YNOT at the Movies

Few films this year will make you feel as much through your ears as through your eyes. Director Daniel Roher's narrative feature debut "Tuner" (Canada/USA 2025 | 109 min.) is captivating and terrifically made, and in a proper Dolby house it is one of the most immersive sensory experiences cinema has offered in recent memory.

Niki White (Leo Woodall) is a gifted piano tuner with hyperacusis, a painful disorder that makes him acutely sensitive to sound. As he crisscrosses New York City with his blunt and charismatic mentor Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), he meets Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a driven composition student who challenges his musical and moral compass. When security contractor Uri (Lior Raz) discovers that Niki's hypersensitive hearing is worth more for cracking safes than tuning Steinways, he offers a risky opportunity to Niki that could help Harry and his devoted wife Marla (Tovah Feldshuh) manage a mounting medical crisis.

Academy Award-winning sound designer Johnnie Burn has placed us entirely inside Niki's perception, where every creak, overtone and held breath carries psychological weight. When Niki snaps at a client mid-session, "Now shut the fuck up, so I can get back to work," it lands as the film's thesis in miniature: sharp, a little funny, and rooted in the particular loneliness of someone who hears everything. The sound design does not just accompany the story. It is the story. It's a film that doesn't just ask you to watch — it asks you to listen.

Leo Woodall is absolutely stunning. His charming yet unassuming presence makes Niki immediately likable, but he goes far beyond likability. He masterfully builds a character full of heart and genuine emotion, someone flawed and real that you root for even as he makes questionable choices.

His commitment extends to the piano itself: he learned a three-minute piece from scratch and is entirely convincing as a man for whom music is both vocation and wound. Niki is more fully convincing as a pianist than Ruthie is as a composer. When Niki disappears entirely into the world of sound, Ruthie occasionally feels a step removed from the world of music.

Leo Woodall already established himself in "Nuremberg" (2025) for what he is capable of: in a film packed with seasoned veterans, he is able to be the only truly mesmerizing presence on screen. He confirms what that performance first suggested. He is one of the most exciting rising stars to watch in the years ahead.

The film weaves heist mechanics into a story that is, at its core, about identity and loss. There are moments of genuine, unexpected emotion in what is also a propulsive, montage-driven thriller with a real comedic backbeat. There is one plot point involving a watch that feels slightly too convenient for where the story needs to go, but the acting and character work are strong enough that the contrivance dissolves quickly.

This is a heist film with a soul, a romance with real stakes, and one of the best sound experiences you will have in a cinema this year.

"Tuner" opens in the San Francisco Bay Area theaters on Friday, May 29, 2026.