ANORA

Sean Baker launches a rocketship of delirious romance when a private dancer lands the ultimate girlfriend experience with a fun young Russian oligrarch’s heir. A palatial gated mansion, banging parties, and spontaneous Vegas getaways, and an ill-advised proposal ensue. Rendered in candy-colored cinematography convey the joys of being young, rich, and horny. You can see why Ani falls for the lottery ticket fantasy of fucking a scrawny billionaire whose days are otherwise occupied by weed and video games.

Before domestic bliss can set in, though, there’s an inevitable crash back to reality when news of their union gets back to mother Russia. Baker’s sympathies lie among the working stiffs left to tidy-up gargantuan messes for feckless oligarchs. The film finds heartbreaking comedy a manic quest to locate and undo the idiocies of a runaway rich kid without any concern for the consequences of his actions. Everyone in the cast is great, but Mikey Madison is a force of nature.

SEPTEMBER 5

A sweaty look inside the nerve center of ABC Sports during the hostage crisis during the 1972 Munich Olympics. A tautly-rendered account of journalists essentially inventing catastrophe coverage on air in real-time when Israeli athletes and coaches were taken hostage in the Olympic village. Director Tim Fehlbaum spares no detail of the tactile and improvisatory nature of breaking news coverage of a pre-digital era: walkie talkies, wiring phone lines to broadcast feeds, jockeying for satellite time, and subterfuge to get footage out of a security perimeter.

Using real footage from the day, the dramatic action unfolds entirely in the cramped quarters of a network control room. There, post-war tensions linger, particularly among the Jewish producers who bear the emotional burdens of being in Germany with the holocaust in recent memory. It’s a story about newsgathering that rightfully sees the work as heroic while recognizing that the real catastrophe lies in the other side of the camera. The tightly scripted and grippingly told story benefits from tremendous performances from Peter Sarsgaard as a legendary veteran forcefully advocating for his team, John Magaro as the rookie producer conducting the high stress symphony, and Leonie Benesch as the network’s German translator who becomes essential to the operation.

SATURDAY NIGHT

Jason Reitman’s hyperkinetic dive into the unbelievable 90 minutes of chaos before the first SNL is anything but a study in extreme competence. Chevy Chase is a handsome-faced egomaniac already at odds with the tortured schlubby artistry of John Belushi. There’s a llama in the loading dock, lights falling from the roof, and too many cards still on the board to ever fit into the show.

Fresh off of playing baby Spielberg, Gabe LaBelle adds Lorne Michaels to his resume of playing of titanic figures of entertainment. Surrounded by a similarly talented young cast, The movie captures the miraculous urgency of coming together to put on a show. It requires an understanding that they’ll make it work, but if you strap in it’s a hell of a ride.

BIRD

I didn’t know it was legal for a film to contain both the chaos-agent energies of both Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, but if anyone can harness their truly insane energies in the same picture, it’s Andrea Arnold. Here, Keoghan is a tatted-up single father to Nykiya Adams’s Bailey, a keenly-observant twelve-year-old on the edge of adolescence. Her dad’s getting married, her new stepmom wants her to wear a purple leopard-print bodysuit in the wedding, but she’d rather cut her hair and trail the neighborhood boys and their vigilante squad.

One morning, having slept in a farmer’s field rather than return home, she wakes to encounter Rogowski’s “Bird”, an enigmatic man who arrives in a burst of wind. She continues to encounter him with interest over the passing days in their seaside town. He’s looking for the past, she’s uncertain about the future. Together, dabbling in magic/social realism induced by her father’s psychedelic toad with a fondness for sentimental pop music, they negotiate the mysteries of identity in unexpected ways.