Pod Insights Pop Culture Happy Hour Great movies we missed About this episode There have been some fantastic movies released this year, and we know you can’t see them all. So we’re recommending four recent movies we missed that you should add to your watchlist: The Furious, Tuner, She’s The He, and Heresy.
If you need a few more fun film recommendations, check out these episodes:
Fun movies you may have missed https://www.npr.org/2026/05/12/nx-s1-5816384/fun-movies-you-may-have-missed
Our favorite movies on Tubi https://www.npr.org/2026/02/26/nx-s1-5725410/our-favorite-movies-on-tubi
We debate the best movies to watch on an airplane https://www.npr.org/2024/12/19/1220280835/we-debate-the-best-movies-to-watch-on-an-airplane
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This message comes from Rosetta Stone, offering an alternative approach to language learning. Without relying on traditional memorization, the platform guides users to intuitively think in a second language. More information at rosettastone.com.
0:19 Aisha Harris? So we cover a lot of movies around here, many of which we adore. But, look, we are but mere mortals, and some really good stuff is inevitably gonna pass us by, which is why we're taking a beat now to spotlight some favorites we just couldn't get to before. I'm Aisha Harris, and joining me today to recommend some great movies we missed on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is my co-host, Linda Holmes. Hey, Lynda.
0:42 Linda Holmes? Hello, Ayesha.
0:44 Aisha Harris? Hello. Also with us is NPR film critic Bob Mondello. Welcome back, Bob.
0:48 Speaker 03 Great to be here.
0:49 Aisha Harris? Great to have you. And rounding out the panel is Walter Chow. He's a writer, critic, and film instructor at the University of Colorado. Welcome back to you, too, Walter.
0:57 Speaker 04 Thanks so much for having me.
0:58 Aisha Harris? Yeah, it's great to have you all here. Let's get right into it. Lynda, you're gonna kick us off with your pick, which I have not seen yet, but I've been hearing about it for a very long time now. I'm very curious to hear more about this. So tell us what it is.
1:13 Linda Holmes? All right, so I chose "Tuner", which I saw at the Toronto International Film Festival. And what I found in my notes when I looked back at this movie is the comment, "I saw things at the film festival that were more ambitious than this. I don't know that I saw anything at the film festival that I found more entertaining than this." It is a crime drama directed by Daniel Rohr, who was the director of the documentary "Nivalny", which won the Oscar a couple of years ago. And it's about a kid played by Leo Woodall. And his name is Nicky, and he has hypersensitive hearing. And it makes it very difficult for him to move through the world because he's very sensitive to loud noises and things.
1:57 Linda Holmes? But that exquisite ability to hear has made him a good piano tuner. And he works for a guy named Harry, who is played by Dustin Hoffman, who has a piano tuning business and goes around to different places and tunes pianos. So he's basically the apprentice to Harry. Harry's wife, played by Tova Felchah, they're kind of his surrogate parents. And he loves and adores them. And one thing leads to another, Harry forgets the combination to his safe. And through all of this, Nikki realizes that in addition to tuning pianos, he can crack safes because of his exquisite hearing. It turns out those skills are connected. So he sort of gradually slides into this life of what he continue. He considers to be kind of pretty victimless crimes,
2:42 Linda Holmes? mostly because he wants to help this couple that he loves and adores who need help. Naturally, he gets in way over his head. At the same time, he is, he has met a woman played by Havana Rose Lou, who is a musician at a conservatory, at a music school. And while he's tuning a piano there, they meet, they become interested in each other. Part of it is a crime drama. There's a lot of heist stuff. There's a lot of running around and trying, you know, not to get caught doing different things. But it's also really fundamentally good drama about this guy and his close relationship with this couple that he loves and his effort to get into this relationship with this woman. And what I really liked about it is that balance of elements, but also it has a couple of filmmaking pieces that I really responded to.
3:27 Linda Holmes? It has a very jazzy piano soundtrack that I enjoy a lot.
3:31 Aisha Harris? I love a jazzy piano.
3:33 Linda Holmes? And if you think about watching a guy crack safes, the worry is it's going to be a lot of sitting there with a guy crouched down by a safe with his hand up to his ear. And what exactly are you going to be watching? Right?
3:47 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
3:47 Linda Holmes? There's a lot of really cool, well-executed macro photography, where they kind of go inside the safes and they go also inside pianos. And I think they do a great job of making it a lot more visually interesting than it could have been. I very much enjoyed all these insert shots of the lock being picked, essentially. But I enjoyed it so much. I really liked the performances. I really like Woodall in this. I really like Havana Rose Lou in this. And of course, Dustin Hoffman and Tova Felchah.
4:17 Speaker 03 Which is amazing.
4:18 Linda Holmes? Playing your loving surrogate parents. That's just a good idea.
4:22 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
4:23 Linda Holmes? And so I just found this whole movie to be really satisfying and entertaining. And I was really glad to see it because as you know, festival movies can be heavy.
4:32 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
4:33 Linda Holmes? And parts of it are a little bit heavy, but mostly it's an entertaining movie and I very much enjoyed it.
4:39 Speaker 04 You know, I really love movies about people who are good at their jobs. And they show details of people of them doing their jobs. This movie reminded me a lot of Thief. Those safe breaking sequences, right? Where you have this, this person's really good at it, or even Rafifi, which is another sort of safe cracking thing.
4:54 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
4:54 Speaker 04 You know, it's all about plans. It's about a person's really good at what they do. Um, it reminded me a lot of Shoot the Piano Player, the Francis Roche Faux film where, you know, it's like they're just, you're just really good at one thing. And it really, it's sort of a caper that's not a caper. It's more of an interpersonal drama. Yeah, really satisfying watch, I think.
5:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, this may be a me thing, but I, as a person who's worked for 40 years in radio, the representation of audio in this picture is really interesting and I, I thought it was very cleverly done. A really smart movie. It just really was. And Woodall is amazing. He's great. Um, he's just such an appealing guy. Is he famous from something?
5:33 Linda Holmes? He's been in a few things. He was in the recent Bridget Jones movie that they did where he's like her young boyfriend. He's done a handful of things. This is my favorite thing I've seen him in.
5:43 Aisha Harris? Yeah. Look, I'm the only one who hasn't seen this yet, but I'm definitely putting this on my list because you have convinced me. I need to, need to check this out. It's right up my alley. And look, ambition, it can be fine. It can be admirable, but execution is to me often even more important. So that's Tuner, which is in theaters now and on VOD. So we're going to go from, you know, crime caper heist movie, but interpersonal relationships to just maximum, maximum everything, violence.
6:21 Aisha Harris? Messages and and all these things. My pick is The Furious and I love this movie. If you are a fan of martial arts films like The Raid, you will enjoy this movie and I had such a blast seeing this. So this is directed by Kenji Tanagaki, who's this veteran stunt and fight choreographer. He's worked with Donnie Yen, including on Blade Two. So he knows his stuff. He knows what he's doing. And this is a movie. It's a Hong Kong action film, but it's kind of a very multicultural, multi-international film. It's set somewhere in Southeast Asia. They don't specify. But it stars Xie Miao as Wong Wei,
7:06 Aisha Harris? a mysterious mute handyman and single father to a young girl named Rainey, who's played by Yang Enyu. And Rainey is kidnapped by traffickers very early into the movie. Of course. Yes. And Wong goes after her and eventually teams up with Naven, played by Joe Taslim. You might recognize Taslim if you've seen The Raid, as I've already mentioned, but also Fast and Furious Six or the recent Mortal Kombat movies. This movie is bonkers. The fight sequences, which are were choreographed by Kensuke Sonamura, they are just so exquisite. They are so intricate. They are so sometimes balletic and beautifully choreographed. They up the ante, like Wong, the the lead of the film. He does an entire sequence,
7:51 Aisha Harris? jumping onto a moving truck that's filled with garbage, but also his kidnapped daughter in abandoned warehouse as well. And it's jumping all over the place. He's running through the streets in flip flops, in flip flops. And I was wondering, how are they still on his feet? He's been doing everything. He's been jumping. He's been, they're still on. And then eventually he takes them off. And I was like, oh, wow, this is, this is wild. I was yelling. I was like, when things happened. Walter, I know you've seen this movie. I, you've seen this movie more than I have. Four or five times?
8:23 Speaker 04 I've seen it four times. I'm gonna go in for another dip soon. I love this movie so much. It speaks so much to. You know, the first time watches of some movies just sort of linger with you. And this is one of those with me. The first time I saw it, it just felt like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this fits just like an old terry cloth robe for me. Something about this is really comfortable. There's scenes where he builds like pyramids out of the bodies of his vanquished. He's climbing up the bodies as he's stacking them on top of each other because they keep coming at him. It is indescribable as a kind of piece of moving art in a way. You know, on the one hand, it's horribly violent and, you know, it's hard to recommend it to grandma. But on my hand,
9:04 Speaker 04 I look at it like, you know, this is beautiful in a way. The choreography is so meticulous. It has to be. And the imagination. How do we film a fight sequence now after we've seen ten gazillion fight sequences over the course of, you know, how do we make it new and interesting and innovative? How do we make the stakes appropriately high? You mentioned the raid and, you know, this generation of fight choreographers that are redefining what it is to look at fights. You know, John Woo did this for the last generation, right? And it just lifts you. And I've been needing a lot of like lifting of late. And so I just kept finding myself, you know, kind of wandering back into screenings of this film. Saying, you know, I gotta just go watch the Furious again. This is exactly what I needed right at this moment to watch.
9:48 Speaker 04 Just everything is so witty, visually witty and inventive, you know, from the flip, the detail of the flip flops to the the callouts to the big boss with the blocks of ice or walking on glass, the diehard of all things. You know, they're they're callouts to the entire history of great action cinema culminating to this point. It's really plays like a history lesson of action films. Um, if you're so inclined, or it's just, you know, it's just one of those movies that I always rail against when people say turn off your brain and watch it. Well, this is one of those movies. You could do that.
10:16 Aisha Harris? You could absolutely do that.
10:18 Speaker 04 Just get lost in it.
10:19 Aisha Harris? It's really great. The only thing I will say is like, thankfully, our producer Liz Metzger warned me ahead of time before I saw it. But like, I do warn people that the actors appear to also be speaking in English, but like, it doesn't always sync up well. So I see. It's giving that like, you know, that adds to the charm, I think, but it's also a little disorienting because it's like, we're clearly not in. A place where you would expect people to be speaking English, but like most characters are speaking English. And also, like, most of the text is written in English. Like, the police station emblem is in English. I'm like, OK, sure. Clearly, they had international audiences in mind, although I always would prefer no dubbing. But again, it also adds to the charm in a way.
11:03 Aisha Harris? It feels like watching an old school movie, like, action movie in that way.
11:06 Speaker 04 I would also offer the trigger warning that it is about child trafficking. And some children are harmed during the course of the film. So if that is your major red line, then I would say be careful with care. But, boy, the people that deserve to get what they get, get it. And I-
11:21 Aisha Harris? Yes, they do.
11:23 Linda Holmes? You know, I haven't seen this one, but people who have seen action movies with me know that sometimes when something really ridiculous happens, then when it finally you get to the end of whatever the stunt is, I will literally sit there in the theater and go, yay! And it seems like a yay kind of movie, so, you know.
11:41 Speaker 04 Exactly.
11:42 Linda Holmes? Perhaps I'll give it a shot.
11:43 Aisha Harris? Well, that is The Furious, and that is in theaters now. And again, please try and go see this in a theater because it is that communal experience that you, we love. Heartbreak feels good in a place like this, blah, blah, blah. All right, after the break, we've got some more recommendations, so stick around.
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12:54 Aisha Harris? All right, we are back and Bob, it is your turn. Tell us your pick.
12:59 Speaker 03 Well, I have been spending a goodly portion of this month watching films that have some association with Pride. A lot of films aimed at teenagers, as it turns out, that are being given a sort of a queer angle, one way or the other. And of them, the one that I just sort of fell over for is She's the He. There are two guys in high school, they're best friends, they really want the girls to notice them and so they come up with this harebrained plan. Well, their plan is that they're going to pretend to be trans. And that, why that would work, I'm not sure. I think you have to be a 17-year-old who's a little warped by hormones to think of
13:44 Speaker 03 that in the first place, but it's a plan and they go for it big time. Now, the interesting thing about this movie is that it is produced by, behind the scenes in it, everybody on screen practically is queer and most of them are trans or non-binary. And Siobhan McCarthy, who made the film, has made it in the most interesting way possible. If you think that, for instance, the whole bathroom scare thing makes sense, you're going to be challenged really quickly in this when the entire football team decides to dress up in women's clothing, emulating these two guys, to get into the girls' locker room, right?
14:25 Speaker 03 I mean, it's silly, it allows for boisterous laughter, but at the same time, it points up how ridiculous this would be in real life, that this sort of thing would be unlikely to happen. And the whole film is like that. The stars playing Alex and Ethan, a wonderful, really sharp trans comic plays Alex, his name is Nico Carney, his read on toxic masculinity is so funny.
14:51 Aisha Harris? Yes.
14:52 Speaker 03 I mean, it's just, it's delightful to watch him. And Misha Osherevich is sweetly affecting as Ethan discovers her true self. And it's a wonderful performance. But what's What's interesting is that all of these theoretically cis male characters are also being played by trans and non-binary performers. And it pops for me. I thought the whole thing popped. It's really funny and it's fun to watch. It's just fun.
15:18 Linda Holmes? Yeah, you know, Bob, it's amazing to me because this sounds when you set it up, I have not seen it. Like the worst, most transphobic eighties teenage comedy. And that's what I find fascinating about your description is that it jumps off of this premise. That is so similar to what's been done so unkindly and
15:39 Speaker 03 Right.
15:40 Linda Holmes? From such a small minded place. And it's fascinating to hear that it's so different from that.
15:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think their whole idea is to make a film for the trans community. That shows up all of these crazy notions in a way that is effective. And I think they've really done it. I was very impressed.
15:58 Speaker 04 You know, I think what Bob's really hitting on that I love is that it's very light. You know, you don't feel as though you're getting pounded with a message. It is.
16:07 Speaker 03 True.
16:08 Speaker 04 You don't feel like there's a soapbox and it reminded me a lot of a film like 500 Days of Summer. You know, where it's very lighthearted and there's a lot of magical realism. I think that goes through there. You know, graphics appear on screen, kind of flutter and squiggly and they're taking very serious topics and treating them intelligently, but lightly.
16:25 Linda Holmes? Yeah.
16:25 Speaker 04 Not as though the topics are light, but in a way that, you know, the audience that most needs to see it potentially will see it. And you know, there's so much joy in it as well. And I think so often whenever we see depictions of of the LGBTQ community, it's through their pain. And then that's that's similar to how, you know, many mainstream depictions of minorities are in films is like, even if we're just sidekick characters, we're the ones that are suffering for the whatever. And you see a different side of it, you know, there's certainly pain in the film, but there's also a lot of joy. And there's a lot of friendship and what acceptance might look like from someone who's having difficulty accepting. You know, their buddy is suddenly trans, uh, suddenly trans.
17:08 Speaker 04 And for people who are just like, of course you're trans. I knew it from the very first day. You know, there's a whole spectrum of acceptance. Acceptance in this, and that's kind of lovely, too. It's something that we all need to see, I think, especially people who are resistant to the very idea, you know, to your point, Bob, are able to see an example of someone who is resistant to the idea, who loves their friend more than they love their ideology.
17:29 Speaker 03 It's as if American Pie meets, I don't know, but Some Like It Hot meets Heartstopper, right?
17:36 Aisha Harris? Some Like It Hot was definitely something that was on my mind as well, just the Jack Lemmon character sort of
17:41 Speaker 03 Right.
17:41 Aisha Harris? realizing that maybe he actually enjoys dressing as a woman. And obviously, that was, you know, sixty plus years ago. So it's like, the way we interpret that movie is very different, but like, there is that sense that that movie is not judging its characters. I'm so glad that you picked this, Bob. It's very fun.
18:00 Speaker 04 I think it's really special.
18:01 Aisha Harris? Yeah, yeah. Well, that's She's the He, and yes, it's in some theaters now and will be available on BOD June 30th. So, seek it out, go find it. And finally, Walter, we're gonna end with you, and you're gonna tell us what we have missed, or what maybe a lot of people have missed.
18:20 Speaker 04 Oh, man, this is really amazing folk horror film. I've really been getting into folk horror in the last few years. And this was a new one, though. It just had just landed on Shudder. It made the festival circuit last year and the year before under a title of Vita Vivian is its original title. It means wise woman. And now it's called Heresy, and it's streaming on Shudder. It is a Dutch production, but they translated their entire screenplay into Saxon. And they have everybody speaking in Saxon throughout the course of it, just to be more period precise. It's about a small village during the Middle Ages, in which a woman, a young wife, played by Annika Sluders, is incapable of conceiving, and that's just anathema to their village, you know, that's not,
19:05 Speaker 04 okay, here's something wrong with you. That's the kind of environment that we're in, this really deeply superstitious, very fundamentalist religious film. And it opens with just these dark images of a village, you know, at night, and these prayers that you can hear coming from all of the houses, these furtive prayers against whatever it is. That's out in the wilderness. Everyone's terrified all the time. I would be. I'm scared going camping. I'm scared walking to my car at night. I'll be honest. And so there's this real terror that seeps into every frame of this. And eventually is lured, the young wife, into the woods where she meets, indeed, the creatures of the wood, creatures taken from from Dutch folklore.
19:47 Speaker 04 The practical effects, the monster work, the everything about this movie is gorgeous, meticulous, fascinating to look at. There is one moment of extreme gore that's also very beautiful in a way. It's like a couple of moments during this film of just this real beauty, this real poetry about a woman fighting her power and finding her voice in these primordial beliefs and pagan rituals, if you will. I love it. It is beautiful. You are steeped into this time and this place. It feels dirty and cold and miserable for a lot of it. It just looks great and it moves great. I've become very evangelical for this film. I want to tell everybody about it.
20:30 Speaker 04 I want to show it to everybody. And it's one of those movies that, you know, man, I know you don't like gore and everything, but this is so beautiful. And there's only this little bit of gore. Just suffer it or turn away for that moment. But actually, don't look at it. It is sculptural.
20:44 Linda Holmes? When you tell me they're sculptural gore, Walter, I start to get worried.
20:49 Speaker 04 It's like it's like those episodes of Hannibal, right? Where you're like, oh.
20:53 Linda Holmes? No, I know. I get it.
20:54 Speaker 04 It's awful. And also, so there's that kind of awful, awesome thing that's going on here. But overall, just the entire vibe of it is absolutely for me.
21:04 Aisha Harris? Yeah. Well, when you say practical effects, I'm in because I love, I love a good practical effect and it sounds gorgeous.
21:12 Speaker 04 It's just a beautiful, beautiful little poem.
21:15 Aisha Harris? Awesome. Well, thank you, Walter. And that's Heresy. It's streaming on Shudder and AMC Plus. And it was really, really fun to talk to you all about all of these movies. That brings us to the end of our show. Bob Mandela, Walter Chow, and Linda Holmes. Thanks so much for being here and recommending some really great films that people should go and check out.
21:37 Speaker 04 What a joy. Thanks for having us.
21:38 Speaker 03 Great fun.
21:39 Linda Holmes? Yeah, thank you.
21:41 Aisha Harris? And this episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Mike Katsoff, and edited by art showrunner Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. And thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all next time.
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