Editor’s Note: Vanyaland Film Editor Nick Johnston is once again out in Park City, Utah, covering the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Check out our preview of the 2025 festival; keep it locked to our full coverage of Sundance reviews from this year’s festival as they go live, and check out our full archives of past editions.
As Mark Anthony Green’s Opus keenly observes, magazine profiles are, if given a little abstract thought, absurdly strange things. It’s not a particularly heterodox idea, either — sure, get-to-know-you profiles of public servants and community members can be (theoretically) considered a public service themselves, but the in-person celebrity profile is a fascinating form of staged performance on both sides of the tape recorder that can be easily manipulated and manicured to a guaranteed end. I remember reading an Esquire profile of Javier Bardem a decade or so ago — he and the writer went on a fishing trip and, while at sea, smoked cigarettes and talked about his fears of death in an on-brand yet compelling way — and thinking how surreal of an experience that must have been for the writer. What if their boat got hit by a rogue wave, or had its stern eaten by a Great White like in Jaws? That barrier between subject and author would have collapsed in full, and the writer, should they survive, would have the piece of a lifetime on their hands. Yet, what if Bardem, less himself and more an Anton Chigurh hopped up on too many viewings of Fincher’s The Game, had planned all the chaos for their own ends? All of us, when we agree to do these profiles, are happy puppets looking to dance for a crowd, a PR strategy masquerading as reportage (which shouldn’t be thought of as a judgment — this kind of writing is frequently done wonderfully, and after all, we’re free to write whatever we want, and free to suffer the consequences as well) in which we trade credibility for access. The power dynamic is firmly tilted in one direction, and the person with the pen ain’t the shot caller.
It’s even worse when you’re a writer like Ariel (Ayo Edibiri), who’s spent years toiling away as a mid-level staffer at a premium-format magazine without a prestige piece. She’s fantastic at pitch meetings, yet her ideas are thrown at the editors-at-large by her EIC, Stan (Murray Bartlett, my crush from HBO’s Looking). Her off-and-on-again boyfriend (Young Mazino) thinks that it’s because, well, she’s kind of boring, not having the life experience to give her writing perspective. If someone says shit like that to a protagonist, you know that they’re about to get some serious experience, and Ariel’s ticket to that new perspective comes in the form of a bizarre gift basket. One afternoon, the newsroom is abuzz with a rumor that the reclusive Moretti (John Malkovich) — a glam-club star who is an unholy combination of Michael Jackson (in terms of record sales), Elton John (in dress), and Right Said Fred (in faux-rap monologuing over Eurobeat) — will be returning with a new record after a 30-year absence. After his publicist (Tony Hale) confirms the news in a YouTube video that looks like a ransom tape, two swag baskets are delivered to the newsroom, inviting Stan and, for some reason, Ariel to an exclusive listening party at Moretti’s home in Utah. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime — and Stan just wants her to take notes.
Once they get out to the desert, Ariel realizes the word “home” doesn’t really do the estate justice: It’s a barb-wire fenced compound, where, behind its adobe walls, contains a Taliesin-like cult of personality. A few hundred people, known as the Levelists, live there, who follow Moretti’s teachings about art and how to hone creative genius. They’re all competent servants, dressed alike, sporting strange scars on their hands, and, weirdly, they all seem pretty happy out there. Once they were normal Moretti fans, and now they’re his disciples, invited to live in his presence. What’s weirder is how the rest of Ariel’s six-person party — including Stan, a daytime TV talk show host (Juliette Lewis), an influencer, a paparazzo, and one of Moretti’s old rivals — shrug this off as typical bizarre rock star behavior: “Typical Moretti!” and so on. It’s clear this isn’t Tay-Tay inviting fans over to hear her new records, bake cookies and play with her cats — there’s a full-on itinerary for the weekend, and they’re assigned 24/7 concierges to help them with whatever they need (and, of course, to spy on them). After a pleasant dinner that first night, weird and violent shit starts to happen — Moretti’s longtime rival goes missing, the influencer has some sort of allergic reaction to the drinks served at a performance, and Stan gets shot with an arrow (by “accident”). Something doesn’t smell right to Ariel, and she’s gonna follow her nose to uncover what it is — hopefully before Moretti finishes his grand design.
Opus is the kind of cat-and-mouse game well in line with other modern variations on the single-location horror comedy movie, where up-and-coming mice are ensnared by some sort of grand old campy feline. Hugh Grant had his moment with Heretic, and now Malkovich gets his turn at the all-you-can-eat celluloid buffet. He is, to put it mildly, delightful in this absurdly theatrical role, full of pop-star pretension offset by a fierce charisma. One moment, he’s sparring with Edibiri about the meaning of one of his new songs, and the next he’s pop-locking in a Daft Punk outfit while casually molesting his invited guests like they hired him for a group lap-dance, all while his cultists cheer him on in the background. Pair that with the Nile Rodgers and The Dream-penned tracks he’s performing (who are also credited as executive producers on the project), and you have a compellingly spicy antagonist. This is what these movies are typically remembered for, after all: A ferocious performance by an older actor slightly out of their usual zone, contrasted with the solid work of the younger kids, provided as a baseline. The formula works, most of the time: Their presence gives the project some cred and puts the up-and-comer near established talent, yet it often results in a squash match. The older talent always wins, and how could they not?
With Green’s help, Edibiri refuses to let Malkovich take all of the good shit at the salad bar. Ariel is one of the best protagonists that the modern iteration of the “trap” horror-comedy has seen, because she’s not passive, nor is she looking for an exit from the first minute onwards. She’s witty, sympathetic, and well-rounded — a thoroughly well-credentialed straight man sent in to match the energy and charm of a bunch of Gen X Jerry Lewises and their acolytes. She’s suspicious, of course, but she’s willing to roll with the strangeness (and the disappointment of being sidelined by her editor), and Ariel’s interactions with Moretti are smartly written exchanges — like what you’d hope one of these profiles would be like if you cracked the spin on a copy of GQ or British Vogue and flipped to A Profile of the Recluse as an Old Man. Their energy blesses the whole movie with a truly life-giving breath, and takes it from running along with its genre-peer pack to a hair’s breadth of damn near leading the race. Opus is a wonderfully entertaining film, and, as far as the Boston vs. Cambridge angle is concerned, I think it’s a draw. Both Edibiri and Malkovich are amazing. So, Go Sox or whatever.