August 2026

 

THE ODYSSEY (2026)

     If you dismiss this epic adventure movie because it fails to faithfully reflect the plot points or themes of a 28-century-old manuscript, you need to stop watching Hollywood films. Fidelity to original texts hasn’t been a priority of the business since DeMille and Griffith moved west. 

     First of all, the production may be the most incredible filmmaking achievement since “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, with vast sea- and land-scapes and vivid, larger-than-life battle scenes—mostly created without CGI—that immerses viewers into this Grecian mythological world created under the name “Homer.” Few stories in the long history of Western literature have been more influential than that of Odysseus and his journey home from the Trojan War. Like all filmmakers, Christopher Nolan used the chosen source material to make the movie he envisioned. That it has inspired sales of Homer’s “Odyssey” should be a moment to celebrate in the wake of news that few Americans read a single book each year.

 

    Dominating this nearly three-hour picture is, of course, Odysseus (often called Ulysses in modern times), played with unbendable resolve by Matt Damon, a brave and clever soldier—he came up with that Trojan horse trick—who is led on a circuitous route home from Troy after he insults the gods. One of the film’s deficiencies is that, other than Athena (Zendaya), these powerful gods, whose existence is central to the characters’ lives, are never seen. In fact, the curse they face from Poseidon, god of the seas, is said as an aside by one of Odysseus’ soldiers and never reinforced. 

      The reality of Odysseus’ soldiers’ brutality, which leads to the hero questioning his role as a leader, is smoothed over by the fog of war, the crashing and slashing of swords that is devoid of moral certainty, and never emphasized until the end of the journey. I’m not sure how many viewers will come away from the movie realizing that Odysseus has broken society’s god-mandated rules of hospitality, introducing a world of victory at any cost.

      Damon does a solid job as Odysseus but has little opportunity for a performance; most of his dialogue serves as narration rather than character building. The script gives his devoted wife Penelope, played by Anne Hathaway, more dramatic moments and she delivers. I was less impressed with Tom Holland as Odysseus’ son Telemachus, and Robert Pattinson as the leading suitor for Penelope’s hand. Both say the same things over and over again with little believable emotion. For all of Nolan’s visual sense, the script is less than poetic.

      John Leguizamo gives the best performance in the film as the blind Eumaeus, who remains loyal to Odysseus despite his years of absence.

     I think Nolan missed an opportunity to show a more complex Odysseus by turning Circe (Samantha Morton) into a one-dimensional witch rather than a temptation. In the poem, Odysseus stays with Circe for years, despite the complaints of his crew. Equally underutilized is Charlize Theron as Calypso. Unlike the poem, the sexual exploits of Odysseus and his men are barely hinted at. As for the controversy over casting, it’s too silly to even address.

      I did not see the IMAX version of the film, purposely, as I have always felt the big format magnifies a movie into an event—something more suited for an amusement park attraction. But for those who see movies as sheer entertainment, no doubt IMAX will enhance the experience.

     Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is the return of the big-screen epics of the 1950s and early ‘60s, such as “Ben-Hur,” “Spartacus” and “Lawrence of Arabia.” Considering the state of Hollywood filmmaking that’s probably a good thing.

  

TONY (2026)

     You don’t have to have been a fan of Anthony Bourdain—restauranteur, writer and TV personality—to enjoy this depiction of his coming of age summer spent during his college years in Cape Cod.

      Set in 1974, it’s a perfectly rendered remembrance of the era; the attitudes, the parties, the casual dress, the romantic rituals and, most importantly, the need to be different while discovering one’s self are captured by writer-director Matt Johnson (“Nirvanna the Band the Show” in its various incarnations) and his team of scripters.

     Dominic Sessa (the gangly prep student in “The Holdovers”) plays the teenaged Tony who bolts his parents’ home to chase Nancy (a charming Emilia Jones), a girl he briefly met at Vasser, to Provincetown. Without a plan or a job, though he pretends he’s won a writing fellowship, Tony ends up washing dishes at a rundown restaurant. There he’s taken under the wing of Chef (a scene stealing Antonio Banderas) and, amid the drugs, fighting and bad decisions, finds his place in the world. 

     Long scenes in the restaurant’s claustrophobic kitchen with the nonstop bickering and insults from the Chef and his assistants Stavros (stand-up comic Stavros Halkias) and Sal (a charismatic Leo Woodall, star of “Tuner”) along with the sweet and clumsy flirting between Tony and Nancy (later his wife) turn this slice of life bio-pic into an unpretentious entertaining movie. That it’s about one of the most interesting television celebrities of this century just adds to the film’s fascination.

      Bourdain, after a career as a chef, wrote a tell-all book about the restaurant world, “Kitchen Confidential,” which led to him becoming the refreshingly irreverent host of TV shows “No Reservations” and “Parts Unknown.” He took his own life in 2018.

     But in “Tony,” we see the wide-eyed, idealistic, ambitious, and somewhat arrogant young man who was destined to leave an impressive mark on the world.

THE GREAT GATSBY (1949)

      Much like “The Odyssey,” no movie adaptation of this beloved work of literature will ever satisfy the novel’s devoted coterie. This is the second of four film versions of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 tale of vacuous Jazz Age elite and the elusiveness of the lauded American Dream. The 1926 silent is a lost film; the two recent “Gatsbys” were stars vehicles for Robert Redford (1974) and Leonardo DiCaprio (2013).

      Starring steely-eyed tough guy Alan Ladd as Jay Gatsby, this 1949 version emphasizes the crime aspect of the story even more so than Fitzgerald’s original. Unlike the 1974 and 2013 adaptations, this film was released before the novel was required reading in high schools, less remembered at the time for its themes than its colorful 1920s setting.

       In fact, the picture opens—after a moment at Gatsby’s grave—with a short montage of our “hero” in action as a bootlegger, shooting at rivals on the street. In the novel, Gatsby’s criminality is vaguely implied, but he clearly purchased his Long Island mansion through illegal activity.

       He befriends his next-door neighbor, Nick Carraway (a miscast Macdonald Carey) so that he can arrange a meeting with Nick’s married cousin, Daisy (Betty Field), who lives across the bay.         

      Flashbacks show Gatsby’s coming-of-age adventures with wealthy boatman Dan Cody and, as a young soldier, meeting and romancing Daisy.

      While Ladd isn’t the most glamourous leading man (I can see Gregory Peck in the role), he pulls off the duality of charismatic gangster and soft-spoken suitor. Less successful are Carey (future soap opera star) as Nick, who never captures the character’s naivety and Field (“Kings Row,” “The Southerner”), who is unconvincing as the privileged, self-obsessed Daisy. Gene Tierney, one of the great beauties of the era, was considered for the role.

      No doubt, restrictions of the era pushed director Elliott Nugent (best known for his Bob Hope comedies) and screenwriters Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum to soften Fitzgerald’s cynicism. Daisy’s husband Tom (Barry Sullivan), an egotistical bigot in the novel, doesn’t seem like a bad guy here.

        But overall, it’s a pretty good picture when one doesn’t put it side-by-side the novel. (Though it’s hard to forgive the writers for cutting Fitzgerald’s poignant, culminating line from Nick.) It’s better than the Redford version but the 1949 movie can’t match Baz Luhrmann’s over-the-top, DiCaprio-dominated picture.

      This version was essentially buried by Paramount when they decided to produce the 1974 movie; it was out of circulation until the Film Noir Foundation refurbished it in 2012.

  

LATE FAME (2026)

       In the second feature by film critic and documentarian Kent Jones, Willem Dafoe plays Ed Saxberger, a postal worker who published a long-forgotten book of poetry in the 1970s seduced into thinking he can recapture his halcyon days through a rag-tag group of twentysomething literary wannabes.

      The erstwhile leader (Jake Lacy) of this high-minded clique tracks Saxberger down and convinces him to hang out. While we never learn exactly what this mopey collection—ironically named the “Enthusiasm Society”—does during the day, it seems most are living life on daddy’s money.

     While Saxberger recognizes the pretentiousness of this group, he falls for the attention, especially from the lone female member of the group, actress-singer Gloria (Greta Lee, superb in “Past Lives”). 

     While the film champions those struggling to make it in the literary world it also questions our memories of the past; Saxberger has to wonder if those he mingled with in the 70s, seen from afar, were just as shallow.

     Dafoe seems to give at least one memorable performance almost every year—“At Eternity’s Gate” (2018), “The Lighthouse” (2019), “Nightmare Alley” (2021), “The Card Counter” (2021), “Poor Things (2023), “Nosferatu” (2024), “The Phoenician Scheme” (2025); an amazing run. Here, he captures the now blue-collar old guy, playing pool with his buddies at the local bar, who also desires to return to his small slice of literary fame.

     But the performance of the movie is given by Lee, who is nearly unrecognizable as drama-queen Gloria, wearing too much makeup and dressing as if she’s living in 1920s Paris. She never stops performing, thriving on the attention offered by Saxberger. Turns out her regular gig is as a cabaret singer (she does a salacious version of the Kurt Weill classic “Surabaya Johnny”) at a small gay club.

      Jones’ first fiction film, “Diane,” was among the best of 2019, propelled by underrated actress Mary Kay Place in the title role. While “Late Fame” is written by Samy Burch, a 2023 Oscar nominee for “May December,” adapting a novel by Arthur Schnitzler (the early 20^th Century Viennese writer who wrote “Eyes Wide Shut”) it isn’t as sharp or insightful as “Diane.” I waited in vain for an interesting discussion of writers or hear Saxberger’s thoughts on contemporary poetry.

     But the interplay between Dafoe and Lee make the film well worth the price of admission.     

   

BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP (2014)

     No current film star reflects the work ethic of studio era performers—who as studio employees didn’t have a choice—as much as Nicole Kidman. The Australian actress has appeared in over 40 films and television series since she made this thriller, based on the acclaimed novel by S.J. Watson.

     A throwback to film noir of the 1940s, the story presents the ridiculous central plot that Kidman’s Christine awakes each morning not remembering anything about her life, starting anew. Amnesia was central to numerous post-war crime pictures, including “Two O’Clock Courage,” “Somewhere in the Night,” “High Wall” and “Dark Passage.” More recently, “Memento” (2000), follows the adventures of a lead character with memory loss.

      But a strong cast, including Colin Firth as Christine’s husband who has to break the news to her each morning, and Mark Strong, as her secretive psychologist, contribute to a compelling drama. Both seem suspicious after Christine starts to put together the pieces of her life and the alleged attack that left her damaged. If you start looking too closely at the plot, it all falls apart (for one, why does this middle-aged woman only have one friend?)

     Director Rowan Joffe (son of “The Killing Fields” director Roland Joffé), who also adapted the novel, uses the repetitive nature of the story to build sympathy for Christine as she peels away the lies. Joffe previously directed an intense remake of the British classic crime picture, “Brighton Rock,” 

     “Before I Go to Sleep” did not do well at the box office and was quickly forgotten amid all the Kidman-starring product out there, but it’s worth seeking out (I discovered it on Pluto TV).

HEAT LIGHTNING (1934)

     Labeling is everything. If you call a low-budget crime picture from the 1940s a film noir, everyone wants to see it. Same with every movie made before 1935 suddenly stamped as a “Pre-Code picture,” a selling point that implies the script was uncensored and presents characters in a more realistic manner than movies made during the Golden Age.  

     But in truth, the institution of Hollywood was self-censoring from its inception, tailoring stories and characters to what it imagined middle-class Americans wanted to see on the big screen. Occasionally, a racy story slipped through the process, mostly allowing the lead actress to be portrayed as having sexual feelings without being condemned.

    “Heat Lightning,” starring two of the era’s most underrated actresses, Aline MacMahon and Ann Dvorak, as sisters Olga and Myra running an auto garage in California’s Joshua Tree desert, actually qualifies as “Pre-Code.” Based on a failed stage play written by George Abbott and Leon Abrams, the film bears resemblance to the more famous one-set melodrama “The Petrified Forest,” (which debuted on Broadway the next year), but Warner Bros. stalwart director Mervyn LeRoy never lets this tale of making tough life choices become claustrophobic.

     The story begins to take shape when a pair of bank robbers on the run, George (Preston Foster) and Jeff (Lyle Talbot) stop at Olga’s diner-garage and are joined by a pair of recent divorceés (Glenda Farrell and Ruth Donnelly) and their chauffeur (Frank McHugh) just in from Reno. While Olga is trying to keep her younger sister from going to a dance with a local pool-hall bum, her own desires are rekindled by George, who, coincidentally, she knew years ago in Oklahoma. But George is a sleazy ball, who only sticks around in hopes of snatching the jewels one of divorceés is carrying. A key element of the plot revolves around a sexual liaison.

     Among all the well-known players, MacMahon is the star here; hiding her sexuality with overalls and a bandana and her expertise in repairing cars (a prized skill in those early days of motor vehicles) while her sorrowful eyes show her regret of leaving her past life. A theatrical actress since 1921, she started her screen career in 1931, mostly cast as a smart-mouthed sidekick or unmarried aunties. She inevitable stood out in most of her films no matter how minor her role, in part because she brought an early version of the Method to her acting, having taken a class in acting from the originator of this novel style of acting, Konstantin Stanislavski.

        She was at her best in her debut “Five Star Final,” as a newspaper reporter with a conscious, and in “Ah Wilderness!” (1935), as Mickey Rooney’s    

aunt in Eugene O’Neill’s examination of small-town America. She scored an Oscar nomination in the now-unwatchable “Dragon Seed” (1944), featuring white performers playing Chinese characters in the adaptation of Pearl S. Buck’s famous novel.

      MacMahon should have also been nominated for playing Burt Lancaster’s aunt in the swashbuckler “The Flame and the Arrow” (1950), for the Anthony Mann-James Stewart Western “The Man from Laramie” (1955) and as another aunt, reprising her stage performance, in the 1963 movie adaption of James Agee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “All the Way Home.”

  

STOCKHOLM (2019)

     The most famous example of the “Stockholm Syndrome,” in which a hostage begins to sympathize with captors, took place when heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by a terrorist group in 1974. But the term originated the year before when an egotistical ex-con walked into a bank in Stockholm, Sweden, took two female employees hostage and demanded the release of an old friend from prison.

     At least that’s how it plays out in this entertaining comedy-drama starring Ethan Hawke, a movie that received little support when released seven years ago despite coming off the actor’s career best performance in “First Reformed.” I found it on the free streaming service Tubi.

     As Lars Nystrom (“just call me the Outlaw”), Hawke plays a machine-gun wielding, unpredictable wannabe cowboy immediately clashing with the stern, unbending Stockholm police chief (Christopher Heyerdahl), who grows increasingly frustrated by Lars’ outrageous requests. After officials release bank robber Gunnar Sorensson (another convincing performance by Mark Strong), the film takes on a sitcom setup, focused on the relationship of hostage Bianca (Swedish actress Noomi Rapace) and Lars.

      After a slow start, the film jumps from unexpected crisis to the next, even after they pile into the getaway car—the same Mustang model that Steve McQueen drove in “Bullitt.” The tale was adapted by writer-director Robert Budreau (who directed Hawke in “Born to Be Blue”) from a New Yorker story.

      Hawke, who scored an Oscar nod last year as the talkative songwriter Lorenz Hart in “Blue Moon,” is perfectly cast; a macho version of Al Pacino’s “Sonny” in “Dog Day Afternoon.”

 

PHOTOS:

Matt Damon, as Odysseus, leads his troops in “The Odyssey.”  (Universal Pictures)

Macdonald Carey as Nick and Alan Ladd as Jay in “The Great Gatsby.” (Paramount Pictures)

Greta Lee and Willem Dafoe in “Late Fame.” (Magnolia Pictures)

Preston Foster and Aline MacMahon in “Heat Lightning.” (Warner Bros.)

 

June 2026

DISCLOSURE DAY (2026)

       If there is anyone who can make me believe in extra-terrestrial beings, the man who made “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.” tops the list. Even when Steven Spielberg wears his heart (and hopes) on his sleeve, folding a film-long chase into a plea for a more caring world, as he does in his new picture, his masterful craft and understanding of human nature results in cinema both highly entertaining and grounded in the real world.

        This may be splitting hairs, but to me Spielberg doesn’t really make sci-fi movies; certainly not in the mode of “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” and the “Superman” and “Avengers” franchises. He makes films in which things happen on Earth that we’ve never seen, but aren’t so futuristic or imaginary that they require a complete suspension of disbelief. Even in “Disclosure Day,” in which characters have the ability to see what other humans can’t, there’s an explanation of sorts.

         Basically, “Disclosure Day” is the journey of two individuals who, separately, have found their destiny and find themselves on the run from a secret government agency that wants to silence them.

       Emily Blunt plays Margaret, a Kansas City TV weather person who has some kind of mental breakdown on air, then hospitalized after seeming to speak in tongues. Escaping from the hospital, Margaret realizes she has to go somewhere but doesn’t know where. (Shades of Richard Dreyfuss’ character in “Close Encounters”).

      Meanwhile, Dr. Kellner (Josh O’Connor) thinks he knows where he’s going. As an employee of Wardex, a secret government-backed company that holds the evidence of alien visitation, he’s made off with what he keeps referring to as “the archives” and looks to rendezvous with the like-minded Hugo (Colman Domingo), who seems to be directing the building of a movie set in a large soundstage.

      Spielberg and co-writer David Koepp (“Jurassic Park,” “Mission: Impossible”) keep audiences in the dark for nearly the first hour of the film, a bold move in the age of streaming, but fleshes out Margaret and Kellner enough that I was willing to wade through the foggy plot to see where they were headed. It’s worth the wait.

     If it really matters, “Disclosure Day” isn’t a great or cutting-edge film, but a somewhat loopy, yet fascinating speculation on alien life visiting Earth and the impact that reveal has on humanity. 

    Blunt proves to be the perfect Spielberg heroine: a believable every-woman who turns into a single-focused warrior, tossing aside all hurdles. While O’Connor, memorable last year in “The Mastermind” and “Wake Up Dead Man,” is well cast as a very sincere whistleblower who finds himself in deep end of the pool.

    Giving what may be the best performance of the picture is Colin Firth (2010 Oscar winner for “The King’s Speech”) as the director of Wardex, determined to rein in the truth Margaret, Kellner and Hugo want the world to know. Somewhat ironic, the three principles of this American story are played by Brits (Blunt, O’Connor and Firth).

      Spielberg, who will turn 80 in December, keeps delivering first-rate pictures. One thinks of him as a 1980s-90s director, but in the past 10 years he’s made “The Post,” “West Side Story,” “The Fabelmans” and now “Disclosure Day,” a record that ranks with the best in the business.

  

PRESSURE (2026)

       No event in human history has been chronicled on the big screen more frequently than World War II, but I don’t think a film has ever focused on the importance of weather reports.

     Based on a stage play written by veteran British character actor David Haig (he also starred in the play), the movie details the tense days leading up to D-Day, when the operation’s commander, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser), recruits a highly respected Scottish meteorologist to the weather team. James Stagg’s job is to advise Ike on weather conditions expected for the Allied assault on Utah Beach in Normandy.

       Turns out Stagg (Andrew Scott of “All of Us Strangers” and “Blue Moon”) isn’t much of a team player, disagreeing with group’s trust in historical weather conditions and fighting the staff’s plans to launch on June 5. A snarling, Gen. Montgomery (Damian Lewis), who previously relied on meteorologist Irving Krick (Chris Messina), isn’t interested in dissenting opinions, but Eisenhower eventually puts his trust in the newfangled ideas of Stagg. 

       This very focused story struggles to fill out a 100-minute movie and its arguments between Stagg and Ike grow repetitive, but the exceptional acting and the importance of the decisions being made, sustain the picture.

    Bringing a softer edge to the somewhat claustrophobic atmosphere is Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin,” “F1: The Movie”) as Kay Summersby, Eisenhower’s trusted assistant and, by most accounts, his mistress (an issue avoided in this film).

      Fraser is a bit over-the-top as Ike and more looming than the 5’10” future president was even when his anger flared. But this is Stagg’s story—he has quite a temper himself—and Scott is once again pitch perfect. Few actors are better at displaying inner turmoil while putting on a stoic front. There’s a wonderful scene near the end when his predictions come true (Ike moved D-Day to June 6) and his insistence to delay the invasion is validated.

     Director Anthony Maras previously directed “Hotel Mumbai” (2018), about a terrorist attack in India.

     I first learned about the importance of the weather to this landmark event, along with all the other issues Eisenhower dealt with, in the superbly researched history “The Light of Battle” by Michel Paradis.

  

THERE’S ALWAYS A WOMAN (1938)

     Time has dulled many a film once considered a sparkling gem. I recently re-watched Howard Hawks’ acclaimed 1934 comedy “Twentieth Century,” starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard as egotistical show biz clichés who spend 90 minutes insulting one another.

       The mile-a-minute line readings, dripping with sarcasm, and a female character who goes toe-to-toe with the leading man, usually out-smarting him, elevated the picture to landmark status, creating a template for what became known as screwball comedies. While I acknowledge the pioneering status of “Twentieth Century,” it’s more irritating than funny. (Don’t get me started on “Bringing Up Baby.”)

      The next day on TCM, I laughed out-loud during almost every scene of this rarely screened Joan Blondell-Melvyn Douglas comedy, a film never considered a landmark of any type, all but forgotten after its initial run 88 years ago.

     As I’ve written before, Blondell may be the most underrated actress of the 1930s: not only did she star in a half dozen films each year, but her knock-about physicality, upbeat personality and wide-eyed expression made her more of a “screwball” than accomplished actresses such as Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn or Claudette Colbert ever managed. Blondell wasn’t half the actress those other women were, but she knew exactly how the unkempt blonde sitting at the end of the bar talked and acted.

    In “There’s Always a Woman,” a wonderfully clever title, she takes up the private eye business her husband (the rather miscast Douglas) has abandoned for a more respectable post with the district attorney. Unlike Myrna Loy’s Nora in “The Thin Man” series, she’s stays one step ahead of her husband and never stops letting him know how far behind he remains.

     Mary Astor, in a role that hints at her performance as Brigid three years later in “The Maltese Falcon,” hires Sally (Blondell) to investigate her husband and, then, no surprise, he’s killed and Douglas’ Bill is on the cast for the DA’s office, competing for clues with his wife, a clever amateur. At one point, while interviewing Astor, Sally picks up a very large magnify glass, looking through it to prove her detective skills. Like a cartoon character, she’s bounding about in almost every scene: jumping on couches, being rolled out of bed, fake punching her husband in the back, flirting with police, banging pointlessly on a typewriter.

      Written by three veteran studio scripters, Gladys Lehman, Wilson Collison and Philip Rapp, and directed by Alexander Hall, “There’s Always a Woman” represents everything that make 1930s pictures endure as entertainment.

     Hall mostly directed B films in the 1930s and 40s, but scored an Oscar nomination for one of the great comedies of the 1940s, “Here Comes Mr. Jordan”—which on last viewing was still very funny.

  

TUNER (2026)

     While the set-up proves more appealing than the follow-through, this low-key, jazz-tinged character study is elevated by a cast delivering finely shaded performances.

     Little-known Leo Woodall (he was Rami Malek’s aide-de-camp in “Nuremberg”) plays Niki, a piano tuner working for a company run by former jazz pianist Harry Horowitz, a nostalgic, talkative man losing his fight against old age, portrayed with relish by Dustin Hoffman. Niki, a one-time protégé, suffers from a hearing disability that makes loud noises excruciating but also has perfect pitch.

     Two things happen in the film: Niki falls in love with a concert pianist (Havana Rose Liu) and, at the same time, joins up with some unsavory characters to raise money when Harry is hospitalized. Inevitably, these two intersect, disastrously.

       In his small but crucial role, the 88-year-old Hoffman, provides much of the film’s humor; it’s a wonderful snippet of what made this two-time Oscar winner one of the premier actors of the 20^th Century.

       Veteran TV, Broadway and film supporting player Tovah Feldshuh makes the most of her role as Harry’s wife as does Jean Reno as a famous composer.

      Woodall, star of such recent streaming series “Vladimir” and “Prime Target,” shows a screen presence even as a soft-spoken introvert made cautious by his hearing problems.

      The film is enhanced by numerous jazz classics on the soundtrack, including Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” and “Cantaloupe Island” (he also makes an appearance as himself) and Dave Brubecks “Unsquare Dance.” In addition, a piece by another master pianist during the closing credits offers a touching connection to an earlier moment in the film.      

      Director Daniel Roher, who won a 2022 Oscar for the powerful documentary “Navalny,” about a Russian dissident, and directed the doc “Once Were Brothers” about The Band, and writing partner Robert Ramsey, give Woodall, Hoffman and the other actors plenty of room to breathe life into their characters. That’s what the best filmmakers do.

  

THE INVITE (2026)

     If you can endure the first hour of this lightweight modernization of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” it does get better. The script, based on a Spanish stage play and film, plays as if it was written in the throes of marriage counseling, during which the disappointments and quirks of two couples take center stage at a wine and cheese get-together.

       Joe (Seth Rogen) is an unhappy music professor (and failed musician) who comes home to his San Francisco apartment to discover that his wife, Angela (Olivia Wilde, who also directs), has spent the day preparing for a visit from the upstairs neighbors. Their over-wrought bickering grows old within minutes but it goes on and on, as does the overbearing cello solo on the soundtrack. All I could think about was why Hollywood so often portrays adults as pitiful, dysfunctional failures. 

      Just as ridiculous is the way Angela acts when the neighbors, Piňa (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), arrive. They stand in the apartment uncomfortably while Angela flaps around nervously, apologizing for everything and making little sense. It’s as if she was channeling Jerry Lewis.

At the same time, the older couple can’t hide their pretentiously hipness and condescending attitude. No one seems happy to be there.

     Hanging over the proceedings is Joe’s desire to complain about Piňa and Hawk’s noisy lovemaking but before he can deliver his gripe, they reveal that they have group sex with other couples. Quickly, the tenor of the evening changes.  

    Director Wilde does a good job of maintain the energy even though the film is set almost entirely in the couple’s apartment, relying heavily on the dialogue. Partly by design of the script, but also because of the screen presence of veteran actors Cruz and Norton, the upstairs neighbors, whether serious or playing games, keep the picture from sounding like a bad stage play.

    Scripters Will McCormack and Rashida Jones (Quincy’s daughter) adapted Cesc Gay’s play for Wilde, whose best film as a director is “Booksmart” (2019), a smart, amusing movie about the unfairness of high school. She’s been acting in films and TV since 2004.

  .   While I winced at some of the dialogue and found little in any of the characters to sympathize with, you have to give props to any film in 2026 that takes on marriage and sex with a sense of humor.

  

THE BRIDE! (2026)

     If you didn’t get enough of the “Frankenstein” story from Guillermo del Toro’s big-budget version last year, actress-turned-director Maggie Gyllenhaal has concocted a story that turns the monster and his female companion into an undead version of Bonnie and Clyde.

    Starring two of Hollywood’s best actors—last year’s Oscar winner Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale—the film seemed destined to be a sure-fire hit. Instead, it was sunk by a script pieced together from other Frankenstein pictures, Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” and Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” and a performance by Buckley that wavers between over-the-top silliness and incoherent insanity. As Frankenstein’s monster, Bale disappears in the shadow of his bride’s uninhibited violence and pointless rants.

     The misguided plot, which I lost interest in after about 20 minutes, starts with the monster showing up at the lab of a scientist known for experimenting with re-animating the dead, Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) and demanding a mate. Not sure why the story has been moved to Depression-era Chicago (I guess the monster tired of roaming around the Arctic) but once a murdered mobster’s mistress has been brought to life, Frankie and Ida cause mayhem as they roam the country.

    At one point, Frankie dances to “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in a homage (I guess) to “Young Frankenstein.” There are dozens of scenes that fall under the category of “this seems cool, right?” Gyllenhaal clearly had no interest in making a coherent movie. If the time shifting isn’t odd enough, we also get Mary Shelley (also Buckley, in ghostly closeup) speaking from the grave for absolutely no reason.

     The movie’s characters, like those in almost every current TV streaming series, use the f-word more frequently and as casually as a ship full of Marines. I have no doubt that the word is spoken more times in this film than it was heard in Chicago the entire year of 1936. I know it will come as a shock to contemporary screenwriters, but harsh profanity was rarely heard in the first half of the 20^th Century.

     In the first decade of the century, Gyllenhaal was among the finest American actresses, creating memorable characters in “Donnie Darko” (2001), “Secretary” (2002), “Happy Endings’ (2005), “Sherrybaby” (2006) and earning an Oscar nomination for “Crazy Heart” (2009). She hasn’t had a lead role in a film since “The Kindergarten Teacher” (2018), but earned a screenplay nomination for her feature directorial debut “The Lost Daughter” (2021), a moving film about real women as opposed to the stitched together version in her second effort.       

  

PHOTOS

 Josh O’Connor and Emily Blunt on the run in “Disclosure Day.” (Universal Pictures)

 Joan Blondell and Melvyn Douglas in “There’s Always a Woman.” (Columbia Pictures)

 Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton in “The Invite.” (A24)