Movie Reviews

‘Sentimental Value’ Review: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgard and Elle Fanning Illuminate Joachim Trier’s Piercing Reflection on Family and Memory

Published

8 months ago

May 21, 2025

‘Sentimental Value’ Review: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgard and Elle Fanning Illuminate Joachim Trier’s Piercing Reflection on Family and Memory

One of the constants in the intimate films of Joachim Trier is his ability to bring out the very best in his actors. With emotional acuity, he mines their inner lives for truths that seem subcutaneously to connect his cast to his characters. Actors don’t so much play roles in the Danish-Norwegian director’s work as live inside them. His transcendent 2022 feature, The Worst Person in the World, is both a romantic comedy and an anti-rom-com, a close study of a woman navigating a messy transitional period, alive with intergenerational insights and foibles most of us can recognize from some point in our lives.

Trier’s exquisite new film, Sentimental Value (Affeksjonsverdi), shifts its gaze from romantic to familial love, at times harmonious and at others tainted by resentment and anger. The director’s observation of the mutable contracts between sisters, and even more so, fathers and daughters, is intensely affecting in a movie freighted with melancholy but also leavened by surprising notes of humor. As always with Trier’s films, its depth of feeling sneaks up on you without announcing itself.

Sentimental Value

The Bottom Line

Genuine sentiments, fully earned.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
Cast: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgard, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning, Anders Danielsen Lie
Director: Joachim Trier
Screenwriters: Joachim Trier, Eskil Vogt

2 hours 12 minutes

There are faint traces of Bergman in Sentimental Value, but also Chekhov and Ibsen, pulled into a contemporary world where they deepen our understanding of history and memory in relation to the characters. With grace and empathy, it explores the volatile power of art and the cost of making highly personal work, to artists and to the people they have hurt.

That aspect is amplified by the living, breathing presence of an Oslo family home, a place that looks like a fairytale cottage, nestled among the soothing greens of the garden and looking onto expansive views of the city. But it’s also a fortress of sorrow, of pain remembered, embedded in its walls.

Renate Reinsve, the luminous star of The Worst Person in the World, plays Nora, an acclaimed stage actress who pours her anxieties into her taxing roles. As a child, she wrote an essay for class about her family’s house and the history it contains of people who lived there before her, precociously attributing it sentient properties.

A hilarious early scene taps Reinsve’s natural gift for physical chaos comedy as Nora is gripped, not for the first time, by crippling stage fright. She misses her music cue (the portentous opening notes of The Shining’s main title theme) while having a full-scale meltdown and refusing to be coaxed by her director to go on. Kasper Tuxen’s agile camera follows her as she dashes from her dressing room to the backstage area, throwing herself at her fellow company member and married lover Jakob (Anders Danielsen Lie, from Worst Person and earlier Trier films). Tearing at her costume and hair, she pleads with him to fuck her, or failing that, slap her. He opts for the latter.

At their mother’s wake, Nora is the calm one while her normally composed sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), an academic historian, is a mess. Retreating upstairs, Nora listens at the heating grate, just as she did as a child eavesdropping on her parents’ arguments or her therapist mother’s conversations with patients; she is startled to recognize the voice of her father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgard), an unexpected arrival.

A once lauded film director who hit a 15-year fallow patch, Gustav abandoned the family when the girls were young, moving to Sweden and divorcing their mother. The reunion is more than a little awkward. Further complicating matters is the fact that their mother got the house after the divorce, but the papers were never signed, meaning Gustav now owns it.

Trier and his longtime co-writer Eskil Vogt draw us in quickly to the family dynamic, establishing the sly ripples of humor that run through even the darker scenes.

Gustav tells Nora he needs to speak with her while he’s in town, later showing her a script that he says might be the best thing he’s ever written and a great comeback for him as a director. He offers her the lead role of a young mother, transparently based on his own mother’s tragic story, though he denies it.

Nora wants no part of the movie or of him, calling him a drunk who has caused the family nothing but pain. She adds that he has never shown much interest in her work and barely even seen her on stage, which he justifies without apology by saying he doesn’t care for theater.

This is a marvelous role for Skarsgard, who gets to play up Gustav’s self-importance and lack of accountability along with his flirtatious charm as the movie progresses. The theater/film divide seems to confirm Nora’s view of him as the enemy. He doubles down on it later, confessing, “It’s not that I hate theater. I just hate watching it.” Sure enough, he then fails to show at her opening night.

Determined to go ahead with the film, he casts American star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), whom he met while being honored at a film festival. She’s jaded with Hollywood and with the projects she has lined up, roles to which she feels no connection.

Rachel responds emotionally to a screening of the movie that put Gustav on the map many years back, a WWII drama about orphaned Jewish children trying to escape the Nazis that ends on a lingering closeup of a young girl’s haunted face.

That role was played by Agnes, who says the film shoot was the only time she ever got to be at the center of her father’s universe. When he approaches her about putting her son Erik (Oyvind Hesjedal Loven) in the new movie, she instantly refuses, though that doesn’t stop him from going around her to try convincing the boy what fun it would be. The DVD selections that he turns up with as a gift on his grandson’s ninth birthday are priceless. Less kid-friendly films would be hard to find.

Playing an egotist with a roguish appeal to which only his daughters are immune, Skarsgard stirs in wry humor (and a funny Netflix dig) about being an aging arthouse director whose success is behind him. He visits his longtime cinematographer Peter (Lars Väringer) in the swanky house paid for by his work on Lasse Hallström films. But during the 15 years since they last worked together, Peter retired; he’s keen to do the movie, but his frail physical state makes Gustav drop the offer. Gustav later asks his producer Michael (Jesper Christensen), “Am I too old for this?”

Trier and Vogt delicately layer in allusions to grief and sadness being passed down to successive generations, both in scenes Gustav rehearses with Rachel and archival records Agnes finds of her grandmother, who was tried for treason, imprisoned and tortured during the German occupation.

Despite the frequent touches of humor, the movie’s swirling mix of past and present builds pathos, yielding one of Trier’s characteristic stylized flourishes in which the faces of multiple generations wash over each other, staring into the camera as one person morphs into the next.

Around this time, Rachel starts to feel uncomfortable about doing the film, realizing it’s not her story to tell. In one of the movie’s loveliest scenes, she approaches Gustav about pulling out; he shows her more paternal fondness than he’s probably ever shown his daughters. Skarsgard is unexpectedly moving as Gustav acknowledges to himself the ways he failed his family, his arrogant certainty abruptly falling away.

There are gorgeous moments late in the movie between the sisters that indicate how their roles have switched since childhood. Nora looked after Agnes when they were girls, but Agnes now serves as protector of her more fragile sister, just as she took on caregiver responsibilities with their dying mother. As wonderful as Reinsve is, Ibsdotter Lilleaas, who’s mostly unknown outside Norway, matches her every emotional beat. “How did it happen?” Nora asks Agnes. “You turned out fine and I’m fucked up.”

Unlike the Hollywood version of this story — the kind of script Rachel Kemp might have passed on — there’s no neat and tidy reconciliation. But Trier keeps tricks up his sleeve that provide surprises and leave open a window just enough to let in a sliver of hope.

For what might have been a standard family melodrama in less capable hands, Sentimental Value is uncommonly rich in emotional rewards and contemplative in its reflections on the places where we live becoming a permanent repository for our memories, remaining there even after we move on. The movie’s poignancy accumulates gradually, every supple turn expertly modulated as the presence of generations past becomes more tangible.

Cinematographer Tuxon (who also shot Worst Person) takes great advantage of the crystalline Scandinavian light, giving the chamber piece a panoramic amplitude. As always, Trier makes beguiling music choices, deep cuts that gently help shape the mood — the way he did with the Harry Nilsson songs and Art Garfunkel’s “Waters of March” cover in Worst Person.

Here, he bookends the movie with two songs brimming with tenderness and warmth: Terry Callier’s “Dancing Girl” and Labi Siffre’s “Cannock Chase.” Anyone whose soundtrack selections run from Roxy Music to Michael Nyman, New Order to Pastor T.L. Barrett & the Youth for Christ Choir, makes you want to score an invite to explore their album collection.

The whole cast is superb, but it’s especially gladdening to see Reinsve working again with a director who draws out every ounce of raw feeling in her, but also makes you think — even in this often dark and predominantly dramatic context — how good she might be in screwball comedy.

One scene comes to mind that’s just a delight, when Nora and Agnes are in the house sorting through things, deciding what they might want to take as keepsakes.

Nora chooses a vase that Agnes wanted and when they see Gustav arriving with Rachel through the window, Nora backs out of the room like a bad driver, almost smashing the vase but catching it in time, running out the back door, across the yard and through a gap in the fence still clutching it. As she walks briskly toward the camera it seems like perfect continuity with her character Julie running in The Worst Person in the World.

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Movie Reviews

‘Greenland 2: Migration’ Review: Gerard Butler in a Post-Apocalyptic Sequel That’s Exactly What You Expect

Published

9 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

‘Greenland 2: Migration’ Review: Gerard Butler in a Post-Apocalyptic Sequel That’s Exactly What You Expect

Desperate migrants are forced to leave Greenland after a malevolent force makes their island uninhabitable. No, it’s not tomorrow’s headline about Donald Trump, but rather the sequel to Ric Roman Waugh’s 2020 post-apocalyptic survival thriller. That film starring Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin had the misfortune of opening during the pandemic and going straight to VOD. Greenland 2: Migration (now there’s a catchy title) has the benefit of opening in theaters, but it truly feels like an unnecessary follow-up. After all, how many travails can one poor family take?

That family consists of John Garrity (Butler), whose structural engineering skills designated him a governmental candidate for survival in the wake of an interstellar comet dubbed “Clarke” wreaking worldwide destruction; his wife Allison (Baccarin); and their son Nathan (now played by Roman Griffin Davis). At the end of the first film, the clan had endured numerous life-threatening crises as they made their way to the underground bunker in Greenland where survivors will attempt to make a new life.

Greenland 2: Migration

The Bottom Line

It’s the end of the world as we know it…again.

Release date: Friday, January 9
Cast: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roman Griffin Davis, Amber Rose Revah, Sophie Thompson, Trond Fausa Aurvag, William Abadie
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Screenwriters: Mitchell LaFortune, Chris Sparling

Rated PG-13,
1 hour 38 minutes

Five years later, things aren’t going so well. Fragments of the comet continue to rain down on the planet, causing catastrophic destruction. The contaminated air prevents people from going outside, and resources are becoming increasingly scarce. But there are some plus sides, such as the bunker’s inhabitants still being able to dance to yacht rock.

When their safe haven in Greenland is destroyed, the Garritys, along with a few other survivors, are forced to flee. Their destination is France, where there are rumors of an oasis at the comet’s original crash site. And at the very least, the food is bound to be better.

It’s a perilous journey, but anyone who saw the first film knows what to expect. The Garritys, along with the bunker’s Dr. Casey (Amber Rose Revah), run into some very bad people, undergoing a series of life-threatening trials and tribulations.

Unfortunately, while the thriller mechanics are reasonably well orchestrated by director Waugh (Angel Has Fallen, Kandahar) in his fourth collaboration with Butler, Greenland 2: Migration feels as redundant as its title. While the first film featured a relatively original premise and some genuine emotional dynamics in its suspenseful situations, this one just feels rote. And while it’s made clear that the crisis has resulted in people resorting to cutthroat, deadly means to ensure their survival, the Garritys have it relatively easy. All John has to do is adopt a puppy-dog look, put a pleading tone in his voice, beg for his family’s help, and people inevitably comply.

To be fair, the film contains some genuinely arresting scenes, including one set in a practically submerged Liverpool and another in a dried-up English Channel. The latter provides the opportunity for a harrowing sequence in which the family is forced to cross a giant ravine on a treacherously fragile rope ladder.

Butler remains a sturdy screen presence, his Everyman quality lending gravitas to his character. Baccarin, whose character serves as the story’s moral conscience (early in the proceedings she spearheads a fight to open the shelter to more refugees despite the lack of resources, delivering a not-so-subtle message), more than matches his impact. William Abadie (of Emily in Paris) also makes a strong impression as a Frenchman who briefly takes the family in and begs them to take his daughter Camille (Nelia Valery de Costa) along with them.

Resembling the sort of B-movie fantasy adventure, with serviceable but unremarkable special effects, that used to populate multiplexes in the early ‘70s, Greenland 2: Migration is adequate January filler programming. The only thing it’s missing is dinosaurs.

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: A real-life ’70s hostage drama crackles in Gus Van Sant’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’

Published

21 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Movie Review: A real-life ’70s hostage drama crackles in Gus Van Sant’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’

It plays a little loose with facts but the righteous rage of “Dog Day Afternoon” is present enough in Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire,” a based-on-a-true-tale hostage thriller that’s as deeply 1970s as it is contemporary.

In February 1977, Tony Kiritsis walked into the Meridian Mortgage Company in downtown Indianapolis and took one of its executives, Dick Hall, hostage. Kiritsis held a sawed-off shotgun to the back of Hall’s head and draped a wire around his neck that connected to the gun. If he moved too much, he would die.

The subsequent standoff moved to Kiritsis’ apartment and eventually concluded in a live televised news conference. The whole ordeal received some renewed attention in a 2022 podcast dramatization starring Jon Hamm.

But in “Dead Man’s Wire,” starring Bill Skarsgård as Kiritsis, these events are vividly brought to life by Van Sant. It’s been seven years since Van Sant directed, following 2018’s “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot,” and one of the prevailing takeaways of his new film is that that’s too long of a break for a filmmaker of Van Sant’s caliber.

Working from a script by Austin Kolodney, the filmmaker of “My Own Private Idaho” and “Good Will Hunting” turns “Dead Man’s Wire” into not a period-piece time capsule but a bracingly relevant drama of outrage and inequality. Tony feels aggrieved by his mortgage company over a land deal the bank, he claims, blocked. We’re never given many specifics, but at the same time, there’s little doubt in “Dead Man’s Wire” that Tony’s cause is just. His means might be desperate and abhorrent, but the movie is very definitely on his side.

That’s owed significantly to Skarsgård, who gives one of his finest and least adorned performances. While best known for films like “It,” “The Crow” and “Nosferatu,” here Skarsgård has little more than some green polyester and a very ’70s mustache to alter his looks. The straightforward, jittery intensity of his performance propels “Dead Man’s Wire.”

Yet Van Sant’s film aspires to be a larger ensemble drama, which it only partially succeeds at. Tony’s plight is far from a solitary one, as numerous threads suggest in Kolodney’s fast-paced script. First and foremost is Colman Domingo as a local DJ named Fred Temple. (If ever there were an actor suited, with a smooth baritone, to play a ’70s radio DJ, it’s Domingo.) Tony, a fan, calls Fred to air his demands. But it’s not just a media outlet for him. Fred touts himself as “the voice of the people.”

Something similar could be said of Tony, who rapidly emerges as a kind of folk hero. As much as he tortures his hostage (a very good Dacre Montgomery), he’s kind to the police officers surrounding him. And as he and Dick spend more time together, Dick emerges as a kind of victim, himself. It’s his father’s bank, and when Tony gets M.L. Hall (Al Pacino) on the phone, he sounds painfully insensitive, sooner ready to sacrifice his son than acknowledge any wrongdoing.

Pacino’s presence in “Dead Man’s Wire” is a nod to “Dog Day Afternoon,” a movie that may be far better — but, then again, that’s true of most films in comparison to Sidney Lumet’s unsurpassed 1975 classic. Still, Van Sant’s film bears some of the same rage and disillusionment with the meatgrinder of capitalism as “Dog Day.”

There’s also a telling, if not entirely successful subplot of a local TV news reporter (Myha’la) struggling against stereotypes. Even when she gets the goods on the unspooling news story, the way her producer says to “chop it up” and put it on air makes it clear: Whatever Tony is rebelling against, it’s him, not his plight, that will be served up on a prime-time plate.

It doesn’t take recent similar cases of national fascination, such as Luigi Mangione, charged with killing a healthcare executive, to see contemporary echoes of Kiritsis’ tale. The real story is more complicated and less metaphor-ready, of course, than the movie, which detracts some from the film’s gritty sense of verisimilitude. Staying closer to the truth might have produced a more dynamic movie.

But “Dead Man’s Wire” still works. In the film, Tony’s demands are $5 million and an apology. It’s clear the latter means more to him than the money. The tragedy in “Dead Man’s Wire” is just how elusive “I’m sorry” can be.

“Dead Man’s Wire,” a Row K Entertainment release, is rated R for language throughout. Running time: 105 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Movie Reviews

Film review: IS THIS THING ON? Plus January special screenings

Published

1 day ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Is This Thing On?

Cinematic stories of disintegrating marriages are fairly commonplace—and often depressing emotional endurance tests, besides—so it’s interesting to see co-writer/director Bradley Cooper take this variation on the theme in a fresher direction. The unhappy couple in this place is Alex and Tess Novak (Will Arnett and Laura Dern), who decide matter-of-factly to separate. Then Alex impulsively decides to get up on stage at an open-mic comedy night, and starts turning their relationship issues into material. The premise would seem to suggest an uneven balance towards Alex’s perspective, but the script is just as interested in Tess—a former Olympic-level volleyball player who retired to focus on motherhood—searching for her own purpose. And the narrative takes a provocative twist when their individual sparks of renewed happiness lead them towards something resembling an affair with their own spouse. The screenplay faces a challenge common to movies about comedians in that Alex’s material, even once he’s supposed to be actively working on it, isn’t particularly good, and Cooper isn’t particularly restrained in his own supporting performance as the comic-relief buddy character (who is called “Balls,” if that provides any hints). Yet the two lead performances are terrific—particularly Dern, who nails complex facial expressions upon her first encounter with Alex’s act—as Cooper and company turn this narrative into an exploration of how it can seem that you’ve fallen out of love with your partner, when what you’ve really fallen out of love with is the rest of your life. Available Jan. 9 in theaters. (R)

JANUARY SPECIAL SCREENINGS

KRCL’s Music Meets Movies: Dig! XX @ Brewvies: As part of a farewell to Sundance, Brewvies/KRCL’s regular Music Meets Movies series presents the extended 20th anniversary edition of the 2004 Sundance documentary about the rivalry between the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre as they chart different music-biz paths. The screening takes place at Brewvies (677 S. 200 West) on Jan. 8 @ 7:30 p.m., $10 at the door or 2-for-1 with KRCL shirt. brewvies.com

Trent Harris weekend @ SLFS: Utah’s own Trent Harris has charted a singular course as an independent filmmaker, and you can catch two of his most (in)famous works at Salt Lake Film Society. In 1991’s Rubin & Ed, two mismatched souls—one an eccentric, isolated young man (Crispin Glover), the other a middle-aged financial scammer—wind up on a comedic road trip through the Utah desert; 1995’s Plan 10 from Outer Space turns Mormon theology into a crazy science-fiction parody. Get a double dose of uncut Trent Harris weirdness on Friday, Jan. 9, with Rubin & Ed at 7 p.m. and Plan 10 from Outer Space at 9 p.m. Tickets are $13.75 for each screening. slfs.org

Rob Reiner retrospective @ Brewvies Sunday Brunch: Last month’s tragic passing of actor/director Rob Reiner reminded people of his extraordinary work, particularly his first handful of features. Brewvies’ regular “Sunday Brunch” series showcases three of these films this month with This Is Spinal Tap (Jan. 11), The Princess Bride (Jan. 18) and Stand By Me (Jan. 25). All screenings are free with no reservations, on a first-come first-served basis, at noon each day. brewvies.com

David Lynch retrospective @ SLFS: It’s been a year since the passing of groundbreaking artist David Lynch, and Salt Lake Film Society’s Broadway Centre Cinemas marks the occasion with some of his greatest filmed work. In addition to theatrical features Eraserhead (Jan. 11), Inland Empire (Jan. 11), Mulholland Dr. (Jan. 12), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Jan. 14), Blue Velvet (Jan. 19) and Lost Highway (Jan. 19), you can experience the entirety of 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return on the big screen in two-episode blocs Jan. 16 – 18. The programming also includes the 2016 documentary David Lynch: The Art Life. slfs.org

Death by Numbers @ Utah Film Center: Directed by Kim A. Snyder (the 2025 Sundance feature documentary The Librarians), this 2024 Oscar-nominated documentary short focuses on Sam Fuentes, survivor of a school shooting who attempts to process her experience through poetry. This special screening features a live Q&A with Terri Gilfillan and Nancy Farrar-Halden of Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah, with Zoom participation by Sam Fuentes. The screening on Wednesday, Jan. 14 at 7 p.m. at Utah Film Center (375 W. 400 North) is free with registration at the website.