Popular reviews

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★★★ 4

  Even beyond the sexual harassment elements, this rang so horrifyingly true to my own experiences almost two decades ago working as an intern at a film company in the same lower Manhattan neighborhood where The Assistant is set. I’ve never seen anything that captured the mind-numbing drudgery of pointless, repetitive tasks mixed with the constant dread that you will fuck some incredibly minor thing up and maybe ruin your shot at a career.

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  Review by Lucy ★★★★ 6

  "listen, honestly... what do you want from me?"

  so potent and unsettling. paints an increasingly anxious picture with so little detail provided

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  Review by #1 gizmo fan ★★★★ 1

  so quietly powerful, this is a female film through and through. gut wrenching in the simplest way. julia garner is a superstar

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  Review by gal pacino ★★★★ 6

  subtly, quietly devastating. the monstrous burden of knowing that doing the right thing is futile will never be lifted — even if you eventually choose to put it down, its ghost lingers. maybe you can do the right thing later, when you’re a little higher up in your career, when you have a little more power. but by then, will it be too late? will you have warped into one of them? this is a horror story.

  with almost no score and almost exclusively diegetic sounds, writer/director kitty green’s dedication to naturalism is immaculate (her previous works are all documentaries). each scene is firmly rooted in our collective reality, making julia garner’s character’s helplessness hit even harder. i admire how…

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  Review by Bethany ★★★★½ 3

  "don't worry, you're not his type."

  fuuuuuck

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  Review by cinéfila... 🕯️ ★★★★½ 2

  this movie and the show succession are part of the MMCUCSCU (Matthew Macfadyen Covers Up Company Scandals Cinematic Universe)

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  Review by Scott Tobias ★★★★½ 9

  Blown away the boldness of Kitty Green's conceit, which stages a day-in-the-life of a new, young assistant to an unseen Weinstein-like movie executive as a horror movie of soul-sickening ambience. There's a minimalist quality to the action, so much of the emphasis is on evoking an environment where underlings, women especially, are intimidated and robbed of power and abuse is quietly tolerated. And another thing the film gets: Never, ever trust your H.R rep. They are not your friends.

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  Review by Shane McAvoy 19

  100% accurate, but that’s not a movie. It might be a New Yorker article or a Twitter thread, but it’s not a movie. Here’s the worst thing I had to do as a PA:

  Our office had 4 cats. They didn’t belong to anyone. They were office cats. One of them was named Santa and she was very old. The CEO had asked me to go on a run then casually threw in this, “Hey, so when you run those DV tapes to Warner Brothers, could you take Santa with you? She’s very old. Drop off the tapes and on your way back, could you have her put down?” 

  So the cat’s in the backseat for the drive to WB.…

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 3

  Would pair nicely with Dark Waters as another movie that understands the terrifying, poisoning mundanity of corporate office spaces and the deadening hum/routine machinery of industry power and abuse. Where Green forges a unique path for herself and is most successful is in the psychological pounding the monotony has on the titular assistant. Watching her probe her place in the established, tacit system of complacency that surrounds her at every waking moment knowing that everyone around her is motivated by self-interest to pretend it doesn't exist is anxiety-inducing. Garner is especially skilled at navigating her thought process and decisions on screen without speaking them while simultaneously being careful of being too revealing to anyone else in the office. The camera's…

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  Review by Ayo Edebiri ★★★★

  the HR scene is a masterclass 

  Macfayden has the range folks!!

  and Julia Garner did not have to act her whole face off but nevertheless? She simply did

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  Review by Ella Kemp ★★★★

  When she reassures a stressed woman on the other end of the phone “It’s not your fault, it’s ok, I fix it” I wanted to scream.

  This is really terrific, it’s smart and really uses its silences to make a searing statement. I’ve heard some echoes of people who didn’t *get it* and to be honest I almost understand that - in the sense that it just goes to show that most people do just ignore these silences, lie through their teeth with their “you can come to me with anything” and just see the lives of those around them purely for the surface-level images. 

  What were they wearing? Can I read that email? Is this earring yours? It’s a slippery and chilly film, and needs to be mandatory viewing for anyone who, uh, has literally ever interacted with anyone

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  Review by fran hoepfner ★★★★ 1

  middle management HR bitch ass talking you down from a complaint by saying how smart you are? couldn’t relate