Brave the Dark, 2025.

Directed by Damian Harris.
Starring Jared Harris, Nicholas Hamilton, Jamie Harris, Sasha Bhasin, Will Price, Daisy Galvis and Joey Cabrera.

SYNOPSIS:

Haunted by torturous childhood memories, Nate Williams finds himself engulfed in darkness. When his drama teacher, Mr. Deen bails him out of jail and takes him in, Nate must confront his past before it leads to his own destruction.

Based on true events, director Damian Harris’ Brave the Dark follows homeless high school senior Nathan Williams (a leather jacket-sporting bad boy played by Nicholas Hamilton), troubled but kind and caught up in a rebellious crowd, also becoming the only one of that group to be punished for stealing from a home appliances store. Following a rather humiliating arrest at school (an effort to make an example out of his misdeeds), his girlfriend Tina (Sasha Bhasin) decides to step away from the relationship while most of the school faculty deem him a lost cause, relieved that they no longer have to deal with a student they attribute as disrespectful and lazy.

One particularly empathetic teacher isn’t ready to give up, as drama instructor Stan Deen (Jared Harris) steps in to not only try and get Nathan back on a more productive life path but to save him from serving time. Naturally, posting his bail turns out to be difficult, and the situation turns out to be much more dire than he ever imagined once he discovers that Nathan has been living in his car instead of a foster home. Nathan is also momentarily reunited with his strict, hard-edged grandparents, who are more concerned with making him work while also perceiving him as more of a burden than anything. The grandfather especially has a startling lack of empathy regarding some trauma that happened to Nathan’s mother, who died when he was six, cruelly stating that she made mistakes in life and got what was coming to her.

These grandparents clearly aren’t the proper guardians to assist Nathan with his current predicament and personal demons, so the well-meaning Stan goes through the trouble of getting authorization for the boy to live with him while helping turn his life around. It also made clear that Stan is already lonely, having lost his mom roughly a year ago, now living alone. This is not about one man’s loneliness, though, as he is a teacher who genuinely perceives his job as going beyond the classroom, subscribing to the notion that no child is hopeless.

As such, Brave the Dark works when it’s allowing Nicholas Hamilton and Jared Harris to talk, as each character slowly lets their guard down. Understandably, Nathan becomes confused about why Stan is going to such extremes to help change his life for the better, giving the expected problem of child resistance. The two often butt heads with Nicholas Hamilton convincingly portraying these conflicted emotions. Meanwhile, Jared Harris is terrific as a kindhearted soul, occasionally with an amusing dry sense of humor. Whenever they are interacting with one another, the film feels grounded and human.

However, and this could be a result of not only multiple screenwriters in Lynn Robertson Hay, Dale G. Bradley, and Damian Harris but also the fact that this is a script rewritten from the works of the actual Nathan and John P. Spencer, Brave the Dark also has several unnecessary melodramatic flourishes. It starts with flashbacks hinting that there is more to the death of Nathan’s mom than a supposed car accident (offering glimpses of an abusive partner.) Then it continues with Nathan gradually taking on the persona of that father when Tina regularly reaffirms that she doesn’t want to talk to him anymore. It’s a situation that only escalates when she quickly starts dating a boy Nathan already doesn’t like without any justifiable reason for doing so. 

There are solid thematic ideas and juxtapositions here, but the execution is noticeably weaker and forced compared to the drama that generally feels real and moving from letting Nicholas Hamilton and Jared Harris act. One wonders if the mystery element regarding what really happened to Nathan’s mom fits in this narrative simply because it consistently hurts the storytelling structure. A more restrained approach to that plot element might have been wiser (there are certainly some flashbacks that don’t need to be here) and further elevated some of the revelatory moments and closing speeches.

However, as a film about compassionate teachers going above and beyond whilst showing the impact they can have on a student’s life for the better, alongside an otherwise inspirational and compelling story for Nathan, it’s easy to brave the dark in Brave the Dark. It has flaws but is well-meaning, sincere, and potentially even crucial, considering teachers today are grossly undervalued.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd 

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If you pair Keke Palmer up with someone, they’d better be on her level or at least round out her energy. SZA does both as Alyssa, who is one of those people who prefers to let the universe resolve her problems rather than handle them herself. She rounds out Palmer’s Dreux who bears some insecurity and awkwardness with loving enthusiasm. SZA shows impressive comedic range throughout. I was mainly impressed by how she depicted patience with Keshawn, and we all know if SZA were controlling the pen, she would certainly go “Kill Bill” on him. Either way, one can sense the childhood history of these characters through their affectionate banter and interactions. Like every Issa Rae production, their friendship and the tests they go through are the film’s core. The co-leads’ radiant energy is enough to justify the price of admission alone. 

One of Them Days is a Millennial Friday But For the Girlies

One of Them Days is like a spiritual successor to Friday but to represent the Millennials. Much of its plotting takes from the F. Gary Gray classic. It captures the same breezy, laid-back style and flavor, even down to Dreux and Alyssa having their own Deebo in Berniece. As Friday was a love letter to Compton, One of Them Days is a love letter to Crenshaw. 

One of Them Days is brimming with hilarious visual gags and the plotting unfolds in a series of vignettes but none that feel too long-winded or disrupt the runtime. Janelle James, Katt Williams, and Keyla Monterroso Mejia portray various amusing side characters that the duo encounters throughout the day, and they all contribute to a lighthearted tone with their over-the-top personalities. My favorite was Williams as Lucky, a homeless man who constantly tries to steer the duo in the right direction, but they never “take heed” from him.

It’s a truism worth repeating: If you’ve done stellar costume design in a contemporary film, you may as well plan to stay home on Oscar night. It’s been 30 years since the academy has awarded a costume design statuette for work on a non-fantastical or non-period film — and that was for the fairly fantastical-if-contemporary “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” — with the second most recent example being 1979’s “All That Jazz.”

Films with contemporary costumes didn’t even score a nomination 20 years ago. But the battle between multi-award-winning veterans Sandy Powell (“The Aviator”) and Colleen Atwood (“A Series of Unfortunate Events”) made for a tense competition — as did the appearance of one of the more famous animated costumers, “The Incredible’s” Edna Mode, at the Feb. 27, 2005, ceremony.

Flying high

Raspy-voiced Pierce Brosnan presented the award along with the animated Mode, who strolled onto the stage and interacted with the actor, who had recently concluded his run portraying James Bond. Mode wasn’t just a character in Pixar’s film; she was at least partly inspired by Edith Head, the costume designer awarded the most trophies (eight) and nomination (35). It was an amusing bit, with Mode totally upstaging Brosnan by calling the costume trophy the “most prestigious award” of the night, and referring to the actors as “models.”

Four of the five nominees were already on the stage as the nominations were read (Bob Ringwood was absent, having retired after working on “Troy”), but it was Powell who triumphed in the end. Her speech was fairly short, largely thanking her “colleagues and partners in crime,” but also giving a personal shoutout to “Marty” (as in “Aviator” director Scorsese) “for being the inspiration for us all.”

This was Powell’s second of three Oscars so far; she has one from 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love” and another for her work in 2009’s “The Young Victoria.” The costume designer has been nominated 15 times, four of them for work on Scorsese films. They first collaborated on 2002’s “Gangs of New York” and most recently on 2019’s “The Irishman.”

“Marty’s very interested in clothes,” Powell told W Magazine in 2016. “He responds well to men’s clothing in particular. Marty is a clotheshorse himself.” While shooting “The Wolf of Wall Street,” she noted that he’d become “obsessed by ties” and got personally involved in certain outfits. “Quite often, on set, especially on something like ‘Wolf of Wall Street,’ if Leo [DiCaprio] comes onto set with a new suit, the first thing Marty does is feel the cloth, or feel the label.”

Dressed for almost success

Atwood went home empty-handed that evening but has won four Oscars and received 12 nominations. Her trophies are for “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” (2017), “Alice in Wonderland” (2011), “Memoirs of a Geisha” (2006) and “Chicago” (2003).

Alexandra Byrne (“Finding Neverland”) has scored six nominations in her career, winning her first Oscar in 2008 for “Elizabeth: The Golden Age.” Sharen Davis was onstage for her work in “Ray” and would go on to nab her second nomination for her work in “Dreamgirls.” “Troy” costume designer Ringwood, the only male nominated in the category 20 years ago, had earlier been nominated for his work in 1987’s “Empire of the Sun.”