Dinner in America (2020): Kyle Gallner is one of those American actors who low-key have been putting together a series of killer movies. You might remember him from Smile (2022) or the recent sleeper hit Strange Darling (2023), and if you put Dinner in America next to them, there’s an immediate sense of the kind of range Gallner has to offer (of course, he’ll always be a Casablancas to me). In this one, alongside the equally exceptional Emily Skeggs, he plays a chaotic neutral (?) kind of guy, whose fearless, if morally ambiguous, character makes for an alluring counterpoint to Skeggs’s apparently awkward fan-girl. The two take on the prescribed fake civility of social norms and their adventure is bold, endearing and sexy. Dinner in America really put writer-director Adam Rehmeier on the map, but it does seem like most people don’t use maps any more. 8
The Ugly Stepsister (2025): I reckon it’s a simple enough idea to take a classic and reinvent it by changing the point of view from which we experience the story. To do it well and engaging is another matter altogether. Emilie Blichfeldt wrote and directed this adaptation of ### (I’ll let you find out by watching, as I did). It’s not easy to tell where everything is going or why there’s an eerie familiarity to it during the first half, to the point that once you do figure it out, expectations settle and a bit of the shine becomes lackluster. Yet, because the interpretation is uncompromising, at times brutal, at times vile and at others vulgar, and because it doesn’t pigeonhole the characters, while looking damn good, the movie maintains an air of fresh authenticity. It’s a strong recommendation for the genre. 8
Vulturii din Țaga (2022): Football movies, who doesn’t love them! I mean the football movies that aren’t just polished PR productions, but those that actually touch on something that’s pure passion. Well, in Vulturii we follow Nelu Tîrnovan, who dedicates his life to keeping everything well lubricated and functional at the minnows of Țaga, their local football club. The snippets we get to see of his day to day and what it takes to energize and keep even a low-league club alive are endearing, with a hint of melancholy. Nelu has to also manage his wife, Ibi, whose lifelong experience of placing second in the man’s priorities manifests through the occasional bickering or biting remarks. Once the stage is set, the rest of the movie settles in a quiet, unassuming rhythm, even as Vulturii travel to an international football competition abroad – which makes for musing and amusing cultural contrasts. So while I definitely enjoyed watching it (and, if you are in Timișoara, you can do so in a special setting on the 2nd of August), I thought it could have dug in a bit deeper and fleshed out the experience more. But, hey, it did have a bookend – one to underline both the things that change and the things that stay the same in our travails to staying true to football. 7
The Marching Band (2024): Sometimes, tearjearkers jerk tears successfully. And En Fanfare, which is generally a tame, well-meaning and structurally suspect story about a famous conductor who discovers he was adopted and then meets his biological brother, only to question what his life would have been like had he not ended up in the more rarified social strata that encouraged conductor-like education paths. It’s not unfamiliar terrain, but it is fairly well executed, only to conclude in said successful jerking of tears. I don’t know, it really shook me, on an unexpected emotional level, even though the movie itself is not that much of a standout. Troubling. 7
Mickey 17 (2025): I’ve not seen Bong Joon Ho’s first two films (yes, yes), but I have somehow seen all the others. And barring Parasite (2019), I thought all of the others were…ok. Lowpoint was Okja (2017), which I didn’t quite like because it didn’t even try to be subtle, and now Mickey 17 joins it. The story goes, we follow said Mickey, who is an expendable off-planet “resource”, tasked with the dangerous jobs and simply reprinted if things go south. He’s got a bit of an a-hole of a “friend”, who is cleverer than him and always takes advantage of Mickey’s honest naivete, somehow a superstar of a girlfriend, all while having to attend to every whim of a dictatorial clown running the colony. Once again, many not-so-subtle characters and situations, but the first half of the movie is at least engaging, with Robert Pattinson having good fun as Mickey. Things start to unravel later, due to the cumbersome plot machinations and, also, an uninspired role by Anamaria Vartolomei, as the movie descends into what is really more of Okja. So a disappointment for me, in spite of its more enlightened moments. 6
tributary stu 