SPLITSVILLE****

Writer-director-actor Michael Angelo Corvino has created an absolute banger of a romantic-comedy with SPLITSVILLE.  It's an absurd set-up and yet within that gets to some real deep truths about thirty-something marriages and contains one of the funniest punch-ups on screen. You can really tell that Corvinho and his co-writer and co-lead actor Kyle Marvin are best friends in real life.

The movie is about the relationships between and within two couples. The first couple comprises Carey (Marvin) and Ashley (Adria Arjona).  Carey thinks they are happily married but Ashley actually wants a divorce because she doesn't feel physically fulfilled.  She drops this bomb on Carey when they're on their way to see good friends Paul (Corvino) and Julia (Dakota Johnson). We think Paul and Julia are happily married, and they even have a young son, but we discover that they are in an open marriage.  Thus inspired, Carey and Ashley decide to start seeing other people, leading to a tour de force scene in which we see the camera move between the various partners that Ashley is hooking up with.  Apparently this was shot in one take which is truly impressive.

What we learn from this scenario pushed to an extreme is that there are real feelings involved when you cheat or even just hook up after a break-up.  These people are all flawed but they're fundamentally good and all care for each other. There's a lot here about insecurity and ageing and feeling that you have to be more for your partner. More hopefully, there's also something rather lovely in the community that comes together of the people Ashley is seeing.

It struck me watching SPLITSVILLE that despite the craziness, it all feels way more credible and relatable than THE MATERIALISTS, in which Dakota Johnson also stars. It's also far far funnier.  Adria Arjona proves that her hilarious performance in HIT MAN was no accident. Johnson is allowed to be real. And the two male leads are just absolutely superb. This truly is one of the funniest films I've seen in a while.

SPLITSVILLE is rated R and has a running time of 104 minutes. It played Cannes 2025 and opened in the USA last summer. It will open in the UK on February 20th.

DREAM SCENARIO****

Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli's DREAM SCENARIO is a film that feels as though it could have been made by a collective of Spike Jonze, Charlie Kauffman and Michel Gondry. This is a good thing. 

Nic Cage stars as a schlubby university professor who starts showing up in everyone's dreams. At first this leads to a wonderful surge in popularity - students actually turn up to his lectures and he gets a book deal. But when his dream avatar turns into a nightmare, the world turns on the real life professor. He and his family are shunned, and then subject to violence. The book deal morphs into a crass trashy occult-baiting book.  The poor man's entire life is upended.

The film has lots to say about the absurdity of the mob - whether in hyping someone up or tearing them down. The increasingly surreal dreams are beautifully executed. And through it all we have Cage's measured, disbelieving, horrified Professor. People are right when they say it's the most well-modulated performance Cage has given in years - playing against type - or rather the caricature that Cage sometimes puts forth of himself.

The resulting film is an intelligent and darkly absurd satire that entertains and provokes. Superb!

DREAM SCENARIO is rated R and has a running time of 102 minutes.  It played Toronto 2023 and was released in the USA and UK last November.