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Connections is the latest New York Times word game that's captured the public's attention. The game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for October 11's Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable SEE ALSO: Hurdle hints and answers for October 11 What is Connections?

The NYT's latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications' Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

Tweet may have been deleted

Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there's only one correct answer.

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If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

Tweet may have been deleted

Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

SEE ALSO: NYT's The Mini crossword answers for October 11 SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for October 11 Here's a hint for today's Connections categories

Want a hit about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

• Yellow: Adore

• Green: Plunge

• Blue: Pure profit

• Purple: Audacity

Featured Video For You Connections: How to play and how to win Here are today's Connections categories

Need a little extra help? Today's connections fall into the following categories:

• Yellow: Cherish

• Green: Quick Jump in the Pool

• Blue: Movies

• Purple: Additional Benefit

Looking for Wordle today? Here's the answer to today's Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today's puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today's Connections #488 is...

What is the answer to Connections today

• Cherish: RELISH, SAVOR, TREASURE, VALUE

• Quick Jump in the Pool: DIP, DIVE, SPLASH, SWIM

• Additional Benefit: BONUS, EXTRA, FROSTING, GRAVY

• Brashness: BRASS, CHEEK, NERVE, SAUCE

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

SEE ALSO: Mini crossword answers for October 11

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to today's Connections.

Connections: Sports Edition is a new version of the popular New York Times word game that seeks to test the knowledge of sports fans.

Like the original Connections, the game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for October 11's Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable SEE ALSO: Hurdle hints and answers for October 11 What is Connections Sports Edition?

The NYT's latest daily word game has launched in association with The Athletic, the New York Times property that provides the publication's sports coverage. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

Tweet may have been deleted

Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there's only one correct answer.

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If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

Tweet may have been deleted

Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

SEE ALSO: NYT's The Mini crossword answers for October 11 Here's a hint for today's Connections Sports Edition categories

Want a hit about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

• Yellow: Adore

• Green: Plunge

• Blue: Pure profit

• Purple: Audacity

Featured Video For You Connections: How to play and how to win Here are today's Connections Sports Edition categories

Need a little extra help? Today's connections fall into the following categories:

• Yellow: Places Where One Scores

• Green: Basketball Defenses

• Blue: Houston Sports Athlete, Past and Present

• Purple: Fictional Coaches

Looking for Wordle today? Here's the answer to today's Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today's puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today's Connections Sports Edition #18 is...

What is the answer to Connections Sports Edition today

• Places Where One Scores: END ZONE, GOAL, HOOP, PLATE

• Basketball defenses: MAN, PRESS, TRAP, ZONE

• Houston Sports Athlete, Past and Presen: ASTRO, COMET, ROCKET, TEXAN

• Fictional Coaches: BOMBAY, BUTTERMAKER, DALE, LASSO

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

SEE ALSO: Mini crossword answers for October 11

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to today's Connections.

NASA, in 2030, will plunge the aging International Space Station into the ocean.

The space agency is banking on commercial companies to build and operate future habits in orbit around Earth. One of them could look like Haven-1, built by the space technology company Vast. The Southern California company has released the final designs for its sleek-looking Haven-1 capsule, which SpaceX plans to launch on its workhouse Falcon 9 rocket as early as 2025.

While the program has a dependable rocket, a reliable SpaceX craft to take occupants there, and a billionaire founder, the timeline for the construction and then launch of a capsule with life-support systems by the second half of 2025 is certainly ambitious. Mashable has reached out to the company for more information on the plans and progress for Haven-1.

SEE ALSO: NASA scientist viewed first Voyager images. What he saw gave him chills.

Vast does have the benefit of hiring a retired NASA astronaut, Andrew J. Feustel, to advise the capsule's design.

"I’ve flown three missions to space, and we are learning from those experiences and innovating to improve the way we can live and work on a space station," Feustel said in a statement. "From communication and connectivity, to private space and interacting with others aboard, to advancing human progress on Earth and beyond, every detail has been designed with the astronaut experience at the core of our work."

The video and images below show conceptions of this design. In sharp contrast with the International Space Station — a cluttered space laboratory dominated by walls burgeoning with equipment and wiring — Haven-1 is minimalist and neat. Lots of equipment, it appears, is stored behind spartan wall panels. The capsule even includes "fire-resistant maple wood veneer slats, bringing natural warmth into what has traditionally been a sterile, necessity-driven interior," the company explained.

The interior layout of the Haven-1 capsule. Credit: Vast A conception of the common area on Haven-1, with a large window overlooking Earth. Credit: Vast

An important factor that might contribute to the likelihood of Haven-1 launching is that it's a single, relatively small capsule (for reference, see the layout above.) In contrast, the International Space Station — which nations began building in the late 1980s — is the "largest humanmade object ever to orbit Earth," NASA explains. It took 42 flights to deliver the main pieces of the station.

It's "larger than a six-bedroom house with six sleeping quarters, two bathrooms, a gym, and a 360-degree view bay window," the space agency said.

The labeled elements of the sprawling International Space Station. Credit: NASA

Vast has solar system ambitions well beyond its initial capsule. If Haven-1 is realized, and it safely harbors a 4-person crew, the company plans to build and then launch a larger module in 2028. Eventually, in the 2030s, it hopes to build "Artificial Gravity Stations" that can house 8-person crews. These longer-term plans, of course, require the financial commitments of deep-pocketed customers, like perhaps a certain national space agency that needs a place to conduct science in low-Earth orbit.

Meanwhile, NASA's ambitions in the coming decades are to the moon and beyond. The agency plans to build a permanent lunar presence, where it will harvest water preserved in frigid craters, and perhaps build a fuel depot for endeavors to Mars or resource-rich asteroids.

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Nicolas Cage wages war on a gang of hostile Australian surfers who stole his surfboard.

That's the elevator pitch for The Surfer, a trippy psychological thriller directed by Lorcan Finnegan (Nocebo, Vivarium) and written by Thomas Martin. But there's more afoot within the riptide of this strangely hypnotic film, which ruminates on toxic masculinity and unprocessed trauma while putting Cage through the absolute ringer.

SEE ALSO: How Nicolas Cage memes shaped 'Dream Scenario'

Taking creative cues from Ozploitation classics of the Australian New Wave like Wake in Fright, Finnegan simultaneously reveres and villainizes the Australian landscape, blurring the line between reality and surrealism while throwing everything he has at the Hollywood star. Cage delivers a characteristically unhinged performance, though he's at the risk of being upstaged by an exceptional Julian McMahon.

What is The Surfer about?

Equal parts tense survival thriller and coastal Western, The Surfer essentially takes place within one location: the confines of a beachside parking lot in the fictional suburb of Luna Bay, Western Australia. (It was filmed in Yallingup, located in Wadandi Country, the traditional land of the Wadandi people.)

Credited just as "The Surfer," Cage's character is a man bursting with nostalgia and idealism. Returning to the Australian town he grew up in after a life in California, he's anxious to finally buy his childhood home and reunite his family. He's a classic divorced dad, waxing lyrical about surfing as a metaphor for life in speeches aimed at his estranged teenage son (Yellowstone's Finn Little). But his lofty quest to close the deal and secure a seaside utopia is disrupted by hostile locals, who won't have a bar of him.

When the Surfer attempts to go surfing with his son, he comes face to face with the Bay Boys, a gang of surfers determined to "keep the riffraff out" of their waves — i.e. non-locals. They're brilliantly described by a carpark-dwelling character crudely credited as "The Bum" (Nicholas Cassim) as a "bunch of fuckin' yuppies cosplaying at being surfers." Dedicated to their mustachioed gang leader Scottie "Scally" Callahan (a brilliant Julian McMahon), this hollering group of violent bleached blondes in tank tops humiliate and harass Cage's protagonist, stealing his surfboard and creating hell for him. As for the local police officer (Justin Rosniak), he's in Scally's pocket too.

As soon as he arrives at the Luna Bay break, the Surfer starts to lose. With dwindling personal effects, increasing dehydration, no allies, and a teetering grip on reality, the Surfer wages an uphill battle against his downhill enemies. Somehow, Finnegan and Martin manage to concoct a never-ending supply of misfortune for their protagonist, all while presenting the locals as deeply corrupt and self-serving. But there's more to this place than it initially appears for the long-suffering Surfer.

The Surfer traps Nicolas Cage in the parking lot from hell.

The entirety of The Surfer is set within an asphalt arena, the beachside carpark overlooking the waves that Cage's character so desperately wants to surf again. That the Surfer himself is contained to this bitumen plain mirrors his denied access to the beach. However, this limitation doesn't mean the film is boring by any means, thanks to Cage's signature slow-burn unraveling.

Cage has been unpredictable in his film choices over the last few years, from his serial killer transformation in Longlegs to playing an amped-up version of himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Here, he's tasked with carrying the whole film as a man just trying to get his stolen surfboard back and catch a wave, and Cage truly leans into gaslit delirium.

Featured Video For You 'Longlegs' cast on Nic Cage's total transformation

Cage's character is pushed to the brink in the film, as his characters often are. But here he's drinking beer out of puddles, eating dead rats, and having his bare feet shredded by carpark broken glass, completely at the mercy of what is by no means a remote environment. As Cage's character stumbles through misfortune after misfortune, the film cleverly and organically becomes a kind of survival drama set within a relatively busy beachside suburb. At many points in The Surfer, you're basically yelling at the screen for this man to get a hotel room and call it a day — two things pretty much always available to him during his turmoil. But there's a deeper reason for the Surfer's determination.

What Finnegan's production team manages to create within one seaside battleground is nothing short of impressive. But probably the most stunning achievement of the film is using Australia's idyllic natural beauty and surfing culture to dive into the sinister realities of toxic masculinity.

The Surfer dives into a particularly Australian brand of aggressive male behavior.

The Surfer is, at its core, a rumination on the harmful effects of hypermasculinity. But it's a particularly Australian, and particularly violent form of it, with the country's tendency to dismiss male toxicity and violence as "larrikin" behaviour. "Boys will be boys," a character literally says aloud in this film.

Finnegan and Martin use surfing culture and the terrifying Bay Boys to sharpen their focus on misogyny and superiority complexes, as well as hammering home Australia's skewed sense of local identity. (The film's local surfer gang, the Bay Boys, seems a subtle nod to the real surf gang from Sydney's Maroubra Beach, the Bra Boys.) While the film doesn't address the hypocrisy of such localism in a country with a violent colonial past, it does go hard on the general messaging of keeping outsiders out, locals in. "Don't live here, don't surf here," the Surfer is violently told by the locals. "Locals only" signs adorn the beach. 

SEE ALSO: How to talk to the men in your life about toxic masculinity

It's the head of this predatory pack who threatens to upstage Cage in The Surfer: McMahon as the chilling Scally. Swanning about with a deep tan and a bright-red beach poncho, this character is so blatantly yet amiably menacing that he gets right under your skin (and that of Cage's character) with cold finesse. Running his "Sanctuary" for young surfers and their problematically younger teen girl visitors — no girl surfers here, no way — Scally's whole deal is that modern men have "gone soft" and "haven't had to suffer." He preaches this to his young followers, encouraging them to unleash their inner "animal" within their beach haven. Under Scally's tutelage, the Bay Boys' abrasive, territorial behaviour isn't just allowed by the rest of the community, it's encouraged, with Cage's Surfer encountering the same level of anti-outsider animosity by other non-surfer locals he comes across in the lot.

In fact, there are only two characters in the entire film who aren't total assholes to the Surfer: his son and a confoundingly underused Miranda Tapsell (Top End Wedding) as a friendly photographer who helps him out. It's overwhelming, this unrelenting hostility. And it's been used as a weapon in many an Australian film.

The Surfer stylistically rides the Australian New Wave.

The Surfer is by no means the first to make a nightmare of Australia's natural environment, amping up the heat, sunlight, and mysteries of the bush for psychological thrills. But Finnegan appears to pay tribute to such Australian New Wave thrillers of the '70s and '80s like Ted Kotcheff's Wake in Fright, Everett De Roche's Razorback, and Tony Williams' Next of Kin. Wake in Fright is the most overt reference here, as a film in which an outsider is also driven to madness by the locals — a psychological state only intensified by the harsh heat and dangerous dehydration. 

Director of photography Radek Ladczuk, cinematographer for Jennifer Kent's brutal Tasmanian film The Nightingale as well as The Babadook, makes a Australian New Wave meal of The Surfer. Meticulously slow or audaciously fast zooms feel right out of the '70s, proving to be a hilariously kitsch but strangely authentic way to capture Cage's earnestness over his beloved waves. Lighting furthers The Surfer's slightly surreal feeling; the entire film feels like it's been drenched in a golden sunlight filter, which moves from idyllic to dangerously searing. The carpark itself glows in green-lit darkness at times, while the lot's cursed toilet block glows an ominous orange. Ladczuk takes full advantage of the strange distortions reflected by metal mirrors typically found in Australian public toilet blocks. 

Then there's that score by François Tétaz and sound design by Aza Hand, resulting in a hypnotic, bonkers smorgasbord of operatic singing, chimes and harps, and blissful orchestral overtures uniquely combined with the sounds of Australian wildlife. Cicadas chirp loudly and relentlessly, a kookaburra's famous laugh becomes a cursed rhythm, and buzzing flies rise as the Surfer's hold on reality slips. It's this combination of whimsy, threat, beauty, and overwhelming powerlessness that makes The Surfer deeply effective.  

Everything about The Surfer's one-line pitch sounds ridiculous (Nicolas Cage versus mean Australian surfers), but the film itself is a haunting set piece about localism, repressed memory, and toxic masculinity, boasting the wild ride we've come to associate with Cage. It's as far from a wipeout as you can get.

The Surfer was reviewed out of the BFI London Film Festival. The film will open in in cinemas early 2025.

So, what in the sweet heck did we just watch?

A family literally being haunted by the scuttling, Frankenstein-esque form of their dead loved one? One giant metaphor for grief? Or some combination of the two?

Despite its amusingly ridiculous title, Daddy's Head is a disturbing (and sometimes confusing) movie about bereavement and a family trying to repair itself after an unimaginable loss. It's also a film that leaves us with questions, so we've had a go at breaking them down here.

SEE ALSO: What to watch: Best scary movies What's Daddy's Head about? Isaac and Laura's bond is tested by their shared trauma. Credit: Courtesy of Rob Baker Ashton. A Stigma Films Production. A Shudder Release.

Okay, let's recap: James (Charles Aitken) is in a horrific car accident, and when he dies from his injuries, he leaves behind his young son Isaac (Rupert Turnbull) and his wife Laura (Julia Brown). While they're trying to come to terms with this shocking tragedy, and while Laura is deciding whether or not to become Isaac's legal guardian, strange things start to happen around the house.

Their dog chases an unseen animal out through the window. Smoke billows through the woods surrounding the house, even though there's no clear fire. Isaac begins to have visions of his dad — albeit a changed version of him — talking to him from the forest and an air vent in his room.

As tensions rise and Laura becomes convinced she can't handle being Isaac's guardian, the creature's influence over the boy starts to grow.

What's the creature haunting them, and is it real? Isaac is haunted by a creature wearing his dad's face like a mask. Credit: Courtesy of Shudder. A Stigma Films Production. A Shudder Release.

We finally get a clear view of the monster at the end of the movie, and it does indeed look like Isaac's father. But it's a nightmarish version of him, with the changing face mutated and twisted, the limbs distorted and spider-like. But although the thing looks like a bad dream, the film implies that it's not purely psychological; three different characters see the monster, and it's able to do real-world damage. In short, it's not purely in Isaac's mind.

But whether or not it's a product of Isaac's mind is a different question. The creature's appearance is the first clue. We know that Isaac is an imaginative child, as it's repeated throughout the film, and we know he likes to draw monsters as a hobby. But when Isaac visits his dying father in the hospital, James is covered head to toe in bandages. Isaac never sees the extent of James' injuries before his death, so Isaac's mind conjures up something terrible.

Although the movie leaves the monster's nature up to interpretation, our best guess is that the thing is a physical manifestation of Isaac's horror and grief at the sudden loss of his father. It's all of his too-big-to-process emotions — not just bereavement and shock, but also suspicion and mistrust of those around him — brought to life. It turns him against Laura, and it makes him want to lash out.

But, crucially, as we see at the movie's end, it can also be overcome.

What's the deal with that skeleton?

For all its horror, Daddy's Head has a happy ending.

After Laura has saved Isaac from the creature and stabbed it to death, we flash forward to an older Isaac (James Harper-Jones) going back to his childhood home. He goes into the woods outside his house and visits the weird little wooden structure that acted as the creature's nest when he was a child. Inside, he finds a picture of himself and his dad, and then he sees a skeleton on the ground with the skull split open down the middle. Older Isaac returns back to his new home and wakes up Laura, who he now calls "Mum."

This isn't made explicit, but our best guess is the skeleton belongs to the creature. Isaac finding its remains shows that the creature is indeed dead, and while the horrible emotions he experienced after his dad died are still there, they can no longer hurt him in the same way as they once did.

Perhaps Laura risking her own life to save Isaac from the monster was enough to prove to him that she loved him and he could trust her — and it was ultimately this realisation that killed the thing haunting him.

Daddy's Head is now streaming on Shudder.

Languages are more than just a means of communication; they encapsulate the essence of a person or community’s identity, history, and culture. But languages – and everything that comes wrapped up in their complex fabrics – don’t last forever. And unfortunately, it’s the lesser spoken, Indigenous languages that are at risk of slipping away first.

The global threat to linguistic diversity is critical. UNESCO estimates that an Indigenous language disappears every two weeks so that by the end of this century, we risk losing 3,000 unique languages forever. With time of the essence, it is vital we embrace modern technology to help preserve these precious assets, stretching back thousands of years.

SEE ALSO: "Time is up" to regulate AI, UN advisor says Why Indigenous languages matter

Indigenous languages are often spoken by small, marginalized communities, making them more susceptible to the overwhelming dominance of global languages. As the world becomes more digitally connected, Indigenous languages face a higher risk of disappearing. If they fade, their rich cultural heritage and histories will be lost alongside any daily usage.

Preserving and reviving Indigenous languages is essential for the survival of the communities that speak them, and has benefits for society at large. It guarantees that all cultures are acknowledged and protected, which is an important first step in building a more accepting and understanding global community.

SEE ALSO: AI's exclusion of Indigenous voices is history repeating itself How technology can help

Published earlier this year alongside our partners at UNESCO, we co-authored the Hello Indigenous whitepaper to help forge a pathway to digitizing endangered languages and expanding the role technology can play in bridging an increasing digital divide. This was a proud moment for us and a significant milestone for Motorola and The Lenovo Foundation’s Indigenous Language Support Initiative, launched back in 2021.

Since that time, and with over 90 languages incorporated in its smartphones, Motorola has supported the revitalization of languages including Kuvi, Kangri (India), Cherokee (North America), Nheengatu (Amazon region), Kaingang (South/Southeast of Brazil) and Maori (New Zealand). Notably, Motorola was the first phone manufacturer to provide Cherokee residents with a fully localised mobile phone user interface and full support for an Amazonian Indigenous language. Finally, most recently, Motorola added Ladin, one of Italy’s twelve minority languages, spoken in the Dolomites region.

Technology provides a means to keep languages alive, but it also fosters digital inclusion by providing chances for these languages to be used in fresh and innovative ways through their incorporation with user interfaces. It becomes a part of users’ digital identity, especially younger generations, and gives them a closer connection to their heritage.

Beyond accessibility, these tech solutions offer hope for the future of language revitalization. Since the Motorola and Lenovo Foundation's initiative, similar projects have been created, such as the first-ever Nheenghatu Academy of Language in Brazil and Lenovo's Aotearoa Bilingual Keyboard in New Zealand. We hope many more will follow.

A global blueprint forward

The Hello Indigenous whitepaper was our call to action to support language diversity worldwide. Collaboration is at the heart of the paper's strategy, given it was developed in conjunction with Indigenous communities to ensure the accuracy of the digitalisation of their languages. By detailing Motorola's approach to integrating these languages into its user interfaces, it also establishes a model the wider industry can apply. The paper shows even a language with limited speakers — Ladin has only 32,500 — can find a place in the digital landscape.

The UN General Assembly declaring 2022-2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages will help sharpen minds, but action must then follow suit. As the global focus on Indigenous languages grows, technology holds the potential to bridge the gap between cultural preservation and modern innovation. The work done in smartphones for Motorola and the Lenovo Foundation, supported by UNESCO, is just the beginning. With sustained investment, collaboration and innovation, digital technology can become a powerful ally in the revival and preservation of endangered languages.

Janine Oliveira and Juliana Rebelatto are the leads of Motorola's Digital Inclusion of Indigenous Languages Initiative.

TL;DR: Put a second number on your phone with a lifetime subscription to Hushed, now just $19.99 with code SAVENOW. 

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Whether you're selling something off social media, meeting someone new on a dating app, or working on freelance gigs, you don't always want to give out your real number. Once it’s out there, it can easily lead to unwanted calls, spam, or even breaches of your personal information. Keeping your private life separate while staying accessible can be a tricky balance. That's why it's so useful to have a virtual phone number from an app like Hushed. 

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How does Hushed work?

This second phone number app works just like your normal phone, allowing you to send texts, make calls, and even set up personalized voicemail. You can even choose any area code, so you get to decide if you want a local number or to appear like you're across the country.

Hushed uses WiFi or data, so you can still stay in touch even if you're somewhere without good cell service. The best part? There’s no hefty bill at the end of the month. The annual plan is super affordable, offering 6,000 texts or 1,000 minutes of talk time. For many people, this easily covers the year, and you avoid the constant drip of monthly fees that come with traditional services.

Hushed is perfect for people who want to compartmentalize their lives: maybe you're running a side business, traveling frequently, or just want an extra layer of privacy when interacting online. It’s simple to switch between your personal number and your Hushed number with just a tap, making it easy to manage your contacts and keep things separate.

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Two numbers, one phone

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Use code SAVENOW to get a Hushed Private Phone Line that lasts for life for $19.99. 

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"Beware of narrative and form. Their power can bring us closer to the truth, but they can also be a weapon with a great power to manipulate."

This statement isn't just part of a speech introducing the work of Disclaimer's lead character, award-winning documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett). It's also a direct message from Disclaimer writer and director Alfonso Cuarón (Roma, Gravity) about how to watch the show. A slippery psychological thriller, Disclaimer prompts you to question its every moment, all while digging into the devastation of long-buried secrets come to light.

SEE ALSO: 40 shows we can't wait to see this fall What is Disclaimer about? Cate Blanchett in "Disclaimer." Credit: AppleTV+

Central to these secrets is Catherine, whose documentary work tends to focus on exposing the dark secrets of others. But when a self-published novel titled The Perfect Stranger shows up on her doorstep, she recognizes herself — and a troubling moment from her past — within its pages. It doesn't help that the book opens with a disclaimer that "any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence." Now, Catherine not only has to find the person responsible for writing the novel, she also has to stop its contents from imploding her relationships with her husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) and her son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog).

Disclaimer doesn't hold back on revealing the "who" and "why" behind The Perfect Stranger's existence. Running parallel to Catherine's panic is a revenge story rooted in grief. The avenger in question is retired teacher Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline), who's lost both his son Jonathan (Louis Partridge, Enola Holmes) and his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville, Queer). Jonathan passed away 20 years ago while alone on vacation in Italy, in an accident linked to Catherine (played in the past by Leila George) and infant Nicholas. Nancy died from cancer more recently, and upon going through her things Stephen finds a manuscript for The Perfect Stranger. It's Nancy's account of Jonathan's accident and the events leading up to it, which she pieced together with the help of some explicit photographs. The discovery lights a fire in Stephen, and he'll stop at nothing to burn Catherine's life to the ground.

SEE ALSO: 'Daddy's Head' review: Grief stirs up scares in this atmospheric creature feature Disclaimer plays with time and form to create a story where nothing is as it seems. Louis Partridge and Leila George in "Disclaimer." Credit: AppleTV+

Disclaimer unravels these many story threads over a variety of timelines, moving between Jonathan's final vacation as it's described in The Perfect Stranger, Catherine's growing distress, Stephen's revenge plan, and his and Nancy's mourning of Jonathan. Each arc comes with its own specific stylistic flourishes to place you in the mind of the person telling or experiencing the story at that moment, hammering home Disclaimer's ideas of narrative manipulation.

These flourishes are at their most visible during Jonathan's vacation scenes, which open and close with iris wipes to reflect both The Perfect Stranger's storybook account of these events and the movement of Jonathan's camera shutter as he photographs the world around him. Long, mostly static shots in the vacation sections also evoke Jonathan's photography, reminding us that we're seeing these moments through a specific lens. Cinematographers Emmanuel Lubezki (who has collaborated with Cuarón on projects like Children of Men and Gravity) and Bruno Delbonnel (Amélie, The Tragedy of Macbeth) contrast these more fantastical trips through Jonathan's past with cooler tones in the present, an effective reminder of the harsh reality Catherine and Stephen find themselves in.

SEE ALSO: 'The Franchise' review: New HBO comedy asks if superhero films are 'killing cinema'

Cuarón also incorporates voiceovers into the present. Catherine's flaws and worries are laid out to her in second person by an unknown narrator (Indira Varma). A guilty conscience, perhaps? Meanwhile, Stephen delivers his own internal monologue with chilling, poetic focus, the vengeful hero of his own story.

In lesser hands, this combination of different storytelling styles might be a confusing jumble, or simply too much. But with Cuarón to guide the way, every element of Disclaimer — from its varying narrators to the occasional near-preposterously heightened sex scene — fits together to build a devastating tapestry of how one event can shatter so many people's lives. And with all these conflicting voices at play, Disclaimer asks, "Whose story do you really believe? Which narrative will you throw your allegiance behind?"

Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline are astounding in Disclaimer. Kevin Kline in "Disclaimer." Credit: AppleTV+

Guiding us through Disclaimer's labyrinth are Blanchett and Kline, whose performances dig up the raw pain at the heart of the show's addictive thriller elements. As Catherine, Blanchett is a tight ball of nerves that gradually unspools as she reaches her breaking point. You may be tempted to draw comparisons between Catherine and Blanchett's role as Lydia Tár in Tár — both are renowned public figures whose lives are coming under sudden scrutiny — but Blanchett's Catherine is far more vulnerable and pained than her steely, commanding Lydia.

Kline's Stephen is no less pained, but he gets some flashier chances to chew the scenery and does so with gusto. From Stephen's increasingly nasty plans to his flowery inner monologue, Kline turns his character from a grieving man who wears his wife's cardigans to feel close to her into a full-fledged villain. Or does Catherine actually deserve what's coming her way? Everyone who reads The Perfect Stranger certainly seems to think so.

Cuarón's direction and Disclaimer's excellent leading performances — as well as strong support from the ensemble, especially Manville and George, who's tasked with a deceptively tricky part — help carry the series over the occasional clunky hurdle. Cuarón has referred to Disclaimer as being like a seven-hour-long movie, and that shows in some uneven pacing and bloat between episodes. Elsewhere, any exploration of the wider consequences of "cancel culture" — including a moment where Catherine is outright told, "You're so canceled" — falls mostly flat.

Despite these blips, the overall effect of Disclaimer is one of intrigue and of questioning the layers of narrative you see before you. With its commitment to formal changeups and a brutal knockout of a finale, Disclaimer is a puzzle that gets under your skin and refuses to leave.

Disclaimer premieres Oct. 11 on AppleTV+, with a new episode every Friday.

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The first thing you notice about Sebastian Stan’s performance as Donald Trump in The Apprentice is the voice — or rather, the lack thereof. By now, years of listening to speeches and sound bites (not to mention multiple SNL impressions) have accustomed us to Trump’s exaggerated intonations and speech patterns. So when Stan’s Trump first speaks, meekly and with few traces of the voice we’ve come to know so well (minus the slightest hint of a “‘uge” or “peoPLE” here or there), it’s a shock to the system.

SEE ALSO: 42 movies you'll want to see this fall

For director Ali Abbasi's biopic, that’s the point. Trump didn't just become the bloviating, corrupt egomaniac we're all far too aware of overnight. No, someone molded him to that point, and according to the film, that someone was notorious lawyer Roy Cohn (Succession's Jeremy Strong). Cohn and Trump's mentor-apprentice relationship kickstarts The Apprentice's propulsive, if not always effective, dissection of the making of Donald Trump.

What's The Apprentice about? Maria Bakalova and Sebastian Stan in "The Apprentice." Credit: Pief Weyman

The Apprentice frames Cohn and Trump's first meeting as that of an ingenue making a deal with the devil. As Trump sits awkward and alone in an elite New York City club, Cohn locks eyes with him from across the room. Strong's unbreaking gaze and some foreboding synths courtesy of composer Martin Dirkov drive home the fact that this man is the baddest of bad news. But after one conversation about how Trump and his father (Martin Donovan) can beat a federal lawsuit concerning racial discrimination against tenants, Trump takes Cohn on as his lawyer. In turn, Cohn takes Trump on as his protégé.

SEE ALSO: 'Hard Truths' review: Mike Leigh explores deep-seated anguish through darkly funny realism

Cohn teaches Trump his three major rules for winning at all costs. One: "Attack, attack, attack." Two: "Admit nothing, deny everything." Three: "No matter what happens, you claim victory, and never admit defeat." If you pay even an ounce of attention to American politics, it's not hard to read any of these tactics onto Trump's presidency and re-election campaign. But in The Apprentice, we get to see Trump try these strategies out for the very first time, using them in his efforts to build a real estate empire and even court his first wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm).

Sebastian Stan makes a solid Donald Trump, but Jeremy Strong's Roy Cohn is the standout. Jeremy Strong and Roy Cohn in "The Apprentice." Credit: Pief Weyman

As Trump embraces Cohn’s teachings and grows into a ruthless businessman, Stan’s performance changes too. He takes on many of the mannerisms we associate with Trump today, from his exaggerated hand movements to the rambling quality of his speech — the latter also comes courtesy of screenwriter and journalist Gabriel Sherman.

But even while Stan becomes “Trumpier,” his performance never veers into caricature. As horrifying as many of the things Trump does in this movie are — including an upsetting scene of marital rape — it’s clear The Apprentice doesn’t wish to ridicule outright. Instead, it lays out its version of events and the man who caused them and lets their absurdity and evil speak for themselves.

SEE ALSO: Watch Sebastian Stan become Donald Trump in 'The Apprentice' trailer

Central to this absurdity and evil is Cohn, played with scene-stealing intensity by Strong. Each focused stare demands your fullest attention, to the point that you feel like you're under a microscope alongside Trump or the other men Cohn sizes up. But Strong's Cohn isn't just all extreme evil, all the time. He finds some humor in his performance, often accentuating Cohn's tirades with a turkey-like neck bob that may just be the most mesmerizing thing in the film.

Since Strong's Cohn is such a magnetic presence, it makes sense that The Apprentice's best scenes are the ones Cohn and Trump share. Here, Abbasi's vision is clearest, showing us the genesis of a monster and the man who created him. It feels almost like a '70s-tinged Frankenstein story, with a graphic late scene of Trump undergoing liposuction and surgical treatment for his bald spot furthering the connection.

What can The Apprentice say about Donald Trump that hasn't already been said? Maria Bakalova and Sebastian Stan in "The Apprentice." Credit: Pief Weyman

Unfortunately, once The Apprentice jumps from the '70s to the '80s — a change accompanied by a visual shift from warm, grainy film to the cooler wobble of VHS — Cohn and Trump's scenes dwindle. By this point, Trump is rampaging through the real estate world, on a quest to go higher and higher. Meanwhile, out of sight, Cohn is dealing with his AIDS diagnosis. His absence throughout this portion of the film speaks louder than a hundred long-winded Trump speeches. Not only are we missing out on The Apprentice's best performance, we're also missing the twisted friendship that makes it tick.

Without Cohn around as much, The Apprentice throws us into a stretch that might as well be summarized as "Trump's greatest hits from the '80s." This includes several moments that gesture at Trump's future in politics, including Trump taking in Ronald Reagan's campaign slogan, "Let's Make America Great Again." (Earlier footage of Richard Nixon saying "I'm not a crook" also points to Trump's own criminal activity.) Yet these nods to the future fall flat, playing like dull historical Easter eggs instead of knowing comedic beats.

The latter sections of The Apprentice also hit us over the head as much as possible with things we already know about Trump: his lies, his affairs, his willingness to shove others under the bus so he comes out on top. These elements are all deeply ingrained in the current political moment, and you would hope that in an election year, a Donald Trump biopic might have more to add beyond rehashing his worst qualities. (Although that may be a useful reminder for some voters.)

The Apprentice almost transcends its rehashing of history thanks to Cohn and Trump's dynamic, which brings to the screen a genuinely fascinating relationship that may not currently be the most general knowledge. Sure, Trump is a showy figure, but it's his relationship with Cohn that makes for The Apprentice's dark, oozing heart.

The Apprentice was reviewed out of Fantastic Fest. It hits theaters Oct. 11.

Grief haunts a young boy and his stepmother in Daddy's Head, the second feature from director Benjamin Barfoot (Double Date).

SEE ALSO: Best horror movies to watch tonight: Scary movie picker

The film premiered at 2024's Fantastic Fest, where attendees also celebrated the 10th anniversary of Jennifer Kent's The Babadook, and it's hard not to put the films in conversation. Both deal with grief over losing a father figure and a husband, both center on a woman struggling to raise a troubled boy, and both feature a terrifying creature who might as well have jumped straight out of a child's imagination. Yet Daddy's Head forges its own path too, mixing its Babadook influences with folk horror to create an unsettling portrait of how grief can rip us to shreds.

What's Daddy's Head about? Matthew Allen in "Daddy's Head." Credit: Courtesy of Rob Baker Ashton

Before Daddy's Head launches us into a nightmarish creature feature, it introduces us to a nightmare that's all too real. Young Isaac (Rupert Turnbull) must say goodbye to his father James (Charles Aitken), who's being taken off life support following a devastating car crash.

Isaac has already lost his mother, and since James had no next of kin, his legal guardian is now his stepmother Laura (Julia Brown). While Isaac and Laura aren't close, Daddy's Head sidesteps the evil stepmother trope. Instead, early glimpses of home video from back when James was still alive paint Laura as someone trying to understand Isaac, even as he processes the arrival of a new maternal figure. At one point, seeing how much he loves drawing, Laura gifts him a set of colored pencils. Isaac is less than thrilled. It's a quietly brutal moment, one in which you can empathize with both Laura and Isaac. She hopes for connection, while he is still struggling with massive life changes.

SEE ALSO: 'The Babadook' filmmaker Jennifer Kent on how her character became an LGBTQ+ icon, and why we will never see a sequel

The uneasy distance between Laura and Isaac becomes fraught in the wake of James' death. Laura was certainly not ready to lose her husband, let alone be the mother to his son. Every night, she numbs herself with wine and home videos, all while weighing the option of surrendering Isaac to social services. Unsure of his own fate, Isaac plays games and yearns for his father's return.

You might think that return impossible, given the fact the film opens with flashes of his bloodied, pulverized face. Yet somehow, some aspects of James follow Isaac and Laura back to their sleek, ultra-modern house, turning their grief into a literal horror show.

Daddy's Head finds horror in the grieving process. James Harper-Jones in "Daddy's Head." Credit: Courtesy of Rob Baker Ashton

The spooky occurrences in Daddy's Head start slow and disparate, with flashing lights reminiscent of police cars blasting through Laura and Isaac's windows, and unexplainable fires popping up in the forest that surrounds them. Here, the film falls into a pattern: day scenes that ramp up the tension between Laura and Isaac, then creepy night scenes where a wine-drunk Laura experiences these strange happenings. Between this pattern and a series of rote jump scares, Daddy's Head falls into a bland routine for a time.

Luckily, things pick up with the arrival of the titular monster, a scurrying, smiling replica of James' head. (Or could it even be the real thing?) It lurks in air vents and calls to Isaac from the forest with a raspy voice that, yes, recalls the Babadook. Of course, Laura believes the creature to be a figment of Isaac's imagination, especially given all the grotesque monsters he's drawn around his room. Even its form — and the film's own title — suggest a silly, childish monster.

SEE ALSO: 'Daddy's Head's disturbing ending, explained

However, as proof of the creature's existence quickly grows irrefutable, how Laura and Isaac choose to deal with it will define their relationship going forward. Will they give in to the monster? Will they continue to deny its existence? Or will they band together and find common ground in this shared, traumatic experience? In this, the monster becomes a stand-in for grief, and for the emotional limits it pushes us to. Both Brown and Turnbull deliver moving work as two people with very different routes to take through mourning. Brown is all unsureness and numbness, while Turnbull brings a vulnerable rage to Isaac's pain.

Barfoot wrings scares from areas besides grief as well, especially when it comes to atmosphere. James designed the house Laura and Isaac now suffer in, effectively trapping his family in a prison of his presence. An unsettling wooden structure Isaac discovers in the woods makes for a folk horror-tinged counterpoint to the main house, and an ideal lair for the monster that lurks within. The slightest flicker of James' smile in the structure's dark depths is enough to send you cowering back in your chair. Equally chilling is the fact that Isaac appears not frightened by this sight, but instead comforted, his very perception of the world warped by loss. Yes, he may be haunted by a disembodied head, but grief and its impact are the real monsters here.

Daddy's Head was reviewed out of its world premiere at Fantastic Fest. It premieres Oct. 11 on Shudder.

Coming to theaters amid the fervor of the U.S. presidential election season, Rumours might seem to be targeting the absurdity within American politics. However, its aim is much broader, skewering global politics as a whole. More remarkable, this scorching satire from co-directors Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, and Guy Maddin plays like the unholy and hilarious spawn of Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie meets Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2. 

Penned by Evan Johnson, Rumours wields an ensemble of international stars, including: Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rolando Ravello, Roy Dupuis, Denis Ménochet, Takehiro Hira, Alicia Vikander, and Triangle of Sadness' Zlatko Burić. Most of these actors appear as the leaders of Democratic nations, brought together for a summit about some crisis or another. The uncertain nature of the crisis is just one of the ways Johnson turns the knife in this cutting comedy, where the world's under attack by some mysterious force our leaders cannot begin to understand, much less ably confront. 

What's going on in Rumours? Credit: Bleecker Street

The G7 event held at a vast and elegant country estate is intended to be a peaceful space where seven world leaders can collaborate on a statement for the world to witness. It's meant to be a statement so powerful and encompassing in its positive message that it will lead to equanimity, hope, and better marital sex — among other things.

However, somewhere between the photo ops involving an unearthed corpse called a "bog person" and an awkward lunch soured by too much wine and shady secrets, the world beyond their quaint lakeside gazebo radically changes. At first, the leaders can't locate another living soul — even to refresh the canapés! But before long, it's clear they are under attack, though how exactly masturbating zombies and a giant glowing brain factor into this peril is sort of beside the point. 

Cate Blanchett leads an outstanding ensemble cast.  Credit: Bleecker Street

Playing earnest Hilda Ortmann, the Chancellor of Germany and host of this summit, Blanchett welcomes not only the other leaders, but us — the unseen audience — into this event. Dropping the snarling intensity of Tár and the swagger cool of Ocean's 8, Blanchett embraces a bouncy, conciliatory tone, which swiftly establishes her Hilda as a people-pleaser who will bend over backwards until she breaks. 

Perhaps it's Hilda's own repressed emotions that draws her to the overwrought Maxime Laplace (a devastatingly dapper Dupuis), the heartbroken Prime Minister of Canada. While the crisply professional Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Cardosa Dewindt (Amuka-Bird), and the bloviating President of France, Sylvain Broulez (Ménochet), aim to crack into this supposedly important public statement, Maxime and Hilda wander off into a forest lit like a moody nightclub for some sexual sympathy under the haze of purple fog. 

Sylvain's self-important gregariousness is well-paired with the smiling but often silent Tatsuro Iwasaki (Hira), the Prime Minister of Japan. But the most dazzling comedy duo here is Rolando Ravello as Antonio Lamorte, the clownish Prime Minister of Italy, and Charles Dance as Edison Wolcott, the President of the United States who speaks resolutely in a British accent. (A cheeky dialogue exchange addresses this detail without actually answering it. But truly, in a movie this devotedly ludicrous, if you're getting hung up on a curious accent, you're already lost.) 

Together, these actors sharply navigate not only the uncertain terrain of Rumour's rural setting, but also the cerebrally silly tone that infuses every bit of dialogue and action. 

Rumours relishes in buzz words and blathering.   Credit: Bleecker Street

You know that very irksome thing where you ask someone a direct question — even a yes or no question! — and they devolve into a confounding collection of phrases and words that manage to add up to nothing? Though rampant in political debates, that's not an easy thing to write. And yet Johnson manages it infuriatingly well. 

Whether massaging the language of a delicate topic or conceiving a plan of how to find help in a world swarming with resurrected, wanking cadavers, these laughable leaders talk in extraordinary circles. At first, when they are safely in the refined setting of china plates and posh meals, it's comedic yet low-key annoying to watch them talk around crisis — as if the word itself is a foreign concept because of their, power, wealth, and privilege. But as they come to realize their positions as world leaders mean nothing to the curious creatures of this freaky forest, a delicious schadenfreude sets in. Far from a slasher movie, where the audience might identify with the fleeing human prey, Rumours invites us to cackle at these politicians' peril, dehumanizing them through mocking portrayals just as political rhetoric too often does to the common person. 

Of course, if you're not much for subtext, there's also the pleasure of Johnson's twisted imagination, which unfurls nightmare creatures with curious kinks and confounding powers, leading to scenes of surreal spectacle and humorous violence. Undeniably, there's a thrill watching the absurd mayhem of Rumours play out, even if you're not sure what the hell is going on. 

This surreally strange satire is a terrifically wild ride, fueled by the game performances from a charismatic cast and the deranged creatures into which they collide. Simply put, Rumours is a bonkers blast.

Rumours was reviewed out of its North American Premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie will next screen at the New York Film Festival. Rumours opens in theaters Oct. 18.

As its 50th anniversary nears, Saturday Night Live is unquestionably an institution, not only in comedy or in late-night TV but in American pop culture itself. It has launched countless comedians, cemented the arrival of up-and-coming musical acts, spawned iconic characters, and even influenced politics, through its much-covered casting and guest stars.

With his new movie Saturday Night, co-writer/director Jason Reitman — whose films range from the superb coming-of-age comedy Juno and the provocative mid-life dramedy Tully to the the horrid reboot Ghostbusters: Afterlife — wants you to remember back when SNL was a scrappy sketch show stocked with counterculture comedians, signifying a major risk for NBC and the show's creator, Lorne Michaels.  

SEE ALSO: 'Ghostbusters: Afterlife' is a soulless ode to nepotism

With Saturday Night (a nod to the the show's original title, NBC's Saturday Night), Reitman and screenwriter Gil Kenan (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire co-writer/director) dug through the Saturday Night Live archives for anecdotes, fun facts, and Easter eggs to reimagine that first landmark night. Set over the course of the 90 minutes leading up to showtime, this film aims to capture the manic mayhem, creative conflicts, soul-crushing obstacles, and larger-than-life personalities that contributed to Saturday Night Live's birth. And it fails. 

Concentrating the massiveness of SNL into one film about its premiere is a boldly ambitious project. At the film's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Reitman noted in his curtain speech that the movie contains over 80 speaking parts. One might admire the filmmaker's passion, but that's also the problem. Reitman, who spent a week as a guest writer on Saturday Night Live in 2008, is a devotee of the church of SNL. As such, Saturday Night is so stuffed with impressions and nostalgic callbacks that it's not much of a movie at all.

Saturday Night throws down a ticking clock that doesn't work.  Ella Hunt as Gllda Radner goofs off on the set of "Saturday Night." Credit: Hopper Stone / Sony Pictures Entertainment

Beginning on the sidewalk in front of NBC's Manhattan studios, Saturday Night shows Lorne Michaels (The Fabelmans' Gabriel LaBelle) fretting to an NBC page (Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard), who is trying unsuccessfully to lure an audience into this free, live comedy show. From there, the film will follow Lorne almost constantly as he dips into the set still under construction, stressful meet-and-greets with network execs, literally explosive rehearsals, an intense control room, and a fateful dive bar, all before the metaphorical curtain rises on his show. 

To enhance the tension, Reitman injects title cards that announce the time, counting down until the live show kicks off — or fails to launch entirely. But there's a prequel-like problem here in that we all know how this ends. Occasionally, this works as a visual gag, like when the camera cuts to the time just after a particularly anxiety-ridden moment as a mocking reminder. But as the film drags on with less story and more and more SNL fluff, this device turns on the viewer, reminding us how much of this movie we still have to sit through.

Saturday Night delivers a cavalcade of impressions.  Nicholas Braun as Andy Kaufman in "Saturday Night." Credit: Hopper Stone / Sony Pictures Entertainment

As teased in the film's first trailer, Saturday Night throws a bunch of young Hollywood stars into the shoes of SNL's earliest icons, like Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Chevy Chase (May December standout Cory Michael Smith), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), John Belushi (Matt Wood), Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien), and Jane Curtin (Kim Matula). Also in the mix are the likes of Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany), George Carlin (Matthew Rhys), Jim Henson, and Andy Kaufman (the last two both played by Cat Person's Nicholas Braun). 

To Reitman's credit, his cast ably captures the dynamic energy of the Not Ready For Prime Time Players. Hunt has Radner's childlike verve. Wood captures Belushi's wounded ego and belligerent brand of physical comedy. O'Brien nails the macho arrogance of Aykroyd, along with his signature Canadian cadence. Recent Emmy–winner Lamorne Morris brings a sophisticated smoothness to Garrett Morris, who calls out anti-Black racism on set and lights a cigarette on a flaming piece of fallen lighting equipment with equal swagger.

Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris in "Saturday Night." Credit: Hopper Stone / Sony Pictures Entertainment

Podany as Crystal is so dead-on in pitch that the comedian is recognizable from voice alone. Rhys harnesses Carlin's wrath; Matula nails Curtin's crisp comedic timing. In his dual role, Braun capably shifts from the soft-voiced pleading of Henson to the high-pitched buffoonery of Kaufman doing his "thank you very much" shtick. The standout in this group, however, is Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, and that's probably because he's the one who gets the closest thing to a character arc. Cocky, caustic, yet undeniably charismatic, Chase acts like he owns 30 Rock as soon as he enters frame. Smith owns the stride, smirk, and silliness that was Chase's signature. But sparks fly when he comes face-to-face with a bigger star with an even bigger ego. 

Saturday Night finds a great villain in J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle.  J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle in "Saturday Night." Credit: Hopper Stone / Sony Pictures Entertainment

Reitman and Kenan's script hinges on the conflict between the Golden Age of comedy versus the new revolutionaries. As such, Lorne faces off against snarling NBC executive David Tebet (Willem Dafoe), and takes a call from a derisive Johnny Carson (an uncredited role that's also the worst impersonation in the film). But most menacing of all is Berle, a well-established comedian who has his own variety show on NBC, which the movie regards as flashy hackery.

Berle prowls Lorne's studio like a predator searching for easy prey, riling the talent and brazenly hitting on Chevy's fiancée, Jacqueline Carlin (Kaia Gerber). This leads to the film's most exciting exchange, where two equal forces of braggadocio face off with a battle of wits that is absolutely crass and cunning. Incredibly, it's Berle who gets the movie's best punchline, involving a bit of wordplay about a choice "comeback" and Chevy's mom. Perhaps that wasn't what Reitman intended, and Simmons just delivered the hell out of that line. Perhaps this moment — which leaves even Chevy Chase speechless — is meant to reflect the uphill battle SNL had ahead of them. Regardless, it's bizarre when a non-SNL figure gets the biggest laugh in your SNL movie.

Rachel Sennott shines, despite an underwritten role. Rachel Sennott, Kim Matula, and Emily Fairn treated as set dressing in "Saturday Night" scene with Gabriel LaBelle and Matt Wood. Credit: Hopper Stone / Sony Pictures Entertainment

Sennott, who has awed critics and audiences in such heralded comedies as Shiva Baby, Bodies Bodies Bodies, and Bottoms, unsurprisingly delivers one of the best performances in Saturday Night, despite her part being horrifically written. 

Sennott plays Rosie Shuster, an Emmy–winning comedy writer whose stint on Saturday Night Live ran from 1975 to 1988; she had a hand in bringing together the cast that would be in the show's first season, as well as many now-classic characters and sketches. She was also married to Lorne Michael from 1967 to 1980, and Saturday Night is much more focused on this latter bit. It's not just that Reitman and Kenan's script treats her like Lorne's sidekick, someone who can dole out advice or a pep talk with equal readiness. It's that the longest bit of dialogue she's given in this movie is doggedly explaining exactly who she is to Lorne, detailing their courtship, relationship, and sex life to Dan Aykroyd in a tedious walk-and-talk.

Reitman overloads the film with such cinematic devices. Far from bringing the excitement or tension of The West Wing to Saturday Night, repeated walk-and-talks reveal little new information visually and make overlong sequences impossible to cut down. A perfect example of Reitman's reliance on this technique is a drug trip experienced by a tertiary character who winds about in mounting panic; it's a detour that tries our patience with no escape. This is true of much of Saturday Night, which is overloaded with tidbits that are potentially fun or nostalgic, but with so little cohesion that this love letter feels more like a rant.  It's left to the talented ensemble cast to keep things together, narratively speaking. While Sennott is beguiling with her trademark crooked grin and skill for biting banter, the role of Rosie is regressive, existing chiefly to inform the audience about Lorne. 

This is especially dismaying when you look back at Reitman's filmography. Juno, Young Adult, and Tully all had complex female characters who were funny and fleshed out! Notably, Reitman directed but didn't write any of those movies; Diablo Cody wrote them. Without her, it seems Reitman loses track of women's autonomy. But here, he loses track of much, much more.

Saturday Night fails to thrill or be all that funny.  John Belushi (Matt Wood) gets violent on "Saturday Night," while Lorne (Gabriel LaBelle) looks on. Credit: Hopper Stone / Sony Pictures Entertainment

In writing the script, Reitman and Kenan made some liberal changes from the facts of the matter. They include sketches and behind-the-scenes anecdotes that weren't a part of that first episode, and even cut an entire cast member from the story because his presence would have put the lie to their generational conflict. (Sorry to George Coe!) Such changes could be excused as poetic license in pursuit of good storytelling — if it actually added up to good storytelling.

Like Saturday Night Live, this movie is a frenzied collection of scenes. Some work, but many don't, primarily because of how this script chips away at others in service of Lorne. While weaving around sets and silliness, Saturday Night above all else paints Lorne Michaels as a creative genius. His main flaw is that he can't communicate his vision to basically anyone, which creates a domino effect of fighting, screaming, and violence. But far from recognizing these as consequences of Lorne's mercurial leadership, Saturday Night is infuriatingly conventional, excusing the shitty behavior of a famous man because he makes something that is popular.

The film treats Lorne as an underdog, put upon by powerful forces that refuse to acknowledge his (yet to be remotely proven) greatness. It's a tiresome, thin argument as it ever was. And in holding him up, Saturday Night reduces the female characters around Lorne to hasty sketches of the women they represent. The well-documented, damaging sexism on that set is addressed only by a tongue-in-cheek rehearsal of a famous sketch, where the female players turn the male gaze on a womanizing Aykroyd, to the amusement of the crew. Essentially, the actual sexism of early SNL is laughed off. 

It's not that any movie could be expected to capture the complexity of early Saturday Night Live. But in capturing that first night, Reitman reduces Gilda Radner to a smile, Jane Curtin to a smirk, Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn) to a running gag about quick changes, and Rosie Shuster to a sidekick.

Further confounding, Reitman spends a gratuitous amount of time building the film's finale, literally brick by brick in a tedious metaphor. Then, he fumbles the turning point that brings this motley crew of chaotic individuals together into an ensemble. What saves the day is not a group scene. It's not a collaboration. It's the re-creation of a solo bit that's not even from an SNL cast member.

In the end, Saturday Night is not an ode to Saturday Night Live. It's a fawning portrait of the men of Saturday Night Live, who are granted punchlines, complexity, and character arcs, while their female counterparts are left with scraps. Longtime lovers of the show may find reason enough to soldier through Reitman's aggravating fanboying over Lorne and the guys. But assembling such a promising cast, looking back on such a pivotal moment in American entertainment, and offering this? It's a punchline that doesn't land. 

UPDATE: Oct. 10, 2024, 2:33 p.m. EDT "Saturday Night" was reviewed out of its Canadian Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The movie has since shown at Fantastic Fest as a secret screening. This article, originally published on Sept. 25, has been updated to include screening options.

Saturday Night is now playing in theaters.

On paper, We Live in Time seems thoughtfully formulated to be the perfect tearjerker for today. John Crowley, the celebrated helmer of the stunning Saoirse Ronan romance Brooklyn, teams with heralded actors/internet darlings Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in a weepy romance of wooing and tragic loss. And yet, while peppered with sex scenes and adoring close-ups, this is not a hot or even sweaty embrace of lust and love, but a soggy handshake of a film that underwhelms despite its star power.  

It’s shocking how We Live in Time had the pieces that should’ve been the stuff of Oscar acclaim and audience adoration. But despite bringing together two of the hottest young actors currently working, Crowley’s movie is astonishingly middling, set apart from forgettable fare only by a time-skipping device that feels inexplicable at best and frustrating at worst. 

We Live in Time's plotting gimmick does not work. 

We Live in Time begins with a couple already so well established that they have a cozy morning routine. Ambitious chef Almut (Pugh) goes on a long picturesque run through a lovely forest, foraging ingredients along the way to use in her next culinary experiment. She returns home to a gorgeous cottage and gets to work in her pretty kitchen, while her loving husband Tobias (Garfield) is still sleeping comfortably in their bed.

No sooner is their bliss established over a breakfast in bed than the movie leaps back to before they met, when he was just a sad sack on the brink of divorce with his first wife. There’s thrilling chemistry following a literal car crash of a meet-cute, with Pugh’s signature charm sparking against Garfield’s unflappable wholesomeness. Other moments, like their much memed ride on a merry-go-round, are winsome. But they are tossed into this film with little regard to pacing or theme or any kind of apparent logic.

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Despite the flashes back and forward, their story is straightforward, the stuff of weepy beach reads. They fall in love while she is building her first restaurant, and he is dealing with the end of his first marriage. They nearly break up realizing they have different expectations around children. But they will overcome these issues, as they will her first battle with cancer and its brutal chemo treatments. The main plot of the film takes place once they’ve had their daughter and are faced with the recurrence of the cancer, more aggressive than before. The question becomes, will Almut endure another round of body-wilting chemo that may not even save her life? Or will she reject treatment to make the most of the time she has left?

The second cancer battle alone could have made an interesting movie. But because this screenplay aims to loop back-and-forth to show the breadth of their entire relationship,We Live in Time feels more like postcards of a relationship than a portrait that is fleshed out or remotely captivating. There’s so little sense of cohesion from sequence to sequence, it’s hard to get emotionally invested in these characters, even if you’re someone who has been a fan of the actors, as I am.  

Florence Pugh shines. Andrew Garfield is stranded. 

This is the kind of role that seems perfect for Florence Pugh, as it is a woman who is dealing with conflicting emotions that demand she smile and frown with equal passion. Almut loves her husband and her child, but also wants to be more than just “someone’s dying mum.” So when an opportunity to compete in a high-level cooking competition arises, she can’t bring herself to turn it down, even if it means pushing her body to its limits and spending less time at home. 

Again, this could’ve made a compelling story on its own. But We Live in Time aims to create some sort of balance by also following Tobias, who has much less to do. Where Almut is established as having desires outside of her marriage, her husband exists solely to mope when she disappoints him. He’s just Ken, an accessory to hang on her like an anchor. Which is wild because Tobias’s arguments in the film — for honesty in their marriage and for attempting a new round of chemo — are valid, yet undermined by a plotting that treats him as a clingy obstacle to Almut’s professional dreams. 

While Garfield delivers a soulful performance with big watery eyes, the scattered structure of the film gives him little to build on. Tobias is so thinly realized that the audience is left to fill in the gaps, perhaps with prior appreciation for Garfield or a general affection for Nicholas Sparks–style romances where the besotted lovers are doomed to be separated by death. In either case, the film on its own is frustratingly fractured. 

Crowley fails to elevate a lackluster script. 

To be clear, We Live in Time is not the worst movie of the year. That’d be the repulsive and abysmal relaunch of The Crow. It’s not the biggest bomb of the year, which looks to be Eli Roth’s messy adaptation of Borderlands. It’s not even a movie arguably enhanced by some sort of scandal, like Pugh’s Don’t Worry Darling or 2024’s other recent weepy It Ends With Us. In fact, We Live in Time will likely be bolstered by the incredible chemistry its stars are sharing on red carpets and cheeky promotional interviews. But on its own, this movie is far less than the sum of its parts. 

The cancer story could have been enough to sustain it. Perhaps with flashbacks to bolster our understanding not only of this couples' love but also the hardships they’ve traversed before. It could have been a delicately balanced story from both perspectives, exploring how sometimes even the choice of life or death is achingly complicated. But Crowley’s execution of Nick Payne’s woe-infested scribblings of a screenplay manages neither. The time jumps feel like artless novelty, attempting to distract from how threadbare this story actually is — particularly Almut’s first round of cancer, which makes up three short scenes.

While Pugh and Garfield give their all to Almut and Tobias, the chaotic smattering of scenes provides no build in emotional tension. In fact, jumping from the couple already together to not having met undercuts scenes of nervous flirtation with inevitability. It’s like for everything that might work in this film, there’s something else that works against it. Sequences like their first conversation in a hospital hallway and a birth sequence wildly alive with energy offer moments of hope that Crowley and company will cut their way through the messy plot device of time-skipping to hook into something unshakably profound. 

But in the end, We Live in Time is profoundly mediocre, lacking the verve, sexiness, and raw human emotion we’ve come to expect from Pugh and Garfield. 

UPDATE: Oct. 10, 2024, 2:41 p.m. EDT "We Live in Time" was reviewed out of its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. This article, originally published on Sept. 16, has been updated to include viewing options.

We Live in Time is now playing in selected theaters. It expands nationwide on Oct. 18.

2024 is proving a sensational year for the revival of the music biopic. Sure, it started off weak with the bog-standard One Love and the infuriating Back to Black. But summer brought the brazen rebellion of Kneecap, which played like an early Guy Ritchie crime romp. And the Toronto International Film Festival brought the wowing double act of Better Man, which reimagines British pop star Robbie Williams as a literal dancing monkey, and Piece By Piece, in which American rapper/songwriter/producer/fashion designer Pharrell Williams spins his life story into a Lego movie. 

Even when the stories hit familiar beats of a rags-to-riches arc, both of these remarkable reinventions make their material stand out through style. But where Better Man embraces a warts-and-all approach, Pharrell Williams — with the collaboration of heralded documentarian Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won't You Be My Neighbor?) delivers an inspirational animated biopic for all ages. 

SEE ALSO: 42 movies you'll want to see this fall

Glossing over the low points of Williams' journey earned the film mixed reviews out of its debut at Telluride Film Festival. But the more I mulled over what this movie does offer, the more I was won over by its playful, glossy approach. 

Piece By Piece turns America's biggest hip-hop stars into minifigs.  Pharrell Williams and Gwen Stefani in "Piece By Piece." Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features

To find the arc of Williams' story, Neville interviewed the multi-hyphenate star, his wife Helen Lasichanh, and a dazzling array of collaborators and colleagues, including Snoop Dogg, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, The Neptunes' Chad Hugo, Gwen Stefani, and many more. In an interview with Mashable, Williams revealed many of these interviewees had no idea their contribution would be filtered through a Lego lens, and only discovered they'd been transformed into minifigs when the first trailer hit. 

Neville's visual translation of these interviews includes amusing flourishes, like turning Snoop Dog into a Lego Doberman, and making metaphors about bakeries literal, with Lego Pharrell selling sweet treats the way he sold hit beats. In one instance, the idea of blowing one's mind with a sick bit of music is illustrated by having a smiling minifig’s head pop right off its base in amazement. These choices bring a playfulness into the film that not only is sure to delight fans of The Lego Movie and The Lego Batman Movie, but also reflects the tone of Williams' hits, like "Happy" and "Get Lucky." 

More than this however, by turning himself into a plaything, Piece By Piece gives Williams a creative distance to reflect on his own life as if it is one of his many media projects. Through warm narration, he opens up about his childhood in the Atlantis Apartments in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The colorful blocks not only reconstruct his humble home but also a more fantastical version of Atlantis, where an Afro-wearing baby Pharrell swims about with a giant goldfish as Poseidon looks on. This charming spectacle showcases Pharrell's imagination manifesting big, surreal scenarios, which becomes a recurring theme — down to dreaming up a Lego music biopic. 

Piece By Piece is a Little Engine That Could tale that kids will relish. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features

After this whimsical dip into brick-made oceans, Williams admits he was considered an oddball by others, confessing, "It broke my spirit." But weird kids out there (or the weird adults they became) might find solace as little Pharrell finds his crew, each of whom also revels in making music. From there, Piece By Piece becomes a story of succeeding by staying true to yourself and putting in the work to build your dream, brick by brick. Along the way, Neville laces various hits that Pharrell has contributed to, from "Hot in Herre" and "Shake Ya Ass" to "Hollaback Girl" and "Blurred Lines." (Parents, don't fret. Some of the racier lyrics have been delicately plucked out.) 

While it's initially fun to indulge in the nostalgia as Neville recreates iconic music videos with minifigs, this device begins to get old as the story of his rise makes for a lot of name- and track-dropping. Pardon the pun, but things get a bit one-note. Then when it comes to a low point — a necessity for any biopic or story for that matter — Williams pulls back. 

Piece By Piece can't commit to its big swing.  Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features

Rosy memories of childhood troubles is one thing, but sharing why his career took a dip is a Lego bridge too far. Instead of probing questions, Neville paves a path with platitudes about how his subject's greatest weakness is he has too many ideas. Colleagues speak vaguely about some business missteps or shameless yes-men who gave Williams bad advice, and these unnamed negative influences are imagined as a trio of gray-skinned ghouls wearing smiles and business suits. 

Here the film suffers. Even with the mask of the minifig, Williams can't let his audience into the dark moments. (On the other hand, this is where Better Man positively thrives.) Swiftly, Williams has reconnected with his pure inspiration, and the third act becomes a rousing celebration of song, dance, and Lego bits humorous and heartfelt. But this fumbled beat undercuts the movie's message. Being true to yourself isn't a one-time battle; it's ongoing. But with a community — like the minifig friends and family in Piece By Piece — one might get their block knocked off and still rebuild. 

Even with help from an on-screen avatar, can Williams not admit the ugly truths of his own story? Or did he and Neville fear self-doubt in anything but the briefest mention might bring down the joy of their movie? To that, I'd point to the other Lego movies, where the Lego universe and Lego Gotham are brought to the brink of utter destruction without us losing faith in their minifig heroes. Heck, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part even made the dark side of its happy hero the minifig villain! 

This wobble aside, Piece By Piece is a winsome reinvention of the music biopic. Animation is enthusiastically employed to bring the audience into the experience of being Pharrell Williams. The colorful blocks not only allow the construction of musical beats to become a physical act rather than an abstract idea, but also give a Ratatouille-like understanding of how this art form affects its hero. His synesthesia is showcased in waves of color as the beat bounces. 

While this colorful concept means Piece By Piece can be a hit with kids, it's easy to wish the movie dared to delve a bit more into the problems of being a grown-up. But all in all, Piece By Piece is a delight that could well have audiences dancing in the aisles. 

Piece By Piece is now playing in theaters.

UPDATE: Oct. 10, 2024, 4:24 p.m. EDT "Piece By Piece" was reviewed out of its International Premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. This review was originally published on Sept. 12, 2024, and has been updated to reflect viewing options.

SAVE ALMOST $50: As of Oct. 11, the Beats Pill is on sale for $99.99 at Amazon. That's a saving of 33% on list price, and the lowest it's ever been on Amazon.

Opens in a new window Credit: Beats Beats Pill $99.99 at Amazon
$149.95 Save $49.96 Get Deal

This year's October Prime day was a great one for audiophiles. Speakers, headphones, and earbuds from just about every brand were reduced to low prices. But even though Prime Day is over, you can still snag a great new speaker at a low price. There are still some incredible audio-related sales lingering at Amazon, including a big discount on the beloved Beats Pill.

Recently upgraded, the Beats Pill is the same speaker we've loved for years, but better. It may appear petite and dainty, but it's robust. It packs a serious audio punch, with the new, bigger, bespoke racetrack woofer displacing 90% more air volume, meaning you get a much deeper, fuller bass. Not to mention, it even has IP67 water resistance so it's safe from accidental splashes.

For portable listening, the new 24-hour battery life will keep you going all day long, and can even be used to charge your phone or other devices through a USC cable.

As of Oct. 11, the Beats Pill is reduced to $99.99 (down from $149.95), saving you almost $50 on list price. This is the lowest it has ever been priced at Amazon, so you know it's a great deal. This price is available in all the colors offered by Amazon: Matte Black, Champagne Gold, and Statement Red, but without the power adapter or AppleCare+.

But you'll need to be quick, as Amazon has listed this as a limited-time deal.

The Daily Mini Crossword is one of the many popular daily word games available on Mashable. Powered by Arkadium, the mini crossword offers a speed round of puzzle fun with clues that are sure to challenge experienced crossword enthusiasts.

But there's no need to let the challenge get in the way of your enjoyment! If moments are turning to minutes after getting stuck on a clue, find the answers you need to progress right here.

And when you're done, check out the many other word games you can play on Mashable, including a full-size crossword.

Also, if you get stuck on any other daily word games, such as Wordle, Connections, or Strands — we have you covered.

SEE ALSO: Hurdle hints and answers for October 11 SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable

Here are the clues and answers to Daily Mini Crossword for Friday, October 11, 2024:

AcrossBangkok language

• The answer is Thai.

Difficult

• The answer is Hard.

Wizard's wraps

• The answer is Robes.

Where most people live

• The answer is Asian.

Cuddly companions

• The answer is Pets.

More on Prime Day: Here are all the best deals to shop still live

DownThe items yonder

• The answer is Those.

Established practice

• The answer is Habit.

Fields of expertise

• The answer is Areas.

Passports, e.g.

• The answer is IDs.

Music genre

• The answer is Rap.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Featured Video For You The Wordle Strategy used by the New York Times' Head of Games

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to today's Mini Crossword.

SAVE OVER $100: As of Oct. 11, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra is on sale for $541.34 at Amazon. That's a saving of 17% on list price.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra $549.75 at Amazon
$649.99 Save $100.24 Get Deal

If a smartwatch upgrade is in your sights, you're probably looking at the classics: Garmin, Apple, and Samsung. Price can always be a big sway in a purchase of that size, so why not check out the latest deal on the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra.

A fantastic offering from Samsung, it truly is a great option for fitness enthusiasts across all activities, specifically those who enjoy endurance sports. It has built-in fitness tracking tools like heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen measurements, and dual-frequency GPS for tracking accuracy, as well as advanced sleep tracking.

The watch design boasts a bright AMOLED display with vibrant colors and brightness, and is controlled both by a touchscreen and physical buttons. A 60-hour battery will keep you going for a couple of days without needing charge and the 10ATM water-resistance classification allows you to enjoy both pool and ocean swimming.

As of Oct. 11, you can snag the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra for $541.34, a saving of 17% on list price. Not to mention, this is the cheapest it has ever been at Amazon. This deal is specific to the Titanium Silver, 42mm LTE model only.

Amazon has listed this as a limited time deal, so if you're interested, head there now.