‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ Review: They Let The Weeknd Make a Movie

May 15, 2025

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Two people hurrying up (CREDIT: Andrew Cooper)

Starring: Abel Tesfaye, Jenna Ortega, Barry Keoghan, Riley Keough

Director: Trey Edward Shults

Running Time: 105 Minutes

Rating: R for Some Language, a Few Drugs, and a Scuffle

Release Date: May 16, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: In the woozy fantasia Hurry Up Tomorrow, Abel Tesfaye aka The Weeknd plays an alternate version of himself who’s really going through some stuff right now. His girlfriend has just left him, but he can’t focus on that right now, because he’s in the midst of a tour and his manager (Barry Keoghan) keeps hyping him up to go out and crush it. But what he really needs to do right now is slow down and rest his aching vocal cords. Into this psychological powder keg waltzes an unstable fan named Anima (Jenna Ortega) who’s introduced while burning down a house in the middle of nowhere. She and Abel hit it off, only to then dive headlong into a nightmare.

What Made an Impression?: To Be So Vain: When was the last time we were blessed to witness a vanity project as shameless as this one? I didn’t realize that The Weeknd even had the cachet to get a major theatrical release like this greenlit. (Although I suppose he did play the Super Bowl Halftime Show a few years ago.) Anyway, I’m not complaining. All artists should be given the space to let their creative ids run loose (even if the results are profoundly messy), just so long as nobody gets hurt.
Will You Let Us In?: Although I suppose the case could be made that some people could in fact get hurt by suffering through the experience of watching this movie. I wouldn’t go that far, but it would’ve been nice if it had been a little esoteric. I’m enough of a fan of The Weeknd that I’ve listened to all of his albums and sung him at karaoke once or twice, but not so big a stan that I’m attending concerts or scrubbing the lyrics for Easter eggs or whatever. Maybe his most ardent obsessives will find plenty to vibe with in Hurry Up Tomorrow. I however am perfectly okay with keeping all that at arm’s length. The Weeknd’s headspace is just too dang melancholic.
Letting a Little Bit Loose: Hurry Up Tomorrow isn’t too bad if you just treat it as a series of dreamy images washing over you and ignore whatever semblance of a plot there is. But within the chaos, there is one genuinely great scene in which Anima has Abel tied up Misery-style as she forces him to listen to her critical analyses of some of his recent songs. And yes, we do get a few new signature Jenna Ortega Dance Moves out of the bargain. It’s kinda stupid, but it breaks the tension nicely.

Hurry Up Tomorrow is Recommended If You Like: Being held hostage

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Phone Calls

Adam Sandler is Unbound in the Almost Unbearably Intense ‘Uncut Gems’

December 12, 2019

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

CREDIT: A24

Starring: Adam Sandler, Kevin Garnett, Julia Fox, Lakeith Stanfield, Idina Menzel, Eric Bogosian, Abel Tesfaye, Judd Hirsch, Mike Francesa

Director: Ben and Josh Safdie

Running Time: 134 Minutes

Rating: R for Shouted Overlapping Profanity, the Violence of High-Stakes Gambling, and a Few Sexy Times

Release Date: December 13, 2019 (Limited)

I know some people who don’t love sports but are able to appreciate athletics when it’s in a movie because you really get to see the emotions and stories behind the games. That has perhaps never been more viscerally true than it is in the climax of Uncut Gems, which hinges on a specific stat line in the deciding game in the 2012 NBA Eastern Conference semifinals between the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers. There are millions of dollars at stake in high-profile events like these, and writing-directing brother Josh and Benny Safdie were astute enough to realize that they could craft a particularly gripping narrative out of one story behind those millions. To wit: New York City diamond district jeweler Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) has placed a bet on the performance of Boston’s star baller Kevin Garnett, and it is no exaggeration to say that it is probably the most significant bet he has ever placed in his life.

The thrill of Sandler working with auteurist directors is that they don’t ask him to change his persona. Rather, they push him to be the most fascinating version of himself. As is the case with Barry Egan in Punch-Drunk Love or Danny Meyerowitz in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), Howard fits squarely within the classic Sandler mold. He’s an unapologetically shouty, emotionally sloppy man-child, but with a dash more (or rather, a hundred dashes more) of recklessness than usual. He’s got hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt all around town, particularly with his brother-in-law (Eric Bogosian), who’s hired a couple of heavies to hound him. But he’s recently come into possession of an extremely valuable precious stone from Ethiopia that could be worth millions. His mixture of predicament and great fortune leads him to broker a potential deal with a precious metal-hungry Garnett, while also dealing with a malfunctioning door buzzer, getting locked while naked in his car trunk, and a wife (Idina Menzel) who can barely stand him. He does also have a much younger girlfriend (Julia Fox) who’s crazy about him, but not in a way that’s particularly healthy for either of them. Anyway, even with all that boiling in the stew, Howard actually has a few opportunities to clear his debt, but he just can’t help himself as he keeps doubling down and going for an even bigger score.

Uncut Gems is a natural companion piece with the Safdies’ last film, 2017’s Good Time, which starred Robert Pattinson and Ben Safdie as a couple of low-level bank-robbing brothers. Uncut Gems matches Good Time for claustrophobia and raises the stakes in terms of catastrophic decision-making, but it allows for the possibility of hope that a happy ending is somehow possible. A lot of that is thanks to Sandler, who when he is actually invested in a performance is so immensely likeable (and is still fairly likeable even when he’s being lazy). It’s not hard to root for Howard. That of course leads to the question, should we really be rooting for him? If all his high-risk decisions work out (and logic dictates that they certainly can), then he’ll never learn to live more reasonably. But at a certain point, with the whirlwind that his life causes everyone around him, I just want it to end. If it all goes wrong for Howard, it also goes wrong for so many people who don’t deserve it. There a few possibilities for how this can all end, all of which are guaranteed to leave you with a ton of adrenaline pumping.

Uncut Gems is Recommended If You Like: Good Time, the NBA playoffs, Colonoscopies set to synth music

Grade: 4.5 out of 5 African Jews