December 2025

 

ROB REINER (1947-2025)   

      More than just a successful actor and director, Rob Reiner has been part of the fabric of Hollywood since he graduated from Beverly Hills High (classmate of Albert Brooks and Richard Dreyfuss) in 1964. Needless to say, he entered entertainment as a scion, the son of comedy-writing legend Carl Reiner, who was part of Sid Caesar’s troupe in the 1950s, created “The Dick Van Dyke Show” in 1961 and later guided Steve Martin ascension to film stardom in the 1980s.

     Rob became a household name in his own right in 1971 when he was cast as “Meathead,” the liberal son-in-law of rightwing crank Archie Bunker in “All in the Family,” nothing short of the most important television show of the 1970s.

     He never stopped acting but it was his writing that earned him notice (most prominently for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour”), leading to directing “This Is Spinal Tap” (1984), a hilarious mockumentary about a British heavy metal band on tour. Reiner directed many hit films but he never made a better movie than his debut. (The disappointing sequel was released this year—you know it’s bad when Paul McCartney supplies the biggest laughs.)

     Reiner, who was stabbed to death along with his wife earlier this month, wasn’t a great stylist or director of important films but he knew how to tell a story that audiences were yearning for. It’s hard not to be impressed with his run of pictures from 1986 to 1992: “Stand by Me,” “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally...” “Misery” and “A Few Good Men.” None of these films are favorites of mine, but the director knew how to find quality stories: Stephen King (twice), William Goldman, Nora Ephron and Aaron Sorkin are among the writers he worked with.

      He found less success this century, but he did make the amusing “The Bucket List” (2007), tapping into the chemistry between two great actors, Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson.

      I recently watched two of his last projects: “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life,” a fascination 2023 documentary about his lifelong friend and “Shock and Awe” (2017), a chronicle of the Knight-Ridder reporters who refused to buy the Bush Administration’s rational for the invasion of Iraq in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

     Woody Harrelson and James Marsden play the reporters who ignore all the PR being pushed by the defense department and repeated by the mainstream media. While it doesn’t deliver the goods with the dramatic power of “Spotlight” or “She Said”—it’s too didactic for its own good—the story of a few journalists who got it right was worth telling.

    And like he does in so many of his films, Reiner delivers a scene stealing performance, here as John Walcott, the wire services’ Washington bureau chief, who guides the coverage.

    His best film work as an actor includes playing the director within the film in “This Is Spinal Tap,” as Tom Hanks’ less-than-helpful friend in “Sleepless in Seattle” and as Leonardo DiCaprio’s straight-talking father in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

      In later years, he became one of Hollywood’s leading progressive voices, a go-to interview for a thoughtful take on the chaos coming out of Washington.

      The tragedy of his death shouldn’t overshadow his status in Hollywood over the past half century, both as a television actor and a director of some of the most loved films of our time.

 

HAMNET (2025)

      More than 400 years after his death, historians still question whether William Shakespeare, a man of the theater, was the author of the plays and poems that carry his byline. Even less is known about his wife Anne (also known as Agnes) Hathaway, opening the door to Maggie O’Farrell speculative fiction pinned to the actual death of the couple’s son Hamnet at age 11.

   Writer-director Chloé Zhao, working with O’Farrell, has created a picturesque vision of early 17^th Century life and the lowly position of women in that world.

     Agnes, portrayed with quiet resolve by Jessie Buckley, is a woman of the woods; Will (a soft-spoken Paul Mescal) first meets her when she is working with her falcon. She finds solace in nature—returning to her favorite tree trunk to give birth—explaining why their home remains in Stratford-upon-Avon while her husband’s work is in London.

     The scenes in the forest are painterly rendered, becoming a romantic refuge for the couple. Director Zhao’s signature is her ability to show characters as a part of the landscape, connected to nature—as she did in “The Rider” and “Nomadland”—here captured by Polish cinematographer Lukasz Zal (“Ida,” “Cold War”).

    Shakespeare’s interest in the marriage becomes secondary to his career as he spends more and more time in London producing his plays. But he dearly loves his daughters and son (a memorable Jacobi Jupe) and is inspired to write his most important work to commemorate Hamnet (apparently, in Early Modern English Hamnet and Hamlet were pronounced the same.)

     Trying to align the story with what is known historically can be tricky—in the film, his wife seems unaware of Shakespeare’s success as a playwright until “Hamlet,” despite it being preceded by 15 to 20 produced plays. It’s hard to believe she had never previously travelled from Stratford (a four-to-five-day trip) to see one of his plays. And I wish there would have been a few more scenes of Shakespeare working in London.

      The film manages to be a study of a writer who sacrifices so much for his art, even in the face of devastating loss, while keeping the focus on the woman who is expected to carry the burden of family.

    A classically trained Irish actress, Buckley, who has played Juliet in “Romeo & Juliet” and Miranda in “The Tempest,” has emerged, in the last five years, as one of the most interesting film performers. She was memorable in “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” (2020), “The Lost Daughter” (2021), “Women Talking” (2022) and “Wicked Little Letters” (2023), but her Agnes moves her into the first rank of film actresses. At the most important moments of “Hamnet,” Zhao fills the screen with Buckley’s face, relying on the subtlety of her acting to tell the story.

     Mescal, a best actor Oscar nominee for “Aftersun” and the star of “Gladiator II” (2024), portrays the Bard as an unassuming regular guy, which has brought some criticism of Zhao and O’Farrell. Can this rather insensitive, humble man be the great genius of Western literature? Maybe that is one of the tale’s points: transformative art can come from flawed sources; for this poet, it seems, understanding the human experience was easier than knowing how to be a responsible husband.

  

TRAIN DREAMS (2025)

   Few recent films have weaved together words and images more sublimely than this adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novella of the same name.

     Director Clint Bentley, one of the writers of “Sing Sing” (2023), scripting with that film’s director Greg Kwedar, has brought Johnson’s simple but moving tale of a itinerate logger in the early part of the 20^th Century to life. Deserving equal credit is Joel Edgerton, who plays Robert Grainier with a solemn, almost ethereal, manner; a man who finds a bit of happiness in a tough, unforgiving world only to see it vanish.

     Johnson, a little known but acclaimed writer, who died in 2017, is best known for the excellent film version of his story of addiction, “Jesus’ Son” (1999). Edgerton and narrator Will Patton bring the writer’s spare, insightful prose to the screen with little dramatics and a lived-in resolve.

 

    After years of working on lumber crews across the Northwest, Grainier marries Gladys (Felicity Jones) and builds a house for his wife. Together, they live blissfully and soon have a young daughter—making it harder and harder for Robert to leave home to earn his living. Only the love for his family keeps him sane during the lonely months travelling with the crews.

    Of course, the landscape of the Western America plays a big part in the story, the stripping of the land of trees as the country modernizes while Robert slips into a permanent sadness. The cinematography by Adolpho Veloso captures the majestic visas of the west.

       The beauty of the film is matched by peerless acting across the board. Edgerton, excellent in “Loving” (2016) and “Master Gardener” (2022), has never been better and should score an Oscar nomination. Also deserving award consideration is William H. Macy as an old-timer helping out the lumber crew and providing a semblance of wisdom in an otherwise dreary existence.

      Jones, nominated last year for “The Brutalist” and in 2014 for playing Stephen Hawking’s wife in “The Theory of Everything,” doesn’t have a huge role but perfectly encapsulates the healing aspect of a loving family.

     Kerry Condon, “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “F1: The Movie,” shows up in the last act as a forest ranger who gives Robert a different view of the changing world.

  

NOUVELLE VAGUE (2025)  

     Richard Linklater, best known for kinetic comedies such as “Dazed and Confused” and “School of Rock,” has tapped into his nostalgic side with two very different releases this year.

     “Blue Moon” remembers mid-century legends of musical theater while “Nouvelle Vague” (we called it “The New Wave”) celebrates the French filmmakers who offered a new way to tell stories in the late 1950s and early ‘60s.

       Working with mostly French actors and shooting in black and white, Linklater tells the story of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s landmark romantic crime picture “A bout de souffle” (“Breathless” in this country).

     Godard was part of the collection of film journalists (along with François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, among others) who traded their typewriters for directors’ chairs, creating most of the important French films of the 1960s and ‘70s.

      “Breathless,” Godard’s 1960 debut, follows a self-styled, rather ridiculous car thief and hustler Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo, soon to be an international star) who shoots a policeman and then seems to hide in plain sight as he romances an American woman Patricia (Jean Seberg), who works for the New York Herald-Tribune. Shot in long takes, much of it on the streets of Paris without permits, with a handheld camera and marked by jagged editing, the picture is best watched as a gemstone that guided the way for other, better, films and filmmakers.

     I enjoyed Linklater’s “making of” movie better than my sixth or seventh viewing of “Breathless,” with Guillaume Marbeck’s spot-on performance as the arrogantly confident, unpredictable Godard, who, while running out of money and ideas, often cancelled filming after one scene. Seeing the American actress Seberg (Zoey Deutch) frustration with the amateurish antics of Godard and his minions (Truffaut and Charbrol helped write the script and lingered around the set) is more interesting than watching Seberg’s Patricia fall for Michel’s faux charm in the original.

      My only criticism of the film is Linklater’s decision to identify with subtitles the famous people when the actor playing them make their first appearance. Most filmgoers who see this film hardly need to be clued in to who Truffaut or Jean-Pierre Melville are; for those who don’t recognize them, the names mean nothing.

     Anyone who is a fan of that glorious period of French cinema known as the New Wave, this film is a must see. But its chronicle of the beginning of guerrilla, independent filmmaking should be fascinating to any movie fan.

  

THE MASTERMIND (2025) and WAKE UP DEAD MAN (2025)

        Josh O’Connor, who first gained notice on this side of the Atlantic with his portrayal of Prince Charles in “The Crown” (opposite Oliva Colman’s reign as the Queen), has had a year. In addition to starring in these two high-profile releases, he co-starred with Paul Mescal in the well-reviewed “The History of Sound.”

      While he captures the slacker attitude of the 1970s, living laissez-faire, in Kelly Reichardt’s “Mastermind,” I just couldn’t bring myself to care as the unemployed (unemployable?) James decides to steal some paintings from a local museum and then, ineptly, goes on the run.

     The director’s usual somnolent pacing and inarticulate protagonist just adds to the movie’s thinness. I felt like I was watching a student film. The picture’s saving grace is the appearance of Hope Davis, as James’ enabling mother. Davis, whose career peaked in the early part of this century, (seek out “The Secret Lives of Dentists”) never fails to leave an impression—she was also a standout in Wes Anderson’s most recent pictures.

       Much more entertaining and offering O’Connor a more interesting role is Rian Johnson’s third “Knives Out” mystery in which he plays a young priest, the prime suspect in the murder of the church’s senior priest (a bombastic Josh Brolin). While there is plenty to laugh at here, “Wake Up Dead Man” has a more serious tone that the previous two.

     Daniel Craig is back for a third go-around as Benoit Blanc, an endlessly amusing master detective, an amalgamation of all the classic private eyes, from Holmes to Poirot to Columbo.

     O’Connor’s Father Duplenticy (you’ve got to love the name) is exiled to Monseigneur Wicks parish, where he immediate clashes with the gloom-and-doom messaging of Wicks. Soon, the senior priest is found dead and the investigation is on.

      Though a suspect, Blanc enlists Duplenticy as an assistant and together they unravel the mystery. Jeremy Renner, Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Jeffrey Wright and Thomas Haden Church are among the movie’s large ensemble.

      But the film’s standout is Glenn Close as the church’s jack-of-all-trades who is devoted to Wicks. Since her Oscar nomination for “The World According to Garp” (1982), she’s been one of Hollywood’s best actresses but in recent years (she’s in her late 70s) Close has shined in creating distinctive older women, embracing roles too often turned into clichés by Hollywood. This eight-time Oscar nominee deserves a win this year.

  

SENTIMENTAL VALUE (2025)

    The stoic nature of Scandinavians provides a perfect setting to study the deep-seated resentments and confused emotions in the wake of a broken marriage.

    While Joachim Trier’s new film doesn’t plumb the depths of Ibsen or Bergman, it brings a contemporary background—show business—to the age-old father-daughter distrust.

       Gustav (a superb Stellan Skarsgård) re-enters the life of his two daughters after his surprise appearance at the funeral of his long-divorced wife.

      Nora (Renate Reinsve), an accomplished but neurotic stage and television actress, and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), who as a child starred in her father’s first successful film, have different reactions to the father.

      Despite his long absence from their lives, the self-centered Gustav can’t understand why Nora won’t star in his upcoming film and ends up recruiting an American star (Elle Fanning) to take a role based on his daughter. (Only the scenes with Fanning and Skarsgård are in English, the rest in Norwegian.)

      While the plot is rather predictable, the acting of Skarsgård and Reinsve lift the story, creating very real, artistic-minded people that are usually flattened (see “Jay Kelly”) in Hollywood films. Both seem destined to score Oscar nominations, especially now that the international membership of the Academy has increased.

       Trier was nominated for a screenplay Oscar for his film “The Worst Person in the World” (2021), which also was a best international film nominee. He also directed an English-language film, “Louder Than Bombs” (2015).

      Reinsve, the star of “Worst Person,” appeared opposite Sebastian Stan in “A Different Man” (2024) and is part of the ensemble of Apple TV’s “Presumed Innocent.”

     The 74-year-old Skarsgård, who has been a go-to supporting player since he played the colorful Bootstrap Bill in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, appears in four or five films a year but this might be his most substantial role and most impressive performance.

  

JAY KELLY (2025)

    A critics’ darling for more than two decades, Noah Baumbach may have finally lost his strongest support with this shallow, poorly structured sitcom-like story of an obnoxious movie star learning life lessons.

    The usually reliable George Clooney looks like a deer in the headlights for much of the film as the title character who throws his entire entourage into a panic as he rashly decides to follow his teenage daughter to Europe. After years of prioritizing his career, he suddenly sees the light, or at least a bit of it—he continues to treat his staff heartlessly.

       His sycophant manager Ron (Adam Sandler, who comes off best in the film) keeps trying to steer Kelly to make sensible choices but the actor acts impulsively and expects the team to follow along.

     The journey lands him on a train from Paris to Tuscany, where he will receive a tribute to his movie career. Along the way, he makes friends with his fellow train passengers, thwarts a robbery, meets up with his flamboyant father (Stacy Keach) and pisses off most of his assistants. Laura Dern, excellent in Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” (2019), is underused in a small role as Kelly’s publicist.

      This is Fellini’s “8 ½” filtered through “Stardust Memories” with a sprinkle of Hallmark thrown in. In what seems like a different film—one that might have been more interesting—we see key moments in the young Jay Kelly’s rise to fame. His half-hearted re-examination of his life is kicked off when he engages his one-time acting buddy (Billy Crudup) in a fight, which, of course, is captured by a bystander and goes viral online.   

     Generally, I have not thought much of Baumbach’s films, though “Margot at the Wedding” (2007) and “Marriage Story” are among the best relationships-in-crisis movies in recent years and featuring fine performances.

      In “Jay Kelly,” the writing (he co-scripted with actress Emily Mortimer) seems strained and the situations too pat to make you feel as if you are watching real life.  

  

THE PROMISE (2017)

     As a resident of Glendale, Calif., I am very aware of the Armenian genocide at the hands of Turkey in 1915. As the U.S. city with the largest Armenian diaspora, Glendale hosts numerous remembrances of the tragedy every year and a multi-story museum is nearing completion downtown.

    As far as I know, “The Promise” is the only American film focused on the genocide, mixing a war-torn romance with reenactments of the tragic events during World War I. Though it has the “based on a true story” feel of a TV movie, the picture stars two of Hollywood’s best actors, Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac.

      Isaac plays Michael, who travels to Constantinople from his rural hometown to study medicine. There he falls for a bohemian woman (Charlotte Le Bon), who is also involved in an on-again, off-again relationship with American photojournalist Chris (Bale). It’s through Chris’ eyes that the film shows the horrors of the Armenian population being purged from the Ottoman Empire.

     At 37, Isaac is a bit long in the tooth to play a young medical student but both he and Bale bring a seriousness to the film that might have been lost with less, if more culturally appropriate actors, in the roles.

      The movie is written, with Robin Swicord, and directed by Ireland’s Terry George, one of the most accomplished screenwriters of the past 30 years, having penned “In the Name of the Father” (1993), “The Boxer” (1997), which earned Bale the Oscar, and “Hotel Rwanda (2004), which he also directed.

     If you are unfamiliar with the atrocities inflicted on the Armenians (which the U.S. government didn’t officially recognizing until 2019!) the film provides a gateway into a little-known tragedy.

 

 

PHOTOS:

Rob Reiner  (The Associated Press)

Joel Edgerton in “Train Dreams.”  (Netflix)

Daniel Craig and Josh O’Connor in “Wake Up Dead Man.” (Netflix)

Oscar Isaac and Charlotte Le Bon in “The Promise” (Universal Pictures)