THE FALL GUY

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

The Fall Guy is a lot of fun. I might even agree with the assessment that it’s delightful. It’s also relatively forgettable, but how important is that? This is a movie that merely aims to entertain while you’re there, and it meets that aim.

There’s a line fairly early on, about the movie the actors are making: it doesn’t have to be realistic, it’s just a movie. It felt like it was giving its own audience permission not to get too nitpicky, and just sit back and enjoy the ride.

I, of course, have nits to pick. It takes a bit longer than really needed in order for the story to really get going. The Fall Guy is the kind of movie that could have been a tight ninety minutes, in which case I would have been left with it in much higher regard. There was no reason for this to be 126 minutes long, which provides too many opportunities for the narrative to sag a bit.

Once the story finally does get going, stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) gets drugged at a club. There follows a fight sequence that is uniquely weird, a character in the scene itself name-checking the psychedelic sequence in Dumbo, a perfectly apt reference. A running gag involves visions of a unicorn. I’d have loved it if this movie had taken the cosmic-comic vibe of this sequence and stretched it through the whole story.

Maybe I just expect too much of a movie like this. The Fall Guy is perfectly serviceable entertainment. You could call it a romantic action comedy, a fairly rare thing to be done all that successfully. Colt gets injured on the job while endlessly flirting with a cinematographer, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), quits the job and disappears for a year, gets convinced by producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) to return as stuntman on a blockbuster science fiction romance epic on which Jody is now the director. The primary tension is whether these two can overcome Jody’s resentment for Colt disappearing and Colt’s regret for not staying in touch.

In other words, the stakes never get all that high. Not even when Gail asks Colt to go look for the movie’s missing star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), but without letting Jody know he’s going it, let alone that he’s doing it to keep the studio from pulling the plug on the production. Granted, the stakes kick up a notch when Colt goes to Tom’s house and finds a fellow stunt man dead in ice in his bathtub.

Most of what follows is just a bunch of action sequences, actors playing the stunt performers who are, ironically, often replaced onscreen by actual stunt performers. A lot of them are genuinely entertaining to watch, particularly a fight sequence in Tom’s apartment between Colt and Tom’s girlfriend (Teresa Palmer), where they wind up using movie props as weapons; a dog who only understands commands in French and takes rides along on a car chase; and a climactic sequence in which three people fighting in an out of control helicopter over a recording device veers a bit into screwball comedy territory. The car chase across the Sydney Harbour Bridge could have been rendered a bit more convincingly real.

When The Fall Guy is firing on all cylinders, it really works, mostly due to the undeniable chemistry between Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. It should be noted that there is some irony in casting Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the hot movie star and Gosling as—well, as the fall guy, the one whose face you’re not supposed to want to see in the movie he’s working on. I mean, come on. Taylor-Johnson is plenty handsome but he’s got nothing on Gosling. Of course, The Fall Guy is the real movie here and Ryan Gosling is the actual star. Oh right, I almost forgot again: it doesn’t have to be realistic, it’s a movie.

It’s just too bad when a solid-B movie could have been markedly better with just some minor adjustments, a tighter polish. I’m convinced this is the real reason behind the film’s underperforming box office—a light action comedy never needs to run longer than two hours. I never got bored, but I did feel like some minor but key thing was missing. Perhaps it was an editor. A shorter film would have been more tightly packed with what are genuinely good action sequences, but as it is, there are too many stretches without much in the way of action.

There is a slightly pointed bit of dialogue about how there’s no Oscar for stunt performers. It’s saying something that, if there were one, The Fall Guy would not likely win it. I’ve seen better stunts in better movies, but this is still pretty fun—the best we’ve got in the genre at the moment.

How great the shot is, is up for debate.

SASQUATCH SUNSET

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

I went into Sasquatch Sunset expecting a kind of gross-out comedy that happened to be about Sasquatches. I had heard there was a lot of Sasquatch fucking and shitting. These things do happen in the movie, but, if you can believe it, they are used sparingly—which only heightens the impact when it does happen. What I was not quite prepared for was an ultimately bleak mood piece about extinction. In retrospect, the very title of the film should have been a clue.

There are only four characters in this movie, and none of them speak anything beyond a somewhat organized series of grunts. While watching, I kept thinking of the 1986 film The Clan of the Cave Bear, in which no verbal language is ever spoken. What I forgot about that movie is that they have established a form of sign language, with which the film presents subtitles. Sasquatch Sunset doesn’t even have that; in this movie, we just get the grunts. Beyond that, all communication and emotion is conveyed through a sort of mime by actors in hairy suits.

To say that Sasqutch Sunset isn’t for everyone is an understatement. There were reportedly many walkouts when the film played earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. This is not difficult to believe: I was one of six people in the theater when I went to see this, and a person in the row in front of us did indeed walk out in the midde. She even booked a seat for an AMC screening of Dune Part Two on her phone before getting up and leaving. An excellent choice, to be fair, but still, side note: don’t do that shit. Your phone screen is distracting and annoying—it’s why I know what movie you booked as an alternative, which you should do after leaving the theater.

I really thought Sasquatch Sunset would be funnier. If there’s so much sex and shit, why wouldn’t it be? Well, co-directors David and Nathan Zellner, working with a script by David, have created something akin to a nature documentary—but with mythical creatures as its subjects. They also mark their territory with piss, and in one fairly gross instance we see one vomit after eating too many fermented berries. But the thing is, once I got a recalibrated sense of the meditative tone of this film, I found myself surprisingly engaged by it. In the end, it’s a kind of family tragedy. About Bigfoot. But it takes an unusually “realistic” approach to what Sasquatch might actually behave as feral animals in the forest, particularly as a kind of “missing link” species between great apes and humans.

Speaking of humans, another curious detail of Sasqutch Sunset is that there are none. Inevitably, the Sasquatch characters encounter human civilization, in the form of things like a red X spray painted on a tree trunk, or a campsite. But, they never encounter any human beings. It’s unclear to me whether we are supposed to infer a loss of habitat due to human activity, though we do see them observe smoke from a forest fire in the distance. Several times the Sasquatch characters we’re following smack sticks against trees together in a coordinated pattern, clearly a signal to any other Sasquatch who might hear it. But, these are the only ones we ever see, and —spoiler alert—not even all of these ones make it to the end of the movie. I got to a point where I began to assume they would all be dead by the end of the film, but that’s not exactly how it ends. I suppose it depends on how you look at it.

I’ll definitely give Sasquatch Sunset credit for being absolutely unlike any other movie I have ever seen. I can’t think of a single person I would recommend it to, but I’m not sorry to have seen it. It’s certainly compelling to know that the Sasquatch characters are played, under intricate layers of makeup and prosthetics, by the likes of Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough, playing the one female among the group. There is also a juvenile played by Christophe Zajac-Denek, and Nathan Zellner himself plays the “alpha.” There is also a baby Sasquatch, performed mostly through what appears to be puppetry, with somewhat mixed results.

There are indeed a few genuinely funny moments, but Sasquatch Sunset plays much more like a meditative drama. And given whose story we are seeing unfold, your mileage may vary. By the time it ended, this Sasquatch story had kind of lost me and then, somehow, brought me back around again. This is a fascinating specimen of experimental cinema, with an unusual blend of absurdity and sincerity. Whether you’ll be into it, even if the premise intrigues you, may very well depend on when you watch and and what mood you’re in. Somehow, in my case, it had a hook that ultimately got me.

They have been to the top and it wasn’t what they were expecting.

Overall: B

ABIGAIL

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

The marketers of Abigail are kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. Do they lure us all in with what the film appears to be about in its first half and let audiences get a wild surprise with the massive—and undeniably entertaining—turn it takes, or do they completely spoil the twist in all of the marketing? Well, if you’ve seen the trailer to this film, you know they chose the latter. Going with the former actually worked with some films once upon a time: think The Crying Game (its deeply problematic content being beside the point I am making here) or The Sixth Sense. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world anymore.

But, let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that you are reading this and have never heard of this film, never seen any trailers for it. Do yourself a favor and just go to this movie, sight unseen. Or, make a note of it for when it becomes available on a streamer. I genuinely envy anyone who manages that experience. I enjoyed this film, but almost certainly would have enjoyed it a great deal more had the twist been the schlocky surprise it was meant to be.

If I don’t want to spoil it here, however, what else can I say about this movie? Well, here’s perhaps the most pertinent point: it was co-directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the duo who previously gave us Ready or Not (2019) and Scream VI (2023). If you have seen those films, that should give you a pretty good sense of what Abigail is like—you may not want to have the twist spoiled, but you probably want to know the genre, which is horror with a healthy sprinkling of comedy. And, there’s a lot of blood, of nearly cartoonish proportions. So if you’re looking for a tear jerker drama or a romantic comedy, this movie probably isn’t for you.

Here’s the biggest drawback of Abigail. What we’re led to believe the film is about in its first half, during which a team of specialized criminals abduct a rich man’s ballerina daughter (a genuinely fantastic Alisha Weir, as the title character) for ransom, just isn’t especially compelling. In order to keep the twist secret, marketers would have to lead us to believe this is all the movie is about—along with, perhaps, the part where the criminals all find themselves trapped inside the house they’ve taken Abigail to. I suppose trailers could have said something like, “It’s not the job they thought it was” and throw in a few clips of gushing blood without showing exactly what’s causing it. These people should have hired me to be on their marketing team.

All I can say is: I will be keeping a lookout for the streaming release of Abigail, with the intent of showing it to my husband, sight unseen. That will be fun. And if by some miracle you don’t already know what this movie is about, just take my word for it: the turn is worth waiting for. The characters, while fairly stock, are genuinely fun as performed by Melissa Barrera as a former army medic and recovering addict; Dan Stevens as a former detective; Freaky’s Kathryn Newton as a hacker; William Catlett as a marine sniper; Kevin Durand as the “muscle”; and the late Angus Cloud as the sociopathic driver. The movie would be nothing, of course, without the delightful performance of Alisha Weir as Abigail, but I’d rather you just watch the movie to find out why.

Suffice it to say that Abigail is excessive in all the right ways, never takes itself too seriously (although an arguably unnecessary subplot regarding the former medic and her estranged young son comes close), and offers all the cartoonish violence you could ask for. Classic cinema this is not, but it delivered on everything I wanted it to be and that I came for.

Just wait until you see what she’s looking at.

Overall: B

CIVIL WAR

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

A movie about a modern American civil war should have a clear point of view, and it should have balls. Alex Garand’s Civil War has neither. It should be noted: the premise alone does not qualify.

I’m not even saying this movie has to make explicit what the political issues were across the country that resulted in armed forces in many states turned secessionists. Garland’s choice to avoid that kind of specificity is actually one of his smart ones. That does not, however, preclude a point of view, something beyond vague notions of “war is bad” or “journalists are soulless.” And notwithstanding the empty complaints among people on the right who clearly haven’t even watched this movie, Civil War really offers very little, story-wise, to hold onto. It’s just a road trip through war-torn country that happens to be America, with some incredibly well directed, gripping, beautifully shot battle sequences.

Even the comparisons of this movie’s American President (Nick Offerman, seen onscreen far less than expected) to President Trump are exaggerated. We know this president is in his third term, that he has ordered air strikes on American citizens (but not how or why), and we know that unlikely groups of people are allied against him. He’s never characterized as a buffoon, or of particularly low intelligence. And yet, the “Western Forces” of California and Texas are allied against him—something that has caused a great amount of chatter among people, on all sides of the political spectrum, as straining plausibility. My stance on this is that far weirder things have happened in times of war, which makes strange bedfellows. Besides, a line early in the film has really stuck with me: “When D.C. falls, they’ll turn on each other.” Indeed, once a common enemy is pushed aside, people previously on the same side are free to find fault with each other.

There are other references to aligned states in throwaway lines in Civil War, such as “The Florida Alliance,” or Midwestern states still loyal to the U.S. government, where small-town residents live their daily lives pretending like none of this is happening. Our protagonist, hardened photojournalist Lee Miller (Kirsten Dunst, truly fantastic) has parents in Colorado doing exactly this. Her very young acolyte photojournalist, Jessie (Priscilla’s Cailee Spaeny, actually 23 years old during production and playing 23, though she barely looks even 18), has parents in Missouri doing the same.

A major problem I have with Civil War is the same problem I have with many dystopian visions of a near future: its refusal to acknowledge race. Does anybody really think there would be a second civil war in the United States and race would have no relevance? There’s a very tense sequence in which Jesse Plemons plays a blithely murderous militia man, and the scene uses two men of Asian descent to illustrate his pointed xenophobia. This is in the same neigborhood as racism, of course, but it’s still distinct from it. But Alex Garland just isn’t interested in going that step further.

This is the fundamental problem with Civil War, which is the cinematic equivalent of a product with claims of nutrition when it actually has none. And don’t get me wrong, there is still a lot to recommend Civil War, which is genuinely gripping from start to finish. But, much like the 2006 film Children of Men, it has too many “why” questions it refuses to answer while it wows us exceptional production. (Children of Men, at least, is far more impressive on a technical and production level, creating a world that feels far more lived in, if just as implausible.)

It’s the ideas themselves that are the problem—or, the lack thereof. This is the kind of movie that you really get into while it’s happening, and can only leave saying it was great if you don’t think too hard about it. Garland, however, is challenging us to think about it, without fleshing out what it’s trying to say. There’s certainly the idea that there are not truly “good guys” in active warfare, and we are never given a side to root for—something these journalists don’t even want, as they pride themselves on supposed objectivity.

And yet, even with journalism being looked at through by far the most critical lense in this film, even that winds up muddled in presentation. Too many of the details make too little sense. “They shoot journalists on sight in the capitol,” we are told early on. Somehow, the armed forces closing in on the capitol welcome press with open arms, no questions asked. Come on, really? And this is hardly a new observation: far too few of the journalists in this film are seen taking video (in fact, I think we see only one or two doing so, and only with a professional news camera—literally not one single character is seen taking video on their smartphone). Lee and Jessie engage with still photography exclusively, albeit with many of the still shots they take being equal parts beautiful and horrifying.

A lot of Civil War is gorgeously shot, which is part of the deeply misleading journey it takes us on. All the plot connections are shaky at best, making this a kind of low-rent Apocalypse Now, even with its often beautiful imagery. I just watched this movie feeling a bit lost as to the actual stakes, and what I was supposed to take away from it. And what I took away from it was its top-notch cinematography, direction, and acting, particularly on the part of Dunst, who has never been better. But what is the whole thing that these parts are coming together to make? Yet another in a long line of supposedly anti-war movies that wow us with its rendering of war, in this case with nothing of any real substance to say.

The Expendables: four journalists face their various fates.

Overall: B

WICKED LITTLE LETTERS

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

Well, I’m going to stay on brand and go right to the race discussion—or rather, the odd point of view that Wicked Little Letters seems to have that there is no need to have one. One might try to argue that this film’s director (Thea Sharrock) and its producers had their heart in the right place, casting key characters in 1920s Littlehampton, England with actors of color, but I would counter that this was wildly misguided. Not so much because it gives dipshit conservatives ammunition in their stupid arguments against “color blind casting,” but because race is never even acknowledged in the film, thereby creating the sense that, while sexism plays a significant part in this story, somehow this was some kind of racial utopia, where skin color meant nothing to anyone. This is tantamount to revisionist history.

And what’s the point of that? This is no reflection on the actors, who are lovely—particularly Anjana Vasan as “Woman Police Officer Gladys Moss,” and Malachi Kirby as Bill, boyfriend to Rose (Jessie Buckley), the woman accused of sending profane letters to people all over the town, but particularly to her self-righteous neighbor, Edith (Olivia Colman). I mean, I’m genuinely glad these actors of color are getting work. I just wish they would get offered roles that made more sense: it isn’t hard to find out that, in the real life story on which this film is based, both of these people were actually White. Because in all likelihood, in 1920s small-town England, such people would be.

This deliberate choice to ignore race in a story steeped in sexism and misogyny is always irritating. It’s the exact same problem that existed in the Hulu adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, which ignored race in a dystopian near-future. In what universe would this ever be the case? Willful ignorance of intersectionality only serves to further White feminism, which serves no one.

So, that is the major flaw in Wicked Little Letters, and it is a pretty glaring, consistently distracting one—if you approach a movie like this with critical thinking, anyway. This is a small movie that carries no such expectation, but I hesitate to regard that as a good excuse.

All that aside—and admittedly, for me it’s a pretty big aside—Wicked Little Letters is a genuinely charming watch, with solid performances, particularly among its two leads, Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley. both of who already have well established track records as stellar performers. In this case, Colman’s Edith is a middle-aged, never-married woman living a deeply repressed life with her parents and particularly under the thumb of her oppressive father, Edward (Timothy Spall). Buckley’s Rose is the free-spirited, foul-mouthed young mother and widow who moves in next door.

The film opens with what is identified as the “19th letter,” addressed to Edith and read by her parents, all of them sitting at their dining table. They are all convinced, with no more evidence than her general demeanor, that Rose sent it. Soon enough, Edith is giving an official statement to the police, and that is how we get half-truths from Edith about some backstory, where these two women actually spend some time as friends, but then fell out after Rose head-butt a man at Edward’s birthday party. I could have used a little more about how the two women got from there to here, as this backstory gets a bit glossed over, robbing them both of some character dimension.

Wicked Little Letters starts with a title card reading, This is more true than you’d think. Mmm, after seeing how it was cast, maybe not. The “mystery” of who is actually writing the letters becomes clear rather early on, henceforth focusing on where Edith and Rose go from there. For what they are, they do both make compelling characters, a great deal of which can be credited to the actors. I did enjoy the extensive amount of time spent on long strings of increasingly creative profanity. Even the end credits are seen over script appearing on letter papers, with phrases like “ten cocks a week minimum.” So that’s fun.

This is a movie that could have been a lot better with the right guidance, but some of its production choices are baffling. I can’t even fault the writer (Jonny Sweet), as his script makes no reference to ethnicity whatsoever—because why would it? In the end, it’s a charming story that did not aim for fantasy but kind of landed there.

These bitches

Overall: B

PROBLEMISTA

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

Problemista is a kind of movie that takes some time to win you over. I spent the first several scenes unable to decide how I felt about it, as a young El Salvadorian immigrant named Alejandro (Julio Torres) found himself in the tentative employ of a manically eccentric art dealer named Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), in the desperate hope of getting a work sponsorship so he won’t be deported.

If Tilda Swinton can be relied on for anything, it’s that she’ll play a part wildly different from any other part she’s ever played. She practically invented “disappearing into a role,” and it’s almost like magic how you instantly forget it’s her you’re even looking at. Here, she wholly embodies Elizabeth and her high strung emotional distractions, to a degree that she is genuinely annoying, and when another character says to Alejandro, “I don’t know how you put up with her,” you’re already wondering the same thing. The even more impressive magic trick is how, by the end of Problemista, you are emotionally invested in Elizabeth in spite of all this.

Swinton is the perfectly cast actor who is just the right size star for this size of a movie, but it’s even more important that we discuss Julio Torres, who not only plays the lead part in this movie, but he also wrote and directed it. I was not very familiar with Torres before seeing this movie, but have heard of some of his other projects: Los Espookys, the Spanish-language comedy on HBO; My Favorite Shapes, his comedy special on the same channel. This guy has been around a few years—and he is nothing at all like Alejandro in Problemista.

It would seem that Julio Torres and Tilda Swinton are a match made in oddball heaven. They have wildly different energies, and yet they have chemistry. Alejandro is very mild-mannered and struggles to assert himself; Elizabeth is oppressively assertive. She never quite crosses over into bitch territory, though; all it takes to rein her in is someone who knows how to speak to her in just the right way.

Here’s my one major note for Torres. The way Alejandro walks is . . . a choice. A rather baffling one, honestly: he moseys forward with something between a shuffle and a hop, little tiny almost-bounces with each step. What the hell is that about? Torres’s performance is stellar otherwise, but having Alejandro walk everywhere in this manner was legitimately distracting.

Problemista is clearly intended as both a charmer and a comedy. and although I got a few legitimate chuckles out of it, it’s much more the former than the latter. There are production design choices that contribute to this, little fantasy vignettes casting Elizabeth as a monster and Alejandro as a hero in a fairy tale for him to conquer, both of them wearing decidedly low-rent costumes. It’s like Problemista is actively trying to charm us by calling out its own low budget—and somehow, it succeeds.

Granted, some things in Problemista work better than others. Rza as Bobby, Elizabeth’s cryogenically frozen artist husband whose painting subjects are exclusively eggs draped with different colored cloths (depending on the painting), isn’t quite as indelible a performance. In fact, I wasn’t super keen on the whole “FreezeCorp” thing where that’s how Elizabeth and Alejandro meet, where Alejandro loses his latest desperate attempt at employment. On the other hand, it does create a setup for the swing at the very end that pays off rather amusingly.

I suppose that’s the best phrase for this movie: rather amusing. Not hilarious, not dramatic (Elizabeth’s theatrics notwithstanding), not particularly moving—but rather amusing. It’s also a singular vision, I’ll give it that much. And sometimes a rather amusing, singular vision is all we need.

A diaspora of people exceeding the expectations of the small world they inhabit.

Overall: B

BAD RIVER

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

When you hear the name “Bad River Band,” if you have no association or history with Native Americans (like me), you might easily mistake it for a classic rock band. Except this is Bad, not Little River Band, and it’s “Bad River” as in Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Today I learned that a “band” is a smaller group, of varying size, within a tribe—and, there seems to be a whole lot of nuance to this, and how it is defined, that requires a breadth of understanding that certainly surpasses the parameters of a movie review.

Suffice it to say that Bad River Band is a very organized group in Wisconsin, with their own U.S. government website, detailing both their status as a federally recognized tribe of the Ojibwe (as they are mostly known in Canada) or Chippewa (as they are mostly known in the U.S.), and their long fight against “Line 5,” an oil pipeline by Canadian company Enbridge, which runs oil through much of the U.S. around the Great Lakes. This includes Minnesota, both the Lower and Upper Peninsulas of Michigan, and Wisconsin, although “Line 5” specifically refers to its route from Superior, Wisconsin (at the westernmost point of Lake Superior), under the Straits of Mackinac (the narrow waterway separating Lake Michigan and Lake Huron), then through Michigan’s Lower Peninsula to oil refineries in Sarnia, Ontario. Specifically for the purposes of this documentary feature film, Bad River, it runs straight through the Bad River Reservation, which is located in Northern Wisconsin on the southwestern shores of Lake Superior.

There is indeed a literal river of the same name in this location, through which Line 5 runs, threatening an inevitable oil spill, the alteration of the river’s route, and then spilling its contamination into Lake Superior. You can read a three-page handout online about Bad River’s lawsuit against Enbridge over Line 5, which, honestly, might do a better job at spreading awareness of this clearly vital issue, than this serviceable documentary feature about it will. It can be argued that documentaries have greater reach than, say, printed materials, but how many of you have even heard of this film? Well, all of you reading this have now, but that’s not going to put much of a bump in the number of people who watch the movie. It helps spread awareness, at least.

And sometimes there’s just an unfortunate difference in the presentation of urgent information in print versus a visual medium. For much of Bad River the film, I failed to connect, not because of the content but because of its presentation: rapid-fire editing meant to seem “snappy” but coming across as rushed; drone shots of Bad River with quick fast-forward zooms. It felt a little too much like I was watching a standard-issue reality show like The Bachelor or Below Deck, which felt a little incongruous.

Much of Bad River quite rightly focuses on centuries of Native American resistance, but specifically contextualized in the history of Bad River Band, including the all-too common stories of genocide and forced assimilation into Christian culture, including literally stealing children and placing them into Catholic schools, where they were often horribly abused. I’m not proud to admit that I found myself thinking: we know this history already, have been told about it many times, what’s different about this story? But, then I caught myself: the fact that these shameful histories bear repeating never diminishes, and serves as a reminder of the generational trauma that undergirds their resistance today. Side note: this is a great example of how Canada, often lionized as the country with a greater moral compass than the U.S., has a history no better than ours when it comes to this stuff—and they are just a callous in their treatment of Indigenous peoples today, if it serves such interests as a corporation’s bottom line.

A very large number of Bad River Band people are interviewed for this film, which greatly personalizes it, on both a collective and individual level. By the end, I did find myself deeply moved, with this film’s novel approach to closing scenes: we see each person’s answer to the question of what they would say to their descendants, many generations from now. The answers vary greatly but have a common through line of love and hope, and if you look at it from the point of view of those descendants they’re speaking to, it’s a literalization of being spoken to by your ancestors. I can’t deny a pretty cynical outlook, myself—both the U.S. and Canada’s histories of relations with Indigenous people, clear to the present day, doesn’t exactly bode well. But that doesn’t lessen the need for resistance, and if nothing else, this film is but one example of a multi-pronged, years-long strategy.

There’s a lot here worth protecting.

Overall: B

THE COLOR PURPLE

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

Here I’ve spent many a year insisting any given film should be judged on its own merits, and then I go and watch this current iteration of The Color Purple directly after watching Steven Spielberg’s original 1985 adaptation.

I do not recommend doing this. It colors everything about how Blitz Bazawule’s current adaptation gets received, and it is unfair to this newer film. It can become difficult to draw the line between whether I’m not responding to it quite as well as I’d hoped, either because it is genuinely a weaker adaptation, or I simply like the earlier film better. And there is no question, I like the earlier film better.

A key difference between the two films is that the new one is a musical—not that you’d know that from its promotional campaign. Fans of Broadway will surely know it, as it may be a surprise to discover the Broadway musical adaptation is itself pretty old now: it debuted in December 2005, nearly two decades ago; ran through 2008; and then had a highly acclaimed revival run from 2015 to 2017. The latter would clearly be what then promoted this film adaptation of the stage musical, which I never had a chance to see but can easily imagine it being a fantastic, powerful experience.

The sticking point for me here is that storytelling works differently in different mediums. This is something too many directors forget when adapting books into films, and the same goes for adapting stage plays into films. Spielberg’s movie covers a great many years, and really lets the story simmer within each phase of Celie’s life, making each key occurrence all the more poignant. The Color Purple, the movie musical, covers just as much ground, but has a run time thirteen minutes shorter than the previous film, and it makes so much time for music sequences that the rest of the story, simply by definition, gets truncated and rushed through.

The actors portraying Celie and her sister Nettie as children (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi and Halle Bailey, respectively) don’t even look that young, thereby undermining the very point of their portrayals. Nettie then does not get near enough screen time, regardless of who is portraying her, which undercuts the intended emotion of the sisters’ eventual reunion after many years of separation. We hardly get to know Nettie here, and so have less reason to care.

All that said, there remains a lot to like about this Color Purple—particularly, somewhat ironically, the music. Your mileage may vary as to whether it’s worth trading effective storytelling for really good music, but at least when the music numbers are being performed, you’re happy to be there. We’ll just set aside how incongruous it feels to have characters breaking out into rapturous song in the middle of a story like this, which features fairly regular domestic abuse.

Furthermore, the actors can’t be blamed for what they’ve been given to work with, and The Color Purple is objectively well cast: Fantasia Barrino is effective as the older Celie (even if her incredibly distinctive voice bears no resemblance to Phylicia Pearl Mpasi’s). Colman Domingo is uniquely sinister as Mister, the man Celie is forced to marry; Taraji P. Henson is electric as Shug Avery, the blues singer with whom both Mister and Celie are enamored; H.E.R. is arguably underused as Squeak; and Danielle Brooks absolutely justifies her Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Sofia, belligerent wife of Mister’s son, Harpo (Corey Hawkins).

Of course, here is where a generational divide creeps in again: none of these current actors can’t really compete with the indelible 1985 performances by then-newcomer Whoopi Goldberg as Celie; Danny Glover as Mister; or Oprah Winfrey as Sofia. The more relevant question might be how many people among 2023 audiences know or care about the 1985 film—they’ll certainly know who both Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey are, if not Danny Glover. The one performer who truly improves on the character in the current iteration is Taraji P. Henson, who truly lights up the screen.

There’s also the valid argument that Steven Spielberg, a rich White guy, was an inappropriate choice for directing this particular story—something he was actually insecure about even in 1985, only taking the gig once Quincy Jones convinced him to. Production of films about Black people plays out in this way less and less anymore, and it’s only right that a Black director should take on this film. It’s somewhat of a bummer, then, that a Black director could not have been given the chance to make just as good a film in 1985, and that the Black director who did direct the film in 2023 did a fine job but still not quite as good.

I do rather wish now that I could have watched 2023 The Color Purple in a bit more of a vacuum, without the 1985 film so fresh in my memory, from literally minutes before. I might not be quite as hard on it, although I feel pretty strongly I still would have given it the same rating, given its strong performances among tonal inconsistencies.

It’s hard to be as timid as the story really calls for when you’re regularly bursting into song.

Overall: B

THE BEEKEEPER

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

There are countless legitimate reasons to shit on The Beekeeper, to bury it in a . . . a swarm of criticism—but I have to be honest: my heart isn’t in it. I had too good a time watching this objectively idiotic movie.

So, well, why not judge a film on its own terms? The Beekeeper knows exactly what it is, which is both a b-movie and a bee movie (get it?), with its own rules of logic, which it basically follows to the letter. It may be a by-the-numbers revenge action movie, naturally starring Jason Statham, but somehow, it still manages to be way better than what it could have been.

I’ve seen some disappointment that this movie doesn’t lean into the “so bad it’s good” genre, but being disappointed on that level entirely misses the point. Have we learned nothing from Snakes on a Plane? When a movie self-consciously tries too hard to be “bad,” it tends to land with a thud. The “so bad it’s good” vibe only really works when the people making the movie were genuinely convinced they were making something good.

The Beekeeper is something different, ironically by being exactly the kind of movie it’s designed to be: it’s pretty stupid, but not too stupid. The actors are all kind of phoning it in, but none of them are being lazy. The action is well choreographed, just clever enough, and consistently entertaining.

Admittedly, even I went into this movie, about a literal beekeeper (Statham) who turns out to be retired from a nebulously defined, top secret program of people also codenamed “beekeepers,” kind of hoping it would be relentlessly stupid. That can be fun, right? And it is stupid, just not relentlessly so. It’s also got a healthy dose of onscreen charisma, a modicum of wit, and a subtle self-awareness as a film that refuses to take itself too seriously.

I sometimes wonder what a stacked cast was thinking when they read the script for a movie that clearly doesn’t work. And no one here is exactly turning in Oscar-worthy work here, in a cast including Josh Hutcherson as the misguided “brains” behind a company that scams elderly people via their computers, Jeremy Irons as the company’s head of security, Phylicia Rashad as one of the company’s victims, and Minni Driver, getting disappointingly little screen time as the director of the CIA. One thing they all have in common, though: they’re having a good time. And so is the viewer.

The Beekeeper does lay it on a little thick with all of its many “hive” metaphors, not always with full coherence (Statham’s Adam Clay is somehow just “protecting the hive” with all the countless people he dispatches), which ultimately is part of its charm. No one set out to make a “smart” movie here, and no one watching it expects one. This is a rare instance of movie marketers being full forthcoming with the kind of movie they’re offering, likely because anyone going to see it only wants exactly that.

In a way, The Beekeeper is just a Fast and Furious movie without any racing cars. You might expect that to make it less exciting, and I suppose arguably it is—but not by much. It’s still got plenty of violence, well staged combat scenes, and at least relatively inventive scenes of either dismemberment or death. What more could you ask for? If you want Oscar bait, there’s still more than plenty of that to go around. If you want heightened action ridiculousness, with an inexplicably indestructable hero bent on avenging the victims of elaborate phishing schemes, there’s The Beekeeper.

It should also be noted: January and February are historically notorious dumping grounds for cinema garbage. What the makers of The Beekeeper seem to understand is that, they can make something in keeping with the vibe of this time of year that’s actually worth the time, if all you’re looking for is knowingly mindless but well-executed entertainment.

If you leave your intellect at home, you’ll have a blast.

Overall: B

ORLANDO: MY POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY

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

Within the first few minutes of Orlando: My Political Biography, one of the young people sitting in the row behind my said, “This movie is so French.” Indeed,

The person who said it seemed mildly amused, not particularly irritated. I’ll say that this film reached me a bit more successfully as it went on, but also that it regularly lost me, then pulled me back in, then lost me again, then pulled me back in again. Some of this was, perhaps, indeed its very French-ness. I suspect some of it was that I was almost certainly the oldest person in that audience, a gender-nonconforming elder receiving an interpretive lesson on how today’s trans and nonbinary youth approach gender identity.

To call Orlando: My Political Biography “high concept” would be an understatement. Writer-director Paul B. Preciado, who is himself 53 years old (and, importantly, a trans man) assembled 26 trans and nonbinary people to introduce themselves by name on camera, declare that they are “playing Virginia Woolf’s Orlando,” and wear a ruffled collar while doing so. This is all a riff on Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando: A Biography, which might work better should you have read the novel recently, or at all. I have never read it, but the film makes many references to how the novel’s namesake protagonist famously suddenly switches genders midway through the story. It does not, however, make any reference to Tilda Swinton playing the role in a 1992 film adaptation.

It should be noted that the 26 subjects featured in the film range from 8 to 70 years old, which would suggest a broad range of ages, but there are only a group of three kids, and one 70-year-old. There’s a couple of clearly middle-aged people, but the majority of them are clearly young, ranging from their teens to their twenties. But there is intention to this as well: the subjects on the edges of this spectrum serve as both contrasts and anchors for the others, who become a collective portrait of contemporary trans and nonbinary experience, of a kind of defiant joy, in the face of persistent societal pressures.

In a sort of parallel to blurring gender lines, Preciado blurs the line between subject and performer, having his subjects recite lines—sometimes directly from the novel; sometimes other written material—as well as having his subjects simply share their thoughts and experiences. The early scenes are perhaps the most avant-garde, which unfortunately makes them the least inviting. At one point, a subject essentially makes out with the trunk of a tree.

This film is garnering rave reviews, but I can’t help but wonder who will be that into it, outside those who are both extensively literate and academically interested in gender. This Orlando features a few funny moments for levity, but is for the most part a very highbrow exercise. I find myself imagining college students in a Gender Studies class patting themselves on the back for how brilliant they think it is, while neglecting more effectively straightforward documentaries about trans history, like Disclosure (2020) or Paris Is Burning (1990).

Don’t get me wrong: I can easily see why some people love Orlando: My Political Biograph, which is genuinely unusual in what it captures in trans pride and trans joy, as well as its cross section of individuals whose very existence transcends the binary, the assumption of shame regarding certain body parts, or the historic insistence that transness necessitates surgery. For all I know, this film is something for contemporary trans and nonbinary people to connect to; I cannot speak for them. All I can say is whether I managed to connect with it, and at its most experimental, I could not.

The film does feature some clips of the earliest post-operation transgender women to speak to the media, and when Orlando connects that history to the present day, and then features a few young trans and nonbinary children as beacons of the future, then it connects with me. For viewers with just the right amount of patience, this film does have its rewards.

A bit esoteric on the approach.

Overall: B