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

BOB TREVINO LIKES IT

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

I feel like I should like Bob Trevino Likes This less than I did, but a great cast sometimes makes up for a lot. It’s also possible that I am simply aging into the film’s target demographic, easily moved by rote emotional manipulation.

But I’m also not ready to sell myself short! And great credit and appreciation is due to Barbie Ferreira, a clearly excellent performer, giving the character of Lily Trevino far more nuance than the script asks of her. The same can be said, albeit to a lesser degree, of John Leguizamo, as Bob Trevino, the guy Lily finds on Facebook who happens to have the same name as her wildly selfish—and I do mean wild—dad, and strikes up a friendship with him. Leguizamo plays bob as an understated loner, and has an unusual, familial chemistry with Ferreira as the two forge a very odd but healing relationship. Leguizamo is a veteran actor with a certain amount of well-earned respect; and I pray I get to see Ferreira in other films as characters with greater dimension.

And to be clear: Lily has far more dimension than anyone else in Bob Trevino Likes It, directly because of Ferreira’s performance. With the simplest and subtlest gestures, movements, and expressions, she is captivating onscreen. She took an undercooked part and ran with it, in all the best ways.

Unfortunately, Bob Trevino Likes It is also bogged down, by the character that is Lily’s biological father, Robert Trevino (French Stewart)—a guy so deeply selfish, narcissistic and unlikable that he instantly becomes a caricature. Screenshots of Facebook messages are shown at the end of the film, indicating that the film was—here comes that phrase again—”inspired by” a real experience, had by writer-director Tracie Laymon. Well, to say that she contrived a fictionalized version of the story would be an understatement.

Lily’s father, who has started going by “Robert” because he thinks the women he’s dating prefer it, breaks off contact with Lily when she can’t get the details of a date right when she tags along, at his request. This is when she connects with Bob on Facebook, sending a friend request she thinks she’s sending to her dad. Weeks later, Robert finally calls and asks to meet up, insisting she break plans she’s already made (with Bob), only to give her an itemized list to demonstrate how much raising her has literally cost him.

I had difficulty getting over what a piece of work Robert was, with zero redeeming qualities—forming the perfect codependent relationship with a daughter who has zero self-worth. Do people like this even really exist? Broadly speaking they do, but even pieces of shit have some humanity, and Robert really isn’t given any. Conversely, Bob has a wife, Jeanie (Rachel Bay Jones), a competitive scrapbooker who throws herself into implausibly winning the grand prize every year as a means of coping with the loss of a small child roughly a decade before. Jeanie is more pleasant than Robert, but does not have much more dimension—and she is used later in an unforgivable way. We are clearly meant to expect by her demeanor that she will be cold and unkind to Lily, only to bait-and-switch the audience out of nowhere, suddenly becoming incredibly sweet.

Who the hell are these people? Not even characters in small parts are given any grace. When Lily visits Robert’s home desperate to get him to answer the door, clearly in despair, the neighbors and a cop insist she leave and not disturb any residents, without offering a shred of empathy. It’s like the universe of Bob Trevino Likes It is populated by the soulless—except for the two main characters we’re meant to feel for, of course.

Indeed: feel for them, we do. In the end, Bob Trevino Likes It works in spite of itself. It has an unusual and compelling premise, the kind that can only be ripped from real life—and it’s refreshing that not only is there no romance even hinted at, no other character suspects it either. It would have made sense for Laymon to explore further into the idea of Lily latching onto Bob as a surrogate father, which makes much of the story here far more awkward than it often even seems intended to be. Instead, we all just take it on faith that they’re just friends, apparently with no strange daddy-issues dynamic. But Daphne (Lauren 'Lolo' Spencer), the young woman Lily works for doing in-home care, notes that it’s weird to suddenly make friends with a sixty-year-old man on the internet—and she’s one of the few characters here talking sense.

That said, I’m fine with trusting that this unusual relationship is sweet and rewarding, even healthy. I just resent how the story written to support it is so contrived, to the point of effectiveness: thanks in particular to Ferreira’s excellent performance, I was still moved to tears. I enjoyed watching these characters hang out together, grow, and learn from each other. I was saddened when they shared or experienced loss. I had a mostly pleasant time sifting through the trappings of mediocrity.

We’re the only real people in this movie, right?

Overall: B-

DEATH OF A UNICORN

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

The first thing you should know about Death of a Unicorn is the visual effects are kind of shit. It was made with a $15 million budget, and it looks like about $10 million of that went to cast salaries. That’s probably not how it actually was, but it’s certainly how it looks. Writer-director Alex Scharfman, in his feature film debut, employs a lot of camera tricks to minimize the amount of time we see actual unicorns on camera. Some of the time, it’s an effective technique for either illustrating the creatures’ enormity, or underscoring their darkly dazzling otherworldliness. Most of the time, it’s a transparent reflection of budget constraints. This is a film with many visual references to other, much better films, from Jurassic Park to Alien. Perhaps we are meant to see Death of a Unicorn as also an ode to Jaws, which also had to obscure its monster due to budget constraints and equipment failures, but with skilled editing became a masterwork of suspense. Once the shark was seen onscreen, audiences were in awe. Once we see the monstrous unicorns onscreen here, there isn’t awe so moch as a question of which cheap off-the-shelf effects software was used.

The second thing you should know about Death of a Unicorn, which makes up for a whole lot of flaws and mediocrity, is it is exceptionally well cast. Granted, most of them are basically phoning in their performances, especially Paul Rudd as Elliot, the misguided dad trying to ingratiate himself to a dying wealthy employer on a weekend retreat at his house in the mountains “this far north”—the most specific reference we get to the location. Are we in Alaska? Where? (It was filmed in Hungary.) But there are others, even when phoning in, who have such strong personas that you can’t help but have fun with them in this context: Richard E. Grant as Odell Leopold, the aforementioned dying employer; Téa Leoni as Belinda, his equally selfish and money-hungry wife; Will Poulter as Shepard, their even more single-minded, dickish son (who is constantly wearing pleated shorts, and somehow, it’s a perfect touch). Possibly my favorite among the cast is Anthony Carrigan, best known as NoHo Hank from HBO’s Barry, as Griff, the Leopolds’ increasingly put-upon butler. Jenna Ortega plays Ridley, Elliot’s daughter, and in the year 2025, Ortega probably qualifies as the film’s biggest star. Now 22 years old, I found myself wondering how long she can continue playing teenagers—although, to be fair, this movie never says exactly how old she is, and does make one reference to college studies.

The film opens with Elliot and Ridley, traveling to this weekend retreat, and it’s while they are driving through the mountains, frustrated with sudden loss of juice in their electronics (later a key plot point), when they hit a “horse-like creature”—or, as Ridley later puts it, “A fucking unicorn.” When the Leopolds discover the healing properties of this creature, and particularly synthesized powder from its horn, everything this greedy, wealthy family does from then on is utterly predictable—as is Death of a Unicorn overall. Let’s just say that the script is not this movie’s strongest element.

There’s something undeniably fun about the story in spite of its flaws, however. Death of a Unicorn might ultimately have been more successful if Scharfman had focused more on directing and collaborated with some other writers. To Scharfman’s credit, though, he strikes an unusually nice balance of tone, with consistently effective humor sprinkled into sequences that overtly veer into the horror genre, as the juvenile unicorn’s parents show up to exact their revenge. This movie has plenty of jump-scares, and I spent plenty of time covering my eyes with my hand.

How often do you get a horror-comedy-fantasy that is also a genuinely good time? This is not a movie that will still be talked about generations from now—or next week, really—but it’s a kick while it’s happening (sometimes literally). Even special effects that are subpar, if not outright terrible, do not detract from that. A lot of movies try to be simultaneously stupid and fun, but typically they land solidly on the side of stupid. Death of a Unicorn pulls off the minor miracle of succeeding at the fun part. With a bit more discipline, it could have been far better, but sometimes you leave a movie satisfied by the fact that it could have been much worse.

Death of a career? Not quite, but a fun step in that direction!

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

BLACK BAG

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

Black Bag begins with an extended dinner party sequence, the kind of scene that usually happens much later in a movie. George (Michael Fassbender) and Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) have invited four colleagues over, because George has been warned that they are among five who could possibly be the source of a leak in the intelligence agency they all work for. As it happens, George has been informed that Kathryn also has both the motive and the capability.

This is the third Steven Soderbergh film in as many years to be written by David Koepp, and it’s the best one yet—Kimi (2022) had a production limited by covid restrictions, but still takes a sudden and very satisfying turn at the end; Presence, from earlier this year, had a fascinatingly novel premise limited by a story not fully fleshed out. No such limitations exist in Black Bag, which is all of 93 minutes long and still achieves what many spy series only aspire to, and in a fraction of the time.

And this brings me back to that dinner party. Through deft writing, skilled editing and solid performances all around, we learn a great deal about all six of the characters at that kitchen table in a very short amount of time. What could have been clunky exposition in someone else’s hands, Soderbergh and Koepp reveal key character details while also moving the story forward—all with just a group of people sitting around a dinner table. Granted, it does culminate in an act of violence which is, in context, both shocking and delightful. Soderbergh has a unique way of keeping us on our toes.

Black Bag’s suspense both starts and ends around that dinner table. In between, a lot of time is spent with all of these characters in the UK intelligence office where they all work, with only occasional scenes shot on location. The central mystery shifts and moves, but with an unusual grace, never a particular jolt of plot turn. George and Kathryn’s four colleagues are in two known romantic pairings as well, but over time we learn who’s been sleeping around with which of the others in the group. Ultimately, their actions serve as a test of George and Kathryn’s marriage—it’s telling that others in the group call them “psychos” because they put their devotion to each other above all else.

This is a story largely about trust, and the type of work that tests it. George and Kathryn aren’t the only couple who use the phrase “black bag” as code for something that is work-confidential, something they cannot talk about. Somehow, though, they are the only ones who manage to make it work—even as they get playful with it: “Would you lie to me?” George asks. “Only if I had to,” Kathryn replies.

Cate Blanchett is 55 years old, and she’s as luminous as ever—this time with long, luscious brown hair. Michael Fassbender is a bit younger, 47, and he’s had showier parts in other movies. But he and Blanchett have a crackling chemistry, the kind without which this film would instantly fall flat. It is unclear to us early on whether George has reason to suspect Kathryn, or if the source of the leak is among the other four characters. The evidence ebbs and flows, and so do our ideas of what’s actually going on between George and Kathryn.

Black Bag is intrigue at its finest, a feast of sleek production design as a backdrop for a mystery both complex and concise. Not a moment is wasted in this movie, which is so well done, it leaves you wondering why so many other similar movies dwell on their own plotting so pointlessly. There is an irony to this film in that, by not engaging in any pretense of self-importance, it achieves an unexpected excellence.

Blanchett and Fassbender teach us about trust in the face of suspicion.

Overall: A-

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

MY DEAD FRIEND ZOE

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

Spoiler alert! Zoe is dead. But, Natalie Morales plays her throughout My Dead Friend Zoe—never as a ghost, but only either as a memory in flashback, or as a figment of her best friend Merit’s imagination. Sonequa Martin-Green plays Merit as a woman with a very peculiar form of PTSD, who has been court-ordered to attend group therapy for veterans after an incident at work. It’s always clear that Merit feels guilt about Zoe’s death, but the specifics of Zoe’s death are not revealed until nearly the end of the film. It turns out to be a bit of a narrative zag that real-life veterans will likely find unsurprising, as it’s a pervasive problem among veterans.

My Dead Friend Zoe is a film that is both very much veterans-forward, and seems somewhat cautious with its themes and representations. Nearly the entire supporting cast is made up of actors who are also veterans, which is very cool; the end credits feature stills of the actors from the film and then photos of them in uniform. This includes Morgan Freeman, who served in the U.S. Air Force from 1955-1959, ages 18-22. Freeman, who has been a professional actor for over sixty years and remains at the top of his game at age 87, plays Merit’s group therapy facilitator. The other members of the group are all also actor-veterans hired for the parts.

This is a film that pointedly sidesteps politics, instead focusing on what traumatic experiences while serving does to people in the military. Indeed, it is noted to have been “inspired” by the stories of two veteran friends known to director and co-writer Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, himself an Iraq War veteran. The two different friends are shown to have been men, but Hausmann-Stokes makes the compelling choice of making the two friends in this film young women—one a Latina woman (Morales) and one a multiracial Black woman (Martin-Green). Indeed, Ed Harris, a veteran of acting if not of the Armed Forces himself, plays Merit’s grandfather Dale, who is the most significant supporting character in this story.

There is a lot of socioeconomic issues at play between Zoe, who characterizes herself as a person with no familial support to go back to after serving; and Merit, who points herself out as “a Black woman in America” just before Zoe points out that she’s one with a lake house. “I don’t have a lake house,” Merit counters. “My grandpa does.” Hausmann-Stokes seems to be playing a bit with common notions of power and privilege, and subtle ways. Whatever the reason for it, it’s unusual to see a multiracial family like this depicted on film, although aside from the one aforementioned reference, there is nothing discussed regarding the differences of cultural experience between Merit, a young Black woman, and her grandfather, an old White man—who does make a point of contrasting veterans of more recent conflicts being welcomed home after they served in Iraq or Afghanistan with how terribly veterans of the Vietnam War were treated when they came home.

There could be some ambivalence with seeing such a depiction of an old White man inferring that a young Black woman should count her blessings, and My Best Friend Zoe makes no effort to even illustrate how their experiences might be different outside the specific context of being veterans. It’s possible Merit’s grandfather was cast as a White man because so few people of color could have risen to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Vietnam War—though, not impossible: only 5% of Army Officers in Vietnam were Black, but they did exist—the highest-ranking, Roscoe Robinson Jr., having been the first African American to become a four-star general. How many of them might still be around today is perhaps a more challenging question, especially considering the number of them to reach the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or higher amounted to merely a handful.

None of these considerations detract at all from Harris’s performance, which is great as Dale, Merit’s grandfather who is diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s. If anything, it’s kind of a bummer to see Harris, like so many older actors, getting relegated to roles like a grandpa with dementia. On the up side, Dale is just as multi-dimensional a character as Merit, a character written well enough to make playing the part worth the effort.

Zoe, as a character, is easily the most complex, and is also fleshed out impressively well, although I would have liked more detail in her backstory. In My Dead Friend Zoe, Zoe exists half the time as her actual self, and the other half as a projection in Merit’s mind. Hausmann-Stoles skillfully illustrates how, in the latter case, Zoe is actually an extension of Merit, and her guilt, however unfounded it might be. Merit blames herself, even though what actually happened to Zoe is not quite what the story leads us to believe for most of the time it’s being told. She’ll say things that Merit fears are how Zoe would feel, but we get to know Zoe well enough to know her better than that.

Merit is a woman dealing with far more than she should have to: the loss of her best friend; the resulting distraction at her job that ultimately got her court-ordered to therapy; the just-discovered dementia in her beloved grandfather. The one positive, which is a welcome subplot, is a barely-budding romance with Alex, the man taking over the assisted living facility previously run by his parents. Alex is played with warmth and compassion—and a dash of snark—by Utkarsh Ambudkar.

There is a bit more I would have liked out of My Dead Friend Zoe, but it has a unique twist on a well-worn premise, and winning performances all around. Its pointed message of supporting the needs of veterans who have given so much to this country, especially in ways the rest of us can barely imagine, is well taken. This film puts its money where its mouth is in ways few others do, offering resources for how to offer that support beyond just seeing the movie, which is still worth the time on its own merits.

A haunting of a different sort, courtesy of Zoe and Merit.

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