension is nearly unbearable.
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That carries into chapter five that brings the chase into a mountain house before smashing back to chapter one. With each subsequent chapter, Toller gives you just enough information to change the field of play—because at its core Strange Darling is about two people at play with each other even if it is a sadistic game. To talk about Strange Darling without ruining its devilish entertaining magic would be a fool’s errand. But know, that nothing is as it seems—even the movie. With shades of an erotic thriller, slasher, crime caper and even satirical comedy, there truly isn’t a way to pin it down other than watching it.
NYFF 2023 | May December follows an actress (Natalie Portman) as she prepares to play a notorious tabloid figure (Julianne Moore) by shadowing her dredging up old wounds
May December begins with Julianne Moore dramatically opening a refrigerator door, while a dissonant chord strums and the camera locks into a closeup, and deadpan delivers the line, “I don’t think we’re going to have enough hot dogs.” While it is a high camp melodrama filled with a cast of near-absurd characters, at its heart it’s a complex exploration of trauma, exploitation, and how all “grown-ups” are just children pretending to be adults. With Oscar winners Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman squaring off as dueling narcissists and Charles Melton giving a star-is-born performance, May December is one of the year’s best.
May Decemberhad its North American premiere at the2023 New York Film Festival.
Right before the title card for director Todd Haynes‘ new film May December smash cuts onto the screen, Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore) swings open a refrigerator door. As the camera closes in on her face and a dissonant chord strums, she dramatically delivers the line, “I don’t think we’re going to have enough hot dogs.” From then on, it’s impossible not to be transfixed by the high camp of this melodrama.
And there’s so much devilishly delightful sparing between Gracie and actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman), who visits Gracie’s Georgia home to prepare to play her in an upcoming movie, that it’s surprising when the movie hits you with a flurry of complex emotions. Screenwriter Samy Burch, who marked her first appearance on the promotional circuit at the 2023 New York Film Festival, said of her screenplay, “I really like the tonal mix of humor and real, genuine sadness and heartbreak.” It’s that exact melange of the darkly comedic melodrama and the deeply felt character study that make May December a satisfying — and deeply odd — romp.
The reason Gracie’s life warrants a movie is her notorious highly-publicized tabloid romance with her now husband Joe (Charles Melton) that swept the nation in the 90s. You see, Gracie and Joe started dating when she was 36-years-old and he was just thirteen-years-old. Twenty years later, the pair still receive their fair of attention — often of the fecal variety — as they live a quiet existence in their Savannah, Georgia seaside home. That is, until Elizabeth arrives.
Portman plays Elizabeth, who from what we can gather is best-known for her performance on a Grey’s Anatomy-type show, with a satirical edge — perhaps chiding her own star persona (or at the very least her iconic accent from her performance in Jackie). She probes Gracie’s life like a psychologist analyzing her patient or a serial killer their prey. She observes her mannerisms, dissects every decision she makes, even copies her makeup routine in a scene that edges on Persona-esque horror — a clear inspiration.
As she observes more people in Gracie’s orbit, we uncover the ripple effects of her crimes that she went to prison for as we see in hilariously accurate tabloid covers (“Pregnant in Prison!”). Her ex-husband Tom (D.W. Moffat) swears he’s over all of it before snapping as he starts to recall the incident, Gracie and Tom’s son Georgie (Cory Michael Smith) — yup, his name is Georgie — is a man-child who is the diva lead singer of a band that performs at a local pub, meanwhile the current manager of the pet shop where Gracie and Joe first met milks the publicity for everything it’s worth — even keeping a laminated copy of a newspaper article about the incident on the counter.
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The cast of characters border on absurd almost becoming caricature, but Haynes keeps the film grounded in some reality despite the camp hijinks. However, Elizabeth isn’t some innocent voyeur. When she finds herself in the notorious storeroom where Gracie and Joe’s first sexual encounter took place she acts it out so convincingly you can’t tell whether she’s actually pleasuring herself. We’re always kept a distance from her true intentions, but at the very least we can infer that she’s not as afraid of exploiting the family for her own work as she says she is.
However, Gracie isn’t as forthcoming with the truth as she thinks she is either. She’s almost dismissive of her past. “Everyone’s got skeletons in their closet,” she says as if she’s referring to a spat of unpaid parking tickets. Both women are unwilling to cede their true selves to the other. Burch’s screenplay doesn’t shy away from making Gracie and Elizabeth irredeemable. Something we don’t often get to see.
And while there is legitimate fun to be had with the passive-aggressive meeting of two different breeds of narcissist, at the heart of May December is a sensitive character study of a man who was both asked to grow up too fast and not afforded the opportunity to. Melton, in a star-making Oscar-worthy performance, portrays Joe with a depth that makes you so sympathetic to his plight that it almost feels like whiplash compared to melodrama. While he starts off as the capable father or doting husband, when he begins interacting with Elizabeth — she herself is 36-years-old, the age that he met Gracie — we watch his body language revert to the 13-year-old boy in that pet store storage room.
With hunched shoulders, his hands in his pockets, and mumbled replies, we see that through all these years Joe has just been putting on the air of an adult. In one of the most heartbreaking scenes, he smokes weed for the first time ever — surprising for a man in his late 30s — with his college-bound son (Gabriel Chung) and through sobs tells him of his hopes that he will live a happy life: “I don’t know if we’re connecting, or if I’m creating a bad memory for you.” In the subtext, he hopes that he won’t suffer the same traumas that he himself had to endure. It’s that incisive insight that makes the movie as compelling as it is entertaining.
On the surface, May December shouldn’t work with its contrasting tones of dark comedy mixed with near-parody satirical elements and sentimental dramatics with complex human condition. However, it manages to find balance in way that allows you to enjoy it without letting you get too comfortable with the sensitive situation.
In a climactic scene, Elizabeth tells a despondent Joe, “this is what grown-ups do.” However, what Burch’s screenplay presupposes is that the concept of a “grown-up” doesn’t actually exist. Regardless of age, people are not much more than their child-self reacting to the things in their present filtered through their past. Every character in the movie has been stunted in their coming-of-age in some way — perhaps because you never stop coming of age. We watch in real-time as Gracie tears into her own children with the gusto of Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest — perhaps its generational trauma or maybe she’s just a sociopath — meanwhile Joe is trying everything in his power to not let them suffer the same fate.
The beauty of May December is that it doesn’t give its characters a melodramatic ending — again, keeping one step in the real-world. Dare I say, the movie comes to a close with some hope. Still, we’re treated to one last flash of glorious camp that sets it as one of the year’s best.
NYFF 2023 | A small town tucked in the mountains of Japan has to decide whether or not to allow a company to build a new luxury campsite in Evil Does Not Exist
With a tense atmosphere underscoring the smart but human-level eco-drama, Evil Does Not Exist works exceedingly well as an engrossing but surprisingly entertaining climate allegory.
Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi is unafraid to include silences in his movies. Not just a lack of dialogue but those lapses in conversations. Like when you’re in a car and you and the passenger find a comfortable silence as you watch the world fly by around you. It was a feature in his U.S. breakout Drive My Car, which earned him nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, and now in his follow-up Evil Does Not Exist. But the way in which he deploys those silences are different. Where Drive My Car found longing and grief in meditative moments, Evil Does Not Exist finds dread. Often while characters speak during long car rides through the Japanese mountainside, the camera will face out the rear windshield. Like something is chasing the characters. Sometimes the camera will navigate the eerie quiet of the snow-covered Japanese forest as Eiko Ishibashi’s sometimes jazzy, sometimes orchestral, sometimes guttural and discordant score plays underneath.
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It’s foreboding, especially for a movie that on its surface doesn’t seem to be about any horrors. The picturesque mountain village of Mizubiki is a tight-knit community. “Odd job man” Tatsumi (Hitoshi Omika) lives a peaceful existence in his forest cabin with his daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa). His riveting daily routine involves wood chopping, water collecting (from a stream, of course), and deer hunting. All usually with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. However, his, and the town, are confronted with usurpers from the outside world when a company presents a plan to build a glamping camp on the outskirts of the town.
In a tense (and darkly hilarious) town hall meeting, the company representatives Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) present the plan to a less than enthusiastic crowd. It’s like watching a film festival Q&A for a movie no one liked (if you know you know). There are those flashes of bleak humor that make Evil Does Not Exist surprisingly entertaining amidst the drama. The townsfolk are wary of the plan. Especially Tatsumi who specifically cites the danger of contamination to the village’s water supply. Of course, rather than listening to their concerns, the powers-that-be at the company push Takahashi and Mayuzumi to convince (and bribe) the citizens. Thus setting off a slow-burn corporate eco-thriller that never quite shows you its hand, until it does.
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Hamaguchi practices incredible patience with his storytelling allowing each piece of the puzzle to fall into place. Whether it’s a story piece or a character one. While there’s a central plot, the real interest of Evil Does Not Exist is within its people. There’s Tatsumi, a steadfast father both to Hana and figuratively to the village, Takahashi and Mayuzumi, initially seen as corporate drones who we begin to learn more about, Sachi (Hazuki Kikuchi) and Kazuo (Hiroyuki Miura), the owners of the town’s single restaurant. As each of them move around each other, we learn not just about their character but also how they interact with a changing world around them.
At just shy of two hours, it is nowhere near the epic scale of Drive My Car. The story feels smaller, more insular, and, in the end, more allegorical. But when its stunning and thrilling final scenes play out, you understand exactly where Hamaguchi’s mind is. It’s with the Earth. It’s with the people that inhabit it. And it’s with the way that we destroy it. Without feeling preachy or overwrought, he makes a swift and compelling case for care. Both for each other and the place we call home.
NYFF 2023 | Foe follows the fallout after a young couple receives news that one of them will be sent to space with a clone to keep the other company
The collective star power ofAcademy Award nominees Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal isn’t enough to save this sweaty (both literally and figuratively) lo-fi sci-fi melodrama from its own ambitions. Despite intriguing heady themes like the ethical dilemma of artificial intelligence, the moral ambiguity of cloning and rumination on relationship dynamics, its distrust in the intelligence of its audience leaves it as its own worst enemy.
The year is 2065 and the Earth is irreparably damaged. Young couple Junior (Paul Mescal) and Hen (Saoirse Ronan) are approached by even keeled and enigmatic Terrance (Aaron Pierre). He tells the couple that in an effort to save the human race, a mysterious combination of the government and private companies is sending a group of people into space for two years to understand how to survive. Junior is selected as a part of that group, which will require him to leave Hen alone for two years. But fear not, a nearly identical biomechanical clone will be left to keep her company. What could possibly go wrong?
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Bringing together critical darlings Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird, Little Women) and Paul Mescal (All of Us Strangers) should’ve been a boon for writer-director Garth Davis’s Foe. Putting the star power and screen presence of two of the hottest young actors working today in a single-location barn-burner relationship drama seems like a recipe for success. I mean, a handful of morality science fiction from Blade Runner, a dash of marriage dynamics from A Streetcar Named Desire and a pinch of Hitchcockian psychological pastiche is enough to whet any appetite. But when the movie feels the need to spoon-feed you each plot point, emotion and moral dilemma with a heavy hand, you quickly lose your appetite.
It’s unfortunate considering the story, which was adapted from Ian Reid’s novel of the same name, is intriguing on its own. Reid co-wrote the screenplay with Davis. But where Reid is unafraid to be obtuse with his storytelling, like his first novel I’m Thinking of Ending Things which was adapted into a stellar psychological thriller by Charlie Kaufman, in translating the story to screen the movie over explains itself. It’s unclear whether it is a choice or for fear that the audience wouldn’t get the tale. But the fun of a twisty psychological thriller is… well, the twist. In an effort to not alienate the audience, it undercuts the narrative’s effectiveness.
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There’s clearly a lot on Reid’s mind. The ethical dilemma of artificial intelligence, the moral ambiguity of cloning and rumination on relationship dynamics could make for an interesting story. And taken outside of Davis’s heavy-handed direction, perhaps those themes could thrive. What we get is a sweaty (both literally and figuratively) melodramatic messy clone of a story already told well. While Mescal and Ronan are chewing the scenery with bombastic performances—screaming, crying, the works—it feels out of place in a story that could’ve been meditative speculative fiction (see: After Yang).
When Foe finally reveals itself, a reveal you probably saw coming a mile away, it’s worn you down with its overwrought anguish. Perhaps there’s some so-bad-its-good replay value to it, but why watch a clone when you can watch the better original thing.
From Beyoncé and Bernstein to Godzilla and Frankenstein, here are the best movies of 2023 that made us, as Nicole Kidman said, laugh, cry and care.
After watching over a hundred new movies in 2023, I’ve narrowed down the list to the 10 best movies of 2023. Well, perhaps not the best movies, but the ones that have stayed with me in one way or another. This year found a comfortable place in the uncomfortable, where filmmakers felt that they were able to tackle themes and stories that were once taboo in ways that are increasingly tailored to our ever-evolving hunger for unique perspectives and bizarre storytelling. My list reflects that.
To see every movie I watched in 2023 racked, go over to Letterboxd.
To explain Bottoms, I need to spoil it just a tiny bit. The final shot of the movie, a baroque painting if I’ve ever seen one, pulls from a classic 90s / early aughts high school comedy trope. The school football team triumphantly raises the school’s quarterback. Students rush the field dancing with joy. Our best friend protagonists make up and hold each other. However, a few added details make this unlike any high school comedy we’ve seen. The field is littered with incapacitated (and possibly dead) players and our ragtag group of protagonists are covered in blood (both their own and others’). In the background, a tree burns after recently being blown up with a homemade device. Welcome to the wonderfully weird and wacky world of writer/director Emma Seligman‘s Bottoms.
Seligman’s vision of high school in Bottoms is equal parts satiric and surreal. Like if Luis Buñel directed The Breakfast Club or Andrei Tarkovsky directed Clueless. It’s a tricky tone that Rachel Sennottand Ayo Edebiri nail with perfectly pitched performances as woefully lame high schoolers PJ and Josie. All they need is a mission. And like any good high school raunchy comedy, this mission involves getting laid: “Do you want to be the only girl virgin at Sarah Lawrence?” Best friends that stick together get laid together. At least that’s their prerogative. The absolute absurdity never relents, yet Bottoms manages to pull at the heart strings. That’s what makes it the best comedy of the year and one of the best movies of 2023.
A clip from Godzilla Minus One. Courtesy of Toho Studios.
Hey, Hollywood? This is how you do a blockbuster. Just when we thought the action blockbuster was dead in 2023, Godzilla Minus One came roaring in at the final moment to save the genre. And while the spectacular giant monster destruction in the forefront has you leaning forward in your seat with bated breath — like a remix of Jaws where our ragtag group of heroes is dealing with a much much larger shark — the character drama grabs for your heart and makes the action all the more tense.
Though it’s a prequel to Shin Godzilla, the first film in Toho Studios’ reboot of the franchise, Minus One is more like a drama that happens to have a giant monster than a full-blown Kaiju movie as it follows failed Kamikaze pilot Kōichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) coping with the fallout of the war. While some deal with the grief and trauma by looking to the future — like young suddenly-single mother Kimiko (Minami Hamabe) — Kōichi constantly looks to the past with regret. He gets the chance to right his perceived wrongs when Godzilla takes aim at the already battered country. Part-war epic, part-classic Kaiju, part-found family drama, Minus One is the perfect crowd-pleasing action movie we were craving this year.
Writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos has always played in magical realism, but with his first foray into full fantasy he is able to flex his world-building like never before — and the result is as magnificent and deeply weird as we hoped.Cribbing the tale of Frankenstein, Poor Things takes place in our world (with familiar locations like Victorian-era London and Portugal), but Lanthimos imagines it as a colorful storybook full of childlike wonder that mirrors protagonist Bella’s (Emma Stone) state of mind as she comes of age after being created by Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) whom she affectionally calls “God.” In classic Lanthimos fashion, Bella’s creation is deeply disturbing as Dr. Baxter uses the brain of an infant to reanimate the corpse of an adult woman. Of course, that disturbing premise isn’t without reason.
Poor Things spins up a tale of discovery both of the self and the world. As Bella comes into herself and into her sexuality, the movie doesn’t shy away from the ugliness of the patriarchal world — represented by a devilishly delightful villain turn by Mark Ruffalo — but also the pure joy it can bring to live a life unburdened by societal norms. The result is a wonderfully batshit epic that is as heartbreaking as it is uplifting.
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Passages
Franz Rogowski and Adèle Exarchopoulos appear in Passages by Ira Sachs, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Guy Ferrandis / SBS PRODUCTIONS
When we first meet German filmmaker Tomas (Franz Rogowski), he is directing the final scene of his latest movie. We watch him as he instructs an actor to enter the scene down a flight of stairs. Then he makes him do it again… and again. Each time he notices something else wrong with the way he enters the scene. We’ll see Tomas do something similar throughout Passages, except this time to the people in his life — specifically his long-suffering husband (Ben Whishaw) and new lover (Adèle Exarchopoulos). That is expecting them to act one way— the way that is best for him and his wants — and getting frustrated when they don’t follow the script he’s written for them in his head.
Eventually, the magnetism that draws people to Tomas begins to repulse them and the gravity that kept them in orbit becomes weaker. Essentially, his life goes off script and he’s not good at improv. While Passages could have easily relied to melodramatics, Sachs keeps each character and interaction grounded. Writer-director Ira Sachs introduces us to the characters of Passages when their lives intersect and tangle into a mess of complications. By the end, Whishaw, whose remarkable portrayal of a gay man finding his strength and independence, untangles the knot and leaves us (and Tomas) flooded with emotion.
In recent years, Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda has been interested in stories about misunderstood people from the found families of Shopliftersand Brokeror the complicated parents of The Truth or After the Storm. He continues that trend with the three points-of-view that make up his latest feature Monster as he plays with our expectations of each of the characters. The core story seems straightforward. We start from the perspective of a single mother (Sakura Ando) concerned about her son’s (Sōya Kurokawa) increasingly erratic behavior who goes on a warpath when she discovers his teacher (Eita Nagayama) may be responsible.
Kore-eda is so skilled at presenting his characters with so much depth that it’s almost impossible not to see the story from their point-of-view and think their actions are justified. In the mother’s chapter, for example, seethe with the same anger that she feels when the school brushes off her initial complaints — in a surprising bit of dark humor. But then, when we discover more through the next chapter, the seemingly uncaring school administration becomes human. Through each chapter of the triptych, our own allegiances shift, but especially in the final perspective that is as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking. Taken as three individual stories, Monster is already impressive. As a whole, it’s a gorgeous tapestry of mystery, suspense, drama and romance that begs to be rewatched.
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Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé
A clip from Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé
The brilliance of Renaissance: A Flim by Beyoncé, a nearly three-hour epic concert documentary, becomes clear just 25 minutes in. And despite the reputation (say hey) Ms. Carter has made for herself as a perfectionist, a moment of imperfection stands out. As we catapult from “Cozy” into Beyhive-favorite “Alien Superstar” the audio suddenly cuts out — and no, it’s not yet time for the mute challenge. We see as the crew, donned in shimmering silver jumpsuits jump into action. Beyoncé is unphased and even decides to gag the crowd by changing her outfit during the short three-minute interruption.
However, because we watched a vignette of the crew putting the stage together with a voiceover by Bey herself explaining the complexity of the show, we know exactly the stakes involved and the people that ultimately save the day. It’s this structure where we’re treated to some background about the tour, the album or Beyoncé herself followed by a part of the show that is directly inspired or impacted by it that makes Renaissance such a satisfying documentary. Oh yeah, and Beyoncé is the performer of our generation. There’s that too.
Sandra Hüller and Milo Machado-Graner in Anatomy of a Fall.
Don’t blink. You’re not going to want to miss a thing in Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall. While the movie sets itself up as an episode of Law & Order: French Edition as we unravel the case of the mysterious fall of a husband and father. Was it an accident? Or did his wife Sandra (Sandra Hüller) or young son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) have something to do with it? As we sweep from investigation to trial, Triet gives us nearly all the clues to solve the case. However, it is still up to the audience to decide who to believe. Hüller’s remarkable performance will sway you in either direction with the smallest inflection or glance.
While structured like a standard procedural, Anatomy of a Fall pays attention to every detail. There is never a shot or line that doesn’t have a purpose, which makes the robust runtime fly by. More impressively, though, Triet is also able to throw in astute observations about marriage, parenthood and even the French judicial system — which if you don’t know is messy messy — that add to the richness of the movie. While the movie has a definitive end, rewatches can uncover something you missed that might change your interpretation of the case. It’s that staying power that makes it one of the best movies of 2023.
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Perfect Days
Koji Yakusho and Arisa Nakano in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days | Courtesy of TIFF
The subgenre of day-in-the-life movies where nothing really happens yet everything is happening will get me every time — and Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days is… well, a perfect example. The way Wenders shows us Hirayama’s (Kōji Yakusho) daily routine is so comforting — the cinematic equivalent of a weighted blanket. Each morning, he wakes up in his modest apartment, makes his bed, carefully waters his plants, steps out donning blue coveralls with “The Tokyo Toilet” scrawled on the back, grabs his morning coffee and sets out on his job cleaning the city’s vast network of public toilets.
However, the magic of Perfect Days comes in the little diversions from his routine like when Mama (revered enka singer Sayuri Ishikawa) trills out a Japanese rendition of “House of the Rising Sun” or his niece arriving at his tiny apartment unannounced. These detours give us a small insight into Hirayama’s interior life, which he seems to have locked away behind his quiet contentment. We may not know much more about his world by the movie’s stunning ending, but we do learn his philosophy. And that may be the greater gift.
Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore in Todd Haynes’ May December. Courtesy of Netflix.
From the second Julianne Moore’s Gracie opens a refrigerator and dramatically says over a discordant chord, “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs” you understand exactly what kind of movie May December is. However, while it is a 70s melodrama on its surface filled with darkly comedic verbal and psychological sparring between Natalie Portman’s B-list actress Elizabethand Moore’s notorious tabloid subject, it never shies away from the darkness of its story.
On the surface, May December shouldn’t work with its contrasting tones of dark comedy mixed with near-parody satirical elements and sentimental dramatics that deal with trauma, grooming and sensationalism. Still it manages to find balance in a way that allows you to enjoy it without letting you get too comfortable with the sensitive situation.
Like with all of his movies, writer-director Todd Haynes allows his characters to show you their character rather than telling you. While there are emotionally resonant moments of insight like Charles Melton’s performance as a young father having a heart to hear with his own son, something as small as the way Melton carries himself that is just as affecting.
Greta Lee and Teo Yoo in Past Lives. Courtesy of A24.
Celine Song’s Past Lives has held the top spot on my best movies of 2023 list since seeing it back in January at the Sundance Film Festival — and that’s partially the movie’s own intention. Though the movie is rich in its story and characters as it follows old childhood crushes that reconnect twelve and then twenty-four years later, it’s the memories of it that linger.
While Nora and Hae Sung’s story, brought to life with stellar performances by Greta Lee and Teo Yoo, is presented as a decades-long “will-they-won’t-they” romance — complete with swoon-worthy conversations and charmingly comical banter, it’s really a story about one person stubbornly chasing a future she’s decided for herself and another avoiding a future by constantly looking back. And while the dialogue Song uses to communicate their feelings is poetic (she is a playwright after all), it’s the visual language that is the most impressive.
Song doesn’t present any easy answers, which is why the movie stays with you long after its stunning heart-wrenching but cathartic final scene. Is looking to the past avoiding the future? Is staying resolute on your future ignoring your inner child? The answer is perhaps hidden in a line from the third member of the trio Arthur (John Magaro), “You make my life so much bigger. I’m just wondering if I do the same.” Past Lives somehow achieves the same effect on its audience and that’s why it is the best movie of 2023.
NYFF 2023 | A Tokyo toilet cleaner enjoys his routine-driven simple life. But unexpected detours force him to face what is simple and what is safe.
Perfect Days is a slight but entertaining and profound day-in-the-life romp through Tokyo that meditates on the dignity of making a living, protecting your peace, and both the beauty and trappings of routine. With an impressive watershed performance by Kōji Hashimoto and Wim Wenders’ sensitive direction, Perfect Days is a simple near-masterpiece.
There’s something about the way Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days shows us a day in the life of the its middle-aged hero Hirayama (Kōji Hashimoto) that is so comforting — the cinematic equivalent of a weighted blanket. Each morning, he wakes up in his modest apartment, makes his bed, carefully waters his plants, steps out donning blue coveralls with “The Tokyo Toilet” scrawled on the back, grabs his morning coffee and sets out on his job cleaning the city’s vast network of public toilets — something the people of Tokyo have always taken pride in. His work is also something Hirayama takes pride in. His coworker Takashi (Emoto Tokio) even marvels that he brings his own equipment to work. “How can you put so much in a job like this?” he asks. Like most of their exchanges, Hirayama is quiet.
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But that doesn’t mean that he’s silent. There are moments of pure bliss. Like when he steps out of his apartment and looks at the clear sky or teaches a British woman how to use the high tech bathroom — the glass opaques when you lock the door! — a soft smile finds his way to his face. Even when things aren’t great he seems content — a drunk business man knocking over the “Wet Floor” sign or an angry mother snubbing him when he finds her lost son. And the movie continues on that way for a large portion of its runtime introducing new elements to his daily routine that slowly unlock the mystery of Hirayama’s past.
But it’s never boring. The same way that Kelly Reichardt finds texture in the slow burn of her movies — particularly First Cow — Wenders finds small moments of magic in Hirayama’s days. One of the most impactful is his nightly drink at a local bar run by a woman affectionately known as Mama (revered enka singer Sayuri Ishikawa) trills out a Japanese rendition of “House of the Rising Sun” that punctuates the melancholic tone to the movie.
It’s in these diversions from his routine where Perfect Days fully captures you. One day, Takashi’s “girlfriend” (Aoi Yamada) comes to visit him at work (“A real ten out of ten”) as he would say. But after his motorcycle fails to start he convinces Hirayama to let them drive his van to the bar… with Hirayama in the van. The two young would-be lovers are fascinated by him and his collection of American cassettes ranging from Van Morrison to Lou Reed, which provide a perfect vibey soundtrack. But it’s when Takashi lets slip “being alone at your age” before trailing off. Hirayama doesn’t take much from it, but we do.
However, the movie takes its biggest turn when Hirayama’s precocious teen niece (Arisa Nakano) shows up at his door step. It’s a bit of a shock for us as he comes off a detached loner. To learn he has family just adds to his depth. We’ll learn a bit more about why he chose this life of protected peace. His niece, a mirror to himself in some ways, forces him to look at his life and choices from a birds eye view and allows us to do the same. But it also gives us insight to his philosophy as he tells her, “Next time is next time. Now is now.”
The final shot is a marvel — and puts Hashitomo’s performance in contention for one of the best of the year. Like the rest of the movie everything and nothing is happening at the same time. Wenders captures the feeling of walking or driving through your city at golden hour. Everything is the same but looks different. It feels nostalgic, melancholic but — and maybe this is Wenders’ point — meaningful. As Nina Simone croons out “Feeling Good” over an unbroken long shot of Hirayama’s face illuminated by the sun a sense of satisfaction creeps over us — like when you reach the final perfect line of a simple poem. Perfect Days is a well-constructed meditation. Simple, relatable but will follow you for the rest of your day.
Crossing follows a retired schoolteacher who enlists the help of a young 20-something to find her trans niece who disappeared years ago.
Crossing is a sweet, sensitive and effortlessly charming found family drama that follows three vastly different people as the grapple with the truths of their pasts, presents and futures. In just 105 minutes, writer-director Levan Akin so firmly wins you over that you’ll miss the characters as soon as it cuts to black. Filled with joy (particularly queer joy) amongst the realities of the world, Crossing is a beautiful and moving testament to change and one of the best movies of the year.
Crossing will be released in select theaters on July 19. It will stream worldwide on MUBI on August 30.
In the final scenes of Crossing, the new film from Georgian director Levan Akin, we say goodbye to each of the three characters we’ve been following over the course of a fateful week. One by one, we watch them step into an uncertain but hopeful future. And yet my heart ached. Not for the trio, they find themselves in a better place than we found them having been profoundly changed by the events of the film. Rather I was going to miss spending time with them in their world, like when your favorite TV show airs for the final time. It’s an impressive feat for 105 minutes but a testament to Akin’s ability to pour empathy through the screen—a reason it is one of the best films of the year.
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While we spend equal time with each of the three characters the story begins with Lia (Mzia Arabuli), a retired school teacher who we meet on a mission to find her trans niece Tekla as a promise to her dying sister. On that journey, she quickly meets Achi (Lucas Kankava), a quick-tongued 20-something living on the outskirts of the Georgian capital Batumi with his less-than-agreeable older brother (“put a shirt on around my wife,” he nags). When he meets Lia, she sees her as his way out, which is convenient as he says he knew her niece and where she lives in Istanbul just across the Turkish border.
There’s an easy charm between Arabuli’s old curmudgeon Lia and Kankava’s young eager Achi—not unlike Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa recently in The Holdovers—as it turns into a road trip movie complete with quippy banter and unexpected snafus—like when Achi books them into a seedy hostel, much to Lia’s dismay. Their search for Tekla hits a dead end when the people in the apartment complex where Achi believes she lived, which is tucked in a rundown neighborhood where much of the city’s LGBTQ+ community resides, don’t recognize her name.
Deniz Dumanlı in Crossing. Courtesy of MUBI.
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Left to wander and search an unfamiliar city, Lia and Achi find themselves on separate journeys of discovery—Lia, an older woman of the past reckoning with a newfound present, and Achi, a boy of the present looking for a future. However, there’s a third variation of this journey. Intercut with Lia and Achi’s story is trans NGO lawyer Evrim’s (Deniz Dumanlı). Her journey is one of a woman of the future living in the present. As we follow her day-to-day interacting with friends, going on a date with a handsome taxi driver and trying to change her gender to female on her government documents (“you have to get this form signed by every department in the building,” a clerk tells her, which she happily does despite its ridiculousness) we get a deeper understanding of her way of life—and that of many queer people in Turkey.
And while it doesn’t shy away from the hard truths of being queer in a country where LGBTQ rights are actively diminished, Akin lets Evrim experience her life with joy and triumph—even if it has to be done largely in the shadows. Dumanli breezes through each scene with lived-in confidence that feels like safety for the audience. It puts Lia and Achi’s own turbulent journeys into perspective although they get to experience their moments of joy too.
As Achi wanders the streets of Istanbul looking for work—and a way to stay in the country—he encounters a group of young people who show him companionship and kindness—and more importantly help feed his seemingly endless appetite. Lia encounters moments that remind of her past and the free woman she used to be. On one night, where she leans too heavily on her alcohol vice that we see throughout the movie, she recounts how she used to be the best dancer in her village before twirling in the street amongst the crowd. Where she usually has a scowl we finally see a smile and Achi understands her just a bit more. It seems understanding is Akin’s goal with the entire movie.
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It’s the small moments of intimacy that bring Crossing to greatness like Achi bringing Lia a pastry after he disappeared for a night, Lia dancing in the street with a group of strangers or Evrim bringing a small local boy to get his haircut. They’re small gestures that speak to the movie’s humanity.
In many ways, Crossing falls into the familiar “chosen family” dramedy genre with movies like Short Term 12 or Hirokazu Kore-eda’s brilliant Shoplifters. Each character’s effortless charm wins you over while their stories move you with profound emotion. At the end, Lia finds Tekla, but perhaps not in the way that you’d expect. It’s in those stunning final scenes that you realize Akin has deep knowledge of the story he’s telling and the redemption that his characters are after.
A young FBI agent tasked with tracking down a mysterious serial killer called Longlegs is taken down a dark hole that she might not be able to crawl out of.
Something feels off in Longlegs. Like if someone shifted all the furniture in your house over one inch without you knowing. It’s barely noticeable, but it makes you uncomfortable because you don’t understand what it is. That’s exactly how director Oz Perkins gets under your skin. Every shot leaves too much empty space around the characters—an open doorway or long empty hallway—like there’s something lurking. Watching. The camera moves a bit too steady with a bit too wide of a frame giving off the sensation of vertigo. Then there’s the sound. Sometimes it’ll be a nearly inaudible drone, but just enough to make your hair stand on end, and other times a discordant throng that sends shivers down your spine.
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Longlegs has an unrelenting creeping dread that will keep you glued to your seat but aching to turn away. It harkens back to a time when the anticipation of the scare was worse than what actually came. Easy comparisons can be made to the disturbing imagery of The Silence of the Lambs or casual cruelty of Seven because of the detective story at the center, but Longlegs finds a way to set itself apart. Unfortunately it’s in those moments that you realize there was nothing to be afraid of all along.
Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), an FBI agent name if I’ve ever heard one, is relatively green but as she canvases house to house in an idyllic suburban neighborhood with her partner something tells her that the criminal they’re looking for is in a very specific house. Perkins captures her partners walk to the house with a wide-angle lens that just barely makes the edges of the frame appear distorted. Her partner, wary of her “instinct,” knocks on the door. BANG. As she breathlessly chases the shooter through the house we’re filled with anxiety. Nearly as much as Harper as she’s surprised by her own accuracy.
It’s that ability that leads her chief Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) to assign her to a case about a string of seemingly random murder-suicides. All the victims were families with a kid. All were perpetrated by the father. All without sign of forced entry other than a letter signed “Longlegs” somewhere in the house. The case disturbs Harker, not just because of the grisly details, but because it seems like it is coming to life all around her. In one of the best sequences, a loud knock disturbs her research into the case in her isolated cabin home. When a mysterious figure draws her outside, behind her in her house we see the same figure lurking. It’s these masterful moments of suspense, using every tactic in the book that has given Longlegs its reputation as a terrifying piece of cinema.
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We get glimpses of the eponymous Longlegs, played by a nearly unrecognizable Nicolas Cage whose vocal performance sounds like a cross between Peewee Herman and the Gingerbread Man from Shrek (“not the gumdrop buttons!!”). Perkins takes care to frame him just far enough away from the camera or just slightly out of frame to allow our imaginations to run wild and let our own nightmares fill in the rest. Unfortunately, that just means that the reveal is nothing short of disappointing.
It is the same reason that the way the plot unfolds leaves us wanting for more. Perkins ratchets up the tension to such an unbearable level that when he finally lets the spool unravel you expect chaos. Instead, the movie goes out with a whimper. Like a balloon slowly leaking air and all the fear is hot air. As the case hits very close to home, Harker has to deal with her and her mother’s (Alicia Witt) religious trauma in a thematic throughline that never quite comes together in service of a horrifying atmosphere that while entertaining for a time add up to an empty web.
Earlier in the year The First Omen stunned with its own dread-filled brand of satanic panic and Late Night with the Devil conjured its own innovative take. And while those movies felt like singular entries pushing the genre in new directions, Longlegs is an amalgamation of better told stories that came before it. Perkins has a mastery for horror and suspense that is worth of his namesake—his father Anthony Perkins played Norman Bates in Psycho—but his stories lack the same gravity to live up to the classics he evokes. Just cue up The Silence of the Lambs.
Rabiah Rowther is a screenwriter, director, and producer based in New York City. Since 2022, she has served on the Screening Committee for the Hamptons International Film Festival. Her career includes roles in development and production at Jane Startz Productions, FilmNation Entertainment, and Milojo Productions. She was also an assistant to Emmy-nominated filmmaker Peter B. Barton on We Rise Up Singing. With directing credits spanning theatre and new media, Rabiah holds a BS from Boston University and an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She recently completed her MFA in Theatre Directing at the Actors Studio Drama School.
We chatted with Rabiah about her career, inspirations and the what she sees for herself in the future.
How have your travels across the globe and experience as an expat from India helped inspire your work?
As I was growing up, moving from one country to another every few years really formed what art meant to me. I was incredibly fortunate to receive a global education, one that exposed me to other theatre, film, and literary traditions that diverged from the “traditional” western canon. This helped to foster an appreciation and recognition of culturally-specific and differing works, as well as created a strong yet malleable foundation that continues to focus my work through the lens of universality. I was also really privileged in that moving constantly meant that I additionally got the chance to travel around the world (a lot!), and that only meant further exposure to art and the ways the definition of art was challenged. Being able to explore space and environment –– and developing an awareness of the differences and similarities of various spaces and environments while I was growing up –– really helped to shape the kind of work I direct with regard to meaning and context, as well as enriches the worlds and circumstances I create when I write.
Is there a filmmaker whose career has inspired you?
Filmmaker Mira Nair often speaks to the clash of cultures and finding one’s own cultural identity in a world that is constantly changing and exchanging, which is something I’ve had to contend with all my life. I really admire her work as a director, as she brings truth and relatability to the stories she tells with a refreshing and timeless simplicity, even when they’re culturally specific or rooted in uniquely individual struggles and circumstances. Her works speak to the range that she has as an artist, a versatility that appeals to me as an artist now, and a quality that I hope to be known for in the future.
Do you have any specific aspirations for your career?
I just want to keep on making work that speaks to people. I love works that can make people laugh, I love directing pieces and writing scripts that even the most reluctant viewer or reader will enjoy. Along with this, I hope to broaden the view of what kind of art can exist in a commercial space, as well as develop stories that reflect the rich diversity of our world that has yet to be explored.
You can find Rabiah @rabiahrowther and www.rabiahrowther.com.
An aging Hollywood starlet gets another chance at stardom when she discovers a mysterious serum that generates a younger more beautiful version of yourself in The Substance.
Even if I told you where Coralie Fargeat’s Palme d’Or-competing The Substance ends up, you’d probably order a psych evaluation before believing me. It’s impossible to understate how audacious, disturbing but ultimately satisfying the conclusion to this twist on The Picture of Dorian Gray by way of Sunset Boulevard by way of a bloody body horror—think The Fly or The Thing or Julia Ducournau’s Palme-winning Titane. The movie lures us in with a straightforward satire on Hollywood beauty standards and actresses’ shamefully short “shelf life” before transforming and twisting itself into a completely different monster (this is foreshadowing).
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The movie begins with a time-lapse of Elisabeth Sparkle’s (Demi Moore) star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame going from newly minted and adored by fans to cracks forming on the surface and passersby noting “She was in that one movie.” It highlights one of the many inspired choices Fargeat made with The Substance‘s conception. By casting Moore in the leading role, whose physical image blanked Hollywood for the better part of a decade but now “past her prime” by industry standards, she’s turned the movie into a meta-commentary that grounds you—that won’t last.
Elizabeth’s time is now spent hosting a morning workout TV show—think Jane Fonda circa 1982—in neon spandex and her signature long black hair. She looks terrific—for any age. But not to her intentionally-named eccentric producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) who breaks the news that the network wants to go in a fresh direction. Read between the lines: younger and hotter. After getting into a brutal car accident after the news, the attractive male nurse gives her a flash drive that contains an advertisement for something called “The Substance.”
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A mysterious phone call leads her to an abandoned warehouse where she finds a package—beautifully designed like the best DTC companies—with three pouches (it’s easy as 1-2-3, if you will). The first is “The Activator,” the second is “The Stabalizer,” and the third is “The Switch.” After injecting herself with the neon green “Activator” serum, Elisabeth’s body convulses violently before her spine begins to rip open and… something crawls out. That something is a younger body who names herself Sue (Margaret Qualley). She stares in the mirror the same way Elisabeth did before injecting herself. Where Elisabeth noted the imperfections, Sue noted her perfections.
Sue sews Elisabeth’s gaping wound with the provided needle and thread and hooks her up to the included IV food supply to give her nutrients while Sue lives in the world. We’re thrust into the colorful world of Hollywood through Sue’s eyes where she is instantly adored for her good looks, bubbly personality and impressive flexibility. Of course, though, there’s a catch. The newly matched Jekyll and Hyde pair must switch every week for a week, which we learn is because without “The Stabalizer,” which is essentially Elisabeth’s spinal fluid, Sue begins to deteriorate.
Thus begins the push-pull relationship between Elisabeth, who is enjoying her second shot at stardom but isn’t able to enjoy any of it, and Sue, who gets addicted to the adoration, but is beholden to the deal of only seven days at a time. Naturally, complications arise, which catapults the movie into full-on diabolically grotesque body horror that I will leave unspoiled but assure are as satisfyingly shocking as you could imagine.
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At one point, I began questioning the movie’s treatment of Elisabeth. Did she deserve this kind of punishment for a mindset that is simply out of her control? But that is until the movie takes its full third act turn that clears up Fargeat’s intentions. While there is an obvious message splashed on the surface of the neon surface of the movie, this is a body horror exploitation through and through. One that isn’t meant to be picked at and examined but rather enjoyed for its surface-level pleasures—perhaps another meta-commentary or perhaps a plea to make movies fun again.
The number of homages in The Substance is almost impossible to quantify. At a story level, there are shades of the duality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the obsession with image (and its ensuing deterioration) from The Picture of Dorian Gray, a sendup of the Hollywood system much like Sunset Boulevard. Then there are its roots in body horror like the magnificent (and practical) special effects makeup of The Thing and playing god with science as in Cronenberg’s The Fly. There’s even direct homages like a devilish sequence set to the score of 2001: A Space Odyssey or a near-recreation of the prom scene from Carrie. It is a filled to the brim with stylistic and story choices that would destroy most other movies. Instead, all those mismatching debauched pieces come together to form a Frankenstein’s monster of a diabolically delightful B-movie that brings laughs, thrills and blood… lots and lots of blood.
Amidst the First World War, The Girl with the Needle follows a young Danish woman forced to make difficult decisions when she discovers she’s pregnant unaware of the dark secrets that lurk.
The Girl with the Needle is a bleak, dread-filled film that blends psychological horror with real horror, highlighted by disturbing imagery and an ominous discordant score.
The narrative follows Karoline, a young impoverished woman in WWI-era Copenhagen, as she makes difficult decisions after discovering she’s pregnant.
Directed by Magnus von Horn with a style reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky, the film transforms from a period drama to a psychological thriller, presenting its dark true-crime story with visceral, emotional impact and even flashes of macabre humor.
The Girl with the Needlepremieredin competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
There’s a reveal in The Girl with the Needle so heinous and disturbing you’d think you were watching a horror—and at times it feels like it is. With its ominous discordant score and disturbing imagery—like the extended opening sequence where we watch a face (perhaps multiple) distorting and blending into one another—director Magnus von Horn treats the story of one of Denmark’s most infamous crimes with the bleakness and dread it deserves. The movie’s descent into psychological horror (and real horror) isn’t linear though, it takes time to build its narrative in a slow burn that never disengages so that when you’re sucked in, it’s too late.
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The eponymous “girl with the needle” is Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), a young woman living in Copenhagen during the First World War. With her soldier husband missing in action, she’s fallen behind in rent, which she pays for with a factory job sewing uniforms. When her landlord brings a mother and her young daughter as prospective tenants, Karoline does her best to deter them by talking about the smokey stove and rats that crawl in her bed at night. The daughter throws a fear-fueled tantrum at the prospect which causes her mother to slap her, without abandon. The sudden shock of violence isn’t the last instance of mother-inflicted trauma.
After finding a shabby one-windowed attic covered in bird feces to live in, she falls into an affair with Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup) the aristocratic owner of the factory who sympathizes with her plight. The swirling romance is cut short when Karoline realizes she’s pregnant, which forces his mother to threaten his inheritance causing a breakup (and Karoline to lose her job). Now with child and nowhere to turn, she turns to desperate measures. She brings one of her knitting needles to the local bathhouse to give herself an abortion. Director and co-writer Magnus von Horn captures the act without sensationalizing it, but it doesn’t make it less effective. He presents it as a visceral bit of body horror that only adds to the dread-filled atmosphere—and eventually his ultimate message.
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There’s a constant sense of impending doom driven by Frederikke Hoffmeier’s discordant score—like a baseball bat smashing into a piano—even as Karoline is unaware of the plots happening in the background. Even when jovial Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), an older woman at the bathhouse with her curiously young toddler daughter Erena (Avo Knox Martin), helps Karoline after her failed attempt the darkness remains.
Dagmar offers her a service she provides out of the back of her candy shop. She allows would-be mothers to drop off their unwanted children for her to find them a home with a family unable to have their own—or looking to help an orphan. The mission, though illegal, is so admirable to Karoline that she asks Dagmar to take her in as her apprentice and help care for Erena. From there, The Girl with the Needle takes twists and turns that are better left unspoiled but are made even more impactful when the final title card labeling the story as based on true events drops onto the screen.
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Von Horn’s direction evokes Tarkovsky’s expressionist style, particularly Persona, with striking crisp black-and-white that suggests horror rather than showing it outright—though it certainly has its moments. As the slow-burn marches towards each of its reveals, it transforms itself from period drama to psychological thriller in a way that is as satisfying as it is shocking. It helps that Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm are giving perfectly pitched performances that transform with the movie.
For a story as dark as The Girl with the Needle, there’s something so enticing about how it presents itself—a storyline involving Karoline’s ex-husband is grotesque in a macabre way but captures you like a sideshow. There are even flashes of the pitchest black humor as Karoline navigates her new situation. Whether you’d consider it a part of the true crime genre is up to you, but if it is then von Horn is pushing the genre to new limits. It is visceral, emotional and relevant without guiding its audience’s hand. Shocking without malice and engrossing without insincerity, it is a highlight of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
Dance musical Illinoise takes the songs of Sufjan Stevens’s album of the same name and reimagines them as a series of stories told around a campfire culminating in an emotional queer coming-of-age
Amongst Justin Peck‘s impressive and high energy choreography for Illinoise, the final new musical of the overstuffed and *insert RuPaul “meh” gif here* 2023-24 Broadway season, two men stand on stage hand-in-hand simply stepping to the side, forward, and back. Their hands are on their hearts and slowly their breathing comes in sync. We sit like this for nearly a minute. It’s a quiet moment, one of many in the musical, that catapults it past simply a “dance play”. It’s raw with meaning and drenched in queerness and love and anxiety and hope — a moment that had my inner gay child screaming.
Illinoise has been a personal project for choreographer-turned-director Justin Peck, who held the prestigious title of Resident Choreographer for the New York City Ballet before transitioning to choreographing for theater and film (he most recently choreographed Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake). Like many millennials including yours truly, Sufjan Stevens and his concept album Illinois has been a nostalgic favorite — and regarded by many as one of the best albums of the 2000s. The twenty-two song magnum opus is a collection of stories inspired by people, places and events connected to the eponymous state.
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That celebration of storytelling is what Peck brought to book writer Jackie Sibblies Drury.
Together, they envisioned the songs as stories told by a group that found themselves together in an anonymous forest. But rather than using dialogue, the musical uses dance as its storytelling medium of choice.
The show’s set is a mangle of scaffolding and trees with platforms housing the band and three vocalists above the stage donning butterfly wings (Elijah Lyons, Shara Nova, Tasha Viets-Vanlear) as if they’re a queer Greek chorus narrating what’s happening below (Legally Blonde the Musical, eat your heart out), crooning out Stevens’s music with gorgeous harmonies and orchestral orchestrations by Timo Andres. The twelve-dancer cast is a troop of hikers gathered around a campfire made of lanterns. Their introduction is bright, energetic and joyful as they greet each other (“Come On! Feel the Illnoise!”). The beauty of Peck’s choreography is its ease. Each dancer, though moving with the unit, feels like they’re in their own unique body imbuing their personality into the uniformity. Each of them holds a notebook.
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Ricky Ubeda in Illinoise on Broadway.
Taking turns, they each tell a story from it set to one of Stevens’s songs, putting it down at the foot of the stage as if activating a new world.
In “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”, Alejandro Vargas puts a flashlight under his face like he’s about to tell a ghost story. The stage darkens and we watch as the story of the eponymous serial killer comes to life in front of our eyes before Vargas’s character relates the story to the skeletons in his own closet. When the emotion becomes too much, his fellow storytellers hold him as he calms down. In “Jacksonville”, Rachel Lockhart stomps out a hip-hop-tinged number that eventually adds Byran Tittle tap dancing his way across the stage. As the number goes on, Lockhart begins to mirror his moves. It is an energetic full company showstopper that feels like it has deeper meaning. Perhaps it’s about the lessons we pass down from generation to generation to find ourselves stronger — Jacksonville, Illinois was a stop on the underground railroad, so the choice to have two black dancers lead the number feels intentional. After all, the opening line of the song is:
I’m not afraid of the black man running He’s got it right, he’s got a better life coming
But the musical never tries too hard to imbue meaning on the numbers. Stevens has always been opaque about the meaning of his music. Peck, who also directs, adds enough context for you to find your own interpretation rather than telling you like many other dance musicals.
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The dance numbers range from intimate interpretive pieces to full-blown production numbers that are as thrilling and entertaining as any big brassy Broadway musical.
Lurking in the background, our protagonist Henry (Ricky Ubeda, the season 11 winner of So You Think You Can Dance?) is observing and shirking off the occasional goading to share what is in his notebook. Eventually, he gives in and for the final hour of the musical we see what led him to the campfire in the forest. On the back wall, a bit of graffiti tells us he’s in a small town in the middle of nowhere with his best friend Carl (Ben Cook) and Carl’s girlfriend Shelby (Gaby Diaz). There’s clearly a tension between the three of them as their bodies twist and spin into and out of each other (“Decatur”). After Past Lives, Challengers and Passageslove triangle are clearly in. However, the tension between Henry and Carl is palpable.
As any queer person can attest, in Henry’s mind there’s something potentially romantic between the men. A touch, playful wrestling, a near brush of the lips will send anyone into a spiral negotiating the potential queerness of their straight friend. During the endearing number “Chicago” the pair drive off to… well, Chicago in a swirl of flashlights that become the car and the city passing by before finding themselves in New York City where Henry meets Douglas (Ahmad Simmons). A gay man who sees Henry for who he is. Henry makes the choice to stay while Carl returns to their hometown (“To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region”).
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Ricky Ubeda and Ben Cook in Illinoise on Broadway.
The brilliance of Illinoise of using dance to tell this particular story is so much of the queer coming-of-age experience comes from body language.
Something the choreography uses to great affect. Like each of the dancers are spinning objects intersecting with each other in time and space grasping for something — sometimes literally each other or a ghost that disappears in a bit of stagecraft that I’ll leave unspoiled. Brandon Stirling Baker‘s dynamic lighting design and Adam Rigg‘s minimalistic scenic design add to the ethereal effect. When life takes a turbulent turn, the stage uses the negative space to focus in on the details of the choreography. Not just the way bodies are moving, but how they’re moving together.
In the end, Illinoise is about community and relationships. How those around us that we allow to understand our plights can figuratively and literally snap us out of our depressive psyches. Ubeda’s performance, worthy of a Tony nomination, is one of a traumatized man finding those moments of light — and the people he trusts. When he’s first introduced, Henry’s memories are literally represented by orbs held above Carl, Shelby and Douglas’s heads that swirl from Henry’s mind onto the stage (“Three Stars”). His expressiveness in his dance finds its way to his face grasping for empathy that he gets in the form of tears streaming down the faces of the audience (at the very least from a 30-year-old gay man in the second row understanding every emotion). What Illinoise presupposes is that speaking (no matter what the medium) is tantamount to healing. And over a beautiful, engrossing, heart-wrenching but ultimately uplifting 90 minutes, you feel it.
Challengers follows a decade-long love triangle between three would-be tennis stars that culminates in a match nearly as intense as their entanglement.
Challengers tells the story of a decade-long deliciously messy love triangle that is as quick and thrilling as a tennis match and crazy, sexy, cool as the best erotic thrillers. Rapidly volleying between the past and present, director Luca Guadagnino keeps a light and fun tone thanks to a stellar heart-pumping score and clever editing even as the competition (both tennis and for the heart) gets heated. With a trio of perfectly-matched performances with Zendaya further cementing her start status and Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist building on their already impressive work, Challengers is as engrossing, entertaining and delightful as they come. A crowd-pleaser that’ll have you on your feet asking for more.
To call Challengers a romance would be both apt — it is about love and relationships after all — and underplaying just how deliciously messy the love triangle at its center becomes. The plot isn’t particularly shocking, unless you consider a well-placed drop shot a twist. But the increasingly debauched ways that each of the three corners of the triangle tangle, using their pasts and understanding of their psychologies against each other, are constantly satisfying even if you know what’s coming.
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That’s because Challengers builds to every moment with incredible precision knowing exactly where to hit and how hard for maximum effect.
So when Zendaya’s tennis prodigy Tashi Duncan turns a three-way make-out with best friends and tennis partners Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) in a dingy motel room during the 2006 Junior U.S. Open Championships into a two-way make-out between the two boys, it’s not only devilishly sweet, it’s exactly where we wanted them to end up.
It all comes back to Justin Kuritzkes’s ingenious screenplay that frames the rocky history between the three would-be tennis stars with what should be a low-stakes match between Art and Patrick that instead becomes a metaphor for their volatile friendship. Each time a point is scored during the match or there’s a particularly intense volley, the movie flashes back to a moment in the entanglement that has the exact same result. Except rather than a point they win Tashi.
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It’s not pedantic as it sounds, but the feeling it evokes has all the intensity and suspense of any tennis match.
When we first meet Tashi and Art they are married. He a tennis pro in a rut and Tashi his scrupulous coach. To help him gain his confidence back, she enters him into a U.S. Open Qualifier hilariously sponsored by Phil’s Tire Town in the very unglamorous town of New Rochelle, New York. It should be a walk in the park for Art, that is until he realizes that Patrick is also in the challenger.
In flashbacks, Art is portrayed as the more serious of the two. He sees tennis as a serious sport. Something to be mastered. Patrick, on the other hand, with a sly grin often laying back with manspreading as wide as possible, believes you either have it or you don’t. It’s that kind of teenaged dirtbag posturing (the he never really shakes even as an adult) that pushes him to unabashedly pursue Tashi at a post-tournament party at the 2006 Junior Opens. However, Tashi, as tactical and strategic in love as she is on the court, can immediately pick up on the dynamic between the pair — and exploits that by pitting them against each other. Both psychologically and literally when she says she’ll give her number to whoever wins the Men’s Singles Final during the tournament.
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Zendaya plays Tashi with an easy confidence that captures you as much as it it captures the boys. Her charisma mixed a knowing wit is irresistible.
Her performance is as much of a technical marvel as the well-captured tennis matches. From the start of the triangle, she is in complete control. Not because she wants to be, but because she knows she can. It’s what’s fascinating aboutthe underlying fascination Challengers has with relationships. Like last year’s Fair Play, the movie presupposes that relationships are as much about power as they are emotion. Whether or not there is actually love between Tashi, Art and Patrick isn’t the question. It’s how the tension — both sexual and psychological — drives their decisions.
In the present, Art is on the precipice of retiring at a low point in his career. An emasculating decision that puts strain on his relationship with Tashi as both wife and coach. With so much of their relationship tied up in tennis, how can they go on without it? The subtext: how can she love him without it? On the other hand, Patrick’s unpredictability, that makes him less malleable for Tashi’s uses, also makes him more attractive. It’s those opposing and attracting forces that make the movie drives the movie’s tension through the roof. Even without sex scenes — most end before or pick up after — the eroticism is palpable.
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However, Guadagnino brilliantly uses the visceral and immersive tennis scenes as the movie’s proxy for sex.
He captures sweat falling, muscles flexing and strained grunting in glorious high definition slow motion that is as captivating as it is gorgeous to look at — for more reasons than one. Guadagnino wrings out the proverbial cinematic rag and switches from player POVs to slow-motion to quick cuts to a stunning tennis ball POV that has the audience literally volleyed between the two players. All the while, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross‘s thumping electronic score — their best since The Social Network — keeps the momentum going. Along with the crispest ball hitting racket sounds, Challengers is an immersive cinematic experience worthy of seeing on the biggest screen possible (find your local IMAX or Dolby Theater immediately).
However, every single shot is charged. Even though Art and Patrick’s relationship is platonic, there’s something so romantic and even erotic about the way they taunt and chide each other — and of course hit balls.
Challengers feels like a movie we haven’t seen before, or at least in recent memory. One that doesn’t feel bogged down by its self-importance nor trying so hard to be shocking or camp (I’m looking at you, Saltburn). Guadagnino simply has fun with Justin Kuritzkes’s brilliant screenplay and uses each of his three actors exactly as they should. Zendaya is the movie star of a generation. Mike Faist is the steady straight man. Josh O’Connor is a scene-stealer with one of the most complex storylines of all. And at the very least, it’s a blast.
A group of journalists and war photographers trek from New York to Washington, D.C. while the United States is in the throes of a civil war
Writer-director Alex Garland’s Civil War is an all-out assault on the senses that immerses you in a war zone that isn’t just close to home, it is home. When it focuses on the sheer terror and brutality of war — graphic images mixed with the worst of human tendencies — and the emotional and moral complexities of being a war photographer, the movie is nothing short of engrossing. However, whenever it deigns to say anything specific about the current state of society and culture in the United States it feels misguided. Mixed with opaque characters and uneven writing, Civil War feels at war with itself.
Civil War is in theaters now.
The first shot of Alex Garland’s Civil War is of the President of the United States, played by Nick Offerman, in extreme closeup. He says, “We are closer than ever to,” then pauses. You assume he’s going to say “civil war.” Instead, he says, “to victory.” It’s perhaps Garland’s cheeky way of quickly setting up the movie as a cautionary tale. The United States is closer than it ever has been to civil war, especially when he wrote this film four years ago. And it’s clear that Garland came up with this story as a response to what he was seeing around him in this country, even if the movie itself takes place in a somewhat fictional dystopia.
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While he keeps many of the specifics of what led to the war and how we got to the point that rebellion forces are on the precipice of toppling Washington, D.C. we get a vague understanding of the state of play. The Western Forces are a coalition of states allied with California and Texas that have seceded from the nation and presumably were fed up with a president that dismantled the FBI, sought and won a third term and used drones on American civilians. I’m sure you can imagine who he’s referring to.
It’s part of the fallacy of Civil War. While Garland avoids specifics as a means to focus in on the general themes, he includes enough for us to understand that the story misunderstands what it’s saying.
It’s the trouble of setting an allegory like this in a real-life environment. The benefit is that it adds a layer of relatability and terror at the prospect of an event like this hitting so close to home. Graphic images of war and violence on the streets of New York City or Washington, D.C. are a chilling reminder of what is going on in the day-to-day lives of some around the world. When the movie hones in on the unabashed brutality of war and the complexity of being a war correspondent, the movie’s transparency enhances all of those feelings. But whenever it attempts to bring in real-world artifacts — a line that mentions a fictional “antifa massacre” is particularly jarring — it immediately takes you out of the movie.
But if the mechanics of its world take you out, the story pulls you in and doesn’t let go. Kirsten Dunst plays Lee Smith, a renowned war photographer on the hunt for the holy grail: a photo of the president. Along with her journalist colleague Joe (Wagner Moura), her mentor Sammy (Lady Bird‘s Stephen McKinley Henderson) and aspiring young photographer Jessie (Priscilla‘s Cailee Spaeny) she makes the long, dangerous trek through war-torn land and raging battles from New York City to the nation’s capital.
Along the way, they encounter the monstrosities of war including a suicide bombing that nearly takes both Lee and Jessie out — of course, a second after getting her bearings Lee is up taking photos of the carnage — and a shootout between rebel forces and the U.S. military.
Both scenes are violent, graphic and immersive. Like you’re being surrounded on all sides by gunfire, smoke and the smell of death. Interestingly, Garland doesn’t sensationalize these images. Even when we watch people dying, the image is objective — just as Lee sees them. That isn’t to say she doesn’t care, she believes that the work is a necessity.
As they continue to make their way through the country, encountering people fighting for both sides and those caught in the middle, we learn what drives each of the characters. However, the screenplay never allows us too close. Almost like we’re just seeing them in a still photograph without the context of what come before or what is happening around them. Perhaps it’s an intentional choice. However, it left me unable to become emotionally invested in their journeys.
When barnburner scenes come along like an encounter with a group of soldiers that goes awry — led by Jesse Plemmons in yet another role that proves he’s one of the great character actors working today — there’s suspense because of the situation, but not because we’re afraid for our characters. As Plemmons’s unnamed soldier goes down the line of our hero journalists asking what state they’re from, there’s a palpable amount of tension. It’s moments like it when Civil War fully meets expectations. But then it immediately fades away because we’re not emotionally connected to the characters enough to have actually cared about the outcome.
When Civil War is great, it is magnificent. Especially the climactic final assault on the White House by rebel forces that could’ve been a short film in itself. Though it’s chaotic, Garland guides us through the carnage to tell us a nearly wordless story about the pursuit of the truth, the melancholic thrill of destruction and even the out-of-touch way that our leaders see the country — like their actions have no consequences. It is one of the best action scenes in a war movie in recent memory and shows he trusts the audience enough to understand what he’s trying to tell us. However, when it starts to tell instead of show, Civil War feels at war with itself.
