OSCARS 2026: Diane Warren: Relentless (2025)

To most people aware of such things, Diane Warren is one of the most successful song writers of all time. She has penned number one hits for Celine Dion, Aerosmith, Toni Braxton, Chicago, Brandy, and, uh, Milli Vanilli. She has provided songs for some of the biggest pop stars of all time, like Beyonce, Cher, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Taylor Swift. Her extremely deep catalogue ranges from R&B to bubblegum pop, hard rock, and the occasional alternative radio track. One indicator of success that has eluded Miss Warren is an Academy Award. Her penchant for weepy ballads has scored her 17 nominations for Best Original Song but not a single win. For nearly the last decade, the Academy has annually put her within sniffing distance of an Oscar but – save for an honorary statue in 2022, which clearly nobody thinks counts – never awarded her one. This has resulted in some extremely questionable titles earning the prestige of a nomination. Which I, in my drive to watch all the nominees every year, have forced myself to watch. Warren is herself the topic of 2026's Obligatory Diane Warren Nomination, "Diane Warren: Relentless." Of course, she penned a song for it. Of course, it is nominated and, of course, I watched it. Ah shit, here we go again. 

"Relentless" tracks Warren's life and career. It follows her childhood in suburban Van Nuys, where her obsession with music was born. Her mom wanted her to become a secretary but her dad always believed in her. Despite a frequently combative personality, a good deal of social awkwardness, and not being much of a singer herself, Warren became a hit maker. "Relentless" interviews friends and collaborators, follows her daily routine, covers her personal struggles, and eventually zeroes in on her repeated inability to finally win that damn little gold man.

 

"Relentless" is, in many ways, your standard biographical documentary. Home movies and vintage photographs are cut together with peeks into Warren's current life and a retrospective of most of her big hits. Director Bess Kargman employs genre cliches like taking Warren back to her childhood home and tracking down old friends and relatives. Famous faces rave about her talent but "Relentless" does stop just short of pure hagiography by acknowledging her quirks and flaws. Such as her potty mouth and being a pain in the ass to work with. Once the topic turns towards the Academy's unwillingness to give her a win, "Relentless" reveals its true reason for existing. Her indefatigable excitement at being nominated and disappointment at losing is showcased. The climax of "Relentless" is the creation of "Dear Me," the Kesha sung number that got the movie nominated. In other words, the documentary is a ninety minute For Your Consideration ad, aimed at convincing Academy members that the perpetual runner-up really deserves a win. 

A rich, famous, and very successful person being sad that they don't have one more trophy to add to their mantle is not the most universal of motivations for making a movie. The makers of “Relentless” were clearly aware that the question of “Why should anyone give a shit?” needed an answer. The documentary cycles through the usual narrative of Warren having a difficult childhood, an impossible to please parent, and struggling to establish herself in the L.A. music scene. Since “Relentless” is as focused on Warren's current life as her past, however, it can't build that into a compelling story arc. There's a lot of mention of Diane's disapproving mother but this thread is mysteriously dropped with a half-hearted admission that the elder Warren eventually got over it. There's a pause to acknowledge the recent death of her beloved cat. Which is sad, sure, but not something you can really build a whole movie around. 

The decision the film finally settles on centers around is questionable. Warren wrote the Lady Gaga anthem “Till It Happens to You” from sexual assault awareness documentary, “The Hunting Ground.” During the press tour for the movie, the songwriter admitted that she herself is a victim of childhood sexual abuse. That takes courage to admit, especially publically. I'm a survivor myself, so I understand. However, the film spinning that bravery as the main reason Warren should have won an Oscar strikes me as distasteful. Especially as the doc pontificates more on how Warren is still trying to get the make-up award for that loss. Yeah, Lady Gaga belted it out at the ceremony. Sure, I think “Till It Happens to You” is a better song than the crappy Bond theme it lost to. But is this movie trying to guilt me into voting for “Dear Me?” As if winning an Oscar would resolve the trauma of Warren's assault? You sure that's the point you wanna make? What are we doing here, movie? 

This marks an exploration of the life and process of a clearly talented person – presumably the reason we watch docs like this – as a secondary goal to “Diane Warren: Relentless'” real purpose: Declaring that its subject really, really needs that fucking Oscar. Which leaves us with a documentary that is a wispy ode to its subject's ego and not much else. Kargman does give us peeks into more humanizing parts of Warren's life. We learn about her love for animals, which includes a ranch home to rescued donkeys and pigs. She talks about her status as a neurodivergent individual. I'm one of those too and I recognize a reliance on structure, lack of a filter, and hyperfocus on passions in Warren. A few scenes discuss her continued lack of a love life and how that reflects on her ability to write love songs that resonate with so many people. That could have been a really interesting topic! Alas, “Relentless” knows that it will be mostly watched by Academy voters and zeroes in on convincing them to vote for its song. 

Unfortunately, “Diane Warren: Relentless” had the misfortune to come out during the same year as “KPop Demon Hunters.” “Dear Me” isn't bad. It's easily the seventh best version of this same song that Warren has had a hand in making. It's not going to beat “Golden” though. If a genuine musical pop culture phenomenon hadn't come out in 2025, Diane's latest teary ode to self-actualization would still probably come in behind “Sinners'” “I Lied to You.” I say that all of this is unfortunate because it guarantees at least one more year of some random-ass thing getting a nom strictly because Warren wrote a song for it. They made an entire movie to win her an Oscar and it'll all be for naught. And if she does somehow won, will Diane pivot towards being obsessed with winning a Tony and filling out her EGOT score card? She does have a jukebox musical hitting stages soon. I guess they'll have to make a “Relentless II” for that. Her suffering is truly never ending. I repeat this joke with a sigh: See ya next year, Diane. [5/10]

 

OSCARS 2026: Weapons (2025)

 

After "Barbarian" became the surprise horror hit of 2022, Zach Cregger immediately went from merely a member of a cult favorite sketch comedy team to the hottest up-and-coming genre director in Hollywood. The press seemed incapable of not comparing Creggor's career path to that of friend Jordan Peele. Well, Creggor didn't win an Oscar for "Barbarian" but his next script – a so-called "horror epic" entitled "Weapons" – did result in a highly publicized bidding war between studios. Despite all the buzz around "Weapons," lips remained tightly sealed concerning the film's actual premise. As the marketing machine started to roll and trailers came out, only the inciting incident of the story remained revealed. I guess everyone realized that "Barbarian" prospered greatly from gaining a "go in knowing as little as possible" reputation online. Clearly, this mysterious approach worked, as "Weapons" became a proper blockbuster this past August. As with Creggor's first hit, I somehow managed to enter the theater without learning too much about it. Was the effort to avoid spoilers worth it? 

In the autumn of 2023, at 2:17 A.M., seventeen children in the town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania left their homes and never returned. All the kids were part of teacher Justine Grady's third grade class with only one, Alex Lilly, arriving at his desk the next day. The local police scrambled to undercover answers but found none. Justine becomes the target of heavy scrutiny and harassment from the parents of the missing children, insisting she must somehow be responsible, but she's as clueless as everyone else. She becomes concerned about Alex and attempts to reach out to him, despite being barred from doing so by the school principal. Archer Graff, father of one of the missing boys, begins to pursue his own investigation. He also determines that the Lilly household is at the center of the enigma. Justine's ex-boyfriend and local cop Paul, her boss at the school, a crackhead named James, and Alex's peculiar Aunt Gladys all become entangled in the mystery as well in increasingly violent ways.  

"Barbarian" started out as a writing exercise for Creggor who, dissatisfied with the direction of the scene, then introduced a wild twist. The rest of the film spun out of that swerve. "Weapons" has a somewhat similar approach, while also drawing from the novel-like structure of "Magnolia." The film is broken into seven chapters, each one following the perspective of a different character. The timeline traces back and forth, sometimes showing the same events from different points-of-view. Creggor often ends each segment with a cliffhanger or exciting reveal, each part of the film only giving the audience a little more information about what exactly is going on here. It is a script designed to draw you ever-more into this narrative, while always having another unexpected twist or shocking event up its sleeve. Two features in and it's clear that this kind of playful storytelling is Creggor's style. Maybe he's a writer with a short attention span who has to repeatedly shift directions in the story to keep himself interested. It's certainly a clever way to catch the viewer's attention and keep us off-guard. 

"Barbarian's" twists were outrageous in nature, a slow-burn battle of the sexes thriller suddenly becoming a monster movie and then shifting towards finding the parallels in the #MeToo era and small town horrors such as those committed by Ariel Castro. "Weapons" is much more of a mystery, presenting us and the characters with a haunting series of disappearances. The film gets a lot of mileage out of shadowy nighttime shots of kids Naruto running out of their houses and into the dark. Starting with Justine's perspective, a baffled bystander who is too empathetic to stop looking into what happened, allows the viewer to also come into the story from the side. We are also an outsider to what is happening here. Archer, meanwhile, is obsessed with uncovering the truth, pushing his wife away and failing at his job as he devotes every waking minute to finding his boy. He looks for clues, re-watching the doorbell camera footage of his son running away and badgering other parents for similar evidence. These are two people at odds with each other but they are both compelled by a search for answers. It's the kind of narrative hook that you can't help but get caught up in too, like any sort of puzzling true crime incident. 

Both of them are also haunted by nightmares centered around the crime. The most beguiling of which has Archer seeing a massive assault rifle emerging from the sky. When paired with a story involving a communities of parents who are enraged, confused, and desperate over the sudden loss of their children, some pressing real world issue come to mind. Is “Weapons” inspired by the unending wave of school shootings we have in this country? Justine being wrongfully targeted as having some sort of responsibility for what happened, meanwhile, brings stories of the mourning parents of dead children being harassed by unhinged conspiracy theorists. Archer's behavior certainly resembles the Sandy Hill Truthers and PizzaGate crowd, with the way he obsessively searches video and images for clues only he can see. There's other ideas floating around inside Cregger's film, concerning police accountability and abuse of power, which could also tie into these themes. Instead, after a fascinating first half steeped in mystery, “Weapons” turns towards providing concrete – albeit supernatural – answers to most of its questions, none of which address these real world parallels. As someone who was, just yesterday, complaining about how modern horror films foreground their subtext at the sacrifice of scares, maybe I shouldn't be complaining about this. Nevertheless, “Weapons” is more compelling when presenting its mystery than when resolving it. 

Which isn't to say that I didn't enjoy “Weapons.” I did, a lot. Creggor's film trusts the audience in a way that most horror movies released by New Line Cinema these days usually don't. Strictly through visual means, the mechanics of the otherworldly forces at work here are explained. This pays off especially nicely in the last act, when a child grasps the same system of sympathetic magic practically intuitively. Further more, there are hints throughout concerning the nature of parasites. It is briefly discussed in Justine's class room and a pair of supporting characters watch a documentary about ophiocordyceps in ants. Both of which give us an idea of the villain's motivation without spelling it out via blunt exposition. In general, “Weapons” is a very assured film. Joe Murphy's editing is tight. Larkin Seiple's cinematography is moody. The soundtrack, from the Holladay brothers, is a little heavy on the discordant ambiance but works more often than not. Much like “Barbarian,” this takes some wild tonal turns in its second half. There's explosive moments of brutal gore, more painful and subtler scenes of bodily injury, before the film veers towards a mad cap sense of high-energy retribution at its climax.

Part of why I felt “Weapons” dropped off a little in its second half is because I found its first two protagonists so much more compelling than its other ones. The script does a very good job of making Justine and Archer complex, layered human beings. Without tediously detailing her backstory, we learn that Justine is a recovering and often relapsing alcoholic. She's made some mistakes in the past but they are often centered around her desire to help people, in her own insistent way. Julia Garner – who is having quite the year – does an excellent job of creating this fail-daughter who is trying her best. Garner makes Justine's frustration and stubbornness amusing and relatable, rather than annoying. While Archer does some shitty things throughout the story, Josh Brolin's performance makes sure to center the pain he feels as a dad that's let down his only child. There's a deep-seated self-loathing to his actions, this sense that he's failed in his goals and now is desperate to make up for them. The rest of the cast is quite solid as well. Benedict Wong gets a few laughs as the person reacting to a lot of the unlikely shit. Austin Abrams is especially amusing as a tweaker always on the search for his next easy buck. Amy Madigan vacillates nicely between a seemingly harmless old lady and a much colder, more sinister figure. I just wanted to know more about Justine and Archer. They were really compelling and the film ends with their arcs both feeling a little incomplete. 

An element of “Weapons” that I did find interesting is the way the camera lingers on brand names throughout. A can of Coke is centered early on. Campbell's chicken noodle soup shows up prominently in the second half. The bedroom of Archer's son is decorated with recognizable athletes and other pop culture figures. The Batman logo makes an interesting appearance. I don't think this an example of product placement or cross-corporate synergy. Another element emphasized in the film is the presence of cameras and recording devices. Everyone in town seemingly has Ring devices on their door bells. Phones are used throughout. A police officer's dash-cam is a plot point. This goes hand in hand with the presence of familiar, comforting brand names and the small town setting. The characters in “Weapons” are surrounded by modern convenience and have their every move recorded. It still doesn't protect their children. It doesn't make their law enforcement any more productive. It does not actually make them feel any safer. This is, perhaps, where the lingering undercurrent about school shootings and conspiracy theories actually build to something. That there is something very wrong in the American psyche, that violence and tragedy can still strike at any point despite all the measures we've taken to make ourselves feel more comfortable 

Another element “Weapons” has in common with Creggor's debut is that, as soon as the story is resolved, the film more-or-less ends. That, combined with the naturalistic way it hints at back story and focuses on being a swiftly paced horror story over any thematic concerns, makes it feel like a very eighties style sort of movie. You can imagine both this and “Barbarian,” in different forms, being actually made in the seventies or eighties. (Instead of merely being an attempt to replicate that style, like most throwback films try to do.) Normally, that would be exactly my kind of thing but I left “Weapons” wanting just a little bit more. That's probably a sign of its high quality, that this two hour and nine minute long film felt like it could have been a little bit longer to me. If nothing else, if New Line Cinema ever gets around to actually making a new “A Nightmare on Elm Street” movie, Creggor's clear ability to get at the heart of darkness underneath a small town's pleasant exterior might make him the guy for the job. Instead, he's rebooting “Resident Evil” next. Anyway, “Weapons” will probably play a lot better for me on a second viewing but it's still definitely a very strong motion picture. [7/10]

OSCARS 2026: If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)

In 2012, Kier-La Janisse published "House of Psychotic Women." The style of film the book covered had existed since at least 1928's "The Wind" but Janisse's "autobiographical topography of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films" helped put a label on a subgenre of melodrama and psychological horror that had previously been unclassified. It's a very hip style of film, as the influence of "Persona," "Possession," and "Fire Walk With Me" grows ever more apparent. Should Janisse ever publish an updated edition or sequel to her most discussed book, it would surely mention "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You." The latest from filmmaker Mary Bronstein, it represents the taste makers at A24 tricking the Academy into watching something weird and abrasive. While it scored no other nominations, Rose Bryne does seem to be the popular second place choice for Best Actress as of this writing. 

Linda is having a hard time. Her daughter has a medical condition that necessitates a feeding tube. This means Linda must drive her to appointments every day and pour nutritional powder into a machine every night. If the kid can gain fifty pounds, the tube can be removed but Linda's child is a very picky eater. Her husband is an officer in the Navy and currently at sea. Upon returning home one day, she discovers a leak in the ceiling... Which quickly turns into a downpour, a massive hole erupting through the house. Linda and her kid move into a sketchy hotel while the repairs drag on. All the while, she continues to go to her day job: Therapist to women in crisis and horny teenage boys. Her own therapist seems increasingly antagonistic to her. Unable to sleep, Linda engages in riskier behavior. Such as drinking, buying drugs, sneaking into her old home, leaving her daughter unattended for long stretches of time. As the endless stresses pile up, the line between dreams, nightmares, visions, and reality blur.

After checking into the hotel they'll be spending the rest of the movie in, Linda is awoken by her daughter's feeding tube machine beeping in the middle of the night. This is opposed to the regular beeping the machine makes when it's working correctly. Whenever she ventures out of the hotel room at night and leaves her daughter behind, she carries a baby monitor with her so she can still hear the beeping. That low level of worry, of frustration, of annoyance, is always present. “If I Had Legs” is basically a cinematic panic attack, which is accomplished by adding ever more disturbances and concerns onto its heroine's head. She can't sit in her car outside the clinic without a man tapping on her window, telling her she can't park here. She can't get a bottle of wine because it's past 2AM. When she arrives early to buy the same wine, she is told she needs her I.D. Her daughter's voice, almost always petulant and needy and demanding, is usually heard crying off-screen as well. Her patients bother her at work and at home. It's never ending for Linda. She has no peace, no quiet. The explosive flood of water into her home in the opening act is not a climax of her worries overflowing. It's the beginning of a chain reaction of bothers that do not cease. 

It is, in other words, the life of a mother. The hole that burst through Linda's ceiling in the first act is an image the movie returns to repeatedly. The opening is yonic in appearance but also recalls both a gaping wound. Not unlike the hole in her daughter's stomach. Throughout her nightmares, the opening begins to resembles both a circle and an ovum about to be fertilized. And if you're standing in the middle of a circle, what is it besides a prison? During a meeting with her daughter's doctor, Linda goes on a largely incoherent rant about how everything is the mother's fault. She sees footage on a TV of a woman eating a baby in a horror movie. Her most desperate patient ends up abandoning her screaming infant child at Linda's office. When she contacts the child's father, he berates her. Being a mom doesn't only mean constantly being needed and being relied upon, it also means that any time something goes wrong, you are to blame.

It's not as if the men in her life are any help at all. Her husband – played by a special guest star that made me point at the screen like in the Leo DiCaprio meme – is rarely anything more than a chastising voice on the phone. In one pointed moment, he's at a baseball game while on the phone with her. He gets a break. Her perpetually annoyed therapist is played by Conan O'Brien, his ability to translate bemusement with only a look finding an extremely suitable use here. She tries to enter his office during an emergency and he repeatedly tells her to leave, fighting over the gap in the door like the tips of their shoes are sabers. Finally, once he's had enough, he simply says this isn't working and gets up and leave. When you're a man, you can do that. The father of the abandoned child demands Linda drop everything and bring his baby to him, because he's busy right now. Guys can leave whenever they want but motherhood is forever. 

In the beginning, Linda being a therapist is a sick joke of sorts. She has all these problems in her life pushing her to the absolute edge... And her job is to listen to other people bitch about their issues. What makes her job even more humiliating is that she does genuinely care about her patients. Caroline is the woman who, in the midst of a nervous breakdown, drops her kid at Linda's office. She is worried about Caroline, trying to contact her, genuinely hoping to help her. Much the same way she cares about her daughter – always off-screen, only her hands or feet seen – despite being forever stressed about her. Being a therapist is a commitment to care about your patient. The same way being a mother is a commitment to care about your child. It's a relief to someone else but a burden to you, no matter how sincere you are. 

All of which is to say that “If I Had Legs I'd Kick You” is an utterly nightmarish cinematic experience. Christopher Messina's cinematography is excellent at making mundane spaces, like the hallway of Linda's office or a beach at night, look uncanny. At a certain point, I began to wonder how much of what Linda was experiencing was a nightmare or her increasingly strange waking reality. The film does not give us the catharsis of confirming one or another. This is a another way it makes us feel trapped in this hell world with its protagonist. Rose Bryne is excellent at conveying how Linda is always only barely pushing back the tide of emotions overwhelming her at all times. Honestly, as someone who does regularly deal with actual panic attacks, I found the film to hit a little too close to home. The most grotesque and unsettling scenes – an escalation of minor horrors involving a pet hamster, that opening deluge, the tidal finale – had me straining the muscles in my jaw from grimacing so hard. 

I would sum the picture up as for the folks who thought “We Need to Talk About Kevin” was too cuddly and light-hearted. Though it features no ghosts or ghouls or hatchet murders – though a little bit of bodily mutation before the end – it is absolutely a horror movie. Like any modern horror story, it features a final scare right before the credits too. In this case, it is the suggestion that Linda's madness is sure to be passed onto her daughter, the same way her mother passed it on to her. That's what I think the vague title means, by the way. A baby is known to kick its mother from within the womb, the beginning of a child putting pressure on its parents. But the young daughter's future offspring hasn't developed legs yet. But it will and it'll kick her too, when the time comes. File this one under one of those films I must admit is extremely well made and thoughtfully created in many ways that I have no interest in ever watching again. [7/10]

OSCARS 2026: Song Sung Blue (2025)

It's a trend that mystifies me a bit. Occasionally, and often around award season time, an already successful documentary will be remade as a traditional narrative film. Why retell a true story that's already been told? I suppose documentaries don't have as much reach and fictionalizing events exposes more people to this tale. The more cynical part of my brain can't help but wonder if this is merely the work of big stars wanting a chance to enact an inspiring true story, one that has already been proven to be a winner. That certainly seems to be the case with "Song Sung Blue," the big budget remake of Greg Kohs' somewhat beloved 2008 documentary of the same name. The story of a Neil Diamond tribute band already seems like a niche topic for a doc. Must we also tell it with famous actors as the real people? Primed to be an awards contender last year, this "Song Sung Blue" received mildly positive but mostly unenthusiastic reviews from the critics. However, Kate Hudson did manage to sneak into the Best Actress category which is why I'm writing about it right now. 

Recovering alcoholic and Vietnam veteran Mike Sardina is a car mechanic by trade. His passion, however, is music... Other people's music. He sometimes works as a celebrity impersonator and sings in tribute bands at fair grounds and bars. He's especially passionate about the music of Neil Diamond and has invented the on-stage persona of "Lightning" around Diamond's tunes. While at a show, he meets Claire Cartwright, a Patsy Cline impersonator. The two find themselves collaborating on interpretations of Diamond's music and, quickly enough, fall in love. They form the tribute act Lightning and Thunder. After a rocky start, they begin to have some success and even open for Pearl Jam at a 1995 concert. Life seems good before Claire is struck by a car in their front lawn, losing a leg. Recovery is difficult for her and she becomes addicted to painkillers. Mike loses his passion for performing without her and has repeating heart attacks. The troubles start to pile up but love, and catchy old pop songs, are hard to give up. 

Like seemingly everyone in my age group, I've always regarded the music of Neil Diamond as a kitschy artifact of an earlier age. Diamond is easily mocked for his cheesy lyrics, tinny production, questionable fashion choices, and throaty vocals. At the same time, his big hits are hard to resist. The hooks are undeniable and the full-throated earnestness with which Diamond sings is charming. "Sweet Caroline" is indeed one of those songs that excite the white folks. Diamond exists in that cultural space between hopelessly hokey and widely beloved. 

This is the mode "Song Sung Blue" attempts to inhabit as well. It uses the inherent pathetic quality of the celebrity impersonator circuit as a source of easy laughs. Look at these dweebs, re-enacting glory days that aren't even their own, passably mimicking the dead and irrelevant famous for pennies at backwoods venues. The film is certainly not above using the dated fashion of Diamond's most famous periods as a punchline nor playing up the incongruity of seeing such an act in the snarky nineties. When Eddie Vedder invites Thunder and Lightning to open for Pearl Jam, it's clearly another grudge era act of irony. A declaration to the Gen X audience of "look at the lame shit your parents were into. Isn't it funny?" 

At the same time... "Forever in Blue Jeans" kind of rocks, ya know? As much as "Song Sung Blue" is giggling at the thoroughly white beard antics of its heroes and the Lame Seventies aesthetics they love, the film is a mostly sincere celebration of Diamond's music. It features most of his big hits, the majority performed enthusiastically by Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson. Jackman, forced to be a superhero when all he really wants is to be an old time-y song and dance man, certainly displays a lot of chummy charm. He's excited to be here and he loves what he loves. Hudson adapts a silly Midwestern accent but, unlike Jackman's loopier performance, keeps the character from being a joke. The two have strong chemistry. There's an amicable sweetness to the scenes devoted to their kids – Ella Anderson and King Princess, both solid – interacting and becoming friends. When it's a loose comedy about these oddballs trying to go their own way and make their dreams into reality, “Song Sung Blue” is amicable. 

This is before a major tonal change literally crashes into the film. A farcical scene of Mike being recorded while singing in just a big shirt and his underwear pans over to the outside of the house, where a car suddenly slams into Claire. What had been a light-hearted rom-com before this moment then becomes a very serious drama. Claire adapting to life with only one leg and slipping into pill addiction deflates Mike's joy. She has manic episodes, walking delusions of being on-stage, between sleeping all day or picking fights with her husband and kids. It is a little on the melodramatic side, all the more because of how abrupt a shift it is. This change also drains the movie of the upbeat energy it had up to this point, leading to a second half that feels like it never ends. Major events, such as Claire's daughter becoming pregnant, are relegated to quickly passed over subplots. While other story beats previously mentioned, like Mike's bum ticker, must be brought up until it can be resolved. All these grim notes are still occurring alongside all the silly set-dressings of the story, a tonal disconnect the film can't overcome. 

“Song Sung Blue” is not technically a musical in the traditional sense. The characters only sing when they are practicing or performing. Nevertheless, the longer it goes on, the more it feels like a movie where the songs are the attraction. The climax, an on-stage rendition of “Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show,” feels especially extended. The film represents director Craig Brewer – previously of “Hustle & Flow,” “Black Snake Moan,” the “Footloose” remake – getting back to music-driven films after two Eddie Murphy vehicles. Perhaps he over-indulged himself. Jackman and Hudson have a good energy and that drives “Song Sung Blue” for a bit. Up until the big tonal shift, I was thinking that this was decent enough. That second half is a train wreck though. I am curious to check out the original documentary now, to see if it handles the ups and downs in the real lives of these people better than this adaptation does. [5/10]

 

 

OSCARS 2026: Blue Moon (2025)

I'm not sure I could ever call myself a fan of Richard Linklater. I liked “School of Rock” and “A Scanner Darkly” but found myself unmoved, perhaps annoyed at times, but some of his other work. The guy, however, is prolific. Since his feature length debut in 1988, he's never gone more than a year or two between pictures, sometimes releasing multiple films only months apart. Linklater's consistency means that some projects are going to fall through the cracks, inevitably being lesser works. 2022's “Apollo 10 ½” was the first of his distributed by Netflix. The streamer giant, notoriously, only puts much promotion into a handful of the countless films they produce in a year. In other words: 2025 was another double year for Linklater and I hadn't even heard of either film until last month. Why I missed that “Blue Moon” existed at all, clearly the Academy did not, giving the motion picture two nominations. 

Linklater has dabbled in behind-the-scenes stories of entertainment industry greats before, with “Me and Orson Welles” and his other 2025 release. “Blue Moon” also operates in this mode. It follows Lorenz Hart – writer of great American songbook standards like “My Funny Valentine,” “The Lady is a Tramp,” and the titular song – on a specific night seven months before the lifelong alcoholic died. His former creative partner, Richard Rodgers, has just debuted his newest Broadway musical, something called “Oklahoma!” After watching the show, the unimpressed Hart slips into Sardi's restaurant and bar. He immediately begins talking of his opinions, his experiences, and his latest romantic fixation with a young college student named Elizabeth. Throughout the night, faces and names that will be famous and obscure walk in and out of the bar. Most notable among them are Rodgers, who is both interested and reluctant in renewing his partnership with Hart, and this Elizabeth that Lorenz can't stop talking about.

From my somewhat limited exposure to Linklater's work, it does seem to me that he likes loosely plotted narratives centered on character interactions and dialogue more than anything else. “Blue Moon” takes this approach and applies it to a story set almost entirely within one location. Nearly the entire film takes place within Sardi's. Hart sets himself at the bar, starts talking with Eddie the bartender, and the other people around the location. While many different characters wander in and out of the bar throughout, much of “Blue Moon” follows this set-up. In other words, “Blue Moon” is rather like a stage play. Not just in its limited scope but also in the way it makes the viewer feel like you are randomly dropping in on a group of people's lives. That the film is about one specific night, the debut of “Oklahoma!” on Broadway, emphasizes that we are merely seeing one incident in a whole series of them. 

Another way “Blue Moon” is like a stage-play is how much the sound and rhythm of the language itself is part of the attraction. Ethan Hawke props himself up on a bar stool in an early scene and immediately begins delivering colorful, lengthy, and fast-paced dialogue about the latest girl of his dream he's met. Much of what follows in “Blue Moon” keeps this going. This is a film full of big personalities, talking in a stylized fashion that is fitting to the swinging forties setting. Later in the movie, Hart describes his dream project to his famous writing partner: A massive production about the life of Marco Polo, with countless dancers and a three ring circus on the stage. Most stage plays don't have production values like that. Most, like the film we are watching, substitute spectacle with memorable human interaction and the kind of pithy, almost musical dialogue that gets you smiling quickly. 

It has been said that the Academy recognizes not the “best” in any given category but rather the “most.” Hawke certainly underwent the kind of impressive physical transformation that impresses the Academy. The 5”10', leading man handsome Hawke is transformed into the 5”4' Hart via a shaved head, some subtle make-up on his face, and classical camera tricks. While some of Hawke's best work make use of his quiet, brooding intensity, this is surely a performance that leans more towards the Most than the Best. The script, breathlessly delivered by Hawke and the rest of the high profile cast, makes sure to illustrate Hart's flaws and virtues equally. His immense creativity and vision, his egotism and pettiness, both his evident wit and his inability to see the most obvious things in front of him. Such as how Elizabeth – played by Margaret Qualley in the kind of enchanting and fast-lipped performance she has quickly come to specialize in – clearly has no romantic feelings towards the old man that is infatuated with her. A better film would do more with these contradictions. “Blue Moon” is instead content to merely link this quality to other ways Hart was two things at once, such as his apparent bisexuality or how he could be both proud and resentful of the titular composition.

I can't deny that “Blue Moon” is a well performed film with a spirited, catchy screenplay. However, there's a reoccurring element to the writing here that bugs me. The film presents Lorenz Hart as a secret architect behind whole swaths of pop culture. Notable figures wander in and out of the story. The writer he chats with is Elwyn Brooks White, as in E.B. White. As in the future author of “Stuart Little,” a sequence where Hart presents an anecdote about a mouse in his apartment goes out of its way to remind us. This is not even the cutest example of such writing in “Blue Moon.” Hart tells a would-be filmmaker to focus less on romantic stories and more on stories between friends. A boy that hangs around Hammerstein, his next door neighbor's child, is said to be an encyclopedia of theatre knowledge. When we learn these individuals' names – George, Stephen – it feels like a punchline to corny jokes. Even a random photographer in the film must be a prominent figure. It's a bit too cute, a distracting running gag. 

There are elements to “Blue Moon” that are worth admiring. Hawke is very good, along with the rest of the cast. In an Oscar year with a less clear front runner, I think he would win Best Actor. (If such a thing comes to pass, I'll consider it a win for his superior acting in “First Reform.”) It's a pleasant film. Linklater supposedly worked on the script for twelve years before coming to a version he actually liked. Despite that, much like the theater writers and directors depicted here, it feels like one of many projects a director that seemingly likes to always be working churns out. He'll be on to the next one soon enough, I'm sure. Whether this becomes an influential fave in his career, like “Dazed and Confused” or the “Before” trilogy, or one that gets kind of forgotten, like “Last Flag Flying" or his "Bad News Bears" remake, is not for us to decide. [6/10]

 

OSCARS 2025: Bugonia (2025)

2003 would see the release of Jang Joon-hwan's oddball dark comedy “Save the Green Planet!” The film would receive a DVD release stateside some time afterwards, grabbing a little bit of press among the horror fandom and cult movie crowd. This was around the same time South Korean crime and horror movies like “Oldboy” and “A Tale of Two Sisters” started to develop a real following around the world. “Save the Green Planet!” never quite got that kind of attention though. Currently, it doesn't even have an American Blu-Ray release. You're going to have to import the UK disc or dig up the out-of-print SD release to own a physical copy. Certainly, I didn't expect a big name director like Yorgos Lanthimos to remake such an obscure title. Meaning I was intrigued by “Bugonia” from the moment it was announced. A notoriously weird filmmaker remaking an already weird movie, unsurprisingly, resulted in a pretty quirky flick. Despite that, Lanthimos has gathered such a following among Academy voters that “Bugonia” managed to score four nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Lanthimos' by-now go-to muse Emma Stone. 

Will Tracy's screenplay hews relatively closely to most of the original's story beats while approaching from a very different tonal perspective. Either way, the set-up is the same: Teddy is an apiarist and a conspiracy theorist thoroughly convinced that Earth is under threat by an insidious invasion from the Andromeda galaxy. He believes that Michelle Fuller, the CEO of pharmaceutical company Auxolith, is one of these aliens walking among us. With the assistance of his neurodivergent cousin, he kidnaps Fuller. They shave her head, believing her hair to be an antenna to communicate with the mother ship, and cover her in skin cream. Fuller attempts to talk her way out of this bizarre situation, Teddy unmovable in his belief that only he can save the human race before the mother ship arrives with a lunar eclipse. Soon, his interrogation of Fuller turns towards torture. As the situation progresses, more of the captor's backstory is revealed and the reality of what exactly is happening here gets murkier. 

When “Save the Green Planet!” was released, conspiracy theories were still regarded with a degree of whimsy by most. The fantastical idea of extraterrestrial life were still centered in most of these beliefs, removing any degree of serious consideration from these ideas. They were kooks, figures of mockery with no cultural power. Things are very different today, when Q-Anon and far right dip shits have effectively taken over the top tiers of America's government. Moreover, in a post-Epstein files era, we have to reckon with the unavoidable conclusion that the cranks were not entirely off-track. This is the mood “Bugonia” inhabits and why it is a lot darker than the frequently wacky original. The film is essentially trying to play out the current anxieties of our times in microcosm. It is a chamber drama showdown between a heartless corporate overlord and a nut case who nevertheless has some good points. 

Fuller is a pharmacy company CEO, directly responsible for the suffering of thousands and never held accountable. She confronts Ted's seemingly unhinged speeches with therapy-speak platitudes, insincere strategies to regain control of the situation. On the surface level, “Bugonia” is a tale of evil versus evil. Much like the collapsing colonies Ted is obsessed with, Fuller is a queen bee, ruling over a colony of what she sees as drones. Her opening scene has her guilt-tripping employees into staying after the hours they can legally be kept on, to get around new worker rights mandates. Ted is an extremist, a kidnapper who electrocutes his bound and captive prisoner. His rantings make Fuller seem like the reasonable one. However, during a key confrontation, she reveals that she's exactly as petty as you'd expect someone in her position to be. She sees herself as superior to underclassmen like Ted and his comatose mother. In other words, while Ted's methods might go too far and his beliefs are delusional, he is actually taking the fight to the Powers That Be and seeking out sorely needed justice. Both are bad but, ya know, at least one is recognizable as a human being and not a blood-hungry capitalist. 

The more we learn of Ted's history, the more sympathetic he inevitably becomes. Through black-and-white dream sequences, the film's most willfully surreal moments, we learn of his relationship with his mother. She was seemingly an addict who underwent an experimental treatment that stuck her in a coma. The corporate reaction to this was insincere. No wonder he's pissed. He references a time before life got all fucked-up. I hope we've all learned that nostalgic feelings for an idealized past is based more in fascist ideology than any reality. At the same time, I don't blame this guy for longing for a more innocent period in his life. When he still had his mom, before his world fell apart, back when things made some degree of sense. Conspiracy theorists look for patterns in the universe to establish order over the seeming chaos of our lives. Naturally they appeal to someone whose life has too often been at the mercy of the cruel and unpredictable.

There's a specific reason he's stuck in this childhood mindset too. An early scene has Ted waxing poetically on how bees pollinating flowers is like sex without “the messy parts.” He chemically castrates himself and his cousin with hormonal injections so they are not distracted by sexual thoughts. Later on, we meet a local cop who was apparently Teddy's childhood babysitter. And, we learn soon enough, molested him as a boy. Lanthimos cast Stavros Halkias, best known as the chummy co-host of a hilariously vulgar podcast, to emphasize how commonplace abuse like this truly is. Teddy's entire paranoid mindset is a reaction to sexual trauma in his childhood, another way to impose order on the random horrors of life. Sexual trauma as the origin point of a splintered mind is a well understood phenomenon. If you've dug into the schizo-posting that's run rampant on social media in the past months, you also know conspiracy theories swirl around abuse such as this as a method for mind control. I don't know about that but all of these things are different types of control. If “Bugonia” is a film concerned with queens having sway over their hives, about the strata of power, these ideas fit right in.

All of that is extremely dark and depressing stuff. Which might seem at odds with “Bugonia” also being a comedy. Yorgos Lanthimos' particular brand of absurd humor is well established by now. “Bugonia” rests unsteadily between the inhuman horror of “A Killing of a Sacred Deer” and the darkness-tinged wackiness of “Kinds of Kindness.” Working from someone else's script means the film is not as heavy on the oddball, staccato dialogue as Lanthimos' earlier work. However, the director's style is still undeniable. Robbie Ryan's cinematography is precise, placing the characters like figures within a diorama. The production design is similarly exact, the sterile offices contrasting with the filth of Ted's basement. The musical score acts as a punchline of sorts, a burst of bombastic sound that put an exclamation point on many absurd moments. The most apparent evidence that we are meant to be amused somewhat by these events on-screen are the bursts of cartoonish ultra-violence. When blood splatters in “Bugonia,” it comes in “Evil Dead”-like waves of crimson. 

Those bursts of over-the-top gore points towards my biggest problem with “Bugonia” and why I've not been able to embrace it fully. Something else the visuals, often looking down at the characters from an elevated distance, bring to mind is a dispassionate god watching ambivalently as these meaningless little ants circle their own destruction. Teddy is a sympathetic figure but he's also a clown. It's hard to deny that we are meant to snicker as he spits his insane theories with utmost conviction. The character of Donny, his cousin, seems to be on the autism spectrum. He speaks in clipped sentences, with an unsteady and lisping tone. Is the implication here that only someone mentally disabled would go along with Ted's bullshit? The actor playing Donny, Aidan Delbis, is genuinely autistic but the way the film regards him, as a foolish other open to mockery, can't help but bother me. When these characters are bloodily torn apart, it is meant to amuse. Are we meant to regard everything that happens in this film as dark comedy? Lanthimos' cold absurdity betrays him here, creating realistically broken anti-heroes and still tugging them along on marionette strings more because it cracks a smile than anything else. 

We head next into spoiler territory but it must be discussed. The assumption “Bugonia” operates on is that Teddy is insane and Fuller is his victim. Any attempts Fuller makes to approach Teddy's crazy bullshit on its level is her trying to bargain with her captor. When Emma Stone delivers a stone cold monologue – that outlines the backstory of the Andromedan beliefs, seemingly mixing Altantis pseudo-history, Oscar Kiss Maerth, dinosaurs, and UFO religion – it represents the film willfully playing with the ambiguity of its situation. Might Michelle Fuller actually be an alien? Is the crazed conspiracy theorist right? This deliberate uncertainty extends right up to the climax of the film before a lengthy epilogue... Confirms it as all true. (While also dropping the bomb that Teddy was a de-facto serial killer.) This reveal in “Save the Green Planet!” was the wacky punchline to a frequently silly film. In “Bugonia's” much darker take on the material, it feels like the bleak end point of the film's cold point-of-view. The final images of the film are of apocalyptic extermination, all of humanity wiped out by alien overlords who have deemed them too innately savage to save. 

It's a sequence impressively pulled off, a darkly detached montage of corpses piling up in multiple mundane scenario. However, what are we meant to take away from this ending? “Bugonia” is a psychic scream about how deep into the shit we are in the 21st century, disinformation and corporate greed battling it out over a planet spinning towards ecological collapse. And the saddest, most frustrating part is the messiness of it all is partially the work of broken humans trying their best. That ending is dismissive, the darkest chuckle at all the horrors that go on here. (Both in the film and in this world, I mean.) There is a note of poetry to them. The sequence is scored to “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” that plea to how we are all caught in a repeating cycle of short-lived innocence leading to death before being reclaimed by the Earth. The final shot of a bee buzzing around a flower, when contrasted with earlier images of dinosaur bones in a museum, suggest this as maybe natural. Humans had their time, just like the thunder lizards did. The Earth will spin on and some other lifeforms will inherit it next, starting the bloody cycle all over again. And that's interesting, more interesting than the snide messaging that none of it matters anyway and we can only be smugly amused by humanity's efforts to fight against the dying of the light that the rest of the film points towards.

The title, by the way, comes from an ancient folk ritual to spontaneously generate bees from the corpse of a cow. Perhaps suggesting all of these events are sacrifices worthwhile as long as they bring the bees back. All of which is to say that “Bugonia” is a very, very interesting film with a lot of fascinating ideas on its mind that ultimately puts me off by being too coldly critical of its own characters. By sanding off the more manic comedy of “Save the Green Planet!,” it's probably a more consistent film. However, I can't help but wonder if Lanthimos' tendency towards coldly considering the foibles of humanity with nothing but a dark grin was the right approach here. Technically, it's a magnificent film. Stone and Jesse Plemons are excellent. It's a movie that buzzes about in my head persistently, that I can't quite dismiss, that I also can't quite love. [7/10]

 

OSCARS 2026: The Secret Agent (2025)

 

My favorite release of 2020 was “Bacurau.” That Brazilian thriller drew you in with an intriguing mystery that then headed towards a brilliantly engineered last act. It was both a clever work of social commentary and an extremely satisfying piece of pulp fiction. The film was co-directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, a critic turned director whose work has been continuously well received in his home country. Each narrative feature he has directed has won Best Film at the Brazilian Academy Awards and his last three movies have all been nominated for the Palme d'Or. Well, now it would seem that we ignorant Americans are noticing Filho as well. His latest fictional work, “The Secret Agent,” would earn a surprise nominations for Best Picture and Best Actor at this year's Oscars. Considering this is the second year in a row that a Brazilian movie would break through into the top category, perhaps the Academy is noticing South American cinema more than before.

And like “I'm Still Here,” a movie that otherwise doesn't have much in common with this one, “The Secret Agent” is also set during the twenty year period when Brazil was ruled by a CIA-backed military dictatorship. It follows Armando. He returns to the city of Recife to spend Carnival with his son Fernando, currently living with his grandparents. He finds himself in an apartment complex run by communists and occupied by other refugees and political dissidents. Armando fled the city after making an enemy of a powerful electric company CEO. The same man has hired a pair of hit men to find and kill Armando. While attempting to reconnect with his son, Armando works at an identity card office, searches for information on his dead mother, and finds political allies based out of his father-in-law's local cinema. These story threads connect with the news of a human leg found inside a dead shark and researchers working in the present day.

From its opening scene, “The Secret Agent” establishes the tension ever-present in living under a violent regime. The first sequence involves Armando pulling into a gas station. A dead body lays on the ground out-front, the result of a shoot-out the night before. The proprietor of the business has simply covered the corpse up with some cardboard, not considering a homicide occurring right before him that outrageous. When the cops roll in, Armando has to present his documents. Before the details behind the character are even established, the audience can already tell that this guy has something to hide from the authorities. The near-by presence of death establishes a sense of pertinent danger, making us assume that the cops shooting Armando in the head would not be out of the ordinary. It turns out alright for Armando in this instance but that atmosphere of always being in danger, of the constant threat of being found out by the authorities, never leaves “The Secret Agent.” Characters must watch what they say in the privacies of their own home and assassins lurk the streets.

This is the world “The Secret Agent” inhabits and, of course, it was the real world for many people living in Brazil in 1977. While Armando's life forms the backbone of the film, the narrative often meanders over to numerous side characters. We learn details about the other inhabits in the apartment, like the elderly owner who is a former revolutionary and the refugees from the Angolan Civil War. We see the hit men go about their grisly business like it's any other job or the corrupt cops halfheartedly investigating the crimes. A lengthy digression features the cops harassing an elderly German Jew, played by Udo Kier in his final screen appearance. No matter how minor the characters turn out to be, we get this sense that they are fully formed individuals. The cat that lives in the apartment, which literally has two faces as a result of a birth defect, or the one cop always banging hookers in the records room feel as interesting and fleshed-out as the main characters. 

Yes, “The Secret Agent” does operate like a collection of snapshots of life in seventies Brazil. Filho was working on the film at the same time he was making a documentary called “Pictures of Ghosts.” I would not be surprised if many of the sequences in this movie were inspired by real anecdotes Filho collected while making that film. “Pictures of Ghosts,” however, is mostly a personal recollection of the filmmaker's childhood memories of growing up in Recife, filtered through the theme of the cinemas he frequented at the time. This too greatly informs “The Secret Agent.” The cinema setting makes clips of films a reoccurring element. We see “The Omen” attracting a crowd, especially after a publicity stunt of a priest performing an exorcism in the lobby. The trailer for Jean-Paul Belmondo action-farce “Le Magnifique” plays at one point, Filho seemingly taking the title for this movie from that one's Brazilian tagline. In particular, “Jaws” is a reoccurring motif here. After the story of the leg being dug out of the shark goes viral, Armando's son becomes obsessed with sharks and the “Jaws” poster. One can't help but assume that the boy is something of a stand-in for Kleber himself. 

It's mentioned that the boy is having nightmares about sharks too. This dovetails with an idea that many other filmmakers have observed in the past: That movies are not too dissimilar from dreams and visions. Easily my favorite sequence in the film brings a sensationalized newspaper story about that severed leg to life. It depicts the leg hopping around on its own, going on a horror movie style rampage through a park used for clandestine hook-ups by gay men. It's a burst of campy, outrageous comedy in an otherwise fairly grim movie. It also shows how the movie blends dreams, memories, and fiction with reality. This incident obviously did not actually happen, the bullshit yarn operating as a way for the paper to report on actual crimes without catching the attention of government censors. Once the movie starts to cut to the present day scenes, where recorded conversations of the past are unearthed, this theme is made all the more apparent. Movies are another way we reckon with our past, with history. Much the same way dreams and memories exist as forms to process our daily realities. 

There's a lot of interesting ideas in “The Secret Agent” and I wish the film held together as a whole better for me. There's not much of a narrative here. The focus on portraying bits and pieces from multiple lives, how the script slowly reveals the protagonist's past, the unexpected leaps ahead into the present: The result is a movie without much overall narrative coherence or forward momentum. “The Secret Agent” is on the long side, twenty minutes short of three hours, and I sometimes found myself wondering what the point of all this was. Too often, the movie feels like a collection of moments and characters in search of a plot. It comes together in its own way but I probably would have liked this more with a tighter narrative. That's obviously not the movie Fihlo was making, so it's more my problem than the movie's. 

The performances are strong, lived-in and realistic. Wagner Moura balances an undercurrent of anxiety and a struggle for normality in the lead. The cinematography is warm and concise. The editing is very well done. It's definitely a good movie and I'm glad I watched it. It does feel like an unexpected breakout success. The title suggests a more straight-forward genre operation but the film is, intentionally so, much more scattered than that. Not something you would expect the Academy voters to love a lot but, here we are. Filho certainly remains a filmmaker to watch. “The Secret Agent” is bold, interesting, insightful, meandering, shapeless, but singular. [7/10]