The beginning of marriages tends to be well documented. Professions of ever-lasting love on Facebook. Engagement photos on Instagram. Videographers and photographers at the meticulously planned wedding. No detail is too small to be forgotten. Everything must be remembered. The end of marriage, on the other hand, is swept carefully away, only referred to in a past tense long after it has occurred. No one live tweets their divorce. In many ways, then, divorce becomes more personal and less public than even marriage. An intensely shared experience between two people alone. Yet, Marriage Story brings this private process to the big screen without sacrificing any of the awkward, all-too touching intimacy.

When you marry someone, you know more than enough to love them. When you divorce someone, you know just enough to hurt them. Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver) obviously know a lot about each other. Years of accumulated knowledge spill out over the opening few minutes as each describes the other, noting many of the little quirks and characteristics that make up their partner. Each detail is the result of loving and being loved. Yet, all this knowledge is not enough to stay in love. For all of the things that Charlie and Nicole do notice about each other, there are other characteristics that they failed to acknowledge. Oversight breeds resentment and grievances overwhelm. Gradually, affection is paired with an equal amount of bitterness. What director Noah Baumbach does so well is portray both the lingering tenderness as well as the animosity. By avoiding depicting a truly hateful divorce, he achieves sympathy for both Nicole and Charlie. Neither want to hurt each other. Yet, the process of separation makes hurt inevitable. For, divorce means an entire disentangling of lives. It means taking separating all the things you once shared together. It means becoming selfish and a little bit petty despite your best intentions. Marriage Story doesn’t avoid depicting the inevitable clumsiness of the process, often in ways that aren’t typically acknowledged by separation stories. A particularly funny and insightful scene, for example, involves Nicole informing her mother and her sister that they can no longer be Charlie’s friends during the divorce. Even families must be disentangled. The process of divorce becomes imagining separate lives when you once could only see them together.

To their credit, it is even more impossible to imagine the film without the collective brilliance of Johansson and Driver. Each, when given the moment to shine, take the light and reflect it a hundredfold. Johansson is particularly good at modulating her voice, going from a place of resignation and softness to fierce independence. Her face, too, expresses a thousand different feelings in the span of a monologue. It is a revelation after seeing Johansson stiffly emoting in so many Marvel movies. Driver, on the other hand, is most effective with his body. He uses every inch of his tall frame, his physicality always more humorous because of how large he is. Somehow, he depicts Charlie’s lack of self-awareness through slouches and hand gestures alone. The characters are brought to life both by these extraordinary performances and the thoughtful attentions of Baumbach, who wrote the screenplay as well. It is almost uncanny how natural the dialogue is, as if all were improvised or stolen directly from real life. Johansson and Driver deliver his words without a hint of performance, transforming memorized lines into something more honest. Thus, when Charlie and Nicole speak, we pay attention, unable to tear our eyes or ears away from the screen.

Marriage Story is all the moments that you typically cannot glimpse. It is about the messy moments that you don’t show others, for fear of exposing too much. But it is also about how those moments are ultimately necessary. There can be no omelet without first breaking a couple of eggs.

We spend most of our life forgetting. We forget the countless minutes and hours that sandwich those few occasions of great importance. Out of those bits of time that are deemed memorable, a whole narrative of life is constructed. All the rest discarded as unimportant. That exhilarating summer afternoon, that moody day spent surfing YouTube, all is reduced to the same monotone muffling. It is a time that we know existed but can no longer prove. Left with only remnants, we can only stitch together a partial picture of what our lives were. Making such a fractured image cohesive is the particular talent of the filmmaker. In two hours or less, they must assemble enough of these pieces to create a character whose life can move believably. Intuitively knowing which piece is most important, knowing which space can be left intriguingly open is why some people are directors and I am relegated to mere critic. I have learned to appreciate the picture all the more, though, especially when it is as beautifully constructed as in Pain and Glory (Dolor y Gloria is the original title). In his latest film, Pedro Almodóvar assembles critical moments from both his character’s and his own life to create one vivid whole.

That feeling of artistic fulfillment has been missing from Salvador Mallo’s life for many years now. Mallo (Antonio Banderas) was formerly a critically successful film director. But time has left him with raging migraines, excruciating back pains, and a throat that will close up without warning. At least he still has a glorious shock of grey hair. Each encounter with bodily agony leaves Mallo bent over, literally breathless. Even in the moments where he is temporarily free, pain casts its dusky shadow over his life. It makes all of his movements careful and slow. Getting into a cab is a cautious unwinding of the body, each breath devoted to avoiding further aggravation. Natural movement is repressed out of fear. This physical repression has led to an artistic bridling as well. He cannot direct while being unable to move with his films. It is not only Mallo that instinctively relates his art to his physical state. Art has always been a bodily act as much as a mental one. Physical suffering from art. Michelangelo was afflicted by severe backaches after standing for hours painting the Sistine Chapel. Art from suffering. Frida Kahlo painted herself laying in a hospital hemorrhaging blood. The title of the film, then, refers to both of the binary aspects of art. We create glorious beauty even in the moments of greatest agony.

Almodóvar, thus, chooses to depict Mallo’s pain unconventionally. Instead of painful, tearing strokes, we see Mallo’s pain in a colorful swirl of animated color. The rest of the film is similarly bright even as it depicts the various indignities of aging. Almodóvar never lets his film get bogged down by the seeming darkness of the present, allowing for a constant light to shine through, especially when Mallo reflects upon his childhood. Loved and guarded by his mother (a brilliant Penelope Cruz), young Salvador discovers much of the inspiration that will fuel his artistic endeavors in the future. The problem becomes combining that young, beautiful idealism with the harsher realities of getting older. It is like drawing a cohesive picture using both crayons and oil paints. This is the problem that Mallo must truly confront, not simply pain, but the fracturing of self that the pain causes. His suffering proves that he is no longer that invincible young man. So, who is he now? Perhaps this film is Almodóvar’s answer to this question. He says it quite beautifully.

Watching Uncut Gems is like watching a car crash in slow motion. The film follows Howard, a relentless gambler played by Adam Sandler, as he races in, out, and around New York City to maintain his constant state of stress (and euphoria). As the stakes rise, we as an audience realize that this is no redemption story; it’s a realistic story.

The Safdie Brothers’ recent films have been experiences I am grateful for, but also experiences that I never want to have again. The film bears witness to Howard’s fatal flaw over and over, costing him his family, friends, and often dignity. Grisly imagery and unsavory settings are used to play off of Howard’s state of mind–and are portrayed in surprisingly beautiful and complex ways. I found myself in love with the visual and metaphorical concept of a shady jewelry shop, complete with fluorescent lighting and a glass double door requiring two buzzes for entry.

Adam Sandler, to me, has always double life when it comes to his career. Moving between thoughtful films like The Meyerowitz Stories and disquieting projects like Jack and Jill, Sandler puzzled me. Uncut Gems almost feels like the convergence of these two sides of his work–in the best way. His performance includes both his nuanced emotive skills and his somewhat slimy persona. He slides into character, donning the jewelry and slim sunglasses to become this larger-than-life yet pitiably weak figure. His work is amplified with equally impressive performances from Julia Fox, Idina Menzel, and Kevin Garnett(! An athlete in a film with Adam Sandler that has a purpose other than pulling tickets!).

Some stray thoughts include: 1. I loved being reminded intermittently that the film took place in 2012. The highly 2012-ish details (like an IPhone’s dated messaging design) were fun to watch. 2. I’m not sure why The Weeknd is in this other than maybe being friends with the Safdie Brothers? I suppose creating a fake celebrity would detract from stray thought #1, but it still felt off and not necessary in the same way Kevin Garnett playing himself was. 3. I won’t lie, I really could have done without watching a colonoscopy.

Uncut Gems is a heart attack worth having. I highly encourage both Adam Sandler fans and haters to see what is sure to be a contender this awards season.

Uncut Gems, the latest work by the Safdie Brothers, came out this Christmas and is sure to add a little bit of excitement to your winter break. The trailer seems to point towards a film experience involving a game of stakes and highly stylized, eye-catching visuals. Good Time, a previous work by this sibling duo, proved to be a crazy ride of a movie and surely Uncut Gems will pick up and continue the kind of frenzied energy presented in the 2017 work. Adam Sandler at his smarmiest will be sure to entertain, too.

Uncut Gems is now showing at the State Theater, grab a pal and enjoy the end of an amazing year for film!!!