Revenge and Morality

It Was Just an Accident (2025) - Panahi Jafar Panahi's new film, It was Just an Accident, starts with a roadside accident at night: a family on a trip back home, runs over a dog with their car. The father stops, gets out of the car, and determines the dog is dead. It was an accident. But his young daughter keeps egging on, "you killed him," even with the father protesting that the road was underlit and her very pregnant mother saying that these things happen all the time in life. With the sustained damage from the accident, soon the car breaks down. The father will need to take it to the garage. So begins the ominous foretelling of the simple, yet rivetting and deeply humanistic morality tale.

The garage owner Vahid is spooked when the father shows up to his garage to get his car fixed. Vahid is gripped in complete fear. He doesn't want to show his face or have his voice heard to this customer. Next thing Vahid does is pretty shocking: he stalks the man - follows him home, and when he gets a chance, knocks the man unconscious and kidnaps him and puts him in his van. It turns out that Vahid thinks the driver of the car is an intelligence officer, Eghbal, who tortured him in prison. It was the dragging sound of his peg leg, as he approached the garage, a giveaway. In a fit of rage, Vahid digs a hole in the desert, in an intention of burying his former torturer alive. Eghbal, tied, blindfolded and covered in dirt in the ground, vehemently pleads that Vahid is soley mistaken, that he is not the man Vahid says he is. Blind folded while being tortured in prison, Vahid now is unsure if he got the right man, and wants to confirm if this man is the right 'Peg Leg' maybe by asking fellow former political prisoners. Via a bookseller friend, Vahid seeks out a wedding photographer Shiva and her subjects - the soon-to-be-married couple, and later, Hamid, a hot headed blue-color worker who was also in prison, who says he can positively identify their Peg-Leg the torturer.

With all of them in the van, as it often does in Panahi films, It Was Just an Accident becomes a road movie of sorts. They discuss the morality of killing a man while their torturer is inside the box they are sitting on, gagged and tied, in the van. What makes them any different from the torturer who threatened and abused them, if they do the same? If they kill him, are they any better than Eghbal?

To make matters more complicated, Eghbal's daughter calls his phone, to inform that her mother fainted while pregnant. Now the crew has to take Eghbal's wife and daughter to the hospital and have the baby delivered safely.

Panahi, in this slow-burn thriller, brings up the concept of morality and justice in Iran. And he reveals how the totalitarian regime inflicted upon political dissenters from all social strata, an unspeakable collective trauma - constant threat of death with a noose around their necks for hours while standing on the platform, imminent sexual violence against young women and physical torture that crippled them. After being released from his jail sentence and years of house arrest in 2023, the prolific Iranian filmmaker doesn't shy away from being bluntly critical about the totalitarian regime of his country, while showing ordinary people's humanity not being lost. It Was Just an Accident is a riveting and beautiful film.

Playfully Choreographed Verbal Farewells

Pin de Fartie (2025) - Moguillansky The latest from Argentine film collective, El Pampero Cine (La Flor, Trenque Lauquen), Pin de Fartie interprets Samuel Beckett's one act absurdist, existentialist play Fin de Partie (Endgame), originally written in French and later translated in English. Not only director Alejo Moguillansky and the co-writers play with the letters in the title, they play with the form and structure, telling related stories within a story in an inventive and playful way. It’s a film anagram version of the play.

It starts with an aging blind man, Otto (Santiago Gobernori) and his young servant girl, Cleo (Cleo Moguillansky, daughter of director Alejo), at the picturesque lakeside (shot in Lake Lake Léman, Switzerland). We do not know how they got there or the exact nature of their relationship. They banter endlessly about petty things, while the sound of loud planes flying by interrupts their verbal exchanges from time to time. There is or was a war and the world is in ruins and they are isolated; we gather from their exchanges. They are stuck together whether they like it or not- a bond that they have a love/hate relationship with.

Early on, it is revealed that through sound folly artists at work, many of the sound you hear are created by folly sessions as well as narration by actors in a studio setting, accentuating the meta aspect of the whole production.

There are two actors (Marcos Ferrante and Laura Paredes of Trenque Lauquen) rehearsing the Beckett's play: they have their routine - He takes subways and she a taxi, they fumble their keys to the hotel room and they go over the play. Their rendez-vous is always at night in a non-descript hotel. Is this for a play that would be staged at a later date or is this some kind of arrangement between two lovers? If it's not for a stage production, who are the targeted audiences?

Then there's an aging pianist mother and her son. The son helps his mother to perform Moonlight Sonata and listen. This arrangement also has a feel of eternity - whether forced upon them or not, feel to it without an end date. One day the mother gives the son the Becket's play and they start reading the lines from it back and forth. One day the son realises that their relationship mirrors that of the play they are reading.

These intersecting stories, playfully jumping from one to another and back, all contemplate the existential dread of being trapped and prolonging the inevitable while enjoying each other's company. It's a choreographed verbal dance move of farewells between two people. Playful and joyous, in spite of the play it is based on, which examines dissatisfaction, pain and meaninglessness, Pin de Fartie is yet another little experiment in narrative storytelling that constantly challenges the norm and form of the traditional cinema from El Pampero Cine.

Dracula, Sucking the Blood of the Proletariat

Dracula (2025) - Jude The prolific Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude presents Dracula, a biting satire about the literary figure forever immortalized by Bram Stoker, and Romania's very own, well, Transylvania’s to be exact, Vlad the Impaler, which Stoker based his character on. After seeing Jude's riotous previous films, notably, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn and Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, I was expecting general mayhem and chaos, and I wasn't disappointed. But with its almost three-hour running time, the film somewhat runs out of steam midway through.

Dracula is a monster of a movie. Stitched together with multiple movie-within-a-movie, story-within-a-story structure (it doesn't go unnoticed by its flamboyant narrator/filmmaker Adonis, played by Adonis Tanta). On the onset, Adonis is asking AI to help making the movie. The AI is called Dr. Judex AI 0.0., which generates horrendous AI images at the whims of Adonis.

Dracula is a decidedly and intentionally a bad movie - not only it's aesthetically ugly - shot in low-grade DV with jumpy zoom shots and old-school corny digital wipes, but it also has a lot of dick jokes, felatios and full-frontal nudities. It's as usual, profanity ridden comment on the state of the world we live in.

The main thread of the plot in Adonis film starts out with a Dracula themed Romanian theater restaurant geared toward tourists, who are there for authentic Transylvanian experience. These suckers are there to spend more than one thousand euros to sleep with the Count, played by Uncle Sandu, an old, former mental patient who got swept into the business by the sleazy proprietor. The problem is, because of his age, he can't perform in bed. The night usually ends with Dracula and Vampirella flee, and tourists equipped with wooden stakes perform hide-and-seek session in the streets of Bucharest.

Divided by chapters, often starting with grotesque AI generated images with Adonis's prompts, there are many different takes on the history of Romania and Dracula legend: there's a tender love story harkening back to olden times in communist regime under Ceaușescu, a reincarnation story of the infamous Vlad the Impaler visiting his own castle- now a tourist attraction, a maize farmer who finds the crops he's been growing has turned into dildos (a lovestory from Dr. Judex AI which need an upgrade, with a nominal fee). The most obvious satire is Dracula as an exploitative tech company boss: as workers complain the long hours and low wages, he brings in his undead goons and sucks the blood out of his workers.

As always the case in Jude film, no current event or persons of interests go unnoticed. Musk and Trump are mentioned many times, so is the war in Ukraine. In criticizing AI, Jude uses great number of AI generated images to fill the gap of his AI prompted stories to horrific effects.

Adonis's original story of actors who play Dracula and Mina/Vampirella from theater restaurant, devolves into a violent witch hunt, where blood thirsty tourists are after them, actively trying to put stakes through their hearts with the proprietor's blessing.

Dracula, probably the most well-known Romanian export, being exploited by the citizens in a rampant capitalist society, is on full display in Jude's satire. But it is the film's relentless assault on the senses and good manners that is its ultimate downfall. As the animated dildos penetrate actors from behind for the umpteenth time, I wished the film, which had made its point from the get-go, had ended an hour ago.

Master of None

The Mastermind (2025) - Reichardt Kelly Reichardt, who has built a reputation as a singular voice in American Indie cinema, garnered devout followers and admirers with her minimalist films over the years. But she stumbles here with the art heist period piece, The Mastermind. One can say that Reichardt's films are always small and narratively open and unresolved - that the beauty of her films is not in satisfying storytelling, but the loneliness she depicts within her often outsider protagonists. And that assessment rings true. But James, our protagonist in The Mastermind, played by Josh O'Connor, is a thoroughly downbeat, unpleasant character to identify with.

It starts with James Mooney (O'Connor) scoping a museum for a score, with his family in tow - his wife Terri (Alana Haim) and two doting young sons, Carl and Tommy (adorably played by real-life siblings Sterling and Jasper Thompson) in a small town, Massachusetts. The year is 1970 and the shadow of the Vietnam War is on TV and the streets every day. It is revealed that James is an art school dropout ne'er-do-gooder in the eyes of his father (Bill Camp), a local judge, who has strong opinions about law and order. James lies about the imminent commission job, so he can borrow money from his sympathetic mother (Hope Davis) behind his father's back.

The art heist, which happens pretty briskly in the first one third of the film, doesn't go well: his last minute assembled crew screws up and ends up on the front page of a local newspaper and on TV. Hiding the fact that he was the mastermind behind the bungled heist from his family and the paintings he stole ending up in the hands of threatening local criminals, James has no choice but to go on the run. And the film becomes a road movie.

James's first stop is a farmstead of old college buddies Fred (John Magaro) and Maude (Gaby Hoffmann). It is revealed that the paintings James stole belong to one of the professors in their art college days. That the burglary was partly out of old-time resentment (over success?) that James chose those particular abstract paintings to steal. Fred is amused that his one-time classmate made a front page of the news and on the run. Maude, a clear eyed realist who doesn't want more trouble in their stable yet poverty stricken life, sternly tells James to leave.

James now takes off to Cleveland, to mooch off of another old friend. But he finds out that they are not home. With money running out and nowhere else to go, he calls Terri, who promptly hangs up on him. With anti-war protests on the street, and cops swarming to control them, James needs to figure his way out.

Reichardt sketches out James's character in subtle ways, giving us only the slight glimpse of a man whose resentments against the success of others and authority figures run deep. Like her Oregon Trail film First Cow, which showed how capitalism was ingrained in the prospecting days of American history, The Mastermind deals with an apathetic character getting swept up in the anti-war movement in the 60s and 70s. But even in her depiction of a prospecting, proto-capitalist in the west in First Cow, there was a small warmth and humanity in the friendship forged between Cookie and King Hu. Instead, James is a person who would steal an old lady's purse during anti-war protests to get by.

I don't fault Reichardt for trying something different. But if her previous genre exercise was any indication - the eco-thriller Night Moves, the only film in her spotless filmography that I didn't care for, she has a real problem handling depicting on-screen violence. I understand her philosophy of refusing to show it and I respect it. But depictions of violence in genre films are wholly necessary, and avoiding it in unambiguous ways comes across as super awkward and unnatural.

I understand why hotshot actors like Josh O'Connor want to work with Reichardt. Her unique small films and her gentle way of depicting loneliness and isolation are truly remarkable. But when the scale of her project gets bigger and more complicated - like her take on a genre film, this time a heist movie in a period setting, the result is less emotionally engaging. The Thompson brothers give the film its laughs and humanity needed. Haim looks the part as a 70s wife/mom, but is wasted in her one note character.

90s New York

Caught Stealing (2025) - Aronofsky Darren Aronofsky directs Caught Stealing, a crime thriller packaged as a fresh, hip spin on late 90s grungy New York that doesn't exist anymore. I know because I was there, living in the same Lower Eastside neighborhood (Avenue A and 2nd St) as Henry (Austin Butler), our bartender protagonist from a small town California, in 1998. Aronofsky creates authentic grimy Giuliani years of LES quite convincingly. Look, there's Benny's Burritos, there's Kim's Video, Paul's Bar looks very much like Sophie's, a roach motel of a bar that after all these years, still nestled in 4th and Ave A & B where I had my first date with my wife to be.

Henry gets into trouble just because he lives next door to an English punk, Russ (Matt Smith), who might be involved in a lot of illegal activities. Russ says his dad is dying and he has to go back home. Can Henry take care of his tabby cat? Henry reluctantly agrees. And all hell breaks loose.

Ukrainian mob goons, a pair of Hasid hitmen (drolly played by Liev Schriber and Vincent D'Onofrio), there's Bad Bunny as Colorado, a Puerto Rican gangster, a corrupt cop (Regina King), everyone wants a piece of Russ and therefore Henry, even though Henry is a merely an innocent bystander. And Zoë Kravitz plays a thankless role as Henry's girlfriend who gets killed off early in the movie.

So is this all a nostalgia trip? Caught Stealing is so by the book and characters so stereotypical, I couldn't even enjoy it as a walk-down-the-memory-lane. Even though Henry's misadventure takes you to far corners of New York - not only the Lower East Side, but to Flushing Meadows and Coney Island, because the story is so bland and generic, and Henry's coulda been Major League ball player looking for redemption back story is so lame, there's nothing really you can hold on to emotionally.

And once you get into nitty gritty details, all the authenticity the movie tries to convey falls apart - how can a bartender afford an apartment that size, by himself, without roomies? How does his medic girlfriend afford a spacious Chinatown (Oxymoron anyone) apartment? I had three jobs and was living in a shoebox with a roommate.

By the unsurprising conclusion that is just as corny as Shyamalan's "Swing away, Merrill," one could wonder, are Aronofsky and writer Charlie Huston going for the whole nostalgia trip? Caught Stealing can be set present day or any other time in New York city's checkered history. Sure there's a talk of gentrification, Giuliani and Mets, but no one in the movie seems to be affected by them at all. There are superior NY set movies that accentuate the era of New York much better - The Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis (60s) and Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead (mid-90s). Are we seriously expected to be sympathetic to a main character who is so uncharismatic that the only distinctive quality he has is that he's a SF Giants fan? What are his goals? What are his ambitions? What is he interested in? Is he just a good looking guy? Matt Smith nails the Brit punk stereotype. Schreiber and D'Onofrio do their thing. But none of the characters have any depth. Caught Stealing is a less flashier and muted version of Snatch which just happens to be set in the 90s New York with no other reasons than banking on nostalgia only on a purely superficial level.