Misty Green review
By Joel Humphries · Watched 10.15.26
★★★½ 3.5 / 5
Spoiler-free review
Misty Green locks onto a gifted actress clawing at a comeback while life keeps tripping her: the industry’s indifference, the orbit of drugs and bad sex, and a brother’s escalating mental health crisis she can’t afford to solve. Rosalind Eleazar is terrific—sharp enough to show the talent isn’t the issue, and honest enough not to sand down the self-sabotage. Daniel Kaluuya adds weight without tipping the film into misery. The direction keeps judgment at bay, letting empathy and exasperation coexist. It’s a knotty, compelling slice of chaos—messy on purpose, engrossing in practice, and well worth seeing.
Full review — contains spoilers
Misty Green is a really solid film about a talented actress who can’t seem to get her career, or much of anything else in her life, back on track. She’s had enough success to know what she’s capable of, but getting another opportunity is a different matter. And when opportunities do appear, there always seems to be something ready to interfere: drugs, relationship drama, family responsibilities or her own behavior.
Rosalind Eleazar is excellent in this. Misty isn’t particularly old, but she’s aging by Hollywood’s standards, and she’s trying to find a way back into an industry that has already demonstrated how willing it is to move on from her. She has talent. That isn’t really in question. The problem is everything happening around it, including the things she keeps doing to herself.
Her brother, played by Daniel Kaluuya, adds another responsibility she doesn’t have much capacity to carry. He’s dealing with serious mental health problems and needs treatment, but she doesn’t have the money to provide the care he needs. He shows up needing help while she’s barely managing her own situation. She loves him, and she’s trying, but loving someone doesn’t automatically give you the resources to take care of them.
Meanwhile, her relationships aren’t providing much support either. Drugs and sexual escapades take up a considerable amount of her life without seeming to give her much fulfillment. A supposed friend offers her a way to make money that amounts to prostituting herself, and her reaction makes it clear how little friendship there really is in that arrangement. She needs work, money and a way forward, and the people around her keep making those things more complicated.
What I appreciated is that the movie gets into all of this without requiring us to excuse her or condemn her. You’re pulling for her, but you can see when she’s making the wrong decision. You can understand why things aren’t working out without deciding she deserves everything happening to her. She’s carrying a lot, sometimes handling it reasonably well and sometimes handling it terribly.
It’s a slice of a very complicated life. She’s fighting for her career, recognition and fair treatment while also fighting herself. It’s a mess, but it’s an enjoyable mess to watch, and Eleazar deserves recognition for the performance. I thought this was extremely well done. Recommended.