Tony / The Weight / Primetime

Emotionally Complex Performances With Depth That Always Pays Off 

Tony

“Are you a good guy or a bad guy?” Dominic Sessa’s Anthony Bourdain is asked late in A24’s Tony. He’s still not sure but borders on somewhere in between and seems at peace with that. Already on Prime following a successful summer run in independent cinemas, this is a film about unrealized potential, the messy, unglamorous struggles of venturing out into the world, and the firm grip of brilliance untethering itself from ego and vanity. 

Set in Provincetown, Cape Cod, in the summer of 1975, Bourdain’s path towards his calling culminates in a tiny kitchen run by CIA and Michelin Star Chef Vatel (Antonio Banderas), who allows Bourdain to sleep in his hammock in exchange for assisting him as a dishwasher. Having initially ventured to Provincetown to see his high school crush Nancy (Emilia Jones), Bourdain finds himself in a web of lies, keeping his job a secret and saying he’s in Provincetown on a writing fellowship. Under the influence of hot-headed line cook Sal (Leo Woodall), Bourdain’s pursuit of Nancy falters and only starts to improve after Vatel fires Sal and takes on Bourdain as a true apprentice. Just as things start to look up, a kitchen fire brings everything crashing down, leaving all of them at a crossroads. 

Cape Cod is very much a character in its own right. Even when you know a place so well by the back of your hand, you never tire of seeing it portrayed onscreen with such sentimentality. “Old Cape Cod,” playing towards the end in a beautiful montage of all the hard work paying off, fills the heart with a warmth Tony’s been building towards all along. The Holdover’s Sessa humanizes Bourdain’s unpleasantness without making him a straight-up antihero. A lot of people feeling lost will recognise pieces of themself in the performance. Banderas delivers his best work in years and comes away as the film's beating heart that will fuel audiences' hunger. Woodall is continuing to rise following his work in Nuremberg and Tuner, and his work here helps fuel the fire of this film, particularly in its Massachusetts home base. I do wish Emilia Jones had a meatier role here,e as she’s an excellent actor,r and I loved her work alongside Mark Ruffalo and Tom Pelphrey in Task as well as Cat Person a, nd of course, Coda. Nevertheless, she maintains an enormously effective presence and really sells Nancy as an interesting person and makes audiences see why Bourdain would travel all the way to Provincetown in the first place and stay for her. 

Tony is a delightful watch and another summer victory for A24. A new summer classic for many audiences, I’m sure. 

The Weight

“I’m in here. That’s my problem.”

That sentiment rings with injustice like ears bleeding more than once in The Weight, and it cuts to the heart of this Pacific Northwest period drama. Where last year’s Train Dreams was a multigenerational, century-changing epic through the eyes of a silent voyeur, The Weight looks through a grittier lens and strikes many universal notes of sympathy. 

Samuel Murphy (Ethan Hawke) is more “conventionally broken” than the lost wandering eyes of Joel Edgerton. His shame is internalized. It’s a product of his predicament, the hardships of his life and circumstances that have led him to a work prison amongst the Great Depression, and the knowledge that his tiny daughter Penny has become a ward of the state (Soon to be put up for adoption), which separates him from societal expectations of a man that he’s failed and that his warden Clancy (Russell Crowe) sees him as easy to exploit. Thus, he offers Murphy to smuggle gold bricks across the forest in exchange for an early release. Along with a few other men and indigenous runaway Anna (Julia Jones), a quest towards a second chance begins. 

The sound of wood creaking on an old rope bridge and the rush of river water as Murphy is trapped underneath are all echoes in the film's mesmerizing sound design. As danger gradually becomes worse and the group starts to crack and become more divided, the stakes become higher, and it becomes very clear not all of them are going to make it. 

The Weight ultimately does what thrillers are supposed to do; It makes the blood in our veins feel a slight chill and grip our wrists a little tighter. Hawke packs a mighty punch in a powerhouse performance, armed with a tremendous emotional weight that levels the film’s bleak tone out perfectly with its more thriller elements. Crowe can always be relied on to bring a sinister calm to even the most extreme environments and makes the wilderness feel even colder from afar. Julia Jones presides over the group with her beautiful owl-like eyes and is always magnetic, and only elevates an already beautiful character drama to higher levels. She and Hawke are electrifying in a scene where they tend each other’s wounds in the night. A perfect and beautiful example of how the revealed human body in full flesh can help tell an entire story on its own and not have anything to do with sex. There’s a warmth and understanding that can come from baring our wounds, and the emotional depth Hawke and Jones bring to these two lost people is among the film’s greatest achievements. 

“The Weight” is emotionally heavy but never too much to bear, and all hardaches eventually pay off. Nothing does that better than a good old-fashioned drive into the sunset. 

Primetime

“Primetime,” following journalist Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) at the height of his success from NBC’s “To Catch A Predator,” is many films in one. First, it’s a haunting ghost story about society's monsters being lured out of their caves into the sunlight where they are fated to be seen for what they are. Then it’s a humiliating expose on audiences and what constitutes entertainment in the 21st century. And from start to finish, it’s a political fable about consumerism and exploitation. It’s successful from beginning to end in every department. 

I suppose “Chilling” would truly be the ultimate word if I could only describe it in one. To say that “To Catch A Predator,” “In which Hansen would confront pedophiles looking to meet teens online and give them a fright before their arrest,” was a smash would be an understatement. But every smash runs the risk of becoming a crash, and Pattinson is exhilarating to watch as he’s officially entered his "Sleaze Era”. After nearly two decades of playing the good guy (Even when you didn’t root for them), he’s settling in nicely with his second villainous role of 2026 following The Odyssey. Part of the genius of his performance is that,  while he takes it very seriously, he can’t help but have fun with the circus of the whole thing. There’s a very normalized extremism to Hansen’s demeanor and physical way of being, and Pattinson LOVES the vocal elements of stepping into a character. That’s very apparent here. I’d like to say that one’s personal take on Hansen won’t influence how you feel about Primetime, but that would be incredibly dishonest. 

Fortunately for me, the distaste he injects into the world isn’t merely on display but explored through the lens of a loss of innocence from ambitious actor Dan Plum (Skylar Gisondo), who serves as the show’s “Decoy,” thrusting him into a world bringing forth extreme psychological damage. Alongside his ratings-prioritizing producer, Andi (Merritt Wever) Hansen holds the keys to complete victory, only for those keys to start shaking as tabloid reports of his extramarital affairs threaten to surface and the network demands “Juicer” predators. Reports of a “Whale” in the form of a district attorney in Texas seem like the perfect answer to the network’s demands and Hansen’s hungry search for something to sustain his ego and Andi’s ruthlessness. Those who know the true story know it all blows up in their face and then life goes on as though nothing happened. It’s still shocking when you see it in the flesh. I do praise filmmaker Lance Oppenheim and writer Ajon Singh for not withholding what ultimately happens on their most ambitious segment, as I suspected that it would be off camera and only spoken about in references. In a time when so many films are catering to audience discomfort by withholding brutality. 

Primetime is an extremely refreshing work of filmmaking and very unbiased for such an opinion-driven story. Wever and Gisondo’s supporting performances match Pattinson’s unsettling presence throughout and place audiences in a mindset they can’t prepare for. Primetime is almost like a circus you don’t remember buying tickets to. 

I’m a firm believer in vigilantism. I can understand and appreciate the satisfaction of seeing evil people get their comeuppance. “To Catch A Predator” was only ever an idealized version of that. 

It was extremely repetitive, and while I think the term “Exploitative” is wildly overused by people as a weapon against having to face what traumatizes them, I agree with those who feel Hansen’s show was just that. It’s also critical to remember what 2006 was like culturally. We were in the midst of the Iraq War; the landscape of television was changing. Reality TV was truly just starting to really become popular, and we were pre-2008 recession. The instinct to have something weekly to look forward to is human. There’s a real NEED. Especially in pre-streaming times. It’s interesting to see how audiences were complicit in this culture. Pattinson and Wever’s performances portray their views on audiences almost like how scientists look at lab rats. They’re not at all disturbed by what people deem entertaining. Why would they? They put it out there to begin with. I do think on Hansen’s part that there was a genuine rage towards predators, but his ego and drive for fame border on complete self-righteousness. An early scene where he wakes his sleeping children to watch their “Heroic” dad is silently blood boiling. Nothing he does seems to be out of the goodness of his heart, and it shows very clearly. The cinematography is also very reflective of television sets of 2006. Almost weirdly nostalgic. Wever is equally menacing, and Gisondo is Primetime’s frightened, beating, and exploited heart, and I’d personally give him an Oscar nomination. He brings to life a perfect “deer in the headlights” performance with a completely human sensitivity that I don’t often see from films like this. I definitely plan on seeing it again. 

This film definitely is out at the right time. We need it. People are furious enough and bitter enough to swallow it whole, and cultural regurgitation will surely follow. It’s unpleasant but in no way unfulfilling. It’s strange and nightmarish and always has a threatening chill ready to engulf you. Hansen’s show was truly a sickening horror. Primetime is an American tragedy.