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November 7, 2025 | View in browser

A man and woman speak on a New York City rooftop.

By Mark Olsen

Staff Writer

Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

I can't claim to be an expert on film distribution, but the number of quality art-house movies coming out over the next few weeks is pretty nuts. Any and all of these are worth your time, so chose however you like: stars, filmmakers, subjects, or what time it starts at the theater.

Winner of the second-place Grand Prix prize when it premiered at Cannes, "Sentimental Value" is filmmaker Joachim Trier's follow-up to his breakthrough "The Worst Person in the World." Stellan Skarsgård plays a semi-renowned filmmaker hoping to attract his daughter, a successful theater actor ("Worst Person" star Renate Reinsve), to appear in his comeback movie. When she declines, he casts a Hollywood starlet, Rachel (Elle Fanning), instead.

In her review, Amy Nicholson had positive things to say about the acting, especially Fanning's: "Reinsve's skyrocketing career is Trier's most successful wager, and he gives her enough crying scenes to earn an Oscar nomination. Skarsgård is certainly getting one too. But Fanning delivers the best performance in the film. ... Rachel could have been some Hollywood cliché, but Fanning keeps us rooting for this golden girl who hopes she'll be taken seriously by playing a Nordic depressive."

Josh Rottenberg spoke to Skarsgård about his role in the film and how it struck close to home for the father of eight. (Six of his children, including Alexander Skarsgård and Bill Skarsgård, are actors.)

"I had to defend Gustav, in a way," he says. "Being a father, which I am, is a very difficult thing to be. To be a perfect father, as we all strive to be, is impossible. So I felt very much for his failure. I told Joachim that I wanted to stress the humanity of it."

Lynne Ramsay's searing, chaotic "Die My Love" finds Jennifer Lawrence as a new mother struggling with post-partum depression and a general dissatisfaction with her life. Robert Pattinson plays her not-much-help husband, with Nick Nolte and Sissy Spacek as in-laws.

As Amy Nicholson points out in her review: "There are dark vibrations emanating from almost every character, even the minor ones, although Grace is too caught up in herself to take any comfort from that. But Ramsay is comfortable suggesting that everyone feels crazy and miserable. I suspect she thinks it's the most normal way to live."

We spoke to Ramsay out of Cannes, where the director — who works too infrequently for our taste — sat happily in a courtyard and chatted frankly about the difficulties of indie financing. "It's not by design," she said. "It's just life takes over. I have a daughter, there was COVID, stuff nearly gets there and falls through. It's just a tough industry. I am picky in the sense that if you're going to stick with a project for two or three years, then you want to know that you're doing the right one. You don't want to be down the line with it and think, 'God, I wish I hadn't started this.' "

I reviewed director Clint Bentley's "Train Dreams," an emotionally resonant adaptation of a novella by Denis Johnson starring a career-best Joel Edgerton as a logger in the Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century. As I noted, " 'Train Dreams' is the kind of movie that people often say they want more of, but when one actually comes along they don't quite know what to do with it. Told with an unassuming, gentle simplicity that grows into an accumulating emotional power, the film manages to feel very small and specific while also vast and expansive."

Speaking to Scott Tobias, Edgerton spoke about how the style of the film helped elevate its emotional resonance. "Lifting up an ordinary life onscreen is one way for audiences to really connect in a way that they don't often get to do," the actor said. "The patience and stillness that Clint has built into the film allow people to then ruminate on their own life while going on Robert's journey in a way that's significant."

"Peter Hujar's Day," a conversation movie, is based on a recording that journalist Linda Rosenkrantz made of a single day — Dec. 18, 1974 — in the life of her friend, artist Peter Hujar. Played by Rebecca Hall and Ben Whishaw, the pair brings depth to the confines of the material, set in one apartment over one day.

As Robert Abele put it in his review, "The interior play of light from day to night across Whishaw and Hall's faces is its own dramatic arc as Hujar's details become an intimate testimony of humor, rigor and reflection. It's not meant to be entirely Whishaw's show, either: As justly compelling as he is, Hall makes the act of listening (and occasionally commenting or teasing) a steady, enveloping warmth. The result is a window into the pleasures of friendship and those days when the minutiae of your loved ones seems like the stuff that true connection is built on."

Ethan Beck spoke to "Hujar" director Ira Sachs about the technical challenges of making a film set almost exclusively in a single apartment (though they do go up to the roof for a smoke break). "It felt like a great risk, but I think without risk there's no beauty," Sachs said. "That is what I take away from what Peter shares with us, that every moment as an artist is a risk, but also there is the potential for the discovery of something totally new."

Directors' Fortnight in L.A.

For the second year, Acropolis Cinema will be organizing a program at the DGA Theater of seven films that played as part of the Directors' Fortnight during the Cannes Film Festival.

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The program opens with Lloyd Lee Choi's "Lucky Lu," about a New York City delivery driver (Chang Chen) whose bike is stolen, with dire consequences. Choi will be in person for the screening, as will Yuiga Danzuka for Saturday's screening of the Tokyo-set domestic drama "Brand New Landscape."

Among the films on Sunday is Nadav Lapid's "Yes," about a Tel Aviv musician (Ariel Bronz) grappling with the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.

Los Angeles "continues to struggle to give films of this sort the theatrical presentation they deserve," said Jordan Cronk, founder of Acropolis, via email. "Our hope is that a program like Fortnight Extended, through the promotional efforts of Acropolis, the DGA and partners like Mubi, can bring together a cross section of curious cinephiles while also lending the films a bit of context via their association with Cannes."

Points of interest

Cassavetes' 'Opening Night'

John Cassavetes 1977 "Opening Night" will play at the Eastwood Performing Arts Center on Friday and Saturday. It stars Gena Rowlands as Myrtle Godon, an actor in the middle of an out-of-town tryout for a new play before it heads to Broadway. After she sees a young fan killed by a car, Myrtle begins to spiral out of control, losing a grasp on what's real. (Considering that Renate Reinsve's stage actor character in "Sentimental Value" is also dealing with severe anxiety, the timing of these screenings is kind of perfect.)

In a December 1977 review, Kevin Thomas wrote, "John Cassavetes has always taken chances. Burrowing away relentlessly — yet compassionately — at his people, he has come up a winner all the way back to 'Shadows' and on to 'Faces,' 'Husbands' and, despite some grievous flaws, 'A Woman Under the Influence.' His people smoke too much, drink too much and tend to indulge themselves in an emotional extravagance that always threatens to lapse into wretched excess. That are moments in 'Opening Night' when this seems all too likely to occur, but Cassavetes — and Miss Rowlands — mangae to pull it off, making those moments work as part of the picture's suspense over the actress' fate."

In a January 1977 story, Lynn Simross wrote about how the production recruited some 700 people off the street to be extras in the audience at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium over two nights, asking them to wear evening clothes. Cassavetes explained that it was a huge savings to the production not to pay professional extras, with people coming even from San Diego to be part of show. Rowlands, surveying the crowd that had turned up, said, "I think this proves that a lot of people still like to have fun."

'Close Encounters' in 4K

The Academy Museum will play Steven Spielberg's 1977 "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" in 4K on Sunday in the David Geffen Theater. This movie still looks and sounds spectacular — including John Williams' iconic score — and should be most impressive in that 950-seat venue. This film captures Spielberg's ability to combine a lived-in domestic story with wide-eyed spectacle, all with a sense of mischievous adventure provided by a fantastic cast including Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Bob Balaban, Teri Garr and François Truffaut.

As Charles Champlin put it in his original review, " 'Close Encounters' proves to be a magic act with dramatic interludes. The interludes range downward from so-so (the movie is oddly like 'Jaws' in that way), but the magic is so thrilling that nothing else much matters. ... 'Close Encounters' stays light on its legs, mystical and reverential but not solemn. It is a warm celebration, positive and pleasurable. The humor is folksy and slapstick rather than cerebral, as if to confirm that our encounter is with a populist vehicle."