Culture Representation: Taking place at the end of the 16th century in Denmark, the animated film “Scarlet” (inspired by William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”) features characters who live in a kingdom and who exist in an Otherworld afterlife.
Culture Clash: After her king father is murdered by his evil brother, a princess vows to avenge and finds herself in a mysterious Otherworld afterlife, where she meets a guy from the 21st century who shows her a different way of thinking.
Culture Audience: “Scarlet” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Mamoru Hosoda and time-traveling fantasy anime films that blend action adventure with existential life philosophies.
Hijiri (voiced by Masaki Okada) and Scarlet (voiced by Mana Ashida) in “Scarlet” (Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)
Inspired by William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” the visually dazzling anime film “Scarlet” has some predictable action in this adventure story about a princess avenging her father’s murder. The movie has a few surprises that save the narrative. “Scarlet” is a fairly simple story that has some deeper philosophical messages about revenge versus forgiveness.
Written and directed by Mamoru Hosoda, “Scarlet” had its world premiere at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival and its North American premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. “Scarlet” is not an exact replica of “Hamlet.” It borrows elements from “Hamlet,” but is a completely different story.
In the beginning of “Scarlet” (which takes place at the end of the 16th century in Denmark), a princess named Scarlet (voiced by Mana Ashida) has an idyllic life. Her kind and gentle father Amlet (voiced by Masachika Ichimura), who is the king of Denmark, adores her and spends quality time with her. Scarlet, who is an only child, wants to make her father proud. “I’ll be the princess you want to be,” she tells Amlet. Scarlet is definitely a “daddy’s girl” because she barely interacts with her mother Gertrude (voiced by Yuki Saito), who will further alienate herself from Scarlet later in the story.
The character of Scarlet is based on the character of Hamlet. Just like in “Hamlet,” Denmark and Norway are feuding with each other. Amlet has an evil brother named Claudius (voiced by Koji Yakusho), who wants to be king. Claudius has Amlet branded as an unpatriotic traitor to Denmark, which leads to Amlet being executed in public. Scarlet witnesses this horrific murder.
With Amlet dead, Claudius becomes king and marries Gertrude. In this movie, Gertrude is shown having a secret affair with Claudius before Amlet died. Scarlet wants to avenge her father’s death and begins training to become a warrior. Claudius wants to get rid of any possible threat to his power as king, so he poisons Scarlet.
Scarlet ends up in an Otherworld afterlife (which looks like a desert with mountains), inhabited by beings who could be dead or alive in the real world. While in this afterlife, she meets a young man from the 21st century named Hijiri (voiced by Masaki Okada), who is friendly and optimistic, in contrast to Scarlet, who is consumed with anger and rage. Over time, Hijiri and Scarlet develop an attraction to each other, but they come from two different worlds. In the production notes for “Scarlet,” Hosoda says that the character of Hijiri is inspired by the character of Ophelia in “Hamlet.”
Most of “Scarlet” consists of Scarlet and Hijiri battling various opponents in this Otherworld afterlife, while Scarlet is determined to find Claudius so she can kill him. Characters from “Hamlet” are also characters in “Scarlet.” Polonius (voiced by Kazuhiro Yamaji) is Claudius’ trusted adviser. Laertes (voiced by Tokio Emoto) is Polonius’ son. Rosencrantz (voiced by Munetaka Aoki) and Guildenstern (voiced by Shota Sometani) are two courtiers who are sent by Claudius to find and kill Scarlet in this afterlife.
The ghost of Amlet makes multiple appearances. And there’s a graveyard scene in “Scarlet” that is a very different version of the graveyard scene in “Hamlet.” In one part of the movie, Scarlet gets a glimpse of what her life would be like if she lived in the 21st century with Hijiri. The movie ends with a revelation that’s meant to pack an emotional punch.
“Scarlet” has some harrowing scenes involving the supernatural and deadly beasts, such as a dragon. The movie’s voice performances are perfectly adequate but don’t particularly elevate the movie. If there’s any criticism for some of the fight scenes, there are a few too many times that the movie has a “damsel in distress” scenario where Hijiri has to come to the rescue. Even with all the action sequences, the movie is at its best with its emotional dilemmas, when Scarlet has to confront her revenge motives, decide how far she’s willing to go, and wonder if it was all worth it in the end.
Sony Pictures Classics will release “Scarlet” in select U.S. cinemas on December 12, 2025. The movie will be re-released in select U.S. cinemas on February 6, 2025, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on February 13, 2025.
Culture Representation: The non-fiction film “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” features a predominantly African American group of people (with a few white people) in a montage collection of images that evoke pages from the non-fiction book “Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience.”
Culture Clash: Various cultures and eras are represented in the movie, which includes archival news footage, still photos, re-enactment footage, and clips from movies and TV shows.
Culture Audience: “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in unconventional movies that explore African and African American cultures.
A scene from “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” (Photo courtesy of Rich Spirit)
“BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” is more of a visual feast than a wealth of information. It’s formatted less like a documentary and more like a museum art installation that interprets the 1999 non-fiction book “Africana.” These visual images include archival news footage, still photographs, re-enactment footage, and clips from movies and TV shows.
Directed by Kahlil Joseph, “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” is his feature-film directorial debut. “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” had its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and made the rounds at several other festivals in 2025, including the Berlin International Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. Kwame Anthony Appiah’s 1999 book “Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience” is given a cinematic portrait in this movie, which takes pages from the book in non-sequential order and assigns visual images to those pages.
The movie begins with an image of someone (whose hands are only shown on screen) opening the book. A caption from director Joseph explains that he and his younger brother got the book as a gift from their father on February 28, 2000. It was the dream of sociologist/writer/scholar W.E.B. Du Buois to write this type of book. He started the project at six months before he died in 1963, at the age of 95.
The movie includes details of Dubois’ 1962 visit to newly independent Ghana, at the invitation of president Kwame Nkrumah. In the movie’s re-enactment footage, Peter Jay Fernandez portrays an elderly Du Bois, while Kaneza Schaal has the role of young adult Du Bois. To give further context the Ghanaian history presented in the movie, “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” include 2023 news footage Business Incorporated about Ghana’s economy in 2023.
The movie’s still photos fly quickly by in montage form, showing a wide variety of prominent public figures, historical events and lifestyles from African and African American cultures. Some of what’s included in these montages are images of jazz, James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, Rastafarianism, Jamaica, Marcus Garvey, Whitney Houston, Willie Mays, voodoo, and Haiti.
“BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” also features Shaunette Renée Wilson as a journalist named Sarah, who is investigating an exhibit of new and artifact items that have been returned. This scene couldn’t be more timely during a political climate when museums devoted to African and African American culture have come under anti-“DEI” attacking criticisms that sometimes demand the removal of certain items in these museums that present the shameful history of racism against black people. The anti-DEI critics often argue that these items are “racist” against white people.
Other people featured in “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” include transgender activist/author Hope Giselle and Bria Henderson as American feminist Fannie Lou Hamer. The movie experiments with images, such as showing a photo of people in an African American barbershop that has a video screen with these words superimposed on the screen: “Radical Critique of the Present. BLKNWS 2017- Present.”
Joseph has a background in directing music videos (he’s collaborated with Beyoncé multiple times, most notably for her 2016 “Lemonade” video album), so the quick-cutting visual style of music videos is very much present in “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions.” It’s an adventurous and unconventional film that won’t be to everyone’s liking if a viewer is seeking a more traditional format for a non-fiction movie. A captioned announcement in the beginning of the film emphatically states: “This is not a documentary.” “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” is a collage of images that can take viewers on a somewhat shallow but interesting journey.
Rich Spirit released “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” in select U.S. cinemas on November 26, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in an afterlife location called The Junction, the fantasy comedy/drama film “Eternity” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A dead woman must choose if she’s going to spend eternity with her first dead husband or her second dead husband.
Culture Audience: “Eternity” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and charming movies about the afterlife.
John Early and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in “Eternity” (Photo by Leah Gallo/A24)
“Eternity” skillfully blends comedy and drama in this unique tale of a dead woman who must choose if she’s going to spend eternity with her first dead husband or her second dead husband. The movie has some twists and turns. Some of these plot developments are predictable, while others are not. “Eternity” has a few tearjerking moments, but they aren’t laid on too thick.
Directed by David Freyne (who co-wrote the “Eternity” screenplay with Pat Cunnane), “Eternity” had its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. The beginning of the movie takes place in Oakdale, New York, but the majority of “Eternity” takes place in a purgatory-like place called The Junction. “Eternity” was filmed in the Vancouver area.
“Eternity” begins in the year 2020, by showing an elderly married couple named Larry Cutler (played by Barry Primus) and Joan Cutler (played by Betty Buckley) in a car that Larry is driving. Joan and Larry have been married for 65 years. They’re about to go to a gender reveal party for an unborn great-grandchild. Joan has medical tubes in one of her arms.
During this car ride, Larry and Joan argue about where they want to spend their next vacation. Larry wants to go to a beach in Florida for their vacation. Joan would rather go to a place in the Rocky Mountains. “We’re not really Florida people,” she says. The conversation turns somber when Larry switches the subject and says, “We have to tell them.” Joan says, “I know.”
The couple’s big secret, which they will eventually reveal to family members, is that Joan (who is a retired librarian) has cancer and is in the final stage of her cancer. Even though Joan is expected to die before Larry, he’s the one who actually dies first. It happens unexpectedly at the gender reveal party, where Larry choked on a pretzel and died.
Larry finds out that he’s dead when he ends up on a train that goes to a place resembling a train station called The Junction. It’s a purgatory (a transition place between life and eternity) where dead people go in the bodies that they had when they were happiest in their lives. Larry (played by Miles Teller) is in his mid-30s when he is at The Junction. Larry finds out that each person is assigned an afterlife coordinator (AC), who helps makes decisions on what type of afterlife the deceased person will choose.
There are different types of afterlife behind several doors at The Junction. For example, one afterlife where people are perpetually at a beach. Another afterlife is where people are perpetually at a nightclub. Another afterlife is where people are perpetually on a cruise ship. Another afterlife is where people are perpetually in a rural wooded area.
Each afterlife realm has a name that reflects its primary lifestyle. Some of the names include Capitalist World, Man-Free World, Surf World and Infantilization World. Various salespeople are in The Junction, where they act like real-estate agents trying to sell different eternity worlds to undecided people in The Junction.
Larry’s AC is outspoken and friendly Anna (played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who tells Larry the ground rules of choosing where he will spend eternity. The biggest rule is that once someone chooses a specific eternity and enters that realm, the person can’t change the decision. Anyone who changes a decision can be stuck in a dark eternal place called The Void. Another rule is that the dead people can’t use ACs or anyone else to pass notes or messages to other dead people. Communication between the dead people must be directly with each other.
Larry also finds out from Anna that most people stay in The Junction for one of three reasons (1) they can’t accept death; (2) they can’t decide which eternity to choose; or (3) they are waiting for a loved one to show up at The Junction so that they and the loved one can decide together which eternity to choose. Larry wants to wait for Joan at The Junction because he wants to spend eternity with her. Anna tells Larry to avoid going through any red doors, which are implied to be doors to hell.
While Larry is waiting at The Junction, he goes into a bar lounge, where he is served by an amiable bartender. Larry eventually finds out that the bartender is Joan’s first husband Luke (played by Callum Turner), who was newly married to Joan when U.S. military soldier Luke died in combat during the Korean War. Larry and Joan got married in 1955, two years after Luke died in 1953. Joan and Luke did not have any children together, although they had planned to start a family before Luke’s untimely death. In The Junction, Luke is in his late 20s, the age range that he was when he was married to Joan, which was the happiest time in Luke’s life.
It should come as no surprise that Luke has been waiting for Joan at The Junction. Luke’s AC is flamboyant and sarcastic Ryan (played by John Early), who has had a longtime rivalry with Anna, who also happens to be Ryan’s ex-girlfriend. When the inevitable happens, and Joan dies and shows up at The Junction. She appears in the body that she had when she was in her late 20s.
Ryan is also Joan’s AC. Ryan would rather see Joan end up with Luke in eternity, so Ryan will no longer have to look after Luke and because Ryan thinks Luke was deprived of a having a long life with Joan. By contrast, Anna wants Joan to end up with Larry because she thinks Larry and Joan have a more meaningful love story. Joan has difficulty deciding which husband to choose. Predictably, Luke and Larry begin competing with each other to be Joan’s eternity choice.
Even though Luke and Larry never knew each other when they were alive, they know enough about each other to feel that the other rival is the inferior choice. There’s also jealousy between the two men. Larry has been envious of Luke’s good looks and image as a near-perfect “war hero” who was more romantic than Larry. Luke has been envious that Larry had 65 years of marriage with Joan, with a family that includes the descendants of Larry and Joan.
Joan befriends an elderly Junction occupant named Karen (played by Olga Merediz), who gives Joan practical advice about life choices. Most people in The Junction are not in elderly bodies, but Karen (who was a closeted lesbian for most of her life) says she was happiest when she was 72. That was the age Karen was when and went on a three-month vacation with her female best friend/lover and was free to be who she really was for the first time in her life. Karen went back to her closeted life (which included being married to a man) after this vacation.
“Eternity” has an uncomplicated premise that becomes a little more complex because of how well the principal characters are written. Olsen gives the standout performance in the cast because of all the wide range of emotions that Joan feels and expresses throughout this story. Joan has to choose between an eternity where she can find out what life would be like during a marriage that was cut short, an eternity where she can continue in an imperfect but happy marriage that she already knows very well, or she can make another eternity choice that doesn’t involve spending her eternity with Larry or Luke.
Teller’s nuanced performance as Larry succeeds in showing that Larry has a lot more in his inner life than being just a “regular guy.” Larry is clearly meant to be the most “relatable” character in “Eternity.” Turner gives a solid performance as Luke, who isn’t just a “pretty face” but has a lot of passion and thoughtful romance to offer to Joan. “Eternity” has some laugh-out-loud moments and some tender emotional scenarios, as Joan spends time with Luke and Larry to make her decision. Larry and Luke also have a few moments where they get to know each other better in this purgatory environment.
Although it’s very believable that Joan was in love with Larry and Luke when she was married to each of them, it’s never believable that Anna and Ryan used to be lovers. “Eternity” tries hard to convince viewers that Anna and Ryan still have sexual tension with each other, but Anna and Ryan come across more like platonic “frenemies” rather than people who ever had a romantic interest in each other. However, Randolph and Early have great comedic timing as Anna and Ryan, since the purpose of Anna and Ryan is mostly to be the movie’s “comic relief” characters.
“Eternity” is not a manipulative film that tries to be all things to all people. The dialogue is often witty and incisive but never preachy or overly judgmental. Although a few parts of the movie feel repetitive, when it comes to Joan dragging out the time that she takes to make her decision, “Eternity” keeps viewers guessing about what choice Joan will make. And when Joan makes her final decision, “Eternity” unapologetically celebrates it. It’s a movie that takes an optimistic view about true love and how life choices—even if they are mistakes—are still worth learning from in anyone’s journey of being honest about the difference between what we want versus what we need.
A24 will release “Eternity” in U.S. cinemas on November 26, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on December 23, 2025.
Pictured clockwise, from left: Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Jacobi Jupe and Olivia Lynes in “Hamnet” (Photo by Agata Grzybowska/Focus Features)
Culture Representation: Taking place in England, from 1580 to 1599, the dramatic film “Hamnet” (based on the novel of the same name) features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Against the wishes of his parents, playwright William Shakespeare marries a mysterious woman named Agnes, they become parents to three children, and they experience a tragedy and deep-seated grief when one of the children dies and becomes the inspiration for Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
Culture Audience: “Hamnet” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, filmmaker Chloé Zhao, movies about William Shakespeare and his family, and well-made dramas about family members cope with grief.
Jacobi Jupe and Paul Mescal in “Hamnet” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)
Superbly acted and artistically filmed, the drama “Hamnet” is a captivating version of the novel about how William Shakespeare and his wife coped with the death of their son. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal give stellar and heart-wrenching performances. And although the movie takes place in the 1500s, its themes are timeless.
Directed by Chloé Zhao (who co-wrote the “Hamnet” screenplay with Maggie O’Farrell), “Hamnet” is based on O’Farrell’s 2020 novel “Hamnet.” The movie had its world premiere at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival and made the rounds at several other film festivals in 2025. At the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, “Hamnet” won the People’s Choice Award, the festival’s top prize. “Hamnet” takes place in England, where the movie was filmed on location in the county of Herefordshire.
“Hamnet” is inspired by real people and real events, although some elements have been changed for the fictional parts of the story. In real life, William Shakespeare was married to a woman named Anne Hathaway. Anne Hathaway is also the name of a famous Oscar-winning American actress who was born in 1982. In “Hamnet,” Shakespeare’s wife is named Agnes.
A significant change from the “Hamnet” book that’s in the movie is William Shakespeare’s name is actually said in the movie, whereas the book avoids mentioning his name. The movie also mentions the name of Stratford-upon-Avon (whose name is not explicitly mentioned in the book), the town where Shakespeare and his family famously lived. He also spent a lot of time in London, as depicted in the “Hamnet” book and movie. For the purposes of this review, the real people are referred to by their last names, while the characters in the movie are referred to by their first names.
“Hamnet” (which takes place from 1580 to 1599) begins by showing how the lives of William Shakespeare (played by Mescal) and Agnes (played by Buckley) diverge and intertwine. When they first meet, William is a Latin tutor for children in an affluent family. He reluctantly has this job because his father John Shakespeare (played by David Wilmot) owes money to the students’ father.
William has taken this job to help John pay off the debt. But what William really wants to do with his life is be a playwright. John thinks this is a foolish career ambition, and he frequently insults William for being overeducated but “wortheless.” John’s mother Mary (played by Emily Watson) isn’t verbally abusive to William, but she also has high expectations for him. She knows that he’s a talented writer, but she thinks he should choose a more sensible profession.
Agnes is the eldest child in a large family where her mother died when Agnes was about 9 or 10 years old. Agnes has a loyal and throughtful brother named Bartholomew (played by Joe Alwyn), who is the closest thing she’s had to a best friend for her entire life. Her father, a sheep farmer who is not seen in the movie, remarried years ago. He has four children with current wife Joan (played by Justine Mitchell): two sons (played by Zac Wishart and James Lintern) and two daughters (played by Eva Wishart and Effie Linnen), who are all seen briefly in the movie.
Agnes has a reputation for being a free-spirit and a loner who likes to spend a lot of time in the woods, where she communes with nature. There has been longtime gossip in the community that Agnes’ mother was some type of forest witch whose supernatural powers were inherited by Agnes. “Hamnet” shows hints that this speculation could be true.
At the very least, Agnes is highly intuitive, superstitious and firmly believes that the forest is a magical place that has healing abilities. She often sleeps outside in the woods. One of the things she also likes to do in the woods is take care of a pet falcon. It’s one of the first things that William sees Agnes doing when their eyes meet and they are instantly smitten with each other.
When it comes to courting Agnes, William moves quickly and uses an effective pickup line when he first talks with Agnes. After he asks Agnes what her name is, she coyly refuses to tell him. Williams says that Agnes will tell him her name after he kisses her. And then, he kisses her, and his prediction comes true. Soon after he meets Agnes, William quits his tutor job by simply leaving in the middle of a teaching session and never coming back.
Agnes and William fall in love and have a whirlwind romance, which is breezed through in the movie with scenes of them frolicking in the woods and then having sexual hookups in places like a wood shed. It isn’t long before William tells Agnes that he’s “handfasted” (engaged) to her, and they find out that she’s pregnant. William wants to marry Agnes, even though he knows both of their families won’t approve.
It’s never a question that William and Agnes are in love with each other. Agnes’ family is worried that low-income William won’t be able to financially support a family. William’s parents are concerned because Agnes isn’t the type of woman they pictured their son marrying, and they think he’s too young to get married. What the movie doesn’t mention is that in real life, Shakespeare was 18 and Hathaway was 26 when they got married. This type of age gap between a younger husband and an older wife was very unusual then, as it is now.
In “Hamnet,” there’s some family drama (mainly from William’s skeptical parents) before it’s decided that Bartholomew should be the one to approve whether or not Agnes and William can get married. Barthlomew and Agnes have a heart-to-heart talk, where he asks her what she sees in this “pasty-faced” impoverished writer. Agnes tells Bartholmew that William is brilliant and has a lot to offer with his artistic writing.
Bartholomew sees how happy Agnes is and approves of the marriage. William and Agnes get married in 1562. And soon afterward, she gives birth to their first child: a daughter named Susannah. Agnes gives birth alone in the woods, just the way that Agnes wanted it to happen.
Three years later, in 1565, Agnes gives birth to twins: son Hamnet and daughter Judith. Mary and two midwives prevent Agnes from giving birth in the woods and insist that Agnes give birth in the family home where Agnes lives. Agnes is certain that not being able to give birth in the woods will bring a curse on the children, but she’s outnumbered and held back by the other women. This childbirth is more difficult because Judith nearly dies from an unnamed respiratory condition, which Judith has for the rest of her life.
“Hamnet” shows that William and Agnes have a happy marriage and are loving and attentive parents to their children. Eldest child Susannah (played by Bodhi Rae Breathnach) is more serious than her playful twin siblings Hamnet (played by Jacobi Jupe) and Judith (played by Olivia Lynes), who like to do things like dress up in each other’s clothes as pranks. Because Hamnet is the only son in the family, he has a special bond with William, who tells Hamnet that Hamnet can be in William’s plays when Hamnet grows up.
Early in the marriage, Agnes sensed that William was getting frustrated and restless with his stalled writing career. And so, she made the difficult decision to send him to London, where he had the best chance of getting recognition and payment for his plays. This decision was frowned-upon by traditional Mary, who thinks that Agnes needs to have a husband living full-time in the family home, in order to properly raise a family.
As the world now knows, Shakespeare did indeed become a successful playwright and is considered to be the most legendary playwright of all time. Although he spent a lot of time in London (where Agnes did not want to move because she thought the London climate would be bad for Judith’s respiratory condition), in “Hamnet,” William is shown going back to his family home in Stratford-on-Avon as often as he could.
The tragedy of Hamnet dying at 11 years old, in 1596 (the movie depicts Hamnet as being a victim of the bubonic plague), is often excruciating to watch in the movie. Jupe’s wonderfully impactful acting as the adorable Hamnet is one of the reasons why Hamnet’s death hits hard. In her performance of a grieving Agnes, Buckley reaches deep inside a despairing mother’s soul and gives heart-piercing screams and tortured stares of inconsolable grief.
Mescal’s coveys a lot with emotions in his expressively haunting eyes in how William copes with the death of Hamnet. After Hamnet dies, the movie becomes even more about Agnes, as William is away and channels his grief into his work. The results of William’s grief would include the play “Hamlet,” starring an eager young actor named Hamnet (played by Noah Jupe, an older brother of Jacobi Jupe in real life), who bears a striking resemblance to the deceased Hamnet.
If there’s any shortcoming to “Hamnet,” it’s in how this 125-minute movie’s screenplay truncates or rushes through the Shakespeare family’s life in some ways. For example, except for Agnes’ brother Bartholomew, the siblings of William and Agnes are briefly seen and then are never seen again. Where are these siblings when William and Agnes are grieving over the death of their son? Don’t expect the movie to answer those questions.
Depsite these minor narrative flaws, the direction, acting, cinematography, production design, costume design and music score for “Hamnet” are all top-notch. Max Ricthter’s music score is one of the particular standouts for how it perfectly sweeps viewers up in the emotions of the scene, in addition to being very memorable music that will stay with viewers long after the movie is over. Ultimately, “Hamnet” impressively depicts the sobering realities of life’s temporary nature but also celebrates the enduring nature of genuine family love.
Focus Features will release “Hamnet” in select U.S. cinemas on November 26, 2025, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on December 5, 2025. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on November 16, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Germany and Luxembourg (and briefly in Austria, the United States, and Italy) from 1945 to 1946, the dramatic film “Nuremberg” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley is summoned to Germany to evaluate Nazi leader Hermann Göring (who was Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command), before Göring goes on trial for war crimes.
Culture Audience: “Nuremberg” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and historical dramas about what happened to Nazi war criminals after the end of World War II.
Richard E. Grant, Michael Shannon, Mark O’Brien and Rami Malek in “Nuremberg” (Photo by Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures Classics)
The 2025 drama “Nuremberg” won’t be considered a classic, but it’s a solid depiction of the prosecution of Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring and his evaluation by American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley. Good performances outweigh some phony-looking “only in a movie” moments and occasionally sluggish pacing. The “Nuremberg” cast is a little overstuffed with many key supporting characters who are underdeveloped. However, the movie offers a unique and well-acted angle of looking at the Nuremberg Trials from a psychological perspective.
Written and directed by James Vanderbilt, “Nuremberg” had its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival and made the rounds at several other film festivals in 2025, including the Zurich Film Festival and AFI Fest.” The movie is based on Jack El-Hai’s 2013 non-fiction book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.” The 2025 version of “Nuremberg” is one of several movies that cover some or all aspects of the Nuremberg Trials that began in Nuremberg, Germany, on November 20, 1945, and ended on October 1, 1946.
The Nuremberg Trials had 24 defendants accused of Nazi war crimes. “Nuremberg” focuses only on the prosecution and trial of Göring, who was the highest-ranking Nazi official after Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945. For the purposes of this review, the real people will be referred to by their last names, while the characters in the movie will be referred to by their first names. “Nuremberg” takes place in Germany and Luxembourg (and briefly in Austria, the United States, and Italy) from 1945 to 1946. The movie was actually filmed in Budapest, Hungary.
“Nuremberg” begins with a scene that takes place on May 7, 1945, in Austria, shortly after the end of World War II when Nazi Germany and other nations in the Axis forces were defeated. American soldiers are patrolling the area (one of the soldiers is seen urinating on an underground bunker trap door with a Nazi swastika symbol) when the soldiers stop a Mercedes that has the audacity to still have a Nazi flag on display. The soldiers stop the Mercedes as the car’s driver (played by Ádám Varga) waves a white piece of fabric (torn from the dress of a girl in the back seat), as a show of surrender.
There are two passengers in the car’s back seat: Hermann Göring (played by Russell Crowe) and Hermann’s 9-year-old daughter Edda Göring (played by Fleur Bremmer), but only Hermann gets out of the car. As an indication of Hermann’s arrogance, he doesn’t show any deference to the soldiers. Instead, he asks the soldiers to get his luggage.
Meanwhile, Robert H. Jackson (played by Michael Shannon), an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, has come up with a unprecedented idea to prosecute Nazi war criminals: Put the accused in international trials prosecuted and judged by representatives from the Allied Forces that won World War II: the United States France, the United Kingdom, and Russia. There would be four international judges representing each nation.
Robert’s personal secretary Elsie Douglas (played by Wrenn Schmidt) is skeptical. “It’s a logistical nightmare,” Elsie says to Robert about this ambitious idea. Robert replies, “I know, but it has to be done.” Robert also wants these trials to be filmed for historical purposes: “The world needs to know what these men did.”
The U.S. government has already set plans in motion to prosecute these war criminals. However, the movie shows that Robert has to rally support for these groundbreaking trials so that the trials would not be considered violations of international laws. The movie depicts him as coming up with a clever strategy of getting an endorsement from Pope Pius XII (played by Giuseppe Cederna) to have these trials.
Robert goes to Vatican City to meet with the Pope, who says at first the he doesn’t want the Catholic Church to get involved in political matters. But then, Robert guilt trips the Pope by reminding him that the Catholic Church stood by and did nothing during most of the Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust. Robert tells Pope Pius XII that the Pope’s endorsement of the trials would be a chance for the Catholic Church to redeem itself and be on the right side of history. The Pope agrees and endorses the trials.
Meanwhile, Douglas Kelley (played by Rami Malek), a U.S. Army psychiatrist, is seen on a train going to Luxembourg. Douglas has been summoned for a top-secret assignment that he will get details about when he arrives in Luxembourg. While on the train, bachelor Douglas flirts with a bachelorette named Lila McQuaide (played by Lydia Peckham), who will cross paths again with Douglas later in the story.
Lila, who is a character fabricated for the movie, has a job that Douglas will find out later will directly impact his involvement in this top-secret assignment. Because the character of Lila is fictional, her purpose in the story looks a little too fake and contrived. Almost nothing is told about Doug and his personal life in this movie, which depicts him as someone who makes work his top priority.
When Douglas arrives at the train station, he is greeted by Howard “Howie” Triest (played by Leo Woodall), a German American sergeant in the U.S. Army. Howie is friendly and helpful when he tells Douglas that he will be Douglas’ German translator. Howie says he doesn’t have the authority to tell Douglas what Douglas has been summoned to do in this assignment.
Douglas and Howie go to the Grand Hotel Mondorf in Luxembourg. The hotel (whose code name is Ash Can) is the top-secret location where some of the worst Nazi war criminals are being imprisoned before they go on trial. Hermann is among these prisoners. The other Nazi prisoners featured in the movie are Dr. Robert Ley (played by Tom Keune), Karl Dönitz (played by Peter Jordan) and Julius Streicher (played by Dieter Riesle).
Douglas then finds out from gruff and stern U.S. Army colonel named Burton C. Andrus (played by John Slattery) that Douglas has been hired to do psychiatric evaluations of these war criminals. Burton will be Douglas’ supervisor. The movie shows the majority of Douglas’ psychiatric evaluations being done on Hermann, with brief montages of Douglas spending time with Robert, Karl and Julius.
Hermann is considered to be the craftiest and most manipulative of all the Nazi war prisoners. At first, Douglas isn’t sure he is the right person for this job of giving someone like Hermann a psychiatric evaluation. But after he meets with Hermann and sees the inevitable mind games that will take place, Douglas becomes excited about what type of impact his psychiatric work will have on this historical trial. Douglas also has a self-serving agenda: Douglas wants to write a book about this experience. He’s certain the book will be an international bestseller.
Douglas finds out that even though Hermann is very smug and cocky, Hermann has way of charming people to make himself seem less harmless than he really is. Hermann also a few weaknesses that Douglas uses to his advantage. First, Hermann is addicted to painkiller dihydrocodeine, a derivative of morphine. Second, Hermann is self-conscious about being overweight.
Before Douglas met Hermann, Douglas was told that Hermann cannot communicate in English and can only communicate in German. However, Douglas suspects that Hermann can understand English, so he tests this theory by saying to Hermann in English that the prison guards make derogatory comments about Hermann because the guards think Hermann is fat. Hermann flinches ever so slightly, which is a giveaway to Douglas that Hermann is only pretending to not know English. Douglas knows he really hit a vanity nerve with Hermann when Hermann begins doing vigorous exercises in order to lose weight.
Eventually, Douglas confronts Hermann about Hermann’s language deception. Hermann admits he knows English, and he subsequently communicates with Douglas in English and in German. Hermann admires Douglas’ obvious intelligence, but Hermann still thinks he’s smarter than everyone else.
Hermann is also convinced that he will be found not guilty during his trial, and he intends to testify at the trial. He has been charged with four major counts: (1) crimes against peace; (2) war crimes; (3) crimes of humanity; and (4) conspiracy to commit those crimes. Hermann’s “not guilty” defense (the same defense used by many of the Nazi war criminals on trial) was that he was just following orders like a German patriot. He claimed that he was not directly involved in the crimes that he was charged with for this trial.
Howie privately tells Douglas that he can barely contain his disgust when he’s around Hermann and the other Nazis. Howie is confused by how Douglas can treat Hermann with a certain amount of politeness. Douglas says it’s all a manipulation tactic so that Douglas can earn Hermann’s trust.
Douglas tells Howie to look at the big-picture goals of these psychiatric evaluations and why it relates to how the Nazis were able to create the Holocaust genocide: “If we can psychologically define evil, we can make sure that something like this can never happen again.” Later, Leo reveals a secret to Douglas about Leo’s personal history that changes Douglas’ perspective of Leo.
“Nuremberg” portrays Douglas as becoming obsessed with outwitting Hermann. He sometimes appears to get too chummy with Hermann, which makes many of Douglas’ colleagues uncomfortable. Douglas also has clashes with supervising colonel Burton, who thinks Douglas is often insubordinate.
Something unexpected happens (which won’t be revealed in this review) that is a setback to the prosecution, and Burton blames Douglas for it. As a result, Burton brings in Dr. Gustav Gilbert (played by Colin Hanks) to be a second psychiatrist to evaluate the Nazi prisoners. Predictably, Gustav and Douglas have conflicts because Douglas wants to be considered the lead psychiatrist, but Gustav wants to be treated as an equal.
“Nuremberg” is at its most fascinating in the private conversations between Douglas and Hermann. These conversations show depths and layers to these characters’ personalities, as well as skilled acting from Malek and Crowe, whose characters are also playing roles in this game of one man trying to outsmart the other. Hermann’s loving communications with his wife Emmy (played by Lotte Verbeek) and daughter Edda are examples of how many Nazis could lead double lives as kind and generous to their families but cruel and homicidal to people whom the Nazis want to destroy.
“Nuremberg” has a somewhat clunky transition to the courtroom scenes, where the character of Douglas takes a back seat during the trial of Hermann. Rudolph Hess (played by Andreas Pietschmann), a high-ranking Nazi official who was transferred from another prison for the Nuremberg Trials, makes a brief appearance in the movie. Hermann becomes the “star witness” of his own trial, which took place for 218 days, from November 1945 to March 1946. However, what has the most emotional impact in the movie is the real-life footage and photos of the suffering and genocide that took place at the Nazi-created death camps.
“Nuremberg” was made by American production companies. And it shows, because the focus is mainly on the prosecution team members from English-speaking countries, with the Americans being the portrayed as the most important prosecutors. The prosecution team depicted in the movie consists of Robert representing the United States; David Maxwell-Fyfe (played by Richard E. Grant), an assistant prosecutor from the United Kingdom; and John Amen (played by Mark O’Brien), a U.S. Army colonel who was the Nuremberg prison chief interrogator during the trials.
The real-life chief prosecutors representing Russia (Roman A. Rudenko) and France (François de Menthon, who was replaced in January 1946 by Auguste Champetier de Ribes) are diminished from this “Nuremberg” movie because these prosecutors get brief mentions but no significant speaking roles. To put it bluntly: The Americans are the biggest heroes in this movie. Although it’s a patriotic slant, it’s not entirely accurate because the Nuremberg Trials and the Allied Forces’ victory in World War II were truly international efforts and not just from English-speaking countries.
By sidelining the Douglas character during the courtroom scenes, “Nuremberg” gets a little disjointed. The trial performances are acted skillfully, with Crowe stealing every scene that he’s in during Hermann’s trial. But compared to the 1947 documentary “Nuremberg Trials” or the 1961 classic drama “Justice at Nuremberg,” the 2025 “Nuremberg” movie looks like an inferior Hollywood version. It doesn’t make “Nuremberg” a bad movie, but it doesn’t make it an outstanding movie either.
The movie’s total running time is 148 minutes, which really isn’t enough time to do a comprehensive depiction of what happened in real life. However, the last 15 minutes of “Nuremberg” are among the best moments in the movie because it shows what happened to Douglas after the Nuremberg Trials. This is the section of the movie that most viewers will be unfamiliar with because the real Dr. Kelley is not a well-known historical figure to most people in the general public. “Nuremberg” is a compelling story about a psychiatrist who delved into the twisted mind of a notorious Nazi, but it’s also a cautionary tale of what human atrocities can occur in the name of fanatical and hateful patriotism.
Sony Pictures Classics released “Nuremberg” in U.S. cinemas on November 7, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of the United States, from 1989 to 2010, the dramatic film “Christy” (a biopic of American former boxing champ Christy Martin) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African American and Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: While Martin was at the top of her career, she was also trapped in an abusive marriage to her coach/manager, and she became addicted to cocaine.
Culture Audience: “Christy” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Martin, the movie’s headliners and formulaic but well-acted celebrity biopics.
Ben Foster and Sydney Sweeney in “Christy” (Photo courtesy of Black Bear Pictures)
The choppy drama Christy is partly a boxing biopic and partly a true crime story about Christy Martin. It’s a showcase for the versatile acting talents of the cast members, but the narrative has some hokey stereotypes usually found in made-for-TV movies. The uneven pacing for the story (including a fairly abrupt ending) doesn’t ruin the movie, but it lowers the quality of the movie, which is a mixed bag of impactful moments and maudlin predictability.
Directed by David Michôd (who co-wrote the “Christy” screenplay with Mirrah Foulkes), “Christy” had its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie is a fairly ambitious project where Sydney Sweeney plays the role of Martin from when Martin was in her early 20s to when Martin was in her early 40s. Martin was born on June 12, 1968, in Mullens, West Virginia. Unfortunately, the mediocre hairstyling and makeup for “Christy” don’t make the aging process look believable for the Christy Martin character in the movie.
“Christy” viewers have to watch Sweeney wear several obvious wigs (many of them ill-fitting), while the movie’s makeup department didn’t do a very good job to realistically age the character. As Martin, Sweeney looks like she’s in her mid-to-late 20s for most of the movie. It’s a bit distracting for people who know that the story’s timeline is supposed to take place over a period of about 21 years.
“Christy” is told in chronological order, from 1989 to 2010. The movie has a captioned epilogue that mentions what happened in Martin’s life between 2010 and 2025, when the movie was released. For the purposes of this review, the real Christy Martin will be referred to by her last name, while the Christy Martin in the movie will be referred to by her first name.
“Christy” begins by showing with a voiceover of Christy saying, “Someone told me once that I fight like I was trying to destroy everyone who did me wrong … Maybe it’s true.” Christy, whose birth name was Christy Salters, is then shown at about age 21, when she was living in Itmann, West Virginia. At the time, Christy had a basketball scholarship at Concord College in West Virginia.
Christy proudly shows her brother Randy Salters (played by Coleman Pedigo) the $300 she recently won in a Tough Man boxing competition. “Easiest 300 bucks I ever made,” Christy brags. Randy is happy for Christy and proud of her athletic accomplishments. Their mother Joyce Salters (played by Merritt Wever) has the opposite reaction: She’s horrified that Christy has taken an interest in boxing.
Joyce is a religious conservative who’s also displeased about Christy being romantically involved with Christy’s basketball teammate Rosie (played by Jess Gabor) because Joyce firmly believes that homosexuality or queerness is a sin that can send people to hell. Christy and Rosie are mostly closeted in a relationship that no one fully acknowledges but it’s an open secret. (In real life, the Rosie character was Sherry Lusk, a basketball teammate whom Martin began dating when they were in high school.)
Joyce speaks softly, but she’s the domineering and controlling parent in the Salters household. Her husband Johnny Salters (played by Ethan Embry) is also a religious conservative, but he’s not as harsh, judgmental and image-conscious as Joyce is. However, Johnny almost always goes along with whatever Joyce wants.
During a family dinner, Joyce gives this order to Christy about Christy’s relationship with Rosie: “We don’t want you to see her anymore. What you’re doing is not normal. We want you to have a normal and happy life.” Joyce also suggests that Christy and Rosie get counseling from a priest as a way to convince Christy and Rosie to break up.
A conflicted and troubled Christy pours her energy into boxing and getting into other physical fights. At school, Christy gets into trouble for punching a basketball teammate who calls Christy a “fucking lesbian” while the team is having a practice session. Joyce discourages Christy from boxing because she thinks it isn’t ladylike and because women’s boxing was not considered a professional sport in the late 1980s.
However, Joyce starts to change her mind when a Bristol, Tennessee-based boxing promoter named Larry Carrier (played by Bill Kelly) takes an interest in paying Christy to box. Larry offers Christy an all-expenses-paid trip to Bristol to fight in a boxing match where the prize is $5,000. Christy easily wins the boxing match.
After this boxing match, Larry tells Christy that a boxing coach/manager named James “Jim” Martin (played by Ben Foster) wants to meet Christy at a later date. Rosie has accompanied Christy to Bristol. Larry notices how Christy and Rosie are together and quickly figures out that Christy and Rosie are both queer. Jim tells Christy that Christy’s mother needs to accompany Christy on the trip to meet Jim because Jim is a “family-oriented person.” Larry says it in a way so Christy knows that Jim is homophobic, and Jim won’t accept Christy being openly queer.
The first time that Christy meets Jim in a boxing gym, he’s standoffish and rude to her. He doesn’t take her seriously because Christy is a lot shorter than he thought she would be. And he hasn’t seen her fight yet. As a test, Jim has a male boxer do a mock boxing match with Christy. Jim quietly tells the male boxer to “hurt her” because Jim doesn’t want anything to do with Christy. You can easily predict what happens next: Christy ends up knocking out her male opponent.
The more Jim sees Christy box, the more he takes an interest in her and the type of money he can make from her boxing talent. Jim, who is 25 years older than Christy, charms Joyce by giving the impression that he will be a protective and conservative father figure to Christy. Jim convinces Christy to live with him in Bristol while he becomes her coach and her manager. Around the same time, Rosie and Christy drift apart because Rosie stays in West Virginia and begins dating a man.
Jim orders Christy to grow her hair and wear pink boxing outfits, so she looks more “feminine.” It isn’t long before Jim abuses his authority and power over Christy and gets sexually involved with her. By 1991, Jim and Christy are married because he convinces her that he’s the only one who can make her a rich and famous boxing champion. Jim tells Christy that it would be easier to achieve that goal if they were married.
“Christy” then goes through the usual motions showing the “rise, fall, and rise again” story arc that is typical in most celebrity biopics. Christy wins most of her boxing matches and becomes America’s first famous female professional boxer. Jim and Christy eventually move to Florida and settle in the city of Apopka.
The movie is more about how Christy became a boxing champion in spite of Jim, not because of him. Jim is hateful, abusive and controlling in all the worst ways. It also comes as no surprise when the movie shows he was also stealing money from Christy.
There are some lurid aspects to this story, such as when Jim forces Christy to do homemade porn videos, which he uses to blackmail her. The movie also hints that Jim became Christy’s pimp who would sell her to male fans who wanted to do erotic boxing and other sexual activities with her. There’s nothing too explicit in the movie, but there’s enough in the movie for viewers to figure out that it happened.
Christy and Jim’s toxic marriage is also plagued by their cocaine addiction. The movie depicts her account that Jim was the one who introduced her to cocaine and encouraged her to heavily use the drug. And as this dysfunctional marriage continues, the abuse gets worse, until it spirals out of control on the night of November 23, 2010. Even though what happened that night made big news that led to an arrest and trial, this review won’t say what happened, in case “Christy” viewers who don’t know the details might want to see the movie to find out.
Once the “Christy” biopic takes a turn into the true crime aspect of her life, it becomes somewhat like a Lifetime movie, with a very rushed ending where the victim’s recovery is presented as too quick to be an entirely accurate depiction of what happened in real life. However, Foster’s portrayal of the evil and creepy Jim is very unsettling and apparently so realistic, the real Christy Martin said she couldn’t be on the “Christy” film set when Foster was there because his depiction was so similar to the real person. (The real Christy Martin has a cameo in the film, as a hallway bystander who wishes Christy good luck on the way to a boxing match.)
Sweeney’s portrayal of Christy has a lot of grit and effective emotional moments. The boxing matches and the training are shown as “checklist” events in her life, rather than immersive cinematic experiences. Because Christy wins so many of her matches (often by knockouts), the movie’s only real suspense in her fights is for a 2003 boxing match when Christy fights Laila Ali (played by Naomi Graham), who is younger, taller and physically stronger than Christy. It’s the only boxing match in the movie where Christy genuinely is afraid and reluctant, but Jim pushes her into it because they need the money.
The boxing matches in the movie are adequately filmed. However, “Christy” is not convincing that Christy has changed much physically during the more than 20 years that this story takes place. And that’s a problem for a movie about a boxer who’s supposed to go from her early 20s to her early 40s in the story.
Sweeney’s performance is skilled at showing emotions but not very skilled in showing the natural maturity that takes place when most people evolve from their 20s to 40s. Even if Christy has some arrested development in her maturity, she was undoubtedly changed physically and emotionally because of her drug addiction, the abuse she got from her husband, and the effects of her long boxing career. However, the movie makes Christy look like she’s physically and emotionally stuck in her mid-to-late 20s. The movie could have also taken a more realistic approach in how Christy’s boxing injuries affected her.
An early scene in “Christy” is an example of the movie’s uneven filmmaking. Christy and Jim meet with notoriously flamboyant boxing promoter Don King (played by a scene-stealing Chad L. Coleman) when Christy is still an unknown boxer. Jim brings a VHS cassette tape to show some highlights of Christy’s boxing matches, but the tape doesn’t work on the VCR in Don’s office. It’s a very sitcom-type moment because the scene—especially Coleman’s performance—is played for laughs. The scene, although well-acted, sticks out like a sore thumb in this very serious movie.
Christy is able to convince Don to sign her, just by doing a few mock boxing jabs in his office. And he comes up with the idea to give her the nickname the Coal Miner’s Daughter (inspired by Loretta Lynn’s 1971 “Coal Miner’s Daughter” hit song) when Don finds out that Christy’s father really was a coal miner. It’s understandable why a movie would condense all of this in one meeting, but it all looks so fake in the way that this scene is written.
However, “Christy” does a good job of showing how someone can feel trapped in an abusive relationship, especially if the abuser has a lot of power over the abused person and isolates the abused person from loved ones. Years into the marriage, Christy asks her mother for help to get away from Jim, but her mother “gaslights” Christy by saying Christy is the problem in the marriage. Jim manipulates Joyce by convincing Joyce that Christy has become a flaky and pathological liar because Christy has a drug addiction.
Christy’s only true confidantes in the movie are Rosie (who is in and out of Christy’s life) and a boxer named Lisa Holewyne (played by Katy O’Brian), who lost to Christy in one of their high-profile boxing matches. Lisa, who is openly a lesbian, is there for Christy during the lowest point in Christy’s life. O’Brian gives a good performance, but there’s not enough shown or told about Lisa for her to be a well-rounded character in the movie.
“Christy” gives a general overview of Christy’s career and personal life in the way that a biopic tends to do when it’s limited to telling the story in a time frame that’s less than three hours. (“Christy” clocks in at 135 minutes.) The movie doesn’t give enough information about who else knew about Jim’s abuse at the time that it was happening.
Very little is depicted about how the business of women’s professional boxing evolved from the 1990s to the 2010s. There’s a scene where Christy fakes being a heavier weight by putting a lot of coins in her pockets, in her shoes, and in her underwear before she gets weighed, so that she can qualify for a boxing match for a heavier weight class. It’s hard to imagine any professional boxer being able to get away with that trick nowadays.
Because the real Christy Martin has a memoir (2022’s “Fighting for Survival: My Journey Through Boxing Fame, Abuse, Murder, and Resurrection”) and a 2021 documentary (Netflix’s “Untold: Deal With the Devil”), people who are familiar with both of these non-fiction projects will know that “Christy” leaves out a lot of information that could’ve been in the movie. (For example, the “Christy” movie doesn’t mention that Christy has gone public about being sexually abused as a child, and Jim’s longtime abuses were much worse than what’s shown in the movie.) “Christy” is worthwhile as a story of inspirational empowerment. But as a biopic, it falls a little bit on the shallow side that’s held afloat by good performances.
Black Bear Pictures will release “Christy” in U.S. cinemas on November 7, 2025. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on October 27, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City on March 31, 1943, the dramatic film “Blue Moon” (based on real letters written between Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart and an unidentified young woman) features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Lorenz Hart experiences highs and lows on the night that his former songwriting partner Richard Rodgers has immediate success with the musical “Oklahoma!,” while a young woman, whom Hart is infatuated with, tells him how she feels about their relationship.
Culture Audience: “Blue Moon” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, filmmaker Richard Linklater, Broadway artists of the 20th century, and well-acted movies about artists who have to come to terms with being past their prime.
Andrew Scott and and Ethan Hawke in “Blue Moon” (Photo by Sabrina Lantos/Sony Pictures Classics)
“Blue Moon” is an exquisite, bittersweet drama about a night in the life of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart in 1943, when his career and personal life were in a downward spiral. Ethan Hawke gives an outstanding performance in this gem of a movie. “Blue Moon” (which takes place in mostly one location) could easily have been a stage play, but there are cinematic touches and visuals that make this story a much richer experience as a movie.
Directed by Richard Linklater and written by Robert Kaplow, “Blue Moon” had its world premiere at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival, where “Blue Moon” co-star Andrew Scott (who plays Richard Rodgers in the movie) won the prize for Best Supporting Performance. “Blue Moon” subsequently screened at other film festivals in 2025, including the Telluride Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival.
“Blue Moon” takes place in New York City, on the night of March 31, 1943. The movie was actually filmed in Ireland. Although the “Blue Moon” screenplay is an original screenplay, it’s inspired by real-life letters that Hart wrote to an unidentified woman, whose first name was Elizabeth, when he was in his late 40s and she was in her early 20s. For the purposes of this review, the real people are referred to by their last names, while the characters in the movie are referred to by their first names.
Before the main story begins, “Blue Moon” opens with a flash-forward to November 1943, when an inebriated Lorenz “Larry” Hart (played by Ethan Hawke) is seen stumbling in a dark alley on a rainy night. As he lies down on the ground, a voiceover narration of a news radio report says that he died of pneumonia. It’s implied that he caught pneumonia from being out on this rainy night. (In real life, Hart died of pneumonia on November 22, 1943. He was 48.)
A caption on screen then shows what happened to Lorenz seven months earlier, on the night of March 31, 1943. It’s the opening night of the Broadway musical “Oklahoma!,” the first project from Lorenz’s estranged songwriting partner Richard “Dick” Rodgers (played by Scott) since Richard temporarily parted ways with Lorenz. Richard, who is a music composer, has a new lyricist for a songwriting partner—Oscar Hammerstein (played by Simon Delaney)—who is his collaborator on “Oklahoma!” The duo of Rodgers and Hammerstein would go on to become the most successful Broadway musical songwriting duo of all time, with hits such as “Oklahoma!,” “The Sound of Music,” The King and I,” “South Pacific” and “Carousel.”
Conversations in “Blue Moon” later reveal that Richard parted ways with Lorenz because Richard grew tired of Lorenz being unreliable and erratic, due to Lorenz’s alcoholism. Richard now wants a songwriting partner who’s able to work during regular office hours and whom he doesn’t have to worry about going missing for days at a time. The end of the partnership wasn’t completely permanent or entirely bitter—in real life, Rodgers and Hart resumed working together until Hart’s death—but this separation didn’t go as smoothly as Lorenz would like people to think it did.
Before the end of the partnership between Richard and Lorenz, they worked together for about 25 years and had Broadway musical hits such as “Pal Joey,” “The Boys from Syracuse,” “Babes in Arms” and “On Your Toes.” The Rodgers/Hart collaboration also resulted in classic songs such as “My Funny Valentine,” “Isn’t It Romantic?,” “With a Song in My Heart,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “Where or When,” “My Heart Stood Still,” “Manhattan,” “Bewitched,” “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” and “Blue Moon.” As time went on, it became apparent that the former duo also separated because of artistic differences. Lorenz prefers satire that could be controversial, while Richard wants to do more earnest and mainstream musicals.
Lorenz and Richard also have different lifestyles. Lorenz is a never-married bachelor who has no children, lives with his mother, and loves to party all night, with no strict work schedule. Richard is a married father who prefers to have a consistent work schedule during the day.
Lorenz’s sexuality is not explicitly identified in the movie, just like it wasn’t in real life. However, in the movie, Lorenz essentially says that he’s not heterosexual when he openly declares that he’s attracted to beauty, regardless of gender. His short height (reportedly about 5 feet tall) and vague sexual identity no doubt affected his love life.
On the night of “Oklahoma!’s” Broadway opening, Lorenz is sitting in a balcony of the St. James Theatre with his mother Frieda Hart (played by Anne Brogan) as they watch the show. Lorenz pretends to be enjoying himself, but he’s actually miserable when he’s watching this musical. (“Oklahoma!,” based on Lynn Riggs’ 1931 play “Green Grow the Lilacs,” is a love story set in 1906 Oklahoma, before it became a U.S. state.) Before the show ends, Lorenz excuses himself and heads over to Sardi’s, a restaurant/bar that is famous for being a hangout for people who work in theatrical stage productions. The rest of the movie’s story takes place at Sardi’s.
When Lorenz arrives at Sardi’s, the place is almost empty because it’s implied that almost everyone who’s anybody in Broadway is at the St. James Theatre for the “Oklahoma!” opening-night performance. Sardi’s will eventually fill up with people arriving from the performance, including Richard and Oscar. But before that happens, Lorenz goes on rants to anyone who’ll listen about how much he thinks “Oklahoma!” is a trite and hollow sell-out of a musical.
Lorenz says about “Oklahoma!” in one of this intellectual tirades: “The show is fraudulent on every possible level.” Lorenz admits that “Oklahoma!” is going to be a smash hit, but he also says he wouldn’t want to be associated with writing such a creatively weak musical. Lorenz says haughtily, “‘Oklahoma!’ is nostalgic for a world that never existed.” Lorenz also expresses annoyance that the musical’s title has an exclamation point at the end.
At this point in the night, the only people who are actually listening to Lorenz’s pretentious and sarcastic ramblings are bartender Eddie Barcadi (played by Bobby Cannavale) and piano player Morty “Knuckles” Rifkin (played by Jonah Lees), who is an aspiring musical composer. Morty uses the stage name Morty Rafferty and wants to meet Richard. During the course of the night, Lorenz gets a rude awakening that people would rather talk to Richard than talk to Lorenz.
Congratulations bouquets and vases of flowers start arriving at Sardi’s for the “Oklahoma!” creators. Lorenz somewhat flirts with the flower delivery guy named Troy (played by Giles Surridge), but Lorenz says Troy looks like he’s named Sven, so Lorenz calls him Sven. Lorenz invites Troy/Sven to a party that Lorenz says he’s having at his home that night. Troy/Sven thanks Lorenz for the invitation but says it in a way that indicates that this delivery guy is just being polite and has no intention of going to this party, where Lorenz would probably flirt with him some more.
There’s someone else who actually preoccupying 47-year-old Lorenz’s thoughts as his current “love interest.” Elizabeth Weiland (played by Margaret Qualley) is a 20-year-old statuesque blonde beauty, who is a sophomore at the Yale School of Fine Arts. Elizabeth is an aspiring actress whom Lorenz has been mentoring, and she is expected to meet up with Lorenz at Sardi’s later that night. Lorenz is completely infatuated with Elizabeth, but their relationship is strictly platonic. Lorenz tells bartender Eddie that his relationship with Elizabeth is “beyond sex.”
“I’m ambisexual,” Lorenz jokes to Eddie. “I can jerk off easily to either hand. But to be a writer, you have to be omnisexual. How can you give birth to the whole chorus of the world if the whole chorus of the world isn’t already deep inside you?” Lorenz also mentions that he likes to call Elizabeth “my irreplaceable Elizabeth.” Lorenz says he’s aware that Elizabeth’s mother (who might accompany Elizabeth to Sardi’s on this night) doesn’t approve and is suspicious of his relationship with Elizabeth.
A writer named E.B. White (played by Patrick Kennedy), who is at Sardi’s by himself, gets pulled into Lorenz’s conversation at the bar when Lorenz starts talking to him. Elizabeth, Richard and Oscar all eventually show up at Sardi’s. Lorenz’s attitude toward “Oklahoma!” then goes from scathing to praising, as he effusively compliments Richard and Oscar on their first musical together. It’s all a showbiz fakery game because Lorenz wants to work with Richard again to revive their musical “A Connecticut Yankee” with four or five new songs written by Lorenz and Richard.
“Blue Moon” is very effective in showing how Lorenz’s alcohol-fueled cockiness is a mask for his insecurities. These insecurities are like open wounds that get further exacerbated when he sees how his value as an artist is diminished, now that he is no longer Richard’s songwriting partner. Katherine greatly admires Lorenz. But is this adoration based on real friendship or social climbing? It’s impossible for Lorenz not to notice that Katherine eagerly reminds him that she wants Lorenz to introduce her to Richard.
To achieve the illusion that Lorenz is shorter than everyone else in the room, Hawke is often seen only from the waist up or sitting down. He also wore oversized costumes, and some of the production design is oversized. The makeup and hairstyling for the Lorenz character are fairly adequate, but the skull cap that Hawke wears in “Blue Moon” (to create the illusion of baldness) is very noticeable, especially if “Blue Moon” is seen on a big-enough screen.
Hawke’s captivating performance is really what matters more than how much he might or might not physically resemble Hart in the movie. Scott (who is British in real life) is also exemplary as Richard and has a pitch-perfect New York accent in his performance. Qualley does well in her role, but there’s not too much depth to the character of Katherine. Katherine’s biggest scene in the movie is when she tells Lorenz a long-winded story about being rejected by a Yale student she has a crush on named Cooper, who cut off contact with Katherine after she had a one-night stand with him. It’s in this scene that Katherine clearly states what type of relationship she wants with Lorenz.
“Blue Moon” has the benefit of a very talented cast, a fantastic screenplay and skillful direction. The movie’s heart and soul of “Blue Moon” can be found in Hawke’s performance. People who have no interest in 1940s American showbiz might have trouble connecting to this movie. The language and acting styles in “Blue Moon” are so indicative of the times, it’s like being transported back to the era in which the movie takes place. You don’t have to be a Broadway musical enthusiast to be impressed with “Blue Moon,” which is essentially about how self-destructive tendencies and showbiz fickleness can turn a celebrated star into a fading has-been.
Sony Pictures Classics released “Blue Moon” in select U.S. cinemas on October 17, 2025, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on October 24, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in 1950s England, the dramatic film “Hedda” (based on the play “Hedda Gabler”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Newlywed socialite Hedda Tesman, formerly known as Hedda Gabler, hosts a dinner party, where various manipulations and love triangles culminate in someone getting shot.
Culture Audience: “Hedda” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, the play on which the movie is based, and well-acted dramas that creatively re-imagine well-known classic stories.
Tessa Thompson, Nina Hoss and Imogen Poots in “Hedda” (Photo by Parisa Taghizadeh/Amazon Content Services)
Writer/director Nia DaCosta’s “Hedda” not only creatively re-imagines Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” play by changing the ending and some racial and gender dynamics, but this drama also skillfully captures how glamour can be a mask for ugly manipulation. The acting is above-average, although some of the performances look a little too self-conscious when they should’ve looked more natural. The movie takes some bold swings that don’t always hit their mark, but “Hedda” is worth watching, regardless if viewers know about the original “Hedda Gabler” story.
“Hedda” is one of several movie adaptations of Ibsen’s 1891 play “Hedda Gabler,” which has been made into countless stage productions. DaCosta’s “Hedda” (which had its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival) changes the story location from 1890s Norway to 1950s England. The basic premise of the story remains the same (a greedy socialite manipulates her husband and other people around her), but the tone of the movie is much more of a dark comedy and less tragic than the original “Hedda Gabler.”
DaCosta’s “Hedda” takes place over the course of 24 hours at a mansion in an unnamed city in England. “Hedda” was actually filmed at Flintham Hall, a stately manor built in the 10th century and located near a wooded bank of the River Trent in Nottinghamshire, England. This river plays a key role in certain parts of the story, particularly a “full circle” moment that is not in the “Hedda Gabler” play.
In the beginning of the movie, newlywed Hedda Tesman, formerly known as Hedda Gabler (played by Tessa Thompson), is being questioned by police investigators about someone getting shot at the mansion in the early-morning hours. The shooting took place after an all-night dinner party hosted at the mansion by Hedda and her ambitious academic husband George Tesman (played by Tom Bateman), who is currently an unemployed professor. George in this version of “Hedda” is madly in love with Hedda and is needy about her reciprocating that love.
The mansion used to be owned by aristocrat General Gabler, Hedda’s widower father, who was heavily in debt when he died. The mansion was put up for sale, but George borrowed money to buy the mansion and to grant Hedda’s wish to keep the mansion in the family. (Hedda is General Gabler’s only child.) George borrowed the money from predatory Judge Roland Brack (played by Nicholas Pinnock), who is a longtime bachelor friend of the Gabler family. Judge Brack is expecting George to pay back this debt after George finds a job.
Hedda is smirking and trying to look calm during this police interview. However, it’s obvious she has a lot to hide. The investigators want her to tell them everything that happened at the party, from the beginning. The rest of the movie is a flashback to the previous 24 hours. It’s eventually revealed in the movie if the person who was shot either died or survived.
The flashback part of the movie begins by showing Hedda standing stoically in the lake and submerged up to her head. She quickly gets out of the lake and goes back to the mansion when someone shouts that Eileen Lövborg (played by Nina Hoss) is on the telephone and wants to speak to Hedda, who seems elated that she’s gotten this phone call. Observant viewers will notice that when Hedda gets out of the lake, she drops several stones that she had put in her clothes. It’s an indication that she had intended to drown herself in the lake before getting this phone call.
Whatever suicidal thoughts Hedda might have been having are pushed aside as she almost breathlessly takes Eileen’s call. Hedda candidly tells Eileen, “I thought you never wanted to speak to me again.” Eileen has called to tell Hedda that Eileen has accepted Hedda’s invitation to a dinner party that Hedda and George will be hosting that evening. It’s an invitation that Hedda did not tell George about, but Hedda tells George only after Eileen accepts the invitation.
George isn’t thrilled that Eileen will be attending the party because Eileen has a reputation for being a drunk troublemaker who hangs out with other rowdy substance abusers. What George doesn’t know is that Hedda and Eileen had a torrid affair years before George and Hedda got married. In the original “Hedda Gabler” play and in other previous movie adaptations of the play, the third person in this love triangle was a man named Eilert Lövborg.
Eileen is an out-and-proud lesbian during a time when it was extremely rare for people to be openly queer. She is considered to be a brilliant non-fiction writer who squandered her potential because of her alcoholism. Eileen’s first book was a smash success. She has since sobered up and completed the manuscript for her second book, which she describes as a “sequel of sorts” to her first book. Eileen hopes her second book will be her spectacular comeback.
Not much is detailed about the love affair that Eileen and Hedda had, except that Hedda broke Eileen’s heart by deciding to end the relationship and pretending like it never even happened. Eileen had been hoping that she and Hedda would make a life together, but Hedda chose to marry George so that Hedda could present herself as a traditional, heterosexual society wife. Based on the way that Hedda acts in the movie, Hedda doesn’t really love George because Hedda is still in love with Eileen. The only thing that Hedda seems to love about George is whatever George can do to get Hedda what she wants.
During the course of the movie, conversations reveal more about the main characters’ backgrounds, motivations and entanglements. Hedda married George because Hedda is terrified of losing her status in society. Hedda only knows the life of being an aristocrat (it’s mentioned that her father spoiled her), even if she’s a financially broke aristocrat.
Hedda keeps her dire financial situation a secret from most people. (George knows, of course.) At one point, Hedda confides in someone at the party that the only inheritance item that she got from her debt-ridden, deceased father was a pistol. And at this point, you know that will be the pistol used in the shooting.
The lavish party is partly a celebration of George and Hedda’s recent wedding and partly a way to impress a very important guest at the party: Professor Greenwood (played by Finbar Lynch), the decision maker of who will get a prestigious fellowship position at the unnamed university where George wants to work. George desperately wants this job because, as he reminds Hedda, George has gone into debt because of the money he spent on the mansion and the party. “I hope you’re happy,” George tells Hedda at the party. Hedda says, “I am,” but her tone of voice and the expression on her face indicate that she’s not happy at all.
Before Eileen arrives, an uninvited female guest shows up because she’s looking for Eileen. Her name is Thea Clifton, formerly known as Thea Ellison (played by Imogen Poots), who is a former acquaintance of Hedda’s because they used to go to the same secondary school. Hedda greets Thea warmly and says she has fond memories of their school friendship. Thea has very different recollections and reminds Hedda that they were never friends because Hedda bullied Thea when they were students at the same school.
Thea looks frazzled and disheveled, so Hedda gives Thea a “makeover” by letting Thea borrow a formal gown and some of Hedda’s makeup so Thea can look “presentable” at the party. While they spend time together, Thea (who doesn’t know that Hedda and Eileen used to be lovers) excitedly tells Hedda that Thea left her husband to be with Eileen, who is Thea’s lover and writing collaborator. Thea is at the party because she wants to tell Eileen the news that Thea left her husband and is now free to move in with Eileen. Whether or not Eileen wants the same thing is shown later in the movie.
Thea says she was an uncredited co-author of Eileen’s first book, but Thea will be credited for co-authoring Eileen’s second book. Thea also tells Hedda that Thea is the main reason why Eileen recently gave up drinking alcohol and promised to live a sober and healthy life. Thea has plans for Thea and Eileen to be a power couple in the literary world. You can easily guess how Hedda will react to all of this information.
Eileen makes her big entrance by showing up not with one guest, as she had told Hedda over the phone. Eileen shows up with six or seven people, most of whom already look and act intoxicated. Eileen has also brought the manuscript of her second book with her. She foolishly tells people (including Hedda and George) that it’s the only copy of the manuscript.
Eileen’s presence at the party becomes extra-worrisome for George because he hears that Professor Greenwood is interested in hiring Eileen for the job that George wants. Meanwhile, party attendee Judge Brack notices the tension at this soiree and delights in stirring up a bit of trouble. That’s because Judge Brack and Hedda had their own secret affair before she married George. Now that George is in financial debt to Judge Brack, this corrupt judge wants to use it to his advantage.
The race and gender swaps for this version of “Hedda” are intriguing ways to re-interpret the story because there’s more at stake in the social-climbing motivations of many of these characters. Eileen is very aware that being known as a lesbian can prevent her from getting many opportunities because of homophobia. Hedda is unwilling to be open about her own queerness because of fear that she will be shunned by upper-crust society. It’s in contrast to Thea, who has chosen to be open about her own queerness and knows she will have some social stigma because Thea has left her husband for Eileen, and Thea wants to be Eileen’s live-in partner.
“Hedda” isn’t a “color blind” movie that switches the race of a main character and doesn’t acknowledge the racial switch. There are quick but noticeable references to the prejudices that Hedda experiences for being biracial. After Hedda is introduced to Professor Greenwood’s much-younger pretentious wife Tabitha Greenwood (played by Mirren Mack), Tabitha snidely whispers to her husband that Hedda looks “much duskier than I thought she would.” It’s also briefly mentioned elsewhere that Hedda is a “bastard child” because her parents were not married.
Women’s maiden surnames and married surnames are used by various people to claim identities or assert power. Hedda doesn’t mind if people still call her by her maiden surname Gabler because the Gabler name has much more clout in this community than the Tesman name. By contrast, George is visibly annoyed when people refer to Hedda as Hedda Gabler and keeps reminding those people that her name is now Hedda Tesman. Meanwhile, Thea no longer wants to be associated with her husband and tells people that she’s gone back to using her maiden surname Ellison.
Although “Hedda” has great production design and impeccable costume design, the movie’s best assets are the performances of the principal cast members—particularly Thompson and Hoss as two former lovers whose unresolved feelings for each other are the catalyst for much of the turmoil and chaos that happen at this party. Kathryn Hunter has a memorable cameo as George’s aunt Bertie. DaCosta’s “Hedda” screenplay is mostly lively and filled with a lot of sarcastic wit. Thompson and DaCosta (who previously worked together on 2019’s “Little Woods” and 2023’s “The Marvels”) are two of the producers of “Hedda.”
“Hedda” is told in five chapters, announced as Roman numerals. The middle part of the movie tends to drag. However, the last third of the movie ramps up the tension and concludes in a way that will be unexpected to people who are expecting a recycling of the original “Hedda Gabler” play. “Hedda,” much like the title character, can make someone’s head spin with an enticing tale, but it’s not the kind of story that’s designed to make everyone feel good.
Amazon MGM Studios’ Orion Pictures will release “Hedda” in select U.S. cinemas on October 22, 2025. Prime Video will premiere the movie on October 29, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles, the comedy film “Good Fortune” features a racially diverse cast of characters (Asian, white, African American and Latin) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A gig economy worker, who has been living out of his car, trades lives with a millionaire business investor (the worker’s former boss), with the help of an angel, who wants to teach both men some life lessons.
Culture Audience: “Good Fortune” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and comedies about people who switch lives.
Aziz Ansari and Keke Palmer in “Good Fortune” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)
“Good Fortune” is writer/director/co-star Aziz Ansari’s politically progressive and spiritual version of 1983’s “Trading Places,” but it’s not a remake or faith-based movie. There’s some salty comedy, but the core of “Good Fortune” is sweet sentimentality. The movie takes a broader sociopolitical look at economic equalities than the more individual-oriented “Trading Places.”
Most comedy fans already know that “Trading Places” starred Eddie Murphy as a poverty-level street-wise con artist and Dan Aykroyd as a pompous rich snob, who unknowingly trade lives with each other, due to manipulation from two wealthy business colleagues of the snob. “Good Fortune” takes a similar concept, but has an angel in control of switching the lives of two men on opposites ends of the financial spectrum. “Trading Places” takes place in New York City, while “Good Fortune” is set in Los Angeles, where “Good Fortune” was filmed on location.
“Good Fortune” (which had its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival) begins by showing a lower-level angel named Gabriel (played by Keanu Reeves) doing his assigned duties in Los Angeles: He has been tasked by his angel supervisor Martha (played by Sandra Oh) to prevent people from crashing their cars if they’re texting and driving at the same time. Gabriel eventually becomes bored with this assignment and asks Martha for more meaningful work, such as saving lost souls.
Martha tells Gabriel that he isn’t ready for that type of job. The movie briefly shows other angels who are under Martha’s supervision. One of them is Azreal (played by Stephen McKinley Henderson), who has the type of soul-saving responsibilities that Gabriel wants. Unfortunately, Martha thinks compassionate and well-meaning Gabriel is too inept and simple-minded to handle those duties.
Meanwhile, aspiring documentarian Arj Ibrahim (played by Ansari) is at a low point in his life: He’s living out of his car and juggling multiple part-time jobs that can barely pay his expenses. One of his jobs is working as a tasker/virtual assistant for a company called Task Sergeant, which is an obvious parody of the real-life Taskrabbit.
His other job is working as a floor associate at a True Value-type retailer named Hardware Heaven. Arj has a crush on a Hardware Heaven co-worker named Elena (played by Keke Palmer), who is bright and resourceful. She works in the store’s furniture section and dreams of having her own furniture-making business. Elena is also passionate about forming a union for Hardware Heaven workers and is leading the effort to unionize the employees.
Arj is ashamed to tell his family about his dire financial situation. Instead, he tells his status-conscious father Saleem (played by Shoukath Ansari, Aziz Ansari’s real-life father)—the relative whom Arj keeps in touch with the most—that Arj has been getting steady work as a freelance documentary editor. Privately, Arj is bitter that his life didn’t turn out the way that he planned. “The American Dream is dead,” Arj tells a pre-teen relative named Navid (played by Aditya Geddada) near the beginning of the movie.
One of the movie’s first scenes shows Arj doing a Task Sergeant assignment of getting some highly anticipated cinammon buns at a local pastry store. Arj and some other customers are waiting in line when they are told the store has sold out of the buns. Just as a disappointed Arj is leaving, he notices a man arriving and happily getting some of the buns that were announced as “sold out.” When Arj asks an employee why this man got special treatment, Arj is told it’s because the man is an investor in the store.
As fate would have it, Arj is hired (through Task Sergeant) to be a temporary personal assistant for a millionaire venture capitalist named Jeff (played by Seth Rogen), who happens to be the same man who got the cinammon buns that Arj wanted. Jeff, just like Arj, is a bachelor who lives alone and has no children. When Arj goes to Jeff’s home for the assignment and sees how rich Jeff is, Arj does an excellent job of fulfulling all of Jeff’s tasks and asks Jeff to permanently hire him as a personal assistant.
Jeff barely knows Arj, so Jeff only agrees to hire Arj on a week-long trial basis. Arj will be hired (or not hired) as a permanent employee based on this probation period. Even though Jeff and Arj are still strangers to each other, Jeff foolishly shows Arj where Jeff keeps a loaded gun locked in a safe, and he tells Arj what the safe’s combination numbers are to unlock the safe. It’s at this point in the movie that you know that gun will be used.
Arj is confident that he can be a successful personal assistant for Jeff, so Arj quits his job at Hardware Heaven. Arj quickly earns Jeff’s trust to get a company credit card with Arj’s name on it. Jeff tells Arj that the credit card can only be used for business expenses. And that’s when you know that Arj will make the mistake of using the credit card for a personal expense.
It happens when Arj takes Elena out to dinner to an upscale restaurant for their first date. Arj doesn’t have enough of his own money to pay for their dinner date, so he uses the company credit card to pay for it. When Jeff finds out, he immediately fires Arj and ignores Arj’s pleas to give Arj a chance to pay back the money if Arj can keep the job.
Things go from bad to worse for Arj when his car gets towed due to his unpaid parking tickets. Arj can’t afford to get his car out of the impound lot, so he has nowhere to sleep, and all of his belongings (except his cell phone and the clothes on his back) are in the car. Arj tries to find work with Task Sergeant but sees on his phone that Task Sergeant is currently “at capacity” in giving out new tasks.
Gabriel sees Arj’s dire situation and introduces himself to Arj as his guardian angel. Even though Gabriel knows that he’s overstepping his bounds on how to help Arj, Gabriel does it anyway because he wants to prove to Martha that he can handle helping a “lost soul.” Gabriel has a heart-to-heart talk with Arj, who says that Arj’s life would be better if Arj were rich like Jeff.
Gabriel disagrees and says he can prove that Arj wouldn’t be happier if Arj had Jeff’s life. Gabriel puts his hand on Arj’s shoulder. And just like that: Arj and Jeff have switched lives. Naturally, Arj loves living Jeff’s life and doesn’t want to go back to Arj’s previous life. Jeff doesn’t know at first why he’s now living Arj’s life, but Jeff eventually finds out. Jeff is infuriated and does what he thinks he needs to do to get his previous life back.
But there’s a catch: When Gabriel tells Martha about this life switch, she scolds him and says that the only way that the mistake can be corrected is if Jeff and Arj truly appreciate their previous lives and genuinely want to go back to their previous lives. Obviously, it’ll be harder to convince Arj than Jeff to go back to the way things were.
“Good Fortune” takes a while before it gets to this conflict part of the story. And then, the movie turns into several slapstick comedy scenes, where some moments are much funnier than others. The movie has a predictable story arc of Jeff and Arj learning how to see life from the other’s perspective and possibly mending what started off as a budding friendship.
“Good Fortune” also has some blatant preaching against capitalistic greed and worker exploitation. The preaching is wrapped in a comedic context, but there’s also a lot of anger and frustration in some of the rants that certain characters have about economic inequalities. You can easily guess which lessons Jeff will learn.
Rogen, Aziz Ansari and Reeves have a Three Stooges dynamic in “Good Fortune” that mostly works well when the movie doesn’t drag with repetition and or doesn’t recycle stereotypical scenarios. Rogen’s Jeff is like the bossy and impatient Mo Howard of the Three Stooges. Aziz Ansari’s Arj is similar to the confused and hapless Larry Fine. Reeves’ Gabriel is modeled after simplistic man-child Curly Howard, except Gabriel is much more laid-back than hyper Curly.
The supporting cast members also mesh well with the story. Palmer plays her role with a natural effervescence that is very charming, even though many people might think that Elena deserves a better love partner than perpetually insecure Arj. Oh’s Martha character is essentially an elevated cameo role, but she also skillfully balances the movie’s serious and comedic aspects. As Arj’s overbearing father Saleem, Shoukath Ansari has a short amount of screen time (less than 10 minutes), but his comedic timing is hilarious.
As far as comedy movies go, “Good Fortune” won’t be considered a classic. However, it’s still entertaining and falls right in the middle of comedies that are ultra-provocative and comedies that are ultra-corny. The movie has a cute recurring joke about how Jeff, Arj and Gabriel all share a love of tacos. If you can tolerate some of the movie’s “life lecture” tone and non-denominational spirtuality aspects (Gabriel being an angel automatically makes “Good Fortune” a movie about spirituality), then “Good Fortune” can be an enjoyable movie choice that succeeds in its heart-warming intentions.
Lionsgate released “Good Fortune” in U.S. cinemas on October 17, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on November 7, 2025. “Good Fortune” will be released on Blu-ray, DVD and an Amazon-exclusive 4K UHD combo pack on December 9, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in North Carolina, from 2003 to 2005, the dramatic film “Roofman” (based on real events) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A convicted robber escapes from prison, hides in a Toys “R” Us store, and begins romancing a divorced mother, who is one of the store’s employees.
Culture Audience: “Roofman” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and well-acted dramas based on true crime stories.
Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst in “Roofman” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)
The crime drama “Roofman” has engaging performances in this “based on a true story” about a convicted robber who escapes from prison, hides in a toy store, and starts a romance with a divorced mother. The movie is a bit too long, but it’s entertaining. “Roofman” (which has a total running time of 126 minutes) also skirts dangerously close to glorifying this criminal and making him look too sympathetic, while glossing over a lot of the damage he did during his crime spree.
Directed by Derek Cianfrance (who co-wrote the “Roofman” screenplay with Kirt Gunn), “Roofman” takes place in North Carolina from 2003 to 2005. It’s a very condensed version of the real timeline period, which took place from 2000 to 2005. Several details of the real story are changed in the movie for dramatic purposes, although the names of movie’s central couple are the same as the real people portrayed in the movie. “Roofman” had its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
“Roofman” (which was filmed on location in North Carolina, and is told in chronological order) begins by showing U.S. Army veteran/divorced father Jeffrey “Jeff” Manchester (played by Channing Tatum) doing what he’s been doing for the the past two years: robbing fast-food places by cutting open a hole in the roof at night, waiting for first-shift employees to arrive at the restaurant before it opens, and then forcing the employees by gunpoint to give him any cash that’s in the restaurant. Jeff, who wears a mask during the robberies, always politely tells his victims that if they remain calm and does what he says, then he won’t hurt them. (For the purposes of this review, the real Jeff Manchester will be referred to by his last name. The character of Jeff Manchester in “Roofman” will be referred to by his first name.)
In this opening scene, Jeff robs a McDonald’s and tells the three employees—Jade (played by Kirana Kiuc), Joslyn (played by Gabriella Cila) and store manager Duane (played by Tony Revolori)—that he’s locking them in the freezer room. Jade and Joslyn each has her own jacket, but Duane doesn’t have a jacket. Duane is afraid that he’ll get hypothermia in the freezer room. Jeff takes pity on Duane and gives his own jacket to Duane before locking all the employees in the freezer room. It’s this movie’s way of showing that even though Jeff is an armed robber, he shows “kindness” to his victims.
Jeff also assures the employees that they won’t be in the freezer for long because right before he leaves, he’s going to use a phone in the restaurant to call 911 to send help. (Jeff presumably disguises his voice for this phone call.) What the movie doesn’t take into account is that this seeming act of kindness doesn’t erase the possibility that one of the robbery victims could have an undisclosed medical condition that would be very harmful and possibly deadly if that person undergoes any expected stress. It also wasn’t smart of Jeff to leave his jacket behind because the jacket has DNA evidence.
Jeff is next seen hosting a birthday party for his eldest child: a daughter named Becky (played by Alissa Marie Pearson), whose only gift request is to get a bicycle. Becky is about 4 or 5 years old. Jeff can’t afford a bicycle, so his birthday gift to Becky is a box set to build toy cars. Becky is visibly confused and disappointed, even though Jeff tries to convince Becky that this is a fun gift for her.
Jeff’s financial problems and being a less-than-responsible father are depicted as two of the main reasons why he got divorced. He and his ex-wife Talena (played by Melonie Diaz) also have twin infant sons, whose names are not mentioned in the movie. Talena is fed up and disgusted with Jeff. She doesn’t trust that he will improve.
Jeff gripes about how miserable he is to his former Army buddy Steve (played by LaKeith Stanfield), who’s involved in criminal activities of his own: Steve and his girlfriend Michelle (played by Juno Temple) sell fake identities and fake ID documents. Steve tells Jeff that Jeff is smarter than most people because Jeff can see solutions to problems that other people can’t see. Steve advises Jeff to use his talents wisely.
After this birthday party, Jeff goes on a robbery spree. The media and others have given the robber the nickname Roofman because of how the robber accesses the restaurants by breaking in through the roof. Steve suspects that Jeff is really Roofman, but Jeff keeps his robberies a secret from everyone.
The movie fast-forwards to a year later, in 2004, when Jeff’s birthday party for Becky is much more elaborate, and he gives her the gift that she wanted: a brand-new bicycle. Becky is ecstatic, but the birthday party turns into a disaster when police show up to arrest Jeff for the robberies. Jeff runs away, but he’s quickly caught, and Becky witnesses this arrest. Jeff is subsequently convicted of the McDonald’s robbery and kidnapping that were shown in the beginning of the movie.
In real life, Manchester was arrested in a wooded area after a silent alarm went off during one of his robberies. His arrest did not take place in front of his daughter or during a birthday party. In the movie, as in real life, Jeff was sentenced to 45 years in prison because the judge felt that Jeff deserved a harsher sentence because Jeff put the robbery victims in a freezer room.
Jeff is the intermittent narrator of this movie. He explains that during his first several months in prison, he became a well-behaved prisoner who earned the trust of the prison employees. Jeff also learned the prison’s routines of when delivery trucks would come and go. He is entrusted with helping unload some of these deliveries and ends up escaping by hiding underneath a delivery truck.
Jeff hides in a Toys “R” Us store and lives there undetected for the next several months. Jeff turns off the recording function in the store’s video surveillance system, which the store employees don’t bother to check on a regular basis. He makes money by stealing items from the store and selling them. Using the alias John Zorn, Jeff ends up dating a Toys “R” Us store employee named Leigh Wainscott (played by Kirsten Dunst), whom he meets when he joins a local Christian church, which is led by amiable Pastor Ron (played by Ben Mendelsohn) and his cheerful wife Eileen (played by Uzo Aduba).
Leigh works as a sales clerk at Toys “R” Us. It’s mentioned at one point that she has a master’s degree, but the movie doesn’t give her enough of a backstory to explain why a middle-aged person with a master’s degree is working as a low-paid sales clerk at a toy store. In real life, Wainscott did not work at the Toys “R” Us store where Manchester was hiding. The movie also erases the fact that Manchester eventually relocated from the Toys “R” Us store to hide in a nearby Circuit City. In real life, Manchester was living in this Circuit City when he did the big robbery of Toys “R” Us that is depicted in the movie.
Leigh, who is not in contact with her ex-husband, is the mother of two daughters: moody Lindsay (played by Lily Colias) and sweet-natured Delilah, nicknamed Dee (played by Kennedy Maeve Moyer), who have very different reactions to Jeff/John when they first meet him. Lindsay, who is 15 or 16 years old, is standoffish and skeptical. Dee, who is about 11 or 12 years old, is friendly and accepting.
Jeff immediately wins over Dee because he knew in advance that she was a fan of “The Legend of Zelda” video games, so he gives Zelda toys and games to Dee the first time that he meets her. The movie shows several scenes where Jeff has a pattern of buying gifts for people as a way to get them to like him or love him more. His materialism and greed are his biggest flaws and will be his downfall.
Jeff becomes a popular member of the congregation because of his good looks and charm. When people ask him what he does for a living, he says he works in a top-secret job for the government. A big plot hole in the movie is Leigh never asks to see where Jeff lives during the entire time that Jeff and Leigh are dating and fall in love. Jeff presumably told her that he couldn’t disclose where he lived because of confidentiality reasons related to his job.
Leigh’s blind trust of Jeff is an example of what can really happen, because there are thousands of people in real life who’ve been conned by getting even less information from the scammers who romance them. Leigh is also an ideal victim for this type of con artist: She tells Jeff up front that she hasn’t dated at all since her divorce. Her emotional vulnerability set her up to be a target of Jeff’s con game and lies.
Other supporting characters in the movie are prickly Toys “R” Us store manager Mitch (played by Peter Dinklage) and Toys “R” Us stock employee Otis (played by Emory Cohen), who is meek and often verbally bullied by Mitch. By having Mitch be a jerk, the movie makes it easier for viewers to not feel much pity for Mitch when Jeff steals from the store, knowing that Mitch will be blamed for these merchandise losses. “Roofman” has this type of manipulation of the facts and fabrication of certain characters’ personalities, in order to make Jeff look more sympathetic than he deserves.
During the movie’s end credits, “Roofman” over-praises the real Manchester in a montage of archival news clips showing interviews with some of the people who were conned by Manchester in real life, such as Wainscott and Pastor Ron Smith. These interview clips only have flattering commentary about Manchester. It all seems very one-sided and agenda-based. The filmmakers also could’ve trimmed a few unnecessary scenes that didn’t happen in real life, in order to bring the total run time to less than two hours.
Even with distortion of certain facts, “Roofman” is held together by the believable performances of the principal cast members. One of the best scenes in the movie isn’t in the flashy “fugitive on the run” moments, but a moment that comes in the last third of the film when Jeff and Leigh are attending a church service. Leigh is singing in the church choir, while Jeff is in the audience. They look at each other with tears in their eyes because it’s at a point in their relationship when Leigh is having doubts about Jeff, and he knows it. This type of scene conveys the more impactful and heartbreaking consequences of the true story, rather than scenes that involve guns or police chases.
Paramount Pictures will release “Roofman” in U.S. cinemas on October 10, 2025. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on October 6, 2025.
