Filmmaker Cyrus Nowrasteh has a low opinion of Islamist militants. No wonder. In his 2019 action film Infidel, they kidnap and torture an American journalist (Jim Caviezel) after he publicly remarks that Jesus Christ is God. Nowrasteh’s disturbing The Stoning of Soraya M. is set in Iran; this movie is set in Cairo but involves Iranian terrorists. The director is of Iranian descent, and to him Iran is a dreadful, far-reaching enemy. . . Infidel has limited appeal, but I think it’s enjoyable. Caviezel is one among many spot-on actors here. It is, in addition, an un-preachy Christian film and entertainment.
It can be nice to hear lies about oneself, bad to hear incivility. In Nicole Holofcener‘s You Hurt My Feelings (2023), people certifiably hear both.
Herein: “A novelist’s longstanding marriage is suddenly upended when she overhears her husband giving his honest reaction to her latest book” (imdb).
But Holofcener, who wrote and directed this comedy-drama, is not pretentious. She declines to make the “upending” worse than it actually would be and is intent to frequently amuse us. We do shake our heads over human behavior, though. Feelings is seamlessly made with appealing performances by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobias Menzies, Arian Moayed and plenty of others. It’s better written, I believe, than the director’s Please Give. The film reminds us that human approval is not easily had; ah, but the piece easily has mine.
Ella MaCay (2025) is about a female politician, likely a Democrat, who is smart but also harried and dissatisfied in her relationships with other people. Probably it could have been shaped into a palatable movie, but no: it’s insipid, dopey, sentimental, and pushy. James Brooks didn’t know what he was doing.
Would that Woody Allen were a major film artist. It would be good to have some artistically successful American comedies about how we live now, and that is not what Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters, from 1986, is.
To begin with, it takes a long time for any of the movie’s humor to make us laugh (to make ME laugh, anyway, but I can’t imagine anyone finding the first 45 minutes of this film funny). Further, Allen is pathetically sloppy at writing dialogue, which is often thin and banal. And not all of the acting is good: Mia Farrow and Max von Sydow are dull, Allen himself dreadful. Finally, the film, though a comedy, is unpersuasively and even ludicrously optimistic. Michael Caine stops obsessing over and pursuing Barbara Hershey, and an infertile Allen actually impregnates Dianne Wiest!
Hannah and Her Sisters (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
While viewing it, I was afraid the 2025 Paul Feig film The Housemaid would present a cruel, and thus grim, ending; but not so. In fact it was sort of inspiring. A thriller, the pic is adapted from a best-selling novel, and it itself is a smash hit. It deserves to be. It’s a dramatic dreadnought starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried (both excellent) and Brandon Sklenar (good). It’s unerringly photographed by John Schwartzman. Not without nudity, not without Nina’s breast pump, Housemaid is plainly sensual. BTW, one reason I believe the film is so popular is that the eroticism in it is strictly heterosexual, not gay. Bon appetit!