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Punk rock thriller "Green Room" focuses more on the intensity fostered by live punk music than it does the actual sound and feeling of being at a punk show. Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier (" Blue Ruin ") explains/apologizes for his general approach to the punk scene in an early scene where fledgling rocker Pat ( Anton Yelchin ) explains why his band has no social media presence: you have to be at the show to experience what they're offering, otherwise the "texture" of the music is lost. Pat, an indecisive beta-male who only really comes alive after he witnesses a murder and is subsequently forced to defend his band from militant neo-Nazis, may deliberately sound pretentious. But he makes Saulnier's point for him. "Green Room" is an overly fussy thriller where dialogue is so direct, and shots are arranged in such a mannered way that you can't help but be distracted by their precision. This is an intentional flaw in Saulnier's otherwise flawlessly clean-burning machine. You have to take the bad with the good here: "Green Room" may be too schematic to fully capture the essence of its characters' groddy milieu, but it's also economically paced, and gorgeous. 

When you first meet Pat and his group, you can't help but be impressed with how aggressively money-minded they are. They're not exactly rolling in it, so this makes sense. They share the same phone, talk about gigs with pay rates in mind, and siphon gas from other cars' tanks as if they were old hands. They even get flustered when a booker interviews them for a college radio gig, and asks them a question as frivolous as "Name your desert island band." So when Pat accidentally sees a group of skinheads crowded around a dead body, it's no surprise that he and his group already have one foot out the door. They're all business, but so are the guys that are out to get them: the Nazi punks that lock Pat and his crew in a graffiti-covered changing room take orders from self-serious club owner Darcy Banker ( Patrick Stewart ), a guy that describes his club as a "movement, not a party." 

Saulnier frequently reminds viewers that neither his pro- or antagonists are walking ledger books, but rather scared people who happen to be too serious for their own goods. That's the essence of the punk scene according to "Green Room": a scene obsessed with authenticity populated by severe, self-made men. Saulnier earns some genuinely admirable, close-to-the-vest laughs whenever characters condescend to each other, like when Pat's group opens a set with the Dead Kennedys' "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" and their frontman whimpers "That was a cover" to an unsympathetic crowd of bigots.

Then again, Saulnier mimics his characters' OCD-level exactitude, and that's seriously distracting. It's one thing to focus on characters who treat every run-in like something they will eventually have to provide a list of itemized excuses for. It's another to film them as if every frame has to represent that compulsive mentality. Saulnier likes his characters' orderliness a bit too much. These guys count gun shells, investigate their enemies' pockets, peek under door slates, and do pretty much everything with their mission in mind. Pat's friends may stumble over their feet sometimes, but watching them talk like they know exactly what they're doing all the time makes them frequently seem like they're too high-functioning to live. 

Which brings me back to my original point: what kind of movie about punk rockers doesn't like punk music? Saulnier's movie uses punk music as background noise: the sounds of feedback, and death-metal growling gets under viewers' skin on a not-quite-subliminal level since those noises are frequently as loud as any given character's voice. We also only see Pat's group perform the above-mentioned cover: this sequence tellingly ends with a group of punks moshing/trampling each other in slow-motion, hip-to-hip and hand-to-shoulder. Saulnier emphasizes the aimless aggression inherent to punk music. And he does a fine job of getting viewers to stay in whatever moment they're in through a series of engrossing tracking shots and long takes. 

But Saulnier doesn't quite nail his film's main joke: how can you be young, brash and  conscientious at the same time? Saulnier's game cast—especially Yelchin and "Blue Ruin" star Macon Blair —makes it a little easier to believe these characters might exist within the context of a tongue-in-cheek thriller. But you'll never believe that Pat and his group could exist in real life. They're not just wound too tight to be punks, though that's partly it. These guys just don't make sense outside of "Green Room."

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

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Green Room (2016)

Rated R for strong brutal graphic violence, gory images, language and some drug content.

Anton Yelchin as Pat

Imogen Poots as Amber

Patrick Stewart as Darcy

Alia Shawkat as Sam

Mark Webber as Daniel

Joe Cole as Reece

Macon Blair as Gabe

• Jeremy Saulnier

Cinematographer

• Sean Porter
• Julia Bloch
• Brooke Blair

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Green Room review – anarchy in a woodland retreat

Patrick Stewart is impressive as a white supremacist in a genuinely shocking horror-thriller about a punk band’s battle with neo-Nazis

I n 2013’s ultra-low-budget eye-opener Blue Ruin , writer-director Jeremy Saulnier wondered what a revenge thriller would look like if most of the movie took place in the sticky aftermath of vengeance. Now, in this only marginally less stripped-down follow-up, Saulnier takes a box cutter to the conventions of the siege/slasher genre, creating a gruelling, gutsy suspense ride that swaps the marooned vistas of Blue Ruin for the claustrophobic confines of a rural roadhouse in which our punk rocker antiheroes are trapped.

The set-up finds hardcore Arlington band the Ain’t Rights losing their shirts on an end-of-road tour from which they can’t even afford the petrol home. Tempted by a matinee payday playing to the backwater boots and braces crowd in a remote Oregon dive, the band head off to a woodland retreat with creepy overtones of Friday the 13th ’s leafy Camp Blood. Here, they antagonise the skinhead crowd with a rousing rendition of the Dead Kennedys’ classic Nazi Punks Fuck Off before retreating to the backstage area where they stumble upon a crime scene. Before you can say River’s Edge meets Assault on Precinct 13 (via Deliverance ), dressing room doors are locked, unregistered firearms are drawn, red-laced troops are assembled, and the management are on the scene in the shape of Patrick Stewart ’s sinisterly silver-tongued Darcy Banker.

“You’re trapped – that’s not a threat, just a fact,” Darcy tells the terrified musicians, who have barricaded themselves into the titular enclosure, assured that this “won’t end well”. And it won’t. In the desperate hours ahead, the air of carefully constructed tension will be sporadically broken by sudden, random acts of violence, the visceral quality of which is heightened by the almost accidental nature of its eruption. Saulnier may cite the analogue hues of 80s films such as Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and RoboCop as “texturally” influential (“They’re so brutal and so blunt,” he recently enthused to Sight & Sound magazine), but there’s also a debt to the early works of Wes Craven , a film-maker who believed in the morality of explicitness when it came to depicting on-screen violence. One scene in particular (which nods directly to Craven’s The Last House on the Left ) drew gasps from the audience – myself included.

I was reminded, too, of my recent conversation with Kill List director Ben Wheatley in which he talked about becoming numb to the “scale of destruction” of modern cinema, and argued that the idea of “being hit by rocks or banging your fingers on things” provoked a far greater audience reaction. Saulnier understands this economy of scale well: just as Blue Ruin generated a palpable sense of alarm at the physical results of violence, so Green Room ’s gore cuts deep because it is so specific, so clinical, so personal . No wonder the screamed refrain of the Ain’t Rights tearing through What Have I Become? carries such resonance.

There is a political dimension to the genre thrills too. While Kevin Smith’s Red State retooled the cliches of so-called “torture porn” to take pointed pot shots at rabble-rousing fundamentalists, so Green Room uses its extremist tropes (supremacist symbols, Confederate flags and “white pride worldwide” stickers) to unpick the more insidious mainstream rhetoric of the American right. From the outside, the battle lines between urban punks and backwoods neo-Nazis may seem clear enough, but Saulnier is more interested in the way that Stewart’s Darcy provokes and manipulates his exploitable thugs for his own cynical ends, insisting that “this is a movement, not a party” when it is nothing of the sort. Smartly cast, Stewart brings an almost Shakespearean edge to the drama, delivering lines such as “all is for nought” in the manner of a theatrical king surveying the devastation of a five-act tragedy.

As always with Saulnier, whose first feature, Murder Party , was dubbed “ The Breakfast Club with chainsaws”, there is also a strong seam of black humour running throughout Green Room . “We can’t take it so seriously,” says Anton Yelchin’s bloodied bassist Pat when the situation couldn’t look any worse, suggesting, instead, that they treat it more “like paintball”. As for Imogen Poots ’s knife-wielding Amber, she reacts to a stupefying escalation of hostilities by declaring simply: “I’m hungry.” A recurrent joke about everyone’s desert island disc choices throws up some entertainingly embarrassingly revelations amid the escalating chaos, neatly undercutting the earnest name-checking (“Er, Misfits, Damned, Candlebox… ”) of an earlier band interview. The brilliant Macon Blair provides a much-needed touch of pathos as Darcy’s conflicted underling Gabe, quietly stealing the show with his haunted gaze and oddly vulnerable air, while Brooke and Will Blair’s pulsing electronic ambient soundscapes offer arresting counterpoint to the movie’s thrashy wall-of-death mosh pit.

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• Green Room is the film equivalent of licking a public restroom floor. It’s great.

A punk band takes on white supremacists in this grungy new thriller.

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Share All sharing options for: Green Room is the film equivalent of licking a public restroom floor. It’s great.

Green Room is the cinematic equivalent of licking a public restroom floor. Naturally, I loved it.

The new film from the immensely promising young director Jeremy Saulnier pits a rock band against a bunch of neo-Nazis in the Pacific Northwest, who lock the band's members in the titular location and plan to kill them after they witness something they shouldn't have. The film brutally toys with your sympathies as the band members descend into hell, find unlikely allies, and then try to climb their way back out again. Not everybody will survive.

Green Room perfectly embodies the "not for everybody" label. It is unrepentantly nasty, laced with comedy so dark it burns, and filled with gross-out moments that will almost certainly turn your stomach. But somewhere in its black little heart, it has something interesting to say about human resiliency and the reckless moral code of youth. And at just over 90 minutes, it never overstays its welcome.

Green Room is especially interested in the limits of the human body and mind

The biggest mental hurdle most viewers will have to clear in watching Green Room is the somewhat unlikeliness of the band becoming trapped in the backstage location itself.

Essentially everything about the film's premise — from the reason the group is playing a white supremacist bar in a small town to the way its neo-Nazi ownership traps them in the green room after the band members see something they shouldn't have — feels just a little bit contrived. And it's easy enough to nitpick, even as you're watching the film, because Saulnier must go out of his way to make sure nobody in the band can use a cellphone at any time, which takes some doing.

But in the end, it doesn't matter. Green Room trades in nightmare logic, where just because things are bad doesn't mean they can't get much, much worse, and where the economical character development of the film's first 15 minutes is literally all you're going to get before the movie starts blazing toward its conclusion.

At the center of Green Room is the question of endurance, of how much you're willing to put up with to survive. Saulnier is fascinated by the limits of the human body, by the way bones snap and skin rips open to reveal blood beneath.

The film's sporadic moments of violence are sudden and horrifying and squirm-inducing, as they should be. They're bursts of blood and terror, and Saulnier cuts away from them just quickly enough, allowing you to see only what's necessary to let your imagination take over in the worst possible way.

Still, he's almost more interested in psychological endurance than in how much duct tape it takes to hold together a battered arm. He poses the question of why these characters continue to want to survive, even when it's clear they're probably done for.

What keeps people going when they descend into hell? What makes them want to escape?

The film posits that friends are wherever you can find them

By far the most fascinating character in Green Room is Amber ( Imogen Poots ), a white supremacist young woman who also witnesses said terrible thing and ends up locked in the green room with the band. (She doesn't know them before this happens.)

Too often, the film's depiction of white supremacists seems designed simply to give it villains who are easy to hate, a criticism that includes Amber. Her motivation for signing up with the white supremacists in the first place is that people of another race committed a horrible crime against her (we don't find out what). In response to that, another character quips that it's not like white people are treating her so well at the moment.

But Amber is also a key element of Saulnier's central statement about human behavior conveyed in the film, which is that alliances, relationships, and motivations are all mutable.

Amber might have been one of the bad guys, were she on the other side of the door separating the band from her fellow neo-Nazis. But because she's trapped inside the green room with them, she becomes a vital ally in times of trouble.

Saulnier is not excusing Amber's worst self — though it's definitely buried — but he does seem interested in the fact that so much of what she believes, or of what anybody believes in this film, is driven by circumstance. Be surrounded by white supremacists, and you might end up being a white supremacist yourself.

In particular, Saulnier doesn't try to suggest that the members of the band are titans of morality themselves. They still play the show, even when they find out what kind of club they're playing. They simply offer a nasty punk sneer to the crowd, expecting to very soon be on their way.

Of course, in the universe of Saulnier's movies (which includes his breakthrough film, the 2014 thriller Blue Ruin ) the bottom is always just about to drop out.

Exploring the good guys, the bad guys, and everybody else

One of the most interesting things about Green Room is that it defines its heroes precisely by making them not the villains. As led by Darcy ( Patrick Stewart , clearly relishing the chance to play someone so vile), the neo-Nazis are so self-evidently terrible that all other human beings become less so in comparison.

The band itself has a couple of familiar faces in it — Anton Yelchin of the new Star Trek films and Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development fame — but it's far more interesting as a collective (particularly once the band joins forces with Amber) than as anything else. The group might be screwed, but they keep making plans to escape, because no one wants to die at the hands of neo-Nazis who sic dogs on them.

Somewhere inside of Green Room , then, is a thoughtful consideration of not good versus evil, but normal versus evil. Again, the members of the band don't want to cause a fuss. They just want to play the show and get out of town with money in hand. But, backs against the wall, they fight back anyway.

At times I found myself wishing that Green Room had more moral weight to it — that it had presented the neo-Nazis as something other than cartoon supervillains, meant to be so bad that we'd applaud when they were bloodily dispatched. But the more I considered Green Room in that context, the more I realized I was barking up the wrong tree.

Green Room tilts the moral spectrum of good guys versus bad guys so far toward the evil end that punk kids who are simply trying to live their lives and play with their band become the de facto "good."

The more I've thought about that, the more I've realized how frequently it's true — how so often those who stand up to tyranny aren't moral heavyweights at all but restless kids who just want to live in a slightly less terrible world. They might not stand up right away, or even all at once, but once they're cornered, there's no force harder to repel.

Green Room is playing in New York and Los Angeles. It expands throughout the country on April 29.

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Green Room : Escape From the Nazi Punks

Jeremy Saulnier’s taut, gory thriller follows a band trapped in a rock venue by white supremacists after witnessing a crime.

The main takeaway of the film Green Room is simple: There are few situations more hellish than being trapped for 16 hours in a music venue by a gang of murderous neo-Nazis in the Oregon backwoods. The story follows the members of the hardcore band The Ain’t Rights—Pat, Tiger, Reece, and Sam, whose lean names befit their means. Low on gas, money, and energy, the band reluctantly agrees to one final gig, the catch being it’s at a white-supremacist club just outside of Portland. The musicians aren’t thrilled, but at least Pat (Anton Yelchin) recognizes what may be the only upside to their situation: How often does a band get the chance to cover the Dead Kennedys song   “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” in front of a crowd of actual Nazi punks?

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But the fun doesn’t last: Minutes after their set ends, the band witness a brutal crime and realize their odds of getting home have just dropped dramatically. The venue’s owner, Darcy (played by Sir Patrick Stewart), mobilizes his most devoted foot-soldiers to take care of the outsiders. What follows is a tense gore-fest, one that’s as grimy and claustrophobic as the titular room. But scrape off the scum, and you’ll find Green Room full of visual artistry, dark humor, smart writing, and glints of humanity. The film’s bleakness and B-movie trappings won’t appeal to everyone: The violence reaches demented heights, and having the antagonists be neo-Nazis may come off as lazy storytelling. But there’s a cool, macabre charm to the whole effort. In short, Green Room has all the makings of a cult classic—one likely to find enthusiastic fans sooner rather than later.

Saulnier’s third feature film, Green Room bears many of the same sensibilities and characteristics as the director’s first two works, 2007’s slasher comedy Murder Party and the infinitely improved, Kickstarter-funded drama Blue Ruin , which was the indie success story of 2013. The latter—a Coen Brothers-esque tale about a man seeking vengeance for his parents’ murders—revealed Saulnier’s deftness at both writing dialogue and cultivating silence, at knowing the exact moments to hold back or to let the action spill forth. On the surface, Green Room has more in common with Saulnier’s messier debut, but it retains the cinematic flair and self-assuredness of Blue Ruin.

Green Room is very much the kind of film where each new development seems to dare the audience to think, “Well, it can’t get any worse than this,” before proving them wrong. As the full weight of their situation begins to sink in, The Ain’t Rights grow increasingly desperate, making dumb decisions as often as they make smart ones. Green Room keeps total hopelessness at bay, though, by making everything feel like a puzzle to be solved.

Saulnier doesn’t rely on character backstories or arcs to build empathy—he operates entirely on the assumption that seeing ordinary people trying to beat extraordinary circumstances is enough to make viewers care whether they live or die. A risky approach, but it works, turning Sam, Pat, Reece, Tiger, and their new companion Amber into audience proxies. It’s easy to care precisely because of how un -special they are. The realistic, often clumsy ways they try to outsmart the latest machete-wielding maniac or killer dog inspires white-knuckled viewing or a nauseated groan when things go wrong.

The film wouldn’t have worked half as well without the stellar performances of its cast. As Pat, Yelchin ( Alpha Dog , the Star Trek reboot) lurches between defeated and defiant, and turns out to be the closest thing the band has to a leader. Imogen Poots ( 28 Weeks Later , Frank and Lola ) is unreasonably charming as Amber, the band’s new ally, and Alia Shawkat (yep, Maeby Funke from Arrested Development ) plays up Sam’s levelheaded cool amid chaos. The skinhead lackey Gabe (the delightful Macon Blair, Saulnier’s longtime collaborator and friend) goes about fixing his boss’s problem as though it’s just another crappy day at the office. Meanwhile, Stewart takes a Gus Fring approach to his role as the neo-Nazi leader—trading a louder caricature of evil for quieter, matter-of-fact menace.

After a certain point in the film, it becomes clear there are only a couple possible endgames. But despite the apparent narrowing of options for the film’s heroes, Green Room delivers one little surprise after another and maintain its frenetic pace. There are much-needed respites scattered throughout, too. The camera occasionally leaves the harshly lit, industrial interiors of the venue to sweep over the soft lushness of the Oregon outdoors. And there’s a good supply of black comedic moments, deadpan retorts, and scenes that become just absurd enough to defuse the ever-building tension. (“I can’t die here with you,” Pat tells Amber at one point. “So don’t,” she replies.)

Saulnier revels in every part of his film—the minimally stylized violence, the hardcore soundtrack, the vulnerability and resourcefulness of his characters—in a way that suggests a deeper personal connection. Indeed, after a screening in Washington, D.C., Saulnier talked about growing up in Alexandria, Virginia, making zombie movies in the streets and later becoming part of the punk-rock scene (The Ain’t Rights are from the nearby city of Arlington). The crowd was filled with old friends, family, and acquaintances, many resembling the tattooed or mohawked or leather-jacketed characters onscreen. A strange tenderness comes through in Green Room , as if the film were a kind of love letter from Saulnier to his younger days.

The movie’s raw appeal, though, stands on its own. Green Room doesn’t traffic in symbols or deeper meanings. There is only survival and death, and the film reminds audiences of how productive the tension between the two can be without much narrative decoration. While queasier types should stay away, fans of gritty siege movies or stripped-down horror will probably find Green Room to be one of the more memorable movies of the year.

Review by Brian Eggert April 30, 2016

Pitting a genuine hardcore punk bank against a gang of ruthless neo-Nazis in a film sounds like something you’d find while scrolling through the many rungs of drivel on Netflix. Put that idea in the hands of an artist-filmmaker like Jeremy Saulnier, whose slow-burner Blue Ruin was an essential thriller from 2014, and you get Green Room , an unrelenting siege of shocking violence and intractable characters. Marked by the same undercurrent of comic irony found in his previous release, Saulnier’s third feature (his debut was the extremely low-budgeted Murder Party , 2007) is efficient and tense as films get, leaving all unnecessary information off the screen. Green Room also boasts an incredible cast, no end of surprises in spite of what might seem like a predictable conflict, and a playful midnight movie setup delivered with Saulnier’s sharp formal precision.

Take the early sequence when one of the Ain’t Rights, the band name of the film’s East Coast punk rockers, drops the needle on the edge of a record to start a bash of hard-drinking fun. Rather than see the revelry, there’s a jump cut to the next morning, when the needle has played through to the record’s interior. Instead of watching the entire party, we only needed to see that it took the length of a vinyl album for the Ain’t Rights to get drunk and pass out. That’s clever filmmaking, and only about two seconds of the film. Green Room ’s first shot finds the band’s ramshackle touring van driven halfway into a corn field, the driver having passed out. Siphoning gas from vehicles to make their low-key tour dates, the band prides itself on a raw punk philosophy. They avoid social media and marketing, play gigs for a few bucks per person, and embrace the live music experience.

Of course, there’s a touch of artifice inherent to a modern day punk band forcing themselves into the nasty lifestyle of yesteryear’s musical renegades. After all, these are millennials who carefully adopt a lived-in pretense. Saulnier uses this artificial characteristic once the film turns into a bloodbath and our guitar heroes are forced into a real-life situation. Turquoise-haired singer Tiger (Callum Turner) seems the most punk-stalwart of them all, followed by the hotheaded drummer Reece (Joe Cole), whereas bassist-manager Sam (Alia Shawkat) seems more level-headed, and guitarist Pat (Anton Yelchin) remains most sympathetic. Together, they drive out to the sticks to play a pickup gig for cash at a white-power club, although the aerial views of the drive there make it feel like they’re headed to The Overlook Hotel in The Shining.

Once again, Saulnier’s title represents the majority of the film’s setting: a room in the back of a dingy club owned by “a movement, not a party” of fascists deep in the forests of Oregon. The Ain’t Rights open with a big F-U to the crowd, playing The Dead Kennedys’ “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” to a throng of white supremacists. Despite the insult, their set goes on without incident—and they could have left scot-free had they not seen a dead body lying in the club’s green room, at which point the employees, including the gun-toting Big Justin (Eric Edelstein), hurry the band into the titular room and lock the door, refusing to let them leave. There’s a strange calmness to the clan holding the band. “We’re not keeping you,” they claim. “You’re just staying .” And the band cannot help but believe the lies during the initial negotiation process, if only because they’re so afraid that they must believe there’s a way to escape this horrifying situation.

The reasons for the murder and the band’s detainment are revealed over time, but the tension comes from the gradual breakdown of several characters who are trapped, and later consider the green room refuge from the neo-Nazis, along with fellow prisoner Amber (Imogen Poots). Saulnier’s villains are every bit as developed as the Ain’t Rights; he turns the screw by portraying them as organized and layered in spooky ways. Macon Blair, star of Blue Ruin , once again uses his everyman looks and weak, compassionate eyes to create a curiously sympathetic skinhead, Gabe. Whereas Kai Lennox plays Clark, the wrangler of pit bulls trained to attack at his German-language order (we come to dread the command “fass”, meaning bite). These two, and a small army of skinheads, are devoted to the film’s most terrifying character: Patrick Stewart plays against type as Darcy, the cold, calculating organizer and overseer who has the unquestioned devotion of his “Red Laces”—youthful drones identified by the red shoe laces they earn after demonstrating their worthiness to Darcy. To be sure, Darcy is a far cry from Captain Picard or Professor X.

The film’s two opposing, nonconformist attitudes make for a clash of ultra-violent, increasingly gruesome attacks. Saulnier never hints at who will die next, and indeed, no one is safe from Green Room ’s barrage of machetes, box cutters, guns, and bloodthirsty dogs. When death arrives onscreen, it’s unceremonious and unflinching—and what’s more, realistic looking. The fleshy, meaty wounds left on an arm by a machete will forever be burned on the mind of Green Room ’s audience; the effect demands audible groans and gasps from the audience (this critic among them). Saulnier’s treatment contains a Carpenter-esque quality, adopting those claustrophobic situations explored in Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) and Ghosts of Mars (2001), where two unlikely characters band together against a common enemy. Although Saulnier doesn’t deconstruct his characters as thoroughly as he did in Blue Ruin , the affable cast members lend a wealth of presence. Green Room seems more interested in taking apart the punk and fascist façades, ultimately determining the more dangerous and scary of them are the white supremacists who live and breathe their upsetting dogma, whereas punk rockers have adopted their regime as an image.

An amusing ongoing joke develops in the form a conversation asking, “What’s your desert island band?” The answers are shared and changed over time, revealing much about our characters given their choices throughout the discussion. It’s these kind of moments that make Saulnier’s writing crisp and smart, while his technical filmmaking is equally sharp. Green Room bows confident lensing by cinematographer Sean Porter, appropriately green-hued for much of the film, and composed, gritty production design by Ryan Warren Smith. Having won several small awards and praise on the festival circuit in 2015, Green Room is sure to find a devoted audience over time, turning this into the cultish row it wants to be. Nevertheless, Saulnier’s third film manages to be much more than a prime selection for Midnight Movie Madness, requiring more serious moviegoing crowds to seek out this title for a rare sampling of an intelligent, well-made, and relentless thriller.

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Summary Down on their luck punk rockers The Ain’t Rights are finishing up a long and unsuccessful tour, and are about to call it quits when they get an unexpected booking at an isolated, run-down club deep in the backwoods of Oregon. What seems merely to be a third-rate gig escalates into something much more sinister when they witness an act of ... Read More

Directed By : Jeremy Saulnier

Written By : Jeremy Saulnier

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Anton Yelchin

Imogen Poots

Alia Shawkat

Patrick Stewart

Callum Turner

David w. thompson, mark webber, macon blair, eric edelstein, michael draper, andy copeland, stage manager, brent werzner, kasey brown, taylor tunes, october moore, critic reviews.

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A punk rock band is forced to fight for survival after witnessing a murder at a neo-Nazi skinhead bar. A punk rock band is forced to fight for survival after witnessing a murder at a neo-Nazi skinhead bar. A punk rock band is forced to fight for survival after witnessing a murder at a neo-Nazi skinhead bar.

• Jeremy Saulnier
• Anton Yelchin
• Imogen Poots
• Alia Shawkat
• 418 User reviews
• 446 Critic reviews
• 79 Metascore
• 8 wins & 25 nominations

• (as David W. Thompson)

• Stage Manager

• (as LJ Klink)

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Sir Patrick Stewart said in an interview that when he finished reading the script at his country home in England, it was so terrifying, that he locked up his house, turned on the security system, and poured himself a Scotch. He then knew that he wanted to play the Darcy Banker role because a character that horrifying would be an incredible challenge, and make for a compelling movie.
• Goofs When the band first has Big Justin hostage there is a telephone sitting on the table next to him.

Pat : I know what it is.

Amber : What what is?

Pat : My "desert-island band."

Amber : Tell somebody who gives a shit.

• Alternate versions French theatrical version was cut to secure a "Not under 12" (!) rating. That version was also released on DVD. The Blu-ray features the uncut version and is rated "Not under 16".
• Connections Featured in Half in the Bag: Green Room (2016)
• Soundtracks Takin' Out the Trash Written by Christian Blunda & Patsy Gelb Performed by Patsy's Rats Courtesy of Christian Blunda

User reviews 418

• moviewizguy
• Oct 1, 2015

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• Runtime 1 hour 35 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Green Room Movie Review — A tense thriller that pits punks against Nazis

Tense, grizzly, and incredibly well-made,  green room   is a unique and incredibly strong entry in the thriller genre..

What can I say about Jeremy Saulnier’s dark and twisted  Green Room   that hasn’t already been said? It’s a movie that has never truly existed until now. Maybe the general premise has, but the way Saulnier tackles it is unique in almost every way. However, it’s this point-of-view of non-violent violence that I find the most interesting. He doesn’t linger on the violence or the gore of the film, which is impressive considering there’s a lot of it. Instead, he focuses on the characters and the story, which could easily fade into the background. This careful perspective makes Green Room  one of the most successful genre films in the last few years.

After a performance goes bad, they take a gig at a neo-Nazi punk bar. Yeah, they’re not the sharpest tools in the shed. However, after spending some intimate moments with them during the beginning of the film, you realize that they’re taking the gig out of necessity. Needless to say, things don’t go quite as planned. After their set, during which they hilariously play “Nazi Punks F*ck Off,” Pat stumbles on a crime committed by one of the guys in the club. They are locked in the green room and must figure out how to escape before the fearsome Nazi leader Darcy ( Patrick Stewart ) arrives with reinforcements. It’s punks vs. Nazis.

Unsurprisingly, it gets ugly – blades, dogs, and all. But not in the way you’d think.

Green Room   is a movie that deserves to be rewatched. It’s really hard to articulate how well-made this movie is. I’ve watched it at least five times and still want to come back for more. There’s just so much in it to dissect and so many details to discover. Every time I watch it, I find something new or learn something different about a character. I see something happening in the background of a scene or a detail in the set. It’s a thoroughly realized piece of film that will hopefully retain the acclaim it has received. And, for the record, my desert island band would be…

Green Room  is available on DVD, Blu-Ray, and digital on Amazon!

Karl Delossantos

Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

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• Review: <i>Green Room</i> Is More Unpleasant Than Pleasurably Tense

Review: Green Room Is More Unpleasant Than Pleasurably Tense

S ometimes it feels like a losing battle to call out a modern thriller for being sadistic or just plain nasty: You might be marked as a lightweight, a viewer who just can’t take the rough stuff. But suspense—and even dramatic tension of the grislier sort, possibly involving gushes of blood, guts, severed limbs and the like—shouldn’t feel like punishment. Jeremy Saulnier’s deeply humorless Green Room —in which a down-and-out punk band takes a gig playing for a bunch of white-supremacist skinheads, with grim results—is more unpleasant than it is pleasurably tense, but it comes affixed with a toe-tag of artistic cred that’s supposed to make it all cool. Saulnier directed the 2013 crowd-funded revenge thriller (and critical darling) Blue Ruin, another genre picture that groaned under the weight of its somber affectation. But Blue Ruin was, at least, a mystery—it gave you lots of reasons to want to keep watching, and the tooth-and-claw precision of Saulnier’s filmmaking kept the story moving along, an engine of quiet fury.

But even though Green Room gives the illusion of precision, its payoff is skimpy. A bunch of discouraged but basically nice kids tangle with ruthless Nazi punks and bad stuff happens: I suppose you could get a movie out of that, but the one Saulnier comes up with is sour and pinched in its brutality, instead of being exhilarating, or mournful, or discomfiting, or any of the many things movie violence can be. Saulnier’s wayward punk band, out of luck and nearly out of gas, pick up a last-minute gig somewhere in the wilds of Oregon. It’s not until they show up that they realize the deadpan skinheads in attendance aren’t their ideal audience. Still, they chug through their set, and we’re rooting for them, too: After all, two of their members are played by Anton Yelchin and Alia Shawkat, among the most indisputably likable of today’s crop of young actors.

Yelchin and company are about to collect their meager fee and get outta town when they witness to a murder: A young woman has been stabbed in the head, and she lies on the floor of the club’s grimy, makeshift green room not surrounded by a pool of blood. We see that later when the murderer, purely for the showy thrill of it all, pulls the knife out of her skull—then it pools around her like sticky black ink.

The murder must be covered up, which means the club’s owner (a purringly menacing Patrick Stewart) first keeps the band members imprisoned in the green room—along with a winsome but gutsy skinhead moll, played by Imogen Poots—and later grants them a kind of freedom that isn’t really freedom. If you want to know absolutely nothing about the horrors that befall the would-be escapees, stop reading here. But the grisly indignities include, but are hardly limited to, an arm slashed open like the skin of a hotdog. As with any horror thriller, the point isn’t so much what happens as how it happens, and how it’s shown. There’s something a little too casual about the way Saulnier’s gaze lingers on open, bloody wounds. How much do we need to see just to get the idea? Characters we’ve come to care about are dispatched cavalierly, their dramatic weight reduced to nothing once they’ve served their purpose. At one point, a character is wounded so severely that he screams in anguish for what seems like minutes—it just doesn’t stop, no matter how much we wish it would. The aim, maybe, is to put us in his shoes, to make us feel empathy for him. But the effect is a kind of distasteful voyeurism, a way of stretching out someone else’s suffering long enough to make sure we get our kicks.

You could film the exact same scene and make it wickedly funny just by shifting the tone slightly. But Saulnier presents everything straight up, as if to make it clear you’re not watching just any old horror film, but one made by an artist. A little of that goes a long way, and the movie’s dour energy is what eventually kills it. The best grindhouse-style pictures temper their sick thrills with some cockeyed buoyancy. But Green Room just keeps grinding away, minute by minute—you know it’s eventually going to hit bone, and so it does. Where’s the suspense in that?

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Green Room Review

13 May 2016

Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier is among the most inventive, versatile filmmakers working in low-budget, indie genre movies. Following break-out black comedy and revenge noir, he’s expertly turned to siege mechanics with this powerful suspense picture.

An opening sequence deftly establishes our heroes, The Ain’t Rights, as defiant followers of the punk flame while explaining the Blues Brothers-like misunderstandings that get them booked to play a far right (“technically extreme left”) club. Opening their set with a cover of the Dead Kennedys’ Nazi Punks Fuck Off might seem suicidal, but their nerve creepily wins over a few of the audience, including the spaced-out screwdriver-murderer who fronts the house band.

Effectively meshes spiky suspense and action with blackly comic touches.

Post gig, after stumbling over a corpse, The Ain’t Rights hole up in the green room with the dead girl’s friend Amber (Imogen Poots, with a neo-Nazi haircut) and bouncer Big Justin (Eric Edelstein) who they take hostage. Put upon manager Gabe (Saulnier’s recurring star Macon Blair) calls in his boss, Darcy (Stewart, relishing a chance to be evil for once), to negotiate or murder away the problem.

Like many great siege movies, this alternates edgy conversations with bursts of action as both sides work out plans to break in or get away and then have to think fast when things go south. There are shock-gore moments a-plenty, and the order in which characters are culled isn’t entirely guessable.

There are also hidden depths to the line-up of musos and skinhead thugs, with the presence of softie indie-drama types Anton Yelchin (the world’s worst inspirational speaker) and Alia Shawkat (a motormouth cleverclogs guitarist with a secret fondness for Simon & Garfunkel) hinting their characters might not be the hardnut outcasts they outwardly claim – which later adds to the suspense as they reveal unexpected capabilities.

It’s no more an in-depth look at the American neo-Nazi scene than Precinct 13 was a sociological study of LA gangs (though it has some unsettling specifics — “Red laces only,” Darcy insists when calling in his troops), but with it so effectively meshing spiky suspense and action with blackly comic touches, who really needs it to be?

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The best action movie out now cost just $5 million and is more intense than anything by Marvel or Disney

The big summer blockbusters are starting to roll out, but the best action movie you can see in theaters has gotten a lot less hype than " The Jungle Book " and " Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ."

"Green Room," directed by Jeremy Saulnier, was shot on a budget of just $5 million, according to Vox . This pales in comparison to the $175 million spent on "The Jungle Book" and the $250 million needed for "Batman v Superman."

But "Green Room" provides nonstop thrills, from its bloody start to its even bloodier ending. The film has received positive reviews in film festivals and generous critical praise, yet continues to see a smaller audience than it deserves.

Here's why you need to watch "Green Room" when it hits your local theater.

The premise is gripping

A punk band, living from cheap gig to cheap gig, reluctantly takes a job at a neo-Nazi-run bar in Oregon. The crowd is raucous, but the show goes well. After witnessing a murder backstage, however, the band is held hostage and finds itself at war with an army of skinheads.

This is a movie of counterculture versus counterculture.

It doesn't feel like any movie made today

"Green Room" takes place in the present. Characters use cellphones, which actually end up being part of the film's most inciting incident. But the movie feels like it's from a different era.

Related stories

Movies about punk bands are rare these days, let alone ones that uses violence this graphically. "Green Room" evokes survival-based horror classics like "Deliverance" and "Straw Dogs." But while those movies are about civilization creeping in on the uncivilized, this one is about two fringe groups, one worse than the other, butting heads.

It's a great movie to experience with a crowd

There are two types of movies that are vastly improved by a live audience's reaction: comedy and horror. "Green Room" contains a little of both. It is great on its own, but really feeds off the energy of a crowd.

One such scene is the moment when the band members and their new friend-by-circumstance Amber (Imogen Poots) have a standoff on opposite sides of a door, as the bar's owner (Patrick Stewart) stands on one side, promising to let them leave unharmed if they surrender. Like much of the movie, the scene is unbearably tense, so expect to hear a lot of screaming and shouting in your theater.

The characters are great

If Saulnier were a bad director, it would feel like this movie was created simply for shock value. Luckily, with just two other films under his belt ("Murder Party" and "Blue Ruin"), he is one of the best filmmakers working today. Besides his eye for action, Saulnier creates characters you come to care about.

Saulnier was in a punk band, and you feel that a lot of the movie draws from this.

Except for the flesh-eating dogs, of course.

Sure, this is a small movie and you might just want to wait until it comes out on demand. But this is the sort of rare film you should rush out to see on the big screen.

Just prepare for gore.

Watch: This is the single worst part of 'Batman v Superman'

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Common sense media reviewers.

Gory, brutally violent, but well-made horror/thriller.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Takes the position that using brutal violence in s

Characters are all capable of great violence and a

Extremely strong, gory violence: Dead, bloody corp

Many uses of "f--k," "s--t," the "N" word, "mother

Beer drinking in social situations.

Parents need to know that Green Room is an intensely violent thriller with horror elements that harkens back to the pulpy "grindhouse" days. There are grisly killings with knives, box cutters, machetes, guns, and killer dogs, accompanied by pooling, spurting blood. There's also lots of fighting, kicking, and…

Positive Messages

Takes the position that using brutal violence in self-defense is considered OK.

Positive Role Models

Characters are all capable of great violence and aren't above stealing.

Violence & Scariness

Extremely strong, gory violence: Dead, bloody corpses; pools of blood; spurting blood. Fighting, kicking, biting. Guns and shooting. Stabbing. Limbs broken. Slashed-up arm (repaired with duct tape). Stomach sliced with a box cutter. Killer dogs tear people apart. Machete to neck. Lots of loud, violent punk music. Violence against women.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Many uses of "f--k," "s--t," the "N" word, "motherf----r," "goddamn," "f----t," "ass," "jizz."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Green Room is an intensely violent thriller with horror elements that harkens back to the pulpy "grindhouse" days. There are grisly killings with knives, box cutters, machetes, guns, and killer dogs, accompanied by pooling, spurting blood. There's also lots of fighting, kicking, and gory wounds (one slashed-up arm is repaired with duct tape). Language includes many uses of "f--k," "s--t," and the "N" word, and there's a lot of violent, expletive-filled music. Characters drink in social situations, but sex isn't an issue. If teens know star Patrick Stewart from Star Trek: The Next Generation and the X-Men movies, they'll get a very different impression here. Still, while the material is extremely intense, this is also a very well-made movie with believable characters, and it's likely that it could become a word-of-mouth hit. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (11)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Compelling but brutally gory

Good but very gory thriller, what's the story.

Punk rock band The Ain't Rights -- bassist Pat ( Anton Yelchin ), guitarist Sam ( Alia Shawkat ), drummer Reece (Joe Cole), and singer Tiger ( Callum Turner ) -- are on tour, but they're not even scraping together enough money for gas. When a key gig falls through, a journalist gets them a replacement one playing a backwoods Portland club for white supremacists. After unwisely playing a Dead Kennedys cover song ("Nazi Punks F--- Off"), the band prepares to make a hasty exit ... when they become witnesses to a brutal murder in the green room. Trapped inside with a stranger ( Imogen Poots ) while the supremacists' sinister, calculating leader ( Patrick Stewart ) schemes, the bandmates must think on their feet in order to survive.

Is It Any Good?

Influenced by exploitation movies of the 1970s (and punk music of the 1980s), this horror-thriller is rooted in a gripping, grisly kind of realism without resorting to lazy coincidence or stupidity. Director Jeremy Saulnier previously made the similarly excellent Blue Ruin ; here he continues honing his skills as a maker of exceptional genre movies that are both entertaining and involving. GREEN ROOM conjures up a vivid atmosphere, introducing characters that feel like they're living in it, rather than just performing in it.

These characters have history -- such as when one band member's wrestling skills come in handy -- and their decisions carry real weight. Saulnier's use of compressed time and space (the movie is set over one long day and mainly in one room) lend the story an air of urgency, while darkness and sounds (barking dogs) add to the unsettling soundtrack. The cast is outstanding, but it's Stewart who with this performance instantly becomes one of the screen's most haunting villains, spreading hatred with soft-spoken precision.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Green Room 's extreme violence . What effect does it have? What purpose does it serve? What's the impact of media violence on kids? Does that impact change as kids get older?

Is the movie scary ? How does something like this compare to a movie with more supernatural horrors?

How does it feel to see Patrick Stewart playing such a frightening, hateful villain?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 15, 2016
• On DVD or streaming : July 12, 2016
• Cast : Patrick Stewart , Anton Yelchin , Imogen Poots
• Director : Jeremy Saulnier
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : A24
• Genre : Thriller
• Run time : 94 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : strong brutal graphic violence, gory images, language and some drug content
• Last updated : January 7, 2024

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By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

We’re used to Patrick Stewart wrapping his plummy British tones around Shakespeare or the grandiose visionaries he plays in Star Trek and X-Men. In Green Room, he has a badass blast as Darcy, a neo-Nazi nutjob who runs a skinhead-filled roadhouse in Oregon – to hell with any punks who get in his way.

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And do they ever! Green Room revolves around Darcy’s attempt to kill the punk band that has the bad luck to play at his club just as one of Darcy’s white supremacists stabs a girl in the skull. The band, called the Ain’t Rights, includes bassist Pat (a superb Anton Yelchin), singer Tiger (Callum Turner), guitarist Sam (Alia Shawkat) and drummer Reece (Joe Cole). Also, Amber (a wicked-awesome Imogen Poots), the dead girl’s BFF. The Ain’t Rights talk a lot about live performance and the energy that flows between band and audience. It’s electric. The same applies to this movie. It keeps getting up in your face with tricks you don’t see coming. Green Room is way more than crass exploitation. It’s a B movie with  an art-house core.

The plot, cooked up by directing maestro Jeremy Salnier (his Blue Ruin is some kind of mad classic), can be summed up in four words: The punks must die! Green Room is a high-tension siege thriller spiced with black humor. The Ain’t Rights actually sang the Dead Kennedys’ “Nazi Punks Fuck Off!” to these backwoods creeps. Saulnier also has an artful way of pushing your fear buttons with machetes, guns and attack dogs and then making you scream for mercy. It’ll do you no good. Green Room means business, the nastiest kind. You’ve been warned.

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The Green Room Reviews

For those who possess eyes to see and ears to hear (for cinema, of course, is also a matter of sound) [this] is the most beautiful, most profound of Truffaut's films -- and without pushing the point, one of the most beautiful French films of recent years.

Full Review | Mar 4, 2021

One of Truffaut's slightest efforts.

Full Review | May 23, 2020

If Truffaut is going into [Henry] James scholarship, he should cite his sources, not his own fantasies.

Full Review | Dec 12, 2017

"The Green Room" may deserve a special place in the annals of misbegotten literary adaptations.

Full Review | May 6, 2017

More neurotic than poetic.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Feb 22, 2008

Francois Truffaut's testimony of obsession, The Green Room, is perhaps the most unheralded film of his career, and surely one of his most personal.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 13, 2007

Iseems his darkest work, and the odd contrast between the florid and the frigid is truly disconcerting.

Full Review | Nov 13, 2007

It is a most demanding, original work and one must meet it on its own terms, without expectations of casual pleasures.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 13, 2007

Truffaut's lack of range as an actor is not helped by the script's purple prose.

Truffaut is attempting a philosophical disquisition on the presence of the lost, the ways in which the dead remain a part of our lives, but his theme can't escape the morbid eccentricity of his characters.

Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

4K Ultra HD Review – Green Room (2015)

March 18, 2024 by admin

Green Room , 2015.

Directed by Jeremy Saulnier. Starring Patrick Stewart, Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, and Callum Turner.

A punk band fight for survival in a neo-Nazi bar after witnessing a murder.

As if you haven’t been spoilt enough by Second Sight Films in the past year with their fantastic limited edition 4K releases, the label now brings you Jeremy Saulnier’s 2015 survival thriller Green Room in a glorious new package to sit on your shelf alongside the more established classics that have been so beautifully presented.

If you have not seen it before, Green Room sees struggling punk rock band The Ain’t Rights – singer Tiger (Callum Turner), guitarist Sam (Alia Shawkat), bassist Pat (Anton Yelchin) and drummer Reece (Joe Cole) – accept a gig at a remote bar that happens to be a neo-Nazi hangout. The band play their set, take the money and are about to leave, but when Pat goes back into the green room to collect Sam’s phone he sees the body of a young woman he had just seen out front lying on the floor with a knife in her head.

Pat panics, things escalate and the band lock themselves in the green room as the neo-Nazi’s try to get in, forcing them to call upon their leader and club owner Darcy (Patrick Stewart) to come down and sort things out. Darcy is intent on wiping out any witnesses to the crime and as his cover-up tactics become more elaborate, The Ain’t Rights find themselves in a battle of survival as the trigger-happy mob outside grow in numbers.

It is fairly obvious from the start that writer/director Jeremy Saulnier is going for authenticity when it comes to the music side of Green Room , as the extensive list of bands in the credits (Napalm Death, Slayer and Obituary don’t usually make it onto many movie soundtracks) and the constant blaring of punk, grind and death metal testify, and that is a good place to start if your central characters are in a band. Hardcore punk and death/thrash metal is built on intensity – from the downtuned guitars, guttural vocals and superhuman blast beats – and the club setting is fantastic, allowing the music to create the necessary atmosphere as the audience moshes, the music gets louder and the obvious tension from being in a room full of angry neo-Nazis all combine to make an electrifying plot.

However, as with most instances of fictional bands in movies – especially punk and metal bands – the portrayal isn’t quite right. By its very nature, punk is a movement defined by outspoken opinions, politics, fashions and generally being obnoxious, and The Ain’t Rights ain’t really any of those things, coming across more like a broke indie rock band with no real attitude or agenda. That isn’t to say the actors’ performances are off, because they’re not, but the way the band are written and presented doesn’t feel authentic – they are obviously not right-wing extremists like the crowd they are playing to, but that is all you get from them – and proper punk/metal is nothing if not authentic.

But the music and the band performing it is only a small factor of the movie, and the real intense material comes when Patrick Stewart comes into the frame. Obviously better known for his more benevolent roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation and X-Men , Stewart was an inspired choice for the casting of Darcy, a man who is very sure of himself and the situation building around him, and his almost zen-like back-and-forth with Pat through a locked door is just as chilling as any of the brutal violence we see later on. The fact that he looks and dresses like any ordinary middle-aged man you would see in the street on any given day adds another layer of fear to his calm demeanour, as Nazis have always been portrayed onscreen as either wearing a definable military uniform or with swastika tattoos and obvious Nazi symbolism; the cartoon caricatures of The Blues Brothers or Animal House these are not, and when Darcy does use racist language, it is used sparingly and is not sensationalised as it would be if Quentin Tarantino had written it, and coming from Patrick Stewart’s mouth it sounds even more chilling.

That said, Saulnier is a little playful with his nastier characters at times, with understated one-liners and some dark humour to offset the tension when necessary, but the overly-serious portrayal of the band before they are trapped in the club doesn’t really help to make those characters as sympathetic as perhaps they would be had we known anything about them other than they are a band and they aren’t right-wing fascists. Nevertheless, once the siege is underway those kinds of flaws become secondary to the cat-and-mouse games that make up the remainder of the running time, and although the violence – when it happens – is quick and Saulnier does not linger on it, the shock of it is all the more effective.

As is customary with these Second Sight special editions, you get the movie and the extras on standard Blu-ray and 4K UHD, housed in a rigid slipcase featuring new artwork, art cards and 120-page book with new essays by various critics and academics. Extras on the discs include two audio commentaries – one by writer/director Jeremy Saulnier, and the other by Reyna Cervantes and Prince Jackson – along with several cast and crew interviews, plus an archive making-of featurette. Plenty to get stuck into, and plenty of different perspectives to add to your enjoyment of a flawed but tense and exciting thriller.

So, as a package we can chalk Green Room up as another success for Second Sight Films in terms of content and presentation. Whether Green Room is a movie that warrants a 4K UHD upgrade is another matter entirely, as it isn’t a movie with overly rich visuals or a wide colour palette. The print is crisp and clean, but the bulk of the movie is shot inside a dark club with various shades of green and black for lighting, so whether this is a massive upgrade from any previous release is a matter for your eyes and home cinema setup to decide. However, if you have yet to own this movie then this is the version to go for, if the collectors don’t snap them all up first.

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

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Book Reviews

This collection may be the closest we'll ever come to a dickinson autobiography.

Maureen Corrigan

A new collection of Emily Dickinson's letters has been published by Harvard's Belknap Press, edited by Dickinson scholars Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell. Three Lions/Getty Images hide caption

A new collection of Emily Dickinson's letters has been published by Harvard's Belknap Press, edited by Dickinson scholars Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell.

Among the Great Moments in Literary History I wish I could've witnessed is that day, sometime after May 15, 1886, when Lavinia Dickinson entered the bedroom of her newly deceased older sister and began opening drawers.

Out sprang poems, almost 1,800 of them. Given that Emily Dickinson had only published a handful of poems during her lifetime, this discovery was a shock.

" 'Hope' is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul," begins one of those now-famous poems. Whatever Dickinson hoped for her poems, she could never have envisioned how they'd resonate with readers; nor how curious those readers would be about her life, much of it spent within her father's house in Amherst, Mass., and, in later years, within that bedroom.

Every so often, the reading public's image of Emily Dickinson shifts: For much of the 20th century, she was a fey Stevie Nicks-type figure — check out, for instance, the 1976 film of Julie Harris' lauded one-woman show, The Belle of Amherst .

A feminist Emily Dickinson emerged during the Second Women's Movement, when poems like "I'm 'wife' " were celebrated for their avant garde anger. And, jumping to the present, a new monumental volume of Dickinson's letters — the first in more than 60 years — gives us an engaged Emily Dickinson; a woman in conversation with the world, through gossip, as well as remarks about books, politics and the signal events of her age, particularly the Civil War.

The Letters of Emily Dickinson, by Emily Dickinson, edited by Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell Harvard's Belknap Press hide caption

The Letters of Emily Dickinson, by Emily Dickinson, edited by Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell

This new collection of The Letters of Emily Dickinson is published by Harvard's Belknap Press and edited by two Dickinson scholars, Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell. To accurately date some of Dickinson's letters, they've studied weather reports and seasonal blooming and harvest cycles in 19th century Amherst. They've also added some 300 previously uncollected letters to this volume for a grand total of 1,304 letters.

The result is that The Letters of Emily Dickinson reads like the closest thing we'll probably ever have to an intimate autobiography of the poet. The first letter here is written by an 11-year-old Dickinson to her brother Austin, away at school. It's a breathless, kid-sister-marvel of run-on sentences about yellow hens and a "skonk" and poor "Cousin Zebina [who] had a fit the other day and bit his tongue ..."

The final letter, by an ailing 55-year-old Dickinson — most likely the last she wrote before falling unconscious on May 13, 1886 — was to her cousins Louisa and Frances Norcross. It reads:

Never Mind The White Dress, Turns Out Emily Dickinson Had A Green Thumb

Little Cousins,  "Called back."  Emily. 

In between is a life filled with visitors, chores and recipes for doughnuts and coconut cakes. There's mention of the racist minstrel stereotype Jim Crow, as well as of public figures like Florence Nightingale and Walt Whitman. There are also allusions to the death toll of the ongoing Civil War.

Dickinson's loyal dog Carlo walks with her, and frogs and even flies keep her company. Indeed, in an 1859 letter about one such winged companion, Belle of Amherst charm alternates with cold-blooded callousness. Dickinson writes to her cousin Louisa:

Movie Interviews

Film celebrates emily dickinson's poetry and 'quiet passion'.

I enjoy much with a fly, during sister's absence, not one of your blue monsters, but a timid creature, that hops from pane to pane of her white house, so very cheerfully, and hums and thrums, a sort of speck piano. ...  I'll kill him the day [Lavinia] comes [home], for I shan't need him any more ..."  

Dickinson's singular voice comes into its own in the letters of the 1860s, which often blur into poems: cryptic, comic and charged with Awe. A simple thank-you note to her soul mate and beloved sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, reads:

Pop Culture Happy Hour

You don't know 'dickinson'.

Dear Sue,   The Supper was delicate and strange. I ate it with compunction as I would eat a Vision.

There are 1,304 letters, and, still, they're not enough. Scholars estimate that we only have about one-tenth of the letters Dickinson ever wrote. And, on that momentous day in 1886, Lavinia entered her sister's bedroom to find and successfully burn all the letters Dickinson herself had received from others during her lifetime. Such was the custom of the day. Which makes this new volume of Dickinson's letters feel like both an intrusion and an outwitting of the silence of death — something I want to believe Dickinson would have relished.

• Emily Dickinson

‘We Grown Now’: Nothing shy in this Chi-Town

Minhal baig’s sentimental drama about two boys in chicago’s cabrini-green housing project hammers home its themes.

“We Grown Now” is a handsome, heavy-footed nostalgia piece that takes place in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing project in October 1992, when the neighborhood became infamous as the setting of two horrors. The first was the killing of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis, who was shot as he walked to school. Then, just three days later, Cabrini-Green was featured as the backdrop of “Candyman,” a cult flick about a vengeful spirit who stalks the complex.

Written and directed by Minhal Baig, “We Grown Now” touches on the former and skips the latter, a hint that she isn’t capturing a moment as much as pruning it to her interests. The filmmaker only wants to view this world through the sentimental lens of two boys, Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez), who don’t yet realize that Dantrell’s death will lead to the dissolution of their friendship and the demolition of their 16-story tower. It’s a simple, gentle tale that’s told beautifully but feels hollow — like a eulogy for an acquaintance.

Malik and Eric’s story starts with a strong opening sequence where the kids drag an abandoned mattress down 12 flights of stairs to the playground. Straightaway, we’re taken in by the noise and energy of their block: the sounds of squeaky shoes and honking horns, the vicarious joy of watching children tumble gymnastically over the camera to land on a heap of tires and springs. But Baig, who was born in Chicago, is trying to shoehorn a semi-authentic drama into her reverie. Too soon, her young leads settle down into forced conversations about life, art, death and their own futures. Malik, the slightly sweeter of the pair, waxes that he dreams of a two-bedroom house where his mom (Jurnee Smollett) can grow her own tomatoes, a hobby she never claims to want herself. I didn’t buy it at first — what 10-year old prioritizes a garden over any other fantasy? — and I believed it even less after the script repeated it two more times.

This is a snapshot type of film that’s more about mood than momentum. The dialogue is all thesis statements. When three generations of characters all talk pretty much the same — “One of these days, he’s going to get killed,” “This neighborhood’s just not the same anymore,” “They treat us like roaches in our own home” — that’s just the voice of the writer. Don’t get me started on the two times the boys bellow into the sky: “We exist!”

Still, cinematographer Pat Scola has a great eye. At least half a dozen shots are flat-out fantastic, and we visually pick up on everything we need to know about Malik’s roots in the building by the fact that his grandmother (S. Epatha Merkerson) managed to drill dozens of framed family portraits into their apartment’s cinder block walls. The lens casts such a warm glow over everything that a close-up of a heap of pencil shavings could practically start a fire. All the while, the score’s violins command attention, at first frolicking like gulls that just swooped in from Lake Michigan, then doing their utmost to add emotional oomph to a slender plot.

In the most memorable sequence, Malik and Eric play hooky and head downtown to visit the Art Institute of Chicago, just as Ferris Bueller and Cameron Frye did before them. It’s a sharp and playful provocation. Don’t these lower-income boys deserve a day off, too? Absolutely — but did they have to pose in front of the same Georges Seurat?

The contrast between the two directors’ styles is telling. In “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” John Hughes cuts between Cameron’s blank expression and an impressionist oil portrait of a child, using visual language to say that Cameron feels blurry, too. Baig is more declarative. Her kids instead turn to the artist Walter Ellison’s painting of a train station and spend a full minute commenting on its socioeconomic power dynamics.

Baig is being sincere when she insists that a place is made by its people. If only her version of Cabrini-Green felt inhabited by actual people. As the end credits roll, we enjoy vintage photographs of its former residents now scattered to the wind. These old faces have a candor we could use more of in the film.

PG. At area theaters. Thematic material and language. 93 minutes.

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‘Cabaret’ Review: What Good Is Screaming Alone in Your Room?

Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin star in a buzzy Broadway revival that rips the skin off the 1966 musical.

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By Jesse Green

Just east of its marquee, the August Wilson Theater abuts an alley you probably didn’t notice when last you were there, perhaps to see “Funny Girl,” its previous tenant. Why would you? Where the trash goes is not usually part of the Broadway experience.

But it is for the latest revival of “Cabaret,” which opened at the Wilson on Sunday. Audience members are herded into that alley, past the garbage, down some halls, up some stairs and through a fringed curtain to a dimly lit lounge. (There’s a separate entrance for those with mobility issues.) Along the way, greeters offer free shots of cherry schnapps that taste, I’m reliably told, like cough syrup cut with paint thinner.

Too often I thought the same of the show itself.

But the show comes later. First, starting 75 minutes beforehand, you can experience the ambience of the various bars that constitute the so-called Kit Kat Club, branded in honor of the fictional Berlin cabaret where much of the musical takes place. Also meant to get you in the mood for a story set mostly in 1930, on the edge of economic and spiritual disaster, are some moody George Grosz-like paintings commissioned from Jonathan Lyndon Chase . (One is called “Dancing, Holiday Before Doom.”) The $9 thimbleful of potato chips is presumably a nod to the period’s hyperinflation.

This all seemed like throat clearing to me, as did the complete reconfiguration of the auditorium itself, which is now arranged like a large supper club or a small stadium. (The scenic, costume and theater design are the jaw-dropping work of Tom Scutt.) The only relevant purpose I can see for this conceptual doodling, however well carried out, is to give the fifth Broadway incarnation of the 1966 show a distinctive profile. It certainly does that.

The problem for me is that “Cabaret” has a distinctive profile already. The extreme one offered here frequently defaces it.

Let me quickly add that Rebecca Frecknall’s production , first seen in London , has many fine and entertaining moments. Some feature its West End star Eddie Redmayne, as the macabre emcee of the Kit Kat Club (and quite likely your nightmares). Some come from its new New York cast, including Gayle Rankin (as the decadent would-be chanteuse Sally Bowles) and Bebe Neuwirth and Steven Skybell (dignified and wrenching as an older couple). Others arise from Frecknall’s staging itself, which is spectacular when in additive mode, illuminating the classic score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, and the amazingly sturdy book by Joe Masteroff.

But too often a misguided attempt to resuscitate the show breaks its ribs.

The conception of Sally is especially alarming. As written — and as introduced in the play and stories the musical is based on — she is a creature of blithe insouciance if not talent, an English good-time gal flitting from brute to brute in Berlin while hoping to become a star. Her first number, “Don’t Tell Mama,” is a lively Charleston with winking lyrics (“You can tell my brother, that ain’t grim/Cause if he squeals on me I’ll squeal on him”) that make the Kit Kat Club audience, and the Broadway one too, complicit in her naughtiness.

Instead, Frecknall gives us a Sally made up to look like she’s recently been assaulted or released from an asylum, who dances like a wounded bird, stretches each syllable to the breaking point and shrieks the song instead of singing it. (Goodbye, Charleston; hello, dirge.) If Rankin doesn’t sound good in the number, nor later in “Mein Herr,” interpolated from the 1972 film, she’s not trying to. Like the cough syrup-paint thinner concoction, she’s meant to be taken medicinally and poisonously in this production, projecting instead of concealing Sally’s turmoil.

That’s inside-out. The point of Sally, and of “Cabaret” more generally, is to dramatize the danger of disengagement from reality, not to fetishize it.

The guts-first problem also distorts Redmayne’s Emcee, but at least that character was always intended as allegorical. He is the host to anything, the amoral shape-shifter, becoming whatever he must to get by. Here, he begins as a kind of marionette in a leather skirt and tiny party hat, hiccupping his way through “Willkommen.” Later he effectively incarnates himself as a creepy clown, an undead skeleton, Sally’s twin and a glossy Nazi.

Having seen Frecknall’s riveting production of “Sanctuary City,” a play about undocumented immigrants by Martyna Majok , I’m not surprised that her “Cabaret” finds a surer footing in the “book” scenes. These are the ones that take place in the real Berlin, not the metaphorical one of the Kit Kat Club. She is extraordinarily good when she starts with the naturalistic surface of behavior, letting the mise en scène and the lighting (excellent, by Isabella Byrd) suggest the rest.

And naturalism is what you find at the boardinghouse run by Fräulein Schneider (Neuwirth), a woman who has learned to keep her nose down to keep safe. Her tenants include a Jewish fruiterer, Herr Schultz (Skybell); a prostitute, Fräulein Kost (Natascia Diaz); and Clifford Bradshaw (Ato Blankson-Wood), an American writer come to Berlin in search of inspiration. Soon Sally shows up to provide it, having talked her way into Cliff’s life and bed despite being little more than a stranger. Also, despite Cliff’s romantic ambivalence; over the years, the character has had his sexuality revamped more times than a clownfish.

The Schneider-Shultz romance is sweet and sad; neither character is called upon to shriek. And Rankin excels in Sally’s scenes with Cliff, her wry, frank and hopeful personality back in place. The songs that emerge from the boardinghouse dramas are not ransacked as psychiatric case studies but are rather given room to let comment proceed naturally from real entertainment. Rankin’s “Maybe This Time,” with no slathered-on histrionics, is riveting. It turns out she can properly sing.

The interface between the naturalism and the expressionism does make for some weird moments: Herr Schultz, courtly in a topcoat, must hug Sally goodbye in her bra. But letting the styles mix also brings out the production’s most haunting imagery. The intrusion of the Nazi threat into the story is especially well handled: first a gorgeously sung and thus chilling version of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” then the swastika and then — well, I don’t want to give away how Frecknall stages the scene in which Schultz’s fruit shop is vandalized.

That so many of these moments arise from faithful attention to the original material should be no surprise. “Cabaret” hasn’t lasted this long for nothing. Created at the tail end of Broadway’s Golden Age, it benefited from the tradition of meticulous craftsmanship that preceded it while anticipating the era of conceptual stagings that followed.

All this is baked into the book, and especially the score, which I trust I admire not merely because I worked on a Kander and Ebb show 40 years ago. That the lyrics rhyme perfectly is a given with Ebb; more important, they are always the right words to rhyme. (Listen, in the title song, for the widely spaced triplet of “room,” “broom” and, uh-oh, “tomb.”) And Kander’s music, remixing period jazz, Kurt Weill and Broadway exuberance, never oversteps the milieu or outpaces the characters even as it pushes them toward their full and sometimes manic expression.

When this new “Cabaret” follows that template, it achieves more than the buzz of chic architecture and louche dancing. (The choreography is by Julia Cheng.) Seducing us and then repelling us — in that order — it dramatizes why we flock to such things in the first place, whether at the Kit Kat Club or the August Wilson Theater. We hope, at our risk, to forget that, outside, “life is disappointing,” as the Emcee tells us. We want to unsee the trash.

Cabaret At the August Wilson Theater, Manhattan; kitkat.club . Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes, with an optional preshow.

Jesse Green is the chief theater critic for The Times. He writes reviews of Broadway, Off Broadway, Off Off Broadway, regional and sometimes international productions. More about Jesse Green

More From Forbes

Businesses beware: greenwashing is the new goldmine for litigators.

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India just became the one of the latest jurisdictions to propose legislation outlawing the practice of greenwashing, or the act of engaging in false or misleading advertising of the environmental merits of certain products or services. With the proposal, it joins the European Union (EU), the United States (US), UK and Australia – along with a growing chorus of individual US states and EU member states , including Belgium, California, New York, Washington and New Hampshire – in developing regulatory standards to keep companies from over-inflating their environmentally friendly credentials.

Prosecutors and class action attorneys have taken note.

Greenwashing is about to be a bigger exposure risk for businesses.

Green Claims Put to the Test

Already, with the ink barely dry on the EU’s Green Claims Directive and US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) still taking public comment on its latest update to the Green Guides , which govern green labeling standards, litigators have seized on large corporations’ green claims as an opportunity to make an example – and some money – when companies cannot support their “eco-friendly,” “green,” “non-toxic” or “sustainable” marketing and advertising positions. Prosecutors in New York have filed a lawsuit against a major global food producer; a consortium of environmental groups led a case against a European airline; and a class action suit against a California beverage company recently resulted in a $10 million settlement, among dozens of other examples.

These costly lawsuits are coming on top of the threat of multimillion dollar fines from regulators for companies that violate these laws. In the EU, for example, greenwashing fines can potentially attract a penalty of a minimum of 4% of the company’s total annual revenue, and in Australia, that amount swells to 30% of total revenue, or a maximum of AU$ 50 million. In the U.S., even though the SEC has recently been forced to pause its climate reporting rules, its Enforcement Task Force Focused on Climate and ESG Issues has been bringing action against firms that use fund names that are likely to mislead investors about a fund’s investments and risks. Recently, the task force announced a $19 million penalty for a major investment advisor for making false claims about an investment fund’s green credentials.

Moreover, the broad definitions these regulators use to describe a green claim are wide enough to capture all sorts of potential misrepresentations, including those made in reference to both products and services. The UK, for example, defines green claims as “claims that show how a product, service, brand or business provides a benefit or is less harmful to the environment.” Australia uses similar language , defining greenwashing as: “any claim that makes a product or service seem better or less harmful for the environment than it really is.”

This is a big issue for large corporations. According to a recent study from McKinsey and NielsenIQ, products making sustainability-related claims averaged 28% cumulative growth over the past five years, while products that made no such claims grew at a rate of 20%. In fact, today, products marketed as “sustainable” products account for nearly half of all retail sales. In a separate study , McKinsey found that 60% of consumers said they’d pay more for a product with sustainable packaging.

The Best Romantic Comedy Of The Last Year Just Hit Netflix

Apple iphone 16 unique all new design promised in new report, the world s best beers according to the 2024 world beer cup.

Together, the runaway growth of the sustainable goods marketplace, the increased consumer demand for environmentally friendly products and the tightening of regulations designed to stop false claims of sustainability has created a high-risk environment for businesses that market their goods under the eco imprimatur. The issue has become so prevalent that attorneys from the law firm Mintz recently described greenwashing as an emerging risk for large corporations, explaining in The National Law Review , that the growing number of class action lawsuits, “may have uncertain outcomes, be expensive to litigate, and can result in costly settlements for companies as well as significant reputational harm.” The law firm Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft LLP put some teeth behind this thesis by providing a detailed list of many recent greenwashing cases brought against large corporations.

Growing Importance of Quantifiable Sustainability Data

So, what should companies do? Is the brand halo that comes along with an image of sustainability worth the risk of scrutiny and potential brand damage if that image is found to be lacking credibility? And what about brands that have been falsely marketing themselves as sustainable for many years? Could they suffer losses if they suddenly dropped their veneers of environmental virtue?

The only way companies can successfully navigate this increasingly fraught environment is to build a rock-solid foundation beneath their green claims. The businesses that are going to survive the current wave of green scrutiny are going to be those that can deliver verifiable data, in many cases signed off by third-party assurance providers, to substantiate every claim they make. Many companies have already successfully defended themselves in greenwashing lawsuits, and many more have started publishing details of their sustainability data including their disclosure reporting associated materiality assessments. This information will go a long way to helping them defend their green claims in the future.

Ultimately, the only viable response to the rising risk of greenwashing litigation is to take a page from the finance and accounting departments and start treating sustainability reporting like financial reporting. Only by focusing on the quantifiable aspects of sustainability – the specific impacts of business activities on things like carbon emissions, biodiversity loss and human rights – can businesses ensure that they are living up to their own hype.

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Movie Review: A lyrical portrait of childhood in Cabrini-Green with ‘We Grown Now’

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows Blake Cameron James in a scene from the film “We Grown Now.” (Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows Blake Cameron James and Gian Knight Ramirez in a scene from the film “We Grown Now.” (Danielle Scruggs/Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows Blake Cameron James in a scene from the film “We Grown Now.” (Danielle Scruggs/Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows S. Epatha Merkerson in a scene from the film “We Grown Now.” (Glen Wilson/Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows Lil Rel Howery in a scene from the film “We Grown Now.” (Danielle Scruggs/Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

This image released by Participant/Sony Pictures Classics shows Jurnee Smollett in a scene from the film “We Grown Now.” (Participant/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

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Two 11-year-old boys navigate school, friendship, family and change in Minhal Baig’s lyrical drama “We Grown Now.” It’s an evocative memory piece, wistful and honest, and a different kind of portrait of a very infamous place: Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing development.

And, pointedly, it’s a film that might not have existed without Participant, the activist film and television studio that just this month announced it was shutting down operations .

Baig sets her film in the fall of 1992, a moment in which the promise of the 1940s urban renewal project had curdled beyond repair. It was there, on Oct. 13 of that year, that 7-year-old Dantrell Davis was killed by a sniper while walking to elementary school with his mother. A few days later, the horror film “Candyman” opened across the country with its Black boogeyman and white heroine, inspiring pointed critiques for its regressive racial stereotypes.

No longer the place of “Good Times,” Cabrini-Green had become a metonym for the failures of the system. A few years later, authorities would begin demolishing buildings there, the last of which came down in 2011. It’s now home to luxury apartments.

But childhood is childhood for Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez). And the biggest thing on their mind at the beginning is transporting a found mattress down the stairs of the high rise, through the streets and sidewalks to their playground area where it will provide the perfect landing cushion for their favorite activity: Jumping.

Malik lives with his sister, mother Dolores (Jurnee Smollett, in a lovely performance) and grandmother (S. Epatha Merkerson). The adults are stable, calm and positive influences on the lives of the kids, keeping them safe in their little enclave. Still, realities of their small world inside Cabrini-Green do occasionally creep in (or, rather, sometimes burst in at 2 a.m., when authorities decide to raid and trash their apartment looking for drugs that aren’t there). Dolores tries to protest and stick up for their rights but is painfully aware of her powerlessness over the ever-escalating hostilities towards them.

The death of a classmate sends everyone into a spiral. Voices from the outside suddenly emerge, from Chicago’s mayor Richard M. Daley and others vowing to clean up Cabrini-Green. There is a pointed disconnect with what Malik and Eric’s day-to-day is actually like, playing, jumping, teasing little sisters and sometimes escaping the dull nature documentary at their school to have a real adventure. Some of these moments land, especially the banter between the boys, but some are a little clunkier. These are the ones that lean more into whimsical ideas of play and inspiration (like when they decide to visit the Art Institute on their own and have a Ferris Bueller moment with the Seurat painting) than an authentic portrait of childhood. But also, why not show the kids being self-motivated to talk about art?

And it’s one of their last adventures before reality comes back to fracture their bond, when Malik’s mother makes the decision to leave Cabrini-Green for a job opportunity in Peoria. Their goodbyes may just have you reaching for a tissue — a testament to the two young actors.

Baig is a product of Chicago, though not Cabrini-Green. There are perhaps questions about who should tell whose story, but she has come to it with a palpable empathy and interest, which is all you can ask for, really. Why would we want to make rules about filmmakers stepping outside the narrow confines of their personal experience to tell different stories?

That care shines through in every frame (evocatively shot by Pat Scola), for the kids growing up in these circumstances, for the adults trying to shelter them, and for the magic they’re able to find despite everything. It is a delicate look at what life might have felt like beyond the fear-mongering headlines, with an elegant score from Jay Wadley. “We Grown Now” is slightly dreamy and stylized, too, but instead of a liability, it makes this very small story feel grand, poetic and cinematic — just like it would for an 11-year-old.

“We Grown Now,” a Sony Pictures Classics release in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago on Friday and expanding April 26, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for “thematic material and language.” Running time 93 minutes. Three stars out of four.

This story was first published on April 17, 2024. It was updated on April 24, 2024 to correct the last name of actor Blake Cameron James.

‘The Three Musketeers – Part II: Milady’ Review: Eva Green Surprises in French Blockbuster’s Less-Than-Faithful Finale

As in Richard Lester's two-part 1970s adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel, the villainous Milady takes the spotlight in the second half, though this time, the film inventively strays from the source.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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For readers of Alexandre Dumas’ novel, extravagant French adaptation “ The Three Musketeers – Part II: Milady” packs its share of surprises: killing off important characters, sparing others and reimagining allegiances that have stood for nearly two centuries. For viewers of “Part I: D’Artagnan,” however, this swashbuckling sequel feels totally in keeping with what came before. Even the twists track, paying off what amounts to a nearly four-hour investment (not counting however many months audiences may have waited to see how the story ends).

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Bourboulon isn’t the first filmmaker to split Dumas’ novel down the middle. Half a century earlier, Richard Lester directed back-to-back features, dubbed “The Three Musketeers” and “The Four Musketeers” — though the latter was rechristened “They Call Her Milady” (“On l’appelait Milady”) in France, suggesting a precedent for accentuating Green’s character in the second half. She’s an infinitely more interesting source of obsession for D’Artagnan than Constance, who comes across as beatifically banal as played by Khoudri here. That in turn makes D’Artagnan’s efforts to rescue her seem rather uninspired, as if he could be doing something better with his time — like lusting after Milady.

In this telling, Constance stumbled upon the perpetrators of the plot to assassinate the king just before the first part ended, which at least imbues the character with a certain value. Still, it’s far more exciting to see D’Artagnan and Milady together, as they are early on, fighting side by side for a change. Bourboulon’s big innovation in these films can be seen in his action sequences, which typically unfold via elaborate oners — dynamic set-pieces designed to look as though they were captured in a single unbroken shot.

During an early escape, the camera chases after D’Artagnan, running along the lofty fortress parapet. When the young hero finds himself cornered, the lensman plunges right behind brave D’Artagnan into the moat. The effect is far more immersive than most adventure movies, which use quick cutting to place viewers in the fray. The way DP Nicolas Bolduc shoots these well-choreographed, minimally edited sequences, we feel like participants in the action, as in a knife fight that comes just a few scenes later, where the nimble camera is at knee level when D’Artagnan drives a blade through his opponent’s leg.

The other musketeers have less to do this time around, though each remains sworn to protecting the honor of others. Porthos has fallen in love with Aramis’ sister, Mathilde (Camille Rutherford), and together the two confront the cad who took advantage of her. In a rather confusing (but nonetheless exciting) subplot, Athos risks his life to rescue a comrade strapped to a wooden cross. He too has unfinished business with Milady — which remains the case all the way to the end, suggesting a thread that could inspire an off-canon “Part III,” should Bourboulon care to continue the epic.

Stateside, subtitles tend to relegate movies to art-houses, where the kind of young audiences most likely to appreciate such showy theatrics rarely set foot. Like last year’s “Napoleon,” this is megaplex entertainment at its most grand. Still, it would take some clever marketing to transform this import into a “Parasite”-style phenomenon, even if both well-made offerings have the same quality: They fill an entertainment niche that American movies have all but abdicated.

Reviewed online, Dec. 19, 2023. Running time: 121 MIN. (Original title: “Les trois mousquetaires: Milady”)

• Production: (France-Germany-Spain-Belgium) A Samuel Goldwyn Films (in U.S.), Pathé (in France) release of a Dimitri Rassam, Jérôme Seydoux presentation of a Chapter 2, Pathé Films, M6 Films production, in co-production with Constantin Films Produktion, ZDF, Deaplaneta, UMedia, with the participation of OCS, Canal+, M6, in association with Ufund, with the support of La Région Île-de-France, La Région Bretagne in partnership with the CNC, BNP Paribas. (World sales: Pathé, Paris.) Producer: Dimitri Rassam. Co-producer: Ardavan Safaee.
• Crew: Director: Martin Bourboulon. Screenplay: Matthieu Delaporte & Alexandre de La Patellière, based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas. Camera: Nicolas Bolduc. Editor: Célia Lafitedupont. Music: Guillaume Roussel.
• With: François Civil, Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris, Pio Marmaï, Eva Green, Louis Garrel, Vicky Krieps, Lyna Khoudri, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Éric Ruf, Marc Barbé, Patrick Mille, Julien Frison. (French dialogue)

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2024 NFL Draft: Day 1 recap of first-round picks

By Faris Tanyos

Updated on: April 26, 2024 / 12:21 AM EDT / CBS News

The worst kept secret in the NFL finally came to fruition Thursday as the Chicago Bears selected highly-touted USC quarterback Caleb Williams with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft .

But the theme of the first round was the run on quarterbacks. An unprecedented six of the first 12 picks were quarterbacks, an NFL Draft record. The first 14 selections were offensive players, also a draft record, with no defensive players being taken until the Indianapolis Colts selected UCLA defensive end Laiatu Latu at No. 15.  

The Bears and their long-suffering fans hope Williams, the 22-year-old phenom, will finally bring them much-needed stability at the quarterback position, which has been in flux since the days of Jim McMahon in the 1980s.

To make way for Williams, Chicago  traded away quarterback Justin Fields last month to the Pittsburgh Steelers after the No. 11 pick in the 2021 draft failed to meet the lofty expectations that were set for him. The Bears immediately sought to give Williams a weapon, selecting Washington wide receiver Rome Odunze with the No. 9 pick. 

In honor of Detroit hosting the draft , NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell trotted out rapper Eminem and Lions legend Barry Sanders to kick off the festivities. More than 275,000 people attended the draft Thursday, according to Goodell, a record for the event. 

This year's draft is one of the deepest in years at the quarterback, offensive tackle and wide receiver positions, in part due to the pandemic, which spurred many players to extend their college careers. Nine offensive linemen and seven wide receivers went off the board Thursday. In total, 23 offensive players and only nine defensive players were selected in the first round. 

The top of the draft went chalk, with quarterbacks as the first three selections. LSU's Jayden Daniels was taken No. 2 overall by the Washington Commanders, and the New England Patriots  selected North Carolina's Drake Maye at No. 3 to replace former first round pick Mac Jones, who was traded to the Jacksonville Jaguars last month. 

The Arizona Cardinals selected the first receiver with Ohio State's Marvin Harrison Jr. — son of his namesake, legendary Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Marvin Harrison Sr. — to pair with talented Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray.  

Following reports that the Los Angeles Chargers and new head coach Jim Harbaugh would perhaps trade down, the Bolts instead stood pat, taking Notre Dame offensive tackle Joe Alt in an effort to improve an offensive line that has struggled to protect franchise quarterback Justin Herbert.

The first major surprise was provided by the Atlanta Falcons, who even though they had signed veteran quarterback Kirk Cousins in the offseason, selected Washington quarterback Michael Penix Jr. with the No. 8 pick. Penix was not expected to go until late in the first round, due in part to injury concerns. 

The Minnesota Vikings — Cousins' former home — conducted the first trade of the night, swapping picks with the New York Jets to move up from 11 to 10 to select quarterback J.J. McCarthy, who led Michigan to a national title in January. 

The surprises culminated with the Denver Broncos — who also in search for help at quarterback after cutting Russell Wilson — selected seasoned 24-year-old Oregon quarterback Bo Nix at No. 12. Nix started 61 games over his college career, according to CBS Colorado, more than any other NCAA quarterback ever. 

Rounds two and three of the draft will be held Friday, and rounds four through seven on Saturday. 

NFL Draft order and picks for the first round

• No. 1: Chicago Bears — QB Caleb Williams, USC

• No. 2: Washington Commanders — QB Jayden Daniels, LSU

• No. 3: New England Patriots — QB Drake Maye, North Carolina

• No. 4: Arizona Cardinals — WR Marvin Harrison Jr., Ohio State 

• No. 5: Los Angeles Chargers — OT Joe Alt, Notre Dame

• No. 6: New York Giants — WR Malik Nabers, LSU

• No. 7: Tennessee Titans — OT JC Latham, Alabama

• No. 8: Atlanta Falcons — QB Michael Penix Jr., Washington

• No. 9: Chicago Bears — WR Rome Odunze, Washington 

• No. 10: Minnesota Vikings — QB J.J. McCarthy, Michigan (via pick swap with the Jets)

• No. 11: New York Jets — OT Olumuyiwa Fashanu, Penn State

• No. 12: Denver Broncos — QB Bo Nix, Oregon

• No. 13: Las Vegas Raiders — TE Brock Bowers, Georgia

• No. 14: New Orleans Saints — OT Taliese Fuaga, Oregon State

• No. 15: Indianapolis Colts — DE Laiatu Latu, UCLA

• No. 16: Seattle Seahawks — DL Byron Murphy, Texas

• No. 17: Minnesota Vikings — DE Dallas Turner, Alabama (via trade with the Jacksonville Jaguars)

• No. 18: Cincinnati Bengals — OT Amarius Mims, Georgia

• No. 19: Los Angeles Rams — DE Jared Verse, Florida State

• No. 20: Pittsburgh Steelers — OL Troy Fautanu, Washington

• No. 21: Miami Dolphins — DE Chop Robinson, Penn State

• No. 22: Philadelphia Eagles  — CB Quinyon Mitchell, Toledo

• No. 23: Jacksonville Jaguars — WR Brian Thomas Jr., LSU

• No. 24: Detroit Lions — CB Terrion Arnold, Alabama (via trade with Cowboys)

• No. 25: Green Bay Packers — OT Jordan Morgan, Arizona

• No. 26: Tampa Bay Buccaneers — OL Graham Barton, Duke

• No. 27: Arizona Cardinals — DL Darius Robinson, Missouri

• No. 28: Kansas City Chiefs — WR Xavier Worthy, Texas (via trade with Bills)

• No. 29: Dallas Cowboys — OT Tyler Guyton, Oklahoma 

• No. 30: Baltimore Ravens — CB Nate Wiggins, Clemson

• No. 31: San Francisco 49ers — WR Ricky Pearsall, Florida

• No. 32: Carolina Panthers — WR Xavier Legette, South Carolina (via trade with the Bills)

• 2024 NFL Draft

Faris Tanyos is a news editor for CBSNews.com, where he writes and edits stories and tracks breaking news. He previously worked as a digital news producer at several local news stations up and down the West Coast.

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