Magazine Dreams

A character study set in America. Killian is a bodybuilder. He works at a supermarket, lives with a grandfather who needs care, and spends all day at the gym. His aim is set: a magazine cover. Nutrition, measurement, injections, mirrors. Everything is on a chart. There is a problem. He suffered a head injury in the past and cannot control his anger. He attends court-ordered therapy. He does not speak there. From there the film is a story of collapse. Contests, judges' scores, debt, and a dose that keeps rising. At the same time there is an attempt at a social life. He asks out a woman from the supermarket and the dinner ends in disaster. Killian also writes letters. He keeps writing to a professional he admires and no reply comes. What the narrative is interested in is not sport but being seen: its idea is that the only reason the man enlarges his body is to be noticed, and that it never happens. The body is the narrative itself. The camera looks long at muscle and that look carries admiration in no scene. The violence is sudden. The narrative gives no warning and there is no way back. The comparisons are obvious. The structure leans deliberately on 1970s American films that ran on a lonely man's own construction of the world. Jonathan Majors underwent serious physical preparation and the film is built almost entirely on him. It screened at Sundance in 2023. The company that acquired distribution dropped it after Majors was convicted of assault and harassment; the rights later passed to another company and it was only released on 21 March 2025. Jonathan Majors, Haley Bennett, Taylour Paige and Harrison Page are in the cast. Elijah Bynum wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes uncomfortable character studies and one-man narratives. Who it is not for: anyone looking for distance; the narrative opens no critical angle on the man and some scenes deliberately corner the viewer.