THE BALTIMORONS

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

I’ve seen The Baltimorons described as “cringe comedy,” and I suppose that’s what it is—but it also feels like an unfair act of pigeonholing. This is a movie that is utterly and completely itself, in spite of all the other things you could call it: a May-December romance, a Christmas movie, a single-day story, etc. The thing is, The Baltimorons works incredibly well as all of these things.

Set over the course of Christmas Eve, Cliff slips on the stairs while taking his potato pecan casserole to his future-in-laws’ house for dinner, and knocks out a tooth when he bashes his face into the door frame. He calls all over town to find a dentist that’s open, and the one who picks up is Didi, who only reveals her office was actually closed when she shows up and lets Cliff in.

I should note that the May-December aspect here has Cliff as the younger one and Didi as the older one. We never learn the characters’ names, but Cliff is played by 36-year-old Michael Strassner; Didi by 66-year-old Liz Larsen. That’s a pretty wide spread, sure, but the gender inverse of what has historically been seen onscreen, and at least Cliff is clearly well past his youth. These things actually make a difference, and the casting of The Baltimorons is one of its greatest strengths: Strassner and Larsen have incredible screen chemistry, and their characters really work together.

Most crucially, the day that unfolds before them takes them many unexpected places, but it always feels organic. This is thanks to the skill and talent of director and co-writer Jay Duplass, as well as Strassner himself, who co-wrote the script with Duplass. Strassner is an alumnus of The Groudlings, which clearly informs the improv sketch comedy background of his character (“The Baltimorons” is the name of the improv troupe Cliff used to be in).

The improv background doesn’t even come into focus until well into the film, as we get Cliff, a sweet guy who also has plenty of fuckups under his belt but has also been sober for six months, entering the dentist office of Didi, who has just learned her ex-husband eloped with his newer, much younger wife and turned their Christmas Eve dinner into a wedding reception, thereby co-opting Didi’s Christmas Eve dinner plans. Cliff overhears the breaking of this news as he makes a wrong turn looking for the bathroom, and insists on taking her out to dinner as a thank-you for fixing his tooth.

That’s a pretty specific reveal, I realize, but this happens so early in The Baltimorons that it’s not any kind of spoiler. What follows is a series of events, some a bit more plausible than others but none so unrealistic that you don’t buy it, that keep these two hanging out even after multiple moments of what they both believe to be a parting. They wind up all over Baltimore, in cars and at the aforementioned Christmas Eve reception and at an improv show and on a boat and even briefly at a jail.

All of this makes The Baltimorons sound like a wild ride, which it really isn’t. It’s more sweet than anything, even in a key scene in which Cliff is very reluctantly pressured into performing improv and Didi finds herself on stage with him. I suppose this is where the “cringe comedy” idea comes in, because there are so many moments that feel like things may be headed to a very bad place—but it never is. It’s more like a lot of near-misses, which packs The Baltimorons with a lot of feeling of relief. But also laughter: I laughed quite a lot at this movie. I also found myself touched by its unusually sincere sweetness, to a point that I even got a bit teary-eyed. This is the kind of movie that really works on the softies.

If I had any one true criticism, it would be the subplot of Cliff’s betrothal to his girlfriend, Brittany (Olivia Luccardi). It’s fine, I guess; and it does provide some context for people who care about Cliff being worried about him because of his past precariousness of emotional state. Still, it felt a little like a plot contrivance to create a clearer-cut barrier to Cliff and Didi’s connection, and the way they meet and their age differences are plenty barriers enough. Every scene with both Cliff and Didi onscreen is far more compelling than any with Brittany onscreen, which I spent just wanting Cliff’s story to return to Didi. That just underscores what a great duo these two are, though, and I would recommend The Baltomorons to anyone who loves being utterly charmed by the movies.

Sometimes you just find yourself having to “yes-and.”

Overall: B+

JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE

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

Who decided on this English translation of Jane Austen a gâché ma vie, I wonder? That’s the original, French title of this film, and when you ask Google to translate, it comes up with Jane Austen Ruined My Life. That’s a better title, no? Am I wrong here? If you remove every word except gâché, however, it translates as spoiled. Should the title have been Jane Austen Spoiled My Life? I should note that I do not speak French at all, and for all I know, gâché is closer colloquially to wrecked in American English than to ruined. I have no idea! I’m really glad we had this talk, I think we really accomplished something here today.

Did writer-director Laura Piani, though? That’s the real question here, because I feel a little ambivalent about this film. It seems to have genuinely charmed a lot of critics. Right now I am kind of leaning toward the title Jane Austen Muted My Evening.

I mean: it’s fine. I have no major complaints. Well, except that I could get little sense of Piani’s direction, and I often could not tell if the characters here lacked any naturalism or if it’s just a vibe of French sensibility that is foreign to me. The characters interact with each other with an unusually comfortable familiarity, which ironically radiated off the screen to me as awkward.

Here’s a burning question. Are Parisians big on book stores? The one where Agathe (Camille Rutherford) works appears to be thriving. Apparently, this is one of the things in Jane Austen Wrecked My Life that is real: the French love books. In fact, the bookstore where Agathe works, Shakespeare and Company, is very real—an English-language bookstore that has been open in Paris since 1951. I wish I had known that while I was actually watching the movie. I’d have paid more attention during the many book store scenes. I remain a little annoyed by the seemingly haphazard way they put books on the shelves. Is there no order in this store?

Agathe works with her best friend, Félix (Pablo Pauly), who indulges Agathe in her obsession with Jane Austen novels. She is also a writer, an insecure one who writers “cheap romances” (as one writing teacher puts it), but Félix submitted her unfinished chapters to the Jane Austen residency without telling her. After much resistance, Félix convinces her to go. This place is located in the middle of the woods somewhere in England, and the sweet old lady running the place speaks French fluently—as does her grown son she send to pick up Agathe, Oliver (Charlie Anson). These are British actors and characters, and Agathe of course speaks English fluently, so Jane Austen Wrecked My Life has dialogue pretty evenly mixed between the two languages.

Here we get to the Great Question: should Agathe be with Félix, or with Oliver? The story here plays out in a way transparently meant to mirror Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Ironically, when Agathe and Félix first meet, he has a prejudice against Austen’s work, calling it “overrated.” We already know Agathe has deep pride in Austen’s work.

It’s all pleasant enough, although Agathe longs for the “poetic spark” of novels that she finds lacking in reality—and most of the time, I kind of felt the same way about this movie. The one exception, and a notable one at that, is when the Jane Austen Residency puts on a ball, with everyone wearing the clothing of Austen’s era, and doing the same English Country dancing. At this point, Félix has surprised Agathe with a visit, the day after she actually has discovered a spark with Oliver, and here she moves from dancing with one, to dancing to the other, and back. This sequence is dazzling in its execution, the moment when Jane Austen Wrecked My Life actually sidesteps into the realm of movie magic. I rather wish more of the rest of the movie were like it.

As it is, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is sprinkled with subtle charms, including Oliver’s dad evidently slipping into the kind of giddy dementia that has him gardening with nothing on from the waist down. I’ll probably forget this movie entirely within a week, as it blossoms in moments but utterly wilts in the shadow of the work that inspired it, but it’s still a nice memory for the short time it will last.

That moment when magic happens.

Overall: B

MATERIALISTS

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

Materialists follows the expected beats of a romance. It goes where you expect it to go, because that is what audiences that go to movies like this come to see. It also slowly becomes much more than its genre trappings, revealing a depth that is probably much more than typical audiences bargained for. In some ways, it even subverts the genre, even as it adheres to its basic rules. We know who the protagonist is meant to be with, and we know who she will end up with.

The marketing makes Materialists seem much more typical a romantic film than it really is. Indeed, had anyone else written and directed it, I’d have taken one look at the trailer and said: “Bleh.” But this was made by Celine Song, who also wrote and directed last year’s sublime Past Lives. Materialists is the kind of sophomore effort that typically brings far more mainstream fare, and that is clearly what the marketers want you to think. But Celine Song smuggles in a shocking amount of cynicism and subtle commentary—on romantic cinema, and on romance itself. This remains unchanged even after the expected note of hopefulness it ends on.

Song’s approach is something I deeply respect. She can be counted on to do something different, as in the opening sequence, which features what we later learn to be the first two cave people who ever married. It’s a serene setting, we hear birds chirping, we see an exchange of flowers and tools. I had no idea what to expect, and kept wondering if something jarring was about to happen. Were they going suddenly get attacked by a bear? What? Instead, they simply lean their heads into each other tenderly, and then a hard cut to the title card, over modern-day New York City.

Lucy is a professional matchmaker with a string of proud successes, yet deliberately living her life as a single woman. To play this part, Song cast Dakota Johnson, an actor with talent and potential but who only really succeeds when paired with the right director. Celine Song could not be more right for her; she’s exceptionally well cast here. I was invested in Lucy as a character, even though she treats romance like “math” (a word she uses frequently) and has such an aversion to low income that she’s convinced herself she’s waiting for a filthy rich man to marry.

Enter Pedro Pascal, borderline overexposed at the moment, as Harry, who has earned millions in “private equity,” as he reveals to Lucy while hitting on her at his brother’s wedding, where the bride was also Lucy’s client. Implausibly—again with the typical story beats—Lucy also runs into her old boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), during her first conversation with Harry. Thus, much as in Past Lives, we get a love triangle of sorts, though it plays out much more differently.

There is still an unusually contemplative tone to Materialists, which I appreciated. There’s a real shallowness to Lucy’s approach to matchmaking, and this feels very deliberate, at times pointed. Lucy is very aware of her own shallowness and harbors a great deal of self-loathing. One of the many things I loved about this film is how there is no competition of jealousy between the two men. There is a minor twist to Harry’s arc, but it humanizes him rather than making him the villain. In fact, Song tells this story entirely from the point of view of the women in it—Lucy’s most of all, but also the others at her matchmaking firm (particularly her boss (Marin Ireland), and one client she’s struggling to find a match for (Zoe Winters).

Admittedly I have some mixed feelings about the subplot involving this client, Sophie, who gets assaulted by a man she was matched with by Lucy. This isn’t exactly a spoiler, because not only do we never see the assault onscreen—Lucy gets told about it after the fact—but Celine Song doesn’t even cast any actor to play him: we never once see him onscreen. This is a wise choice much more typical of a woman filmmaker, but I am also not sure how I feel about its inclusion as a subplot at all. Maybe it’s about the inherent dangers of the dating world, and the thoughtless ways they can be disregarded. On the other hand, Sophie herself is used as a plot device to reveal the kindness Lucy actually has deep inside her.

One wonders how much Celine Song herself even thought about these nuances, the way audiences could easily argue back and forth as to whether the film itself is cynical and materialistic, or if it’s a commentary on these things. Honestly, I just found myself deeply engaged with the story, between all three of these characters, largely because of Song’s phenomenally layered writing. It’s lovely to see Chris Evans again in a part that’s not Captain America, and it’s especially nice to see actual grown-up actors in a romance for grown-ups (Pascal, Evans, and Johnson are 50, 44, and 35, respectively—a pretty wide age rang in which the woman is predictably the youngest, sure, but even she’s now ten years past her Fifty Shades of Grey breakout).

In any case, I was taken in by the romance of Materialists, its effectiveness augmented by excellent writing, competent performances, and Shabier Kirchner’s cinematography, which is far more beautiful than a film like this has any need to be. But therein lie its success, with many parts of it being better than they need to be. Song is not cashing in here, she is sharing an authentic vision every bit as much as she did with her previous film. If I had to choose I’d pretty easily say Past Lives was better, even though I have given them both the same overall grade—but a film need only be judged in its own context, on its own merits. Materialists takes all the familiarities of the romance genre and enhances them.

This is one in which Dakota Johnson is actually good!

Overall: A-

A NICE INDIAN BOY

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

Full disclosure, it’s a bit more difficult for me to be objective in my assessment of A Nice Indian Boy than it is for most films. Setting aside the myth that true objectivity even exists, this is a film that really hits home for me: it’s about a white man who marries a South Asian man in an Indian wedding that’s made as gay as a traditional Indian wedding can be made. And, I am a white man who married a South Asian man in an Indian wedding as traditional as we could make it. Some of it was modified in ways it would have had to have been regardless of our sexuality: truly traditional Indian weddings last for days; ours lasted an afternoon. The same goes for the wedding that occurs in this movie, but which featured very specific, Hindu rituals that I performed in my own wedding to my husband.

It’s an unusual thing indeed, to see a film so steeped in South Asian culture, and yet even as a white guy, see so very much of my own experience reflected in it. A pretty significant subplot involves multiple characters’ love of the very famous 1995 Bollywood movie Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (translated as The Brave-Hearted Will Take the Bride), commonly abbreviated as “DDLJ”—and, very specifically, its signature song, “Ek Duke Ke Vaaste” (“For Each Other”). I have seen that film only once, myself; but that song has been a staple of my Hindi music playlists for a solid two decades. It has had a particularly nostalgic place in the hearts of South Asians the world over for thirty years that I could never access, but it also has a very particular nostalgic meaning to me personally.

A Nice Indian Boy does push the bounds of plausibility a tad, but therein lies the magic of movies, I suppose. Only once did I feel a bit dubious about the meet-cute setup between Naveen (Karan Soni) and Jay (Jonathan Groff), as they actually meet in a temple, Jay showing up to pray to the elephant god Ganesha, as though he were a natural practicing Hindu. But, not long after that, we learn that Jay, now orphaned due to his parents having been older when they took him in, was adopted by Hindu parents. So then, I though: okay, I guess I buy that.

Soni and Groff are well-cast and have clear chemistry, Soni as someone still struggling to overcome shame and embarrassment; Groff as someone self-assured after the heard-learned lessons of a youth spent in foster care before finding the parents who ultimately welcomed him home. I’d love to learn more about Groff’s unique experience, but the fact of his parents’ deaths makes it easier for the story at hand to focus on Naveen and his family.

A Nice Indian Boy is arguably more sweet and romantic than it is funny, although it is also plenty funny. I just wish I had known to bring in plenty of tissues—I cried a lot more than I expected to. It is perhaps to this movie’s greatest credit that all the tears were shed in response to touching and heartwarming turns of events, as opposed to anything sad or tragic. It is told in five chapters, starting with Naveen and Jay meeting and then going on a sweetly awkward first date. In a particularly well-executed scene at a bar, Jay surprises Naveen by admitting that he’s nervous. The special thing about Jay is his comfort with simply acknowledging such things, while Naveen still has much to learn on that front.

Naveen and Jay are very well rounded, flawed and adorable characters. But what truly makes A Nice Indian Boy special is the cast that rounds out Nareen’s family: his parents, Archit and Megha (Harish Patel and Zarna Gang), have had six years to come to terms with a son who is openly gay—so much so that, in fact, they spend a lot of time watching the gay cable channel—but, until now, no experience meeting one of his boyfriends. Naveen also has an older sister, Arundhathi (Sunita Mani), struggling with the loveless marriage her parents arranged and now resentful of how much more effort to be open minded her parents are being about their son than they seemed to have been when they married off their daughter.

It would be easy to make these characters one-note punch lines, but in all three cases, they bring a level of humanity not usually given to such supporting characters, particularly in romantic comedies—even good ones. These characters feel like real people, ones that you might meet in reality. Archit and Megha’s unusual acceptance of their gay son does not change that. These are simply loving parents who are making an effort, often stumbling adorably along the way. Archit in particular has a lovely arc in the story, never overtly judgmental of his son but with some clear discomfort, which feeds into Naveen’s discomfort with himself.

There is an on-again, off-again, on-again arc between Naveen and Jay that feels tied a little too neatly, but it’s the ensemble cast, including loving and colorful friends on both their parts, that really sells their story. There is real and believable development among all of the principal characters, concisely written by Eric Randall as adapted by the play of the same name by Madhuri Shekar. A Nice Indian Boy runs a brisk 96 minutes, which gives it a key thing in common with Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag (an otherwise very different movie—except that it’s also very romantic): it packs a lot into a lean runtime, without every feeling rushed.

I couldn’t tell you yet whether I will wind up seeing A Nice Indian Boy many more times, or if it will become a long-lasting favorite. It might. All I can tell you for certain is that I was deeply moved by it, on a very personal level, and I would recommend it to absolutely anyone. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll love it either way.

I don’t know if you’ll fall in love with this movie but I would encourage you to find out, because I sure did.

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

WE LIVE IN TIME

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

Make no mistake: We Live in Time is a tragic story and a bit of a tear jerker. I walked in pre-equipped with tissues and I suggest you do the same.

It is not a spoiler to say this is about a woman dying of cancer, as that’s the whole premise. Now, director John Crowley (Brooklyn) and writer Nick Payne (The Sense of an Ending) sprinkle in some classic rom-com elements, some of them a bit far fetched, from a meet-cute where Almut meets Tobias by running into him with her car, to the delivery of a baby in a gas station bathroom. I was easily able to lock into this stuff, largely because it illustrated the life worth living even in the face of it being cut short.

The biggest reason it’s easy to engage with We Live in Time, though, is the casting, which can make or break a movie. I might not have even had much interest in this movie, certainly not based on the premise alone, if not for the two leads: Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield. These two are well-established as stellar actors, and neither of them have ever had more palpable chemistry with their costars. Their story unfolds with a warm sweetness that is never saccharine, making you want to hang out with them, even when they face terrible and likely fatal news. Perhaps even especially when that happens. These two are precisely what makes this movie work.

Tobias gets a job with Weetabix, an odd bit of product placement, getting several mentions in the film. Far more notably, and ultimately very key to the story, Almut is a high-end chef with aspirations to participate in a European cooking competition. A lovely subplot involves Almut mentoring another chef, Jade, and their relationship develops both personally and professionally over the course of the story. Jade is played by nonbinary actor Lee Braithwaite, in their debut feature film role, more than holding their own alongside a powerhouse actor like Florence Pugh. I only wish the Tobias character could have gotten an equivalent subplot, although a few scenes with his father (Douglas Hodge) comes kind of close. There’s a sweet scene in which Tobias’s father helps him prepare for a date with Almut, giving him a haircut and even shaving the back of his neck.

Next to the phenomenal casting, though, a key part of what makes We Live in Time work is the editing—very relevant to the film’s title—by Justine Wright. This story is told as a nonlinear narrative, jumping back and forth in time in Almut’s and Tobias’s relationship. It regularly returns to key periods, though: when they first start dating; when they have a baby; and when Almut is given her ovarian cancer diagnosis. Over time, we are even provided more context around her cancer, the risk for which could have been significantly lessened but for her choice to keep the possibility of having a baby. And even with all the time jumps, we always know where we are, and it always feels like the story is unfolding just as it should.

In the cancer-diagnosis era scenes, their little girl, Ella, is played by a tiny actor named Grace Delaney. Even this proves to be excellent casting. Delaney isn’t given a lot of lines, but she is in a lot of scenes, and her presence always feels just as natural as anyone else’s. This is likely more a product of skilled direction and editing than anything else.

In the end, though, it’s Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield who are everything to the success of We Live in Time. Their performances, and their chemistry, are the magic sauce that makes the movie deeply compelling from start to finish. Conceptually, it’s just a romantic drama with just as many joyful turns as sad ones, but on paper does not sound particularly exceptional. What is exceptional is its cast, who make this a movie well worth the time.

Don’t fret! A lot of the movie is way more fun than this looks.

Overall: B+

CHALLENGERS

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

Had Challengers been directed by anyone else, I likely would not have been interested. But, offbeat Cicilian director Luca Guadagnino is a game changer. This is the guy who previously brought us the beautiful Call Me By Your Name in 2017; the unusually subtle and lovely queer-ish limited series We Are Who We Are in 2020; and the jarringly tender cannibal love story Bones and All in 2022. He also made the wild mess that was the remake of Suspiria in 2018—the director can be all over the place with his projects, but one thing you can never say about him is that he is unoriginal.

Challengers is easily Guadagnino’s most mainstream project to date, with superstar Zendaya at its center, her injured-tennis-player-turned coach Tashi also being the center of a dysfunctional love triangle with two other rising tennis talents: Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist, who played Riff in Steven Spielberg’s underrated 2021 version of West Side Story). This movie is also only about tennis on the surface, featuring plenty of onscreen tennis matches, but always as a metaphor for the personal tensions between the players. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Guadagnino film without some homoerotic undertones, which here occasionally veer into overtones.

It’s easy to say that these are the kinds of film details that speak to me, but it’s much deeper than that. I don’t think it’s even an accident that O’Connor and Faist are both hot young men, but almost pointedly unconventionally hot—as they compete for a woman played by one of the most universally attractive woman stars in the world. And this is a film that sexualizes all three of them, albeit in one case the camera zooms in on an inexplicably gratuitous shot of Faist’s butt in form fitting pajama bottoms. I found myself wondering if there were any conversations about the intentionality of that on set. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were.

Challengers is presented with a curious narrative structure, where “present day” is a 2019 tennis match that turns out to be a rematch between Patrick and Art after thirteen years, a pivotal match that we return to regularly throughout the film. It jumps back and forth from there to a week ago, or three days ago, or in a great many cases, thirteen years ago—when Patrick and Art first meet Tashi. This is where the homoerotic undertones begin: “I’m not a homewrecker,” she says, about getting in between the two of them, who have been “bunking together” since they were twelve.

I had mixed feelings about this approach to editing at first, and honestly it took several scenes at the beginning of the film before I started to find any of these characters interesting. But this is Guadagnino’s subtle, secret weapon: an expertly applied slow burn, getting you to a point where you don’t even realize yet that you’ve been won over. And in retrospect, Challengers would not have been as effective with a more linear plot line. As it was, every time we jump back to the “present day” match, at which point Tashi is married to one of the eternally competitive (yet unusually intimate) friends as well as acting as his coach, the stakes become clearer. Tennis is just used as a uniquely effective framework for a deeply compelling romantic drama.

Still, in anyone else’s hands, I could easily have lost interest. Guadagnino works with frequent collaborator Sayombhu Mukdeeprom for his cinematography, consistently finding angles on the action that are at once beautiful and offbeat. Several scenes largely hinge on their visual impact, from a sudden wind storm, to a bevy of unconventional shots during tennis matches: off-center closeups of the players’ tense bodies, or POV shots of the players hitting the ball with their racquets, or in one memorable sequence, taking on the point of view of the tennis ball itself. I remain eternally confused by how the hell tennis is scored, but somehow I remained deeply invested in everything happening onscreen.

The performances are excellent all around, but especially stellar on the part of Zendaya. Challengers had already more than won me over by the climactic end to the present-day tennis match at hand, but then the acting, the memorably propulsive score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the editing, and the cinematography all converge with first-time feature writer Justin Kuritzkes’s script, and everything comes together with such deep satisfaction, it’s like a beautiful puzzle where the picture isn’t clear until the final pieces are set in place. Sticking the landing is a significant challenge even in many otherwise great movies, but here it’s done so well that it elevates an already great film. I left the theater thinking about what a fantastic experience it was.

Match points: I suppose you could call this my favorite tennis movie.

Overall: A-

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

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

As 21st-century noirs go, Love Lies Bleeding is pretty great—until it takes an inexplicably wild swing at the end. I would recommend this film, but I would have to warn you about that at the same time. I won’t spoil what happens, except to say it’s somewhat debatable whether what happens is something we are meant to believe is actually happening, or if it’s a character fantasy. I am not averse to wild swings as a concept, mind you; I just want them to be clear in their purpose or what they represent, which is really lacking here—in spite of several allusions to it earlier in the film, which only make at least that much sense in retrospect. Without the wild turn at the end, I might have felt confident that this could be one of the year’s best movies.

It could be argued that, so far at least, it still is. There’s a lot of far worse stuff out there, after all. It’s just that there’s a sequence of maybe five minutes in this movie that really straddles the line between subversive and bafflingly weird.

All that aside, Love Lies Bleeding is a dark, twisted, violent, lesbian romance thriller that is absolutely worth a look. It’s beautifully shot in New Mexico, starting with an opening shot that we only realize well into the story later was the camera lifting out of a ravine that plays into the plot. And it’s edited with a unique sort of precision, moving the plot forward without any excess bloat while keeping the pace at a steady clip. Best of all, it’s exceptionally well cast, with Kristen Stewart as gym manager Lou, who falls for mysterious body builder Jackie, played actual body builder Katy O'Brian, wandering in from out of town. They both get increasingly mixed up with Lou’s gun range owner and insect enthusiast dad Lou Sr (Ed Harris, with both his telltale bald head and a ring of hair that is nuts-long, and somehow it fits the character.)

We learn early on that Lou doesn’t speak to her father, and one of many refreshing elements of Love Lies Bleeding is that this estrangement has nothing to do with Lou’s sexuality—evidently he couldn’t give half a shit about that. I expected some kind of cathartic confrontation between Lou and her father by the end, but much of the story goes by without giving a sense of any catharsis coming with an earned payoff. This is where director and co-writer Rose Glass’s expert construction of the story comes in, because eventually we get just enough revealed about Lou’s dark history with her father, and we understand perfectly why she doesn’t speak to him.

In the meantime, both Lou and Jackie find themselves suffering the consequences of impulsive, violent mistakes. It should be noted that, in at least two scenes, something pretty gruesome occurs. In the first, we see the same shockingly horrid wound so many times, it begins to feel like Rose Glass is toying with us. She’s certainly having fun with this movie: the comic moments are few and far between, but when they do come, they are pretty hilarious.

And that’s the bottom line with Love Lies Bleeding: this is a postmodern take on film noir, with its own sensibility, in a world that is dark and dangerous and yet you love being witness to it. It takes a brief detour into “Wait, what?” territory that I could have lived without—but then immediately reeled me right back in with one final bit of humor, and then a bit of interpretive dance over the end credits. You kind of have to be there. Just because it isn’t perfect doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go there.

I don’t know if you’ll root for them exactly but you’ll still want to know where they’re going.

Overall: B+

THE TASTE OF THINGS

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

It’s been said that you shouldn’t watch The Taste of Things on an empty stomach—and that is precisely what I did. And then I sat through this lengthy, gorgeously shot, expertly choreographed opening sequence of an elaborate dinner getting prepared in a large, late-nineteenth-century French kitchen.

Here’s the thing. If you are a carnivore, you might have greater need to heed such a warning: there is a lot of meat and seafood prepared in this movie. I am, however, a vegetarian—I don’t even eat seafood. I could appreciate the vividly shot food, clearly actually cooked on set, on a purely aesthetic level, but it certainly didn’t have me salivating.

Here’s what it did do. It made me think, a lot, about the way we eat our food. It made me long for a meal prepared with such intricate care, from ingredients sourced from the garden right outside the door. The film’s opening shot, in fact, is of Eugénie (a luminescent Juliette Binoche, still a genuine stunner at age 59) harvesting produce straight out of the dirt. We throw phrases around like “farm to table” as though it’s a marketing concept, and then we witness it occurring onscreen in this movie, almost in real time. And here, in the real world, 140 years after the setting of our movie, we pass our days eating food made quickly or cheaply or, in most cases, both.

The Taste of Things is populated with characters for whom flavor is more important than anything. I marveled at the technical proficiency already achieved by the 19th century, the myriad combinations of ingredients and cooking techniques, and the amount of time that it takes—and took—to master all these dishes.

As I said, the meat based dishes—beef, veal, fish, you name it—still failed to make me salivate, in ways I am certain it will most audiences. And then Eugénie whips up this Baked Alaska dish and I nearly cried with desire: Holy fuckballs that looks amazing! And I don’t even like meringue. The men Eugénie serves this dessert to discuss the physics of how the ice cream stays frozen inside, and I was rapt. This was one dish with meringue I could imagine using as skin cream. I wanted to bathe in it.

The Taste of Things is about much more than vividly shot food preparation, of course. At its heart, it is a love story, between Eugénie, a longtime cook, and Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel), the restauranteur Eugénie worked for for many years. They now live together in a kind of perpetual romance, Dodin regularly proposing to her, and Eugénie regularly insisting she prefers things as they are. Their love and affection is quite overtly represented in the deeply rooted history and skill in the food they share. This includes both cooking and eating it, although Eugénie does most of the cooking.

There is a bit of sadness thrown in, and I won’t spoil exactly what that is, although it gets alluded to pretty early on, in the middle of the aforementioned, extended opening sequence. It’s easy to focus on that sequence, because of the incredible blocking and choreography and camera work, but most scenes in this film involve cooking, and without exception the food is shot with a cozy, loving eye. Beyond the focus on the food, the story is deceptively simple. But it stays with you.

There is a somewhat curious separation of genders in this film, and the heavy focus on Binoche notwithstanding, I kind of wish there were more women in it. Besides Eugénie, the only significant female characters are two younger cooks who work with her: Violette (Galatéa Bellugi), who evidently has relatively mediocre still; and Violette’s niece, Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), who has an astonishing, precocious talent for gastronomy. Dodin, for his part, has a group of about five men friends who populate many scenes, often to pontificate on the prepared food or to provide support to Dodin, as needed.

But, it all comes back to Eugénie and Dodin, every other character serving their story. One of the great many things I love about The Taste of Things is the way it naturally veers away from any of the typical film tropes. Just because of the way I’ve been conditioned by decades of movie watching, I kept expecting one of the apprentice cooks to trip while climbing the many staircases in the house, or for one of the men to creep on young Pauline. But, nothing of the sort happens in this story, which is only about two character who are, as Dodin puts it, “in their autumn years,” and their earnest devotion to each other. Sometimes the simplest stories are the most moving and beautiful, and this is certainly one to savor.

Don’t insult this movie by eating cheap popcorn while you watch it!

ALL OF US STRANGERS

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

How do I adequately convey how much I loved All of Us Strangers? How do I even explain what it’s about? Except, perhaps, to say it’s a beautifully melancholy, queer love story with an emotional through line that cuts deep?

Mind you, I say this as a gay viewer, and this is incredibly relevant. I can’t help but wonder how the response to it might be different among audiences that are not gay men. I am certain anyone open to the experience of this film can be deeply moved by it, and even have an intricate, nuanced understanding of what the characters are feeling. But for me, in a way few other movies ever have, this story wrapped my very soul into a warm embrace.

Will I love this movie as much upon rewatch, I wonder? There’s only one way to find out.

In the meantime, I must say there is plenty of All of Us Strangers that evades straightforward understanding. That is beside the point. You need only to feel it. And boy, did I.

Adam (Andrew Scott) and Harry (Aftersun’s Paul Mescal) are two gay men, living in the same London high-rise apartment building. It must be a new building, very few other people living in it, as they discuss how distractingly quiet it is living there. We really never see them interact with anyone else in the building, only each other. When a fire alarm has Adam exiting the building, he sees Harry’s silhouette in his sixth-story window, looking down at him. After Adam returns to his unit on a much higher floor—with spectacular, panoramic London views—Harry knocks on his door, drunk, and introduces himself.

Adam and Harry’s steadily blossoming relationship expands beyond that first meeting, which is tentative, cautious, a bit shy. They don’t hook up immediately. They do a bit later, though, and it’s some of the most beautifully shot and tender, gay sexuality I’ve seen onscreen since Moonlight (2016). It’s both highly erotic and genuinely moving—a feat of narrative execution that has me tempted to call director and co-writer Andrew Haigh a cinematic magician.

And All of Us Strangers is indeed magical, even when it defies logic, and quite deliberately so. The story of Adam and Harry runs parallel to the story of Adam and his late parents, who died in a car crash when he was twelve years old. And yet, he takes a train across town to his childhood home—and finds his father (Jamie Bell) and his mother (Claire Foy) there, the same age they were when they died, somehow unsurprised to find their son coming home, now a grown man they had never actually gotten to see grow up.

Mum and Dad have an understanding that about 35 years have passed, but have no knowledge of what has transpired in that time. Their knowledge and relative ignorance remains stuck in, we can only estimate, about 1988. And as premises go, this is a little out there, because All of Us Strangers never makes explicit exactly what’s going on, and there’s a physicality between Adam and his still-young parents during their visits that negates any idea of them as conventional ghosts. It’s a little more like they exist as flesh and blood, but in a different dimension.

What it does allow for, however, are conversations Adam never had a chance to have with his parents otherwise. He comes out to them both, in separate conversations. It’s notable that his mom has a more complicated, slightly more negative reaction than his father, who is much more quickly accepting—a scenario that defies the stereotype of gay experience, and is likely more common than many realize. This, among many other conversations Adam has with his parents, packed a unique emotional punch for me, and so far as I could tell, I was crying before most of the rest of the people in the theater.

All of Us Strangers features gorgeous cinematography, and is edited with unparalleled finesse, transitioning between Adam with Harry, and Adam with his parents, with seamless grace. There’s a sequence in which Adam and Harry go out dancing, do some drugs, and then proceed into a sort of montage of domesticity, with the club music continuing uninterrupted through it all. It’s beautifully executed.

There is a bit of a twist at the end, very directly related to Harry, which ultimately had me baffled. It calls into question a great deal of what has been seen beforehand, but then, there is even a moment when Adam asks his mother, “Is this real?” The answer, evidently, is that if it feels real, then it is. And All of Us Strangers is all feeling, which therefore makes it real. Adam tries to introduce Harry to his parents, and for most of this sequence, Harry seems to be the only one existing in a grounded reality. This is now a film that will allow things to be that simple.

This is a movie I will be thinking about for a very long time, maybe for years to come. I haven’t been this in love with a mood-piece queer love story since Moonlight. Indeed, that film and All of Us Strangers would make for a spectacular double feature. From end to end, it is beautiful and sad and cozy and charming and erotic and mysterious and bewildering. It would seem there is no end to the riches it has to offer.

Nowhere to go but up: together,

Overall: A