Apple TV’s “Slow Horses” has received consistent acclaim and annual nominations from the Television Academy, most of them deserved. Netflix has its own six-episode British spy series that deserves to be alongside the Gary Oldman hit on the medal platform: Joe Barton’s “Black Doves,” a thrilling balance of humor and espionage, and another show that blends the personal with the political in continuously captivating ways.

The second season drops today, and it’s just as good as the first, a study in the inherent trauma of spyhood, a profession that demands that relationships be as tenuous as the pull of a trigger. With some of the most breakneck plotting of any show on any network, “Black Doves” is a rare Netflix drama that justifies the binge model, pushing through twists and turns over six chapters that might even force you to put your phone down while you watch.

A sort of Brit riff on “The Americans,” “Black Doves” is about a woman named Helen Webb (Keira Knightley), the wife of the U.K. Secretary of State of Defence who also happens to be a Black Dove, a mercenary spy organization that gets the shit done that Slough House can only imagine. Having someone undercover in the Cabinet is important enough, but season two promises even more access as Helen’s husband Wallace (Andrew Buchan) is about to become Prime Minister. Helen’s handler Reed (Sarah Lancashire) comes to her with new information … and then promptly disappears. Uh oh.

Meanwhile, Helen’s BFF Sam Young (Ben Whishaw) is hired for a job that goes very wrong, pinning him under the thumb of a mysterious figure played by Sam Riley, who tasks him with a series of assassinations for his and Helen’s freedom. A meeting between Webb and someone on the Russian side who could broker long-delayed peace looms so large on the horizon that it brings in an American representative played by Neve Campbell (kinda wasted but almost impressively just there for the ride) while the great Babou Ceesay of “Alien: Earth” slinks into the proceedings as Helen’s new handler with the Black Doves, and someone who may not be as understanding as Reed.

A brief early plot summary of season two of “Black Doves” barely scratches the surface of what it’s about, in part because some of the joy of the brilliant plotting is in twists and turns that won’t be spoiled, but also because this show moves at a speed that’s unusual in the streaming era. Many modern espionage shows linger in their Le Carré inspirations—“The Agency” being a good example—slow-burning through the day-to-day tension of being undercover. Not “Black Doves.” It constantly shifts and moves, closer to a Bond action movie in its telling of a story that began decades ago in one character’s early spy career. 

The writers here know how to use their relatively large cast, amplifying the roles of Sam’s allies Williams (Ella Lily Hyland) and Eleanor (Gabrielle Creevy), and introducing a new quirky assassin named Laila, played perfectly by Ambika Mod. It’s a big extended cast that never gets away from Barton and his team, giving each of the players essential parts to play in the unfolding chaos, and his team expertly ties its characters together not just narratively but thematically, giving all of them issues related to the classic spy fiction belief that caring is a weakness.

It also smartly doesn’t rely purely on chaos, taking opportunities to ground its characters, often through their action. It helps to have a performer as consistently fantastic as Whishaw, who imbues Sam with growing melancholy this season, playing him like a man who’s accepted he’s tied to the train tracks of a profession that doesn’t let people walk away before they get run over by the train.

Sam’s moral code remains in place, but he’s starting to ask what good it’s done. He will protect Helen at all costs, but that commitment has led to the kind of personal tragedy and immoral decisions that make him the kind of melancholy alcoholic that only Whishaw could play. We’ve seen so many troubled spies in literature and film, but Whishaw makes Sam into one of the most memorable, a figure who is somehow equally haunted and driven.

Whishaw may be the award-worthy standout of “Black Doves,” but the cast has no weak link. Mod makes for a marvelous addition this year as the kind of live wire who will throw a dart at a jerk at the pub; Ceesay oozes as the kind of suit that probably can’t be trusted even while he insists he can; Hyland and Creevy get to have some real fun as a couple of assassins who may find love undercover. That word is essential to the success of “Black Doves”: so much of this show is “fun,” and it always remembers to be as witty in its dialogue as its plotting.

The end run of the plotting in season two of “Black Doves” requires a bit more suspension of disbelief than some of the best spy fiction, especially in a fifth episode that gets so surprisingly heavy on the gunfire that it offers flashes of Michael Bay. But it’s a minor complaint for a show that should be more major in the public sphere. When it ended with a series of scenes promising a third season that will go in a different direction, it’s rarely more exciting to see where a show goes next.

Whole season screened for review. Now on Netflix.

The 27th San Diego Asian American Film Festival takes place November 5th-14th, and I have the pleasure of serving as the festival correspondent for RogerEbert.com. Boasting 190 films–its largest program to date– the line-up represents films from over 30 countries and 30 languages. The festival has long been one of the country’s leading showcases of Asian and Asian American film, and that’s evident not just in the sheer breadth of the programming but also in the curation process. 

As is the case with festivals that take place later in the year, the team at RogerEbert.com has seen and covered some films playing, and ones I can personally guarantee are worth viewing (and that I anticipate to be in the film conversation for years to come) include gems such as “All of a Sudden,” “Let Us Through Dear Ancestors,” “Take Me Home,” “Bedford Park,” and “Arrested Memory,” to name a few. 

Personally, I’m excited to catch higher-profile films that have eluded me at other fests, such as Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Look Back,” and animated gems like the opening-night film “In Waves” and “We Are Aliens.” 

The festival has divided its films up into seven sections: “Special Presentations,” “Asian American Panorama,” “Asia Pop!” “Masters,” “Unknown Pleasures,” “Classics Restored,” and “Shorts.” Of note, I’m most excited to check out the “Classics Restored” section, which includes four films: “Charlotte Sometimes,” “Eve and the Fire Horse,” “Good Neighbors,” and “Just Like the Weather,” that have been revived in all their detail and glory. It’s touching that the festival makes room to celebrate stories that have contributed so richly to on-screen depictions of Asian and Asian-American experience. 

As I gear up to head to the festival and inevitably redo my carefully planned-out film schedule, as is custom when trying to cram in too many movies in too little time, I’m reminded by what “Beef” creator Lee Sung Jin told me when I spoke with him earlier this year: “The Asian American experience is that we contain multitudes. There isn’t even enough time or real estate for us to cover all of it. So my hope is I get to keep finding new slices of our experience to highlight.”

Indeed, no monolith or standard blueprint exists for the Asian and Asian American experience, and the films in this lineup are living proof of that diverse vitality. This will be my first time attending the festival and the first time covering one solo on behalf of the site; it is my deep honor, and you can expect full reviews, dispatches, interviews, and more thoughts on the ways the city influences the cinematic scene and vice versa.

For those already attending, living in the area, or feeling emboldened to plan an impromptu trip to the fest, more information on how to get there and get tickets is here.

As you plan your schedule, here are some titles I’m looking forward to and that will probably pop up in my coverage of the festival.

The SDAFF team graciously provides the following synopses.

“Via Negativa” (Special Presentation) 

Young Mazino (“Beef,” “The Last of Us”) continues to raise the temperature on screen, this time as Father Dan, a holy man with a feral coyote, hellbent on leaving no vow unbroken as he barrels down a long winding road toward reckoning. 

After complaints about his eccentric sermons, Father Dan is suddenly a priest without a parish, or a home for that matter. Dan leaves Oregon on a pilgrimage of a different sort to Cheyenne, Wyoming, to grieve the passing of his high school friend–swigging whiskey in between dispensing free absolutions for lost souls in the parking lot. Along the way, Dan attracts unlikely companions, wildly spinning with their own invisible injuries, as grief’s gravity pulls him toward the dark heart of estrangement.

Adapting a novel by Daniel Hornsby, Hannah Peterson’s moody, simmering “Via Negativa” channels the great American road trip–its weird highway attractions, entanglements with strangers, and lonely urges lashing around in a heartland of depopulating churches and geographical wonders repurposed into teen watering holes. In this barren terrain, Mazino is a tortured and taut bundle of lost bearings, of pain seeking purpose, a man who could just as easily burst into tears of salvation or rain upon the world like a million flames.

“Tycoon” (Asian American Panorama)

Flames reflected in a red sports car door: the year is 2028. LA prepares for its Olympics with the traditional corruption and repression. A new pandemic in the food supply has made GMO cockroaches the best available source of protein, and of course they’re not cheap. Somebody’s got to break into a delivery truck—a great opportunity for the right pair of rise-and-grind bandits.

Charlotte Zhang’s debut feature follows two outlaw-entrepreneurs, played with a puppyish charm by Miguel Padilla-Juarez and Jon Lawrence Reyes, as they scrounge, scam, and grift, just like the CEOs who control the cockroach supply. Zhang’s handmade, diaristic approach mixes political urgency with intimacy, capturing stray moments of care, bullshitting, and breakups. MiniDV, iPhone, and grainy Xerox images cut against each other as frame rates shudder and whites get blown out.

LA films ranging from Lost Highway to Transformers have imagined the end of the world in a bonfire of rubber and chrome. Like them, Zhang sets her apocalypse to roaring engines and thrumming interiors. But cars are also where romantic oldies play on the radio. They’re homes you take with you. The footage Zhang films at street takeovers, kids spinning out their cars in careening loops of speed and noise, aren’t signs of end times. They’re communal resistance to despair—joyrides.

“Edjop” (Asia Pop!) 

How do people get justice when the executors of the law manipulate it to benefit the already rich and powerful? This is the very question that fabled activist Edgar Jospon was killed for trying to answer; the same question his triathlete daughter, Joyette, has been running from her entire life.

Before he was the revolutionary activist Edjop, Edgar (Elijah Canlas) was a devoted student of law and justice. The son of a successful grocer, he grew up educated among the wealthy in Manila, optimistic about the mutual interest in the common good. That is, until 1969, when Ferdinand Marcos’s campaign spending overwhelmed the Philippines with national debt, inflation, and peso depreciation, spurring social turmoil. From his beginnings as a respected student leader in the First Quarter Storm, EDJOP follows Jopson’s propulsion into life as a revolutionary—sacrificing a life of affluence and fatherhood for the greater good.

Framed by Joyette’s navigation of her familial trauma, EDJOP recalls the faint memory of the Philippines under martial law, which continues to haunt the present. Jodi Sta. Maria delivers a masterclass performance as Joyette, celebrating the outspoken organizers and heroes we too often take for granted. Director Katski Flores cuts through the brutality of martial law with the community joy and unity behind revolution, envisioning a better future for all through a united front against corruption.

“We Are All Strangers” (Masters)

It is 2025, the year of Singapore’s 60th anniversary. Boon Kiat, a restaurateur running a kopitiam (a traditional Southeast Asian coffee shop), and his son Junyang both find themselves falling in love. Boon Kiat develops a crush on Bee Hwa, a beer promoter, while Junyang secretly dates Lydia, a model student from a more affluent family. As a series of unexpected incidents unfolds, the four struggle to stay on top of their lives—before life decides things for them.

“We Are All Strangers” completes filmmaker Anthony Chen’s Growing Up trilogy, following Ilo Ilo (SDAFF ‘13) and Wet Season. Reuniting with regular collaborators including Yeo Yann Yann and Koh Jia Ler, Chen offers an even sharper and crueler reflection on class division and technocracy in an island nation accelerating relentlessly toward the future.

The film asks what possibilities remain for ordinary people trying to make a living amid limited resources and financial constraints. When a system fails to deliver what it promises to the people it is meant to serve, what can they do to challenge the status quo? Or are they forced to remain where they are, turning instead to exploiting one another? The film offers no easy answers. Instead, it presents a view of life that never shies away from its complexity or significance.

“Seoul Guardians” (Unknown Pleasures) 

With the adrenaline of a high-stakes action film, “The Seoul Guardians” drops us in the electric center of thousands of shoving, climbing, screaming, crying bodies in December 2024–during the most shocking six hours in modern Korean history–when the South Korean president declared martial law in the dead of night and a clock ticked down on democracy.

The images are jaw-dropping: politicians, one after another, hurling themselves over a wall, lifted on shoulders or sneaking past police to physically enter the National Assembly and cast the most important vote of their lives. Inside the building, staffers and media coordinate impromptu formations, converting sofas into barricades to slow down military battering rams and smoke bombs. As a swarm of teenagers, elders, journalists, YouTubers, lawmakers, and aides spontaneously converge to somehow stop helicopters and armored vehicles, three MBC journalists document the mayhem and mobilization of that frenzied tinderbox night, when one missed moment or one errant spark could utterly change the course of Korean society.

“Genevieve’s Garden” (Asian American Panorama) 

SDAFF alum Katie Colosimo’s feature debut, “Genevieve’s Garden,” is a hoppy dramatic comedy that follows Lily (played by comedian Chynna Walker), lost and depressed after a recent breakup, as she signs up for a wellness camp to distract herself and find a new direction. We follow her from the social media ads of upstate mental paradise to the rather ordinary house hosted by the retreat leader, a 20-something Genevieve, and realize that the so-called retreat is little more than a house hang between five strangers.

An energetic, quirky score accompanies a rabbit hole of Hudson Valley fake yoga, dinnertime confessions, and, of course, co-resident make-out sessions. Lily meets Charlie, whose sleepwalking produces quasi-romantic feelings that pine to go somewhere. Between false intimacy and all the conventions of self-improvement rituals under capitalism, the characters yearn for what they are searching for in themselves under the strange affliction of moonlight, ticks, and campfire, and perhaps even find a way there.

“Will You Still Be My Friend” (Unknown Pleasures) 

In a rural fishing village in southern Taiwan, 13-year-old Jun befriends Jasper, also 13, who has recently moved from Singapore, amid a growing conflict between locals and Jasper’s outsider parents who bought a stake in the land. As tensions escalate, Jun struggles to understand his relationship with Jasper and protect them both from attacks from the outside world.

The pain of growing up comes with the price of revelation. Filmmaker Lu Po-shun captures this process with care and subtlety, bringing the hidden dynamics of adolescent life to light. The boys’ friendship refracts the conflicts of the adult world, from class and gender to politics, through a complex web of desire. Jaden Wang and Aloysius Looi deliver refreshing performances that capture regret, home, and the uncertainties of adolescence. The film also highlights the confrontation between urbanism and an imagined pastoral, as well as the use of science to justify economic intrusion. “Will You Still Be My Friend” is a contemporary fable that traces the shifting contours of an adolescent mind and resonates well beyond the final frames.

“The Day She Returns” (Masters) 

It’s like a talk show setup: on one side is the charismatic actress, wearing white, framed by a plush dark restaurant booth. Opposite her, a young journalist in modest black leans across the table and asks questions. Then comes another journalist, then another. They look up to the actress: divorce, art, and motherhood have served her middle-age epiphanies. “Love yourself the most,” she urges each of them. Between interviews, she kneels in the grass in a Buddha-like posture and vapes.

Hong Sang-soo’s comedy uses the ritualistic repetitiveness of film press tours to study how even casual encounters reshape lives. Three young women bring out different sides of the actress Jeong-su. In turn, the interviewers project their own anxieties and ambitions onto her. What are we doing when we talk to other people–are we actors in their lives? Are they in ours?

A question Jeong-su often asks her interviewers is, “Really?” making them repeat their criticism or compliment back to her. It’s a common question in Hong’s films and reveals a key to his philosophy. The first time something happens, it isn’t to be trusted: it needs to be doubled and reenacted in order to become really real.

“Just Like Me and You” (Asian American Panorama)

Like any freshman in college, Joseph Chang navigates an alien world–one that’s not quite hostile, but not exactly safe either. It’s a place of new sensations, of badminton sweat and curious voices radiating through his hearing aid. Most enchanting of all is the odd snark spewed by his study partner Kevin, who has just the right mix of cool, clever, and criminal to capture the imagination of an outsider like Joseph. From text chains to library meet-ups, Joseph and Kevin–and by extension the viewer–slither down a rabbit hole of seductions and misdirection, brain-bending and brain-bashing.

“Just Like Me and You” may be set on a campus, but it’s disinterested in the usual social dynamics of the college film. Instead, the film plays out like a math problem that becomes increasingly difficult but also formally liberating as it contorts and shape-shifts. Like a David Lynch and Kiyoshi Kurosawa film set in a Southern California university of bible studies and biology classes, “Just Like Me and You” rewires the Asian American film narrative as it rewires the neurons, a riotous and utterly watchable mishmash of inspiration and ambition.

“Pinball” (Asian American Panorama) 

“Naturally my body doesn’t feel at home here. Naturally.”

At the age of four, Yosef Al Windawi and his family were one of the 213,000 Iraqis fleeing their country after 2004, arriving in Egypt and later receiving asylum in, of all places, suburban Louisville, Kentucky. In “Pinball”, a now-teenaged Yosef navigates feeling isolated and anxious amidst college decisions, pro-soccer dreams, athletic training, civil protests, and tough conversations with his Dad and friends about the American dream. 

His body and heart know something is missing, and questions about his family’s relocation from Cairo to Louisville keep resurfacing. Should he feel grateful for his community in Louisville? Or should he question his current life in the United States? When an opportunity presents itself to visit his sister in Egypt, will Yosef step out of his comfort zone?

Director Naveen Chaubal lets Yosef blossom through his own questions and gentle address to viewers, showing a multifaceted young immigrant man who navigates displacement, conflicted feelings about home and culture, and complex familial dynamics. Emerging from this intimate, honest portrayal, “Pinball” gives Yosef space to figure out his own story while inviting viewers into a place of joyful uncertainty through his journey and asking what it means to feel at home.

“Uncommitted” (Asian American Panorama) 

With a strong Arab population, Dearborn, Michigan becomes the beating heart of the Uncommitted Movement, a political campaign to bring a ceasefire in Gaza to the forefront of the Democratic Party platform. Chronicling an origin story centered around Election Day 2024, “Uncommitted” interviews, highlights, and showcases how the “uncommitted” vote, a voting strategy used in the 2008 elections with President Obama, is a symbol of protest, needed change, and lasting power.

Personal history and grief fuel the organizing, education, and galvanizing within the Dearborn community. From interviews with the town’s first Arab American mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, arguments against the movement’s approaches from the DNC and American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, to critiques of Kamala Harris’s campaign, the film discusses the priorities, strategies, and nuances of a movement that ultimately garnered over 100,000 “uncommitted” votes in Michigan alone.

For viewers seeking alternative civic futures and reinvigoration, “Uncommitted” traces the journey into political power, where belonging, coalition-building, and immigrant and marginalized storytelling ignite the desire for an enduring and just future.

“Ideal and Weird Family” (Asia Pop!) 

As an out lesbian couple, Da-sun and Hee-soo have seen their marriage deteriorate into something far from ideal. Da-sun, an irreverent writer who gave up her career to raise their children, has spent years bristling against Hee-soo, the image-conscious, type-A breadwinner of the family. The only appropriate solution: divorce.

Something stands in the way of their separation, however: their teenage daughters. The two are as different and distant as their mothers, with a bookish Sol taking after Hee-soo, while Wo, a former K-pop trainee and aspiring influencer, mirrors Da-sun’s creative spirit. So, as casually as discussing dinner, the couple ask the girls to choose a mother to live with. But before they can answer, they set off on a family road trip to Hee-soo’s sister’s wedding, because what better way to deal with falling apart than forced proximity and awkward reunions with estranged relatives?

Amidst the trip’s chaos, the two mothers reckon with what drove them apart, while the sisters question what it means to choose for just themselves. Kim Ji-hyun’s comedy quietly tiptoes into dramedy, the journey’s absurdity giving way to something more vulnerable: a family confronting the sacrifices of staying together.

It’s impossible to ignore the similarities between the Apple TV series “Ted Lasso” and “Stick,” as both follow the therapeutic sports-comedy playbook.

These shows feature tremendously likable actors in the lead role as deeply broken coaches who use the purity and poetry of a sport to build an endearing surrogate family while trying not to unravel from past trauma and paternal baggage. Both series feature amicable divorces, viral meltdowns, tested loyalties, inspirational comeback stories and top-tier needle drops—and both pull off an impressive balancing act that compels us to follow the journeys of not only the leads, but more than a half-dozen supporting players.

We could go on, but we’ll stop after this note: Whereas Jason Sudeikis’ Ted would almost be lost without Brendan Hunt’s wonderfully eccentric and fiercely loyal Coach Beard, Owen Wilson’s Pryce has Marc Maron’s equally protective but infinitely more cynical Mitts. Both Don Quixotes have their Sanchos Panza.

“Stick” isn’t in quite the same instant-classic league as the Emmy award-winning, pop culture-dominating “Ted Lasso,” but Season 2 is a remarkable upgrade from the already engaging first season.

Yes, Owen Wilson is doing his familiar laid-back, soft-rebel-with-a-heart-of-gold thing, but he’s tailor-made for the role. As the second season delves even further into Wilson’s Pryce “The Stick” Cahill’s unresolved past, the series proves to be more than a breezy underdog sports comedy/drama. Wilson does some of the finest work of his career as a 55-year-old man-child, given perhaps his last real chance to embrace opportunity before he’s relegated to a lawn chair on a driving range in Fort Wayne, forever lamenting what might have been. (And who he could have wound up with.) As Pryce puts it, in a crossroads moment: “Maybe it’s better to go through life believing you could have been great than to find out you couldn’t.” But what a waste of a life that would be.

Season 2 finds Pryce with some measure of purpose, thanks to his mentorship of Peter Dager’s Santi Wheeler, a troubled teenager turned sensational golf prodigy who, at 18, is wavering between taking a full ride to Indiana University and turning pro. John Higgins (from the “Please Don’t Destroy” comedy sketch group) joins the cast as the oily, relentless sports agent Jeremy Pierce, who dazzles Santi with splashy Hollywood parties and promises major endorsements if he joins Jeremy’s high-end agency.

Higgins is just the start of this season’s expanded cast. Billy Zane is in prime, slick, unctuous form as Jeremy’s boss. Rhea Seehorn, fresh off her Emmy win for “Pluribus,” adds great spark as Amanda Lydecker, who has known Pryce since they were teenagers and is the daughter of Pryce’s first coach and mentor, Butch Lydecker (Rex Linn), who is living with dementia. (This is a reunion for Seehorn and Linn; on “Better Call Saul,” Seehorn played Kim Wexler, while Linn played Kevin Wachtell, CEO of Mesa Verde Bank and Trust.) With Pryce’s former rival Clark Ross (a returning Timothy Olyphant, flashing that megawatt grin) urging him to make an unlikely comeback at 55, Amanda reluctantly agrees to coach him—but only if he follows her precise instructions for conquering the course. And agrees to work on his mental health as well.

This is our cue for Pryce’s sessions with a sports mindset specialist (Sasha Alexander), which unlock flashback scenes where we witness the complicated dynamic between a young Pryce (Hudson Brooks) and his grifter father (Warren Kole from “Yellowjackets”), and isn’t it something how so many TV/movie characters have grifter fathers? (We just saw that storyline in the Jon Hamm-starring “American Hostage,” and John Goodman will reportedly be playing the grifter dad to Claire Danes’ Aggie in Season 2 of “The Beast in Me.”)

We do witness the occasional pacing problem in Season 2—but it’s mostly because of an embarrassment of riches within the subplots. Santi’s romance with the free-spirited Zero (Lilli Kay) hits some speed bumps, as does the relationship between Mitts and Santi’s “momager,” Elena (Mariana Treviño). Alas, the invaluable Judy Greer is mostly on the sidelines as Pryce’s ex, Amber-Linn, though she is showcased for a set-piece wedding episode.

Just as “Ted Lasso” isn’t really about the football, “Stick” is about far more than the golf—but the scenes on the links are effective, thanks to Wilson and Dager effectively mimicking legit swings, and the use of custom-built mechanical rigs, high-speed drones, and specialized audio and video effects to give us reasonable facsimiles of actual tournaments. (It doesn’t hurt to have the legendary Jim Nantz and retired Master champion Trevor Immelman playing themselves in the broadcast booth.) Season 2 not only avoids the sophomore slump, but it also elevates the material and delivers a richly rewarding payoff.

Full season screened for review. Streams November 4th on Apple TV.

A few years back, Chicago-based directing duo Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson broke out big with “Ghostlight,” their tender exploration of family (played by Chicago powerhouse acting family Keith Kupferer, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, and Tara Mallen) as they process an unimaginable loss through the power of community theatre. This year the duo have re-teamed with two-thirds of the Mallen Kupferer family for another exceptionally perceptive and honest depiction of grief and the rocky road towards healing. 

Katherine Mallen Kupferer is Minnie, a high school junior who’s perfectly content playing second fiddle to her best friend Callie (Chloe Coleman), a theatre kid with her sights set on Juilliard and then Broadway glory. When an accident on the first day of summer break disrupts their close-knit friendship, Minnie must navigate senior year alone. 

As the year progresses, she forms an unconventional friendship with Helen (Sophie Okonedo), her best friend’s mom, and the two bond over their memories of Callie. At the same time, Minnie’s relationship with her single mom, Barbara (Tara Mallen), begins to fray as she falls in love with a girl named Kat (Iman Vellani), who also knows a thing or two about losing a loved one. 

In her four-star review of its Centerpiece presentation at the Chicago International Film Festival, Cortlyn Kelly praised O’Sullivan’s screenplay, writing that it “braids together these familial, romantic, and platonic connections of Minnie’s life, putting her through a whirlwind, almost accelerating her maturity…O’Sullivan’s words are so delicate in how they balance aiding the performers to express these complexities without stifling the space for them to show, not tell. “

Born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, U.S., O’Sullivan began performing in children’s theatre at age five, later moving to Chicago where she studied theatre at Northwestern University and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s School. Inspired by the autobiographical elements of Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird,” O’Sullivan wrote the screenplay for “Saint Frances,” mining her own experiences supporting herself as a nanny in her twenties. This led to her first major collaboration with her creative and life partner Alex Thompson, who directed the film.

“Saint Frances” won the audience award at the SXSW Film Festival and was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards, while Thompson was nominated for Breakthrough Director at the Gotham Awards. 

O’Sullivan stepped into the co-directing chair for their second collaboration, “Ghostlight,” which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Written specifically by O’Sullivan for her one-time theatrical co-star Keith Kupferer, the film received numerous awards and nominations, including Best Lead Performance for Kupferer at both the Gotham Awards and the Independent Spirit Awards, where they were once again nominated for the John Cassavetes Award. 

Their latest collaboration, “Mouse,” debuted in the Panorama section of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival and received a nomination for Best Feature Film at this year’s Gotham Awards, which will be presented in November. 

For this month’s Female Filmmakers in Focus column, RogerEbert.com spoke with directors O’Sullivan (who also writes) and Thompson at the Chicago International Film Festival about making intimate, character-driven films, moving forward with grief, and leveling up their directing partnership. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When you work on something that comes from a deeply autobiographical place, where do you start?

Kelly O’Sullivan: Well, for me—and this was the same with “Ghostlight” and “Saint Frances”—it starts from a real place and the real feelings that I felt at the time when my friend died, and then it spins out from there. I wasn’t interested in portraying what really happened to our community in a super specific way after her death. I was more interested in this fictional character of the mother, Helen (Sophie Okonedo), and that relationship with Minnie (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), which is totally fictionalized. It came from wanting two people who had been defined by Callie (Chloe Coleman) and asking, “What do each of them do when Callie is suddenly gone?”

Would you say it started with that question or once you had the character?

K.O.: I think it was a combination of it starting with that event that really happened in my life, but then also the question of who did these people become?

I imagine you set the film in 2002 because those were your teen years?

K.O.: Yeah, it was. That was a huge part of it. I think it’s just so different to be a teenager now. I would have a hard time writing all the specifics of what it is to be a teenager now. I also wanted to set it pre-social media because I think the way that we grieve has really changed.

With social media, now when somebody dies, I feel like a way to pay tribute—and it can be beautiful—is to take to social media. That’s where you can express all your complicated feelings, and that’s where you can post all the pictures. But that’s where competitive grief can come out, and sometimes some performative grief.

Cara (Audrey Grace Marshall) is sad and grieving, but she’s also making it her whole personality in a way that is deeply uncomfortable to watch. 

K.O.: When you’re a teenager, those feelings, because you haven’t experienced anything like that before, are so front and center that sometimes you don’t know what to do with them. It can start in a genuine place, then become performative.

So, I wanted to go back to a time when, if you were going to have to find an outlet for your grief, it couldn’t be through social media. It might have to be through a talent show. When I found out that my friend died, I didn’t have a cell phone, so the way that I found out was very confusing. It was mostly word of mouth until we all gathered at somebody’s house, and then information slowly trickled in. Then it became a flurry of text messages and calls. So I wanted to preserve the messiness and the confusion of that.

I had a friend who passed away in 2008 in a really terrible way. After I rewatched this movie a couple of days ago, I started thinking about her, and I did go on her Facebook. It’s a memorial now. It’s interesting how you can keep people alive in your brain forever, and now also digitally. She’s been gone longer than I knew her, but I think about her all the time. Then, with the Facebook page, I can look at her pictures.

K.O.: I was just talking about my friend in that way, too. Because she was just 17 years old when she died, and now she’s been gone longer than she was alive. I remember when we hit that number, and now it’s even beyond that. Just the strangeness of that, of thinking, “I’ve been alive double the amount that she got.”

You have a lot of perceptive lines about grief. There’s this line when Minnie is being kind of rude to Kat, and she says, “I’m still raw. You’ll find out.” But also, in the sad parents group, someone says, “There’s no moving on; There’s just living forward.” That line really hit because it’s so true. One aspect of grief is the same for everybody: we all hold on to it; it morphs, but it never goes away.

K.O.: One time I saw this beautiful image of a person, and their grief was like a circle inside them that was taking up their whole body, and they said, “What happens is the grief doesn’t get smaller. You just expand around it.” The grief stays the same size; you just grow. That really stuck with me as well, because my mom died very suddenly while we were shooting this movie.

That’s horrible. I can’t imagine that happening so suddenly, and then you still made a movie. That’s a lot.

K.O.: It was a lot, but in a weird way, all these lines that I had written, mostly from a hypothetical place, became very experientially true. Like that line that you mentioned from Kat, “It’s still fresh.” I just hit the two-year mark of my mom, and I’m nowhere near healed, you know. And don’t expect it to ever be okay.

Not even close. I think we’re all at that age where our parents are starting to pass away. 

K.O.: That’s the hard thing. I have this group of friends, and I’m the first one to lose a parent, but other people’s parents are starting to go through health crises. My mom died very suddenly. It was a brain aneurysm. She was perfectly healthy, and then, like that, she was gone. It’s weird to be the first one in a group and think, “Oh my God, you guys have no idea what’s coming.”

Both “Mouse” and “Ghostlight” are interesting films about grief because they don’t have many big scenes. Okonedo has one big scene at the end, but for the most part, it’s made up of the little parts of grief, which is more accurate to how people grieve. How do you approach writing those small scenes?

K.O.: What I’ve really found is that if I write from the specificity of what I’m going through, and I know that for me it’s a lot of those little moments, then it seems to resonate with other people. Sometimes I’ll watch a movie, and there will be a series of big scenes over and over, and it feels so punishing. It also doesn’t feel very true. What feels true to me are the little moments, and then the person has to carry on, because life keeps going. And you’re debating, “Do I let myself acknowledge this moment, or should I just keep on with my day?” That feels the most true. 

In that big scene with Helen and Barbara (Tara Mallen) at the end, where you faintly hear “Achy Breaky Heart” in the background. Was that planned in the script as a sort of comic thing to balance the big emotions?

K.O.: Oh yeah. This goes into my whole mission statement: always having the comedy and drama of life exist at once, because that’s how it happens all the time. I’ll be having the biggest breakdown in my life, and something ridiculous is happening in the background. But also, that song choice was written into the script. One, because it was huge when I was young. But also thematically, the lyrics of that song are so perfect: “Don’t tell my heart, my achy breaky heart, I just don’t think he’d understand. So it was both the absurdity of this girl choosing to clog dance in this memorial show and the lyrics being right.

Another great comic-tragic moment is during the funeral slideshow when “Angel” by Shaggy plays. This is exactly what the teenage girls would have picked in that year, but at the same time, if you’re from our generation, when you hear Shaggy, you also think of his more inappropriate song.

K.O.: We tried a couple of different songs, and for a while it looked like we weren’t going to get the rights. Then when we finally got the rights, we were like, well, we just have to. And, again, it’s that thing where it’s ridiculous, but they absolutely would have picked it.

Then you have that great Leanne Womack song.

K.O.: Oh, that song that was on heavy repeat. 

It played during every dance. Usually the slow song at the end of the dance. 

K.O.: Yes. 100%. And again, that song, like, if you listen, the lyrics of it are so sad. It’s so sad. We got to constantly play with this idea of what is appropriate to the moment, and then what is appropriate thematically.

In terms of setting the era, it is 2002, so September 11th is really fresh, and you vaguely allude to that, but you do it in a way that is really impactful, because that kid who decides to sign up for the army realistically might die. So many kids who signed up during that era died or got injured horrifically or have PTSD.

K.O.: There was a period in the script where the post-9/11 world played more into it, with yard signs that say, like, “Never forget,” but it ended up not making the movie. I remember after 9/11 happened, there was this surge of 18-year-olds in my high school signing up.

At the time, they were being praised for it, and they were so convinced it was the right thing. And now it is the most tragic thing in the world to me. How many came back with PTSD, if they did come back at all? I think that’s the power of movies set in the past. Obviously, we know what’s going to happen in a lot of ways, and it adds tragedy to this sweet, goofy guy.

In the ’90s, there were all these films set in the 1970s, and it made sense. People thought, yeah, that was 20 years ago. But I don’t feel like we think of 2002 as being almost 25 years ago. 

K.O.: No. I don’t; it feels like 10 years ago. Why? 

Do you think that living in the social media era has shifted our perception of time?

K.O.: Probably. Also, I think we’ve had some major catastrophic events that have arrested our development as a society. I think certainly COVID and Trump and all of these things freeze us. It very much feels like my amygdala is frozen. I’m also curious whether people making films in the 1990s set in the 1970s felt like it was 20 years ago. 

Maybe they didn’t either. You worked with Katherine Mallen Kupferer and Tara Mallen on “Ghostlight.” And Keith, who makes a cheeky cameo on a poster in the video store. While you were writing “Mouse,” were you thinking of Katherine for this role?

K.O.: No, not at all. I wrote “Mouse” before I wrote “Ghostlight.”  After “Saint Frances,” we went a little more traditional Hollywood, trying to make “Mouse” with a bigger budget and find just one financier, or maybe two. It was in development hell for like five years; then it was almost put together when the strikes happened, and it all fell apart. That’s when we pivoted to “Ghostlight.” So, when I was writing “Mouse,” I didn’t even know Katherine yet. It took me a while, quite honestly, to even see her in the role of Minnie, because it’s so different from Daisy in “Ghostlight.”

But we really believe you should work with the best actor. And when we were doing the press tour for “Ghostlight,” there was a  Q&A where Katherine, who is normally so confident and says whatever she wants, which is the opposite of Minnie, there was one moment where she got confused by the question or something. It was the first time I had seen her be really unsure of herself. 

After that Q&A, she had real self-doubt. And I thought, “Oh, we should cast her.” The really amazing thing is she’s just as good in a role that’s totally different.

[Alex joins the conversation.]

Having co-directed “Ghostlight” together, did your process change at all with this film?

Alex Thompson: I recall that on “Ghostlight” there was still a sense of not wanting to step on each other’s toes. I think “Mouse” was more 100/100 rather than 50/50. We knew how special the story was, and how much potential it had to be a powerful piece of cinema, so neither of us wanted to miss a beat or an opportunity to make it as small and as intimate as it is. 

It’s like all of our movies; it’s just about people. So we talked a lot about justifying the big screen and really loving movies that may focus on everyday things or the mundanity of life, but never feel that way. Movies that feel like walking into an old church and feeling connected. Where your little tiny life can be up on a big screen. 

We each had different interests day by day, or sometimes literally scene by scene. So, like some scenes, it was Kelly talking to the actors more; in some scenes it was me. Some props were very important to me, so I focused on those. I think we tried not to exhaust people by doubling down. If one of us had something covered, we wouldn’t kind of double down on it. There was a lot of trust. 

It’s like parenting or, I imagine, it’s like cooking. You know someone’s over there chopping the onions, and so you’re not “let me get those onions.” It’s like, okay, I hear Kelly gave me a note; I don’t need to give my take on that note. The fun thing about co-directing is you get to really be surprised when you watch the monitor. Because it’s not always your note. It’s not always something you care about, but you get to see it make things change.

When you work with your actors, do you start with a physical rehearsal before getting on set?

K.O.: No, we don’t really. We had the table read, and then we had one afternoon where we just read through the scenes with Katherine and Sophie. They’re big scenes, so we said, “If there are any hiccups, any things that feel like they’re giving you pause as an actor, not the character, let’s work it out.” That was the extent of our rehearsals. 

A.T.: We also had one piano day; that was ostensibly to rehearse the piano scenes, but we ended up hanging out for an hour.

This was filmed in Arkansas, where it’s set. Are you originally from Arkansas? Is that why it’s set there?

K.O.: I am, yeah, that’s why it’s set there.

What was that like going back to where you were from?

K.O.: It was such a mind trip to go back to my hometown and film a fictionalized version of this event twenty-plus years later, because the actual place has changed. It’s way cooler. I remember one time, early in the morning, our ten-month-old wouldn’t sleep, so I went out to a coffee shop in my pajamas and ran into somebody I knew from high school. I found out later when I looked in the mirror, and I was just like, “Young Adult.” But I also felt the echoes of the past there. The most incredible thing was getting to spend time with my parents before my mom died, which I didn’t know was gonna happen, but that was the best thing about it.

Every time I go home, I’m always torn. I know why I left, and also, but why did I leave? You know what I mean? There are all those little things that are just a part of you, I guess, forever.

K.O.: I know, and sometimes, I look at people who stayed, and I’m like, “Your life seems pretty great. Seems pretty easy.”

But then they’re always super stressed. You talk to them, and they give you all the things they’re stressed about, and you’re like, damn, okay. I guess that’s like the human condition.

A.T.: Also, the event that inspired the movie, to some extent, wasn’t just impactful for Kelly. So many of the crew were younger, but you could also feel that this was something that they knew about, maybe hadn’t talked about. We had young actors whose parents talked to them about it afterward. Or Christen Pitts, who choreographed the dance. 

K.O.: She was my high school dance teacher, who knew my friend who died. She choreographed the dance that is in the movie. So there are all these layers of crossover that could have happened by us going back to Arkansas.

The quarry sequence is probably the most intense physical scene in one of your films. I would love to hear about filming that.

A.T.: I think we tend to write for what we can do, and there were some things in “Mouse,” to the earlier point, that justify a bit more work and a bit more effort. Like when the girls are driving the car recklessly while they’re singing the song. Same for the quarry scene. We found the quarry through the location scout. The quarry Kelly wrote for was on an army base, and it was definitely illegal. 

K.O.: Kids are not supposed to sneak in, and we weren’t allowed to sneak in.

A.T.: So then we went to the other quarry after scouting and jumped in. Then when we picked the spots for filming and once the actors got into town, we went, and they were really gung-ho about–

K.O.: We had a whole stunt team.

A.T.: Chloe Coleman’s mom was a producer on “The Amazing Race.” She was like one of the people they would throw the challenges at to test them. So she was super gung ho, like, “Oh, this is gonna be this is gonna be great, Chloe. This is gonna be awesome. Jump from the highest point.” Then she did it, and I think the water had dropped 20 feet.

K.O.: Because there had been a drop. 

A.T.: That was a bit scary. We had found three points, which served as three different angles for the jump. One was the actual high jump, which one person did: Minnie’s body double. Then the other two were our vantage points, and we were a little lower. 

K.O.: We had a stunt team, and we had an underwater team. There were boats in the water to make sure everyone was safe. 

A.T.: Good to reassure the reader. 

K.O.: But it’s true, because it’s so different from what we’ve done in our other films. 

A.T.: There was a good guy in a wetsuit, and there were always two people waiting out in the water. 

K.O.: Even the dream sequence of the two little girls underwater required a stunt team. There were all these scuba divers around them off camera, keeping eyes on them. And that’s just in a pool. It’s interesting to make movies that require just a little bit more each time. 

A.T.: It reminded me of working with intimacy coordinators, because they’re very interested in what your vision is, and then working with you and the actors towards that vision. Whereas without stunt people…one of the girls went underwater, and it was clear she was uncomfortable holding her breath. If it was just me on set, I would be like, “Well, we didn’t get that, and we probably won’t get that. Let’s find another solution. But the stunt team did like little swim lessons and breath-holding lessons, and got everybody comfortable. That’s when you realize how much effort goes into those kinds of scenes. 

It seems so effortless when you watch it on screen. But you know, there’s so much preparation.

A.T.: It’s true for any department, but I think on “Mouse,” it was the first time that stunts and intimacy teams were as important for the creative as the cinematographer or the art department.

Especially with a film that is so personal, what do you hope audiences will come away with after they’ve finished watching?

K.O.: This is like all the scripts I write, but I really do hope there’s an increased sense of connection. This is a cliché, but I do think life is so hard, and there are events that are unforeseeable, and I think the only way out is through each other, and leaning on each other, and that there’s no right way to do it and that it’s okay to laugh. That connection is gonna help us through.

Are there any women who have made films that inspired you as a filmmaker, or films directed by women that maybe you think not enough people have seen?

K.O.: It was a huge hit, but I love “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” I think that’s one of the most incredible movies. 

A.T.: I think Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking” should have won everything. It’s so fucking good. 

K.O.: What’s the name of her doc? “Stories We Tell.” It’s brilliant. 

A.T.: I also count Agnès Varda amongst my favorite filmmakers.

You would think that after years of covering London Film Festival, I wouldn’t get lost so easily. And yet, if you had eyes on Waterloo Station the day I set out to see “Julián,” that’s what you’d see: a lanky, bespectacled film critic stumbling past roadblocks and protests to find the concrete halls of the BFI set against the River Thames.

Fortunately, no one makes the journey worthwhile quite like Irish studio Cartoon Saloon, and “Julián”—a powerful debut from director Louise Bagnall—easily solidified its place as my favorite film of the festival.

Based on a storybook by Jessica Love, “Julian” immediately exudes pure joy writ in bright colors, deliciously evocative animation, and a melodic soundtrack. Bagnall revealed in the Q&A that hundreds of background drawings were produced using colored pencils and markers to put us in child protagonist Julián’s shoes. All of this complements a moving and invigorating story about queer identity set against the backdrop of Dominican-American culture and the Coney Island Mermaid Parade.

The film echoes Cartoon Saloon’s best work, weaving family drama and self-discovery with cultural and religious magic. Gone are the forest fairies and wolfwalkers of the Emerald Isle; instead, Julián (played pitch-perfectly by nine-year-old Knyght Darius Jack) is helped along by a blue sprite named Luna and the Yoruba goddess Yemayá. Together, these entities help Julián accept who he is and share his light with his family. The project feels essential given the current political climate around gender and queerness without ever being didactic.

Watching Julián’s father drop him off at his grandmother’s house in Brooklyn, I couldn’t help but be reminded of when my mother did the same for me. I treasured the chance to connect with my grandmother across multiple generations, to learn about the ins and outs of her little corner of Brooklyn: her favorite restaurants, her local grocery store, her love for the promenade. This is where “Julián” really sings. Bagnall and her team created as authentic a depiction of neighborhood life as Spike Lee did in “Do the Right Thing”—no mean feat for a team working from across the Atlantic Ocean.

Where “Julian” had me levitating out of my seat with nostalgic memories of New York, “Variations on a Theme” evoked an entirely different part of my past. It was almost startling to hear a film boldly open in Afrikaans, my father’s first but rarely spoken language. 

I was immediately hooked as narrator and co-director Jason Jacobs launched into a story about Black South Africans who fought in World War I and II but who never received meaningful compensation, an unfortunate echo of unfulfilled promises of “forty acres and a mule” in the US. Not all veterans received such poor treatment, of course. Later in the film, we learn that one Black soldier received a bicycle as payment while his white peers received homes.

Yet these somber trappings belie the film’s whimsical soul. “Variations” offers a funny, ardently deadpan snapshot of life in the Northern Cape village of Kamieskroon. As we meet each of our main characters, fleeting as they are, we learn they are descendants of World War soldiers still waiting for government veterans’ grants. We see them caught in a Kafka-esque cycle of blue form applications, processing fees, and perpetual delays. One character, Hettie (Hettie Farmer), hopes in vain that a new administration under Cyril Ramaphosa (South Africa’s sitting president) will bring change.

Jacobs and co-director Devon Delmar oscillate between locked-down shots of donkeys, an old man sleeping against a building, locals playing dominoes, and Hettie the goat herder overseeing her flock. This approach pairs with utterly naturalistic performances, giving the film a feeling of raw authenticity. 

Jacobs’ vignette-like narration imbues each scene with meaning. He tells us that one of the donkeys staring passively at the camera tried to escape through a barbed-wire fence the night before, causing intense distress; in the same matter-of-fact tone, he confides elsewhere that Hettie wonders whether her flock of goats considers her a caring mother or a slaughtering god. 

Neither backstory appears visually, but it breathes a hidden life into each character, much like a documentary might. Yet the veneer of realism cracks when Jacobs and Delmar create a particularly striking image: a World War veteran ancestor visiting Hettie astride a bicycle, powerfully connecting the denizens of Kamieskroon to a country that has left them behind.

I actually visited South Africa in two wildly different contexts at LFF: in “Variations,” I saw the country in the modern era, and in “Tutu,” I was invited on a multi-decade march toward the end of apartheid. Director Sam Pollard offers a compelling and often inspiring documentary portrait of the eponymous archbishop. We follow one of the most significant civil rights leaders in South Africa’s history as he prophesies, then fulfills, his dream of liberating the country from racial repression. 

It’s a movie that feels deeply salient today, as communities on opposite sides of a deeply traumatizing and violent fence work together to build a new future. The parallels to Israel-Palestine are immediately obvious, although the film spends surprisingly little time on the connection despite Tutu’s passion for making peace in the region.

Pollard wisely avoids hagiography. He depicts Tutu as a powerful speaker and devoted husband, but also as a man sometimes at odds with his own movement. Tutu’s commitment to nonviolence marks him as a collaborator and traitor to liberation, in contrast to African National Congress figureheads. 

In the most harrowing sequence of the film, anti-apartheid protesters attempt to “necklace” someone they deem to be an informant to the government—a shocking tactic that involves putting car tires around a person, dousing them in gas, and lighting them on fire. Tutu puts his own life in jeopardy by standing in between the mob and the target. For the archbishop, Pollard suggests, this was a fight for the movement’s soul.

Later in the film, Pollard includes an interesting sequence in which Tutu lays out the extent of his Christian ethic. He explains to a Jewish friend that he believes everyone, even someone like Adolf Hitler, could find salvation and forgiveness if they sought it out and repented. Tutu uses this controversial belief to illustrate that apartheid government leaders could have a place in the new South Africa if they would just admit to their crimes through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 

Some officials took Tutu up on that offer; many did not. But ultimately, Tutu believed that sitting down and talking things through is the first and most essential step in repairing harm and rebuilding connection.

Some conflicts have no resolution, as it is in “A Common Story,” a promising debut from Italian actor-turned-director Anna Foglietta. The movie deftly explores gender dynamics through the lives of married couple Erika (Alba Rohrwacher) and Mauro (Guido Caprino). The film opens with the pair seeing their daughter off to college, and empty-nest life reveals a slew of problems in their relationship.

Facing down issues previously ignored for the sake of a shared goal, like child-rearing, isn’t anything new. But what grabbed me about “A Common Story” was its clever bait-and-switch storytelling. We first see Erika rebuff Mauro’s attempts to start a romance, alongside his kind efforts to coach local kids in soccer. We see him reject the boorish, sexist nature of his father’s generation with a sense of deep embarrassment. 

Foglietta gives us the impression that Mauro is just a nice guy stuck in a loveless relationship. But as the film shifts perspective, we see another side to Mauro. He’s just as stuck in old gender norms: demanding his food be ready on the table when he comes home and neglectful of Erika’s needs. There is a subtle commentary here on a younger generation of Italian men who believe they’ve shed regressive mores, only to reinstate them when push comes to shove.

It’s unfortunate that Foglietta seems unwilling to allow her muses to carry the day with the compelling central message. Rohrwacher and especially Caprino are up to the task. But as the drama reaches a fever pitch, Foglietta gets in the way with garish crossfades and almost soap opera-like zooms. These distracting choices make what should be a powerful denouement feel almost silly with melodrama. It is a testament to the underlying truth of “A Common Story” that I would still recommend the film despite these strange choices, and I look forward to seeing what a now-experienced Foglietta can do in a follow-up.

The critic Pauline Kael once said, “An artist must either give up art or develop.” It seemed fitting that I would be seated in the Kael screening room at Picturehouse Central to watch Duncan Jones’ sci-fi war film, “Rogue Trooper,” because this is an important moment for Jones. 

After bursting onto the scene with the modern classic “Moon” in 2009 and following it up with the wonderful time-loop film “Source Code,” Jones hit a rut. His last film, “Mute”—set in the same universe as “Moon”—proved to be a distasteful, unmitigated disaster. “Rogue Trooper” is his chance at a comeback, and while it has its flaws, I’m glad he chose to develop rather than give up.

The animated epic follows a soldier named 19 (Aneurin Barnard) who belongs to an elite caste of soldiers whose consciousness is stored on a removable chip. That means that if they die, they can live on in a new body or other available machinery.

While 19 and his brothers in arms are relatively unremarkable characters when they have bodies, the fates conspire to transplant each of his platoon into a different bit of his equipment: Gunnar (Jack Lowden) ends up in his gun, Helm (Daryl McCormack) in his helmet, and Bagman (Reece Shearsmith) in his backpack. Ironically, this shift away from living, breathing people helps the whole cast come to life and compelled me to see 19’s mission to its high-octane conclusion. I only wish it came sooner after such a dreary opening sequence.

Part of what makes “Rogue Trooper” hard to get into is its lifeless, often uncanny animation. The film uses Unreal Engine 5, a popular software for creating video games, to weightless effect. I found myself wishing for a more traditionally animated film or live action; what we get instead fails to capture the highly stylized art of the 2000 AD Rogue Trooper comics.

Despite this, robust vocal performances from 19 and his disembodied misfit companions won me over enough that I would be keen to see a sequel, particularly with this character’s setup out of the way.

On the other end of the animation spectrum is Fernanda Salgado’s extremely watchable “Ana, en passant.” The movie mixes media, including stop motion, collage, hand-drawn animation, rotoscoping, and even stylized live-action video, to create a textured, expressive world for its lead character.

The movie follows Ana (Jéssica Pierina) as she leaves her home in Paris to follow a cryptic clue her Brazilian grandmother left behind. When she arrives at her grandmother’s old apartment, Ana meets a woman named Alice (also Pierina), who lets her stay while she explores the town.

“Ana, en passant” offers a subtler, more consistent take on the Afro-Brazilian notion of “spiral time,” also explored in 2024’s “Formosa Beach.” Salgado lets the film’s narrative fold in on itself repeatedly. Ana and Alice come across as very similar people, helped by having the same voice actor, raising questions about how much of what Ana is experiencing is real.

Alice also shares the same name as Ana’s grandmother, hinting that Ana is somehow staying with a younger version of her deceased relative. These interwoven abstract interpretations offer no easy answers but invoke a unique, culturally distinct narrative mode that feels refreshing.

In key ways, “Ana, en passant” shares DNA with both “Olivia and the Clouds”—my standout pick of the fest—in how it plays with form and sound to explore family ties and history. The film’s deeply evocative soundtrack comes from Brazilian jazz band Metá Metá; Salgado revealed in a Q+A that she listened to the band as she developed the film over ten years, so they were a natural fit for the final treatment. 

Salgado mixes their sometimes bouncy, sometimes otherworldly tunes with a deep sense of aural tactility through sound effects and foley. As Ana picks up a fruit from a street vendor, it rips away, revealing the film’s very canvas; meanwhile, city buildings unfurl as she walks by, as if hastily assembled by the filmmaker. Together, these elements create an almost ethereal sense of constructed reality as Ana pieces her family history back together.

In some ways, attending London Film Festival puts me in a similarly dreamlike state. Flitting from film to film can create a transfixing stupor as the reels begin to blend. Did I not just meet Hettie the goatheard? Was Metá Metá really providing a personal soundtrack to my life? I can but duck into just one more theater to find out.

Director Jordan Firstman’s “Club Kid” hums with the kind of specificity that would make the chronically online (ideally those who are also in the queer nightlife scene in NY) feel seen. But its narrative bones are steeped in the universally relatable struggles around balancing the pursuit of pleasure with the responsibilities of growing up. Those who enter this cinematic dance party aware of Firstman’s online persona might understandably expect something more irascible and obnoxious than the final product, which laces its sincerity with carnality. 

Firstman stars as Peter, an underground party promoter who runs a successful club with his business partner, Sophie (Cara Delevingne), but the years of late-night partying, whirlwind hookups, and incessant drug consumption have taken a toll on his body and mind. In the midst of this rut, he learns he unknowingly fathered a son, Arlo (Reggie Absolom), who spent his first ten years abroad in the UK. When Arlo’s birth mother passes, Peter begrudgingly becomes the father who steps up, aware that having a child fundamentally changes his life, while wrestling with how this reality both liberates and restricts. 

As Peter navigates the throes of fatherhood, he learns a lesson that’s hardest for any caring parent: caring for your kid doesn’t mean shielding them from what is uncomfortable about the world, but being present when they have questions about what they experience. Additionally, Peter’s struggles with adulthood are unique in their stressors: does maturing mean assimilating to heteronormative standards about parenting? How do queer people track their growth when the demarcations of adulthood are not as easily defined as they are for straight people? Firstman’s film explores these questions with a dizzying rhythm, soundtracked by classic and modern club hits you can’t help but groove to. 

“It’s complicated though because the club is where [queer people] show up for each other, where we see each other. I think that can still create a space to create rituals, but we need to keep a better eye on it as opposed to just getting rid of that structure,” Firstman shared. 

After being the life of the party at Cannes, Firstman invited many others to partake in the film’s cinematic riches across TIFF, NYFF, and the Chicago International Film Festival. At the latter’s stop, hours before he was set to introduce the film and receive the Breakthrough Award, Firstman spoke with RogerEbert.com at the Ritz-Carlton, where the writer, director, and star spoke about choosing the film’s soundtrack, the enduring influence of author Bruce Wagner on his creative life, and discerning when it is time to leave the party, adapt to the party, or start a new one. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Your film has an unapologetic specificity. There are, of course, references like “mama lets research,” but I also know that you educated the straight crew–such as DP Adam Newport-Berra–about gay lingo like “gaggy shots.” Tell me more about getting these details right and how you balanced being niche without alienating those who might not be as dialed in as you. 

Jordan Firstman: It’s a bit of a “one for them, one for me” mentality. That’s why I have so much physical comedy. That sequence where Peter pushes Arlo is broad and can be universally seen as a beat of humor, same with the double throw-up moment, and in exchange, I get the “Miley, what’s good?” meme and “thank you The Can.” I grew up on the internet, and I love memes, and when people quote them, I think you can tell a lot about people. 

In the scene when the Miley Cyrus quote is being reiterated, Peter is trapped in the bathroom with these annoying gays who can’t stop quoting TikTok. I’m not just throwing these references in here just because. My friend called it Chekhov’s Gina Rodriguez because that sequence sets up the “mama lets research” line. 

I love finding clever ways to teach the audience and creating characters who can act as entry points for the uninitiated. That was part of the inspiration for having the cousin at the beginning who needs to have certain drugs or lingo explained. I know it is corny, but truly everyone is invited to the party, and I didn’t want it to feel exclusionary even if you don’t get a reference. 

On the note of relevancy, when I was talking with my friends about the film’s soundtrack, they mentioned how the Slayyyter song you chose, “Crank,” is quite hot right now, which meant that you had to have a finger on the pulse to include it. 

When I was editing the scene where Peter is searching for Arlo, I was going through some options that weren’t quite landing, but “Crank” had just come out. I don’t even think the full album had been released yet. 

Yeah, Worst Girl in America came out in March of this year. 

But I’ve known Slayyyter as a friend, and the song felt very modern but also very scary, especially in the club. On TikTok, it sounds really fun, but in that context, it becomes frightening and intense. We made some fun edits to stretch certain parts longer to fit the scene’s vibe. 

What inspired the choice for “Swimmers”? 

It’s been saved on my Spotify for years, and it was always on the movie’s playlist. There were two songs on rotation for that montage, but I ultimately went with that one because it has a nice melancholy to it. The sequence where it plays feels a little bit ’90s, even the way I crossfade the shots in the window. For that moment in particular, I was watching “Basquiat” for some of those shots. 

You’ve mentioned how kids, in so many ways, for straight couples, act as this sort of marker for adulthood development. For queer people, that “rite of passage” is not always there, so it’s easy to believe that you are developmentally stunted. I’m wondering if you can speak more to that idea as it relates to “Club Kid.” How have you created rituals for yourself to mark growth in a world otherwise bereft of them? 

I feel like us queer folk have Peter Pan syndrome for sure–that’s why the character’s name is Peter, by the way. I don’t think we need to, though; I think the club is a space where we find the family unit and structure, but not the growing-up structure. We also live in an age where gay men specifically have found a way to have really high-power jobs and party all weekend. They do live this double life. You go to these parties in New York, and you see surgeons do cocaine, and then they go to work the next day and do open-heart surgery. 

It’s an interesting time to observe what gayness and party culture have become because I do think we’ve, in some ways, veered away from the community aspect. I think when gay guys were partying in the ’70s, they were also rioting on the streets. They had a camaraderie that defined them in and out of the club. I think when you take away the fight, and you just have the party, then it leaves you empty and a little bit of emptiness. That’s the arc of Peter’s story. 

It’s complicated, though, because the club is where we show up for each other, where we see each other. I think that can still create space for rituals, but we need to keep a closer eye on it instead of just getting rid of that structure. 

The film has definitely made me pick and choose when to be present in that space. I’m making sure to nurture friendships outside of the party, have dinners with people, prioritize phone calls and lunches, and not just have party friends. I do feel like when I left the scene–I’d say I now party once a season–you do lose friends. It’s like if you quit a job, you’re probably never going to see most of those people again. That space is now a place of release and fun for me, but it’s not the habit it used to be. 

I was definitely thinking about what it means to be good friends with people when so much of how you relate is tied to a certain activity. How do we maintain friendships as adults, or what does it mean to be a good friend as you age? 

It’s funny, I’m not going to say what I’m thinking about for the next thing, but this topic is something I’m hoping to explore in it. 

What strikes me is that the film isn’t a condemnation of the party scene. It can be a hard line to showcase its difficulty and hardship but also celebrate it. 

Listen, I’ve had transcendent experiences at the club. I’ve talked to God on the dance floor. I believe in the power of drugs, to be honest. But I also believe that like anything good, too much is too much. 

You’ll finally give us the answer for how to be friends as adults. I was listening to your album, Secrets, on the way here, and a song that has stuck with me was “Mother’s prayer.” In that song, your mom literally speaks to you about the pitfalls of “the immediacy of sharing your gifts in the world.” How do you think about patience, serendipity, and timing in relation to art-making? Do you think this is something you could have made before? 

I appreciate you mentioning that song. There are nuggets of wisdom there, and it’s beautiful to make that connection, although I think when the album came out, it was too esoteric for people. With “Club Kid,” I think everything came together at the perfect time. I’m happy now, in hindsight, that I didn’t get to make the stuff I wanted to make before because I came into this project seasoned and had some sense of knowing what I was doing. 

I’ve been in this industry for over a decade. I’ve been in writers’ rooms; I’ve directed, I’ve acted in so many things. People–critically, let me note that this is not me saying this–have been saying that this feels fully formed for a debut. I believe in timing, whether it is God or the universe, and while the film touches on a variety of subjects, I think the emphasis on timing is a thematic core. A person can come and change your life, and the transformative power of love can disrupt your notions of the world, which is what Arlo does for Peter and vice versa. You never know when love will come, and you can’t look for it, but when it comes, you have no choice but to change. 

I read that your sister and her wife have a kid–a daughter–thanks to you, in that you’re both the uncle and biological dad. Speaking of timing, it’s interesting to note that your daughter/niece was born after you wrote the script, and now you’re getting ready to release this film into the world. 

Yeah, she’s such a great baby, and my sister is so happy. It’s cool to be like, “Whoa … that is a part of me even if I’m not raising me.” I’ve definitely been a deadbeat uncle and dad because this year has been so busy (Laughs). The kid is so good, smiley, and well-behaved and doesn’t cry that much. I’m not sure if that experience has changed my perception of kids, but it’s beautiful to see my sister so happy. Her daughter was born in the last week of production, actually, speaking of timing. 

Now your second kid, “Club Kid,” is getting ready to come into the world. You have cited author and writer Bruce Wagner as a mentor and influence. When I think about his work, like “Maps to the Stars,” it is both apocalyptic and spiritual, as though he is trying to make a guidebook for how to cling to hope in our times. I’m curious whether you can trace any influence his work might have had on the film? 

Bruce’s work hinges on this idea of total surrender. I think his idea of freedom and God is surrender, and that comes with death. I don’t know if you’ve read Marvel Universe: Origin Stories, but it definitely traffics in those themes. Earlier you were talking about specificity and memes, and I’ve been inspired by Bruce’s specificity. I think reading his work subconsciously helped me be specific in a way that felt true to me. 

When I first read his Marvel Universe: Origin Stories, I didn’t know that much about him, and so I was like, “There’s no way a 38-year-old gay guy didn’t write this.” Then I met this 70-year-old straight man, and I was like, “What the fuck?” He’s a spiritual mentor to me beyond the artistic and creative stuff, and he talks me off a ledge. 

I think with the spiritual work I’ve done with the ayahuasca and other things, I think there is just an unspoken hope that I will always have because I’ve seen beauty and I’ve just seen things.  It would be hard for me to be a complete cynic, given some of what I’ve experienced. I think using my work to get those messages across is, hopefully, for others as much as it is for myself: that we have the power to change, and that it isn’t too late to change. There’s no time limit, and we have to remember that even if it feels like our personalities are developed and it can feel like it’s all over. 

So much of your work revolves around the depiction of sex and exploring sexuality. I’m curious what your thoughts are around the notion that Gen Z wants less sex in their films. “Club Kid” focuses on intergenerational relationships, but what happens when one generation feels estranged from the other? 

Sex has always been a big part of my life, and this is the least sexual work I’ve probably ever done. Even the Oscar stuff feels so tame. I love the moment where Peter asks for a hug from him because I feel like it’s so not gay, and there’s a stereotype that we’re right to sex all the time. Sometimes all we need is a hug, and it’s rare to let things happen naturally, to have sexual chemistry with a guy and let conversation take its course first. 

To your point, though, it is interesting because we just had our first college screening of “Club Kid.” They went crazy; I didn’t really get a chance to talk to them after, but I’m wondering what Gen Z gets from this movie. They were into it, but they also haven’t even lived the life that I’m talking about, yet they felt something in it.

I know shooting on 35mm was important to you, and one benefit is that you can see the nuances of performances. Was there a moment when you were watching playback that surprised you or affirmed: “This is why I wanted to shoot in this format.” 

I don’t know if this defends it or not, but when Peter goes back to Arlo and tells him he’s going to stay, the drama of that performance lives on my face. When Adam first did that shot, and I was like, “Girl, I’m never using that shot. It’sway too close. I hate the blurry background.” Even during the edit, he would try to sneak it in, and I would always say, “No, we’re not using that shot.” Then, once we reframed the scene, the camera could capture both of us deciding, through our microexpressions, that we are committing to being in each other’s lives. 

I’d point to that moment as the moment I fall in love with Arlo and embrace him, and capturing that nuance feels like something only 35 mm film can do. Reggie makes this little facial expression, and to me that’s where the movie shifts, where Peter says, “Okay, I’m in this now.” 

“Club Kid” is in select theaters on November 6, via NEON.

Bass Reeves, the man who inspired The Lone Ranger, has had more media appearances in recent memory than that famous fictional lawman. Over the last few years, Reeves has been fictionalized several times: portrayed by Delroy Lindo in Jeymes Samuel’s “The Harder They Fall,” David Oyelowo in Chad Feehan’s gritty miniseries “Lawmen: Bass Reeves“, and even voiced by Keith David in an episode of “Gremlins: The Wild Batch” last year. The Reeves-urgence has hit full throttle, so to speak.

None of these titles comes close to creator LeSean Thomas’ (“Yasuke”) latest Netflix series, “Bass x Machina,” an entertaining, ultraviolent, anime-styled actioner that depicts Reeves as a bionic-armed bounty hunter in a steampunk-infused American West. 

Making Edison’s lightbulb look like a lollipop, Thomas conjures a genre-bending world where men can wield mechs, and Indigenous Americans bear element-bending powers. It’s like a ’60s-era spaghetti western meeting “Mortal Engines,” but with a sharper arsenal for discussing racial injustice than even “Harder They Fall.”

The six‑episode first season opens on a pre‑U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves (Brian Tyree Henry) on a bounty assignment across snowy terrain. A stern, gruff, one‑man machine, he’s tormented by memories of having his arm torn off and modified into a cybernetic hand (one that can transform into a double‑barreled gun). Through an exciting, grisly gun‑slinging shootout sequence aboard a steam train, we see him operate as judge, jury, and executioner, always getting his mark, preferably with a bullet to the head. (Got to make the TV-MA rating count.)

Upon returning to a robot‑aided frontier town, he’s enlisted to rescue a missing scientist, Dr. Eugene Starr (Nick Thurston), presumed abducted by Indigenous people on Five Civilized Tribes territory. Reeves’ rapport with them makes him the best candidate. They tell him the metal used for his arm has been found, activating his revenge fuel to find General Rivenbark (Currie Graham)—the Frankenstein to his monster. To seal the deal: $1,000 in compensation and appointment as the first Black U.S. Marshal, with equal pay to his white counterparts.

He returns home to his two sons and pregnant wife, Glory (Janelle Monáe), whom he lovingly dubs “the Boss.” After a series of night terrors, she suggests he go fulfill his quest.

Reeves isn’t the only one searching for Starr; Starr’s passionate 14‑year‑old inventor niece, Dana (an unrecognizable Tati Gabrielle), is too. She offers to help find the only family she has left, and he declines. Unrelentingly, she joins anyway, to his dismay. 

Riding on her steampunked e-bike alongside his horse, the pacifist Dana suggests “the alive” option in the “dead or alive disclaimer” to Reeves. All while using a non‑lethal gadget she made or reengineering service bots to aid Reeves in jams when outnumbered by outlaws.

South Korean animation house Studio Mir (“Devil May Cry,” “X-Men ’97”) astounds with their animation, as they always do.  Each action scene is fast-paced and exciting, and the mix of steampunk and Western violence brings out the best of both worlds, whether it’s a bloody shootout or Bass bringing out his big guns against high-scaled mechs. The cinematic art direction stands out most. The color scheme relies heavily on dusty yellow and sienna brown. The woodsy, straw-built architecture across the Frontier and Tribal settings, mixed with the often brown-and-grey rustic machinery, creates a vibrant world. 

Alas, the same doesn’t hold true in its alt-history setting. Robots are present, but American history still unravels the same. It plays colonialism, segregation, and oppression very 1:1 to history itself, with mechs just being part of it. It leaves you questioning certain aspects more than others, particularly: when did the indoctrination of roboticism in society normalize? During slavery or post-Civil War? 

Those questions aren’t going to be answered, for the series is more concerned with deconstructing Reeves’ past traumas. From being robbed of his autonomy after losing his first wife and kid to American soldiers, there’s a clear reason why he’s hard-edged in his burgeoning “True Grit”-like friendship with Dana. Still, Henry and Gabrielle’s vibrant voicework makes this central relationship familiar and admirable. 

However, each episode bears a variation of the same “Bass demands she go home and her persistent refusal to leave” argument. It’s repetitive, and stalls the show’s pacing and the potential to develop their buddy dynamic with earned emotional weight. It adds some great ideas, but like a rusty door hinge, it noisily creaks when characters decide to open up.”

Bass X Machina” is most incisive when it mirrors Bass’s rage-fueled quest with other marginalized groups’ resentment toward a discrimination-driven America. It focuses on a cultural dispute between Reeves and his complex, cordial relationship with Five Civilized Tribes sheriff Lighthorse (Chaske Spencer) and a mysterious thunder-powered woman named Ahni (Cree Summer).

While historical injustice can be a complex tightrope to walk, especially in a genre show like this, the show’s team of Black (Chad Handley) and Native American (Anthony Florez) writers makes their conversation about existential racial exhaustion feel nuanced and viscerally timely. The steampunk elements function as a conduit for themes of morality, justice, and retribution through a marginalized lens moving through an unjust America. 

Nevertheless, “Bass X Machina” is among the finest original animated series to come out this year. As action-packed as it is thought-provoking, it’s a sharp straight‑shooter that, while not hitting all its marks, makes for a strong-armed binge. 

All episodes screened for review. Streaming on Netflix November 3rd.

“It Gets Worse” is a thoroughly Gen-Z show; elder millennials and previous generations beware. There are some nuggets for the olds—guest appearances by Andrew Scott and Lena Dunham, both playing delightfully to type. Famed author Zadie Smith narrates, further bolstering the British show’s cross-generational marketing points. But in its aesthetics, hang-ups, and worldview, “It Gets Worse” is not for anyone who’s ever had a Facebook account. 

Created by and starring Leo Reich, the six-part first season opens with an episode focusing on his character Ethan. An insufferable 24-year-old, he’s staring down a hole in the drywall of the apartment he shares with his two best friends from university, Abi (Emily Fairn) and Sam (Olive Gray). They have to leave, and so Ethan must fix the wall to get their deposit back. But with no skills (practical or otherwise), he languishes, wasting time instead of completing the task and helping his friends, who need the money.

Sound entitled? It’s supposed to. “It Gets Worse” knows that Ethan is terrible; the pilot opens with the narrator declaring, “Ethan had one of the easiest lives in recorded human history.” And from there, it goes on to follow his misery—this handsome, white, gay guy with a trust fund is thoroughly toxic, unable to show up for his friends or himself.

Thankfully, the next episode pivots as each roommate gets a close look, and then this Showtime/A24 series moves to various groupings and themes within their 20-something-in-London set.

Abi is a striver, working at a tech start-up and hoping that following the rules will make her happy. She’s trying out a demure brand of femininity and hitches her star to a boyfriend (Sean Delaney) with a nice flat. He looks good on paper, but isn’t much interested in her sexually or otherwise.

Sam is a creative, a writer who lands in an artist’s compound, with all its thrills and pretension. She tries to be chill with her ex-girlfriend-turned-flatmate while paying her bill by tutoring (judging and mentoring) younger people, including Jake, a surprising Billy Rilot.

Together, they seem like an unlikely trio, and “It Gets Worse” gives the backstory of their connection in episode four, explaining their initial, negative reads on each other and declaring “they were all right about each other.” But as that episode goes on, the show reveals what cemented their friendship and their most positive estimation of their closest friends. It then repeats the same line about this later judgment: “they were all right about each other.”

This duality is what makes “It Gets Worse” so smart. It opens with its least likable character at his shallowest, then layers on shades of humanity. Ethan doesn’t get better per se—and the show does not explain his pathology (he only jokes about trauma, appearing to have no experience with it), but it does show his vulnerability. He’s not all sex and coke and bulster. There’s a wounded bird in there, just trying to be loved.

Indeed, each of the central three could fit that characterization, their bent feathers poking out of their manicured styles at times. These are folks trying to make their way in a world that feels chaotic and unstable. Now, “It Gets Worse” motions at politics (Ethan regularly decries the state of the world, without naming anything in particular that’s wrong) but it isn’t particularly interested in world events.

Instead, this show focuses on the business of being 24. What’s the right job? How do you advocate for yourself at work? What makes for a good partner? A hookup? Where’s the line with family? With friends?

It’s coming-of-age stuff, just a decade later than TV usually pins it to. And “It Gets Worse” knows its audience, its characters, and its world. This is a young, broke London, filled with artists and grungy flats. For those not familiar with this world, the series is both a cold plunge and a gentle weaning—the whole season could be a feature film, but instead Reich measures out the doses, giving us just six 24-minute installments with Ethan, Abi, and Sam.

And to be clear, Reich has real insight into these people, revealed not just through their bad behavior and mistakes (although there’s plenty of that), but also their possibilities. The incisive writing sees these protagonists clearly in all their contradictions, naming and teasing their incongruities as it goes.

For if “It Gets Worse” has a central thesis, it’s that more than one thing can be true at a time. It can be the easiest time in human history, and a privileged manchild can still be in over his head, stuck in a destructive cycle. Abi can be fierce and ambitious with no real clue about what she wants. And Sam can be empathetic and mean, a confident agent in the world who is still far from coming into her own.

And more than that, “It Gets Worse” promises to get better. It evolves over the season and hints at more, with plenty of room to grow. Will Ethan ever figure out what he wants to do? Will Sam make it as a writer? What will come of Abi’s economic ambition? It’s impossible to know. But Reich clearly has plenty to say. And he’s just getting started.

Not that I announced it or anything, but I set myself a challenge to make 2026 the year of Comedy Unloveds. It’s a genre I don’t lavish quite enough attention on. As I get into my video on this month’s Unloved, the sublimely ridiculous and ridiculously sublime “Never Change!,” you’ll see why. 

You can throw on a movie like “Blazing Saddles” or “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and admire everything about it except the humor. The compositions, the great approximation of the language of genre, the performances, the costumes, the production design, their comments on the place of myth in popular culture and in the make-up of modern morality… etc. 

But what sells them to most people is that you just laugh yourself stupid while they’re on. Those two films are peculiar in the annals of comedy: basically everybody will tell you they’re funny. Not to say they aren’t; they are, they obviously are, but maybe not always for the same reason. 

A lot of people will tell you the funniest part of the Black Knight scene in “Holy Grail” is the line “Just a flesh wound.” Allow me, the joyless critic, to say that’s the least funny part of the scene. The funny part is when Cleese’s Black Knight runs at Graham Chapman’s King Arthur and his arms are limply chopped off in a spray of blood. The mix of high energy and low reward. That’s comedy. To me. 

See it again in Will Forte’s big scene in “Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie,” where this man and his chintzy shop are suddenly the center of the universe. “You listen to me! I’m Alan fucking Bishopman, and I’ve run EZ Swords for 15 years. And you want me to CHANGE! FUCK YOU!” Forte’s character barely makes a dent in the film, though he makes an important phone call that sets the third act in motion: he’s suddenly the biggest adversary the heroes have ever faced. And he’s a guy running a sword shop in a deserted mall in 2012. 

All this to say that I’ve been studying Marty Schousboe’s “Never Change!” and it has just about every kind of joke structure imaginable, all of them to my liking. Me. The joyless critic. It swings a hundred times, hoping it’ll connect at least once. To me, it worked 90% of the time. 

I mean, just look at the opening. The first sound we hear is a TV playing a commercial. “Pizza Hut. We’ve cleared out all the dead bodies and our crust is sometimes literally stuffed with shit.” That’s the first ten seconds. Then we see two movers on the front lawn of a sad-looking two-story house, throwing every belonging into the back of their truck and surely breaking everything in it. 

For the joke to land, two things can be true: it doesn’t matter what’s in the boxes, or it does. The film asks which one you think is funniest because the scene works either way, but the camera dollies past this to Jo Firestone, looking out the window, wistfully. The movie is already both itself and a parody of itself. That’s the first minute. 

Thank god that the critic’s job, charitably, isn’t just explaining why funny stuff is funny, but god knows a movie like this tempts me. I could just go on listing jokes and explaining why I laughed but… well… just watch. I wavered a little in my mission to make a year of comedy Unloved, and spoiler alert: my December Unloved is NOT a comedy. But it was nice to look for human grace notes and big laughs when I’m sometimes looking for the kind of vision that seems to burn through time. 

I have a friend I sometimes show homework movies to, and she’d tell you it’s much less risky to suggest “Heaven’s Gate” than to suggest “Never Change!” After all, a landscape is self-evidently beautiful, a myth self-evidently in need of deconstruction. But comedy? That’s subjective. 

What happens if you don’t laugh in that first minute and 100 remain? Comedy is hard. But I’d stake anything that you’ll laugh at least once while watching this movie. 

The “Next Generation” Star Trek movies were never quite as popular, or as well-received, as the original series Shatner flicks. But one of Patrick Stewart’s closing lines from his crew’s big-screen debut, “Star Trek: Generations,” still sits with me decades later. “Time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment… because they’ll never come again.” 

“What we leave behind,” he adds, “is not as important as how we lived.”

By Jean-Luc Picard’s own metric, Patrick Stewart, who passed this week at the age of 86, left behind an immense footprint on the worlds of not just stage and screen, but pop culture as a whole. A stentorian British thespian who nonetheless found mainstream American success as the captain of a TV starship (and, later, as the leader of a band of mutant superheroes), Stewart always felt like an exception to the chiseled-jaw masculinity that embodied most Western movie stars.

He was handsome, to be sure, but his bald pate (which he hardly ever masked underneath a toupee) stood in stark contrast to the beauty standards set for men in the world of film and television in the 1980s and 1990s.

Born in Mirfield, England, in 1940, Stewart spent his childhood living in poverty beside his two brothers, Geoffrey and Trevor, and his parents Gladys and Alfred. He frequently discussed his and his family’s history of domestic violence at the hands of his father; he later advocated for organizations like the UK’s Refuge, which supports women and children fleeing violent homes.

He picked up the acting bug young, leaving school at the age of 15 to pursue theatre alongside childhood friend Brian Blessed. Together, they attended the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where he would get his start in shows like Cyrano de Bergerac. He’d later join the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966 alongside other young actors like his future “Generations” foil Malcolm McDowell; in 1971, he made his Broadway debut as Tom Snout in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His 1979 turn in Antony and Cleopatra snagged him his first (of two) Olivier Awards.

For as storied his theater career was, though, Stewart initially struggled to break out into film. Early roles were relegated to supporting parts (which he nonetheless made his own) in sci-fi horror like “Lifeforce” and John Boorman’s high fantasy epic “Excalibur.” He also made an impression in David Lynch’s then-overlooked 1984 “Dune” as Gurney Halleck, seen in one shot running out into battle carrying a pug under one arm.

But it was his turn as the diplomatic, sophisticated Captain Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” that would make him a household name. Stewart was reluctant to take the part; he signed the six-year contract only after his agent advised him he could return to theater if the new show inevitably bombed. But despite all odds (and a couple of shaky initial seasons), “The Next Generation” soon became the standard-bearer for science fiction television in the 1980s and 1990s. He cut a demonstrably different figure to William Shatner’s James T. Kirk, a man of rhetoric and diplomacy more than action. In his initial episodes, Picard was a stern career officer who low-key loathed that his cushy new assignment running the Federation flagship, the U.S.S. Enterprise-D, left him in proximity to a bunch of children.

But as the show grew into its identity, and Stewart into the role, Picard became a titan of principle, art, culture, and a healthy dose of good humor. Granted, he could be a grump, and he had as hard a time taking a vacation as he did letting his Number One, Jonathan Frakes’ Commander Riker, lead away missions. But the events of the show, facing monsters and implacable moral dilemmas week after week (to say nothing of his brief stint as Locutus of Borg, a development that left him scarred), allowed Picard to grow as a person in ways that the vagaries of episodic television often didn’t allow; Stewart carried those wins and wounds in remarkably subtle ways as the series went on.

Picard grew so popular, in fact, that “Kirk vs. Picard” became a schoolyard argument for elder-millennial boys and girls worldwide. And with that popularity came the welcome passing of the movie franchise torch from Shatner to Stewart in 1994’s “Generations,” which saw the “Next Generation” crew graduate, of a sort, to bigger and better stages. Stewart always felt screen-ready, and his commanding presence helped make those films feel a bit more than feature-length episodes of a TV show. “Star Trek: First Contact,” especially, benefits from Stewart’s lead performance, as the return of the Borg rankles Picard in ways that evoke another character Stewart has famously played: Captain Ahab. 

Granted, the movies largely suffer from a flattening of the show characters, as Stewart insisted behind the scenes on more romantic relationships and action-y roles (it’s hard to square the poker-playing, Shakespeare-reading Jean-Luc of the TV show with the phasers-akimbo, dune buggy-driving Picard of the movies). But even these wrinkles proved that Stewart had the chops to carry a feature film.

Luckily, Stewart could slow down his fisticuffs for yet another iconic role in a nerd-friendly franchise: In Bryan Singer’s 2000 adaptation of “X-Men,” he sat in the wheelchair of Professor Charles Xavier, a warm, paternal telepath responsible for leading a group of misfit mutants who protect the very humans who persecute them, against his old friend, Magneto (played by Ian McKellen, himself an old friend of Stewart’s). Here, he once again channeled Picard’s wisdom and patience, without the pressure to do all the punching and kicking that often felt out of character for the cerebral Brit. 

Instead, he could carry all the weight and pathos of the characters’ philosophical battles, while Hugh Jackman et al. could slash and shoot laser beams to their heart’s content. He and McKellen did a lot of work to class up what would nominally be a cape-and-punching movie for kids, elevating the comic book genre to something approaching seriousness (and, in so doing, kicking off the superhero movie boom that, in one form or another, exists today. Hell, Stewart still has one more turn as Professor X coming up in this year’s “Avengers: Doomsday,” which will presumably be the fourth time we’ll have seen his version of the character die.)

Even after those characters passed their prime in the aughts (Picard in 2003’s “Star Trek: Nemesis” and Xavier in “X-Men: The Last Stand”), Stewart’s popularity, not to mention the unending specter of well-known IP, meant he would return to the well for both of those roles. Stewart would get back in Xavier’s wheelchair for James Mangold’s incredible deconstruction “Logan,” as an elderly Charles whose growing dementia meant his own telepathic powers were a danger to himself and those around him. 

Stewart found new layers to play here: volatile, vulnerable, irascible, yet deeply paternal towards Jackman’s Logan as both struggled to unite around one last grasp at their former glory. The performance was so good, there were even whispers of an Academy Award nomination for Stewart. (He would, sadly, never receive one.) He’d also reprise the role both in Singer’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and in the MCU for “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness,” but “Logan” still stands as Stewart’s finest hour as the character.

As for Picard, Stewart would hop onto the Alex Kurtzman Paramount+ school of “Trek” shows for a self-titled spinoff that followed Jean-Luc in old age, a retired admiral who’d left the Federation behind. “Star Trek: Picard” was a divisive show, especially in its first two seasons, as Stewart only agreed to return if Picard would not wear a uniform, not be part of Starfleet, and if the show would tackle thorny political issues like Brexit. 

The show would eventually right course with fans in its third season, which reunited Stewart with his “Next Generation” cast for a fan-service-friendly final bow for the Enterprise-D crew that made for exciting empty calories. It’s hard not to feel Stewart’s frustration, though, as the new show he’d hoped to create slowly morphed back into the one he’d fought so hard to escape.

Outside of nerd circles, though, Stewart continued to work steadily in stage and screen, with a few other notable roles under his belt. 1995’s “Jeffrey” saw him playing a gay man in a happy relationship with another man; Jeremy Saulnier’s neo-Nazi slugfest “Green Room” benefited greatly from his calm, collected turn as calculating villain Darcy. On stage, his 2007 production of Macbeth (later restaged for an episode of PBS’s “Great Performances”) is still one of the greats. He’s played Ahab and Scrooge and King Lear capably in TV movies, and lent his resonant, sonorous voice to numerous voice roles.

Given his puffed-up stature as a Shakespearean actor, it would have been easy for Stewart to turn his nose at comedy. But having been humbled by his time on “The Next Generation,” where the goofy exploits of his co-stars taught him the value of poking fun at himself, has done the same in numerous comic roles and parodies. See his incredible cameo in Ricky Gervais’ “Extras,” where he channels his experience playing Professor X into a decidedly different pitch for his telepathic powers:

Or his years-long collaboration with animated comedy king Seth MacFarlane (a Trek fan so nerdy he made his own “TNG” homage with “The Orville”) on “Family Guy” and “American Dad”; on the latter, he hammed it up as CIA director Avery Bullock, tormenting MacFarlane’s federal family man with his six-pack abs, love of DJing, and ravenous sexual appetites. He played the role until his passing, and the long-running show will surely suffer without him.

So, too, will we, as fans of science fiction and theater and art and culture; Patrick Stewart was a figure who felt too classy for the works he found himself in, but rather than drag them down, he lifted them to the artistic heights fitting his talents. Thanks largely to him, “The Next Generation” didn’t feel like day players in pajamas spouting corny lines at rubber monsters: it felt like, well, Shakespeare. He inspired generations of actors and scientists to pursue their dreams, just from that one role itself. That he had such a robust, admirable body of work on top of that is just icing on the cake. Or, if we’re talking savory, we may quote one of the most iconic musical guest intros ever to grace “Saturday Night Live”: