The breakout film of Cannes, with a loud purchase by Netflix and an eye towards the Academy Awards, Spanish queer epic La Bola Negra (2026) has a deeply felt connection to the stories of the untold and how that untelling can create the uneasy ground for future generations to live on.
Inspired by the unfinished work of the same name by Federico García Lorca, as well as the play La piedra oscura by co-screenwriter Alberto Conejero, filmmaking duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, commonly known as Los Javis, have announced themselves to the wider world with a bold and evocative epic spread across decades in Spain.
In 1932, Carlos (Milo Quifes), at the behest of his father, seeks to gain membership in the city’s exclusive casino but is denied (blackballed) on account of local rumours of him being homosexual. In 1937, listless musician Sebastián (Spanish singer-songwriter Guitarricadelafuente in one of the best performances of the year) is conscripted into the Spanish Civil War by the pro-Franco army, where he meets and falls for a leftist POW. In 2017, Alberto (Carlos Gonzalez), a playwright turned historian, receives an unexpected inheritance from a distant grandfather, causing friction in his already fraught relationship with his mother.
Guitarricadelafuente as Sebastián in La Bola Negra
From the opening images, we see that Los Javis are interested in the great human scale of classic Hollywood, but with the modern digital lens rather than pure nostalgic lens that would’ve been terminal to a film of this kind.
The film is a tragedy of what happens when we deny ourselves; this queer identity triptych is didactic and bold, wearing its desire for acclaim proudly across its shoulders. With an eye towards One Perfect Shot maximalism, the Carlos sequences in particular. La Bola Negra is constantly pressing meaning out of every camera placement and blocking choice. When it is revealed the nature of why these moments are so heightened, the film more naturally locks into place.
Sebastián, in the centre of the film’s timeline, is the beating heart of the film. A mess of emotions and desires, forced into the most rigid of boxes, he discovers a glimpse of a brighter and more expansive Spain upon meeting Rafael Rodríguez Rapún (Miguel Bernardeau). A real life footballer, soldier, and personal companion of Lorca, Rapún blends the timelines together in unexpected ways, pulling beauty, tragedy and melodramatic poetry out of difficult scenes that require a delicate touch.
Sebastián, whose inability to navigate the moment has him retreating to a bathroom windowsill, frantically playing his trumpet to calm himself. The film has supreme confidence in landing these moments of overwhelming emotion, using Guitarricadelafuente’s embodied tumult and heartbreak as a pillar that generations will be built upon.
Guitarricadelafuente Miguel Bernardeau as Sebastián and Rafael Rodríguez Rapún in La Bola Negra
There is a palpable modernity to Alberto that allows the torch-passing cuts from story to story to land with potency. A digital alarm. A Grindr notification. Martin Solveig and Dragonette’s Hello, the directing pair know how to use modern moments to create friction with the past. His search for meaning in the past is more grounded and elliptical than the narratives taking place in the 30s, turning a film that begins with a shout into a more measured narrative speaking volume. This does create an inconsistent tone that, while clearly intentional, lacks the avalanche-like structure Los Javis are striving for.
Weaving these stories of queer men unmoored and uncertain on how to navigate a combative, fascistic Spain across decades with dedication, La Bold Negra flitters between a tactile poetry and uninspired melodrama until finally arriving at a surprisingly emotional and potent final act.
With a second half in need of a jolt, the film offers us an explosive performance by Penélope Cruz. Arriving at the perfect time in the epic, giving Sebastián a true north star with the promise of a future in Madrid.
Where the film discovers transcendence is in its moments of musicality, either through the original song “La Nieve” (“The Snow”) by Guitarricadelafuente, or through composer Raül Refree, who is given key scenes to shine through a combination of modern synths and older instrumentation. The film has an air of deep collaboration and heart from many great Spanish artists, with an eye to telling the stories of Lorca’s unfinished work to a new audience eager to hear it.
“This country has too many love stories buried in the fields”. Operatic in theme and style, La Bola Negra knows how to land its climax with La Nieve, pushing past melodrama to arrive at a moment of poetic, emotional clarity that defines the ambitious goal Los Javis are searching for in their epic. With a groundbreaking performance from multi-hyphenate Guitarricadelafuente, La Bola Negra has a pillar to build an ambitious queer epic we too rarely see in modern cinema. While occasionally dipping into rote melodrama that can feel manicured, Los Javis still achieves moments of emotional reckoning most films only hope to glean, with characters that live long in the minds of its audience.
La Bola Negrais in select theatres from October 15th.
From Cannes favourites to local newcomers making their mark, the Melbourne International Film Festival is a fixture in the Australian cinema calendar, with the 2026 entry in the loaded program having something for everyone. Whether you just want to get the jump on Oscar prediction morning or need to spend the last weeks of a brittle Melbourne winter in packed cinemas, the festival will provide. Below is part two of our resident festival obsessive Darcy’s notebook on what he’s seen and loved this year.
All of a Sudden (2026) – Ryusuke Hamaguchi
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
As a keen Drive My Car (2021) evangelist, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s newest film, a near 200-minute luxuriation on connection, empathy, and capitalism inside a nursing home in France, was the must-see event of the festival. And it did not disappoint. With a unique pair of performances from Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto (who shared the best actress award at Cannes) that glue you to the screen for its extended runtime, All of a Sudden has a dramatic and thematic engine you never want to leave. Whether it’s during a walk along the river or a whiteboard-assisted monologue on the cancerous nature of capitalism, Hamaguchi knows what he has in Efira and Okamoto and his characters, moving through a world of care and empathy without falling into saccharine traps that would doom a film of this nature.
But this isn’t just a talky film; it also contains perhaps the best use of natural lighting since Barry Lyndon (1975), particularly in its duration capture of sunrises and sunsets. There is a unique magic to having radical natural light changes within a durational scene, and Hamaguchi and cinematographer Alan Guichaoua build many of their extended sequences around it. Hamaguchi’s films may not be to everyone’s taste, but the observational clarity of storytelling he builds his work around should be required viewing for anyone still open to having their world altered by a work of cinema.
Minotaur (2026) – Andrey Zvyagintsev
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
The weaving of a simmering political turmoil with a pulpy affair plot would be an ill-fitting suit, but with Andrey Zvyagintsev, we immediately feel a cool, meticulous guidance. Coupled with a ruthless consideration by cinematographer Mikhail Krichman to achieve a level of voyeurism that probes without gawking, Zvyagintsev’s film is impressive and engrossing. Even when the film’s gentle simmer reaches boiling point, we are asked to observe and consider its characters rather than place ourselves inside their lives. A reimagining of Claude Chabrol’s 1969 classic The Unfaithful Wife — also made into the erotic thriller Unfaithful in 2002 with Richard Gere and Diane Lane — against the backdrop of the Ukraine war, wealthy local CEO Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov) suspects his wife Galina (Iris Lebedeva) of hiding an affair. As the pressure mounts to sacrifice 14 workers to the war effort, Gleb’s family and personal turmoil begin to boil over.
The film excels as both high art drama and family melodrama through this melding of the weight of the personal and the existential. The political undertow pulling us to the violence of the sea is constant and powerfully considered, landing in a place of resonance in its final act that manages to echo Burn After Reading (2008) and postwar Soviet cinema. This high-wire act of tonal precision has to be seen to be believed, particularly with an active and engaged crowd.
Nagi Notes (2026) – Koji Fukada
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
A gentle, clear-eyed look at human dynamics playing out across the struggling small town of Nagi, Koji Fukada’s probing drama Nagi Notes is deeply fascinated by places and their impact on people, unfolding itself slowly but warmly. 630 kilometres outside Tokyo, Nagi is a small farming town that was forced to sell off most of its land to the government for an army base, creating a transitory aspect to the once stationary place.
The film is centred around a coming and going. The coming: an ex-sister-in-law from the city, Yuri (Shizuka Ishibashi), moves in with sculptor and farmer Yoriko (Takako Matsu), to sit for an art piece. The going: the son of a military family, Keita (Kiyora Fujiwara), tells his friend and crush HarukiIguchi (Kawaguchi Waku) he has to move away in two weeks. The joy of Nagi Notes comes from how Fukada weaves narrative and character dynamics in unexpected ways through this seemingly simple story, so the less said before viewing the better; just know you are in the hands of a caring and inquisitive writer and filmmaker.
Sweet Milk Lake (2026) – Harvey Zielinski
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Harvey Zielinski bursts onto the Australian film scene with a debut to remember. Confidently entering the conversation for best Aussie film of the 2020s, Zielinski writes, directs, and leads Sweet Milk Lake (2026) in dual roles as sibling pair Sam and Jake.
Jake has recently transitioned and is struggling for their place in the city while living under the shadow of his more confident and successful brother Sam. While his brother is wonderfully supportive and offers a job to them, Jake is unsure where they see themselves. On an impulse, Jake travels down to the remote country town of Sweet Milk to see his terminally ill father (Kieran Darcy-Smith), who doesn’t know about their transition. After being mistaken for his brother Sam, Jake decides to stay longer than intended in Sweet Milk. The film is a charming and unique look into wider Australian culture and how gender is performed in different contexts while never losing its narrative drive. Zielinski’s writing is assured and moves with a syncopated rhythm that allows the awkward humour and piercing family drama to arrive and crescendo at unexpected moments, making for a thrilling watch.
Josephine (2026) – Beth de Araújo
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
“In some ways I’ve been writing this since I was eight years old”. A to-the-core film of devastation from the intimate perspective of a child who witnesses a sexual assault and the emotional ripples of that moment. Told from the perspective of Josephine (Mason Reeves), we view the failed attempts at comfort and understanding from the adults surrounding her, particularly her parents, played by Gemma Chan and Channing Tatum.
Beth de Araújo knows in her bones that the only way to tell a story like this is through force. Some may find moments or scenes manipulative or lacking subtlety, but that is to deny the argumentative nature of the filmmaking. This is a film to be shown to all who can see it, not to be watched passively or with any remove. To understand that perspective is to know the power of Josephine.
La Gradiva (2026) – Marine Atlan
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
A worthy winner of MIFF Bright Horizons competition, cinematographer turned writer and director Marine Atlan has crafted what could be a definitional coming-of-age film through its extraordinary blend of modernity and timelessness.
One of the best films of the year, Atlan and her co-cinematographer Pierre Mazoyer have an eye for documentary-like importance even as the scenes flow with the casualness of youth. Following a French school group on a trip to Pompeii on the precipice of their final exam results, Atlan is delicately placing her characters, with their youthful drive and view of eternality in a famous space of stolen time, swallowed by ash. There is depth here I will be mining for years to come, like staring at an ash-encased body, interpreting the life underneath by the surface and shape placed in front of us.
Erupcja (2025) – Pete Ohs
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
A soft wisp of a modern 71-minute Godard riff starring Charli XCX as Bethany, a Londoner visiting Warsaw with her soon-to-be fiancé Rob (Will Madden). Questioned why Bethany wanted to go to Warsaw over somewhere like Paris, she responds, “it’s more romantic”. This is a half-truth, as the answer is Nel (a magnetic Lena Góra), who owns a flower shop in town.
Their connection is tectonic, as the pair will tell you. Each time they encounter one another, a volcano erupts. Like the magnificent and frightening energy of the natural event, Bethany and Nel radically change the environment around their reunions, oftentimes leaving others in the ensuing ash. Filmmaker Pete Ohs was clearly working with fragments of ideas and a loose plot coming into production, allowing the ease of connection between the cast to drive the story like the French New Wave films Erupcja is indebted to. The key cast members all have writing and producing credits here, which is deeply felt scene to scene and allows the film to reach several poignant moments inside its modest framework.
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (2026) – Noah Segan
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
A charming and thoughtful exploration of aging and legacy shot beautifully across the five boroughs, Noah Segan’s newest film as director longs for a previous golden age of cinema with New York streets operating as its veins. John Turturro excels as Harry, a career pickpocket making do in a world with fewer floating wallets and cash than ever before as he hustles to care for his ailing wife.
Segan’s film is Uncut Gems (2019) in a pair of moccasins, with the stakes never raising the blood pressure too high. An over-the-hill pickpocket moving through the city is a lovely way of weaving through modern life in New York. Harry’s reticence to change tactics to online or credit scams gives him an air of a Lupin-tinged gentleman thief, where even his detective rival, Allen (Giancarlo Esposito) respects him. A delightful film that works best on an older crowd.
The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026) – Kiyoshi Kurosawa
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Equal parts political war drama and samurai Columbo, horror master Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s adaptation of the 2021 novel The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026) moves to its own rhythms, knowing its audience is hooked to every moment.
Set in 16th-century Japan, samurai lord Murashige Araki (Masahiro Motoki) is locked in his castle as Oda Nobunaga lays siege to his home. The film begins in earnest when rival envoy Kanbei Kuroda (Masaki Suda) is captured by Murashige. The award-winning novel opens with the line “Toss him in the dungeon; do not let anyone see him and do not kill him. Keep him alive until I say otherwise.” In a time of ruthless killing and few prisoners of war, the stage is set for a defensively woven chamber drama that is keen to charm an audience by its movements towards Agatha Christie and other European-style mystery fiction. The pair of performances between Suda and Motoki is gripping and falls easily into Kurosawa’s unique film style that allows long sequences to play out naturally, ratcheting the tension inside a still frame that has made his horror features the best in the genre. Overlaying this perfected style of storytelling over a samurai chamber epic makes The Samurai and the Prisoner a wholly unique and captivating viewing experience.
The Man I Love (2026) – Ira Sachs
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
There is a certain surreality that occurs when you’re around a sick person who, after a gruelling treatment process, returns, however fleetingly, to their previous self. An almost religious experience. Screenwriters Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias know this intimately.
Handling the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York with a passion and care for those caught in its crosshairs, and how they choose to respond, Sachs imbues his characters with the dramatic tension of uncertainty and sharp edges, complicating each conversation scene with where we expect it to conclude. Rami Malek and Tom Sturridge have never been better, and with the introduction of Luther Ford to cinema with support from Rebecca Hall and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Sachs can paint with a wider canvas than his previous couple of films to show the community and isolation of this well-documented era of American history.
Treacly and warm as any movie this into honey and bees should be, The Rivals of Amziah King (2025) is an entertaining and shapeshifting tale of revenge, interpersonal legacy, and community built on music. A true film out of time, one that dynamically shifts its focus constantly, and, while it has stumbles, arrives at a place of unexpected poignancy.
The film opens with an earnestness that fuels our journey. Amziah (Matthew McConaughey) is the last to arrive for a stitched together bluegrass performance at a local outdoor diner with his bandmates that immediately calls to mind the 80s and 90s hangout movies that defined McConaughey’s early career. After an uptempo jig and title sequence, we tail Amziah as he is whisked away by the police, not for any wrongdoing, but due to Amziah being the local beekeeper who can assist them in uncovering whose honey had been stolen from the back of a truck in town.
The following extended sequence is frenetic, matching Amziah’s energy and ability to weave himself into the lives of the community. Filmmaker Andrew Patterson knows what he has in this McConaughey performance, and builds the style and narrative around his charm and magnetism, allowing the film to evolve and develop through and eventually expand past him.
(From left) Angelina LookingGlass and Matthew McConaughey in The Rivals of Amziah King.
The shared connection of music is the foundation of The Rivals of Amziah King, with every moment bursting with the frenetic energy of a brash bluegrass group working a tune out together. The story takes a turn when Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass), a foster child Amziah and his late wife raised and cared for, returns to town and is swept up into his exuberant storm. To the uninitiated, as Kateri is, Amziah’s brash inclusivity is overwhelming, but comes from a palpable desire to uplift those around him. The world is unforgiving and cruel, why not spend one’s time surrounded by music and friends. McConaughey and LookingGlass have an easy connection that feels rooted in the characters’ shared history. Her nervousness and modern sensibilities clash with his old-school bravado without ever causing friction, a charming dynamic that allows the film to stay balanced as it shifts gears in its second half.
There are several sequences here that are exhilarating with a crowd and worth taking the chance on. One, a charming, farcical escapade in a school cursed with an aggressive hive. The other, an extended bee hive heist set against the backdrop of the swampy backwaters of Oklahoma that calls to mind some great Kelly Reichardt films.
But the film isn’t all sweetness and treacle. Tastes will greatly vary for the effectiveness of the film’s second half depending on how one feels about the groundwork laid in its opening chapters. The Rivals of Amaziah King moves with a clouded confusion in its back half, shifting gears with abandon, relying on the location and its relentless stomp clap score to stay on the rails.
While a film built on top of people playing music constantly, this is not a traditional music film about folks trying to make it big. Amziah and his troupe of friends play at the local hall not to leave their small lives and be the next big stomp folk act, they play to entertain and connect with their community in the same way the potluck served alongside the event does. There is a sweet beauty in these moments that pierce through the overwhelming earnestness and makes a true impact.
After the emergence of The Vast of Night (2020), a film that struggled to break out and was greatly heralded by critics to get more eyes on it, there were fears Patterson would quickly follow it up inside a bigger tent, or god forbid pivot to television. The double-edged sword of Patterson’s follow-up being an intimate look at his local Oklahoma community is that it comes to screens a painful seven years after his debut. Thankfully, with a towering and human return to screen by McConaughey, we are rewarded with Patterson’s return with a unique comfort film that blends the old and the new, with a sweet aftertaste.
From Cannes favourites to local newcomers making their mark, the Melbourne International Film Festival is a fixture in the Australian cinema calendar, with the 2026 entry in the loaded program having something for everyone. Whether you just want to get the jump on Oscar prediction morning or need to spend the last weeks of a brittle Melbourne winter in packed cinemas, the festival will provide. Below is part one of our resident festival obsessive Darcy’s notebook on what he’s seen and loved this year.
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning (2026) – Clio Barnard
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
One of the finds of the festival, a gorgeous and riveting tableau from Clio Barnard based on the novel from writer and poet Keiran Goddard, cramming what felt like a season of a revered BBC miniseries into 109-minutes with the best editing of the year by Maya Maffioli.
I’m a total sucker for Northern UK street poeticism, with its blue collar groundedness with a powerful north star of where to point the millennial finger of ennui and uncertainty at. The film with the title of the year (sharing the name with the novel) follows a tight group of young Gen Z friends growing together and apart, set amongst a constantly shifting Birmingham. With an honesty and clarity into youthful modernity and the crippling weight of housing pressure on individuals and a community. A must see.
Maddie’s Secret (2025) – John Early
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
There is something magical about watching a film with an extreme amount of conviction that brings a totally game audience to the edge of a cliff but still begs for more. John Early had already made a name for himself as an impressive comedian and actor, but in Maddie’s Secret (2025), we see the emergence of Early as one of the most impressive comedic filmmakers to come out of a decade struggling for cinematic laughs.
The Far From Heaven (2002) for the Bon Appétit content mill sounds like a difficult pitch to audiences, but the power and potency of the satire Early is operating from, performance to lighting elevates this to astonishing levels. Dealing with the underdiscussed world of bulimia and eating disorders with the maturity and understanding that allows it to remain as silly and extreme as it is with the knowledge the audience will never jump ship. In a just world Early and Kate Berlant will be in awards conversations.
Wicker (2026) – Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
An incredibly well-cast 19th-century small-town fable about a fishmonger (Olivia Colman) who asks the local basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband, just to get her nosy neighbours off her back. The Weaver obliges, crafting her a perfect wicker husband — played wonderfully by Alexander Skarsgård, wrapped in an astonishing wooden body made by the Wētā Workshop — asking only for coin in return. The film is a riot. With a unique take on gender struggles with its bashful comedy and storytelling echoing the Brothers Grimm, Wicker comes by its fantasy matter-of-factly, with a lyricism that keeps you on the hook for where Wilson and Fischer want to take us.
Rose (2026) – Markus Schlesinger
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
All gender is performance, and it can give you desires you didn’t think you possessed if you embody the performance for long enough. Markus Schlesinger and Sandra Hüller are on a very targeted wavelength in Rose, a period film about the not uncommon situation of a woman assuming the role of a man to garner a level of respect and equity they see for themselves, particularly around wartime and, notably here, postwar time.
With a considered palette from Schlesinger and cinematographer Gerald Kerkletz, Rose at once feels both in command of her situation and burdened by its crushing weight. The film gains some real drama and tension akin to The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) in its final act, with Hüller’s rugged demeanour giving way to an unkind world when the truth begins to leak out.
We Are All Strangers (2026) – Anthony Chen
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 2.5 out of 5.
A wide tapestry of a film on family, Anthony Chen’s compelling yet frustrating new work is a tale of almosts. A rare film set and filmed in Singapore and the first Singaporean film to screen in competition in the Berlinale’s 70-plus-year history, We Are All Strangers weaves in its setting well across its 157-minute runtime, even as it feels in a rush to arrive at its destination rather than ruminate and observe its surroundings. Centring a father and son trying to make it in the rapidly changing city flooding in with new money, characters come and go through their lives (in fascinating and infuriating ways) that propel you from scene to scene.
The Fox (2026) – Dario Russo
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Dario Russo’s Adelaide set film The Fox is the hottest ticket of the festival. A charming and well-cast comedy that would make a fascinating double feature with Obsession (2026), with its ideas on relationships, control, and gendered violence inside a gnarly and knowing bit of magical realism. With brilliant voice performances by Olivia Colman and the late great Sam Neill as a fox and magpie, respectively, in a quiet town, Russo’s ear for Australian idiosyncrasies makes for a wall-shaking cinema experience of locals, as the film raises its brow up at our culture of quiet contempt subdued by our heavy drinking tendencies. While not groundbreaking in any form, it is refreshing to have a proud Australian comedy making waves at the festival.
Lost Land (2025) – Akio Fujimoto
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
There is an overwhelming nature to docufiction that makes it a uniquely cinematic genre of storytelling, and Akio Fujimoto’s Lost Land (2025) is as good an entry point for audiences as you’ll find. The film approaches the stories of Rohingya asylum seekers through a pair of real siblings, Shomira Rias Uddin and Muhammad Shofik Rias Uddin playing nine-year old Somira and four-year old Shafi, as they have to journey from a Bangladeshi refugee camp to Malaysia to hopefully get confirmed asylum status, a necessity for a stateless people.
There are questions to be had about filmmaking ethics here akin to Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal (2022), but the power of docufiction comes from the blurred line of ethical artistry when a subject of such weight centres the work. Left with more ideas and questions than anything I’ve seen at the festival this year.
Mad Rush (2026) – Madellin McKenna
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
There’s nothing like seeing a hometown success story at the festival. At the premiere of Madellin McKenna’s debut, the Capitol was buzzing with locals eager to wrap its arms around a film so invested in the city. A madcap rush of blood to the head pierces through Melbourne streets after Madisha (Senuri Chandrani), a struggling young person fresh out of work and potentially forced to return home, is targeted by an ATO phone scam trying to bleed her for everything she’s got.
Mad Rush attempts to walk a difficult thematic and narrative tightrope, as McKenna tries to blend a high-octane movement-based thriller with a contemplative and lyrical exploration of modern life as a 20-something. Albeit in rare bursts, when the performances, editing, and narrative settle into a groove that has both tracks building together, the audience is quick to be swept up into Madisha’s world.
Rose of Nevada (2025) – Mark Jenkin
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
No one is doing it like Mark Jenkin. A truly singular artistic expression of the British community, wielding vintage Bolex cameras that capture no audio, giving the film a detached and mythic distortion, Rose of Nevada is a bitter, acquired taste. It touches on truly weighty subjects like the destruction of personhood for the benefit of those you may never meet through its jagged edges and abrasive storytelling, leaving the door slightly ajar to lose yourself in.
Indie film’s lynchpin weirdo, George Mackay, plays wonderfully alongside the more laissez-faire partner in Callum Turner, giving the film a beating heart surrounded by the rust and the chains. The story is best left unsaid, as it is best to uncover the strangeness of Rose of Nevada alongside its characters, entering its brittle trance at the same pace.
As the title suggests, The Death of Robin Hood (2026) begins with Robin Hood seemingly at the end of his journey. Somewhat of an extended coda, he has no desire to continue; Robin Hood (an aged and grizzled Hugh Jackman) spends his days pushing through the days, weighed towards the centre of the Earth by the gravity of his past. Long gone are his famous troupe who scampered across England as outlaws, robbing the rich and giving to the poor.
Instead, the famed outlaw is alone in the English hearth, making do with simple hunting to survive with no home or companionship. It is not until his old friend Little John (Bill Skarsgård) asks Robin for help rescuing his wife and daughter from bandits that the outlaw is pushed to purpose. This scene is quickly riddled with conflict, as in the same breath we learn of how Little John came about this family; having acquired them after he killed their husband and father years prior.
Filmmaker Michael Sarnoski made a name for himself with his 2021 breakout, Pig, starring Nicolas Cage, a mature and reflective look at an older man with a lifetime of regrets forced back into society through violence — all themes that also drive The Death of Robin Hood. It is fascinating that Sarnoski, the now 31-year-old American, has a deep pull to these stories and is deftly able to probe humanist questions on regret at the beginning of his artistic career.
The metatextual element of casting Hugh Jackman as the waking ghost of Robin Hood is effective, layering on his legacy as an old-fashioned showman to this storied character worthy of reinvestigation. Similar in many respects to Logan (2017), Jackman’s greatest performance as the weathered Wolverine, Robin Hood is a man with a code that can easily morph into self-mythologisation through nothing but the immovable passage of time. The stories we tell ourselves to survive, especially ones that shield us from the stories others tell about us, drive Robin, even in his withered state. Throughout the film, Robin is both correcting the record of his folklore and forgetting the names of those he has slain, a fascinating bit of oscillation that creates an engine of revisionism that powers Sarnoski’s gritty screenplay.
From Left: Hugh Jackman and Bill Skarsgård in The Death of Robin Hood.
Whether Sarnoski is deeply connected to the Robin Hood folk tale or just enjoyed one of many depictions across cinema, his iteration on the character is a mere shorthand to investigate the life of an outlaw defined by mythmaking and storytelling that justifies one’s violence until violence is all that remains. This is a film with a relentless drive to revise notions of history at scale through an intimate lens.
The Death of Robin Hood is an adult film that wields its violence with a sharp knife. It cares for its impact both in the moment and in how it ripples through generations. Beginning with a stark moment of brutal violence – Robin killing a teenager who has come for revenge in the night is straight out of Robert Eggers’ grimy historical epic The Northman (2022), a lynchpin inspiration here – Sarnoski is signalling to the audience the film to come. This moment is one of a long line of sons and daughters seeking revenge on Robin’s trail of blood. Even through several wistful and lyrical sequences that weave in and out of the film, it is this graphic violence that chains the story to the damp soil.
After the rescue attempt goes as expected for a film this cold and bleak, Robin is beaten and left within inches of a death he so clearly craves, and shipped out to an island priory to heal. Surprisingly, in a shrewd piece of filmmaking, this island is where we are left for the remainder of the film. The film is split in two, with Robin Hood made to support the small community led by the prioress, sister Bridgid (Jodie Comer), as his wounds heal. A bifurcated film is difficult to pull off, but Sarnoski’s lush visual lyricism creates a flowing river of moments that land.
Jodie Comer in The Death of Robin Hood.
Plucked from the Sheffield folk scene, musician Jim Ghedi’s score and soundtrack both shroud and dampen the opening section of the film as much as they light the scenes in the priory. Coupled with an aspect ratio shift after the first act, cinematographer Pat Scola focuses on the warmth of sunlight seemingly hitting Robin’s cheek for the first time in decades. Sarnoski is driven to guide the famed outlaw and us towards the light.
But the past cannot be willfully ignored even at an island retreat. With new visitors steadily coming to the priory for care, Robin’s desire to fade into obscurity becomes harder and harder. Coupled with this is the punishing repetition of Robin Hood not remembering those he has killed along his journey. This is the sturdy rock Sarnoski’s film is built on. The why does not matter, as the why never matters when it comes to those that carry on the legacy of those that have been lost. There is only the loss.
For a film with a loud fight scene set in front of a burning building, it surprisingly has its most gripping moment in an infirmary, involving several intimate bloodletting scenes between Comer and Jackson, with Sarnoski carefully building up the tension of his grisly film to this point. Comer elevates these moments and the back half of the film even as her character is kept to the side, with Sarnoski clearly driven by singular character portraits and how people enter and exit a person’s life.
Whether it arrives at its emotional climax in its dying moments with legitimacy is in the eye of the beholder, but Sarnoski is serious enough about his adult drama to conclude his film with an aching sentimentality that is all too rare. With a sturdy ensemble that occasionally elevates above Sarnoski’s considered lens, The Death of Robin Hood is the dramatic adult period piece probing at the heart of heroism and violence that is rarely seen on a big screen anymore. Now all we need is Sarnoski to make his Ned Kelly film.
Power Ballad preview screening provided by Madman.
Like the familiar restaurant on the corner that knows your order as you open the door, one knows what to expect coming into a John Carney film. A focus on the healing power of music. The power music has in mending frayed relationships as well as allowing new ones to bloom.
In Power Ballad (2026), Carney shifts into a contrasting mix of styles, with a more Judd Apatow American studio-comedy style pushing up against his sharp but enchanting Irish swoon. Carney’s characters are always down on their luck but never out for the count, an element that allows for some iconic screen performances over the last 20 years.
Enter Paul Rudd as the washed-up wedding band singer, Rick. Settled into his life in Dublin with wife Rachel (Marcella Plunkett) and teenage daughter Aja (Beth Fallon), Rick tours around local weddings performing the thankless task that has been swapped out to DJs in recent years. This is somehow not a pressing issue for a film that has a strange, outside-of-time quality that is destabilising, one of many aspects that slow the film down in its desperate search for greater drive.
Nick Jonas as Danny and Paul Rudd as Rick in Power Ballad. Photo Credit: David Cleary
The drama that pushes the film forward occurs when an ex-boy band member, Danny (Nick Jonas), gets up on stage and performs with Rick and the band at the wedding, which spirals into an all-nighter between the pop star and the wedding singer. The conversations are as you expect, without a hint of passion or interiority that is needed for these scenes to serve as the spark that allows a feature film to burn.
Desperate to be taken seriously, Danny steals one of Rick’s songs he plays for him late at night, turning it into his breakthrough hit, wielding the song’s lifetime of anguish and pain for his own gain, never fully grappling with the song he’s singing. There is a powerful thread Carney weaves throughout the film about the potency of original songwriting compared to the pop machine version of being given a song to sculpt, even if it never develops into much inside the film’s narrative. Upon hearing Danny’s version and his ensuing success, Rick is driven insane, especially as none of his loved ones can remember him ever playing it for them.
Seemingly built out of a desire for metatextuality with Nick Jonas’s casting, Power Ballad doesn’t seem all that interested in developing the film into a tale of two musicians, but rather of a faded musician and singer having what he views as his life’s work taken from under him. Carney seems completely unsure of the relationship we should be cultivating with Danny, leaving him for long stretches of the film where the crux of his emotional narrative is taking shape.
Nick Jonas as Danny and Havana Rose Liu as Marcia in Power Ballad. Photo Credit: David Cleary
When we finally do return to Danny’s story, the audience spends the majority of the scene playing catch-up with the film to understand the emotional context in which we find him. This never gives Jonas a chance to prove himself here or elevate the material, which is in desperate need of a great performance. While it’s charming to see Rudd settle into a role in a small-budget film with this and the wonderful 2024 comedy Friendship, the results are mixed. Due to the hacked-up nature of the film and edit, Rudd’s relaxed improvisational style gets no air to breathe in scenes compared to the Tim Robinson film, ending up in a bizarre mixture of languid pacing and disjointed scene shifts.
Coupled with these issues is the film being fuelled by a confounding engine of anti-drama. So reticent to enjoy the fruits of the music film genre tropes that we do not enjoy much of anything throughout. So when we eventually arrive at the climactic confrontation between Rick and Danny, the film rests its shoulders on, none of the legwork has been done to appreciate anything in the scene, falling completely flat.
There is no more egregious sin the film makes than introducing a fascinating relationship with Danny and Marcia (Havanna Rose Liu), only to break up this relationship through a choppy news clipping montage straight out of 2006. Do Carney and co-writer Peter McDonald not believe audiences are interested in that personal dynamic? Was this a studio note to cut down time? These are not questions that should be asked of a light dramedy of this scale.
In 1990, Iraq faced strict UN-backed sanctions, which led to extreme poverty and shortages of food and medicine. Despite this, Saddam Hussein required all Iraqis to celebrate his birthday. Set two days before the president’s birthday, either during or on the verge of the Gulf War, The President’s Cake (2025) follows nine-year-old schoolgirl Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef), who is anxious about being selected for the terrible honour of baking a cake for the day.
Filmmaker Hasan Hadi contracts a world from Lamia’s perspective outward through childlike framing and camera movements, grounding us in the surreal circumstance she finds herself in on the morning of the draw to decide who will have to bake the cake. The scene is an entire film in a bottle. We see Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), Lamia’s close friend, has to write his name five times to be placed in the draw as punishment for his lateness to class. A boy reminds the teacher that his father fixed his bicycle, and his name is not written down for the draw. When Lamia is called to draw the cake, an ultimate punishment, we collapse on her face, slammed with despair, but not broken. She learnt this from her grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat).
Without parents and raised on the outskirts of the city by her frail but spirited grandmother Bibi, Lamia must scrape and scrounge to acquire the funds to obtain the basic ingredients needed for the cake, which, if she doesn’t present it on the day, will be punished by being dragged through the street and possibly killed.
Baneen Ahmad Nayyef as Lamia in The President’s Cake.
The film is littered with pensively powerful moments, like Bibi giving Lamia a shopping list for the cake while sorting through personal family items they will have to sell to acquire the ingredients. The crippling weight of political forces bears down on each individual we see. The dictatorship and UN-backed sanctions are visibly fraying the knot of community in this Iraqi village and city.
Once the film separates Bibi and Lamia on their trip to the city to collect ingredients in several heartbreaking sequences, the story blooms. Lamia is driven to acquire the ingredients and persevere, while Bibi is trying to give her granddaughter a better life as she grapples with the limitations of herself as her guardian. As the film is primarily focused on a child’s perspective of the world in a state of turmoil, this bifurcated narrative is purposely unbalanced, which can lose some audience members while engrossing others.
We see the crippling rule of dictatorship through a child’s eye and how that perspective ripples through others. As Lamia and her friend Saeed encounter various strangers on their journey for eggs, flour, and sugar, we see the callousness the regime has instilled in people, where even the sharing of small kindnesses seems impossible.
(From left) Sajad Mohamad Qasem and Baneen Ahmad Nayyef as Saeed and Lamia in The President’s Cake.
Baneen Ahmad Nayyef as Lamia is one of the best child performances in years. She carries with her a pathos that never derails her fierce determination to succeed despite her situation, making her a vital screen presence in a film that too easily could’ve sunk under the weight of its circumstances.
What also allows the film to float above the muck is the gorgeous work of cinematography by Tudor Vladimir Panduru. The President’s Cake maintains a propulsive energy, never luxuriating in the search for that one perfect shot that derails all too many films.
A film about the futility of a stable life under a cripplingly arrogant dictatorship, Hadi savvily avoids the potholes of despair with a gliding approach from scene to scene, focusing on the childlike goals at hand that ground the story in the familiar despite the circumstances. Too often, films of this nature root themselves too heavily in the past and its specifics, which feel bound by their circumstances, allowing the audience to separate their lives from the ones we see on screen. That is not the case here, and it is all the more powerful for it.
A vital and poignant film that collides with the madness of oppression with a child’s resilience, Hadi’s film is indebted to classic Iranian filmmakers like Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami while still matching contemporary urgency with a reflective look at the past. As the children move through the city ravaged by poverty through recent sanctions, all in a desperate search for money and supplies to get through the president’s birthday, we reflect on each passing individual and how they are forced to look out for themselves instead of these desperate children.
The audition of a lifetime. 100 dancers, 1 contract. An expansion of the television docuseries Dance Life (2024), the documentary feature Dance For Your Life (2026) is an intimate look into the world of modern professional dance through two dance companies: Sydney’s Brent Street and London’s Shapehaus led by revered choreographer Dean Lee. 100 dancers will have the opportunity to prove they have what it takes to obtain the single contract up for grabs in the notorious London company.
The question Dance For Your Life asks across its 100-minute runtime boils down to whether this is an extended TV episode or a work of cinema. While starting on rocky footing with an extended first act in Sydney, the film blooms into a wonderful work of resilience and passion once the group of ten finalists arrive in London, which benefits from the space given by the feature-length runtime. All great works of documentary in this vein ultimately require compelling characters, something Dance For Your Life takes its time cultivating beyond simple introductions during the trial stage in Brent Street. Once we begin to see the Australian dancers interact and learn from Lee, the world begins to open up, and we see what these young artists are capable of achieving.
Spending the first 45 minutes locked in Sydney was crucial to establishing the world and stakes of the film before the lucky ten arrived in London. We are introduced to many impressive dancers, with the knowledge that only a few will make it to the final performance at the end of the film, so it is only once the final ten are selected that the audience can settle into which individuals to give emotional weight to.
Dean Lee (centre) and Brent Street dancers in Dance For Your Life (2026). Screener courtesy of Mushroom Group
What director Luke Cornish and cinematographer Geoff Blee understand about filming dance is the potency of a locked-off wide shot, allowing the dancers to power the scene. Like most creative subject documentaries, the film thrives when we are given space to watch these incredible performers do what barely anyone else on the planet can do. Dance For Your Life is given more space to breathe and explore the works in London, working through Dean Lee’s choreography that will be the basis for the film’s final performance.
The tension between personal gain and camaraderie is at the heart of the film and allows the competitive engine to keep the audience invested in the story and these dancers. In a climate of economic uncertainty in live performing spaces at scale, the stakes feel impossibly high for these young people trying to survive in a creative industry seemingly set up for them to leave.
Dance as a ruthlessly athletic medium of artistic expression is unlike any other art form, but is potently absent from the competition element of the film. When we watch the ten in these wonderful rehearsal scenes, we are not viewing it as an artistic pursuit but as a fellow judge, picking up on minimal mistakes and alterations from the group. When this shift in viewership excels, it is in the lead sequence as Lee is deciding between Max and Connor, watching the piece back to back, noticing what each individual brings to the part. Expressing themselves within the framework in place is electric to watch, with the knowledge that ultimately only one will be selected.
Dance For Your Life has Dean Lee at its heart. It works more effectively as an exploration of modern professional dance and those who are excluded and marginalised from that space, rather than a competition that ultimately feels secondary to the journey the dancers go on at Shapehaus.
The final dance performance, which the entire film has been building towards, is a feat. The access for filming allowed the sequence to excel beyond a simple documentary or competition television film. The medium of dance allows for a litany of great cinematic moments when performed at the highest level, something Dance For Your Life achieves in this finale.
There is a wisdom to not linger in the final contract decision at the film’s conclusion for long, knowing the audience has seen the growth of these performers across the film as more important than this one opportunity. While only one lucky person received the contract, no one walked away empty-handed.
Dance For Your Life is in select theatres from April 2nd.
Melding powerful and emotive choreography with rhythmically propulsive music built out from recontextualised hymns, The Testament of Ann Lee (2025) is an intoxicating musical biopic like no other, creating a singular theatrical experience that will have you asking more from the genre. Centred on the fascinating movement of the Shakers, the 18th-century religious group known for their ecstatic dancing, Mona Fastvold’s exploration into humanity, ambition, and religion in a moment of turmoil and potential is an unexpected revelation in cinema this year.
The film operates as a probing look into personal religion and how it can be expanded into a community, with Fastvold exploding the potential of the story into a wild and emotive musical that feels grounded in the power of the Shaker movement through its choreography and music. At the heart of it all is the titular Ann Lee, the rare female religious leader whose story is easily worth an emotive and expressionistic biopic starring one of the industry’s best actors in Amanda Seyfried. Spurred by unimaginable grief and some notable, potentially queer subtext, Ann is devoted to becoming a prophet of the Shakers she has found herself the leader of, seeing the act of celibacy as a key tenet of driving away sin, even as the movement is built on the overwhelming sense of religious community born out of dance and bodily movement.
Ann’s decision to shift the movement towards celibacy can only be accepted for so long by the large community in Manchester, as well as her husband, Abraham (Christopher Abbott), a simple man who will walk with her to the edge of his faith, but not beyond his human desires. Staying by Ann’s side through it all is her brother William (Lewis Pullman) and close friend Mary (Thomasin McKenzie), who also serves as the film’s narrator in one of the best uses of lengthy expositional narration in years.
Stacy Martin and Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee (2025).
Remixed from Shaker hymns, composer Daniel Blumberg follows up award-winning work on Fastvold’s previous film, The Brutalist (2024), with a starkly different collection of music, combining beautifully with the ensemble’s choreography that always stays within the realm of absurd realism that the Shakers are known for. Seyfried allows the melodies to transcend the screen, using the repetitions of the hymns as a hypnotic bedrock to build out some exalted musical numbers.
Working previously as a co-writer on her partner Brady Corbet’s standout film The Brutalist, Fastvold’s film works as a fascinating companion piece of equal quality. Both Ann Lee and The Brutalist are fixated on ambitious figures that see potential in the pursuit of America, believing themselves to be called to a higher purpose in some form, with the faith that this purpose will shield them from the dangers that lie ahead. While Corbet’s film echoes its protagonist’s mode of deliberate architecture (as its namesake) to tell its wider story of faith, religion, and pursuit, Fastvold’s film moves with the grace of fresh silk and dance.
The Testament of Ann Lee transcends the bounds of its screen when the small group manage to obtain passage by boat to New York, with an extraordinary piece of montage, choreography and music as good as any you’ll find this decade. Fastvold’s exploration of the newly American striver through the unique lens of an upstart religious sect in England, stymied by the lack of progressive thinking at home, is swept up in the power of the musical genre at its best, with Seyfried commanding the helm with a mixture of mania and overwhelming grace.
Amanda Seyfried and Lewis Pullman in The Testament of Ann Lee (2025).
She contends with this part of the film in a complex understanding of many sides to the Shaker history of driven American conquest. The group see America as untoiled land, perhaps more accepting of a female preacher and of their unconventional worship practices. As they arrive in New York, however, they are almost immediately confronted by a slave auction, which Ann sees as barbaric sin; she is here to cleanse in her mission to expand the movement.
A story of finding divine ambition in community and connection, Ann Lee feels powerfully tied to many period-set ‘Great Men’ films like There Will Be Blood (2007), but shown through a woman’s lens. With a pivotal montage of the Shakers building their housing and village, we see Ann less as a wise prophet and that of project manager and architect, reflecting many scenes in The Brutalist, bathed in hopeful sunlight and warm wooden surroundings. Rarely have we seen such a powerful set of companion stories, especially ones filmed so similarly and with equal ambition.
But this is not just a film of personal ambition built on grief and personal turmoil; it is crucially a film driven by ideas of faith and religion. This may steer off many an agnostic cinemagoer in ways Fastvold and Corbet’s previous film didn’t (although that film is as Jewish in nature as this film is Christian); to open your heart to the story is no different than the task given to an audience in many films.
As difficult a proposition as this film is for audiences, the lack of Academy recognition Fastvold and her collaborators received this awards season is surprising. It is especially difficult to reckon with as The Testament of Ann Lee is a more intelligently woven story of ambition and grief than the walloping Hamnet (2025), which received eight nominations. For those crying out for individual voices still striving to work with Hollywood studios, you simply have to witness this fascinating and engrossing film from a truly singular voice.
The Testament of Ann Lee is in select theatres now.
Set in the Northeast of Brazil in the city of Recife in 1977, just as the country’s military dictatorship rounds third base, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s relaxed but probing political film The Secret Agent (2025) is like nothing else you’ll encounter in a cinema this year. Able to open a double feature with either Dazed and Confused (1993) or Army of Shadows (1969), the film wears many hats that in less assured hands would appear frayed and confused. Thankfully, Filho has levelled up as a filmmaker and storyteller, letting his playful tendencies heighten the moments of potent tension and violence that in less capable hands would beguile an audience.
Centring a former professor and widower with a political target on his back, Armando (an exceptional Wagner Moura) returns to Recife to collect his son from his in-laws, seeking refuge in the warm embrace of a small community of political refugees helmed by Dona Sebastiana, in one of the year’s best supporting performances by Tânia Maria that feels achingly real.
Wagner Moura’s work shifts elusively from room to room as Armando quickly surveys his surroundings to uncover how he needs to respond to each interaction. The highly regarded actor is given the role of a lifetime and is set to acquire several awards, as a man with a committed goal, but never stops living his elusive life, even as the violence around the corner draws nearer.
Wagner Moura as Armando in The Secret Agent (2025).
By placing this political and community-based struggle in the veins of a hangout film, Filho supports Moira’s performance with an outstanding cast that gives life to the past by giving a beating heart to this community of political refugees of his own country.
Echoes ripple through buildings, but the truth in history is something that must be searched for. Filho explores his country’s past and the people who inhabit those histories not as vessels for political tropes and ideologies, but as human beings who pass away long before their heroism is uncovered. The secondary narrative device of university students seeking to uncover the truth through tape recordings of our central story is surprising when it first appears, but it allows a dense exploration of ideas to occur. Filho’s way of shooting these scenes gives what could’ve been a contrived narrative crutch a potent level of emotional intimacy, allowing the film’s final sequence to sing.
In voicing The Secret Agent in the language of De Palma and Pakula, masters of the genre and time period the film is based, Filho is placing his film in conversation with the genre of political thrillers that most audiences are familiar with, allowing a discourse to occur across the screen between time and continents, ideas that are very much at the heart of the narrative. Alongside this, the film is a Cinema Paradiso (1988) level love affair with cinema itself, playing out in large swathes at a theatre, set against the backdrop of the sweltering summer backdrop of Jaws (1975) and the way it took the world by storm. Opening the film is the beguiling discovery of a leg inside a shark being studied at a local university, sweeping us up in the strange and playful mode Filho builds the world around, all while leading us down deeper and deeper with an unnerving sense of impending violence.
Like his previous film, Bacurau (2019), a rhythmic playfulness quickly sweeps an audience into a story, but a moment of visceral violence and aggression can pierce through that world like a stray bullet. With The Secret Agent, Filho’s eye is sharper and more directed, but playfulness is still the engine that drives his work. People do not stop living as the plots of his films take place; everything and everyone is transient, a poignant concept to maintain in a political thriller of this kind.
(From left) Robério Diógenes, Wagner Moura, and Igor de Araújo in The Secret Agent.
While the political thriller genre is defined by American filmmakers like De Palma and Pakula, peaking in the conspiratorial aftermath of Watergate and the Nixon administration, in recent years, the genre has been defined by international cinema. The Secret Agent asks much of its audience in terms of prior knowledge of Brazil’s military dictatorship, but in a modern climate of authoritarian spot fires around the globe, many audiences will see themselves in the images Filho shows us. Scenes of political refugees commenting on the limited groceries that are handed by a local farmer trying to assist them are as keenly observed as the moments of shocking violence.
Returning to the present day with the students weaving themselves into the stories of the past, we are in a constant meditation with ideas of bearing witness through aural recollection and the intimate but limited way of history being investigated. A pivotal scene in the film’s movement towards the thriller genre plays out when Armando and Elza (Maria Fernanda Cândido) discuss getting his family out of the country and the hit being put on his head, all while recording the conversation. This gripping scene is shown alongside Flavia (Laura Lufési), a heavily invested student, probing the moments we are shown, trying to glean insight into this moment and what may have occurred in that room outside of the captured audio.
What does it mean to tell a story of such darkness with this level of lightness? The film’s Godardian level of bounce and freedom activates a unique form of scene-to-scene tension not often seen in the political skin that Filho’s film wears. But, while the tension of these genre moments is usually played for excitement, The Secret Agent conditions us to find these moments profoundly reflective, peering into these lives with an open heart and a wry smirk of the absurdity of buffoonish political violence. A high-wire act that appears shockingly relaxed.
