Sometimes you come across a film that just defines what grown up cinema should be.
Joachim Trier's Nordic family drama 'Sentimental Value' is such a film.
Easily his most Ingmar Bergman like film to date, it begins with a defining sequence that focuses on the home of the Borg family.
Drawing from an essay by Renate Reinsve's Nora Borg from when she was a child, the narration gives the house human traits - wondering if it is happy when it is full of people and objects or empty and whether it also feels pain.
Nora's home has witnessed life and death through various generations and also the pain of her parents' marital break-up - a heartache that still haunts the family to this day.
As the movie unfolds, we learn Nora, who is a respected theatre actress, has been more deeply impacted by her parents' break-up than her sister, Inga Ibsdotter Lileass' Agnes.
While Agnes has married Andreas Stoltenberg Granerud's historian Even Pettersen and has a young son Oyvind Hesjedal Loven's Erik, Nora has eschewed the notion of getting married.
Her anxiety about her past frequently bubbles up and we get an early taste of it as she is about to step onstage on the opening night of a new play.
In an unbearably tense sequence, we see production staff frantically trying to keep her nerves in check as she threatens to walk out.
When Nora eventually overcomes her stage fright and launches into a monologue, it comes as a huge relief.
There is a persistent feeling of unease throughout Trier's film which ramps up following the death of the Borg sisters' mother.
This leads to the return of their errant father, Stellan Skarsgard's acclaimed film director Gustav.
Nora's relationship with Gustav is especially frosty to the point where, when they meet up for coffee and he produces a screenplay written with her in mind for the lead role, she just won't entertain it and storms out of the restaurant where they meet.
Gustav, however, has an itch to scratch and that is to get the movie made
When he meets Elle Fanning's American movie star Rachel Kemp at a retrospective of his work at the Deauville Film Festival, opportunity knocks.
He offers her the lead role instead and, thanks to her clout, his first work in 15 years is greenlit.
Because of his wife's inaction, the family home legally belongs to Gustav and he sets about shooting his movie there while Agnes and her family move out.
With Gustav looking to cast Erik and Rachel's casting unsettling Nora who still won't look at the script, family tensions boil and eventually erupt with old grievances hitting each of them hard.
But can they repair the damage?
'Sentimental Value' is a movie that takes its time, yet never feels slow - drawing you into its events as they unfold and seeping into your own life experience of family.
Some viewers may find it a more unsettling watch than others, depending on their own family circumstances but there's no doubt that this is one of the most truthful pieces of cinema you will ever see.
It's superbly written, terrifically acted and masterfully directed.
Trier allows his cast the time to properly inhabit their characters and there are moments in the movie where facial expressions say a lot more than the words being uttered.
Reinsve turns in one of the best performances of the year or, for that matter, any year - brilliantly conveying the hurt, disappointment and resentment that Nora has built up over the years and the physical trauma it has exacted.
Skarsgard is, unsurprisingly, more than a match for her - capturing the regret and desperation of a man who knows that time is marching on if he is to repair the wounds he has inflicted on his family and also complete a film that is literally his life's work.
Gustav's journey in the film raises pertinent questions about the follies of parenthood and the inherent tension between being satisfying artistic desire and familial sacrifice.
Lileass is a great foil for both and has a powerhouse scene where she finally unleashes all her latent anger and frustration at Gustav.
Fanning is wonderful too as an actress trying and struggling to make sense of a family dynamic that she has no real knowledge of but which is informing her movie within the movie.
All of this, I know, sounds like heavy stuff but Trier and his fellow screenwriter Eskil Vogt still manage to find real moments of levity in the fillm.
Yet even these ring true and don't feel forced.
As for Kasper Tuxen's cinematography, it's appropriately unobtrusive and subtle, while Oliver Bugge Coutte's film editing hits just the right pace which allows Trier and Vogt's screenplay to fully breathe.
'Sentimental Value' is one of those movies that grabs you by the lapels and slowly but surely pulls you into its characters' lives.
It does this so profoundly and movingly and with enough mischief that it will leave you musing on it for days.
It's a masterclass in how mature visual storytelling on a modest $12 million budget can emotionally outgun bombastic multiplex movies that pretend to trade in real emotions.
('Sentimental Value/Akfessjonsverdi' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on December 26, 2025)
By way of contrast to Trier's film, the Russo Brothers' Netflix movie 'The Electric State' exemplifies everything that's bad about a lot of Hollywood cinema.
A naff science fiction tale about how humans' addiction to technology is ripe for exploitation, it's one of those movies that has its cake and gorges on it.
Although in this case, the chocolate mud pie it thinks it's serving is really just made of mud.
The film begins with a rambling prologue about how in an alternate 1990s robots became more widely used in service roles for humankind but decided to rebel under the leadership of the Woody Harrelson voiced Planters mascot, Mr Peanut.
A war erupted, with humans under the cosh until the world fell under the spell of Stanley Tucci's tech guru Ethan Skate who came up with a way of fighting back with the help of technology.
While some of the defeated robots went to ground, Skate further developed his Optimus Prime style headset known as a neurocaster which when the story finally gets rolling is keeping most of the human population subjugated.
Oblivious to the world around them, citizens use the neurocaster to get their fix of virtual worlds tailored for their own tastes.
Milly Bobby Brown's orphaned teen Michelle Green isn't so enamoured with the technology and is still wrestling with the loss of her genius little brother, Woody Norman's Christopher in a car crash.
When a robot turns up at her family home, she's shocked to realise that its traits bear a lot of similarities to Christopher and she becomes increasingly convinced that he may somehow be alive.
Setting off on a journey with the bot known as Cosmo to the Exclusion Zone to locate her brother and Ke Huy Quan's Dr Clark Amherst, who she believes may know his whereabouts, she stumbles across Chris Pratt's wise cracking smuggler John D Keats and his bot, the Anthony Mackie voiced Herman.
Tracked down by Giancarlo Esposito's bot hunter Marshall Bradbury, a former soldier known as "The Butcher of Schenectady," the four of them manage to outwit his robot and set off on a journey to locate Christopher.
With Skate's virtual world suffering glitches because Christopher has been spirited away by Amherst, the tech CEO engages Bradbury to hunt the group down and recapture Michelle's little brother so he can feed off his creativity.
At this point, it's best to go no further than that because 'The Electric State' is just one of those movies that is really not worth much effort.
The plot is so perfunctory and formulaic, it could almost have been written by an AI chatbot.
Bits of 'The Wizard of Oz,' 'Pinocchio,' 'Wall-E,' 'Star Wars,' 'ET,' 'Avatar,' 'Minority Report' and 'Edge of Tomorrow' are cobbled together in a tiresome plot.
Millie Bobby Brown does her usual schtick of looking scared one minute, then teary and then angry.
Chris Pratt gets to engage in more Harrison Ford/Han Solo cosplay.
Jason Alexander pops up in a going through the motions role as Michelle's oafish, loudmouth stepdad and there's a brief cameo from Holly Hunter while Woody Norman is asked to amp up the cute as Christopher.
Stanley Tucci, Giancarlo Esposito, Ke Huy Quan and a voice cast that includes Anthony Mackie, Woody Harrelson, Brian Cox, Jenny Slate, Hank Azaria, Colman Domingo and Alan Tudyk simply punch in the clock and collect their pay cheques.
Every so-called "emotion" in the movie is writ large and in neon.
It's a cocky and soulless blockbuster like many of the Marvel movies the Russos built their reputation.
Worse still, its childish, derivative CGI nonsense - full of crashing, banging and shouting amid the faux earnestness and its many attempts at lame humour.
But perhaps the biggest crime of all is the lack of self awareness of the directorial duo and their screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely who just don't seem to get the irony of making a movie that decries the placation of people with digital escapism while releasing a film that trades in digital escapism while force feeding its audience product placement after product placement.
'The Electric State' is a depressing watch.
It certainly isn't worth a single cebt of the reported $320 million it cost to make it.
('The Electric State' received its world premiere at the Grauman's Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles on February 24, 2025 before being made available for streaming on Netflix on March 14, 2025)
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