- Prime Video’s Lush, Ambitious “The House of the Spirits” Does Right By Isabel Allende’s Masterpiece (April 28, 2026)
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that some literary projects are simply not meant to be reimagined as feature films or television series. Or, at least, it used to be. Now, with successful adaptations of previously deemed “unfilmable” classics like Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and Frank Herbert’s “Dune” finding their way to screens both large and small, what was once termed impossible is suddenly both thrilling and necessary.
Like García Márquez’s Nobel Prize-winning novel, Isabel Allende’s “The House of the Spirits” is considered one of the foundational texts of magical realism, mixing both fantastical and quotidian elements to tell the story of four generations in the lives of a single family and those who weave in and out of their world. The novel was adapted as a feature film in 1993, but its star-studded cast of bizarrely miscast Anglo actors and limited run time didn’t do the depth of the book’s story any favors. But with the release of Prime Video’s lavish eight-part streaming adaptation, Allende’s classic is finally given the prestige treatment it has long deserved.
Told in Spanish and featuring a cast from across both Latin America and Spain, the series feels authentic, lived-in, and, yes, magical from its first moments. Its lush sets, sweeping landscapes, and colorful interiors are both visually striking and narratively significant, interspersed with depictions of the post-colonial political upheaval at work across South America. Showrunners Francisca Alegría, Fernanda Urrejola, and Andrés Wood eagerly embrace Allende’s themes of love, memory, and justice, even as they delve into some of the novel’s darkest subplots without flinching. It’s not a perfect adaptation by any stretch, but this “The House of the Spirits” is a remarkably tenacious and ambitious attempt.
Set in an unnamed Latin American country that bears multiple unsubtle parallels to early 20th-century Chile, the events of “The House of the Spirits” unfold across the better part of a hundred years, mixing fiction and allegorized events from Allende’s own family history.
Fernanda Urrejola y Rochi Hernández
The story begins with the Del Valle clan, whose youngest daughter, Clara (portrayed by Francesca Turco, Nicole Wallace, and Dolores Fonzi at various points), has clairvoyant abilities that allow her to communicate with spirits and predict the future. When her beloved older sister, Rosa the Beautiful (Chiara Parravicini), tragically dies from poison meant for their politician father (Eduard Fernández), Clara retreats into silence, refusing to speak for the better part of the next decade. She reclaims her voice in time to meet and wed Rosa’s former fiancé, Esteban Trueba (Alfonso Herrera), a poor miner turned wealthy hacienda owner whose ambition, materialism, and penchant for violence will fuel much of the story to come.
As the years pass, the series not only follows Clara’s story but also those of her daughter, Blanca (Sara Becker and Urrejola), and granddaughter, Alba (Rochi Hernández), whose lives are continually shaped and affected by the choices of the generations that have preceded them. Meanwhile, Esteban continues his climb up the ranks of the Conservative Party, and the family is continually drawn into the (occasionally violent) political upheaval unfolding across the country, with several members finding themselves on opposite sides of the debate.
Book fans will undoubtedly be perturbed that “The House of the Spirits” makes some fairly significant changes to the source material, fully excising a fairly major member of the Trueba family, softening some of the story’s more overt political elements in its earliest episodes, and altering several key details of the novel’s ending. Yet the Prime Video drama remains remarkably faithful to the spirit of Allende’s work, leaning into themes of fate, class, memory, resilience, and hope as it weaves a tale of political and personal turmoil across generations.
But while the series incorporates many of the more charming supernatural and fantastical elements of magical realism that Allende helped to pioneer, this is not a story for the faint of heart. “The House of the Spirits” contains multiple instances of sexual assault, torture, psychological abuse, domestic violence, and murder. (There’s even a grisly animal death fairly early on.) Some of these scenes, particularly in the show’s later episodes, are downright brutal to watch, and the story is clear-eyed about the damage that cycles of generational trauma wreak on the Trueba family and those around them.
Alfonso Herrera (Esteban Trueba)
This “House of the Spirits” is also unabashedly feminist in its politics—perhaps even more overtly than the novel at times—as its female characters, across class lines, push back against aspects of the patriarchy that oppress them. The cast is excellent across the board: Wallace boasts an ethereal glow as the young adult Clara, whose kind and often otherworldly nature offers a stark contrast to Esteban’s overt and unapologetic cruelty. Fonzi’s older version, by contrast, is demonstrably stranger, but more at peace with herself and her unique way of existing in the world. Elsewhere, Hernandez’s Alba perfectly balances the girl’s more modern youthful idealism and strident stubbornness, while Fernanda Castillo is furious and heartbreaking by turns as Treuba’s spinster sister, Férula.
But it is Hernandez, the only actor to appear in all eight episodes, who is perhaps most impressive, playing a character shaped by a lifetime of brutality and anger who turns that pain outward onto everyone around him. It is easy to imagine a version of Esteban Trueba that is little more than a caricature, a bad man and selfish politician who gleefully revels in his power for its own sake. Instead, Hernandez manages to find glimpses of humanity in the story’s most monstrous figure, even as his love for Clara and, later, for Alba, is often not enough to temper his worst and/or most violent impulses.
Like the book it is based on, “The House of the Spirits” is not always an easy or particularly accessible tale, especially for those unfamiliar with the complex geopolitical history of the region in which it is set. But it remains a deeply moving and satisfying story in its own right, and a strong example of the ambitious content the streaming era once promised us. It’s nice to know it still can.
All eight episodes screened for review. Premieres April 29 on Prime Video.
- Male Directors Can’t Stop Making Movies About Female Pop Stars (April 28, 2026)
Coachella recently wrapped up its 25th edition, and the main takeaway was that women ruled. Superstars such as Sabrina Carpenter and Addison Rae reaffirmed their global dominance, offering energetic sets highlighted by expert choreography, arresting songs, and a compelling sense of scale and drama. Very cinematic, too.
Pop music is the culture’s soundtrack, and while there is no shortage of blockbuster male artists—Bruno Mars, Justin Bieber, Harry Styles, Ed Sheeran—to my ears, their female peers have proved to be more thrilling. Taylor Swift remains the queen of the music industry, but acts like Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Charli XCX, Lady Gaga, Olivia Rodrigo, Dua Lipa, and Chappell Roan are all royalty as well. At a moment when women’s rights are severely threatened in this country, the mere presence of so many bold, sexually assertive, sometimes politically outspoken female artists would alone be worth cheering. That they’re also among music’s most electrifying and innovative acts is inspiring.
But it’s not just on stage and on Spotify where female pop stars reign supreme. Over the last few years, they’ve also been regularly featured in theaters—and I’m not talking about Swift’s, Beyoncé’s, and (coming soon) Eilish’s big-screen concert films. Fictional female superstars have been the focus of several movies, the latest of which features Anne Hathaway as the titular troubled superstar in “Mother Mary.” The movie joins a disparate trio of recent films about women pop stars: “Vox Lux,” “Trap,” and “Smile 2.”
But there’s another thing these movies have in common: They’re all directed by men. Thankfully, though, you won’t see a lick of misogyny in these stories. The male filmmakers may view their female pop stars through various prisms—artist, cultural symbol, enigma—but there’s a clear respect and even awe for their characters’ real-life counterparts, who are so captivating in part because they’re so unknowable. Like many fans, these directors are obsessed with these women and their exalted, occasionally precarious standing in the world.
Marie Falconetti in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc.” (Janus Films)
Men have been making movies about iconic women since cinema’s earliest days. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” perhaps the greatest of all silent films, starred Renée Jeanne Falconetti as the 15th-century French teenager in her final hours as she is put on trial. A hero of the people who believed she was acting on divine orders, Joan of Arc is depicted as saintly, otherworldly, a warrior wrongfully persecuted by the cruel, unthinking masses. Joan meets a bad end in Dreyer’s classic, but she never loses her dignity or fiery spirit.
That dynamic—an imperiled public woman seen through the eyes of a male filmmaker—is expressed in different ways in “Vox Lux,” “Trap,” “Smile 2,” and “Mother Mary.” Brady Corbet’s “Vox Lux” stars Natalie Portman as Celeste, a veteran superstar with a traumatic past—she was one of a handful of survivors of a childhood school shooting—and an uncertain future. M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap” is unique in this quartet of films for two reasons: His pop star, Lady Raven, is not the main character, and she’s played by the director’s pop-star daughter, Saleka. (The thriller concerns a serial killer, portrayed by Josh Hartnett, who takes his daughter to Lady Raven’s sold-out show, unaware that the concert is an elaborate sting operation to catch him.)
Parker Finn’s sequel to his hit 2022 horror film “Smile” shifts to a new victim, Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who is mourning the death of her boyfriend and recovering from addiction when she starts seeing visions of people with menacing grins. And David Lowery’s “Mother Mary” casts Anne Hathaway as a legendary performer who, like Skye, is in the middle of a comeback, visiting costume designer and former friend Sam (Michaela Coel) to create a killer outfit for her (hopefully) triumphant return.
Each of these fictional pop stars is put on a pedestal, their ecosystem of fame, money, and privilege an alien environment. But there’s nothing snide or dismissive in these portrayals; the filmmakers never treat pop music as synthetic or superficial. The clearest indication of this is how lavish each fictional pop star’s concert performances are. All four films contain at least one seismic number that demonstrates the singer’s sizable talent on stage.
Anne Hathaway in “Mother Mary.” (A24)
The effect is especially palpable in “Mother Mary,” for which Lowery tapped veteran choreographer Dani Vitale (who has worked with Rihanna and Katy Perry) to nail Mary’s moves and enlisted Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff, and FKA Twigs to craft bangers worthy of a star of her stature. “Mother Mary’s” concert scenes convey the staggering ambition that real-life pop icons bring to their mammoth stadium shows, and the same is true in “Vox Lux,” “Trap,” and “Smile 2,” all of which emulate the energy and grandeur of a modern pop show.
Although Mary was not based on any one musician, Lowery has talked about being inspired by Swift’s epic “Reputation” tour. “The scale of it was something I’d never seen before,” he recently enthused about Swift’s shows. “I couldn’t wrap my head around how she and her team put that together. It truly felt monumental.” In the years before poptimism, it was hard for pop stars—especially female pop stars—to be taken seriously. Those days are now long over.
This admiration for the scope and spectacle of a pop concert is matched by an appreciation of the modern female pop star’s sexual confidence. Female singers flaunting their sex appeal is nothing new—Carpenter was honoring her spiritual foremother by bringing out Madonna during Coachella’s second weekend—but so many contemporary performers parade their femininity not to be shocking but, rather, to express a natural aspect of everyday life. The modern pop star’s dance moves may be titillating, but they’re also celebratory and playful, less concerned with getting a rise out of moral watchdogs than in proudly reflecting the joy and challenges of being a sexual person.
Indeed, although it might be a slightly paternal instinct, a recurring theme in these movies is that these women, despite being at the top of the pop world, are struggling. Lady Raven is doing fine, but Celeste, Skye, and Mary are either at a crossroads or rebuilding after professional or personal setbacks. In “Mother Mary,” Hathaway’s aging singer is fighting against strange supernatural occurrences—most notably, the four films possess horror/thriller elements —and viewing celebrity as a potentially fraught proposition, while simultaneously seeking to reclaim her iconic status alongside younger, hotter pop stars.
Natalie Portman in “Vox Lux.” (NEON)
Whether it’s the background swirl of deadly gun violence in “Vox Lux” or the terror engulfing Skye in “Smile 2,” looming danger surrounds these singers. (Even poor Lady Raven has no idea she’s about to meet a mass murderer.) It’s almost as if these female superstars are being punished by a patriarchal society that wishes to tear them down, connecting female beauty to suffering and tragedy.
The tendency goes back to “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” but it also extends to the funereal works of Edgar Allan Poe, who once observed, “the death, then, of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” Only one of these fictional singers actually experiences an untimely demise, but both in the 19th century and today, men do love telling stories of gorgeous women going through hell.
And just like Joan of Arc or Poe’s Annabel Lee, these pop stars agonize from a distance, just out of reach. In “Mother Mary,” Mary may be the main attraction, but it’s telling that we actually experience the film from Sam’s perspective, with Mary always a remote figure, even when the scenes put her in the foreground. As much as these movies are enthralled by their singers, the directors know they’ll never fully grasp these icons—not because they’re women, but because they’re insanely famous, the person behind the well-honed persona an eternal riddle.
As a result, these movies frequently conceive their pop stars as symbols of something larger than themselves. Before “Vox Lux,” Portman won an Oscar for playing another performer in a downward spiral—the dancer Nina in “Black Swan”—but Celeste is less a metaphor for an artist’s drive to be extraordinary than an avatar for our complicated relationship with celebrity.
“The movie is about the desire to be iconic,” Corbet told The Guardian at the time, later commenting, “[W]e expect celebrities to be our representatives. … [T]here’s a strange expectation of Taylor Swift to take a political stance and support the female Democratic nominees. Even if that’s who I support, why should she have [to have] an opinion about it?”
Naomi Scott in “Smile 2.” (Paramount)
That fascination/perplexment is echoed in Finn’s conception of Skye, saying in a “Smile 2” interview that he was curious about “what it’s like to be one of the stars who get sort of elevated to godlike status. I think we put so much pressure on some of these women to always be playing this persona in public and always be performing even when they’re not onstage. I think that takes a major toll. It’s a toll that is hard for them to show to the world. … [T]here’s something really intriguing about the parasocial relationship we have with celebrities.”
In “Vox Lux,” “Trap,” “Smile 2,” and “Mother Mary,” these women come to represent the mysteries of fame to those of us on the outside. The galvanic concert scenes, the allure of celebrity, the currency of young female beauty, the ineffable tractor-beam pull of the pure star: These actresses embody the seductive magnetism that impels fans to worship their favorite performers.
The specific pop icon who comes up most often when male directors discuss the model for their fictional musicians is Taylor Swift, a sign not just of her popularity but also of her role in defining our cultural moment. No artistic lightweight, no Kewpie doll puppet controlled by others, she’s a savvy businesswoman who runs a global empire, long ago making her name by refusing to take any guff from a man, whether it be Jake Gyllenhaal or Scooter Braun. It’s only fitting, then, that Corbet, Shyamalan, Finn, and Lowery would be so entranced by the cinematic sweep of Swift and others’ stadium shows, which are the most visible display of their creative and professional mastery. And the bigger these stars get, the more beguiling and inscrutable they become, reaching levels of success and wealth never before imagined.
No wonder “Mother Mary” ends with a dreamlike image of Hathaway, playing this perfect pop star as a nearly celestial figure, still beyond the understanding of Sam or the audience. For male filmmakers, female pop stars are the closest thing we have to angels in our midst. And angels aren’t meant to be possessed, merely venerated.
- Love’s in Need of Love Today: Reflections on EbertFest, Cinema, and Empathy (April 27, 2026)
This month, the very last EbertFest took place in downtown Champaign, Illinois, in the magnificent Virginia Theater, a 1000-seat venue that’s over a century old.
Originally known as The Overlooked Film Festival, EbertFest ran for 25 years, starting in 2001. It was founded by Roger Ebert and his wife and partner Chaz Ebert (who also founded this site; Chaz is the publisher) and directed by their friend Nate Kohn, a professor at the University of Georgia and associate director of the Peabody Awards. I attended most of the festivals after that as a panelist and moderator, and more importantly, as a movie fan and a representative of this site.
Each time, the event would be documented by a team from Shatterglass, a Champaign-based production company founded and run by Luke Boyce and Brett Hays. Luke interviewed festival guests, myself included, in a small, well-lit area backstage. I am pretty sure I first sat for an interview with Luke in 2013. I have done many more interviews with him since, about festival lineups, specific movies and guests, and the overall experience of EbertFest. Luke recently directed and co-wrote the excellent feature-length documentary “The Last Movie Critic,” which retells Roger Ebert’s life story by delving into a few of the films that were most dear to him; it premiered at the final EbertFest, a bittersweet experience, I’m sure.
The final festival concluded with a screening of Rob Reiner’s 1996 romantic comedy “The American President.” This, too, was bittersweet: the late Rob Reiner was supposed to attend to close things out, and the feature was preceded by a lovely clip reel in his honor. There was also a theatrical presentation, a first: a presentation of Siskel/Ebert, a play by Chicago’s Kaitlin Schneider about Roger’s TV partnership with critic Gene Siskel.
At the very end, when the theater was empty, Luke asked if I would do one last interview with him, speaking as someone “who’s been here for many, many years [and] loves Roger as much as anybody here, [about] what this festival has meant, and what it means to be here now.”
I agreed. When I thought about it afterward, I realized it addressed issues that resonate beyond this festival, so we’re publishing a lightly edited transcript here. Luke, if you’re reading this, thanks for being such a good friend and an interviewer who brings out the best in me.
(You can see the full, uncut interview below.)
When I arrived at the airport and took a Lyft to the Virginia Theater for what would be the last EbertFest—or so I’m told—the driver asked what EbertFest was, because he’d only moved here a couple of years ago. He knew about it. He knew it was kind of a big deal. But he didn’t know what it was. And I thought, gosh, how do I put it as simply and concisely as possible?
What I told him was, it’s a film festival where the only criterion for selection is do the people who run the festival love the movie, and do they believe that the movie will engage the audience, like involve them, grip them, move them in some way. And that’s it.
No deals are made here, I don’t think. There’s nobody running out with their cell phone to go tell their assistant to submit a bid to someone about something. That just doesn’t happen here. In any given year, probably the majority of the films being shown are, as they would say, past their sell-by date. That’s how you talk about film when you think of it as a business only, not as an art form.
And here is this incredible utopian little bubble where that doesn’t matter. Nobody talks that way. What they talk about is: What is the film saying? What is the worldview of this film? What are the values of this film? Does it stir the heart? Does it make you feel connected to other people, including—and perhaps most importantly—people you’ve never met? Does it take you to places you’ve never been? Does it help you understand what a life is like that you, prior to seeing the film, could never have imagined?
Stephen Winchell as Gene Siskel (l) Zack Mast as Roger Ebert (r) in Kaitlin Schneider’s play “Siskel/Ebert,” which was performed at the final EbertFest.
That’s probably the thing that binds all of the movies that have played here. I can’t think of a single movie that’s played here that I saw that I didn’t like, or that I didn’t find at least interesting, really, really engrossing.
The audience is great. It’s like a religious pilgrimage that happens once a year. They come here to this magic, enchanted place, this temple, and they sit in the dark, and they watch revelations unfold on the screen. And I’ve had so many of those here. The very first EbertFest that I attended was—God, I want to say 2009 or something.
I remember sitting there watching “Synecdoche, New York” and feeling like I was in the movie, somehow. I didn’t feel like I was watching a movie. I felt like I was having a dream. And specifically, I was having someone else’s dream.
If someone were to ask me, in one line, what movies are like, I would say they are an art form that lets you share other people’s dreams and experience other people’s thoughts. There’s a great quote from Roger—which I’m going to paraphrase really poorly, probably—where he talked about the mechanical aspects of cinema as it has always been presented, which is: you sit in the dark, which is what you do mentally when you meditate; when you take a moment, you clear your head; you clear your head of everything that’s extraneous. And you receive things that were not there before. You open yourself up.
This final festival has been really remarkable. I [initially] had some concerns, like, “Oh, only two days? Gee.” But they said everything they needed to say with this group of films. And the new documentary on Roger Ebert [“The Last Movie Critic,” directed by the interviewer] was probably my favorite of all the things I saw here, because it made me think about my own role in this ecosystem, however small or large it may be—what my role is, or what it should be.
It’s a garden. And I’m supposed to be taking care of the plants here. I’m supposed to be making sure that these lovely, lovely things have as long a life as they possibly can, and that the seeds that have just been planted grow into something.
It reminded me of what movies are to most people: they are stories that make them think, feel, and reflect on themselves, and see themselves in individuals who, superficially, are not like them, but in really deep and basic ways are exactly like them.
I’ve seen so many movies here where the people have almost nothing in common with me, except we’re made of the same basic genetic material, you know? I don’t have anything in common with the characters in “The American President.” I don’t have anything in common with the characters in “Bob Trevino Likes It,” which is another of my favorite movies that played this year. And yet I have everything in common with them.
I think the most important thing I got out of this last festival was a recommitment to the important part of being a critic, which is: you’re trying to connect people to things that will enlighten them, enrich them, and challenge them in some way—actively. Things that they’re going to engage with, that they’re going to make a decision to engage with. Not something that they’re going to consume like a bag of chips and never think about again.
The movies that people value, that they celebrate and acknowledge by hanging posters on their wall or buying the deluxe Blu-ray, are not the movies that just go in one ear and out the other, and through your eyes and out the back of your head. They’re the movies that have something new to give you every single time you watch them.
One example of that for me was “Mi Familia,” which I reviewed as a critic for Dallas Observer in 1994, when it opened, 32 years ago. The main thing that moved me about that film at the time is the same thing that moved me [when it screened at EbertFest] this time: all the characters are so open. They are transparent. You can see the gears turning in their heads and in their hearts as you watch this movie.
I told Gregory Nava, the film’s director, about this. I said, “Nothing about that movie is cool. It’s not trying to be cool. It’s not trying to be hip. It’s not trying to get a rise out of anyone. It’s not trying to break any taboos. It’s not about any of that superficial stuff. It’s about saying, ‘Hey, you have parents. You have children, possibly, or even grandchildren. You have a mate, or maybe you don’t. You’ve lost people for all kinds of reasons, you know. Natural causes and unnatural ones.”
And, most importantly, speaking as somebody who is coming up on 60 in a few years, the film is a warning to you that the days are long but the years are short.
One activity which, for me, makes the passage of time sting less is the act of watching a movie. Because, to paraphrase Roger again, the really great movies are the ones where you watch it the first time and you identify with one character or one aspect of the film, and then you see it again, and you’re looking at something else.
[When] I watched “Mi Familia” the first time, the part of the movie that moved me the most was the journey of the Jimmy Smits character, who [because of his older brother being shot by police years earlier] was carrying a lot of trauma, and a lot of unacknowledged anger that he didn’t have the tools to really address, even if he were willing to address them, which he’s not. Superficially, I’m nothing like that guy. But I looked at that guy, and I went, “That’s me. That’s me.”
And this time, when I was looking at the grandparents in that final scene, that was the scene this time where I went, “Oh my God, that’s me.” They’re sitting there with wrinkles on their faces and gray in their hair. And they have lost people. They have suffered so many tragedies, gotten through so many things that are just not fair, that don’t seem to have any rhyme or reason. I remember when I first saw the film, in my 20s, and I thought, among other things, “Oh my God, what a rough life they had.” And when they said, “Yes, we’ve been very lucky,” that was one part of the movie that I thought kind of rang false. They weren’t lucky.
Now I’m looking at it [again] and going, “Yeah, yeahˆthey were lucky. They were lucky. That’s 32 years, right? That’s 32 years of living that gets you to that conclusion. What other festivals not only do that, but do that on purpose?
I said in an earlier interview that I did with you that Roger was not just a man, and he was not just a critic; he was an idea. He is an idea. He exists in the present tense. And Roger’s core idea is that the world doesn’t begin and end with you. Other people exist, and you should care about them, even if you’ve never met them. You should try to understand them even if you didn’t know they existed five minutes ago.
That’s the basic building block of civilization. There are many people, including many colleagues in my profession, who think that’s sentimental. They think it’s corny. They think it’s cringe. And it’s not. It’s the purpose of art, and it’s the purpose of life.
I’ve emerged from this last festival recharged and ready to go out there and continue the work that Roger did—work that meant so much to me, that led me into this profession, which is to remind us that movies are machines that generate empathy. And, boy, do we need empathy right now. We need it so badly!
Stevie Wonder, in one of my favorite songs on my favorite Stevie Wonder album, Songs in the Key of Life, says, “Love’s in Need of Love Today.” As a kid, I didn’t understand that. What does that mean? “Hate’s going round, breaking every heart. We have to stop it, please, before it’s gone too far.” I get that now. You know, it’s very, very easy to find anger, edginess, nihilism, a blasé “I don’t give a damn” kind of attitude [and] posture, [and] to find it cool, to find it exciting. Being decent is not really exciting. It’s not sexy in the way that being bad is. But it’s way more important, because one way of looking at the world is destructive, and the other one is an act of creation, and cementing bonds that already exist.
In another one of Roger’s favorite films, “Do the Right Thing,” there’s a great scene—which of course is a reference to another great movie, “The Night of the Hunter”—where Radio Raheem tells the story of Love and Hate, and they’re fighting each other the whole time. We can’t just stand on the sidelines. You know, you’ve got to do the non-sexy thing, the non-cool thing, which is be decent. Just be decent.
Roger also said that when he cries during a movie, it’s often not because of something sad that happens. It’s because some character did some kind thing. They demonstrated kindness. That’s what moved him, and that’s usually what moves me, too. I don’t cry in a movie when a character dies, but I might cry when one of the survivors approaches another survivor and gives them a memento of the person who’s gone now, and says, “They would have wanted you to have this.”
I’m hugely moved now, after the conclusion of the final screening of the final EbertFest, because this is one last gift from Roger. Chaz made sure we received it and kept it going. And we owe it to Roger and Chaz to go out there and spread the word.
- An Act of Translation: David Lowery on “Mother Mary” (April 27, 2026)
Trailers for director David Lowery’s “Mother Mary” have cheekily referred to it as “Not a ghost story,” likely a reference to the director’s 2017 film of the same name. Make no mistake, though: this is very much an exorcism story, one that also focuses on a spirit that refuses to leave its chosen place of habitation.
Lowery nestles this story within the rapturous extravaganza of a pop concert, his film focusing on Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway), a pop star preparing for her comeback concert in the aftermath of an onstage accident. Unsatisfied with the outfits presented to her, she returns to the English countryside to speak with Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel), her former friend and costume designer. Here, the verbal unspoken conflicts between them take on an almost physical form. Lowery is aware that we can wear our demons like clothing and grip our prayers like knives, and the simple conversations between those two end up expanding into larger, divine questions centered around friendship, love, and performance.
For Lowery, his work as a filmmaker is, in some ways, an exorcism of the intangible within himself, giving it flesh and blood through moviemaking. “I suppose that’s what I’ve always wanted to do and have been doing: I’ve been trying to take a feeling and give it form,” he shared.
Lowery spoke with RogerEbert.com about the journey of light that anchors the film, how he sees his work as a filmmaker as a work of transubstantiation, and the surprising and poignant influences of “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and “Barry Lyndon.”
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Roger was famous for saying that movies are machines that generate empathy. Before we properly begin, I wanted to share that your film was very much an empathy-machine movie for me, even if I can’t say my feuds with friends have ever physically manifested as a spectral red cloth.
David Lowery: Roger Ebert is one of the reasons I love movies so much. He taught me how to love movies. You guys are continuing his tradition in such a wonderful fashion. His empathy machine quote is one that’s written in stone and in all of my art. I’ve spoken before about how I grew up without a television, but I had his Movie Home Companion, and my film school education was just reading his reviews. To this day, I can quote some of them because they were just emblazoned in my head at such an early age.
I’m struck by the lighting in the film, the way you contrast the congregational lights of the concert to the dimly lit sequences of those barn sequences that are lit naturally. Can you talk about working with Production Designer Francesca Di Mottola, including how you wanted to depict light and what you see as the character arc of light throughout the film?
It really was a collaboration between Francesca, me, and the cinematographers, Andrew Droz Palermo and Rina Yang. We wanted this movie to be incredibly visual because when you read this script from Mother Mary, it’s all dialogue. We could have just rested on the shoulders of that dialogue and let it–quite literally–do all of the talking, but I also wanted this to be an incredible visual experience. Finding the right space for these characters to inhabit was important. I’d written that the movie is set in a vaguely gothic medieval barn, and we knew there would be stadium concert sequences. There were parameters we had to work around, but figuring out exactly how to make the movie cohesive was a real Herculean effort on all our parts.
I have to tip my hat to Francesca, Andrew, and Rina because I can write it and I can describe it, but they have to figure out how to execute it. I had always described it–from when I was with Andrew on the set of “The Green Knight”–that I wanted this to be my goth movie. So baked into the very concept was the idea that it would be a very dark film, a movie set in a world of shadows. I envisioned the film would have a moody disposition, but we hadn’t quite defined what that was yet. It wasn’t until we found that barn in Cologne, Germany, that we really understood the space in which this movie would exist.
I remember when we were looking at location photos, just clicking through a slideshow, and all of a sudden, a photo of that barn popped up, and I stopped in my tracks and said, “I think we have to shoot the movie there.” The barn looked very different, of course, from how we portrayed it in the film, but its bones were built in the 1300s. It had an ancient, timeless quality similar to “The Green Knight,” which also had much of its action take place in a barn.
Mother Mary (A24)
The existing windows largely informed how light was used. They became multiple centers around which we set the action, so we could move in and out of shadow. We put lamps here and there to change the feeling of the scene, and so that way, for some sequences, Michaela could reach and turn a lamp on, and all of a sudden, the blue daylight would get infused with the golden tungsten of a desk lamp. We really were just trying to lean into the mood of that space, which was immense, cavernous, and ultimately strange. Even just walking into the barn for the first time, it felt like a strange liminal space that didn’t really exist, and it could transform in so many different ways because it was so big.
It felt like a cathedral, which served as some inspiration for those concert sequences. One of the only lighting references we had, because we tried not to look at too many other movies, was the duel at the end of “Barry Lyndon.” That scene in particular was a key text for us, and we wanted to do that on a much larger scale purely because the barn was so massive. The way that sequence was defined, the characters could move in and out of light, was something that guided me. Likewise, we wanted to let location lead the way.
Another key point was that the sun would set at a certain time. We can go from the daylight version of the barn to the nighttime version, at which point the shadows deepen, and the walls, which were sometimes hard to see in the daylight because they were lost in shadow, at times fall away altogether. By shifting to night, the lines between past and present, reality and surreality, became a little more fluid, and we were able to start using that to poke through the fabric of reality and let the movie enter its unique register and zone.
That interplay between the symbolic and the embodied dovetails with my next question, because my favorite line in the film is when Sam says, “The transubstantiation of feeling … that’s what we’re doing here,” with regard to her work as a dressmaker. That Catholic idea–of the bread and wine becoming the literal body and blood of Christ–seems like such a rich metaphor for being an artist, so I’m curious if you view yourself as a “transubstantiator” and what that means to you as a creative person.
It’s so interesting being raised in the Catholic church, and having communion be an everyday occurrence. They may tell you that you’re eating the literal blood and body of Christ, but you–or at least I– never really thought about it in physiological terms. The second that you do, it becomes very strange, but that’s where the term transubstantiation comes from, which is, of course, a key tenet of Catholicism and is the only thing that allows the act of communion to not be incredibly disturbing.
I love that term, though. Of all I took away from my Catholic upbringing, that concept is incredibly meaningful to me. I suppose I do think of myself in those terms. I haven’t thought about it in terms of my other movies, but with this film, when Sam says that, she is describing what the movie’s doing, what the characters are going to be doing over the course of the movie, but she’s literally, for all intents and purposes, giving the logline of the movie to the audience.
Mother Mary (A24)
We never hear the lyrics or the full song of “Spooky Action,” but I could see what Sam says as a line of that song.
Exactly. When we make movies, we take a screenplay, which is one object, and turn it into a movie, which is another. I often look at that as an act of translation. It’s like translating poetry where you are finding a new form for something, and yet it still needs to embody what it originally was. Transsubstantiation is probably an even better term. We are taking these texts, these words on a page, and turning them into images that need to have sound and emotion to them that would never exist in textual form, yet we’re always there implicitly within the screenplay.
When I think about my own movies, the stories and narrative structure are always important. But more important than anything else are the feelings. Often when I’m making a movie, especially a movie like “A Ghost Story”, “ Mother Mary,” or “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” the story is less important to me than the feelings that they evoke. With the latter film, I literally did not care about the story at all. What I cared about was the emotional undercurrent and the feelings I wanted the story to evoke. I suppose that’s what I’ve always wanted to do and have been doing: I’ve been trying to take a feeling and give it form. That is an act of transubstantiation.
I wish I could say I was turning that feeling into celluloid, when in reality, I’m just turning it into a file on a computer. But maybe we’ll have a 35mm print, and the metaphor will work fully.
You have a vinyl coming out with the Mother Mary songs, so maybe that’s a good start. A24 put out a facetious video about the fact that there isn’t a single line at all for a man in the film. I’m curious how intentional that was on your part. It’s interesting to note that, given how you’ve also said this is probably your most personal film to date.
There was no agenda behind it, other than that when I wrote Sam and Mother Mary, they were female characters. There was never any sort of decision; that’s just how they emerged from my subconscious. So those chromosomes were leading the way when I started writing the script, and initially, it was just the two of them. Then Hilda entered the picture, and for Hilda, I wrote her role specifically for Hunter Schafer. She always had to be who he was, and apart from those characters, there aren’t many other people in this movie. It was never a sense of, like, “I’m going to operate in this specific lane”; it was more that two very specific characters took that form.
We can talk about the feminine divine. We can talk about how gender modes operate in art–specifically, pop music and fashion–and how those sometimes feel very gendered, even though they’re inclusive of everyone. It’s funny now to see it documented in that way. It made me think, “There are no men who speak in this movie.” There’s a photograph of me in this movie, so it’s not 100% man free. When Michaela’s looking at fitting photos on a phone, I’m in one of them.
That’s the director’s privilege.
Amongst the entourage, of course, there were men there, but you don’t feel them in the movie. I don’t want to take credit for the level because it certainly wasn’t intentional, but on a subconscious level, it excluded anyone who didn’t need to be part of it.
Mother Mary (A24)
I know that you’ve previously cited how the way the T-1000 was flailing and dying at the end of “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” was an influence for the movement of the Red Woman. It’s made me wonder about the influence that film–and sci-fi films in general–have had on you as an artist. I love the idea of these heavy science movies merging with your spiritual provocations.
I mean, first of all, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” is one of the greatest movies of all time. That sequence really stuck with me as a child. I watched the movie when it was first released on VHS, and it was fun and exciting. There’s something about that scene where the T-1000 is dying that was very moving to me. Watching it try to hold on to some form of integrity was beautiful and sad, and, honestly, more emotionally moving than Arnold Schwarzenegger with the thumbs-up.
Finally, some justice for the antagonist.
I mean, we could sidebar on this, but I’ve always been interested in empathy for the antagonist. T-1000 is a character who, by design, you are not allowed to have empathy for because there’s no emotion. But in that moment, in that scene, all of a sudden, there’s desperation and emotion from this previously unemotive character who, in those few seconds, suddenly you feel an odd amount of empathy for. When I was trying to explain to people that the Red Woman needed to be an intangible character seeking her true form, it was not only the reference I could think of, but also the perfect one.
“Mother Mary” is in theaters via A24.
- Sony’s Exclusive “Saros” is One of the Year’s Must-Play Games (April 24, 2026)
In 2021, Housemarque and Sony Interactive Entertainment released one of the best games of the current generation, a punishingly addictive experience called “Returnal.” Combining the brutality of a Soulslike game with the unpredictability of the Roguelike genre, “Returnal” was unlike anything else that year, winning multiple awards for its remarkable design. Five years later, Housemarque has released a spiritual successor in the excellent “Saros,” out next week exclusively for the PS5 and ready to dominate your spare time and raise your blood pressure.
First, a bit of definition: “Saros” is a “Roguelite,” a variation on the genre “Roguelike.” In the latter, every time one presses play on a game, it’s different, and nothing is retained from one play to the next. “Roguelites” feature upgrades, shortcuts, and even new start points after certain achievements, usually like killing bosses, but also include different elements with every play. For example, each trip through the portal in “Saros” will spawn different weapons, artifacts, and even a few settings, all linked together, among those that need to appear to progress the story. Think of it like a video game meets a deck of cards: You have a different hand every time, but always the same number of cards, and the rules of what you’re playing don’t change drastically.
In “Saros,” the excellent Rahul Kohli (“Midnight Mass,” “The Haunting of Bly Manor”) plays Arjun Devraj, a Soltari enforcer who ends up stranded on a planet called Carcosa, a place that is undergoing consistent solar eclipses that explain the remapped setting every time you play. How Arjun got there and what he’s searching for on this distant hellscape are things that Sony has asked us not to spoil, but there are some clear cinematic references, mostly of the philosophical sci-fi/horror genre. Tarkovsky’s “Solaris” feels like a major influence, and some of the true horror reminds one of the increasingly cult classic “Event Horizon.” Suffice to say, you are often alone on Carcosa, sent to vanquish hundreds of things that want to kill you.
Much like “Returnal,” “Saros” works on a biome system, but there’s a much more distinct progression system to this one, wherein you can use a portal to skip to the setting that meets your mission requirement, or if you just want to explore. The strongest parallel to “Returnal” is in the look and feel of the combat.
The creatures across Carcosa that want you dead are all relatively Lovecraftian in nature, demon-alien hybrids with varying ways to turn you into space dust. They all shoot three different projectiles in blue, yellow, and red. The blues are best dashed through, the yellows can be absorbed by your shield in a way that powers your weapon, and the reds can eventually be parried back at the enemy that shot you. At its peak, “Saros” becomes a combat ballet wherein you are constantly dodging, absorbing, shooting, and parrying. It is a remarkably addictive gameplay dynamic, one of those perfectly calibrated things that’s relatively easy to learn but hard to master. By the end of my “Saros” run, I had so much control over the system that I felt nearly invincible. It’s an adrenaline rush of a game.
Of course, feeling all-powerful was rarer in “Returnal,” a game you barely survived, more than mastered. While “Saros” is notably easier, it also offers deep customization options that let one adjust the difficulty for a greater challenge. Every run produces something called Lucenite, and most include an element found in the environment called Halcyon that can be used to permanently upgrade Arjun. Not only does this element of grinding make the game easier as Arjun gets more powerful, but there’s also a clever system called Carcosan Modifiers that allows for further modification. It’s basically a metered menu wherein if you want a little more firepower, you have to give up something, like how much Lucenite you retain after you die, for example. It’s more than just a difficulty management system; I found myself using it after what I learned on runs about what I needed and what I could sacrifice for the next attempt.
In keeping with the Roguelite genre, each run produces different weapons, upgrades, and artifacts that you lose on death. It’s such a fun dynamic in that each venture through the landscape of Carcosa feels unique, even though most players will eventually find the guns they hope to locate each time they launch. (For me, it’s a shotgun through most of the level and a better long-distance weapon like a crossbow or rifle for bosses.)
As addictive as any game you’ll play this year, “Saros” is a must-play, but it’s not perfect. The environments often feel repetitious and there’s a wild difficulty spike in the second act with one boss who took me a lifetime to dispatch. There may be some user variance here, but the boss before it and all of the ones after were dispatched the first or second time I faced them, while this particular nightmare fuel took literal days. Again, my gameplay may differ from yours, but such intense difficulty variations can make for an experience that’s more frustrating than fun.
There are also some moments in the gameplay when the facial models seem a bit outdated, although the cut-scene graphics are remarkable enough to overcome any visual concerns. Most impressively, the final act of “Saros” is its most narratively captivating. Again, my tongue is forcibly tied as to the how and why, but know that this is a more satisfying piece of storytelling than the familiar first half might imply.
Most of all, the game’s success comes down to gameplay that can be punishing but also feels so rewarding once it’s overcome. Like most Soulslike games that I love, there’s a sense of accomplishment in “Saros” that most games lack. It may lack in true authorship—there aren’t branching narratives or moral choices, for example—but you truly feel like you’re in control of this interstellar warrior, one who’s going to die if you do something wrong. Again and again.
Sony provided a review copy of this title. It launches in early access for pre-orders on April 28th and to everyone on April 30th.
