If you’re reading a review of a limited release slasher comedy in the year 2025, you probably don’t need me to explain that 1980’s Friday the 13th is one of the seminal slasher texts: It’s not the first or best entry in the genre, but perhaps the most influential, the one that codified most of the tropes into formula. It launched not just a dozen sequels but a hundred imitators. The slasher format comes back into vogue every ten or fifteen years with some new horror tone or narrative twist or vibe that the studios want to mine for cheap box office returns.

All of that is what makes Hell of a Summer feel just a little out of step. It behaves, at least through the first half, like Friday the 13th is the only slasher movie that co-writers/directors (and twentysomething actors) Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk have ever seen. It has little use for postmodern shenanigans or high concepts. The pair fastidiously recreate the scenario of Friday the 13th, simply because they think it’s cool and want to make their own comedy version of it. (The pair cite Shaun of the Dead as a major inspiration, but “zombie movie with jokes” was a lot more novel in 2004 than “slasher with jokes” is in the 2020s.)

It’s clear that the movie’s target audience is more Stranger Things fans (re: Wolfhard) and teen comedy lovers than slasher-heads. It is practically allergic to genre obligations to a level that’s borderline reckless and alienating: The kills occur mostly off-screen and amount to run-of-the-mill stabbings and decapitations. The boring murders are not about dodging an R-rating; the movie’s full of sex talk, drug use, and profanity, and the MPAA slapped it with an R nonetheless. I suspect the pair have little interest in horror, and simply used a slasher scenario as the loosest and easiest possible narrative framework to slide into “horror comedy.” There’s no final girl, no climactic chases, no real tension or catharsis in the deaths themselves.

One trope that is fulfilled: The plot kicks off with an opening murder. The owners of Camp Crystal Lake… errr, Camp Pineway meet undignified ends. One, an annoying campfire-side guitar crooner, gets his six-string snapped and jammed through his throat. It’s easily the funniest and cleverest kill in the film. Cut to the next day: a cadre of counselors show up to prep for summer before the younglings arrive. They assume the owners are out on errands. Among the arriving staff is Jason Hochberg (Fred Hechinger), a deeply corny 24-year-old camp lifer and nostalgia addict who treats Pineway like it’s sacred ground. Everyone else is presumably 18 or 19, except for Claire (Abby Quinn), with whom Jason has some unresolved romantic tension. Claire is a couple of years older than most of the other staff members, or maybe just more mature.

Among the other counselors: social media hottie Demi (Pardis Saremi), himbo Mike (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), witchy Noelle (Julia Lalonde), self-absorbed theater kid Ezra (Matthew Finlan), and a few others who mostly won’t make it to the credits (though more do survive the runtime than you’d probably guess). Wolfhard and Bryk show up as two dum-dums. That night, the masked killer promptly dispatches Demi, the vainest of the bunch. Jason finds her body, but it vanishes, and nobody believes him. When it becomes clear that death is indeed afoot, everyone pivots and accuses Jason of being the killer himself.

(The killer’s identity is eventually revealed, of course, and for a few minutes in the middle of the film, I thought the movie was going to lean really hard on its Friday the 13th homage: We briefly meet Jason’s mother at the start of the film. She’s unhappy he’s wasting another summer at the camp and is looking for some way to convince him to come home…)

What keeps the film afloat through its dimly-lit and poorly-staged carnage isn’t terror or tension (both essentially absent) but the dynamics between the various teen counselors. The cast is having tons of fun. The ensemble is too big for every character to really stick, but their archetypes are sharply drawn and their banter crackles. Importantly, the film gets funnier, not just noisier, as the violence ratchets and everyone turns against each other. The dialogue has that adolescent zing that feels written by someone who actually knows what being eighteen sounds like; given Bryk and Wolfhard wrote the first draft of the script when they were 21 and 19, this makes sense. (I loved the touch that the 24-year-old is the hopelessly out-of-touch geezer. All y’all are kids. Signed, a 36 year old.)

This film is the most that I’ve bought into Fred Hechinger’s boyish charisma. He gives Jason the kind of earnest, heartsick energy that simultaneously wins you over and annoys the crap out of you. But Jason’s love for Camp Pineway and his struggle to fit in with kids who only barely remember his name give the movie a surprising emotional throughline that anyone who went to a memorable summer camp as a teen will recognize. I can’t remember the last time a slasher gave me a character I was actually rooting for this hard. I was even invested in his fumbled romance with Claire.

The second half of the film shifts tone to more closely resemble Scream. Once the body count ticks up and the group turns on itself, the movie starts toying with misdirection and meta twists. The stretch where the counselors are convinced that Jason is the killer is pretty hysterical. Characters debate the significance of the kill order and jockey for spots in the narrative for the sake of favorable media coverage. The reveal of the killer and their motivation feels particularly inspired by the Scream series.

Whether Hell of a Summer works for you will depend almost entirely on your tolerance for two things: teen hangout movies and slashers that aren’t all that interested in being slashers. The puts me squarely in its crosshairs. If you want slick kills, gnarly gore, and high-strung tension… well, you probably shouldn’t be watching a comedy directed by the kid from Stranger Things, anyway. But if you’re down for a low-key comedy that has Friday the 13th on the brain, you’ll have a decent time. There’s not a lot of substance here, but the film has a comic pulse I dug. I give it the softest of passing grades.

Time will tell whether Bryk and Wolfhard (together or separate) have a full directing career ahead of them, or if this was more of a one-off. Given that its appeal is almost entirely its teen spirit and fresh energy rather than any sort of solid bones on the filmmaking or writing front, I’m not convinced the magic is sustainable. But not everyone can pull off comedy, and they do, so kudos to them. The cast is game, the dialogue snaps, and there’s enough personality to make it worth the 88 minutes.

Have I sold you on it yet? No? Let me pitch you a few more points. The film is about 25 minutes too long. It’s set in a John Carpenter-esque dystopia but with only a few fun bits of production design. It features one of the most annoying characters of recent memory, Basho (Andrew Koji). It has a big twist that’s simultaneously predictable and extremely dumb, the revelation of which should kick off the movie’s last ten minutes, but instead comes with about 40 minutes left in the runtime. The tone is nightmarishly calibrated, not quite funny nor frothy nor muscular nor brooding.

Put another way, Boy Kills World is pure, unadulterated wasted potential. It’s got a hook that sounds kinda cool from the outside: arch revenge flick in a part-Trumpian DC, part-cyberpunk dystopia. But every moment, even the occasional good one, is subsumed in the jittery nausea of creative chaos. You can tell nobody on this crew — the writer, the editor, the director, the production designer, the casting director — was on the same page. Total misfire.

There are parts that do have a distinct and coherent voice, and they are the fight scenes. If you’re a pig to high-spectacle action slop, you might even like this movie. Boy Kills World has some vaguely John Wick-ish, video game-flavored, fight-through-a-room sequences. And they’re decent for what they are! Very playful and kinetic like a more martial Matthew Vaughn film. There’s a stomach-turning corker set in a fancy kitchen that ensures I will never look at cheese graters the same way. The big mid-film semi-climax takes place on a TV set with fun juxtaposition of ultra-violence and network TV cheeriness.

And the very last fight scene is the best in the film. It’s a “final boss” fight that lives up to the buildup: a visceral showdown that turns all of the participants involved into bloody pulps. Yet the fact that it comes after such a stretched out, underwhelming runtime diminishes its punch too much for me to even really care by that point.

Rothe is predictably great in an underfed role, but it has me wondering what her deal is. Does she have a bad agent? Is she a nightmare to work with and semi-blacklisted? Does she just not want a busy schedule? Why isn’t she starring in two or three movies every year across the full spectrum of genres? Why must we Rothe-heads beg for scraps like this? She was astonishing in the Happy Death Days, and has carried a few mediocre indies by herself. I demand a Rothenessaince!

She’s not the only cast member who’s good. Martial artist Yayan Ruhian of some of Gareth Evans‘ films is an imposing figure as Skarsgard’s trainer, “Shaman.” Skarsgard himself, meanwhile, is fine enough in a very physical lead role. My favorite turn among the ensemble of villains is Brett Gelman as a slimy goon confronting his flickering conscience. Michelle Dockery, who I mostly know from Downton Abbey, is fun as a prima donna baddie, too. I just wish the film was a better vehicle for any of these performances.

The film’s problems are legion. The worst might be the comic relief. It’s tough to overstate just how movie-ruining Benjamin’s appearance is. He fills all the dead air, and movies need some dead air. It’s an RC Cola Deadpool shtick, breaking the fourth wall with corny jokes. His quips are dumb and distracting, and it totally removes you from the action.

Boy Kills World has fleeting moments of fizzy, violent fun, but it’s ultimately a disappointment. Too many self-defeating pieces in conflict with one another with too little payoff. Debut director Moritz Mohr shows some signs of energy and imagination — really leaning into the video gamey feel from time to time — but fails to corral the project into a satisfying whole. Fingers crossed his next effort holds together better.

Set in Jerusalem concurrent with Jesus’s life, The Book of Clarence follows the story of its titular character (a terrific LaKeith Stanfield), as he wonders why the so-called Savior hasn’t made his own life any happier and finds himself on his own crucified Messiah journey. The film juggles several ideas at once, showing a healthy spiritual skepticism without outright mocking Christianity, though he pretty clearly leans anti-theist. Samuel interrogates the shortcomings of an organized religion that profits its leaders and not its people, as Clarence creates a profitable racket declaring himself a religious icon.

Like The Harder They Fall, the film’s cast is once again entirely led by Black actors (with one cheeky exception late in the film). Anything else would have been surprising given that Samuel’s m.o. seems to be “period piece with a cool-as-hell Black cast.” The Harder They Fall didn’t have much to say about race despite a setting (post-Civil War America) where it would have been an obvious topic. It’s interesting, then, that The Book of Clarence has a lot to say on the topic of skin color defining one’s path in the world: it’s less organic in this context which is maybe why it’s so intriguing and fresh.

But that cast is, indeed, excellent and immensely cool. Samuel ropes in no less than a dozen great turns, with Stanfield’s magnetic presence the anchor. Teyana Taylor, Omar Sy, David Oyelowo, Alfre Woodard, and several others steal scenes. But my favorite performance besides Stanfield is probably RJ Cyler, who brings an eccentric but intense energy that feels just right for a street corner preacher in 33 CE. Cyler firmly has my attention after also being quite funny in The Harder They Fall — I look forward to his upcoming roles.

As thoughtful and funny as The Book of Clarence is, it’s a bit tedious at times. The pacing is quite uneven as it meanders through its themes and subplots. Samuel’s writing, while brimming with ideas, has a lack of urgency that had me checking my watch once or twice, and might have benefited from a ruthless edit by a seasoned writer. Honestly, the film’s execution often feels more like prestige television than a movie proper, with its broad thematic scope and occasional lack of cohesion, plus a narrative looseness that features a bunch of episodic chunks smushed together.

And yet I quite like the film. It’s an engaging and provocative watch, and it made me laugh several times. It’s not often you find a film so eager to directly confront the topic of faith and its role in our lives, especially one that’s ostensibly a punchy comedy. The setting and tone are unusual. I can’t imagine it finding a huge audience, but I suspect it will earn its ardent admirers.

If nothing else, Jeymes Samuel is getting better and more interesting, and I hope he keeps working. (And his strengths in music and sound mixing are better than ever — this film sounds great.) The Book of Clarence showcases Samuel’s growth as a filmmaker, taking bigger swings and pulling from broader influences, with touches of Hamilton’s historical-racial-inversion and Mel Brooks’ Bible sketch comedy. Who knows what stuffy period genre Samuel will tackle next. Fingers crossed for steampunk.

Glazer’s signature dark humor, a key feature of all his previous works, takes on an even more sinister tone in The Zone of Interest. The juxtaposition of the prim and proper Germans going about their daily lives — trying on fur coats stolen from prisoners and strolling through immaculately maintained gardens — against muffled screams and barbed wire creates a bleak and deeply unsettling irony. The film so effectively interrogates the concept of “the banality of evil” that the phrase itself has become a crutch for trying to describe the gut-slicing feeling this film conveys of people treating monstrous violence as normal and justifiable daily business.

The sound design is undeniably the film’s crowning achievement, and frankly one of the great accomplishments in cinema of 2023. The nearly mono, all-encompassing fog of horror that envelops the audience — gunshots, screams, barking dogs, incinerators — recalls nothing less than the sanity-cracking terror of All Quiet on the Western Front, when Hollywood powered on Pandora’s speaker for the first time. Mica Levi’s spare, unsettling score complements the sound design, further amplifying the film’s oppressive atmosphere.

Glazer’s direction is spot-on for his objective, his insistence on capturing the Hosses’ day-to-day life with unobtrusive naturalism deeply immersive and unsettling. There are only a few instances where the film’s themes become a bit too heavy-handed and on the nose. For example: Hedwig’s mother, arriving for a visit, complains about the slight discomfort of her train ride while the sounds of steam engines and gas chambers echo in the distance.

So is it a masterpiece? As an achievement of using the medium in new and skin-crawling ways, all while never alienating its audience the way that experimental cinema so often does, hell-to-the-yes it’s a masterpiece. And yet, it’s a clinical and museum-quality film: You watch it to say that you watched it, to “get it,” to discuss it afterward and point out just how important and timely its message is despite being set 80 years ago. (Ceasefire now.) I appreciate it, I respect it, but that’s not really why I go to the movies. It might be the “best” from an academic perspective, but it is not my “favorite” movie of 2023, not one I will excitedly watch again and pass on to my children. Glazer is so deep in “art film” territory at this point that his movies have become less rewarding to watch… even as his craft grows stronger and stronger, his ideas sharper and sharper, and his black sense of humor more cruel. Sexy Beast was in love with the possibility of cinema, and even if it was a bit unpolished, it rubbed off — The Zone of Interest reveals Glazer as a pro using his tools with razor precision but little thrill.

The film’s premise — “gimmick” if you are feeling uncharitable — offers a unique and gut-wrenching impact that grows numbing across a hundred minutes (again, this is part of the point: cruelty becomes normal with repetition). But it ends with a thought-provoking “twist” of sorts that heaves its message back to modern reality. It’s a provocative reminder of the dangers of historical atrocities fading into sterile, forgotten dust — that “the banality of evil” is a commodity that shifts to routine capitalism and daily business as time marches on.

The film, adapted from the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett, has a fun, satirical premise: a Black academic named Monk Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) gets so frustrated by the popularity of works by Black authors that pander to white audiences with stereotypes of poverty and crime that he creates an absurdly over-the-top parody, only for it to treated as genuine and become a bestseller.

But this premise is also not really what American Fiction is about. It’s just a narrative backbone. What the movie really is about instead is Ellison’s depression and mounting grief with the many losses in his life. Ellison’s darkness is matched against his attempt to find some connection and meaning in a world that feels increasingly empty. And yet as I write it out, I can also that that is not quite what American Fiction is about. It is not so dark as that pitch makes it seem, so I’m not sure the best way to classify it: fascinating portrait, intriguing scenario.

American Fiction has a remarkably light touch that makes it easy to like: It is not a nasty satire; moreso exasperated. Jefferson cares more about a compelling, character-rich emotional landscape than drilling home a point about race. The film eschews broad punchlines and wackiness in favor of light dramedy. But that doesn’t stop it from being a very funny movie, one of the funniest of the year. American Fiction never goes more than a scene or two without a great joke. In all, it’s a marvelous balancing act of tones, a terrific piece of comic finesse that would have crashed and burned in most hands.

The cast does a lot to carry the material: I’ve never liked Wright more than this — his exhausted disdain for a world that lets him down again and again is hysterical every time. I’m glad he’s up for the Oscar — this is one of my favorite performances of the year. He’s surrounded by a phenomenal ensemble: Erika Alexander plays his new girlfriend with warmth; Leslie Uggams is perfectly acerbic as his dementia-ridden mom; and Tracee Ellis Ross is mind-blowingly good in a way-too-small role as his sister. (She has about 10 total lines, and every single one is memorable.) I’m also very fond of Sterling K. Brown’s turn as Monk’s gay, alcoholic brother, who not only displays some hilarious physical comedy but gets to deliver the film’s key dramatic monologue towards the end of the movie.

Generating a lot of laughs will cover up any movie’s flaws. American Fiction’s biggest problem is a byproduct of its most appealing traits: By keeping the tone loose rather than incisive, a shagginess emerges. There’s a distinct lack of punch in its storytelling, which may be a bummer if you’re looking for a great piece of racial satire. I dig this breeziness, though I do think American Fiction pulls a few punches it should have swung with. The story pivots away from some of the richest points of conflict just as they start to get good, like the simmering resentment between Monk and his girlfriend Coraline (Alexander) as he grows more successful — she disappears right when their arguments start heating up and piercing to the heart of the issues of Black representation that Monk is so worked up about; whether he’s overreacting or justified is left a bit too unexamined. The story also holds back on the dark irony and Monk’s self-loathing of the film’s central gag: Ellison having to adjudicate his own pseudonymous work, which he made intentionally bad, as a judge for a literary award that’s more prestigious than anything he’s won with his serious work.

The screwiest part of American Fiction is its ending, which is the only point of the film that stumbles over its own cleverness in search of a point to make. The film’s reality breaks down with a time-rewind twist that gives us competing versions of reality. If this were really an early Woody Allen film, the ending would have been a grand slam gag. Here, it’s a little soft and sloppy.

One film that American Fiction made me think of frequently is Get Out: Both films take aim at the casual, unconscious racism of liberal, well-educated white people. (And if I may be cynical for a moment, I suspect some of the praise heaped upon both films comes from white critics who, consciously or subconsciously, want to prove they’re not “one of them.”)

The actual racial commentary of the film is, frankly, underwhelming and outdated: I’m not sure exactly what targets Jefferson had in mind for his takedown of the literary industry, but they were probably big in the ’90s. (If the movie had been about film instead of books, on the other hand, it would have clicked a little more: stories about poor Black people still get a lot of award buzz.) At a minimum, American Fiction feels like it comes from a pre-2020 America. A post-George Floyd version of this story should have targeted the white-oriented “anti-racism” books by Black authors that clogged bestseller lists during the pandemic. But, crucially — unlike some less successful satire movies from the past few years, including Not Okay and The Blackening — American Fiction functions just fine in spite of its hit-and-miss satire. It’s a funny film and charming dramedy even without its racial content, and so it isn’t dependent upon the satire to work.

American Fiction is a delightful film and one of the best directorial debuts of 2023. At first blush, I don’t think it’s quite special enough to earn that Best Picture nomination, but it honestly ranks among the year’s top ten films measured purely in terms of my enjoyment, so maybe it actually does. With a cast and comic touch this good, I can’t wait to see what Jefferson does next.

Something else coloring my affection is that I love mumblecore films. Self Reliance really isn’t a mumblecore movie, but star/writer/debut director Jake Johnson is to the movement what Anna Karina was to the French New Wave, so inevitably some of that spirit rubs off on Self Reliance: There’s a sense that this film would only be made by whimsical weirdos in an era when you can get a set of film equipment for only a few thousand dollars. (This is certainly higher-budget than classic mumblecore, though.) Self Reliance feels like it was made because it was a Sunday afternoon and Johnson always kinda wanted to write and direct a movie like those Duplass brothers, so why not? Your appetite for that “fuck it” attitude will color your reaction to it.

The mumblecore vibes go even further than the irreverent, bootstrapped spirit. It’s in the narrative DNA as well. Self Reliance is an ambivalent look at messy relationships between poorly-adjusted, middle-class thirty-somethings featuring an inconclusive ending. Its narrative structure is anarchic, steering away from Syd Field textbook storytelling. (Some critics have mistakenly declared this film “streaming fodder”; no, it’s “forgotten, sloppily-assembled SXSW movie from the mid/late 2000s that subsequently ran once a week on IFC for a couple years” fodder.)

None of that makes Self Reliance good (or bad) on its own, of course. It just means that I personally will like it.

The film was conceived of by Johnson as a streaming TV series, and the transition into a single 95-minute script is a bit rocky. The film isn’t exactly rushed, but it is oddly shaped: boundaries for themes and narrative segments that would have formed the episodes are clear. (It made me think of last year’s Metal Lords in this regard.) But it’s not too jarring a cadence, and it’s very fun to watch. The wacky high concept is executed with self-deprecation and twinge of awkwardness that will be familiar to fans of Johnson’s oeuvre.

Tommy (Johnson) finds himself in a deep rut following a breakup with his longtime girlfriend Theresa (Natalie Morales). (In fairness to Tommy, I would be quite sad if Natalie Morales dumped me, too.) He lives with his mom and works a boring-ass office job. Then one day, while he’s walking the street, a limo pulls up beside him him; the window lowers and it’s Andy Samberg (whose introduction offers a funny meta-joke, in that we expect him to be playing someone else, not himself).

Samberg, along with a team of conspiratorial operators, have a proposition for Tommy: He can participate in a “dark web” game in which he will be closely monitored and hunted down by assassins trying to kill him. If he survives for 30 days, he wins a million dollars. The assassins are ruthless and can strike any time, even when he’s not expecting it, but there’s one catch — a “loophole,” as Tommy declares it: If he remains within a few feet of another human, the assassins will not kill him. Thus, Tommy needs to find a way to remain in close quarters with other people at all times for a month straight.

Johnson, as writer-director, doesn’t bother pretending that this is anything other than a metaphor. In fact, it’s explicitly lampshaded multiple times: This challenge that Tommy has signed up for is a violent stand-in for his own confrontation with loneliness in the adult world. It is also a concave mirror reflection of the pandemic: the absence of human contact within six feet can bring about invisible lethal danger, rather than the opposite. (And, indeed, the script’s first draft was written early in the 2020 lockdown.)

The premise unfolds steadily and intriguingly, though somewhat artlessly: Johnson is primarily concerned with depicting the challenge in mechanical and humorous detail. He also spends a lot of time playing with the ambiguity of whether the entire thing takes place in Tommy’s head rather than in real life. Though Johnson acknowledges it, he’s much less interested in exploring the dark contradictions and pathos this brings out in the characters than the hijinks themselves. Luckily, Johnson as director and writer finds just enough thematic depth and character development to keep it grounded and keep the audience caring whether Tommy makes a personal breakthrough (and/or survives the game).

The cast is stuffed with charismatic turns by friendly comedians and actors: Johnson is as delightfully scruffy and funny as ever. He carries the film with ease in front of the camera, wringing both laughs and humanity out of the scenario’s absurdity. Anna Kendrick (another mumblecore muse) is outrageously charming as another participant in the dark web game, a perfect foil for Johnson. Biff Wiff is lovably wholesome as a recurring homeless companion to Tommy. Mary Holland, Emily Hampshire, Nancy Lenehan make up Tommy’s skeptical family with great chemistry. And the film features a bunch of well-done cameos (and pseudo-cameos, a term I can’t really explain without spoiling some good moments).

As for the film’s craft and visual appeal… well, I did group it with mumblecore movies earlier, which should tell you everything you need to know. It’s not taking any swings, but you’re not here for the way the film looks. It’s content to simply not distract you with ugliness, and it achieves this goal.

So, overall, I can’t quite give Self Reliance a glowing endorsement, but I can profess that I enjoyed the shit out of it. It’s more fun and interesting than good, per se. But it’s funny enough to go down smoothly. And given this exact recipe of cast, premise, and storytelling vibe, there was almost no way I was going to dislike it.

The story is deeply repetitive. Everything after about the 45 minute mark is just Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) with the help of her trainer (Jodie Foster) attempting the same swimming feat literally four times in arduous detail. The first three times, she fails and feels sad. The fourth time she succeeds and fist pumps.

If the execution itself wasn’t bad enough, Nyad is weighed down by significant para-film baggage. The first problem is the inexplicable Oscar nominations: Jodie Foster and Annette Bening are barely acting in this, yet both got nominated. Bening at least has to embody a neurotic obsessive weirdo, but she takes the path of least resistance and least imagination to the character. Foster is just being Jodie Foster, which is not a problem for a movie like this, but hardly worthy of a freaking Oscar. Bening’s Best Actress nod is especially frustrating when so many remarkable turns (Cailee Spaeny, Greta Lee, any others I forgot?) were spurned.

The second and bigger problem is that no major swimming organization recognizes the feat depicted in Nyad as factual. That’s right, this deeply inspirational story is in fact very likely made up, or at least exaggerated. I love plenty of fabricated biopics; in fact, most of my favorites (Amadeus, Social Network, Ed Wood) are more fiction than truth. The difference is that Nyad rubs our faces in just how inspiring this very truthful story is, integrating clips of the real Diana Nyad giving media appearances into the opening and closing, and so its falsehood is kinda movie-crushing.

I save the film from bottom marks for two reasons. The first is, sure, if you’re going to spend 115 minutes with two actresses bantering with each other, barely veiling sexual chemistry (that you know is intentional because it’s lampshaded three times), you could do a lot worse than Bening and Foster. The second is that the movie puts forth some honest-to-God effort in the swimming footage, making it feel like Bening is really out in the deep, vast sea.

Alas, Nyad is exactly the eye-roll-inducing inspiration porn you would expect it to be when you read the logline, just as undeserving of those nominations as you would fear. But, hey, if you take a shot every time Diana Nyad explains that her last name is a homophone for a Greek water spirit, you at least won’t have to remember sitting through it!

What starts as an intriguing, absurdist sci-fi lark gradually turns into hacky sitcom beats about a loser getting sudden fame, which in turn becomes a braindead allegory on viral fame and cancel culture. The final ten minutes try to bring it all together with an emotional thread that the film pulls off better than I expected at that point.

It’s a symptom of how episodic the film is that my review basically boils down to a line graph of how well it works across its runtime. This is a wildly inconsistent and scattershot film of ideas, a decoupage of goofy “what-ifs” and vignettes united by Cage’s quirky turn as a nebbish college professor who can’t get anything right in the face of a supernatural conundrum.

The film is Norwegian director-writer Kristoffer Borgli’s English-language debut after his dark 2022 comedy Sick of Myself and 2017’s meta-documentary Drib, neither of which I’ve seen. Borgli clearly has a knack for intriguing and original surreality, but I’m curious whether he’ll be able to tie films together better than this, or if uneven storytelling is part of the Borgli experience.

The film’s biggest strength is its casting: Cage is the anchor of this strange experience, of course, shouldering the film into watchable even when it starts to sag. But the ensemble is really filled with great turns: Michael Cera is perfect as a smarmy advertising executive, and Dylan Gelula is a damn treat as she always is. (Team Shithouse for life.) Perennial comedy character actor MVPs Tim Meadows and Dylan Baker have medium sized roles, as does David Klein, who is new to me but I expect to see in films like this for the next 25 years. The 2018-2020 romcom prince Noah Centineo makes a great cameo, too.

The film’s dream sequences are heavily inspired by Michel Gondry’s work in Eternal Sunshine, but (it should almost go without saying) to much worse effect. The editing is clever and ambiguous, but it starts to feel cheap that the movie constantly hides whether any given scene is dream or reality, to the point where I was totally checked out. I had no grasp on the film’s reality and stopped caring about the characters. I started to assume that any twist would be undone as “just a dream,” and I was usually right.

So I’m overall disappointed on the cohesion of the final product. The stabs at commentary on viral fame in the second half are condescending. But there are plenty of moments and ideas here. I always appreciate a good high concept that pokes at the edges of reality. Dream Scenario is at least trying stuff and taking swings, with bits and pieces of it connecting to the point I almost recommend it.

It is just one part of an extremely satisfying and spirited whole. For the first time in almost two decades, Payne’s film is one he was clearly excited about making, with vision and purpose: a vintage-style dramedy the types of which used to be box office gold but have since been relegated to the Sundance circuit and streaming fodder.

In particular, Payne is aggressively channeling the aesthetics of early 1970s cinema with grain, noise, color grade, and composition style (much of which was added and tinkered with in post-production; this was shot digitally). Reviewers are citing Hal Ashby as an obvious inspiration, though I confess to not having seen any of Ashby’s films. The opening title cards give 1971 as the film’s year (the same year Ashby released Harold and Maude). Nonetheless, I find the film’s story and tone to be a bit later in style, after the biting “New Hollywood” crested and cinema turned a bit more optimistic. Though The Holdovers is filled with sadness and defeat, it’s ultimately a life-affirming and optimistic work; not always kind to its characters on a scene-by-scene basis, but ultimately generous and forward-looking.

The story follows the winter break at all-boys boarding school Barton Academy where Hunham teaches as a strict, old-fashioned English teacher. A group of students who aren’t able to return home during the break for one reason or another — holdovers, they’re called — have to kill time at the school while supervised by Hunham. The English teacher was given the gig of babysitting holdover students because he’s on the headmaster’s bad side after giving the son of a big donor a bad grade.

The quiet December gets interrupted by the arrival of the wealthy parent of one of the students. This parent offers to bring the whole group skiing, so long as the other students’ families are okay with it. Alas, Angus (Dominis Sessa) can’t get in touch with his mom to get approval for the trip, so he’s stuck by himself with Hunham and cafeteria worker Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) for the Christmas break on Barton grounds while the rest of the students head off to a ski resort.

Thus begins the proper promise of the premise: a three-hander between Angus, Hunham, and Mary who are all suffering in different ways. Angus recently lost his father; Hunham is an alcoholic depressed by the mediocrity of his life; and Mary’s son died in Vietnam. Payne takes his leisurely time getting to this portion of the story: We’re around minute 45 once the film settles into its three main players. But, against my better judgment, I didn’t hate this about the film. It really lets you soak in the setting and mood of a chilly winter filled with chilly hearts as it builds.

The film’s episodes are almost universally sad but not quite tragic: A Christmas eve party where Mary gets too drunk and Hunham strikes out romantically; a hospital visit where Angus has to lie to save Hunham’s job; etc. The darkest moment occurs when Angus shares a dark truth about his family life, but even that is tempered with Hunham boosting Angus’s spirits.

The overall tenor is deeply inviting. It’s not due to one aspect of the production, but the balance and universally strong execution: The script is a bit soft near the end and could have been edited, but is filled with some terrific character development and turns of phrase. The look is nostalgic but just dingy enough to avoid feeling saccharine. The direction by Payne is strong, but moreso in its discipline and patience than any tricks (though I’ll shout out the hysterical long takes of Giamatti doing physical comedy in the name of personal fitness).

The one part of the film I’d mark as a home run is the acting. It starts with Giamatti, as mentioned, who I must repeat is just so damn good at this. I love how his character’s humiliating physical characteristics are piled on as the story progresses. He even gets an iconic, “merlot”-level one-liner delivery, this time about penis cancer.

Against all odds, Sessa nearly matches him as the charming, jaded teen with a bleeding heart barely under the surface. The rookie actor is nearly a co-lead with Giamatti and keeps up. (Sessa’s story is remarkable, too; he was a student at the school where the film was shot, walked into an audition with no professional experience, and won the part.) Randolph is currently sweeping awards as the grieving mother, and though I’d put her in third place, she’s quite good. Her awards candidacy benefits from a few “Oscar reel” type scenes.

Mary is a character I struggled with throughout the film, though. Race has never been Payne’s strongest topic (see: Downsizing), and Mary serves primarily as thematic counterweight to Hunham and Angus, especially how her main role is to motivate both to persist in their dreams. It borders on a cliche, but Randolph’s presence is strong enough to keep the character afloat.

The Holdovers is possibly easy to overrate, and perhaps just as easy to underrate. On the one hand, its nostalgic look and storytelling mode, its “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore” spirit, beg for a pat on the back. But I think it’s also easy to see a low stakes dramedy made for a broad audience, with themes and content that middle schoolers will appreciate just as much as Oscar Death Race cinephiles, and miss just how well-crafted and pleasing it is. It’s one of my favorite movies of 2023, one of Payne’s best movies period, and a film I plan to regularly schedule in my holiday movie nights.

Also there’s a dog named Snoop, and he’s a good boy.

The film opens with a phenomenal scene that is disorienting in the moment, but increasingly rich in retrospect. Sandra, a prestigious (and bisexual) writer, gets interviewed by an attractive grad student (Camille Rutherford) with whom she relentlessly flirts while her husband mopes in jealousy in another room. Eventually, the husband starts blasting “P.I.M.P.” by 50 Cent from speakers so loud the interview is cut off. Sandra makes plans to meet the student sometime in the future in the city, and off the student goes.

Flash forward an hour or so:  Sandra’s child Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) finds his father, Samuel, dead on the ground from a lethal fall. Did he trip out by accident? Leap to his death? Or, perhaps, was he pushed by Sandra? Thus is the mystery investigated for the duration of Anatomy of a Fall.

The film’s lawyers and judges repeatedly state that the trial is not an examination of the Sandra’s conscience and marriage, but of the facts of the case, yet that is clearly not true. One of the film’s many themes is that isolating details of an important incident in our lives is impossible; every single moment is wrapped up in context. We did not fall from a coconut tree.

Anatomy of a Fall’s script is terrific, one of the best of the year. It never goes too long without some new revelation that reframes our understanding of Sandra, Samuel, and Daniel. It’s filled with familiar courtroom drama tropes, but always shifted and twisted just enough to feel unique rather than pro forma.

The acting, too, is excellent: Hüller belongs on short lists of the year’s best performances, swirling through guilt and righteous anger and helpless anxiety. Graner is great as well, delivering a powerhouse of facial expressions (though I never believed he was actually blind). I also found myself drawn in by Swann Arlaud who plays Sandra’s enigmatic lawyer.

Less consistent is the direction by Justine Triet. It’s a grab bag of styles, ranging from an immersive handheld, to simulated pseudo-verite documentary style, to austere stillness. Triet throws in a bunch of flourishes that feel tacked on, too, like multiple hypothetical depictions of the titular fall, the only elements of the film that shatter the reality. One touch I liked was a dizzying long take of Daniel being interrogated in the courtroom, the camera stuck on his face as voices come at him from all around.

It’s a layered, compelling film filled with ambivalence and nuance. Not one I expect we’ll still be talking about a year or two from now, but the kind of cerebral, polished, prestige piece of filmmaking that award seasons are designed for; very-good-but-not-quite-great films made for grown ups that are too uncommon.