The Invite (2026)

Score: 4.5 / 5

The surprise of the summer! 

An unhappy married couple host their upstairs neighbors for a dinner party that devolves into a nightmarish spiral of social and sexual anxieties. This is exactly my kind of story, its roots deep in theatrical chamber pieces like God of Carnage and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in a certain absurdist lambasting of bourgeois niceties. 

Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen play the primary couple, and their winsomeness is carefully calculated to fracture and tear at key early moments. Each plays their part with energetic conviction, adding rich layers to characters that could be played quite straight. Trapped at home for years in a life that clearly doesn't satisfy, she's been buying expensive (and, frankly, a bit gaudy) materials to spruce up their large and expensive apartment while walking naked by her single-pane window on her community courtyard to catch the eye of a neighbor. He's a miserable band teacher who has lost touch with any inspiration (he was once a promising musician) and hides from the world at home while complaining about a bad back and doing nothing to help himself. They live in wholly separate worlds, and have clearly each attempted therapy without following through; within moments of him returning home on this day, they're hurling passive-aggressive jabs while deflecting with half-baked psychobabble. As they scream at each other in the kitchen, one wonders if their upstairs neighbors who are expected momentarily can hear them.

Which is funny, because half of the fight is about them. Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz, a sexy, worldly couple who have caught the eyes of both Wilde and Rogen separately, are apparently not quiet about their sex life. As the main couple fester in a sexless, loveless hell of their own making, Norton and Cruz have vivacious and very loud sex regularly in the dead of night. Rogen wants to confront them about the noise and establish some sort of dominance; Wilde seems eager to know more about what's happening up there and maybe compete or join. Once the dinner party commences -- which is an unmitigated disaster, for several increasingly hilarious reasons including dietary restrictions, a lack of wine, and the ultimate carnal purpose for the entire evening -- it's clear that the bohemians upstairs are in fact a little too perfect an opportunity for their repressed downstairs neighbors. Not all is well in their world of seemingly unbridled pleasure. 

Without having seen the 2020 Spanish film on which this is based, I admire writers Will McCormack and Rashida Jones for their incisive, kinetic screenplay that keenly and knowingly dives into the darker and more graphic subtext found in most sex-adjacent sitcoms. These jokes aren't salacious in nature or mean-spirited about who deserves pleasure and fulfillment in any kind of puritanical schema; rather, they take a frank look at people being genuinely curious while also being riddled with anxiety and demonstrate the inherent humor of being forced to reckon with oneself while trying something new in a nonjudgmental way. This refreshing approach is bolstered by four top-notch performances, each of which deserves an award.

Wilde herself directs this venture, which is saying a lot because her performance was the standout for me, with an aesthetic visually more in line with a thriller. Somewhat drab lighting in frames upon frames -- doorways and windows constantly restrict movement of these characters in their starkly artificial world -- makes the film appear a little jaundiced in its sickly amber pools of light. Her pacing is fast and I found myself cackling aloud in the cinema while sometimes chiding myself for laughing at certain moments of insults and cruelties. It's apparent that this is originally based on a play, and I'd love to see it live. Wilde succeeds, in making it a film, by deftly and artfully controlling the scope of our reactions to every beat -- awkward, horny, and hilarious -- as they come. The first act might throw some viewers off because of the forceful directorial approach (by which I mean the cinematography and editing, both firing on all cylinders from the first scene), but once you settle in to her style, you can start collecting boons. When the music starts interjecting slasher-movie stings in the middle of a particularly funny and tense scene, I found myself thinking that Wilde was parodying Hitchcock in a clever blend of Psycho and The Trouble with Harry. 

By the second half, things calm down a bit visually and aurally, and the actors rise to the occasion to carry us through the climax and denouement with some career-best work. Where she started the film encouraging us to judge the characters, she opens up in the final act with a more mature approach, allowing the film and actors to breathe, and us by extension. This is a slice of life; strange, funny, and earnest, meant to remind us that what connects us all isn't necessarily money or sex but something a bit more mysterious and satisfying. Purpose and communication, negotiation and patience, kindness and hospitality; these things should matter more than they do in 2026 America, and films like this help us cut through the confusion to find our profound shared humanity. The laughter and sex just help us swallow the pill.

Don't Worry Darling (2022)

Score: 3 / 5

Sumptuous and sensual, dripping with style, Don't Worry Darling has finally arrived after much tabloid coverage. And it's about as much a mixed bag as you might have expected, though not for the reasons splashed across headlines and news bytes. Its marketing was confusing and related press even more so, but generally it looked like a cross between The Stepford Wives and Black Swan, and for the most part I'd still say that's a reasonable set of correlations to make. It's probably how I'll describe it (if I ever need to) in the future. We follow Alice, a young married woman, as she experiences her life in a desert utopia in the American West. We aren't given much information about why she's there, though she seems to be learning the customs and socializing quickly enough, or even who she is, apart from her obvious and troubling attempts to look and act just like the other housewives in town.

And, much as the town in the film functions in relation to her, the film itself asks us the same question: Why does context matter, when everything is so lovely? And lovely it is! Victory, the name of the town and its mysterious workplace that only men are permitted to enter, is indeed victoriously designed with its perfectly manicured lawns leading up to stunning mid-century modern houses in tasteful colors. Every man in tailored suits and slicked hair, every woman in vibrant dresses and aprons, every adult with a delicious cocktail in hand at any hour. Oldies music plays loudly in every scene, and the camera enhances each color to be warm and polished, almost surreal in hue as if we were watching it all in a Technicolor commerical from the '50s. And that's to say nothing of the evenings, when the men of town return from work to ravage their wives with renewed vigor and go to booze-soaked house parties that would make Jay Gatsby blush.

But of course all is not well in paradise, and who better to carry us on that journey of revelation and retribution than Florence Pugh, cinema's recent golden girl who churns out yet another Oscar-worthy performance. Her character Alice is innately above the town of Victory, and we see her struggling to completely fit in; early on, instead of a colored dress and heels, she waves goodbye to her husband in the morning in an oversized white shirt and recently-sexed hair. She challenges the normative ways men treat their wives and constantly wonders what, exactly, they do at "work" every day. Her nagging suspicions threaten to label her as a nagging wife, and so she dutifully -- if somewhat resentfully -- swims at the pool and goes to dance class and does what the other good wives do. After all, she's not really paying for this lavish lifestyle, and her only real concern is what cocktail to drink next or how to fashion her hair today. Who is she to complain, right?

A plane crashes nearby and no one seems to care. A friend of hers (one of the few women of color) has a breakdown and then seemingly kills herself but nobody wants to talk about it. She tries to visit her husband's workplace and passes out for a full day. Things are weird in Victory, no thanks to the charismatic and mysterious founder Frank (Chris Pine, delighting in playing what amounts to a wicked little cult leader). But this Mad Men fanfiction takes a dark turn when Alice -- and we -- realize what exactly is going on. Even though by this point it was fairly obvious what was coming, I found the "aha" moment to be more of an annoyed groan. If you're going to reimagine The Stepford Wives or The Truman Show, the best way to do it isn't to use the tech from The Matrix. 

So while the plot itself is neither original nor inspired, I don't want to completely villainize screenwriter Katie Silberman, whose dialogue and pacing is actually exquisite. She grapples angrily with a lot of weighty ideas, launching a film that ultimately tirades against the American patriarchy, and while it's no fresh idea, it is a bit refreshing to be reminded that this kind of feminist film is still horrifically relevant. It's okay to rage against the machine because most of us in real life are still under its yolk. Pugh, to her inestimable credit, takes her fiery feminist streak in stride and makes it relatable without dumbing it down; her response to being constantly gaslit into compliance is eminently believable and we want to fight back too.

It helps, in odd ways, that her costar is Harry Styles. I've never much liked his artistry, and here he fully fits the character: vapid, vain, and unwilling to be uncomfortable. He can't stand the thought of his Alice gaining the upper hand in any conflict or in general, and so he resorts to aggressive placations, feigning weakness to garner support, and even asking for professional help when he is at the breaking point. Styles, much like his character, is incapable of reaching emotional depths to match Pugh, and his manner of listening and responding to her is embarrassingly forced. Perhaps it was a conscious acting choice (doubtful), but it's telling that the original casting had Shia LaBeouf in this role, who has a much more intense and raw method of performing that would have created a vastly different atmosphere for this film. I'm glad Styles is the choice in that regard, as he fits the bill, but he's just not got the chops across from Pugh or Pine or even Olivia Wilde herself, who plays Alice's neighbor to great effect.

It's a stunning film, from the genius of Matthew Libatique's cinematography to the sumptuous production design and costumes, and even the heavy score worked for me. It's just that the screenplay, which nails so many things, was inspired by a half-baked, derivative notion that wasn't properly fleshed out. Films like this can work if they're either consciously referencing their obvious source material or evolved enough to be only vaguely suggesting connections with it. This does neither, and so despite the rapturous artistry in it, by the closing credits I felt that I'd been had as much as Alice was.

Richard Jewell (2019)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Atlanta, 1996. The Georgia summer heat isn't bothering the thousands of people who descended on the Olympic games and assorted festivities. During one concert at Centennial Park, a pipe bomb explodes, killing two people and injuring a hundred more. A frantic hunt for the bomber begins, but a clear suspect takes center stage: Richard Jewell, the security guard who found the bomb.

But Richard Jewell doesn't begin here. The introduction to this film starts earlier, following its protagonist through a bustling office where he works as a custodian. Shortly after, we see that he has become a security guard at a college. His tough work ethic doesn't always jive with his coworkers or the people he serves; he is mocked for being overweight and for having lofty ambitions (he considers himself law enforcement, on par with police officers). He is fired after multiple complaints from students of him overstepping boundaries and abusing the power of his position; he views this as him going above and beyond the call of duty, but the dean simply asks him if he'll resign or if he needs to be fired. It's pitiful in the awkward way where we are made to understand his predicament even though he is clearly in the wrong. But it's awkward viewing because we know the director and we know he is using this introduction to lionize someone who might not entirely deserve it.

If you know the story at all, things get more familiar from here on out. After moving in with his mother, Richard gets a job working security for the Olympics in Atlanta. Once he alerts the authorities about a suspicious bag -- they initially mock him for being so pretentious, only to discover three pipe bombs inside -- he works hard and fast to make a perimeter before the explosion. His heroic action makes him the center of attention, and before he can go home he is swept up in the media spotlight, interviewed by Katie Couric herself. But as the FBI begin to investigate, he becomes their primary suspect. He certainly fits the psychological profile.

Despite Clint Eastwood's heavy-handed storytelling, which seems to only get more problematic as he continues pumping out movies, the film manages to keep its emotional manipulations in check by focusing so tightly on the relative uniqueness of its characters. Unlike the broad stereotyping in Sully, for example, a lot of the characters here are not really representative of their professions, and so they aren't really painted as "good guys" or "bad guys." Jon Hamm, for example, and Olivia Wilde are painted pretty clearly as the antagonists (FBI agent and media reporter, respectively), but their characters are a little too specific and too layered to represent their power structures. Wilde is especially fascinating in a sure-to-be criticized role as a desperate reporter who jumps to wild conclusions and exchanges sex for information.

But the movie belongs firmly to Paul Walter Hauser, Kathy Bates, and Sam Rockwell as Jewell, his mother, and their lawyer. The three of them play off each other beautifully, crafting a moving relationship that bends under each new blow by the media and the government without breaking. And while most artists in Trump's America are doing well to vindicate the free press, this film does the difficult -- and, thankfully, mostly tasteful -- job of showing what negative effects can happen when the news jumps to conclusions. Eastwood isn't lampooning the FBI or press here, though I was certain he would, and he does a fair job showing how irritating his main character can be and why he was, somewhat rightfully, suspected. But Eastwood seems more interested in showing how the tone of the news and the disdain of the investigators ruined Richard Jewell's life, along with the repulsive popular interest and mob mentality of the public who wanted him to fry.

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

Score: 3 / 5

If you thought James Bond and Indiana Jones should team up in the American West to fight extraterrestrial monsters.... Well, let's just say that nobody (except fans of the graphic novel) saw this one coming. And frankly, nobody has said much about it since it premiered. A big factor of that, no doubt, lies with the too-familiar sci-fi plot; the Western elements of the narrative -- though predictable --feel more engaging simply because the Western film is all but dead.

For a film that could be all concept and no content, director Jon Favreau keeps his movie rolling. His kinetic energy gracefully avoids too many gimmicks while still playing off a few too many clichés of both sci-fi flicks and (the long-deceased genre of) Westerns. Dialogue is sparse and banal, but the quiet moments are weirdly absorbing. Harrison Ford delivers a solid performance that slightly departs from his typical work; that's something we don't see much of. Daniel Craig, though, leads with particular intelligence, and his moody presence onscreen is electrifying (mostly because he looks great in chaps).

The narrative is anything but original: Amnesiac man wakes up with mad skills and a secret, makes enemies with townspeople, befriends an exotic woman who assists him, rallies the townspeople in defense of outsiders, and finally defeats said "aliens". And yet, a mash-up of the rustic frontier and futuristic aliens is such an ingenious idea that we don't know entirely how to approach the film. In fact, it's so low-brow that I think most of us are just angry that we didn't think of it first. I'm jumping the gun now, though: I want to see Pirates & Fairies next.

Funky editing, lazy camerawork, and a focus on spectacle make this film dull for me. But I don't hate it; I hardly even dislike it. I think my odd fascination with it -- apart from its conceptual awesomeness -- is that it is so incredibly serious. This film could have easily been a pulpy mess, a campy charade, or a sci-fi dud. Instead, we have a straight action film that keeps punching when its intrigue has run out. Wisely, Favreau stops his cast (and himself) from ever winking at the camera or going too overboard with the weirdness; if they even hinted at meta, the film would have utterly failed. As it is, it is not smart or well-crafted, but it is thoroughly entertaining.

IMDb: Cowboys & Aliens