Tight as a drum and almost nauseatingly suspenseful, Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5 presents an unexpected angle on a familiar event. The violent standoff at the 1972 Munich Olympics, which saw the Palestinian terror group Black September take a group of Israeli athletes hostage — an incident that resulted in the shocking deaths of all the captives and most of the captors — has been well documented on film, most notably in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated 2005 drama Munich. Fehlbaum returns to the event via its on-the-ground transmission: the ABC sports team that, while providing round-the-clock live coverage of the Olympics that year, suddenly found itself in one of the biggest, most dramatic news events of its time.

This approach is filled with potential pitfalls. At heart it’s kind of an underdog story, about sports guys, chroniclers of the frivolous, punching above their weight when given the opportunity. Make it too much of one, however, and you undermine the deadly gravity of the situation. At one point, network headquarters suggests to ABC sports chief Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) that they let the news team handle this one, and he refuses; his guys found the story, they have access to the satellite link, and they’re the ones on the ground. Sarsgaard, who gave his greatest performance more than two decades ago in another true-life journalism drama, Shattered Glass, once again captures the right pitch for this type of role: a soft-spoken single-mindedness that can quickly shift to outrage or bewilderment as the situation demands. You can imagine this guy, with those seemingly kind eyes that also look like they could slice right through you, leading a newsroom. (The actor, who won the Volpi Cup at Venice last year for Memory, probably deserves a bit more recognition these days as one of the best we’ve got.)

The movie stays largely within the confines of ABC’s remote studio in Munich, which Fehlbaum and his crew have scrupulously re-created, reportedly down to the tiniest details. Its dark, cramped corridors and control rooms absorb the sinister mood of the events happening outside; every decision begins to feel like a life-and-death matter, even though in many of these cases it’s just journalists and technicians pressing buttons and saying words. Much of the suspense derives from the ways that the studio crew, led by Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) and Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), figures out how to cover the unfolding story, from tapping into radio frequencies being used by the police to dressing up a crew member as an athlete so he can smuggle canisters of film in and out of the now-cordoned-off Olympic Village. At 94 minutes, the film races by, but it also demonstrates a patience and fascination with the process — with the whirr of tape reels, the tangle of cables, the lumbering weight of cameras — that enhances the tension. By focusing so intently on this particular group of people covering this broader event, Fehlbaum finds his way into an otherwise pre-determined drama. We know what happened at Munich, yet we find ourselves living through the events as if their outcome was unwritten.

The film also takes on the quality of a conjuring. Fehlbaum has also remained ruthlessly faithful to the facts, interweaving acres of real, contemporaneous television footage with this modern-day reconstruction, so that his actors are interacting with actual images from the era. When they talk to the legendary sportscaster Jim McKay, we’re seeing the actual McKay (who died in 2008) as if he were responding in real time; when an Israeli athlete who got away from the kidnappers comes into the studio for an interview, we’re seeing the real guy. That may not sound like such a dramatic aesthetic gambit, but the incorporation is so thorough, so constant, that the movie starts to feel like a conversation with the past. Which it is: We forget, perhaps, that the presence of Israeli athletes at Munich was a big deal in 1972, just a generation and a half removed from World War II, in a landscape where the shadow of the Holocaust still loomed large.

Of course, September 5 comes at a time when it’s bound to become part of another conversation, about what’s currently happening in Palestine. The film serves as an important reminder that civilians have died on both sides of this conflict for decades — that nobody anywhere, really, has a monopoly on the murder of innocents. And while September 5 was filmed before the events of October 7 and Israel’s subsequent attack on the Gaza Strip and beyond, the filmmakers didn’t walk into this guilelessly; the struggle in the Middle East might sometimes exit the news cycle, especially in the U.S., but it’s been an ongoing debacle for most of our lifetimes.

The hermetically sealed quality of Fehlbaum’s film perhaps prevents us from reading too much into it about contemporary politics — or maybe it invites us to read whatever we want. But of course, such a framing can itself reveal the real-time political machinery of a historical event. Within this heated environment, we see how attitudes and language become codified. At one point, there’s even an internal conversation about whether to refer to the Black September captors as “terrorists.” We know how that one turned out. September 5 reminds us — as did Munich, as does No Other Land, for that matter — that it’s the drip, drip, drip of small, seemingly minor decisions and actions that wind up determining how we see, experience, and understand history.

A still from ‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’
| Photo Credit: Warner Bros

There’s always been a curious magnetism to Middle Earth’s rich mythology of untold tales — the whispered legends tucked into appendices, or the histories that get only a fleeting nod in Tolkien’s pages. The War of the Rohirrim, the latest foray into this hallowed realm, takes up the challenge of unearthing one such story: the origin of Helm’s Deep, the fortress whose name alone conjures echoes of Peter Jackson’s grandiose battle sequence. 

There’s also a peculiar kind of pressure that comes with adapting Tolkien. You’re tending to the sacred flame of geekdom, stewarding a world whose fan base makes the Uruk’s look tame. Kenji Kamiyama’s anime feature is not so much a gallant charge into this rarely-charted territory as it is a cautious trot down a well-worn path, with just enough novelty to justify its existence and plenty of fodder for those who find Middle Earth’s cinematic ubiquity exhausting.

Set two centuries before the Fellowship’s arduous quest, The War of the Rohirrim focuses on Héra (voiced by Gaia Wise), the spirited daughter of Rohan’s king Helm Hammerhand (voiced with gravelly gravitas by Brian Cox). Héra is a proto-Éowyn — a horse-riding, sword-swinging shieldmaiden who dreams of defying patriarchal expectations. She is everything Tolkien’s women were often not: a warrior with a strong arc, albeit one that doesn’t quite escape the pull of predictability.

A still from ‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’
| Photo Credit:
Warner Bros

Crafted by a fellowship of writers including Philippa Boyens (a veteran of Jackson’s trilogy), the screenplay tries valiantly to inject her with a sense of agency, yet she remains curiously adrift, and more of a narrative device to tie together a tale of revenge and ruin.

Revenge, in fact, is the film’s driving force. The plot kicks off when Helm accidentally one-punches a rival lord to the afterlife during some testosterone-charged negotiations. The man’s son, Wulf, swears vengeance. He is your standard-issue villain  — brooding, snarling, and single-mindedly set on destruction. 

Wulf’s siege on Helm’s Deep — the iconic fortress not yet mythologized by Gandalf’s epic third-act cavalry charge in The Two Towers — forms the better part of the story. It spans a bitter winter with an extended set piece that Kamiyama renders with a painterly menace: snow-swept battlements, dwindling supplies, and a creeping sense of doom that evokes a slow-burning dread. It’s grim, atmospheric, and at times hauntingly beautiful. 

But then the characters start talking, and the spell breaks. Over the second act, the quality of the dialogue takes a plunge off the deep end and veers into clunky exposition, robbing the quieter moments of their power, sort of like watching the Battle of the Pelennor Fields with an LOTR nerd pausing every five minutes to explain why their favourite character is an inanimate siege weapon (guilty).

Visually, The War of the Rohirrim is an intriguing paradox. Its multi-dimensional animation recalls the tactile wonders of Jackson’s films, with sweeping vistas and intricate details that pay homage to Middle Earth’s grandeur. Kamiyama’s Rohan also shares an unmistakable kinship with Ghibli. The windswept plains, dotted with lone riders against an endless horizon, feel like they’ve galloped straight out of Nausicaä. Héra’s rebellion against her father’s ironclad ideals echoes the fierce, untamed spirit of Mononoke’s San, while Helm’s descent into myth could easily pass for the sort of sombre tragedy Miyazaki might weave into his more melancholic works. 

A still from ‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’
| Photo Credit:
Warner Bros

But where Ghibli tempers its bloodshed with quiet, meditative beauty — a moment to watch the wind ripple through the grass or the sun dip below the horizon — Rohirrim charges headlong into battle, its sense of wonder often lost beneath the clamor of swords and overly scripted dialogue.

What ultimately hampers The War of the Rohirrim is its own sense of obligation — to Tolkien, to Jackson, to the legions of fans who demand reverence for Middle Earth’s lore. In its best moments, the film embraces the arresting surrealism of anime or the introspective wonder of Miyazaki, but largely settles for something safer: a forgettable myth-making exercise. For a story steeped in Tolkien’s love of deliberate world-building, the rushed denouement also feels rather sacrilegious.

Still, there are treasures here for those willing to dig, and for Tolkien devotees, there is enough here to merit a watch. There’s of course a certain satisfaction in seeing Middle Earth’s cinematic universe expand, even if its endless appendices are starting to feel more and more like spinoff bait than the main quest.

Ultimately, The War of the Rohirrim is a curious beast — evoking neither the awe-struck majesty of Jackson’s epic trilogy, nor the offbeat whimsy of the Rankin/Bass animations, nor even the fever-dream charm of Bakshi’s rotoscoped oddity. It feels stranded somewhere in the middle, torn between paying solemn homage to Tolkien’s sprawling legendarium and daring to carve its own path.

‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’ is currently running in theatres

When the manager of the transportation security officers at LAX greets his bleary-eyed employees with a chipper “good morning” at the beginning of Carry-On, Jaume Collet-Serra’s low-key gripping thriller, his voice drips with sarcasm.

It is Christmas Eve at the bustling airport, which means it is decidedly not a good morning. The stakes are high for the hundreds of agents responsible for shepherding anxious and impatient travelers through security checkpoints. The bag scans, the body searches and the changing instructions around shoes and laptops are triggering for a citizenry worn down by the post-9/11 security apparatus. So truthfully, it’s a bad morning — and, at least for Ethan Kopek (an excellent Taron Egerton), it’s about to get worse. 

Carry-On, which premieres on Netflix this Friday, Dec. 13, follows the slacker TSA agent through what might be his most challenging day on the job. It begins on fairly normal grounds, with Ethan and his girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) reveling in the news of an unexpected but welcomed pregnancy. The prospect of a child activates Ethan’s anxiety about adulthood (“I thought I would be further along before this happened,” he says) and prompts Nora’s encouraging speech about following dreams. She just got promoted to a managerial position at the airport and urges Ethan to reconsider taking the police academy exam so he can fulfill that classic American dream of becoming a cop. 

But Ethan, still scarred by his first failure to get in, wants to focus on making more money. That day at work, he asks his boss for a promotion, or a chance to prove himself. Phil (Dean Norris), with some convincing from Ethan’s buddy Jason (Sinqua Walls), puts Ethan on bag scans.

Unbeknownst to Ethan and his fellow security agents, a shadowy figure needs a dangerous package to get through LAX checkpoints. This mysterious man (Jason Bateman) and his associates (one played by Theo Rossi) planned for Jason to be in that seat. When they realize Ethan is their new pawn, the crew deftly adjusts to blackmail him instead. 

Working from an assured screenplay by T.J. Fixman (Ratchet & Clank), Collet-Serra (Black Adam, The Shallows) crafts a satisfying surveillance thriller reminiscent of Eagle Eye (2008) and Phone Booth (2002). Like Shia LaBeouf’s Jerry, Michelle Monaghan’s Rachel and Colin Farrell’s Stuart, Egerton’s Ethan finds himself under the control of an anonymous extortioner. (The instructions come to Ethan through a tiny earpiece dropped off by a random traveler.) And similar to these other films, Carry-On builds its suspense on the frightening reality of the state’s expanded surveillance power and the erosion of individual privacy in the name of national security. It might not spawn any advanced theories about these latter themes, but it does serve as a reminder of this omnipresent system’s relative novelty. 

Carry-On revs up fairly quickly, leaving the stilted intimacy of Ethan’s personal life for the bustling drama of LAX. The film’s early tone resembles a workplace comedy, complete with the beleaguered manager, try-hard colleague (Joe Williamson) and personality hire with several side gigs (Gil Perez-Abraham). The actors who make up this gallery of side characters offer brief but wonderful turns, adding humorous touches to a high-stakes story.

Collet-Serra and DP Lyle Vincent (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Bad Education) stage some pretty memorable scenes of TSA agents at work, including one in which Jason tries to soothe a frustrated crowd and help travelers fed up with a system of random checks make their flights. These scenes humanize the agents who don’t want to enforce these rules any more than passengers want to comply. 

While his colleagues try to make the best of a nightmare travel day, Ethan, fresh off the threats on Nora’s life, is on edge. The mysterious traveler (who remains unnamed throughout the film) has given him the nonnegotiable terms and conditions of this arrangement: If Ethan doesn’t let the bag through, Nora will die. Ethan refuses to accept this anonymous bullying, and this desire sets off the principal action of Carry-On. 

A gripping game of cat and mouse begins as Ethan tries to outwit the traveler and his cohort cohort. Egerton and Bateman’s performances elevate Carry-On and contribute significantly to the film’s overall success. Even when the repeated showdowns between the TSA agent and traveler lose potency, these actors maintain the narrative’s tension and viewer investment. As their rivalry slowly becomes one of two equals, wondering how each might outmaneuver the other becomes part of the thrill. Bateman is excellent as a villain, and Egerton finds his groove as a working class American trying not to get fired. The Rocketman star goes beyond the surface of his character’s layabout persona to find the attributes that transform him into a hero.

Running parallel to the confrontation between Ethan and the traveler is an underbaked plot about the local police’s investigation into an incident that might be related. But the external factors that set off the heightened airport chamber drama are less evolved and these scenes, which include an underused Danielle Deadwyler, are some of the weakest in Carry-On.

The Piano Lesson actress plays Elena Cole, a police officer with a hunch about a mysterious fire that opens the film. From minor clues, she figures out a dangerous plot is afoot. But the plausibility of this subplot is cursed by a clunkiness that recalls the more unbelievable moments of F. Gary Gray’s Heist. Ultimately, this thread introduces more questions than Carry-On can realistically acknowledge or even answer — serving as a reminder that in film, as with travel, it pays to pack light.