Couture

• Director: Alice Winocour
• Writer: Alice Winocour
• Starring: Angelina Jolie, Anyier Anei, Ella Rumpf, Louis Garrel

Grade: C+

Paris Fashion Week serves as the backdrop for writer/director Alice Winocour’s latest film, Couture. The story centers on three women navigating the complexities of life while focusing on their work in an industry not known for its empathy. Angelina Jolie produces and stars in what is her follow-up outing to 2024’s biopic Maria, which saw the cultural icon embodying late opera singer Maria Callas. Couture is a quieter project for the veteran actor, but still gives her the chance to flex her ability to fall effortlessly into any character she’s given. While there are bright spots to be found throughout, the film stumbles into uneven territory at times, never fully threading the needle. 

The Invite

• Director: Olivia Wilde
• Writer: Rashida Jones, Will McCormack
• Starring: Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz, Edward Norton

Grade: A+

If you’re at all dialed into cinematic pop culture, you probably remember the moment that was the press tour for Olivia Wilde’s last film, 2022’s Don’t Worry Darling. Critics and audiences were divided on the film’s merits, but it was the off-screen relationships and shenanigans surrounding the Hollywood release that truly captured the zeitgeist. Wilde’s latest directorial effort, The Invite, feels like a triumphant return to a focus on filmmaking with the director turning in the strongest entry of her career so far. The story centers on two neighboring couples, each with their own quirky eccentricities, who meet for a dinner party. What starts as a conventional evening quickly devolves into chaos as the couples are forced to deal with new perspectives that magnify hidden truths in their own relationships.    

Saccharine

• Director: Natalie Erika James
• Writer: Natalie Erika James
• Starring: Midori Francis, Danielle MacDonald, Madeleine Madden

Grade: C-

Saccharine is the third feature from Writer/Director Natalie Erika James, following her pandemic-era breakthrough Relic and 2024’s Rosemary’s Baby prequel, Apartment 7A.  The film follows Hana (Midori Francis), a medical student suffering from body dysmorphia who experiments with a new weight-loss pill that promises to slim her down in next to no time. With GLP-1 medications now commonplace in our society, this may feel like a familiar and timely premise. But of course, there’s more to it, as Hana finds that what seems like a simple solution to her struggles may come tied to sinister consequences.

undertone

• Director: Ian Tuason
• Writer: Ian Tuason
• Starring: Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco, Michèle Duquet

Grade: C

A24’s latest horror flick undertone puts a new twist on screen-life horror: instead of playing out the story via windows on a computer screen, the terrors in the film unfurl through a series of podcast sessions. Evy and Justin (played by Nina Kiri and The White Lotus’s Adam DiMarco) cohost a podcast dissecting paranormal events. When they begin to dive into a series of ten audio files sent by a mystery contributor, things start to shift in the home Evy shares with her ill mother (Michèle Duquet). Unfortunately, the story that follows is messy and cliched, failing to live up to the inventive horror films A24 is often known for putting out.