Distribution deal for Godzilla Minus One will bring the film to 38 European territories, and a new trailer has been revealed

Godzilla Minus One, the latest Godzilla movie from Toho, is set to be released in Japan on Godzilla Day this year, November 3, 2023. It will then receive a nationwide release in the United States on December 1st. Variety reports that the theatrical-only specialist distributor Pieces of Magic Entertainment has now acquired the rights to distribute Godzilla Minus One in 38 European territories (excluding the U.K., Ireland, and German-speaking territories), and will be releasing it at the beginning of December. Along with the news of that distribution deal comes the unveiling of a new trailer for the film, which can be seen at the bottom of this article.

Toho will be bringing Godzilla Minus One to the states in its original Japanese version, with English subtitles. The film has secured a PG-13 rating for its U.S. release.

Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, Godzilla Minus One will see an already devastated postwar Japan facing a new threat in the form of Godzilla. Interestingly, one of Yamazaki’s previous credits is the 2007 film Always: Sunset on Third Street 2, which features a Godzilla cameo in a fantasy sequence. 

Toho’s Koji Ueda has said, “Set in a post-war Japan, Godzilla Minus One will once again show us a Godzilla that is a terrifying and overwhelming force, which you already get a sense of from the teaser trailer and poster. The concept is that Japan, which had already been devastated by the war, faces a new threat with Godzilla, bringing the country into the ‘minus.’“

Yamazaki directed a trilogy of Always: Sunset on Third Street films, as well as Juvenile, Returner, Ballad, Space Battleship Yamato, Friends: Naki on the Monster Island, The Fighter Pilot, Stand by Me Doraemon, Stand by Me Doraemon 2 (with Ryuichi Yagi), Parasyte: Part 1 and 2, Fueled: The Man They Called ‘Pirate’, Destiny: The Tale of Kamakura, The Great War of Archimedes, Dragon Quest: Your Story, Lupin III: The First, and Ghost Book Obakezukan.

Godzilla Minus One is Toho’s 33rd film in the franchise. The most recent entries were the 2016 live-action film Shin Godzilla and a trilogy of animated features; Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters, Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle, and Godzilla: The Planet Eater. While Toho works to get this one out into the world, Legendary is keeping their own Godzilla MonsterVerse alive with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (which is set to reach theatres on March 15, 2024) and the Apple TV+ series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

Are you interested in Godzilla Minus One? Check out the new trailer, then let us know by leaving a comment below.

Colleen Atwood, who worked on Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice 2, says we will be able to see the evolution of the original’s characters.

Happy Halloween! Also, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice! The long-awaited sequel to Tim Burton’s afterlife comedy, Beetlejuice, is close to being completed. The combination of the writers’ strike and actors’ strike has since put the film on pause, but Burton has insisted that Beetlejuice 2 is 99 percent done. “I feel grateful we got what we got. Literally, it was a day and a half…We know what we have to do. It is 99 per cent done.” The writers may have put an end to their strike, but talks for the actors resume this week. Burton returns to the sequel along with Winona Ryder and Michael Keaton returns as “the ghost with the most.”

Burton’s newest collaborator, Jenna Ortega, has been added to the sequel, and the movie has a lot to catch audiences up on. According to ScreenRant, Colleen Atwood, a costume designer on the film, has revealed that the movie will address the 30-year gap. Atwood spoke with ScreenRant to promote her latest work, Pain Hustlers, on Netflix when she spoke about Beetlejuice 2. Atwood stated, “Well, you’re gonna see some old friends in the costume world. There’s a real homage to Beetlejuice, the original, and then you’ll see you the journey that those people have made in the 30 years since Beetlejuice, it’s been a while. So, it’s a fun process, I think the audience is gonna love it, it’s really fun.”

In addition, Burton, who has been CGI happy with his latest films, including the Disney live-action adaptation of Dumbo, has glowed about going back to basics with the special effects in this movie. “On this last one, Beetlejuice 2, I really enjoyed it. I tried to strip everything and go back to the basics of working with good people and actors and puppets. It was kind of like going back to why I liked making movies.” The sequel’s plot is still under wraps, but the cinematographer has explained, “At its heart ‘Beetlejuice [2]’ is a story about a family…And now it’s 30 years later and what are the intricacies and the human condition in keeping a family together all that time set in the craziest world possible? That’s why I choose projects. That human connection for me is always at the forefront.”

For a lot of horror fans, October is their favorite month of the year, giving us 31 full days to watch even more horror movies than we do throughout the rest of the year, including films that are set on the holiday that ends the month: Halloween. Of course, the Halloween-set horror movies that get the most views are the slasher movies that share their name with the holiday. So with fresh viewings of every Halloween movie taken in, we have assembled a list: Halloween Movies Ranked, from worst to best. Check it out:

HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION (2002)

Director Rick Rosenthal did such a good job emulating the style of John Carpenter when he made Halloween II, bringing him back to direct the follow-up to H20 seemed like a great idea. It turned out to be a mistake. Rosenthal didn’t have great material to work with: the movie walks back the ending of H20 and kills off Laurie Strode in the first 15 minutes, then dives into a story that does make sense for our modern world – a group of college students are gathered together in the old Myers house for a livestream event – but didn’t really need to be a Halloween movie. The director brought an odd sense of humor to this sequel, making any dramatic scene come off as campy and allowing actors to deliver silly, over-the-top performances. The worst offender is Busta Rhymes, who gives such a ridiculous performance filled with goofy ad libs that it’s clear he didn’t take this movie or anything about the Halloween franchise seriously at all. They ignored sequels to make H20, then went on to make the worst sequel of the bunch.

HALLOWEEN ENDS (2022)

The final confrontation between Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode and the masked slasher Michael Myers is almost an afterthought in this story about a bullied babysitter who becomes a slasher himself. While Myers was securely locked up for 40 years, Laurie let her trauma and fear rule her life. But since he disappeared after slashing his way through Haddonfield and killing her daughter, Laurie found peace and has been carrying on a normal life for 4 years. Director David Gordon Green and his co-writers present the idea that Myers gains strength with each murder he commits (sort of like Freddy Krueger gathering souls), but it seems that strength doesn’t last long, because after his 2018 killing spree he ended up a broken down sewer dweller. The movie also plays with the idea that Myers’ evil can be passed on to someone else, which could be interesting… but the execution in Halloween Ends is lacking, dull, and often cringe-inducing. I didn’t need to see Michael Myers go out killing with a sidekick, or get knocked around by his protégé.

HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS (1995)

Fans had to wait six years to see the resolution to the Halloween 5 cliffhanger… and what a reward we got for our patience. A compromised mess packed with ideas that never should have been brought into the franchise. Jamie Lloyd, no longer played by Danielle Harris, has been kept in captivity for years and impregnated against her will. She’s around just long enough to give birth and get killed. Myers is now associated with a Druid cult, only kills when a certain constellation shows in the sky, and can be stopped by magical stones. At least, that’s what we’re told in the Producer’s Cut of this Joe Chappelle-directed letdown. In the Dimension Films theatrical cut, the cult is played down in favor of references to genetic experiments and shots of Myers oozing a green substance from his face. At least we get Paul Rudd as hero Tommy Doyle, no matter which version you watch. The Jamie Lloyd trilogy gets such an upsetting, wrongheaded conclusion, I want a retcon sequel that brings back Danielle Harris and the burn-scarred Michael Myers of this era so we can finish this story right. (And film it in Salt Lake City, of course.)

HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021)

Picking up exactly where Halloween 2018 ended, this one could sport the tagline The Night Everyone in Haddonfield Acts Like an Idiot. Obviously a movie called Halloween Kills has to have a large body count, but the fact that almost everyone Michael Myers comes across just stumbles into their demise through pure buffoonery (firing all of their bullets at nothing, sitting back and watching their pals get killed, holding a knife but not trying to defend themselves, etc.) takes some of the enjoyment out of it. Then there’s the idiocy of the townsfolk who form a mob, run around chanting “Evil dies tonight” and persecute an innocent man who looks like The Penguin, figuring he must be Myers. It was fun to see director David Gordon Green try to recreate Halloween 1978 for some flashbacks (replacing the events of the original Halloween II), but the characters in this movie are so stupid that it becomes very irritating and borderline insulting to sit through. At least Jamie Lee Curtis got paid to spend most of another movie relaxing in a hospital bed.

HALLOWEEN II (2009)

Rob Zombie has gone on record as saying that working with Dimension Films heads the Weinsteins when he was making his Halloween movies was a nightmare. Apparently he dealt with even more studio interference on Halloween II than on the previous movie – which is surprising, because the movie plays like he had more creative freedom this time around. He got to shoot it on grainy 16mm film and packed it with bizarre hallucinations: a white horse, a ghostly mother, a pumpkinheaded royal. This sequel feels like even less of a Halloween movie than its predecessor and almost every character in it (other than Brad Dourif’s Sheriff Brackett) comes off horribly. After finding teen heroine Laurie Strode (played in these movies by Scout Taylor Compton) boring to write in the remake, Zombie livened her up in the sequel by making her deeply traumatized and struggling with her own sanity. In the process of dealing with her trauma, Laurie has gotten just as foul as the average Zombie character. There are some good ideas in here, some ideas that will make you wonder what Zombie was thinking, some nice slasher moments, and an excessively long nightmare sequence that gives a nod to the hospital setting of the original Halloween II. This isn’t my idea of a Halloween movie, but at least Zombie was trying to do something interesting with it.

HALLOWEEN (2007)

Writer/director Rob Zombie’s Halloween is an odd beast, pairing nearly an hour of prequel material – which turns the formerly mysterious force of evil Michael Myers into your typical serial killer with a lousy childhood (the treatment even said he lives in “White Trash Heaven”) – with remake material that plays like watching John Carpenter’s Halloween at 1.5 speed… and with a lot of vulgarity added in. Any time Zombie tries to replicate a moment from Carpenter’s film, his movie pales in comparison, but outside of those moments he was successful at putting his own stamp on / bringing his own style to the Halloween brand. A hulking version of masked slasher Michael Myers may be present, but he’s not the same Myers we knew before, and the movie has a different feel to it than other Halloweens have – it’s more along the lines of sleazier movies like Silent Night, Deadly Night. As an entry in the franchise, it doesn’t quite fit in. Taken on its own as a slasher movie, it has its moments.

HALLOWEEN 5 (1989)

Halloween 5 is a sequel I like more and more as time goes on. It’s not the ideal follow-up to Halloween 4, the hermit nursing Michael Myers back to life is weird, it has the annoying Tina character, returning heroine Rachel is killed off too early, the Man in Black that was randomly dropped into the film during production never should have been added… It has plenty of problems. But I love Halloween 4, and while director Dominique Othenin-Girard brought a different style (and questionable ideas) to this follow-up, it is the closest any other sequel has come to being like Halloween 4, since it’s a direct follow-up. So it has that goodwill going for it. Danielle Harris continues to be great as Myers’ niece Jamie Lloyd, even though her character’s voice is taken away for most of the movie, and Donald Pleasence‘s Dr. Loomis continues to be awesome to watch. The franchise really lost an important element when he passed away. I want to get a glimpse into a universe where Jeff Burr got to make the Halloween 5 he was going to direct that would have been set on the same night as 4, but the Halloween 5 we got does include some great moments – most notably the laundry chute sequence.

HALLOWEEN II (1981)

The first Halloween sequel scores points with the fact that director Rick Rosenthal was trying to replicate the tone and style of the first film. The story picks up right where the previous film left off, taking us back to Halloween night 1978, and it feels perfect. The opening 30 minutes or so, with Michael Myers roaming around the town of Haddonfield while Dr. Loomis and the police force deal with the aftermath of the first movie, is terrific. But once the film settles in at the hospital it starts to feel like a missed opportunity. It becomes an empty kill fest, despite John Carpenter’s desperate attempt to add substance to the script by awkwardly dropping in the “Myers and Laurie Strode are siblings” twist, something I wish he hadn’t done. (Really could have done without the “Samhain” graffiti, too.) Jamie Lee Curtis is wasted, as Laurie Strode spends most of the movie unconscious or groggy in her hospital bed. The way Halloween H20 and Halloween 2018, or even Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, show Laurie dealing with post-traumatic issues make me wish they had done something like that in 1981 instead of slapping together a movie that’s only about Myers walking around in a hospital, looking for a sleepy Laurie.

HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982)

Feeling the Michael Myers story had been run into the ground, producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill thought they should turn Halloween into an anthology series. Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, Halloween III: Season of the Witch is so different from the other films, I considered giving it an “honorable mention” and just ranking the Myers entries. But it is part of the series, and I do enjoy it more than some of the Myers movies. Tasked with writing a “witchcraft meets the computer age” story, Nigel Kneale came up with the idea (then filtered through Wallace and Carpenter rewrites) of a toymaker who decides to play a prank / make human sacrifices by harnessing the power of Stonehenge to melt the heads of any kids wearing Halloween masks made by his company, Silver Shamrock. Dan O’Herlihy delivers a Bond villain performance as toymaker Conal Cochran, with Tom Atkins as our deadbeat alcoholic hero Dr. Dan Challis, a character who might be insufferable if he weren’t played by Atkins. There’s still some Halloween style in here, thanks to cinematographer Dean Cundey and the music by Carpenter and Alan Howarth, but this weird and wild movie – with its robots, snakes, bugs, and supernatural lazer beams – makes for a very different viewing experience than any other Halloween.

HALLOWEEN H20: 20 YEARS LATER (1998)

I hated this movie when it was released because of the decision to bring Jamie Lee Curtis back to the role of Laurie Strode by ignoring the events of the sequels she hadn’t been in. As time has gone on and the franchise timeline has gotten more fractured, I’ve come to see Halloween H20 as a strong follow-up to the first two films. It has a good atmosphere, thanks to director Steve Miner (who got his start on the Friday the 13th franchise), and it’s a nice attempt to show the repercussions of the trauma Laurie Strode endured in ‘78. Some of the dialogue is overwritten (I suspect the uncredited Kevin Williamson was responsible for that), but the biggest problem is that the movie feels like it’s rushing through the story. Miner likes his movies to be as short as possible, but this one could have used a bit more time to breathe. The H20 version of traumatized Laurie seems more likely to me than the one in Halloween 2018, but the movie should have spent more time on her issues. Some of the deleted scenes (like this one) should have been left in. And while the “paramedic clothes switch” twist isn’t revealed here, it is telegraphed well enough to take away from the effectiveness of the final moments.

HALLOWEEN (2018)

It was kind of surprising when Jamie Lee Curtis said she wanted to return to the Halloween franchise for H20 so she could explore how Laurie Strode was handling her trauma twenty years down the line – and so she could have a final confrontation with Michael Myers. The fact that she came back again after another twenty years to do the same thing all over again, that was truly shocking. Directed by David Gordon Green, Halloween 2018 does comes off like “H20 Take 2″, but it does a slightly better job of handling the trauma side of the story and has some nice stalking and slashing scenes (that long take sequence is awesome) while feeling like a blend of Carpenter’s original with some of the grit and brutality of Zombie’s vision. It builds up to a climactic “Laurie vs. Michael” rematch that’s even better than the ending of H20. The fact that I strongly disliked both of this movie’s direct follow-ups does taint it a bit for me. In retrospect, it would have been better if Curtis had only returned for one movie and this was the “Halloween Ends” installment, because this would have made for a great ending. Instead, it’s a strong start to a disappointing trilogy.

HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS (1988)

Producer Moustapha Akkad wanted to bring Michael Myers back after the bizarre detour of Halloween III. The director chosen for the job was Dwight H. Little, who delivered a film that has some of the best Midwestern Halloween atmosphere to be found in the entire franchise, a badass version of Michael Myers (try not to let the mask ruin it for you), a wonderful ‘80s vibe, a Haddonfield that’s populated by memorable and/or endearing characters, and another incredible performance from Donald Pleasence as Dr. Loomis. The sibling twist in Halloween II may have been a misstep, but it did allow for this story of Myers going after his young niece Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) in the absence of Jamie Lee Curtis, which works due to the strength of the characters and performances. From the moment the nostalgia-inducing title sequence begins until the awesome ending, Halloween 4 is a joy to watch. I’m always hoping the latest Halloween sequel will recapture some of what made Halloween 4 so great, but they never do.

HALLOWEEN (1978)

The first and the best. John Carpenter’s Halloween is a masterfully crafted stalk ‘n slash classic. The set-up is simple: a young boy murders his teen sister on Halloween night for no apparent reason. Fifteen years later, he escapes from a mental institution just in time for Halloween and returns to his hometown, where he proceeds to stalk a babysitter (Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode) and knock off her friends. It’s random. It’s fate. Michael Myers is pure evil, but there’s no talk of cults or supernatural powers. He’s just a killer with a mask and knife, preying on the innocent while Donald Pleasence turns in an iconic performance as his doctor, Sam Loomis, who doesn’t do a very good job of trying to stop his patient. The cinematography, the music, the tone and structure, and the simplicity work together to make the first Halloween not just the best entry in this franchise, but one of the best horror movies ever made.

How does your personal list compare to this Halloween Movies Ranked list? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

A live-action trailer has been released for the video game RoboCop: Rogue City, which will be available to play this week

The first-person-shooter video game RoboCop: Rogue City, which features the return of Peter Weller as the iconic hero RoboCop, is set to be released for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store this Thursday, November 2nd. To remind us the game is right around the corner, a new trailer has arrived online – but this one only features a brief glimpse of the game. Instead, it’s mostly a live-action short in which we see RoboCop out on patrol. You can watch this live-action trailer in the embed above.

Peter Weller provides the voice of RoboCop in the video game, but of course they didn’t make the 76-year-old put on a costume or sit in the makeup chair for the live-action trailer.

RoboCop: Rogue City was developed by Teyon, the company that was behind Terminator: Resistance and Rambo: The Video Game. It has been said that the game will “combine first-person shooter gameplay with exploration of Detroit and multiple-choice dialogue”. The game has the following synopsis: Crime runs rampant as Detroit lies on the edge of ruin, with people fighting for scraps as others live extravagant lives of luxury. Control of the Detroit Police Department is given to the Omni Consumer Products corporation in an attempt to restore order. You are that solution: a cyborg tasked with protecting the city.

If the trailer above left you wanting to see more of this video game, IGN has you covered. They have released a video that shows off 16 minutes of RoboCop: Rogue City gameplay, and you can check that one out at the bottom of this article.

Peter Weller played the title character in the 1987 classic RoboCop and reprised the role for the 1990 sequel RoboCop 2. But due to scheduling issues, he missed out on 1993’s RoboCop 3 and was replaced by Robert Burke. In the thirty-plus years since RoboCop 2, Weller did have the opportunity to provide the character’s voice for a Family Guy video game and the Mortal Kombat 11 video game.

What do you think of the live-action trailer for RoboCop: Rogue City, and of the gameplay video embedded below? Will you be buying and playing this game later this week? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

In a new trailer for the slasher movie Thanksgiving, director Eli Roth and cast members build up the legend of John Carver

The killer in director Eli Roth‘s long-awaited slasher movie Thanksgiving, which is set to reach theatres on November 17th (that being the Friday before Thanksgiving this year), wears a mask inspired by John Carver, the first governor of the Plymouth colony. In a newly released trailer, Roth and cast members Nell Verlaque (Big Shot) and Patrick Dempsey (Grey’s Anatomy) build up the legend of this new John Carver in quick interview snippets that are intercut with new footage from the film. You can check it out in the embed above.

Thanksgiving is a feature expansion of the faux trailer Roth made for the Robert Rodriguez / Quentin Tarantino double feature Grindhouse sixteen years ago. Roth has been wanting to make a feature version of Thanksgiving ever since he made the faux trailer, and even wrote the screenplay with Jeff Rendell (who played the homicidal pilgrim in the trailer) a dozen years ago. The feature has happened thanks to Spyglass Media stepping in to provide the funding. Roth jumped at the chance to get the movie made, even though it meant having Deadpool‘s Tim Miller take over as director on the reshoots for his video game adaptation Borderlands.

Roth and Rendell are producing the film with Roger Birnbaum. Spyglass chairman and CEO Gary Barber and president of production Peter Oillataguerre serve as executive producers alongside Kate Harrison and Greg Denny of Cream Productions Inc. Oillataguerre and SVP Production & Development Chris Stone are overseeing the project for Spyglass while Caellum Allan and Kelseigh Coombs oversee for TriStar.

If you’ve watched the original Thanksgiving trailer, you have a good idea of what this slasher movie is going to be about, but here’s the synopsis: After a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy, a mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorizes Plymouth, Massachusetts – the birthplace of the infamous holiday.

Verlaque and Dempsey are joined in the cast by Addison Rae (He’s All That), Jalen Thomas Brooks (Walker), Milo Manheim (Z-O-M-B-I-E-S), Gina Gershon (Bound), comedian Tim Dillon (who was in a TV show called Thanksgiving), Rick Hoffman (Hostel), Gabriel Davenport (Mistletoe Time Machine), Tomaso Sanelli (Titans), and Jenna Warren (The Young Arsonists). Character details have been kept under wraps so far, but we do know that Patrick Dempsey is playing the town sheriff.

Speaking with Collider, Roth explained that he considers this movie to be a “reboot” of the non-existent one he made the faux trailer for. “We were trying to get the script right. For years, I was just connecting the dots between the trailer, and then I was like, ‘Am I just filming the scenes in between what I already did before?’ The big revelation was, (Jeff Rendell) said, ‘I have to just pretend that Thanksgiving 1980 exists and that it was so offensive that every print was destroyed, and the only thing that survived was the trailer. This is the reboot of what that movie was. Every copy of the script was burned. Every print was burned. The only thing that survived was that one trailer, on the darkest corners of the internet. So, we have to make a movie based on that. This is the reboot of what that was.’ That freed me up creatively to go, ‘I can use a couple of my favorite things in the trailer, but I don’t have to worry about recreating the trailer.’ That trailer was for a movie where every print was destroyed. Now, this is gonna be its own thing.“

Are you looking forward to Thanksgiving? What did you think of the new “The Legend of John Carver” trailer? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Sofia Coppola has resisted her father Francis Ford’s urging to re-edit some of her films, something he has grown fond of.

With her latest film Priscilla earning Sofia Coppola some of the best reviews of her career, the Oscar winner is undoubtedly proud. But one person who might want Sofia to reevaluate it in the future is her father, Francis Ford Coppola, who knows a thing or two (or more…) about revisiting his works.

Speaking with Rolling Stone ahead of the release of Priscilla – which sits at a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, behind only 2003’s Lost in Translation – Sofia Coppola said she is continuously nagged by Francis Ford about tweaking her movies long after their release. “My dad loves to recut his movies, and he’s always saying, ‘You can do that!’…I don’t have any desire to. I feel like they are what they are, even with their baby fat and awkwardness, that’s what I was thinking about at that time.”

Sofia is absolutely correct that Francis Ford has a habit of re-editing his pictures: only a few years after their releases, Coppola combined the first two Godfather films to create the TV miniseries The Godfather Saga; 1979’s Apocalypse Now would get a famous overhaul with 2001’s Redux, adding nearly an hour of footage; he would also fork out a half-million dollars of his own money for a new cut of The Cotton Club, which he subtitled Encore. More recently, he revisited The Godfather Part III to create The Godfather Coda, which is an admirable effort but does, tragically, still feature Sofia…

Unlike Francis Ford, Sofia won’t even be revisiting her lesser works, citing 2006’s Marie Antoinette, which stands as her worst-reviewed movie. “I’m always happy that I get to make what I want to make. I was happy we got to make that movie, but nobody saw it…It was a flop. So the fact that it’s lived on and people talk about it has been really satisfying because so much work went into it. It makes me happy that now it’s kind of found its way and people enjoy it.”

What are your thoughts on director’s re-editing their films? What are some good examples of alternate cuts? Give us your picks below!

Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, and Jeremy Allen White are excellent in an otherwise underwhelming sci-fi romance.

Plot: Anna and Ryan have found true love. It’s been proven by a controversial new technology. There’s just one problem: Anna still isn’t sure. Then she takes a position at a love testing institute and meets Amir.

Review: Science fiction, as a genre, is often associated with space battles, aliens, and other action-oriented elements. Sometimes, as in the films Her and Gattaca, sci-fi can be dramatic and take a slight twist on the very near future. Fingernails follows that tradition by presenting a contemporary world almost the same as our own but with one main difference: a process where a couple can be tested to confirm that they are compatible and truly in love. It is with that conceit that filmmaker Christos Nikou looks at two people, Anna and Amir, who have tested positive with others but find themselves falling in love with each other. The idea that love is more than a testable diagnosis is not new but is a touching and quirky starting point for this sweet movie. Fingernails may not be revolutionary, but it works because of the resonant performances from the talented main cast.

In Fingernails, Duncan (Luke Wilson) runs a facility where a series of exercises and a genetic test can determine with certainty if you are in love with your partner. Anna (Jessie Buckley), a schoolteacher, works at the center unbeknownst to her boyfriend, Ryan (Jeremy Allen White), with whom she tested as a 100% match three years earlier. Anna is fascinated by how the center analyzes couples through exercises like holding their breath underwater, blind smell tests, tandem skydiving, and analysis of fingernails extracted through a torturous procedure involving pliers and a wooden spoon. Seeing couples enter the facility awakens Anna’s look at her own relationship, which is further complicated as she develops feelings for her coworker, Amir (Riz Ahmed). While Amir is in a relationship with Natasha (Annie Murphy), he and Anna begin a quiet and seemingly unrequited courtship while each questions the truth behind the tests they administer.

This is not just a movie about love but how culture pushes relationships worldwide. With online dating, DNA genealogical testing, and countless other modern advances, the concept of what it means to be in a relationship has changed compared to a hundred years ago. Hell, things have changed even as compared to twenty years ago. Continuing the thematic trend from this year’s excellent Past Lives, Fingernails is categorized as a romance but only in a very unconventional way. Fingernails instead focus on the question of what love truly is and if you can define it concretely or if there is more nuance to it. Is it possible to be in love with more than one person? This is a question Anna asks, to which Duncan resoundingly says no. But Fingernails ponders whether loving someone and being in love with them are one and the same. It is a powerful question and one that Christos Nikou tries desperately to answer.

Clocking in at just under two hours, Fingernails is a deliberately paced drama with elements of quirky humor that keep it from feeling languid. Watching multiple couples, to varying degrees of success, undertake the testing process gives us a good look at how pairs of all kinds can come together. In some cases, the tests prove that the lack of visible chemistry is an indicator, while others bring the whole process under review. The film’s title refers to the brutal and hard-to-watch process of extracting a fingernail to test in a machine whose operation is never truly explained. But, for all of the questions not answered, Nikou’s film works thanks to the effortless chemistry between Buckley and Ahmed. Both actors are excellent here, especially Buckley, who is far more contained than she has been in films like Men, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, and The Lost Daughter. Jeremey Allen White is also very good as Anna’s boyfriend, Ryan, who does not question the relationship plateau that has caused Anna to question. Annie Murphy and Luke Wilson are good in their smaller roles, but Riz Ahmed continues to show why he is one of the best actors working today.

This movie is a very restrained and quiet film that never delves deeply into the subject of love on a verbal level. Much of the film lingers on the unspoken, with cinematographer Marell Rev focusing on Ahmed and Buckley’s glances while the other is not quite looking. The almost retro production design makes Fingernails feel like it is out of time, distancing it from the science fiction themes within the story. Christopher Stracey’s score is good and elevated by classic romance songs performed in French (you have to watch to find out the reason why). Nikou co-wrote his English-language debut with Sam Steiner and Stavros Raptis and misses hitting the points it is trying to convey. Much of the film’s build-up feels anticlimactic in the end due to the lack of any concrete resolution, leaving a lot of questions unanswered. Much of that is likely intentional, as Fingernails is not about explaining things but rather asking questions that the characters are too afraid to ask. I wish there were a bit more fleshed out for the supporting characters, who seem to get the short end of the stick here in favor of trying to drive Anna and Amir together.

Fingernails, premiering on AppleTV+ and in limited release on November 3rd, is a nice movie and one that is certainly romantic. It is a movie that fills your heart with questions and hopes for Anna and Amir, as well as their significant others, while also providing harsh realities that question when, if, and how these two well-suited partners could be together. Fingernails is a showcase for Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed in a quiet and restrained story that will make you feel good as much as it makes you feel bad. This movie is about heartache more than romance, but it does not build enough on an intriguing premise. There is a missed opportunity here to have explored things about the process that Christos Nikou and his co-writers developed, but it is enough to watch these actors share the screen together. I wanted a little bit more out of this film, but Fingernails is still worth a watch.

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