New movie review: The Killer

Michael Fassbender, in The Killer

It would be a lot easier to be a big fan of the collected works of David Fincher. There is nothing controversial in proclaiming The Social Network one of the best films of the 2010s. No one bats an eye if you observe that Zodiac is a top-shelf crime procedural. There is, of course, the cult of Fight Club. The director is famed for his numerous takes, and over the years, his dedication to his process has become its own sort of mythology. I’m very happy for everyone, but it’s also okay to want more.

Speaking of wanting more, enter: The Killer. Fincher’s latest is a sleek little thriller that sure seems to be a lot of fun. After all, who doesn’t want to watch a globetrotting assassin story with Michael Fassbender at the center? Insert your Assassin’s Creed jokes here. The performance is great. The pictures are pretty. There is, however, an emptiness at the film’s core different from that intended by Fincher and screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker.

The film is nihilistic to a fault, which in and of itself feels a tad “been there, done that” from the guys who made Se7en. But, at the end, this was not the emptiness I felt. Rather, I sensed a thematic void. The movie spends a lot of words – a lot of words; truly, Fassbender’s Killer is almost shockingly loquacious – saying virtually nothing at all. Its defenders would have you believe this is a feature, not a bug, but I’m not buying it.

I have heard the lead character is intentionally dull, that the point is the dullness. This would hold water if not for the fact that when push comes to shove, the unnamed killer pulls out enough Jason Bourne- and John Wick-style tricks to seem sufficiently badass for a college dorm room poster. Indeed, the image of Fassbender pointing his gun directly at you will make a nice companion piece to that Tyler Durden poster your freshman year roommate definitely had.

There is no point in penalizing a filmmaker for an audience misunderstanding his work. It is not Fincher’s fault that Project Mayhem now carries a lot of Proud Boy baggage for those who lack a sense of irony or self-awareness. Still, the director seems to have ascended in the culture to that rarified air where his weak spots are declared intentional satire, and detractors are accused of not getting the joke. Make no mistake, there are jokes, and I get them. It’s just that no amount of humor can cover for what’s lacking underneath.

For instance, it’s very funny that we hear the Killer repeatedly recite a set of rules for pulling off an assassination, then proceed to break every one of these rules and never pull off a successful assassination. But, that’s it. That’s the joke. It doesn’t mean anything that he tells us, in that incessant voiceover, he is one of the best assassins in the world, then proceeds to fail at the one thing at which he’s supposed to be an expert. At best, it’s a weak joke, and at worst, it’s a story flaw.

It gets worse the deeper you dig – and from here on out, spoilers if you intend to watch The Killer – so let’s dig. After the Killer botches the opening assassination, he is targeted for elimination by some other hired guns. Those hired guns show up at his house in the Dominican Republic and badly injure – but don’t kill; I guess they’re not very good either, despite us being told they are – the Killer’s girlfriend. 

We will never learn much about this girlfriend. Her name is Magdala, and she is played by Sophie Charlotte, who is given nothing to do. She’s just a function of the plot, a reason for Fassbender’s assassin to go on, what Tarantino might call, a “roaring rampage of revenge.” Ah, but therein lies the rub. See, one of those rules he lives by is to “fight only the battle you’re paid to fight.” He will spend the rest of the film working pro bono. Again, funny, but empty.

Finally, there is the movie’s most curious choice, one I have not been able to stop thinking about and pondering, ‘Why?’ The Killer does, in fact, kill a lot of people, and every single one of them is a woman or person of color. He is hired by a white, male billionaire to kill another white, male presumably billionaire, neither of whom ends up dead. So, where does that leave us? I see two options.

One, it’s a mistake of casting. The Lawyer (Charles Parnell) doesn’t have to be black. The Expert (Tilda Swinton; we’ll come back to her) doesn’t have to be a woman. The Brute (played by Sala Baker, who is Kiwi) does not have to be ambiguously non-white. Maybe it just happened to work out that way. But, I don’t think so. The famously meticulous Fincher doesn’t leave anything to chance.

This leaves option 2: It’s intentional and meant as commentary. I’ll take a stab at it: When the elite clash, marginalized people suffer. Fine. It is perhaps marginally subtler than Fight Club in its messaging, but there is no more meat on the bone. The Killer represents whatever function of capitalism you wish to rage against, but he’s still fun. He’s still the POV character, and Fincher and Walker position him as the person we’re meant to root for, without reservation.

It is the Tyler Durden problem once more. Fincher, a consummate stylist, simply can’t make the character anything less than cool. With his keto diet, Smiths playlist, and eighth-grade nihilism, he certainly seems like someone who would listen to Joe Rogan. This is a person I know for a fact Fincher hates, but the script and filmmaking lack the restraint of style to make the critique stick.

A quick word on the performances: I will highlight two in particular, though everyone else does lovely work. Fassbender is in nearly every frame of this thing, and he is magnificent, reminding us why we loved him in the first place. Coming off a rough stretch (including The Snowman, X-Men: Apocalypse, Assassin’s Creed, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix, all reviled) and time away from acting to raise a family and race cars, this will be seen as a huge win for the actor. Warmly received and popular on streaming, if not at the box office, we can say that Fassbender is back, and hopefully, he gets more chances to do his thing.

Swinton, meanwhile, anchors the film’s finest stretch. As one of the assassins hired to kill the Killer, she is sitting down to a quiet meal alone in a fine-dining establishment when the Killer takes a seat across from her (along came a spider who sat down beside her). The dialogue is no great shakes, but Swinton and Fassbender sell the hell out of it. And for once, Fincher lets the actors lead, setting his camera down and just watching these two great performers work together. I could have watched 90 minutes of just this scene, but alas, there was more to be done, none of it equalling these heights.

Ultimately, maybe I’m not criticizing the movie Fincher made so much as the movie people will see. But, you would think the guy who made Fight Club would have learned to be a little more careful with his aim. As the Killer would know, the ricochet can be brutal.

New movie review: Albert Brooks: Defending My Life

Albert Brooks (left) and Rob Reiner, in Albert Brooks: Defending My Life

“You think I see two roads.” – Albert Brooks, in Albert Brooks: Defending My Life

Albert Brooks has been with me my whole life. I can’t say what the first thing I saw him in would have been, but I know it was early. It could have been The Simpsons, where he made his first guest appearance in 1990. Maybe it was The Scout, a 1994 baseball movie that would have been on the shelf at the video rental store at the exact moment in my life that I was watching every baseball movie in existence. The true beginning doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s been there.

Rob Reiner’s new film, Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, is a documentary about Brooks, yes, but it’s also a chronicle of all the ways he’s been there and all the people he inspired along the way. Reiner, who has been best friends with Brooks since they were in high school together, takes us through every stage of Brooks’ amazing career.

We see the early variety and talk show appearances, which presage what we would now call the alt-comedy movement. We see the early short films he made for Saturday Night Live, a tradition that continues on the show to this day. There is a brief standup career, which serves as proof that a mind like Brooks’ cannot be confined to the stage. No, this act must be presented before the largest audience possible, which means TV and, of course, the movies.

The movies. The first Brooks-directed film I saw was Defending Your Life, a staple of TBS in the late ‘90s. About a man who arrives in Judgment City, the way station between life and the afterlife, the premise held much appeal for a kid who was scared of dying. We don’t know where those trams are going at the end of the movie, but they must be headed somewhere, and anywhere would be better than the void. It’s a wonderful fantasy.

Brooks tells Reiner that Meryl Streep approached him at a party and (maybe) jokingly asked if there was a role in the movie for her. He demurred, then realized, ‘Well, yeah, of course there’s a part for Meryl Streep.’ She is, naturally, excellent in the film.

Reiner’s documentary is full of these kinds of Hollywood stories and behind-the-scenes anecdotes. Much of the film is told by Brooks to Reiner as they sit at a restaurant booth together, á la My Dinner with Andre. There are clips from just about everything Brooks has been a major part of, and there are interviews with everyone from David Letterman to Neil DeGrasse Tyson to Steven Spielberg. It’s a tremendous boon to the film that Reiner can call upon his famous friends, but the stories make it clear that for most of the interviewees, the privilege is theirs to be able to honor Brooks in this way.

Along with Woody Allen and Mel Brooks, Albert Brooks absolutely deserves to be in the conversation as one of the best comedic filmmakers of the 1970s and ‘80s. Allen had the accolades and the prodigious work ethic, while Mel Brooks had the bigger-than-life spoofs and outrageous gags. Albert Brooks instead flew under the radar, working rarely and often with little help from the studios. A number of the doc’s best stories involve Brooks getting studio notes, then ignoring them to his films’ great benefit.

So, Brooks has never won an Academy Award nor had a particularly big box office hit. He is what we would refer to as a “filmmaker’s filmmaker.” Other artists love him because they get it. Brooks is simply always ahead of the curve. With hindsight, though, it seems apparent that Brooks’ first three films – Real Life (1979), Modern Romance (1981), and Lost in America (1985) – serve as the sharpest critique of yuppie culture that we have. Each remains relevant today, and in many ways, they grow more relevant every day.

Watching these early films makes you feel like you are in on a secret, and no matter when you discover them, you feel that Brooks is speaking directly to you about the world you occupy. Twenty-one years before Survivor landed and changed the television landscape, there was Real Life, a perfect distillation of what reality TV would become. Give the two leads in Modern Romance a couple iPhones and it becomes virtually indistinguishable from dating in the 2020s.

Lost in America was explicitly about the post-Vietnam generation of yuppies who were too busy consuming to concern themselves with the bigger questions. But, release it today and see what millennial doesn’t identify with the desire to chuck it all and start over, while feeling trapped by the relentless grind of life. There is no generational divide when it comes to middle-class, middle-aged ennui.

Ahead of his time at every turn, Brooks is very obviously a genius, but he is also a comedic genius, and one thing I am underselling is just how damn funny this movie is. Whether it’s your first time seeing the ventriloquist act or the 50th, it remains riotously funny. Even today, the 76-year-old Brooks, né Albert Einstein, is as quick-witted as ever, cracking up Reiner at every opportunity.

There are brief sections, as well, on an acting career that features pitch-perfect supporting turns in everything from Taxi Driver to Drive to his Oscar-nominated performance in Broadcast News. Obviously, he is a top-tier guest star on The Simpsons, serving as the best part of one of the single greatest episodes of perhaps the greatest television show ever made (Hank Scorpio, “You Only Move Twice”; enjoy).

For me, though, it all comes back to the movies and wishing we got more than just the seven features written and directed by Brooks, including just one this century. That would be 2005’s Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, another biting satire about looking for connection in an increasingly disconnected world. Of course that film would face difficulties, coming as it did in the midst of the “War on Terror,” and Brooks found himself at odds with the studio again.

In the closing moments of the documentary, Brooks says to Reiner:

“I had a very famous agent, and he said to me, ‘I don’t know why you always take the hard road.’ And, my answer was, ‘You think I see two roads, and I don’t. If there was an easy road, I’d have a house there.’ I said, ‘What do you think? I get up. I can’t wait for the goddamn trouble I’m gonna get into.’ I said, ‘... I see one road.’”

This hit me hard. I’m no longer a kid, afraid of death. I can accept the void. At 35, if I’m very lucky, maybe I have a little more life in front of me than behind me, but there’s only one road, and it only goes one direction. That’s true for all of us, and all we can do is the best we can. And, hopefully, if there is a Judgment City out there, our best is enough.

New movie review: Anatomy of a Fall

The first thing we see is a tennis ball haphazardly tumbling down the stairs. We never see what caused it to tumble, who might have thrown it, dropped it, or perhaps accidentally knocked it. We accept the mystery because in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter. Anatomy of a Fall will ask us to accept the mystery many more times over the course of its story, and we will learn bitterly that some mysteries are easier to accept than others.

Director Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or-winning drama forces us to confront the way our culture has turned murder into a spectator sport by way of true crime podcasts, sensationalized media, and our own need for tidy endings and easy answers. It is a brilliant piece of work that instantly joins the pantheon of that ever-vaunted genre: the legal thriller.

And yet, it stands above such genre trappings. Triet employs a sense of style rare among courtroom dramas, and even the best American legal thrillers can tend toward formula. Anatomy of a Fall is anything but formulaic. Yes, it helps that to outsiders, such as myself, the French trial process will seem downright bizarre, but the film’s specialness goes beyond any cultural oddities. Its genius lies in the multitude of small, human interactions it gets right, in its deft handling of the subjective and objective points of view, and in the wonderful performances Triet gets from her actors.

Chief among these, of course, is German star Sandra Hüller, whom you may recognize from the international breakout hit Toni Erdmann or 2021’s lovely I’m Your Man. Here, Hüller is given the unenviable task of playing a woman so convinced of her own righteousness that she can seem aloof or unfeeling. In her most private moments, however, we can see that she is anything but. Rather, she simply seems tired of participating in the games so many others are committed to playing. Her Sandra wants what she wants, and right or not, she is willing to take it.

In a subtle bit of foreshadowing, we hear Sandra before we see her. Over images of that falling tennis ball we mentioned, we hear Sandra talking to a student who hopes to base her thesis at least in part on Sandra’s work. Sandra is an author who has based much of her fiction on circumstances from her own life, as many authors do, but she comes off as strangely unaware of the many parallels that exist. 

Their conversation, which is being recorded for the student’s notes, can be read two ways, and Hüller plays that space between perfectly. On the one hand, Sandra is a German woman who has moved to her French husband’s small hometown, and with few, if any, friends, she could be seeking comfort in a genuine human connection. On the other hand, as she drinks what is not her first glass of wine this afternoon, the bi-sexual Sandra may be trying to seduce the student, literally right under the nose of her husband, who is working upstairs.

Friendship or seduction? It could be either, and this is the first time but not the last that we are asked to live in the mystery. This same tension underlies everything that follows, emphasizing just how ephemeral the idea of objective truth really is.

Triet drives this point home in the film’s standout scene, one of the best scenes in any movie this year. Sandra is on trial, accused of murdering her husband, Samuel (a superb Samuel Theis), and the prosecution reveals it has a secret recording of a fight between the couple that occurred the day before Samuel’s death. The fight takes place in English, so the members of the court are provided a French transcript so that they may follow along with the recording.

For the first time in the film, we get a true flashback. We finally get to meet Samuel, who has been a ghost haunting the film up until this point. We see the husband and wife argue. It starts off small, turns petty, then explodes, as arguments between long-term couples with simmering resentments are wont to do. 

From a filmmaking standpoint, it is a bravura sequence, with Hüller and Theis delivering wonderfully lived-in performances, convincing as two exhausted people who have been through this before, too many times. The writing is a masterstroke of observation, exemplifying the ways small grievances fester and turn toxic, poisoning a relationship. In this one scene, we learn everything we could ever need to know about who these people were, who they are, and how they got this way.

It is absolutely devastating to witness these two people verbally tear each other to shreds. Then, at the peak of the emotional tension, just as it is about to boil over into physical violence, Triet cuts back to the courtroom. On the recording playing for the jury, we hear glass break, a slap, more breaking glass and possibly dishes, and more physical violence.

The director does not cut away here to shield us from the brutality that is evident. The film is unsparing in what it chooses to show us. Rather, once the confrontation turns physical, it exits the world of objective truth and becomes something subjective. The transcript, the recorded words, this is all that can be known for sure, so we are allowed to see it. What happens outside of that must be interpreted, guessed at. Sandra provides an explanation, but it is only her side. We are not allowed to see it because that would be the film showing us something that cannot be known.

The argument sequence is one of those rare, magical moments in cinema when everything – the writing, the themes, the performances, the filmmaking – comes together at once to crystallize whatever the filmmaker is trying to say. Every single person I have spoken to about the film has mentioned this scene. It has a way of sticking with you long after you leave the theater. You feel compelled to play it back in your mind, thinking through the twists and turns, looking for some clue that explains it all. I’ll save you the time: No such clue exists.

This is Triet’s and co-writer Arthur Harari’s final trick. The media are filled with lurid true-crime tales and murder-of-the-week stories that teach us to look for the signs, to be junior detectives, parsing every detail for information. Generally, at the end of these stories, the clues add up, the murderer is caught, and we are satisfied that wrongs have been righted and justice prevails. Anatomy of a Fall exposes these stories for what they are: wish fulfillment. Life is so often messier, and Triet and Harari understand this.

Sandra’s attorney has argued that Samuel killed himself, though Sandra herself doubts this theory. At one point, a TV commentator says plainly that a famous writer murdering her husband is a lot more interesting than a sad teacher killing himself. During the trial sequences, Triet often cuts to the gallery, filled with spectators who have no skin in the game but their own fascination with a dead man and an accused woman. They are invested in a story of a murder, not a story of facts and truth.

Among these spectators sits Daniel, Sandra and Samuel’s preteen son. Played by Milo Machado-Graner, in one of the greatest child actor performances you will ever see, Daniel is the collateral damage of a marriage turned sour, a culture turned cold. The final half-hour turns on what Daniel may or may not remember and what he chooses to do with that memory. His process is gut wrenching to witness, and we know that no matter what choice he makes, he will never be the same.

At the end of the day, when we cannot know the truth, all we are left with is a choice about what to think and whom to believe. In general, movies are a safe space because filmmakers are omnipotent. Even the best, most subtle films offer us objective stories wherein we can feel secure because we will be told what is real and what to feel. Anatomy of a Fall is anything but a safe movie, and therein lies its power.

We All Fall Down: The 10 Most Anticipated Movies Of 2023

Emma Stone, in Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things

It’s strike season in Hollywood, and Last Cinema Standing stands with the Writers and Screen Actors guilds. What is at stake in this work stoppage is nothing less than the very future of an industry I care deeply about, and it is fair to say at this point that only one side seems to care if the industry even has a future.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has already said it is willing to starve writers out of their homes before it would be willing to negotiate reasonable terms. In case a producer is reading this but has somehow never seen a film or television show, that makes the AMPTP the villain. And if choking off the livelihoods of the same people who create the products they sell weren’t enough, the producers also seem willing to cut off the supply of that product to the places where it is sold. Namely, movie theaters.

So, we come to this, the seventh edition of Last Cinema Standing’s Most Anticipated Movies of the Fall, from an odd place. Since it seems the strikes most likely will continue through the holidays and studios have no actors to promote their films, those films are slowly but surely being removed from the release calendar. Though all of the films in the list below have either premiered at festivals or been given fall release dates, there is no guarantee any of them will, in fact, be released this year.

The No. 2 film on the list – Yorgos Lanthimos’ Emma Stone-starring fantasy Poor Things – was supposed to come out next week, but due to the ongoing strike, it was pushed back to December. Assuming the strike will continue through December, there is nothing to suggest the studio will not continue pushing the release. And, that is just one film.

Other films have already moved to tentative places on the 2024 calendar, such as Luca Guadagnino’s tennis drama Challengers and the Ghostbusters reboot sequel. In the middle of writing this piece, Denis Villeneuve’s highly anticipated Dune: Part Two, which had already moved multiple times and seemed always on the chopping block, was exiled from this year’s slate. None of that is to mention the films that shut down mid-production and may or may not ever return.

All film fans can do is wait and see and hope the producers come to their senses, showing some affinity for the business they run. As of now, they seem downright resentful of the fact that human beings – artists – have to be involved in the process at all or that those people would like to be paid for their work. It reminds of the line in Goodfellas when Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill talks of his friend, Jimmy, after pulling off the biggest heist in American history: “It made him sick to have to turn the money over to the guys who stole it. He’d rather whack them.” Once again, for clarification, Jimmy is the bad guy. 

To transition rather inelegantly to the task at hand, one of the lesser shames of the situation is that the slate of films we are due to receive this year has the potential to be monumental, assuming all or most of them are released. The list of films that did not make my top 10 would itself make a fine top 10 in another year.

These include Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla and new films from indie stalwarts Todd Haynes (May December), Alexander Payne (The Holdovers), Andrew Haigh (All of Us Strangers), and John Carney (Flora and Son). There is also the return of Michael Fassbender to the big screen after a six-year break during which he has raced cars and raised a family. He will star in new films from both David Fincher and Taika Waititi.

Pedro Almodóvar is set to make his English-language debut after decades of conquering Spanish cinema with Strange Way of Life, while Michael Mann will offer Ferrari, starring the aptly named Adam Driver as automotive mogul Enzo Ferrari. Let us hope Driver has traded in whatever that Italian accent he was doing in House of Gucci for something a little less arch. Finally, Emerald Fennell, hot off a supporting acting turn in the phenomenon that is Barbie, returns with her first film since the Oscar-winning Promising Young Woman: Saltburn.

Those films alone would constitute an embarrassment of riches, and yet, here we are with 10 films that stand tall above the rest. Last Cinema Standing’s 10 Most Anticipated Movies of Fall 2023:

10. El Conde, directed by Pablo Larraín

Release date: Sept. 15

From No to Neruda to Jackie to Spencer, Larraín consistently crafts the most exciting, inventive, and visually splendid films based on the lives of real people. None of these films could rightly be considered a biopic. Rather, they are deep dives into the psyches of their subjects. With El Conde, he appears to be taking his biggest swing yet, portraying the reviled Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as an actual vampire. The conceit alone would sell tickets, but it is the anticipation of what Larraín might do with it that will get me in the theater.

9. The Bikeriders, directed by Jeff Nichols

Release date: Dec. 1

We will get to another pair of famous director-actor collaborators further down this list, but let’s take a moment to appreciate Nichols and longtime friend Michael Shannon. Nichols has never made a bad movie, and Shannon is incapable of giving a bad performance. In their five previous films together, Shannon has not always been the lead, but Nichols has always brought out something new and interesting in the performer. This story of a 1960s motorcycle club, which has been a passion project of Nichols’ for nearly a decade, would seem to promise more of the same.

8. The Zone of Interest, directed by Jonathan Glazer

Release date: Dec. 8

Sometimes a movie gets such great notices out of its festival premiere that it becomes an instant must-see. Parasite was like that after it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2019. Now comes The Zone of Interest from Glazer, which was the talk of the festival this year at Cannes, where it won the Grand Prix (traditionally considered second prize; the Palme was reserved for a film a little further up this list). This is Glazer’s first film since his beloved indie sci-fi flick Under the Skin in 2013, a fact that would have made this follow-up a curiosity anyway, but the glowing notices from France have sent my level of interest through the roof.

7. Fallen Leaves, directed by Aki Kaurismäki

Release date: TBA

I saw Kaurismäki’s The Other Side of Hope at the Lincoln Center in 2017. I found it to be charming, idiosyncratic, and honest. I had never seen any of the filmmaker’s previous works, which I had somehow missed over the years. That changed during the early days of the pandemic lockdown, when the Criterion Channel offered up a retrospective of Kaurismäki’s films. I devoured them and began plotting how I would expose more people to these odd little fables that somehow achieve universality and transcendence. I will never miss one of this director’s films again.

6. Anatomy of a Fall, directed by Justine Triet

Release date: Oct. 13

I have not seen any of Triet’s work, but I am excited to familiarize myself with it. Her two films previous to this one are both available on the unsung hero of streaming services, Tubi, for anyone else who wants to check out Sybil or In Bed with Victoria. As for this film, it, of course, won the top prize at Cannes back in May, making Triet just the third woman to win the award in the history of the festival. Adding to the intrigue, the film stars the brilliant German performer Sandra Hüller, who was so excellent in films such as Toni Erdmann and I’m Your Man.

5. Napoleon, directed by Ridley Scott

Release date: Nov. 22

As Don’t Worry Darling star Harry Styles might say, sometimes a movie comes along that feels like “a real ‘go to the theater’ film movie.” As part of that picture’s disastrous press run (from a marketing standpoint; the movie was a big success, recall), that quote was widely mocked. But, you know what? I get it. And, movies like this are the reason why. Scott – the director of such epics as Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven, as well as a half-dozen or more absolute classics of modern cinema – helms a biopic about one of the most famous men in the history of modern civilization, starring one of the finest actors we have. Mock if you like, but that’s real ‘go to the theater’ film movie type stuff.

4. Occupied City, directed by Steve McQueen

Release date: TBA

I don’t have a ton of information on what lies ahead for movies in 2024, but if I had to put money on what will be my No. 1 most anticipated film of next year, I would guess Blitz, McQueen’s upcoming film about the bombing of London during World War II. While I wait for that, I will have to tide myself over with this 4-hour, 22-minute documentary about the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam from 1940-1945. The film is written by McQuen’s wife, Bianca Stigter, and based on her book, which is an exhaustive recounting of the occupation. McQueen reportedly has a 36-hour cut of this film that covers everything featured in the book. You know what? Sign me up.

3. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, directed by Radu Jude

Release date: TBA

Jude’s previous feature, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, is one of the finest films of this young decade. The one before that, I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, is equally invigorating in its formal daring and political ardor. Along with directors like Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu, and Corneliu Porumboiu, Jude is at the forefront of the Romanian New Wave, producing the most innovative and urgent films of the movement. Anything Jude puts out into the world automatically becomes a must-see event.

2. Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

Release date: Dec. 8

Perhaps I am being optimistic as I type, and once I publish, that optimism will be proven foolish. But, I am going to hope against hope that Lanthimos’ twisted, Frankenstein-style fantasy fable makes its way to movie screens this year. There was even a time when we thought we might get two new pictures from the Greek auteur this year, but let’s not be greedy. We’ll get AND when we get it. For now, we’ll just pray to the gods of cinema that this gorgeous looking film makes its Dec. 8 release date, and we get to see this amazing cast in a story that promises to be truly unique.

1. Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese

Release date: Oct. 6

It could be nothing else. It would never be anything else. How could it ever be something else? Our greatest living film director is making an epic western crime picture about the systematic murder of indigenous peoples and the theft of their money and property. It stars the finest actor of his generation – Leonardo DiCaprio – and features a supporting turn by the perhaps the finest film actor of all time – Robert De Niro. Add to that a performance by indigenous performer Lily Gladstone that by all accounts steals the picture out from under both of them.

The story of what happened to the Osage Nation is timely and relevant. The picture looks beautifully mounted, of course; this is Scorsese’s third straight collaboration with director of photography Rodrigo Prieto after Silence and The Irishman and first time working with the brilliant production designer Jack Fisk. There could be nothing bigger. 

This is why movies matter. This is why theaters matter. This is why the people who write these films and star in them – as well as every single other person who works on them – matter. And, this is what the AMPTP wants to take away. First, destroy the soul of the thing, then destroy the thing itself. In this case, that “thing” is art, and these are our finest artists.