KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. After the cold and sinus infection took me down for a couple weeks, I managed to get to the theatre four times in 6 days. I still feel like I'm quite far behind on new releases that I actively want to see in theatre, but still, progress is progress.
This Week:
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (2026, d. Bassam Tariq - in theatre)
Wicker (2026, d. Alex Huston Fischer, Eleanor Wilson - in theatre)
Whalefall (2026, d. Brian Duffield - in theatre)
Primetime (2026, d. Lance Oppenheim- in theatre)
Airport 1975 (1975, d. Jack Smight - dvd)
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What's clear from Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is that something clicked with Ali and Tariq and they really wanted to work together. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, isn't, however, a "what if...?" situation. It's not a Blade analog. It's not a film that will bring to mind Marvel storytelling or characters, although there is definitely one part of the film where Ali uses swords and daggers in a many-on-one fight that signals just what an Ali-as-Blade fight sequence might have looked like in Tariq's hands.
In Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother Ali plays Latif, a ... hitman of sorts. He is an ex-Marine (maybe?) who takes jobs for money, but he's selective about the jobs he does. They have to be justified and leave him with peace of mind. They have to be threats to his Muslim community, and the threats seem like they may be as much within his community as outside of it.
We first meet Latif mid-job, mid-fight. It's gruelling, but Latif is big, powerful, and skilled (Ali got very swoll, no doubt in training for Blade) and gets the better of his opponent. And then his phone rings.
Latif's wife passed away, leaving him with a teenage daughter, Fatiha (Adia), pre-teen son Qadir (Jahleel Kamara) and a baby daughter Khadijah at home. As he mourns with his family and tries to reassess his life without his wife, his handler, Mike Mahmoudi (Laith Nakli) keeps trying to get in touch, in increasingly aggressive and disruptive ways. His family doesn't know about his other life, but his mentor and imam Abdul Malik (Giancarlo Esposito) does and warns that the path Latif has chosen may cost him everything.
Khadijah's supply of breast milk is dwindling, and she cannot seem to stomach formula, so the film finds Latif in search of breast milk for his baby. He wants to provide. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a "milk bank", which is awesome, if you can access it, which Latif cannot. Eventually in his desperate quest, Mike finds him, and with thinly veiled threats, forcefully asks him to take a job. Mike's nephew Hatty (Abubakr Ali) has gotten rich off of making porn, but a neo-con group of religious wing-nuts made up of largely ex-soldiers led by the gold-toothed pastor Hwan Yoon (John Cho) is on a mission from God to punish human traffickers and destroy the pornography business, and has Hatty in their sights. Mike wants Yoon killed. Latif refuses.
The second act of the film finds Latif on his desperate quest to feed his baby while fending off not just Mike but having inadvertently gotten on the radar of Hwan Yoon's church. Things become increasingly severe as his family start becoming targets from both sides.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother opens with intensity and holds at that level with occasional spikes of respite or escalation throughout. It does feel like riding a knife's edge for nearly two hours. I think of something like You Were Never Really Here as a comparable film in tone, but Joaquin Phoenix's character in that film is dark, brooding and lonely, driven by a need to do some sort of good in the world, while Ali here is dark and brooding, and while surrounded by community and family he's still alone, and he's driven by a belief that he's doing good in the world. Religion, however, plays a huge part in this film, and a cornerstone to Latif's background is he was once a teacher of the Quran to youths (including Hatty), and he tries to instill Muslim values in his kids, unaware that Fatiha is in full teenage rebellion, flirting with Mormonism. The kicker is that for all his teachings and all his connections to the mosque and community, Latif seems like a lapsed Muslim, a man who maybe doesn't truly believe anymore.
It's hard not to see the intention in the way Tariq presents the Muslim faith here. He's not trying to put a layer of gloss over it or, really, in any way preach about it or claim it is perfect (there are pains here to show that just like any religion and any community, there are people who use and abuse the community for their own purposes), but there's a stark juxtaposition against Hwan Yoon's cult of guns and violent righteousness (and I had to appreciate that the cult was not just white men, but quite diverse, if still laden with nutjobs). That juxtaposition extends between a "church" that kills for its beliefs and Latif's same ethos. There are religious allegories and metaphors here, most lost on me yet did not diminish the impact of the story being told.
This isn't an action movie, though there are sequences that really hit hard. It is far more a character study of a man reeling from loss, a man at a crossroads examining everything he believes himself to be and what he believes in, a man in his most desperate hour, and a father who is only just learning how to be a parent.
Ali is the best scene partner to everyone on screen...he has presence no matter what he's doing at any moment, and he knows it, so he gives his scene partners so much space and elevates every peformance around him. I'm reminded of One Battle After Another somewhat in the moments between Tariq and Fatiha, the most important relationship in the film, the fact that Tariq's life choices have impacted Fatiha so severely that she faces difficulties in finding her own place in the world...and eventually Tariq's other life comes crashing down on his family and Fatiha's really the only one who understands what her father truly is, and the realization is so beautifully performed by Adia, just an exceptionally emotional, deep and raw performance that signals the arrival of a tremendous new talent. I think a version of this story told entirely from Fatiha's perspective would be incredible.
The only downside to Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (besides my lack of familiarity with Muslim traditions and proverbs) was the sound mixing. I'm sure it's fine for the average person but the mix of Ali's low grumble, the ambient atmospheric noise (within the film, not the theatre) and the terrific Son Lux soundtrack made it hard to hear a lot of the dialogue (including a very key line delivery at the film's climax)... even still I found it enriching and impactful.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother's denouement is one of the most surprising things I've seen in a good long while. The way this film closes tells us what's most important in life and it's so counter to the traditional hero's journey. It's pretty marvelous (ahem).
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Wicker's trailer promised a whimsy, fantasy, sex and gender politics, and the film delivered on all fronts if not always consistently.
It's true that there is a whimsical nature to Wicker but the playful, fanciful tone of the film is underpinned with splinters threatening to prick you with every movement. For every spark of joyful glee, there's a devilish smirk as the film makes abrupt turns or jagged revelations that change continually change the texture of what your watching.
The fantasy of the film is two fold. The setting of the film isn't pure fantasy but at the same time, the village it takes place in is insular and relatively isolated, and the denizens largely seem content with it being that way. It's hard to pin down a time period for the film, but it's before electricity, everyone has a job to do (well, every man has a job to do) and they are devoid of proper names. They are called their profession... Fisherwoman, Baker, Tailor or, for most women, their identity is tied to their husband, like Tailor's Wife. At first I thought when people called Olivia Coleman "Fisherwoman" that it was meant as a pejorative. The town folk look down on this unmarried, older woman who is completely self sufficient and largely uninterested in the societal norms and pleasantries (it's also clear she's faced a life of derision and has built up a resilient defensive shell and a barbed tongue in response).
The other fantasy, though, is obviously the center of the film. Basket Weaver (Dinklage) can do magic with his strands of wicker. Fisherwoman, having accidentally been signalled the next to be married (and ridiculed by the town in response) asks Basket Weaver to make her a husband, just to mock the town's patriarchal rites and structures. But Basket Weaver makes a true man, a man who will look at a woman as an individual, not a possession. A man who will love and care for his partner, and be content with his life only if she is content with hers. The Wicker Husband (Skarsgaard) and Fisherwoman do marry, and Fisherwoman finds herself changed with the realization that there is an alternative to the life she has been leading, as well as an alternative to the life the people of the village attempt to enforce.
One such enforcer is Tailor's Wife (Debicki), who is the defacto town magistrate through sheer sternness and force of will. She's a sour woman who, like Fisherwoman, is disgruntled with the patriarchy of her town, and displeased having to defer to her husband. But that is the town way, so the only thing that gives her purpose is enforcing the village rite and traditions. Fisherwoman bucking in the face of those traditions, doing what she cannot, only angers her more, she's full of resentment.
Wicker Husband breeds a lot of resentment. It's clear that Fisherwoman is being satisfied by her husband, a generous and selfless lover, so the women are curious while the men feel emasculated. Though sex is at the core of the film's trailer, it's just one of the facets through which this film examines the patriarchy. Feminine pleasure may get more attention in the post Sex and the City years but still the male gaze dominates our media.
Though just touched upon briefly, Wicker escapes the "born sexy yesterday" trope and does reinforce that Wicker Husband does have agency, and was not built to serve Fisherwoman, he actually chose to partner with her.
Wicker is a pseudo-Frankenstein tale that refuses to engage with Frankenstein tropes. It could have leaned into those horror roots, but it's got its own plans for how the story of Fisherwoman, her Wicker Husband and the rotten village play out and it doesn't have any interest in the same old thing. Instead it looks to fables and fairy tales, teaching all the characters of the film a lesson or two (but each to their own lesson). It is based off a 2008 short story "The Wicker Husband" by Ursula Wills, which was written as a fairy tale. (The story apparently had only been self-published online prior to the film rights being acquired, which is itself fascinating how things can be discovered anywhere, anytime.)
There are many delights to Wicker, but the greatest is the design of Wicker Husband. WETA Workshop's visualization of the character is so intricate and gorgeous, the details of his face, his hands, his body are just magnificent. The sound design, every move of Wicker Husband elicits a creak or a groan from the weave as the reeds compress or expand (yes, including that part of him).
It is a romantic, funny, sharp and pointed film that's probably the biggest, out-of-nowhere surprise of the year.
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I know right? It sounds so unique and exciting.
And it is. And it isn't.
Whalefall finds Austin Abram's Jay Gardner returning to his coastal Californian home town from college (in landlocked Ohio) for the first time in a while. It's been a year since his father, terminally ill, committed suicide by returning himself to the ocean. Jay gathers with his mom (Elizabeth Shue) and sisters (Jane Levy, Emily Rudd) where it's clear that everyone except Jay is coping with the loss.
Jay's dad Mitt (Josh Brolin) was an expert diver. He was a whale spotting tour guide as well as a bit of an eco warrior. He saw Jay as the heir to his knowledge of the world, but also the heir to his perspective on life. He wanted Jay to be aware of the world, and how to live in sort of harmony with it. Mitt didn't just respect the ocean, he worshipped it. Like any father who can't see past their own perspective, their own desires for their children, he bullied Jay into learning all the things he wanted him to learn, never taking the time for Jay's interests or to listen to Jay's perspective. It was a fraught relationship and despite Jay's desire to find connection, Mitt could never seem to stop the noises in his brain from reaching his mouth long enough to make one.
A comment from his sister about the empty coffin at Mitt's grave site leads Jay to the idea to go for a dive to find even one bone of his father's remains, even after being made aware that Mitt jumped intending to go down off the shelf into the inky blackness where Jay couldn't reach him. Yadda yadda yadda Jay winds up inside a whale.
There was an excellent, as yet unfinished comic book mini-series from (woah) nearly 20 years ago called Gutsville by Simon Spurrier and Frazer Irving about a whole town living inside the belly of a whale. I loved that story and still hope it is completed one day. Of course any story of man being swallowed by a whale is a spin off the biblical Jonah and the whale...or at best a riff on Pinocchio...but director Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You) has no designs on high fantasy inside a cavernous stomach. No, he's much more interested in the gooey, fleshy, pulsating innards of earth's largest mammals, in the case a sperm whale.
Whalefall has two stories to tell. It has the tale of Jay's survival inside a great beast that has very little awareness that he's in there, and the story of Jay's relationship with his father. I have seen stories about people being inside of beasts before, as well as stories about the challenges between fathers and sons...so as much as Whalefall presents some familiarity, it also present a whole lot I've just never seen before in both of its plots.
Having complicated a complicated relationship with your father, or being a father and having a complicated relationship with your children (or having step-kids who have complicated relationships with their fathers) is definitely not unfamiliar ground for me and if it's done well, I'm 100% in for such exploration. I have to say, it is done quite well here. I could feel Jay's frustration with Mitt. I know that frustration. But at the same time, the movie gives space for Mitt too, not to express his frustration at Jay ... well, he does do that a lot, but examining that Mitt's frustration is as much about his own inability to escape his own trappings, his own nature, his own learned behaviour. But it's not what everyone came to Whalefall to see.
And so being inside the mouth and various stomach chambers of the whale is a fucking ordeal. And it's intense and mesmerising, just fully captivating, with no sense at all of what's to come next or what the plan is to get out of this situation. And all the biological functions inside, well, I have no idea what's truth and what's just what looks funky on screen, but it's all really, really awesome...
...until it isn't.
The reality is there's a limited amount of space, and a limited amount of resources inside the body of a whale, so it really makes MacGyvering a way out of the situation pretty hard. It also limits the amount of interaction Jay can have with his environment, and so there's only so much time to be filled with the central premise. The rest has to be more emotional, more personal.
So where Whalefall falls down is in its third act. For the first two acts, the film jumps between Jay's present and his past. Lost-style, there are kind of memory triggers, or blackouts that precipitate a flashback. It's a familiar formula and it works well. As much as, yes, the flashbacks interrupt the most exciting part of the film, they also provide a grounding tether to this fantastical situation.
The third act, though, attempts to merge these two threads, to get metaphysical, to get sort of spiritual, where Jay, defeated, and running low on oxygen starts communicating with the whale, and the whale communicates back to him, but as Mitt. It's supposed to be an emotional catharsis, it's supposed to fully bridge the gap between these two stories, but it had the opposite effect on me, putting more and more distance between my connection to either story. This merger makes the survival tale that was grounded by the emotional story feel far fetched because the emotional story itself takes on a fantasy element. And the survival of the third act becomes more about the survival of the sperm whale, less about Jay.
Abrams, in survival mode for the second time this year, ably carries the weight of this film, even with absence the lighter touches he's brought to every other role I've seen him in. He's perhaps an unlikely superstar, but I predict his 30's are going to be huge for him.
I really liked Whalefall but was also pretty disappointed by it. These two emotions have no choice but to coexist. It's unlike anything I've ever seen before, except that it is.
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Primetime is largely shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio, black space flanking either side of the image on screen. Oppenheim uses (or simulates) many different camera formats throughout the procession of the film, including home video recorders, mini-cameras strapped to guns, and all manner of TV cameras. With only one watch it's hard to pick out specifically what the formatting is telling us, and whether the late-stage scene of a over-the-shoulder camera being dropped in a swimming pool (and not retrieved) is some form of message about network TV drowning in "reality TV".
The subject of Primetime is the trashy, gawking 2000's reality TV show To Catch A Predator, wherein a crew behind the scenes bait "sexual predators" found in chatrooms on the internet into thinking they are young teenagers interested in having encounters with gross older men. Once on the hook online, they're drawn to a location to have a physical encounter where they're pounced on by one-time journalist Chris Hansen, who then reads excerpts from their on-line chats and he publicly shames them before being tackled by police upon exiting the premises.
There was always something gross about To Catch A Predator, always something disquieting and uncomfortable about it. Not just the awareness that there are men like that out there, men ready to exploit the naivite of a teenager, but that there's people, and a network who are exploiting these exploiters for profit. Capitalism has no scruples. The show also blurred the lines of journalism and law enforcement and what responsibilities journalists actually had.
Primetime stars Robert Pattinson as Hansen, or, rather, a version of Hansen. Pattinson is delivering a performance, portraying a man who is driven by ego and prestige and a self-deluded belief that he is, somehow, helping make the world a better, safer place. It's a magnificent transformation that he makes a full meal out of, bathing in the glory of his accomplishments, but always falling in the shadow of contemporaries like Stone Phillips.
While Hansen is the lead character, Merritt Weaver co-stars as Hansen's producer, Andie Bender. Andie and Chris have a professional relationship and little else, but both fuel each other's ambitions, and neither is about to check the other for going too far. Andie is as wrapped up in the ratings race to take down Lost as Chris is. Where Hansen doesn't even consider the ethics of what they're doing, Bender seems to know that the work their doing is trash and morally questionable, but fully admits to not caring.
Skyler Gisondo plays "Decoy Dan" Plum, an actor hired to be the "teen" greeting the potential predator at the door. Where Chris is kind of unknowable as a person, keeping anything close to real at a distance in this story, and Andie is all in on her success-by-any-means, Dan just has ambitions as an actor to get his SAG card. He takes his role seriously, prepping for it as if every encounter he's going to have is a mini-play, partially scripted but with some improvisation. Dan is the heart of this very darkly comic movie, but even he falls prey to the darkness. There are moments that pull him out of the black ink he's fallen in and Gisondo plays those moments of conflict and turmoil perfectly.
Oppenheim isn't interested at all in investing the audience in the success or failure of To Catch A Predator within the film, which is counter to the usual rhythms of these types of media based-on-a-true-story productions. Usually there's some investment into the health of the show, but Oppenheim is more interested in the toll that the show takes on the people behind the scenes.
Primetime, as well as To Catch A Predator, hits its peak when they find a white whale, someone in the government...besides a celebrity there could be nothing more scandalous. The result of this encounter are pretty dark, and ends both the show and the film, save for a small coda. The film is uber stylish, and quite propulsive, but starts to sputter a bit at the top of the third act, as it circles some of the character beats it's previously examined. There was more meat to be had in the fallout of the white whale but no room left to explore it.
For such a dark and twisted subject matter, Primetime is quite lively and even shockingly fun.
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And so we get the motley crew of passengers aboard a Boeing 747 red-eye from Washington to Los Angeles, complete with the most briefest of introductions and character defining moments. It should be an uneventful flight, but a weather front across the western seaboard forces the plane into an early landing at Salt Lake City.
Unfortunately for them, a small single engine personal plane is also in their airspace, and its pilot is in the midst of having a heart attack. He loses control and grazes the side of the cockpit, tearing a hole open. The co-pilot is sucked out into the open air, a console falls and kills the navigator, and the captain is blinded in the collision. It's up to flight attendant Nancy Pryor (Karen Black) to take control of the situation and hopefully find their way to safety. The encroaching mountains aren't going to be much help though.
A disaster film has three parts - the introductions, the calamity, and the fallout. If one of these fails the other two can prop it up no problem. If two fail, then the third had better be good. Here, the opening introduction to our players is pretty weak, mostly glossed over. The disaster itself is especially terrible -- the image of the very-clearly-a-prop-dummy being sucked out of the plain is hilariously awful, and our only exterior view of the collision is on the poster -- but once the film settles into the procedural aspect of getting Nancy to fly the plane (while the passengers start coming to the realization of the full severity of their situation) it's pretty gripping. And then they attempt a mid-air insert of a pilot from a military helicopter into the cockpit through the hole. Insanity.
Half kinda trashy, half genuinely entertaining, Charlton Heston is kinda sleepwalking through his part, and Karen Black plays Nancy a little too hysterical for my liking, but overall it generally does work. George Kennedy needlessly reprises his role as Joe Petroni (though he seems to have gotten a pretty big promotion since the last one), but adds the most tenuous of connections to the first film...as if that really mattered.
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