All posts by Stephen Michael Brown

I've reviewed films for more than 40 years, since junior high school - and film critique was my college thesis project at University of South Carolina Honors College. My movie review and news site Silver Screen Capture includes current film reviews of both theatrical releases and streaming movies, with content added weekly. Many capsule critiques originally appeared in expanded form in my syndicated Lights Camera Reaction column. I will be at Toronto International Film Festival in September 2026.
2026

Something “Wicker” This Way Comes in Offbeat Romantic Fable

Leave a comment

Writer/directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson weave a whimsical “romantasy” in Wicker (B+), sure to thrill and titillate more than just those elusive underwater basket-weaving majors. Few things vex this provincial village more than a woman with ideas, agency and the audacity to enjoy herself, and Olivia Colman gleefully upsets the social order as a fisherwoman who commissions a perfect husband fashioned from woven willow. Colman’s droll humor and poignant vulnerability, Alexander Skarsgård’s steadfast devotion as her wicker husband and Elizabeth Debicki’s deliciously bottled-up villainy as the tailor’s wife give this peculiar romance its comic spark and emotional stakes. Peter Dinklage’s basket weaver initially seems to have wandered in from another universe, but his eccentric incantatory delivery offers wit to spare. Anna Meredith’s music accents the joy and menace while deftly navigating the film’s tonal turns, and cinematographer Lol Crawley’s evocative use of light lends the fable its adult enchantment. Prosthetic makeup and practical effects, led by Joe Dunckley and Sarah Rubano, make the woven beau a marvel of craftsmanship. From bed-breaking romps to a jubilant dance that turns the couple’s affection into a public declaration, the film finds playful ways to explore gender politics and the acceptance of outsiders, with a few surprises tucked into its final act. Knock on wood, this crafty courtship earns its place among a season’s worth of cinematic pleasures.

2026

“Godzilla Minus Zero”: Unconventional NYFF Spotlight Film, a Superb Sequel

Leave a comment

Consider this another beast in show! Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus Zero (B+) delivers a stirring adventure that finds resonance in personal sacrifice and ingenuity in building a better mousetrap for a monster. While the filmmaking no longer carries the same shock of discovery as its predecessor, the sequel deepens the emotional stakes and enriches the saga. Two years after Godzilla plunged a war-ravaged Japan below zero, a new threat shatters the fragile peace and inspires fresh acts of heroism. Ryunosuke Kamiki and Minami Hamabe shine as the film’s emotional anchors, struggling to hold their family together while bringing their distinctive strengths to the kaiju resistance. Yamazaki’s spectacular visual effects find an equally impressive match in Anri Jojo and Wataru Hirai’s meticulous production design. Naoki Sato’s rousing score gives both the monster mayhem and the human drama an extra surge of power. This is serious stuff from the get-go and an impressive entry into this series.

2026

Ambitious Stop-Motion “Wildwood” Buries Its Story Beneath a Lush Visual Canopy

Leave a comment

Travis Knight’s stop-motion animated Wildwood (B-) wanders into a fantasy forest, ambitious visual terrain for sure, but lingers in the weeds of mediocre narrative. It’s hard to know where homage branches into facsimile as an otherworld journey akin to Narnia and battles right out of Tolkien’s Middle Earth commence. Like Labyrinth, a female teenager’s little brother is abducted as the plot’s inciting incident. This protagonist’s journey across Portland railroad tracks into the “Impassable Forest” reveals an alternate reality inhabited by a villain trying to fill an emotional void, factions of talking animals and a fussy parade of adventures that rarely feel as interesting as the fanciful sequences simply in urban Oregon. The ornate animation, splendid indeed, is the reason to behold this work. Smart script choices early on roundly devolve as the plot machinery progresses, with too many characters left undeveloped. The plucky heroine voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee gets most of the wry and winning lines while high-pedigreed talent including Carrie Milligan and Mahershala Ali don’t have much stuff to strut. No doubt this work is leagues more lush and creative than most kiddie fare out there, but as a slightly more adult and sometimes violent alternative, it is a beautiful mixed bag.

2026

Prosthetic Aesthetic: Gotham Gets Grisly with Arrival of “Clayface”

Leave a comment

It’s been a while since Batman spun a yarn on the big screen, but an origin story for one of his adversaries proves a worthy next of kiln. James Watkins’s Clayface (B) follows a matinee idol (Tom Rhys Harries) whose disfigurement by a mob boss (David Dencik) sends him into the care of a scientist (Naomi Ackie), whose genetic intervention transforms him into a grotesque shapeshifter. Pursued by a detective (Max Minghella), the actor trades leading-man looks for monstrous new possibilities as this slow-burn thriller shifts into full-throttle revenge. The inventive makeup effects deliver body-horror bliss, with jaw-dropping transformations and fiendishly creative kills compensating for occasionally uneven storytelling and ho-hum atmosphere. Harries and Ackie give the mayhem an emotional center, grounding the escalating grotesquerie in palpable chemistry. From the laboratory to the lavatory, where a terrific airplane-mirror sequence turns self-reflection into a mid-flight fright, Watkins finds fresh ways to make flesh crawl. With ample craft beneath its shifting skin, this genre-bending installment in James Gunn’s DC Universe delivers guts, glory and a villain worth getting fired up about.

2026

South Korean Drama “Possible Love” Exposes the Quiet Brutality of Class Warfare

Leave a comment

Class warfare unfolds with hardly a raised voice in Lee Chang-dong’s quietly bruising drama Possible Love (B+), as two couples confront the aftermath of a factory strike, violent retaliation and layoffs in a tight-knit South Korean town. Those spared by the company’s capricious cuts are deemed “the living,” while those cast out become “the dead.” The luminous Jeon Do-yeon plays the resilient wife of a displaced welder (Sul Kyung-gu), whose stoic pride contrasts with her willingness to share their story with a film crew. An affluent documentarian (Cho Yeo-jeong) and her entrepreneur husband (Zo In-sung) take an interest in the struggling couple, exposing tensions that sympathy alone cannot bridge. Lee probes the power dynamics between those behind the camera and those before it, the comfortably insulated and the economically exiled. The material is far bleaker than the hopeful title suggests, yet remains absorbing across a substantial, largely earned runtime. Jeon is the standout, her character’s confidence, keen observations and bursts of courage suggesting possibilities beyond the class boundaries that flashbacks reveal have long defined her life. Her apparent capacity to transcend those limits makes their persistence all the more devastating. This potent cautionary tale exposes the presumptions that accompany privilege and the human cost of inequality.

2026

Survival Saga “Whalefall” Also a Moving Tribute to Fathers and Sons

Leave a comment

The novelty of a man trapped in the belly of a whale threatens to swallow the deeper achievement of Brian Duffield’s Whalefall (B+): a moving exploration of the emotional depths between fathers and sons. Magnificent practical effects bring this maritime survival tale to life inside an 80-foot, 60-ton leviathan, where Austin Abrams’s imperiled protagonist must also reckon with the legacy of his salty, stubborn father, played by Josh Brolin. Well-placed flashbacks punctuate the adventure, revealing a contentious bond that gives the physical ordeal its emotional weight. The journey through the creature’s innards occasionally grows tedious, but Abrams and Brolin lend an almost spiritual dimension to two men struggling to translate love into words and actions. Their unfinished business proves as gripping as the mechanics of survival. A triumph of spectacle and emotion, the film finds an unexpectedly potent vessel for exploring generational trauma and the painful work of surfacing from it.

2026

“You Can See Everything” a Must-See Documentary

Leave a comment

Her science may have been fiction, but the strange saga of disgraced American business tycoon Elizabeth Holmes proves all too real in Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s meta-documentary You Can See Everything (A-). The film interrogates the notion of truth itself as co-director and wry Everyman Fielder moves in with Holmes and her husband for the weeks leading up to her imprisonment for defrauding investors about her blood-test technology invention. The co-directors create an unsettling sense of claustrophobic atmosphere as they enter the couple’s intimate environment to ask them questions the world has been wondering. The film’s titillating entreaty is answered and much more, even though, like a narrative film such as Anatomy of a Fall, an audience member’s POV on the nature and reliability of the characters may shift and change throughout the doc’s duration. Memorable sequences unfold seaside, with metaphorical waves lapping up each fleeting glimpse at the true crime subjects at work and play. Audiences will want to stick through the nearly three hour runtime as some of the best turns occur in the final act. It’s a rewarding and absorbing watch with lots of surprises and one of the year’s most cleverly constructed stories.

2026

“The Social Reckoning” Is the “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights” of Facebook Movies

Leave a comment

The same eyeballs Facebook wants glued to a screen are perfectly capable of rolling in exasperation. Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning (C) tells an important story about the dark side of one of our generation’s defining inventions with so little style, verve or surprise that its blandness borders on cinematic malpractice. We’ve seen what inspired directors can do with Sorkin’s screenplays: Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, Bennett Miller’s Moneyball, Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men and The American President, and David Fincher’s The Social Network all found compelling rhythms in his words. Here, fussy framing and fragmented flashbacks can’t manufacture narrative momentum. Mikey Madison, as a Facebook data scientist turned whistleblower, and Jeremy Allen White, as a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, struggle to animate awkwardly written roles, while Jeremy Strong’s ruthless Mark Zuckerberg registers as an extended cameo with little bite. Almost everything that distinguished the film’s predecessor gets a downgrade, with Alexandre Desplat’s pleasant orchestral score replacing Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s unnerving soundscapes and a listless ensemble inheriting the feed from a razor-sharp cast. Bill Burr supplies a welcome jolt as a fictionalized investor turned critic of the billionaire leader, briefly making the film feel as combative as its subject demands. The stakes have grown, but the filmmaking has shrunk. What should provoke outrage too often invites a scroll. While it stops short of Speed 2 or Staying Alive territory, this inferior sequel turns a potentially devastating reckoning into a largely forgettable status update.

2026

Murder Mystery Noir “Verity” Short on Novelty

Leave a comment

It takes a while in the latest Colleen Hoover adaptation for the pages to start turning, the pot to begin boiling and the bestseller to reveal its juiciest secrets. But buried within the guilty-pleasure formula of Michael Showalter’s slow-burn thriller Verity (B-) are some deliciously campy pleasures. After a confounding metropolitan meet-cute, Josh Hartnett’s character convinces a struggling novelist played by Dakota Johnson to retreat to his secluded lakeside home and finish a bestselling series written by his now-catatonic wife, the titular Verity (Anne Hathaway). Johnson takes a while to find her footing, or much believability, in this quasi-mystery despite a cavalcade of ominously charged objects ranging from nanny cams and motorized beds to canoes and PB&Js. Hathaway is saddled with a mostly thankless role told through flashbacks, but eventually gets the opportunity to lean gleefully into the unhinged. Hartnett fares best as the charismatic liaison caught between two increasingly dangerous women. There’s a lot of melodrama about manuscripts before the plot finally gets cooking, but once it does, the final act delivers some satisfyingly lurid twists and turns. Verity is never quite titillating or thrilling enough to become a trash-classic all-timer, but when the literary intrigue finally gives way to full-blown pulp, it becomes a pretty good page-turner after all.

2026

The Frill Seekers of “Digger” Can’t Plow Past Insufferable Allegory and Artifice

Leave a comment

Talk about a blunt instrument! Mining through the rubble of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s meta satire Digger (D+) produces a few inspired treasures while largely burying its thesis beneath too many allegorical characters and too much self-satisfied artifice. Ostensibly an arty star vehicle for Tom Cruise, playing an out-of-touch billionaire oil tycoon whose willful blindness to the consequences of his policies collides with a real-time climate crisis, the film is rarely as interesting as it thinks it is. Wisely, Iñárritu creates at least one character who registers as more than a caricature: Riz Ahmed’s science advisor, whose attempts to speak truth to power provide some of the movie’s most authentic moments. Others range from understated and underdeveloped, including Sandra Hüller as a green-minded entrepreneur, to deliriously over the top, with John Goodman cranking his agitated POTUS well past eleven. What begins at a tonal decibel barely registering soon gets amplified to merciless levels, turning Iñárritu into the Boy Who Cried Wolf in multiple milieus for two punishing hours. Buried somewhere in the permafrost of the parody is an impulse so mistrustful of its audience that virtually every trick gets hurled against the VistaVisionary wall in hopes that something will stick. Cruise, to his credit, finds flashes of subversive authenticity beneath the pancaked prosthetics, occasionally suggesting a more interesting movie struggling to burrow itself out. The film aspires to Dr. Strangelove and barely surpasses Toys. But the film’s insistent calliope condemning intentionally destructive acts against the planet loses its potency remarkably quickly. For all its potentially benevolent “save the earth” intentions, the filmmakers muddy and muddle their point with a continuous cavalcade of plot and production design conventions. Their fussy film ultimately comes up embarrassingly shallow.

2026

“In Between” a Joyful Queer Romcom About Next Level Acceptance

Leave a comment

The buoyant new queer dramedy world-premiering at the Out on Film Festival suggests there can be a second “coming out”: finally becoming comfortable in one’s own skin within a community that can impose its own seemingly impossible body standards. Juli-Ann De Barros and Nicholas Molencupp’s In Between (A-) plumbs the pop psychology of a “husky” gay man waiting for his prince to come while the little voices in his head, and considerably louder ones on the dating apps, broadcast decidedly mixed signals. Molencupp tells his own story as writer, co-director and extremely affable leading man, bringing brazen panache to an empowering tale that rarely gets told with this much wit, candor and romantic optimism. Consistently funny and empathetic, he plays a burly young gay man who has spent much of his dating life wondering why the perfect tens he desires aren’t exactly lining up, and a terrific soliloquy captures the exhausting marathon of succeeding at work and everywhere else only to score neutral-to-negative points in the impossible queer dating milieu. Cameron Moir is deeply effective as the primary and surprising love interest, a man forced to reconcile his genuine attraction with the entrenched expectations of his peer group, while Sachin Bhat and Elle Army are especially electric as the protagonist’s best friend and sister in an altogether winning ensemble. Krystal Joy Brown nearly walks away with the movie as a therapist who radiates such glorious self-possession that she becomes the living embodiment of self-acceptance, a personified gay anthem of self-love and the patron saint everyone deserves. Through meet-cutes, courting rituals, shame valleys and fantasy sequences, this entertaining movie cycles its characters through rejection and renewal with poignant humor and enough emotional honesty to keep its romcom buoyancy grounded. There is little time to wallow when an afternoon by the pool, a night of gay bingo or group karaoke comes calling, and the film understands that finding your people can be as essential as finding your person. De Barros and Molencupp ultimately deliver exactly what this kind of movie should: a relatable, big-hearted framework for seeing yourself differently while gently challenging a community to broaden its definition of who deserves to be desired. It’s not merely a film about acceptance; it is a joyful celebration of becoming comfortable enough in your own skin to demand love without first demanding that you become somebody else.

2026, Industry News

Out On Film Festival Has Begun in ATL, Now Through Oct. 4

Leave a comment

One of America’s preeminent LGBTQ+ film festivals, the Oscar®-qualifying and USA TODAY “10Best” Out On Film Festival (#OOF26), invites the community to be part of “The World We’re Making” as the nonprofit festival kicks off its 39th year of bringing the best in LGBTQ+ films, documentaries, and shorts to local, national, and international audiences – in person and via the festival’s virtual platform. The festival boasts 150+ narrative films, documentaries, shorts and special events. Presented by GILEAD, all festival screenings, Q&As and panels will take place at the historic Landmark Midtown Art Cinema.

Every ticket helps create spaces where LGBTQ+ stories can be seen, celebrated, and shared, and helps build “The World We’re Making.” This year’s theme reflects the power of queer cinema to not only tell our stories, but to help shape the world around us. Every screening, filmmaker, volunteer, audience member, sponsor and conversation contributes to building a more connected, visible, and inclusive future.

This 39th festival offers a diverse selection that includes 38 features (26 narrative films and 12 documentaries, four of which are streaming-only films); an episode of an upcoming TV series; 108 shorts; three music videos; and five episodics for a total of 155 films. In all, Out On Film will host 10 world premieres, five international premieres, 11 U.S. premieres and more than 20 regional premieres as part of the 2026 festival.

“Coming off of a record-breaking 2025, we are extraordinarily proud to present our largest festival ever, one that shines a spotlight on cinema and voices around the world,” said Out On Film Festival Director Jim Farmer. “It’s also wonderful to be able to offer so many Atlanta-area films and filmmakers, including some exciting world premieres.”

“’The World We’re Making’ feels especially meaningful and empowering right now,” said new Out On Film Executive Director Cindy L. Abel. “We’re not waiting for a better world to be handed to us, we’re building it, frame by frame and story by story, together. There’s something powerful about experiencing these films in a room full of people and discovering the conversations and connections that begin when the credits roll. We hope audiences leave a little more hopeful, a little more connected, and certain that the world worth making is already under construction — right here, right now.”

Out On Film continues to build on its national recognition. Earlier this year, Two People Exchanging Saliva, directed by Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh (France/USA), which

qualified for Oscar® consideration through Out On Film in 2025, tied for the Academy Award® for Best Live Action Short.  

Seven films awarded grants from Out On Film’s Filmmaker Fund are in the line-up, including Charlene Fisk’s Call and Response and Hannah Alline’s Scissors. Reel Resistance Fellowship (a six-month in partnership with Atlanta Pride) recipient films include Carlo Velayo’s The Center and Beyond The Doors of Club 708.

Thursday, Sept. 24, opening night is the East Coast premiere of Before I Do exploring a lakeside bachelor party weekend that devolves into comedic chaos when the groom and his best man’s past romantic feelings reignite, entangling the wedding party in pre-wedding drama. The film stars Cole Doman, Michael Hsu Rosen, Nico Greetham, Robin de Jesús and Jared Reinfeldt.

The festival’s Centerpiece Film Sunday, Sept. 27, 6:15 p.m. is Give Me The Ball!  Billie Jean King is a global icon whose impact on tennis and equality resonates around the world. But the personal turmoil behind this transformational figure has in many ways remained hidden from view. The film shares the sacrifices King was forced to make behind the scenes, even as she fought high-profile battles for the professionalization of her sport and equal treatment for women. From struggling to escape an unhappy marriage and hiding her sexual orientation to facing an eating disorder and staring down misogyny at every turn, her march to triumph was a long and often lonely one. This is a woman whose saga cuts deeper than her victory in the “Battle of the Sexes” showdown, and the film showcases King like the persistent fighter she had to become. Through a trove of rarely seen archival material and powerfully honest interviews with King, this film explores the depths of agony she endured so that others might follow a less painful path. It is the story of selflessness, struggle, and triumph that shines an unforgettable light on a figure who is widely admired but, until now, never properly understood.

Additionally notable, Closing Night Sunday, Oct. 4, 6:30 p.m. is La Bola Negra. The film is a bold tapestry spanning nearly a century of Spanish history. It is last week’s TIFF People’s Choice winner and tells the story of three generations of men whose lives are intimately connected through desire, pain, and love in this celebrated film from Cannes-winning directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi. It stars Milo Quifes, Guitarricadelafuente and Carlos González with featured performances by Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close.  

Another notable special presentation is 1985’s iconic Desert Hearts with Director Donna Deitch set to appear. Based on Jane Rule’s novel, this romantic drama has become an iconic lesbian classic. While waiting for her divorce papers, repressed literature professor Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver) finds herself unexpectedly attracted by a carefree, spirited young woman named Cay (Patricia Charbonneau).

A few other anticipated highlights of the festival:

  • The world premiere of In Between, directed by Nicholas Molencupp and Juli-Ann De Barros, filmed in Atlanta with a local cast
  • The U.S. premiere of Canadian film I Come Home
  • The Southeastern premieres of Ephemera from Singapore and Out of the Woods featuring Frances Fisher
  • The Georgia premiere of Israel film A Man Walks Down the Street
  • A Rising Star Award presentation to actor/singer/director Jelani Alladin, whose short film Next Year will have its world premiere at the festival
  • The first episode of the STARZ drama “Tip Toe”
  • The Mexican films The Divine Tragedy and On The Road
  • The Brazilian film Gugu’s World
  • The Spanish film Ivan & Hadoum
  • The British film Madfabulous
  • The South African film Black Burns Fast

Passes and tickets are on sale now at festival.outonfilm.org.