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Outtakes

Off the Rails

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Ghost Train

by Rachel Willis

Several strange incidents at a subway station spark the curiosity of a YouTube content creator in director Se-woong Tak’s film Ghost Train.

To understand the real issues surrounding the rash of bizarre occurrences, Horror Queen Da-kyeong (Joo Hyun-young) bribes tales from a station master (Jeon Bae-soo) with fancy spirits (some of which I wouldn’t mind trying).

As the station master spins each yarn, we’re privy to what really happens to each person at the center of the individual tales. At times, what we’re shown during the movie is not what appears on the surveillance tapes the station master shows to Da-kyeong.

There are several unsettling concepts at work to help unnerve the viewer. A woman who repetitively bangs her head against the train door sends passengers scurrying to another car. This is a motif that pops up at different moments, helping to create an atmosphere of dread.

Each of the station master’s stories has a uniqueness that makes the movie flow like an anthology horror. However, the style and atmosphere remain consistent, setting a creepy tone throughout.  

The framing story is the movie’s weak link. The Horror Queen herself isn’t nearly as compelling as the individuals in the station master’s tales. Da-kyeong’s nemesis at work is a stereotypical mean girl, and her work love interest is about as interesting as a blank sheet of paper. It’s with impatience that we wait for the next of the station master’s tales.

However, as the film enters the final act, the framing story picks up steam. As Da-kyeong learns more about the station and its history, her story starts to get its teeth.

Unfortunately, those teeth are never quite sharp enough to explain the overall mystery around the ghost train. While there are a lot of memorable and interesting parts, they never quite come together as single narrative. That said, the movie is creepy enough to remain interesting, and overall, an intriguing series of ghost stories.

Outtakes

What Makes You Beautiful

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Sweetness

by Hope Madden

Back in 1982, German filmmaker Eckhart Schmidt released The Fan, a horror thriller about a teenage girl obsessed with a pop music star. It’s a wild, weird, uncomfortable technopop ride, and I admit I expected (hoped?) Emma Higgins’s Sweetness would be a kind of American update.

Because The Fan is so very weird, yet somehow relatable.

Higgins’s film is very different, and a touch more on the believable side. Kate Hallett (Women Talking) is Rylee, unpopular high school kid with an obsessive crush on Floorplan lead singer Payton Adler (Herman Tømmeraas). His pouty pretty face covers nearly every inch of her bedroom walls and ceiling. Her headphones are always in, his emotional vocals drowning out the mean girls in class, her father’s overly eager girlfriend (Amanda Brugel), and everything else Rylee doesn’t want to hear.

When bestie Sidney (Aya Furukawa, Fall of the House of Usher) leaves Rylee behind after a Floorplan concert, she meanders alone until being struck by a car driven by the very impaired object of her affection, Payton Adler!

Totally worth it!

What follows is a crooked path lined with the faulty logic of the young and the twisted imagination of a filmmaker who’s spent most of her career embedded with pop stars. Higgins has directed scads of music videos. That’s probably why the music for this film is so unnervingly authentic, exactly the kind of thing that would make a troubled teen swoon and believe her life had been saved.

Even if she’d, in fact, just been run down by a car.

Furukawa and Tømmeraas both shine, one as a semi-vacuous but still good friend, the other as a good-looking opportunist with a drug problem.

Hallett anchors the film with a sort of wide-eyed yet world wearied performance that’s as heartbreaking as it is frustrating.

Higgins never laughs at or Rylee and her youthful obsession. Though the movie doesn’t wallow in the maudlin, avoiding angst at all possible turns, the filmmaker demands that we empathize with this girl in a way that’s both moving and nightmarish.

Stylish cinematography and slick production design emphasize the pop music stylings, but the film is hardly all glossy exterior.

There are some telegraphed moments and a couple of convenient contrivances, and anybody seriously shocked by Rylee’s choices definitely needs to see The Fan. But there’s a twisted, broken little heart here and Higgins and Hallett want you to witness it.

Outtakes

Role Reversal

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Untitled Home Invasion Romance

by Hope Madden

Jason Statham is doing what Jason Statham does in a new thriller hitting screens this week. But did you know that Jason Biggs, known mainly for being a likeable dork who makes bad decisions, is doing just that as well this week?

Actually, with his latest film Untitled Home Invasion Romance, Biggs does stretch a new muscle. The American Pie star directs. It’s his first go behind the camera and, much thanks to a game cast and a surprisingly dark script from Joshua Paul Johnson and Jamie Napoli, he delivers an unexpected delight.

Biggs plays Kevin, an actor known best for his role in erectile dysfunction treatment ads. But Mr. Softy has decided to play rough. Just play, though. In an attempt to win back his wife (Meaghan Rath), he’s planned a weekend getaway where another actor (Arturo Castro) will pretend to break into the house, giving Kevin the opportunity to play the hero and win back Suzie’s love.

It backfires, obviously. And indeed, the set-up is so obvious you may be tempted to give up on Untitled Home Invasion Romance. I was. But stick it out, because not only does the film get zanier by the minute, but Biggs manages an impressive feat of tone, humor, and sly feminism.

Rath delivers nuanced comedy with a restrained but important physical performance. The action in the film is big and showy, but the comedy is a bit more low key. Micro, even, like the micro-aggressions both Suzie and police chief Heather (Anna Konkle) tolerate from the men around them who insist on taking care of things.

At a certain point, the underlying comedy of sexual politics takes over the larger-than-life home invasion plotline, but Biggs and cast have done such a wonderful job of charming and alarming that it feels both wildly out of place and exactly necessary.

A comedy this likeable and smiley, that’s simultaneously twisted and dark is tough to come by. Because a lot of people meet grisly ends, and most of them are actually pretty nice. Not the lawyer, though. Screw that guy.

Credit Biggs for stretching. Not the performance—Kevin is, to the letter, your garden variety Jason Biggs character. But the director knows how to wring a little something different out of his work.

Outtakes

2026 Oscar Nominations: Praise & Complaints

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Well, if you’re a horror fan, 2025 was your year, at least according to the Academy. All told, the genre racked up 27 Oscar nominations. Ryan Coogler’s period vampire epic Sinners led the pack with a record breaking 16 nominations. The previous high-water mark was 14 nominations.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein nabbed nine noms, while Zach Cregger’s Weapons got one—Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Amy Madigan—and Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister garnering a nomination for Best Makeup and Hair.

Films outside horror did quite well, too. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another received 13 nominations, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value nabbed five. Joseph Kosinski’s F1 received three Oscar nominations and Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice received none. What?!

Wicked for Good got shut out, even in the makeup, costume, hair design and production design categories, which is a bit of a surprise. Otherwise, the Academy recognized what we all expected them to recognize, but, per usual, we have a handful of complaints.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Oh, glorious day, they recognized Delroy Lindo! This is a stacked category—Del Toro stole every scene he was in, and Sean Penn has not been such a hoot in any film in decades. Expected to see Paul Mescal, whose turn in Hamnet was so beautiful. Others who were great in smaller roles were Adam Sandler in the utterly forgotten Jay Kelly, and Miles Caton from Sinners. Not sure where we’d put them, though.

·         Benicio Del Toro, One Battle After Another

·         Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein

·         Delroy Lindo, Sinners

·         Sean Penn, One Battle After Another

·         Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Another stacked category with so much to be happy about. No real nits to pick here.

·         Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value

·         Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value

·         Amy Madigan, Weapons

·         Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners

·         Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

Best Actor in a Lead Role

This shook out the way we’d expected, although we would have loved to see Jesse Plemmons remembered for Bugonia. We’d have given Ethan Hawke’s slot to him or to Joel Edgerton for Train Dreams, although right now Hawke looks like he may be the upset winner, so what do we know?

·         Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme

·         Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another

·         Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon

·         Michael B. Jordan, Sinners

·         Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

Best Actress in a Lead Role

We are thrilled to see Hudson get attention for her delightful performance in Song Sung Blue, although the money’s on Buckley. Chase Infiniti would have been welcome for her fearless performance in One Battle After Another, as would Amada Seyfried for The Testament of Ann Lee, but again, not sure who we’d lose to make room.

·         Jessie Buckley, Hamnet

·         Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

·         Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue

·         Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value

·         Emma Stone, Bugonia

Best Director

Would have loved to see Park Chan-wook on this list for just another masterpiece, No Other Choice, perhaps in Safdie’s place, but it’s a good group.

·         Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another

·         Ryan Coogler, Sinners

·         Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme

·         Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value

·         Chloé Zhao, Hamnet

Best Casting

It’s the first year for the award, and the Academy only came up with four films. Given the sheer volume of acting nominations One Battle After Another received, seems funny they didn’t make this list.

·         Hamnet

·         Marty Supreme

·         The Secret Agent

·         Sinners

Best International Feature

Where on earth is No Other Choice? These films are great—intense, heartbreaking, fascinating—but only Sentimental Value and It Was Just an Accident deserve the spot over Park Chan-wook’s film.

·         The Secret Agent, Brazil

·         It Was Just an Accident, France

·         Sentimental Value, Norway

·         Sirãt, Spain

·         The Voice of Hind Rajab, Tunisia

Best Score

What a great group! So thrilled for all five films, although we would have given Train Dreams the nod over Bugonia.

·         Bugonia

·         Frankenstein

·         Hamnet

·         One Battle After Another

·         Sinners

Best Original Song

Loved seeing Train Dreams and Sinners in there.

·         “Dear Me,” Diane Warren: Relentless

·         “Golden,” KPop Demon Hunters

·         “I Lied to You,” Sinners

·         “Sweet Dreams of Joy,” Viva Verdi

·         “Train Dreams,” Train Dreams

Best Adapted Screenplay

Not to beat a dead paper executive, but where is No Other Choice? We love you, Bugonia, but we’d have given your slot away.

·         Bugonia

·         Frankenstein

·         Hamnet

·         One Battle After Another

·         Train Dreams

Best Original Screenplay

Maybe it would have been too much to ask for Weapons over Blue Moon?

·         Blue Moon

·         It Was Just an Accident

·         Marty Supreme

·         Sentimental Value

·         Sinners

Best Documentary Feature

In another year of searing, heartbreaking, brilliant documentaries, great to see Come See Me in the Good Light get noticed.

·         The Alabama Solution

·         Come See Me in the Good Light

·         Cutting Through Rocks

·         Mr. Nobody Against Putin

·         The Perfect Neighbor

Best Animated Feature

Solid choices in a relatively weak year in animation.

  • Arco
  • Elio
  • KPop Demon Hunters
  • Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
  • Zootopia 2

 Best Cinematography

What an absolute gift we got in cinematography this year. Look at these gorgeous films!

  • Frankenstein
  • Marty Supreme
  • One Battle After Another
  • Sinners
  • Train Dreams

Best Costume Design

Here’s one where Wicked: For Good is a surprise omission.

  • Avatar: Fire and Ash
  • Frankenstein
  • Hamnet
  • Marty Supreme
  • Sinners

Best Film Editing

The Perfect Neighbor was a marvel of editing, and The Testament of Ann Lee was like a dream, but these choices are tough to argue.

  • F1
  • Marty Supreme
  • One Battle After Another
  • Sentimental Value
  • Sinners

Best Production Design

Wicked: For Good could be included here, too, but what to toss out?

  • Frankenstein
  • Hamnet
  • Marty Supreme
  • One Battle After Another
  • Sinners

Best Picture

F1? It was thrilling fun, but….

·         Bugonia

·         F1

·         Frankenstein

·         Hamnet

·         Marty Supreme

·         One Battle After Another

·         The Secret Agent

·         Sentimental Value

·         Sinners

·         Train Dreams

The 98th Academy Awards will be held Sunday, March 15th.

Outtakes

The Delights of Cruelty

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Maldoror

by Hope Madden

Deeply, darkly weird and surprising—that’s a good phrase to describe, to one degree or another, the films of Fabrice du Welz. His high-water mark for me is 2004’s Calvaire, a Christmas horror story that feels like something David Lynch might have done with Texas Chainsaw Massacre if he spoke French.

I am always eager to watch whatever springs next from a mind that conjures anything so harrowing and bizarre. His latest, Maldoror, is a true crime tale set in Belgium in the 1990s.

Paul Chartier (Anthony Bajon, Teddy) joins the Gendarmerie because he wants sincerely to make a difference. What he wants, as the film will slowly unveil, is to create for himself the life he was not born into—one with value, with family, with honor. For Paul, the unsolved missing persons case involving two small girls from the neighborhood provides the opportunity.

The crimes at the heart of the film are based on those of Marc Dutroux, a serial rapist, killer and pedophile who was able to continue to prey upon little girls in his community because of an inept and siloed legal system, as well as a corrupt justice department. Boy, there was a time when that would have sounded far-fetched, wasn’t there?

Du Welz surrounds Bajon with a large ensemble including the great Sergi López, always magnificent Béatrice Dalle, and du Welz regular Laurent Lucas. The filmmaker is at his loosest and most naturalistic with this film, a choice the cast embraces. Du Welz’s script, cowritten with Domenico La Porta, feels less well-suited to the approach.

The material is grim, covers more than a decade and casts a wide net. It’s sprawling and gritty, marked by a cynical unease about the possibility of finding truth or justice in a corrupt legal system. Yet somehow Maldoror becomes a tale of one man’s obsession, which neither fits the story being told nor the actor playing lead.

Bajon’s vulnerable, awkward cop and family man is played with an integrity that rings true. Even his early steps over the line in favor of eventual justice fit. But the character’s arc is a misfit for the film and the actor, and it reduces the story. Act 3 feels like it’s pulled from a different, lesser effort. The end result is that, though it boasts real tension and great performances, Maldoror feels like a misstep.

Outtakes

What a Snooze

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Sleepwalker

by Brandon Thomas

Horror has always used trauma as a foundation for some of the best of the genre. Films like The Changeling or Don’t Look Now wouldn’t be what they are without the emotional trauma haunting their characters. However, these films also had outstanding scripts, a top-notch cast, and directors who knew how to bring it all together. How does Sleepwalker fare as a new entry into Trauma Horror? Unfortunately, like a bad dream. 

Acclaimed artist Sarah (Hayden Panettiere of Scream 4 & 6, TV’s Heroes) is still in the throes of grief after the loss of her daughter in a car accident. This same accident left her estranged and abusive husband, Michael (Justin Chatwin of War of the Worlds), in a coma. As Sarah’s grief begins to manifest itself in sleepwalking, her grip on reality begins to loosen, putting those around her at risk.

Director Brandon Auman attempts to craft a psychological tale that works equally well as a dark drama as it does as a horror film. Think Ari Aster’s Hereditary. However, Auman’s script lacks the nuance, depth, and frankly, the scares, of Aster’s film. The very real topics of PTSD, domestic abuse, and grief get skimmed over with broad strokes instead of being given the attention and finesse needed to be effective. 

When Sleepwalker shifts into horror mode, it’s never really able to escape reliance on the dreaded jump scare and a score that telegraphs said jump scares a mile away. There’s a lack of visual flair during these scenes that robs the film of any kind of mood or atmosphere and ultimately hobbles Sleepwalker from the get-go.

Instead of being given a complex, nuanced character to play, Panettiere’s Sarah spends the entire film bouncing through a cornucopia of emotions. Her entire role boils down to “gaslit character”. Chatwin fares even worse. His Michael is a walking, talking (actually, yelling) stereotype. Having your two lead characters be such empty vessels keeps Sleepwalker from finding any kind of emotional traction. 

There are lofty goals to be found within Sleepwalker, but unfortunately, the film is ultimately DOA due to a poor script, uninspired direction, and a complete lack of scares.

Outtakes

Best Films of 2025

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Damn fine year, 2025. Well, for movies it was. Magnificent original films, like Ryan Coogler’s breathtaking Sinners, as well as blistering new work from Park Chan-wook and Yorgos Lanthimos. Gorgeous literary adaptations, including Chloé Zhao’s heartbreaking Hamnet, Clint Bentley’s lonesome Train Dreams, and GDT’s wondrous Frankenstein. Breathtaking stage-to-screen visions from Paul Thomas Anderson and Thomas Kail. Incredible documentaries, the best superhero film in years, remarkable horror, unusual comedies—if you couldn’t find a movie to love this year, you were not looking. But, we had to narrow it down, so here are our 25 favorites.

  1. One Battle After Another

Though the massive cast is characteristically littered with incredible talents crackling with the electricity of writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s script, Benicio del Toro stands out. He brings a laidback humor to the film that draws out Leonardo DiCaprio’s infectious silliness. While much of One Battle After Another is a nail-biting political thriller turned action flick, thanks to these two, it’s also one of Anderson’s funniest movies.

It may also be his most relevant. Certainly, the most of-the-moment. A master of the period piece, with this film Anderson reaches back to clarify present. By contrasting Bob’s paranoid, bumbling earnestness with the farcical evil of the Christmastime Adventurer’s Club, he satirizes exactly where we are today and why it looks so much like where we’ve been during every revolution.

But it is the filmmaker’s magical ability to populate each moment of his 2-hour-41-minute run time with authentic, understated, human detail that grounds the film in our lived-in reality and positions it as another masterpiece.

2. Sinners

Ryan Coogler reteams with longtime creative partner Michael B. Jordan to sing a song of a 1932 Mississippi juke joint. The Smoke Stack twins (Jordan) are back from Chicago, a truckload of ill-gotten liquor and a satchel full of cash along with them. They intend to open a club “for us, by us” and can hardly believe their eyes when three hillbillies come calling.

Jack O’Connell (an amazing actor in everything he’s done since Eden Lake) has a brogue and a banjo. He and his two friends would love to come on in, sing, dance, and spend some money, if only Smoke would invite them.

It’s scary. It’s sexy. The action slaps. It’s funny when it needs to be, sad just as often. It looks and sounds incredible. And there’s a cameo from Buddy F. Guy, in case you needed a little authenticity. When Ryan Coogler writes and directs a vampire movie, he gives you reason to believe there is yet new life for the old monster.

3. Train Dreams

Beautiful, lush, and quietly meditative, Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams is the kind of movie you just don’t ever get to see. It’s a wonderous, melancholy character study set against the rapidly changing America of the early 20th Century, and it is shouldered by the best performance of Joel Edgerton’s career.

Edgerton has yet to turn in a bad performance, nor even a mediocre one, but he seems custom built for this introspective figure, a witness, haunted but open and admirably vulnerable. Bentley surrounds him with so many marvelous performances, sometimes leaving an astonishing mark—on audience and protagonist alike—in only a single scene. Edgerton will no doubt be remembered this awards season, as should the film itself.

4. Hamnet

Chloé Zhao has crafted, aided by magnificent performances and hauntingly stunning cinematography from Lukasz Zal (The Zone of Interest, Cold War), a film that is shattering in its articulation that it is the depth of love that deepens and amplifies the pain of grief.

People make movies about grief all the time. We can expect one every Oscar season. But what Chloé Zhao does with Hamnet is ask us to experience that grief, not just witness it, and in experiencing it we understand the power and vital importance of art.

5. Frankenstein

Lush and gorgeous, even when it is running with blood, the world del Toro creates for his gods and monsters is breathtaking. The choices are fresh and odd, allowing for a rich image of creator and creation, the natural versus the magnificent.

Oscar Isaac is a marvel of angry arrogance made humble. As his creature, the long and limby Jacob Elordi offers a monster who’s more sensitive son than wounded manchild.

Mia Goth delivers the same uncanny grace that sets so many of her characters apart, and del Toro’s script allows Elizabeth an arc unlike any previous adaptation. You don’t wander into a Guillermo del Toro film expecting less anything than glorious excess—another reason why Frankenstein and he were meant for one another.

6. No Other Choice

Park Chan-wook’s crafted a seething satire on capitalism but manages to edge the biting farce with strange moments of deep empathy—just one example of the tonal tightrope Park doesn’t just walk, he prances across.

No Other Choice is complicated but never convoluted, constantly compelling and almost alarmingly funny. Between the intricate detail of the thriller and the gallows humor of the comedy, Park crafts a wondrously entertaining film.

7. It Was Just an Accident

This is the first film for Jafar Panahi (No Bears, Taxi, Closed Curtain) since Iran lifted his decade-long filmmaking and travel ban, and while he’s no longer filming himself in secret, Panahi’s storytelling still bursts with intimacy and courage. It Was Just an Accident is more proof that he is one of the true modern-day masters, with a clear and distinctive voice that demands attention.

8. Sentimental Value

Joachim Trier’s rich, quiet, masterfully performed film is about the places we keep our memories rather than dealing with them directly. It could be a house, like the one patriarch Gustav Borg (never-better Stellan Skarsgård) turns into a movie set. It could be the movies, or any art where the artist attempts to address conflicting emotion and memory without the interference of others’ interpretations or responses. But at the heart of these repositories is the family that fosters these memories. In this case, among others, Gustav’s daughters (Renate Reinsve, magnificent, and Inga Ibsdottter Lilleaas, also wonderful).

Sentimental Value is a gorgeously crafted family drama brimming with visual flourishes, comedic moments, heartbreak and honesty. It also boasts one of the finest ensembles of 2025.

9. Hamilton

(Released in theaters for the first time this year) The difference between seeing something live and feeling the energy exchange between cast and audience, as opposed to watching it on a screen where you’re removed from the human element of it, is often hard to overcome. (Remember Cats?) But Thomas Kail – who also directed the 2016 Broadway shows that were recorded for this film – has crafted a near perfect mix of spatial movement and character intimacy.

10. Bugonia

The script from Will Tracy and Jang Joon-hwan offers director Yorgos Lanthimos and his small but savvy (including Emma Stone and Jesse Plemmons, brazenly magnificent) cast fertile ground for the bleak absurdism the filmmaker does so well. Bugonia treads tonal shifts magnificently, slipping from comedy to thriller to horror and back with precision. Lanthimos’s control over audience emotion has never been tighter.

11. Superman

12. Pee-wee Herman as Himself

13. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere

14. The Ugly Stepsister

15. Black Bag

16. Eddington

17. Hedda

18. Weapons

19. Zootopia 2

20. Friendship

21. Marty Supreme

22. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

23. A House of Dynamite

24. The Secret Agent

25. Baltimorons

Honorable mentions: Sirat, Nouvelle Vague, Warfare, Eephus

Outtakes

Ticking Away the Moments

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No More Time

by Rachel Willis

What writer/director Dalila Droege does really well with her pandemic thriller, No More Time, is capture the fear, paranoia, and rage that comes with a viral outbreak.

Hilarie (Jennifer Harlow) and her husband, Steve (Mark Reeb), flee Texas for Colorado in hopes of finding some kind of escape. They seek to disappear, leaving everyone they know behind and hiding in a vacation town in the mountains.

A radio announcer (voiced by Jim Beaver) embodies the rage that can breed from the conflicting information that comes with a viral pandemic. Beaver’s broadcaster falls into the trap of thinking that if information changes on daily basis, that makes it suspect. The vocal performance captures the blind anger that comes from a place of deep fear and distrust.

However, that doesn’t mean that, within this world, the radio is entirely wrong. There is something very disturbing about the virus.

Droege effectively captures the ways in which our society can easily fall apart when faced with an external, existential threat. The idea of mean-world syndrome permeates nearly every moment that Steve and Hilarie interact with the people around them.

To juxtapose the deep schisms growing among the human population, Droege peppers peaceful scenes of the ecosystem throughout. The environment glows in opposition to the violence brewing in the human world.

Droege’s instinct for dialog is not as strong. At times the lines are so heavy handed as to be unbelievable.

But the overall effect of the film is deeply unsettling and familiar. Though the virus at the heart of No More Time is vastly different than the one we endured, the emotions are the same. We can learn from past mistakes, or fall into the same fear, paranoia, and anger that crippled us in the past and permeates the world of No More Time.

Outtakes

Eye in the Sky

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Visions

by Rachel Willis

Unsettling close-ups of eyes and haunting music opens director Yann Gozlan’s thriller, Visions.

Estelle (Diane Kruger) is a successful commercial pilot who lives a seemingly idyllic life with her husband, Guillaume (Mathieu Kassovitz). However, it’s clear early on that Estelle keeps herself under strict control. Small details show how tightly wound she is.

Her ordered life is upended when she is reunited with an old friend, Ana (Marta Nieto). As Estelle’s opposite, Ana’s disorder is a little too on the nose. In one scene, Estelle is as rigid in her stance as Ana is fluid. Because of how heavy-handed they’re presented as foils, the two characters feel hollow.

As many women coiled too tightly, Estelle unravels rapidly. Violent dreams leave marks on her body. She begins to see eyes peeping in on her in various situations. There are several tense moments between Estelle and her husband, as well as between Estelle and Ana.

Kruger is impeccable, carrying the bulk of the film’s emotional weight. It’s unfortunate that the story can’t match her intensity. The film is often frustratingly opaque, leaving the audience with little to try to unravel as Estelle’s visions haunt her. Too many pieces seem smashed together with little narrative cohesion.

The overall effect is tedious. It’s hard to care about characters that are never fully realized. Each person in Estelle’s orbit is mere shadow. And the mystery at the heart of Estelle’s “visions” is less interesting than certain extreme moments she spends in the cockpit of a plane.

The focus on eyes is one of the more compelling features of Visions, but on the whole, it doesn’t succeed in keeping our eyes glued to the screen.

Outtakes

Blue Christmas

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Goodbye June

by Hope Madden

Oscar winner and perennial contender Kate Winslet makes her directorial debut with the Christmastime family drama, Goodbye June. What drew the esteemed thespian behind the camera? A script by her son, Joe Anders.

The film tells the tale of June (Helen Mirren), whose cancer has returned just two weeks before Christmas. Her doting, anxiety riddled son, Connor (Johnny Flynn), and her husband (Timothy Spall) get her to the hospital and wait for the rest of the family to come in and, well, take over.

These are the sisters: Julia (Winslet), Molly (Andrea Riseborough), and Helen (Toni Collette).

Pause to marvel at this cast.

It would be hard to go wrong with any one of those humans, and indeed, Winslet’s ensemble—Riseborough and Spall, in particular—craft lived-in characters, each one’s behavior naturally amplified because of the situation. June is dying.

Winslet captures the chaos, simultaneously merry and discordant, in a big family brimming with little kids all cramped in a hospital room or running wild through its halls. The child actors are quite good, not to mention awfully cute.

Anders’s script doesn’t overexplain, mercifully. The details aren’t terribly necessary if you’ve ever been in or near a family. Molly kind of hates Julia. This hurts Julia, who is also mortified by Molly’s controlling, even bullying behavior with hospital staff. Everyone thinks Helen’s a flake. Likewise, everyone is fed up with Dad and filled with a mixture of tenderness and disappointment in Connor.

Credit Anders, as well, for avoiding the cliché of the sainted, dying mother in the hospital bed. A charmingly mischievous Mirren is unapologetic but loving, still getting in digs here and there that have no doubt worn down her children over the decades. Helen shouldn’t wear yellow. Julia needs to look after everyone, but not in that overbearing way she sometimes has.

The fine-tuned performances are nearly undone by the superficial plot, unfortunately.  Goodbye June is saddled with obviousness bordering on the maudlin that Winslet and her inarguably talented cast can’t quite transcend. Winslet’s crafted a holiday tearjerker with a fine but conspicuous message.