Week Ending 7/10/26

Steven Soderbergh's The Christophers is eighty minutes of a woman stoically staring as a man loquaciously and often inanely vomits dialogue to no end before finally becoming self-conscious enough to realize he's actually being forced to confront just how hollow, scared, and inconsequential he has become. And it's a ton of fun as Ed Solomon writes Ian McKellen a steady stream of one-liners within it that are made funnier by Michaela Coel's deadpan expressions.

The other twenty are some of the most unforgettable and legitimately heartfelt moments of human connection you'll see all year. Moments devoid of the artifice of celebrity that McKellen's renowned painter Julian Sklar lost himself to two decades ago. Moments of authentic understanding portrayed via the silence shared when he stems his tide of drivel long enough for Coel's Lori Butler to tilt her head into the universal "Are you done now?" position.

There's also a lot to be said about artistic intent, speculative value versus intrinsic value, and the difference between actual critique causing an artist to get angry because they know it's true and performative critique seeking to belittle an artist—regardless of the quality of their work—as a means towards giving themselves value through the excoriation. There's even more to be said about the pain, suffering, and love inherent to the act of creation.

It's why Jessica Gunning and James Corden are so good as the no-talent leeches attempting to profit off their father instead of even trying to discover why he never finished the paintings they hire Lori to forge (not that he gave them reason to care). And why the potential buyer is no better than them by attributing value to the idea of the art rather than the art itself. Because it's not about ownership. It's about the experience of doing, seeing, and knowing.

8/10

While I'm not surprised Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind was a critical success, I am shocked it also proved to be a commercial blockbuster. Because there's no real story to follow beyond the esoteric draw of an extra-terrestrial phenomenon. The script neither concerns itself with focusing on why aliens have come to Earth nor the human aspect of Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) letting his marriage implode. It's merely a spiritual quest into the unknown.

It's about finding answers. It's about the imperative of discovery above all else. We see it clearest when Jillian (Melinda Dillon) recovers her son and instantly retreats back into the distance while Roy completely forgets about his own kids to move closer. He (as well as François Truffaut's Lacombe) has sensed God. He's found something more important than his physical self, family, or possessions. He seeks to discover his place within existence itself.

That's some heady stuff that Paul Schrader apparently didn't care to engage with when writing the original script that Spielberg called "one of the most embarrassing screenplays ever professionally turned in to a major film studio or director." I love that sort of trivia because it reveals how long the cinematic process takes and the care some filmmakers wielded to ensure everything is right before rolling cameras. Schrader wanted plot. Spielberg wanted soul.

The UFO stuff is wild with all the different shapes and flight patterns (no wonder little Barry called them "toys"). Douglas Trumball's effects and the numerous composites and matte paintings still look fantastic fifty years later. And it's fun to spy Lance Henriksen in the background and Carl Weathers in the credits. But the real takeaway is the film's ability to let Roy be consumed by his obsession without being villainized as a deadbeat dad.

Who doesn't enjoy watching a patriarchal 1970s film hail a selfish man as heroically inspirational? You could write a book about the toxic masculinity on display (see Roy's son calling him a "cry baby" while he and Teri Garr scream back rather than console). That's the thing, though, right? When in service of a higher power, you're supposed to be forgiven for forsaking everything else. But proving your faith often demands that others foot the emotional bill.

7/10

Director Yeon Sang-ho returns to zombies six years after putting a pause on his Train to Busan series (an American remake and another Korean sequel are still in the works). This time he and co-writer Choi Kyu-seok skew more towards The Last of Us by way of a new form of "collective intelligence" being manufactured at a reputable biotech corporation. As with many capitalistic dystopias, however, the person selling it isn't the one who created it.

Colony therefore begins with Seo Yeong Cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) calling in a terrorist attack he's about to unleash. The threat is a biological outbreak of which he declares he's the vaccine. He tells the police the location (a conference held by the CEO of his former employer within a public marketplace high-rise) and then lurks in the background as his stolen research is pitched to the crowd. That audience doesn't know it's about to become Seo's proof of concept.

The resulting infected are a gnarly bit of business. Whereas Cordyceps creates a simplistic hive mind system that connects them, Yeon's iteration possesses the ability to learn, share information, and evolve together. So, while the initial onslaught feels feral and random with people crawling on all fours and getting confused by mannequins and LED advertisements, each misstep leads to the group tilting their heads upward to download the next "software" patch.

Soon they're walking on two legs, differentiating between plastic and flesh, and even conserving energy by waiting for their next opportunity for proliferation rather than simply bashing their heads against glass walls. Thankfully, the small group of survivors serving as our protagonists has a biology professor amongst them to recognize this pattern. While Se Jeong (Jun Ji-hyun) seems to be one step ahead of these monsters, it's only until the bigger picture gets revealed.

All the usual genre tropes are present within this new spin on the concept. You must be bitten to get infected and the infected are easily confused if they think you already are, but the wrinkle here is that Seo acts as a sort of puppet master—the Borg Queen, so to speak—with the power to see everything they see and course correct on a whim. So, when his "workers" get caught in a hiccup, he uploads new commands that rewrites the description of their target.

Se Jeong is the perfect unwitting hero at the center. Her ex-husband thinks she's listless, but really she just can't find people on her level to both not get frustrated with their idiocy and not have them get frustrated with what they believe is her ego. We learn pretty early that Se has no community of family or friends as a result, so she becomes a metaphor for the advantages of a closed loop system over the unwieldy and often volatile firehose of infinite cooperation.

That's not to say she is cold or unfeeling, though. No, that's the businessman and police officer sent to find Seo who are also part of her party. They have one-track minds thinking of their own survival first whereas Se proves her humanity by helping to save a paraplegic in-need (Kim Shin-rock's Choi Hyeon Hui) until her security guard brother (Ji Chang-wook's Choi Hyeon Seok) arrives. Those siblings conversely think only of each other at their own expense.

Yeon and Choi have thus crafted a very specific cast of characters to drive home their message about humanity's flaws and strengths. I've seen a couple people dismissing Colony for writing "dumb" people refusing to come up with easy solutions to the central problem at-hand, but that's kind of the point. The confusion and selfishness inherent to our species via fear is exactly what Seo hopes to eradicate with his mind virus. But it's also what can save us.

Se is only here because her ex was worried about her well-being knowing she'll be alone when he leaves for America with his new wife and daughter. Hyeon Hui is here on her vacation just to visit her brother in his place of work because getting out from behind her desk isn't worth as much as being happy in his company. And all those dumb mistakes the rest make that ultimately lead to their own deaths are intentionally avoidable because we are intrinsically imperfect.

But not as imperfect as the hive mind that's unable to get out of its own way when falling prey to its own deficiencies. The sheer fact that Seo must exist as the head of the snake shows their greatest weakness considering the whole idea of "collective intelligence" is to ensure everyone is on equal footing without jealousy or greed getting in the way. Why does he have power over them then? Why are they slaves to his whims? The whole is a metaphorical fascistic state too.

And Se is the leader of the free will rebellion. A scientific mind that understands the logic behind Seo weaponizing the ideal of a "greater good" into a protective shield as well as the human emotions to feel the cost of making the tough call that actually achieves it. Because choice is our greatest power. The choice to be brave or stupid. The choice to play politics or rip off the Band-Aid. The choice to be the pariah knowing it means your haters are still alive.

It's a nice message only lost on audiences consisting of too many Seos who think they're infallible because they know how to tear down a film's infrastructure in a way that ensures they've missed the point. And it's delivered with a great cast, a wealth of viscous fungal slime, and some of the most memorable "zombies" yet courtesy of acrobatic extras climbing atop each other before striking. Yeon always knows how to keep us entertained.

7/10

The debate surrounding classified information and whistleblower criminality has always centered on safety. But anyone paying attention to the world's descent into partisanship, tribalism, and fascism knows it's truly about power. Because that's what knowing gets you. That's why the public can't know. Not because they won't understand or because that knowledge will drive them insane. No, it's because true equality means there are no more secrets to control.

Disclosure Day plays like a re-imagining of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third fifty years later rather than a companion piece. It not only takes pains to ensure the two people pulled into its unexplainable orbit via visions and invisible strings (Josh O'Connor's Daniel and Emily Blunt's Margaret) have no children to beat the deadbeat allegations Richard Dreyfus couldn't, but it also augments its collision course with concrete meaning and purpose.

That's not to say Close Encounters needed either. It was made in an era devoid of the technologies that have flattened our world in ways that were supposed to unite us. Sadly, that fire hose of information only separated us more by forcing its facilitators to find new ways of profiting from it through misinformation and fear mongering. They've weaponized our ability to connect to prove how much the world hates us rather than how much we must empathize with them.

David Koepp's script is therefore less about the wonder of discovery than the reality that our humanity has been lost. That faith in God to save us above others has let us stop seeing our neighbors as family. That religion has provided us yet another means to feel superior over our fellow man. And it’s only through the knowledge that we aren’t alone that we can truly reconnect with who we are. That borders and nations are irrelevant. That we're all in this together.

So, Disclosure Day is a comment on jingoistic invasion actioners like Independence Day. They show humanity rallying together in a show of force much like the rising tide of nationalism has. Why? Because it leans into that notion of power. It keeps the military industrial complex alive. But what if we rallied around peace? What if we remembered to extend a hand rather than slap one away? That we can care for strangers and family alike. That we can be better.

8/10

We never find out what "misunderstanding" got Eleni (Cemre Paksoy) fired from her last nursing job. Only that she took time off and is now ready to get back to helping people. Dr. Mann (Mimi Rogers) either doesn't think it was too bad or can't worry about caring if it was due to a dearth of candidates because she hires her on the spot. Douglas (Bruce McKenzie) is a "difficult" patient and beggars can't be choosers. Desperation rules them all.

Writer/director Georgia Bernstein's grandmother almost fell victim to the "grandchild in trouble and in need of money" scam before a bank teller refused to hand over her savings, so she understands the psychology behind the crime. That being said, however, Night Nurse isn't really about the con. This isn't Thelma with the victim hunting down her predator or some mystery to be solved by the audience or characters on-screen. It's about compulsion and control.

Because we learn very early on who the culprit is and why he doesn't actually need the money. No, he does it for the excitement of knowing he can. He does it to wrap his accomplices around his finger and create a psycho-sexual dynamic that makes it so they'll do anything he asks. And they assist him because doing so is literally their job. It's their purpose to give him purpose and his belief that doing so also gives purpose to their marks to "save" their family.

This isn't quite the sadomasochistic thriller you might expect, though. The bond formed between Douglas and Eleni isn't about sex as much as it is about the absurdity of the situation. Bernstein admits the on-screen logic is intentionally rendered to feel dreamlike in its execution as it moves from scene to scene. The act of indoctrination itself happens so quickly that you must wonder if it's real. That's how strong of a drug this warped idea of "caring" proves.

Eleni becomes addicted the moment Douglas hangs up the phone after wrapping it around her body to use as a restraint both so she doesn't ruin the call and so he can assert his power over her. She falls in line with his whims in a way that ultimately pushes his other nurse Mona (Eléonore Hendricks) to the fringes. Sometimes it feels like Eleni's excitement is exactly what he craves to keep going. Sometimes it feels like she's a bit too excited even for him.

Bernstein blurs this line between help and lust throughout. She portrays the intimacy of elder care as a hotbed for sensuality whether it's a hand on the waist as the nurses lead their male patients around the pool or a spying eye through the crack of a door as another applies lotion to their chests. Even Dr. Mann's yearning to alleviate the pain and confusion of her patients inevitably comes off as a fetish by the end as every interaction with Douglas carries subtext.

The film I thought of most while watching was Natural Born Killers and its crazed depiction of love transcending immorality and insanity. Because right when we know for certain that Douglas has been faking his dementia to secure his spot in this luxury retirement community, something shifts to make us question just how lucid he is. We must also wonder if he truly believes he is helping his victims since a tragic moment of letting one down sparks his decline.

While that uncertainty of what's real is the point, it can be somewhat tiring to endure as the pacing grinds much of the narrative propulsion to a hazy halt of clouded lethargy. Eleni's obsessive desire to keep going. Douglas' loosening grip on time. The addition of more nurses falling prey to his allure for fun even if they're unaware of his extracurricular activities. I did worry that Night Nurse was spinning its wheels for a good portion before its climax arrived.

Sure, the acting is very good with Paksoy's descent and McKenzie's audacity, but it wasn't until the finale blurred lines even more via a role reversal to smack us all sober prior to delivering one last "good deed" that I really started to see what the film offered. It's not going to be for everyone since it enjoys playing with its viewers' patience and comprehension, but that's also the part of this ride that will definitely appeal to the rest.

6/10

The hope from revolution in Iran was for freedom from monarchic rule. Reality, however, eventually ushered in an era of even worse oppression via an iron-fisted theocracy. Should those who chose to return and see their country reborn have seen the writing on the wall? Maybe. But arguments about where to go next are part of structural change. Debate will get heated, but cooler heads should prevail. They didn't realize how much power the Islamic extremists already held.

So, it's not long after Azar Nafisi (Golshifteh Farahani) begins her post teaching English Literature in Tehran that the curtain falls. Hijabs become mandatory. Text and ideas deemed to be immoral are banned. Citizens daring to protest and live as they had in the past are arrested and, sometimes, executed. Everything Azar and her husband (Arash Marandi's Bijan) thought was possible ends in an instant. Purpose and circumstances are forced to change.

Adapted by Marjorie David from Nafisi's memoir of the same name, Eran Riklis' Reading Lolita in Tehran begins with Azar's return from America. Centered around her teaching The Great Gatsby at university, we watch as her optimism is tested at the airport and again in her classroom. She welcomes the challenge. She welcomes the opportunity to educate and mold minds that show a willingness to listen despite their indoctrination. She just isn't really given that chance.

From there we move to 1995 where the title originates. This is when Azar begins her "book club" with trusted former students willing to risk their safety by leaving their husbands and/or fathers for one day a week to read classics like Lolita. We listen as these women (Zar Amir Ebrahimi's Sanaz, Mina Kavani's Nassrin, Lara Wolf's Azin, and others) catch the metaphors to their own lives in the text. And we watch their persecution crosscut against those words.

Riklis takes us back to the 80s with Daisy Miller when Azar attempts to teach again despite war with Iraq and forward to the late 90s with Pride and Prejudice as an in-road to sexuality and escape. The film does its best to spotlight one main through line connecting that era's Iran to the novel so the plot can progress in tandem with Azar's evolution from teacher to mother to mentor to woman in need of change, but you can tell a lot of context is missing from the source.

Think of this as more companion than replacement. Its runtime demands that a choice be made between telling Nafisi's story through her experiences with these books or a story about Iran through those shared experiences with the women trapped alongside her. David and Riklis chose the former for an uncomplicated biopic wherein the book club becomes one part of Azar's journey. The politics become a backdrop to her personal choice about staying.

That's not to say the film avoids the darkness inherent to those politics, though. We're still taken inside the prison with teenage protestors to understand the PTSD Nassrin speaks about towards the end. We witness the ordeal Sanaz endures to wonder aloud whether Iranian women have been turned into "Lolitas" by the Islamic Republic. We catch glimpses of the small yet still very dangerous ways in which Azar and her professor friend (Shahbaz Noshir) rebel.

The result is a captivating if somewhat superficial account of what occurred. It latches onto the broader swaths of what Nafisi wrote to craft an easily digestible tale of rebellion and survival. The complexities remain (Azin's inability to save herself with a daughter involved, Reza Diako's Bahri's conflict between the religion ruling his mind and the art ruling his heart, Azar trying to get Bijan to understand she can no longer afford hope), they just aren't mined further.

And that's okay when you still have the book at your disposal. The film is allowed to be just effective enough to give life to the overall journey while also sparking your interest to dig into the text and experience the historical and emotional details left behind. Farahani is great in the lead and Noshir lends a welcome air of self-aware nonchalance, but it's Ebrahimi, Wolf, and Parvaneh who stand out. It's probably why I wish we got more of the "club" in the process.

7/10

I kept wondering why the other sheep weren't named after crime novel icons like Marple for about half the film before realizing Chris O'Dowd's character was actually called Mopple. So, maybe I was the fool the whole time. You're off the hook, Officer Derry.

The Sheep Detectives was very cute in premise and execution. Credit director Kyle Balda and screenwriter Craig Mazin for not softening the edges of Leonie Swann's German-language source too since Hollywood needs more children's fare that touches on death with as much authenticity and darkness as this one (while also explaining how the pain of grief helps keep lost loved ones alive).

Great tone. Great cast. Great absurdity. ("We're going to forget all about that in three, two, one ...") And an entertaining mystery that satirizes the genre's "rules" while also abiding by them. I'll happily head to France to watch this wooly flock uncover a werewolf's identity if they decide to green-light the sequel.

7/10