THE ROYAL HOTEL

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

I can’t decide how I feel about The Royal Hotel. My initial reaction, particularly to the ending, was that the supposed payoff was unearned. The more I think about it, though, the more I think: but, was it?

There was a David Mamet stage play, and then a film, about thirty years ago called Oleanna. In the first half, we witness a series of conversations between an older, male professor and a younger woman student. In the second half, she accuses him of rape, and you are forced to re-evaluate everything you thought you saw in the first half. It was a very polarizing story, particularly down gender lines. I can still remember reading about the arguments it elicited among audience members. in Rogert Ebert’s 1994 film review.

That script was clearly designed to make audiences second-guess their own opinions, and to a degree, even their own eyes and ears. I’m not convinced that was the intention of director and co-writer Kitty Green with The Royal Hotel, and yet I find myself having that sort of response to it. I can imagine very different, and very gendered responses to it.

The trouble with me is, I exist somewhere in the middle. And when I start to go down the road of criticism in my mind, I start to wonder whether I am falling into the trap of victim blaming.

Kitty Green, who also happens to be Australian, has set this film in the Australian outback. Two young “work travel program” backpackers, both women, need to make some money quickly, so they take a gig bartending in a mining town many hours’ drive away from any city. When they arrive, there are two young women from the UK staying and working there, but they soon move on. The pub they work at has one other woman employee, an Aboriginal woman. The entire time we spend with these ladies, we see maybe two other women patrons of the bar. The point is, women here are vastly outnumbered by men.

And Green definitely traffics in nuance and subtlety. The men that Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) contend with, mostly pub regulars, display a variety of demeanors. But, the more you think about it, the more you realize that they’re displaying varying degrees of toxic masculinity. So much of The Royal Hotel moves at a labored pace, with seemingly very little actually happening, it takes a while to register.

My own gender expression has no bearing on the fact that I cannot truly fathom what it’s like to exist in the world as a woman—whether it’s in the United States, or Canada (where these two characters are from), or Australia. Of course, the Outback is a reliable source for putting these sorts of cultural ideas into sharp relief. In any case, I could very well be off base when my initial reaction is to think that the way Hanna and Liv ultimately respond to these men is wildly disproportionate. The more I consider it, the more it occurs to me that there are plenty of women who suffer a sort of million tiny cuts, and these are a couple of characters who reach their breaking point.

They don’t reach it at the same time, mind you. Hanna is uncomfortable in this working-class, male-dominated environment from the first night. Liv spends a lot of time giving virtually all the men the benefit of the doubt, even a particular one who is clearly a creep. She’s convinced they all just have cultural differences.

A lot of The Royal Hotel is spent worrying about what harm might come to Hanna and Liv. Nothing as bad as feared ever really happens, and yet, it’s in this space of degrees where the real food for thought lies. There is a bit of violence that occurs in one instance, and again: it’s easy to imagine the interpretation of the degree to which it was an “accident” being split down gender lines. I think this is where Kitty Green knows exactly what she’s doing.

It’s whether it works, particularly as a movie, that I can’t quite decide. Also, no discussion about misogyny or toxic masculinity is complete without consideration of race, and that is every bit as much the case in Australia as any other bastion of colonialism around the world. An Aboriginal man appears in one scene, driving a delivery truck. The owner of the pub, Billy, still owes him three months back pay. Elements of racism, both with this character and with the woman who works the pub kitchen, are only hinted at. But, to a large degree, so is toxic masculinity.

Billy is played by Hugo Weaving, bearded and much aged since his heyday in the Matrix movies. I didn’t even recognize him. There are so many men with speaking parts in this film, I find myself wondering how much they truly understood the nuances of the script. The setting was very remote, and so was the set: filming occurred in the town of Yatina, South Australia, with a population of about thirty people. It’s roughly 150 miles north of Adelaide, where, presumably, a lot of the local actors were found. Billy is a drunk, and is predictably late paying Hanna and Liv, who over time are left to fend for themselves tending bar to rowdy locals.

I find myself struggling with this movie. I wanted more to happen in it, to justify the telling of the story. The plot pivots significantly at the end, in a way that may make some think of it as a “women’s revenge” movie. It’s not at all that simple. That’s an element in its favor, but, while I suspect I would gain greater insight with repeat viewing, I just didn’t find the overall story compelling enough to think that kind of investment would be worth it.

The Rorschach Hotel: you tell me what you see.

Overall: B

DUMB MONEY

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B

I’m honestly surprised no one has titled a movie Dumb Money before now. This movie itself informs us that “dumb money” refers to investments made by individual, non-institutional investors. Here that money is represented, first and foremost, by Keith Gill, a regular guy who inspired an investment revolution aimed at hitting hedge fund managers where it hurts.

This is the GameStop story you likely remember from the news—from literally just two years ago. It’s not often that a true story gets optioned, greenlit, produced and released to theaters with that kind of turnaround time. The height of the GameStop buying frenzy occurred in March 2021, and this film’s script writers were hired the following May.

What curious timing this film has. On the one hand, it tells the story incredibly soon after it actually happened—in movie production time, two years is not a lot. On the other hand, early 2021 was also the height of the covid pandemic, with most people working from home unless they were essential workers, and right now that feels like an entire world away.

It’s worth noting that more people are seen walking around in face masks in Dumb Money than any other wide release film I can think of. The way director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) represents mask-wearing in this movie is strange inconsistent and sometimes outright odd. Of course, any director wants his actors’ faces to be visible wherever possible, so for instance, we see hospital staff removing masks when only two people are in a room together, even though at the time hospital staff would be masking around anyone at all. A bar waitress removes her mask to gawk at Keith Gill’s stock portfolio on his phone. A GameStop store manager is constantly telling his employee to wear his mask properly, which is actually right and correct, and yet we are meant to think of the manager as a nag and the employee as the one to root for. We get it, the whole mask thing was annoying. Does it make sense to subtly villainize the people insisting on doing the right thing to actually save lives?

Dumb Money isn’t so much concerned with the details of a pandemic, however—only with the “little people” who stuck it to the man while one was happening. It’s relevant that many companies raked on record profits at the expense of essential workers, and kind of odd that no one in this movie ever mentions it.

Still, the whole business, in this particular context, is undeniably fascinating, and kind of surprisingly fun. Given the time in which the story occurred, we don’t get any crowd scenes, yet Dumb Money features a large ensemble cast, of people mostly existing in separate locations. I find myself wondering if Keith Gill and his actual family are as colorful as depicted onscreen here, with Keith played by Paul Dano; his brother Kevin played by Pete Davidson, and his parents played by Clancy Brown and Kate Burton. Having Kevin employed as a DoorDash delivery guy who constantly grabs bites out of the food he delivers is an odd detail. Anyone whose OCD was exacerbated by the hygiene practices of peak covid are certain to be triggered by that.

A lot of other stars are featured among the rest of the supporting staff. A couple other random “regular guy” investors, among a handful, are represented by America Ferrera and Anthony Ramos. Shortsighted billionaires are played by Nick Offerman and Vincent D'Onofrio; a multimillionaire by Seth Rogen. Shailene Woodley is Keith’s wife, Caroline, here depicted as uniformly supportive.

The pacing moves at a steady clip, keeping the runtime at a tight 105 minutes, although it relies heavily on YouTube and TikTok clips, not to mention memes. On the whole, Dumb Money is unexceptional, but I enjoyed it. It’s certainly a unique story worth being told. I can’t say it commands viewing in a theater, much as I advocate for the theatrical experience. This is a movie worthy of an eventual couple of hours on your television.

Well this guy was not as dumb as he looked.

Overall: B

THE CREATOR

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: C
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Special Effects: B+

The Creator is a visual achievement, and if that’s all you need, it will work very well for you. It’s also a narrative mess.

This film seems to be leaning into ideas of xenophobia, American exceptionalism, the narrative structure of Apocalypse Now (which itself was a loose adaptation of the 1899 Jospeh Conrad novella Heart of Darkness), and even, arguably, both-sides-ism. The script, co-written by Chris Weitz and director Gareth Edwards, doesn’t fully commit to any of these things to achieve any truly crystalized ideas. This movies seems to want, at the same time, to entertain both American military jingoists and self-identified compassionate leftists.

It’ll probably satisfy average viewers just looking to watch a science-fiction action movie. And on that front, it does impress: Gareth Edwards, with previous directorial offerings from Monsters (2010) to Godzilla (2014) to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), has an established history as a gifted visual storyteller. He knows how to integrate visual effects on a modest budget that serve the story rather than the other way around. And in The Creator, every scene is visually compelling. with attention paid to every part of the frame, foreground as well as background. Combined with the production design, it makes for very effective world building.

I just wish the story these things are serving were better. Too many things don’t add up, not least of which is the idea of a world threatened by AI that exists in self-contained, individual robot units, some of them with only robot parts, some with heads and faces indistinguishable from humans, aside from cylindrical holes that pass through where ears would otherwise be. I’m frankly astonished that Edwards would make a movie like this without once considering the idea of, say, a wifi network in which all of these machines are connected to each other, as one unified whole. These AI “beings” exist as though they are all singular personalities, much like androids. Except this is never the way that would go, especially if humanity were to declare war on the lot of them, as has happened here—due to a coding error that resulted in Los Angeles getting nuked, fifteen years before the events of this movie.

We’re moving through the 2060s here. What’s the state of climate change, then? No one ever even mentions it. I suppose I’m nitpicking here, but still, I prefer movies like this to make sense. The best science fiction extrapolates from plausible, present-day realities, which this film all but ignores. Instead, it relies on wild plot contrivances.

I hesitate to even get into the moral quandary of “compassion” for artificial intelligence. Multiple times we hear the line: “It’s not real. It’s just programming.” This movie clearly wants us to hear that as misguided, and take the side of the AI. The problem with this is that “it’s just programming” is actually correct. Ironically, humanity is wildly vulnerable to emotional manipulation by AI to think it’s “alive,” and The Creator itself is a movie that successfully manipulates our emotions. To say there’s a lot to unpack with this movie is a wild understatement.

Further complicating matters is how undeniably entertaining it is, at least when you’re not thinking too much about its many plot holes and lapses in logic. John David Washington makes a great protagonist in this world, easily seduced by the adorableness of “the weapon,” a super-advanced “AI” being designed to look like a little girl, played by a seven-year-old Madeleine Yuna Voyles—complete with her own cylindrical hole through her head, ear to ear. These two have great chemistry together, and could have been a classic duo in a better written movie, the “lone wolf and cub” trope notwithstanding.

Between the acting, the cinematography, and the visual effects, The Creator has more than enough going for it to keep viewers rapt from start to finish. When it comes to the technical elements, this is a very well crafted film. If you don’t mind that it really has nothing original or even cohesive to say, then I guess it delivers.

Sure, it looks great if you only look skin deep.

STOP MAKING SENSE 40th Anniversary Rerelease

Directing: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Music: A

Several times while watching Stop Making Semse, the now-classic, cult favorite Talking Heads concert film, I almost thought I was looking at Cillian Murphy. David Byrne, the lead singer of the Talking Heads—which have not released an album of original music as a band in 35 years—was 32 years old at the time of this concert’s filming, in December 1983. (Hence the “40th anniversary” moniker, I guess, even though the film was originally released in October 1984). Cillian Murphy is 47 now. He’d better get on it if he’s ever going to star in a biopic. I’d be there in a flash, anyway.

I have a curious personal history with this band. In spite of collecting the entire discography of many singers and bands from the seventies and eighties, I have never owned any album by the Talking Heads. And yet, as a lover of film, I have genuinely loved both concert films with David Byrne as lead performer. David Byrne’s American Utopia was my 8th-favorite movie of 2020. Having now seen Stop Making Sense in a theater, I think I am just slightly partial to American Utopia, which is, as a recording of a Broadway performance, is much more of a choreographed stage production.

They do make great companion pieces, I think. In 2020, I marveled at David Byrne as an exceptional live vocalist, particularly at the age of 67. Turns out, this was nothing new. To say Byrne is an odd man is an understatement, but his stage presence is undeniable, and his unique singing style still manages to blend perfectly well with backup singer harmonies.

There must be something to the quality of The Talking Heads’s back catalogue, as well as their power over an audience, considering how much I love watching them perform, in spite of having only cursory familiarity with the material. I know the tunes to “Psycho Killer” and “Burning Down the House” and “Once In a Lifetime,” of course, but Stop Making Sense is full of songs I am unaware of having heard anywhere else, and still I am just as into the next one as I am the last.

The presentation of Stop Making Sense is a simple conceit, but a very effective one. It opens with Byrne alone, performing “Psycho Killer” with nothing but a boom box and an acoustic guitar. For the next song, “Heaven,” he sings only with Talking Heads bassist Tina Weymouth. And so it goes with the following songs, each with a new instrument added: drums by Chris Frantz; guitar (and later keyboards) by Jerry Harrison; and an expanding number of supporting instrumentalists. Stagehands either carry or roll out their equipment ahead of time, while Byrne continues performing in front of them.

Even at the age of 32, Byrne’s energy and stamina are stunning. Like all the band members, he sweats a good amount, but never shows any signs of tiring, particularly when it comes to his vocals. He sounds incredible from start to finish.

So: is it “the best concert film of all time,” as considered by many critics? Who am I to argue? Granted, this strikes me as wildly objective. If the Talking Heads’s music doesn’t speak to you, would you still align with this perspective? Granted, this film is also known for some technical innovations, as in its digital audio techniques. I suppose that means this could be called “the Citizen Kane of concert films.” Does that make it the best? Well, it’s excellent, anyway.

If nothing else, it certainly holds up, incredibly well. I find myself wondering what it might be like to watch in a house theater full of fans. I watched this at a 4:20 p.m. screening, with one single other person in the theater. I was super into the music, moving a bit to it, in my sleep. The young woman two seats down from me was not so much as tapping her foot.

I’m glad I got to see it in a theater. There’s no question that, nearly empty theater notwithstanding, it was a far more absorbing experience than it would have been watching at home. I had a blast.

You don’t have to be a Talking Heads fan, but it helps.

Overall: A-

THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

Directing: C+
Acting: B+
Writing: C+
Cinematography: C-
Editing: C-

Here’s something I’ve never said about a movie before: The Origin of Evil might just be too French or its own good. Full of unlikably arrogant people, with an inflated sense of self. Not all of the French are like that, I’m sure; these are stereotypes. But this movie isn’t doing them any favors.

In spite of its bevy of talented performers, The Origin of Evil lost me early on. It gets progressively weirder, in less compelling ways. Nathalie (Laure Calamy) is visiting a father, Serge (Jacques Weber) she’s never met before. She progressively gains his trust, to the suspicion of his wife, Louise (Dominique Blanc); his daughter, George (Doria Tillier); his grandaughter, Jeanne (Céleste Brunnquell); and their longtime housekeeper, Agnès (Véronique Ruggia), all of whom live in a giant, overly cluttered house together. I won’t spoil the many narrative left turns that follow, even though one of the few things that impressed me about this movie is how unremarkable it is for all its twists.

I will say this: we never get a sense of Nathalie as a whole person, or what really informs her actions. I knew little about this film going in, and when Nathalie is shown dialing Serge on the phone, she appears nervous to the point of terrified—a detail that makes less sense in retrospect once the film is over. “What are you playing at?” is something she is asked at one point, and I was already asking it. There are moments early on when it feels like The Origin of Evil will be a straightforward family drama, the title notwithstanding, but things prove to be far more complex than that. Just not in any way that particularly satisfied me.

This film has many unearned pretensions, not least of which is the title—these are shitty people, basically all around, but evil is a bit loaded for what ever actually happens onscreen. Nathalie works at a fish packing factory, and the opening title card appears superimposed over lined trays of fish, with ominous music. You would think the fish, or the factory, would play a particularly crucial part in the plot. They don’t.

If there is anything to love about The Origins of Evil, it’s the ensemble cast of nearly all women, with only one exception: Serge is the only principal character who is a man. He’s an asshole, but all the other women also prove to be either assholes in their own right or sociopaths, with the possible exception of Jeanne—but given the fucked up family she’s in, give her time.

The film runs slightly over two hours, though, and the first half in particular moves so slowly, it might play a lot better with a good fifteen or twenty minutes cut out. Things do pick up in the second half, and get a bit more exciting, but for me it was too little too late. I spent more time thinking about when this movie would end than I did about what was going to happen next.

I have to mention the cinematography, because some of it just plain sucks. Why the hell is a movie like this employing the use of retro split screens, with thick black lines separating the different feeds? The first time it happens, Nathalie is just sitting at a table having dinner with Serge and his family—five people, three sections of a split screen, each of them cutting to a new person saying something or making noise, including every time Jeanne gets a text notification. Why do we care about all this? I have no answer. A few later scenes employ the split screen as well, and you get the sense that director Sébastien Marnier thinks he’s doing something clever with this material. He isn’t.

I have to acknowledge that talent went into the making of this film, particularly the cast, and the set design. I’d love to see all of these people’s work in a less tiresome movie.

It’s not nearly as fun as this might suggest.

Overall: C+

MUTT

Directing: B
Acting: A-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

I’m sure I shouldn’t be, but I’m a little stuck on the title of the film Mutt. Ironically, googling slang meanings of the word brings up, among a few other things, “stupid person,” and I feel a little stupid not getting it in the context of this film. Evidently it can also be a derogatory reference to someone being multiracial, which indeed, the film’s protagonist, Feña, is—he has a Chilean father and a White mother. Feña’s racial background is not in the least bit a driving force in the story here, however.

His transness, on the other hand, is. And the story here takes place over the course of one 14-hour period, in which quite a lot happens, not least of which are his reconnection with, in turn, an ex-boyfriend, his younger sister, and his father. All of them have been estranged, to one degree or another, from Feña since he started his transition.

John (Cole Doman) is returning after a year and a half in Philadelphia, to look after a sick mother. Zoe (MiMi Ryder) has run away from school for the day to hang out with Feña in the City. And Pablo (Alejandro Goic) is flying in from Chile to see Feña for the first time in two years.

Mutt has a fair amount of exposition, all of it well integrated. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of Spanish—and Feña is bilingual—would expect Feña to be a feminine name, but Feña is actually specific about this: “It’s one of the few gender neutral names in Chile.” This film is also unusually frank about a young trans person still fresh from the transition process. Feña is revealed only to have had boyfriends and relationships with men all his life, and this desire does not change after transition—an aspect of transness not often represented onscreen. John, the strikingly gorgeous ex-boyfriend, shows no signs of his physical attraction abating post-transition, nor is there any hand-wringing about sexuality on anyone’s part, something I really respect. John also delivers the cutting line, “People don’t hate you because you’r trans, people hate you because you’re an asshole.”

I don’t know if we’re meant to think Feña is indeed an asshole, but Lio Mehiel, the trans actor who portrays him, never gives any indication that he is, per se. Maybe he was an asshole to John? In an early scene, he references how they made each other worse when they were together. Feña is so earnest and well-intentioned, if somewhat of a basket case, it’s difficult to imagine.

There’s a lot I really liked about Mutt, but I had trouble with a lot of the dialogue, particularly in the first half of the film, as it felt underwritten, not quite contrived but bordering on inauthentic. Not in terms of anyone’s background or identity, just as regular people and how people in the real world talk. If often felt just “off” from regular conversations.

This changed with pivotal scenes, both between Feña and John, and between Feña and Pablo. In the end, I was moved and I shed a couple of tears. There’s something to be said for a film which, while imperfect, offers a unique point of view.

In the process of writing this review, I came across a GoldenGlobes.com article in which Lio Mehiel is quoted as saying, “I really identify as a mutt. I got that phrase from a filmmaker friend of mine. I am a mutt in that I am of mixed ethnicity (Puerto Rican and Greek). I have mixed genders. I am also a Gemini.” Setting the dubious relevance of astrology aside, this brings the film’s title into sharper focus—particularly in terms of both ethnicity and gender, simultaneously. See, we went on a journey in this very review itself. I still maintain that a film’s title should not need external explanation.

The dialogue may not be strictly contrived, but the plotting is, a bit. We’re telling a lot about Feña in just one 24-hour period, starting late at night and ending late the next night, and the conceit doesn’t do much for the storytelling. To its credit, however, I did feel enriched after seeing this film.

Feña is a walking example of intersectionality, or so we’re supposed to gather.

Overall: B

FREMONT

Directing: B
Acting: B-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B

There’s a fantastic shot, in the last quarter or so of Fremont, in which the protagonist, Donya (Anaita Wali Zada), is sitting on one of the twin beds in a hotel room, facing a large white figure of a deer, like a lawn ornament, standing on the other twin bed. I really wanted to find it as a still online to use as my image for this review. Alas, I can find no images online of Anaita Wali Zada with the deer.

It was about this point in the film that Fremont finally endeared me to it. There is an oddly deadpan tone to most o this film, directed by British-Iranian Babak Jalali and co-written by Jalali and Italian writer-director Carolina Cavalli. There’s a surprising depth to Fremont that only gradually reveals itself, ultimately rewarding the patience asked of its audience. The almost universally stilted line deliveries take some time to get past.

Donya herself leads a very solitary life, in the Bay Area suburb of Fremont, hence the film’s title. She is among a known community of Afghan immigrants who live there, as Fremont has the largest concentration of Afghams in the United States (a trivia fact not ever mentioned in the film; I looked it up). She works in a “hand made fortune cookie” factory in San Francisco. Another fact the film does not bother to mention: it takes about an hour and a half to commute that distance by train. But, Donya herself confides in a therapist that she took the job to be around Chinese people during the day rather than surrounded by other Afghans all the time.

She’s visiting a therapist, a man played by Gregg Turkington as a vague sort of comic relief, in her pursuit to procure sleeping pills due to persistent insomnia. This is a guy who speaks in deadpan snippets with long pauses, same as Donya, same as Joanna (Hilda Schmelling), her coworker friend at the factory. Nearly everyone speaks the same way, I can only assume the director told them all to deliver their lines this way.

On a day trip to what she thinks is a blind date, Donya comes across a mechanic played by Jeremy Allen White. This is the only truly famous member of the cast, known for both Shameless and The Bear, and as a result White nearly qualifies as an untenable distraction. That said, he’s also the one performer in this film with line deliveries that make him feel like a real person, with a truly naturalistic performance. It only occurred to me just now that this may have been by design: his mechanic character is clearly meant for Donya as a romantic interest, and although the entirety of Fremont is shot in black and white, the contrast is as though Donya were Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, walking into a world of color.

There is something about Fremont that has really stuck with me, and the more I consider the film, the more I appreciate it. I’m still not a fan of most of the line readings, and yet the measured pace really works for it. Even before Donya meets the mechanic, Fremont takes a tonal turn, as she has been hired to write the fortunes for the cookies, and she inserts a secret message into the pile. We get a brief montage of randos reading their fortunes, and they are actually the first people we witness speaking like real people.

Who actually winds up finding the secret message is a sort of plot twist, but it has no bearing on Donya’s fate. In the end, Fremont is a romance, about a lonely Afghan woman with a quiet strength about her, who fled her native country with a dose of PTST. When this movie began, I had no idea I would leave at the end feeling light and uplifted. Fremont is a sneaky charmer.

I wanted to show you the deer, but this will have to do.

Overall: B

ARISTOTLE AND DANTE DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

And here we get yet another charming, moving, gay coming-of-age story that just makes me wistful for what I could never have. Even if I could never have had the experience of the young characters in this story, what might it have been like for me had there even been a movie like this to watch when I was a teenager? When I was sixteen, I was alone in my bedroom, secretly lusting after the gay men in Madonna’s “Erotica” video.

There’s a bit of irony there, the means I had of tapping into dark sexual fantasy, as compared to Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which is almost shockingly innocent, about the blossoming of young love, of a kind the protagonist does not understand nearly as well as, amazingly, his parents do. This story, actually, is comparatively chaste, the physicality never moving beyond a couple of kisses, the holding of hands. It’s a good two thirds of the way through before it even gets to that. This movie is perfect for young kids around the age of puberty, maybe just past it. And what a beautiful thing, to get something legitimately age-appropriate that explores these themes, asserting that kids of all kinds are perfect just the way they are.

This kind of shit gets to me, it’s so far removed from the experience of my youth. Some stories work by being relatable, and others are more aspirational. I can only guess as to what it’s like to be a young person today with access to a movie like this—which, incidentally, is based on a multiple-award-winning 2012 young-adult novel by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, which I have immediately put on my reading list.

It appears, though, that this film is a pretty faithful adaptation, with many lines of dialogue lifted directly from the source text. If I have any genuine criticism of this film, it would be that sometimes the dialogue doesn’t necessarily translate perfectly to the screen—I must admit, at times, I found the script, co-written by Sáenz himself and director Aitch Alberto, distractingly just outside the realm of real-life delivery. Some of the lines feel a little oversimplified and slightly stilted.

Ultimately, it’s a small quibble—there are just so many other things to love about this movie, not least of which is the very specific universe in which it exists, about Mexican-American families in 1987 El Paso, Texas. Aristotle (Max Pelayo), or Ari for short, is a solitary boy who is unaware of his own abiding loneliness. He’s been faltering at swimming lessons, and then meets Dante (Reese Gonzales), who volunteers to teach him how to swim. They become fast friends, and maybe the first third of Aristotle and Dante is just a lovely, leisurely paced portrait of the evolution of their friendship. Nothing more is even suggested until Dante’s family moves to Chicago for a year thanks to his professor dad’s job, and in one of Dante’s letters he slightly scandalizes Ari by bringing up masturbation (this is the most frankly sexual the movie ever gets).

During their year apart, both Aristotle and Dante pursue relationships with girls, presumably because that’s all that occurs to them, and it’s just what’s expected. It’s great to see that, unlike many other films about gay people, the interactions with girls stay healthy and never end in any melodramatic heartbreak. This is much more about these boys slowly realizing who and what they are.

The truly unique element here is Ari’s parents, who are giving him knowing looks largely from the start. Ari has a beloved aunt who visits and when she tells him “You are perfect just the way you are,” it feels incongruous to him, and to a degree, even to us as viewers, that early on. I wasn’t even sure at first whether we were meant to understand that Ari’s parents know he’s in love with Dante before Ari does. I found myself thinking of the deeply empathetic father played by Michael Stuhlbarg in Call Me By Your Name. The key difference here is that these parents are not as articulate, maintaining a family secret about Ari’s incarcerated brother that keeps them, and especially his father, largely silent.

Perhaps most notable is how Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe avoids stereotype at every level—quite plausibly because both writer and the director are of Latin-American descent, telling a story about Mexican-American characters. There is a uniquely heartwarming mix of specificity and authenticity here, while also avoiding any of the cliches of toxic masculinity in parenting. Ari’s parents are clearly imperfect, just like anyone, but their love and concern for him is never in doubt.

We don’t get as much about Dante’s relationship with his parents, perhaps because they are portrayed as progressive intellectuals and we are meant to assume they’ll be fine. Dante does worry in one of his letters about their reaction to him, but the narrative never revisits that thread.

I suppose you could say that, had I been a producer of this film, I’d have had notes. On the other hand, sometimes imperfections add to the charm. While I found myself debating exactly how good I thought this movie was in its first half, it really came together for me in the end. I was both charmed and deeply moved by it, practically weeping by the time these boys finally come around to their inevitable fate. That’s not a spoiler, because you should know that this is a coming-of-age love story and not a tragedy, and that’s how they go; besides, the value is in the journey, the experience, both for them and for us. This is one movie I will likely seek out for a rewatch.

Sometimes a connection becomes an opportunity for discovery.

Overall: B+

BOTTOMS

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

If you want to be truly impressed by some acting talent and versatility, watch Nicholas Galitzine as posh gay Prince Henry in Red, White and Royal Blue on Prime Video, and then go see him as meathead football player Jeff in Bottoms. To be fair, neither movie is exactly “highbrow” and neither seems especially challenging for its performers—but, these two characters are wildly different from each other, almost opposites, and yet Galitzine embodies them both believably, He’s the kind of actor whose talent you don’t truly realize until you’ve seen him in multiple roles.

To be fair, Red, White and Royal Blue and Bottoms do have a couple of key things in common: they both have two gay protagonists (gay men in the former; lesbians in the latter), and both put their own unique stamp on modern camp. That very thing is what makes both films worth watching.

There’s a lot more to Bottoms to recommend it, not least of which is equally (if not more so) versatile Ayo Edebiri, whose Josie in Bottoms is also wildly different from her Sydney in Hulu’s The Bear. (Josie is a bit more similar to Janet in Theater Camp, another surprisingly delightful comedy from this year.) It’s also great to see two gay main characters who are lifelong platonic friends, and this story is not about them having sex or falling in love with each other. In fact, there is an old-school sex comedy element to this, as it is about them aiming to get laid. Just, with other people. It’s like a typical sex comedy with dudes trying to get pussy, replacing the dudes with ladies . . . trying to get pussy.

They’re also incredibly socially awkward, which Rachel Sennott (Shiva Baby), as PJ, plays just as well as Edebiri. It’s a delight to see a movie like this that acknowledges the continued existence of homophobia but only in a cursory way, and instead characterizes a sort of evolution of how characters like these get sidelined in high school—not just for being gay, but for being “gay and untalented.”

I should stress here that Bottoms goes out of its way to be over-the-top silly, in a way that almost miraculously works. I may want to watch it again just to catch more of the gags in the details and in the background. Many times a funny detail comes and goes so quickly it can easily be missed, making it a potentially rewarding rewatch.

It doesn’t hurt that we also get a winning performance by none other than Marshawn Lynch as Mr. G, the unlikely teacher duped into serving as teacher “advisor” to the self-defense club devised by PJ and Josie as a scheme to get under some cheeleaders’ skirts. Lynch plays a doofus who is only sexist until some high school girls prove that they can be badasses.

Now, I must admit to a certain amount of disappointment, particularly in the nature of this club that becomes a surprisingly violent “fight club.” The trailer made me expect a lot more comedic ultra-violence, and I suppose I should be grateful that director and co-writer Emma Seligman uses it more sparingly than expected. I just thought this would be a bit more of an action comedy, based on the marketing, but it’s really more of a campy teen comedy. By those standards, though, Bottoms still succeeds, and is consistently funny. What more should I want from it?

Besides, there is a fantastic brawl between the fight club and an adversary I won’t spoil here that serves as the climactic sequence of the movie, and it’s kind of worth the wait. I had a somewhat odd experience with Bottoms, leaving the theater feeling like I enjoyed it but still wished it had been better, or funnier. But the more I’ve thought about it since, the more I’ve decided I placed unfairly high expectations of it, and on its own terms, it delivers on its promise.

Sometimes it’s shocking what some people do in pursuit of pussy.

STRAYS

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Special Effects: B-

Strays falls prey to its marketing campaign in a very conventional, almost traditional way: it burns through a lot of its funniest bits in the trailer. I have to wonder how much more fun I might have found this movie if I didn’t already know what was coming several times—gags I did laugh pretty hard at, the first of the half dozen times or so I already saw them.

But, what are you going to do? You have to share some of it in order to market a movie as something with the tone it has—which is to say, an “animal adventure” film crossed with a raunchy comedy. These are talking dogs, which also say “fuck” and “shit” a lot.

This supposed tonal dissonance is hardly new in itself, considering movies like Paul (2011) and Ted (2012), respectively about a stoner alien and a foul-mouthed Teddy bear, came out more than ten years ago. The biggest surprise with Strays is that it didn’t get made sooner.

But, here’s the thing. How much you enjoy Strays is absolutely going to depend on how much of an animal lover you are. If you have any appreciation whatsoever and also love dogs, you are going to have a blast watching this movie, which is about a small dog (voiced by Will Ferrell) making his way back from the city to a suburban human (Will Forte) he doesn’t realize doesn’t actually care about him. He befriends three other strays along the way, voiced by Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher and Randall Park, who form a sort of “chosen family” pack with him and assist on his quest.

Much hijinks ensues, as you can easily predict. A lot of it is very entertaining, a good portion of it very funny. A movie like this really needs more “laughs per minute” than it actually has, which essentially means it would be far more effective as a film short. But, who the hell watches film shorts, outside of film festivals? It’s a bit of a catch-22, having to spread an otherwise great premise thin just so it can have some hope of an actual audience.

Still, I’m trying not to spoil too much here, so that if you should decide to check this movie out, you’ll have a better experience with it. The less you know going in, the better. All you really need to know is that it takes what is traditionally a kids’ genre and runs it through the prism of R-rated comedies. You can just imagine all the foul language they use and all the inanimate and/or inappropriate things they hump.

The voice work is decent. The CGI moving mouths, barely rendered better than they were in the Babe movies from the nineties, indicate adequate visual effects work. I’m probably the only person in the audience thinking about this, but a small dog’s body visibly rising and lowering from the effects of panting doesn’t quite fit with calm delivery of dialogue, no indication of it being out of breath. I realize it’s a little extra to be nitpicking the “realism” of a movie about talking dogs. It would have been a note I would have given during production nonetheless.

Strays does have an undercurrent of genuine sweetness to it, and Will Ferrell’s Reggie, the main protagonist, has a charming naiveté about him. Bug is the streetwise stray who befriends him, another small but high strung dog, and Jamie Foxx clearly had a good time voicing him. And I’ll give it this much credit: Strays goes for broke in its climactic sequence in a way that is never even hinted at in the trailer, and borders on shocking. These are dogs that would be flipping their middle finger to the establishment, if they had any fingers. Let’s say they’re shitting on the face of the establishment—with mixed results. I had a good enough time with it, anyway.

It’s all fun and games and then you come across some mushrooms.

Overall: B