“I know it’s not chic to be the last one at the party, but I think I just don’t like to go home.”
Charli XCX as a pop star has clawed tooth and nail to be at her place in the cultural pyramid. Ever since her first LP, “True Romance,” she has sacrificed seemingly everything with an innate sense of hard work, releasing (relatively) critical achievements such as the iconic “Vroom Vroom EP” and her work with the belated SOPHIE and her 2020 quarantine album, “how i’m feeling now.” However, it seemed that since “CRASH,” she had been straining for it all—commercial and critical fame—and finally, with “brat,” it seems she finally made it. While 2024 was her rise, “The Moment” shows a world where she faced any artist’s worst fear: selling out.
On her blog in November 2025, she wrote, “You get to feel special, but you also have to at points feel embarrassed by how stupid the whole thing is” about her own fame. This sentiment is explored even further in her latest venture, film, with “The Moment,” released in January of 2026, directed by longtime collaborator, fashion photographer and music video director Aidan Zamiri, who you may know through his work with Caroline Polachek, Billie Eilish and PinkPanthress.
Set in seemingly an alternate universe of Charli XCX’s rise to fame, “The Moment” shows her struggle to maintain artist independence under a large record label while battling her executives and commercial concert film director (Alexander Skarsgard), who want to sanitize her vision for a concert film (a la Taylor Swift.) It asks the essential question, why should “The Moment” keep going? And how can an artist, its creator, bear to watch it end?
It absolutely has a distinct air of director Gaspar Noé’s work, especially through the flashing transitional cuts and semi-ironic logomania. Lighting is used with intent; “brat” green shines over fans’ faces on their phones, lights strobe in practice studios and everything feels intensely focused on the mental state of Charli XCX as she explores the stressful world of stardom. Crashing into an intensely cathartic experience by the end. Its writing really aligns with a common style of stressful storytelling; it has the stress of Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” and the Safdie Brothers’ “Good Time” and “Uncut Gems.” It seems like nowadays, films have grown to have this tense, pulsating anxiety that’s threatening to pull you under the entire time, which, if this is a trend, maybe I should start bringing a heart monitor to the theater.
Perhaps one of the most evident complaints I could hurl towards this makeshift diary of a film is how on the nose everything feels, its metaphors stick out like a sore thumb, its writing can occasionally come off as a train of thought. The jabs are clear, the writing occasionally clings onto this farce idea of what a good film has to be, that one must be able to sit and point out what a bird dying in a dance studio means by the moment it falls on the concrete floor.
The cameos, featuring the likes of Rachel Sennot, Anthony Fantano and Kylie Jenner, show a modern reflection of current pop culture better than most films have been able to in this mass-produced, mass-shift to accelerationism (Nick Land was right!), but remains satirical despite this tap into the current trends. Kylie Jenner has an almost Mother Mary-like look about her in contrast to a frazzled, exhausted Charli XCX in her appearance; it was comical in its scene, which I adored.
The soundtrack, created by longtime collaborator A.G. Cook while also containing a vast array of songs from XCX’s own category, really makes it. From the very first shot we are hit with “365 featuring shygirl,” and the fast paced performance against a stage setting, strobing colors and… yeah. But the best needledrop comes at the end from a perfect sonic pivot, using 90s hit “Bittersweet Symphony” by The Verve, because for an ending, it definitely is bittersweet.
Whether you’ve been a die-hard angel since “Boom Clap,” or you just found her out through “brat,” it’s a wonderful ride into the psyche and state of modern pop, with biting satire, incredible direction and a great performance from the head cast.
