- This Is Not Art, This Is Life: Ross McElwee on “Remake” and “Sherman’s March” (July 8, 2026)
Born and raised in North Carolina but now based near Harvard, where he’s taught filmmaking since 1986, Ross McElwee is one of the most original, consistently excellent nonfiction filmmakers of the past half-century. His powerful new film “Remake”—about the passing of his son Adrian, a regular presence in his later work—is playing exclusively at New York’s Film Forum through July 16, following nine months of screenings at film festivals, and will eventually be viewable at home, although no release date has been set.
In addition to representing how many years McElwee has taught at Harvard, 40 is significant for McElwee the documentarian: it’s the number of years that have elapsed since the release of his first feature, 1986’s “Sherman’s March,” one of cinema’s most inspiring examples of a director leaning into a behind-the-scenes disaster and making art from it. The story: McElwee received a $28,000 grant (in today’s money) to make a documentary retracing Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Civil War campaign through North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. He was about to start shooting when he and his girlfriend broke up, which devastated McElwee and made it hard for him to focus on the film’s original premise.
In his own circuitous, digressive way, the result does get around to telling the story of Sherman’s march. But it’s intertwined with McElwee’s musings on the cultural aftershocks of the Civil War, the threat of nuclear extinction, and interviews with women. The latter mainly fall into one of two categories: new prospects that McElwee would like to hook up with, and former girlfriends that McElwee hopes can give him some perspective on why they didn’t work out as a couple. Sometimes McElwee’s interview subjects interview him back.
McElwee’s filmography flows into and out of “Sherman’s March.” “Charleen” (1977) focuses on his longtime friend Charleen Swansea, a schoolteacher and poet; his 1984 featurette “Backyard” is about his relationship with his father and the complex dynamics between Black and white people in the southern states. “Time Indefinite” (1993) is a direct continuation of “Sherman’s March” that touches on the death of McElwee’s grandmother and father, the sudden, shocking death of Charleen’s husband, and the filmmaker and his then-wife, Marilyn Levine, suffering a miscarriage. “Photographic Memory” (2011) was an unwitting prequel to the agonies depicted in “Remake,” detailing McElwee’s increasingly uneasy relationship with Adrian, by then a teenager who was developing his own interests, viewpoints, and spiky personality while struggling with the mental illness and drug addiction that would claim his life.
The totality of McElwee’s work brings to mind Robert Altman’s comment in 2006 while accepting a lifetime achievement Oscar: “To me, it’s just been one long movie.” I was blessed to talk to McElwee about the long movie of his life—in particular, the experience of grieving for Adrian off-camera and then struggling to translate his feelings into images and words. Shaken by watching “Remake,” I told McElwee about my own experience as a man who’s been widowed twice, and he sensitively referenced these losses periodically throughout our talk, which to me was like a small-scale, verbal equivalent of watching one of his wonderful films.
My condolences on the loss of Adrian.
Ross McElwee: Well, thank you. That’s a nice way to begin to talk about this. It’s been quite a journey getting through that. The decision to make a film about it was not easy.
As a father myself, I can’t imagine going through something like that.
That’s interesting to know that you have had experience raising kids, or maybe you’re still in the process. I’ve spoken with people who’ve really appreciated the film, both with and without children. The way people perceive the film seems to break down into two audiences.
What other patterns have you noticed in audience reactions?
Maybe it’s predictable, maybe it’s obvious, but I do think that as you get older, you’re more sensitive to these kinds of losses.
I’ll tell you a quick anecdote, which I haven’t shared with too many people, maybe nobody, but at the end of my film, there’s this peculiar choice of “El Erlkönig (The Elf King),” a famous 1782 ballad by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that Franz Schubert put to music as a song for the credits. The story is about a father holding his son, who’s very, very ill, as they race on horseback to reach a place where there might be help for the boy. And as he rides, his son sees monsters in the trees.
The son keeps saying that he sees the Erlkönig, this sort of mythical king of the monsters. He tells his father, “It’s the Erlkönig, and he’s trying to take me to his kingdom of death.” And the father keeps saying things like, “No, my son—that’s only the mist in the trees that we’re running past—don’t worry!”
The piece goes through several cycles of this, and finally, the Erlkönig grows increasingly upset with the child because the child won’t agree to go with him, and the monster starts threatening him. He tells the child, “Okay, now I have to take you with me,” and the son says, “Mein factor! Mein factor! Mein factor!” My father, my father, my father. The father finally pulls up to a place where he can get some medical attention for his son, still holding his son, and he looks down, and the son is dead.
I mean, even telling you the story…It sort of…[Long pause] I get a little choked up just telling that story.
The story adjacent to that is: I knew that poem [set to music] from a college course decades ago. It always stayed with me because it was really vibrant, written in a way that lets you hear the horse’s hoofbeats as it tries to get the father and son to their destination in time. It’s really beautifully constructed, the whole thing. You know, I wasn’t weeping the first time I heard the music or anything. I wasn’t thinking of my brother and my father. For a while, I didn’t quite know why that song stayed with me.
Then suddenly I realized it was because my father, who was a doctor, also had an experience like that, where his son—my brother—was injured, and it turned out he was injured mortally, and my father was out in the wilderness somewhere and couldn’t get help in time. And that’s why the story of the Erlkönig stayed with me for so long. Then, at a certain point after my son died, I realized that turned out to be true for me, too.
This film is having its commercial release in 2026, almost 10 years after Adrian’s death. What made you decide that enough time had elapsed to address that loss as an artist, after spending a decade trying to process it as a dad?
It is a distinction that needs to be made. The dad part of me could never come to terms, I guess.
Maybe you know some of this yourself, after what you’ve been through with the double death of your first wife and your second wife: there’s a thing that people say to me, this phrase, ”Well, at least you had”—in my case—“twenty-six good years with him before he died.” When they say this, I don’t reply; I just nod my head.
And you know, they say things like “Memories are so important, and they will sustain you through this.” Joan Didion wrote two books about losing people: The Year of Magical Thinking, about losing her husband, and Blue Nights, about the loss of her daughter soon after that. In Blue Nights, someone tells her,’“You have your wonderful memories,” and she says something to the effect of, memories are the things that I no longer cherish, or no longer need. They’re too painful. I think that was really my situation for a while.
What was it like processing Adrian’s loss from a father’s perspective?
The way I got through it was to first go through a long process of doing nothing. No writing, no thinking about a film or anything. I thought about the wording Joan Didion used: that memories are the things we don’t want to remember.
I didn’t quite answer your original question, though, which was how I finally got over the part of the grieving dad to become the grieving artist. I think I had to do it in stages. One stage was that I hired an assistant to go through my films, select only those in which Adrian had appeared, and choose one of two still frames from each film that featured him. I just wanted the still frames, the frame grabs. I wanted to see if I could begin writing about the still frames without breaking up and being unable to go any further, which is what happened to me when I tried looking at home movies: I just couldn’t do it because they were moving.
This was something different, though. The still frames gave me a little bit of objectivity. And I wrote paragraphs to accompany each still frame. There were seven of them altogether. Doing that helped tremendously, because I got to see that I could somehow eventually come around to being able to do a film featuring home movies in which Adrian had appeared, and scenes from my feature films in which he’d appeared, if necessary.
After that, I started going back to the archive and choosing moments with him that I’d filmed when he was a child, piecing them together into a kind of timeline and using that as the basis for the film.
About those paragraphs you wrote to go with the still frames: what were they like? Did you make the text merely descriptive? Or did it spin off into other areas?
It went off in other areas. It was descriptive, giving context to each case, but I also had to start dealing with my emotions because I was thinking, “My emotions are probably going to end up playing a role in this film as voiceover narration,” which helped me get to that point.
There’s a bit of narration that says, “My family life had been the lens through which I tried to make sense of the world around me.” That made me wonder if, at this point in your life, having lost so many family members to natural and unnatural causes, you are concerned that the lens is gone? Or at least harder to use, or harder to focus?
The answer is surely yes, but maybe for more than one reason. One is what you say: it’s just emotionally very, very difficult for me to think of ways to creatively reckon with images of people who are no longer here. But also, as I’m getting older and older, I think I’m losing some of my libido to go out and film the world, which is kind of a sad thing. I don’t know that I have the desire or energy to continue undertaking these journeys into the real world, whatever that means these days. I’m not feeling entirely comfortable with asking other people to reveal themselves to me when I’m holding a camera.
Now, this could all change. I’m still very much in the throes of living and working on the distribution of “Remake,” the film I just finished. I think when I’m all done, I can take a deep breath, reconsider everything, and make another film—one that actually does allow me to use that lens that you just referred to as a way to see the world
I was struck by the particular words used in Adrian’s death notice. It says “Adrian R. McElwee, 27, passed away on December 24. 2016, after a long illness.” There was a time when most people would wonder what kind of physical illness: cancer, pneumonia, multiple sclerosis. But it refers to mental illness generally, and to addiction, which is increasingly thought of as a category of mental illness.
As recently as 10 or 15 years ago, a notice for someone like Adrian would have had a headline that either obliquely communicated the cause of death or omitted it entirely. What do you think about all this?
I think now that those two terms, mental illness and addiction, are being described and perceived today much more readily than in the past. I’m not quite sure what moved my former wife to describe it in the way that she did, but we were very aware that he’d had mental health issues. We spent a lot of time helping him find therapists and work with psychiatrists. He went away to wilderness camps that dealt with substance abuse issues. I think if this [event] were happening now, in 2026, instead of 2016, it would have been possible for [the death notice] to be even more forthcoming from the very beginning about the issues involved in his death.
It all happened so quickly, too. Suddenly, there was a need to hold a funeral service and post something. And to be honest, I don’t even remember how it all came about. I’m not even sure I was able to read what was written before it was published. It was just so complicated.
It’s interesting what you did, going back to that death notice. Adrian himself was very much interested in the whole phenomenon of addiction and left behind footage that proves it. He has lots of footage that he shot of his friends experimenting with these opioid drugs, and you know [from the film] that opioids led to heroin and then fentanyl, which of course is what Adrian got in trouble with. So I think it would be described differently if it were an obituary that was written these days.
You could probably hear me stammering and stuttering as I talked to you. I find it amazing that we’ve been traveling with the film for almost nine months, and that still happens. You’d really think that by now it would have become very simple for me to talk about this more eloquently and in a more flowing way. But something happens when I start talking about Adrian’s death. I can feel the constriction in my throat. It’s just very, very hard for me to do, as you well know.
People constantly tell you it’s unhealthy or abnormal to carry a wound like yours around for the rest of your life. Some of the greatest poetry in English, by poets such as Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and John Donne, is about loss and grief. In the 1800s, someone who had suffered a loss like yours might have visited their loved one’s grave every week and left a flower there, and no one in their circle would’ve judged them negatively for doing it.
Did you, by any chance, read George Saunders’ book Lincoln in the Bardo?
No, I haven’t.
Oh, you should. I mean, that’s exactly what it’s about! President Lincoln just can’t help himself in going back to the tomb of his son, who died when he was a child. It’s largely fictionalized, but it’s about the phenomenon that you’re talking about. I read that book early on while trying to work my way through the grieving process and create something. It was very useful for me to read and understand what was going on with Lincoln.
It’s also unexpectedly amusing in places. Saunders creates these fictional people who are writing articles that appear in local papers, with very florid descriptions of the loss of the president’s son and how that’s affecting him and his family.
There’s a moment in “Sherman’s March” where the camera is pointed at you in a medium shot. You’re just sitting in a chair with a window behind you, and you say, “My father’s asleep upstairs. I think he already has enough questions about the validity of my film project without seeing me dressed up like this.” I wonder, in the 1980s, did you know any other people who were filming themselves that way? Do you feel like one of the founders of that form of expression?
There were certainly other people doing it. In fact, one of my film school teachers was one of those people, and I was greatly influenced by him. His name was Ed Pincus, and he made portraits of his family. He had a large impact on me and other filmmakers. There was a small colony of us, mainly in Boston and Cambridge, who were making those kinds of movies. Half a dozen people, maybe. We all encouraged each other foolishly to keep doing it. I persisted because it was something I felt comfortable doing.
But it also was very important to me to be sure that the films, certainly the early films, featured other people, because otherwise you ran the risk of something being really narcissistic and self-centered, and that would never work as a movie. It needed expansiveness to strive for some sort of universality.
But now it seems like everybody’s doing it. And you’re right, selfie-making has become an international phenomenon. I hope my films weren’t a catalyst for that happening. I would be very disappointed in us as a nation if that happened because of my filmmaking.
Of course, there are differences between how most people make [selfie videos] and how I do them. For one thing, most of theirs are over in 25 seconds or whatever, where I really give the time in all of my films to let whatever version of reality I happen to encounter and alter with my filming to take as long as it needs to sort itself and explain itself. Even that monologue you just mentioned: I think that was like two or three minutes long, an unedited single shot. So, in a way, if I helped create or help launch the selfie revolution, I was continuously undermining it at the same time.
In “Sherman’s March,” there’s a scene where you’re filming your first meeting with a prospective date. Your friend Charlene, who introduced the two of you, intervenes and says, “Would you stop? Would you stop? This is important. This is not art. This is life.” What do you think about Charlene’s warning today, 40 years later? Where is the divide? Is there a divide?
Are you asking me if the whole concept of trying to film a version of your own reality is no longer a valid pursuit?
No, I’m curious to hear your interpretation of what Charlene said to you. The implication is that if a personal moment is really important, you should put the camera down.
That’s a very urgent phrase that Charlene tossed up, and there was nothing rehearsed about it—it just unfolded before the camera. She was really sort of upset with me for doing [“Sherman’s March”] but also highly amused by it. And, having taught poetry in schools for many, many years, Charlene was aware of what art can do and of its importance. So I think there’s an ironic implication in her juxtaposing those two possibilities in the same statement, but it is kind of a clarion call for caution, because you can overdo it one way or the other with a camera when you’re trying to live your life.
Can you really live your life when you’re filming it at the same time?
Good question. I think about it all the time: This is not art, this is life. There are times when you should put the camera down, stop filming, and deal with what you have to do in order to live your life. So I think there’s validity to what she says.
When I’m watching iPhone footage of somebody who’s caught in, let’s say, a war zone, or a tsunami, I think, “It’s so stupid that they’re filming this! They could be killed!”, but also, “Wow, we’re so fortunate to have this footage to look at, because it shows us what it feels like to be in that situation.”
Yes, I think both things are true. They could be killed, and it’s pretty amazing that they’re getting this footage. And then there’s also the question of whether you have the right to stick your camera in somebody’s face as they’re going through some traumatic event, or have just been through a traumatic event, and expect them to be able to respond?
I made a film called “Six O’Clock News,” which asks those questions as I travel across the country. That was one of the things that set my journey in motion across the country: how do people deal with these tragedies, and how in the world does television think it has the right to stick a camera in their face and ask these questions? So I went out and did it myself. But I broke the ice by allowing the TV camera crews to sort of do the dirty work of finding the person who was willing to talk to a camera, obviously, because I would never have known anything about them, but then I’d go interview them a few weeks later to see where their lives were now.
By the way, on that film, I think I was motivated by the fact that I had just lost my father, and so I’d had my own grieving period and got through that. I never totally left it behind. But was able to move forward with making a film. How do other people deal with their losses? That was the question that motivated “Six O’Clock News.”
What sorts of reactions have you heard from people who have seen “Remake” and have themselves lost a child?
A few people have come up to me after screenings and talked about that experience. Invariably, they’re weeping, and then I start weeping too, and it’s kind of a mess. I learned pretty early on that I should vacate the theater. But I feel bad about that because one of the things I’ve always enjoyed about showing films—my previous films, anyway—was interacting with individuals in the audience who had just seen the film. To avoid that entirely would be to deny [myself] that important experience. So it still seemed necessary to do it sometimes.
As for the people who have come up and talked to me…I mean, it’s, it’s very difficult. Everybody’s loss is, in some ways, similar and, in others, absolutely unique. I guess I found it supportive of my filmmaking that they felt the need to discuss something similar and deeply tragic that had happened in their own lives with the filmmaker.
I do hope maybe that something could be done once this year passes and we’re not doing live screenings anymore, of offering the film to groups of people who’ve lost family members or loved ones to addiction, so they could then go out and talk about the process of dealing with what they’ve been through. There are already groups like that. They exist and have existed for many years. But maybe films like this can also play some role. It’s still too early for me to know.
I think what I’m bringing to people is a sense of solace. I can never make the pain go away, any more than they can make it go away from their own lives. But the film gives them the sense that they’re not alone, that there are other people who’ve been through this, too. All of that, I think, is worth doing.
- KVIFF 2026: Rose, Black Money for White Nights, Paris Paris (July 8, 2026)
I’m now nearing the halfway point of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, and I’m happy to report that there haven’t been many objective misses yet. Part of that is helped by the festival programming the best of Cannes and Berlinale. But the Crystal Globe, the film’s primary competition, has also shown great early strength, as has the Proxima competition. The three films outlined here, in fact, are from three separate sections: Horizons, Crystal Globe, and Promixa—and all follow figures fighting against larger forces, like patriarchy, misogyny, and xenophobia. Combined, they exemplify the variety of stories thriving up and down the lineup.
There’s no way you can run out of ways to praise Sandra Hüller. Her performances are too rich and varied not to stretch the English language. Her latest turn in Markus Schleinzer’s “Rose,” for which she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 2026 Berlinale, is another incredible achievement. In “Rose,” she plays a woman pretending to be a man—we never learn her “masculine” name—who arrives in a small Protestant village after the Thirty Years’ War to claim a plot of land. While she carries all the necessary documents and has some memories of the place, the locals aren’t quite sure what to make of this mysterious male heir.
Rose has spent decades concealing her gender on battlefields by projecting a masculine form (her back is always upright, and her gaze is unflinching) while avoiding any form of intimacy. Despite the locals’ wariness, she transforms her ramshackle farm into fertile land. Her success is so great that she even marries Suzanna (Caro Braun), the daughter of a rival farmer, to use his stream to expand her crop. Much can be said, therefore, about the film’s diverse themes of gender inequality, gender fluidity, patriarchal greed, and dogmatic religiosity. They arrive with such a quiet force—as translated through the evocative photography and controlled performances—that “Rose” becomes thornier the harder you try to grasp it.
The film’s photography is burnished within an ambiguous grey scale: Is the lack of color meant to paint Rose’s actions as morally fluid or as stark, clear, and right? While her fellow villagers certainly have much to say about her boundary-crossing, especially as it relates to land ownership, marital property, and all the other rights unduly conferred on men—it’s obvious that Rose sees her cross-dressing with a rightness that never once gives way to self-doubt. She is unbowed; therefore, she is to be feared and possibly erased. Moreover, the cinematography matches the narrative’s many methods of obscuring. Significant violence is committed, and truths are uttered off-screen, moments that we are never privy to, save for a female narrator telling us the series of events that have occurred. Instead, we’re expected to sit with the effects these hurts and revelations have on these characters.
Few actors possess Hüller’s ability to imbue the widest range of feelings, hopes, and fears in the smallest twitch of the face. She finds greater difficulty here deploying her visage because of a relatively seamless prosthetic that marks a fake grisly scar across her right cheek. Nevertheless, because she must fight harder for those expressions to surface, when they do appear, they burst forth with greater force—as the half-smile she wears when she’s holding a baby or the sternness her eyes project when men attempt to undermine her will. Oftentimes her performance more than recalls Renée Jeanne Falconetti’s in “The Passion of Joan Arc.” She bends Falconetti toward her own persona, creating a near-stoic alchemy of heartache. In turn, “Rose” is a defiant picture whose reach for cinematic perfection borders on the divine.
Lately, there’s been a rise in what I like to call “scammed cinema.” There are movies, like “Thelma” and “I Care a Lot”—about older folks who, either by phone or online, are duped out of a large sum of money by conniving parties. Petar Valchanov and Kristina Grozeva’s Crystal Globe participant, “Black Money for White Nights,” is a continuation of this bleak sub-genre, with a new spin and greater grounding.
It follows the cutting nurse Marina (Tanya Shahova) and the taciturn train porter Gosha (Ivan Savov) who’ve taken bribes over the years to afford a dream trip to Russia, ostensibly to see the famed white nights, but really so Marina can visit her father’s grave. Months before their trip, however, Russia invades Ukraine, rendering a path from their home country of Bulgaria to their dream locale perilous. And while they revisit the shady travel agency with concerns, they’re assured their booking is safe. Fast-forward a few months, and without my telling you, you can pretty much guess the opposite is true. The only people who aren’t so clued in are Marina and Gosha, who show up to a bus station hoping to begin their long-awaited sojourn only to discover the difficult reality: They won’t be seeing the white nights.
If you’re an Oscar junkie, you may remember the directors behind “Black Money for White Nights” for their film “Triumph,” which was submitted by Bulgaria to the 97th Academy Awards and starred “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” wonder Maria Bakalova as a psychic employed by the army to search for an alien artifact. This film isn’t nearly as zany as that one, but it’s also not without its absurdities. Gosha, for instance, attempts to go through some back-dealing underworld debt collectors, while Marina turns to her avaricious sister—who often critiques Marina’s ambiguous parentage.
Despite their best efforts, this disaster appears to Marina to be the result of divine retribution for their years of underhanded bribe-taking. Consequently, there’s a sense that certain truths, events, and relationships are inescapable, including their marriage to one another. As the film wears on, Marina and Gosha reveal the hurtful secrets they’ve kept from each other, which now threaten their union.
Valchanov and Grozeva’s omnipresent filmmaking doesn’t overwork these revelations into melodramatic fodder. Their camera, instead, remains empathetic. There’s never a sense, in fact, that they’re having a laugh at the expense of their doomed characters. That sentiment is deepened by Shahova and Savov’s naturalistic performances, which fully articulate the unbreakable connection Marina and Gosha feel. In that sense, much like the natural event Marina hopes to visit, there can never be a sunset on Marina and Gosha. There’s only the understanding that comes with growing older, which “Black Money for White Nights,” an entertaining and remarkable romantic tragicomedy, uplifts and nurtures.
The more I’ve thought about writer/director Isabelle Tollenaere’s ruminative immigrant story, “Paris Paris,” the more this outspoken drama has overwhelmed me. Running at an extremely efficient 78 minutes, this rich film, which world premiered in the Proxima section, follows three new arrivals to Paris: Yi-En (Yi-En Chen) from China, Junior (David Mutamba) from Congo, and Hamzah (Mahmoud Bichtawi) from Palestine—as they take a French language course and also work odd jobs in a city of lights that dims their dreams by the day. Yi-En stands as the primary catalyst: He opens the film by enunciating the French words for “bread” and “wine” before teaching his instructor, whom we never see, how to pronounce his name.
When Yi-En isn’t at his language course, which he takes with other undocumented students, he lives in a nearly abandoned apartment complex with the kindhearted Junior. The pair don’t have much: a mattress they share, a couple of chairs, some knives, and a hotplate—but they do care for one another in a way that happens when two boats spin together at the center of a raging whirlpool. Because both occupy a city that’s openly hostile to them despite Junior dutifully working on demolition sites that literally render him white with dust. The pair eventually open their home to Yi-En’s classmate Hamzah, a quiet poet. Together, the trio builds a home that’ll include a pet cat and fish.
While some film titles feel like afterthoughts, the name “Paris Paris” is integral to this story. Yi-En hails from Tianducheng, a housing estate modeled after Paris, replete with its own Eiffel Tower. Within France, therefore, Yi-En is displaced yet intricately tied to his surroundings. This doubleness mirrors the in-between state of migrants: the feeling that you’re never one complete identity when you’re away from your country—without relying on loud speeches or obvious messaging.
Instead, Tollenaere’s taut script considers the roots of colonization, gentrification and economic exploitation through respectful symbolism and measured performance. And while the last act might veer too closely toward the oblique, the bones of “Paris, Paris,” from the acute sense of place to the quietly vulnerable performances that populate the film, are obviously well considered, if not wholly illuminating.
- Join the Golden Age of Piracy in Engrossing “Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced” (July 8, 2026)
For thirteen years now, Ubisoft has been chasing a pirate. While there have been some great “Assassin’s Creed” games since the 2013 release of “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” (I’m particularly fond of “Origins” and “Odyssey”), and a truly awful movie, nothing has felt quite as accomplished as the beloved pirate simulator. While “Assassin’s Creed” already had a strong critical reputation from its first three games, it was the release of “Black Flag” that revealed the potential of this series: blending addictive storytelling, open-world exploration, naval combat, and even a bit of a history lesson into what is widely recognized as one of the best games of its era.
So it makes sense that Ubisoft would take a break from chasing that glory with new games to revisit it directly, remaking the story of Edward Kenway into the gorgeous “Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced,” available this week for PS5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S. The best “Assassin’s Creed” game is now even better.
One of the most visually striking games of 2026, “Resynced” reminds gamers of a certain age why “Black Flag” felt like such a bolt of lightning while also slipping into a few of the traps that would define the lesser entries in this series that would follow. In the end, “Black Flag Resynced” is a consistently entertaining piece of storytelling that sails through modern gaming waters despite its open-world ballast.
In a controversial decision, the “Resynced” version of “Black Flag” removes all of the Abstergo Industries material, which has been disintegrating from this franchise for years anyway. If you’re unfamiliar, the early games in “Assassin’s Creed” lore centered on a company called Abstergo that developed an “Avatar”-esque way for people to explore genetic memories. It was an explanation for how each installment could feature a different time period and protagonist, but it got clunkier and more distracting each time, and it makes sense that “Resynced” would eliminate it almost entirely, although elements of “Animus” side missions, collectibles, and even currency remain. Still, purists will be annoyed that such a hefty chunk of the original story has been excised.
“Black Flag” opens in 1715, as you step into the shoes of Edward Kenway, who kills an assassin named Duncan Walpole and assumes his identity. From the beginning, the writers of “Black Flag” are cleverly playing with mistaken identity in a manner that feels right in tune with famous stories of pirates from film and literature. Both “Pirates of the Caribbean” and The Pirates of Penzance play with similar elements.
The expansive storytelling sees Kenway amassing power and assembling a team of pirates as he gets drawn into a plot involving the Templars and a mysterious figure known as the Sage. As the plot moves forward, Edward crosses paths with legendary characters like Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet (who would inspire “Our Flag Means Death”), Benjamin Hornigold, Anne Bonny, Charles Vane, and many more. It’s a narrative sandbox set in the Golden Age of Piracy that stands to this day as the best game of its kind in this period and subject matter.
One of the reasons for that is what was breakthrough naval combat back in 2013 and still rocks in 2026. Shortly after the opening chapters of the game, Edward takes control of a ship called the Jackdaw, which becomes an open-seas killing machine. You can upgrade elements of the ship, like its cannons, mortar, and ramming ability, as you sail the waters to decimate ships for supplies and even manpower. In 2013, it was almost soothing to just sail the open seas in search of a new adventure, and that element has been upgraded in this version with even stronger graphics and environmental elements like storms, rogue waves, and more. As the story takes you around the Caribbean to locations like Havana, Nassau, and Kingston, just getting there can be half the fun.
Of course, “Black Flag” also features extensive segments on land, most of which involve Edward having to kill waves and waves of enemies. There have been numerous “quality of gameplay” additions to the resynced version, including a parrying system and the ability to crouch with a single button instead of only in specific spots in the environment. The combat does start to get repetitive very early, as there are only a few enemy types and they’re relatively easy to defeat. What offsets the repetition is the detail in the upgraded graphics, which gives the game a more three-dimensional feel than any other “Assassin’s Creed” game to date.
Whether it’s synchronizing high above cities and islands or creeping through mansions full of enemies, “Assassin’s Creed” has never looked so good. Yes, there’s the occasional glitch in the pre-release version, but those will likely be patched out soon (it’s an Ubisoft pattern to never fully judge a game for a few weeks due to post-release tweaks), and “Resynced” will be one of the best-looking games of 2026. Developed in the Unreal Anvil engine, the water effects, from waves to storms, are particularly impressive, but it’s the way shadows play across the landscape that’s truly remarkable. It’s a captivating game just to watch someone else play.
Even those who played “Black Flag” repeatedly in the 2010s will find enough new content here, beyond the graphics, to justify the purchase. There are new storylines involving supporting characters, including an excellent series of quests involving three officers who can join you on your journey. There are new customizable options, including a pet you can keep beside you on the Jackdaw and new sea shanties. Of course, there’s a new photo mode to show off the graphics to your friends.
I’ll admit that some of the repetitive combat of “Black Flag” felt more like the issues I’ve had with some recent “Assassin’s Creed” releases than I expected due to the rose-colored glasses of memory I have when I think about the original experience, but that’s to be expected with a 13-year-old game. And I’ll admit that the game, like all “AC” games, has a few too many side missions and collectibles scattered throughout the world of the game, giving it a sense of bloat that works against its streamlined main story.
These are minor complaints for a very fun game that joins recent remakes like “Silent Hill 2” and “Resident Evil 4” in bringing a classic experience to a new generation. Set sail.
- A Leaning Tower of Camp: John Early on “Maddie’s Secret” (July 7, 2026)
The first thing you need to know about comedian-turned-actor-turned-filmmaker John Early‘s performance in “Maddie’s Secret” is that it is, at its core, deeply serious. It is also, at least in Early’s estimation, not drag, despite the central character at the heart of Early’s feature directorial debut being played by Early in a wig and women’s clothing.
That’s the tonal tightrope that “Maddie’s Secret” (and Early) walks: the film sits somewhere between sincere pastiche of the woman’s pictures of the 1950s and the NBC TV movies of the week (like the Meredith Baxter Birney-starring “Kate’s Secret,” from which “Maddie’s” borrows several core concepts and plot beats) and the camp irreverence of John Waters. In the film, Maddie is a thirtysomething woman struggling to balance her newfound notoriety as a food influencer with the eating disorder that has plagued her since her youth; along the way, we just so happen to get jokes about trendy condiments like Fly By Jing and Conner O’Malley as an unhinged producer for a Bon Appetit-like food content mill.
But then, “Maddie’s Secret” gives way to its protagonist’s emotional fragility, and her attempts to gain a sense of control over her life even as everyone around her—from best friend Deena (frequent Early collaborator Kate Berlant) to her husband Jake (a supportive, sweaty thicc hunk played by Eric Rahill)—land her in a rehab facility for adults suffering from eating disorders. Even there, she deals with the wacky quirks of her fellow addicts (including Vanessa Bayer) alongside surprisingly probing conversations about the nature of disordered eating.
It’s a curious project for the Nashville-born Early, 38, who started out in stand-up before landing standout guest roles in shows like “Broad City” and “Difficult People.” Not long after that, he starred for four seasons of HBO’s “Search Party” as Elliott, the flamboyant, selfish gay mess who was frequently willing to sell out his values for another crumb of notoriety. Add to that Terry Goon in Theda Hammel’s cult COVID-era movie “Stress Positions,” and Early has proven his penchant for self-absorbed characters on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
In Maddie, Early finds a new evolution of those roles, channeling his love for the numerous films that influenced his debut into every thread of this picture. Squint hard enough, and you’ll see the flamboyant fight for fame in Paul Verhoeven’s “Showgirls”; the psychosexual mother-daughter drama of Hitchcock’s “Marnie”; virtually every role Divine ever played, but chiefly in Waters’ melodrama satire “Polyester.” The bra fits, so Early wears it.
Shortly after the film’s wide release, Early sat down with RogerEbert.com to talk about his relationship to his deepest media references (and his relationship to our relationship to them), the way his film talks about food, and how melodrama can sometimes bring out our deepest, most painful truths.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Some spoilers ahead for the end of “Maddie’s Secret.”
This is a film deeply steeped in reference, a recurring marker throughout your career—from lip-syncing in “The Characters” to shot-for-shot remakes of “Showgirls.” You seem to have such a unique relationship to reference, and I wondered how you, as a creator, work to go beyond reference and turn it into something new?
You know, I don’t know. It’s kind of an unconscious instinct I just end up doing. I think I’m a very devotional person and artist, and part of why people are devotional is that you lose yourself in the act of devotion to another person, a piece of work, a being. That’s very appealing, but it’s also an illusion. In the case of “Maddie’s Secret,” I thought by doing this kind of “Supermarket Sweep” approach to reference and pastiche, just grabbing at anything that excited me and throwing it in, I guess I felt protected. That I was making something so far out of the realm of me.
It almost feels like, if you’re grabbing from a gumbo of references and tones, you have a security blanket. “Maddie’s Secret” doesn’t have to live or die on how well it emulates “Kate’s Secret” or “Showgirls.”
Yes, certainly with the budget level I had. I would never be able to truly emulate some of the more…well-funded references. But I quickly realized, as I was writing the movie, that through referencing all these things, I kind of ended up leaking out all over the place. It was surprisingly personal in ways I couldn’t even explain, and still can’t. I really thought I was getting away with it; I thought I was making a totally safe, leaning tower of camp. But actually, it’s a profoundly personal piece of work.
That makes sense for people who love film, media, and culture—in a way, we sort of are the product of those influences. For this project, you’ve been able to wear those influences on your sleeve by talking about the films that inspired “Maddie’s Secret” and even programming some of them at places like Metrograph. What’s it like to get the chance to use this movie as a showcase for the things that you love?
It’s very nice… I get a little frustrated with how much the media ecosystem is obsessed with reference; it feels a little surveillance-y sometimes, the Letterboxd thing of “What are your four favorites?”, the Criterion Top 10, what do you pick in the Criterion Closet? Interviews these days seem to be very focused on references. This is ultimately a net positive, mind you; I think there’s a cinephilia in the air that is driving people to older movies, and that’s really cool, and to my movie as well. But I get a little….
And the thing is, I’m such a willing participant in it because I love talking about the movies I love, and I want people to see some of the ones I feel are underseen. I fall right into the trap, and I don’t think it’s all bad. I want to be very clear. But there’s this weird kind of gamifying or math-equation approach we’re trying to take with the references, where we’re not also acknowledging the fundamental mystery of what we’re doing or making. It’s a weird trap I find myself in right now.
But the truth is that I love that I’ve gotten to program these things. The Alamo Drafthouse let me program a few movies as “Maddie” inspo, and American Cinematheque did too. The fact that I got to put “The Brady Bunch Movie” on the big screen, are you kidding? That’s my life.
You mentioned that so much of you came out of this process, and I wonder how that translates to your relationship to Maddie as a character. What was it in the soul of her that you really wanted to inhabit? There’s this camp element, of course, but there’s a sincerity that comes with knowing her struggle, even if the stuff around her is a little over-the-top.
At the end of the day, I’m a deeply feeling, schmaltzy kind of person; to quote Deena, “It’s cool that you care.” And then Maddie goes, “It’s pathetic!” That’s the two sides of me, you know? I care, and I’m embarrassed that I care. So I try to layer on, I don’t know how many layers of irony, to mitigate the caring—to make less of a firehouse of sincerity and intensity. So I chose an archetype and a sensitive issue to work from, I think. This all moved so fast that it really felt like I didn’t know what I was doing.
But as time went on, and the more distance I got from it, I think I deliberately chose something so hot-button. It’s not relevant, of course; people have been talking about bulimia since the ’90s. But it is sensitive. I knew the only way through was to approach it with total commitment and sincerity. So, without realizing it, I created a project where I would be at the proverbial gunpoint and tap into the part of me that is a deeply feeling person who cares and is very sentimental.
Maddie’s Secret (Magnolia Pictures)
I think that’s what modulates the tone of “Maddie’s Secret,” especially in the scenes between Maddie and Deena. I’m curious how your longstanding collaboration with Kate Berlant informed those two characters, especially Deena, who sits between Maddie’s sincerity and a more overt parody of these kinds of pictures.
Those two sides of Kate are so integrated; there’s the broadness, the physical comedy, her proficiency in clowning. Then there’s the wetness of her eyes; there are so many moments in this movie when she looks at Maddie, and she’s like a child. I don’t know, I think her performance elicits such big laughs, which is so necessary for this movie to balance out so much of my trackiness. But at the same time, her performance is so full of longing.
I’ve always been of the school that likes expressive performances—not because I like fakeness or artificiality, but because I actually know those people. I’m one of them. I had the great displeasure of seeing some interview I did to promote this movie this morning, and I saw myself roll my head back and laugh so heartily at something that was not funny. I saw myself do that, and thought, oh, you poor baby, why are you laughing so hard? Who are you trying to please?
I know so many people and friends like that, and Kate does it with total abandon in this movie. But it’s all balanced by these tiny flickers of pain and humanity.
There’s a pathos to her, too, because of this unrequited yearning for Maddie that she lets take her so far in these extreme directions.
Deena breaks my heart, and so does Kate’s performance.
One of the other more presentational elements in the film is these dance sequences at the queer gym, which obviously have a lot of “Showgirls” in there. I’m curious about those, because they go so far beyond the gym movement classes in “Kate’s Secret” that clearly inspired them, from this very severe, theatrical movement to the expressive camerawork. Talk to me about that tonal tightrope you had to walk.
Dance is so amazing; if you’re like me, and you write dialogue that is so blunt, you find that dance can express the inexpressible. It’s also very efficient, and it’s such a quick path to feeling. I knew I was working in a very blunt, pedestrian, low-culture style, and I was missing this dreamlike or expressive element. I didn’t want to so rigidly say I was doing a parody of a TV movie. So I was excited when I realized there could be a narratively motivated five- to eight-minute dream ballet at the center of this movie. Like in “Oklahoma!”
Of course, it’s absurd, but queer dance classes are a real thing. There are queer gyms in LA, and when Deena says, “It’s radically inclusive, no toxic gym bro stuff,” that is directly lifted from the website of queer gym. I have friends who attend these classes; I’ve seen footage of them leaning into vogue-inflected choreography. It’s all in the name of cardio, but it’s not as pragmatic as an aerobics class. There’s this other level of self-acceptance, almost like social justice kind of thing. Anyway, it’s actually real.
Maddie’s Secret (Magnolia Pictures)
I have to imagine it was exciting for you, as a filmmaker, to get the chance to work both in the dance sequences and, more broadly, to find creative ways to hold and move the camera. I’m even thinking of some of the early scenes at Gourmaybe, where long tracking shots follow you and Deena, and even dolly around you to a comically dizzying degree.
I worked with Max Lackner, an incredible cinematographer. This is his first feature, and he’s a friend of mine; it’s a beautiful relationship that I hope will last forever. Because of our amateurishness, we were really ambitious—maybe if we were more experienced, we could have convinced ourselves not to be so visually expressive. But because our budget made that hard, we naively, like Nomi Malone herself, were like “why not? Let’s make this look like ‘Showgirls’!”
We had a gigantic whiteboard where we broke down every scene and tried to distill each one into a single key word, so every scene felt like it had a very clear aesthetic or tonal goal. The first word in the first scene was “horse!” because she’s jogging, and we wanted to be off to the races. The style was always in service of the larger pacing, and this feeling of getting on a train and it not stopping until you’re careening off the cliff.
Maddie’s relationship with food is also complicated by her work pressures at Gourmaybe, which lets you kind of rib at the kind of programmatic, performative way that a lot of food creators talk about food—even the way Maddie would rattle off trendy ingredients and describe a dish in this formulaic manner, even in casual conversation, is really fascinating. What’s your relationship to that school of food culture?
I like that kind of food. I go to the places they go, and I shop at the places they shop. I’m right at the epicenter of it here in LA, and when I’m in New York, too. Even where I’m from, in Nashville, they’ve become very orange wine-y. I’ve passively absorbed it through ironic consumption.
Plus, it gives Maddie job pressures that Kate of “Kate’s Secret” doesn’t have, because she’s just trying to survive as a mom and deal with an emotionally unavailable, potentially philandering husband. Maddie, meanwhile, has no kids and a supportive husband in Jake; one curious deviation from “Kate” is that Jake is the perfect gentleman to Maddie, to the point that it’s stifling.
To me, what that’s about is that, by presenting this angelic image to the world and hiding these darker parts of herself in her self-presentation, Maddie inspires a kind of simplistic devotion that proves unsustainable. If she’s perfect, she’s gonna have Deenas and Jakes in her life go, “You’re perfect.”
And there’s pressure to maintain that perfection.
Yeah. Maddie plays a huge part in what’s wrong with those dynamics.
It’s that need to curate an impossible version of yourself to appease people.
Maddie reminds me of another character you’ve played recently: Terry Goon in “Stress Positions.” They’re both such inwardly drawn characters who are riddled with anxiety. What draws you to roles like that?
Here’s me saying “I don’t know,” while I bite my nail. [Laughs.] I don’t know, really. I think the truth is both Terry and Maddie are presenting as housewives, in that archetypally, they’re both neurotic. They’re very different, though. Terry is bitter and has this cancerous kind of rage, whereas Maddie is more hopeful and sweet. But they do both fall into this woman’s picture archetype of the troubled housewife.
I think they want to find security in the domestic. But I do think there’s a little bit of rage burning at the core of Maddie, too.
Oh, Maddie’s got some rage for sure. But she doesn’t direct it at other people, just at herself.
Maddie’s Secret (Magnolia Pictures)
Which we see more of in the film’s back half, when she’s in treatment. That section seems to have the most work to do to straddle the dramatic and the comedic; as you got to these places in the story where you’re in a clinical, rehabilitative setting, what considerations did you have about toeing the line one way or the other tonally?
The main thing I told myself was not to be scared, to throw myself into the Greek stakes of these TV melodramas. That’s every eating disorder movie: They go into treatment, there’s no avoiding it. And there’s always rebellion, resistance to the treatment, and some kind of escape. I also watched this movie “Thin,” which is a very harrowing documentary about an eating treatment center I got a lot from.
There’s the “Cuckoo’s Nest” of it all.
Yes, and “Girl, Interrupted,” and my friends’ experiences, who have been in treatment centers for eating disorders. They gave me beautiful details. I knew the biggest mistake I could make was, once I got there, to suddenly seize up and feel I had to handle things delicately. I have been totally shocked by the emotional responses to it from people who have been in treatment programs, who tell me, “It’s so accurate.” That’s thrilling to me, but it’s not necessarily what I was going for.
I was having a lot of imaginary fights with people on Twitter while I was writing this movie, and imagining these terrifying Q&As. None of that has happened, but I had to really try not to get lost in those thoughts, be an artist about it, and not forget the tonal needs of this style. My north star with the treatment center was to still go for it and not pump the brakes on the intensity, the crudeness, or the fun. That was a big thing, too; I didn’t want the audience to feel betrayed, as if we were suddenly in this grim, punishing part of the story. I wanted it to still be full of bright characters, soft colors, and adventure. I think we achieved that.
The film ends with Maddie jogging just as she did in the beginning, but it feels so different, and she feels so different. Where do you feel like Maddie’s running to?
I wanted that last shot to have a feeling of freedom—her hair is no longer half up, half down; it’s now fully down. There’s a little smile right at the freeze frame. I think Maddie has no immediate plan, but….I don’t think they’re long for this world, Maddie and Jake. What they go through in this movie is a tough thing to bounce back from. But by the end, she’s an integrated woman, and she wants to see what her life would be like elsewhere.
- Short Films in Focus: Bob’s Funeral (July 7, 2026)
I should have written about “Bob’s Funeral” last month for Father’s Day, since it is about fatherhood and how some get it right and some get it wrong. It’s a documentary told from a son’s point of view, someone trying to get answers about his family’s past and why his grandfather’s funeral was so somber while his dad’s was more celebratory. It is also about how one side of a family is estranged from the other, and the drama that still unfolds whenever they are in the same room.
The “Bob” in the title refers to filmmaker Jack Dunphy’s grandfather, who died in 2019. The film opens on the morning of Bob’s funeral. Dunphy cannot help but bring his video camera everywhere he goes. He takes all the blame when the family runs late for the funeral, a church service where everyone struggles to deliver a heartfelt eulogy for the deceased. What does this say about Bob, his family, and how he raised his kids?
Dunphy’s own father, Mark (son of Bob), seemed to be a much more gracious and well-liked person. He died of stomach cancer just a few months after Bob passed away. Through some crude but charming cut-out animation, Dunphy talks about some of the more embarrassing memories he associates with his father, including an incident involving magnum-sized condoms. He also delves into some of the more hurtful aspects of his relationship with his father. At the same time, he reiterates the important role humor plays in his family, which seems to be the opposite of how Mark was raised by Bob, his father, who ran a pretty strict household.
Dunphy’s film is heartfelt and revealing, even though he is told on many occasions by his family members to put the camera down or “get that camera away from me.” He has that documentary filmmaker’s instinct to dig deeper into the family dynamic and ask all the uncomfortable questions people would think twice before answering. As a result, he sometimes gets non-answers from his family that say just enough for us to interpret something substantial.
In the end, the film is about how we’re remembered and how that memory determines the tone of your funeral. Bob’s funeral was difficult, and for good reason. Mark’s memorial service, which took place in a flower shop. Reminded me of my dad’s Celebration of Life a few years ago. Everyone worked hard on their eulogies. Everyone had a funny memory. Tons of people turned out for it, way more than we expected. Dunphy’s film is a funny and sincere tribute to a life well-lived, flaws and all.
