In Mahde Hasan’s feature debut, “Sand City,” a tight, clipped psychosis of disaffection rips through its atmosphere. There’s a stifling thrust cities exert as Dhaka does in the film. Where’s the release? Mauled by a city’s pummelling of daily routines, how do you inch towards a smidgen of fresh possibility? A faith in transcendence is snipped by the brutal drudgery synonymous with scratching out a life of dignity. How do you endure with grace when battered by daily banality?
“Sand City” spins around two characters. Emma (Victoria Chakma), a woman from an ethnic minority population, exits her office only to discover slurs scrawled on her bike. It happens on a daily basis. The guard claims he hasn’t a clue who’s behind it. Rather, he redirects insinuations at her, implying: why is it that only she is targeted? She must be doing something that attracts a particular kind of image. At work, Emma is mostly disconnected. She’s seen as an outsider, an anomaly.
The other character is Hasan (Mostafa Monwar), who slaves away at a glass plant with a gradually swelling plot of making his own. He collects several materials, including silica sand, and stores them at home. Emma also hauls off sand for her cat litter. Sand binds the two strangers. She feels edged out in most spaces, receding thereby to her own little corner. There’s no comfort she receives or warmth from kindred others. He’s biding his time, rosy-eyed about the big, brilliant future his project’s success can bring him.
Hasan orchestrates the city-space’s discombobulating effects with precision and austerity. Smoggy landscapes accentuate a deep-set sense of doom and collapse. There’s despair and disillusionment, but it’s purposefully muted. The film drives the kind of morass that seems inescapable, binding on all fronts. Dream as you may; turning the tide is futile, crashing past any mild fluttering of the heart.
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Hasan is terrifically confident in handling silences. Long wordless stretches dominate much of the film, a sandbox for you to decipher and project what characters may be feeling at any given point. There’s a distance, a chasm in place between Hasan and Emma, though a few interstices come up sometimes. But what’s felt more keenly is people being strung apart, socio-economic vectors firmly in place.
It’s a cold hollowness that creeps up on individuals. They have dreams which they pursue tenderly, secretly. Hope is so delicate it might shatter, should they recklessly share, open up their hearts. Giombini’s sharply sculpted framing prises out the city and its deadening blow. It’s a stark, alienating atmosphere we are slowly dipped into. Hasan has no interest in setting up a conventional structure, with easily discernible narrative beats. Instead, he and Giombini imbue “Sand City” with a moodier drift. The blue glowing nights draping over Emma are as striking as evocations of the netherworld in the wasteyards Hasan scavenges through.
A still from “Sand City” (2025)
Characters don’t navigate the city as much as they are stuck within fixed routes. It’s a stasis that chews into the fibre of their lives. They don’t know how to find their footing if they take a plunge. Hasan does fling himself out there more demonstratively. However, their emotional, psychological isolation gnaws like an open wound. Amidst a space crunch, individuals are severed from any form of affectionate intimacy. The daily struggle for sustenance might not be the same for all. Some, like Emma, occupy a more privileged status.
But fulfilment remains elusive. People wander, aching for some anchorage that’s also affirming. Emma is waiting for visa issues to get sorted, so she can fly out of the country. Rarely do we witness the characters sharing a meaningful, grounding bond with others. Both Emma and Hasan are hemmed in. The latter is hopeful about his big project. But the city’s ruthlessness soon rams into him. To leap at salvation of some kind is exposed bleakly, rudely as a sorry quest. The promise of a renewed future stays suspended.
Mahde Hasan bends the film into a visually stunning drama. Most of the undercurrents are riven into Oronnok Prithibi’s sound design, which unleash vividly seething sensations in both crucial moments, like a heightened, shocked discovery, and regular, mundane rhythms. “Sand City” splays grimness into a vacuum that nags both its characters. Each yearns and jostles with the city’s grind. How much will they yield to it? They have to perennially deal with the interplay between resignation and resistance.
The latter is most terrifying, but the final choice, they hope, will make a difference. The director stitches in jolting, disquieting revelations, aided by Prithibi’s piercing, bracing sound design. The clang of construction noise, as the city expands unto itself in all its congestion, works as a constant reminder of the larger scale. A sliver of genuine human connection seems out of reach for both the characters. For Emma, it manifests through an uncanny intrusion. With defiant interruptions and daring ellipsis, Mahde Hasan twists “Sand City” into something evasively peculiar, singular, and unforgettable.
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Sand City premiered at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2025.
The Timothée Chalamet movie that’s arriving on Christmas Day is “a 150-minute-long heart attack of a film,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. In “a career-best turn” that’s “a feverish go-for-broke tour de force,” Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, an aspiring table tennis champ in 1950s New York City who’s ready to lie, cheat, and steal for the chance to become the best in the world. This first film from director Josh Safdie since 2019’s Uncut Gems turns out to be a character study that “doubles as a cracked American success story,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. Marty is a scrawny kid with a pathetic mustache, but he’s also a fast-talking grifter with supreme self-confidence, and his game earns him a trip to London and the world championship tournament before a humbling stokes his hunger for a comeback.
Surrounding Chalamet is “a supporting cast you’d swear was assembled via Mad Libs,” because it features Fran Drescher, Penn Jillette, Tyler the Creator, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, and—as a faded movie star Marty sweet-talks into an affair—Gwyneth Paltrow, “reminding you how good she was before Goop became her full-time gig.” To me, it’s the story beneath the story that makes Safdie’s “nerve-jangling, utterly exhilarating” movie one of the best of the year, said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. “It’s about a Jewish kid who knows just what kind of antisemitism and finely stratified racial dynamics he’s up against in postwar America, and who is using every means at his disposal to smack back.”
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‘Is This Thing On?’
Directed by Bradley Cooper (R)
★★★
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“There are far worse things that a gifted filmmaker could offer an audience these days than a feel-good divorce comedy,” said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. But it’s still slightly disappointing that screen star Bradley Cooper has followed up A Star Is Born and Maestro with this minor work, due Dec. 19, about a father of two who starts doing stand-up in New York City to cope with the likely end of his marriage. With Will Arnett and Laura Dern as its co-stars, Is This Thing On? is “an observant, bittersweet, and highly watchable movie,” but it’s also so eager to hide the agonies of divorce that it “can feel like it’s cutting corners.”
The 124-minute film “doesn’t really get going until hour two,” said Ryan Lattanzio in IndieWire. Until then, it’s “lethargic and listless,” slowed by long takes “that drag on and on.” Fortunately, Arnett and Dern have real chemistry that kicks in when Dern’s Tess accidentally catches Arnett’s Alex performing his bit about their sidelined marriage and sees him with new eyes. Good as Arnett is, “it’s Dern who’s the revelation as a woman who truly doesn’t know what she wants and is figuring it out in real time,” said Alison Willmore in NYMag.com. Cooper, playing a reprobate friend of Alex’s, gives himself the script’s biggest laughs. More importantly, he proves again to be a director with “a real flair for domestic drama.”
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Joe Carnahan was a sagacious choice to co-write and direct the engrossing and visceral survival thriller “Not Without Hope,” given Carnahan’s track record of delivering gripping and gritty actioners, including early, stylish crime thrillers such as “Narc” (2002) and “Smokin’ Aces” (2006), and the absolutely badass and bonkers Liam Neeson v Giant Wolves epic “The Grey” (2011).
Based on the non-fiction book of the same name, “Not Without Hope” plunges us into the stormy waters of the Gulf of Mexico for the majority of the film, and delivers a breathtaking and harrowing dramatic re-creation of the 2009 accident that left four friends, including two NFL players, clinging to their single-engine boat and fighting for their lives. The survival-at-sea story here is a familiar one, told in films such as “White Squall,” “The Perfect Storm,” and “Adrift,” and the screenplay by Carnahan and E. Nicholas Mariani leans into well-worn tropes and, at times, features cliché-ridden dialogue. Still, this is a well-paced and powerful work, thanks to the strong performances by the ensemble cast, some well-placed moments of character introspection, and the documentary-style, water-level camerawork by Juanmi Azpiroz.
Zachary Levi (the TV series “Chuck,” the “Shazam!” movies) is best known for comedy and light action roles. Still, he delivers solid, straightforward, and effective dramatic work as Nick Schuyler, a personal trainer who helps his friends Marquis Cooper (Quentin Plair) and Corey Smith (Terrence Terrell), two journeyman NFL players, get ready for another season. When their pal Will Bleakley (Marshall Cook) shows up at a barbecue and announces he has just been laid off from his financial firm, he’s invited to join the trio the next morning on a day-trip fishing trip from Clearwater, FL., into the Gulf of Mexico. (The casting is a bit curious, as the four lead actors are 10-20 years older than the ages of the real-life individuals they’re playing — but all four are in great shape, and we believe them as big, strong, physically and emotionally tough guys.)
We can see the longtime bond between these four in the early going, though we don’t learn much about their respective stories before the fishing trip. Kudos Carnahan and the studio for delivering a film that earns its R rating, primarily for language and intense action; the main characters are jocks and former jocks, and they speak with the casual, profanity-laced banter favored by many an athlete. (Will, describing the sandwiches he’s made for the group: “I got 20 f*cking PB&Js, and 20 f*cking turkey and cheese.”) There’s no sugarcoating the way these guys talk—and the horrors they wind up facing on the seas.
The boat is about 70 miles off the coast of Clearwater when the anchor gets stuck, and the plan to thrust the boat forward to dislodge it backfires, resulting in the vessel capsizing and the men being thrown overboard. Making matters worse, their cell phones were all sealed away in a plastic bag in the cabin, and a ferocious storm was approaching. With title cards ticking off the timeline (“13 Hours Lost at Sea,” “20 Hours Lost at Sea,” “42 Hours Lost at Sea”), we toggle back and forth between the men frantically trying to turn over the boat, keep warm, signal faraway ships, battling hunger and thirst, and the dramas unfolding on land. Floriana Lima as Nick’s fiancée, Paula, and Jessica Blackmore as Coop’s wife, Rebekah, do fine work in the obligatory Wait-by-the-Phone roles.
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It’s terrific to see JoBeth Williams still lighting up the screen some 40 years after her “Big Chill” and “Poltergeist” days, delivering powerful work as Nick’s mother, Marcia, who refuses to believe her son is gone even as the odds of survival dwindle with each passing hour. Josh Duhamel also excels in the role of the real-life Captain Timothy Close, who oversaw the rescue efforts from U.S. Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg. At one point, Close delivers a bone-chilling monologue about what happens when hypothermia sets in—“hallucinations, dementia, rage…eventually, it breaks your mind in half”—a point driven home when we see what’s happening to those men at sea. It’s savage and brutal, and heartbreaking.
Given this was such a highly publicized story that took place a decade and a half ago, it’s no spoiler to sadly note there was only one survivor of the accident, with the other three men lost to the sea. Each death is treated with unblinking honesty and with dignity, as when the natural sounds fade at one point, and we hear just the mournful score. With Malta standing in for the Gulf of Mexico and the actors giving everything they have while spending most of the movie in the water and soaked to the bone, “Not Without Hope” is a respectful and impactful dramatic interpretation that feels true to the real-life events.
Selected by Tajikistan but ultimately not accepted by the Academy to compete in the Oscar international feature category, “Black Rabbit, White Rabbit” begins ambitiously, with a famous quote from playwright Anton Chekhov about setups and payoffs — about how if a gun is established in a story, it must go off. Moments later, an inviting long take involving a young man selling an antique rifle ends in farcical tragedy, signaling an equally farcical series of events that grow stranger and stranger. The film, by Iranian director Shahram Mokri, folds in on itself in intriguing (albeit protracted) ways, warping its meta-fictional boundaries until they supersede its characters, or any underlying meaning.
Still, it’s a not-altogether-uninteresting exercise in exploring the contours of storytelling, told through numerous thematically interconnected vignettes. The opening Chekhov quote, though it might draw one’s attention to minor details that end up insignificant, ensures a heightened awareness of the movie’s artifice, until the film eventually pulls back and becomes a tale of its own making. But en route to this semi-successful postmodern flourish, its character drama is enticing enough on its own, with hints of magical realism. It begins with the tale of a badly injured upper-class woman, Sara (Hasti Mohammai), discovering that her car accident has left her with the ability to communicate with household objects.
Sara’s bandages need changing, and the stench of her ointment becomes a quick window into her relationships. Her distant husband rejects her; her boisterous stepdaughter is more frank, but ultimately accepting; her gardener and handyman stays as diplomatic as he can. However, the film soon turns the gunfire payoff in its prologue into a broader setup of its own, as a delivery man shows up at Sara’s gate, insisting that she accept delivery for an object “the deceased man” has paid for.
Mokri eventually returns to this story (through a slightly tilt-shifted lens), but not before swerving headfirst into a seemingly unrelated saga of extras on a film set and a superstitious prop master, Babak (Babak Karimi), working on a shot-for-shot remake of an Iranian classic. A mix of rapid-fire Tajik, Persian and Russian dialogue creates dilemma upon dilemma when Babak’s ID goes missing, preventing him from being able to thoroughly check the prop ammunition for an assassination scene.
Danger begins to loom — a recent Alec Baldwin case even warrants a mention on-screen — as the notion of faulty firearms yanks Chekhov’s wisdom front and center once more, transforming it from a writing tip into a phantasmagorical inevitability. In keeping with the previous story, the props even communicate with each other (through subtitles) and begin gossiping about what might come to pass.
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After establishing these narrative parameters through unbroken, fluid shots filmed at a sardonic distance, Mokri soon begins playing mischievous temporal games. He finds worthwhile excuses to revisit scenes from either different angles or with a slightly altered aesthetic approach — with more proximity and intimacy — in order to highlight new elements of his mise-en-scène. What’s “real” and “fictional,” even within the movie’s visual parlance, begins to blur in surreal ways, largely pivoting around Babak simply trying to do his job. However, the more this tale engorges through melodic, snaking takes, the more it circles around a central point, rather than approaching it.
The film’s own expanse becomes philosophically limiting, even though it remains an object of curiosity. When it’s all said and done, the playfulness on display in “Black Rabbit, White Rabbit” is quite remarkable, even if the story’s contorting framework seldom amounts to much, beyond drawing attention to itself. It’s cinema about cinema in a manner that, on one hand, lives on the surface, but on the other hand, invites you to explore its texture in ways few other movies do.
