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Friendship September 14, 2024 By: Button Tyler Banark Friendship had its World Premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. A24 will release it in theaters on May 09, 2025. Cringe comedy has become a new form that’s slowly been on the rise recently. The situations we see characters get themselves in and how awkwardly they handle them is an odd way to make audiences laugh. Whether it’s watching a guy go on a dating show only for the house’s zipline or seeing someone make obscene comments during a late-night haunted house tour, SNL alum Tim Robinson has found numerous approaches to making us squirm. He’s been behind the rise of this comedic style via his Netflix variety series I Think You Should Leave . His newest film, Friendship, breathes life into his technique and offers substance to his otherwise dry comedy palette. Making an out-of-place addition to this year’s Midnight Madness lineup at the Toronto International Film Festival, Friendship also boasts one of the most irresistible men in Hollywood in Paul Rudd. Robinson and he play neighbors who find themselves in camaraderie and playing mind games with each other in a plot format Robinson knows all too well. When Austin (Rudd) starts ghosting Craig (Robinson) to hang out with his usual friends, Craig goes to great lengths to fix their relationship, even if it involves him getting into inappropriate positions. Some of the incidents we see Austin and Craig get into often involve troubling circumstances (trespassing, assault). Still, it’s not until they start spending time away from each other when things escalate. Rudd and Robinson play off each other well when these events happen in the movie, and their comedic styles blend surprisingly to a tee. Two factors go into making cringe comedy: the writing and delivery. While this may sound like a no-brainer for a comedy, let alone any movie, it’s vital to this specific style. Some of his line deliveries play a part in it, as some can be dumb, but he manages to make it work. There’s a moment where Craig’s trying to intimidate Austin’s friends and says they shouldn’t mess with him because he recently bought a van. This threat shouldn’t work, yet Robinson makes it, and the response is an uproarous laughter. Rudd helps him out sometimes, mainly just as a setup to a punchline. The best instance is when the two are exploring a sewer and trying to climb over a wall. Rudd clears the wall, but Robinson struggles, and seeing him struggle is where the joke lands. On one occasion, Rudd does make the joke himself, and it’s when he and his friend group start singing My Boo by Ghost Town DJs. It might simply pose as a random needle drop, but if the boot fits, wear it. Occasionally in Friendship , there is the zany humor that writer-director Andrew DeYoung’s script samples. Craig has a wife Tami and son Steven played by Kate Mara and Jack Dylan Grazer, respectively. There’s a moment in the opening minutes where the three have an interaction with each other that’s met with many laughs, and the three actors do an excellent job of executing it. Grazer and Robinson have more experience in comedy than Mara, but she still helps out in the moment as the joke catches audiences by surprise. On the contrary, some of the humor outside of the cringeworthy jokes isn’t as outstanding. The movie often showcases moments of Craig experiencing a psychedelic trip and tries to get a laugh out of audiences through those moments. If this movie had come out in the 90s, these choices likely would’ve been seen as genius but unfortunately, do not and drag Friendship down. With Friendship , Robinson makes his film debut as a leading man and brings his comedic chops to the forefront. While it translates better on the big screen than as a streaming show, there’s still the looming factor that cringe comedy won’t be for everyone. Regardless, Friendship sees Robinson make a big leap in his career and has an excellent team to work with on it. It might get some viewers to explore more of Robinson and make I Think You Should Leave an even bigger show, but viewers who weren’t too amused by this won’t have their lives changed. As long as viewers are hooting and hollering, it works. You can follow Tyler and hear more of his thoughts on Twitter , Instagram , and Letterboxd . More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

She Said October 29, 2022 By: Button Hunter Friesen She Said screened at the 2022 Twin Cities Film Fest. Universal Pictures will release it in theaters on November 18. Of the hundreds of cinematic subgenres, investigative journalism seems to have the highest bar set by its predecessors. All the President’s Men set the stage with its punctual retelling of Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting of the Watergate scandal, which earned itself four Oscar wins from eight nominations. Then came the equally Oscar-coveted films The China Syndrome, Reds, The Killing Fields , and The Insider . Of course, then there was Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight , which, with its win for Best Picture, will perpetually be the model of comparison for any future movies in the genre. The Post and Bombshell , while good in their own right, cracked under the newly lifted weight of expectations. So, let’s get the inevitable question out of the way. Is She Said , Maria Schrader’s new film about The New York Times’s reporting on the Harvey Weinstein scandal, as good as Spotlight ? The answer to that question is “no.” But hold on a minute! Even with its deficiencies, this is still a more than worthy (and timely) addition to the genre, and the 2022 movie culture. Coming off her Outstanding Directing Emmy win for Netflix’s Unorthodox , Schrader delivers a tense thriller that never ceases to let up. From the get-go, we’re introduced to Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) as she’s publishing a story about a series of sexual assaults by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. While the story picks up traction, the intended result doesn’t come to fruition, sewing doubt about what can be done to stop this problem. Working on a similar story is Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan). Hers is about the perverse reign of Harvey Weinstein at Miramax Pictures, a figure and place synonymous with Oscar success and launching the careers of young actresses. But you don’t have to even peek under the covers to know that something is wrong, with several stars such as Rose McGowan and Ashely Judd coming out against Weinstein’s rampant sexual abuse. From there, the dots are connected to several other female employees within the Miramax machine, all of which were silenced by an intricate system designed to destroy anyone who opposes those in power. Written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz ( Ida , Disobedience ), the film packs in quite a lot of details within its two-hour-plus runtime. We watch as Twohey and Kantor make phone calls, collect leads, corroborate stories, meet with superiors, and dodge disruptors. It’s an all-consuming process that endangers their work-life balance, which was already in jeopardy with Twohey’s newborn and Kantor’s two young kids. Weeks and months go by as the two try to unshroud events that everyone is terrified to speak about. Some of the ones that offer their side of the story are Zelda Perkins and Laura Madden, former assistants to Weinstein. Each is played by Samantha Morton and Jennifer Ehle, respectively, both delivering terrifically heartbreaking work within their limited screen time. While Lenkiewicz and Schrader are deftly able to handle those moments with the lesser-known victims, the same cannot be said for the bigger stars. A few cringe-worthy name drops, such as one mentioning Lena Dunham, and workarounds of showing the actual figures deflate some of the authenticity. And there is a slight sense of the script spinning its wheels as we cycle through similar stories and expository journalist jargon meant to keep us up to speed. Along with those mentioned in the introduction, She Said will be a film that is taught in journalism classes for years to come. Maybe a drinking game will be created out of all the tropes it crosses off the list? Even so, there’s power in its message and a bit of hopefulness within the heartbreak. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Pain Hustlers October 24, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen Pain Hustlers had its World Premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Netflix will release it in theaters on October 20, followed by its streaming premiere on October 27. GMP: “Grey Matters Productions, how may I help you?” N: “Hello, this is Netflix, we worked with you guys on The Laundromat and Yes Day a few years back and wanted to see if you were interested in partnering up again?” GMP: “Oh hi Netflix! I gotta say I’m a little surprised you called since… well, let’s be honest, those two movies didn’t exactly pan out the way we planned.” N: “I know, but we’re in the business of hitting quotas and churning out as much content as possible. Quality is a little lower on the hierarchy of needs. Plus, the third time is the charm, right?” GMP: “I guess you’re right when you put it that way. So, what do you have in mind?” N: “We’d like to make a movie about the opioid epidemic — a takedown of Big Pharma.” GMP: “Hasn’t that already been done to death over the past few years? Hulu had that show Dopesick that won a couple of Emmys a few years ago, and Laura Poitras’ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed just won the Golden Lion at Venice last year for her story about Nan Goldin and the downfall of the Sackler family. It seems like the market is overly saturated and the bar has been set relatively high. Wait, didn’t you just release a show called Painkiller a few months ago about the Sacklers?” N: “I’ll admit, we got beat to the market in this area. But we’re Netflix, we never let being late to the punch stop us from getting in on the action. Remember Red Notice ? We did that after everyone was already getting sick of Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot. And we still gave Joe and Anthony Russo hundreds of millions to make The Gray Man after Cherry . No one else on the planet would do that besides us.” GMP: “You do put your money where your mouth is, I’ll give you that. And at least you’re not Amazon. People actually watch the stuff you pour generations' worth of wealth into, even if they don’t like it. Speaking of the Russos and Amazon, did you see Citadel , supposedly the second-most-expensive show ever produced?” N: “No, of course not! But we are giving them another $200 million to make another action-adventure movie starring Chris Pratt.” GMP: “I don’t think you know what irony is. Whatever, alright, we can do this Big Pharma movie with you. We’ve got this book we bought the rights to called The Pain Hustlers about these two charismatic young people getting caught up in illegal pharmaceutical selling.” N: “Awesome! Who should we get to direct this? We need it to be fun and palatable enough so people will look up from their phones on the couch. But we also need a simplistic message about how all of this is bad.” GMP: “Okay, so you want something that’ll make it on your top 10 list on its opening weekend and then never to be talked about again? N: “That’s our specialty!” GMP: “Let’s see, Martin Scorsese did The Wolf of Wall Street a few years ago and that was a big success. You guys just worked with him on the The Irishman . Is there any chance you get him back? Or maybe Steven Soderbergh? I could get him on the phone and see if he’s interested.” N: “No, those guys were expensive and wanted full control of their work. We’re moving towards directors that are just big of a name to be on the poster, but not big enough that we can still tell them exactly what to do.” GMP: “[flipping through the rolodex] Well, there’s this guy called David Yates that’s available. He just came off the Fantastic Beasts trilogy so you can get him on the cheap. But he doesn’t have a discernable style, so he wouldn’t be a good fit for this angle you want.” N: “Ehh, that doesn’t matter. We’ll take him! I think we can make up for it by having a couple hundred ChatGPT bots watch some Scorsese movies and then edit the film.” GMP: “I don’t think that’s how that works, but it’s your money. Well since we cheaped out on the director, can we at least spend some decent money on the stars? After all, you have built your brand around paying ungodly amounts of money to movie stars. How about Emily Blunt and Chris Evans? Both charismatic actors and Evans checks off your obligatory Russo box.” N: “That sounds good. Blunt will be great in the role. Can we make Evans do a vague Boston accent even though he’s terrible at it? Oh, and can we make this whole thing a mockumentary? All the kids love those!” GMP: “I’ll let Evans do the accent because it would be fun to see him fail. But I don’t think the mockumentary angle is a good idea since that’s also been overplayed.” N: “Well, The Office was too much of a success on our platform so we have to do it. Hmmm. Alright, we’ll just do half of it. Like, we’ll lean on it heavily in the opening and then drop it for an hour before abruptly bringing it back right at the end.” GMP: “That seems a little haphazard and might mess with the tonal balance. But I get what you’re saying. You don’t want to mess with the algorithm. Alright, so I’ve got you down for the film rights, Yates, Blunt, and Evans. Your total will be $58 million, plus a few extra $10 million payments for marketing.” N: “Wow, only $58 million?!? I guess this is what it feels like to be making indie movies?” GMP: “Are you doing cash or card?” N: “Can you just put it on my tab? I’ve already got $14 billion on there right now so it just makes sense to keep adding to that. Don’t worry, we’ll pay it off eventually.” GMP: “I really shouldn’t since you still owe me for those other two movies, but what the hell, why not? Alright, we’ll have that order ready for you in October.” N: “One more thing! Can you have it ready by September? I want to debut it at the Toronto International Film Festival and start the buzz rolling early.” GMP: “Sure thing! We’ll just have to trim around the edges a little bit. You’ll probably lose about 10% in quality from what we already planned, but that doesn’t matter since we’re already making a movie no one will care about anyway!” More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Emilia Pérez June 6, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen Emilia Perez had its World Premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Netflix will release it in theaters on November 01, followed by its streaming premiere on November 13. A prison drama centering on a Muslim convict; a romance between a single father and a killer whale trainer deepens after tragedy; a Sri Lankan Tamil warrior feels to France to seek a better life; two brothers chase after a gold prospector in 1850s Oregon; and a sexually-charged romantic comedy about millennial Parisians. These are the basic descriptions of the last five films directed by Paris’ own Jacques Audiard, none of which seem to share an obvious thematic link or calling card. In fact, the only thing that keeps them connected is their fate after they premiere, with all of them collecting a bevy of festival and César nominations/awards. That streak of genre maneuverability continues with Audiard’s latest work, Emilia Perez , a musical crime comedy set in modern Mexico. Based on the results, I’m sure more awards are not far behind to go along with the Best Actress and Jury Prize haul at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Those Cannes audiences may have already had their fill of pure bewilderment in the form of Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating Megalopolis , but Emilia Perez is the one of the pair to actually do it right. It’s a film whose on-paper plot raises several eyebrows, only to be met with more craziness as it all explodes on the screen. It doesn’t always work, but it bats a pretty high average, and almost all of the strikes are just as satisfying to watch as the hits. Let’s start back up at the top and get ourselves reoriented. Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldaña) is an overworked and underpaid lawyer in Mexico City. Her victories in the courtroom are often defeats in her personal life, as no amount of work she does seems to make a difference. Her strong resume gets her noticed by the ruthless cartel leader Manitas (Karla Sofía Gascón donning incredibly convincing makeup), who, in exchange for $2 million, hires Rita to help him go through the gender reassignment surgery that he’s always dreamed of having. Years go by as Manitas becomes Emilia Perez, with Rita taking up the position of the professional guardian for Emilia’s wife (Selena Gomez) and kids, who have been in the dark about the whole operation. The degree to which the musical aspects would play into the narrative may have been shrouded in mystery during the announcement and production phases, but all those uncertainties are squashed within the first minute of the finished product. Saldaña is our guide through this story, with her seldom-seen musical chops being unleashed in an opening number featuring a large chorus and flashy camerawork. It’s this sequence that illustrates much of what’s to come, both from the story and performers: an extraordinary amount of dedication and sincerity to even the most outlandish of concepts. Audiard gives maximum effort to each of the genres he’s melding together. Each of the musical sequences is bursting with a bombastic spirit, the lighting and camerawork being as expressive as the actors. Then there’s also real danger with the crime elements, which attempt to grab ahold of Mexico’s problem of missing persons and cartel-related violence. It can all feel a little silly due to the operatic fever dream of the production, but its heart is always in the right place. Carrying that heart is Spanish trans-actress Karla Sofía Gascón. While Rita is the one finding herself falling deeper down the rabbit hole, Manitas/Emilia is the one trying to dig their way out. Gascón finds that nugget of remorse that’s needed for us to sympathize with her. She also brings the house down with some of her solo numbers. Gomez is a bit shortchanged by the structure of the story, only showing up in bits and pieces. Her pop-star presence gives her scenes a certain amount of flair that distances them from any of her other previous roles. Musicals will be all the rage later in the year with Joker: Folie à Deux , Moana 2 , Wicked , and Mufasa: The Lion King filling up the multiplexes. Save for maybe Todd Phillipps and the chaotic duo of Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, Audiard and his cast could easily lay claim to the most audacious musical of the year. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Echo Valley June 9, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen Echo Valley opens at the bottom of a lake. A wrapped-up dead body is adrift, the details as murky as the ethics of the person who put it there. How and why that body got to where it is is the central mystery that will be solved, unraveled, and resolved within the next two hours. It starts on Kate's titular Pennsylvanian horse farm (Julianne Moore). Due to her wife's tragically sudden passing earlier in the year, the farm is just downtrodden as Kate's emotional state. Doing the bare minimum to keep the place at least somewhat presentable is the only thing that gets her out of bed in the morning, which takes a little longer to accomplish with each subsequent day. A barn roof collapse doesn’t make matters any easier, forcing Kate to beg for the $9,000 to repair it from her ex-husband Richard (Kyle MacLachlan), who now has a much younger wife and daughter. The two of them share an adult daughter named Claire (Sydney Sweeney), who's been in and out of rehab several times over and is relatively estranged from her parents. While Richard has stuck to the pledge they made in family therapy that they wouldn't interact with Claire until she got better, Kate can't completely go cold turkey. A few days later, Claire shows up at the farm. She still has a shitty boyfriend, but things seem to have drastically improved. That is, of course, until it's revealed that she has gotten involved in a drug debt and has no one else to turn to except for Kate. I'll stop the plot synopsis there to preserve the cover of who that dead body is, and how they got to be there. The script comes from Brad Ingelsby, who most recently created and wrote every episode of Mare of Easttown , alongside films Out of the Furnace , The Way Back , and American Woman . The pervasive themes of strained familial relationships within a crumbled America are present here, just in a frenzied manner. Stories like this have become dime-a-dozen streaming miniseries at this point, and there are more than a few instances here where that route would have lent to a more methodically structured story. Twists and turns come at a pretty rapid rate, leaving little time to question what's going on and how we should react. Then again, it's nice to watch a story dole out multiple swaths of information in minutes rather than chunking it out over several hours. Having great actors like Moore and Sweeney at the helm helps make it all go down more easily. There are years of melancholy in each of Moore's choices, grounding the highwire choices she has to make as a parent. Despite not being present for large stretches, Sweeney makes the most of her opportunities. The frenetic energy she brought to her character in Euphoria is replicated here. A harrowing confrontation between mother and daughter becomes the standout scene, as each character unloads years of baggage on the other. The subsequent busyness of the plot loses focus on that raw emotionality, almost as if Ingelsby doesn't trust himself to reach the audience without a tried-and-true murder plot. Director Michael Pearce, the main discoverer of Jessie Buckley with Beast back in 2017, shoots this story with a gloomy palette. There are moments where it feels as if he didn't know that the final product would be watched on Apple TV+, with the overall darkness of the imagery requiring a pitch-black cinema to make out any of the details. On one hand, I blame myself for watching this on a summer afternoon, the sun being too powerful for my curtains. On the other hand, I lay some blame on an artist for not being considerate of his audience. It's that kind of dichotomy stretched across each department keeping this film from lifting itself out of the realm of being respectably average. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

The Color Purple December 19, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen The Color Purple is not a musical, it’s a MUSICAL. Unlike other movie musicals slated to release soon (looking at you Wonka and Mean Girls ), this one is unabashed in its traits and always threatening to leap off the screen and break out into song in the aisles. Director Blitz Bazawule opens the film with the camera swirling down from the sky, eventually careening its way to two sisters sitting on a tree. The girls make their way into town where they’re greeted by the townsfolk singing about how the Lord works in mysterious ways. It’s an uplifting, high-energy tune filled with athletic choreography and a restless spirit, a tone-setter for the rest of the set pieces. These joyous moments do not replace the darkness that is within this story. Even at a young age Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi) and Netti (Halle Bailey) face incredible hardships. Celie is pregnant with her second child from her father Alfonso, the first having been “given to God” immediately after it was born. The second shares the same fate, with the cruelty of the father only growing exponentially. A wolf in sheep’s clothing comes in the form of “Mister” (Colman Domingo), who reluctantly buys Celie to be his bride after being told that Nettie is not for sale. Years go by in the blink of an eye as a grown-up Celie (Fantasia Barrino, reprising her role from Broadway) must live a secluded life raising Mister’s unruly kids from his previous marriage and is forbidden from contacting Nettie. Her first smile does not come until almost an hour into the film. By then it’s a foreign concept, something she forgot was able to exist in her life. Barrino is quite remarkable as Celie, never feeling like an imitation of Whoopi Goldberg from the 1985 Steven Spielberg film. She has the incredibly difficult job of being beaten down to utter silence while also displaying perseverance through loud musical numbers. Along with her in many of those set pieces is Danielle Brooks (also returning from Broadway) as Sofia and Taraji P. Henson as Shug Avery. Each of these women delivers a movie star performance on the grandest stage, with Brooks being the notable standout with her rendition of “Hell No!” But while the cast is all game for the balancing act of light and dark, Bazawule and screenwriter Marcus Gardley are not. A distinct tonal imbalance hangs over everything, making it all feel like it's stuck in neutral. For a movie that belts its emotions for 140 minutes on a giant screen, you ought to feel something, anything . I don’t want to cop out and say this movie just doesn’t have “it,” but there’s no better way to describe it. The words “occasionally monotonous” are not what I predicted to use to describe this beforehand. Neither would I think Gardley would sand down Alice Walker’s novel even further than the 1985 film did, with Celie and Shug’s original passion for each other being reduced to little more than a slightly sexualized friendship. Bazawule does display an admirable amount of command over the entire production. His experience with Beyoncé's Black Is King is apparent, with the music and visuals popping off the screen. It’s an interesting middle ground between a film adaptation and a recorded stage production, sometimes feeling like several visual albums awkwardly stitched together to make a cohesive narrative. Dan Laustsen’s cinematography features heavenly lights beaming through every window and Paul D. Austerberry’s sets are beautiful, yet artificial. The Color Purple has a giant heart that it loudly shares with the world, yet there always seems to be a gap in the translation. A puzzling transition here, a missed emotional beat there; it all adds up to something being a little less than the sum of its parts. Luckily, this epic journey ends on a superior number, both lyrically and visually. I walked away with a half-smile, which definitely counts for something. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

You Hurt My Feelings May 24, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen After brief stops in television (directing episodes for Mrs. Fletcher , Extrapolations , and Lucky Hank ) and the Middle Ages (penning the “The Truth according to Marguerite de Carrouges” portion of The Last Duel ), writer/director Nicole Holofcener returns to her New York roots for You Hurt My Feelings , now bowing in theaters after premiering at this past January’s Sundance Film Festival. The older we get, the more we come to realize that the childhood saying “honesty is the best policy” is not the unbreakable rule that we were led to believe. Sure, you should strive to be honest with people, especially those you care about the most. But the real world never invites simplicity, so we have to bend the truth a little to get by without as little damage as possible. What’s the worst that could happen anyway? The obviously clichéd answer to that question is that a lot of catastrophic events would happen, either physically or emotionally (see Dancer in the Dark or The Hunt ). But in all her deftness, Holofcener doesn’t reach for fire and brimstone. Instead, she puts a magnifying glass on a couple that has built a strong foundation, mining relevant truths out of their small-scale situation. The specimens are Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Don (Tobias Menzies). Beth is a semi-successful writer who is putting the finishing touches on her new mystery fiction novel, which acts as a slight departure from her usual non-fiction work. Don is a therapist that seems to have lost his edge. He looks and sounds so tired that even the endlessly squabbling couple that he regularly sees (real-life partners David Cross and Amber Tamblyn) takes pity on him. Beth has been using Don as a writing resource these past few months, and he’s had nothing but praise for her work. That is until the nuclear bomb goes off (metaphorically of course). Beth and her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) stumble upon Don and Sarah’s husband Mark at a specialized sock store (this is New York after all). They decide to sneak up on the men, but they end up getting more than they bargained for as they overhear Don telling Mark that he doesn’t think Beth’s new novel is good. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her, but he also feels the strain of letting her on with constant false encouragement. Don’s admittance puts in doubt everything else he’s said over the years, as well as Beth’s belief in her skills as an author. But it’s not like Beth is a total victim here, as the shoe is often on the other foot. She’s always saying how her son’s upcoming work will be great, and that cosmetic surgery is a good idea for Don. Holofcener could have taken the Green Book approach to her story, filling it with well-worn and clearly structured beats and ideas. But she’s smarter than that, as both she and we know this isn’t some problem that can ever really be solved. Most of us have to come to realize that a lot of our lives are comprised of filler words and feelings, with only a few times where we share our honest selves with others. And if that truth hurts, then sometimes it’s best to just keep the peace. Louis-Dreyfus and Menzies have great chemistry together. Their calmness with each other sells their long-standing marriage, as well as pushing past some of the overly simplified final few scenes. While clearly not alike in terms of style, You Hurt My Feelings reminded me of Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster from 2016. Both movies take a stab at the long-standing battle between love and honesty without getting bogged down by solutions we’ve been fed all our lives. They also provide excellent counter-programming during the summer, acting as a refreshing cool down from the noise and explosions in the other rooms. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Freud's Last Session December 12, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen September 03, 1939 was an unlikely day that featured an unlikely meeting between two unlikely intellectual leaders. Dr. Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins), famed psychoanalyst living out his sickly final days in London, is greeted at his door by C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode), Christian literary scholar and eventual author of the The Chronicles of Narnia . The topic at hand is the existence of God, with the Austrian a staunch denier and the Brit a firm believer. The weight of that subject is paralleled with the events of the day: Nazi Germany has just invaded Poland and the British government is declaring war. It only took twenty years for “the war to end all wars” to be usurped by an even bigger global conflict. Adapted from Mark St. Germain’s 2009 off-Broadway play of the same name, Freud’s Last Session opens up the action from within the confines of Freud’s study. Director Matthew Brown ( The Man Who Knew Infinity ) , who also co-wrote the screenplay with St. Germain, has these two titans interacting with average Londoners as the panic of Nazi bombings starts to set in. It’s in a cramped bomb shelter that inklings of Lewis’ PTSD from World War I start to bubble up to the surface. But rather than allow Goode and Hopkins to tell their own character’s backstories, Brown rashly splices in flashbacks to their youths. None of them match the energy of the central duo, nor do they communicate anything interesting, both narratively and visually. Take for instance the perfunctory scene where Freud as a child is scolded by his father to “never pray for him,” or a scene where Lewis as a child sees God through the beauty of nature. Never would I think historical figures such as these would have the same broad origin stories as superheroes. There’s also the inclusion of a subplot involving Frued’s daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries), who would go on to become a highly respected child analyst in her own right. Sigmund’s inoperable jaw cancer causes him unbearable pain and bleeding from the mouth, which often causes him to lash out in anger. Despite the pleas of her partner Dorothy (Jodi Balfour), whom Sigmund disapproves of on the grounds of lesbianism being a symptom of a bad relationship with one’s father, Anna stays devout to her father. Fries is steadfast in her role, but she’s left on an island by Brown, only interacting with Hopkins and Goode briefly in the first act before being shunted off on a B-story. Hopkins and Goode make good (sorry, I couldn’t help myself with that pun) on the material, which is surprisingly more muted than one would expect a debate about God would be. Both of them are polite in their stances, obviously reverential of the work the other has done. The early stages take the form of a drawn out fencing match where one person takes a slight jab, analyzes the opponent’s reaction, and then retreats back. Hopkins (who played Lewis in the 1993 film Shadowlands ) is experiencing one of the highpoints of his career with roles in The Two Popes , HBO’s Westworld , The Father , and Armageddon Time . He’s exceptionally playful with his dialogue here, always prepped with an answer even when he knows he’s wrong. Goode never wavers in the face of confrontation, keeping his guard up through his charming wit and intelligence. The final, and fatal, blow to the movie comes in the postscript, which reveals that this meeting may never have happened. Its inclusion isn’t meant to be a plot twist as the play is very forward with this information and labels itself as a possible work of fiction. But in a film such as this that has lacked so much energy and memorability, it evokes the same feeling as a college professor that has given a tiring lecture and ends it by saying none of it will be on the test. It’s hard to care when you’re told you don’t have to. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Marlowe February 17, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen Marlowe is as cheap and dull as its title would suggest. Its titular character, created by Raymond Chandler in the 1920s at the height of the hardboiled detective literary craze, established many of the tropes found within the noir genre, such as seductively dangerous blondes, double entendre dialogue, and the thin line between what's is and isn't within the bounds of the law. The likes of Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum have stepped into the role, further planting this character in a different time and place than what modern audiences are used to. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that as a major sign as to what demographic this movie is aimed for, a 70-year-old Liam Neeson (in his 100th screen credit, many of which have come in this tiredly ongoing post- Taken phase of his career) stars as Marlowe. Never mind that the character is canonically in his mid-30s in almost all of his stories, including The Black-Eyed Blonde , which serves as the source material here. Neeson's Marlowe is too old for this shit, a line that is muttered almost verbatim a few times in a sort of winking fashion to the audience. It's not as unintentionally hilarious as when Marlowe's young employer proposes a little fooling around, which he declines by staring almost directly into the camera and saying, "I can't do that because you're half my age and we have a professional relationship." It's tiringly groan-worthy moments like these that make Neil Jordan's adaptation feel lost in time, as it has one foot planted in the creaky old charms of the past and the other in the present sensibilities. It might be why Jordan, speaking at the film's quiet world premiere at the San Sebastián Film Festival back in October, says his film is more of a science-fiction flick than anything else. But this is no Blade Runner , with Marlowe on a case of a missing man everyone claims to be dead, except for his lover, the beautiful Claire Cavendish, who reports having seen him walking about just a few days ago. As he digs for clues, Marlowe comes across a cavalcade of nefarious characters that want nothing less than to have someone poking around their business. Jessica Lange, clearly having the most fun in her thankless role, plays Claire's mother, a once-famous actress that may also be connected to this case. Danny Huston is the manager of the elite club where the missing person was supposedly killed, a detail that he is reluctant to share. And Alan Cumming is reaching far too down in the well of camp in his role of a sleazy nightclub owner, complete with a phony southern accent and even phonier tirades. Xavi Giménez's claustrophobic framing does as much as possible to hide the fact that Spain doubles for 1930s Los Angeles. Jordan employs some long takes to add a bit of professionalism, but the cheap sets and costumes make everything feel closer to an SNL parody than a true dive into the genre. There's also a clear lack of pacing by Jordan and co-writer William Monahan ( The Departed ), with events progressing in such a lethargic manner that any excitement has to be fully supplied by the audience, who don’t have a good chance at fighting their increasingly heavy eyelids. It's a great shame, but it seems that Neil Jordan is the newest member of the group of once-respected directors that just don't have "it" anymore. Fellow Irishman Jim Sheridan, Wim Wenders, and somewhat Werner Herzog have been steady patrons of the club, where the promise is still semi-there on paper, but the continually shoddy execution results in crushing disappointment. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

MSPIFF43 - Dispatch #1 April 22, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen The 43rd Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) is currently going on from April 11-25, with over 200 films screened. Here are some quick-bite reviews of a few of the films I have watched, with more to come soon. Green Border Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border is nothing short of ambitious, as it sees the revered Polish writer/director putting her native government through the wringer in the hopes of shining a light on the atrocities taking place on its eastern border. Split into several chapters, the majority of the film’s focus is on a Syrian migrant family as they start their journey to Sweden to start a new life with one of their distant relatives. Like thousands of other families, they are lured into Belarus under the government’s false advertisement of safe travel into the European Union. They are then harassed and extorted by border guards until being forcibly flung into Poland as part of a geopolitical war to destabilize the EU. Any hope of sympathy from the Polish forces quickly vanishes; replaced with more xenophobia, abuse, and forcible deportation back to Belarus. Holland captures the brutality of this inhumane game of tug-and-war in stark black-and-white, the endless forest along the border being perpetually shrouded in darkness. There’s always a “one step forward, two steps back” attitude towards the plight of the family, with Holland never crossing over the line of torturing her characters for the sake of a message. The themes of inhumanity extend further into the other chapters, which eventually becomes a bit of a Pulp Fiction -esque story of intersecting storylines. One of those storylines features a young group of Polish activists who circumvent the law to aid the battered migrants, although their work never seems to be more than putting a metaphorical band-aid on a gunshot wound. Although the feeling of hope rarely shines through in Holland’s material, a bit of it can be felt based on the anger it incites. It’s no surprise that for all the prizes (including the Special Jury Prize in Venice) and acclaim the film has received from Western audiences, it was heavily condemned and censored by the Polish government. Even if the film has been prevented from having its full impact at home, it at least still carries quite the universal punch abroad. (3.5/5) Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell You need to have serious guts (and a really trustworthy producer) to have your debut feature film run over three hours and feature little to none of the usual trappings audiences expect to keep them occupied in their seats. Vietnamese writer/director Phan Thien An has created a film of extraordinary uniqueness, aligning closely with the extreme slow cinema works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Béla Tarr. The plot is simple: A man’s sister-in-law dies in a motorcycle accident and he must escort his young nephew across the country to his estranged father. But the literal plot is something that An is least concerned with, instead focusing much of his attention on the spiritual ambiguity underlining every moment of our lives. Every scene is comprised of a single take, all of them extraordinary feats of production on account of their length and complexity. Time is often at a standstill, with no one ever seeming to be in a rush or wanting to have a direct conversation. Your attitude towards this style will be determined quickly, most likely in your ability to stay awake. But even those who drift off from time to time will have their dreams permeated by images from the film. It’s part of the experience, a little piece of the film that sticks with you, something the large majority of other works fail to do. Pham received the Camera d’Or prize for best first feature film at the Cannes Film Festival last year, where he premiered as part of the Directors’ Fortnight section. I have no doubt that it will be the first of many prizes he will receive at that festival, as their relationship seems to be a match made in heaven. (4/5) Shoshana Michael Winterbottom’s story of British Mandatory Palestine (specifically Tel Aviv) circa the 1930/1940s never knows exactly what side it wants to be on. It’s a film that wants to examine the British/Arab/Jewish conflict from all angles but always feels too scared to probe a little deeper for fear of angering viewers, which becomes most noticeable when the postscript reveals sentiments that the events of the film hardly supported. Winterbottom has usually been a filmmaker who plays fast and loose (see 24 Hour Party People and Wonderland ). Here he trades that all away for a polished procedural style, complete with bland archival footage and a tacky score by the usually reliable David Holmes. At the heart of this conflict are the star-crossed lovers of British police officer Tom Wilkin (Douglas Booth) and Zionist Shoshana (Irina Starshenbaum). They try to stay neutral with their feelings, but the increasing violence and tension ultimately force them to choose a side. Both of the leads are quite capable in their roles, it’s just that they end up being swallowed by the uninteresting forces around them. (2.5/5) Janet Planet Playwright Annie Baker’s feature directorial debut is a work of quiet observation, both literally and metaphorically. The nature of rural Massachusetts is the film’s soundtrack: crickets, swaying trees, and the distant verve of a car passing by on the dirt road. Inside one of the secluded houses live Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and her 11-year-old daughter Lacy (Zoe Ziegler). Throughout the summer of 1991, three people enter their lives: the reserved Wayne, former friend Regina, and pseudo-intellectual Avi. Baker captures the textures of an endless summer with ease, using a certain kind of slow cinema that’s mostly been found in cinema outside the Western hemisphere. While the argument behind the need for the theatrical experience has mostly been reserved for huge tentpoles filled with bombastic sound and visuals, Janet Planet makes just as much of a case to be seen in a dark room while barely registering over a whisper. The quiet rhythms and cinematography will surely not play as well at home, or in any multiplex with sound bleed. It’s one of those films I wished I could see alone in a screening room, just letting the vibes wash over me. Zeigler is tremendous in her first-ever performance. She and Nicholson share great chemistry, always at the heart of the film even as sometimes spins its wheels. Baker’s film could be the little indie sensation of the summer if A24 gives it the proper push it deserves. (3.5/5) More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Murder Mystery 2 March 31, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen When I’m watching a new movie, I always bring a small notebook and jot down observations and things I want to mention in my final written review. Usually, I fill up about a page or two with bullet points, most of them almost illegible due to me having to write them in the dark while still trying to look at the screen so as not to miss anything potentially important. But for Murder Mystery 2 , now available on Netflix, I wrote only two lines: “Happy Madison logo usually signals a movie being cheap and artificial” and “bad jet ski greenscreen.” Both of those observations were made within the first five minutes, and neither of them required much critical thinking on my part. For the next eighty minutes, I just sat in my chair and watched the movie with as much attentiveness as a student during the last class before Spring Break. There were definitely things that happened in the movie: people got killed, Sandler and Aniston did their usual married couple banter, and the mystery was resolved through some sort of twist ending. But for the life of me, I can’t recount anything else more specific than that. I was neither fully entertained nor bored, neither liking nor hating what I was watching and probably was somewhere between asleep and awake during long stretches. That’s the Netflix national anthem at this point, with 90% of their content just being the air that fills the room, with the other 10% that is worth your time ( The Irishman , The Meyerowitz Stories, Private Life ) being suffocated into relative obscurity. This is also why, in an act of full transparency, the information provided in the screener email is doing most of the heavy lifting in this next paragraph that summarizes the setup for the main plot. Nick and Audrey Spitz are now full-time detectives after solving the case in the first movie (I’ll give $100 to anyone that can remember how that movie ended). They’re about as competent as you would think, which is why they gleefully accept an invitation from The Maharajah (also from the first movie) to his wedding on a luxurious island. But the circumstances that seem too good to be true turn out to be exactly that, as the couple finds themselves framed for murder. They must now clear their name once again and unveil the real killer (or killers). I feel like I’m not properly doing my job as a critic by keeping this review so brief, but there’s really not much else to say. If you’re the type of person who wants to watch something like this, then you’re not likely to be stopped by a bad review. And if you’re someone who isn’t immediately clamoring to see this, then there won’t be any good reviews to convince you otherwise. It doesn’t matter which bucket you fall into, as no one is going to be thinking about (let alone talking about) this movie by Monday. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

The Legend of Ochi April 21, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen The Legend of Ochi screened at the 2025 Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. A24 will release it in theaters on April 25th. Before the (digital) film reel started spooling to unveil the story of The Legend of Ochi , first-time feature writer/director Isaiah Saxon gave a brief introduction via a video message set in what could only be assumed as one of the Romanian filming locations. Speaking in a comedically hushed tone, the filmmaker stated that he made this film for children and that their intelligence rarely gets the respect it deserves from Hollywood. Maybe it was just because I had seen A Minecraft Movie a week prior and had my brain fried from the TikTok toilet humor, or that the fact that the largely adult-oriented distributor A24 is finally breaking into the realm of children’s entertainment, but Saxon’s words really resonated with me. Here is a film for children that is explicitly meant to be engaged with on both an emotional and intellectual level, and not just be a vessel for memes and merchandise. Of course, I say all this and can immediately see that A24 has littered their online shop with Ochi swag and ironically posted about it everywhere on social media. I guess we can’t always get everything that we want… Unfortunately, it’s way more interesting to think and discuss what The Legend of Ochi represents than it is to talk about what happens between minute one and minute ninety-six. For as much as Saxon finds himself clearly inspired by the darker children’s films of yesteryear like The NeverEnding Story , Labyrinth , and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial , there’s never a moment where the weight of comparison doesn’t fully crush this lush tale. Take for instance the premise of the young girl Yuri (Helena Zengel) growing up in a remote village in the Carpathian mountains. She has a strained relationship with her father Maxim (Willem Dafoe) and has been told her whole life that the local wildlife that goes by the name of the Ochi only live to feed on the flesh of the living. All day and night Maxim marches up the mountains rabble-rousing and training the local youth to hunt down these creatures. Being that she has a general distrust towards her dad, Yuri doesn’t buy into the jingoistic fervor. And it also only takes one non-gun-related meeting with these creatures to convince her that they aren’t as dangerous as she’s been told. One of the babies got caught in a trap and has been separated from its family, a feeling that Yuri figuratively feels every day. That connection spurs them on a quest of reunification and self-discovery. In this momentary void between the television hiatus of The Mandalorian and its 2026 film continuation, the titular baby Ochi has kicked Baby Yoda / Grogu off its perch at the top of the animatronic cuteness pedestal. Fully operated by hand, this monkey-ish puppet features solid black eyes, sharp teeth and claws, and a lovely bright orange coat of fur. When seen from a distance in the dead of night, one could almost forgive Maxim for duping himself into thinking these creatures are evil. But just as it does for any living creature, the sun illuminates our best features. There’s a loveliness to seeing the Ochi move with a little bit of jerkiness, as sanding off the artificiality with visual effects would have made it seem even more fake. Saxon surrounds his humans and puppets in a world of matte paintings and sets possibly borrowed from Midsommar . He’s already been forced to stave off unfounded claims of AI usage, and I fear he’ll be forced to continue that defense as more eyes are placed upon the film. I’ll admit, the imagery within the film does have a striking resemblance to those demo reels that float around social media preaching that technology has unlocked a new age of filmmaking. Along with the fact that it was filmed in 2021 before any of this AI nonsense was a serious threat, Saxon’s argument stems from the love and sweat put into his craft, which is always visible on the screen. But that love Saxon has for his work is never felt by us, with everything feeling more like an aesthetic than a fully realized world. The emotional coldness doesn’t help to bridge that gap either, David Longstreth’s score doing all of the communicating. Because of this, I fear that Saxon’s intended adolescent audience is unlikely to discover and commit to the task that this film lays before them. It’s foolish and unfair for one film to be beset with the expectation that it’ll reinvigorate a largely stagnant subgenre, although the words from the creatives and marketers certainly have set themselves up for that. Saxon has certainly earned another go-around, so perhaps that will contain the spark that sets all of this ablaze. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen