Drama Archives – Laemmle Theatres

Paula González-Nasser Imbues ‘The Scout’ With Firsthand Knowledge

October 7, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Paula González-Nasser worked as a location scout for six years. As writer, director, and producer, she shot a film based on her experiences in a mere ten days. Anyone who sees The Scout will come out realizing why – it’s a job that requires crazy amounts of multitasking, and an ability to be everything to anyone at any given time.

The Scout opens Oct. 9^th at Laemmle’s Glendale, and Oct. 16^th at the Monica Film Center. Catch Paula González-Nasser on a new episode of Inside the Arthouse with Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge.

Sofia (Mimi Davila) begins her day slowly. Long takes hold on her preparing to face the day, slowly performing her solo role at her own pace. Being a location scout at first feels a lot like fishing – she leaves flyers on doors of potentially interesting buildings, promising a fee if they’re chosen. The next stage is a bit of a flirtation, as she gains access to people’s houses to take reference photos, and they proceed to tell her every detail of their lives, delighted to have a new person they can trauma-dump on. Men, by themselves, all too often suspect it might be a literal flirtation, and so long as she still needs their location, Sofia has to string them along. As soon as the production rejects the place for any reason, it’s time to ghost the tenant and move on to the next, potentially more perfect staging area.

Sofia has a car to get around New York City – the subway would be just too slow and non-spontaneous for what she needs – and parking tickets, of which there are many, just become yet another business expense. As she drives around, she plays all her phone messages on speaker phone. Some are angry at being forgotten with no follow-up calls that she never had the time for; others are excited at the possibility of their house being on TV…or the paycheck that comes with it. Then there’s a strange one from her past that has become suddenly relevant again.

When she interacts with the full location crew, the pace of the story and the dialogue picks up, entertaining the viewer even as it frustrates Sofia, who needs a more meditative space to take her pictures. In a group setting that’s all noise, she shrinks away into a corner…in a one-on-one setting, she must function as counselor, negotiator, and potential love interest to get what she needs on her end. Yet whatever she negotiates is subject – constantly – to cancellation from above her pay grade. That’s just part of the gig. A real social life, for the most part, is not. Location scouts aren’t paid to have plans that might interfere with their availability.

The Scout depicts both a typical and an atypical day (and change) in the life – on the one hand, it’s clear Sofia deals with this kind of stuff every day. On the other, it involves a reunion with someone from her past, one that deserves time she simply doesn’t have. It’s a surprise and an emotional curveball, but we get the sense that even if they aren’t all like quite like this one, there are equivalent personal swerves on a regular basis. The quiet moments in between can be silly, or sad, but they are most often alone. All in the service of a job many would only dream of doing…as they like to tell her. Often.

The story rings true, and the fact that the writer-director was sufficiently prepared to shoot the whole thing in less than two weeks makes it ring truer, as evidence she knows how to get this stuff done. Due credit, also, to the casting – the faces onscreen in The Scout are as varied as the locations, and in some cases tell even just as much of a story as the script can.

“The film confidently highlights the delicate relationship between people and their spaces, while also acknowledging the understated harshness of a job that requires you to assess… one of the more intimate elements of another person’s life.” — Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter.

“At its best, “The Scout” captures the contradictory experience of having a job closer to your dreams than many people ever get, but still far from where you want to be.” — Christian Zilko, IndieWire.

Padraic McKinley’s ‘The Weight’ Recalls Classic Westerns and Thrillers

September 16, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe are the big-name actors in Padraic McKinley’s The Weight, but the real star of the movie is the vast, untouched Bavarian forest location, standing in for Oregon circa 1933.

The Weight opens at Laemmle’s Newhall, Monica, Town Center 5, and NoHo 7 Sept. 18^th. Be sure to catch McKinley on Inside the Arthouse with Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge.

On the heels of his acclaimed turn in Blue Moon last year, Ethan Hawke sticks close to the same time period, this time as a World War I veteran in 1933 who’s fallen on hard times. He’s Murphy, a single father who can’t make the rent, but he knows a thing or two about illegal engine modifications. When a seeming case of mistaken identity gets him thrown into prison and on to a chain gang, he’s the kind of guy the wardens like: silent, strong, and all about the work. Getting out so that his young daughter doesn’t have to go into the foster system is the priority.

Along comes the metaphorical devil, to make a deal: Russell Crowe’s baseball-loving Warden Clancy needs some gold relocated from a mine before the FDR government comes along and confiscates it. If Murphy and the cohorts of his choosing – with supervision, of course – can spirit all that gold away on a five-day journey across Oregon, through unforgiving woods, they’ll get released immediately thereafter. The only problem, aside from it being highly illegal and the forest full of dangerous men, is that gold has a tendency to make men who’d otherwise cooperate think only about themselves.

It’s a classic western setup in a more modern era: outlaws with gold braving the wilds on a perilous journey to freedom. But this wild, western state is no desert or high plain – rather, the endless woods feel like Blair Witch territory, waiting to cloud the mind and disorient or mislead casual travelers. Murphy’s war experience comes into play here, as he has a sense of danger that his colleagues do not, including an inclination of who is or isn’t bluffing.

Crowe peaces out of the middle of the movie – he’s there to set the stage and wrap things up with appropriate gravitas, menace, and token bits of quirkiness. (Clancy likes Dr. Pepper, shooting pigeons, and baseball.) McKinley served as consulting producer on the Crowe-directed Poker Face and executive produced and edited Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird with Hawke. Clearly he made a good impression, and they’re here paying back the favor in full. Co-screenwriter Shelby Gaines previously helped Hawke write the Flannery O’Connor biopic Wildcat, while coscribe Matthew Booi wrote the World War I drama Trench 11.

McKinley has been in the business for many years, predominantly as an editor. The Weight is his directorial debut, a genre blend that combines many of his favorite types of film, from chain-gang adventures like Fled to Depression-era drama like The Grapes of Wrath, and anti-heroic spaghetti westerns in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly‘s vein. In Hawke, he has a cinephile star to match – going full-on Clint Eastwood, Murphy is the kind of guy to scowl slightly, speak softly, and pack a mean punch. Plus the things he does with a wedding ring include one of the finest bits of planting and payoff in any recent drama.

Actors were physically weighed down to feel like they were transporting gold bars for real, which makes the title literal, but there’s also the burden of trying to be a good father from behind prison walls, the trauma of war, and the conscience of doing what you have to do to survive among money-hungry and desperate men. The weighting, one might say, is the hardest part. Watching it comes much more easily.

“A rugged period melodrama that draws liberally from esteemed predecessors like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Deliverance, and Sorcerer” – Don Kaye, Moviefone.

“The Weight is the kind of ragtag, band-against-the-odds adventure that used to fill cinemas back in the day.” – Stephen A. Russell, Time Out.

Rafael Manuel’s ‘Filipiñana’ Captures National Class Struggle in a Golf Course

August 25, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Writer-director Rafael Manuel has made a debut feature to immediately command attention with Filipiñana, a deadpan, day-in-the-life look at an elite golf course through the eyes of the teenage country girl who works there on the lowest rung of the service scale.

Filipiñana opens Friday, Sept. 4^th at Laemmle’s Glendale and Monica Film Center. In person Q&As with writer-director Rafael Manuel after a special 7 p.m. show on Sept. 2nd at the Royal, a 7 p.m. show on Sept. 3rd at the NoHo, and after the 7 p.m. shows Sept. 4th and 8th in Glendale!

As the title of the movie appears onscreen, Filipiñana delivers an edit that recalls the famous matchstick-to-desert cut in Lawrence of Arabia, but deliberately, ironically in reverse. The hot, crowded streets of Manila, where families line up for limited water rations, instantaneously transition to a view of sprinklers on a vast golf course. The water here is freely given away – to the plants rather than the people – while the fruit trees drop their mangoes that nobody is allowed to pick, to be eaten by ants on the ground. From a high angle, the rows of golf carts traveling in unison along the designated paths look like nothing more than the world’s most expensive model train set.

Earlier this summer, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass riffed on The Wizard of Oz for comedic effect. Here, Manuel gives us a verdant Emerald City of sorts more akin to the original Baum novel, or perhaps Wicked, complete with all-female caddies in Glinda-pink uniforms. It’s an impressive kingdom – the movie’s golf resort was filmed using eight different courses to create the impression of one massive one. And it suggests opulence and luxury, yet it’s a fraud at heart, just like its very own “wizard,” Dr. Pelanca (Teroy Guzman). Like the nation of the Philippines itself, it’s built on colonization and exploitation, and its artificial space allows the richest clientele the luxury of not having to pay attention to anything else.

Seventeen year-old Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto) is new to the job, from the northern, rural region of Ilocos, which has a distinct culture and language (and was home to dictator Ferdinand Marcos). She’s a tee girl, whose job it is to ensure there is always a ball ready for players on the driving range to hit. Tee girls aren’t allowed on the actual course, but its vast size makes that an impossible rule to fully enforce. In the morning, as she cools off lying on the grass, a smaller girl walks into her field of vision, greets her, and then runs off. Later in the day, that girl will be reported missing, and almost nobody will care.

Cinematograoher Xenia Patricia shoots mostly long, static shots in 3:4 aspect ratio – not due to any expectation that Filipiñana will be screened in IMAX, but to emphasize vertical power dynamics, and the trees on the course which represent the labor. Water is thrown at them until they die, at which point they are easily replaceable. Employees are frequently filmed either lying down or from higher angles, while Dr. Pelanca and his friends are forcibly looked up to. Like Michael Haneke, Manuel wants to see how manipulable you are as an audience member. The takes are slow, but blink and you might miss a clue. The ultimate test of this is the end credits – be sure you sit through them rather than walking away too soon (as every character onscreen does), in order to get the real ending.

Like Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winning The Zone of Interest, Filipiñana says as much with what it doesn’t show as what it does, which is mostly luxury and comfort if you don’t look too closely. The caddies are old enough to speak truth, but only among ears that will hear it. Music is sparse, and mostly in the form of bands playing stereotypical “exotic” music they imagine the mostly Chinese guests will want to hear.

The feature is an expansion of Manuel’s thesis short film at the London Film School, and produced by Jia Zhangke (Still Life) who served as his mentor for two years. Filipiñana won the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, rewarding everyone’s faith in the material. It should similarly reward viewers in theaters this fall.

“An incisive, slow-burning satire of capitalism and powerful men with far too much hubris — basically, a story for our times.” – Aisha Harris, NPR.

“Through heightened control of imagery and mood, attention to composition and texture and sound, Manuel turns this simple, languid setting into something far more sinister without ever betraying the beauty of what’s onscreen.” – Bilge Ebiri, Vulture.

Emmanuel Courcol’s ‘The Marching Band’ Is Like a French Spin on ‘School of Rock’

August 19, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Triumph and tragedy are inextricably intertwined in Emmanuel Courcol’s The Marching Band, from the moment superstar conductor Thibaut Desormeaux (Benjamin Lavernhe) gets a leukemia diagnoses that results in him finding a long-lost brother. As they mend fences and fight the illness, the two also prepare to compete together in a regional marching band contest.

The Marching Band opens at Laemmle’s Town Center 5 and Royal Aug. 28^th, and at the Glendale Sept. 4^th.

You’ve likely heard of School of Rock – consider this movie “Factory of Classical.” Mishaps escalate early in the story for Thibaut, as he doesn’t just have cancer, but his sister can’t donate bone marrow to him, because she’s not his biological sister, and he never knew it. It’s a hell of a way to learn he’s adopted, just as it’s awkward for his long-lost brother Jimmy (Pierre Lotin) to suddenly learn about Thibaut when he suddenly shows up on the doorstep requesting a transfusion.

Jimmy works in a cafeteria, but plays in a marching band made up of local factory workers. He appears to have a genetic affinity for music, and Thibaut sees in him the potential to also become a conductor. When the band’s own conductor has to leave town over a job change, the two newfound brothers work together to get these decidedly ragtag, argumentative local musicians into shape for a regional competition.

The selection they practice is “Bolero” by Maurice Ravel, which Thibaut calls the biggest classical hit of all time, possibly showing some patriotic bias as Ravel was French. Trust us, though, you’ve heard this piece, even if the name doesn’t ring a bell. It’s narratively related, too: “Bolero” was one of Ravel’s last compositions before e contracted a mystery illness that would ultimately kill him. It was also likely inspired by the rhythms of the factory in which Ravel’s father worked, and used to frequently take him as a child. (Thibaut claims this as a fact, but the actual facts are less clear.)

While the preparation and build up towards a big concert makes for a traditional underdog triumphant arc, Courcol is less interested in that aspect than he is the bonding between two very different siblings with similar gifts. Slender, well-dressed Thibaut had every advantage in life, worked hard on his music, and became a superstar in the classical world. Jimmy, who dons blue jeans and a tracksuit top, had to struggle to stay just above the poverty line, and could only find time for music as a hobby. The circumstances were out of their control, and it’s too late to radically change, especially with leukemia lurking, but if they can find forgiveness and the camaraderie they were never allowed as separated kids, maybe that’s as big a triumph as any competition victory.

As a result, you don’t have to know anything about classical music to appreciate the story. Indeed, many of Jimmy’s bandmates don’t, but “Bolero” is a perfect entry-level tune for singers, musicians, and listeners, even as more knowledgeable audophiles will appreciate its thematic resonance as well.

Courcol’s first film as director was Ceasefire, a period drama about a World War I veteran who abandons his family for Africa, then returns and has to heal the wound he caused. His second, The Big Hit, was a comedy abut a prison theater troupe. With The Marching Band, he might just have hit the crowd-pleasing sweet spot, with both a performing troupe and healing familial bonds in play. The movie’s not above being a tear jerker at times, but a reason to cheer the characters onward is never far behind.

“This film may not surprise, but it’s a sincere and uplifting tale that is in tune with the spirit of underdog crowd-pleasers Brassed Off and The Full Monty.” – Dulcie Pearce, The Sun UK

“A huge hit in its native France, this uplifting, moving and subtly funny affair has been making friends right around the world.” – Leigh Paatsch, Daily Telegraph (Australia)

Kent Jones’ ‘Late Fame’ Asks if Flattery Gets You Anywhere

August 4, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

For many viewers, it’s hard to recall a time when Willem Dafoe wasn’t beloved and famous. Yet in Kent Jones’ Late Fame, he’s able to embody the delight of a creative artist being recognized late in life, decades after giving up a poetry career for a practical job at the post office.

Late Fame opens Aug. 14th at Laemmle’s Royal, and then the 21^st at the Glendale, NoHo and Town Center. Director Kent Jones and screenwriter Samy Burch will participate in a Q&A following the 7:30 PM shows on August 14th and 15th at the Royal. Jones will also be a guest on Inside the Arthouse with Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge.

A former film critic, festival programmer and documentarian, the sixty-something Jones knows a bit about late blooming himself. Late Fame is only his second dramatic feature as director, following 2018’s Diane, which scored star Mary Kay Place a Best Actress award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics. His newest, like Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, is based on a novella by turn-of-the-20^th century Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler.

Jones’ approach, however, is very different – where Kubrick created artificial New York City blocks in London, and put Tom Cruise on a treadmill in front of a rear projection screen, Jones goes street-level in the real thing. There’s a liveliness and sense of space to it, from two-story coffee shops maximizing their vertical space to a surprisingly large single apartment that indicates hidden wealth on the part of its owner.

Dafoe’s Ed Saxberger has mostly accepted his blue-collar status, and is a bit bewildered when a young college student, Edmund Donovan’s dandy-ish Meyers, basically stalks him to his home to shower him with praise. Like Schnitzler himself, Meyers is part of a group of young, aspiring iconoclast writers who believe themselves well-positioned to shake things up. They use only surnames, speak formally, and theoretically eschew technology (to a point).

Gradually, Saxberger begins to enjoy the attention, particularly from showy, uninhibited would-be muse Gloria (Greta Lee). Finally flattered for his intellect, he starts to wonder if his working-class bar buddies are too unsophisticated. But even limited, newfound fame can be ultimately just as empty as the first time around – especially if you’re no longer the same person whose art earned it.

It would be easy to turn the scenario into caricature, with shallow rich kids misunderstanding an old man with real life experience. Jones, however, is more interested in fully developed characters and their nuances than in specific plot beats. These youngsters may be clueless but they genuinely want to be profound as well; Gloria’s performance art at one point is demonstrably so terrible that it stops the movie and the audience in its tracks, yet she can still deliver a meaningful poetry reading while completely high on something, and her life situation turns out to be way more complex than expected.

Ed’s post office career is designed to draw comparisons to author Charles Bukowksi, yet it also demonstrates their biggest point of contrast. Unlike Bukowski, Ed is several years sober, and enjoys his life with a steady government paycheck. He relishes the newfound attention for his work, and is bemused by the idea that he’s been “re-discovered,” but the reality is that a reasonably content, well-adjusted old man just isn’t in the same space as an angry, lovelorn young one breaking the rules of literature.

In real life, someone like Ed could take their cue from director Jones, maintaining an analytical lens throughout his careers that has proved endlessly adaptable, whether to film analysis, documentary, or fictional character study.

“…there’s a satisfying depth to it, and the movie abounds in exquisite grace notes.” – Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter.

“The classic theatricality of its characters juxtaposed with the modern world gives ‘Late Fame’ the feeling of a eulogy for an artistic world that young idealists desperately want to revive.” – Jourdain Searles, RogerEbert.com.

Daniel Roher’s ‘Tuner’: When the Piano Man Goes Bad

June 29, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle 2 Comments

While movie industry observers have noted the surprise success of smaller movies this summer like Obsession and Backrooms, there’s another one slowly and steadily holding on arthouse screens everywhere: Daniel Roher’s Tuner. Now about to enter its third smash month in theaters, the first narrative film from the acclaimed documentarian behind Navalny and The A.I. Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist blends crime, romance, jazz piano, and even a touch of real-life super power in the tale of a piano tuner whose nimble fingers and ears also serve him well at safe-cracking.

You can still catch Tuner at Laemmle’s Town Center and Laemmle’s Monica Film Center.

One key reason not to miss Tuner in theaters is the distinctive sound design by Maximilian Behrens, whose audio work on The Zone of Interest contributed greatly to that film’s overall impact. Behrens’ work puts us directly inside the head of Niki (The White Lotus‘ Leo Woodall), who has hyperacusis, a condition that makes loud noises painful and debilitating, but allows him to hear other things inaudible to most humans. As he listens for distinctions between piano notes, or for tumblers in a lock to slide into place, we feel it. Mercifully, when the sounds of the world go in the other direction, the movie only gives us a small taste of the pain that forces Niki to wear earplugs and headphones almost 24-7.

Roher takes a break from real-world existential threats like Vladimir Putin and Artificial Intelligence to focus on much more personal stakes. Niki’s irascible mentor Harry (a scene-stealing Dustin Hoffman) has angrily and temperamentally canceled his own Medicare, and refuses to eat healthy; before long, he’s stuck with a hospital bill he can’t afford. Piano tuning, even for New York’s rich and careless, doesn’t earn Niki enough to help, so he takes the slightly less legal route, working for an unethical “security” company that skims from clients’ safes.

Meanwhile, a romance is blossoming with hard-working piano prodigy Ruthie (model-turned actress Havana Rose Liu) who reminds him of himself before the hearing condition made playing literally painful. He wants to help her, but the erratic, spontaneous needs of his illegal work threaten to tear him away.

Unmoored from the demands of documentary reality, Roher treats the story like a parable; it involves some extreme coincidence, but treats it as karmic justice. The ending is designed to get audiences talking, and perhaps arguing, the moment they leave the theater. And the director couldn’t have asked for a better cast to anchor his first drama. Jean Reno shows up as a musical maestro, Tovah Feldshuh gives as good as she gets playing Hoffman’s wife, Herbie Hancock appears as himself, and Lior Raz brings lived-in menace to Niki’s criminal boss Uri. Prior to being an actor, Raz was an IDF commando and a bodyguard for Arnold Schwarzenegger; he doesn’t have to do much to persuade a viewer of his inherent threat level.

Be sure to catch Tuner in theaters while you still can. With its canny, subjective soundscapes, original numbers by Marius de Vries (La La Land), and carefully-selected jazz classics, you’ll want the premium speaker experience. But the story might just stick in your head as well.

“Roher knows that in crime flicks, as in jazz, pacing is everything: he reveals just enough but allows the audience to fill in the gaps.” – Wendy Ide, The Observer.

“It’s a thrill to watch this kind of original, adult moviemaking that’s all too rare these days.” – Katie Walsh, Tribune.

‘Romería’: Carla Simón’s Moving Portrait of Loss, Identity, and Belonging

June 23, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Over the course of three features, Carla Simón has quietly established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary European cinema. Following her acclaimed debut Summer 1993 and the Golden Bear-winning Alcarràs, the Spanish filmmaker returns with Romería, a deeply personal coming-of-age drama that continues her exploration of family, memory, and the lingering impact of loss.

Catch Romeria in theaters beginning July 1st at the Laemmle Glendale.

The title translates roughly to “pilgrimage,” an apt description for the journey undertaken by Marina (newcomer Llúcia Garcia), an eighteen-year-old preparing to leave home to study filmmaking. Before she can begin that next chapter, however, she must travel to the Galician city of Vigo in search of documents connected to her late father, whose death years earlier left crucial gaps in her understanding of both her family history and herself.

Raised apart from her father’s relatives, Marina arrives as both an outsider and a blood relation. Her extended family welcomes her warmly enough on the surface, inviting her on boat trips, beach outings, and sprawling family gatherings, yet beneath the hospitality lies a more complicated reality. Old wounds remain unhealed, uncomfortable truths have been buried, and differing accounts of the past begin to challenge everything Marina thought she knew about her parents.

Like Simón’s previous work, Romería unfolds through intimate observations rather than dramatic confrontations. The filmmaker has a remarkable gift for capturing the rhythms of family life: overlapping conversations around crowded tables, casual moments of affection, and the subtle tensions that emerge when multiple generations inhabit the same space. Yet as Marina pieces together fragments of her family’s history, Romería expands beyond a straightforward search for answers. Her mother’s diaries, camcorder recordings, and the stories told by her relatives create a layered portrait of two people she barely knew, as what begins as a realistic family drama gradually opens into something more lyrical and impressionistic. Simón incorporates dreamlike passages and flashes of imagined memory, allowing the boundaries between history, recollection, and personal mythology to blur. These touches of magical realism give emotional shape to experiences that can never be fully recovered, only reimagined.

Both tender and quietly heartbreaking, Romería confirms Simón’s status as one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. Drawing from deeply personal material while touching on universal questions of identity and belonging, she has created a film that is at once a family portrait, a coming-of-age story, and a meditation on the subtle ways that each of us carries the residue of our forebearers.

“Carla Simón’s story of a young woman untangling a web of family secrets cements the filmmaker’s aptitude for naturalism while also marking a bold new step towards magical realism.” – Sophia Satchell-Baeza, British Film Institute

“A kind of road movie by sea, journeying in pursuit of some sense of self-completion.” – Guy Lodge, Variety

John Early’s ‘Maddie’s Secret’ Finds Heart Beneath the Camp

June 23, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

John Early has spent years building a reputation as one of contemporary comedy’s most distinctive voices, whether through scene-stealing performances in projects like Search Party and Stress Positions, or his singular stand-up and musical work. That history makes Maddie’s Secret an especially surprising directorial feature debut. While the film contains plenty of the heightened absurdity and comic precision that fans of Early will recognize, it ultimately reveals itself as something far more sincere: a melodrama about eating disorders, self-worth, and modern womanhood disguised as a campy made-for-television movie.

Catch Maddie’s Secret in theaters beginning June 26th at the Laemmle Monica.

Early stars as Maddie Ralph, a shy but gifted home cook working behind the scenes at a trendy food-media company. Her life changes overnight when a homemade cooking video goes viral, transforming her from anonymous dishwasher to the face of the brand. This sudden attention, however, reawakens her long-suppressed struggle with bulimia. Desperate to conceal her relapse from her loving husband Jake (Eric Rahill) and best friend Deena (Kate Berlant), Maddie tells an impulsive lie that quickly spirals beyond her control.

The premise sounds like the setup for broad satire, and Maddie’s Secret certainly pokes fun at influencer culture, wellness trends, online therapy apps, foodie celebrity, and other fixtures of contemporary life. Yet Early’s screenplay consistently resists easy cynicism, treating its characters with affection and finding humor in their quirks without reducing them to punchlines. Even the broadest personalities feel grounded by an underlying emotional honesty.

That tonal confidence is especially evident in Early’s performance. Playing Maddie could easily have become an exercise in caricature, but he approaches the character with remarkable empathy. Maddie is funny, anxious, talented, vulnerable, and deeply human. The film never treats her eating disorder as a joke, even as it finds comedy in the myriad social pressures, cultural expectations, and personal contradictions that surround it.

What ultimately distinguishes Maddie’s Secret is its refusal to choose between irony and sincerity. In an era when many comedies keep their subjects at arm’s length, Early allows himself to care deeply about his protagonist and the struggles she faces. The film is frequently funny, occasionally outrageous, and unexpectedly moving. By the time it reaches its emotional climax, what initially seemed like a clever genre exercise has transformed into something infinitely richer: a compassionate portrait of a woman trying to reconcile the person she is with the person she believes she should be.

For a filmmaker making his feature directing debut, it is an impressively assured achievement. Campy and heartfelt, and unlike much else in contemporary cinema, Maddie’s Secret announces John Early as a filmmaker worth watching.

“A lesser film would find more cynicism and mockery in the text, but Maddie’s Secret is a testament to the art of trying, finding optimism, and approaching life empathetically.” – Peyton Robinson, RogerEbert.com

“Brimming with style and spirit up to the final scene.” – Natalia Winkelman, The New York Times

“A film of real kindness.” – Sam Bodrojan, IndieWire