As I wrote in my review, “Because Train Dreams is indebted to the acute pain of loss…and Netflix is more responsible for the loss of theatrical culture than any other unyielding corporate monster, it’s a strange home for the film.” It would be ironic that one of the most patently gorgeous films of 2025 barely made it to any actual theater screens, but we’re past irony at this point. Though The Secret Agent isn’t the spy flick its title promises, Filho’s film feels like an act of subterfuge, using scraps, shreds, and morsels of time—clues, songs, newspaper clippings, and even a young boy’s excitement over the Brazilian release of Jaws—to give playful, powerful life back to everything a government destroyed. Though Eephus is a solid hang-out, drama kept to mostly a hush, Lund is remarkably precise about where characters are on the diamond and when, or how the light moves across the grass as it gets dark, inviting us to ponder this location, what it meant to these guys, and how uneventful goodbyes can be.
Author: Dom Sinacola
Published at: 2025-12-22 23:00:00
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