Tag: Willem Dafoe

Review: ‘Late Fame,’ starring Willem Dafoe, Greta Lee and Edmund Donovan

October 11, 2025

by Carla Hay

Greta Lee and Willem Dafoe in “Late Fame” (Photo courtesy of Late Fame LLC)

“Late Fame”

Directed by Kent Jones

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, the dramatic film “Late Fame” (based on the novella of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: An elderly post-office worker, who gave up on being a poet after his 1979 book of poems was a commercial failure, is “rediscovered” by a group of young artists, who want him to make a comeback.

Culture Audience: “Late Fame” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and movies that take aim at false images that are presented when artists try to market themselves as “authentic.”

The witty drama “Late Fame” gives amusingly accurate observations about the pretensions of ambitious artists. Willem Dafoe exquisitely plays a disillusioned poet who is plucked from obscurity for an agenda-driven comeback. Although “Late Fame” gives a very specific portrait of what New York City’s artistic scene can be like in the 2020s, many of the movie’s themes can apply to any artistic community that has no shortage of brilliant talent as well as wannabes and pretenders.

Directed by Kent Jones and written by Samy Burch, “Late Fame” is adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s 1894 novella of the same name. “Late Fame” had its world premiere at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival and its North American premiere at the 2025 New York Film Festival. The movie was filmed on location in New York City.

“Late Fame” begins by showing post-office worker Ed Saxberger (played by Dafoe) coming home to his modest apartment in New York City’s Manhattan borough. Ed (who is in his late 60s or early 70s) is a bachelor who lives alone and doesn’t have much of a social life, except for hanging out with a few co-workers at a local bar/pool hall. It’s implied that Ed has no children because there is no mention of him being a father. If Ed was ever married, that’s not mentioned in the movie either.

Ed mentions later in the movie that when he was 17 years old and a high-school dropout from western Pennsylvania, he moved to New York City with very little money and had big dreams of becoming a professional poet. In 1979, Ed had a book of poems published titled “Way Past Go.” The book was a flop and has long since been out of print. Shortly after the commercial failure of “Way Past Go,” Ed gave up his dreams to be a poet. He has been working as mail sorter for the U.S. Postal Service for the past 37 years.

When Ed arrives at his apartment building on this particular day, he finds out from his nosy neighbor Paulie (played by Tony Torn) that a young male admirer has been waiting “like a prom date” for Ed outside of the building. Ed is curious about who this stranger is, so Ed goes to talk to him. The stranger introduces himself as Wilson Meyers (played by Edmund Donovan), who is in his early-to-mid-30s, and says he prefers to be called by his last name.

Meyers already knows who Ed is and tells him breathlessly and enthusiastically, “I read ‘Way Past Go.’ It’s as if the poems were written yesterday. They just slap you across the face with their relevancy.”

Ed is surprised and flattered. Meyers mentions that he bought “Way Past Go” at a place that sells out-of-print books. When Meyers asks Ed what Ed is doing with his life now, Ed matter-of-factly says that he’s a postal service worker who sorts mail. “Ah, a man of letters,” Meyers says as a friendly joke.

Meyers (who describes himself as a poet) offers to take Ed out to dinner and gushes to Ed, “You wrote a masterpiece, whether people know it or not.” Ed thanks Meyers for the compliments but politely declines the dinner offer.

Meyers tells Ed that Meyers isn’t the only admirer of Ed’s work. Meyers says that he’s part of a small group of artists called the Enthusiasm Society, who are all fans of “Way Past Go” and would love to meet Ed. Meyers says that Ed has an open invitation to hang out with the Enthusiasm Society at a local cafe called Any Old Place in Manhattan’s East Village, where the group meets on a regular basis.

When Ed gets home, he listens to a voice mail message from his sister Barbara (voiced by Welker White), who is annoyed that Ed hasn’t been returning her phone calls. She gives an update on their ailing brother Jimmy, who is apparently close to dying. Barbara scolds Ed for not seeming to care about Jimmy. “He’s your brother too,” she says.

Ed’s reluctance to return his sister’s phone calls is the movie’s only indication that Ed’s family represents a painful part of his past that Ed feels he doesn’t want to revisit. When Ed decides to go to the cafe to meet the Enthusiasm Society, you get the sense it’s not just because of curiosity but also because a part of him might be seeking a new family, especially a group that he knows already adores him before even knowing him.

Ed meets the Enthusiasm Society when he sees stalkerish Meyers again. Meyers asks Ed if he can read and evaluate Meyers’ poetry. It’s during this conversation that Meyers persuades Ed to meet the other members of the Enthusiasm Society, who mostly want to be referred to by their last names.

As expected, the members of the Enthusiasm Society treat Ed like a long-lost celebrity. Meyers introduces the rest of the group to Ed. They are mostly in their mid-to-late 20s. Ed soon finds out that most of the members of the Enthusiasm Society aren’t really struggling financially because they come from affluent families who are funding their artistic endeavors.

Chia Carmichael (played by Arthur Langlie) is a fairly quiet aspiring playwright. Brussard (played by Clay Singer) is a brooding cynic who is a cultural critic/essayist. Sherfey Fernandez (played by Graham Campbell) is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and has taken a vow of silence, so he is non-verbal for the entire movie. Winn (played by Luca Padovan) is a very perky multi-format writer and the youngest member of the group: He’s about 17 years old and still in high school.

Meyers tells Ed that the members of the Enthusiasm Society have a particular fondness for and want to emulate the beatnik artists of the mid-to-late 20th century. (Allen Ginsberg is a particular hero of the Enthusiasm Society.) Meyers says that the Enthusiasm Society consists of counterculture non-conformists who think social media and technology addictions are ruining society. The Enthusiasm Society members have a particular disdain for social media influencers, whom they point out in the cafe as shallow non-intellectuals.

Someone else is part of the group and shows up later: Her name is Gloria Gardner (played by Greta Lee), who is a theater actress and cabaret singer. Gloria is the only woman and only person of color in the Enthusiasm Society. And until Ed is asked to join the group, Gloria (who is in her early 40s) was the oldest member of the Enthusiasm Society.

Everyone tells each other a little bit about their personal backgrounds, except for Gloria, whose personal background is “murky,” according to Meyers. When Gloria does show up, she does a lot of preening and swanning. She talks a lot about how hard it is to get funding for a play that she wants to do. Mostly, she acts like she’s a fabulous and in-demand diva, even though it’s an obvious façade.

When the Enthusiasm Society members decide to have dinner at a nearby restaurant, the group wants to hear Ed tell stories of any respected artists whom he used to know. When he’s asked if he knew any of the Beat Poets, Ed says no. Gloria leans over and quietly suggests to Ed that when someone asks him that question, he should lie and say yes. Clearly, Gloria is accustomed to putting on false airs for herself, so it’s no wonder she thinks other people should do it too.

Ed is attracted to Gloria, but Brussard privately warns Ed that Gloria likes to manipulate men and is already involved with Carmichael. Gloria senses that Brussard has been saying negative things about her to Ed. She tells Ed that Brussard made a pass at her but she rejected Brussard.

Gloria leans into Ed and says seductively, “I have a high tolerance for despicable men.” Regardless of who’s telling the truth, it doesn’t lessen Ed’s attraction to Gloria. She openly flirts with him and goes out of her way to spend some time alone with him.

It isn’t long before Meyers tells Ed that the Enthusiasm Society is having an introductory event where the members will have their work performed in public. Meyers wants this event to be a showcase for Ed’s comeback and suggests that Ed write a new poem that Gloria can perform at this event. Ed is taken aback by this idea, but he eventually agrees to this plan.

Meyers invites Ed over to his place so they can get to know each other better. It’s here that Ed finds out how rich Meyers really is and how Meyers (who doesn’t have a job) has been living off of his family’s money. (Observant viewers will notice at the end of the scene that Meyers, who supposedly is very anti-technology, uses Amazon’s A.I. virtual assistant Alexa in his home, which is something that’s revealed after Ed’s visit ends.) Meyers, who has a master of arts degree from New York University, shrugs off his privileged lifestyle and says that the Enthusiasm Society doesn’t care about where its members went to school or who their fathers are.

But then, Meyers proceeds to ask Ed the type of questions that are aimed out finding out Ed’s educational background and family status. Ed mentions how he dropped out of high school and moved to New York City at age 17. When Meyers asks if Ed is Jewish (because Ed’s last name is Saxberger), Ed says his father was a non-practicing Jew, and his mother was a Catholic homemaker.

Meyers seems to think Ed being a high-school dropout who didn’t come from a wealthy family makes Ed look like some type of “cool” bohemian. Meyers suggests to Ed that Ed should write a memoir. It’s an idea that Ed is not enthusiastic about at all. However, Ed is open to the possibility of getting a new book deal to publish any of his new poetry. The attention that Ed gets from the Enthusiasm Society has renewed his interest in being a poet.

Meyers sets up a meeting with a literary agent whom he knows named Harrison (played by Jake Lacy), who works closely with a top publishing company called Novell. This meeting is an eye-opening experience for Ed, who finds out that what this agent has in mind for Ed is not what Ed wants to do. It’s also the first indication that Meyers wants to push Ed in a direction befitting what Meyers wants to do by promoting Ed as being worthy of a comeback.

As Ed spends more time with the Enthusiasm Society, their “high and mighty” intellectual ways start to rub off on him. Ed starts to avoid his blue-collar buddies Arnold (played by Clark Johnson), Irv (played by Stephen Badalamenti), Hank (played by Daniel Oreskes) and Leonard (played by William Hill) because Ed says he’s too busy with his new set of friends who admire him as a poet. And when Ed does hang out with his old friends, such as during Arnold’s birthday party, Ed literally says they’re too lowbrow for him. This insult happens after Ed gives “Way Past Go” as a birthday gift to Arnold, and Ed gets lightly mocked for it by the men at the party.

Ed ignoring his siblings and distancing himself from his longtime friends might sound like he’s a self-centered jerk. However, Ed has a very compassionate side to him, particularly when it comes to Gloria, whom he treats very well. His infatuation with Gloria, just like the Enthusiasm Society’s unexpected passion for Ed as a poet, seems to have reawakened Ed to a past version of himself that he thought had long disappeared.

“Late Fame” drops enough hints to show that certain people in the Enthusiasm Society are not exactly who they pretend to be. Why are they, especially Meyers, so fixated on making Ed a famous and widely respected poet? Ed is caught up in the non-stop flattery until he starts to see the true natures of some people who want to attach themselves to him.

“Late Fame” screenwriter Burch (who was Oscar-nominated for 2023’s “May December” screenplay) mines similar territory about how delusion and deceit can be a toxic mix in crafting public images. In addition to serving up biting commentary on privileged people pretending to be edgy struggling artists, “Late Fame” also skewers the hypocrisy that is often part of creating artists’ public personas. Ed has never been a “fake it ’til you make it” kind of guy, so he’s in for a rude awakening when he finds out that some of the aspiring artists he thinks are his new friends have no problem with telling lies to get ahead.

It leads to the inevitable question: How much of the Enthusiasm Society’s admiration for Ed is real or fake? It’s the part of the story that is the most intriguing. Dafoe (who can always be counted on to give above-average performances, even in his worst movies) is in fine form in “Late Fame,” as someone who has renewed hope in getting another chance at a long-abandoned dream. Dafoe’s portrayal of Ed has moments of wistfulness that are somewhat heartbreaking when you know that Ed’s Enthusiasm Society “fan club” is built on a shaky foundation of hidden agendas.

Jones’ engaging direction of “Late Fame” infuses an authentic blend of New York City’s artistic community in the present-day, by depicting those who are hungry for recognition and want the grit and the glamour, while chasing after fame and artistic credibility. The movie’s visual style and music also evoke some fond nostalgia for New York City of the 1970s, the decade that Ed had his biggest chance of “making it” as a poet. (Lou Reed’s 1976 songs “Charley’s Girl” and “Ooh Baby” are part of the soundtrack.) There’s a wonderfully simple but impactful scene of Ed taking out photo albums and scrapbooks when he’s by himself at his apartment, to remind himself of the “good old days” before his poet dreams were crushed.

Lee and Donovan also give standout performances for characters who are both similar and different from each other. Lee’s Gloria is obviously a “fake it ’til you make it” type of person, but you immediately sense that she does it out of necessity because she doesn’t have a rich family to support her, like Meyers does. Gloria also has the talent to back up her aspirations. There’s a scene where Gloria invites Ed to see her do a cabaret performance, and she sings a terrific rendition of “Surabaya Johnny” from the Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht musical “Happy End.” Ed is suitably entranced.

Donovan’s skillful portrayal of Meyers morphs from being a star-struck exuberant fan to being a calculating control freak. There are many different sides to Meyers, depending on who he’s talking to and what he wants. He can go from be a seemingly progresssive thinker who wants to relate to everyday people to being an elitist snob of the highest order. The Enthusiasm Society is supposed to be democratic, but Meyers often acts like a dictator.

“Late Fame” is not a cynical indictment of people who want another chance at pursuing goals and dreams. And although the movie has clear examples of how the “haves” and “have nots” can operate differently in society, “Late Fame” is not a complete attack on those who are more privileged than others. Rather, “Late Fame” is a clever and memorable story about identity and what can happen if we choose to let other people define who we really are.

UPDATE: Magnolia Pictures will release “Late Fame” on a date to be announced in 2026.

Review: ‘The Man in My Basement,’ starring Corey Hawkins, Willem Dafoe, Anna Diop, Jonathan Ajayi, Gershwyn Eustache Jnr., Pamela Nomvete and Tamara Lawrance

September 6, 2025

by Carla Hay

Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins in “The Man in My Basement” (Photo courtesy of Andscape/Hulu)

“The Man in My Basement”

Directed by Nadia Latif

Culture Representation: Taking place in 1994, in Sag Harbor, New York, the dramatic film “The Man in My Basement” (based on the 2004 novel of the same name) features a predominantly African American cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: An unemployed man, who is close to losing his house because of his unpaid debts, accepts an offer from a mysterious stranger, who wants pay the man at least $65,000 to secretly let him live in the house’s basement.

Culture Audience: “The Man in My Basement” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, the book on which the movie is based, and psychological thrillers that have vague endings that many people would consider unsatisfying.

Corey Hawkins in “The Man in My Basement” (Photo courtesy of Andscape/Hulu)

Just like the mysterious renter Anniston Bennet, this misguided psychological mystery comes undone in a self-imposed prison of half-baked ideas, rules that are broken, and a muddled identity. The talented cast can’t save this mess. “The Man in My Basement” is the type of movie that starts out intriguing, but it squanders the potential to be a good movie with too many rushed, sloppy and nonsensical scenes in the last third of the movie.

Directed by Nadia Latif and co-written by Latif and Walter Mosley, “The Man in My Basement” is based on Mosley’s 2004 novel of the same name. The movie takes place in 1994, in the village of Sag Harbor, New York. (The movie was actually filmed in Sag Harbor and in the United Kingdom’s Wales.) “The Man in My Basement” (which is Latif’s feature-film directorial debut) had its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

“The Man in My Basement” begins by showing a poker game taking place in the house owned by Charles Blakey (played by Corey Hawkins), who lives alone in the middle-class house that he inherited from his mother Valerie, who died in 1985. Charles’ father died when he was a child. Charles and his mother were each born in this house. Charles used to live with his elderly uncle Brent Blakey (played by Brian Bovell, seen in flashbacks), but Brent died in 1991.

Charles, who has no siblings, is a never-married bachelor in his 30s. He lives in a neighborhood called Sag Harbor Hills, a historically African American community. The house that he owns has been in his family for eight generations. Charles mentions later on in the movie that he’s the last person in his immediate family who has the last name Blakey.

Charles is playing poker with his best friend Ricky Winkler (played by Jonathan Ajayi) and their friend Clarence Mayhew (played by Gershwyn Eustache Jnr.) in a game that quickly becomes hostile and turns into a physical fight. The three men are discussing Charles’ dire financial predicament: Charles has been unemployed for months, he’s fallen behind on his mortgage payments, and the house is very close to getting foreclosed on by Sag Harbor Bank.

Because the house has been owned by Charles’ family for generations, it can be presumed that at some point in the past, Charles took out a mortgage on this house and has been unable to pay that mortgage. The conversation about Charles’ financial predicament is making Charles uncomfortable, so he annoys Clarence by calling Clarence the nickname Clara. It’s a nickname that Clarence dislikes. Clarence warns Charles not to call him Clara again. But, of course, Charles does call him Clara again.

Clarence throws a beer bottle at Charles. The bottle narrowly misses Charles, who lunges at Clarence. Clarence calls Charles “lazy, ungrateful” and the derogatory “n” word name. The tussle turns into a brawl that goes outside. Ricky breaks up the fight and does his best to keep the peace. A still-infuriated Clarence leaves in a huff after telling Charles, “I hope they take your goddamn house.”

The next morning, Charles gets a visit from a mysterious stranger who knocks on Charles’ door. The stranger introduces himself as Anniston Bennet (played by Willem Dafoe), who says that he’s from Greenwich, Connecticut. Anniston confirms that Charles is the owner of the house and makes an unusual request: Anniston asks to rent Charles’ basement for “a couple of months,” or 65 days to be exact.

Charles replies, “This house ain’t for sale or rent … I live alone, and I like it like that.” Anniston is polite and takes this rejection in stride. Anniston leaves his business card with Charles and tells Charles to contact him in case Charles changes his mind. The business card shows that Anniston works for a company called Tannenbaum & Ross Investment Group.

Much of the first third of the movie is about Charles becoming increasingly desperate for money. Ricky, who is a construction worker, tells Charles about a construction company that is hiring extra workers. Ricky and Charles go to the construction site, but the hiring manager Wilson Ryder (played by Mark Arnold) chooses Ricky and other men and immediately rejects Charles, who has no other job prospects.

It’s not revealed until later in the movie that Charles has been unemployed for months because he was involved in a theft scandal at Sag Harbor Bank, where he used to be an employee. (The details of the scandal, such as if Charles is guilty or not, are revealed in the movie.) Sag Harbor Bank’s highest-ranking manager John Paterson (played by Bret Jones) was Charles’ boss and is also the person who’s the chief administrator for Charles’ mortgage. Charles strongly suspects that John has been saying bad things about Charles to potential employers. Charles privately blames John for Charles’ inability to find a job.

Charles’ cousin Lainie (played by Kayla Meikle) works as a mid-level manager at the bank. She is unsympathetic about Charles’ plight and refuses to help him. She suggests that Charles should take an offer that the bank received from a unidentified buyer who wants to purchase the house, but Charles refuses to consider selling the house. Charles calls his aunt Peaches (played by Shellia Kennedy) to ask her for a $2,500 loan. She says no and expresses irritation with Charles because she hadn’t heard from him in months, and now that he’s contacted her, all he seems to want from her is money.

Things get so bad for Charles, he’s counting loose change to see if he has enough money to pay for gas for his car’s nearly empty gas tank. With his options running out, Charles calls the phone number on Anniston’s business card. Charles gets voice mail and leaves a message to say that he’s possibly interested in renting out the basement to Anniston, but Anniston has to give more information first about how much he’s willing to pay.

In the meantime, Ricky suggests that Charles should look around Charles’ house for any valuable items that could be sold. Ricky recommends that Charles set up a meeting with an antiques dealer named Narciss Gully (played by Anna Diop), whom Ricky knows. Narciss can come to Charles’ house and do an appraisal of any items he wants to sell.

Ricky privately makes a verbal agreement in advance with Charles to get a 10% commission on any items sold by Narciss, whose specialty is in African and African American artifacts. Charles somewhat reluctantly agrees to this deal. When Charles and bachelorette Narciss meet, Charles feels an immediate attraction to her, but he plays it cool. Narciss seems to be attracted to him too, but their first meeting is strictly platonic.

Narciss finds three African masks in the house and tells Charles that the masks could be worth $40,000 to $100,000. Charles’ elation turns into disappointment when Narciss tells him that it would take up to three months to get a response from any antiques dealers willing to buy any of the masks and up to nine months for any museums to respond. Charles can’t wait that long because he’s supposed to pay his defaulted loan in less than a week.

It’s around this time that Anniston returns Charles’ phone call and tells him what he will pay to rent Charles’ basement. Anniston offers a payment of $1,000 a day, for a total of $65,000 in cash. The first $10,000 would be paid as a deposit. Anniston then would pay $20,000 on the move-in day. The remaining $35,000 would be paid at the end of the 65 days.

The only requirement that Anniston has is that Charles can’t tell anyone about this basement rental deal, and no one can know that Anniston is living at the house. Charles takes the offer. Anniston has a matter-of-fact tone in how he speaks, and he’s very persuasive. However, there’s still something obviously suspicious about him because of his weird demands.

On the day that Anniston moves in, and as workers put his belongings in the basement, Anniston tells Charles that he’s renting the basement so Anniston can “disappear” for a while. Anniston is adamant in saying that he doesn’t want any visitors and doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s there. Charles asks him if Anniston is mixed up in anything illegal and wants to know exactly what Anniston does for a living.

Anniston replies that he’s in the “reclamations” business. Anniston further explains that he finds properties that have hidden wealth. “I locate the wealth. And I acquire the property that contains it. Then, I receive a stipend based on the value of my reclamation. Nowadays, it’s called globalization, outsourcing, the cost of doing business.”

If Charles is feeling any doubts about this deal, he pushes these doubts aside. At this point, all he cares about is making the payment on his defaulted loan so he can keep his house. When Charles goes to Sag Harbor Bank, he curses out bank manager John before smugly giving John a wad of cash to cover the debt that was due to be paid in a few days.

Charles is in for a shock when he goes home and finds a zoo-sized cage in the basement. Anniston has locked himself inside the cage, which has a chair, table and a few books. Anniston says he wants to stay in the cage for the entire 65 days. Charles will have to provide the food, liquids and waste management for Anniston, who says he plans to spend most of his time reading in the cage. The basement has a water hose that’s close enough to the cage, so Anniston can use the hose to clean himself.

Charles hates this idea of having to take care of Anniston while Anniston locks himself in cage. Charles says he wants to back out of their deal. However, Anniston convinces Charles to do a two-week trial for their deal. After the two weeks, if Charles wants to end the deal, then he can keep the money that Anniston already paid. But if Charles wants to complete the original deal of letting Anniston stay there for 65 continuous days, then Charles will be paid an increased total of $130,000.

“The Man in My Basement” takes quite a long time (nearly half of the movie) before it gets to this crucial point. The movie tries to inject some horror elements that are clumsily handled and ultimately don’t do much for the story. For example, Charles has hallucinations and nightmares, many of which are dead-end jump scares. There’s also a mysterious German Shepherd that keeps showing up in places where Charles goes. Don’t expect any answers about the significance of this dog.

“The Man in My Basement” also has a mishandled and ultimately useless “love triangle” subplot about Ricky, Charles and Ricky’s girlfriend Bethany (played by Tamara Lawrance), whom Charles has known since they were teenagers. Apparently, Bethany has had a longtime crush on Charles. However, they never dated each other because he ignored her attempts to start a romance with him.

Bethany is still very attracted to Charles and would probably dump Ricky if she thought she had a chance of being in a relationship with Charles because she still flirts with Charles when they’re alone together. It’s hinted that Charles could also have some feelings of attraction for Bethany because he masturbates when he hears Bethany and Ricky having sex upstairs in Charles’ house while Charles is downstairs on the living room couch. Ricky thinks Bethany could be the woman he permanently settles down with, and he tells Charles that Ricky will probably take his relationship with Bethany to the next level.

“The Man in My Basement” has some unexplained lapses in logic. The movie makes a point of showing that Charles has a nosy neighbor named Irene Littleneck (played by Pamela Nomvete), who is the caregiver for an adult relative named Chastity, who lives in the same house as Irene. Irene lives close enough to Charles where she (and anyone else close by) can see the comings and goings of anyone who goes inside Charles’ house through the front door.

On the day that Anniston moved in, he and Charles had a conversation in the front of Charles’ house that could easily be seen by anyone close enough to see them together—including the workers hired to move Anniston’s belongings into the basement. Anniston’s biggest requirement for this basement rental deal is that he doesn’t want anyone except Charles to know he’s at the house, but Anniston has a less-than-smart way of keeping it a “secret.” Later in the movie, Anniston does other things (which won’t be revealed in this review) that will frustrate or annoy viewers because these things contradict some of the strict “rules” that Anniston has for this bizarre arrangement that he has with Charles.

Although “The Man in My Basement” has compelling performances from Hawkins and Dafoe, the movie spirals into “fever dream” nonsense and never recovers. “The Man in My Basement” is a cluttered mix of ideas and themes, such as childhood trauma, manifestations of a guilty conscience, race relations, African American heritage, and generational wealth. These ideas and themes become a lot like the items stored in Charles’ basement: They’re haphazardly arranged, and the people responsible for sorting things out just don’t really know what to do with everything.

Hulu will release “The Man in My Basement” in select U.S. cinemas on September 12, 2025. The movie will premiere on Hulu and Disney+ on September 25, 2025.

Review: ‘The Phoenician Scheme,’ starring Benecio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch and Bill Murray

May 29, 2025

by Carla Hay

Mathieu Amalric, Michael Cera, Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton and Jeffrey Wright in “The Phoenician Scheme” (Photo courtesy of of TPS Productions/Focus Features)

“The Phoenician Scheme”

Directed by Wes Anderson

Culture Representation: Taking place from 1950 to 1951, in Europe and in Asia, the comedy film “The Phoenician Scheme” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latin people and black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Wealthy and corrupt business mogul Anatole “Zsa-zsa” Korda tries to avoid getting assassinated while instigating and covering up shady deals.

Culture Audience: “The Phoenician Scheme” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the filmmaker Wes Anderson, the movie’s headliners, and madcap dark comedies about eccentric people.

Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Phoenician Scheme” (Photo courtesy of of TPS Productions/Focus Features) 

“The Phoenician Scheme” has more star power than story power. It’s watchable if you can tolerate filmmaker Wes Anderson’s oddball style. The cast’s performances save a plot that becomes a checklist of business betrayals and schemes.

Written and directed by Anderson, “The Phoenician Scheme” (which had its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival) offers more of the same types of quirky retro films that Anderson has been churning out on a regular basis. Characters talk in a clipped and rushed tone, as if they’re always in a hurry to get somewhere. There’s meticulous production design, where every location looks unnaturally photogenic, like something of out of a museum.

Anderson’s movies also tend to have cinematography that is very pastel or very rustic, occasionally peppered with black-and-white imagery. The stories, more often than not, center on a morally dubious or conflicted protagonist who’s dealing with corruption in one form or another. Various other characters scurry around or pop in and out of the story to either participate in the corruption or try to thwart it.

“The Phoenician Scheme” fits all of the above descriptions. It’s not a movie where Anderson pushes any new creative boundaries. It’s a movie where Anderson sits firmly in his comfort zone, for better or worse. In other words, you don’t like any of Anderson’s films, “The Phoenician Scheme” will not win you over into become a fan of Anderson.

The protagonist of “The Phoenician Scheme” is Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (played by Benecio del Toro), known as Korda, who is a wealthy and corrupt business mogul of vague European origins. He has business in a variety of areas, such as arms dealing, property development and transportation. Korda has a reputation for betraying colleagues through fraud and theft. Needless to say, he’s made a lot of enemies.

The first scene in the movie shows Korda narrowly escaping an assassination attempt when the side of private plane is blown up during the flight, instantly killing one of Korda’s employees. Korda tells the airplane pilot that he’s fired before killing the pilot by ejecting the pilot from the plane before it crashes. For a while, Korda goes missing, but he is found alive. Korda’s incredible survival becomes big news in the media.

Korda has more than one close brush with death during the course of the movie. Every time he comes closes to dying, he briefly visits an afterlife realm, where God (played by Bill Murray) and other celestial beings try to judge Korda. Back on Earth, another group of people can be seen judging Korda in a different way: Members of business syndicate, led by a vengeful rival named Excaliber (played by Rupert Friend), vote unanimously to stop Korda, by agreeing to a price-fixing plan that will hinder Korda from buying certain materials for his businesses.

Korda’s grand scheme is to disrupt the economy of Phoenicia. Because he knows he’s an easy target for his enemies, he tries to revamp his business affairs by making his eldest child Liesl (played by Mia Threapleton) the heir to his estate, with Korda aiming to teach Liesl his shady business practices so she can continue his legacy. The only problem is that Liesl is in the final stages of becoming a nun named Sister Liesl. At first, she says no to Korda’s requests, but Korda convinces her to accompany him for his various antics. Liesl think she can redeem her father.

Korda has been married and divorced three times. He has 11 children. His other 10 children are all sons under the age of 18: Jasper (played by Edward Hyland), David (played by Kit Rakusen), David #2 (played by Jonathan Wirtz), Phillip (played by Milo James), Michael (played by Ogden Dawson), Jamie (played by Hector Bateman-Harden), Harry (played by Benjamin Lake), Steven (played by Gunes Taner), Samuel (played by Gabriel Ryan), Thomas (played by Momo Ramadan, also known as Mohamad Momo Ramadan). It’s really just a gimmick to show 10 boys in a room where Korda really can’t keep track of them all.

Korda also persuades a Norwegian entomologist Bjørn (played by Michael Cera), who was teaching Korda about entomology, to become his personal assistant. Bjørn is attracted to Liesl, even though she is about to become a nun. Much of the interactions between Bjørn and Liesl consist of Liesl trying to avoid Bjørn’s obvious infatuation with her.

“The Phoenician Scheme” gets more convoluted in its shenanigans than what is necessary, considering that it’s a very simple plot. The story shows Korda going from place to place in Europe and in Asia, in an attempt to cover up his embezzlements and to do damage control when certain business associates find out that Korda betrayed them. These associates include subway developers Leland (played by Tom Hanks) and Reagan (played by Bryan Cranston); nightclub owner Marseille Bob (played by Mathieu Amalric); and investor Marty (played by Jeffrey Wright), who all deal with Korda’s double-crossing in various ways.

Korda embezzlement has resulted in him having a money deficit that he calls the Gap. He spends much of his time scrambling to find money to fill the Gap before certain people find out that the money is missing. Along the way, he also has encounters with a royal named Prince Farouk of Phoenicia (played by Riz Ahmed) and a radical freedom fighter named Sergio, (played by Richard Ayoade), all while dodging gun shootouts and other deadly attacks.

Korda’s biggest enemy is his half-brother Nubar (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), who is called Uncle Nubar in the movie. Nubar’s grudge is explained in the story. Also appearing in supporting roles are Scarlett Johansson as Cousin Hilda, who becomes Korda’s fiancée; Hope Davis as Liesl’s Mother Superior; Willem Dafoe as a knave; and F. Murray Abraham as a prophet.

The dialogue is filled with quips, but the personalities of the characters are sometimes two-dimensional. Because so many famous people are crammed into Anderson’s films, it seems as if quality is sacrified for quantity, when it comes to character development. Anderson’s films often become less about the plot and more about which characters his celebrity cast members are going to portray and how offbeat these characters are going to be.

There’s a world-weary drollness that del Toro gives to his character that brings some humanity to an otherwise detestable character. Threapleton is a standout and is able to hold her own in scenes with cast members who are better-known that she is. Cera (who is American in real life) is somewhat miscast because he’s never that convincing as a Norwegian. Cumberbatch hams it up as the story’s biggest villain and having the physical-appearance flamboyance (bushy beard and debnair wardobe) to match. The other cast members also consistently stick to the Anderson film tone of hyper-realism.

“The Phoenician Scheme” can be used as an example of the type of stylish screwball comedy that fits Anderson’s filmmaking formula. His movies aren’t for everyone, but viewers who are inclined to like his films will probably find something to enjoy about “The Phoenician Scheme.” However, the movie gets repetitive, and there’s not much of a plot. “The Phoenician Scheme” should also be a wakeup call that Anderson needs to focus more on presenting better stories instead of over-relying on casting many famous people to populate his movies.

Focus Features will release “The Phoenician Scheme” in select U.S. cinemas on May 30, 2025, with a wider release to U.S. cinemas on June 6, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on July 8, 2025. “The Phoenician Scheme” will be released on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray on July 29, 2025.

Review: ‘Zero’ (2025), starring Hus Miller, Cam McHarg, Gary Dourdan, Roger Sallah, Moran Rosenblatt and the voice of Willem Dafoe

April 27, 2025

by Carla Hay

Cam McHarg and Hus Miller in “Zero” (Photo courtesy of Well Go USA)

“Zero” (2025)

Directed by Jean Luc Herbulot

Some language in French with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Dakar, Sengal, the action film “Zero” features a predominantly African group of people (with some white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Two men, who have opposite personalities and who are strangers to each other, wake up to find out that they have bombs strapped to their chests, and they are forced to complete certain tasks in less than 10 hours, or else the bombs will be detonated.

Culture Audience: “Zero” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching nonsensical action films with irritating characters.

Pictured seated in center: Cam McHarg and Hus Miller in “Zero” (Photo courtesy of Well Go USA)

“Zero” is the title of this incoherent action film, but the word “zero” could also describe the entertainment value of this dreadful dud. This “race against time” movie (about two men with bombs strapped to their chests) has idiotic scenes and bad acting. A movie with this concept can work well if at least one of the victims in peril is someone who is easy to root for, but almost everyone in “Zero” is unlikable and obnoxious.

Directed by Jean Luc Herbulot (who co-wrote the “Zero” screenplay with “Zero” co-star Hus Miller), “Zero” takes place during a 24-hour period in Dakar, Senegal, where “Zero” was filmed on location. “Zero” had its world premiere at the 2024 edition of Beyond Fest. Although the pacing of the film is frenetic, what’s actually shown in the movie soon becomes tedious in this one-note flop.

“Zero” begins by showing an unnamed American businessman (played by Miller, who is one of the producers of “Zero”) waking up in a sweat on a small bus in Dakar. (There are only about 10 people on the bus.) In the movie’s end credits, this character is identified as One because he is the first person in the movie to be shown with a bombed strapped to his chest.

When he wakes up, he asks, “Where am I? I was supposed to be taken to the Radisson Blu from the airport.” He doesn’t know how he got on the bus. All he remembers is getting on a a plane. A young woman (played by Moran Rosenblatt), whose name is later revealed to be India, suddenly appears next to him and hands him a cell phone. She says that an unidentified man gave her $300 to give the phone to One.

Soon after One gets this phone, he finds the bomb strapped to his chest. It looks like an utterly ridiculous scenario because something as heavy as a bomb strapped to a chest should be felt and noticed right away. Needless to say, when One sees the bomb strapped to his chest, it causes him and the people around him to panic.

The movie’s mastermind villain (whose name is never revealed in the movie but is voiced in a menacing tone by Willem Dafoe) then calls One and tells him to run. In the movie’s end credits, this villain is identfied only as the Voice on the Phone. The character known only as One frantically runs outside. And when it becomes known he has a bomb strapped to himself, police are quickly notified, and he is chased by police through the streets. He manages to escape and hide.

But the nightmare isn’t over for One. The Voice on the Phone tells One that the bomb has a ticking time clock that is counting down to when the bomb will detonate. One has less than 10 hours to complete a series of tasks before the time clock reaches zero. The tasks involve stealing certain things from various criminals in a convoluted cat-and-mouse game. If he tries to get help or ignores the villain’s orders, the villain threatens to set off the bomb. The Voice on the Phone says that the phone can only receive calls.

And how does the Voice on the Phone know what One is doing this entire time? The Voice on the Phone says that he is using drones to watch One’s every move when he ges outside. There are also hidden cameras on the bomb. It’s an utterly stupid concept, but the movie depends entirely on this concept in order for the strapped-to-bomb victims to do what the Voice on the Phone wants.

About an hour after he goes on this race against time, One finds out that another unnamed American man is experiencing the exact same thing: waking up to a ticking time bomb tied to his chest and being ordered to complete a series of tasks before the bomb clock goes to zero. In the movie’s end credits, this second man is called Two (played by Cam McHarg, also known as Cameron McHarg), who is an even more mysterious (in other words, underdeveloped) character than One.

The Voice on the Phone forces One and Two to work together. And it should come as no surprise that One and Two have opposite personalities and clash with each other. One is hyper and neurotic. Two is stoic and inscrutable. The entire time that they work with each other, One and Two don’t even tell each other their names.

One only reveals small tidbits of information about himself during the entire movie. He mentions that he’s a rich businessman whose specialty is hiding funds for clients. He also had a love affair with a Senegalese woman 18 years ago when he was in Senegal on a business trip.

The only background information revealed about Two is that he is a military veteran of the Afghanistan War. One (who is the more talkative person in this unlikely duo) tries to be friendly to Two, but Two rudely brushes off any attempts by One to have an amicable connection to him. Even though One is a chatterbox, most of what he says is meaningless and annoying.

And why were One and Two chosen for this bizarre and deadly crime? The Voice on the Phone says it’s because One represents the wealth of the United States, while Two represents the violence of the United States. By the end of this convluted and silly movie, this motive has no real relevance.

During this race against time, the two bomb-burdened men encounter some uninteresting and one-dimensional criminals. Onaye (played by Roger Sallah) is the main crime boss who causes problems for them. There are nefarious characters with names like Missile (played by Samba Mbodj), Cherif (played by Auguste Bruno Derneville), Daniel (played by Gary Dourdan, who is one of the producers of “Zero”), and Nzana (played by Annabelle Lengronne), who is nicknamed the Bomb Queen.

Chase scenes, fights, shoot-outs and explosions happen, but they are filmed with very little style and just look as messy as the plot. “Zero” might have worked better if some of the movie was amusing. But most of the attempted comedy is limp and mindless. A few surprise “reveals” at the end of the movie are underwhelming. By the end of “Zero,” the only bomb that you might think about for the movie is how “Zero” such a turnoff, it’s a surefire cinematic bomb with audiences.

Well Go USA released “Zero” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on April 11, 2025.

Review: ‘The Legend of Ochi,’ starring Helena Zengel, Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson and Willem Dafoe

April 18, 2025

by Carla Hay

Baby Ochi and Helena Zengel in “The Legend of Ochi” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“The Legend of Ochi”

Directed by Isaiah Saxon

Culture Representation: Taking place on the fictional island of Carpathia, the fantasy film “The Legend of Ochi” features a cast of working-class human characters and monkey-like creatures called Ochi.

Culture Clash: After a hunting attack separates a male baby Ochi from his mother, a teenage girl rescues the baby Ochi and goes on a quest to reunite the baby with his mother at the same time the girl looks for her estranged mother.

Culture Audience: “The Legend of Ochi” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and are interested in uncomplicated family-friendly entertainment where magical creatures are big parts of the story.

Willem Dafoe and Finn Wolfhard in “The Legend of Ochi” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“The Legend of Ochi” isn’t quite the epic adventure that this fantasy movie’s title implies. It’s a simple and sentimental story about woodland creatures, lonely humans, and family reunions with obstacles. The creature puppetry steals the show. Although there’s competent acting from the cast members, the movie’s biggest flaw is that not enough information is given about many of the characters and the island they inhabit.

Written and directed by Isaiah Saxon, “The Legend of Ochi” is his feature-film debut. The movie had its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Saxon has a background in directing music videos and short films. At times, “The Legend of Ochi” looks like it could have been a short film, because there are parts of the movie that could have been removed and it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the story.

“The Legend of Ochi” takes place on the fictional island of Carpathia, which is in an Eastern European country that is not named. The people in the movie speak with a range of accents that sound German, Russian, and everything in between. “The Legend of Ochi” was actually filmed in Romania in the Carpathian Mountains region.

In the production notes for “The Legend of Ochi,” Saxon says that Chinese golden snub-nosed monkeys were the main inspiration for how the Ochi creatures look in the film. The Ochi might also remind people of how the gremlins look in the “Gremlins” movies before the gremlins transform into monsters when doused with water.

Later in the movie, it’s explained that Ochi are mysterious creatures who hide in the woods. They communicate by making siren calls that sound a lot like the combination of a monkey screeching and a bird cooing. It’s later explained in the movie that when Ochi creatures talk in a collective chorus, the sound is magical and powerful.

“The Legend of Ochi” begins with exposition-dump narration from the movie’s protagonist: a girl named Yuri (played by Helena Zengel), who’s about 15 or 16 years old. Yuri is the only biological child of a pompous and domineering man named Maxim (played by Willem Dafoe), who lives with Yuri and her adopted brother Petro (played by Finn Wolfhard), on a farm. Petro, who is about 17 or 18 years old, was adopted by Maxim when Petro became an orphan at age 14.

Petro is conflicted between being loyal to Maxim or loyal to rebellious Yuri. There are also seven boys (ranging in ages from about 10 to about 14 years old) who have been entrusted in Yuri’s care by the boys’ families so Yuri can teach the boys how to hunt and become self-sufficient with military-styled training. The boys spend a lot of time with Maxim inside and outside the household, but he is not their adoptive father. Petro gets training along with the boy, but because Petro is more experienced than the younger boys, Maxim expects Petro to be a role model to the younger boys.

In the movie’s opening narration, Yuri has this to say about her life: “I was born on a small island in the Black Sea. Most people here live right from the land. It’s how we’ve always survived. For a long time, nothing much changed here. But things are starting to feel different. People say it’s a dangerous place. There are bears and wolves. And something else—something people feel is much worse.”

She is then seen going to a library and getting a 1992 book titled “Carpathian Beasts & Demons.” (The movie doesn’t specify what year the story takes place, but it appears to be in the early 1990s, before smartphones and social media existed.) Inside the book, there are illustrations of the Ochi as demon-like creatures. The illustrations indicate that humans have been battling Ochi for centuries.

Yuri continues in her narration: “For as long as I’ve known, I’ve fought them. I’ve never seen one myself, but I’ve heard them at night by going down from the mountain. I still don’t know the whole story. But since I was 4 years old, the one thing I knew for sure is that it destroyed my family.”

Maxim has repeatedly told Yuri that Yuri’s mother Dasha (played by Emily Watson) abandoned the family. Maxim also forbids Yuri from trying to find Dasha. “I’m going to find her!” Yuri shouts at Maxim during an argument at the family dining table.

The village where Yuri lives is a mixture of ancient and modern. People travel by horse-drawn carriages, but people also travel by car. Yuri lives on a farm and the people in the community “live off of the land,” but there are also contemporary grocery stores in the area.

Yuri lives in a household that does not have a TV or a computer. Her main connection to the outside world is music that she listens to on headphones. Her father and other people in the community are very religious. However, Yuri seems to be in defiance of her strict religious upbringing because she listens to death metal music.

One of the movie’s first scenes shows Maxim taking Yuri and some of his boy trainees into the woods for a nighttime hunting expedition. The purpose is to find and kill Ochi. “The Legend of Ochi” raises questions that the movie never bothers to answer. The biggest question is “Why are Ochi considered such a threat to humans?”

Another clue is a quick glimpse early on in the movie that shows a herder of Highland cows in a field. One of the cows is dead and appears to have been mauled by an unknown animal. Considering that there are wolves in the area, a wolf could have killed this cow. But the movie constantly shows that Ochi seem to be blamed and feared as the worst creatures and enemies of humans living on Carpathia.

Yuri mentions that there are wolves and bears in the area, but these wolves and bears are never seen in the movie. Based on what’s seen in the movie, the Ochi do not kill people, but people have been taught that Ochi will kill people. There is a curfew at night to avoid being near Ochi, who are mostly nocturnal creatures.

The only animals the Ochi are actually seen eating are insects. Humans don’t kill Ochi for food. Humans hunt Ochi simply because Ochi have been described for centuries as “predators” of humans. The point that the movie seems to be making is that if mythology is told enough times and for an extended period of time, people will believe it.

Yuri is the first person in her family to seriously question what she’s been taught about the Ochi creatures. During that nighttime hunting trip to kill Ochi, several of them are seen by Maxim and his squad of young people. Maxim orders them to shoot as many Ochi as they can. Luckily, none of the Ochi gets wounded. But in the chaos, a male baby Ochi gets separated from his mother. Maxim and his squad go home.

The next morning in a barn, Maxim gives a lecture to Yuri and the boys by telling them, “Last night was beautiful,” even if they didn’t hit any of their targets. Maxim warns them the demon is still upon them. “We are cursed with a wickedness.” And he tells them they must all give their hearts to “the cause.”

The isolation that Yuri feels in this male-dominated environment is obvious and doesn’t seem to faze Maxim. During this lecture in the barn, Yuri is crouched quietly on a perch, while the boys are gathered in unity around Maxim. He mentions the problems in some of the boys’ families (such as alcoholism, mental illness, poverty) that led these boys’ families to give Maxim the responsibility of looking after them. “You are all my sons,” Maxim says as he tells them he expects obedience and loyalty from them.

The boys who are not Petro barely talk or don’t talk at all. Their names are Ivan (played by Răzvan Stoica), Oleg (played by Carol Borș), Vlad (played by Andrei Antoniu Anghel), Gleb (played by David Andrei Bălțatu), Pavel (played by Eduard Oancea), Tudor (played by Tomas Otto Ghela) and Edi (played by Eduard Ionut Cucu), whose personalities are blank slates. In fact, the only people in the movie who have significant lines of dialogue are Yuri, Maxim, Petro and Dasha. As already revealed in “The Legend of Ochi” trailer, Dasha is a pivotal character in the film.

The night after the hunting trip, Yuri goes back to the area in the woods where Ochi creatures were seen. And that’s when she sees the lost male baby Ochi, who has a leg caught in one of the traps that Maxim and his squad set in the words. Yuri sets the baby free, and it runs away in fear. However, Yuri manages to coax Baby Ochi into a backpack and takes Baby Ochi home and hides it in her bedroom.

Yuri treats Baby Ochi’s leg wound. And slowly, Yuri and Baby Ochi learn to trust each other. One of their first bonding experiences is when Yuri shows Baby Ochi a caterpillar from her vivarium. When Yuri sees that the Ochi doesn’t hurt the caterpillar, she quickly figures out that Ochi are not as dangerous as she’s been told they are.

Although Yuri is lonely and wants to keep Baby Ochi as her friend, she knows the right thing to do is to return Baby Ochi back to his family. It isn’t long before Yuri (who is very unhappy living with Maxim) decides to run away from home to find Ochi’s family and to find her mother Dasha. Predictably, when Maxim finds out that Yuri has run away from home and has an Ochi with her, there’s a “race against time” hunt when Maxim and the boys go looking for them.

For an unknown reason, Maxim is dressed as a gladiator when he goes on a hunting mission. It seems to be the movie’s way of showing Maxim’s over-the-top, bombastic personality. Dafoe portrays Maxim almost at cartoonish levels, but the character becomes a little bit more grounded in the last third of the movie.

The Ochi, which are combination of puppetry and visual effects, have wonderfully expressive faces and a combination of intelligence and empathy. Baby Ochi is quite simply adorable and is by far the most charming character in the movie. Some viewers might not like the “cuteness” that the Ochi bring to the movie, but other viewers will welcome it once it becomes obvious that “The Legend of Ochi” is a sweet-natured family film and not an edgy movie.

That doesn’t mean it’s a perfect movie. A few scenes are very awkward and nonsensical. For example, after Yuri has run away with Baby Ochi, she goes into a supermarket to get (steal) some food. Even though she hides Baby Ochi in her backpack, he makes himself known when he reaches for some eggs, and some people in the store see him. Customers scream and run in fear.

That’s not what’s odd and ridiculous about this scene. What’s odd and ridiculous is that during this panic, a cashier takes out a shotgun that he had stashed near the cash register and starts shooting at Yuri and Baby Ochi. Who does that to an unarmed kid? Yuri gets away with Ochi in a rolling cart and crashes through the front window with the cart when store employees lock the front doors. She then steals a car in the parking lot because the car just happens to have the keys in the ignition.

None of this is really spoiler information because “The Legend of Ochi” is the type of movie where you can tell how it’s going to end the minute that Yuri runs away from home. The movie’s trailer also reveals that Yuri suddenly and inexplicably begins to understand the Ochi language, so she begins communicating with Ochi in this language, which is subtitled in the movie. The parallels between Yuri and Baby Ochi are obvious because this is a story about a child wanting to be reunited with the child’s mother, despite forces who don’t want this reunion to happen.

The movie’s performances are capable, although “The Legend of Ochi” doesn’t explain a lot of things about Yuri and her family. It should come as no surprise that Dasha has a very different version of why she stopped living with Maxim and Yuri. Dasha’s story of how she lost her left hand (which has been replaced with a wooden prosthetic) indicates that this family’s history is very dark and troubled.

Watson gives the best performance of the cast members, as is often the case with any her projects. It’s too bad that the character of Dasha is in less than half of the movie. Zengel is convincing as introverted teen Yuri, but she mumbles some of her lines. Wolfhard doesn’t have much to do as Petro, the quasi-mediator between the feuding Yuri and Maxim.

“The Legend of Ochi” has excellent cinematography by Evan Prosofsky and has some heart-tugging moments (including an emotion-stirring music score by Evan Prosofsky) that will either endear or irritate viewers. The movie follows a lot of familiar formulas but has a positive message (without getting preachy) about showing compassion for those who are misunderstood and mistreated. Despite the movie’s flaws, the story can’t be faulted for this overall impactful message.

A24 released “The Legend of Ochi” in select U.S. cinemas on April 18, 2025, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on April 25, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on May 20, 2025. “The Legend of Ochi” will be released on Blu-ray on July 8, 2025.

Review: ‘Nosferatu’ (2024), starring Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin and Willem Dafoe

December 9, 2024

by Carla Hay

Lily-Rose Depp in “Nosferatu” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

“Nosferatu” (2024)

Directed by Robert Eggers

Some language in German and Italian with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in 1838 Germany, the horror film “Nosferatu” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A vampire demon named Count Orlok targets a young woman to be his bride.

Culture Audience: “Nosferatu” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, filmmaker Robert Eggers, and artfully made horror movies that have more haunting images than storytelling suspense.

Nicholas Hoult in “Nosferatu” (Photo by Aidan Monaghan/ Focus Features)

Artsy filmmaker Robert Eggers’ somewhat overhyped version of “Nosferatu” delivers the expected grotesque and macabre in this vampire movie that tends to drag with repetition. The acting and visuals are better than the screenplay. It’s the type of movie that takes much too long to get to showing the villain doing what was announced at the beginning of the movie. At 133 minutes long, some parts of “Nosferatu” didn’t need to be in the film at all.

Written and directed by Eggers, this version of “Nosferatu” was inspired by the classic 1922 German silent horror film “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror,” directed by Henrik Galeen. This 1922 movie was inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula,” which is used as a template for basically any horror story where there is a male vampire with the title of count or some other royal title. Eggers’ version of “Nosferatu” doesn’t really do anything groundbreaking, but it does have some very unique imagery that will stay in viewers’ memories.

“Nosferatu” begins by showing a young German woman Ellen (played by Lily Rose-Depp) having a nightmare that she is the bride of vampire and is succumbing to his sexual advances. She wakes up from this horrific dream. The movie then fast forwards “several years later,” to 1838, in an unnamed part of Germany, that is later revealed to be the Baltic region of Germany. (“Nosferatu” was actually filmed in the Czech Republic.)

Ellen is now a newlywed named Ellen Hutter, whose husband Thomas Hutter (played by Nicholas Hoult) is an estate agent. Thomas is loving and attentive, but he is in debt and looking for a way to earn more money. Ellen wants to start a family with Thomas, but he would rather wait until he is more financially stable.

It just so happens that Thomas’ boss Herr Knock (played by Simon McBurney) has an offer that Thomas can’t refuse: Go to Transylvania and get the wealthy Count Orlok (played by Bill Skarsgård) as a client. Herr Knock tells Thomas: “Secure the count, and you will secure your position in the firm.” Herr Knock also says that Count Orlok, who is “too ill” to travel, has insisted that an agent visit Count Orlok “in the flesh.” Thomas needs this type of job promotion, so he takes the assignment with almost no hesitation.

The assignment requires a trip away from home for about six weeks. Thomas stays with friends Friedrich Harding (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his wife Anna Harding (played by Emma Corrin), who are happily married with two daughters: Louise Harding (played by Milena Konstantinova), who’s about 6 or 7, and Clara Harding (played by Adéla Hesová), who’s about 4 or 5.

Friedrich is a wealthy ship merchant. Anna is pregnant with their third child. Their family doctor and trusted friend Dr. Wilhelm Sievers (played by Ralph Ineson) plays an important part in the story, when Ellen eventually comes to stay with the Harding family too, and all hell starts to break loose in the last third of the movie.

“Nosferatu” doesn’t waste time in telling Count Orlokf’s primary goal: It’s revealed within the first 15 minutes of the movie that ever since Ellen was a child, she’s been having dreams of this mysterious vampire hunting her down so he can take her as his bride. The main flaw with “Nosferatu” is that it takes an almost excruciatingly long time in the movie for Count Orlok to even begin this hunt, even though it doesn’t take long for Count Orlok to come into contact with Ellen’s husband Thomas. It should come as no surprise that Thomas’ visit to Count Orlok is a setup to get Thomas into Count Orlok’s lair.

“Nosferatu” excels when it comes to setting up scenes with great atmosphere. The production design, costume design, cinematography and makeup are top-notch. But the dialogue is a little clunky, simplistic and at times unintentionally comedic.

And there are many times a viewer might wonder, “Where is Count Orlok? Ellen isn’t that hard to find. Does he need a map?” The movie tends to over-rely on jump scare scenes where it’s revealed that what was shown was really someone having a nightmare. But then, the movie also hints this nightmare could have been a sleepwalking episode.

“Nosferatu” is at its best in scenes with eccentric Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz (played by Willem Dafoe), an occult expert who is recruited by Dr. Sievers to help investigate some of the chaos that’s happening. For a long time, Friedrich remains staunchly skeptical that there are supernatural reasons for Ellen’s visions and other terrible things that start happening in the household. And you can easily predict what can happen to a skeptical character in a supernatural horror movie.

Dafoe’s performance as kooky Professor Eberhart livens up an otherwise relentlessly dour movie that could have used better character development. One of the more memorable lines that Professor Eberhart says is, “I’ve seen things in this world that would make Isaac Newton crawl back into the womb.” Depp and Hoult handle dramatic scenes quite well, but there’s not much more to the characters of Ellen and Thomas than this couple being targeted victims of Count Orlok. Skarsgård is effectively sinister as Count Orlok, who isn’t in the movie as often as you might think for a film where Count Orlok is the chief villain.

“Nosferatu” also has a few plot holes and unanswered questions. For example, one of the main characters gets feasted on by Count Orlok, but several days later, that vampire victim never shows signs of becoming a real vampire, such as having vampire cravings and being vulnerable in sunlight. The climax/showdown for the movie is also a bit weak and will make viewers wonder, “Why didn’t the characters do something like this sooner?” Despite these flaws, “Nosferatu” is still better than the average vampire movie. Just don’t expect any clever surprises or characters that are completely developed.

Focus Features will release “Nosferatu” in U.S. cinemas on December 25, 2024. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on January 21, 2025.

Review: ‘Saturday Night’ (2024), starring Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O’Brien, Lamorne Morris, Matt Wood, Cooper Hoffman and Willem Dafoe

October 1, 2024

by Carla Hay

Kim Matula, Emily Fairn, Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott and Matt Wood in “Saturday Night” (Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures)

“Saturday Night” (2024)

Directed by Jason Reitman

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, on October 11, 1975, the comedy film “Saturday Night” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: In the 90 minutes leading up to sketch comedy/variety series “Saturday Night Live” debuting on NBC, the cast and crew experience various mishaps, conflicts and setbacks.

Culture Audience: “Saturday Night” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, “Saturday Night Live” and large ensemble films with a talented cast.

Pictured standing in the front row, from left to right: Ella Hunt, Kim Matula, Cooper Hoffman, Rachel Sennott, Lamorne Morris, Josh Brener and Gabriel LaBelle in “Saturday Night” (Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures)

Whether people like or dislike the live sketch comedy/variety TV series “Saturday Night Live,” there’s no denying it’s become an American institution in pop culture. Much like the real “Saturday Night Live,” this comedic film about “SNL’s” TV premiere is hit and miss with its jokes, full of manic energy that sometimes fizzles. However, the performances are entertaining to watch, with many transcending mere impersonations. The movie’s scenarios veer into ridiculous sitcom territory, but much of the dialogue is snappy, if at times a little too contrived-sounding.

Directed by Jason Reitman (who co-wrote the “Saturday Night” screenplay with Gil Kenan), “Saturday Night” had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie takes place in the frantic 90 minutes before the New York City-based weekly series debuted at 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time on NBC on Saturday, October 11, 1975. Viewers will have to keep up with the intense flurry of activities and numerous cast members who populate the movie. Obviously, people who are familiar with who was in the original “Saturday Night Live” cast will have the most appreciation for this semi-factual re-enactment of the show’s series premiere.

Much of what’s in “Saturday Night” is obviously exaggerated for the movie, but there are other parts of the movie that look toned down, especially when it comes to the notorious drinking and drugging that took place behind the scenes. There are some references to people taking illegal drugs (cocaine snorting, spiking someone’s marijuana joint with an animal tranquilizer), but they’re very tame references, compared to the reported realities of the backstage debauchery and addictions. For example, “Saturday Night Live” creator/showrunner Lorne Michaels (played by Gabriel LaBelle) isn’t even shown smoking a cigarette or drinking coffee during his clearly sleep-deprived, stressed-out state of being as several things go wrong before the show goes on the air.

Curiously, John Belushi (played by Matt Wood) and Gilda Radner (played by Ella Hunt), who were widely considered to be the most talented and funniest members of the original “Saturday Night Live” cast, are treated like supporting characters in “Saturday Night.” Instead, the “Saturday Night” movie gives most of the cast-member screen time to smirking playboy Chevy Chase (played by Cory Michael Smith) and fast-talking Canadian wisecracker Dan Aykroyd (played by a Dylan O’Brien, doing a spot-on portrayal), who happens to be openly having an affair with Lorne’s wife: “Saturday Night Live” writer Rosie Shuster (played by Rachel Sennott), a hard-working and sarcastic feminist. Lorne knows about the affair, but he’s more concerned with launching “Saturday Night Live.”

Through conversations in the movie, viewers find out that Lorne and Rosie (who’ve been married for eight years at this point) have an unconventional, open marriage that is more like a business arrangement. What they have in common is a passionate belief that “Saturday Night Live” will be a success, even though the odds were stacked against this show that starred a then-unknown group of comedians in their 20s. The background on the relationship between Rosie and Lorne is Lorne and Rosie started off as friends, he fell more in love with her than she fell in love with him, and it seems like they got married because Lorne kept pursuing Rosie, and she finally gave in to his persistence.

“Saturday Night” begins by showing Lorne anxiously going outside of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan (where the “Saturday Night Live” studio is) to look for a special guest he wants to have on the show’s first episode: a then-unknown eccentric comedian named Andy Kaufman (played by Nicholas Braun), who emerges from a cab, much to Lorne’s relief. Lorne has also ordered a pet llama to be in this episode. Why? Because he can.

Meanwhile, Lorne gets nervous when he notices an NBC page (played by Finn Wolfhard), who’s handing out flyers on the street to invite people to be in the studio audience, isn’t having much luck. Almost everyone whom this page approaches doesn’t seem interested in going to see an unknown show at 11:30 p.m., even if it’s going to be on national TV. Inside the studio, various mishaps and meltdowns happen. A lighting rig falls down from a ceiling and narrowly misses injuring people. The show’s only trained lighting director quits in disgust.

Lorne is under pressure to cut the length of some of the sketches, but he refuses to do it. Various cast members trick the very unhip, middle-aged script supervisor Joan Carbunkle (played by Catherine Curtin) into keeping racy slang in the script, such as “golden showers” and “clam digger,” by lying to her with fake definitions for these terms. John throws a fit and disappears because he doesn’t want to wear a bee costume. Mild-mannered puppeteer Jim Henson (also played by Braun, who’s better in his portrayal of Henson than as Kaufman) defensively worries that “Saturday Night Live” won’t take his Muppets seriously.

Drug-addled guest comedian George Carlin (played by Matthew Rhys) storms off the set because he thinks he’s too good for the show. Lorne frantically tries to find someone who can be the new lighting director as the clock keeps ticking toward showtime. (And there’s literally a time stamp showing the time at various parts of the movie.) Musical guest Janis Ian (played by Naomi McPherson) is one of the few people on the show’s first episode who isn’t depicted as a complainer or someone who causes problems.

The other original “Saturday Night Live” cast members who are portrayed in the movie are laid-back Jane Curtin (played by Kim Matula); neurotic Laraine Newman (played by Emily Fairn); and frustrated Garrett Morris (played by Lamorne Morris, no relation), a Juilliard graduate who goes through a range of emotions when it dawns on him that he’s being treated like a token black person who is deliberately being sidelined and not given much to do. Garrett repeatedly asks no one in particular why he’s just being expected to stand around and not do much, in a tone that suggests he knows exactly why, but he doesn’t want to say the word “racism” out loud. Garrett is never asked for any comedic input and instead has to show his comedic talent when he jokes around during rehearsals with musical guest Billy Preston (played by Jon Batiste), the only other black person in the movie who gets a significant speaking role.

Also featured in the movie is Dick Ebersol (played by Cooper Hoffman), NBC’s director of weekend late night programming, who is Lorne’s closest business confidant and the person credited with helping Lorne develop “Saturday Night Live.” Years later, Ebersol would become an executive producer of “Saturday Night Live” (from 1981 to 1985) and chairman of NBC Sports (from 1998 to 2011). Lorne is an ambitious dreamer, while Dick is more of practical realist. Dick is the one who tells Lorne that NBC executives are expecting that “Saturday Night Live” will fail because the show is being used as a pawn in contract renegotiations with “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson, who wants reruns of his “Tonight Show” episodes to air in the time slot that “Saturday Night Live” has.

One of those NBC executives who thinks “Saturday Night Live” will be a flop is NBC talent chief Dave Tebet (played by Willem Dafoe), a ruthless cynic who lurks around and makes cutting remarks about how the show is being run by people who don’t really know what they’re doing. Dave isn’t completely wrong. Lorne is like an inexperienced fire chief who has to lead a team putting out one fire after another, even before the fire engine can leave the station. Dave is also on edge because he’s invited several executives from local NBC affiliate stations to watch the debut of this unproven new show.

“Saturday Night” has brief depictions of people who would end up becoming longtime associates of “Saturday Night Live”: musical director Paul Shaffer (played by Paul Rust); announcer Don Pardo (played by Brian Welch); writer Alan Zweibel (played by Josh Brener); writer/actor and eventual “Saturday Night” Live cast mate (and later disgraced politician) Al Franken (played by Taylor Gray); and writer/actor Tom Davis (played by Mcabe Gregg), who was one-half of the Franken & Davis duo on “Saturday Night Live.” These appearances are fleeting and only seem to be there to check some boxes in the long list of people that the “Saturday Night” filmmakers wanted to include in the movie.

As overcrowded as “Saturday Night” is with its ensemble cast, the movie is at its best when there is snappy dialogue between two or three people. One of the funniest scenes in the film is when guest star Milton Berle (played by a scene-stealing J.K. Simmons) trades very hostile insults with Chevy when Milton begins flirting with Chevy’s fiancée Jacqueline Carlin (played by Kaia Gerber), who is the latest of many wannabe actress girlfriends whom Chevy insists should be hired to work with him. Chevy calls Milton an old has-been. Milton calls Chevy an irrelevant nobody. And then, elderly Milton (nicknamed Uncle Milty) does something that’s even more shocking and outrageous than anything that the young rebels in the “Saturday Night Live” cast would do.

LaBelle’s magnetic portrayal of Lorne is a combination of cocky and idealistic—someone who forges ahead with his visionary goals, even when Dick tells him that NBC executives have set up “Saturday Night Live” to fail. Under pressure, Lorne is willing to entertain ideas that other people tell him won’t work at all. And all these years later, when the Emmy-winning “Saturday Night Live” has lasted longer than most TV shows that will ever exist, it’s easy to see who has the last laugh. Nicknamed as the show for the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” of television, “Saturday Night Live” has become the very “insider” establishment that these TV outsiders used to sneer at and mock.

As much as “Saturday Night” seems to be a love letter to the first version of “Saturday Night Live,” it’s a love letter that has some blind spots that lower the quality of the movie. The movie portrays but doesn’t have a critical look at how women and people of color are treated as inferior to white men in the business of comedy. The female characters in the movie are literally supporting characters, who are depicted as catering to the needs and whims of whatever the men are deciding.

For example, instead of showing anything about why Gilda Radner was the type of brilliant comedian who could create unique characters, Gilda’s biggest moment in the movie is when she persuades a petulant John (who’s hiding out at the Rockefeller Center ice skating rink) to come back to the “Saturday Night Live” set and wear the bee costume that he hates. Instead of showing why Gilda was a talented comedian in her own right who would become in real life one of the breakout stars of “Saturday Night Live,” she is relegated to being a quasi-therapist to John.

Laraine’s big moment comes when she opens a long coat to reveal she’s wearing a bikini. Jane is so bland and generic, she doesn’t make much of an impression, and she’s still in the role of being a helper to the men on the show. To put it bluntly: The men in “Saturday Night” get the best lines, the most memorable character personalities and the most attention.

Rosie is the only female character who is depicted as having a full life (the movie shows or tells nothing about the female “Saturday Night Live” cast members’ personal lives), but the movie repeatedly points out that Rosie is in a position of authority because she’s married to Lorne. Rosie is supposed to be one of the top writers on the staff, but the biggest decision she is shown making is whether or not she should use her maiden surname or Lorne’s last name for her surname on the “Saturday Night Live” credits. As one of the top writers on the show, she is never shown making any real writing decisions when the first episode gets shaken up with various revisions on short notice.

In real life, “Saturday Night Live” has also had a very problematic history when it comes to race and racism. The “Saturday Night” movie rightly points out that Garrett Morris was used as a token (he was the only person of color in the original “Saturday Night Live” cast), but the movie’s approach to this uncomfortable subject matter is a bit timid. Garrett makes a thinly veiled diatribe (cloaked in a comedy bit) against white supremacist racism when he jokes that he wants to kill white people. Garrett gets all the white people in the room to laugh at this joke, but then it’s back to business as usual, and Garrett is mostly ignored.

Women of color in the “Saturday Night Live” world of 1975, as in this movie, just simply don’t exist as valuable team members and aren’t considered important enough to be included as decision makers in this world. Because as much as “Saturday Night” wants to portray this ragtag group of “outsiders” as the “rebel underdogs,” within that group of “rebel underdogs,” the sociopolitical hierarchy was the same as the establishment they wanted to rail against: White men get to have almost all of the power, and everyone else has whatever the white men will decide they’ll have.

Reitman and Kenan have previously collaborated on 2021’s “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” and 2024’s “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.” The “Ghostbusters” franchise was co-created by Aykroyd, who has starred in most of the “Ghostbusters” movies with Bill Murray, another “Saturday Night Live” alum. “Ghostbusters” co-creator Harold Ramis was the third main star of the franchise, while Ernie Hudson (just like Garrett Morris) was treated as an inferior sidekick, even though Hudson was an official Ghostbuster too. Jason Reitman’s father Ivan Reitman directed the first two “Ghostbusters” movies and was a producer of all the “Ghostbusters” movies until his death in 2022, at the age of 75.

“Saturday Night” has some of the same problems that “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” has: In its eagerness to cover a lot of bases in fan service, it gets overstuffed and unfocused when trying to show off how many quipping (and sometimes annoying) characters it can cram into a movie. However, “Saturday Night” has the advantage of having main characters as people who became celebrities in real life, so viewers already know what to expect from a lot of these characters. “Saturday Night” is a zippy and sometimes-messy nostalgia piece that is like a series of sketches rather than a comprehensive overview of what went into the launch of “Saturday Night Live.” As long as viewers don’t expect to see an in-depth history of “Saturday Night Live” in this movie, it works just fine as a film that’s somewhere in between lightweight and substantial.

Columbia Pictures released “Saturday Night” in select U.S. cinemas on September 27, 2024, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on October 4 and October 11, 2024.

Review: ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,’ starring Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe

September 5, 2024

by Carla Hay

Winona Ryder and Michael Keaton in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

“Beetlejuce Beetlejuice”

Directed by Tim Burton

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional city of Winter River, Connecticut, the fantasy film “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (a sequel to the 1988 movie “Beetlejuice”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latinos and some African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Troublemaking and wisecracking demon Beetlejuice returns from captivity to stop the wedding of his would-be bride Lydia Deetz, a psychic who can see ghosts, while Lydia tries to repair her strained relationship with her daughter, and Beetlejuice is being hunted by his vengeful former bride. 

Culture Audience: “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the the first “Beetlejuice” movie, the movie’s headliners, director Tim Burton, and anyone who likes watching high-energy movies that are comedic supernatural stories.

Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Winona Ryder and Justin Theroux in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (Photo by Parisa Taghizadeh/Warner Bros. Pictures)

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” comes very close to being overstuffed with subplots, but they all tie together in the end. This flawed but energetic sequel to 1988’s “Beetlejuice” has enough supernatural fun to charm new fans and existing fans. Do viewers need to see the first “Beetlejuice” movie to understand “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”? No, but it certainly helps, especially in noticing many of the references to the first “Beetlejuice” movie that are in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” These references (also known as Easter eggs) can be considered shameless fan servicing, but most sequels of hit movies are guilty of pandering to die-hard fans.

Directed by Tim Burton, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” was written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who are both collaborators with Burton on Netflix’s “Addams Family” spinoff series “Wednesday.” Michael McDowell and Warren Skaaren wrote the first “Beetlejuice” movie, which was directed by Burton. Neither movie is perfect, but both movies have appeal to people who like movies that combine Gothic sensibilities with goofy comedy. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” has many more characters (almost too many) compared to the first “Beetlejuice” movie, but the visual effects in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” are a vast improvement over the cringeworthy and tacky visual effects in “Beetlejuice.” The makeup in Beetlejuice” was superb though, which is why the movie won an Oscar for Best Makeup.

The original “Beetlejuice” movie has a simple plot: The ghosts of a married couple named Adam Maitland (played by Alec Baldwin) and Barbara Maitland (played by Geena Davis) try to get rid of the wealthy new family who have moved into and renovated the Maitlands’ former house in the fictional city of Winter River, Connecticut. The house’s new residents are former real estate developer Charles Deetz (played by Jeffrey Jones); his pretentious sculptor/conceptual artist wife Delia Deetz; and their Goth psychic teenage daughter Lydia Deetz (played by Winona Ryder), who is the only one in the family who can see ghosts.

The house is isolated and sits on a hilltop, which is why there are no neighbors who notice the strange activity taking place in the house. The Maitlands reluctantly enlist a troublemaking and wisecracking ghost demon named Betelgeuse (played by Michael Keaton) to try to get rid of the Deetz family. Betelgeuse becomes enamored with Lydia and wants to marry her. Betelgeuse (who lived and died as a human sometime in the 1300s) appears when his name is said three times in a row. There’s an entirely different discussion that could be had about how inappropriate it is for Betelgeuse to marry an underage teen, but it underscores how much of a creep Betelgeuse is and how he comes from an era when it was considered normal to marry someone who is 15 or 16 years old.

In “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” Lydia (also played by Ryder) is now a single mother who is the famous host of TV series called “Ghost House With Lydia Deetz,” where she helps people who say they have haunted houses. It’s mentioned that Lydia has been a professional psychic for the past 15 years. Lydia is a pill-popping neurotic who has been dating her manager Rory (played by Justin Theroux), who is an obviously slimy manipulator pretending to be sensitive and caring. Rory not only enables Lydia’s drug abuse, but he also encourages it.

Lydia uses pills to cope with her personal life being a mess. She barely speaks to her parents. Lydia also doesn’t have much of a relationship with her teenage daughter Astrid (played by Jenna Ortega, star of “Wednesday”), who is bitter because Astrid thinks Lydia cares more about her career than Lydia cares about Astrid. Lydia was separated from Astrid’s father Richard (played by Santiago Cabrera) when Richard died in a drowning accident.

Astrid, who is about 16 or 17, is a student at a boarding school, where Astrid is a loner who is treated like an outsider freak because of what Lydia does for a living. There’s a scene where some “mean girls” have vandalized Astrid’s room by putting up a paper ghost in the room that says “Boo.” Astrid is highly intellgent and well-read, but she has a lot of anger toward Lydia. Astrid thinks Lydia is a fraud because Lydia cannot see the ghost of Astrid’s father Richard.

One day, Lydia gets a frantic phone call from her mother Delia, who tells her to come to Winter River immediately. That’s how Lydia finds out that her father Charles died. His plane crashed over the South Pacific, and he was killed by a shark. In real life, “Beetlejuice” co-star Jones, who played Charles, got arrested in 2002 for child porn. Jones is now a registered sex offender, which is probably why he wasn’t asked to be in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” which uses animation, visual effects and archival footage of Jones to depict Charles in the movie.

Lydia feels uncomfortable with returning to Winter River, because it brings back bad memories of Betelgeuse, whose name is now spelled Beetlejuice in this sequel. (“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” was actually filmed in the United Kingdom, Vermont and Massachusetts.) Astrid and Rory also go to Winter River to attend Charles’ funeral. Delia and Astrid don’t really know each other but they do have one thing in common: They both despise Rory.

To the horror of Delia and Astrid, Rory uses Charles’ memorial service to propose marriage to Lydia—and he wants to get married in Winter River on Halloween, which is two days after this marriage proposal. Father Damien (played by Burn Gorman), the priest to led the funeral service, has been enlisted to officiate at the wedding. Lydia wants more time to think about Rory’s marriage proposal. However, Rory makes her feel guilty, so she reluctantly agrees to this hasty wedding. Lydia is also seeing some indications that Beetlejuice might be coming back into her life.

Meanwhile, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” explains from the beginning that Beetlejuice has been trapped in an afterlife purgatory. In his previous life (when he was alive), he was a grave robber who married a femme fatale named Delores (played by Monica Bellucci), the leader of a soul-sucking cult. Beetlejuice left Delores, but the ghost of Delores wants to get back together with Beetlejuice by any means necessary to marry him. An early scene in the movie shows Delores putting her sliced body back together, with her restored body in stitches.

Beetlejuice has several mute minions with shrunken heads who wear the same type of striped suit that he does. His most loyal and rusted minion is named Bob. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” has a lot of scenes with these minions that might remind people of how the “Despicable Me” animated movies use their own minion characters for anti-hero/supervillain Gru.

One of the biggest comedic gags in the “Beetlejuice” movies is an afterlife waiting room, where recently deceased people wait to get checked in to travel to heaven, hell or somewhere in between. The ghosts appear exactly as how they looked when they died, which means many of these ghosts are mutilated or deformed if they died gruesome deaths. Near the beginning of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” Danny DeVito has a quick cameo as an unnamed janitor in this afterlife waiting area.

It’s in this waiting area, there’s an Afterlife Crimes Unit led by a pompous ghost named Wolf Jackson (played by Willem Dafoe), who was an actor when he was alive. Wolf was an actor who was best known for playing a police detective named Frank Hardballed. As a ghost, Wolf still likes to pretend that he’s a real cop. He takes it upon himself to lead team that is looking for Delores, the chief suspect in a spree of murders where people’s souls have been sucked out of them.

And there’s even more going on in this plot: After Lydia accepts Rory’s marriage proposal, a disgusted Astrid storms off on her bicycle. Astrid accidentally crashes through a fence and tumbles into a backyard tree. The tree has a treehouse, where teenage Jeremy Frazier (played by Arthur Conti) happens to be when Astrid has her bike accident.

You know what happens next: Jeremy and Astrid, who are both about the same age and are intellectual loners, have an immediate attraction to each other. But what will happen to their relationship if Astrid is only going to be in Winter River for a few days? There are some twists and turns in “Beetlejuice” which have some surprises that are more unpredictable than others.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” has some nostalgic references to the first “Beetlejuice” movie. The Handbook for the Recently Deceased is once again a pivotal part of the plot. Miss Shannon’s School for Girls, which was seen at the end of “Beetlejuice,” has a much more prominent role in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” Little Jane Butterfield (played by Rachel Mittelman), the pre-teen daughter of nosy real-estate agent Jane Butterfield (played by Annie McEnroe) in “Beetlejuice,” is now all grown up in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” The adult Jane Butterfield Jr. (played by Amy Nuttall) is also a real-estate agent.

Music also plays a big role in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” which has “Beetlejuice” composer Danny Elfman returning for the franchise’s jaunty score music. In “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” there’s a soul train where people in the waiting area dance like they’re in a “Soul Train” episode from the 1970s. There are mostly African American people (many with Afro hairstyles) in these soul train scenes, which might or might not be taken a certain way depending on how much viewers know about “Soul Train” in the 1970s.

Songs from Harry Belafonte’s 1956 “Calypso” album—most notably the hit tune “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)”—are prominently featured in the original “Beetlejuice” and can be heard again in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” But the song that gets its big moment in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” is “MacArthur Park,” which was a hit (separately) for Richard Harris in 1968 and Donna Summer in 1978. Also look for a comedic moment featuring Richard Marx’s 1989 hit “Right Here Waiting.”

Keaton, Ryder and O’Hara all give very good performances in reprising their “Beetlejuice” roles. In “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” Ryder has the most challenging task of the three original “Beetlejuice” stars because her Lydia character has changed the most from the original “Beetlejuice” movie. Lydia is now a complicated adult with more emotional baggage than what the teenage Lydia character had. Much of the movie relies on Lydia’s reactions to a lot of the mayhem that takes place. Ryder’s performance as Lydia (who gets the most screen time in the movie) could be annoying to some or entertaining to others, but she is always compelling to watch in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” Keaton’s Beetlejuice is essentially the same, while O’Hara’s Delia is even more cartoonish than in the original “Beetlejuice” movie.

Ortega and Theroux are perfectly fine in their roles, but they’re both doing versions of other characters that they’ve already done on screen: the pouting teen character for Ortega, the two-faced liar character for Theroux. The “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” filmmakers made the right decision to have Delores say as little as possible because Bellucci has a limited acting range compared to other stars in the “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” cast, although she looks fabulous as Delores, who could pass for an evil cousin of Morticia Addams. Dafoe hams it up as the buffoonish Wolf, who is the most unnecessary new character in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” at times seems a little too self-satisfied with all of the different subplots that are sometimes left to dangle and are left hanging while another subplot comes along as a distraction. The mischievious rogue Beetlejuice is also not in the movie as much as some viewers might expect from a film named after this character. Overall, if viewers have any curiosity about “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” it’s best to see the original “Beetlejuice” movie first and then enjoy the somewhat wild and bumpy ride that is “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

Warner Bros. Pictures will release “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” in U.S. cinemas on September 6, 2024. The movie was released in several countries outside the U.S. and had sneak preview screenings in U.S. cinemas on September 4, 2024.

Review: ‘Kinds of Kindness,’ starring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie and Hunter Schafer

June 20, 2024

by Carla Hay

Emma Stone and Joe Alwyn in “Kinds of Kindness” (Photo by Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight Pictures)

“Kinds of Kindness”

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of Louisiana, the comedy/drama film “Kinds of Kindness” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Various people seek satisfaction in their lives but experience conflicts in this offbeat, three-story anthology. 

Culture Audience: “Kinds of Kindness” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and movies that are often strange but are well-acted.

Margaret Qualley, Jesse Plemons and Willem Dafoe in “Kinds of Kindness” (Photo by Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight Pictures)

It’s weird and not always wonderful, but “Kinds of Kindness” has committed performances from the cast members in this unpredictable anthology film. This acerbic comedy/drama cuttingly explores the dark sides of power, control and manipulation. Several scenes in “Kinds of Kindness” are deliberately off-putting and intended to make people squirm with discomfort.

For example, there’s a scene where a woman is drugged without her knowledge and consent, and then she is raped while she’s unconscious. (The sexual assault is not shown in graphic detail.) There’s another scene that shows animal cruelty. (A disclaimer in the movie’s end credits says that no animals were harmed while making the film.) In other words, “Kinds of Kindness” is not a family-oriented film that’s supposed to have mass appeal.

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (who co-wrote “Kinds of Kindness” with Efthimis Filippou), “Kinds of Kindness” had its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where “Kinds of Kindness” co-star Jesse Plemons won the award for Best Actor. This anthology movie is told as three different stories, all taking place in Louisiana, where “Kinds of Kindness” was filmed on location. Lanthimos is known for making offbeat movies about people doing very unpleasant things to each other. Most of his movies also depict polyamory and/or sexual fluidity. “Kinds of Kindness” is more extreme and less straightforward than Lanthimos’ Oscar-winning films “The Favourite” and “Poor Things.” Some cast members from “The Favourite” and “Poor Things” are also in “Kinds of Kindness.”

In “Kinds of Kindness,” the three stories have these titles, shown in this order: “The Death of R.M.F.,” “R.M.F. Is Flying” and “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich.” (R.M.F. is a mysterious character played by Yorgos Stefanakos in all three stories.) All three stories feature the other main actors portraying different characters in each story. Emma Stone, Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn and Mamoudou Athie are the rotating star cast members in each story. Stone and Plemons get the most screen time. Hunter Schafer has a small role in “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich.”

Each story takes its time to reveal the motives of the central protagonists. Keeping the viewers guessing in this way has benefits and limitations. Viewers who have short attention spans will quickly grow tired of “Kinds of Kindness” because of all the guessing games that the movie has in revealing bits and pieces of each story. Many times, viewers will be asking themselves, “Where is this story going?” If you dislike how the first story plays out, then chances are you won’t like the rest of the movie either.

“The Death of R.M.F.”

Hong Chau and Jesse Plemons in “Kinds of Kindness” (Photo by Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight Pictures)

In “The Death of R.M.F.,” Robert Fletcher (played by Plemons) and his wife Sarah (played by Chau) are a seemingly regular middle-class couple. Sarah and Robert have no children, but they have been trying to start a family. Sarah has gotten pregnant several times but lost all of the pregnancies.

Robert works for a company in an unnamed industry. It’s an office job where Robert is expected to wear business attire. Robert’s boss is Raymond (played by Dafoe), who is a demanding tyrant. Robert and Raymond have been in each other’s lives for about 10 years.

It soon becomes apparent that Raymond wants complete control over certain people in his life. For example, Raymond dictates what Robert and Sarah can eat and when the couple can have sex. Raymond also tells Robert that Robert needs to gain a few more pounds. Raymond expects Robert to confirm every day that Robert has followed Raymond’s orders. Robert willingly complies.

However, there’s one demand from Raymond that Robert has a problem carrying out: Raymond has ordered Robert to kill someone by crashing Robert’s car into the other person’s car. Raymond insists that this car crash has been arranged by a suicidal person whose car will be hit by Robert’s car. Robert is supposed to get a description of the car and the crash victim in advance.

Robert is very reluctant to follow this order from Raymond. Near the beginning of the movie, R.M.F. is shown as someone who’s in another car that Robert crashes into with his car. The fate of R.M.F. is shown in this story. Meanwhile, Raymond’s willing accomplice in these bizarre suicide arrangements is his lover Vivian (played by Qualley), who has been put in charge of meeting with the future car crash victims and asking them to pose for photos that she sends to Raymond for his approval.

It’s soon revealed that Robert is also sexually involved with Raymond, who expects to have complete control over Robert, Vivian and other people. Raymond sometimes gives rare collectibles to manipulate people into thinking that he likes them. In the beginning of the story, Raymond has gifted to Robert and Sarah a tennis racket that was smashed by John McEnroe in 1984.

Alwyn has a cameo as a collectibles appraiser who meets with Raymond. Athie is briefly seen in this story as a character named Will, who also works for Raymond. Stone has the role of a lonely bachelorette named Rita, whom Robert asks on a date after Robert sees that Raymond is also dating Rita.

“R.M.F. Is Flying”

Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons in in “Kinds of Kindness” (Photo by Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight Pictures)

In “R.M.F. Is Flying,” Daniel (played by Plemons) and Neil (played by Athie) are best friends and police officers who work together. Daniel and his wife Liz (played by Stone) are very close to Neil and his wife Martha (played by Qualley) and spend a lot of time at each other’s houses. The two couples are so close, it’s eventually revealed that they are swingers who have foursome orgies with each other that they record on video.

In the beginning of this story, Liz (who is a marine biologist explorer) has been missing during a deep-sea exploration trip. However, Liz has been found on a remote island and has been rescued by helicopter. When she arrives home after a brief stay in a hospital, Daniel notices that Liz has a hard time putting on her shoes, because her feet seem slightly bigger than her shoes. Liz says her feet must be swollen.

Other things happen (as shown in the story) that convince Daniel that the person who was rescued and claims to be his wife Liz is an imposter. Is Daniel imagining things or is he correct? Liz’s father George (played by Dafoe) disapproves of how Daniel has been acting cold and distant to Liz, ever since the rescue. Chao has the role of George’s supportive wife Sharon. Alywn appears in the movie in a brief role as a defiant and intoxicated passenger in a car that gets pulled over by Daniel for reckless driving.

“R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich”

Emma Stone in “Kinds of Kindness” (Photo by Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight Pictures)

In “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” Emily (played by Stone) and Andrew (played by Plemons) are on an intense search for a woman who saved Emily’s life when Emily almost drowned in a swimming pool. At first, Emily and Andrew seem like they’re a couple. But it’s eventually revealed they’re in some kind of polyamorous sex cult led by a domineering guru named Omi (played by Dafoe), who decides which people in the cult will have sex with Omi and when. A mother named AKA (played by Chau) has a certain “tastemaker” role in the cult.

Emily is literally a hard-driving person: She speeds, careens and skids around in a dark purple Dodge Challenger, as if she’s in a demolition derby race. Emily is rude and impatient in her obsessive search. The reason for the search has to do with special powers that she thinks her rescuer has.

Qualley portrays identical twins Rebecca and Ruth in this story. Schafer has a small role as a woman named Anna, who is examined by Emily in a hospital and is quickly rejected as not being the woman whom Emily is seeking. Alwyn portrays Joseph, Emily’s estranged husband, who has custody of their unnamed daughter (played by Merah Benoit), who’s about 7 or 8 years old. Athie has the role of an unnamed morgue nurse.

Of these three stories, “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich” is the most memorable and the most disturbing. It’s also sure to be the most divisive part of “Kinds of Kindness” because of the way it depicts spiritual beliefs and sex in the context of a cult. The main reason to keep watching is to find out what happens in the story’s mystery.

Because “Kinds of Kindness” has two stories in this movie where Dafoe portrays a leader who controls other people’s sex lives, “Kinds of Kindness” seems to be repeating itself in this way, which is to the movie’s detriment. Some of the movie’s bizarre scenes can be amusing, while other weirdness is just plain irritating and serves no other purpose but to show something weird. The cinematography (by Robbie Ryan) gives “Kinds of Kindness” a compelling modern noir tone.

The cast members’ performances make much of the movie more interesting. Stone excels in portraying three very different characters. The other cast members also capably handle their roles. Plemons’ three characters (Robert, Daniel and Andrew) all have loss of control as a major part of their stories, so his “Kinds of Kindness” characters are not as varied as Stone’s characters in this movie.

Viewers of “Kinds of Kindness” should not go into this movie expecting to see charming characters who are easy to like. The movie goes out of its way to have characters who are unlikable or are sometimes difficult to watch. “Kinds of Kindness” is like sushi smothered in wasabi. Many people won’t be able to tolerate the parts that sting, but there are other parts that go down easier and have more substance if people are curious to see how everything ends.

Searchlight Pictures will release “Kinds of Kindness” in select U.S. cinemas on June 21, 2024.

Review: ‘The Boy and the Heron,’ a fantastical adventure anime movie from filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki

November 26, 2023

by Carla Hay

Mahito Maki and the Grey Heron in “The Boy and the Heron” (Image courtesy of GKIDS)

“The Boy and the Heron”

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Available in the original Japanese version (with English subtitles) or in a dubbed English-language version.

Culture Representation: Taking place in Japan, mostly in 1944, the animated film “The Boy and the Heron” features a cast of Japanese human and animal characters representing the working-class, middle-class and royalty.

Culture Clash: A lonely adolescent boy, who’s grieving over the accidental death of his mother, befriends a half-heron/half-man, who leads the boy to fantastical world inside a mysterious tower, where he encounters past versions of various people and a power-hungry group of parakeets. 

Culture Audience: “The Boy and the Heron” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki and time-traveling anime movies that can be enjoyed by various generations.

Himi in “The Boy and the Heron” (Image courtesy of GKIDS)

“The Boy and the Heron” artfully blends heavy issues of grief with the escapism of a thrilling adventure. It’s a beautifully told and moving story that is as much about being a legacy to departed loved ones as it is about establishing one’s own identity. “The Boy and the Heron” had its North American premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.

Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, “The Boy and the Heron” is inspired by but not connected to Genzaburō Yoshin’s 1937 novel “How Do You Live?,” which is the Japanese title of the movie. “The Boy and the Heron” has elements of Miyazaki’s childhood in the movie, which has an original screenplay. Miyazaki (who won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for 2001’s “Spirited Away”) has been synonymous with among the best of what Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli has to offer. “The Boy and the Heron” ends a 10-year gap between Miyazaki’s movies. His previous movie was 2013’s Oscar-nominated “The Wind Rises.”

“The Boy and the Heron” begins with a tragedy. In 1943, in Tokyo during the Pacific War, 12-year-old Mahito Maki is woken up from his sleep to the sound of chaos. His businessman father Shoichi Maki tells him that the hospital where Mahito’s mother Himi works is on fire. The hospital and the fire can be seen from the Maki family home. Mahito (who is an only child at this point) wants to go with his father to the hospital to help save Maki, but Shoichi insists that Mahito stay at home. Unfortunately, Maki does not survive the fire. It’s implied that the fire was caused by a bomb during this war.

The following year, 13-year-old Mahito and Shoichi move to Grey Heron Mansion, in an unnamed city in the countryside. Shoichi, who owns an ammunition factory near the estate, is now married to Himi’s younger sister Natsuko, who is described as a look-alike to Himi. The first time that Mahito meets Natsuko, he finds out that she is pregnant with his younger sibling. It’s a lot to take in for introverted Mahito, who is deep in grief over his mother’s death.

The mansion has seven elderly maids, who dote on Mahito and often work together in a pack. The maids’ names are Kiriko, Aiko, Izumi, Eriko, Utako, Oyuki, and Kazuko. Kiriko is the unofficial leader of the maids. She is often stoic and less talkative than the other maids in the group. Natsuko and all of the maids treat Mahito with kindness. Shoichi is a caring father, but he is very preoccupied with his work.

One day, Mahito notices that a grey heron has flown up to him, as if to try to get his attention. Mahito is told that his grey heron has lived on the property for quite some time. The grey heron will visit Mahito more times over the next several days.

Shortly after moving to this new home, Mahito goes exploring in the estate’s wooded area. He finds a tower that is somewhat sealed off, but Mahito finds a way to peek inside. He’s later told by Natsuko that the tower was built by her granduncle, who had a mental breakdown and disappeared. However, this granduncle left behind a book of his writings. Natsuko also tells Mahito that when Himi was a child, Himi disappeared for a year, but reappeared a year later with no memory of having been gone.

Quiet and shy Mahito has a hard time making friends with other students at his school. The students mostly ignore him or give him hostile stares. Out of frustration and to get out of going to school, Mahito hits himself on the head with a rock. It causes him to bleed profusely. Mahito tells people that he fell down, but his father Shoichi doesn’t believe Mahito. Shoichi thinks that Mahito was assaulted by a bully and is determined to find out who it is.

While Mahito is recovering from his injuries, he gets an unusual visit from the grey heron, who flies to Mahito’s window and squawks, “Mahito, save me!” The heron tells Mahito that Mahito’s mother is still alive and living in the tower. Around the same time, Natsuko goes missing. Through a series of events, Mahito, the heron and Kiriko find themselves trapped in the tower, which is actually a magical place inside that has past versions of some of the people whom Mahito knows.

The grey heron also reveals himself to be half-pelican, half-man, who can wear the pelican part of his body like a costume. It’s best not to go into further details in this review, but it’s enough to say that the story in “The Boy and the Heron” also features pelicans, a parakeet kingdom, and beings called warawara that look like white-colored stars and have a purpose that’s connected to life forces. Some of the scenes in this movie are visually stunning and very immersive.

The voices of “The Boy and the Heron” characters are portrayed by different cast members, depending on the version of the movie. The original Japanese version (with English subtitles) has Soma Santoki as Mahito, Masaki Suda as the Grey Heron, Takuya Kimura as Soichi, Yoshino Kimura as Natsuko, Kô Shibasaki as Kiriko, Aimyon as Himi, Jun Kunimura as the Parakeet King and Kaoru Kobayashi as a wise old pelican. There’s also a U.S. version, with the dialogue dubbed in English, that has Luca Padovan as Mahito, Robert Pattinson as the Grey Heron, Christian Bale as Soichi, Gemma Chan as Natsuko, Florence Pugh as Kiriko, Karen Fukuhara as Himi, Dave Bautista as the Parakeet King and Willem Dafoe as a wise old pelican.

“The Boy and the Heron” explores themes of life, death, and what it might mean to change one’s destiny by going back in time and possibly doing things differently. There are also some sociopolitical observations about how much control people should give leaders over who lives and who dies, as well as some obvious (but not preachy) commentary about the dangers of damaging the environment. There’s a point in the story where Mahito has to decide how much he is going to make his grief control a big decision that he has to make.

The movie has some well-animated and suspenseful action scenes and gives each of the main characters a distinct personality. The voice actors also give very good but not outstanding performances. With so many animated movies stuck in a formulaic rut, “The Boy and the Heron” can be a viable option for people looking for a well-made and entertaining animated film that also has meaningful messages about humanity’s connections to other creatures, the environment, and the life cycles that are unique to all.

GKIDS released “The Boy and the Heron” in select U.S. cinemas on November 24, 2023, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on December 8, 2023. The movie was released in Japan on July 14, 2023.

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