SXSW 2025 Review: ONE MORE SHOT, Emily Browning vs. Time Traveling Tequila

You had me at "time traveling tequila."

One More Shot
The film enjoyed its world premiere at SXSW 2025.

Emily Browning glides down a hallway as The Cranberries' "Dreams" blasts over the soundtrack.

Directed by Nicholas Clifford, making his feature debut, One More Shot starts with a huge advantage, setting a celebratory mood on New Year's Eve, 1999. Browning plays Minnie, an anesthesiologist in Australia who doesn't want to head out for a night of partying with old friends until she hears that her old beau Joe will be there.

Her hopes of romantic (or at least sensual) bliss are interrupted when she learns that Joe (Sean Keenan) has returned home from New York City in order for everyone to meet his girlfriend Jenny (Aisha Dee). Dismayed, she soldiers onward until midnight; soon thereafter, she discovers that the old bottle of tequila she brought as a gift can somehow enable her to travel in time to the beginning of the night.

Any movie fan worth their salt knows that time-travel movies need to have something new and/or fresh and/or radically different about them to make them worthwhile. Quite cleverly, screenwriters Alice Foulcher and Gregory Erdstein have come up with all three key ingredients, helping to make One More Shot an entirely satisfying experience.

Two or three elements push the movie upward. First, Emily Browning is effervescent when she needs to be, delivering comic dialogue with speedy relish and enacting physical hijinks with remarkable dexterity. She is equally at ease when the story calls for her to plumb the depths of her soul, swimming through deep emotions with a disarming grace and an ease that belies appearances. She is a fearless actor, never more so than in this movie.

Ashley Zukerman has capably handled leading roles in recent years, so it's a bit of a surprise to see him in a supporting role, especially one that appears minor at first. His performance turns into one of the film's many strengths, though that's not to diminish the effectiveness of the other supporting players.

The third element is the brisk pacing. Editor Julie-Anne De Ruvo does an excellent job, maintaining clarity and helping the film to zip to its incredibly satisfying conclusion.

One More Shot is an adrenaline rush of a comedy, while tempering that with the realities of the morning after. Happily, there is no hangover.