Dreams, 2025.

Written and Directed by Michel Franco.
Starring Jessica Chastain, Isaac Hernández, Rupert Friend, Marshall Bell, Eligio Meléndez, Mercedes Hernández, Tatiana Ronderos, Bobby August Jr., Nessa Dougherty, and Jayden Leavitt.

SYNOPSIS:

A powerful socialite and a promising ballet dancer begin a dangerous affair. When he secretly crosses the US-Mexico border, she takes desperate measures to protect their future together.

Much will be written (and probably already has, given that the film has been released in several countries and played many film festivals) about the system-shocking, provocative final 20 minutes of writer/director Michel Franco’s Dreams. Aside from the fact that the filmmaker also knows how to stage erotic and passionate sex scenes moving the fornicators all over an area’s space (whether it be a countertop or a stairwell), and some sociopolitical/American dream commentary that is both nuanced yet clearly an unspoken focal point of an interracial relationship between a ballerina undocumented immigrant and a silver-spooned wealthy white woman torn between love and losing the privileges that come with living within such a rich but racist family, there also isn’t a whole lot to talk about regarding the first hour.

Everything about the shocking scene in question, which will certainly be offensive to some, is frustrating because of its racial optics. Some will unquestionably welcome anything that jolts the film out of its dull slumber. In the end, it’s Michel Franco resorting to in-your-face trauma and abuse to get a rise out of an audience, seemingly not knowing what else he wants to say, so he resorts to highlighting what has already been said through the above gratuity. Is it offensive? Sure, it will be to some. It’s more eye-rolling that the filmmaker apparently knows only one trick or mode to fall back on when everything else fails.

And yes, the optics are indeed quite bad with the kind of implied message that is downright stunning being sent from the filmmaker of Mexican heritage. There is a high chance viewers will rebuke everything about Dreams after a certain scene (it’s the kind of moment that can lower 4 stars to 2 in some eyes), but what is more illuminating about the film and filmmaker is that there will be a variety of reasons.

Michel Franco seems to mean well, as the majority of his torrid secret love affair drama follows newcomer Isaac Hernández’s Fernando Rodriguez, an aspiring dancer who has become so romantically entangled with Jessica Chastain’s Jennifer, a socialite and integral member of a foundation funding such Mexican arts, that he crosses the border to be with her in San Francisco. Expectedly, the physicality of the relationship is hot and heavy, yet it comes to a screeching halt, even after time, as Jennifer remains unwilling to let her family (including a brother played by Rupert Friend and a father played by Marshall Bell) in on the truth about their dynamic. This initially causes Fernando to pull back and distance himself entirely from Jennifer, who essentially becomes a stalker, offering more and more until she gets the relationship back.

Again, the filmmaker demonstrates social and power imbalances not merely through situational elements and dialogue, but also through cinematography, using large spaces and wide shots whenever Fernando is in the dance rehearsal studio or mingling with Jennifer. The world is simply much bigger to him with more opportunity when he is underneath her thumb. This is also a double-edged sword, given her obsessive craziness, which makes it just as dangerous.

Once all of this is established, Dreams, unfortunately, doesn’t really have anywhere to go for nearly an hour. As previously mentioned, even then, Michel Franco takes it in a direction that gives new meaning to sledgehammering home a “yikes”-worthy metaphor (here, it’s more like a missile to the brain, with it written all over its side in all capital letters). The sex scenes and occasional dancing are the only reprieve from dullness.

That is, before a tone-flipping third act brings both uncomfortable crimes of whirlwind passion, which would be fine if the filmmaker had the wherewithal to exert some restraint. Artists deserve free rein to do whatever they want, so I generally dislike calling any film irresponsible, but releasing Dreams during this US administration, with everything happening in the world right now, is dancing on that knife-edge. With one major change and a similarly provocative, challenging ending, the film would be fine. Instead, a better conclusion must be dreamed up. And yet it is still such an unexpected assault on the senses that it’s misguidedly trying to say something about these imbalances throughout the film; the film shouldn’t be written off entirely.

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

Robert Kojder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

I completely turn my phone off when I go to the movies. Not just on silent – all the way off. I say this not because I think that I’m better than you, or that by doing so the ghost of Billy Wilder will come back to shake my hand. I consider it one of life’s little luxuries: for at least an hour and 45 minutes, I am entirely unreachable. I keep my phone off for the duration of the credits, too. It feels decadent to stay put as my fellow moviegoers slowly filter out, illuminated only by rolling text.

And, lately, the glow of the Letterboxd app.

Over 26 million people use Letterboxd, a movie-cataloguing app. Like the Criterion Collection or A24, it has become industry shorthand for a certain type of tastemaker who hypes new releases and delights in rediscovering old classics. Users rate and review movies, and the funniest or most illuminating critiques rise to the top of the page, incentivizing cinephiles to put in some effort.

On a recent trip to the movies, the credits had barely started before the man in front of me began typing his review. A few seats over, a couple sat, heads down, jotting down their respective thoughts.

The late film-maker David Lynch had a piece of advice: write down every great idea the exact moment that it comes. If you don’t, it could slip your mind, and, as he put it: “If you forget a good idea, you want to commit suicide.” Lynch was speaking to aspiring film-makers, but the same ethos applies to Letterboxd.

Josh Stern, a 20-year-old student in New York, always writes his reviews from his movie seat.

“If I don’t get my thoughts out quickly once the movie ends, my reviews are much less coherent and articulate,” he said. “It takes some time. I’m pretty slow, and my girlfriend doesn’t like it.”

Stern goes to the movies a lot – 182 times last year – and is on a first-name basis with the theater employees, who sometimes have to kick him out so they can start cleaning the aisles. He thinks it’s fair game to milk the credits: “When you pay for a movie ticket, credits are a part of the movie.”

Letterboxd’s most enthusiastic supporters credit the app with reviving excitement around a battered film industry, where productions are down and unemployment is up. (Letterboxd also boasts the kind of demographics brands covet – its highest cohort of users is between the ages of 18 and 24, followed by 25 to 35.)

Hype begets hype; eagerly awaited movies see a flurry of activity on Letterboxd immediately after the first screenings. The most-liked review of Emerald Fennell’s divisive Wuthering Heights – “emily brontë died of tuberculosis 177 years ago yet this adaptation is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her” – has more thank 50,000 double taps. The Moment, Charli xcx’s fictionalized retelling of Brat summer, produced this comparison to tabloid enemy Taylor Swift’s concert film: “eras tour documentary found dead.”

“It’s a little bit of an addiction,” said Ben Glidden, a 33-year-old New Yorker who works in marketing for women’s sports. He also likes to write reviews during the credits. “Reflecting on what you just saw, immediately after you saw it, helps with the artistic experience. It helps you grasp the key messages of a film. If it makes you feel like a warm hug, that’s not necessarily something you remember five hours down the line.”

Glidden feels most compelled to review a film if it was very good – or very bad. Case in point: he recently sat through the Chris Pratt sci-fi vehicle Mercy. “I was actually so offended by how egregiously bad it was, that I was excited to pull out my phone and give it a half-star review,” he said. (Glidden’s a tougher critic than the Guardian’s film critic Pete Bradshaw, who gave the film three stars, calling it, “ingenious and watchable stuff”.)

Dakota Chester, a 28-year-old New Yorker who works in social media, saw Arco, the Oscar-nominated animated fantasy film, at an Upper West Side theater and stuck around to write the review (“it got five stars”). He’s clocked worse behavior: people taking out their phones to Letterboxd the movie they are currently watching. “That gets on my nerves,” he said.

One of film’s most enduring urban legends recounts a screening of the Lumiere brothers’ 1896 silent short that showed a train pulling into a station. Cinema was in its infancy and – according to this debunked rumor – the shot of a locomotive heading straight toward the camera shocked the crowd so much that people ran away screaming.

A hundred-and-thirty years later, cinema etiquette remains just as bad. No one knows how to act in public any more, especially when the lights go down: viewers take pictures of the screen, bring in smelly food, and, as was the case during Barbenheimer summer, sometimes engage in all-out brawls.

Some have taken to social media to debate the appropriateness of Letterboxding during credits. When one TikTok user posted about her “quiet little moment” writing a review in an AMC theater after the credits ended, movie theater employees chimed in. “Pls do this in your car, as soon as the credits stop rolling we have to clean in there or we get way behind in our scheduled cleans,” one wrote. “Take this to the lobby,” another added.

Courtney Mayhew, a representative for Letterboxd, wrote in a statement: “Anecdotally, we’ve heard from members who’ve struck up conversations after noticing someone nearby on the app, sometimes leading to ongoing friendships or just a great chat about what they’ve just watched. That impulse to get your thoughts down while they’re fresh is something we understand – it’s part of the ritual for many people … And obviously, phones out during the actual film is still a cardinal sin – we’re not monsters.”

Other Letterboxd users like to let a film marinate before posting. Irene Vasquez is a 22-year-old film student who joined Letterboxd in 2018 and credits the app for helping her take movies more seriously.

“As I’ve seen it get more popular, it’s gamified movies for people, and it feels like everyone’s in competition to watch as many movies as possible,” she said. “I get frustrated with all the people who pull out their phones immediately to rate films, because I really value sitting with a movie and letting it sink in. I treasure that experience.”

Professional critics used to be arbiters of taste, but in a fractured, post-Gene Siskel or Pauline Kael media ecosystem, Letterboxd reviews probably do more to get young people talking to each other about films than any New York Times writeup could. Raphael Martinez, 43, who manages and programs for a movie theater in Chicago that caters to a “pretty hardcore” art-house crowd, is heartened by the app’s most immediate reviewers. “Within 20 minutes of the movie ending, we have a handful of advertisements on Letterboxd for the movie,” he said. “It helps get people to the theater and gauges community reaction to what we show.”

In the 2010s, Marvel movies conditioned millennials to stay for post-credit scenes offering breadcrumbs or plot reveals for future films in the universe. Martinez found that much more annoying than the cinephiles who stay to get their thoughts down. “People weren’t doing anything, they would just wait around,” he said. “Now, people are hanging out, engaging, and it’s more of a vibe, as opposed to simply consuming.”

Claiming to be from the future, a man takes hostages at a Los Angeles diner to recruit unlikely heroes to help him save the world. The newest movie from director Gore Verbinski is not only one of the best of the year so far, but it is also one of the most fun you will have in a theatre in recent memory. 

There is honestly so much to say about this movie, but saying too much would definitely spoil things, and this is the type of movie you want to go in blind if you could. Having said that, this is going to be a shorter review. Still, there are plenty of things to acknowledge about this one.  We have seen so many movies showing us a future where technology takes over the world. That is nothing new. However, the well-written script, amazing cast of characters, and the current topic of AI really set this film apart from the rest. 

Sam Rockwell is excellent as the lead character from the future looking for a group of civilians to help save the world. The action starts right away as we realize that this guy has tried to save the world from AI several times with a different group each time, and failing each time. He has yet to find the perfect combination of help. Our cast of characters this time around includes  Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Juno Temple, and Haley Lu Richardson. Everyone is so good in their roles, specifically Richardson and Temple, proving that they can handle the serious moments as well as the more comedic ones. 

How Does it Make You Feel?

There are several different ways to review or critique a movie. Some movies get just about everything right from a technical angle, but still won’t please folks. Some movies get everything wrong from a technical aspect, and it will be someone’s favorite thing. When I review films, I try to be 50/50 to give them a fair chance. Is the movie well-made, and does it leave me feeling anything? While many movies lean more one way than the other, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die manages to please on all accounts. 

The movie is shot well with tons of amazing set pieces. The characters are likeable and developed enough that you truly care about them, and the script is so original that it truly left me not knowing where the movie was going next. Verbinski had previously directed Pirates of the Caribbean and The Ring: two completely different movies and tones, but both very successful. Verbinski really shows his range in this new movie. He manages to capture both tones of horror and comedy in this film perfectly while sprinkling in a few other ones as well. 

The movie is so successful at making you laugh one moment, then leaving you uncomfortable and on the edge of your seat in the next. I will not spoil anything, but there are a couple of scenes in this movie that, if they were in another film, they just wouldn’t work. They are either too weird or too controversial. Current topics in real life are played for satire in this film, and these scenes pack a punch for sure. 

The movie is also very smart in how it tackles the idea of AI. The goal of this movie isn’t to completely erase technology or the use of AI. The movie is smart enough to know that AI is already here to stay, whether people like it or not. The heroes are not here to destroy it, but rather find a way to control it responsibly so that we have a world where people can be aware of what is reality and what isn’t. This was such an intelligent and fascinating way to handle things.

Overall

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is the best movie I have seen so far this year and probably the most entertained I have been at the movies in some time. It is an original Sci Fi comedy that has a lot to say without being preachy. It is truly a trip that feels like an old-school adventure film full of rich characters and excitement. It is truly a shame that this movie hasn’t received more screenings, but if there is one local to you, you owe it to yourself to check it out.