Writer: Bradley Cooper, Will Arnett, Mark Chappell
Starring: Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Andra Day, Bradley Cooper, Christine Ebersole, Ciarán Hinds, Sean Hayes, Amy Sedaris
Grade: A-
You don’t need me to tell you that tragedy plus time equals comedy. This is essentially the formula for Bradley Cooper’s third directorial effort, Is This Thing On?, and it continues the actor-director’s streak of simple but effective character studies. But, rather than leveling up his production budget, Cooper has chosen to scale back and create a more intimate, personal story that still caters to his sensibilities as a storyteller.
Starring: Janel Tsai, Ma Shih-yuan, Nina Ye, Brando Huang, Alvin Lin, Blaire Chang
Grade: B+
Recent four-time Oscar winner Sean Baker may be the carrot at the end of the stick that is Left-Handed Girl for cinephiles, but he’s a secondary force in director Shih-Ching Tsou’s delightful family dramedy. It’s easy to understand the duo’s collaboration; they co-directed Take Out in 2004, and have had a working relationship together on most of Baker’s projects in the intervening years. Baker’s sensibilities can be seen within the story (he’s the co-writer of the screenplay along with Tsou, and serves as the film’s editor), but the film is more than a triumph of good editing and writing.
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield, Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, Gabrielle Rose, Clare Coulter
Grade: B
Motherhood, and all its terrifyingly wonderful aspects, has rarely been rendered with as much dimension as in Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love. The Scottish writer-director is at her best when she’s tapped into fractured psyches, and the destruction they often wreak on others (You Were Never Really Here and We Need to Talk About Kevin), but her latest is no different, utilizing a scorching lead performance from Jennifer Lawrence. And though it’s often captivating and visceral, the film’s meandering plot tends to wear down the viewer throughout its 2-hour runtime.
Starring: Renata Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning
Grade: A-
Beloved international auteur Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), the ersatz lead character of Sentimental Value, has written what may be his best, and possibly last, film, and he’s written it especially with his daughter Nora (Renata Reinsve) in mind for the lead role. For any actor, this would be seen as a no-brainer decision to gain some bona fide recognition. But Nora rejects his film, without even reading the script, and the remainder of Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s latest film presents an intriguing, nuanced look at why.
Starring: Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, William H. Macy, Kerry Condon, Clifton Collins Jr., Will Patton
Grade: A
In the entire history of the universe, since matter was first created, the time which humans have occupied on Earth has been microscopic. And the average life span of an average human fractures that already tiny number into an even smaller percentage. In other words, the modern world which you or I are seeing and experiencing is just a small bit of what’s come before and what will come after. This is, ostensibly, a review of Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams, the best film of the year, but because it’s a film that spoke to me on a deeper, more human level than any film in a long time, I feel it warrants a more philosophical and personal discussion.
Starring: Collin Farrell, Fala Chen, Tilda Swinton, Deanie Yip Tak-Han, Alex Jennings, Jason Tobin, Adrienne Lau
Grade: C+
Every gambler knows that, sooner or later, no matter how hot their streak becomes, they’ll eventually go bust; the only variable is how much it’ll hurt when it happens. After making an international splash in 2022, director Edward Berger’s new film Ballad of a Small Player isn’t a spectacular bust, but is a relative disappointment compared to his recent output. Though it’s easy to see why Berger was drawn to making the film, the end result is a worn-out character piece full of wasted potential.
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott, Bobby Cannavale, Margaret Qualley, Jonah Lees, Simon Delaney
Grade: B
Richard Linklater’s long and illustrious career has taken him across genres, decades, countries, and styles to make one of the most varied filmographies since his rise on the indie scene in the 1990s. For his latest, Blue Moon – the first of his two films to be released in 2025 – Linklater reunites with his most constant collaborator, Ethan Hawke, to produce a new spin on the biopic. I had written in my review of Linklater’s last film that he’s always been interested in exploring the private persona versus public, and while this certainly applies here, he’s perhaps just as fascinated with the passage of time and how it can distort those same perceptions.
Starring: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr
Grade: A-
Getting any film made, even under the best of circumstances, is a small kind of miracle. For auteur Jafar Panahi, getting a film made under the Iranian regime is another kind of miracle entirely – not to mention an active act of resistance. Panahi has faced difficulties making films before (his last film, No Bears, was made while he was under house arrest). But It Was Just an Accident is as openly critical towards his government as possible, and presents a moral and existential quandary that anyone can relate to when living under fear.
Below is my conversation with Lauren Z. Ray, the director of Winter Fantasy, a documentary about the small town of Logansport, Indiana, and the theater program that forms a kind of backbone throughout the community for its young artists. The film is making its World Premiere at the Heartland Film Festival. We discuss her thought process behind inserting herself in the film, the universality of small-town theater programs, and life in the arts post-high school. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Ben Sears: Logansport is such a unique place, and the film really captures that nicely.
Lauren Z. Ray: That was part of the goal. I always wanted to showcase Winter Fantasy, but I wanted to make this film very Logansport and very Hoosier as well. I kind of had this bucket list of items that I wanted to include, whether it’s a quick B-roll shot or a scene, just to give that texture and vibe to everything. In Indiana, I always think they have fantastic sunsets, so I wanted to include that, or a bonfire, which were very special to me when I was growing up.
BS: Did you have a goal in mind when you first conceived of the film, besides featuring the program? Did the story change at all throughout production?
LR: Totally, the initial idea was a micro-doc, under 20 minutes. I just wanted to showcase what Winter Fantasy is, and that’s it. But I hadn’t really been back to my high school, or talked to anybody in 10 years. But upon arriving, as I started setting up interviews and going through all my old things, I didn’t even really think of myself at first, but I started getting nostalgic.
My first interview is with the manager of McHale, and after that interview, I wanted to just explore everything with high school and Winter Fantasy, so I went through everything in my bedroom. That’s when I realized how much of my story needed to be included in this story in order for it to make sense. From there, I also wanted to include the stories of people who went on to become professionals after going through Winter Fantasy. Every documentary I’ve done is like detective work, it’s journalism. You learn more about the story through the interviews you do; it became a lot longer in the process of all the interviews and learning everyone’s stories. I initially wanted it to be just about Winter Fantasy, but it ended up being about my acting career, Winter Fantasy, and all the decades of people who have done the show.
BS: It’s interesting that you never even considered inserting yourself into the story because it helps to ground the story through your eyes.
LR: That’s how it felt at the time. It became more of a first-person documentary, which I had never done before. That really challenged me because I didn’t know how I could make it happen. Normally I’m the one behind the camera, so I knew I’d have to allow someone else behind the camera and help them to understand my vision. I hadn’t seen too many first-person documentaries, so I watched a lot, and I had to learn how this style is done. It was definitely a big process.
BS: You stay focused on Logansport and this specific program, but do you see this program as a microcosm of similar small town arts programs? Do you think there are similar stories like this across the country?
LR: I think so, I think it’s totally relatable. I remember when I did my first documentary, which was about a small town in Indiana, and I thought ‘this town’s really quirky and unique.’ And then everyone who saw it had a relationship to a small town across America somewhere, and it was relatable to a lot of people, even if they weren’t from this particular town. I think with this one, it was the same thing. People had either gone through their own musical theater program, or someone they knew went on to become someone from their theater program. Any time I’ve explained to someone what I was working on, people say they relate to it and they tell me stories about their programs, or their experiences with it. People totally understand that theater kids and staff tend to be very quirky by design, so I definitely think it’s a relatable topic, even though it’s just about Logansport, Indiana.
BS: You also have, later in the film, the experiences from you and your friend in Chicago, and the struggles with finding work in the arts after high school. Was that another avenue that was unplanned as well?
LR: Yes, actually, I was hoping I could get a hold of Dannie Smith. She didn’t know who I was, but I knew who she was because I went to all of her Winter Fantasy shows. I was absolutely obsessed! [laughs] I had never met her before, and the conversation we had on her couch was so crazy because of how similarly our stories had aligned. I had no idea, when I had called her initially, that she had retired from acting; I thought she was still acting. To learn that it was for similar reasons to me was really interesting.
BS: A development like that could be seen as a kind of mood killer, but in Winter Fantasy, it’s kind of hopeful, and a celebration of theater, and what people can do when they work together.
LR: I think a lot of people can relate to that as well. I know a lot of people that pursued theater after high school but couldn’t find any success, so I hope they can find something relatable in that. I think, accidentally, I always try to make my stories a feel-good story of some type. Those are the types of stories that I prefer to see, myself.
BS: Have you shown the film to the Logansport community at large yet?
LR: I haven’t. I’m very excited to do that, though. In January of this year, literally a week after I had finished, I had the cast come and see the film. Heartland is taking place during the school’s fall break, so that didn’t work out for them to screen it. But on November 8th, I’m going back to Logansport again, and I’ll do a public screening at McHale auditorium. I’m very excited, and this year’s Winter Fantasy is the following weekend, so I’m hoping it’ll hype up the town to show up and support that show this year.
Winter Fantasy will have in-person screenings at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis, and will be available to stream online throughout the festival.Buy tickets here.
There are over 300 companies today throughout Japan employing actors, not for film or television roles, but as ordinary people helping other ordinary people to get through the day. Rental Family explores the almost too bizarre to be true phenomenon and the emotional toll it takes from both sides. It’s a slam-dunk premise for a weepy dramedy, but director Hikari’s film is too unfocused to be as resonant as intended.
The Movie State 