The program for the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival came into sharper view with Monday’s announcement of the majority of titles for the event’s galas and special presentations section. Along with TIFF’s news, some of the larger fall festival and awards season is also beginning to take shape.
Toronto, long known as a powerful showcase for launching awards-hungry and commercially ambitious fall titles, has been seen as losing some of its strength in recent years to festivals in Cannes, Venice and Telluride. This year’s TIFF program, which marks its 50th edition, will be closely watched for how its titles are received not only at the festival itself, but in the months ahead.
Among the notable world premieres in Monday’s announcement are Aziz Ansari’s feature directorial debut “Good Fortune,” a comedy of identity-swapping and self-discovery starring Ansari and Seth Rogen with Keanu Reeves as an inept angel, and James Vanderbilt’s “Nuremberg” starring Russell Crowe as imprisoned Nazi Hermann Göring, with Rami Malek as the psychiatrist tasked with interviewing him.
Maude Apatow will make her feature directorial debut with “Poetic License,” starring her mother Leslie Mann alongside Andrew Barth Feldman and Cooper Hoffman. “True Detective” creator Nic Pizzolatto will also make his feature directing bow with “Easy’s Waltz,” a drama of down-on-their-luck entertainers starring Vince Vaughn and Al Pacino.
TIFF will host the world premiere of Bobby Farrelly’s comedy “Driver’s Ed,” starring Kumail Nanjiani, Sam Nivola and Molly Shannon. Alex Winter directs and also appears in the comedy “Adulthood” alongside Josh Gad, Kaya Scodelario and Billie Lourd. David Mackenzie’s crime thriller “Fuze” stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Sam Worthington, Theo James and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
Baz Luhrman will unveil “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” which utilizes previously unseen footage the director discovered while researching his 2022 film “Elvis.” The result is what Luhrman has described as “not specifically a documentary, nor a concert film.”
Saoirse Ronan stars in “Bad Apples,” which is premiering at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
(Republic Pictures )
Other world premieres include Jonathan Etzler’s “Bad Apples,” starring Saoirse Ronan; David Michôd’s “Christy,” starring Sydney Sweeney as boxer Christy Martin; and Alice Winocour’s fashion world drama “Couture,” starring Angelina Jolie.
At this stage in the season, interpreting how a Toronto title is announced can give some clues as to where it may be popping up beforehand. “International Premiere” can mean a title is also first playing a week earlier at Telluride, while “North American Premiere” can mean something is playing first at Venice. “Canadian Premiere” means it is likely playing both Telluride and Venice (or already premiered at Cannes) before coming to Toronto.
The only title listed as an international premiere is Clint Bentley’s “Train Dreams,” which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival.
North American premieres likely headed to Venice include Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire,” starring Bill Skarsgård and Colman Domingo; Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” starring Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi; Mark Jenkin’s “Rose of Nevada,” starring Calum Turner and George MacKay; Mona Fastvold’s “The Testament of Ann Lee,” starring Amanda Seyfried; and Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine,” starring Dwayne Johnson.
Canadian premieres include Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Player” starring Colin Farrell; Jafar Panahi’s Cannes-winning “It Was Just an Accident”; Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague,” about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless”; Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent,” which won best actor at Cannes for Wagner Moura; Daniel Roher’s “Tuner,” starring Leo Woodall and Dustin Hoffman; and Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” starring Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve.
Michaela Coel, left, and Ian McKellen star in “The Christophers,” which is premiering at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
(Department M / Butler & Sklar Production)
Toronto’s previously announced titles include the opening night selection “John Candy: I Like Me,” a documentary on the beloved Canadian-born actor, directed by Colin Hanks and produced by Ryan Reynolds, as well as the world premiere of Rian Johnson’s third Benoit Blanc film starring Daniel Craig, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.”
Other previously announced world premieres include Derek Cianfrance’s “Roofman,” starring Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst; Nicholas Hytner’s “The Choral,” starring Ralph Fiennes; Paul Greengrass’ “The Lost Bus,” starring Matthew McConaughey; Hikari’s “Rental Family,” starring Brendan Fraser; Nia DaCosta’s “Hedda,” starring Tessa Thompson; Steven Soderbergh’s “The Christophers,” starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel; and Agnieszka Holland’s “Franz,” a biopic of Franz Kafka.
Other titles already announced for TIFF that will be premiering elsewhere include the Canadian premiere of Chloé Zhao’s highly anticipated “Hamnet,” starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley; and the North American premiere of Rebecca Zlotowski’s “A Private Life,” starring Jodie Foster, which premiered at Cannes.
More of the Toronto program will be announced in the coming days and weeks, including the Platform section for emerging voices and the popular Midnight Madness section. This year’s Toronto International Film Festival runs from Sept. 4 to 14.
File this as prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay good news: Larry David is returning to TV with a new six-episode sketch comedy about American history, produced the Obamas’ by Higher Ground.
He will be writing the HBO series alongside Jeff Schaffer, who was a showrunner, executive producer and director on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” David will star in the series, which will feature some actors from “Curb” as well as noteworthy guest stars.
Schaffer and David will both executive produce, with Schaffer taking the lead on directing. Barack and Michelle Obama will be executive producing the limited series for their banner Higher Ground Productions alongside Vinnie Malhotra and Ethan Lewis.
HBO’s official logline reads, “President and Mrs. Obama wanted to honor America’s 250th anniversary and celebrate the unique history of our nation on this special occasion.
…But then Larry David called.”
“Once ‘Curb’ ended, I celebrated with a three-day foam party,” David said in a press release. “After a violent allergic reaction to the suds, I yearned to return to my simple life as a beekeeper, harvesting organic honey from the wildflowers in my meadow. Alas, one day my bees mysteriously vanished. And so, it is with a heavy heart that I return to television, hoping to ease the loss of my beloved hive.”
Obama added, “I’ve sat across the table from some of the world’s most difficult leaders and wrestled with some of our most intractable problems. Nothing has prepared me for working with Larry David.”
The beloved and critically acclaimed “Curb Your Enthusiasm” aired for a total of 12 seasons from 2000 to 2024.
“The characters Larry is playing didn’t change history. In fact, they were largely ignored by history. And that’s a good thing,” Schaffer said.
David and Schaffer have also worked together on “Seinfeld” and the TV movie “Clear History,” which starred David. Schaffer is also known for his work as the co-creator of “The League” and “Dave” at FX. And David is no stranger to sketch TV comedy — he was a writer and performer on ABC’s early ‘80s late-night series “Fridays.”
There’s a reason Nate Jackson’s debut Netflix special arrives during barbecue season. Perched on a stool under the spotlight at his shows, the comedian spends most of the evening delivering hospital-worthy third-degree burns to crowd members who want the smoke. If you lock eyes with him in the first five rows, chances are you even paid extra to be his next victim by sitting in “the roast zone.”
During a recent pair of packed, back-to-back gigs at the Wiltern last month, the Tacoma-bred comic made full use of his flame-throwing abilities to torch his highest-paying L.A. fans over their questionable fashion choices, weird haircuts and bad teeth. As the evening progresses he dives deeper, extracting more information and grilling them about their personal lives and romantic relationships with a camera zoomed in on them, broadcasting their faces on a jumbo screen if they were at a Dodger game. When everything works right, Jackson finds a way to weave the stories of his random burn victims together in a way that makes the whole show feel pre-planned. Meanwhile, even as Jackson is busy making fans the butt of his comedic freestyle, the person laughing the hardest is usually the roastee. It’s the mark of good crowd work that’s not simply well done but more importantly done well.
This ride of the unpredictable twists and turns is given the same spotlight and attention in his special as his pre-written jokes in a way that keeps the pace engaging while making his audience the stars of the show. It makes his debut “Nate Jackson: Super Funny” a testament to the style and the brand of comedy he’s grown from a weekly comedy night to a brick-and-mortar comedy club and now a Netflix special that bears the same name.
Speaking of names … no, he didn’t interview himself for this story. But a journalist and the comedian swapping professions for a day or two could be funny. Whaddaya think, Nate?
Recently Nate Jackson spoke to Nate Jackson about his career coming up in the Tacoma comedy scene, refining his ability to improv on shows like MTV’s “Wild ‘N Out” and using his crowd work skills to go viral on TikTok.
This conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Well, well … Nate Jackson.
Nate Jackson.
I heard about you, man.
When I Google me … we come up. What is the likelihood of that?
It’s been my whole career — searching “our name.”
Then there’s a random guy [another Nate Jackson] playing a guitar and then all of the sudden, a third-string Denver Bronco [also named Nate Jackson] wants to write a book about playing football while high, and then he takes over the front three pages of our name.
No worries, us doing this interview together will definitely help us both surge in Google rankings.
So you’re Nate Jackson. I’m Nate Jackson Jr., and my dad is [also named] Nate Jackson. So this is a lot of Nate Jackson.
Some Nate-ception going on!
[Laughs] Bars!
Congrats on your latest special, “Nate Jackson: Super Funny.”
What’d you think?
I thought that it was a great balance of what everyone’s seeing on you on their phones [via TikTok] recently, and it also shows people what you spent your entire career doing in comedy before social media. You’re able to convey the level of crowd work you do in a live setting really well. I know a lot of people say, “Oh, crowd work is so easy to do,” but is it actually really hard?
Oh no, it’s easy to do. It’s hard to do right.
“Organic [humor] wins almost every single time when you’re writing material. One of the main challenges is making it so that it’s consumable by the masses,” Jackson said. “You want to write about things that people can relate to.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
How did it start for you with the crowd work becoming a central part of your act?
It never was a thing I wanted to go to as a central part of my act. I fought against that concept. If you work on a joke for three months, you want that to work more than the thing you just walked out [on stage] and said, “Look at that light flickering.” But you can’t control what is going to hit harder. Organic [humor] wins almost every single time when you’re writing material. One of the main challenges is making it so that it’s consumable by the masses. You want to write about things that people can relate to. You want to be relatable, right? Well, what’s more relatable than, “It’s hot in here, and we can all feel it.”
How did you get started in the Tacoma comedy scene?
I started because I had a room in Tacoma, Washington. I had a lot of rooms in Washington, and I consolidated them into a Thursday night, and it was the “Super Funny Comedy Show,” which is now the “Super Funny Comedy Club.” But it was every Thursday, and I was young enough in my career that I was like, I need to produce a show that would pack this place out, and I don’t have the skill set to be the [driving force] yet. But I can host; I can add a live band. I need my headliners coming from somewhere else. So that’s why we had [big names like] Lil Rel, Tiffany Haddish, Leslie Jones, Deon Cole. So Tacoma was spoiled by the lineups that came and did [my] Thursday night.
In doing that, every week I could write, but I could not keep up with the pacing of having a monologue every Thursday. [I was] a new comic without my voice. So I abandoned that. Sometimes I would make a joke and then say, “Now I’m just gonna mess with who’s in front of me.” And that [crowd work] muscle started to pulsate. Then I added a little improv to it. Then it I said, “All right, this next [set] I’m gonna go up with [no material]. I’m gonna go up naked and I’m coming off with a ‘W.’” It got to where people are like, “Yo, I kind of like it when you just freestyle.”
So doing improv on stage led to you freestyle roasting people?
It didn’t necessarily need to be a roast. I could be [a joke on] something I saw on the news that day. They just want to see me create — to just pick up the newspaper and then go off that. I’m like, “Guys, that’s a slap in the face to when I’m putting three, four hours in at Starbucks, working on the writing and making sure the punch lines are all there.” But it’s the same thing I’m doing with the crowd work content. I don’t just mess with people for the sake of messing with them. I am getting information to then plug into a setup. Now we’re in a comedy structure where it’s act out and mix up a set up, a punch line, etc. I want to make it worth slowing down the pacing that I would have if I was the only one talking and dictating the energy.
When I go to somebody, it is now at their pacing. They can take four minutes on the answer, and people are now fidgeting in the crowd. I’m like, “Come on now, hey, come on.” You got to keep it moving; that’s the rule to what’s happening onstage. It can go slow, but we need to feel like we’re going from point A in a story or an interaction to point B. Sometimes maybe I’m going from point A to point C, and I hit you with some misdirection in there, then, wham to point C and all connects. People are like, “Wait, so the last 10 minutes was a setup?!” That’s what I pride myself on. So you, how do just say, “Oh, that’s crowd work” — is it?
“I think that what I’m doing it is the evolution of stand-up,” Jackson said. “You [can’t] go on stage and just do your set the same way — the way you practice it in your mirror — in front of a blinding light, where you can’t even see [the crowd].”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
It’s definitely more than what people ascribe to it as a part of a show. It turns the fans into the show in a way that they can walk away feeling good about — even if they’ve been roasted.
And that’s on me, because I could just be malicious and leave it bad. But I always, I try to uplift. I’m a “Que,” a member of Omega Psi Phi [fraternity]. It’s one of our principles, “to uplift.” I don’t want you to leave the show being like, “Man, I’ll never watch a show again.” No, it should be like, “Okay, [he roasted me], but we had fun.” I’m not trying to beat up on people.
I wanted to talk about the role TikTok played in your recent glow-up in comedy over the last few years. How did it help you develop as a comedian?
I just started showing [my skills]. Once you start showing it, you’re not a secret anymore. Comics would come to Tacoma — which is off the beaten path — and then be like, “There’s a guy up there that even as a host you need to have, you need to be ready to follow, because he’s just — he’s literally just up there winging it, and he’s on fire.” Everyone in comedy knows the guy or the girl, and that was kind of what the stigma became. I was one of comedy’s best-kept secrets. People would come up [to my comedy shows], they would see my razzle-dazzle, they would take little bits of my recipe and add it to their stuff. And so I would watch people years later and be like, “Really … really?!” Don’t come up here and take my sauce and then, because you got more shine than me, use it. It takes a lot to just be the person that can handle that and not develop a chip on the shoulder. But if I’m the creator, if I’m their origin and I’m the source of [my style of comedy], then I have no issue continuing to create.
People were just like, “You need to get online!” I was like, “I am! I have every app and I’m tired now. How many things I gotta manage?” And it just got to the point where I was like, “Alright, let me get on. Let me do TikTok. That’s the app where people are following.” I saw friends that were having wild success on there, and I was like, alright, I’ll try it. And sure enough, within six or seven clips — the seventh [clip] hit. It wasn’t mega viral or anything, but it did more than my average video was doing over on on Instagram. I said, there’s something to this. And I stayed on it. And then things kept it [growing]. And so I was watching, and the needle was moving. And so here we are.
How often would you post clips on TikTok when you started using it?
I was posting at least once a day. That is not easy, because you got to get your sound right, your video needs to be quality, and then you got to pull it, edit it, and caption the words that are on the screen. There’s AI now, but all of us who were doing this [before AI] would laugh about it and be like,“When do you caption?” We’ll watch a movie and literally just be captioning. For a five-minute video, a four-minute video, I’m talking about exhaustion … Now, you plug that thing in [with AI] and the whole thing is done. Thank God, or thank computer. I don’t know who [I] was supposed to thank in that scenario, but it streamlined the process so much more content can come out now. What took me all night long to get one clip out — now we do three a day. Or two a day now, at the very least.
We talk about how AI can be a threat to original entertainment, including comedy. But are there ways AI and social media have changed the art form for the better?
Yes, and we can do so much more. We can now edit a whole podcast in two minutes. You would think it’s getting rid of jobs, and in theory it should be, but it should make one person be able to do so much more. Instead of someone losing the job, we have the capacity to put out way more content. So let’s keep all of our employees, but let’s now do 180% times more work. Also as far as AI goes, I’m okay if we stop right now for two years. Let’s just stop right now … before we legitimately are in a plot of “Terminator.”
With the type of show you’re doing now, where do you see the future of comedy going?
“Live your life to the fullest. Love hard, play hard,” Jackson said. “We only got one shot at this. I left it all out on the stage. That’s exactly how we should live every day.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
I think that what I’m doing it is the evolution of stand-up. You [can’t] go on stage and just do your set the same way — the way you practice it in your mirror — in front of a blinding light, where you can’t even see [the crowd]. What’s the difference between being in front of seven people or 70,000 people? It feels exactly the same. I think there’s a detachment between the person and the people. We’ve seen the guys that are such glitzy superstars — that just being there to watch it, that’s the presence you want to be in. But with human interaction, every show is different. You have to be malleable and loose. You can’t do your set, 1-2-3-4-5 — you gotta be able to go 5-3-2-1-4, with different segues on the fly.
What’s a better mechanic, the one that does the same 14 diagnostic steps no matter what car comes in, or the one that opens the hood and listens and goes, “[Your car needs a] timing belt, gimme a timing belt”? Let’s say you have five jokes — your hot five. Three [jokes] are about your cat, one’s about your mom and one is about a motorcycle. And you walk out on stage and there’s a motorcycle club in the front four rows. Do you get off of your normal order and establish rapport with the audience by moving your motorcycle joke to the front, or do you set yourself up for failure by talking about your new cat for three jokes to a motorcycle gang? They’ll listen to you if they like you. So get what will establish that first — be malleable.
A lot of new fans of yours may not know, but you’ve had experience with improv years ago in the “Wild ‘N Out” days [on MTV during Season 8, circa 2016]. What’s it like taking those skills you learned on TV and moving it to your own specials, podcasts and social media in this new era?
It’s all “yes, and …” We take the current situation and go, “What else can we add?” We’re just building … the real talent, the expertise comes in when they build, and it’s also a pivot, like the segue you just did right now to get into this topic. So kudos to “Wild ‘N Out” to being able to procure and find all of us and put us together. But all of us obviously had something, otherwise how do you catch the eye of a network showrunner? Shout out to Nile Evans and everybody that’s a part of procuring the talent that ends up being the stars of tomorrow. We can be like, “Oh, it’s a little urban hip-hop show.” Or we can be real about the fact that Katt Williams and Kevin Hart and all these people have come down the halls of that show. I would argue “Wild ‘N Out’s” alumni that have hit are as decorated or more than “In Living Color.”
This special feels like just a big culmination of your career right now. What’s something you would want people to take away from it after watching?
Live your life to the fullest. Love hard, play hard. We only got one shot at this. I left it all out on the stage. That’s exactly how we should live every day. Bert Kreischer said [my new special] made him miss doing stand-up … that is so powerful. The best comics make you go, “Why didn’t I think of that?” or, “God, I gotta write!” He didn’t watch it and go, “You know who you remind me of?” I think that’s not flattering. He watched and said, “I gotta get down on my stuff.” I don’t know if it’s like, “Oh, this kid’s coming,” or if it’s just a, “I respect what you do, I appreciate it, and it made me want to get back on my stuff.” I feel like it’s more the latter, but there’s going to be some of that “OK, this kid’s coming.” There’s going to be nothing you can do because I’m coming, whether you like this special or not.
The first time Atsuko Okatsuka filmed a comedy special, 2022’s “The Intruder” for HBO and Max, she didn’t have health insurance. A lot has changed since then.
Instantly recognizable for her severe bowl haircut and “art teacher”-esque, maximalist fashion, the Los Angeles-based comedian has since become insured, hired an assistant, embarked on a world tour, amassed more than two million Instagram followers, met family members she didn’t know she had and filmed her second comedy special, “Father,” which was released June 13 on Hulu.
“I think I have, like, 12 agents or something, and I’m like, ‘Is that even a thing?’” Okatsuka says over Zoom. Wearing a purple, yellow and magenta colorblocked T-shirt, Okatsuka flashes aqua nails topped off with hot dog charms. “It comes with leveling up, right? Not to quote ‘Spider-Man,’ but … yeah, responsibility, right?”
The building blocks of Okatsuka’s life remain in place, though. Amid traveling the globe on her “Full Grown” tour, being interviewed by Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” and Chelsea Handler on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and being named one of Variety’s Top 10 Comics to Watch in 2022 (among other accolades), the Taiwanese Japanese stand-up still spends most of her time with her Grandma Li, her mother, and husband Ryan Harper Gray, who is an actor, director and producer and helps manage Okatsuka. Family members feature prominently in Okatsuka’s comedy, to such an extent that a lot of her sentences begin with “My grandmother…” and “My husband, Ryan…”
“I am an open book in that I truly want to connect with people,” Okatsuka says. “I’m just gonna end up telling you what’s happening in my life. That’s the only way I can try to connect with other humans.”
(Mary Ellen Matthews / Disney)
In this respect, Okatsuka jokingly refers to herself as codependent, but from a comedy standpoint, her familial riffing serves as a handy world-building device, building a sense of familiarity with audiences, who no doubt walk out of Okatsuka’s sets feeling like they really know her. “I am an open book in that I truly want to connect with people,” she says. “I’m just gonna end up telling you what’s happening in my life. That’s the only way I can try to connect with other humans. It just naturally happens to be that I am with my mom, grandma and Ryan a lot. I love that the fans have gotten to know the family. They can be Team Ryan. They could be Team Me. I think most often they’re Team Ryan. They’re like, ‘Oh, Atsuko did it again. She can’t find her keys.’”
Okatsuka’s scatterbrained qualities — like losing her keys, realizing she’s never once used the washer and dryer and depending on Gray to set up her Zoom calls — are not only endearing, they also have informed her special’s title of “Father.” As Okatsuka’s star rose, her fans have taken to calling her “Mother,” a mostly Gen Z slang term signaling approval. But to Okatsuka, a “mother” knows how to do things like use the washer and dryer and fill out paperwork correctly, which she remains willfully ignorant about. For example, she frequently tells a story about how she and Gray forgot to file their marriage certificate when they first got married in 2017. When Okatsuka went to put Gray on her health insurance in 2023, she learned there was no record of them being married. “What about the unorganized girls?” she asks her audience. “What about the b— that crumbles easily? We exist! We are not a monolith… No, no, no… I am Father.”
While Okatsuka has been doing stand-up for the better part of a decade, starting out with local sets at the Virgil and Dynasty Typewriter, she shot to viral fame during the pandemic when she posted a video of her (and her grandmother) suddenly “dropping” to Beyoncé’s “Yoncé” in unexpected locations like Little Tokyo and the grocery store. Generating millions of views, the #DropChallenge exploded, with everyone from Mandy Moore to Serena Williams emulating Okatsuka.
In addition to classic observational and absurdist comedy, part of Okatsuka’s charm is also that she has a real knack for tapping into internet humor. Across her social media channels, she dances and puts her own spin on TikTok skits and trends. A recent example is a clip of her doing Doechii’s “Anxiety” dance while her grandmother hovers in an attempt to feed her dumplings.
While “Father” is a self-deprecating jab at Okatsuka’s nondomestic qualities, the title also refers to Okatsuka’s recent reunion with her dad in Japan. This marks the beginning of a winding life journey, which Okatsuka has spoken of at length in her comedy, as well as in an episode of “This American Life” titled “I Coulda Grown Big In Japan.”
Her story began when Okatsuka’s parents, who met on a Japanese dating show, divorced shortly after her birth in 1988. At first, the comedian lived with her father in Chiba; later, she moved in with her mother and grandmother. But when her mother began having mental health struggles (Okatsuka’s mother was later diagnosed with schizophrenia), Okatsuka’s grandmother moved everyone to Los Angeles to be closer to her uncle in West L.A. At the time, Okatsuka’s grandmother told an 8-year-old Okatsuka they were going on a “two-month vacation.” But as eight weeks turned into years, Okatsuka started to wonder if perhaps she’d been kidnapped — another concept she’s worked into her sets. “We’re just like a chiller, more polite, Japanese ‘Jerry Springer’ show,” Okatsuka cracks of her familial backstory.
When asked what it meant to reconnect with her father, Okatsuka becomes somber. “It filled a lot of holes — like, questions that I had. Like, did my grandma kidnap me? I also learned your gut is often right.”
Technically, Okatsuka was kidnapped, if only because her father had full custody of her at the time. Okatsuka might joke about suffering from Stockholm syndrome, but she really is best friends with her grandma, who was her primary caregiver in childhood and now has her own social media fan base.
“That’s why I got into comedy,” Atsuko says. “So that other people can feel seen, and I feel seen too.”
(Lee Jameson)
Ironically, it didn’t occur to Okatsuka to pursue comedy until she was in her early 20s. Her first exposure to stand-up was when, in eighth grade, a friend slipped her a Margaret Cho DVD during a church sermon. “I was like, this is badass. But nowhere did my brain go, ‘That’s gotta be me,’” Okatsuka says. “I dreamed pretty small. When I was a kid in L.A., my dream was to work at an ice cream parlor … And then at 17, I did. [I worked at] Cold Stone Creamery in West L.A. I said, ‘Now what? I’ve already reached my goal. I peaked at 17. I have to dream more.’”
Okatsuka spent a year and a half attending UC Riverside and then transferred to CalArts, where she majored in creative writing and film/video. “You can just get in with an art portfolio; you don’t need grades,” she deadpans. “My interest was in the arts. I wasn’t an academic.” After art school, Okatsuka decided to really make a go at stand-up amid juggling a handful of jobs — dog walking, teaching cinema at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita and dance fitness in Atwater Village. “But stand-up comedy was always first for me,” she says. “Sometimes I would, you know, take off from teaching community college and get Ryan to substitute for me. It was totally illegal.”
In 2018, Okatsuka got her now-signature bowl haircut, which has made her so recognizable that fans all over the world show up to her sets wearing bowl-cut wigs. She might kid around about being stuck with it (“because my brand,” she says in “Father”), but she really does delight in its permanence, simply because it makes people so happy. Plus, her fans went to the trouble of buying and customizing lookalike wigs. “I mean, in this economy? They gotta be able to wear their wigs again the next time they come to see me.”
Fans will get their chance to break out the wigs again. After “Father”, Okatsuka is heading back on the road in September for the Big Bowl Tour. But there’s a bittersweet element to Okatsuka’s always-expanding schedule. The busier she gets, the less time there is to spend with her mother and grandmother. “The point of all this is we can all be together more, and we could be that happy family that we were trying to be when we first moved to America,” she says. “That’s kind of what I’m talking about in my new show. It’s a real thing that I’m figuring out right now.”
For the time being, Okatsuka has signed her mother up for Instagram, where she can see her daughter anytime she likes. “It’s taking a minute to teach her these things, but at least she can look at what I’m up to,” Okatsuka says. “You just click on my face, and you see what I’m up to that day. And that’s how she keeps up with me. We can do phone calls, but there’s nothing like being able to see your favorite person in your hand.”
Ultimately, Okatsuka revels in the opportunity to connect with as many people as possible, wherever she might be in the world. “That’s why I got into comedy, right? So that other people can feel seen, and I feel seen too.”
SINCE Sky’s Soccer AM left our screens two years ago, its celebrity penalty shootout has been much missed.
But I can reveal the fan-favourite format has now inspired a copycat segment from Graham Norton‘s So Television.
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A copycat segment from Graham Norton’s So Television is set for our screensCredit: The Mega Agency
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Soccer AM’s celebrity penalty shootout has been much missedCredit: YouTube
Just like Sky’s original version, the new series will see a line-up of big names stepping up to the penalty spot to try to score.
But with comedian Chloe Petts in charge of proceedings, it will feature fellow comics only.
So far stars including Nish Kumar and Harriet Kemsley are on the team sheet.
A source said: “Penalties frequently provide some of the funniest moments in football, so adding comedians to that mix will bring about endless laughs.
“Soccer AM had big names like Stormzy, Ed Westwick and Louis Tomlinson desperate to be involved so everyone is very excited that this new spin-off could run and run.
“Chloe Petts is a genuine football fan and brings a wealth of knowledge, as well as humour. Filming begins this week in London and everyone can’t wait to see how it turns out.”
In an increasingly common move, the series is first heading to YouTube.
The source added: “This kind of content lends itself brilliantly to a short-form media and so will live online for now.”
Soccer AM ran for 29 years on Sky until it was shelved in May 2023 due to falling ratings.
As well as the penalty spot, other segments included the Nutmeg Files, Unbelievable Tekkers and the Crossbar Challenge.
Plenty of comedic inspiration there too, I’d say.
‘I cringe about that’ says Soccer AM legend as he admits regret over much-loved segment that ‘pushed the boundaries’
TV star Jon Richardson has reportedly signed up to a hit Channel 4 show despite giving up comedy for a very different career after his divorce from Lucy Beaumont
21:54, 14 Jun 2025Updated 21:54, 14 Jun 2025
Jon Richardson is said to have landed a spot on a huge TV show(Image: Rob Parfitt/ Channel 4)
Comedian Jon Richardson is said to have signed up to take part in a popular Channel 4 show after “quitting comedy”. The TV star issued a surprise announcement earlier this year where he revealed he was changing careers.
His unexpected move came just months after his split from wife of nine years Lucy Beaumont. Jon and fellow comedian Lucy starred in their hit series Meet the Richardsons, but were forced to quit following their divorce.
He is now said to have signed up to take part in Celebrity Bake Off for their next Stand Up to Cancer campaign. A source said: “Bosses are over the moon that they signed up Jon. He is hilarious, so will bring the laughs to the tent, and he’s hugely popular with viewers.”
“It’s been a tough year for Jon following his split from Lucy, so this has given him some light relief and it’s all for charity, so that’s an added bonus,” they added to the Sun.
Posting on social media earlier this year, Jon made his bombshell revelation. He said: “I just thought I’d give you a little update. I don’t really do social media updates, and I’ll tell you why – because I don’t think anyone cares.
“But I have a little bit of news. I’ve obviously been taking a little bit of a break from stand-up and it’s really made me… want to carry on taking a break from stand-up.”
He added: “I’ve been thinking a lot about a diary entry that I found from 1997.” An excerpt of his old diary then popped on screen, as the BBC Radio 6 star explained: “It’s this one. I was 14 years old, it says although I would love to be a stand-up comedian, I’ll probably end up being a teacher. And I’ve been thinking a lot about that.”
He split from wife Lucy last year(Image: BAFTA via Getty Images)
Jon revealed: “I’ve loved being a comedian, it was absolutely the right choice. But I’ve decided it would’ve been nice to try the other option, so that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.”
The comedian shared that he’d already accepted a teaching job, stating: “I’ve been doing some training, I’ve taken a teaching position. I will update you as and when I can. but that’s all from me for now, just to let you know where I’ve been. I’ll keep you posted.”
Jon and Lucy tied the knot in April 2015, and share eight-year-old daughter Elsie. At the time of their break-up, a joint statement read: “We have jointly and amicably made the difficult decision to divorce and go our separate ways.
“As our only priority is managing this difficult transition for our daughter, we would ask that our privacy is respected at this sensitive time to protect her well-being. We will be making no further comment. Jon Richardson and Lucy Beaumont.”
In September it was revealed the pair had come to an agreement in their divorce payout as Jon handed Lucy an eye-watering amount. He gave Lucy a whopping £1.625 million. Lucy is also ready to make a return to TV, having signed up to take part in the first celebrity edition of The Traitors.
The Mirror has contacted Jon’s representatives and Channel 4 for comment.
For more than a quarter century, director Kevin Smith has tried to resurrect “Dogma,” his religious satire about two fallen angels looking to get back into heaven. Recently, his prayers for the 1999 comedy were finally answered.
On Thursday, the movie got a theatrical re-release across 1,500 AMC Theatres screens in honor of its 25th anniversary. Technically, the milestone was last year. But the second coming of a movie that brought us one of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s best on-screen collaborations and an A-list comedic ensemble — including George Carlin, Chris Rock, Janeane Garofalo and Alan Rickman — not to mention the meme-worthy, winking “Buddy Christ,” warrants a long-awaited hallelujah.
“It’s got a good legacy to it,” Smith said of the film. “It’s become the ‘umbrella film’ for me. The umbrella film is the movie that no matter what you do, even if you make s— that people don’t like, they won’t crucify you — pun intended — because you made a movie that they like.”
“To me, it plays like a kid really trying to celebrate his faith after having grown up in a church where every Sunday, everyone seemed to be mourning it. … It’s a love letter to spirituality,” Kevin Smith said about “Dogma.”
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Though the sparkling period of Smith’s career is largely defined by 1994’s “Clerks” and 1997’s “Chasing Amy,” his fourth film, “Dogma,” steeped in irreverence and hilarity centered around his former Catholic faith, is still considered one of his classics. The movie debuted at Cannes in 1999. He returned to the renowned film festival last month, when the comedy played in the Cannes Classics section, just days before sitting down with The Times on camera to discuss “Dogma’s” whirlwind re-release. In the interview, the director, writer and actor recounts how the movie was saved by filmmaker and actor Alessandra Williams, who raised money to buy the film from Miramax earlier this year, decades after it was acquired and shelved by disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein sold Smith’s film, along with a trove of others, to Williams to help pay for his legal defense, Smith said.
In collaboration with Iconic Events, the film has since been remastered in 4K for its screening tour and is being shown in select AMC theaters. Smith is well-seasoned when it comes to touring his old films, pairing the screenings with Q&As and stand-up performances throughout the live presentations. It took little time for him to book a sold-out, 20-city tour aimed at getting fans fired up to come see “Dogma” once again under much different (and safer) circumstances.
“Even with getting people aware of the movie this time around, it’s not as fraught with peril as it was back in the day,” Smith said, referring to the death threats, protests and 400,000 pieces of hate mail he said the movie garnered from Christian extremists who denounced what they believed to be the film’s mockery of their faith.
“You Jews better take that money you stole from us and start investing in flak jackets,” Smith said while closing his eyes and reciting one of the letters from memory. “We’re coming because we’re coming in there with shotguns. Signed, Your Brothers in Christ.”
Though the controversy of the film has definitely waned, the inspiration behind the film remains steadfast, Smith said. “To me, it plays like a kid really trying to celebrate his faith after having grown up in a church where every Sunday, everyone seemed to be mourning it. So I think [people hopefully see it] for what it is. It’s a love letter to spirituality.”
The Emmys’ limited series/TV movie acting categories have come to represent some of the best and most-talked-about shows on television, and this year’s crop of contenders is no exception.
The seven actors who joined the 2025 Envelope Roundtable were Javier Bardem, who plays father, victim and alleged molester Jose Menendez in Netflix’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”; Renée Zellweger, who reprises her role as the British romantic heroine in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy”; Stephen Graham, who co-created and stars in “Adolescence” as the father of a teenage boy who commits a heinous murder; Jenny Slate, who plays the best friend of a terminally ill woman in FX’s “Dying for Sex”; Brian Tyree Henry, who portrays a man posing as a federal agent in order to rip off drug dealers in Apple TV+’s “Dope Thief”; Elizabeth Banks, who takes on the role of an estranged sibling and recovering alcoholic in Prime Video’s “The Better Sister”; and Sacha Baron Cohen, who appears as the deceived husband of a successful filmmaker in Apple TV+’s “Disclaimer.”
The Times’ news and culture critic Lorraine Ali spoke to the group about the emotional fallout of a heavy scene, the art of defying expectations and more. Read highlights from their conversation below and watch video of the roundtable above.
The 2025 Limited Series / TV Movie Roundtable: Elizabeth Banks, left, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jenny Slate, Javier Bardem, Brian Tyree Henry, Renée Zellweger and Stephen Graham.
Many of you move between drama and comedy. People often think, “Drama’s very serious and difficult, comedy’s light and easy.” Is that true?
Banks: I think the degree of difficulty with comedy is much higher. It’s really hard to sustainably make people laugh over time, whereas [with] drama, everyone relates to loss and pining for love that’s unrequited. Not everybody has great timing or is funny or gets satire.
Henry: There’s something fun about how closely intertwined they are. In my series, I’m playing a heroin addict running for my life, and I have this codependency with this friend … There’s a scene where I’ve been looking for him, and I’m high out of my mind, and I find him in my attic, and all he’s talking about is how he has to take a s—. And I’m like, “But they’re trying to kill us.” You just see him wincing and going through all these [groans]. It is so funny, but at the same time, you’re just terrified for both. There’s always humor somewhere in the drama.
Banks: There’s a reason why the theater [symbol] is a happy face/sad face. They’re very intertwined.
Renée Zellweger of “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.”
Renée, with Bridget Jones — how has she changed over the last 25 years and where is she now with “Mad About the Boy”?
Zellweger: Nobody’s the same from one moment to the next, one chapter to the next and certainly not from one year to the next. It’s been a really interesting sort of experiment to revisit a character in the different phases of her life.
What I’m really grateful for is that the timing runs in parallel to the sort of experiences that you have in your early 20s, 30s and so on. With each iteration, I don’t have to pretend that I’m less than I am, because I don’t want to be the character that I was, or played, when she was 29, 35. I don’t want to do that, and I certainly don’t want to do that now.
So it was really nice to meet her again in this place of what she’s experiencing in the moment, which is bereavement and the loss of her great love, and being a mom, and trying to be responsible, and reevaluating what she values, and how she comports herself, and what’s important and all of that, because, of course, I relate to that in this moment.
There’s a certain level of sociopathy.
— Brian Tyree Henry, “Dope Thief,” on the lengths actors will go to get the shot
Stephen, “Adolescence” follows a family dealing with the fallout of their 13-year-old son being accused of a brutal murder. You direct and star in the series. What was it like being immersed in such heavy subject matter? Did it come home with you?
Graham: We did that first episode, the end of it was quite heavy and quite emotional. When we said, “Cut,” all of us older actors and the crew were very emotional. There were hugs and a bit of applause.
And then everyone would be like, “Where’s Owen?” [Cooper, the teenage actor who plays Graham’s character’s son]. “Is Owen OK? Is he with his child psychologist?” No, Owen’s upstairs playing swing ball with his tutor. It was like OK, that’s the way to do this — not to take myself too seriously when we say, “Cut,” but when I am there, immerse myself in it.
Let’s be honest, we can all be slightly self-obsessed. My missus, she’s the best for me because I’d phone her and say, “I had a really tough day. I had to cry all day. My wife’s died of cancer, and it was a really tough one.” She goes, “The dog s— all over the living room. I had to go shopping and the f— bag split when I got to Tesco. There was a flat tire. They’ve let the kids out of school early because there’s been a flood. And you’ve had a hard day pretending to be sad?”
Bardem: I totally agree with what Stephen says. You have a life with your family and your children that you have to really pay attention to. This is a job, and you just do the job as good as you can with your own limitations. You put everything into it when they say, “Action,” and when you’re out, you just leave it behind. Otherwise, it’s too much.
Certain scenes, certain moments stay with you because we work with what we are. But I think it doesn’t make you a better actor to really stay in character, as they say, for 24 hours. That doesn’t work for me. It actually makes me feel very confused if I do that.
On the show “Monsters” I tried to protect Cooper [Koch] and Nicholas [Alexander Chavez], the actors who play the children, because they were carrying the heavy weight on the show every day. I was trying to make them feel protected and loved and accompanied by us, the adults, and let them know that we are there for them and that this is fiction. Because they were going really deep into it, and they did an amazing job.
Elizabeth Banks of “The Better Sister.”
Elizabeth, in “The Better Sister,” you portray Nicky, a sister estranged from her sibling who’s been through quite a bit of her own trauma.
Banks: I play a drunk who’s lost her child and her husband, basically, to her little sister, played by Jessica Biel. She is grappling with trauma from her childhood, which she’s trying not to bring forward. She’s been working [with] Alcoholics Anonymous, an incredible program, to get through her stuff. But she’s also a fish out of water when she visits her sister, who [lives in a] very rarefied New York, literary, fancy rich world. My character basically lives in a trailer park in Ohio. There’s a lot going on. And there’s a murder mystery.
I loved the complication … but it brought up all of those things for me. I do think you absolutely leave most of that [heaviness] on set. You are mining it all for the character work, so you’ve got to find it, but I don’t need to then infect my own children with it.
Sacha Baron Cohen of “Disclaimer.”
Sacha, you have played and created these really gregarious characters like Ali G or Borat. Your character in “Disclaimer,” he’s not a character you created, but he is very understated. Was that a challenge?
Cohen: It took me a long time to work out who the character was. I said to [director] Alfonso [Cuarón], “I don’t understand why this guy goes on that journey from where we see him in Act 1.” For me it was, how do you make this person unique?
We worked a lot through the specificity of what words he uses and what he actually says to explain and give hints for me as an actor. A lot of that was Alfonso Cuarón saying, “Take it down.” And there was a lot of rewriting and loads of drafts before I even understood how this guy reacts to the news and information that he believes about his wife.
Jenny Slate of “Dying for Sex.”
Jenny, “Dying for Sex” is based on a true story about two friends. One has terminal cancer, and the other — your character — supports her right up until the end. Talk about what it was like to play that role in a series that alternates between biting humor and deep grief.
Slate: Michelle Williams, who does a brilliant job in this show, her energy is extending outward and [her character] is trying to experiment before she does the greatest experiment of all, which is to cross over into the other side. My character is really out there, not out there willy-nilly, but she will yell at people if they are being rude, wasteful or if she feels it’s unjust. [And she’s] going from blasting to taking all that energy and making it this tight laser, and pointing it right into care, and knowing more about herself at the end.
I am a peppy person, and I felt so excited to have the job that a lot of my day started with calming myself down. I’m at work with Michelle Williams and Sissy Spacek and Liz Meriwether and Shannon Murphy and being, like, “Siri, set a meditation timer for 10 minutes,” and making myself do alternate nostril breathing [exercises].
Brian Tyree Henry of “Dope Thief.”
Brian, many people came to know you from your role as Paper Boi in “Atlanta.” The series was groundbreaking and like nothing else on television. What was it like moving out of that world and onto other projects?
Henry: People really thought that I was this rapper that they pulled off the street from Atlanta. To me, that’s the greatest compliment … When I did “Bullet Train,” I was shocked at how many people thought I was British. I was like, “Oh, right. Now I’ve twisted your mind this way.” I was [the voice of] Megatron at one point, and now I’ve twisted your mind that way. My path in is always going to be stretching people’s imaginations, because they get so attached to characters that I’ve played that they really believe that I’m that person.
People feel like they have an ownership of who you are. I love the challenge of having to force the imaginations of the viewers and myself to see me in a departure [from] what they saw me [as] previously. Because I realize that when I walk in a room, before I even open my mouth, there’s 90 different things that are put on me or taken away from me because of how I look and how I carry myself.
Javier Bardem of “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”
Javier, since doing the series are you now frequently asked about your own opinions on the Menendez case? The brothers claim their father molested them, and that is in part what led to them murdering their parents.
Bardem: I don’t think anybody knows. That’s the point. That was the great thing about playing that character, is you have to play it in a way that it’s not obvious that he did those things that he was accused of, because nobody knows, but at the same time you have to make people believe that he was capable.
I did say to Ryan [Murphy] that I can’t do a scene with a kid. Because in the beginning, they do drafts, and there were certain moments where I said, “I can’t. It’s not needed.” The only moment that I had a hard time was when [Jose] has to face [his] young kid. It was only a moment where Jose was mean to him. That’s not in my nature.
Henry: I discovered, while doing my series, “My body doesn’t know this isn’t real.” There’s an episode where I’m shot in the leg, and I’m bleeding out and I’m on all this different morphine and drugs and all this stuff, and I’m literally lying on this ground, take after take, having to mime this. To go through the delusion of this pain … in the middle of the takes, it was just so crazy. I would literally look at the crew and say, “Somebody hug me! Somebody!”
Stephen, that scene where you confront the boys in the parking lot with the bike, I was just like, “Oh, my God, how many times did he have to do that?” This kid gets in your face, and I was like, “Punch the kid!” My heart went out to you, man, not just as the character but as you being in there.
Graham: Because we did it all in one take, we had that unique quality. You’re using the best of two mediums. You’ve got that beauty and that spontaneity and that reality of the theater, and then you have the naturalism and the truth that we have with film and television. So by the time I get to that final bit, we’ve been through all those emotions. When I open the door and go into [Jamie’s] room, everything’s shaken. But it’s not you. It’s an out-of-body experience and just comes from somewhere else.
Bardem: Listen, we don’t do brain surgery, but let’s give ourselves some credit. We are generous in what we do because we are putting our bodies into an experience. We are doing this for something bigger than us, and that is the story that we’re telling.
What have been some of the more challenging or difficult moments for you, either in your career or your recent series?
Zellweger: Trying not to do what you’re feeling in the moment sometimes, because it’s not appropriate to what you’re telling. That happens in most shows, most things that you do. I think everybody experiences it where you’re bringing something from home and it doesn’t belong on the set. It’s impossible to leave it behind when you walk in because it’s bigger than you are in that moment.
Banks: I would say that the thing that I worked on the most for “The Better Sister” was [understanding] sobriety. I’m not sober. I love a bubbly rosé. So it really did bring up how much I think about drinking and how social it is and what that ritual is for me, and how this character is thinking about it every day and deciding every day to stay sober or not. I am also a huge fan of AA and sobriety programs. I think they’re incredible tools for everybody who works those programs. I was grateful for the access to all of that as I was making the series. But that’s what you get to do in TV. You get to explore episode by episode. You get to play out a lot more than just three acts.
Stephen Graham of “Adolescence.”
Stephen, about the continuous single shot. It seems like it’s an incredibly difficult and complex way to shoot a series. Why do it?
Graham: It’s exceptionally difficult, I’m not going to lie. It’s like a swan glides across the water beautifully, but the legs are going rapidly underneath. A lot of it is done in preparation. We spend a whole week learning the script, and then the second week is just with the camera crew and the rest of the crew. It’s a choreography that you work out, getting an idea of where they want the camera to go, and the opportunity to embody the space ourselves.
Cohen: That reminds me of a bit of doing the undercover movies that I do because you have one take. … I did a scene where I’m wearing a bulletproof vest. There were a lot of the people in the audience who’d gone to this rally, a lot of them had machine guns. We knew they were going to get angry, but you’ve got to do the scene. You’ve got one time to get the scene right. But you also go, “OK, those guys have got guns. They’re trying to storm the stage. I haven’t quite finished the scene. When do I leave?” But you’ve got to get the scene. I could get shot, but that’s not important.
Henry: There’s a certain level of sociopathy.
Slate: I feel like I’m never on my mark, and it was always a very kind camera operator being like, “Hey, Jenny, you weren’t in the shot shoulder-wise.” I feel like such an idiot. Part of it is working through lifelong, longstanding feelings of “I’m a fool and my foolishness is going to make people incredibly angry with me.” And then really still wanting to participate and having no real certainty that I’m going to be able to do anything but just make all of my fears real. Part of the thing that I love about performance is I just want to experience the version of myself that does not collapse into useless fragments when I face the thing that scares me the most. I do that, and then I feel the appetite for performance again.
Do you see yourself in roles when you’re watching other people’s films or TV show?
Graham: At the end of the day, we’re all big fans of acting. That’s why we do it. Because when we were young, we were inspired by people on the screen, or we were inspired by places where we could put ourselves and lose our imaginations.
We have a lot of t— in this industry. But I think if we fight hard enough, we can come through. Do you know what I mean? It’s people that are here for the right reasons. It’s a collective. Acting is not a game of golf. It’s a team. It’s in front and it’s behind the camera. I think it’s important that we nourish that.
Henry: And remember that none of us are t—.
Bardem: What is a t—? I may be one of them and I don’t know it.
There’s a wonderfully simple emotional appeal embedded in the opening of “I Don’t Understand You,” a comedy from co-writer-directors Brian Crano and David Joseph Craig. Well-meaning, well-off gay couple Dom and Cole (Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells, respectively) are eager to adopt a baby. In watching them record an appeal video — selling themselves as fit parents to an unknown mother — you want the best for them. It’s a heartrending, nervous-laughter scene: Are they sincere without being desperate? Charming yet not edgy? In between the stops and restarts, they both wittily let off steam about the absurdity of the process.
How hard does it have to be for willing adults in a loving relationship to start a family? That’s where “I Don’t Understand You” devotes its more darkly humorous energies when it sends Dom and Cole to sunny, pastoral Italy for an anniversary trip, dropping them into a series of lethally unfortunate situations that probably only Patricia Highsmith would consider a proper vacation.
Soon after landing in Rome, they’re buoyed by news that a receptive pregnant mother named Candace (Amanda Seyfried via video chat) is touched by their story, their vibe being everything she wants for her baby. It’s a cautious optimism, though, competing with the anxiety Dom and Cole generally feel as gay men on the alert for everyday microaggressions, also as tourists who don’t know the language and urbanites not exactly comfortable navigating another country’s backwaters at night.
That last concern is what kicks off their nightmare, when the couple’s rental car gets stuck on a private road that leads to a remote farmhouse where they have a reservation for an anniversary dinner. A mild panic bubbles up. The gruff, irritable and armed local who shows up only fuels their notion that death is surely around the corner. And it is, just not the way they or we may have imagined when they eventually reach the rustic home of retired restaurateur Francesca (a nonna-authentic Eleonora Romandini) and find a voluble soul who can’t wait to serve her only guests a celebratory candlelit meal.
Subtitles helpfully let us know what the skittish, suspicious Dom and Cole never quite understand about their friendly host. When Francesca’s hulking, inquisitive son Massimo (Morgan Spector) appears, suggestively brandishing a knife, a blunt fiasco of an evening suddenly tips over into a bloody farce of fear-driven misjudgment. Despite the game commitment of everyone on-screen (starting with Kroll and Rannells’ believable portrayal of loving, vulnerable gay marrieds), “I Don’t Understand You” is only sporadically funny.
The writer-directors are themselves a real-life couple who adopted a child, so ostensibly we’re getting an exaggeratedly autobiographical peek into what self-preservation on the cusp of dadhood looks like at its off-the-charts hairiest. And it’s encouraging that the filmmakers opted to turn their experience and its attendant emotions into a silly horror comedy instead of one more earnest social-issue drama. (Amanda Knox is a listed co-producer too, and when the Italian arm of justice gets involved, you’ll understand why.)
Just as its opening triggers hope for its wannabe family men, you want “I Don’t Understand You” to really nail its downward spiral, and yet it’s something of a misfire, albeit a likable one. The tone swerve into body-count humor and the nuts and bolts of violence eventually prove too much for Crano and Craig to effectively mold into a comedy of perception and privilege.
