THE CAST – Soraya Akhlaghi

THE TEAM – Soraya Akhlaghi (Director), Mehrdad Oskouei (Director/Writer), Amir Adibparvar & Siavash Jamali (Writers)

THE RUNNING TIME – 76 Minutes

Some films get made under such harsh, restrictive conditions that their mere existence seems miraculous. “A Fox Under A Pink Moon” is one of those films. Soraya Akhlaghi’s harrowingly intimate self-filmed documentary has plenty of power as it is, but learn even a bit about the story behind how the film got made, and it becomes even more impressive: Soraya filmed herself on two Galaxy phones in Iran and Turkey when she was 15-19 years old as she and her husband, Ali, were trying to escape to Greece. The teenage artist sent footage back and forth with established documentary filmmaker Mehrdad Oskouei (“Starless Dreams”), who discovered her as an artist’s apprentice and was taken with not only her striking sculptures but also her personality and story. Born in Iran to Afghani parents, Soraya is essentially stateless, unable to legally travel to Afghanistan to get the ID she needs to get the passport that would allow her to travel (ideally to Austria to meet her mother, who left Soraya and her father eight years ago at the start of the film). When her father passed away not long after, Soraya was sent to her uncle, where she quickly learned how to take a beating. He married her off at fourteen because he couldn’t take care of her any longer. The beatings continued. The film doesn’t spell all of this out, though (Soraya’s first mention of her husband is so out of left field that you’d be forgiven for wondering if she was joking), building Soraya’s world from the inside out and slowly revealing the full truth of her plight. Hers is a heartrending tale of the human spirit’s triumph in the darkest places imaginable, a testament to art’s power to save us when nothing else can.

The film opens with a brief introduction to Soraya and her art, with an animated fox appearing behind her as she sits in front of a camera explaining how difficult communication is and what life is like as they wait for word from the traffickers bringing her and 40 other people over the border to Greece. The next scene plunges you into hell: Everyone has been crammed into one van, at that point for over six hours. Soraya’s camera shows us just how tightly packed they are, and when a woman cries out to please not trample her baby, it’s as unsurprising as it is horrifying. At one point, their drivers run away, leaving the group of refugees stranded with no knowledge of where they are or what’s happening. They end up having to find taxis back to where they had been living in Istanbul, with only months left before the country becomes too cold to survive and forces them back to Iran. There have been many films about the experience of refugees escaping their oppressive homelands and sneaking across borders in harrowing conditions, but none with the immediacy of Soraya’s footage. Her need to hide her filming from those around her, so as not to jeopardize their illegal crossing, lends these sections of the film an authentic sense of danger that puts you fully into Soraya’s shoes. The desolate landscapes, cramped quarters, and chaotic commotion, even in short spurts, paint an unsparing portrait of a refugee’s journey.

The film doesn’t present all this terrifying footage without a release valve, as Soraya lets us into her artistic world, which gives her a vital escape. She makes art in her free time, which she has plenty of, and the film uses her artwork to immerse us more fully in her headspace. Her paintings become animated sequences that introduce her most recurring themes, namely clowns. In the first of these sequences, she imagines a clown holding everyone in its arms like a life raft, protecting them as they cross the sea to Thessaloniki. She sees clowns as strong, with their incredibly physical abilities and undying smiles. Soraya has the mark of a true artist, using whatever materials she has to create; she sculpts the “demon sculptures” that represent her fears; for example, she sculpts out of a mix of water and egg cartons.

The film is art for her, too, and you can feel Soraya’s affinity for the form grow as time passes. The lighting and framing become more striking, and she becomes bolder with what she films and when. Honest to a fault, Soraya shows no shame in putting the bruises from Ali’s beatings on camera, staring down the lens and daring the audience to look away from what the world has forced her into. Between the beatings, the squalid living conditions, and the never-ending, agonizing attempts at border crossing, one can hardly blame her, but her art seemingly always saves her, giving her an outlet to process her trauma and a way to envision a future for herself. Against all odds, it gives her hope and the strength she needs to survive.

To keep her storytelling as simple and minimalist as possible, Soraya and Oskouei gloss over details that would provide important context for her living situation, making the film a bit difficult to follow, especially for Western audiences. Soraya herself is so open and honest, though, that you feel for her all the way through. As she becomes more comfortable on camera and gains maturity with each passing year, she opens up more about her past and what she wants for her future. The animated fox constantly reminds us that, despite her maturity, Soraya is still incredibly young. She’s shaped by the world around her, though, in ways that make her youth impossible to reconcile with her circumstances. At one point, she hacks her hair off and then films herself joyously dancing in traditional dress. We don’t know exactly why she decided to do so, but it’s clear she now feels free in a way she didn’t before. In the very next scene, she shows her worst bruises yet. She actively wonders why she feels so connected to her home country of Afghanistan, which she watches come under the rule of the Taliban, when she has never been there. Many people feel this way about their birth country, but hearing it directly from someone so young paints that feeling in a light that feels impossible to shake. Here is a child who knows next to nothing about the world, who has been beaten down by it at every turn, and who still somehow manages to find joy and keep pushing for a better life. There’s nothing more inspirational.

And yet, there’s also nothing more horrifying. What Soraya captures, and how she captures it, is just as important to her story as the art she shares. The film’s restraint in fully exploring Soraya’s dire circumstances makes the horrors she shows feel even more harrowing. It’s hard to imagine living through so many failed trips across the border, but hundreds of people around the world do, and this film comes as close as possible to making you feel the anguish and pain that comes with it. With Soraya’s vividly expressive paintings and sculptures, “A Fox Under A Pink Moon” fully puts you in its subject’s shoes and forces you to live in them. In just under 80 minutes, it makes you feel more than most films do in two hours, but it’s never too much. The images linger: Dozens of refugees hiding from the vicious winds under sheets that make them look like corpses dotting the landscape, a line of people trying to escape in a snowstorm, a broken guitar after a seventeen-year-old girl excitedly puts on lipstick for the first time. These images carry a raw power that doesn’t need explanation. For someone so young to have to go through this is terrible. That she can make such bold, uncompromising, hopeful art from her experience is remarkable.

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THE CAST – Brock Yurich, Tammy Blanchard, Mike Edward, Paloma Garcia-Lee & Matthew Morrison

THE TEAM – Sam McConnell (Director) & Brock Yurich (Writer)

THE RUNNING TIME – 113 Minutes

Considering how incredibly homoerotic bodybuilding is, it’s slightly surprising how full the sport is of toxic heterosexual masculinity. Or, perhaps, that’s not as surprising as the fact that so many (male) bodybuilders vehemently deny their sport’s homoerotic undertones, to the point where it may seem like there are no gay male bodybuilders at all. Actor Brock Yurich knows this world well: The son of a bodybuilder who has taken up the sport himself, Yurich’s experiences as a queer man in this space have led to his screenplay for “Test”, in which he plays Eddie, a Midwestern aspiring bodybuilder living with his codependent alcoholic mother Joanne (Tammy Blanchard), who also helps coach and prep him for his bodybuilding shows. Joanne doesn’t know the inner workings of the bodybuilding world, though, and when well-respected coach Mike (Mike Edward) notices him backstage and gives him some tips, Eddie seeks him out to train with him. Naturally, Joanne doesn’t take this well, pushing Eddie away out of spite.

Yurich’s emotionally generous screenplay gives each character ample space to express their inner truths while staying locked into Eddie’s perspective, culminating in a stunning finale that marks a true moment of growth, and perhaps the truest expression of who Eddie is inside. Growing up in a religious household in a conservative community, Eddie has had certain ideas of manliness drilled into him since his youth, meaning that he’s never had the opportunity to become his fullest self. While the film never goes too deep into the characters’ pasts, there’s enough subtext given through dialogue and reactions to paint a reasonably full portrait of Eddie’s life, including a caring church community led by the conservative Pastor Gregg (Matthew Morrison), a high school girlfriend (Paloma Garcia-Lee) who left town to pursue her dreams as a ballerina in New York, and a side hustle as a cam model on a gay website. When he and Mike, estranged from his own son, start making eye contact, it’s hard to tell at first whether they’re doing so with paternal/filial love or lust. When they eventually kiss, it’s surprising not because it comes out of nowhere, but because Yurich and director Sam McConnell have so thoroughly established the boundaries of the world they inhabit. Their relationship instantly feels dangerous for a whole mess of reasons, and both Yurich and Edward flesh out their characters so much that their relationship feels like it takes up a larger amount of the film than it actually does.

While the film stays focused on Eddie and his journey, the other characters never feel short-changed. Mike’s characterization is surprisingly rich for his relatively small amount of screen time (given how provocative Mike and Eddie’s relationship is, it’s hard not to wish it received even more prominence), and Garcia-Lee does heartfelt work ensuring that Eddie’s ex, Abby, always feels like more than a device to dive into Eddie’s character. Her chemistry with Yurich feels completely natural, and the way she pushes Eddie to embrace his more feminine side through both ballet lessons and emotional intimacy is endearing. Blanchard has the most prominent supporting role, and her deeply personal connection to the character shines through. Joanne’s codependency feels deeply tied to her addictive nature, and Blanchard seizes on this, swinging between motherly over-attentiveness and ice-cold dismissal. As Eddie spends more and more time away from her and starts coming into his own, Joanne becomes more erratic and self-pitying. Blanchard delves deep, giving a performance that feels dangerous for both character and performer, fully giving herself over to Joanne’s gut-wrenching desperation for human connection.

That human connection provides the film with much of its vibrancy. Yurich and McConnell build a world where its inhabitants feel believably trapped. Even Abby, who made it out to the Big Apple, is pulled back to care for her mother and run her dance studio when she becomes ill. Eddie works as a waiter at a barbecue joint, and his coworkers seem to have no aspirations beyond their town. Simultaneously a reflection of the dire economic straits for young people and of the limited worldview they’ve been given, the film taps into a potent strain of ennui recognizable to anyone who grew up in a “small town”. Eddie knows he wants something more, but the only way he’s found to get it is bodybuilding. Even though he’s willing to go to great lengths to get his pro card, cutting out his mom and subjecting his body to all kinds of physical and chemical stress, he finds himself unable to answer when Mike asks him why he feels like he needs it. It could be his ticket out of there, a path toward greatness, or maybe the only thing he can think of wanting. After all, his church likes him and takes care of him, and even though his mother is clearly too involved in his life, she also cares for him deeply. Eddie is too deep into the world that has been built for him to know even who he really is inside, and watching him take the first tentative steps towards becoming that person and building his own world is heartrending, especially as the film piles on the melodrama in the last act.

Somewhat surprisingly, the film’s ending feels ambiguous. Eddie manages to eke out a major personal victory for himself, but the expression on Yurich’s face tells a more complicated story. Has everything he put himself through drained him so completely that his emotions are shot? Is he defiantly standing up for himself and holding back the “I told you so”-style victory speech? Or does he feel this victory is hollow, devoid of meaning because it hasn’t fundamentally changed the material circumstances of his life? It’s the cherry on top of Yurich’s charismatic, wholly endearing performance. As Eddie’s world collapses in on him, Yurich keeps showing more and more depth, fully investing himself in the screenplay’s dramatic turns without ever going over the top. His emotional openness and vulnerability are striking onscreen; we don’t often see men built like that express such feelings. McConnell’s stylish direction never pushes too hard on those notes, recognizing the simple power of Yurich’s performance. “Test” is quite a remarkable debut for Yurich as a writer, but even if this ends up being the only thing he has to say, his performance proves that he deserves a long career as an actor.

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THE CAST – Michael Hsu Rosen, Cole Doman, Nico Greetham, Jared Reinfeldt & Robin de Jesus

THE TEAM – Gary Jaffe (Director/Writer)

THE RUNNING TIME – 87 Minutes

Alex (Michael Hsu Rosen) thought he was over his ex, John Michael (Cole Doman), but then the bastard had to go and rescue him from a toxic relationship with a music producer. John Michael was so worried about Alex that he flew from the East CoastEast Coast to California not long before his own wedding. Now, the old feelings are back, making Alex’s role as John Michael’s best man pretty awkward. Joining them for a bachelor-party weekend in the woods, their college besties Simon (Jared Reinfeldt) and Luis (Robin de Jesus) can’t wait for sparks to fly. Into this charged mix drops Kit (Nico Greetham), John Michael’s best friend since childhood, who just so happens to have recently come out as bisexual. Just how many sparks will fly this weekend? And will any of them set fire to the rain?

When you assemble an ensemble as strong as Gary Jaffe has for his debut feature “Before I Do,” you don’t need much else. Each of the five cast members are strong individually, but their chemistry together elevates Jaffe’s alternately intimate and hilarious screenplay. Each character gets at least one big moment, giving everyone a chance to dig deep and show plenty of personality. The characters appear as stereotypes at first, Simon’s the sex-forward himbo, Luis the sassy elder, etc., but gain depth the longer we spend with them, much like making new friends, which is appropriate, since between the warm, closely observed screenplay and the vibrant performances, watching “Before I Do” really does feel like being welcomed into a new friend group.

And what a group they are! Each one is unique and lovable in their way. The focus is on the will-they/wont-they of Alex and John Michael, and even though their characters don’t pop as much as the others, Doman and Hsu Rosen make for a pretty dreamy pairing. Each brings out such sweetness in the other, and they both make it clear that while they aren’t exactly performing in front of the others, they feel more comfortable with just each other. De Jesus, as always, steals the film whenever he’s onscreen, with line readings sharpened to a fine point. Reinfeldt’s disarming innocence makes him a fantastic foil for everyone in the group, bringing a unique take on a familiar character type. As the group outsider, Greetham has an appealing affability that makes his faux pas as a newly-out bisexual even funnier. Together, they’re a charming group, and their endearing antics make them relatable to any adult gay man; suffice it to say that from now on, gay culture is identifying as the Meryl Streep character you are closest to, then doing karaoke in drag as that character.

It’s not all camp and quirk, though. Jaffe’s screenplay captures the rhythms of life: how different people bring out different sides of you, how certain people will always have a hold on you, and how group dynamics change both in the short and long term, not to mention how friendship can turn sexual or romantic. This makes the film feel true to life even in its more obviously scripted moments. Thankfully, those moments have an appealing simplicity to them, never reaching for clever words even when the situation stretches credulity. The autumnal cinematography and covetable clothes contribute to the film’s enjoyably low-key vibes, creating a warm and cozy hangout movie that only gets better the more friends you watch it with. For gay men, “Before I Do” offers a perfect (if idealized) vision of ourselves and our friend groups; for everyone else, it’s a highly enjoyable, low-stakes dramedy with some swoony romance sprinkled on top. Much like Alex’s earworm original pop song, “Can’t Stop Dancing With You,” it’s too simply pleasurable to watch to not keep hitting repeat.

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THE CAST – Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, Callina Liang, Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i, David Dastmalchian, Cody Rhodes, Eric André, Andrew Schulz, Vidyut Jammwal, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson & Jason Momoa

THE TEAM – Kitao Sakurai (Director/Writer) & T.J. Fixman (Writer)

THE RUNNING TIME – 120 Minutes

“Street Fighter” has had many lives for a video game with no real plot. Sure, the one-on-one fighting game’s characters have backstories in the game’s literature, but neither they nor the plot setup affects gameplay. You choose your fighter and punch, kick, and block your way through enough fights to win a tournament. That’s it. Yet artists around the world have adapted the game into multiple manga series, multiple Japanese anime series, an American animated series, comic books, and now three live-action films. Surely the allure of the game’s popularity serves as a reason for this: “Street Fighter II,” the game that has served as the main inspiration for every adaptation and sequel since, is one of the best-selling video games of all time and laid the template for a whole genre of imitators to follow, most notably “Mortal Kombat,” which followed “Street Fighter” to cinemas in the ‘90s. While both “Street Fighter” and “Mortal Kombat” films were savaged by critics, they made bank at the box office, and since Hollywood in the 2020s can seemingly only spend money on well-known IP, both series have been rebooted.

Kitao Sakurai (“Bad Trip”) may seem like an odd choice to take on this material, but the film’s anime-style opening sequence gets things off to a decent start. Remixing elements of every “Street Fighter” game and film into a new(-ish) story, Sakurai introduces us to Ken (Noah Centineo) and Ryu (Andrew Koji) during the 1987 World Warrior Tournament. Best friends from different backgrounds (Ryu, an orphan; Ken, an American misfit) study martial arts under the same master, Gouken (Don Lee), and Ryu makes it to the tournament’s final round, where he must face the dangerous Sagat. Sagat trounces Ryu at first, causing Ryu to abandon his master’s teachings and give in to the darkness inside him. Ryu beats Sagat, but unleashes a greater danger: Akuma (Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i), a dark demon who taunts Ryu and pushes him further from the light. Ken is shaken by the force of Ryu’s victory, believing he could never possess such power, but Master Gouken reminds him that greatness isn’t always found in the ring, and tasks him with an important job: Protecting Ryu from himself. This opening animation sets the tone so perfectly that you almost wish the whole film had been told in that medium; the stylized violence feels both exciting and dangerous, thanks to plenty of blood, a kinetic techno score by Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson, and title cards dropped for maximum audience reaction.

Unfortunately, after this sequence, the film moves ahead six years to 1993, and the live action kicks in. In an expository news report, we learn that after Master Gouken’s death, Ken has been making waves as a massively popular bad-boy fighter with multiple endorsement deals (the clips of commercials for Duracell batteries and Jolt Cola are hilariously period-accurate), while Ryu has gone MIA. In order to draw him out of hiding, the villainous M. Bison (David Dastmalchian) decides to hold a second World Warrior Tournament and sends his envoy Chun-Li (Callina Liang), an undercover Interpol agent targeting Bison for killing her father, to personally invite the world’s eight best fighters, including Ken and Ryu, to take part. At the first World Warrior Tournament, Bison saw Ryu unleash the power of Akuma and became obsessed with claiming that power for himself. When Akuma tells Ryu that he will kill whoever wins the tournament, Ryu tries to warn Ken. Years and distance have frayed their brotherly bond, though, and Ken refuses to give up his moment to shine outside Ryu’s shadow, essentially forcing Ryu to enter the tournament if he wants to save him.

If this all seems overly complicated for a movie that essentially only exists to watch martial arts badasses fight each other, well, the film even struggles to keep up. While the character building for Ken and Ryu gets enough focus to serve as the film’s narrative spine, the world-building is practically nonexistent, to the point that it’s not even clear who Bison is. He could be a local government leader or the supreme leader of a sovereign nation, a titan of industry or a military commander, or even just a random guy with enough money to fund endless experiments to harness what he calls “Psycho Power.” Dastmalchian goes all in with his performance, latching onto Bison’s lust for power and curdling it into a more human lust for anything that moves. Rolling his eyes into the back of his head as he can barely contain himself, sniffing burning flesh like it’s an aphrodisiac, he’s an equal-opportunity lech, verbally caressing both his clawed henchman Vega (Orville Peck, cheekily taking his first film role in an even bigger mask than usual) and bodyguard Juli (Rayna Vallandingham). The film’s overall horniness is one of its biggest, most pleasant surprises, ogling every single cast member and taking the piss out of the typically stoic male fighting characters by giving them genuine emotion (Ryu calms himself before fights by listening to “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes) or underlining their homoerotic tendencies (Cody Rhodes’s quintessential American soldier Guile constantly stumbles – both knowingly and unknowingly – into homoeroticism), and Dastmalchian’s performance leads the way with its unrestrained villainy, which the actor heightens by carefully choosing the moments where he goes over the top.

While the whole cast has fun playing their roles just slightly larger than life, most audience members care more about how they look while fighting than what quips they crack in between rounds. Thankfully, the highly energetic fight scenes find fun, exciting ways to visualize many of the video game’s most famous special moves, like E. Honda’s Hundred Hand Slap or Guile’s Flash Kick. The biggest set piece, however, belongs to Blanka (Jason Momoa), a green-skinned, electrified mutant who looks entirely CGI. Only occasionally does he look like he’s physically part of the scene, mostly when he’s moving. The visual effects in the film’s fighting scenes look appropriately cartoony. Still, the character’s fantastical design doesn’t fit the world the film has established, and the wonky effects make him stick out even more.

After Blanka’s big scene, the film’s relentless pace and exuberant visuals start to grate, and by the unnecessary late showdown between Ryu and Ken just before the final battle, it’s exhausting. Sakurai and T.J. Fixman’s screenplay ties itself in knots to bloat it to two hours, and while it’s fun to see childhood-favorite characters mashed up against each other like action figures, there’s no real suspense about how any of the fights play out. This makes the final fight, in particular, an ordeal, as all the aura farming tricks Sakurai deployed earlier have lost their potency. Combined with a plot that barely hangs together (truly, the aura farming does a lot to paper over awkward scene transitions and plot holes), it makes for a deflating ending to an otherwise fun popcorn flick. For just over half its length, though, “Street Fighter” hits the sweet spot for a video game adaptation: it takes itself unseriously without veering into camp, bringing its characters and superhuman abilities to life just about as seamlessly as possible. It’s easily the best fighting game adaptation yet. Not the highest bar to clear, but “Street Fighter” gets the job done.

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THE CAST – Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass, Arabella Olivia Clark, Dichen Lachman, Karen Allen, Arian Moayed & Rosie Anne O’Gorman

THE TEAM – Rob Savage (Director) & Nathan Elston (Writer)

THE RUNNING TIME – 93 Minutes

Films have used whole scenes as trailers for decades, but Rob Savage’s “Other Mommy” may be the first to keep the title card treatment intact from film to trailer. After the creepiest what-the-fuck image of Jessica Chastain contorted into a ball under a counter, we flash to the title with a wobbly bass throb: “O”. Then back to Jay Duplass falling backward through a sliding glass door. “T”. Cut back to young star Arabella Olivia Clark screaming her little head off. “H”. And so on. What works as a hype moment in a trailer doesn’t necessarily work in a film, though, and this is only the first instance of Savage mistaking something that looks cool for something that actually works onscreen. “Other Mommy” is overflowing with cool, clever visual flourishes meant to goose up its tiresome jump scares. Still, they can’t hide how barely functional this screenplay is (based on Josh Malerman’s novel “Incidents Around the House,” who also wrote “Bird Box”). Thankfully, Oscar winner Chastain is on hand to deliver the kind of wildly overqualified horror-villain performance that basically guarantees a good time for the audience. If only the rest of the film were up to her level.

Russ (Duplass), Ursula (Chastain), and Isabela (Clark) look like a perfect family at first glance: successful, fun-loving, comfortable. Look closer, though, and you can see that things aren’t quite right. Mommy and “Daddo” are clearly going through a bit of a rough patch, but they do their best to put on happy faces for Bela. Their daughter has noticed, though, and she isn’t the only one: A demon has latched onto Bela, taking the form of her mother and asking her to go inside her heart so that she can “protect it.” Bela is wary of the entity she calls “Other Mommy,” but when her parents see the demon for themselves, Bela becomes as scared of them as she is of Other Mommy. When their already frayed relationship gets put through the wringer, will Ursula and Russ find a way to protect their daughter’s heart for real?

Malerman’s novel told the story from Bela’s point of view, and screenwriter Nathan Elston does the same. Unfortunately, this creates a tonal disconnect: the film’s action is hard-R, gory, and intense, but the character and thematic beats are plainly stated in simple language appropriate for children. Good on them for not treating Bela like a tiny adult, but this approach makes “Other Mommy” feel more like a PG-13 film in an R-rated package. Everything about the film’s story feels designed for younger audiences, but the hyperviolent bursts of gore happening every few scenes are actively un-kid-friendly. On top of that, Russ and Ursula’s marital strife, the driving force behind Bela’s attachment to Other Mommy, is only obliquely referenced for most of the film before a last-act trauma-dump monologue that packs a lot of storytelling into a vanishingly short time. The film’s on-the-nose thematic message delivery feels geared toward younger audiences, partly because it uses Bela as the main POV character. The film is self-aware enough to throw in a slyly comic edit or backhanded joke every once in a while, but it takes its thematic content seriously, an admirable choice that nonetheless feels wrong. The film didn’t have to lean fully into camp or horror-comedy to succeed, but it feels stranded in a tonal no-man’s-land between PG-13 and R-rated audiences: too intense in moments for younger audiences, too simplistic for older ones.

Despite all that, though, Chastain rises above. In her dual role as Ursula and Other Mommy, the film fits into the long, proud lineage of so-called “hagsploitation”: scary movies built around an older actress fully committing to a ridiculous part to entertain her public. Chastain may seem too young for this, but it’s worth noting that, at 49, she’s only about five years younger than Bette Davis was when she starred alongside Joan Crawford in the hagsploitation classic “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”. The Oscar winner conducts herself exactly as Davis, Crawford, Olivia de Havilland, Shelley Winters, and others did in their latter-day horror projects, never once condescending to the material or the audience. Her classical training shines through in how she differentiates between Ursula and Other Mommy, adopting uncannily stiff, nearly alien body language and overly crisp vocal work as the demon that’s instantly unsettling. The sound team helps with her otherworldly presence, adding a slight echo whenever Other Mommy takes over. While the visual effects and makeup teams clearly had fun designing her most demonic forms, resulting in some nicely creepy imagery, Chastain’s rictus grin and blank stare are their own kind of special effect, a twisted maternal version of the demon in “Smile”.

Would that Savage had an ounce of that film’s bravery to be genuinely upsetting. Instead, he slathers “Other Mommy” with flashy editing transitions meant to heighten the film’s supernatural surreality. They’re effective on a base level, but they also feel like a last-ditch effort to cover up the film’s bland screenplay with some visual interest. Chastain does that all on her own, creating an iconic horror villain with just her face. She saves “Other Mommy” from the depths of unwatchability, as great actresses have done since the dawn of cinema. Still, the audience would have an even better time if she had a script that actually built something solid around her. Younger audiences sneaking in or watching at a slumber party may jump here or there, but audiences who have seen their fair share of horror movies won’t be inviting “Other Mommy” into their hearts any time soon.

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THE CAST – Paul Rudd, Evan Peters, Paul Giamatti, John Turturro, Jason Clarke, Tatiana Maslany, Amy Ryan, Dylan Baker, Noah Robbins, Zach Woods & Nina Arianda

THE TEAM – Tom McCarthy (Director/Writer)

THE RUNNING TIME – 111 Minutes

Our planet is dying. It is slowly getting hotter, causing massive shifts in weather patterns and climate ecosystems, which in turn causes changes to how we live. While Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius first made the connection between burning fossil fuels and Earth’s rising temperature in 1896, no one (at least in the United States) did anything about it until 1980, when the US government brought together a group of environmental activists, scientists, lawyers, and lawmakers to solve the problem found in a study that showed the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions on the environment. The group, moderated by Tom Jorling (Paul Rudd), convened for four days at a hotel in St. Petersburg, FL. For four days, they debated, negotiated, and wrote to figure out how to solve humanity’s most pressing issue. But first, Tom has to figure out how to arrange the chairs. No pressure.

Tom McCarthy’s “A Statement” uses conference transcripts to show how we arrived at our current climate crisis. In fact, all the dialogue during the conference comes directly from the transcripts, overlaid onscreen in the opening minutes to prove the film’s fidelity. Those transcripts are compelling enough on their own, but McCarthy smartly invents scenes outside the conference room that further clarify who prepared this statement and why writing it was such an arduous process. Treating the people involved as fully rounded humans, McCarthy takes them to task while acknowledging that the system that impaneled them essentially set them up to fail. This makes for a remarkably clear-sighted film, albeit a mightily depressing one, but it’s nowhere near as dry as that sounds. “A Statement” is a sobering look at our failed history in trying to combat climate change and protect the environment, but it’s also massively entertaining thanks to lively pacing, snappy dialogue, and a tight ensemble cast who bring deeply human life to the proceedings.

Much like some of the conference attendees, McCarthy knows how dry these sorts of conferences can be, and illustrates that right off the bat: After each of the twenty participants introduce themselves (don’t worry; McCarthy does yeoman’s work wrangling the cast so that only a few names and specialties need to stick in your head), it doesn’t take long for Dr. David Rose (John Turturro) to present a series of six slides that detail the possible impacts of varying levels of CO2 emissions on the environment over time. We experience this highly technical deep dive through the perspective of Annemarie Crocetti (Amy Ryan) of the National Commission on Air Quality, a nonscientist who understands less and less as Rose drones on and on. After that, though, such discussions are kept to a minimum, with terminology all audience members can understand, even if the speed of the dialogue can hinder full understanding of the more complex ideas at play. Thankfully, McCarthy and his stellar cast give the most impactful ideas room to breathe, letting the audience catch up and appreciate the gravity of the moment.

The esteemed ensemble makes it look easy to build full characters from nothing but dry, technical, high-minded expressions of knowledge. Recognizable faces like Dylan Baker, Bryan Batt, Jason Clark, Paul Giamatti, Tatiana Maslany, Zak Orth, Evan Peters, Noah Robbins, and Zach Woods play both to and against type, building personalities and relationships out of next to nothing. With only the historical record of what was said aloud to go off of, the cast members put in tremendous effort to imagine how these people would have actually interacted: who they shared silent glances with, why they would remain silent instead of speaking, and how and when they would assert themselves. Between the sheer amount of dialogue and the setting’s presentational nature, the actors are essentially performing a play, and their commitment to staying in the moment keeps the audience fully immersed in their dilemmas, no matter how seemingly insignificant or unsolvably large they may be. Since he has the most audience-pleasing lines, Turturro is the easy standout, his stiff, almost disinterested bearing slowly giving way to passionate emotion that requires all his strength to keep inside. Peters, as environmental activist Rafe Pomerance, is fun as Turturro’s opposite: No matter how hard he tries, he cannot contain his frustration with his colleagues’ inability to get anything done. Ryan gets the film’s big emotional moment, one that hits even harder because it’s not invented for the film but taken directly from the transcripts.

Taking most of its dialogue directly from the transcripts ensures that “A Statement” offers the kind of fly-on-the-wall, you-are-there cinematic experience usually found only in vérité-style documentaries. The film’s setting takes place in the kind of rarefied air most of us will never get to breathe, but the characters are still much closer to the working class than the upper classes, no matter how much knowledge they possess. Watching these discussions play out is as heart-rending as any expert melodrama; you can feel good people with their hearts in the right place being torn apart by their own professional standards and an overabundance of caution because of their situation. Although they aren’t primarily political, they must consider the politics of their statement if they want politicians to act. When Annemarie delivers her final statement to the group, she’s saying what everyone in the audience is thinking: If everyone in the room agrees this is a real problem that needs to be dealt with immediately, why don’t they just say so in the draft statement? Yet all her colleagues can do is stare in silence, knowing they have no time left to craft wording that will reach consensus, and that without a statement, they will have failed at their task.

Early in “A Statement”, Jorling explains to young atmospheric science expert Robert Cunningham (Robbins) that the goal of the conference is to achieve consensus, not unanimity. Cunningham doesn’t understand the difference, so Jorling explains: Unanimity means that everyone agrees, while consensus means that no one disagrees. The latter is more achievable, but even that proves nearly impossible with all the competing factors at play, especially the constantly evolving opinion of the scientific community, which does not like to deal in absolutes. The problem with that is that politicians, the ones responsible for pushing through the laws and regulations that will do the work of saving the planet, the ones these scientists and wonks have to convince that action is necessary, need absolutes in order to sell those laws and regulations to their constituents. As a document of how the democratic process breaks down, “A Statement” is an invaluable piece of cinema, one that explains better than any film since “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” the inner workings of government and why it’s so damn difficult to get anything of substance done.

While its message may be a downer, the percussive score and razor-sharp editing keep the pace up, and the dialogue (even some stuff lifted straight from the transcripts) has enough laugh lines to cut through the complex issues at hand. McCarthy gives the audience the same amount of cold, hard facts as any good documentary while keeping the film from feeling like a lecture. It will leave you incensed, and more than a little afraid for the state of our nation, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe we need something to stop us from constantly kicking the can down the road, something that will force us to put our personal peccadilloes aside and come together where our collective future is concerned. “A Statement” very much feels like that something, and not a moment too soon.

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THE CAST – Pedro Pascal, Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor, Alexa Swinton, Kaya Ralls, Erik Griffin, JoBeth Williams, Margarita Levieva, Hank Azaria & Will Arnett

THE TEAM – Tony Gilroy (Director/Writer)

THE RUNNING TIME – 124 Minutes

Many crafts involved in moviemaking could be said to have the most impact on the final product. Some would say the “invisible art” of editing; others would say the cinematography, but the craft that has the biggest effect on the finished product is really the music. No matter what else is going on, the score is the primary driver of the audience’s emotions, guiding them towards the director’s desired emotional destination. Put a bright, jaunty piece of music over a tragically serious scene, and it suddenly becomes a comedy; play a racing piece with pulsing beats over a romantic scene, and it becomes a thriller where you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. Tony Gilroy’s “Behemoth!” understands this ability better than most films, using our cellist protagonist’s performance of fictional genre scores to color flashbacks of the events that led him to this point. It’s a potent reflection on making art and how storytelling conventions can shape our memories, and it packs an emotional punch even with its unexpectedly minor ending.

When we first meet Alex Serian (Pedro Pascal), he looks downcast and sits alone in a recording studio. His fellow musicians begin trickling in, and in their small talk, we learn that Alex is something of a prodigal son returning home and is quite uncomfortable about that. As they play the amped-up version of the last musical cue for a new film, Alex’s memory flashes back to his last gig, an orchestra in Chicago. After a beautiful gala performance, he’s informed that a big donor’s wife is looking for him, angry that he’s considering leaving. Carol (Olivia Wilde) and Alex have been having an affair for some time, and she’s gotten too attached. The driving rhythm of the film score grows in intensity to match Alex’s attempts to evade Carol, making for a fun, uniquely metacinematic moment. Alex says he’s leaving Chicago for his mother (JoBeth Williams), who is deteriorating from Alzheimer’s, out in Los Angeles. Still, everyone around him keeps implying that he’s running away from something instead of running to anything. As Alex navigates his fraught relationship with his brother, Andy (Will Arnett), helps a young cellist (Kaya Ralls) prepare for an audition, and searches for that next elusive gig, the music he plays sends him back further and further into the past, taking the audience on a journey to discover what’s really motivating him.

If you’re going to put an exclamation point at the end of your movie title, you really need to earn it. Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!” earns it through sheer over-the-top spectacle; “Airplane!” through the overwhelming number of jokes per minute. “Behemoth!,” Gilroy’s first feature film in over a decade (since 2012’s woebegone “The Bourne Legacy”), doesn’t earn it in such obvious ways. The film earns that exclamation point thanks to its metacinematic structure, where the film score Alex plays soundtracks his memories. Hearing the score for some nonexistent film over scenes from the film you’re watching screws with your head, leading to intriguing insinuations about the manipulative nature of art and how the art we view colors our memories. Life doesn’t happen like in the movies, but our memories often feel that way. We tend to experience them in the emotions of the present, casting a different color over the event in hindsight than when it actually occurred. Gilroy’s presentation of this idea, aided by John Gilroy’s buttery-smooth editing and Damián García’s striking cinematography, offers a completely fresh way of looking at the world. That score, which contains pieces from composers Michael Abels, Emily Bear, Lukas Frank, Michael Giacchino, James Newton Howard, Henry Jackman, Nami Melumad, Brandon Roberts, and Alan Silvestri (together known as The Behemoth! Collective), may even earn the exclamation point all on its own for just how thoroughly it covers the full scope of modern movie music. Every scene features a delectable new piece of music that sounds both incredibly familiar and totally new, in the best kind of pastiche. Gilroy and his collaborators skillfully swerve between present and past, diegetic and nondiegetic music, and wildly contrasting moods; the film’s score is the glue holding it all together.

If only Gilroy’s screenplay held everything together as compellingly as the score does. It has all the makings of a great character study, as Alex has a large amount of baggage to sort through. Born to a family of musicians, Alex was groomed for success from a young age, even appearing on the Johnny Carson show at the ripe old age of six. Since then, he’s bounced around from gig to gig, leaving a load of exes in his wake. One of them, a violinist named Nadia (Eva Victor), left him for a wealthy patron (Matthew Lillard) and died young, leaving behind a child who grew into a music prodigy (Alexa Swinton). The film’s dizzying structure makes it difficult to get a complete picture of who Alex is, and Pascal’s restraint in the role doesn’t help. Seeing the fallout of Alex’s relationship with Nadia without ever seeing it play out (apart from an incredibly sexy bathroom hookup) forces the viewer to take Nadia’s summation of his character at face value, and it doesn’t line up with how he’s been presented. Even during the film’s breathtaking final montage, it’s hard to feel the full weight of Alex’s arc when most of it takes place offscreen.

Pascal does admirable work carrying the film’s narrative on his shoulders, although his castmates make for fantastic scene partners. Victor’s sly sensuality and Wilde’s electric brazenness are perfect foils as Alex’s most significant others, while Arnett’s soulful sadness as Alex’s less accomplished brother and Hank Azaria’s lacerating self-obsession as Alex’s overzealous father offer their own clues to how Alex became who he is. Alex remains central throughout, though, leaving Pascal to do a lot of heavy lifting to make something whole out of the scattered pieces of Alex’s life. For better or worse, Pascal holds back, giving a performance so subtle that he almost seems to sleepwalk through it at times. Yet the layers he brings to that subtlety keep the performance compelling. In Pascal’s hands, even the slightest change in expression signals a seismic emotional shift, exactly what the film needs to work in the way Gilroy intends. But even with all of Pascal’s considerable charisma, Alex isn’t terribly interesting. His belief system is a blank slate, his emotional issues are standard-issue former-child-prodigy baggage, and his main motivation is so backgrounded for so long that it feels tacked on, despite how Gilroy and Pascal increasingly hint at it throughout the film.

If “Behemoth!” was meant to be a character study, the fact that Alex likely feels closer to himself at the end of the film than he did at the start while the audience feels no such proximity is a massive miscalculation. It is a relief that “Behemoth!” turns out to be so much more than just a character study. In its exploration of music’s power in cinema, it stands as a unique, compelling, handsomely crafted film.

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THE CAST – Vladimir Vulević, Agathe Bonitzer & Birte Schnöink

THE TEAM – Angela Schanelec (Director/Writer)

THE RUNNING TIME – 93 Minutes

Thomas (Vladimir Vulević, drolly withdrawn) doesn’t know it yet, but his world is about to be turned upside down. The forty-year-old construction worker is having a perfectly fine day behind the controls of a crane when he’s summoned to the office after a phone call from his wife. He makes small talk with the office girls about his wife’s work as a kindergarten teacher and what it would feel like to lose a child. He shows them pictures on his phone, since his wife doesn’t pick up when he tries to call. More small talk between the office assistants as we watch Thomas sit, puzzling over what to do about his wife while the construction site still hums outside, despite looking like not much is happening. Smash cut to Thomas’s wife, Carla (Agathe Bonitzer, captivatingly unstable), sitting on a bench. Thomas eventually finds her, and thank God, because once she starts crying, she can’t stop.

Like most (if not all) European art house films, Angela Schanelec’s “My Wife Cries” would have you believe that it is so much more complex than its simple situation/title. On the surface, the film is about a husband caught off guard that his wife has feelings that she doesn’t share with him (she’s been having an emotional affair with a man from a dance class, with whom she was just in a car accident that he didn’t survive). Still, the real subject matter lies in what the characters talk about. Stopping for long stretches so characters can talk about completely unrelated things, like how rare it is to have friends from different generations, or what it really means to fail, or the price of couches, Schanelec’s film fits comfortably in the long line of films about disaffected Europeans philosophizing at each other while plot may or may not happen around them. It has enough quirky bits and strong compositions to keep you hoping something interesting will happen, but it never quite does. Until Thomas, Carla, and their friends start dancing to Leonard Cohen’s “Lover, Lover, Lover” out of nowhere. Oh, those crazy, kooky Europeans; can’t figure out a single thing about how to live a happy life, but they won’t let that stop them from letting loose with the most awkward, unself-conscious dance moves you’ve ever seen.

Schanelec’s direction stands out as the film’s strongest element. Some shots are so still they almost look like freeze frames, while others use movement and deep focus to emphasize life’s absurdity (wait for the brass band). Every single shot is rigorously composed without ever feeling stiflingly airless, a unique trait especially in today’s cinematic landscape. Even her choices about when not to cut often provoke interest, as in the first scene when the camera stays on Thomas absent-mindedly scrolling on his phone while the office girls have a whole conversation without him. Strong as the filmmaking choices are, though, they don’t add all that much substance to the film, just some (much-needed) visual interest.

One topic of discussion for the characters is how words can fill the space between people, which feels instructive as to how to approach the film. But even with that in mind (and accounting for the vagaries of translating for subtitles), the words spoken here don’t sound like things living, breathing human beings would say to each other. Even pretentious college philosophy students aren’t that dull when talking about affairs of the heart, and even though that’s the center of the film’s story, most of the dialogue isn’t even about it. Sure, the screenplay’s discursive nature means everything the characters say is in conversation with the leads’ situation. Still, their conversations go so far afield that it becomes an endurance test, even if this style of film is your thing. Scene after interminable scene, the characters prattle on about anything but what they should be talking about, with precious little entertainment value to compensate, making this one of the longest 93-minute films you will ever see. For those with an affinity for this kind of film, it adds nothing new or interesting to the genre; it’s been done many times before, with more intrigue and better scripts. For those of us who don’t, it’s a tedious, meandering bore.

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THE CAST – Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett, Ismael Cruz Córdova & Brady Wagner

THE TEAM – Michael Showalter (Director) & Nick Antosca (Writer)

THE RUNNING TIME – 117 Minutes

“There is no light where we’re going,” warns Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway). “Only darkness ahead.” The words, from a document titled “So Be It” on a monogrammed USB drive hidden in the author’s writing desk, appear to be as much about her apparent autobiography as about “Verity”, the film about her. Adapted from the best-selling novel of the same name by Colleen Hoover, the moody thriller marks a departure from the author’s typical romances. Not that Hoover’s romances are all sunshine and rainbows, dealing as they do with relationships between people whom social mores dictate should not be together. While it still deals with a taboo-busting affair, the tone and perspective of “Verity” mark a notable shift from Hoover’s usual style, with a self-consciously dark, arch tone that wants to engulf the reader in its twisted worldview. How twisted “Verity” actually is will be a matter of great debate, given how ultimately tame much of it feels. The film adaptation plays out like a good girl doing her best “Gone Girl” impression, reaching for signifiers of “dark”, “twisted”, feminist erotic thrillers without a full understanding of the darkness of that worldview. It’s a sheep in wolf’s clothing, desperate to make you believe in its villainy but fundamentally unable to do so convincingly.

We gain access to Verity’s autobiography through Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), a struggling author whose work has received good notices but little commercial success. All that changes when her publisher brings her in for a mysterious meeting about a ghostwriting gig for an injured author, which turns out to be an offer she can’t refuse: to finish the next entries in Verity’s “The Noble Virtues” series. She’s nervous about being able to get into Verity’s headspace to convincingly write in her voice, but is appeased when Verity’s husband, Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), who just so happened to assist her in the aftermath of an accident on her way to the publisher meeting, informs her that not only is Verity a fan of her work, but that the gig comes with access to all of Verity’s notes during a stay at their remote Vermont compound. Upon her arrival, Lowen is taken aback by Verity’s near-comatose state; she can neither move nor speak, requiring round-the-clock care. As she works through Verity’s notes, Lowen finds the aforementioned autobiography, in which the author admits to dangerous desires and abhorrent actions, and she starts to lose sympathy for the immobile author. As her desire to comfort the sympathetic Jeremy crosses the boundaries of impropriety, Lowen becomes more and more convinced that Verity may not be as helpless as she seems. But is what she’s seeing real, or is her deep dive into Verity’s psyche causing her to break from reality?

Director Michael Showalter knows the work that has influenced “Verity” and dutifully constructs his film in part as a knowing homage to other Hitchcockian woman-in-peril thrillers, with decidedly mixed results. The sleek surfaces of Jim Frohna’s cinematography give the film an appealing look, especially once it reaches the Crawfords’ gorgeous estate. Their home is one of the year’s great production-design achievements, with rounded rooms, floor-to-ceiling windows, and impossibly long hallways. The retro stylization of Verity’s office and the incorporation of natural elements like rocks and tree trunks into the house’s design say a lot about the characters without the need for exposition, and they provide a feast for the eyes. Thanks to Volker Bertelmann’s pastiche-y score, the film is just as much of a treat for the ears, evoking the best of classic Hollywood composers like Max Steiner and Bernard Herrmann. It’s often fun enough to trick you into thinking the film itself is just as much fun, especially early on. But Showalter, much like Hoover, offers a mere simulacrum of the darkness supposedly at the story’s heart, emphasizing the surface-level pleasures of film noir shadows, posh decor, and beautiful people acting ugly instead of what’s actually going on inside the characters.

The characters have more than enough going on to make them fascinating, but that doesn’t quite come through in the execution. Part of this is by design: Between the over-the-top, more stylistic dialogue given to Verity and Hathaway’s seductively arch delivery, that character pops off the screen, but Lowen and Jeremy, by contrast, just sit there, with drippy dialogue that is meant to sound more naturalistic but mostly just sounds lazily functional. Johnson and Hartnett, two charismatic actors who have shown facility with stylization in the past, wither and die on screen trying to give these lifeless characters some energy. It’s a thankless job, since Verity looms so large over the film’s story, but considering we’re meant to see them both as potentially unreliable narrators (Hartnett’s Jeremy is obviously hiding something from his first appearance; Lowen has a habit of mixing her dead mother’s Xanax with wine), there’s precious little that actually draws you towards the characters. Stuck with only the most obvious, broadest emotions to play, both actors are sapped of the uniqueness that makes them such watchable performers. Johnson can still knock out a deliciously off-kilter line reading, but Lowen is such a cipher that she can’t make her interesting, delivering a wan, personality-free performance that only comes to life during an extended erotic fantasy that ultimately feels like a pale imitation of the actress’s past work.

Hathaway, too, riffs on her past work, with more significant success. Taking the heightened physicality and stylized voicework of her performance in William Oldroyd’s “Eileen” and dialing them up to eleven, Hathaway is sensational, weaponizing her velvety voice to give the copious voiceover a spicy kick that elevates the whole film. Whenever Hathaway takes center stage, “Verity” is an absolute hoot, reveling in the character’s wickedness while never condescending to her; the revelations contained in Verity’s autobiography are shocking for saying all the things that women are never supposed to say about motherhood, marriage, and sexual attraction, but Hathaway lets just enough humanity shine through so that audiences can sympathize with her, at least up to a point. 2026 has been a watershed year for the actress, with a new film in theaters seemingly every other month, but Verity may be her crowning achievement, a fully fleshed-out characterization that never loses sight of the burning humanity underneath all that purple prose.

Hathaway is having a blast, and it’s likewise a blast to watch her. The film around her, though, isn’t nearly as much fun, mostly because of the source material. Not the story itself, which contains enough twists and turns to keep you guessing right up until its edge-of-your-seat finale, but where it places its emphasis and how it maintains its tone. When the story shifts to Verity’s writing, the heightened tone makes you lean in; the stylized voiceover makes it feel fresh and exciting. When the story shifts to Lowen’s perspective, though, it flattens out and becomes more generic.

Hoover loves her tawdry details and sordid scenarios, but those presented here (namely Lowen’s connection with Verity’s son and her growing sexual attraction to Jeremy) feel like window dressing, meant to provoke a reaction rather than say anything meaningful about the characters or their situation. Since “Verity” is a thriller, providing thrills to the audience is part of its mandate, but compared to the more genuinely provocative content of Verity’s storyline, everything with Lowen and Jeremy feels uninspired, and the attempts to juice up those scenes cinematically don’t work, only calling attention to how much they lack genuine excitement and interest.

While “Verity” is ultimately too dull to truly provoke, Hathaway is sharp enough to cut through the mediocre muck surrounding her, giving her sections of the film a winningly wicked wink. She’s reason enough to see the film, even if the rest of it leaves a lot to be desired.

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