Criminal Convents, Papal Elections, & Draft Dodgers: Here’s 9 Films We Saw This Fall

Nightbitch

Photo Credit: Searchlight Pictures

Since the trailer for the adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s novel of the same name hit the internet in September, the consensus seemed to be that Nightbitch will only be one of two things: really good, or really bad. Well, it gives me no pleasure to report that it’s the latter. It’s so bad, in fact, that I’ve been referring to it as “Barbie for twee moms.”

When we meet Amy Adams’ “Mother,” she’s caged by the mundanities of motherhood — from cooking the same Trader Joe’s hash browns every morning to (kind of) participating in library sing-a-longs with a chorus of screaming kids. She was a city-dwelling artist once. Now, she’s a suburban single mom with a largely non-existent husband. Frankly, we’ve seen this story before. And the more Nightbitch attempts to set itself apart from the others (you know, with the whole her becoming a dog thing), the less compelling it actually is — mostly because it refuses to go all the way there.

When Yoder’s protagonist begins running with neighborhood dogs (who are also bored mothers), we barely see a physical transformation with the exception of bolting down food, barking, and more body hair. There is a scene that nearly approaches the body-horror level of The Substance, in which she grows a tail right before our eyes…and yet, here’s no explanation as to how it disappears when she’s not a dog. Though Mother returns to art, demands a separation, and creates a community, there’s not much of a psychological transformation either. Her story ends right where she started: back in a relationship with her husband, and a mother to not one but two small children. We’re told to celebrate this as she’s finally discovered autonomy or whatever. Instead, I was still wondering where the hell the tail went. Between her legs?

In fairness, Adams as the titular Nightbitch tries. Really hard. But between the lame dialogue and repetitive voiceovers (“I am a woman”), even the most solid acting doesn’t stand a chance against truly cringe, surface-level feminism. It’s safe to say that this isn’t the film that will win her the Oscar, but it’s not her fault. Nightbitch‘s bottom line is, for lack of a better phrase, dog tired.

Queer 

Photo Credit: A24

Luca Guadagnino has taken audiences to some singularly entertaining, sexy, and sad places since his mainstream breakout with Call Me By Your Name in 2017 — from the lonely highways of Middle America to a New Rochelle country club. Queer, an adaptation of William S. Burrough’s novel of the same name, is no exception, even if it’s his most clumsily-navigated odyssey.

The story follows William Lee (Daniel Craig), a forty-something American expat, and his ill-fated infatuation with a recently discharged Navy serviceman named Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Where the latter is detached and his sexual identity a bit dubious, the former borders on predatory and is very often pitiful in his pursuit not just of Allerton, but of yagé (also known as ayahuasca), a psychedelic that possesses telepathic qualities. That Lee isn’t just trekking through the Ecuadorian rainforest for a plant, but a connection with someone that transcends the physical body is glaringly obvious, as is his desperation for that someone to be Allerton.

Unfortunately, Queer‘s arc is, at times, frustratingly dense (this is another potential Oscar contender that could’ve undergone more cuts) and truly befuddling (there’s a tone shift in the jungle that gives slapstick). Fans of Guadagnino’s previous work might even find the film totally inaccessible — particularly its discordant use of miniatures to illustrate Lee’s labyrinthine inner world. In fact, I was certain I didn’t like the film until it occurred to me that I was still turning it over in my mind weeks later.

Watching Craig turn himself inside out with all-consuming longing is agonizing in that it’s a horrifyingly accurate (and award-worthy) reflection of what we’ve all looked like when pining for someone who probably doesn’t feel quite as intensely. When you care for someone that deeply, you see, hear, and feel only what you want to, as opposed to what’s actually there. In Allerton’s presence, Lee trips over his words and unabashed wantonness, despite how apparent it is to the audience that he’s by himself on this journey. Learning that it’s perfectly possible to be in love all alone is as alarming as, well, finding oneself lost in the middle of a jungle. Watching someone else do it? Plain painful. And, in this case, very impressive.

Conclave

Photo Credit: Focus Features

If you’re anything like me, you might wonder what could possibly be interesting about a Papal election? A bunch of self-riotous sex pests, shysters, and pedophiles clamoring over each other for power? You might as well just turn on the news. But that snap judgement, my friends, is a grave mistake. Edward Berger’s adaptation of the 2016 Robert Harris novel is a thoroughly entertaining amalgam of a whodunnit and a political thriller back when Hollywood still regularly churned out both.

When the Pope unexpectedly dies, Ralph Fiennes’s Cardinal Lawrence is tasked with charting the conclave’s next steps — most importantly, naming his successor. Most of his choices are profoundly flawed so the process is ultimately a matter of deciding upon the lesser of two evils. Sound familiar? There’s his buddy Bellini (Stanley Tucci) who leans left, and Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) who…doesn’t. Then, there are the moderates: duplicitous Tremblay (John Lithgow) and the secret daddy, Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), who aspires to become the first African pope. Finally, there’s Benitez (Carlos Diehz), a cardinal from Kabul that no one cares to know until just before the film’s conclusion.

Watching the believably ambivalent Fiennes sift through their personal histories proves to be both surprising and seriously satisfying. When the conclave finally agrees on a Pope, a woman in my theater actually stood up and clapped as if the papacy had made an exception for her and she, too, got to cast a vote. Conclave isn’t particularly groundbreaking, nor was it the payoff perfect, but I’ve never had more fun being proved wrong. And for the love of all that’s holy, if that cinematography isn’t astonishing…

Small Things Like These

Photo Credit: Big Things Films

Not since Tom Hanks in 1993 and 1994 has there ever been a back-to-back Best Actor victor at the Academy Awards, but if there’s ever been a case for a repeat, it’s Cillian Murphy in Small Things Like These. One year after Oppenheimer, he turns in another subtle, stirring performance — this time, of an Irish coal worker wrestling not just with right and wrong, but action and apathy after witnessing an atrocity in plain sight.

Murphy’s Bill Furlong is a humble working-class man. He rises before the sun, delivers coal until it’s swallowed by the horizon, and then scrubs the soot from his fingers and sits with his five daughters until bedtime. He also observes people — a barefoot boy drinking from a bowl of milk left on a benevolent stranger’s stoop; a woman fending off a drunken asshole trying to kiss her after a night out; and most consequentially, a young girl being dragged into a convent by a nun. The convent, we soon learn, is a part of the Magdalene Laundries, a rotten (and, until 1996 very real) system of orphanages, homes for “fallen women” and unwed mothers, and workhouses, where women and girls provided free labor for the community. Sinead O’Connor, a former inhabitant, once described the Laundries this way:

“It was a prison. We didn’t see our families, we were locked in, cut off from life, deprived of a normal childhood. We were told we were there because we were bad people. Some of the girls had been raped at home and not believed. One girl was in because she had a bad hip and her family didn’t know what to do with her. It was a great grief to us.”

As Furlong learns of the horrors happening inside the institution, the audience discovers more about him in a series of flashbacks. He was the son of a young, unwed mother (aka a blight upon the Catholic Church and his community) and, after her untimely death, an orphan. The memories provide further context for his empathy and, in the end, his help in spite of the risks that come with defying the church.

“If you want to get on in this life, there’s things you have to ignore,” Furlong’s wife warns in one particularly sonorous scene. The timeliness alone is searing. The bleakness of the imagery, too. But there is nothing that lingers longer than Murphy’s silent tears as he comes to terms with the fact that he doesn’t want to get on if it means looking the other way.

Oh, Canada

Photo Credit: Film at Lincoln Center

In Oh, Canada, Paul Schrader’s latest, Leonard Fife (Richard Gere), the fictional protagonist in the 2021 novel, Foregone, written by Schrader’s longtime (now-deceased) friend, Russell Banks, takes stock of his life. Fife is a famous documentary filmmaker confronting all kinds of regrets as he slowly succumbs to cancer. Chief among them is the abandonment of multiple women and his two children. He’s supposed to be a complex character. By the film’s conclusion, he seems like nothing more than a bitter misogynist.

According to Oh, Canada‘s synopsis, Fife is “intent on revealing his long-guarded secrets and demystifying his mythologized life” during one final TV interview conducted by former students. He insists his wife, Emma (Uma Thurman), be there to hear what he says. But the central secret isn’t that Fife fathered two children and left their respective mothers without a word. Emma, we learn, already knew about at least one of the children from her own investigation. Instead, he admits to fleeing to Canada to avoid serving in the Vietnam War. Then, he dies. The end. It’s disappointing that not only is there very little to demystify, but that there’s no real climax despite how hard Schrader tries to establish tension.

As I wrote immediately after I saw it, the film is guilty of a lot, but one of its most unforgivable sins is that it — at the very least — skipped an opportunity to further contextualize draft-dodging. On its own, it’s just some asshole lamenting life’s coulda, woulda, shouldas for an hour and a half. If that’s your thing, might I recommend your local dive?

The Substance

Photo Credit: Metropolitan Filmexport

Much has already been written about Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance — from the ways it realizes distinctly feminine self-hatred, to its smart skewering of American beauty standards, to its portrayal of showbiz’s mastication of women before it unceremoniously shits them out. As a hater: believe the hype. Welcome back, Demi Moore, etc., etc.

Moore’s Elizabeth Sparkle is a fading fitness superstar facing down impending irrelevancy when she learns of a self-administered injection that spawns an ideal version of anyone who takes it. A serum that makes you younger, tighter, and shinier? What could go wrong? Elizabeth and her counterpart, “Sue” (Margaret Qualley), fuck around and find out after they ignore the substance’s one rule: Elizabeth’s younger iteration can’t be inhabited for more than seven days or she’ll suffer far worse consequences than crows feet and some stray grays. If TikTok hasn’t spoiled it already, the result of their error is the grossest onscreen transformation I’ve ever felt guilt for giggling at.

The Substance‘s many allusions to the horror films that came before (The Fly, Psycho, The Shining) are visually stunning, the performances are rich, and the payoff — though familiar — is deeply felt. Here’s hoping all of this gets the Academy distinction it deserves.

The Room Next Door

Photo Credit: Warner Bros.

When a film stars Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton and I’m more intrigued by the space they occupy, there’s a serious problem. Set in upstate New York, two old friends reconnect over mortality — namely, Swinton’s Martha. She’s dying of cancer, we learn, and before she deteriorates, she wants to end it all by Moore’s side.

It’s not a boring premise or a boring cast. And yet…I was bored — so starved for whatever the film was trying to say that I just kind of studied Swinton’s home for most of it. Call me crazy but the concept of assisted suicide (and generational female friendships) should be much more moving than the color of a couch.

Emilia Perez

Photo Credit: Netflix

An Israeli transphobic surgeon; Selena Gomez telling a former lover her “pussy still hurts” at the mere thought of him with utter seriousness; a choreographed dance number wherein nurses sing about vaginoplasty. Jacques Audiard’s genre-bending opera, Emilia Perez, has it all. Whether you want to take any of it with you is another conversation.

Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldana) is a hard-boiled attorney in Mexico, made cynical by a corrupt system and sick with the knowledge that she’s a participant in it. When Castro is kidnapped by a drug kingpin (Karla Sofía Gascón) and presented with an offer she can’t refuse, she sees redemption — and not just for herself. The cartel leader, she learns, wants to start life anew. The first step? Access to gender-affirming care. Not only is Rita tasked with finding the right one-stop surgery shop, but also with faking the death of the married parent of two. It all goes off without a hitch until the titular character’s crimes have consequences.

Now, if all of that sounds compelling, don’t get too excited. The filmmaker is a cisgender man, meaning you can expect a pretty baseline portrayal of the trans experience that somehow, in the year 2024, is overwhelmed by tropes (read: trans people as martyrs, trans people as killers, etc.). As Autostraddle‘s Drew Burnett Gregory wondered: “Certainly, this shallow understanding of trans people can’t still be interesting to cis people.” Perhaps that’s why every frame is a sensory overload. That way, it’s easier to trick audiences into thinking they’re seeing something more complex than they are.

Truth be told, the best thing about Emilia Perez is the complete revelation that is Gascón. With her charm, comedic timing, and completely commanding presence, she deserved a far better debut in the mainstream. Seeing Saldana get to be someone other than a hot girl in an action film was a treat, too.