Rating: R | Runtime: 116 minutes
Release Date: June 13th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: A24
Director(s): Celine Song
Writer(s): Celine Song

It’s just math.

I am desperate to know Celine Song’s direction to John Magaro since his entire performance is just one phone conversation that unfolds prior to us learning the context behind its enthusiasm. Did he read the script? Did he know what actually happened in contrast to his words? Or did he just play the page as it was written?

The fact there are so many possibilities behind his read epitomizes the film and its dissection of the human condition where it comes to dating versus love. While the former can feasibly be conducted via an algorithm—whether an app or matchmaker crunching the same numbers manually—the latter can only prove a happy yet unlikely accident from its results. A further truth is that the math only mitigates the risk of compatibility in the sense of time management. And those stats can be manipulated in ways where the risk to one’s safety during that time (and beyond) may always be exponentially greater than you think.

Good on Song for going there because her great rom-com premise (girl with nothing who desperately wants everything meets boy who wants for nothing and desperately seeks an equal with whom to share it despite not being the soulmate that girl’s self-loathing keeps trying to make her forget) would have succeeded on its own. She instead wields her sexual assault subplot in a way that never diminishes its horror while also utilizing it (conveniently or not) to help prove her point (narratively and generally where it comes to human value over statistics).

Best touch: Augmenting Pedro Pascal’s “unicorn” status by having the shot of Dakota Johnson’s approach catch him entertaining a child rather than another woman with that dance.

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(L-R) Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal in MATERIALISTS; Credit: Atsushi Nishijima, courtesy of A24.