Late Fame (2025)

I loved this. Willem Dafoe plays a former poet who had some recognition and is approached some fifty years later by a group of pretentious young admirers of his work. Greta Lee is delicious as the dramatic Gloria and Edmund Donovan very good as the fawning Meyers. Jake Lacey has a cameo as an agent.

Director Kent Jones works from a script written by Samy Burch and based on an 1895 novella by Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) that was published in 2014.

I made notes that I enjoyed the score by Don Fleming and editing by Mike Selemon. All I can find of the music is a five minute track (scroll to the fourth) on this page.

Dafoe was last blogged for Saturday Night, Lee for Past Lives, Lacy for Their Finest, and Burch for May December. This is Jones' fourth feature as director, Fleming's first as composer, and Selemon's ninth as editor, one of which was directed by Jones.

32 producers are credited, which earns it a spot on my Producers Plethora Prize list, though not near the top.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are famously up to date, loving this with a 94% average, while its audiences are more oblivious at 67. I rented it for a long plane ride on October 12. 

How to Rent and Download for Offline Viewing (e.g. airplane mode). Steps 1-3 must be completed while online.

1. Rent and Download: Search for a movie in the app of your choice (I use Apple TV), select Rent, and download it onto your device. Do this up to 30 days before watching.
2. Verify Download: Ensure the download is complete before boarding, still online. The file is stored directly on your device.
3. Start Online: While still connected to the internet, open the app, open the rental, and press play for a few seconds. This helps to activate the 48-hour viewing window (most rentals give you only 48 hours to watch once you have started). Do not quit the app.
4. Offline Access: On the plane, now you can activate Airplane Mode. Reopen the app on your device, go to Library, select Rentals, and play your movie. If you don't finish watching it, remember you have only 48 hours from when you start watching until it goes away.
5. Alternatively, you can buy it for a few dollars more, which would enable you to watch it anytime on any device.

6. Note: noise-canceling over-the-ear headphones are a must on airplanes.

Miss You, Love You (2026)

Allison Janney is terrific as a prickly widow who has to plan her husband's funeral with a stranger because her son sent his personal assistant instead of showing up. Andrew Rannells is also very good as the assistant. Director Jim Rash was inspired to write the screenplay by his sister's having done the same: sent her assistant to plan their father's funeral instead of coming herself. Bonnie Hunt apparently did some improvising as the amusing busybody choir leader. 

The only part of the score by Mark Orton I can find online is this 2 minute 11 second suite on YouTube, Then there are two things, related to a song, that I wish had been done differently, but I won't print them here as I deem them spoilers. Write me at babetteflix at gmail if you really want to know.

Apparently, due to a short shooting schedule, the actors memorized all their lines in advance as if they were performing a play. In fact, it was originally going to be a stage play. That makes sense, because, though it takes place and was shot in New Mexico, there are few locations.

Janney was last blogged for The People We Hate at the Wedding, Rannells for The Intern, Rash for co-directing and co-writing Downhill, and Orton for Somewhere in Queens. Before I gave Hunt short shrift for I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, I saw her in Jerry Maguire (1996), The Green Mile (1999), Return to Me (2000), and others of her dozens of credits. It should be noted that she also directed and co-wrote Return to Me.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics like this one a lot, as shown by their 88% average, while its audiences aren't sure if they want a commitment at 77. Jack and I streamed this on HBO on October 9.

Here (2024)

I wanted to like director/co-writer Robert Zemeckis' latest, but didn't. It's a non-linear exploration of a plot of land, in what would become New Jersey, from prehistoric times to the future, centering on a house built there. The first reunion since Forrest Gump (1994) of Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Zemeckis, co-writer Eric Roth, cinematographer Don Burgess, and composer Alan Silvestri, it jumps around in time, due, no doubt, to its basis on a 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire.

My biggest issue was that I didn't like the main characters. Hanks and Wright play the central couple, with Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly as Hanks' parents. Hanks' and Wright's characters are not nice and Bettany's is angry and mean. Copious computer effects helped the actors play older and younger. My favorite characters are an inventor and a pin-up model who lived in the house in the 1940s, played by David Flynn and Ophelia Lovibond.

Here's Silvestri's score on Apple Music.

Zemeckis and Silvestri were last blogged for Death Becomes Her, Hanks for Asteroid City, Wright for Blade Runner 2049, Roth for Killers of the Flower Moon, Burgess for Allied, Bettany for Avengers: Infinity War, Reilly for Calvary. Flynn and Lovibond have dozens of credits, the latter having starred in all 18 episodes of Minx.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics also want to be somewhere else with their 35% average, while its audiences are almost as remote at 59. I downloaded it from Hulu and watched it October 6 on a plane ride.

Tony (2026)

I loved this bio-pic about chef Anthony Bourdain (1956-2018), taking place in the summer of 1975. Dominic Sessa is very good in the title role, and ably supported by Antonio Banderas as the Brazilian Chef of a local restaurant, Emilia Jones as Tony's crush Nancy, and Leo Woodall as his bad influencing friend Sal.

Matt Johnson directs and co-wrote the script, based on early parts of Bourdain's 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential, with Todd Bartels, Lou Howe, and Matthew Miller, and it moves along very well. The screenplay was on the 2024 Black List of notable unproduced scripts.

Eighteen minutes of the lovely and moody score by Jay McCarrol is available on Apple Music and imdb lists many songs, some from the mid-70s. The one that sticks with me, however, is the classic Old Cape Cod by Patti Page.

The location shots in Provincetown lend authenticity. It should be noted that the Canadian crew has some trouble getting there but they finally did.

Sessa was last blogged for The Holdovers, Banderas for Babygirl, Jones for CODA which earned her a bunch of nominations and wins, and Johnson, Miller, and McCarrol for BlackBerry. Woodall is familiar to me for the title role of the series Vladimir and all of season two of The White Lotus. This is Bartels' first screenplay and Howe's second.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are eating it up, averaging 93 and 92%. I saw it in a bricks and mortar theatre with a captions device as usual, on September 27, but you can now rent it.

I'm going to put this on my list of Random food movies. Though there isn't as much cooking in this as in the other entries, it needs to represent.

Verity (2026)

This thriller about a woman hired to ghost write the end of a novel series by a best-selling author boasts a location to die for (more in a moment), but I didn't care much for it, despite Anne Hathaway's sleek title character. Dakota Johnson as the younger writer and Josh Hartnett as Verity's husband didn't do it for me. 

Nick Antosca adapted Colleen Hoover's 2018 novel for director Michael Showalter and there are many twists throughout. Volker Bertelmann provides the evocative score. Plus there are at least nine songs.

Most of the movie was shot in a stunning mid-century modern house in upstate New York, standing in for Maine. Read this for more on that place. 

Hathaway was last blogged for The Devil Wears Prada 2, Johnson for Materialists, Showalter for Oh. What. Fun., and Bertelmann for Conclave. Hartnett is not new to the business, having appeared in The Virgin Suicides (1999), Black Hawk Down (2001), and Oppenheimer, among his dozens of credits. This is Antosca's fourth feature after a number of TV series and shorts.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics have written it off with a 31% average, while its audiences found it slightly more noteworthy at 71. I saw it October 3 in a theatre, where it wasn't my first choice but there was an error in the published schedule. The estimate for streaming is late November or early December on Amazon Prime Video.

Blue Sun Palace (2024)

I was distracted--a lot--while watching this well-reviewed, moody story of massage therapists in Chinatown in Queens, New York, so it's not fair for me to admit that I wasn't particularly drawn in. Yes, critics have loved it (see below) and they were probably way more focused than I. Most of the dialogue is in Mandarin so it's almost surprising that it takes place in this country. The main characters are Didi, played by Haipeng Xu, Cheung, played by Kang-sheng Lee, and Amy, played by Ke-Xi Wu.

This is, after three shorts, the feature debut of director/writer Constance Tsang. Sami Jano's score is not available online, but some of his other scores are on Apple Music and Tsang created a Spotify playlist, which I assume is comprised of songs from the movie.

Xu has been in four other features, Lee forty-one, Wu fifteen, and Jano has scored seven others.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are royally impressed, with a perfect score of 100%, but the site doesn't have enough audience scores to give an average.

I originally rented it for a long haul plane ride but forgot a vital step before we were in the air. Write me if you need instructions on how to watch a rented movie in airplane mode. If you follow all the steps it'll work just fine!

I watched it in segments, finishing on September 12, on a couple of bad days, in a room that didn't get dark enough. Not sure if I've addressed this in the blog, but I prefer to watch movies in the afternoon, and am away from my home theatre (which has blackout shades) as Jack holds down the fort.

Finding Emily (2026)

I loved this rom-com about a Gen Z musician trying to locate his dream girl at her college in England. Spike Fearn stars as Owen and Angourie Rice plays a different Emily who helps Owen in his quest. I particularly enjoyed Prasanna Puwanarajah as a snarky professor, Minnie Driver as the beleaguered dean, and Kat Ronney as a pink-haired Emily.

Alicia MacDonald makes her feature debut directing from the sweet script by Rachel Hirons. Music is important here and, even though we don't learn that Owen is a musician until the second act, there are 28 songs, according to this site. The Apple Music soundtrack lists only thirteen, with five of them by the movie's composer Morgan Kibby and not included in the 28.

Interesting trivia factoids include that it was originally set at UCLA but Hirons moved it to Manchester, England, a half hour from her home, where it was almost entirely shot; and that Fearn had a lot of training to perform as a musician.

This movie had been on my radar for a long time. As my long-time followers know, since lockdown I have only streamed movies, almost always in the afternoon. But now I am away from my home theatre for a few months, and my current apartment's windows are very sunny in the afternoon. So I went to my second movie in a bricks-and-mortar theatre since Tenet, when eleven of us rented a screening room in November of 2020. This time I forgot to ask for the caption device and, wow, did I need it. Owen's Manchester accent is thick and his brother's is even thicker. That said, it is now available for rent and you should turn on the captions. I may even watch it again sometime to see what I missed.

Rice was last blogged for Mean Girls and Driver for Millers in Marriage. Fearn has a handful of credits, including Aftersun, though I failed to mention him. Puwanarajah looked familiar because he was in seven episodes of Too Much and two of The Crown. Ronney is new to me. This is Hirons' fourth feature and Kibby's twelfth.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences have found this project very enjoyable, averaging 89 and 90%. I watched it September 5. Don't walk away when the credits roll, because there's a major "where are they now" bonus.