'Aftersun' review: This is the best film of the year by a first time writer-director

"Aftersun" debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and left a lasting impression.

Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio are seen in a still image taken from the official trailer of "Aftersun," only in theaters Oct. 21.

I've been thinking about "Aftersun" since its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Now it's in theaters where no excuses will be accepted for you missing it. This is the best film of the year by a first time writer-director.

The Scottish newbie is Charlotte Wells, 35, and her debut is a cause for celebration. Don't expect sexual shocks or show-off effects. For Wells, the territory of the human heart is all she needs to keep us smiling, nodding in recognition and then fighting back tears.

"Aftersun" is a father-daughter story, based on Wells' life as a young girl on vacation with her dad. The time is the late 1990s when the Walkman and karaoke held sway. The place is a budget beach resort in Turkey far from Scotland where dad left her and mom to live in London.

PHOTO: Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio are seen in a still image taken from the official trailer of "Aftersun," only in theaters Oct. 21.

Looking to spend time with each other, 11-year-old Sophie (knockout newcomer Frankie Corio) and her father Calum (Paul Mescal) make memories with a camcorder that the grown and queer Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall), now a parent, reflects on with sweetness and regret.

Delicate business is being transacted in this place where meaning is found in exchanged looks and the space between words. Wells can distill a life in the way an agonized Calum -- with a cast on his forearm -- smokes silently on a balcony while his daughter sleeps or pretends to.

MORE: Review: 'Anatomy of a Scandal' features exhilirating performances

Wells suggests that Calum is now dead and Sophie, in a ghostly dance, is using her childhood memories to make sense of her father in her own adulthood. That's a tall order that Wells executes with powers of observation that filmmakers twice her age might envy.

There's the sight of Sophie negotiating the treacherous turning point between childhood and adolescence. Or Calum dancing alone, lost in a strobe-lit club. As dad tells daughter, "There's this feeling, once you leave where you're from, that you don't totally belong there again."

PHOTO: Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio are seen in a still image taken from the official trailer of "Aftersun," only in theaters Oct. 21.

Sophie feels a sense of abandonment magnified later when Calum, a slave to his quicksilver moods, sends her on stage by herself to do a karaoke version of "Losing My Religion" that they had planned as a duet. Wells doesn't give us details, only the sorrow eating at this young father as he vainly tries to keep the best side of himself alive for Sophie.

This would be a good time to extol the brilliant, breathtaking, soul-deep performances of Mescal and Corio that represent acting at its truest and finest. Corio was cast after a Facebook call for unknowns. And what a genuine find she is.

MORE: Review: 'The Woman King is indelible and truly inspiring

The Irish Mescal, 26, who earned an Emmy nomination and sex symbol status opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones on Hulu's "Normal People," is an extraordinary actor, as witness to his excellence even in smaller roles in "God's Country" and "The Lost Daughter." In "Aftersun," he fills a complex role with disarming charm and elemental power.

The empathy that Wells and her actors invest in these characters gives "Aftersun" the capability to sneak up and floor you. Is the film too small for awards attention? Hardly. Last year, the mesmerizing miniature that was "CODA" took home the Best Picture Oscar.

One thing is for sure: you won't be able to get "Aftersun" out of your head and heart.

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‘Their rapport is a marvel’ … Aftersun

Aftersun review – beach holiday with Paul Mescal and daughter is a sunny delight

This effortlessly relaxed debut by Charlotte Wells is a subtle and complex investigation of post-divorce parenthood, with a brilliant performance by young Francesca Corio

C harlotte Wells makes a rather amazing feature debut in the Critics Week sidebar of Cannes with Aftersun, starring Paul Mescal and nine-year-old newcomer Francesca Corio, about a divorced dad and his young daughter taking a low-key summer holiday in a budget Turkish resort, a sunshine break that is a kind of farewell.

Wells’s movie ripples and shimmers like a swimming pool of mystery; the way Wells captures mood and moment, never labouring the point or forcing the pace, reminded me of the young Lucrecia Martel. With remarkable confidence, she just lets her movie unspool naturally, like a haunting and deceptively simple short story. The details accumulate; the images reverberate; the unshowy gentleness of the central relationship inexorably deepens in importance.

Aftersun is about childhood memories being worn to a sheen by being constantly replayed in your mind, about the meanings that were not there then, but are there now, revealed or perhaps created by the remembering mind, and endowed with a new poignancy and grace.

Paul Mescal is – as ever – excellent as Calum, a Scottish guy who has come on this package holiday trip with his kid Soph: a charming and unaffected performance from Corio. It is the 90s, so Calum keeps in touch with home via a payphone and Soph wonders that he still says “Love you” to her mum at the end of their overheard conversation even though they are divorced. Throughout most of the film nothing very dramatic happens, and even when something important does happen, it is coolly unemphasised: like a live feed from real life, or perhaps an unedited bit of the video that Calum and Soph are making with his brand-new DV Sony handycam.

Soph and Calum have to share a double bed in their room because the travel agency messed up his request for twin singles. But it doesn’t matter; there is no atmosphere of imminent transgression or doom or emotional upset. They get on with their holiday cheerfully enough: going to the pool, hanging out, doing karaoke (Soph has to do it on her own because her dad won’t join in), doing day trips to cultural points of interest, taking the mickey out of the reps. Soph befriends a boy her age that plays on the motorbike game next to her in the resort’s video arcade. Calum embarrasses her terribly with his dance moves at the resort disco and his love of Tai Chi. And when Calum is content to read on his own, Soph gets to hang out with older teen kids because she turns out to be really good at pool, and they introduce her into the adult art of gossip. But one night Calum goes off on his own and gets drunk, overwhelmed with a sadness he can’t show her, and then overwhelmed with guilt at how he neglected Soph.

As for Corio, she isn’t doing Tatum O’Neal-style precocity or acting; she just good-naturedly responds to Mescal’s amiably laidback teasing or chat, without ever being annoying or cute. Their rapport is a marvel, as is the way they have been directed by Wells.

And all this is structured in terms of flashback via Soph’s adult self with great flair, quite unlike the normal way this framing device is managed. Calum’s final walk away from Soph in her memory, down an airport corridor that appears surreally to lead to a nightclub, is a wonderful touch. What a pleasure.

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The Gorgeous Melancholy of Aftersun

Portrait of Alison Willmore

Calum is a young dad, young enough that when he’s out with 11-year-old Sophie (Francesca Corio), people assume that they’re siblings rather than a parent and child. Someone makes this mistake not long into Aftersun , and you half expect Calum to let it pass uncommented on, or to be embarrassed when he has to explain the truth. He is, after all, played by the irresistible Paul Mescal, prince of the charming, unreliable heartthrobs, and with his rumpled looks and empty pockets, he comes across as someone more at home carousing with his boys at the bar than periodically reapplying sunscreen to his daughter’s back to ensure that she doesn’t burn. And yet Calum, for all the other ways that things have not been working out the way he planned, is proud to announce that he’s Sophie’s father, and proud to be taking her on a vacation he can’t really afford to a discount beach resort in Turkey. Aftersun , the debut from Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells, is a dual portrait of a girl on the cusp of adolescence and a young man feeling adrift in adulthood, and it’s a work of masterful and almost unbearable melancholy.

It’s one of the best movies of the year, though it damn well makes you work for it, with Wells taking such a deliberately oblique approach to her premise that it at first comes across more as an affectation than as subtlety. Aftersun is made up almost entirely of the trip in question, which, we soon grasp, took place two decades ago, though it’s pointedly only Sophie, played as an adult by Celia Rowlson-Hall, who we get to see in flashes in the present day. It’s frequently Sophie who’s shooting the crummy digital video footage we periodically cut to, the lower resolution and artifacting as much a signpost of the era as the soundtrack, which is littered with late ‘90s detritus from the Lightning Seeds, Catatonia, and Aqua. She and Calum — who broke up with her mother years ago — turn the camera to the sun and the pool, but more often they point it at one another, and in the opening shot Sophie has trained the lens on her father in order to interview him, asking him if this is what he imagined he’d be doing when he was her age.

She doesn’t seem to realize how this question devastates him, though it becomes clear when the film returns to this moment later and shows it from the outside. Calum’s planned this holiday over his 31st birthday, which may not be a major milestone, but for someone who jokes about being surprised he made it to 30, represents a panicky forward trudge of time with little to show for it aside from the funny, self-assured daughter he doesn’t get to see much. But Calum’s depression remains an only half-glimpsed mystery, the shots of him reflected in a television screen and a coffee table surface serving as visual reminders of his elusive nature. There comes a moment when you start to actually comprehend your parents as people separate from yourself, ones whose lives stretched long before your arrival and contain vast unseen realms. Sophie, who’s played with such unaffected ease by Corio that she doesn’t seem to be acting at all, may not be there yet, not any more than she is one of the teenagers she hangs out with one evening. But she’s close enough to sense what she doesn’t yet know, in the same way that she playacts romance with a boy from the arcade after watching the older kids canoodle, the two sharing an tentative open-eyed kiss.

Tiny details like that have submerged but seismic resonances throughout Aftersun . That experimental peck is the start of years of exploration that will lead to Sophie, at 31 herself, to be in a relationship with a woman with whom she has a baby. A stack of books about meditation and tai chi are indications of Calum’s search for meaning. Calum left Scotland, where Sophie lives with her mother, for a life drifting around London, and when she asks him if he’ll ever move back, he gives her an answer that doubles as a description of his psychic state: “There’s this feeling, once you leave where you’re from, that you don’t totally belong there again.” In the closest this delicate film has to a pivotal sequence, Sophie puts their names on a list to sing karaoke in what’s clearly been a tradition for them before, though this time Calum’s not in the mood, and so Sophie goes up alone, her bravado fading as she slogs her solitary way through a rendition of “Losing My Religion.” Throughout Aftersun , Mescal is a marvel of boyish fun masking a deep streak of self-loathing he tries mightily to hide from his daughter, but in that sequence, as Sophie stands there discovering insecurity in real time, he’s easy to hate.

Neither could articulate why they’re so upset, though the night spirals from there, Calum leaving his daughter and getting drunk in an abdication of parental duties he’s otherwise proven himself devoted to. Aftersun isn’t a recreation of a memory, though the act of remembering is obviously at its core. Rather, it’s about trying to square the intimacy of being cared for as a child with the perspective that comes with being an adult. It’s about wanting to reach across time, and to meet a loved one in an impossible space where, for once, you’re both on the same level, and you can finally understand them for who they are — or who they were.

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‘Aftersun’ Review: A Father, a Daughter, and Things Left Unsaid

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Review: ‘Aftersun,’ one of the year’s great debut films, is a piercing father-daughter story

Man with a broken wrist with his arm around his daughter

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Something odd happened to me during a recent press screening of “Aftersun,” a beautifully sculpted and quietly shattering first feature from the Scottish writer-director Charlotte Wells. While jotting down a few stray thoughts and details, I turned a page in my notebook and came across a drawing, something my 6-year-old daughter had doodled in bright-orange crayon. That wasn’t odd in and of itself; notebooks get passed around our house like potato-chip bags. But it was the first time the discovery of her handiwork, usually a cute and funny mid-screening distraction, had the effect of nudging me closer to the two characters in front of me — who, it may not surprise you to learn, are a girl and her father.

My apologies for the indulgent personal intro, something I’ve allowed myself only because the process of picking through one’s personal baggage — including the scribbled notes and stray memorabilia our loved ones leave for us — feels entirely germane to what Wells herself is doing. “Aftersun,” opening in theaters after an acclaimed festival run that began at Cannes this year, is what the director calls an “emotionally autobiographical” work, inspired by her recollections of a summer vacation she and her father took together in the ’90s. It’s a memory piece and, as such, a rumination on the ways in which memories can be at once indelible and imprecise, how they can torment us and fail us and still be the most precious things — maybe even the only things — we have left.

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From the opening moments, rendered in the grainy textures of camcorder footage, Wells makes explicit the patient, methodical act of sifting and sorting, of peering with intense concentration into the past. But then the past comes suddenly into focus with a shimmering, almost hyperreal clarity. The sun blazes down on the pools and deck chairs of a budget resort in Turkey, where 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) and her thirtysomething single dad, Calum (Paul Mescal), have come for a late-summer holiday. The hotel isn’t much — the tackiness of the lobby furniture, speaking of memories, will emblazon itself on your retina — but Sophie and Calum take most of their setbacks and letdowns in stride. They have the easy adaptability of two people who are pleasant and undemanding by nature and, it soon becomes clear, a little disoriented in each other’s company.

A man and a girl do a dance in a field with low mountains in the background

Sophie lives with her mother (never seen) in Scotland; Calum makes his home in England. This Mediterranean getaway is thus a rare attempt to make up for lost time, though it also carries the unmistakable feel of a farewell. That impression may well be deceptive; the future of Sophie and Calum’s relationship, if they have one, is left unexplored. But something is clearly slipping away here, most obviously Sophie’s childhood, which you can all but see vanishing into the maw of early adolescence. It isn’t just the attention she attracts from boys at the hotel or the mix of fascination, envy and faint skepticism with which she regards the teenage couple making out poolside. It’s that her entire way of seeing her young, emotionally and geographically distant father until now — as an erratic but benevolent presence, more goofy older-brother figure than paternal authority — is about to change and possibly vanish.

Corio, an amazing discovery, somehow conveys these and countless other pinprick impressions without putting any of them into words. There’s a startling translucence to her performance, a willingness to let emotions bleed through gently and unforcedly, that matches the unhurried grace and circumspection of the filmmaking. Much of the story’s meaning can be divined simply from the interplay of Gregory Oke’s cinematography and Blair McClendon’s editing, the way the movie cuts between and around Calum and Sophie mid-conversation, insistently framing and reframing the scene in a way that suggests the workings of memory itself. At times the off-center compositions, resort setting and exquisitely detailed sound design — every splash of pool water and hiss of Turkish bath steam registers with crystal clarity — reminded me of Lucrecia Martel’s coming-of-age drama “The Holy Girl,” with its skill at conveying psychological interiority through atmosphere.

Like Martel, Wells knows the power of narrative elision: “Aftersun” may be a feature-length flashback, but apart from a few lyrical framing elements, its story unfolds in a spare, self-contained present tense. Apart from a friendly, mostly inaudible phone call from Calum to Sophie’s mom, we learn nothing of their long-ago relationship. And we glean only vague details about the recent accident that shattered Calum’s wrist, save for the sight of his forearm in a cast — an image of little dramatic significance but enormous metaphorical weight. A mantle of sadness hangs over Calum, even with the warmth of his sweet, boyish smile and the vigor coursing through his frame.

A girl in a yellow shirt smiles

The restrained but intense physicality of Mescal’s performance finds intermittent release when Calum practices his tai chi moves or, in a sudden surrender of inhibitions, goes wild on the dance floor. But the actor, as distinct here as he was in his recent supporting turns in “The Lost Daughter” and “God’s Creatures,” can hint at a deep, inchoate anguish with an image as simple as Calum having a restless smoke on the balcony while Sophie sleeps. For all his easygoing vibes, he also tends to shut down without warning, invariably when Sophie needs him most, and to feel a guilt afterward that’s all the more terrible because of her quickness to forgive. A scene in which Calum leaves Sophie to stumble her way through a solo karaoke performance seems to distill everything — adolescent awkwardness, parental abandonment, a chasm that seems to be widening in every direction.

The song Sophie’s singing in that moment is R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion,” one of several ’90s hits swirling through a movie with an unerring musical ear for its moment. (The moody Britpop of Blur’s “Tender” marks that moment as 1999; the Macarena craze is still in full swing.) But if Wells has assembled a note-perfect evocation of a highly specific chapter — the end of a millennium and possibly something else — it’s when she deliberately breaks with realism that this gently aching movie achieves an overwhelming emotional force.

At times she briefly flashes forward, showing us an older Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) in her own early stages of parenthood. At times she shows us the accumulated relics of that long-ago holiday — an ornately woven rug, a faded Polaroid, a postcard message as achingly sincere as it is crushingly inadequate. And finally she gives us, in astonishing bursts of strobe-lit abstraction, the recurring image of Calum dancing in a faraway nightclub, lost in himself and perhaps lost to her forever. There’s mystery in this image, but also revelation and, astonishingly, recognition. As Wells has noted, “Aftersun” isn’t exactly her story, and glancing personal associations aside, it isn’t yours or mine either. And yet in these moments, for reasons as tough to articulate as they are to shake off, it feels ineffably, unmistakably ours.

Rated: R, for some language and brief sexual material Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes Playing: Starts Oct. 21 at AMC Burbank 16; AMC Century City 15

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‘Aftersun’: A father-daughter bond, seen through a haze of memory

Paul mescal plays a troubled yet loving young father in charlotte wells’s ‘emotionally autobiographical’ directorial debut.

movie reviews after sun

The fragile fabric of memory, rendered in both mist and digital media, is the subject of “Aftersun,” the assured and emotionally complex feature debut of writer-director Charlotte Wells. Wells has described her first film — a window into the loving relationship between an idealistic young father and his in-some-ways-more-worldly-wise tween daughter — as “emotionally autobiographical.”

The filmmaker’s father died when Wells was 16, the recognition of which is only hinted at in a film that — though set on a sunny father-daughter vacation at a Turkish beach resort in the late 1990s — is overshadowed by a sense of gloom, maybe even doom. But the dad we initially meet, Calum (played by Paul Mescal with a soulful, brooding melancholy that only infrequently weighs down his sweet smile), seems mostly a goofball. Gradually, though, a darker, more nuanced portrait emerges.

The action of “Aftersun” mostly takes place in traditionally staged scenes of Calum and Sophie (Frankie Corio) on holiday: chatting poolside, dining at a restaurant, relaxing in a karaoke bar. She’s just turned 11; he’s about to turn 31. But at times, we can still catch glimpses of the teenager Calum must have been when he first found out he was going to become a father. At other times, Sophie reveals the insights of a much older person, telling her father at one point that’s it’s “sort of nice” to look up and contemplate the fact that they “share the same sky,” even though they’re apart much of the time. (Sophie lives with her mother in Edinburgh, Calum in London.)

These tender scenes are intercut with home-movie camcorder footage framed as the reminiscences of an adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) looking back on her own youth and searching for clues to something she could not recognize as a girl. Though we see little of the now-grown Sophie, her reflections, making up the structure of the film itself, feel tinged with a sense of rue — and the realization that the man Sophie thought she knew as a child may not have been the man he was.

There are moments when this sense of foreboding — a sense of illusion about to fall — is leaned on a little too heavily. During one scene set in an arcade of (mostly British) tourists, we see the words “game over” flash on a video game screen. The double meaning of those words is a bit on the nose in a film that otherwise deftly avoids such easy readings. For the most part, understatement is the order of the day: Calum and Sophie’s interactions are light and breezy, clouded over only occasionally by suggestions that Calum may have money and job worries, feelings of loneliness, and perhaps more serious mood swings. These are subtly signaled by his increasing alcohol consumption.

One especially heartbreaking sequence takes place when Calum declines to join Sophie onstage for a (flat but endearing) karaoke rendition of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion.” Later that night, he accidentally locks his daughter out of their hotel room, and she wakes up later to find that he has a small injury on his shoulder. It’s a series of small and seemingly meaningless incidents that, in Wells’s telling, loom large only from the vantage of hindsight.

The seemingly happiest moments of childhood, Wells seems to argue, can take on somber overtones when seen in the rearview mirror. A day at the beach is all fun and games, in other words, until the night falls, and the burn sets in.

R. At AMC’s Georgetown 14. Contains some strong language and brief sexual material. 101 minutes.

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Aftersun Reviews

movie reviews after sun

Its striking imagery evokes both the power of memory and its obscurities through the ingenious use of analog video and purposeful audio/visual distortions.

Full Review | Feb 13, 2024

movie reviews after sun

Aftersun is a sad and beautiful exploration of grief, of Sophie's struggle to reconcile complex and conflicting feelings about her father, and her struggle to forgive his decision, and perhaps to forgive herself.

Full Review | Dec 29, 2023

movie reviews after sun

Charlotte Wells’ stunning debut is a quiet rumination of the lost daughter.

Full Review | Nov 2, 2023

movie reviews after sun

Charlotte Wells’ picture-perfect debut visually epitomizes the heart-wrenching processes of memory.

Director Charlotte Wells gives us one of the most piercing debuts in recent memory with this intimate dad-daughter relationship drama.

Full Review | Sep 12, 2023

Shimmering like a mirage that retreats and dematerializes the closer one gets, Aftersun may just be the best movie of 2022.

Full Review | Jul 27, 2023

movie reviews after sun

Aftersun is so interesting in the way it explores the reality of parents that they keep their children in the dark about.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

movie reviews after sun

Aftersun is left open-ended, and that’s a perfect conclusion to this portrait of a father and daughter relationship. It speaks to the inability of a child to truly understand their parents, no matter how valiantly they try.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

movie reviews after sun

'Aftersun' depicts an unvarnished portrait of a young man grappling with responsibilities, struggling to hold on to his own life while willingly shouldering responsibility of another.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2023

movie reviews after sun

Aftersun is a tour de force for its two leads, a phenomenal child performance from Frankie Corio with Paul Mescal cementing himself as one of the best actors of his generation and showcasing incredible range

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 19, 2023

movie reviews after sun

In addition, there’s a dark side to all of this; you begin to remember the darkest of memories – the ones you try to avoid...

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jul 19, 2023

movie reviews after sun

The Scottish director is not only beautifully attuned to the most minor nuances of human sensitivities, but also capable of translating this natural inclination through a refined command over form.

Full Review | Original Score: 5 | Apr 25, 2023

Without being an overtly dramatic or narrative lesson, Aftersun sticks a finger into the wound and digs into the most intimate to devastating effect. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Apr 4, 2023

The film is small, discreet, intimate, a little coy—at times, a bit self-involved and inward-turning. The somewhat self-conscious insistence on the lack of great drama can be tedious at times.

Full Review | Mar 24, 2023

The easy pace of Wells’s direction brings out the best in her central performers, and the chemistry between Mescal and Corio plays out effortlessly. The light moments between them are warm and the darker ones linger heavily.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 21, 2023

movie reviews after sun

A quiet, emotionally unmooring portrait of father and daughter in moments of blissful silliness and small confessions... it’s a devastatingly honest rendition of the aftershocks of a parent’s love when we realise, too late, the simple joys we shared.

Full Review | Original Score: 5 | Mar 20, 2023

Wells shows how interactions that were solid within their own moment become more ambiguous as time has gone by and the adult understanding of Sophie has grown.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 17, 2023

Charlotte Wells’s self-assured debut takes pains to be specific to its time and place.

Full Review | Mar 16, 2023

A subtlety—a nuanced exposition of storylines that might have easily been too simplified—that one doesn’t often find in larger films, particularly American ones...

The role calls for the sensitivity of the budding artist, the impishness of childhood, the yearning of adolescence, security and sudden insecurity, the unspoken intimacy of parent and child. Corio is marvelous.

Full Review | Mar 15, 2023

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Aftersun review: a tender, heart-wrenching memory piece

Alex Welch

“Anchored by a stunning lead performance from Paul Mescal, Aftersun is one of the year's most moving and unique movies.”
  • Charlotte Wells' gentle, observant visual style
  • Paul Mescal's performance
  • An unforgettable final 5 minutes
  • An overly languid pace
  • A meandering second act

Charlotte Wells’ directorial debut, Aftersun , is an open-hearted, tender piece of filmmaking. It crackles and vibrates with the same kind of lived-in intimacy that has defined the works of filmmakers like Richard Linklater and Terence Malick. Like those two auteurs, Wells has an ability to turn silence into its own special effect, one that makes you lean in further and feel as if you can smell the same musty air as the characters you’re watching on-screen.

A tale of memory and loss

The film contains one of the best performances of the year, a slow burn movie that is worth your time (and patience).

There are many moments like that in Aftersun , a film that isn’t afraid to let its characters pause, breathe, and observe the world around them. Rather than detach in these brief minutes of respite, don’t be surprised if you feel yourself sinking further into the film’s meditative mood.

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But there’s something else lurking beneath the surface of Aftersun . Underneath the film’s moments of joy, sadness, and togetherness, there is a yearning. It’s present in Aftersun ’s opening scene, which introduces a young father, Calum (Paul Mescal), as he dances around a hotel room and avoids answering the personal questions his daughter, Sophie (Frankie Corio), is asking him from behind her video camera. We watch Calum through the lens of Sophie’s digital camcorder, but it’s only when the recording comes to an end that we realize we’re not the only ones doing so.

As the recording freezes on Calum’s blurred face, a reflection suddenly forms over the entire image. In quick succession, we realize not only that the recording itself has been playing on a TV the whole time, but that it was this previously unseen figure who turned it on in the first place. In terms of visual tricks, this opening moment in Aftersun is one of the best of the year, and it establishes Wells’ ability to imbue even the most minute of details with stunning levels of emotional significance. It is, in other words, the perfect opening note for Aftersun , a film that creates massive ripples of emotion out of the smallest pebbles.

Over the course of Aftersun ’s 101-minute runtime, the details of its story gradually become clear. Slowly, we realize that the reflection in the film’s opening scene belongs to an older version of Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall), who has taken it upon herself to revisit some of the digital recordings she has from a trip she took to Turkey when she was 11 with her dad, Calum. Aftersun is, therefore, essentially one long trip down memory lane. The few present-day detours it takes on the way toward its heart-stopping conclusion only further imbue Sophie and Calum’s trip with an even greater sense of heartbreak and loss.

Sophie has, it turns out, begun excavating her memories in the hopes that she might finally be able to understand her father, who died shortly after his and his daughter’s fateful trip together. We’re never told how Calum died, and Wells never wastes any time exploring the 20 years that have passed since Sophie’s final vacation with him. In fact, Wells’ script for Aftersun never verbally communicates any of this information. The film, instead, establishes its “plot” through images and details that become impossible to forget. A handful of sequences in which Rowlson-Hall’s adult Sophie calls out to Mescal’s Calum in a dark, strobe-lit nightclub, for instance, make her character’s desire to reconnect with her father even after his death startlingly, heart-wrenchingly clear.

Wells brings the same level of restraint to her depiction of Calum, a mysterious figure whose internal pain is only made apparent by the knowledge of what ultimately happens to him. Mescal, for his part, turns in one of the year’s more well-calibrated, lived-in performances. He, in collaboration with Wells, builds a complete character out of nothing more than a series of short emotional breaks and long, contemplative silences. It’s a testament to the line Aftersun ultimately rides that we’re able to simultaneously understand why Corio’s younger Sophie was so mystified by her father and also discern with devastating clarity the same pain within him that Rowlson-Hall’s older Sophie can’t unsee.

Wells’ script never makes the mistake of spelling out Calum’s issues too clearly. Aside from one small scene in which Calum tells his curious daughter about a disappointing birthday from his childhood, we’re never truly allowed into his mind or given much insight into his past. Instead, Calum’s demons arise in small, all-too-relatable moments, like when his frustration over repeatedly trying and failing to put on a scuba suit briefly gets the better of him, the strain and embarrassment of it all turning his face red and ruining his mood.

Later, when Sophie talks about how she sometimes feels so tired that she becomes convinced her bones don’t work anymore, Wells’ camera briefly drifts over to Mescal’s Calum. Standing in front of a hotel room sink, Calum listens to his daughter speak and we watch, helplessly, as the fear that he’s passed his own problems onto Sophie overwhelms him. When he subsequently spits at his own reflection, it’s both a shocking moment of physical aggression and the only logical response for Calum, a man who frequently struggles to hide his own self-loathing from his daughter.

Aftersun doesn’t hurry to get to its biggest moments of emotional revelation or catharsis. The film takes its time in every sense of the phrase, which leads to its second act feeling occasionally listless and meandering. For some viewers, the film’s deliberately languid pace may even distract from the poignancy of its story and, especially, its perfectly-executed final five minutes. Those who are able to get on Aftersun ’s wavelength and give it the patience that it requires will, however, likely find themselves growing increasingly attached to its world and characters.

That’s because it’s ultimately irrelevant whether one identifies with Calum and Sophie’s relationship or not. It’s Aftersun ’s desperate desire to find answers in Sophie’s memories that makes it so emotionally effective and compelling. Wells understands, better than most it seems, that memories are puzzle pieces that change over time. In  Aftersun , Sophie’s memories don’t so much lose their shape as they do their size. Put together, they form a picture that would be complete were it not for the ever-widening spaces that run throughout it. The power of Aftersun doesn’t just come from how it explores the spaces that separate its memories from reality, but in how it attempts, perhaps fruitlessly, to close them.

Aftersun is playing in select theaters now.

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Alex Welch

Entergalactic isn’t like most other animated movies that you’ll see this year — or any year, for that matter. The film, which was created by Scott Mescudi a.k.a. Kid Cudi and executive producer Kenya Barris, was originally intended to be a TV series. Now, it’s set to serve as a 92-minute companion to Cudi’s new album of the same name. That means Entergalactic not only attempts to tell its own story, one that could have easily passed as the plot of a Netflix original rom-com, but it does so while also featuring several sequences that are set to specific Cudi tracks.

Beyond the film’s musical elements, Entergalactic is also far more adult than viewers might expect it to be. The film features several explicit sex scenes and is as preoccupied with the sexual politics of modern-day relationships as it is in, say, street art or hip-hop. While Entergalactic doesn’t totally succeed in blending all of its disparate elements together, the film’s vibrantly colorful aesthetic and infectiously romantic mood make it a surprisingly sweet, imaginative tour through a fairytale version of New York City.

From its chaotic, underwater first frame all way to its liberating, sun-soaked final shot, God’s Creatures is full of carefully composed images. There’s never a moment across the film’s modest 94-minute runtime in which it feels like co-directors Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer aren’t in full control of what’s happening on-screen. Throughout much of God’s Creatures’ quietly stomach-churning second act, that sense of directorial control just further heightens the tension that lurks beneath the surface of the film’s story.

In God's Creatures' third act, however, Holmer and Davis’ steady grip becomes a stranglehold, one that threatens to choke all the drama and suspense out of the story they’re attempting to tell. Moments that should come across as either powerful punches to the gut or overwhelming instances of emotional relief are so underplayed that they are robbed of much of their weight. God's Creatures, therefore, ultimately becomes an interesting case study on artistic restraint, and, specifically, how too calculated a style can, if executed incorrectly, leave a film feeling unsuitably cold.

Andrew Dominik’s Blonde opens, quite fittingly, with the flashing of bulbs. In several brief, twinkling moments, we see a rush of images: cameras flashing, spotlights whirring to life, men roaring with excitement (or anger — sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference), and at the center of it all is her, Marilyn Monroe (played by Ana de Armas), striking her most iconic pose as a gust of wind blows up her white dress. It’s an opening that makes sense for a film about a fictionalized version of Monroe’s life, one that firmly roots the viewer in the world and space of a movie star. But to focus only on de Armas’ Marilyn is to miss the point of Blonde’s opening moments.

As the rest of Dominik’s bold, imperfect film proves, Blonde is not just about the recreation of iconic moments, nor is it solely about the making of Monroe’s greatest career highlights. It is, instead, about exposure and, in specific, the act of exposing yourself — for art, for fame, for love — and the ways in which the world often reacts to such raw vulnerability. In the case of Blonde, we're shown how a world of men took advantage of Monroe’s vulnerability by attempting to control her image and downplay her talent.

Aftersun Review

Aftersun

18 Nov 2022

Rare and special is a film capable of summoning this much poignancy: a feeling which lingers well beyond the film’s final, achingly moving moments on screen. That Aftersun is the debut from British filmmaker Charlotte Wells only adds to its accomplishment.

For the most part, this two-hander of a drama moves along a languorous linear timeline: Calum (Paul Mescal) is on the brink of his 31st birthday, and committed to giving his daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) the best experience he can with the little money he has.

Aftersun

Their days are filled with idle pastimes and familiar rituals, like the careful application of after-sun cream to each other’s faces at the end of a long and somehow exhausting day. Wells masterfully creates a transfixing rhythm via running motifs — hang-gliders drifting across the sky, bare British limbs knocking together by the pool — to further pull you into their world, one of tinny ’90s chart music and luminous fizzy drinks. Eleven-year-old Sophie is starting to notice the hormones in the air, and the way the older kids touch. Other than his palpable love for his daughter, Calum keeps his feelings caged. Instead, a series of small sentiments slowly build up the profile of a young man who has lost his sense of self-worth, at a time when dialogue around mental health was less robust.

Frankie Corio is a revelation, imbuing Sophie with scrappiness and affection that never feels forced.

Mescal played his first lead role in Normal People only two years before Aftersun but is already proving to be a unique and complex screen presence, with crooked charisma and a talent for playing characters who aren’t all that they appear to be. As Calum, he delivers a soulful performance that unfurls gradually, heartbreakingly, over the holiday. Corio, meanwhile, is a revelation, imbuing Sophie with scrappiness and affection that never feels forced. Together, the pair conjure a tenderness that is, at times, breathtaking; in one scene, Mescal traces Corio’s eyebrow with his finger until Sophie falls into an easy sleep.

Their story exists in the form of adult Sophie’s (Celia Rowlson-Hall) memories, who, on her own 30th birthday, has that holiday heavily on her mind. Rather than a conventional flashback device, Wells puts Calum and older Sophie together under the flashing lights of a crowded, kinetic dancefloor, moving to the music in a way that feels far more powerful than words could achieve. The final act doesn’t pack a big gut-punch moment, but evokes all the emotional weight of one. The end of Calum and Sophie’s holiday is inevitable, though not before a joyful, precious few final moments together.

Aftersun plays out as a deftly orchestrated, empathetic and honest character study. It is beautifully performed, and captured with heart and ingenuity by Wells, who isn’t afraid to play with framing and style (the holiday is filmed in part on a shaky MiniDV camera) to compliment her story. Breakout filmmaking simply doesn’t come more exciting than this.

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Aftersun review: An astounding first feature that captures Paul Mescal at his most heart-wrenching

Scottish filmmaker charlotte wells has made a movie that feels as if it’s teetering on the edge of a cliff, article bookmarked.

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It’s difficult to think of the moments before a heartbreak and not lace them with omens. The mind, too often, moulds memories into prophecies. Colours get dialled up. Emotions solidify. It’s a hard thing to talk about, let alone visualise. That’s why Aftersun , the debut of Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells, is so astounding. She’s captured the uncapturable, finding the words and images to describe a feeling that always seems to sit just beyond our comprehension.

The only way to understand memory, in any meaningful way, is perhaps on personal terms. And here, Wells has siphoned some element of autobiography into a story of her own precise crafting. Eleven-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) is on holiday with her dad, Calum ( Paul Mescal ), at a point in the Nineties when the Macarena was at its cultural apex. It’s made clear that Calum isn’t with Sophie’s mother any more. He moved to England; they stayed in Scotland. This trip to Turkey, which Calum can barely afford, is a rare opportunity for father and daughter to be together.

Except we’re not watching these events as they were, but as they’re remembered – by an older Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) under the strobe lights of a nightclub or a rave or, really, the chaotic confines of her own brain. We also see her play and replay an old VHS tape from the trip, trying to pinpoint some hidden truth that Aftersun , in a masterstroke move, never reveals. But this shared time between Sophie and Calum marked the end of… something. That much we know.

At one point, you can see the ghostly imprint of an adult Sophie in the television screen’s reflection. What terrible thing haunts her? Wells’s camera draws us gently towards the telltale signs of self-discovery. Sophie’s trip, on its surface, signalled the dwindling days of childhood naivety. Her fingers brush up against a boy’s at an arcade. She spies, through a bathroom keyhole, the gestures of an older girl as she details to her friends the handjob she gave the night before. Kids drift across each other’s paths, at pools and at play areas, finding a strange solidarity in the ritualistic nature of the package holiday.

Corio, here, movingly captures mute desperation. She shrinks down. She smiles small. It’s the hesitancy of a child who wants to show her dad that she loves him, but doesn’t quite know how. Wells draws a painful irony from the way Sophie is always in the act of documentation, snapping Polaroid photos and videoing Calum while she quizzes him. When he tells her he doesn’t want to be filmed, she says she’ll “record it in my little mind-camera” instead. But all the video footage in the world can’t give her the answers she needs. All we have to lean on is Calum’s offhand yet portentous remarks to other characters.

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For all that Aftersun can be described as gentle, contemplative and even beautiful, it’s also the kind of film that feels as if it’s teetering on the edge of a cliff. Mescal’s Calum bears the same kind of broken-down charm of his Connell in Normal People , but there are moments of sudden detachment that feel especially heart-wrenching. If only Sophie could grab that head of his and shake it until all the secrets fell out. What is it, Calum? Where has your soul been bruised? Aftersun doesn’t let us know. It doesn’t let Sophie know, either. It leaves behind a deep feeling of want, and it’s one of the most powerful emotions you’ll find in any cinema this year.

Dir: Charlotte Wells. Starring: Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall. 12A, 101 minutes.

‘Aftersun’ is in cinemas from 18 November

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Aftersun

‘Aftersun’ review: Paul Mescal hits new heights in the best British movie this year

His latest is a moody, melancholic rumination on parenthood and the passage of time

W hat happens when you become a father before you’re really ready? That’s one question bubbling away underneath Aftersun , the distinct debut from Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells, starring Normal People ’s Paul Mescal. He plays Calum, who is trying to connect with his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) when they go on holiday to a Turkish resort. No longer with Sophie’s mother, he’s barely out of his twenties. “Can’t see myself being 40,” he remarks. “Surprised I made it to 30.”

  • Read more: Aftersun ending explained: breaking down one of the year’s best film scenes

It’s the mid-’90s, although time is very elastic in Aftersun . As Sophie mucks around in the amusement arcades in their resort, flashbacks to Calum’s own hedonistic youth (which coincided with the rave explosion) slip into the film. Meanwhile, wrapping around this are scenes of an adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) sifting through old home video footage of their break in Turkey, reflecting on her relationship with her oft-absent father.

Despite an underlying melancholia, Calum’s aiming for self-improvement as he gets older. In his luggage are books on Tai Chi and meditation. And for all their differences, he and Sophie communicate. She tells him about kissing Michael, a boy she meets on the holiday, and Calum encourages her to speak to him about anything. Even when it comes to drugs. “I’ve done it all and you can too,” he says, in what might be either be very modern parenting or a disaster waiting to happen.

movie reviews after sun

Just as in any family, there are issues lurking beneath the surface. In the film’s most awkward scene, Sophie sings R.E.M. ’s ‘Losing My Religion’ in a karaoke bar at the resort; Calum refuses to join her, then offers to pay for her to have singing lessons when they get back home. Don’t make the offer if you don’t have the money, she replies – clearly stung in the past by broken promises. Guilt, on Calum’s side, slides around this story like a squirt of suncream.

While Mescal and newcomer Corio forge a tight bond on screen – they even get mud baths, in what might be the cutest father-daughter moment this year – it’s the way Wells depicts conversations that really leaves the strongest impression. One sequence, as they talk while sitting on the hotel bed, plays out entirely with the camera trained on the switched-off screen of the room’s TV, reflecting their image in the blackness of the tube.

It’s moments like these that create the film’s intense intimacy, exactly as Wells intended – as if we’re sneaking a look at some discarded home movie footage. Similarly dreamy is the soundtrack, with ’90s tracks flooding our ears ( All Saints ’ ‘Never Ever’, Chumbawamba ’s ‘Tubthumping’ and Catatonia ’s ‘Road Rage’ all get an airing). Best of all, Blur ’s ‘Tender’ – a song whose title rather sums up the feelings Aftersun evokes – arrives, warped and woozy in a distorted version.

Liable to increase the cult around Mescal, following his BAFTA-winning turn in Normal People , Aftersun may be small in scale, but it leaves a distinct and lasting impression. No question, it’s the best British movie this year.

  • Director: Charlotte Wells
  • Starring: Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall
  • Release date: November 18 (in cinemas)
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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, writing inside out: charlotte wells on aftersun.

movie reviews after sun

A few months ago at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, I sat in silence, fully dazed, as the credits rolled on a film that seemingly kicked me in the throat and also gave me a warm hug. The best movies, in that way, have a tendency to perform the incomprehensible; they’re familiar yet distant in the way of a far-flung memory. When you lose a parent, especially at a young age, those memories are the fabric of you. And their meaning and design take time and close inspection to reveal itself. Charlotte Wells ’ feature debut “ Aftersun ” is that closer inspection, a devastatingly personal coming-of-age film that follows a father and daughter on holiday in Turkey. 

Wells’ short films have already hinted at her keen ability to unearth significant clarity from emotionally opaque characters: “Laps” sees a woman experiencing a sexual assault on the train in the middle of rush hour; “Blue Christmas” concerns a haggard tax collector spending his holiday avoiding his wife’s mental illness; “Tuesday,” a thematic precursor to “Aftersun,” captures a daughter visiting the home of her deceased father. The characters in these films are all battling denial, a defense mechanism that Wells doesn’t merely explore in “Aftersun.” She instead sizes up every inflection, and every definition the word has to offer for a crushingly intimate portrait of processing a parent’s pain.     

When “Aftersun” begins, that anguish, initially, is as hidden as the year the film is set in (we only know it’s the late-1990s). Sophie (an inventive Frankie Corio) and her father Calum (a gripping Paul Mescal )— he’s separated from her mother—share a close bond (they’re sometimes mistaken as siblings). As their trip progresses, however, the difficulties weighing upon Calum are slowly revealed. Through scenes set at this Turkish resort and in the present-day, we soon see how Sophie might be carrying a similar weight. 

“Aftersun” is lush and vibrant in its recollections, and often viscerally empathetic as Sophie works to understand her father’s own difficulties. Its point of view, by virtue of Sophie using a camcorder, oscillates from probing to distant for moving compositions. A period-oriented soundtrack offers further bursts of sincerity. And one scene—set to a blinking strobe light and featuring father and daughter cathartically wrestling for forgiveness to the strains of “Under Pressure"—might be the best of the year. It all adds up to an unforgettably refined and controlled debut from an already assured filmmaker.  

Charlotte Wells spoke with RogerEbert.com by Zoom about working with Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski , shooting in Turkey, and how David Bowie and Queen’s “Under Pressure” became the focal point of her film’s most emotionally bruising scene. 

In past interviews you’ve talked about how the script began as more conventional in its plotting until you began putting portions of yourself into these two characters. Was there some reticence in going more personal?

I mean, on some level, yes; but it just felt impossible not to. I spent so long working on it and there was always a personal infusion into the characters. That was never lacking. I just think over the course of writing and allowing memories and anecdotes from childhood to form the first skeleton outline of this script was a process of searching through my own past. And that process found its way onto the page, you know? So the film took on this like retroactive gaze that it didn't have in that more conventional concept.

movie reviews after sun

Did you feel like you needed to ease into the personal memories?

I think it just started from a place of thinking about what might my first feature be: A young father and his daughter on holiday. I have a lot of experience to draw from, and it's a relationship I don't see portrayed too often in the way I think I can write about. And wouldn't it be fun to shoot a movie in a holiday resort? [ laughs ] 

I had made one short film at that point, and I made two shortly thereafter. But it was really early in my filmmaking and in writing, and so it came from a much more pragmatic place. I was in school and everyone was told to think about their feature film. In allowing it to be personal I think, ultimately, it's coming from a sincere place of expression. I'm not really writing outside in; I think I'm writing inside out. So that, unfortunately, as a person who doesn't particularly like to talk about myself, even personally, it's just the reality. I've found this way of articulating things that I don't think I can articulate any other way.

On that note, what has it been like seeing people's reactions and sitting in an audience while the film has been playing?

Well, those are two different questions because it was almost torture to sit in an audience as the film was playing. I finally had the experience at Telluride where I was able to watch it. And I think because I've seen several films in that same cinema, there was a comfort in there. I feel like for the first time I was able to just watch and not be intensely stressed out. So now I think I'm done watching because I'm just grateful that I was able to have that experience. 

People's responses, though, have been amazing. I had never considered going into Cannes what would happen when the credits rolled. We'd just been so focused on getting the film ready, which it only barely was. Immediately after that screening, a few people approached me—I was in a daze—and shared their personal stories with me and in a way that caught me so off guard for the sole reason that there was just a great fear that nobody would understand the film; and nobody would feel the film. I was just so moved and relieved that people did. And genuinely surprised that so many people were along with us for the ride.

When did producers Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski come on and what’s the process been like working with them?

They were the first partners on board. In fact, they're the first people I sent the script to. I had met Adele through my shorts, which could have passed around various people. And one person sent to another, and sent to another, and eventually we met. When we met, I had promised a script. She claims I gave her the impression the script was further along than it was at the time. Which I probably can't argue with. I knew when I finally wrote it, that I would write it quickly. And I spent a long time laying the groundwork and finding anything else to do but write, while I waited for that moment where lightning would strike. And it struck not two weeks later, but about two years later. And I did write it quickly. I wrote it in two weeks. It took a long time for those two weeks to come. 

Thankfully she was still there to read it. She jokes that I was on their “no more brunches and drinks for Charlie” list. But I shared it and they were supportive right from the beginning. With Pastel, we developed the script together. From that point we continued to move forward toward production. Barry's role became more prominent in post when he started watching cuts and giving feedback. He has been a huge advocate for the film through post and through its presentation to the world and distribution.

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In the past you’ve talked about how all of your films are shaped by the theme of denial and that theme is especially prevalent here.

That's so funny. I always thought this sits a little bit more outside of that, but you're right. It doesn't. What pulls me to the theme of denial? I don't know. That's a question for my therapist. [ laughs ] I mean, I think I'm interested in how contradictory people are. You know? Which always makes it challenging to write, in the sense of more typical clarity and consistency because I think people are not consistent. They often don't know who they are and what they say. And what they think even for themselves one minute might be at odds with what they think for themselves at another. That is what I'm drawn to in writing and denial is one version of that. 

While you were casting, what qualities were you looking for that you found in Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio?

We realized over the course of casting that we were looking for something very specific in terms of age. Because both characters are on the precipice of a new stage. Sophie is on the cusp of adolescence, but fundamentally, at least at the beginning of the film, she was still very much a kid. I wanted her to feel and behave like a kid. I didn't want her to be overly precocious, so I wanted her to be goofy and maybe even a little annoying at times. Calum is older than he looks, but still young and also on the cusp of adulthood, you know, of a certain type. And so there was a kind of visual aspect to it.

There were [also] the innate qualities that different actors possess that to some degree are gonna be woven within the character regardless of their performance. Paul offered an innate warmth and stability—both in personality and in his physicality—that felt essential to the character. It felt essential that the character struggle be surprising and that we have within our control the ability to disclose it over the course of the film. For Frankie, she was such an amazing surprise in the room. Her ability to perform, her ability to transition between emotional states but not carry them forward once the kind of game of acting was over was really unique and special. And she was also just a relentlessly funny kid who tortured us at any given opportunity and who would tell me to go back to making my sad little movie. 

She was amazing. They both were. They both built a genuine relationship. The bond was real. I feel very grateful to have had such a positive experience with them both, and that we enjoyed each other so much because making films is hard. And we were under a lot of pressure because Frankie is a kid and we had her on camera for only four hours a day. If there's a clash of personalities outside of that it would just be so much harder than it already is.

You were able to shoot much of this film in Turkey. What was location scouting like, particularly for the resort?

The location scouting was in the dead of winter during the height of Covid. So we were traveling down the coast, the southwest coast of Turkey, over about 600 miles through ghost towns where the hotels were operational only in the most technical sense. And it rained heavily, and it took a lot of imagination as to how the spaces would feel in the summer. But ultimately, I think, locations were one of many lessons learned on this and that locations really are one of the most creative parts of filmmaking. 

We discovered places during that scout that informed the film and the script, and ultimately we chose those two things that were closely woven together in the end. There were lots of good reasons we chose where we ended up, including the paragliders, including the hotel room we found that allowed for a two shot I had in my head with her on the bed and him in the bathroom. We discovered this location, this interior pool, with a skylight that totally transformed that kissing scene into not just kids surrounding them, hiding in the bushes, but looking in on them, which you could discover over the course of the shot.

The period detail is also so specific here. I noticed in one shot, a stack of tai chi books, and among them is a book of poetry by Margaret Tait. Did you draw on Tait’s films, specifically her film “Blue Black Permanent,” for “Aftersun” at all?

Yeah, I saw “Blue Black Permanent” definitely when this project was well underway. It came on Mubi. Somebody mentioned it, and I knew Margaret Tait by name only because I think the Glasgow Film Festival has a Margaret Tait award. It's just one of those names I've never investigated. And when I did, I was blown away by the scope of her work; the independence of her work; the lack of support for her work. And the fact that she was the first woman to make a feature film in Scotland in 1992, you know, in her seventies, at the end of her career. And that the film was in so many ways my film [ laughs ]. It's a special film and it relates in many ways to what I was doing. There is a really rich and inspiring cinematic history and heritage in Scotland of people who did it their own way—for better and often for worse—in terms of their ability to be supported and work within the system that was available. 

With the book, it’s the kind of thing you probably only do in your first feature, and I wouldn't be so audacious to do again. That is, to stack a pile of books like that and just slip a couple in there [ laughs ]. But it just felt like a nice acknowledgement.

I also love the color grading in this film. What reference points did you use to capture that 1990s photography aesthetic?

Yeah. I appreciate that question. I will talk for days about the color grade. Greg and I had a series of photos that we both collected from family photo albums, and we shared them under an informal NDA with our colorist Kath [Raisch], who we both worked with on other projects. Kath was on my last two shorts. One of which Greg also shot. And we aimed to match the look of the photographs. We went with a magenta skin tone. We wanted the film to feel really bright and lush and colorful. We didn't want to play into the sense of period [pieces] and wash it out in any way. It was quite the opposite. We wanted it to feel very present. That was infused in the design and in the costumes.

I had an amazing collaboration with Billur Turan , the production designer, and Frank Gallacher , who did costumes, and the three of us built out a color palette. So the grade was about bringing all of that out and really matching the feel of those photographs, and wanting the blacks to be really black, like falling into absolute darkness. It was a lot of fun thinking about what color is sunlight, you know? How blue or orange is it? It was a really crazy part of the process and a really satisfying collaboration.

movie reviews after sun

I have to ask about the “Under Pressure” scene. There was an interview where you talked about some of the songs in the film being planned and others being ones you found in the edit. Was it always going to be “Under Pressure”? 

I stumbled onto it because music, often when I'm looking to turn my mood around or when I’m procrastinating, or both, is my kind of gateway to work. And I love David Bowie and Queen and was aware of this version where the vocals are pulled out. And that story has such a fantastic origin and history as a unique collaboration. But I don't know why I pulled it into the edit. We had spent a long time just putting together the first assembly of the film. But the rave we had put off, we being Blair McClendon , the editor and I, until the very last moment. Because it was impossible to work with. It was like large squares of blackness because we had a real strobe and we’d get one frame of image and then nothing, and then another frame. We had a temp score. And then one night, I brought in “Under Pressure,” perhaps as a joke at first, to see how it would play. We'd often bring in songs you didn't expect and set them to the picture. It was kind of a lighthearted way of keeping going. I hit play and it lined up at exactly the perfect point. It's possible if I bought that in and it had been like 200 frames further down the timeline, it just wouldn't have worked. There was something about the point I dropped it in.

It seemed completely insane that it would stay. But as soon as it was there, it couldn't go. So then that became a fact of sorts. We didn't know if we would have the ability to actually clear the rights. But we then, in the edit, had to kind of build toward that. And what's so satisfying, in a lot of ways, about that sequence, outside of the music, it really is what I set out to do. Which isn't true everywhere across the film. It never is. But it was written in that way. I'm really happy that I was able to successfully extricate that from my head onto the screen.

The precision of that scene, especially with the strobe light, is incredible.

So Celia [Rowlson-Hall], who plays the grown-up Sophie, also is a dancer and a choreographer. Not by accident [ laughs ], but when we were casting that role, it was Greg Oke, our cinematographer, who suggested we consider dancers. It was Adele’s suggestion to cast Celia, who very graciously came out to Turkey. We didn't have long. We had an hour before we started choosing to choreograph that. But she is so supremely gifted at what she does. 

I remember the first time they blocked it through; it was so moving seeing her wrestle control of him. It was really special. And then it was like: Okay, how do we capture that? Because that’s what’s so amazing about dance. It’s a moment and then it’s gone. We had to recreate it, and then we had to cut it. It was challenging. Huge credit for that goes to Celia. Even though I really knew what I wanted the feeling of it to be, my language around how to communicate that choreography was so limited. It's just so many people’s work that combines to that final scene. Every tool that you have available to you in cinema feels like somehow it's employed there. Especially the score too. Because we had to replace that temp score, which accidentally worked. It's so much better than that temp ever. Oliver Coates , the composer, found a way to meet Freddy Mercury with his cello and let a lot of the cello soar, and ultimately, take over. It works. As outrageous of a choice it was.

What’s the next project?

I’m retired. One and done for me. [ laughs ] I don't know. I'm trying to enjoy this moment of sharing it with audiences and to enjoy the moment with the team who worked so hard on it. I look forward to the morning that I sit down at this desk with a cup of coffee and I have a blank page in front of me. I'm really excited to discover what's next. But I think it will be a discovery for myself. I'm not in a rush. I definitely need a little bit of time to not become a walking embodiment of “Aftersun” [ laughs ]. So, like watching things and reading things in a way that I really haven't had that much capacity for, for the past couple of years while this film has been such a huge presence in my life. So I'm not sure. But I look forward to finding out.

"Aftersun" will be available in theaters starting October 21st. 

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels is an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and Critics Choice Association (CCA) and regularly contributes to the  New York Times ,  IndieWire , and  Screen Daily . He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto. He has also written for the Criterion Collection, the  Los Angeles Times , and  Rolling Stone  about Black American pop culture and issues of representation.

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‘Aftersun’ is a masterpiece of memory | review and analysis

Aftersun follows the childhood memory of a girl on vacation with her father to the turkish coast. but where there’s sun there is also shadow..

movie reviews after sun

Aftersun is one of the greatest depictions of depression and grief captured on film as it meditates on childhood, parenthood, and memory. Beautifully wrought with cinematography and score that play like a memory on loop. As the movie comes to its stunningly satisfying and emotional conclusion—perhaps one of the greatest final moments of a movie I’ve seen in some time—we’re taught that opening that box might be a means to an end. A means to heal the burn that memories can leave.

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Do you know that lethargic feeling after sitting in the sun on a hot summer day? Or the melancholic daze that follows you home after a perfect vacation? Do you get blotches in your vision after looking into a bright light or staring up at the sun? All those sensations perfectly described Charlotte Wells’ debut feature Aftersun , which feels like the perfect term to encapsulate each of those feelings. And that is what the whole movie is: a feeling. For its largely plotless 96-minute runtime nothing really happens in front of you. But rest assured, there’s plenty happening in the shadows of the sunny father-daughter beach holiday at the center of the movie.

Wells presents Aftersun as a childhood memory flashing into the mind of a girl 20 years later—when she’s the same age as her father at the time. But as with any memory, things look different in retrospect.

In the early 90s, young father Calum ( Normal People ’s Paul Mescal ) brings his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (played as a child by Francesca Corio , a real festival breakout) on a sleepy summer vacation on the Turkish coast. Gregory Oke’s dreamy cinematography simultaneously underlines the sunny haziness of a beachy summer and the soft edges of memory. In between days lounging at the pool, trips to the resort’s restaurant, and interactions with the other guests, we see interstitial clips from home video of the trip filmed by either Sophie or Calum. It’s in those clips—and interruptions often taking place at night while Sophie is asleep—that we sense there’s more meaning and heaviness in this vacation for Calum.

Those feelings only come in waves though. We never see Calum being less than a devoted (and goofy) father to Sophie, almost a complete juxtaposition to the view we have of the usual young parent—sometimes he’s even mistaken for her brother. Sophie, as a child, sees him as nothing less than an invincible infallible hero—how many of us see our parents. Her childlike wonder extends to the world around her as she becomes enamored with a group of older kids—a bit of a nod to the typical coming-of-age story, of which Aftersun is decidedly not. However, that wonder also leads to conflict when Sophie’s frank questions lead to revealing that not all is great and perfect in the background of Calum’s life. At the moment, she thinks nothing of them. However, when adult Sophie looks back at the same clips we’re watching, they play very differently. Like videos taken before a coming disaster.

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Memories always have their blind spots. You remember the bright moments while blocking out the darker ones. It’s not until you look back and unpack them as an adult that you see their profundity.

31-year-old Sophie ( Celia Rowlson-Hall ), who we cut to for short moments throughout the movie, is the same age as her father when they went on that vacation. As she remembers the bright spots—the late night karaoke, her first kiss, her dad clumsily juggling bread rolls at dinner—the darker ones slip in as well. Or, at the very least, she fills them in—her dad crying in the middle of the night, his quiet swaying while smoking a cigarette on the balcony, his muffled contentious phone calls back home. However, the movie never lingers on those moments—like adult Sophie is trying to keep them out of her perfect vision of that summer vacation. The same way that we exclude the awkward pauses at an otherwise lovely dinner or the arguments heard through walls late at night after you went to bed in our memories. You keep the good and avoid the bad until you can no longer stand the weight of the past.

It’s difficult to describe Aftersun because nothing and everything is happening at the same time. Though what’s happening on screen may seem mundane, it’s drenched in subtext. For those that aren’t looking in the right places, the movie might be tedious to get through.

Aftersun is about many things, but at its core it’s about the blindspots of our memories and traumas—and how we fill them in to make them whole again.

Our parents try to create the best childhood for us. Short of that, they at least try to create the best version of those memories for you, whether intentionally or unintentionally. It’s why nostalgia exists and why some memories float to the surface while others burrow themselves deep into our psyches. Charlotte Wells uses Aftersun to show us what it’s like to unlock that box that we all keep away in a hidden dark corner of our minds. What it’s like to admit that our perfect childhood memories are just afterimages of the brightest moments. As the movie comes to its stunningly satisfying and emotional conclusion fittingly underscored by Queen’s “Under Pressure”—perhaps one of the greatest final moments of a movie I’ve seen in some time—we’re taught that opening that box might be a means to an end. A means to heal the burn that memories can leave.

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Aftersun Ending Explained: Exploring The Meaning And What Happened To Calum

This one hurts.

I first saw Aftersun in October 2022 at the Chicago International Film Festival. It’s a movie that has left me haunted ever since. The film quietly devastates you. The ending doesn’t have to shout to speak volumes about the fate of the characters and the crippling weight of memories, loss, and mental health issues .

This is one of the most profound films of 2022; you can’t help but feel something as you watch it. The Aftersun ending leaves you with one final somber image, so let’s discuss it.

Warning: Aftersun spoilers ahead. Proceed with caution.

How Does Aftersun End? 

It’s the final night of Sophie (Frankie Corio) and Calum’s (Paul Mescal) Turkey vacation. They celebrate with some ice cream and some dancing to “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie (it’s one of the best movie dance scenes of 2022).

This scene is juxtaposed with images of adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) seeing her dad dancing at a rave. She screams for him but he doesn’t hear her. Then she holds him as the film flashes between child Sophie dancing and holding her father close and adult Sophie holding him so he cannot leave.

However, he eventually escapes and falls away from adult Sophie before she turns into a child.

We then see Calum recording her as she boards a plane back to Edinburgh to be with her mother and return to her life. The film then freezes on her as a child waving goodbye to her father. Adult Sophie has paused the video on her home videos from that vacation.

The final scene is of Calum stopping the recording and walking away.

What Happened To Calum? 

When I originally saw Aftersun in October, I was convinced that the film clearly reveals that Calum died after the vacation. Rewatching the film, it became apparent that my memory of the ending has become slightly distorted. You can just feel the weight of his absence so much that it seems like the movie makes a big declaration about his fate.

Aftersun tells you everything you need to know without stating it. It shows far more than it tells.

It’s not bluntly stated, but heavily implied that he commits suicide not too long after that trip. It’s clear that this is the last time Sophie sees her father and that’s one reason why she’s recalling these memories. 

There is a chance that Calum doesn’t commit suicide, but his life still ends in a heartbreaking manner.

He could have died due to some of his self-destructive behavior, or his mental health issues could have gotten so bad that he disappeared, never to be seen again. His fate isn’t confirmed, but this is a film about grief and loss, at least one aspect of it. So whatever has happened to Calum, the loving father from the vacation is gone forever. 

Calum is never diagnosed in Aftersun but he shows many signs of someone suffering from a form of depression. He tries to hide it from Sophie, but in moments of solitude, you see the pain, self-loathing, fear, and despair that surrounds him. It’s one of the most thoughtful movies about depression.

One of the most gut-punching moments is when Calum casually mentions that he doesn’t think he’ll make it to 40 and is surprised he made it to 30.

There are so many little moments like these, where Calum mentions something that shows he has been suffering from mental health issues for a while, probably since adolescence. Aftersun builds its tension by allowing the audience to slowly see more and more of Calum’s pain, until we watch him break down crying.

Because much of the tone is upbeat, it isn’t the saddest movie ever but it doesn’t shy away from making its audience feel melancholy when it all ends. 

At the end , the final shot further confirms his fate. Calum walks away, not going back into the real world, but into Sophie’s memories. You see the strobe lights coming from behind the door, and this seems to imply that this becomes Sophie’s final active memory of her father. 

The Fear Of Aging In Aftersun 

We see Calum and Sophie going through opposite reactions in their journey of aging. Sophie wants to grow up. Like many kids, she sees being an adult as a much more exciting possibility than childhood.

Calum fears growing old. We can assume this is a natural fear for many 30-somethings. However, he seems even more haunted by it than many his age, because his life doesn’t seem to be going as he wants. He has money issues, has not particularly found his career, and seems to be haunted by regrets and bad memories.

The fear of aging seems entangled with his depression and anxiety about his life. In some moments, it even seems like Calum would love to switch places with Sophie and have the ability to do it all over again, so he'd have more time to get it right.

We only see glimpses of adult Sophie, but she seems to be a similar age as Calum in the past. She’s also a new parent. So, she may be dealing with similar questions: Is this the life I wanted at this age? Am I the person my child needs me to be right now?

Growing older seems to be a major starting point for the trip (a sort-of birthday celebration for Sophie and Calum), and aging may be why adult Sophie starts her journey of remembering her father. 

She celebrates a birthday, and from the opening scenes, we know that Sophie and Calum have birthdays close to each other. Therefore, her aging could also make her think even more about her father, because his birthday is also coming up.

Aging is sometimes a privilege and a curse. For Calum, it’s something he will never get to look forward to or dread again, because he’s now forever frozen in his early 30s.

The Unreliable Nature Of Memory

Aftersun is very much a movie about memory. In an interview with Brief Take , director and writer Charlotte Wells states that the overall arc of the movie is adult Sophie looking back and reflecting on this trip and her father. At the very beginning, the recording freezes and you can see a reflection of adult Sophie watching these home videos.

We then, at the end, see her fully watching them. Many of the scenes with adult Sophie show her in a rave-type situation watching her father dance. This seems, in my opinion, to act as a way to show the fading nature of Sophie’s memory of her father.

The strobe lights make it hard to completely see and watch him. He comes in fragments. He’s also moving along a sea of others, almost lost and fading from her. Metaphorically, this could be his declining mental health and also her inability to hold on to memories as she ages and they become less vibrant.

In a Deadline interview, Wells stated that she hopes viewers take away the idea that the loss doesn't diminish the love between these characters. Calum may be gone, but it’s clear that he fought his inner battles to try to be a good father for Sophie. His love for her says a lot more about him than his death. 

In a Letterboxd interview, Paul Mescal had this to say about what he hopes people take from Aftersun:

They’ll probably feel a great sadness. But I’d also like them to come away knowing that memory is a very powerful thing, and it’s warm.

This offers an interesting perspective on this film. If you view it from this lens, the film still remains painfully sad but it gives power to memories. Memories help keep people alive in spirit. They also make feelings such as love, joy, and even loss stronger and more real. 

Aftersun is a movie that may not have initially been at the top of my upcoming movies watch list, but I am so glad I saw it. It offers a thought-provoking look at mental health, parenting, aging, and memories. It’s one of the new streaming movies that everyone needs at the top of their list. 

Rent/buy Aftersun on Amazon.

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Nostalgic drama studies depression; smoking, some language.

Aftersun movie poster

A Lot or a Little?

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

The importance of managing trauma and grief and al

Calum is a good father. He is flawed, damaged, and

The film only really has two characters of note, a

Suicide is a theme in the movie. It's suggested th

Two teens are shown kissing passionately. A young

Occasional use of the word "f--k" as well as "arse

Characters order specific drinks such as Coca-Cola

Set on a holiday resort, people are shown drinking

Parents need to know that Aftersun is a slow-burning but brilliantly moving drama that focuses on mental health in men -- with themes around suicide -- and a daughter dealing with a difficult past. Sophie is independent as a child (Frankie Corio), and reflective as an adult (Celia Rowlson-Hall). Her father,…

Positive Messages

The importance of managing trauma and grief and allowing memories, both good and bad, to help shape who we are today.

Positive Role Models

Calum is a good father. He is flawed, damaged, and suffering from depression, but he cares for his daughter, Sophie. He makes mistakes, such as neglecting her one night, leaving her to fend for herself in a foreign country. But on this occasion he's not himself. Sophie is both independent, pensive, and curious. She tries to live a full life, finding some kind of peace and understanding about what happened to her as a child.

Diverse Representations

The film only really has two characters of note, a father and a daughter. They're both White, and holidaying in Turkey so many supporting characters are of Middle Eastern descent, and we get a sense for the culture they are living within. Mental health issues in men are explored. A character is gay, which is not a plot-point, just presented as a matter-of-fact.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Suicide is a theme in the movie. It's suggested that a character takes their own life. A character becomes separated from their parent.

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

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two teens are shown kissing passionately. A young character shares their first kiss with someone of the same age. Two strangers are also seen kissing. A character's naked behind is briefly shown.

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

Occasional use of the word "f--k" as well as "arse." A character gives the middle finger to another.

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

Products & Purchases

Characters order specific drinks such as Coca-Cola and Fanta.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Set on a holiday resort, people are shown drinking beer and wine. Teens are seen doing shots. A child tries a sip of their parent's beer. The same parent talks about drugs with their child, hoping to create a safe space for them to have a dialogue about it as they get older. People are seen smoking cigarettes and shisha. One character picks up a lit cigarette from the ground after someone drops it on the floor.

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 Aftersun is a slow-burning but brilliantly moving drama that focuses on mental health in men -- with themes around suicide -- and a daughter dealing with a difficult past. Sophie is independent as a child (Frankie Corio), and reflective as an adult (Celia Rowlson-Hall). Her father, Calum ( Paul Mescal ), is a good father, but he is a flawed one. He makes mistakes, such as leaving her locked out of the room one night on their holiday in Turkey. Turkish culture is explored in an affectionate way, from the blissful perspective of tourists. People are shown smoking shisha and cigarettes. Characters also drink alcohol, with teens drinking to excess. Even a child tries a sip of beer. Drugs and alcohol are discussed, fleetingly, between Calum and Sophie as he hopes to create an open dialogue and safe space for her as she gets older. There is kissing and a male character's bare behind is seen in one scene. "F--k" is heard on occasion, as is "arse." 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.

Aftersun Trailer

Community Reviews

  • Parents say (2)
  • Kids say (3)

Based on 2 parent reviews

A beautiful movie suitable for older kids, but likely will bore them

What's the story.

AFTERSUN follows Calum ( Paul Mescal ) and his daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) as they take a holiday to Turkey, a trip that will live with the latter forever. Twenty years later, on her birthday, Sophie finds footage causing her to reflect and ponder on the experiences she had that shaped her, for better or for worse.

Is It Any Good?

This profoundly emotional drama is one of the most assured, confident debut productions from a first-time filmmaker you're likely to see. From Aftersun 's very opening frame, Charlotte Wells knows exactly the story she is telling, and has complete power over the narrative. With this control, she takes the viewer on a quite staggeringly moving journey. It's a voyage through time and memories, studying how we reflect and remember times past to try and reconcile where we are now, and those we have loved (and lost).

The film delivers emphatically on two counts, as you connect in equal measure to both Calum, a 30-something father and Sophie, a 10-year-old girl. Calum shows the complexities of the human mind and the challenges that come with it. While Sophie's journey is one of nostalgic, hazy childhood memories. Fueling that nostalgia is a superb soundtrack. But what helps illuminate this production are the two central performances. Mescal is as good as he's ever been, and the young Corio is a revelation as Sophie. This isn't just one of the best films of the year, it's one of the best films in years.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how depression is portrayed in Aftersun . Did you find it unusual to see mental health issues in men addressed like this? Why, or why not? What are your own experiences when it comes to mental health?

Discuss the relationship between Calum and Sophie. Did it seem like a healthy father-daughter relationship? Why, or why not?

The movie is about looking back on the past. How do you feel when you look back at certain events from your life?

Talk about the strong language used in the movie. Did it seem necessary or excessive? What did it contribute to the movie?

How did the film depict drinking and smoking ? Were they glamorized? Did the characters need to do these things to look cool? What were the consequences ?

Movie Details

  • In theaters : October 21, 2022
  • On DVD or streaming : January 23, 2023
  • Cast : Paul Mescal , Frankie Corio , Celia Rowlson-Hall
  • Director : Charlotte Wells
  • Studio : A24
  • Genre : Drama
  • Topics : Holidays
  • Character Strengths : Curiosity
  • Run time : 102 minutes
  • MPAA rating : R
  • MPAA explanation : some language and brief sexual material
  • Last updated : January 29, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

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

Suggest an Update

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Aftersun (II) (2022)

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Aftersun’ on Streaming, a Pensive, Moving Father-Daughter Drama From Gifted Filmmaker Charlotte Wells

Where to stream:, what movie should i watch tonight 'marcel the shell with shoes on' now streaming on netflix, stream it or skip it: ‘marcel the shell with shoes on’ on netflix, a delightfully funny story of a teensy anthropomorphic shell, stream it or skip it: 'everything everywhere all at once' on netflix, the best picture winner in which michelle yeoh finds herself overwhelmed by the ultimate multiverse story, stream it or skip it: 'jenny slate: seasoned professional' on prime video, a comedian grows up (and glows up) in brooklyn.

Aftersun (now on VOD streaming services like Amazon Prime Video ) is among 2022’s most significant critical successes. The accolades for Scottish writer/director Charlotte Wells’ feature debut began at Cannes, where premier art-film distributor A24 snapped it up for North American distribution; it gathered further acclaim through the festival circuit before landing on the National Board of Review and Sight & Sound’s best-of-the-year lists. It stars first-timer Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal – of BBC series Normal People and 2021’s extraordinary The Lost Daughter – as daughter and father on a sunny, seaside Turkish vacation, framed as a melancholy reminiscence that quietly sinks into your bones.

AFTERSUN : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Shaky camcorder video: Sophie (Corio) films her dad, Calum (Mescal). It’s two days before his 31st birthday. “When you were 11, what did you think you’d be doing now?” she asks, playfully. He never really answers. The footage was shot 20ish years ago, when she was 11, and they took a holiday in a resort in Turkey. They arrive at the hotel to find their room has only one bed, when he booked for two. Would it be a big deal if father and daughter slept in the same double bed? Probably not, yet he sleeps on a cot. Or perhaps doesn’t sleep very well – the clock on the bedside table reads 3:08 a.m. Now, 3:09.

It’s a relaxing trip, with time spent languorously in restaurants and poolside. Sophie plays a motorcycle video game, and chats with a boy her age. They do a little bit of snorkeling, take a bus trip to scenic locales, play billiards, watch as resort staff performs the Macarena; Calum refuses to do karaoke with Sophie, while she refuses to dance with him in the dance club. They visit a Turkish rug merchant, and Calum tells Sophie how each piece tells a story. He inquires about a price for a rug, but it’s expensive; he’ll go back later, without Sophie, to purchase it.

As the quiet, introspective narrative plays out, we piece together the dynamic between these two. Calum and Sophie’s mother aren’t together – they clearly had Sophie when they were relatively young. He doesn’t have much money, and appears to be struggling professionally. Being only 11, Sophie doesn’t seem to quite understand why he seems to be so emotionally inaccessible. Sometimes, he practices tai chi, and she rolls her eyes at his “slo-mo ninja moves.” For his birthday, Sophie encourages a busload of tourists to sing to him, and he doesn’t appear to be happy or even embarrassed. He just looks glum. Blank.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Aftersun offers the understated artistry of a Kelly Reichardt film – see Old Joy or First Cow – with the strongest, most unaffected child-actor performance since Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project .

Performance Worth Watching: Even when playing a character recording herself with a camcorder, Forio shows a remarkable ability to simply exist, naturally and comfortably, in front of a camera.

Memorable Dialogue: Sophie, to her father: “I think it’s nice that we share the same sky.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Pay close attention and you’ll deduce that Aftersun is the adult Sophie’s melancholy – deeply melancholy – reminiscence of her time with her father. This is a film made whole by its unspoken inferences; to watch it is to marinate in the silences filling space among sparse dialogue. The nature of Sophie and Calum’s relationship is purposely vague, and we’re left to ask questions: They don’t see each other often, do they? She likely lives with her mother most of the time. His personal situation, psychologically or otherwise, is probably too unstable to meet the demands of an 11-year-old girl who, like all children her age, is discovering her independence despite still being wholly dependent on the adults in her life – you know, that awkward developmental stage illustrated by her desire to put sunblock on herself, despite her inability to adequately reach her own shoulder blades. So Calum rubs the lotion in for her.

And so the film prompts us to read into its many small, seemingly mundane moments like this. Sometimes, the relative silence cracks via a pithy observation – maybe the sky, big and vast and blue, is all that truly connected Sophie and Calum – or a few heaving gasps of despair. Wells occasionally drops in on and returns to a surreal dance club sequence where Calum has apparently lost himself in movement and music, and Sophie struggles to reach him; it’s the classical nightmare where you’re reaching for something that’s just out of your grasp, or trying to dial the phone but keep mashing the wrong numbers.

There’s the anger and frustration of loss coursing beneath the tender, but curious scenes of Sophie and Calum playing in the pool or quietly eating a meal. Adult Sophie looks back upon her father and the mystery of his profound melancholy with the perspective of someone who’s become an adult, and likely understands her father better now, in his absence, than she ever did as a child (not that she was at all capable, mind you). There’s a scene in which Sophie and Calum are eating dinner when a man takes their photo, and the Polaroid slowly fades into fuzzy focus. That was her father; this is her memory.

Our Call: Aftersun is the work of an artist capable of invoking abundant emotion via innovative narrative means. STREAM IT.

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

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movie reviews after sun

Screen Rant

Aftersun ending explained: what happened to callum.

The Aftersun ending needs to be explained to fully understand the heartwrenching and nostalgic drama, which earned Paul Mescal an Oscar nomination.

  • Aftersun probes hidden depths of family dynamics and melancholy, with a powerful and ambiguous ending that hints at unspoken pain.
  • The ambiguous ending of Aftersun leaves it open to interpretation, exploring themes of guilt, love, and depression in a powerful way.
  • A chilling delve into Calum's mental state, Aftersun highlights how people hide deep sorrows even from loved ones until it's too late.

Warning: The following article contains mentions of suicide and depression.

The ending of Aftersun may need to be explained, as it leaves the answer to the main question open to viewer interpretation. Aftersun comes from director Charlotte Wells in her feature debut, which earned an Academy Award nomination in 2023 for Best Actor for Paul Mescal, who stars as Calum. The film follows a young Scottish girl named Sophie (Frankie Corio) who holidays with her single father, Calum, at a Turkish resort. Calum has recently separated from his wife and is using this opportunity to bond with his daughter on the eve of his 31st birthday. Interspersed throughout the film are chaotic scenes of a rave and Calum dancing.

Aftersun is an incredibly powerful movie that deals with heavy themes of depression, guilt, memory, and love all through the lens, literally and figuratively, of the young Sophie. With a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes , Aftersun has received warm critical acclaim for its performances, plot, and unusual storytelling style. It's heartbreaking, melancholic, and probing into how people often hide important parts of themselves away from loved ones. At the same time, Aftersun is a beautiful vacation movie where the experiences and setting are relatable and awe-inspiring. The ending of Aftersun is intentionally unclear, but there are hints and throughlines in the film that can help explain it.

Feature Image Movies Like Aftersun

10 Best Movies For Fans Of Aftersun To Watch Next

What happens in the aftersun ending, a dance across generations.

Towards the end of Aftersun , Calum and Sophie finally dance together on the last night of their vacation. The father and daughter share a loving and happy dance, intercut with scenes of Calum dancing alone at some unknown rave. The next scene is of Calum and Sophie at the airport. Calum waves goodbye to Sophie as she goes back to her mother's house and the camera spins to show that the scene is a home video that the adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) is watching alone. Sophie is shown with a family of her own as she sorts through old videos of her trip with Calum.

The scene then transitions back to young Sophie waving to her father at the airport. This time when the camera pans around, it's Calum who's in view, holding the camcorder that Sophie had all trip. Calum seems to break the fourth wall, filming the audience from a bright and antiseptic-looking hallway with halogen lights buzzing. After a pause, he lowers the camera and turns around to head toward two doors at the opposite end of the hall. When he pushes through them, they are shown to lead to the same rave that's been shown throughout the film . Calum enters the rave and the doors close as the credits roll.

Calum Took His Own Life After The Events Of Aftersun

Deciphering calum's hidden pain in aftersun.

Calum standing in a brightly lit hallway at the end of Aftersun.

While it is not explicitly stated in Aftersun , it can be assumed that Calum took his own life after the events of the film. There are multiple scenes in the movie that point to Calum's deep depression. In an early scene, he casually steps in front of an oncoming bus. Nothing happens, and though he feigns ignorance, it's an early sign that Calum isn't thinking clearly and has been behaving recklessly. Calum hides his financial struggles and his smoking from Sophie, does Tai Chi, and reads self-help books incessantly. Clearly, he is trying to find a way through some sort of crisis.

“ Every character should push you out of your comfort zone in some capacity. But this wasn’t one of those where I was like, ‘I can’t do this. I want to do this, but I can’t.’ I didn’t know what it would look like in the end, but I just had a gut instinct that I knew that man somehow. ” - Paul Mescal on playing Calum (via ScreenDaily )

Later, Calum admits to a diving instructor that he's surprised he made it to 30 and doesn't believe he will ever see 40. The signs that Calum's depression is leading to suicide are so obvious that when he goes swimming at night alone, viewers wouldn't be wrong to think that is the last they will see of Calum. Even after making it out of the water alive, Callum breaks down alone in his hotel, crying over letters he has written, addressed to Sophie. Throughout all of these troubling scenes, there is a general tone of indifference and sadness emanating from Calum . Little on this vacation seems to bring him joy.

All of these clues, hints, and plainly laid evidence combine with the end of the film to heavily imply that Calum died soon after his and Sophie's vacation. The end of Aftersun shows Sophie watching home videos of the trip, suggesting the entire film is a home video. It's obvious that Sophie is watching these videos for answers. What she's searching for are signs of her father's depression, those she was oblivious to as a child.

Sophie Uses The Video Camera To Remember Her Father On The Vacation

Deciphering fatherhood and loss through home videos.

Throughout Aftersun , Sophie is oblivious to signs that her father is struggling . She doesn't notice him smoking, she doesn't completely understand why he's upset when she loses an expensive diving mask, and she doesn't know why it's embarrassing for Calum not to be able to afford a rug he likes. Sophie generally acts like a happy, carefree young girl, as any young girl would on a tropical vacation with her father. She also brings a camcorder along on the vacation and many scenes are shot from her point of view. There are many scenes, however, like Calum crying after his night swim, which she couldn't possibly have seen.

It's only with the experience and maturity of an adult that Sophie can fill in the blanks of her father's life and understand that he was in pain underneath a happy exterior.

Sophie is using her home videos as a way to go back and see what signs she missed that would have pointed to her father's impending suicide. She desperately watches the old videos to understand where she could have saved him. Aftersun makes it clear that there weren't key moments she missed. As an 11-year-old, Sophie couldn't understand her father's financial troubles, and the scenes where Calum truly breaks down are not ones she was present for . It's only with the experience and maturity of an adult that she can fill in the blanks of her father's life and understand that he was in pain underneath a happy exterior.

The Rug In Sophie's Apartment Was A Gift From Calum

Unveiling the love story hidden in a rug.

Calum lying on a rug in Aftersun

A moment in the ending of Aftersun makes an earlier scene much more meaningful. In adult Sophie's home, there is a large, ornate rug hanging on the wall. Back in Turkey, Calum and Sophie went to a store where Calum asked Sophie to pick one out.

Though Calum is unable to afford the rug, he later returns without Sophie to purchase it in secret. This same rug is one that hangs on her wall all these years later. It's a quick moment that points to how much Calum and Sophie loved, and still love, each other.

Why Do Calum And Sophie Dance To "Under Pressure"?

Exploring calum's anguish through music.

Paul Mescal as Calum and Frankie Corio as Sophie dancing and hugging in Aftersun.

Calum refuses to dance or sing multiple times throughout Aftersun . First, he doesn't join Sophie in karaoke for "Losing My Religion", then he appears sullen and depressed when Sophie gets a group of tourists to sing him "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" for his birthday. However, at the end of their stay, Calum asks Sophie to join him on the dance floor, and they hug and sway to David Bowie and Queen's "Under Pressure". The title of the song is a clear allusion to Calum's current mental state and feelings of being under pressure in his life.

Notably, the outro of "Under Pressure" has the lyrics, " This is our last dance/This is our last dance/This is ourselves under pressure/Under pressure/Under pressure/Pressure ," which are more than a little foreshadowing. Similarly, the first verse of the song contains the lyrics, " Under pressure that burns a building down/Splits a family in two/Puts people on streets ". " Splitting a family in two ," is already applicable to Calum's life with his divorce, and " Puts people on the streets ," alludes to Calum's financial woes.

The Rave Sequences Visualize Calum's Mental State

A haunting dive into calum's internal chaos.

Calum dancing at an imagined rave in Aftersun.

Interspersed throughout Aftersun are sequences of Calum dancing at a rave as an adult Sophie tries and fails to reach out to him. These scenes are not real but are used to represent how the adult Sophie now understands Calum's mental anguish at the time of the Turkey trip. Calum is not dancing happily in these scenes. His dancing is frenzied and his face is contorted. Calum was in pain on this trip and his mind was working in overdrive, as represented by the sensory overload of the rave.

When Sophie filmed the vacation as a child, she had no idea what was really going on with Calum. As an adult, she now has an understanding. At the end of Aftersun , when Calum turns and reenters the rave, i t's a sign that he can't escape the inner turmoil in his head, leading to his death .

The Real Meaning Of Aftersun's Ending

Aftersun's ending explores unseen suffering.

Sophie and Calum posing for a picture against the ocean in Aftersun.

Aftersun does not hand-hold when it comes to explaining what the audience should think or feel. Themes of misery, grief, and nostalgia are intertwined with the film as much as the rave scenes are. What Aftersun does make clear, and is the major theme of the film's ending, is that it can be impossible to understand what others are going through without years of reflection. Calum gave no signs to Sophie, at least no signs an 11-year-old would understand, that he was extremely depressed. Only the audience knows of Calum's pain and even with understanding the intimate details of his suffering, Calum's end is not perfectly clear.

Aftersun makes it abundantly clear that depression and misery can be so internal that even those closest can miss the signs. There is power in revisiting moments as Sophie does, even if those memories now bring up sorrowful feelings. As Aftersun shows, Sophie did have a wonderful time on her trip. Her father gave that to her, along with a rug to remember it by. She can take solace in those memories and the happiness she shared with her father. It still may take time for Sophie to accept that she could not have foreseen her father's fate, but in Aftersun , like in life, grieving is often a lifelong process.

Aftersun Movie Poster

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - To the Hashira Training Review

Demon slayer’s day in the sun.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - To the Hashira Training Review - IGN Image

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - To the Hashira Training marks the wildly popular anime series ’ third cinematic outing. But while ufotable’s gorgeously animated interpretation of Koyoharu Gotouge’s manga deserves to be seen on the largest screen possible, To the Hashira Training continues an unfortunate trend started by its immediate predecessor, 2023’s To the Swordsmith Village: Unlike the first Demon Slayer movie, Mugen Train , this isn’t a standalone story but rather a compilation of two episodes from the TV show. It takes for granted that the audience is fully caught up on the high-octane adventures of Tanjiro Kamado, and despite all the visual splendor on display, this patchwork format makes for unfulfilling storytelling divorced from its larger context.

Pairing the finale of Demon Slayer’s third season with the premiere of its upcoming fourth, To the Hashira Training is just the very end of one story followed by the very beginning of another, related one. In many ways, it’s good, because it’s two episodes of Demon Slayer, and Demon Slayer is a good show. But being dropped into a climax, seeing its big emotional payoff unfold, and then watching 30 minutes of setup for the next chapter make for a bizarre filmgoing experience.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - To the Hashira Training Gallery

movie reviews after sun

While we receive a very brief introduction to the other times Tanjiro has bested a demon, To the Hashira Training is decidedly not for newcomers to Demon Slayer. You won’t get an explanation of who the main characters are, what relationship they have to one another, what they’re doing, or why they’re doing it. While many movies based on anime series go far too hard in the opposite direction – wasting precious time to over-explain their basic tenets – To the Hashira Training assumes you’re here to watch the new episode early and on the big screen. Honestly, that’s a fair assumption, especially in Japan, where the film topped the box office during its opening weekend.

It’s also an assumption that’s immediately clear. After its brief intro, To the Hashira Training opens on a chase scene already in progress, because that’s where the season 3 finale begins, too. It doesn’t explain what happened in the story to get us here or remind us who’s involved. Even if it’s only been a few months since you watched the Swordsmith Village arc , it’s a good idea to brush up on what was happening before its conclusion. Fortunately, the episode’s Big Moment still hits hard – assuming you know the characters, of course.

Dozens of “yokatta!”s later, episode one of the Hashira Training arc arrives, exposition- and lore-heavy – though the adaptation smartly adds an incredible fight sequence with the Wind and Snake Hashiras. The scene is brilliantly choreographed and successfully endears us to two characters who, before now, have had very little screen time. It’s the obvious highlight of the episode, which contains plenty of delightful moments and intriguing revelations, but no more big showstoppers. It works excellently as a season premiere, but not quite as naturally as the second half of a movie. All of the action sequences in To the Hashira Training take place during the first 60% of the film.

Which Hashira are you most excited to see in the upcoming arc?

It’s tempting to recommend just waiting to watch the Hashira Training arc at home. But if you’re a big Demon Slayer fan or a lover of animation generally, the chance to catch ufotable’s stunning work on the big screen – or in IMAX, if you get so lucky – makes To the Hashira Training worth heading to the theater. Demon Slayer’s animation is often compared favorably to that of big-budget studio movies, so to watch a pair of episodes presented exactly like a big-budget studio movie feels not only natural, but like a genuine treat. The detail of the backgrounds, the dynamic ways in which the characters interact with their environment, and ufotable’s virtuosic blending of traditional and computer animation all feel extra potent when you’re able to take in every mossy, rusty shingle of a rooftop.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - To the Hashira Training works awkwardly as a movie, and it’s definitely not a good starting point for newcomers to the series. But for fans caught up on the anime, it’s worth a watch to see such stunning animation on the big screen. The first episode of the upcoming Hashira Training arc is solid, but works better as a season premiere than the second half of a movie.

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Movies | ‘mea culpa’ review: in tyler perry’s chicago, attorney-client privileges include sex and painting lessons.

Kelly Rowland and Trevante Rhodes ride a jagged edge of legal trouble in "Mea Culpa." (Netflix)

Now steaming on Netflix, as well as streaming, the super-ripe Tyler Perry legal thriller “Mea Culpa” has zero hold on reality-based  behavior. But life is short. Why demand something so dull of something like this? No need pleading guilty-pleasure when the movie itself pleads no contest within minutes of introducing Chicago’s most ethically fluid defense attorney, played by Kelly Rowland.

Attorney Mea Harper takes the case of accused murderer Zyair Malloy (Trevante Rhodes), very big in the art world and living in a very big loft to prove it. His high-ceiling workplace, also his sexplace, is accessed by a freight elevator on loan from Glenn Close and “Fatal Attraction.”

The legal eagle is not in a good place of her own as “Mea Culpa” embarks on its merry, trashy way. The attorney’s anesthesiologist husband (Sean Sagar) has been semi-secretly unemployed for eight months after getting high on his own supply. Her brother-in-law (Nick Sagar) is the district attorney, itching to prosecute the accused artist and further his own mayoral ambitions.

Mea’s in-laws wriggle under the thumb of her husband’s not-nice mother (Kerry O’Malley), near death after a cancer diagnosis but full of vitriolic zingers. Early in “Mea Culpa,” shot mostly in Atlanta with a few exterior bits on location in Chicago for fake authenticity, mom is birthday-gifted with a many-thousand-dollars wristwatch. “How much was it?” seethes the resentful, cash-strapped Mea on the ride home. Don’t worry, her husband replies, “I sold the piano.”

Enticed by the prospect of going head-to-head in court against her DA brother-in-law, Mea goes all in with the case of the mysterious hunky artist. Zyair’s up against considerable circumstance evidence, including cellphone footage of one of his missing-presumed-dead ex-lovers screaming “HE’S GOING TO KILL ME!” But did he? And what’s the story behind the fractured skull bits embedded in one of the artist’s paintings?

Mea keeps it strictly business for a scene or two. Then it’s sexytime, full of candlelit finger painting on various body parts. Quicker than you can draw a Jagged Edge around the Body of Evidence, “Mea Culpa” gets squirrelier and squirrelier, though much of Perry’s dialogue in the earlier scenes sets the tone. “I am your attorney. I am not your friend,” Mea states for the record, although she’s no match for the come-ons murmured by Rhodes: “I find you incredibly attractive … the way you smell … your brilliance … all very intriguing.” The Isaac Hayes cover of “Walk on By” on the turntable takes it from there.

Writer-producer-director Perry knows what he’s doing here, and what he’s willfully overdoing. If the relatively chaste 2020 Netflix ripoff “Fatal Affair” can revive the late ’80s-mid-’90s cycle of legal trouble, Perry can too, with more skin and some polish to go with the ridiculousness. Amanda Jones’ cello-lined musical score is a real plus, even if its restraint is fundamentally at odds with the reasons we watch stuff like this. Which are?

For many, the reasons go back to the simple pleasures of heckling, either out loud or in our own interior monologues. It’s not about derision, really, even with set-ups and payoffs as wait, whaaaaat? as those in “Mea Culpa.” When Zyair forces his lawyer to watch him in flagrante delicto with an anonymous nude groupie, appearing out of thin air, it’s practically an improv prompt. Also, Zyair happens to live directly above an underground crimson-hued sex club. You know, as one does. Imagine the homeowner association fees.

Without giving away the last 20 minutes, which really go for it, “Mea Culpa” includes the useful reminder that anyone who offers someone red wine and says “Here, I made you a drink” is walking human neon sign spelling danger . There’s no “making” a glass of wine. There’s just the “pouring.” You say “making,” and you’re saying “glassful of trouble,” which tends to give the game away a little more pointedly than warranted.

Tyler Perry the screenwriter may never come close to the skill level of Tyler Perry the first-rate actor; he does not appear on screen here, which is sad. But Tyler Perry the producing entertainment force remains an empire of its own.

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“Mea Culpa” — 2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, language, some violence and drug use)

Running time: 2:00

How to watch: Now streaming on Netflix

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The Super Bowl Ads, Ranked

Here is how our critic saw the Super Bowl commercials from best to worst.

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Christopher Walken in a black suit and shirt, smiling.

By Mike Hale

In the spirit of “Who actually watches the game?,” here is our ranking of Sunday night’s Super Bowl commercials, from best to worst.

Ground rules: Only ads shown on the national CBS broadcast during the game were eligible. Not included are some non-commercial (religious, political, social advocacy) spots and most movie trailers and promos for television and streaming broadcasts.

The Best of the Bunch

These are the ones we’ll remember for at least a day or two.

Christopher Walken makes fun of people making fun of Christopher Walken, with a cameo performance by the Super Bowl halftime star Usher. As always, he walks the walk.

Mountain Dew

Aubrey Plaza flat-affects her way through life with the help of a carbonated citrus beverage. Plaza is reliably droll, and there’s a late “Parks and Recreation” homage.

Squarespace

Aliens (a theme in this year’s ads) come to earth and can’t get our attention until they figure out how to get on the internet. It is handsomely directed by Martin Scorsese (working with the “Barbie” cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto), though it’s not at all clear what’s being advertised.

A chocolate ball bops around the world to the tune of Perry Como’s “Round and Round.” Shiny, bouncy candy.

‘A Quiet Place: Day One’

Lupita Nyong’o faces an alien invasion in a prequel film to John Krasinski’s “A Quiet Place.” The clear winner among the movie trailers.

A man with low vision records his life in sharp photographs using a new feature of the Google Pixel. Touching story with a predictable but effective big finish.

A blustery Ben Affleck tries to impress an unimpressed Jennifer Lopez while an embarrassed Matt Damon and enthusiastic Tom Brady look on. Pleasant buzz of star power.

A pair of lifelike babies play pickleball with a pair of obnoxious adults in need of schooling. One of the few ads whose humor has anything resembling a bite.

Attractive young people in grainy, retro split-screen video try to convince us of the healthy nature of the sodas sold by this Austin, Texas-based beverage company. Visually fizzy.

National Football League

A youngster imagines playing American football as he runs through a crowded Ghanaian market accompanied by N.F.L. players, then emerges into an N.F.L. international training program and encounters the former New York Giant Osi Umenyiora. Better ground game than the Chiefs or 49ers.

Vince Vaughn explains that Tom Brady, and only Tom Brady, is not allowed to use the sports betting service because he has already won too much. Vaughn-to-Brady is a winning combination.

The Perfectly Fine

These get an A for effort and a B- for execution.

The “Abbott Elementary” star Quinta Brunson tells us (twice) to do our taxes. Brunson is so darn likable that it seems like a good idea.

NYX Cosmetics

Cardi B raps about lip gloss; an accompanying comedy bit about men using Duck Plump to plump something other than their lips was available online but not shown on CBS. The timidity was disappointing but Cardi B is never not funny.

Apartments.com

Aliens come to earth and, naturally, need an apartment. Simple-minded but any scenario benefits from the presence of Jeff Goldblum.

America realizes it needs to give France a gift in return for the Statue of Liberty, uses Etsy to send a giant cheese board. Sounds cute, and it is.

Dad of the year uses his Kia EV9 to light a pop-up ice rink so a young figure skater can perform for her ailing grandfather. (Or at least that’s what it looks like.) High-horsepower tear-jerker.

The Coors Light train roars across the country to salvage an awkward big-game party. Forward momentum and an amusing five-second LL Cool J cameo.

The American dream as lived by an immigrant named the Beetle, from 1949 to the present, set to “I Am … I Said.” Herbie goes to Ellis Island.

A pair of abuelas named Dina and Mita go into avenger mode when a young guy grabs the last bag of Dinamita chips. Comic action with a brief appearance by Jenna Ortega.

Beyoncé, with the help of Tony Hale (in “Veep” mode), tries to break the internet as a saxophonist, cyborg, Barbie, astronaut and Botus. Sorry, BeyHive, but self-referential does not equal super.

Everyday people contemplate the differences that the Copilot A.I. assistant could make in their lives. Evocative and (intentionally?) a little eerie.

STōK Cold Brew

Anthony Hopkins lampoons his own gravitas to sell cold brew coffee as well as promote the Wrexham soccer club. Sir Anthony is in good form but his 2016 spot for TurboTax was funnier.

Inoffensive but Forgettable

They tried. Nobody got hurt.

Zach Braff and Donald Faison of “Scrubs” join Jason Momoa for a “Flashdance”-inspired musical ode to cutting the cord. Lively, though is this something anyone still needs to be told? (The first T-Mobile spot, with celebrities doing goofy auditions, was more pedestrian.)

A farm grows human couch potatoes who are irrigated with constant streams of their favorite programming. This elaborately staged comic-dystopian scenario is awfully close for comfort.

Randall Park pretends to be John Krasinski in a promo, inspired by a similar gag in “The Office,” for Krasinski’s imaginary-friend film “IF.” Park spars amusingly with Ryan Reynolds but yes, every movie trailer really is too long.

As the movie hero Agent State Farm, Arnold Schwarzenegger sends up his film persona and his actual accent. Schwarzenegger is charming but the joke runs thin faaaast.

Candies joyfully dance before being popped into the mouth of the influencer Addison Rae. Nothing much to it, but watching a big gummy pirouette to “Flashdance … What a Feeling” is just a little bit mesmerizing.

The Clydesdales come out of retirement to pull a wagon of beer through the snow. Artful nostalgia, though who thought “The Weight” was an appropriate anthem for beer delivery?

A sporty young woman runs through lovely mountain landscapes. The clothes won’t make the rest of us look that good.

Young female athletes take pratfalls across a variety of sports in what turns out to be a public service announcement for body positivity. Engaging but not quite coherent.

Had some talent involved but the result sailed wide right.

Booking.com

Tina Fey’s former castmates from “30 Rock” play variations of her to demonstrate that you can be anyone you want on vacation. Funny people trapped in a moldy premise.

The rapper Ice Spice, hanging out at the club with PepsiCo’s Starry, is ambushed by her ex, a generic lemon-lime soda. It’s a blandly cute scenario with a twist of horror.

The fictitious outing of Michael Cera as the mastermind behind the similarly spelled cosmetics line continues in a sendup of dreamy, narcissistic designer-brand commercials. Could have used an exfoliator.

‘N.F.L. Sunday Ticket’

Evoking Carroll Ballard’s wonderful film “Fly Away Home,” a solo pilot follows uniformed Eagles and Seahawks who are migrating away from the football season. Just barely achieves flight.

Michelob Ultra

Lionel Messi kicks a soccer ball around a beach while waiting for his beer; Jason Sudeikis and Dan Marino are among the onlookers. Stylish shrug.

Ken Jeong is unfrozen into a present day full of miracles: fanny packs, drone delivery, Popeyes’ new chicken wings. Studiously neutral about the current state of the world.

Bass Pro Shops

Photogenic middle Americans pilot Bass Tracker fishing boats around picturesque lakes. Straightforward, as if made for local late-night.

Mighty Patch

A woman in a red body suit yells “Pop me!” in a pitch for pimple patches. Memorable for the wrong reasons.

Chris Pratt puts on a walrus mustache and goes viral as the Pringles guy. Cute but does not answer the question, “Chris Pratt?”

Kate McKinnon and a monosyllabic cat make mayonnaise fly off the shelves in a high-concept spot that has something to do with food waste. Would have been better, and $7 million cheaper, at 30 seconds.

Women chant “hot flash” and “not flash” to promote the prescription menopause medication. Lukewarm.

Various celebrities forget things because of the brain space required to remember everything Uber Eats delivers; for example, Jennifer Aniston forgets David Schwimmer. Maybe they could have ordered a less labored premise?

The messaging app tries to sell itself by putting down the features that characterize other social media. Hey, I like likes!

The Flagrant Missteps

Famous people and millions of dollars that together can’t quite amount to mediocrity.

Dan Marino, Terrell Owens and Bruce Smith receive rings for having come close to winning the Super Bowl. Scarlett Johansson’s cameo can’t save it.

CrowdStrike

Part “Westworld,” part “Star Wars”: a cybersecurity tech in a digital Old West town fights off alien invaders with her tablet. Least exciting showdown ever.

The drug company invokes a long history of scientists, including Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, to celebrate its 175-year existence. Visually inventive, but there’s no vaccine against overreach.

A magic bottle grants wishes, including palling around with Peyton Manning and Post Malone. From a beer with reduced calories, a world of diminished expectations.

e.l.f. Cosmetics

Rick Hoffman and Gina Torres of “Suits” and Judy Sheindlin of “Judge Judy” in a courtroom scenario that parodies both shows. Objection: relevance.

Miller Lite

The comedian Rob Riggle jogs in Miller Lite body paint for the brand’s “Running of the Beers” campaign. Doesn’t really go anywhere.

Dan Levy of “Schitt’s Creek” and Heidi Gardner of “Saturday Night Live” run through various frenetic scenarios in a series of ads for the online real estate company. Could have used more Jeff Goldblum.

Being in the presence of a Kawasaki Ridge makes both people and animals grow mullets. Boring in the front, boring in the back.

Mr. T chastises Tony Romo, who called the big game for CBS on Sunday night, for pointing out that there is no “t” in Skechers. Pity is called for.

A living room focus group reacts zanily to news about a new peanut butter candy. Hackneyed high jinks (which is probably the point, but still).

The Worst of the Bunch

It takes real effort to be this bad .

Flipping a coin is replaced by twisting an Oreo, in momentous decisions from the Trojan War to the creation of “The Kardashians.” Crème de la creaky.

Actors, athletes, animated figures, reality stars and the band Creed gather on a snowy mountain to do something that involves Patrick Stewart mildly embarrassing himself. Makes no good argument for the necessity of second-tier streaming services.

The Chinese e-commerce company repeated its “shop like a billionaire” theme from last year, with an animated young woman spinning through a world of merchandise. Positing that everything we see has a price tag may be realistic but should it inspire you to shop?

Fifteen seconds of slightly surreal, “artificial” sports action followed by 15 seconds of “real,” BodyArmor-approved sports action. I’ll have the artificial, please.

Toyota Tacomas tool around the desert while people in the passenger seat make bug eyes and hold the grab handle for dear life. Unlikely to grab you.

The comedian Eric André, ill on a plane, is tended to by an ice cream cone named Dr. Umstick. Apparently there wasn’t a writer on board.

The former Patriots star Rob Gronkowski misses a field goal live, losing money for some bettors and winning it for others. Lame right. (A later, recorded spot offered a tribute to the actor Carl Weathers , who died Feb. 1.)

Mike Hale is a television critic for The Times. He also writes about online video, film and media. More about Mike Hale

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‘American Conspiracy’ sheds little light on Danny Casolaro’s knotty theories

Netflix docuseries attempts to make sense of the late journalist’s investigations and the believers who pressed on with his work but doesn’t succeed with either..

"American Conspiracy" focuses on the investigations of Danny Casolaro, a journalist who was found dead in what authorities called a suicide.

“American Conspiracy” focuses on the investigations of Danny Casolaro, a journalist who was found dead in what authorities called a suicide.

My hope going into the four-part Netflix true crime documentary series “American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders” was that the filmmakers would shed some light on an incredibly tangled and wide-ranging mystery, and maybe even provide some definitive answers — but when we reached the end of the rabbit hole, I felt as if there were more questions than ever before, and the light had dimmed even further.

Alas, that does NOT make for an entertaining and informative viewing experience. “Frustration” is the word that leaps to mind.

Directed by Zachary Treitz and produced by Duplass Brothers Productions with Stardust Frames (“Wild, Wild Country”), the series is an odd mix of solid and intriguing storytelling with a deep dive into the world of conspiracy theorists — but it never finds solid footing. Is it an investigative piece about the death of a journalist who was obsessed with uncovering what he believed to be a world-shattering conspiracy at the highest levels of the U.S. government? Or is it a study of individuals who got so caught up chasing down the alleged conspiracy that it ruined their lives? It’s a little bit of both, but not enough of either.

A four-part docuseries available Wednesday on Netflix.

Let’s go through the looking glass. Episode 1 takes us back some 30+ years, when writer-reporter Danny Casolaro was obsessed with a dispute between the Department of Justice and a tech company called INSLAW, which had developed a criminal tracking software program known as PROMIS. Casolaro had become convinced the government stole the program from INSLAW, had sold it to a number of foreign countries, and was using a secret “trap door” entry point that would allow the United States to spy on adversaries as well as allies.

  • From 2014: TimeLine stages blistering international conspiracy drama “Danny Casolaro”

In August of 1991, he traveled to Martinsburg, West Virginia, to meet with a source he believed would provide key evidence to back up his theory — but days later Casolaro was found dead in his hotel room with his wrists slit multiple times. Authorities ruled it a suicide. Many of Danny’s relatives and associates were convinced it was murder — that Danny had gotten too close to uncovering a vast conspiracy led by eight of the most powerful men in America, a group he dubbed “The Octopus.”

Fast forward years later, and we meet photojournalist Christian Hansen, who has decided to pick up where Casolaro left off and search for the truth behind the so-called Octopus conspiracy. “I realized I should finish the book Danny was writing,” says Hansen, who eventually becomes as consumed with the case as Casolaro was back in the 1990s.

Christian Hansen works on confirming Casolaro's theories — for a time.

Christian Hansen works on confirming Casolaro’s theories — for a time.

We follow director Treitz and Hansen as they cast a wide net and follow leads that take them across the country in pursuit of proof that certain shadowy government agencies were using ill-gotten monies to fund covert operations. Along the way, a number of characters straight out of spy movie are introduced to the mix, including Michael Riconosciuto, a chemistry, laser physics and computer software savant who was Casolaro’s entry into the world of the Octopus; John Philip Nichols, a shadowy operative who at one point took up residence at the Cabazon reservation in Indio, California., where he held weapons demonstrations for a group of nefarious figures, and Philip Arthur Thompson, an FBI informant and hardcore criminal.

  • Chilling Netflix doc ‘Lover, Stalker, Killer’ retraces a love triangle with some weird angles

At one point, a journalist tells of meeting with an alleged operative within the Octopus ranks who shows her a version of the Zapruder film that the operative claimed was the REAL deal, unlike the one everyone else has seen.

There’s no denying that some of the incidents and unsolved crimes chronicled here are of a deeply suspicious nature, and it’s hardly beyond the realm of possibility that the government would be involved in some shady dealings (hello, Iran-Contra affair), but we’re also reminded that Casolaro had allowed himself to be swallowed up by his obsession, to the point where friends and family pleaded with him to talk about anything else, to let it go, to just … stop.

It doesn’t help the series when Christian Hansen, the journalist who picked up the investigation, is actually enlisted to portray Casolaro in the dramatic re-creations of events from the 1990s. It’s a bizarre choice.

Just when it seems as if Hansen is losing touch with reality and will be swallowed in the shadows, of truths, half-truths, myths and allegations, he decides to pull back for the sake of his own sanity. Cheri Seymour, an investigative journalist who spent considerable time pursuing various leads connected to the Octopus Murders theory, made the same choice, saying, “Are you going to go back to your normal, boring life ... and enjoy small things like movies or barbecues, instead of phone calls from the netherworld? Are you going to deprogram yourself, and go back to being a normal person again?”

In the case of Danny Casolaro, it’s clear that even before he met his tragic fate in that hotel room, he had become deeply, disturbingly entangled by the tentacles of the Octopus, whether real or imagined.

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COMMENTS

  1. 'Aftersun' Review: A Father and Time

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  3. Aftersun movie review & film summary (2022)

    Powered by JustWatch In the foreground, an 11-year-old girl lies asleep in bed. On the balcony beyond, seen through the plate-glass door, the girl's father struggles to light a cigarette, hampered by the cast on his right arm.

  4. 'Aftersun' review: This is the best film of the year by a first time

    'Aftersun' review: This is the best film of the year by a first time writer-director - ABC News Last Updated: February 24, 7:21:30PM ET 'Aftersun' review: This is the best film of the year by a first time writer-director "Aftersun" debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and left a lasting impression. By Peter Travers November 4, 2022, 1:15 AM

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    Aftersun review - luminous father-daughter drama starring Paul Mescal , Observer film critic @KermodeMovie Sun 20 Nov 2022 03.00 EST

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    Paul Mescal Cannes film festival Drama films Festivals reviews Reuse this content This effortlessly relaxed debut by Charlotte Wells is a subtle and complex investigation of post-divorce...

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    'Aftersun' Movie Review: A Work of Gorgeous Melancholy The Gorgeous Melancholy of Aftersun By Alison Willmore, a Vulture film critic Alison Willmore is a film critic for New York magazine and...

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    'Aftersun' Review: A Father, a Daughter, and Things Left Unsaid Writer-director Charlotte Wells' elegiac debut feature tells a simple but deceptively devastating tale of a family vacation whose...

  9. 'Aftersun' review: Charlotte Wells' piercing debut film

    Review: 'Aftersun,' one of the year's great debut films, is a piercing father-daughter story Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal in the movie "Aftersun." (A24) By Justin Chang Film Critic Published...

  10. Review

    Review by Michael O'Sullivan October 26, 2022 at 9:21 a.m. EDT Frankie Corio, left, and Paul Mescal in "Aftersun." (A24) 3 min ( 3 stars) The fragile fabric of memory, rendered in both mist and...

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    The film is small, discreet, intimate, a little coy—at times, a bit self-involved and inward-turning. The somewhat self-conscious insistence on the lack of great drama can be tedious at times ...

  12. Aftersun review: a tender, heart-wrenching memory piece

    An unforgettable final 5 minutes Cons An overly languid pace A meandering second act Charlotte Wells' directorial debut, Aftersun, is an open-hearted, tender piece of filmmaking. It crackles and...

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    Aftersun Review. In the late 1990s, 30-year-old single father Calum (Mescal) takes his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Corio) to a Turkish holiday resort for a rare trip together. Years later, an ...

  14. Aftersun film review: An astounding first feature that captures Paul

    Clarisse Loughrey Comments Aftersun UK trailer It's difficult to think of the moments before a heartbreak and not lace them with omens. The mind, too often, moulds memories into prophecies. Colours...

  15. 'Aftersun' review: the best British movie this year

    'Aftersun' review: Paul Mescal hits new heights in the best British movie this year His latest is a moody, melancholic rumination on parenthood and the passage of time By James Mottram 18th...

  16. Writing Inside Out: Charlotte Wells on Aftersun

    Charlotte Wells ' feature debut " Aftersun " is that closer inspection, a devastatingly personal coming-of-age film that follows a father and daughter on holiday in Turkey. Advertisement. Wells' short films have already hinted at her keen ability to unearth significant clarity from emotionally opaque characters: "Laps" sees a woman ...

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    Aftersun Metascore Universal Acclaim Based on 46 Critic Reviews 95 User Score Generally Favorable Based on 186 User Ratings 7.9 My Score Hover and click to give a rating Add My Review Where to Watch Amazon ($3.99) All Watch Options Top Cast View All Paul Mescal Calum Frankie Corio Sophie Celia Rowlson-Hall Adult Sophie Sally Messham Belinda

  18. 'Aftersun' is a masterpiece of memory

    Aftersun is one of the greatest depictions of depression and grief captured on film as it meditates on childhood, parenthood, and memory. Beautifully wrought with cinematography and score that play like a memory on loop.

  19. Aftersun Ending Explained: Exploring The Meaning And What Happened To

    This one hurts. I first saw Aftersun in October 2022 at the Chicago International Film Festival. It's a movie that has left me haunted ever since. The film quietly devastates you. The ending...

  20. Aftersun Movie Review

    By Stefan Pape, Common Sense Media Reviewer age 14+ Nostalgic drama studies depression; smoking, some language. Movie R 2022 102 minutes Add your rating Parents Say: age 11+ 2 reviews Any Iffy Content? Read more Talk with Your Kids About… Read more A Lot or a Little? What you will—and won't—find in this movie. Positive Messages

  21. Aftersun (2022)

    "Aftersun" is a slow build to a climax that left me openly weeping, to the point that I had to sit in the theater for a bit after the end credits were over just to compose myself. It doesn't even seem to be about very much for a while, just a melancholy story about a dad and his pre-teen daughter trying to enjoy a vacation at a run-down resort.

  22. Aftersun

    Plot In the late 1990s, 11-year old Sophie travels to a Turkish holiday resort with her young father Calum, who moved to London after having separated amicably from her mother. Sophie records the holiday on a MiniDV camera, the footage of which is interspersed throughout the film.

  23. 'Aftersun' Streaming Movie Review: Stream It or Skip It?

    Sex and Skin: None. Our Take: Pay close attention and you'll deduce that Aftersun is the adult Sophie's melancholy - deeply melancholy - reminiscence of her time with her father. This is a ...

  24. Aftersun Ending Explained: What Happened To Callum?

    The ending of Aftersun may need to be explained, as it leaves the answer to the main question open to viewer interpretation. Aftersun comes from director Charlotte Wells in her feature debut, which earned an Academy Award nomination in 2023 for Best Actor for Paul Mescal, who stars as Calum. The film follows a young Scottish girl named Sophie (Frankie Corio) who holidays with her single father ...

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