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Tom's Guide
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
I'm telling everyone to stream this millennial masterpiece for free on Tubi — and it's 96% on Rotten Tomatoes
Many coming-of-age movies rightfully center on those usually awkward, sometimes painfully relatable transitions between adolescence and adulthood. But some of the genre's best big-screen examples extend that growing-pains period to a character's 20s and 30s, showing that becoming who you will be doesn't come easy, no matter your age. "The Worst Person in the World", a 2021 Norwegian stunner by director-writer Joachim Trier that centers on a 30-year-old woman struggling to find her direction in life, falls beautifully in the latter camp — and it's now available to stream for free on Tubi. The acclaimed modern-day dramedy is just one title among the streaming service's ever-changing lineup, which, thanks to ad support, boasts 20,000 free TV shows and movies from studios including Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate and networks including A&E, Lifetime and Starz. Those few commercial breaks mean that, unlike other platforms like Netflix, Tubi doesn't need to charge you for your next movie marathon. And speaking of movie marathons, here's why "The Worst Person in the World" should be added to your next watch list ASAP. The third installment of Joachim Trier's "Oslo" trilogy — which also includes 2006's "Reprise" and 2011's "Oslo, August 31st" — "The Worst Person in the World" sees Renate Reinsve in a Cannes Best Actress Award-winning turn as Julie, a medical student on the brink of 30 who's navigating both professional changes (her career path transitions from medicine to psychology and later photography) and personal switch-ups. Julie has been in a relationship with Aksel Willman (played by Anders Danielsen Lie, the only actor to appear in all three of Trier's "Oslo" dramas), a comic artist 15 years her senior. However, an unexpected encounter with an intriguing barista named Eivind (Herbert Nordrum) at a wedding reception makes her unsure about her future with Aksel. Told across four years of Julie's life — in a novelistic format of "chapters", with both a prologue and epilogue — "The Worst Person in the World" follows the young woman as she battles indecision both in her heart and her career, often to humorous and heart-shattering effect. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. With its sexy meet-cutes and 'shroom-laced fantasies, "The Worst Person in the World" does include many of the exciting bits of self-discovery that tend to occur in your late-20s and early-30s, but it's "a romantic comedy that delightfully subverts the genre's well-worn tropes," according to the critical consensus over on Rotten Tomatoes (where the film boasts an excellent 96% approval rating). Indeed, the award-winning drama — which earned Oscar nominations for Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay for Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt — has become thought of as a millennial masterpiece precisely because it allows a good deal of wistfulness and woe to permeate Julie's journey to happily-ever-after. Rather, Reinsve's heroine feels resonantly stuck and dissatisfied at every turn, a generational moodiness that's handled hilariously but also movingly throughout the film. ("You seem to be waiting for something. I don't know what,' Aksel tells her at one point.) Publications including Vanity Fair and The Atlantic declared "The Worst Person in the World" the best film of 2021, and we'd be hard-pressed to disagree. It's an achingly exquisite watch, at turns devastatingly funny and just plain devastating. Julie might think she deserves the harshness of the film's title, but Trier's instant-classic treats her messy struggles to find her place in the world with something that looks a lot like grace. Watch "The Worst Person in the World" on Tubi now
CairoScene
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
Review: Joachim Trier's Most Emotionally Mature Film Yet
Review: Joachim Trier's Most Emotionally Mature Film Yet 'Sentimental Value' is directed by the acclaimed Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier. Trier is best known for introspective and emotionally resonant films like Oslo, August 31st and The Worst Person in the World. The latter earned two Academy Award nominations, including Best International Feature and Best Original Screenplay. With this latest feature, Trier seems to channel the emotional precision of Ingmar Bergman. This very well might be his most mature and accomplished film to date. 'Sentimental Value' screened in the main competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival. By the time this review gets posted, the winners will have been announced. If it were up to me, this film would win the Palme d'Or. There's a sense in this film that Trier has elevated his craft as a director. His work now reflects not only technical mastery but also a deeper philosophical engagement with his characters and their inner lives. Much like Bergman in films like Scenes from a Marriage, Trier employs a narrator who verbalises the inner states of his characters with startling clarity. Emotions aren't simply identified. They're evoked through vivid metaphors that draw us deeper into the character's interior world. In the opening scene, the narrator recalls how, as a child, the protagonist was asked to choose an object and describe how it felt. She chose her house. She describes how the house hated being empty. How it went through long periods of silence. It hated that feeling. This silence, of course, was due to the absence of a family member. The way the narrator describes the house's emotional state mirrors the void left behind by a family that was on the verge of collapse. When its rooms weren't filled with footsteps or laughter, it felt empty, just like her. From that very first scene, you understand the emotional architecture of the entire family. The writing is devastating. It's a great example of how good narration with vivid descriptive imagery can be a vessel for emotional truth. Co-written with his longtime collaborator Eskil Vogt, the film explores how past wounds shape the present. It's a deeply personal drama that reveals how the stories we tell can become a way of coping and understanding the pain we inherit. The story revolves around Nora Berg (Renate Reinsve), a stage actress grappling with the recent loss of her mother. Her estranged father, Gustav Berg played by Stellan Skarsgård in a powerhouse performance, resurfaces with an unexpected offer. He wants her to play the lead in his new comeback film. The project is clearly autobiographical. Nora refuses. She can't seem to forgive her father for his past mistakes. When she turns him down, Gustav casts a rising Hollywood star, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), in her place. In this role, Fanning displays an impressive range of emotions. Of course, it is not long before she realises that she's is portraying a version of Nora shaped by the director's own memories. What follows is a delicate meditation on the fragile ways art can both reopen wounds and begin to mend them. 'Sentimental Value' is a film about the redemptive power of storytelling. It explores how the act of making cinema can be a form of healing. How re-enacting the traumas of the past can offer a new way of seeing, of understanding, of letting go. In revisiting pain through performance, characters don't just relive their memories. They begin to reshape them. Trier suggests that we might not be able to escape our past. However, through the expression of art, we might just learn how to live with the pain. 'Sentimental Value' is filled with emotional honesty. It's a reminder of why we turn to cinema in the first place. It's to make sense of the world. Great films help us understand why we feel the way we do. They offer a kind of clarity that life often withholds. In doing so, films like this one help us come to terms with the people we love. Not as we wish they were, but as they truly are, flawed and deeply complex. 'Sentimental Value' will almost certainly find itself in the awards conversation by year's end. I loved everything about it.
