Marceline Lee | Illustration Editor
“Tony”
For most of A24’s “Tony,” all you see of the titular chef is a curly black mop of hair. It’s the summer of 1975, and Anthony Bourdain — the world-traveling culinary critic, brilliantly acerbic writer, and the epitome of cool — is simply Tony, a 19-year-old dishwasher cutting his teeth in the kitchen. Bourdain, played by Dominic Sessa, is a slouching, awkward teenager, lying about a scholarship, grandiose about his writing, and spending his days serving up platters of fruits de mer to summering patrons and his nights pining after a girl from high school.
Set in beautiful, bustling Provincetown, Massachusetts, the film serves up scene after scene of dusky sunsets or the shimmering harbor, but leaves viewers wanting in terms of substance. With the choice of all of Bourdain’s life, why this particular summer? He possesses none of his characteristic charm or innate sense of cool, and the movie decides to take creative liberty (read: makes up) a cute, tidy ending in which everyone learns a lesson and becomes friends again. Ultimately, this movie falls victim to the most pretentious critique of all — the book was better.
“The Invite”
“The Invite” opens with an Oscar Wilde quote that reads, “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.” But it’s a different quote, often a misattribution to Wilde, that captures more of the movie’s essence: “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.”
An adaptation of Cesc Gay’s 2015 play, “Els veïns de dalt,” the entire film takes place during a dinner party between two couples in their shared apartment building. Art-school-grad-turned-harried-mom Angela (Olivia Wilde) is all wide eyes and flustered, distinctly bird-like gesticulation, while her husband, Joe (Seth Rogen), is a musician who finds his career curdled into that of a one-hit-wonder marooned in an unremarkable life. Upstairs, the bohemian Pína (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton) keep the couple awake with their rowdy sex life, a constant point of tension, though only for Angela and Joe. It’s a little early to say for sure, but the four actors put themselves in the running for strongest performances of the year. When Pína and Hawk come to dinner, a series of mishaps turn the night into a claustrophobic nightmare. But it’s only once the dinner party detours into a swinging foursome that the two couples are truly able to confront themselves and each other. Wickedly funny and quietly cathartic, “The Invite” revels in the conclusion that “sex is about power.”
“One Night Only”
Months before the release of “One Night Only,” skeptics abounded. A world where unmarried people are allowed to have sex one night a year? Why? What about mutual masturbation? How would they (whoever “they” were…) even monitor that?
Just a few minutes into Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro’s performances, though, you’ll stop stressing about all the logistical details and just allow yourself to enjoy the ride of a fantastical, ridiculous premise. The movie doesn’t try to answer any of these questions. It just throws its hands up and accepts the circumstances as the hellish reality we’re in now, so why not try and get some laughs in while we still can? In a way, it’s the perfect rom-com for 2026: set in politically inert hell, chock-full of product placement, chronically online, and conspiratorially concerned over birth rates. It’s a world where messy twenty-somethings live in tiny studio apartments furnished entirely by Urban Outfitters and features cameos from all your favorite niche not-so-micro-influencer faves. Maybe all the references to Tubi originals and Skyrizi ads will age the film quickly, leaving behind only the marks of a terrible moment we’ll want to forget. But for “One Night Only,” there’s always next year.