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I'm not at all surprised that my esteemed colleague Michael Phillips of the Tribune selected John Carney's “Once” as the best film of 2007.

I gave it my Special Jury Prize, which is sort of an equal first; no movie was going to budge “ Juno ” off the top of my list. “Once” was shot for next to nothing in 17 days, doesn't even give names to its characters, is mostly music with not a lot of dialog, and is magical from beginning to end. It's one of those films where you hold your breath, hoping it knows how good it is, and doesn't take a wrong turn.

It doesn't. Even the ending is the right ending, the more you think about it.

The film is set in Dublin, where we see a street musician singing for donations. This is the Guy ( Glen Hansard ). He attracts an audience of the Girl ( Marketa Irglova ). She loves his music. She's a pianist herself. He wants to hear her play. She doesn't have a piano. She takes him to a music store where she knows the owner, and they use a display piano. She plays some Mendelssohn. We are in love with this movie. He is falling in love with her. He just sits there and listens. She is falling in love with him. She just sits there and plays. There is an unusual delay before we get the obligatory reaction shot of the store owner, because all the movie wants to do is sit there and listen, too.

This is working partly because of the deeply good natures we sense these two people have. They aren't “picking each other up.” They aren't flirting — or, well, technically they are, but in that way that means, “I'm not interested unless you're too good to be true.”

They love music, and they're not faking it. We sense to a rare degree the real feelings of the two of them; there's no overlay of technique, effect or style.

They are just purely and simply themselves. Hansard is a professional musician, well known in Ireland as leader of a band named the Frames. Irglova is an immigrant from the Czech Republic, only 17 years old, who had not acted before. She has the kind of smile that makes a man want to be a better person, so he can deserve being smiled at.

The film develops their story largely in terms of song. In between, they confide their stories. His heart was broken because his girlfriend left him and moved to London. She takes him home to meet her mother, who speaks hardly any English, and to join three neighbors who file in every night to watch their TV.

And he meets her child, which comes as a surprise. Then he finds out she's married. Another surprise, and we sense that in his mind he had already dumped the girl in London and was making romantic plans. He's wounded, but brave. He takes her home to meet his dad, a vacuum cleaner repairman. She has a Hoover that needs fixing. It's Kismet.

He wants to record a demo record, take it to London, and play it for music promoters. She helps him, and not just by playing piano. When it comes down to it, she turns out to be level-headed, decisive, take-charge. An ideal producer. They recruit other street musicians for a session band, and she negotiates a rock-bottom price for a recording studio. And so on. All with music. And all with their love, and our love for their love, only growing. At one point he asks if she still loves her husband, and she answers in Czech, and the movie doesn't subtitle her answer, because if she'd wanted subtitles, she would have answered in English, which she speaks perfectly well.

“Once” is the kind of film I've been pestered about ever since I started reviewing again. People couldn't quite describe it, but they said I had to see it. I had to. Well, I did. They were right.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film Credits

Once (2007)

Glen Hansard as The Guy

Marketa Irglova as The Girl

Written and directed by

• John Carney

Photographed by

• Tim Fleming

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The Movie Review: 'Once'

Cillian Murphy is a rising young actor who has delivered several fine performances of late (in Batman Begins , Red Eye , and Breakfast on Pluto , among others) and possesses arguably the most piercing blue eyes since Paul Newman. So it is a considerable surprise that, to date, his greatest contribution to cinema may be a movie he wasn't in.

Murphy, who before taking up acting was a nearly-signed rock singer, had been slated to star in and produce Once , an indie-rock musical directed by fellow Irishman John Carney. But when Murphy discovered that Carney had cast a nonprofessional actress as his co-lead and heard some of the vocally complex songs he was expected to sing, he--and with him, all the financing--pulled out of the project.

So Carney turned to the man who had written the songs and recommended the female lead in the first place: Glen Hansard of the Irish band The Frames. (Carney had been the group's bassist in the early 1990s.) Hansard, who'd appeared in exactly one film--a supporting role in Alan Parker's The Commitments 15 years earlier--was persuaded to play the missing lead, and Carney put the film together in three weeks for a meager $150,000, all of it supplied by the Irish Film Board.

The result should shame filmmakers with budgets a thousand times larger. Once is a small miracle, an unprepossessing gem that is at once true to life and utterly magical. It is also one of the best romantic comedies in a generation, provided one is willing to define that category broadly enough to accept a film that delivers few jokes and contains just a single kiss--on the cheek. The word "winsome" was invented for experiences such as this.

The winner of the audience award at Sundance, Once opened a few weeks ago in a tiny number of theatres scattered across the country. And while that number has increased each week (to 120 screens nationwide, at last counting), it won't be around for long, so if you can find it, see it. Quickly. (Yes, this is a late recommendation, but one, I think, firmly in the better-than-never camp.)

Hansard plays a Dublin busker (i.e., street musician) who performs covers for the crowds by day and his own compositions to the empty sidewalk by night. Until one night, that is, when the sidewalk turns out not to be empty. A young Czech immigrant (Markéta Irglová) stops to listen and then questions him with invasive but charming directness: Who did you write that song for? Where is she? Is she dead? Hansard is at first put off by his inquisitor, but gradually warms. When she asks what his day job is, a concrete link is formed: He fixes vacuum cleaners in his dad's shop; she has a vacuum cleaner in need of fixing. Might she bring it by for him to take a look at?

Thus begins one of the most endearing associations in recent cinema. She brings her Hoover by the next day, dragging it by the hose like a leashed puppy. Hansard is again annoyed by the imposition, but ultimately agrees to take a look at the machine. ("What's wrong with it?" he asks. "It's fucked," she replies matter-of-factly, draining the word of any hint of obscenity.) Soon enough, their relationship moves beyond vacuum cleaners. Irglová, too, is a musician, a classically trained piano player. And while she is too poor to afford her own piano, the proprietor of a music shop allows her to play one in the back of his store during lunchtime. Irglová invites Hansard to join her with his guitar and they share a duet, tentatively at first and then with increasing confidence. (One of the few coynesses of the film--though one easy to ignore--is that neither of the lead characters is given a name.) From this first, informal collaboration arise others: She writes lyrics for one of his songs, and later joins the thrown-together "band" with whom he records demos of his music.

With the exception of one clumsy proposition, angrily declined, it is never stated but always evident that the two are also falling in love. But there are complicating factors: the girlfriend who left Hansard for London and for whom he still pines; the mother and young daughter who live with Irglová, and the estranged husband she left behind in the Czech Republic. And though these might appear to be surmountable obstacles, neither character makes any great effort to surmount them. It's as if both recognize that what they have between them, their romantic non-romance, is too delicate to burden with heavier demands.

The result is a love-affair-by-other-means, and the means are primarily musical. Opinions will vary of the songs themselves, which have been widely compared, both in flattery and disdain, to Coldplay. (For my part, I found them frequently affecting, though the tendency of almost every one to begin as a quiet lament before building to a wailing chorus becomes a little tiresome.) On some level, though, it hardly matters: Hansard and Irglová are not performing for us, exactly, but for themselves and for one another, their songs like a runoff channel for the overflow of feelings they cannot share directly. The result is musical numbers that are simultaneously undersold and brimming with meaning. One in particular, in which Irglová walks the nighttime streets in pajamas and bunny slippers, composing lyrics as she listens to her Discman, is the most evocative, unforgettable sequence I've seen in a movie this year.

Hansard is very good as a likable layabout whose stabs at cynicism do nothing to obscure a generous heart. But Irglová is a true find. Just 19 years old, the Czech singer-songwriter (with whom Hansard had collaborated on an earlier album) conjures a character with thicker armor than her costar and, belying her age, greater maturity. She, like the film, knows that the easiest, most obvious thing to do (kiss him, for goodness sake!) is not necessarily what will serve her best in the end. Rather than presenting her child and husband as complications to be solved, the movie recognizes that they are her reality; Hansard is the complication. In an era when Hollywood has largely lost the ability to distinguish between romance and sex, Once is the rare film that recognizes that love is no less love for being held in check, it is merely a different kind of love. Sixty years after David Lean's most intimate masterpiece, Brief Encounter , this is still a controversial cinematic assertion.

The film Once resembles still more closely, though, is Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise , another minor-key marvel of romantic portraiture. As in that film, the two leads do not face any particular challenges together beyond the simple, and yet immensely complicated, task of deciding what they think of one another and what they want to do about it. Indeed, apart from their underlying conflicts, the lives of Hansard and Irglová seem almost charmed: Whereas a typical film would include a few unhappy swerves on the road to the successful demo session, Once motors pleasantly along from small victory to small victory. The potential heavies encountered--Hansard's dad, the man in charge of a bank loan, the skeptical recording engineer--are all quickly won over; the eventual fruition of his music career seems secure. All that remains is the question of love. I won't say how the film answers it, except to note that it is exactly right, an ending equal parts happy and sad, and somehow deeply affirming--a remarkable achievement at any price.

This post originally appeared at TNR.com.

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Once Reviews

In the end, they were both strangers guided by the kindness they showed one another. And I bet youve forgotten what resolution the camera quality is by the end credits.

Full Review | Feb 21, 2022

Effectively capturing the world of street musicians, writer-director John Carney hit gold in a story of talented artists seeking the big time in little venues. Wistful romance and memorable music proved flexible enough for a move from film to stage...

Full Review | Aug 11, 2021

A simple miracle of a film.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.0/4.0 | Sep 18, 2020

Movies like this don't come along very often, and Once is really something special.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 6, 2019

The simple and real love story will stay with you.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 15, 2018

If "The Commitments" shows the gritty, robust side of Dublin and the Irish music scene, "Once" shows us a softer, more romantic side.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 18, 2014

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 18, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Oct 10, 2011

At once delicate and gritty, wistful and deeply satisfying.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Oct 29, 2008

So this is how you make a low-budget musical these days!

Full Review | Oct 18, 2008

There is much to admire about Once, in a little-movie-that-could kind of way, but it can't help but get in its own way just when it begins to gain some momentum

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 18, 2008

In an era when Hollywood has largely lost the ability to distinguish between romance and sex, Once is the rare film that recognizes that love is no less love for being held in check, it is merely a different kind of love.

Full Review | Sep 18, 2008

my biggest road block was the fact that I didn't like the music

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 17, 2008

It has its own peculiar naturalism, a kind of lo-fi, lovelorn charm.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 7, 2008

Um filme mágico que, através de sua narrativa enganosamente simples, alcança uma vitória que escapa à maioria das obras do gênero, retratando com sentimento o instante preciso no qual dois seres humanos se descobrem apaixonados um pelo outro.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 19, 2008

Once is the anti-blockbuster that couldn't have come at a better time.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Feb 28, 2008

a tender little ultralow budget movie about the intimate connection of making music...the warm folkiness of the songs and their generally non-narrative-pushing content make it feel more like a long, lovely home movie of a short portion of two people's liv

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 16, 2008

Un effort battant la mesure d'une manière somme toute imparfaite, mais néanmoins prenante, qu'un genre aussi excessif que le film musical a besoin de temps à autre...

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Feb 16, 2008

A moving story about two people who share a common love of music.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 2, 2008

mia idiaiteri kinimatografiki empeiria, esto kai san kolaz, apo mia seira binteoklip me toys idioys, agapimenoys soy protagonistes

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 26, 2008

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Sweet, romantic musical hits all the right notes.

A Lot or a Little?

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

Lots of emphasis is placed on pursuing your dreams

The characters develop a wonderful, delicate, and

No overt violence, but some potentially upsetting

A man propositions a woman, but indirectly and awk

Lots of swearing, usually involving "f--k&quo

Very little, though the street musician sings in f

Some smoking in pubs; lots of drinking in social s

Parents need to know that Once is an endearing indie romance. Although there's a fair amount of swearing -- particularly "f--k" -- hardly anything else would raise a flag for teens and up. In fact, it's one of the few love stories that doesn't require its leads to get naked or fall in…

Positive Messages

Lots of emphasis is placed on pursuing your dreams, and the couple is very supportive of each other's wants and needs.

Positive Role Models

The characters develop a wonderful, delicate, and respectful romance; from the onset, they treat each other like equals (a rare thing onscreen). Characters care for both their elders and their children with grace. A couple of sour notes: Lots of swearing, and a man drives after some drinks and no sleep.

Violence & Scariness

No overt violence, but some potentially upsetting scenes related to poverty -- families shoehorned into very small apartments, for instance.

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

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A man propositions a woman, but indirectly and awkwardly. One mention of "hanky panky," but in a jovial, respectful manner. Sexual tension, but the focus is on the couple's burgeoning emotional attachment, not what would happen if they got naked.

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

Lots of swearing, usually involving "f--k" -- as in "for f--k's sake" and "f--king brilliant."

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

Products & Purchases

Very little, though the street musician sings in front of a CD store with the name fully displayed.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Some smoking in pubs; lots of drinking in social situations.

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 Once is an endearing indie romance. Although there's a fair amount of swearing -- particularly "f--k" -- hardly anything else would raise a flag for teens and up. In fact, it's one of the few love stories that doesn't require its leads to get naked or fall in bed together. A thief does try to make off with the musician's street earnings, and there's some bitter talk of past breakups, plenty of beer drinking, and flirtation between a married woman and a single man (even though both know she's still married). But the positive messages about love and emotional connection outweigh any iffiness. 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 (6)
• Kids say (10)

Based on 6 parent reviews

Wrong supportive message

A great story of an unlikely friendship and finding your passion despite hard circumstances., what's the story.

Glen Hansard, frontman for beloved Irish indie-rock band The Frames, stars as an unnamed musician who sings on the streets of Dublin in ONCE. During the day, he plays Van Morrison songs, but at night, he sings his own compositions -- sad, affecting tunes -- with a passion that has no relationship to audience size. One day he meets a young woman (Marketa Irglova) who turns out to be an accomplished, impoverished Czech immigrant who plays the piano beautifully but sells flowers and cleans houses to make ends meet. They're soul mates, and theirs is a story of the transformative power of love and music.

Is It Any Good?

John Carney 's musical is one of those gems that so rarely graces the big screen these days: a truly good movie. That Carney, who once was a member of The Frames himself, could fashion such a moving, romantic film without resorting to the ho-hum boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl formula is a testament to his talent as both a writer and a director. Deftly and lightly, he lets emotions build up quietly for maximum impact. The relationship between the two leads develops as if in real life: unhurriedly but with great force.

Once 's songs aid the storytelling -- but, unlike most musicals, they pour out naturally, as you'd expect when two accomplished musicians unite. In "Falling Slowly," a haunting melody, the pair sings in harmony: "I don't know you/But I want you/All the more for that." In fact, the movie itself plays like a great song; you could listen to it over and over and rediscover something new each time.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what makes Once so different from typical Hollywood romances. How does the main couple connect without having sex? Do other movies rely too much on establishing relationships primarily through getting physical?

How do most movies define "love"? Is that realistic?

Families can also discuss the fact that movies often portray the pursuit of dreams. Do these dreams seem attainable? If not, how do you keep the faith?

How do the characters in Once demonstrate communication ? Why is this an important character strength ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : May 16, 2007
• On DVD or streaming : December 18, 2007
• Cast : Glen Hansard , Hugh Walsh , Marketa Irglova
• Director : John Carney
• Studio : Fox Searchlight
• Genre : Musical
• Character Strengths : Communication
• Run time : 85 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language.
• Last updated : April 26, 2024

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Once: EW review

Just about everyone with a heartbeat has had this tingly experience. You’re at a movie, and a song, as if by magic, breaks through the surface of the drama. Suddenly, you’re no longer sitting and watching — you’re soaring. That’s the feeling you get at the 1954 A Star Is Born , or at Moulin Rouge , and you can get it, as well, from naturalistic movies that are built like musicals, such as Nashville , Saturday Night Fever , or Sid & Nancy . But until Once , which was written and directed by John Carney, I’m not sure that I’d ever seen a small-scale, nonstylized, kitchen-sink drama in which the songs take on the majesty and devotion of a musical dream.

On the sidewalks of Dublin, a 30ish fellow (Glen Hansard) strums a guitar with a worn-out hole where the pick board should be. His face would look cherubic if it weren’t swathed in an orange beard, and he sings with a fervor that might make your average street musician blush. Most folks pass him right by, but one girl (Markéta Irglová), shy yet with a disarmingly open smile, lingers, attracted by his braying passion. Once tells the deceptively simple story of how these two (we never learn their names) are drawn, over a few days, into each other’s orbit, a romance — or is it? — played out in the songs they sing together.

Early on, they go to a musical-instrument store, where the girl, a Czech immigrant in her early 20s, likes to play the piano (she can’t afford one herself). He teaches her one of the songs he wrote and hopes to record professionally, and as they begin to play, with him singing ”I don’t know you/But I want you/All the more for that,” the scene becomes a shimmering reverie of love at its birth. Is this what they feel? What they hope to feel? Or is it just an exalted moment of harmonic bliss? That we don’t entirely know — and that they don’t know either — is part of what’s so touching about it, and the beauty of the number, the way that the voices blend and soar, building and stretching the words into a sustained cry, makes it seem as if time itself is standing still.

Hansard, a member of the Irish group the Frames, wrote the movie’s songs, and they are softly gorgeous odes to troubled hearts — what emo promises and (to my ears) never delivers. Away from the piano and guitar, Once moves with the dartingly unresolved, clear-eyed spirit of a French New Wave film. The girl, it turns out, has a daughter, plus a husband in the Czech Republic; the guy has an ex in London he may still love (their relationship is captured in a home-video montage that’s like a mini operetta). Instinctively, we want to see Hansard, with his tender bluster, and Irglová, all watchful innocence, save each other; Once plays off that desire, then peeks behind it. Away from the music, the two are caught in a limbo of doubt and expectation. Yet when Irglová, singing with a demo she’s listening to on headphones, walks down a street luxuriating in the percolating sadness of ”If You Want Me,” or the two of them, in the recording studio Hansard has rented for a weekend, give themselves over to the syncopated yearning of ”When Your Mind’s Made Up,” the movie swoons, and you will too.

Related Articles

Once (2007)

At once delicate and gritty, wistful and deeply satisfying, John Carney’s Once is a intimate little film that, like a favorite song, you would rather play for someone than try to describe. Not just because the experience loses in the telling, but also because the joy is in the discovery, the in-the-moment immediacy, the barely perceptible tension that leaves you holding your breath for the last twenty minutes, not wanting a single misstep to mar the story.

Artistic/Entertainment Value

Moral/spiritual value, age appropriateness, mpaa rating, caveat spectator.

Not a story so much as an incident that becomes a turning point in two people’s lives, Once relates a brief but memorable encounter between a bearded Dublin street musician (Glen Hansard of the Irish band the Frames) and a young, ponytailed Czech pianist (19-year-old singer-songwriter Markéta Irglová).

He plays guitar on street corners; she notices his playing and is intrigued. She observes that he plays edgy, heartfelt songs only at night; he explains that he makes his money during the day from passersby who only want to hear popular songs they know. He works in his father’s vacuum cleaner repair shop; she has, yes, a broken vacuum cleaner. She plays piano, but doesn’t own one; a shop owner lets her use the store piano during lunch hour. They play together and collaborate on a song.

She is lovely; he is lonely. Both are wounded souls, and their connection is emotional as well as creative, but she has a clear, untroubled sense of who she is, and won’t let things go too far. We never learn their names, and never need to know. It’s not inconceivable that they never learn one another’s names.

Those are the notes, or some of them. What I’ve left out is the music. To call Once a musical is both entirely accurate and thoroughly misleading. It would almost be better to call it the antidote to the musical, or at least the antithesis, whether you love musicals or hate them.

If Once is a musical, then every musician lives in a musical, every painter in an art gallery and every film critic in a film festival. The actual folk-rock they play may or may not be your thing; it doesn’t matter. It’s their thing, and they live and breathe it. Nothing has been staged for our benefit; there’s no offscreen conductor or choreographer in the wings, no show-stopping production number, no artifice or razzle-dazzle. The unrehearsed quality of their first-time collaboration, of his impromptu, semi-comic musical lament on the bus, feels like the real thing. (It just about is. The film was shot in 17 days on a negligible budget.)

Watching Once , one may wonder what the title refers to. Is their chance encounter a once-in-a-lifetime experience? What is or happens once? Is it a fleeting once, like a convergence of celestial bodies? Or is it a lingering once, like true love? As the film draws to a close, it finds the one right note to resolve its lingering tensions. It could easily have gone differently, but it doesn’t misstep — not even once.

Like the personal songs the street musician sings at night, Once doesn’t play to the crowds looking for disposable mainstream fare. It comes from the heart, and for those with an ear out for something new it lingers in the heart and mind.

I’m glad you appreciated Once . I think it’s a rare person who does appreciate it the way you did though. You hinted at this throughout your review; Once is not a typical romance, musical, or low-budget film. And someone can’t just be inclined toward those types of films to enjoy it. I’ve talked with people about Once , and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is one of those movies that a lot of people just don’t or aren’t willing to understand or relate to. But, if you do let yourself be pulled in and affected, it’s immensely enjoyable and meaningful. I’m being too vague, but you know what I mean. Sometimes I wonder what came first, your reviews or my taste in movies. :)

I always look forward to reading your reviews, as they are consistently insightful and thought-provoking (not to mention that most of the time they’re right). One thing which I’ve appreciated is that I’ve never seen you criticize, say, American movies just because they’re American, or praise indie movies just because they’ve escaped Hollywood, etc. It doesn’t make any sense to do so, I think, but nevertheless it is often done. In that light, I’m wondering in what sense to take your final ’graph in your review of Once . The disjunct here seems too neat, and to reflect a stereotype (of there being a difference between “crowds” and more refined viewers) which does not need reinforcing — since in my opinion most people straddle both groups, depending on a host of factors including the time of day. And, of course, “Once” did play to crowds — it reached a vastly greater audience than anyone seems to have expected — but those crowds weren’t looking for disposable entertainment. Clarification, please?

I saw the trailer for the movie Once and it appeared that the girl was married and had a husband who was coming back. Can you tell me what happened?

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Once Review

19 Oct 2007

NaN minutes

Every year, while the big studio titans battle for box-office supremacy, a few indie whippersnappers manage to weave their way through the tumult, emerging unsquished and lauded for their success. So while our expectations of the much-hyped monsters are either met or (more likely) punctured, it’s always welcome when a film pops up from nowhere to steal your heart.

So it is with Irish director John Carney’s Once, which won the Audience Award at Sundance and counts Steven Spielberg among its admirers. You could call it a sleeper, but it’s more like the dream. But it’s hard to make it sound even halfway appealing. A movie about a guy who composes whinge-ballads on an acoustic guitar? A love story with no sex?

It’s also a film with some very scuffed edges. Carney’s loose, low-fi shooting style isn’t particularly pretty, and despite the social-realist trappings he allows himself a few scenes which, under cold scrutiny, border on corny. One such moment sees ‘Guy’ (Glen Hansard) and band in the studio, having been dismissed as time-wasters by a surly engineer. A verse into their first recording, the engineer starts to nod in approval. By the end of the song he’s a fan. Talent wins out, as it can only in a movie.

But here’s the good news: it’s impossible to scrutinise moments like this coldly, or object to the muddy photography, for two crucial reasons. Firstly, the songs are fantastic. And secondly, you can’t help but love the people who’ve written them. And they’ve really written them.

Leads Hansard (aka Outspan from The Commitments) and Markéta Irglová (making her debut) had already recorded an album together and collaborated on all of Guy and Girl’s songs here. So there’s no dubbing, no miming, none of that gleaming-toothed ersatz quality that hopscotches through your usual big-screen musical. This is why, ultimately, the rough shooting-style suits: it’s more like catching a pair of true, raw talents in one take than watching an elaborately stage-managed show that follows months of rehearsal and leotard-tight choreography. One scene sees Girl sing along to a temp track that’s playing on a Discman as she walks along the street in her pyjamas; another has Guy composing a tune while he’s mooning over home-video footage of his ex-girlfriend (Marcella Plunkett). In short, it’s less razzle-dazzle, more warm glow.

Anchoring such moments are Hansard and Irglová’s tender, natural performances. He’s self-effacing and likeable; she’s plucky, cheeky and sweet. Both, though, have been hardened by tough experience, emotionally and financially. As suggested by the fact they display an instant connection through their music, you feel these two are destined to be together whatever the obstacles (he’s pining for his ex, she has a young daughter), their songwriting just a prelude. Naturally, things aren’t that simple. A subtle, engrossing romance ensues, but it’s one which is achingly platonic, laced with a bittersweet tang.

Still, Carney knows how to end on a high note, if not the kind you expect. Appropriately, he concludes with the most impressive shot in the movie, one guaranteed to leave a tear in your eye, and for all the best reasons, too.

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Directed by John Carney

How often do you find the right person?

A vacuum repairman moonlights as a street musician and hopes for his big break. One day a Czech immigrant, who earns a living selling flowers, approaches him with the news that she is also an aspiring singer-songwriter. The pair decide to collaborate, and the songs that they compose reflect the story of their blossoming love.

Glen Hansard Markéta Irglová Hugh Walsh Gerard Hendrick Alaistair Foley Geoff Minogue Bill Hodnett Danuse Ktrestova Darren Healy Mal Whyte Marcella Plunkett Niall Cleary Sean Miller

Director Director

John Carney

Producer Producer

Martina Niland

Writer Writer

Casting casting.

Maureen Hughes

Editor Editor

Paul Mullen

Cinematography Cinematography

Tim Fleming

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

David Collins

Production Design Production Design

Tamara Conboy

Art Direction Art Direction

Composers composers.

Glen Hansard Markéta Irglová

Songs Songs

Sound sound.

Michelle Fingleton

Costume Design Costume Design

Tiziana Corvisieri

Samson Films Summit Entertainment RTÉ Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland

Ireland USA

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

Czech English

Releases by Date

20 jan 2007, theatrical limited, 16 may 2007, 23 mar 2007, 15 jun 2007, 30 aug 2007, 20 sep 2007, 19 oct 2007, 25 oct 2007, 31 oct 2007, 03 nov 2007, 14 nov 2007, 15 jan 2008, 17 jan 2008, 14 feb 2008, 28 mar 2008, 15 apr 2008, 18 apr 2008, releases by country.

• Theatrical M
• Theatrical 12 AB Inter. mj.gov.br
• Theatrical U
• Theatrical 0
• Theatrical 15A

Netherlands

• Theatrical AL
• Theatrical M/12

South Korea

• Theatrical All
• Theatrical A ICAA 131407
• Theatrical 15
• Premiere Sundance Film Festival
• Theatrical limited R
• Theatrical R

85 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Silent J ★★★★ 11

You ever listen to a song so beautiful and amazing that it just causes you to break down and cry?

Once has a lot of those songs.

Review by Dragonknight ★★★★ 21

”It’s you I love.”

 Two non-professional actors. A few heartfelt songs and a budget of just 112,000$. That’s all director John Carney needs to construct a miraculous collection of human emotions that tend to break your heart or uplift you depending on how you like to connect with the characters and the overall atmosphere of the film. With its unimaginable simplicity Once reaches the heights that many movies so desperately try to achieve with multi million dollar budgets, fake superstars and childlishly deformed stories of romance yet fail. Carney’s film manages to portray the most fundamental yet at the same time most profound emotions of us human beings and then through the magic of music transfers those earnest feelings into…

Review by adambolt ★★★

can't believe this is the first movie to be filmed on a nokia phone

Review by Rod Sedgwick ★★★★★ 11

Once is a perfect example of capturing lightning in a bottle...

I started 'Falling Slowly' for John Carney's Once the moment Glen Hansard's falsetto (like discovering Jeff Buckley or Thom Yorke all over again) and Markéta Irglová's eargasmic harmony sent chills down my spine in the film’s award winning soundtrack moment. This film is all about those moments that are only possible with shared experience through the power of music and the heart yearning for connection, and boy does it all play out in the right tune in this little Irish gem - a film that has somehow eluded me 'til now.

The film in all its simple elegance is many things; a portrait of emerging raw talent, a delicate…

Review by Holli ★★★★ 1

and to think i've put off watching this for years because the poster looked like a hallmark christmas movie

Review by Disgustipated ★★★★★ 11

When I was 18, I saw the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was jumping up and down at a gig, totally enthralled by the music. I went straight up to her, grabbed her by the Doc Martin boot and hoisted her up on top of the mosh pit. From that day forward, music was the medium of our romance and the soundtrack of our love. 17 years later and we are still the greatest couple to have ever existed, cemented by the foundation of our shared passion for music. Then along came a movie called Once, where two characters find love and tenderness for one another through their affinity for music and provide each other with compassionate…

Review by Ale ★★★★½

Guy: What's the Czech for "Do you love him?" Girl: Milujes ho. Guy: So, milujes ho? Girl: No, miluji tebe

This film is so beautiful, who cares about the cinematography or lighting or any technical aspect. This film is a miracle.

Review by Sarah ★★★★★

Imagine meeting a guy and asking him to play a song he's written, and he plays bloody Falling Slowly.

Review by James (Schaffrillas) ★★★ 4

I'm definitely missing something here cause this didn't work very well for me at all. It leaves a terrible first impression with the cinematography at the beginning, but that aspect improves as the film goes along (even if the flat lighting doesn't). The bigger issue for me is how the script feels entirely barebones, rendering the story and romance very basic and unengaging. I don't feel a particularly strong connection between the main characters and I don't feel like I know them well at all.

The movie's saving grace is definitely the music; every song sequence is genuinely magical and it elevates the entire package. I wish I could just fall in love with this film; it's impressive for a…

Review by mary🦋 ★★★★ 5

This movie and its songs (“falling slowly“ and “if you want me” in particular) added at least 10 years to my life

Review by ji ★★★★★ 3

“take this sinking boat and point it home we’ve still got time raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice you’ll make it now”

MY HEART IS GRIEVING LEAVE ME ALONE

Review by Prateek Sharma ★★★★★

I guess Ted lasso was right when he said " Once so good I saw it twice".. Whatta beautiful heartwarming and upbeat film this is.. We all know John Carney for begin again but it clearly seems he made the film begin again for wide audience taking the inspiration from Once. He wrote two of my favorite characters now with Markéta Irglová and Keira knightley in Once and begin again respectively.. Both in vulnerable state still holds up pretty well and knows how to live life... This film is just vibe, experience it, feel it and watch it.. The scene with father son at last few mins and that ending scene made me emotional not gonna lie... The way John Carney…

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Once review – hearts soar and music shimmers in deeply-felt, generous musical

Eternity theatre, Darlinghurst Based on the 2007 film, Australia’s production of the Broadway hit is tender and heartbreaking, with Stefanie Caccamo undisputedly the star

D arlinghurst’s Eternity theatre is named for Arthur Stace. He was the cleaner of the building in the 1930s, back when it was the Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle, and he was so inspired by the sermons there that he felt called to write the word “eternity” over and over on footpaths around Sydney. He did this for decades, so determined was he to rouse his city and the people in it towards love and redemption.

Perhaps then the Eternity is the perfect home for Once: the soft-spoken, deeply felt musical about the forces of human connection that compel us to reach out to one another and hold on for dear life. It’s a place for the soul, for the heart, and Once is about people who need their souls healed. Our lead characters are “stopped” – depressed, stuck in a moment, unable to move forward. Until they make each other move.

First immortalised in the 2007 film by the same name, written by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, who perform together as the Swell Season, the musical debuted on Broadway in 2011, and won eight Tony awards. Richard Carroll’s Australian production debuted in 2019, a little jewel amongst musical theatre’s more rambunctious cousins. It has returned home two years and a pandemic later with its arms open wide and a 21-week tour ahead, packed with small venues offering the gift of intimacy. It’s what this musical needs: it works best if we get close.

From the moment we enter, there are offerings to situate us inside the story: mulled wine by the door, new signs in the foyer welcoming us to an old-fashioned Irish pub. Even the bar is wearing its own costume. An Irish band plays folk songs. It’s the gentlest form of immersion, a space between reality and a new fictional world.

Onstage, Hugh O’Connor’s production design is warm and earthy, with wooden boxes and benches making up most of the non-instrument props; Peter Rubie’s lights create dimension – mournful dark, shafts of hopeful light. Swinging doors and a window offer a promise of forward momentum.

The story starts with a heartbroken Guy (Toby Francis), who has been singing one last song on the street in Dublin, readying himself to leave his guitar, and possibly the world, behind. Then he meets a Girl (Stefanie Caccamo). She sees the Guy’s pain, recognises within it something of her own, and offers him a lifeline they both need. Two bruised hearts in a city of poets, their connection unfurls into something beautiful and necessary – and utterly impossible (it only lasts five days).

Most musicals build toward a happy ending; Once understands that not every romance ends well, or even gets to begin at all. Instead, this is a love story about feeling something new and nourishing – about breaking through the numbness and stasis to grow.

The most dated aspect of the show is its story structure, which positions the Girl primarily as a saviour of the Guy and only latterly as a complicated character in her own right, but its music – where the heart of a musical always lies – never diminishes her. It helps too that Caccamo is undisputedly the star of this production; her wry cleverness and astonishing voice wields emotion like a map, making the Girl feel very real and very human.

Francis’s Guy is gruff and miserable, a little less emotionally accessible than the Girl, but his glorious tenor and subtle command of timing makes him a great partner for Caccamo. This Guy is a product of the early 2000s too; he thinks more of his own pain than the Girl’s, but when they finally understand each other – and understand that their connection cannot last – he meets her in that moment. It could make you weep.

Carroll’s production has matured since its initial season into a self-assured, music-first production. Its humour is well-judged, with Carroll’s love for going broad mostly funnelled into Drew Livingston’s bank manager, who fancies himself a bit of a bard. It’s a welcome relief to laugh, and laugh hard, and this one grand outlet seems to have afforded Carroll some welcome restraint; he trusts the vulnerabilities and emotional revelations of the characters to carry the rest of the show, letting their jokes – and there are many – play smaller and more real. It’s a welcome new dimension.

The few moments that seem to lag and flounder do not last – the music, Irish folk blended with torch songs, is always there to save them. The cast is also the band, and musical director Victoria Falconer, who plays the part of Reza, has built a generous and shimmering world of music, the clarity of which is rightly prioritised by Dylan Robinson’s sound design.

In the music, hearts soar, and as the cast weaves their way through the show, movement director Amy Campbell has them create a moving symphony – a violin on roller blades, guitars in formation, mandolin and cello emerging from the shadows.

In the end, it’s the music – and how it speaks the language of our feelings – that saves the Guy and the Girl, and it might just crack something open in you too.

Once runs at the Eternity theatre until Sunday 18 July, before touring regional NSW and Canberra through August and September

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‘The Idea of You’ Review: Surviving Celebrity

Anne Hathaway headlines a movie that’s got a lot to say about the perils of fame.

• Share full article

By Alissa Wilkinson

Women of a certain age (that is, my age) feel like they grew up alongside Anne Hathaway, because, well, we did. We were awkward teens together when she made “The Princess Diaries” in 2001. We felt ourselves to be put-upon entry-level hirelings right when “The Devil Wears Prada” came out in 2006. We understood her broken-down narcissistic addict in “Rachel Getting Married,” because who couldn’t? And we watched the Hathaway backlash, pegged to public perception that she was trying too hard, and worried that people saw us the same way.

Now we’re 40-ish. We know for sure that Gen Z considers millennials to be cringe, and, thankfully, we no longer feel the need to care. The greatest gift of reaching middle age is having settled into yourself, and that is apparently what Hathaway, age 41, has done . She has been through the celebrity wringer (and more ) and come out the other side looking radiant, with a long list of credits in movies that swing from standard commercial fare to auteurist masterpieces.

This is perhaps why it’s so satisfying to see her name come first — alone, before the title credit — in “The Idea of You,” which is on its surface a relatively fluffy little film. Based on the sleeper hit novel by Robinne Lee, “The Idea of You” is plainly fantasy, in the fan fiction mold, that poses the question: What if Harry Styles, the British megastar and former frontman of One Direction, fell madly in love with a hot 40-year-old mom? In this universe, the Styles character is Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), the British frontman of a five-member boy band called August Moon.

Hathaway plays Solène Marchand, an art gallery owner whose arrogantly useless ex-husband, Daniel (Reid Scott), buys v.i.p. meet-and-greet tickets for their 16-year-old daughter, Izzy (Ella Rubin), and her two best friends, all of whom were huge August Moon fans … in the seventh grade.

The event is at Coachella, and Daniel is set to take the teenagers but backs out at the last second, citing a work emergency. Solène reluctantly agrees to take them, and while at the festival, mistakes Hayes’s trailer for the bathroom. They meet, it’s cute, and you can guess what happens next.

Or can you? It was clear about 10 minutes into the movie that what was required for enjoyment was to surrender to the daydreaming, and so, with very little internal protest, I did. How could I resist? Solène is smart, competent, kind and secure; she has great hair and a great wardrobe; and most important, she seems like a real person, even if the situation in which she finds herself greatly stretches the bonds of credibility.

More than once, I was struck by how authentically 40 Solène seemed to me — a woman capable of making her own decisions, even ones she thinks might be ill-advised — and how weirdly rare it is to see that kind of character in a movie. She has a kid, and friends, and a career. She reads books and looks at art, and she is flattered by this 24-year-old superstar’s attention but takes a long time to come around to the idea that it may not be a joke.

Solène also feels real shame and real resolve in the course of the winding fairy tale story, which predictably has to go south. But most of all, she’s in a movie that doesn’t try to shame her, or patronize her, or make her appear ridiculous for having desires and fantasies of her own. She’s just who she is, and it’s simple to understand her appeal to someone whose life has never been his own.

Directed by Michael Showalter, who wrote the adapted screenplay with Jennifer Westfeldt, “The Idea of You” succeeds mostly because of Hathaway’s performance, though she and Galitzine spark and banter pleasurably (and he can dance and sing, too). It tweaks the novel in a number of ways — Hayes is older than the book’s character, for one thing — and also seems to implicitly know it’s a movie, and that movies have a strange relationship with age-gap romances.

In fact, that’s one of its strengths. Several times, characters remark on the double standard attached to people’s judgment of Solène and Hayes’s relationship, hypothesizing that in a gender-swapped situation, people would be high-fiving the older man who landed the hot younger star. Sixteen years looks like a lot on paper, but in the movies, at least, it is barely a blip.

That musing is interesting enough, if a familiar one. More fascinating in “The Idea of You” is its treatment of the cage of celebrity. Hayes seems mature compared with his bandmates and the girls who follow them around, but he’s also clearly stuck in some kind of arrested development. And I do mean stuck: He is self-aware enough to tell Solène, plaintively, that he auditioned for the band when he was 14 and not much has changed beyond his level of fame. He wants a life beyond the spotlight, badly.

And that’s just what he can’t get. Neither can Solène, nor, eventually, anyone around her. The idea of living a quiet life might obviously be out of reach, but the added elements of tabloid news and rabid fans unafraid to treat Hayes as if they know him make things far worse. The film starts to feel a little like the tale of a monster, but the monster is parasociality, encouraged by the illusion of intimacy that the modern superstar machine relies on to keep selling tickets and merch and albums and whatever else keeps the star in the spotlight.

It’s probably coincidental that “The Idea of You” comes on the heels of Taylor Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” on which she strongly implies that her carefully cultivated fandom has made her love life a nightmare. But spiritually, at least, they’re of a piece — even if the origins of the film’s plot seem as much borne of parasociality as a critique of it. And that makes Hathaway’s performance extra poignant. She’s been dragged into that buzz saw before. And somehow, she’s figured out how to make a life on the other side of it.

The Idea of You Rated R for getting hot and heavy, plus some language. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Prime Video .

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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Syracuse Stage’s ‘Once’ brings honesty, vulnerability and beauty to the musical genre (review)

• Updated: May. 04, 2024, 1:26 p.m. |
• Published: May. 04, 2024, 1:19 p.m.

Joe Boover and Ana Marcu in the Syracuse Stage production of "Once," May 1-19, 2024. Michael Davis

• Linda Lowen

The hardest challenge for a theater reviewer is to praise a deeply moving and emotionally profound production. Like crying wolf, “A must see!” sounds stale when used too often. That’s where analogies come in.

“Once,” the closing production of Syracuse Stage’s 50th season, is a musical, but to call it that is to cheapen it. The typical modern musical leans into bright, loud, biggest-bang-for-the-buck tunes -- it’s a grocery store ferns-and-chrysanthemum bouquet. But “Once” -- with its real, honest songs of vulnerability and beauty -- is a wild cherry tree discovered in the middle of the woods on a spring hike. As you stand below the delicate blossoms, loosened petals spiral downwards, and days later, you find them, dried and pale, clinging to your jacket yet still possessing magic.

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‘One Day’ Review: Beautifully Tender Angst

“What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us, time and time over. They are to be happy in. Where can we live but days?”

A limited series adaptation of a 2009 novel, which was previously adapted into an averagely successful 2011 film, wouldn’t sound like the most exciting story on paper. However, the Netflix show “One Day” proves expectations wrong. Based on the novel of the same name by David Nicholls, the streaming adaptation of “One Day” follows the friendship and love story of Emma (Ambika Mod) and Dexter (Leo Woodall) over the course of almost two decades. Led by two charming performances, “One Day” breathes new life into the romantic comedy genre, providing a touching watching experience.

“One Day” consists of fourteen episodes, spanning from 1988, the date Emma and Dexter meet for the first time, to 2007. Besides the two last episodes, which make multiple-year jumps, the other twelve only focus on one year at a time, following from the beginning of Emma and Dexter’s love and their intertwined storylines. The episode format is engaging, as the audience can grow alongside the characters and feel the importance of Emma and Dexter’s relationship. At just under seven hours, “One Day” is the perfect bingeable show.

While common narrative techniques advise that showing is better than telling, “One Day” flips this advice on its head, sacrificing action for detailed character study. The series doesn’t show many big plot points or characters’ immediate reactions to them, but rather focuses on their lingering emotional effects. As such, the audience feels everything the same way as the protagonists do, becoming further attached to the duo.

The show’s success can be attributed to its two leading performances. Mod and Woodall’s acting is fresh and electric, and the two come across as veterans of the rom-com genre. The chemistry between them is full of longing and tenderness, which makes watching their journey all the more enthralling.

Compared to the movie, the series format allows “One Day” to spend more time developing its characters. Another welcome change from the book is the casting of Ambika Mod, a British actress of Indian ancestry, whose self-deprecating humor and underlying vulnerability make her an important core of the series. Because of the lack of representation of women of color in the genre, Mod herself has talked in an interview about the doubt she experienced about her lead role before the show began filming. While the show doesn’t heap extra focus on Emma’s background and family, the casting still remains an integral aspect of the series.

The script balances passion with witty humor and banter in a fresh and exciting manner. “One Day” is perfect for fans of other British rom-coms such as “Notting Hill” and “About Time.” One cast member of “Notting Hill,” Tim McInnerny, even stars in “One Day” as Dexter’s father. The series also has a nostalgic quality, enhanced by its focus on the ’90s, that may automatically increase its appeal for many.

Another highlight of “One Day” is the soundtrack. The songs in each episode are carefully placed, corresponding harmoniously to the storyline and characters’ emotions. The lyrics tend to voice what the characters cannot, such as when “Iceblink Luck” by the Cocteau Twins plays at the end of the third episode. The line “I think you’re in her heart” plays as the camera lingers on Dexter after he and Emma painfully part once more without expressing their true feelings.

The series’s filming and cinematography also highlights Emma and Dexter’s connection. One standout is the prominent eye contact between the two love interests, which makes the impossibility yet inevitability of their romantic relationship even more palpable.

“One Day” is refreshing because it takes itself seriously. While many consider the rom-com genre dead, the show proves to be an exciting addition. By mixing in heavier topics such as personal growth, public pressure, and the death of a parent with the ongoing thread of loving and longing, “One Day” presents a new example of what a romantic comedy can be. By the end of the series, the viewer will be wishing to start it over again, to spend a bit more time with the charming Emma and Dexter.

—Staff writer Erlisa Demneri can be reached at [email protected] .

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If You Like 'Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood,' Watch This Underrated Crime Series

David Duchovny hunts down the infamous Manson family in this NBC drama.

The Big Picture

• Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood offers an alternate history where Sharon Tate survives.
• NBC's Aquarius is a gritty cop drama that delves into the dark world of the Manson Family and Hollywood.
• Aquarius focuses on the women of the Manson Family and explores the dark side of Hollywood in the '60s.

August 9, 1969 changed American history and culture forever, marking the perceived end of a free-loving decade due to a series of murders committed by the Manson Family, named for cult leader Charles Manson . However, the infamous murder of actress Sharon Tate and several others staying at her house is circumvented in Quentin Tarantino ’s masterpiece, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood . The love letter to Los Angeles in the late '60s encapsulates the romanticism Americans still carry for the decade and the changing film industry through actor Rick Dalton ( Leonardo DiCaprio ) and stuntman Cliff Booth ( Brad Pitt ).

Providing an alternate timeline of historical events, similar to Inglourious Basterds , Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood posits what would have happened if Tate had survived that night, and how it all would have played out if the Manson Family had been prevented from carrying out their gruesome plan — by Hollywood actors, no less. For those intrigued by the collision of real historical figures and fictional characters, as well as the true-crime elements of the Manson family, NBC's Aquarius is the perfect companion. The series features a hardened David Duchovny in the lead as fictional detective Sam Hodiak, who works the streets of 1960s Los Angeles and finds himself crossing paths with the infamous Manson Family after taking on a case involving a missing teenage girl.

A gritty 1960s cop drama about LAPD detective Sam Hodiak and his trainee, who must deal with gangs, brutal crimes, changing times, family crises and unhinged manipulative small-time crook Charles Manson, who's slowly building his cult.

What Is 'Aquarius' About?

Aquarius takes on '60s counterculture and spins it into a dark retelling of the Manson Family by following a fictional teen runaway who joins their group. Duchovny's Detective Sam Hodiak has been tasked with finding 16-year-old Emma Karn ( Emma Dumont ), which unknowingly leads him to Charles Manson in the process as the cult gears up to commit the Tate-LaBianca murders . Alongside Duchovny, Grey Damon is a standout as the heroin-addicted narcotics officer, Brian Shafe, who goes undercover for Hodiak as the two try to track down Emma before it’s too late. The series also tackles the second wave of feminism, through Claire Holt 's Charmain Tully, one of the department’s first female officers.

Gethin Anthony ( Game of Thrones ) is terrifying as Aquarius ' version of Charles Manson, and the series focuses on the women he manipulated who then became willing accomplices in committing crimes and murders on his behalf. As Hodiak closes in on Emma's whereabouts, the series uses her fictional character to expose the monster Manson was , and how he groomed, drugged, and brainwashed many vulnerable individuals. Among the cast playing members of the Manson Family are Ambyr Childers as Susan "Sadie" Atkins, while Tara Lynne Barr initially played Patricia Krenwinkle before being replaced as Madisen Beaty for the remainder of the series. (Notably, Beaty would also reprise the role of Patricia Krenwinkel in Tarantino's Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood .) Cameron Deane Stewart plays Tex Watson, another member of the Manson Family and a participant in the Tate-LaBianca murders.

David Duchovny Collides With Charles Manson in 'Aquarius'

Aquarius , first and foremost, is an invigorating cop drama that revolves around a cat-and-mouse chase. Hodiak's life has become a boring humdrum of the same dealings, and he has little purpose other than hating hippies, as well as the counterculture of marijuana and rock and roll that has littered the streets of Los Angeles. He's a man who is not of the times, but is still very much the epitome of cool in sunglasses and sharp suits. However, when he's tasked by an old flame, played by Michaela McManus , to find her daughter, Emma, that's when Hodiak comes alive. Duchovny possesses a cold remove as a hardened cop who has seen too much in his line of work, and as he hunts down Manson, true-crime fanatics will be glad to find out that the series has done its homework on the notorious serial killer.

As Hodiak begins his hunt in 1967, the series follows Manson and his cult up through the murders in August 1969, where arrest only becomes more imperative. Desperate and disillusioned that he's destined to become the next big rock star, like The Beatles , Manson's rage at show business and Hollywood reaches a boiling point that shows no signs of cooling down. On the other side of the hunt, Hodiak and Brian's partnership, as two outsiders within the police force who share differing views on life, is a bonus to the show. Duchovny and Damon have an easy chemistry as they cruise through downtown L.A. , similar to DiCaprio and Pitt's camaraderie in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood .

'Aquarius' Focuses on the Women of the Manson Family

The third act of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood lands in the hands of the women of the Manson Family, which kicks off with a sinister scene featuring Dakota Fanning as Squeaky Fromme. The climax of the film, however, is a bloody extravaganza with harrowing performances, as Sadie ( Mikey Madison ), Katie (Beaty), and a demon-worshiping Tex Watson ( Austin Butler ) ultimately face off with a drunk Rick Dalton and an LSD-tripping Cliff Booth. Aquarius similarly spotlights the women of the Manson Family , exploring their stories further.

However, Dumont's impressionable Emma Karn is the glue that holds Aquarius together . Thanks to her, Hodiak becomes aware of Manson , and because of that, Manson becomes his number one target. The decision to create a fictional female Manson family member is a smart one for the series, liberating the writers to explore the stories of many women who fell victim to Manson's manipulation through one plotline. As Emma grows weary of Charlie's plans, however, the other Manson women begin to show their darker sides; the series doesn't paint them as helpless victims, but as blossoming murderers. Aquarius offers knotty character studies of women on the verge, and as Season 2 tackles the Tate-LaBianca murders head-on , these characters only become more terrifying.

'​​​​​​Aquarius' Is a Gritty Cop Drama and a Dark Exploration of Hollywood

The story of Manson and his cult cannot be told without revealing the dark side of Hollywood . It's been well-documented Manson was obsessed with stardom, and wanted to be the next big thing in music. Aquarius even follows the story of how he and the women came to stay at Brian Wilson's house in Hollywood, and how that ultimately contributed to actress Sharon Tate's eventual, tragic death. While the infamous serial killer is the spark that begins the story, Aquarius goes beyond the Manson cult and explores more of the unrest in Los Angeles during the '60s — including police brutality, workplace harassment, and racial discrimination. Airing on NBC despite its nudity and violence, Aquarius may have been too dark and daring for its own good , and was canceled after two seasons despite positive reviews.

Aquarius understands that there are no heroes or fairy tale endings in real life. Duchovny's Sam Hodiak follows in the footsteps of many hardened cops of the neo-noir genre, disenchanted with the free-spirited, bare-footed hippies strolling the streets while sensing the real darkness looming. Through his partnership with Brian, however, Hodiak is forced to understand the generation he has committed himself to hating and learns a thing or two about humanity in the process. Beneath the glamour of '60s Hollywood lies a lot of dirty dealings , something both Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood and Aquarius recognize. But while Tarantino writes the City of Angels a love letter , Aquarius gives it a reprimand.

Aquarius is available to watch on Netflix in the U.S.

Watch on Netflix

Restored and Rereleased, the Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ Is Revealed to Be the Joyful Documentary It Always Was

In 1970, it looked like a portrait of the Beatles breaking up. Now it looks like the first rock 'n' roll reality show — and a vision of them coming together.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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• Restored and Rereleased, the Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ Is Revealed to Be the Joyful Documentary It Always Was 6 days ago

The Beatles , in their early years, looked alike (same hair and suits, same lemon-shaped smiles), and even after they’d entered the psychedelic zone with “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper” they dressed and coiffed themselves with a splashy coordinated harmony. They were unified . And that made a kind of supreme sense, since they were the larger-than-life pop avatars of love. They sang about love and made a mantra of it; love was the centrifugal force that held their music together. But “Let It Be,” starting with that plaintive shrug of a title (which seemed to be telling a planet’s worth of fans that the dream was over), had a very different vibe.

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That, however, was then. When Peter Jackson plunged back into the 57 hours of footage that Michael Lindsay-Hogg shot for “Let It Be” and assembled it into “The Beatles: Get Back” (2021), his extraordinary eight-hour documentary , Jackson’s expanded epic revealed that the fabled January 1969 recording sessions were not the downer of legend. There were many moments that were funny, spirited, communal. That said, what of the original “Let It Be”? After the revelation of “Get Back,” would it still look like the morning-after hangover of the Beatles’ saga?

The film has been out of circulation since the 1980s. It is now being re-released by Disney+ in a version restored by Jackson’s team, using the same technological wizardry that made “Get Back” look and sound like a present-tense epiphany. The restoration allows “Let It Be” to be sharper, brighter, more alive, without betraying the original film. The early scenes shot in Twickenham Studios still give off that tinge of gloom. But only a tinge.

For me, though, the revelation of seeing “Let It Be” today, when everything about the Beatles is now ancient history, is that as you experience the movie anew (or for the very first time), it’s not the myth of the Beatles that falls away. It’s the myth of “Let It Be.” I now think it’s one of the most joyful rock documentaries ever made.

What’s changed? It’s not merely the Jackson upgrade. It’s that the Beatles, viewed with half a century’s hindsight, no longer look so separate. Their identities remain separate — by this point, they were locked into their own lives as complicated adults — but what we now see, knowing all that in our bones, is the lingering, between-the-lines emotional profundity of the connection between them. We now feel how the music, every gloriously ragged note of it, arises out of their love for each other.  

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• Cast & crew

The Good Half

Renn Wheeland returns home to Cleveland for his mother's funeral. Once there, he forges new relationships while healing old ones, before confronting his problems and trying to face his grief... Read all Renn Wheeland returns home to Cleveland for his mother's funeral. Once there, he forges new relationships while healing old ones, before confronting his problems and trying to face his grief. Renn Wheeland returns home to Cleveland for his mother's funeral. Once there, he forges new relationships while healing old ones, before confronting his problems and trying to face his grief.

• Robert Schwartzman
• Brett Ryland
• David Arquette
• Dee Beasnael
• Ryan Bergara
• 5 Critic reviews

• Rick Barona

• Funeral Guy Bill

• Renn Wheeland
• Ticket Agent

• Lily Wheeland

• Leigh Wheeland

• Darren Wheeland

• Dinner Guest
• (uncredited)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• July 23, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• The Ranch Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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• Runtime 1 hour 50 minutes

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