ROUNDING (2025) - Music Box Selects

Rounding
Music Box Selects

Original Release Date Feb. 14th, 2025
Written by Alex Thompson, Christopher Thompson
Directed by Alex Thompson
Starring Namir Smallwood, Sidney Flanigan, Michael Potts, Rebecca Spence, Bradley Grant Smith
Language English

Get your copy HERE from Diabolik, or HERE from Orbit

by "Doc" Hunter Bush
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast

Overview:

Rounding comes to Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome partner label Music Box Selects. Director Alex Thompson, and his co-writer brother Christopher draw on the family business to bring a medical thriller that blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. Music Box Selects' release of Rounding features a respectable video transfer and audio package with a somewhat middling selection of bonus features.

The Movie Itself: Good

After the death of a patient shocks him into a breakdown, young doctor James Hayman (Namir Smallwood) transfers to a more rural hospital, hoping to start over somewhere that he could reset, do some good, and hopefully make some strides in his career. But he may not be as ready to return as he'd like to think. When a young girl with a perplexing diagnosis comes to his notice, James begins to see something sinister happening under the surface of this idyllic new situation.

Rounding is a moody, cold, alienating experience that is nonetheless a pretty fascinating watch. A character study with a really engrossing lead performance, its biggest problem is that it keeps trying to distract the audience from what the real story is, which does it a disservice. As James becomes obsessed with "solving" Helen (Sidney Flanigan)'s case, he begins to put his personal life, health, and sanity on the line in ways that feel visceral to the audience and impressively visualized.

I want to like Rounding more than I ultimately did. The trailer, which is included as a bonus feature, obviously leads you to presume something more unique is happening at the story’s core, and that subterfuge being a red herring takes away from the emotional core of the story. Without the visions of floating girls or beasts lurking in the hospital’s dark corridors, the movie is essentially an episode of House M.D. (it even has its obsessed medical professional limping through the film’s back half!) and there’s really nothing wrong with that. House was on TV for eight seasons, so obviously there is an audience for this kind of medical mystery-solving, without necessarily needing to include a Scooby-Doo style ruse.

None of this is to say that the film is bad. Every other facet, aside from that story contrivance, is actually quite good. The writing itself, the acting, the look and sound of the flick are all very polished and professional, which even for a sophomore effort is quite impressive.

The Packaging: Average

This is another solid but unremarkable physical release, from a design perspective. The case here is the usual, slightly wider, sturdier clear plastic Blu-ray case. The cover is an excellent, evocative image of James with some surreal touches alluding to his growing obsession over Helen's case. The interior image is James staring out from a black void. Nothing incredible, but it does have one of the more eye-catching covers.

The Video: Good

Rounding looks great. Cinematographer Nate Hurtsellers has a very varied list of previous works, including music videos, which I always say speaks to a great versatility and creativity. Without spoiling anything, there are some supernatural visuals in Rounding that are incredibly competently handled for such a low budget film. Golden or amber lights, cool greens and blues, and deep shadows run throughout much of the film, and all look very appealing, even as they add to the increasingly spooky tone.

A reoccurring event in James' life is that he goes running early in the morning every day before his shifts, no matter the weather. There's a very tangible cold dampness that's most noticeable in these scenes, but persists throughout much of the film. This inhospitable feeling helps to put you in James' mindset as he increasingly feels he is the only one truly committed to Helen's care.

The Audio: Average

I noticed no issues with Rounding. There's one sequence where a code is called and rather than wait for the elevator, James runs up several flights of stairs. It turns out this code was called in error, and an exhausted James then throws up in a nearby trashcan. For some reason, this moment is underscored by a kind of goofy clarinet movement? Other than that though, the score is very non-invasive and overall pleasant and fitting for whatever is happening onscreen. 

The sound mix is perfect for what it is. My three channel soundbar had no issues with the mix, so no buzzing or anything like that, and I had no issues with the volume, so I wasn't constantly adjusting up and down to hear dialogue. That's always my biggest gripe (aside from maybe muddy audio in general), and Rounding was a real "set it and forget it" situation.

The Supplements: Average

The bonus features here are decent, but nothing to write home about. My favorite bit was the Interview with Michael Potts who plays James' attending, Dr. Harrison. It's clear that Potts put a lot of thought into who this man was when he wasn't on screen, including some backstory and a personal obsession, none of which are important (or even mentioned) in the film, which leads me to believe these were the actor's choices. And I applaud them.

I couldn't let this one thing go, however. The BTS feature is made up of cast and crew interviews and while they do feature some interesting observations and context (like what it was like for them making the film during COVID, etc.) but then the following Interview features are just the same footage. There's a little extra meat on each of the bones, but not enough where it feels like it warranted a multiple separate entries, and if it was that interesting, just fold it all into the main BTS feature. It almost feels like it was done to artificially inflate the bonus feature count? A weird choice.

• Commentary with director Alex Thompson and editor Mike Smith
• Behind the Scenes of "Rounding" (15:38) (HD)
• Interview with director Alex Thompson (5:14) (HD)
• Interview with co-writer Christopher Thompson (4:20) (HD)
• Interview with Namir Smallwood (3:43) (HD)
• Interview with Sidney Flanigan (2:27) (HD)
• Interview with Michael Potts (2:50) (HD)
• Deleted Scenes (4:47) (HD)
• Outtakes (6:13) (HD) (Unmixed audio)
• Trailer (1:34) (HD)

Final Thoughts: Worth a Look

Rounding is a very well-made film that tries to obfuscate its concerns with too much misdirection, which ends up robbing the third act of some of its impact. The supernatural imagery, even though I liked it, quickly becomes such an obvious misdirect that I could feel myself not fully engaging with the film's stranger scenes because I presumed they would just end up being revealed to be another dream sequence or the like. But the story at Rounding's core is very interesting and ultimately tragic.

There is a way to just tell this story without as many unnecessary complications and allow it to be a story about obsession, dedication, and self sacrifice (to a fault), and I feel like that version of Rounding would have me recommending it with my whole chest. As it stands, I feel this is definitely worth seeing, for the excellent cinematography and lead performance, but will only earn a place on specific folks' shelves.

THE DISH & THE SPOON (Music Box Selects)

The Dish & the Spoon (2011)
Music Box Selects / Vinegar Syndrome

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, MovieJawn podcast director, host of the HWGW Podcast

The Dish & the Spoon comes to Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome partner label Music Box Selects. Written and directed by Allison Bagnall, this film is an honest and chaotic look at a woman in the middle of great distress. Anchored by quietly dynamite performances from Greta Gerwig and Olly Alexander. Music Box Selects' release offers some slight additional materials, but the movie is the real prize here.

The Movie Itself: 4 stars

Rose (Greta Gerwig) is in, as they say, a bad state. When the film opens, she's crying and driving; never the best situation to be in. Turns out her husband has had an affair with a local dancer / yoga instructor and Rose found out and took off in a flurry of hurt and anger. She's obviously at a low point: she doesn't quite have enough money for all six donuts and all six beers from the convenience store, so she leaves one bottle on the counter amidst fistfuls of loose change, the clerk takes pity on her and lets her go. Her next stop, a lighthouse overlooking the sea (as they generally do), is where she finds her counterpart for this picture, the spoon to her dish: Olly Alexander as an unnamed boy.

The Dish & the Spoon is an almost hypnotic doomed-romance story with a decided New England flavor to it. As the emotionally lost Rose drinks away her feelings, occasionally attempting to incite violence against the other woman, she finds the Boy to be, maybe not so much a kindred spirit as a safe harbor. He, for his part, is affable and nearly as lost as she is, but for entirely different reasons.

Writer/director Allison Bagnall allows a certain improvisational looseness to the film that only enhances the barely contained chaos of this whirlwind not-quite romance. Amidst a nearly continuously storming Northeastern coastal town, Rose interrogates who she is and what she wants by playing dress-up--sometimes literally--with a gracious, quiet, increasingly lovestruck young man whose name we never learn.

Almost from minute one, I was left quietly reeling. Both Gerwig and Alexander deliver muted performances that are devastating in their raw vulnerability. Every emotion is on display without ever announcing themselves. The film is simultaneously a whirlwind of activity and emotions--the whole thing takes place over just a few days--and a slow burn romance that there's no clean and easy resolution to. The Dish and the Spoon is by no means a flashy film, but it's a subtly stunning one.

The Video: 3 stars

Being set in a seaside beach town in the cold, wet off-season, everything in the film has that northeastern United States cold, wet, washed out cast to it. Outside are bright grey skies over muted golden beaches, the skeletal black branches of nearly bare trees and carpets of brown fallen leaves. The interiors are warm, but occasionally dark, as Rose and the boy navigate her parents' summer house by kerosene lanterns as there is no electricity or heat in the off-season. 

The transfer is fabulous, but like the movie itself, not flashy. The exteriors are never washed out, the interiors, no matter how dramatically lit, are never too obscured to see what's happening. Facial expressions are always readable, no matter how subtle. The whole visual aesthetic projects intimacy in a way that reinforces the film's subject matter perfectly.

The Audio: 3 stars

As with everything thus far, the audio mix isn't showy, but it's well-balanced for how dynamic it is. There's roughly as much screaming as there is whispered dialogue in the beginning of the film and my three-channel soundbar handled it all very well without me having to adjust the volume levels at all. As Rose and the boy develop their little faux domestic routine, and begin to have fun, there is singing, piano music, and non-diegetic songs on the soundtrack that are all handled equally well.

The mixing also makes use of the environments of any given scene to add a real world dynamism to the events. When Rose drives to the other woman's home and stands out in the driveway, shouting, you can hear the distance and the space of the outdoors versus when she and the boy spend an evening asking each other about their lives. The first third of the film, it always seems to be storming outside, and when they're in the summer house, the whistling wind and the rhythm of the rain is occasionally present but never overwhelming. It ends up reinforcing the coziness of the scenes as much as it underlines their friendship as a calm in the eye of Rose's emotional storm.

The Supplements: 3 stars

The additional features aren't amazing, but they were very enlightening. The 2011 South By Southwest interview by Ann Thompson with Gerwig and Alexander underlines the looseness on-set and what they describe as the sense of play they felt in being able to build their characters. This is reinforced by the deleted scenes which aside from being largely aimless silliness--Rose and the boy spitting beer at each other, or spending an afternoon in the woods playing with branches and other natural detritus--it really highlights Allison Bagnall's non-restrictive approach.

Interestingly, Bagnall clearly had some of the movie locked in mentally before production began. The Location Scouting feature is composed of footage filmed during these scouting sessions contrasted with how they appear in the finished film and it's remarkably similar. I feel that her having some firm ideas for how she wanted the film to look, yet being able to allow for improvisation and creativity at the same time to be a really fascinating and admirable quality in a filmmaker.

• Deleted Scene and Outtakes (7:00) (HD)
• SXSW Interview from Ann Thompson, 2011 (20:06) (SD)
• Location Scouting featurette (4:08) (SD/HD)
• "The Whale" performed by Olly Alexander (2:25) (audio only)

There's also a slipcover that I believe is still available, featuring collage-style minimalist art designed by Beth Morris, featuring imagery from the film:

Final Thoughts: Highly Recommended

The Dish and the Spoon comes highly recommended if you're looking for a melancholy time. It's bittersweet, but both the bitter and the sweet are wonderfully realized and performed. This is an independent film in all the ways that I grew up loving: small (both in budget and scale), intimate, honest and never simple. Being a person is hard, complicated work, especially when you add emotions into the mix. With The Dish and the Spoon, Allison Bagnall (as well as Greta Gerwig and Olly Alexander) share something that makes it feel okay to acknowledge that things can be messy, and temporary, but still worthwhile.