drama

Who’s Your Daddy?

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 19:48:56 +0000

Who’s Your Daddy? Chet Kozlowski June 16, 2026 - 15:48

Topics

Tags

Palestine, 1928: lonely widower Moshe hires a woman, Yehudit, from a neighboring kibbutz to help raise his two children and work his farm. She arrives, surly and strong-willed, with few possessions and insists on sleeping in the stable, not the house. She is deaf in one ear and screams in the night.

Men are instantly smitten: Moshe (who considers her wife potential), the shrewd shopkeeper Globerman, and Jacob, a quiet intellectual who forsakes his marriage to the most beautiful woman in the town. The men circle her. Moshe teaches her the ways of the farm. Yaakov releases a cageful of wild canaries as a show of passion. Yehudit accepts them on her own terms, beds each, and soon is pregnant. She doesn’t care about paternity and isn’t about to marry anybody. Her child will have three fathers.

This story is the core of the film For the Love of a Woman. It has the contours of a folktale with hints of magical realism.

The film adds another flourish. For the Love of a Woman opens in the year 1978, focusing on Esther, a writer and a woman who exemplifies the era’s feminism and free love. Esther is headstrong and independent, very much her own woman. Upon her mother’s death, she receives a letter from her mother and a mission: that she travels to Israel, armed only with an old photo of her as a child with her father, which is torn to omit a mysterious third person.

For the Love of a Woman toggles back and forth between 1928 and 1978. Esther arrives and enlists the aid of a quiet academic, Zayde, who takes her around and, in the process, tells Yehudit’s story as a parable.

The film, guided by Guido Chiesa’s intelligent direction, is enthralling and well-acted. Mili Avital is elegant and sexy as the modern woman Esther. She has an air of ruined aristocracy about her. She and Zayde (Ori Pfeffer) take on a friendship that grows convincingly as Esther gets closer to her mother’s truth. Ana Ularu exudes arch, formidable beauty as Yehudit; one can see how Alabn Ukaj (Moshe), Marc Rissmann (Yaakov), and Serhii Kysil (Globerman) would drop everything to be with her. Fine cinematography by Emanuele Pasquet uses a limited color palette for 1978 that complements the sunburnt authenticity of the 1928 scenes.

For the Love of a Woman is expertly made, so it’s surprising that some sequences, especially those set in 1978, appear disjointed. Esther doesn’t feature as a character at all in the source novel “The Loves of Judith” by Meir Shalev. The filmmakers have added her, and one wonders why: did they decide the 1928 tale (1930s in the book) was too quaint, or might not hold the interest of a modern audience? Regardless, the framing device is underdeveloped and stitched together in editing. Mr. Chiesa and his co-screenwriter Nicoletta Micheli bring the stories together in the climax and their solution, while clever, comes off as contrived and a little, well, creepy.

_____________________________

For the Love of a Woman. Directed by Guido Chiesa. 2025. From Panorama Films. An Italian production in English and subtitled Hebrew. In theaters. Runtime 117 minutes.

Add new comment

Man Overboard

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 14:16:01 +0000

Man Overboard Chet Kozlowski June 15, 2026 - 10:16

Topics

Film Review

Tags

drama

Rose of Nevada is the sort of movie you’ll be tempted to begin again as soon as you finish. The film is a puzzle, and the clues are all upfront.

A decrepit fishing boat thought lost suddenly appears in the harbor of a small fishing village. It’s the Rose of Nevada, and its gears and machinery are rusted with age. Mike, the town steward, boards it and finds it’s abandoned. The cabin shows no signs of life except for a weathered red cap and a photo of a town woman, Tina.

Tina lives in a dour house with her daughter. She and Mike have a bond — undisclosed to the audience — that leads them to agree that the Rose of Nevada must go back out to sea. A crew is enlisted: Nick Dyer, a townie with a mournful expression and a young family, and Liam, an unruly roustabout. The men are teamed with Murgey, the gruff captain, thinking they’ve signed on for a fishing expedition. Actually, it’s a voyage into destiny.

Nick returns to find himself a man out of time: the newspaper is dated 30 years in the past. Folks who were ancient when he left are now middle-aged. They call him by another name. Liam has taken up with Tina. Everyone acts out of character. Who are these people? Who, for that matter, is Nick himself? An elderly neighbor excuses what we at first read as his wife’s dementia: “She gets the past and present mixed up.” She’s not the only one.

The film is the confident work of director Mark Jenkin, who wrote the screenplay based on an original story with Mary Woodvine. Visually, Mr. Jenkin lays out a mosaic of mysteries. The camera lingers on motor parts rusted as red as blood, mold the green of idyllic fields, a curtain being drawn closed, rain-slicked stones, a towel drying a woman’s wet hair. These montages are not mere verisimilitude. The textures and tones are emotional cues. Mr. Jenkin also composed the haunting sound design and score.

Rose of Nevada looks like an 8mm home movie. The editing is clunky. The screen shape is square, not the horizontal aspect ratio of most current films. A flare shows up on the edge of the frame, as if the film were exposed to light. This may seem amateurish, but its naivete pays off. Flourishes like an earthbound character locking eyes with one in the heavens, and showing another repeatedly in shadow, then illuminated by an open door, suggest a distinct cinematic vision. This DIY style is an extension of the “found footage” genre. It creates an artificial nostalgia and the sense that all the lives have been witnessed and are preordained, adding to the eeriness.

As Nick, George Mackay (seen in 1917) grounds the film. His sharp features and knotted brow reflect our own confusion. Rosalind Eleazar simmers in a range of emotions as Tina and has been so good in Apple TV’s Slow Horses. Callum Turner (in The Boys in the Boat and the Fantastic Beasts series) exudes a working-class coarseness as Liam. Yana Emily Penrose as Tina’s grown-up daughter and Mae Voogd as Nick’s wife round out the cast nicely. They’re a compendium of fine young acting talent that you’ll see much more of in the future.

Once you’ve finished Rose of Nevada, begin again. The clues are all there. They’re cryptic, but patience pays off: revisiting them adds poignancy to an already intriguing trip.

____________________________________

Rose of Nevada. Directed by Mark Jenkin. 2025. United Kingdom. Runtime 114 minutes.

Add new comment

Don’t Be Cruel

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 20 May 2026 05:29:41 +0000

Don’t Be Cruel Chet Kozlowski May 20, 2026 - 01:29

Topics

Film Review

Tags

drama

Poor Nore. She just wants to get laid, and none of the men will do it.

They know her. She’s a regular at the bar, and most of them have either bedded her or heard about her. She asks the owner. No go. The bartender. No go. A married man is sitting on the couch. She tells him she has nowhere to sleep, and he offers to pay for a room. But he won’t be joining her.

The new film Easy Girl is writer/director Hille Norden’s feature debut. Upfront, it asks the question: How hapless must a girl be to offer herself and be rejected?

All this is witnessed by Jonna, a shy tomboy who can’t take her eyes off Nore. When a man finally responds to Nore’s proposition, Jonna insinuates herself between them and drives him off. Jonna offers her a spare room in her apartment.

Nore moves in. Jonna doesn’t necessarily want sex with Nore, she just wants to bask in the glow. Jonna is fascinated. She watches her dress. Nore makes her own clothes, blowsy gowns that make her look like a cross between Tinkerbell and Blanche Dubois—fairy princess as predator. But even as Nore remains upbeat, Jonna notices her body is covered in bruises and self-harm scars.

Nore brings home a succession of damaged men: a masochist, one with one eye. Jonna takes up with the ones Nore has brought home and discarded. The men profess their love, but they get a cup of coffee in the morning, then get out. If they balk, Jonna defends her friend: “Do you have a problem with her liking sex?” One guy, Michel, can’t get it up for Nore, yet takes up with Jonna and becomes the women’s guardian angel.

And then the bottom falls out. Literally. In an unexpected cinematic trick, we plunge through the looking glass into Nore’s psyche. There’s her younger self, open and naïve and seen in what we suppose is a flashback, being violated by her first love. We hear her abuse happen off camera as her adult self and Jonna observe from across the room. Jonna asks, “Who would hurt someone they love?” Nore replies, “What’s the point of hurting someone you don’t care about?”

It’s this second half that sets Easy Girl apart. Surreally, the younger Nore joins her adult self and Jonna on the dance floor and on the prowl. The film switches from a depiction of casual sex to an intense meditation on the long-term consequences of sexual violence.

Easy Girl is writer/director Hille Norden’s feature film debut. It’s an incredibly intimate film, rendered with rich imagination. Ms. Norden has tricks up her sleeve and a story to tell. Her directorial style is at once earthy and flamboyant.

Easy Girl’s advertising campaign is misleading, suggesting a softcore thriller. Its title is sexist: who but a male would consider Nore “easy”? (The original title “Lihtne tüdruk” translates to A Simple Girl, closer to the mark. The film has also been seen under the title A Smalltown Girl, which is totally beside the point.

As Nore, Dana Herfurth is mesmerizing, as lean as a lightning bolt. She’s a waif, a lithe body with a strawberry cream complexion. Nore seeks out men (“I can’t be alone”) and accepts defilement, and her shift from party girl to abuse survivor is convincing. Luna Jordan plays Jonna with an impish charm that ripens into wisdom as she helps her friend. Jonna is Nore’s foil and alter ego until young Nore (Vera Fay) comes along. As Michel, Jakob Gessner simmers with razor-sharp conviction, you’re never sure what he’s capable of or how his impotence and suppressed rage will manifest.

Easy Girl most resembles Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), a similar study of sexual license, except that protag presented as a symbol of liberation and free love. Nore’s psychic wounds come from trauma, and they go deep: according to her, “You’re allowed to love people who hurt you,” even while carrying a burden of guilt and pain.

___________________________________________

Easy Girl. Directed by Hille Norden. 2026. In German with English subtitles. Runtime 124 minutes

Add new comment

O The Humanity

Chet Kozlowski — Thu, 07 May 2026 19:45:35 +0000

O The Humanity Chet Kozlowski May 7, 2026 - 15:45

Topics

Film Review

Tags

drama

We are fascinated by the workings of hospitals. Evidence every TV show from Dr. Kildare to E.R. to Grey’s Anatomy (now in, what, its 79^th year? Kidding, 22) to the current fave, HBO’s The Pitt. We thrill to dedicated professionals charging purposefully down pristine halls, barking instructions and jargon. So much at stake, so many skills on display. They assess, they race against time, they grieve. We admire them and identify with them.

Medical dramas work best as episodic series. They are a continuum: save some, lose some; there’s always more to come. The new drama Late Shift is self-contained. It feels like it's happening in real time, but crisply distills an eight-hour shift to two. It’s a day in the life of Floria Lind, a nurse, not in the E.R., but nonetheless dealing with life and death.

Floria arrives at the hospital on public transit, the picture of empathy and cool efficiency. She’s cheery and professional, a locus of calm in an understaffed world. We trail her from room to room as she checks in with patients. Most are appreciative, like the African immigrant about to undergo surgery who shyly drops that he has no relatives or friends to stay with him. “I’m your friend,” assures Floria. To calm another, she sings to her.

Others complain: their test results have not come back yet; an ornery patient on private insurance times his services with an expensive watch and declares them mishandled. Inattentive doctors display a lack of humanity. Overworked and losing her cool, Floria’s mantra becomes “there are only two of us on duty.”

Of course, the center cannot hold. The shift wears on, and Floria’s patience wears out. She becomes harried and fed up. She deals with that damn watch. And finally, she turns her attention to the quietest of the lot, a squeaky wheel who hasn’t asked for notice, and whose circumstances turn out to be the most dire.

As Floria, Leonie Benesch is a perfect Everyperson. I’ve seen her in another workplace film on Netflix, The Teachers’ Lounge. She’s extremely watchable. As Floria, she presents as stalwart and natural. We believe in her. We root for her. Ms. Benesch has also been in Babylon Berlin and The Crown.

Director Petra Volpe has several films to her credit. She is as efficient as her protagonist. In her hands, Late Shift is Steadicam heaven: Ms. Volpe’s camera glides and dodges and hovers around Floria, a frenetic witness to the mayhem. The viewer is invested in Floria’s plight: with so many successes, it’s the failures that haunt. The climax is quietly devastating and set to Hope There’s Someone by Antony and the Johnsons, itself a haunting coda. Late Shift concludes as a parable and offers an incisive view of a health care system that is humane yet still imperfect.

Floria faces mortality itself, and we realize that tomorrow, or on her next shift, she will do it all over again.

_____________________________________

Late Shift. Directed by Petra Volpe. 2025. A Swiss and German production, in German with English subtitles. 92 minute

Add new comment

Are We There Yet?

Chet Kozlowski — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 02:46:21 +0000

Are We There Yet? Chet Kozlowski April 22, 2026 - 22:46

Topics

Film Review

Tags

drama

Endurance is the theme of the new film The North. Physical endurance by way of a 350-mile hike through the Scottish Highlands. Endurance that tests the bonds of friendship. And endurance of spirit, how far will you go with a secret inside you? The walk is, of course, a metaphor, but one that is enthralling and well executed.

Boyhood friends, now approaching thirty, embark on the 30-day trek. All starts out well: they are polite and deferential. Chris (Bart Harder), strapping and red-headed, is married, planning a family, and beset by a business that keeps calling him along the way. Lluis (Carles Pulido) is swarthy, unattached, and more upbeat. “Even a bad day in nature is better than a good one at the office,” he tells Chris. The pair are frequently seen as REI candy-colored specks dwarfed by a vast expanse of green, rolling hills. There is rarely anyone else in sight.

They do run into other hikers, at rest stops and in the few towns they pass through. But mostly they are alone with each other and with their thoughts. For all the camaraderie they don’t talk much about important matters. They walk, sleep in a lightweight tent, go through sun, fog, relentless rain and crippling wind.

Lluis’ knees give out and Chris goes on by himself, left alone with his thoughts and the concern—for Lluis, for his life—shows on his face. Lluis meets up eventually, with maps, insisting that they will fare better without their phones and GPS, like the pioneers did. Fellow travelers comment on their sleeping in the same tent: “You must be really close. Or hate each other.” Lluis casually reveals to one stranger a medical diagnosis he had never told Chris. That startles him; how could Chris not have known?

The filmmaking of The North is straightforward and unassuming. Director/writer Bart Schrijver lets the locations speak for themselves, the desolate and unforgiving beauty of the West Highland Way and Cape Wrath Trail, Likewise the acting: Mr. Harder and Mr. Pulido are both understated and naturalistic, an unlikely couple and increasingly sympatico to each other. The trip tests their bond. They show the fatigue of people who are too close for too long.

The smartphone is a player in all this. Technology imposes itself in modern ways. When Lluis ditches GPS, they flail. Poor Chris gets shrill calls from work at the most inconvenient times. Still, the very lightness and stealth of the technology and the equipment used in the filmmaking makes the narrative immersive. We glide alongside the men (interesting shots here of depth of focus), not giving a thought of the camera’s presence. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that some shots were done on the phone as well.

Set pieces are subtle and effective; a dark interlude sequestered in the tent as rain pours down; Chris, annoyed, striding along the beach, tosses off his backpack, walks on then thinks better of it and goes back to retrieve it; Lluis’ eventual submission to his pain is heartbreaking exactly because it sidesteps conventional drama.

Director Bart Schrijver’s adeptness at second unit work contribute to his eye here helming a feature. He is known also for Human Nature (2022).

____________________________________________

The North. Directed by Bart Schrijver. 2025. Distributed by Tull Stories. Runtime 130 minutes.

Add new comment

Fallen Angels and O.G.s

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:57:40 +0000

Fallen Angels and O.G.s Chet Kozlowski March 23, 2026 - 20:57

Topics

Film Review

Tags

drama

Fantasy Life is a welcome throwback to low-impact comedy like Annie Hall, Goodbye Columbus, and Blume in Love. Writer/director Matthew Shear’s work fits perfectly into the mold of Jewish-centric comedy. You half expect him to unzip from the forehead and the pre-pariah Woody Allen to step out. It’s not a bad model to follow, yielding laughs and knowing insights about the caprices of human nature.

When we meet 30-year-old Sam (played by the multi-tasking Mr. Shear), he is being let go from his job. Dazed and confused, he recounts this to Dr. Fred, his shrink, who tells him his son and his wife need a “babysitter” and suggests Sam apply.

David the son is a charismatic musician, a rock bassist. Diane the wife is a once-popular actress who has fallen out of demand and hopes to be “re-introduced” to the filmgoing public. Sam accepts the job watching their three daughters while David goes off on tour, and Diane, depressed about “aging out” (one scene has an autograph seeker mistaking her for another actress, Lake Bell), wanders through the house like a sleepwalker. She starts chatting with Sam, and soon they’re watching old movies together. Sam is smitten. A bond forms. Things come to a head when David returns and the extended family summers on Martha’s Vineyard, where tragedy almost strikes when Sam, who is prone to panic attacks, puts the children at risk.

It’s a simple enough premise and handled with wit and aplomb by Mr. Shear. Fantasy Life assumes an old-school structure, a few steps removed from sitcoms and passed through a Mumblecore filter. Besides Amanda Peet (Diane) and Alessandro Nivola (David), both believable and appealing actors, Mr. Shear must’ve practically peed himself to get the rest of the cast: O.G.s like Judd Hirsh (Taxi, The Fablemans) as the shrink Dr. Fred, Andrea Martin (Only Murders in the Building, et al) as Dr. Fred’s receptionist, and isn’t that Bob Balaban (Asteroid City, et al) and Jessica Harper (Phantom of the Paradise) playing the grandparents? Season this with turns by Zosia Mamet (HBO’s Girls), Holland Taylor (Bombshell) and the vivacious child actors Romy Fay, Callie Santoro, and Riley Vinson as the kids, and you have a satisfying feast indeed.

Amanda Peet has many films and TV shows to her credit, including The Whole Nine Yards, Dirty John, and Your Friends and Neighbors (I have a special place in my heart for her in Aaron Sorkin’s single-season Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). Ms. Peet can be comic, elegant, and sexy at the same time. Her performance here as the conflicted Diane is subtle and a little heartbreaking. “I’m a wealthy white woman and I always feel like a victim,” she opines. She’s the prom queen in purgatory. Ms. Peet renders with delicate sorrow Diane’s quest to maintain her roles as mother and wife while remaining marketable. Ms. Peet is also listed as a producer of Fantasy Life.

Matthew Shear is a hyphenate to watch. This is his first feature film. As a writer, his script is witty and unpredictable; as an actor, he projects into Sam a vulnerability and self-awareness. His directing style is loose and not showy. In all roles, he’s willing to step back and give his able cast room to shine.

If I have any complaint about Fantasy Life, it’s a reliance on the lilting score by Christopher Bear. The music’s fine, don’t get me wrong. But too often, Mr. Shear undercuts the power of his scenes with its whimsy. Its placement softens some strong emotion. This instinct will hopefully relax as Mr. Shear gains confidence. I’m looking forward to his next effort.

_______________________________

Fantasy Life. Directed by Matthew Shear. 2025. From Greenwich Entertainment. Runtime 91 minutes.

Add new comment

"Trust Is A Red Herring"

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 21:59:42 +0000

"Trust Is A Red Herring" Chet Kozlowski March 3, 2026 - 16:59

Topics

Film Review

Tags

drama

In the opening montage of the faux-documentary Group: The Schopenhauer Effect, various New Yorkers walk to the Group session, heeding their inner voices, which are ambivalent, argumentative, insecure, and so on. Once in the room, under their therapist’s guidance, they express their turmoil and, in doing so, help each other. The Group rules are simple: what’s said in Group stays in Group, and the participants can’t meet separately outside the office. It’s a closed unit and an effective form of therapy. The film is based on a successful web series that chronicles the fictitious practice of real-life psychoanalyst Dr. Elliot Zeisel.

The conceit of the film has the participants returning from Covid’s limbo of Zoom. They meet weekly and are happy to be back in person. A new member creates a disturbance: Alexis, a filmmaker who wants to observe the Group as research for an upcoming project. He’s been convinced by Dr. Zeisel to join and commit for real. His presence throws the balance off. The others object, fearing he’ll mine their serious purpose for trivial entertainment. They are wary of him until he proposes a plan that will encourage them all to make real therapeutic progress.

Sounds dry, I know, but fans of Showtime’s Couples Therapy, HBO’s In Treatment, and even Netflix’s Love is Blind (once they leave the pods) will find much to enjoy. First, there’s the buzz of identification (from common issues and skirting mental ruts; Dr. Zeisel’s probing questions and jolting statements —“Trust is a red herring”— blasts oneself out of complacency), and the superiority that comes with the illusion of solving the troubles of others.

The ensemble is seasoned actors, and the film and series are scripted and improvised. Thomas Sadowski (of HBO’s The Newsroom) is Alexis, the surrogate of the film’s director Alexis Lloyd (30 Beats). The cast is rounded out by Lucy Walters, Teresa Avia Lim, Ezra Barnes, Bernardo Cubría, Gabriela Kohen, Elisha Lawson, and Cara Ronzetti, all giving empathetic performances. The characters, even the disagreeable ones, become familiar quickly.

The mise-en-scène blurs the line between reality and fiction. It’s lots of close-ups by a handheld camera in a room. Yet Mr. Lloyd makes it compelling (my online screener kept bugging out, making me frantic to rejoin). I wonder how Group: The Schopenhauer Effect will play out on the big screen, given its YouTube roots. Watched on a phone or laptop, the segments put the viewer in the Group as well, producing an intimacy that could be lost when expanded. The conversion to a feature film also freezes the premise, making it a one-off rather than a reliable ongoing series. But the actors are appealing, and the insights edifying. We are sad when our time is up.

___________________________

Group: The Schopenhauer Effect. Directed by Alexis Lloyd. 2026. From Abramorama. Runtime 119 minutes.

Add new comment

How Not to Survive Pre-Adolescence

Brandon Judell — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 13:22:10 +0000

How Not to Survive Pre-Adolescence Brandon Judell January 6, 2026 - 08:22

Topics

Film Review

Tags

drama

"Carrie's got the curse! Carrie's got the curse," sang out the teens stomping onstage in a locker room in the short-lived 1988 Broadway adaptation of Stephen King's ode to menstruation.

Don't be surprised then if "Ben's got the plague! Ben's got the plague," is being chanted likewise in the near future. If "that time of the month" with a dash of telekinetic powers can inspire a musical, why can't a lad with a ghastly rash do the same?

Writer/director Charlie Polinger's The Plague, with its current 100% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating, is a raw, painful look at pre-adolescence based on the director's actual journals from when he was 12, a time he notes "when social anxiety is so visceral that every day feels like life-and-death." He labels his mesmerizing film "psychological horror."

With its trauma-inducing score (Johan Lenox), its eerily immersive cinematography (Steven Breckon), its perfect casting of both awkward and bullies (Rebecca Dealy), plus its riveting pacing (editors Henry Hayes and Simon Njoo), The Plague does for pre-teens what Jaws did for sharks and The Shining accomplished for recovering alcoholic authors with writer's block. You'll want to keep them at more than an arm's length.

Although shot in Bucharest, Romania, the film takes place somewhere stateside in the summer of 2003 at the Tom Lerner Water Polo Camp, 2^nd session.

Opening shot: a huge, uninhabited swimming pool. A screen of discomforting, gurgling blue. Suddenly, one boy jumps in from a distance. Then a multitude follows. Within seconds,s all we see are dozens of headless, flailing tweens kicking to and fro. Sound: disembodied blasts as if from a ship leaving port.

Cut to the boys' torso-less heads bobbing up and down above water as they clap hands in the pool, rather reminiscent of a Synchronized Swimming Olympic event as choreographed by Sweeney Todd? Fear not. It's a cheerful visual. Not a slaughter. The chaps are having fun. It's only the soundtrack that's at times rather worrying, plus your own memories, especially if you hid in bathroom stalls during your junior high years.

(Warning: After watching The Plague, be prepared for the rising up of flashbacks of some of your most traumatic pubescent trials by fire that you once thought were submerged forever. One of my own: After school was out, Howard B., who lived in my building, gleefully told me in the elevator that everyone in gym class that day noticed that my testicles were hairless. How they saw, I didn't ask. Worn-out undies? Anyway, I hadn't yet read Questions Children Ask by my mom, who borrowed the book from Susan Rosenhouse's mother across the street. Consequently, I didn't know I was supposed to be hirsute down there. By the way, the first two questions in that pragmatic guide were "Why don't I have one?" and "Why is Daddy's bigger than my own?" Thankfully, my father, who exposed me to many mental horrors throughout the years, avoided exposing himself, so I never even thought of asking that final one, and clearly I had no need to ask the first. But wait! They come in sizes? Clearly, a lack of sex education was just another reason in the Bronx in the early '60s to ridicule someone already blessed with a higher voice, uncoordinated limbs, and an inability to play punchball. Don't worry. Gyms and facial hair rid me of the taint.)

Back to critique: Class time. Coach Daddy Wags (Joel Edgerton), who himself had a depressive youth, understands lads and is forgiving even when someone draws a penis with an unerasable red marker on the whiteboard he's utilizing for instruction. The probable artistic villain of this dastardly deed and the apparent leader of all non-scholastic on-campus delinquent doings is the ever-smirking Jake (Kayo Martin, nominee for several Breakthrough Performance awards at the moment). He's been around the whole summer and knows the ropes.

Not so for the new boy, the fragile Ben (Everett Blunck, who was so brilliant in last year's Griffin in Summer). He's walking through life as if feeling his way across a newly frozen lake. Every step can be a fatal misstep. But so far, the in-crowd is accepting him even if Jake immediately unearths Ben's flaw. The youth pronounces "stop" as "sop" and "Boston" as "Bosson." That's teasable, but not enough reason to be ostracized.

Happily, Ben is accepted at the "popular" lunch table, and he's even asked his opinion on such heady philosophical questions as would he rather have sex with a dog without anybody knowing or not have sex with a dog with everyone thinking he did.

Eli (Kenny Rasmussen) isn't so lucky. This quirky, shapeless youth, who's been around since the beginning of summer, has suddenly broken out with a body rash which Jake and pals have deemed a highly contagious form of leprosy. Don't touch Eli or sit where he has sat, or you'll have to run to the shower and soap up rigorously.

Ben feels both the absurdity and the injustice of this ostracization, but can he both befriend the boy with the dermal eruptions and still pal around with locker-room elite who lie about their sexual exploits when the lights go out? Of course not.

Edward Burne Jones, the pre-Raphelite painter, once noted: "I can only come near to what I wish, and am unhappy in consequence." Ben could wear that on a T-shirt.

In the end, what might at first sound like a Netflix 8-episode trek through the agonies of acne and the want to be accepted is instead a nigh-perfect film that is terrifying from beginning to end without the need of monsters because we, intentionally or not, are the monsters.

(Please note: the appropriately named Spooky Pictures is one of the production companies involved here.)

Add new comment

Missing No More

Chet Kozlowski — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 01:48:25 +0000

Missing No More Chet Kozlowski December 27, 2025 - 20:48

Topics

Film Review

Tags

drama

I’ve been a fan of Jared Harris since seeing him as John Lennon in the 2000 TV film Two of Us (to Aidan Quinn’s Paul McCartney). He’s done a lot more since (and before) then, of course, but I remember him most as King George VI in Netflix’s The Crown, and Lane Pryce in Mad Men—his lined face, gruff demeanor, and throaty growl mask a pained tenderness. So I looked forward to seeing him in the new film Reawakening.

He plays John, an itinerant electrician. John and his wife Mary live a quiet working-class life in England. Their daughter Clare stormed out of the family home a decade ago. She was fourteen years old and presumably left to live on the streets. Mary mourns. John canvases neighborhoods, showing Clare’s photo, chasing phantoms, and tracking down leads that, over ten years, have gone nowhere. He sits on a TV stage to plead for clues on the tenth anniversary of Clare’s disappearance and slips into a trance while looking at a photo of her face.

And now, suddenly, Clare has returned. No fanfare, she’s just there on the doorstep. The years have left her lean. She asks forgiveness and wants to come home. Mary takes her in, no questions asked. But John is suspicious. Is it really her?

Juliet Stevenson plays Mary. She’s best known for Truly, Madly, Deeply and one of the best screen Noras in a 1992 TV production of A Doll’s House. Erin Doherty, who appeared in Netflix’s The Crown and Adolescence, whose delicately elongated features would inspire Modigliani, is Clare.

John and Mary’s conflict is played out in terse remarks courtesy of writer/director Virginia Gilbert’s literate script. John implores Mary to see the cracks in Clare’s story. “You must feel it isn’t right,” he says, to which Mary replies, “Don’t tell me what I feel.” When John asks Mary what this imposter could want, Mary cries, “Why should she want anything from us? We’re nobody! We’re nothing!” For her part, the woman skitters around the edges, there but practically not in the frame.

The return of the Prodigal lends itself to a thriller motif, often leading to violence and mayhem. And in fact, Reawakening is being marketed as a thriller of that stripe. But Reawakening isn’t that; it’s more modest and more thoughtful. The suspense comes from what the characters won’t or can’t do, how they are helpless. The ensemble plays an understated cat-and-mouse game of passing glances and conflicting emotions that addresses the loneliness of loss and what we’d do to relieve it. In the end, Reawakening gives poignant meaning to its title.

________________________________________

Reawakening. Directed by Virginia Gilbert. 2024. Runtime 90 minutes. In theaters and on VOD.

Add new comment

Enigmatic Enlightenment

Chet Kozlowski — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 17:20:56 +0000

Enigmatic Enlightenment Chet Kozlowski December 21, 2025 - 12:20

Topics

Film Review

Tags

drama

Universal is an odd little movie. It seems to be made up of codes. First, there’s that title. Universal is hardly universal in any sense. It takes place in one setting, and the action is essentially a dialogue among three characters; no one else appears in the cast. It sets up situations and then doesn’t follow through, at least in an expected way. Are these missed opportunities or parts of the design?

Basically, in Universal, three people in a cabin in the woods confront the mysteries of the universe. Leo and Naomi are US-based British academics. They’ve been dating for three years. They arrive at a holiday rental, ready for relaxation. Leo has a wedding ring and is ready to pop the question. His plan is scuttled by Rickey, a graduate student at his college, who appears at the door. Rickey has been working in their mutual lab and made a startling discovery about “junk DNA,” Leo’s field of study, whose research will bring him tenure. Rickey drove hours to see him and avoids leaving. Remarkably, Leo and Naomi warm to Rickey’s discovery, which we see as primitively animated monochrome diagrams on her laptop.

Everybody is onboard with the premise. The actors give engaged, relaxed performances: Joe Thomas is appealingly nerdy as Leo, Rosa Robson softens convincingly to circumstances as Naomi, and Kelley Mack has an impish charm as the intruding Rickey. They talk, and they talk. There is precious little conflict yet several opportunities for it: a drug-fueled party; surprise nudity; a gun suddenly revealed. But little comes of them. And then the end credits roll. The ninety minutes have flown by, but to quote David Letterman, “It’s a long way to travel to find out the store is closed.”

Yet I would recommend Universal as a pleasant, low-impact experience. Weeks after seeing it, I think back on it fondly. The performances are shar,p even if it’s hard to figure out just what the film’s stakes are.

Writer/director Stephen Portland seems earnest and deals in clues here, but to a mystery only he can solve. Universal is pokey, and its arc is inconclusive, but it feels “organic,” very much intentional, and leaves you wanting more. Mr. Portland directed another film with a similarly generic one-word title, Something, in 2018.

In some respects, Universal feels like a prelude to a longer film. I wonder if there was more to it, and if the production was truncated by the tragic death of one of the actors. The film is dedicated to “the late” Kelley Mack, who plays Rickey, and who suffered a brain tumor, aged 33. Ms. Mack had a starring role in a season of The Walking Dead and did voice work for animated films. She might well have gone on to a solid career.

____________________________

Universal. Directed by Stephen Portland. 2025. Runtime 90 minutes. Available on demand.