Martin Cid's Blog: Martin Cid Magazine, page 8

Max Hooper Schneider’s “Scavenger” at 125 Newbury Marks the Artist’s First New York Solo Exhibition

Max Hooper Schneider presents “Scavenger” at 125 Newbury in Tribeca, his first solo exhibition in New York. The project is structured as a laboratory of hybrid ecologies, assembling engineered environments from salvaged matter, fabricated organisms, and vernacular debris to examine how objects and classification systems behave under conditions of transformation and decay.

The installation centers on vitrined habitats and outdoor assemblages conceived as dynamic systems rather than static sculpture. Materials such as coral, teeth, crystals, plasma gas, and mass-market detritus are organized into microcosms that stage succession, corrosion, fossilization, and preservation. Among the tableaux are an oversized cookie form that leaches oil into an archipelago of copper-plated toy animals; a crusted relief where barnacles and dollhouse furniture encase miniature screens showing burning sculptures; a nocturnal grove of bricolaged refuse suspended with lantern-like capsules; and burned aquaria reconstituted as copper-dendrite reefs.

Hooper Schneider describes the exhibition as “a set of conditions without a plot,” positioning the works closer to open systems than to narrative display. The presentation reframes natural-history museology as speculative apparatus: vitrines, taxonomies, and dioramas are redeployed as instruments to register entropy, resilience, and mutation. The result is a series of test environments in which organic and industrial residues cohabit, prompting close, sustained looking rather than episodic spectacle.

The artist’s methodology draws on training in both art and the life sciences. Studio procedures adapt techniques from landscape and marine studies, while the material vocabulary—manufactured plastics, metallized surfaces, domestic miniatures, and biological remnants—underscores a sustained interest in how culture and nature are co-produced. Rather than illustrating environmental discourse, the works model processes (oxidation, accretion, petrification) that make legible the temporalities of damage and repair.

Hooper Schneider was born in Los Angeles and studied Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design, with earlier degrees in Urban Design and Biology from New York University and additional study in marine biology and entomology. His work has been shown at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, MO.CO Montpellier, and the Hammer Museum, and in group exhibitions at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Schinkel Pavillon, Leeum Museum of Art, Kistefos Museum, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. His work is held in public and private collections including the Hammer Museum, MOCA Los Angeles, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, the Rubell Museum, Fondation Lafayette, and the Fonds d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève. Recognitions include the BMW Art Journey Prize and the Schmidt Ocean Institute Prize.

“Scavenger” is presented by 125 Newbury, a 3,900-square-foot project space founded by Arne Glimcher at 395 Broadway, whose program alternates thematic group exhibitions with focused solo presentations. The exhibition coincides with Hooper Schneider’s participation in the 12th SITE SANTA FE International, curated by Cecilia Alemani.

Venue and dates: 125 Newbury, 395 Broadway, Tribeca, New York — September 12 to October 25, 2025. Related program: SITE SANTA FE International, “Once Within a Time” — on view through January 12, 2026.

Tate Britain’s Art Now Presents Onyeka Igwe’s our generous mother

Tate Britain will present a new film installation by Onyeka Igwe, our generous mother, as the next commission in its Art Now programme. The work extends the artist’s investigation of archives and contested histories by focusing on the Nigerian university where her mother studied, using the campus as a framework for examining the intersections of private memory and state narratives.

Centred on the University of Ibadan—described as Nigeria’s oldest degree-awarding institution—the film moves through the site’s tropical modernist architecture to chart political and familial trajectories from colonial foundations through independence and civil war to the present. Igwe layers contradictory accounts and hybridises modes, allowing fiction to intersect with documentary and analogue procedures to meet digital display, to consider how a single place sustains multiple, competing versions of the past.

The installation is organised as a sequence of viewing conditions that alter the image and its legibility. A Perspex sculpture first refracts and fragments the projection, underscoring the conditional character of historical interpretation. Midway through the space, the work shifts into slide-projection, a format that references instructional materials created to educate colonial officers in the mid-twentieth century, in which images were paired with scripts to be read aloud. Commandments adapted from the Ibadan Film Unit Guide are interwoven at this stage. The piece concludes as a large-scale digital projection on a cinematic wall, drawing on a lineage of radical filmmaking to probe how institutional narratives are constructed.

Art Now functions as Tate Britain’s free platform for contemporary practice and has provided early public visibility for artists who later achieved broad recognition, including Tacita Dean, Ed Atkins, Fiona Banner, Hurvin Anderson and Doris Salcedo. Igwe’s commission sits within this history while directing attention to pedagogy, infrastructure and administration as subjects of moving-image inquiry.

Across these phases, the curatorial logic is consistent: the work tests how exhibition formats and image technologies shape what counts as evidence. By routing a family biography through the built environment and bureaucratic residues of a major university, our generous mother treats documents, memories and moving images as materials subject to editing and re-reading, rather than as fixed records.

Venue and dates: Art Now, Tate Britain — 19 September 2025 to 17 May 2026.

Nathan Blaze’s Directorial Debut Feature Thriller ‘Run’ Trailer Release – Stars Marie Wetherell, Blaine Hall, Tom Zembrod, and Stelio Savante

The Blaze Brothers Production Company LLC presents the trailer release of the first feature written and directed by Nathan Blaze, who also executive produced.

Currently in post-production, Run is a dystopian thriller revealing how doom has encompassed the post-apocalyptic world. A woman and her best friend, Squeaks the mouse, are hunted by a cannibalistic gang. All she has for her and Squeaks to escape is her pace.

Blaze assembled a talented cast that includes Marie Wetherell (1923) as Claire, one of the few survivors of a global invasion from vicious otherworldly creatures, Blaine Hall (Killers of the Flower Moon) as Merik, the leader of one of the last remaining human gangs in the region, Tom Zembrod (Howlers) as Jax who is Merik’s right-hand man, who’s every bit as twisted, and Stelio Savante (Ugly Betty, The Chosen) as Kane, a rugged veteran of the apocalypse.

“I knew this film was going to be physically demanding, filming on location in the woods, running around. So I knew I had to choose someone for the lead who not only fit the look or had the acting chops, but someone who could pull off the physicality. I knew instantly Marie would be a great fit because I had worked with her before, and she thrives in physically demanding roles. I think she actually enjoys it,” said Nathan Blaze. “Blaine completely surprised me. I knew he could do the physicality of the role, but I had never seen him in a villain role. I had only worked with him on sets as being the good guy. I knew he was good, but even I didn’t realize he was that good, especially being behind a face mask for the majority of the movie. His performance pierces right through it.”

Produced by Jon Blaze, Brenda Blaze, and Kyle Blaze, the additional cast of Run includes Eric Neal Matthews, Justin Alan Dunlap, Lexi Graves, Winston Easy Ebune, Tanner Lucas, Brenna Spencer, Tori Davis, Squeaks the mouse, Michael Costanza, Rick Gokenbach, Megan Bell, Jake Bell, and Mitch “Taco” Bell. Release date to be determined. Screenplay is by Nathan Blaze, with screen story by Ryan T. Johnson.

Marie Wetherell is represented by The Wayne Agency (VA) and The Tory Christopher Group (TX), Blaine Hall is repped by Kit International Talent, and Stelio Savante is repped by Mavrick Artists Agency (CA), Eris Talent Agency (NY), Figjam Agency (ZA), Opus Entertainment (CA), The Harter Allen Agency (UK), Treasure Coast Talent Agency (CA) and Vox (CA).

The Blaze Brothers Production Company is an American film company launched by brothers Nathan and Jonathan Blaze. Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, the label is contributing to the growing North Texas film industry with the survival-thriller Run and many more to come.

Run

Texas Nightmare Poster Drops Ahead of Hollywood Horrorfest Screening

The upcoming indie horror feature Texas Nightmare is ramping up ahead of its festival debut with a haunting new poster and fresh momentum on the genre circuit. Directed by Michael Merino (Acceleration, Clutch), the psychological cult thriller is set to premiere as part of Hollywood Horrorfest & Boobs and Blood International Film Festival on September 20, 2025, at Los Angeles’ Eastwood Performing Arts Center.

Starring horror veterans Sadie Katz (Wrong Turn 6), Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp), Randy Charach (Vanished), James Pratt (The 3 Killer Pigs), Lew Temple (The Walking Dead), Eva Hamilton (Ruin Me), and Rufus Dorsey (Pearl Harbor), Texas Nightmare blends atmospheric tension with cult horror, evoking shades of David Lynch and The Wicker Man.

Isolation, Paranoia, and Cult Terror in the Hill Country

Set in the haunting quiet of the Texas Hill Country, Texas Nightmare follows a writer (Katz ) who retreats to a remote home to finish her novel. What begins as a creative escape slowly twists into a waking nightmare, as she discovers the surrounding community harbors a deadly secret. When a local cult sets their sights on her, fiction and reality begin to blur in a fight for survival.

Merino, who also wrote the script, describes the film as “a slow-burn descent into psychological terror — the kind that lingers long after the credits roll.”

Produced by Merino and Randy Charach, the film also sees Katz and Rose stepping behind the camera as co-executive producers, continuing their involvement in championing female-driven genre fare.

Hollywood Horrorfest: A Fitting Launchpad

The Texas Nightmare screening will take place as part of Program 1 in SCREEN TWO, kicking off at 1:30 PM on Saturday, September 20. The feature will be accompanied by a curated short film block, clocking in at a lean 90 minutes total — a format that Horrorfest co-founder Miles Flanagan says is designed “to keep the blood pumping and the pacing tight.”

With its recently released trailer offering a first glimpse into the film’s eerie visual palette and mounting psychological dread, Texas Nightmare is already drawing comparisons to genre icons. The Lynchian influences are unmistakable, but Merino’s take on isolation and cult horror carves out a voice of its own. As buzz builds ahead of its Hollywood Horrorfest premiere, the film is poised to be one of this fall’s indie horror standouts — a slow-burn descent that promises to leave audiences unsettled long after the screen fades to black.

Texas Nightmare

The Hunt for Ruthenium: How AI Turned a Rare Metal into the New Gold

Ruthenium (chemical symbol Ru) is a silver-white member of the platinum-group metals. For decades it lived on the margins of the periodic table’s celebrity circuit: small industrial uses, tiny market, scant press. That anonymity has vanished. As hyperscalers expand cloud and AI infrastructure, ruthenium has moved from obscure byproduct to strategic input, with prices surging and buyers racing to secure supply.

Why this metal, and why now? In modern hard-disk drives used by data centers, an ultrathin layer of ruthenium—measured in fractions of a nanometer—helps pack more bits onto each platter while stabilizing magnetic performance. In plain terms: more data per disk, at lower cost per terabyte. As generative AI multiplies training sets and inference workloads, that cost-per-terabyte math matters. Industry shipments of high-capacity, “AI-ready” HDDs are climbing, and with them, consumption of ruthenium.

The AI effect doesn’t stop at storage. Chip researchers are testing ruthenium as a candidate for next-generation interconnects, where traditional copper faces scaling and reliability limits. If even a sliver of advanced semiconductor production migrates toward ruthenium, technology’s pull on this tiny market would intensify.

A market that outpaced the headlines. Over the past year, ruthenium’s price has nearly doubled, revisiting peaks last seen more than a decade ago and outpacing the gains in marquee precious metals. The rally is striking because the underlying market is minuscule by commodity standards—measured in tens of tons per year and hundreds of millions of dollars, not the multi-billion-dollar scale of copper, nickel, or gold. Price discovery is opaque: there’s no major futures exchange, and most trades occur directly between refiners, fabricators, and end-users. That illiquidity magnifies every shift in demand.

Supply is tight by design. There are no dedicated ruthenium mines. Virtually all supply is a byproduct of platinum-group mining, especially in South Africa, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of primary output. When platinum producers throttle back investment or battle power disruptions and labor issues, ruthenium volumes move in tandem. Recycling helps at the margins—recovery from spent catalysts and electronics—but flows are small relative to the new demand coming from data infrastructure.

Analysts who track platinum-group metals describe a classic squeeze: structurally inelastic supply meets a sudden, secular source of demand. Several expect the market to drift into, or remain in, deficit absent a step-change in byproduct recovery or a broader upswing in platinum mining. Some also see psychological spillovers: as buyers worry about access, precautionary stockpiling can tighten the spot market further.

Expert view, in brief. Critical-minerals specialists point to three dynamics likely to define the next leg:
• Cost advantage of HDDs vs. flash keeps nearline disks central to data-center storage tiers, anchoring ruthenium demand even as SSDs gain elsewhere.
• Materials efficiency—thinner coatings, tighter process control—will curb growth in grams-per-device, but won’t fully offset the scale effect of new deployments.
• R&D optionality in chips and energy storage (from interconnects to catalysts and supercapacitors) is a wild card; commercial adoption would be incremental at first, but cumulative.

The unintended rivalry: AI vs. clean energy. Ruthenium’s electrochemistry makes it attractive for high-performance catalysts and experimental battery systems, including prototypes for lithium-oxygen cells and advanced supercapacitors. Those projects now contend with a price environment shaped by AI. When the world’s deepest pockets are buying to store data, emerging climate technologies that rely on ruthenium face tougher bill-of-materials math. Unless prices ease or substitutes mature, some energy-storage concepts may be delayed or redesigned around more abundant materials.

Geopolitics and concentration risk. With supply heavily concentrated in one country and refining dominated by a handful of firms, ruthenium sits squarely in the conversation about critical minerals. There is no quick lever to pull: boosting output requires capital cycles in platinum mining, not a switch labeled “more ruthenium.” Policymakers focused on resilience will look to three levers—recycling, process thrift, and substitution—to de-risk supply without choking innovation.

What to watch next.
• Data-center capex and storage mix. If hyperscaler spending remains robust and HDDs retain the nearline tier, ruthenium demand stays supported.
• Platinum-group production guidance. Any sustained uplift (or disruption) in South African volumes will ripple directly into ruthenium availability.
• Materials breakthroughs. Demonstrations that reduce ruthenium loadings—or viable alternatives in HDD coatings, chip interconnects, or catalysts—could bend the demand curve.
• Recycling scale-up. Improved recovery from spent catalysts and e-waste would add a second, steadier leg to supply, smoothing volatility over time.

Bottom line: Ruthenium has become a case study in how a single technological wave can reprice a niche material overnight. As AI infrastructure scales, the metal’s role in cost-efficient data storage gives it staying power. Until supply catches up—or engineering makes ruthenium do more with less—this once-obscure element will remain a strategically significant, tightly balanced market where small changes carry outsized consequences.

New Netflix Documentary Explores Digital Harassment in ‘Unknown Number: The High School Catfish’

A new true-crime documentary released on Netflix, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, examines a case of cyber-stalking that evolves into a complex psychological mystery. The film centers on a teenage girl and her boyfriend who become the targets of a sustained campaign of harassment from an anonymous phone number. The narrative follows the subsequent police investigation as it uncovers a secret that challenges the initial assumptions of everyone involved in the case. This positions the documentary not only as a crime story but as a contemporary document on the darker aspects of digital communication and the weaponization of personal technology.

The Narrative Unfolding a High School Mystery

The documentary constructs its narrative by first establishing the intense and personal nature of the harassment. The story begins as the teenage couple receives relentless, vulgar, and taunting text messages at all hours of the day and night. This initial phase focuses on the significant psychological distress inflicted upon the victims, detailing their feelings of self-doubt and paranoia as a familiar device—a cell phone—is transformed into a source of torment.

As the campaign of digital harassment continues, the film shows how the conflict escalates beyond the initial targets to affect their entire social circle. What starts as a digital prank unravels into a chilling psychological game where trust evaporates among friends and the wider high school community. Parents become involved, leading to public confrontations and accusations that heighten the social pressure on the students. A critical turning point in the documentary occurs when suspicion shifts toward the primary victim, with the possibility raised that she could be orchestrating the entire affair to garner attention. This development introduces a layer of misdirection and psychological complexity, forcing investigators and the community to question the nature of victimization itself. The severity of the situation is underscored by the eventual involvement of the FBI, which elevates the case from a local high school incident to a federal investigation. The film’s narrative structure prioritizes the emotional and social consequences of the crime, focusing less on the procedural mechanics of the investigation and more on the subjective experience of being caught in a web of suspicion and betrayal. For an audience that may already be familiar with the outcome of the case, the documentary’s purpose appears to be a definitive exploration of the motivations and unseen details behind the events, rather than a simple reveal of the perpetrator’s identity.

Unknown Number The High School Catfish

The Director’s Vision: The Work of Skye Borgman

The documentary is directed by Skye Borgman, a filmmaker with an established presence in the true-crime genre. Her filmography includes several notable Netflix titles such as Abducted in Plain Sight, Girl in the Picture, Sins of Our Mother, and I Just Killed My Dad. Borgman’s work is characterized by an approach that emphasizes the human stories behind criminal cases, often focusing on the victims’ perspectives while exploring complex, morally ambiguous situations. Her directorial style is frequently described as sensitive and objective, avoiding sensationalism while telling stories that exist in shades of gray rather than as simple black-and-white narratives. Borgman often chooses projects with elements she doesn’t fully understand, allowing her to explore the questions from an unbiased position. Her filmmaking techniques blend intimate interviews with archival materials and carefully constructed re-enactments to create an authentic and immersive viewing experience. These re-enactments are sometimes shot on 8mm film to evoke the feeling of a home movie, adding a layer of authenticity that transports the viewer back in time.

Behind the Production: Campfire Studios and Terminal B Television

Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is a production of Campfire Studios in association with Terminal B Television. Campfire Studios, founded by CEO Ross M. Dinerstein, is an Emmy Award-winning production company known for producing a wide range of premium non-fiction content for major streaming platforms. The studio’s mission is to tell authentic, human, and message-based stories through a premium and artistic lens. The studio’s portfolio includes projects such as WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults, The Innocent Man, and Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food. The company’s stated mission is to tell authentic and human-focused stories, a philosophy that aligns with the directorial approach of Skye Borgman. The collaboration between the director and the studio indicates a cohesive vision for the film as a character-driven, psychologically nuanced narrative.

Key personnel credited on the project include executive producers Ross M. Dinerstein, Ross Girard, and Rebecca Evans for Campfire Studios, and Tom Forman, David Metzler, Alysia Sofios, and Justin Sprague for Terminal B Television. Several of the producers, including Dinerstein, Girard, and Evans, are recipients of Emmy Awards, underscoring the level of experience involved in the documentary’s creation.

The documentary presents a true-crime narrative about digital-age deception and intimate betrayal, crafted by a respected director and a premium production studio. It serves as a timely examination of cyberbullying, catfishing, and the erosion of trust in an era of constant connectivity.

Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is available for streaming on Netflix beginning August 29, 2025.

Netflix’s Two Graves: An Act of Familial Vengeance in the Andalusian Sun

Netflix’s new Spanish-language production, Two Graves (Dos Tumbas), arrives as a stark and potent entry into the thriving landscape of contemporary European thrillers. A compact, three-part limited series, it presents a narrative of profound loss that metastasizes into a grim quest for retribution. The series establishes its somber premise with brutal efficiency: two years have passed since the disappearance of Verónica and Marta, a pair of 16-year-old friends, in a case that has grown cold, officially shuttered by law enforcement due to an utter lack of evidence or viable suspects. This institutional surrender becomes the narrative’s inciting incident, activating a force more resolute than the state itself. The protagonist is not a hardened detective or a vengeful father, but Isabel, the grandmother of one of the missing girls. Portrayed with formidable gravitas by the veteran actress Kiti Mánver, Isabel is a woman who, having nothing left to lose, embarks on her own extra-legal investigation. What begins as a desperate search for truth inexorably transforms into a harrowing story of vengeance, situating the series firmly within the coordinates of the revenge thriller. This dark journey is populated by a formidable cast, including Álvaro Morte and Hovik Keuchkerian, actors of significant international standing. Produced by Sábado Películas, the miniseries unfolds against the sun-bleached, rustic landscapes of Andalusia’s Axarquía region, with filming in locales such as Torrox, Frigiliana, and Nerja providing a landscape of stark contrasts—ancient beauty haunted by modern depravity.

The series’ most significant narrative gambit is its deliberate subversion of the vigilante archetype. By placing a grandmother at the center of a violent revenge plot, creator Agustín Martínez consciously selects a protagonist he describes as “rarely seen at the heart of fiction.” This is not merely a novel casting choice but a fundamental re-engineering of the genre’s mechanics and thematic resonance. The traditional revenge narrative often relies on protagonists whose capacity for violence is pre-established. Isabel possesses none of these qualifications. Her power is not derived from physical prowess but from the absolute finality of her loss, a grief so profound it erases all fear of consequence. This choice reframes the concepts of justice and revenge, filtering them through the prisms of age, societal invisibility, and the unique ferocity of familial bonds. Isabel is a character whose radicalization feels tragically inevitable, a figure who, as Martínez suggests, could perhaps only be fully realized on a platform like Netflix, which has demonstrated a commitment to more complex and unconventional character studies. Her journey is not about the restoration of order but about a personal, elemental balancing of scales in a world where official systems of justice have proven impotent. Furthermore, the selection of an Andalusian setting is a decision steeped in cultural and aesthetic significance. It moves beyond mere scenic backdrop to become an active participant in the narrative’s thematic structure. The stark, brilliant light of southern Spain creates a visual dichotomy with the moral darkness of the story, a trope central to the Mediterranean noir tradition. This specific geographical and cultural context distinguishes Two Graves from the rain-slicked, metropolitan chill of its Nordic or American counterparts.

Two Graves

The Architecture of a Vendetta

The narrative construction of Two Graves is a masterclass in economy and escalating tension, a testament to the screenwriting acumen of Jorge Díaz and Antonio Mercero, working from the original story by Martínez. The series operates as a hybrid, meticulously blending the procedural elements of a cold-case investigation with the visceral, psychological trajectory of a revenge tragedy. Its initial movements are investigative, as Isabel gathers clues and navigates a community bound by secrets. However, the narrative soon pivots, shedding its procedural skin to reveal the far more brutal machinery of a vendetta. The three-episode structure is crucial to this effect; it enforces a narrative compression that generates immense forward momentum, leaving little room for subplots or extraneous exposition. This compressed timeline mirrors Isabel’s own psychological state—her grief and impatience collapsing into a singular, obsessive focus. The plot is engineered with the “unexpected twists” promised by its creator, functioning not as mere contrivances but as catalysts that deepen the moral quagmire into which the protagonist descends. Each revelation serves to justify her increasingly extreme actions, forcing the audience to confront uncomfortable questions about the limits of empathy and the seductive logic of retribution.

At its core, the series is a profound exploration of the philosophical chasm between justice and law, a recurring theme in Spanish crime fiction. It dramatizes a scenario in which the formal legal system has failed, creating a vacuum that Isabel’s personal, uncompromising moral code rushes to fill. Her decision to operate “beyond the law” is a foundational trope of the revenge genre, but it is rendered here with a particular sense of tragic necessity. The title itself, Two Graves, is a direct and ominous allusion to the ancient aphorism attributed to Confucius: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” This is not a story that glorifies vigilantism; rather, it is a sober examination of its corrosive, self-destructive nature. The narrative architecture is built to demonstrate that the pursuit of vengeance, however righteous its origins, inevitably consumes the avenger. The supporting cast, which includes Nadia Vilaplana, Joan Solé, Zoe Arnao as the missing Marta, Nonna Cardoner as Lupe, and Carlos Scholz as Beltrán, are not simply pawns in the central mystery; they represent the collateral damage and the complex human ecosystem torn apart by the initial crime and Isabel’s subsequent crusade. Their presence underscores the widening gyre of tragedy that emanates from a single act of violence. The series is therefore less about the satisfaction of revenge and more about the documentation of a soul’s unraveling, a process made all the more compelling by the unconventional nature of its protagonist.

The Triumvirate of Auteurs: Pen, Lens, and Performance

Two Graves is the product of a potent confluence of three distinct but complementary artistic forces: the narrative architects of Carmen Mola, the precise directorial vision of Kike Maíllo, and the towering central performance of Kiti Mánver. The series’ literary provenance is rooted in the unique collaboration of Agustín Martínez, Jorge Díaz, and Antonio Mercero. Their initial deception as the pseudonymous female author Carmen Mola became a major literary scandal, but it also underscored their mastery of a particular brand of dark, commercially successful fiction. Their background as seasoned television scriptwriters is evident in their narrative construction, which prioritizes pacing, structural integrity, and high-impact plotting. The success of their Inspector Elena Blanco novels provides a clear blueprint for the thematic concerns of Two Graves: a focus on strong, often tormented, female protagonists, the exploration of complex criminal conspiracies, and a stark, unsentimental depiction of violence.

This potent narrative engine is guided by the directorial hand of Kike Maíllo, a filmmaker whose sensibilities suggest a more atmospheric and psychologically nuanced approach. A Goya Award winner for Best New Director for his debut feature, the melancholic science-fiction film Eva, Maíllo has consistently demonstrated an interest in internal landscapes and complex emotional dynamics. His subsequent work, such as the sophisticated psychological thriller A Perfect Enemy, further cements his reputation as a director more interested in tension than spectacle. That film, which largely consists of a tense verbal duel between two characters, showcases his ability to build suspense through performance, dialogue, and meticulous visual composition. As both director and an executive producer on Two Graves, Maíllo’s influence is pervasive, suggesting that the series will balance its more brutal plot points with a deep, incisive focus on the internal corrosion of its characters.

At the heart of this creative synthesis is the monumental performance of Kiti Mánver as Isabel. Mánver is a titan of Spanish cinema, an actress whose career spans more than five decades and over one hundred films. She is a living link to the history of modern Spanish filmmaking, having been a key figure in the post-Franco cultural explosion of La Movida Madrileña through her iconic collaborations with Pedro Almodóvar in films like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Her extensive filmography includes work with a pantheon of Spanish directors, and her talent has been recognized with a Goya Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her casting as Isabel is a masterstroke, providing her with a role of immense complexity that weaponizes her veteran status. She imbues Isabel with a lifetime of warmth and resilience, which makes her descent into cold, calculated vengeance all the more terrifying. It is a performance that challenges and ultimately shatters the conventional, often passive, portrayals of older women on screen. Mánver’s presence provides the series with its unwavering, tragic center, a performance of such raw power that it anchors the entire production.

The Echoes of a Global Phenomenon

The casting of Álvaro Morte and Hovik Keuchkerian is a strategic decision that reverberates far beyond the narrative confines of the series. Their inclusion represents a deliberate and calculated move by Netflix to leverage the immense global success of La Casa de Papel (Money Heist), a series that transformed its ensemble cast into international stars. Morte’s portrayal of the cerebral mastermind “The Professor” and Keuchkerian’s role as the formidable “Bogotá” made them recognizable faces to a massive global audience, turning the Spanish series into one of the platform’s most-watched non-English language properties. Their reunion in Two Graves is, therefore, a powerful marketing tool, creating a pre-existing, built-in viewership and ensuring the new series a high degree of visibility within the crowded streaming landscape. Morte, in particular, has successfully parlayed his Money Heist fame into a robust international career, with significant roles in the Amazon fantasy series The Wheel of Time and the American horror film Immaculate, demonstrating his established appeal to a global market.

This use of star power is a textbook example of a streaming-era strategy for international productions. Netflix, having established a European production hub in Madrid, is engaged in a synergistic feedback loop, using the success of one flagship Spanish original to bootstrap the launch of the next. By casting Morte and Keuchkerian, the platform is not merely hiring talented actors; it is importing the brand equity and dedicated fanbase of one of its biggest hits. This is a sophisticated risk-mitigation strategy that enhances the new series’ discoverability and guarantees a baseline level of audience engagement. However, this commercial strategy also presents a fascinating creative challenge. The series offers Morte and Keuchkerian a chance to deconstruct the very personas that made them famous. Two Graves is a far cry from the high-octane, stylized world of Money Heist. It is a more intimate, psychologically grounded, and tonally somber thriller. The critical success of the series will hinge, in part, on the ability of these actors to fully inhabit their new roles, to create characters so compelling that they eclipse the long shadows of The Professor and Bogotá.

A Golden Age of Spanish Noir

Two Graves does not exist in a vacuum. It arrives at a moment that can rightly be described as a golden age for Spanish television, particularly for the thriller and crime genres. In recent years, Spanish-language series have achieved unprecedented global reach, with productions like Money Heist, the teen thriller Élite, and the Harlan Coben adaptation The Innocent becoming international phenomena. This boom has been fueled by the massive investment of global streaming platforms, most notably Netflix, which established its first European production hub in Madrid and has made a concerted effort to cultivate and distribute local stories for a worldwide audience. This industrial shift has transformed the Spanish audiovisual sector, providing local creators with larger budgets and a global stage. The result is a wave of productions that are both culturally specific and universally resonant, a trend that Two Graves perfectly embodies.

This new wave of Spanish noir is defined by several key aesthetic and thematic signatures. There is a distinct emphasis on what some have termed “Latin emotions”—a narrative style that prioritizes passion, intricate personal relationships, and high-stakes emotionality over the cooler, more restrained approach often found in Anglo-American or Nordic crime dramas. Character development is paramount; these series delve into the complex backstories and psychological motivations of their protagonists, making them deeply relatable. Furthermore, these thrillers are rarely simple good-versus-evil narratives. They are often steeped in social commentary, exploring complex issues of institutional corruption, systemic social inequality, and the frequent failures of the state to protect its most vulnerable citizens. Two Graves, with its intensely emotional, character-driven plot centered on a grandmother forced into vigilantism by an impotent legal system, is a quintessential example of this movement. It synthesizes the genre’s most potent elements into a compelling and compact narrative. Ultimately, the series stands as a potent confluence of the talent and trends defining this era, a sophisticated piece of genre entertainment that is both a product of and a testament to the remarkable vitality of contemporary Spanish fiction.

The three-part miniseries Two Graves premiered on Netflix on August 29th.

Netflix’s “Love Untangled”: A Nostalgic Lens on Youthful Insecurity

Netflix’s latest Korean original film, Love Untangled, arrives as a noteworthy entry in the romantic comedy genre, leveraging a meticulously recreated 1998 setting to explore the enduring anxieties of youth. Titled 고백의 역사 (Gobaegui yeoksa, literally “History of Confession”) in its native Korean, the film’s central conceit is deceptively simple: in the coastal city of Busan, nineteen-year-old Park Se-ri becomes convinced that her lifelong complex—a head of severely curly hair—is the primary obstacle to a successful love confession. This premise, however, serves as a conduit for a more profound narrative, a potential hinted at by its production pedigree. The film is produced by Bombaram Film, the studio behind the socially resonant Kim Ji-young: Born 1982, suggesting an inclination toward stories with substantive cultural commentary. Helming the 119-minute feature is Namkoong Sun, a director whose career has been forged in the crucible of the independent film circuit. Her previous works, including the critically acclaimed Ten Months and Time to Be Strong, are distinguished by their sober and nuanced examinations of formidable themes such as patriarchal pressures, career interruptions due to pregnancy, and the psychological trauma afflicting former K-pop idols. Her transition to a seemingly effervescent “high-teen” romance is not a dilution of her authorial voice but a strategic transposition. The film utilizes the accessible, popular format of a nostalgic romantic comedy as a vehicle for the director’s recurring thematic interests in self-acceptance and societal pressure, packaging a critical indie sensibility for a global mainstream audience.

The Narrative Weave: Confessions, Complications, and Curls

Scripted by Ji Chun-hee and Wang Doo-ri, the film’s narrative architecture is driven by Park Se-ri’s singular mission: to confess her feelings to Kim Hyeon, the school’s most popular boy. This objective is predicated on her belief that she must first tame her perpetually frizzy hair, a feature she considers a fatal flaw. The catalyst for action and complication arrives in the form of Han Yoon-seok, a transfer student from Seoul whose initial cynicism belies a hidden past. Se-ri’s plans crystallize into “Operation Love,” a scheme concocted with her friends Baek Seong-rae and Go In-jeong to engineer the perfect confession. Yoon-seok is drawn into this endeavor, not least because his mother runs a beauty salon purported to have the only cutting-edge hair-straightening treatments in Busan. As the group executes their plan, the narrative unfolds through a series of comedic and often clumsy set pieces. Yet, beneath the surface of this mission, an authentic, subtle chemistry begins to form between Se-ri and Yoon-seok, constructing an intriguing love triangle. The film deliberately employs this “operation” framework, a common trope in teen comedies, to deconstruct the ritualistic nature of adolescent courtship. The act of confession is treated not as a spontaneous overflow of emotion but as a quasi-military campaign, meticulously planned and fraught with perceived high stakes. Se-ri, described as being experienced in failed confessions, approaches this latest attempt with tactical precision, reflecting the immense social pressure that transforms vulnerability into a strategic challenge. When asked what she will do if the confession fails, Se-ri offers a surprisingly mature perspective: “The time we spent together will still remain, won’t it?”. This sentiment reveals the film’s deeper focus on the process of connection over the outcome of the romance.

Love Untangled

Character Portrayals and Performances

The film is anchored by a trio of central performances that play with and subvert audience expectations. As Park Se-ri, Shin Eun-soo delivers a performance of remarkable vivacity, a notable departure from the more restrained and melancholic characters she has portrayed in works like Summer Strike and Twinkling Watermelon. She embodies Se-ri’s “pure positive energy,” a quality Shin has stated is close to her own personality when among friends. Director Namkoong Sun lauded the actress for her ability to express emotion with her entire body and for her meticulous preparation, which included working with a dialect coach multiple times a week and getting help from her Busan-native co-stars to master the regional accent. Gong Myung, known for versatile roles in the box-office hit Extreme Job and the fantasy drama Lovers of the Red Sky, portrays Han Yoon-seok. He charts the character’s evolution from a cynical outsider to a gentle and emotional confidant, a performance he described as his “most youthful portrayal” to date. Gong’s established persona of boyish warmth provides a stable emotional core for the film, against which the other characters’ complexities are contrasted. Playing the idealized object of affection, Kim Hyeon, is Cha Woo-min. An actor who has built a formidable screen presence through intense, antagonistic roles in Weak Hero Class 1 and Night Has Come, his casting here is a deliberate counterpoint to his established type. This choice imbues the seemingly one-dimensional “school heartthrob” with an underlying tension, adding an enigmatic air to the character and questioning the placid surface of high-school hierarchies. The supporting ensemble, including Yoon Sang-hyeon as the loyal friend Baek Seong-rae and Kang Mi-na as Go In-jeong, provides crucial comedic and emotional texture. Further reinforcing the film’s thematic lineage is a reported cameo by Gong Yoo and Jung Yu-mi, the stars of producer Bombaram Film’s seminal Kim Ji-young: Born 1982.

Directorial Vision and Thematic Depth

In Love Untangled, Namkoong Sun skillfully infuses a mainstream genre with the thematic gravity characteristic of her independent work. The film’s central metaphor is Se-ri’s hair, which the director identifies as the “backbone of the film’s plot and its central message”. The perpetually frizzy, uncontrollable curls serve as a potent symbol for the aspects of self that defy societal norms, embodying the adolescent struggle with insecurity and the painful desire for acceptance. The narrative arc is thus less about a romantic conquest and more about an internal journey toward self-love, posing the critical question of whether one truly needs to change to be worthy of affection. This theme of overcoming shame to find self-worth resonates with other successful contemporary Korean productions. Namkoong Sun applies her “uniquely tender perspective” to the small, relatable moments of teenage life, validating the emotional weight of what might otherwise be dismissed as frivolous concerns. Her direction employs a form of empathetic realism within a stylized, nostalgic framework, refusing to treat the sincerity of teenage confession lightly and instead exploring its emotional weight. The 1998 setting is not merely an aesthetic choice but a carefully constructed narrative vessel. By removing the contemporary pressures of social media and digital surveillance, the film creates a safe, allegorical space to explore the timeless and universal anxieties of adolescence with sincerity.

The Aesthetics of 1998: A Study in Cultural Nostalgia

The film’s production design and cinematography work in concert to resurrect the specific cultural milieu of Busan in 1998. The visual world is populated with period-specific artifacts that evoke a powerful sense of “vintage charm”: cassette tapes, bulky camcorders, 35mm film cameras, pagers, and popular comic books of the era. The costuming, from retro hairstyles to the oversized school uniforms, further grounds the film in its chosen time. This aesthetic choice is deeply connected to the director’s thematic intent. Namkoong Sun, a high school student herself during this period, selected 1998 to capture what she describes as the era’s “strange cultural optimism,” a time when the first generation of K-pop idol groups was emerging and a sense of new possibilities felt palpable for young people. However, this representation constitutes a form of curated, “reflective nostalgia”. The film’s focus on cultural vibrancy conspicuously omits the profound national trauma of the IMF Financial Crisis, which reached its zenith in 1998. This is not a historical oversight but a deliberate artistic choice. Rather than attempting a complete historical reconstruction, the film engages in a nostalgia that “dwells in longing” for a particular feeling of the past. It remembers the past not as it was in its entirety, but as an “imagined” space to explore the resilience and optimism of its youth culture as an emotional antidote to the shadows of both that era and the present.

An Evolution of the Genre

Ultimately, Love Untangled succeeds in its ambitious synthesis of directorial depth and genre accessibility. The film uses its nostalgic setting and romantic comedy structure to deliver a poignant and enduring message about the complexities of self-worth. Se-ri’s journey to untangle her hair is inextricably linked to her journey to untangle her own insecurities, a process facilitated by the charming and emotionally resonant performances of its cast. While some may find the narrative’s plausibility loosens in its final act, the film’s heart lies not in grand romantic gestures but in the quiet, terrifying, and ultimately liberating act of a heartfelt confession. In an age of digital immediacy, this focus on an analog vulnerability feels both nostalgic and radical. The film stands as a mature evolution of the South Korean rom-com, a genre that, since the 1990s, has increasingly moved away from traditional melodrama to explore more complex, character-driven stories. It is a quiet but powerful celebration of the courage it takes to be vulnerable and the profound peace that comes from accepting oneself, curls and all.

The film was released globally and exclusively on Netflix on August 29, 2025.

The Unluckiest Winner: Netflix’s New Documentary Millionaire Tells a Story of Fortune and Misfortune

A new documentary titled Millionaire examines the intersection of fortune and misfortune through the story of a humble farmer from southern Chile. The film centers on the widely held fantasy of winning a life-altering lottery prize, but it explores this concept through a dramatic inversion. The narrative follows Javier Zapata, a farmer and gambler from the rural community of Los Ángeles, who becomes the winner of his country’s largest lottery. However, the initial joy of this incredible event quickly transforms into anguish when he discovers the winning ticket has been completely ruined. This central conflict sets the stage for a story that is not just about a single event, but about the prolonged and arduous journey to reclaim a dream. The documentary uses this powerful premise—the universal hope of a sudden windfall—to delve into a deeply personal yet broadly resonant human story.

The Narrative of a Ruined Dream

The documentary meticulously reconstructs the events that began in late March 2018, when Javier Zapata held the winning ticket for the Kino lottery. The prize was a staggering sum, equivalent to $2.5 million at the time, an amount capable of fundamentally changing his life. The film chronicles the immediate aftermath of the ticket’s destruction, launching the viewer into an odyssey. This journey is not a solitary one; Zapata is joined by his family and friends, who become his support system in the quest to validate his claim. The narrative extends far beyond the initial incident, documenting a persistent legal battle that continues in the Chilean court system. This element of an unresolved conflict lends the documentary a sense of immediacy and suspense. The complexity of Zapata’s situation is further compounded by the fact that he was not the only individual to come forward to claim the prize, a development that complicates the investigation and adds another layer to his personal fight.

Millionaire

A Portrait of Rural Life and Community

Beyond its central plot, Millionaire functions as a detailed portrait of a specific cultural environment, framed as a real-life tragicomic story. Instead of relying on a single narrator, the documentary constructs its story from a polyphony of voices. It features extensive testimony from Javier Zapata’s immediate circle, including his family members, childhood friends, a former co-worker, and even a former administrator of the Kino lottery. This method captures a defining characteristic of the rural community, where, as the filmmakers observed, “everyone has their own version of what happened.” The documentary embraces this local tendency for storytelling, which includes personal spins and occasional exaggeration, presenting it as an authentic feature of the region’s cultural fabric. This strategy elevates the community itself to the level of a central character. The film also delves into the broader themes of rural Chilean life, depicting a world of sacrifice and relentless hard work—milking cows at dawn, selling cheese—that stands in stark contrast to urban existence. The “tragicomic” quality emerges organically from this context, as community members recount Zapata’s loss not with pure sorrow, but “with a lot of grace,” a resilient and humorous perspective that guided the filmmakers’ approach.

Behind the Lens: The Making of Millionaire

The creation of Millionaire was a multi-year endeavor. The documentary is a Chilean production directed by the brothers José and Felipe Isla and produced by the companies Gran Montana and Fundación Kumelén. The filmmaking team, with Daniela Valenzuela and Ainara Aparici as executive producers, spent three years on the project after becoming interested in the story four years after the 2018 lottery draw. Gaining access to the story’s core required patience. The directors noted it took a month and a half to secure their first meeting with Javier Zapata, who was wary of media attention, particularly given the circulation of false rumors that he was secretly living a lavish life. This extended production timeline allowed the filmmakers to move beyond sensational headlines and capture the authentic reality of Zapata’s life. The final film has a running time of 96 minutes.

Premiere and Availability

Ultimately, Millionaire presents a narrative of hope, perseverance, and the unpredictable nature of chance. It documents one man’s struggle against bureaucracy and misfortune, supported by the collective strength of his rural community. The documentary is available for viewing on Netflix starting today, August 28, 2025.

The Thursday Murder Club: Chris Columbus Delivers a Wry, Unfussy Crime Puzzle for Netflix

Adapted from Richard Osman’s bestselling novel, The Thursday Murder Club lands on Netflix as a precisely engineered “cozy” whodunit that trusts craft, ensemble performance, and procedural clarity over gimmickry. Directed by Chris Columbus and produced in partnership with Amblin Entertainment, the film translates a literary phenomenon into a streamlined screen narrative with clear geography, measured pacing, and an emphasis on character dynamics. The premise remains intact: four retirees at an upscale English retirement community turn their cold-case hobby into a live investigation when a local death exposes a tangle of motives. The tone is light without flippancy, and the film treats both mortality and community with unforced tact.

The ensemble is the organizing principle. Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie embody Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim, and Joyce with a combination of comic restraint and observational acuity. The film lets their complementary tempos do the narrative work: Mirren’s economy of gesture; Brosnan’s stubborn warmth; Kingsley’s analytic stillness; Imrie’s gently porous curiosity. The chemistry is functional rather than ornamental—lines overlap, pauses carry meaning, and the group’s rhythm makes interrogations feel like collaborative deductions rather than set pieces. Around them, Naomi Ackie and Daniel Mays provide a police counterpoint defined by procedure rather than condescension, while David Tennant, Jonathan Pryce, Richard E. Grant, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Tom Ellis, Geoff Bell, Paul Freeman, Sarah Niles, and Ingrid Oliver populate a network of suspects and confidants that widens the field without sacrificing legibility. The casting extends beyond marquee value; each performer supplies a distinct vector of testimony, contradiction, or motive that advances the evidentiary chain.

The Thursday Murder Club

Columbus keeps authorship proportional. His direction emphasizes actor-forward coverage, clean blocking, and a preference for spatial logic over emphatic visual punctuation. Scenes begin and end on thought rather than flourish. Dialogue is allowed to resolve naturally, with the cutting pattern favoring motivated reactions and matches on action that maintain the continuity of inquiry. The effect is closer to mid-century drawing-room mysteries than to modern pastiche; it resists the reflex to heighten when patience will suffice. In practical terms, that means clues are shown before they matter, misdirection emerges from credible behavior, and the solution reconfigures existing information rather than introducing late-stage contrivances. It’s a fairness doctrine applied to a popular form.

The technical departments align with that ethos of legibility. Don Burgess’s cinematography privileges readable geography—establishing lines, recurring vantage points, and selective depth of field that isolates relevant detail without ostentation. Interiors in Coopers Chase are lit with soft naturalism; exteriors make practical use of overcast skies to keep textures and edges clear. Dan Zimmerman’s editing respects conversational cadence and trims redundancy, particularly in interview sequences where over-insistence could telegraph outcomes. Thomas Newman’s score supplies connective tissue with recurring motifs that mark shifts from conviviality to inquiry without dictating emotion. Each choice preserves audience autonomy: the film invites inference rather than insisting on reaction.

Production design and costume undertake quiet narrative labor. Communal spaces show use rather than curated eccentricity; private rooms reflect their inhabitants through restrained color and object economy. Wardrobe avoids shorthand caricature—function over flourish for Elizabeth, layered utility for Ron, calibrated neutrals for Ibrahim, and measured warmth for Joyce. The cumulative effect is to anchor the characters in plausible daily life and to resist the genre’s frequent reliance on “quirky elder” costuming as personality proxy. In a story that depends on observation, this tactility matters; it grounds the deductions in a world that looks inhabited rather than staged.

As an adaptation, the film condenses a novel known for diary-like textures and multiple points of view into a two-hour framework without amputating its core interests: the friction and cooperation between institutional procedure and civilian initiative, and the way age confers methods that are undervalued by systems. Columbus and screenwriters Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote streamline peripheral threads and externalize interior monologue via action, gesture, and judicious insert shots. The humor arises from inference, not punchline mechanics, and the film maintains the book’s equilibrium—macabre events treated with proportion, friendship foregrounded without sentimentality. Osman’s involvement as executive producer is evident in the preservation of tonal balance and in the refusal to instrumentalize age either as punchline or as saccharine inspiration.

Crucially, the film treats its elderly protagonists as competent collaborators rather than narrative novelties. Their investigative tools—listening, institutional memory, patience with unglamorous tasks—form a counter-model to the hyper-competent detective archetype. The police are not straw antagonists; they adapt to the Club’s unorthodox contributions, and the investigation becomes a study in reciprocal respect. This design has cultural value. In a streaming environment that tends to favor high-concept escalation and youthful leads, The Thursday Murder Club demonstrates that intergenerational cooperation and local knowledge can organize a satisfying thriller without recourse to spectacle.

The Thursday Murder Club

The film’s structure observes the genre’s “fair play” principle. Clues appear in plain sight; red herrings are motivated by character, not by authorial caprice; and the denouement privileges accountability over grandstanding. Viewers familiar with Golden-Age mechanics will recognize certain shapes—alibi testing, class-inflected motives, the dramaturgy of a final reveal—but the pleasure here is procedural: watching how Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, and Ron assemble meaning from fragments. The result is less about the shock of revelation than about the clarity of reconstruction, a form of satisfaction that survives rewatching.

Performance calibrations sustain this approach. Mirren locates authority in restraint, allowing the suggestion of a storied past without expository burden. Brosnan plays conviction rather than volume, which gives Ron’s confrontations an earned abrasion. Kingsley’s observational quiet—eyes doing diagnostic work—makes Ibrahim’s deductions feel like the product of method, not magic. Imrie’s timing refuses cutesiness, rendering Joyce an ethical center as much as a source of warmth. Among the supporting players, Ackie and Mays sketch a credible institutional context; Tennant, Pryce, Grant, Lloyd-Hughes, Ellis, Bell, Freeman, Niles, and Oliver articulate discrete strands of motive and opportunity that keep the suspect map legible.

From an industry perspective, the film is a logical alignment of assets. Netflix gains a recognizable literary IP with built-in global awareness; Amblin guarantees mainstream storytelling competence; and Columbus brings long-honed ensemble management. Formally, the project is calibrated for home viewing: the dialogue mix is forward; compositions favor mid-shots that read on a range of screens; momentum is maintained through scene purpose rather than action spikes. At catalog level, the title complements the platform’s darker thrillers with an adjacent register—witty, humane, procedural—that broadens the service’s mystery offering.

The credits reflect the same coherence. Columbus directs and produces; Jennifer Todd produces; the screenplay is by Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote; image, cut, and score come from Don Burgess, Dan Zimmerman, and Thomas Newman; production companies include Jennifer Todd Pictures, Maiden Voyage, and Amblin Entertainment, with Netflix as distributor. These details matter because they signal a preference for seasoned collaborators who understand classical narrative engineering—a mode that can look unfashionable until it quietly outperforms louder strategies.

What remains is the film’s cultural gesture: a refusal to flatten age into type. The retirees’ capacities—pragmatism, endurance, capacity to listen—become the engine of the investigation and the source of the comedy. The murder is not trivialized; it is contextualized within a community that understands consequence. The result is neither subversion nor comfort food. It is a competently made mystery, executed with proportion and tact, whose pleasures arise from clarity, performance, and the steady accretion of meaning.

Limited theatrical release begins August 22, 2025; streaming premiere on Netflix is August 28, 2025.