The Invite (2026)

Jack and I loved this cringey, profane story of a tense couple, whose marriage is on the rocks, and their dinner party with a couple in their building. Several others of our friends loved it, too. Olivia Wilde directs and stars as the tightly wound wife in couple #1 with Seth Rogen as her baffled husband. When gorgeous couple #2, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton, enters the picture it gets even more crazy.

Will McCormack and Rashida Jones adapted the screenplay from the Spanish movie 2020 movie Sentimental AKA The People Upstairs. Devonté Hynes' jittery original score can be streamed on Apple Music. Wikipedia says he plays cello, among other instruments, and that is primary in this score.

A few fun trivia tidbits: Wilde dedicated the movie to her mentor Diane Keaton, who died three months before the movie's Sundance Film Festival release; it opens with a quotation from Oscar Wilde, who is no relation to the director (her birth name is Olivia Jane Cockburn); and this is the seventh adaptation of Sentimental (I counted more than the imdb trivia), all in other languages.

Wilde was last blogged for directing and acting in Don't Worry Darling, Rogen for Dumb Money, Cruz for Ferrari, Norton for A Complete Unknown, the writing team of McCormack and Jones for Celeste and Jesse Forever, and Hynes for Passing. 

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences have RSVPed yes, please, with averages of 96 and 89%, respectively. We rented it on August 11.

Passing (2021)

In this sublime story of two light-skinned biracial women in 1929 New York, Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga shine as Irene and Clare. Friends from childhood, Irene lives in Harlem with her Black husband (André Holland) and Clare is passing for white, married to a white man (Alexander Skarsgård).

Actress Rebecca Hall, making her directing and screenwriting debut, has African-Americans in her family tree, as detailed in this article from The Daily Mail. Hall based her script on a 1929 novella by Nella Larsen. Hall wanted to find actresses who both could play either role and both are biracial as well.

The music by Devonté Hynes can be streamed on Apple Music and elsewhere, complemented by songs listed here which are evocative of the roaring 20s.

The magnificent black and white cinematography is thanks to Eduard Grau.

Thompson was last blogged for Sorry to Bother You, Negga for Loving for which she was Oscar-nominated, Hynes for scoring Queen & Slim, and Grau for shooting Suffragette. After I blogged about Holland, I loved him in the miniseries The Eddy in which he starred in all eight episodes after winning awards for Moonlight. And Skarsgård most recently appeared in these pages for The Aftermath, followed by fourteen episodes of Big Little Lies and one of On Becoming a God in Central Florida.

It's early, but festival nominations are accruing for this feature, which is averaging 90% from Rotten Tomatoes' critics and 85 from its audiences.

We greatly enjoyed watching it on Netflix on November 12.

Queen & Slim (2019)

This drama of a black couple's first date gone horribly wrong, after an encounter with a white Cleveland cop, is fine cinema, though the road trip shots could have been trimmed to shorten its 2:12 length.

Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith are very good as the incompatible leads, as is Bokeem Woodbine as her uncle.

The original score, not available online, is by Devonté Hynes. The movie is nominated for an award for music supervision, which is the choosing and, I think, the obtaining of rights for the songs included in the movie. The tunes are evocative. I didn't count them when we saw it on Tuesday, but sixteen songs are streaming on Spotify and eleven on Apple Music. Many of them are labeled "Explicit." Duh.

I believe this is the feature debut for director Melina Matsoukas, and I know it's the feature debut for screenwriter Lena Waithe, who won an Emmy for writing the Master of None episode in which her character comes out to her family.

Kaluuya was last blogged for Widows and Hynes for Palo Alto.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics' average is 83% and its audiences' a bit higher at 93. The digital release is set for December 31.

Palo Alto (2013)

This independent movie has a lot to offer besides its familiar story of good kids in California doing dumb things. The acting is strong, the pace is certain, and there are so many famous relatives your head will spin. James Franco wrote some short stories and Gia Coppola, (daughter of Francis' late son Giancarlo and niece of Sofia) adapted them into the script for her directorial debut. Franco (last blogged in This Is the End) co-stars as the soccer coach, but the movie belongs to Jack Kilmer (son of Val and Joanne Whalley; Jack Kilmer's screen debut) and Emma Roberts (daughter of Eric, niece of Julia; most recently in We're the Millers) as the sweet kids Teddy and April making bad choices. 

Teddy's loose-cannon best friend Fred is played by Nat Wolff (son of Polly Draper and musician Michael Wolff; covered in Admission) and he's very good. Gia's mother Jacqui Getty (after Giancarlo died she married Peter Getty, son of J. Paul; she had a small part in something else and here's some tabloid coverage) plays April's mom and Val Kilmer (last in When You're Strange) her eccentric stepfather. April's naughty friends include  Zoe Levin (bitchy daughter in The Way Way Back), Olivia Crocicchia (most recently in Terri), and Margaret Qualley (daughter of Andie MacDowell). Jack spotted Don Novello (best known as Father Guido Sarducci on SNL) but we both missed Talia Shire in cameos.

The soundtrack is by Devonté Hynes (Blood Orange) and Coppola's cousin Robert Schwartzman, and includes tracks by Nat Wolff and Jack Kilmer. This link tells you about the soundtrack on Spotify, but once on the app, I had to search for Palo Alto and got some different tunes. Still good.

Rotten Tomatoes critics come in at 72% and audiences at 65. We saw it three weeks ago in its limited run. You may want to check it out when the DVD comes out September 9, 2014.