The movie’s hook channels E.T. and Poltergeist in its master shot of a suburban enclave, home to Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as an unhappily married Michigan couple whose love has seen better days. While Denise (Hathaway) secretly toils away on a typewritten manuscript about an unfulfilled wife, Greg (McGregor) delivers pizzas to make ends meet. In their split-level home, they parent teens Audrey (Maisy Stella, the terrific star of My Old Ass) and Brian (Christian Convery), and the efficient screenplay quickly establishes each as a likable human. It’s effective, economical storytelling—and it happens within the first ten minutes during a sun-dappled community block party.

And what an opening. That neighborhood street fest doesn’t merely dress up an era but effectively recaptures bygone, classic movie magic—the uncynical innocence of American teens tossing water balloons while dreaming of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, snarky neighbors, a pretty new student, outracing neighborhood bullies down Main Street on old-school BMX bicycles and bonding with the loyal family pooch—while also hinting at deeper familial rifts. Denise and Greg are on edge (she’s on the verge of calling it quits), and their pained kids feel the strain.

Nothing like a life-threatening crisis for family reunification! Strangeness is afoot—giant piles of dung and centuries-extinct plants emerge, followed by blinding flashes in the middle of the night. For reasons perhaps best left to Mitchell’s screenwriting, a wild contrivance tears a wormhole—stay with me—in time, hurtling the neighborhood backwards (I think) to the prehistoric era, where their Oak Street hamlet is suddenly, inescapably surrounded by swamps, volcanoes, tropical jungles—and many, many threatening dinosaurs.

Can Denise and Greg save their kids, their marriage and themselves? This is all great fun, firing on all cylinders and working like a charm. Terrific performances? Hathaway, especially, knocks this out of the park as the sidelined mom with a dream to reinvent herself, who comes into her own as a feral maternal protector; it’s a hoot seeing her furiously take on a T-Rex ferociously trying to tear her from her car, and then try to gobble her from a neighbor’s porch.

Super special effects? Indeed. Gone are the usual fakey CGI/AI, low-stakes creations of most fantasy films; ILM’s Jay Cooper led the technical wizardry, which is terrifically convincing, even scary. The effects team has outdone themselves sequence after sequence, including that marvelously limber T-Rex and a thrilling, quiet sequence involving a very long prehistoric worm surreptitiously infiltrating the family home, which builds to a brutally effective denouement.

But the movie isn’t just nostalgia and action, and its family dynamics contain a gender role reversal distinctly contemporary in terms of who in the family holds the most smarts and power—the mother, not the father. But this is not served up as PC ideological didacticism, and it’s actually rather touching to see McGregor fumbling, usually just keeping pace with his wife. Early in the movie, when he pulls into the driveway with the pizza delivery sign affixed to the top of his car, explaining to his teenage son that he removes the sign every night to avoid his mother’s embarrassment, it’s insightfully poignant. 

Those who are quick to say that it’s a subversive gender-switch upending the milieu, and that the father is somehow sidelined or emasculated, are missing the broader point. If he’s presented as a struggling would-be breadwinner recently (and secretly) made unemployed who, in his words, tells his wife during one tense moment that “everything I say is wrong,” he’s also a deeply identifiable human character, and when the going gets rough, a paternal protector in the extreme. Hathaway, on the other hand, is given a character who turns into a savagely effective mama bear with, as they say in today’s parlance, agency; she’s a blast saving the day. But Mitchell makes the marital dynamics complicated and honest enough that any argument suggesting gender dynamics are merely flipped to serve the times is reductive.

Mitchell, creator of 2014’s cult horror hit It Follows and 2018’s dismissed Under the Silver Lake, makes all of this work in 99 trim minutes (90 would have likely been sufficient), never losing sight of the humans at the center of the sci-fi thrills. Both Hathaway and McGregor are touchingly vulnerable together and a well-matched pair of unlikely heroes showing up for their kids, even when Mitchell audaciously throws shocking surprises at them (and us). Somehow, he’s pulled off a summer movie with huge spectacle that keeps the family firmly in front of its creatures; we care deeply about them and their efforts to keep their family intact.

The picture’s technique is impeccably retro-appealing, with cinematographer Mike Gioulakis providing a period-authentic grainy sheen (shot on digital but looking every bit like 80s celluloid), while composer Michael Giacchino’s loving, melodically rich orchestral homage to John Williams has as much transporting power as the film’s space-time continuum (which gets pretty loopy in the final moments; better to avoid scrutiny and just go with it).

A treat.

3 1/2 stars

The post A Summer Sleeper with Teeth: The End of Oak Street is a Dino Thriller With Old-School Charm first appeared on ChicagoFilm.

Nolan, who won picture and directing Oscars last time out for 2023’s Oppenheimer, keeps topping himself (his only real head-scratcher was 2020’s impenetrable sci-fi espionage thriller Tenet). And while only at 2026’s midpoint, it’s hard to imagine The Odyssey won’t repeat Oppenheimer’s Oscar coup. 

Shot for a reported $270 million and entirely on 70mm IMAX (a format only 41 theaters around the world can faithfully project), The Odyssey finds Nolan swinging so big that the risk-reward nearly knocks you over with the sheer audacity of an artist’s singular vision, mounting big-screen-only wonders few other working contemporary filmmakers dare (or perhaps care) to attempt. 

Those Homeric marvels include menacing beasts, sorceress witches, benevolent and vengeful gods, lethal sirens, lost souls roaming Hades, warcraft perils on land and sea, treacherous power plays and a gratifying family homecoming that ranks as Nolan’s most touching hour in a career of coolly cerebral works. In sequence after sequence, the architecturally visionary filmmaker stages set-pieces of immense ambition and craftsmanship. This is not to say that The Odyssey is mere populist escapism (Clash of the Titans it isn’t); it trades “fun” for smarts and rigor. 

In a career performance, Matt Damon (full disclosure: I briefly wondered how Leonardo DiCaprio might have approached the role), is King Odysseus of Ithaca, away for two decades of the Trojan War and its aftermath. The picture opens on a knockout shot of the famed Trojan horse half-buried at the seaside, recalling the coup de grâce finale of 1968’s Planet of the Apes. Son Telemachus (Tom Holland), a boy when his now-presumed-dead father departed, has been forced into manhood, ready to embark on a quest to find dear “dad” (Nolan, who adapted the screenplay, indulges in modern vernacular). Meanwhile, Queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway, claws out) pines for her husband’s return, pressured to remarry or surrender the throne of the once-great kingdom. 

There’s a juicy secret plot in the midst, courtesy of power-hungry suitor Antinous, played by Robert Pattinson with venomous arrogance and an Ithaca-entitlement complex that won’t be denied; Mia Goth also turns up as Penelope’s (dis)loyal maid and Antinous’ co-conspirator. Waiting for his kingly friend’s return is Odysseus’s faithful, blind servant Eumaeus (a warm John Leguizamo, gamely distracting). 

The movie shuttles between palace intrigue and Odysseus’ roving exploits of battle and myth, which, courtesy of Nolan’s go-to DP Hoyte van Hoytema, are awe-inspiring, beginning with an early sequence as the warriors do battle with the sheep-herding Cyclops (Bill Irwin), a killer giant with a hefty appetite (the most violent Nolan has ever been). The dialogue here about escape is slightly on the nose (and we’ve already thought of the solution before Damon articulates it to his men). Still, the creature, a hulking, one-eyed terror, is a real movie feat—a 60-foot animatronic puppet whose movement and voice came courtesy of Irwin, a literal towering achievement of practical effects and performance, sans CGI. 

Another terrifically staged digression features a standout Samantha Morton as witch Circe, who transforms Odysseus’ men into pigs; still another conjures a giant sea whirlpool (Nolan and team created turbulence and swells and then digitally enhanced) that threatens to suck Odysseus’ ship into its spiral. And a creepy sequence involving sirens, calling the men to doom, is superbly staged on a ship deck, with novel sound design. 

And there’s much more, including the Trojan horse ambush on Troy, deployed in two sequences; only in the climax does Nolan bring its thematic significance into focus. And Charlize Theron is nymph Calypso, who nurses a PTSD-stricken Odysseus, whom she loves, while conveniently making him forget his home—for ten long years. 

Shot over 91 days in six countries including Greece, Morocco, Italy, Iceland, Scotland and the Western Sahara, using helicopters to access roadless, steep mountain locales upon which the production built massive sets (eschewing CGI and AI), The Odyssey looks and feels alive in a way movies are rarely made anymore. And unlike Hollywood’s many green-screened, CGI-infested adventure films (most of which are failing with moviegoers), every cent of Nolan’s budget is onscreen.

It’s not a perfect film—Holland, whose best work remains his prodigious adolescent turn in 2012’s tsunami survival picture The Impossible, is miscast, lacking in classical (and vocal) gravitas, while both Goth and Zendaya (as the goddess Athena) are underutilized. As for the film’s first hour, it can be challenging to follow Nolan’s time-hopping—his signature obsession—as he deploys multiple-perspective flashbacks with cursory context. 

But there is no denying the visceral power of the movie’s final act, the rousing return of a pauper-king, dispatching betrayers in tactile combat, slinging arrows and spears after the desperate Penelope commands her suitors to an ill-fated rite of passage. Damon, 55, has lost none of his Jason Bourne verve while Hathaway is formidable in a searing mother-son exchange. 

Nolan crafted the screenplay, heavily informed by Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation positing a morally complicated Odysseus; he strips away any heroism in favor of gritty perspectives on the trauma of war. Surprisingly, the movie’s take on warfare aligns with that of Oppenheimer. Just as Robert J. Oppenheimer struggled with intense guilt over the devastation wrought by atomic hellfire, Nolan fashions Odysseus as a man haunted by suppressed memories of the devastation he unleashed at Troy and the men he lost—and it’s here that the movie, for all its eye-popping craft and thrills, sticks the landing. 

As Nolan sees it, Odysseus returns to Ithaca not in glory but instead burdened by what he did in the fog of war, a timely theme acted by Damon with emotional realism that is surprisingly effective in Homer’s ancient mythical context. Nolan has also largely excised the role of The Odyssey‘s gods from his retelling (save Athena, sort of Odysseus’ personal confidant, and threats of Poseidon’s wrath that hang over the soldiers’ fraught voyage). 

The Odyssey has been a lightning rod for Elon Musk-led casting controversy surrounding supporting players Elliott Page and Lupita Nyong’o, who found themselves on the receiving end of a sordid, much ado about nothing wave of racist and anti-trans abuse online. Page, an Oscar nominee for Juno, and Nyong’o, an Oscar winner for 12 Years a Slave, play Greek warrior Sinon and twin sisters Helen of Troy/Clytemnestra, respectively. Though their appearances here are relatively minor, both deliver fine performances that make the most of their limited screen time. As the doomed warrior Sinon, Page has a knockout Hades-set scene taking Odysseus to task for his demise. As for Nyong’o’s striking Helen of Troy, she’s deemed—due to her scarring—as “the face that launched 500 ships,” a cruel barb from Spartan king Menelaus (a modern-sounding Jon Bernthal). 

The Odyssey is an essential achievement that demands, and deserves, to be seen on the finest premium format screen possible. If you love movies—and you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t—make your pilgrimage to the biggest screen you can find. 

4 stars

The post Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Is a Monumental Epic With a Human Soul first appeared on ChicagoFilm.

But adult content is enjoying a revival in prestige pictures like the Oscar-winning Anora, Poor Things and Babygirl, while comedies such as Bottoms, No Hard Feelings and last year’s spouse-swap buddy picture Splitsville may signal a renewed appetite for racy laughs. Now comes Olivia Wilde’s savvy, altogether hilarious The Invite, a riot of marital unrest, temptation and the threat/thrill of polyamory, played so well by a smooth machine team of rarely better stars that it ranks among the year’s most enjoyable moviegoing experiences.

On her third time in the director’s chair, Wilde’s The Invite is an impressive feat of sustained, anxious lunacy—closer to two laughs a minute than one—and the idea of sex, as both a marriage killer and an alluring liberation, exerts a gravitational pull. Working from a devilishly sharp screenplay by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, adapted from Spanish writer-director Cesc Gay’s 2020 The People Upstairs, Wilde—whose Booksmart delivered big laughs while Don’t Worry Darling brought bold style (and, ahem, a bit of Harry Styles controversy)—takes a major and assured step forward as a director.

A biting chamber piece largely set inside the sprawling San Francisco apartment of an unhappily married couple on the verge of realizing it, The Invite is anchored by career-topping performances from Wilde and Seth Rogen as longtime spouses about to face a reckoning.

The film opens on a petty squabble after acerbic former musician-turned-associate professor Joe (Rogen) learns that his high-strung wife Angela (Wilde) has invited the new couple upstairs for a little unwanted get-to-know-you. As the pair talk over and walk around each other with zinger disregard, Wilde establishes a comically worn marital dynamic. By the grace of Joe’s deceased parents they reside in a far more expensive home than they could otherwise afford, yet inside is a life of constant confrontation. For his part, depressed Joe has a bad back and lost himself as an artist, while Xanax-popping Angela, who studied art but never pursued a career, is stuck in the stay-at-home doldrums, obsessively home decorating to distraction.

Those upstairs neighbors arrive—do they ever—in the form of a game Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton as hilariously enlightened, libertine lovers as free as their hosts are bound. Psychotherapist and “sexologist” Pina, a blonde Venus vision in Cruz, is played with such non-conformist allure and sly comic predation that the actress delivers the best supporting performance in an American movie this year. And her rug-obsessed, former firefighter turned Rolf masseuse boyfriend Hawk (Norton) is part swinger, part life coach and so comfortable in the film’s escalating absurdity that he turns his hosts’ discomfort into some of the evening’s funniest moments.

If the dinner party goes quickly and superficially off the rails (a very funny Pina brings flan but rejects everything on Angela’s over-prepared menu, including the Spanish jamon), what follows is a pointed dissection of marital dynamics and fidelity over a painfully awkward, too-long night. For Joe and Angela, the stakes are high—they’ve got a 12-year-old daughter who seems to be their only real common ground—but if they’re already on thin ice with their frequently scorching recriminations (and a bit of mutual deception), Pina and Hawk push them into even shakier territory. The introduction of their enigmatic bohemian neighbors only underscores what they’ve lost and how desperate Angela is to recapture it.

Both couples have their own agendas, and there’s a funny bit of misdirection where Angela apologizes for renovation commotion while the Joe’s real aim is to get to the bottom of what’s happening upstairs in the middle of the night—a major source of noise—which Pina and Hawk are more than willing to explain away, to uproarious comic effect.

This sequence, as Wilde performatively hangs on Cruz’s deadpan details of swinger etiquette (“There’s a menu?”), her Angela determined to join the cool kids club, is among the star’s finest and movie’s zaniest; she’s never been this loose onscreen, and her spirited line deliveries (“Don’t be rude, look at her boobs!”) land with deadly funny precision.  

The desperation Wilde is playing here—Angela suffocating in her staid marriage while trying to reclaim an adventurous spark, however vicariously—has real punch. Special mention goes to Cruz, who’s been vital and sexy and intelligent onscreen for about 35 years, here reinventing herself with a confident comic command that tilts the movie (and us) toward her every time she’s in frame. And while Rogen could perform this material eyes closed by simply trading on his patented sardonic irreverence, here he points those trademarks toward some poignant truths.

Throughout, he’s used to maximum effect as straight man to the escalating hijinks; his reactions in a scene where he and Cruz steal away and propose coupling up is fall-down funny, as is an awkward kitchen tryst between Wilde and Norton, both couples spiraling toward something deeper that will cut to the core of long-term commitment.

In scenes like this, as the acting quartet takes off, you start to notice how carefully the comedy is built into the characters, and how Wilde’s camera catches it all in side glances, asides and pained reactions; each actor is clearly having so much fun that anywhere the camera looks, something special is happening. Wilde ingeniously carves out this comedic psychodrama in tight close-ups. Yet somehow, her movie never feels stage-bound; the apartment is an integral character, as if in on the fast-clip jokes, frequently and effectively underlined by composer Devonté Hynes’ high-stress cello.

The Invite has a nervy, near-farcical acceleration that’s a blast to plug into, but the hilarity comes out of something painful underneath; the film’s swerve toward third-act Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? truth-telling can feel slightly abrupt (though no less lacerating); consider that a minor non-quibble. It’s hard to believe that anyone in a long-term relationship won’t feel a shock of recognition, especially after a riveting exchange about how in order to continue on, together, you must sometimes accept that things, at least as they were, are over. This is exceptionally fine writing and a reminder of how good American comedies used to be when grown-ups talked honestly about such topics as sex, marriage and the big “existential” questions (there’s a funny joke here about that too).

At times, The Invite recalls vintage Woody Allen in its stinging one-liners and mordant observations on relationships, love and the human condition. I laughed to tears—an uncommon thing in American comedy today—and found myself unexpectedly moved by the end.

Highly recommended.

4 stars

The post The Invite: A Dinner Party with Bite, and A Riotous Return of the Sex Comedy first appeared on ChicagoFilm.

The movie turns on a wan revenge plot by way of manufactured sisterhood empowerment, and it’s one of those films where it becomes almost immediately clear that something is wrong. There is simply nothing funny (though the film clearly thinks there is) or remotely engaging about Supergirl Kara Zor-El (Alcock), who is introduced as a jaded, hard-partying malcontent still struggling to recover from the loss of her parents and the destruction of her home planet, Krypton. For the record, the film’s depiction of Krypton’s destruction cannot hold a candle to Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman, which handled the moment far better (though these sequences do give Alcock some of her strongest moments) and accomplished it without today’s reliance on expensive effects. 

Anyway, Kara isn’t exactly thrilled about being Supergirl and is far from heroic, living her days as a kind of drifter with the same powers as cousin Superman (David Corenswet, appearing in a cameo, urging her to get her act together). She isn’t the heroic type, nor is she particularly concerned with preserving truth, justice, and the American way. And who can blame her? Unlike Superman’s infant Clark Kent, she spent much of her early life on the planet Krypton and in Argo City, and after the deaths of her parents, she has only her dog Krypto as the last remaining connection to her former life. So she keeps her head down—until one day sword-wielding Ruthie Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley) comes knocking. Predictably, it takes Kara some time to team up with the younger girl and set out to track down the big bad galactic villain who murdered her father. 

Trapped in this mess is the wonderful—and very handsome—Belgian star Matthias Schoenaerts (though it’s not his fault that none of that talent or good looks are on display here) as that villain. And if movies like this can be partly measured by the strength of their antagonists, Schoenaerts is not given much to work with. His character, Klem—a pierced space pirate and human trafficker who kidnaps young women (George Miller did this much better in Mad Max: Fury Road) and even manages to shoot the trusty superdog Krypto—feels, like nearly everything else in this picture, pulled straight off the shelf, with little distinction despite the star’s efforts. And Jason Momoa turns up as a wily bounty hunter named Lobo, doing what Jason Momoa typically does.

Scruffy Milly Alcock stars this time around, and she brings plenty of spunk and punk attitude, but she lacks the star power of, say, Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman or even Corenswet. That is partially understandable given Kara’s reluctance to embrace the savior mantle, but Alcock is more of a modern, edgy performer and seems less comfortable during the film’s many battles and confrontations. There is simply no larger-than-life quality to her daring, though you have to feel for her when she is saddled with such clunky dialogue during the final stretch: “Hello. My name is Kara Zor-El. You shot my f*****g dog… This is for my dog, and for what you did to that little girl.” It is all painfully on the nose, lacking nuance or imagination, much like the entire picture.

 Rumor has it that Gunn took control of the picture during editing after poor test screenings, but clearly he was unable to salvage it. Certain Gunn touches are still identifiable—such as the irreverent, overly clever pop music choices on the soundtrack, a habit he has carried over since 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Here, that includes a misconceived needle drop cover of Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle,” which feels completely out of place. Other than Gunn’s touches, Supergirl bears the DNA of a soulless corporate product and represents the worst tendencies of American fantasy filmmaking: a film that does nothing more than pummel audiences with hardware, unconvincing jerky CGI, loads of attitude and plotting so obvious that boredom sets in after barely ten minutes. 

It’s worth noting that the character previously made her way to the big screen in Jeannot Szwarc’s campy, vampy (thanks to stars Faye Dunaway and Brenda Vaccaro), 1984 Supergirl, starring Helen Slater, which after Donner’s high marks with Christopher Reeve was dismissed as a small-stakes embarrassment. By comparison, however, that earlier film now feels refreshingly innocent next to Gillespie’s overblown saga. 

With early indicators pointing toward weak box office results, many will undoubtedly attribute its failure to audience fatigue with superhero movies (which, for the most part and thankfully, appear to have run their course), while others will predictably blame vocal fanboys determined to sink a “girl power” outing (and they do enjoy taking credit for the box-office failure of 2023’s ill-fated The Marvels). But the real problems here are a routine story, a complete lack of wonder and excitement, and a sourpuss central character. 

However, Alcock’s Kara is a realist about the world; she has little interest in her cousin’s rose-colored heroics or his optimism about human nature. That is an interesting idea, and perhaps if the film had paired its superhuman cousins for an exploration their opposing philosophies, it might have found something worthwhile. As it stands, though, it is an inconsequential throwaway. Not for one minute is it fun. 

Not recommended. 

1 star

The post Supergirl Falls Flat in a Disappointingly Lifeless Spectacle first appeared on ChicagoFilm.

If Arthur Penn’s 1967 classic Bonnie and Clyde remains the blueprint, Carolina Caroline confirms notions of lawbreaking lovers as an ever-durable movie escape. From a screenplay by Tom Dean, director Rehmeier (Dinner in America) infuses this time-tested formula with emotional immediacy, and stars Weaving and Kyle Gallner lend a modern vitality echoing the impulsive chemistry Dunaway and Beatty made archetypal more than a half-century ago. 

Weaving, the Australian-born actress known for committed, versatile turns in both genre (Ready or Not, Borderline) and prestige (Three Billboards Out of Ebbing Missouri, Babylon) pictures, finds her career best role as one Caroline Daniels, a small-town Texan whose job at a roadside convenience store affords a chance meeting with a charismatic, “just passing through” drifter in denim named Oliver (Gallner), who cons the cashier before disappearing down the road in his classic, baby-blue Chevy Chevelle.

Caroline may be small-town, but she’s also perceptive and restless, and after the pair’s second encounter at the local honky tonk and a come-hither moonlight dip in a secluded quarry, a charged magnetism ignites. “So, what do you do?” She asks. Oliver submerges. But after he explains his moral indifference to petty cons and a bit of slow-dancing at the local roadhouse, Caroline surmises that learning the tricks of his trade might be her ticket to a wider world; hers is a classic self-expulsion from the cocoon of small-town life. Oliver’s world is one of analyzing human behavior, building trust and then making a score. Caroline figures she’d like to learn something about that. 

Bidding goodbye to her devoted dad (Jon Gries), she rides shotgun across the American southeast and headlong into good trouble. This first hour of Carolina Caroline is intoxicating—detailed character-building, steamy romance and role-playing hustles, from short-change scams to swindling savings accounts to retail boosts. An immensely watchable movie duo, quick study Caroline and ace operator Oliver so draw us to them that we almost forget the long arm of the law is never far behind—especially after Caroline’s bank heist spree becomes regional infamy, curdling the exhilaration. 

Dean’s screenplay gives the pair plenty of time to develop as likable young people seeking a better hand but quickly get in over their heads. Together onscreen, Weaving and the welcome Gallner (Strange Darling, Smile), who makes Oliver more vulnerable than he first appears, are so striking in their love on the lam that we root for them to make a clean getaway, perhaps to Ecuador, of which Caroline’s father has always dreamed. Mainly, we wish for them to be in another film genre that could spare them the fatalism defining this one. In their most resonant exchange, Caroline wonders, “How do you know if we’re good people pretending to be bad, or bad ones pretending to be good?” Both stars exude a white-hot chemistry that makes the film’s doomed late stretches—particularly during a climactic scene set in a beer-soaked country dive, as news footage of the pair flashes on television screens nearby—sincere and heartbreaking.

Like all good road movies, Carolina Caroline—filmed across rural Tennessee, doubling for a half-dozen southern states over 25 shooting days and a staggering 100 location set-ups—has both freewheeling propulsion and gritty Americana lyricism. Rehmeier atmospherically captures lonely, two-lane rural highways, unhurried rhythms of main street and the lived-in textures of roadside joints where the lovers knock back shots and beers to their favorite jukebox tunes. And the film’s soundtrack, a collection of 25 well-curated country and western cuts including Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, Margo Cilker and Townes Van Zandt provides a tonal complement to the film’s outlaw romanticism.  

The film’s late passages allow Weaving to lean into its drama fully. As Caroline endures a wounding encounter with the bar hound mother who abandoned her as a baby—played by a ferocious Kyra Sedgwick—Weaving quietly essays a lifetime of hope instantly dashed. The astonishing Sedgwick, seated on a barstool for a marathon single scene, vividly plays Caroline’s hard-drinking, rough-living “mom” as cruelly unapologetic grotesquerie. And in a shock encounter with a curious police officer, Caroline’s distress becomes one of Weaving’s most finely judged moments. 

Caroline Daniels is quite a movie creation, and early on Weaving channels the spirit of an early Taylor Swift, Tim McGraw-era country-girl in her appeal—unguarded and distinctly small-town, the sort of unselfconscious local beauty who has yet to realize that she’s world-class. Later, after Caroline morphs into a bandit in a red leather minidress and bobbed Louise Brooks wig, pistol-packing cool under pressure, we’re seeing the kind of all-in star turn Weaving clearly has been holding out on us to deliver. She pours everything she’s got into the year’s most endearing screen character. 

Highly recommended. 

4 stars

The post Carolina Caroline: A Radiant Samara Weaving Powers Affecting Fugitive Love Story first appeared on ChicagoFilm.

At face value, Carolina Caroline nods to a long line of outlaw lovers on the American road that perhaps began with Arthur Penn’s 1967 classic Bonnie and Clyde, where lovers pull off cons with abandon, tearing across the landscape in muscle cars, carousing in roadside motels and working us over with the vicarious thrill of the take. But Rehmeier’s gives his film a surprising tenderness; we come to care for two likable young people searching for a bigger hand than they’ve been dealt. The power of Carolina Caroline comes not from the lovers’ criminal exploits but from the doomed romance that develops along the way.

I recently caught up with the director to chat about Weaving’s remarkable performance and the film’s challenging production schedule, which spanned nearly 100 locations in just 25 days across rural Kentucky. We discussed our shared nostalgia for fading Americana and ’70s crime road movies, and he offered insights into how his top-notch production team mounted Carolina Caroline, finding fresh territory within a familiar genre to deliver one of the year’s most affecting independent films.

ChicagoFilm: I’ve seen the movie three times now, and I’ve fallen in love with it. When you see enough movies, sometimes you fall in love with characters, too. It happens to me a couple of times a year. I’ll walk out of a movie and think about a character until I see the movie again, and then even afterward.  Samara Weaving—I think I’ve seen everything she’s ever done, and I’ve always liked her—but something about her characterization here really affected me.

Adam Carter Rehmeier: Yeah, that’s what I’m going for. I’m always trying to create memorable characters. When I first got the script, it was very different from the finished film. Tom Dean’s script had the bones of what I thought could become a ’70s road movie, but it wasn’t there yet. At that point, it played more like a crime thriller. In fact—and this is a spoiler—the original ending had what I’d call a B-movie twist. Oliver turned against Caroline and tried to kill her, and she ended up having to kill him. 

I told Trevor and Tim White, from Star Thrower, who had optioned the script and brought it to me, that I saw the movie as a love story. I pointed to the scene near the beginning of the movie where they go to the rock quarry. They’re bobbing in the water together, and she asks him, ‘What do you do?’ He says, ‘You know what I do.’ Then she asks, ‘What do you do if you get caught?’ He says, ‘I don’t get caught.’ And she replies, ‘I caught you.’ I said, ‘This is a ’70s movie.’ It’s behaving that way in this part of the script, and I really liked that. If the rest of the film could feel like that, I would be all in.

So we talked to Tom. I gave my notes, and Tom incorporated them into the script. It wasn’t quite there yet, though. We started working with an actor. I had cast Samara, and we had cast another actor instead of Kyle. I’m not going to say who it was or go down that path. But we started working with that actor and tailoring the script. In the original version, Oliver was described almost like a Kennedy. He wore a Rolex, dressed in fancy suits and drove a Mercedes.

CF: By the way, is it a Chevelle?

ACM: Yeah, it’s a Chevelle.

CF: My dad had a yellow one. That was our first car.

ACM: The yellow Chevelle?

CF: Yeah. A ’70s model.

ACM: So that version of the character didn’t appeal to me. I thought he should feel American. He should drive an American car. I wanted him to have a sort of neo-cowboy quality. That’s where the drifter aspect came from—the Canadian tuxedo, denim from top to bottom, kind of a Martin Sheen in Badlands vibe.  My thought process was simple: hot guy, hot girl, a gun and a muscle car. Those are classic ingredients. Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry was a big influence.

CF: My childhood favorite.

ACM: Thunderbolt and Lightfoot was a huge reference for me. The Great Texas Dynamite Chase was another one, although a smaller influence.

CF: I never got over that final scene in Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. Ever since I first saw it as a kid.

ACM: Yes! Or Vanishing Point—another great ’70s film. Those movies behaved differently. They were more abstract, and that’s what I wanted this film to vaguely feel like in my own modern way. Originally, Tom’s script was set in the early ’90s. I had just finished Snack Shack, and I knew we were making this film on a budget. We had 25 days and almost 100 locations. It’s almost an impossible ask.

CF: That must have been a low shooting ratio.

ACM: Yeah. It’s just hard to do with all the company moves; constant company moves. It was like guerrilla warfare filmmaking. We moved the timeline forward, but I didn’t want to move it too far. Post-9/11, with CCTV cameras and everything else, it became exponentially harder to rob banks. I don’t know the exact statistics, but I’d bet bank robberies dropped dramatically compared to the 1970s. So I thought: let’s set it in a period that reflects how we looked back at ’70s movies during the ’90s. I’m an ’80s and ’90s kid. We romanticized those films from the ’70s. Let’s do the same thing here. Let’s set it in the early 2000s but have it play like a ’70s movie. That way, people who are 30 or 40 today can look back at it and think, ‘It’s retro. It’s cool. It’s turn-of-the-century.’

With Snack Shack, I was looking at movies like Stand by Me and thinking about how cool the cars were, the guys in white T-shirts with cigarettes rolled into the sleeves and everybody listening to bubblegum rock. That’s a great movie because, at the end, you discover Richard Dreyfuss is the narrator. He has kids of his own, and he’s been reflecting on a story from about 30 years earlier. That’s the sweet spot for nostalgia—25 to 30 years. And that’s where Carolina Caroline sits today. It’s about the distance between where we are now and where we were 25 years ago. That’s how I thought about the setting.

CF: I have this love of Route 66 and fading Americana. I miss many things—single screen movie houses we used to have that were torn down, diners, drive-ins. I still go to the drive-in that I grew up with, the Getty-4 Drive-In in Muskegon, Michigan. It’s still standing and people still go. This movie has a feeling of vanishing Americana to it. It’s a texture. As you’re taking this road trip with the characters, you’re also taking a trip through that world.

ACR: Here we are in the birthplace of Route 66, right here in Chicago; Chicago to Santa Monica. I was fortunate enough in the ’90s, when I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, to make that drive many times. My parents lived in Nebraska, so I was constantly going back and forth. I watched a lot of it disappear. I always took the road less traveled. I’d take Route 66 or some variation of it—the dusty roads, the two-lane blacktops. I watched everything move out toward the highways. The great thing about Route 66 was that it went through the center of all those little towns. Then you’d see the mom-and-pop businesses start boarding up and disappearing. That imagery stayed with me.

Luckily, we shot in rural Kentucky, and a lot of those places were still thriving. They didn’t have major highways running through them, so we were able to tap into that and capture a lot of it. It was basically free production design. Many of those places had been left relatively untouched. We cheated a lot of states. We cheated Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, Florida and South Carolina. We were constantly making one place look like somewhere else. And we did not (do the post production) up in Louisville and shoot within a 25-mile radius. We shot in Shelbyville, Shepherdsville, New Haven, Bedford, Frankfort and Bardstown. We were all over the state.

It was not an easy shoot. We were extremely mobile, constantly grabbing little pieces of things and stitching them together. Honestly, out of every production I’ve done—and I just wrapped a movie in South Africa where I had 41 days instead of 25—this was without a doubt the hardest shoot I’ve ever done. I was waking up with panic attacks over locations dropping out.

One of the biggest challenges was dealing with bank owners. For better or worse, some of them were worried about copycat bank robberies! In the history of cinema and the history of bank robberies, I don’t think there’s much correlation there, but you can’t laugh at those concerns. You’re trying to win people over, and sometimes you just can’t. We had a really hard time getting permission to shoot inside banks. I think they were called Stock Yards Banks. The blue bank in the montage—the one where Caroline is wearing the red, white and blue outfits—that was a Stock Yards Bank. I believe the first bank she robbed was also a Stock Yards branch. We renamed it Herkimer Bank. Frankie (Francesca Palombo), my production designer, came up with that weird name because it would clear legally. 

I really do have the best team in the world. I love the men and women I work with.

-Adam Carter Rehmeier

But they had a branch in Indiana that was willing to work with us, so we had to drive about 75 miles from Louisville.  We drove all the way up there, shot during the day, then came back and shot a night scene. A day like that is brutal. You start by driving 75 miles one way, shoot through lunch, drive 75 miles back, and then shoot an entire night sequence. That’s a ‘Fraturday’-type day.

CF: One of the things I love about this genre—if you want to call it that—going all the way back a half-century to Bonnie and Clyde, is that the first half of the picture is usually where we fall in love with the couple. We want to see them together, in bed, on the run, pulling off crimes. It’s exciting. In this movie, there’s real chemistry between them. That’s a hook right from the beginning. I think we fall in love with them the way they’ve fallen in love with each other. Then the second half, where the law inevitably catches up, is never welcome. I was surprised by how invested I became in Caroline and Oliver. I almost felt like you were more interested in the love story than the robberies themselves. Am I wrong about that?

ACM: No. It was always a love story. The bank robberies, the cons, all of that was secondary. This is going to sound abstract, but I remember seeing Tony Scott’s Man on Fire—the Denzel Washington version, not the original. What always stuck with me was that they spent almost an hour building the relationship between Denzel and Dakota Fanning before anything happened. You became invested in them. Their relationship had an arc. It evolved. So when she gets kidnapped, the back half of the movie works because you’ve already spent that time with them. I was conscious of that when redesigning this script. I thought a lot about how much time we spend with Caroline and Oliver before anything major happens. Obviously, they’re very different movies, but I admired how Man on Fire developed its characters before putting them into the central conflict. I was definitely thinking about that.

CF: Caroline is a small-town girl who wants to see the world, and the cons and robberies become a way for her to escape and experience something larger. Yet what I found so compelling about her is that she’s also deeply introspective. Two moments really stand out. In the first, she’s in bed with Oliver, and says she’s afraid of getting close to people because she might actually be like her long-lost mother. Then later, she has that terrific line about whether they’re good people doing bad things, or bad people doing good things. I appreciated her search for her identity.

ACM: Those are Tom’s lines. Tom wrote those good lines! That’s part of what I loved about his script.

CF: The movie really works us over emotionally. When you reprise the Jason Isbell (Cover Me Up) song near the end, we realize how far we’ve gone with these two characters. That scene on the dance floor is heartbreaking. There’s a television screen over the bar with their photos while they’re dancing together, and the walls are closing in. That scene broke my heart.

ACM: That’s an interesting scene because, from a design standpoint, Jean-Philippe Bernier, my DP, and I designed it very specifically. One (earlier) dance scene moves clockwise, and the other moves counterclockwise. They’re mirrored scenes. That wasn’t in the original script. What also wasn’t in the original script was the song Carolina Caroline. The movie was already called Carolina Caroline, and I suggested we commission a version of the song. The original Jonathan Edwards song is good. We actually tried it in the movie, but it didn’t quite fit the tone. When we shot the dance scene, they were dancing to that song because we were still exploring different options. 

We commissioned two artists. Courtney Marie Andrews did one version, and River Shook handled the version performed by the band at the end of the movie. River’s band actually appears in the film. My idea was that we’d hear the song one way when the relationship is beginning, and then hear it again at the end after everything they’ve been through. I wanted to see how the audience would feel about it after that whole journey.

The reality is that the Jason Isbell song started as temp music. Sometimes that’s dangerous because people fall in love with the temp track, but that’s exactly what happened here. It pulled so much emotion out of the material that I couldn’t imagine the movie without it once we locked the cut. At first, it wasn’t really on the table because it was an expensive song. Later, though, the producers were willing to revisit it because they missed it, too. They felt the emotional impact it brought to those scenes.

CF: It leaves you in tears.

ACM: Yeah. It does.

CF:  And Townes Van Zandt’s Tecumseh Valley works the same way near the end as Caroline makes a certain phone call. The song carries through that sequence, and it’s affecting. Also, Chris Stapleton’s Parachute—everything works; Margo Cilker’s That River. 

ACM: Justin Krohn, my editor, really curated that soundtrack. Usually, I have a lot more input. I’m sitting in the editing bay every day and I’m often suggesting tracks. But Justin would bring me two or three options at a time, and he just kept hitting home runs. Every song fit. I didn’t want to interrupt that flow because he was making such great choices. The soundtrack became one of my favorite aspects of the movie. You have things like the Nebraska cover and other tracks that just fit perfectly. There are so many great selections in there. Tennessee Bird Walk is a weird one in that first montage. I’d never heard it before. It’s a strange song, but it’s great. It adds so much playfulness.

There are twenty-four songs on the soundtrack. Like any good road movie, all of those songs are balanced against Chris Baer’s score. Chris created this pulsing, electronic, synthesizer-driven sound underneath everything. What I love is that neither the score nor the soundtrack draws attention to itself. It’s not flashy. It’s not trying to tell the audience what to feel. I think it’s all very thoughtfully curated and very well scored.

It was always a love story. The bank robberies, the cons, all of that was secondary.

-Adam Carter Rehmeier

CF: Samara’s performance in the scene where the police officer gets shot is perhaps my favorite. She has this sort of breakdown—or whatever the right word is. Her emotionality and physicality are so nuanced. It’s a complex, almost wordless piece of acting.

ACM: I can tell you exactly how we approached that scene. Jean-Philippe and I planned everything leading up to it. We knew we wanted to shoot it handheld, but in a very controlled way; almost like a human tripod. The camera is extremely steady at first. Then, once the officer gets shot, we stopped blocking things. We deliberately chose not to choreograph what happened next. We wanted it to surprise us. We wanted the actors to figure out the movement themselves. So when everything changes after the shooting, that’s all Samara and Kyle. Jean-Philippe is reacting in real time, trying to find moments as they happen. You’ll notice Samara drifting in and out of focus. Her eyes move in and out of focus because he’s chasing the performance rather than dictating it.

CF: She sort of turns sideways, back and forth, unstable. It’s quite a moment.

ACM: Honestly, it’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Production fought me hard on that location. I was absolutely committed to it because of the limestone walls and the way the sunlight dappled through the trees. There was something beautiful about that stretch of road. The problem was that it was incredibly difficult to control. We had to block off huge sections of roadway—something like a quarter-mile in one direction and half a mile in the other—so you wouldn’t see any traffic. Before we rolled the cameras, there were cones stretching forever down the road.

CF: That’s an extra layer of suspense in the scene. As viewers, we’re already worried about the drama playing out, and we’re also thinking somebody could drive by at any moment.

ACM: Another thing I love in that scene is when they speed away afterward. Kyle is really driving. There’s no process trailer. No tricks. At one point he starts pounding the steering wheel. That sound you hear is the actual sound of the steering wheel and steering column in that old Chevelle. It made the most beautiful noise. I remember our sound designer, Ugo (Derouard), replacing it with something cleaner. I told him, ‘No. Go back and pull it from the guide track.’ He said it was a little over-modulated. I said, ‘I don’t care. I love it.’ It’s probably my favorite sound in the entire movie. I didn’t care if it was technically imperfect because it captured exactly what that moment felt like. It’s the sound of a man who knows everything is over.

CF: And we haven’t seen him like that before.

ACM: Exactly. I remember saying, ‘Let’s pull everything else down around it. Let Caroline’s hyperventilating sit underneath it. Let the steering wheel speak.’ It all worked out in the end, but that sound was incredibly important to me.

CF: Let’s talk about Kyra Sedgwick. She comes into the movie for a single scene and absolutely tears through the screen. It’s a ferocious performance. And what’s amazing is that she isn’t really ‘doing’ anything. She’s sitting the entire time. There’s almost no blocking.

ACM: Did I luck out or what? She’s incredible. You’re right. She comes in, sits down next to her daughter, and the whole scene unfolds. There’s almost no physical action. She smokes a couple of cigarettes. She has a couple of drinks. That’s about it. They’re not running around. They’re not chopping wood. They’re not doing anything. It’s just actors, in the best possible way. There’s no sentimentality there at all. If anyone expects a warm reconciliation scene, they’re in for a surprise. 

I loved working with Kyra. I’d love to do something else with her because she absolutely blew me away. We had her for two days. One thing I told her beforehand was that I wasn’t going to break the scene up unnecessarily. It’s about twelve pages long, which looks terrifying on a call sheet. But because it’s all in one location and mostly one conversation, we could approach it almost like theater. I told her, ‘Let’s treat it like a one-act play.’ That seemed to make her feel a lot better. We shot all of Kyra’s coverage in one day and all of Samara’s coverage in another day. Then we spent part of the next day picking up supporting coverage—Greg, who plays Johnny, the guy with the pool cue, P.J. the bartender and some other material around the bar. After that, we shot (Samara) leaving the bar. I think we’d already shot her arrival at the house because we needed time inside the location beforehand.

It was brutally hot. Over one hundred degrees in Kentucky. And that location was deep in the hood. It wasn’t a safe area. I remember leaving one day and seeing a guy driving down the street trying to hit people with his car. I called our AD and said, ‘You’ve got to get everybody off the street.’ The guy doubled back and came right toward our set. And he pulled everybody out of the way, and sure enough, the guy drove right through the middle of our production trucks. It was crazy.

CF: There’s a shot late in the film that I love. It’s a drone shot where the car crosses railroad tracks. The car is moving in one direction in the frame while the camera is moving in the opposite direction along the tracks. There’s something unexpected about it.

ACM: My friend Richie Trimble handled all of the second-unit photography with Josh Quiros, our gimbal operator. What was cool was that the camera was mounted on a gimbal attached to the drone. Josh controlled the camera while Richie controlled the drone. Because they’re operating independently, you can create these really dynamic movements. It’s almost a true 360-degree system. I love those guys. We had one day allocated for everything you see in the movie. It rained, which gave us an extra half day. Every aerial shot, every driving shot, every montage sequence—day, night, rain, shine—they captured all of it in a day and a half. It’s unreal. The bridge shot that opens one of the montages—all of that was done in that same time period. I really do have the best team in the world. I love the men and women I work with. They’re fantastic.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post “It Was Always a Love Story”: Adam Carter Rehmeier on Carolina Caroline’s Road, Romance and Robberies first appeared on ChicagoFilm.

Rising star Leo Woodall (The White Lotus, Nuremberg) plays the piano tuner, Niki White, a soft-spoken protégé to longtime tuner Harry Horowitz (an underused Dustin Hoffman), the laboring duo haunting New York City’s five boroughs, often summoned to upper-class homes to get their pianos in tune (and, at times, asked to do other jobs, like, well, fix toilets). The pair spend their days in Harry’s branded van (many shots of a dashboard Hoffman bobblehead), a kind of father-son journeyman duo, and the opening of the picture teases a warm camaraderie; soon, however, Hoffman’s Harry suffers a medical crisis, leaving the business—and largely the film—to Woodall’s Niki.

For his part, Niki may be the best piano tuner in the business, but he has a serious hearing affliction called hyperacusis, which makes him ultra-sensitive to any louder-than-average sound; even things that seem normal to most people—like home construction work—register at such high decibels that he frequently clutches his headphone-covered ears. Perhaps he’d be more suited to a cabin in Big Sur than on the mean streets of Manhattan? One of Rosner’s best touches here is the subjective, richly detailed sound design and its amplification from scene to scene; he and Woodall excruciatingly pull you inside Niki’s head.

After Niki cleverly uses his hearing ailment to assist Harry and wife Marla (a warm Tovah Feldshuh) in cracking their home safe, he falls into a low-level gangster ring of sorts, helping crack safes in the boroughs and beyond, led by hair-trigger Uri (Lior Raz). And while Niki pockets fast cash to pay for Harry’s medical expenses, he also very slowly courts a pretty young pianist named Ruthie—first in need of a piano fix (her apartment has flooded and perhaps destroyed the keys) and then maybe a boyfriend—well-played by Havana Rose Liu. Eventually, his double life catches up, as they tend to do. 

Woodall, whose American soldier confessional scene in James Vanderbilt’s recent Nuremberg stole the film from co-stars Rami Malek and Russell Crowe, does his very best to keep all of this reasonably watchable. With huge, sad eyes and an impressive emotional minimalism (unlike many of his contemporaries, he never displays overconfidence), he makes Niki a guarded enigma, someone whose loaded quietness holds a past pressing just against his surface. Predictably, Niki’s former life as a piano prodigy will be revealed, and when we hear him play again, credit Woodall’s careful character calibration throughout Tuner for giving the scene its punch.

But the film—which almost works as an idiosyncratic portrait of a wounded young man too closed off from the world, too early, who may be morally compromised but finds a glimmer of hope—feels less invested in its story than its lead character, and its plot mechanics are simply not that involving. And while Rohner works to free the story from the inherent commercial tropes of most crime pictures, the rest of his 109-minute film lacks forward thrust, even when Niki’s deception is uncovered. While Woodall and the striking sound design are standouts, Tuner hums a bit off-key.

2 1/2 stars

The post Tuner: Leo Woodall Shines in Slightly Off-Key Film first appeared on ChicagoFilm.

In this all-Black ensemble—which includes such heavyweights as Sterling K. Brown, Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson and a badass Vivica Fox—Harris has cast a pair of revelatory young actresses in two-time Tony-winner Kara Young and Kindred’s Mallori Johnson, who star as twin sisters shocked after being summoned to their long-lost mother’s deathbed. 

They’ll embark on a revenge odyssey to dispatch the father responsible for the trio’s disfigurement in a horrific act of violence decades earlier. The film’s title is deliberately opaque; is it colloquial, broken grammar? Is it a query on the existence of the divine? And if “He” does in fact exist, why would such a father allow near-demonic cruelty?

Northeast officer cleaners and sisters Racine (Young) and Anaia (Johnson) have mastered keeping their heads down; they clean cubicles on the night shift and largely avoid human contact. And while Racine’s disfigured arms and maimed hand can be largely concealed, Anaia can’t hide the scars of her past, written all over a face whose primary features are deep scars and skin grafts. 

The sisters share a “railroad apartment” and loyal dependence, and the movie cleverly half-subtitles their conversations, as if speaking telepathically. They also share a terrible childhood trauma, which for Racine (“the rough one”) is made manifest in confrontational bravado and, eventually, a thirst for revenge. Anaia (“the quiet one”), for her part, though externally scarred, has largely internalized her pain and is frightened of the soul-deep consequences of vengeance. After all, God is watching. 

Is she ever. A surprise letter from their believed dead mom (Fox)—known as Ruby the God—spirits the reluctant pair to the deep south (the film was shot entirely in Louisiana), where Harris stages an inventive mother-daughters reunion scene of cold fury; wait until you see Fox, body a twisted roadmap of spousal abuse, hair cooly braided by multiple caregivers, reopening old wounds in a harrowing flashback. Her diabolical, dying wish? That Racine and Anaia eliminate their long-gone abusive father.

Simple, right? Not quite. This violent odyssey leads both women (and us) down impossible-to-predict rabbit holes across dad’s demented past en route to a climactic reckoning; my jaw was slack as Harris upped the ante from scene to scene in her episodic, exciting movie, one that builds with the ferocity of a gathering storm. 

Harris shuttles us from one colorful sequence to another—Alexander as a fiery Pentecostal minister named “Divine the Healer,” given to cultish sermons and long devotion to her monstrous ex; Williamson as a lawyer muted by a mutilated tongue, issuing written warnings via a notepad (“Be careful with vengeance; one doesn’t know where the blood will land”); and an elegant Monáe as the refined, gilded-cage new wife, trapped by coercion and protective motherhood.

When American Fiction Oscar-nominee Brown finally shows up, he gives the movie’s final stretch one of the most dangerously charismatic, sinister screen villains ever; this is what a great actor can do. After much expositional build-up, the handsome actor presents a calming, deceptively paternal, near-plausible rebuttal to his long-architected legend; in a stunning scene of knife-edge tension, Anaia and her father (known as “the Monster”) come disturbingly (and fleetingly) close to tenderness. Here, the movie achieves its apex in scriptural allusions in a father figure more satanic than divine—not a guardian but rather an architect of their ruin.

To say more would betray Harris’ superbly keen balance of B-movie revenge thrills and very serious consideration of patriarchal abuse and manipulation; “the Monster” is symbolic but clearly recognizable—the father as a cold-blooded psychopath of little conscience and ever-present ghost, leaving a self-defining imprint on his victims, as if a curse that can’t be counseled away because he has twisted his victims’ bodies in his image.

Harris’s impressive attunement to character shifts creates an enigmatic psychological puzzle between her leads, who indulge in very different coping strategies. While the women are initially polar temperaments but simpatico, their pursuit of vengeance changes both, especially the hair-trigger Racine, whose internal trauma is given license to become, for once, rage unleashed (her code of “justice” also lacks conscience). But during a key late scene where an innocent character is shockingly killed, and another, in which an unlikely ally seems to emerge, the sisters  will diverge—Anaia’s core sense of human morality starkly contrasts Racine’s belief that trauma can be soothed through bloody retribution.  

Is God Is is a shamelessly entertaining, outrageous, pulpy revenge movie with one foot firmly in overheated 70s exploitation (including the luscious, supersaturated, high-grain widescreen lensing by Alexander Dyson) and another that is deadly serious about intergenerational scars, sibling symbiosis, the pain of growing up an outsider, and legacies of abuse. Every supporting character, performance, and set-piece (including a terrifying, helmeted motorcycle killer and a sexed-up striptease power game) takes the movie to a new level, and editor Jay Rabinowitz moves at such a clip as to leave not an ounce of fat on the film’s efficient, 99-minute bones. It is lurid, ridiculous, deeply sincere, and slightly profound—and damned entertaining in a way few movies today even attempt.

It’s a knockout.

4 stars

The post Is God Is: Myth, Memory and Trauma in Southern Gothic Revenge Tale of Serious Psychological Weight first appeared on ChicagoFilm.

In her debut feature’s quiet opening sections, Romvari establishes a deceptively lyrical spell—one she will progressively undermine—as a family settles onto Vancouver Island in the late ’90s. Told largely through the wide eyes of nine-year-old Sasha (the expressive Eylul Guven, holding the frame), her Hungarian immigrant parents, by way of Canada, become increasingly concerned with her wayward half-brother Jeremy (Edik Beddoes).

Not a day goes by without a struggle, whether corralling Jeremy for family beach outings (where he sits alone on a cliff) or wrangling him after a disappearance. With three other children to tend to, their exasperated mother (Iringó Réti) and stepdad (Ádám Tompa) try to connect with the troubled teen, whose anarchic withdrawal initially registers as typical rebellion. But Jeremy only seems to drift further, isolated in his bedroom (or asleep on the front porch) where he crafts intricately detailed island maps. 

While Jeremy is gentle with his siblings, defiance turns to deeper disturbance when he’s apprehended shoplifting before recklessly endangering himself atop a roof. Romvari acutely documents the parents’ bewilderment as run-of-the-mill acting out becomes far more serious—perhaps “oppositional personality disorder” as suggested by a local child psychologist. Meanwhile, carefree Sasha and her two other brothers can’t grasp the gravity of Jeremy’s destabilization. 

Romvari subtly shapes a world of hurt—a mother and daughter preparing dinner together, the mother a thousand miles away; parents speaking in hushed whispers about unhelpful family counseling while frightened of things to come; a father and son physically fighting toward a restraining embrace; and Jeremy himself, an enigma acted by Beddoes as if trapped in a privately volatile world, masked by bottle-thick glasses that place him at an even greater visual remove.

While Sasha’s mother rebuffs her suggestion to have friends over out of concern for how the community will perceive Jeremy’s already talked-about obstinacy, Sasha herself is insulated from his behaviors—either by distance or outside windows contemplating hushed phone voices—and Romvari frames her as if peering in, piecing together what cannot be spoken aloud.

In the film’s second half, Blue Heron takes a striking narrative leap (and asks the audience for a leap of faith), flashing forward decades where adult Sasha (Amy Zimmer) has become a documentarian still trying to understand the whys of Jeremy’s fate, assembling a team of mental health experts to review his case file and assess whether contemporary approaches might have yielded a less tragic outcome—or perhaps not.

A storytelling masterstroke finds adult Sasha appearing to revisit her childhood home, imagining herself as the social worker whom, as a child, she only peripherally observed. In a heartstopping sequence, she sits beside her younger self before conducting a parental visit to consider a possible foster care solution for Jeremy. 

The film’s ingenious poster depicts the family on a happy afternoon outing, its paper ripped down the center to suggest a ruptured, open wound. And more than once during Blue Heron, I was moved to tears in Romvari’s sobering contemplation of how some wounds deepen with time rather than heal. Her structural audacity depicts the coexistence of past and present as a non-linear memoryscape, most effectively in a heartbreaking exchange as adult Sasha finds a measure of comfort in reading an aged letter, her long-deceased brother sitting beside her.

While most of the movie is told from young Sasha’s perspective, Romvari—who based the film on her own experiences and late brother—moves fluidly to the parents’ struggle, and ingeniously to her docu-like investigation where Sasha’s child and adult identities merge; her movie seamlessly balances these points of view and its structural daring without ever stepping wrong.

Romvari directs Blue Heron without an ounce of melodrama (in tone, similar to Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun but, for my money, more gripping). After a festival run last year, Janus Films has given the film a limited theatrical release, and it is an essential moviegoing experience. 

4 stars

The post Blue Heron: Sophy Romvari’s Devastating Act of Memory Reconstruction, Family Wounds first appeared on ChicagoFilm.

And the returning duo of Weisberger, who screen-adapted her own account in 2006, and director David Frankel, finds the pair threading the The Devil Wears Prada 2 needle like master haute couture tailors, deepening their quartet of principal characters while putting them through the paces of a changing world. In other words, they aren’t content with mere fan service. It takes some time for this fast-paced movie to find its real narrative; the first hour is enjoyable but episodic. 

Everything fans expect is here, namely Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci returning in fine form; superbly used New York City, the Hamptons, Milan and Northern Italy locales (George Clooney’s Lake Como fortress should receive supporting credit); of course, the editorial and runway couture spreads and spectacles; and a fab cameo by Lady Gaga, who performs a self-parody sendup and runway concert performance. Thank you!

But what’s also here, and what was unexpected, is a takedown of the billionaire class evisceration of the publishing world and the sidelining of veterans by younger cost-cutters. You might expect this sequel to be a fizzy, escapist confection like its predecessor, but it’s a bit more—Weisberger and Frankel have something to say about “restructured” industries axing long-time experts. Even the all-powerful Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), high priestess of the fashion world, will face down this gauntlet. 

Now, on to the fun parts. It would be hard to find a 2026 studio movie as scene-for-scene enjoyable as The Devil Wears Prada 2, which is handsomely shot, briskly edited and gorgeously production designed; it looks and feels like luxury (but it’s not romantic comedy wealth porn). The picture opens with now successful journalist Andy Sachs (Hathaway) winning a big industry award while she and her fellow writers are unceremoniously axed via group text. 

Turns out Andy left the fashion world behind twenty years ago to become a serious scribe. She’s also now unemployed, and while her bestie Lily (Tracie Thomas) wants her to join the art world, she is reluctantly lured back to high fashion publication Runway. Her charter? To fix its damaged reputation after a sweatshop designer expose becomes a snowballing PR scandal.  

This isn’t a homecoming, and Miranda hilariously pretends not to recognize Andy, but then the workplace has changed—she’s no longer allowed to so fiercely dress down her assistants, and the famous coat throwing is a no-no; this provides Streep with a marvelous bit of physical comedy as Miranda tries to take off, and hang up, her own coat. And in a turnabout, she’s now got to contend with former assistant Emily Charlton (Blunt), graduating from tormented junior assistant to Dior fashion house exec, and whom Miranda now badly needs for advertising. 

Andy doesn’t get her feathers ruffled this time around; she knows the game, and how to handle Miranda, but she’s going to have to earn respect all over again, and after being relegated to a closet-office and tasked with writing features that yield high click rates (she doesn’t), she schemes to get a big interview for Miranda with an elusive philanthropist played by Lucy Liu. 

But after Runway chairman Ira Ravitz (Tibor Feldman) unexpectedly exits stage left, leaving his son and heir (B.J. Novak) in charge, Miranda’s livelihood is suddenly thrown into question, and it’s there that the movie takes off and allows Streep to find something new in the role, primarily a pained pushback against a world shifting beneath her feet. In one terrific Milan moment set against a backdrop of The Last Supper, a sharp Justin Theroux, as an inept tech billionaire, lectures her about AI; Streep is sublime, advocating for mainstays of beauty while her eyes register defeat. 

In another, she queries life partner Kenneth Branagh (underused) about where she might find meaning sans career. And in a hard-won late exchange with Andy she gives credit where due—unusual for Miranda—in a moment of genuine connection. Across the film, Streep reminds us why she is and will forever be unmatched—even in smaller scenes like a brief Hamptons garden party kitchen exchange, the star authors immense detail.  

Andy, for her part, is substantively written (and played by Hathaway with radiant, leading lady ebullience), holding on to her loyalty to former, unemployed colleagues while cautiously considering a secret tell-all biography of Miranda, sure to net a huge payday. But is her loyalty to Miranda worth more than a promised $350k advance? She’s also given a real estate developer as a love interest (likable Patrick Brammall) to push-pull the (de)merits of big-money urban gentrification. This relationship feels fresh and earned. 

As Miranda’s steadfast workhorse art director and Runway bedrock Nigel, Tucci is flat out terrific—and terrifically touching—and it’s nice to see such warmth, particularly in a surprising moment with Streep near the close and a final exchange with Hathaway. Much was made on the first go-round about Streep’s send-up of a certain Vogue honcho who happened to be Weisberger’s real-life tyrannical task-master. This time, the Wintour-isms aren’t the whole show. 

Streep as always is in top form, but her Miranda 20 years on is lightly different; it’s not that she’s lost her way with sarcastic zingers but they’re a tad less poisonous; she’s still imperious but more restrained, given to weary wisdom—though she can still toss off a laugh line like no one’s business (my favorite was a quip about human trafficking).  It’s the best performance by an actress in an American film this year.

Frankel steers The Devil Wears Prada 2 to a fab closing shot, which Mike Nichols used effectively in 1986’s Working Girl and which here, as framed with an elegant pullback from an office window, has something to say about the future of three colleagues we’re surprised we’ve grown to love. 

3 1/2 stars

The post A Sharper Cut of Prada: Satisfying Sequel is Surprisingly Smart, and Unmistakably Streep first appeared on ChicagoFilm.