THUNDERBOLTS*

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

Thunderbolts*, like countless other Marvel Studios films before it, is both overlong and overstuffed, trying to do too much, because even after years of being exhausted by it, these movies still expect to trade on audiences’ intricate knowledge of every other wild thing that has ever happened in now-33 films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Who has time for that shit?

Furthermore, there are no aliens in this movie. I only mention this because there are aliens in other MCU movies, and this one has a very brief, single line that references “when the aliens came.” But what if you’re watching this movie and you’ve never seen any of those other, “alien” ones? You’d just be left thinking: Huh?

None of the original Avengers are in Thunderbolts* either (spoiler alert!). What happened to them all, anyway? How many years ago was that? Some sacrificed themselves, I think? Some simply retired, like, to a farm or something? I honestly don’t remember, and it’s because frankly I don’t care. I’m just over here waiting for another one of the rare MCU films that actually manages a successful pivot, like Black Panther or Logan. I even liked Black Widow more than I expected to—even if it’s not quite in the same league as the aforementioned films—which is the very reason I found myself interested in Thunderbolts*, which serves as a quasi-sequel. Florence Pugh and David Harbour both return as Yelena Belva and Alexei Shastakov (“The Red Guardian”), and they are delightful characters.

They do get a bit darker here, as the themes of this film, as directed by Jake Shreier, takes a bit of a left turn into metaphors for mental health and depression. As someone who does not live with depression, I cannot truly speak to how successful the film is at this. It’s easy to imagine some people feeling like it trivializes their experiences and their struggles. Others might find it makes them feel seen. The inevitable climactic battle here takes place inside the mind of a supervillain who is a huge danger to himself and the world, but is also deeply empathetic—an unusual choice that I appreciate. Even when it doesn’t fully work, I can always respect a big swing.

Of course, the plotting also gets unnecessarily convoluted. But, if it results in by far the biggest role in an MCU film by Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the perennially dubious CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, I’m all for it. Thunderbolts* could have taken a few action sequence cuts and added more of Valentina. Nobody would have complained.

Not that I have any major complaints about Thunderbolts* as it stands. This ragtag team of misfit criminals-turned-heroes, which along with Yelena and Alexei, includes Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko), Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), and maybe also Robert Reynolds (Lewis Pullman), have chemistry. They get conveniently thrown together when Valentina sends them all to assassinate each other in a giant vault on top of a mountain where she plans to incinerate all the evidence of a shady operation which, naturally, ultimately produces our supervillain.

As for the supervillain, comic book readers will likely recall why he is referred to as both “Sentry” and “The Void.” It’s easy to feel ambivalent about this character, and it’s difficult to gauge how deliberately Schreier makes that part of the point. I will say this: after countless superhero movies following the exact same beats over and over, in which a CGI-laden mega-battle occurs to save the entire planet or the entire galaxy or hell, even the universe (how about multiverses!), it’s refreshing to see one of these movies dial back the stakes and ground them, even if in this case they are largely wrapped in uncertainly executed metaphorical psychology.

Whatever turns it takes, Thunderbolts* is consistently and undeniably fun. It’s a bit drab visually, lots of shades of grey in its color palate (perhaps a deliberate choice for characters who struggle between inner light and inner darkness), and the visual effects are serviceable. Black Widow was a better movie, and the absence of Scarlett Johansson is keenly felt, but it’s also nice to spend more time with a couple of other great characters is introduced to us. The new characters feel a bit expendable overall, really, but it’s the presence of the special ones that at least slightly tips the scales in its favor.

*Made you look!

THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND

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

It’s been some years since I went to a movie, and loved the soundtrack so much I sought it out later, only to discover that no soundtrack album has actually been officially released. Notable recent examples have been All of Us Strangers (2023) and Babygirl (2024)—the best I could find in either case were playlists assembled by other Apple Music users. Oh sure, you can find “soundtracks” to both films, but in both cases it’s the original score, quite separate from the fantastic collection of pop songs featured in the films. I can only theorize that, in the age of digital music subscriptions, packaging and selling soundtrack albums just isn’t worth the effort it once was. I get it, and it also makes me sad.

Enter The Ballad of Wallis Island, for which I am delighted to report a soundtrack album of the songs featured actually has been released. The songs are performed by Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan, who also star in the sweet, touching drama that uses folk music to tug on our nostalgic heartstrings.

I find myself wondering how many others watching The Ballad of Wallis Island also thought of the excellent 2013 Coen Brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis, to which this new film is a spiritual sequel of sorts. Inside Llewyn Davis also costarred Cary Mulligan, and also has a truly wonderful soundtrack. It’s almost unfair to bring it up, as on every level, Inside Llewyn Davis is better: it’s a far better story; the folk music is of far higher quality; the performances are much more indelible. It’s a classic piece of cinema in the way The Ballad of Wallis Island could never hope to be.

But, even as The Ballad of Wallis Island serves in many ways as an echo of that other, better film, it also complements it well—the Coen Brothers have always brought with them a deeply (and entertainingly) cynical sensibility; this year, director James Griffiths, and in particular co-writers Tom Basden and Tim Key (who also play the two lead characters). bring with them an innocent hopefulness. The character Charles Heath (Key), who has hired legendary folk duo McGwyer Mortimer (Basden and Mulligan) to come to his very remote home island to play a gig for just him, has a charming naivetée. He talks way too much, something that would usually be annoying—to be fair, it regularly annoys Herb McGwyer—but somehow, here it’s endearing. Even as he’s annoyed, even Herb says at one point, “He’s actually kind of sweet.”

I should note now that McGwyer Mortimer broke up a decade ago, but Charles made them both offers they could not refuse, and managed to get them to reunite by not telling Herb that Nell Mortimer was also coming. Misunderstandings and frustrations predictably ensue. Nell arrives with her new husband, Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen), an American Black man with an affinity for birding. Michael is the character with the least dimension, an unfortunate disservice to the only Black character in the film, who only ever serves as a character device, and at one point is unnecessarily hurtful to Herb. Also, it’s odd to have Michael be the one American character in the film, even though Akemnji Ndifornyen himself is actually British.

With the addition of local shopkeeper and object of Charles’s affection, Amanda (Sian Clifford), The Ballad of Wallis Island has all of five characters with speaking parts (six if you count the one very brief scene with Amanda’s teenage son). Otherwise, there’s a couple of scenes with boat drivers, taking the entirety of the cast number to nine. This would have been a great production to have mounted during covid restrictions. Sometimes a small cast of characters, when written well, can really work, though. The Ballad of Wallis Island skirts the bounds of treacly, but it worked on me. This is largely thanks to the music, which, while not amazing enough to feel plausible as the output of a “legendary” folk duo, still has a unique power to elevate the material.

Also, Tim Key is worth singling out as Charles, a truly unique character in his ability to elicit charm and empathy even when his clueless behavior is exasperating. Both he and Amanda are written as charmingly ignorant, sometimes a little stupidly so: are we really to believe that Amanda, as the shopkeeper, does not even understand what a peanut butter cup is? or that Charles has never heard of a mosh pit? (This reference makes sense in context; it’s brought up as a joke that Charles doesn’t understand.) Portraying rural island dwellers as jaw-dropping simpletons is a little odd.

I would not be inaccurate to say that most of the characters in The Ballad of Wallis Island are one-note—but, what a pretty note it is. They players play it well, and all to a lovely soundtrack. This movie did make me nostalgic for better days and better things, but it’s a pleasant experience all the same.

This movie deserved more of Cary Mulligan. Justice for Carey!

Overall: B

THE AMATEUR

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

If I hated The Amateur, I could make some wisecrack about how apparently everyone involved was just that. That would have been fun! Instead, these filmmakers had the nerve to make something that was . . . just fine.

Which is to say: I had a relatively good time. The Amateur doesn’t particularly arouse the passions either way. It passes a couple of hours serviceably. The definitively mixed reviews are no surprise. It has some clever plotting.

There is a bit of a moral quandary here, though. As directed by James Hawes (One Life) and as performed by Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody), the title character, Charlie Heller, is not so much presented as an antihero as he is presented as a hero, understandably seeking vengeance by finding and killing the terrorists who killed his wife. I use the word “understandably” very loosely here. When the leader of these criminals is finally reached, he does point out the hypocrisy in Charlie’s pursuit of vigilante justice, but it barely gets touched on and then The Amateur moves on.

But hey, whatever—I’m here to see a glass swimming pool buckle and fall sixteen stories, and The Amateur delivers. How Charlie kills, or attempts to kill, the others is never as exciting as the swimming pool sequence, which is clearly why that pool collapsing got prominent placement in the movie trailer. The first of the killers he goes after, the attempt that goes the most wrong, Charlie does find a pretty ingenious way to threaten her life. It’s totally contrived for the sake of the story, of course, but at least it’s something we haven’t seen before.

Charlie works for the CIA, helped design all of their surveillance systems, and uses these systems and his wits to come up with clever ways to best the villains. Much is made of the difference between killing someone “from a difference” versus what killing someone at close range does to you. “You’re not a killer, Charlie,” says Henderson (a welcome Laurence Fishburme), the guy the CIA taps first to train Charlie as a means of placating him, then as an attempt to capture him. The Amateur isn’t much interested in the fact that killing is killing, no matter the distance.

But hey, forget about that, we’re having fun! The Amateur wants to have its cake and eat it too—and so do I. We’re all on the same page here. The moral gray areas of this story wouldn’t be egregious if not for presenting Charlie as though he’s on some moral quest, but I have chosen not to care about that. I care that we get to see Michael Stuhlbarg as the Big Scary Russian villain, and how he seems to have Charlie cornered but Charlie outwits him in the end. Julianne Nicholson’s CIA Director Moore is wildly oversimplified and idealized, almost to the point of propaganda, but she plays her part in taking down the people holding Charlie back so we love her!

I’ve made a fairly cynical read of The Amateur, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it well enough. Whatever works! With competent performances all around and deceptively clever turns of plot, this movie gets a pass.

He gets the job done and so does this movie.

Overall: B

A MINECRAFT MOVIE

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

I could have had a field day ripping A Minecraft Movie apart—if it weren’t funny. But, the thing is, I laughed a lot. And maybe you won’t. Maybe you will. This movie has a pretty specific and peculiar sensibility, which gets very goofy and dumb, for no other reason that its self-reward. It spoke to me. And I don’t even have the slightest bit of knowledge or familiarity with the 2011 video game on which it’s based, although plenty of the action feels like a video game. Or what I imagine a video game to be like, anyway. What do I know? I played a few video games at a friend’s house in the summer of 1989, decided fairly quickly that it wasn’t for me, and haven’t bothered with it since. Most of this movie’s audience will have been born after that.

How easily I settled into A Minecraft Movie’s delightfully absurdist humor only better serves to recommend it. Anyone open to its brand of humor can enjoy this movie, whether they’re familiar with the video game or not. Granted, the setup a paper thin and utterly stupid, introducing us to Jack Black’s Steve, a doorknob salesman with a lifelong dream of being a miner. He follows his dream, goes down into a mine, and within minutes uncovers an “orb” (it’s actually a cube) that opens a portal into “the Overworld,” a place where creativity knows no bounds—well, except for the unstated fact that apparently everything has to be designed in cubed shapes.

Anyway, everything that so quickly gets Steve to the Overworked is ridiculously convenient and untied to any backstory to give Steve any character dimension whatsoever. I don’t seriously think this is the case, but I suppose you could argue that this setup is itself a meta commentary on the thinly contrived characters in any typical movie of this ilk. There are no intellectual pursuits here—getting right to the delightful absurdities is very much the point.

I could have lived without the way Jack Black’s delivery is far more over the top than it needs to be, every single line he delivers. He’s overly excited about everything he sees onscreen, or even any particular thought he has. It’s on-brand for Jack Black, I guess, and makes him fit better in the Overworld than he does in the real world. The others that find themselves sucked into this world give more naturalistic performances, with the exception of Jason Momoa as Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison, a former “Gamer of the Year” in—speak of the devil!—1989.

Not all of the humor in A Minecraft Movie lands. What makes it work is that most contemporary absurdist comedies, especially wide-release big-budget ones, have far more humor that falls flat than that works. A Minecraft Movie is the other way around. For every gag that doesn’t work, there are five that do. I laughed far more consistently at this movie than I expected to.

Not all of the characters really work either, to be fair. Jennifer Coolidge appears as a high school Vice Principal, who invites a Minecraft villager to dinner after he wanders through the portal to the real world and she hits him with her car. Director Jared Hess, working with a script written be a team of six writers, cuts back and forth between the Overworld action and this dinner date, enough times to make you wonder what the point of the dinner scenes even is. In the end, the point seems to be only to get to a bit between Coolidge and the CGI villager during the end credits. Well, the bit is hilarious, one of the funniest things in the movie, so I guess it’s worth it?

Rounding out the principal cast are Sebastian Hansen as Henry, a very creative kid just starting high school in the Idaho town of Chuglass; Emma Myers as Natalie, Henry’s older sister who hardly looks like she should be out of high school herself (Myers is 23) and has been hired as the social media manager for the town’s potato chip factory; and Danielle Brooks as Dawn, the local real estate broker with a mobile zoo as a side hustle. Brooks in particular is a known talent who is somewhat wasted here, as all these characters are easily interchangeable with any serviceable actor, but they’re still all fun enough. Momoa, Coolidge and to a lesser degree Jack Black provide the most color as characters, although only Momoa provides a kind of colorfulness that fits neatly into the video-game-adaptation context.

The bottom line is, none of the plot, such as any plot exists, matters. What matters is a bevy of well-executed, adorably bizarre details, such as the villainous borde of cube-headed “piglins” from another dimension, led by a piglin witch named Malgosha. By and large, there is little to no rhyme or reason to anything that happens in A Minecraft Movie, but it’s the execution that makes it work—humor that works more often than it doesn’t; and more actors with charisma than without. It’s an impressively staged bit of organized chaos, set in a world rendered with surprisingly artful special effects. It’s a movie that is ultimately meaningless but kind of a blast, but sometimes a mindless blast is its own reward.

Which of these characters is the most fun? You get one guess!

Overall: B

THE ASSESSMENT

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

There is so much to unpack, something so provocative at the core of The Assessment, it’s difficult not to recommend for the conversation potential alone. There’s also something in the execution, however; something in the details—well: I have notes.

In the world of this film, the focus is on a married couple, Mia and Aaryan (Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel), living in a near-future society preserved under a climate controlled dome (rendered only in subtle ripples briefly shown in the daylight sky, a clever effect). This society is a deeply oppressive one, with strict laws of population control. The inference here is that these are citizens giving up freedoms in exchange for living well—a theme well mined in cinema, but here in a hyperspecific context. Mia and Aaryan are visited by Virginia, an “Assessor” (Alicia Vikander), who stays with them for seven days to determine whether they are fit to have a child.

This is very much the focus of The Assessment, the future world in which they live simply being the context. Virginia is an uncomfortable presence from the start, assessing “all aspects” of their relationship, including hovering outside their open bedroom door during oral sex. Mia and Aaryan are so desperate to have a child, they suck it up (so to speak) and perform their sex acts even with the knowledge of a stern observor.

By the next day, Virginia wakes up, sits at the breakfast table, and is immediately acting like a child. It becomes instantly clear that Virginia is testing Mia and Aaryan’s parenting skills by doing this—breaking her plastic spoon on the table, flinging food from her spoon onto the would-be parents. The behavior, in this context, occupies a nebulous space between rational and psychotic. And with only a couple of pointed exceptions, Virginia behaves like a small child for the rest of the week, testing how the would-be parents handle it.

I was pretty locked in with The Assessment until this turn, which happens fairly early on—day two of the Assessment, to be exact. I pretty quickly lost my own patience with Virginia and her antics, especially as they became increasingly bizarre, reckless, and dangerous—even to herself, that being very much the point notwithstanding. Mia and Aaryan are so nervous about behaving correctly in the presence of the Assessor, this being the one chance “The State” will give them for this, that they rarely question the lapses in logic, and do even less as the week wears on.

On the one hand, there could be much discussion among viewers of how fit Mia and Aaryan are as parents regardless: psychotic or not, Virginia gives them multiple chances to make mistakes but then learn from them. On the other hand, the only way to truly test their fitness would be to put an actual child in their care. Virginia herself is a grown woman, merely acting like a child, but it’s not possible to just shut out the fact that she knows better than a child. There are other, far more practical considerations, like the fact that an actual child of which Virginia is ostensibly embodying would weigh far less than her. Aaryan has a bad back, and after an outing to the beach near their house, Virginia insists he give her a piggyback ride, literally until he has to put her down because his back can’t take it anymore. In all likelihood, he’d have managed to carry an actual child the entire way. These sorts of details, which to me were glaringly obvious, are never acknowledged by a single character in the film, which is frustrating.

The Assessment is written by a team of three writers, and if they had really taken the time needed, they would have understood that a premise this specific yet complex needs to account for all potential plot holes. On this particular front, they were apparently not up to the task.

There is still much to make The Assessment worth watching, though. In the film’s best sequence, Mia and Aaryan are cornered into hosting a dinner party. The guests include a man Mia once had an affair with and his current girlfriend; Aaryan’s not-very-maternal mother; a lesbian couple composed of a work friend of Aaryan’s, her wife, and their own adoelscent child; and, mostly delightfully, an older woman named Evie, played by the perennially underrated Minnie Driver. Driver, an undeniably beautiful woman, plays a character who reveals herself to be 153 years old—we learn of a medication all these citizens can take to stop the effects of aging. This detail is part of the giant exposition dump that this dinner party doubles as, but specifically a long monologue by Evie, who shares some of the history of “old world” (later revealed to be any place outside this climate dome) and memory of how people used to tear each other apart “over scraps.”

Evie has no faith whatsoever in the sustainability of this new society, and openly regards it with contempt, even as she sits from an obvious position of privilege borne directly from it. Minnie Driver’s performance is incredible in this sequence, easily the best thing in the movie, both because of her innate talents as an entertainer—and her performance is very entertaining, offering most of what little humor this film contains—and because of how deftly she executes such exposition while we barely recognize that as her character’s sole purpose.

As for Mia and Aaryan, Elizabeth Olsen and Hamish Patel are also great, and provide nuanced explorations of the many ways the Assessment quite deliberately tests the limits of their relationship. Mia tends to many beloved species of plants in a greenhouse; Aaryan is a designer of AI “virtual pets” so advanced that he’s working on textured surfaces that can actually be felt to the touch. The latter stuff brings up a whole lot about the potentials and dangers of AI that The Assessment never fully explores—it is far more interested in the concept of regulated procreation in a bleak future—but also provides some pretty indelible imagery. Only this movie could depict something shocking with a human baby, I won’t spoil exactly what, and have it still be okay—because even the characters understand it to be a digital construction.

Aside from Minnie Driver, Alicia Vikander is ultimately the MVP of The Assessment, both in spite of and because of how contemptible Virginia is as a character. I spent most of the movie hoping Mia and Aaryan would be pushed to their breaking point, and they straight up murder her. On the other hand, a twist comes near the end that, while fundamentally disappointing on a narrative level, also manages to cultivate some empathy for Virginia. Empathizing with her did not make her less intolerable to me overall, however.

The Assessment is both imperfect and deliciously provocative, the kind of movie you love to talk about. It has some potential that it doesn’t quite realize, but there’s still something deeply satisfying about having seen it.

Hey maybe they do deserve to be judged.

Overall: B

NOVOCAINE

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

The best thing Novocaine has going for it is its clever and innovative premise: an Assitant Manager at a bank breaks the streak of an incredibly sheltered life to go on a wildly dangerous quest to save his crush from bank robber hostages—something he’s uniquely able to do because he has a genetic condition that prevents him from feeling pain.

What this means is two things. First, for an action comedy, Novocaine gets surprisingly graphic and gory. Second, for a mid-tier movie like this, Novocaine is genuinely funny, often precisely because of the graphic gore. Some of it actually reminded me of the 2023 comic gore fest Cocaine Bear, which actually put some viewers off because it relied so heavily on violence as comedy, but I got a big kick out of it.

Novocaine spends more time getting comedy out of its character relationships, to varying effect. Jack Quaid is well cast as Nate, the man with the “Novocaine” nickname. We learn that he grew up sheltered because it’s so easy for him to get injured and not realize it—he even avoids eating solid foods for fear of biting his tongue off (and when he is finally convinced to try a bite of cherry pie, I was really afraid that was what actually would happen). Quaid embodies the put-upon recluse well, although the full body of tattoos (all drawn on my Nate himself) strains believability. Plus, he has real charisma with Amber Midthunder, who plays the object of Nate’s crush at the bank, Sherry.

The bank robbers, though, are to a person thinly drawn, utterly contrived villains who fail to be interesting despite the best efforts of the people playing them—including Jack Nicholson’s son, Ray Nicholson. Between him and Quaid, who is the son of Randy Quaid and Meg Ryan, Novocaine is quite the “nepo baby” movie. But if an actor has the juice, it doesn’t matter who their parents are. It’s easy to see potential in Nicholson, but it would be nice to see him cast as a character whose motivations actually make sense. In Novocaine, his Simon character kills people indiscriminately both during and after the bank robbery, racking up a body count with no interrogation whatsoever into what’s behind his behavior. No sane criminal who has actually had multiple successful heists already would act so recklessly, but here I guess he serves as a potentially lethal danger to a protagonist who can withstand massive injury without blinking an eye.

Speaking of which, co-directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, and writer Lars Jacobson, are fairly careful about making sure Nate’s injuries actually last and don’t magically disappear. This does happen a bit with cuts and bruises on his face—Quaid is the star, after all—but the burns on his hand after sticking it in boiling oil last the rest of the film, sometimes taking other characters aback. An injury to his leg has him limping thereafter. And by the climactic sequence at the end of the film, Nate is finding ways to use his own injuries as weapons.

And this is all we’re going to Novocaine to see, really: the comic violence and clever gore that comes with a guy on a dangerous mission who can’t feel pain. That, and Jack Quaid himself. Few other actors would be as good a fit for Nate, a guy who is fearful and cautious until he is driven to put his body through the ringer. There’s a twist about halfway through that I did not see coming but which I’m sure others will see a mile away. It does make the story more interesting, but in a way that is severely limited by a pack of one-dimensional villains whose motivations only get halfway to making sense about half the time.

The trick to this movie—and most action comedies, really—is to go in with expectations properly calibrated. I certainly expected nothing special out of Novocaine, and that is precisely what I got. But it’s also very well paced and consistently funny, which is how a movie that could easily have fallen flat manages to work. Sometimes you just want solid entertainment even if it’s ultimately forgettable.

Nate never gives a handout because this just might be what he gets back.

Overall: B

Advance: THE PENGUIN LESSONS

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

The Penguin Lessons is one of those movies “inspired by true events,” in this case an adaptation of Tom Mitchell’s 2016 memoir of the same name, recounting his time in 1975 Argentina, when he rescued a penguin from an oil spill and then the penguin refused to leave his side. And although that is indeed what happened, “inspired by” remains the key phrase in the film adaptation, which engages with many typical movie tropes.

The biggest difference, though, is a curious one: Tom Mitchell was 23 years old in 1975, but here Steve Coogan plays him at the age of 59, complete with a tragic backstory that no 23-year-old is likely to have. The careless nature of rescuing a penguin on a holiday in Uruguay, and then smuggling it back to the Argentinian boarding school where he works, is much more befitting of a young man in his twenties. But, to be fair, Coogan kind of makes it work.

He also make The Penguin Lessons a film more appealing to older audiences, which I can’t help but suspect was deliberate. I attended an advanced screening billed as part of an AARP program called “Movies for Groups.” My husband and I drove out to the suburbs to watch it, and the theater was nearly filled to capacity with senior citizens. My husband is 51 (hence the target demographic of AARP, being over 50); I am 48, and I was almost certainly the youngest person there. One wonders: would an advanced screening of a sweet but slight movie about a young man and his penguin friend garner such a crowd size? The event was contextualized as part of fighting ageism, and I am all for making more movies for older audiences. Whether they can make money in the cinema landscape of the 2020s is another question. We already know they can’t.

The Penguin Lessons actually has a pretty wide range of ages amongst its characters. The Swedish fellow teacher who thrusts a somewhat unwanted friendship upon Tom is played by 39-year-old Björn Gustafsson. The headmaster of the school is played by 77-year-old Jonathan Pryce. The school’s resident housekeeper (Vivian El Jaber) whose outspoken young adult granddaughter (Alfonsina Carrocio) gets taken by the oppressive Argentinian military of the era. And Tom teaches English to a class full of teenage boys, a few of whom are minor characters in this story. That classroom is where The Penguin Lessons starts to feel a little like Dead Poets Society if the teacher happened to have a literal penguin sidekick—Tom gets the students to improve academically by bringing the penguin, given the name Juan Salvador, to class.

As directed by Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty), this story unfolds with all the expected charms of a movie that revolves around an adorable animal. Usually it’s a dog or a cat, so at least a penguin is something different—and something pulled from a real story. There is little doubt of the typical embellishments of film adaptations, though, particularly the young woman who reminds Tom of his lost daughter. On the plus side, there is no romantic interest there at all, and The Penguin Lessons really veers from cinematic obligations by having no romance at all. Unless you count the way everyone who encounters him falls for Juan Salvador. Multiple supporting characters become part of a running joke of finding themselves on Tom’s balcony, confiding in the penguin like he’s the attentive listener friend they always needed.

The adapted script, as written by Jeff Pope (Philomena—which also starred Steve Coogan, incidentally), is a little bit clunky, especially in the early scenes, with dialogue somehow both stilted and sedate. The live penguin used to play Juan Salvador injects life into the proceedings, though, and turns The Penguin Lessons into a cute comedy. The subtle comedy works better than when things turn more dramatic, and the penguin is used as a strained metaphor for resisting fascist governments. The movie itself even acknowledges this: when Tom refers to “putting the penguin in the pool” as a metaphor, Pryce’s character actually says, “not a very good one.”

Still, I cannot deny that The Penguin Lessons ultimately got to me. It took a while, but eventually I was locked in, both charmed by that flightless bird and shedding tears of sorrow for it when the inevitable occurs by the end of the film. This is a movie with a job to do—manipulate our emotions—and it does it well. Granted, I spent a lot of time also thinking about how much bird shit there must have been for someone to clean up, something this movie only references a couple of times as offhand gags. It spends a bit more time acknowledging the pungent fishy smell that follows Juan Salvador everywhere he goes.

I have mixed feelings about this sort of domestication of a wild animal at all. There’s the argument that Juan Salvador would not leave Tom no matter how much tried to shoo him away, so what could he do? He probably should have just left the penguin and let nature take its course—notwithstanding the character who literally counters, “Oil spills aren’t natural!” A student later notes that if a penguin loses its one chosen partner, they separate and eventually die. We can feel for Tom and his inability to push Juan Salvador away, except that a subplot involves Tom struggling to get the local zoo to take the penguin, only to change his mind. The quarantine area of the zoo, clearly designed to look like the 1970s zoo version of a medieval dungeon, puts him off the idea. This is an example of a film easily convincing its audience that the wild animal is better off living in as a boarding school teacher’s roommate than in a place that’s actually best for it.

But hey, look at me, just being a killjoy. The Penguin Lessons is pleasant enough. I’m happy to have seen it. I just, as always, have thoughts. This film is sweet and entertaining, but taking a penguin home with you is never a good idea! This concludes my overlong public service announcement.

That is one very unconventional TA.

Overall: B

MICKEY 17

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

It was always going to be a challenge for Bong Joon Ho to follow up his 2019 film Parasite, which turned out to be a watershed moment in both cinema and Oscar history. This is a guy with a penchant for genre mashing, and actually never more so than in Parasite—but no one would expect him to match that, and it makes sense that he would return to his oddball science fiction sensibilities with Mickey 17, a movie with neither hopes nor aspirations for Oscar glory. This is a movie just made by a bunch of people who are clearly having fun.

None more so than its star, Robert Pattinson, who plays two parts: Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. Technically he plays 18 parts, all of them the same person: Mickey has signed up to be an “expendable,” offering his body for fatal research on a planet marked for colonization, his body “reprinted” every time he dies, each time with his memory restored. Bong, who co-wrote the script, wisely doesn’t even try to explain what kind of science could make this possible, because it doesn’t matter, not pertinent to the story being told. This is just used as a tool for exploring other things that are on his mind.

In this future world, it has been declared unethical to allow “multiples” to exist at the same time: a person can only be reprinted after death. After we are taken through a pre-credits montage of Mickey’s first through 16th bodies, an unexpected twist of fate has 17 surviving when everyone assumes he has died, thereby printing 18 without realizing 17 is not really dead. These two characters are the leads in Mickey 17, and Pattison gives a performance that is unique, delightful, and illustrative of a breadth of talent wider than many realize.

Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have followed similar career paths after the Twilight series made them young movie stars—ironically, in both cases with objectively unremarkable performances (in Stewart’s case, that’s putting it diplomatically) in that subpar vampire fantasy series. In the years since, both of them have taken on far more interesting roles that have revealed surprising depths of talent. It would be fascinating to see them paired in a film again, but in a film that was actually good.

In the meantime, we can get a kick out of Mickey 17 in Mickey 17, a copy of a copy of a copy who is somehow frightened and insecure. When he meets Mickey 18, he discovers 18 to be very much over it, much more aggressive and even prone to revenge. You might even say nihilistic. I thought a lot about what might account for such drastic change in personality in the exact same person, and could never quite come up with anything. Mickey 17 is clearly fatigued by the memory of 16 different deaths. There is a fascinating thing to think about, though: with Mickey 17 still alive, presumably Mickey 18 can only be revived with the memories of Mickey 16, which means this is the first point at which two different versions of Mickey’s experience diverge.

This is much different from playing twins, and is more akin to playing clones, who are produced as people of the exact same age. It’s a deeply fascinating premise that Bong really doesn’t dig into deeply enough. The closest is when Mickey’s girlfriend, Nasha (Naomi Ackie), delights in the attempt at sleeping with two Mickeys at once. Mickey 17 is understandably baffled, and Mickey 18 is into it—even at one point running his fingers through 17’s hair. The scene gets interrupted, but I found myself relating to all three people involved. Who wouldn’t want to sleep with two Robert Pattinsons at once? And even though he’s not so much “hunky” as possessing a kind of stringy handsomeness, if I had Pattinson’s body I’d sleep with myself too.

But I haven’t even gotten to the “creepers,” the alien life on this planet so named by the very Trumpian character Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo, mugging in oversized teeth) and his wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette, stealing scenes as usual). These creatures have a vague resemblance to the “super pigs” in Bong’s 2017 film Ojka, only this time they’re closer to a cross between a muskox and a giant caterpillar. One of several nitpicky criticisms I have of Mickey 17 is how the “creepers” are the single form of life we see on the planet Niflheim. What sustains them? What do they eat? How do they thrive in a vacuum devoid of biodiversity? So far as we can tell, Nilfheim features only ice, and these creepers.

They do prove to be surprisingly intelligent, and a “translation device” gets introduced that, plot-wise, is a little too easy and convenient. Still, Bong manages to shoehorn in a lot of undeniably liberal talking points about colonization, and who is really an “alien.” And don’t get me wrong, of course I appreciate that, but much of it is a bit too on the nose.

Mickey 17 is undeniably entertaining, but also a bit too simple in its storytelling given the premise and its setting. The creepers are all impressively rendered, but I would have liked a bit more of the dazzle promised by this film’s marketing—either in terms of the visual effects, which lack color with its endless focus on white ice and snow contrasted with the metal and browns of the spaceship or the creeper creatures, or in terms of its plot turns. There’s not even as much action in this movie as you might expect. To be fair, it still has oddball sensibility to spare, which at the very least we can always expect of a Bong Joon Ho film. This is a movie that did not quite meet the excitement of my expectations, but the more I think about it, the more I think it will likely work well on rewatch.

Robert Pattinson doubles our pleasure in Mickey 17.

Overall: B

UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

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

An odd and unusual thing occurred when I went to SIFF Film Forum to see Universal Language tonight. When I arrived, about 15 minutes before showtime, there was a surprisingly large group of people already waiting—I would guess at least 30—outside the theater, which was not yet open. I, like probably many others, assumed maybe they did not open until shortly before the one showtime they had tonight, and waited patiently, even though we could see two or three people skulking around the dimly lit lobby through the glass walls. The minutes passed, and the crowd grew larger. Who knew this many people were eager to see this obscure Canadian-Iranian film, six days into its run at SIFF’s smallest theater?

Shortly after 7:00, the listed showtime, a young woman finally opened the door to announce they were still waiting for someone to arrive who could run the projector. She thanked us for our patience, said they hoped to let us in within five or ten minutes, and declared she also had a ticket and was excited to see this movie. Within minutes after that, finally, we were all let inside, and filtered into the theater as quickly as possible. There were no concessions for sale, but this crowd didn’t seem to care. The house was nearly sold out (in a theater capacity of 90), and within moments of the film starting, the audience was eating up this film—generously laughing at the most subtle of humor, a crowd typical of SIFF Cinema, eager to bridge gaps across cultures through cinema. Just like the characters in this movie.

What is my take, then? Honestly, I’m relatively ambivalent—I found Universal Language’s self-consciously absurdist charms to be effective, but often had no idea what the hell was really going on. I still can’t decide if that even matters. I’m not as eager as the rest of that crowd clearly was wholeheartedly to embrace this film regardless of how much sense it made, and yet, I found it a fun experience, in a rather bemusing way. I was impressed by how successfully it conveyed an often surrealist sensibility, without the use of camera tricks or special effects. This movie was clearly made on a shoestring budget, and still it looks great, thanks in large part to cinematographer Isabelle Stachtchenko.

Much of Universal Language went over my head, but I got this much: it straddles the line between absurdism and realism, and its odd sensibility and tone belie great narrative depths. There is a peculiar fusion of both culture and language, between Tehran, Iran and Winnipeg, Manitoba (in spite of a running joke with multiple characters mistaking it for a city in Alberta). Director and co-writer Matthew Rankin is himself a native Winnipegger, who plays a character in the film named Matthew, a government employee in Montreal who sheds his identity and hops on a bus to Winnipeg. On this bus he is joined by the “French immersion class” teacher (Mani Soleymanlou) who is never seen again after the bus breaks down outside Winnipeg, one of the narrative threads that kind of threw me for a loop—especially given that the film opens on that class.

But, there are two other interwoven storylines, and one of them involves a couple of girls from that class, who discover money frozen in ice and then go on a quest through the city to find the tools to chip it out of there. In this location, I was under the impression that we were all still in Montreal, but their quest later has them in Winnipeg, as though the two cities are easily traversed back and forth—even though it is specifically noted on the aforementioned bus that they have to ride all the way through Ontario between the two. But, maybe I missed something. I may have missed several things.

Finally, we meet Massoud (Pirouz Nemati), employee of the “Winnipeg Earmuff Authority” who freelances as a tour guide through amusingly absurd and innocuous “points of interest” in Winnipeg. This includes a briefcase abandoned on a park bench in 1978, and a stop at the memorial site for 19th-century Manitoban resistance fighter Louis Riel, where the tour group is asked to observe “thirty minutes of silence” in his honor. Eventually we learn that Matthew has returned to Winnipeg to reconnect with his ailing mother with whom he long ago lost touch, and who in her failing memory of old age has long been mistaking Massoud for her son, after a few years of him shoveling show for her. Ultimately this provides opportunity for connection through shared elements of identity, although for me this metaphor lacked clarity.

Still, between Matthew, Massoud, the girls, and even a couple of other students from the French immersion class, in the final act these seemingly disparate storylines connect in startlingly satisfying ways, puzzle pieces that suddenly fit together almost as if by accident. All the while, we are taken through a fictional version of Winnipeg where it has such a large population of Iranian immigrants that every sign is written in Persian, right down to those on a version of Tim Horton’s that is a teahouse that also sells doughnuts. Indeed, the vast majority of the dialogue in Universal Language is Persian, with merely a sprinkling of lines in French.

This blend of East and West is very much borne of the collaborators on this film, with Matthew Rankin co-writing the script with Iranian-Canadian friends Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati (Nemati being, again, who plays Massoud, and Firouzabadi appears in a cameo as the bus driver, who argues with an old lady passenger who complains about having to sit next to a live turkey—who, the driver points out, had its own paid ticket).

Universal Language has a clear love of Persian culture, at the same time it has some fun with the notion of Winnipeg as a dull city with nothing worth attracting tourists (something I am certain is not true). It has a “Grey District” and a “Beige District.” Ironically, it is shot beautifully, with stark, almost Brutalist simplicity, often framing characters against a backdrop of grey concrete and white snow. I don’t know what it is about Winnipeg that apparently inspires wildly absurdist films; I couldn’t help but also think of the 2003 film The Saddest Music in the World, set in a Depression-era Winnipeg in which Isabella Rossellini gets two glass prosthetic legs filled with beer. The director of that film, Guy Maddin, also a native of Winnipeg, later directed the very strange 2007 film, a sort of local history through a dreamlike lens, My Winnipeg. Rankin seems very much to be following in Maddin’s footsteps, just with a much more multicultural bent.

If there is anything Universal Language decidedly is not, it’s American—it’s very Persian and very Canadian, with no American sensibility whatsoever. These days, that comes as a relief: a celebration of diversity through quietly fantastical cultural fusion. I didn’t always know what to make of Universal Language, but I enjoyed the journey through its tightly structured if untethered narrative.

Matthew Rankin and Pirouz Nemati embrace their differences.

Overall: B

PADDINGTON IN PERU

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

With two preceding films that have long been beloved and arguably became instant classics in their time, Paddington in Peru has a lot to live up to. I’ll get right to the point there: it doesn’t quite make it.

Paddington in Peru is fine. But, you want these movies to be better than fine. I suppose I should confess I really missed the boat—two boats, actually—with both Paddington and Paddington 2. Having been released in 2014 and 2017, respectively, I had already been reviewing movies for years by the time they came out, but I did not see either of them in theaters, I guess because I thought they looked too corny and cutesy. Little did I know! I finally watched them both in 2018 and was utterly—and predictably—charmed by them, although I seem to be in the minority position that the first is actually the better of the two. I have now seen them both three times, the third time in anticipation of Paddington in Peru—this practice often being a mistake. Indeed, I don’t recommend it. If it’s been a while since you saw either of the previous two films, do not rewatch them shortly before seeing this new one. You might actually enjoy it more.

And don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed Paddington in Peru, in a whimsically nostalgic way that director Dougal Wilson clearly intended. This is Wilson’s debut feature film, after a long career directing music videos and film shorts, and the absence of Paul King, who directed the previous two films, is keenly felt. Granted, King went on to direct Wonka, which was definitively worse than this movie, so I’m not sure where that leaves us. In Wilson’s hands, while changing the setting away from London to Paddington’s country of origin is quite compelling, much of the film just feels like a franchise running out of steam.

This time out, we get new characters played by both Antonio Banderas and Olivia Colman, both apparently jumping at the chance to be in a Paddington movie in spite of their characters being undercooked. Banderas makes the best of a character haunted by generations of ancestors looking for treasure in Peru, a boat captain named Huner Cabot, but as written, he never fully clicks into the story. Colman certainly fares better as the “Reverend Mother” who turns out to be a villain a step slightly back in the direction of Nicole Kidman from the first film. This is not really a spoiler, as Colman only stops short of literally winking at the camera, in a way that’s one of the most endearing elements of the film. She lets the word “suspicious” slip out in amusingly suspicious ways.

The entire Brown family is also back, cast with mostly the same actors, which is comforting—once again we get Hugh Bonneville as Henry; and Madeleine Harris and Samuel Joslin as the kids, Judy and Jonathan, now seven years older than they were in Paddington 2. Julie Walters also returns as Mrs. Bird, but for reasons apparently unknown, Emily Mortimer replaces Salley Hawkins as May Brown. It’s an okay replacement, I guess, as I didn’t even realize the actor had been replaced until I looked at IMDb. In any case, it’s nice to see the whole family again, but as they all take a family trip to Peru with Paddington to help him find his Aunt Lucy who has gone missing from the Home for Retired Bears, they seldom serve any purpose besides fitting into slots of obligation.

In the early scenes, when Paddington gets photos taken for his passport now that he’s become a British citizen, it’s easy to be charmed. When the Browns travel to Peru, the momentum peters out a bit, the deceptively hilarious whimsey of the previous films largely absent. Boat captain Hunter Cabot shows up with his concerned daughter Gina (Carla Tous), and the vibe is a bit incongruous. Olivia Colman’s Reverend Mother isn’t a perfect character either, but Colman is clearly having such a great time, I couldn’t help but have fun watching her.

Of course things do come full circle in a way with Paddington in Peru, the third film set in the country he came from, and the action picks up in the last act in a fairly satisfying way. The story closes in a way that really tugs on our nostalgia strings, and I was not immune to it. In spite of the story sagging a bit prior to that, I got a little teary eyed. This movie works as a coda of sorts to the Paddington franchise, even if it’s undeniably inferior to what came before it—an all-too common turn in the third part of a film series.

I will say this: Paddington in Peru looks spectacular. The visual effects are top notch, especially in the Peru sequences, where the detail in the rendering of Paddington bear is incredible. I won’t say it makes up for a relatively mediocre plot, but this movie is visually dazzling, and that’s still something. And of course, Paddington himself—especially as voiced by the delightful Ben Wishaw—is as lovable as ever. This one may not be an instant classic, but it still invites us back into a world we know and love, still a warm and cozy place to visit.

Not as great as we wanted, but we can make the most of it: maybe use Paddington’s approach to all things when watching this movie.