Movie Reviews
‘Dying’ Review: Matthias Glasner’s Three-Hour Thanatopsis Feels Slight, Despite Its Epic Running Time
Over three hours and five different chapters, Matthias Glasner’s “Dying” chronicles the travails of an estranged family of four: an elderly couple on the brink of death, their successful composer son and their alcoholic, ne’er-do-well daughter. The film casts a wide net over their experiences, and every leading performance is as impeccable as the last. However, Glasner’s formal rigidity prevents their stories from feeling intrinsically bound, leaving each of them with little to say.
The film opens in the German countryside with elderly couple Lissy (Corinna Harfouch) and Gerd Lunies (Hans-Uwe Bauer) being found helpless by a neighbor. Lissy’s litany of ailments render her only semi-mobile, and she often ends the day by soiling herself, while Gerd’s dementia leads him to wander naked into people’s homes. They can’t help each other, and their adult children are too preoccupied with their own metropolitan lives to get involved.
While the premise verges on misery “misery porn” (other works about helpless older couples like Michael Haneke’s “Amour” and Gaspar Noé’s “Vortex” come to mind), Glasner takes a wry and frank approach to these indignities. He frames them not only as inevitable, but familiar — for instance, Lissy’s intense embarrassment and her rankled responses to well-meaning helping hands.
As Lissy wrestles with placing Gerd in an assisted living facility, “Dying” comes achingly close to probing the fears of death (and of dying alone) that keep hovering in its margins. However, once it switches focus to their middle-aged son Tom (Lars Eidinger), the movie’s foundation begins to rattle. Tom, the pseudo-stepfather to his ex’s baby with another man, is deep in the process of perfecting an orchestral piece called “Sterben” (“Dying”) written by his old friend and uneasy collaborator Bernard (Robert Gwisdek), though his young musicians don’t seem to grasp its nuances.
The musicians’ conversations and debates on death lead to new ways of expressing and performing, but in these moments, the film’s self-reflexivity begins to stagnate, as Glasner and cinematographer Jakub Bejnarowicz seldom match this sense of artistic transformation with visual evolution of their own. To quote a critic of Tom’s orchestral conducting in the film, “The whole thing is a huge banality.” This particular criticism appears late in the film as a bit of tongue-in-cheek lamp shading, as though the movie were protecting itself, but this instinct towards self-preservation is part of its problem. “Dying” is often too safe and too hermetically sealed to make a real emotional impact, despite the caliber of performances at play.
As Gerd, Bauer shuffles confusedly between hallways and embodies a tragically lonely physicality, one which seems to be reaching out for recognition or understanding. Just as tragic as his loss of understanding is the way his eyes briefly light up when Tom makes a fleeting visit, affording Eidinger the chance to embody a burdened stillness, as though he were at a loss for answers. His dynamic with Harfouch is just as alluring, not only as a brilliant stroke of casting (Tom and Lissy look like mirror images of one another), but as a doorway to some hilariously bizarre discomforts, as the looming specter of mortality gives way to frankness and admissions of regret.
However, Glasner’s stilted visual approach unfortunately goes hand-in-hand with stilted writing. The dialogue is often snappy (Harfouch in particular delivers it with a sharp tongue), but the moments where “Dying” is able to convey a sense of lived history between the characters are few and far between. In the process, spoken words become the movie’s crutch, especially when the fourth key family member is introduced: Tom’s sister Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg), an amateur singer and wayward dental assistant having an affair with her employer, Sebastian (Ronald Zehrfeld).
On its face, the booze-soaked romance between the two is perhaps the closest the movie comes to feeling emotionally vibrant or aesthetically affecting — the camera matches the actors’ mood, their movement and their energy — but the lack of meaningful connection between Ellen and her family is something the movie isn’t able to fully convey or deftly dramatize. Stangenberg is immensely committed, as a young woman lost down a hole of her addiction and isolation, but she belongs to a different movie entirely, with its own distinct rhythms. Rather than matching the pitch of the other chapters, the film’s Ellen segments are little more than an appendix.
These disparate chapters are lightly connected by feelings of isolation and fears of never finding closure or reconciliation. However, to imbue the story as a whole with these feelings — absent any sort of challenge, subversion or rumination — leaves it vulnerable to the very criticisms of banality that seem to be on Glasner’s mind and on the tip of the movie’s tongue. If there’s any reflection or revelation to be found, it’s that the connective tissue between various threads involves phone calls that read differently once the film revisits them from another character’s point of view. But beyond this minor trick of perspective, there’s little that’s truly cinematic about “Dying,” a film of remarkable performance and subject matter, laid low by unremarkable filmmaking.
The sixth outing in the director’s chair for filmmaker Kirk Jones, I Swear dramatizes the real-life story of touretter John Davidson (played by Robert Aramayo). Tourette’s Syndrome, for those unfamiliar with the condition, is a nervous system disorder that causes various tics, the most prolific being erratic and explicit language. However, as I Swear expertly showcases, the syndrome is far more than ill-timed outbursts of curse words. Davidson’s story is one of societal frustration, finding your people (both with and without the condition), and using your voice to help others rise. The subject and subject matter are handled with absolute care and understanding under Kirk’s measured vision and Robert Aramayo’s BAFTA-winning performance.
The film kicks off with the greatest exclamation to democracy ever uttered (*%#! the Queen!), as a nervous John Davidson prepares himself before entering an awards ceremony hosted by Britain’s royal family. Right away, the film tells us what it is: a triumph over adversity that blends humor and human drama with education. It’s an important setup, as the film flashes back to Davidson’s 1980s youth, where we see his time as a star soccer recruit flatline as his condition takes hold. Davidson’s life spirals from there. Some aspects, like school bullying and accidental run-ins with authority figures, are expected but important to empathizing with young Davidson’s (young version, played with heart by Scott Ellis Watson) new everyday life. The more tragic, a complete meltdown of his family system, is unsettling if quick. His father (Steven Cree) is never given enough screen time to explore his alcohol coping tendencies. However, his mother Heather’s descent into easy fixes and blaming is crushing and convincing. Harry Potter series actress Shirley Henderson (Moaning Myrtle) gives a layered performance as Heather. Someone who loves her son, but also feels cursed by him as the entire family exits the picture. It’s bitter, she’s tired, and fills each conversation with ‘only medication and your mother can save you’ energy.
From there, the viewer and Davidson find refuge in a host of characters. Maxine Peake plays Dottie, the mother of a childhood friend and a retired mental health nurse. Screen vet Peter Mullan plays maintenance man Tommy Trotter. Together, they help Davidson build a life and an understanding of himself that carries the film forward into its second half. After that, the film is primarily a 3-actor show as director Kirk fills the screen with these tour-de-force performances. Peake and Mullan are great vessels to get the film’s main message across: patience, love, and a shared responsibility between the diagnosed and those who understand their struggle can help change the path for people quickly left behind by a normative world. Together, they are the soul of the movie, with the filmmakers clearly hoping the audience will follow their lead after they exit the theater (in my case, the beautiful Oriental Theater for the Milwaukee Film Festival). Both performances are perfectly warm and reflective and shouldn’t be left out in discussions of I Swear.
I say this because the movie is anchored by The Rings of Power actor Robert Aramayo, who leaves Elrond’s elf ears behind to bring an acute naturalism to his performance of main character John Davidson. Aramayo’s physicality and timing of the fitful Tourettes Syndrome never feel out of place or overplayed. In fact, the movie as a whole does an amazing job of never veering into sentimentality. While many moviegoers left with tissues dabbing their eyes, the filmmaking never felt like it was forcing that reaction out of audiences. It straddles the line between feel-good and reality with every story beat and lands squarely on the side of letting the real inform our feelings. Anyone with an ounce of empathy will grasp the film’s message and hopefully take it with them into life.
I Swear continues at the Milwaukee Film Festival on Tuesday, April 21st, and releases nationwide April 24th, 2026, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Pizza Movie (2026) Director: Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, Star: Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone
Somehow, I got through an hour of this movie. I was seconds away from turning off in the first fifteen minutes because of the juvenile humor. Pizza Movie is too silly, repetitive, and the characters are annoying. Stranger Things Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone star as college friends, Jack and Montgomery. College angles are rarely seen in films right now, and that’s the one saving grace of the film. Similar to high school, people are also trying to fit in. The story and visuals were too corny. You can only watch someone’s head exploding for so long without letting yours.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) Director: Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, Stars: Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, Anya Taylor-Joy
I never saw the first Super Mario Brothers Movie when it was out, but I heard it got positive reviews. My brother always loved playing Super Mario video games as a kid, and I’d watch him. I tagged along with my friends to see Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and it’s a cute and fun film. I like it when movies explore the video game world. The animation creates unique worlds and characters. The characters are split into their own storylines, and for me, I felt like it worked. It adds more action, especially for kids who are seeing the films.
Emily in Paris Season 5 (2025) Creator: Darren Star, Stars: Lily Collins and Ashley Park
After a bright spot in season 4, I thought season 5 of Emily in Paris would continue its growth in the story and its protagonist, but no, it’s all drained out in the usual Emily (Lily Collins) mishaps. Ashley Park (Mindy) has become too good for this show. Emily and Mindy waste several opportunities because of their love lives. The whole relationship angle is ruining it. I don’t understand why Alfie (Lucien Laviscount) is still in the show. I thought writers learned their lesson, but by the last episode, they’re continuing to bring the past into an apparent season 6.
Sarah’s Oil (2025) Director: Cyrus Nowrasteh, Stars: Naya Desir-Johnson and Zachary Levi
There’s always history lurking right beneath our noses. Sarah’s Oil (2025) tells the true story of Sarah Rector, an Oklahoma-born African American girl who became the first black female millionaire in the U.S. Naya Desir-Johnson is fierce and driven as Sarah. Zachary Levi is also along for the ride as Bert, a man who helps Sarah. Kate (Bridget Regan) was another favorite character as an intelligent woman. Cyrus Nowrasteh was drawn to the subject for its story and its themes. Nowrasteh’s direction is compelling as he unearths a hidden story from history. The film is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Jack Goes Boating (2014) Director and Star: Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Ryan
Jack Goes Boating (2014) didn’t quite work for me, largely because of its slow pace and uneven storytelling. The film stars the late Seymour Hoffman as Jack, who also directed the film. This was Hoffman’s first and only time in the directing chair. Amy Ryan also stars in the film, giving a solid performance. This was also based on a play that Hoffman starred in. Jack wants to participate in a swim championship. That’s hardly what the film is about, tracking other characters’ stories. While the film aims for quiet intimacy, it ultimately drags, making it an underwhelming viewing experience.
You Kill Me (2016), Director: John Dahl, Stars: Ben Kingsley, Tea Leoni, Luke Wilson
Meet You Kill Me (2016), yet another film that I found in the museum of underrated gems. The concept revolves around Frank (Ben Kingsley), a hitman, who is sent to an A.A. meeting to get his mind focused again. A different story happens, where Frank falls in love with Laurel (Tea Leoni). Leoni is one of my favorite actresses. It also stars the funny Luke Wilson. I liked the trio’s dynamics. You Kill Me is a mental health movie. It’s okay to make changes if you’re not happy. I recommended that you keep an eye out for this movie.
Desert Warrior, 2026.
Directed by Rupert Wyatt.
Starring Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley, Ghassan Massoud, Sharlto Copley, Sami Bouajila, Lamis Ammar, Géza Röhrig, Numan Acar, Nabil Elouahabi, Hakeem Jomah, Ramsey Faragallah, Saïd Boumazoughe, and Soheil Bostani.
SYNOPSIS:
An honorable and mysterious rogue, known as Hanzala, makes himself an enemy of the Emperor Kisra after he helps a fugitive king and princess in the desert.
With aspirations of being a historical epic harkening back to the sword and sandal blockbusters of yesteryear, Rupert Wyatt’s seventeenth-century Arabia tale is about as generic and epically dull as one would expect from a film plainly titled Desert Warrior. Yes, there appear to be real locations here, and there are some admittedly sweeping shots of various tribes storming into battle on horseback and camels, but it’s all in service of a mess that is both miscast and questionable as the work of a filmmaking team of mostly white creatives.
The story of Emperor Kisraa (Ben Kingsley, a distracting presence even with only one or two scenes) rounding up women from other tribes to be his concubines, which inevitably became the catalyst for a revolution led by Princess Hind (Aiysha Hart), uniting all the divided clans and strategizing battle plans for flanking and poisoning, is undeniably ripe for cinematic treatment. The problem is that what’s here from Rupert Wyatt (and screenwriters Erica Beeney, Gary Ross, and David Self) is less than nothing in the primary creative process; no one seems to have a connection to Arabic heritage or culture, but they have made a flat-out boring film that is often narratively incoherent.
Following the death of her father and escaping the clutches of oppression, the honorable Princess Hind joins forces with a troubled, nameless bandit played by Anthony Mackie (he totally belongs here…), who seems to be here solely to give the movie some star power boost without running the risk of white savior accusations. Whatever the case may be, it’s jarring, but not quite as disorienting as how little screen time he has despite being billed as the lead and how little characterization he has. It is, however, equally disorienting as some of the other names that show up along the way.
As for the other factions, Princess Hind talks to them one by one, giving the film an adventure feel that fails to capitalize on using beautiful scenery in striking or visually poignant ways at almost every turn; the leaders of these tribes also often have no character. There also isn’t much of an understanding of why these tribes are at odds with one another. This movie is filled with dialogue that consistently and shockingly amounts to vague nothingness. Nevertheless, each tribe doesn’t take much convincing to begin with, meaning that not only is the film repetitive, but it’s also lifeless when characters are in conversation.
That Desert Warrior does occasionally spring to life, and a bloated 2+ running time is a small miracle. This is typically accomplished through the occasional fight scene between factions that also serves to demonstrate Princess Hind coming into her own as a warrior. When the tribes are united in a massive-scale battle, and that plan is unfolding step by step, one certainly sees why someone would want to tell this story and pull it off with such spectacle. However, this film is as dry as the desert itself.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
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