Steve Pond's Blog, page 148

‘My Father’s Shadow’ Review: Cannes’ First Nigerian Movie Mixes Autobiography and Mystery

The line “I’ll see you in my dreams” is repeated frequently in Akinola Davies Jr.’s “My Father’s Shadow,” the first film from a Nigerian director to earn a slot in the Cannes Film Festival’s official selection. And in that line, perhaps, is the heart of a standout film.

Dreams and ghosts figure heavily into the film, which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the festival on Sunday. While on the surface the drama follows a day trip taken by two young boys and their father to the Nigerian capitol of Lagos, the film slides between reality and imagination, between the natural world and the spiritual one. It’s a rhapsody of sorts, but a rough one; it examines the nuts and bolts of a family dynamic, but leaves room for mystery and is beautifully elusive.  

“My Father’s Shadow” opens with a reverie that mixes scenes from the natural world —flies buzzing, ants swarming, wind blowing — with two young boys, ages 8 and 11 (brothers Godwin Egbo and Chibuike Marvellous Egbo), in a small village is Nigeria in 1993. Their father, Fola (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù), shows up, which apparently isn’t as regular an occurrence as they’d like, and he impulsively invites them on a day trip to Lagos, where he needs to collect a paycheck for work he’d done for an upcoming presidential election.

That election was the country’s first since a military dictatorship assumed power a decade earlier, and it was a tightly contested race between the military ruler, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, and challenger Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola (aka MKO) of the Social Democratic Party. The election was closely watched around the world to see if Nigeria could hold an open and free election – but it was also closely watched in Akinola Davies’ home, with the director basing much of the film on his own memories of the time.

On the bus to Lagos, the kids overhear talk of a recent massacre, which is alternately condemned as a slaughter of unarmed pro-democracy protestors and dismissed as “election propaganda.” The fact that people were killed is not in dispute, but the numbers are, though Fola isn’t in the mood to talk about it with his kids. (His frequent nosebleeds are also a sign that he’s perpetually uneasy.)

The trip is low-key but foreboding; everyone the family encounters seems convinced that their candidate, MKO will win, but uncertain if the incumbent will yield power. The film flits from one gathering to another as Fola tries to find somebody who can pay him for the work he’s done, carving out time in between to hang out with the kids and show them the sights of a big city, including an amusement park that they find thrilling.

The action meanders, but there’s always an undercurrent of dread. And while many of the episodes are down to earth, the filmmaking lets things flow from image to image with lines that search for deeper truths but don’t advance the plot. “My Father’s Shadow” can also be reminiscent of recent African films like “Atlantics” and “Dahomey,” with their blurred lines between the living and the dead. 

Any sense of reverie, though, is dashed when a TV newscaster announces that the ruling party has annulled the election results, claiming fraud. Everyone in Fola’s circle is enraged and distraught, and the trip back to the village becomes a nightmare when a soldier at a military blockade is sure that he knows Fola from somewhere. Are these childhood memories, dreams or something worse? “My Father’s Shadow” drops clues but not answers, and this tender drama is all the better for it.

The post ‘My Father’s Shadow’ Review: Cannes’ First Nigerian Movie Mixes Autobiography and Mystery appeared first on TheWrap.

Donald Trump Wishes Joe Biden a ‘Fast and Successful Recovery’

Donald Trump sent wishes for “a fast and successful recovery” to Joe Biden Sunday after the office for the former president announced his prostate cancer diagnosis.

“Melania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis. We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone,” a statement released by Biden’s office and shared by CNN Sunday read.

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.”

Biden and his family “are reviewing treatment options with his physicians,” the statement also said. The former president is home in Wilmington, Delaware, CNN also reported.

Trump has been a longtime Biden antagonist, and frequently encouraged crowds at his campaign rallies to vote for which term they felt best described the then-president: “Sleepy Joe” or “Crooked Joe.”

In September 2023 Trump challenged Rupert Murdoch and Biden to mental acuity tests.

“In a phony and probably rigged Wall Street Journal poll, coming out of nowhere to softened the mental incompetence blow that is so obvious with Crooked Joe Biden, they ask about my age and mentality,” he wrote on Truth Social.

He continued, “Where did that come from? A few years ago I was the only one to agree to a mental acuity test, & ACED IT.”

He added, “I will name the place and the test, and it will be a tough one. Nobody will come even close to me.”

The post Donald Trump Wishes Joe Biden a ‘Fast and Successful Recovery’ appeared first on TheWrap.

‘Urchin’ Review: Harris Dickinson’s Directorial Debut Is a Devastating, Delicate Drama

When you’re a film critic who sees film after film and reviews them over the course of a busy festival, there can be a tendency to leave yourself out of the picture in order to prioritize being more analytical and detached about what it is you’re seeing. There is no doing that with actor Harris Dickinson’s debut feature “Urchin.”

A drama about a man who goes from living on the streets of London to trying to start his life over again and break free from the stranglehold of addiction after a stint in prison, it’s the first film where the final moments made my breath catch in my throat as I began to tear up at Cannes this year. This is no small achievement. It’s the type of moment that serves as a testament to just how confidently written and directed it is as it takes what was an otherwise simple yet still effective film then transforms it into something more unexpectedly shattering.

Even as this year’s festival has already benefited from a great instance of an actor making a memorable directorial debut in Kristen Stewart’s evocative “The Chronology of Water,” Dickinson’s “Urchin” is more than worth holding in the same esteem. Going even further, while Dickinson has drawn some comparisons to the work of the great director Mike Leigh, the film that was most rattling around my head while watching this was Danny Boyle’s “Trainspotting.” This isn’t because it utilizes narration or music in a similar way — it’s entirely without the former — but because of the soul to it. Both are films about deeply flawed people trying to do better, only to find themselves continually getting drawn back into the same old painful patterns and making the same mistakes.

This all rests on the shoulders of a fantastic Frank Dillane who doesn’t just play Mike, he fully embodies him. From the opening scene where we see him awaken on the street, unable to sleep because of a shouting street preacher who is hawking bibles, we feel the frustration and agony that comes from not even being able to have a moment of peace to yourself. Dillane will likely be known to most for his brief role as a young Tom Riddle in the film “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” but you immediately forget any such history and instead get completely wrapped up in Mike’s day-to-day life.

He tries to get money for food from uncaring Londoners who stare right through him, is kicked out of a restaurant where he is trying to charge his phone before falling asleep, and finally manages to find a place to rest in a parking garage. His life is then about drifting through each day before he gets in a confrontation with another resident of the streets (who is notably played by Dickinson himself) after he stole his wallet. When Mike is then assisted by a stranger who breaks up the fight and offers to buy him food, he waits until the two are alone. He then attacks and robs him.

It’s a sudden moment of violence that the film spends the rest of the runtime gently interrogating. Rather than seeking to alienate us from Mike or reduce him to someone to look down on, the film simply observes him with all his many complications. Dickinson is not interested in absolving his protagonist for what he’s done nor, it seems, is Mike himself. As he serves his time, gets clean, starts a job, and initially builds a new life for himself, he’s open about what it is that he did. While it’s clear he did it out of desperation for a fix, this is not something that he uses to let himself off the hook. He still hurt another person and now he will have to figure out how to carry on after this.

Shot with an emphasis on character in its frequent close ups, including an emotionally complicated scene built around restorative justice that is one of many where the film knocks you sideways, we also get glimpses of people within a system who are trying to help someone like Mike yet are still, along with him, falling short. This is then juxtaposed with the moments where he retreats into his mind, with several strikingly shot sequences that take us deep into what appears to be a cave far out in the forest. It’s a mesmerizing way of expressing the peace that Mike desires most yet is unable to stay in for very long. No matter what he does, it always feels many miles from his own world.

As Dickinson then traces the fits and starts of Mike trying to imagine a new future for himself, he withholds much about his background. We are briefly told that he is adopted and hear the reaction of a likely parental figure on the other end of a phone call he makes from prison, though this is essentially it. Everything else comes from Dillane’s delicate and devastating performance.

It’s not about making him palatable to us, as if only people who are without flaw are deserving of compassion. We instead get to take in the full complicated person and still deeply care for him every step of the way. It’s an intimate performance. This is a full character that Dillane and Dickinson have built from the ground up, where the little details of how he reacts to things can tear right through when you least expect it.

This includes a scene where he is not even at the center of the frame, but out of focus at a critical moment. As you see him lift his head in response to information he’s been given, put it back down again, and remain still, you can feel every crushing pound of the tension that is playing out inside him. It’s a remarkable moment that Dickinson constructs which also marks the moment where everything begins falling apart. Where lesser films could make this feel like a trite inevitability, “Urchin” was so patient in the buildup to it that it makes the preceding fall that much more devastating.

This extends all the way through to the final sequence that blows the doors off the entire film. This is where “Trainspotting” again feels like an influence, but there is also a fantastic final shot that is closer to something like “Aftersun.” Just as these are high points of praise, Dickinson also does much that he can call his own. It cements the film as a breathtaking work of overwhelming humanity and a debut for the ages.

The post ‘Urchin’ Review: Harris Dickinson’s Directorial Debut Is a Devastating, Delicate Drama appeared first on TheWrap.

‘Nouvelle Vague’ Director Richard Linklater Dumps On Trump Tariff Threat, Gushes Over Godard: ‘He Had Such An Interesting Brain’

A new hangout movie from the man who knows them like the back of his hand, Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague” chronicles the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” and pays tribute to the French New Wave in a way that recalls his previous films like “Slacker” and the “Before” series. Premiering Saturday in Cannes, it marked the culmination of a years-long journey that the Austin filmmaker said he always dreamed would end with them here. 

“It’s exhilarating for this film, certainly, to be here,” Linklater said alongside stars Guillaume Marbeck and Zoey Deutch at a press conference on Sunday. “All roads lead to Cannes if you’re lucky. We got lucky.”

As it was a French production, Linklater was asked about the recent social media posts by President Donald Trump where he said there would be tariffs on films shooting on “foreign lands” without offering any specifics. The director, for his part, didn’t seem worried.

“The tariff thing, that’s not going to happen, right?” Linklater said. “That guy changes his mind like 50 times in one day,” Linklater said. “It’s the one export industry of the U.S., it would be kind of dumb to… Whatever, we don’t have to talk about that.”

What Linklater did have time to talk about was his love of Godard, as the influential late filmmaker “had such an interesting brain” and “it’s amazing he got to make films.” Making “Nouvelle Vague” was about learning as much as he could about how the French master worked.

“It was almost therapeutic, or cathartic, to get to know a film so well,” Linklater said. “It was pretty magical, like they did those two scenes in one day?!”

While he acknowledged that taking on the project was a “crazy leap,” he felt that he had been working long enough that this was the right time to try something like this.

“If you do it long enough, you should make a film about making films,” Linklater said. “It felt like an important moment in cinema history, so it was fun to dial down on one film and learn so much about it

Linklater said he initially thought that French audiences would “hate that an American director did this,” before recounting how the more the film got underway, the more he felt the shared passion people had for it. He said, though he doesn’t speak French fluently, that the language barrier didn’t prove to be an issue as they all spoke in the visual language of film. He also said it was not about mimicking Godard. 

“You can’t imitate Godard, but you could feel the style of the time.” 

When asked more about how cinema has changed in the many decades since, Linnklater did say that there remain challenges, but that he considers good art to be something that endures. He specifically praised the “Letterboxd generation” and young people taking an interest in film.  

“It always feels under attack,” Linklater said. “It is tough, it’s a struggle, but it always has been….There’s something perpetual.”

The post ‘Nouvelle Vague’ Director Richard Linklater Dumps On Trump Tariff Threat, Gushes Over Godard: ‘He Had Such An Interesting Brain’ appeared first on TheWrap.

‘Die, My Love’ Star Jennifer Lawrence Says She Was Heartbroken By Postpartum Story: ‘It’s Extremely Isolating’

As unflinching a film about postpartum as you’ll ever see, “Die, My Love,” the haunting new work from acclaimed filmmaker Lynne Ramsay, has marked a long-anticipated return for the director eight years after her last film, 2017’s “You Were Never Really Here.”

Premiering Saturday night in Cannes to largely rave reviews, it’s a film that centers on Jennifer Lawrence’s Grace as she finds herself trying to raise a child almost entirely alone in a remote Montana home, an experience the actress said is about her world “peeling away.” The film, Lawrence said at a Cannes press conference on Sunday morning, resonated on a personal level after she had a child herself. 

“As a mother, it was really hard to separate what I would do as opposed to what she would do. It was just heartbreaking.” Lawrence said at the press conference alongside Ramsay and co-stars Robert Pattinson, Sissy Spacek and LaKeith Stanfield. “There’s not anything like postpartum. It’s extremely isolating.” 

Lawrence said that she was pregnant with her second child during the filming, with the good hormones allowing her to navigate some of the painful elements of the story. She also pointed to having kids as helping her to tap into character and emotion that much better.  

“Having children changes everything,” she said. “It changes your whole life. It’s brutal and incredible. I didn’t know that I could feel so much and my job has a lot to do with emotion. They’ve opened up the world to me. It’s almost like feeling a blister, so sensitive. They’ve changed my life for the best and they’ve changed me creatively. I highly recommend having kids if you want to be an actor.”

For her part, Ramsay said that she wasn’t always sure if this project, which has been years in the making, is something she could do as “the writing was very special” and “dreamlike.”

Comparing it to her 2011 film “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” she said it was still a new “experiment” for her and that she used the love story to find her way into the film. 

Though specific in terms of its location, a remote rural house that the couple moves into, Lawrence said that “extreme anxiety and extreme depression [are] isolating no matter where you are. You feel like an alien.” 

For his part, Pattinson said that this part was something different for him in that the character “was more a normal guy than I ever played.” That normality provides the central tension of the film. 

“Trying to deal with her isolation and figure out what your part and role in the relationship afterwards is incredibly difficult,” he said. “Trying to hold on, he doesn’t have the vernacular, he’s just a guy. He’s not looking at TikTok reels about parenting and stuff.”

Pattinson, who has a one-year-old daughter with his partner, Suki Waterhouse, did not reveal which TikTokers, if any, he used to get his own parenting advice. 

The post ‘Die, My Love’ Star Jennifer Lawrence Says She Was Heartbroken By Postpartum Story: ‘It’s Extremely Isolating’ appeared first on TheWrap.

‘SNL’: Colin Jost Tells Lorne Michaels to ‘Retire Bitch,’ Offers to Do ‘Anything to Run the Show’ in Weekend Update Joke Swap | Video

Colin Jost and Michael Che held their annual “Weekend Update” joke swap during the “SNL” Season 50 Finale on Saturday. And Che hit Jost hard from the jump by writing a tribute to “Saturday Night Live’ boss Lorne Michaels for Jost to read.

The tribute: “Retire Bitch!”

Watch the clip below

Season 50 Finale Joke Swap with Colin and Che! pic.twitter.com/zkV7oMyP2r

— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) May 18, 2025

In case you forgot, the joke swap involves Che and Jost writing jokes for one another that neither are allowed to see until the episode is filmed. Obviously they’re written for maximum embarassment.

The joke about Michaels happened as Jost let the audience know they were doing the swap, adding “before we start, it’s SNL, 50th season. So I want to take a moment to say something to our boss, Lorne Michaels.” Followed by the joke.

Next, Jost was forced to tell a joke about how CBS is airing the first daytime soap with a majority Black cast. The punchline: “It’ll air when black people are home from work, 24 hours a day.”

Next, a horrified Jost, reading from Che’s script, said, “so since you like that, here’s another,” and this time the punch line was, “It’s called All My Children don’t know who their dads are.”

Next, Che read a joke by Jost where he said he masturbates during the “Minecraft” movie, adding that he liked it so much, “I haven’t been that excited since I saw a white woman drink unattended.”

After another exchange, They brought out Scarlett Johansson — Jost’s real life wife. “SNL” viewers will remember that last year Che wrote some really tasteless jokes for Jost to tell about her last season. So this time Jost wrote an ‘apology’ for Che to say.

“The fact is, I was just lashing out because I’m jealous. I’ve never even seen a human vagina,” Che told Johansson. “And notice I said ‘human,’ because I once spent the summer on a farm.”

“I can’t even take my hoodie off during sex because I have more nipples than a pregnant dog,” Che also read, after which he turned to Jost and said, “I’m sorry too, because I owe you everything. When Colin discovered me, I was selling crack… and now look at me selling crack.”

After joking he’s “gotten dozens of laughs,” during his tenure on the show, Che added, “but I’ve never said the three most important words of all, I love you.”

The joke swap ended with this joke, read by Jost:

“Some psychologists say adults can reduce stress by returning to a childhood hobby, which is why I returned to my favorite childhood hobby, topping off priests with my pretty little mouth,” Jost said. At this point, still reading from Che’s script, he grabbed some lipstick on and, cracking up, added, “I’ll do anything to run this show.”

The post ‘SNL’: Colin Jost Tells Lorne Michaels to ‘Retire Bitch,’ Offers to Do ‘Anything to Run the Show’ in Weekend Update Joke Swap | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

‘SNL’: Trump Breaks the Fourth Wall in Cold Open, Pokes Fun at Morgan Wallen: ‘Get Me to Allah’s Country’ | Video

James Austin Johnson’s President Trump celebrated his trip to the Middle East, broke the fourth wall and poked fun at Morgan Wallen’s infamous, abrupt exit earlier this season in the cold open of this week’s “Saturday Night Live.”

“I’m cooking, I’m having a great time,” Johnson’s Trump said of his Middle East trip, while standing next to the ruler of Saudi Arabia (Emil Wakim). “I’m just going to say it: I love the Arabs! I don’t want to go home. Let me stay!” In a cheeky reference to Wallen’s Instagram post about going back to “God’s country” after his “SNL” performance in late March, Johnson’s Trump then remarked, “Get me to Allah’s country! Everyone loves me here. They’re not allowed to not, right?”

When Wakim’s Saudi ruler asked Johnson’s Trump to stay and build a palace next to his, the president responded, “Sadly, I can’t. I have to get back home. Luckily, we have our own little slice of Saudi Arabia in America: a dry, desert area filled with people who are way too into their religion. We call ours Utah!”

You can watch the “SNL” cold open yourself in the video below.

“I did very well on this trip, got a lot of cool stuff,” Johnson’s Trump said, before specifically mentioning the $400 million luxury jet that the royal family of Qatar recently gifted the president. “People said that was some sort of bribe. Not true! Not true, because they haven’t asked for anything in return.” That latter remark prompted Wakim’s Saudi royal to note, “Well, not yet.”

“Now, people are saying I should really be flying in an American plane. Uh, no thanks, honey! Have you seen what’s going on with our planes?” Johnson’s Trump added. “The radar is down, and the screen is blank. Newark!” Bragging that the United Arab Emirates has promised to invest over $1 trillion in the U.S., he joked, “I love Dubai because they do… buy a lot of weapons!”

At the end of the sketch, Johnson’s Trump decided to break the fourth wall and take an “SNL” audience member’s seat. “It’s the ‘SNL’ finale. Season 50! Worst one yet,” Johnson’s Trump announced. “Since it’s the finale, that means after tonight, you won’t be seeing me here for a while. Well, not the fake, fun version of me that makes you smile. The real one will still be omnipresent.”

“You can’t escape me, right? I’m everywhere. Even in your dreams, like the late, great Freddy Krueger,” Johnson’s Trump concluded. “See you again in the fall, if we still have a country, right? It’s a coin toss!”

“Saturday Night Live” is now streaming on Peacock.

The post ‘SNL’: Trump Breaks the Fourth Wall in Cold Open, Pokes Fun at Morgan Wallen: ‘Get Me to Allah’s Country’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

Bill O’Reilly Chuckles at Newsom-for-President Rumors: ‘J.D. Vance Has Got to Be the Happiest Guy in the World’ | Video

With what the Associated Press calls “the earliest phase of the 2028 presidential election season already underway,” one name being floated for the Democrats is California Gov. Gavin Newsom – and Bill O’Reilly says that should make Republicans feel pretty comfortable in these early days.

Newsom hasn’t declared either way, but media outlets from the AP to Politico to NBC News were reading the tea leaves last week as the second-term governor is rumored to be kicking the tires and working on a “rebrand” as a more centrist candidate than previously advertised.

As he tends to do, O’Reilly just said it outright:

“Gavin Newsom is running for president,” the “No Spin News” host said. “I told you this earlier this week, and he sees an opportunity because there’s no competition on the Democratic side for him at this point. Newsom — talk about a hypocrite. This is hypocrite number one.”

O’Reilly pointed to Newsom’s recent pivots on homelessness and a proposed cap on state public health spending for undocumented immigrants as evidence.

“Well, what took you so long?,” O’Reilly said. “You’ve been governor for six years. [Homelessness] has cost the state billions of dollars and has destroyed San Francisco and other cities. And all of a sudden, you’re enlightened? You want the homeless camps dismantled?”

He also rolled a clip of Newsom recently talking about his plan to address the state’s annual $12 billion spending deficit.

“So here are the solutions,” Newsom said. “$5 billion on a freeze on our Medi-Cal expansion. We’re not cutting or rolling back those that are enrolled in our Medi-Cal system – we’re just capping it, particularly for those with documentation.”

O’Reilly called spin on that: “Yeah, a cap. What a weasel this guy is. So, why didn’t you do it five years ago? Why didn’t you do it? It is so ridiculous.”

And finally, O’Reilly had a good chuckle at Newsom’s blame for the state’s financial woes on the Trump administration.

“California is under assault,” Newsom said in another clip. “The United States of America, in many respects, is under assault because we have a president that’s been reckless in terms of assaulting those growth engines, has created a climate of deep uncertainty, and certainly has California in his sights.”

The former Fox News host found that truly funny: “So, it’s Trump’s fault. It’s Trump’s fault that California has a $12 billion-a-year deficit. Democrats, is this what you want? This is what you’re going to put up?”

O’Reilly concluded that it’s only good news for whomever Republicans intend to run in 2028 – especially if it’s the current vice president.

“J.D. Vance has got to be the happiest guy in the world,” O’Reilly said, shaking his head. “He’s got to be the happiest guy in the world. Yeah, bring it on. Unbelievable.”

Watch the entire segment in the video above.

The post Bill O’Reilly Chuckles at Newsom-for-President Rumors: ‘J.D. Vance Has Got to Be the Happiest Guy in the World’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

‘Orwell: 2+2=5’ Review: Angry Documentary Is as Much About Us (and Donald Trump) as About George Orwell

For about half an hour or so, Raoul Peck’s documentary “Orwell: 2+2=5” is amazingly restrained in the way it deals with author George Orwell, his seminal dystopian novel “1984” and its connections to today’s world. The film, which premiered on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival, gives us passages from the author’s essays and diaries read by Damian Lewis and shown over bucolic aerial shots of the Scottish island of Jura, where Orwell wrote his classic 1948 novel about a future society in which the government, personified as an all-powerful Big Brother, freely lies to its citizens and creates false enemies to direct their anger toward the other.

There are scenes from the many film adaptations of “1984,” from other movies and from news and historical footage to show that parts of Orwell’s playbook are in use today, detailing actions in Myanmar, Ukraine, the Philippines, Russia and Hungary, among other hotspots of oppression. It then brings things to the North American continent by talking about how George W. Bush rallied the country (and some of the world) behind the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq with false information. (It’s pretty uncanny when you place his speech alongside Big Brother’s explanation of why the fictional superstate of Oceania needs to be at war with Eurasia.)

In those juxtapositions and others, “Orwell: 2+2=5”  lets the author’s words detail the dangers of “the organized lying practiced by totalitarian states” and the “disbelief in the very existence of objective truths” that Orwell identified and current regimes practice today. But for most of the film’s first half hour, it doesn’t mention the current U.S. president at all. Could Peck, the Haitian filmmaker whose other documentaries include “I Am Not Your Negro” and “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found,” really be following the lead of other media outlets who have seemingly given up on going after the second Donald Trump presidency?

Hell, no. He couldn’t, and he wouldn’t. Because about half an hour into “Orwell: 2+2=5,” Peck drops in footage of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters: the mock gallows to hang Vice President Mike Pence, the enraged protestors breaking into Congress and assaulting guards and police officers, and then Trump’s own Big Brotherly description about that day: “The love in the air, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

With that sequence, Peck drags Donald Trump into the world of “1984,” and finds that the president is a very good fit for a fictional society in which one of the three main slogans is “Ignorance Is Strength.” (The other two are “War Is Peace” and “Freedom Is Slavery.”)

The rest of the movie is far too nuanced to be a simple polemic against the Trump administration, but there’s a reason why Peck pulled “Orwell” out of Sundance and delayed its release until Cannes: because he kept finding things that needed to be said about ties between Orwell’s work and the current U.S.A.

That means that the right wing won’t pay attention to Peck’s film, or will put the award-winning filmmaker on the ugly/untalented list alongside Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen and whoever gets on their leader’s bad side this week. And it means some naysayers will dismiss the whole thing on the grounds that Orwell was an artist, and artists shouldn’t venture into politics.

Then again, Orwell had answers for both of those complains more than 80 years ago: “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude,” he wrote at one point, along with the observation that in some societies, “atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in based solely on political proclivities.”

“Orwell: 2+2=5” is an artful balancing act, one that dips in and out of Orwell’s life and work, but also uses a broad array of reference points as it swings from history to art to the most current of events. The film is an essay, not a biography, and it feels placid and measured, because of the way Orwell wrote and the way his words are read by Lewis. But as it details the use of the “1984” playbook in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Honduras, El Salvador, Palestine and countless other places, there’s inescapable anger driving even the most subdued sequences.

And that anger is aimed not just at despots and tyrants, but at profiteers and enablers. Jeff Bezos, Charles Koch, Elon Musk and others make the dishonor list, and dismissed in a line Orwell wrote about their midcentury predecessors: “They are simply parasites, of less use to society as fleas are to a dog.”

 In its two-hour running time, Peck also ventures into the threats of AI and the surveillance society and the rise of the far right and anti-immigrant sentiment around the world. As it wanders further away from Orwell, “Orwell” threatens at times to becomes sprawling and unfocused, though most of the time it remains heady, dense and even playful.

And even if it’s not easy to find its way back to Orwell after a while, the author was always more of a jumping-off point than a true subject.  “Orwell: 2+2=5” is less about Orwell than it is about us, and it’s less about “1984” than it is about 2025.

The post ‘Orwell: 2+2=5’ Review: Angry Documentary Is as Much About Us (and Donald Trump) as About George Orwell appeared first on TheWrap.

‘Die, My Love’ Review: Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence Are Outstanding in Haunting Domestic Horror

There is no one who can cast a spell quite like Lynne Ramsay. Be it in a portrait of a mother reeling from the fact that her son committed a violent act or a study of the world’s loneliest mercenary who gets caught up in a conspiracy, it’s less about the “what” of the story than the manner in which she tells it. Her latest, the confined “Die, My Love’ starring Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence as a loving couple whose world begins to rapidly unravel, is no different. A film that falls again under the banner of “domestic horror” like “We Need to Talk About Kevin, “Die, My Love” is about seeing the way a small crack in the psyche can splinter outwards until everything shatters. While not always as measured as her past work and often a little rough around the edges on a technical level, the moments where Ramsay strips away all the noise to immerse us in the more unsettling experiential elements makes it a welcome return for the filmmaker. 

Building up to the Cannes Film Festival, one of the biggest questions was whether the director, who first made an incredible debut at the festival back in 1999 with “Ratcatcher,” would be returning with this newest work. By no means the most prolific of filmmakers, Ramsay’s inclusion immediately made “Die, My Love” one of the most anticipated films of the festival. While this level of expectation and the high bar she has set for herself could work against the often rather flawed “Die, My Love,” there is still so much that is worth appreciating in the rich details of the remote world that she explores. Even as it can increasingly start to feel a little scattered as it approaches a shaky finale, the journey to get there offers plenty of Ramsay at her best. 

Premiering Saturday in the festival’s main competition, it first introduces us to the couple of Grace (Lawrence) and Jackson (Pattinson) as they begin a move into their new home. While this could sound like the setup to a more conventional horror film, the way Ramsay shoots this opening holds us at an intriguing distance with a wide shot where we see the beaten down house that will become the film’s primary location. We then get hurled headlong into a series of scenes between the couple where they almost begin to attack each other in shared sexual reverie. It’s an intoxicatingly shot introduction that immediately convinces us of the couple’s deep passion for one another, which then makes the rest of the film that much more agonizing as the two grow further and further apart.

Specifically, the couple having a baby upends their lives and leaves each of them with vastly different day-to-day experiences. Where Jackson goes away to work frequently, Grace is left entirely at home where she begins to grow “bored of the universe,” as she bitterly says at one point. Though she was once a writer, all of her waking hours are now consumed with caring for their child almost entirely alone. When Jackson then brings home a dog without asking, any quiet that she could have hoped to have in her house evaporates in an instant. As we feel via the all-consuming sound design, Grace is never able to have a moment of peace. It’s Ramsay’s version of the recent “Nightbitch,” complete with Lawrence walking on all fours and barking like a dog, though instead of sanding off the rougher edges of motherhood as that film did, she sharpens them so it all cuts right to the bone. 

Both Pattinson and Lawrence are outstanding in their roles — the latter becomes a protagonist of sorts while the other is a pseudo-antagonist. We can see the anger, fear and isolation in their every move, with the vacancy that exists behind their eyes proving to be the most chilling part of the whole affair. It’s like we’re seeing the ghosts of who each of them were getting left behind by the bodies that are just going through the motions, living a life that may just be the thing that destroys them. This primarily falls on Grace as the isolation, buzzing of flies, and the general sense that she is wasting away starts to consume her from the inside out. 

There are big moments of shocking violence where this comes to a head, including a scene where Lawrence throws herself through a glass door. There’s an off-kilter humor that Ramsay, working from a script she co-wrote with Enda Walsh, weaves in and out of the film. Many of the interactions Grace has with the people that she encounters in her day to day, while bound up in rage, are also darkly funny. It’s not at the expense of her character or the suffering she is experiencing. Instead, it’s about the dark absurdity of the waking existential nightmare that has come to define all aspects of her life. For much of the beginning of the film, this is all captured with a quite self-assured, confident hand. 

Unfortunately, things start to fray in ways the film doesn’t quite have a handle on as we get into the middle stretch. An affair Grace has feels only half-baked, which could come down to the fact that it may not be entirely real in the way we imagine, and ultimately just wastes the presence of the always magnetic LaKeith Stanfield. There are some distracting technical flourishes in this stretch as well, including an awkward use of day-for-night cinematography. But these are small missteps for what remains an intriguing work.

As we see Grace become more distant from life, you find yourself being drawn in by Ramsay’s spell. The rhythms of the home, equal parts mundane and maddening, is what gives the film its power. You are constantly looking for a way out, but none is coming as the film keeps ratcheting up the quiet sense of tension until you can hardly stand it. Even as it’s not Ramsay’s best film, even a minor work from the filmmaker is still better than just about any other director. There remains a haunting power that she’s able to wield over her audience.  

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