D.W. Moffett Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘One Battle After Another,’ starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti

September 17, 2025

by Carla Hay

Teyana Taylor, Otillia Gupta and Leonardo DiCaprio in “One Battle After Another” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Culture Representation: Taking place in unnamed locations in the United States, the action film “One Battle After Another” (inspired by the 1990 novel “Vineland”) features a racially diverse cast of characters (African American, white and Latin) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A former member of a radical, left-wing militant group goes on a mission to rescue his biracial teenage daughter when she becomes the target of a secretive and powerful white supremacist group.

Culture Audience: “One Battle After Another” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, and sprawling action movies that take a dark comedic approach to sociopolitical issues, such as racism and income inequalities.

Teyana Taylor and Sean Penn in “One Battle After Another” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

“One Battle After Another” is a sometimes-rambling, sometimes-taut blend of being a dark screwball action comedy and a preachy anti-racism drama. The performances and action scenes are better than how the movie handles racial issues. “One Battle After Another” seems to be filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson’s response to criticism that his previous movies didn’t have enough racial diversity. But some areas of “One Battle After Another” are cringeworthy in how it tries too hard to be a politically progressive statement film.

Written and directed by Anderson, “One Battle After Another” is inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” a story about a California former radical hippie and his teenage daughter who go on the run from government officials. “One Battle After Another” can be considered a contemporary Wild West movie, with themes about loyalties to family versus loyalties to the government. In “One Battle After Another,” the “heroes” are members of a violent, radical, left-wing anti-government group, and the “villains” are the U.S. government and a secretive group of white supremacists who are in positions of power. Many of the scenes involving car chases and fights take place in remote desert areas where the only laws that seem to matter are the laws of survival.

“One Battle After Another” (which was filmed in California and the Texas city of El Paso) begins somewhere near the U.S./Mexico border. A radical activist named Perfidia Beverly Hills (played by Teyana Taylor) goes to a remote area in the desert to meet her group of colleagues in a left-wing anarchist group called the French 75. The members of the French 75 believe that the best way to bring attention to their causes is by committing violent crimes. They do things such as blow up buildings and rob banks.

On this particular day, about 20 members of the French 75 (who call themselves “revolutionaries”) will be raiding a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center. The French 75’s goal is to free the immigrant detainees and imprison the military detention guards in the same cages that were built for the detainees. In another part of the movie, the French 75 blows up the campaign office of a politician who voted to ban abortion in his state.

The French 75 is a collective with no official leader. But if they did have an official leader, it would be Perfidia. She is hardcore in her beliefs, infatuated with violence, and fearless in getting what she wants. Perfidia is also one of the most one-note characters in the movie, which flubs opportunities to present her as a more complex and more interesting character.

Bob Ferguson (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is a drifter/stoner, who desperately wants to be accepted into the French 75. On the day of this ICE detention invasion, Bob is seen arriving with a wagon of weapons (such as guns and tear gas) at a French 75 meeting place and telling Perfidia that he has any weapons that they might need. Perfidia has a tough persona, but she soon reveals that she has a soft spot for Bob because they have a noticeable attraction to each other.

Before the members of the French 75 raid the ICE detention center, they chant, “Free borders, free choices, free bodies, and freedom from fucking fear.” The French 75’s raid is victorious, as they achieve their goal of freeing the detainees and locking up the detention center guards. Perfidia takes pleasure in putting a gun to the head of the detention center’s leader: Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (played by Sean Penn), who has an erection when she takes him from his room and leads him to the cage where he gets locked up. She also takes his gun and hat.

Perfidia and Bob hook up soon after the ICE detention raid and become a couple. If they fall in love, then Bob is definitely more in love with Perfidia than she is with him. Bob and Perfidia move in together. He thinks she’ll want to settle down for a happy domesticated life, but he is very wrong about that assumption.

Meanwhile, it’s shown many times in the movie that Steven (who is an unmarried loner with a rigid personality) has a secret sexual fetish for black women. Steven becomes obsessed with Perfidia and masturbates when he stalks her. Perfidia finds out that he’s been following her when he corners her in a public restroom. He tells her that he doesn’t care what she does, as long as she returns his gun and hat to him.

Of course, those items are not what Steven really wants. Perfidia and Steven have sex in the bathroom, in an encounter where he lets her dominate him. They have a similar sexual encounter in another scene that’s also more about power than sex.

Within an unnamed number of months after Perfidia and Bob become a couple, Perfidia finds out that she’s pregnant. Bob is elated about becoming a parent. Perfidia has a “wait and see” attitude about parenthood.

After Perfidia’s mother Sandrae (played by Vanessa Ganter) finds out about the pregnancy, she candidly tells Bob: “You are unsuitable for my daughter. We come from a long line of revolutionaries. She’s a runner. You’re a stump.” (Who talks like that in real life? Only people in a movie like this one.)

It eventually becomes obvious that Perfidia’s real love is causing chaos with her version of radical activism. Nowhere is this exemplified more than in a scene where a very pregnant Perfidia, with her belly exposed, gleefully shoots off rounds of a machine gun somewhere in a desert area where the other French 75 members have gathered. It’s a visually striking scene but one of many scenes in which Perfidia seems to be objectified as a black female fetish.

After Perfidia gives birth to a daughter named Charlene (played by Otillia Gupta as a newborn baby and Nia Leon as an older infant), Perfidia says in a voiceover that she thinks Bob loves the baby more than he loves Perfidia. In other words, Perfidia gets jealous because she can’t stand not being the center of attention in her own home. And the truth is, Bob is a more attentive and more loving parent than Perfidia.

So what does narcissist Perfidia do? She abandons her family when Charlene is less than 6 months old and tries to make Bob look “soft” by telling him that she’s more committed to the French 75 cause than he is. Perfidia says to Bob, “You and your crumbling male ego will never do the revolution like I will.”

Bob attempts to persuade her to stay, but he eventually gives up when he sees that Perfidia has made up her mind and won’t come back. The last thing Bob says to Perfidia in a resigned voice is, “Do the revolution, baby.” After this breakup, Perfidia does something to betray the French 75. This betrayal has consequences for years to come. What happens to Perfidia is eventually revealed in the movie.

“One Battle After Another” then fast-forwards 16 years later to show that many years ago, Bob left the French 75 and has raised his daughter as a single parent in an “off-the-grid” area with desert terrain. The daughter is now named Willa (played by Chase Infiniti), who knows that Perfidia abandoned her and Bob. Because Bob left the French 75 under acrimonious circumstances, and because he was directly responsible for many of the group’s bombings and other violent crimes, he is paranoid about being found. His paranoia is also fueled by his continuous abuse of drugs and alcohol.

In some ways, Willa is a typical teenager who’s at a stage in her life where she’s embarrassed by her parents and wants more independence. In other ways, she’s not a typical teenager because she’s been raised from an early age to defend herself from getting murdered. Willa is skilled at using guns. Bob encourages her to take lessons in martial arts. And because Bob wants to live as undetected as possible, he doesn’t like Willa’s use of technology.

“One Battle After Another” makes a big deal out of how racism is the reason for most of the movie’s conflicts. And yet, “One Battle After Another” is quite cowardly in sidestepping any realistic conversations that white Bob and biracial Willa would have about racial issues. The movie spends more time pointing out that Willa has a friend with “they/them” pronouns than having Willa talk about her mixed-race heritage. When being black is mentioned by anyone in this movie, it’s only in the context of pain and acrimony, not joy and harmony. Racism becomes its own fetish for the purposes of this film.

Meanwhile, as Bob and Willa navigate their changing relationship, Steven is invited to interview for membership in a secret white supremacist group called the Christmas Adventurers Club. The members of the club are high-ranking politicians, military leaders, judicial officials, business moguls and other powerful people. The Christmas Adventurers Club hails St. Nicholas as part of a group ritual. The senior leader of the Christmas Club is Roy More (played by Kevin Tighe), whose name seems to be an obvious nod to real-life right-winger Roy Moore, a controversial former Alabama supreme court justice.

Other members of the Christmas Adventurers Club have names that are the same or similar to other famous people: Sandy Irvine (played by James Downey) is most definitely not the 22-year-old British mountaineer who died while trying to climb Mount Everest in 1924. William Desmond (played by D.W. Moffett) has a name that is similar to Irish American actor-turned-director William Desmond Taylor, whose 1929 murder (when he was 49) remains an unsolved mystery. The only female Christmas Adventurers Club member who’s shown in the movie is Roy More’s wife Alice More (played by Patricia Ridgely Storm), who is briefly seen and has a subservient role.

Christmas Adventurers Club member Virgil Throckmorton (played by Tony Goldwyn) is a politician who reaches out to Steven to recruit Steven as a possible member of the Christmas Adventurers Club. Steven is eager to join the club and is flattered that he was asked. But first, he must go through a vetting process that’s required for all potential members. Because “One Battle After Another” reveals very early on in the story that Steven has a secret sexual fetish for black women, you can easily predict where the movie is going to go in this vetting process.

The second half of the movie is mostly about Willa going missing and Bob on a frantic quest to find her. It results in madcap and violent chase scenes and fights that include an eccentric mercenary character named Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (played by Benicio del Toro), Willa’s karate teacher whom Bob enlists to help him; a Christmas Adventurers Club “fixer” named Tim Smith (played by John Hoogenakker); and a French 75 member named Deandra (played by Regina Hall), who becomes a maternal figure to Willa and helps her hide in a convent of nuns called the Sisters of the Brave Beaver, who grow marijuana. Steven also gets involved in this search for Willa.

“One Battle After Another” has elements that seem to want to be like a Coen Brothers movie and a Spike Lee movie at the same time. “One Battle After Another” wants to be quirky and amusing while delivering serious social messages about racism. The combination works well in some areas and doesn’t work as well in other areas. When it comes to the movie’s dark comedy, “One Battle After Another” is like a comedian who constantly laughs at the comedian’s own jokes before getting to the punchlines.

Some of the dialogue in “One Battle After Another” is so cheesy and cornball, it’s comical. The cast members in the movie do a great job of selling it, with some (such as DiCaprio, Penn and del Toro) seeming to be in on the not-so-subtle ways that this movie is trying to be a satire. And although “One Battle After Another” is obvious in its attempt to present Willa as an action hero instead of a stereotypical damsel in distress, make no mistake: This is a very male-centric movie, where the men get the best dialogue, and the story is told mainly from the perspectives of the male characters.

Characters such as Perfidia and Deandra come and go in the story and are ultimately overshadowed by other characters. Deandra barely gets any dialogue until the part in the movie where she’s supposed to be a protective mother figure to Willa. And because “One Battle After Another” is so focused on the buffoonish antics of Bob and Steven, the movie sidelines or ignores many of the characters who deserved more screen time in this long-winded, 170-minute film.

The French 75 is the catalyst for everything that happens in “One Battle After Another.” However, one of the movie’s missed opportunities is in not telling enough about any of the French 75 characters who aren’t Bob and Perfidia. Who are they as people, where did they come from, and what motivated them to join this radical group? Don’t expect the movie to answer any of those questions.

One of the French 75 is a nerdy guy named Sommerville (played by Paul Grimstad), who is in charge of a lot of the technical planning. That’s about all you’ll find out about him. Many of the French 75 characters have deliberately cartoonish nicknames—such as Mae West (played by Alana Haim), Junglepussy (played by Shayna McHayle) and R.A. Rippey (played by Sachi DiSerafino), whose name references 1970s child star Rodney Allen Rippy—that are practically begging for interesting backstories to be revealed. But these French 75 characters are merely shown quickly in scenes where they participate in violent crimes in the name of their activism.

“One Battle After Another” excels in its immersive cinematography (by Michael Bauman) that ramps up the movie’s tension in the action scenes. People who get easily queasy when watching movie cameras dip and rise like a rollercoaster should be warned in advance about a part of the movie where there’s a chase scene on a very hilly road. Jonny Greenwood’s unique musical score for “One Battle After Another” stands out for its unconventional piano motifs, but it is music that won’t be to everyone’s liking because it can’t be described as “crowd-pleasing.”

The biggest assets in “One Battle After Another” are the entertaining performances by this very talented cast. DiCaprio, Penn, Infiniti, del Toro and Taylor are all compelling in their roles. But their characters are written in ways that their characters’ humanity doesn’t feel entirely real, because they are near-caricatures in a movie that wants to shock more than awe. “One Battle After Another” isn’t as progressive and innovative as it thinks it is. Ultimately, it’s a very long action movie where the ending and the people who have the most importance in the story can easily be predicted.

Warner Bros. Pictures will release “One Battle After Another” in U.S. cinemas on September 26, 2025.

Review: ‘Alarum’ (2025), starring Scott Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, Willa Fitzgerald, Mike Colter, Isis Valverde and Joel Cohen

February 1, 2025

by Carla Hay

Scott Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone in “Alarum” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“Alarum” (2024)

Directed by Michael Polish

Culture Representation: Taking place in Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, the action film “Alarum” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Two married assassin spies, who used to be opponents, are targeted by an intelligence network of criminal anarchists, who want to gain possession of a valuable flash drive.

Culture Audience: “Alarum” will appeal mainly to fans of the movie’s headliners and people who don’t mind watching bottom-of-the-barrel action flicks.

Mike Colter in “Alarum” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

Creatively bankrupt on every level, “Alarum” is a mindless mess of an action film that goes through the motions until its very lazy and abrupt ending. The performances are never believable in this moronic story about spies fighting over a flash drive. That’s essentially the entire limp plot of “Alarum,” which is time-wasting junk, even though some well-known actors are in the movie’s cast.

Directed by Michael Polish and written by Alexander Vesha, “Alarum” takes place mostly in Gdańsk, Poland, and briefly in Prague, Czech Republic, and in Prešov, Slovakia. The movie was actually filmed in Oxford, Ohio. “Alarum” has characters that you won’t care about because they are so hollow, and most of the acting in the film is terrible.

The protagonists of “Alarum” are two American spouses who are assassin spies: Joe Travers (played by Scott Eastwood) and Lara Travers (played by Willa Fitzgerald), whose maiden name was Larissa Moss. As shown in the movie’s opening scene, Joe and Lara met in Prague, in 2019, when she was assigned to kill him when he worked for the CIA. They crashed out of a high-rise hotel window during this life-or-death fight.

The movie then fast-forwards to 2024 in Gdańsk. Joe and Lara are now married. (Their courtship is never shown in the movie.) It’s soon revealed that Joe (whose code name was Archibald) went rogue and abandoned the CIA in 2019, which is why Joe and Lara have gone into hiding. It’s implied that Joe and Lara make money by being low-level con artists.

Joe and Lara are in a hotel room as they get ready for a dinner double date with a married couple named Roland Rousseau (played by Joel Cohen, who is one of the producers of “Alarum”) and Bridgette Rousseau (played by Isis Valverde), who don’t know that Joe and Lara are spies. Before going to this dinner at a restaurant, Joe and Lara are in their hotel room and have a petty disagreement over what lies they will tell the Rousseaus.

Joe wants Lara to pretend that she has obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), while Lara wants Joe to be the one to pretend he has OCD. Lara agrees to be the one to pretend to have OCD, but then Lara blurts out during the dinner that Joe has OCD. Back in their hotel room, Joe tells Lara that he’s irritated that Lara didn’t go along with the original plan. It’s one of several pointless sequences in “Alarum.”

Not long after this awkward dinner, Joe and Bridgette are part of a tourist group that witnesses the crash of a small plane, which was shot down from behind by snipers in another plane. At the crash site, Joe sees that this plane (which has no survivors) is from the Drug Enforcement Agency. The only two people on the plane were the pilot and a co-worker passenger.

Joe somehow knows that he needs to get a flash drive (which he calls a “flight pill”) from the dead pilot’s stomach. Joe retrieves this flash drive in a gruesome manner. And somehow, there’s a secret surveillance device on the plane that picks up the sound of Joe talking and transmits this audio surveillance to the CIA. That’s how the CIA finds out that Joe is in Poland.

It’s later revealed that this flash drive has something to do with Alarum, a secretive group that “wants to tear down the tyranny” of the government intelligence network. Now that Joe has the flash drive, he and Lara are targets of people who want to kill Joe and Lara and get the flash drive. Various chase scenes and violent fights ensue. All of them look phony and badly choreographed, with tacky visual effects.

Other characters in this cinematic garbage dump are a corrupt operative named Orlin (played by Mike Colter, an American actor doing a terrible African accent), whose African nationality is vague and who has a team of henchman; CIA deputy director Roland Burbridge (played by D.W. Moffett), who just talks on a phone while he’s sitting at a desk; CIA agent Kirby (played Mark Polish), a generic subordinate who’s eager to impress Roland; and a rebellious mercenary named Chester (played by Sylvester Stallone), who is hired by the CIA to find and kill Joe because Roland thinks Joe has joined Alarum. Everything about “Alarum” is so mind-numbingly horrible, it’s an embarrassment for anyone involved in this junkpile film.

Lionsgate released “Alarum” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and on VOD on January 17, 2025.

Review: ‘May December,’ starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore

January 19, 2024

by Carla Hay

“May December”

Directed by Todd Haynes

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Tybee Island, Georgia, in 2015, the dramatic film “May December” features a white and Asian cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A famous actress is starring in a movie about a disgraced and formerly imprisoned sex offender, who seduced an underage co-worker and later married him, and the actress goes to the couple’s home to do research for the role.

Culture Audience: “May December” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, filmmaker Todd Haynes, and movies that put a fictional spin on real-life scandals.

Julianne Moore and Charles Melton in “May December” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“May December” is a very glossy psychological portrait of manipulation and exploitation, inspired by a real-life sex scandal. Although the principal cast members give above-average performances, it’s a slow-moving film with a fragmented story. Some viewers might see “May December” as a very dark comedy. However, the movie’s few comedic moments are in short spurts and then quickly fade into the background when “May December” becomes more concerned about making viewers increasingly uncomfortable with certain awful characters pretending to be better people than they really are.

Directed by Todd Haynes and written by Samy Burch, “May December” gets its title from the term “May December relationship,” to describe romances that have a big age gap between the partners. The younger partner is supposed to be in the spring of youth (as exemplified by the spring month of May), while the older partner is supposed to be closer to the end of life (as indicated by end-of-the-year month of December). “May December” had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and made the rounds at other film festivals in 2023, including the New York Film Festival and the BFI London Film Festival.

In “May December,” the story’s scandal is based on the real-life relationship between Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau. In 1996, the year they got sexually involved with each other, Letourneau was a 34-year-old married mother of four children, and she was Fulaau’s schoolteacher in Burien, Washington. He was 12 years old.

Letourneau eventually served time in jail (in 1997) and in prison (from 1998 to 2004) for statutory rape and for violating the terms of her 1997 plea agreement, which had required her to stay away from a then-underage Fualaau. Her first husband divorced her in 1999. She gave birth to two daughters fathered by Fualaau. The first daughter was born in 1997, while Letourneau was awaiting her sentencing. The second daughter was born in 1998, when Letourneau was in prison. Letourneau and Fualaau got married in 2005, but they separated in 2019. Letourneau died of colorectal cancer in 2020, at the age of 58.

All of this background information is helpful to better understand the nuances in “May December.” In the movie, the character based on Letourneau is named Gracie Atherton-Yoo (played by Julianne Moore), while the Fualaau-based character is Joe Yoo (played by Charles Melton), who are living a quiet suburban life together as married parents in Tybee Island, Georgia. Elizabeth Berry (played by Natalie Portman) is a 36-year-old famous actress who is starring as Gracie in a made-for-TV movie. “May December” (which takes place in 2015, which is about 23 years after the scandal) shows what happens over the course of several days when Elizabeth goes to Tybee Island to do research for the role by visiting Gracie and Joe, as well as interviewing their friends, family and other people who know this notorious couple.

“May December” begins with a scene of Elizabeth in a Georgia hotel room as she gets ready to go to the Yoo home to meet Gracie and Joe for the first time. Meanwhile, Gracie and Joe are at their home, where they are preparing to welcome Elizabeth to a family cookout in their backyard. Gracie is in the kitchen making deviled eggs and a cake with her friend/neighbor Rhonda (played by Andrea Frankle), who is Gracie’s staunchest defender and supporter. It’s later revealed that Gracie has a home-based business where she makes cakes. Joe works in a hospital as a medical assistant.

Before Elizabeth arrives, Gracie tells Rhonda what she expects from Elizabeth: “All I ask is that she’s polite and not just sitting there with her sunglasses on.” And when Elizabeth and Gracie meet in a polite but slightly guarded way, Gracie tells Elizabeth: “I want you to tell the story right.” Elizabeth, who speaks in calm, measured tones, replies: “I want you to feel seen and known.”

In real life, Letourneau and Fualaau had two daughters. In “May December,” Gracie and Joe have two daughters and a son. Eldest child Honor (played by Piper Curda) is an outspoken college student living away from home, but she will soon be visiting to attend the high-school graduation of her younger twin siblings: insecure Mary (played by Elizabeth Yu) and rebellious Charlie (played by Gabriel Chun). Another member of the Yoo family is Joe’s widower father Joe Yoo Sr. (played by Kelvin Han Yee), a Korean immigrant who—just like his son Joe—chain smokes when he’s feeling stressed-out.

Over time, viewers see that Gracie likes to appear composed and in control in public and when Elizabeth is there observing. But in private and when Elizabeth isn’t there, Gracie is high-strung, very demanding and overly critical of other people. When things don’t go her way, Gracie loves to play the victim.

Gracie also treats Joe as someone whose only purpose in life is to make her happy. When Gracie has a tearful meltdown because a customer canceled an order for a cake that Gracie already made, Gracie expects Joe to comfort her like someone who needs to be comforted over the death of a loved one. And there are signs that Gracie has an undiagnosed mental illness, such as when Gracie insists to Joe in private that he was the one who seduced her when he was a child.

Another scene that shows how Gracie is a master manipulator is when she and Mary (with Elizabeth invited to observe) go shopping for Mary’s graduation dress. At a store’s dressing room, Mary tries on dresses. Mary’s first choice is a sleeveless dress, but Gracie doesn’t want Mary to wear a dress that will expose Mary’s arms. Mary gets annoyed with Gracie and firmly says that she’s getting the dress. However, Mary changes her mind when Gracie comments that other girls in the graduating class probably won’t wear sleeveless dresses because sleeveless dresses will make their arms look fat.

Over time, an unspoken rivalry develops between Gracie and Elizabeth, who is very aware that image-conscious Gracie is bothered by Elizabeth, who is going to play a younger version of Gracie. One of the movie’s most memorable scenes about this power struggle is when Elizabeth and Gracie are standing in front of a bathroom mirror in Gracie’s home while Gracie is putting on makeup. Rather than have Elizabeth mimic her, Gracie insists on putting the makeup on Elizabeth herself.

Joe is quiet, humble and unassuming. And at first, he seems to be in the background of Elizabeth’s thoughts as she puts most of her initial focus on studying Gracie. It should come as no surprise that the more that Gracie gushes about Joe to make it sound like they have a beautiful love story, the more that Elizabeth seems to get curious about Joe and takes more of an interest in him. Elizabeth flatters Joe and drops hints that he deserves a better life than the one that he has with control-freak Gracie. But does Elizabeth really care about Joe as a person, or does Elizaebth care more about immersing herself so much into Gracie’s life that she wants to replicate aspects of Gracie’s life?

Some of the people whom Elizabeth interviews for her research are Gracie’s ex-husband Tom Atherton (played by D.W. Moffett), who is now married to another woman; Gracie’s adult son Georgie Atherton (played by Cory Michael Smith), from her first marriage, who bitterly tells Elizabeth that Gracie ruined Georgie’s life; and Colin Henderson (played by Charles Green), the owner of the pet store where Joe worked as a kid and where Gracie was Joe’s supervisor. Observant viewers will notice that for all the interviews that Elizabeth does, she’s not very forthcoming about herself, until a very revealing scene where she makes a speaking appearance in Mary’s drama class and answers prying questions from a few of the students.

No one from Elizabeth’s personal life is seen in the movie, which is the movie’s way of showing how Elizabeth skillfully compartmentalizes her life. Elizabeth is shown briefly talking in phone conversations at her hotel with her fiancé and with the director of the movie where she stars as Gracie. In these conversations, she reveals herself even more to be a very driven and ambitious actress.

Elizabeth is also seen in the hotel room looking at video auditions of teenage boys who will be playing the role of Joe. These boys are supposed to be in their early teens, but Elizabeth remarks that they don’t look “sexy” enough, based on what Elizabeth has seen of Joe. But it’s a sign of a reality disconnect for Elizabeth, because the Joe she’s getting to know is an adult, not the child who was manipulated into an illegal sexual relationship with an adult.

“May December” presents Elizabeth as the central character, but the movie doesn’t always do a great job of balancing the perspectives of Gracie and Joe. There is almost nothing told about how Joe’s side of the family reacted to the scandal, or how Joe’s experiences as a child of an immigrant affected his outlook on life. His father seems to have accepted the marriage of Joe and Gracie, but was this acceptance easy, difficult, or somewhere in between? The movie never says and doesn’t seem to care.

Joe is only given two or three really good scenes that show he’s more than just a loyal “boy toy” husband. Those scenes arrive when awareness starts to sink in with Joe about how much of his childhood was robbed when Gracie chose to cross the line and have a sexual relationship with him when he was a child. It hits him the hardest when he sees Mary and Charlie graduating from high school. This graduation ceremony scene is when Joe fully understands that his children’s coming of age and starting new chapters in their lives as young adults are very different from what he experienced.

What “May December” also does very well is show how Elizabeth’s presence is the catalyst for Gracie and Joe to re-evaluate how they want to be perceived by others and how they perceive themselves. Gracie’s reaction is to “double down” on the narrative that she and Joe have a “fairytale love story.” Joe starts to have doubts and wonders if this “fairytale love story” he’s believed in for all these years was one big lie.

Meanwhile, on another level, “May December” is also a story about what happens when two predators meet and become competitive with each other—not just in how to interpret Gracie’s life but also in trying to prove who’s living a more “fulfilled” life. In that regard, the scenes where Elizabeth and Gracie are in the same room are fascinating to watch. Observant viewers will notice that Elizabeth’s “research” has a more profound effect on her than Elizabeth expects. This is demonstrated effectively in the movie’s final scene.

Portman and Moore are compelling to watch in “May December,” but the movie loses a bit of steam when it can’t really decide how much importance Gracie’s children and in-laws should have in the story. It’s never explained why Elizabeth talked to only one of Gracie’s children from Gracie’s first marriage and not the other children from Gracie’s first marriage. And the character of Joe Sr. seems like a “token” character, because the movie doesn’t seem concerned about how showing or telling how Gracie’s scandalous actions with Joe affected members of Joe’s family.

If “May December” is supposed to be a dark comedy, then it doesn’t quite succeed as a dark comedy or satire like director Gus Van Sant’s 1995 movie “To Die For,” starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix. “To Die For” succeeded in its comedic intentions as a movie version of a real-life scandal about an adult female teacher seducing an underage teenage student to commit a felony crime. As a psychological drama, “May December” excels in its intention to be an unsettling film about the human cost of treating people like pawns in a chess game.

Netflix released “May December” in select U.S. cinemas on November 17, 2023. The movie premiered on Netflix on December 1, 2023.