Film

Madeline's Madeline

Name: Madeline's Madeline
Genre: Drama
Released: 2018
Cast: Helena Howard, Molly Parker, Miranda July, Okwui Okpokwasili, Sunita Mani

Coming-of-age

A fever dream of a film about a teenage girl caught between her mother and a manipulative theater director who mines her trauma for art. Hallie Estabrook's debut is visceral and disorienting—bodies move wrong, sound design unsettles, the camera refuses to settle. It's for people who want cinema to feel like being inside someone's panic.

TMDb rating

3.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to films that feel improvised and unsettling at once, where a rehearsal room's experiments with mood and movement bleed into real emotional danger and you enjoy being kept slightly off balance.

Skip it if you want a clean narrative with clear stakes and steady footing, since the film keeps shifting between staged theatre and raw domestic tension and may feel fragmented or frustrating to follow.

What it asks of you: It runs a brisk ninety-four minutes but asks you to hold several registers at once, staying alert as the boundaries between rehearsal and life loosen and tighten without warning.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

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Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Madeline's Madeline

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

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Moonlight2016

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The Killing of a Sacred Deer2017

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A woman's body as lure and instrument; experimental sci-fi that's more texture and mood than plot, with Mica Levi's score doing the real emotional work.

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Certain Women2016

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The Act of Killing2012

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