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Zeros and Ones review – Abel Ferrara’s dream-like thriller struggles to make sense

Abel Ferrara’s confused, guerrilla-filmed actioner stars Ethan Hawke as a soldier and his hostage twin brother

M aybe there is always something in Abel Ferrara ’s work that always has to be indulged; his recent work anyway. I was initially unsure what on earth to make of this new film: it’s an experimental moodscape, murky and grainy, apparently made under lockdown conditions in his adopted city of Rome (a fever-dream of lockdown perhaps) shooting largely at night in what looks like a covert guerrilla-style way. The film is topped and tailed with weird “prologue” and “epilogue” pieces to camera by its star Ethan Hawke, appearing ambiguously and semi-fictionally as himself, discussing the film, the director and whether to feel optimistic or pessimistic about life.

On paper, this could be a conventional thriller, but it’s more like the confused dream you might have after watching a conventional thriller. Hawke plays an American special forces soldier, or possibly an expatriate American mercenary, operating in Rome as part of some anti-terrorist unit. He also plays his own twin brother, a radical leftist revolutionary held captive somewhere, who rails against his oppressors, quoting Woody Guthrie: “This machine kills fascists!” The soldier is also mixed up with some sinister cabal of Russian oligarchs who have a hold over him (a glimpse of a magazine photograph hints that both brothers were acquainted with them in days gone by) and a truly strange sequence shows him being forced to have sex with one of the women so she can have a baby. The terrorists themselves succeed in blowing up various Rome monuments, the occasion for some bargain-basement CGI work. There are Christian metaphors and a quotation from St Francis: “The world is the hiding place of God.”

This film may stretch your patience to the limit and beyond. It’s minor work – but there is always something there, some restless wounded intelligence, a pugnacious worrying-away at something. Ferrara is muddled, incoherent, but also strangely concerned to make sense of – or just acknowledge – the pain and anxiety of our lives.

• Abel Ferrara
• Ethan Hawke

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Zeros and Ones Review

Cryptic currency..

Zeros and Ones will be available in select theaters, Apple TV, and everywhere you can rent movies on Friday, Nov. 19.

One of cinema's enduring emperors of unease, Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant, King of New York), collaborates with Ethan Hawke on a confounding, nightmarish noir piece meant to evoke paranoia, confusion, and overall anxiety. Zeros and Ones is a pandemic lockdown dream gone sideways, filled with dark, silent streets, hazy hallways, and characters who feel just out of reach.

Zeros and Ones will not be for everyone, as it's as much a piece of performance art as anything else. With no clear premise other than Hawke playing both an intelligence operative and that operative's imprisoned twin brother, during a time in Rome when Vatican City has either already been bombed (or will be bombed, as the dreamscape qualities have you doubting time), the film puts you in the shoes of someone who simultaneously knows everything and nothing. Like the worst of one's unsettling dreams, the viewer feels unprepared, underinformed, and distanced from everyone and everything in a way that's fascinatingly frustrating.

Filmed in Italy during the throes of the country's COVID lockdown, Zeros and Ones bats the conventions of a typical espionage thriller around in Lynchian fashion, providing elements of devious doppelgangers, unexplained puppet masters, and dark spaces that can swallow someone whole.

This entire parade -- filled with smirking shadowy contacts and an ever-shifting spectrum of allegiances -- has been crafted to deliver a messy cauldron of feelings that bubbled up within Ferrara during the worst of 2020, wherein he manifested a "five minutes from now" dystopia full of disorientation. Hawke's JJ, a man in search of answers regarding his twin, speaks sparingly and cryptically while his lengthy masked-up treks through the city's mostly barren streets and cramped buildings are designed to mean more than the "plot."

A danger is about to befall the world, something set on upending everything. It's never named, barely discussed, and looms over the entire film like a sick cloud of dread. Hawke himself also bookends the movie with direct addresses to us, as part of this deceptive and divisive package, to talk about his involvement.

We learn the first Hawke video was a type of fundraiser, to drum up money for the movie, and that, after all was said and done, the actor was left as possibly befuddled as the rest of us. Though, as he's proven with past projects, Hawke's often driven to esoteric themes and stories that present as poetry and the preened plumage of arthouse fare. So, as an extra layer, the star of the movie participates in a brief postscript in an attempt to parse this bizarre curio.

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If you're looking for strong semblance of story, clarity of purpose, or well defined and presented characters, Zeros and Ones won't be your cup of tea. It's an experiment shot and structured to intrude upon your mind and heart. It moves from scene to scene in ways that only work to further build anxiety and resentment, never providing a moment of transparency or reprieve.

Zeros and Ones uses the spy genre as a thin mask for a fever dream that evokes nightmarish uncertainty. Star Ethan Hawke was drawn to the film because of its out-there murkiness rather than because of a clear understanding of the project and the end result is a patchwork quilt of operatives busting into rooms with guns drawn, characters watching hazy night vision footage, and wealthy mobsters laughing at the thought of their own unclear motivations. It's an interesting endeavor that vibrates with dismay.

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‘Zeros and Ones’ Review: Abel Ferrara’s Murky Pandemic-Era Mind Game

By Jay Weissberg

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The pandemic has slowed some of us down, but Abel Ferrara isn’t a guy to let an opportunity go to waste, even if it’s not clear what he’s actually doing with it. After his COVID-era documentary self-portrait “Sportin’ Life” last September comes “ Zeros and Ones ,” a murky — in every sense — apocalyptic spy thriller shot at night during the strict lockdown in his adopted city of Rome. Starring Ethan Hawke in dual roles as a military man of uncertain allegiance and his revolutionist brother, the film will have viewers grasping for Ferraraesque judgments on the politics of pandemic protocols, though the director’s own statements clearly place him among the sane.

His acolytes know best not to struggle too hard to parse a story that’s designed more as sensory mind play than straightforward (or even meandering) narrative. St. Peter’s Basilica gets blown up, but this is hardly “Angels and Demons.” Ethan Hawke provides an explanation of sorts in prologue and epilogue speaking directly to camera, but that too is surely making a game of our expectations rather than a genuine assist to the audience (more about that later).

What “Zeros and Ones” does do — deliberately, calculatedly, in the kind of messy intuitive manner that’s been the director’s signature of late — is reproduce the general state of unease and insecurity that’s plagued most of us during lockdown, when deserted nighttime city streets are even more unsettling than in a noir film and paranoia about who gains from exploiting these empty mental and physical spaces generates troubling reflections. Ferrara won’t be expanding his fan base, but its hunger should be temporarily sated.

The film’s intense soundscape, full of the kinds of cranked-up trebles and basses that make your guts rumble, creates an aural framework more unifying than the deliberately disorienting narrative with its teasing glimpses of plot visually matched by dimly-lit scenes shot in claustrophobic close-up. The period is full pandemic, with masks and hand washing clearly in evidence, but it’s like an alternate present in which a shadowy military force controls the empty streets and only the Chinese underworld and glitzy Russian overlords operate outside prescribed spaces. It’s here that JJ (Hawke) searches for news of his imprisoned brother Justin, questioning his sister-in-law Valeria (Valeria Correale) before connecting with sinister Chinese criminals who tempt him with girl-on-girl action and mounds of cocaine.

The Chinese element is a major misstep, smacking of hoary stereotypes of opium dens where Caucasians are lured by drugs and lesbian sex. It’s a clichéd netherworld existing just below the surface of “normal” (i.e., Western) society, spreading corruption among the populace, and given strong anti-immigrant feelings in Italy, this tired trope feels especially offensive. It’s a charge that could also be leveled against the overdressed mafiosi-like Russian power brokers (including the “laughing Russian agent” played by Ferrara’s wife Cristina Chiriac), seen swilling champagne and laughing about their negative COVID status. Ferrara can’t be blind to the troubling recycling of such caricatures, in which the presence of “the other” furthers the sense of societal decadence, so why go down this path?

Other paths are less clearly marked but not potentially odious: Muslim men at prayer in a mosque is thankfully not meant to carry negative connotations, yet the scene’s significance remains vague at best. The same can be said for much else, though at a stretch one could say the film has something to do with a martyred revolutionary, Justin, whose vision of a just society runs counter to the controlling needs of military forces prepared to waterboard their enemies to stop the spread of such liberating ideology. JJ’s ambiguous position within that military system remains unexplained, just as the destruction of St. Peter’s doesn’t quite jive with the heavily underlined Christological parallels in reference to Justin.

Which brings us to Hawke’s prologue and epilogue, or more accurately Ferrara’s bookended monologues for Hawke. The pre-credit opening has the actor talking to the camera in a kind of private message to the viewer, saying the usual stuff about how excited he was to work with the director, how the script really speaks to this moment but not in a didactic way and so forth. He outlines his two roles, engages our sympathies by acknowledging “this wild year we’ve been living through,” and then the “true” film begins. But of course the prologue is integral to the film, which the epilogue openly asserts: Audiences heading for the doors during the final credits will miss this crucial coda in which Hawke says he didn’t really understand the script and then goes on to spout innocuous platitudes about death, life and the start of a new day, ending it all with “yes, this is part of the film.” It’s all a tease, a kind of manipulation which may or may not be a message to mistrust easily digested information we’re delivered in this fake news era. It’s unlikely Ferrara is telling us what to think, instead demanding we set aside the crusade for answers and ponder the state we’re in.

Ferrara’s Rome is not the Eternal City of most cineastes, and few others are bold enough to make it look so grungy. Largely shot in the late-19th-century Piazza Vittorio neighborhood, a more multiethnic quarter than most parts of the historic center, the film evokes a gloomy cityscape marred by overflowing graffiti, its streets emptied out by the pandemic (exceptional permission was granted for shooting during Italy’s strict lockdown period). For a city celebrated for its light and beauty, it’s disquieting to see Rome through eyes long habituated to the uglier corners. Sean Price Williams’ camera is intentionally over-near to its subjects, using the dislocating effects of close-ups combined with barely lit interiors and exteriors, reminiscent of a blacked-out city during an air raid, to visualize the spirit of oppression. Drone images of deserted streets act in similar ways, lightened just once by a brief shot of maskless people in a café, able to once again enjoy a cup of coffee indoors.

Reviewed at Locarno Film Festival, Aug. 12, 2021. Running time: 85 MIN.

• Production: (Germany-U.K.-U.S.) A Capstone Pictures presentation of a Maze Pictures, Rimsky Prods., Almost Never Films, Hammerstone Studios, Macaia Film production. (World sales: Blue Box Int'l, Los Angeles.) Producers: Philipp Kreuzer, Diana Phillips. Executive producers: Alex Lebovici, Danny Chan, Brent Guttman, Don Young, Robert Pessell. Co-producer: Manuel Stefanolo.
• Crew: Director, writer: Abel Ferrara. Camera: Sean Price Williams. Editor: Leonardo Daniel Bianchi. Music: Joe Delia.
• With: Ethan Hawke, Cristina Chiriac, Phil Neilson, Valerio Mastandrea, Valeria Correale, Dounia Sichov, Mahmut Sifa Erkaya, Korlan Madi, Stephen Gurewitz, Babak Karimi, Carla Lucia Cassola, Anna Ferrara. (English, Russian dialogue)

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‘Zeros and Ones’ Review: Ethan Hawke Plays Twin Soldiers in Abel Ferrara’s Scuzzy Plea for a New World Order

David ehrlich.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2021 Locarno   Film Festival. Lionsgate releases the film in theaters and on VOD on Friday, November 19.

Abel Ferrara has never been much for salvation, at least not in the sense that it might be handed to us on a silver platter by someone who died more than 2,000 years ago; his “Bad Lieutenant” wasn’t exactly a self-portrait, but Harvey Keitel referring to Jesus Christ as a “rat fuck” didn’t come out of nowhere. In recent years, however, the grindhouse nihilism of Ferrara’s earlier work has been tempered by the personal acceptance of impending doom.

The scraggly Bronx-born filmmaker traded Catholicism for Buddhism around the same time as he relocated from New York to Rome, and movies like “4:44 Last Day on Earth,” “Tommaso,” and “Pasolini” — while still rank with the raw sewage that stops up human civilization — began to look inward for answers even as they confronted the end of the world. It’s as if the now-70-year-old Ferrara was steeling himself for some kind of structural collapse in the hopes that he might find the personal strength necessary to survive it. Watching that process hasn’t always rewarded the patience required to keep up, but if cinema (or civilization) feels like a ship that’s been taking on too much water, even Ferrara agnostics might struggle to think of anyone they’d rather follow to safety.

In other words, of course Abel Ferrara had a hog-wild COVID film loaded in the chamber as if he’d just been waiting for the streets to clear out so he could use them as his sets. And while “Zeros and Ones” may be incomprehensible even by the nonlinear standards of recent work like 2020’s Jungian dream poem “Siberia,” the confusion of its plot is offset by the conviction of its purpose. If most pandemic films have been the obvious product of compromise — of plans abandoned and reshuffled on the fly — Ferrara’s addition to this grim sub-genre feels like it’s been growing hair in the back of his fridge for God knows how long. It’s a scrambled call to action that’s finally being unleashed now that people can appreciate the stakes.

That Ferrara would eventually team up with Ethan Hawke seemed inevitable, but it’s curious that he would do so now, and with a film that can seem like the garbled second part of a call-and-response with Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed” (at least if you cup your ears and listen for a certain wavelength). If that movie asked, “will God forgive us for what we’re doing to his creation?,” this one answers, “why the hell are we waiting for Him?” If that movie insisted “well, somebody’s got to do something!,” this one agrees, albeit with a much vaguer understanding as to why, and a much vaguer sense of what ought to be done about it. And if that movie ended with the aborted suicide-bombing of a small country church, this one begins with the very successful — very crudely animated in After Effects — suicide-bombing of the Vatican.

COVID is never mentioned by name in “Zeros and Ones,” though it’s clear that the air is poisoned by one thing or another, and Ferrara takes full advantage of the virus’ décor, especially in an opening sequence that recasts members of the Italian military as extras in whatever kind of war it was that forced Rome under lockdown. A ponytailed Hawke, in the first of his twinned roles, enters the movie as an American soldier named JJ.

Sean Price Williams’ scuzz-noir cinematography and Joe Della’s reverb-heavy drum and guitar score fill the empty streets of the Eternal City with a post-apocalyptic emptiness that makes room for all sorts of oblique insinuations. Maybe there are terrorists afoot, or maybe the most immediate threat is of a different nature. Is JJ there on official government business, or has he gone AWOL in search of his missing twin brother Justin? It’s hard to say. “Have you figured out what you’re doing in my country?” someone asks him. “I’m working on it,” he replies.

Don’t bother doing the math, as “Zeros and Ones” only grows more abstract as it goes along. JJ prays at a mosque amid chatter of “death to the infidels,” but Ferrara isn’t pointing any fingers at religious fundamentalism; an imam shows up long enough to engage JJ in a conversation about how “Jesus was just another soldier in a 3,000-year war,” and then the Islamic angle falls away. Skype calls with scantily clad sex workers come with even less context (“they’re both negative,” a liaison boasts), and real-time surveillance footage from a dinner party full of Russian billionaires lasts just long enough for one of them to tell a long joke about Norman Mailer. Everyone JJ meets tries to shed his imperialist skin, but only one woman — pointing a machine gun at Hawke and demanding he impregnate a nameless girl on a hotel bed, perhaps so that she might give birth to a brighter tomorrow — even gets him to take off his clothes.

Meanwhile, JJ’s stringy brother is forcibly administered LSD and tortured for information by… someone. Justin never sought the comfort of a uniform, and it’s clear that he was a nation unto himself until the bitter end. Justin isn’t around for long, but his brief time on screen is built around a spittle-filled monologue that acts like kerosene for this funeral pyre of a movie. “Your strippers are Marxist, your cameraman is my brother,” he tells his captors. Later, after repurposing Woody Guthrie’s favorite weapon against fascists, Justin rants, “how come no one is lighting themselves on fire anymore!? The world is watching what happens here, and it’s up to us — the living — to finish the work of the dead so that they will not have died in vain.” And finally: “Nobody is going to stop me from living the freedom my way.”

What exactly those words inspire JJ to do is unclear. The film’s overarching threat is never made explicit, though the binary title that Ferrara has chosen for it — supported by an emphasis on digital media and a general disgust for the data that it uses for currency — suggests an urge to break the coding of modern civilization and topple the shadowy power structures that it holds in place. Nevertheless, JJ becomes increasingly determined to seize upon the instability that surrounds him and use this brief window of opportunity to remodel the world in a more equitable image. That process involves chintzy explosions, murdered strippers, and shots of soldiers pointing their rifles at who knows what, but the dying words of St. Francis speak through the grainy detritus of Ferrara’s digital jazz all the same: “Do what is yours to do.”

“Zeros and Ones” isn’t much of an entertaining sit — watching it feels like dusting off a cryptic artifact from a bygone civilization, its pleasures more archaeological than anything else — but every frame of this weird soup is suffused with the restless creative spirit of someone who’s been waiting for a new world order, and recognizes that we only get so many chances to make it happen. And if we blow it, which we almost certainly have by now, it won’t be because it wasn’t possible, but rather because we sat around waiting for someone else to program a different future.

“Zeros and Ones” premiered at the 2021 Locarno Film Festival. Lionsgate will distribute it in the United States.

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Zeros and Ones review – Abel Ferrara’s head-scratching lockdown thriller

Ethan Hawke plays a US mercenary on an incomprehensible mission in a murky conspiracy thriller that seems designed to baffle viewers

10 Mar 2022

Pre-pandemic, Abel Ferrara left us out in the cold with a patience-testing dreamscape about a man whose mission was impossible to make sense of. Now he has done the same, though arguably with even less narrative cohesion, in his latest Zeros and Ones . If you've seen Siberia , you'll know that's no mean feat. This film appears to promise a kind of siege thriller, poster adorned with an image of the Vatican in flames. Misleading as that is, you have to feel for the marketing team: there would be no other way to sell what the director delivers here.

Ethan Hawke (with long hair tied back) plays JJ, a stoic US mercenary assigned to prevent something from happening in the vicinity of the Vatican. His mission will lead him into the company of various unscrupulous characters, a rogue's gallery of terrorists, spies, and drug dealers, for a series of cryptic conversations – and also his own brother, Justin, a madman prone to messianic rants who has been taken hostage, and whom JJ believes to be a “revolutionary.” Justin is also played by Hawke, only with his hair down to help us differentiate.

This is a guerrilla-style pandemic film that seems to address the anxious state of the world through murky footage and a disorienting plot that constantly eludes any attempt to work out what it all means. The result is in many ways impenetrable, but I suspect some will fall under its strange, hypnotic spell, scenes held together by the casting of a game-for-it Hawke, who seems to have a soft spot for morally dubious war thrillers (see Good Kill ).

Ferrara shot the film quickly under lockdown conditions, and it reeks of pandemic cinema in the usual ways: empty street locations, crude camerawork, a general sense that the script didn’t take that long to write. People can be seen wearing marks, temperatures are taken with laser guns – what it has to say about the pandemic is anyone's guess, though there is knowing humour in watching Hawke repeatedly adopt to the protocol of using hand sanitiser despite the nature of his work.

Perhaps the most baffling aspect is the inclusion of an intro and outro, which has Hawke – as himself or playing himself, it isn’t clear – addressing the camera and talking about why he decided to make the film and what he thinks now, having made it. I can’t think of a reason to include these moments, except at some studio behest to make sense of something nonsensical. But Ferrara doesn't seem like the type to take notes. These scenes serve a purpose – though maybe only in the director's mind.

Ferrara's late-career experiments are not entirely uninteresting, but they’re not exactly compelling, either. Still, I can’t deny that something of this film’s edgy mood stuck with me, a lingering sense that hidden among the rubble there is a real point being made. Answers on a postcard.

Zeros and Ones is now available on digital platforms.

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Movie Review – Zeros and Ones (2021)

January 7, 2022 by Robert Kojder

Zeros and Ones , 2021.

Written and Directed by Abel Ferrara. Starring Ethan Hawke, Cristina Chiriac, Phil Neilson, Anna Ferrara, Salvatore Ruocco, Valerio Mastandrea, Babak Karimi, Dounia Sichov, Valeria Correale, Korlan Rachmetova, and Mahmut Sifa Erkaya.

Called to Rome to stop an imminent terrorist bombing, a soldier desperately seeks news of his imprisoned brother — a rebel with knowledge that could thwart the attack. Navigating the capital’s darkened streets, he races to a series of ominous encounters to keep the Vatican from being blown to bits.

Oddly (although I suppose such a term is par for the course with writer and director Abel Ferrara), Zeros and Ones begins with leading man Ethan Hawke speaking directly to the camera. No, not his character; this is the actor himself briefly meditating on what it was like to work with the filmmaker during the height of lockdown within Rome while touching on how this is a bizarrely presented movie of the moment. The entire speech plays like one of those AMC greetings from the cast before an early promotional screening or first-look trailer, but in this case, seeing that Zeros and Ones comes from Lionsgate, I just initially assumed it was the distributor’s instructed method of informing blind paying viewers that they are about to witness something unabashedly unconventional and abstract to the core. Whether or not this plays into the narrative or themes at hand, I will leave you to discover for yourself, but it’s advised not to skip the ending credits. As for the specifics of the narrative, here goes nothing.

Ethan Hawke portrays an unnamed military soldier (although he is credited as JJ) called into pandemic Rome on the watch for a potential terrorist threat to the Vatican. Trust me, it’s a lot less exciting than it sounds (I will say that there is a tiny amount of action here, but not to expect much considering the budget), but the investigative proceedings work as a brooding, darkened, atmospheric all-nighter odyssey through a seedy political underbelly containing major players of various countries. Naturally, no one really seems to be prioritizing the well-being or on the side of our clueless antihero.

JJ encounters a mysterious mother and child that he appears to have a vested interest in protecting, seeks information from a mosque, at one point becomes embroiled in blackmail threatened to forcibly have sex with another woman as part of a twisted political game (the soldier holding JJ at gunpoint also happens to be played by Abel Ferrara’s wife, Cristina Chiriac), but is most presently concerned with unearthing whether or not his revolutionary brother is alive or dead. Also noteworthy is that Ethan Hawke also plays JJ’s brother during a few suspenseful flashbacks and is relatively captivating in the dual roles.

Putting it straight out there, Zeros and Ones is not a film that one comes away from once or multiple times with even a fundamental understanding of the characters and plot. Abel Ferrara works with his frequent collaborative grunge composer, Joe Delia, propulsively finding more thrills by allowing JJ and the audience to share in the paranoia of whatever corruption is brewing. Cinematographer Sean Price Williams also adds a stylistic touch with aerial perspectives, night and heat vision framing, and a grimy edge when it comes to JJs freedom fighting brother. With that said, it’s in that dynamic where Zeros and Ones come close to touching upon anything resembling emotional resonance. Such shortcomings would assuredly sink most films, although there is an unsettling urgency here as Abel Ferrara simultaneously confounds and beguiles. The ending itself, alongside its post-credits reveals, also had some intriguing recontextualization.

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

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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‘Zeros and Ones’ Film Review: Ethan Hawke’s Mission Is Murky in More Ways Than One

Director Abel Ferrara raises more questions than he answers, but the pursuit of the truth (for the protagonist and for the audience) proves compelling enough

Everyone has picked a side in writer-director Abel Ferrara’s cryptic new thriller “Zeros and Ones.” His pandemic-set mood piece concerns the clash of warring forces in a reality on the brink of collapse, where the images that cameras capture offer a distorted look into the abyss. Narrative lucidity hides under the artist’s self-imposed mandate to instill somberness at the expense of character and plot.

American soldier JJ (a scruffy Ethan Hawke) arrives in Rome wearing a face mask. As he walks through the train station and into the city in a long sequence that establishes the context, we turn to a sanitation employee power-washing surfaces. A shell of its bustling self, the Italian capital, and later the Vatican, appear deserted. The recognition sets in; this is not entirely dystopian fiction but rather an unsettling, recognizable normal.

Ferrara makes no explicit mention of the COVID-19 pandemic, and no other explanation for the facial coverings is given, almost as if he took for granted that part of the screenplay had already been written for him and downloaded into our minds by the hand of our collective uncertainty.

Walking shadowy streets, JJ embarks on a Stations of the Cross–like hunt, visiting a series of enigmatic characters hiding in plain sight to obtain intel about his twin brother’s whereabouts. Insert voiceover over religious imagery (Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam”) anticipating the end of the systems of oppression as we know them and the commencement of a new, presumably fairer era. The radicalized preacher behind the prophetic statements is Justin (also Hawke), the sibling in question as well as a wanted man.

In cinematographer Sean Price Williams’ grimy frames, the director finds an accomplice in creating an atmosphere of confusion amid the darkness that shrouds the holy city. Wielding a hand-held camera, Price Williams seeks angles that reveal the symbols in the background as JJ carries out on-the-ground reconnaissance. A dance of limited light and shifting focus while walking along with the antihero conveys an unnerving energy, that of an enemy lurking even when unseen.

From the frustratingly evasive presentation of the events, with scarce details about what any of this means, one can at least infer there’s a plan in motion that must be stopped for order to remain. JJ and other American soldiers on the ground repeatedly demand to know “When?” and “Where?” from every person they interrogate. Digs at American imperialism also abound in unabashed form.

Although we are blind as to what exactly they need to prevent, Ferrara’s fondness for the sordid fills in the time, whether that is two Asian women touching each other erotically as the leading soldier purchases illegal substances or JJ forced to engage in sexual activity while being recorded for blackmailing purposes. For all the sleaziness he witnesses, Hawke’s character never skips dabbing hand sanitizer when entering a new space. The practice resonates as both timely and knowingly comedic.

When playing JJ, Hawke bargains in muted grimaces, translating the heavy impotence and guilt of being part of the mission in place to apprehend Justin for terrorist ideation. Tormented by betrayal, he maintains a stoic façade as he carries out his calculated quest in this strange underworld. There are no furious outbursts or moments of lightness, just a steady stream of tension.

But when the often-daring actor gets to his scene as Justin, a self-anointed messianic figure, Hawke goes for broke, reciting an impromptu manifesto somewhere between the Declaration of Independence and a Catholic prayer. With an ardent, almost maniacal conviction, this revolutionary martyr echoes Hawke’s protagonist in Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed,” a priest on an ecological crusade.

“Zeros and Ones” is the fourth release by the incredibly prolific director in less than two years (the others being “Tommaso,” “Sportin’ Life,” and “Siberia”), marking a period of vigorous creation for him with assorted effectiveness in the output. But even at his most impenetrable, Ferrara is nothing if not a filmmaker conscious of all elements that compose a cinematic experience, and as obvious as one could imagine that is for everyone who dedicates their time to this medium, that’s not always the case.

Here he plays with the frame rate, forcing us to observe closer details he deems notable, even if we can’t comprehend why. He shows segments of scenes through the lens of a camera in night vision to further note the distinction between what we see and the truth, or he deploys Joe Delia’s score, heavy on military drums, like a bold motif.

And though many of these choices come off as too obviously deliberate, their inclusion builds a language of expression that communicates, if not precisely discernible ideas, a feeling of dread and discomfort. The seams show in the explosions of sacred buildings achieved via low-grade VFX that fails to convince, a decision from an obstinate artist unfazed by any demands of technical perfection but bent on completing his bizarre point about the future. There’s something admirable in that mad vision.

Indecipherable to a fault but in the end surprisingly hopeful, “Zeros and Ones” feels like diving into a murky river to search for a missing object, fully aware one might never find it but still willing to get wet in its slush for the sake of trying.

“Zeros and Ones” opens in US theaters, on demand, and on Apple TV+ on Nov. 19.

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Zeros and ones, common sense media reviewers.

Challenging experimental movie has violent scenes, language.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Filmmaker seems to be saying something here -- or

JJ is the only real character in the movie, and hi

Main character is a flawed White man; other charac

Person tortured via waterboarding. Dead people sho

A woman seduces the main character, removing his s

A few uses of "f--king." Also "s--t," "motherf----

JJ buys drugs (white powder). Character injects dr

Parents need to know that Zeros and Ones is an experimental drama by cult-favorite filmmaker Abel Ferrara. It follows an American soldier (Ethan Hawke) in Rome during the COVID-19 pandemic who's trying to stop a bombing. The movie is full of strange, intriguing imagery and ideas, and mature viewers are bound…

Positive Messages

Filmmaker seems to be saying something here -- or lots of things -- though it's not clear exactly what. Violence and conflict seem to be part of it, as well as (perhaps) idea that things captured by digital format may or may not be real. As with many experimental movies, viewers will likely come away with different ideas. Ultimately, the movie is a challenge, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Positive Role Models

JJ is the only real character in the movie, and his behavior is often iffy, while his goals and achievements are fuzzy.

Diverse Representations

Main character is a flawed White man; other characters are seen for very little time. Two Asian women are shown in a situation drawn from stereotype and objectified in the process (they're depicted kissing and caressing each other). Most characters are European.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Person tortured via waterboarding. Dead people shown covered in blood spatters, with more blood spatters on the wall. Other dead bodies. Explosions. Main character with gun. Soldiers with guns. Boxing.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A woman seduces the main character, removing his shirt and kissing him. Two scantily clad women kiss and caress each other. Naked man depicted in Michelangelo painting.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

A few uses of "f--king." Also "s--t," "motherf----r," "c--ksucker," and a use of "p---y."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

JJ buys drugs (white powder). Character injects drugs into his hand. Cigarette butts shown. Character drinks vodka from the bottle; others drink vodka shots with dinner. Characters drink sparkling wine.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Zeros and Ones is an experimental drama by cult-favorite filmmaker Abel Ferrara . It follows an American soldier ( Ethan Hawke ) in Rome during the COVID-19 pandemic who's trying to stop a bombing. The movie is full of strange, intriguing imagery and ideas, and mature viewers are bound to come away with differing interpretations. Violent scenes and images include a character being tortured via waterboarding, dead women covered in spattered blood, soldiers with guns, buildings exploding, and more. Someone seduces the main character, kissing him and removing his shirt, and two scantily clad women kiss and caress each other. Language includes a few uses of "f--king," "motherf----r," "c--ksucker," "s--t," and "p---y." The main character buys drugs (heroin?), and another character injects a drug into his hand. Characters drink vodka shots, vodka out of the bottle, and sparkling wine, and cigarette butts are seen. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (1)

Based on 1 parent review

Absolute piece of junk

What's the story.

In ZEROS AND ONES, a soldier named JJ ( Ethan Hawke ) is sent to Rome during the COVID-19 pandemic to discover the whereabouts of his revolutionary brother (also Hawke), who may know something about a potential bombing of the Vatican. JJ learns from his sister-in-law, Valeria (Valeria Correale), that his brother may be dead, in prison, or both. So he starts searching the Roman underworld for clues, encountering all kinds of unusual types and existential dread. Can JJ prevent the attack?

Is It Any Good?

Director Abel Ferrara goes even more deeply than usual into uncommercial experimental mode here, delivering an opaque, baffling movie. Zeros and Ones hardly has any plot, but it does offer a series of nervy ideas and undeniable sensations. If Ferrara's Tommaso and Siberia appealed mainly to the cult director's die-hard fans, then Zeros and Ones makes those two films look positively mainstream, like multiplex popcorn-munchers. This film recalls Jean-Luc Godard's arty, post-New Wave work or Terrence Malick 's more polarizing offerings, wandering from one unexpected moment to something else that feels totally disconnected, with various thoughts like "a hard road leads to a real life" expressed seemingly at random.

The pandemic -- and images of hand-washing and masks -- are among the most familiar things in the movie, providing something of an anchor but also indicating more uncertainty. Hawke is the only other familiar thing here. The movie opens with a video of him introducing the movie and ends with another video of him trying to make sense of what we've just seen. He closes with "yes, this is part of the film." Even the title, Zeros and Ones , is unclear, unless it refers to the digital format in which the movie was made. Whatever Ferrara is trying to say here, whether it's about conflict or acts of violence or something else, it's told by a veteran filmmaker who hasn't lost any of his fire. It's a tough, tricky movie that's worth unpacking.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Zeros and Ones ' violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

What are some of the movie's themes? What did it make you think about?

What is an "experimental" movie, as opposed to a "narrative" movie? Is it possible to blur the lines between the two?

How is sex depicted here? What values are imparted?

How are drinking and drug use depicted? Are they glamorized? Are there consequences? Why does that matter?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 19, 2021
• On DVD or streaming : January 4, 2022
• Cast : Ethan Hawke , Valerio Mastandrea , Babak Karimi
• Director : Abel Ferrara
• Studio : Lionsgate
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 86 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language, some violence, bloody images, sexual material and drug content
• Last updated : July 12, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

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First Reformed

Knight of Cups

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Indie films, cult classics.

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Wednesday, November 17, 2021

'zeros and ones' (2021) movie review.

Ethan Hawke ( Sinister ) plays J.J., an enigmatic American military man stationed in Rome. Over the course of one night, he navigates the COVID-riddled nighttime streets to thwart an imminent attack somehow connected to his brother, Justin (also played by Ethan Hawke,  First Reformed ), a vehement radical with extremist ties. The plot unfurls like a quiet, contemplative, political  Heart of Darkness  as J.J. traverses the Italian capital, from one fraught, shadowy encounter to the next. 

[Related Reading: 'Predestination' Review: Ethan Hawke's Unusual, Unexpected Time-Travel Thriller]

COVID colors the entire film, both narrative and production. Gritty and grainy, shots and scenes feel stolen and illicit, pilfered when and where Ferrara and company could find them on empty Italian streets. Characters often interact via video-calls, which grounds the story in a specific moment, but also likely served a practical function during filming. J.J. dons an omnipresent mask, and at each stop has his temperature taken and douses himself with hand sanitizer. It paints a portrait of terrorist hunting in a time of a raging plague, piling a layer of tension on top of J.J.’s search. 

[Related Reading: 'In a Valley of Violence' Movie Review]

Clocking in at 86 minutes, with an introduction by Hawke and lengthy opening and closing credits, this is more like 75. Tops. The earlier uses of words like sparse and lean aren’t hyperbole. And while the end result plays understandably thin,  Zeros and Ones  offers up intriguing ideas with which to grapple. Religious iconography peppers the film, as well as ideas of duality, loyalty, and more, and though they often ring hollow and unexplored, the film nevertheless offers a fascinating, often gripping watch.  [Grade: B-]

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Zeroes and Ones Reviews

The point, which is probably that we're losing ourselves, and our "self," in our electronic devices, isn't particularly new, but the way it's delivered is pretty interesting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 18, 2011

This spectacular orchestration of visual elements seems wasted on a threadbare, inanely repetitive plotline.

Full Review | Mar 15, 2011

0s & 1s goes beyond merely communicating what it feels like to have one's consciousness colonized by spectacle, employing its exhaustive catalog of new media in instructive ways.

The most egregiously off-putting treatise yet on modern media addiction

Full Review | Original Score: .5/4 | Mar 14, 2011

LOCARNO 2021 Competition

Review: Zeros and Ones

by  Giorgia Del Don

13/08/2021 - Co-produced by Germany, the UK and the USA, Abel Ferrara’s latest work turns out to be a chaotic and difficult film to decipher, held aloft by an omnipresent score

Captained by an ethereal and unflappable Ethan Hawke , stepping into the shoes of an American soldier called JJ whose mission remains largely unknown, Zeros and Ones   [ + see also: trailer film profile ] plays on an endless form of suspense which sadly becomes a little taxing. Introduced by Hawke himself, who explained Abel Ferrara ’s motivations for making the film – to react to the health crisis, but also as a result of the very same reasons which drive an actor to choose the projects best suited to him - Zeros and Ones hurls us into a dystopic world inhabited by lugubrious and unscrupulous characters as of its opening shots.

Summarising the story told by Abel Ferrara in his latest cinematic effort, which was presented in a world premiere within the Locarno Film Festival ’s International Competition, is no easy thing, because the film introduces us to an almost infinite number of characters, whose only common link is JJ, an American solider on a mission in Rome, which is being attacked by apocalyptic forms.

The film revolves around JJ’s nervous, paranoid wanderings, which might be aimed at saving the eternal city from destruction, freeing his anarchic brother (as the protagonist describes him) or saving the latter’s wife and daughter from an unknown, imminent danger. JJ’s real motivations remain unclear in a coming and going of increasingly sinister encounters, involving religious fanatics (both Catholics and Muslims), rugged, oriental drugs traffickers and voluptuous mafiosi women hailing from the East. The film’s vagueness reaches a climax when Hawke, aka JJ, is forced at gunpoint to impregnate one of the two mysterious girls while being filmed using the camera JJ wields compulsively throughout the film , all to the tune of an unlikely song by Loreena McKennitt .

Whilst, at a certain point, we realise that the chaos is caused by the destruction of the Vatican (which is blown away by a bomb), there’s nothing to help us understand who JJ is looking for and why everyone is so angry at him. Despite the surreal atmosphere dominating Ferrara’s political thriller, it still feels familiar to us thanks to the inclusion of habits which are now part and parcel of all our lives: the wearing of a mask and the nigh-on automatic reflex of washing our hands. Why the director chose to combine a health crisis with a political thriller might be a question worth asking, given that, ultimately, the theme of the pandemic is only explored at surface level and remains a peripheral and sadly trivial thing. Is Zeros and Ones the director’s attempt to lend form to the fears and paranoias which have inhabited him over the past year and a half? Nothing is certain, but this might be one of the keys to understanding this film, which is decidedly difficult to decipher and whose only logical narrative seems to come from the music whose presence is constant from beginning to end. It’s a shame, though, that a director like Ferrara, who has always proved himself to be a visionary and cult filmmaker, didn’t see fit to include any “female” characters who transcend basic stereotypes; instead, mothers, prostitutes, femmes fatales and seducers abound. From this point of view, at least, the film could definitely have done better.

Zeros and Ones is produced by Maze Pictures (Germany), Hammerstone Studios (USA), Rimsky Productions (UK) and Macaia Film (Italy) in co-production with Almost Never Films (USA). World sales are in the hands of Blue Box International.

(Translated from Italian)

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more about: Zeros and Ones

The Ordinaries wins the German Cinema New Talent Award for Best Director at Filmfest München

As every year, the festival has bestowed a series of awards upon new talents from the young generation of German filmmakers, as well as several other prizes across different categories   

11/07/2022 | Filmfest München 2022 | Awards

La Roche-sur-Yon welcomes the many faces of contemporary cinema

The 12th edition of the French festival will unfold from 11 to 17 October with a very rich and diverse programme of more than 100 films, including nine in international competition   

07/10/2021 | Festivals | Awards | La Roche-sur-Yon 2021

Indonesia’s Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash walks away with Locarno’s Golden Leopard

The Swiss festival’s leopard roars back to life with a welcome dose of irony, awarding its main award to Edwin’s new work   

17/08/2021 | Locarno 2021 | Awards

Co-produced by Germany, the UK and the USA, Abel Ferrara’s latest work turns out to be a chaotic and difficult film to decipher, held aloft by an omnipresent score   

13/08/2021 | Locarno 2021 | Competition

Locarno makes its voice heard with a 74th edition to be held in person

The new films from Bertrand Mandico, Axelle Ropert and Abel Ferrara are vying for the Golden Leopard in the first edition under the artistic direction of Giona A Nazzaro   

20/07/2021 | Locarno 2021

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Zeros and Ones (2021)

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Zeros and Ones’ on VOD, in Which Ethan Hawke Roams the Roman Shadows Mid-Pandemic

Where to stream:.

• Zeros and Ones
• Ethan Hawke

Elizabeth Hurley Praises Her Son Damian For Making Her Feel "Safe And Looked After" While Directing Her Sex Scenes In 'Strictly Confidential'

'leave the world behind' trends as cyber attack fears spread amid ongoing social media and phone network outages, 'reality bites' at 30: slackers and yuppies face-off in this gen x battle between authenticity and capitalism, 7 movies like 'the notebook' that will make you swoon.

Now on VOD, Zeros and Ones is a pandemic thriller for art’s sake by Abel Ferrara, the certified nut behind infamous ’90s indie staple Bad Lieutenant . He casts Ethan Hawke as an American videographer-soldier AND his anarchist/communist/terrorist/pick an -ist (as long as it’s not fascist) twin brother, the former on assignment in locked-down Rome, and the latter imprisoned back in the good old U.S. of A. Deducing what Ferrara has to say might be a task fit only for fools, so maybe he’ll kick up a mood or two during these 86 minutes.

ZEROS AND ONES : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open on Hawke’s face in closeup, introducing himself as Ethan Hawke. The movie hasn’t started yet — he provides an amiable intro in which he points out that Ferrara isn’t giving us anything remotely “didactic” in regards to the current Covid era, which may be an obvious statement, considering the image of a weeping, naked Harvey Keitel is forever emblazoned in our memories.

On to the narrative at hand: Rome. 2020. MY KINGDOM FOR SOME DECENT LIGHTING. Every scene is a squint into a grainy pitch. A lonely subway train rolls into Rome, and Hawke’s character, J.J., disembarks, walking through the abandoned station and streets. He goes home, at least I think it’s home, washes his hands, chats with a friend or agent via Zoom, leaves, walks a bit, gets a temp check by a soldier, hops in a Jeep, gets vague instructions from a superior — “that’s the news of the world,” “shoot it so they believe it” — and sets off with video camera in hand. It’s night. And even if it isn’t night, It’s always like night in this movie.

He drops in on his brother’s wife and daughter, who wakes up crying. He has a scintillating conversation with the little girl: “What are you dreamin’ about? Fish?” She doesn’t reply, possibly because he’s pretty much the opposite of warm and fun. Next stop, a vague, unidentifiable locale — the movie is full of these — for some white-powder drugs and a glimpse at a tablet computer, which is home to a disturbing video of his brother being shot up with some serum and interrogated. Then, he chats with a homeless man whose cardboard box looks like a coffin in an overhead shot; visits a Muslim prayer room; joins two other soldiers to film them waterboarding a boxer; goes to church so a nun can deliver some cryptic dialogue. There’s more stuff here, including a strange scene with some Russians and a couple troublesome phony-CGI explosions at Roman landmarks. Piece it all together and what do you get? A whole lotta hellifiknow.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I dunno if this impenetrable bullshit is preferable to Michael Bay-produced Covid exploitationist flick Songbird . If so, then just barely.

Performance Worth Watching: Hawke has had a strange career, ranging from the sublime ( Boyhood , the Before trilogy) to the grippingly intense ( Training Day , First Reformed ) to pretentious twaddle ( Tesla , Great Expectations ). Guess which of the three this movie falls under?

Memorable Dialogue: “Jesus was just another soldier. Another war casualty. But on whose side?” — J.J., via voiceover, proving he’s the life of every party

Sex and Skin: Dark, grainy footage (of course) of two scantily clad women making out.

Our Take: I caught myself dreamin’ about things while watching Zeros and Ones . Things like fish! The film is incomprehensible, ugly to look at and utterly humorless, which is a not nice way of saying it’s “challenging.” Ferrara stirs some of his favorite stuff — sex, violence, religion, sexy violence against religion — into a big pot of early-Covid existential bleakness, and all we can do is accept it as a kind of skanky mood piece, dim and damp and everyone close enough to the camera that we can smell their pits. Perhaps it goes without saying that mass death and isolation linger silently at the margins of the plot, which otherwise begs interpretation. Good luck with that.

Certainly, all this is intentional. Ferrara has a rep as a provocateur, so knock yourself out trying to wring roiling political metaphors from the rag of stern Americans and laughing Russians crossing paths in the skeevy Roman underground, occasionally emerging on the street to make the Vatican go kablooey. I’m sure there’s nuance here in the gritty, pixelated shadows, in Hawke’s personification of an almost-character, in whatever else is going on — read into it as you may. But it’s also eminently dismissable.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Despite its maddening opacity, I truly believe Zeros and Ones has an audience. It’s just very, very, very small.

Will you stream or skip the Ethan Hawke pandemic thriller #ZerosAndOnes on VOD? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) November 22, 2021

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com .

Where to stream Zeros and Ones

• Prime Video
• Stream It Or Skip It

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Movie reviews: 'Zeros and Ones' gives you two Hawkes for the price of one

ZEROS AND ONES: 1 ½ STARS

Are you an Ethan Hawke fan? If so, “Zeros and Ones,” a cryptic new film by director Abel Ferrara now available on VOD, gives you two Hawkes for the price of one.

But be warned, this isn’t “Dead Poets Society” or “Before Sunset.”

At one point during this enigmatic movie, a woman (Valeria Correale) asks J.J. Jericho (Hawke), a soldier who spends much of his time roaming the empty streets of Rome, “Have you figured out what you’re doing in my country?”

“Working on it,” he replies.

Jericho may also be working on understating the point of this movie. I know I am.

Jericho is an American soldier in Italy on the hunt for Justin (also Hawke), his revolutionary twin brother. Justin, who is prone to incomprehensible pontification and breaking into song, is suspected of masterminding a plan to blow up the Vatican, but now he has gone missing.

On his search, Jericho, who is also no stranger to odd verbal blurtings — “Jesus was just another soldier,” he says, “but on whose side?” — finds out his brother is dead. Or that he’s in jail. And so, he continues his lonely mission through empty streets, deserted parks and shadowy alleyways.

Ferrara takes advantage of the severe Italian COVID-19 lockdown to shoot in the abovementioned vacated spaces, and that adds to the film’s sense of unease, but that’s about all there is in this impenetrable, repetitive movie.

Hawke does what he can to lift Jericho and Justin off the page, but the script only offers underdeveloped, one note characters for him and his gravelly voice to inhabit. As such, Jericho’s quest and Justin’s cause offer no emotional engagement with the audience.

“Zeros and Ones” is an odd film. It is bookended by Hawke who provides an intro, talking about how much he’s always wanted to work with Ferrara, and a prologue of a sort that begins with the actor saying that when Ferrara gave him the script, “I really didn’t understand a word of it but I really liked it.”

He liked it. I didn’t, but to each his own. An arthouse thriller of a sort, it isn’t concerned with the niceties of story or characters. It’s a kinetic exercise in abstruseness, one that conjures up a feeling of unease but little else.

MARIONETTE: 3 ½ STARS

“Marionette,” a new psychological thriller, now on VOD, begins with a shocking scene of self-immolation that sets the scene for the psychological fireworks to come.

The story circles around a child psychiatrist Dr. Marianne Turner (Thekla Reuten) who relocates to Scotland from America for a new job. Why did she move to Scotland?

“I like rain,” she says.

She replaces Dr. McVittie, who left after psychiatric issues prevented him from properly treating his patients. One of those patients, 10-year-old Manny (Elijah Wolf) is a curly-haired boy with a faraway look who expresses himself through his drawings.

“He’s a mystery,” Turner says. “My impression is that his world view is some sort of defence system, a fortress.”

Turns out, Turner is the only doctor Manny has ever spoken to. Usually, he communicates solely through his pictures, drawings of violence and disaster. As Dr. Turner settles into her new job, she makes friends with Kieran (Emun Elliott) at a book club where they discuss the mind-bending thought experiment of Schrödinger’s cat among other high-minded ideas.

“We all need to see a psychiatrist if we think this is a good way of passing the evening,” Dr. Turner jokes at the end of a club meeting.

Soon, strange things start happening. Mysterious phone calls suggest, “You have to kill him before he kills you,” as Manny continues to draw unsettling images. Dr. Turner soon makes a connection between Manny’s drawings and real-life events.

“You draw a lot of accidents and disasters, don’t you Manny?” she says. “What are you thinking of when you draw them?”

Leaving science and the metaphysical cat behind, she looks to the paranormal to determine whether Manny is predicting the calamitous events or causing them.

“What’s in there,” she asks, pointing to a large portfolio of his pictures. “The future,” he says.

“Marionette” is a gloomy psychological drama that effectively creates an atmosphere of tension throughout. Co-writer and director Elbert van Strien weaves ambitious ideas into the plot, elevating a pulpy story to something approaching gothic proportions.

Dr. Turner arrives in Scotland with the baggage of a dead husband she left behind in the U.S., and her grief informs the story and her reactions to the situations she finds herself in. Dutch actress Reuten — her uneven accent is explained away with a quick, “Oh, I’m not American. I just lived there for a long time” — brings the complicated doctor to life in a performance that is equal parts anguish, intellectual curiosity, paranoia and empathy. Her quest for the disturbing truth takes her to some uncomfortable places, but Reuten keeps us interested.

Reuten may provide the heart of “Marionette,” but it is Wolf who brings the creepy kid vibe that is the movie’s engine. With a relatively small amount of screen time, he makes a startling impression with his mannered speech and wide eyes.

“Marionette” spends a bit too much time on its philosophical underpinnings. It asks big questions such as whether we have free will or are we simply marionettes dangling on the end of a string operated by something or someone we don’t understand, without truly exploring them. Also, a bit of knowledge on Schrödinger’s cat might give you a leg up. Or not, depending on how deeply you become invested in the story. Either way, these aspects of the storytelling hammer their points home with a sledgehammer when a tap would have sufficed.

Before it disappears down its philosophical rabbit hole, “Marionette” is an enjoyable Hitchcockian story.

RAY DONOVAN THE MOVIE: 3 STARS

Despite a final shot that is about as subtle as one of its title character’s trademarked baseball bat attacks, “Ray Donovan: The Movie,” now streaming on Crave, brings the moody television series to a satisfying conclusion.

The movie picks up where season seven of the TV show ended. Mickey (Jon Voight), family patriarch and all-round scumbag, and his quest for cash led to a violent showdown that resulted in the accidental shooting death of his granddaughter Bridget’s (Kerris Dorsey) husband.

With Mickey on the run, his son, Ray (Liev Schreiber), a “fixer” who solves pesky personal problems for wealthy clients, is looking inward, determined to fix his own issues, beginning with his trouble-making father.

As the main action plays out in present day, through flashbacks we learn more about the Donovan clan. How Ray ended up in Hollywood doing whatever it takes to keep bold-faced names out of the gossip pages or jail or both. The roots of his lifelong beef with Mickey and why bad luck and trouble has been this family’s only friends.

Anyone familiar with the tone of the last few seasons of “Ray Donovan” will not be surprised by the downbeat feel of the movie. Dour and sour, it’s a dark sins-of-the-father story that never met a shot of Schreiber’s scowling face it didn’t love. As it wraps up the series, the movie circles around its main ideology, that violence begets violence. It’s not exactly a revelation from the Donovan timeline, but it is the thread that sews up the loose story bits left by the abrupt cancellation of the series. It’s not always subtle (no spoilers here, but check out the last hammer-the-nail-on-the-head shot of Ray) but it does get to the heart of what makes the Donovans tick.

“Ray Donovan: The Movie” is a slow burn, but at a tight 100 minutes, should provide closure for fans of the show, a bit of action and even some emotional moments.

THE LAST THING MARY SAW: 3 STARS

“The Last Thing Mary Saw,” a new film about sexual repression, and now streaming on Shudder Canada, is more about mood and atmosphere and the toll that fear takes on people than it is about horror.

When we first meet Mary (Stefanie Scott), she is blindfolded, blood tickling down her cheeks, under interrogation regarding her grandmother’s (Judith Roberts) “sudden departure.”

Suspected of being a witch, one of her captors assesses the situation.

“It is not our responsibility to give the devil a chance to repent. He must perish with her.”

Sombre and creepy, it is just the beginning of Mary’s unsettling journey.

Jump cut back in time to 1843 in rural Southold, N.Y. Much to the horror of her devout parents, Mary is having a love affair with Eleanor (Isabelle Fuhrman), the family’s maid.

“Our daughter’s ears are deaf to the Lord’s preachings,” her father tells the soon-to-be-gone family matriarch. “She continues to engage in acts with the help.”

Instead of sending the maid on her way, it’s decided the young lovers will be subjected to “corrections,” a torturous religious punishment wherein they are forced to kneel on grains of rice and recite Bible passages. “Mary and the maid played dangerous games and were punished accordingly.” Unsurprisingly, the rudimentary conversion therapy doesn’t work, and Mary and Eleanor continue to clandestinely see one another.

When they are discovered, lives are shattered as a mysterious character named The Intruder (Rory Culkin) enters the story.

“The Last Thing Mary Saw” isn’t particularly scary in its violence or visuals, save for a deeply unpleasant dinner scene, but it is chilling filmmaking. First-time director Edoardo Vitaletti calibrates each scene, including a long, virtually silent middle section, for maximum discomfort.

Repression covers the entire film like a shroud, as Mary and Eleanor attempt to live their lives away from the fear and religious fervor spawned by Mary’s pious parents. Human nature is the boogeyman here, not Mary’s alleged witchcraft.

The forced clandestine nature of their relationship is enhanced by Vitaletti’s shadowy, candlelit photography. It is restrained and sophisticated throughout, etching some unforgettable images in the viewer’s imaginations.

On the downside, the restraint, while moody, feels as though the movie is holding back, stopping just short of fully embracing its horror elements. This straightforward, serious treatment undersells the creepy elements that could have made the story as memorable as the images.

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ZEROS AND ONES Review

•   November 23, 2021
•   Amanda-Marie Howard
•   News

Film Pulse Score

Zeros and Ones directed by Abel Ferrara, is chock-full of military, political, religious, and even familial musings that still fail to mount a cohesive and impactful story. The objectives of the main character JJ (Ethan Hawke), a soldier in Rome who works to chronicle events for the military, are foggy, as are some of the scenes themselves, as everything is filmed under the cover of night. 

And even as the Vatican disappears amidst multiple fiery explosions, it’s hard to know what part he played in the deed, besides its filming. The only thing that is clear is that he’s searching for his brother, Justin –  the “revolutionary,” also played by Hawke – who was put in jail. 

The two appear to be on opposite sides, but who’s to say what the sides are? On top of it all, the pandemic plays its own small part through the scenes of hand sanitizing, mask-wearing, and talks of being “negative.” This was my first film where the pandemic makes its presence known, and I didn’t hate it. If it has to be in our daily viewings, slightly ruining the fantasies on our screens, better it be a side character than a main player. 

JJ is the throughline, the anchor in the ambiguous storm, as he films various events of the night. He films a waterboarding where a man gets water dumped onto a black cloth held tight to his face. He also participates in the filming of a sexual assault after he’s kidnapped by Russians after the Vatican goes up in flames and is made to have sex with a woman to impregnate her. Besides the doctor in the room and another woman holding a gun as they’re on the bed, the actual sex looks less forced and more like a consenual, sensual encounter as they kiss and she helps him take off parts of his uniform. With non-existent context, it’s hard to see why any of these scenes are important and why JJ’s involvement either helps or hinders them. 

This film exists in the in-between, the middle ground. In the beginning, JJ can be seen filming parts of the Vatican. He narrates the scene saying, “Jesus was just another soldier, another war casualty…but on whose side?”

In the introduction to the film, Hawke talks about his character and why he chose the project, and he says he plays a military man who you’re not sure is good or bad. We’re in this weird state of suspense where the characters can’t articulate what they’re doing or their motives. All the details remain unclear, and the picture continues to get more bleary, literally and figuratively, as time wears on. 

The only time Hawke is seen as Justin is on video footage as he’s shot up with drugs by men and goes off on how he’s willing “to light himself on fire,” ”how come no one is lighting themselves on fire anymore?,” and how a “government of the people, for the people, by the people, shall not perish.” Hawke gets to be hysterical and shouty as Justin but in going all out as a ranting political prisoner, it’s obvious he’s trying too hard to distinguish his brother persona from the serious, military one. Justin is a plot device, something to not only add a vague political element but to humanize JJ. It doesn’t accomplish this, seeing as their relationship isn’t particularly deep and the brotherly bond is hard to connect with or believe. 

The believability of this film is slim all around and more plot details would have certainly helped. Should we take solace that Hawke, in a post-credits scene, confesses he’s also confused as to the film’s meaning? Universal confusion shouldn’t be a selling point or a way to hint at a deeper message. Confusion only causes most to not want to stick it out until the end, and unfortunately, with the way this film is structured, many won’t even make it to Hawke’s reflections. 

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Is This the Best Movie of 2024 So Far?

Radu Jude’s ‘Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World’ won’t take the box office by storm, but it still stands out for its incisive dark comedy, subtle acting, and extraordinary choreography 

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Driving endlessly through hazy, sun-deprived Bucharest to scout potential interview subjects for a corporate video , an overworked and underpaid production assistant named Angela (Ilinca Manolache) battles traffic, construction, and the weight of her own eyelids. The irony that she’s risking life and limb to help produce a PSA for job-site safety is not lost on our heroine, and neither is the fact that her overlords are only truly interested in exercising caution when it comes to covering their asses (they’re offering victims not-so-subtle hush money in exchange for participation in the videos). Angela’s white-hot loathing of her time-sucking, gas-guzzling gig is palpable, but it’s also sublimated beneath steady, pounding waves of boredom. Blond-tressed and statuesque in a sparkly, sequined T-shirt, she’s an unlikely and indelible embodiment of alienated labor.

To blow off steam (or maybe just to stay awake), Angela punctuates her errands by recording outrageously profane videos in character as “Bobita,” a racist, sexist, xenophobic alter ego addressing “a nation of sluts and pimps.” “You won’t catch me dead here,” crows Bobita, who’s been modeled, visually and rhetorically, after Andrew Tate, the notorious kickboxer turned social media star who was recently under house arrest in Romania on charges of human trafficking and rape. Angela’s scenes are shot in black and white on grainy 16 mm celluloid, but when she transforms into Bobita, the format switches to cellphone video, with Tate’s visage digitally superimposed over her own. The result is a wonderfully layered sight gag that renders Bobita as a blurry, androgynous refugee from the uncanny valley, at once hyper-macho and strangely coquettish. Tate, who got rich off his grift as the king of toxic masculinity , would not be amused.

He might be the only one: Bobita is the comic creation of the year, a spleen-venting Greek chorus in a modern odyssey through a crumbling European metropolis. As its title suggests, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World has distinctly apocalyptic vibes; where some movies evoke dystopia by way of special effects, writer-director Radu Jude simply keeps his lens trained on everyday life, refracted through multimedia prisms that distort it like a fun-house mirror. In this degraded present tense, everybody—even a posturing shock artist like Bobita—can be infamous for 15 seconds. To paraphrase the author of “The Hollow Men,” this is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but a TikTok.

When Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World premiered last fall at various international film festivals—including Locarno, Toronto, and New York—it made an explosive impact. Imagine a dirty bomb blowing a hole in all that surrounding art-house austerity. Such shrapnel-like sharpness is Jude’s stock-in-trade: In a pop-cultural moment that’s increasingly come to be defined by political provocation, the Bucharest-born director’s staunchly incorrect sensibility places him in the vanguard of contemporary edgelord auteurs. After cutting his teeth as an assistant director on his countryman Cristi Puiu’s harrowing, pitch-black comedy The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005)—a film widely credited with kick-starting the influential movement known as the New Romanian Cinema —Jude made his feature-director debut with The Happiest Girl in the World (2009), a gentle but pointed comedy whose preteen protagonist is tapped to star in a car commercial, only to receive a harsh lesson in the realities of the hard sell. The theme of behind-the-scenes satire continued in 2018’s superb I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians , in which a young female theater director attempts to dramatize a dark chapter in Romanian history only to suffer threats of government censorship. Her struggles with the project—and the attendant questions about the ethical representation of violence and genocide—provide the spine for a movie that both celebrates and subverts the impulse to re-create the past.

In 2021, Jude scored international headlines—and won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival—for his kamikaze comedy Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn , a delirious, satirical tour de force in which a female history teacher becomes a local pariah after a homemade sex tape gets uploaded to an X-rated website. Carefully divided into three parts that increasingly veer away from straightforward narrative—including extended, stylized digressions into Godardian essay-film territory and documentary interludes depicting work and play in the shadow of a pandemic— Bad Luck is swift, confrontational, and self-consciously obnoxious; a shot of a priest wearing a face mask emblazoned with the words “I Can’t Breathe” dares to be deconstructed. Such semiotic high jinks are catnip to critics looking to anoint vanguard auteurs, but unlike, say, Yorgos Lanthimos—whose Poor Things ultimately flatters its audience under the guise of subversion —one gets the feeling Jude couldn’t care less about award races or even good reviews. In the film’s funniest sequence, Angela ends up crashing the set of a science-fiction thriller being directed by none other than Uwe Boll, who crows about literally getting into the ring with the critics who panned his movies and beating the shit out of them. “They came, and I smashed them,” says the bullet-headed director of Alone in the Dark and BloodRayne. “That’s the history of cinema,” Angela replies.

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Suffice it to say that Jude knows plenty about the history of cinema, and Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World has been carefully annotated for cinephiles via a series of thoughtful but scattershot homages ranging from art house to trash-humping. Jude’s style is to keep bouncing images, ideas, and epigrams off of each other until they either spark meaning or become redundant—a throw-everything-at-the-wall style that might be called shitpost modernism. The dialogue is peppered with allusions to current affairs, including the war in Ukraine, yet the script’s two biggest reference points bridge the gap between past and present, as well as between the Old and New Worlds. Firstly, Angela’s adventures behind the wheel directly invoke Romanian director Lucian Bratu’s 1981 film Angela Goes On , about a female taxi driver winding her way through Bucharest. The film, while by no means famous, is a key audiovisual artifact of the Nicolae Ceausescu regime, and, in an inspired act of solidarity, Jude edits footage from Bratu’s movie into his own, drawing pointed parallels between images of a country buckling beneath dictatorship and one supposedly liberated by democracy. Forty years ago, Bratu’s film flummoxed the country’s censors by embedding its critique into a deceptively banal slice-of-life style, with the titular cabbie as a passive tour guide puttering, quietly, through scenes of widespread poverty. On the other side of the millennium, Jude leans into the idea of Angela 2.0 as a rhetorical shit-stirrer, duly inventorying injustices at every intersection, as well as a directorial surrogate. “I satirize through caricature,” she announces at one point, effectively instructing the film’s audience on how to watch it.

Jude’s other guiding light is one that will be more familiar to Western viewers: the freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Dylan’s landmark video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues” —in which he silently flips through a series of cue cards containing his cryptic, poetic lyrics—becomes an important motif in the film’s second half, including in an extraordinary, 30-minute, single-take sequence that is probably the best scene of the year so far. This extraordinarily choreographed and acted static shot not only serves as the climax to Angela’s labors, but also ropes in Bratu’s version of the character—now a senior citizen and played by the original actress, Dorina Lazar—for a kind of metatextual coup de grâce. After two hours of relentless digression and momentum, Jude’s camera comes to rest on the “winner” of Angela’s search—a wheelchair user recently out of a coma—and depicts, in excruciating detail, his participation in a spectacularly disingenuous PSA designed to absolve its producers of all responsibility for his condition. For what feels like a small eternity, the man’s testimony about the nature of his accident is cheerfully critiqued, revised, and eventually silenced altogether; under cover of corporate politeness, a broken man is reduced to a ventriloquist’s dummy and then a literal placeholder—an absurdist doppelgänger for Dylan, except his cards are blank, waiting for somebody to fix them in post. “Don’t worry, we’ll write what we said we would,” says one of the filmmakers, lying through his teeth. Not that anybody on set believes him anyway. As the man himself said, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows; with fresh air in short supply, Jude’s brilliantly corrosive movie invites us to breathe in a toxic lungful.

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Ambiguity and extreme emotional states occur simultaneously in Jessica Hausner's films, where what "is" is not a simple question, and what we should take from all of it is equally obscured. Her characters are in extremis , and their emotional or spiritual states create a separate reality. The everyday business of going through life doesn't come into play. There's a monomaniacal devotion to one idea whether it is religious fanaticism in "Lourdes" (2009), the marriage of love and death in "Amour Fou" (2014), or the mesmerizing dark-magic orchids of " Little Joe " (2019). These films exist in a bell jar where rationalism has no place. Hausner's new film, "Club Zero," is an intense entry in her exploration of ideas run amok, of fantasy overtaking reality to the degree that reality itself is called into question (and regarded as an enemy). The film takes place at a school for special or "difficult" kids. The school is expensive, and some of the parents are very involved in what goes on there, while others have clearly just dumped their kids off because they are too busy with their own lives to deal with a high-needs kid. The school uniform is extremely odd—yellow T-shirts and billowy khaki shorts, bright blue knee socks, white sneakers. A new teacher has appeared on the scene, Miss Novak ( Mia Wasikowska ), whose specialty is nutrition. She has developed a program called "conscious eating", and she wears the almost beatific expression of a true fanatic. She speaks in measured tones, and the six or seven students, seated in a circle, are pulled into her orbit instantly. When she asks them why they are taking the class, the answers are varied. One student wants to save the planet. One wants to reduce her body fat. One wants to detach from consumerism. The scholarship student just needs the credit. This is the first scene in the film. The establishing shot of the classroom, its wood-paneled walls and mid-century Modern furniture, is static, almost like it's from a security camera in the corner of the ceiling. When the kids go around the circle sharing their thoughts, it's shot in a continuous sometimes dizzying pan. The kids all seem to be in a dissociated deadpan state. Perhaps this leaves them vulnerable to the workings of a master manipulator. Miss Novak's credo is that everyone needs to eat less. The way to achieve this is by taking deep meditative breaths before every bite, and reducing the amount you eat. Miss Novak says, "The slower you eat, the less food you'll need." Some of the kids resist, but most succumb to her program, almost like they're under a spell. The kids all take on her beatific expression as they sit in the cafeteria, holding up a small forkful of food, breathing in and out with closed eyes, before slowly eating the morsel. They look at each other and smile. They feel elite, they feel special. They float through the hallways with a distracted air of superiority. It is behavior modification and brainwashing at work. Miss Novak uses every cult-leader trick in the book. She creates an Us vs. Them mentality, separating the kids from their peers and, more worryingly, their parents. The parents are, of course, alarmed when their children stop eating, but Miss Novak reassures the students that their parents are trapped in "old beliefs", and cannot be expected to understand. "Your parents don't seem to see you for the way you really are." Only she sees them. She holds self-confession sessions, where traumatized students admit they cheated and had something to eat. There's love-bombing when a student accepts the program. The peer pressure to conform, and the resulting sense of togetherness, is addictive. Naturally, in this environment, eating disorders are seen as not just normal, but preferable. Some of the other teachers are disturbed by what's going on with these now-unreachable students, but some are inspired to try "conscious eating" themselves. Ambiguity is a hallmark of Hausner's fascinating work. At times, it's hard to tell what is being critiqued. The kids are so easily manipulated, and there is a warning implicit in this. Teens' brains aren't developed yet. They are vulnerable to suggestion by mesmerizing adults. Presenting what it means to live in service of a single ideology could also be a "critique", but Hausner's approach leaves room for interpretation. Ideology creates monsters. The belief in Utopias also creates monsters. Is that what we're seeing? The parents are all pretty awful (except for Ben's concerned working-class mother, played by Amanda Lawrence , who rings the alarm bell to school officials.) The film's ambiguity might be frustrating to some people, particularly because it could be perceived as "endorsing" eating disorders (although that would be just an interpretation, and not one I share). The young cast ( Florence Baker , Samuel D Anderson, Luke Barker , Ksenia Devriendt , and Gwen Currant ) are completely believable in their eerie devotion to the project and to Miss Novak. The assurance that nobody in the cast lost weight for the film is a welcome addition to the end credits.  This is Hausner's eighth collaboration with cinematographer Martin Gschlacht . Gschlacht's cinematography completely de-stabilizes the already odd atmosphere. There are those clinical establishing shots of empty rooms, the camera slightly elevated, looking down on the characters. There's also a calculated use of sudden zooms, or God's-eye overhead shots, creating a paranoid and otherworldly atmosphere. The final shot, which reminded me of the culminating stanza in Helen Reddy's extremely weird song "Angie Baby," leaves you with more questions than answers. Cult leaders want to bring their followers to paradise, whether it's on earth or in some other dimension. The goal is to separate people from contact with other humans who might sully the purity of their ideology. What is Miss Novak's end game? She crosses multiple lines in supplanting the parental units, as well as discouraging any intimacy between the students. She must be the kids' sole focus. One girl is confronted by her terrified parents and her reply is full of what brainwashing expert Robert J. Lifton termed "thought-terminating cliches", all memorized buzz words like a mantra: "Those who can live without food are free from all social and commercial pressure. Thus, we are threatening the capitalist system. This will be politically explosive." Her ideology is so impenetrable it's like Brutalist architecture. Anyone who has tried to talk sense into a fanatic, to poke holes in an ideology to a "believer," knows the helplessness of the parental attempt. "Club Zero" has a monotonous quality, ultimately, because existing with a Brutalist-architecture ideology is monotonous. Still, the film exerts an unnerving pull.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Club Zero (2024)

110 minutes

Mia Wasikowska as Miss Novak

Sidse Babett Knudsen as Miss Dorset

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Elsa Zylberstein as Elsa's Mother

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Lana Parrilla leads One of the Good Ones , a sitcom on steroids from One Day at a Time reboot creator Gloria Calderon Kellett

EW reviews the new play at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine , The Hollywood Reporter , and more. She's worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW's quarterly romance review column, "Hot Stuff," Maureen holds Master's degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight , is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.

With her reboot of One Day at a Time, Gloria Calderón Kellett became a household name employing the Norman Lear touch, but with her new play, One of the Good Ones, she enshrines herself as the heir apparent to his legacy.

The play, now making its world premiere at Pasadena Playhouse, follows a wealthy Latine family preparing to meet their daughter’s “very serious” boyfriend for the first time. Mom, Ilana ( Once Upon a Time’s Lana Parrilla ), who is half Mexican, half Puerto Rican, wrestles with guilt over not being “Latina” enough, while dad Enrique (Carlos Gomez) doesn’t appreciate his daughter’s new commitment to political discourse. But things go off the rails when Yoli ( One Day at a Time’s Isabella Gomez) brings home Marcos (Nico Greetham), a white boy, born and raised in Mexico.

Kellett writes with her usual blend of humor, cultural specificity, and acknowledgment of real-world issues. The approach, showcased by Lear on his hit shows like All In the Family, allows audiences to engage with today’s most pressing concerns through laughter. That is certainly the thrust of Kellett’s play — Yoli pushes her parents to examine their parenting, questions their understanding of identity, and generally raises their hackles with her Gen Z approach to life.

They love her, but they don’t want to hear about what they could have done better as parents or that Enrique’s Cuban roots make him a descendant of “white colonizers.” But Ilana and Enrique have no choice but to confront these more difficult questions of identity when Marcos is thrown into their orbit.

Who has the right to call themselves Mexican? Ilana, as the ancestor of both the Tongva peoples and Spanish rancheros who lived in California when it was still part of Mexico, but who doesn't speak Spanish? Or Marcos, who is whiter than an eggshell, but speaks fluent Spanish and has a Mexican passport thanks to his dual citizenship?

This question ignites a heated conservation as Marcos and Yoli push Enrique and Ilana to examine their prejudices and how they define the Latine population (for good measure, there’s also a key exchange around the use of Latinx/a/o/e). While Enrique probes the notion of American “melting pot," he ponders whether or not all that melting has led to some degree of erasure. It’s an age-old question of what is lost and what is gained with assimilation, presented with a new, hip vocabulary and heaps of one-liners, as well as a useful salad metaphor.

The moments where the play digs into these questions are its best, drilling down with humor and heart on topics with no easy answers. But Kellett tries to fit an entire season’s worth of a sitcom's plot in 90 minutes. It would be more than enough to focus solely on this question of identity, but the play also brings in intergenerational trauma, the role of therapy, and even finds room to take a dig at influencer culture without ever returning to the topic despite it being Yoli’s supposed job.

Throughout the play, Ilana and Yoli remind Enrique to take deep breaths before he loses his cool — but the text could have used some breathing room as well, instead of trying to pack every facet of the generational divide and two major plot twists into its brief running time. One could easily imagine how these story threads would have built and evolved over a 10 or 22-episode season, but they don’t all belong here.

Still, that’s not to say that One of the Good Ones isn’t a hell of a lot of fun. The play is anchored by four strong performances from its cast. Parrilla, who is half-Italian, half-Puerto Rican, is all flustered earnestness, a woman who wants to embrace her identity, but also feels pinned down by her guilt and discomfort with difficult conversations. As her foil, Carlos Gomez is all paternal machismo, but he deftly nails the depths of Enrique’s vulnerabilities and love for his family under his bluster.

Isabella Gomez walks a tightrope with her take on Yoli, making her both endearing and well-intentioned, while also capturing Gen Z’s naivety and irritating tendency to morph any conversation into a platform for debate and the failings of those who came before them. However, Gomez is sometimes guilty of telegraphing a moment, rather than feeling entirely natural in her choices.

While this play is about the family at its heart, it’s Greetham who steals the show as Marcos, a well-meaning suitor who can’t seem to stop digging the hole he’s put himself in. He’s self-effacing and confident in equal measure, able to assert his beliefs while also milking the comedy of his fish-out-of-water situation. His sense of comedic timing is pitch perfect.

Kimberly Senior’s direction also allows Kellett’s writing to sing, creating a comedic symphony out of her staging and careful timing. The play zings with sitcom energy, pratfalls, physical bits, and double takes fueling the comedy as much as the sharp script. Tanya Orellana’s set design works hand-in-hand with Senior’s direction, providing an impeccable California home with intriguing levels for the action to play out on.

One of the Good Ones is the type of writing both theater and television could use more of — genuinely funny, topical, and heartfelt without feeling preachy or overly sentimental. As Hollywood and Broadway try to find their footing in the midst of great cultural change, we’d suggest they look to forces like Kellett to help show them the way. Grade: B+

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Review: ‘3 Body Problem’ Is a Galaxy-Brained Spectacle

The Netflix sci-fi adaptation has done its physics homework, even if it sometimes falls short on the humanities.

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By James Poniewozik

The aliens who menace humankind in Netflix’s “3 Body Problem” believe in doing a lot with a little. Specifically, they can unfold a single proton into multiple higher dimensions, enabling them to print computer circuits with the surface area of a planet onto a particle smaller than a pinprick.

“3 Body Problem,” the audacious adaptation of a hard-sci-fi trilogy by Liu Cixin, is a comparable feat of engineering and compression. Its first season, arriving Thursday, wrestles Liu’s inventions and physics explainers onto the screen with visual grandeur, thrills and wow moments. If one thing holds it back from greatness, it’s the characters, who could have used some alien technology to lend them an extra dimension or two. But the series’s scale and mind-bending turns may leave you too starry-eyed to notice.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, partnering here with Alexander Woo ( “The Terror: Infamy” ), are best known for translating George R.R. Martin’s incomplete “A Song of Ice and Fire” fantasy saga into “Game of Thrones.” Whatever your opinions of that series — and there are plenty — it laid out the duo’s strengths as adapters and their weaknesses as creators of original material.

Beginning with Martin’s finished novels, Benioff and Weiss converted the sprawling tomes into heady popcorn TV with epic battles and intimate conversations. Toward the end, working from outlines or less, they rushed to a finish and let visual spectacle overshadow the once-vivid characters.

In “3 Body,” however, they and Woo have a complete story to work with, and it’s a doozy. It announces its sweep up front, opening with a Chinese scientist’s public execution during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, then jumping to the present day, when a wave of notable physicists are inexplicably dying by suicide.

The deaths may be related to several strange phenomena. Experiments in particle accelerators around the world suddenly find that the last several decades’ worth of research is wrong. Brilliant scientific minds are being sent futuristic headsets of unknown provenance that invite them to join an uncannily realistic virtual-reality game. Oh, also, one night all the stars in the sky start blinking on and off.

It all suggests the working of an advanced power, not of the cuddly E.T. variety. What starts as a detective mystery, pursued by the rumpled intelligence investigator Clarence Da Shi (Benedict Wong), escalates to a looming war of the worlds. What the aliens want and what they might do to get it is unclear at first, but as Clarence intuits, “Usually when people with more advanced technology encounter people with more primitive technology, doesn’t work out well for the primitives.”

Most of the first season’s plot comes straight from Liu’s work. The biggest changes are in story structure and location. Liu’s trilogy, while wide-ranging, focused largely on Chinese characters and had specifically Chinese historical and political overtones. Benioff, Weiss and Woo have globalized the story, shifting much of the action to London, with a multiethnic cast. (Viewers interested in a more literal rendition of Liu’s story can watch last year’s stiff but thorough Chinese adaptation on Peacock.)

They’ve also given Liu’s heavy science a dose of the humanities. Liu is a brilliant novelist of speculative ideas, but his characters can read like figures from story problems. In the series, a little playful dialogue goes a long way toward leavening all the Physics 101.

So does casting. Wong puffs life into his generically hard-boiled gumshoe. Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth in “Thrones”) stands out as Thomas Wade, a sharp-tongued spymaster, as does Rosalind Chao as Ye Wenjie, an astrophysicist whose brutal experience in the Cultural Revolution makes her question her allegiance to humanity. Zine Tseng is also excellent as the young Ye.

More curious, if understandable, is the decision to shuffle and reconfigure characters from throughout Liu’s trilogy into a clique of five attractive Oxford-grad prodigies who carry much of the narrative: Jin Cheng (Jess Hong), a dogged physicist with personal ties to the dead-scientists case; Auggie Salazar (Eiza González), an idealistic nanofibers researcher; Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo), a gifted but jaded research assistant; Will Downing (Alex Sharp), a sweet-natured teacher with a crush on Jin; and Jack Rooney (John Bradley of “Thrones”), a scientist turned snack-food entrepreneur and the principal source of comic relief.

The writers manage to bump up Liu’s one-dimensional characterizations to two-ish, but the “Oxford Five,” with the exception of Jin, don’t feel entirely rounded. This is no small thing; in a fantastical series like “Thrones” or “Lost,” it is the memorable individuals — your Arya Starks and your Ben Linuses — who hold you through the ups and downs of the story.

The plot, however, is dizzying and the world-building immersive, and the reportedly galactic budget looks well and creatively spent on the screen. Take the virtual-reality scenes, through which “3 Body” gradually reveals its stakes and the aliens’ motives. Each character who dons the headset finds themselves in an otherworldly version of an ancient kingdom — China for Jin, England for Jack — which they are challenged to save from repeating cataclysms caused by the presence of three suns (hence the series’s title).

“3 Body” has a streak of techno-optimism even at its bleakest moments, the belief that the physical universe is explicable even when cruel. The universe’s inhabitants are another matter. Alongside the race to save humanity is the question of whether humanity is worth saving — a group of alien sympathizers, led by a billionaire environmentalist (Jonathan Pryce), decides that Earth would benefit from a good cosmic intervention.

All this attaches the show’s brainiac spectacle to big humanistic ideas. The threat in “3 Body” is looming rather than imminent — these are not the kind of aliens who pull up quick and vaporize the White House — which makes for a parallel to the existential but gradual threat of climate change. Like “Thrones,” with its White Walkers lurking beyond the Wall, “3 Body” is in part a collective-action problem.

It is also morally provocative. Liu’s novels make an argument that in a cold, indifferent universe, survival can require a hard heart; basing decisions on personal conscience can be a kind of selfishness and folly. The series is a bit more sentimental, emphasizing relationships and individual agency over game theory and determinism. But it’s willing to go dark: In a striking midseason episode, the heroes make a morally gray decision in the name of planetary security, and the consequences are depicted in horrifying detail.

Viewers new to the story should find it exciting on its own. (You do not need to have read the books first; you should never need to read the books to watch a TV series.) But the book trilogy does go to some weird, grim — and presumably challenging to film — places, and it will be interesting to see if and how future seasons follow.

For now, there’s flair, ambition and galaxy-brain twists aplenty. Sure, this kind of story is tough to pull off beginning to end (see, again, “Game of Thrones”). But what’s the thrill in creating a headily expanding universe if there’s no risk of it collapsing?

James Poniewozik is the chief TV critic for The Times. He writes reviews and essays with an emphasis on television as it reflects a changing culture and politics. More about James Poniewozik

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Is Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire appropriate for families? Movie Review

T he 2nd installment from the Paul Rudd era of Ghostbusters is back in theaters and is good! If you have seen Ghostbusters: Afterlife you know what to expect sorta. If you have little ones you are probably asking, “Is Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire appropriate for families?”

I liked this one even better than Ghostbusters: Afterlife I think it is the writing and not the fear of having to have so many Easter Eggs that then lose a bit of the storytelling aspect from the film.

In this movie, we see Paul Rudd take more of a father figure to Phoebe, the true lead of the film.  

Before going to purchase tickets remember to check out how to save money at the theaters !

Is Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire appropriate for families?

At what age would be good to see the movie.

The movie is rated PG-13. I would imagine if you were okay with your kids watching the first one, that this one has the same amount of language and would need the same amount of guidance. If your little one is okay with ghosts, comedy, and some language then this movie would be good to watch with your guidance.

Is it controversial?

No, not at all! The main character has a friendship with one of the ghosts and if you wish to believe that the relationship is more than just a friendship you can. I wondered if it was only because I am often asked about lgbtq inclusiveness in films and I didn’t notice.

How long is the movie?

The movie was an hour and fifty-five minutes long. It did not feel long to me, but I think the little ones will need a potty break or two during this one.

Image: Sony Pictures

Are there any special effects or visual spectacles in the movie?

The movie has a lot of special effects and CGI like the others. It might be a little too overwhelming for the small kids but I LOVED the effects of things turning into ice and breaking. It had a sense of satisfaction to watch the effects.

What is the movie’s plot summary or synopsis?

In Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the Spengler family returns to where it all started – the iconic New York City firehouse – to team up with the original Ghostbusters, who’ve developed a top-secret research lab to take busting ghosts to the next level. But when the discovery of an ancient artifact unleashes an evil force, Ghostbusters new and old must join forces to protect their home and save the world from a second Ice Age.

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Interview with the cast of ghostbusters: frozen empire: ‘it transcends generations’.

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Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

How does a movie become iconic in the world of pop culture? It can be thanks to incredible sets, or to an amazing soundtrack. It can also be thanks to some of the props used in the movies, props that might become some of the most sought after merchandise once the movie comes out. And sometimes, a movie franchise will have all of these things and become incredibly popular all over the world: Ghostbusters can boast of having a legendary firehouse, protons packs, an emblematic no-ghost sign but also one of the best and most recognizable car in cinema history, Ecto-1 (and its even more recognizable siren).

While Ghostbusters: Afterlife introduced us to Egon Spengler’s descendants, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire mixes classic and new, nostalgia and revival. The movie has heart, soul, and a good dose of ghost busting. Directed by Gil Kennan and produced by Jason Reitman, the film, now out in theaters, brings the Spengler’s back to New York, where it all begun. Once again the Ghostbusters will have to fight an evil force about to create a new ice age. So of course, when a ghost is threatening an entire city, who you gonna call?

‘’ Ghostbusters , it transcends generations’’ told me Ernie Hudson who portrays Winston Zeddemore in the franchise, during our interview over Zoom. ‘’When I see grandparents, great grandparents watching it with their little children, that’s really, really special. I think at a time where the world seems to be tattering on confusion, Ghostbusters has an amazing way of pulling people together, sit together and laugh together, and it‘s not that many movies that does that. That’s what I love about the franchise. I saw a lady with her family, and she had a little baby and he had the Ghostbusters suit on him. And I said ‘Wow that is so special, where did you find that jumpsuit ?’ And she said ‘I made it for his father when he was a baby, and now his baby is wearing it’”.

NYC premiere of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

While the new cast, which includes Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Mckenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard still can’t realize they are now ghostbusters as well, it seems like filming inside the firehouse, 40 years later, felt as nostalgic and unbelievable for them as it was for the public, who grew up watching these movies: ‘’It’s unreal, because I have seen this place for decades, and it’s so well known and iconic” told me Paul Rudd. “All the stuff that was inside, a lot of the props, were from the original film. Being there and seeing the Ecto-1 just sitting there, which was also from the original film, it’s kind of impossible to just feel like ‘ok yeah, we are on a location, filming a scene in a movie’. It’s like ‘oh wow, this is pretty special and I don’t think that we ever got totally used to it‘”.

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I asked the young cast how they were able to appropriate such a famous place, and make themselves at home, knowing it has been visited by fans and tourists from all over the world these past 40 years. ‘’It’s a good question’’ said Wolfhard’’. ‘’ I think we’re still trying to figure that out ourselves. Being in the firehouse was amazing, but the production design really helped us get into it, we had our own bedrooms, the way it was decorated kind of how we all wanted, it helped a lot. ‘’

This piece does contain spoilers past this point

The first two Ghostbusters have some of the funniest, most famous lines ever written for a movie. During a scene in Frozen Empire , Rudd even quotes the theme song of Ghostbusters to Carrie Coon: ‘’Busters makes me feel good’’ he tells her in the most serious way possible. I asked them what were the most quoted lines on set, in front Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson: ’’We didn’t really, because the OG’s were there, we wouldn't dare, they were sitting next to us, I would be terrified.’’ laughed Carrie Coon. ‘’But I do think of Sigourney Weaver as Zuul often, it’s something that’s really burnt into my brain from childhood. I think of that a lot. Iconic.’’ Rudd added: ’That's a very good question. It would be intimidating, ‘Hey Bill, remember when you said ‘We came, we saw… ’. No I'd feel like an idiot”

For a lot of fans, the recipe to a good Ghostbusters movie resides in hearing the siren of Ecto-1 going at full speed in the ghost-infested streets of New York. For others, the secret to success is getting to see Slimer once again, or witnessing the whole team in full gear, hanging on to their proton packs, ready to fire. For Carrie Coon, returning to this world a second time, and becoming Callie once again, wasn’t that hard: ‘’I’m a pretty haggard mom anyway, so that was pretty easy to do, I have 2 children myself, it’s very hard, so it wasn’t a big stretch for me’’ she joked. ‘’But it was fun to put on the suit and the proton pack, because I didn’t get to do that in the last film so it's nice to see Callie embracing her family like that. ‘’

For Ernie Hudson, coming back as Winston one more time, brought back many memories: ‘’ Zipping up the jumpsuit and the proton pack, the siren of the car, the whole experience is unique and it takes you back to the very beginning, to the very first day when I came to the team, it’s very special.” Although for Hudson, it mostly is the sight of the fans, families and friends coming together to see yet another Ghostbusters movie, that resonates so much with him today: ‘’It’s also looking at the faces of people I’ve worked with for 40 years, and just being so appreciative that we’re still here and being loved’’ he concluded.

During the final battle in Afterlife , Egon comes back as a ghost and helps his granddaughter, Phoebe, to hold on to her proton pack as she is fighting Gozer (the Gozerian) who just made a big comeback. In Frozen Empire , a similar scene includes the whole family, who surrounds Phoebe, as they fully embrace the fact that now, they are Ghostbusters too.

Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

‘’Passing the torch is the theme of the film, Ernie setting us up for the future, and Dan sort of having to hang it up. It’s multigenerational our movie, we’re proud of that.’’ said Coon. ‘’That final scene, we feel like we earned the suit‘’ added Rudd.

‘’Oh that’s so funny, I didn’t even thought of that. I like that, I’m sure it was on purpose and I’m just too dumb to realize that’’ joked Finn Wolfhard when I drew comparison between these two final scenes. In Frozen Empire , Phoebe is now a teenager, she feels cast aside, and struggles to find her place amongst the living, and her own family: ‘’It’s interesting having Egon’s ghost help Phoebe at the end of Afterlife , and she has a big connection with a ghost in this one. She just has this fascination for ghosts and the one person she connects to in this film is a ghost. I feel like that’s kind of a recurring theme for her. So it’s nice to see the whole family come around and support each other, so now she has a connection to the living at least. ‘’

In the film, Ray and Winston keep mentioning how these days, these years, are supposed to be their golden years, so I asked Hudson if he felt like right now, it was his golden years as well, a time where he could appreciate and enjoy this experience even more, knowing the impact that the two first movies has had on many generations, compared to how he felt in 1984, not knowing that Ivan Reitman and his cast had just made history:

‘’The golden years is a time where you live long enough to appreciate some of the work that you’ve done. I’ve done a lot of movies, many more TV shows, but to have one that people love and embrace, that’s really special. I think Winston sees the golden years as ‘We’re gonna do research and let these young people get out there with the packs and run around town’ and Ray still wants to be the guy running up the stairs. And I’m like ‘We’re too old for that’.

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‘We Were the Lucky Ones’: Joey King Shines in Hulu’s Devastating WWII Drama

One family fights to survive the horrors of World War II in the crushingly sad true story “We Were the Lucky Ones.”

Leila Latif

Vlad Cioplea/Hulu

Gratitude is a powerful thing. Studies have shown how shifting your perspective—documenting and savoring the things that you can be grateful for, even in the most difficult of circumstances— can be the key to happiness. But the new Hulu series We Were The Lucky Ones really puts that notion to the test. Its very title is a provocation in that respect: To call the survivors of such horrific events “lucky,” by any definition or stretch of the imagination, is to desperately search for a glimmer of light in a horrifying cavern of pitch black.

Based on a novel by Georgia Hunter, and on the tragic real-life events that inspired the book, the eight-episode series (premiering Mar. 28) begins with a sobering statistic: “By the end of the Holocaust, 90 percent of Poland’s Jews had been killed.” In fact, Poland suffered the worst death per capita of any country during the war, and around 17 percent of its entire population—a number just shy of 6 million total—was lost. Perhaps aware that death on that scale is beyond human comprehension, We Were the Lucky Ones encapsulates the tragedy through the story of one Jewish family separated by the war, and “lucky” only in how it was brought back together at the end of it.

Before the war, the Kurc family lives in relative harmony and comfort in the town of Radom. Success has shielded them some from the swelling bigotry of the moment: “Minor celebrity softens even the worst antisemite,” young Halina (Joey King) teases her successful musician brother, Addy (Logan Lerman). Such lightness about their place in the world will not last. The series covers the subsequent seven years, as the Kurcs are scattered to run from dehumanization and genocide. Some are forced into hiding or condemned to dreaded camps. Others make it across Europe with their eyes set on starting a new life in America, forced to face the timely obstacle of proving they’re the “right sort” of immigrant. One harrowing thread sees a family member forced to dig their own grave, while a parallel sees another who has coopted a new identity endure protracted torture as the Nazis attempt to get them to confess their Judaism.

It’s not a show for the faint-hearted or easily triggered. But despite the spiral of cruelty it traces, We Were the Lucky Ones remains elegantly crafted throughout, which is to be expected from a creative team made of veterans of Fosse/Verdon , The Morning Show , and the tragically canceled Julia . In contrast to the dehumanization that consumed them and so many others, the show recognizes the preciousness of the lives it follows. Each member of the Kurc family is honored; this spotlight extends from how exquisitely they’re costumed, framed, and lit to the attention paid to every agonizing decision they make to survive.

While the entire ensemble dignifies the legacy of these real-life victims, bringing a lived-in warmth to their characters’ interpersonal bonds, particular praise should be reserved for Joey King, who’s stunning in the role of Halina. King has a certain quality that makes you forget that she’s ever looked at an iPhone. Somehow every molecule of her body, including her perfectly set period curls, reads as authentically 1940s. In We Were the Lucky Ones , the Kissing Booth star retains the feistiness for which she’s known, while exhibiting a heretofore unrevealed nuance.

Family, tragedy, trauma, resilience: These are themes of timeless, universal appeal. But the show also fascinatingly buttresses against the politics of the time in which it’s being released. Characters travel to “Palestine” and discuss immigration policies that echo Donald Trump’s wall and the U.K.’s Rwanda plan. There are parallels to be found with families now being traumatized and annihilated in Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine. Ultimately, We Were The Lucky Ones is a story of people screaming at us from the annals of history, begging us to not make the same mistakes and knowing that each life lost is the end of a tragic tale, even when the cumulative number is inconceivably vast. It’s a stunning culmination of the legacy of the Kurc family that eight decades later, we get to bask in their bravery, be warmed by their familial bonds, and heed their warnings. For all that, a viewer can feel lucky, while still questioning how the people immortalized by this powerful drama of survival ever could.

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