Photo caption: Jodie Foster in A PRIVATE LIFE. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
In the dark comedy A Private Life, Jodie Foster plays Lilian Steiner, a prickly, disagreeable Paris psychiatrist, so self-absorbed that she often fails to listen to her own patients. One of her patients dies, and Lilian is stung to be blamed by the family for their loved one’s suicide. More out of personal pique than any sense of justice, Lilian sets out to prove that the woman was murdered.
It’s very funny as Lilian blusters off, imagining potential suspects and projecting motive and opportunity. When Lilian reports a real crime, a burglary of her apartment, she’s so high strunf that the cops suspect that she’s a crank.
What’s even funnier is that Lilian presents the same compulsive behavior, lack of boundaries, and attachment issues that she is paid to treat in her patients. After all, what woman declines an opportunity to hold her first baby grandchild? Indeed, the whodunit is merely the vehicle for Lilian’s journey to personal connection.
Jodie Foster is very good as the ever-aggrieved Lilian, a role that must have been fun for her to play. Liliane is an American who has lived for decades in Paris, mirroring Foster’s own lifelong embrace of French language and culture. The movie’s biggest laugh comes when Lilian is stymied by what Americans see as the French over-vacationing.
Daniel Auteil, who has been nominated 14 times for a Best Actor César, is wonderful as Lilian’s adorable ex-husband. The rest of the cast is filled with French A-listers in minor roles (Mathieu Amalric, Virginie Efira, Irene Jacob). Vincent Lacoste is quite good as the son who expects his mom tp behave badly, but still can be surprised by a new outrage. The great 95-year-old documentarian Fredrick Wiseman sparkles in a cameo playing Lilian’s stern mentor, who calls her on her shit.
A Private Life was written and directed by Rebecca Zlotowski (Grand Central). It’s a well-made diversion that you can wait to stream at home.
Photo caption: Wagner Moura in THE SECRET AGENT. Courtesy of NEON.
The Secret Agent is both a superb movie and an unexpectedly original immersive experience. Writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho embeds his slow burn thriller into 1977 Brazil, and Mendonça creates an unsurpassed sense of time and place, which is absolutely absorbing.
Wagner Moura plays a man traveling under an assumed name, making his way across the country in a VW Beetle. Eventually, we learn that his name is Armando, and he’s returning to his home city of Recife. He’s on the down low now, on the run from something, but when he later learns the particulars of the threat against him, his flight becomes increasingly urgent and cloak-and-dagger.
In the first scene, at a rural gas station, Mendonça tells us three things about the setting. Disorder reigns. Life is cheap. The police are unabashedly corrupt.
Mendonça doesn’t paint a picture of a regime like Pinochet’s Chile, where th state itself is hunting down its perceived dissenters and eliminating them by imprisonment, torture and extra-judicial execution. Rather, Mendonça’s 1977 Brazil is chaotic, where the government, casually and without much organization, tolerates or even perpetrates murder at the private whims of the rich. While the rich and their henchmen call their targets “communists”, this isn’t ideological, it’s for the most personal of interests, such as revenge and greed. Indeed, Armando isn’t a dissident activist; he’s a technology professor whose success at his job has become inconvenient for a crooked industrialist.
The cops are portrayed, often comically, as vulgar louts; the ongoing feeling of menace in The Secret Agent stems from their unaccountability. The Secret Agent simmers with tension until Mendonça brings the story to a boil with Hitchcockian suspense in a humdrum government office and an explosively thrilling chase through the sidewalks and alleys of Recife.
In juxtaposition to the life-and-death stakes of Armando’s story, it is Carnival time, and the population at large is embracing boisterous partying and carefree sensuality. The local media has created a fantastic bogeyman to sell newspapers, which Mendonça hilariously brings to life. There are recurring themes of sharks, dismembered legs and movies.
One of the movies (also shark-themed) is Jaws. Besides the movies and popular music, Mendonça brings us the cars and the dress of 1977, down to details like a Nadia Comaneci poster in the background. I have no idea how he filled the street of Recife with hundreds of extras, all dressed as in 1977 fashion. It’s very, very hot, and the men wear their shirts open, or not at all.
We’re jarred when we see an iPhone on a tabletop, Mendonça’s clever tipoff that he has jumped the story 48 years into the future.
The plot is about what will happen to Armando, and Mendonça reveals the answer in a surprisingly non-exploitative way. It’s underplayed, and it’s really perfect.
Wagner Moura carries the film, emanating Armando’s unusual decency, intelligence, and determination (and maybe too much stubborness for his own good).
As good as is Moura, The Secret Agent astounds with its amazingly deep cast and pitch-perfect performances. We come to know even the most minor characters as distinct individuals without tereotypes, and there are over 20 indelible performances. In particular, the child actor Enzo Nunes, playing Armando’s six-year-old son, gives a strongly textured performance reacting to Armando’s explanation of his mother’s death. Their are eight villains, each loathsome in entirely singular ways. This is the first year that the Academy Awards are granting an Oscar for casting, and The Secret Agent is justifiably nominated.
Mendonça had a US arthouse hit in 2016 with the Sonia Braga showcase Aquarius. That film was critical of the political status quo, and the Brazilian government’s refusal to submit it for the Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar created a controversy, detailed in this New York Times article.
The Secret Agent is nominated for four Oscars: Best Picture, Best International Picture, Best Actor and Best Casting. It should have been nominated for Best Director. You can stream it from Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.
Photo caption: Pavel Talankan in the Oscar-nominated MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN. Courtesy of the SLO Film Fest.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – a republished review of Mr. Nobody Against Putin, now Oscar-nominated and available to stream at home. Next week – a new review of A Private Life, with Jodie Foster acting in French, and a preview of the 2026 Cinequest, coming up in March.
REMEMBRANCE
Catherine O’Hara was a master of comic sensibility and comic timing. She was unforgettable in Best in Show as the endearingly goofy Cookie, who didn’t know that people who live in mobile homes aren’t supposed to win snooty national dog shows, and who was blissfully indifferent when her sexual past kept popping up to enrage her husband (Eugene Levy). She was also brilliant in A Mighty Wind as Mickey of the defunct folk duo Mitch and Mickey (again, with Levy), especially performing their hit A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow. As The Wife reminded me, those movies, along with Waiting for Guffman and For Your Consideration were Christopher Judge mockumentaries, where O’Hara and other cast members mostly improvised their own lines. She was singularly funny in Beetlejuice, Schitt’s Creek and The Studio.
Photo caption: Pavel Talankan in MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN. Courtesy of the SLO Film Fest.
Nothing has changed since Aeschylus observed that the first casualty of war is truth, as revealed in Mr. Nobody Against Putin, the blistering exposé of Putin’s outrageous domestic propaganda about his Ukraine War.
Pavel Talankan is an unassuming, goodhearted guy with a small-time job as the events coordinator at the school in a remote Russian industrial town. That also makes him the school videographer, so no no one notices that, as he films school assemblies, award ceremonies and performances, he is also capturing the blatant Big Lie propaganda. It’s a surreptitious documentary filmed in plain sight.
Pavel is an unlikely muckraker. He is a free-thinking nebbish who loves Russia and loves his hometown of Karabash in the Ural region, putrefied by a noxious copper plant and called “the most toxic place on earth”.
More than anything, Pavel cares about his students, and he is increasingly disgusted as Putin ramps up the propaganda. First, a cadaverous party hack, whose heroes are the most vile Commie hitmen in history, spreads empirically false information about Ukraine being the aggressor in the war. Then, horrifyingly, Wagner mercenaries are brought in as classroom guest speakers. Silently, Pavel continues to film, letting the propagandists defile themselves for history.
Pavel is a hero, albeit a non-violent one, who risked his life to gather this material. David Borenstein exquisitely formed Pavel’s footage into a searing exposé of Putin’s soul-crushing impact on Russia. The secret audio from the funeral of a former student killed in Ukraine is heart-rending. The film begins with video of Pavel’s midnight escape from Russia,
Mr. Nobody Against Putin has been Oscar-nominated as Best Documentary Feature. I saw it at the SLO Film Fest; it’s now available to stream from Amazon and AppleTV.
Photo caption: Tao Zhao in CAUGHT BY THE TIDES: Photo courtesy of Janus Films.
This week on The Movie Gourmet, I’m just back from another indelible experience at Noir City, and I have posted a new review of the dreary and odd The Testament of Ann Lee and my ruminations on the Oscar nominations. I am waiting for the wide release of A Private Life with Jodie Foster acting in French and the epic Magellan.
We’re heading into a few months with comparatively few promising theatrical and online release. It’s still a busy time for me, as I cover film festivals: Slamdance, Cinequest, SLO Film Fest and SFFILM. But it’s a great time for everyone to catch up at home with the:
January 31 Deliverance And then we have another classic just as INTENSE: Deliverance from 1972. It’s one of my all-time favorites – still gripping today – with a famous scene that still shocks. Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox form an impressive ensemble cast. Beautifully and dramatically shot by the late great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond.
Photo caption: Amanda Seyfried in THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
Let’s get this out of the way at the outset – I don’t care for movie musicals, and, beforehand, I didn’t know that The Testament of Ann Lee was a musical. But I did not walk out on The Testament of Ann Lee because it is a musical – I walked out because it is a dreary, self-important musical.
This is a biopic of the woman who came to lead the Shaker religious sect in 18th century England, seen by followers as a female Christ, and founded the utopian Shaker settlement in America.
The talented and ever appealing Amanda Seyfried stars as Ann Lee, and this is the third feature for Mona Fastvold as a director. Fastvold co-wrote Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux and The Brutalist, and Corbet co-wrote The Testament of Ann Lee. with Fastvold. In trying to make a compelling portrait of spiritual zeal, the filmmakers had to address two challenges – the life of Ann Lee itself and the Shakers themselves – and they failed.
First, Ann Lee grew up in Manchester, England, in the mud-1700s, where even the families of artisans lived in what we would see as squalor. Already a religious non-conformist, Ann kept getting impregnated by her husband’s inconsiderate rutting, resultng in the birth of four babies, each of whom died before the age of one. Then, she was committed to an asylum. It’s no wonder that this experience would prompt Ann to lead her sect into celibacy. All this (sexual abuse, grief, depression, renouncement of sex) is not fun to watch.
Second, the Shakers were so named because they moved their bodies during worship to express ecstasy (“shaking”). These movements are depicted by the filmmkaers, well, oddly. The film opens with a group of women dressed like Pilgrims doing what looks like spastic Tai Chi. Later, it becomes clear that the Shaker’s movements are choreographed like Broadway numbers. The Shakers make up for their celibacy by rhythmically thrusting their arms instead of their hips. I am familiar with how spiritually euphoric Pentacostals act and even recently experienced Whirling Dervishes in Turkey. But Fastvold and Corbet’s Shaker “shaking” begins as offputtingly contrived before it lapses into the unintentionally funny.
The music, by Daniel Blumberg, who justifiably won an Oscar for The Brutalist’s score, is throbbing. Most of The Testament of Ann Lee was filmed in Hungary with mostly Hungarian technical crew. This is a technically well-crafted film, and the verisimilitude of the 18th century settings is excellent.
In a courageous and fully committed performance, Amanda Seyfried captures both Ann Lee’s suffering and her charismatic self-confidence. And Seyfried sings very well.
Nevertheless, unless you are convinced that you are Christ, stay away.
Photo caption: Teyana Taylor in ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER: Courtesy of Warner Bros.
I think that this moment in America favors an Oscar win for One Battle After Another, because the fascist repression imagined by the filmmakers is, to our shock, happening now. The movie depicts the US Army running amok in a brutal political crackdown – but Gestapo-like state terror is being perpetrated by ICE In Minneapolis today.
Amazingly, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson invented the movie’s story without even knowing who would win the 2024 US Presidential election, let alone the emergence of the previously unthinkable American Gestapo.
This year’s Oscar horse race is between One Battle After Another and Sinners. Those two movies, along with Frankenstein, Hamnet and Marty Supreme account for 56 of the total nominations. It’s kinda like in the summer, when 80% of the movie screens are monopolized by the same 3 or 4 franchise popcorn movies. But this year’s Oscar nominations are pretty solid.
Mohammed Ali Elyasmehr, Majid Panahi and Hadis Pakbaten in IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT. Courtesy of NEON.
Here are more of my reflections:
It Was Just an Accident (good news): First of all, I’m glad that it got nominated for Best International Picture because there was no way that this film, which trashes the current Iranian regime, was going to get submitted to the Academy by Iran. I had forgotten that, although directed by an Iranian and shot in Iran with an Iranian cast and crew, it is technically a French film because of the producers; let’s hear it for the French for submitting this over a film by a French director! I am rooting for it to win Best International Film and Best Original Screenplay.
It Was Just an Accident (bad news): I am miffed that this movie, tied for first in my 2025 list, was not nominated for Best Picture; (there were TEN slots, people). And I am incensed that Jafar Panahi was overlooked for Best Director. In an act of incredible courage, Panahi wrote and directed this harsh critique of the Iranian government, and shot it secretly, including even some scenes in in plain sight on the streets of Tehran. Wow.
Frankenstein: Guillermo del Toro’s omission from Best Director tells me that Frankenstein is unlikely to clean up at the Oscars. But it should win for production design, costumes, score and, of course, makeup.
Train Dreams: This fine film is nominated for Best Picture, where it has no chance to pass Sinners and One Battle After Another. I kinda hope it wins for Adapted Screenplay. It was a mistake not to nominate Joel Edgerton for Best Actor.
F1: I don’t have a problem generally with a popular, well-made, popcorn movie getting nominated for Best Picture. But it looks to me that it crowded out It Was Just an Accident, and that’s not OK.
Best Actress: Jesse Buckley is justifiably a lock for Best Actress for Hamnet. I was surprised that Jennifer Lawrence was not nominated for Die My Love, but her character was difficult to watch and she wouldn’t have beat out Buckley anyway.
Best Supporting Actress: The first chapter of Another Battle After Another would have been completely different without Teyana Taylor’s electrifying performance – it’s absolutely the definition of a great supporting performance. I am glad that Inga Ibdotter Lilleaas, an actress I had never heard of, was nominated for Sentimental Value; as I noted in my review, her performance was as least as good as those of the heavy hitters Stellan Skarsgard and Renate Reinsve. And, speaking of Sentimental Value, I defy anyone to explain to me why Elle Fanning’s adequate performance was worthy of an Oscar nomination.
Best Supporting Actor: I am elated that Jacob Elordi was nominated for imbuing Frankenstein’s Creature with such grace and fluidity and for expressing such emotional depth under all that makeup. I’m rooting for Elordi, but a win by Sean Penn would also be justified.
Casting: This will our first chance to intuit what Academy voters are looking for in this new category. I have no clue.
Mr. Nobody Against Putin: Because I haven’t seen the competition, I can’t say whether this film will or should win. But it is an admirable and endearing portrait of personal courage amidst Putin’s outrageous domestic propaganda about his Ukraine War. You can stream it from Amazon and AppleTV.
The Oscars telecast is on March 15. To be Oscar-literate, try to see One Battle After Another, Sinners, Frankenstein, It Was Just an Accident, Train Dreams and Hamnet in the next seven weeks.
Jessie Buckley in HAMNET. Courtesy of Focus Features.
Photo caption: Lee Byung-hun in NO OTHER CHOICE. Courtesy of NEON.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – I’m in Oakland covering Noir City, Eddie Muller’s absolutely essential festival of film noir; here’s my NOIR CITY 23: a musician walks into an alley… I’ve also published a new review of the wonderful A Little Prayer, showcasing a superb acting ensemble. And I’ve completed my 2025 review with the 8 Most Overlooked Films of 2025 – all of which you can stream at home.
You Got Gold: why John Prine is admired and beloved. In theaters, but hard to find.
ON TV
Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon in DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
On January 26 , Turner Classic Movies airs Days of Wine and Roses, Blake Edwards’ unflinching exploration of alcoholism, featuring great performances by Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick (both nominated for Oscars) and Charles Bickford.
Photo caption: Ed Harris, Natalie Morales and Sonequa Martin-Green in MY DEAD FRIEND ZOE. Courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment.
Everybody knows about One Battle After Another, Frankenstein and Sinners, but today I’m highlighting 2025 movies that have slipped below the popular radar. You may not have seen Hollywood commercials for these films, but they are novel, well-crafted and mesmerizing. And you can stream all of them at home.
Here are the 8 Most Overlooked Films of 2025:
A Little Prayer: This exquisitely-acted family drama, by the writer-director of Junebug, explores the dynamics between parents and their adult children, and the profound frustration of seeing problems that you can’t fix. David Straithern and Jane Levy lead the year’s best ensemble cast. Best Movies of 2025. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
My Dead Friend Zoe: This deeply affecting dramedy might be the best film on the transition from wartime military service to civilian society since The Best Years of Our Lives. The screenplay, by first-time director Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, himself a decorated Army paratrooper who served in Iraq, is brilliant. Best Movies of 2025. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
Caught by the Tides: Sweeping over decades of modern Chinese history, the auteur Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides reveals profound changes in Chinese society by implanting a personal story within an epic sweep. Writer-director Jia has built Caught by the Tides from footage shot over the 21 years as he made other movies. In a tour de force, actress Tao Zhao delivers an exquisite portrait of resilience. Best Movies of 2025. Criterion (included) Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango.
No Sleep Till: In this engrossing art film, a hurricane is about to hit downscale Florida beach towns; the tourists are already gone, and workaday Floridians prepare to evacuate or hunker down. The storm is merely the setting for a compendium of short stories, as writer/director/editor/producer Alexandra Simpson, in her feature debut, reveals essential truths about her characters, one or two at a time – a lost crush, a solitary obsession, a resuscitated friendship. Each chapter is so authentic, I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t watching a cinema verité documentary. Best Movies of 2025. hoopla (free), Amazon,
To Kill a Wolf: In this character-driven indie drama, a reclusive woodsman in the Pacific Northwest finds a seventeen-year-old runaway collapsed in the forest. He nurses her back to health, but she’s not forthcoming about why she’s there, so he has a mystery to solve. Meanwhile, the audience is on to other mysteries – why is he living such an isolated life and why is his relationship with local community members so charged? As he takes the girl on a road trip to her most recent residence, the answers, one by one, are revealed. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
Made in Ethiopia: This scintillating documentary is a brilliant exploration of clashing cultures and economic imperialism. Chinese entrepreneurs build a mammoth new industrial park, essentially a gleaming sweatshop, in Ethiopia. What could possibly go wrong? PBS, PBS POV.
Twinless: In this refreshingly original dramedy a young man has been rocked by the sudden death of his twin brother and meets another participant in his grief support group who reminds him of his dead brother. That new friend is played by James Sweeney, Twinless’s writer director, who has written a character of remarkable ambiguity and vulnerability. Reflecting both the sweetness and edginess we find in life, Twinless is one of the smartest and most satisfying comedies of recent years. Best Movies of 2025. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango
Architecton: This documentary is the film most unlike the others on this list. It is cinema as high art and surprisingly entertaining. Almost narration-free and elevated by Evgueni Galperine’s original music, Architecton is director Viktor Kossakovsky’s immersion into rocks – rocks arranged and moved by Nature and by humans. The visual experience is hypnotic. HBO Max (included), Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango,
Jordan Coley and Xavier Brown-Sanders in NO SLEEP TILL. Courtesy of Factory 25.
Photo caption: David Straithern and Jane Levy in A LITTLE PRAYER. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
In the exquisitely-acted family drama A Little Prayer, Bill (David Straithern) seems to be an unlikely candidate for a life crisis. He owns a successful Winston-Salem, North Carolina business, which he runs with his son David (Will Pullan). Bill is popular in the community, and his employees appreciate his fairness and generosity. He shares a spacious home and a longtime. comfortable marriage with his wife Venida (Celia Weston). David and his incredibly sweet wife Tammy (Jane Levy) live in a smaller house on their property, and both Bill and Venida adore Tammy.
But Bill is upset when he suspects that David may be having affair with one of their employees. Protective of Tammy, Bill dithers about what to do. As he tries to intervene, he finds that David’s extramarital fling might be the only tip of the iceberg.
Bill and Venida know what it’s like to disappointed by an adult child. Their daughter Patti (Anna Camp) is the hottest of hot messes, a nightmare of selfishness, entitlement, irresponsibility and self-created drama. In every respect, she is the worst possible role model for her daughter Hadley (Billie Roy), and Bill and Venida are sickened when they see Hadley acting out. I am not a violent person, but I wanted to reach through the screen to slap Patti.
It’s one thing to be disappointed by your child’s lack of achievement or romantic choice or even to suffer embarrassment from their legal trouble. But it’s entirely another level of horror to recognize profound character failings in your child. Could I have raised a sociopath, a victimizer? Why can’t I fix him?-
BIll has always known that Patti is a mess (and he has enabled her behavior). But, the deeper he probes into David’s life, the more shattered he becomes.
Bill is a Vietnam vet and enjoys the camaraderie of other old vets at the VFW hall. David is a veteran of the conflicts in the Middle East, and, although he is affable and fun-loving and seemingly functional, he may have unresolved issues from his service. Venida intuits that something is wrong in David and Tammy’s marriage, but Bill is gobsmacked to learn what it is.
David Straithern’s performance as Bill is one of his best. Bill is a decent, well-intentioned guy who is in control of his life, until he becomes absolutely bewildered by what is wrong and his own inability to fix it. I’ve loved Straithern’s work since his early John Sayles films, and he is now recognized as one of America’s most reliable screen actors.
Bill is the protagonist, but the story is centered on Tammy’s arc. Jane Levy (Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist) is exceptional as Tammy, a seemingly perfect woman who masks her vulnerabilities. Levy has two scenes – one at a clinic and one after a museum visit with Bill, that are among the most emotionally powerful of the year.
The character played by Dascha Polanco (Daya in Orange Is the New Black) also has two extraordinary scenes with Bill, one where he is in control and one where he is powerless I always enjoy Celia West in a movie, and she’s also very good as Venida. This cast is one of the strongest ensembles in recent movies.
This is only the fourth feature film that writer-director Angus MacLachlan has directed since 2005, but one of them was the wonderful family dramedy Junebug. Junebug became an indie hit, and Amy Adams’ Oscar nominated performance launched her career.. A Little Prayer deserved to be a hit, too, but its release seemed to be delayed and it somehow got overlooked.
Junebug was also set in North Carolina. A Little Prayer was produced by a stalwart of North Carolina indie cinema, Ramin Bahrani, director of Goodbye Solo, At Any Price, 99 Homes, Fahrenheit 451.
A Little Prayer is one of the Best Movies of 2025 and can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube.
