While Hugh Grant has made his career playing the male protagonist in romantic comedies, the actor is currently showing audiences a new side of himself in the horror film Heretic. In this A24 film, he plays against type as the villain of the movie. In his review for Heretic, our own Chris Bumbray said, “It’s certainly a far cry from the stammering rom-com roles that made him such a heartthrob […] He radiates fiendishly clever intelligence, and he’s given a sadistic streak I didn’t see coming, which feels bold for a mainstream horror flick.”
As the trailer for his return to the Bridget Jones franchise drops, Grant also reflects on a past role of his where he didn’t find the character terribly affable. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Grant recently participated in Vanity Fair’s “Scene Selection,” where actors explain some of their past roles. Grant would talk about his character, William Thacker, from Notting Hill. Grant humorously says,
Whenever I’m flicking the channels at home after a few drinks and this comes up, I just think, ‘Why doesn’t my character have any balls?’ There’s a scene in this film where she’s in my house and the paps come to the front door and ring the bell and I think I just let her go past me and open the door. That’s awful.”
In the film, Grant plays a bookstore owner who forms a relationship with Julia Roberts’ character, who’s a famous movie star. The paparazzi and tabloids are set ablaze with this new romantic entanglement and both Grant and Roberts’ characters attempt to navigate the manic situation as they try to live a normal life seeing each other. He continued, “I’ve never had a girlfriend, or indeed now wife, who hasn’t said, ‘Why the hell didn’t you stop her? What’s wrong with you?’ And I don’t really have an answer to that — it’s how it was written. And I think he’s despicable, really.”
Grant returns for Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, where Bridget is alone once again, widowed four years ago, when Mark (Oscar winner Colin Firth) was killed on a humanitarian mission in the Sudan. She’s now a single mother to 9-year-old Billy and 4-year-old Mabel, and is stuck in a state of emotional limbo, raising her children with help from her loyal friends and even her former lover, Daniel Cleaver (Grant).
Three years have gone by since it was announced that Edgar Wright was coming on board to direct a new take on the novel The Running Man, which was written by Stephen King under his Richard Bachman pen name. The Running Man was, of course, previously turned into a film back in 1987 that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and had little to do with the source material. Earlier this year, it was announced that Glen Powell of Top Gun: Maverick, Hit Man, and Twisters is following in the footsteps of Schwarzenegger to play the lead role in the new adaptation. Wright’s take on The Running Man is now in production and Powell has been spotted on the set – and yes, he was running. You can check out some of the images right here:
King’s novel has the following description: It was the ultimate death game in a nightmare future America. The year is 2025 and reality TV has grown to the point where people are willing to wager their lives for a chance at a billion-dollar jackpot. Ben Richards is desperate – he needs money to treat his daughter’s illness. His last chance is entering a game show called The Running Man where the goal is to avoid capture by Hunters who are employed to kill him. Surviving this month-long chase is another issue when everyone else on the planet is watching – and willing to turn him in for the reward.
During an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast last year, Wright said he was drawn to The Running Man because, “I like the film but I like the book more, and they didn’t really adapt the book. Even as a teenager when I saw the Schwarzenegger film I was like, ‘Oh, this isn’t like the book at all!’ And I think, ‘Nobody’s [done] that book.’ So when that came up, I was thinking, and Simon Kinberg says, ‘Do you have any interest in The Running Man?’ I said, ‘You know what? I’ve often thought that that book is something crying out to be adapted.’ Now, that doesn’t mean that it’s easy! [Laughs] But it’s something that we are working on, yes.”
Wright is directing The Running Man from a script he co-wrote with Michael Bacall and is producing the film with Nira Park and Simon Kinberg. Powell is joined in the cast by Katy O’Brian (who had a breakthrough role in Love Lies Bleeding and shared the screen with Powell in Twisters) as a contestant; Daniel Ezra, who played the character Spencer James on 106 episodes of the CW series All American; Josh Brolin (Outer Range), who is playing the main villain; Lee Pace (Halt and Catch Fire) as a ruthless hunter; Michael Cera (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) as a “naïve rebel who tries to help the desperate man”; Emilia Jones (CODA) as a “privileged woman blind to the oppression of the government“; and William H. Macy of Fargo and Boogie Nights.
Are you looking forward to seeing what Edgar Wright and Glen Powell do with The Running Man? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Ever since it was first announced, we’ve had bits and teases about what we can expect from Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: The First Steps, with fans using artwork to search for clues as to when the film would be set, which additional characters outside of the core four would appear and pretty much anything else their minds could conjure up. Now, with Phase Four on the brink of wrapping up next year, Marvel is keeping no secret about the plot of their Phase Five launcher, releasing the official plot synopsis.
Here it is, courtesy of Fantastic Four Updates: “Set against the vibrant backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world, “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” introduces Marvel’s First Family—Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, Johnny Storm/Human Torch, and Ben Grimm/The Thing as they face their most daunting challenge yet. Forced to balance their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond, they must defend Earth from a ravenous space god called Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and his enigmatic Herald, Silver Surfer (Julia Garner). And if Galactus’ plan to devour the entire planet and everyone on it weren’t bad enough, it suddenly gets very personal.”
The first official synopsis for ‘THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS’ has been released:
Set against the vibrant backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world, “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” introduces Marvel’s First Family—Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, Sue… pic.twitter.com/gZK7kOJLxq
If we weren’t already excited enough – The Fantastic Four: The First Steps is currently my most anticipated in Phase Five of the MCU – that synopsis teases the sort of mixture of action and emotion that come of the best films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have given us. OK, so The Fantastic Four has a terrible track record on the big screen – the movies either suck or were literally unreleasable – but this introduction into the MCU is long overdue and I believe that the work has truly been done this time around to make it worthwhile and a service to fans. The film comes out on July 25th, 2025.
The central cast features Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing.
What do you hope to see in The Fantastic Four: The First Steps? Are you excited for the gang to join the MCU?
Conan O’Brien has been tapped to host the biggest night in Hollywood as the former late-night talk show host has been announced to host next year’s Oscars. The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences extended an invite to the beloved comedic host and he has graciously accepted. The ceremony is set to take place at the Dolby Theatre at 4 p.m. PT on Sunday, March 2, 2025. The prestigious event of the film industry will be televised live on ABC in more than 200 territories around the world.
Academy CEO Bill Kramer and president Janet Yang announced Friday morning in a statement, “We are thrilled and honored to have the incomparable Conan O’Brien host the Oscars this year. He is the perfect person to help lead our global celebration of film with his brilliant humor, his love of movies and his live TV expertise. His remarkable ability to connect with audiences will bring viewers together to do what the Oscars do best — honor the spectacular films and filmmakers of this year.” O’Brien added, “America demanded it and now it’s happening: Taco Bell’s new Cheesy Chalupa Supreme. In other news, I’m hosting the Oscars.”
Conan‘s illustrious career in the late-night game came to an end in 2021, and since then, he’s been focusing on a more stripped-down format with his podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend as well as his new spin on the travel show genre with the Max original series, Conan O’Brien Must Go.
Craig Erwich, the president of Disney Television Group, which oversees ABC, has also made a statement, “Conan is a preeminent comedic voice, whose decades-long success is marked by his distinctive humor and perspective. He joins an iconic roster of comedy greats who have served in this role, and we are so lucky to have him center stage for the Oscars.” Producers of the last Oscars telecast, Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan, have added, “Conan has all the qualities of a great Oscars host — he is incredibly witty, charismatic and funny and has proven himself to be a master of live event television. We are so looking forward to working with him to deliver a fresh, exciting and celebratory show for Hollywood’s biggest night.”
PLOT: At the Sekai Taikai, Miyagi-Do faces new challenges and old enemies as they fight to become world champions — can they stay united as internal rivalries bubble back to the surface?
REVIEW: When the first five episodes of Cobra Kai‘s final season debuted in July, I was underwhelmed by the repeated retread of familiar storylines. Cobra Kai VI, the lowest-rated season of The Karate Kid spin-off series, has only premiered a third of its final season so far, leaving ten of the fifteen chapters to debut. The second batch of episodes continues where the first left off, setting up a showdown at the Sekai Taikai tournament between Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai, along with some other competition. Once again, Ralph Macchio and William Zabka are a charismatic pairing, whether on opposite sides or the same one. However, the middle section of Cobra Kai’s final season still feels like it is padded to maintain views for as long as possible rather than set up a satisfying conclusion to the series that debuted in 2018. With some new additions to the cast and a couple of surprising twists, part two of Cobra Kai VI slightly improves over the first but still does not match the quality of prior seasons.
The five-episode Part 2 of Cobra Kai VI picks up right from the cliiffhanger ending that revealed that Tory Nichols (Peyton List) had joined Martin Kreese’s (Martin Kove) new dojo with co-sensei Kim Da-Eun (Alicia Hannah-Kim). With the writers explaining how Kreese could publically appear despite being an escaped criminal, the format of the Sekai Takai tournament is explained. For some reason, the first rounds of competition are brawl-style or tag-team competitions between the dozen dojos, including teams from Spain, Ireland, Russia, and more. The main competition outside of Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai are the Iron Dragons, led by Sensei Wolf (Lewis Tan) and his star fighters Axel Kovacevic (Patrick Luwis) and Zara Malik (Rayna Vallandingham). The third faction in the five-season brewing feud adds some dimension to the competition. Still, it cannot eclipse the fact that Cobra Kai continues to mine the exact same plot structure season after season after season.
Without fail, this season has infighting amongst the Miyagi-Do team as they question each other’s allegiances. Miguel (Xolo Mariduena) questions Robbie’s (Tanner Buchanan) leadership as team captain, Demetri (Gianni DeCenzo) and Eli (Jacob Bertrand) continue to squabble about their falling out over college choices, and Devon (Oona O’Brien) still feels guilt over what she did to cost Kenny (Dallas Dupree Young) a spot in the tournament. These disagreements boil over with Robbie and Sam (Mary Mouser) troubled by Tory’s defection to the enemy and the intimidation from Cobra Kai captain Kwon (Brandon H. Lee). Kreese still threatens boy Daniel (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny (William Zabka), but Daniel is still trying to discover the truth about Mr. Miyagi’s past and how it connects to the Sekai Takai. For the most part, Daniel and Johnny’s ongoing opposition to one another takes a back seat in this run of episodes, but that does not mean it is entirely gone.
We get some fun moments with Daniel, Johnny, and Chozen (Yuji Okumoto), but unlike prior seasons, most of these five episodes feature in-tournament competition. Sure, there are a couple of training montages and some connections to The Karate Kid feature films in the form of cameos, but this run of Cobra Kai VI is the most actual martial arts we have seen in the entirety of the series combined. The quality of the fights is improved by including athletic performers Lewis Tan and Rayna Vallandingham, the latter of whom are champion martial artists in real life. The Barcelona setting serves as a nice location change from the tried-and-true Valley. Still, outside of a couple of outdoor sequences that make great use of the geography of the Spanish city, most of the action takes place in hotel rooms and gymnasiums. I appreciate the heavier focus on competition in these episodes, but it still feels like it is treading water.
Writers Joe Piarulli, Luan Thomas, Bob Dearden, and Chris Rafferty build on the first five episodes of the season with the aid of Ashley Darnall, Emily Abbott, and Olga Lexell. They do their best to make the Sekai Taikai tournament feel like a big deal and a culmination of where the prior seasons have led, but they do not seem to want to deviate from the familiar tropes that have become staples of this series. Cobra Kai started out as a nostalgiac homage to The Karate Kid that evolved into a balance of the younger generation of fighters alongside the older ones. This season’s twists replicate twists we have seen before, with the big reveal concerning Mr. Miyagi still feeling like a misdirect to keep some artificial tension in Daniel LaRusso as a sensei. Too many artificial conflicts pad out this middle section of the final season that could have been condensed into one or two episodes.
The sixth season of Cobra Kai felt like a couple of episodes too long, and the second part feels the same. Thanks to better fight choreography and an ending to the fifth episode (overall, the tenth episode of the season), which is the darkest place this series has gone yet, Cobra Kai VI Part 2 is a modest improvement over the first part of the season. The increase in profanity is not a replacement for mature writing, but I had more fun with this run than with the five episodes released earlier this year. It remains to be seen if the third and final batch of episodes will tie things up or lead into the upcoming Karate Kid: Legendsfilm, but I hope Cobra Kai brings this story to a close in a way that does not repeat the same things we have seen season after season from this show.
Cobra Kai VI Part 2 premieres on November 15th on Netflix.
One of the supreme highlights of my 2024 Cannes experience was discovering the films of New York filmmaker Tyler Taormina. Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point is presented through its marketing as a cheesetastic holiday movie, but is in fact a wide-eyed paean to the dynamics of family and the suburbs as a place of ecstatic joy. It’s his feature follow-up to 2019’s Ham on Rye, a strange coming of age movie in which the suburbs is not painted in such a dewy-eyed light.
Your first feature, Ham on Rye, was a film that was critical of life in the suburbs. Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, is almost the opposite, framing it as this rapturous place.
I would say that there are thorns presented to that particular rose. Ham on Rye is for me the story of staying in the womb too long and not cutting the cord. I think that Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point is the story of how tempting it is to stay in the suburbs. The bosom of childhood is what the suburbs becomes in this film. But I think we present a little bit of darkness and some of the limitations. But also, I wanted to make a Christmas film in a way that was warm and inviting and not written with cynicism.
Where did that impulse come from?
Well, the germinating seed of the film really is my writing partner and I sort of waxing poetic about our memories with family members and these little details that have become sort of characterised in our minds. It really was with an affection for those memories that started the whole thing.
How were you able to select and assemble the soundtrack of wall-to-wall Christmas tunes?
Well, so the first thing I’ll say, and I always take this sort of compliment, but none of the songs in the movie are Christmas songs, but they feel like it. They’re all just pop songs from the ’60s, or at least that sound like the ’60s. The soundtrack is really one of the germinating seeds of the work, and it came to us from listening to the Scorpio Rising soundtrack. We wrote the script listening to that soundtrack, and it’s pretty obvious. It was very difficult to get all the licensing for the songs. And in the end, there’s a lot of songs that sort of just sound like the period so that we can play the bigger, more expensive songs that are really important.
Rather than use the act structure, your films – including this one – are more like passing through a moment of time, and seeing that time from many different perspectives.
The shape is everything. Yeah, I definitely am aware that I am not working in a sort of traditional dramaturgical way. And I think that the way in which Eric Berger and I approach a script, we’re really studying a sort of milieu and what it’s like to be there and what it’s like for a camera curiously going from person to person.
What did the initial script for the film look like?
The way in which I understand these films is actually through drawing out the space. What I mean is we drew a house on the top left corner of a piece of paper, and we populated all the scenes we wanted to be there, sort of left to right in order you’re going to see them.
It’s like you’re trying to trap a moment in amber with this film.
Well, the first Christmas ornaments were made of amber. Yeah, this was a big thought of ours, day one of writing. And I kind of regret not naming the main character Amber.
Believe it or not, there used to be a time where movie sequels were actually an incredibly rare thing. As it was, audiences felt that movies and even tv shows should have definitive stories and points that they were trying to make and why would anybody bother making a sequel to what should have been a conclusive story? But now, in an era where Hollywood values established IP and fanbases more than any potential original project, sequels have become the norm. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing that sequels have taken over cinemas, provided that the sequels are just as good as the originals and come out with their own original plot-lines. Like all movies, whether or not a person might enjoy a surplus of sequels is preferential and is more so dependent on the subject material, especially if it’s regarding a franchise that the audience has taken a liking too. With all of that being said, several of the best sequels in history have been released in the last few years, including this year’s Across the Spiderverse, and we wanted to see how said sequels compared to one another.
This list is not a ranking and merely in chronological order of release date.
Godfather: Part II (1974)
When Francis Ford Capolla took the world by storm with his iconic masterpiece that is The Godfather in 1972, nobody thought he’d be able to top it. Instead, Capolla proved to the world what a true genius he was behind the camera and made a sequel that, to this day, is still debated as the best movie sequel of all time. The Godfather: Part II is not just as good as the original, but perhaps even better as it showcases the story of Michael Corleone’s slow fall into the depths of organized crime while using flashbacks to highlight how his father began their families story in the first place. It’s darker and more complex and grips the audience at every turn with a pacing that can seldom be matched – 50 years later and this movie still deserves every bit of praise.
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
What can be said about a movie that is still arguably the greatest sequel of all time even though it came out nearly 50 years ago? The Empire Strikes Back pushed the boundaries of what sci-fi movies were capable of, while simultaneously shattering the boundaries of what cinematic storytelling could achieve. The reveal of Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker’s father will forever be the greatest plot-twist of all time and the journey that Luke had to go on to become a Jedi was the most relatable and humbling adventure that an action-star had taken up to that point. The visual-effects, the story-telling, the acting, the direction – this movie will never rate anything less than 100%.
Aliens (1986)
James Cameron undoubtedly has some words for anyone who thinks that audiences don’t want strong, female-led movies. Alien came out and blew peoples minds due to the confined space that Cameron was able to tell his sci-fi story in – then Aliens came out several years later and paired sci-fi and horror together in a way that encapsulated audiences in the most terrifying ways possible. Even today, the Alien creatures from the movie are haunting and hold-up to the effects that we have now. Sigourney Weaver gave a performance of a life time and proved to everybody that girls could be even more bad-ass than boys – get away from her, you bitch!
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
I’ll be back – and better than the first one. James Cameron had proven multiple times by 1991 that he was a master filmmaker and could create stories/worlds that audiences would fall in love with. However, he solidified himself as the greatest sequel filmmaker in history when he released Terminator 2: Judgment Day, one of the best action movies of all time. The film improves on the first Terminator movie in every possible way – better visual effects, a better plot/story, and somehow an even better villain. Cameron stepped away from the love narrative of the first film and gave that same energy to the relationship between John Connor and the Terminator, allowing audiences to still have something to root for as the effects kept their eyes glued to the screen. Include the addition of Linda Hamilton as the badass Sarah Connor and what more could you possibly ask of a sequel?
Toy Story 2 (1999)
The first Toy Story movie set the tone for every Pixar film that has followed, but audiences still haven’t forgotten that the direct sequel is still one of the greatest that the studio has ever produced. Toy Story 2 continued the story of anthrapamorphized toys that come to life when people aren’t around (a truly revolutionary idea) and somehow improved upon the original, adding characters like Jesse and Bullseye while giving Woody’s character genuine depth and emotion. The humor was just as on-point as the original and the animation was just as top-notch – for a couple of animated movies, the Toy Story franchise is undoubtedly one of the best of all time.
Shrek 2 (2004)
Speaking of fantastic animated franchises, Shrek doesn’t fall far behind Toy Story on the list. The original concept of the beautiful fairy-tale princess falling in love with the unhygienic orge rather than Prince Charming was gripping to say the least. After the success of that concept, the sequel decided to delve even further into the family dynamic of the princess marrying the orge and chose to make a movie about how her parents would feel about it. After all, most fairy tales end with ‘happily ever after’, but Shrek 2 hilariously explored the concept of what ‘happily ever after’ might actually entail.
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
With great power comes great responsibility. It’s the line from the franchise that has had two reboots in the last two decades, but it’s a line that will stand the test of time. In Spider-Man 2, after obtaining and honing his powers as Spiderman, Peter Parker must come to grips with the fact that even with his abilities he can’t do it all. Include the appearance of Alfred Molina as Doc Ock in what is arguably the greatest cinematic super-villain performance of all time and you get one of the greatest sequels to ever grace audiences screens. (Speaking of movies directed by Sam Raimi, Evil Dead II ranks right up there, too.)
The Dark Knight (2008)
For a character as famous and elusive as The Joker, it’s baffling that an entire generation of people can’t hear the name without thinking of Heath Ledger. Make no mistake that Christopher Nolan composed a masterpiece when it comes to The Dark Knight as the story of Bruce Wayne coming to terms with the fact that he can’t do it all (seeing a pattern here?) was just as relatable as it was in Spiderman 2. However, audiences everywhere know that the crowning achievement of this film was how on-point the late-great Heath Ledger’s performance was – RIP to the man who gave his absolute all to the role.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Yes, this is the third straight super-hero movie to make the list of best sequels and they’re all incredible. That said, Captain America: The Winter Soldier holds a special place in it’s own regard despite not having as much notoriety as the previous two. The Winter Soldier was unquestionably a terrific movie and sat atop the list of best MCU movies for a very long time. However, even with the surplus of projects that the MCU has churned out over the last several years, there are quite a few MCU enthusiasts who believe that The Winter Soldier is still atop said list. Cap confronting his past, the reveal of Bucky still being alive and Hydra growing inside of SHIELD, the addition of Falcon – it’s just top tier.
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Don’t call it a comeback. Despite Tom Cruise being one of the most notable and recognizable movie stars of the past 40 years, it somehow took him until 2022 to make the most profitable movie that he’s every appeared in. Top Gun: Maverick flew into theaters nearly four decades after the original and became the highest grossing movie of Cruise’s career by raking in more than $1.5 billion at the global box office. Now, the story of Top Gun: Maverick might not have the gripping, keep-your-eyes-glued-to-the-screen dialogue and dramatic scenes that some of the other movies on this list have, but what it does have is breath-taking visual stunts and a story that’s so well delivered that an audience member doesn’t even need to see the original to enjoy the sequel. For that reason alone, it takes a deserved spot on this list.
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Like we said, we’re in the era of sequels, and somehow 2022 managed to have two of the best sequels of all time. Avatar: The Way of Water took it’s sweet time reaching cinemas after a thirteen year break from the first one, but it didn’t disappoint and gave audiences a brand new version of Pandora to fall in love with. Combine the concept of the sequel focusing more on Sully and Neytiri’s children rather than keep honing in on the parents story and it created a sequel that felt like you could’ve completely skipped the original and still understood everything going on. The bonus of the VFX being out of this world only added to the experience.
Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse (2023)
Is it the greatest Spiderman movie of all time, the best sequel of all time, or just the greatest movie of all time? According to audiences, it could be all three. The follow up film to 2018’s Into the Spiderverse had a huge burden in trying to match the success that the original captured five years ago. Instead, the sequel surpassed every expectation and has audiences making more noise than they did for No Way Home. The story of Miles learning that his fate as Spiderman is sealed and unchangeable hits home for nearly everyone watching and becomes personally relatable when Miles comes to the decision that his destiny is in his own hands. The animation, the soundtrack, the voice-acting, the story, the lore – what more could any sequel possibly have?
What do you think are some of the best sequels of all time? Would you have added Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to the list? The Nightmare on Elm Street follow-up Wes Craven’s New Nightmare? Mad Max: Fury Road, Blade Runner 2049, or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan? The Night of the Living Dead sequel Dawn of the Dead? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
New perspectives are exciting, even more so when they arrive on our screens in the medium of a moving picture. The film festival exists for this very reason, giving space to explore even the oldest of tropes with fresh direction, talent and stories.
This year’s London Film Festival was the first for three burgeoning directors. Little unites the work of Jesse Eisenberg, Malcolm Washington and Christopher Andrews in space, time or subject matter, but each of their films at LFF this year has created a similar, quiet sort of realness that explores just how the weight of the past bears down on the present. These were ordinary stories about everyday people, united in their exploration of generational trauma and how it affects the psyche, provokes the paranormal and sometimes erupts in violence.
Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain is a road movie that follows cousins Benji (Kieran Culkin) and David (Jesse Eisenberg) on a tour of Poland, undertaken to honour both their Jewish heritage and their recently deceased grandmother. The pair are polar opposites: Benji navigates the world with a carefreeness that is both charming and jarring, while David possesses a tense stoicness that seems to weigh him down.
But as their trip progresses, Benji falls apart. He tries his best to decline any proper engagement with the facts and figures of the Holocaust, and when he does, it results in chaotic, tearful outbursts. The weight of confronting the loss of his grandmother whilst surrounded by the collective pain of his people leaves Benji teetering on an unpredictable edge that, David explains, previously pushed him to take his own life. A Real Pain portrays just two ways in which grief can influence the psyche. In the face of their trauma, David carries all of the resilience, while Benji seems to carry all of the pain.
Just as David and Benji handle their grief differently, so too do the siblings of Malcolm Washington’s The Piano Lesson. In 1911 Pittsburgh, Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler) and Boy Willie (John David Washington) are at odds over the fate of their heirloom piano. For Boy Willie, selling it means he can reclaim the land that their ancestors once worked as slaves, but Berniece refuses to let go. She clings to the piano, captured by the carved face of their enslaved mother that gleams in the piano’s ebony wood.
In The Piano Lesson, the effects of this ancestral grief manifest themselves as a paranormal haunting. The ghost of the family’s slave master wanders the halls of their home, entrapped by Berniece’s double act of clinging to the past, while refusing to look it in the eye. The apparitions arrive as a chaotic force that physically pushes Berniece towards the future. Only when she takes a seat at the piano does the haunting cease. The pain remains, as it always will, but the tension shatters and the anger dissipates in a way that only letting go can bring.
There is no such satisfactory release in Bring Them Down. Michael O’Shea (Christopher Abbott) is the sole tender of his disabled father’s sheep farm in the hills of rural Ireland. They are at odds with the neighbouring Keeley family, tethered by a tragic car accident that killed Michael’s mother and scarred Jack Keeley’s mother Caroline. But when Jack (Barry Keoghan) steals two prize rams from their shared mountaintop, tensions come to a head, and before long there’s bloodshed.
Bring Them Down is laced with a collective trauma that explodes into episodes of brutal, male violence. Jack ponders a life outside the farm that he might never see, and Michael is no more than a sullen soldier serving his father’s whims. Both sons are trapped by the weight of their families’ livelihoods – the farms – and when things go wrong, both turn to violence in panicked desperation.
So much of this film echoes an Ireland of past and present; the clipped sentences between Michael and his dad, often spoken as Gaeilge (in Irish); the Tayto crisps and Barry’s Tea bags piled high on the counter; and the terse code of silence that echoes the ancestral Irish quality of looking the other way. It’s a tragic representation of generational trauma that mirrors the classic consequences of rigid Irish masculinity and male aggression.
Though distinct from one another, these portrayals of grief find root in a universal truth; trauma trickles down the family line, and it persists. There are no easy solutions offered here. These films force the viewer to confront the rawness of the human experience, serving as a reminder that healing is a process with no clean-cut end. Yet, through Benji’s vulnerability, the reconnection of the Charles-Doaker family and the desire to break cycles of violence in Bring Them Down, a subtle invitation to move forward is offered. We must take it, even if it hurts.
1960 has been described as The Year of Africa, as a wave of political change spread across the continent and led to 17 nations declaring independence. Among the most contentious of these was the case of the Congo, which announced its determination to emerge as a free nation under the leadership of the charismatic Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba on June 30th. Three days before losing control of its colony, Belgium privatised the Union Minière mine, the prime source of the country’s enormous potential wealth, and within seven months Lumumba would be assassinated following a Belgium-backed coup d’état. So much for independence.
Lumumba’s tragic story has been told before, notably by Raoul Peck in his 1990 documentary Lumumba: Death of a Prophet, but Johan Grimonprez brilliantly weaves Lumumba into a sprawling geopolitical tapestry in Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat. The Belgian filmmaker doesn’t shy away from critiquing his own country’s role in the Congolese crisis, but he also details the myriad ways in which the United States exerted its pernicious influence in the region, with the rise of the leftist Lumumba exacerbating their Cold War paranoia; after all, more than 3,000 tonnes of the uranium used to create the first atomic bomb were mined in the Congo.
To make moves in Africa, the Americans needed a smokescreen, and the most fascinating strand of Grimonprez’s film shows how many of the greatest jazz musicians of the era – Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Nina Simone, et al – were often used as unwitting stooges in CIA operations.
This musical angle ensures the film bounces along to a vibrant, eclectic score, but it also helps Grimonprez organise and structure the enormous wealth of archive footage, soundbites and quotations that that he uses to tell this complex story. The director and his editor Rik Chaubet allow the music to dictate the rhythm of the sequences that they cut together; one passage of the film might be energised by the aggressive drumming of Max Roach, while another unfolds against the slow, resonant build of Abbey Lincoln’s defiant vocals. Roach and Lincoln were among the activists who stormed the United Nations in 1961 to protest the killing of Lumumba, an extraordinary incident that Grimonprez uses to bookend his film.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is a dense and meticulously constructed picture. Grimonprez packs a daunting amount of detail and incident into 150 minutes while encouraging viewers to dig even deeper into these events, with the source of every quotation and fact being cited on screen. But if that description makes the film sound like homework, the kind of history lesson one should approach dutifully rather than with keen anticipation, then it’s a misrepresentation of what watching it actually feels like.
On a moment-by-moment basis, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is as exhilarating and illuminating a history lesson as you’ll ever have, and Grimonprez’s inclusion of adverts for Tesla or Apple products – both reliant on materials extracted from the Congo – reminds us that we are living with the consequences of this history every single day.
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The holidays are a time for tenderness, togetherness, and falling asleep on the sofa after your third round of mince pies and sweet sherry. Most Christmas films reflect the pressure cooker atmosphere of the period, usually with some sort of disaster inevitably causing festive friction, but Tyler Taormina takes a slightly different approach, as the members of a large Italian-American family cram into their matriarch’s suburban home for dinner on Christmas Eve. Rather than following a traditional narrative structure, Taormina’s film is more observational, focusing on snippets of conversation and exquisite visual details over the course of the evening. While the younger members of the family plot to sneak out with their friends, the adults discuss the matter of their ailing mother, and whether or not it’s time to consider a nursing home.
It’s tempting to ascribe the term ‘cinéma vérité’ to Taormina’s film, and there is absolutely a fly-on-the-wall quality to the intimate camerawork and lack of any major dramatic thrust. But Carson Lund’s vibrant cinematography – utilising coloured gels, light sources such as fairy lights and lamps and intricate close-ups of toy trains and plates piled high – gives Christmas at Miller’s Point a nostalgic, dream-like quality, at once authentic but as artificial as a fake fir tree or snow in a can.
This artificiality is the point, though – Taormina’s film reflects on the rituals that develop within family, and the tiresome notion of tradition for tradition’s sake. Although the family attempts to slap on smiles and keep things all perfectly pleasant, it’s only natural that tensions rise to the surface, and there’s an undercurrent of melancholy beneath the gaudy decorations and loud 1960s pop music which plays on an almost constant loop.
As the evening’s festivities progress, the teenage cousins Michelle (Francesca Scorsese) and Emily (Matilda Fleming) make a bid for freedom, congregating with their friends at a local bagel shop. It’s in the second half that the film loses focus a little bit, as the expansion out of the family home brings a direct divide between the adults and the teenagers. Michael Cera and Gregg Turkington have small roles as a pair of late-shift cops bored of their minds (and possibly harbouring secret feelings for each other) and Sawyer “son of Steven” Spielberg cameos as a local stoner named Splint, but the most compelling scenes are between the adult members of the family, as it’s revealed this is their last Christmas in the family home. Other smaller details come out in snippets and soundbites – occasionally we come into a conversation midway through – and in that manner, the film replicates the often disorienting experience of spending the holidays with family.
The vibes-based approach that Taormina takes likely won’t land with everyone, and the film’s meandering rhythms take a little while to adjust to. But Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point is perhaps the closest a holiday film has come to truly capturing the experience of coming together for the festive season – often there are no high theatrics, just petty squabbles, hushed gossip, and more food than anyone knows what to do with. To this end, there’s a timelessness to the setting, which is realistically somewhere in the mid-00s (flip phones and Call of Duty give it away) but could be much earlier judging by the decor and vibrant, fuzzy film stock. It’s a film with an affection for the past, but one that also acknowledges you can never go back to how things were when you were younger – and that while everything about the holidays seems perfectly exciting and straightforward as a kid, the older you get, the more the fault lines start to appear.
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