He is little known here, but Louis Theroux is one of those journalists who can head a report with his name. Popular for his work at the BBC, he has tackled hot topics such as Scientology, the genocide in Gaza, or the most marginal subcultures in the United States. On Netflix, he has released a documentary about the manosphere, a burning issue on which many reports have focused. The difference in this case is that Theroux uses his fame to interview influencers who are famous and would refuse other reporters. He does not manage to speak with the pimps Andrew and Christian Tate, possibly the best-known gurus of the manosphere, but he does speak with some of their collaborators and colleagues, such as Justin Waller, who runs these brothers' online business, The Real World, a website dedicated to selling courses and tutorials on how to become a millionaire. Also with Myron Gaines, host of the podcast Fresh and Fit; Sneako, a streamer whose channels have already been shut down for his misogynistic and antisemitic comments; or the British tiktoker HSTikkyTokky, who manages his businesses from Marbella and Ibiza, possibly because Miami, according to Theroux the spiritual home of these characters, is too far away. The journalist's strategy consists of positioning himself, with a non-hostile demeanor, in a position of authority regarding his subjects. As he argues from the outset, he is a journalism professional, while the others are influencers; and he is making a report for Netflix, not just content for social media. This distance legitimizes him in front of a group of men accustomed to speaking from a rhetoric of domination. In the documentary, Theroux plays at unmasking the codes with which they represent themselves on social networks. He places them in conversations where they lose control of the narrative, asks them to clarify the meaning of euphemistic expressions such as unilateral monogamy or questions them about some of their misogynistic statements in front of their girlfriends or mothers. In this way, he highlights the contradictions and the lack of solidity of the manosphere's discourses, and how they serve to monetize the anxieties of millions of young people to identify with a model of masculinity that they find attractive, through cryptocurrency businesses, OnlyFans accounts, or supposed courses to become a millionaire. Theroux draws the recurrent pattern of these misogynists: the discourse according to which women are born with value, beauty, while men have to learn to assert themselves, but at the same time can achieve what they set out to do; the conviction that, in a hetero couple, the man must be the provider and the woman must adopt a submissive role of caregiver; the conspiratorial belief in a system (the matrixan allusion to the Wachowskis' film from which the concept of red pill also originates) that deceives men from a very young age so that they are obedient and against which they teach to rebel; and an increasingly evident drift towards antisemitism and other forms of hatred beyond misogyny. The journalist also describes a recurrent scenario that, according to him, would partly explain the attitude of the protagonists: they have all grown up with absent or abusive fathers, or in dysfunctional homes, and would project their trauma onto society. Theroux acknowledges this vulnerable aspect of the manosphere leaders and at the same time warns of the matrix that they themselves generate and that traps millions of teenagers who obtain their emotional education on social networks.

The new movie by Pedro Almodóvar connects with Pain and Glory (2019) in its autobiographical inspiration. We find ourselves once again with a film featuring a director as the protagonist, although here in a dual role. Barbara Lennie She embodies Elsa, a cult filmmaker, a migraine sufferer, and haunted by her mother's death. This character, in a story within a story, is at the heart of a new screenplay being written by a filmmaker named Raúl, played by Leonardo Sbaraglia. In the film's first part, Almodóvar revels in his familiar imagery without injecting any new energy, and doubts arise from the images. Is the director from La Mancha aware that the reflection of himself shown to us by Elsa and Raúl isn't particularly flattering? Could there be a touch of artifice in his insistence on making Chavela Vargas a trigger for emotion? How is it that the best sequence in this segment is a striptease The male lead, directed by Patrick Criado, reminds us of Almodóvar's torrid early work? And is he clear that he's portraying his partner first as a pure object of desire and then (in the skin of Quim Gutiérrez) as a mere caregiver?

The race towards the Oscar It's long enough for the odds on the favorite to fluctuate along the way. But, in recent weeks, the preferences in the best actor category had been split almost exclusively between Michael B. Jordan and Timothée Chalamet, who was nominated for the third time. But the star of Marty Supreme It seems that age is working against him (young actors don't usually receive awards) and it hasn't helped him either. the controversies surrounding her comments on ballet and opera

Pillion It is the English word that designates the rear passenger on a motorcycle, what we would call the packageBy metonymy, in the slang of gay biker subcultures, it also refers to the passive figure in relationships based on dominance and submission. Because that is the context in which this unexpected romantic comedy unfolds, about a conventional young man, Colin, who falls in love with the leader of a biker gang, Ray. Harry Lighton's first feature film is based on the novel Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones, to turn a few expectations on their head.

In the intriguing start ofThe secret agentArmando, the widowed protagonist played by Wagner Moura, stops at a gas station on his way to Recife. A corpse lies on the ground, seemingly unconcerned by the station attendant. It's Carnival. There's violence, but nothing stops. When the police arrive, they're more interested in the protagonist than the deceased. In his most ambitious feature film to date, Kleber Mendonça Filho It portrays Brazil in the 1970s as a sum of contradictions marked by the normalization of (not only) state violence. The film, nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture and Best International Feature FilmThe film focuses on an underground militant living in a dissidents' safe house who begins working under a false identity at the Civil Registry and plans to flee the country with his son.

A living legend of Italian cinema, Marco Bellocchio, at over eighty years old, is enjoying a new golden age in his career, which has recently expanded to include television fiction. Four years ago he premiered Exterior nit, a series revolving around a recurring theme in his work: the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro and the impact it had on the political map of his country. Now he premieres the equally splendid Portobellowhich shares several points of contact with the previous title. Once again, we have a miniseries focused on the real-life ordeal of an Italian politician, in this case Enzo Tortora (Fabrizio Gifuni, who also played Moro), a member of the Radical Party but much better known as the presenter of a hugely successful television magazine program in 1970s Italy, the Portobello From the title.

"What should a film about Vallbona show?" asks José Luis Guerin, off-screen, to the inhabitants of this neighborhood in the far north of Barcelona, ​​during the audition. in situ which the team organizesStories from the Good ValleyThe filmmaker introduces at the beginning of his new film excerpts from the casting process for this project, which stems from First impressions (2023), a commissioned piece for the occasion ofexposure An unknown city shrouded in fog at the MACBA. Guerin thus positions himself as a director willing to shoot an open film (a "work in progress", according to the credits), but not merely observational; rather, it is constructed from the reality presented to the camera.

The adaptation of book by Maggie O'Farrell The film opens with the protagonist nestled in the woods, viewed from a bird's-eye perspective that emphasizes how organically she fits into nature, like a baby in its mother's womb. Chloé Zhao's film thus deviates from the novel's opening to underscore its singular element: the centrality and autonomous identity of the protagonist, Agnes, who doesn't become William Shakespeare's wife until well into the narrative. From the outset, the film establishes how Agnes embodies a heterodox, yet idealized, model of femininity: the woman who doesn't conform to social or intellectual conventions, instead connecting with forms of experience and knowledge linked to the natural world. Zhao, therefore, sets aside the point of view of Hamnet, the young son of the main couple who gives the story its title, whose subjectivity doesn't take center stage until the dramatic turning point—a challenge the director resolves convincingly. O'Farrell's successful novel immerses the reader in Agnes's world through sensory experience. Zhao opts for a restrained, precious aesthetic that avoids academic constraints. However, in comparison, it feels somewhat flat. His most interesting decision is to film many interior scenes frontally, thus evoking the perspective of a theatrical audience. For example, when the son's room is left empty, it creates a continuity with the stage on which the father is staging a play. HamletAnd the idea of ​​trafficking, which visualizes the transfer of the child, makes sense. The entire final section, the theatrical performance, acquires an undeniable cathartic power, thanks also to the immense talent of Jessie Buckley, the actress who best embodies the role of the "normal" woman in contemporary cinema.

In Beladas Department Water nymphs, minairons, witches, demons, the bogeyman, and Count Arnau all appear. But the new fiction series premiered by 3Cat is neither a classic look at Catalan mythology nor an ethnographic educational program. This fictional work, created by Júlia Cot and Jordi López Casanovas, is an approach to folklore from a format that avoids the usual tone of a traditional program about local legends. Beladas Department adopts the model of sitcom labor that coined The officeWe're dealing with an office comedy in the style of a mockumentary, with a constantly moving camera, characters breaking the fourth wall with knowing glances at the audience, and a demystified view of the workplace as a space of productivity. However, the series' tone sets aside the cynicism of the format created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, positioning itself somewhere between the gentler humor of Parks and Recreation and the family-friendly educational comedy tone of Whip.

No other female star has distanced herself as much, through her professional choices, from the image of the teenage actress who rises to fame with the most popular teen romance of her time as Kristen Stewart. In her directorial debut, an adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch's autobiographical novel of the same name, Stewart also avoids falling into the most worn-out model of independent cinema. Unexpectedly, she adopts aesthetic strategies more typical of the experimental realm, such as hyper-fragmentation, blurring, and non-linear structures, which allow her to break away from two commonplaces of cinematic mise-en-scène.

In The Killers of the MoonMartin Scorsese started from the codes of western to revisit the American founding narrative and highlight, through a real event, the extent to which the country's oil wealth was built on the plunder and massacre of the Indigenous population. The film takes place on Osage lands in Oklahoma, a state also known for another landmark of racist violence, the Tulsa Massacre of 1921. It is precisely in Tulsa that the film is set. True hidden, the new series created by Sterling Harjo after Reservation dogsThe series, set on an Indian reservation in the area, centers on Lee (Ethan Hawke), a white owner of a Tulsa used bookstore who also works as a journalist and amateur sleuth. In one of his articles for a local publication, he exposes the shady dealings of the Washbergs, one of Oklahoma's most powerful families, headed by Donald (Kyle MacLachlan), who aspires to become governor. But Donald's brother, Dale (Tim Blake Nelson, one of the series' best performances), is found dead in his home in what appears to be a suicide. Lee suspects that the death wasn't self-inflicted and begins investigating the case, starting with a letter he finds among the first editions of Jim Thompson novels that Dale treasured in his library. The clue gradually leads him to a long history of white supremacy and land grabbing.

No French filmmaker had dared to adapt a work into a film until now. The foreigner ofAlbert CamusPerhaps out of respect for this seminal work of modern literature, which is articulated from a subjectivity alienated from conventional forms of socialization, a perspective difficult to translate onto the big screen. François Ozon Ozon transports us to French-occupied Algeria through a stylized black and white that helps reconstruct an idealized image from the French imagination of that colonial period. It is within this image, as beautiful as it is false, that his protagonist, Meursault, is inscribed—the young man who destabilizes this appearance of normality when he murders an Arab boy for what he claims is sunstroke.

AfterAn unlucky hookup or crazy porn and the masterful Don't expect too much from the end of the worldRadu Jude concludes a sort of (perhaps unintentional?) film trilogy that captures, like no other current film, the drift of contemporary Europe through the tribulations of a female protagonist. With a title that alludes to Europe '51Like Roberto Rossellini's film about the spiritual crisis of a mother (Ingrid Bergman) who loses her son in postwar Italy, the Romanian filmmaker also presents a woman, Orsolya (the magnificent Eszter Tompa), tormented by the conflict caused by the suicide of a homeless man during an eviction.

No other director in history has demonstrated his passion for cinema with such generosity Martin ScorseseThe person responsible for Taxi Driver He appears in countless tributes of all kinds dedicated to other filmmakers, and has directed two essential series on the subject, A personal journey with Martin Scorsese through American cinema (1995) and My trip to Italy (1999). He also heads The Film Foundation, an institution dedicated to the preservation of cinematic heritage, which has already restored more than 900 titles from around the world. Scorsese has spoken extensively about the filmmakers he admires. But we were missing a series that explained why he is a key figure, not only in cinema, but also in contemporary culture.

Die my love It closes with a version of Love will tear us apart Joy Division's song, sung by Lynne Ramsay herself. Quite a statement of intent from a director who, since her debut with Ratcatcher (1999) has stood out with such forceful and unconventional titles in his female portraits as Morvern was silent (2002) and We need to talk about Kevin (2011). This adaptation of Ariana Harwicz's novel of the same name is defined as a portrait of a mother with postpartum depression. To Ramsay's credit, the film doesn't aim for a prosaic description of this scenario and its circumstances, but rather unfolds as a cubist and emotional approach to a woman under the influence, Grace (Jennifer Lawrence), who experiences an overwhelming situation, presented in a way that borders on horror. All this unfolds while her love story with her partner, Jackson (Robert Pattinson), implodes.

Active member of the Iranian Green Revolution, since 2009 Jafar Panahi has been the victim of various arrests, imprisonments and domestic confinement. by his country's government. However, he hasn't stopped filming, to the point of turning his films and the conditions under which he was forced to produce them, often confined to his home, into a reflection of these experiences of captivity and a form of artistic resistance against political oppression. A simple accident represents, at first glance, a return to a certain normality. The winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, which is sweeping the French box office, is a film shot under less restrictive circumstances and, in terms of narrative, is one of the Iranian director's most accessible works.

In 2008, long before MeToo and the boom of women in television comedy, Malena Pichot launched a video blog on YouTube, The crazy shit, which revolutionized online humor with stand-up comedy that addressed everything from the embarrassment of calling your ex to pre-period moods. The format opened the door to conquering a territory as masculinized as audiovisual comedy from a feminine and feminist perspective, and became a reference for many subsequent podcasters, such as those responsible for the popular Weekly Deformed. Pichot has maintained her popularity on social media (she has over a million followers on X), to the point of becoming a widely recognized media figure in Argentina, who delves into political and feminist issues without being intimidated by hateful reactions.

The premise of Kathryn Bigelow's new film is very clear: how would the United States react to an imminent nuclear attack? In a post-Cold War context, the tension of a war conflict is not fought on the battlefield but in the centers of military and government operations. The first part ofA house full of dynamite It takes place mostly in a White House control room, when a nuclear missile is detected heading toward US territory and there are barely twenty minutes left to respond to this impending apocalypse. Both subsequent segments review the same events from complementary perspectives. But the film does not unfold as a blockbuster Armageddon. With a script by Noah Oppenheim, the approach is reminiscent of the prestigious series of twenty years ago, such as 24 and The West Wing of the White House, since it follows the functioning of the system through various characters and through the processes, protocols and discussions before this conflict, deployed with the tension typical of a thriller in real time and against the clock.

It's often recalled that Hollywood is an industry created and governed by Jewish executives. But the paradox this entails is much less discussed. Commercial cinema and, to a large extent, the American audiovisual industry have never given prominence to the everyday experience of Judaism. Pragmatic, the promoters of the Hollywood studio system were clear that one of the great potentials of cinema was to become an assimilationist tool, a mass communication medium that would allow millions of immigrants from around the world to integrate into an idea of an American nation that was identifiable, with respect to religious social practices. We have countless films and series about the celebration of Christmas, but we don't know much about how Hanukkah is celebrated.

In 1954 Luis Buñuel completed Abysses of passion, his fascinating adaptation of Wuthering Heights, with the protagonist sneaking into a cemetery and breaking into the family vault to reach the coffin where his beloved rests and embrace her corpse. The Spanish director condensed the impulse oflove was that runs through Emily Brontë's novel, and which excited the surrealists. In his last film, David Cronenberg It starts with a similar idea transferred to one of his hyper-technological universes. After the death of his beloved wife Becca, the protagonist, Karsh (a Vincent Cassel who is eerily reminiscent of Cronenberg himself), has devised a device that allows him to contemplate her corpse and its decomposition at all times. A way of crystallizing the ideal of love beyond death, which he successfully markets in his own cemetery. And another snail's return to the Canadian filmmaker's erotic and voyeuristic obsession with the organic nature of bodies, over which the memory of his wife, Carolyn Zeifman, who died in 2017, unfortunately looms. The director, on the one hand, expands Karsh's passion for his wife to the bond he maintains with Becca's sister, Terry (Diane Kruger), in a disturbing relationship marked by the shadow of Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock's. On the other hand, it entangles the protagonist in an international intrigue typical of one of high-tech thriller which unnecessarily complicates the film without providing the necessary argumentative tension. The shrouds It remains as a powerful but ill-fated reflection on grief and the erotic ghosts it evokes, by the always recommendable David Cronenberg.