BARBIE

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

One might not be blamed for ambivalence about the movie Barbie, which is the latest in a long line of “movie adaptations” that seem far from intuitive ideas, perhaps starting with the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie twenty years ago. The flip side of this notion is that Pirates of the Caribbean turned out far better than anyone could have expected a movie based on an amusement park ride to be; and Barbie proves that, with the right director, the right writers, and the right casting, really any movie concept can be great if it’s done right.

And, to be clear: the sole reason I had interest in Barbie from the start was that it was directed and co-written by Greta Gerwig, who previously gave us fantastic works like Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019). Barbie is her third film as a solo director (fourth when counting a co-directing gig), and hardly anything anyone would guess based on her previous offerings. But, her name on the project gave it both specific and unparalleled pedigree that made it something that had to be seen.

It is co-written by her longtime partner, Noah Baumbach, also an unusual and fascinating choice. These are both voices of critical independent films of the past decade or so, and in both cases Barbie qualifies as their first bona fide blockbuster film. I’m not sure anyone expected Barbie to be this huge when it was first greenlit, but this movie based on Mattel’s most famous toy has been the beneficiary of a marketing push the likes of which we haven’t seen in ages, and it’s one that has worked. A year ago, I would have expected Barbie to be the modest success and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer to be the blockbuster. Instead, almost certainly to the surprise of the makers of both movies, who no doubt opened them on the same weekend regarding them as counter programming, “Barbenheimer” became a thing, and a stunning number of movie-goers have committed to seeing both movies on opening weekend, making this almost certainly the biggest box office weekend of the year. What’s more, Barbie is tracking to be the biggest earner of the two.

You might think that comparing these movies is like comparing apples and oranges, but they do have a surprising amount in common, each with a protagonist who deal with the paradigm-shifting consequences of their actions, forever altering the universes that they live in. And from that perspective, I would argue, actually, that Barbie is the better movie.

A different director could have made a film version of Barbie that was every bit as fun, and maybe even worth seeing, but only Greta Gerwig, with the help of her expertly curated ensemble cast, could so successfully pack the movie with subtext. Even better, viewers with no interest in the subtext can just as easily enjoy the movie on a surface level—this doesn’t have to be an intellectual pursuit, or something you have to analyze or deconstruct. Gerwig’s genius is in how she makes that possible without making it necessary.

Barbie does indeed owe a certain debt, in premise, to movies like Toy Story or The Lego Movie (which really just ripped off Toy Story), in which toy characters live in the world of imagination created by those who play with them. Barbie is simply more dense with both meaning and humor. The humor part should really be stressed, because this is a very funny, wildly entertaining movie. Barbie manages the rare feat of taking ideas that were successful before, and making them better.

With a standard three-act structure, Barbie takes place in Barbieland in both the first and third acts, and this is the preferable setting, the more fun place to be. Barbie and Ken’s journey to The Real World is crucial to the plot, however, and this is where the second act takes place—and where I still very much enjoyed myself. I was charmed and impressed by everything in, and everything about, this movie.

Margot Robbie could not possibly have been better cast in the lead role, as what we come to discover is “Stereotypical Barbie.” Few other actors could pull off the balance of wide-eyed innocence and undiscovered pathos. Ryan Gosling is brilliantly cast as Ken, the would-be boyfriend who follows Barbie into The Real World only to discover the patriarchy that exists there, and then bring it back to Barbieland. This theme of patriarchy becomes a huge part of the movie, which will likely rub a lot of men the wrong way—the very men Greta Gerwig clearly wants to rub the wrong way. And those of us all-in on this movie from the jump are here for it.

A diverse array of other women play other Barbies, the ones long known as associated with a specific profession or particular personality trait. Amusingly, no fewer than eleven women are credited with just the same character name “Barbie,” among them Issa Rae (who plays the President of Barbieland), Kate McKinnon (for a while referred to as “Weird Barbie”), Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, and Dua Lipa, among others. Emerald Fennell even appears as Midge, the short-lived pregnant doll that apparently came across as a little creepy. Similarly, several men are credited as “Ken,” including Simu Liu (who is Gosling’s primary rival), Chris Evans and even John Cena. Michael Cera plays Allan, the onetime doll introduced in the sixties as Ken’s buddy, now a bit of an oddball outsider.

As can be expected with a movie like this, Barbie is also cram packed with visual gags and references to “Barbie” characters, careers, outfits and dollhouses throughout the toy’s history, none of which was I particularly familiar with and thus most of which I was unable to catch. But the magic of Barbie the movie is how it pokes fun at all of this, while also acknowledging the nostalgia that still exists for it, as well as the critiques of what the doll has been perceived to represent for women in society. These ideas only get underscored by Barbie and Ken’s journey into The Real World, where the meet America Ferrera as a mother with fond memories of playing Barbies with her now-teenage daughter (Ariana Greenblatt), as well as Will Ferrell playing the Mattell CEO—alongside a cadre of doltish male board members—as a bumbling fool but whose intentions are in the right place.

Given the wide range of perspectives on this doll, not by any means all of them positive, it’s almost extraordinary that Mattel actually signed off on the film as is. There has been some coverage of certain scenes that Gerwig refused to cut as requested, and a bit of hand wringing about the movie’s undeniably corporatized nature regardless of how much it satirizes. I am here to tell you, though, that Barbie is a genuine cinematic achievement, something that transcends its myriad ways of becoming a pop culture phenomenon. It’s actually a great film, an incredibly fun couple of hours constructed and designed by great minds and delightful performers alike. I genuinely look forward to seeing it again so I can catch some of the fun details I missed the first time around.

Barbie discovers that self-doubt and thoughts of mortality will break the spell.

Overall: A-

OPPENHEIMER

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

Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page biography, written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin and published in 2005, called American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. For director and co-writer Christopher Nolan to adapt a book of that length and density, it’s of little surprise that this film is a solid three hours long, and doesn’t feel like it due to its own density.

I have mixed feelings about the editing, which jumps around multiple timelines, albeit with parallel arcs—more than one detailing a hearing. In one, Oppenheimer, expertly played by Cillian Murphy, is being interrogated as someone with “leftist” and communist ties. In another, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) is facing a Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of Commerce, and at first it seems like he is being scrutinized for his own associations with Oppenheimer, but the dynamics of that hearing evolve over the film’s run time.

Does any of this sound like a movie that commands being shot entirely in IMAX film stock? The expansive marketing for this movie sure made it seem so, which was easy to assume to be true given Nolan’s filmography. To be clear, I was very impressed by this movie, but I did leave it at the end wondering why it was so essential that it be seen at a legit IMAX theater—which I had gone out of my way to do. I am here to tell you: it is not essential. It does look great that way, but also the vast majority of this movie is just people in rooms talking. That can be just as effective at a standard movie theater, or even, arguably, on a home entertainment system.

There are some visually awe-inspiring moments, to be fair. A great deal of time is spent building up to the test of the first-ever atom bomb, which Oppenheimer was perhaps most instrumental in inventing–that being the very reason this film exists. And, much has been made of this movie having no CGI shots in it, which is impressive indeed. The practically rendered (yet still, thankfully, not a real example of precisely what was being rendered) mushroom cloud, a giant plume of fire steadily expanding into the sky, makes a memorable sight on an IMAX screen. I had to lean forward so I could take the image in in its entirety, from the bottom of the screen past the people in rows ahead of me, to the top.

These moments, though, it really should be noted, are comparatively fleeting. Again, this is a solid three-hour film, and only a small percentage of that time is dedicated to explosions. The rest is dedicated to scientific theory, math equations, moral quandaries, a bit of philandering, and a bit of backstabbing. A memorable line: “The truly vindictive have the patience of a saint.” Having not read the biography, which in all likelihood I never will, I wondered to what extent this protracted personal rivalry between Strauss and Oppenheimer was invented, or embellished, for cinema.

I can say this much: seeing Robert Downey Jr. as any character besides Iron Man is truly a breath of fresh air. The man is 58 years old and he actually looks his age in this movie, something that hasn’t happened in so long, it took me multiple scenes before I even realized it was him I was looking at. Plus, he’s finally been given a role that showcases his genuine talent for the first time in about fifteen years.

Cillian Murphy may be the clear star of this cast, but it’s still a huge ensemble, packed with one recognizable face after the other: Matt Damon (also excellent) as General Leslie Groves; Alden Ehrenreich as a Senate aide; Kenneth Branagh as Danish physicist Niels Bohr; Josh Hartnett as nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence; Matthew Modine as science administrator Vannevar Bush; Benny Safdie as theoretical physicist Edward Teller; Casey Affleck as military intelligence officer Boris Pash; Dane DeHaan as civil engineer Kenneth Nichols; David Krumholtz as physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi; and Rami Malek as an aide whose testimony provides a critical plot turn. (Malek appears in two scenes with no dialogue at all first, and only later gets the pivotal scene with actual lines.) That’s just a liberal sampling, and doesn’t even mention the only two female parts with any substantiveness: Emily Blunt, excellent in a part that’s easy to feel ambivalent about, as Oppenheimer’s alcoholic wife, Kitty; and Florence Pugh as Jean, Oppenheimer’s mentally unstable mistress. Pugh in particular is kind of wasted here, barely recognizable in a minor role that does nothing whatsoever to showcase her ample talents.

All of these people populate multiple interwoven, cross-cutting narrative threads, and that they are edited together with coherence is an impressive achievement, a big part of what makes the film move along at a steady clip in spite of its length. Oppenheimer is getting astoundingly positive reviews, will likely be on a ton of “best of the year” lists, and all but guaranteed to garner a ton of Oscar nominations, perhaps more than any other film this year. None of this presents as a mystery to me; I get it. I even have a feeling that I would gain deeper appreciation for this movie by seeing it multiple times. But, I mean, who has the time!

Whether I can say I think Oppenheimer is overrated, if only slightly, is something only time can tell. I really enjoyed it, and many others clearly have as well. There’s certainly something to be said for the consistency with which Christopher Nolan can make original films, that are not sequels or reboots or part of broad IP, legitimate event movies. The man is in a class of his own, particularly among filmmakers of his generation.

I still feel compelled to reiterate this film not especially worth the premium pricing of the IMAX experience. It’s great on a big screen, but is likely just as much so in a standard movie theater. I’d have felt my money were better spent seeing this using my AMC subscription rather than shelling out an extra $21 for it.

Sure it’s illuminating, but is it worth a special trip?

Overall: B+

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING PART ONE

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

I am of two minds about this, the seventh entry in the Mission: Impossible film franchise—starring a sixty-one-year-old Tom Cruise, twenty-seven years after the first of these films was released. Which is to say, Tom Cruise’s evident desire to one day die on a movie set, perhaps during yet another stunt on a train, is starting to run out of steam.

And I am a bona fide fan of this fanchise, in spite of having actively ignored it for its first fifteen years. It was Ghost Protocol in 2012—the first of the sequels not to be given a number—that made me a convert, largely on its spectacular sequence on the outside of the Burj Khalifa building in Dubai. That remains my favorite in the series, but I would not argue with anyone who asserted that the films actually got better with each installment from there, from Rogue Nation in 2015 to Fallout in 2018. I consistently gave all three of these movies a highly recommended B-plus.

This is a better action franchise than the wildly uneven Fast and Furious, and far more fun than the self-indulgent John Wick series. Well, until now, anyway.

I’d say Dead Reckoning Part One takes a bit of a dip. “Bit” is the operative word here; it’s not a very big dip. This movie is an undeniably exciting watch, but I can’t say it does much in the way of innovation. Previous installments have had signature set pieces that really make them stand out, from the Burj Khalifa to clinging to the side of a plane to a practically shot skydive sequence. Dead Reckoning spends a lot of time referencing things we’ve seen already: a fight atop a runaway train that recalls the first Mission: Impossible; a car chase through Venice that recalls similar sequences in both John Wick and James Bond movies; an admittedly spectacular set piece involving train cars sliding over a cliff that, if you’re old enough anyway, recalls a very similar sequence in the 1997 film The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

We do, at least, get to see our hero, Ethan Hunt, ride a motorcycle right off a cliff to lean into a parachute dive, only to cut soon after to a very funny moment when he crashes through a window into one of the cars of the aforementioned train. This cliff jump was seen ad nauseam in the trailers, which effectively racheted up the anticipation. It’s a great, beautifully shot stunt, which is one of the few moments in this movie that don’t last long enough.

Which brings me to the thing about Dead Reckoning Part One that genuinely impressed me. This is by 16 minutes the longest of the Mission: Impossible films, but you’d never know it from watching it: at least two different action set pieces go on quite a long time, but there are actually fewer such set pieces than usual in a movie like this—in fact, this time around, director Christopher McQuarrie (who has now done the most recent three of these films) moved away from the traditional cold open with a huge stunt. Instead, we start with a submarine sequence that is more concerned with suspense and intrigue than with action, one of several elements that deliberately harken back to the very first film. (Henry Czerny also returns as Eugene Kittridge, having last been seen in the 1996 original.) And still, not a moment feels particularly wasted, at least in terms of being entertained.

Did this need to be split into two parts, though? I’d have been much happier with a film of this run time, with the same number of action sequences, with an actual resolution at the end rather than a literal cliffhanger. Evidently McQuarrie and Cruise were so enamored with all the set piece ideas they had that they wanted to cram them into one, ridiculously long story. But, I mean, why not just save some for the inevitable next sequel?

That said, I’m not sure how many sequels this franchise needs. Once we get next year’s Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two, maybe we can settle on the idea that eight is enough. This is the first time in roughly a decade that the franchise has felt less rather than more propulsive than the prior installment. Honestly, as great as McQuarrie has been, it may just be a matter of getting some fresh directorial blood into the franchise. Tom Cruise will be kicking ass with whichever director it takes until one final kick throws his back out.

A quick side note: I do love how many women get showcased in these movies. We do get Ehtan’s beloved buddies yet again, Luther (Ving Rhames, the only other person besides Cruise himself who has been in every one of these movies) and Benji (Simon Pegg, who has been in all of them since Mission: Impossible III). We also get Rebecca Ferguson returning for a third outing as Ilsa Faust; Vanessa Kirby for the second time as The White Widow (doing an excellent job as both that character, and a different character disguised as her); and franchise newcomer Hayley Atwell as Grace, a skilled pickpocket who gets yanked into the proceedings. All of them play pivotal roles in the story, and none of them are particularly objectified or the subject of womanizing. In fact all three of them are ass kickers, although honestly as characters Grace is the least memorable of them.

I would say Dead Reckoning does have a slight villain problem, in that any human villain really only counts as a henchman—and the real villain this time around is an artificial intelligence. The whole plot, ridiculous as always (and we would expect nothing less from this franchise) revolves around a global race of nations to get their hands on a key, which will potentially unlock control over this AI that can be used to take over the world, but which is essentially well on its way to that all on its own. How this plays out gets predictably muddled, as it’s all just fodder for the aforementioned action sequences. It also results in a massive threat that has no personality. And a movie is always better if its villain has personality.

We do get Esai Morales as Gabriel, someone returning from Ethan Hunt’s distant past (but never having been in the franchise before), who ultimately functions as a meat-puppet of the AI. Gabriel could have been infused with some personality, but Morales doesn’t give him much, nor does the script.

Don’t get me wrong, I was very engaged with and entertained by this movie. When it’s “same shit, different year,” it’s easier to cope with when it’s still good shit. I just didn’t have quite the same level of emotional investment as in previous installments, not so much because of the characters, who have never had all that many dimensions to them, but because the same level of cinematic inventiveness isn’t quite there. It’s still a serviceable outing that gets the job done as an action movie.

This franchise is still hanging in there.

Overall: B

BIOSPHERE

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

I have wildly mixed feelings about Biosphere, which I really wanted to like. I also went into it quite eager to find out what this movie about two men stuck for years, with only each other, in a sealed biosphere after a global catastrophe, would have to say about sex, and attraction, and what having no other option does to people. We’ve all heard the stories about prison, right? Presumably this would be a similar scenario, just minus the criminal aspect.

What I did not expect was for it to tackle sexuality within minutes, and head on, and then effectively make it part of the entire premise. It just didn’t do it in anywhere near the way I thought it might, or even that I particularly wanted it to. I won’t spoil the turns the story takes, but I will say it felt a little bit like a copout, and like a movie that thinks it’s progressive is actually being a little regressive.

Beyond that, the premise has vast potential for deeply nuanced discussion of sexuality and gender roles, of which director Mel Eslyn, co-writing with Mark Duplass who also co-stars, barely scratches the surface. Instead we are presented with a pair of childhood friends who are now dealing with the fallout—quite literally, it would seem—of the most recent U.S. President’s deeply bad decisions, in the face of the advice of a best-friend advisor (from the opposing political party, no less).

The fact that these characters are middle-aged men who were recently the President and his advisor turns out to be utterly pointless. Very few truly political ideas get explored, and this backstory seems to exist only as a handy backstory and nothing more. I’d have found Biosphere much more successful were it about two best friends who happened to build a safe haven in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that was not of their own making. That way the story could focus on their relationship as friends and regular people, Americans sure, but the idea of their political leadership (or lack thereof) feels very awkwardly shoehorned in.

It also has nothing to do with the supposed “evolutionary jump” that occurs to the fish in their tiny pond, as well as to Billy and Ray themselves. And here we come to my biggest hangup about Biosphere, the same issue I had with last year’s Crimes of the Future: the preposterousness of a so-called leap in evolution that does not, could not, and will not ever happen. The fact that they even directly reference the “Life finds a way” quote from Jurassic Park is meant as amusing but just underscores how derivative this truly hair brained idea is. This could have been so much more incisive a story had Eslyn and Duplass merely stuck with an exploration of what forced, extended isolation with just one other person does to people in ways that are actually plausible.

To be fair, that is not especially the Duplass brand. Mark Duplass plays Billy, the former president; Sterling K. Brown plays Ray, the guy who was really pulling the strings—this being one of the sources of resentment between them, which could just as easily have been done without making them titans of politics now rendered restless man-children.

What eventually happens to them borders on otherworldly. A bonkers as the plot becomes, they are fun to watch together, and the one real compliment I will give to the writing is the fact that this is a two-hander in the truest sense of the phrase—we see no other actors onscreen, ever, except these two—and the film still manages to hold the viewer’s attention. Duplass and Brown feel like childhood friends.

But, the more Biosphere went on, the more embarrassed I became by it, as it couches itself in what it wants us to take on faith are extrapolations of real-world scientific ideas. Except that fish are not amphibians and humans are not fish, and Biosphere is finding ways to conflate them all in ways it hopes we won’t notice.

I might be willing to forgive a lot if, for instance, the fantastical things that occur were a springboard or nuanced examinations of human relationships. I think Biosphere is crafted to make us think that is indeed what it’s doing, except that every idea it examines, it does little more than regard as a slight amusement. This is a movie deeply confused about what it wants to be, which is a disservice to any of the legitimate ideas it touches on.

The laws of nature get thrown right out the biosphere window.

Overall: C+

JOY RIDE

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

The surprising irony of Joy Ride is that it’s when it gets earnest that it actually works best. There are moments of seriousness, and even more moments of genuine sweetness, that really land, and endear us to every one of the four lead characters, who are on a road trip in China.

It’s in the comedy that Joy Ride falters, about half the time. The gags are spotty at best, with punchlines landing effectively maybe half the time. The writers, comprised of a team of three, seem to have taken a kitchen-sink approach, throwing in seemingly every idea they’ve got, without a lot of honing. The result is a comedic mixed bag. This means there actually are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, and if you’re willing to just roll with it all, you’ll have a good time. But, because of the rapid-fire nature of the comedy, plenty of it also falls flat. At least there’s never enough time spent to linger on the flatness, as we quickly move on to the next attempt.

I never want to say this about a movie, but I actually feel like Joy Ride could have benefited from some focus groups. On the other hand, how the hell they could find a representative sample of who they think is this movie’s target audience, I have no idea.

Part of it is the marketing, which bills this movie as a “raunchy comedy”—which, to be fair, it is. But, the trailers really don’t indicate that there’s a lot more to it than that. What’s more, Joy Ride actually avoids the pitfalls of countless “raunchy comedies” from the early 2000s, which persisted in revealing a supposedly wholesome core, which always felt disingenuous. Nothing about Joy Ride feels disingenuous, even though a lot of it is pretty contrived. No one is learning any lessons that feel shoehorned in from a totally different tone of a movie.

These characters grow and develop, rather than learning lessons, per se. And the best thing about them is the actors who play them: Ashley Park as Audrey, an Asian girl adopted by White parents; Sherry Cola as Lolo, Audrey’s very sexually liberated best friend since childhood; Stephanie Hsu as Kat, Audrey’s roommate from college; and Sabrina Wu as Deadeye, Lolo’s socially awkward cousin. When lifelong overachiever Audrey is sent on a business trip to China to close the deal, Lolo tags along as her ostensible interpreter; Deadeye tags along as a hanger-on; and they meet up with working Chinese actress Kat while there, even though Lolo and Kat don’t get along (for now).

The plot gets a little more convoluted as it goes along, with Audrey only finally being convinced to track down her birth mother as a means of impressing the guy with whom she’s meant to close a business deal (played by Malaysian comedian Ronny Chieng). The foursome of delightfully brassy young women travel by plane, by bus, by train and by boat, from Seattle to Beijing to rural China to Seoul, South Korea—all of which are represented by location shots in and around Vancouver, B.C.

There’s a fair amount of sex along the way. Plenty of genuinely hot men come and go in smaller parts. The core cast of four have real chemistry with each other, and Joy Ride has a refreshing amount of diverse representation in it—both across the Asian nationalities and across sexuality and gender lines. By the end of the film, Deadeye is being referred to casually with they/them pronouns, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that get worked into a film’s narratively so subtly and organically.

All of which is to say, there is a lot to like and enjoy about Joy Ride. It’s just that the comedy isn’t always one of them, which is a bit unfortunate given that the comedy is supposed to be the reason to see it. In other words: you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll occasionally think it’s a bit lame. I wanted, and kind of expected, a laugh-a-minute riot. I’ll settle for what I got, which was a good laugh every ten or fifteen minutes, with some sweet connections between friends in a silly movie.

Filthy minds and golden hearts: the foursome of JOY RIDE.

Overall: B

THE LESSON

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

The Lesson is a fine movie with a serviceable story, and will hold the attention of plenty viewers with no particular interest in looking upon it with a critical eye.

You can perhaps see my predicament in that context. I won’t make the blanket statement that I am incapable of looking upon a film without a critical eye; plenty of wildly entertaining titles are built for that very purpose—although even those have had varying levels of success. The issue with The Lesson is that it actively invites a critical eye, and in so doing underscores its own flaws.

Any film about literary figures, and particularly any film about a supposedly brilliant writer, can only truly succeed if its own script features brilliant writing. Unfortunately, the writing is the weakest thing about The Lesson. None of the fictionalized prose written by J.M. Sinclair, famed novelist, comes across as particularly brilliant, as it frequently gets read aloud. I almost feels ironic that the script, written by Alex MacKeith for his first feature film, is an original work. Maybe he wrote it as a movie instead of as a novel is because it wouldn’t quite work as a novel—there would be far too much expectation to see many more paragraphs of Sinclair’s “brilliant” work.

Another irony is that Sinclair is actually played brilliantly by Richard E. Grant, who elevates the material, as he is wont to do in virtually any role he plays. Now 66 years old, his very talent seems to get richer with age, and he disappears into his parts. Here, he plays a narcissistic and pompous old man who has let a lifetime of adoration get to his head. And, along with his wife Hélène (Julie Delpy) and his son Bertie (Stephen McMillan), they are still in the throes of grieving the loss of the favored son.

Thrown into this mix is young writer Liam (Daryl McCormack), who has been hired on as live-in tutor to Bertie, to assist in studies for a prized college admission. We see the story play out from Liam’s perspective, through which we are subject to multiple plot twists, more than one of which can be seen coming from a mile away.

And yet: this ensemble, even including the stoic butler (Crispin Letts), is esceptionally well cast across the board, and I felt The Lesson was worth seeing for that reason alone. Grant is the clear standout, but Delpy brings a mysteriously quiet presence, and McMillan plays Bertie’s petulance under enormous pressure wonderfully.

When it comes to the story, I will only say this: at the outset it seems to be about the relationship between Liam and Bertie, with even a very brief hint of romance that quickly gets shut down; I was actually a little disappointed, not that romance doesn’t blossom between them per se, but that neither of their sexuality ever gets directly addressed at all. And in that case, why hint at it just that once? Ultimately, The Lesson becomes about all of these people’s relationship with Sinclair, and whether he will respond to people with cruelty or neglect, depending on his mood. This shift in focus could have worked if not for the story playing out from that point forward so conventionally. There are moments of contrivance that are unnecessary at best, and one shot, meant to trick us into thinking Liam is about to smother Sinclar to death with a pillow and then turning out to be a fake-out, borders on unforgivable. That was a moment that genuinely deserved an eye roll.

There is an element of frustration to watching The Lesson, because it offers no insights whatsoever, with the possible exception of skilled performers making the best of what they were given to work with. The story plays out almost as an ode to mediocrity, but the actors are anything but. Which is to say, they’re all worth watching here, but they’ve all been in better things before.

Have any of us learned anything here today?

Overall: B

NO HARD FEELINGS

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

I’m a little mystified by the decidedly mixed reviews for No Hard Feelings, a modern take on the sex comedy that, I felt. did a solid job on updating the genre. Granted, the premise is both utterly ridiculous and a little cringey: a 32-year-old woman (Jennifer Lawrence) is hired by the parents of a 19-year-old young man (Andrew Barth Feldman) to date him and bring him out of his shell as preparation for college. I wouldn’t necessarily begrudge anyone unable to get past that as a setup. Pun intended.

The thing is, No Hard Feelings actually manages to transcend any potential cringe factors, and winds up being surprisingly sweet—in addition to being consistently funny. Now, it’s not hilarious, and I can’t say it has the rewatchable factor of, say, the 2019 comedy Booksmart, which I think may be the funniest movie of the past five years. I hesitate to call it “lacking” in humor, though, especially given its high-caliber performances that rival any drama.

I also feel compelled to stress that No Hard Feelings is definitively better than its trailer might have suggested. When I first saw the trailer, I was cautiously optimistic at best, but fully ready to be disappointed by this movie. I wasn’t at all.

It’s really rare that a comedy manages to showcase a performer’s broad range of talents. Jennifer Lawrence is as good here as she’s been in anything, and Andrew Barth Feldman is a delightful discovery. Both of them have competent control of nuances you would never expect to find in a movie like this.

The history of film is also rife with examples of actors playing far younger than they actually are—Jennifer Lawrence herself was catapulted to superstardom in the 2012 adaptation of The Hunger Games, playing a sixteen-year-old at the age of 22. Lawrence is now 32 years old, and that is also the age of her character, Maddie. Andrew Barth Feldman is all of 21 years old, 20 when the movie was filmed, and he plays 19-year-old Percy. There’s something refreshing about that, in addition to the flipping of the historic script, with onscreen couples featuring a man far older than the woman.

Somehwat miraculously, No Hard Feelings never gets creepy, or even particularly weird. I told someone before going to see this movie that I was seeing a “raunchy comedy,” and it really isn’t even that. It’s barely even a sex comedy. It’s really about two very different people, at very different points in their lives, finding surprisingly genuine moments of connection.

Of course, “creepy” is not the same as awkward—and this movie has awkwardness to spare. But, it is never once disingenuous, and it is always fun and entertaining. Although I do have to say: there’s a bit of a running joke about Maddie’s friends, who are expecting a baby, not really liking the homemade baby crib mobile Maddie crafts for them, out of an umbrella and dangling surf boards. I thought it was a really sweet gesture that they should have genuinely appreciated—especially as these friends are surfers—but, whatever!

No Hard Feelings is about people making misguided decisions. I suppose the very premise of this movie could be regarded as one, except that the characters in the movie actually develop in satisfying ways. I suppose Percy being this intense recluse who then quite easily starts talking to peers kind of out of nowhere is a possible target for nitpicking. I didn’t care so much, because wherever the material falters—and it only ever does to minor degrees—the acting and the chemistry onscreen elevates it. I had just as much fun as I wanted at this movie and I think others will too.

Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman are awkward in all the right ways.

Overall: B+

EVERY BODY

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

We are informed early on in Every Body, an excellent documentary on intersex people that predictably not nearly enough people are seeing, that in the United States alone, up to 1.7% of the population “has an intersex trait.” That amounts to an estimated 564,000 people. Much more to the point, up to 0.7% of Americans have clinically identifiable sexual or reproductive variations which may at one point warrant surgery. That amounts to about 230,000 people—or, the equivalent of the population of Spokane, Washington.

The idea that the systemic issues faced by any minority group should be ignored precisely because they are supposedly so small in number is preposterous. It’s mathematically illogical. And I should be frank here, in a way that director Julie Cohen does not bother to be: the queer community has been historically problematic on this front as well—just as we have been regarding queer people of color, just as we have been regarding trans people. Anyone complaining about the inclusion of the purple circle on a yellow background in the design of the progress flag clearly doesn’t get it, especially considering the vast overlap of struggles between the trans and intersex communities, in spite of them being two distinct groups. Again: rejecting their inclusion is illogical. (Side note: there are also fair debates about this.)

Small-minded people have a long, sad history of conflating sex with gender, and conflating sexuality with both. The deeply conditioned obsession with binary systems, which provably do not exist within any strict boundaries in nature (human or otherwise), persist with deeply frustrating tenacity. The film Every Body quite economically underscores this notion by opening the film with several clips of “gender reveal” parties, an idea that rivals astrology as the dumbest thing currently known to humankind. We see expectant parents, of both evident genders confined by the binary, getting truly nuts-excited by the news of their baby being a “boy” or a “girl.” All they are doing, really, is jumping up and down at the news of a visible penis, like an obsessive fan at a Beatles concert. Seriously, what are we all doing?

Cohen then introduces us to the three outspoken, out, intersex activists that Every Body almost exclusively focuses on: Sean Saifa Wall, assigned female at birth and now using he/him pronouns; River Gallo, assigned male at birth and now the only known working intersex actor in Los Angeles, using they/them pronouns; and Alicia Roth Weigel, assigned female at birth and now using she/her/they/them pronouns.

These three individuals provide more than enough content, and food for thought, for a feature film running at a brisk 92 minutes, but I would have liked a few more subjects to illustrate the very diverse array of intersex experiences, because the way being intersex manifests itself is extraordinarily diverse. Weigel is a uniquely fascinating case as she was born with internal testes and has XY chromosomes, but was assigned female at birth simply due to a lack of a penis—and she alone disproves any boneheaded arguments about “basic biology” proving any kind of sex binary. She stood as a physical rebuke to the transphobic Texas “bathroom bill” when she testified against it. By mandating that all people use the bathroom of their “biological sex,” Weigel would be legally compelled to use the men’s room, even though she was raised as a girl based on medical practices and laws inconsistent with what is currently being faced. And what sense is there in denying life-saving medical care to one group while forcing it upon another group that doesn’t need it?

The most important concern here, by far, of course, is bodily autonomy: surgeries forced on children, ranging from infancy to puberty, without their consent, which are regularly performed to this day. There are now decades of this practice, all traced back to a study later revealed to have a false conclusion, based on the case of David Reimer. Reimer had a botched circumcision as an infant, then his mother was advised by doctors just to raise him as a girl. We see a large number of clips of him getting interviewed in the late nineties, speaking out about his horrible experience and how the same horrors are being inflicted on other children based on incorrect conclusions about his case—and he wasn’t even intersex. He is not interviewed for this film because he committed suicide in 2004 at the age of 38.

Amnesty International notes that the number of people with intersex traits is comparable to that of people with red hair. Can you imagine forcing some kind of physical “correction” on every person with red hair? Presumably you would find that both preposterous and inhumane. What the film Every Body does best is humanize intersex people, and make the case that it really doesn’t matter how small the number is: barbarism is barbarism.

We clearly have a long way to go in terms of cultural understanding, as the resistance to understanding and accepting intersexuality is rooted in the longstanding, mistaken notion that there are only two sexes, and therefore any aberration is abominable, and worthy only of secrecy, shame, and correction. Anyone with sense can see how wrong-minded such thinking is, and Every Body is a deeply effective tool for directing a spotlight onto that sense.

Ending intersex surgery, one step at a time.

Overall: A-