A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE*****

Director Kathryn Bigelow (THE HURT LOCKER) and writer Noah Oppenheim (JACKIE) have created a stunningly good film that keeps your pulse racing and your mind spinning in the most disturbingly brilliant film of 2025. It will be on Netflix on October 24th but I urge you to watch it in a cinema if you can, to take advantage of the stunning score and sound design, and brilliant lensing.

The film is Apocalypse Rashomon. Someone has fired a nuclear weapon at the USA. The military and political command scramble to figure out who did it, but it's unclear whether it's Russia, North Korea, China, a cyberattack or an IT malfunction. Even switching from Defcon 4 to 2 alerts the USA's enemies to the fact that they are on a war footing. The single point of decision making is the President. Within 18 minutes of the missile being fired - not even hitting its target - just fired - he has to decide whether to retaliate or wait. Should he knock out the command and control centres of the USA's enemies, with mass casualties, to prevent yet more US cities being lost? Or should he trust Russia when they say it's not them? Take a chance that it was just a rogue actor or an IT failure? And risk losing an all-out nuclear war in minutes? What would you decide?

We see this decision tree played out over three acts and from three perspectives. The first segment is in the White House situation room, helmed by Rebecca Ferguson's highly trained naval officer. The reactions are varied. Some flee, panicked. Others buckle down and do their jobs, knowing their families are at risk and that they cannot warn them. We see the news trickle out into the White House and panic spread. There's a moment when Ferguson's character thinks her colleague and friend has left her. We think he might have too. He was planning to propose to his girlfriend that evening. When he returns we feel her relief: if this is the end of the world she won't be alone. There's another scene where she turns her face from that colleague to momentarily experience, and then have to peg back, her grief. This is beautifully acted by Ferguson and captured by DP Barry Ackroyd. Kathryn Bigelow's admiration for the professionalism and duty that these men and women exude is palpable and affecting.

In the second segment we run the 18 minutes from the perspective of those in Stratcom - a US military compound in the middle of nowhere, deep underground. These generals have rehearsed this situation hundreds of times and are prepared to take tough decisions. Except the decision is not theirs to take. They are merely in an advisory role. The always superb Tracy Letts anchors this segment as a four star general advising the president to go for an all out retaliation. On the other side of the argument, and the conference call, is a ludicrously young national security advisor played by Gabriel Basso (HILLBILLY ELEGY). He believes that POTUS should hold back and try and calm the other nuclear nations. 

The final segment is when we actually meet the President, as played by Idris Elba, who has so far just been a black tile and a panicking voice in a conference call. He is the one who has to take in all the information, and in the final scene, make his decision accompanied only by a mid-ranking Naval officer who shadows him at all times, carrying the nuclear football. He presents the President with a book of laminated options and explains the severity of the outcomes. What an impossible decision! Meanwhile, the heart of the film is arguably the Secretary of Defense, as played by Jared Harris (Chernobyl), who learns that his estranged daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) is in the city under attack, and has to somehow be of service to his President when his world is falling apart. 

I cannot speak highly enough of the actors in this film who have to essay their characters and moral dilemmas in very limited screen time. The characters are all good people trying to do their best. Even the most hawkish of them - Tracy Letts' general - has a reasonable and rational response. But the situation is impossible. I spent much of the film petrified at what would happen with the current incumbents in the roles of SecDefense and Potus, but also reassured at the competence of those in positions around them. I think this is partly Bigelow's point. Admire the professionals. Vote knowing that in extremis these are the decision makers you are empowering. 

I feel strongly that she deserves to be Oscar-nominated for this film, as does her screenwriter. There is real skill in creating a film of such verisimilitude and unrelenting tension, as well as one that provokes so many vital and urgent questions. The way that Oppenheim doubles back on the same scene from different angles, and deepens our understanding over the three segments, is masterful. Gabriel Basso's character is a case in point. He starts off as a bit of a joke. A tile on a zoom call jogging to work and losing signal. By the end he has gravitas and our empathy.

I would also nominate Rebecca Ferguson and Jared Harris in the Supporting Actor categories for performances of deep emotional power created in a handful of minutes of screen time. This is Harris' film more than anyone else's. Kudos also to Greta Lee and Tracy Letts.

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE has a running time of 112 minutes and is rated R. It played Venice and will be released on Netflix on October 24th.

STRAYS**

STRAYS is a foul-mouthed animation/live action comedy that never fully commits to the sheer filth of TED, and thus finds itself stranded in "meh".  Will Ferrell voices a relentlessly optimistic and naive dog called Reggie whose owner Doug (Will Forte) is clearly abusing him.  When Doug finally totally kicks Reggie out, he finds himself taken in by a group of strays, led by wise-cracking street-smart Bug (Jamie Foxx). Through Bug and fellow strays Maggie (Isla Fisher) and Hunter (Randall Park), Reggie comes to realise that his owner didn't in fact love him and commits to hunt him down and bite his balls in vengeance.

The film starts off strong with some excellent black comedy at Reggie's expense but settles into a rather heartwarming but gentle buddy comedy that falls between two stalls. I just wish writer Dan Perrault (American Vandal) and director Josh Greenbaum (BARB AND STAR GO TO VISTA DEL MAR) had had the courage to fully commit to X-rated humour. 

STRAYS is rated R and has a running time of 93 minutes. It was released on August 17th.

PAST LIVES*****

The charm of the road not taken is that one can reminisce and reimagine safely from the comfort of that choice now being closed off.  Celine Song's debut feature PAST LIVES asks what would happen if the road not taken was never quite in the rear-view mirror but persisted as an option in the present day, tugging at one's sleeve and distracting us from the seemingly happy life now lived. What if our choices were still open to be re-litigated?

Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) are childhood sweethearts in Korea.  They are on the verge of a sweet pre-pubescent romance and even have a charming date in a park chaperoned by her mum when Nora's family emigrate to Canada.  

Twelve years later, Nora and Hae Sung rediscover each other via social media and create a Skype romance that moves rapidly from whimsical to serious and then frightening.  Frightening because an actual romance will require compromise: Hae Song has to do his military service and is committed to studying engineering in Korea; Nora has been accepted to a writer's retreat in Montauk. Both put their careers before their relationship.  

We jump forward another twelve years and Nora is seemingly happily married to fellow writer Arthur (John Magaro). They seem happy despite the cultural barriers between them. He tries to learn Korean to narrow the gap - to go with her into her instinctive dream language. But at the same time, as she explains to him, she doesn't feel Korean, especially when she contrasts herself to Hae Sung. He is "so Korean". She is Korean American. 

Hae Sung finally travels to New York and the weight of two decades of emotion become apparent. How does one weigh up the the pull of childhood love and cultural resonance against the reality of change, maturity and cultural difference? Is Hae Song drawn to - does he even know and understand - Nora now? Is she attracted to Hae Song or to a nostalgia for Seoul?

Song's film is delicate, quiet, elegant and wistful. It speaks to the impossibility of going back and recapturing a different time and place - a certain innocence.  But it is not melancholy. It celebrates the fact that people grow and move forward and that while this might make a rekindled romance impossible and undesirable, it acknowledges the need for.... well....acknowledgement. You can both love your husband and acknowledge your real feelings for a childhood sweetheart, and the potency of a fantasy of the road not taken.

The three leads are all strong in this film. But for me the standouts are Song's taut, spare script and cinematographer Shabier Kirchner's washed-out palette and framing. Often we see characters set apart from each other in the same frame, or filmed from a distance while their voices utter dialogue unrelated to that moment. We are at a distance, withheld from their true feelings, and this perfectly captures the ambiguity about what those feelings truly are.  At the end of the film, we know far more than the unseen couple speculating on the triumvirate's relationships at a bar at the start of the film, but we don't really know them fully.  And that is as it should be.

PAST LIVES is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 105 minutes.  It played Berlin and Sundance 2023 and was released in the USA in June. It will be released in the UK on September 8th.