Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Brandon Fraser in PRESSURE. Courtesy of Focus Features.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of the Japanese psychological thriller Exit 8 and the Saudi feminist shocker Unidentified. This is the opening weekend of the 11-day Frameline; here’s my festival preview and my recommended international films – Frameline Goes International.

I also watched the HBO Max documentary Earth, Wind & Fire: To Be Celestial and That’s the Weight of the World. It’s director Questlove’s remarkably well-sourced doc about musician Maurice White and his seminal band Earth Wind & Fire, with archival footage interpreted by surviving band members and White’s widow, and with comments by Barack and Michelle Obama, Stevie Wonder and Lionel Ritchie. I found the story underwhelming, and, although I loved Questlove’s Sly Lives! and his Oscar-winning Summer of Love (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), I can’t recommend this one.

Note: the genial Italian comedy The Last One for the Road is now on VOD.

CURRENT MOVIES

  • Exit 8: nightmare on a loop. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Unidentified: a slow burn whodunit – until the shocker ending, In theaters.
  • Pressure: engrossing study of high-stakes decision-making. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Power Ballad: what (and who) makes a ht song? In theaters.
  • Mirrors No. 3: two enigmas explained. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Is God Is: an extraordinary new story-teller. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • This Tempting Madness: she can’t remember whodunit. In theaters, but hard to find.
  • The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford: remembering when people had attention spans. In theaters.
  • The Last One for the Road: the party never ends. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Marty, Life Is Short: an engaging profile. Netflix.
  • Sirat: gripping, hypnotic and devastating. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango and included with Hulu.
  • The Christophers: twisty, watchable and disposable. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Omaha: in the best interest of the children. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Earth, Wind & Fire: To Be Celestial and That’s the Weight of the World: underwhelming. HBO Max.
  • The Drama: the darkest romantic comedy that I’ve ever seen. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.

ON TV

Robert Redford in THE GREAT WALDO PEPPER

On June 23, Turner Classic Movies airs The Great Waldo Pepper, with Robert Redford playing a daredevil stunt pilot barnstorming across America in the 1920s. It’s a wonderful period piece, brightened by the unregulated, and therefore harrowing, aviation of the time. Redford’s protagonist is disappointed that he missed on WW I aerial combat, and he’s as alienated as any 1970s movie character. Directed and co-written by George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting), It’s a fine film, but here’s why it’s overlooked – Redford made it immediately after Jeremiah Johnson The Way We Were, The Candidate, The Sting and The Great Gatsby, and immediately before Three Days of the Condor and All the President;s Men; so, it kind of has gotten lost in the Redford canon. The fine cast includes Susan Sarandon, Bo Svenson, Margot Kidder, Edward Herrman and Geoffrey Lewis.

UNIDENTIFIED: a slow burn whodunit – until the shocker ending

by
Photo caption: Mila Al Zahrani in UNIDENTIFIED. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

In the Saudi mystery thriller Unidentified, we meet Nawal (Mila Al Zahrani), a recent divorcee, who is restarting her life with an entry-level job scanning files at a Riyadh police station. Addicted to a true crime podcast with makeup tips, Nawal is intrigued – and ultimately obsessed – by the discovery of a high school girl’s body in the desert. The girl has been killed, and nobody knows who she is. Because no one has reported a missing teenager, the cops assume that her family doesn’t want the case publicized, and so they don’t upset people by asking around. The mystery looks headed for the cold case files, but that’s not acceptable to Nawal, who embarks on an unauthorized investigation of her own.

Unidentified is the work of Saudi Arabia’s first female filmmaker, Haifaa Al Mansour, and Nawal is an nontraditional woman who has left her husband, lives by herself, drives a car, and refuses to kowtow to male authority. Nawal blows by male disapproval in a society where arranged marriages remain the norm and honor killings are not uncommon. Her investigation takes her inside the exclusive schools and gated compounds of the rich, to a hookah bar disco and across the endless sand dunes of the Saudi desert. Otherwise as uncovered as possible, Nawal dons a burqa for its advantages in tailing a possible witness.

Unidentified is a slow burn whodunit, until a shocker ending that I sure didn’t anticipate. The final twist is an utter gobsmacker.

Mila Al Zahrani in UNIDENTIFIED. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Al Mansour previously directed Wadjda (2012), the Elle Fanning Mary Shelley (2018) and The Perfect Candidate (2019), also starring Al Zahrani. She’s also directed plenty of TV episodes, including Florida Man, City on Fire, Fear the Walking Dead and Bosch: Legacy. In Nawal, Al Mansour has constructed a character whose intimate familiarity with Saudi culture, much of which she rejects, helps her navigate rings around the police.

Unidentified opens in select theaters this weekend, including in LA at Laemmle’s Town Center 5, Royal, and Glendale.

EXIT 8: nightmare on a loop

by
Photo caption: Kazunari Ninomiya in EXIT 8. Courtesy of NEON.

In the Japanese psychological thriller Exit 8, a workaday Everyman (Kazunari Ninomiya) is unenthusiastically heading to his temp job on Tokyo’s subway. But when he exits the train, he can’t find the way out of the station. As he walks past the gleaming white-tiled walls, he follows the signage toward Exit 8, which never emerges. He’s caught in a nightmarish loop, and he gets increasingly desperate. Will the guy, named “Lost Man”, be trapped forever?

This is a movie about endless repetition, so how does director and co-writer Genki Kawamura keep us engaged for an hour-and-thirty-five minutes? First, Lost Man encounters other solitary, and seemingly random characters in the station corridors The most vivid is the rigidly-postured, pony-tailed Walking Man (Yamato Kochi) – who is he, and why isn’t he panicking about being lost, too? Later, there’s a boy, a high school girl and the apparition of someone the Lost Man knows. To make the Lost Man’s escape even more frantic, he learns he has to deal with a life-changing development outside the subway system.

Although it’s not obvious, Exit 8 is based on a labyrinth game, and there’s a subway information placard with the instructions to keep going as long as there are no anomalies, but to turn back if an anomaly is spotted. Kawamura gets us to follow Lost Man as he essentially plays the game by trying to spot the anomalies

Kazunari Ninomiya in EXIT 8. Courtesy of NEON.

Finally, Kawamura deploys some horror movie techniques. There are jump scares and disturbing images and sounds. While I was watching Exit 8, The Wife was in a different room, but she still got scared by the soundtrack. There is no gory body horror.

96% of the story is in a maze comprised of the same three or four corridors of a subway station, filmed on a set. The rest was shot in three actual Tokyo subway stations.

This is a film unlike any we’ve seen, and it’s pretty entertaining. Exit 8 is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

Frameline Goes International

by
Photo caption: Eya Bouteraa and Marion Barbeau in IN A WHISPER. Courtesy of Frameline and Strand Releasing.

Frameline, the oldest and longest-running LGBTQ+ film festival in the world, celebrates its FIFTIETH annual festival, opening this Wedesday and running through June 27. Frameline50 brings us festival award-winners from Cannes to the Berlinale, with over 140 films from 35 countries.

As in my Frameline coverage last year, I’ve focused on the international cinema in the program. The Frameline programmers have a gift for finding the promising films of new directors, such as last year’s Diciannove. Here are my recommendations, beginning with a Must See from Tunisia.

In the coming-out drama, In a Whisper, Lilia (Eya Bouteraa) is a Paris engineer who returns to her native Tunisia for her uncle’s funeral. Intending to come out to her family, she brings her French girlfriend Alice (Marion Barbeau), who is eager to meet and join Lilia’s family. Lilia plants Alice at a hotel until the time is right. But Lilia finds her family in turmoil, because the uncle has died in suspicious circumstances and the family is desperate to keep it a secret that he was a closeted gay man. Lilia and Alice launch their own investigation of the uncle’s death, that takes them from a gay-friendly nightclub in the city to a remote village. In her third film, writer-director Leyla Bouzid bases the story in her own home city of Sousse, and shows us a Tunisia where a legal ban on homosexuality is enforced by police and prosecutors. The attitudes of Lilia’s own family range from acceptance to unabashed homophobia and are split even within genders and generations. Will Lilia solve the mystery of the uncle’s death? Will she be able to cone out to her family? Can she maintain her relationship with Alice? Bouzid keeps us engrossed, right up to the emotionally powerful ending.

Joan Chen and Charlotte Aubin in MONTREAL, MY BEAUTIFUL. Courtesy of Frameline.

And here are three more Frameline tips:

  • Montreal, My Beautiful: Joan Chen plays Feng Xia, a 53-year-old Chinese immigrant to Montreal who has invested her entire life in meeting other people’s needs at her expense. She and her professionally frustrated husband toil in their convenience market, and neither is finding success or fulfillment in the Canadian Dream, and the husband is increasingly unhappy. Feng Xia decides to explore her own queer sexual yearnings and meets Lisa (Charlotte Aubin) a younger Québécoise lesbian with her own family issues. Two forces – the duties manifest in traditional Chinese cultural values traditional and her own long-repressed need for self expression – are pulling her in opposite directions. As one would expect, Joan Chen’s performance as a woman whose emotions are roiling behind a contained countenance, is exquisite. Impressive second feature for writer-director Xiadan He.
  • La Belle Anee: Filmmaker Angelica Ruffier, at age 36, returns to her hometown to clean out her late father’s effects. She finds her own diary from twenty years before, which recounts her first crush, a profound fascination with her highly professional literature teacher, 23 years older. As Ruffier mulls over that year in her life, the beautiful year of the film’s title, the tone of La Belle Annee morphs from cinéma vérité to dreaminess. Then we’re back to cinéma vérité with a meeting between the two women, which is so emotionally charged that it’s dreamy, too,
  • Black Burns Fast: This queer coming-of-age story is embedded in a social satire. Two Black South African girls are scholarship students at an exclusive boarding school, where they employ humor to cope with the White Mean Girls and the cringe-worthy microaggressions (Your community must be proud of you) of the adults. An impressive new Black student shows up, triggering an infatuation. The tone of Black Burns Fast is sassy and breezy.

You can peruse the program and get passes and tickets at Frameline. Here’s the trailer for In a Whisper:

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Paula Beer and Barbara Auer in MIRRORS NO. 3. Courtesy of 1-2 Special.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of Christian Petzold’s masterful psychodrama Mirrors No. 3, the briskly-paced thriller This Tempting Madness, and the droll British satire The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford.

Note: both of the two best films of 2026 so far, Mirrors No. 3: and Is God Is are now available on VOD. The best movies in theaters right now remain Pressure and Power Ballad.

CURRENT MOVIES

  • Pressure: engrossing study of high-stakes decision-making
  • Power Ballad: what (and who) makes a ht song? In theaters.
  • Mirrors No. 3: two enigmas explained. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Is God Is: an extraordinary new story-teller. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • This Tempting Madness: she can’t remember whodunit. In theaters, but hard to find.
  • The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford: remembering when people had attention spans. In theaters.
  • Marty, Life Is Short: an engaging profile. Netflix.
  • Sirat: gripping, hypnotic and devastating. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango and included with Hulu.
  • The Christophers: twisty, watchable and disposable. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Omaha: in the best interest of the children. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • The Drama: the darkest romantic comedy that I’ve ever seen. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.

ON TV

Robert Mitchum and Ken Takakura in THE YAZUKA

On June 13, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1974 neo-noir The Yakuza, starring Robert Mitchum. The world-weary Mitchum was the greatest male star of classic film noir, and 25 years later was still jaded and just as cool. Here, Mitchum plays a former GI who returns to Japan to help rescue the kidnapped daughter of an army buddy (Brian Keith) who still lives in Japan. Mitchum’s character has a unique relationship with a former Yazuka (Ken Takakura), who can help him navigate the Japanese underworld. Of course, the Japanese had been making Yakuza movies for over a decade, but The Yakuza introduced American audiences to the code of behavior of the Yakuza (severed fingers and all) and other aspects of Japanese culture. There’s a big reveal about two of the characters, and the finale is heavy duty. The Yazuka was directed by Sydney Pollack (Out of Africa, Tootsie, Jeremiah Johnson) from a screenplay adapted by Paul Shrader (Taxi Driver) and Robert Towne (Chinatown). James Shigeta, who I discuss in my post about The Crimson Kimono, also appears.

Keiko Kishi and Robert Mitchum in THE YAZUKA

THE FALL OF SIR DOUGLAS WEATHERFORD: remembering when people had attention spans

by
Photo caption: Peter Mullan (center front) in THE FALL OF SIR DOUGLAS WEATHERFORD. Courtesy of MUBI.

In the droll British satire The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford, Kenneth (Peter Mullan) works for the museum of the local country manor house, giving tours of the grounds. Kenneth is an enthusiastic interpreter of the history he has learned, and uncritically worships the manor’s 18th Century owner, Sir Douglas Weatherford. When an episodic television fantasy series, closely resembling Game of Thrones, arranges to film on the estate’s grounds, the village is deluged with its fans. Kenneth cannot understand why the mobs of fans, many of whom dress in the faux-medieval garb of the series, are obsessed with every detail of the fictional story and are devoted to its celebrity actors. He is further offender that they show no interest in the local history that is his life’s work.

Even Sir Douglas Weatherford’s present-day descendants drop Kenneth’s beloved history programming to capitalize on the fantasy craze. Kenneth’s bewilderment spins into rage, and, when he loses his job, he decompensates. Kenneth, his world turned upside down, plots an epic revenge.

There are essentially two jokes in The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford. The first is that Kenneth sees Sir Douglas Weatherford as a giant of the Age of Enlightenment like Isaac Newton or Edmond Burke. In fact, the achievements of Sir Douglas that Kenneth so reveres are objectively inconsequential. Furthermore, Sir Douglas’ values were exactly on the wrong-side-of-history. He was an historical figure who would get cancelled today, if anyone except Kenneth remembered him.

The second joke is in mocking today’s embrace of celebrity culture and shallow entertainment, and the prevalent lack of embarrassment at historical illiteracy. Kenneth is right about all of this, but it doesn’t surprise anyone else, and Kenneth takes it way too seriously.

Although Kenneth focues on the 1700s (and, as a re-enactor, even sometimes dresses in that way), he is really stuck in the 1980s, before the Internet Age, when there was a common national culture and people still had attention spans.

Here’s what I found funniest – the actual Weatherford descendant, who smugly fancies herself as a progressive and a radical environmentalist, is exactly the entitled awful person that Sir Douglas and his forebears must have been.

Peter Mullan is superb. A great screen actor, he imbues Kenneth with both stunned confusion and simmering fury; Kenneth is almost always outwardly stoic, even as he is raging inside.

I tend to like droll dark comedies, but The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford was such a slow boil that I kept losing interest. The premise is very funny, but even deadpan needs to move more quickly. The pace drained the comic impact of the absurdities.

I screened The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford for SFFILM, where I did not choose to recommend it. It is releasing into theaters this weekend.

THIS TEMPTING MADNESS: she can’t remember whodunit

by
Photo caption: Simone Ashley in THIS TEMPTING MADNESS, Courtesy of Vertical Entertainment.

In the briskly-paced thriller This Tempting Madness, Mia (Simone Ashley) emerges from a coma, and can’t remember the fall that caused her critical injuries. She learns that her husband has been jailed for trying to kill her, but she can’t accept that explanation. She embarks on an investigation to find out what really happened, and begins to unspool the mystery, uncovering ever darker discoveries.

Is she being gaslighted? Does her family have a grudge? And what is she herself capable of? There are plenty of surprises in the story.

Simone Ashley (Bridgerton) is believable as Mia yo-yos between theories of what has occurred, and she has a magnetic presence onscreen.

This is the first feature for director Jennifer E. Montgomery, who co-wrote the screenplay with her husband Andrew M. Davis. Both the hoppin’ pace of the movie and the twisty screenplay are strong work,

This Tempting Madness is a neo-noir, and there is so much amnesia in classic film noir that it constitutes the sub-genre of Amnesia Noir – High Wall, Somewhere in the Night, Crack-Up, Spellbound, Deadline at Dawn, The Snake Pit, The Clay Pigeon, The Long Wait and many more. But the screenplay for This Tempting Madness was inspired (surprisingly) by a true story.

I screened This Tempting Madness for the 2026 SLO Film Fest, where I highlighted it in my best of fest post, . This Tempting Madness opens June 12, including at some Laemmle theaters in LA.

MIRRORS NO. 3: two enigmas explained

by
Photo caption: Paula Beer and Barbara Auer in MIRRORS NO. 3. Courtesy of 1-2 Special.

As Christian Petzold’s intimate psychodrama Mirrors No. 3, opens, we see Laura (Paula Beer) on a river overpass, and she looks so despondent that we wonder if she will jump to her death. But Laura, who is studying piano at university in Berlin, wanders off lethargically to meet her boyfriend for a couples day trip she would rather skip. Scattered and periodically catatonic, she is clearly suffering from clinical depression, but the boyfriend is too self absorbed to notice. When she cuts the trip short, he drives off the road; he is killed, but Laura suffers very minor injuries.

The accident happens near a house isolated in the countryside, and the middle-aged resident Batty (Barbara Auer) helps Laura to her house for medical treatment. Laura asks if she can stay instead of going to the hospital, and Betty kindly agrees, and makes her comfortable in an upstairs bedroom.

Betty goes out of her way to dote on Laura as she recuperates. The two quickly bond, and neither is in a hurry for Laura to move on. Betty seems to adopt Laura a little too eagerly than decency and generosity would require, which is an indication that something odd may be going on. When Betty has Laura cook dinner for Betty’s brusque husband Richard (Matthias Brandt) and her lumbering, uncommunicative son Max (Enno Trebs), increasing weirdness is evident.

Betty’s husband and son don’t live with her. Passersby occasionally stop and gawk at the house. Betty sometimes calls Laura by another name. Laura doesn’t show any interest in returning to her Berlin apartment and resuming her studies.

Barbara Auer and Paula Beer in MIRRORS NO. 3. Courtesy of 1-2 Special.

The audience is wondering what is going on with Betty’s family, but Laura isn’t – she’s found an emotional refuge. As the clues accumulate, we can guess the family’s back-story, but Laura doesn’t seek out the truth until it is blurted out, in a scene that becomes explosive.

Among cinema’s current auteurs, Petzold is unsurpassed in ending a movie and this one is perfect.

Along with his genius in observing human behavior and constructing psychodramas, Petzold is a master of movie sound. This is as far from a movie epic as you can get, but all his gifts are on display here.

Barbara Auer in MIRRORS NO. 3. Courtesy of 1-2 Special.

This is a screenplay that works because of the exquisitely authentic and nuanced performances odf Paula Beer and Barbara Auer. All four actors have worked with Petzold before, and Beer is his current muse. In his previous film, Afire, three of them play starkly different roles: Trebs as a self-loathing intellectual brat, Brandt as his gregarious but very frank publisher and Beer is the playful sexpot who has been double-booked at his vacation rental.

The movie shares its European title, Miroires No. 3, with a Ravel piece for piano that is played in the film.

Mirrors No. 3 may not reach the heights of Petzold’s Phoenix or Afire, but it’s one of the best films of 2026 so far. Mirrors No. 3 is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Andrew Scott (center foreground) in PRESSURE. Courtesy of Focus Features.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of the engrossing study of high-stakes decision-making Pressure and the delightful dramedy Power Ballad. I also previewed the 50th Frameline film festival, which open in a week or so.

This week I watched Marty, Life Is Short on Netflix and found it engaging. Although it’s feature length and directed by noted documentarian Morgan Neville, I’m not publishing a separate review because it’s more of a celebrity profile than a biodoc. Martin Short is a genius of sketch comedy, and his upbringing, personal attitude and career path are interesting, with the strongest element being his longtime marriage. We get to see his iconic Jiminy Glick and Ed Grimley characters and Short hosting family get-togethers with his best friends Eugene Levy and Steve Martin. Again, it’s a good watch.

CURRENT MOVIES

  • Pressure: engrossing study of high-stakes decision-making
  • Power Ballad: what (and who) makes a ht song? In theaters.
  • Marty, Life Is Short: an engaging profile. Netflix.
  • Sirat: gripping, hypnotic and devastating. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango and included with Hulu.
  • The Christophers: twisty, watchable and disposable. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Omaha: in the best interest of the children. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • The Drama: the darkest romantic comedy that I’ve ever seen. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • Heads or Tails?: a spaghetti western goes off the rails. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
  • A Great Awakening: good religion and bad history. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
Nick Jonas and Paul Rudd in POWER BALLAD. Courtesy of Lionsgate

PRESSURE: a study in high-stakes decision-making

by
Photo caption: Brendan Fraser and Andrew Scott in PRESSURE. Credit: Alex Bailey/Focus Features/STUDIOCANAL © 2026 All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Focus Features.

The superb historical drama Pressure is a study in high-stakes decision-making. Few human endeavors had higher stakes than the Allied invasion of Europe, upon which hinged millions of lives, the liberation of formerly free nations, and the defeat of the fascist and racist Nazi regime (whose worst crimes were yet to be publicized). And, after all the planning and investment in resources, the success of that invasion came down to secrecy and a weather report, made by human beings.

History’s most massive amphibious invasion would be logistically difficult and cost many lives, no matter how well things went. But it would certainly generate horrendous casualties and possibly even fail, if the Allies lost the element of surprise. The allies had gone to extraordinary lengths to mislead the Germans about the location of the D-Day landings. This spiderweb of secrecy, deception and misdirection couldn’t be maintained forever, and the clock was ticking.

While the Allies needed to launch D-Day as soon as possible, they also needed to wait for the right conditions. The landing required high tides and low-enough waves for landing craft, a moon-lit night for the airborne forces, along with good visibility and a high ceiling for air support. Missing the window for the moon and tides, would mean a two-week delay – with the threat of the secrecy unraveling.

Brandon Fraser in PRESSURE. Courtesy of Focus Features.

One man held the responsibility for the critical decision of when to deploy – General Dwight D, Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser). Eisenhower’s decision would pivot on the weather forecast by the British meteorologist British Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott). Pressure is the harrowing moment-by-moment story of the crushing weight of this decision.

This is a true story, and Pressure is remarkably historically accurate. Some details are streamlined, but the truth of what happened is maintained. I fact-checked the two elements in the story that I wasn’t familiar with, and they turned out to be factual. As is the case with the best history, the historical events are humanized.

Director Anthony Maras co-wrote the screenplay with David Haig, based on Haig’s play. In his second feature, director Maras distills a complex story and maintains a blistering pace – only one-hour-and-forty minutes.

Brendan Fraser accurately captures the cauldron that Ike operates in, always burdened by the most immense responsibility, while being sniped at and undermined by rivals. Fraser’s Ike maintains control – and the appearance of control – while constantly second- and third-guessing himself.

Andrew Scott in PRESSURE. Courtesy of Focus Features.

Likewise, Andrew Scott is excellent as the apparently humorless Stagg, who kept his eye on the science despite overwhelming pressure to come ip with a more desirable answer. There were no weather satellites in 1944, and Stagg had to get a handle on the future volatile weather by manually tracking real-time reports from various weather stations in the North Atlantic. Scientists like Stagg don;t give final reports with 100% certainty, and Eisenhower had to act decisively despite that. (I had the experience of helping to make important public health decisions during the COVID pandemic; political and military leaders are comfortable making decisions based on, say, 75% certainty, while doctors and scientists often refuse to be definitive unless they have 100% proof.)

Despite overwhelming pressure to do otherwise, Stagg had the balls to stand firm with his scientifically-informed forecast, no matter how unpopular. (I related to Stagg, having, many times in my own real-life career, told very powerful people what they did not want to hear, even in the presence of pandering sycophants.)

Kerry Condon is excellent as Kay Summersby, Ike’s driver and personal assistant, and essentially his work wife. Condon just keeps showing up in movies with yet another distinctive performance (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Ray Donovan, Better Call Saul, The Banshees of Inisherin, Train Dreams). This time she brings a historical character to life, and, once again, she’s one of the best elements of a movie.

Similarly, Damian Lewis nails the supreme confidence and insufferable narcissism of Field Marshal Bernard “Monty” Montgomery. Montgomery was incapable of being a team player, and his arrogance and disloyalty is depicted here.

I saw Pressure with The Wife, who is generally not a fan of war movies, and she was absorbed in impressed by the film. Pressure is now in theaters.