LA BOLA NEGRA

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: A
Editing: A

There is so much depth, so many layers, so much richness entangled with Spanish history in La bola negra, it begs to be watched again. Being an American with only a cursory knowledge of things like the Spanish Civil War, some of its themes went a bit over my head. The more I learn about La bola negra and all that it references, the more impressed I am with it. To be clear, I don’t think homework should be necessary to fully appreciate a film. Thankfully this works incredibly well even if you go in with no prior knowledge of these things.

For instance? La bola negra really was an unfinished play, with a gay protagonist, started in 1936 by Spanish writer Federico García Lorca, portrayed briefly in the film by Alberto Cortés. Lorca had a lover, Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, a Spanish soccer player, actor and soldier who figures far more prominently in the movie, as portrayed by Miguel Bernardeau. Rafael is among the Spanish Repiblicans captured and rehabilitated from serious injury by the Nationalists intending to interrogate them before their execution. This is where he meets Sebastián, La Bola Negra’s primary protagonist, played by the gorgeous Spanish singer-songwriter Guitarricadelafuente, in a truly stunning feature film debut. His performance is breathtaking.

References to La bola negra thus go through multiple degrees of separation, between characters, across history, even in the space between fact and fiction. The timeline of this film switches back and forth between the late 1930s and 2017, with a contemporary protagonist, Alberto (Carlos González), himself a playwright, albeit one who has given up writing. Alberto has a loving boyfriend, Juan Pablo, who some may recognize as Salvadorian writer/actor/comedian Julio Torres, who created Los Espookys and multiple comedy specials for HBO, in addition to starring alongside Tilda Swinton in the 2024 film Problemista.

To say that La bola negra features a stacked international cast would be an understatement—many stars from Spain, including a memorable sequence with a woman entertaining the troops played by Penélope Cruz. We are even treated to an American star, Glenn Close, as an American scholar of Federico García Lorca, whom Alberto seeks out after discovering what a grandfather he didn’t even know was still alive until recently left him in his will. Alas, this part is not substantive enough to garner Glenn Close yet another Oscar nomination she doesn’t win, but it’s still a treat to see her.

To call La bola negra a movie about the gay experience in Spain would also be an understatement, as it does so via three different threads: Sebastián and his brief acquaintance with Rafael; Alberto, who also happens to be gay, and his journey of discovery with his recently departed grandfather; and the one I haven’t even mentioned yet: young Carlos, also in the 1930s, who is applying for membership at the “Casino” (an exclusive club) his father is a part of, and encountering rejection due to local rumors of his homosexuality. The club members vote on his admission using a form of blackball ballot, hence the title.

It is some time before it’s fully clear how Carlos’s story fits into the overall story, and even though he and Rafael clearly have different names, I must confess I went a long time thinking they must be the same character at different ages, because no other explanation was provided. Eventually an explanation comes, though, and the intricate plotting clicks together extraordinarily well, thanks to the clearly deep well of talents shared by co-directors and co-writers Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo (a third cowriting credit is shared with Alberto Conejero). The duo is known as “Los Javis,” and their 13-year relationship ending during principal photography, with no end to their creative partnership, is already part of this movie’s lore.

There is so much to mine in La bola negra, tons will get left out—but that is fitting, as this is a film that should be an experience of discovery. We are introduced to Sebastián, Carlos and Alberto separately, at different points in time, and we must travel across Spanish history before finding out how they are all connected. Each of them must navigate relationships with their own brand of complexity, and the key thing they all have in common is their sexuality. La bola negra is a story about gay men, written and directed by gay men, representing other gay men who wrote about gay men at a time when it was lethally dangerous to do so. Gris Jordana’s cinematography is exquisite, especially during the occasionally fantastical visual flourishes.

In other words, it’s as though La bola negra were created in a lab just for me, a gay writer with an appreciation for queer history and an abiding love of cinema. I have a clear bias here, but I won’t apologize for it. La bola negra is also about many other things, including familial relationships, the Spanish Civil War, and how the two intersect. Alberto has a strained relationship with his mother (Lola Dueñas), who is kind of horrible to him, but eventually we learn how she also fits into all of this, collateral damage of a history of homophobia.

This is a film of intricate delights, visual splendor, and tragic sorrow. La bola negra is an epic of our times, an instant classic of cinema—queer or otherwise. It’s a tapestry of narrative threads that I feel privileged to have been wrapped up in. It will be streaming on Netflix on December 2, but for now I am deeply grateful it was given a theatrical release. This is a film that commands immersion, which an only truly be provided by the theatrical experience.

Behold, Sebastián: just one of the indelible images in La bola negra.

Overall: A

Tasveer Advance: ELEPHANTS IN THE FOG

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: A
Editing: A

It’s a challenge to find lived-in, stereotype-free representation of trans people in cinema broadly, but rarer still to find any kind of trans representation at all in international feature films. Enter director and co-writer Abinash Bikram Shah, with a truly stunning debut feature film Elephants in the Fog, starring Nepali trans activist Pushpa Thing Lama—also in her film debut. Several trans women actors are featured here, and this was the film debut for most of the cast; this is a big part of what makes the film such an extraordinary achievement.

The community depicted here is known as Kinnar, a legally recognized third gender in Nepal since 2007—the first country in South Asia to grant such recognition. (This community was given legal recognition in Pakistan in 2009; India in 2014; and Bangladesh in 2013.) In much of South Asia this community is known as Hijra, but in this film the Nepalese characters default to the evidently more respectful Kinnar—at least when the women in question are referring to each other.

Legal recognition or not, there remains cultural discrimination and oppression, as with anywhere on Earth. In South Asia, however, there is a sort of tenuous tolerance of this community, widely seen to be capable of either blessing or cursing. We see these characters in Elephants in the Fog clapping their hands together as part of this ritual, its intent contextualized by attitude and demeanor. In many scenes, one of these women is seen granting a blessing at weddings or to a pregnant woman. They are given often meager amounts of money for this service, and this is how they make a living, all the while living in a tightly structured community with a spiritual leader and a vow of celibacy.

It is within this framework that the story of Elephants in the Fog unfolds. I suppose I could give a trigger warning: this is indeed a tragic story—but not in anywhere near the typical way trans people have long been depicted in film. Pirati (Pushpa Thing Lama) is “mother” to several of the other trans women in this community, including the recklessly rebellious Apsara (Aliz Ghimire), who goes missing shortly after a confrontation between the two. These women share a house in a vollage bordering an area where dangerous wild elephants roam, and the immediate assumption is that Apsara may have been trampled in that adjacent forest.

The bulk of the story involves Pirati’s obsessive search for her, in the face of police indifference and building community resentment of this entire Kinnar community. This is all complicated by Pirati’s own hypocrisy, as she is engaged in an affair with a man who lives in the city of Birgunj, a little over 30 miles away. Pirati is all stoic resolve, but her refusal to give up even as she endangers her own standing among her “daughters” indicates a deep-seated guilt.

Apsara’s ultimate fate is not what we spend the movie expecting, and yet it’s deeply tragic in its own way. What makes Elephants in the Fog work so beautifully is how flawed all of these characters are—these are not magical heroines in the face of their oppression. They are simply surviving, and in this exceptionally well-written script, they are fallible and messy, just like all human beings. Rarely do trans characters come across as so well-drawn, their community and environment so authentically lived-in.

Elephants in the Fog is also beautifully shot, by cinematographer Noé Bach (in this case, far from a film debut: Bach has been working since 2012). The film’s budget does not appear to have been made public, but it’s probably safe to assume it was relatively small; I found myself wondering whether we would get to see any elephants at all, or if they would remain unseen and, to a degree, merely metaphors for partial truth. Never fear, though: elephants do get some screen time, but they are used so sparingly that their impact is incredible, and in the end almost overwhelming. The final shot of this film is one of the most powerful in any film released all year.

Indeed, Elephants in the Fog will easily be one of the best films I have seen all year, if not the best film I’ve seen this year—a bit of a frustration, in that I cannot tell you where to see it: there has not yet been any U.S. theatrical release date announced, and if there is one, it will not likely be until sometime in 2027. But I cannot ignore this film until then, because it simply cannot be ignored. I implore you to make a note of it, and see it as soon as it gets U.S. distribution.

Kinnar in the Fog: a beautifully painted portrait of a very specific community.

Overall: A

YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING

Directing: A
Acting: B+
Writing: A
Cinematography: A
Editing: A+

There is a scene quite early on in You Can See Everything that will stay with me for a very long time. Granted, many scenes in You Can See Everything will stay with me for a very long time—but, this one in particular: it has only just started to become apparent how intimately Nathan Fielder, his co-director Lance Oppenheim, and their documentary film crew have been integrated into the daily home lives of Elizabeth Holmes and her boyfriend, Billy Evans. And it’s a brief shot, just a few seconds—but, it’s of Billy taking a shower, brushing his teeth at the same time. Not from behind anything, not even though a frosted glass shower stall door: it’s straight-up, full-frontal, head to toe. Billy Evans, brushing his teeth in the shower, fully naked on camera. It cuts then to Nathan Fielder himself behind the camera capturing that shot, immediately underscoring the uncertainty of what he’s getting himself into with this project.

From the film’s perspective, that very much seems to be the point: this is an example of the so-called “radical access” Holmes and Evans are giving this film crew, months after speaking to no media at all, and only a couple of months before Holmes is set to serve an 11-year prison sentence for fraud. Their position is that they “have nothing to hide,” hence the access. But from Billy Evans’s perspective, in this shot in particular, what is the point? “Radical access” does not have to mean everything short of watching them have sex or use the toilet on camera, but this seems to be the pointed suggestion. Or is this, perhaps, also a subtle kind of posturing, a strangely misguided display of dominance?

This, among a great many things in You Can See Everything, is up for debate—and a big reason why this film is essential viewing. Rare indeed is the documentary feature that astonishes at this level, with this consistency. It has to be seen to be believed, and I have never before seen a film in the documentary genre that begs not to be spoiled. Usually spoilers are moot with documentary filmmaking, because they tell a story that’s already been reported. Except You Can See Everything slowly turns into the story of its own making, which means it is packed with details you could never see coming. So yes, I suppose telling you Billy Evans appears full-frontal nude on camera is itself a spoiler, but what can I do? I have to tell you some things in order to convince you to see the movie.

I can tell you this: “strangely misguided” is an apt phrase for virtually everything we see both Holmes and Evans doing and saying. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Holmes herself is the bigger mystery—it’s almost impossible to decide what to make of her. Is she wildly deluded? Is she the most naive woman on the planet? Is she a supervillain whose greatest power is master manipulation? All of these things seem to be on the table, at all times, from beginning to end.

One thing is certain: Holmes has a brain that functions unlike any other. To call her “neurodivergent” doesn’t even get to the right connotation. In a key scene, Fielder shows her a clip from an old movie to demonstrate how she understands things differently, and even Billy gets on board with the analogy: he’s right, Billy agrees; you do think differently from other people. (I’m dying to tell you what clip Fielder shows her, but this I will not spoil; it’s far too apt, critical, and delicious to the overall story.)

There are times when both of these people seem straight up sociopathic. And this especially evokes some cognitive dissonance because of how warm, welcoming and inviting they are. They both talk about working on a new prototype, the “next step” in developing the very thing that never actually worked—a blood testing device that did not actually work—as if there is any chance that will ever happen. A couple of times we see Elizabeth’s parents visiting, and in one close-up shot of their faces as they listen to them talk about this stuff, it’s as though you’ve never seen sadder people. In the meantime, Elizabeth Holmes is constantly answering questions with wide eyes and a smile so consistent it quickly becomes genuinely creepy.

The film’s title, You Can See Everything, is a direct reference to the “radical access” this film crew is given into their lives—including Fielder’s eventual decision, after some reluctance, to accept the invitation to stay in their guest house. There’s a big difference between watching people’s every move at home and watching them at work, however, and things do get more tense later when Fielder starts asking questions of people outside of the Holmes/Evans household. Evans himself is less mystifying than Holmes is, albeit not by a huge amount—they simply gradually reveal themselves to be mystifying in different ways.

This would be in large part why You Can See Everything justifies its own length: even at two hours and 54 minutes, not a moment onscreen is wasted; there is no filler here. And things take a big turn roughly two thirds of the way through, when Fielder starts getting to know Amanda Seyfried, who played Elizabeth Holmes in the 2022 Hulu miniseries The Dropout. When this turn occured, I found myself quickly drifting into deep skepticism: What is going on here? I don’t know if I like this. And then, this turn quickly reveals itself to be a brilliant device for telling the rest of the story, which is precisely about telling the rest of the story.

You Can See Everything gets to a point where it blurs the line between fact and fiction, fact-finding and fictionalizing. We start to see reenactments of deeply relevant things that happened but were not on camera, which is how this film became the first documentary I have seen in which acting can still be evaluated. We see people talking about the scripts written for the reenactments; we see them reacting to the details revealed in them, evidently while reading and hearing about them for the first time; and we see that intercut with the reenactments themselves.

I spent a lot of this film expecting it to end at the point where Elizabeth Holmes finally goes to prison, because that’s the basic premise set up from the beginning. There are moments when Fielder is openly unsure as to whether he should stay and marinate in whatever akwardness is happening, right up to within a couple of hours of Holmes being taken in. But then You Can See Everything goes far beyond any of this, breaking open far more narrative threads to all of this than you ever thought possible.

Given Nathan Fielder’s history and the ways in which he often inserts himself into his own projects—and it is made very clear that Holmes eagerly invites him into this project having no real sense of his work whatsoever—it’s easy to wonder what extent his own penchant for invention goes in this film. How can a “real” documentary be this beautifully shot, for example? The cinematography by David Bolen—who also shot Primetime, which Lance Oppenheim also directed—is beautiful. This is evident from the very opening shot, of Billy’s face looking up from the lying position in perfect lighting, laying out exactly what we are there expecting to see: an intimate documentary portrait of people claiming they have nothing to hide. (We later watch Amanda Seyfried watching this very same clip.)

Some shots are too gorgeous not to be suspect. We see Nathan Fielder and Amanda Seyfried chatting in comfy chairs in front of a fireplace with burning logs in it—again, beautifully lit. How was this set up? Was this itself at all rehearsed? Did someone just figure out how to create the perfect visual setting for a real-life discussion featuring reactions to the story we are actively watching unfold?

There’s also a curious element of Fielder and Oppenheim being co-directors, but with Fielder being the active onscreen participant and Oppenheim always being the silent director behind the camera—but, presumably both were typically in the room. When we get shots of Fielder holding a camera, someone else is holding a camera to show us that. Whatever is going on, it seems to get normalized very quickly: in another early shot, Elizabeth enters her living room and says “Hi, guys” with a smile, clearly to the whole crew. It’s very rare but there is a couple wide shots showing most of the crew in the room, while Elizabeth and Billy go about their business as though none of them are there.

In spite of it being nearly impossible not to think and wonder about these things, it all works. Oppenheim and Fielder have clearly molded a massive amount of footage into a coherent story—impressively so, given the way it starts to fold in on itself, with people onscreen talking about how this very film got greenlit, how they set it up, and how they are actively putting it together as they go along. Truth, trust, deception, and artistic license are all recurring themes, to the point where this film’s portrait of Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans does change your perception, and maybe even your opinion of them, but does not make them any less jaw-droppingly baffling. Is Elizabeth Holmes acutely aware of everything going on and actually pulling the strings? Is Billy Evans actually manipulating her? Are they both stunning narcissists? Maybe it’s all of the above, but You Can See Everything makes the very act of contemplating it a spectacular experience.

Okay but I can’t tell you everything because you simply have to see it.

Overall: A

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A+
Cinematography: A
Editing: A

The more I think about One Battle After Another, the more impressed I am with it. This is the sign of a great movie. I didn’t have the wherewithal to think about whether it was a Great Movie while I was watching it, because I was too absorbed by it. I wouldn’t even say I was blown away by it, per se—and I mean that as a compliment. I was simply invested in every single character onscreen. I only had the bandwidth to reflect on it once it was over, and then, after some time, it gradually dawned on me: that was an amazing movie.

Everything that’s amazing about it is done subtly—not something that writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson is exactly known for. Many of his films, particularly early ones like Boogie Nights or Magnolia or Punch-Drunk Love, throw a lot onscreen that amounts to showing off. And don’t get me wrong, it works: those are all objectively great movies, top-tier in the PTA canon. Not that much of his output can qualify as bottom-tier—the only one of his films I did not particularly like was Inherent Vice (2014). Licorice Pizza (2021) got rave reviews and I thought it was very good but without the usual P.T. Anderson impact, and his debut feature film, Hard Eight, is fine. Just about any of his seven other feature films, though, you could reasonably call a masterwork. How often does a director come along like that?

Anderson does have a signature style, both in writing and in look—if you look deep enough. Many of his movies are truly like no other, and yet they all have a connective tissue to them. As such, One Battle After Another feels like the culmination of his life’s work. It might be his crowning achievement. He’s only 55 years old, though. Imagine what more we might get out of him over the next twenty, maybe even thirty years. It’s thrilling just to think about. Maybe he’ll give us a dud or two, who knows? I expect it will be worth it. This is a guy who takes huge swings, over and over, and nearly every time it pays off.

And how to even talk about One Battle After Another in a way that effectively illustrates its greatness? This is a movie about America, told through three different ethnic lenses: Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio), the once-revolutionary White guy who has long since given up; Willa (Chase Infiniti), the daughter he’s had with Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), a Black woman with a passion that cannot be domesticated; and Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio Del Toro), Willa’s Latino karate sensei who has his own immigrant-underground-railroad going on.

There’s a bit of yin-and-yang with the Whiteness in this film, Bob being counterbalanced by Col. Stephen J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn, as committed to the part as ever), who is eager to join the White-supremacist “Christmas Adventures Club,” but also has a conflicted attraction to Perfidia—who may or may not have similarly conflicted feelings about him. Lockjaw is one of the most compelling and layered villains to come along in cinema in a long time, and I will only say that there’s a pointed poetic justice to his ultimate fate.

It feels important to note that a great deal of time is spent on Bob and Perfidia (and, to a degree, fellow revolutionary Deandra, played by Regina Hall) many years in the past, their hunger for both revolution and each other, and the ultimate consummation of their relationship and what would appear to be the resulting offspring—and then, time jumps forward, and little Willa is sixteen years old.

The “French 75,” the name these revolutionaries have given themselves, is loosely based on the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s, particularly as detailed in the 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland—which is credited here as “inspiring” One Battle After Another, rather than being an outright adaptation of it. In this film, however, these revolutionaries are clearly grafted onto a 21st-century world, with no other added commentary: we get no context clues about what the French 75’s numerous bombings or bank robberies did to American culture. We only see that these things happen; this group exists; and they are in active pursuit by law enforcement. It is perhaps telling that this stuff does not necessarily feel out of place being recontextualized to the modern era.

The story does’t even take off until the jump forward to Willa as a 16-year-old. Her mother disappeared when she was a baby; her father spends his time frying his brain with weed. But a sudden turn of events has Colonel Lockjaw going after both Joe and Willa for the first time since her infancy, and the motivations here all come back to his obsession with his own Whiteness. A reactivation of communications between current and former members of the French 75 creates a lot of comic moments when Joe can’t remember all the communication passwords he’s supposed to have had memorized for the past sixteen years.

Nothing goes in the direction you expect it to in One Battle After Another—another hallmark of Paul Thomas Anderson films. You root for the characters, and you fear for them; sometimes they get out of scrapes and sometimes they don’t. Whatever is going on, the runtime of two hours and 41 minutes flies by, thanks to a kinetic energy that never abates. It has this in common with Magnolia, the only P.T. Anderson film that was longer. One Battle After Another is less stylized and far less high-concept; the characters here are much more grounded, making them more plausible and real. All of these things tie together into what amounts to the best film of the year so far.

One Battle After Another is so good you’ll be convinced by a 25-year-old-actor playing a 16-year-old character.

Overall: A

SORRY, BABY

Directing: A
Acting: A+
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

Rare is the film that is as self-assured as Sorry, Baby, which is written and directed by 31-year-old Eva Victor—who also stars in the lead role, as Agnes. Directing oneself is an impressive challenge in the best of circumstances, and doing it this successfully is practically a miracle. Victor’s performance is simultaneously subtle and astonishing, the kind of thing it’s tempting to say deserves an Oscar, except the Oscars don’t pay much attention to “small movies” like these. And Sorry, Baby has so much integrity, it’s almost condescending even to mention the Oscars, as this isn’t a movie with any aspiration for prizes.

I find myself thinking of the male gaze, because this movie so deftly sidesteps it. This is a film very much about trauma, but it takes a unique approach to it. The separated chapters, each with a title card, aren’t even presented in a fully linear timeline. Once we get to “The Year with the Bad Thing,” the bad thing itself is never shown onscreen. The camera is stationery, across the street, facing the house where it happens. There’s a hard cut to dusk, another hard cut to night. Agnes leaves the front door clearly in a bit of a daze, which continues as the camera follows her to her car, and along her drive home. We only learn exactly what happened when we hear Agnes recount it to her very close, lesbian friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie).

One of the many things I love about Sorry, Baby is how much humor is in it, and nearly all of the humor occurs after we learn of this assault. There’s humor in the doctor’s office the very next morning, when Agnes is getting “standard questions” from a clueless doctor, with Lydia by her side. There’s humor in Agnes’s meeting of a random sandwich shop owner who calms her down when she drives off the road by his shop due to a panic attack. There’s humor in Agnes’s awkward dinner with university colleagues which includes a deeply jealous woman (Kelly McCormack) who believes she should have gotten the full-time position Agnes was offered. And there’s some subtle humor in Agnes’s cautious development of a relationship with her neighbor, Gavin. Lucas Hedges is perfectly cast as Gavin, having returned to film last year after a break to focus on writing. He’s been missed, and as always he works incredibly well as a character actor in supporting parts.

And Gavin, incidentally, is the closest we get to a male point of view in Sorry, Baby. And to say it’s told from a female point of view is itself a bit complicated: Eva Victor reportedly uses both they/them and she/her pronouns. Agnes, the character, never states any preferred pronouns, except for a scene in which an arrow is pointed to the space between M an F under “gender” in a jury duty questionnaire. Lydie, on the other hand, is depicted both post- and pre-coming out in subtle ways, consistently refers to herself as gay, but is in a relationship with a nonbinary person named Fran (E.R. Fightmaster, who is themself nonbinary). These variances in gender are never the focus of the story or any particular character, which is what’s so great about it: they just are, and art getting made by younger filmmakers will inevitably do this more often, thereby slowly but surely conditioning audiences to the idea, whether some dipshit Alabama governor likes it or not.

With all that in mind, it’s somewhat amusing to think of how Eva Victor is referred to when referred to only by last name. Sorry, Baby clearly has more than just these things on its mind—and even has the way people are treated based on perceived gender on its mind. There’s a scene in which two women on the faculty basically feign concern for Agnes when one of them says, “We know what you’re going through. We’re women.” Except it sounds like a memorized script, and that’s the point. It plays funny, but with a deep subtext of sadness. People who have never experienced sexual assault might feel like such odd, awkward or wildly tone deaf reactions to it are unrealistic. People who know the experience are fully aware of how often this sort of stuff happens—both being victimized and being completely misunderstood about it.

It would seem at first glance that Sorry, Baby is a movie about the friendship between Agnes and Lydie, but it’s actually far more specifically about Agnes, and how they come to terms with this trauma. Lydie, while clearly a very good friend, is just one of the narrative threads. Still, once the story gets to Lydie and Fran having a baby, we get to how that baby is, in her way, the title character. This is only revealed in the final scene, when Agnes is looking after the baby while Lydie and Fran are on a walk, and Agnes assures the baby that she can tell her anything no matter how scary—and scary things will happen. Life will have its challenges, but we’ll help each other get through it. And I feel lucky to have Victor take me through Sorry Baby, a film that turns deeply complicated issues and themes into a gem of poignant simplicity.

This might be the smartest movie you’e seen about such heavy subject matter.

Overall: A

BABYGIRL

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A
Editing: A+

Babygirl does not pull any punches regarding what it’s about: it opens with Nicole Kidman having an orgasm with Antonio Banderas. Or so it would seem!

That is to say, this is a very sex-forward film. It’s a very sex-positive film, which is good for everyone. It’s actually not that difficult these days to find high-profile, even mainstream movies that are frank and positive about sex, a trend I fully support. What makes Babygirl stand apart, how it goes an extra step that other movies do not go, is that it’s specifically kink-positive.

I’m not saying this has never been done before. Secretary came out 22 years ago, after all. The key difference is that James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal are nowhere near as big of movie stars as Nicole Kidman, or even Antonio Banderas, and never have been. Nor did that movie bother much with gender politics and power dynamics at all really, let alone handle them so deftly. Another key point is how much of a relief it is that Babygirl was written and directed by a woman—Halina Reijn on both counts, who previously directed (but did not write, though perhaps she should have) Bodies Bodies Bodies. Any movie about a woman with a humiliation fetish should absolutely be directed—and, preferably, written—by a woman.

Nicole Kidman gives a towering performance in Babygirl, which I fear may be overlooked by many just because of the subject matter. This is arguably her best performance in twenty years, although a couple others come quite close—it’s no revelation to say she’s an incredible actor. But she’s given something very new to do here, as a woman who can’t climax without very particular circumstances, and who only slowly comes to understand and embrace what’s going on in a healthy way.

This brings me to Harris Dickinson, who is hot as hell as Samuel, the subtly cocky intern who seduces Kidman’s Romy, the CEO of an Amazon-like tech company in New York City. Dickinson is the rare kind of package in the same vein as Timothée Chalamet or Colin Farrell before him: as talented as he is gorgeous. I’ve been impressed with Dickinson as a performer since his breakout role as a closeted gay teenager in Beach Rats (2017), and he was magnificent in Triangle of Sadness (2022). He is unlikely to become a superstar like Chalamet, but he’s poised to have a film career that is every bit as interesting.

Babygirl never tells us how old Romy is, though it’s easy to presume it’s somewhat younger than Kidman’s actual age of 57. She’s the mother of two teenage daughters, one of whom (Esther McGregor) is an exceptionally well-drawn young lesbian. Samuel is clearly meant to be in his twenties (Dickinson is 28), which makes the age gap between him and Romy somewhere between 20 and 30 years. Halina Reijn, as writer-director, spins a sexually tense tale between them with true finesse, never quite making clear the degree to which Samuel may or may not be threatening to Romy. What’s easy to forget, and perhaps deliberately so, is the inherent power imbalance between them, and very much in Romy’s favor. Samuel knowingly talks about how he could take everything from her with one phone call because he knows it turns her on. But who is really taking advantage of whom here? How threatening could he actually be to her, really? Reijn is very much playing with our expectations, taking advantage of our inclination to see the man as the one who is inappropriate. Neither of them is innocent here, but only one of them has the real power.

This is not directly related to, as many would assume, but is in conversation with Romy’s humiliation kink. Her husband, Jacob (Banderas), is a nice guy who cannot wrap his head around Romy’s specific sexual desires. He utters perhaps the most critical line in the film when he says of her suggestions in bed, “It makes me feel like a villain.” This sexual disconnect, having no bearing at all on how much Romy loves him, is the entire reason for her affair with Samuel, who has an innate instinct for her desires and takes advantage of them at the first opportunity. Conversely, again, it’s important to note that Romy allows it—something made explicit when she and Samuel have a conversation about consent that is unusually clarifying onscreen, and they even agree on a safe word. Incidentally, when I was thinking about Samuel’s seemingly borderline behaviors later in the film, it took a while for me to register that she could have used that mutually agreed-upon safe word, and never did.

I kind of love that Reijn cast a star as big as Antonio Banderas for the part of Jacob, which could arguably have been played by anyone and which in someone else’s hands could have been a thankless role. This is the kind of part that has been a bone tossed to older women actors for decades, although once you look deeper, you realize that Jacob also plays a critical role in this story. Samuel, tantalizing as he is, is just a catalyst for what is ultimately Romy and Jacob’s story. There is only one scene Banderas and Dickinson share, and it is fantastic, going in directions you never expect, in turn both furious and tender.

If you are super vanilla and don’t get kink at all, you’d best avoid Babygirl. If you are vanilla but have an open mind about people who are different from you, then you have just as much reason to see this incredible film as the rest of us. Babygirl is easily one of the best films of the year, and Kidman gives one of the year’s best performances. Romy is just the kind of complex figure perfect for an actor of Kidman’s caliber, a woman balancing the nuances of beauty standards for mature women in the highest levels of the corporate world, who remain rare indeed.

There is another key line, when Romy’s assistant (Sophie Wilde) says “I genuinely thought women with power would behave differently.” What Reijn deliberately leaves unclear is the extent to which the implication there is or is not correct: is Romy behaving just like the other men in her position? We could argue about this for hours, and that, perhaps more than anything, is what makes this movie great.

Move over Nicole, I’m next!

Overall: A

FLOW

Directing: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A
Editing: A+
Animation: A+

I’m not sure I can adequately explain how much I loved this movie. Flow is not just the best animated film of the year by a mile, it’s within striking distance of being the best film of the year overall. Critics love to throw around the word “triumph,” but here it legitimately applies. This is a film that transcends any cliché.

There are so many impressive things about Flow, it can be difficult to decide where to begin. How about the animation: Latvian director and co-writer Gints Zilbalodis, and his team, rendered the gorgeous animation entirely with the open-source software Blender. He also never makes clear what created the specificity of the world presented therein, with its undercurrent of haunting melancholy which is still somehow also beautiful: the characters in Flow are all feral or wild animals, inhabiting a world once inhabited by humans, recently even, but we never see any. The closest to a human character we see is a humanoid statue, and beyond that, the remnants of artistic carvings left inside a house that a cat has been using for shelter.

We never get any indication that the cat ever knew the human who once lived in that house, although we see wood carvings of cats mid-project, evidently abandoned. Finished cat carvings, most only slightly bigger than the live cat we follow in Flow, dot the yard in font of the house, right down to the bank of a passing river. The human artist was apparently quite obsessive about cats: we briefly see a cat statue so huge it has scaffolding around it.

This live cat is the closest thing Flow has to a protagonist. It encounters other animals, some more than once, but the cat is the only animal we always follow: from the opening scene of it considering itself in the reflection of the river water, to the closing scene of it doing the same. In between those bookends, we discover that there is a cyclical nature to either the world’s climate or its geology—or both—wherein the area floods to a massive degree, and then after several days, the water recedes. The cat moves to different areas of higher ground after getting swept away by a massive flood which is then followed by steady water rise, until it is trapped atop the aforementioned giant cat statue.

A drifting sailboat luckily passes by, and the cat manages to make its way onto it. Much of Flow is spent with the cat on this wooden boat, which already has another animal on it: a capybara. Over time, a sort of team of animals amasses on the boat: a ring-tailed lemur; a secretarybird; a yellow Labrador Retriever; eventually the rest of the pack of dogs that Lab has been running with—which, of course, complicates the group dynamic on the boat.

Unlike other animated films of this sort, there is no dialogue in Flow: none of the animals talk. This is an excellent choice. They do, however, make vocalizations, which are used to flesh out a personality, of sorts, for each animal. With only one exception, recordings of the species’s actual vocalizations were used for each animal we see in this film. Only the capybara stands apart, as the recordings they got from one at a zoo did not work well for the capybara’s personality in this film, so they used a baby camel’s sounds instead.

These choices make Flow particularly stand apart from films like WALL-E, which is basically a silent film in its first half but introduces cartoon humans in its second half; or Bambi, which 80 years ago innovated natural-world movements in animation but still featured talking animals. To be clear, Flow does anthropomorphize its animals, a reasonable choice as otherwise we’d just be watching a bunch of adorable animals drown or get eaten. It must be stressed, however, how subtly Zilbalodis does this: each of the animals move and vocalize only the way their species actually does in the real world. And then, the secretarybird and even the cat are using the rudder to steer the sailboat for some time before it even registers that’s what’s happening.

There is no villain in Flow, only the constant specter of danger—particularly for the cat, who falls out of the boat and into the water far more times than any small child would likely want to see (there’s a reason this film is rated PG). Given the cat is the primary character, I was sure we would get to the end with it alive and well—or would we? There is only one moment where Flow gets mystical, the cat and the secretarybird suddenly floating into the air toward a swirling celestial sky. I really wondered if we were supposed to be witnessing their deaths. I’m still not quite sure when it comes to the bird.

I see no need to dwell on it, though. Flow is a stunning achievement just in how easily it locks in its audience, from start to finish, without any dialogue beyond real animal noises. I found everything about this film utterly mesmerizing, and by turns suspenseful, sad, occasionally funny, and heartbreaking. One could call the dogs comic relief, they are such doofuses sometimes. But they only ever act like dogs, aside from occasional teamwork in an attempt to help another animal. Until a bunny hops by anyway.

There’s even a whale, who gets comparatively limited screen time and yet it has a story arc, just like any of the other animals. The whale is just as susceptible, if not more so, to the perils of rapidly rising and receding waters as any of the others. I spent a lot of time watching this movie either dazzled or with my heart in my throat. The visual achievement cannot be overstated, particularly the cinematography, where the “camera” is constantly swaying back and forth or swirling around the action, giving it very much the feel of something that was actually captured on camera. And after a tightly edited 84 minutes, the story comes full circle, with the strong suggestion that what all these animals have gone through, they will likely go through again. I don’t want that for them, but I am eager to turn right around and watch this film again, many times over.

Times of crisis make strange bedfellows. Or boatfellows.

Overall: A

ANORA

Directing: A
Acting: A+
Writing: A
Cinematography: A
Editing: A

It’s so rare, and so deeply satisfying, when a movie actually lives up to the hype. Anora is everything it promises to be and more.

It’s also very much a riff on the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman, a movie as beloved as it is quite rightly criticized as a vapid look at sex work. Anora takes the concept of a rich guy who woos a sex worker with the promise of riches in exchange for exclusivity, and makes it grittier, more real, with both more authentic joy and more authentic sorrow. Instead of a high-end Beverly Hills escort played by Julia Roberts, we get a no-nonsense Brooklyn exotic dancer played by Mikey Madison—who is a revelation in the role.

And in the case of Anora (Ani for short), the fairy tale begins to crack fairly early on. She’s on the job when she meets Ivan (a stupendous Mark Eydelshteyn), a young Russian man with money to burn. He buys a lap dance, then invites her to his giant home, and within days he’s asking her to be his “boyfriend” for a week. Within that week, he proposes to her, convinces her he’s serious, and flies her with some friends to Las Vegas, where they do indeed get married,

This is all extended setup, and it last probably a good hour into the movie: Ani being taken in by a whirlwind fantasy life moving so fast she doesn’t even have time to consider whether it’s too good to be true. All the while, Ivan has an irresistibly sweet, youthful exuberance that is easily mistaken for innocence. It’s just as easy to be taken in by it as a viewer as it is by Ani as a character, which is testament to Eydelshteyn’s performance.

It’s when Ivan’s parents catch wind of this marriage that things take a turn. He is visited by two men we would reasonably read as henchmen, working for Toros (Karren Karagulian), the handler hired by Ivan’s parents. But Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov) get far more than they bargained for when they come face to face with Ani, who is having trouble processing the idea, suddenly presented to her, that her marriage is a sham.

This turn in the plot, though, would in just about any other movie get scary and violent. Garnick and Igor, as it turns out, are not interested in violence—only in getting Ivan and Ani to sign paperwork to annul their marriage. It’s Ani who turns out to be unexpectedly wild, a young woman with ample experience not taking anbody’s shit, and she’s the one who get surprisingly violent. This is an extended sequence in Ivan’s house, and it is hilarious.

Garnick and Igor have such trouble containing Ani’s outbursts—which, to be fair, are reasonable under the circumstances—that Toros is forced to leave the performance of a baptism to assist. He’s astonished at how beat up Garnick and Igor are when he arrives at the house, and instead of being on board with Ani being tied up like he would be in most movies, he’s aghast. The other two struggle to convince him it would be a mistake to untie her.

Writer-director Sean Baker has made easily his best movie since his masterful 2015 breakthrough Tangerine. I wasn't quite as huge a fan of his next two films, The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021), which were both very good but not quite as incredible as many other critics asserted. With Anora, Baker adds to a truly impressive body of work and, so far at least, makes possibly his crowning achievement. It’s beautifully shot, beautifully acted, expertly edited, and its sexual frankness only adds to its quality.

It doesn’t take long to find online discourse about whether Anora is “feminist,” which misses the point. This is not what the story is concerned about, but rather with telling a nuanced story of a stripper who is neither ashamed nor explicitly proud of her job. She’s just matter-of-fact about it, about the line of work she’s in, and even about the clear talent she has (and yes, pole dancing takes talent). I would argue that alone is a feminist take.

Anora exists in a fully realized world, which is both very specific and something you can’t look away from. And this is Ani’s story from start to finish, Ivan much more a part of it in the first half than in the second, during most of which Ani, Toros, Garnick and Igor are searching the city for him. Igor in particular proves a surprisingly tender character for someone clearly meant to be a villain, and how he relates to Ani over time evolves organically until he plays a part in the closing scene of the film that is bittersweet at best and tragically sad at worst. In either case, he’s the one character who offers Ani any truly genuine intimacy.

There’s a lot of sex in Anora, particularly in its first half, when Ani is falling in love with Ivan. The fantastic trick Sean Baker pulls off is that it’s never gratuitous, at least not in the context of storytelling—not even when Ani gives a kind of performance in Ivan’s living room usually reserved for a private room at the strip club. In every case, it moves the story forward, and has a refreshing frankness about how sex plays an undeniable part in people falling for each other.

There have been many characterizations of Anora as “Pretty Woman meets Uncut Gems.” I would push back a bit on that characterization, as Uncut Gems is an unbearably tense and stressful portrait of a gambling addict you’re desperate to see make the right decision even once and he never does. Anora gets somewhat similarly frantic in its second half, but it’s far funnier and nowhere near as stressful. What it does do, on the other hand, is end with a couple of extended, quietly profound scenes that really drive home the inability of Ani to escape the trappings of her social and economic class, no matter what gets disingenuously promised to her.

Anora is a movie that passes no judgment on any of its characters, even while plenty of them—especially Ivan’s parents–are passing judgment on her. Mikey Madison is a star among stars in this movie, all of them giving unforgettable performances, and this is a stellar movie I won’t soon forget,

The promise may be too good to be true but this movie isn’t.

Overall: A

SING SING

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: A+
Editing: A

Not to diminish the phenomenal performances or anything, but very early on in Sing Sing I thought to myself: I need to look up who the cinematographer was on this movie. It was Pat Scola, whose resume is rather diverse: he shot Pig (2021) as well as this year’s A Quiet Place: Day One. These were decently shot films, but honestly nothing truly special on that note. When it comes to Sing Sing, however, not only is it evidently by far the best film he has shot, but it should rightly put him in the sights of many talented directors to come.

If Scola doesn’t get nominated for the Best Cinematography, it will be a crime. Granted, there was no doubt a great amount of collaboration between him and this film’s director and co-writer, Greg Kwedar—here offering merely his second feature film, eight years after his debut, a film called Transpecos. (Side note: that film appears to have been fairly critically acclaimed in its own right, and I now wish I had even heard of it, let alone seen it.) But, it was Scola behind the camera, shooting a film set almost entirely, with the exception of the final scene, inside the maximum security prison that is this film’s namesake.

Few people would expect a film set entirely inside a prison to be shot so beautifully, but this becomes clear from the start of the story—and it sets us up for a beautiful story, based on a real theater program, and featuring a whole bunch of former inmates who had been a part of the program. This is the case with a majority of the cast, with the one notable exception of Coleman Domingo, whose own incredibly performance is undiminished by how much the inmate cast shines, especially Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin—who plays himself. Many of this cast plays themselves, in a way never seen in film before, especially so successfully. A few of them play fictionalized characters.

Maclin is incredible. So is Domingo. The rest of the cast is astonishing, considering the behind-the-scenes details. Sean Dino Johnson, who both plays himself and is also a board member for Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), which runs this program, gets a short monologue that is particularly moving.

Sing Sing could have easily been a documentary feature, and one just as memorable and affecting as a narrative film featuring these actors. But this film, as it actually exists, is far more in the spirit of the purpose RTA serves, which the film touches on: it teaches these men how to be vulnerable, how to harness their feelings in healthy ways, how to make it one vital aspect, among many, of their rehabilitation. Most crucially, it showcases these men doing exactly what they learned to do: act. This is an award-worthy ensemble if ever there was one. It’s too bad the Academy Awards do not have a “Best Cast” award—but the SAG Awards do, and they’d better take note.

In this story brilliantly fashioned to showcase all of this talent, John “Divine G” Whitfield (Coleman Domingo) is the unofficial ringleader, delving deep into these productions every season, but now hoping to present compelling evidence of his innocence at an upcoming clemency hearing. In one of the few parts actually played by established actors, the troupe director, Brent, is played by Paul Raci, playing a role similar to the one he played in the also-excellent 2020 film Sound of Metal. Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin plays a version of himself as an inmate who signs up for the program, a man putting on airs as a gangster but with surprising knowledge of Shakespeare, but with significant insecurities once he is accepted.

In the first meeting he attends, Maclin puts forth the proposition that they put on a comedy, because they all have enough tragedy in their actual lives. Whitfield, who has written a script his hopes they will use, is a bit disappointed, but Maclin clearly has a point. Honestly, I mention this mostly because after seeing the bits and pieces of the time traveling comedy play Brent then writes, I really wish I could go see this play in its entirety.

Which is to say: Sing Sing absolutely nails every part of everything it sets out to do, from showcasing talent to telling a perfectly calibrated story that could have been corny or maudlin in lesser hands. At an hour and 45 minutes, even its runtime is perfect, after countless films of recent years, from blockbusters to dramas, becoming reliably overlong. The script, by Greg Bentley and Greg Kwedar—from a story developed by Kwedar and Clint Bentley along with both Maclin and the real “Divine G,” based on the book Break-in’ The Mummy’s Code by Brent Buell (the character played by Paul Raci)—is incredibly tight. It’s a work that could be studied as proof that extra time need not necessarily be taken to tell a profound story with lasting impact. Sometimes it’s limitation that bears perfection.

Sing Sing even gets its meta elements right, standing for both solid storytelling and growth through art at the same time. We see character development and human development at once, in real time. I haven’t even gotten how incredible it is to see an overused monologue from Hamlet performed in a way never seen before, from an unusual performer who delivers the lines with unique conviction and beautifully infusing it with a personality and background Shakespeare himself could never have dreamed of. Sing Sing is a miracle of a movie, gathering the parts of what should be tropes, and instead moving us all forward.

An “Eye” and a “G”: both divine.

Overall: A

ROBOT DREAMS

Directing: A
Acting: B
Writing: A
Cinematography: A
Editing: A
Animation: A-

Robot Dreams is an utterly delightful, adorable animated feature without any dialogue and with an undercurrent of melancholy. It’s about friendship, love, and a meditation on the transient nature of relationships. It’s uniquely lush in spite of being almost exclusively set in cityscapes, with dark lines around rounded shapes filled with vividly solid colors that somehow combine to create a visual warmth.

Everything about it invites and envelopes you, even as the story takes unexpected turns. This is a universe filled with anthropomorphized animal characters, packed with endlessly charming visual details. “Dog,” the protagonist, wags his little tail any time something makes him happy or excited. He reads a copy of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary when he crawls into bed at night, making us wonder what a society of animals keeps as pets (which we never do actually see).

I am certain I could watch this movie again and discover many charming details I missed the first time around. One of my favorites is when Dog and Robot take a row boat ride in a lake, amongst many others doing the same. One other boat with two companions contains an elephant and a mouse, the elephant weighing down one end of the boat so heavily that the mouse is pushed high into the air at the other end.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. “Robot” is our other main character, a companion Dog has ordered through the mail via a number provided in a television ad. “Are you alone?” the ad copy onscreen reads, and we have already gleaned that Dog is lonely. This was where I first noticed the penchant for background detail in Robot Dreams, actually: as Dog eats his TV dinner alone in his apartment, we can see through his window and again through the window of an apartment across the street, an affectionate couple (a cow and a giraffe, if I remember right) snuggling on a couch in front of their own TV, feeding each other popcorn.

These are details we, as viewers of the movie, notice first. But then Dog notices, and he longs for something of the same in his own life. Enter Robot, who never exists as a character to provoke any thoughts about robotics or AI or anything particularly science-fiction in tone or theme. He’s more like a platonic mail-order bride, and in the end he doesn’t even have any particular personality defects that might cause tension in Dog and Robot’s relationsip. In the end, it’s more about how things can change even between people who never love each other less, but due to circumstances beyond their control. It’s the unhappy accidents of life itself that get in the way.

Robot Dreams is an unrated film, but if it were to get an MPA rating, logically it would get at least PG—not because of vulgarity or violence, which this film really has none of whatsoever, but just because it could be a bit sad for small children. There’s a moment in Robot’s journey, something that happens to him, that broke my heart. And I’m 48 years old.

Well before that, though, we just watch an extended sequence of scenes with Dog and Robot’s blossoming relationship. They walk to the park, go roller skating, and go to the beach. This goes on long enough that I found myself wondering how and when some kind of conflict will enter the story, as there is no story without one. And this is one of the many great things about Robot Dreams: it checks off the obligatory story beats, but always in unexpected ways. In this instance, Dog and Robot get separated at the beach because neither of them realized Robot would rust if he went swimming. He is rusted frozen on the sand, too heavy for Dog to drag away after they have napped clear through evening, and the door through the fence barrier to the beach not only closes at the end of the day, but until the next spring! Dog is dragged away by a cop for trespassing, given no chance to try and repair and retrieve Robot, who then spends the entire winter under snow and ice, quite literally dreaming of ways he might get reunited with Dog (hence the film’s title).

Dog marks the date he can go back (June 1), but in the meantime is forced to go on with his life. He’s still lonely, he tries to make friends, with varying but never complete success. By the time June 1 actually comes around, circumstances have changed significantly for both of them. I won’t spoil it except to assure that Robot does not stay stuck in the sand forever, and this is actually part of their diverging fates that take Robot Dreams to its surprisingly bittersweet conclusion. It’s not often that a film ends with its characters not unhappy, but perhaps fated with a lifetime of wistful yearning for what could have been.

Through all of it, the story is told almost exclusively in a visual manner, the closest to any dialogue being characters snickering or hollering out, “Hey!” I suppose you could say Robot Dreams thus features “voice acting,” although not in a way that particularly showcases anyone’s talent. The story and the animation are what make this the wonderful movie that it is, along with the soundtrack: the only time we hear actual words being vocalized is in song, tunes played on the soundtrack or from a character playing a cassette tape.

Director and co-writer Pablo Berger sets the story in 1980s New York, a plainly deliberate choice that adds to the nostalgic tone. Everything seen onscreen is a celebration of what we see, right down to the teenage animal punks who flip off Robot as he walks by them (oh wait, I guess that one moment could be seen as a “vulgarity,” even though even that plays with charm). Many shots feature the twin towers of the old World Trade Center in the background, always lovingly rendered, just like everything else we see onscreen. This is a movie that loves New York, and all of the characters in it. It loves Dog and it loves Robot, and it loves all the characters they meet along their respective journeys. It loves the art of storytelling and it loves animation in all its forms, and perhaps most of all, it loves us: the people watching the movie.

Robot and Dog swim in a sea of innovative storytelling devices.

Overall: A