Welcome to Monday Miniatures, where I tell you about some of the stuff I’ve been watching in the past week that I wouldn’t otherwise get to share.
The week of Nov. 3-Nov. 9, 2025:
Bugonia, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
How I watched it: In theaters (AMC Americana)
As much of the world did, I fell in love with Lanthimos as a filmmaker after seeing 2010’s Dogtooth. I have greatly enjoyed watching his evolution as a filmmaker and the evolution of his films over the past 15 years. Bugonia represents the director as his most Dogtooth since Dogtooth, and it’s a breath of fresh air – or a sigh of relief if, like I was, you were feeling a little stultified after the one-two punch of Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness.
Bugonia is a tense, electrifying (pun intended, if you’ve seen the movie) thriller about humanity’s dual needs to find something or someone to blame for why things feel so bad right now and for that something or someone to be not our fault and out of our control. All conspiracy theories are born from the need to make order out of chaos, to find meaning in randomness. The proliferation of the internet and, in particular, social media has only made it easier for people selling answers to find a ravenous audience of buyers. Of course, just because you bought it doesn’t make it real, another key fact of the internet age.
I have not seen the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet!, on which this is based. I would like to, and my understanding is that Bugonia writer Will Tracy (The Menu) hews pretty close to the original text. That said, there are elements that feel very 2020s. A few examples: 22 years ago, internet rabbit holes didn’t exist the same way they do now; conspiracies in 2003 existed at the fringes of society, not as an essential thread of our political fabric; the pharma CEO played by Emma Stone, girl-bossing and leaning in, could only have come from the past decade.
All of which is to say this feels like an essential film for our moment. Jesse Plemons’ conspiracy-obsessed kidnapper feels real and tragic in the same way it feels to watch anyone construct the architecture of his own demise. You have brought this upon yourself, but that doesn’t make it any less sad that we live in a world in which your brain can break in this way. It is in fact a world that profits and feeds off your brokenness.
There are some missteps in the third act that I have been grappling with since seeing this movie, but the final images are so haunting and poetic, and not just a little prophetic, that I’m willing to forgive a lot. I guess what I’m saying is: It’s good to have Lanthimos back in his wheelhouse. At his best, no one is doing it like him.
Nouvelle Vague, directed by Richard Linklater
How I watched it: In theaters (Landmark Playhouse, Pasadena)
A movie about one of the most iconoclastic filmmakers of all time making one of the most influential films of all time shouldn’t be this darn conventional, but here we are. I was trepidatious based on the trailer that Linklater, in directing this movie about Jean-Luc Godard directing Breathless, would attempt to ape the master’s style. The trailer is cut in such a way to remind one of later-period Godard. At least Linklater does not do that. Unfortunately, he failed to substitute in any style of his own.
Loaded with a Marvel level of Easter eggs, film history buffs will enjoy the dopamine hit of recognition when they see French New Wave figures paraded around for little reason other than to acknowledge that they were there, too. ‘Look! It’s Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy! Did you know they were married?’ The movie even helpfully puts a little chiron on the screen telling you who each person is as they flash by on screen, just so the audience knows the movie knows what it’s doing.
The worst sin this kind of movie can commit, to my mind, is to have the characters be humorously unaware of the future, those moments when the filmmakers try to have a little wink-wink, nudge-nudge metatextual fun with the audience. I call it Pirates of Silicon Valley syndrome, a made-for-TV movie from 1999 in which Steve Jobs berates Bill Gates while questioning, “Windows? What the heck is Windows?” Even as a kid, I knew that was silly.
A lot of this movie, however, falls into that trap, with Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) remarking early and often on how glad they are no one will ever see this stinker of a film they’re making. The moneymen on screen doubt the film will ever make a dime, which I’m sure was true, but you can feel the movie winking.
Kudos to Guillaume Marbeck, who plays Godard, for infusing some of the real man’s anarchic spirit into the film, even if the rest of the movie lacks that same soul. Marbeck captures perfectly what one imagines the young, cocky, but unproven Godard to be like as he made his cinematic debut. As a whole, the movie is fun if you absolutely, positively love the French New Wave, and even then, only just fun enough.
Cover-Up, directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus
How I watched it: In theaters (Aero Theatre)
Poitras originally wanted to make a documentary about investigative journalist Seymour Hersh back in 2005. He declined, and in the ensuing 20 years, Poitras herself has proven to be one of the great investigative documentarians of her time. More than that, she is one of the great chroniclers of individuals standing up for truth (or their interpretation of truth) in the face of overwhelming power and pressure.
Her Oscar-winning Citizenfour, about whistleblower Edward Snowden, is the defining document of the post-9/11 surveillance era. She followed that up with portraits of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks (Risk) and Nan Goldin’s battle against the Sackler family (All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, for my money, her masterpiece). Now, she returns to the subject of Hersh at a critical time for truth in politics, guts in media, and the journalist’s own legacy.
Poitras appeared at the Aero Theater on Saturday for an advanced screening of the film and a wide-ranging and thoughtful, if not terribly hopeful, Q&A afterward. I can’t say for certain what Poitras’ approach would have been in 2005, but it is clear two decades of involvement in the geopolitical happenings in this country have informed the filmmaker’s approach to the material.
It would be easy enough to make this film a hagiography of Hersh, whose accomplishments as a journalist include breaking the My Lai massacre, furthering the Watergate investigation, and uncovering evidence of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Poitras, however, is smarter than that and well aware that the past 15 years or so have not been kind to Hersh’s legacy, whether because of shoddy reporting, poor instincts, or single-sourcing some of his pieces. These are all fair criticisms that do nothing to diminish Hersh’s accomplishments, but it takes just one stain to tarnish a brand built on truth.
Instead, Poitras and co-director Obenhaus use Hersh’s reporting to craft a timeline that lays out 60 years of government lies, scandals, and (lending the film its title) cover-ups. From Vietnam to Iraq to today, the machinery of power has operated in much the same fashion. And even in the time of Watergate, it took a monumental amount of effort across a vast network of journalists even to begin to dismantle that machinery. Today, for so many reasons, it feels less possible than ever.
From the perpetuation of conspiracies to the consolidation and conglomeration of media, the debasement of journalism, and the undermining of the very concept of facts, it has never been more difficult to speak truth to power. Poitras has built a career depicting people who preach openness, honesty, and accountability, but at the end of the day, the filmmaker herself may be the greatest practitioner of that which they preach.
Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese
How I watched it: Blu-ray I own
Sometimes, it’s just good to remind yourself why the great ones are great. I threw this on while working the other day and found myself glued to the screen, even still for a movie I’ve seen 40 or 50 times. It never gets old, and the filmmaking remains as vital today as the day it was released. If you haven’t seen this in a while, do yourself a favor and pop it on.
