Movie Reviews

‘Franz’ Review: Agnieszka Holland’s Freewheeling Kafka Biopic Is Playful and Moving

Published

2 months ago

September 8, 2025

‘Franz’ Review: Agnieszka Holland’s Freewheeling Kafka Biopic Is Playful and Moving

The biopic is the vulgar but necessary tribute inherently populist cinema pays to more traditional, higher-brow art. Scholars and snobs might sneer at these films, and especially the way they love to transmute childhood trauma into creative drive, all in the service of a tidy narrative arc. But we secretly sort of love them too, especially when they’re a little tacky, and preferably accurate enough to offer the cinematic equivalent of a well-edited Wikipedia page or, for the more serious-minded, a scholarly biography. It helps if the subject, in addition to being admired and talented, if not sympathetic, had a dramatic and interesting life, like mentally imbalanced painter Vincent Van Gogh. Even better: a life we know very little about, like playwright and poet William Shakespeare, making plenty of room for fictional invention.

Given that the writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was not famous in his lifetime, it’s remarkable that we know as much about him as we do. Indeed, it’s a miraculous fluke that we know his work at all given that he instructed his friend and literary executor Max Brod to destroy all his writings and personal letters after he died. Luckily, Brod was, in some ways, the world’s worst literary executor — although he did risk his life at points to smuggle the work out of Czechoslovakia as he escaped Nazis to make his way to Palestine, as dramatized in Franz, Agnieszka Holland’s excellent new biopic.

Franz

The Bottom Line

Never the trial, always a pleasure.

Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations)
Cast: Idan Weiss, Peter Kurth, Jenovefa Bokova, Ivan Trojan, Sandra Korzeniak, Katharina Stark, Sebastian Schwarz, Aaron Friesz, Carol Schuler, Gesa Schermuly, Josef Trojan, Jan Budar, Emma Smetana, Daniel Dongres
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Screenwriter: Marek Epstein

2 hours 7 minutes

In fact, as far as I can work out, this may be the only proper, life-spanning biopic made so far about Kafka, although there are several films that turn him into a character caught in a world much like his own absurdist, menacing fiction (see Steven Soderbergh’s 1991 exercise Kafka) or ones that memorialize a small slice of Kafka’s bio. (German directors Judith Kaufmann and Georg Maas’ The Glory of Life focuses on the last year of the writer’s life, for instance.)

Holland, whose last film Green Border was one of her best, seems to know conventional biopics are inherently cheesy, and risk being boring and shapeless if they plod chronologically through the subject’s life. Plus, she has to contend with the fact that Kafka’s life wasn’t especially eventful on the surface. He grew up in an affluent German-Jewish family in Prague; had a rocky relationship with his overbearing father Hermann, but a better one with his mother and sisters; worked in the legal department for an insurance company; got engaged but broke it off and never married; caught tuberculosis and died, aged 40.

His writing, to which he was devoted, was the most interesting thing about him, an intensely rich and motley life of the mind. Only his near contemporary, the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens (who survived into old age), who weirdly enough also was a lawyer for an insurance company, rivals Kafka in terms of the inverse proportion of literary originality and canonical significance to dullness of life story.

In order to surmount the challenges the raw facts present his biopic-makers, Holland, screenwriter Marek Epstein, editor Pavel Hrdlicka and the team have opted to create a ludic, kaleidoscopic montage film that flits like a fevered mind around the subject’s life and beyond, leaping decades with a single cut.

That said, the structure never feels random; there are obvious causal connections. For instance, we see young Franz (played as a child by Daniel Dongres) being “taught” to swim by his father (a superb Peter Kurth) by being chucked into a river after just a few lessons, compelled to sink or swim (he sinks). That scene is directly followed by flash-forwards to tourists in the present day admiring a riverbank spot where the adult Kafka would always rest after a swim. Similarly, a section that touches on how prolific a letter-writer the adult Franz was (now played by Idan Weiss, a dead ringer for the real Kafka but also a subtle, gifted performer) then cuts to a tour guide (Emma Smetana) at the Kafka museum pointing out that, in sheer weight, his personal papers are dwarfed by the mountain of wood pulp about him produced over the years.

Indeed, Holland takes a puckish delight — one that Kafka would probably have been equally amused by — in showing how this introverted, neurasthenic perfectionist has become an icon in modern-day Prague, with burger restaurants, statues, tours, tourist traps and all manner of tchotchkes pedaled in his name.

Nevertheless, the film strives to offer a rounded portrait of Franz that gets across his intellect, his sense of humor (there’s a great scene where he reads, smiling broadly throughout, passages from The Trial to a room of guffawing peers), and his complex emotional inner life. A fair amount of screen time is devoted to his tortured relationship with Felicie Bauer (a tender Carol Schuler), the Berlin-based relative of Brod’s to whom Kafka proposed. Not long before their engagement was to be officially announced, Franz became besotted with Felice’s best friend Grete Bloch (Gesa Schermuly) and started writing letters to her, an absurd romantic farrago that would seem farcical if it weren’t so very sad. The closest the film comes to a happy-ish ending is the limning of his later affair with married journalist Milena Jesenska (Jenovefa Bokova), a relationship that at least made him happy for a time.

Even with its two hour-plus running time, Franz feels dense but nimble, Tomasz Naumiuk’s cinematography often in motion, or static as the characters flow frenetically from room to room within the frame, especially in the Kafka family home. We come to appreciate why Franz would crave silence so as to be able to pursue his craft. Even so, the original score by Mary Komasa and Antoni Komasa Lazarkiewicz, supplemented by sadcore indie tracks by Trupa Trupa, is a presence throughout, acting like a sonic glue that holds the chronologically disparate sequences of the film together while adding a distinct modernity to the tone.

However, it will be newcomer Weiss’ intense, playful, sweet rendition of Kafka that people will remember this film for — a portrait of a complicated man who lived mostly in his head but was capable of tenderness with friends and lovers. Also, Franz doesn’t minimize the centrality of Kafka’s Jewish identity and Zionist beliefs, but neither does it pander in any way to any particular audience. The fact that almost none of his family survived the Holocaust is not neglected. But the film doesn’t dwell on that part of the story, all of which unfolds long after Franz’s death.

The tense near-final scene where Brod just escapes the scrutiny of a Gestapo officer on a train, with all of Kafka’s papers in his satchel, is all you really need to know about the rise of fascism that Kafka foretold in a way. Similarly to his writings, Franz the film is interested in a distilled, abstracted meditation on power, the law, control and desire that transcends the banal borders of realism.

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Movie Reviews

Sisu: Road to Revenge

Published

12 hours ago

November 21, 2025

Press Room

The lethal and tenacious Aatami Korpi returns in this sequel to 2022’s Sisu. Like its predecessor, Sisu: Road to Revenge offers up nonstop, gory hyper-violence as the old soldier shoots and stabs his way through the Soviet Union’s Red Army to avenge his family’s murder. Paired with all the bloodshed is a handful of f-words and some drinking, as well.

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Sisu: Road to Revenge” takes a Wrong Turn or Three

Published

1 day ago

November 21, 2025

Press Room

Movie Review: “Sisu: Road to Revenge” takes a Wrong Turn or Three

I am an audience of one at a late afternoon “preview” matinee of “Sisu 2,” aka “Sisu: Road to Revenge,” the sequel to the savage sleeper hit by Finnish carnage Jalmari Helander.

Do the locals know something I don’t? Or are the good folks in “The Last Capital of the Confederacy” showing their red ball cap displeasure at a movie about mowing down Russians by staying home?

I’m guessing it’s the fact that Screen Gems’ marketing didn’t spend enough to move the needle even a centimeter that dampened enthusiasm, as nobody knows about it.

That’s no big deal, because this sequel is inferior in pretty much every way to the original “Sisu,” which came out of nowhere back in 2023 and which takes its title from a Finnish word that more of less means unfettered rage. It’s not on a par with Helander’s “Rare Exports” Santa-horror splatter film either. He’s due for a misstep. Here it is.

“Road to Revenge” brings back our non-speaking, unstoppable and unkillable Finnish commando Korpi (Jorma Tommila), this time out to haul the pieces to his house across the Russian border after the end of World War II.

When your anti-hero is “unstoppable” and “unkillable,” that lowers the stakes. A lot.

Throw in feeble pacing and thus no urgency to its story of driving, shooting, stabbing and missle-launching his way through legions of belligerant Russians, fresh from their triumph in “The Great Patriotic War,” and you’ve got a thriller whose only creative bits are random moments of Russian-mutilating and murdering.

Remember, the vodka/borscht-folk and their dictator sided with the Nazis at the beginning of WWII, only to F-around and find out you can never trust a Nazi. And the Russians further earned their history’s bad-guys status by invading Finland at the start of the war, and paying dearly for their miscalculation, at least for a time.

The Soviet Russians annexed Finnish territory at war’s end, and that’s where Korpi lived. So he’s got his passport and his battered, oversized military truck and he’s aiming to move the logs of his old homestead, where his family was slaughtered, to a new location across the new border.

Ivan doesn’t want him to get away with it.

The stages of his quest are broken into superfluous “chapters” like “Old Enemies,” “Motor Mayhem:” and “Incoming.” The dialogue, almost all of it by a Russian tormentor (Stephen Lang) who commanded the troops who failed to finish off the Finn in the first film, is every bit as pointless.

“Unleash Hell,” like they haven’t already. “Keep your eyes open,” the most worthless command cliche of them all. And “Look at me,” served up as if he isn’t looking at you.

Duels against armored commandos on motorcycles (!?), airborne fighter bombers and the like ensue. Our hero takes another licking and keeps on ticking. The Russians? Let the body count commence, Comrades!

I laughed at a few of the more audacious butcherings, but that was early on. The narrative settles into a slog in the middle acts and no pull-out-the-stops train ride finale could drag it out of the mud.

Rating: R, graphic violence, pretty much start to finish, profanity

Cast: Jorma Tommila, Richard Brake and Stephen Lang.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jalmari Helander. A Screen Gems release.

Running time: 1:29

About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine

Movie Reviews

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Ariana Grande Shines In A Solid But Weaker-Than-The-Original Finale!

Published

2 days ago

November 20, 2025

Press Room

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Ariana Grande Shines In A Solid But Weaker-Than-The-Original Finale!

Wicked: For Good Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jeff Goldblum, Jonathan Bailey, and Michelle Yeoh.

Director: Jon M. Chu

Wicked: For Good Movie Review Out: Solid Performances But Underwhelming Conclusion (Photo Credit – Instagram)

What’s Good: Wicked: For Good is definitely a showpiece when it comes to production values, and so, every single frame is beautiful to look at and the ultimate Wizard of Oz experience when it comes to visuals.

What’s Bad: The film is slower than the first, and it feels, especially when the new songs don’t hit like the ones in the previous instalment ,and dialogue feels like a lot of filler.

Loo Break: Anywhere in the first act, as the film moves so slowly that you can probably go and come back and not miss anything.

Watch or Not?: If you loved the first one, then yes, you need to see this and close the cycle.

Language: English (with subtitles).

Available On: Theaters

Runtime: 137 Minutes

User Rating:

Opening:

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Ariana Grande Shines (Photo Credit – YouTube)

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Script Analysis

Wicked: For Good is a solid film, there is no doubt about that, you just have to look at the powerful visuals, and the entire production value, but the script might be the weakest aspect of the film, especially when it comes to structure and dialogue, which affects the pacing, making the first two acts of this musical epic feel like it could do with a couple more drafts to make the story tighter, and the flow a lot more natural.

As it is, the first two acts move a snail’s pace, and the songs simply don’t match the quality and catchiness of the songs in the first two acts of the first film, here, the songs feel like they are there just to make the film longer, and it is hard to remember one that is simply memorable enough to sing along. Fans of the original musical will probably have a lot more fun with this aspect of the film, but as a newcomer, I did feel a drop in quality on the musical side.

The dialogue also does a lot of damage to the film, as it feels like everything is delivered in two or three lines that are too long, when it could have been conveyed in a simpler and more efficient way. It just doesn’t work, and while the actors do their best, the material doesn’t hold up. Nevertheless, some jokes here and there truly land, and the film does tell a compelling, complete story, which is a lot more than many other films do today.

The third act also feels quite rushed, and the connections to the original Wizard of Oz film, and the characters from that story deserved a lot more, because they are so legendary and iconic, that for some reason this movie feels like it should just move away from them as fast as it can, hurting the overall impact of the story, and the character growth.

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Star Performance

Cynthia Erivo is quite solid in here, and she is plotwise, the main character, but let’s be real, this is the Ariana Grande show, who basically steals the show in every single scenes she is in, not only with her powerful voice but also with her solid acting abilities, she just has it, when it comes to presence, delivery and charisma.

The rest of the cast is quite good. Bailey does some terrifying things in the film and effectively creates all the darkness it needs, while Goldblum’s Oz is just right – nothing to talk about, but definitely his performance, along with the rest from all the other actors, doesn’t hurt the film; it elevates it.

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Movie Lacks Crisp Editing At Places (Photo Credit – YouTube)

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Direction, Music

Jon M. Chu started as a relatively standard director. Still, he has definitely graduated to the big leagues with these two films, as the scale of everything just goes out of the window when it comes to the visuals and the camera’s placement, which is always in the perfect spot to show it. Really, the world-building that Chu and his team have created here is outstanding.

The music, as we said before isn’t as good or memorable as the first film which really hurts the experience because this is a musical and I thought the best was being safe for last in the song department, of course, it will be a matter of taste, as it is everything but this is definitely one of the biggest negative points for the film. Nevertheless, the performers are truly going out of their way to create something extraordinary, so there is really nothing to criticize regarding the actors, dancers and singers themselves.

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Takes Viewers On An Atmospheric Ride (Photo Credit – YouTube)

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: The Last Word

Wicked: For Good closes this adventure in a solid manner, although the overall package feels weaker than the first film, which is disappointing. However, Jon. M. Chu, his team, and his cast demonstrate that they truly care about the project, and it shows on the screen as the film finally delivers on being entertaining, grandiose, and visually stunning. It could have been better, but what is there is truly remarkable.