Tuner is easily in my top three favorite films of the year so far. In part because I saw it with Friend at a mystery early showing thinking it was going to be Obsession. So imagine my surprise when a low budget indie romance? appeared on screen and I had to weigh my willingness to be disappointed with this or see the showing of Third Man next screen over. I’m going to end things there for anyone who reads this and is intrigued, because I think in a lot of ways this movie relies on its off radar nature to be able to creep up on you, much like Anora (which I liked so much that I hesitated to write about it all the way through my first viewing and into its win as Best Picture–and even now a year later it’s one of the very few movies I have had a hard time recreating for review, despite having rewatched it since). I will urge you to avoid a trailer of this movie if you can. OK, so spoilers ahead:
Tuner is Baby Driver but Pianos or Whiplash but Heist–in more than superficial ways. Led Woodall is an electric new talent and Havana Rose Liu hot off of 2024’s Bottoms role. The music (desperate here for the name of the YT who plays the actual fingering of actors in movies to show you how insane it is how badly they play confidently wrong) is a marathon of jazz bangers and the plot spins off its centrifuges so insanely quickly from where it starts with that wholesome set of short bits with Dustin Hoffman. Hoffman by the way is tragically type cast as Old Man Who’s Old So No One Should Be Surprised He Died Even Though the Actor Is Still Alive (Because Otherwise All You Have Is Deepfakes of Recently Dead But Still Recognizable Actors, I Suppose) but he finds ways to do so much with what could’ve been a pretty thankless role. The pivot to romcom followed by Liu’s resistance at an extravagant gift after we learn the montage we’ve just witnessed is actually a love bombing one month long that feels like a year is so perfectly focalized. The twist into a Heists movie that escalates at the worst possible moment defies expectations and the ending–so perfectly messy and clipped!
