Iris (Naomi Watts), a novelist and creative writing teacher, has been asked to take in the dog owned by her best friend, Walter (Bill Murray), who died of suicide.

“This is what Walter wanted,” insists Barbara (Noma Dumezweni), Walter’s third (and last) wife.

There’s no proof of this and, to be honest, it’s slightly sus that Barbara doesn’t like dogs, but Iris reluctantly agrees.

She heads to the shelter to collect Apollo. We already know from Walter’s colorful description of stumbling across Apollo in the park after a run that the dog is “giant.” But we don’t realize just how giant. The camera pans briefly to a cute pittie curled in the back of a pen. Nope. Not Apollo. Then out he comes—a magnificent, massive Great Dane. And not just any Great Dane, an absolute unit, weighing more than 150 pounds.

Did I mention that Iris lives in a small, rent-controlled Greenwich Village apartment?

A story like this could’ve gone many ways, including broad comedy, but that’s not the kind of movie The Friend is.

You see, Apollo is grieving, much like Iris is. He stares at her—or more accurately, beyond her—with big, mournful eyes that, frankly, resemble Bill Murray’s. (Although in Apollo’s case, one eye is blue and one is brown—the David Bowie of dogs.)

Although Barbara assured Iris that Apollo was well-trained and knew to stay off the furniture, he makes a beeline for the bed, where he splays out dejectedly. He won’t eat. He won’t play. He won’t use the elevator (at least Iris is getting her cardio). And he won’t let Iris on her own bed.

The only things that seem to give him comfort are Walter’s old Columbia University sweatshirt and having someone read to him, which Walter apparently did a lot.

Watching The Friend I couldn’t help but to notice that, although it’s mostly populated with women, it doesn’t pass The Bechdel Test, as all these women are always discussing Walter.

The film is a bit retro in that regard—Walter was supposed to have been a literary giant, and he’s constantly quoted, celebrated, and forgiven for his many sins, which include affairs and a grown daughter, Val (Sarah Pidgeon), that he just recently introduced to the world.

And get this, Val and Iris are writing a book together called Letters which is, you guessed it, a collection of Walter’s letters. Although the film is based on Sigrid Nunez’s acclaimed novel of the same name, which came out in 2018, the whole feels very 20th century.

Hell, even Apollo is male. (I kid, I kid.)

Despite my concern with its Great Man Theory approach to storytelling, I did like The Friend quite a bit. It’s an example of my favorite genre—Manhattan intellectuals in life and love, dressed in lots of wool blends and tweed, as seen in the films of Woody Allen, Nicole Holofcener, and Noah Baumbach.

The film is very self-consciously literary—everyone’s working on a novel; they have a flashback to Walter giving a reading; and Samuel Beckett is quoted liberally.

Another tiny gripe: Walter is supposed to have been a genius, always dicey to pull off in a film, and we can mostly believe it. Murray, who is mostly seen in flashbacks as Walter, has that wise, rumpled, larger-than-life way about him that allows you to believe he was both a revered writer and notorious lady’s man. But some of the passages read from his books don’t pass the literary smell test. Would a literary giant truly say that someone was “sadly bereft”? (As an editor, I’d stet the word sadly and write REDUNDANT in red caps.)

But enough about Walter. This movie really is about Iris and Apollo, who slowly come to rely on each other. And kudos to Bing, who plays Apollo (and his trainers, I suppose—although clearly this dog is a natural). This is one of the best dog performances I’ve ever seen. The dog truly seems sad, then less so as he and Iris get closer, and then, in the final scenes, he limps! (Daniel Dog Lewis anyone?)

The central conflict of the film is that Iris isn’t allowed to have Apollo, or any dog, in her apartment. It’s hard enough to stow away a Chihuahua or a Yorkie. Try sneaking a Great Dane into your apartment. And since her apartment is rent controlled, her landlord is itching to get her out of there so he can jack up the rent.

There’s a cute subplot involving a kindly superintendent (Felix Solis) who keeps firmly telling Iris she needs to get rid of Apollo, even though he secretly loves dogs, too.

And that’s pretty much it. The film has pleasingly low stakes. Will Iris be able to reclaim her own bed? Will she start her novel again? Will she be forced out of her apartment? Will Walter’s second wife (Carla Gugino) come to accept Val, who was conceived very shortly after they split?

And since I’m whacking the film for its male-centric plot, let me give it credit for something borderline radical. Iris is in her late 40s, or so. Lives alone. Has no husband. And the film is okay with that. I’m loath to admit that, at one point, when she visits the office of a therapist (Tom McCarthy), I thought, “Could he be a love interest?”

Shame on me. This is not that kind of film. Iris has one love interest in The Friend: a big, beautiful, sad-eyed dog.

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It’s the near future and resources in the “New World”—distinct from the barely habitable Old World (i.e. earth)—are scarce and childbirth is only granted to an elite few. If a couple wants a baby, they need approval from the government and must submit to something called an Assessment.

When we meet Mia (Elizabeth Olsen), a botanist trying to grow edible plantlife in her greenhouse, and Aaryan (Himesh Patel), a bioengineer trying to recreate animal life as virtual pets, they seem the perfect candidates for parenthood. Yes, their home is cold and remote—but that seems to be a thing in the New World: There are virtually no children. No real pets (the pets were all unceremoniously euthanized to save resources). And no foliage, beyond what Mia has growing in her greenhouse. Nonetheless, Mia and Aaryan seem loving and stable.

Then one morning, the stern looking Virginia (Alicia Vikander) shows up at their door. She’s their assessor. She immediately takes control of the house—asking Mia and Aaryan probing questions about their sex life and their relationship. She complains about her living quarters, so they give her the master bedroom. Curled up together in the twin bed intended for Virginia, they begin to have sex, only to notice Virginia lurking outside the doorway, watching them.

“I need to assess all aspects of your relationship,” Virginia says matter-of-factly. “Just imagine I’m not here.”

Things get stranger the next morning at breakfast when Virginia starts grinding salt crystals with a spoon and laughing. Then she begins banging her bowl against the table, instead of eating the food—oh, wait, she’s acting like a toddler.

But she had never told them she was going to morph into toddler—it just sort of happened.

How are Virginia and Aaryan to respond?

The thing is, babies are cute for a reason. Virginia is a grown woman, throwing tantrums. Must Mia conjure up maternal feelings toward this strange woman? And are she and Aaryan supposed to give Virginia the kind of physical affection one might give a small child? Won’t that get…inappropriate?

Aaryan, the more patient of the two, tells Mia to stay calm, even when Virginia is having fits. We signed up for this, he reminds her.

But I didn’t ask for this, she says.

The Assessment, like many a sci-fi before it, is about how far people will go to have, or save, a child. It has a creepily airless and insular quality that adds to the sense of dread. Director Fleur Fortune does a particularly good job of occasionally filming Mia and Aaryan through cracks in the door, to indicate they are always being watched. And then there’s that mysterious flashback (flashforward?) of a child drowning.

Things go slightly off the rails when Virginia throws a dinner party, meant to rattle Aaryan and Mia. A lot of complicated backstory is thrown at us—one of the guests was apparently in a relationship with Aaryan; another was a boss that Mia slept with—and frankly I couldn’t follow it all. (It does, at least, give Minnie Driver a chance to gleefully ham it up as a New World Karen.) There’s also an eerily self-possessed child, about 10 or so, in attendance. Her parents apparently passed the Assessment.

The Assessment is a provocative and sometimes squirm-inducingly funny sci-fi that gives its three leads lots of juicy material to chew on, with Vikander, in particular, turning her Virginia into a compellingly inscrutable, but not entirely unsympathetic, antagonist.

It will have you asking how far you would go to get a baby—and if you and your partner could pass Virginia’s sadistic test.

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I wanted to get that out of the way right off the bat because there’s so much uncertainty surrounding this year’s Academy Awards. Zoe Saldana is also almost definitely going to win Best Supporting Actress for her role in Emilia Pérez, unless her win is derailed by the controversy surrounding the film (more on that in a sec). And I’m feeling relatively comfortable picking Demi Moore as our Best Actress winner for The Substance.

But Best Picture? Best Actor? Best Director? A lot of these big categories are thrillingly up in the air. (You might even say their outcome is A Complete Unknown…*ducks.*)

It’s been a long time since we’ve had an “awards season” (one of the most cursed phrases known to man) so unpredictable. Just when you think you know which way the wind is blowing—Adrien Brody as Best Actor for his stellar work in The Brutalist, say—along comes a change in direction, like Timothée Chalamet getting an eleventh hour Screen Actors Guild nod for A Complete Unknown.

On top of that, there have been the aforementioned controversies. Some were clearly drummed up by competing studios (the disclosure that The Brutalist employed AI to zhuzz up Adrien Brody’s Hungarian accent), while others happened more organically: A journalist unearthed offensive tweets by Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón, the first trans woman ever to be nominated for Best Actress. Even before that, the film was controversial, with an increasingly loud online backlash for what many saw as its broad caricature of Mexican culture. (Not for nothing, the film’s director, Jacques Audiard, is French, and there are no Mexican actors in the main roles.)

Before those controversies emerged, Emilia Pérez was a veritable lock for Best International Film (its 13 nominations were most in this year’s field and made it the most nominated non-English film in Oscar history). Now it leaves the door open for an upset.

So, yeah, lots to chew on here. I’m going to do my best here with my predictions, but don’t put any money on my guesses. Except for Kieran. With him, go all in.

BEST PICTURE
Who will win: Anora
Who might win: Conclave, The Brutalist
Who should win: Anora
Final thoughts: As recently as two weeks ago, I was sure The Brutalist was going to win this thing. Then Anora won both the PGA and the DGA, making it a clear frontrunner. But, with the preferential ballot in play—meaning voters rank their choices—a much liked (if not quite loved) consensus pick could still snag the award. When you look at it that way, the universally loved Conclave—or hell, even Wicked or A Complete Unknown—could score an upset win.

BEST ACTOR
Who will win: Adrien Brody
Who might win: Timothée Chalamet
Who should win: Adrien Brody
Final thoughts: Chalamet was very good in A Complete Unknown and he’s been on an all-out charm offensive since the film’s release, hosting SNL (and serving as the musical guest), showing up to a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest, wearing some fly (and, let’s face it, some fugly) fashion, and all-in-all being the happy-go-lucky goofball that he is on his press tour. Will his winning personality, combined with the (nothingburger, in my opinion) AI controversy propel him to a win? I still think Brody’s performance was just too good to deny, so I’m sticking with my pick.

BEST ACTRESS
Who will win: Demi Moore
Who might win: Mikey Madison
Who should win: Fernanda Torres from I’m Still Here
Final thoughts: Moore sealed her fate when she gave a stirring acceptance speech at the Golden Globes. Yes, she’s quite good in The Substance and her winning would be the feel-good moment of the Oscars, but if we’re being honest here, she gives the fifth best performance in this group (which also includes Cynthia Erivo and Gascón).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Who will win: Kieran Culkin
Who might win: Tom Wambsgans?
Who should win: Edward Norton
Final thoughts: I wish this race had been a little more contested. Norton is a heartbreaking Pete Seeger in A Complete Unknown and Jeremy Strong is riveting as that snake Roy Cohn in The Apprentice. But I can’t begrudge Culkin his win. A Real Pain is a special movie and he is its beating heart.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Who will win: Zoe Saldana
Who might win: Ariana Grande
Who should win: Zoe Saldana
Final thoughts: It was wonderful to see Saldana, an actress who has sometimes been buried under a sea of green makeup and CGI in films like Guardians of the Galaxy and Avatar, show the full range of her talents here. I think she has accrued enough momentum and good will over the years that her association with the now tainted Emilia Pérez won’t derail her win.

BEST DIRECTOR
Who will win: Sean Baker
Who might win: Brady Corbet
Who should win: Sean Baker
Final thoughts: I admire how Corbet made a searing American epic with a limited budget in The Brutalist—and I really loved that film—but Baker has been releasing banger after banger since 2015, and Anora is arguably his best film yet. It’s his time.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Who will win: A Real Pain
Who might win: Anora
Who should win: Anora
Final thoughts: Most prognosticators are picking Anora here so I’m deviating from the pack. I feel like the Oscars are going to want to reward Jesse Eisenberg, who is beloved.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Who will win: Conclave
Who might win: A Complete Unknown
Who should win: Conclave
Final thoughts: I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t love Conclave (although a few are a bit iffy on that surprise ending…I dug it). Feels like its year.

A FEW MORE PREDICTIONS:

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: The Brutalist
BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: I’m Still Here
BEST EDITING: Conclave
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: The Wild Robot
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Porcelain War

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It had all the hallmarks of an Oscar darling. Academy voters love epics, they love history, especially World War II—better still if the film is about the Holocaust. They love films about brilliant, tortured men. And if the film features a haunting, tour-de-force performance from its male lead? Start making room in that trophy case.

Now that I’ve seen The Brutalist, my opinion hasn’t really changed—I still think it’s going win. But it turns out the film is much weirder, more singular, more audacious than I ever expected it to be. For one thing, Corbet breaks his grand-scale film—shot in a stunning, mid-century hi-res technology called VistaVision—into small, sometimes shockingly intimate set pieces. Although it is never boring, its pace is defiantly unhurried. That haunted male lead, played by Adrien Brody? He happens to be a heroin addict, a snob, and a philanderer, among other things. The film is both better than I thought it would be, and less Oscar bait-y, if that makes any sense. It almost made me wonder: Have the Oscar voters seen it?

When we first encounter László Tóth (Brody), he is in the steerage compartment of a ship arriving at Ellis Island. He has broken his nose along the way—or so we’re told (with all due deference to the prodigious beak of Mr. Brody, it’s hard to tell)—which starts him on his path to heroin addiction. He is greeted by his cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who takes him home to live and work in his custom furniture shop, Miller and Sons, just outside of Philadelphia. (“Who’s Miller?” László asks. “I am,” Attila says, explaining that he Americanized his last name. He also invented make believe sons because Americans like “family businesses.”)

Miller and Sons sells sturdy, Shaker style furniture, which László regards with some disdain.

“What do you think?” Attila asks.

“Of the furniture?” sniffs László. “It’s not very beautiful.”

As we are soon to find out, before the war broke out and he was imprisoned in a concentration camp, László was a rising-star architect in Budapest, a progenitor of the Brutalist style. (The massive, minimalist structures represent permanence to László in a fragile world.) Now Attila has agreed to let him live in a spare room, adjacent to the workshop, as long as he helps out with the custom builds. Attila’s beautiful, gentile wife, Audrey (Emma Laird), isn’t super keen on this new tenant, and will ultimately be the thing that comes between the cousins. (Attila represents one choice available to the European immigrant Jew—assimilation as a survival tactic.)

László has a wife of his own, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), whom he assumed died in the war. When Attila tells him that she’s alive but stuck in Europe with László’s niece (Raffey Cassidy), László collapses in relief and joy. But getting Jewish refugees to the U.S. is challenging, bordering on impossible. So he must carry on with the real possibility he’ll never see her again.

After his falling out with Attila, László takes a menial job with a construction crew where he is reintroduced to captain of industry Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce, never better). They had met before, when László and Attila had built him a custom library, a surprise gift from his son (Joe Alwyn). Van Buren hated the library, designed by László with remarkable retractable shelves, and threw László and Attila out of the house. (He was also bothered that László had brought a good friend to help with the construction who happened to be Black.)

Now he has returned to László, a bit sheepishly. He has discovered that László was, in fact, a famous architect—a man of great distinction. Van Buren would never admit that he didn’t like or understand the library—he protests that his mother was sick and dying and he was too upset to fully appreciate it, but he wants to hire László for a job. He’ll be building a massive community center/gym/chapel on his property, allegedly in honor of his late mother but actually a monument to himself, and he wants László to design it. And thus begins the precarious relationship between the two men. Van Buren claims that he is intellectually stimulated by his talks with László, but he’s also quick to denigrate his tattered clothes and broken English. He’s seething with jealousy over László’s brilliance, but he’s repulsed by him, as well. And he’s a man who like to lord his wealth and power over everyone who meets. As you can guess, things will not go smoothly between them.

Eventually, Van Buren puts László in touch with a lawyer who can arrange to bring Erzsébet and his niece to Pennsylvania. And that’s the end of the first half. Yes, there’s an intermission in this three-and-a-half-hour film, which I welcomed (and I didn’t even need to pee). It’s nice to be able exhale and gather your thoughts a bit before the second half begins.

The second half focuses on László’s relationship with Erzsébet, strained for a variety of reasons, and the various roadblocks he encounters building Van Buren’s massive vanity project. (Art and commerce have never made for good bedfellows—and when you throw in László’s status as an enigmatic Jewish outsider, things are further complicated.)

The malevolence of both Van Buren and his feckless son comes into high relief in the second half—perhaps a bit too unsubtly.

The film’s epilogue, set in 1980, is another audacious choice as László, now an old man, doesn’t even speak in it. But it’s there where we come to understand the particular choices László made in his creation of Van Buren’s massive center. It’s not a surprise ending, per se, but one that adds a layer of depth and poignancy to all we’ve just seen.

The Brutalist isn’t just the front runner for Best Picture; Adrien Brody will likely get an Oscar for playing László, his second time for depicting a Holocaust victim. Look, the guy has a face built for tragedy—expressive and searching and gaunt, like a hollowed out Buster Keaton. And he’s captivating here, depicting all of László’s contradictions—his vanity, his brilliance, his desperation.

I’m not quite prepared to call The Brutalist a great American masterpiece just yet—I’ll need to see it a couple more times to make that call—but it is quite extraordinary. A deeply personal story told on a grand scale. A story about American monsters and American heroes—and how those lines can sometimes blur. If it does win Best Picture, the voters will have accidentally gotten it right.

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“Pressure is a privilege.” —Tennis great Billie Jean King
“Pressure makes diamonds.” —General George S. Patton Jr.
“Pressure sucks.” —Me, right now

I’m sitting on my couch feeling anxious, flushed, and slightly nauseated.

A bout with COVID? A nasty case of the flu? Nope, I’m just watching my beloved Ravens in the playoffs.

Here’s the crazy thing about the NFL playoffs: Every year, all you hope is for your team to get there and then, if the sports gods are willing, that they go on to win the Super Bowl. And never once, as you wish and hope and pray, do you think to yourself, “And if they DO make the playoffs, I will be a miserable wreck and in a state of complete and utter misery the entire time.”

Take Saturday’s game against Pittsburgh. It started out pretty comfortably. As the Ravens went up 21-0 at halftime, I actually felt some tension release from my body. We got this.

Then at some point in the third quarter, Pittsburgh QB Russell Wilson found a groove. He wasn’t just dinking and dunking his way down the field. He was getting big chunks of yards on majestic, accurate passes that landed perfectly in the outstretched hands of Steelers’ receivers. The offense had found a flow.

Suddenly, it was 21-7. Then the Ravens answered right back on a Derrick Henry 44-yard scamper and I yelled, “IN YOUR FACE!” at the TV screen.

Then Pittsburgh scored again—and quickly. I had barely blinked and it was 28-14.

Dear reader, I’d like to say that I was calm and realistic in this moment. We were up 14 points at the start of the fourth quarter. We had demonstrated that we could score on their defense. We have two of the best players of all time—Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry—in purple and black.

But in reality, what I thought was: Oh my God, if we lose this game after being up 21-zip at halftime, it will be the most upsetting, depressing, demoralizing sports loss since the infamous Billy Cundiff game against the Patriots (IYKYK).

Indeed, it wasn’t until the clock showed all zeroes that I was able to unclench my shoulders (and various other body parts) and breathe freely.

But was I jubilant? Ecstatic? High-fiving strangers in the street? No. I was upset that we had let them back in, given them hope. The Steelers had outscored us 14-7 in the second half. Did it reveal a softness in our secondary? A lack of killer instinct? Were we trending in the wrong direction?

If you had told me before the game that we would win 28-14, I would’ve been thrilled. But the pessimist in me worried. (I also worried about Lamar’s tender ribs. Love you as a runner, my dude, but stay safe out there.)

The post-season anxiety is always there, but it’s much more pronounced when your team is favored. Every time I hear some pundit picking the Ravens as Super Bowl champs (it’s a sexy pick right now), I scream, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” at my screen.

It’s not just that the Ravens are good and have something to prove, it’s the Lamar of it all.

Talking to my friend Travis, I confessed that I wanted the Ravens to win for the team, for Baltimore, for Harbaugh. But mostly I wanted them to win for Lamar.

The idea that the only way you can cement your legacy is by winning a championship is one of the more asinine tropes in sports—and yet it persists.

Despite the two (soon to be three) MVPs (don’t screw this up, AP sports writers), the all-time quarterback rushing record, the dazzling statistics year after year, Lamar still apparently has something to prove. The sentiment expressed over and over again is that he can’t win the big one. (Never mind the fact that we were one Zay Flowers goal line fumble away from being just three points down late in the third quarter of last year’s AFC championship game against the Chiefs.)

I want that monkey off Lamar’s back. I want Lamar to silence the naysayers, the doubters, the haters. Yes, I want this for Lamar more than I want it for myself.

Nonetheless, to quote Stanley Tucci in The Devil Wears Prada, I will gird my loins and watch Sunday’s game against the Bills. Was I hoping for Denver? Yes, yes, I was. (Especially since everyone will see this as some sort of referendum on Lamar vs. Josh Allen, even though Lamar already beat Allen earlier this year and his stats are demonstrably better in virtually every category. Aaargh.)

“To be the best you’ve got to beat the best” —Annoying people
“I prefer a weak opponent, thanks” —Me

Come Sunday, I will sit on my couch. I will pray to the football gods. I will wear the same outfit I wore last Saturday. I will have my throat in my mouth. My blood pressure will reach unhealthy levels. I will be in agony.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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If you’re not familiar with the phrase, it’s a Gen Z invention that argues that if two adults want to engage in all sorts of freaky-deaky behavior, let them! Role playing, handcuffs, leather. Whatever you’re into is cool as long as it’s consensual. Don’t kink shame, bro!

It’s important that this concept is a product of the TikTok generation because in Babygirl, Romy (Nicole Kidman), the imposing owner of an international shipping company, essentially kink shames herself. She is married to the lovely, and frankly hot, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), who is a director of Broadway plays. The film starts with the two of them having what seems to be tender, mutually satisfying sex. But not so fast. After they are done, Romy retreats to a private room where she masturbates to an S&M video. This is clearly a ritual for her. She gets off on being humiliated, dominated. At one point, she attempts to express this desire to Jacob by asking if he can cover her face with a pillow when they’re having sex. He can’t do it. “I feel like a villain,” he sighs. He’s a generous, completely evolved man—exactly what she doesn’t want in a lover.

Enter the hot new intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson) who isn’t some S&M authority, like Christian Grey. He’s more of an extreme empath, who naturally intuits what other people want. He’s also a card-carrying member of the “Don’t kink shame, bro” generation.

So Samuel almost instantly figures out that Romy wants to be dominated. He’s attracted to her, wants to be with her, but also wants to please her—it’s in his nature.

So he starts ordering her around. At first, she balks: This is highly inappropriate. She’s the big boss, he’s a lowly intern. But, of course, she’s turned on, too. At an office party, he sends her a glass of milk, and watches her keenly from the bar, smirking. She hesitates and then drinks it down in one gulp, much to the astonishment of onlookers. “Good girl,” he whispers to her at the end of the party.

They commence an affair, with Samuel continuing to boss her around. The film makes it clear—this is not some anti-feminist fantasy where Samuel needs to cut the powerful Romy down to size. This is about him getting off on getting her off.

Both actors are wonderful here—Dickinson toggles between cocky den master and sheepish pupil. A few times he giggles because the scenarios are so ridiculous, but he’s trying here! As for Kidman, she has become one of our most fearless actresses. Maybe this was me beauty shaming (did I do that right?) but I used to think she had a coldness about her, an aloofness that made her unrelatable. How wrong I was. She fully commits here, allowing us to see the rawness of Romy’s desire and her shame. In fact, that cold exterior—perfect for her CEO character—makes her vulnerability, the overwhelming intensity of her desires that much more moving.

The funny thing about Babygirl is that, despite its taboo subject, it’s actually a very sweet film. Samuel is sweet. Jacob is almost painfully sweet. Romy’s two teenage daughters are good to her—even the ostensibly rebellious one. Now can we all stop kink shaming and get along?

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1. Anora

Pretty Woman but make it indie. A sex worker gets swept off her feet by the happy-go-lucky son of a Russian oligarch. Briefly, we allow ourselves to get carried away by their silly and sexy romance. Then the parents intervene, a group of (only semi-competent) Russian gangsters enter the scene, the Russian Prince Charming turns out to be a bit of a dud, and we find out just how feisty our heroine really is. Directed by Sean Baker, the Shakespeare of sex workers, reprobates, and loveable losers, and featuring a star-making turn by Mikey Madison in the title role.

2. Conclave

Director Edward Berger brings us the most audaciously entertaining film of the year. The pope dies and the cardinals are placed in seclusion—a conclave—to select their new leader. Egos run amok, battle lines are drawn, and everyone’s ambition rises to the surface. Ralph Fiennes is impeccable, as usual, as the cardinal in charge of the whole thing—trying to separate the righteous from the power-hungry. The twist at the end is satisfying, if a bit ridiculous. Pay close attention to the nuns.

3. Thelma

When 93-year-old Thelma (June Squibb, perfection) gets tricked by scammers, she takes matters into her own hands, inspired by her restless spirit and her love of Mission Impossible films. Her reluctant partner in crime is Ben (the late Richard Roundtree, wonderful), who tags along and tries to quell her more dangerous impulses. Meanwhile, her frantic family—including her slightly dim and doting grandson, Daniel (Fred Hechinger)—chases after her. But she doesn’t want to be rescued, she’s having the time of her life. And so are we.

4. A Real Pain

Ostensibly a film about a pair of cousins (Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) traveling to Poland to see the hometown of their grandmother who survived the Holocaust, Eisenberg’s film is actually about how we manage to live in a world full of suffering. Most of us compartmentalize, adapt, deny. But what if someone feels everything a little too deeply? That’s Culkin’s Benji. His outsized emotions manage to be the perfect foil to Eisenberg’s well-tempered repression. We watch the cousins fumble toward a mutual understanding and see Benji interact with the world—in turns annoying, delighting, and unsettling everyone he encounters.

5. A Different Man

Edward (Sebastian Stan) has Proteus syndrome, aka Elephant Man’s disease, and lives a quiet life of desperation. His beautiful new neighbor (Renate Reinsve) shows him kindness and he briefly misunderstands her intentions. Her rejection sends him spiraling—eventually to a doctor who claims to have a cure. He emerges a new man, a handsome one, who actually begins a tentative romance with the neighbor. But his world—and worldview—are disrupted when another man (Adam Pearson) with the exact same affliction arrives on the scene. This man has a joie de vivre—he charms the world with his friendliness and openness; he’s a lesson about embracing life in the form of a doppelganger. This quirky, smart, and slightly off-kilter film from Aaron Schmiberg is reminiscent of the early collaborations between Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman.

6. Emilia Pérez

Like nothing you’ve ever seen. A Mexican drug lord (enthralling Karla Sofia Gascon, in a dual role) recruits an overworked and underpaid lawyer (Zoe Saldana, never better) to arrange for him to get a sex change and start a new life. Once she has the surgery, she becomes a formidable but nurturing philanthropist who helps people find loved ones who died in the drug wars. But she pines for her two children so arranges to have them come live with her, along with her “widowed” wife (Selena Gomez), under the pretense that she’s the drug kingpin’s long lost sister. How long can she keep this charade up? Did I mention that Jacques Audiard’s film is a rock opera? I loved every cockamamie second of it.

7. The Beast

A sci-fi love story, of sorts, with three distinct chapters. In the framing device, set in the future, a woman named Gabrielle (Lea Seydoux, mesmerizing as ever) fears undergoing a process that “purifies” her DNA by conjuring and then eradicating memory of her past lives. She meets and is instantly drawn to a man named Louis (George MacKay) who shares her reservations about the process.

In a flashback to the turn of the 20th century, she’s a pianist and dollmaker who meets Louis at a party, where she confides in him that she has a dark cloud of dread hanging over her. In the middle memory, set in contemporary times, Louis is, shockingly, a deadly incel, modeled after Elliot Rodger. (Here, director Bertrand Bonello seems to be making a statement about the isolation and difficulty of real intimacy in modern society.) In the final chapter, we wait to see if she and Louis will undergo the treatment, thus losing their past-life connection. What does it all mean Honestly, I’m not sure, but I was absolutely riveted.

7. Will & Harper

Sure, it was jokey and gimmicky, not the kind of serious documentary that will win awards, but no film this year moved me more than this one, in which Will Ferrell takes a cross country trip to get reacquainted with his old best friend who has transitioned and become a woman. The film is generous, open-hearted, curious, and incredibly funny, much like Ferrell himself. It felt like the exact right film at the exact right time.

9. Challengers

Why aren’t there more films about tennis? Not only is the sport itself cinematic—all that thwacking and sweating and skidding across the court—it’s a showdown between two people, the ultimate war of wills. Ingeniously, Luca Guadagnino made his tennis film about two best friends (Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor) turned rivals who are both in love with the same woman, Tashi Donaldson (Zendaya). A threesome of sorts plays out off the court—it’s possible the young men are a little in love with each other, too. But on the court, they’re playing for nothing less than Tashi’s heart.

10. The Apprentice

Films are empathy machines, as Roger Ebert famously said. Which is why I was afraid to watch Ali Abbasi’s film about Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) and his Svengali-like mentorship of Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan). It’s true, young Trump seems a little sheepish here, a little too eager to get out from under his father’s shadow, and almost something resembling sweet. But as Cohn teaches him the three rules of business combat: attack, attack, attack; admit nothing and deny everything; and claim victory no matter the outcome—he creates a monster in his own image.

Trump’s star surpasses his own and suddenly, the rapacious narcissist we all know emerges, treating the man who invented him like a mere rung on the ladder to success. Both performances are excellent—we watch Stan slowly become Trump, mannerisms and all, and Strong actually makes us pity one of the worst humans who ever lived.

Runners up (in alphabetical order): Ex Husbands, Good One, Hit Man, Janet Planet, Love Lies Bleeding, Messy, My Old Ass

*As of writing this, I had not yet seen a few highly praised films, including The Brutalist, Nickel Boys, and Hard Truths.

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The rumors go something like this: Twenty years ago, director James Mangold made Walk the Line about the life and times of Johnny Cash, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter. It was a critical and box office hit—Witherspoon even won the Best Actress Oscar. The movie was as traditional as it gets, starting with Johnny’s abusive childhood on a farm, and going on to depict his musical ambitions, his chaotic love life, his struggles with drugs and alcohol, and his career setbacks and triumphs.

Indeed, the film was so by-the-numbers, it prompted a parody, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which was both an uncanny simulacrum and a brutal takedown. There’s nothing like a good parody to make you realize how cliched a particular genre really is and once Walk Hard lifted the curtain its tropes, it seemed that the traditional biopic was doomed.

Not so fast! Biopics have merely evolved: Recent ones have largely eschewed the Wikipedia-style retelling of a biography, instead homing in on a particularly illuminating period of the subject’s life. I think that’s a good development, as it forces the filmmaker to reflect on what they think is important about the subject and why this pivotal time frame matters.

It’s fair to say that A Complete Unknown, Mangold’s new biopic of Bob Dylan, exists in a post Walk Hard world. We don’t have hazy flashbacks to Dylan’s childhood in Minnesota; there’s no framing device of present day Dylan, old and craggy, reflecting on his life. Instead, the film focuses on the period when young Bobby Dylan arrived in Greenwich Village with a guitar and a dream. It ends shortly after the infamous Newport Folk Festival where Dylan scandalized the assembled crowd and organizers by “going electric.” (Damn, America was cute back then.)

That said, there is nothing experimental or avant-garde in the storytelling here. It’s straightforward. Its pleasures come from seeing Timothée Chalamet channel Dylan, from its brilliant supporting cast (particularly Edward Norton as Pete Seeger—more on him in a bit), and from its painstaking recreation of the 1960s folk scene.

Let’s start with Chalamet, because that’s who you’re here to read about. Famously, he does all of his own singing and guitar/harmonica playing in the film—and most of the takes are live, because he wanted to capture Dylan’s rough and raw performance style. Only Dylan can really do justice to Dylan, but Chalamet comes close and his instinct to perform live was spot-on. He nails Dylan’s nasal, mumbly voice and he has his confident magnetism on stage as well as his hooded, cautious presence off of it. (Dylan is the rare celebrity who says he hates fame—and we believe him.) Chalamet seems every inch the brooding, tortured, formidable young talent. And the concert scenes rip.

Young Dylan gravitated to the folk scene, because he was a natural born singer-songwriter and because he idolized Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy). But in many ways, he wasn’t a natural fit. He simply wasn’t earnest enough—everything he did was suffused with irony. And he believed that for something to be beautiful, it also had to be a little bit ugly. He derides his musical—and sometimes romantic—partner Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) for having a voice that’s “too pretty.” “Your songs are like an oil painting at the dentist’s office,” he sneers. Baez correctly calls him an asshole.

The foil to Dylan was Pete Seeger (Edward Norton)—as earnest and irony-free as they come. Pete meets Dylan when the young musician shows up unexpectedly at Woody Guthrie’s hospital room. (This, like many scenes in the film is an amalgamation of actual events.) Guthrie, already deep in the throes of Huntington’s disease, can barely communicate, but he bangs his nightstand with appreciation as Dylan belts out the homage tune, “Song to Woody.” Seeger, too, recognizes that Dylan is a special talent and takes him home to crash at his house for a while.

Seeger is shown as having a wonderful life. His wife is a devoted partner, both personally and professionally. His children are adorable and loving. His home exudes an easy, familial warmth. But he is not the brilliant artist Dylan is. What’s more, he truly believes in the special power of folk music—a simple song, simply told, often with a humanitarian message. Dylan doesn’t outwardly scorn Seeger—he appreciates his talent. But he sees him as a bit of a relic and he finds the music corny. And Norton plays Seeger as sweet and sincere, humbled by Dylan’s talent and a little wounded by his artistic rejection. It’s a heartbreaking performance.

The film also focuses on Dylan’s love life. There are two central women in his life—Baez and Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), a beautiful peace activist who brought a measure of comfort and stability to Dylan’s life, but didn’t get much in return.

It’s funny that this is one of the few films Chalamet has done where he’s a true romantic lead—Call Me By Your Name was a love story, but he was the one doing most of the pining (and he was a literal cannibal in Bones and All so does that really count?). Here, he is the object of desire—withholding, mysterious, creative, and a bit of a dick. Who among us has not fallen for that guy? (Even with the help of a slight prosthetic nose, Chalamet is more handsome than Dylan ever was. But honestly, it was Dylan’s brilliance and elusiveness that made him so alluring. And Chalamet captures those qualities well.)

Mangold is a an exceptionally competent director. You can sit back and know you’re in the hands of a true pro. But he does have a hard time avoiding cliché or facile mash-ups. The Civil Rights movement is merely a tiny backdrop to the film, although Mangold makes it very clear that Black artists approved of the young troubadour. (At least twice he has an established Black blues artist—Odetta, in the wings of the Newport Folk Festival, and the made-up bluesman Jesse Moffett, on the set of Pete Seeger’s public access television show, Rainbow Quest—nod approvingly as Dylan sings.) This strikes me as self-serving, a shorthand for really delving into Dylan’s relationship to Black music and the civil rights movement. And Mangold uses Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook), clearly one of his heroes, as an avatar for artistic rebellion and integrity. (“Track some mud on the carpet,” he advises young Bob.) The pep talks he gives Dylan were likely fabricated.

The heart and soul of the film, though, is that relationship between Dylan and Seeger. And here’s where giving a film focus really does help. Because Norton’s open, searching face will break you. But it also reflects a larger cultural shift, away from a more decorous kind of counterculture, to one that was loud and rebellious and angry.

Do we understand Dylan better after watching A Complete Unknown? A bit. He’s a famously elusive figure (which Todd Hayne’s cleverly tackled in his experimental Dylan biopic, I’m Not There, by giving Dylan several different personas played by different actors). But the film’s biggest thrill is watching the formation of an uncompromising artist and getting a little taste of what it must’ve been like to wander into Gerde’s Folk City on a random night and see a young man in a snap cap who was about to change the world.

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I’m sorry. I know this will upset its legion of fans who have improbably turned Richard Curtis’ twee bit of fluff into an enduring Christmas classic. I can acknowledge it’s not without some merit. Merely juggling all those storylines takes a certain amount of skill. And the acting elevates the material to something almost bearable. When it first came out, I thought it was facile, slick, and shallow. Now I can add maddeningly retrograde to the mix.

It’s remarkable the kind of casual sexism that went unchecked in films that came out in the 21st century. But as is the case with any anthology-style film, some of the storylines are better than others—and a few are nearly…good?

What follows is my official ranking of the Love Actually storylines, from worst to best. This ranking is final and binding. I will accept no phonecalls at this time.

9. That One Guy Who Goes to America
I don’t need to tell you this is the worst storyline. You already know it. I think most people have memory-holed this storyline out of the film. In it, an extremely annoying guy (Kris Marshall) can’t get a girl in England so he tells a friend he simply needs to go to The States where there are hot women everywhere who will love his British accent. His friend tells him this is a terrible idea but he goes any way—and the joke is, he’s right.

When he arrives at a bar in Wisconsin, he’s immediately set upon by a group of beauties (including a young January Jones!) who invite him back to their apartment where—oops—they all sleep naked. Ha, ha, it’s like a porn film fantasy, but it’s real! He triumphantly arrives back in London with a beauty on his arm and—wait for it—he even brought a spare girl for his friend. It’s not outrageously sexist because it’s just a joke! Lighten up, ladies!

8. That Other Guy Who’s in Love With His Friend’s Wife
This might be controversial, as the moment where Mark (Andrew Lincoln) professes his love for Juliet (Keira Knightley) via cue card while her husband and his (alleged) best friend (Chiwetol Ejiofor) sits obliviously upstairs is one of the more iconic scenes in the film. But why? What is cute about that? Falling in love with your best friend’s wife sucks, but why did he need to tell her? (She already figured it out when she saw that he had filmed the wedding like some creepy stalker, with the camera trained exclusively on her.) And why make her a party in his deception? Not only does she lie and say there are carol singers at the door, she runs after Mark and rewards him with a little kiss. This man should not be rewarded for his disloyal, selfish behavior! He’s a bad person!

7. The Step Dad and Cute Kid Who Bond Over the Mystery of Girls
This one feels like a missed opportunity. A stepfather getting closer to his stepson after the death of the child’s mother? Get me a ream of tissues. But all poignancy is immediately wrenched from the scenario when we find out the kid (wee little Thomas Sangster, cute as a button) is not extra sad because his mother died, but because he’s in love with an American girl at school (again, with the American girls? It’s becoming a fetish) who doesn’t know he exists. Stepfather (Liam Neeson) and son bond over how to get the girl—it involves learning to play the drums and then ducking security to chase her through Heathrow, a crime that would probably get him 15 to life in the real world. The moral of the story? If you’re really, really persistent, the girl will come around. Bad moral, Richard Curtis!

6. Laura Linney Lusts After a Hot Co-Worker (Improbably Named Karl)
The best part of this is the little happy dance Laura Linney does right before she thinks she’s about to have sex with her colleague, Karl (Rodrigo Santoro). Also, Karl is stupid hot, despite his name. The worst part is when her boss (Alan Rickman) kind of orders her to hit on Karl. Paging HR!

5. Colin Firth’s Love Language
There are better examples of Colin Firth finding love on film (usually as some iteration of Mr. Darcy), but this little trifle will do. Firth plays a writer who finds out this his girlfriend is cheating on him with his brother (an unnecessarily sadistic touch) and takes refuge at a countryside cottage in France. There he falls for the stern, no-nonsense Portuguese housekeeper (Lúcia Moniz), and they are able to communicate without a mutual language. The final scene at the restaurant where he fumblingly proposes to her is cute, but no self-respecting director would film a scene where a couple kisses and onlookers cheer. Manipulation at its finest. (Love Actually does this twice.)

4. Prime Minister in Love
Much as Laura Linney saves her minor storyline with her little happy sex dance, Hugh Grant’s goofy dance throughout the halls of 10 Downing Street to The Pointer Sister’s “Jump (For My Love)” is this sections’ selling point. But this is one of those retrograde bits. So let me get this straight…he crushes on a staffer, leaves her alone with a smug and handsy U.S. President (Billy Bob Thornton) who hits on her, and then has her fired? And then he chases her around London—not to apologize but to profess his love? She should’ve told him to get stuffed. Instead, she apologizes.

3. The No Good, Very Bad Cheating Husband
Emma Thompson softly crying to Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” when she finds out that her husband (Alan Rickman) is cheating on her might be the single most poignant moment in this entire film. And that’s why this one is ranked so high. But one thing that shocked me was the full-on evil temptress in Alan Rickman’s office. She was in pure homewrecker mode—a character that only exists to lure our hapless husband into her bed. When I talk about the film’s no-longer-acceptable misogyny, this “character” is who I’m talking about. (This section also features Rowan Atkinson as a maddeningly punctilious jewelry salesman, because of course it does. I believe it’s in his contract to be in all British ensemble comedies.)

2. The X-Rated Meet Cute
This one is essentially a one-joke gag, extended throughout the course of the movie—but it’s a good gag. A mild-mannered man (Martin Freeman) and woman (Joanna Page) are serving as “stand-ins” for a film that apparently features a whole lot of sex. With all the romance of doing their taxes, they pantomime various sex acts and fondle each other’s naughty bits, as the Brits would say. Along the way, this decorous duo falls in love.

1. Aging Rock Star Has One Last Hurrah
The funny thing about this segment is it’s almost a meta commentary on the film itself. Aging rockstar Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) puts out an ersatz, treacly version of his song, “Love is All Around,” changing the lyrics to “Christmas is All Around.” He knows it’s shit and grumbles and grouses his way through the press tour. Somehow, Mack’s candor about the cheap money grub of the song works. It becomes the number one Christmas single, which is apparently a big deal in England. (Bless their hearts.) And this is a case where the film strives for poignancy—and achieves it!—when Billy Mack realizes that the “love of his life” is actually his long-suffering manager, Joe (Gregor Fisher), with whom he actually wants to spend Christmas with. Okay, I cried.

To hear more of my thoughts on Love Actually, tune into WYPR’s Midday With Tom Hall on Monday, December 9 at noon.

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Musicals are having a moment. It’s an extension of fan culture—that is to say, culture—with musical theater nerds loudly and proudly staking their claim among the other fandoms on social media. When I went to see The Outsiders on Broadway, there was a large group of teenage girls screaming for Ponyboy and cheering in anticipatory excitement before all the big numbers. When I caught a preview of The Great Gatsby, the screams were so loud you would think star Jeremy Jordan was Harry Styles.

Certainly among the most enduringly popular musicals is Wicked, the girl-power reimagining of The Wizard of Oz, which made co-stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth stars—or at the very least, god tier among musical theater nerds.

Happily, Universal Pictures didn’t try to obscure the fact that Wicked is a musical, but that’s not to say the production was without controversy. Everyone agreed that Cynthia Erivo, who won the Tony for The Color Purple and was Oscar nominated for her turn as Harriet Tubman in Harriet, was perfect for the part of misunderstood witch Elphaba, but mega pop star Ariana Grande as Glinda? When there were deserving musical theater professionals out there in need of a big break? Additionally, the promotion was not above its own bait and switch. Never seen in the commercials and trailer is the fact that the nearly three hour film is merely part one. Part two is due next year.

Let’s get those “controversies” out of the way first. Ariana Grande is a marvelous Glinda—pampered, entitled, but secretly kind—like Alicia Silverstone in Clueless if she had pipes for days. Anyone who has seen Grande on Saturday Night Live already knew she was funny—and here, her stellar comic timing is aided by her adoring sidekicks played with gleeful “you can’t sit here” bitchiness by Bowen Yang and Bronwyn James. As for the film being a part one? I wouldn’t fret it. It ends perfectly. You feel satisfied with what you just saw, while eagerly anticipating the next installment.

So yeah, Wicked is good. Almost great, although I couldn’t quite warm up to all the CGI sets and backdrops. I understand that director Jon M. Chu worked hard to create a built environment, even going so far as to plant 9 million tulips to recreate Emerald City (reader: I thought they were fake). But, despite his best efforts, the film still has that slightly glossy, uncanny feeling of AI. Give me cheesy, hand-built sets any day.

Still there’s a lot to recommend here, as the film is filled with wit and cleverness and verve. Erivo, as expected, makes for a heartbreakingly vulnerable, yet fierce Elphaba, and her belting out of “Defying Gravity” feels like cinematic catharsis at its finest.

There are also excellent supporting turns, including Jonathan Bailey as the dashing but romantically conflicted Fiyero; Michelle Yeoh as the glamorous professor of the dark arts, Madame Morrible; the voice of Peter Dinklage as the wise and kindly goat professor, Dr. Dillamond; and Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard. (I mean, of course, Jeff Goldblum is the Wizard of Oz. It’s casting as inevitable as it is perfect.) Also, look out for a few smartly placed cameos. (Can you say: Adele Dazeem?)

Directed and performed with flair and obvious affection for the source material, Wicked is a wickedly good time at the movies. And yes, I imagine it’s going to be popular, as I’m already thinking of shelling out 15 bucks to see it again.

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So it was a rather genius move for Eisenberg to cast himself against Culkin in the film he wrote and directed, A Real Pain. They are an “odd couple” to be sure, but while Neil Simon’s play was mostly a vehicle for laughs—the slob and the neatnik living together—Eisenberg is reflecting on no less than how humans process grief and come to terms with global atrocities.

Eisenberg’s David and Culkin’s Benji are first cousins who were once best of friends but have since drifted apart. This is largely because David has moved to Manhattan, with a wife and a mop-headed toddler son and a normie job (he sells banner ads on websites). Meanwhile, Benji is a bit adrift. He still lives in the basement of his childhood home, in Binghamton, NY. And he’s still reeling from the death of his grandmother, his “favorite person in the world.”

It’s the death of their grandmother that compels the cousins to travel to Poland, to see the home where she grew up before she escaped the Nazis. They also will pay a visit to the nearby Majdanek concentration camp, where millions of others didn’t benefit from “a series of tiny miracles” to survive. They join a tour group of mostly well-heeled Jewish people, led by the earnest and knowledgeable James (White Lotus’ Will Sharpe). In the group: a retired married couple (Daniel Oreskes and Liza Sadovy); a recent divorcee named Marcia (Jennifer Grey) seeking meaning in her life; and Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who converted to Judaism.

“Oh snap!” exclaims Benji when he finds out that Eloge is a genocide survivor. Everyone stares at him, but this is what Benji does—he expresses his feelings, loudly and without a filter. David finds himself apologizing for his cousin throughout the trip, but something curious happens—Benji’s brutal honesty and outsized emotions have a way of loosening the tour group up and bringing them to some greater truth. Marcia starts confiding in him. Eloge and Benji become real friends.

At one point, the tour visits a statue of Polish soldiers during the Warsaw Uprising. Benji wants to take a photo with the statue, pantomiming himself in battle. “That’s inappropriate,” David stutters, but Benji plows ahead, and soon everyone is joining him—all playing various roles (Eloge is a medic, using his scarf as a torniquet).

Next, at a Jewish graveyard, Benji tells tour guide James he’s talking too much. Just let them feel.

James is affronted and, again, David apologizes for his cousin’s rudeness, but later, James realizes that Benji was right about that—and about the fact that they should spend more time among actual Polish people—and he thanks him.

When the group finally arrives at Majdanek, they all do the solemn thing we do on such tours—walk slowly, hands behind their backs, their faces silently registering the shock. On the train ride back to the hotel, however, Benji is the only one who openly weeps.

Both Eisenberg and Culkin are playing variations of their well-worn personas, but neither has ever been better. Eisenberg’s David is so heartbreakingly familiar, a kind and fastidious man who has learned how to manage his fears and neuroses, but they’re always burbling just under the surface. And Culkin is a sheer life force as Benji—a human truth bomb, all id, no filter, equal parts charming and unsettling.

It’s clear that Benji feels too much, is honest to a fault, takes up too much space. He would be exhausting to be around, a “real pain.” But Eisenberg is also suggesting that our ability to compartmentalize grief, to take in the horrors of the world without being leveled by them is not always a good thing. And thus we get the double entendre of the title: Sometimes it’s important to sit with that real pain.

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But what if I told you that Edward Berger’s Conclave was one of the most exciting and best films of the year—a tense and beautifully shot procedural filled with intrigue, surprise twists, double-crosses, and almost incalculably high stakes.

Early in the film, the stage is set. The pope has died and while many high-ranking clergymen fuss over his death bed, only one seems to truly be in mourning. That’s the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), whom we find out later had recently tried to resign his post—without success. Maybe the pope knew he was going to die, Lawrence speculates, and he wanted someone he trusted running the conclave.

A conclave, for the uninitiated, is a special election of a new pope by the Cardinals. That deal with the smoke billowing out of the Vatican until we get a new pope? That’s the conclave.

And if you think it’s a peaceful and stress free process, may I direct your attention to HBO’s Succession?

Four candidates emerge early on. There’s Stanley Tucci’s Bellini, the self-described liberal of the group, who wants the Catholic church to continue its progress on social issues. There’s Adeyemi (Lucien Msamati), who would be the first Black pope, but has some skeletons in his closet. There’s the entertainingly loathsome Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), who vapes like he’s in some South Beach nightclub and believes that the Catholic Church should regress to its traditional ways—Latin liturgy, no women in the church, no gay marriage. (Tedesco makes the mistake of assuming Lawrence shares his values. When he casually mentions what a disaster it would be if Adeyemi becomes pope, Lawrence radiates with visible disgust.) Finally, there’s the seemingly mild-mannered Tremblay (John Lithgow), the moderate choice—but what to make of the rumors that the pope asked for his resignation shortly before he died?

As Dean, it falls on Lawrence to oversee the conclave, but there is a complicating factor—the cardinals are in lockdown, and therefore he has no access to outside information that might help him get to the bottom of the various rumors.

The first of many votes comes in and there are a few surprises: For one, Lawrence gets a few votes, even though he made it clear he wasn’t interested. Adeyemi is in the lead, with the other three main contenders fairly far behind. And there’s an even a more surprising vote bringing up the rear—for the humble Benitez (Carlos Biehz), a newcomer to the Vatican who had been serving a dangerous Catholic ministry in Afghanistan and had been secretly made a Cardinal by the pope.

The similarities to American politics, to all politics for that matter, are strictly intentional. Tucci’s Bellini pretends to be a reluctant candidate, but secretly craves the job. Tremblay is so blinded by ambition, he’s lost his moral compass. And as for Tedesco, his motto may as well be, “Make the Vatican Great Again.”

All the cardinals are so grasping they can hardly believe that Lawrence means it when he says he doesn’t want to be pope. They accuse him of secret ambition and sabotage, when he’s actually only seeking someone worthy of the job. (That said, he does have a papal name picked out: John. It’s that old aphorism about American politics: “Something happens to a man when he looks in the mirror and sees a president.”)

Although I was a fan of Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front, I found its score a little jarring (intentionally so, but still…). Here, the jangly and stuttering sounds of a string quartet perfectly enhance the tension. The film is shot beautifully in a recreated Vatican—all long halls, secret chambers, and light-filled sanctuaries. (The film’s recreation of Sistine Chapel is impeccable.) But there’s a sense of claustrophobia, too. The cardinals are perfectly cloistered. It might as well be the 17^th century up in there.

All the acting is top notch—Castellitto in particular is a riot—but Ralph Fiennes is nothing short of masterful as Lawrence, a good man caught in the maelstrom of these red-robed men and their outsized ambition, all while grieving the pope and suffering his own crisis of faith. And look for a quietly powerful Isabella Rossellini as the all-seeing and all-knowing Sister Agnes.

Conclave is gripping from beginning to end. It’s one of those movies that reminds you why you love movies.

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None of this is intended to short shrift Pugh, who is an absolute delight—a singular talent and earthy beauty who has rightly taken Hollywood by storm. Girl is no slacker in the charm department herself.

So it is with some disappointment that I tell you that We Live In Time lives up to its dopey name. It’s muddled and half-baked, even though the two actors give it their all and, yes, do convince us they’re an actual couple.

Here’s the basis of the title: We are all shaped by our past, cleaved to our present, and unaware of our own future, the film argues, and only when we see all three at once do we get the full measure of a life. Not exactly revelatory stuff. Director John Crowley and writer Nick Payne toggle back and forth between Garfield’s Tobias and Pugh’s Almut at various stages of their relationship. One minute they’re an established couple with a daughter, Ella. One minute they are meeting (not-so) cute when Almut runs Tobias over with her Mini Cooper. One minute we are finding out that Almut’s cancer has recurred, although we didn’t know she had cancer to begin with.

All this is fine. I mean, I didn’t find it especially confusing, as some have complained, although Garfield looks exactly the same throughout—same fabulous head of tousled hair, same concerned face, same wire-rimmed glasses that he trots out to look extra emo. They could’ve at least given him a goatee or a haircut or something to help us navigate the timelines. (Thanks to chemo, Almut occasionally has a shaved head.) But it doesn’t really add anything to the film. I didn’t learn much more about the couple or their motivations because of the shifting timeline—if anything, it felt like a bit of a cop out. Just when things start to go below surface level, poof, we’re in a new year!

Also, the film has been falsely advertised to a certain extent. It’s not a story about Tobias and Almut so much as a story about Tobias reacting to Almut. She’s at the center of the film: her pain, her willfulness, her triumphs, her choices (or lack thereof). All Garfield has to do is look at her—at various points moist-eyed, adoring, befuddled, and, yes, concerned.

This is a bit of a gender reversal, I suppose. In most films, it’s the woman who is forced to be “put upon” and “long-suffering” as the husband, our hero, goes off and commits various acts of derring-do. But it’s a telling gender reversal because Almut doesn’t go on adventures: she gets cancer and has a child, all while guiltily navigating a career as a star chef.

Early in their relationship—too early, perhaps—Tobias tells her that he wants to have children and that her stated uncertainty on the matter could be a dealbreaker. She lashes out, cursing at him, telling him he’s putting a lot of unnecessary pressure on her. (Facts.) Their relationship progresses, but when she gets her first cancer diagnosis, she has to choose between a complete hysterectomy (meaning no chance of getting pregnant) or a partial one, which would be riskier but allow her to conceive. She chooses the latter and the film makes sure we know this was her decision . . . but was it? He’s the one who really wants kids.

Mixed in, we have lots of cozy, classic British rom-com scenes—Almut teaching Tobias to make eggs (you crack them on a flat service, she instructs); the two of them on bumper cars; the two of them getting it on in candle-lit rooms; scenes of smelling herbs and lemons in their painfully quaint garden; the obligatory scenes of Almut peeing on a stick as Tobias watches, concerned, until the happy pregnancy news comes through, etc.

The big conflict of the film has to do with Almut secretly entering international cooking competition Bocuse D’Or when she should be home resting during her cancer treatments. Her logic: If she’s going to die, she wants Ella to remember her for doing something great. But the film itself is ambivalent about this decision—one day, Almut’s so distracted by the menu preparation she leaves Ella waiting outside school in the rain. Is this a moment of female empowerment or a selfish choice by a mother who doesn’t quite love her daughter enough? The film isn’t sure. (But kinda, secretly, deep down thinks she’s a Bad Mom ™.)

In one of the timelines there is a brilliant set piece involving Almut giving birth in a “petrol station” bathroom (hey, it’s England). It’s an extremely funny and touching scene—both Garfield and Pugh act the shit out of it—but it fits in with my overall concern about the film. Garfield’s Tobias wants a child and Almut eventually agrees. But it’s not Tobias on the dingy floor of that station, hands gripping the sink, pushing for dear life.

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One day, the comedian/actor Will Ferrell gets an email from his old friend, a former head writer for SNL and one of the first people to truly recognize Will’s talent. She explains that she’s transitioning and now goes by the name Harper Steele.

This is a bit of a shock to Will. For one, in her old life, Harper was something of a guy’s guy—a drinker of cheap beer, a fan of the open road, a curmudgeon. Also, she’s 61, which seems late in life to make such a big change. Will never saw this coming. But that’s because Harper hid her true self so well.

It’s Will’s idea that the two old friends should take a cross-country road trip to get reacquainted with each other. It’s important for Harper that Will meets the real her, a new person—still flawed, still scared but a better, more honest version of her old self. Nothing is off limits. Any questions can be asked. Yes, you can ask why it took so long. Yes, you can ask about her boobs. (Of course, Will will make a Nordstrom “Rack” joke.)

So the two friends climb into a Grand Wagoneer—the actual perfect car for a road trip—and set off.

This trip is meaningful for Harper in many ways. Back before she transitioned, she used to love road trips. Partly this was because she simply loved Americana—road stops, honkytonks, Wal-Marts. But also, we learn, because she would allow herself to wear a dress on the road—always with a pair of trousers in the back seat in case she was stopped by a cop or the like. And later, in one of the film’s more touching sequences, we discover that she bought herself an absolute shithole of a house—a stained mattress, graffiti on the walls, creaky floorboards—in the middle of nowhere. A place to hide. But also, what she thought she deserved.

So the road trip is allowing Harper to test the open road as her true self. Will is there as a buffer. Harper worries she won’t be accepted in her new gender, especially in places like Texas and Iowa, but Will is accepted everywhere.

At one point, they stop at a dive bar on the road and Harper asks Will to stay in the car. She’ll call him if she needs him. She wants to do this on her own—she needs to do this on her own. She walks into the bar—there’s a Confederate flag on the wall—and introduces herself to some locals. They start chatting. She calls Will: Come in and meet my new friends.

Will is such a goofy guy, and the two friends have such an easy rapport, cracking jokes and giving each other good-natured crap, that much of the trip has a loose, almost giddy feel. But while many are accepting of Harper, not all goes smoothly. They meet the governor of Indiana at a Pacers game, only to discover after the fact that he had signed an anti-trans bill into law. They go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant in Texas and are met with derisive stares (followed, inevitably, by cruel and transphobic tweets—thanks, Elon).

In both case, Will castigates himself. He should’ve taken better care of his friend. Harper assures him that what he’s doing for her is a gift.

I found Will’s openness to Harper almost unbearably moving. He compliments her—tells her she looks pretty. He is comfortable hugging her and crying in front of her. This is real masculinity, in my eyes. Men, take notes.

A few former and current SNL cast members show up: There’s a dinner in New York with Tina Fey, Seth Meyers, Tim Meadows, and others. Harper talks about how she no longer feels safe walking alone in an alley.

“Welcome,” says Fey.

“Does it ever feel safe to walk alone in an alley?” Meadows cracks.

They go for a hot air balloon ride with Will Forte, who says he’s honored to be part of their journey, and there’s a funny bit with an anticlimactic champagne popping.

They call Kristen Wiig and ask her to write a theme song for their trip. It needs to be jazzy, upbeat, with elements of country, and it should also make you cry. She has two days.

The film, of course, ends with Wiig’s creation, “Will and Harper Go West,” which is as funny and delightful a ditty as you might hope. (And yes, it made me cry.)

Oh, how I wish the transphobes of this world could watch this film and see how wonderful empathy is. It costs nothing. It broadens one’s understanding of the world and the humans who populate it. And it makes everyone feel good.

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In that film, our young hero was death obsessed and suicidal until a life force in the form of Gordon’s Maude lifted him from his malaise and taught him how to find mischievous and rebellious pleasure in life. The two commenced a love affair. The fact that Maude was 79 is, well, why it’s a cult classic.

Strangely, few films have replicated its particular formula. Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples is, rather explicitly, an homage to Harold and Maude, albeit a super Jewish one.

When we meet Ben Gottlieb (professional sad sack Jason Schwartzman) he’s going through a personal crisis that doubles as a metaphor—he’s a cantor who can’t sing. We find out that his novelist wife died earlier that year and, after moving out of the home they shared and moving in with his meddlesome lesbian mothers, he’s been a shell of a human—morose, passive, morbidly depressed.

Then along comes Polly, er, Carla (Carol Kane), who was Ben’s music teacher when he was a kid. She doesn’t recognize him at first, not so much because he’s aged, but because he’s lost his spark. Only when she sees a picture of Ben grinning on his driver’s license—before his wife’s death—does she place him.

She’s visiting Ben because she wants to be bat mitzvahed. She explains that she’s a recent widow who wants to fulfill her childhood dream. At first Ben says no, for reasons not completely clear. (As a cantor, he well knows that you need not be 13 to be bat mitzvahed.) But Carla hectors the rabbi (Robert Smigel), who relents. So Ben commences coaching Carla, who begins to chip away at his sadness. What Carla does (quite explicitly, in one drug-fueled encounter) is reintroduce Ben to who he used to be, the confident young man brimming with possibility. Figuratively and literally, she helps him regain his voice.

This material is a little mawkish, so Silver goes out of his way to make the film as edgy as possible, with some jangly handheld camera work, some dirty talk in a car next to a cemetery, and some unnecessarily grotesque closeups of Ben and Carla sharing a burger. Sometimes this works, as in during a disastrous family dinner scene toward the end of the film, but sometimes it feels gratuitous.

Of course, Ben’s moms (Dolly De Leon and Caroline Aaron) have no idea that he’s spending so much time with a little old lady. They keep trying to set him up with people. They invite a doctor to the house. At first, Ben thinks she’s a psychiatrist, which he reluctantly agrees he might need, only to discover that she’s a plastic surgeon. “You think I need work done?” he asks, confused. She’s a single doctor, one of his moms points out. Later, a woman shows up at the temple. She’s here for their Jdate, she says. Needless to say, Ben doesn’t have a Jdate account.

So yeah, Ben’s mothers are meddlesome yentas. It’s something of a Jewish stereotype that I wasn’t super keen on, although it’s mitigated by the fact that Silver himself is Jewish. Similarly, the rabbi, a cheater at golf who keeps Ben on as cantor because his moms make a sizeable donation to the temple, is another borderline caricature. At least the rabbi seems to have a genuine fondness for Ben—so much so that he wants to set him up with his daughter (Madeline Weinstein), recently dumped by her fiancé, and as much of “a mess” as Ben is.

She arrives to town and she’s pretty and a little quirky (she sheepishly does a terrible impression of Katharine Hepburn) and seems interested. By this point, Ben is much less zombified, thanks to Carla—and we think we know where this is going. Until we’re not sure.

The film has many pleasures, but the greatest has to be the return of Carol Kane, a seminal figure in ’70s and ’80s film and television, famed for her frizzy blonde hair, squeaky voice, and impeccable comic timing. I’m happy to report that she still looks great—and her acting is better than ever. (This is a performance that deserves Oscar consideration, although she might have to settle for an Indie Spirit nod.) To add some poignancy to the proceedings, her Carla once aspired to be a singer and even released an album. We see its cover—a hazy, period spot-on photo of a luminous young Kane, just as we remember her.

Between the Temples is often funny, sometimes uncomfortable to watch (intentionally), and, despite its flaws, quite moving. All hail the manic pixie dream senior.

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With her cascading blonde hair, long legs, and toothpaste-commercial smile, Blake Lively is the epitome of the sun-kissed California beauty. It was actually a little far-fetched that she played some sort of Upper East Side princess in Gossip Girl—she’s surf boards and Laguna Beach all the way. But we bought it, mostly because her primary purpose on that show was to be the foil to the jealous Blair, who wanted the effortless charm that Lively’s Serena possessed.

In It Ends With Us, based on Colleen Hoover’s wildly popular novel (as seen on TikTok!), Lively does not have blond hair, but a mess of cooperative red curls, the sort that exist far more often in romance novels than real life. She wears flowy, artfully mismatched clothing—I spied some Magnolia Pearl, notorious for their expensive schmattas; she also seems to favor these architecturally complicated chainmail boots. She opens a flower shop in Boston, straight out of a “Bohemian Flower Shop” Pinterest board. It’s all a little ridiculous. It seems like cosplay.

Lively’s incongruous casting is a perfect metaphor for the film, which also seems to be suffering from an identity crisis.

At first, It Ends With Us seems like a love story. Lively’s Lily Blossom Bloom—yes, the film makes fun of the name, which feels like cheating since they’re the ones who gave her the name—meets hunky neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who also directs) on a rooftop. (For the record, they also make fun of his soap-opera-ready name. Again, YOU NAMED HIM THAT.) She’s up there contemplating her father who just died, but whom she didn’t really love. (More on that in a bit.) Ryle comes on the roof to vent about something—he assaults a chair. Knowing that the film was ultimately going to be about domestic violence, I thought this was a good touch. They’re showing that he has a bad temper. And yet, for a while, Ryle is nothing but a dreamboat. Although he’s a notorious playboy, he vows to change his ways for Lily. He’s doting, sincere, patient. There’s a minor road block once it’s discovered that Ryle is the brother of Lily’s best friend, Allysa (Jenny Slate, here to save us). But their love cannot be stopped! With Allysa’s blessing, Ryle and Lily get married.

Okay, but let’s back-up a bit. In flashbacks, we also see glimpses of Lily’s first love, a homeless boy named Atlas (stop laughing). In those flashbacks, Lily is played by Isabela Ferrer and Atlas is played by Alex Neustaedter, who both only glancingly resemble their older counterparts. The flashbacks here are doing a lot of heavy lifting: They’re showing us Lily’s first love and showing us that Lily’s father beat Lily’s mother and eventually Atlas, when he discovers the boy in bed with his daughter—but they feel perfunctory. Baldoni seems much more interested in the scenes depicting Lily’s adult life (maybe because he’s in them?).

And then Ryle hits Lily. It kind of comes out of nowhere. This film would’ve been notably better if they’d established Ryle’s violent tendencies—getting jealous at a bar, maybe, or being enraged when his much-loved Bruins lose a game. Yes, we saw him assault that chair on the roof, but that was it. Beyond that, he was Prince Charming. Ryle gaslights Lily (and to a certain extent us) into thinking it was an accident. (The film intentionally holds back on showing us the extent of his violence until later on.) Lily covers her bruise with some makeup and they go out for dinner with Allysa and her affable husband (Hasan Minhaj). The waiter looks kinda familiar? You guessed it, it’s Atlas, all grown up now and sporting a non-threatening beard (he’s played as an adult by Brandon Sklenar). He’s not just their waiter, he’s the restaurant’s owner and chef. (He is the Swiss Army Knife of convenient plot contrivances.)

Atlas sees the hastily covered bruise on Lily’s face and immediately groks what’s going on, even if she refuses to see it. He and Ryle fight and this is the beginning of the end, as Ryle becomes consumed by jealousy.

I experienced a fair amount of cognitive dissonance watching It Ends With Us—it plays like a sun-dappled romance that suddenly turns violent. (Apparently some people, expecting it to be an uncomplicated love story, felt deceived by the sudden change in tone.)

I appreciate the fact that this is ultimately a film—and book—about ending the cycle of violence. We’ve evolved past the “fall in love with your rapist” trope, thank goodness. But it feels like they want to have their cake and eat it, too, here—a hot romance with beautiful people and a “you go, girl” film about a woman rejecting her violent lover. And then there’s Atlas—chef, waiter, restaurant owner, former homeless kid turned bearded king—waiting in the wings. Is the answer to leaving your abusive husband having a better alternative on deck?

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The biggest twist in M. Night Shyamalan’s latest, Trap, is that there is no twist. I mean, there are plenty of surprises along the way, but the central premise—that our normie suburban dad protagonist, Cooper (Josh Hartnett), is in fact the knife-wielding serial killer nicknamed “The Butcher”—is established right away.

I’m trying to imagine what the film would be like if we didn’t know this fact, if we simply thought Cooper was a caring dad who had taken his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to a Lady Raven concert only to discover that the show was doubling as a massive manhunt for The Butcher. If we worried that Cooper and Riley might come into to contact with this maniac. If we feared for their lives?

But no, the trailer makes it quite clear that Cooper is our guy. Knowing this adds a meta layer of humor to the film, even before the (relatively swift) reveal. For example, it’s funny out of the gate when Cooper refuses to speed to the concert, telling Riley, “We’re not going to break any laws!”

Indeed, Cooper seems like nothing more than a doting dad, learning teen slang (“crispy” means good, but no, “extra fried” doesn’t mean very good, Dad, duh) and proudly recording Riley’s dance moves on his phone (she knows all the Lady Raven choreography by heart).

But he starts to notice a massive police presence and gets twitchy. He befriends a T-shirt vendor named Jamie (Jonathan Langdon, giving great everyman) and asks him what’s up. Jamie leans in, conspiratorially, and says that he’s not supposed to say anything, but the whole concert is actually a set-up to catch The Butcher. Cooper’s face goes white.

He then immediately checks a live feed on his phone of some poor schmuck named Spencer whom he has trapped in a basement.

Yup, he’s The Butcher.

From there, it’s a cat and mouse game, as Cooper tries to evade the police (they have every exit covered and are also randomly hauling in fathers in for questioning) while also trying to keep up happy appearances with Riley, who is having the time of her life.

Finding out that our apparent hero is actually a stone-cold killer puts the audience in a strange spot. For a while, at least, we find ourselves rooting for Cooper to escape—and we’re entertained by his clever evasions and diversion tactics.

And the humor, now mixed with a kind of underlying menace, continues throughout. Cooper is confronted by an aggressively flirty PTA mom whose daughter has snubbed Riley. Will Cooper murder her to avenge his daughter (or simply because she’s annoying)? Later, Cooper finds himself alone in the storage room with Jamie, who is opening boxes of T-shirts. “Here, hold this,” Jamie says, handing Cooper the box cutter. Dude just handed The Butcher a box cutter!

Shyamalan directs all this like the pro he is, taking us from the swirling activity on the stage to the jam-packed stands to Cooper’s paranoid face as we watch him make split-second calculations whenever he encounters a new threat.

As for the actress playing Lady Raven? Earning her spot on the Mount Rushmore of nepo-babies, she’s none other than Saleka Shyamalan—yup, M. Night’s daughter. (Arguably the man created an entire film to give her a chance to perform). But here’s an actual twist: she’s good. In fact, compared to the fake boy band in The Idea of You (which I liked!), she’s quite believable. And she wrote all the film’s catchy, radio-ready songs. Some families get all the talent. Saleka is a bit less successful in the latter part of the film when she gets off stage, not necessarily because she’s a bad actress (time will tell) but because the film’s final act is laughably preposterous. The less said about it, the better.

Still, that first hour is tight—tense, funny, scary. Edge of your seat stuff. And Hartnett is great here—turning on a dime from dear-old dad to psychopath in wildly entertaining fashion. I am so here for the Harnett-aissance. It’s also wonderful to see Hayley Mills—yes, that Hayley Mills—as the FBI profiler who can anticipate The Butcher’s every move. She mentions, in passing, that The Butcher probably has OCD. About half an hour later, we see Cooper fastidiously fix a lopsided towel in a bathroom, even as he’s on the run. It’s that kind of attention to detail that makes Trap so satisfying. Turns out, knowing who The Butcher is the whole time makes for killer fun.

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In neither case is there a chyron under the interviews noting that both of these interviewers’ careers were about to be upended by their own sexual abuse and harassment scandals, but those of us watching know. The irony is rich. And it’s everywhere.

Sorry/Not Sorry isn’t about Rose or Lauer, but in a way, it is, as Louis C.K. becomes a stand-in for the kind of highly admired man who routinely abused his power. It’s about how men like Louis get away with this kind of behavior—about how difficult it is for victims to respond “correctly” in the moment of the abuse and how unrewarding, if not ruinous, it is to come forward in their aftermath.

I confess that what happened with Louis was particularly upsetting to many women, including myself, who admired him greatly. He was a uniquely incisive, funny, and honest comedian and auteur who talked about his own gender in less than flattering ways. (His famous assertion that men were the greatest threat to women became infamous after the sexual misconduct scandal emerged.) We thought he was an ally—self-deprecating, and a bit of a sad sack, rueful about his own worst sexual impulses but wise and empathic enough to resist them. Turns out, he was something much worse: A faux ally, who used his public reputation as a good guy to gain the trust of unsuspecting women.

Mones and Suh interview many of the female comedians who were victims of Louis C.K., including Jen Kirkman, who remembers the first time she met him. He was already somewhat established—although he was about to get much bigger—and she was a newbie. He gave her a lift to the hotel they were both staying at and, along the way, talked about his various sexual conquests. Kirkman recalls being taken aback by his behavior, wondering, Is this normal? Is it an initiation of sorts? After all, comedy is a boy’s club. Was he testing to see if she could hang with the fellas? Later, she ended up in the corner of a bar with him and he asked how she would feel if a man masturbated in front of her. She thought he was being hypothetical, maybe working on a bit. He laughed at her naivete and made it clear he was talking about himself. Right now.

There were other incidents: He invited Kirkman to be his opening act, a career-changing proposal, but with the strong suggestion she would need to sleep with him to stay on the tour. (She declined.) At another time, he whispered in her ear backstage, “I’m going to f**k you one day.”

None of this was encouraged or welcomed by Kirkman.

He never did drop trou and masturbate in front of Kirkman, but he did many times in front of many other female comedians, always asking for permission first and taking their stunned silence as consent.

That’s the thing about this kind of behavior: It always catches women off guard, shocked into a kind of stasis, maybe even questioning their own reality, as comedian Abby Schachner did when she heard Louis C.K. masturbating over the phone one day as they talked shop.

And then, if they do come forward, they’re the ones who get blacklisted or mocked. Dave Chappelle cracked on stage that Schachner could’ve simply hung up the phone and said she had a “brittle-ass spirit.” And that’s always the line: Why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you say no? Why are you so uptight?

One of the most intriguing aspects of the doc is that Louis C.K.’s behavior was an “open secret” in the comedy world and beyond. This is the way it was before the #MeToo movement. The path of least resistance, especially among those who served to benefit from Louis C.K.’s success, was to ignore the whispers, or pretend you didn’t know, or think, “It’s not my problem.” It was also apparently known that Harvey Weinstein abused the casting couch (although some of the stronger allegations, like rape, were not widely known) and that Bill Cosby drugged and sexually abused women. These open secrets were given oxygen during the #MeToo movement. It was a painful reckoning, but long overdue.

After five female comedians accused Louis C.K. of sexual misconduct in a New York Times article in 2017, he acknowledged that they had told the truth and wrote an open letter in response. It was a thoughtful letter, where he seemed to really understand what he had done—taken advantage of the power imbalance, jeopardized these women’s careers, and put them in an untenable position. It was a self-flagellating letter, consistent with his standup routine, although notably, he never actually said, I’m sorry.

I remember after I read that letter that I felt a little better about him, that maybe he really did get it. “I will now step back and take a long time to listen,” he wrote. And then he did.

In Sorry/Not Sorry, the comedian Michael Ian Black asks the question, “How do we deal with this?” The worst of the bad actors go to jail or have rendered themselves completely unhireable. But what do we do with the Louis C.K.s—men who did objectively horrible things but who are perhaps not deserving of permanent shunning.

Here’s my two cents (not that anyone asked): If society deems the act worthy of punishment, but not worthy of permanent exile, there is a path back. The path back is showing genuine contrition. The path back is learning from your mistakes. The path back is using your platform for positive change.

But that’s not what Louis did. Nine months after taking a “step back,” Louis C.K. did a surprise set at the Comedy Cellar, but he was no longer the contrite, self-reflective man from his “apology” letter.

Instead, he cracked jokes about what had happened and suggested that he merely had an embarrassing kink that had been revealed to the public. The acknowledgement that he had abused his power and damaged women’s careers was a distant memory.

Since then, his career has thrived (he even won a Grammy), although he has now become a hero of the right, as he’s leaned into his status as a victim of cancel culture. He has surely lost many female fans—and many male ones as well. But as one fan lining up for Louis’ Madison Square Garden show sheepishly says, “Everyone lives with a certain amount of hypocrisy and this is the amount that I’ve allocated for myself.”

Sorry/Not Sorry is available on VOD.

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But as soon as Daniel leaves, Thelma always takes off the bracelet. It’s uncomfortable, and she likes her independence, even though her license was taken away a few years ago. She misses driving, she says longingly at one point.

When Thelma gets a phone call from “Daniel,” who says he’s in prison after getting in a car crash and tells her to wait for instructions from his lawyer, we gasp, immediately knowing what’s up.

“You sound funny,” Thelma says to fake Daniel.

“I broke my nose,” he says. (Not so fun fact: Scammers are already using AI to create realistic voice simulacrums of our loved ones, so we’re all screwed.)

Next she speaks to the “lawyer” who says she needs to get $10,000 in cash to a P.O. Box right away.

She finds the money, tucked away in book shelves and under the bed, and puts it in an envelope. As she slowly slides the money into a mailbox, we watch, in horror: Nooooooo.

But it’s too late. The money has been sent.

Thelma calls her daughter, Gail (Parker Posey), who gets a bit frantic herself. She tries Daniel’s number, but he doesn’t pick up. Then she tells her husband, Alan (Clark Gregg), who calls their son again. This time, he picks up, groggily. He was just sleeping.

They go to the police, but it’s fairly useless, because it was sent via regular post.

When the police officer explains that scam artists find private information—Daniel’s name, for example—on social media, Thelma moans, “How can Zuckemborg let this happen?”

To the family, it’s an unfortunate incident, but one they can easily put behind them. But Thelma is outraged. She wants her money back.

She’s doubly frustrated when she hears her family discussing her in an adjacent room—maybe it’s time to put Grandma in a home, they’re saying.

“I just lost my wallet,” Daniel says, defending her. “Are you going to put me in a home?” (From there, the conversation immediately pivots to whether or not Daniel has arranged to get a new driver’s license, because it’s extremely dangerous to drive without one, and he needs to get on that right away. I am related to these people.)

Fueled by a sense of injustice—and a newfound appreciation for Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible—Thelma sets out to find the scammers and reclaim her money.

There’s only one problem: She knows the family won’t support her mission and she can’t drive. So she goes to the retirement home where her friend Ben (Richard Roundtree, wonderful) lives and, after a bit of small talk, steals his motorized scooter. He steals another scooter and chases her around the center. She and Ben come to an impasse—but not before a head-to-head collision—and he reluctantly agrees to tag along on her mission.

One of the many ingenious things about Thelma is it’s treated like a (low-stakes) Mission Impossible film, with snappy, caper music accompanying Thelma’s every move. This starts with the chase scene at the senior center—that scooter corners like it’s on rails, by the way—and continues when Thelma outsmarts her family, who are now frantically searching for her, by tossing her Life Line bracelet over a fence. (An aside: Fans of The Daytrippers will delight in seeing Parker Posey driving in the back seat of another family vehicle on a quest.) But the film’s greatest set piece comes when Thelma finds herself in an extremely cluttered antique store hoping to confront the bad guys. Ben is waiting outside, wearing an ear piece (actually, his iPhone, set to hearing aid mode), and he guides her, as though she’s Tom Cruise navigating lasers next to a priceless safe. When she lands with a thud on a bed in the store and rolls off it like a cat burglar, I lost it.

On top of the delightful performances by its entire cast and those winking action sequences, Thelma is genuinely one of the funniest films I’ve seen in a while.

At one point, Daniel makes his way through the retirement home, looking for Thelma.
“Grandma?” he yells out—and several hopeful voices reply, “Yes?”

There’s a running gag where Thelma bumps into people who look familiar, and they cheerfully try to figure out their connection. Mutual friends? No. The same synagogue. No. The sly joke is that when you hit 93, everyone looks familiar.

Another good joke also captures the poignancy of this film. The workers at the retirement home ask Thelma’s family if she has any ailments.

Well, she had valve replacement, hip replacement, a double mastectomy, and has a slow-growing brain tumor, they say. Besides that, she’s fine.

Getting old is not for the faint of heart, the film reminds us. But if you approach life as the great adventure it is, you’ll leave with no regrets.

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The thing is, I had uttered those very words myself. From Top Gun: Maverick to the romcom Anyone But You to the upcoming (and unnecessary) Twister remake, it did seem like Hollywood was shoving this guy down our throats. Yes, Anyone But You was a surprise box office hit, but I felt like too many people were attributing its success to Powell, when I thought costar Sydney Sweeney was the real secret weapon. I found him to be both bland and smug as an actor, a combination that reminded of none other than Ryan Reynolds. (Spoiler alert: I’m not a fan of Ryan Reynolds.)

But there was his mom with this sign, which said a lot. It said he has a sense of irony about himself. And it said he has a good relationship with his mom. So I softened.

Then I saw Hit Man—which, after a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it theatrical run in a few select cities, is now streaming on Netflix—and I had to cry uncle. For starters, Powell is credited as the co-writer of the film, along with director Richard Linklater. That’s…hot. Also, he’s undeniably great in it, displaying acting chops that had heretofore been hidden to me (or maybe I’d just overlooked them).

Yes, it’s a doozy of a role, designed to make its lead actor look good. But you still have to ­pull it off—and Powell does that and then some.

Remarkably, the film is based on a real person, although the details of the story are made up. When we first meet Powell’s Gary Johnson, he’s got wire glasses and stringy hair and he sports cargo shorts. He’s a philosophy and psychology college professor by day and police IT guy by night. As he talks about Nietzsche’s concept of living passionately, one of his students mutters under his breath, “You drive a Civic.”

Indeed, Gary leads a very quotidian life. He’s a birder, who also has a couple of cats, and he doesn’t date much.

Even working for the police department isn’t especially sexy. He’s the guy in the truck making sure the wires are picking up audio and video correctly as they monitor a cop named Jasper (Austin Amelio), who is pretending to be a hit man for hire. That is, until one day Jasper gets suspended for roughing up a suspect a bit too zealously and Gary’s supervisor, Claudette (Retta), turns to him and says, “I’m thinking you’re up.” Gary stares at her, slackjawed: “I’m up?”

But there’s no time to spare. The mark—that is, the suspect who called up the department’s fake hit man—is waiting in a diner. Gary has listened in on countless such sting operations, Claudette reminds him. Plus, there’s no one else, except for Gary’s co-worker Phil (Sanjay Rao), who balks at the idea. (“Tried it years ago. Almost got killed,” Phil says—not quite words of encouragement.) So, against his better judgment—or maybe because he’s secretly yearning for a passionate life—Gary wires up and heads into the diner.

What he discovers, both in the diner and at several other such sting operations, is that he’s a very good fake hit man. Not only does he stay calm under pressure, but his background in philosophy and psychology allows him to read the mark and figure out exactly who they want him to be. It’s quite funny as he goes from Russian tough guy to fancy Eurotrash to gun-loving good ol’ boy. (The only thing all of Gary’s hit men have in common is that they all like pie. “There’s no bad pie,” is Gary’s motto, which is pretty solid, as mottos go.) And Linklater brilliantly ushers us through those encounters—first a scene at the designated meeting spot, then a brief conversation, an exchange of money, and a jump cut to the suspect’s baffled mug shot after their arrest. Foiled by Gary again!

The film maintains that hit men don’t actually exist—they’re just something we see in movies. (Is that true? Mind blown!) But people want the concept to be real, want to believe that they can make a single phone call and all their problems will magically go away. The wish fulfillment aspect of it is almost poignant and Linklater and Powell lean into that.

When Gary is hired by the beautiful Madison Masters (Adria Arjona), he decides she wants a confident, cool hit man named Ron. Which his exactly what he becomes. Ron wears sunglasses and a rugged leather jacket. His hair is slicked back. He’s got a roguish stubble. It’s Ron who convinces Madison not to off her abusive husband, but instead, to use the money she was going to pay him to move out. It’s against the rules—he’s there to catch the bad guys, not become their life coach—but he can’t help himself. He’s taken with her and believes her to be a good person.

And even though Gary broke protocol, both Phil and Claudette become enamored by Ron, too. They agree that while Gary is a mild-mannered nerd, Ron is an extremely doable stud.

So, as Ron, Gary begins to romance Madison—also an ethical no-no, needless to say. And he starts becoming Ron in real life.

“When did Mr. Johnson get so hot?” one of his students whispers. Turns out, Ron was inside Gary all along. He just needed to tap into him. This mirrors the Kantian concept Gary is teaching about the self being a construct.

Yup, Hit Man has romance, a bit of action, philosophy, and tons of clever humor. It’s a delightful film, nearly perfect on its own terms, and it’s an important one, too—it made me a Glen Powell believer.

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Buffy is my all-time favorite show. To me, its blend of humor, horror, teen (and, eventually, young adult) angst, and romance has never been surpassed. I watched it in a manner similar to I Saw the TV Glow’s protagonist, Owen (a heartbreaking Justice Smith.) I had missed the first three seasons, so I caught up on DVDs loaned to me by my friend Geoff. (In the movie, Owen watches on video tapes.) I remember that on the season three stack of DVDs, Geoff had scribbled, “Holy s&@$!” (IYKYK.) After that, I was able to watch in real time, in weekly installments. (This is how we used to watch television shows, children. Like barbarians.)

But here’s the thing. I was in my twenties when I first started Buffy, not a teenager. I’m not sure how I would’ve reacted differently to the material if I were a kid or searching for my identity in any way. It might’ve been more transformative—it might’ve grafted on me differently.

I say this because it took me a while to adjust to the gloomy, arty, lo-fi mood of I Saw the TV Glow. To me, the most outstanding aspect of Buffy is its sharpness, its wit, its heightened sense of irony. (And the hotness of vampire Spike in a leather coat, but I digress…)

But I can imagine to a young queer person, the show’s idea of outsiders having a divine purpose, being able to combat demons (actual ones, standing in for the metaphorical ones), and being part of a special secret sisterhood would be quite heady. (Later, the show explicitly honored its queer fanbase by making cute-nerd-turned-hot-witch Willow gay.) That’s the side of Buffy that I Saw the TV Glow writer/director Jane Schoenbrun, who is transfeminine, leans into.

Our action takes places in a small, nondescript suburban town, possibly named Void (the kids go to Void High). Young Owen (first played as a 7th grader by Ian Foreman) meets fellow outsider Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and she turns him onto The Pink Opaque, a show about two girls psychically bonded in their quest to vanquish a moon-like “Big Bad” named Mr. Melancholy. The show is explicitly based on Buffy, in terms of tone, title font, indie rock score, and various other similarities—Buffy also called its season-long antagonists Big Bads.

We see little clips of the show, starring Helena Howard as Isabel and Lindsey Jordan (Baltimore’s own Snail Mail!) as the cooler, tougher Tara. Funnily enough, the actress who played Tara on the original Buffy, Amber Benson, has a very sweet cameo here. But The Pink Opaque’s Tara is more like Buffy’s authority-defying Faith; Isabel is more a stand-in for Buffy herself. And the characters are meant to mirror Owen and Maddy. (Both Owen and Isabel are half-Black and the more cautious member of the duo.)

Maddy and Owen watch The Pink Opaque in her wood-paneled basement, with a huge aquarium bubbling beside them. Upstairs, her parents fight. Maddy’s father is abusive. Owen’s mother was doting, bordering on helicoptering, but when she dies of cancer, Owen is left in the care of his taciturn father, who spends all day watching TV. (We see him on the coach, as the flickering lights of the television dance across his motionless face.)

It’s Maddy who wants to leave home. Owen is too fearful. And then, just like that, she vanishes, leaving only a burning TV behind.

Is there something demonic going on in their small town, as Maddy posits. Or is it “just the suburbs,” as Owen responds sadly.

Maddy was empowered by The Pink Opaque to go off on her own hero’s journey. Owen, stuck permanently in his hometown, wastes away. (He narrates the film, from childhood all the way through middle age.)

I Saw the TV Glow is filled with beautiful, evocative images—not just the constant glow of television sets, but a billowing, tented planetarium the students build in school; a sensory-numbing amusement park, with more of those ever-flickering lights; and the tattoo-like, neon pink birthmark the Pink Opaque duo have inscribed on their necks. In one of the film’s most tender and intimate scenes, Maddy painstakingly draws the pink birthmark on Owen’s neck.

The film is also quite scary, in exactly the way Buffy could be—not with fancy special effects, but by tapping into something genuinely nightmarish and sinister. (Another Baltimore connection: local filmmaker Albert Birney helped with the construction of the monsters.) I do wish it were funnier, but that’s what made Buffy important to me—not Schoenbrun.

It’s telling how much I Saw the TV Glow, which is mostly set in the late ’90s, feels like a period piece. There was a time when television was crucial, unifying. Schoenbrun understands that, yes, we can be mesmerized, even zombified by these glowing images, but they’re not here to condemn television. They’re here to pay tribute.

Sometimes, a TV show could be a portal to a better world. Sometimes a TV show could save a life.

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Hathaway has always been a beauty, but in her younger years, she also convincingly played gawky (see Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada). There’s nothing gawky about her now. She recently wowed me in a femme fatale-ish role in the criminally underseen Eileen. She had an allure, a kind of gravitas in that film that reminded of no less than Cate Blanchett.

Here, she’s leaning into her Julia Roberts era—electric smile, gobs of charisma, and a kind of cozy and confident sex appeal.

Her character’s young lover, Hayes Campbell, is the lead singer of the boy band August Moon. He’s played by rising star Nicholas Galitzine, who is indeed charming and hot, although not totally convincing as this boy band stud. Galitzine has a kind of sensuous, heavy-lidded beauty that tends to appeal to, well, older women. Most boy band members have a cutie-pie androgyny. (Also: Those fake tattoos? Unconvincing!). One thing that is convincing: August Moon’s super catchy, radio-friendly music, written by songwriters Savan Kotecha and Carl Falk. And Galitzine has a respectable singing voice.

The Idea of You is directed with breezy affection and confidence by the always reliable Michael Showalter (The Big Sick). No, it doesn’t have the snappy cleverness of Notting Hill—what does?—but it should appeal to folks craving an intelligent and sexy romcom.

Hathaway plays Solène (!), a gallery owner who’s still reeling a bit from a recent divorce and the sting of turning 40. Her big-shot lawyer ex-husband, Daniel (Reid Scott), cheated on her with a younger woman at the firm, who now seems desperate to become besties with Solène (who understandably scoffs at these overtures). Solène, refreshingly, has a good relationship with her 17-year-old daughter, Izzy (Ella Rubin).

It’s because of Izzy that Solène is at Coachella—Daniel bought Izzy and her friends all-access passes to meet August Moon. (It’s actually a minor, but clever detail that Izzy’s preoccupied father doesn’t realize that she hasn’t been into August Moon since the 7^th grade. These days, she prefers the likes of St. Vincent.)

Solène encounters Hayes backstage after a meet-cute involving a trailer mistaken for a bathroom. He’s immediately smitten. She thinks he’s attractive, but harmlessly so. He’s a baby! Later, Hayes dedicates a song to Solène from stage. Again, she’s amused, but doesn’t think too much of it—until he shows up the next day at her gallery and promptly buys all of the art. (He insists he has an empty house and likes Solène’s taste.)

They have lunch, they kiss; they spend more time together. They begin having an affair. She worries she’s too old for him. He worries he’s “a joke” as a musician. They lift each other up.

And then there are conflicts. I won’t go into them all, so as not to spoil the movie, but they involve things like internet trolls, paparazzi, and the effect all of this is having on Izzy. Will they make it or won’t they?

The Idea of You so deftly avoids cliches, I wasn’t totally sure until the very end.

The Idea of You is now playing on Prime Video

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Challengers is about a love triangle, albeit an unconventional one. Best friends and tennis players Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) are both in love with Tashi—but they’re also secretly in love with each other. We see it early in the film when they’re playing doubles—gliding around the court, chest bumping, and getting high off just being together. Director Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name), that master sensualist, films them in sync—both lanky and loose-limbed, slinging their giant tennis bags over their shoulders in unity.

When they meet Tashi, they’re playing in the junior’s circuit, still merely dreaming of future success. Patrick is going to try his hand as a pro, and both Art and Tashi are going to Stanford, but with one big difference. She’s already a can’t miss star, with an Adidas contract and posters with her likeness plastered all over tournament grounds. In fact, all three meet at a party that Adidas is throwing for her. The boys are in awe of her—her otherworldly poise, beauty, and tennis acumen.

They invite her back to their no-frills hotel room, not expecting her to show up, but she does. As she waits by the door, she hears them frantically straightening the blankets, pulling on shirts, and shoving underwear under the bed. She’s amused and is already aware of the power she has over them.

“I don’t want to be a home wrecker,” she demures, when Art and Patrick admit they both like her.

“It’s not like that,” they both protest . . . a bit too much.

After drinking and smoking and flirting, Tashi pats the bed next to her. In one of the more comical scenes—you’ve probably seen it in the trailer—the boys trip all over each other to sit beside her on the bed. They begin kissing, but she keeps positioning herself so that, in order to kiss her, they must kiss each other. Eventually she pulls away and the boys are making out. The look on her face is, “My work here is done.”

But Challengers is not quite a gay love story, at least not explicitly. Both boys are still after Tashi. Patrick gets her first. It’s clear she’s more attracted to his bad-boy swagger. (Art is the proverbial nice boy.) Art is jealous but accepts his defeat. But he and Tashi get closer in college and he’s by her side when she suffers a catastrophic injury. Realizing her playing days are over—there’s a beautiful scene where Tashi is sitting under a tree and Guadagnino trains the camera on her pained face as she acknowledges the harsh reality—she agrees to coach Art. She says he’s better than Patrick, he just doesn’t know it.

Challengers jumps around several timelines, mostly related to big matches. We know early in the film that Art and Tashi have gotten married and have a daughter and that he has become a multiple Grand Slam champion. Patrick is still languishing in those challenger tournaments, scraping by.

The film makes it clear that what Patrick needed was, well, Tashi. She has transposed her own ambition onto Art, giving him the competitive edge to make him great. But Art is not as enthused about tennis as he once was and is considering retirement. He worries that Tashi will love him less if he’s not a player—and he’s right. Hunger for competition is what fuels Tashi. She sees it in Patrick, but less so in Art, who is basically a dutiful and devoted husband. He became great because she wanted him to be great.

Guadagnino films the tennis scenes like they’re boxing matches—often in slo-mo, with extreme close-ups of flying sweat, straining biceps, and leaping legs. Sometimes he even films from the perspective of the whizzing tennis ball. I’ve never seen tennis filmed more beautifully or effectively.

The soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is another standout. It’s mostly fast-paced electronica, which disrupts and propels the action at unexpected moments. It has a freneticism with fuels the film.

The three leads are in every single frame and they’re all quite good, with Zendaya being a standout. She has that rare beauty and presence, a la Elizabeth Taylor and Angelina Jolie, where we can believe men would makes fools of themselves, sever longtime friendships, and basically move mountains for her. She has one of the great femme fatale lines ever in this film when Art protests that Patrick doesn’t love her.

“What makes you think I want someone to be in love with me,” she says with a steely-eyed glare.

Faist, who was so good as Riff in West Side Story (you haven’t seen West Side Story yet? Fix that!) is solid here, mixing his yearning with a tiny bit of resentment. Deep down, he knows that even though he got the girl, the connection between Patrick and Tashi is stronger. O’Connor does rascally bad boy quite expertly. All three are convincing on the tennis court.

My sense with Challengers is that Guadagnino wanted to make a tennis film because he knew he could capture the beauty and physicality of the sport better than anyone else. Mission accomplished. He’s also pretty good at that love story thing.

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He was a good sport in the audience, playing along even when host Jimmy Kimmel cracked that he wanted to go camping with him “and not tell our wives.” He acted out a genuinely funny fake feud with Emily Blunt over Barbenheimer (sample joke: “They called it Barbenheimer, not Oppenbarbie because you were riding on our coattails all year.”) And, most of all, he delivered an instantly iconic performance of “I’m Just Ken.”

Before his appearance was announced, lots of people speculated that he wouldn’t perform the Oscar-nominated song because he was too big a star to be relegated to “musical talent.” Others feared that the song was just too silly for a cool guy like Gosling to perform in public.

This demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of who Gosling is. What makes him so wonderful is that he is gleefully, unabashedly, exquisitely goofy. He’s been goofy on SNL (his Papyrus digital short is a classic). He’s was goofy in The Nice Guys (a great film, if you haven’t seen it). He was simultaneously goofy and heartbreaking in Barbie. And he was gloriously goofy on stage last night. Advice to men who fear being goofy: It just made him more powerful.

It wasn’t just that Gosling was fully committed to the song—belting it out while wearing a bedazzled bubble gum pink suit, all while channeling Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It was that it was a production. At one point, they did a Busby Berkeley-style overhead camera shot with complicated choreo. Gosling’s fellow Kens showed up, including Simu Lu and Kingsley Ben-Adir. He pranced into the audience, giving director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie their chance to sing and bop along. Hottie musical producer Mark Ronson was on stage, and then Guns ‘N’ Roses guitarist Slash showed up, too, just for good measure.

I mean, why shouldn’t they do elaborate numbers like this at the Oscars? Why should the Tonys have all the fun? (As one wag quipped on X, formerly Twitter: “If you liked ‘I’m Just Ken,’ wait til you find out about Broadway musicals.”) (Unfortunately, I can’t find the original tweet, so that’s a paraphrase.)

So yes, the Kenergy was strong at last night’s Oscars, but it was overall an excellent show, with a few minor quibbles. Below, I give you a few of the highlights and lowlights.

Best Joke of the Monologue: “This night is full of enormous talent and untold potential, but so was Madame Web, so who knows?”

Best Bit from the Monologue: Kimmel “pulling a Biden” by forcing the room to applaud for the injustice of Greta Gerwig’s Best Director snub and then pointing out that they were the ones who didn’t vote for her.

Best Performance That Wasn’t “I’m Just Ken”: Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” How that young woman can create such heartbreaking intimacy on such a grand stage is beyond me. She’s a generational talent.

Most Wasted Opportunity: Having John Cena give an award for “Best Costumes” while naked. It was an inspired bit—and he had me giggling on my couch. But man, this was the year that Barry Keoghan made nudity his thing. My man dropped trou a lot. First in his controversial film, Saltburn, and then in a Vanity Fair animated cover. It would have been EPIC if Keoghan had been the night’s DNG (Designated Naked Guy).

Best Award Intro That Wasn’t Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt: John Mulaney is just a confident comedian. And it takes his kind of confidence—and comic chops—to do a non-sequitur riff on Field of Dreams while announcing Best Sound. Many thought he was auditioning to be next year’s host. Suffice it to say, he passed.

Worst Fashion Trend: The floating straps seen on Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh were…odd. As I said on X, formerly Twitter: “It looks like a ghost is removing their dresses.” It didn’t help that Blunt’s dress had a strange, um, crotch design. 

Best Dressed Woman: Zendaya absolutely stunned in an antique rose silk gown by Georgio Armani Prive. Yes, it helps when you LOOK LIKE ZENDAYA. But she was utter perfection.

Best Dressed Man: When it comes to awards-show fashion, every man is playing checkers and Colman Domingo is playing chess.

Most Unwelcome Product Placement: Was I hallucinating, or did an ad for Don Julio break out in the middle of the broadcast?

Best Upset: Zone of Interest winning for its uncanny haunting sound design was an unexpected—and inspired—choice.

Funniest Line in An Acceptance Speech: Robert Downey Jr.’s “I’d like to thank my terrible childhood.”

Most Adorable Winner: When The Last Repair Shop took home the award for Documentary Short, they brought out one of the film’s subjects: 12-year-old violinist Porché Brinker, who looked like a fairy tale princess in a pale blue taffeta dress.

Second Most Adorable Winner(s): The crew from Godzilla Minus One, who nabbed an upset award for Best Visual Effects, all while clutching Godzilla toys. What they lacked in English-language proficiency, they more than made up for in giddy, contagious enthusiasm.

Most Adorable Audience Member: They lied to us and said that Messi, the talented Border Collie from Anatomy of a Fall, wasn’t going to make the Oscars due to important dog park business (or somethin’). But it was a fake-out! Messi was there, wearing a fetching bow-tie (get it?) and effortlessly stealing the show.

Worst Dismount: Best Picture is the emotional climax of the night…except for when it isn’t. Al Pacino came out to deliver the award and he was a bit, shall we say, shambolic. He neglected to read out the 10 nominees, hastily tearing open the envelope and saying, with a slightly quizzical look on his face, “And my eyes see Oppenheimer.” It took a full 5 seconds for people to realize that Oppenheimer had actually won, which is an eternity on live TV. No, it wasn’t quite the La La Land/Moonlight fiasco, but they didn’t exactly stick the landing.

Worst Trend: The In Memoriam segment is always a bummer, and not just because it reminds us of all the great talent lost in a given year. People clap at awkward moments, as though one person’s death is more applause-worthy than another’s. And the Academy invariably leaves someone notable out. But the solution to this problem is not to run a quick, scrolling list of the dearly departed after the main segment. It felt more like a diss than a tribute, akin to the original Gilligan’s Island theme song referring to the Professor and Mary Anne as “and the rest.” Don’t do it again!

Best Gift From the Comedy Gods: When Jimmy Kimmel, known for his “Mean Tweets” segment on his late-night talk show, began reading one of his bad reviews on social media—sample quote: “His opening was that of a less than average person trying to be something which he is not”—it just seemed like the host was just doing a riff on that segment. Then he got to the punchline: “Make America Great Again.” Yes, the anonymous social media critic was, in fact, former president Donald Trump. “Thank you for watching, President Trump,” the comedian quipped. “I’m surprised you’re still up. Isn’t it past your jail time?” Oh, buuuurn.

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On the other hand, it has felt a bit like a slow march to the inevitable this season, hasn’t it? There are locks every year, but thanks to the juggernaut that is Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (an excellent and largely deserving film!), there are more than usual this year. I’d love to tell you to expect the unexpected, or prepare for upsets galore, or gird your loins, or whatever—but I can’t lie to you like that. Most of these categories are in the bag.

With that said, here are my (not that) bold predictions for the major categories.

BEST PICTURE
American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Past Lives
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest

Who will win: Oppenheimer
How sure am I? I’d bet the farm, if I had one.
Who could win: No other film might win. Don’t blame the messenger.

BEST DIRECTOR
Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall

Who will win: Christopher Nolan
How sure am I? What’s surer than sure?
Who could win: Just for giggles, I’ll give Lanthimos a two-percent chance.

BEST ACTOR
Bradley Cooper, Maestro
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction

Who will win: Cillian Murphy
How sure am I? I’d go all in, but maybe leave a bit of emergency cash in a lock box.
Who could win: Paul Giamatti has a chance, in the Dumb and Dumber, “So you’re saying there’s a chance?” sense of the phrase. But a chance all the same.

BEST ACTRESS
Annette Bening, Nyad
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall
Carey Mulligan, Maestro
Emma Stone, Poor Things

Who will win: Lily Gladstone
How sure am I? Pretty, pretty sure.
Who could win: Emma Stone could clearly take this. It’s been neck and neck between these two great actresses all awards season, but Gladstone definitely has the mo’.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things

Who will win: Robert Downey Jr.
How sure am I? Like, Michael Phelps at the Beijing Olympics sure.
Who could win: People are beginning to recognize how great Mark Ruffalo was in Poor Things. But…naaa.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
America Ferrera, Barbie
Jodie Foster, Nyad
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Who will win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph”
How sure am I? If I had a second farm, I’d bet that one, too.
Who could win: Honestly, no one. But for the sake of argument, Emily Blunt.

Okay, that’s the end of the categories I’m totally sure of. I’ll throw in a few more predictions that I’m relatively confident in below:

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: American Fiction

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Anatomy of a Fall

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Oppenheimer

BEST SONG: “What Was I Made For?”, Barbie

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Spider Man: Across the Spider-Verse

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: 20 Days in Mariupol

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: The Zone of Interest

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

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But what about the rest of us? For all its stellar special effects, rousing action, awe-inspiring beauty—undulating sand dunes, billowing capes, fire-red crescent moons—and cast of young Hollywood hotties acting their butts off, Dune Part Two didn’t pass the ultimate test for me. That test being: Would I recommend the film to my mother? No. No I would not.

Look, not all films are for all people—I get that. But the very best genre films transcend their tropes and offer something for everyone. An apropos example: I would recommend Villeneuve’s Arrival to all film lovers, not just sci-fi fans.

My biggest objection to the Dune series continues to be that it takes itself far too seriously. Again, I get it—we’re dealing with serious stuff here: dying civilizations, ancient prophecies, struggles for power, the dark temptation of revenge. But just because something is set in a desert doesn’t mean it has to be this dry.

I was a fan of first Dune in this series, although I logged similar complaints about its self-seriousness. This one is a little better; the action is just as thrilling but the characters are given more depth and the central moral dilemma of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet)—at what point does one become blinded by power?—begins to snap into focus. There is also a love story with the wonderful Zendaya, playing Chani, a member of the blue-eyed desert people, the Fremen of Arrakis. Paul is utterly devoted to her (“I will love you for as long as I breathe”) but she is a bit more circumspect. “You will never lose me as long as you stay who you are,” she says pointedly. She knows that Paul is being pulled by some powerful temptations, namely the Fremen people, who see him as a possible savior. They grow to worship him, especially after he manages to tame one of those giant worm creatures, riding it like Ben Hur through the swirling sand. But will Paul lose himself in his quest for revenge? It’s hard not to root for the brave and resolute Paul—he is played by Chalamet, after all—but Chani serves as the film’s voice of moral clarity and skepticism. She knows he’s teetering toward a point of no return.

But we’re not there yet. Paul is still quite heroic in this film, even as he’s haunted by visions of leading the Fremen people to their own destruction. He has voices in his ear: His power-hungry, sorceress mother (Rebecca Ferguson), now pregnant with Paul’s sister, and recruited by the Fremen to be their Reverend Mother; the big-hearted Fremen patriarch, Stilgar (Javier Bardem), who is a true believer in Paul as the messiah; and Chani, who tells him to be wary of these prophecies.

Meanwhile, Arrakis is under siege by the Harkonnen kingdom, a land with, apparently, no Rogaine. Last film we met the Jabba the Hut-like Baron (Stellan Skarsgard), who was after the Arrakis’ precious resource of “spice.” This time we also meet his creepy nephew Feyd (Austin Butler), a lethal swordsman, not above cheating to win a dual, with a beautiful, alien-like face and positively crazed eyes.

Florence Pugh, who does some of the film’s narration, only appears briefly as the daughter of the Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken), who feels his grip on power slipping away. Her arc will be compelling—she’s loyal to her father, just as Paul was loyal to his, but she comes to realize that he is not a righteous man. By the film’s end, her fate and Paul’s fate will be inextricably entwined. (Alas, we’re going to have to wait for Part Three to see it play out.)

Villeneuve recently gave an interview where he said that he is mostly interested in cinema for spectacle, that dialogue holds little appeal to him. Having seen Dune: Part Two that tracks. The film is a spectacle, a marvel of craftsmanship, the sort of film you need to see on the largest screen possible. But the dialogue is mostly expository, and at times painfully earnest. That said, I wouldn’t want some script doctor jazzing this thing up with zingers (“Stop trying to worm your way out of this, Paul!”). That’s definitely not the vibe. Dune Part Two is the best Dune Part Two it can possibly be. I just have to accept that it’s not the best film for me.

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The film is largely set on a manor in the French countryside, sometime in the late 19th century. Dodin (Benoît Magimel) is the master of the house—and a noted chef and gourmand himself. Eugénie is his cook—and lover. (Add a thief and a wife and we’d have a Peter Greenaway film.) They share an all-consuming passion for food and a love of being in the kitchen. This being the 19^th century, everything in that kitchen is sturdy, made of cast iron or wood—the kitchen is filled with wonderful sounds of chopping and simmering and clanging (as well as outdoor birdsong and a persistently meowing cat). Eugénie, in particular, also loves spending time in the garden, pulling up cabbages and radishes and herbs that she will include in the day’s meals.

The film starts with a nearly 40-minute scene of the preparation of one of those meals—and if you don’t like seeing animal flesh being gutted, stuffed, plucked, and tied, you’ve come to the wrong movie. Most of the finished food in the film looks divine—you’ll be craving baked Alaska, roasted veal, skate floating in cream and butter, and whatever that puff pastry masterpiece was—but Tràn gets into the visceral nature of the preparation, too. The kitchen scenes are not for the squeamish.

But to Dodin and Eugénie, these are the tools of their art and how they communicate their love. Yes, they are in love, but not married—her call, not his. She likes the current arrangement. She is happiest when making a meal plan, cooking with and for him, and leaving her door open, sometimes, for him to join her in bed at night. But she values her alone time and, in a strange way, also values the clear lines of employee/employer between them, even if those lines have been blurred over the years.

That meal they’re preparing at the film’s start is for Dodin’s best friends, a group of wealthy men, like him, in their 50s and 60s, who are epicureans. They don’t just eat the food Eugénie has prepared for them, they savor it—first inhaling its smells, then slowly swirling and chewing and swallowing it until they slump back into their chairs with a contented sigh. Wine from Dodin’s cellar is the drink of choice, naturellement, but they also enjoy cognac and a post-meal pipe. Eugénie never joins them, even though they protest. She prefers to be in the kitchen.

The men are kind and joyful and loving. This isn’t a film about the callousness of the rich—quite the contrary. There is a real fellowship among these best friends. They are fiercely loyal to the better things in life—and to each other.

The day of the party, the manor’s young housekeeper brings her even younger cousin, who it turns out is a bit of a prodigy. She has a remarkable palate for someone her age. At one point, Dodin tests her by feeding her a complex sauce and she matter-of-factly rattles off its ingredients. Later, she is so overcome with emotion by the taste of that baked Alaska, she says she might cry. That emotion is not just an ineffable expression of love, but perhaps the sense that the moment of eating it has now come and gone—a Proustian nostalgia for the present. Dodin and Eugénie decide they want to make her their apprentice.

The Taste of Things is not just a sensual experience for the characters, but for the viewer as well. And it goes beyond the food. The pastoral manor is bathed in a golden light that changes with the seasons and humming with activity—it comes alive for us; we feel as though we’ve stepped into a Renoir. And Tràn has an interest in all aspects of the flesh—at one point, he cuts from a perfectly shaped pear to Eugénie in repose on her bed, her naked form mimicking the curves of the fruit.

At 59, Juliette Binoche is as beautiful as ever—and cinephiles will know that she and co-star Magimel fell in love 20 years ago on set and even have a child together. (They broke up several years ago.) It adds a bit of subtext and meta poignancy, if you will, to the film. Dodin and Eugénie have grown old together, and familiar, but that makes their love stronger. At one point, Dodin attends a fussy luncheon thrown by a prince. The food is ridiculously ornate and busy and there’s far too much of it. But Dodin knows better. Like food, the best things in life are slowly nurtured, loved, and perfected over time.

The Taste of Things is now playing at The Charles.

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Of course, that wasn’t the case. Assembling all those pop legends required a herculean effort—and first they had to write the song.

Through interviews and priceless behind-the-scenes footage, Bao Nguyen’s documentary, The Greatest Night in Pop, reveals just how that song came together on that one fateful night in 1985. It’s narrated by a bunch of pop luminaries, most notably Lionel Richie, who co-wrote the song with Michael Jackson and proves to be an excellent raconteur. Also interviewed are Cyndi Lauper, Kenny Loggins, Huey Lewis, producer Quincy Jones, and various music execs and tech people. Most shockingly, Bruce Springsteen is interviewed—he somehow seems both proud of the project and slightly mortified by his involvement. (It’s clear The Boss found the song corny.)

The concept was cribbed from Bob Geldof’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, which had every New Wave British singer you can think of (including Sting, Bono, and my forever crush, Duran Duran’s John Taylor) and raised money to combat famine in Ethiopia. Inspired by Geldof’s success and icon Harry Belafonte’s involvement in the same cause, Richie and co. set out to do an American version.

Richie, who met Michael Jackson, then at the peak of his “Thriller” success, at his home to write the song, shares colorful stories about encountering Michael’s various exotic pets: There was Bubbles the chimp, a talking parrot, and a giant python, which was a bridge too far. (Richie bolted.)

Michael didn’t play any instruments, but instead hummed the song he heard in his head, as Richie interpreted it on piano. They had to construct a song that was catchy, uplifting, and allowed for a variety of disparate voices. It’s safe to say they succeeded.

With the involvement of Richie, Jackson, Stevie Wonder (an early sign-on), and Quincy Jones, it was fairly easy to recruit the biggest stars of the day. One after the other they said yes—Paul Simon, Tina Turner, Diana Ross, Billy Joel, Steve Perry from Journey, Willie Nelson—and so on. But even they were surprised when first Bruce Springsteen and then Bob Dylan signed on. These were iconoclastic rockers, not exactly known to be joiners.

They smartly chose to record the song all in one session, the day after the American Music Awards—when everyone was already in town. They all assembled in an LA recording studio, where the words “Leave Your Ego At the Door” were hastily taped to window. It was necessary.

One thing you have to understand about “We Are the World” is that not everyone got a solo. The biggest stars did, although Richie and Jones had to tap dance around that reality by saying it was based on vocal range. Still, some of the stars who didn’t get solos were salty. (Not sure how they could be when Bette Midler herself didn’t get one.)

The percussionist and singer Sheila E, then Prince’s girlfriend, was on hand and called her beau, telling him he was missing out, he had to get there. Briefly, there was an excited buzz that Prince was actually going to show—imagine having both Prince and Michael Jackson in the same recording studio—but Prince never made it. Sheila E wasn’t surprised. She said Prince was shy.

So, at the last minute, Huey Lewis was asked to fill in for Prince on the vocal solos. Lewis, who is extremely endearing in his interviews, said he was excited and petrified. He was truly afraid he was going to lay an egg in front of all his heroes.

Cyndi Lauper also seemed a bit intimidated by the crowd of icons—who were mostly older and more established than her. When she did her solo, she feared they were laughing at her. They explained that they were laughing at the fact that her enormous earrings and stacked necklaces, her signature style, were rattling on the mic. She sheepishly removed them and belted out her verse with her patented raspy alto.

Despite the undercurrent of jealousy, there was much conviviality in the studio, and an understanding that what was transpiring was truly extraordinary. But as the night wore on—and turned to morning—people inevitably got cranky and tired and sweaty.

“The room was ripe,” one sound engineer said.

For the most part, Quincy Jones, with help from Richie, managed to keep the group on track.

Among the singers, some were more used to this kind of pop anthem than others—but no one was more out of place than Dylan, who looked hilariously miserable and out of sorts for most of the recording.

Indeed, when it was his turn to sing, he wasn’t as mic-ready as others, and seemed a bit baffled as to what was expected of him. Stevie Wonder emerged to save the day, in an ingenious way you’ll have to watch the doc to find out.

The Greatest Night in Pop is one of those wonderfully wish fulfilling, “man I wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall during that recording”-type documentaries. I want to watch it again just to take in all the background activity (stars hugging and laughing and whispering in each other’s ears) that I missed. But wonderful as the doc is, it still doesn’t answer one of the greatest mysteries of them all, up there with Stonehenge and the Bermuda Triangle: What on earth was Dan Aykroyd doing there?

The Greatest Night in Pop is now playing on Netflix.

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For gay men, in particular, the trauma can be deep-seated: getting bullied in school, getting kicked out of the family home, and, if you’re of a certain age, living through the fear and tragedy of AIDS.

Adam (Andrew Scott), the protagonist of Andrew Haigh’s heart-crushing All of us Strangers, had a fairly normal, middle class childhood, for a while at least. He knew he was gay at a young age, and got relentlessly teased at school—at one point, his classmates shoved his head down a toilet. But didn’t tell his parents. They were kind, but hardly enlightened. And Adam always had a hunch—a correct one it turns out—that his father (Jamie Bell) secretly suspected his son was gay but was in denial about it. (He told his son to stop crossing his legs, because he looked like a girl—a pointed indignity Adam carries with him to this day.) Instead, his father adopted something of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy around the house.

These “minor” traumas turned to a major one, when Adam’s parents died in a car crash when he was 12. He was sent to live at his grandmother’s house. At a new school, he hid himself, acted straight. And when he finally came out, it was in the middle of the AIDS crisis.

So when we meet Adam now, he’s a lonely, isolated, closed off man. He lives in a brand new apartment complex in London that has few tenants. One of them, a handsome stranger named Harry (Paul Mescal), shows up one night, drunk. He has noticed Adam noticing him through the window. Can he come in? (The window, by the way, is a recurring theme in this film—the glass panes representing the otherness of people, the inaccessibility of their interior lives.)

Adam, used to being alone and a bit taken aback by this stranger’s boldness, demurs. Harry leaves, but they meet up a day or so later, in the elevator, and strike up a conversation. Adam invites Harry over and they become lovers.

Harry, who is younger than Adam, had his own version of trauma to deal with—a family that rejected him because he’s gay. But when he finds out about Adam’s parents, he understands that Adam is dealing with something extremely heavy. He is uncommonly kind and gentle with him. Harry’s kindness and sexual ministrations open Adam up. He becomes some version of happy.

While all this is happening, Adam is living a double life, of sorts. He’s visiting his childhood home—the house he lived in before his parents died—and visiting with his parents. Yes, his parents are there—frozen in the 1980s (Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Thompson Twins are often playing in the background)—actually a little younger than Adam is now.

They seem to know that this is some sort of liminal state—they marvel over how big Adam has grown and want to hear all about his life since they died. His mother (Claire Foy) is a bit dismayed to discover her son is gay. “It’s a lonely life,” she says. Adam explains that things have changed for gay people. He can have children now—even get married. If he’s lonely, it has nothing to do with him being gay, he says, unconvincingly.

His father, with his mustache, ugly sweaters, and bad haircut, seems older than his son. He is unsophisticated, thoroughly middle class—Adam has more of an urbane vibe. But Adam’s father is self-aware enough to have regrets. He’s sorry that he didn’t console his son, who was crying in his room, bearing the pain of his bullying alone. He even fears that, when he was young, he might’ve been the kind of boy who would join in on the bullying. The two men hug. The camera pulls back. Dad is now hugging Adam as a 12-year-old child.

So what exactly is happening here? Is Adam cracking up? Is the film supernatural? Haigh never fully answers that question—nor should he. The film, which is exquisitely acted by its four leads, especially Scott, is about loneliness and the need for connection. It’s about the particular trauma of the gay male—yes, even in these enlightened times. But its themes of longing to be accepted—by one’s parents, by society, by a romantic partner—are universal.

It is about Adam. It is about Haigh. It is about all of us.

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