Planted firmly in the middle of Main Street, the Empire movie theater could be in any small town from North Britain to Southern California and it would look the same. Hilary (Olivia Coleman) is a White middle-aged woman that works day in and day out in the thankless job of movie theater manager. Taken advantage of by her boss and ignored by everyone else, she lives a life of simple solitude.

Elegance Bratton made his name as a filmmaker whose work in documentaries, short films, and television has focused on exploring the lives of vulnerable Black queer and trans young people in New York. With his feature film debut, he tells a lightly fictionalized version of his own troubled youth. Kicked out of his home at age sixteen by a staunchly homophobic mother, Bratton navigated homelessness for nearly a decade until a decision to enlist in the Marines helped him to find new purpose in his life. It’s a deeply personal story, but lyrically rendered with clear eyes, it’s also universally accessible.

Leonor had a rich and lustrous career creating films that everyone loved; she brought joy to the masses and herself. Now as an older woman, her career long behind her, she is directionless, forgetful and desperate to be back in that limelight. Reigniting her passions, she begins reworking an old script and while taking a break is hit in the head by a rogue television set from above sending her tumbling into her own mind where her script becomes reality. This is no joyful reunion of cast and creator, most of her work involved gritty backdrops, guns and deadly scuffles. As she tries to navigate this unexpected journey and find safety in a familiar but dangerous world, back on Earth her son Rudy attempts to revive her from her “conscious sleep” as the doctor puts it.

Luca Guadagnino has never shied away from heightened depictions of the pleasures or torments of the flesh. With his adaptation of Bones and All he confronts an entirely different sort of misunderstood passion and hunger in the form of a cannibal love story.

In many ways, She Said fits the mold of a classic investigative journalism thriller. Two reporters toil tirelessly against very powerful forces to nail down a story that will take down a very bad guy. Further, anyone with any awareness of the course of the last half-decade’s recognition of sexual misconduct in the workplace almost certainly knows what became of Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s efforts to bring the abuses of Harvey Weinstein to light in the pages of America’s newspaper of record. Knowing how something turns out, however, isn’t necessarily an obstacle to crafting a film this that revels in the process of getting the big story.

With his prestige television background, including an Emmy for Succession, director Mark Mylod has a keen eye for the foibles of the ridiculously rich and powerful. In his feature film debut that crackles with humor and wild surprises, he applies that perspective to concoct a wild and biting commentary on the dark undercurrents of and frivolities of the high-end food world and those who patronize it.