When talking about the preparation for his role of Pete Seeger in “A Complete Unknown,” Edward Norton expressed recalcitrance at getting into specifics, sharing, “I think we’re getting so hung up on the process and the behind-the-scenes thing that we’re blowing the magic trick of it all.” Watching “Diane Warren: Relentless,” a documentary about the titular, animal-loving, fifteen-time Academy Award nominee songwriter, it’s evident that Warren herself thinks similarly. Those hoping to walk away with a greater understanding of her prolific output (she’s written for more than four hundred and fifty recording artists) commensurate with her success (she’s penned nine number-one songs and had thirty-three songs on the Billboard Hot 100) will do so empty-handed, though not without having been entertained. 

“As soon as someone starts talking about [process] I want to kill myself,” she groans. “Do you want to be filmed having sex?” To that end, without offering this insight, the documentary at times feels almost too standard and bare, especially for an iconoclastic creative like Warren. Director Bess Kargman plays through the expected beats initially, ruminating on her success and career with cleverly placed adulation assists from talking head interviews from industry icons like Cher, Jennifer Hudson, and Quincy Jones, before narrowing focus and focusing on how her upbringing and family circumstances led to where she is today.

There’s a deceptive simplicity to these proceedings, though. Yes, it may follow the typical documentary structure, but by refusing to disclose the exact “magic trick” of Diane’s success, the film is much more effective at ruminating along with her. It’s the kind of documentary that won’t immediately spark new revelations about its subject through flashy announcements. But, when played back down the line, one can see that the secrets to success were embedded in ordinary rhythms. It’s akin to revisiting old journal entries after you’ve spent years removed from the headspace of the initial writing. You walk away with a greater understanding not just of the past but of the present, too.

Refreshingly, the film knows that the best way to honor its subject is not to make her more “agreeable” or sugarcoat her sardonic tone but instead revel in it; the doc desires to capture her in all of her complexities and honesty. When we first meet Warren, she’s getting ready to drive over to her office with her cat. It’s no different from many set-ups you’ve probably seen before in other documentaries. A handheld camera shakily follows its subject through quotidian rhythms as if it were a vlog of sorts. Yet, while in the car, Warren directly breaks the fourth wall and cheekily tells the camera that it can be placed at a better angle before grabbing it and trying to reposition it herself. It’s a small moment, but one that underscores her personality.

Another facet that’s interesting about this approach is that we see, at times, how this is uncomfortable for Warren herself. She doesn’t try to mythologize her life and work, not out of a false sense of humility but because she genuinely seems content with letting her creative process be tinged with mystery even unto herself. She’s aware that the camera’s probing nature can often disrupt the sacredness of that mystery, and it’s funny to see the ways she navigates its presence, especially when she begins to share more personal details of her life, such as the fact that while her father supported her music, her mother did not. She flirts between wanting to be anonymous and knowing that visibility (especially in the entertainment industry) is the key to longevity. It’s an interesting metanarrative to witness on-screen, even when the subject matter may vary at a given moment.

Given Warren’s confidence, the documentary could have further explored her relationship with the Academy Awards; it’s evident it’s important for her to win and Kargman isn’t afraid to linger on the devastation and anger she feels when she’s snubbed for the umpteenth time. It raises a question, though, that for all of Warren’s self-confidence, why does she feel the need to be validated by what this voting body thinks? It’s clear that not winning hasn’t deterred her or reduced the quality of her music, as she uses each loss as further fuel to keep creating.

When the film does get into more personal territory, such as detailing the creation of songs like Lady Gaga’s “Til It Happens to You,” which was inspired in part by Warren’s own experience of being sexually assaulted, we get a little bit of more insight into her creative process. The songs she writes that are directly inspired by her life (“Because You Loved Me,” a tribute to her father is another) are significant because, as some of her frequent collaborators note, she’s penned some of the most renowned songs about love despite deriding romance in her own life. Kiss singer Paul Stanley, who wrote “Turn on the Night” with Warren, observed that it’s “easier to write about heartache when you don’t have to live it … but you do fear it.” For Warren, she shares how writing love songs feels more like acting and doing role play; it’s touching to see the contrast between songs rooted in her personal history and ones that aren’t.

At times, “Diane Warren: Relentless” falters in embodying the transgressive nature of the artist at its center. But upon further reflection, this is the type of lean, no-nonsense documentary that could be made about an artist like her; it’s disarmingly straightforward and bursting with a candor befitting of someone toiling away in a merciless industry purely for the love of the game. It may be hard to get on the film’s wavelength at first. But then again, Warren wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s telling that Manuel Betancourt’s new book, “Hello Stranger: Musings on Modern Intimacies,” grounded in queer theory and abolition, takes its title from a line from the 2004 film “Closer,” about two messed-up straight couples.

The choice of “Closer,” “a bruising piece about the rotting roteness of long-term intimacy,” as Betancourt puts it, is an experience familiar to many. 2024 was a year in which marriage, specifically heterosexual marriage, was taken to task. Miranda July’s most recent novel, “All Fours”; Sarah Manguso’s scathing novel “Liars”; nonfiction accounts such as Lyz Lenz’s “This American Ex-Wife”; Amanda Montei’s “Touched Out”; and even the late entry of Halina Reijn’s film “Babygirl” all show that, at the very least, women are unsatisfied with heterosexual marriage, and that some are being destroyed by it.

The straight male experience of sexual promiscuity and adventure is nothing new. It has been well trod in novels by writers such as John Updike and Philip Roth and more recently, Michel Houellebecq. In cinema there are erotic thrillers — think “Basic Instinct,” “Fatal Attraction,” “Eyes Wide Shut” — in which men are the playboys and women the collateral damage. Betancourt tells us that “Hello Stranger” begins in “a place where I’ve long purloined many of my most head-spinning obsessions: the movies.” But this book isn’t interested in gender, or heterosexuality. It’s an embrace of what makes us human, and the ways in which we avoid “making contact.” Betancourt wants to show that the way we relate to others often tells us “more crucially” how we relate “to ourselves.”

Through chapters focused on cinematic tropes such as the “meet cute” (“A stranger is always a beginning. A potential beginning,” Betancourt writes) and investigations of sexting, cruising, friendship, and coupling and throupling, “Hello Stranger” is a confident compendium of queer theory through the lens of pop culture, navigating these issues through the work of writers and artists including Frank O’Hara, Michel Foucault and David Wojnarowicz, with stories from Betancourt’s own personal experience.

In a discussion of the discretion needed for long-term relationships, Betancourt reflects: “One is about privacy. The other is about secrecy. The former feels necessary within any healthy relationship; the latter cannot help but chip away at the trust needed for a solid foundation.” In the chapter on cruising, he explores how a practice associated with pursuit of sex can be a model for life outside the structure of heteropatriarchy: “Making a queer world has required the development of kinds of intimacy that bear no necessary relation to domestic space, to kinship, to the couple form, to property, or to the nation.”

The chapters on cruising and on friendship (“Close Friends”) are the strongest of the book, though “Naked Friends” includes a delightful revisitation of Rose’s erotic awakening in “Titanic.” Betancourt uses the history of the friendship, and its “queer elasticity” using Foucault’s imagining of friendship between two men (“What would allow them to communicate? They face each other without terms or convenient words, with nothing to assure them about the meaning of the movement that carries them toward each other.”) to delve into Hanya Yanagihara’s wildly successful novel, “A Little Life.” He quotes Yanagihara, who echoes Foucault when she says that “her interest in male friendships had to do with the limited emotional vocabulary men (regardless of their race, cultural affiliations, religion, or sexuality—and her protagonists do run the gamut in these regards) have.”

Betancourt thinks about the suffocating reality of monogamy through Richard Yates’ devastating novel of domestic tragedy “Revolutionary Road” (and Sam Mendes’ later film adaptation), pointing out that marriage “forces you to live with an ever-present witness.” In writing about infidelity, he explores Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Company” and quotes Mary Steichen Calderone, former head of Sex Information and Education Council of the United States, in her research on adults who engage in extramarital affairs: “They are rebelling against the loneliness of the urban nuclear family, in which a mother, a father and a few children have only one another for emotional support. Perhaps society is trying to reorganize itself to satisfy these yearnings.” These revelations are crucial to Betancourt’s argument — one of abolition and freedom — that call to mind the work of queer theorists like the late Lauren Berlant and José Esteban Muñoz.

Betancourt ultimately comes to the conclusion popularized by the writer Bell Hooks, which is that amid any discussion of identity comes the undeniable: our humanity. He quotes Hooks’ quotation of the writer Frank Browning on eroticism: “By erotic, I mean all the powerful attractions we might have: for mentoring and being mentored, for unrealizable flirtation, for intellectual tripping, for sweaty mateship at play or at work, for spiritual ecstasy, for being held in silent grief, for explosive rage at a common enemy, for the sublime love of friendship.” There’s a whole world outside the rigid structures we’ve come to take as requirements for living.

“Hello Stranger” is a lively and intelligent addition to an essential discourse on how not only accessing our desires but also being open about them can make us more human, and perhaps, make for a better world. “There could possibly be a way to fold those urges into their own relationship,” Betancourt writes. “They could build a different kind of two that would allow them to find a wholeness within and outside themselves without resorting to such betrayals, such lies, such affairs.” It’s the embrace of that complexity that, Betancourt suggests, gives people another way to live.

When asked how he could write with such honesty about the risk of promiscuity during the AIDS epidemic, the writer Douglas Crimp responded: “Because I am human.” “Hello Stranger” proves that art, as Crimp said, “challenges not only our sense of the world, but of who we are in relation to the world … and of who we are in relation to ourselves.”

Jessica Ferri is the owner of Womb House Books and the author, most recently, of “Silent Cities San Francisco.”

Game Changer Story: Ram Nandan (Ram Charan), an upright IAS officer, is committed to eradicating corruption and ensuring fair elections. The film juxtaposes his modern-day battles with the historical struggles of his father, Appanna, highlighting a generational fight against systemic injustice.

Game Changer Review: The highly anticipated film Game Changer, directed by Shankar and featuring Ram Charan, Kiara Advani, and Anjali alongside SJ Suryah and Srikanth in pivotal roles, is a political action drama that delves into the murky waters of corruption within the Indian political system. Shankar, renowned for his grand storytelling, makes his Telugu directorial debut with Game Changer. His signature style is evident in the film’s lavish production and narrative structure. The story, penned by Karthik Subbaraj, weaves together action, drama, and social commentary, though it occasionally leans heavily on familiar tropes.

Ram Charan delivers a compelling performance in dual roles, seamlessly transitioning between the principled Ram Nandan and the rustic Appanna. As the central figure of the story, he carries the narrative with remarkable ease. While his portrayal of Ram Nandan is high on style and swag, it is his heartfelt performance as Appanna that truly resonates with the audience.

Kiara Advani, as Deepika, plays Ram Nandan’s love interest. Her character moderates Ram’s anger and inspires him to take up the IAS. While Ram and Kiara light up the screen, their love track feels somewhat clichéd. Anjali, as Parvathy, gets a meaty role as Appanna’s wife, championing his principles and cause. The emotional depth she brings to the story bolsters the film’s core.

Srikanth, as Bobbili Satyamurthy, surprises with his antagonist role. His dynamic interactions with Appanna add layers to the narrative. SJ Suryah, known for his distinct style and mannerisms, delivers yet another solid performance as Bobbili Mopidevi.

The film opens with Ram transitioning from an IPS officer to an IAS officer, featuring a stylish action sequence where he settles old scores. The first half chronicles his journey from a fiery college student to a committed civil servant. Although it employs some usual tropes and forced humour, the first half ends with an interval twist, setting the stage for an engaging second half. The latter part of the film takes a different trajectory, transitioning into a politically driven narrative rooted in the soil. The screenplay, treatment, and even the colour palette shift to complement this transformation.

Thaman’s musical score elevates the film, with a soundtrack that complements its themes. Tirru’s cinematography captures both the grandeur and grit of the story, employing dynamic visuals that enhance the viewing experience. Editing by Shameer Muhammed and Ruben ensures a cohesive narrative flow. The production values reflect Shankar’s commitment to high-quality filmmaking, with grandiose visuals in the song sequences. “Jaragandi” stands out as the highlight track, while the popular “Naanaa Hyraanaa” is yet to make its way into the final cut. The team has announced its inclusion starting January 14.

While Game Changer impresses with its grand visuals and socially relevant themes, it falters in areas that detract from its overall impact. The narrative occasionally veers into predictability, relying on familiar tropes of love, political corruption, and systemic injustice. The screenplay’s didactic tone, though impactful at times, can feel heavy-handed, leaving little room for subtlety.

Overall, Game Changer is a well-executed commercial film. Shankar’s grand scale and Ram Charan’s brilliant performance, combined with strong supporting roles and technical excellence, make it a compelling watch for enthusiasts of the genre.