Roger Ebert

Max (Ruaridh Mollica) is like many young writers I met in my 20s. Ambitious, smart, rather dashing when talking about an art he’s passionate about, which in his case, is literature and the work of enfant terrible writer Bret Easton Ellis. Max is a touch cocky for a freelancer, he’s known to accidentally alienate friends and colleagues with harsh words, and thinks he knows better than his editors. However, unlike most reasonable writers, he’ll stop at nothing to find inspiration, even if it puts him in danger. 

On his quest for the bestselling debut novel, Max takes on the persona and name of Sebastian – which also gives this movie its title – to go undercover as a sex worker in search of stories to tell. He learns the new digital sex work landscape, meets clients of all kinds, and flits from one’s bed to another’s couch, typing away about the encounters once he’s back in the safety of his computer. But his muse comes with the very real dangers of sexual assault and abuse, especially if any of his clients were to learn the truth about why Sebastian is really doing in their home. At the same time, the 25-year-old writer is facing off against the whims of the publishing industry, requests to be more active on social media, and morphing himself into becoming a celebrated author – with the pressure that his work will live up to expectations. 

Written and directed by Mikko Mäkelä, “Sebastian” plays like a cautionary tale about toxic ambition. From the start, our main character Max is vocal about his goals, with the hunger to move up shining in his eyes, even as he’s missing deadlines to chase flashier assignments. It’s almost unpleasant to watch how desperately he wants to climb the ladder before the years catch up to him. At one point, he compares himself to his hero and sadly notes how he’s already older than when Bret Easton Ellis was when he first arrived on the literary scene. As both Max and Sebastian, Ruaridh Mollica delivers a nuanced performance, navigating the young writer’s fears and confidence with equal measure. He plays the character sympathetically even when he’s at his most petulant or manipulative. Yet Mollica’s scenes with Jonathan Hyde, who plays one of Max’s older clients seeking companionship, are beautifully tender – like an antidote to the movie’s harsher scenes. 

As with his difficult hero, Mäkelä can be also tough to figure out. In trying to run away from the trappings of a tragic queer story, which Max even points out in a tense meeting with his publisher, the movie ends up running right into some of its own tropes, especially in the sour moments of Max’s escapades. Our protagonist is shown to be rather isolated, very much in his own head, and keeping others – as well as the audience – at bay. When he’s left alone, he is at his most vulnerable, sometimes crying but we’re not entirely sure why – does he regret following his yearning for success? Does he regret the emotional toll of sex work? It’s also not quite clear what drove Max to picking up sex work for the sake of his book, although its encroachment into his life and free time plays out pretty organically with his ambitious personality. Mäkelä and his cinematographer Iikka Salminen draw on a dark color palette shaped by the fluorescent lighting of newer buildings and hotels, and the occasional venture into the warmth of a client’s home and the neon refuge of clubs. It’s as if the room itself will set the tone for the encounter-to-come, and perhaps it’s why when something goes awry, there’s a sense of betrayal, the destruction of safety in the harsh light of a reality check. 

Mäkelä’s follow-up to his feature debut “A Moment in the Reeds” is a complex portrait of an artist as a young man. Drawn into Max’s story by Mollica’s passionate performance, “Sebastian” follows the highs and lows of chasing fame, surviving the sting of rejection, and navigating the threat of being found out for using intimate hookups for public consumption in the pages of a would-be bestseller. In close-ups of Max, Mäkelä shows his audience the fleeting moments of unease, desire, pain, and lust in these encounters. There is so much left unsaid in the tense meeting of strangers who size each other up then give in to each other’s arms. Yet for all its gloomy aesthetic, there is something life-affirming about the kindness of a stranger who wants to read your work and the power that comes with owning one’s own words and stories. 

As someone who venerates Harold and the Purple Crayon, Crockett Johnson’s 1955 hymn to the power of imagination (I gift every love one’s new baby with a copy of the book with a purple crayon taped inside),  the idea of a film adaptation has always filled me with a certain sense of trepidation. This is due to the somewhat uneven track record of past attempts to bring the great works of children’s literature to the screen. Sure, a film like Spike Jonze’s take on Maurice Sendak’s beloved “Where the Wild Things Are” captured the delicate charms of its source material in ways that enchanted viewers both young and old. But for every one of those, there’s something like that monstrous live-action version of “The Cat in the Hat,” a movie just as bad as the original Dr. Seuss book was good.

Now “Harold and the Purple Crayon” has arrived in theaters in all its live-action glory. It starts on a surprisingly engaging note: a 2-D animated sequence that recaps Harold’s adventures in the book. The sequence finds a decent approximation of the book’s famous visual style and features narration by Alfred Molina. Unfortunately, that sequence lasts about 90-odd seconds, and the real story kicks in after that. Everything goes straight to ultra-garish Hell via a narrative that feels more like a failed “Jumanji” knockoff than anything that the late Johnson’s work could have possibly inspired. Here is a film that pays lip service to the importance of creativity without ever displaying a demonstrable shred of it during its seemingly interminable run time.

After that recap of the original story, we see a now-grown Harold (Zachary Levi) still cavorting through his cartoon world along with friends Moose (Lil Rel Howery) and Porcupine (Tanya Reynolds) and the ever-present voice of the narrator. Then, one day, the narrator’s voice disappears, and Harold decides to use his all-powerful crayon to draw a portal to our world so that the three of them can try to track him down. Alas, the real world proves to be odd and confusing for them, so luckily, Harold and Moose (now in human form, though he occasionally switches back for no apparent reason) end up running into Terri (Zooey Deschanel) and Melvin (Benjamin Bottani), a mother and middle school-aged son who are still in the dumps since the death of Mel’s dad. For reasons that defy explanation, she allows them to stay the night at her house, where Harold finds Mel to be a kindred spirit — he has an unseen imaginary pet that is equal parts eagle, lion, and alligator — and lets him in on the magical crayon. (Porcupine, for the record, has gotten separated from the others and is off wreaking benign havoc on her own.)

While Terri is off at her job at Ollie’s — an institution shown far more reverence here than Johnson’s book — Mel ends up helping Harold and Moose to find the narrator, leading to any number of wacky slapstick scenes in which they fly through the air in a plane or cause mayhem at the store. They also enlist the aid of Gary (Jermaine Clement), a creepy librarian with the hots for Terri, who is also the author of an unpublishable fantasy novel called “The Glaive of Gagaroh” (allowing the film also to alienate fans of “Krull” to boot). Eventually, Gary reveals to Harold that he is, in fact, a character from a book, which sends Harold, Moose, and Mel off on a trip to Crockett Johnson’s house to finally see him. Although Google helpfully reveals the address, it inexplicably fails to mention the key reason why they could have skipped that trip. Meanwhile, Gary, having seen the crayon’s power first-hand, schemes to acquire it for himself and bring the universe of his book to life. 

Trying to transform Crockett’s 64-page book into a feature-length film would always be a dubious proposition. But even the most pessimistic of minds could have imagined something as dire as this. For starters, Harold himself has been transformed into one of the most annoying screen characters in recent memory thanks to the appallingly clumsy screenplay by David Guion and Michael Handelman that tries to make him into an irrepressible free spirit along the lines of Buddy in “Elf.” Still, he only manages to make him obnoxious beyond belief. Things aren’t helped much by Levi’s awful performance, which tries for winsome adorableness throughout but which comes across as if a.) Levi had been struck in the head with a board before every take, and b.) that director Carlos Saldanha did enough takes to rival Kubrick before he (and presumably only he) was satisfied. Beyond that, the storyline is choppy, the visuals are utterly blah, the big set-pieces are the usual CGI-happy dreck, the sentimental moments are woefully unearned, and the notion of a film ostensibly celebrating children’s literature utilizing a librarian as the bad guy is infuriating.

Before you send me comments scolding me for not looking at this film through the eyes of a child, based on the available evidence, no one involved with “Harold and the Purple Crayon” had any real interest in engaging younger viewers on any level. Sadly, exploiting the good name of a familiar piece of IP in the hope of scoring a few bucks from families that have already seen “Inside Out 2” and “Despicable Me 4” and are looking for something else to watch seems to have been of more importance to actually living up to the legacy of said IP.

Ultimately, “Harold and the Purple Crayon” is the product of people working under the cynical belief that kids will just accept anything foisted upon them in the name of “family entertainment” as long as it is noisy and colorful. If you genuinely care for your kids, you will give this movie a wide berth and use the ticket money to buy and read Crockett’s original book and its follow-ups. Trust me, they’ll thank you for it one day.

Pop music really can change your life. That’s part of the setup of M. Night Shyamalan’s near-miss of a thriller “Trap,” a movie that feels less like the Night Brand than a lot of his twisty ventures, a pared-down version of what he does that needed a round or two more of fleshing out its best ideas and amplifying its visual language. Night is at his best when he has a team of craftspeople to help elevate his best ideas in films like “The Sixth Sense,” “Old” (a movie that has grown on me), and “The Village,” but “Trap” too often lacks the craftsmanship it needs to crackle with energy and tension. Despite these missteps, Josh Hartnett almost makes “Trap” worth seeing, imbuing his character with a playfulness that can be captivating. It’s a shame his great work sometimes feels trapped in a movie that doesn’t know what to do with it.

The majority of “Trap” unfolds at a place that can be truly terrifying for a parent forced to spend hundreds of dollars on the latest pop superstar. In this case, it’s Lady Raven, played by Night’s daughter Saleka Shyamalan, a pop star shaped in the image of someone like Taylor Swift – one of those performances wherein the average age in the crowd is in the teens, and everyone knows all the words. Saleka wrote and performed most of the music, and speaking bluntly, there’s a bit too much of it, especially because it’s not quite as catchy as T. Swift.

Attending this Lady Raven show in Philly is an average guy named Cooper (Hartnett) and his teen daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue). Shortly after their arrival, and with minimal character development, Cooper notices a strong police presence at the venue, including heavily armed men at all the doors. Through a brief act of politeness, he earns the trust of a vendor (Jonathan Langdon) who lets him on a secret – the cops and feds are there because they know that a notorious serial killer named The Butcher is in the building. Cooper is that man.

Their plan to stop every man who leaves the building and basically put them in front of ace profiler Dr. Grant (a woefully miscast Hayley Mills, likely here just because she’s famous for a different “Trap” movie and Night thought that was funny) to determine guilt makes absolutely no sense. Still, people buy a ticket for a movie like “Trap” knowing the premise, and Shyamalan’s film gets by on its set-up for a while, largely because it allows Hartnett to shine through the opening act. Hartnett makes numerous smart, subtle choices that convey Cooper’s precise personality, particularly in a sly smile that reveals how much this sociopath enjoys the unexpected challenge.

Sadly, Shyamalan’s script doesn’t give Hartnett’s performance the stage it deserves. Cooper should be a cagey genius, someone who has kept his identity secret from everyone in his life and only has to do so for a bit longer to escape capture again. Instead of sketching Cooper as the smartest person in the room, Shyamalan almost comically makes him into the luckiest. Cooper keeps narrowly averting exposure through what can only be called movie magic. And when Shyamalan’s concept is forced to leave the arena, it comes apart with a series of scenes that make increasingly little sense. There are numerous times when the answer to “Why would someone do that in that situation?” can only be “Because of the movie.”

There’s an undeniably unique energy at a concert for a major pop star, a place where people scream (usually with glee), the lighting can be unpredictable, and someone in the crowd may not be all they appear to be. It’s a clever setting for a thriller, and where most of “Trap” unfolds, but Shyamalan doesn’t do enough with the geography of the space. A better film conveys how even a massive arena can feel claustrophobic when thousands of people surround you. But the cinematography by ace director of photography Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (“Challengers”) is oddly captivated by the large screens over the stage instead of the actual performer. This approach is surely to keep us more trapped in Cooper’s POV, but it ends up making the actual Lady Raven performance feel lackluster when we watch most of it on a screen on a screen. The editing by Noemi Katharina Preiswerk (who also cut Night’s “A Knock at the Cabin”) also lacks the hum that “Trap” really needed to work.

Ultimately, there’s something to be said for a man who can get a movie like “Trap” made in today’s market. It’s a weird, unpredictable movie not based on a pre-existing IP, and we are in an era where there are depressingly few original ideas in blockbuster filmmaking. For that alone – and the Joshaissance clearly unfolding with “Oppenheimer” and now this – it’s tempting to give “Trap” a pass. It’s just too bad that it ultimately feels like the word people so often throw at pop music confections: disposable.

Earlier this year a movie was released and forgotten in such quick succession there’s a strong chance you didn’t know it existed. That’s fine, I almost missed it myself, except for one thing: I was looking for it. Why? It was directed by the great and lively Kim Jee-woon, the least celebrated of the big three South Korean genre directors who became popular midnight movie fixtures in America in the ’00s. His movies have been released to increasingly little fanfare, and to my knowledge, his TV series “Dr. Brain” went completely unacknowledged by Western critics (tragically, its star Lee Sun-Kyun, also of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite and Hong Sang-soo’s Oki’s Movie, passed away last year). 

His movies “The Foul King,” “A Tale of Two Sisters,” “A Bittersweet Life,” and “I Saw the Devil” put him on the map. He’s yet to produce anything since that has had the same reputation to the point where his most personal film, the film set comedy “Cobweb,” vanished without a trace. I like Kim’s movies now (especially his 2016 spy yarn “Age of Shadows”) better than ever, and here’s why, and why I still look forward to his every new movie, with a quick sojourn into the history of South Korean cinema that affected him and his peers. 

There’s never a time when I don’t feel like watching the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies, the first of which was released August 1, 2014. That’s ten years ago this week. Time flies when a film is a classic. This one is. So are the sequels, even though there are vestigial plot elements from the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe in all three that you have to decide to ignore or look beyond when re-watching, like one of the major characters (Gamora) getting replaced by a “variant” of herself in “Guardians of the Galaxy 3” because she’d died in another movie set elsewhere in the same universe. 

It’s a testament to the imagination and tonal control of writer-director James Gunn that impediments that might’ve stopped another trilogy in its tracks become mere speed bumps. Gunn’s as much of a pop music obsessive as a comics obsessive—the films are filled with music video-like montages and action set pieces built around specific tunes. So it makes sense to think of the main characters as a band with an evolving lineup and the three movies as albums with no bad songs on them. There’s enough individual flavor to stand the test of time, even though the trends and fads that originally brought them into existence have faded. 

You could add Gunn’s name to a list of distinctive directors who should’ve made a musical by now, given their creative tendencies, but he already has three times (five if you count “The Suicide Squad” and its spinoff, the Max series “Peacemaker”). The musicality of the movies extends beyond the music-driven sequences. The banter between the characters has a pleasing, teasing rhythm, with delayed punchlines going off at unexpected moments. In each movie, the momentum and goodwill generated by the performances and the filmmaking means that the entire enterprise seems to walk with a spring in its step. Or maybe I should’ve said “power-walk,” which is what Gunn loves to have the Guardians do right before a big action sequence, like band members putting their battle faces on as they move from the wings to the stage and try to forget their egos and become part of a hive-mind.

It’s almost a shame that the “Guardians of the Galaxy” trilogy was ever officially part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The characters don’t pop in the “Avengers”-branded “Endgame“—in the same way that they do in their own features. And of all the films released under that corporate banner—34 and counting—they’re the three that come closest to having their own identity apart from the Marvel-Disney brand.

They have a slight edge that belies their PG-13 rating, and it’s carried by Gunn’s strong empathy for, and personal identification with, his core characters, all of whom are to some degree the sum total of their coping mechanisms after having suffered unimaginable trauma or loss, whether it’s Peter Quill, aka “Star-Lord” (Chris Pratt), initially entering the narrative as a bumbling Han Solo-esque “I work alone” type because, as a child, he was abducted by Ravagers immediately following his mom’s death from cancer; or Rocket (Bradley Cooper plus visual FX artists) constructing a nihilistic wiseass personality to submerge his pain and rage at having been manufactured in a lab; or Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) and her “sister” Nebula (Karen Gillan) repeatedly trying to kill each other as a result of having their minds twisted by their evil patriarch; or the Ravager leader Yondu (Michael Rooker), an abductee himself, transforming his own negative experiences into life lessons by adopting Peter instead of letting him be eaten, and telling himself he did it because Peter was a small boy who could fit into spaces where an adult smuggler couldn’t. (Groot, in comparison, is a bit of a special case: a pure innocent, really—the giant child they all look out for and who intuitively understands the rest of them.) 

Quill defines them all as “losers” at one point in the story. The description is not as self-flagellating as it initially might seem. He’s reclaiming the word by redefining a loser not as somebody who cannot or will not “win” but as somebody who’s lost something precious but keeps going anyway.

No other character in the MCU franchise is as believably and fully human as the mostly non-human ensemble assembled by Gunn in the “Guardians” films. Like the rest of us, they do things for reasons they don’t understand. And they usually strain to justify their actions later, in terms that often don’t make rational sense, or try to lie or cover up their actual reasons for doing things, often as a way of saving face in front of a group that treats locker-room style verbal jousting as a bonding mechanism. Gunn also has a rare gift for writing lyrically deluded comic characters who become funnier and funnier the more they dig in their heels defensively when another character successfully defines them, as when Rocket warns that the strongman Drax (Dave Bautista) cannot understand figurative language because his people are “completely literal…metaphors go over his head,” and Drax huffs, “Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it.”

Gunn was the beneficiary of a lot of lucky breaks in making the “Guardians” movies, the first one especially. A big one was Marvel supervising producer Kevin Feige’s willingness to say yes to the most off-brand of MCU movie adaptations. If Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, and Captain America were the comic book equivalent of a band’s greatest hits, “Guardians” was what a pre-Internet DJ would call a “deep cut.” But this proved to be a great creative advantage because there weren’t legions of fans champing at the bit to hyper-critique every aspect, and that freed Gunn to make, well, a James Gunn superhero movie. (That’s something the general audience had no sense of at that point unless they’d seen Gunn’s R-rated “Super,” a perverse and subversive vigilante satire starring Rainn Wilson of “The Office” that owes more to “Taxi Driver” than “The Punisher.”) 

Another advantage was timing. Disney, via its recent acquisition of LucasFilm, was generating a new trilogy of “Star Wars” movies around the same time the MCU entered its cultural dominance phase and Gunn was in production on the first “Guardians.” But the first entry in Gunn’s trilogy came out almost a year-and-a-half before the first new “SW” film in ten years, J.J. Abrams’ “The Force Awakens,” which meant that the brand new and shiny, according-to-Hoyle “SW” film got compared (sometimes unfavorably) to “Guardians” rather than the other way around. The first movie was not only a huge enough hit to not seem like an underdog in relation to LucasFilm products, it was more cohesive and original. All in all, it got closer to capturing the appeal of the original, medium-redefining 1977 “Star Wars” than “Force Awakens” because of its total commitment to the “band of random losers saves the cosmos” storyline. (The “Star Wars” sequels ultimately abandoned the democratic spirit they tried to impart in “Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi” by reverting in “The Rise of Skywalker” and tying things back to the same damn royal family the storytellers had supposedly been trying to escape the shadow of.)

Taika Waititi got a lot of acclaim for being one of the few MCU directors to successfully import his own distinctive voice into the franchise with “Thor Ragnarok.” Still, the blend of intra-family squabbling, arena rock needle-drops, and goofy-grandiose action showcased in that one had been done first by Gunn and arguably with more consistency and control. 

The “Guardians” movies are the kinds of films that some viewers bond with so intensely that they feel protective of them, as if they’re friends or family members rather than mass-produced entertainments. That’s because all of the characters, no matter how preposterous in conception, come across as real people, as inconsistent and emotionally fragile as anybody walking around on the street where you live, and all the more moving because of it.

While many have already reviewed the incredibly successful “Shadow of the Erdtree,” the multi-hour DLC for the smash hit 2022 game “Elden Ring,” I’ve been wandering the Lands Between and the Land of Shadow, obsessively trying to take in everything this ambitious venture has to offer before filing. To be honest, while I had put many dozens of hours into “Elden Ring” a couple years ago, I had in no way explored everything that game had to offer. So the launch of “Erdtree” allowed me not only to complete the main game, but explore so much more of it than I had before launching into this remarkable expansion (like 100+ hours more). For years, DLC often felt like deleted scenes from a movie, something that hit the cutting room floor in the first place for a reason. But “Shadow of the Erdtree” is much more than that, a lengthy expansion of the world of “Elden Ring” that builds on the main game while presenting fully-realized new settings, enemies, and even mechanics.

Rather than just add another chapter to the story of “Elden Ring,” the developers of From Software built “Shadow of the Erdtree” out of the game’s rich lore. It’s a massive game that always feels like it’s barely scratching the surface of its storytelling, and fans have sought to unpack the back stories and trauma of its many NPCs through hundreds of websites. The main game’s ending can radically differ depending on interactions with these non-playable characters (and if you complete what essentially amounts to side quests), and that questline structure continues in the expansion. So it makes sense that “Erdtree” would branch off characters already met in the main game while also reshaping a few of the ones we already thought we knew.

Most people know by now that, to enter the DLC, a player needs to have defeated two optional bosses in Radahn and Mohg before entering the Land of Shadow, a place with new challenges to overcome and secrets to uncover. Much of the success of “Elden Ring” has been chalked up to its open-world aesthetic, one that encourages players to explore instead of following a linear path through an RPG story. The world of “Shadow of the Erdtree” doesn’t just maintain this asset but feels even more encouraging of it. There are really only three bosses in the DLC that need to be vanquished to complete its story, but there are dozens more worth fighting and entire massive regions that would go undiscovered if someone tried to speed through it. One of the many things I love about this game is that sense of player freedom. Instead of other Soulslike games wherein a challenging boss merely stood in the player’s way until it was defeated, “Elden Ring” wants people to go find another thing to do, returning when they’re strong enough to win the battle.

On that note, since most people will be playing “Shadow of the Erdtree” at a high player level that makes traditional farming for runes to upgrade difficult – one needs more and more to do so with each level – the developers came up with a new upgrade system called Scadutree Blessings and Revered Spirit Ashes. The former makes you stronger, and the latter does the same for your beloved Spirit Ashes, but both enhancements only work in the Land of Shadow. It changes your strategy: you can’t just grind for what will make you stronger. You have to find it. This mechanic feeds into the aforementioned encouragement of exploration, although I think it works better for a late-game DLC than a full game.

What’s most remarkable about “Shadow of the Erdtree” is an element that made the proper game stand out, too: the world in which it unfolds. Not merely being content to replicate regions from “Elden Ring,” the developers have built out a whole new setting, opening with a field of tombstones in the Gravesite Plain that’s instantly visually captivating. From the deep blues of the Cerulean Coast to the haunted mansion aesthetic of the Specimen Storehouse, the world of “Shadow of the Erdtree” feels unpredictably alive (and deadly). It also feels darker and more foreboding than the main game, filled with undead, aflame creatures that want you to suffer. 

It could be because it’s one of my favorite games of all time, but the nightmare-fuel enemies in this expansion also feel more like “Bloodborne” than any Soulslike since its release. From the swamps of practically unkillable specters that drive you mad to the ruins of massive fingers jutting from the earth, “Shadow of the Erdtree” sometimes feels like a cross between H.P. Lovecraft and J.R.R. Tolkien, in all the awesome ways that implies.

As of this writing, I am at the final boss of “Shadow of the Erdtree,” after struggling to climb the rise of Enir-Ilim in ways that no Soulslike has ever given me. More than the full game “Elden Ring,” sections of this DLC feel almost too unpredictably punishing, even though I know there’s no such thing for hardcore fans. (I raced through some bosses considered impossible and then struggled with the non-boss enemies that followed in confusing ways, creating some baffling between-boss difficulty spikes.) There are enemies in this game, like the lightning-wielding warriors of Enir-Ilim that almost drove me insane, that would be bosses in many other titles. It’s a game constantly asking you to reconsider your strategy, and the DLC encourages you to try out its new weapons and gear; even though I was pretty attached to the melee build that I’ve fully upgraded through the main game.

It’s easy to say that “Shadow of the Erdtree” works because it follows my grandpa’s favorite saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But that undersells what this game – and at 40 hours, it really is more of a game than an expansion – does well, not just content to replicate what worked but to shift it in a new and fresh way. The developers have said there won’t be any more DLC for “Elden Ring.” They said the same for “Dark Souls 3” and then released a second expansion, for the record, so don’t give up hope. If that happens here, I’ll be ready on day one. But if it doesn’t, “Shadow of the Erdtree” reminds one how much influence this game will have on the team at From Software and the competitors who seek to replicate its success. Even if many will falter, I feel like we’ll look back on “Elden Ring” and “Shadow of the Erdtree” as titles that unleashed a creative ripple through the industry. At least until “Elden Ring 2.”

The Publisher provided a review copy of this title.

Every day, people from all over the world come to Washington, DC, to look at the historic sights. As the documentary “War Game” begins, we see a man looking through his windshield at the Capitol building and then taking pictures of the Washington Monument. He’s not a tourist sharing local icons with his friends on Instagram; he calmly talks to a passenger in his car about wanting US troops to “gun down patriotic Americans” and starting a fire at the Pentagon. It is chilling. And then, when we find out who he really is and what he’s really planning, it gets downright terrifying.

On January 6, 2021, the world watched as Trump supporters broke into the Capitol building to try to stop the certification of the election of Joe Biden. While some still argue they were just “tourists,” the footage shows that they smashed through barriers and locked doors. People in the mob and some in law enforcement were injured, and some died. Members of Congress had to evacuate until order was restored. 

That was the first time there was a violent attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power that is the foundation of a democracy. It led to criminal charges against many of the organizers and participants and an unprecedented second impeachment of President Trump, who urged the mob to march to the Capitol and, depending on your perspective, either protest the legitimacy of the election results or prevent the certification by force. It has also led, for the first time, to US investments being assessed for “political risk.”

The men we saw in the car were not planning an attack. They were trying to figure out how to respond to one. On January 6, 2023, a group of veterans and current and former government officials spent the day pretending that a much better organized and more powerful group had attacked the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2024 elections. This was a tabletop exercise or “game” to better understand the seriousness of the threat, the pervasiveness of the disintegrating trust in our democratic system from those who question the legitimacy of our government, and how our elected officials and military can and should respond. 

The set-up is detailed, serious, and all too believable. It includes a movie set-like replica of the White House briefing room and pre-recorded “news reports” on the events of the day based on the limited information—and some strategically distributed disinformation—as it becomes “available.” The enemy makes very effective use of social media, fake footage, manipulation of their followers, and their understanding that any use of force against them will make them more powerful as martyrs. 

All of the participants have broad and deep experience, and it’s fascinating to see them work through their options. The role of the President, who has just been re-elected by a margin of less than one percent, is played by Steve Bullock, former Democratic governor of Montana. His advisor is played by former Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-Nevada). One of the advisors in creating the fact situation is Alexander Vindman, Former Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council, who blew the whistle on then-President Trump’s attempt to, depending on your point of view, persuade or bribe Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of the man Trump considered his likely opponent in the 2020 election. It is sobering to learn that the people who put the exercise together are veterans whose own experience in the military made them deeply concerned about the threat from inside. As Senator Heitkamp says, “We’ve always been able to unite the country when the threat is external.” However, we have relied on a dangerous form of exceptionalism in assuming that the US is immune to threats from rogue actors with access to military technology. One twist in the exercise made me gasp aloud because I realized how vulnerable we are: in a moment, the most senior government officials go from deciding whether to deploy the military to uncertainty about whether the person with the title Commander in Chief has the authority to do so.

Countless films have shown us the world on the brink of extinction, with serious men (and a few women) meeting in situation rooms and members of the military and the CIA staring into banks of computers, monitoring the risks and computing the options. Usually, the focus is on the action: the many actors who played James Bond and Jack Ryan, the many heroic roles played by Steven Seagal and Tom Cruise. But we eat our popcorn knowing how those movies are going to end. James, Jack, Steve, and Tom will always save the day. So, the specifics of the crises are not important. We get a couple of details about some McGuffin of a powerful thing that’s bad, just enough to give our heroes something to inspire crazy stunts, chases, and explosions and demonstrate their amazing skill, cunning, technology, and heroism.

There are few films that focus on the people in suits, ties, and uniforms who deploy the heroes, perhaps most compellingly in the savagely hilarious classic “Dr. Strangelove” (and the serious drama with a parallel storyline released the same year, “Fail Safe”) and the underseen “Eye in the Sky,” about the moral, political, and national security risks of drone warfare. 

“War Game” brings it all home, in my case literally – I live just outside of Washington DC. It’s the scariest movie of the year, especially when you consider that it was not Homeland Security, the NSA, the Pentagon, or Congress running the exercise. Instead, it’s a group of former military members called the VetVoice Foundation, stepping in because their experience showed them the gross underestimation of the possible threats from armed extremists. A note at the end tells us that they briefed the government on their findings. Let’s hope they listened. 

Apple TV’s “Women in Blue” / “Las Azules” is a flawed show. The acting is uneven, with some cast members going full telenovela while others stay in realist drama. Worse, it’s clear that this is a show about women created by men (Fernando Rovzar and Pablo Aramendi, to be precise). All of the episodes are directed by men, and the majority of the scripts are written by men, too. 

The beginning is particularly cliché, featuring a bored (and of course beautiful) housewife, who looks for (and finds!) meaning in work after she catches her husband cheating. Even the title sequence reads like a bunch of guys brainstorming markers of femininity – red heels? Check! The woman symbol? Yup! Women getting objectified in swimsuits? Absolutely. And the list goes on.

This surface-level understanding of what it is to be a woman makes some aspects of “Women in Blue” deeply frustrating – including the arc of lead character María (Bárbara Mori), the aforementioned housewife. It also means this 1970s, ostensibly feminist drama fails to have much to say about gender dynamics in the workforce, even as its whole plot centers around the women who sex-integrated Mexico’s police force. “Mad Men” this is not.

Still, it got me. “Women in Blue” has an enticing mix of elements, a certain hodgepodge that shouldn’t work but does. It’s a thriller as our titular “Women in Blue” use their police training to track down a serial killer targeting young women. There’s a “Silence of the Lambs” element when María hits up an infamous, incarcerated serial killer for advice. 

Then there’s the historical fiction aspect (“inspired by true events” as they say), complete with go-go boots, macrame beads, and white-roofed Cadillacs. “Women in Blue”’s take on the era’s sexism doesn’t go much deeper than that “it was bad,” but the critique is still there, reminding us that not so long ago (and maybe even today), the idea that women could serve effectively as protectors of the peace was entirely foreign.

Then there’s the commentary on policing itself. “Women in Blue” shines in how it dramatizes detective work, ringing suspense from how Ángeles (Ximena Sariñana) finds and organizes data (in the 1970s we’re talking paper files here). The show also presents various interrogation techniques, ranging from torture to compassion to much effect. Indeed, it’s particularly insightful when Gabina (Amorita Rasgado), the estranged daughter of the police chief, gets an insider’s perspective of what it really means to be a cop. State-side audiences may brush off this learning, believing Mexican police are inherently corrupt but the truth is more complicated, and “Women in Blue” does a good job of exploring that complication.

But this series is best at the blood-pounding thriller of it all. It builds a complex chase with the clues scaffolding nicely upon each other. When we get the killer’s back story, “Women in Blue” mines it for typical ideas of trauma and neglect but also delivers a strong rebuke of the typical violent-past-as-destiny trope.

As the cliffhangers mount, the suspension and stakes go with them. I prefer to watch my TV before bed and this show required an hour to decompress after – such was my state after exiting this intense, plot-driven environment. 

Yes, it’s feminism light (perhaps at the lightest: set in the past with no lessons other than things have gotten better). Yes, it’s a show that critiques policing but ultimately makes a hero out of those who don the badge. And yes, the direction and writing are uneven (it’s not until writer Silvia Jiménez’s seventh and eighth episodes that the characters finally start to get some human depth).

But it’s also a thrilling and satisfying ride, combining predictable genre elements with surprising turns. I was jumping in my seat, staying up too late and enjoying “Women in Blue” quite a lot, despite its many imperfections.

Fantasia’s not all blood and guts; there are plenty of laughs to be had among the fest’s voluminous genre offerings. Horror and comedy, after all, go together like chocolate and peanut butter, or machetes and human flesh. The three films in today’s dispatch pay homage to previous horror-comedy maestros like Peter Jackson, Joe Dante, and more, with a welcome double dose of Canadian treasure Steven Ogg sprinkled in the mix.

But before we can Ogg-le one of Canada’s best character actors, it’s worth flying over to Estonia to see one of the fest’s most riotous, chaotic surprises: Sander Maran’s musical-horror-comedy-romance “Chainsaws Were Singing.” Much like “Hundreds of Beavers” last year, “Chainsaws” carries with it a kind of anarchic DIY-indie energy, somewhere between Chuck Jones, “Monty Python,” and “Brain Dead.” The essential skeleton holding its two hours of chaos together concerns a “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”-like family of maniacs, including the sadistic but softhearted Killer (Martin Ruus), who sings about how much he likes flowers while he tears through unsuspecting victims with his trusty chainsaw. His latest victim is Maria (Laura Niils), a young girl who’s just fallen in love with the heartbroken Tom (Karl Ilves) before being snatched away from him and thrown in the Killer’s van. Bolstered by new love, Tom gets picked up by a wacky driver named Jaan (Janno Puusepp), who gleefully becomes his sidekick on his adventure to rescue his newfound paramour. Amputations, bukkake, and lesbian hedgehog attacks ensue.

As with the rough-and-tumble vibes of its presentation — Raimi-esque crash zooms, wild Dutch angles, run-down props and costumes that really sell the ‘made for five euros’ vibe of the whole thing — the songs themselves are charmingly unpolished, characters squeaking through increasingly absurd and bawdy lyrics with boundless enthusiasm. And the dumber the jokes get, the more they work: buffoonish cops blast away with reckless abandon while holding donuts in their mouths, and nearly every vehicle Tom and Jaan exit seems to explode behind them for increasingly dubious reasons.

That said, “Chainsaws” does lose a bit of gas in its middle act, as the threadbare structure struggles to sustain itself over two hours. We get long stretches in between songs, and some superfluous interludes including woodland bukkake-worshipping cults that don’t seem to add much to the overall story besides a staggering refrigerator-based money shot. The Killer’s family dynamics also get a little shaky, and a running joke about Killer’s incestuous brother-couple Pepe (Ra Ragnar Novod) and Kevin (Henryk Johan Novod) teeter a little too uncomfortably into outright homophobia. Still, it picks right back up by the time Tom stages his rescue mission, and the last half hour lends more focus to the blood-splattered nonsense. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly one of the most delightful watches of the fest. (See it with an audience, especially when they start clapping in rhythm to some of the ditties.)

The latest from Canadian filmmaker Lowell Dean (“WolfCop”), “Dark Match” takes its name from the industry term for a non-televised wrestling match meant to excite crowds before the main event. That’s a fitting name for the film itself, really, as it feels like a warmup more than a full meal. It’s got its charms, mind you: Dean’s stylish camerawork and sly script really throws you into the ring in its opening minutes, using an ’80s-style TV promo to introduce us to our scrappy set of amateur wrestlers. Most notable among these is Miss Behave (Ayisha Issa), whose ambitions for a title are stymied by her rivalry with popular, white rival Kate the Great (Sara Canning) and the fact that, well, audiences aren’t primed to root for a Black female wrestler. But she and her fellow underdogs agree to a dark match at a remote estate in the middle of nowhere for heaps of cash. It’s there that a fellow wrestler (Steven Ogg) recognizes the man in charge: The Preacher (WWE legend Chris Jericho), a charismatic washout who’s since assembled a cultlike following here. Only too late do they realize that the five element-based matches they’ve agreed to aren’t just being televised: they’re demonic rituals meant to summon Satan from the depths of hell.

There’s a lot to like in “Dark Match,” at least conceptually: Issa makes for a capable, fun lead, and the supporting performances from Ogg and Michael Eklund (as the team’s weaselly promoter) carry a lot of the film’s scrappy energy. The matches themselves are bloody fun, living somewhere between “GLOW” and “Saw” as the ring gets modified with flamethrowers, broken glass, and giant blowing fans that can trap and eviscerate each contender. But there’s a feeling that Dean and co aren’t going hard enough on the craziness; there’s a groundedness to the suspense that makes it feel more like “Green Room” than something more ostentatious like the premise and ’80s trappings require. Jericho makes for a mighty presence when he’s on screen, but he’s mostly sidelined until the end, which is a shame considering the marquee name he brings. That’s probably a consequence of the stacked cast; the opening throws a lot of names and characters at you, but the match-by-match structure means character conflicts and beats often get pushed to the wayside or resolved far too early. (Still, there’s a fun gag including one of Behave’s compatriots, a luchador-like wrestler who’s taken a vow of silence, that approaches the kind of silliness this should have worked towards.) Dean puts forth a game effort, but “Dark Match” doesn’t quite earn its championship belt.

Still, we’re not done with Steven Ogg, as our number two (heh) entry in his Fantasia double-bill, “Scared Shitless,” brings us squicky, shitty Joe Dante creature-feature energy. Ogg plays Don, a down-on-his-luck plumber living with his layabout son Sonny (Daniel Doheny), whose mother recently passed of a stomach bug, turning the boy into an anxiety-ridden germaphobe. To shake Sonny out of his hypochondriac funk, Don decides to drag his boy along to his newest call: a plumbing problem in a remote apartment complex. Bad night for this kind of test, though, as the building is plagued by Don’s most pernicious porcelain problem yet: a genetically-modified creature secreted home by Dr. Robert (Mark McKinney, “The Kids in the Hall”). It’s now on the loose and out for blood, hiding in the pipes and ready to execute some disem-bowel movements on every unsuspecting tenant.

To its credit, “Scared Shitless” is exceedingly lean at a cool 76 minutes; with its clean if unremarkable cinematography and unassuming low-budget charm, it’s a future Tubi Original in the making. Director Vivieno Caldinelli makes great use of Brandon Cohen’s leakproof script, giving us just enough setup of the characters and situation (Julian Richings makes a suitably oily appearance in the cold open) to get down to the bloodletting with little fuss. The victims don’t get much to do before they’re dispatched, really, but who cares? What little screentime they get is filled with fun gags like an older couple whose freaks definitely match (complete with the husband drawing “SLUT” in lipstick over his chest for date night) and another victim who gets pulled halfway down the commode headfirst. (The creature effects, courtesy of Canadian VFX legend Steven Kostanski, are stellar, though the design leaves a little to be desired — it’s mostly just a toothy tentacle reminiscent of a million ’80s horror creatures of the apst.)

Ogg and Doheny have enviable father-son chemistry, Ogg in particular bringing his signature underbite intensity to his love and passion for toilet maintenance. However, Doheny struggles to keep the same energy with concierge Patricia (Chelsea Clark), who becomes an erstwhile companion/love interest in the latter half. Even so, the “Gremlins” energy abounds in this one, making for a sprightly, splattery romp you won’t have to flush twice.

On Mondays at the Wayfarer Studios offices, there’s a tradition during meetings in which everyone in attendance has to answer the same question: What’s something that’s bringing you joy that has nothing to do with work or family? This is the sort of thing that has the potential to be painfully precious—a strained attempt at bringing some warm-and-fuzzy energy to the soullessness of the workplace—but the folks here at this Los Angeles production company take it seriously, especially its co-founder Justin Baldoni. The tradition was started by Wayfarer’s CEO Jamey Heath, an award-winning music producer, but it resonates with Baldoni, who radiates a positive vibe and seeks it out in others. 

“We’re family,” Baldoni, 40, tells me on a recent Monday at their Beverly Hills offices. “As I was building this [company], it just became clear that what he had as a human, and the way he handles himself in the world and in business, was what we were striving to be as a company. If we want to have real change in the industry, we have to try to be the change. We’re going to fail all the time, because we’re humans and we’re perfectly imperfect. But what he brings is that innate joy and zest for life.”

Everybody goes around the room listing things that are bringing them joy—someone’s looking forward to a vacation, someone else heard an inspiring story—and the friendly vibe in the room is palpable. I’m here to profile Baldoni—the onetime “Jane the Virgin” star who has rebranded himself as a filmmaker about to release his biggest movie to date, “It Ends With Us,” in a few weeks—and I’m conscious of the fact that office visits from a journalist sometimes compel employees to be on their best behavior. Still, if the idea of such feel-good meeting exercises seems cringey, it’s clear everyone at Wayfarer has bought in.

That true-believer attitude starts at the top. Baldoni is nothing if not a man who has faith in his mission to create something new at Wayfarer, preaching a gospel of creating films and series of substance in an age of deadening social-media overkill. That philosophy is embedded in the company’s very moniker. “‘Wayfarer’ stands for the journey of the soul,” explains Baldoni. “It’s named after the Wayfarer in a book called The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys, which comes from the Baha’i Faith, which is my faith. It’s the journey of the soul, trying to figure life out. Whether you are a believer in God or whether you’re spiritual—whatever you are—it’s that journey of just trying to understand the world around us and yourself in the process.”

Those who only remember Baldoni from his years on “Jane the Virgin,” where he played the hunky love interest Rafael Solano, may find all this a bit much. Didn’t that dude just take off his shirt a lot? (Baldoni was shirtless previously on “Everwood” as well.) Much has changed since then—including a popular 2017 TED Talk in which Baldoni articulated the conflict he felt between the traditionally manly roles he played on television and the sensitive, vulnerable guy he felt he was. The Justin Baldoni you meet in 2024 is an outspoken feminist and budding mogul who’s convinced that Hollywood needs to let go of its exhausted, empty CGI-driven action flicks and move toward more emotionally fulfilling films. And he thinks “It Ends With Us” could be part of that future.

Don’t get Baldoni wrong: He loves event movies. In a screening room earlier that day, he tells me how much he treasures “going and sitting in a dark room with people that we don’t know and having a shared experience. I remember crying in ‘E.T.’ I remember sobbing watching ‘Lion King’ in the theater and hearing other kids crying. I remember being in high school and having that experience with ‘Titanic’ and then later on with ‘The Notebook’ and feeling like I wasn’t alone. Having a place, especially as a young man, to be able to emote in a dark room: ‘I can cry and other people are crying. We shared this moment in time together.’ For me, it’s poetic.”

In his TED Talk and in his subsequent book Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity, Baldoni promotes a modern manhood that’s in touch with its emotions and rejects outdated notions of what his gender requires of him. In recent years, plenty of telegenic men have peddled themselves as “You see, ladies, I’m sensitive” feminists, many of them coming across as cynical, disingenuous attention-seekers capitalizing on a trend. But Baldoni, who’s been married to his wife Emily since 2013, is refreshingly candid about just how flawed his attempts to be enlightened are. And, blessedly, he’s not proud of himself for his progressive views—in fact, he’s careful to be modest, knowing that he can screw up as much as the next guy. But the passion he brings to his “Man Enough” campaign—which includes a long-running podcast—is equal to his evangelizing for a different type of movie experience. In fact, he sees them as intertwined.

“Human emotion is not something that we should be running from,” he says. “If somebody wants to go to the theater and just have a mind-numbing experience, then there’s a lot of movies for them. But if they want to see a Wayfarer movie, then my hope is that five, 10 years in the future, they know they’re going for that reason—they’re going to get the action or the adventure or whatever the story is about, and then they’re also getting the substance that allows them to connect with that part of themselves. I don’t think that that’s utopian—I don’t think that that’s too aspirational. We need meaning—we’re a country that has been living off junk food, and look at our health overall. I think movies are the same way—what we ingest, what we focus on, what we think about is who we become. It might be a lofty idea and it might be disruptive in terms of the normal studio model, but I think that’s where it’s going. I think that’s where cinema has to go.”

Wayfarer has been producing movies for only a few years, including Baldoni’s second directorial effort, 2020’s “Clouds.” On its website, the company declares its priority of “championing inspirational stories which unite as true agents for social change.” Recently, Wayfarer financed “Will & Harper,” the crowd-pleasing Sundance documentary featuring Will Ferrell and longtime friend Harper Steele on a road trip after she came out as transgender. But the company isn’t just interested in traditional inspirational films, as witnessed by the fact that Wayfarer was involved in this year’s “The Garfield Movie.” What prompted Baldoni to put his muscle behind that animated cat flick, which seems to be standard Hollywood product? “We went in as investors because it had an amazing father-son storyline,” he explains, “and it tied into masculinity and my work with ‘Man Enough.’ We saw that as an opportunity. Have you looked at ‘Inside Out 2’? I took my nine-year-old daughter and my six-year-old son, and I cried, and it started conversations with me and my kids. That’s what we need—that’s what we’re craving.”

As is probably obvious, Baldoni is an earnest, enthusiastic guy. He’s exceedingly handsome but weirdly approachable. And if you get him talking about Wayfarer’s ambition to create more nourishing commercial cinema, he’s practically an evangelist for his vision. When I comment on his near-missionary zeal, Baldoni responds, “I think that the only way to start anything that [has] the chance of success is if the person who is starting it believes in it with everything that they have. Life is so delicate and short and fragile—and I’ve spent so much time contemplating mortality and spending time with people who didn’t have time on this planet—that I view it as a sacred gift, as silly as that sounds.”

This conversation is happening in Wayfarer’s parking lot. He’s just driven me from the screening room to the offices, but he doesn’t get out of the car yet because this is something he wants to talk more about. “Time I view as my most valuable resource,” he continues. “If I’m going to spend my time doing something, I have to believe it. Starting these things—whether it’s trying to get a movie off the ground or starting this business—I genuinely believe that there is a way that we can make some difference in the industry and affect people. I’m always focusing more on the effect. It’s like a movie—to me, the movie starts with the ending and then you work backwards. If you have an amazing ending and you can stick the landing, you can reverse-engineer and create the story. That’s how I think it is with starting a company or a film or my work with masculinity: What is the impact?”

When Baldoni’s acting career was going through rough patches—he still remembers the casting agent who said he wasn’t getting a particular part because his eyebrows were too distracting—he started investing his time in making shorts, discovering a passion for filmmaking. He’d rarely felt attractive enough to be an actor, anyway: “I was the ugly-duckling nerd kid that didn’t have a date to any dances until I was a junior in high school.” After tearing his hamstring, losing college scholarships for soccer and track, he sunk into despair. To compensate, he got buff. 

“What got me out of the depression was lifting weights,” he recalls. “I put on almost 20 pounds of muscle in that six, seven months before I left for college. I remember that feeling—I was like, ‘Oh, now I feel strong.’ I didn’t know at the time that I was just masking and delaying the inevitable [mental] healing process that I would have to go through in my 30s. But it was the combination of that and then getting to college and parts of my face growing with the other parts of my face—I maybe became a little more symmetrical—but I was still never the hot guy.”

Among his early directing projects, in 2012 he created “My Last Days,” a documentary series focusing on people with terminal illnesses talking about life, which profoundly reshaped his view on the importance of maximizing one’s time. When he was cast on “Jane the Virgin,” he used his downtime to work on his feature directorial debut, 2019’s “Five Feet Apart,” a tearjerker based on a true story that starred Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse as young people with cystic fibrosis. The indie film was a smash, and Baldoni followed it up with another true story, “Clouds,” with Fin Argus, Sabrina Carpenter and Madison Iseman, about a teenager with cancer. Dismiss those films as touchy-feely, Baldoni doesn’t care.

“I make movies that I would want to see,” he says. “I come from the school of very commercial cinema. I wasn’t going to the theater to watch arthouse indie movies. I grew up with very commercial films. And I believe that most human beings are hungry for a connection and want to feel, because I think everything in this world is orchestrated in a way that’s making us feel less.” 

His third film is his most high-profile, although it certainly sounds akin to his previous two in terms of taking on emotional subject matter. “It Ends With Us” isn’t based on a true story but, rather, Colleen Hoover’s wildly popular 2016 novel. The drama stars Blake Lively as Lily, a woman who falls for Ryle (Baldoni), a seemingly nice guy who ends up displaying abusive behavior. (Around the same time, Lily reencounters an old flame, Brandon Sklenar’s Atlas.) I haven’t seen the film, but the fact that its charitable partner is NO MORE tells you that “It Ends With Us” will be tackling issues that are at the core of Baldoni’s “Man Enough” mission while also speaking to the social causes that are crucial to Wayfarer. 

Sight unseen, “It Ends With Us,” which is being released by Sony, is an intriguing early-August release. This summer has been underwhelming commercially, save for some reliable I.P.-driven films like “Inside Out 2,” “Twisters” and “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which have been blockbusters. Can a romantic drama adapted from a bestseller starring Lively find its audience? Initial box-office tracking suggests it could be a sleeper hit, and Baldoni is convinced there are viewers hungry for something like “It Ends With Us.”  

In the Wayfarer conference room after everyone else has cleared out, Baldoni tells me, “When I spoke to Sony, [I said], ‘I believe that there are not enough tentpole movies for women—and I believe this [movie] could be an experience for women. I believe if we make it right, they will come—they will cry and they will laugh.’ This was before we had any big stars attached—I just genuinely believe that that’s possible with this movie. I’ve always felt it. Now, what that looks like is different—for me, I don’t put a number on that. Most everybody else is putting the commercial-success expectations on the movie—I just want it to be a movie that a lot of women go see, and they bring men with them, because that’s important.”

Baldoni likes to talk about embracing imperfection, recognizing that all of us make mistakes all the time. In his pursuit of being a more conscientious man, he’s had to confront a classic Hollywood stereotype of the demanding male director as genius and ultimately authority. It’s easy to fall into that trap. “There are always moments where I step back and go, ‘Oh wow, I was on autopilot there and I need to course-correct,’” he says in regards to his life in general. “What’s interesting as it relates to making movies is that I think I’ve been so afraid to accidentally become one of those tyrants. If anything, I think I’ve gone the opposite direction and at times not trusted myself enough. On my first movie especially, I realized in some ways I was too passive. I’ve never raised my voice and yelled on a set—it doesn’t mean I haven’t had big feelings and been angry, but I’ve never raised my voice. That’s not my style. I’ve been around that, and I’ve been on the other end of it, and it feels terrible—it kills the creativity of everybody around you.”

It’s interesting that not only did Baldoni decide to take on a supporting part in “It Ends With Us”—his first acting gig in a while—but that he chose to play the dark, troubled Ryle. Wasn’t he tempted to portray the sensitive Atlas? Why would he want the role of the type of guy he’s spent his public life railing against?

Initially, it was Hoover, the book’s author, who told him she thought he’d make a good Ryle. He was surprised. “I was like, ‘Could I play this guy?’ But her thinking that I could was enough to shift that in me, to where I went, ‘Maybe she sees something that I don’t.’ And as I started developing the project, I started asking women, ‘What is it that you like so much about the book?’ And so many of them said, ‘Ryle.’ I thought the answer was going to be ‘Lily’s empowerment,’ but so many women liked the relationship between her and Ryle. There was a little bit of a fantasy element to it—he was likable and charming, and a little bit dangerous. I think what Colleen probably saw is that the way that I live and who I try to be—sometimes unsuccessfully—could help make Ryle more likable. This isn’t a story where there’s some archvillain—this is a human story, where there’s true love between the two characters. You have to be invested in the relationship between Lily and Ryle, or the movie doesn’t work.”

Baldoni has come a long way from being the beefcake beauty on “Jane the Virgin,” where his frequent shirtlessness became part of the show’s appeal. In his TED Talk, he took playful potshots at his own pin-up image and his uncomfortable relationship with those shirtless scenes. But while he’s careful to avoid “It Ends With Us” spoilers, there is one thing he can reveal, albeit sheepishly: He does take off his shirt in the movie.

“I had a lot of anxiety about it,” he admits, laughing. “I had been training not to look good for a while—I’ve been training to feel good and, honestly, I’ve had some back issues. I wasn’t able to move the way that I used to or run the way that I used to. As I was getting closer to 40, I noticed my metabolism changing. I have two kids, and I’m not sleeping as much. I thought to myself, ‘I haven’t even had time to work out—how am I going to do this?’ So I was nervous about it because of the way he’s described in the book. I felt an obligation to try to look similar to the way that the fans [thought of] him, but I didn’t want to be shirtless in every scene.”

While he prepares for the “It Ends With Us” press tour, he’s also thinking about Wayfarer’s future. At the meeting I attend, he and his team discuss upcoming projects, including “Will & Harper,” which will be getting an awards campaign from Netflix. And, of course, there’s his live-action Pac-Man film, which was announced in 2022. Baldoni can’t go into much detail—I got a glimpse at some initial ideas, but I can’t talk about them—but he does see the movie as continuing Wayfarer’s commitment to films of substance. “We have the idea of what it can be,” he says, “but how do you make it meaningful? Figuring out how to make a big tentpole, four-quadrant kind of family action-adventure movie for both a nine-year-old and a 60-year-old? That’s exciting to me.”

Earlier, when everyone went around the room in the meeting talking about what’s bringing them joy, Baldoni shared his relief that he’s at the end of a health scare that started more than a month ago. He’s doing better now, but he had to be in the hospital for a week, which made him think about his life. It also validated his wife’s insistence that he needs to start taking it a little more easy. 

“I’ve been listening to my wife for 12 years about slowing down, and it wasn’t until maybe this last two years ago that I’ve really been taking that to heart,” he admits. “But [“It Ends With Us”]—acting and directing—it was a challenging film because of the amount of hats that I was wearing. Then you end up in the hospital with some random infection and you’re like, ‘Oh, got to slow down.’”

Baldoni says he doesn’t have nightmares about the film tanking or no one liking it. “The things that keep me up at night have more to do with wanting to make sure that I have enough time, uninterrupted, with my family after this. [“It Ends With Us”] has been a gargantuan [undertaking] for a few years, and they really need me—they need their daddy. I’ve told my agents—I told my team—I’m not going to direct anything for a while. I’m going to take a break.”

Stereotypical old-school men might scoff at that suggestion of taking your foot off the gas. But Baldoni is trying not to listen to that impulse. “The only way I’ll ever be able to really function in this industry—an industry that doesn’t care about time, doesn’t care about your schedule, doesn’t care about your plans, doesn’t care about your dreams or your hopes—the only way that I know that I’ll be able to have my joy and be happy in this business is if I expand and contract. Everything in life is expansion and contraction—the waves, our breath, everything. There’s a moment of expansion, and then we have to contract. And I’m entering this next phase of contraction so that I can be the man that I really want to be and be the dad that I really want to be.”

Earlier in the day, Baldoni had told me that he didn’t want to be indispensable at Wayfarer—he wanted to trust the people he hired to run the company without him necessarily being involved in every single aspect of every single project. As our time comes to a close, he returns to that idea. 

“The studio was set up in a way where that [freedom] is possible for me, but in the event that there is success, it’s going to require me saying no to a few things,” he confides. “Which, as a person who was said no to so often, there’s fear of, like, ‘Oh, what if I’m going to miss it?’ — that FOMO of ‘This might be the chance.’ But there is power in [saying no]. It all changed for me when my wife asked me, ‘What is enough?’ When I was writing the book and editing ‘Clouds’ and finishing ‘Jane,’ I was doing so much, and she was like, ‘Well, when is it going to be enough? What’s enough?’ That was not a question I was prepared to answer. And the answer is, ‘It’s never going to be enough until we decide it is.’”

Justin Baldoni looks at me. “That’s where we are now as a family. This is enough for right now. And then we’ll move on to the next thing.”