- A-List Cast Continues to Make “Lioness” the Queen of the Streaming Jungle (July 31, 2026)
Over the first two seasons of Taylor Sheridan’s star-powered, high-octane spy thriller series “Lioness,” certain patterns and rhythms have been established, making it easier to navigate the deep-in-the-weeds geopolitics.
1. Zoe Saldaña’s Joe McNamara, the head of the U.S. military’s special ops program known as Lioness, recruits a badass and battle-tested but emotionally scarred and combative soldier to infiltrate a target on a mission so dangerous it’s borderline suicidal. In Season One, the new lioness operative was Laysla De Oliveira’s Cruz; for the sophomore campaign, it was Genesis Rodriguez’s helicopter pilot Carillo. (Both actresses turned in fiercely captivating performances, and it’s great to see both back for Season 3.)
2. Joe and her team of wisecracking and world-weary but ferociously effective operatives regularly find themselves in the middle of chaotic, blood-spattered, rip-roaring battle sequences—some of the best action scenes rendered on any TV series this decade.
3. Because most of this stuff is supposed to stay off the grid and is borderline legal at best, Joe is regularly summoned to meetings involving her icy mentor, Kaitlyn Meade (the TV-ubiquitous Nicole Kidman); Secretary of State Edwin Mullins (who else but Morgan Freeman); NSA Chief Damian Hollar (Bruce McGill), White House Chief of Staff Mason (Jennifer Ehle); and CIA Deputy Director Byron Westfield (Michael Kelly). There’s a lot of reprimanding and “You’re on thin ice!” type talk, but Joe always gets the green light to proceed.
L-R: Zoe Saldaña as Joe and Laysla De Oliveira as Cruz in Lioness season 3, streaming on Paramount+, 2026. Photo Credit: Lauren “Lo” Smith/Paramount+
4. To help us catch our breath from the harrowing, massive action set pieces, we get a steady diet of quieter domestic moments. Days or even hours after having just killed enemy combatants while suffering bruises and sometimes worse, Joe returns home to her handsome, gray-haired pediatric surgeon husband Neal (Dave Annable) and her daughters Kate and Charlie (Hannah Love Lanier and Celistina Harris). Joe and Neal survived some rocky times but now behave like heated-up teenagers whenever she comes home—but soon the phone will ring, and Neal will be left to make breakfast for the kids and take them to school while Joe gears up and leads the team on another covert mission to save the world.
We also get glimpses of the home lives of Kelly’s Westfield, who coaches his son’s Little League baseball team, and Kidman’s Meade, who lives in an enormous and chilly-looking house straight out of “The Others” with her husband Errol (Martin Donovan), a wealthy investment banker with deep and perhaps dark political connections.
It’s a winning formula, with Sheridan returning to the territory he so expertly mined in writing the feature film “Sicario,” one of the best films of the 2010s. For Season 3, “Lioness” amps up the action and increases the personal risk factor, reflecting the real-life chaos of today’s geopolitical landscape while telling fictional—if mostly plausible—stories. Instead of getting involved in admittedly large-scale and casualty-laden battles in Mexico or stateside, the team now finds itself on the front lines of a full-scale war overseas—a war described by one operative as World War I meets “Star Wars,” with soldiers literally climbing out of trenches with bayonets while a seemingly endless swarm of high-tech drones buzz overhead, raining fire on the enemy. It’s TV with the scale and sheer visceral impact of a well-budgeted war movie.
L-R: Morgan Freeman as Edwin Mullins and Michael Kelly as Byron Westfield in Lioness season 3, streaming on Paramount+, 2026. Photo Credit: Ryan Green/Paramount+
“Lioness” remains a star vehicle for Saldaña as Season 3 reminds us that Joe can’t really leave her job at the doorstep once she returns home, but the series has wisely expanded its scope to feature more of Joe’s team—which raises the dramatic stakes because we’ve come to care about this group, who in this latest assignment find themselves in WAY over their heads. Amidst all the flashy pyrotechnics—the cool, blue-tinged cinematography of extensive battles, the fog and mist and smoke of war, the drone P.O.V. shots—we’re holding our breath that Jill Wagner’s Bobby and LaMonica Garrett’s Tucker and James Jordan’s Two Cups, et al., make it back in one piece, or at least without too many pieces missing. (Taylor Sheridan also makes an indelible impression as an actor, bringing a rough-hewn edge to the veteran Delta Force operator Cody Spears, who wryly notes, “There’s a reason an old soldier is an old soldier.”)
The dialogue in “Lioness” isn’t always Sorkin-esque. It takes skilled actors to pull off lines such as, “You’d be taking Putin’s queen off the chessboard,” and “You know honeypot? I hold the jar.” Fortunately, the ensemble cast is one of the best in the business, whether we’re talking about the Oscar-winning Kidman, Saldaña and Freeman, reliable veteran hands such as Kelly, Donovan and McGill, or younger stars such as Laysla De Oliveira and Genesis Rodriguez. As much as Zoe Saldaña remains the heart of this series, carrying the load with nomination-worthy aplomb, “Lioness” has such a rich bounty of supporting characters that even if Joe decided to take a desk job and make it home for dinner with the family every night, the series could carry on for years to come.
The first three episodes of “Lioness” Season 3 were made available for review.
- Home Entertainment Guide July 2026: Obsession, The Drama, Is God Is, More (July 31, 2026)
10 NEW TO NETFLIX
“Copshop““Fall““Free Fire““Hamnet““The Hunger Games““Memento““Mile End Kicks““The Mothman Prophecies““Violent Night““Wicked: For Good“
9 NEW TO BLU-RAY/DVD
“Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” (Criterion)
This site’s relationship with early Martin Scorsese films is well-documented. Roger was one of the key supporters for Scorsese in the ’70s and ’80s, really helping to elevate the profile of one of the best American filmmakers of all time. I think he would love that Scorsese’s 1974 drama, which won a deserved Oscar for the great Ellen Burstyn, has been given the Criterion treatment 52 years later, including a 4K digital restoration supervised by the master himself. The set also includes an imported commentary with Scorsese and his incredible cast, alongside new conversations with Burstyn and the recently passed Marcia Lucas. As if that’s not enough, the brilliant Farran Smith Nehme conducts the Burstyn interview, and the great Stephanie Zacharek provides an essay. In a time when Criterion gets a lot of attention for headline-grabbing releases like the upcoming Kubrick set and Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” releases like this can fall under the radar. Don’t let it.
Special Features
New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Martin Scorsese, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
Audio commentary featuring Scorsese and actors Ellen Burstyn, Jodie Foster, Kris Kristofferson, Diane Ladd, and Alfred Lutter
New conversation between Burstyn and film critic Farran Smith Nehme
New interview with editor Marcia Lucas
Making-of documentary featuring Burstyn and Kristofferson
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by film critic Stephanie Zacharek
“The Christophers“
Every Steven Soderbergh film should be a bigger deal. He’s quite simply one of the best American directors of his generation, and his latest is merely further proof of his remarkable range. Who else could go from the haunted “Presence” to the thrilling “Black Bag” to this chamber piece about art and commerce? Sir Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel prove to be a perfect partnership in this smart, engaging drama from Neon, which has given the film a relatively bare-bones physical release, but did include a new conversation about the film between two brilliant writers: Ed Solomon and Charlie Kaufman.
Special Features
Conversation with screenwriter Ed Solomon and Charlie Kaufman
Theatrical trailer
“Cold Prey Trilogy”
It’s always amazing to stumble into entire hit franchises from other countries that simply never found their way into the American pop culture consciousness. Despite being a huge horror fan, I hadn’t really heard much about (or I had heard and forgotten) this Norwegian slasher trilogy launched by the director of “The Wave” and “Troll.” Could these films really justify a massive Limited Edition box set from the excellent folks over at Second Sight, a European physical media company? (Note: You’ll need an all-region player for this one as it’s not HD.)
Regular readers of this column will know how much I love it when a company like Arrow or Second Sight goes all out for what could be called a cult classic, and that’s the case here. This gorgeously packaged set includes tons of special features, including a booklet filled with excellent essays. As for the movies themselves, there’s a captivating efficiency to the first movie: The story of five snowboarders who discover that the remote ski resort they found for shelter has a homicidal resident. And the second movie is arguably even more ambitious while also feeling like a “Halloween II” nod. They’re a reminder of how lean and mean the slasher genre can be, and it’s worth noting that future “Westworld” star Ingrid Bolsø Berdal is great in both.
Cold Prey Special Features
A new audio commentary with Director Roar Uthaug and Actor Ingrid Bolsø Berdal
This is the Vibe: a new interview with Director Roar Uthaug
Draw the Process: a new interview with Actor Ingrid Bolsø Berdal
Alternative Ending
Behind the Scenes
The Visual FX of Cold Prey
Car Scenes Bloopers
Short Film: Mountain Rose Runs Amok
Short Film: An Evening in the Green
Music Video: Bloodlights “One Eye Open”
Cold Prey II Special Features
A new audio commentary with Director Mats Stenberg
A Blessing and A Curse: a new interview with Director Mats Stenberg
Dissociation: a new interview with Actor Ingrid Bolsø Berdal
Stepping Aside: a new interview with Associate Producer Roar Uthaug
Behind the Scenes
Bloopers
Extended / Deleted Scenes
Cold Prey III Special Features
A new audio commentary by Christer Andresen and Phillip Escott
Behind the Scenes
Limited Edition Contents
Rigid slipcase with new artwork by James Neal
120-page book with new essays by Matt Donato, JA Kerswell, Justin LaLiberty, Paul Lê, Ariel Power-Schaub and Nathaniel Thompson
5 collectors’ art cards
“The Crying Game” (Criterion)
“Some movies keep you guessing. Some movies make you care. Once in a long while a movie comes along that does both things at the same time. It’s not easy.” Roger Ebert got “The Crying Game,” a masterful drama that was sadly reduced to its twist instead of appreciating it for its characters. This Criterion version should go a long way to correcting the record, especially via two of the best essays of the year from the phenomenal Tasha Robinson and Willow Catelyn Maclay. The set also includes new interviews with the great Neil Jordan and Stephen Rea, along with some excellent previously available material.
Special Features
New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Neil Jordan, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
Audio commentary featuring Jordan
New interviews with Jordan and actor Stephen Rea
Making-of documentary from 2005 featuring interviews with Jordan, Rea, and producer Stephen Woolley
Alternate ending featuring audio commentary by Jordan
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: Essays by film critics Tasha Robinson and Willow Catelyn Maclay
“The Devil Wears Prada 2“
Two decades after the release of the Oscar-nominated “The Devil Wears Prada,” audiences flocked to the sequel, making it one of the biggest films of 2026 (it’s approaching $700 million worldwide). Given how much I adore the cast, I wish I liked the final product more, but it’s an easy watch on a lazy weekend this summer, and it’s notable that Fox has gone lavish with the Blu-ray release, including a commentary and several featurettes. Even as the plot gets increasingly thin in a movie that I’m not sure really understands journalism, fashion, or big business, it’s never anything less than gorgeous. Sometimes that’s all that matters.
Special Features
AUDIO COMMENTARY BY DAVID FRANKEL, ALINE BROSH MCKENNA, AND MOLLY ROGERS – Watch the film with audio commentary by director David Frankel, writer Aline Brosh McKenna, and costume designer Molly Rogers.
Level Up: Updating the Icons: Join the cast, crew, and other notables as they look back on the iconic first film and its timelessness. Then see how the characters and their wardrobes have evolved for the sequel, and follow the shoot in New York.
Inside the Fashion Closet: Sit down with the cast, filmmakers, and lead costume designer Molly Rogers as she talks about dressing Miranda, Andy, Emily, and Nigel. Discover their of-the-moment but timeless fashion looks that shine a spotlight on each of their personalities.
Front-Row Access: Shooting in Italy: Join the cast, crew, and director David Frankel as he talks about the production in Italy and shooting during Milan’s fashion week. Hear how top design houses supported the production and how Runway’s own fashion show and concert was created.
“Runway” Music Video by Lady Gaga and Doechii: Turn it up with Lady Gaga and Doechii in their music video for the movie’s new song, “Runway.”
GAG REEL – Check out the fun on set in these outtakes from the making of the movie.
“The Drama“
Kristoffer Borgli’s A24 film is one of the most divisive of 2026, a movie that’s either a brilliant dissection of modern morals or a hollow provocation that borders on irresponsible, depending on how you’re talking to. I’m actually in the middle of those extreme camps. It’s a bit of a premise in search of a movie, and I don’t think it really has the nerve to follow through on some of its thorniest ideas, but Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, and Alana Haim are all unimpeachably great, adding nuance and believability to difficult characters. Ultimately, it’s not quite as smart as it thinks it is, but I also don’t think it’s as dumb as its detractors would have you believe. The A24 Blu-ray is expectedly great for one of their top ten movies of all time, with a commentary, featurette, wedding video, postcards, and excellent packaging.
Special Features
Commentary with Costume Designer Katina Danabassis, Production Designer Zosia Mackenzie, & Co-editor Joshua Raymond Lee
“Unpacking the Drama” Making-of Featurette
Wardrobe & Camera Test with Commentary by Katina Danabassis
“Relationship Hotline” Promo
Charlie & Emma Wedding Video
Set of six collectible postcards illustrated by Kristina Tzekova
“Hud” (Criterion)
Criterion’s Western section is one of the best in the industry, and they’ve finally gotten around to including Martin Ritt’s adaptation of genre master Larry McMurtry’s Horseman, Pass By. The title character, played by Paul Newman in one of his best performances, was more of a minor one in the source, which focuses on Lonnie Bannon (Brandon deWilde), who is trapped in a battle between his grandfather Homer (Melvyn Douglas) and uncle Hud. The new Criterion release is a beauty, including new interviews with Sally Field and Roger Deakins, two absolute legends. It also features a captivating episode of the classic “Inside the Actors Studio” with Newman, one of my favorite actors of all time.
Special Features
New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
Audio excerpts from a 1974 American Film Institute seminar with director Martin Ritt
New interview with actor Sally Field, conducted by author Isaac Butler, on Ritt and Hud
New interview with cinematographer Roger Deakins on director of photography James Wong Howe
Episode of Inside the Actors Studio, hosted by James Lipton, featuring actor Paul Newman
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by author and film scholar Gabriel Miller and a 1963 American Cinematographer interview with Howe
“Is God Is“
Amazon MGM is doing that kinda lame thing they do sometimes wherein they drop a movie on physical media … and that’s the end of it. Not only is there no digital code for this thrilling future cult classic, but nary a special feature. If writer/director Aleshea Harris has the career I suspect that she will, “Is God Is” will someday get a special edition. Until then, find a way to watch her debut, the story of twin sisters Racine (movie MVP Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson), and their quest for vengeance on the awful father (Sterling K. Brown) who set them on fire. The filmmaking here is kinetic, marrying classic revenge movie tropes to a new vision. There’s a reason we put this on our list of The Best Movies of 2026 So Far. Don’t miss it.
“Obsession“
The story of “Obsession” is one of the most interesting pop culture explosions of 2026. Shot for under $1 million and picked up out of TIFF (where I first saw it) by Focus for around $15 million, it has now made almost half a billion dollars around the world. It is a true phenomenon, and more than just an announcement of a new talent in Curry Barker. It truly feels like this, and “Backrooms” (and, to a lesser extent, “Iron Lung” last year) signal a shift in the horror industry, a new wave of young talent that’s redefining the narrative in the genre, taking us from the Grief Horror era into a new one about an uncertain world. As “Obsession” continues to make money in theaters, it’s already available on Blu-ray and DVD in a relatively thin edition for a movie that proved thicker than anyone could have imagined.
Special Features
FEATURE COMMENTARY WITH DIRECTOR/WRITER/EDITOR CURRY BARKER
OBSESSION UNLEASHED – Take the obsession further by going behind the scenes with filmmaker Curry Barker and the cast, Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson and Megan Lawless, to see them create a wild horror story out of intense performances and shocking scares. Hear the cast reflect on their most memorable scenes, get a peek at Michael and Inde’s chemistry test that sparked the film’s emotional core, and see how their collaboration shaped the film’s most unsettling moments.
- Live Long and Prosper: A Personal Journey through the 2026 San Diego Comic-Con (July 31, 2026)
60 Years of Star Trek
My first stop was The Lodge, where I wish I had more time to dance, but the night was young when we got in. We mainly went there for Star Trek, but “The Last Airbender” fans were better served. Our usual activation rounds were lighter than usual, and we especially missed Hulu/FX. FX’s “American Horror Story” opted for timed limited ice cream offerings at specific locations. For Star Trek fans, also outside the convention center was “Star Fleet Command: 60 Years of Star Trek” (The Sinclair on G Street), which displayed authentic on-set props, ship miniatures, and classic uniforms, but also offered a Holodeck VR experience, interactive claw machines, and custom personalized Star Trek trading cards.
After years of trying, I was finally given a press reservation for the Saturday Star Trek presentation in Hall H that featured remarks by Rod Roddenberry, George Takei, Michael Dorn (Worf in “The Next Generation,” “Deep Space Nine” and “Picard”), Robert Picardo (“Voyager,” “Deep Space Nine,” “Prodigy” and “Starfleet Academy”), Dominic Keating (“Enterprise”), Cirroc Lofton (“Deep Space Nine”), Doug Jones (“Discovery”), Michelle Hurd (“Picard”), Jerry O’Connell (“Lower Decks”), Christina Chong (“Strange New Worlds”) and Karim Diané (“Starfleet Academy”).
While some reporters stayed for a chance at the Marvel panel that was hours later, I met with the male panelist for round table interviews where I asked each panelist about their favorite Star Trek episode. Takei, now often seen in a wheelchair, is still sharp and on top of current events. Of course, his favorite is not an episode, but a movie: “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” where Hikaru Sulu is a captain in command of the USS Excelsior. Takei wishes that Sulu’s adventures as a captain were further explored, but he conceded that producers have to think about a lot of issues. Takei has used his Star Trek celebrity to help other causes such as spreading the knowledge of Japanese Americans’ World War II incarceration and LGBTQ concerns, and that’s part of Star Trek’s 60-year legacy.
Guillermo Del Toro and Pan’s Labyrinth
On the Thursday and Friday of SDCC, fans could participate in a special interactive scavenger hunt: “The Fetch Quest” as part of a special celebration for the 20th anniversary of Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” which will be released in theaters later this year in a 4K restoration. That means that some of the excellent SDCC cosplay was professional actors dressed as Ofelia, Captain Vidal, and The Faun. You needed to encounter all three characters in order to qualify for a limited-edition anniversary poster. The first 50 players to successfully complete the quest won access to a private autograph signing session with Guillermo del Toro. Things reportedly got a little aggressive for the final 50, but once lined up at the Parq nightclub, those that got in were able to view the first two tests that launched the 3D conversion of the film. Del Toro introduced the clips, saying, “When the time came for ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’s 20th anniversary, I said, because then I saw ‘Pacific Rim’ on the IMAX 3D … it was amazing. It was like I was watching somebody else’s movie.”
He then said he decided, “I’m going to do a new transfer. I’m going to do a new mix. I’m paying for a new layer of sound for the movie, and I’m remixing it before we launch it again. We’re color correcting it again because the tools are better now than ever.”
The audience got special 3D glasses and the key to a free drink. Del Toro reminded the audience that October 9 was his birthday and that’s the day when the new conversion will be released this year. Love the film? You can record a video to submit to be part of the celebration (#PansLegacy).
His recent Netflix film, “Frankenstein,” also had a brief exhibition in Los Angeles for awards season last year. At SDCC, the visual effects team for that film had a Saturday evening panel that confirmed that working for del Toro means striving for an obsessive level of excellence. They are not only working for a director, but also someone who curates props from his film.
DC Comics Commits to Canines and Community
Ultimately, DC Comics won my heart this year, not only because two of their activations were totally committed to creating an atmosphere of serious fun (Lantern Training Headquarters for HBO Max’s “Lanterns”) and off-the-wall fun (The Comic Center of Pasadena for HBO Max’s “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe”) which were interconnected by portals and DC had an app to alert you to DC fun at SDCC, but also because of their commitment to canines and community.
At the Lantern Training Headquarters, we shot at apples instead of aliens and found a green lantern at a bar after following the clues. Ultimately, we learned to be fearless and got a cool metal (not plastic) Green Lantern ring. “Lanterns” premieres on 16 August 2026 on HBO.
At the Comic Center of Pasadena (much nicer and more spacious than the comic book store I knew in Pasadena), you are helping store owner Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman) and had three chances to fail to save the universe with challenges like:
You land in an apocalyptic universe.
Good news: the Flea Market survived.
Bad news: those are actual zombies, not hipster artisanal collectors.
You’re going to need supplies.
Which stall do you hit first?
Your choices were Dental Floss, Food, or Weapons. We headed to the Weapons stall and were faced with three more choices: a shield, a grenade, or a sword. What you’re really searching for is the quantum interference device that Sheldon Cooper, Leonard Hofstadter and Howard Wolowitz (three of the main characters of “The Big Bang Theory”) made. We found it and learned how “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe.” A bonus touch is that Stuart’s store and the Lantern Training Headquarters are linked via a video portal in real time.
On Thursday, DC Heroes and Villains was the focus of the Her Universe fashion show. If you didn’t want to wait in line for the show itself, there was a selfie-ready display of DC heroes and villains, but Her Universe also partnered with Best Friends Animal Society to bring Krypto’s Corner (sponsored by Milk-Bone) to the lobby of the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel, and the local organization Paws for Coronado featured adoptable puppies (Thursday afternoon only).
The show was co-hosted by Her Universe founder Ashley Eckstein and Broadway actor and singer Michael James Scott (currently featured as Nurse Francois Dubois in the “Scrubs” revival series), and twenty contestants strutted their stuff to win cash and a chance to design a fashion collection for Her Universe. This year the winners were Sean Quinn of Santa Clarita, CA for “Jokes on You” (Judges Winner) and Ten Wilkinson of Midlothian, VA for “The Beast Within” (Audience Winner). The show ended before 8 p.m., but the contestants stuck around to explain their craft and help inspire future costume designers.
I was already set for the “Air Bud Returns” panel, having attended the press conference on Saturday where I learned four dogs were used in the film, and when the film comes out in January of 2027, there is a chance you can buy those basketball sneakers for your own dog. Director Charles Martin Smith was attached to the 1997 original film, but the reboot is under the direction of Robert Vince, who was first attached to the 2002 “Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch.” Vince was upstaged by his furry star during the panel for the 15th film in the “Air Bud” series.
During the dog days of summer, what better way to end a long weekend? I started by walking my own dogs in cosplay, met and played with other dogs, and then came back to my own walking in the cooling air (while wearing a Green Lantern ring) before heading off for some pizza and back to Los Angeles.
- Fantasia 2026: Ferine, The Eyes, The Mutation (July 30, 2026)
Identity, and our anxiety around it, is a ripe battleground for horror: Are we who we think we are, and are we terrified of the things we’re becoming? Or, conversely, should others be terrified of us? In one way or another, the next three films on our Fantasia Festival journey explore those neuroses: two in bloody, suspenseful fashion, the other in quiet, sensitive contemplation. The latter, in fact, might be the closest you might get to something downright cozy at a festival known for ghouls, ghosts, and gore.
Returning to Fantasia with the feature-length version of his short of the same name, Italian director Andrea Corsini’s “Ferine” channels, among other things, Paul Schrader’s remake of “Cat People” into a headier, more carnivorous entry in the motherhood-horror canon. “Oddity” standout Carolyn Bracken plays Irene, the daughter of a recently passed, acclaimed conceptual artist, whose string of miscarriages have left her choosing the surrogacy route. But when the surrogate mother has last-minute scruples about handing her child over, Irene flees with her baby from the fertility clinic in the middle of the night.
Problem is, we’ve just seen minutes before that a mysterious animal wrangler (Caroline Goodall’s Dama) has just lost a precious South American jaguar in the same woods she’s driving through. And in just the first ten minutes of “Ferine,” we see Irene’s car crash, the baby flung just out of her reach. In one of many shocking moments, Irene barely misses saving her infant from the cat’s bloody jaws.
This kind of tragedy would traumatize anyone, but Corsini takes his character down a darker, bloodier route than anyone could imagine, as “Ferine” tracks Irene as her shock and grief swiftly make her go downright feral. She starts behaving strangely, even to her best friend Rosa (Paola Lavini) and her art dealer Alfredo (Marco Gambino), and begins developing a curious taste for raw animal meat. When she can’t get it from the fridge, well, she starts seeking out more live prey. Despite this, Rosa, who runs the aforementioned clinic, tries to help Irene with her grief by offering to bring her Giulia (Elisabetta Caccamo), a young child under her care, and whose drug-addicted mother clearly can’t take care of her. But when the girl’s possessive father objects, Irene takes matters into her own hands.
We’ve seen this kind of basic story before: the pressures of womanhood and motherhood reducing women to their most primal instincts. There’s ostensibly a liberation teased here in the freedom Irene’s transgressions give her, placing her beyond the petty human concerns of those around her. Bracken plays this kind of wild-eyed ferocity well, even as Irene’s journey renders her increasingly nonverbal. But the mama-lioness in her comes raring in when she steals Giulia away, and the girl silently takes to her new mother’s animalistic protectiveness.
“Ferine” is, to pardon the pun, a curious beast: It looks gorgeous, with Fabrizia La Palombara’s crisp cinematography capturing each of Irene’s blood-soaked kills (and Carlotta Desmann’s brutalist production design) with clinical verve. Those images are paired nicely, of course, by the second Pino Donaggio score we’ve gotten this year (both have been featured in Fantasia); it’s suitably lush and haunting, though more anonymous than his work in “Her Private Hell.” But this formal feast feels like empty calories thanks to a script that barely explains what it’s doing, and works a little too opaquely to let you figure out exactly what’s going on from beat to beat. A final act, in which Dama captures Irene and studies her in a cage like one of her prizes, comes close to some thematic parallels about the thin line between human want and animal instinct. But Corsini is a little too precious for his own good, and “Ferine” could have stood to sink its fangs deeper into its material.
Similarly frustrating is Yeom Ji-ho’s derivative serial killer thriller “The Eyes,” not to be confused with the J-horror “The Eye,” about a woman who sees ghosts in her newly transplanted eyes. This film, however, feels similarly stuck in a previous era of East Asian horror, trudging steadily down the repetitive, sometimes problematic tropes of the ’90s serial killer flick without doing all that much to subvert them. (Since this is a remake of a 2010 Spanish horror film called “Julia’s Eyes,” maybe that old-fashionedness tracks.)
Seo-jin (Shin Min-a) is a photographer struggling both from her rapidly degenerating eyesight (a congenital condition) and the trauma from a years-prior run-in with her crazed ex-boyfriend, Kim Hyun-min (Lee Seung-ryong), who tried to kill her in her studio one day. But those haunting memories return when she discovers her twin sister, Seo-in (also Min-a), hanging from the ceiling of her apartment. She’s not convinced it was a suicide and recruits the help of a sympathetic detective (Kim Nam-hee’s Do-hyeok) to help her discover the truth.
Yeom slowly parcels out the information relating to their investigation alongside Seo-in’s true fate in ways that are effective, but derivative of everything from “Se7en” to “Psycho.” There are the haunting flashbacks to Seo-in’s life before her death, the slow dissemination of clues, the brief bursts of action to spice up the investigation. We even have a red herring in the form of Dae-ho (Son Bo-bseung), Seo-in’s burly neighbor, whose mental illness leaves him shambling and mumbling in ways evocative of all the ugliest tropes of the genre. Yeom makes judicious use of Seo-jin’s blindness in a few key moments of tension (particularly when she might have to pretend she’s more blind than she is), but it’s a shame such stylish imagery is in service of such a slog of a story.
Sadly, that’s not the only hokey depiction “The Eyes” gets up to, as its climax slowly builds to a confrontation with the eventual perpetrator, a ridiculous reveal that the film to this point does not earn. Suffice to say, we’re still doing “Psycho” in 2026, folks, and Yeom plays this twist straight enough that it’s impossible to reclaim as camp reappropriation and simply feels like queerphobia. Such a gonzo turn could have been salvaged if “The Eyes” had the foresight to justify it.
Enough with the cannibalism and serial killing; let’s get into more tender territory. Shin Su-won’s first film in three years, “The Mutation,” may sound like a Fantasia selection from the title alone, but its real aims are as human as they come. The title refers, curiously, to Se-oh (Han Hyun-min), a mixed-race Korean man who has lived a life being treated as an outsider. After quitting his job as a costumed entertainer at a local amusement park (fittingly, he is forced to play a white tiger, which furthers his feelings that he’s a “mutant”), Se-oh gathers all the money he has, buys a slick Armani suit and a pricey Louis Vuitton suitcase, and offers the latter (and its contents) to anyone who will travel with him for two days to his destination.
The only person who says yes is Sora (Lee Zoo-young), who struggles against her own marginalization: she’s a queer woman grieving the loss of her relationship due to her family’s homophobia. The two broken souls choose to travel together, hopping along trains, truck beds, and even hitchhiking, to reach whatever end Se-oh has in mind. (Our only clue is a mysterious blue vial he keeps on him. Is it a suicide pact? Is it something else? Shin keeps us guessing.
“The Mutation”‘s simple, gossamer charms come in its two sensitive central performances, Sora and Se-oh finding warmth and community in their respective struggles. As they go from place to place, healing old wounds and discovering new ones to open up, Hyun-min and Zoo-young find ways to bond over their experience of difference in Korean society, even if their struggles are not the same. Hyun-min has a chip on his shoulder over the obvious conclusions people reach based on his appearance, and Zoo-young stifles her queerness and identity, even as she yearns to connect. Her vocation is in constructing beautiful wooden tables, which she believes are best shared with others; she wants connection and community, but Korean society bars her from it.
Shin’s camera is generous and unobtrusive, capturing both urban and rural locales with a light, sensitive touch. There’s something of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s expressive airiness in her camera placement and the subdued, wounded performances of her actors. It’s a film of immense yearning, of people struggling to find connection in a world that consistently rejects them. The answer, the film supposes, is just finding someone to take with you along the journey—even if your paths diverge at the end.
- Desire Is the Catalyst: Gregg Araki on “I Want Your Sex” (July 30, 2026)
With “I Want Your Sex,” Gregg Araki mounts a long-awaited return to filmmaking in the same surreal, provocative key that long ago cemented his status as a true icon of queer independent cinema.
At the center of his latest is a volatile BDSM relationship that develops between contemporary artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde) and her studio assistant Elliott (Cooper Hoffman), one charged by their obviously exploitative power imbalance and complicated additionally by their failure to communicate across generational lines. Araki’s playfully anarchic comedy—in US theaters starting this week, via Magnolia Pictures—has been broadly described as a “dominatrix drama.” But in typical Araki fashion, it fluctuates boldly between tones and sensibilities, splashily subverting its own premise with elements of art-world satire, film-noir pastiche, and hyper-pop surrealism.
Like Araki’s seminal “Teen Apocalypse” trilogy—“Totally F***ed Up,” “The Doom Generation,” and “Nowhere,” three caustic time capsules of Gen X youth in revolt—and his other best-known work, all considered part of the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s—his latest film is exuberantly stylized and at times jarringly provocative. It’s also, as Araki recently discussed in an interview with RogerEbert.com, something of a “love letter” to its target audience, departing from the nihilistically violent endings of his earlier films to suggest something hopeful—if also impish and ironic—about the perpetual plight of sexually confused twentysomethings.
Ahead of the US theatrical release of “I Want Your Sex,” Araki sat down to discuss Wilde’s movie-star mystique, the intersection of artifice and intimacy in his filmmaking, and the fire of sexual desire he prays is still burning inside Gen-Z audiences.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I Want Your Sex” is your first theatrically released feature in 12 years, since “White Bird in a Blizzard,” but you’d encountered Karley Sciortino’s original script even earlier than that previous project. How did the character of Erika Tracy emerge over that time, and what changed when Olivia Wilde entered the picture?
It’s been a long journey. I first read Karley’s original spec script in 2012 or 2013; that’s how I first met her. Erika Tracy was not in that script; it was a female intern and a male boss. Erika did not really appear until there was a version of the movie I was trying to make around 2015; it fell apart, as various other movies happened. In 2017, around #MeToo, I remember thinking, “I really don’t want to see a woman get dragged around by the hair, even in a consensual relationship.” I don’t want to kink-shame anybody, but it was just not an image I was comfortable with.
I got the idea to flip-flop the sexual roles and make it a male sub and a female dom, which was so much more interesting, and that gave rise to the Erika Tracy character. I thought of Erika as being a cross between Robert Mapplethorpe and Madonna: this larger-than-life, provocative, polarizing, and charismatic figure—like a movie star—of the art world. That character would so easily draw in Cooper’s character; he obviously wouldn’t be able to resist her. She was, to me, almost a sex superhero; it actually describes her in the script as that.
We had been trying to make the movie, and it had been a long, long journey. Olivia wasn’t even on my radar, but my manager slipped the script to her agent without telling me; then she was like, “Oh, Olivia Wilde read this script and wants to meet.” I was like, “Olivia Wilde? That’s a fucking cool idea.” I’ve been a fan of hers forever, since she was on “The O.C.”
A bisexual icon from the start, on that series.
From the start! Olivia’s totally like a ’40s movie star; she has that presence, those cheekbones. It’s everything about her; she feels like Greta Garbo or Ingrid Bergman. She’s an old-time movie star, and I feel like Hollywood didn’t really know what to do with her. She would just be the wife or the girlfriend or the hot mistress. I think that’s why she read the script and was like, “Oh, this part’s so juicy! It’s so fun! It’s such a cool character to play. It’s not just the hot girlfriend I always am.”
Olivia was so cool and fearless. I told her, in that very first meeting, “Whoever does this part, they have to not give a fuck about what people are gonna think, what they’re gonna say. She told me that she was down, that this was what she wanted to do, and so we met up. 48 hours later, the movie was financed, so it came together very quickly from there. We got Cooper involved because he had such great chemistry with Olivia.
From the start, out of the gate, she knew exactly what she wanted Erika Tracy to be; another aspect of casting Olivia is that she’s that type of actor that can pull off anything: any hair, makeup, costume. And that’s what I wanted her to be like. The different eras of Madonna, all those different kinds of personas and images she’s embodying—Madonna’s coffee table book, Sex—was all a big part of the character.
“I Want Your Sex.” (Magnolia Pictures)
You do cultivate this movie-star mystique, to a degree, with the Erika Tracy character, though elements of kink, BDSM, and queer sexuality all subvert it. The film, more broadly, is engaged with ideas of sex, beauty, and desire—as well as with elements of fantasy and role play that seem linked to its engagement with cinema, especially to opening with this film-noir frame reminiscent of “Sunset Boulevard.”
I think of the film as a funhouse, despite being about this dark obsession. I didn’t want to make a movie that was too dark, bleak, or pessimistic, given the hellscape of a world that we’re living in. Personally, as a moviegoer, I can’t watch films that are too dark or dystopian, because the world is so apocalyptic right now. I knew that I wanted it to be very pop and fun.
In all my movies, but this one in particular, there is definitely a reflection on film history. In the script development, the sense of “Sunset Boulevard” came through; the whole film-noir framework of the movie was, for me, very inspired by those ’80s Almodóvar movies “Law of Desire” and “Matador.” I started calling it “preposterous film noir,” with these very convoluted film-noir storylines that—like “The Maltese Falcon”—never really make sense.
The film-noir aspect of the movie comes from those stylized Almodóvar films that aren’t meant to be taken at face value, even though there’s also the interrogation room from “Se7en,” which feels like it’s in a totally different movie. The world of the film is such an entertaining amalgamation of all these things: film history, movies I’ve seen, popular culture.
It’s interesting you bring up Almodóvar because, across a lot of the films that you’ve made and across his films as well, there’s a unique relationship between artifice and authenticity, and with where intimacy and desire exist between those two polarities. In this film, the language of sex constantly sets up contrasts: intimate but not necessarily honest, performative but personal. Tell me about the atmosphere and the aesthetics of “I Want Your Sex,” how one starts to flesh out a world this stylized and expressive.
My movies tend to be “not real.” My movies tend to be heightened, accentuated, stylized. The colors, the compositions, the sets, as with Almodóvar movies, which also aren’t real, feel like you’re in a different world. As a filmmaker, that’s something I really appreciate—particularly “Law of Desire,” which is one of my favorite movies of all time. I first saw it in the late ’80s. I was just starting to make movies, and that was a big influence on me. The authenticity and intimacy of the sex scenes in that movie, and also “Matador,” were very inspiring to me.
That’s, I think, why sex and sexuality, and those intimate moments, have been so much a part of all my movies from the start. There is definitely contrast between these intimate, very real moments and a broader context of the universe around them, which is stylized, surreal, and “not real,” while the intimacy is real on a human level.
That’s a testament to the actors and their ability to sell what the movie is selling; they sell those moments. I never tell my actors, “This is really theatrical and stylized.” It’s like, “It’s real to them.” I remember, when Olivia and Cooper had their first chemistry read, that relationship’s real, and the conflict there is real. Going around them gives me the latitude to do whatever I want to do in terms of lighting, design, color, wardrobe—as long as that central, human part is authentically there.
Director Gregg Araki on the set of “I Want Your Sex.” (Magnolia Pictures)
The film is very engaged with our contemporary moment, in how it senses isolation and loneliness in people’s relationships to sex, to performance; the way young generations are constantly mediating their interactions through social-media platforms, performing their identities in many senses. How did you determine the specific types of BDSM, the specific kind of role play, you wanted to include in this film?
Erika is very much a mouthpiece for me; a lot of the things she says in the movie about younger generations not having sex, about the fear of missing out on the formative sexual years of your life, are relevant to my ideas. My whole life—my career, my art, my personality, my character—is all formed through the sexual adventures I’ve had and sexual mistakes I’ve made at confusing times in my life. It all forged me as a person, and it’s been a very important part of my evolution. I definitely relate to Erika’s character in that way.
But what Cooper’s character brings up is that his generation is the first generation that, literally from the time they were babies, had a phone in their hand. They’ve been attached to technology for so long, and it’s the notion that everything—because of social media, because phones are literally a part of people now—is being surveilled. What if I had not been sneaking out to a gay bar when I was nineteen or twenty years old? That was a primal experience in my life. That was the step out of the door into the world that made me the person that I am. I had to do that on my own, and it was sex that drove me there. It was also this private, secret activity.
Would I have done it if there’d been cameras everywhere and everybody was being surveilled? Kids don’t hit on each other in bars or clubs anymore, because they don’t want to be humiliated because somebody’s videotaping them going up to the pretty girl, going, “Would you like to dance?” and she’s like, “Fuck you,” and then you end up on Instagram. It’s why kids don’t drink anymore. They don’t want to get too drunk at the party, throw up on someone’s shoes, get videotaped, and be humiliated.
That’s a new kind of fear around exploring sexuality, and it’s not completely unfounded.
It’s all about fear and anxiety, and it’s absolutely real. People need privacy. They need things that are not public; they shouldn’t be made public. We live in this odd time. I absolutely empathize with that feeling of what Cooper says in the movie: “We’re afraid of making a mistake.” And what Erika tells him is that being young is making mistakes. Being young is fucking up. Being young is doing the wrong thing and learning from it. How else are you going to learn about life? And that’s definitely a paradox.
I don’t want to preach at or lecture anybody, to tell people what to do. I just want to open a conversation for people to talk about this; I want you to go out with your friends to the bar after the movie and just discuss, pick a side, and argue for it or against it.
As you mentioned, Erika is seen quoting sentiments you’ve expressed in interviews, but Elliott is another type of director surrogate for you; Cooper Hoffman had his ear pierced, and he has tattoos on his hands as you do…
That’s very intentional. Erika is very much not based on me. I don’t fuck my interns. I don’t do the stuff that she does. But a lot of her care, her passion, and her feelings about sex and sexuality come from me; literally, that interview on the laptop when Cooper’s character sees her for the first time, that’s Olivia quoting an interview I’d done. Those are literally things I’ve said. I definitely relate to her.
But, at the same time, I relate to him, in the sense that he to me is what I was like when I was twenty-two years old: “I want to be an artist. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what my life will be.” Cooper pierced his ear for the movie because I have my ear pierced; then we put tattoos on him, like my tattoos. I did very much base his character, and where he’s at in life as a fledgling artist, on what I was like when I was his age. It’s young me fucking older me.
To take that even further, every character in “I Want Your Sex” refracts a certain version of you, expresses a specific sexual attitude, or in some other way is reminiscent of your past work. So many different past collaborators of yours pop up in small moments—from “Nowhere,” from “Kaboom”—that further heighten this performative art-world setting. In bringing that all together, what conversations did you end up having with yourself about your body of work and its relationship to sexuality, to intimacy, to performance?
It’s definitely true. It’s been true of all my movies. It’s like, with “Doom Generation,” people are always like, “Oh, are you the Jimmy character?” People always think I’m the Jimmy character, because he’s part Asian. I’m always like, “I’m actually all the characters. And, actually, for “The Doom Generation,” I relate more to the Amy Blue character than the other characters, because that’s how I was in the mid-’90s: very snarky, very sarcastic, very fuck-you.”
Definitely, in this movie too, there are parts of me in everything. When the Mason Gooding character is saying, “I’m just fucking gay; I’m not pansexual or whatever,” that literally is something I’ve said before, about myself. When he’s like, “Oh, have you ever sucked a dick? Well, if you haven’t, then you’re straight, so knock it off,” his character is very much me in that moment.
“I Want Your Sex.” (Magnolia Pictures)
But there’s a wide array in everybody, in terms of the spectrum of sexuality in the movie. There’s Erika, who’s slept with men and women; she’s very sex-positive, performative, Madonna-esque, and very larger-than-life. She’s, in the truest sense of the term, a sex symbol. There’s Elliott, who’s young, exploring, trying to figure it out. There’s Apple, [played by Chase Sui Wonders,] who’s like—God only fucking knows. She’s just repressed and hasn’t figured out who she is yet. Hopefully she’s going to get there. I hope she is going to have a happy ending or happily ever after. There’s Charli [XCX,], whose character is very uptight, very not into sex at all, but maybe she really is into it—just not with the Cooper character. There are all kinds of colors along the spectrum there. There is definitely a lot going on in the film; it’s like “Nowhere,” in that way, in terms of its range of queer and straight relationships.
And they’re all ricocheting off one another, these embodied facets of you, in this colorful, pop-art space.
I really wanted to do something that was pop, fun, and innocent, as an antidote to the hellish times that we’re living in. It’s a world where kind of anything’s possible, and there are dark moments, but it’s not going to be deadly. I’ve certainly made darker movies in the past, like “The Doom Generation,” which ends on a very dark note. “Mysterious Skin” has a lot of darkness in it. With this movie, I really want people to have a good time. I want them to be provoked. I want them to be challenged. And there’s so much to talk about, I think.
In working with production designers, art directors, costume designers, set decorators, makeup artists, hair stylists, and so on to create the heightened reality of “I Want Your Sex,” tell me about working with limited resources—both in terms of budget and timing, given how quickly the production came together once Olivia was attached—while aiming so high visually.
I have been doing this for 35 years, so I’m very experienced, but the work I have done in television was intense. When we made Now Apocalypse, we shot ten episodes; I directed all ten, and we shot them in 40 days. We were shooting an episode every four days. I am very fast and very resourceful as a director. I had this movie in my head.
I knew what Erika’s office was going to be, and I had that in my head, this black box. The crazy thing about Erika’s office is that we were inside of it for eleven pages. It was a crazy amount of time to spend in this office, so it could not be a boring office. It had to have such life, and so I’d come up with this idea of a video painting behind her desk. I worked with Angelique Clark, an amazing production designer; we’d never worked together before, and she was so nervous about the level of ambition we were talking about, based on the schedule and the budget that we had. But she was so creative and really pulled a rabbit out of a hat to make this stuff happen.
She did a fantastic job, trying to create all of this. She’s the one who came up with that incredible orifice in Cooper’s bedroom, this hole in the wall that looks almost like a vagina; it does not make sense, in terms of what it is and how this kid could afford to live in an apartment that has this feature, but she saw a picture of it and brought it to me. She really got what we were trying to do. I want Charli’s bedroom to be monochromatic, with paint on the wall the same color as the sheets, and so she understood that. We were in this stylized world, and she brought so much to that vision.
In terms of actualizing it with Ari Phillips and Monica Chamberlain, the costume designers: Ari was Olivia’s idea, because they had worked together on “Don’t Worry, Darling.” I told Olivia, “Ari Phillips is never going to do this movie. She’s an Oscar-nominated costume designer. She is used to big-budget productions; she doesn’t do indie movies.” But she’d done “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” so I said, “Let’s see.” Ari loved the script, she loved Olivia, and so she agreed.
“I Want Your Sex.” (Magnolia Pictures)
My favorite Ari story is that there’s that piece that Mason wears at the art show; it’s a one-piece mesh—it’s not mesh, it’s plastic, but you can see his body through it. I was at a fashion show, and I sent a picture of it to Ari, and I asked if we could find something like that for Mason. And Ari just responded, “Oh, that’s Christian Siriano. He’s a friend of mine.” And literally two days later, it was in the office, fresh off the runway. That’s how Ari is; she’s amazing. We got so fortunate with this movie in terms of all the right people at the right time.
“I Want Your Sex” features discussions of pornography, of contemporary art, of BDSM dynamics—but, at one point, the character of Yvette (Roxane Mesquida) comes into play as this European acquaintance of Erika’s, who draws a distinction between sex as performance and real eroticism. Where do you see eroticism existing in culture today and, if we’re proposing that Gen Z is struggling with sex and desire, where are they with eroticism?
I love the Yvette character—who was written for Roxane Mesquida, who’s been with me in “Now Apocalypse” and “Kaboom”—and her French outlook on eroticism. We live in such a crazy time right now. In the movie I’m working on right now, I invoke the Charles Dickens quote—“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times”—because there’s so much that’s terrible. The way social media is depleting everyone; you’re constantly being surveilled by the police; there’s this total lack of privacy. Nothing’s real anymore, nothing’s true anymore. It’s all breaking down. But, at the same time, there’s so much freedom and openness—at least for now, until the fascism really kicks in and the freedoms fall away, as they already have started to.
But eroticism… I do think, particularly for young people, there is a real sense of eroticism in pop culture. “Heated Rivalry” is such a phenomenon, which is fascinating to me. I love it, of course, but it’s so fascinating to me that it’s found mainstream success. As somebody who made “The Living End” in 1992, now wine moms in Santa Monica are obsessed with “Heated Rivalry.” The level of queer sex is essentially the same. It’s not porn, and it doesn’t cross that line into that kind of eroticism.
But I think porn, in a way, has been liberating, because of its accessibility. It is accessible to everybody—except children, of course. Children shouldn’t be watching porn—but if you were a closeted guy in like the ’40s or ’50s, what did you do for sex? What did you do for desire? Were you looking at Sears underwear ads? Now, every DL guy—and this is obviously true all over America—is watching gay porn; they have figured out this is what they want, and they’re on Grindr, trying to get it in real life. That’s so much bigger than it ever was. They’re not necessarily out. They’re not necessarily bi or pan; they’re still married with their kids and under homophobic laws, but there is a level of participation. They’re having gay sex. In this modern world, where everything is a free-for-all, there is still eroticism.
That’s true, too, for Gen Z. I do think of “I Want Your Sex” as a sex-positive love letter to Gen Z, saying, “Kids, I’m not going to tell you what to do, but think about this, discuss it, talk about it.” There is this level of access they have. Think about somebody like Lil Nas X; he’s a little bit of a tragic character, but his version of Black queer sexuality never would have happened in ’60s, ’70s, even ’80s culture. Prince in the ’80s, at the height of his androgyny, was not where Lil Nas is: so unapologetically queer and so out there with it. That’s a sign, for Gen Z in particular, that they have an awareness of it, which is so important, because that openness is critical for any progressive nature to move us forward.
It’s easier for us as older people to forget they live in a different world. I was talking to Cooper about this; for my generation, as a post-sexual-liberation generation, lust or sexual desire is the catalyst. It’s the trigger. It gets you out of the door. It gets you out of the house. It gets you on Grindr. It gets you wherever you’re going to seek out that contact, that encounter, whatever it is.
Does Gen Z not have as strong a sex drive? Do they lack that desire, which is how they can sit back and think dating’s too hard? I wonder if technology’s somehow dampened that. When we were growing up, sex was all you’d ever think about. As a teenager, as an adolescent, full of hormones, you’re just constantly going to the next party, going to the dance, going wherever you’re going, seeking contact with that desire, that crush, that person: “I’m so in love with that person.” I wonder if it’s internal, if the fire of desire is not burning as intensely for them. But let us hope that fire is still there.
“I Want Your Sex” is in theaters July 31, via Magnolia Pictures.
