FREAKY

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

Slasher movies and body-swap movies are both as old as time, it seems, at this point . . . or at least forty to fifty years. Psycho , arguably the grandfather to all slasher films, goes back to 1960 and has been imitated ad nauseam. The original Freaky Friday was released in 1976, was remade in 2003, has had a couple of TV iterations, and featured a concept either ripped off or cleverly tweaked in countless other movies. It would seem there’s nothing left to do with either of these genres.

Think again! Enter Freaky, which drops the second word of that original body-swap title and conveniently makes for a perfect slasher movie title mashup with the body swap concept. It’s almost surprising nobody thought of this sooner. And to be honest, that clever conceptual twist almost makes the movie worth watching on its own.

Even better are the two bodies that get swapped: a serial killer and a teenage girl in high school. To be frank, the script, by Michael Kennedy and Christopher Landon, leaves a lot to be desired. The opening sequence features shades of the original Scream, only without any of that movie’s satirical wit—we just see several teenagers get dispatched in semi-innovative ways by a giant brute in a mask. Here is villain name is coined “The Butcher,” and Christopher Landon, who also directs, goes out of his way to establish long-worn slasher movie tropes. It would work better if it had any satirical edge of its own, rather than playing as just as corny as any other subpar slasher movie.

What absolutely saves Freaky, then, is the inspired casting: Vince Vaughn, a truly giant and imposing man, as The Butcher—this guy may have an established record in comedy, but he easily slips into the role of the creep. (He played Norman Bates in the 1998 remake of Psycho, after all.) The thing is, if Vaughn stayed “The Butcher” for the entirety of this movie, it would be absolutely forgettable and easily written off. It’s when The Butcher stabs a high school girl with a cursed antique dagger and swaps bodies with her that he truly shines, with a flair of empathy for teenagers, never playing it campy, the ample humor all coming from the fish-out-of-water context.

Vaughn isn’t even the first grown man to play a teenage girl surprisingly well: Jack Black did it first in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017). These are two very different teeange girls, though: like any category of human, they contain multitudes. Millie, for her part, is reserved and meek, still grieving the loss of her dad a year before—a plot device a little too heavy for a movie so otherwise enamored with ridiculously gruesome murders and gallows humor, but it serves as some approximation of a launching pad for Millie’s character development.

Millie, by the way, is played by Pokémon: Detective Pikachu’s Kathryn Newton, and I don’t want her to be completely overshadowed by Vince Vaughn (both literally and figuratively), as when she plays The Butcher, she is rather delightful in her own right. Millie is far less interesting when playing herself—the same being the case, of course, when Vaugh is The Butcher, who is just a raving psychopath who doesn’t get even a shred of his own backstory. That would detract from the novelty of the film’s concept, I guess? In any case, it’s when Vaughn plays Millie, and Newton plays The Butcher, that Freaky is fun as hell. Even the dialogue gets much better.

We’re also treated with a delicious supporting appearance by Alan Ruck, who plays a hardass teacher who is an asshole for no good reason (honestly, his behavior towards Millie strains believability). He really exists only to be a sacrifice to one of the film’s more entertainingly gruesome turns, and on that front he does not disappoint.

Millie also has two best friends, a Black girl and a gay white boy, Nyla and Josh (Misha Osherovich and Celeste O’conner), whose respective race and sexuality evidently only exist for Josh utter the honestly kind of hacky line, “You’re Black and I’m gay: we’re dead!” Still, they wind up sharing more screen time with Vince Vaughn than they do Kathryn Newton, and the juxtaposition never really gets old. In fact, Freaky doesn’t wast too much time before Millie convinces Nyla and Josh that it’s her inside that huge man’s body, albeit after a pretty funny scene where they quite understandably think he’s the town killer. The somewhat lame twist at the end is slightly closer to a waste of time, but still offers a satisfying conclusion for Millie.

The truth is, even though Freaky has a ton of potential it’s frankly just too lazy to realize, I still had a great time watching it. This movie still offers everything you’d want from either a slasher movie or a body swap movie, creating something novel and entertaining just by mashing them together. Both Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton give performances that are better than the movie deserves, and in so doing make it a fun couple of hours.

Some teenage girls, you have to watch your back.

Oerall: B

SUPERNOVA

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

There’s something pleasantly naturalistic about writer-director Harry Macqueen’s dialogue in Supernova—at least, until it turns inevitably heartbreaking. He immerses us into the decades-long relationship between Sam and Tusker (Colin Firth and Stalney Tucci), introducing us to them as they drive an RV through the beautiful English countryside, embarking on a sort of last-hurrah road trip. The first thing we see is them bickering like an old married couple—instantly reminding me of my own grandparents, who spent nearly two decades of their retirement traveling full-time with a travel trailer—because that is essentially what they are. And the things they talk about are very typical and trivial, but it’s so well written, and instantly gives us a sense of them as individuals, that it is both compelling and a kick to listen to. Again, just like it had been with my own grandparents.

Sam and Tusker do not have children, though, and thus no grandchildren either; they do have a preteen niece, who clearly looks up to them, whom we meet when they briefly visit the house of Sam’s sister (Pippa Haywood). They have a dog, who travels with them, and also a bit of am emotional albatross: they are taking this trip with the full knowledge that it will be their last while Tusker is fully lucid. Tusker has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia.

So yes, this is another one of those movies about an older couple dealing with memory loss. The key difference here is that the couple in question is gay, although that fact is almost entirely incidental to this story. And it is indeed heartening to see more movies about topics that are not inherently related to sexuality but the main characters just happen to be gay. It also helps that Firth and Tucci are very close friends, and though the actors are straight, their closeness almost certainly informs their performances.

The more pertinent difference between Supernova and other movies like it is how the entire story stays within the framework of the person losing his memory still having most of his memory. This is the story of a man who knows full well that his memory is slipping, and is tortured by it.

And Macqueen allows us to spend a lot of time with them before the the emotional turmoil becomes fully clear. This is an effective storytelling strategy, given how much fun it is to hang out with Sam and Tusker. Anyone would be so lucky to have them as their uncles—or brother and brother-in-law, or whatever. Supernova gives us a sense of what is getting lost, before the loss has fully occurred. This is very much a drama, and even a bit of a tearjerker by the end, but you’ll also get several good chuckles out of just hanging out with them for a while first.

A whole lot of the narrative follows them as they drive along English country roads, offering some beautiful cinematography, wide open spaces to contrast with the intimacy between Sam and Tusker. Not much in the way of sex per se, but with the exception of a surprise party sequence, the vast majority of Supernova is just these two main actors. And they carry the film with exemplary strength and sensitivity.

Things do take a slightly more dramatic turn in the end, but not enough to keep this film from succeeding as a quiet and moving meditation on love and loss, and particularly grieving someone who is not quite gone yet. Anyone who has dealt with dementia of any kind in their family can relate. Supernova might feel a bit to slight for some, but it had more than enough depth to keep me moved.

There but for the grace of stardust go I.

Overall: B+

I CARE A LOT

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

Let’s start with the things I love about I Care a Lot, now streaming on Netflix, as there’s a few. I love that three of the four principal characters are women, including the protagonist. I love that said women are just as shady as characters as any of the “Russian mob” men they get mixed up with: we need more nuanced woman villains! I love that Diane Wiest is cast in a key part, as we don’t get to see her enough.

On the other hand, we still don’t get to see Diane Wiest enough, even in this movie, and I don’t love that. She features more prominently in the first half than in the second, and I spent too much time hoping her character would be the one to get the last laugh in the end, only to be disappointed. Jennifer Peterson is a fascinating character, and I wish writer-director J Blakeson had given her more agency. She’s really the only character in this movie who deserves to take charge of her own fate, and she winds up being the only one denied it.

I’ll still credit Blakeson for how much agency he gives Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike, effectively playing her as an unsettlingly amoral person), regardless of how villainous she is. This is a woman running a practice that is legal but, to put it euphemistically, “morally dubious” as they mark elderly people to be deemed unable to care for themselves. Marla gets courts to grand her guardianship over these senior citizens, places them into assisted living facilities, and sells off all their assets.

I’ll even credit Blakeson for casting Peter Dinklage as Roman Lunyov, her most direct nemesis and Jennifer Peterson’s mob boss son. Nothing in the script indicates that Roman is a little person, and nothing in the dialogue is changed to make a single reference to his size. He just exists as another person here, albeit a clearly evil, criminal one who wields a lot of power. In someone else’s hands, they might make his lifelong resentment of being marginalized a part of his psychological portrait—it certainly was in Game of Thrones—but here, it’s completely incidental, and only Dinklage’s performance has any relevance to his presence in the cast. (And he’s very good.)

On the other hand, I have somewhat more mixed feelings about the choice to make Marla, and her partner/lover/accomplice (Eiza González), lesbians. Sure, this detail is also incidental and does not hinge on the plot in any way. Still, the slight sting of history remains, where far too many films have made their most horrible characters gay.

All that said, for much of I Care a Lot, we are treated to a riveting game of cat and mouse between Roman and Marla, who surprises him by being every bit his match. This is a surprise to him because he is part of a very powerful mob family, and makes the mistake of underestimating Marla as a small-time crook. Marla is an incredibly dynamic, intelligent woman who refuses to be intimidated by the men who assume they can easly shut her down. This makes her an unusually compelling character, even as an awful person herself, especially as Rosamund Pike plays her.

And, no disrespect to Peter Dinklage—who is reliably great—I just wish that cat-and-mouse game had rather been between Marla and Diane Wiest’s Jennifer. This is one of the problems with I Care a Lot, as even though it gives women (good or bad) far more credit than most movies do, at the same time it gives the elderly no credit or agency whatsoever. In this universe, every old person is helpless and vulnerable, a potential victim for prey. Even when Jennifer begins to realize, and deviously delight in the fact that Marla has gotten in over her head by involving her son, that remains the context: she is dependent on her son. I want to see the movie where Jennifer is the clever one.

I suppose you could argue it’s just too easy not to be happy with these things, especially when it’s a movie that has so much going for it—and, I Care a Lot has a lot. It does make several narrative leaps of faith over probability, but I won’t spend much time nitpicking over that; what crime thriller doesn’t? I can say this much for the film: it delivers on the promise of the genre, being plenty suspenseful, and sprinkled with dark humor, throughout. I used to gauge whether I’d recommend a movie based on whether I thought it was worth going to the theater to see. Would this one have been? It would have for me; I’m just not sure it would be for others. Lucky for you, you can already fire it right up from your couch. From there, it’s plenty worth your time.

Strong, nuanced women, all of them awful . . . it’s great!

Overall: B

NOMADLAND

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

Why do I love Nomadland so much? It’s hard to say . . . and maybe it being hard to say is why I love it so much.

It’s hard not to love a movie that pushes the form into new territory, does something few, if any, other movies have done. The Harry Potter series followed along as a bunch of kids grew up, and also a bunch of adults got older, over some eleven years. Boyhood took the concept to a further extreme by having the cast meet a few days each year for twelve years, then edited the footage together to create a story for a single movie, in which we watch the characters age in real time. We could even bring in the MCU here, noting that Marvel managed to produce over twenty movies over just over a decade, which collectively tell a single, overall story.

Nomadland pushes the medium of film into new territory in both smaller and newer ways. Granted, it’s not unprecedented to blend real-life people into a fictionalized narrative (consider the excellent 2011 film Bernie, which tells a true story through interviews with real people who were there, but actors depicting the story they tell). Nomadland blends them in a uniquely seamless way, though, with the vast majority of the supporting characters being real-life nomads, essentially playing themselves: they all use their real first names in the film.

There’s an immersive element to Nomadland that is hard to shake, the fact that director Chloé Zhao and stars Frances McDormand and David Strathairn actually living in vans themselves during production. This approach clearly elevates the final product, in which it is impossible to tell how much is actually scripted. This is based on the 2017 book by Jessica Bruder, but the film’s production inserts itself into the lives of these so-called nomads as they actually exist. Many of them take periodic seasonal jobs in order to fund an otherwise incredibly minimalist life, including work at Amazon fulfillment centers. (Interesting that the film is not streaming on Prime Video, but rather on Hulu.)

There’s not much plot to speak of; Nomadland is instead much more of a portrait: of both an alternative way of life, and of a particular character. The woman Frances McDormand plays, Fern, is a childless widow who is from Empire, Nevada, a town which emptied after its lifeblood and main employer United States Gypsum closed down its mine in the wake of the Great Recession in 2011. This is the year in which Nomadland is set, with Zhao filming McDorman’s travels through seven states over several months.

I can’t help but wonder how much total footage Zhao got. The final result it superbly edited, beautifully shot, creating a portrait that is ultimately quite moving, offering an understanding of how people might choose to live this way. There is an anti-capitalist undertone to some of it, but mostly it’s just people living their lives with a kind of freedom most of us only dream of. McDormand embodies the role of Fern as well as any she’s ever done. Strathairn plays Dave as a man whose interest in Fern never quite moves into romantic territory—the only romance here is with the open road—and whose prioritization of nomadic life shifts along with his own familial relationships.

Zhao subtly illustrates how this life is not for everyone, but for some, it’s everything. For several, it’s a fitting last act to their life. Fern is a bit younger than a lot of them, and when she runs into certain people from Empire, they worry about her far more than they necessarily need to, thinking of her as “homeless” when that is not technically true. In the meantime, Fern learns many lessons in the ways of her new life, some as trial by fire, some as favors from the people she meets along the way.

There’s a hint of sweetness to the overall arc of Nomadland, as Zhao finds to need to find any of the nomads to be sinister or predatory. Instead, she finds a very cooperative society of travelers, each of them with their own story, none of them boring. The fact that almost all of them appear just as themselves means that there is no element of “Hollywood glamor” in any of these depictions, and McDormand fits right in among them. This is a woman who is the epitome of aging gracefully, a beacon of naturalistic beauty with no obsession over youth. Fern is just a woman who wants to move on, to keep moving on.

“See you down the road,” they say, as a means of never saying a final goodbye. It’s the basic vibe of Nomadland, and it’s the perfect sentiment with which to leave us.

It’s the journey . . . there is no destination.

Overall: A-

THE KID DETECTIVE

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

I suppose The Kid Detective is a textbook case of under-promising and over-delivering, conceptually speaking. Who’s going to have high expectations of a movie about a washed up thirtysomething private detective who used to charm his entire town with his mystery-solving as a kid? That gives it a relatively low bar from which to exceed expectations, but the competence with which this movie is written, directed and performed is objectively impressive.

Writer-director Evan Morgan, in his feature directorial debut, establishes a fairly quiet, mellow tone early on, which somehow makes the humor work perfectly. Morgan has his actors deliver their lines with a certain stoicism, which in someone else’s hands might give the film an air of self-conscious “quirkiness.” Maybe it’s that The Kid Detective is a Canadian film, but the tonal sensibility here is both incredibly endearing and almost relaxing. It got several good laughs out of me, particularly with surprisingly clever callbacks.

You could call this movie a “dark comedy,” but it has more depth and more heart than that might insinuate. Adam Brody is well cast in the title role, Abe Applebaum, a guy with a private investigator practice whose life seems to be going nowhere. He has a goth girl for a receptionist (Veep’s Sarah Sutherland) who answers an old-school telephone, even while everyone else uses smartphones. How the hell Abe can afford to pay her is anybody’s guess, but we’ll just let that one go.

When a teenage girl named Caroline (Sophie Nélisse) comes to him to help her solve the murder of her boyfriend, Abe sees it as a chance to both prove himself and redeem himself in the eyes of a town that lost faith in him. His childhood charms faded in their eyes after the still-unsolved kidnapping of a young girl devastated the town a couple decades before.

And this is what I love about The Kid Detective: none of the details are insignificant, and they always prove important, worthy of attention, because something about them will always resurface in relevance. This movie brings to mind the much flashier 2019 whodunnit Knives Out, where the mystery is the central aspect of the fun. To be fair, Knives Out is a much snappier affair, a slightly better film, albeit one with its own, very different sensibility. But Evan Morgan makes The Kid Detective very much its own film as well, the crime a bit darker but the humor a bit more subversive. And this movie has its own dramatic flairs as well, with a genuinely shocking turn near the end. The Kid Detective isn’t concerned so much with multiple suspects, so much as with Abe’s journey on a path to redemption. It even gets so serious in its final shot, with a sudden outpouring of emotion, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, and I can’t decide if it even fits with the tone of the rest of the film.

When taken as a whole, however, The Kid Detective has a subtly seductive power to it, with a unique skill in narrative plotting. The editing particularly impresses, with not a single moment wasted, and scenes ending in places that leave certain events to the imagination when other films would indulge needlessly. It has a unique economy of storytelling, where what gets left unseen is nevertheless crystal clear in our minds thanks to what we did see. The pacing is only deceptively measured, where there is very little action onscreen but the story still seems to zip right along.

As if it’s not enough that the well polished script brings all the story threads neatly together, The Kid Detective’s central mystery is its most satisfying part. Abe may have a knack for solving mysteries, and particularly predicting the end of mystery movies, but The Kid Detective offers us resolutions that make perfect sense but were impossible to see coming. It’s a dark journey that doubles as a chill ride.

It’s so much better than you might guess.

Overall: B+

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH

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

It’s a rare thing when you can tell a film is of superior quality from the first frame, and Judas and the Black Messiah is one such example. I was unaware of director Shaka King before this, but you can bet I’ll be remembering that name, seeking out his other work, and looking forward to what he does in the future. That this is only his second feature film is a stunning accomplishment.

That it’s based on an incredible true story is just the jumping-off point. As with any mainstream American movie, certain artistic license is taken, such as characterizing FBI informant Bill O’Neal’s position in the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party as much more significant than it really was, or depicting his relationship with chapter Chairman Fred Hampton as much closer than it really was. These details are beside the point; a film’s purpose is to offer a narrative, and this one is a whopper. What remains a matter of historical record, and depicted accurately, is that O’Neal sold out Hampton to the feds, and it was ultimately tragic for everyone involved.

Which is to say, Judas and the Black Messiah is not a fun story. In fact, by the time it reaches its conclusion, the emotions it stirs are difficult to characterize. Shaka King is using this specific story to allude to a far bigger picture, a point in a vast history of a nation built on oppression. Some of the opening shots feature activist audio recordings offering a distinction between rioting and rebellion, which themselves offer some context to several scenes that come later in which Black Panther Party members find themselves in shootouts with police, where police and Black civilians alike are shown getting shot and in many cases killed. It would be a mistake to say this film is offering any defense of any of the violence shown—which, by the way, is uniformly, expertly staged—but rather, what inevitably happens in our communities when injustice is not just allowed to flourish, but actively tended.

And all that is merely the backdrop to a story in which the protagonist is arguably the villain. Shaka King won’t let us off quite that easily; there is too much nuance to any of these characters to put them in tidy slots like “bad guy” or “good guy.” The villain here, really, is white supremacy itself, and that’s what anyone paying any attention at all should take from this film. Bill O’Neal, played with career-best sensitivity by LaKeith Stanfield, is a man whose motives we can understand, if not condone. After being caught impersonating an FBI agent as a ruse to steal cars, the FBI itself recruits him to volunteer with the Black Panthers, and get close to Fred Hampton. His FBI contact is played by Jesse Plemons, who is proving time and time again that he fits perfectly not so much as a leading man, but as the kind of richly reliable character actor whose career will almost certain span decades.

Plemons is one of only two white supporting characters of particular note in this movie, the other being FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself, with Martin Sheen nearly disappearing into the small but memorable role. This is a pretty impressive feat given Sheen’s fame, and an incredible hair and makeup job.

Indeed, everything about the production of Judas and the Black Messiah is top-notch, and it’s easy to imagine Academy Award nominations in nearly every category. Daniel Kaluuya is incredible as Fred Hampton, aided in large part, as with every actor, by wonderful costume design and production design. Cinematography by Sean Bobbitt (The Place Beyond the Pines, 12 Years a Slave) is subtle and sleek. Kristan Sprague’s editing forms a polish of the narrative which is perfectly augmented by an original score with an uobtrustive yet infectious groove by Craig Harris and Mark Isham.

Miraculously, none of this gives the film any air of pretension. This is just storytelling at its finest, plain and simple: it offers endless fodder for discussion, perhaps even debate, but the history and politics are not what make it a great movie. It’s the drama itself, the journey of these two men, one who fatally betrayed the trust of the other. (Even the film’s title could not be more perfect.) Certainly the details create a rich tapestry that elevates the film, but it’s the simplicity of the central relationship that draws you in. Crucially, we are never given an easy answer as to whether O’Neal’s clear emotional turmoil has more to do with any feelings of guilt about his betrayal, or merely the increasingly hazardous position he’s put himself in.

To say that the struggles depicted here, and the endless conflicts between Black Americans and the police, are as relevant now as they ever were is an obvious understatement. Judas and the Black Messiah commands attention, not just because of its vital historical context, but because it is every bit as great an artistic achievement. It’s a triumph of cinema.

An incisive study of real-world betrayal.

Overall: A

GREENLAND

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

Strange direction I’m going in this week, moving from Little Fish to Greenland—in the world of cinema, moving from a disastrous global virus to a global cataclysm. At least in Little Fish everyone just loses their memory; in Greenland most of the world dies.

That’s no a spoiler, as it’s beside the point of Greenland—the title referring to the location of a deep-underground bunker used to save select humans from an extinction-level event. Shades of the 2009 movie 2012 there. The event here is a comet, a hunk of mass several miles wide headed straight for Earth, preceded by other meteorites of varying size, causing varying degrees of damage, including the wiping out of cities. In that sense, it’s an update on the 1998 film Armageddon. It’s just not dumb as shit.

Greenland might not quite qualify as “fun,” the way the similar blockbusters of two decades ago like Armageddon or Deep Impact (also 1998) were intended to be. This movie is much more unsettling in tone, a few steps closer to realism, the fiery hellscape falling from the sky more often in the background, a backdrop for the story of a couple and their young son trying to survive as the natural world is torn apart around them. Some of these scenes, as staged by director Ric Roman Waugh, brought to mind the panicked crowds featured in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005). Both films have a particular interest in the human effects of disaster, rather than in the shock and awe of the disaster itself.

And this means the actual imagery of meteorites hitting the earth, in Greenland, is used sparingly, and it is an effective tactic. This is clearly a film with a fraction of the budget of those earlier blockbusters; it was made with $35 million. But Waugh makes all of those dollars count, and when we do get brief shots of a fiery sky, or of molten meteorites raining down on a highway, it makes a longer lasting impact (no pun intended).

It’s a good thing, too, because to be frank, the Garrity family—John, Allison, and young Nathan—just isn’t that interesting. The “plot,” such as it is, still suffers in the same way plots in these movies always do: details shoehorned in to give us a select few characters to care about, who somehow beat the kind of odds that would never be beaten in a similar real-life scenario. John and Allison are estranged, with the most basic marital problems imaginable. Will disaster bring them closer together again? I’m on the edge of my seat! Young Nathan is a diabetic kid, and his need for regular medication is the inciting event that creates extra challenges, without which we would not have the slightest interest in following these characters through such extraordinary circumstances.

Now I’m going to bring up something that might put off some readers with its “wokeness,” and I don’t care! The couple is played by Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin—both white. How is that relevant, you ask? Well, they live in Atlanta—a city that is 54% Black. If the main characters here were from, say, Seattle or Portland, then their being white would be pretty much expected, just in terms of odds. No doubt Greenland is largely set in Georgia because Atlanta is such a huge epicenter of movie and television production, but if the couple has to be white, the least writer Chris Sparling could do is make them interesting. I guarantee you that there are countless other Black couples in Atlanta whose stories moving through this landscape would be far more compelling. (To be fair, countless other white couples would also be far more interesting.) And it’s not just that the principal characters are white; it’s that combined with the fact that Black people even among supporting characters barely exist, and of course one of the two with speaking parts winds up dead. These are details that reveal the subtle effects of white supremacy, something the filmmakers probably didn’t even realize was at play, but they should be paying more deliberate attention. In Atlanta, of all places.

So, in short, Greenland is far from perfect. When is any disaster movie going to be? Flaws aside, there’s still something to be said for its tone and approach, almost procedural in its observance of people struggling to survive in lethal circumstances. I suppose whether that’s better or if it’s better for a disaster movie to be just fun, escapist entertainment is up for debate. I also gave 2012 a solid B, after all, and that movie was straight-up preposterous on every level. But, the movie still succeeded on its own terms, terms which were different than those at play here. Greenland may still be just another disaster movie, but it’s going for something different. In certain ways it succeeds within those parameters, and it certain ways it doesn’t. If you love the thrill of disaster onscreen, it does offer several effective doses of that particular fix.

Nice job dodging those plot holes!

Overall: B

LITTLE FISH

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

“When your disaster is everyone’s disaster, how do you grieve?” I can’t stop thinking about that line. Surely director Chad Hartigan and writer Mattson Tomlin had no idea when they started making Little Fish that their little indie movie about a pandemic would run headlong into . . . a pandemic. But that’s precisely what happened, and what’s maybe the most curious thing about it is how prescient some of it turned out to be, and how wildly off base the rest of it was.

I don’t recall anyone ever using the word “pandemic” in this film. Do they even use the word “virus”? I can’t remember. Instead, the characters make casual references to what has happened to the world, so that we can piece it all together over time. Some things far more extreme than what we experienced with COVID-19. Grounded flights. Intermittent chaos in the streets. Okay so yes we had that last one in real life, but that was coincidental, about something other than the pandemic.

Other things are depicted as strangely tame in comparison to what we’ve really experienced. In Little Fish, there is all of one scene in which people are wearing face masks. There are no lockdowns. The film does depict government patrols made in an effort to control a wandering population, as the virus here causes dementia—another word never used in the script, but it’s still fundamentally it: people are losing their memories. Like our real-world pandemic, however, the severity and swiftness of infection varies depending on the person. In this case, some people “fade” slowly, and other people just lose their memories all at once.

In that sense, the virus depicted here is very similar to that of the 2008 movie Blindness, in that people around the world are afflicted with something that causes a disability, but they remain otherwise physically healthy. No one in Little Fish comes down with a cough or respiratory illness. They just, in effect, go insane. There are more accidental deaths as a result of “NIA” (“neuroinflammatory affliction”), however, such as when a pilot forgets how to fly. (Tomlin’s script makes no reference to copilots that must have been on that plane. Maybe it' was a small, single-pilot plane.)

This is all the backdrop in which Little Fish tells a micro story within a macro concept: we follow Emma and Jude (Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell) as they struggle to keep the memory of their own relationship alive, while Jack’s memory systematically fades. The same is happening to Emma’s mother who is back in England, though we never meet her; we only observe phone calls. Emma also works at a veterinary hospital, where her job has become little more than euthanizing the increasing numbers of lost pets whose owners don’t remember they’ve lost them.

In other words, Little Fish is a fucking sad movie. Do we really need this right now? I would argue no, but from the point of view of the filmmakers, what choice have they got? What insane timing for the making of a movie like this, whose planned premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2020 had to be postponed due to an actual pandemic. Given the long tail of this globally massive event in all of our lives, there was never going to be a time anywhere close to now when the release of this film would be “better.” So, once at least some of the dust has settled, it might as well be released now. And still, although it’s very well made, especially for the clearly small budget impressively maximized by Hartigan, I don’t have it in me to recommend it. Too much of it hits too close to home.

And I haven’t even yet mentioned that it was filmed in Seattle, which is where I live. I wonder if it goes down easier for people who don’t live here? I sort of doubt it. I keep going back to that line: “When your disaster is everyone’s disaster, how do you grieve?” How could anyone better summarize the year 2020? For literally everyone on the planet? This is supposed to be science fiction.

And to be clear, much of it very much is. An experimental surgical procedure is developed that involves puncturing the brain through the roof of the mouth. This makes for one particularly harrowing scene, but also strains the boundaries of plausibility. And even though this is clearly far from the point of the story, I sure wish someone in the film revealed even the slightest hint of how this virus spread. With the exception of when Jude applies for a clinical trial, no one here walks around wearing a mask. Is this just happening to everyone randomly without explanation? Apparently so, as is the case far too often in movies about a global virus, and it’s a bit annoying.

Chad Hartigan is clearly much more interested in telling a sort of inverted love story, where the young couple starts to forget how they fell in love in the first place. Does that sound like fun? Little Fish is like a mashup of a pandemic disaster movie and one of those movies about an elderly couple coping with Alzheimer’s. Except in this case, the couple is young—which is really the most novel thing about this film. In any event, everything about it is tragic, only the tragedy is realized in a slow burn, a creeping melancholy that might serve as a useful trigger any time you need a good cry. Which, to be fair, far too many people these days absolutely do need. I’m just not sure they need it from something that cuts so deep into the heart of all our actual lived experiences: a collective feeling of heartache and loss.

Had Little Fish been made even one year earlier, I might be more inclined to consider it a recommended watch. It actually is very well done. I could even say it is indeed a recommended watch . . . just not right now. Maybe just bookmark it for a watch five or ten years from now.

What you need to know is this movie will make you very sad.

Overall: B+

THE TRIP TO GREECE

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

I’ve said it before, and I guess I’ll say it again: The Trip, in which Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play fictionalized versions of themselves driving all over Northern England to review pretentious restaurants, was bright, breezy fun in 2011. The Trip to Italy was more light, breezy fun in 2014. And when they did The Trip to Spain in 2017, it was even more light, breezy fun, albeit with just a hint of diminishing returns. That third film had a baffling twist ending, and left me wondering if these two would do any more of these films. Well, The Trip to Greece, which was actually released in mid-2020, came right on schedule: all four of these films have been released three years apart. In a way, this series joins the likes of the Harry Potter series or “The Up Series” of documentaries, or even the Before Sunrise trilogy. We’re watching people, and their relationships, age in real time.

Somehow, even though I’ve noted it in all three of my previous reviews, I forgot that in every case of The Trip movies, the source material is a six-episode British television series, edited into a feature film. I’d be curious to see the greater depth the series reportedly gets into, although, ironically, watching The Trip to Greece had me thinking about how even the films feel very much like watching a series. Now they are just four episodes with an average length of an hour and 45 minutes, the general tone always consistent, just the setting changing each time. All four films are available to stream on Hulu.

And the thing is, even as feature films, I would argue they work better as a home watch. The Trip to Greece is the first in the series I did not see in a movie theater, and I really couldn’t say for certain whether I would have gone out of my way to see this one in theaters were they open right now. Perhaps I would, but it really would have depended on whether or not it was just the best option at the time, given that typically in February, quality films are harder to come by. We are in very different times now, however, and it’s not at all difficult to find worthy content. Honestly the only reason I am reviewing this movie now, fully nine months after its release, is because I am a completist and don’t want to have only reviewed the previous three.

That said, there is almost nothing to differentiate The Trip to Greece from its predecessors. If you enjoyed the others, you’re apt to enjoy this; if you did not, then don’t bother. It’s essentially more of the same, the change of scenery being immaterial: the whole point is that they are traveling, and nearly every place they have gone through all of these films has been in Europe. There’s not a lot of space for, say, culture shock. Instead, they spend a lot of time at restaurant tables, amusing each other with their endless impressions of famous actors. And I do mean endless: this is a constant theme through all four films. I suppose it would get stale quickly if you did a binge-watch of all four films, but seeing them all three years apart makes it work, a pleasant diversion.

There is a very subtle undertone of melancholy as this series ages, however, and The Trip to Greece even touches on the death of a loved one. Coogan and Brydon spend a fair amount of time making cracks about their respective ages—and to be fair, they weren’t even particularly young when the series began a decade ago, when they were both 45 years old. Add another ten, and you know how old they are now.

And now, they say, this is the end of them producing this series; they want to “quit while they’re ahead,” which is a respectable position to take. I can’t say any of these films is especially vital, but considering they still leave open the possibility of returning to it many years down the road, that could also be an interesting experiment. We certainly don’t need more of these every three years indefinitely; they can only ruminate on celebrity and mortality for so long, and three years is really not that long. It’s a far cry from, say, the nine years between every Before Sunrise sequel, or the seven between all the Seven-Up documentary sequels. Maybe they should make another The Trip movie in some multiple-of-three years from now. How about nine? Someone should slip series director Michael Winterbottom a reminder note in 2029. Coogan and Brydon will be 64 then and even bigger, possibly more entertaining cranks.

Another three years, another European country.

Overall: B

MALCOLM & MARIE

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

“You’re hyperbolic!” snaps Marie, at one point in this movie that is, ironically, maybe the most pretentious I have ever seen. Malcolm & Marie feels like an experiment that failed spectacularly, a worthwhile exercise that should never have been taken any further than just that: an exercise. It’s among the first mainstream films to have been written, produced, directed and completed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, with only two characters ever seen onscreen and shot in a single location. With all that extra time on his hands, you;d think writer-director Sam Levinson could have developed this abysmal script into something that no longer felt like a first draft.

This movie is all over the place. It has a couple of strong points. Much like Levinson’s previous and far better film, Assassination Nation (2018), the cinematography is one of the best things about it. There are some truly beautiful shots. Malcom & Marie is also shot entirely in black and white, evidently to narrow the focus on the two performers. The problem this time is that shooting this endless string of drivel in black and white only adds another layer of pretension.

At least with this film Levinson managed to snag a couple of bona fide stars: John David Washington and Zendaya as the title characters, a couple returned from a movie premiere. They spend the rest of the night mostly fighting over unbearably stupid shit. I won’t lie, occasionally I did see my own relationship in the petty ways these two went out of their way to hurt each other. The difference is, my husband and I are never this articulate when we’re shouting at each other, nor are we ever shouting about high-minded philosophy of “art.”

Malcolm is the director of the aforementioned film whose premiere they have returned from, you see. I kept wondering if the nonsense coming out of his mouth, about making film, or about his frustrations with certain things film critics focus on, was just Levinson using a character and a film to air his own grievances. Who knows? It’s impossible to tell when it’s already taking a herculean effort just not to tune out the bickering.

What I cannot figure out is who this movie is for. Fans of the actors? People merely interested in seeing how filmmaking can work (or can’t work) in the midst of pandemic-related restrictions? Maybe just rubber-neckers eager to witness a disaster? Why this had to go on for 106 minutes, I’ll never know. After being relatively intrigued for the first third or so of the movie, I lost my patience with it 34 minutes in. I am convinced my stamina in this regard was greater than most.

The acting is good. I’m seeing some people, even harsh critics of the film, saying the acting is “brilliant,” but I just don’t see how that’s possible with dialogue this contrived, between two characters who are both so deeply unlikable. Even great actors can’t save this bizarrely slick ode to self-indulgence. The concept here could have been executed with finesse, if not for Levinson’s decision to make the characters Hollywood insiders, offering commentary on Hollywood. This is supposed to be a so-called “romantic reckoning,” which could be done far more effectively without all that “Hollywood” crap. Maybe this is a “write what you know” approach. It feels like Levinson doesn’t know enough about script revision.

What a wasted opportunity. Malcom & Marie could have been made with just as few people, and with a better script, still been compelling enough to make you forget it was made under unprecedented limitations. But it’s not like movies with only two characters or set in one location have never been made before; in the past, occasionally it was a gimmick for its own sake. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, but the point is, it can work. There’s no reason this couldn’t have. Instead, Malcom & Marie seems to exist solely to keep otherwise bored filmmakers busy. Some talented people have squandered their talent here, but at least they got some work. Good for them, I guess.

Take it from me, whatever depth you see here is an illusion.

Overall: C