Fjord (2026)

The thesis of Cristian Mungiu's film is so clear—and apparent so early in the film—that I wasn't really left much to think about or enjoy. 

Mungiu's point, and I think it's well taken, is that progressive societies look askance at Christian families, practices, and values as troubling relics of the past, backward, restrictive, and ultimately very, weird. And that sometimes, these same "progressive" societies are interested in restricting the literal freedoms of these people, forcing them—in this case violently and fascistically—to adopt more "progressive" ways. Thus, in this way, these progressive societies display a similar lack of tolerance, a similar recourse to the use of force, and a similar set of techniques that demonize the Other as the ones they critique in Christian cultural traditions. The very thing they say they deplore in the conservative religious group, they demonstrate with their violence, their refusal to empathize, and their claims to justice. 

So, ok. I accept all of this, and although I, too, felt in many ways similarly toward the family at the center of Mungiu's film, Fjord doesn't really ask us to think about anything. Mungiu makes his point. And I think he's right. But is there anything else? 

One thing I did think was interesting was that the film's Christians demonstrate quite clearly that they really are intolerant and violent and hateful. Mihai Gheorghiu's outburst "she wouldn't know; she's not a mother!" in the courtroom, and the graffito on the school campus demonstrate this intolerance, even when it does seem that the central character might actually be reckoning with something. He's not, as it turns out. He's an ideologue and actually needs very badly the anger management classes they asked him to take. The film asks us how we would deal with this man and his backward ideas, but I don't actually think it gives us a lot of options. The state's intervention here is a gross violation. It's barbarous and fascist and insanely intolerant, and so the plot of Fjord is a good deal more black and white than it seems to wish to be. 

I enjoyed the walking-on-water stuff: that's easily my favorite part of Mungiu's film.

Heart of the Beast of Mossy Bottom

I keep calling this The Man and His Dog, even though it actually has this much much sillier title Heart of the Beast, a title I've had trouble remembering since I first saw the trailer. 

 David Ayer's movie really works. It's a solid man-in-nature thing, and instead of the man being alone or with a human best friend, he's with his canine best friend, and the two take care of each other beautifully. I found this movie exciting and enjoyable throughout. It has beautiful shots of the natural world, and Brad Pitt and his dog are both a pleasure to watch. 

 I didn't like one of this movie's central political premises, though. Heart of the Beast is framed by the violence of the US American war machine, and I don't really understand what that's about. Both the dog and Pitt's character are combat veterans, and they've experienced a great deal of modern warfare in what looked like one of the US's most recent imperial wars. This is fine, as far as it goes, and it's clear why Pitt and his pup would want to leave all that behind and escape to the beauty of the Alaskan wilderness where Heart of the Beast is set. But the movie also takes for granted that the experience of modern warfare is somehow comparable to or equivalent with the experience of being alone in nature at the mercy of the elements and the local megafauna. This strikes me as a deeply disingenuous point of view. The natural world has nothing in common with the very man-made destruction of cities, homes, hospitals, and other sites of civilization. War is definitionally cultural and not natural. Furthermore, US bombs are actively destroying wildernesses, habitats, and the natural world, and the US military and its ballistic systems have been doing this for nearly a century.

Unrelated except for the fact that its title makes a fun Wheel of Fortune-style Before and After is Shaun the Sheep: the Beast of Mossy Bottom:

It's pleasant, and I laughed out loud many times. Something about the silence of all of the characters, though, starts to feel boring, and both me and my companion fell asleep at different times in the movie and each missed about 5 minutes (we compared notes afterward to make sense of the film). Honestly, though, it was a nice nap, and the world of Mossy Bottom and Shaun the Sheep is pretty delightful.

For the record, this movie's onscreen title is simply The Beast of Mossy Bottom. It seems like internet databases like IMDb and TMDB all use the titles on posters now instead of using the titles that actually appear on screen (cf. The Mandalorian and Grogu, Wicked: Part One). This seems odd to me, but oh well.

Primetime (2026) / Predators (2025)

I think I loved Primetime. I was very into its cold, cold '90s color scheme and approach to video and light, and the acting was excellent. In many ways it was styled like something unhinged and surrealist, even though it stays in the real world and never strays into that territory. The whole plot is so vicious, though, and the story of To Catch a Predator so insane, self-serving, and terrible, that watching Primetime always does feel surreal. 

I loved the performances: Robert Pattinson, Merritt Wever (who I don't think I've ever seen in anything before), and Skyler Gisondo are great. (In fact, they're better than great, and Oscar nominations for some of them seem like they really ought to arrive.) And it's always a fun time when Bokeem Woodbine is onscreen. 

For me, Primetime took a really different tack than David Osit's 2025 documentary Predators, which covers much of the same material as Primetime. When I saw Predators earlier this year I found myself filled with rage. 

I assume that Predators—like, I suppose, Primetime—is polarizing subject matter, and so I figure plenty of other viewers will not agree with me, but I think these Chris Hansen shows, the Chris Hansen imitators, and Hansen himself are the lowest of the low. These guys are moralizers who are peddling fear and terror to US American audiences by invoking the fantasy of the vulnerable child (no actual children ever appear anywhere) while disavowing the operations of desire that are at work in themselves. One of Predators' insights is that people want to watch To Catch a Predator and its copycats because they want to feel better about themselves, to place themselves on a moral high ground above people they imagine to be morally irredeemable. It strikes me that a person has to be pretty morally bankrupt already if the only way one can feel superior is to compare oneself to an exploiter of children.

My gripes with Predators were threefold: 1) Osit isn't nearly as hard as he should be on To Catch a Predator; 2) there isn't enough of a critique of sex offender legislation in the film; and 3) there is zero differentiation in the film between "stranger danger" and child predation happening within families or at home (the latter in fact gets no mention at all).

But Lance Oppenheim's approach in Primetime is completely different. Mostly I appreciated that the tack  Oppenheim takes toward Chris Hansen and his merry band. Primetime never once treats these folks as anything other than people making television and attempting to get good ratings. They're not remotely moral crusaders; they're craven television producers and nothing more, and Hansen in particular relishes the language of the men he is busy setting up. The one exception is Matthew Maher's Xavier Von Erck—the guy who founded "Perverted Justice"—who emerges in Primetime as a twisted engine of desire, driving things by spending hours online attempting to seduce other men.