Sirāt. Writer/director Óliver Laxe and co-writer Santiago Fillol have made a mesmerizing and often exhilarating, but tedious and exhausting thriller. The beats don't land as strongly as they would have if the audience were to know more about Mar and why she disappeared. Exposition remains at a bare minimum. There are some twists that make the film more and more tragic, but those twists seem like plot devices in retrospect, especially after something happens to one of the characters. The filmmakers aren't interested in getting to know Luis or any of the ravers that he meets during his dangerous trek through the desert, so they all stay at a cold distance from the audience. Moreover, the use of music feels bizarre, heavy-handed and intrusive. That said, the cinematography and breathtaking desert landscape, which becomes a character in itself, are the film's major strengths. They add visual style, although that's not enough to compensate for the lack of substance. At 1 hour and 55 minutes, Sirāt opens on November 14th, 2025 at Angelika Film Center via NEON.
Number of times I checked my watch: 3
Three different stories from different time periods take place near the same Ginko tree in a garden adjacent to Marburg University in Silent Friend. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Tony Wong (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), does research to explore the consciousness of the Ginkgo tree. Dr. Alice Sauvage (Léa Seydoux), a botanist, advises him through a video call on his computer. In 1908, Grete (Luna Wedler), an aspiring botanist, struggles to become the first female science student at the university and goes up against the sexist faculty members. In 1972, Gundula (Marlene Burow) researches the impact of humans on plants while romancing Hannes (Enzo Brumm), her classmate. Writer/director Ildikó Enyedi has made a thought-provoking, quietly moving and poetic film with shades of Carlos Reygadas. The three stories only become interconnected thematically and with the same large and beautiful Ginkgo tree which becomes a character in itself. Interestingly, they each have different cinematography: the one set in 1908 is shot in black-and-white in 35mm, the one set in 1972 is shot in color in grainy 16mm, and the one set in 2020 is shot in digital.
Enyedi moves the pace slowly, so he trusts the audience's emotions and allows them to absorb the breathtaking sights of the tree both at night and during the daytime. Not all of the three narratives are as strong as the others, to be fair, and each one has a slightly different tone. The one that's less engaging is the one involving the romance between Gundula and Hannes because it falls flat. Fortunately, the other two stories feel captivating enough. Patient audience members will be rewarded with a very meditative experience that leaves a lot of room for interpretation about the power of nature and the symbiosis between man and nature. At a running time of 2 hours and 27 minutes, Silent Friend opens on May 8th, 2026 at Angelika Film Center via 1-2 Special. It would be an interesting double feature with the Carlos Reygadas film Silent Light and the much more ambitious, elliptical and sprawling The Tree of Life.
Number of times I checked my watch: 2
Singer/songwriter Bruce Springstein (Jeremy Allen White) makes the album "Nebraska" while dealing with his childhood trauma and romancing Faye (Odessa Young), a single mother, in Springstein: Deliver Me From Nowhere. The screenplay by writer/director Scott Cooper is shallow, by-the-numbers, bland and sugar-coated, much like last year's A Complete Unknown. However, the performances by the ensemble cast, namely Jeremy Allen White, Odessa Young, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser and Stephen Graham are terrific enough to invigorate the film. The flashback scenes to Springstein's childhood are redundant, though, and only serve as exposition. Cooper's screenplay ultimately fails to design enough of a window into Bruce Springstein's heart, mind and soul. He's a stranger to the audience at the beginning and remains a stranger to them until the very end. It's also hard to grasp how he's truly grown and changed throughout the course of the film. His few epiphanies don't feel contrived.
Not surprisingly, the scenes with Springstein's music are the ones that are exhilarating on a palpable level. If only the same could be said about the scenes without his music which, sadly, fail to resonate on an emotional level like the recent, underseen music biopic Stelios manages to accomplish with flying colors. At 1 hour and 59 minutes, Springstein: Deliver Me From Nowhere opens nationwide on October 24th, 2025 via 20th Century Studios.
Number of times I checked my watch: 3
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