Jack Hewitt

For all The Birthday Party’s faults, the benefits of her assured direction, a confident and watchable cast, and further dissection of the film’s signature themes of generational trauma are obfuscated by unignorable flaws.

While not quite at his satirical best, The Diary of a Chambermaid has a more muted tone that helps foreground the maturity of Jude’s form and continues the quieter tension he began exploring after the balls-to-the-wall “Dracula.” Not a story of unrest, but rather one of rest against the friction of your surroundings.

Jude forces us into discomfort, looping cultural critique into grotesque comedy. If he intended to hold a mirror to the digital age’s self-destructive behaviors, sucking identity, myth, even creativity into an algorithmic blender, “Dracula” surely succeeds. It’s rattling, ridiculous, and in its own way, wholly necessary, though not always sustainable over its nearly three hours of absurdity.

Although not as strong as “Plan 75,” Hayakawa draws from her personal experiences to craft a deliberately paced, nostalgic story that warmly touches upon universal themes of grief, childhood imagination, and the bonds of family from this life and beyond.