Sandra Huller – We Are Movie Geeks

PROJECT HAIL MARY – Review

*Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace in PROJECT HAIL MARY, from Amazon MGM Studios. Photo credit: Jonathan Olley. © 2026 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.*

Can a middle school science teacher save the world? With Ryan Gosling as the teacher with more potential than it first appears, he just might. In the intelligent, highly-entertaining, often funny science fiction adventure epic PROJECT HAIL MARY, we set out to find out, with a perfectly-cast Ryan Gosling as the science teacher plucked out of his classroom to try to do something incredible to try to save the world. PROJECT HAIL MARY is a film that exceeds expectations of what it could be, with great performance by Ryan Gosling, in a top-notch, visually glorious adaptation of the best-selling novel by the author of “The Martian,” Andrew Weir.

Like the movie adaptation of “The Martian,” this tale is science-forward and a thrilling adventure tale with a good dose of humor, about an unlikely man who finds himself in space, tasked with saving the world by using his brain-power, creativity and scientific skills to figure out how to not only survive, but save the planet – and more. Humor is a bigger part of PROJECT HAIL MARY than in THE MARTIAN, with its quirky main character, but this is still a smart, science-filled adventure that also offers the same uplift as THE MARTIAN.

Reportedly, PROJECT HAIL MARY is largely faithful to the best-selling novel. The film is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the Oscar-winning team behind SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, and THE LEGO MOVIE. Besides the frequent use of humor, PROJECT HAIL MARY is an optimistic film, offering hope and inspiration, which is a refreshing change from the dystopian science fiction dramas more common now, and making it a call-back to some earlier classic science fiction. Ryan Gosling carries the film as almost a one-man show for most of the film, and does so brilliantly, with charm, humor and heart.

Humor is a bigger part of PROJECT HAIL MARY than THE MARTIAN, often laugh-out-loud funny, but Ryan Gosling’s biology teacher in space, like the stranding astronaut in that previous film, has to uses his knowledge to figure it out on his own. But it is not just his survival at stake but the whole planet – and more – as something is destroying – eating – the sun. An international team has come together to solve the problem before the sun dims too much to sustain life on Earth. They recruit teacher Dr. Rylance Grace (Ryan Gosling), a molecular biologist who was ostracized from the scientific community after publishing a paper with a shocking premise, to help figure out what is destroying the sun, as part of a “try everything” plan to save the Earth.

But we first meet Dr. Grace as he is waking up from an induced coma aboard a spaceship, light-years from Earth. Grace remembers who he is but little else – not where he is, how he got there, or why he’s there, due to the prolonged time spent in an unconscious state for the trip. As Grace comically stumbles around the ship, he starts to figure things and discovers he is the only crew member to survive the journey.

Ryan Gosling is perfect in this role as this smart but quirky, funny and self-deprecating reluctant astronaut. The memories start to come back as this lone scientist starts to figure things out, which allows the film to tell us the backstory in long flashback sequences, of what brought him to space and why, while Grace’s space adventure story in the film’s present moves forward. Like in THE MARTIAN, Gosling records himself in little messages to himself about what he is experiencing, videos that are both funny and helpful narrative.

While it is only Gosling on screen much of the time, he does get some help from a few co-stars. Sandra Huller plays the stone-faced leader of one of the international teams working on the threat to Earth, who recruits the reluctant Dr. Grace to help with the project.

When Huller’s Eva Stratt shows up at Grace’s school, Grace argues that he’s just a teacher, but she counters by pointing to his biology paper with a startling hypothesis about life on other planets. Grace has a PhD in molecular biology, not astrobiology (yes, that’s a real field) but Stratt wants him to give it a shot anyway. Huller plays this character with a deadpan style that is the perfect comic foil for Gosling’s more emotional, oddball, non-conformist Dr. Grace.

Of course, Eva Stratt’s team isn’t the only one working on this problem, as many other teams are trying to solve it from different angles, and presumably, another team is working on this with astrobiologists. After all, it’s called Project Hail Mary because finding the solution is such a long shot – but the alternative is to do nothing and just wait to die.

Throughout the Earth-based part of the film, before he finds himself in space, Gosling’s Dr. Grace is reluctant, due to lack of self-confidence or maybe just aversion to risk, although when backed into the proverbial corner, he shows remarkable resourcefulness. His ability to “figure things out” keeps him on the team as they move towards finding a solution. But once he wakes up in space alone, he has to overcome this innate reluctance because he only has himself.

Gosling’s other major co-star is a space alien he meets when he encounters another spaceship. also with a sole occupant, sent from a different planet with a similar mission. This is no spoiler, as the alien is in the movie’s trailer, and the character is a major par of the story. The alien, which Grace dubs Rocky, is played by a puppet that looks like a rock with legs, winningly operated and voiced by puppeteer James Ortiz. Rocky is enthusiastic and energetic, and his comic bits have Gosling playing the foil, as the two, scientist and engineer, “figure things out” (a repeated phrase in this film).

Yes, the film has a little fun with the title, with Gosling’s Grace aboard a spaceship he calls Mary, but this is a smart if playful film. PROJECT HAIL MARY gets most of the science right and also delivers it in an accessible, engaging way. The most hard-to-believe part is that the world would come together to solve this problem, something that hasn’t happened since nations and businesses worked together to fix and ozone hole, and with current anti-science attitudes and lack of international cooperation generally, seems exceedingly unlikely now.

Visually, the film is marvelous. It shifts between close-in personal sequences, often laced with humor, as the scientists work, and gripping, exciting adventure sequences, moments of danger and tension, often in space. The film is visually astounding, shot for IMAX and with some 70mm versions out there too, so it is well worth seeing on an IMAX screen for sheer enjoyment.

Despite it’s two and a half hour running time, PROJECT HAIL MARY does not feel long, due to its level of excitement and engaging storytelling, but this is clearly an epic story.

All in all, PROJECT HAIL MARY is a smart, entertaining, not-to-miss science fiction adventure film, with a fabulous performance by Ryan Gosling, a wonderful story, and terrific big-screen visual effects. It is something to see on the biggest possible screen, and it is a film that holds up as entertainment through multiple viewings, while inspiring with a hopeful message that we can use our brains to figure it out.

PROJECT HAIL MARY opens nationally in theaters on Friday, Mar. 20, 2026.

RATING: 4 out of 4 stars

ZONE OF INTEREST – Review

The “zone of interest” is the euphemism the Nazis used to describe the area around Auschwitz, which included where the SS Nazi concentration camp commandant Rudolf Hoess and his wife Hedwig lived with their children, in a house right next to the death camp. In the historical drama THE ZONE OF INTEREST, we see Hoess and his wife going about their ordinary-seeming private life, trying to build “an idyllic life” right in the shadow of Auschwitz, while determinedly ignoring the horror that was happening right next to them. This chilling embodiment of Hannah Arendt’s phrase “the banality of evil” is at the center of director Jonathan Glazer’s powerful historic drama THE ZONE OF INTEREST.

German star Sandra Huller (ANATOMY OF A FALL, TONI ERDMANN) plays Hedwig, the wife of the Nazi SS officer commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Rudolf Hoess (played by another German star, Christian Friedel), as the couple raise their children and “strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp,” as the film’s notes put it.

Both Huller and Friedel resisted the idea of playing Nazis, which is no wonder, but the point of this drama is to portray both the ordinary humanity of the camp commandant and his wife and the extraordinary inhumanity of their actions and ideas, and the actors were persuaded when they understood the film’s intentions. A sense of the “banality of evil” pervades this film, as it focuses on their rationalizing of the awful and a human capacity to deliberately ignore cruelty, particularly in the service of personal ambitions. Glazer makes the point that this human failing is not something of the past, but something that could happen today. If anything, it illustrates how close this flaw in humanity is to the surface even now.

The idea of building a “dream life” next to a place of mass death seems both bizarre and inconceivable yet that is what the real couple tried to do, which required some determined, cold blindness to the evil on the other side of the wall. As the family’s father goes off to work, we stay behind with the family and wife Hedwig, who is thrilled with the large house and has remade the field next to it into a lovely garden.

The film opens with the family enjoying a beautiful day on the banks of a lovely river, swimming and picnicking. We watch them do ordinary things – throwing a birthday party for the father, watching the children play or going off to school, watching the wife have coffee with friends or work in her garden. Their life is comfortable, with a large house, and beyond it, a large garden with flowers, a patio, playground and even a swimming pool. Beyond that are stables for the commandant’s horses and fields and forests to ride in, with a river nearby. But the high wall the family compound shares with the concentration camp is just steps away from the house’s front door.

When Hoess leaves for his work, we don’t follow him but stay with the wife as she goes about her day.

We don’t see what happens in the concentration camp, but we do hear sounds, of shouting or gunfire, and sometimes we see smoke rising from the chimney or ash falling on the flowers. We see a few prisoners working in the garden and a slave-labor detail toiling outside the walls. Although there is no on-screen violence, it is ever present in our minds.

The private life of the Nazi commandant and his family is the focus, and following them, particularly the wife Hedwig, through their ordinary days emphasize their human side, yet slowly reveals the inhumanity in their characters as well, aided by their selfishness, personal ambitions and deliberate blindness. When her mother comes to visit, she asks about where the Jews are, and Hedwig cold says they are on the other side of the wall, in a voice dripping with hate. In another scene, we see Hedwig and some friends, even staff, go through some clothes. We assume they are Hedwig’s castoffs, until she picks a fur coat and takes it upstairs to try on, and we realize they are possessions of newly-arrived prisoners. A current of chilling horror runs throughout the film, as it coolly observes their domestic life in a distant way, and lets their actions reveal their true dark nature.

THE ZONE OF INTEREST was loosely adapted from Martin Amis’ novel of the same name by writer/director Jonathan Glazer. The film has been nominated for an Oscar and won both the Grand Prix and FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes. Glazer decided to take a very different approach to making a “Holocaust film,” by refraining from showing the violence we know is going on inside the camp and instead focusing on the Nazis perpetrators, to show their humanity rather than demonizing them, to pointedly underline that it was ordinary humans who carried out the inhumanity of the Holocaust.

Jonathan Glazer, who was born in London to a Jewish family, has said that this film is not about the past but the present. The British director shot his German-language historical drama on location in Poland at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The commandant’s house still stands right next to the wall of part of the camp but due to restrictions at the protected historic site, the director decided to recreate the house interiors and garden, which were new at the time, for the film in an old officers barracks adjacent to Auschwitz. Being at the actual site added to the film’s feeling of tension, as did the director’s choice to film scenes in the house with multiple surveillance cameras, which gives it a “fly on the wall” vibe.

The commandant in Martin Amis’ novel was based on the real Nazi Rudolf Hoess, but director Glazer leaned into that even more, researching details about the commandant and the time period when he was at Auschwitz. To be clear, despite the similar name, Rudolf Hoess is not the same person as Rudolf Hess, one of Hitler’s top leaders. This Nazi, Rudolf Hoess was the long-time commandant of Auschwitz and is considered a possible architect of the Nazis’ “final solution,” an efficient killer who was hanged after the war.

Glazer set the film near a time when Hoess received a promotion that would have meant relocating to Berlin, and his wife Hedwig became upset at the thought of giving up the beautiful house and garden she had worked on so hard. A couple reluctant to relocate for a husband’s job has a human ordinariness to it but we quickly are reminded that his “job” is killing when he meets with his Nazi “bosses.”

While the film is presented from the viewpoint of the Nazi family, it is not their point-of-view but a dispassionate observation of who and what they really are. Another thing that sets this film apart from most Holocaust-themed films is it’s use of experimental, symbolic scenes and that it refrains from showing violence directly. That is not to say it it absent, as it is very present in our minds, if not visible on screen.

While many scenes are presented in a straightforward dramatic way, a few are strikingly experimental. One example is a scene where the commandant reads bedtimes stories, a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, to his children. As he reads, we see black-and-white negative images of a little girl walking through the woods. Slowly we realize it is not an illustration of the fairy tale but infrared images of a girl who reaches her destination and begins pushing apples into piles of soil. Her purpose is mysterious until a later scene, where we see the camp’s prisoners taken to a site nearby working with those same piles of dirt, and see the apples embedded in them, and remember an earlier scene where the commandant rode his horse through a field filled with fallen apples. We make the connection that we were watching a Polish girl from a local village, secretly leaving food under cover of night.

The film’s sense of horror comes from knowing what is happening rather than any scenes of violence. We do not see the violence on the other side of the wall but we do hear sounds, of gunshots and shouting, and we see the smoke rising from the chimney. While the couple blocks out what is happening right next to them, we see one of the children become upset by the sounds. When Hedwig’s mother comes for a visit, she is unable to ignore the horror going on next door the way her daughter does, and cuts her visit short.

The tone of the film is cool and distant despite the intimacy of the situations. Scenes were shot in an observational style, with few close-ups. Both Sandra Huller as Hedwig, who is more the film’s main focus, and Christian Friedel, as Rudolf Hoess, play the characters in an emotionally restrained manner, with dead eyes and cold smiles.

Hedwig and Rudolf Hoess compartmentalize, so they can block out the horror and their responsibility for it. It is more about self-interests and personal dreams. The couple don’t spout Nazi ideas – but they talk about their personal ambitions and revel in living in material comfort. In one scene, the couple talk about plans for becoming farmers after the war, in a creepy fantasy of Ayran prosperity.

The film is not the typical historical drama about the Holocaust, not just by focusing on the Nazi commandant’s family, but by it’s fly-on-the-wall observations of the family and some artistically creative dream-like symbolic scenes. The style of the film is artistic rather than a more conventional drama, with surveillance-like footage, very tamped-down performances and some surreal moments, which might not be to the taste of some audiences.

The ordinariness of their family life, their behavior and discussions revealing their selfishness, their refusal to look at or take responsibility for the evil in which they are participants, serves as a reminder that the potential for inhumanity can lurk in the most ordinary seeming human, and therefor we must be vigilant about “never again.” The film shows the truth of the phrase “the banality of evil” and that the possibility of evil is not something safely in the past, but within human nature still.

THE ZONE OF INTEREST, in German with English subtitles, opens Friday, Jan. 26, in theaters.

RATING: 3.5 out of 4 stars

ANATOMY OF A FALL – Review

*Sandra Huller as Sandra and Samuel Theis as her husband Samuel, in ANATOMY OF A FALL. Courtesy of Neon*

ANATOMY OF A FALL begins with a deadly fall but another kind of fall is much of the fascinating, emotionally searing story, starring Sandra Huller, who was so outstanding in TONI ERDMAN. Huller plays Sandra, the German wife of a French man, Samuel (Samuel Theis) who is killed in a deadly fall from an upper level of their remote Alpine chalet home, a fall that quickly becomes suspicious, with circumstances pointing to the wife. The couple have a son who may or may not be a witness to what happened – if there is indeed a crime. Questions and doubts abound in this excellent drama.

ANATOMY OF A FALL won director/writer Justine Triet the Palme d-Or at Cannes, wowing both audiences and critics, and creating considerable awards buzz. Director Justine Triet’s drama is a near perfect combination of police procedural, courtroom drama, and psychological relationship drama with a deep dive into an unraveling marriage and complex family dynamics. The cast is outstanding, the photography striking and storytelling gripping.

The film is French and the story takes place in the French Alps but the film is mostly in English, the language shared by the German wife and French husband, and spoken at home with their son, with some French and a little German with subtitles. But because of the rules for the Oscars, this excellent film is not France’s submission for the International Oscar due to the amount of English spoken versus French.

Regardless, it is an Oscar-worthy film, and an impressive example of how an engrossing, edge-of-your-seat crime thriller film should be made.

In the film’s press notes, the director said that the idea of the film was to depict the downfall of the couple’s relationship, which we discover is teetering even before the fatal fall. References to the potential for a fall, physical or emotional, is everywhere.

From the beginning, with a shot of a ball bouncing down stairs, the photography emphasizes the steepness of the Alpine chalet home, giving us a sense that falling is an ever-present threat. Even the location of the house, perched on a mountain, reinforces this feeling of imminent falling.

The action begins with the German wife Sandra (Huller), an author, being interviewed in their home. Although the interview is why the young woman journalist is there, the author seems to keep delaying the interview’s start, asking questions about the interviewer, refilling her own wine glass and offering a glass to the interviewer, even though it is only mid-day. Eventually, the interview does start but as the interviewer switches on her digital recorder for her interview notes, loud music starts blaring from upstairs.

The author says it is her husband, who is listening to music while working on their attic, yet she makes no move to go and ask him to stop. After struggling for awhile to conduct the interview despite the noise, they finally give up and agree to meet another time, maybe in town. The author only looks slightly irritated, more sorry to lose the company than anything, while the interviewer is clearly frustrated, after having made a long trip.

The subtext that something else going on in this household is palpable, and our anticipation that something will happen as soon as the interviewer leaves is keen. Instead, the loud music continues and the camera’s focus turns to the couple’s son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner), who leaves the house with his dog, for a walk in the snowy landscape.

When the boy returns, it is to find his father’s lifeless, blodd-spattered body, face down in the snow, just outside their home. He yells for his mother, who rushes out of the house to find the shocking scene. Emergency services are called, as well as the couple’s long-time friend Vincent.

From then on, there is a flurry of police and ambulances, with the couple’s long-time friend Vincent (Swann Arlaud), a lawyer, arriving for moral support and to act as a buffer between the woman and the investigators. The first question is what happened: was it an accidental fall, a suicide or, perhaps, murder? The evidence seems to point to something suspicious, and those suspicions quickly fall on the wife. What had been an emergency response becomes a crime scene investigation.

ANATOMY OF A FALL unfolds like a police procedural and then a courtroom drama, but the whole while, an interpersonal drama is unfolding, one that reveals the nature of their marriage and the family’s history as layers are peeled back. A key for us, the audience, is the presence of the lawyer friend, who to be on hand during the investigation and to help support his friend, moves into the remote mountain home. There, he both consuls the widow legally and provides emotional support, but allows the audience to have a narration of what is going on, physically and emotionally. The lawyer is an old friend of the couple, and his awareness of their shared history, gives us an entry the couple’s private lives we would not otherwise get. One of the things we learn is that their son is legally blind, which may have an impact on what he can tell about what happened before the fall.

Through flashbacks to the couple together, including confrontations, we learn that things have been unraveling for awhile and why. These insightful scenes and conversations with the old friend, now her lawyer, alternate with the police investigation in the home, their interrogations, and crime scene recreations and later courtroom scenes.

In addition to the talks between the accused wife and her lawyer friend, we get scenes between the boy and a court-appointed advocate for him, who also keeps an eye on any attempt by the accused to influence what her son might say. There are, of course, scenes between mother and son, where she is solicitous and caring but also worried, both about how he will be affected by what has happened and what he may say or do with all that is happening.

ANATOMY OF A FALL is a film that always keeps you guessing. The woman appears dazed by what has happened and proclaims her innocence. In fact, she does not seem guilty to us but there are a lot of secrets about the couple’s relationship and a good amount of acrimony between them is revealed. Doubt creeps in, and we waver back and forth about whether we think she is guilty. We can’t rule out something that might have happened, maybe in the heat of the moment, but maybe more deliberate.

The effect is chilling but the film also makes a deep dive into the characters, revealing their past and their conflicted thoughts and emotions. This excellent film builds up a thriller tension as the investigation and trial unfold in parallel to its tense family drama, with deep insights into a failing marriage and complicated family relationships, all of which grabs and holds tight to our attention.

Sandra Huller is the amazing center of all this, delivering a powerful, multi-layered performance, while on screen nearly throughout. The other actors are excellent as well, particularly young Milo Machando Graner as their son Daniel, who undergoes a transformation as the secrets of his parents’ marriage are revealed. But the biggest acting burden falls to Huller. And she is supremely good, keeping us on our toes, revealing her character’s inner conflicts, her fears and anger, in creating this complex character.

ANATOMY OF A FALL is a title that might evokes another film, the classic ANATOMY OF A MURDER, a 1959 courtroom drama directed by Otto Preminger and starring Jimmy Stewart, but apart from being a courtroom drama (in part) with an accused central character, there is not a lot of overlap. In the case of ANATOMY OF A FALL, we follow the events of the fall from start to finish. Everything is in doubt, all characters may not be what they seem, and even whether a crime has occurred at alls is a mystery. It almost could have been called “anatomy of a marriage” but that does not cover it all either. One thing is certain in this fascinating drama is that there is more and more, as each layer is peeled back, in its riveting examination of relationships and events.

ANATOMY OF A FALL opens Friday, Oct 27, in theaters.

RATING: 4 out of 4 stars

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