The Media Tourist

What’s so funny about a world in which extramarital sex is illegal? This wild-night romcom explores the horny ha-ha’s

One Night Only
Starring Callum Turner & Monica Barbaro
Directed by Will Gluck
Rated R

In theaters Friday, Aug. 7, 2026

A “sex comedy” with some stinging societal undertones, One Night Only is set in a dystopian alternative reality where it’s illegal to have sexual relations outside of marriage. Except for one night only, a 24-hour period set aside each year when hot-to-trot, love-starved singles are free to mingle.

Callum Turner plays Owen, a pizza maker on the prowl when his girlfriend (Maya Hawke) tells him she has other plans—with another guy—for the evening. Ouch! Monica Barbaro is Allie, a commercial jingle singer hoping to hit a high note or two with a sexy hookup.

Owen and Allie don’t know each other, but we watch them meet, intersect throughout the night and eventually…well, you’ll have to see the movie to find out. In between, you’ll see a slew of familiar faces in comedic cameos and supporting roles, including Molly Ringwald, Levar Burton, Bobby Canivale, Succession‘s Nicholas Braun, indie singer King Princess, SNL’s Pete Davidson and Ben Marshall, and Este Haim of the musical sister trio Haim (who also composed the film’s soundtrack).

But Turner (who starred in last year’s afterlife comedy Eternity with Elisabeth Olsen and Miles Teller) and Barbaro (so impressive as Joan Baez alongside Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown) are the real workhorses here. We’re along for the ride as their characters run a gauntlet of wild-night situations, in a hospital emergency room, a police station, a recording studio, a crashed party and up, down and all across the teeming streets of New York City.

I particularly enjoyed how a jingle Allie records—for a product to combat plaque psoriasis—becomes a much bigger recurring punchline. And how the subject of a book she remembers from her childhood, about the little red lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge, sets the stage, literally, for the movie’s finale.

Director Will Gluck knows how to put a uniquely funny spin on movie romcoms, as he did with Easy A and Anyone But You. Here he relishes the clever details of a “world” in which unmarried sex is taboo, and people are branded with wrist biosensors to monitor their bed behavior. As you might expect, the “chastity mandate” is hugely unpopular; we see graffiti expressing the wide malcontent, and infographics showing “acceptable” and “unacceptable” displays of affection.

When the sun goes down and the “one night” begins, there’s a mad rush on condoms (surge-priced, of course), and costumed vendors dressed as oversized tubes of KY Jelly hawk their lubricant to sidewalk passersby.

It’s like a merry mashup of George Orwell, The Handmaid’s Tale and When Harry Met Sally, with more sex jokes—a lot more. But it’s also a movie with a lot more than sex on its mind. There’s a gravity to all the sexy light-heartedness, a somber sense that its reality—of government intrusion into who we can love, and when—isn’t so far-fetched. Like when we see a newscaster reporting on the “purity” of America. And it’s not just a throwaway line when characters talk about the “crazy time” they’re living in, on the “most unromantic night of the year.” Or a policewoman (Michelle Hurd, from TV’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) is chided for “being on the wrong side of history” when she talks about a repeat offender arrested multiple times for his extramarital crimes of passion.

It’s never raunchy, but always zingy, a movie about surging hormones allowed out of the box for a nocturnal buffet of sensual splurging. But there’s a sweetness too, a sense that sex is but one part of a healthy romantic relationship.

“Maybe we shouldn’t overthink this,” Owen says at one point. Indeed. One Night Only is a zippy, zany satire of a world gone crazy, in more ways than one—a world that looks, and feels, very familiar. And very funny, at least until you start thinking about how close to reality it might really be.

—Neil Pond

Director Christopher Nolan’s epic retooling of the iconic Greek legend deserves to be seen on the IMAX screen

The Odyssey
Starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway & Robert Pattinson
Directed by Christopher Nolan
R

In theaters Friday, July 17

Director Christopher Nolan’s bold, brawny and brutally impressive new take on one of the world’s oldest and tallest of tall tales puts a colossal cinematic crown on the legend of the Greek warrior king Odysseus and his 10-year journey home after the sacking of Troy.

The saga known as the Odyssey has been around since prehistory, passed along through songs and poems and ultimately attributed to the blind poet known as Homer. Its theme—of a husband and father trying to return to his wife and his son after a brutal war—resonates worldwide throughout art, literature, language and pop culture.

Matt Damon (above) leads the cast as Odysseus, the king of Ithica. Anne Hathaway gives a searingly strong—and potentially Oscar-worthy—standout performance his ever-faithful wife, Penelope, holding things down back at the palace, wondering when—and if—her king will have a homecoming. Should she give in and remarry, and move on?

Tom Holland breaks free of the Spider-Man movie web as Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, who sets out on his own trek to find his father—or find out what fate befell him. Robert Pattinson is the film’s hissable villain Antonius, who shakes things up as a smarmy suitor with his eye on Odysseus’ wife, and on the spoils of the royal throne.

There’s also John Leguizimo as Odysseus’ loyal servant, the blind swineherd Menelaus, Lupito Nynong’o as Helen of Troy, and Zendaya as the goddess Athena. Mia Goth is a disloyal maidservant, Charlize Theron is the seductive sea nymph Calypso, and John Bernthal plays the king of Sparta. Transgendered actor Elliot Page (formerly Ellen Page) is Sinon, who plays a pivotal role staging the Trojan horse attack. In a nod to the tale’s roots in oral tradition, the rapper Travis Scott makes an appearance as a bard, spreading an early version of the Odysseus legend.

The movie opens with the words “A tale of apparent magic,” and that’s true in more ways than one. In addition to the fantastical elements of the story, there’s also movie magic. Nolan, one of the most commercially successful and creatively ambitious directors in Hollywood today (his previous film, Oppenheimer, won seven Oscars and grossed nearly $1 billion), makes The Odyssey an immersive, transportive experience, more than just a story on a screen. Filmed entirely with new 70mm IMAX cameras, it’s a hyper-visual experience made to be seen as large as it was made, so don’t be stingy. Fork over the few extra IMAX bucks and behold its wide-ranging wonders.

Eschewing CGI and computerized effects for physical props and sets, and filming on location throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, Nolan takes us along for Odysseus’ legendary adventures—captured by a monstrous cyclops, clashing with giant woodland warriors, escaping from a sorceress (the terrific Samantha Morton) who turns men into animals, steering his longboat past the seductive song of the sirens, and navigating the treacherous passage between the whirlpool Charybdis and the multi-headed monster Scylla. We’re there for the siege of Troy, with Odysseus and his men packed like sardines into a wooden horse, their elaborate ruse to gain entry to the city and destroy it. There’s even a side trip to hell, where they encounter a blood-slurping legion of the undead.

It all comes to a head with a brutal showdown and Odysseus rights a few wrongs—and breaks out his trusty bow and arrows one final time.

It gets a bit too intense for young kids, hence the R rating. It’s suffused with magic and mysticism, but it can be ominous, scary and bloody. The music and sound, by Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson, is a perfect complement to the imagery, full of experimental, non-traditional orchestral noises and ancient instruments that enhance the mythic, meaty elements of the story.

But for all its dark wonders, this Odyssey grounds its nearly three hours of wide-ranging, high-seas, gung-ho adventure in a very human story about a bond between a father and his son, the enduring love of a husband and his wife, and the emotional toll wrought on Odysseus by years of war, wondering and wandering. It’s a story about loyalty, faithfulness, sacrifice, guilt and retribution. And at the end of his long road, Odysseus is tired, weary and worried about the path of destruction he’s been carving. “To burn the walls of Troy,” he laments, “was to burn the world entire.”

Hmmm…. Maybe that’s a cautionary message this ancient tale holds even for our world today, and where it might be headed.

Even when The Odyssey was weeks away from opening, it had already sparked a clamorous backlash and a bit of burning of its own from critics who wanted to harp on its casting (too ethnically diverse, they said), its authenticity (those longboats look more Nordic than Greek) and its dialogue (Telemachus refers to his father as “dad,” and there are several f-bombs).

But such reproach is but a handful of small stones thrown at a towering achievement. Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is an epic movie for an epic story, an odyssey in more ways than one, and a movie that’s going to be watched, discussed and lauded for a long time to come—in alignment with the ever-malleable story of Odysseus itself, which has endured for 2,500 years.

And hey, it’s probably the only film you’ll ever see with a rapper, Zendaya as a goddess, Spider-Man, a 50-foot-tall cyclops in a cave, and a bunch of pigs that used to be guys.

—Neil Pond

Rollicking, randy all-star-cast comedy puts a naughty spin on “The Wizard of Oz”

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass
Starring Zoey Deutch, Ken Marino, Jon Hamm & John Slattery
Directed by David Wain
R

In theaters Friday, July 10

A multi-layered concept comedy with a motley crew running all over Los Angeles, Gail Daughtery and the Celebrity Sex Pass is the latest absurdly raunchy, ridiculously hyper romp from director David Wain.

Wain’s previous films—like Wet Hot American Summer, Role Models and They Came Together—skewered big-screen tropes with satire and a smirk, and this one’s in a similar vein. It follows a young Midwestern hairstylist, Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch), who takes a fish-out-of-water trip to sunny California.

You see, Gail and her fiancé, Tom (Michael Cassidy) made a far-fetched deal, sort of, agreeing that if either of them could have a booty call with their celebrity crush, the other would be free to do the same—in other words, a celebrity sex pass. When Gail finds Tom bonking Jennifer Aniston in the back room of a bookstore, she heads to Tinseltown to hook up with actor John Hamm and “level the playing field.”

Yes, it sounds crazy. And it is, packed with bawdy jokes and bonkers celebrity cameos. In addition to Aniston and Hamm, who play themselves, there’s Henry Winkler, Weird Al Yankovic and Penn Gillette. And isn’t that Paul Rudd as a wedding guest, giving a wink to the camera? Yes, it is!

Actor/comedian Richard Kind is a cab driver. Elizabeth Perkins and Elizabeth Banks have cameos you might miss if you get up to get popcorn. Hamm’s Mad Men co-star, John Slattery, plays a version of himself, one that’s surprisingly well-versed in the art of self-defense. Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Jo Lo Truglio is an inept thug. There’s a map-of-the-stars salesman (Michael Ian Black) and Fred Melamed’s a mailman, narrating the tale looking into the camera…and sometimes into the mailbox. There’s a guy (Robert Herjavec) from Shark Tank! Reno 911’s Thomas Lennon is a rock-star hairdresser, the master of the whip curl, who knows how to use his curling iron as a weapon. Sabrina Impacciatore, from The White Lotus, hams it up as an evil mastermind.

But the real standout here is Deutch. The daughter of actress Lea Thompson and director Howard Deutch embodies the movie’s enthusiasm, its embrace of wide-eyed adventure and its self-assurance that all the wacky comedy is hitting a bullseye. She “sells” it, hammering home the silliness with dynamic self-confidence. She’s come a long way since Disney’s The Suite Life on Deck in 2010!

There’s also a fateful briefcase switcheroo in an airport, a plot to collapse the world economy, bad guys chasing good guys, an abandoned Wild West set and a roll of 35mm camera film that becomes an inspirational touchstone. It feels like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World meets with The Naked Gun, with a Mad Men reunion to boot.

On one level, it’s a sweeping, sexed-up mock-tail toast to Hollywood, with actors playing themselves, paparazzi (The Residence’s Ken Marino, who also co-wrote the movie) lurking in the bushes, bodyguards, a movie pitch and agents from Creative Artists Agency. To top it off, it’s also a loopy salute to one of the most classic films of all time.

You don’t have to dig deep to see the connections to The Wizard of Oz. Gail is the Kansas girl, like Dorothy Gail in the 1939 film, who ventures into a place full of wonder and danger, on a mission with a posse of characters, trying to avoid pursuers—and wearing a pair of ruby red slippers. If you have trouble figuring out who, exactly, is standing in for the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion, Dorothy’s dog Toto, the Wicked Witch and the flying monkeys, stick around for the credits.

As for the Wizard himself, well, you’ll make the connection when one of the characters admits his insecurities about pretending to be someone he’s not, living “behind the curtain” of his fame—and certainly when he drops in later, via hot-air balloon.

Of course, in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy didn’t sing about being “off to see the Wizard” to hop into the sack with him. But Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass doesn’t want us to think too hard about that, or about anything. It just wants to nudge us into some chuckles at its outlandish premise, its random randy-ness, its cavalcade of in-jokes, and its weird, wonderfully wacky spin on someplace way, way over the rainbow—where sex with the stars is a thing, some dreams really do come true, and Weird Al Yankovic hops off his golf cart to chase interlopers away with an Uzi.

–Neil Pond