AFI Fest always feels like coming home.
It was the first film festival I ever attended, way back in the before times of 2010, and now that I’ve returned to Los Angeles from Denver it represents a literal homecoming. The 38th edition of the festival and my 10th, this October’s “almanac of the year in film” once again drew much of its program from earlier festivals that place more emphasis on world-premiere status (like Berlin, Cannes, and Venice) and took place over five days in Hollywood. There were several standouts among the 20 or so movies I saw, presented here in no particular order:
No one is especially happy in Igarashi Kohei’s understated heartbreaker, though not for lack of trying. Super Happy Forever takes its name from a self-help seminar whose attendees claim to receive messages of some kind; the phrase is also mentioned in a passing way that, by film’s end, is somehow devastating. Kohei only ever shows us the before and after of the film’s central relationship, making it both a prequel and sequel to a romance we don’t see. What we do see is beautiful in its restraint and more than a little reminiscent of Aftersun in how gradually — and then suddenly — its full weight hits. (Release date: TBA)
Thirty-five years since their onscreen debut, Wallace & Gromit are inherently nostalgic: stop-motion reminders of a time when animation was a bit more DIY and heartfelt. The duo’s latest outing and second feature, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, premiered at AFI Fest ahead of its upcoming Netflix release. As with literally every other film the hapless inventor and highly intelligent (but nonverbal) dog the duo have starred in, it’s a delight. Series creator and returning director (this time alongside Merlin Crossingham) Nick Park has always about leaving the audience more; in addition to being the pair’s first appearance since the 2008 short A Matter of Loaf and Death, Vengeance Most Fowl is barely an hour and fifteen minutes long. That’s enough time to fall in love with the series all over again, not least because it features the long-awaited return of the oh-so-devious Feathers McGraw, but not enough to keep you from feeling just a little sad when the credits roll. (Release date: January 3)
It gets late early in Eephus, which feels like a feature-length answer to a question asked in Moneyball: “How can you not be romantic about baseball?” If our national pastime is the sport most conducive to conversation — one of the many benefits of its oft-criticized pace — then Carson Lund’s directorial debut might be the baseball movie that most closely reflects its leisurely vibe. It’s true that the stakes aren’t as high as they are in the likes of Major League or Field of Dreams, but it’s also true that some of the most enjoyable ballgames take place in late August between two teams with no chance of making the playoffs. (Release date: 2025)
Dementia drama Familiar Touch mirrors its protagonist’s condition by dropping us into the narrative from her perspective without any context, meaning we learn crucial information — namely, that the mystery man eating a meal with her in the first scene is her son and that the car ride they’re taking is to a care facility — at the same time she does. It’s an effective technique, as well as a quietly devastating one. First-time writer/director Sarah Friedland’s approach to her “coming-of-old-age” story is so granular in detail that it would come as little surprise to learn that Familiar Touch is autobiographical; it’s also so sincere in its emotions as to feel universal. (Release date: TBA)
Nightbitch’s premise is as simple as it is absurd: a stay-at-home mom begins to think she’s turning into a dog. Whether she believes this because she’s at her wits’ end or because it’s actually happening is difficult to discern, but the movie itself is easy to enjoy. That might not have been the case if Amy Adams weren’t the leading lady of Marielle Heller’s latest, an adaptation of the novel by Rachel Yoder. She commits fully to a role that others might have played with irony for fear of embarrassing themselves, imbuing it with genuine pathos and raw animal energy. It’s silly at times — how could it not be — but in being unafraid of being silly it manages to also be much more. (Release date: December 6)
The cycle of violence never ends in The Kingdom, just passes from one generation to the next like an atavistic trait fated to doom the entire bloodline. About the surprisingly tender relationship between a Corsican teenager named Lesia and her mob-boss father, it’s a bit like a feature-length episode of the “College” episode of The Sopranos in which the wise-guy patriarch is much more forthcoming about his line of work. You can't choose your family, nor can you choose the family business — or, in this case, whether or not to be involved in it. (Release date: 2025)
“How come you get to be so still and calm?” Sister Midnight’s troubled heroine asks the moon on a particularly bad night. She doesn’t receive an answer, of course, but the fact that she was compelled to make such an existential inquiry in the first place is part of what makes her — and Kandar Kandhari’s remarkably assured new film — so compelling in its own right. A kind of companion film to Nightbitch, the film follows a newly married Indian woman as the discontentment of her arranged nuptials gives way to uncontrollable nightly urges to eat live animals. It’s hard being human, as she says, which is why some people want to be something else. (Release date: Spring 2025)
