The Treatment

Director India Donaldson’s 2024 feature film debut 'Good One' is deceptively simple: a teenager, her father, and her father’s friend go camping in upstate New York. But the film goes into an unexpected direction, telling its story with tension and subtlety. For her treat, she cites a 2003 sculpture by the visual artist Shimabuku, whose simplicity evokes unabashed joy.

Actor Simon Helberg is no stranger to playing highly intelligent characters with a few social shortcomings. He’s best known for his comedic turn as the brilliant, but awkward engineer Howard Wolowitz on the CBS sitcom 'The Big Bang Theory,' which ran for 12 seasons. He’s also appeared in films including 'Old School,' 'A Serious Man,' and 'Florence Foster Jenkins,' for which he received a Golden Globe nomination.

His latest role is as Martin Phister in the AMC series 'The Audacity.' Phister is a tech genius who can’t connect with his own family. Helberg talks about getting into the psyche of someone highly intelligent and neurodivergent, why some tech titans believe they are actually saving the world, and he reveals what he thinks when he catches himself on 'The Big Bang Theory.'

Writer-director BenDavid Grabinski’s newest film, the crime caper 'Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice,' is in part an homage to the independent films of the ‘70s. For his treat, he pays tribute to a recent Broadway revival starring two performers known for going back in time and having a most excellent adventure.

More than 125 years ago, brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière invented the cinematograph, a precursor to the movie camera. Their contributions to modern filmmaking are enshrined at the Institute Lumière in France.

As a scholar of film, Thierry Frémaux, director of the Institute Lumière and Cannes Film Festival, was drawn to telling the Lumière brothers’ story. His first film as director is 'Lumière, le Cinema!,' in which he narrates a series of shorts created by the Lumière brothers and explains the significance of their invention. Frémaux talks to Elvis about why he wanted to tell this story, why the Lumière brothers' invention of the cinematograph was so consequential, and how the films they created are still relevant today.

Actor Jeff Daniels has had a storied career in TV, film, and Broadway. He’s the winner of two Emmys for his roles in 'The Newsroom' and 'Godless,' has appeared in films as varied as 'Terms of Endearment,' 'Dumb and Dumber,' and 'The Martian,' and earned three Tony Award nominations for his work in the plays 'God of Carnage,' 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' and 'Blackbird.' To top it all off, he’s also an accomplished musician, with several folk and blues albums of original music. For his treat, he pays tribute to a live album recorded in 1970 by a musician on the precipice of mega-stardom.