- HBO’s “War” Bares Its Teeth, But Lacks a Considerable Bite (September 28, 2026)
Created by George Kay, HBO’s new series “War” follows tech billionaire Morgan Henderson (Dominic West) and his movie-star wife, Carla Duval (Sienna Miller), whose marriage is colder than the dreary London weather. When we first meet him, he sleeps with a young woman who is clearly not his wife, but the morning after their tryst, she calls someone to report that her work is done.
We soon find out that Carla set this meeting between the two up, unbeknownst to her husband, as a means to use Morgan’s infidelity as a cataclysmic excuse for divorce. Later, Morgan has a legal aide posing as a fan serve his wife divorce papers on the red carpet at her new film premiere, showing that he too can be calculating, and that this marriage has run its course on both ends.
While Carla gets legal counsel from the famed Taylor & Byrne, Morgan hires the ruthless Cathcarts & Sons, and both firms make it clear they will stop at nothing to secure their clients’ victory. Largely an intriguing premise, the series unfortunately focuses on two incredibly dull characters who feel like they belong in a procedural drama aired on cable television rather than the home of a series like “Succession.”
Despite sharing 10 years in this marriage, Morgan and Carla don’t feel like two people who have ever been in love, or frankly, two people who have ever shared a room. While they’ve clearly fallen out of favor with each other, the life in every scene is sucked out each time West and Miller share the screen, leaving behind a stale, stifling air.
Thankfully, the series quickly introduces Jonathan “Johnny” Warren (Archie Renaux), an ambitious, cocky young lawyer who becomes entwined in the mess Morgan and Carla have created. Masquerading as a double agent, he just might be the most thrilling character to watch in the show’s overwhelmingly dull first few episodes. As Johnny runs to and from various offices and attempts to secure the future of his career, Renaux delivers each line and huff with a tenacity unlike the series’ top-billed cast. He, along with both sets of lawyers from Taylor & Byrne and Cathcarts & Sons, makes this series feel worthwhile, even when the series’ momentum feels like it’s finally fizzling out.
War (HBO)
As the lawyers in the series, married couple Serena Byrne (Phoebe Fox) and Nicholas Taylor (James McArdle), along with work partners St. John Smallwood (Pip Torrens) and Beatrice “Queen Bea” Ubosi (Nina Sosanya) also steal the show. They play their roles like hound dogs thirsty for blood, sniffing out the lies Morgan and Carla tell and salivating at the thought of being at the center of a legal battle so messy it threatens to upend the lives of the two people at its center.
Slowly, the divorce at hand starts to infiltrate their lives as well, as lawyers and aides begin to use each other’s secrets and lies to gain the upper hand in their cases. With such a fantastic supporting cast, it’s a shame the series doesn’t fully invest in them until halfway through this season’s eight episodes.
That isn’t to say there aren’t moments of greatness in each episode. Oli Julian’s score, in particular, is filled with plucky strings and sharp keys that make even a drive down the road in a fancy car feel stressful, and Eve Doherty’s kinetic editing also amplifies the thrills.
War (HBO)
The show’s craft makes each act of betrayal more complex and engaging than it appears on paper, even when the performances that the outcomes of these deceits hinge on do little to translate those moments. And of course, the sharp dialogue reminiscent of HBO titans like “Industry” often lands with a punch, even when the actors’ facial expressions don’t match the way their teeth gnash after vile words spill from their lips.
Although it gets stronger as the season unfolds, “War” takes too long to get its gears turning. That’s not to say the series doesn’t improve greatly over its eight episodes, because it certainly does. It’s just unfortunate that it takes so long to fully flesh out the identity that will inevitably continue on into the show’s second season, which has already been greenlit.
As the lawyers and aides become a bigger focus, the series shows how their lives are dictated by the cases they take, with the drama their clients bring trapping even the most experienced characters in a web of lies they become ensnared in. By the end of the eighth and final episode of the season, the series thankfully transforms into one that seems to understand what it wants to be, just in the nick of time.
All episodes were screened for review. Premieres October 1st on HBO.
- Adult Swim’s “Get Jiro” Serves Up Bloody, Sloppy Culinary Revenge (September 28, 2026)
It’s funny, looking back on 2026, that we’ll have gotten two televisual glimpses into the mind of the late, great chef and food writer Anthony Bourdain. One, Matt Johnson’s wry, tender biopic “Tony,” gives us a glimpse of the man’s larval form, the insecure, manipulative boy before he became the Tony we all knew and loved. The other? Bizarrely enough, an adaptation of a graphic novel he co-wrote in which a beleaguered chef with a checkered past punches, kicks, and decapitates his way (Casey Ryback-style) through a post-apocalyptic dystopia where haute cuisine carries enough cultural weight that people will kill for the right dish.
That’s the logline for “Get Jiro,” a graphic novel Bourdain penned in 2012 alongside Joel Rose, now adapted into a ten-episode Adult Swim series. The premise is so high-concept as to feel derivative, like a gumbo with too many disparate ingredients thrown together: In a resource-scarce future Los Angeles in which the populace entertains themselves with virtual reality, the only true sensory delights lie in food. Ergo, chefs have been elevated to a place of extreme cultural importance, mastering their craft like samurai and living like mob kingpins.
Living and cooking on the “Outer Ring” of this world is Jiro (Brian Tee), a stoic, unassuming sushi chef who, in the first episode, is approached by a sniveling dilettante at his humble locale to recruit him for greater things. But when the man insists on dipping his nigiri in soy sauce, Jiro’s blade gets another use besides slicing salmon, and the man’s head leaves his body. Unfortunately for Jiro, that becomes the first blow in a turf war that eventually sees him pitting two over-the-top rival chef kingpins, “Zatoichi”-style, against each other.
Get Jiro (Adult Swim)
All the components are there for a delightfully zany, bloody take on the yakuza/mob action thriller, with dishes as coveted as territory. But the original comic’s appeal lay in its vivid, grotesque artwork (by Langdon Foss) and the bona fides Bourdain’s name gave to its chef-flavored mayhem more than its story; Adult Swim’s adaptation loses the flavor of that artwork, dousing its well-worn cliches in unpalatable animation that feels more Flash animation than flashy.
Over the course of the first season’s ten episodes, Jiro is drawn further and further into the Inner Ring’s criminal underworld, battled over by Bob (Titus Welliver), a gruff, uncompromising maker of French international cuisine, and Rose (Allison Pill), a crunchy vegan who prides herself on ethical eating and no meat-is-murder dishes…though dispatching humans is a different story. Each wants Jiro’s talents with a blade (in any context) for their own reasons, and he’s more than happy to play them against each other, even as deeper scars from his family past begin to surface.
Granted, the show appeals most when it leans into the food-themed action: sniper-bakers who snuggle their rifle components in a series of baguettes, car chases evading variously themed food-truck bounty hunters, mob bosses drowning failed subordinates through what can only be described as “hollandaise-boarding.” The list goes on. Bourdain’s aim with the comic was clearly to send up the self-seriousness of chefs like himself, mixed with his love of samurai and yakuza movies, by building a fictional world where the tools and terms of chef culture become bloody weapons. Picture any “John Wick”-style action sequence set in a restaurant kitchen, and you get “Get Jiro”‘s whole deal.
Get Jiro (Adult Swim)
But after a few episodes, the novelty of the premise dissipates, and it gets harder to invest in the series’ twists and turns. As a character, Jiro remains pretty thin, his ronin-like stoicism buoyed mostly by the gradual reveal of his checkered past. His supporting cast offers little to offset that bitter taste; his allies consist of the well-meaning cop (Courtney Taylor) with her own relationship to food, and two innocent sisters (Seychelle Gabriel, Tessa Inez) whose proximity to Jiro put them in danger, most of whom don’t get enough to do to offset those formulaic roles.
The big later-show curveball comes in Justin Kirk‘s Alister, a Bourdain-like food critic whose relationship to Jiro’s cooking takes bizarre turns (especially after an episode featuring a violent escape from Butcher’s Block Prison, where all the big scary chefs get locked up). While the show mostly uses food as window dressing to add some seasoning to its been-there-done-that crime thriller action, Alister’s thread lets “Get Jiro” do what it does best: It actually explores our relationship to food and its various class signifiers.
It’s clear that shows like “Invincible” and “Blue Eye Samurai” have paved the way for something like “Get Jiro” to get made, and the animation style tries its level best to bring its over-the-top world to life. It’s clear showrunner Nate Cash (an old hand at “SpongeBob” and the director behind the brilliant “Over the Garden Wall”) had an uphill battle adapting this material for television, and it’s easy to relish the courses that feel pleasant on the tongue. If only the meal itself didn’t feel quite so bland.
All episodes screened for review. Premieres October 3rd on Adult Swim.
- NYFF 2026: Opening Night Preview and Early Highlights (September 25, 2026)
The 64th edition of the New York Film Festival strikes me as its strongest in ages. I have no doubt that many critics and festival observers will agree with this, and no doubt various theories will be adduced to explain it. I recently heard a critic friend opine that the long shadow of COVID has finally dissipated, and that the current NYFF, like Cannes, Venice and other 2026 festivals, reflects cinema returning to its pre-pandemic strength (an idea that doesn’t even account for the bounce provided by “The Odyssey” and YouTube-spawned hits like “Backrooms” and “Obsession”).
Personally, I don’t have any theory to explain why this year’s festival seems so strong, but I do have a way of measuring it. Film critics, as I’m sure you know, are nerds. And one very nerd-like thing we do throughout the year is to keep thinking of the 10-best list we’ll compile at year’s end. For decades now, I’ve realized that the New York Film Festival has dependably supplied at least half of the ten films that appear on my list. When you consider that the festival occupies only a small fraction of the year (a little over two weeks) and that its Main Slate usually contains roughly 30 films, that’s pretty amazing. And is obviously a credit to the discernment of the selection committees that have guided the festival’s choices over the years.
This year, over eight months of film viewing produced only three films that I felt were likely to have places on my 2026 list: Ross McElwee’s “Remake,” Patrick Wang’s “A. Rimbaud” and Daniel Raim’s “The Ozu Diaries”. (All are films I think should have played the NYFF. But that’s a perennial kind of complaint.)
Then I got to this year’s festival, which runs from September 25 to October 12, and three days of early press screenings produced what may well be the top half of my 2026 10-best. To wit:
“Fjord“
“Naza”
“All of a Sudden“
“Club Kid“
“Minotaur“
You may have already heard that the top two films there share something: they are controversial. Very much so. I think that quality explains some of the excitement about this year’s festival, and is connected to what makes the films innovative, original and important. Though “Fjord” is a fictional drama and “Naza” a documentary (and that’s one reason it’s rather unfair to rank them, I admit), they are both, in a way, real-world horror films.
In “Fjord,” the horror lies in five kids being ripped from the care of their parents. No, this doesn’t happen in Ukraine, with the kids being shipped off to Vlad’s Russia. It happens in Norway and the family in question are not only immigrants from Romania, but they are also conservative Christians. At first. they are welcomed into the small coastal town where they land, but gradually suspicions arise about their imported values, including their parental practices; soon flimsy accusations of child abuse leads to the children (including a nursing newborn) being taken by the state and the parents entering a nightmarish legal quagmire.
Cristian Mungiu, the film’s writer-director, is Romanian and previously won Cannes’ top award, the Palme d’Or, for “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.” “Fjord” took the same award this year, which puts him in the small company of filmmakers who’ve won it more than once. Clearly, he’s one of cinema’s masters. As I noted in reviewing his “Graduation,” he “employs a patented style that involves long takes (many scenes entail only a single shot) and eye-level widescreen compositions. The effect is of a crisp, unblinking intentness, one that induces the viewer to pay attention to the characters, their words and interactions….”
Though “Fjord” has all the brilliance of Mungiu’s best previous films, including top-notch performances by Renate Reinsve and Romania-born Sebastian Stan as the parents, its win at Cannes inspired a dark chorus of grumbling, as a friend covering the festival wrote to me. Its presumed sin is to take what’s regarded as a right-wing position on the well-intended ministrations of a liberal, supposedly enlightened Western state. To me, this is a very parochial (but very American, I think) view, one that ignores how exactingly Mungiu has previously X-rayed the lingering baneful effects of Communism in Romania. In any case, readers should be advised that, querulous reviews aside, the extraordinary “Fjord” deserves to be seen.
In “Naza,” the horror lies in the genocide in Gaza as described by two dozen Israeli intelligence operatives and soldiers who administered it. Made in secret over three years by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, half of the team that made the Oscar winning “No Other Land,” the film surfaced on Sept. 10 at the Venice Film Festival, where it won a 25-minute standing ovation. That acclaim almost instantly sparked worldwide headlines, and in Israel caused what one newspaper called “Naza hysteria,” with the Netanyahu regime signaling its desire to strip the filmmakers of their citizenship.
The film shows Abraham sitting on a Tel Aviv rooftop at night, facing his interviewees, whose faces and voices are digitally altered to protect their identities (their testimonies have thus been questioned by critics of the film, though The Guardian, one of its producers, says it has vetted them). What they describe is Israel’s high-tech method of killing over 70,000 Palestinians in the last three years: it seems that virtually all of Gaza is under electronic surveillance, so that once a reputed Hamas member is identified in his home, the building is bombed, usually with everyone in it killed. (“Naza” is shorthand for collateral damage.) Hardly any of these elite members of Israel’s military voice any compunction about the mass slaughter of so many innocents, though one man says that when he visited Poland, he wondered how the Germans who committed the Holocaust could live with themselves. Now he knows.
I came out of the film shaken, as I’m sure many will. I can only recall one comparable incident at the NYFF: the effect of Laura Poitras’ “Citizenfour” was similarly electrifying to me. Both films were subject to high security by the same company prior to their first screenings (at “Naza,” members of the press were asked to surrender their phones before going into the theater). I saw the head of that company before the screening and, mindful that films like “No Other Land” and “The Voice of Hind Rajab” did not get theatrical distribution in the US, asked if there was any chance “Naza” would get a distributor. “It already has one,” he said.
Unless I miss my guess, “Naza” will end up being not just greatly acclaimed but historic, with a greater impact on public perceptions and events than any previous movie. After its first public screening at the NYFF tomorrow, it will open at the IFC Center in New York on Sept. 30, then roll out to much of the rest of the US on Oct. 9. On the morning that I write this, it was announced that the film will be available online for free in 50 countries beginning in November.
As for the other the other three movies on my top five:
“All of a Sudden”: Made in France by the great Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car), this lyrical masterpiece hinges on the brilliant work of actresses Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto in a story about eldercare, empathy and performance.
“Club Kid”: Caregiving is also the central theme in this terrific comedy by writer-director-star Jordan Firstman; it’s about a coked-out gay party giver who’s surprised by a tyke he didn’t know he fathered years before. Hilarious and moving.
“Minotaur”: Though he was obliged to leave Putin’s Russia, the latest by Russian master Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan) ponders the spiritual and social corruption of that country during its war on Ukraine in this chilly, gripping thriller about marriage and murder.
As noted, the five films discussed above represent only a portion of films screened for the press at the NYFF thus far. Is it possible that future screenings may provide more candidates for my evolving 10-best? I’d say it’s not only possible but likely, obliging the critic to deal with the welcome challenge of an unusually rich and varied cinema year.
That likelihood is bolstered by the fact that I haven’t seen any of the festival’s world premieres, which in 2026 are in greater number than is usually the case, a factor widely seen as contributing to the festival’s overall strength this year.
While the NYFF, unlike many festivals, doesn’t put a premium on world premieres, it often features them in its three prestige slots: Opening Night, Centerpiece and Closing Night.
Opening Night this year belongs to James Gray’s “Paper Tiger,” a crime drama about an American family that gets mixed up with the Russian mob, starring Adam Driver, Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson. Since most of Gray’s films are set in NYC, and many have played the NYFF, it’s fitting that one finally gets the Opening Night slot. It opens theatrically in November.
The festival’s Centerpiece, meanwhile, is “Behemoth!” by writer-director Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton). It stars Pedro Pascal as a renowned cellist returning to Los Angeles to write a film score. Opens in December.
I’m particularly looking forward to the Closing Night selection, Ava DuVernay’s “14th,” a title referring to America’s 14th Amendment. A documentary featuring interviews with a wide range of experts, it’s a companion piece to DuVernay’s “13th,” which I named the best film of 2016. It plays Netflix beginning in December.
Among the other world premieres, the one that tops my must-see list is “Artificial” by Luca Guadagnino, whose “After the Hunt” opened the festival last year. The year’s one big release dealing with the hot topic of A.I., it stars Andrew Garfield as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. It already stirred notoriety by being dropped by Amazon MGM earlier this year; it was subsequently picked up by NEON for a Christmas release.
Also on the electic world premiere docket: Takashi Yamakazi’s “Godzilla Minus Zero,” the 39th (and first R-rated) entry in the beloved Godzilla franchise; Tom McCarthy’s “A Statement,” a provocative dramedy about experts trying to draft a congressional statement about climate change; and the marquee-busting title “I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies,” a documentary by noted Iranian director Mani Haghighi about two eccentric archivists in the city of Tabriz.
- I’m Not Going Anywhere: Twiggy and Sadie Frost on “Twiggy” (September 25, 2026)
In 1966, photographer Barry Lategan scheduled a test shoot: a model’s first-ever photo shoot, meant to market her to other photographers and brands. That model was 15-year-old Leslie Hornby, a slim, boyish girl with a pixie cut and penciled lashes, and those photos became some of the most recognizable fashion portraits ever taken.
Deemed “The Face of ’66,” Leslie would gain fame under her nickname, Twiggy, a name that to this day recalls shift dresses, charm, and the blueprint for what we recall as the decade’s signature makeup look. And now, sixty years after the year she possessed, director Sadie Frost unpacks and outlines Twiggy’s legacy, spotlighting her humble beginnings, rapid rise to stardom, tribulations as a young woman finding her agency and power (including that viral “gotcha” moment with Woody Allen), and the stage and screen career that followed.
Frost’s documentary is comprehensive, surveying Twiggy’s meteoric living legacy not just from the source but from the variety of women, industry professionals, and collaborators who have mined value from her example. For those who may know her image but not her person, or those who believe her career is limited to fashion alone, “Twiggy” will be an enlightening portrait of an icon. Twiggy and Frost spoke to RogerEbert.com about these topics and more.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you two first get connected?
Twiggy: We met originally 30-odd years ago in London through mutual friends. We knew each other enough to say hello, but we didn’t hang out or work together.
Sadie: But then, I made a documentary about Mary Quant and I was on Twiggy’s podcast to promote it.
Twiggy: I asked her when she was going to make another film because I loved “Quant” so much. She told me how much she loved doing the film because it was about the 60s and she was having fun with the research and wanted to do something else from that decade. And then she was like, “I should do you!” It wasn’t planned!
Sadie: A lot of people kind of sit around trying to think of their next move, but sitting in that podcast, I realized I wasn’t going to have a job the next day. *laughs* We had a conversation, but Twiggy was at first a bit hesitant.
Twiggy: I was a bit reticent because it’s a major thing to commit to having your life told in detail on a big screen. But on the other hand, I had thought over the years, “somebody is going to do it anyway,” so I’d like to be involved. I wanted it to be with someone I trusted. I love the fact that she’s a woman and has done all the things I’ve done: been a designer, actress, model, and in the public eye from a similar age. She understood.
Sadie: It’s about trust and respect. In working on the Mary Quant documentary for so long, she was very ailing, and I was dealing with her family to develop the film. This time I was working with someone who was very much here with me, and it was a balancing act: making the film I wanted while making sure Twiggy, her family, and the production company, were happy. You have to stick true to your values, and I wanted this to be a very celebratory and inspiring film.
When you mention Mary Quant, she was such a prominent figure in shaping the 1960s Mod scene and culture. In this film, Twiggy says she considered herself a Mod in her teen years. Your filmography almost feels like you’re crafting a filmic lineage of British female cultural icons. Is that part of your motivation?
Sadie: I think so. That time is fascinating for me because I was a baby and my mum and dad were sixteen when I was born, and they were Mods. I lived a very bohemian, reckless life in that world, and I wanted to take myself back. By making “Quant” and “Twiggy,” it feels like I’m there, revisiting my youth and getting to know characters that would’ve been there when I was a child. The funny thing was, I’ve got a few other documentaries with women after this that could be parallel and very exciting, but I didn’t want to go straight into making another about women. So now, I’ve made a documentary with Pete Townsend about Quadrophenia, which is all about Mods. So I must’ve been a Mod in a past life. It’s really culturally based around them and identity.
Twiggy: It was such an amazing movement. It was so huge in the UK. The clothing was so important, and I think that’s why I got so into fashion and designing. Having the right clothes was imperative.
Sadie: And I think this is good to do now that I’ve done it through two female lenses to do it through a male lens. It’s something completely different to do it in a world I’m not party to: a male headspace and mental health perspective.
Twiggy, as is the nature of being a model, actress, and public figure, your life has been immensely documented moment-to-moment for decades. What is it like to see all of it culminate in one project? Does it feel different to you?
Twiggy: When I’m living my life, I very rarely think about the past. I don’t think about the 60s. I’m always very much in the moment. I’m always thinking about what I’m doing next and what my project is right now. But when I actually saw the first cut, we both cried. It’s kind of peculiar and uplifting. And the sad moments come back when you see them on the big screen, obviously. You relive them. But Sadie did a remarkable job, and we still love each other!
Sadie: Yes, we never fell out! [laughing]
The ’60s was such a specific era culturally and socially, with the Youthquake and the pop culture British Invasion, but also politically. In many ways, it almost feels like a sister decade to ours. This documentary feels like it’s coming out in a parallel moment. With “Twiggy,” we’re reflecting on a life that took off amid all these shifts, and the fashion was shaped by those cultural contexts that the film also explores. It feels very tapped in to today; do you feel that as well?
Sadie: Yeah, I think so. I just finished “Quadrophenia” today and watched it all the way through. The big part in the ending is the current third wave of Mod revival. In London, there are all these amazing bands and girls that look like Twiggy when she was sixteen. I went to a lot of underground clubs, and people don’t have their phones out. I think it’s a backlash to what’s happened in the past 5-10 years.
And Twiggy, your signature look was one you created. You made your clothes, and the now iconic eye look was inspired by one of your rag dolls. What was it like to see your look popularized and made synonymous with an era?
Twiggy: Yeah! I created that makeup before I was even modeling. I was a grammar school girl, so we weren’t allowed makeup in school. It was a big no-no. On weekends, like all teenage girls, my friends and I would gather in one of our bedrooms and play with makeup. That’s where it all came about! I was allowed to wear it Saturday and Sunday, and off it came for the week. But then once I was discovered, those lines I drew under my eyes became known as “Twiggies.”
The film not only honors your status as a fashion icon, but also acknowledges that it only scratches the surface of your career. You found success on stage, in movies, and in music. What was it like transitioning out of modeling into those careers? And Sadie, how did you strike that balance in prioritizing the whole legacy over the more mainstream aspects of it?
Twiggy: Like modeling, I didn’t plan any of it. It’s about meeting people. I was as shocked as the rest of the world was when I became a model. If I had walked into an agency, they would’ve said “too small, too thin, wrong background,” and shut the door. I didn’t look like the models of the day, but in hindsight, that’s why it probably happened to me.
Sadie: But I think you either have it or you don’t. Of course you can work for it, but I think Twiggy was always meant to be discovered. She has a natural talent. She could sing, dance, and act even though she wasn’t trained. When people are trained, sometimes they all act like everyone else. Ken Russell said she was quite moldable, and he used that in “The Boy Friend.” That’s why she got two Golden Globes. Her career evolved, and opportunities came naturally for Twiggy.
Twiggy: It’s important that someone like Ken Russell, who at the time was the biggest director in England, cast me. I hadn’t planned to give up modeling, but Ken became a mentor, and he changed my life. One door opens another door. Tommy Tune was in “The Boy Friend” with me, then went back to New York, became a big theatre director, and cast me in “My One and Only” on Broadway in the ‘80s. It was something I never thought I could do, but he told me, “There’s no such thing as can’t. Pack your bags and get out to New York.” It was a massive hit; I was nominated for a Tony, and we ran for 18 months. It’s wonderful to have the right people believe in you and give you the courage to try and to work hard.
Sadie: You make the best of what you have. Life isn’t about sticking to the same thing. You can try other things even if some people criticize you for it. As a director, it was just important to show every aspect of Twiggy’s life. You can’t just do the bit you like. I had to be challenged to be flexible.
Through making this documentary, I’m curious if your feelings toward the idea of legacy have shifted. I wonder if it’s hard to see when you’re so up close to it, but this film is an exhibition of that.
Sadie: We just got to the Cleopatra offices, and they have the most amazing posters and T-shirts, and I was wrestling to the ground to get one. So that must show that Twiggy’s legacy is very alive today. Everyone is gonna want the T-shirt and poster, not just me. Her legacy is firm.
Twiggy: I’m not going anywhere.
- Two Perfect Films I Saw at TIFF 2026 (September 25, 2026)
It is rare to see a perfect film, let alone two back-to-back, but that is precisely what happened to me on the same day recently at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Both films were documentaries, which in this day and age can be as dramatic as any narrative feature. And these films—Barry Avrich’s “Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been” and William & David Greaves’ “Once Upon a Time in Harlem”—were uplifting in the way they brought to life key figures and moments in history that can show us a path forward. Let’s begin with the original Queen of Christmas…
Finally, Darlene Love is no longer twenty feet from stardom. She is now front and center on stage and in her own life. Like Morgan Neville’s “Twenty Feet From Stardom,” which earned the Best Documentary Oscar in 2013, Canadian director Barry Avrich puts a fully dimensional face on an artist whose voice holds an indelible place in our memories, even when it was left uncredited. I was once again reminded that a lot of the voices and harmonies I liked most in classic songs were because of the value added by backup singers. And in this instance an inordinate percent of those were sung by Darlene Love.
The documentary takes us through the history of Darlene Love under the tutelage of record producer Phil Spector. We learn that he deliberately kept her in the background because he didn’t want her singing talent to outshine his ability to produce the music. As far as he was concerned, the singers were fungible commodities. You could substitute one for the other and it wouldn’t matter. Spector’s premise was that it was his own brilliance in the layering of the wall of sound that created the hits. But then we hear such icons as Cher, Bruce Springsteen and Dionne Warwick, among others, singing Love’s praises and declaring her voice outstanding. And no one proclaims it better than Paul Shaffer, the Canadian musician and former Bandleader for the David Letterman show.
The scenes of Shaffer directing Darlene Love in her comeback tour are worth the price of admission. But what makes the film a must-see is its footage of Darlene herself, who at age 85, is as towering a life force as ever. In the film there are brief scenes of her going through her daily exercise paces on the treadmill and in the weight rooms. We know how the voice can change and weaken with age, so when I heard her on film singing so robustly, I just assumed the sound had been fortified. But then Ms Love came out live on stage! She wore a mini-skirt and platform heels to show off the fruits of all those workouts at the gym. And when she opened her mouth, her vocals came out rich and strong, age-be-damned. We understood her mantra of knowing where she’s going because she knows where she’s been. And we are all glad that she is back.
Whereas “Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been” peers through the eyes of a legend who is thankfully still with us, “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” brought me an experience that is as close to time travel as cinema can get. Just as Alan Elliott brought us breathtaking concert footage of Aretha Franklin in 2018’s “Amazing Grace,” originally shot by Sydney Pollack in 1972, David Greaves’s film ingeniously assembles 16mm reels that his father William (the visionary auteur whose credits include 1968’s “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One”) had shot in the same year. What they capture is astonishing: a high-spirited gathering of various iconic figures from the Harlem Renaissance invited by Greaves to the home of Duke Ellington. Among them are poets Arna Bontemps and Richard Bruce Nugent, painter Aaron Douglas, composer Eubie Blake, photographer James Van Der Zee, and Ida Mae Cullen, widow of the late poet Countee Cullen.
In Robert Daniels’ review written after the film’s Sundance premiere, he poetically noted how “we witness these legends grappling with what their legacy will be, especially with a younger militant generation who they feel are forgetting them. That angst, tension, and candidness grant these towering figures a grounded vulnerability. And as they begin to leave this room, walking toward antiquity, we want to remain and revisit their presence—living with them in an intellectual fairytale whose occurrence remains incredible and whose existence feels like a miracle.”
Daniels is right, you don’t just watch this film, it gives you the ethereal feeling of sitting in history. The film lovingly cuts between split screens of Romare Bearden and James Van Der Zee as they debate the importance of the Renaissance and then shows their actual paintings and photographs. Ida Mae Cullen insistently interrupts to make sure that her husband and his spot in highlighting the importance of Black and African history is not forgotten.
HERITAGE: BY COUNTEE CULLEN
What is Africa to me:Copper sun or scarlet sea,Jungle star or jungle track,Strong bronzed men, or regal blackWomen from whose loins I sprangWhen the birds of Eden sang?One three centuries removedFrom the scenes his fathers loved,Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,What is Africa to me?
I have only read Zora Neale Hurston’s books, but to hear these luminaries discuss how none of this would have been possible without her intervention is illuminating. And what a treat it is to see the wizened actor Leigh Whipper become animated as he recites from memory his lines from stage and poems. In the film he is older than most of the others at the gathering and he seems almost asleep. But when prodded to recite his lines he does so instantly and perfectly. It’s the sort of treasure that you want to share with as many people as possible.
I had the pleasure of interviewing William Greaves’ granddaughter, Liani Greaves, at Sandra Schulberg’s “Rescue Fest” in Los Angeles in December 2024. Schulberg is the founder of IndieCollect whose exalted mission is to locate and restore lost indie films from approximately 1950-2000. At Rescue Fest she presented a restored copy of William Greaves’ film “Nationtime,” the only film made about the 1972 National Black Political Convention held in Gary, Indiana. There, as in “Once Upon A Time in Harlem,” you get to see the immediacy and vibrancy of Greaves’ cinema verite style. Also participating at Rescue Fest was Mario Van Peebles who presented his father Melvin Van Peebles film “The Story of a Three-Day Pass.” And on Opening Night, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin presented John Bailey’s “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.”
It is so important to acknowledge these cinematic treasures. They not only educate and entertain us but seemingly open a portal into humanity itself.
