For my second run at AFI fest, I got to say I made a lot of improvements over my first time experience. However, there were a couple of snafus. There were so many feature-length films I wanted to see that I altogether avoided the short films shown here. And from what I understand, all of those shorts kicked some sort of ass, and it was a better showcase than there was last year. Once again, I missed almost all the red carpet premieres, and I have no regrets about it. Those particular events are not friendly towards the press, so f*** that. The films that premiered at the red carpet events that I did not see are Jay kelly, nuremberg, Christy, song sung blue, and dead man’s wire. All those will have reviews at a later time.
I wish I could have seen more. But there were a lot of overlapping times for things I wanted to see, and I prioritized Guillermo del Toro’s Q&A over seeing more. I saw seven movies over five days. Ranking these movies would be silly, I know, but there was one transparent best film among the things I saw, and it should be pointed out.
Here is the rundown….
FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER 🤮
I try very hard with Jim Jarmusch. Over and over again, I go into every one of his films knowing that subtlety is the name of the game. I see a star-studded cast, I see an intriguing premise, and I’m game. The problem with his films comes in pacing and story. There’s a statement to be made about this movie’s exploration of the long-lasting effects of positive and negative parental influences on children. I get that that’s what the story was trying to say. However, the interesting characters introduced become a notable weakness for the film, given that as soon as things get interesting… they disappear for good, and we never see them again.
Also, the pacing is flat-out glacial. I know that’s normal for arthouse independent films and all, but there are loooong, drawn-out sequences of silence between the dialogue, and it just slows down whatever rhythm is going on. I must accept that these are traits of the filmmaker that have been here for the last 15 to 20 years, and that maybe his stylings just aren’t for me.
springsteen: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE 😊
I’ve always been the one to say that there are three types of musical biopics:
- The post-career biopic where the film serves to show a highlight reel of the artist’s greatest moments (maestro)
- The rags-to-riches biopic is usually seen at the end, right before the artist becomes famous. (The runaways)
- And… The biopic in which the artist creates a seminal part of their work and shows very little of the artist’s life outside of that one project (Like this film).
Springsteen: deliver me from nowhere is not a story about Bruce Springsteen, really. This does not contain any information about his relationship to his band, his struggles with fame, his clashes with the music industry as a whole, or anything like that, which is ultra strange considering that by the time Nebraska came out in 1982, Springsteen was 10 years into his career, and had already released The River AND Darkness on the Edge of Town. This is SO not a documentary about the man. This is a biopic about the 1982 album Nebraska.
There is a deep dive into the inspirations behind every song, the artistic process, and the reason Springsteen wanted to keep it so close to the chest, not promoting or advertising it. But if one is unfamiliar with Bruce Springsteen as a whole (as I am)Â it does feel as if you’re being fed information about the actual guy with teaspoons. I guess getting to know the man would be getting familiar with his art. In fact, I do think that is a point that the movie wants to make. And I respect that. But I don’t know why this is a biopic instead of a documentary.
THE CHORAL 😊
I am an absolute sucker for movies where the art is the saving grace. Get a ragtag group of aimless individuals together, put an expert coach of the aforementioned art in front of them, and watch as they learn and grow within the art to create a collective piece that is both moving and thoughtful. That’s my bag.
Movies like sing sing, School of Rock, sing street, & to Sir, with Love… Right in my wheelhouse. The coral is definitely in the category of these movies, and I couldn’t help but be engrossed. The main problem with this movie, however, is that it is trying to make a statement about how war affects communities. About how people can’t find their art because they’re too worried about dying after being drafted. It’s well told, but given the absolutely justified seriousness of everything that’s going on, it’s not necessarily as inspiring as the films previously mentioned. World War II was very active during the time of this story, and many of these characters have an inevitable outcome. It makes things a lot sadder, honestly.
That does not mean it’s not satisfying when the pieces finally fit, just not even close to what it could be. The epilogue of this film falls completely flat because it doesn’t offer the kind of epilogue these kinds of stories tend to have.
BUGONIA 😊
I deeply respect Yorgos Lanthimos as a filmmaker. I come to appreciate that, with every film he does, he’s going to give me something completely out of left field, with no sense of predictability. I don’t think it’s ridiculous to say that bugonia is both a thriller and a horror movie. In those particular genres, it is expertly done. There are so many scenes of elevated tension that I honestly felt tired after the movie was over… in a good way.
Jesse Plemons is absolutely brilliant in this film. This is his best performance by miles, playing a character that is quite reprehensible. He’s done plenty of villains before, but never like this. He and Aidan Delbis are quite extraordinary together and have a lot of comedic chemistry, even when the scenes are dead serious. Emma Stone, in this movie, has a pretty weird dynamic. It’s an incredibly one-note performance… but it kind of should be precisely that. Nothing is bad about what she does here, but she’s done so many other dynamic things when working with Yorgos that it’s kinda surprising there’s no real wow factor. When it comes to the Lanthimos filmography, this may be a tie for the bronze medal along with the favorite.
IS THIS THING ON 🤩
Is this thing on is a testament to Bradley Cooper being an elite filmmaker. Though this is a film about a divorcing couple, it really zeroes in on the many factors that lead to divorce, even though the people getting divorced don’t know why things have gotten so bad. It’s rare to find a film where every character is likable, and you’re rooting for all of them to succeed, and the only thing that can make them grow is for them to own their own bull****. The film is really good at showing how finding the bull**** is almost impossible.
One of the more fascinating things in all of Cinema is when long-standing comedians have revelatory dramatic performances. When this happens, the potency of the performance depends on how many times you arrive at “holy s***, I didn’t know he could do that” while watching the performance, and Will Arnett has a ton of that here. The directorial choices during the stand-up scenes are really admirable and personal. Arnett is staring directly into your soul while trying to tell you jokes, and he’s not a stand-up comedian. It’s very raw and fresh. A fantastic film.
BAD APPLES 😊
It took me a couple of hours to decide whether I liked bad apples. I almost walked out a couple of times in all honesty, but I think I’m coming around the bend here, and my mind is very close to being completely changed. This film has the largest quantity of absolutely unrealistically impossible scenarios that I’ve ever seen. Radical scenarios that are so absolutely implausible in today’s reality that I felt that my intelligence was being insulted.
However, that’s the wrong way to go about this. I was being way too logical going into this film. That was a big mistake. There’s so much ridiculousness on a frame-by-frame basis that it is strongly recommended that you simply abandon the concept of actual reality before you start watching this.
Had I been given a precursor to watching this, that this story took place in some other multiverse where things like child protective services and federal investigations didn’t exist, then this might be one of the most clever movies of the year. This is one of the darkest comedies around. Very dark stuff here. It’s a movie where the comedy is so dark that the laughs primarily come from the shock of it all.Â
The more I think about it, the more impressed I am that it reached level 10 and stayed there throughout the film, right up to the last frame.
And finally….
THE PLAGUE 🤩
The plague seems very simple at the base level. A coming-of-age story set at a water polo camp for teenage boys (Yes, they do exist, I guess), and “the plague” is puberty.
On the surface, it seems like something we have seen 100 times before. But what THE PLAGUE evolves into becomes something special. This is quite possibly the most thorough breakdown of childhood bullying that I’ve ever seen a film try to do: How bullying is bred into someone, the terror that a group of bullies can have, how quickly the bullied fall into hopelessness, and most importantly, the long and short-term effects of severe bullying.Â
It is not with any hyperbole when I say this, but the performances of Everett Blunck and Kayo Martin are two of the best child performances that I’ve EVER SEEN IN A FILM. EVER. In a perfect world, Blunck himself would be nominated for an Academy Award for what he does in this film. There are not five better leading performances in a movie in all of 2025 than his. One of the 10 best films I have seen this year without question.
