THE BAD GUYS

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

The Bad Guys may be the most “kids’ movie” movie I’ve watched and still managed to enjoy with adult eyes. It’s about as silly as it gets, but still fits in a few clever gags that fly over kids’ heads and right into the comic sensibilities of grownups. It’s clever enough, I was very much entertained, and the animation is fairly impressive, particularly its detailed urban backgrounds that seem to render Los Angeles as though it had more of a New York City density.

I say all this even though I’m still the dipshit sitting there confused by the inconsistent rules of the movie’s universe. Mind you, this movie is aimed squarely at children, and they don’t care about this stuff, like: how do characters that are a piranha and a shark (voiced by Anthony Ramos and Craig Robinson, respectively) able to survive without water? They exist as two-legged land animals! I guess I shouldn’t be stuck on this; there’s also a humanoid shark in The Suicide Squad and I didn’t have any hang-ups about that; in fact I was delighted by that demented movie.

I suppose a key difference is that The Bad Guys is the farthest thing from demented—although there are subtle moments of dark humor, particularly when it comes to Snake, who is easily distracted by all the guinea pigs he wants to eat.

That said, I still couldn’t help but to be distracted by the fact that, in the world of this movie, only the principal characters are animal characters, and everyone else in this world seems to be human. There is the quasi-butch Chief of Police, Misty Luggins (Alex Borstein), who is human, but otherwise the five “Bad Guys” are a wolf, a snake, a spider, a shark and a piranha; then there’s Governor Diane Foxington (Zazie Beets), a fox; and Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade), a guinea pig.

No other intelligent being in this universe is a talking animal, though. There’s even a massive army of guinea pigs at one point, and all of them are like regular animals. How do they become like that, but Professor Marmalade becomes an intelligent being with a British accent? There’s also a kitten who gets stuck in a tree and all it does is meow. What’s with all these inconsistencies? I want answers!

To be fair, the same sort of thing happens in old fairy tales. Little Red Riding Hood happens upon a talking wolf, after all. And a big plot point in The Bad Guys is that all of these animals are species that people are automatically afraid of, without even giving them the chance at being perceived as “good.” As a band of thieves and bank robbers, they are just meeting the fate society has created for them. But then Wolf gets an unexpected bit of appreciation when he saves an old lady from falling down the stairs, and gets a taste of what if feels like to be appreciated for goodness, and thus the plot is set into motion.

As already indicated, I’m the only one obsessing on the inconsistent rules of this universe. It still would have made a lot more sense if every character in this world were an animal (as in Zootopia, a similarly themed but better movie), but whatever. I’ll get over it! The voice talents alone go a long way, with Sam Rockwell as Wolf; Awkwafina as Tarantula; and Marc Maron as Snake, taking an unusual turn for his career, and one that’s a great fit.

The Bad Guys is almost pointedly over-the-top ridiculous, something that can really work against a film regardless of its target audience. But here, it somehow works, and I found myself charmed by it. They can’t all be classics, but they can be at least as entertaining as this. If nothing else, it seems obvious that kids love it, which is all a movie like this needs. It’s a bonus that I also enjoyed it.

You can’t help but love them all, in spite of an unnecessarily extensive running gag about piranha farts.

Overall: B

DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA

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

Slipping back into the world of Downton Abbey is the cinematic equivalent of slipping into a cozy, warm blanket—specifically an old, beloved one you’ve had for years. It’s a bit worn and tired, a lot of threads are coming loose, but the familiarity alone brings a heartening comfort.

This feeling is arguably even more pronounced with Downton Abbey: A New Era than it was with the release of the 2019 original Downton Abbey film, which itself came along three years after the six-season television series aired its last season on PBS. Now, it’s been three years we last saw all these beloved characters on the big screen, and six since we saw them on the small screen. (Granted, the lines between “big screen” and “small screen” are increasingly blurred, both with shorter windows of release between the two, and literal sizes of home TV sets. But, this cast of characters fits comfortably in all combinations.)

Beyond that, I can’t say there’s anything particularly special, or particularly disappointing, about A New Era. It’s made for the fans, and it brings them just what they want. I enjoyed the film precisely as much as I was hoping to. The key difference between the two films, I think, is that the first came a year prior to the start of a pandemic that severely hastened a lot of inevitable changes in the film industry. As such, the 2019 film felt a lot more like an essential moviegoing event, at least for Downton fans, than this one could ever hope to. The official release date is today, but I went to an earliest screening possible, at 7:00 last night, and was one of maybe ten people in the theater. Had the pandemic never happened, this absolutely would not be the case. But, as it is, presumably there are plenty of people very much looking forward to watching this film, but also fine with waiting all of 45 days to see it at home on Peacock 4th of July weekend.

I might have been too, really. I just love going to the movies, and am one of those nerds who despair at the erosion of moviegoing as a tenet of American culture. Marvel blockbusters are singlehandedly saving the theater industry, largely with extraordinarily expensive testaments to mediocrity, but I must begrudgingly appreciate them, at least for now while they keep multiplexes open, and allow for movies like this to play on other screens while the blockbusters make all the money. Still having the monthly membership available through AMC (which other chains now offer too) does make it easier, so I can see Downton Abbey in the theater and not feel like it’s more expensive than it’s worth.

Because this movie is . . . let’s face it: fine. For true fans of the series, it’s good. Not great, but good—something that could be said of every iteration of this property from the start, really. It’s just another <i>Upstairs Downstairs</i>  concept effectively designed for addictive watching, a sanitized view of extreme wealth in period costumes (in this case as they shift into the 1930s), conveniently gleaning over the true horrors and oppressions of class and British colonialism while basically ignoring race altogether. (There’s a scene in this film in which a Black woman singer is highlighted at a party. You can practically hear writer Julian Fellowes desperately saying, “Look, I included a Black person!”)

As for the plot, just like the previous film, it feels very much like just another extended episode of the series—albeit one in which some key plot turns occur. I won’t lie, this movie did make me cry a little, but I’m just going to blame that on the relatively recent death of my mother making me soft, or at least softer than I was before. A New Era begins with a wedding (between Tom Branson and Lucy Smith, a woman introduced in the first film who I did not remember), and ends with a death—I won’t spoil whose, except to say that it hardly qualifies as tragic. There are sad turns, but nothing truly horrible happens in Downton Abbey, particularly in the film iterations, which exist solely to trade on fan nostalgia. This is a key difference between the films and the series, which was much more of a soap opera, whereas these films might make you wistful at the very worst.

Ultimately, Downton Abbey is pure fantasy. This is something Fellowes, as directed by Simon Curtis, kicks up a notch in A New Era, what with Lady Grantham (Maggie Smith, even at age 87 arguably the biggest star of this huge-ensemble film) suddenly inheriting a villa in the South of France, from a man with whom she had a weekend fling in her youth. Half the cast goes to this villa for a visit, meeting the bitter widow (Nathalie Baye) and her shockingly agreeable son (Jonathan Zaccaï) who invited them all. In an extraordinary coincidence of timing, at the same time a film crew has asked for permission to shoot a movie (starring actors played by Laura Haddock and Dominic West; West gets involved in a subtle almost-romantic subplot with Robert James-Collier’s Barrow, who is now running the downstairs staff after the butler Carson’s retirement).

There are many subplots, of course, and they all get tied up tidily by the end, as is the formula for Downton, and precisely what all of its fans come for. This movie exists just to keep us all satiated for just a little bit longer, but with that at its mandate, it succeeds on all fronts.

What’s old is still the same, ironically.

Overall: B

DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIIVERSE OF MADNESS

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

There are people genuinely convinced that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a truly great film, and that makes me despair of humanity. Not because this movie is particularly bad, but because audiences are so conditioned by the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” that they can no longer distinguish between that which is quality cinema, and that which is average.

The thing is, this movie isn’t even all that great by MCU standards. I largely gave up on superhero movies over a decade ago, actively avoiding then for several years—because they were nearly all just like this one: rushing through expositional interludes between overly busy action sequences drenched in CGI that looked dated within a year, all in the service of the same story beats as the last film just like it, over and over again. But, over the past five or ten years, Marvel found better directors and better writers, and slowly but surely began to offer movies more worthy of regaining attention. This movie feels like a throwback to that earlier time.

The greatest disappointment about that is the fact that it was directed by the legendary Sam Raimi, of Army of Darkness (1992) fame, who directed the original Tobey MaGuire Spider-Man in 2002, and who has not directed a feature film in nine years (there’s nothing better to say about the equally mediocre Oz the Great and Powerful). It’s true that Multiverse of Madness gets better in its second half, and eventually it even gets genuinely weird, with quasi-horror elements that are only novel by MCU standards, but are still presented with recognizable Raimi flair. Alas, it doesn’t get sufficiently weird until at least three quarters of the way through, at which point it’s really too little, too late.

Multiverse of Madness comes up short by every measure. Even compared to other MCU movies, it’s not nearly as much quirky fun as Thor: Ragnarok (2017); it certainly has nothing of anywhere near as much substance to say as Black Panther (2018); it’s not even as interesting as the original Doctor Strange (2016). What it does do is rehash every concept imaginable, most of all the idea of a “multiverse,” something introduced brilliantly in the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018, arguably the best year for Marvel) but which has already been revisited in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), a live action film that was better than anyone could have expected. But, here we are again, with fully expected diminishing returns.

And this Doctor Strange sequel is not helped at all by its very direct narrative ties to the Disney+ series WandaVision. I won’t say anyone who hasn’t seen the show will be lost in the plot here, but they’d certainly understand it a lot more having seen it. And what good does that do the movie itself? This is the twenty-eighth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, all presented by a studio that increasingly expects its audiences not only to have seen but have remembered them all, plus increasing numbers of TV series. There comes a point when it’s just all too much, and that point arguably came and went a decade ago.

Elizabeth Olsen does a fairly impressive job as the villain, the Scarlet Witch, but it’s not as easy to recognize without having seen WandaVisison, which was itself, frankly, a bit overrated. Such is the case with a great majority of MCU films, with occasionally notable exceptions. Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character is . . . fine. The same could be said of the entire cast, none of who are given any room to breathe their performances in the overstuffed plot. This movie is 126 minutes long, almost “short” compared to many MCU movies, and too much is happening too quickly, whether it’s CGI spectacle action sequences or the rare quiet conversations between characters.

It just feels like a wildly missed opportunity, like a movie dictated by committee (it having only one writer notwithstanding; it should also be noted that this is Michael Waldron’s first feature film script), beholden to a multitude of strictures as part of the broader cinematic universe. That very much limits a filmmaker’s ability to put their own stamp on it—Chloé Zhao’s Eternals (2021) suffered from the same problem. If the studio could have loosened their evident grip, the uniquely dark and macabre Sam Raimi style could have permeated more than just the final quarter of the movie. With that alone, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness would have been much improved.

To be fair, this particular movie was never going to be a masterpiece, no matter who wrote or directed it. It still had massively unrealized potential, and instead stuck with well-worn storytelling tropes that renders it the same shit in a different movie. I’d probably have enjoyed this exact same movie more had it been released seven or eight years ago, but time is not always kind to a decades-old franchise (consider what a challenge it has been for ages for anyone to make a truly great James Bond movie). Now, we’ve spent far too much time, year after year, with rushed storytelling wrapped in subpar special effects. Too few of these movies get any finessing, and are instead churned out as from an assembly line, all using a well worn template. Even well worn templates are tolerable if they can be given a novel enough spin, but Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is convinced it’s taking a huge swing without realizing it’s stepping up to bat when the game is already nearly over.

I’d tell you more about the plot but it was so forgettable I forgot it.

Overall: C+

THE NORTHMAN

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

Don’t let all the assertions that The Northman is by far Robert Eggers’s “most mainstream” film fool you—when measuring mainstream appeal of his work, the bar is frankly low. His last film, after all, The Lighthouse (2019), was so impenetrably weird that it’s the only movie I ever gave just a three-word review. I still stand by that review, by the way.

Rest assured, though, The Northman is uniquely bonkers. A transporting musical score largely using traditional instruments of the period is the tip of the iceberg . . . in Iceland, incidentally. This is fundamentally a tale of revenge, something the trailer made overtly clear, which is a tale as old as time. What Eggers does is tell it in a way you truly have never seen before, and well, let’s say, results may vary.

Even before the pandemic hastened inevitable changes in the U.S. cinema landscape, there’s no way this movie would be a huge hit. It’s just too weird, steeped as it is in historical viking details and traditions far more focused on historical accuracy than on anything even remotely close to viking cliches. It also detours into occasional, magical flourishes, making it a sort of fantasy epic for the viking set. Eggers managed to get Bjork to return to film for the first time in 17 years, appearing as an eyeless witch in just one scene. She offers a prophesy to Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård), who has returned to his homeland hell bent on avenging the death of his king father.

I have to admit, I spent much of The Northman unable to decide what to make of it, but once it ended, and I could consider the film in its entirety, I pretty quickly decided I really liked it. The landscapes of the North Atlantic are beautifully shot, and this story based on the 13th-century Scandinavian story Amleth, which is said to have later inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet, predicts the ways in which simplistic quests for revenge are never actually simple. This is not just a “revenge flick,” but rather a text dense with lessons and textures. Some of them I found difficult to make out, but, whatever. Just surrender to it.

I’m not usually into something so drenched in testosterone. The Northman features a climactic battle sequence with two nude men navigating streams of volcanic lava. I mean, clearly the place is hot, they want to shed any extra layers. Still, one minute they’ve got clothes on, and suddenly they’re both buck naked. There’s nothing even remotely erotic about this scene, much as I had looked forward to it. Eggers’s point, clearly, is the deeply primal nature of what’s going on, and he conveys it incredibly well with his visual style. Most of this movie is, indeed, visual poetry, and this climactic battle is its zenith.

The primal tone exists from the beginning, however, when we meet Amleth as a teenage boy, his king father (Ethan Hawke) teaching him via memorably visceral rituals to commune with his inner beast. Amleth’s mother is played by Nicole Kidman in what may be secretly the best performance in the movie, even though she gets only one scene in which her acting talents are overtly showcased. But she is seen many other times, often in background or as a side presence, but paying close attention has its rewards. She gives a look in her very first scene that offers a glimpse of a twist to come many years later in the story.

As for Skarsgård, his clear talents tend to be more easily identified with the right directors who know how to draw them out of him. It could be argued he has never been more committed to a role. After being raised by a deeply animalistic group of pillagers (one impressive attack sequence features indiscriminate killing), Amleth disguises himself amongst a group of slaves that are being offered for sale to the murderous uncle who has now married his mother and had another child with her. Along the way, he forges a connection with a blonde slave woman (a suitably ethereal Anya Taylor-Joy), who is compelling enough on her own but ultimately just serves as a plot point and, in the end, a point of motivation for Amleth.

Along the way, The Northman goes some very strange places, and to some gruesome places, and some places that are both at once. A lot happens in this movie that is impossible to understand unless you are deeply versed in Scandinavian legend, history and mythology. And still, there’s something about this movie that I can’t shake—something that makes it feel greater than the sum of its parts. This film was absolutely worth seeing on the big screen, and even after being regularly baffled by it, I find myself thinking I might want to return to it for another look. I have a soft spot for such movies, which may not reach perfection yet somehow command reconsideration over time.

Careful where you’re swinging that rod!

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: NEPTUNE FROST

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

Neptune Frost is an Afro-futurist musical directed by New York-based slam poet Saul William and his wife Anisia Uzeyman, and it is dense with African musical roots, metaphor, and meaning—in a way that it’s practically impossible for me not to describe it in an embarrassingly “whitey-white” way. I mean, just moments ago I mentioned to a friend that calling this movie a “musical” is kind of a technicality, at least in terms of traditional American perceptions of musicals: “It’s all African drum stuff,” I said. Is that “whitey-white” enough for you? I think it qualifies. Also, of course, it’s a lot more nuanced than that. It fuses traditional African drum beats with an infectious kind of industrial electronica, in a way that made me wish its soundtrack were a lot more accessible than it seems to be.

I will freely admit that I found Neptune Frost largely difficult to follow, much of it like an extended, abstract music video. I’ve never done this before, but I think we can all live with it: I’m just going to let Deadline do the synopsis work for me:

The film takes place amid the hilltops of Burundi, where a collective of computer hackers emerges from a mining community, the result of a romance between a miner and an intersex runaway.

There’s even a lot more than that going on, with narrative threads connected to everything from colonialism to worldwide internet connectivity. This is a particularly unusual movie with one of its primary characters being intersex—a biological condition that, depending on the person, may not even qualify as on the “queerness” spectrum, with no representation among the letters GLBT, although it clearly fits into the sex and gender conversation.

This character’s name is Neptune (hence the title; Frost is a bird—what the bird signifies, I was unable to discern), and Neptune encounters many other characters with poetic names: “Memory,” “Innocent,” “Psychology,” even “Matalusa” which eventually gets spelled out as Martyr Loser. Neptune encounters each of these other people in turn on a kind of dreamscape version of Homer’s The Odyssey. Except eventually Neptune finds the aforementioned hacker collective, and Neptune’s arrival becomes the power source for the collective’s many computer parts and motherboards. I took it to be a metaphor for powering community, but I have no idea how close to the mark I am there.

Because, indeed, most of Neptune Frost is abstract, in a way that leaves the viewer little choice but to surrender to its well-rendered, complex and mysterious quasi-technological universe. There is one line of dialogue so refreshingly concrete that I had to write it down: after asking if gender is “so crucial” in someone’s desire for intimacy (for many people, indeed it is), this follow-up question is asked: “Are you justified in attacking strangers who do not fulfill your unwarranted desires?” A great question that needs to be asked of many, but also, not the primary point of Netptune Frost—but a crucial component of it.

These lines of dialogue are after a sequence in which the ironically named “Innocent” attempts to seduce Neptune, but is shaken by unexpected anatomy. This but one of many threads in a vast tapestry of beats and vocalizations, and occasional, subtle but seamlessly integrated digital effects. Neptune Frost is a visual accomplishment that belies its clearly limited budget. I may not have been able to understand its many narrative threads to their fullest, but the talents of its makers are indisputable, and I would still recommend it on the strength of its visuals and sounds alone.

Just the abstract Afro-futurist musical you were looking for.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: SEDIMENTOS

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

There’s a moment in the Spanish documentary Sedimentos, the scene that gives the film its name, in which the six trans women who are the subjects of the film visit a geological formation, sort of cross section of land revealing the difference of colors between layers of sediments. It becomes immediately clear that this is a metaphor, for the endless depths of these six women, with a wildly varied range of perspectives, attitudes and experiences. It does appear that all of them are white, and an intricately intimate portrait like this would be even richer with other racial backgrounds included, but that aside, this group, even among only six, is unusually diverse.

It’s almost astonishing that this is even a documentary, the editing is so spectacular, creating a narrative that makes it very easy to mistake this for a narrative feature. Even the cinematography is quite good, which is unusual for documentaries, particularly of the sort in which the director and crew just sit back and disappear into the backgrounds of these ladies’ environments, giving us as an audience a unique sense of being a fly on the wall.

Indeed, I do think it’s useful to know beforehand a little bit about how Sediments was made. I found myself wondering, is the director trans, or even a woman? Nope: he’s Adrián Silvestre, a Barcelona-based director who connected with Spanish trans organization I-Vaginarium, which provides information and resources for trans women considering vaginoplasty. His intent was to create a documentary film portrait of trans women that stands apart from the longstanding cliches of trans representation in other films.

And boy, does he do it here, with stunningly intimate results, finding six women who were comfortable with cameras being present, and possibly recording, during any and all moments of a group trip to the rural town in the Spanish province of León. Starting with workshops before filming began, to get them comfortable with the filming process, ultimately they become so completely comfortable with the presence of the single camera Sylvestre is using, you would never know they were even conscious of it while watching the film. This is precisely why it’s useful for us as audiences to know how the production came together.

So, with this objective separation, the camera never judging or commenting, we are subject to six unique individuals who are solely themselves, who have moments of both joy and tension, and yield moments of deep intimacy both emotional and physical (not in terms of sexual activity, but certainly some frank nudity). These women are unafraid to express themselves and to confront each other when they feel it necessary, but they also don’t hold any grudges. Getting to know each other like this is bound to be messy, particularly with the range of backgrounds, experiences, and crucially, stage of transitioning.

One woman, Cristina, is in her fifties only only recently began her transition process; she’s the only one consistently wearing an obvious wig. Yolanda, on the other hand, never reveals her age but can’t be far from Cristina, yet she’s a seasoned veteran of the trans experience, having paid her dues in youth in a way the two twentysomething young women present can’t quite directly relate to. She even has a gravelly voice and a tracheostomy in her neck from an earlier cancer surgery. There is particularly protracted tension between Cristina and Yolanda, as Yolanda tires of Cristina’s oversharing in a way that that attempts to separate herself from the others; Yolanda calls her an egomaniac and Cristina dwells on this for a long time, asking the opinion about it in turn from all the other women. Another woman often sits back quietly, drawing portraits of the others. Ultimately, though, Yolanda helps Cristina make her bad wigs . . . a little better.

Sediments has a quality to it that is reminiscent of Robert Altman films, with its focus not just on dialogue but on overlapping conversations. Except in this case, they are real, neutrally observed and recorded. Whether this is compelling is a matter of taste, I suppose, but in my view the context alone makes it deeply so. It’s not so much just recordings of ordinary conversations, as the editing creates a rich narrative of six women from as many walks of life, bonding with each other.

We’ve had the privilege in recent years of seeing films and television shows that revolve around the lives of trans characters. But, this may be the first time I can recall where all of the characters are trans, and even though they still clearly move through a world of cisgender people—we meet the parents of one of them—they are all comparatively incidental, none of them quite even making it to “supporting character” status. This about these six trans women and these women only. The closest we come even to meeting a boyfriend is a blush-inducing moment in which one of the elder women asks a cute waiter at a restaurant if he’s single and attempting to get him to connect with the clearly embarrassed younger woman at the end of the table. These woman talk about the other people in their lives, and experiences from their pasts, but with the brief exception of the aforementioned pair of parents, we never see them.

For one weekend, Sylvestre’s camera follow just these six women around, and the results are moving and profound. It’s difficult to imagine a film like this getting done with such great success in the U.S., at least not one directed by a cisgender man. Maybe in a few years, but it doesn’t feel like even progressive Americans are quite ready for the kind of frank intimacy on display here. Yet, anyone who sees this film will be enriched by it.

An intimiate weekend well worth spending.

Overall: A

SIFF Advance: NOTHING COMPARES

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

Nothing Compares begins with, and returns to again near its end, a quite notable event in Sinéad O’connor’s career that no one has really talked about since: her October 1992 appearance at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Tribute concert at Madison Square Garden. She is shown coming out onstage, greeted with a stunningly equal mix of cheers and boos—because of what remains, unfortunately, the most widely known moment of her career: Two weeks before, after performing on Saturday Night Live, she tore up a picture of the Pope.

It’s been another thirty years sine that incident, and in that time, particularly in the past twenty years, the Catholic Church’s international image has been greatly tarnished and they have had much to atone for, particularly after a major 2002 Boston Globe investigation of child abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, and an Oscar-winning 2015 film based on it (Spotlight). The massive controversy surrounding the incident notwithstanding, an incident which truly derailed O’connor’s career, it could easily be argued that these hard truths about the Catholic Church finally coming to light are thanks to the bravery of people like her.

And, as always, the people booing her at that Bob Dylan tribute concert are completely lost on the irony of their actions. Says one of the many voiceover interview subjects in the film: “People that would boo Sinead O'connor, what were they doing at a Bob Dylan concert?” This was a time, though, in which even people who thought of themselves as militant progressives still regarded religious leaders as off limits, deluding themselves into believing that they are by definition incapable of villainous behavior.

Sinéad O’connor clearly knew different. She has insisted all along that she has no regrets, and she rightfully deserves respect for that. But I still feel sad for the state of her career after 1992. Millions of people have no idea how musically prolific she remained after those first three studio albums, released between 1987 and 1992—a five-year period on which this film focuses almost exclusively. She has released another five studio albums of original material in the intervening time, with a six set to be released this year. And while I have not followed her personal life much at all, I have been keeping up with every one of these musical releases, many of which are actually quite good, not that so many who dismissed her thirty years ago would know.

I rather wish director Kathryn Ferguson would have given some focus to O’connor’s post-1992 life and career, as much of it deserves attention. She even released a 2005 reggae album called Throw Down Your Arms that is almost shockingly good, and not quite the left-field career non sequitur it seems. She had long felt an affinity for Rastafarian struggles from the start of her career, and here’s another detail no one mentions when they talk about that ripped-up Pope picture: it was done at the end of a cover performance of Bob Marley’s “War,” a song consisting almost entirely of a 1963 speech to the UN General Assembly by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Salassie, a screen on global racism. with which O’Connor drew parallels to child sex abuse within the Catholic Church.

When Nothing Compares returns to the Bob Dylan tribute concert, we learn—or are reminded—that, in the face of the ironically unruly crowd, O’connor scrapped the originally planned performance and then defiantly sang “War,” yet again. There are, of course, all kinds of arguments that could be made about the effectiveness of Sinéad O’connor’s tactics in their time, but it is impossible to watch the recording of this performance and not think of her as an extraordinary woman.

And that is what Nothing Compares does expertly, even within the limitations of focusing on only five years of O’connor’s career. It’s a little like the movie barely acknowledges the decades of output that it complains the industry and her fans ignored, but, there’s also no denying that this is the era that holds the most interest. Ferguson makes the interesting choice of never showing footage of her interview subjects; all of them, including sound bites of present-day O’connor herself, are used as voiceover with old photos and archive footage. Another unfortunate detail: because Prince was the writer who holds the copyright to O’connor’s one international #1 hit, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” and his estate refused to grant licensing, the song is never heard in this film. I kind of feel like this is fine, because it allows for some focus on her many other, just as worthy tracks.

And finally, at the very end—spoiler alert, I guess?—we finally see a relatively current Sinéad O’connor, onstage performing the closing track from her 1994 album Universal Mother (which did enjoy a bit of underground success), “Thank You For Hearing Me.” Keeping O’connor as she exists today offscreen until this moment does have a certain effectiveness. This is a woman with a well-known history of controversy and mental health issues, and it’s nice to see the moments where she is self-possessed and self-assured. These moments have long lived on performance stages, which Nothing Compares skillfully illustrates was a space safely removed from early interviews in which journalists treated her with a jaw dropping amount of condescension.

Through it all, though, Sinéad O’connor stayed true to herself in her art, and you can argue whether she was pretentious, but she never comes across as insincere or lacking integrity. That alone makes Nothing Compares worth a watch, whether you were already a fan of hers or not.

An exceptional portrait.

Overall: A-

SIFF Advance: VERA DREAMS OF THE SEA

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

Vera Dreams of the Sea is currently making the rounds at film festivals, having first premiered at Venice in September 2021, now playing at the Seattle International Film Festival, and in these post-pandemic times, I fear for its potential to reach the number of eyeballs it really deserves. This is an accomplished feature debut from Kosovo, by director Kaltrina Krasniqi and writer Doruntina Basha. Krasniqi was at the screening I attended, and she noted that this film, running at a tight 87 minutes, too her seven years to make. The result is imperfect yet worthy of that effort, and all I can think about is what potential it has for limited theatrical runs. Even on eventual VOD or streamers, will this film always just be a hidden gem?

It’s potent fodder for discussion a cross section between film studies and gender studies, in any case. The title character is a middle-aged woman whose husband has just committed suicide. His death brings out secrets regarding his gambling habits, and unpaid gambling debts, which are linked to a house in a village Vera hopes to sell in order to secure a better future for her daughter and granddaughter.

Krasniqi is working within the framework of a society and culture that still has deeply embedded gender norms, which dictate that the word of men always takes precedence over even legal leverage of women. But Vera, as played by the wonderful Teuta Ajdini, is kind of a quiet badass. She’s managed to secure an unusual level of independence due to a unique skill: sign language, learned from her late, deaf mother. She now works as a sign language interpreter, a fact which plays a subtle but pivotal role in the plot.

Granted, everything that happens in Vera Dreams of the Sea is subtle, and while watching it, the story seems deceptively simple—until you try to explain it. There isn’t a lot of complex plot twists, and the pacing is relatively slow. But the editing is arguably the best thing about this film, only ever showing us exactly what we need to know at any given moment. This is a quiet film, with broad implications.

As pressure mounts for Vera to sign a contract handing over the village house to a man claiming it was promised to him, Vera consistently pushes back with steady resolve. Pressure turns to threats which escalate to a bit of violence, and it begins to feel like she’s being defeated. In a way, she is, which left me spending a lot of time eager to see her put one over on her oppressors. Whether or not Vera gets what she wants, exactly, the way her story ends is nice and satisfying.

This is a movie that rewards patience. I’m glad I saw it, and if more people seek it out, they will be too.

A highway to revenge?

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: CAT DADDIES

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

Move over, “cat ladies.” This is a documentary about Cat Daddies, and boy, does it know its target audience. If you are a cat person, you will love this movie, which is often so sweet it’s almost unbearable. Granted, I am a cat person. I am so much a sucker for this kind of thing, it’s ridiculous.

To be fair, there is an argument to be made, still, that Cat Daddies is a documentary a step above other documentary feature films that focus in one way or another on cats. This is hardly even the first “cat documentary” I have seen at the Seattle International Film Festival—do I have a problem?—from Kedi (2016), about the feline population of Istanbul, to Catwalk: Tales from the Cat Show Circuit (2018). There was something different about the focus of those other films, though, a certain distance kept between their subjects and the true depth of meaning cats can have in people’s lives.

Cat Daddies is a different . . . uh, animal. Director Mye Hoang clearly aims to subvert the stereotype of the “crazy cat lady” as an old spinster woman obsessed with cats to at the expense of her own health and hygiene. That was a cliche that was never fair to women to begin with, but the flip side of it is this idea that cats are somehow not masculine and of little interest to men. There are, of course, men who do buy into this idea. But it’s never hard to find a man who once felt that way but had his heart melted by the introduction to a cat.

There’s something to be said for the mental health benefits of taking care of a pet, including cats, which Cat Daddies briefly touches on, though it doesn’t dwell on it much. Instead, it presents visual profiles of several men around the United States with a deep love, either for cats in general, or one particular cat. There’s a fire station that adopted an orange and white stray, named him “Flame,” and even built a mini fire station for him. There’s the professional stunt double in Atlanta who fell in love with a cat before discovering it to be a Maine Coon. There’s the Brooklyn activist who captures neighborhood cats to have they spayed or neutered and then rereleases them. Most bittersweet is the homeless man with early-stage Parkinson’s Disease and a cat named Lucky who is the one thing he finds to keep living for—an effective lesson in not judging homeless people who keep dogs or cats as pets.

A few of those profiled are already enjoying some amount of internet fame. The opening scenes focus on a guy named Nathan, who uses the handle NathanTheCatLady, and who I immediately recognized as someone I have been following on TikTok for more than a year. A couple I had not yet heard of: “GoalKitty,” a cat trained to stand on its hind legs and stretch its front paws straight up into the air; and Tora the Trucker Cat, who has now traveled through 45 states. It’s too bad that accomplishment is totally lost on the cat, who attracts people from sometimes hundreds of miles away for meetups.

I have mixed feelings about Hoang’s decision to feature “celebrity cats,” their being cared for by men notwithstanding. GoalKitty in particular has been trademarked and we are treated to a display of branded merchandise. A person’s got to make a living, I get it, but this is the least compelling thing in a movie like this. Maybe Hoang is going for some measure of “star power,” but, surely she could find plenty of other far more fascinating men whose beloved cats are not simply the subjects of viral videos.

Indeed, the most interesting subject in Cat Daddies is the homeless man, David, and the NYPD cop who befriended him, with a very similar looking cat of his own. This movie uses gendered stereotypes as its hook, but it succeeds at illustrating the objectively healthy connection that can form between human beings and their pets—and particularly cats, which really aren’t always as aloof and moody as they are made out to be.

Notably, Cat Daddies is also skillfully and lovingly shot, by cinematographer Robert Bennet, giving it a far more polished and professional look than the average documentary, let alone other documentaries about cats. A lot of the imagery is quite beautiful, especially of the cats themselves in soft light and slight slow motion. It’s nearly hypnotic in how it just makes you want to reach through the screen and hug these animals—and also the people who love them. This is a move that succeeds better than most at painting moving portraits of people who are not eccentric but just earnest in their assertion that cats enrich their lives.

As such, Cat Daddies has greater potential than other similar films to be compelling even to those who are otherwise indifferent to cats, but are interested in well made films. Of course, it’s still the people who love cats who will really love this movie.

I guess “Cat Gentlemen” wasn’t as catchy.

Overall: B+

THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT

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

I have to admit, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is not quite as self-referential as I expected, or perhaps even that I wanted. It would be a mistake to expect a movie in which Nicolas Cage plays himself as an overly self-absorbed and ambitious actor to go to far into a surreal dimension. Being John Malkovich, this is not, and I learned the hard way that it’s a mistake to expect anything even close to that.

In fact, that is arguably the oddest thing about The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent—how straightforward, at times almost earnest, it is. Cage is known for making crazy acting choices, particularly late in his career, and the craziest thing about this is how not crazy it is. It’s relatively clever, to be fair, although its title is easily the most clever thing about it. And that alone sets an expectation that the film does not meet.

The script, co-written by director Tom Gormican, barely manages a handful of passing references to Cage’s past movie titles, out of a filmography of well over a hundred films. It’s gotten to the point that it feels like Nicolas Cage will just take any acting role that gets offered him. Given that Gormican has only one other motion picture to his credit (some terribly reviewed 2014 movie called That Awkward Moment), even this role, in spite of a premise that makes it sound exceptional, fits into that mold.

None of this is to say that I did not enjoy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. I did. It just doesn’t feature anything close to unbearable weight or showcase anything remotely close to massive talent. It’s just a silly diversion, which may not meet its massive potential, but is still fine. I had a good time and got a few good laughs.

There’s not even as many cameos as you might expect. In the trailer, in which Neil Patrick Harris is prominently featured, it was easy to assume Harris was playing himself. He’s actually playing Cage’s talent agent. Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz play CIA agents Vivian and Martin, who throw a wrench into the plot by telling Cage the rich Spanish bachelor (Pedro Pascal) whose birthday party he’s been hired to attend is a dangerous mob criminal, and ask him to spy on him. This element of the film is what makes the plot wildly contrived, which I suppose is the point. Unfortunately, Haddish in particular gets saddled with a ton of expositional dialogue, and she is given no opportunity to let her well-known comedic talents shine.

Aside from Cage himself, who commits to this role with as much vigor as he does any, my favorite casting choice is actually that of his fictionalized ex-wife, Olivia, played by Sharon Horgan. Horgan is a reliable source for elevating whatever material she is given, and in this part, even though it constraints her talents as well, she still doesn’t disappoint.

The sort of full circle irony is that Nicolas Cage himself is what makes The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent worth watching. He forges a friendship with Pascal’s character, Javi, and the plot revolves around their relationship—while they also work on a movie together, about a friendship between two men, in which they feel compelled to add action sequences in order to “get people into theaters.” Cage and Pascal have an unusually wholesome chemistry, and they are a big part of how this movie is, if not quite as hilarious as I hoped, surprisingly sweet.

Cage also regularly talks to an imagined, younger version of himself, with a CGI de-aged face I could have lived without. On the upside, it’s a kick to see Nicolas Cage give himself a giant kiss.

I just wish there were more moments like that. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent suffers from an almost shocking aversion to risk. That seems to be partly what the film itself is meant to be commenting on, except that every single thing this movie tries to do, Adaptation did better, precisely twenty years ago. That includes the movie itself veering into the very kind of storytelling on which it’s commenting. It’s no accident that Adaptation had been co-written by the brilliant Charlie Kaufman, of which this movie is a cheap imitation.

Maybe just try not to think too much about that, or that it could be argued Adaptation was Cage’s last truly great performance (seriously, just go rewatch that movie). It’s not fair to compare The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent to an actual masterpiece. In a vacuum, this movie is entertaining enough, if not great enough to justify the money and effort to see it in a theater. Fake-Cage and Javi would be so disappointed to fall short in that ambition. But then, they would also be convinced their movie is better than it is.

“It’s . . . grotesque,” says Nicolas Cage, in a movie that should have been more grotesque.

Overall: B-