How do Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise outdo Mission Impossible: Fallout? Because even the most impressive of the previous MI films couldn’t hold a candle to that one. I mean, the public restroom fisticuffs alone!
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I has big shoes to fill and bridges to blow up and buildings to scale and masks to wear and trains to stop and whatnot. Does it succeed?
Of course, it does.
Ethan Hunt (Cruise) accepts a mission from his sketchy government contact (Henry Czerny). But Ethan and his team will do what they do best: go rogue. Because this key is too powerful for any one man, any one nation.
We know Ethan will do the right thing because he’s a beautiful soul. Come on, have you not been paying attention? But this villain – sentient AI “the Entity” – constantly calculates odds and probabilities. It knows Ethan’s weakness and will use it against him.
It’s a clever script by Bruce Geller, Erik Jendresen and McQuarrie. By weaponizing AI and falling back on the old rubber mask disguises, MI: DR1 mines contemporary anxiety with old school solutions.
But McQuarrie et al know what’s made the best of these films stand out. It’s not the plot – although there’s nothing at all wrong with this plot. It’s not really the villains (that’s Bond’s territory). The MI franchise lives and dies on two things: Ethan Hunt’s humanity and Tom Cruise’s willingness to risk his own life for thrilling stunts.
Expect both – aplenty! – in Episode 7.
Incredibly fun and impressive car chases follow some nifty rooftop running before turning to a magnificent series of train-related set pieces. Plus, of course, that motorcycle/mountain thing they tease in the trailer. Lunacy!
The core team – Cruise plus Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Rebecca Ferguson – continue to share entertaining camaraderie. Franchise newcomers Esai Morales, Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementeiff bring varying degrees and styles of badassedness. But, let’s be honest, all eyes are on Cruise.
He sells it. There is something old timey about a runaway train, and yet, in Cruise and McQuarrie’s hands, it’s never looked more fun or more thrilling. It’s a long film – just a hair under 3 hours – and it tells only half the story. Part 2 is due out in 2024. Still, Cruise and company manage to exceed expectations yet again.
Back in 2023, Chris Kentis crafted one of the most nerve-wracking explorations in tension ever filmed. Open Water dropped you in the middle of the ocean with a married couple and, eventually, as day turns to night and their scuba boat never comes back for them, a lot of sharks.
Few survival tales have stripped away so much and still left you so frazzled. Andres Beltran follows the minimalist tourism of doom path with his Colombian hiking misadventure, Quicksand.
Although Sofia (Carolina Gaitan) and Nick (Allan Hawco) are separated and heading toward divorce, they accept friend Marcos’s invitation to speak at his medical convention. During some down time, they go for a hike, run into trouble, and flee for their lives in the wrong direction – into a part of the rainforest known for quicksand.
Here is where we spend most of the film: stuck chest deep in Colombian mud with an unhappy married couple. No one will realize they’re missing for at least a day, and even then, they’re miles away from where anyone might look for them.
The quicksand isn’t their only problem, naturally. Trapped as they are, they’re vulnerable to predators – fire ants, snakes – but they’ll still have time to hash out their own issues.
A film this limited, done well, can keep you in the moment, your head on a swivel, your mind working along with the characters’ to find a solution. Adam Green’s 2010 skiing horror Frozen succeeded, as, to a degree, did the 2010 Ryan Reynolds date with claustrophobia, Buried.
Given the extremely limited cast, action and locations, a film like this lives and dies on performances since there’s almost nothing else to look at. Hawco delivers layered, vulnerable work that surprises.
Gaitan is less convincing, partly because the performance is superficial and partly because Sofia’s internal journey feels inauthentic and manipulative.
Beltran’s direction, though competent, lacks inspiration. He never manages to mine tension, and his actors rarely feel truly stuck. Uncomfortable, sure. Dirty and wet, definitely. Trapped and panicked, nope.
The fact that the film’s blandly obvious, wildly outdated message is all we get from our efforts doesn’t do Quicksand any favors, either.
Wasting an exceptional if oddly miscast ensemble, Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s The Miracle Club has something important on its mind. It just can’t quite articulate it.
Two Americans and a Brit lead the cast as scrappy Irish folk. Chrissie (Laura Linney) is the prodigal daughter returned for her mother’s funeral. Eileen (Kathy Bates) is her childhood friend who cannot believe Chrissie had the gall to return after what she did. The deceased’s best friend Lily (Maggie Smith) is disappointed the girl didn’t come sooner to comfort her mother during her time of need.
Chrissie’s timing is actually amazing. The whole parish is taking part in a talent show in honor of her mother. The winners get a trip to Lourdes to ask for a miracle. One contrivance follows another and next thing you know, Chrissie, Eileen and Lily are all en route to the holy city in France, begrudgingly together.
The Miracle Club is frustratingly evasive when it comes to Chrissie’s backstory. We get a sense but no real clarity, but it seemed to have been something quite dire. And yet, all is forgiven without much a do.
What O’Sullivan – working from a script by Joshua D. Maurer, Timothy Prager and Jimmy Smallhorne – tries to bring to the surface is an image of systemic oppression relieved only when women support each other.
There is one moment – a climactic confession – where the film’s themes resonate, thanks mostly to Linney’s quietly desperate performance. Dolly (Agnes O’Casey) is hoping that, with the help of the Blessed Virgin, her son will finally speak. But she has a secret, and she believes she’s to blame for whatever ails little Daniel (Eric D. Smith, adorable).
In this moment, O’Sullivan’s film seems to find its miracle, as four women recognize the burden their faith and the patriarchy have put on them. But we must rely on the weighty stares from one talented actor to the next because the film has no intention of pinpointing its deeper concerns.
Worse still, O’Sullivan’s film is so entirely forgiving of both the church and the patriarchy that these themes feel as artificial as the leads’ accents.
O’Sullivan’s tone is forever uplifting, sometimes comically so, but the underlying peril these women have faced and forced is anything but light. He and his writers (men, all) honor these put-upon women who manage. God bless them for managing. God forbid they revolt.
Adele Lim’s Joy Ride puts the R in raunchy comedy, but beneath a by-the-numbers R-rated roadtrip is a smart, irreverent, confident tale about owning your identity.
The film opens on Day 1 of the friendship between Audrey & Lolo in the funniest comeuppance scene since the 1993 Thanksgiving pageant at Wednesday Addams’s summer camp. The two are fast friends, even though Audrey (Ashley Park) is ambitious, applied, and constantly proving herself while Lolo (Sherry Cola) makes sex positive art instead of working in her parents’ Chinese restaurant.
But Audrey is about to make partner and move to LA, while Lolo is still living in Audrey’s garage, getting high, making art and enjoying dick.
It’s a phrase you should definitely get used to.
Though Lolo is not the film’s centerpiece, the way the character upends stereotypes about women generally and about Asian women specifically is part of the film’s success. Lim and co-writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao use the beats of a familiar story to undermine its relatively misogynistic history. Joy Ride is more than just smart, racially savvy, sexually open and foul mouthed.
It’s funny.
Park is an excellent vehicle for both the core idea of claiming your identity and the necessary schmaltz at the heart of any raunchy comedy. But she is not carrying the comedic burden. Leave that to Cola and Audrey’s other two travel companions, Deadeye (Sabrina Wu, hilarious) and Kat (Stephanie Hsu, hello glorious!).
The commentary on microaggressions, aggressive aggression, all manner of racism, and glass ceilings feels honest, sometimes brave, often borderline (and joyously) lewd.
Don’t be confused. The plot itself is dumb as hell. It’s a roadtrip (well, it’s more of a globe trot) as the four pals travel through China to support Audrey as she lands the big client that will mean a big promotion. Hijinks do what they do best, they ensue.
Not every wild situation lands. Each emotional climax feels destined, obvious. But somehow, even well-worn tropes feel revolutionary when claimed by a filmmaking team (director, all writers, all leads) of nothing but Asian women.
There is something elegantly old school about the slow burn literary mystery afoot in Alice Troughton’s feature directorial debut, The Lesson. Its overt, unyielding structure suggests a familiar, even predictable thriller.
However zealously screenwriter Alex MacKeith subscribes to the traditional three act story, theme stated on page 5 and all that, Troughton and a superb cast still manage to mesmerize you. You’re given every piece of evidence you will need, and yet you’ll wonder ceaselessly where it will all lead.
Troughton’s direction evokes a tense thriller, even though the story itself never feels as if danger’s around the corner. Still, the camera angles and shot choices – gorgeous though they are – leave you on edge. With her creeping camera and gorgeous location Troughton blurs the line between intellectual drama and mystery thriller.
Her stellar cast helps. Richard E. Grant plays renowned writer J.M. Sinclair, whose son Bertie (Stephen McMillan) is in the market for a tutor to help prepare him for Oxford’s entrance exams. Aspiring writer and massive Sinclair fan Liam (Daryl McCormack, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande) gets the job.
Julie Delpy also stars as family matriarch Hélène, whose aloof demeanor strikes the perfect chord against Grant’s vibrance. It would be wrong to say Grant chews scenery, but you certainly can’t look away from him. A charming narcissist, viciously insecure and competitive, his Sinclair is a big presence, which allows the balance of characters to quietly observe, connive even.
McCormack, who was so impressive in the two-person revelation of Leo Grande, delivers another introspective and surprising performance. At times Liam seems to mirror Sinclair’s insecurity and artist’s fragility, but this is not that story.
The conclusion feels a little tidy, but the intricate ballet of character study and mystery that precedes it is so tight you’ll forgive the minor misstep.
One of our favorite parts of the trauma of accepting that half the year is behind us is our therapy of celebrating so much great horror cinema! Did you forget these treasures? Already?! Well, here are (in alphabetical order) the ten best horror flicks so far this year.
The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
An awful lot of people have reimagined Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in an awful lot of ways. What makes writer/director Bomani J. Story’s take, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, so effective is that it tackles a lot in very little time and handles all of it heartbreakingly well.
To say that Story situates Shelley’s tale in the context of drug violence would be to sell his film short. He’s moved the story from European castles and laboratories to the projects, where Vicaria’s (Laya DeLeon Hayes, stunning) mother fell victim to a drive-by shooting, her brother was shot to death on a drug deal gone wrong, and her father deals with his grief by using. But drugs are just part of the larger problem, the almost escapable, systemic and cyclical nature of violence and poverty.
Story’s chosen genre may feel slight, even campy, but the tropes belie some densely packed ideas, and there’s a current of empathy running through the film that not only separates this from other Frankenstein tales, but deepens the film’s genuine sense of tragedy.
The Blackening
Several friends from college (including Jay Pharaoh, Yvonne Orji, Sinqua Walls, Antoinette Robertson, and the film’s co-writer Dewayne Perkins) are reuniting at a remote cabin for a Juneteenth celebration. It isn’t long before they discover a talking blackface at the center of a board game called The Blackening (“probably runs on racism!”) and fall into a sadistic killer’s plan to pick them off one by one.
The game will test their knowledge of Black history and culture, and demand they sacrifice the friend they deem “the Blackest.” It’s a clever device that Perkins, co-writer Tracy Oliver and director Tim Story use to skewer both well-known horror tropes and well-worn identity politicking.
The old joke about Black people being the first to die in horror films is pretty well-worn, too, but don’t let that poster tagline convince you that the film has nothing new to say. The less “Blacker” these characters seem, the greater chance they have of surviving. That’s some fertile ground for social commentary, and what began as a viral comedy sketch lands on the screen as a refreshing new angle for a horror comedy.
Evil Dead Rise
Deadites hit the big city in Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise, the latest instalment in the old Sam Raimi demon possession franchise. As was true with its predecessors, blood will rain, viscera will spew, chainsaws will bite, and the dead will most definitely rise.
We open, as usual, on a cabin. Despite the top-notch title sequence, though, this episode will not be a cabin-in-the-woods horror. Cronin, who’s credited with the script as well, takes the Necronomicon and all its secrets into an urban high rise to see what hell he can raise.
Cronin uses disorienting angels and shots throughout the film to beautifully bewildering effect. A fisheye-of-death through a peephole is just one of the film’s many horrifying highlights.
Huesera: The Bone Woman
Michelle Garza Cervera’s maternal nightmare is bright and decisive, pulling in common genre tropes only long enough to grant entrance to the territory of a central metaphor before casting them aside for something sinister, honest and honestly terrifying.
While it toes certain familiar ground – the gaslighting of Rosemary’s Baby, for instance – what sets Huesera apart from other maternal horror is its deliberate untidiness. Cervera refuses to embrace the good mother/bad mother dichotomy and disregards the common cinematic journey of convincing a woman that all she really wants is to be a mom.
Huesera’s metaphor is brave and timely. Brave not only because of its LGBTQ themes but because of its motherhood themes. It’s a melancholy and necessary look at what you give up, what you kill.
Infinity Pool
Brandon Cronenberg + Mia Goth + Alexander Skarsgård … for a very specific set of people, the sum there is hell yes.
Riding our favorite wave in horror – that rich people are unspeakably diabolical – writer/director Cronenberg takes us on a strange journey through privilege, debauchery, entitlement, boredom, narcissism, psychotropic drugs and more in his trippy new flick, Infinity Pool.
Cronenberg’s ultimate concept is clearly, wildly his own, but moments sometimes call to mind ideas from last year’s Speak No Evil, as well as Society, Kill List, Hour of the Wolf, and A Serbian Film (no, not that part). Still, the film never feels borrowed. Uncomfortable, yes. Borrowed? No.
Influencer
Kurtis David Harder’s approach to influencer horror leans Neo-noir thriller as the cold and calculating CW (Cassandra Naud – outstanding) spins a dangerous web for an unsuspecting social butterfly.
Harder and cinematographer David Schuurman create an absolutely gorgeous pot for boiling this mystery. From atop deserted island beaches to below crystal clear waters and inside lavish vacation homes, Harder’s nimble camera and visual aesthetics reinforce the notion that pretty pictures don’t always tell the whole story.
With sharp dialogue, skillful plotting and simmering dread, Influencer is plenty worthy of that “Like” button.
Malum
Equal parts Assault on Precinct 13 and The Shining by way of Charles Manson, Anthony DiBlasi’s Malum is a quick, mean, mad look into the abyss.
DiBlasi is reimagining his own 2014 flick Last Shift, although it feels more like a riff on Carpenter’s 1976 Precinct 13 than anything. Regardless, what the filmmaker does is confine the audience along with our hero in a diabolical funhouse.
Malum gets nuts, exactly as it should. Though it never feels genuinely unique, it manages to avoid feeling derivative because of DiBlasi’s commitment to the grisly madness afoot. The result is a solid, blood soaked bit of genre entertainment fully worthy of your 92 minutes.
M3GAN
Hilarious. Gerard Johnstone – whose 2014 horror gem Housebound is a must see – displays a sly instinct for humor in a film that understands what’s creepy about dolls and toxic relationships.
Allison Williams is solid as the workaholic who just wasn’t cut out to be a parent. That would be fine, except her orphaned niece could really use a parent, not an AI caregiver whose rushed-to-production programming and unseemly backstory make her dangerous in, let’s be honest, a pretty fun way.
You remember that trailer. We could have used more dancing, but when M3GAN plays “Toy Soldiers” on the piano, we were already hooked.
Renfield
They totally made a movie with a very saucy Nic Cage as Dracula. And a saucy Nic Cage is the best Nic Cage.
There’s at least one bloody toe in waters that send up rom-coms, satirize narcissistic relationships and homage a classic horror character while it’s also modernizing the themes that built him.
But experiencing Count Nicula alone is worth it. Plus, Nicholas Hoult is perfect as the put-upon sad boy with access to anti-hero superpowers and Awkwafina can wring plenty of humor from simply telling a guy named Kyle to F-off.
Renfield might be bloodier than you expect, but it’s just as much fun as you’re hoping for. Call it bloody good fun.
Skinamarink
There’s probably some version of this nightmare in your past. You were just a kid, separated from your parents and trying in vain to reach them or call out for help, or maybe just escape.
Remember how scared you were? Director Kyle Edward Ball and cinematographer Jamie McRae do, and they twist that knife again and again for 100 minutes of dark, disorienting dread.
Cinematography and sound design are intertwined in an analog, cathode-ray aesthetic that recalls vintage, grainy VHS. Two children whisper to each other (“Where do you think Dad is? I don’t know.”) as they wander from room to room, with Ball’s camera never allowing you one second of relief.
The past and present look a little too similar in writer/director Georgia Oakley’s quietly profound drama, Blue Jean.
This is true, regardless of the spot-on period detail. Jean (Rosey McEwen) teaches high school PE in Thatcher-era London. Protests over the conservative party’s push to enshrine anti-LGBTQ+ laws echo from radio stations and TV sets in the faculty lounge, greeted with reactions from colleagues that confirm Jean’s instinct to stay closeted.
McEwen’s riveting performance is almost entirely internal. A gesture, a breath, a blink holds meaning. And tears – forget it. Jean is too tightly wound, trying so hard to disappear, to draw no attention to herself so she can slip through her days unnoticed. But why did she get into teaching in the first place?
Without a hint of a heavy hand, Oakley brings us around to that question. She didn’t do it because she didn’t want to leave an impression. No one chooses to spend their days surrounded by adolescents, of all things, if they don’t want to offer some kind of value, provide some kind of guidance toward adulthood.
Jean doesn’t want to be a hero, but there comes a moment when she has to reckon with whether or not she’s willing to be a villain.
McEwen’s isn’t the only impressive performance. A vibrant and endlessly lovable Kerry Hayes makes love interest Viv a buoyant but levelheaded surprise. Young Lucy Halliday is raw vulnerability as Lois, balanced beautifully by the layered, roiling emotion of Lydia Page’s Siobhan.
It’s stunning that this is Oakley’s feature debut. The patient pacing pays off with a fully earned climax and not one note rings false. Every moment aches of heartbreak, but that only makes the pure joy of the final act that much more beautiful. Like the best queer cinema, Blue Jean makes the political personal. But even in the most oppressive climate, it is freedom.
How is this year half over?! Well, whether we want to believe it or not, it is. That means a look back at the movies that most impressed us over the course of the first six months. Here, in alphabetical order, are our favorites.
Air
If you still need proof that Ben Affleck is a damn fine director, you’ll find it, right down to how he frames the multiple telephone conversations. But the real surprise here is the script. In a truly sparkling debut, writer Alex Convery brings history to life with an assured commitment to character.
And much like his success with the Oscar-winning Argo, Affleck proves adept at a pace and structure that wrings tension from an outcome we already know. In fact, he goes one better this time, inserting archival footage that actually reminds us of how this all turned out, before leaving Mrs. Jordan’s final ultimatum hanging in the air like a levitating slam from Michael.
Asteroid City
As is so often the case, director Wes Anderson, writing again with Roman Coppola, painstakingly creates a world – colorful, peculiar, emotionally tight lipped – brimming with characters (equally colorful, peculiar and emotionally tight-lipped). Brimming. About 50 speaking characters stand or sit precisely on their mark, perfectly framed, each one doing their all to keep chaos at bay.
The wordplay is succinct and witty per usual, dancing through themes of science, art, and Cold War paranoia. But while Anderson’s last film, The French Dispatch, left its procession of indelibly offbeat characters to fend for themselves, this time they’re connected with the sterile humanity that buoys the best of his work.
Blackberry
So, a voice on the line says, “You have a collect call from ‘What the f%& is happening’!”
That’s not really the caller’s name.
He’s actually Jim Balsillie (a terrific Glenn Howerton), co-CEO of BlackBerry Limited, and he’s having yet another temper tantrum. The pairing of Balsillie’s bare-knuckled business sense with the tech genius of other CEO Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel, perfectly awkward) made the company an early leader in the cell phone game, but things have started to unravel. Fast.
The colliding of worlds is engaging enough, but the delightfully sharp humor and first-rate ensemble (also including Michael Ironside) turn these based on true events into a rollicking, can’t-look-away slice of history.
John Wick: Chapter 4
Chapter 4 is not just more of what makes the series memorable, it’s better: better action, better cinematography, better fight choreography, better framing and shot selection. Sandwiched between inspired carnage are brief moments of exposition set within sumptuous visions of luxury and decadence. This movie is absolutely gorgeous.
One of the reasons each episode of this franchise surpasses the last is that the franchise is not exactly about John Wick. It’s a love letter to a canon, a song about the entire history of onscreen assassins and their honorable, meticulous action. Genre legends arrive and we accept a backstory that isn’t detailed or necessary because the actors carry their cinematic history with them, and that’s backstory enough.
It’s hard to believe it took this many sequels to get us to John Wick v Donnie Yen, but it was worth the wait.
Linoleum
If you haven’t gotten to know filmmaker Colin West, it’s high time you correct that. The writer/director follows up last year’s surreal Christmas haunting Double Walker with a beautiful look at living a fantastic life.
The effortlessly affable Jim Gaffigan plays Cameron, an astronomer in suburban Dayton, Ohio hitting a very rocky path in his middle age. The kiddie show about science that he hosts is failing. Maybe his marriage is, too. New neighbors, a mysterious woman, and increasingly bizarre events have got him wondering. What does it all mean?
Return to Seoul
In Return to Seoul (Retour à Séoul), a trip “home” becomes a catalyst for one woman’s search for identity, as director and co-writer Davy Chou crafts a relentlessly engrossing study of character and culture.
In her screen debut, Park Ji-min is simply a revelation. Her experience as a visual artist clearly assists Park in realizing how to challenge the camera in a transfixing manner that implores us not to give up on her character. Her Freddie is carrying a soul-deep wound and pushes people away with a sometimes casual cruelty, but Park always grounds her with humanity and restraint.
Freddie begins to embody the typhoon that pushed her toward this journey of self, and Return to Seoul becomes an always defiant, sometimes bristling march to emotional release. And when that release comes, it is a rich and moving reward for a filmmaker, a performer, and all who choose to follow.
Showing Up
Visual poet of the day-to-day Kelly Reichardt returns to screens with a look at art as well as craft in her dramedy, Showing Up.
Michelle Williams is characteristically amazing, her performance as much a piece of physical acting as verbal. You know Lizzy by looking at her, at the way she stands, the way she responds to requests for coffee or work, the way she reacts to compliments about her work, the way she sighs. Williams’s performance is as much in what she does not say as what she does, and the honesty in that performance generates most of the film’s comic moments.
Chau knocks it out of the park yet again, and like Williams, she presents the character of Jo as much in her physical action as in her dialog. The chemistry between the two is truly amazing, simultaneously combative and accepting, or maybe just resigned to each other.
Like Nicole Holofcener and Claire Denis, Reichardt invests her attention in the small moments rather than delivering a tidy, obvious structure. The result feels messy, like life, with lengths of anxiety and unease punctuated by small triumphs.
Sisu
Is there anything in all the world more satisfying than watching Nazis die? Perhaps not. Jalmari Helander, the genius behind 2010’s exceptional holiday horror Rare Exports, squeezes a lovechild from Leone and Peckinpah by way of Tarantino (natch). The result, Sisu, a kind of WWII-era Scandinavian John Wick.
Helander’s confident vision meshes majestically with the cinematography of Kjell Lagerroos, capturing the lonesome beauty of Lapland in one minute, the next minute bursting with the frenetic energy and viscera of action. The stunt choreography and editing in the dizzying array of carnage-laden set pieces are breathtaking. Knives, guns, fisticuffs, tank fire, regular fire, land mines, a hanging, airplanes – a seemingly endless string of magnificently crafted violent action keeps the pace breathless.
Clocking in at just 91 minutes, Sisu is perfectly lean, relentlessly mean, and consistently satisfying at every blood-soaked turn.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
A reminder that multiverse films can, indeed, be made well, this story is wild but never illogical, delivering a heady balance of quantum physics, Jungian psychology and pop culture homages while rarely feeling like a self-congratulatory explosion of capitalism. Heart strings are tugged, and it helps if you’ve seen the previous installment. (If you haven’t, that’s on you, man. Rectify that situation immediately.)
A star studded voice cast shines, but that wattage is almost outshone by the animation. Every conceivable style, melding one scene to the next, bringing conflict, love and heroism to startling, vivid, utterly gorgeous life.
If there is a drawback (and judging the reaction of some of the youngsters in my screening, there may be), it’s that Across the Spider-Verse is a cliffhanger. If you’re cool with an amazing second act in a three-story arc (The Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers), you’ll probably be OK with it. Maybe warn your kids, but don’t let it dissuade you from taking in this animated glory on the biggest screen you can find.
You Hurt My Feelings
One of filmmaker Nicole Holofcener’s great talents is acknowledging within a film that there is no reason to feel for her characters, and then making you feel for the characters. She’s a master of the relatable if tedious angst of the privileged. In her hands, these primarily insignificant tensions are humanized and often hilarious.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who was so magnificently flawed and empathetic in Holofcener’s 2013 film Enough Said, stars as Beth, a novelist. Well, she wants to be a novelist, but her memoir only did OK and now her agent doesn’t seem that thrilled with her first ever novel. Maybe it sucks?
No, supportive-to-a-fault husband and psychologist Don (Tobias Menzies) assures her. But secretly, honestly, maybe that’s not how he feels.
Thanks to these two excellent performances the filmmaker delivers her finest moments, creating a lived-in world, a true microcosm that pokes fun at our insecurities and the little white lies that keep us happy.
