THE BALLAD OF WALLACE 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 Wallace 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 Wallace 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 Wallace Island could never hope to be.

But, even as The Ballad of Wallace 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 Wallace 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 Wallace Island get skirt 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 brough 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 Wallace 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 NICE INDIAN BOY

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

Full disclosure, it’s a bit more difficult for me to be objective in my assessment of A Nice Indian Boy than it is for most films. Setting aside the myth that true objectivity even exists, this is a film that really hits home for me: it’s about a white man who marries a South Asian man in an Indian wedding that’s made as gay as a traditional Indian wedding can be made. And, I am a white man who married a South Asian man in an Indian wedding as traditional as we could make it. Some of it was modified in ways it would have had to have been regardless of our sexuality: truly traditional Indian weddings last for days; ours lasted an afternoon. The same goes for the wedding that occurs in this movie, but which featured very specific, Hindu rituals that I performed in my own wedding to my husband.

It’s an unusual thing indeed, to see a film so steeped in South Asian culture, and yet even as a white guy, see so very much of my own experience reflected in it. A pretty significant subplot involves multiple characters’ love of the very famous 1995 Bollywood movie Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (translated as The Brave-Hearted Will Take the Bride), commonly abbreviated as “DDLJ”—and, very specifically, its signature song, “Ek Duke Ke Vaaste” (“For Each Other”). I have seen that film only once, myself; but that song has been a staple of my Hindi music playlists for a solid two decades. It has had a particularly nostalgic place in the hearts of South Asians the world over for thirty years that I could never access, but it also has a very particular nostalgic meaning to me personally.

A Nice Indian Boy does push the bounds of plausibility a tad, but therein lies the magic of movies, I suppose. Only once did I feel a bit dubious about the meet-cute setup between Naveen (Karan Soni) and Jay (Jonathan Groff), as they actually meet in a temple, Jay showing up to pray to the elephant god Ganesha, as though he were a natural practicing Hindu. But, not long after that, we learn that Jay, now orphaned due to his parents having been older when they took him in, was adopted by Hindu parents. So then, I though: okay, I guess I buy that.

Soni and Groff are well-cast and have clear chemistry, Soni as someone still struggling to overcome shame and embarrassment; Groff as someone self-assured after the heard-learned lessons of a youth spent in foster care before finding the parents who ultimately welcomed him home. I’d love to learn more about Groff’s unique experience, but the fact of his parents’ deaths makes it easier for the story at hand to focus on Naveen and his family.

A Nice Indian Boy is arguably more sweet and romantic than it is funny, although it is also plenty funny. I just wish I had known to bring in plenty of tissues—I cried a lot more than I expected to. It is perhaps to this movie’s greatest credit that all the tears were shed in response to touching and heartwarming turns of events, as opposed to anything sad or tragic. It is told in five chapters, starting with Naveen and Jay meeting and then going on a sweetly awkward first date. In a particularly well-executed scene at a bar, Jay surprises Naveen by admitting that he’s nervous. The special thing about Jay is his comfort with simply acknowledging such things, while Naveen still has much to learn on that front.

Naveen and Jay are very well rounded, flawed and adorable characters. But what truly makes A Nice Indian Boy special is the cast that rounds out Nareen’s family: his parents, Archit and Megha (Harish Patel and Zarna Gang), have had six years to come to terms with a son who is openly gay—so much so that, in fact, they spend a lot of time watching the gay cable channel—but, until now, no experience meeting one of his boyfriends. Naveen also has an older sister, Arundhathi (Sunita Mani), struggling with the loveless marriage her parents arranged and now resentful of how much more effort to be open minded her parents are being about their son than they seemed to have been when they married off their daughter.

It would be easy to make these characters one-note punch lines, but in all three cases, they bring a level of humanity not usually given to such supporting characters, particularly in romantic comedies—even good ones. These characters feel like real people, ones that you might meet in reality. Archit and Megha’s unusual acceptance of their gay son does not change that. These are simply loving parents who are making an effort, often stumbling adorably along the way. Archit in particular has a lovely arc in the story, never overtly judgmental of his son but with some clear discomfort, which feeds into Naveen’s discomfort with himself.

There is an on-again, off-again, on-again arc between Naveen and Jay that feels tied a little too neatly, but it’s the ensemble cast, including loving and colorful friends on both their parts, that really sells their story. There is real and believable development among all of the principal characters, concisely written by Eric Randall as adapted by the play of the same name by Madhuri Shekar. A Nice Indian Boy runs a brisk 96 minutes, which gives it a key thing in common with Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag (an otherwise very different movie—except that it’s also very romantic): it packs a lot into a lean runtime, without every feeling rushed.

I couldn’t tell you yet whether I will wind up seeing A Nice Indian Boy many more times, or if it will become a long-lasting favorite. It might. All I can tell you for certain is that I was deeply moved by it, on a very personal level, and I would recommend it to absolutely anyone. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll love it either way.

I don’t know if you’ll fall in love with this movie but I would encourage you to find out, because I sure did.

Overall: A-

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-