MICKEY 17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Pattinson doubles our pleasure in Mickey 17.

Overall: B

UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matthew Rankin and Pirouz Nemati embrace their differences.

Overall: B

PADDINGTON IN PERU

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LOVE HURTS

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

Ke Huy Quan deserves a successful, fun, smart action movie that proves he’s bankable beyond the stunning alignment of stars that was Everything Everywhere All at Once. We’re now three years beyond that film, and Quan has been cast in the starring role of the action comedy Love Hurts, which is . . . not that movie.

It’s difficult to express precisely how bad this movie is. To be fair, there was some talent that went into it—Quan himself is in it, after all, and he’s the one person in it giving a passable performance. But oh my god, the script! Something truly unexpected comes to mind: the old Christian quote about how Jesus answered when asked how much he loves us: “This much, he answered: then he stretched out his arms and died.” Time to flip the script, so to speak: that’s how much I hated the writing in this movie. I should really be admitted into a hospital.

Love Hurts was written by a team of three writers, whom I will do the courtesy of not naming here. The possibility that any of them might be proud of this work makes me despair for humanity. I could have written a better script in a single evening with one hand tied behind my back. While on a triple dose of Ambien.

It’s almost worse that the premise could have actually worked. Marvin Gable (Quan) is a real estate agent who has reinvented himself after a life of crime working with his brother, Alvin (Daniel Wu), who has sent several of his goons after Marv after hearing that Rose (Ariana DeBose), who was supposed to have been killed for stealing from Alvin, is actually alive and has returned. Hardly original, true—but it doesn’t have to be. All that’s needed is some chemistry, charisma, and wit, and you have the makings of passable entertainment. But Quan has no chemistry with DeBose; all of the supporting actors have zero charisma; and the story is completely witless. I suppose I should be fair. I did laugh a couple of times when it was unintentionally funny.

Did I mention that Alvin’s nickname is “Knuckles”? Or that Sean Astin shows up, quite randomly, as Marv’s boss with a cowboy hat and an exaggerated Southern accent?

Everything that happens in Love Hurts is unbearably rote and obvious. Every character exists as nothing more than an exposition factory. Given the streamer’s executive notes to creators that characters should repeatedly say aloud what they are doing, this should have been released on Netflix. I’d say that why anyone would waste their time seeing this movie in the theater escapes me, except that’s precisely what I just did. There were four other people in the theater. All those empty seats were the sensible choice. The rest of us need a wellness check.

I knew this movie was headed nowhere good as soon as it began, with excessive voiceover narration, declaring Valentine’s Day a day full of delightful surprises. Marv gets on the phone with depressive his assistant, Ashley (Lio Tipton), who is getting ready for the office Valentine’s Day party. What office ever throws a party for Valentine’s Day?

Three of Knuckles’s henchmen get what pass for subplots in this movie. One, “The Raven,” becomes a love interest for Ashley when she discovers his book of poetry. Then there are Otis and King, played by André Eriksen and Marshawn Lynch respectively, who spend a lot of time shooting guns at people but not hitting their targets, with one exception that is played for one of the many laughs that fall flat. I don’t fault anyone for being a fan of Marshawn Lynch, he seems like a delightful enough guy, but that does not make him a good actor. His relatively unnatural line readings could perhaps be forgiven if not for nearly every other performance being phoned in. Seahawks fans might get a minor kick out of hearing Lynch literally say “Beast mode!” when he tackles someone during a fight, but to me it felt like an Easter egg in the wrong basket. Anyway, King keeps giving Otis advice on how to mend his relationship with his wife and, you don’t care, do you? God knows I didn’t.

If Love Hurts has any redeeming quality, it’s the fight choreography—this is the only time the movie stops being oppressively stupid and becomes genuinely fun. But these moments are fleeting, largely because we don’t get nearly enough of them. While they are happening, the fight choreography flits between clever and corny, but appears to have been done practically, if sometimes obscured by frenetic cinematography. But it’s as though these martial arts exist in a different movie. If only they did.

Ke Huy Quan, to his credit, is the best thing in this movie, which isn’t saying much for a film that so brazenly sets the bar low. The bar is in the basement. It’s in the Earth’s core. But Quan is game and appears to be having fun. Still, I have to wonder about his judgment. The fact that all of these actors read this script and thought it was worth shooting makes me wonder about their reading comprehension.

Maybe this was a test, for all of us. Where is the reward? I sat through an 83-minute movie that felt like an eternity and all I got was this ridiculous review.

Yes, that is correct. This movie misses the mark.

Overall: D+

DOG MAN

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

Dog Man is a cute, sweet, sporadically very funny movie, based on a series of graphic novels of the same name by Dav Pilkey, which were themselves a spinoff of Pilkey’s original Captain Underpants illustrated novel series. Dog Man is also overstuffed with antic plotting, and feels a bit overlong even at an 89-minute runtime. Surely young kids will love it; they don’t care about nuances of criticism. As for how the adults will like it when they take children to see it? Well, they won’t likely hate it, at least.

On the topic of animated feature films that manage to reach both children and adults at their own levels simultaneously, Dog Man is impressive in how often it manages this, even without particularly sophisticated or subversively “adult” humor. This movie is wholesome top to bottom, and is only rated PG, I would assume, because of the cartoon violence in it. The protagonist is a loyal dog’s head transplanted onto the body of his beloved police officer master, after all, and director and co-writer Peter Hastings (collaborating with Pilkey on the script) somewhat pointedly skirts past the darker implications there. This means Officer Knight is effectively dead, right? Someone tell all the children in the screenings so they understand! Actually, I’d have more respect for this film if it found some way to say Officer Knight—or his head, anyway—had gone to live on a farm.

Indeed, there is a vibe of some missed opportunity with Dog Man, a film that is filled with self-awareness and packed with jokes and sight gags—I enjoyed the gag where two characters argued on opposite sides of a split screen and one of them literally grabbed the line splitting the image. It’s that kind of subtly meta stuff that really works in this movie. Unfortunately, while many of the jokes land, plenty of them don’t, and the latter happen when the story sags under the weight of its own bloat.

I keep thinking of the halcyon days of the 75-minute animated feature film, something that was far more common roughly thirty years ago and earlier. This is much more appropriate to the attention span of young child audiences, and many animated features in the past decade—specifically those meant for kids—have leaned closer to an hour and 45 minutes. Given the desire for theaters to maximize showtimes and therefore ticket sales, I’m at a loss as to what the endgame is there, unless the skill of the storytelling justifies the length, which is rare. And getting to Dog Man, this is a film that would land far more effectively for adults and children alike with a runtime closer to 75 minutes, but for some reason filmmakers seem to think they need to “flesh out” these stories.

But Dog Man is exceedingly simple: once Dog and Man combine, they become a “Supa Cop,” easily capturing OK City’s biggest villain, Petey the (of course) evil cat—voiced pretty entertainingly by Pete Davidson. He plots to take over the world and rid it of all “do-gooders,” going so far as to clone himself, not realizing the clone will appear as a kitten who won’t grow up for 18 years. “Li’l Petey” (voiced adorably by Lucas Hopkins Calderon) comes out of the clone machine—easily ordered by mail by Petey—with an innocence that, naturally, brings everyone together in the end. Spoilers!

Anyway, Petey is just as good at escaping prison—in an admittedly delightful montage—as Dog Man is at catching him, so this just becomes a cycle until Petey ups the ante with all manner of wild inventions, including my favorite: a robot he calls “80-Hexatron Droidformigon,” or “80-HD.” The robot becomes a quasi-character in its own right, although the rest of the cast is much more amusing, including Lil Red Howery as Dog Man’s bumbling police Chief; Cheri Oteri as OK City’s comically corrupt Mayor; Isla Fisher as ambitious TV reporter Sarah Hatoff; Stephen Root as Petey’s deadbeat dad; and Ricky Gervais as the movie’s most baffling character, an evil fish villain named Flippy. (Look for the obvious Aliens reference when Flippy goes after Li’l Petey and Petey shouts, “Get away from him you fish!”)

Flippy makes a nice segue into what doesn’t work all that well in Dog Man. Flippy serves as a villain to unite all the others against, but the plot mechanics are unnecessarily convoluted, and the “climactic” sequence this ushers in is less exciting than it is baffling. Literal buildings are brought to life as sort of building-monsters that wreak havoc, almost Gozilla-style. Dog Man winds up operating a giant “Mecha Mail Man” to battle them with. It’s all very: what? Although it still gets a few funny gags, none of it really works as well as the rest of the movie does.

Ultimately, Dog Man falls into the same trap nearly every other superhero movie does, predictably ending in a massive, ridiculously high-stakes battle blowout. Who the hell created the rule that every superhero movie has to end this way? Peter Hastings does smuggle in a subtle (and very brief) commentary on this very trope, but while also fully participating in it. I’d have much preferred a resolution only between Dog Man, Petey and Li’l Petey without any involvement with a supervillain fish and monster buildings. And haven’t we had enough of Ricky Gervais anyway? There’s a man who started off strong and then long outlasted his welcome.

To be fair, as “superhero movies” go, Dog Man is unlike any other. It just would have been far more successful, even on its own terms, with some script polishing and tightening of the editing. It wasn’t what I wanted nor what it could have been, but to its credit, I still had a good time. And none of my criticisms will mean anything whatsoever to a seven-year-old who will certainly have a blast watching it.

Just do your job Dog Man!

Overall: B

ONE OF THEM DAYS

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

One of Them Days aspires only to be a fun, sweet, funny comedy about two young women down on their luck, having something in between the weirdest day and the worst day. It’s the kind of movie you’re meant to escape into, laugh, and just forget your own life for about ninety minutes. And by virtually all these measures, it succeeds.

Keke Palmer and SZA play Dreux and Alyssa, respectively—best friends and roommates in a dilapidated apartment where the landlord is demanding the rent even as he neglects the widespread disrepair in “The Jungle” complex where they live. Dreux has just finished a graveyard shift at the diner where she works, and Alyssa’s dipshit boyfriend Keshawn (Joshua David Neal) has “invested” their rent money in a T-shirt business idea on the same day the landlord has demanded the rent by 6:00 or they face eviction.

Thus, One of Them Days follows Dreux and Alyssa from place to place, where they either cleverly gain or painfully lose the money they need, and it makes for a nice successio of consistently amusing set pieces. They explore their options at a payday loan business, where the guy hanging outside (Kat Williams) is actually the only one talking any sense. Alyssa nabs an expensive pair of sneakers hanging from a power line and puts them up for sale online (in perhaps the quickest seller account setup in history—on a smart phone). They have a run-in with an aggressive woman Keshawn also hangs out with named Bernice (Aziza Scott) who spends most of the rest of the film hell bent on revenge. Through all of this, there are sporadic title cards announcing the hours and minutes until eviction, which a plot twist later takes a clever turn that I don’t want to reveal here.

It’s all generally entertaining, with a genuinely sweet heart at its center, focused on the relatable bond between Dreux and Alyssa, in spite of what is frankly a lot of dipshittery on Alyssa’s part. There’s also a subplot with the one White character in the film, Bethany (Maude Apatow—Judd’s daughter), a young woman who moves into “The Jungle” with her dog and is a pretty overt symbol of representation. But, she is also woven into the story quite neatly, and Dreux and Alyssa find a way to leverage Bethany’s privilege in a way that is both clever and harmless.

All that said, I just wanted One of Them Days to be funnier. It’s undeniably fun, but never hilarious. It’s more like an IV drip of consistently moderate amusements. I chuckled regularly, but never guffawed, and this movie had the potential to go there. Part of it is a pacing issue, with editing that makes the gags lose steam by virtue of their slower tempo. Snappier editing would have helped, but there’s also the fact that none of the gags or punchlines go particularly hard. This is more of a chill ride that keeps a smile on your face than a knee-slapper, and I went in hoping for the latter. Maybe that’s on me.

Besides, winning performances and a wholesome sweetness at its center make up for a lot—and there’s not that much to make up for here. Keke Palmer and SZA have great chemistry as best friends, and One of Them Days is filled with fun bit parts with the likes of Kat Williams, Vanesa Bell Calloway, Lil Red Howery, and Abbott Elementary’s Janelle James.

“Comedy” is a genre broadly applied, where dramedies and romances and animated features and even tearjerkers can all get bunched together under the same heading. But One of Them Days, even with the warmth in its heart, is a comedy in the classic sense: it exists only to amuse, to be a kick. The last time I saw a movie going for a similar effect was 2019’s Booksmart, and that was a much funnier—and therefore much more rewatchable—movie. But, for now, One of Them Days will do fine.

One of them movies—which gives just enough of what you want from it.

Overall: B

NIGHTBITCH

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

I’ll give Nightbitch this much: it’s deeply engaging from start to finish. Some of the time you may not quite understand what’s so compelling about it, or indeed what the overall point is, but it’s still engaging.

It’s also very, very odd. It’s a layered film, in that it has layers of oddness. One particularly odd thing is how it moves back and forth from being a little too on the nose, and being metaphorically opaque.

This is the story of a woman (Amy Adams) who turns into a dog, after all. It’s confusing to her at first, but ultimately becomes her means of being set free, specifically from her resentment toward motherhood being far more overwhelming than she expected. Why a dog? You got me there. It occurred to me that it was possible I was having a gendered reaction to this heavy-handed yet unclear metaphor—I cannot have children, so who am I to judge? Sort of to my relief, it appears that other critics’ reviews of this film are pretty evenly mixed between the genders, whether they quite liked it or they didn’t.

The script, co-written by director Marielle Heller, is far more muddled than the previous feature film for which she wrote the script, The Diary of a Teenage Girl. And if the script isn’t great, it matters less when everything else is great. Nightbitch opens with the mother and son at the grocery store, and when another young mom sees her and asks how she’s doing, she immediately fantasizes about unloading all of her frustrations. It is no doubt very relatable to just about any mother, but also filled with sentiments we have heard many times over. One might even be tempted to call it deeply unoriginal.

The curious thing with Nightbitch is that Amy Adams’s stellar performance makes up for far more than it ought to. She’s incredible in this movie—both as a frustrated mother, and as a woman turning into a dog at night. She bites into this role with no vanity, giving us a performance on film more memorable than anything she’s done in nearly a decade. Nightbitch is almost worth seeing just for her alone.

I’m glad I saw it, anyway. I’m not going to urge anyone else to rush out and see it. I do love that Heller is uninterested in taking any particular moral stance on motherhood: there is no judgment here, and if there is anything done deftly in this script, it’s the adorable little boy (played by twins, Arleigh and Emmett Snowden), who is never anything but a perfectly normal toddler. There are no “special needs” or unusually challenging behaviors that set the mother off the edge. He won’t fall asleep when his mom wants him to, just like virtually any other kid. This is about motherhood being overwhelming no matter what the kid is like, and Nightbitch exists only to empathize with that—and with the quiet cluelessness of a husband (Scoot McNairy) who assumes he’s being supportive while never truly seeing the burdens of parenthood that he rarely thinks to engage with.

All of that is what I understand about Nightbitch. It’s the whole dog business that throws me. She develops heightened senses, particularly of smell, and starts to attract other neighborhood dogs to her door, who bring her dead animals as offerings. She starts to deeply hate the household cat, which makes for a few moments of good comedy even if it’s a little weirdly off the mark: dogs tend to be very affectionate toward cats if they are part of the same household. There’s a particular group of three dogs that keep coming around, and I began to wonder if other women are turning into dogs too, and perhaps we are meant to understand these dogs are actually the three other moms that keep chatting up our protagonist at the storytime group she brings her son to. But, there is never any clarity on this.

I do wish Heller had drawn a bolder line between what might be merely in this mother’s imagination, and how “real” what she’s going through actually is. The mother tells her husband about strange hair growths, but never shows him the tail that starts growing out of her lower back, or the extra sets of nipples that appear on her abdomen. The husband just keeps moving along in blissful ignorance, which I suppose is part of the point.

There are no named characters in Nightbitch’s primary family, by the way—this is why I have not referred to any of them by name here. Amy Adams is credited as “Mother”; Scoot McNairy as “Husband,” and the different types of descriptors there seems very deliberate. The little twin boy actors are credited as “Son.” Even in flashbacks, Kerry O’Malley is credited as “Mother’s Mother.” There’s something to this, how family roles erase previous identities. Again, it could have been illustrated with greater clarity.

Mother does use the word “Nightbitch” at one point in the film, because of her getting snippy with the Husband in the middle of the night when it’s only reasonable he take a turn dealing with the boy. Heller then very much literalizes the idea, and turns Mother into a bitch. Maybe the idea is that being a bitch is surprisingly freeing—although, as a dog, Mother sure sprints through the streets in the middle of traffic a lot. If this happened in real life, she’d get run over by a car her first night out. Even this interpretation of “bitch” as a metaphor has no clean application, however, as Mother is only a bitch in the behavioral sense a couple of times. She turns into a dog to get some space away from the tedious frustrations of motherhood, which is pretty distinct from being a bitch. Then again, many people would judge such a woman to be a bitch whether it’s fair or not, so maybe I’m walking right back into the point here.

There’s some real weight to that maybe though, when Nightbitch is arguably—and admirably—Marielle Heller’s most ambitious work to date, but also her most challenging to make clear sense of.

Bitch please.

Overall: B

Y2K

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

Y2K is really fun, for about twenty minutes. The opening scene is super fun, very deliberately tugging at our weird nostalgia for AOL Instant Messenger or the sound of dial-up modems. The first thing we see is computer screen activity, multiple AIM chat windows open at once, as well as a window showing a video clip of President Clinton (or, as a character later calls him, “President Blowjob”) commenting on the spectre of the Y2K bug.

Our introduction to Eli (Jaeden Martell) and his best friend Danny (Julian Dennison) is fun, especially as they chat in Eli’s bedroom while they wait for a topless photo of a woman to load in horizontal sections on his computer screen. Of course, the gag is a bit undermined by all the action going on with his computer screen in the opening shots, without any glitches whatsoever.

Still, Eli and Danny are perfectly endearing characters. We briefly see Eli’s parents, who talk a little awkwardly about Eli finding someone to kiss at the stroke of midnight. It’s New Year’s Eve 1999, you see. When Eli’s mom kisses him on the cheek, he makes a face perfect for setting the tone of a modern teen comedy.

Danny is preoccupied with one of them getting laid. Eli pines for a popular girl, Laura (Rachel Zegler). Pretty standard teen comedy stuff, most of it relatively charming, none of it particularly clever. Booksmart, this is not. Eli and Danny hang out for a few hours before deciding to go to a New Year’s Eve party. It takes just slightly too long for this movie to get to the critical moment, the stroke of midnight.

Y2K has a pretty great conceit, a revisionist history take on what millions feared when the date flipped over to the year 2000. In this movie, the computers really do go berserk. For a good ten minutes, machines start taking people out at the party, in amusingly gruesome ways. Panic ensues, lots of people die, it’s actually pretty entertaining..

And then? Just as quickly as the action starts, Y2K, a movie with tons of potential, runs out of steam. It uses up all of its ideas in a matter of minutes. A small group of kids escape the party house, and find a place with no electricity to hide out. A lot of the rest of the movie takes place in settings where no technology present, and it feels less like an active narrative choice than a way to stay within a seriously limited budget. We get one shot of a burning cityscape from the top of a hill—which is used, very economically, twice—and, in the same scene, one shot of two planes crashing into each other mid-air.

But here’s where Y2K really fails. First-time feature director and co-writer Kyle Mooney could have mined this concept for comedy gold, finding myriad ways for glitchy machinery to cause havoc, even without slapping on a tired “collective consciousness AI” idea onto it all. The computers and machines not only become sentient villains, they literally bind together to become humanoid junk-parts robots with computer monitors as heads. Seriously? Yes. A couple of times, a dude-bro avatar type figure comes onto screens and talks to the kids. Even the 1992 sci-fi horror trash fest The Lawnmower Man had more clarity of theme.

Mooney was born in 1984. He would have been 16 years old when Y2K happened. You’d think he’d have done enough research—and even memories—to come up with something better than this. The kids, such as they are, are of course high school characters played by young adults. Jaeden Martell is 21. Julian Dennison, once the breakout child star of Hunt for the Wildepeople, is 22. He also costarred in both Deadpool 2 and Godzilla vs. Kong, so at least he’s had some genuine box office success. He’s also the most interesting character in Y2K, only to be dispensed with in the first half of the film. I won’t spoil how, although there’s no good reason for you to watch this movie anyway. Unless you want to see Danny’s almost-clever resurgence during the end credits.

In any case, none of these young actors were even born when Y2K happened. They’re all taking direction from a guy who was 16 years old when it happened. Either these things are relevant to the many ways this film is lacking, or Mooney just isn’t that good a writer. He’s an adequate director; he gets endearing performances out of his young stars, anyway. In the meantime, Mooney attempts just coasting on millennial references and a late-90s soundtrack, complete with a leaden appearance by Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst as himself. Once these references move away from specifics of the era’s technology, they just stop working.

Otherwise, Y2K can’t quite settle on a tone, and it certainly can’t decide on a direction. To say it sags in the middle would be an understatement. I found it both boring and tedious by that point, although to its credit, at least it was always better than Red One, easily the worst movie I’ve seen this year. Y2K is only the eighth-worst movie I’ve seen this year, so at least it has that going for it.

You’re not ready for this. You don’t want to be ready for this. It’s too stupid.

Overall: C+

WICKED: PART I

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

Unlike the travesty that was Red One, Wicked is filled with actors who all know what movie they are in. They understood the assignment, and as a result this movie is poised to become the biggest movie musical sensation in five years—perhaps overtaking the surprising success of the 2017 live action remake of Beauty and the Beast. Although I liked even that one more than I expected to, I find myself rooting for Wicked’s success.

And this is in spite of fairly measured expectations going in. I did not expect to hate Wicked by any means, but I have never been among the rabid fans of the Broadway musical, which first opened in 2003; or certainly Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel on which it was based, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. I did find myself wondering how the filmmakers could justify giving a film based only on the first act of the play a runtime of two hours and 40 minutes, when the entire play—including intermission!—lasted all of five minutes more than that. But I’m here to tell you: Wicked Part I easily won me over, very early on, not in spite of but arguably because of how director Jon M. Chu (who also directed the wonderful and criminally underrated In the Heights) fleshed it out.

One of the biggest surprises, given how much the film is fleshing out the play, is that Part I features 11 songs, and all of them are from the Broadway play; reportedly the key difference is that, much like the rest of the story, several of the songs have been “altered and extended.” This, honestly, should comfort the diehards: it’s just more of exactly the thing you love.

As for me, my personal history with this property is practically nonexistent. I never read the novel. I did see the stage musical, once, on tour in 2009. I can’t remember anything about it. My vague recollection was that it was fine, but I didn’t quite see why people went crazy for it. This was why I went into this film, Wicked Part I, expecting it also to be fine, if maybe a little bloated. To my surprise, the film entirely justifies itself, and I was utterly charmed by it.

A huge piece of that success is the casting. Ariana Grande is stupendous as Galinda, later to be known as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. She perfectly threads the needle between revoltingly self-centered and lovably clueless, delivering an over-the-top performance that is also packed with indelibly subtle touches. She is arguably the best thing about Wicked, except that this will inevitably, criminally, overshadow the deeply affecting and nuanced performance by Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, later known to be the Wicked Witch of the West. This is the story of how two completely opposite personalities are first enemies and then become friends at Shiz University, in spite of Galinda’s blinding privilege and Elphaba’s lifetime of oppression for being different, having been inexplicably born with green skin.

There is obviously great potential for allegory here, which Chu doesn’t dig into quite as deeply as some might have liked—although, in contrast to Idina Menzel having originated the part on Broadway, one might read further meaning into the casting of Erivo, a Black woman, as Elphaba. Given the time elapsed since the play was first mounted, and the cultural landscape today, this is a change that makes more sense. (It would have made more sense in 2003 too.)

Wicked also features a far more directly allegorical subplot about animal characters who are the victims of a conspiracy to stop all animals from speaking. There is a goat professor character who is a key feature in this subplot—I struggled to identify the wildly familar voice being used for this CGI character rendered as a full-on goat who can talk (how the hell he does things like, say, get dressed in the morning, we just won’t talk about), and it turned out to be the great Peter Dinklage. In the Broadway play, the animals are portrayed by humans wearing fairly elaborate prosthetics, but they still presented as definitively humanoid; it follows that in the film, they would be entirely CGI creations. In any case, I found this subplot to be rather undercooked, more of a plot device for a wedge in Elphaba and Galinda’s friendship than the legitimate, front-facing concern it should be.

Speaking of the visual effects, it should be noted that this is Wicked’s weakest element. The universe of this film is invented with vivid imagination, I will give it that—it’s just rendered in plainly obvious visual artifice, with sometimes distracting glitchiness, such as how Elphaba’s movements hitch a bit when she’s seen flying on her broom. Even compared to the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, one can’t help but be impressed by that film’s elaborately designed and colorful, practical sets, even by today’s standards. Much of the visuals in Wicked feel like shortcuts that did not demand the same kind of effort, even though a movie like this more than justifies such efforts.

What recommends Wicked is how much movie magic it still contains, in spite of that. The music is unbelievably catchy and easily elevates a script that could stand some greater depth. Far more importantly, the casting is spot-on across the board, starting with Ariana Grande and Erivo, who alone make the movie worth seeing, both for their shining, distinct personalities and their undeniable charisma as a pair. But the rest of the cast is wonderful too, from Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, to Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey’s singularly charming turn as the prince Fiyero. There’s even a touch of unforced queerness among the supporting cast, most exemplified by Bown Yang as one of Galinda’s two biggest acolytes, which I very much appreciated.

Jeff Goldlbum, for his part, is serviceable as the Wizard of Oz; it’s a casting choice that works and makes sense, even though he’s just as Goldlbum-y as ever. I won’t say his singing is bad, but it certainly pales in comparison to the staggering singing talent surrounding him. And yes, original Broadway players Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth do get concurrent cameos, in a scene that is quite funny. Finally, Marissa Bode is good as Ephaba’s sister, Nessarose, who is a wheelchair user, but I rather wish that character had been given more to do and meatier content to chew on. At least in this case they cast an actual wheelchair user to fill the role.

Wicked: Part II is set for release at this same time next year, and I am now looking forward to it far more than I expected to prior to seeing Part I. I still have mixed feelings about splitting film adaptations this way; on the one hand it feels like a choice motivated by profits alone, and on the other hand it can really allow a story with a lot going on to breathe. I find myself surprised to feel that nothing in Part I comes across as filler, and still some of it could have been better fleshed out. Given that this is an adaptation of a Broadway musical, it already has a clearly defined first and second half baked in. This film ends with an extended version of “Defying Gravity” and it is sensational, a great way to end the movie—in spite of one woman in the elevator after the screening I attended being quite miffed to have discovered only that night that this was only part I. Again: it just allows you to look forward to more of exactly the thing you love. In the meantime, just think of this as a year-long intermission.

Some of the best connections come from the most surprising places.

Overall: B+

RED ONE

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

Let’s talk, for just a moment, about Mariah Carey. I am not a fan. Okay, in the hands of the right director she can be a pretty good actor—but I’m talking about her music. And yes, I know, she has legions of fans; even I can acknowledge that she holds the record number of #1 singles of any solo artist in history. That doesn’t make the music good. I’m sorry, I just can’t with her music—especially that crazy-making perennial single “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” And I love Christmas!

You may be starting to see where I am going with this. Director Jake Kasdan (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle), perhaps, thought he was being a bit cheeky when, instead of throwing “All I Want for Christmas Is You” onto the soundtrack to his new, absolutely soulless Christmas movie, Red One, he chose “Santa Claus Is Coming’ to Town”—from the same 1994 album.

The song’s arrangement is as generic and forgettable as it could possibly be. It’s what plays over the end credits, standard white text on a black background, nothing fancy or cute. And this is easily the best part of the movie.

Red One is what happens when feeling dead inside becomes a feature film. I have never seen a movie with so much magic onscreen be so lacking in actual movie magic. I went into this thinking I was fully prepared, but ready to have a good time in spite of the poor reviews and lackluster response. Sometimes bad movies are fun! If only. Instead, Red One is so busy just being busy, it dulls the senses, and becomes a snooze fest. Believe me when I say that literally. I nodded off multiple times. During the periods I managed to stay awake, one of the five other people in the theater let out a loud snore. We’re all in this together, I guess.

Except: you aren’t. Or you won’t be, if you value your time. Some of you might expect amusement from a movie where someone actually utters the line, “It’s Christmas, dickhead!” Some of you might even be genuinely amused by it. In that case, you’ve lost my respect. I’m just over here wondering why the hell anyone would cast J.K. Simmons as a Santa Claus who is not fat, but jacked. Santa literally lifts weights in this movie. In what universe does this make sense? Santa is supposed to be cuddly and soft. Stop fat shaming Santa Claus!

Okay, okay. I was reminded, as I left the theater expressing my active contempt for this movie, that I did laugh a few times. We all have our moments of weakness. There are some things in Red One that are almost fun. There’s a testy polar bear, voiced by Reinaldo Faberlle, who might have improved the film slightly had he just gotten more screen time. Kristofer Hivju chews up the scenery pretty well as Krampus. This is about as close as I can get to finding redeeming qualities.

Chris Evans plays Jack O’Malley, the unscrupulous tracker tasked with finding Santa Claus after he is abducted. He’s a douchebag on the surface who we know from the first second will eventually be revealed to have a heart of gold, and Evans might as well be sleepwalking his performance. Dwayne Johnson plays Callum Drift, head of North Pole security, and the earnest seriousness of his performance would feel out of place if not for the fact that not one of these actors seems to think they are in the same movie as any of the others. Lucy Liu is utterly wasted as “Director Zoe Harlow,” just walking around looking mildly annoyed all the time. I would be too if I had to appear in this movie. Bonnie Hunt appears as Mrs. Claus and similarly gets nothing interesting to do. Kieran Shipka, once young Sally Draper from Mad Men now grown up, plays Gryla the Christmas Witch, attempting to ham it up as a villain but sadly failing to make any real mark.

Christmas movies are a dime a dozen anymore. Less than that, even. A penny per hundred. It used to be a fairly regular thing to get a theatrical Christmas movie release that actually penetrates and becomes something special. I felt something close to that with Happiest Season, but that was largely contextual: an effectively sweet holiday film released on a streamer (Hulu) during the pandemic. These are the kinds of things Red One isn’t even aiming for. It’ll entertain a few teenagers who get a kick out of a “Christmas movie” with enough profanity to land it a PG-13 rating.

There’s something about Red One that feels deeply cynical to me. It hits obligatory story beats and the same old moral lessons, purporting to be about “the meaning of Christmas” without actually using the phrase. Characters spew platitudes and learn to be “nicer,” driving home the consumerism of the holiday by using toy store stock rooms as portals to travel around the globe, packaged as entertainment for an audience that increasingly celebrates cruelty. It’s clear that no one involved in the making of this movie thought they were making something any more special than a paycheck, and as long as those checks cash, what reason do they have to care that this was easily the worst movie I’ve seen all year?

Why so serious? Jesus Christ, eat a doughnut!

Overall: D+