Since the first teaser trailer for Greta Gerwig's Barbie was made public in December 2022, anticipation for the movie has increased. Now that we're getting closer and closer to the 21 July release date, the hype could not be higher. The question on every Barbie (or Ken) fan's mind is: will the movie live up to all of this excitement? Some very lucky people got to see it on Sunday night at the world premiere. When you're done oohing and ahhing at the aesthetically pleasing and on brand premiere outfits the cast was flaunting, you can read on to get a gist of how the first official screening of the film made audiences feel. Barbie's world may be made in plastic, but was it fantastic?
From the glowing reactions that viewers shared on social media, it sure seems like the bright pink summer blockbuster might just be a dream come true. Joseph Deckelmeier, writer at ScreenRant, described the film as “funny, bombastic and very smart." He praised the cast's performances as "pure entertainment." And what more could you want from a pastel coloured fantasy film? Variety's Kacy Stephan took to Twitter to share her thoughts on the screening, calling it "a nuanced commentary on what it means to be a woman in a whimsical, wonderful and laugh-out-loud funny romp." ComicBook.com writer Jamie Jirak gushed that director Gerwig "tackles the positives and negatives of Barbie so beautifully." And demands that the Academy "give Ryan Gosling an Oscar nomination, I'm dead serious!”
If you're not already on the edge of your seat awaiting the official release of the candy coloured and bubble gum pop fuelled spectacle, read some more praise for the film and get ready!
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Originally published on Esquire US
We've heard about the new Timothée Chalamet-fronted Willy Wonka film for a while now. As a teaser, the actor posted an image of himself back in 2021, where he's bedecked in the signature purple coat and brown top hat. The caption—"The suspense is terrible, I hope it will last."—accompanied the image. While reaction to the images was mixed, the actor was correct: the suspense is terrible.
But now we have the full-length Wonka trailer. We follow a young Willy Wonka before his candy empire as he tries to realise his dream of having a chocolate shop, he has to face off with the Chocolate Cartel. Although Chalamet displayed mannerisms and whimsy that millennials might reference Johnny Depp's portrayal of the 2005 version of the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Wonka is actually a prequel to the Gene Wilder-led Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971).
Y'know, Gene Wilder. This face that launched a thousand Condescending Wonka memes.
While this isn't based on any existing Roald Dahl's work, fingers crossed that this prequel brings back the awe and wonder of the 1971 film. We spy musical numbers, that familiar tune of "Pure Imagination", the involvement of Keegan-Michael Key, the directing prowess of Paul King of Paddington and Paddington 2 (fight me, Paddington 2 is pretty great film). Oh, and... a (much smaller) Oompa Loompa; one that's played by Hugh Grant as he launches into a dance and the Oompa Loompa song.
The Wonka film comes out on Christmas Day in theatres.
After nearly three decades of life—having forfeited by dreams of becoming a baseball superstar, a Margaritaville mixologist, and a magazine editor—I've finally decided what I want to be when I grow up: Sonny Hayes.
Simply... Sonny Hayes.
Hayes, if you're unfamiliar, is a fictional F1 driver. Relative unknown Brad Pitt will play the (admittedly fictional) racer in Joseph Kosinski's upcoming F1 movie, which is currently untitled—and thin on plot details. Hayes even graced the real-life British Grand Prix this past weekend, filming scenes alongside fellow driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). According to ESPN, Kosinski's production set up camp on the racetrack itself, whipping around a F2 car, setting up shop in its own garage, and trotting out both characters for the national anthem. "I'm a little giddy right now, I've got to say," Pitt told Sky Sports. "It's great to be here. Having such a laugh, time of my life."
Now, there's no release date for the film—which, by the way, has F1 legend Lewis Hamilton on board as a producer—but Pitt did divulge a few details about its plot."So [Sonny Hayes] has a horrible crash, kind of craps out and disappears and is racing in other disciplines... His friend, played by Javier Bardem, is a team owner. They're a last-placed owner, 21, 22 on the grid. They've never scored a point. They have a young phenom played by Damson Idris. He brings me in as a kind of Hail Mary, and hijinks ensue."
Pitt also hinted that we'll see some of Kosinski's signature camera tricks, a la his last film, Top Gun: Maverick: "Tell you what's amazing about it," Pitt continued. "You'll see the cameras mounted all over the car. You've never seen speed, you've never seen the G-forces like this. it's really amazing."
But I don't want you to think about that right now. At this very moment? I'd simply like to direct your attention to how damn cool—and believable!—Pitt looks in F1 gear. Look at the shot below. The man's strutting across the grass in a white suit, has ads for god-knows-what all over it, and he doesn't care about the prying journalist and his newsboy hat. He even unzips his suit at the top, because the man is biologically flame-resistant! To hell with it! Sonny Hayes even wears little racing booties, which only Sonny Hayes can make cool.
Anyway, Sonny Hayes, if you're reading this? Just know you're my hero
Originally published on Esquire US
Now this is how you do an animated Marvel film.
Spider-Man aka Mile Morales (played by Shameik Moore) travels across the Multiverse, where he meets the Spider-Society—an organisation of multidimensional Spider-People charged with protecting its very existence. It's all fun-and-transdimensional games until Morales is confronted with the truth of his origins.
I didn't think that the sequel would improve on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse but there you go. The film has equal parts action and a more intimate unpacking of the characters. Despite being 28, Shameik Moore, who voices Morales, nails that teenage register; there's that gung-ho front that's anchored with that adolescent uncertainty. We get to see the dynamics of the Morales and we are reminded about how we, as teenagers, tend to butt heads with our own parents and widen the generational gulf.
It's great to see Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld) take her place in the spotlight. In the last chapter, we just got a quick recap of her origins—bitten by a radioactive spider; joined a band; saved her dad; couldn't save her best friend, Peter Parker—which gives us what we needed to know her in 30 seconds. For Across the Spider-Verse, we get more depth to her character and how she has to wrestle with her relationship with her policeman father, George Stacy (Shea Whigham), as a daughter and as the police's most-wanted vigilante, Spider-Woman.
The new antagonist, the Spot (Jason Schwartzman) goes against the mould of your classic Marvel villain and that's refreshing. This is a dude, who resorts to robbing ATMs because that's all he can do. He starts out as a wannabe crowing for Spider-Man's attention and eventually becomes worthy. There are cameos galore, especially, when we get to the Spider-Society. There, we meet the many versions of Spider-Man that range from the brooding Ben Reilly (Andy Samberg) to the happy-go-lucky Pavitr Prabhakar, there is not a wasted minute introducing each of the Spider-Person.
And the visuals... let hosannas ring around this eye candy. When Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was released, critics crowed about their pushing the envelope in the animation field. With Across the Spider-Verse, the envelope is now pushed off the table, rolled down the hill and opened up to reveal the winner of next year's best-animated film. Eye-popping and ground-breaking, the art comes at you fast and furious. Each dimension and its characters come with their own style: Stacy's universe is more hand-painted with changing colours to reflect her emotions; Brown's universe is, according to the filmmakers, 'hand-cut, pasted, drawn, glued together' to evoke the DIY look of punk rock posters; O'Hara's world is like a 'Syd Mead-style illustration of what the future might look like'. These different styles give a more varied and believable layer to this world- I mean, universe-building.
Also, please more of Pavitr Prabhakar and lessons in grammatical redundancy:
No Spider-Man Noir? For shame!
There are a host of cameos at the Spider-Society, some as a one-note joke and others, surprising. Aside from the fire soundtrack and visual narrative touches, look out for the two narrative turns in the film: the first is a gut punch when we find out more about Morales' origin but the second twist sets up what's the come in the next chapter.
Then, there's the scene where the Spot travels to a real-world convenience store where he talks to the owner Mrs Lu (Peggy Lu). If you're like me and have wasted your time watching less-than-marvellous adaptations of anti-hero IP, you'd recognise the set from Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is now out in theatres.
See where The Super Mario Bros Movie stands in the long and complicated history of video game adaptations.
If you were a big-ticket Hollywood screenwriter, one of the toughest gigs you could get is the task of turning a video game into a coherent movie. Usually, video game stories are meant to be played and interacted with—not just consumed. It’s why running and jumping as Mario feels amazing... but hearing him talk in full sentences with Chris Pratt’s voice is unnerving.
Most games also tend to run about 30 to 60 hours long—if you don’t get addicted—and reducing all that to a tight 90 minutes is a nearly impossible task. Video games are also inherently ridiculous. You upgrade stats, collect coins, complete quests, and play out an experience unique to what you make of it. It’s something a fixed medium like film can’t even seem to get something simple like Sonic the Hedgehog right. Remember some of his adorable and cool friends like Tails and Knuckles? Well, they don’t even show up until the sequel.
But perhaps most daunting? People love their video games. The characters, the storylines, the visuals: they're all subject to insane scrutiny because you invest your time and energy and 3am. bags of Doritos to be part of these worlds. Now, we have a new adaptation to put under the microscope: The Super Mario Bros Movie. Read on to see where it stands in the long and complicated history of video game adaptations.
Jean-Claude Van Damme is one of the best action stars Hollywood has even seen, so it was only logical that a guy who starred in dozens of Die Hard clones would eventually get to work with the film’s scribe himself, Stephen E de Souza, on an adaptation of Street Fighter. Outlandish and full of impressive fighting choreography, the '90s film made for an incredibly campy rework of the 2-D arcade fighter. Especially since it (awkwardly) favored the one American character as its lead over its Japanese protagonist. Still, Van Damme can sure kick ass.
Bet you didn't think Pixels would be on here, huh? 2015 probably told you to hate anything and everything Adam Sandler. Well, it's 2021 and we like the Sandman again. Pixels is a loving, if... uneven ode to the arcade classics of the '80s (think: Pac-Man and Centipede). Plus, it stars Brian Cox and Peter Dinklage. And Michelle Monaghan. Yeah. Pixels deserves a replay.
Uncharted had so much going for it. A genuine star in Tom Holland, who plays the leading adventurer, Nathan Drake. Mark Wahlberg as his co-star. Plus, an apt director in Ruben Fleischer, whose breakout film, Zombieland, is still massively rewatchable. We hate to report that Uncharted is half of what it could've been. Which means that there are still some quips, gargantuan action setpieces, and various acts of Tom Hollanding would seeing. It's just all wrapped up in a film with scattershot pacing and not much character development for its lead.
The creative team behind the Assassin's Creed film took the correct approach. Ubisoft, the game studio, decided to snag the creative reins of the project itself and attach a reliable talent who believed in the potential of the franchise. This talent, of course, was budding Hollywood leading man Michael Fassbender. What he did with the film may not have been exactly a box office pleaser, but it was an example of a video game movie that was done artfully, made with a deep, meticulous understanding of the game series’ lore.
Say what you will about Paul WS Anderson, but he created a world all his own in the Resident Evil film series. The movies, frustratingly, diverge greatly from the storytelling of the games, but Milla Jovovich has become something of a screen icon thanks to her enduring leading role in them. While they take a lot of liberties with the Resident Evil franchise, the world-building in the films is captivating enough to make these a stand-out in the genre.
World of Warcraft is one of the most beloved video game series of all time. Its fan base is large, spanning generations of kids who, in some cases, have been playing it for decades. Duncan Jones’ take on the series showed, perhaps for the first time, what happens when a huge fan of a video game is given the keys to a film franchise. Jones is an outspoken WoW-head, and his knowledge of the series was apparent in this film.
We hate to say it, but Sonic the Hedgehog 2 doesn't go quite as fast as its predecessor, losing some of wit and charm from the first outing. That said, Ben Schwartz's gleefully chaotic work as Sonic, with a superb Idris Elba added to the mix as the echidna Knuckles, makes Sonic the Hedgehog 2 firmly one of the better films on this list.
Sure, the Mortal Kombat reboot was never going to reach the bloody, campy heights of its 1995 predecessor. But it's still a treat for gamers who grew up slicing and dicing back when the fighters were merely two-dimensional.
After Angelina Jolie’s lukewarm take on the franchise in the early 2000s, it seemed like Tomb Raider would never achieve its full potential onscreen. The series itself is extremely cinematic, and, aside from the burdensome exploitation and sexism in the games, it offers what could be a very strong woman-led Indiana Jones-type movie series. In 2018, Alicia Vikander starred in this much darker—and much more realistic—version of Tomb Raider, and she really nailed it.
The Super Mario Bros Movie is for kids. For. Kids. Please remember that, as you watch one mister Chris Pratt Mario cheese his way through Mushroom Kingdom. The Super Mario Bros Movie doesn't totally have a plot—does any Mario game ever veer too far from Mario-beats-Bowser, anyway?—so it leans on the hits. Meaning: a Mario Kart scene here, a Super Smash Bros moment there, and cameos that'll delight even the crabbiest of trolls. Just enjoy it, OK? Life's too short to dunk on an animated plumber.
Final Fantasy is another major gaming franchise that has a subculture all its own. For decades, fans wondered how their beloved RPG would look onscreen. Advent Children, the only film on this list that’s not live-action, answered that call in 2005. The imaginative and at times fully bonkers take on the beloved Square Enix series used computer-generated 3D graphics instead of real life actors, and it really blurred the line between film and gaming.
Listen, if I could give the top spot to "Speed Me Up"—the song of last summer, this summer, next summer, and the summer after that—I would. But my editor won't let me. Instead, props goes to the movie itself, which proved to be a surprisingly fun outing for the blue guy, despite months of production troubles. For better or worse, we'll probably always remember Sonic the Hedgehog as the last movie we saw in theatres before the pandemic.
OK. Wreck-It Ralph isn't technically a video game movie, in that Wreck-It Ralph doesn't exist as a game IRL. But the film imagines a world where arcade game characters meet up in a digital romper room, leading to a celebration of a film about video games and the bad guys that inhabit them. It's weird. It's wild. It has heart. And a Bowser cameo. What else do you need?
Pokémon as a franchise has always been a stalwart: there are the cards and the TV series and the animated films. Oh, and then there's the game itself, which has defined an entire generation. Even with all that, when Detective Pikachu was announced, there was some (rightful) skepticism about what a live-action film starring the beloved creatures might look like. Not only did the visuals deliver, but Ryan Reynolds and Justice Smith make the outing a blast to watch. Pokémon Go stream it now.
What is there to say about the Mortal Kombat movie that hasn’t already been said? It’s campy. It’s exciting. It’s dumb. It’s brilliant. The spirit of the '90s is alive in full force in this film, and to this day, the techno-futuristic-cage-match title still stands as the most satisfying video game movie to date. Sure, it may not be the most “high-art” example on this list. But Mortal Kombat perfectly captured the essence of a game franchise, and it cannot be beat.
Originally published on Esquire US
As a moviegoer—and I don’t want to speak for all moviegoers, but, hey, that’s what I’m going to do—the ideal scenario is to not just get a lot of movies coming out, and to not just get a lot of good movies coming out, but to get a lot of different kinds of good movies coming out. Surprising studio tentpoles, captivating genre pictures, audacious little indies, you name it. Great films that appeal to different tastes and identities, made in different styles and with different means.
This year hasn’t always done that. The pickings have often been slim (particularly for moviegoers who don't live in Los Angeles or New York City), and the films themselves disappointing. But April saw the best mix of films thus far—ranging from the maximalist surreality of Beau Is Afraid to the understated charm of Showing Up. There were enough strong releases this month that it felt time to finally start picking favorites. Here’s my inaugural ranking of the best movies of 2023, followed by my most anticipated releases for the rest of the year.
Sometimes a great piece of art smacks you in the face, other times its effect creeps up on you. Kelly Reichardt’s films tend to work in the latter mode, and Showing Up—one of her best—is no exception. The film follows Lizzy (Michelle Williams), a dour sculptor who works at a small Portland arts college, in the leadup to a new exhibition. Showing Up captures the realities of a working-class art-making process—the distractions, frustrations, and sporadic victories—better than any movie I can recall. Williams and Hong Chau (who plays her landlord and a fellow artist) are both better here than in their respective Oscar-nominated turns from last year. A pleasurable as the bulk of the movie is, the quietly transcendent ending is what moved me from a place of simmering enjoyment to full-boiled enthrallment.
If How to Blow Up a Pipeline was a pure popcorn thriller, it would still be one hell of a time at the movies. But Daniel Goldhaber’s follow-up to his 2018 camgirl horror flick, Cam, harnesses its edge-of-your-seat adrenaline for admirably audacious ends: To urge viewers to rethink what modern eco-activism should look like. Without becoming didactic about its politics, the film creates a context in which attacking oil infrastructure is a heroic act. It’s a subversive piece of pop entertainment, one that riffs on cinematic classics while having an eye to the future. It’s probably the film most likely to make you say “Hell yeah!” upon exiting the theater.
There is so much happening beneath the surface in Saint Omer, documentarian Alice Diop’s narrative debut. In depicting the trial of Laurence Coly, a woman charged with killing her 15-month-old daughter, as seen through the eyes of Rama (Kayije Kagame), a novelist and literary scholar, Diop constructs a meta-narrative about true crime spectatorship, cultural dislocation, myth, and motherhood. Where the French justice system tries to explain—and ultimately condemn—Coly for her actions, Diop works in the mode of observation. She’d rather raise interesting questions than seek simple answers. Leaning on long, expertly composed takes, she emphasizes the richness and inscrutability of human faces. Maybe we can’t ever truly understand each other, but there are ways to try.
I’m worried that if you haven’t seen Godland—and chances are, you haven’t—because almost anything I mention about the film will make you less likely to want to see it. It’s starless, set in the late 19th century, and takes a nuanced look at colonialism, religion, and mortality. See what I mean? But please, don’t be deterred. Hlynur Pálmason’s third feature is much less forbidding than the Icelandic elements he captures so breathtakingly in his third feature. This story of a young Danish priest’s harrowing journey to a remote region of Iceland is stunningly photographed, occasionally quite funny, and ultimately one of the few movies that actually warrants adjectives like “sublime” and “epic.” Herzog fans rejoice.
It’s abundantly evident from watching A Thousand and One that A.V. Rockwell, who directed the film, grew up in New York—and has both genuine love and deserved derision for her hometown. Rockwell’s feature debut follows Inez (a revelatory Teyana Taylor) from the mid-'90s, when she gets out of Rikers, to the present. As she tries to rebuild her life in Harlem, with a son she smuggled out of state custody, the threat of being discovered and the pressure of providing for him large. Rockwell’s character study highlights the ways people define a place, and how a place rubs off on people. A Thousand and One is clear-eyed about the toll of gentrification without being overly sentimental for a more vibrant, but still imperfect past incarnation of the city. In totality, the movie finds great beauty and pathos in a nuanced, unexpected, and drawn-out sort of tragedy.
With The Civil Dead, Clay Tatum and Whitmer Thomas have made one of my favorite comedies in… *thinks*... a long time! The film, written by the pair and directed by Tatum, finds Thomas playing a ghost only Tatum’s character can see. But this ain’t your average haunting. Rather than explore trauma or evoke fear, this is a ghost story about friendship–and how being a friend can sometimes get a little annoying. If those sound like small stakes, well, maybe they are. But the key to a good buddy movie is a good hang, and The Civil Dead delivers that and then some. Enormously funny and wonderfully idiosyncratic, it’s a very promising debut.
You have to admire Mia Goth and Alexander Skarsgaard for their sheer willingness to go there. In Brandon Cronenberg’s third feature, what happens during a vacation at a luxury resort quickly makes the drama at a White Lotus hotel feel tame. There’s enough graphic—and hallucinatory—sex, drugs, and violence that the film just skirted an NC-17 rating. Exiting the theater, my own brain felt as though it had been chemically altered. After the come down, though, the ideas Cronenberg raises about identity, self-destruction, and tourism stuck with me—though, admittedly, perhaps less so than the wonderful absurdity of Mia Goth sitting on the hood of a moving car, taunting Skarsgaard’s James, and throwing fried chicken at him.
It’s hard to flat-out love a movie as bleak and tragic as the Dardenne brothers’ latest, but it’s even harder not to be deeply affected by it. Tori and Lokita follows a pair of African migrant children trying to survive and stick together, in modern Belgium. It's about how they are failed by bureaucracy, taken advantage of by the underworld, and ignored by everyone else (implicating viewers, including all those who will skip this film because of its heaviness). The 11 year-old Tori and 17-year-old Lokita are forced to operate well beyond their years. In playing them, Pablo Schils (Tori) and Joely Mbundu (Lokita) achieve the same feat. Their performances are subtle and convincing, touching and gripping; crucially, they imbue these characters with the vivid humanity society denies them.
Ari Aster’s latest is an early front-runner for most polarizing movie of the year. You’ll either get down with Aster’s sense of humor and submit to this absurd, punishing epic of mommy issues and paralyzing anxiety, or you’ll be alienated and put off by it. I erred more in the former camp—admiring the film’s abundance of detail, Aster’s visual imagination, and, yes, all the puerile humor. Aster’s use of a certain Mariah Carey track alone pays off the three-hour runtime.
Is attention-getting an art or a disease? In Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli’s utterly absurd, dryly hilarious debut feature, it’s a little bit of both. When her artist boyfriend gains a dash of notoriety for his stolen furniture sculptures, Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) takes an alarming dose of a dangerous Russian drug—in a deliberate attempt to attract sympathy–causing her face to break out in lesions. Borgli, whose short films hit a similar caustic tone and clinical aesthetic, is a master of threading the line between body humor and body horror, between grotesquery and beauty, a cringe and a cackle.
Forget identifying buses or street signs. Your response to M3GAN could function as its own CAPTCHA: if you didn’t have fun, you’re probably a robot. Blumhouse marketed M3GAN as a horror movie, and yes, there are jump scares and bursts of violence to back that up. But there’s something so uncanny, and consistently hilarious, about the way this luxury AI doll—who’s played physically by Amie Donald—moves. Whether M3GAN was prancing through the woods like a demon or dancing in a hallway, she had my theater keeling over in a good sort of pain.
Carla Simón’s sophomore feature is a portrait of a peach-harvesting family in present-day Catalonia that faces the end of an era: their orchard is about to be destroyed to make way for the construction of solar panels. It’s the sort of conflict that’s usually framed in stark good-versus-evil terms in movies. But what’s so refreshing about Alcarras is that Simón doesn’t judge so much as observe, humanizing—but not lionizing—the people caught in the current of progress.
Perhaps it’s because of his approach to collaboration that Lukas Dhont is able to so evocatively capture the amplified feelings of early adolescence. Dhont is a keen observer of the way children are socialized out of their early emotional abandon. When 13-year-old best friends Léo and Rémi enter a new year of school, their intimate bond is broken by the growing awareness of how their outward affection is perceived by their peers. Friction mounts, and without the words or self-awareness to address what they’re each feeling, their relationship meets tragic ends. The stomach-hollowing guilt that mingles with grief isn’t shocking; but rather, its power resides in the ways it feels achingly familiar.
Part of the magic of Kyle Edward Ball’s feature debut is how it manages to feel both fresh and nostalgic. Another part: its slow pace and fuzzy white noise threatens to lure you to sleep, while its dimly glimmering nighttime perspective on a suburban home is the stuff of (millennial) childhood nightmares. Ball has a gift for framing, and is clearly fluent in translating analog horror to the digital age. No wonder his film has been such a viral sensation.
Like Ocean’s 13, Magic Mike’s third and final chapter may not be the franchise’s best, but general tepid response to it probably has less to do with the movie itself than the incredibly high bar set by the first two installments. In Last Dance, Mike Lane (Channing Tatum) is retired from dancing and earning a living bartending at high-end parties–until he meets Maxandra (Salma Hayek Pinault). She's a rich dilettante who, after procuring Mike’s steamy services, hires him to come to London and put on an extravagant show at a historic theater. The film has its moments as a love story. But Last Dance is at its best as a movie about the artistic process and the complications that arise when making art relies on a wealthy, mercurial benefactor.
Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut is, more or less, exactly what you’d hope for from the veteran actor: smart, wry, thoughtful, and personal. In adapting his own audiobook (based, to some extent, on his own romantic history), Eisenberg turns to Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard to play a high-minded social worker and her vapid teen musician son. Moore, in particular, gives a sterling performance—channeling a vein of lofty, humorless do-gooderism that can be off-putting as it is well-meaning.
The bulk of the press around Pete Ohs’s Jethica revolves around the sheer accomplishment of the movie. Ohs has pioneered a filmmaking method in which he acts as his entire crew, allowing him to make aesthetically dynamic features for less money than most shorts. (The bill for Jethica was $10,000.) But as with Ohs’s previous film working in this style, 2021’s Youngstown, you don’t need to grade Jethica on a curve to enjoy it. The film is a stylish New Mexico-set comic noir about a woman who is haunted by the ghost of her stalker. Ohs brings to the film both the playful spirit of a home movie and the rigor and eye of an auteur. He collaborated on the story with his small cast, and they take the film in several surprising directions, with Will Madden (as Kevin) giving an especially standout performance.
There have been a lot of Rosemary’s Baby-inspired pregnancy thrillers in recent years, some interrogating popular notions of motherhood and others flipping the script and putting the baby bump on a man. And of all these films, Huesera: The Bone Woman, the snap-cracking, bone-chilling debut from Mexican director Michelle Garza Cervera, may be the best. Garza Cervera captures the bodily horror and gendered double standards of pregnancy without veering overly didactic. Her tale is inspired by Mexican mythology, and it brims with evocative imagery, potent surreality, and edge-of-your-seat tension.
Not much happens in Hannah Ha Ha, the microbudget debut from filmmakers Joshua Pikovsky and Jordan Tetewsky. Hannah (Hannah Lee Thompson), 25 and aimless, spends her summer days working on the family farm, biking around, and giving guitar lessons to children. When her ambitious brother (Roger Mancusi) comes to visit, he urges her to strive for more—and she’s left navigating what she wants with her life. But the film, shot through a hazy, impressionistic filter, is sensorially rich, evoking the smoky smell of evening bonfires, the sticky sweat induced by the thick New England air, and the bright chirp emanating from the green trees. It’s the sort of film that lingers after you’ve seen it, like a memory that could be your own.
The senior year experience chronicled by Ethan Eng in Therapy Dogs is far from extraordinary. Eng and his fellow small town Canadian teenagers are reckless, bored, awkward, and full of boundless energy. To entertain themselves, they attack lockers, hang from car roofs as they drift in parking lots, and climb up a tall water tower. But in the process, Eng subtly interrogates his cohort’s budding masculinity. The filmmaker paints a vivid, often exhilarating portrait of what it is to be young now—both how it’s unique to this moment and just like any other time.
Originally published on Esquire US
Instead of a rooftop shoot that we had planned, we’re indoors at Dune Studios on Water Street. Outside, the weather is every writer’s dream: “It is an ash-streaked sky that portents a downpour.” “Like a warning, steel wool hangs overhead.” “A dishevelled blanket of grey that drifts languidly like detritus in a muddied pond.” A wet weather doth not a good shoot make.
When Joel Kinnaman arrives, the first thing you notice is how large he is. Bigger than life, broad-chested, he sometimes stands astride, like he’s about to break the spirit of a wild stallion. Then, there’s that presence; a sort of aura that’s quiet but still strong-arms you for your attention.
Just as the fashion shoot is about to start, Kinnaman asks if he could put on his own playlist for the shoot. He brings up his Spotify playlist, titled ‘For some of mankind’. "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" by Jimmy Ruffin plays.
“The playlists are just for fun,” Kinnaman tells me. “I’ve made a playlist for every project that I’ve been in.”
The project that this particular playlist was made for is For All Mankind, now playing on Apple TV+. It’s a show that puts forth the idea: what if America lost the space race to Russia?
Created and written by Ronald D Moore, the visionary behind the reimagined Battlestar Galactica and Outlander, For All Mankind stars Kinnaman as Edward Baldwin, a NASA astronaut who works alongside Buzz Aldrin (Chris Agos) and Neil Armstrong (Jeff Branson). Kinnaman’s character isn’t based on a particular historical figure, instead he is a composite or a representative of the ‘all-American’ astronauts of that era.
“I’m half-American and half-Swedish,” Kinnaman says. “I’ve lived in Sweden and America so, in a way, I’ve a split identity. My favourite part of the American spirit is not giving up. If they get knocked down, it is a national honour in getting back up and continuing the fight. In reality, when the US got to the moon, it concluded the space race. We didn’t get the continuation in space exploration that everyone was promised.”
Kinnaman is drawn to the science-fiction genre, fantasising of what could have been (though it can be said that the broad field of fiction can also put forward, ‘ what if’). Growing up, he watched the Star Wars movies, he loved the cyberpunk feel when he shot Altered Carbon. He is a fan of Blade Runner due to its dystopian future.
Do you think that sci-fi’s dystopian trope is becoming a reality? Kinnaman muses on that. “We’ve a president who is a national and international embarrassment. He’s immoral, a compulsive liar, a narcissist who doesn’t respect or appreciate democracy. I pray and hope that this nightmare would soon come to an end.
“But I believe we have the potential to overcome this. If we change paths and realign our focus in coming together as a human family, we can solve whatever problems that come our way together.”
This sentiment is echoed in For All Mankind, although the loss wasn’t the be-all and end-all for America. According to Moore, in losing the space race, America ends up the winner in the long run because of the continual effort into space exploration.
“Art can be a little lazy in pointing out the negatives. In many instances, the role that art and the artist play is showing us what’s wrong: that’s important but showcasing the positives is equally important. For All Mankind shows us how we should be operating if we are guided by our better angels.”
Physicist and theoretical biologist, Erwin Schrödinger, came up with a thought experiment. Imagine, if you will, a cat that’s sealed in a box. And inside that box is a device that might or might not kill the cat. Quantum theory states that quantum particles can exist in a superposition of states at the same time. Some even theorise that the quantum particles will collapse to a single state when it’s observed. When applied to Schrödinger’s cat, the feline is both dead and alive until you open the box.
Schrödinger came up with this thought experiment to explain that “misinterpreted simplification of quantum theory can lead to absurd results which don’t match real world quantum physics”. In the real world, it’s absurd that the cat is both dead and alive at the same time.
But one can also see this as an example of how the scientific theory works. Nobody really knows if a theory is right or wrong until it can be tested and proved. It’s like asking someone out on a date, you don’t know if that cute girl or guy will go out with you until you ask; the possibilities of rejection and acceptance remain in co-existence.
That is before you open the box.
Observe: Joel Kinnaman wouldn’t have existed if his father, Steve, had not defected from the US Army. An Indianapolis native, the elder Kinnaman was drafted and stationed in Bangkok, Thailand during the Vietnam War. While he was there, he started spending time with European backpackers, who have a different perspective of the war. A seed was planted. It finally blossomed when he attended a friend’s wedding in Laos. “It turned out that the woman’s family was half Laotian and half Vietnamese,” Kinnaman says. “It was an emotional moment for my dad. He asked himself if these were the people that he was going to kill.”
Still reeling from the love he had witnessed, the elder Kinnaman returned to his base. It was then that he was given the news that he was being reassigned to the battlefront in Vietnam.
In the history of war, the common punishment for desertion is death. According to the US Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 85, it is meted out “by death of other such punishment as a court-martial may direct”. (Since the Civil War, only one American serviceman was executed for desertion: Private Eddie Slovik in 1945.)
Knowing the penalties for desertion, the elder Kinnaman made the decision that night to leave camp. He hitchhiked his way up into northern Thailand and into Laos. He burned his passport, changed his name and passed off as Canadian. For the next four years, he lived life among the Laotians doing odd jobs. Then, he found out that Sweden grants asylum to Vietnam deserters. Since moving to Sweden, President Jimmy Carter eventually issued an amnesty in 1977. The elder Kinnaman continues to reside in Sweden. After his first marriage ended, he was involved with Bitte, a therapist. This relationship yielded Joel.
“I’ve been working on the script about his life,” Kinnaman says. “The idea would be that I’d play my dad but I’m getting a little old.” It’s a story to be told, one about the dangers of blind patriotism; a tool that’s often exploited by governments. “We need to be critical individuals who should make up our own minds.”
Observe: Kinnaman had his first taste of acting when he was 10. He played Felix Lundström on Storstad, a soap opera that looks at the lives of the residents living in the fictional town of Malmtorget. Back then, Sweden had only two TV channels so even if it’s a secondary or even tertiary role on an ensemble piece, people will recognise you. “I didn’t understand it,” Kinnaman says. “There was something thrilling about being famous but there was something I didn’t like about it either.” His whole experience as a child actor was underwhelming.
In fact, taking a page from ‘history repeating itself ’, observe as Kinnaman could have been a soldier in the Swedish army.
“It was mandatory for the men to be conscripted for a year in the army and it was during my time when the rules for enlistment started to relax,” Kinnaman says. “If you didn’t want to enlist, all you have to do is purposely fail the proficiency tests.”
Alas, Kinnaman was so caught up in the competition that he aced it. His results showed potential to be a company leader. He was enlisted and assigned to an 18-month tour in the Arctic Circle but Kinnaman plum forgot about it. When he moved to Oslo, Norway, to be a bartender, he received a call from his mother, informing him that there was a government notice stating that he was supposed to enlist in three days.
He called the army to tell them that he was no longer in the country. “They said, this is a serious offence and I could get prison time for this. But if I were to write a letter to explain the situation, I could get out of this.” And then he forgot to write the letter. Kinnaman continued working odd jobs but he was always haunted by the thought that if he were ever to be arrested by the police for anything, they might discover his draft dodge from his records and he would be sent to prison.
“I ended up at this fight outside a night club and got taken in by the police.” Kinnaman says. Observe: Kinnaman could have ended up serving his sentence for draft dodging but nothing came of it.
Acting was calling out to him once more. His friend, Gustaf Skarsgård (famously known for his role as Floki in History Channel’s Vikings), was on track to becoming an actor and advised Kinnaman to apply for theatre school. After several applications, Kinnaman finally got into what he describes as “Sweden’s second-best acting school” and would go on to film two movies during his enrolment.
After graduation, he continued acting in Sweden before moving to America. He kept himself busy. He made an appearance in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; starred as Governor Will Conway in House of Cards; made people notice with his portrayal as the homicide detective, Stephen Holder; scored the lead role in the Robocop remake; was cast as Rick Flag in Suicide Squad.
The one genre that Kinnaman can’t seem to appear in is comedy. Yes, he has a stern demeanour but the man is also funny. “Sometimes, Hollywood sees you in a certain way and it’s much easier to get cast for it. And the next is similar to that and so on. I haven’t made an effort to dissuade people’s opinion. The lighter side is probably more me.”
The closest he has gotten to doing comedy is the shooting of the Suicide Squad sequel. Helmed by James Gunn, Kinnaman said in another interview that it feels like he’s “shooting his first comedy”.
“I’ve been around tough people with issues before,” Kinnaman continues. “I’ve had some bad times so those kind of environments were natural to be in. It’s a survival mechanism too. A way for me to cope as I grew up. At the time, you’re figuring out about your identity. I felt insecure, powerless and didn’t know what to do in life.
“It was a period of my life that was pretty negative. But one of the beauties of acting is that those dark periods become a mother lode that you can mine from. Maybe I’ve drawn a little bit too much from it by playing too many tough guys.”
In May 2016, Kinnaman was one of the delegates and personalities from Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden who was invited to one of President Obama’s final state dinners. Kinnaman, dressed in a sharp tuxedo, attended the dinner with his then-wife, Cleo Wattenström.
He overheard that the Obamas were fans of House of Cards and was looking forward to being introduced to them. At the reception, he and the other representatives stood in a row as President Obama made his way down the line, shaking hands and posing for a photo op. By Kinnaman’s admission, his mind wandered as he imagined what he’d say when President Obama came up to him. “Maybe I’d say, ‘Mr President’, and then he’ll say ‘Governor Conway’, and then we’ll laugh. And we’ll end it with a cool handshake.”
And all of a sudden, the president stood before him and Kinnaman muttered, “Mr President…” There was an awkward pause. Kinnaman would recount that it’s very possible that either the Obamas hadn’t watched the episode that he was in or if they did, his presence made zero impact. Before the silence could prolong, Kinnaman ended with, “thanks… for everything”. President Obama said something along the lines of, “Surely but surely, we cannot lose hope” and Kinnaman was ushered off.
He would retell this story when he introduced President Obama at Brilliant Minds, a conference of creative individuals who embody the forward-thinking spirit of Sweden, in June 2019. After the introduction, he returned backstage, where President Obama was waiting for his cue to go up. “He had this huge smile on his face and he said to me, ‘bring it in for a cool handshake.’ We hugged, we talked for about five minutes. He was super friendly. I’ll always remember that moment.”
Kinnaman isn’t shy about his politics. He voiced support for the #metoo movement; he had championed the environmental cause by one of his fellow Swedes, Greta Thunberg; he does not hide his disdain for the Trump administration.
“I think the last UN report stated that we have about eight years to turn back our carbon expenditure into the atmosphere,” Kinnaman says about where we’re heading as a species. “You don’t have to be a prophet to see that the world is heading towards the wrong direction. The oceans are heating up, the glaciers are melting. These natural disasters will be more frequent and that’s gonna lead to more tensions among countries.
“Politically, we’re moving towards a more nativist direction; people are pulling away from international cooperation. There’s the rise in disinformation campaigns, which will threaten democracy.”
But Kinnaman, ever the optimist, still believes in the human spirit, that we can innovate our way out of this quagmire.
Observe: Kinnaman, who was born with pectus excavatum, chose to correct the disorder instead of living with it.
Pectus excavatum is a chest-wall deformity that affects roughly one in 400. Instead of the breastbone being flush against the chest, it sinks in. Measured on a scale called the Haller index, anything above an index of 3.2 is considered severe. Kinnaman’s index was a seven or an eight.
“It’s something that’s survivable,” Kinnaman explains. “But it’s a condition that grows worse over time: your posture becomes worse; your stamina worsens as your heart is not given room to pump. By correcting it you can add years to your life.”
For a condition this severe, doctors had to insert two curved metal bars across his chest. Then the bars are turned to force the chest out and then the bars are wired to his ribs. The operation changed his life for the better. He doesn’t feel self-conscious whenever he removes his top. Six weeks after his surgery, he had to do reshoots for Suicide Squad. It was a fight sequence but Kinnaman sucked it up. “Would you like to feel it?” He asked.
He raised his arm like an invitation. I reached out and felt the spot, where the metal bars are, beneath the fabric and skin.
That’s an interesting party trick, I say. Kinnaman could only chuckle in response.
“It’s funny, if you ask me to say a line from a movie that I’ve been in before, I can’t. Not one line from any movie that I’ve done but I once did a monologue that was one hour and 30 minutes and I knew it by heart after 10 days.”
Kinnaman used to opine that as a Swedish-American, growing up with dual cultures gives him a better perspective of the world but that also left him feeling like he doesn’t belong. He jumps from place to place, leading a nomadic existence.
“But I think,” he says as though he had stumbled upon some great truth a long time back, “I don’t wanna travel so much any more. Home. That’s where I’d like to be. I have two bases: one in Venice, LA and the other, an hour outside Stockholm.
“Growing up, my family didn’t have any money. We lived in this tiny little cottage that was in the middle of the woods. Now, I have this piece of land, where my family lives. This past midsummer was the first midsummer that we all spent together.
“That’s my new happy place.”
Joel Kinnaman looks like a man who has placed the final piece in that mystery of his life. He has stopped worrying about how he’s perceived by the public. He has exorcised people who have “struggled with jealousy, who don’t have a natural inclination towards generosity”. He has zero tolerance against bullshit. He likes how his career is shaping up—aside from Suicide Squad 2, For All Mankind is now filming a second season, and Kinnaman has three films coming out: The Informer; The Sound of Philadelphia and The Secrets We Keep; the last two, he avers, are his best work. “People who have watched me for a long time, it will remind them of my early career and for people who recently followed me, they will see a new side of me.
“I have goals that I’d like to achieve. Actor awards are such bullshit… until you get one. But yeah, that would be great. In future, I’d definitely want to be in a producing role and at some point, I’d like to also direct.
“I’ve said that I’d direct in five years time for about 10 years now.” That might change. His life is still a long and open road ahead.
Schrodinger’s cat posits two states that the creature can be in—dead or alive. But what if there’s a third option. That within the confines of the box, the cat is not there. It’s escaped. Unburdened from the stipulations of a thought experiment, free to do what it wants.
Originally published in the December 2019 issue
