PLAN B

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

Maybe it’s just me, but I am fascinated by the timing of a film whose production was not before, but in the middle of the pandemic. Until recently, most major releases, whether in theaters or on VOD or streaming, were filmed before pandemic shutdowns began—as in, most filming occurred in 2019. After a few months into the pandemic, TV and movie productions opened again, with incredibly strict COVID safety precautions, but only in recent weeks are we seeing an increased frequency of those particular productions coming up for release.

Enter Plan B, the morning-after abortion-pill-road-trip movie, streaming on Hulu as of Friday (May 28). The film is set in South Dakota, clearly in service of the premise so these two teen girls have to drive all night in search for either a pharmacy or a Planned Parenthood where they can get the pill, but it was filmed in Syracuse, New York. Principal photography occurred between September 30 and November 10 of 2020—right in the very period where national U.S. Covid cases were ramping up to their peak of the entire pandemic. Daily cases were less than their peak to date as of the start of production, but by November 10, although they had quite a ways to go to reach their true peak, they were still by then far higher by day than they ever had been up to that point.

I mention all this just to contextualize the achievement that Plan B really is. It’s well written, well acted, and well crafted—enough so that, if you didn’t know they shot it under incredibly restrictive circumstances, you’d never know the difference.

The movie, in both theme and tone, is very similar to the great 2019 film Booksmart, and it’s nearly as good (close enough, as I gave both of them the same overall grade). It’s wonderful to see this increased frequency of “teen movies” centered around young female protagonists; the more such things just seem normal as opposed to a delightful anomaly, the better off we’ll all be. And there’s a particular scene in Plan B that really amped my affection for it: when one of the girls is eating at a restaurant with her crush. She pours her heart out to him, confesses to what she feels was a huge mistake and the reason she and her friend are on this wild goose chase, and he responds with understanding and says all the right things. Not the least of them is that the idea of her being a “slut” for having sex one time is a double standard. We hear women in entertainment saying that constantly; how often do we hear it from young men?

I just love that Hunter (Michael Provost) is a good kid, nonjudgmental, and that the male sexual pursuit of women is not in any way the point of Plan B. This is a story about friendship, with the backdrop of stupid inaccessibility to birth control, abortion or family planning services in America’s heartland, where far too many states have created a scenario where women have to drive for hours just to gain access to a pill. That’s the dark framework of this story, into which directly Natalie Morales injects a story of adventure and emotional breakthroughs between friends.

Given its South Dakota setting, Plan B’s cast is surprisingly diverse: neither of the two protagonists are white; Sunny (Kuhoo Verma) is of Indian descent, and Lupe (Victoria Moroles) is from a fairly large Mexican family. Even the pharmacist who first refuses to sell Sunny the Plan B pill, on “moral grounds” is an Indian guy. The crush Lupe has her eyes on is Black, and Hunter is white. He’s also kind of impossibly cute, in the way kids of any gender often tend to be in the movies, but I also love that he’s clearly into Sunny, as opposed to the pretty little white girl she assumes he’s into. I do find myself wondering what the odds are of exactly this degree of diversity among such a group in South Dakota—which, without spoiling too much, also turns out to include a bit of queerness—but I certainly won’t question it as aspirational representation in film. There’s even a church-going Christian kid who feels a great deal of guilt about his (heterosexual) sexuality, and Morales’s narrative doesn’t treat him with any more judgment than it does any of the other kids.

In the end, the bottom line is, much like Booksmart, Plan B is consistently funny and disarmingly sweet. The teen characters are all good hearted, none of them bullies. They just make mistakes, and are far more afraid of disappointing their parents than they are afraid of each other. These are the kinds of coming-of-age stories we can always use more of.

Getting a simple pill should never be this hard, but it makes for an entertaining comedy.

Overall: B+

CRUELLA

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

If you’re a skeptic but open to giving Cruella a chance, you may find yourself a bit more entertained than expected. I certainly did. The irony is that, even for what limited vision this movie has, it really could have been a lot better. Shaving about 30 minutes off its insane 134-minute run time probably would have done the trick alone.

This is, effectively, a kids’ movie, is it not? If it isn’t, then I don’t know who the hell it was made for—maybe boomers still nostalgic for the original 1961 Disney animated feature One Hundred and One Dalmatians. I never saw the 1996 live action film 101 Dalmatians or its 2000 sequel 2002 Dalmatians, but I can find no indication of any ties between this film and those, aside from Glenn Close executive-producing here. I couldn’t even tell you precisely why I went ahead and saw this one when I actively avoided those other live action films; they all got fairly mixed reviews, after all—except Cruella remains by a fair distance the best-reviewed of the three.

To be honest, the deciding factor was probably rather simple: options. We we living in normal, pre-pandemic times, there’s little doubt there would be many other new releases to choose from this weekend that held far greater interest to me. As it happens, this was the third film I’ve gone to see in a theater since returning to theaters, and there literally was no other better option.

I’m happy to say I don’t regret it, at least. I had heard this film had great costume designs, and to be sure, on that front, Cruella absolutely does not disappoint. The gowns worn both by Emma Stone as the title character, and Emma Thompson as her nemesis, The Baroness, are consistently fabulous. The same goes for the production design, all of which is better appreciated on a large movie screen.

Another point in this movie’s favor is the casting, as Emma Stone nicely fills the role of a young woman we freely empathize with even though we fully understand she will eventually become a psychopath who literally wants to skin Dalmatian dogs in order to make a coat. This never actually happens in Cruella, be assured, although there is a sequence in which she’s convinced other characters she had—and, let’s be honest, that’s sociopathic enough.

The real draw of Cruella, however, is Emma Thompson, who gets to wear the best costumes and infuses those incredible gowns with just the right amount of villainous attitude. Furthermore, her Baroness has murderous intentions for far more than dogs (in fact, here she’s the one with Dalmations, who are the only beings she seems to offer any real love or compassion) and she makes even later-life Cruella look like a saint in comparison.

Side note on the Dalmatians: in many of their scenes, they are CGI rendered, and it’s distracting enough to take you out of the movie, because they never look quite real. This issue is by no means limited to the dogs, though. Almost every clear visual effects shot is rendered as though whoever worked on it decided its audience would be too young (or too stupid?) to notice. We regularly see far better visual effects work on cable or streaming TV series, so this is a bizarrely preventable flaw for a blockbuster motion picture to have.

Rounding out the supporting cast are Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser as Cruella’s henchmen Jasper and Horace, respectively. Hauser, for his part, joins Emma Stone as principal actors here who are Americans playing British, which is an interesting, it not unnecessary, choice. Surely they could have found plenty of rotund British actors (not to mention plenty of young British actors who could have been cast in the title role) who fit the part perfectly—but, to Hauser’s credit, he’s surprisingly good at the Cockney accent, and as a result some viewers might even miss that that’s the same guy from I, Tonya and BlacKKKlansman.

Jasper and Horace serve as plot devices here for Cruella to learn “the true value of friendship,” which brings us back to who the audience for this movie is. Once you realize Cruella is rated PG-13 (almost certainly due to the aforementioned allusions to, if not outright animal cruelty, then certainly intentions to it—and also straight up human murder), it can’t be for genuine children. The “Disney” wholesomeness otherwise incongruously thrown in here would suggest that it is, but I can only conclude it’s meant for . . . teenagers? How many teenagers today would actually think this IP from the sixties is actually cool, anyway?

This is a movie that clearly can’t decide exactly what it wants to be. And the thing is, this “Battle of the Emmas” could have been part of a far better movie with basically the same concept but not relying on decades-old, pre-existing IP. Many of these live action remakes and origin stories of old Disney animated features work better than expected, but never surpass or even come close to equalling the originals. Apparently, and unfortunately, recycling the same shit over and over is the only way studios seem to be able to rake in the box office profits anymore.

In other words, there’s a ton of unrealized potential here, between the story and the actors. Does no one even think about the objective impracticality of turning Dalmatians into fur coats? Sure, the spots are cool looking, but Dalmatians are short-haired dogs; a fur coat is meant to be not just posh but lush, and maybe warm? In other words, I just wish I could have seen a great, clever movie with Emma Stone and Emma Thompson as viciously sparring fashion designers. (Another side note: Cruella never offers any explanation for her succeeding at creating a public rivalry with The Baroness, beyond mere publicity stunts. No one in this movie ever questions: where does Creulla create, design, manufacture, or sell her clothes? I suppose here I’m just getting nitpicky. It’s my job!)

Cruella is a potentially good idea, limited by the constraints of being a prequel none of us ever needed. I have to admit, though, that even within those limitations, and especially thanks to delicious performances, it’s still a good time.

No Dalmatians were harmed in the making of this coat … because they’re all CGI anyway.

NEW ORDER

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

The longer I think about the Mexican film New Order, playing in theaters now, the less I like it, or even think there was any point to it. The movie is both intentionally and effectively unsettling, until the events unfolding desensitize you into not caring about any of the people onscreen—just as the oppressive forces taking over Mexico City don’t care about anyone.

I just . . . don’t get it. This film has gotten decidedly mixed reviews, with many appropriate comparisons to Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite (2019), which takes a similar thematic look at class warfare. Any favorable comparison is outright preposterous, however; Parasite has an invigoratingly inventive narrative, is incredibly entertaining, and has something to say. None of these things can be said of New Order, really.

Writer-director Michel Franco has a particularly literal take on the concept of class warfare. The film begins at the wedding of a young couple at their wealthy parents’ home, increasingly frequent hints and references to a working class uprising occurring around the city and getting progressively closer to them. There are offhand comments about how they should have postponed the wedding, met with dismissive reactions.

Franco focuses on this young couple and their parents as the primary characters, plus the woman who heads the house staff, and her son. The focus is decidedly on the wealthy family though, and maybe a third of the way through the film, the rioters scale the walls of the property, and overtake everyone there.

They aren’t nice about it. If there’s any pertinent idea to take away from New Order, it’s that many people talk endlessly about “revolution” without acknowledging how inevitably violent a genuine revolution would be. One of the uprising men enters the property with a gun, and his response to pleading is just to blithely shoot the person. There’s a lot of this.

Franco clearly wants us to be thinking about the income gap, as many of the house staff gleefully take part in the looting of the house almost immediately. Several people are summarily executed as soon as they hand over their valuables. Men, women, children, a pregnant woman, you name it and you’ll see that person get shot in this movie. The tone is oddly neutral as all of this is observed, and we get little in the way of backstory or any of these characters.

My biggest problem with New Order might be that no one in it is particularly characterized as a good person. The one possible exception is the young bride, who might be the character we find ourselves rooting for in a different, better movie. Instead, we’re subjected to witnessing her kidnapped by armed militia, humiliated, in one scene sexually assaulted. It really just gets worse from there, and we are never given any hint that she’ll get out of her predicament. And this film doesn’t seem to have any real moral point of view on what we’re watching, or even necessarily want us to feel for her. All that’s left, really, is nihilism.

I don’t consider having sympathetic characters in a movie a requirement. But if all of your characters are either morally bankrupt or headed there, your movie should at least have something to say. I still have no idea what I was supposed to take away from this movie, which is oddly casual in its persistent violence.

It’s also confusing. Eventually, I lost all sense of who really had control of the country. There was the working class uprising, but then the society gets overrun with military—if this was an excuse for the military to stage a coup, then why does the film switch to focusing on masked soldiers in fatigues without bringing up the working class rioters to begin with? Are they one and the same? The young bride (only ever seen in a bright red pantsuit, incidentally; never in an actual wedding dress) is taken hostage by militia members, and I could never distinguish between them and the Mexican military, or figure out whether they were indeed different. At first I thought it was the fed-up working class who kidnapped her, but then they are seen doing horrible things to her and to other rich people being held for ransom. Is this what we’re supposed to expect from the oppressed and downtrodden? The camera cuts away just before we might otherwise see them pulling down some guy’s pants and using an electric prod to shock his asshole. Why we even need to see that much, I have no idea.

It’s one thing when stuff like this a depiction of historical events that should be learned from, but New Order is a fantasy—one not far from our reality, admittedly, but it’s still all just a made up story. And why? What are we getting from a story like this? Does Franco just want to assert that it doesn’t matter what “side” you’re on, you’re capable of the basest, most horrific acts against your fellow humans? That doesn’t make for a very pleasant trip to the movie theater, I can tell you that much. Spoiler alert: nearly every character you’re introduced to in this movie is dead by the end. The best I can say about this movie is that you won’t have related much with any one of these people, but by the end you’ll be left with a bleak view of humanity. If that’s your thing, knock yourself out—but I rather hope I forget all about this movie sooner than later.

I’ve heard about party crashers but this is a little much.

Overall: C

THE DRY

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

The Dry is essentially a murder mystery which uses rural Australia caught in the grips of more than a year of draught as its backdrop—hence, the title. The draught has created economic desperation for many, and this plays into the motive for the murder case at hand. In that sense, “the dry” (a phrase no character uses in the film) is relevant to the story.

There was another film, starring Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson, that set its story in a desperately dry Australia, that one a near-future and more of a chase than a mystery. Released in 2014, The Rover used that backdrop to far greater effect. I always felt that not enough people saw that movie. Side note: that movie is available on Showtime, or VOD for three bucks. It’s a much better deal than the $7 I spent to watch The Dry.

This movie stars Eric Bana, rounding out his portfolio with an independent production in his home country. This is actually playing in select theaters (albeit in a single theater in the greater Seattle area, in Tacoma), and I suppose there’s another way of looking at it: $7 VOD is a better deal than paying to see it on the big screen. Although it does have some nice cinematography, wide shots of increasingly barren Australian landscape, which probably renders well on a large screen.

Aaron Falk (Bana) is a police detective from Melbourne, returning to his rural home town several hours outside the city for a funeral. It seems his childhood friend Luke has shot his wife, his young son, and then himself, sparing only the baby. Or did he? Luke’s parents are convinced Luke could never do such a thing, and enlists the help of Aaron, effectively guilting him by bringing up how they know he lied about the circumstances of another death, Ellie, also from childhood. It seems everyone in this town, all of whom have secrets kept for the past twenty years and revealed in turn as the story unfolds, blame Aaron for Ellie’s death.

Thus, The Dry actually features two mysteries: whether or not Luke actually perpetuated a mass murder-suicide on his family; and the truth of how Ellie died twenty years prior. When Aaron was still a teenager, Ellie’s father essentially succeeded in running him out of town. Now, some of the townspeople are pissed to see him there again.

Based on a best-selling novel, I imagine The Dry is more gripping in literature form. Don’t get me wrong, I found the film compelling, but barely; it takes its time, really cultivating a lot more atmosphere than plot. It should be noted, though, that the film had one of the largest opening weekend box office takes in Australian history when it opened there in January: clearly there was an appetite for it. Then again, they were also headed back to theaters after months of pandemic lockdowns.

I suspect my tepid response to this film has more to do with the genre than anything else. Murder mysteries don’t often do much for me for their own sake, unless they’re cheekily complex, as in the wonderful Knives Out. That film doubled as a comedy, though, and The Dry is a drama, with some rather dark thematic elements. It’s a movie about broken people doing very broken things. For some people, that’s entertainment.

It’s well done for what it is, in any case. I suspect people into the genre—and god knows there are plenty—will enjoy it. I thought it was fine.

I mean, some might say just take a look at Eric Bana if you want to get wet.

Overall: B

GEORGETOWN

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

Too many actors dream of being directors. And too many of the best actors have their sights on “ascending” to the level of director, maybe because they want to be their own boss? There are plenty of cases where this works out, but arguably more often it doesn’t. Case in point: Christoph Waltz, in his feature film directorial debut with Georgetown, in which he also stars. Sure, more experience at it could make him better, but if this movie is any indication, he is better left as an actor in the hands of other directors. It’s earned him two Oscar wins, after all—albeit for his only two nominations, under the guidance of the same director, Quentin Tarantino.

Waltz is no Tarantino, and I daresay he never will be. Georgetown is a wildly different, yet far more understated and therefore less memorable, story about a D.C. con man attempting to make a name for himself among the political establishment with the help of his far older widowed socialite wife (Vanessa Redgrave) and her contacts. She’s found dead in their home one night, and of course the young husband is the prime suspect.

It should be noted that the film begins with this: This story does not, in any way, claim to be the truth. Nonetheless, it is inspired by actual events. The “actual events” are detailed in a 2012 New York Times Magazine article, “The Worst Marriage in Georgetown,” by Franklin Foer. Curiously, cited in the opening credits as the source material—although the script was adapted by David Auburn, who wrote the 2019 version of Charlie’s Angels as well as The Lake House (2006). After seeing Georgetown the film, my guess is that you’ll be far more likely to be wowed by the 2012 article. Just go read that.

Not that Georgetown is bad, on any level really. It’s just mediocre, on pretty much every level. The story, as written, is . . . fine. The performances are . . . fine. The treatment of the death at the heart of the story as a mystery is somewhat odd, given both the fact that we know from history and how increasingly obvious it is even in the film. And the film makes odd choices that make it almost pointedly less interesting than the real story, such as the fact that young Albrecht Muth was all of 18 years old when he first attempted to ask out Viola Drath in 1982, when she was still forty years married and 62 years old. That’s a 44-year age difference.

In Georgetown, these characters are respectively named Ulrich Mott and Elsa Breht, and when we first meet Mott, he’s an intern—just as Muth had been—but already in his fifties. Granted, by the time Elsa is found dead she is identified as being 91 years old, and Ulrich is still clearly in his fifties. No one ever states explicitly what their age difference is in the film, but it’s still clearly somewhere close to at least 35 years. Waltz just makes an effort to avoid depicting Mott any time in his youth, perhaps so he wouldn’t have to attempt playing that much younger than his own real age, or hire another actor.

Still: it’s less interesting. Georgetown also creates a young daughter for Elsa, who is suspicious of Ulrich from the start: “He looks like he could be my brother!” she says. The daughter is played by Annette Bening, an actress of ample talents who is entirely wasted in this part, and not just because she’s put in terrible wigs in the flashback scenes.

I wonder how many of these actors already knew each other on some level? Maybe they found the premise compelling and wanted to help out a fellow actor who is trying on a director’s hat. The spirit of giving is nice and all that, but when it comes to women actors past a certain age, both Vanessa Redgrave and Annette Bening are given thankless roles here. The entire film revolves around what a deluded conman Ulrich Mott is, and somehow even Christoph Waltz can’t make him that interesting. And this is a guy who duped countless high-ranking officials and politicians. There’s an irony on being a successful conman, when it takes that much skill and work to get there: why not just apply that same work ethic to legitimate paths to success? At leas then you won’t wind up disgraced. But, I suppose the mindset of a conman just doesn’t work that way.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure all the work that clearly went into Georgetown particularly paid off. This movie was filed as far back as late 2017, and wasn’t even scheduled for release until 2020. We all know what happened then. And after a brief Italian theatrical run in June 2020, it was punted to VOD release just this month, in 2021, three and a half years after production wrapped. That alone is somewhat telling. The movie is better than that might suggest, actually, but it’s also nowhere near its potential. I liked it okay, but I spent seven bucks to watch this on Prime Video and I don’t think you should.

A marriage of suspicion is no enough to make this movie all that memorable.

Overall: B-

SAINT MAUD

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

I spent a lot of Saint Maud thinking about how I couldn’t quite decide how I felt about it. This movie is the very definition of a “slow burn,” to the point that, if you were channel surfing and happened upon it at any point during, say, its first third, you’d be liable to get bored quickly and move on. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? “You should watch this movie, it’ll take a while to get into it!”

I’ve seen many movies this slowly paced that featured an ending worth waiting for. This one, I still can’t decide. The parting shot, just before the credits, is deeply memorable. But it literally lasts less than a second. Still, it did make me say “Oh my god” out loud. Maybe that was precisely the intent of writer-director Rose Glass. I’ll give her this much: it’s a strong piece of work by typical first-time-feature-director standards.

That said, Saint Maud is almost too cerebral for me, almost self-consciously so, and I felt it lacked clarity. There is certainly an effectively eerie tone from start to finish, vaguely reminiscent of some of the best horror films of the seventies—that similarity extending to the intensely religious themes. The key difference in this comparison though, is that so many of those old religious horror movies operated on the premise that God and Satan, and demons, were real.

Are we meant to believe what Maud (Morfydd Clark, well cast) is seeing and experiencing is real? There is a bit of clarity lacking here. Maud is a recently-converted and insanely pious nurse, hired as in-home care for Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a former professional dancer now in the final stages of cancer. Maud becomes convinced that God has given her a calling to save Amanda’s soul, and at first, Amanda appears to take her seriously. But really, Amanda is just amusing herself: “You have no idea how dull it is to be dying.”

Well, it’s certainly not dull to be Maud. As the movie wears on (at a mere 84 minutes, thank god, lest this film itself become unbearably dull), she has visions, even hears God speaking to her. She takes on physical pain as an act of piety, in one difficult to watch scene, stepping into her shoes with upstanding nails inserted into them. There’s an earlier scene between Maud and a panhandler with a line I won’t soon forget: “May God bless you and never waste your pain,” she says to him. This, in a way, is the theme of the film, at least from Maud’s perspective.

The choice I made, quite easily, was that Maud was having hallucinations. Perhaps Saint Maud is about the dangerous power of self-delusion. Still, if we assume that, then is this movie about a young woman suffering mental illness? There is never any discussion of medication or the like—only an unspecified incident that resulted in Maud no longer being employed at the hospital where she used to work. It’s difficult to decipher precisely what kind of portrait is being painted here.

If nothing else, it is clear that no other character experiences the otherworldly or supernatural things that Maud does, even while in the same room. An old coworker stops by Maud’s apartment on her own way to work, and ironically babbles on about how they are all in their own bubble, while never registering the bizarrely quiet calm with which Maud just stands there, staring at the window.

Whether it’s in her head or not (it is), some fantastical things do occur in this movie. They just come few and far between, and be warned, nothing exciting whatsoever occurs in the first act. We just meet the characters, Maud and then Amanda, but also a couple of Amanda’s friends (including a young woman, played by Lily Frazer, who comes by for romantic trysts). For the most part, the cast here is very small: maybe half the movie features only the two leads.

And then, there is a jarring scene in which Amanda challenges Maud’s very faith, offering it a blithe dismissal: “He isn’t real.” I won’t say that making either of these characters likable was necessary, but it might have helped the film. There are moments when each of them seems to think they have compassion for the other, but in both cases they are profoundly self-involved, if in very different ways. And in this particular scene, it veers into one of the few sequences where genuine visual effects are involved. They aren’t especially impressively rendered, but given how sparingly they’re used, it doesn’t much matter.

What does matter, I suppose, is how Saint Maud stays with you after its brief but startlingly memorable end. The trick is in remaining engaged enough to get there.

Oh come off it, Maud, no need to break your back on your invisible high horse.

Overall: B

(Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.)

SHIVA BABY

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

There’s no one famous in Shiva Baby, but that’s one of the many things that makes it such a delightful watch. The movie is filled with character actors, one of whom, Fred Melamed, might be recognized from several other independent films if you’re prone to watching them, as well as TV shows. He’s run the gamut, from A Serious Man to In a World… to Bone Tomahawk to Lady Dynamite and WandaVisision. Whenever I see Melamed in something, I have come to regard him as a litmus test of sorts. He’s a good actor, but in some things he’s good, and in some things he’s not great, coming off as unrehearsed. I’ve decided this is a particular reflection of the director: did they get the necessary performance out of him?

I’m happy to report that Shiva Baby is one of the good ones, in which Melamed blends into the cast seamlessly, especially playing husband to Polly Draper’s Debbie. These two are both well-rounded even as they play the parts of bickering Jewish parents to the title character, Danielle. They are all attending the funeral service of a distant relative by marriage, where all but the opening scene of the film takes place—the simple premise being that Danielle has left the home of one of her clients, only to find him also at the service.

As written and directed by Emma Seligman, adapted and expanded from her 2018 short film of the same name, Shiva Baby clocks in at a tight 77 minutes, barely qualifying as a feature film—but given the single setting, it works. As played by 25-year-old Rachel Sennott (the only holdover from the original short), Danielle is a young woman whose often petulant motivations are never quite fleshed out, but Seligman keeps things running with such efficiency, you never get a chance to care. And I got a lot of good laughs out of this movie.

Advocates for bisexual representation should be pleased to learn that Danielle is decisively bisexual, and not confused about her sexuality—she’s just confused about a whole lot of other things in her life. To make things even more interesting, her ex-girlfriend Maya (Molly Gordon) also happens to be at the service. Between her slightly overbearing but loving parents, her ex-girlfriend, the many relatives who berate her for being too skinny, her sugar daddy, his wife she didn’t know about, and their baby, Danielle spends her time overwhelmed by the sensory overload of the event. Luckily for us, most of these peripheral characters are hilarious.

The sugar daddy, Max (Danny Deferrari), is not the most memorable character, really just fulfilling a role of plotting in this film; he could have stood a little more dimension. To call him a “sugar daddy” might be misleading to some, as Max is not especially old—he’s just, maybe, ten years older than Danielle. And even though Danielle’s motivations are never fully clarified, I still liked that her decision to have sex for money is never treated by this film with judgment: “I wanted money and it was an easy way to get it,” she says, matter-of-factly. Note the word wanted rather than needed: Danielle has parents who are attentive and provide for her. She’s a young woman figuring out her place in the world, and that process just happens to include sex work. Good for her!

Seligman does work in a bit of literalism with the “baby” of the title. Shiva Baby is not just a broad play on words with the phrase “sugar baby”; her parents keep calling her their “baby,” and when Max’s wife—who happens not to be Jewish—arrives, she brings a literal baby into the picture. Danielle, who has been telling everyone she’s been making her extra money “babysitting,” is confronted with holding the baby at one point, betraying how very much it does not come naturally to her.

Some might dismiss Shiva Baby as too clever for its own good, without anything of real substance to say. They wouldn’t be too far off the mark, except that this movie achieves everything it sets out to. It takes an amusing premise and runs with it, winding up far more entertaining—and funnier—than you might expect. There are unexpected layers to its characters and its characterizations, just not especially to its story, which is neither a requirement nor a necessity here. In short, I had a great time, and this was 77 minutes well spent. Given that it’s currently available only on VOD, it was also $3.99 well spent.

Would you believe these people are the life of the party I mean shiva>

Overall: B+

DANCE OF THE 41

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

I sure wish it were easier to find out how Dance of the 41 (title in original Spanish: El Baile de los 41) is being received in its native Mexico. Perhaps this will change slightly over time, but at the moment I can find only one review written in English, and I am no longer fluent enough in Spanish to read the few reviews I have found in Spanish. There is no page for this film at MecaCritic.com, although over on RottenTomatoes.com it has a “fresh rating” of 75%, based on all of four reviews collected. (Actually all it’s officially showing is the user rating of 73%, the four critic reviews not enough in number to warrant an official “tomatometer” rating.)

I am here to tell you, though: this is a movie that commands attention. It deserves to be seen, and you should watch it. It’s streaming on Netflix, giving it a platform it could get few other places, so what excuse do you have? It does center around a 1901 event that became an enduring flash point in the history of queer people in Mexico, which, let’s face it, inevitably means it does not end well. You might want to brace yourself for the emotional gut-punch of the very last shot, in fact. You should still watch it.

The inevitably sad fate of the people involved notwithstanding, there is a lot to love about Dance of the 41. On a superficial level, the costuming and production design are impeccable; this is a visually lush period piece. I can’t imagine a huge amount of money was spent on this film’s production, but nothing that made it onscreen looks cheap. In fact, director David Pablos was granted access to Mexico City’s Casa Rivas Mercado for filming, a cultural center featuring the late 19th century architecture of the time.

There’s some pretty frank and occasionally explicit sex in this movie, both straight and gay—with quite a lot of male nudity. I say this not to be salacious, which this film really isn’t. When the Mexican president’s son-in-law, Ignacio de la Torre (Alfonso Herrera) introduces Evaristo (Emiliano Zurita) to the secret gay society to which he belongs, we eventually discover that they gather not just for high-society socializing, schmoozing and drinking and playing billiards, but also for orgies. What I love about how Pablos frames this is that it is always without judgment. Whether it’s a bunch of gay men sucking and fucking in a large room with a bunch of bathtubs, or an incredibly tender love scene between Ignacio and Evaristo alone in a bedroom, all Pablos seems interested in is showcasing queer joy. This applies to far more than just the sex; a key element of the historical event when one of these society parties gets raided by the police—in a man’s private home—is that half of them were dressed in drag. And until the raid, we just see a group of people being free to be their authentic selves, and it’s a beautiful thing.

The flip side, then, is the relationship between Ignacio and his wife, Amada (an excellent Mabel Cadena)—then-Mexican president Porfirio Díaz’s daughter. In an early scene, we see these two having sex for the first time on their wedding night, and it is one of the most awkward sex scenes I have ever seen committed to film. It’s rare we see this kind of scene, and I found myself thinking about how common it must have been in real life throughout history (and for some people, still is), for the poor women who marry men who are incapable of desiring them sexually. Given how easily this can breed (so to speak) resentment in such women, I think it will be easy for some to think of Amada as a villain here. It’s an easy trap that should be resisted, as it’s much more nuanced than that. I found myself sympathizing with Amada every bit as much as I did Ignacio.

Dance of the 41 takes a fascinating, contextualized look at a horrible moment in Mexican history—which I only learned about for the first time about a month ago, on TikTok. It’s apparently the reason many Mexicans have a negative association with the number 41 (and 42), with many in contemporary queer culture reclaiming them. This film, however, says little to nothing about the lasting cultural impact of the event, and focuses instead on the event itself, humanizing the people involved. Ignacio de la Torre was a real historical figure and rumored to have been at the event; it was always 42 people there, but the president, clearly wanting to avoid any association with it, had his son-in-law removed from persecution.

There is a brief sequence in the film depicting the horrible public humiliation endured by the other 41 people at the event, and it is indeed difficult to watch. Thankfully, Pablos neither dwells on it nor sensationalizes it, although he does allow enough time to challenge the viewers with the horror of it, which is only right and proper. Still, what sticks in your mind once the film is over, gut wrenching as the parting shot might be, is the far greater amount of time spent on the drama and romance leading up to it. In effect, most of this story is a love triangle, between two gay men and the wife of one of them. I really can’t recommend it enough, and really hope that word spreads that it’s worth seeing.

A lovely showcase for queer joy … until it isn’t: either way, a must-see.

Overall: A-

THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD

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

I had high hopes for Those Who Wish Me Dead, because of its director, Taylor Sheridan: he’s got a proven track record of films I loved, including Wind River (2017), Hell or High Water (2016) and the best of them, Sicario (2015). Of these others, Sheridan directed only Wind River, but he has sole writing credit on all three, all of them being uniquely nuanced, layered, and thoughtful dramas with singular points of view. What makes Those Who Wish Me Dead a comparative disappointment is not just that Sheridan shares writing credit with two other people—including Michael Koryta, the author upon whose book this is based—but that he’s directing someone else’s story. It just doesn’t work quite as well.

Now, “comparative” is the operative word here; Those Who Wish Me Dead is not bad. It’s maybe even a little better than the rather mixed critical consensus would suggest. I did watch this streaming on HBO Max, where it will be available until June 14, but it is also playing in theaters, and I kind of wish I had seen it there. It’s not some high-octane action movie, exactly, but it is cinematic in a way that would benefit from the big screen. Especially in the latter half of the film, in which the characters are all threatened by a huge forest fire in the wilderness of Montana.

Which brings me to casting, one area we can perhaps agree is where this film missing the mark, at least with its marquee star: Angelina Jolie. We’ve all known her for decades now, as a gorgeous movie star. I won’t say it’s patently unrealistic for a stunningly beautiful woman to be a firefighting survivalist; I’m sure they’re out there. The issue is Jolie herself, as her glamorous stardom itself is a distraction. She gives a serviceable performance in the role of Hannah, a woman still feeling guilty about the young boys she was unable to save from fire in a forest a year prior. A more unknown actor in the role could have made the part shine. Granted, a lot of times it takes casting stars that big in order to secure funding for production to begin with, so there may be a bit of catch-22 at play there.

The rest of the cast is surprisingly diverse, especially considering it’s rural Montana—one of Hannah’s firefighting buddies is a Black man, and one of the principal supporting characters is a pregnant Black woman named Allison. That woman, by the way, teaches a local survivalist school, basically runs a ranch, and the woman who plays her, Medina Senghore, fits into her role far more naturally than Angelina Jolie does hers. Even Tyler Perry pops up in a cameo, as the primary contact of the two assassins (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult).

I do feel compelled to highlight the teenage co-lead, Finn Little, as 13-year-old Connor, who witnesses the murder of his father and is on the run from said assassins. It’s extremely rare that this could be said of any child actor, but Little’s performance is easily the best one in this movie. By comparison, everyone else is just going through the motions, in a movie that has very little to say.

Not that it has to have “something to say,” mind you, but it should either have that or be a fun ride, and the narrative here moves somewhere in the space between the two, seemingly unsure of a decisive thematic direction. It’s not boring, and it features just enough tension to keep it suspenseful (especially in its second half), but the script curiously leaves out pertinent details. Connor’s dad offers vague explanations for assassins coming after him for “doing the right thing,” without ever telling us precisely what that thing was. He gives Connor a written account of his “secrets” and asks him to promise to take it to the news if something happens to him. Connor gives these notes to Hannah at one point; we see her read them; we never learn their contents. And if we don’t know exactly why all this is happening, what reason do we have to care?

Furthermore, I’d have liked Those Who Wish Me Dead a lot more if the wildfire just happened naturally—it’s established immediately that it’s a regular occurrence, after all, and we even see scenes in which lightning strikes the ground in the forest and in an open field multiple times. But instead, the assassins ignite a fire just to create a distraction for local law enforcement, turning the fire into a cheap plot device. All I could think about, really, is the increased frequency of wildfires each year due to climate change, and how shit like this exacerbates it, but this movie has no interest in coming even close to addressing that. Which is, honestly, surprising for a Taylor Sheridan film, which we have come to expect to create portraits of characters facing issues unique to our time.

It almost feels like a sellout paycheck project. And maybe it is: good for him, i guess. I can only hope it helps him make a better movie again moving forward. Those Who Wish Me Dead isn’t deeply flawed, really; it’s just not up to the usual standards, and in so being, winds up being somewhat forgettable. You’ll enjoy yourself while it’s on, though.

If you want to survive, stick with an Oscar winner!

Overall: B

Advance: FINDING YOU

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

Call it YA fiction, because that’s exactly what it is: Finding You is based on the YA novel There You’ll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones. Evidently, the film significantly departs from its source material, as reading through the Amazon user reviews of the novel, the story originally incorporated both anorexia and the main character’s “faith journey.” One book reviewer from 2019 writes, I'm looking forward to seeing the film adaption in 2020 and hope that the faith theme and Finley's personal struggles aren't glossed over since these are the heart of the story. Well, I’m sorry you’ll be disappointed, anonymous user from Hershey, PA!

I can’t really tell who this movie is for, which means, oddly, maybe the movie would have worked better for the same target audience of that novel, if it had been more faithful to it? Finding You says nothing about the faith of the main character, Finley (Rose Reid), until she finally locates the gravestone her late brother had sketched—and the camera lingers on an epitaph with a direct reference to God. I think that lady from Hershey will indeed think the “faith theme” was “glossed over.”

Instead, Finding You focuses on the context of Beckett Rush’s movie stardom, and how he and Finley fall in love while he’s filming another in a series of dragon fantasy movies in the small Irish town where Finley is studying abroad. As written and directed by Brian Baugh, to say that the entirety of Beckett’s life as a famous actor is contrived is an understatement. He’s a young but grown man, and somehow his father (Tom Everett Scott) has total control over every aspect of his professional and personal life, right down to making up romantic stories about Beckett’s relationship with his costar, Taylor (Katherine McNamara, in a much smaller role but somehow getting top billing). There’s a scene in which Taylor is trying to convince Beckett to stick with their made-up life in order to keep public interest turning into box office earnings. She says to him, “So few understand the life that we lead,” and I found myself thinking, Does this movie’s director even understand that?

This movie lost me within its first few minutes, when Finley is boarding her flight to Ireland from her hometown of New York, and a flight attendant just up and offers her a seat in first class because there happens to be an empty seat. Oh I see, so this movie is a complete fantasy. By the way, the airline is “Aer Lingus.” I thought that was ridiculous too, until I googled it and found out that is real. They get pretty prominent product placement in this movie. Am I the only person who sees the name “Aer Lingus” and thinks of mile-high cunnilingus? But I digress.

Finding You has some redeeming qualities. Rose Reid as Finley and Jedidiah Goodacre as Beckett have genuine onscreen chemistry, not to mention a natural screen presence that gives their performances a sincerity that transcends much of the bland formula of the script. It is perhaps for this reason only that I found myself sucked into the story in spite of its many flaws—well, that and Vanessa Redgrave in a supporting part as a local crotchety old lady. It’s always nice to spend screen time with Vanessa Redgrave.

But then the narrative cuts to Beckett on set, where the throwaway actor playing his director has the most ridiculous “European” accent I’ve ever heard. Trying to say the word “joke,” he literally says, “I made a yoke!” Is this supposed to be comedy? It’s embarrassing, is what it is.

At least the rest of the characters are well cast, including the Irish host family with whom Finley stays. And it’s helpful, actually, to cast relative unknowns as the leads (Jedidiah Goodacre played Dorian Gray in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina; this is Rose Reid’s fifth-ever acting credit), although it’s amusing to think how Goodacre’s personal life is still nothing like that of the famous actor he’s playing. In any event, those two are compelling enough to elicit hope that they both get better opportunities for meatier roles in far better films than this in their near future.

Can you believe this script?

Overall: C+

[Opens Friday, May 14.]