‘The Secret Agent’ (2025)
A two-headed cat. A dead body lying casually outside a gas station, which neither employees nor police can be bothered to remove. A hopping, stop-motion disembodied leg wreaking havoc in a park full of late-night trysts. These are just a few of the unforgettable images in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s densely layered, magical realist political potboiler. Wagner Moura plays a humble university professor turned reluctant dissident, trying desperately to arrange passage out of the authoritarian Brazil of the 1970s for himself and his young son. Every time you think you have a handle on where this story is going, however, Mendonça throws another narrative curveball or dizzyingly surreal visual. “The Secret Agent” captures both the horrors of the ’70s Brazilian regime and the delirium of Carnival in one of the smartest and most unclassifiable thrillers of the year. (Oscar Goff)
At the Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square.
‘Endless Cookie’ (2025)
In my side hustle as a social justice film programmer, I’ve learned a lot about how other traditions tell stories. For some Indigenous filmmakers, the concept isn’t so much beginning, middle and end, but the ever-undulating cycles of life, family history and lore – with some culminations, but also always new beginnings. I can’t think of a better crystallization than this uplifting animated documentary by Seth Scriver and half-brother Pete revolving around taped conversations between the two detailing Pete’s struggles with schizophrenia. Seth is white, Pete is biracial (white and Indigenous), fluent in Cree and lives on the Shamattawa First Nation reserve in Manitoba. “Endless Cookie” is something of a mind-blower, gonzo and a bit meta. Among its digressions and side stories is a thread of Seth forever chasing funds to finish his film; indeed, it took more than eight years to make. But the matters at the core are isolation, addiction, colonialism and the harmful impacts on generations of Indigenous people, done in vivid, hand-drawn animation by Seth that makes Adult Swim look tame; the characters are all some freaky cool combination of human, dog and veggies, conceptual neighbors to SpongeBob or the Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The title comes from that cyclical notion of life, but there is a character in the film called Cookie, who, as you might guess, is a sugary confection with legs and plenty of attitude. It’s a kind of anti-Pixar (no offense) adult animated film reminiscent of last year’s Oscar-nominated “Robot Dreams,” and this past weekend “Cookie” won Best Animated Film from the Boston Society of Film Critics. (Tom Meek)
For rent or purchase on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video.
Cambridge writer Tom Meek’s reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in WBUR’s The ARTery, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom is also a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and rides his bike everywhere.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
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