THE SOCIAL RECKONING

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

Aaron Sorkin is a rightly celebrated screenwriter. This is the guy who wrote A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing, The Social Network, and Moneyball. His most recent four movies, however—Molly’s Game, The Trial of the Chicago Seven, Being the Ricardos, and The Social Reckoning—were both written and directed by Sorkin. You can tell at a glance what the issue is there: other directors have historically raised Sorkin’s work to the level of excellence. Sorkin manages to direct his own material to a level one or two steps below that.

So it is with The Social Reckoning, a follow-up to The Social Network sixteen years later, thus qualifying as a “lega-sequel.” Critics left and right constantly hail The Social Network as “a masterpiece,” and I’ve never been willing to go quite that far—it’s a really good movie that I gave an A-minus, but it’s not perfect. I still clearly did myself a favor by not rewatching it before seeing The Social Reckoning, in which both David Fincher’s direction and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score are sorely missed.

It feels a little like Aaron Sorkin feels like he is the only one who can truly bring his visions to light, and he is mistaken. Parts of The Social Reckoning feel pointlessly heavy handed, and there’s a couple of editing choices that are genuinely baffling. Twice there are cuts to shots of only a set of people’s calves and feet walking on a sidewalk, with the audio deliberately going in and out. I don’t get it.

What I do get is the point of making this movie, though—I’m not really on board with the people saying the movie itself is pointless. Anything that keeps people talking about Facebook and its now-widely-known dangers is a good thing, however ineffectual it may ultimately be. “Based on a true story” movies don’t always have the intended impact when they are set less than two years before its release, and this one gets to within about five years ago. A lot of what was going on in the world then is still pretty vivid in our collective memory, and depictions of the covid years remains a tricky business. Yet again, we get shots with characters here and there wearing masks, but only just enough to jog our memory, and not nearly enough for it to be realistic. We have to keep seeing all these actors’ beautiful faces, right?

Covid is deeply relevant to this story, though, because it’s used as one of countless examples of Facebook being culpable in the spread of damaging misinformation. A brief but key scene is set in a grocery store (the one scene in which nearly everyone is actually wearing a mask), with a mask-less woman shouting at everyone “You’re a sheep!” And we all know she got this idea from Facebook.

Which is to say, of course, that The Social Reckoning is also often pretty on the nose. Is this movie actually providing any insight? I suppose it might be to some, who pay far more attention to movie entertainment than actual news, which sadly is most people—but most people seeing this movie aren’t necessarily going to care. I’d say you can just find the 17-part series The Facebook Files that was published in The Wall Street Journal in 2021 and the writing of which forms the basis of this film, but a) most of it is behind a paywall; and b) you wouldn’t likely read it even if it weren’t. (I haven’t read it, nor do I have a subscription to The Wall Street Journal.)

Still, by and large The Social Reckoning is pretty engaging, mostly because of being very well cast. This isn’t exactly a showcase for Mikey Madison, who plays the awkward and nerdy Facebook employee whistleblower Frances Haugen, but if you happened to see her in either the Scream reboot or her Oscar-winning performance in Anora, you’ll get a sense of her incredible versatility. This is a showcase for Jeremy Strong, whose performance as an almost sociopathic Mark Zuckerberg is almost worth the price of admission on its own. Nearly all of his scenes are set during a rehearsal for testifying before Congress, however, and we only get one scene in which Zuckerberg and Haugen are even in the same room (and they don’t even speak to each other). Sorkin’s choice to set this rehearsal on the same day the January 6 insurrection is one of several things that make this script feel a little over-written.

Jeremy Allen White is a great actor, but here he’s in a role—as Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz—that any competent actor could have played. The same could be said of Betty Gilpin, who plays Horwitz’s editor; or Bill Burr, who plays an evident frenemy of Zuckerberg’s implausibly brought into the rehearsals to help with crisis management. But, it’s still really fun to see them both.

In any case, The Social Reckoning is packed with performances that range from competent to quite memorable, and I’m not sorry I saw it. That’s a very different sentiment from being thrilled by it, I realize. Some of the writing choices are deeply contrived and corny, but I still left with a certain appreciation for the overall experience. I certainly hoped for better, but my highest praise for this movie is that it could have been a lot worse.

Watching pretty people look at Facebook internal documents is so exciting!

Overall: B

DIGGER

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B+

Digger opened five days ago, and it is already well-documented what a huge flop it is: made with a production budget of over $125 million and a marketing budget of around $100 million, it landed at #4 at the box office its opening weekend, grossing a paltry $8 million domestically and $23 million worldwide to date. This is a movie many media outlets are reporting needed to make $300 million in order to break even, and instead is Tom Cruise’s worst opening weekend in nearly two decades—likely longer in adjusted dollars, considering $8 million in 2007 was the equivalent of $13 million in 2026 dollars.

All of this is to say: Digger being not for everyone is the understatement of the year. Reactions have been sharply divided, to the point that word of mouth is actively working against it. It’s too bad, because there is a hell of a lot to say about this movie, and such conversations can be fun as hell. So: is Digger for me? I really couldn’t decide for a while. I actively thought about this while in the middle of watching the movie, which does not say much for it. And yet, I found it really stuck the landing in the end, on an unsettling note that was somehow both incredibly on the nose and subtle at the same time. There is no way of predicting this, especially in today’s siloed media consumption landscape, but this is a movie I can easily imagine being reclaimed sooner than later. It could be as soon as it releases on a streamer somewhere (it’s a Warner Brothers film, so probably HBO Max), or it could be a decade from now. Someone is going to discover this movie and wonder how they slept on it. The question is whether that someone will be in the company of significant number.

More than anything, because this movie is not for everyone, Digger has a marketing problem. For instance, let’s talk about that quite-obviously animatronic cat, which was featured prominently in the trailers. No context is given for why the cat looks and moves like that, and the result is something that seems to suggest the production skimped on budget and wound up with a pet that looked bafflingly artificial, given the state of visual effects capability today. And I don’t really know what the answer is here, as it would be a notable spoiler for the trailers to give context—maybe they should not have shown that cat in the trailers at all? Because the film itself does provide context to how that cat looks and moves, and it’s something that actually makes sense. But who would know that, watching the trailers? Whose boneheaded choice was this?

All that aside, I can’t say that Digger always worked for me, but it certainly worked better than I expected it to based on the reviews. This is perhaps one of the most critically polarizing films of the year, and usually a MetaCritic score of 46 is a reliable indicator that I will not like a movie. There are occasional exceptions, though, and this is one of them—fascinatingly, the user score on MetaCritic is a much more respectable 6.8 out of 10, so evidently I am not alone. (The user rating over on Letterboxed is a similarly respectable 3.8 out of 5 stars.) It’s worth noting that this is only among the few people who actually bothered to see the movie.

I just love what a swing Digger is—not that unusual for director and co-writer Alejandro G. Iñárritu (this guy directed both Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance and Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths; thankfully this movie’s title is shorter), but very unusual for Tom Cruise, who hasn’t taken a swing this big since his appearance in Tropic Thunder in 2008. I want him to keep taking swings like this, as it makes him a far more interesting actor. I was afraid the poor box office performance might scare him off such swings in his late-career years, but evidently he’s been defending Digger, which is a good thing.

Now, there are many big swings in Digger, and some of them work better than others. Cruise’s performance is excellent, especially considering he actually plays two characters—oil tycoon Digger Rockwell himself, and Curtis Markson, the actor playing Digger in a satirical play. This is where Digger leans hard into meta territory, something I love when done well, but the jury may be out on that point here. When the film suddenly shifts to the same actors we’ve been watching all along playing actors rehearsing a stage play, for a while it’s very confusing. It doesn’t help that clarity comes after these “actor” characters are suddenly arguing about whether this is a satire or a farce and whether it is funny. Up to that point, some of the comedy in Digger has landed well, but some of it also has very much not. I got several good laughs out of this movie, but also experienced multiple attempts at it that just fell flat. And if you are very directly asking us to consider whether what we are watching actually works as a satire, I’m not sure it’s actually working as intended. Or was that the point? Here Digger starts to get lost in its own convoluted plot machinations.

Digger has a sister, Emma, played by Sandra Hüller, an actor rightly celebrated as her profile has been raised in recent years. But this may be the worst performance I have ever seen her do, she spends so much time just shrieking at her brother, and it never quite feels genuine. Or was that a deliberate choice, and the actor playing Emma is not that great at her craft? It seems Iñárritu has built in a clever excuse for what appears to be subpar acting. The same can be said of John Goodman, as the idiotically bombastic President of the United States. His performance is so over the top it makes Digger himself—also an outsized character—seem subtle. And again, suddenly, we see the play actors discussing how different their play characterizations are from the real people they are playing, and how that is all part of the satirical intent.

There’s a lot going on on Digger though, and I have a feeling a lot of people are missing the point in what seems on the surface like a narrative mess, much like the characters themselves are missing the point of how they got themselves into the climate catastrophe that forms the basis of the story. There is a barely-detectable, unsettling truth seeping through Digger, about the hypocrisy of “advanced” societies reaping the benefits of the technology that they self-righteously deride as ignorantly self-destructive. There is a key scene in which Digger addresses a room full of world leaders prone to speaking out of both sides of their mouths, and again, much of what he says is very on the nose—and still, I listened to his screaming monologue about environmental hypocrisy and just found myself thinking: Well . . . he’s right.

I wonder what the carbon footprint of this movie’s production was, incidentally? Not that that’s part of Digger’s point either; this is not a movie that is preaching to its audience—if anything, it’s a skewer aimed at people prone to preaching to their audience. And there’s a lot in it that’s really fun, including Riz Ahmed as Digger’s Head of Environmental Safety, Dr. Ganesh, who seems to be a slightly stereotypical character at first but then proves to be satisfyingly nuanced. We also get Michael Stuhlbarg as the Vice President; Jesse Plemons in a ridiculous red wig as the play’s benefactor; and House of the Dragon’s Emma D’Arcy, who it took me a while to fully recognize in the part of Digger’s assistant.

There are some baffling choices in Digger that only come halfway around to making sense later, such as the scene in which Digger, the President and a host of other government officials are watching a live feed of environmental destruction in Europe, but the camera only ever shows the reactions of the people in the room and never what they are actually watching. Was this also a budget choice? Clearly not; we later see news feeds of the same destruction, rendered quite impressively. Was this a staging choice if we were to later consider how it would have been performed in a play? That idea also falls flat when you consider the extensive use of screen imagery in the play. I still don’t have an answer to this one.

Some of Digger may always remain a mystery. Some of it may become clearer after repeat viewings. Will I ever rewatch Digger? Probably, although I couldn’t say whether it will be any time soon. I can only say it had my undivided attention from its first moment; it veered dangerously close to losing me in the middle; and by the last scene, which is expertly staged and edited, I found myself surprisingly satisfied, if not exactly blown away.

There is so much more going on than you think,

Overall: B

PRIMETIME

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

It’s hard to put my finger on exactly how I feel about Primetime, which feels intentional. I went in expecting to feel pretty icky about it, from virtually every angle—and that’s nearly where I landed. What I didn’t quite expect was not being able to tell what this movie has to say about its subject, if anything. If it’s intended as a showcase for Robert Pattinson’s talents, it certainly succeeded there—but I left wishing I’d gotten a bit more.

Shouldn’t a movie about a show as exploitative as To Catch a Predator have something clear to say about it? There is so much to say about the actual television series, which aired twenty episodes between November 2004 and December 2007 (most of them just between February 2006 and July 2007), that it feels odd that Primetime has so much less to say. If nothing else, it reflects the moral bankruptcy of the entertainment industry as it blurred the line between “news” and entertainment—after all, To Catch a Predator was part of Dateline NBC, but was transparently more concerned with ratings than with actually catching child predators. When the most elaborate sting the show staged inevitably ends in a kind of tragedy no one can particularly feel good about, we see the show’s producer (a wonderful Merritt Wever) say to show presenter Chris Hansen (Pattinson), “I can make this work.”

What does something like this do to the “performers” who play the decoys, anyway? Skyler Gisondo plays “Decoy Dan,” the 23-year-old actor cast to impersonate boys as young as 13. Gisondo does a great job of conveying the wild emotions that must go through someone who sees a guy whip out his dick and spray whipped cream all over it. (This never actually happened on the show, by the way, although some did get caught completely naked.) This is indeed a wild situation to be in, being a young man impersonating a teenager, who then becomes subject to a genuinely pedophilic act—all of which is caught on camera. One wonders whether “Decoy Dan” needed therapy after this.

Director Lance Oppenheim’s film is thus ripe for examination of the psychological effects of all this, but what we get instead is something presented as a media satire. Is it really satire, though, if it’s inspired by things that actually happened? Just because Oppenheim is taking artistic license doesn’t mean he’s not reflecting real life here. Hollywood has a long history of films depicting a dystopian media future, and here we have something that winds up being pretty disgusting from all angles, and it happened two decades ago.

I haven’t even gotten to how many of these sting operations, which were done with the cooperation of local law enforcement, stink of entrapment. No one wants to be defending pedophiles, but there are proper ways to catch criminals, and this isn’t quite it. Among the many ways To Catch a Predator was criticized, Charlie Brooker wrote at the time, “When a TV show makes you feel sorry for potential child rapists, you know it's doing something wrong.” This is worth noting because in many cases, Primetime does exactly the same thing, and it does not seem to be commenting on the fact that To Catch a Predator was itself doing it. We see actors portraying the entrapped predators, and we feel conflicted because of how close we get to sympathizing with them.

And, to be clear, I do hold the controversial stance that even pedophiles should be treated humanely. There have been a couple of films in the past, most notably the 2004 Kevin Bacon film The Woodsman, that dared to challenge their audiences with this notion. It’s a provocative idea worthy of debate, and an idea not particularly explored in Primetime, which is far more concerned with Chris Hansen, his (fictional) producer Andie Bender, and their insatiable quest for ratings. These people don’t really care about the supposed righteousness of catching these predators, except that it is this idea of righteousness that brings in audience numbers. There are multiple scenes of fans talking to Hansen and saying things to him like, “You’re doing the Lord’s work.” Of course no one is considering the damage being done to the people actually doing this “work.”

There is a subplot involving The National Inquirer hounding Chris Hansen for comment on photos taken of him with a woman he had an affair with, a clearly juicy angle given his purported moral crusade—as if a simple affair is in any way equivalent to pedophilia. Primetime’s cinematographer, David Bolen, shoots a ton of the action in incredibly dark rooms, almost to the point of distraction. I know the show’s crew did a lot of its work in hiding, but if they are all in separate rooms, am I to believe they still kept the lights off? This combines with a heightened style of shooting to really drive home of the darkness at play. And yet, everything onscreen is designed to entertain us more than to elucidate us, which kind of makes Primetime guilty of the same thing To Catch a Predator was guilty of.

And I won’t deny it—I was very engaged by this movie, maybe even entertained, albeit at someone of a loss when it ended. The acting is excellent, especially on the part of Robert Pattinson but also Skyler Gisondo as “Decoy Dan,” as well as Merritt Wever. I just can’t come up with a purpose to this film that sits well—the same as any sane person would feel about To Catch a Predator. I’d have loved to be enlightened by this film in some way, and instead I was entertained. There are certainly some who feel that the publicly humiliating punishment of pedophiles is just and right as well as entertaining, but I’d rather we just find an efficient way to protect our children from them. Using them for entertainment is not it.

A media satire about a sickening subject, what fun!

Overall: B

PRACTICAL MAGIC 2

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

There’s an oddly contemporary dissonance to whatever math there is supposed to be in the timeline of Practical Magic 2—which, as it happens, is based on the novel The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman, itself a sequel to the original novel Practical Magic. These novels were published in 1995 and 2021, respectively; a 26-year gap—though the timelines in their stories were apparently roughly 20 years apart. Plus, The Book of Magic is the fourth in the Practical Magic series of books, but this is only the first film sequel to be made—28 years after the first. But, although specific ages of characters are never revealed in either film, we certainly know that Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Diane Wiest and Stockard Channing have aged 28 years—albeit with Bullock and Kidman having had work done, making them appear unnaturally younger than they actually are (this isn’t quite as much the case with Wiest and Channing, who are 78 and 82, respectively). Bullock and Kidman are now 62 and 59, respectively; but their characters’ two daughters, who were played by girls who were 10 and 7 years old in the 1998 film, are now played by 28-year-old Maisie Williams and 26-year-old Joey King. One of them was a toddler and the other not even born when the first film was released, but, I guess everyone is playing younger here across the board. (Incidentally, 46-year-old Lee Pace is playing Bullock’s love interest in this movie. Get it, Sandy!)

Anyway, realistically, Bullock and Kidman’s Sally and Gillian Owens sisters would realistically be contending with grandchildren closer to the age of the kids in the first film by now, but, whatever. In Practical Magic 2, Antonia (Maisie Williams) is a medical intern, and Kylie (Joey King) appears to be still in college—and falling in love with Gideon (Xolo Maridueña). Anyone familiar with the first film knows where this is going, which is the predictable concept around which the plots of both films revolve: the Owens family has been suffering a curse for generations, in which any men who fall in love with their women meet an untimely death.

I must admit, I have some questions. Does the Owens family never produce any male offspring? Evidently not. And why do we never learn anything at all about Sally and Gillian’s mother, except that she “died of a broken heart” because—of course—her husband met with an untimely death? The original Practical Magic ended happily with Sally mated with an Arizona cop played by Aidan Quinn, but by the time we’re seeing Practical Magic 2, we learn quickly that that character has also met with an untimely death. In response, Sally casts a spell to make her daughters forget about being witches and makes Gillian promise never to tell them. To call this contrived could be the understatement of the year, but we have to get a further storyline from somewhere, don’t we?

Again: whatever. Movies like Practical Magic are built to withstand nitpicks like this, because they exist only to charm audiences coming for fluff and magic. I have always thought the original film could have been better, but still had its charms; I’ve seen some reviewers of this sequel characterize it as lacking “the magic” of the original, evidently forgetting how the original played in its time. Practical Magic is more of exactly the same, which actually makes it the exceedingly rare “lega-sequel” that actually matches and lives up to its predecessor. Anyone fond of the original is just as likely to be fond of this one, particularly if you are fond of the older principals in the cast.

We don’t get broadly successful movies like this with so many main characters who are women, after all. And by all accounts, the fluff-and-magic of the movies honor the books on which they are based; there is no serious depth getting missed anywhere here. It does make a difference that characters this thinly drawn across the board are played by such deeply talented actors, without whom the film would easily pass by totally ignored.

When it comes to “witchy” stuff, these stories never got super deep into that, either. We see spells and hexes, and actually more onscreen magic than in the first film, with more involved and better (if not perfect) special effects as well. But, as always, this is about the generational relationships between aunts and nieces, and more importantly the bond between sisters. This is always rather slight in characterization, but it all still makes for perfectly pleasant entertainment. I’m not going to be rushing to rewatch this movie any time soon, but I always felt the same about the original, which I’ve probably seen at least four times now. I suppose that still averages out to once a decade. Still, when I inevitably go to watch it again another decade from now when craving something both nostalgic and witchy, I’ll probably inevitably double-feature it with this one. It’s just as good, after all, and as I already clearly demonstrated, it’s fun to overanalyze everyone’s respective ages. Youth is temporary, but nitpicking is eternal!

In any case, predictable pleasantness does not preclude having a good time. Practical Magic 2 is just as blandly cute as you’d expect or want from it.

A family reunion you’d actually want to attend.

Overall: B

THE SUN NEVER SETS

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

There’s a case to be made that The Sun Never Sets is a well-written and impressively nuanced drama about a modern love triangle, but there also remains the question: who wants to watch these people? I’m honestly at a bit of a loss as to what writer-director Joe Swanberg himself found compelling about these characters.

To be fair to Swanberg, I suppose, it’s certainly a well-observed account of two men vying for the same woman, who want to think of themselves as evolved, but still wind up being predictable jerks. Dakota Fanning’s Wendy has her own jerky moments, sure, but if we put it to a contest, both the guys are the clear winners.

The title of the film is a subtle nod to the setting of Anchorage, Alaska, where they have around 20 hours of daylight in the summer. Maybe it’s also a subtle metaphor for the nebulous state of Wendy’s relationships, one with Jack (Jake Johnson), a divorced father of two young kids who love her; the other with Chuck (Cory Michael Smith), a pilot ex-boyfriend who has been out of the state for three years and is suddenly back and seemingly changed—or is he? I don’t know if Jake Johnson got deliberately a bit more schlubby for the part of a middle-aged school coach or if Swanberg is just taking advantage of where he is right now, but he’s balanced out by Chuck’s fit outdoorsiness, and both characters provide plenty of pros and cons for Wendy to consider.

That said, everything that happens is Jack’s fault. He says so himself more than once, and he’s right. When we meet them, Wendy has her own place but regularly stays over at Jack’s house, where he is very set in his ways, and worries about Wendy committing to him when he has no interest in getting married again or having more kids. About this, Jack is also right. On the other hand, his insistence that they “take a break” so she can see what she might find out in the world before making a final decision about staying with him seems a little counterproductive, particularly in light of their having been together for two years. This does seem to strip Wendy of a little bit of credit in regards to knowing what she wants, and I find myself wondering how this story might have unfolded had it been written by a woman. Swanberg clearly knows how self-invovled men can be, but Dakota fanning is over here elevating a female lead part that is perhaps a bit underwritten on the page. It doesn’t even occur to Wendy that she might be throwing her life goals away by staying wth Jack until Jack insists on it.

Wendy goes on one date with a a friend she has no chemistry with but has had a longtime crush on her, and it’s pretty convenient, for plot purposes, when she runs into Chuck at the very bar at which she’s on this date. What a perfect time to run into an old flame who maybe might work after they themselves have spent some time apart!

I feel a bit of ambivalence about The Sun Never Sets, which is competently made, and, I suspect, succeeds at exactly what it sets out to do—frustrate us with the behavior of these people. Jack’s immediate second thoughts when Wendy starts spending time with Chuck are utterly predictable; he almost becomes a caricature of a jealous man–except that we’ve all known men who behave exactly this way. There’s a moment when Chuck says to Wendy, “I don’t want to be part of an open . . . thing,” and Wendy says she doesn’t either, and I thought: well shit, why not? Wendy doesn’t get all of her needs met by either of these guys, but she gets pretty much all of them met between both of them. Chuck will go on spontaneous camping trips that Jack has zero interest in, and Jack will go to Wendy’s friends’ art showings that Chuck has no interest in. Okay I take it back because I know exactly why not: neither of these guys are completely mature adults. They want to be, but they aren’t.

The Sun Never Sets provides plenty to ponder and discuss, I’ll give it that. Consider this: why does whether or not Wendy might one day decide she wants children have to factor so heavily in all these choices right now? Discuss! It could be argued that Jack is being weirdly paternalistic on this point, which really means she shouldn’t be with him to begin with.

I don’t have to like all the characters in a movie, but if it’s not something like a biting satire, it’s helpful to have at least one person to root for. Wendy, as a character, is just a fairly average young woman living her life in Alaska. These two guys she’s trying to decide between have no interest in truly sharing an equitable life with her. I regularly wanted to punch them both, but it’s also a relief that there is no scene in which they punch each other (in one scene, they kind of get halfway there).

I suppose it sort of sounds like I disliked this movie, which isn’t quite accurate. I didn’t love it, which is different. Aside from the somewhat flawed script, everything else about the movie is perfectly serviceable, and the performances are solid all around. These all feel like real people, particularly people you know, which does reflect a certain talent—the characters are drawn far more successfully than the plot unfolds. I was just glad to not be hanging out with them anymore when it ended.

Maybe next we can get a movie about a successful poly threesome in the Alaskan winter called The Sun Never Sets.

THE MARCHING BAND

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

I can just hear all the criticisms by film snobs of The Marching Band: it’s emotionally manipulative, it’s treacly, it’s occasionally contrived—you know, all the things that make a crowd-pleasing movie work. Well, this movie very much worked on me, and I’m happy to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s practically the definition of a crowd-pleaser, and isn’t that precisely what the crowd wants?

It also has far more depth than it might seem at first glance, thanks to a tight script that was co-written by director Emmanuel Courcol. A ton of plot happens within just the first act: successful orchestra conductor Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe) discovers he has leukemia, and when his sister, Rose (Mathilde Courcol-Rozès, making the most of fairly little screen time), takes a DNA test to see if she is a match for a bone marrow transplant, it is revealed for the first time that Thibaut was adopted. He also discovers he had a brother he never knew he had, Jimmy Lecocq (Pierre Lottin), whose DNA is a match.

Most of The Marching Band is far less about Thibaut’s cancer than it is about the budding relationship between these two brothers who have only just learned of each other’s existence. This is one of the many surprising delights of The Marching Band, the title being a reference to Jimmy’s own extracurricular interests—something he keeps from Thibaut at first. It seems Jimmy, in spite of Thibaut’s discovery that he has perfect pitch, has a bit of an inferiority complex.

A whole lot of the story that unfolds here deals with class differences and the assumptions made by people born of privilege. Thibaut is understandably furious at his parents for not telling him he was adopted—”Lies kill!” he shouts at them—but takes a while to register the opportunities that would not have been available to him if not for his adoptive family. More than once the two brothers contemplate what their fates might have been had they actually grown up together: Thibaut in Jimmy’s working-class environment, or Jimmy in Thibaut’s world of comparative education and opportunity. (By way of brief explanation as to why Thibaut’s parents did not also adopt Jimmy, it is explained that they thought they were unable to have children, but then Rose was “a miracle” that left them ill-prepared to take on yet another child.)

The Marching Band also naturally brings up age-old questions of nature vs. nurture, at least when it comes to innate talent: Rose was not up to par with violin lessons in school; Jimmy is a natural musician. Jimmy is a divorced dad of a 13-year-old daughter he doesn’t get to see often enough, playing trombone in a community marching band in northern France. When the band’s conductor has no choice but to take a job in another region in order to pay off significant debts, the first suggestion is that Jimmy step in, but he has no confidence. Thibaut steps in to help him, with the encouragement of another band member, Sabrina (Sarah Suco), who Jimmy is too blind to see has a thing for him.

The whole cancer backstory seems to take a surprising backseat after the first half an hour or so, until it comes up again in a way that some may find surprising and some may find predictable—I was so taken with this movie, its characters, and particularly its performances, that I was happy just to go with the flow as the story went along. And in the end, all the story threads and the musical threads come together in a kind of emotional and musical crescendo that you’d have to be dead inside to resist. I was so moved by it, I really wish I had known to bring tissues.

It’s easy to see how The Marching Band became a smash hit in France, earning over $20 million in that country alone, and more than $30 million globally, before finally coming to the United States. This is happening, a bit inexplicably, nearly two years after it was first in wide release in France (November 2024). I’m a little baffled that this movie is not more well-known here; I only discovered it when checking to see what was playing in my local market at SIFF Cinemas. Time will tell whether France will enter this as their selection for the Best International Feature Oscar, but it is well deserving, and would give it greater exposure to American audiences. Otherwise, if you happen to see this review, and you enjoy deeply heartwarming dramas, then either check your local listings for this movie or make a note of it for eventual VOD or streaming options.

The orchestra conductor slums it with The Marching Band.

Overall: B+

THE DOG STARS

Directing: C+
Acting: B
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B
Editing: C
Special Effects: B-

This movie is kind of a mess. I really wanted more from it. The talent involved certainly elicited hope for more: Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Guy Pearce, Margaret Qualley, Allison Janney, Benedict Wong. And then there’s director Ridley Scott, whose long and storied career has included multiple classic genre films, but also, if you’ll pardon the expression, plenty of dogs. You could say that the title The Dog Stars is a little on the nose. Our main character is declaring constellations based after his dog—spoiler alert, the dog does not make it—but that’s not exactly helping,

The Dog Stars wants you to think it’s a different kind of post-apocalyptic story, except it kind of isn’t. Most of it is a bit more meditative, sure; Mark L. Smith’s script, adapted from a novel of the same name by Peter Heller, ostensibly leans into themes of grief—as if we haven’t had enough movies about that in the past fifteen years. And who needs a movie about a world decimated by a fly virus, only six years after the outbreak of an actual pandemic that did kill millions? Clearly no one around here: I was one of eight people in the theater I went to. It was a 4:45 showing on a Thursday, but still. Seeing characters get asked to hold a digital thermometer to their forehead doesn’t have the same kind of otherworldly quality it had a decade ago. I think it may be some time before it does again.

There’s something to be said for timing—including this film’s late-August release date, which telegraphs a lack of studio confidence in it. And there’s really nothing fun about The Dog Stars. It’s either too grim, too sad, or it straight-up doesn’t make sense. In this post-pandemic world in which we see very directly it’s supposed to be 2035—are we to think of this as what the world would be like if covid actually did kill everyone?—a large group of the few survivors left in the world are referred to as “Reapers.” Why, I couldn’t tell you. How people completely isolated would catch wind of this group name, I have no idea. And when the “Reapers” show up, they are all White, covered in tattoos, disorganized and manic. We never see a single one of them utter any actual lines. They simply serve as a collective threat for our primary characters, who basically just act like monkeys on crack the few times we see them.

There’s another sequence in which Elordi’s Hig, bringing along two people he has tentatively befriended, Cima and her dad, “Pops” (Qualley and Pearce), to an operational airport in Grand Junction, Colorado—we previously learned that Hig was originally from Denver, a CGI-desolate city we see in a few different scenes. This is where we meet Allison Janney’s Darlene, and while I probably shouldn’t spoil the turn of events here, I will say that Janey may as well be playing a literal clown. Darlene is clearly meant to be suspicious as a woman not just acting like she’s still a flight attendant but literally wearing the uniform and caked-on makeup. I haven’t read the novel, but I know that the pointlessly surreal turn of events at Grand Junction that happens in the movie is not from the novel.

Why does it have to get weird, anyway? Is it that Ridley Scott just can’t help himself? Honestly, I think he’s just working for a living. He’s made some underrated films even in recent years (see The Last Duel). And all of these actors are undeniably talented, though I suppose you would only know it from other films. Jacob Elordi carries the film competently, but I did find myself wondering where he does his laundry. Hig’s jeans are scuffed up, but never quite enough; he was a mechanic before the world ended, and now he repairs a small plane and flies it around. Honestly, Elordi is too beautiful to be in this world. Hig comes across another scavenger in Denver City Hall and that other guy looks busted. Realistically, Hig would too, but we don’t want to mess up that pretty face.

The Dog Stars starts off promising but starts going off the rails before long. Some of the lack of realism is wildly distracting: why would digital screens still be flickering images in town after at least a decade? Where the hell is this electricity still coming from, in a long-since abandoned city with buildings covered in overgrown vegetation? Hig regularly returns to the house he used to live in, with a convenient view of the Denver skyline right from his front porch, to continue grieving the loss of his wife, and the house is spotless. Is Hig cleaning up every time he visits?

This is a movie that fails from a lack of narrative foundation, made by people with poor attention to detail. And attention to detail, which makes the depiction of a grim future like this work, is the only way movies like this can succeed. The actors all give solid performances (albeit with Janney going a little over the top), some of them weirdly under-used. I wish I could say they made this worth movie worth seeing, but it feels like everyone else was cutting corners. You should probably cut your own corner and find some other movie to see.

Is there any way to fly out of this movie?

Overall: C+

TONY

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

I thought a lot about the 2004 film Sideways while I was watching Tony. On the surface, there’s nothing earth-shattering here, but is there anything wrong with it? I would be hard pressed to find any genuine criticisms of this film, which is just lovely from start to finish, with surprisingly elegant nods to how Anthony Bourdain got into heavy drug use in his early adulthood.

Nearly everything about this movie charmed me. Maybe the best thing about it is the choice to focus on Bourdain’s very early career. This is generally the only way a biopic is successful, when the story narrows its focus to a single incident or particular time of the person’s life. In this instance, a college-aged Bourdain follows his high school crush from New Jersey to Provincetown, is quickly brought down by his own hubris, and winds up takig a job at a local restaurant run by a Portuguese chef played by Antonio Banderas. (Banderas is actually Spanish, but there is no indication he changed his accent at all. I suppose I could criticize that? Chef is a composite of Bourdain’s early-years mentors, though, so I suppose I can let it go. It’s not like I’d be able to distinguish between a Spanish or Portuguese accent anyway; it’s only that the character is referred to as Portuguese and Antonio Banderas is widely known to be Spanish.)

Bourdain himself, through most of the movie telling people to call him “Tony” until a key moment that makes him change his mind, is played by Dominic Sessa, who was previously seen in the wonderful 2023 Alexander Payne film The Holdovers. I noted then that he was impressive, and in Tony he proves to be inspired casting; I find myself eager to follow his acting career going forward. Granted, both of these particular parts are young kids of bravado masking insecurity, so hopefully we’ll get to see him play many kinds of roles.

Emilia Jones plays Nancy, the crush Tony follows to Provincetown, and she’s also lovely, if playing a part that mostly exists to move the plot forward. But that’s just it—the plot moves forward so assuredly, thanks to excellent direction by Matt Johnson. This is the guy who directed the incomparable Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, which opened earlier this year; and the surprisingly excellent BlackBerry in 2023. And Tony’s breezy 106 minutes were edited by Curt Lobb and Robert Upchurch, both of whom also worked with Johnson on both those other movies. These guys clearly make an excellent team.

I’m not usually struck by the cinematography in movies like this, but even without it ever calling attention to itself, I was here—and Tony was shot by One Battle After Another cinematographer Michael Bauman. All of this underscores that even the best director is nothing without an excellent crew working with them.

Rounding out the cast are Tuner’s Leo Woodall, as a kitchen colleague who introduces Bourdain to drugs; and Stavros Halkias, who had a memorable turn as a cop in Bugonia. (Here, his character also works in the kitchen, and takes a lot of good-natured hits at his weight.) Although there’s a few others who work in this kitchen who really don’t get much in the way of lines—all of them Black characters, it is perhaps worth noting—this restaurant staff become a kind of found family for Bourdain as he’s away from home.

We only get the slightest hints at Bourdain’s relationships with his parents, including an encouraging father (Rich Sommer) and a skeptical mother (Dagmara Dominczyk). But even the smallest parts in Tony are almost uniformly great performances; it’s a big part of what makes this movie irresistible. And there’s something about Sessa’s performance as Tony in particular, you can’t help but root for him even as he’s being a dipshit twenty-something with far more confidence than could possibly be justified.

Maybe the best thing about Tony, and its focus on the very start of a career that he stumbled into when convinced he was going to do something else (specifically writing, and he lies about being a writer for much of the film), is how it sidesteps this man’s lifelong struggles—not to mention his sad and tragic end—without completely ignoring them. Johnson alludes to the directions Bourdain’s life is destined to go, but only ever in a way that showcases the young man’s vast potential. I didn’t care as much about Tony’s pursuit of Nancy as I did about his evolving relationship with Chef, who allows Tony to sleep on his porch in exchange for clearning dishes as the restaurant.

It should be said that Antonio Banderas is a good a reason to see Tony as any, in one of the warmest roles he’s ever played. I’m starting to feel a little like I’ve been sleeping on this Matt Johnson guy—I’m consistently delighted by his films, and he should be credited for clearly knowing how to assemble teams that fit perfectly as collaborators and make great art. I’ll be eager to see what we get next from Johnson and from Dominic Sessa. It’s such a treat to experience such synthesis of talent.

Just like that chef’s jacket, this movie is a gift.

Overall: A-

MADDIE'S SECRET

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

I am left a little bemused by Maddie’s Secret, an elaborate and sharply observed homage to 80s and 90s “movies of the week” set in the world of modern social media food content production—in which first-time feature writer and director John Early cast himself in the title role. As a straight, cisgender woman. In which he almost totally plays it straight.

In short: I don’t get it. Why was it necessary for him to cast himself in this part? It’s not like he’s channeling Divine—or even John Travolta—here; there is no camp to be found, although ironically I suspect John Waters would love this movie. Would it play differently had Early actually cast a woman in the part of Maddie? I can’t imagine the act of homage and the very subtle satire here would be particularly different in that case. So what was the point, then, aside from the fact that it gets more people talking about the movie?

And here’s the weirdest part. Early is good in this role. It actually doesn’t take very long to just accept him as this character, in spite of facial structure and detectable Adam’s apple, which are fairly obscured by the 38-year-old Early’s enviable softness of skin. When Early presents as himself, he presents as pretty culturally “male,” but he can shift into zones of androgyny with unparalleled ease. He speaks with a soft voice as Maddie, and surrounds himself with quite a number of women in supporting parts—even more than male parts. Every one of them seems to understand the assignment, even if I don’t.

The thing is, as good as Early is, I was still regularly thinking about the fact that this was a self-identified man playing the part of a woman. This could only take me out of the story at regular intervals, even though the superb production is just as committed to the loving homage of the TV movies of our childhood as, say, Far From Heaven was committed to the loving homage of Douglas Sirk films. The key difference is that it’s a bit easier to take the characters in Far From Heaven seriously, since it makes no anachronistic casting choices.

I keep thinking of Divine and John Travolta, who were cisgender men playing the part of cisgender women in John Waters films, and the presentation was similar in that they played it straight—but, those movies were far more heightened than this one, under the direction of a man who practically invented camp. John Early is working far more subtly, even if the final product is still heightened. Maddie works as a dishwasher where chefs record themselves cooking original recipes, and when she quickly becomes a viral star after posting some food content of her own, the suppressed eating disorder from her childhood begins to resurface.

Early is 12 years younger than I am, but I can remember the very movies he’s referencing here. I can remember watching TV movies about women with bulimia, and their exaggerated close-ups of them binge-eating before purging seared themselves into my memory. Seeing similar scenes in Maddie’s Secret (which are done shockingly few times, only once or twice) brought those memories right back, which I suspect was by design. There was a moment during this film that I thought: Is this movie going to take a turn? I thought, maybe it will suddenly get truly wild. It never quite does, though. Early has a stupendous hold on the fine line of tone that he was clearly going for here, and he consistently gives us just a taste of the melodrama without ever truly taking it over the top.

Does any of that qualify as something to recommend Maddie’s Secret, though? This is where I struggle. Were I to tell you that you should see this movie, I would struggle to tell you why—even though so much of it is so finely attuned, so competently put together. Is it funny, at least? Not really; that doesn’t seem to be what Early was going for, although there were a couple of moments that got me laughing pretty hard. They almost felt accidental, even though they were clearly very precisely constructed. I suppose, if pressed, I could say Maddie’s Secret is worth watching for the marvel of how Early basically disappears into a role that, by his own assertion, is not drag. Honestly it’s not campy enough to be drag. It has no connection to trans people, either, which puts this film into a deeply niche space that defies categorization.

Will I ever watch this again? I will forever be impressed by the perfectly imperfect flyaways of Early’s blonde wig, but nevertheless: not likely. Early has long been a peculiar performer for whom a choice like this weirdly makes sense, but I’m going to have to spend some more time pondering whether the final product makes much sense for the rest of us.

It’s not much of a secret anymore.

THE INVITE

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

The less said before you see The Invite the better, but here I am writing about it, and here you are reading it. What are we doing! Maybe go watch the movie and then read this. I mean, I won’t spoil any plot points, at least no more than are in the trailer, which is a truly rare example of one that is expertly cut. It intrigues effectively without giving anything away. And that is also my challenge here today.

Why don’t we start with the people who made it?

Olivia Wilde directed and stars in this movie, always a deeply impressive feat when it’s done well. This is her third feature film as director, and by all accounts she’s two for three: I never saw her 2022 film Don’t Worry Darling, in spite of being accused of shirking my duty for not seeing a movie everyone was talking about. Well, its almost universally weak reviews were enough for me not to waste my time. But! I do know Wilde is exceedingly capable, given her debut feature was the fantastic and hilarious 2019 film Booksmart, which may not have a cult following but it certainly deserves to.

Wilde returns to comedy with The Invite, in which she proves herself to be an incredible talent, both behind and in front of the camera. She’s phenomenal as Angela, one of only four people seen onscreen after just a couple of introductory scenes set outside of the San Francisco apartment that serves as the setting. She’s anxious, insecure, perpetually frustrated, and simultaneously authentic and believable. It’s also easy to believe she’s married to Joe, played by Seth Rogen. Now, all of the four leads are excellent here, but if I were forced to choose one that was the least impressive, it would be Seth Rogen, who has charisma to spare but also basically always plays a version of himself.

It certainly helps that he’s lifted up by the heavy hitters around him, which include Edward Norton and Penélope Cruz as Hawk and Pina, the neighbors Angela and Joe are barely acquainted with who have been invited to their apartment for dinner. Cruz has arguably cornered the market on being equal parts sexy and smart, and Norton is a veteran, versatile actor who seems always to understand the assignment.

The script, co-written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, could easily be a play—come to think of it, I would jump at the chance to see a live stage version of this tightly polished script, which would translate easily. It’s actually based on the 2020 Spanish film Sentimental, marketed to English speaking audiences with the title The People Upstairs. And—oh! Guess what? Sentimental was written by Cesc Gay, based on his own play! It turns out the play was called Los vecinos de arriba, which literally translates to “The Upstairs Neighbors.” Okay, that makes sense. I might have to find that original Spanish film, which apparently has been remade in at least six other countries. Thank you for going on this journey with me.

The American version stands as a testament to the potential of reinterpreting stories in other cultures, which often falls flat. It is perhaps no accident that Wilde cast Cruz, who is herself Spanish. The Hawk character spends a fair amount of time speaking with Pina in Spanish, and this becomes a well-integrated plot point.

In any case, all four of these actors crackle with onscreen chemistry, and both Rogen and particularly Wilde are incredibly funny. Hawk is a bit of an odd character, which provides Norton with several opportunities for effectively subtle humor as well. Cruz isn’t especially funny, for her part, but she more than makes up for it in hotness and being arguably the most talented performer there.

You can guess what happens in The Invite based on the trailer, and you would be right, except that it’s much more complex than that. Fundamentally, this is a film about marriage, or more specifically what happens in years-long romantic relationships that largely move beyond the romance. Angela and Joe are bickering the moment we see them together, and anyone who has been married a long time will deeply relate to the things they talk about and how they speak to each other. Pina and Hawk exist as a challenge to Angela and Joe’s long-entrenched ideas about their relationship, and when Pina kind of sums things up, some may find it a bit of an oversimplification. The thing is, simple things don’t become untrue just because they are simple. And The Invite, which is hilarious and moving and sometimes genuinely sweet, is a deliciously complex presentation of simple ideas.

A dinner party that goes off the rails in all the best ways.

Overall: A-