The most I’ve laughed at an Anderson since Mr. Fox, maybe.
Jake

Feb 2026: Katy kept asking when it’s gonna get good, until halfway through when I said it’s been good the whole time, and she DNF.

The most I’ve laughed at an Anderson since Mr. Fox, maybe.
Jake

Feb 2026: Katy kept asking when it’s gonna get good, until halfway through when I said it’s been good the whole time, and she DNF.

Maybe I should’ve watched Whiplash… was looking for drumming, got a hippie-ass lesson-drama about accepting yourself. It was a good call casting sensitive Riz Ahmed in a Rudimentary Peni t-shirt as the lead, though the story calls for 5% sensitivity and 95% frustration. After belligerently touring through his increasing hearing loss, drummer Riz finally goes almost completely deaf, is checked into a rural community run by Paul Raci for dealing with deafness, then kicked out at the end for selling all his music gear to pay for hearing aids, because Raci believes deafness is something to live with, not to overcome. Reuniting with his gf/singer Olivia Cooke at her dad Mathieu Amalric’s house… per AS Hamrah, “In this part of the movie we learn, inadvertently, that deafness is a class position and that class mobility is not possible.”


An unusual Western with a pretty usual setup: two killers are sent after a guy who a fourth guy is tracking, only this time all the guys get to talkin’ all philosophical-like, and decide to team up. One of the Brothers (J. Phoenix) is kinda the dumb drunk one, and doesn’t seem completely on board with quitting the killing business to join the others and start a utopian society in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, but as time goes by, he upgrades his ambitions from killing the target to replacing his boss (Rutger Hauer). Phoenix also gets overzealous with the gold-detection chemical which the gentle escaped commie scientist (Riz Ahmed) has invented, leading to the loss of his hand and the death of the scientist and his tracker-become-bestie Jake Gyllenhaal. His brother (JC Reilly) is the more thoughtful one, is a good mediator between the others and also an excellent killer. Between the cast (including Rebecca Root as a local town/crime boss who hunters the Sisters) and the movie’s title and character names (Riz plays “Hermann Kermit Warm”), the movie seems like a comedy, but doesn’t have many laughs, and is gradually revealed to be its own weird thing. Surprising change from the over-serious immigrant crime dramas A Prophet and Dheepan. The actors’ faces aren’t usually visible, and I can’t tell if it’s a stylistic choice or Audiard not knowing how to light people wearing cowboy hats. Nice to see, briefly, Carol Kane as Mother Sisters, not made up to look like a crazy person for once.