Sentimental Value: A Review - Of Fathers and Daughters

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A fantastic film that boasts as superb a cast and performances as I’ve seen in years.

Sentimental Value, written and directed by Joachim Trier, tells the story of two adult sisters, Nora and Agnes, as they reunite with their estranged filmmaker father after the death of their mother.

The film, which is mostly in Norwegian with English subtitles, hit screens back on Christmas Day and is now available to stream on Hulu, which is where I watched it. (Speaking of Hulu – they are on a great run with their film catalogue this year with It Was Just an Accident, The Secret Agent and now Sentimental Value.)

Sentimental Value is a distinctly European film in tone, theme and style, which more mainstream viewers might find a bit impenetrable. But if given the chance, the film is most definitely worthy if for no other reason than it features a bevy of top-notch acting talent – Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning and Stellan Skarsgard, giving awards-worthy performances. In fact, the film, which won the Best International Feature Film Oscar, also received nominations for Best Actress (Reinsve), Best Supporting Actress (Lilleaas and Fanning), and Best Supporting actor (Skarsgard).

The plot of the film is that Nora (Renata Reinsve) and her younger sister, Agnes, (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) are hosting the funeral for their recently deceased psychotherapist mother when their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgard), unexpectedly arrives.

Gustav is an acclaimed filmmaker and his career is, like his life, fading. Nora, a stage and tv actress, and Agnes, a historian and young mother, are resentful of Gustav having left their mother and abandoning them as children.

Gustav, played with exquisite skill and aplomb by Stellan Skarsgard, is a narcissist and manipulator who is like a hurricane blowing through people’s lives.

Nora and Agnes brace for Hurricane Gustav but do so in different ways. His relationship with each of them is very different, with Nora much more resentful and emotionally stunted, and Agnes more forgiving and open.

Gustav, seemingly out of self-interest, has come back to his familial home where the girls were raised but from which he ran, with a new script he has written, and wants Nora to star in it.

I will refrain from any other discussion about plot, except to say that from there, drama ensues…and it is a glorious, complex, insightful, and revelatory drama that is extremely compelling, and despite its European/ arthouse trappings, thoroughly satisfying.

The acting on display in Sentimental Value is as good as any you’ll see in any film this year, or in recent memory.

Renate Reinsve is electrifying as the eldest daughter Nora. I first saw Reinsve in Trier’s fantastic 2021 film, The Worst Person in the World. She is a wonderful actress who brings a vibrant inner life and sharp complexity to each of her roles. She is a beauty, but a deeply complicated and conflicted one…never easily understood or comfortable.

Reinsve has some scenes in this film, the details of which I will not divulge, that are so great it made me want to crawl out of my skin and scream in agony and ecstasy. She is a magnificent and magnetic screen presence and one of the best actresses we have working right now.

Elle Fanning plays Rachel Kemp, an American actress dripping with all the trappings of American stardom in the movie world. Fanning is fantastic as the new it-girl thrown into the disorienting storm that is Stellan Skarsgard’s Gustav. Fanning is a fascinating actress. She is at once goofy and gullible yet also sexy and smart…a lethal combination. One can imagine an actress of her versatility and presence being a force in film for decades to come.

Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas plays the younger daughter Agnes, who is the most composed and least damaged of everyone involved but even she is not without issues. Lilleaas is an extraordinarily captivating screen presence who never pushes or forces things but just lets things be as they are and simply lives in the presence of it.

These three women give utterly phenomenal performances and the credit for that goes to, first of all…them for their talent, skill and commitment…but also to Joachim Trier for writing such layered and complicated characters, and for having such a deft directing touch with his cast.

As great as these women are…and goodness gracious they are great, the straw that stirs this drink is the ever-reliable Stellan Skarsgard. Skarsgard is good in everything he does, but in Sentimental Value as Gustav he brings all his skill and talent to bear and embodies his narcissistic character with a calculating charisma that is undeniable while also being repellent.

Skarsgard’s god-like Gustav is a force of nature and personality that alters the gravity field wherever he wanders and is consistently destabilizing and destructive while being blissfully unaware of the damage he does but not of the power he wields. Gustav has desperately been the center of the universe for the entirety of his adulthood, but now Father Time is rearing his ugly head and Gustav finds himself out of control and running out of time…that that dramatic clash is glorious.

Which brings us to writer/director Joachim Trier. Trier is a phenomenal filmmaker. His previous film, The Worst Person in the World, is a mesmerizing masterwork, and Sentimental Value is similar in its dramatic success.

Trier is one of those rare combinations of filmmakers that is an elite writer and an elite director of actors, and the proof of that is obvious in Sentimental Value.

Trier’s understanding of father-daughter dynamics and the intricacies of the artistic mind and spirit are astonishing, and his bravery to show those things without a safety net is equally impressive.

Ultimately, the distance between father and daughter is an ocean, and it can never be crossed…but there can be fleeting moments of understanding, glimpses across the vast divide, that reveal a deeper, more meaningful connection than most can fully, consciously, comprehend. This is the story of Sentimental Value…and it is a story that is well worth your time and effort.

If you like complex dramas made for grown-ups that feature stellar performances across the board, then Sentimental Value is for you…it most definitely was for me…as I thought it was one of the best films of the year.

©2026

A Different Man: A Review - The Elephant Man in the Room

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. This is definitely a flawed and uneven film, but it is also a film that features a fantastic performance from Sebastian Stan, so it’s worth giving it a shot on streaming.

A Different Man, starring Sebastian Stan, chronicles the travails of Edward (Stan), a man suffering from a severe case of neurofibromatosis, which gives him a grossly disfigured face and leaves him socially isolated.

I knew nothing about A Different Man before seeing it – didn’t know the plot, the genre, the purpose or meaning behind the film…and if I’m being honest, after having watched it, I still feel like I still don’t really know all that much about it.

A Different Man is not a terrible movie, not at all, in fact it has a lot going for it, not the least of which is a superb performance from its star Sebastian Stan, but it is a frustratingly uneven film.

I won’t give much of the film away…not even a whiff of spoilers here…but the first half of A Different Man is a really cinematically invigorating experience, as it sets itself up as a very vibrant drama accentuated by Stan’s terrific acting work.

But then about midway through, the film transforms and transitions from an intriguing drama to a rather farcical comedy. The tonal shift is jarring and, in my opinion, very unsatisfying.

The second half of the film is so tonally off-kilter to the first half that it feels frivolous and superfluous, two things which the first half most definitely is not.

That is not to say that the more comedic material falls flat…it doesn’t. There are some legitimately funny scenes and sequences in the second half of the film…like a discussion about JFK and Lincoln, it just feels out of place and like it should be in a different movie.

In fact, there are a few different movies struggling to break out in A Different Man but we don’t get to glimpse enough of any of them for this movie to truly shine.

For example, as previously stated this could’ve been a really gritty and gruesome character-study drama. Or it could have been a sort of absurdist, reality-bending psycho-dramedy. Or it could have been a flat-out farcical comedy. It ended up trying to be a bit of all of them and ending up being not quite enough of any of them.

This film is writer/director Adam Schimberg’s third feature, and interestingly enough, it is his second major feature dealing with physical, specifically facial, disfigurement.

Schimberg was born with a cleft-palate and brings a unique and very interesting perspective to the navigation of disfigurement issues from both sides of the coin.

He also brings a somewhat intriguing cinematic and narrative style. One can’t help but think that Schimberg has a great movie in him that he just hasn’t quite matured as a filmmaker enough to produce. I think once he figures out what exactly he wants to say and how exactly he wants to say it, he’ll be a powerful auteur.

The very best thing about A Different Man is Sebastian Stan as Edward. Stan gives a remarkably versatile performance which features existential drama, frantic comedy and everything in between.

Stan’s Edward, particularly in the first half of the film, is so well-done, and so specific and detailed, that it is actually shocking considering he is best known for playing Bucky Barnes in the Marvel movies.

Watching Stan flex his artistic acting muscles instead of his actual muscles was a joy to behold. Even after the shift in the second half of the film, Stan stays committed and keeps on crushing this role, showing a versatility and skill level that is astonishing.

Sebastian Stan was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar this year but it wasn’t for A Different Man, but rather for his work as Donald Trump in The Apprentice. I have not seen The Apprentice so I can’t speak to his work in it, but I will say that Stan definitely deserves a nomination for his work in A Different Man.

The rest of the cast do very good work as well, most notably Renate Reinsve as Ingrid and Adam Pearson as Oswald.

Reinsve is fantastic as Edward’s subtly seductive, arthouse, manic pixie dream girl, neighbor Ingrid. She is one of those actresses who so effortlessly commands your attention. She never pushes too hard and never gets lost in the lesser parts of the script.

Pearson, who plays Oswald – Edward’s sort of alter-ego, is a magnetic screen presence who has a such a vivid and visceral energy to him that he is undeniable.

Ultimately, A Different Man could have and maybe should have, been a different movie. But the movie that it is, I suppose, good enough…or at least interesting enough, to be worth watching.

The film is currently streaming on MAX, which is where I saw it, and although I think it has some flaws and some issues, I also think it is worth giving it a watch especially if you have MAX.

A Different Man is not a great film, or a particularly profound film, or a keenly insightful film, but it is a unique enough film, and better than most of the thoughtless junk out there, to be worthy of watching.  If you go in with tempered expectations you might come out feeling a bit more positive about it than I did. And regardless of whether you connect with the film or not, you will definitely leave it feeling a great deal more respect and admiration for Sebastian Stan as an actor and artist than you did going in.  

©2025