WILDWOOD

Directing: A-
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A-
Animation: A

To say that a surprising choice is made in the very opening sequence of Wildwood would be an understatement—it’s the kind of choice other filmmakers would be afraid to make, but director Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings) and writer Chris Butler (ParaNorman) kick things right off with unusual boldness. Never mind how this opening sequence shifts perspective in an otherwise relatively conventional way, it’s still the tip of the iceberg of countless reason this movie truly blew me away, both visually and narratively.

Perhaps you should be warned, because this film that seems at first glance to be a kids’ movie features surprising amounts of brutality—and I don’t mean just here and there, but throughout, in a never-dull 130-minute runtime, the longest stop-motion animated feature film of all time. I must admit I was shocked when I first learned of this film’s length. How could that possibly be justified? Well, I can only tell you to see it, and find out for yourself. Because this movie is riveting from beginning to end. In fact, if I had any complaint, it would be that it actually feels a tad rushed at times. I did find myself wondering occasionally what its MPA rating is, as I could not imagine it being any less than PG-13 (which indeed is its rating; it’s the third-ever stop-motion animated feature film to get the rating.

And I don’t think the content of this film can be overstated. There are epic army battles, stunningly rendered but with quite a lot of onscreen kills. Some characters who seem like they will play significant parts, you might not want to get too attached to. This is a great movie to see in a packed movie theater, both because the incredible visuals are best seen that way, and because on multiple occasions during it, the crowd audibly gasps.

I can’t remember another fantasy film that is so perfectly constructed with a contemporary sensibility. The “real world” the main character, Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), lives in is both widely recognizable and satirized: it’s Portland, Oregon. Prue defies the plea of her parents (voiced by Jake Johnson and Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s Maya Erskine) not to take her baby brother out of the house while babysitting him. She pulls him on a wagon as a trailer behind her bicycle through the city, and this sequence is packed with light, Portland-specific gags and landmarks. The citizens of Portland are going to adore it.

They will also learn, as we do, that there is a magical “Impassable Wilderness” just outside the city, which a murder of crows whisks baby Mac off to, snatching him from a playground. And yes, sure, Wildwood has a fair bit in common with the 1986 film Labyrinth, not that many of the young audience for this film will know to make the connection: an older sister enters a magical land to retrieve a baby brother kidnapped by a greedy member of magical royalty. This time, instead of Jim Henson puppets, it’s stop-motion animated puppets; and instead of David Bowie the Goblin King, it’s Carey Mulligan as Alexandra, the dowager governess who has been darkened by grief.

Unlike Labyrinth, though, Wildwood takes narrative risks not often seen outside of original Grimm’s fairy tales. In an era of deeply risk-averse film studios, I was kind of stunned by this, leading to genuine delight, because this is one movie in which you truly have no idea what will happen next. And even in the midst of all these surprisingly tragic turns, Knight still allows the story to breathe enough to include a ton of deeply charming details, and characters who will consistently make you giggle just the way animated features often do.

I haven’t even mentioned Prue’s classmate, Curtis (Jacob Tremblay), by whom she is initially annoyed but who ultimately becomes a sidekick she could not get by without. He fills a satisfying narrative function, though I found myself wondering about his own parents, who are never even mentioned, even though he gets lost in the same Impassable Wilderness as Prue. Even Prue’s parents get fairly little screen time, honestly, although they do get enough characterization to seem like real, young-ish Portland parents. But, as with many fairy tales, this is a story about the kids and not their parents—although Prue’s parents turn out to be critical parts of the backstory.

Wildwood is otherwise fleshed out with an incredibly well-realized universe, in which human and anthropomorphic animal characters just coexist, which alone allows for many subtly clever gags. There is a uniformed army of coyotes, and their animal and amusingly vulgar behavior provides entertainment and menace in equal measure. There’s a giant community of birds in the “Avian Principality,” from which the antagonistic crows have long separated; the number of birds in this film make for some of the most awe-inspiring visuals as they engage in separate patterns of murmuration.

This may be the most visually stunning stop motion animated film ever made, and I say that acknowledging recency bias—but, I really can’t overstate how blown away I was by it. The voice acting is good, but kind of overshadowed by the visuals, even with the voice talents of Mahershala Ali as the Bandit King; Awkwafina as Septima the gross but surprisingly friendly rat; Tom Waits as the leader of the coyote soldiers; Charlie Day as Dmitri the coyote turncoat; Angela Bassett as the giant golden eagle called the General; Richard E. Grant as Owl Rex the onetime Prince of the Avian Principality; Blythe Danner as the Seer who advised Prue’s parents before the children were born; Rob Delaney as Samuel the rabbit constable; and many more. The truth is, they could have hired all unknown names to voice these characters and it would have worked just as well, but getting all these names adds to the film’s pedigree. I was far more taken with what was going on in every scene than I ever was with the voice of given characters, whose personalities were better conveyed through expert animation and writing.

Be sure to stick around through the first few minutes of the end credits, to get a brief glimpse behind the scenes. The stop motion animation reportedly took about six years to complete, with only minor elements augmented by CGI (including digitally created crows from scans of hand-sculpted models, or digitally removing seams on the puppets). The more you learn about Wildwood’s making, the more impressed you are likely to be—but, the story very much speaks for itself, as do the visuals simply as they appear onscreen. I can hardly wait to see this again.

Girl on bike meets bandit on horse: the magical collision of worlds in Wildwood.

Overall: A-

WICKER

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

It may take a few beats to feel immersed in the world of Wicker, a fantastical film based on the short story The Wicker Husband by Ursula Wills. That title clearly gives a bit away: it’s about a husband made entirely out of wicker, woven by Peter Dinklage’s Basket Weaver at the request of Olivia Colman’s Fisherwoman. The character names here are just what they do, you see: Doctor (a nearly unrecognizable Richard E. Grant); Tailor (Nabhaan Rizwan); Bottlewasher (Gustav Lindh); Baker (Ben Ashenden). With the exception of Fisherwoman, however, the women in this little village are only addressed in relation to the man they are married to: Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki); Baker’s Wife (Ella Bruccoleri); Bottlewasher’s Wife (Marli Siu).

These rigid gender roles are quite literalized very early on, with marriages featuring the groom putting a metal collar around the bride’s neck. The minister shouts, “Man and Woman becomes Man and His Wife!” Fisherwoman is established quickly as not just an aging spinster, but one the villagers make fun of for her fishy odor. But when Fisherwoman goes to the Basket Weaver to request he make her a husband, he’s startled by the request, but tells her to come back in a month, and in that time he has one for her. But not before Fisherwoman leaves him and we see Basket Weaver perform an extended monologue, something that occurs twice in the film and is one of the few things I found did not quite work. It feels like an attempt at something playfully Shakespearean, but even though Dinklage is up to the task as always, it lands awkwardly.

What’s amazing about Wicker, however, is how much of it does not land awkwardly when you might easily expect it to. A live, man made of wicker? Yep, that’s what we get here—and one incredibly well-rendered, I might add, with almost entirely practical effects. Wicker is a feminist fable, and fables often feature anthropomorphized non-human characters; I suppose a man made of wicker qualifies. The trailer to this film already made amply clear that the Wicker Man and the Fisherwoman have lots of sex, which leads to the obvious question: how on earth can anyone comfortably have sex with wicker? Aside from a very brief but delightfully shocking glimpse of his anatomy, I regret to inform you this question never gets answered—and, I will reluctantly concede, it is entirely beside the point of the film.

The villagers quickly become jealous of Fisherwoman’s and Wicker Man’s happiness and harmoniousness: the women of Fisherwoman getting so freely satisfied sexually (not to mention constantly volunteering to help around the house); the men feeling inadequate in the shadow of someone their wives clearly wish they were more like. Even the Fisherwoman gets caught up in the cycle of mistrust and jealously, leaving the Wicker Man as the only person who is too new to existence to even quite understand all this pettiness.

I will admit that at first I couldn’t quite decide what to make of Wicker, it is so brazenly odd, but the more I think about it, the more taken with it I become. This is a film that is very much its own thing, constructed from a simple fantasy universe that feels simultaneously familiar and unique. The performances are excellent all around, particularly on the parts of Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård, who plays the Wicker Man with a physically stiff but heartfelt devotion that is easily melting hearts. This is an incredible achievement, given the obvious constraints of his wicker suit, and the fact that his eyeballs are the only part of his actual person we ever see. (We do see the Basket Weaver polishing an eyeball while constructing him; why a Basket Weaver would have eyeballs laying around is one of the many questions you are meant not to ask when being told a fable.)

Wicker is not only quite clearly not for everyone, but this is a case in which one might quite understand it not working for some. I suspect that for those susceptible to its charms, however, it works quite well. In the end, I am one of those people—admittedly, largely because Alexander Skarsgård remains irresistible even when all you are really getting are his eyes and his voice.

A match made in the willows: a loose Olivia Colman and a stiff Alexander Skarsgård complete each other in Wicker.

Overall: B+

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

It would seem that film and TV adaptations of Jane Austen novels—she only published seven, only four of them during her lifetime—are endless. But, this is really a testament to the enduring power of her work. Pride and Prejudice has of course gotten the most treatments, and Emma also had its fair share. But Sense and Sensibility, Austen’s debut novel, has only had two notable feature film adaptations, starting with the widely admired 1995 film starring and written by Emma Thompson, who won that film’s only Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Now we have a new film adaptation, over thirty years later, and as with all adaptations, it reflects the time in which it was made as much as it reflects the time it depicts (in this case, early-19th century England).

One might wonder what point there is of another film adaptation, if the previous one was so great. I shall probably watch that one again soon, just out of sheer curiosity—but, it was likely the right choice not to have watched it right before this one. Making comparisons inevitable is unfair, and this Sense and Sensibility, directed by Georgia Oakley and adapted by Diana Reid (writing her first feature film script), works quite well on its own merits.

The world of this adaptation feels deeply lived in, and features all the charms one might want or expect from a Jane Austen story: a family of young women who are all victims of circumstance; a subtly villainous woman; fundamentally misjudged suitors; an eccentric aunt. The aunt in this case, one Mrs. Jennings, is played by an always-welcome Fiona Shaw, significantly livening up the proceedings.

There is something eternal about Austen’s stories, in which the women who make up the primary characters have their fortunes tied only to the fates of the men in their lives. Here we focus on three sisters: Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones); Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles); and Margaret (Bodhi Rae Breathnach). Their father has died and left their mother, Mrs. Dashwood (Caitríona Balfe), relatively destitute, as his older child from a previous marriage, the sisters’ half-brother John (Tom Brooke, a somewhat inexplicably odd presence here), thus inherits the house. So it goes in this time: an uknown relative can take all the assets because inheritance only passes through the men.

And so, as always with these stories, the plot revolves around the women finding happiness by finding the right man with whom to secure their future. While Margaret gets a bit short shrift here, perhaps because she is youngest, both Elinor and Marianne are faced with suitors who have their own array of challenges: Edward (George MacKay) has clear affections for Elinor but is painfully shy about it, with more complicated reasons revealed further into the story; Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum) is taken with Marianne, who is annoyed by his apparent lack of passion, and smitten by the apparent abundance of it in one John Willoughby (Frank Dillane).

I spent a lot of time watching Sense and Sensibility and thinking about its many narrative similarities to Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s second novel and by far her most popular. It’s also true that this particular film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility has a fair amount in common with the Kiera Knightly-starring film adaptation of Pride & Prejudice from 2005. That is a better film than this one, just by virtue of its far higher pedigree, but not by a huge margin. By all accounts, the same could be said of the novels: Pride and Prejudice is better, but not by a wide margin.

These other stories largely exist for people wanting to continue their Jane Austen fix. At least in this adaptation, the characters are more lively than they are buttoned-up—particularly the women, who are well-rounded, multi-dimensional and distinct characters thanks both to the writing and the performances. In this film, the male characters as a general rule are serviceable but nowhere near as interesting. It’s always great to see women get their due, but they also deserve better men, don’t they?

This, I suppose, is the downside to the world of Jane Austen: the women can only pin their hopes and dreams on the men available to them, no matter how interesting or dynamic they may or may not be. With different actors, these men might seem more charismatic, but it’s also how they are written. But, whatever: it remains easy to get emotionally invested in these young women, their romantic entanglements and especially their relationships with each other. Such is the magic of Jane Austen, particularly when well enough adapted, which this is.

One of many stills from Sense and Sensibility that could double as a painting.

Overall: B+

Tasveer Adance: 49 TO 51

Directing: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Grief is different for everyone, and I was glad to see this notion stressed in 49 to 51, a documentary feature about the experience of someone suffering the loss of a loved one to suicide. In spite of it being an oft-repeated sentiment, it really can’t be repeated enough. I had an aunt once tell me that there are many ways to express grief, “all correct,” and it was something I found equally comforting and beautiful.

A significant qualifier in 49 to 51, however, is that there are also different and identifiable types of grief, and grieving loss to suicide is a very particular one. Director Ambalika Khadria, in her feature film debut, finds a fascinating subject to focus on: Indian-American mental health advocate Pooja Mehta, who herself has experienced suicidal ideation and speaks openly about her own suicide attempts—but this is about how she copes with the suicide of her younger brother, Raj.

49 to 51 is constructed on a “microbudget,” as Khadria herself called it in a post-screening Q&A, and at times, this shows—particularly in the film’s opening moments, which quite slowly ease into the details of Pooja’s family life in the hours and minutes leading up to the specific circumstances his death. Raj himself had no evident history of mental health struggles of his own, and his motivation for this act is an eternal mystery, something that will likely haunt his family for as long as they live.

Pooja talks onscreen about how well she knew her brother, how certain she is he would tell her if he was not well, and that he could not have been himself when he did this. I don’t mean to be argumentative, but what immediately came to my mind is how we can never truly know anyone outside of ourselves, not even our closest family. Raj may have had mental health struggles and simply hid it extraordinarily well. It is also stressed in the film that there is no reliable correlation between mental health and suicide, and I’m not attempting to dispute that. One of many struggles with Raj’s suicide is simply the not knowing. What could possible have motivated him to do this, and evidently so impulsively?

49 to 51 wisely does not dwell on this question, as the focus is on Pooja, and the evolution of her expression of grief, especially in a South Asian family in which suicide is a taboo subject. It’s natural to be curious about Pooja and Raj’s parents, who suffered the tragic loss of their child. But they are much older and far less comfortable discussing such intimate details of their own grief, especially on camera. Khadria worked on this film for roughly five years, and did speak to the parents many times, eventually earning enough trust for them to allow footage of Pooja’s arrival for a visit home in their foyer, and that’s about it. We do get some archival footage of them speaking at Raj’s memorial service, which, among many other scenes in this film, is heartbreaking.

Still, Pooja makes for a uniquely compelling subject in this story, given her own mental health history and her longstanding work as a mental health advocate. Grieving the loss of someone to suicide is already very complex, and this adds a whole new level of complexity. And it would seem that if there is any overall message to this film, it’s an encouragement to talk about grief, both your own, and that of others. More often than not, people actually want to talk about the person they are grieving. Others around those who are grieving are often terrified of doing or saying the wrong thing, but this is not something the person grieving is really thinking about. Just ask them what they need, maybe give them options: do you need space? do you need someone to listen? There can be this idea that this approach is more dangerous territory if the lost loved one took their own life, but it isn’t, really. Suffering in isolation is the worse option.

Pooja is a rather brave person to bare her grief not just so frankly, but on camera. We see footage of her two and three years apart, intercut with each other. In the beginning of the film, it’s very focused on her; as the film progresses, we see her with certain dear friends, or visiting India, or reuniting with the man who ran her survivor’s support group.

49 to 51 won the Best Documentary Feature prize at the Tasveer Film Festival, and I found myself wondering how emotionally taxing it might be for the filmmakers to present and sit through this film over and over again; the post-screening Q&A I attended was deeply insightful but, naturally, pretty melancholy in tone. I hope they have space for joy in their lives, even while immersed in a massive, multi-year project about grief, which likely has people crying—as I did—at every screening. Before the film, they did show a photo of their film festival award, the crew surrounding it from behind with bright smiles. Balance is always good.

The title, 49 to 51, is at least a reference to something a bit more lighthearted, a lovely detail revealed very near the end of the film. The last shot, though, is a deeply impactful and memorable one, involving the curious mixture of heavy grief with a delightful memory filled with uproarious laughter. In the end, this is a film that effectively honors both the departed and those who will always miss them, however complicated the circumstances may be. There is no distribution yet planned for this film, but I do hope it finds a home somewhere that people can access. It’s a rare kind of film that is both a tough sit and also a comfort, particularly if you have grieved a complicated loss.

It’s an oversimplification to call this a tearjerker, but you do probably want to have tissue handy.

Overall: B+

Tasveer Advance: ELEPHANTS IN THE FOG

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: A
Editing: A

It’s a challenge to find lived-in, stereotype-free representation of trans people in cinema broadly, but rarer still to find any kind of trans representation at all in international feature films. Enter director and co-writer Abinash Bikram Shah, with a truly stunning debut feature film Elephants in the Fog, starring Nepali trans activist Pushpa Thing Lama—also in her film debut. Several trans women actors are featured here, and this was the film debut for most of the cast; this is a big part of what makes the film such an extraordinary achievement.

The community depicted here is known as Kinnar, a legally recognized third gender in Nepal since 2007—the first country in South Asia to grant such recognition. (This community was given legal recognition in Pakistan in 2009; India in 2014; and Bangladesh in 2013.) In much of South Asia this community is known as Hijra, but in this film the Nepalese characters default to the evidently more respectful Kinnar—at least when the women in question are referring to each other.

Legal recognition or not, there remains cultural discrimination and oppression, as with anywhere on Earth. In South Asia, however, there is a sort of tenuous tolerance of this community, widely seen to be capable of either blessing or cursing. We see these characters in Elephants in the Fog clapping their hands together as part of this ritual, its intent contextualized by attitude and demeanor. In many scenes, one of these women is seen granting a blessing at weddings or to a pregnant woman. They are given often meager amounts of money for this service, and this is how they make a living, all the while living in a tightly structured community with a spiritual leader and a vow of celibacy.

It is within this framework that the story of Elephants in the Fog unfolds. I suppose I could give a trigger warning: this is indeed a tragic story—but not in anywhere near the typical way trans people have long been depicted in film. Pirati (Pushpa Thing Lama) is “mother” to several of the other trans women in this community, including the recklessly rebellious Apsara (Aliz Ghimire), who goes missing shortly after a confrontation between the two. These women share a house in a vollage bordering an area where dangerous wild elephants roam, and the immediate assumption is that Apsara may have been trampled in that adjacent forest.

The bulk of the story involves Pirati’s obsessive search for her, in the face of police indifference and building community resentment of this entire Kinnar community. This is all complicated by Pirati’s own hypocrisy, as she is engaged in an affair with a man who lives in the city of Birgunj, a little over 30 miles away. Pirati is all stoic resolve, but her refusal to give up even as she endangers her own standing among her “daughters” indicates a deep-seated guilt.

Apsara’s ultimate fate is not what we spend the movie expecting, and yet it’s deeply tragic in its own way. What makes Elephants in the Fog work so beautifully is how flawed all of these characters are—these are not magical heroines in the face of their oppression. They are simply surviving, and in this exceptionally well-written script, they are fallible and messy, just like all human beings. Rarely do trans characters come across as so well-drawn, their community and environment so authentically lived-in.

Elephants in the Fog is also beautifully shot, by cinematographer Noé Bach (in this case, far from a film debut: Bach has been working since 2012). The film’s budget does not appear to have been made public, but it’s probably safe to assume it was relatively small; I found myself wondering whether we would get to see any elephants at all, or if they would remain unseen and, to a degree, merely metaphors for partial truth. Never fear, though: elephants do get some screen time, but they are used so sparingly that their impact is incredible, and in the end almost overwhelming. The final shot of this film is one of the most powerful in any film released all year.

Indeed, Elephants in the Fog will easily be one of the best films I have seen all year, if not the best film I’ve seen this year—a bit of a frustration, in that I cannot tell you where to see it: there has not yet been any U.S. theatrical release date announced, and if there is one, it will not likely be until sometime in 2027. But I cannot ignore this film until then, because it simply cannot be ignored. I implore you to make a note of it, and see it as soon as it gets U.S. distribution.

Kinnar in the Fog: a beautifully painted portrait of a very specific community.

Overall: A

YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING

Directing: A
Acting: B+
Writing: A
Cinematography: A
Editing: A+

There is a scene quite early on in You Can See Everything that will stay with me for a very long time. Granted, many scenes in You Can See Everything will stay with me for a very long time—but, this one in particular: it has only just started to become apparent how intimately Nathan Fielder, his co-director Lance Oppenheim, and their documentary film crew have been integrated into the daily home lives of Elizabeth Holmes and her boyfriend, Billy Evans. And it’s a brief shot, just a few seconds—but, it’s of Billy taking a shower, brushing his teeth at the same time. Not from behind anything, not even though a frosted glass shower stall door: it’s straight-up, full-frontal, head to toe. Billy Evans, brushing his teeth in the shower, fully naked on camera. It cuts then to Nathan Fielder himself behind the camera capturing that shot, immediately underscoring the uncertainty of what he’s getting himself into with this project.

From the film’s perspective, that very much seems to be the point: this is an example of the so-called “radical access” Holmes and Evans are giving this film crew, months after speaking to no media at all, and only a couple of months before Holmes is set to serve an 11-year prison sentence for fraud. Their position is that they “have nothing to hide,” hence the access. But from Billy Evans’s perspective, in this shot in particular, what is the point? “Radical access” does not have to mean everything short of watching them have sex or use the toilet on camera, but this seems to be the pointed suggestion. Or is this, perhaps, also a subtle kind of posturing, a strangely misguided display of dominance?

This, among a great many things in You Can See Everything, is up for debate—and a big reason why this film is essential viewing. Rare indeed is the documentary feature that astonishes at this level, with this consistency. It has to be seen to be believed, and I have never before seen a film in the documentary genre that begs not to be spoiled. Usually spoilers are moot with documentary filmmaking, because they tell a story that’s already been reported. Except You Can See Everything slowly turns into the story of its own making, which means it is packed with details you could never see coming. So yes, I suppose telling you Billy Evans appears full-frontal nude on camera is itself a spoiler, but what can I do? I have to tell you some things in order to convince you to see the movie.

I can tell you this: “strangely misguided” is an apt phrase for virtually everything we see both Holmes and Evans doing and saying. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Holmes herself is the bigger mystery—it’s almost impossible to decide what to make of her. Is she wildly deluded? Is she the most naive woman on the planet? Is she a supervillain whose greatest power is master manipulation? All of these things seem to be on the table, at all times, from beginning to end.

One thing is certain: Holmes has a brain that functions unlike any other. To call her “neurodivergent” doesn’t even get to the right connotation. In a key scene, Fielder shows her a clip from an old movie to demonstrate how she understands things differently, and even Billy gets on board with the analogy: he’s right, Billy agrees; you do think differently from other people. (I’m dying to tell you what clip Fielder shows her, but this I will not spoil; it’s far too apt, critical, and delicious to the overall story.)

There are times when both of these people seem straight up sociopathic. And this especially evokes some cognitive dissonance because of how warm, welcoming and inviting they are. They both talk about working on a new prototype, the “next step” in developing the very thing that never actually worked—a blood testing device that did not actually work—as if there is any chance that will ever happen. A couple of times we see Elizabeth’s parents visiting, and in one close-up shot of their faces as they listen to them talk about this stuff, it’s as though you’ve never seen sadder people. In the meantime, Elizabeth Holmes is constantly answering questions with wide eyes and a smile so consistent it quickly becomes genuinely creepy.

The film’s title, You Can See Everything, is a direct reference to the “radical access” this film crew is given into their lives—including Fielder’s eventual decision, after some reluctance, to accept the invitation to stay in their guest house. There’s a big difference between watching people’s every move at home and watching them at work, however, and things do get more tense later when Fielder starts asking questions of people outside of the Holmes/Evans household. Evans himself is less mystifying than Holmes is, albeit not by a huge amount—they simply gradually reveal themselves to be mystifying in different ways.

This would be in large part why You Can See Everything justifies its own length: even at two hours and 54 minutes, not a moment onscreen is wasted; there is no filler here. And things take a big turn roughly two thirds of the way through, when Fielder starts getting to know Amanda Seyfried, who played Elizabeth Holmes in the 2022 Hulu miniseries The Dropout. When this turn occured, I found myself quickly drifting into deep skepticism: What is going on here? I don’t know if I like this. And then, this turn quickly reveals itself to be a brilliant device for telling the rest of the story, which is precisely about telling the rest of the story.

You Can See Everything gets to a point where it blurs the line between fact and fiction, fact-finding and fictionalizing. We start to see reenactments of deeply relevant things that happened but were not on camera, which is how this film became the first documentary I have seen in which acting can still be evaluated. We see people talking about the scripts written for the reenactments; we see them reacting to the details revealed in them, evidently while reading and hearing about them for the first time; and we see that intercut with the reenactments themselves.

I spent a lot of this film expecting it to end at the point where Elizabeth Holmes finally goes to prison, because that’s the basic premise set up from the beginning. There are moments when Fielder is openly unsure as to whether he should stay and marinate in whatever akwardness is happening, right up to within a couple of hours of Holmes being taken in. But then You Can See Everything goes far beyond any of this, breaking open far more narrative threads to all of this than you ever thought possible.

Given Nathan Fielder’s history and the ways in which he often inserts himself into his own projects—and it is made very clear that Holmes eagerly invites him into this project having no real sense of his work whatsoever—it’s easy to wonder what extent his own penchant for invention goes in this film. How can a “real” documentary be this beautifully shot, for example? The cinematography by David Bolen—who also shot Primetime, which Lance Oppenheim also directed—is beautiful. This is evident from the very opening shot, of Billy’s face looking up from the lying position in perfect lighting, laying out exactly what we are there expecting to see: an intimate documentary portrait of people claiming they have nothing to hide. (We later watch Amanda Seyfried watching this very same clip.)

Some shots are too gorgeous not to be suspect. We see Nathan Fielder and Amanda Seyfried chatting in comfy chairs in front of a fireplace with burning logs in it—again, beautifully lit. How was this set up? Was this itself at all rehearsed? Did someone just figure out how to create the perfect visual setting for a real-life discussion featuring reactions to the story we are actively watching unfold?

There’s also a curious element of Fielder and Oppenheim being co-directors, but with Fielder being the active onscreen participant and Oppenheim always being the silent director behind the camera—but, presumably both were typically in the room. When we get shots of Fielder holding a camera, someone else is holding a camera to show us that. Whatever is going on, it seems to get normalized very quickly: in another early shot, Elizabeth enters her living room and says “Hi, guys” with a smile, clearly to the whole crew. It’s very rare but there is a couple wide shots showing most of the crew in the room, while Elizabeth and Billy go about their business as though none of them are there.

In spite of it being nearly impossible not to think and wonder about these things, it all works. Oppenheim and Fielder have clearly molded a massive amount of footage into a coherent story—impressively so, given the way it starts to fold in on itself, with people onscreen talking about how this very film got greenlit, how they set it up, and how they are actively putting it together as they go along. Truth, trust, deception, and artistic license are all recurring themes, to the point where this film’s portrait of Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans does change your perception, and maybe even your opinion of them, but does not make them any less jaw-droppingly baffling. Is Elizabeth Holmes acutely aware of everything going on and actually pulling the strings? Is Billy Evans actually manipulating her? Are they both stunning narcissists? Maybe it’s all of the above, but You Can See Everything makes the very act of contemplating it a spectacular experience.

Okay but I can’t tell you everything because you simply have to see it.

Overall: A

YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

What a singular achievement Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is, to be genuinely unlike any other film. And a singular vision on the part of Bassam Tariq, who wrote and directed. Where else are you going to find a tense action-drama with violent grudges and retaliation, presented with deeply devout, Muslim characters?

Ultimately, this is a film about faith—and it very much acknowledges other faiths as well, and is surprisingly respectful of them. Recently widowed Latif (Mahershala Ali) and his three children live in an apartment complex where teenage Fatiha (Adia) hangs out with neighbors who are all devout Mormons. Eventually Latif gets mixed up with an evangelical preacher, Pastor Hwan (John Cho—looking, forgive me, a little ripe) who is convinced he needs to “liberate” people from the porn industry—including Hatty (Abubakr Ali), the son of Mike (Laith Nakli), the Arabic man who has a history of hiring Latif for hit jobs.

It is one of these hit jobs that opens the film, after an introductory reading of the Islamic story behind the film’s title. The film later returns to the characters we first heard reading and listening to that story, but in the meantime we see Latif dispatch a faceless man with some effort in a public restroom, which turns out to be out of both working faucets and paper towels. But within minutes after this scene, we learn that Latif’s wife has recently died, leaving him with his aforementioned teenage daughter; an preadolescent boy, Qadir (Jahleel Kamara); and a baby still used to breast milk who will not accept formula.

There is only a limited amount of pumped breast milk left, so Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother quickly becomes a race against time, as Latif desperately tries to find breast milk for his baby, from multiple sources. As a parent, this is Latif’s driving motivation whatever else is going on—and a lot else is going on. He’s trying to maintain family stability. And Mike is so pissed about Pastor Hwan’s baseless accusation that Hatty is using his porn studio as a front for human trafficking that he insists Latif dispatch him. He doesn’t care about Latif’s many other concerns at the moment, and asserts that he has no choice.

All of this is just the groundwork for the story that unfolds, and it’s a lot—Bassam Tariq works his own miracle by getting all of these characters to cross paths organically. Latif is a seasoned and skilled hand-to-hand fighter, who has created his own “code” in which he never uses guns and only uses knifes. Why is never made fully clear, but it makes for some great action sequences. It’s worth noting that, aside from the opening bathroom sequence, it’s a while before any real action takes place. The action in this film is exceptional but used sparingly and therefore with unique effectiveness. We really get to know these characters, which raises the stakes far higher than your average action movie.

In the midst of all this, Latif is having a crisis of faith—something clearly suspected by his most trusted elder at his mosque, Abdul (Giancarlo Esposito, finally in a role in which he is barely recognizable). But this is where I get into some ambivalence with Your Mother Your Mother, which takes a turn into the supernatural in the final act—something that ultimately connects Latif and Pastor Hwan in a surprising way. I still can’t decide how I feel about it. I prefer my tales of crises of faith to be ambiguous, and this film takes a sharp turn into the opposite.

On the other hand, it could be said that this is one for the Muslims: Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is a single dot of American cinema with a broadly positive depiction of Islam in a vast history of film that villainized Muslims by default. This is a story about flawed people, not a flawed religion. Granted, that is where my ambivalence comes in, because as an atheist I believe all religion is flawed. I also know I am in the minority on this, and I still champion fair depictions onscreen. Fair representation is one thing, though; telling a story in which something that appears to be an outright miracle occurs is quite another.

Whether it still works for the purposes of the storytelling here is something reasonable people can debate. It just took it a step into the realm of the ridiculous for me, but that doesn’t change how expertly crafted this movie is. The acting is exceptional across the board, and especially impressive on the part of the young actors playing Latif’s children. It’s probably worth noting that this story is very specifically about American Muslims, which might account for the degree of religious tolerance they have. They live in a country in which they have no choice but to coexist with other religions, after all.

In any case, until that turn at the end, which was clearly what Tariq was leading up to all along, I was super into it. Perhaps it’s a parable, or a morality play, and I’m open to these interpretations—I don’t even begrudge the many who have only good things to say about this remarkable film. I may not have been moved by faith the way the characters were, but I was still moved by this movie.

A father sits in, for Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

Overall: B+

Tasveer Advance: LALI

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

I am clearly not the target audience for Lali, which makes me patently unqualified to comment on it. I can’t even tell whether director and co-writer Sarmad Sultan Khoosat made it with the idea of general audiences worldwide watching it. One would presume so, but consider this user review on Letterboxd: Fucked with this hard and could smell the white people‘s confusion in the entire cinema heheheheh. It is perhaps relevant to note that I am married to a South Asian man, and when the movie ended he asked what I thought; I said: “I didn’t get it.” He said, no fewer than three times: “That was a crazy good movie!”

Context is everything, right? I saw this at the Tasveer Film Festival, which is specific to South Asian film, and that audience ate it up. This is pretty typical of festival audiences, regardless of the festival and regardless of how good the movie really is. I once saw a “documentary” called Orwell Rolls in His Grave at the Seattle International Film Festival, and it was one of the worst movies I had ever seen. There was a Q&A after the screening and the questions were shocking in how they revealed that the audience there clearly thought it was brilliant.

There is nothing so stark going on with Lali, which I kind of vibed with until the unhinged final act. There remains the context of cultural and ethnic experience, this film being dense with both, and which I have almost zero experience with. Even my husband grew up Hindu in India, so I have some broad knowledge of that cultural context—but, notwithstanding the obviously fair amount of cultural crossover, Lali is about a Muslim family in Pakistan. It opens with a wedding, and my husband did explain to me that green is a traditional color worn at Muslim wedding events. This was the first I had heard of that, and that would be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cultural details densely packed into this narrative that I was unfamiliar with.

Even the experience of being one of only a handful of White people in the sold-out audience otherwise full of South Asians (or Americans of South Asian descent) was a somewhat peculiar experience. Lali is presented as a dark comedy, until the final act when it just slips into straight up (if not necessarily straightforward) darkness, but I was often baffled at what moments people in the audience laughed at. I laughed out loud a couple of times, but even my husband laughed a couple of times at moments when I thought: Is that supposed to be funny?

The basic premise of the film is that Zeba (Mamya Shajaffar) is finally getting married, to a man named Sajawal (Channan Hanif), or Sajju for short—after multiple previous engagements resulted in fiancés winding up dead. The community being convinced that Zeba is cursed is her cross to bear; Sajju’s is is huge birthmark on the left side of his face. The people in his family and community rarely use the word “birthmark,” though, in favor of the far more evocative word “scar”—an indicator of differing degrees of attitudes as compared to the West, perhaps. (Not to suggest that anyone in the West would have it easy with a giant birthmark on their face.)

It took me a while to understand why Sajju was so quiet and brooding. In the opening, wedding event sequence, he’s wearing a headdress with strings of flowers obstructing his face. Soon enough we see the birthmark, and we learn how it shaped him growing up. He has a comically overbearing mother (Farazeh Syed) and a father whose death he eventually reveals he blames on her. In the early scenes shortly after the wedding is finally over, with many people comically paranoid about Sajju’s fate with this supposedly cursed woman, it feels like we are meant to see that he’s deeply self-conscious but a good guy.

Much of Lali is very surreal, and it takes a turn when Sajju is suddenly prone to jealous rages. Maybe because of such deep-seeded self-loathing that he assumes Zeba must be looking elsewhere, despite all obvious evidence to the contrary? All I can say is, when a disturbing scene occurs in which Zeba comes home drunk, pours liquor over Zeba’s head, and the scene ends without depicting but unsubtly suggesting marital rape, it was a jarring narrative leap that felt a bit unearned, after we saw him making odd but still kind gestures toward her. This type of mystifying narrative turn only continues in the final act, in which I completely lost the plot and thought Lali went right off the rails, with both Zeba and Sajju having wild breakdowns that come out of nowhere.

Lal translates as “red” in Hindi and Urdu (this film is spoken in Punjabi but with sprinklings of Urdu). Lali is thus a pejorative nickname for Sajju and his “scar,” which he suddenly leans so far into in the final act that he wraps himself in a red blanket, covers himself with a red oil or paint of some kind, and otherwise starts hopping around and hanging from bars like a lunatic who thinks he’s a bat—all while referring to himself as a jinn, a dark spirit from Arabic mythology. The nickname is used exclusively by a neighbor woman who visits frequently and was much more kindly welcomed by Sajju’s mother than by Sajju himself; her condition is never specified but she is clearly mentally disabled in some way. If there is some symbolic meaning there, I completely missed it.

And therein lies the challenge in my experience with this film, which, while it left me baffled in the end, I did not hate—largely because the performances of both the leads were equally excellent. And I certainly cannot write it off the way I might have if it were made by an American director and writer and infused it with equivalent amounts of American or Western mythology. I read enough reviews and reactions to this film to know that I was certainly not alone in it losing me in the final act—what would be interesting but impossible to find out would be what the ethnic breakdown of these reactions were. It may be that it’s simply the audiences who are not of Muslim, Pakistani or South Asian background who do not get it. Lali is clearly dense with meaning that only a certain population can fully grasp. They get it, and I don’t, and I guess that’s okay.

Lali may surprise you, but who knows how much you’ll vibe with that surprise?

Overall: B

Tasveer Advance: HOOP LIKE THIS

Directing: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

What possible insight could I have about this movie? I mean, I watched it, largely due to happenstance, but it’s part of this year’s Tasveer Film Festival and it’s a new film so I’m reviewing it. But I should say right off the top that I am far from this film’s target audience: I am neither South Asian nor do I know the first thing about basketball. Okay, I suppose I know the first thing. You dribble the ball, right? That’s where my knowledge ends. I actually watched this movie thinking about how I have no idea how many points you get for making a basket, nor whether there are other ways to get points in the game. To say I am ignorant of this sport—okay, all sports—would be an understatement.

I gleaned this much: there is an annual tournament with the incredibly creative name of The Basketball Tournament, or “TBT” for short, for which the ultimate winner gets a cash prize of $1 million. Strike that—in 2026 it’s $2 million; but during the couple of years covered by this film, it was $1 million. It’s up the team to decide how that prize gets split up, but you can assume a roster of 12 players, a coach, and staff. Do TBT teams have staff? I have no idea! But if you assume a minimum of 13 people, then that $1 million works out to around $77,000 per person at most. No one discusses this in the documentary.

Anyway, the real subject of Hoop Like This is a very specific team called “India Rising,” comprised exclusively of either people from India or people of Indian descent from around the world—the Indian diaspora—and founded by Gautam Kapur (featured prominently) with the mission of showcasing South Asians in high-level basketball and breaking the stereotype that people of Indian descent are unathletic. India Rising is thus the first-ever Indian professional basketball team.

This film, directed by Shubhangi Shekhar, is broadly speaking a pretty standard sports documentary—the kind that is fine for people not already emotionally invested in its subject (like me) but perhaps a delight for people with direct relevance to it (South Asians; South Asian basketball players). I’m not sure how interested people who love basketball but don’t have much occasion to think about the ways it can be diversified will be, which is unfortunate (either for them, or for my own lack of imagination).

The stuff that interests me here are indeed the more cultural ideas—I am married to a person from India, so there is that angle of personal interest, albeit one that has never had any connection whatsoever to basketball. My husband sometimes watches American football, certainly gets invested in the World Cup (for soccer), and has a working knowledge of cricket—but has never been particularly compelled by basketball. There is a brief but fascinating detour in the film, though, in which Kapur visits India and learns that basketball was first introduced to the country by Canadian YMCA instructor T. Duncan Patton around 1893. It is thus argued that basketball is no more or less “Indian” than cricket.

Moving back to the present day, there are some amusing moments in which players kind of lean into their stereotypes, such as how something like half of them are doctors as a day job, and many of them have family members who own gas stations or drive taxis. We see one if them examining a teammate’s possibly-injured foot. That seems kind of convenient. We also get a few talking-head interviews with certain entertainers of South Asian descent, such as American actor/rapper/singer Utkarsh Ambudkar (Brittany Runs a Marathon, Blindspotting), or comedian and writer Nimesh Patel, among others. Between this and a lot of high-octane needle drops from presumably South Asian musicians, this all feels a bit like a means of upping the film’s “cool” factor. And, to a degree at least, it seems to work.

The period Hoop Like This covers is India Rising’s first and second years in TBT, when they suffered the loss of their very first game the first go-round . . . and then won their first game the second go-round. That second one serves as this film’s climax, as it was widely cited as the “biggest upset in TBT history,” when they defeated the No. 1 Seed and host Red Scare in Dayton. They were then eliminated in the second round, and I have already well established that I know next to nothing about basketball, but I suspect that would mean they still aren’t exactly the best team out there—but, Hoop Like This is quite deliberately not about that (and who would want it to be?), but rather about how they are gradually fulfilling their aforementioned mission, and proving that they can’t just be dismissed or written off.

We do learn that the team, in an effort to be more inclusive of all South Asians, has since been renamed the “Brown Ballers,” and I do wonder if I’m the only one who hears that and just thinks of brown people freeballing. The logo design is the same either way, with the word “Rising” or “Ballers” in standard red lettering at the bottom, below either “India” or “Brown” written in lettering shaped like iced mountain peaks with a basketball rising like the sun behind them. It’s clearly meant to evoke the Himalayas, but, I don’t know, maybe they should find a new marketing consultant. For a split second I wondered why they didn’t just call the film India Rising, until I realized that might only put forth wrong connotations—hence, perhaps, the change in the team name. Still, Hoop Like This is a pretty bland title.

When it all comes down to it, I’m not sure who to recommend this to, aside from South Asians with a marked interest in basketball (or even sports broadly), and maybe the people who love them. Professional sport does nothing for me, but there was enough here to make it a bit more interesting than expected.

Okay so what’s happening here? Is anyone scoring any points? Who designed those outfits?

Overall: B

THE SOCIAL RECKONING

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: C+

Aaron Sorkin is a rightly celebrated screenwriter. This is the guy who wrote A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing, The Social Network, and Moneyball. His most recent four movies, however—Molly’s Game, The Trial of the Chicago Seven, Being the Ricardos, and The Social Reckoning—were both written and directed by Sorkin. You can tell at a glance what the issue is there: other directors have historically raised Sorkin’s work to the level of excellence. Sorkin manages to direct his own material to a level one or two steps below that.

So it is with The Social Reckoning, a follow-up to The Social Network sixteen years later, thus qualifying as a “lega-sequel.” Critics left and right constantly hail The Social Network as “a masterpiece,” and I’ve never been willing to go quite that far—it’s a really good movie that I gave an A-minus, but it’s not perfect. I still clearly did myself a favor by not rewatching it before seeing The Social Reckoning, in which both David Fincher’s direction and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score are sorely missed.

It feels a little like Aaron Sorkin feels like he is the only one who can truly bring his visions to light, and he is mistaken. Parts of The Social Reckoning feel pointlessly heavy handed, and there’s a couple of editing choices that are genuinely baffling. Twice there are cuts to shots of only a set of people’s calves and feet walking on a sidewalk, with the audio deliberately going in and out. I don’t get it.

What I do get is the point of making this movie, though—I’m not really on board with the people saying the movie itself is pointless. Anything that keeps people talking about Facebook and its now-widely-known dangers is a good thing, however ineffectual it may ultimately be. “Based on a true story” movies don’t always have the intended impact when they are set less than two years before its release, and this one gets to within about five years ago. A lot of what was going on in the world then is still pretty vivid in our collective memory, and depictions of the covid years remains a tricky business. Yet again, we get shots with characters here and there wearing masks, but only just enough to jog our memory, and not nearly enough for it to be realistic. We have to keep seeing all these actors’ beautiful faces, right?

Covid is deeply relevant to this story, though, because it’s used as one of countless examples of Facebook being culpable in the spread of damaging misinformation. A brief but key scene is set in a grocery store (the one scene in which nearly everyone is actually wearing a mask), with a mask-less woman shouting at everyone “You’re a sheep!” And we all know she got this idea from Facebook.

Which is to say, of course, that The Social Reckoning is also often pretty on the nose. Is this movie actually providing any insight? I suppose it might be to some, who pay far more attention to movie entertainment than actual news, which sadly is most people—but most people seeing this movie aren’t necessarily going to care. I’d say you can just find the 17-part series The Facebook Files that was published in The Wall Street Journal in 2021 and the writing of which forms the basis of this film, but a) most of it is behind a paywall; and b) you wouldn’t likely read it even if it weren’t. (I haven’t read it, nor do I have a subscription to The Wall Street Journal.)

Still, by and large The Social Reckoning is pretty engaging, mostly because of being very well cast. This isn’t exactly a showcase for Mikey Madison, who plays the awkward and nerdy Facebook employee whistleblower Frances Haugen, but if you happened to see her in either the Scream reboot or her Oscar-winning performance in Anora, you’ll get a sense of her incredible versatility. This is a showcase for Jeremy Strong, whose performance as an almost sociopathic Mark Zuckerberg is almost worth the price of admission on its own. Nearly all of his scenes are set during a rehearsal for testifying before Congress, however, and we only get one scene in which Zuckerberg and Haugen are even in the same room (and they don’t even speak to each other). Sorkin’s choice to set this rehearsal on the same day the January 6 insurrection is one of several things that make this script feel a little over-written.

Jeremy Allen White is a great actor, but here he’s in a role—as Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz—that any competent actor could have played. The same could be said of Betty Gilpin, who plays Horwitz’s editor; or Bill Burr, who plays an evident frenemy of Zuckerberg’s implausibly brought into the rehearsals to help with crisis management. But, it’s still really fun to see them both.

In any case, The Social Reckoning is packed with performances that range from competent to quite memorable, and I’m not sorry I saw it. That’s a very different sentiment from being thrilled by it, I realize. Some of the writing choices are deeply contrived and corny, but I still left with a certain appreciation for the overall experience. I certainly hoped for better, but my highest praise for this movie is that it could have been a lot worse.

Watching pretty people look at Facebook internal documents is so exciting!

Overall: B