Hudson Theatre, New York
Allison Janney and Joe Keery co-star in a powerful drama about a family reunion turned political minefield

Just in time for the holidays, Jon Robin Baitz’s family reunion drama, Other Desert Cities, is back with an even starrier cast than its 2011 premiere. The revival is a headline-grabber for marking the stage debuts of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Joe Keery, alongside the Broadway returns of Ed Harris, Allison Janney and Lily Rabe.

But if this raises eyebrows as a takeover of Hollywood vanity, those concerns are easily quelled by the performances – especially those of the newcomers. John Benjamin Hickey’s staging is well attuned to its cast’s abilities, more than justifying its speedy return to Broadway. This Pulitzer finalist play still has a lot to say.

An adaptation of Peter Heller’s 2012 novel never finds its footing with overly familiar survival beats and a glum lack of energy

Looking towards the end of an August movie dumping ground littered with more unwanted trash than usual, there seemed to be a faint glimmer of hope, a shiny treasure poking out through the dusty mass of unnecessary sequels and sex purge romcoms. Somehow, there was a $110m-budget adaptation of an acclaimed novel directed by Ridley Scott, led by a recently Oscar-nominated rising star with support from two Oscar-nominated actors and an Oscar winner. But why then would such a film be unveiled in between the summer blockbuster season and the upcoming deluge of prestige fall festival big hitters? A cursed weekend that’s recently been home to Jay Roach’s heinous War of the Roses remake, Dennis Quaid’s Ronald Reagan biopic and George Miller’s hard-to-define and even harder-to-love flop Three Thousand Years of Longing.

Ever since The Dog Stars, based on Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, had been yanked from its far more encouraging date at the end of March, there were multiple red flags flying and the rotten end of August has ultimately become an appropriate punishment for a limp and lethargic film that only briefly fascinates in pushing us to wonder what anyone was really hoping this would end up being. It’s yet another grubby postapocalyptic survival tale, an overcrowded subgenre that hasn’t just reached maximum capacity on the big screen but on the small one too. In a world of seven Walking Dead shows, the beats are now far too familiar – artfully dishevelled actors grieve for the past and fear for the future as they scramble to find and protect resources – and there’s nothing new or notable here to conjure anything but deja vu.

A talky, performance-driven two-hander manages to find specificity and spark in what could have felt like an overly familiar throwback

Hollywood is currently in an odd but oddly exciting place, where no one is quite sure what types of “films they don’t make anymore” they should actually start making again. We’ve seen historical epics such as Oppenheimer, erotic thrillers such as The Housemaid and female-led workplace comedies such as The Devil Wears Prada 2 all make blockbuster bank and we’re in the middle of a bumper year at the box office, edging towards a pre-pandemic total.

But around the edges or in-between the cracks, there are brackets of films that might once have been given a spotlight, yet are still being left in the dark. A film such as Miss You, Love You – a talky comedy drama about adults navigating adult issues – would never have been a smash hit exactly, but it would have occupied a space which has now mostly faded, a space where specialty releases slowly turn strong reviews into good word of mouth that in turn allows for minor, yet, impressive numbers, a sleeper hit with awards buzz. Made over two years ago and then screened for buyers at this year’s Sundance, with the help of Julia Roberts, whose husband acts as cinematographer, it was ultimately bought by HBO and shuffled into an early summer TV premiere, where it will likely go the unfortunate route quietly laid out by the network’s other purchased titles.