Movie Reviews
‘Queer’ Review: Daniel Craig Burns a Hole in the Screen With Obsessive Desire in Luca Guadagnino’s Trippy Gay Odyssey
The jazzy experimental style of the Beat Generation writers has made their work notoriously tricky to adapt for the screen. Walter Salles’ On the Road, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Howl and David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch took stabs at it with varying degrees of success. John Krokidas’ under-appreciated Kill Your Darlings arguably came closer to capturing the rebellious energy of the literary movement by tracing a formative episode in the lives of the writers themselves. In Queer, Luca Guadagnino meets William S. Burroughs on the iconoclast’s own slippery terms and the result is mesmerizing.
Working again with Justin Kuritzkes, his screenwriter on Challengers, Guadagnino paints an evocative picture of ex-pat ennui in post-World War II Mexico City, establishing the foundations of a love story grounded in realism before shifting into fantasy as the narrative becomes a drug-addled mosaic. The film was acquired ahead of its Venice premiere by A24, which is planning a release later this year.
Queer
The Bottom Line Drifts hypnotically between realism and hallucination.
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
Cast: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Screenwriter: Justin Kuritzkes, based on the novel by William S. Burroughs
2 hours 15 minutes
Written in the early ‘50s while Burroughs was awaiting trial for the allegedly accidental homicide of his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer, but not published until 1985, the novel is practically a memoir, given how closely it hews to events in the author’s diaries and letters.
The book sits squarely between Junkie and Naked Lunch in chronicling the experiences with opioid addiction of Burroughs’ alter ego, William Lee. But Queer perhaps is the most revealing of the three books about the writer himself, depicting Lee’s unraveling, possessed by desire and corrosive need. The object of that obsession is Eugene Allerton, a fresh-faced American ex-military kid inspired by Adelbert Lewis Marker, who was 21 when he and Burroughs met.
It’s hard to think of a more ideal director than Guadagnino to explore queerness, sensuality and the shifting terrain of romantic intoxication, and he’s found the perfect traveling companion in Daniel Craig. In a transfixing performance that balances colorful affectation with raw hunger, the actor makes Lee a magnetic raconteur whose shield of worldly composure falls away as Eugene (Drew Starkey) eludes his grasp, leaving him a virtual ghost by the end of the film.
In Mexico City to escape charges of heroin possession in the U.S., Lee indulges his drug habit with whatever he can get, while trying to write but more often spending time strolling the streets, drinking in a charged atmosphere of brothels and cock fights and bars captured in granular panoramic splendor by DP Sayombhu Mukdeeprom.
Aside from some second-unit work, the movie was shot entirely at Cinecittà, with sets constructed on the historic Rome studio backlot. (Queer marks the second major film this year to recreate Mexico on European soundstages, following Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez.)
Lee is a fixture at the Ship Ahoy bar, floating among the queer American ex-patriate community but maintaining a real friendship seemingly only with Joe, who’s unwilling to give up his taste for rough trade over anything as inconsequential as getting assaulted or robbed. Played by an unrecognizable Jason Schwartzman, Joe could almost be an Allen Ginsberg surrogate, spinning low-key hilarious accounts of his sexual adventures. When a dalliance with a cop turns sour and he finds “El Puto Gringo” scrawled on an exterior wall of his home, he shrugs, “I left it there. It pays to advertise.”
Lee pulls his share of young tricks, both Americans and Mexicans, but when lanky, bespectacled Eugene catches his eye on the street, he’s bewitched. At first, their flirtatious glances are a playful cat-and-mouse game. Lee strikes out in his initial attempts to connect, but Eugene gradually starts fraternizing with him at bars.
They go to a movie theater to see Cocteau’s Orpheus, where Guadagnino finds a gorgeous visual translation for Burroughs’ description of Lee as he imagines caressing and kissing Eugene, with “ectoplasmic fingers” and “phantom thumbs.” Also lifted directly from the novel is a moving image soon after, when Lee in his mind leans in close to the younger man, appearing “curiously spectral, as though you could see through his face.”
Though the connection does eventually extend to the physical, it’s more a question of Lee servicing Eugene and the latter surprising him by reciprocating, albeit with impersonal detachment. While Eugene is sufficiently bi-curious to express interest in the gay bars around town, there’s no indication that he’s had sex with men before, or that he enjoys it. But Lee perseveres, convincing him to accompany him to South America, covering all costs and bargaining for intimacy once or twice a week.
Burroughs purists might scoff, but it lends credibility and warmth to the trajectory of this transactional relationship that Guadagnino and Kuritzkes have sanded down some of Lee’s more abrasive edges from the novel — his patronizing attitudes toward Mexicans for one. Craig looks both seedy and elegant, louche and dashing in his linen suits and fedora. You can understand a youth being dazzled by Lee’s “routines,” flavorful anecdotes full of seductive conversational flourishes.
While Craig makes this loquacious side of the character highly entertaining, he’s also superb at showing Lee’s unaccustomed self-exposure, his aching need for human contact increasing his vulnerability as his addiction to Eugene becomes chronic. With illuminating new self-knowledge comes crippling weakness, something Craig fully conveys in a ballsy performance covering a broad psychological and emotional spectrum.
Once they depart Mexico, drug withdrawals leave Lee weak and shivering, clinging to every tenuous sign that Eugene cares for him. Playing a withholding character, Starkey deftly keeps an air of mystery around that question though he never risks being perceived as a mere user. Despite being ambivalent about the sex, his irritation is tempered by compassion for hopelessly consumed Lee. The actor quietly sizzles in the high-waisted trousers and knit shirts of the time; Eugene wears his preppy wardrobe with a natural panache about which he seems oblivious.
The purpose of the South America trip is to find a plant-derived hallucinogen called yagé, more commonly known as ayahuasca, which Lee believes can trigger powers of telepathic divination. This takes them into the Ecuadorian jungle to meet wildly eccentric, stringy-haired American botanist Dr. Cotter, who lives in a hut with her younger male companion (Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso) and a sloth. (Another of Guadagnino’s directing contemporaries, David Lowery, appears earlier as one of Lee’s bar acquaintances.)
The botanist is played to the hilt by Lesley Manville (also unrecognizable), feral and ferocious, packing a pistol lest anyone try to make off with her precious research material. Lee assures her in his disarming way that they just want to sample the brew, which she warns them is a mirror, not a portal to another place.
Psychedelic tripping scenes in movies often tend to be embarrassing. But Guadagnino knows what he’s doing, folding together body horror elements reminiscent of his Suspiria remake — if you want to see two men literally vomit up their hearts, you’re in the right place — with an almost balletic union between Lee and Eugene that’s as spiritual as it is carnal.
Cotter encourages them to stick around and see where more of the drug could take them, but they decline. As they leave, she tells Eugene: “The door is already open. You can’t close it.” Those cryptic words hang in the air of a haunting epilogue with Lee back in Mexico City two years later, in which the images of Eugene in his head become enmeshed with Burroughs’ own traumatic history with Vollmer.
This is Guadagnino’s fourth collaboration with gifted Thai cinematographer Mukdeeprom; it’s heady and beautiful, finding dreamy visual poetry even in tawdriness and squalor. The air seems pervaded by palpable strains of both sensuality and desolation. The period production and costume design (respectively Stefano Baisi and Jonathan Anderson) clearly have been meticulously curated but have a lived-in feel that gives the movie as much grit as elegance.
After their pounding beats energized Challengers, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross shift gears with a score drenched in melancholy feeling, shaping the mood along with invigorating blasts of non-period tracks by New Order, Nirvana, Sinéad O’Connor and Prince, among others. Those bold choices are typical of Guadagnino’s sure hand throughout this strange, beguiling film, fueled by tenderness, loneliness, lust and swooning unrequited love.
2/5 stars
Guilt proves to be a powerful trigger for a retired bomb disposal expert in the Taiwanese action thriller 96 Minutes, when his past mistakes prove every bit as deadly as a bomb planted on board a cross-country express train.
Austin Lin Po-hung stars as Kang-ren, still haunted by his failure to prevent a deadly department store bomb attack three years earlier, whose past catches up with him at high speed after attending a memorial service for the victims.
Travelling back to the capital with the other attendees, Captain Li (Lee Lee-zen), who was Kang-ren’s boss, receives an anonymous message warning that there is a bomb on board set to detonate in exactly 96 minutes, or if any attempt is made to stop the vehicle or unload its passengers.
Clues point to the bomber being on either their train or the one that left a few minutes prior. Both are filled with grieving relatives, scarred survivors, as well as Kang-ren’s own mother (Lu Hsueh-feng) and fiancée (Vivian Sung Yun-hua).
With the clock ticking, the police must find the device, identify the bomber and save the day before either train hurtles into Taipei station.
Movie Reviews
Review | Another World: macabre human fable is a new milestone for Hong Kong animation
4/5 stars
Hong Kong filmmakers rarely get as philosophical about the human condition as they do in the animated feature Another World, which contemplates the limits of goodness in the face of great evil, set against a vibrant action fantasy backdrop.
Although the film’s focus on reincarnation appears to align it with Eastern religions, Another World’s belief in kindness renders it a universally engaging watch. Young children should stay away, however, as they might be scarred by some of the shockingly grisly moments in this macabre tale.
Leading us into the afterlife is one of its spirit guides, Gudo (voiced by Chung Suet-ying), who is tasked with helping deceased souls let go of their memories and escorting them past a magical waterfall into the next life – all the while making sure the “seed of evil” inside each of them, if any, does not sprout out of resentment.
His latest charge is a girl named Yuri (Christy Choi Hiu-tung), whose pure and lively character fascinates Gudo. Yuri is initially not aware that she has died and is instead persistent in her search for her younger brother, whose fate remains unknown for much of the runtime.
Movie Reviews
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t Movie Reviews Are In – And There’s One Clear Critics’ Consensus
The first critics’ reactions to Now You See Me: Now You Don’t are finally here, and they largely agree that the Lionsgate threequel is another major hit. After being stuck in development, the highly anticipated Now You See Me Sequel will finally arrive in theaters on November 14, 2025, continuing the story of the iconic Four Horsemen, illusionists and street magicians who are experts in orchestrating elaborate heists.
In Now You See Me‘s third installment, the Four Horsemen recruit three skilled illusionists for another heist involving the world’s largest queen diamond before finding it belongs to a powerful crime syndicate. The hype surrounding the movie is poised to rise after the first wave of reactions had high praise for the project.
Critics who saw an early screening of Now You See Me: Now You Don’t in New York shared their first reactions on X. The threequel received largely positive reactions, with nearly all critics saying that it is thoroughly entertaining and fun.
Film critic Andre Saint-Albin described the film as “a sleight-of-hand masterpiece,” noting that Now You See Me 3 has an “entertaining story” and a “phenomenal diamond heist.” He also teased that the film has an “epic” third act while also praising the new casting additions:
“‘Now You See Me: Now You Don’t’ is a sleight-of-hand masterpiece! The Four Horsemen (Eisenberg, Harrelson, Franco, Fisher) return for their next trick with an entertaining story & a phenomenal diamond heist. Smith, Sessa & Greenblatt plant the seeds as Gen-Z firebrands, clashing with old-school magic. New seeds, old tricks, epic third act! Fleischer’s directs a ride so good fun you’d swear it was sorcery!”
Entertainment reporter Jonathan Sim boldly claimed that Now You See Me: Now You Don’t is a “funny, thrilling heist movie” and teased that it was “filled with surprises:”
“#NowYouSeeMe: Now You Don’t gives us the magic we’ve been waiting for. A funny, thrilling heist movie. The Horsemen are back in action with non-stop fun, tricks, and joy. The new characters are an A+ addition. Filled with surprises and just as dazzling and astonishing as ever.”
While Critics Choice’s Tony Mosello admitted that it’s more of the same, he said that fans will love Now You See Me: Now You Don’t due to its fun “twists and surprises, with elevated stakes:”
“NOW YOU SEE ME: NOW YOU DON’T proves the original Horsemen still have “it”, injecting the show with youthful energy via the newcomers and a fun, campy, and villainous Rosamund Pike. Full of twists and surprises, with elevated stakes; it’s more of the same, but fans will LOVE it.”
CinemaBlend’s Riley Utley shared that the threequel made her “smile from ear to ear,” and the movie reminded her why the first movie made her fall in love with films in the first place:
“‘Now You See Me: Now You Don’t’ reiterates with exclamation points why the first ‘Now You See’ movie was one of the projects that made me fall in love with movies. There’s nothing better than projects that make me smile from ear to ear, blow my mind and make it clear why movies are magic.”
That Hashtag Show’s Manny Gomez praised how the latest Now You See entry allowed the original cast to “set the stage for the new magicians to shine:”
“#NowYouSeeMe is a fun addition to the franchise that allows the beloved cast to set the stage for the new magicians to shine. Loved the magic… misdirection… and twists and turns that make going to the movies fun.”
The Direct’s David Thompson was proud to declare that the “magic is back” in the Now You See Me franchise after seeing that the third installment was filled with “some satisfying twists and turns:”
“Happy to report the magic is BACK in the #NowYouSeeMe franchise — loved the new cast, a bunch of fun sequences, & some satisfying twists and turns.”
Film critic and The Film Blerds host Brandon Norwood said that fans of the series will definitely “love” Now You See Me: Now You Don’t because it is “thoroughly entertaining:”
“NOW YOU SEE ME: NOW YOU DON’T: Thoroughly entertaining! The younger cast mixes in well with the OGs. Fans of the series, you’ll love this. Really miss mid-budget studio popcorn fare like this.”
Popternative’s Christopher Gallardo enjoyed the latest Now You See Me entry and described it as a “new-gen rivals old-gen story” that has a special flair:
“NOW YOU SEE ME: NOW YOU DON’T is an exciting thrill-ride with all the tricks and dazzle you’d want. It’s a ‘new-gen rivals old-gen’ story with a special flair that shines with it’s fun cast chemistry. Sessa, Greenblatt, and Smith especially rock all throughout!”
FandomWire’s PossesSEAN gave high praise to the movie’s “impressively staged set pieces,” calling the threequel a “great popcorn movie:”
“#NowYouSeeMe: NOW YOU DON’T was catnip for me — another exhilarating, funny caper with some of the most impressively staged set pieces of the year. A great blend of old and new that effectively ups the stakes and scale. What a great popcorn movie!”
Ethan Simmie of The Movie Draft Podcast admitted that Now You See Me: Now You Don’t went “full Mission: Impossible mode,” with him celebrating the fact that it was “some of the most fun” he’s had at the movies this year:
“NOW YOU SEE ME: NOW YOU DON’T is some of the most fun I’ve had at the movies all year! This entry goes full Mission: Impossible mode and is hilarious, entertaining, and perfectly meta. I could watch one of these every single year forever. We really do come to the movies for magic.”
Directed by Ruben Fleischer, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t is one of the 12 biggest sequels in 2025. The movie has a stacked cast, including Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, and Dave Franco. They are joined by newcomers Justice Smith, Ariana Greenblatt, Dominic Sessa, and Rosamund Pike. Now You See Me: Now You Don’t will premiere in theaters on November 14, 2025.
Now You See Me 3’s Success Could Lead to Franchise’s Promising Future
Based on the first wave of reactions, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t seems poised for success, which is good for the franchise’s future. Moreover, widespread critical praise could boost the movie’s box office returns.
The long wait for Now You See Me: Now You Don’t could be seen as an advantage because it offers a sense of nostalgia to original fans. The nine-year gap also allowed the movie’s writers to strike an ideal balance, crafting intricate heists while establishing seamless chemistry between the returning cast and new additions.
If successful, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t could lead to future installments or potential spin-offs. With prequel entries to many recognizable franchises like Alien: Earth (read more about Season 2 here) and It: Welcome to Derry finding success in streaming, the threequel’s triumph at the box office could push Lionsgate to explore a spin-off focusing on the younger versions of the Horsemen.
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