Vengeance (2022)

Jack and I liked a lot this dark comedy about a New York writer and would-be podcaster who goes to Texas to pursue a story about a woman he hooked up with briefly who has since turned up dead. B. J. Novak stars, directs, and wrote the script and is ably backed by, among others, Boyd Holbrook and J. Smith-Cameron as relatives of the deceased, Ashton Kutcher as a mysterious music producer, and Issa Rae as the podcast producer.

The neo-Western score by Billie Eilish's brother Finneas O'Connell can be streamed on Apple Music and probably elsewhere.

This is Novak's feature film directing and writing debut (though he wrote and directed several episodes of The Office and The Mindy Project, to name a few) and he was last blogged for acting in The Founder. Holbrook was last in these pages for Logan, Smith-Cameron for Nancy (she's best known for 29 episodes of Succession), Kutcher for Annie, and Rae for Coastal Elites.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics' average of 81% and its audiences' of 86 reflect our satisfaction with this one. We streamed it on September 21 with our subscription to Peacock but it's also available to rent on Amazon and Apple TV.