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The Old Man & the Gun November 1, 2018 By: Button Hunter Friesen Robert Redford has built a successful decade-spanning career as a charming actor who can play any type of character with a heart of gold. It seems fitting that in his final performance in the new film The Old Man & the Gun , Redford plays Forrest Tucker, a man who was born to rob banks. Except he’s not your typical bank robber, he’s the most polite and happy criminal around. Now at the age of seventy-four, Tucker becomes nationally famous and must continue his passion while eluding the pursuit of detective John Hunt, who becomes enraptured by the legend of one man living his dream despite the consequences it may bring. Director David Lowery isn’t a household name, but the thirty-eight-year-old has made some quality films such as his 2017 indie hit A Ghost Story and Pete’s Dragon in 2016 (also starring Redford). Lowery goes for the sweet and simple approach when it comes to directing this film. He keeps the feel of the film feeling like a cool, light breeze and keeps the main plot centered on detail at a time. He also nails the look and feel of the film to fit the 80s setting. The film doesn’t just feel like it's set in the 80s, it's like it was made during that time period. He uses very grainy film stock to shoot the movie, giving it a very nostalgic feel. There is also an abundance of old classic songs of that era that perfectly fit the tone. The simple approach Lowery uses also has its minor drawbacks. The overall story of the film felt a little shallow and could have used more buildup and stakes in order to build suspense. There could have also been more interaction between characters in order to develop relationships as some don’t feel as genuine as they should have. Lowery also adapts the screenplay from a real-life biographical article written about Forrest Tucker in The New Yorker by David Grann. Lowery matches his writing with his approach to directing. The script is filled with tender moments that work wonders with the actors involved. The diner scenes between Redford and Sissy Spacek are the best as they simply just enjoy each other and talk about life in old age. With only a little bit of effort and some magic, the two actors and the dialogue they share are able to keep us engaged throughout. Below the surface, however, is where Lowery’s script suffers from the same problems as his directing. The overall story told feels too simple to satisfyingly fit a feature-length film. More background and supporting details could have been used to tell the story with more depth. Many important events happen with little to no explanation, which proves very distracting by the end as they cut down on the overall believability. Redford essentially plays a culmination of every part he’s previously played in his fifty-plus-year career. He works magic with his confidence and overall physical presence in each scene. It’s a testament to his skill that you never actually see the gun he uses during the robberies, rather his charisma and charm are the only weapons he needs. Even with all his misdoings, you end up rooting for him by the end of the film. Partnering up with Redford in a supporting role is Sissy Spacek as Jewel, a widow whom Forrest takes an interest in. Jewel finds herself romantically caught up with Tucker and just can’t seem to shake him off despite knowing what he does for a living. Spacek and Redford have excellent chemistry together and keep us thoroughly entertained in even the most mundane of scenes. Every criminal needs a cop to be his nemesis, and filling that role is Casey Affleck as John Hunt. Affleck provides a counterbalance to Redford’s glee as his character glumly deals with the thought of getting older in a static career. Affleck middlingly works throughout but never matches Redford’s ability to make us care about his character. The Old Man & the Gun is similar to that of a Sunday drive out into the country. It doesn’t really know where it’s going from time to time, but it doesn’t really matter because the ride itself is more enjoyable than the final destination. In his farewell performance, Redford shows us that he can win over any crowd and rides out into the sunset and leaves us with his legend and unforgettable skill as an actor. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery September 10, 2022 By: Button Hunter Friesen Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery had its World Premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. Netflix will release it in theaters on November 23, followed by its streaming premiere on December 23. The Last Jedi haters are rolling in their graves, as Rian Johnson has pulled off another incomprehensible feat with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery . A sequel to 2019’s Knives Out , a great igniter to the revitalization of the whodunit genre, was always going to be a tricky obstacle to overcome. In stepped Netflix, who gave Johnson the necessary blank check to indulge in his wildest fantasies. And because of that, he has crafted a whodunnit that is grander, funnier, stranger, and perhaps better than the original. The Thrombey family has been dealt with and a whole new cast of characters has been assembled within Glass Onion . None of these people are bound by blood. Instead, they are all old friends that go by the “Disruptors.” The leader of the group is Miles Bron (Edward Norton), whose billion-dollar fortune allows him to live on a private Greek island. Lionel (Leslie Odom Jr.) is the lead scientist at Bron’s company. There’s also Senate candidate and family woman Claire (Kathryn Hahn), airheaded fashion model Birdie (Kate Hudson), gun-toting Duke (Dave Bautista), and his much younger girlfriend Whiskey (Madelyn Cline). The black sheep of the group is Andi (Janelle Monáe), who was excommunicated after she lost a lengthy lawsuit against all of them for stealing her business idea. Every year, the group (minus Andi) receives a puzzle box invitation for a weekend getaway on Miles’ island. This year, however, invitations have also been sent to Andi and to Mr. Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), whose mind is turning into mush as the COVID-19 pandemic has him shut inside without a case to crack. As you expect, the fireworks begin to go off once all these characters are assembled in one location. Long-held secrets are spilled, violence is enacted, and everyone is a suspect. As is the location and budget, the mystery here is much larger than in the original film. Double crosses become triple crosses, which then become quadruple crosses. As another testament to his dominance over his genre contemporaries, Johnson’s ability to control the material as both a writer and director are unparalleled. Through slick editing and a tactical sense of pacing, he’s created another murder mystery where the placing of the puzzle pieces is just as satisfying as seeing the whole picture. Monáe takes over the Ana de Armas role from the first Knives Out . She’s Blanc’s intelligence, laying out the details of each of these theory characters, and what motives they may have to harm another. Talking specifically about how she effortlessly overcomes the challenge of her role would require going into spoilers, so you’re just going to have to take me at my word that she’s incredible. The rest of the cast doesn’t have as much pressure on their shoulders, but they still shine when they need to. Norton is his signature smarmy self, complete with a flashback scene of him donning Frank Mackey’s outfit from Magnolia (a decision I can only imagine was explicitly targeted toward me). Hudson gets many of the laugh-out-loud moments, and Hahn chews the scenery as usual. Of course, Craig leads the pack, whose enthusiasm for the role is immediately infectious. Watching an actor known for playing the most serious iteration of James Bond don a pinstripe swimsuit and spew information with a comically overdone Southern accent is such a sight to behold. Luckily, Craig’s relationship with this character is much more positive than Bond, so the future is bright for further travels around the world. Glass Onion skillfully embraces and overcomes the usual dangers of doing the same thing as the original, just on a bigger scale. As the first of two planned sequels by Netflix, I can only imagine what Johnson is going to serve up next. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Judas and the Black Messiah February 8, 2021 By: Button Hunter Friesen Fred Hampton was only 21 years old when he was murdered by Cook County police in an illegal home raid in 1969. He was drugged with a sedative to prevent him from fighting back and shot twice in the head while sleeping in front of his nine-month-pregnant partner, Deborah Johnson. Even though he died young, Hampton had already accomplished more than many of us could ever dream. As chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, Hampton founded the multicultural organization, the Rainbow Coalition, and allied his party with other Chicago groups in an effort to end street violence and instigate social change. He was a born leader and speaker, moving hundreds with his words at the protests and educational courses he led. Now, after fifty years since his untimely death, Hampton is getting the biopic treatment in Judas and the Black Messiah . The British-born Daniel Kaluuya portrays Hampton in a performance that can only be described as electrifying. Kaluuya has already made himself known with his lead performance in Jordan Peele’s Get Out and a supporting turn as a sadistic hitman in Steve McQueen’s Widows . Here, Kaluuya elevates his game even further as he channels both the powerfulness Hampton carried in public and the tenderness he had in private. There isn’t one second you’re not glued to him while he’s on screen. An Oscar nomination is bound to happen and a win would be deserved. Playing Judas to Hampton’s Black Messiah is LaKeith Stanfield (also in Get Out as the brainwashed Andre King). Stanfield plays William O’Neal, who was a petty Chicago criminal who became an informant for the FBI as he rose the ranks within the Black Panthers. O’Neal was the one who sedated Hampton in exchange for $200,000, an act he never considered a betrayal. Stanfield rises close to the level of Kaluuya as he gives a twitchy and layered performance that is nothing short of a career-best. Directed and co-written by Shaka King, Judas and the Black Messiah meets both criteria of a biopic, which is to be both entertaining and informative beyond the top-layer Wikipedia facts. We learn about Hampton through O’Neal, as we watch him ascend from the bottom to the top within the party, interacting with Hampton at various points in history. King doesn’t commit the sin of falling head over heels with his subject. Like the Messiah in the holy book, Hampton had his demons that he had to constantly wrestle with. King takes a similar approach that Steven Spielberg took with Lincoln , where we get a compelling real-life hero and learn about what they had to overcome both externally and internally. This treatment also extends to O’Neal, whom King doesn’t wholly vilify or pardon. We’re shown the path O’Neal initially led himself down and how he saw an opportunity to work for the FBI. While it’s an easy decision to make, King lets the audience decide how to perceive O’Neal’s actions. With Steve McQueen’s go-to cinematographer Sean Bobbitt in his crew, King makes this one of the most surprisingly gorgeous movies of the year. Incorporating a mixture of long takes and over-saturation, King and Bobbitt perfectly illustrate the vibrant urban setting. And the jazz-infused score carries sharp tension with its low trombones. At just over two hours long, King carries his film with great energy from beginning to end. Expertly filmed action is interspersed throughout as well as sharply edited speeches that contain more action than the actual shootouts. Even when King falters for a few brief moments at the beginning of the third act, he picks himself back up and delivers an utterly spine-chilling and infuriating ending that properly uses the clichéd element of postscript. Judas and the Black Messiah is an all-powerful work by director Shaka King and the two leads Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield. Both timely and historical, this biopic will surely land near the top of my best-of-year list and is not one to miss. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark 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 One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Materialists June 11, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen Materialists opens during the Paleolithic period of the Stone Age. A caveman brings tools and flowers to the woman he loves, hoping it’ll be enough to earn her affection. We may think that love gets purer the further you go back in time, but there has always been a business angle. Dowries, negotiations, and aligning kingdoms are the old ways of forming a union. Now there’s an algorithm for that, loaded with statistics like height, income, and political views. And for those that are more serious (or desperate) and have the funds to do so, there are services like Adore, which will assign a personal matchmaker to search for you. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is one of those matchmakers, and a damn good one to be specific. She’s responsible for nine marriages, salvaging the most recent one by spinning the bride’s cold feet confession that part of the reason she’s marrying the groom is because it makes her sister jealous into a lesson about finding value and feeling valued. The key to her success is to treat dating as a business venture, using the same calculating mindset you’d find on Wall Street. “Market forces,” “competitive advantage,” and “strategic skills” are her phrases of choice. The results speak for themselves, and there’s no denying that this is the path that the dating landscape is rapidly progressing along. It’s natural and odd that after writer/director Celine Song tenderly explored the concept of destiny and love in Past Lives , her follow-up takes a cold, hard look at the facts. There isn’t going to be a Prince Charming waiting in the wings, or a Cinderella that perfectly fits the glass slipper. Dating is a trial-and-error endeavor, with adaptability and compromise being the most important qualities. Song makes sure there are a lot of laughs to be had with all this nonsense. Lucy’s customers are demanding, neurotic, and impatient. A potential match must be this tall, be in this age range, like these certain songs/movies, and make at least this amount of money. Living in the Midwest all my life certainly didn’t prepare me for the astronomical figures that people expect to receive on the East Coast. But all of this is funny because they’re saying the quiet parts out loud, and deep down, we all know we do it too. The eternal bachelorette who has a knack for helping others find love is a trope as old as the romantic dramedy itself. Song may know how to reexamine it in the ways I just described, but she also knows how to harness its extremely potent traditional qualities. She also knows how to best steer the performers on all sides of this love triangle. Yes, Lucy gets more than she bargains for when she simultaneously finds affection in two separate places. Johnson is perpetually on a pendulum swinging back and forth. And after the swing (and miss) that was Madame Web , she was due for a major slide to the lighter side. We meet Pedro Pascal’s Harry as he charms his way through his brother’s wedding reception. He’s also obscenely rich, tall, and handsome. He’s what Lucy refers to as a “unicorn” in her line work - the man of every woman’s dreams. John (Chris Evans) has some of those qualities, but definitely not the financial ones. He’s your usual struggling actor with a part-time catering job who lives in a shitty apartment. But he’s real, and there’s a reason Lucy and he were together for five years before they broke up. We’ve seen characters with these archetypes before, but here they’re steeped in enough authenticity so you can’t just immediately pick a side. Materialists can also be too honest for its own good. There’s a darker element that gets introduced later in the story that drives part of Lucy’s decision-making about her personal life. Song handles it to the best of her ability, but its inclusion is habitually distracting from the other excellent qualities. Honesty is still the best policy, and Song continues to show that she’s a master of telling us how it is in the ways we want to hear it. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Showing Up July 17, 2022 By: Button Hunter Friesen Showing Up had its World Premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. A24 will release it in theaters on April 07, 2023. As Woody Allen once said: “80% of success is just showing up.” But for the character of Lizzy (Michelle Williams) in Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up , which premiered in competition recently at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, showing up doesn’t seem to be leading to much. She has a sort-of career at a small arts college in Portland, complete with her mother as her boss and Andre 3000 as the flirty pottery expert. Her cat owns her personal life with around-the-clock needs for attention, and her neighbor/landlord, Jo (Hong Chau), still hasn’t fixed her water heater after two weeks of constant requests. Is Woody Allen wrong, or is this all her life is cracked up to be? Either way, it’s not a comforting thought. Reichardt’s work has been infrequent, yet always well-reviewed. 2008’s Wendy and Lucy marked the first of many collaborations between the director and Williams, followed by Meek’s Cutoff and Certain Women . But even with those great reviews, Reichardt’s films have never lit the box office on fire. First Cow , seemingly an epic in comparison to her other work, was prevented from having a chance due to its unlucky release during the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. Maybe as an act of self-commentary, all of that can also be said of Lizzy in Showing Up . Sculpting intimate creations, Lizzy’s work has always been appreciated but never put on the same pedestal as her contemporaries, such as Jo and her unwieldy creations. Lizzy is struggling to meet the deadline for her new exhibit, and questions whether she should even attempt to show up. In its low-key nature, Showing Up can be a comforting ode to small artists persevering to put their creations into the world. Just as Reichardt often sleeps on people’s couches and teaches at Bard College (all of which was revealed by Michelle Williams), Lizzy has to put up with no hot water and a never-ending litany of problems to finish her work. And taking the connecting through-line of the bond between humans and animals from First Cow , Reichardt finds a way for Lizzy’s life to be upended, and ultimately transformed, by a pigeon that injures itself by crashing into her window. Both sides of the debate will correctly say that not much happens in Showing Up . But for those that are familiar with Reichardt's work, is that much of a surprise? Plot has never been on the priority list. Ditto to pacing, as Reichardt, serving as her editor as always, lets the credits roll in extended fashion across the first several minutes, and makes time for Williams to meticulously craft the arms to one of her sculptures in an unbroken take. With that slow pacing, Reichardt has often been able to mine deep and expose the hidden feelings that faster-paced works can’t. Not many could carefully tell the uplifting and heartbreaking friendship within First Cow . Showing Up tries to find a similar vein but doesn’t deliver the same refined fulfilling message about the way unforeseen people and circumstances shape our lives. Unlike Lizzy’s clay creations that start as wet messes and end up as fully formed creations, Reichardt’s work stops just short of the kiln and ends up feeling more like a shallow puddle of good ideas. Showing Up won’t win Reichardt any new fans, but it could potentially offer another helping of what her supporters love so much. For them, Reichart has supplied the goods, now it’s time for them to show up. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Reptile September 9, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen Reptile had its World Premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Netflix will release it in theaters on September 29, followed by its streaming premiere on October 06. Is a red herring a red herring if you know it’s a red herring? That tongue twister of a sentence rattled throughout my head throughout most of the bloated 134-minute runtime of Reptile . In this police procedural, there are several suspects and clues, most of them presented so obviously to be of fake importance that you know immediately that you don’t need to expend the mental energy to keep track of them all. Even with these self-inflicted wounds writer/director Grant Singer, making his feature debut, can still mount an entertaining movie that is far stranger (mostly in a good way) the more you look under the hood. The body of Summer Elswick has been found in the home of her partner Will Grady (Justin Timberlake). She was stabbed 33⅓ times, with the final strike being so powerful that it got the knife stuck in her pelvis. She has a shady ex-husband by the name of Sam Gifford (Karl Glusman) and an even shadier enemy in commerce in Eli Phillips (Michael Pitt). And then there’s still Will and his obsessive mother (Frances Fisher). There are probably other people who could have done this too, but Detective Tom Nichols (Benicio Del Toro) is already starting to get lost in the mud of motives and opportunities. For all its talk of murder and treachery, what stands out the most about Reptile is the enlarged funny bone it has. There are little jabs here and there, most of them meant to raise your eyebrow as they create a hard break from the grisliness. Tom has a fascination with Will’s touchless sink faucet, even going so far as to take a picture of it during the recreation of the moment Will found Summer’s body. I can’t say it always works, but it does make for some interesting moments that make the film more watchable, especially considering the conventionalism of the events. Most of the story follows Tom and his partner (Ato Essandoh) going through the motions of finding evidence and investigating suspects. The answers are the ones you expect, with the same going for the twists. Singer and editor Kevin Hickman create some good moments of tension through their cross-cutting, overlapping the simultaneous actions of a handful of characters. It’s a disorienting technique that works to place you in the mind of Tom, who’s still dealing with his shady past that forced him to move to New England with his wife (Alicia Silverstone, unfortunately not given enough to do). But Singer can’t help himself with the disorientation as he repetitiously punctuates many of his scene transitions with loud crashes, which gets about as annoying as you’d expect. Del Toro is giving it his all in a role he co-wrote with Singer and Benjamin Brewer. He’s a man who seems to have lost a little bit of his touch, never really knowing if he’s on the right trail or can trust anybody. It’s a slight shame that the material isn’t able to match his effort on screen. Timberlake has always been an uncomfortable actor, especially in dramas as you can clearly see the effort he’s putting in to pull it off, as opposed to the nonchalant professionalism of Del Toro and Silverstone. Thankfully, that twitchy uneasiness is part of his character. The rest of the characters are real characters , mostly on account of their actors committing too much to the part. Reptile will likely fall into the pantheon of semi-forgettable Netflix originals. I can’t say that’s a shame because the movie doesn’t do a lot to make a case for its existence in my memory outside of a few questionable choices. But when compared to the other forgotten content, it’s a cut above. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

MSPIFF 2024 Preview April 11, 2024 By: Hunter Friesen When you think of the oldest film festivals in the world, you tend to gravitate toward the European monoliths such as Venice, Berlin, and Cannes. And even when you shift your gaze over to North America, we stay eastward with New York (NYFF) and Toronto (TIFF). But there’s a little festival tucked in the midwest that has been going on for almost as long as the giants: The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. Abbreviated as MSPIFF (pronounced EM-spiff by the locals), the festival will be in its 43rd year this April, once again a hotspot for international cinema. Over 200 films from around the world will be screened at The Main cinema during the two-week-long event, with cinephiles such as myself cautioned to have their mail forwarded to the theater on account of the multitude of hours spent watching great films. Many of the highlights within the lineup boast laurels from many of the other festivals listed above. Case in point, the opening night film of Sing Sing , starring recent Oscar-nominee Colman Domingo as an incarcerated man finding solace in the prison’s theatre group. It premiered in Toronto last fall as part of the Special Presentations category and quickly became one of the buzziest under-the-radar titles. A24 picked up distribution rights and introduced it to American audiences a few weeks ago at SXSW. Minnesota audiences will be able to catch the film a few months early before the summer general release. That’ll be just one of several titles that A24 will be bringing over. The pair of Janet Planet and Tuesday premiered at Telluride last fall, finally reemerging ahead of their spring/summer releases. Also from SXSW is the Anne Hathaway-led The Idea of You by director Michael Showalter. And then there’s a smattering of TIFF titles such as The Convert , Days of Happiness , Shoshana , and In Our Day . Green Border and Evil Does Not Exist were both prize winners at last year’s Venice Film Festival. They’ll be screening here along with fellow Venice title The Beast . Both Evil Does Not Exist and The Beast were two of my favorite films I saw at TIFF , and I’ve been dying to revisit them in the six months since. A new Cannes may be on the horizon (and you can join in my anticipation by checking out my predictions article), but there are still plenty of titles from last year’s edition to celebrate. Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses has been pleasantly lingering in my mind since I saw it on the Croisette almost nine months ago. I won’t be rewatching it because of its daunting 197-minute runtime, but I might revisit the much shorter (87 minutes) Banel & Adama . I’ll hopefully be able to see Kidnapped and Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell for the first time after missing them at both Cannes and TIFF, with the latter winning the Camera d’Or and receiving rave reviews. But the fun doesn’t stop with just the films! The festival has graciously awarded Roger Deakins, the legendary cinematographer of several films from Minnesota’s Coen brothers as well as a two-time Oscar winner for Blade Runner 2049 and 1917 , with the Milgrom Award. He and his wife/collaborator James will be in attendance for the final two days of the festivals give an in-person conversation, book signing, and introduce a screening of Fargo . Also screening on the final day will be The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , which netted Deakins an Oscar nomination. I’ll be publishing full reviews for select titles, with others being condensed into dispatches. You can take a look at the full slate of festival titles at the MSP Film Society website . More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Cannes 2024 Predictions - Part 1: The Question Marks April 5, 2024 By: Hunter Friesen With Oscar season firmly behind us (although it never really ends), it’s time to set our sights on the next white whale barreling toward us: festival season! Sundance and SXSW have provided the appetizer with their concentration of indies and spring studio releases, opening the doors for Cannes to take center stage with glitzy red carpets and world-class talent. Last year’s edition proved to be one of its best, with Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall and Grand Prize winner The Zone of Interest being two of the most acclaimed and rewarded films of the year. Also featured were About Dry Grasses , Fallen Leaves , La Chimera , May December , and The Taste of Things . Last year’s SAG and WGA strikes will likely put a damper on the presence of Hollywood on the Croisette (and potentially at the later fall festivals), but it shouldn’t prevent Delegate General Thierry Fremaux and his team from assembling some of the best that world cinema has to offer. The festival will announce its full lineup on April 11. Until then, I’ll take a closer look at some of the films that are generating buzz and predict which ones are likely to make it up the coveted steps this year. The first of three parts of this series looks deeper into the fog. There’s a multitude of reasons why these projects are slotted here, all of them very much deserving of a selection spot. There could have been production delays due to the strikes, distributors have a different release strategy, or the pedigree of the director/stars may not be at the level Cannes desires. But miracles have happened, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed. Because of the uncertainty surrounding so many projects, there had to be a cap on how many I could include. Festival favorite directors such as François Ozon, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Jia Zhangke have been reported or rumored to be working on new films, but the information is too sparse and unsubstantiated for them to be considered. The Apprentice A Donald Trump biopic doesn’t sound like the most commercial project in an election year such as this. But it may be enough of a button pusher to garner the juicy headlines that Cannes craves. Director Ali Abbasi made a name for himself at the festival in the 2018 Un Certain Regard section with Border , which led him to be promoted to the Official Competition in 2022 with Holy Spider . Sebastian Stan will play a young Donald Trump, with Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, and Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump. Wherever this premieres, controversy will surely follow. The Way of the Wind There’s no way to precisely know when a Terrence Malick film will be released. All you can do is wait and pray. Malick premiered his last film, A Hidden Life , at Cannes in 2019, and he also won the Palme d’Or for his magnum opus The Tree of Life in 2011. He once again has saddled himself with another weighty topic, as The Way of the Wind will tell several episodes of the life of Jesus Christ, led by a cast of Mark Rylance, Ben Kingsley, Joseph Fiennes, and Matthias Schoenaerts. Several of Malick’s films have been delayed for years as he endlessly tinkers in the editing room, with this one (shot in 2019) being just as likely to come out later than sooner. Chocobar Lucrecia Martel’s Zama was one of the most acclaimed films of 2017 and appeared on several “Best of the 2010s” lists. She’s been relatively silent since, plugging away at her new film, which marks her first venture into non-fiction storytelling as it explores “The murder of indigenous activist Javier Chocobar and the removal of his community from their ancestral land in Argentina.” While Cannes has been more averse to admitting documentary films into their official selection compared to other major festivals, they have opened up in the past few years, most notably last year with Four Daughters and Youth (Spring) . Martel is a festival veteran, but she recently presided over the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 2019, the landing spot for Zama . Like Terrence Malick’s The Way of the Wind , it could be a few more years until we get an answer to this question. Blitz Cannes president Thierry Fremaux let it slip last year during the Occupied City Q&A that McQueen’s WWII epic will potentially premiere in this year’s competition. That fact should come as no surprise considering McQueen has been a regular at Cannes since 2008’s Hunger . Apple TV+ has big Oscar prospects for this film, and a glitzy premiere on the Croisette would put the right foot forward. Of course, a more conventional awards path starts at the fall festivals, so it’s still up in the air. Father, Mother, Sister, Brother When thinking of established American directors to make Cannes their home, you’d tend to think of the Coens and Wes Anderson. But it’s actually Jim Jarmusch that deserves to be at (or at least near) the top of that list as he’s premiered eleven feature films on the Croisette since 1984. His highest point was 2005’s Broken Flowers , which took home the Grand Prix. He began shooting his new film in the fall and late winter, recruiting the trio of Cate Blanchett, Charlotte Rampling, and Vicky Krieps. With production delayed due to the strikes last year, Jarmusch will have to work around the clock to get it submitted in time. If he is able to accomplish that, there’s no doubt Fremeaux will extend an invitation to one of the festival’s most cherished figures. The Balconettes Noémie Merlant is stepping behind the camera for a second time with a Marseille-set comedy-horror film she co-wrote with her Portrait of a Lady on Fire director Céline Sciamma. Merlant will also be starring in the film along with Souheila Yacoub (just seen in Dune: Part Two ) and Sanda Codreanu. Her debut directorial feature, Mi Iubita Mon Amour , played at the Special Screenings section in 2021. With both this and her starring role in Audrey Diwan’s Emmanuelle , Merlant could be the big talking point of this year’s festival. Hand of Dante With a cast composed of Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, Gerard Butler, Gal Gadot, Al Pacino, John Malkovich, and Martin Scorsese, Julian Schnabel’s crime drama will surely grab headlines wherever it debuts. Venice would be the likely landing spot based on precedent, with all but one of Schnabel’s films premiering on the Lido. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly remains the outlier, which netted the festival prize for Best Director. Fremeaux will at least make a push to grab that assemblage of stars for his red carpet. Emmanuelle Audrey Diwan rose her stock considerably after winning the Golden Lion at the 2021 Venice Film Festival with Happening , which also received numerous nominations/awards from groups such as the BAFTAs and Césars. She’s enlisted Noémie Merlant and Naomi Watts to headline her new film, an adaptation of the famous erotic novel she co-adapted with Rebecca Zlotowski. Diwan likely now has the pedigree to be extended an invite to her native festival, but she may opt to return to Venice in hopes of repeating her past success. Rumours Winnipeg’s Guy Maddin has been puzzling cinephiles for years with his often non-linear and perplexing arthouse pieces. He’s sizing up to blockbuster levels (at least in the context of the rest of his filmography) with his newest work to be co-directed with usual partners Evan and Galen Johnson. Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander, Takehiro Hira, Charles Dance, and Denis Ménochet play world leaders who “get lost in the woods while drafting a statement on a global crisis, facing danger as they attempt to find their way out.” Maddin has never played Cannes before, nor, opting between Venice or Toronto. His longstanding reputation within the industry and this cast may beckon him over to the Croisette. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Enys Men March 19, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men is the kind of film you stumble upon late at night as a kid on a public access channel while you are staying over at your grandparents’ old summer house. That description may be too ultra-specific for most people to relate to, but watching this movie lovingly took me back to those youthful nights when you had no idea what you were watching and if it was any good, but you couldn’t help but be endlessly transfixed by it. In true David Lynch fashion - a figure Jenkin takes much influence from, including having similar total creative control by filling the positions of writer/director/cinematographer/composer/sound designer – the plot of Enys Men is entirely dependent upon what you put into it. Speaking to The Guardian in December, Jenkin described his favorite movies as ones “that take you into the woods. You don’t know what the fuck is going on… then they leave you there.” Taking place on the titular island, with “Men” using the Cornish pronunciation of “main,” meaning “stone island,” Jenkin’s looping story follows a woman (Mary Woodvine) simply named The Volunteer. She seems to be a researcher observing the growth of a rare species of flower on a remote island somewhere off the coast of Cornwall. Her day follows the same pattern: she wakes up and strolls down to the cliff to record the soil temperature and observe the petals, tosses a rock down the abandoned mine shaft, returns to her small cottage, and records her notes for the day. The OCD-level repetition of this ritual leads to a sleepy sense of banality for the woman and the viewer, with our instinctual expectation that the cycle will eventually be broken going through several rounds of testing. But just as your eyes and senses tire out after the first half hour, Jenkin snaps you awake like a Catholic teacher with a ruler, with unsettling imagery and sounds slowly burned into your memory. There’s nothing purely horrifying about the hallucinations and strange events that fall upon our woman. Still, there is a heavy amount of discomfort and dread that they instill, keeping you in fearful excitement of what’s coming next. Clues of the overarching narrative are dripped through eerie radio recordings and historical landmarks, yet nothing seems to be set in stone (pun intended). Just as he did with his 2019 debut feature Bait , Jenkin goes ultra-low tech by shooting on scratchy 16mm and recording all sound in post-production. It’s as if this was a lost film that had just been unearthed on an abandoned island, rotting away for years until being saved at the last minute. Woodvine’s stark red jacket is the sole bit of lively color, sticking out like a sore thumb against the muted green and brown landscape. Her sparse dialogue is raspy and cold, hinting at long-buried torment, something that may lead a person to seclude themselves on an island for months on end. Neon’s wonderful, yet entirely misleading, trailer for Enys Men may signal it to be too experimental for the casual viewer. But just as Ari Aster and Robert Eggers have amassed cult followings for their new-wave style of horror, Jenkin deserves the same for his now-signature trips down the psychological rabbit hole. The beckoning of Hollywood doesn’t seem to be having much effect on him, promising more distinctly singular work from this up-and-coming artist. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

The Room Next Door September 7, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen The Room Next Door had its North American Premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics will release it in theaters on December 20. The unmistakably romantically sumptuous music of Albert Iglesias once again draws open the curtains for a film by Almodóvar. Although this is their 14th feature collaboration as composer and director, The Room Next Door marks the first time the strings have been used to reinforce dialogue in the English language. The story, one of the few not to be an original idea by the famed auteur, comes from Sigrid Nunez’s 2020 novel What Are You Going Through . New York City serves as the backdrop, with it never looking more beautiful as the seasons and towering buildings always casting perfectly symmetrical lines. Even down to the smallest of spaces, such as Martha’s (Tilda Swinton) junk drawer, the colors pop with radiance. Unfortunately, the neverending revolving door of serenity is perpetually tinged with the darkness of reality, as Martha lounges in her perfect surroundings riddled with the cancer that will most likely kill her. Rushing to her aid once she hears the terminal news is Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a longtime friend of Martha, although they haven’t spoken in a few years on account of their busy careers (Ingrid is a famous novelist, while Martha hurries to the next battle as a war correspondent). While time has been no barrier in the rekindling of their relationship, Martha has not been so successful with her daughter. They’ve been estranged nearly all their lives, neither of them being exceptional at fulfilling their parent-child duties. Ingrid now finds herself trying to mend that bridge before it’s too late, a timeline that’s being hastened by Martha’s decision to forgo treatment. The closer people get to death’s door, the more honest they become about the life they’ve lived. Swinton, reunited with Almodóvar for the second time after marking his unofficial English-language debut in 2020 with the short film The Human Voice , is the active member of the actress pair, delivering a cascade of monologues about her past, a few of them supplemented with flashbacks. While Google Translate was clearly not used based on Almodóvar’s consummate professionalism and prowess as a screenwriter, quite a few moments get lost in the translation. Swinton and Moore navigate the pitfalls with relative ease, biting into the high drama with gusto. There are more than a few moments of unintentional hilarity that pivot from us laughing at the movie to laughing with it solely based on the delivery of the lead pair. The younger cast doesn’t fare nearly as well, with their handful of scenes leaving them stranded to exchange lines that could have used a little more proofreading. It's these intermittent eyebrow-raising moments, many of them swept away before their intention can be deciphered, that keep The Room Next Door at a medium temperature. There’s always a feeling that Almodóvar could reach his trademarked boiling point of melodrama, but his confidence in the material just isn’t there. It’s still a remarkable improvement from The Human Voice and his most recent English-language short, Strange Way of Life , so there’s plenty of hope that, if he were to continue working outside his native language on such projects as his abandoned A Manual for Cleaning Women , it would reach the lofty heights we expect of him. That bar also means that a disappointing feature from Almodóvar is still very much worth the investment. There’s still no one who serves actresses better than him, with a nice supporting turn from John Turturro (mostly interested in sex and the hopelessness that climate change has brought) thrown in there for good measure. Here’s hoping he continues to challenge himself, bringing along A-list talent looking to rise to a new level. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

Zack Snyder's Justice League March 25, 2021 By: Button Hunter Friesen What was once an internet pipedream has become a reality. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is finally here in all its bombastic glory. This specific version of Justice League was never meant to happen, and neither was the 2017 theatrically released version. Snyder’s original vision was for this movie to be the third part in his DCEU series, directly following Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice . Snyder left the film in post-production after a devastating family tragedy. Distributor Warner Brothers - not wholly satisfied with the path Snyder was taking - brought in The Avengers director, Joss Whedon, to retool the film into a more light-hearted affair. What was released in theatres contained very little of Snyder’s material, and was widely disregarded as a disjointed and forgettable mess. The #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement was born immediately, with hundreds of thousands of irate fans demanding that Snyder’s original version be restored. After years of campaigning, Snyder and his fans have been treated with a golden opportunity that looks to right the wrongs of the past. The general plot found within Snyder’s version is nearly identical to the one in the Whedon cut. The evil Steppenwolf, a loyal follower of Darkseid, has come to Earth to claim three mother boxes that wield unlimited power to conquer worlds. Honoring his promise after Superman’s death, Batman assembles a team of superheroes to stop Steppenwolf and unite the planet to defend itself from threats beyond the stars. Snyder adopts the Seven Samurai approach to his story as the first half takes an individual look at the members of the team. They each get backstories in varying degrees of quality, with some being more embarrassing than others. The Flash’s introduction will act as a litmus test of your acceptance of Snyder’s excessiveness. Above all else, this version of Justice League is an infinitely more cohesive and enjoyable experience compared to its predecessor. It’s also fun to ponder and discuss with others, unlike the migraines I get every time I think of the Whedon cut. The film looks and feels like a single production, and not a Frankenstein-like mashup of competing ideologies. Gone are all Whedon-directed scenes and the color saturation levels have been reset to Snyder’s usual palette. The intricacies of the story have been completely retooled, giving characters such as Cyborg and The Flash more characterization and things to do. Superman no longer has his infamous CGI baby mouth. Steppenwolf is less embarrassing as he is visually reworked and supplied with a proper backstory and motivation. Tom Holkenborg’s score and Fabian Wagner’s cinematography are also allowed to flourish on an unparalleled epic scale. Now, these improvements are not to say this a perfect movie. Stripping away the benefit of comparison, Snyder’s film carries many of the foundational problems that have plagued both of his previous DC films. The newly revised script provides the 5 Ws (and one H) for each story thread, filling in the gaping plot holes present in the Whedon cut. The problem is that a few of these storylines aren’t necessary or that interesting, to begin with. And the writing is still filled with cringe-worthy exposition with attempts at humor that don't mesh well with the self-serious tone. Snyder’s insistence on using a 4:3 aspect ratio - more commonly seen in arthouse films - seems to be a decision based more on him being seen as a bonafide auteur rather than just improving the picture quality. At 242 minutes long (yes, that’s four hours), the film requires a gigantic investment from the viewer that isn't fully warranted. Scenes are stretched to the nth degree by incessant slo-mo and a few deleted scenes that should have been left on the cutting room floor have found their way back here. The nearly thirty-minute epilogue is entirely spent on setting up sequels that are unlikely to ever be made. Its inclusion feels like an attempt by Snyder to rally his troops once again to demand the story be told his way. No matter how much it drags the story down and erases a lot of the goodwill built up to that point, Snyder’s ideas are much better than anything else being offered at the moment. Even though a much tighter and free-flowing three-hour cut could have been released, there is a complete singular vision here, one that Snyder has carried throughout his DC films. His vision may not always succeed, but it is something to be championed. With many blockbuster films leaning ultra-safe to guarantee box office returns, Snyder’s no-holds-barred style is the answer to Martin Scorsese’s comment on comic book films lacking an authorial voice. For better and for worse, a filmmaker was the driving force for a major franchise, which is more than one can say about the corporate machine attitude over at Marvel. An experience that may never be replicated again, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a mythologically epic film that delivers more than anyone could have imagined. It may not always work, but it sure does pack the punch that fans deserve. If you have the mental and physical ability to invest four hours into this monumental project, I recommend you do so. More Reviews One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen A Christmas Party September 23, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Him September 18, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Swiped September 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen