We live in an age of outrage.
Fuelled by social media, people are quick to lecture others about how they should live and how they should think.
Some of the outrage is performative.
A lot of it is self serving and just plain attention seeking.
Attempts at brutal takedowns online are what make X, Facebook and many other online platforms particularly insufferable - especially if you value reasoned debate.
Politics has also been impacted, with politicians chasing votes by creating rage bait.
Rather than focus on fixing problems, populist leaders choose instead to harangue their rivals over how incompetent they are and even how evil.
Against this backdrop, writer director Kristoffer Borgli has waded in with a new movie about cancel culture.
Having tackled the subject before in his 2013 movie 'Dream Scenario' with Nicolas Cage, he's back at it again with a new darkly comic parable 'The Drama'.
A sort of anti-romcom, the movie starts with a "meet cute".
Robert Pattinson's bumbling Englishman spots Zendaya's Emma Harwood in a cafe in Cambridge, Massachusetts and falls immediately for her.
Pretending to have read the novel she is devouring, Charlie Thompson plucks up the courage to speak to her and starts to wax lyrical about the book.
However he gets no reaction.
Suddenly realising Charlie has been speaking to her, Emma reveals that she is deaf in the ear he has been blethering into and has music blaring in the other.
Immediately charmed by him, they date and the story fast forwards two years to the week leading up to their wedding .
Charlie is preparing his wedding speech and wants to weave the story about the meet cute into it.
Running the speech past his best man Mamadou Athie's Mike, he even moves his friend to tears.
Emma, meanwhile, has asked Mike's wife, Alana Haim's Rachel to be her maid of honour.
On their way to a final tasting session with Rachel and Mike for the wedding meal, Charlie and Emma spot their DJ, Sydney Lemmon's Pauline smoking what appears to be heroin near a public park.
Later as both couples get tipsy during the tasting, Emma and Charlie recount what they saw and wonder if they should fire Pauline.
When Emma defends the DJ, arguing they have all probably done something bad, Rachel challenges each of them to confess the worst thing they have ever done.
Each of them reluctantly offers up a tale about some past sin but the evening comes to an abrupt end when Emma reveals something about her teenage years that sends Rachel into a fit of rage.
The reaction is so fierce, it also sends Charlie into a tailspin and ultimately threatens to destroy their wedding.
What follows is a movie about a controversy that balloons out of all proportion and raises all kinds of questions about people's ability to empathise anymore.
Be warned, though. Borgli's cautionary tale is executed with all the subtlety and grace of a boulder falling from the sky but maybe that's the point?
In an era where the loudest, most outraged voice on social media feeds and the airwaves dominates debate and shapes narratives, 'The Drama' focuses on how it has also corroded sensible discussion.
Perhaps we need a heavy handed parable like Borgli's to jolt people into listening and understanding others a lot more instead of rushing to judgment?
As the film unfolds Pattinson and Zendaya make for a good pairing, throwing acid into the traditional notion of how a romcom couple should behave onscreen.
Charlie, in particular, feels like a send-up of Hugh Grant's gallery of bumbling, lovelorn, occasionally idiotic, romcom Englishmen.
As the film spirals into dark comedy, though, he begins to resemble Grant a lot less and looks more like Wild E Coyote.
The supporting cast also amuse with Athie, Lemmon, Hailey Gates as Charlie's museum co-worker Misha and Zoe Winters as the couple's wedding photographer impressing.
The scene stealing performance of the movie arguably comes from Alana Haim who delivers a masterclass in thinly veiled animosity in the final act.
Belarusian cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan melds his beautifully lit images well with the pacy editing of Borgli and his collaborator Joshua Raymond Lee.
And while the movie lacks the maturity of a film like Joachim Trier's 'Sentimental Value,' it nevertheless entertains - especially in the toe curling final act.
The presence of Ari Aster of 'Hereditary,' 'Midsommar' and 'Beau Is Afraid' fame among the executive producers should tell you an awful lot about the movie's tone.
And even if Borgli's movie doesn't make the ten best films you will see this year, you'll certainly not forget it in a hurry.
('The Drama' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on April 3, 2026)
In stark contrast to 'The Drama,' South African director Oliver Hermanus' 'The History of Sound' is a much more delicate affair.
A story of two young men in the early 20th Century who meet at the New England Conservatory of Music and conduct a clandestine affair, it's a heartbreaking exercise in subtle, visual storytelling.
Paul Mescal is Lionel Worthing, a young man from a Kentucky farming family, who falls for Josh O'Connor's David White in 1917 after hearing him play on a Boston pub piano a folk song from back home.
Intrigued as to how David came across the tune, he engaged him in conversation.
David reveals he has a deep interest in American folk songs and has a flair for picking them up quickly.
Lionel falls in love with him.
However David's also been drafted into the Army and is dispatched to Europe to fight in the First World War.
Lionel returns to Kentucky to help his parents, played by Molly Price and Raphael Sbarge, on the farm.
Just when it looks like Lionel may be trapped, an offer comes his way from David when the war ends to join him on a trek around rural America on an academic exercise to capture recordings of folk songs on wax cylinders.
Lionel jumps at the chance to take part and rekindle his romance with David as they camp in forests and river banks on their epic journey.
But how well does Lionel really know his companion?
Adapted from the short stories of Ben Shattuck, 'The History of Sound' is a sumptuously shot, meditative drama on love, duty and tradition.
Like Clint Bentley's Oscar nominated 'Train Dreams,' it doesn't rush its story.
Instead it revels in the sights and sounds of rural America - its sunrises and sunsets, its babbling rivers and the crunch underfoot of pine needles.
It also treats as sacred the musical heritage of America which created a rich songbook of folk music that blended Irish, Scots, Scots Irish, English, Scandinavian and African influences.
Mescal and O'Connor, two of the most engaging actors working in cinema right now, are superb as the lovers capturing the songbook.
Comparisons to Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in 'Brokeback Mountain' are inevitable and both actors stand up well to that yardstick.
Price and Sbarge also add to the sense of heartache that permeates Hermanus' film.
So does Hadley Robinson whose character Belle surfaces later in a pivotal section of the film and Emma Canning as Clarissa.
Chris Cooper pops as the older Lionel in the final section of the film and doesn't disappoint.
Hermanus impressively guides his cast and crew through this tender drama and takes full advantage of Alexander Dynan's breathtaking cinematography, Chris Wyatt's disciplined editing and the striking work of Chris Fuller and the rest of a 24 person sound team.
The film also benefits from designer Miyako Bellizzi's perfectly judged costumes and Deborah Jensen's perfectly pitched, period production design.
A month on from the Oscars, it seems a real shame that a film as skilful and accomplished as Hermanus's did not get rewarded with any nominations.
Perhaps its prospects were somewhat dented by the success of 'Train Dreams' which is similarly contemplative in tone?
But now that the dust has settled on the Oscars race, there's no doubt 'The History of Sound' should really have made the Best Picture shortlist and figured in some of the acting and technical categories too.
While that battle has long been lost, in the long run, the power of Hermanus' haunting film will not fade and it may well develop into a movie you'll return to in years to come.
(The History of Sound' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on January 23, 2026)
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