In 2023, the two Israeli Oscar-winning filmmakers behind No Other Land, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, sat down, across rooftops in the shadows of the Tel Aviv night, to discuss Israel’s genocide 35 miles away in Gaza. Their visually obscured subjects—24 Israel Defense Forces intelligence officers and soldiers participating on conditions of anonymity—spoke candidly.

NAZA is a new word, the lexical equivalent of dehumanization. It counts human beings, but doesn’t regard them as people—just numbers. It doesn’t distinguish between age, gender, or other demographics. “NAZA” is the term the IDF invented to identify collateral civilian deaths from an airstrike… without having to call them that. So when an officer remotely bombs a building that’s suspected to have two Hamas members inside and 47 civilians, they don’t say “47 civilians.” They say “47 NAZA,” then pull the trigger.

Szor and Abraham’s documentary answers a perplexing, wide-reaching contemporary question: how does a military encourage its ethically troubled, AI-led, remote drone operators to kill women, children, and other innocents in the name of the state? Nationalism and jihadistic belief only go so far for those tasked with exacting mass execution. But language can cut deep, cover up, rewire (or remove) the meaning of something in our brain and change how it sounds, how it feels. Until one’s conscience catches up with them.   

The military personnel that came forward have all done so because they’re having second thoughts about the Israeli occupation and suffocation of Gaza as a means for good. Many speak about how they joined after the October 7 attack to help Israel, to defend their country. They talk about how the idea that “there are no innocent people in Gaza” spread like wildfire and rallied them into what they thought was defensive action. Meanwhile, cameras capture life in Tel Aviv—through apartment windows, construction sites, traffic-locked roads. Above them, rockets sail through the air like shooting stars on steroids and hair-raising wartime sirens sound off in the ether.

NAZA is not for the faint of heart, just as it’s not for Zionists. The litany of evidence, examples, and statistics provided is staggering—more than enough to break through the weeds of technicalities to make you feel sick to your stomach or sob uncontrollably. It’s a thorough, primary-source investigation into how genocide literally operates in modern times, how it functions through the strength of a well-backed 21st-century military, much less the ideological conviction that it’s warranted. 

Agents explain that one of the main ways the IDF collects intelligence and locates targets is through an AI program called “Lavender,” which finds phones that operate like Hamas operatives. But they fire on those targets regardless of the collateral body count, regardless of the NAZA. Drone operators talk about strikes with 500 NAZA for one target (20 eventually becomes the benchmark). They discuss how at least 15% of Lavender’s intelligence is inevitably leading them to non-Hamas operatives (e.g. a bakery owner who has Hamas customers in the neighborhood but no connection to the group). They admit that the most junior-level operators have been given carte blanche to green light their own AI-intel attacks.

They discuss the value of quantity over quality (or accuracy) of strikes in the IDF’s mission, how they kill suspected targets at home to make it easier, knowingly annihilating entire families—mothers, kids, babies—and all neighbors in a building just to kill one man. On one occasion, a man recalls what he says is a common story of dropping bombs on a target with dozens of NAZA present, only to learn afterward that the Hamas operative they were going for wasn’t home. They merely murdered his family and neighbors with no repercussions. If anything, the strike invites pats on the back.

They talk about below-the-belt moves ordered from up high to disrupt The Hague in order to reduce or eliminate the international war crimes with which Netanyahu has been charged. Soldiers tell first-person stories about picking off Palestinians with sniper rifles at food distribution sites if the malnourished people—fearful they wouldn’t get enough food to survive—got out of line. The banality of evil that Hannah Arendt witnessed in the Eichmann trial is on full display in the soldiers’ explanation of why they continue to carry out a genocide on behalf of the state: they’re just doing their job.

In one of NAZA‘s most chilling sequences, an officer explains that he never understood how the Nazis perpetrated such evil against the Jewish people until he, simply wishing to help his country, suddenly found himself a proud cog in a similar machine built to systematically wipe out a civilization and group. He still thinks Nazis are evil; now he wonders how he’s any different.

Very, very few films, no matter how great or important, are actually urgent. You’ll get around to it eventually; it’ll be stuck in time waiting for you. But NAZA is urgent, an essential film, a living document in conversation with the most pressing issue in the world right now. And it’s the new foremost authority on what’s happening on a granular, behind-the-scenes level in Israel’s crusade against Gaza. It’s much harder to question or deny a genocide that’s happening when the people perpetrating it in real time call it genocide themselves.

NAZA screened at the 64th New York Film Festival and is now playing in limited release.

Many were optimistic that the first Trump Presidential term would be, at the very least, a blessing for satire. Two years into his second term and a former member of his cabinet was the one to declare comedy “legal” again, and the most lightweight of comedians were forced off the air in attempts by the networks to ally themselves with his administration further. This is the cultural context that kept circling around my mind while watching Digger, a movie that raises questions about whether the troubles of our times will be processed by future generations through art, and what that can possibly look like, considering the billionaires holding the purse strings. Unfortunately, it doesn’t satisfyingly explore these ideas so much as raise them so the audience can have a more invigorating post-viewing conversation; David Ellison may not be in control of Warner Bros. just yet, but even he would shrug off this satire aimed at the right-wing ruling class if he were in charge when the project arrived at his desk.

The specifics of how the movie approaches these ideas is being treated as a spoiler, which director Alejandro G. Iñárritu has explicitly asked critics not to reveal in all invitations sent to the press—maybe the first case of a director willing an F Cinemascore upon himself. Personally speaking, I found this unrevealed aspect of the movie far less interesting than the face-value shenanigans teased in the trailer, its bolder background conceit never living up to the audacious satirical ideas presented on paper. The film instead resembles something closer to a post-apocalyptic Birdman. There’s a significant change in context to that movie, but it feels like the director treading familiar ground. When the movie isn’t operating in that more thoughtful register, it’s content to mimic Dr. Strangelove, albeit with a broadness of tone that makes Peter Sellers’ German scientist uncontrollably giving the Nazi salute look subtle.

Luckily, Iñárritu has a go-for-broke lead performance from Tom Cruise–and an arguably better supporting turn from Riz Ahmed–to ground the stupidity. As someone allergic to the over-the-top comic stylings of his Tropic Thunder performance, I was pleasantly surprised that his Digger Rockwell was closer in spirit to the tragic egotism of Magnolia’s Frank T.J. Mackey, complete with a show-stopping monologue where he paints himself a savior from the ills of the world to which he’s contributing. Those ills are the ecological fallout from decades of his company’s oil-drilling in Greenland, with an ice shelf 400-feet high and approximately the size of Washington D.C. (lovingly nicknamed Judy) heading towards mainland Europe. 

His scientist Ganesh (Ahmed) has long warned about the impact, which could trigger a tsunami that would kill hundreds of thousands and displace even more as the continent continues to flood. The President (John Goodman) is uninterested in acting based on Ganesh’s various projections that rely on the whims of wind and ocean currents, and his administration instead opts to use an AI to ban contentious words ranging from “ice” to “Al Gore” on social media. It was either that or drop a nuke on the iceberg.

The beat-by-beat fallout, which builds up to Digger’s impassioned speech to the booing members of the European parliament about how his company supplies their “freedom” (itself an unintentional echo of the far better Foghorn Leghorn courtroom monologue in last month’s Coyote vs. Acme), may be predictable for anybody with an interest in more realist post-apocalyptic dramas such as Threads, but it’s never boring. Cruise and Ahmed both locate the right tone for the director’s brand of over-the-top dark comedy, finding just the ideal amount of silliness in the seriousness, working best when bouncing off each other. The same can’t be said of the rest of the supporting ensemble, especially a well-cast but badly-utilized Goodman, who has been cursed with a character written as if all his uses of curse words were the jokes in and of themselves. The movie threatens to become a tiresome edgelord shock fest each time he reminds someone he has “cancer of the asshole.” 

For reasons I can’t get into, Digger insulates itself from the criticism of being unsatisfyingly broad satire, to the extent this is even called out within the text. But satire doesn’t need to be dry and hyper-specific to be funny; Dr. Strangelove and the delightfully lowbrow works of Mel Brooks are considered among the greatest comedies Hollywood has ever produced, showing that you can take real cultural anxieties and lingering historical trauma as the starting point for a good joke. The difference is: they were first to the punch when it came to tackling everything from nuclear fallout to the holocaust, setting the tone for how comedy would be able to approach the traumatic; Digger isn’t even the first star-studded climate-change comedy this decade (although it’s a major improvement over the hectoring condescension of Don’t Look Up). There’s funny material and precision-focused comic performances in the mix here, but they’re contained within a movie already resigned to not having anything new to poke fun at.

If you found yourself put off by the constant drumming in Birdman, rest assured that Iñárritu has managed to make Digger just as stylistically off-putting. Cosmo Sheldrake’s score oscillates between whimsical and Hans Zimmer-style booms of orchestral sound, while each set is drowned of color, Cruise’s pale make-up occasionally making him blend into the walls of his palatial mansion. As handled by returning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, the bold decision to capture this desaturated palette in gorgeous VistaVision turns out to be a big swing that pays off. If only that were true of more in Digger, a movie where the admirable satirical boldness appears further devoid of insight the more removed one gets.

Digger opens in theaters on Friday, October 2.

There’s lesser-seen and then there is Srđan Karanović’s Virgina (Virdžina). But the 1991 Serbian feature is being wrested from dark corners of film history by Altered Innocence, who will release the new restoration at Metrograph on October 23 after its world premiere at the Frameline LGBTQ+ Film Festival. Ahead of this, we’re please to exclusively debut their new trailer.

Completed in June 1991 as Yugoslavia descended into war, Virgina became a long-term victim of its nation’s larger tumult. But after queer film historian-filmmaker Jenni Olson located surviving elements in France, the Belgrade-based rights holder Centar Film initiated a new 2K restoration in collaboration with the Yugoslav Film Archive—a proper second chance at life. Said restoration was completed by the Department for Digitisation and Digital Restoration of the Yugoslav Film Archive in Belgrade based on a scan from a 35mm internegative using an ArriscanXT scanner with archival gate overscan, with color correction by Masha Badalić under the supervision of director Srđan Karanović. Audio was sourced from the original 35mm mono sound negative and restored by the Sound Department of the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad.

“Virgina feels astonishingly contemporary for a film made more than three decades ago,” said Frank Jaffe, founder of Altered Innocence. “Its exploration of gender, identity, and social expectation remains deeply resonant, while its disappearance and rediscovery only add to its power. We’re honored to help bring this remarkable and long-unavailable work to North American audiences.”

Here’s the synopsis: “In the rugged mountains of a 19th-century Balkan village, a fourth girl is born to a poor family ‘cursed’ by superstition to bear no boys. In a culture where family honor outweighs individual desire, the baby girl is raised instead as the ‘virdžina’ Stevan, with the rights and responsibilities of a boy, to become the family’s sole heir. ‘Better a rooster for a day than a hen for life.’ his mother says. Stevan grows into a handsome young man carrying the weight of a destiny chosen for him, but as first love stirs and tragedy unfolds in the village, Stevan is pushed to rebellion against the role he’s been forced to play. Virgina (Virdžina) offers a captivating look into the workings of misogyny, gender, and sexuality in late 19th-century Serbia and unfolds as a sensual, haunting tale of identity, duty, and rebellion—a clash between the rigid codes of tradition and the unstoppable pull of the self.

Watch the preview below:

At the top of our interview, director Garth Jennings pulls the laptop in close. He’s seated next to the subject of his new film: Jarvis Cocker, legendary Pulp frontman. We are Zooming to discuss their new film, Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore?, a combo concert film/documentary on the origins of the best band of the ‘90s, and which is now streaming on MUBI. What follows is our cheeky conversation about the film, the Pulp reunion, ‘90s nostalgia, virtual ABBA, and their (fake?) new anti-AI slop motivational video series.

Garth Jennings: I’m just gonna bring you in a little bit. Intimacy, that’s what we’re after.

The Film Stage: Even if we’re digital, we gotta get a little intimate here.

Garth: Bridge the gap.

We’re doing this interview on Zoom. That’s very exciting to me, but as someone born in the mid-’90s, my mind can’t help but go to a place where this is the ‘90s, I have some magazine’s credit card, and we get to have a steak dinner and do some designer drugs for this interview. As someone who’s a 31-year-old musician, can you tell me if there’s anything better about being an artist now than in the ‘90s? Any negatives we’ve missed out on?

Jarvis Cocker: Well, I mean, yeah, there’s certainly a bit of ‘90s nostalgia going on. Like in the UK next week, there’s an exhibition at Tate Britain opening called ‘90s. In my interview for that, I said that the ‘90s is when the best and worst things happened to me. And they were both the same thing, I suppose. The best thing was, in the UK at least, there was this moment where bands that would normally just have been called “indie bands” were, for some reason, allowed to be major bands as well. And that felt like a very exciting moment: that there was gonna be a revolution and culture was gonna get better and it would be the ‘60s again.

And then when we actually did become famous I realized it wasn’t gonna be the ‘60s again. It was the ‘90s. You know? We elected a Labor government for the first time in a long time and we suddenly realized that that idea of a socialist government had disappeared. So it was a bit of a disillusioning time. But my main lesson that I got from that was that you can’t really get hung up on that, you know? Like I said: I wanted it to be the ‘60s because all the TV I watched when I was a kid made me feel that the world was much more exciting then. But the only—I’m gonna sound like I’ve been going to some kind of mental religious thing or whatever—the only time you have is now. So rather than trying to make something that was in the past happen again, you have to try to make something happen now. And maybe that’s what could be good about now: that things are so bad that it would be great for people to make something for themselves.

Garth: I totally agree with that! Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, I agree. I mean, I like the now, too—at least because I get to be alive now.

Jarvis: Right!

As far as the documentary, is there anything awkward about making it? Like literally: when you call up relatives for old pictures and videos, how prepared are they?

Jarvis: Well, I supplied some of the archive. For some reason, I had been given all the tapes from a BBC special that was made on Pulp back in 1995. They’re on Betamax, so I’d never seen them.

Garth: The footage came from everywhere. A lot that Jarvis had, and Mark Webber had, and home videos. And then also we went around raiding the TV stations’ archives and there’s a lot, and it was fantastic. The only trouble with that process is it’s sort of like a guilty pleasure because, for instance, you find a clip of a band on Top of the Pops and then you watch that clip to make sure it’s good, but then instead of stopping, there and going on to the next thing you can’t help but watch the whole show because it’s fascinating. Like, you know, when you go through your old photographs and you’re only supposed to fold em up, put ‘em in a book or something, and you just stop and go “remember that barbecue?” And it was like that going through all the archive material. It was just extraordinary to see that time again, be back in that time. And there were things that we found of the band that I’d never seen before. Not just their own personal footage, which of course I wouldn’t have seen, but stuff on TV that was amazing, that came from different countries as well.

Like the children’s pirate show that Pulp appeared on. That was something I hadn’t seen.

Jarvis: I really wish I’d never seen it. [Laughs] But that was, you know, there was no way to see that, because that show was called Live & Kicking, and it was on on Saturday morning for kids, and it was live. So, you know, you did it, and then you went off to play a concert or whatever. Never got to see it.

Garth: There was no YouTube to upload it forever. So it’s, yeah, it was a lot of discovery. It must have been quite odd for you [Jarvis], seeing all that stuff that you’d never seen before.

Jarvis: But that was the reason that I… I say in the film, half-seriously, that it was this thing of wanting to realize my childhood dream of living on the TV, like living in TV land, and I thought that if I said yes to every offer that we were given to go on TV, then eventually they’d say, “Oh, you want to live here, don’t you?” And I’d say, “Yeah, where’s the apartment?” It never came. I had to learn to live in the real world just like everybody else.

Garth, you designed Pulp’s stage show before there was a movie?

Garth: What happened was: I reached out to Jarvis when I heard there was a rumor that there was gonna be a tour just to say how excited I was, and if there’s any chance of filming I’d love to give it a shot. Jarvis came to meet me, I thought to talk about that, but actually we ended up talking about: how would you stage a show like this? If it’s going to be an encore, what should it look like? How should it feel? And so I got involved in that way.

Jarvis: We’d both seen this [virtual] ABBA show that’s on in London at the moment called ABBA Voyage. Which is where it looks like the young ‘70s ABBA are all performing onstage. So we both really enjoyed that show and how it worked, and in a weird way it made you realize that the band were important, because there were bits where it went to a full-video-screen thing and they weren’t so interesting. But when you had the little figures performing, you really rooted for them.

Garth: It galvanized everyone. I think it’s a 3,000-seater arena for ABBA. Everyone’s looking at them and we’re all rooting for them. We were cheering and singing along. It was amazing.

Jarvis: You know, everybody knew that they weren’t actually there.

Garth: It didn’t matter. We wanted them to be there more than we wanted to accept that they weren’t. And that’s what audiences do, don’t they? They bring it to life.

Jarvis: So I think that that had a big impact on how we then put the show together. What you realise there was: the audience made it happen. There was no band actually performing; they weren’t “giving their all.” They’d given their all in the capture stage, but there was nothing there. And yet the belief of the audience made it work. So that told [us] something very profound about how concerts work, and so I think it got us off on the right foot.

Garth: It did. Also, just that idea of putting on a show, a really good show. And having a real curtain and making a grand entrance and not stopping, that every aspect of it would be thought through. And yet there was still all this spontaneity within that. There’s nothing like working on something live. It’s been one of the highlights not just of my career but of my whole life working on the Pulp show. I’m not just saying that because he’s sitting here. My wife would back me up; she would remember me coming home saying “this is the greatest thing ever.”

So to get this straight: the ABBA Voyage. Is this, like, a 3D thing?

Garth: Yes! How it’s actually done it’s very-high-definition screens, but they’re done in such a way —

Jarvis: No, no, because sometimes they walk! They walk to the piano and play. Or maybe I’m just believing that?

Garth: No that’s good! In a way I sorta don’t wanna tell you, because it will break the spell. Actually, even though I’ve seen it three times now, every time I just completely… it’s like a puppet show. When they first appear, you’re going, “Oh, there’s the wires. There’s the man, and he’s moving it.” But immediately, because it’s done artfully, you just invest in the trick that’s being performed. Done well, you just go with it. And that’s the ABBA Voyage. It’s the best magic trick ever because it is just imagery on screens at 120 frames per second.

Jarvis: But they were casting a shadow on the stage, that was…?

Garth: Yeah, but the stage was just a reflective surface, so it’s just reflecting the screen.

Jarvis: Right.

Garth: It’s brilliant!

Listen, if it comes to New York, I’ll see it!

Jarvis: Well, I think they’re gonna start doing it all over.  I was told that KISS was gonna be the second one, which I wasn’t so excited about. Obviously they’ll be trying to do an Elvis one. I bet the Rolling Stones would do it; they don’t often turn down a chance to earn something. [Laughs]

The KISS voyage I’d be a little afraid of myself. Incidentally, to settle a bet: the Sunrise bit during “Sunrise,” was that a reference to Ken Russell’s Tommy?

Garth: No, I think that most of that all came from Jarvis. You do love circles.

Jarvis: I do, yeah.

Garth: Lots of circles. And also it’s “Sunrise.” It’s just sometimes you want to do as little as possible to set up a song. You also cut a really… what’s the word? Not “significant.” Your silhouette is very identifiable.

Jarvis: Well, and at my age, a silhouette is the way that I look the best. I think I prefer to see myself in silhouette than full-on. [Laughs]

Garth: But it was lovely to perform two sunrises. That was the idea: to bring up the sun, and then it goes away and a real one comes up, and that light source, it’s like something they would have used at the end of Close Encounters. It is a real, blinding, probably incredibly dangerous light which Jarvis, at the end of it, he has to turn around before the very last beat, because you could get a tan off that.

Jarvis: It is like you’re getting cooked.

Garth: He’s getting fried. Yeah.

Jarvis, you note in the doc that there was a 14-year gap between first exposure on the John Peel show and your first hit. You were a little older than some of your peers in the ‘90s, and I feel like that’s incorporated into your writing style. This O2 show was your biggest ever, which is 30 years or so into your career. This implies that some of your appeal comes from a maturity in your perspective, which is a quality I also associate with artists like Leonard Cohen and Serge Gainsbourg. How consciously did you shape that perspective? When did you feel that start to come out in your writing?

Jarvis:  I don’t know. But you know, both those people you mentioned, I really rate them. And I also like the way—especially like, say, Leonard Cohen and also David Bowie—they worked until they died. Leonard Cohen was working a couple of months before he passed away, and Bowie released Blackstar, and two days after it came out, he died. You use creativity; you’re writing about your life, but it also gives you life because I think it gives you something to do. Not like a hobby, but that you have a project that you’re working on, hope you get to the end of it. So there’s always something to write about, I hope. I was writing a couple of things whilst we’ve been touring, but it’s always hard to do that. I’ll have to see. But I think you just have to look around and then see what you’re thinking about, what you’re gonna write about.

I texted my friend Leah Hennessy, who’s a great musician, and told her that I’m doing this interview. She has a question: as a teenager, you dreamed of Pulp as celebrating the excess, the waste of society, the literal “pulp.” Do you see any value in the pulp of contemporary culture? Is there any redemption that you see in the modern trash?

Jarvis: Well, I suppose “modern trash”… we’re in a weird position now, aren’t we, with—I’ve heard a phrase—“AI slop.” Whole aspects of modern culture are coming from AI, and that’s… that’s weird, because, you know, everybody says AI is terrible and it obviously is in a lot of respects.

In terms of creativity, I called the band Pulp because all the stuff that I watched when I was a kid was considered to be throwaway rubbish—you know, like Batman and comic books and all these kind of things—but I found that I liked them. And often the more kind of throwaway aspects of modern culture are the bits that last. [Whereas], like, concept albums about dragons coming to free the world and all that kind of stuff is like: yeah, bye bye. Nobody’s listening anymore.

So whether AI will make some slop that defines the 2020s: I don’t know. I’m out of touch, I guess. You know, I haven’t really… the pop charts were a kind of form of religion for me as a child, and I’ve kind of lost touch with them. Around the mid-2000s. I don’t know what’s been #1 in the chart for at least a decade. How about you?

Garth: I’ve been making these Sing movies, so I’ve been listening to a lot of modern pop music. But I’m aware that it’s not like it used to be. I was exactly the same—you just used the word, like, “religiously” followed [the charts]. That was exactly how I felt about pop music. And now it feels more like: everyone has their own lane. And I liked it when everyone listened to everything. And the charts reflected that. They were bananas. You look back at the eclectic mix of things when I was growing up.

I don’t know, really. Hopefully the AI thing inspires people. The idea of “slop” sends people the other way, which is to put a premium on authenticity. The real thing just got more valuable, hopefully.

Jarvis: Yeah, I think it could. If all the kind of rubbish stuff is produced by a computer, then you have to then set your sights on producing something that can’t be done by a computer, so it might actually be an inspiration to people to up their game.

Garth: Up your game.

Jarvis: Come on, let’s up your game. Come on!

Garth: Come on!

Jarvis: I think we should be making motivational videos?

Garth: This is it. We should be in leotards going, “Up your game!” That’ll be it; it’ll come on the screen as we say it.

I’ll try to find some leotards for you guys. Yeah, up your game.

Garth: No more slop!

I think you guys got a side hustle here if you need it, you know? The Up Your Game series.

Jarvis: Yes.

Garth: It’ll be like Milli Vanilli meets motivational speakers, yeah.

Man, this is a dream come true. See, this is what we do it for, you know? I’d like to think I had a small part in you guys maybe finding a true passion.

Garth: The idea of what we’re doing next just got sorted out. Yeah.

I think we figured it out. Up Your Game.

Jarvis: Thank you, Matthew. Let’s all up our game.

Garth: Let’s leave this conversation knowing that that is what we’re gonna do.

Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore? is now streaming on MUBI.

While recuts are nothing new for Michael Mann, who made some controversial changes to his classic Manhunter just this year, we were surprised to learn the director once more picked up his scalpel and applied it to Miami Vice. Masterpiece and essential text of the 21st century though it maybe, the film had been troubled during its production and seemingly haunted Mann since: in 2016, ten years after its premiere, he remarked, “I know the ambition behind it, but it didn’t fulfill that ambition for me because we couldn’t shoot the real ending.” More recently, he spoke highly of Miami Vice while reiterating a key problem: “I would make the movie all over again. It doesn’t have its proper ending.”

Without flying cast and crew to Paraguay and finally shooting the elaborate sequence that would’ve concluded his film, Mann’s perhaps found the next-best means. Ahead of Miami Vice: The Director’s Final Cut (running 132 minutes to the theatrical edition’s 133 and director’s cut’s 139) debuting this Saturday at Beyond Fest, a press release for the five-disc 4K and Blu-ray set (coming December 15 and now available to pre-order) has given a little more insight into what’s changed while raising altogether new questions.

So it goes:

“To mark the film’s 20th anniversary, the new definitive edition uses elements from both the original theatrical master and Mann’s first director’s cut along with previously unused dailies footage, with fine details adjusted scene by scene to help ensure the new cut looks and sounds better than ever. Fans will also notice changes to the story, with select scenes being refined, a re-ordering of certain scenes, and a significantly recut final act incorporating previously unused footage to reflect Mann’s preferred ending.”

The above starts simply enough—integrating footage from multiple cuts is nothing new for Mann—before raising about five questions per word. However much marketing language is, needless to say, designed for grabbing people’s attention and promising things that might not come to pass, Mann is on a short list of directors I might expect to take a major chance on new material, and that’s before we recall his decades of complicated feelings. Reports from Saturday’s screening couldn’t be more anticipated, and even the slightest chance to experience Miami Vice anew suddenly seem possible.

In a year of impressive performances, Sandra Hüller’s best outing may very well be in Markus Schleinzer’s Rose, a film that earned her the Berlinale Silver Bear prize. Austria’s official entry to the 99th Academy Awards will arrive in select U.S. theaters beginning December 11, and now MUBI has unveiled the new trailer and poster.

Here’s the synopsis: “Amidst the turmoil of the Thirty Years’ War, somewhere in Germany, a mysterious soldier appears in a secluded protestant village. Small and quiet, his face disfigured by a scar, this stranger declares himself the heir of a long-abandoned farmstead and produces a document to support his claim to the suspicious villagers. With time, he overcomes their doubts and shows himself to be a hard-working, God-fearing man, becoming part of the community in a quest for acceptance made up of impossible deceit. The true and twisted tale of a deceiver of land and folk, who, defying her birth as a woman, comported herself as a man and committed many a wicked deed.”

Rory O’Connor said in his review, “If the credibility of period filmmaking can be measured by whether the audience is able to imagine a character scrolling on an iPhone, Markus Schleinzer deserves recognition for his contributions to the genre. The Austrian director’s latest, a macabre, pseudo-folktale titled Rose, is set in 17th-century Germany and looks as if it was shot there, too. After some introductory narration (read with dubious cheer by Marisa Growaldt), we meet Sandra Hüller’s eponymous war veteran—a woman who’s been presenting as a man for years (“There is more freedom in trousers”, she later explains)—just as she encounters a group of villagers near the plot of land she’s come to falsely claim. It’s nighttime, and the scene is lit by torch fire—all the better to show the asymmetries of the faces and establish the textures and potential threats of Rose’s world. It feels like something from another era.”

See the trailer and poster below.

Wrapped inside the visual splendor, luxurious elegance, and ornate decoration of Sofia Coppola’s resplendent and anachronistic Marie Antoinette is the story of a young woman leaving her family behind to help lead another country—an unknown journey and simultaneous document of wealth, excess, and its depressive isolation. Yet despite Coppola tapping into her short filmography’s recurring themes, at least on set, she never contended with the same separation and loneliness of her ill-fated heroine. That’s largely because her mother, Eleanor Coppola, was always by her side—lurking and observing and recording 80 hours of behind-the-scenes footage with her digital camera inside the halls of Versailles. 

Eleanor shelved the footage for 14 years, then dusted it off with Sofia during the pandemic, hoping to turn her personal material into an archival documentary. Now, two years after Eleanor’s passing (and 20 since the release of Marie Antoinette), Sofia has completed her mother’s vision, with editor Aaron Matthews compiling and editing Eleanor’s digital library—captured entirely throughout the movie’s 57-day shoot—and bringing it to vivid life. More ephemeral and narratively considered than an electronic press kit and infused with a mother’s instinctual, appreciative, encouraging eye, Making Marie Antoinette functions as both an engrossing time capsule of a young filmmaker finding her voice and a privileged peek behind the curtain of an initially misunderstood classic that now has a Criterion 4K.

Perhaps fittingly, Eleanor’s decision to hover in the margins of Marie Antoinette was not her natural setting. It had been 15 years since Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the acclaimed 1991 documentary she co-directed about the making of her husband’s Apocalypse Now, but this time she approached the camera with a striking degree of self-consciousness. Woven alongside highlights of her daughter’s filmmaking prowess are Eleanor’s diary entries, narrated by Diane Lane, in which she reflects on her place as a creative and questions whether she even deserves to be holding the camera. “I’m basically a shy person and I hate to intrude,” she says. “It’s counter to my personality to shoot a documentary. And yet, over and over again, I do it.”

That hesitation, and Eleanor’s awareness of her own interference, unexpectedly gives her more intimate access. She quietly courts the affections of Kirsten Dunst prepping for a scene, listens in on side conversations between producers managing logistical concerns, and finds herself close enough to capture the small, unguarded moments—like Jason Schwartzman fooling around with a harpsichord—that a more assertive, prescriptive documentarian might have missed. Much like seeing the source material behind a frequently circulated meme, it’s both illuminating and jarring seeing certain iconic behind-the-scenes stills (namely, Dunst and Schwartzman looking intently at a MacBook) recontextualized through Eleanor’s lens, invigorating them with smalltalk, laughter, and background music.

Like the best making-of movies, Making Marie Antoinette takes special aim to highlight the craftsmanship at work. There’s plenty to go around, starting with costume designer Milena Canonero, who designed 72 unique gowns for Dunst. Not to mention the herculean task of adorning every other actor and extra with their own period-specific clothing, makeup, and wigs that are cleaned and powdered every day. At one point an assistant notes that the production loses a whole day each week because of that prep time, and it becomes clear that Sofia isn’t just directing a costume drama, but orchestrating an entire ensemble of department heads and go-betweens whose execution and audibles must align in precise fashion for this operation be successful. It’s a burdensome load, but in chronicling the handmade labor, inflexible budget, and ruthless schedule needed inside a palace that never grants access to cinematic endeavors, Eleanor reminds us how much moviemaking relies on mystical qualities: cooperation and collaboration. 

Still, as much as it feels like a miracle that those disparate parts come together and keep production on pace, Eleanor is also cognizant of the tenuous moments that require Sofia to raise her voice and maintain vision amidst the chaos. “It feels like I was left out of that discussion,” she tells someone who explains why extras aren’t ready for a scene. That might initially seem like a timid, albeit passive-aggressive reaction, but it’s an educational reminder of the male-dominated space Sofia constantly occupies—an ironic juxtaposition considering most of the movie is spent beside women eating fruit and chocolates in candy-coated dresses and skyscraping hairdos. Later into shooting, as though eager to show her daughter’s own growth on set, Eleanor deftly eavesdrops on another mild confrontation between Sofia and her cinematographer. This time, the director takes a firmer stance regarding the camera’s point of view sticking with her protagonist. “It’s not the guy’s story,” she says. 

If those interactions capture some tension Sofia might be feeling on set, there are plenty more that reflect the beauty and levity surrounding the production every day. In many ways, Marie Antoinette was a family affair—starting with Sofia’s brother Roman, who parachutes in to film second-unit scenes and offer Sofia another set of eyes. There’s even a few days with her father, Francis, who effectively grants permission to keep fighting for her vision amidst the crowd of opinions. “Throw a Marie Antoinette party and invite everyone to it,” he advises. “Do it the way you want to.” But those bursts of help pale in comparison to Eleanor’s own omnipresence with Sofia. Near the beginning of production she observes Sofia’s worsening cold and eventually calls a doctor to diagnose her bronchitis. Later, in a scene between Marie and her mother, Eleanor deftly pans her lens to the left to capture Sofia looking through the camera, aware of the relationship parallels at play. 

Careful to consider Eleanor’s feelings and reflections without ever sacrificing the pace and chronological flow of the production it’s capturing, Making Marie Antoinette saves its most insightful charms for its end. The best documentaries about the creative process inspire and breed the desire to create. It’s clear that the filmmaking process alone has reinvigorated Eleanor’s artistic inner life (even while it’s ironically made Sofia reconsider ever making such an expensive movie again). “Shouldn’t I be engaged in my own creative process, not just observing the work of my talented family?” she asks. She would answer that internal question ten years later, becoming the oldest woman to direct her feature debut with 2016’s Paris Can Wait. It’s the kind of full-circle moment that makes this documentary feel like finding a long-lost puzzle piece and snapping it into its colorful, connective place. 

Making Marie Antoinette screened at the 64th New York Film Festival and will arrive in theaters on October 23 and on MUBI on November 6.

Misty Green is a disaster on all fronts. It’s a film that seems to hate its characters, the audience, and Black cinema in general. It’s a Hollywood satire with no insight. It’s a character study with no character. It’s a drama uninterested in its own stakes. It’s a comedy unconcerned with making us laugh. The longer you watch it, the more it seems to only exist as a platform for writer-director Chris Rock’s most hateful impulses. The titular actress is a cipher, shepherded from scene to scene by plot mechanisms alone. Rosalind Eleazar plays Misty Green with energy and commitment, but the narrative has no real respect for her as a woman. The real star of the film is Rock himself, who plays a hapless director mysteriously named Jordan Green. He even shares his name with Misty’s mentally ill brother, referred to as Jay presumably to lesson confusion. But like most of the problems in the film, this needless misunderstanding can be attributed to Rock’s shocking lack of imagination. Going by Rock’s script, the most important thing to know about Misty Green is that she lets men down.

But who is Misty? The film never tells us, but it does provide some first-draft details. She grew up with a white mother and absent Black father. Her brother Jay (Daniel Kaluuya) isn’t her mother’s son, but she took him in anyway, and the three lived together unhappily. Misty has an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama for her role in Red Eye, a fictional Shondaland series that used to come on after Scandal in the 2010s. Since then she has been financially supporting her brother while (presumably) spending the rest of her network checks on clothes, shoes, bags, and partying. When we meet her, she’s living in an apartment bought for her by a married man. It’s a year after his death and the widow (Amy Landecker) has come to seize the property. This dilemma gives Misty a ticking clock that she immediately ignores, partying with Zach (Adam Driver) the night before her audition. When she arrives late and unprepared the next morning, she ducks into a bathroom for a bump. 

Making this situation all the more bleak is that Misty seems, at no point, to ever have any fun in her wild life. Everything she does is framed as a form of self-harm. Her only sex scene—with Zach—is passionless, her eyes looking forward as he hammers into her. She’s a lonely, pathetic character for seemingly no other reason than Rock needing her to be. It’s as if she’s based on a woman Rock fell for years ago but never really got to know. Perhaps he, like his director avatar, sees himself as a good man constantly set aside for reasons he’ll never fully understand. Regardless of how little Rock knows Misty, he knows her well enough to believe she should be punished. His film is the chronicle of a downfall unmotivated by any narrative truth beyond the fact that it’s what he wanted to film. 

Throughout Misty Green, people ask Eleazar’s character if she knows any personal details about the people she considers friends. These repeated exchanges are meant to illustrate that Misty is a brat who only cares about herself. She struts through life in sexy clothes, Birkin bag in hand, with big eyes that always seem to be asking for a favor. She drinks only to get drunk. Her energy seems to come solely from cocaine. She smokes weed and cigarettes, rarely eats, and never seems to get enough sleep. The only healthy practice Misty manages to keep up with is going to her local gym with her best friend Naomi (Anna Kendrick). But even that is framed as an extension of Misty’s constant pursuit of unbridled vanity. Rock structures her story as a grim procession of humbling encounters, meant to bring her back down to Earth. It’s made all the more obvious by Rock’s constant onscreen presence, his character functioning as both a love interest and paternal figure. Misty Green is a woman’s story told entirely in a man’s voice, and that voice seems to hate her on a level that feels intensely personal and perverse.

Misty Green has no interest in the plight of Black women in Hollywood or their work, handwaving sexism and racism as if they’re both beside the point. This is also exemplified in the roles we see Misty read for and discuss. She is, for some reason, auditioning for the role played by N’Bushe Wright in the 1994 crime film Fresh. The sides she reads are direct quotes. If it were a reboot, why is the script the same? Later, we see an old clip of Misty reading for Anne Hathaway’s role in The Devil Wears Prada, which seems unrealistic based on her fame level. Throughout the journey we also hear about an ill-fated Cinderella reboot that brings to mind the 1997 version with Brandy Norwood and the late Whitney Houston. Then we hear about Misty being in Shaft—presumably the 2019 version, based on her age. But the biggest indication of Rock’s limited knowledge of recent roles for Black women is the part Misty chases the most throughout the film: Deena in Dreamgirls, last played in the 2006 film by Beyoncé. Though it is normal to reboot a film 20 years later, it seems unlikely that a television actress would be reading for a role previously played by one of the biggest singers on the planet. 

If this suggests nitpicking, the laziness is distracting. The film’s one true invention, Red Eye, is a show no one takes the time to describe. Did Rock choose a title and immediately move on? Misty has an Emmy for playing a popular character, but no one mentions who that character was or even what she did on the show. The film is more concerned with the men in Misty’s life—especially her brother—and the many ways she has let them all down. As Misty’s life implodes around her, Rock pulls focus towards the unhoused residents of Los Angeles. Characters express disgust at having to see them on a constant basis, living in tents and asking for change. These moments, coupled with Misty’s money troubles, seem to function as a narrative threat. It’s as if Rock is saying that holding onto money is everything, and if you lose it, you become a nuisance and drain on society. The ending is especially tasteless in that regard. But perhaps California Governor Gavin Newsom will enjoy it.

Many will laud the work of Eleazar, who simply isn’t given a real character to play here. We never get into Misty’s head beyond flashbacks involving her brother. She often looks at a framed photograph of them with her mother, each close-up emptier than the last. Eleazar moves through every scene stiffly, her clothes fitting perfectly, her hair thick and luminous, her eyes begging for one more shot. But she never seems comfortable in the role, delivering her lines unconvincingly; audition and performance scenes are distinctly unnatural. This becomes especially clear in her scenes with Kendrick, who makes a meal out of a deeply troubled, darkly funny character. As for Kaluuya: he does the best he can with a poorly written role that turns him into a walking plot device. But it’s Rock’s performance as a scumbag deluded enough to think he’s a good guy that truly dooms the film. There is no good here. Misty Green is a black hole.

Misty Green screened at the 64th New York Film Festival and opens in theaters on October 9.

When, earlier this year, Olivier Assayas told me that his next project would be “in the vein” of Personal Shopper, it didn’t take much to parse that this meant the long-rumored reunion with Kristen Stewart—their first major collaboration since that 2016 film, itself the closest thing to a modern classic. (Her turn in Irma Vep is a nice cameo, and for this perhaps doesn’t count.) That’s confirmed with today’s word of Spiritual World, a new feature in which she’ll play “Ada, a haunted young woman with clairvoyant powers who is visited by mysterious premonitions.” [Ion Cinema]

Great news and not even the half of it. Spiritual World is a who’s-who of acting royalty: Riley Keough, Vicky Krieps, Niels Schneider (fresh off The Unknown), Wagner Moura, and longtime Fassbinder collaborator Barbara Sukowa. (Surely there’ll be space to sneak in Lars Eidinger?) Curiosa Films and ARTE France are behind the project, which shoots from February to April between France and Germany. Nothing else is known to date, and it might be nice keeping it like so until a late-2027 or, we can guess, Cannes 2028 premiere—about as anticipated as these things get whenever and wherever it finally lands.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of Modern Art
A Yuen Woo-ping series continues, featuring two Once Upon a Time in China films by Tsui Hark, Wong Kar-wai’s Hong Kong cut of The Grandmaster, and a print of Kung Fu Hustle; Long Live the Underground begins.

Film Forum
Unzipped begins in a 4K restoration; Funny Face shows on Sunday.

Paris Theater
Big & Loud brings The Tree of Life on 35mm, plus The Sound of Music and 2001 on 70mm.

BAM
A series on Bush-era cinema includes prints of War of the Worlds, Redacted, and 25th Hour.

Roxy Cinema
A retrospective of 2006 continues with a 35mm print of The Departed on Saturday; a print of Crash shows on Friday; Fat Girl screens on Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives
A Toney W. Merritt series has begun.

Museum of the Moving Image
A print of Dead Ringers shows on Friday while The Birds plays on Saturday.

IFC Center
9 to 5 screens daily; Dog Day Afternoon, Angel’s Egg, and Paris Is Burning play late.

Nitehawk Prospect Park
Juice and a print of Forbidden Planet screen on Saturday and Sunday.

Metrograph
The Wedding Banquet, The Warriors, Time and Tide, Paprika, The Little Mermaid, Alien: Resurrection, The Ninth Gate, and Seven show on 35mm; Sakamoto on Screen and Salomé Lamas start while Histories of Home, A Cyberpunk Canon, Classical Cinema, Darius Khondji, and Tsui Hark continue.

In a sobering wake-up call to anyone somehow not paying attention to the genocide Israel is enacting, as well as the most essential documentary of the year, No Other Land directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor are returning with NAZA. Premiering at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival and next coming to the 64th New York Film Festival this weekend, the Jonathan Glazer-backed film will open in theaters on September 30 ahead of a streaming release on The Guardian in November. In advance of next week’s release, the first trailer and poster have arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “In secret conversations on the rooftops of Tel Aviv at night, the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza are revealed by the people who designed and operated them.”

“We made this film out of a sense of obligation to use our position as Israeli filmmakers and journalists to examine the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians for which our country is responsible,” said the directors. While filming members of Israel’s military on rooftops at night in Tel Aviv over the past three years, we found ourselves asking the very questions that were asked by our grandparents’ generation and throughout the 20th century: how does one group of people allow the total dehumanisation of another? What do the inner workings of such a system look like?”

They added, “Many of the revelations in the film were published almost immediately as we learned of them, in the months following the October 7th attacks, by The Guardian (one of NAZA’s producers), in collaboration with reporting partners +972 Magazine and Local Call. The film lets us explore something deeper than we could in our investigative journalism alone: not only the words being said but also those that are not said, the silence. It is up to all of us to break that silence.”

See the trailer and poster below.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Backrooms (Kane Parsons)

The opening five minutes serve as an ideal primer for anybody unfamiliar with Parsons’ Backrooms web series, and who maybe need a little extra convincing that a 20-year-old YouTuber has some juice: a found-footage recording of a researcher lost in the endless liminal space who gets chased by some unseen force of evil. Even when seen in the extremely low resolution of period-appropriate early-1990s camcorders, there’s something immediately disquieting about the uncanny production design (courtesy of Perkins’ regular collaborator Danny Vermette), where signs appear as their mirror image, various objects of furniture have melted into the floor, and the only living souls are seagulls. It’s an uncomfortable space to be in before the echoes of footsteps begin gathering speed behind our cameraman, and as this tape ends in offscreen devastation, we flash forward approximately ten days to meet Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a failed architect and owner of the fabulously named furniture store Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire. – Alistair R. (full review)

Where to Stream: HBO Max

Brand New Landscape (Yuiga Danzuka)

A favorite on the festival circuit last year, where it premiered at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, Yuiga Danzuka’s debut feature is on Fandor. Blake Simons said in their review, “When confronted with the past, do you drive away or turn back to face it? Siblings Ren (Kurosaki Kodai, in his first lead role) and Emi (Mai Kiryu) have been estranged from their father (Ken’ichi Endô) for the ten years since he chose a new work opportunity in Tokyo. Ren, now a florist, notices a familiar name on the neighboring workstation’s order card. Propelled by emotion, not logic, he takes on the delivery himself, arriving to discover his father staring back at him through the floor-to-ceiling window of a major exhibition. Clutching the arrangement tight to his chest, there’s a heavy burden to carry.”

Where to Stream: Fandor

Dead Souls (Alex Cox)

Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, and Walker director Alex Cox makes his return with a Western adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s classic novel Dead Souls. In his interview with the director, Jackson Diianni said, “Having read Dead Souls, it’s not surprising that it would appeal to Cox. For one thing, there’s a very self-referential quality to the writing. The narrator often speaks directly to the reader about the novel itself, calling to mind some of Cox’s well-known postmodern touches: the generic food labels of Repo Man (1984), the intentional anachronisms of Walker (1987), Malcolm McLaren’s finger guns and Sid Vicious’ fantasy of shooting the audience in Sid and Nancy (1986). Reimagining a classic of Russian literature as a Spaghetti Western is a suitably offbeat and imaginative choice for Cox, and he’s not the first punk to embrace this particular novel—it inspired a Joy Division song of the same name.”

Where to Stream: VOD

Idiots (Macon Blair)

For its relatable premise and tried-and-true structure, the road movie has a rich cinematic history. Its success has spawned a number of subgenres, including the screwball escort film where opposing personalities often work against each other to reach a destination. Whether it’s getting someone to the Greek or a 3:10 train to Yuma, it’s a beloved trope that resurfaces every few years. In 2026, writer-director Macon Blair revives the formula for Idiots. He plots a tumultuous course for his prisoner-transport comedy that keeps the journey interesting and finds space to add depth to an otherwise broad comedy. The steady two-hander never quite soars, but is elevated by an eclectic batch of supporting roles that supply bursts of energy in the right places. – Kent M. W. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Jackass: Best and Last (Jeff Tremaine)

The thing with Jackass is: there’s really nothing like it. Evolving from the skate videos of the 1990s, Jackass has persisted long enough to see its public perception come full circle: from lewd, obnoxious jerks to lewd, obnoxious sweethearts. The franchise never tried to be anything it wasn’t. In making the faithful leap from television to theaters, it only upped its budget to match the larger screen. Charismatic leader Johnny Knoxville and his partner-in-pain, director Jeff Tremaine, always followed a core thesis, a timeless truth: if you film someone getting hit in the nuts, people will laugh at it. Because of their fidelity, the Jackass brand has outlasted the relevance of its once-culture-defining home, MTV, and now its middle-aged principal cast. Despite numerous threats that they had hung up their thongs and Tasers for good, the gang is back for a bittersweet coda. – Kent M. W. (full review)

Where to Stream: Paramount+

A Magnificent Life (Sylvain Chomet)

It’s common for a successful artist to be asked about advice they’d give their younger self; one film from this year’s Cannes Specials selection does the opposite. In Sylvain Chomet’s animation A Magnificent Life, French playwright, filmmaker, and inventor Marcel Pagnol is 61 years old and very close to giving up on his career, so a younger Marcel comes to the rescue. When asked to write a memoir column for Elle magazine, Pagnol simply can’t do it––not without the help of hope and optimism personified in the figure of young Marcel. – Savina P. (full review)

Where to Stream: Netflix

Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore? (Garth Jennings)

If you grew up with a well-worn CD of Pulp’s 1995 album Different Class, or discovered it at some point in the last three decades, then watching the band’s new documentary might cause your life to flash before your eyes. Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore?, Garth Jennings’ film shot during the band’s triumphant June 2025 shows at London’s O2 Arena, captures a band at its effortlessly brilliant best. That’s no small feat when your first performance took place in the early ’80s. Lanky, lovably louche frontman Jarvis Cocker may look a bit older, but he’s clearly lost none of his wit (or dance moves). – Christopher S. (full review)

Where to Stream: MUBI

Tuner (Daniel Roher)

Oscar-winning director Daniel Roher says he lost his artistic inspiration after Navalny‘s victory. I don’t think that’s necessarily a surprise, to hit peak success in your industry and wonder what comes next. That’s when he met a Los Angeles piano tuner named Peter White to light a spark. While one might assume that would lead to a documentary about the man, his profession, the instrument, etc., it instead led to his fiction debut. – Jared M. (full review)

Where to Stream: Paramount+

Also New to Streaming

Disney+

Toy Story 5

Kino Film Collection

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World

Netflix

The Room Next Door
Stop! That! Train!