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.

Swapped

• Director: Nathan Greno
• Writer: Robert Machoian
• Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Juno Temple, Tracy Morgan, Cedric the Entertainer, Justina Machado

Grade: C-

My hackles immediately go up at any film which opens with a “yeah, that’s me, I bet you’re wondering how I got here”-style voiceover, and Swapped – which trafficks in a similar kind of flash-forward – never really recovers from rote familiarity at nearly every turn. Director Nathan Greno, and screenwriters Christian Magalhaes, Robert Snow, and John Whittington, show some originality through the creative character designs, but the film mostly feels emblematic of what’s plagued Netflix original films and modern animation overall.

Omaha

• Director: Cole Webley
• Writer: Robert Machoian
• Starring: John Magaro, Molly Bell Wright, Wyatt Solis, Talia Balsam, Emma Keifer, Teo Santos

Grade: B

Those who follow the Sundance Film Festival regularly know that it attracts a certain type of indie film with recurring sensibilities. I’d never profess to be a long-standing expert on this phenomenon, but Cole Webley’s Omaha (which premiered at Sundance in 2025 and will soon be in theaters nationwide) plays as an emblematic example of what the festival does best, for better or worse. That is, a portrait of a hard-up family or individual scraping by, probably somewhere in rural or small-town America, as they’re faced with external or existential adversities – with some sad indie guitar music peppered in for flavor. Webley’s film is exactly that, a road trip focused on a family as they move from their foreclosed home to the titular Nebraska city.