The Secret Agent, Marcelo (Wagner Moura), a former teacher, gets more than he bargained for when he seeks refuge in Recife, Brazil while searching for his son. Writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho has made a slow-burning and overlong, but bold, visually stylish and refreshingly unpredictable political thriller set in 1977. The tonal shifts feel jarring at times as it veers into horror, dark comedy and even a little satire, but it all comes together in a way that makes it unique and unconventional. Filho doesn't bombard the audience with exposition and keeps many things a mystery, especially who the secret agents are and why are there some men trying to track down Marcelo and kill him? Wagner Moura anchors the film with his palpable charisma. The cinematography and production design are also superb while adding both style and substance. To be fair, The Secret Agent does begin to drag around the 2 hour mark, so it could've used tighter editing. At 2 hours and 38 minutes, The Secret Agent opens on November 26th, 2025 at Angelika Film Center via NEON.
Number of times I checked my watch: 3
After the death of their mother, Nora (Renate Reinsve), an actress, and her sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), reunite with their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a film director, in Sentimental Value. He hopes that Nora will star in his new film, but when she turns it down, he casts Rachel (Elle Fanning), an American actress, in it instead. Writer/director Joachim Trier and co-writer
Eskil Vogt have made a wise, tender and genuinely heartfelt portrait of a dysfunctional family. At its core, it's fundamentally about a father trying to reconcile with his daughters while dealing with their past trauma. The characters feel lived-in because they're complex and flawed which makes them more relatable. There are no villains, heavy-handed scenes or melodrama. With a less sensitive screenplay, Sentimental Value could've easily turned into a schmaltzy and contrived soap opera, but it avoids veering into that direction. Trier and Vogt also have a great handle on comic relief which provides just enough levity to counterbalance the many serious moments. The nuanced and emotionally convincing performances by Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve help to ground the film further in authenticity and to open the window into their characters' heart, mind and soul. They both deserve to be nominated for an Oscar. At a running time of 2 hours and 13 minutes, Sentimental Value opens on November 7th, 2025 at Angelika Film Center via NEON.
Number of times I checked my watch: 1
Luis (Sergi López) takes his young son, Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona), to search for his missing daughter, Mar, in the Moroccan desert in Sirāt. Writer/director Óliver Laxe and co-writer Santiago Fillol have made a mesmerizing and often exhilarating, but tedious and exhausting thriller. The beats don't land as strongly as they would have if the audience were to know more about Mar and why she disappeared. Exposition remains at a bare minimum. There are some twists that make the film more and more tragic, but those twists seem like plot devices in retrospect, especially after something happens to one of the characters. The filmmakers aren't interested in getting to know Luis or any of the ravers that he meets during his dangerous trek through the desert, so they all stay at a cold distance from the audience. Moreover, the use of music feels bizarre, heavy-handed and intrusive. That said, the cinematography and breathtaking desert landscape, which becomes a character in itself, are the film's major strengths. They add visual style, although that's not enough to compensate for the lack of substance. At 1 hour and 55 minutes, Sirāt opens on November 14th, 2025 at Angelika Film Center via NEON.
Number of times I checked my watch: 3
Singer/songwriter Bruce Springstein (Jeremy Allen White) makes the album "Nebraska" while dealing with his childhood trauma and romancing Faye (Odessa Young), a single mother, in Springstein: Deliver Me From Nowhere. The screenplay by writer/director Scott Cooper is shallow, by-the-numbers, bland and sugar-coated, much like last year's A Complete Unknown. However, the performances by the ensemble cast, namely Jeremy Allen White, Odessa Young, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser and Stephen Graham are terrific enough to invigorate the film. The flashback scenes to Springstein's childhood are redundant, though, and only serve as exposition. Cooper's screenplay ultimately fails to design enough of a window into Bruce Springstein's heart, mind and soul. He's a stranger to the audience at the beginning and remains a stranger to them until the very end. It's also hard to grasp how he's truly grown and changed throughout the course of the film. His few epiphanies don't feel contrived.
Not surprisingly, the scenes with Springstein's music are the ones that are exhilarating on a palpable level. If only the same could be said about the scenes without his music which, sadly, fail to resonate on an emotional level like the recent, underseen music biopic Stelios manages to accomplish with flying colors. At 1 hour and 59 minutes, Springstein: Deliver Me From Nowhere opens nationwide on October 24th, 2025 via 20th Century Studios.
Number of times I checked my watch: 3
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