Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a remote reserve full of genetically engineered dinosaurs descends into chaos when scientific hubris unleashes the creatures on visitors. You have, three times? Okay, then how about this; a ragtag group travels to an abandoned dinosaur reserve for an important mission only for everything to go catastrophically wrong. Three times as well? Then let’s go with a plot about scientists creating a hybrid dinosaur only for it to escape and wreak havoc. Twice?
It has been over thirty years since the first Jurassic Park became an instant classic. In that time, there have been six movies, with a seventh just around the corner. And each of those six movies has relied on at least one of the above plots. Often two. Even films that promised something new, like Fallen Kingdom or most egregiously Dominion, largely play out the same beats again. And all indications point to a similar result for this year’s Rebirth, which centerson a ragtag team travelling to an abandoned dinosaur reserve for an important mission only for everything to go catastrophically wrong, this time due to another hybrid dinosaur. Essentially we’re being sold the plot of The Lost World, Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Again.
It’s not news that Hollywood likes to play it safe when it comes to legacy sequels. The Force Awakens was mostly a beat for beat mirror of A New Hope, and after The Last Jedi’s mild subversions to the formula kickstarted a ceaseless culture war, The Rise of Skywalker was overhauled to just be Return of the Jedi, but stupider. Is it any surprise that after a mostly disliked last film Universal would go back to familiar territory?
You can’t entirely blame executives for being cautious. Long established franchises come with entrenched fanbases who often hate the formula being messed with. But the problem here is that a new Jurassic World movie can no longer be considered a ‘legacy sequel’. Rebirth will be the fourth new movie in a decade. The franchise has brought back all the old favorites. It has retraced the plots of the first two films several times over. It’s indulged in every tribute and callback imaginable. Surely it’s time, now, to try something else?
Fallen Kingdom doesn’t tend to be highly ranked among Jurassic films, but in 2018 there was a palpable sense of excitement at the final scenes, which promised the chaos and excitement and danger of a world overrun with dinosaurs. It felt like the long overdue fulfilment of Ian Malcolm’s warning in the first film: “Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution, have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?”
And after Fallen Kingdom, it really did seem like we might not have the slightest idea of what to expect. With dinosaurs out in the world, the next film could not be another park or secret mission. It had no choice but to do something new. There was a real sense of possibility.
You almost have to admire Dominion’s complete unwillingness to give audiences what they wanted. Trailers teased a world overrun with dinosaurs. But in the film itself, that’s not really the case. In fact, the dinosaurs aren’t nearly as much of a concern as the locusts who, bafflingly, take up much of the first half’s focus.
The second involves the characters converging on another dinosaur park only for everything to go wrong. Again.
Dominion was more than a disappointment; it was an act of audience contempt. You can almost feel the nervous hovering executives warning the creative team not to blow up the status quo too much, just in case this film is badly received and they have to pump out a more ‘traditional’ Jurassic movie in a couple of years. Which obviously is what happened, but it would seem to bespeak a gigantic misunderstanding of why Dominion was so derided; it didn’t do what it promised. And now, rather than offer a mea culpa film that does, Universal are again reverting to the same old formula and, according to the synopsis, they’ve functionally walked back the events of Fallen Kingdom and Dominion by explaining that dinosaurs mostly can’t survive in modern earth’s environment and so now only exist in small, remote, tropical locations. Like, say, secret islands.
If we’re being charitable then we have to acknowledge a couple of things. It does make sense that dinosaurs would be more suited to hotter environments; it’s the whole reason they were on Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna in the first place. And during the press tour for Dominion, director Colin Trevorrow regularly warned that we wouldn’t be seeing a dinosaur takeover of the planet because it wasn’t really credible that could happen, with Trevorrow likening your chances of encountering a dinosaur as being roughly on par with your chances of encountering a bear or some other dangerous predator. And look, that would be fair enough – if we were talking about a franchise that cared much about credibility.
Once upon a time, yes it did. Among the many reasons Jurassic Park struck such a chord is because it didn’t feel a million miles removed from something that could actually happen. But with each new film that relative grounding has slipped away, whether it was the ‘raptor whistle’ in Jurassic Park III or Chris Pratt’s apparently superhuman ability to withstand temperature when he’s lying inches away from molten lava. As such it feels egregious to pick and choose when you want to abide by the rules of reality, especially when said abiding is your excuse for not making the all out chaos movie about dinosaur dominion (actually, this time) that the franchise has arguably been leading towards since the very start.
Is there anyone who would rather watch another movie about characters sneaking onto a dinosaur island over a film where pockets of surviving humans eke out an agrarian existence in a world where a T-rex could appear any second? There is nothing stopping these films from jumping forward several decades to get there, apart from the evident fears that doing so might cross a line this lucrative money machine cannot come back from.
It’s true that a Jurassic film blowing things up to such a degree would indeed be difficult to retcon if poorly received. Once the franchise has moved from dinosaur islands to a genuine dinosaur world, it can’t really go back unless the hard reboot button is pressed.
It’s only fair to note that without having seen Rebirth we don’t know what tricks it might have up its sleeve. And there is a precedent for that; Fallen Kingdom gave us half a film of the standard mission to dinosaur island before pivoting into gothic horror in the second half – still the closest the later films have come to something genuinely fresh. But so far we are not being sold anything close to a radical reinvention. Rebirth has a strong creative team and there’s every chance it will be well written, exciting and fun, but unless the marketing is hiding something massive, it’s nearly impossible to imagine the film getting away with its own familiarity. We’ve just seen this story too many times already.
Changing the Jurassic formula would be a risk. But after so much repetition, not doing so is an even bigger one.
On this episode, JD and Brendan head to Peru as we go on an adventure with the Brown family in Paddington in Peru! We’ve really enjoyed the last two Paddington films, especially the masterpiece that is Paddington 2, so we were looking forward to this one. It might not have reached the heights of its predecessors, but there’s still plenty of charm to go around.
Review: Paddington in Peru (4:00) Director: Dougal Wilson Writers: Mark Burton, Jon Foster, James Lamont Stars: Ben Whishaw, Hugh Bonneville, Emily Mortimer, Olivia Colman, Antonio Banderas
On this episode of Chasing the Gold, Shadan is joined by Nick Spake from WatchMojo to discuss this year’s BAFTA winners and predict this weekend’s SAG winners! The BAFTAs didn’t do much to clarify the chaos of this season, and in fact, only added to the madness. Some categories are seemingly locked up, but for those up in the air, there are still a lot of questions floating around. SAG will likely give us some answers this weekend, so we had a great time discussing how we see that unfolding over the next few days.
On that note, check out this week’s show and let us know what you think in the comment section. Thanks for listening and for supporting the InSession Film Podcast!
On this episode, JD and Brendan discuss the latest entry into the MCU with Captain America: Brave New World! The MCU has has a rocky journey in recent years, and with Phase 5 coming to an end, we were hoping that Sam Wilson’s take on the character would move Marvel into a new trajectory. Sadly, that wasn’t the case.
Review: Captain America: Brave New World (4:00) Director: Julius Onah Writers: Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, Julius Onah, Peter Glanz Stars: Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez, Harrison Ford, Carl Lumbly
Director:Matt McClung Writer:Matt McClung Stars: Anna Jacoby-Heron, Josh Andrés Rivera, Kevin Nealon
Synopsis:A young woman moves in with her lapsed Catholic boyfriend, only to discover that they’re being haunted by the vengeful ghost of his childhood youth minister.
In order for religious horror to be successful you have to make the lapsed church-goer clutch their chest for a pendant that’s no longer there. You have to give them such a spectacle that for the run time of your film they question everything they have come to believe since falling away from the beliefs they held. The same is true for spiritual/new age horror. You have to make people suddenly wonder if their friend who burns sage and keeps an amethyst stone clutched in their hand at moments of stress isn’t totally out there.
Inhabitants attempts to have its way with both and it never quite finds its footing. That isn’t to say the conceit and the tension between Olivia (Anna Jacoby-Heron) and Francis’ (Josh Andrés Rivera) different worldviews isn’t an intriguing twist on the genre. It just muddies the waters of what we’re meant to be scared of. Should we worry that Olivia’s rituals are causing the disturbance? Or should we worry that because Francis is living in sin, vengeance is being wrought upon him? It’s not made clear for a long time, which is a problem with the pacing of the film.
The vibe of Inhabitants is definitely setting us up for what we assume is a poltergeist. Then it shifts to possible possession. Then it’s a sort of plain haunting. There is so much to the mystery that Inhabitants never really gets to the point. There is no jump scare or climax that makes you crawl out of your skin. Inhabitants never makes you want to hide behind your hands. It goes through the motions of the supernatural horror film, but never gives us the real thrill.
A lot of potential scares are left on the table. There’s a scene where Olivia calls home and her parents, whose objections to her lifestyle are never fully explained, are sitting still staring at the walls as the phone rings. What could they possibly be thinking or doing? Or is that just Olivia’s perception of them? We just don’t know because the tension fails to mount beyond the weirdness of the image.
In the tensest and potentially scariest scene, there are jump cuts that build to a climax. Olivia is putting the finishing touches on dinner and listening to music on headphones. Francis has gone to the bathroom to trim his pubic hair at Olivia’s request. The boiler is sabotaged by the spirit to make a frightening noise. The problem is that by the time the action gets to the point where Francis accidently jabs the scissors somewhere into his genitals, we never know where, which is so much the better, we’ve already anticipated the action for too long for it to be effective. It never scares us in the way it wants, but it is intentionally funny in ways you don’t expect.
The film needs to lean far more into its comedic elements. There are genuinely funny lines and sequences. The film is also funny without making fun. Denny (Kevin Nealon) the owner of the new age shop where Olivia works is a goof, but what he does doesn’t make him goofy. Lillian (Ana Arthur), Francis’ devout Christian mother, is a little too much, but is never shamed for her beliefs. If writer/director Matt McClung had leaned into the “Scooby-Doo” of the situation it could have made the film infinitely better than this attempt at something scary.
As it is, Inhabitants is a scary story without any scares. The film has the DNA, but none of the execution. Even its climax, at the apex of the haunting, after we know the whole truth, the resolution is tepid. The characters are too underdeveloped for us to really feel anything for them in spite of the actor’s proficient job with the script. If we can’t get behind them all the way or see the full picture of who they want to be, the whole thing falls apart. There isn’t a plot hole or a piece left unexplained, but it still feels very incomplete. The film is fine, but if you’re looking for scary religious horror, you may want to look elsewhere.
Director: Rebeca Lenkiewicz Writer: Deborah Levy Stars: Emma Mackey, Vicky Krieps, Fiona Shaw
Synopsis: With a strange illness, a mother and her daughter embark on a journey to the Spanish coast to find a cure, and along the way the daughter discovers another reality far from her controlling mother.
In 2016, British playwright and novelist Deborah Levy made headlines after publishing ‘Hot Milk’, a novel that garnered her comparisons to Virginia Woolf because of the vividness with which Levy created the various character dynamics that occur in the narrative. She was already recognized by book-readers for her work ‘Swimming Home’, by being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2012. But ‘Hot Milk’ placed her on a new pedestal writing-wise. It put her in a zone, not to her comfort, and she excelled, as readers rave about her work since then. Similarly, and in some aspects unfortunately the opposite, the same thing has happened to screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Known for writing the screenplays for Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski), Disobedience (Sebastian Lelio), and She Said (Maria Schrader), all stories about women set in different times and focusing on varying dynamics, Lenkiewicz is tasked with adapting Deborah Levy’s aforementioned work, ‘Hot Milk’ (screening in competition at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival).
It seems like a shoo-in when you consider the novel’s themes (female rage, sexuality, solitude, and fractured relationships) and its play in character dynamics and bonds. Successfully adapting this novel will put her on another pedestal, like how ‘Hot Milk’ raised Levy’s literary profile. The main reason is that this is the first time Lenkiewicz is in the director’s chair. Previously, she has been a storyteller but neverin charge of the whole boat. Where Levy and Lenkiewicz differ in terms of the result of their portrayals is that the latter does not develop convincing character relations. Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk comes off as rather unbelievable and flimsy. The use of deceptive realism, which Ledy utilizes in her novel during the first chapters, does add some intrigue. But it does not evolve into a similarly dense, yet substantial, piece of work.
Hot Milk follows a different set of pairings but primarily centers around Sofia (Emma Mackey) and her ailing, wheelchair-bound mother, Rose (Fiona Shaw), as they arrive in Almeria, a seaside town in Southwest Spain, during the heart of the summer. From the moment Lenkeiwicz introduces Sofai and Rose to us, you have already noticed that their mother-daughter relationship has more than a few expected cracks. This pattern of the audience being one step ahead and knowing the state of the different dynamics occurs throughout the entirety of Hot Milk. Although this initial one between Sofia and Rose has to be evident in order to dissect their mental states and reasons for being, some foibles in Lenkeiwicz’s adaptation make it one note.
Rose is overbearing, demanding her daughter accompany her to find an experimental healer, Dr. Gomez (Vincent Perez, who is poorly cast and adopts a terrible accent), who has an expensive treatment that can potentially cure her undiagnosed ailment. She claims that her “bone condition” prevents her to walk, even though Rose does so on random occasions throughout the year, as Sofia describes angrily at this confusing real or fake health situation. Sofia is full of doubts, yet she helped mortgage their house to pay for this trip that will potentially help her mother. The viewer also questions the conveniences of her condition, including the stoic metaphor that Lenkeiwicz constructs along the way. Does Sofia actually want to help Rose? Is all of this just an act induced by a traumatic experience? Why is Rose so harsh to Sofia, even if she does all these favors for her?
This condition began once Sofia’s father, Christos, left the family for a life of new faith in Athens, living with his new, younger wife and child. The abandonment caused their world to move out of sync. Hence, Rose and Sofia are in this tricky situation. Once arriving at Almeira, the two occasionally take distance from each other to take a breather and heal their broken souls, apart from the corroding bond they share. As Rose goes along with Dr. Perez’s treatment, trying to understand Christo’s decision to leave, Sofia meets and begins an affair with a German traveler, Ingrid (Vicky Krieps, whom I’m always glad to see on-screen). Sofia and Ingrid meet on the beach, the latter appearing on the scene via horseback, a magical entrance that seems quite fairytale-esque. Her entrance adds a layer of grounded mysticality, enhanced by the imagery of the sun-soaked beaches and streets that cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt captures.
The encounter awakens something in Sofia, a new experience in her young, detained life. Emma Mackey’s performance, which Lenkiewicz relies on to move the emotional, contemplative needle, helps express this inner emotion that has been kept hidden for years, mainly via the British actress’ facial expressions and mannerisms. Her expressions are flawless, as she conveys yearning, solitude, and rage built from the familiar separation via the most minute details. She does everything that Lenkiewicz prompts and asks. The problem is that Lenkiewicz fails her in one key thing: the scenes in which Sofia and Rose are apart from each other do not reveal enough details about their personalities or about why their relationship is this broken or acidic, to which neither Mackey nor Shaw can tap into with their performances, no matter how hard they try.
Key details hint at the roots of Sofia and Rose’s fracture and brooding. There are not a lot of them, but there sure are revelations of how Sofia feels about being stripped of her role as a daughter (and independence) to become a surrogate for her mother’s pain. However, the scenes meant for their independent healing journeys never show another side of them amidst the encounters with these strangers they are slowly connecting with, whether Ingrid or Dr. Perez. Hot Milk focuses so much on these suffering souls’ disdain and angst that it leaves room for reconciliation and emotional fervor, which Levy does in the latter half of the novel. Neither the couples, mother-daughter, or doctor-patient convince you since they lack tenderness and vividness.
Lenkiewicz adds notches for ‘The Lost Daughter’–a novel Elena Ferrante wrote and Maggie Gyllenhaal adapted in 2021–and The Five Devils (a 2023 French film directed by Léa Mysius) into her adaptation of Hot Milk, primarily by their cold, distanced yet emotionally tangible stories about women–mothers on the brink of significant change in particular. Rebecca Lenkiewickz is not close to being Ferrante in writing, although she can be compared to Mysius. So, you can’t expect the poetic, pensive, and highly detailed portrait of broken human connections that Ferrante provides in her books. What Lenkiewicz succeeds in doing, as demonstrated in Ida and the rest of her screenplays, is showing elegance through her writings about identity and the unearthing of the past’s secrets. However, that is what Hot Milk lacks. And what you see instead is a lesser version of what she has done before, without the poise or a defined emotional core. In the end, Hot Milk ends up as a missed opportunity–one that fails to tap into the emotional depth or nuance of the source material, leaving a hollow, unfulfilled version of a complex story.
This week on the InSession Film Podcast, we feature a fun Harrison Ford Character Draft where we go five rounds picking the best Ford characters! We also talk a little BAFTAs and JD loses his mind over a hockey game.
– Hockey Excitement / Ghost Story (0:42) As a lifelong diehard hockey fan, JD could not contain his excitement over the Four Nations Face-Off game between the United States and Canada going super viral over the weekend. It was electric and pulsating. We had to talk about. JD also updates us on the ghost living in his house after we first brought it up during our Presence review.
– BAFTAs (18:58) The BAFTA winners were announced over the weekend, and in the spirit of the season, they did not do much to stifle the chaos leading up to this year’s Oscars. There are some categories that seem locked up (the supporting actor categories, for example), but many others are still in lingo, including Best Picture. There was plenty to discuss and we had a great time breaking it all down.
– Harrison Ford Character Draft (56:55) For our draft this time around we decided to focus on the characters of Harrison Ford. He’s been in a lot of franchises, obviously, so it didn’t make too much sense to do performances without being too redundant. Same thing with picking the movies themselves. However; narrowing it down to characters allowed for more space to look beyond the Indiana Jones and Han Solo’s on his resume. Which certainly made the bottom few picks quite challenging as there’s much to debate once you get beyond the obvious selections. With that said, who do you think had the best draft?
If you want to help support us, there are several ways you can help us and we’d absolutely appreciate it. Every penny goes directly back into supporting the show and we are truly honored and grateful. Thanks for your support and for listening to the InSession Film Podcast!
Director: Martin Campbell Writers: Matthew Orton, Simon Uttley, Paul Andrew Williams Stars: Daisy Ridley, Clive Owen, Ray Fearon
Synopsis: Criminal activists hijack a gala, taking 300 hostages. One extremist plans mass murder as a message to the world. An Ex-soldier turned window cleaner now works to rescue the hostages.
Cleaner is uniquely entertaining as it unravels from a high-stakes crime heist to a full-blown action thriller set in modern-day London. Centered around the life of an always running late, foul-mouthed ex-soldier who now cleans windows 50 floors up. While the film is sold as an action thriller, there’s plenty of heart to Cleaner that leaves a lasting impression long after guns blaze. Unfortunately where the action shines, the narrative complicates a rather straight and simple premise. If there’s anything to be said, it’s that Daisy Ridley was made for action.
Audiences first met Joey Locke (Ridley) in a flashback showing a family life that is nothing short of toxic. As she’s listening in on an argument between her loved ones, she’s climbing the cupboards of her home to escape her surroundings. Cleaner establishes early on that Joey has a troubled family life, yet highlights the importance her older brother Michael (Matthew Tuck) has, as the camera lingers on a photo of them. From a young age, Joey is shown to be a highly skilled climber with an ability to get herself out of situations when needed.
Flash ahead to the present day, Joey is a window cleaner for an powerhouse energy company run by two brothers, Geoffrey Milton (Rufus Jones) and Gerald Milton (Lee Boardman). As she is running late, which is made to seem like her normal behavior, she is interrupted by a family emergency about her older brother. True to form, Joey races to her brother’s aid, taking him to work with her for the day. Joey’s job flat-out sucks; her bosses are jerks who talk down to her, and the owners of the company give their employees little relief. In one of the best moments of the movie that highlights Joey’s empathy, the film makes a point to show her care for others.. In a cramped elevator with a pregnant coworker, she sticks up for her when their CEO makes a nasty remark about her working while heavily pregnant.
As Joey clocks in for another late shift, with her brother safely on the first floor, she begins to clean the windows. A job at first is played for laughs, cleaning bird messes that no one else wants to, but later in the film is used to Joey’s advantage. But this day is not like any other, as the Milton brothers are hosting an important gala that will soon be taken over by radical activists with their deadly intent hidden behind colorful masks. Joey, trapped outside, must use her military background to save the building filled with 300 hostages, one being the most important person in her life. Cleaner is not afraid to ramp up the stakes, not wasting a single bullet when it counts.
Where this film truly shines is with its lead Daisy Ridley, who not only has a heartfelt sincerity when admitting to her brother she wasn’t always the best sister but also an impressive physical presence. There are many action pieces in this film in which Ridley is hanging off the side of a building, yet still landing her lines with force. Plus, plentiful amounts of hand-to-hand fights are featured where she outsmarts her opponents at each turn, but not without getting banged up herself. Ridley brings an earnestness to Joey with her dedicated physical performance and empathetic nature. Often, her performance outshines the rest of the cast, leading to one-sided dialogue that would hit harder emotionally if paired better.
What took me by surprise in Cleaner was the relationship between Joey and her brother Michael, who is on the spectrum. Both siblings are talented in their own right, with her brother being a genius computer hacker who carries an emotional support object with him, resembling Thor’s mighty hammer, Mjolnir. They have a complicated relationship that is explored through their bonded history with abusive parents, with Joey’s brother Michael taking the brunt of the abuse. There’s a genuine admiration for each other as they work through their shared trauma together all while the clock races.
Cleaner takes place almost entirely at One Canada Square, Canary Wharf in London, a 50-story high-rise building. It is seen from three perspectives: those who work there, those who own it, and those who see it as corrupt. Each viewpoint is only slightly explored, leaving many questions regarding their outcomes. Once the audience enters the building with Joey, we know there is no leaving peacefully for the 300 hostages. Campbell, along with Director of Photography, Oliver Loncraine, succeeds at a feeling of claustrophobia, enabling us to feel as one of the 300. The film shows the skyline only a few times to give a true idea of the scale of the building, leading to moments where Joey is left stranded on a lift several floors up only to be lost in the lack of depth in the frame. Visually, the building does its job to a degree; but nothing that truly captures that it’s the third tallest building in the United Kingdom.
Director Martin Campbell is no stranger when it comes to action, with Casino Royale, GoldenEye, and more recently The Protégé under his belt; he no doubt knows the genre well. Cleaner benefits from strong action pieces that are amplified by the heist aspect. The fights are engaging, making choices difficult for the film’s lead to choose, as the ideal and safest outcomes seem impossible to achieve. Unfortunately, the script leaves bits to be desired, with too many ideas going on to let any of them truly flourish. There’s an interesting story in there to be told, with energy companies facing the public as clean but being corrupt, and those fed up taking a stand, but it gets shuffled into a crowded deck.
Overall, Cleaner feels like a modern gender-bent version of Die Hard that showcases how versatile Daisy Ridley is as an actor. Campbell has a strong ability to build tense action but falls short with a narrative that is only there half of the time. Here’s to hoping Cleaner isn’t the last time we see Ridley bashing in faces with a monkey wrench.
This week on Women InSession, it’s our little twist on Valentine’s Day as we discuss our favorite vampire romances! Sure, we could have talked about rom-com’s or general romance dramas, but we had to spice it up a little bit. We thought this would be a fun way to get into the spirit of Valentine’s while talking about a genre of film that we really love.
Panel: Kristin Battestella, Jaylan Salah
On that note, check out this week’s show and let us know what you think in the comment section. Thanks for listening and for supporting the InSession Film Podcast!
Director: Julius Onah Writer: Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson Stars: Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez
Synopsis: Sam Wilson, the new Captain America, finds himself in the middle of an international incident and must discover the motive behind a nefarious global plan.
There are simply no real human cinematic stakes in Captain America: Brave New World. The title suggests a new phase or chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, the film lacks excitement, suspense, and intrigue. While some may appreciate its brisk runtime and lack of complexity, the plot is shallow, and, at under two hours, the action remains generic and, at times, a yawn-inducing been there, done that kind of way.
And, to make matters worse, Captain America: Brave New World takes itself too seriously without any reason, and is not being particularly compelling in any way.
Captain America: Brave New World opens with Sam Wilson (The Hurt Locker’s Anthony Mackie), the new Captain America, tracking an illegal sale of adamantium—the rare metal bonded to Wolverine’s skeleton and claws—in the heart of Mexico. Alongside Joaquin Torres (Top Gun: Maverick’s Danny Ramirez), aka Falcon, they thwart Sidewinder’s ( Giancarlo Esposito, reprising his role from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) plan.
In recognition of his efforts, President-elect Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) invites Sam to the White House under the guise of a job well done. He brings Torres and Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) to mend ties with a country that once turned its back on them. However, during a speech, Isaiah unexpectedly attempts to assassinate the President-elect. After a tense chase, Sam catches up to the aging super soldier—only to discover that Isaiah has no memory of his actions.
Captain America: Brave New World is from the director Julius Onah, the man who directed one of the best films of 2019, Luce, a film that was a deeply layered, strategic thriller whose take on White guilt and Black existentialism is always at a thoughtful boil. There was an opportunity for Brave New World to engage with similar themes and, at times, it comes close. In one scene, Ford’s President Ross pointedly tells Mackie’s Sam that he is no Steve Rogers, bringing race into the conversation—especially in light of Isaiah Bradley’s history.
However, the film quickly abandons this subject matter. As you watch, it becomes evident that the script went through multiple rewrites, stripping away anything compelling in favor of a formulaic, CGI-heavy spectacle that follows the standard comic book movie playbook beat by beat. The script has five credited writers—Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, Julius Onah, and Peter Glanz—raising the question of why anyone expected this new chapter to match the emotional complexity and conflict of Captain America: Civil War. After all, the lead script credit belongs to a writer from Netflix’s Full House revival.
Instead, Captain America: Brave New World is an extension to one of Marvel’s most misused storylines—The Hulk—while setting up Thunderbolts and delivering one of the most underwhelming post-credit scenes in MCU history. The film is overloaded with exposition for those who may have forgotten Bruce Banner’s past, the lost history ofThe Eternals, and the interconnected Disney+ series, yet these references feel primarily meaningless.
It made me wonder whether this film was simply a way to tie up loose ends from previous Marvel projects that the studio has no real intention of revisiting. This makes you wonder what the point of this entry is. It doesn’t seem to have any reason to exist besides being a bridge. When you have two iconic African-American comic superheroes with so much to offer with deep, thematic storylines, only to whittle them down to a story about the Red Hulk, with tired storylines about listening to both sides screaming from the aisles politically?
Captain America: Brave New World may still work for you if you’re a diehard fan of the studio and the comics. However, for those expecting something more substantial, the film feels like leftovers—reheated and lacking real depth. The only thing this comic book film assembles is boredom, a humdrum Marvel experience if there ever was one. The storyline of Sam Wilson and Carl Lumbly’s Isaiah Bradley deserved far better than this watered-down take on these essential comic book heroes.
You can watch Marvel’s Captain America: Brave New World only in theaters February 14th!
Director: Corey Sherman Writer: Corey Sherman Stars: Isaac Krasner, Dora Madison, David Johnson III
Synopsis: A teenage boy’s unexpected crush turns a camping trip into a weekend of self-discovery in this heartwarming coming-of-age comedy.
Coming-of-age stories have been a staple in indie cinema since its inception, bringing audiences into relatable firsthand experiences or spotlighting lives not personally experienced. These stories allow filmmakers to tell intimate stories recanting their own lives or new original ideas. When those who tell these stories allow us into their most embarrassing or formative moments, we learn new perspectives, making the world feel smaller than it is. Big Boys tells an all-too-relatable story about accepting yourself for who you are, quirks and all.
There’s much to enjoy from this queer-centered debut from Director Corey Sherman. A lovable lead, mortifying moments in front of a crush, and an idyllic summer trip away from home. Centering around the life of fourteen-year-old Jaime (Isaac Krasner) as he prepares for a weekend camping trip with his brother Will (Taj Cross), his cousin Allie (Dora Madison), and surprise guest, with her boyfriend Dan (David Johnson III). Sherman tells a unique narrative within Big Boys about a queer teen navigating through life with those who he is closest to.
Audiences first meet Jaime as he’s packing in his room, cluttered as any teen’s space is, with assorted junk piles under the bed and an unkempt bed stacked with supplies for the coming trip. Double, triple, and quadruple checking his list to make sure no item is forgotten, it’s quickly established that Jaime, although he has many moments of emotional immaturity, is much more mature than teens his age. This is made alarmingly apparent when Jaime’s older brother Will enters his room unannounced, poking fun at his younger brother and his detailed prep work for their trip, a common theme throughout Big Boys.
Sherman establishes early on that Jaime has a close relationship with his family, and when he finds out that his cousin Allie has invited her boyfriend Dan to their cousin’s trip he’s agitated. The day of the trip arrives and Jaime meets Dan for the first time, Jaime, from the moment he lays his eyes on Dan, has found his type. Dan is easy on the eyes, and as cliché as the description of tall, dark, and handsome can be. And in true awkward fashion, Jaime makes an ill-timed, yet hilariously dry bear-eating camper comment that those in the room giggle off. But from this moment Big Boys has Jaime experiencing everyone’s most formative teenage moment… their first crush. It just so happens that his first crush is his cousin’s burly boyfriend.
The majority of Big Boys takes place at a campsite over the course of a weekend, and from the moment the group arrives, Jaime makes it his mission to impress Dan. Grabbing kindling for a fire, carrying heavy coolers, or flexing his culinary skills by showcasing his secret stash of spices he brought along. We learn who Jaime is as he explores these new feelings. Setting the film in such a centralized location allows it to feel deeply intimate; when Jaime retreats to his tent after an embarrassing moment, it feels like we are closed in there with him, reliving those times when we were too vulnerable with our crushes. There’s a closeness with this family, but also their proximity to each other often leads to Jaime never truly being alone with his thoughts.
Jaime, as a character, is endearing; it’s easy to see yourself as him, and it’s refreshing to see a lead that takes up space, both in a personality sense and a physical sense. Jaime, who towers over his older brother Will, has bright hair compared to his brother’s dark hair; they couldn’t be more different. Will is more concerned with hooking up with random girls he meets and scoring drugs, compared to Jaime, who expresses that when he is ready to go all the way with someone, it’s going to be with someone he cares about and writes in a journal the reasons why he could or couldn’t be gay. Their relationship isn’t perfect and is often a point of conflict; Dan teaches Jaime that he needs to stick up for himself, a lesson that Jaime cherishes.
As Big Boys progresses and the trip nears its end, Jaime and Dan have bonded over just about anything that could be imagined; from burger seasonings to Alicia Keys. They share a final awkward situation out in the woods when they get lost on a trail, and Dan has to take his shirt off to make a bandage for Jaime’s wound. Sherman closes the film out by letting Jaime express his identity using their final moment in the woods, facing his queerness and not shying away from it. For Jaime’s character, it feels like the most natural ending, as someone who has shown incredible maturity from the start of the film. Knowing his feelings were real even when some of his closest family were pushing him in another direction.
Visually, the film radiates summertime from the first frame to the last, thanks to the cinematography by Gus Bendinelli and costuming by Laiken Landry and Karla Garcia. The look and feel of coming-of-age stories are just as important as their story; they help transport us to this sliver of time. Bendinelli captures the glittering of the lake water as Jaime pokes his head above the surface, or the beams of luminosity peeking through the breaks of leaves as he rests on a boulder. Paired with the costuming of Landry and Garcia, Jaime’s personality can be seen almost exclusively through visuals. Emerging from the lake to spit game with his older brother while pulling a wet shirt that is clinging to his body, or wearing his baseball cap backward to match his new crush, Dan.
Overall, Big Boys finds its stride with exploring the relatable growing pains of its lovable lead Jaime, with a queer twist. The film is overflowing with chemistry between its small cast with plenty of moments of heartfelt sincerity to be felt. Sherman finds himself nominated for the John Cassavetes Award, along with Krasner receiving a nomination for Best Breakthrough Performance for the 2025 Film Independent Spirit Awards. A film that reminds us of the importance of queer stories and their ability to make us empathize.
I never had children of my own. But I co-parented a child for three years—three of the most torturous, bittersweet years of my life. Nothing has ever hurt deeper. And no cut has felt ripe and exposed as that child that I mothered getting ripped out of my life. Or, to be more blunt, flaying myself off that child’s life to escape an abusive relationship.
Being motherless and experiencing motherhood in a way that I couldn’t find a proper definition for has made me hungry for any sort of connection, relatability, or a sense of solidarity with fellow women who have gone through crazy, inexplicable bursts of motherhood experiences, ones undefined by law or religion.
Motherhood is sacred and scary, a talisman for every woman until she tries it. Like the Vestal Virgins guarding the holy fire in the Temple of Vesta in Rome, each woman waits for her turn to guard that fire. Many women are crushed when the maternity train passes them. They feel excluded and lonely, as if there is a private club whose secret membership a woman obtains with difficulty, and later feels ostracized if her friends talk in front of her about the membership’s advantages (or disadvantages).
In my community’s motherhood club, I was an only child. My friends talked about breastfeeding, so I talked about my morning cappuccino. They talked about clothes stained with puke, and I spoke of cat fur on my cashmere sweater. I found myself locked in a cinematic shot from the protagonist’s POV, like a scene in Roman Polanski’s Tenant, and everyone sighs dramatically, explaining, “You don’t know how hard it is to be a mother,” their eyes are hostile and unkind.
I find my release in horror films where mothers are evil and controlling. Even in the way they love their children, they are by no means perfect. They are cruel or violent in more than one instance without trying to embellish this. Horror films often portray a bleak, neurotic mother figure, stripped of any angelic grace or sacred aura of motherhood—her fragile, innate essence left exposed and vulnerable, inviting threats rather than reverence.
In films such as Carrie And Psycho, the mother pushes her child into the abyss and causes them to go crazy with her domineering personality and her authoritarian religious manner. In Friday the 13th, Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) creates a little monster by constantly protecting Jason from the outside world, exploiting his illness to control all the details of his life.
Horror films also overthrow all theoretical values and ideals—nothing is perfect, inviolable, beautiful, or infallible from criticism and ridicule. The mother appears in many of them as a symbol, in which the dark side expands until it swallows everything in its path; the mother does not behave as she should and does not love her children as nature dictates.
The mothers I prefer have always been in horror movies.
As I have worked to process my own complex relationship with motherhood, I turned to horror films. As a source of comfort and an escape, but also as a resource to help me understand this beautiful, twisted bond between mother and child.
I have chosen to analyze films from three points of view: the relationship between the mother and the mothered, my connection to how motherhood is portrayed in the film, and how the aesthetics help elevate the storytelling from monster design to lighting, hair, and makeup.
Mama: The Monster of Loss
In Mama, directed by Andrés Muschietti, motherhood comes in the form of the wild energy of nature with its opposite poles: cruelty and tenderness, indifference and pity. It is cruel to those who take shelter from it to teach them life lessons while expressing kindness and refuge in those who lean into its chaotic energy. This is the case of the two girls, Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lily (Isabelle Nélisse), whose father is trying to kill them after he’s lost his mind and killed their biological mother. “Mama” is a woman from whom they snatched her child, sent to a psychiatric hospital, and after she tried to escape with it, kills the father and takes them both in.
In this film, Mama is not kind or affectionate. She is unrestrained and untamed, like motherhood, when it turns into a crushing monster that swallows everything that stands between it and what came out of its womb.
She is also a surrogate mother, the role I’ve played before, and I find myself sadly repeating in most of my current romantic relationships. Mama, like me, has been cursed with that eternal hunger for a child that’s not hers, abandoned or neglected by the biological parent, so she steps up to fill in the role that the original mother should have occupied. In that child’s eternal hunger for a mother’s tenderness and nurturing embrace, Mama overpours, but because she is a soul of a forest, a creature, no more no less, she does that in ways that only showcase her savagery.
Prosthetic Supervisor Montse Ribé’s makeup and hair for Mama fascinates me. Her emaciated form, her distorted figure, her jerky and twitchy movement—very fitting of a woman formerly spending a portion of her life in a mental asylum—and her disheveled, wild, uncombed hair, the way she flips it around her head as she swiftly moves, crawls, and creeps into the corners of the house where the two girls reside with a “false” other mother, then suddenly jerks and attacks, she has a mix of a wild animal’s physicality and a sleek ghostly movement.
The Babadook: Depression as a Monster
How far will a mother go to love a child? How does a mother know her child won’t swallow her entire existence? What if a child is born into the world to bring their mother misery instead of light?
The Babadook is a feature about motherhood and the ghost of depression, specifically postpartum depression. In the film, the mother Amelia (Essie Davis), lives with her son Samuel (Noah Wiseman) alone after her husband died in a car accident while driving her to the hospital. She has a guilt complex for losing her handsome, loving husband in favor of giving birth to her boy. Her toxic feelings petrify in the form of severe depression, which grows until they break free from her and become a monster in the name of Babadook that takes her and Samuel as hostages in their house—the Babadook ensnares them both in a vicious cycle that feeds itself backward.
Extreme closeups trap me in Amelia’s world and force me to react to her isolation in motherhood while raising her son. It makes me wonder if motherhood is, in fact, suffocating and could sometimes bring misery to the mother rather than pride and joy. What if I become one of those sad, depressed mothers? What would I do if the maternal outpouring of emotions work in reverse, and instead of happiness and joy, I feel pain and bitterness? The camera focuses on Amelia’s face, which lacks a single hint of a smile, and my insides curl in repulsion, especially when the camera pans to a shot of her son, small and annoying, as the camera’s POV is her viewing her son. As I eye him, donning the gown of Amelia, I wonder to myself, “What’s worse: not having a child entirely, or being unable to love my child?” Amelia and Samuel’s home is shrouded in mystery, dimly lit and morbid, like a funeral home. Large frame sections are obscured in pitch darkness, ending any hope in sight. The Babadook is a physical manifestation of Amelia’s postpartum depression and the feeling of secretly hating her son, a sin that she cannot face. The resentment enlarges inside of her until it becomes an actual monster in the form of The Babadook.
Lights Out: The Monster of Untreated Mental Illness
Lights Out shows untreated mental illness as a familiar ghost, one that haunts the living and refuses to leave. Diana —the half-demon, half-human— is a manifestation of Sophie’s (Maria Bello) mental illness; psychosis and schizoaffective disorders come to mind due to the nature of Sophie’s behavior, but also severe clinical depression. Diana is Sophie’s untreated mental illness, but she is still afraid to lose her, even though she has caused the collapse of all other aspects of Sophie’s life, including her relationship with her children. Sophie desperately clings to her deteriorating mental state in an attempt to rebel against the destruction of her identity as a mother.
Depression has been the only thing that allows the mother to feel that she is just a woman and not a vessel for giving birth, nursing, and watching over the child who comes out of her uterus to take over her existence and threaten her identity. I understand Sophie’s plight, even her adherence to her mental illness, refusing treatment. A warped mind can sometimes wrap itself around a disorder or a disturbance to create an identity. Surrounded by many mothers, I often hear their complaints about how it has become only about the baby that they sometimes wonder, “But who am I? Where have I gone?” To Sophie, Diana, in all her darkness and oppressiveness, is a testament to her individuality against the pull of her role as a mother.
Cinematographer Marc Spricer plays with varying degrees of light and shade. In every lit room, there is a dark corner or two. It is a testament to the elusive nature of the mental illness and when trauma is triggered. Sophie’s children live in the tiny spots where the light stays as opposed to their mother’s pitch-black room. To them, their mother becomes a source of alienation, an uncanny presence rather than a source of nurture and warmth. The film is shot in ways that place Sophie always in the darkened corner or the door’s opening, a silhouette rather than a fully-fleshed human, a ghostly presence rather than a supporting, loving figure. Even to the viewers, she appears untrustworthy. I wonder, as a woman with multiple diagnosed mental disorders, had I decided to have children, would they have seen me as Sophie hiding Diana? Would I have become a trustworthy figure in their lives or a source of fear and misery?
The Others: Motherhood As a Sin
What is a mother’s greatest fear? To accidentally cause the death of her child. We hear a lot about negligent homicide, so what about a mother who accidentally killed her two children in a fit of raging madness? Enter Grace (Nicole Kidman) in The Others, who dealt with one of the greatest taboos in the world of motherhood: a mother murdering her child. In a moment of utter despair, Grace kills her two children after hearing the news of her husband’s death in World War II. Then, she self-punishes to cleanse her great sin (she is a religious mother who raised her two children on Christian teachings) and commits suicide.
As someone with mental and behavioral disorders, this fear has always walked by my side like a shadow; what if, by some unimaginable burst of darkness inside me, I hurt the ones I love? It’s one of the reasons I refused to have children and not even once tried to seek to get pregnant. It’s why I always picked complicated and far-from-stable relationships. Part of my commitment-phobic personality has been a fear of what commitment may bring: devotion, compromise, and the possibility of motherhood as a sacrificial other self. But what if the caregiver, the kind, nurturing soul in those children’s lives, is the threat they should be protected from?
Photo by Jessie Eastland
Director Alejandro Amenábar and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe drew inspiration from German Expressionism while shooting the film. Playing with shadows and lighting, the contrast between darkness and light has contributed to the atmosphere of burying Grace’s ultimate sin, her denial of the murder of her children. The way she imprisons herself with the children in a large mansion devoid of light is also expressed through the use of sheets, drapes, blinds, and monochromatic coloring in the costume design department. The contrast between the warm light of the candles, the opaqueness of the fog scenes, and the blackness that absorbs every color in its wake work to enhance Grace’s deteriorating mental state after ending her children’s lives, and her clinging to a nonexistent hope of “righting an irreversible wrong”. Her silly motherhood dream of “all can be fixed to protect my child” haunts me.
Aliens: Tokophobia and Monstrous Motherhood
From an outsider, non-avid sci-fi fan perspective, the first four Alien movies are about one central theme: the intense dynamic between Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the Queen Xenomorph. All of the sci-fi special effects, the intricate plot details, the masterful direction, and the brilliant cinematography mean nothing without the face-off between two mothers, a mother who never had children of her own (Ripley), and another who has had an abundance of them, so much so, she keeps planting them in other people’s bodies so that she can procreate more (Queen Xenomorph).
I fell for the Queen Mother just as I fell for Ripley: two women, their motherly instincts being tested. Ripley is always escaping the insertion of the xenomorph tails and tentacles inside her. But at her core, she is evading that inevitable destiny of getting pregnant. In every one of the first three Alien films, we get an uncomfortable scene of Ripley and an attempted insertion, possible fertilization of a baby xenomorph inside her. What does that communicate, not just about Ripley but also the generalized fear that women experience of pregnancy, conception, giving birth, and losing a child? The Queen Xenomorph, on the other hand, is the queen of a hive, so she has no sensitivities about having thousands and thousands of children. She goes as far as using other people’s bodies —unwilling surrogates— to carry the burden. Her ferocity and merciless violence make her a mother in the wild, a Mama Bear protecting the cubs from intruders, a lioness grabbing people’s necks and sinking her fangs into their carotid. Even though Queen Xenomorph is a predator, I don’t love her any less than Ripley. In her hive, she has her reasons for going after human intruders, using their bodies as incubation pods for her hatchlings. When tables are turned as in Alien: Resurrection, humans don’t prove any better than her when they capture the xenomorphs and execute torturous experiments on them. From her point of view, she is not a real villain, but a misunderstood hero of her own tale.
Swiss Surrealist painter H.R. Giger created a monstrous mother by designing the Xenomorph. He left many birth, intercourse, and pregnancy symbols in the spacecraft, and the landscape of the Xenomorph lair, because, at its core, the spaceships and the Xenomorph hive—a dark cavernous, spacious colony occupying the cooling towers of a terraforming station— are the tenebrous inside of a mother’s womb. So Ripley, who is a mother not biologically but through mothering another woman’s child, enters the womb of another mother —the Queen Xenomorph— to get rid of this other woman’s fetuses, eggs, and full-grown children, the xenomorphs. Is there anything more poetic than this? As I watched the first four films of the franchise, I felt a sense of exposure therapy, having genitalia that are eerily similar to mine. The xenomorphs’ mouths are vaginal openings, and the Facehuggers insert their penile-like zingers in the victims’ mouths to eject their eggs. The alien derelict is a giant vagina, an erotic being, an entry into Giger’s twisted mind, but also a fascination, a world where humans need to be swallowed for xenomorphs to come to life. A hidden, latent fear of fertilization and pregnancy resurfaced in me; to bring a child into the world, who has to be swallowed whole for this new creature to be born? Is it the integrity of my vaginal wall? Is it my womb? I hear stories of multiple births causing women’s vaginas to look distorted and morphed, losing that tightness and firmness that a woman prides herself on as she grows older and begins experiencing her body in full. I remember the cavernous space opening of the Alien vassal and Kane getting swallowed whole to be impregnated and carrying the baby xenomorphs and I wonder about the physiology of the womb and the body and how it carries birth that may sometimes bring death on the carrier.
The Curse of La Llorona: Motherhood As a Punishment On the World
Bringing a child into the world is sometimes a woman’s greatest pride and joy. But what if it’s also her greatest nightmare? In the case of La Llorona (Marisol Ramirez), it’s an entirely different narrative than Grace in The Others, because La Llorona mourns her children by wanting to harm those of others. She drowns her children in a fit of jealous rage against an unfaithful husband, and when she wakes up from the mess she made, La Llorona rages against the world. She searches for other mothers to punish for her crime.
La Llorona represents the wild side of motherhood, unrepentant grief, and animalistic loss. If people talk about moving on and living, finding grace and bliss in everything, La Llorna objects. She demands an unforgivable, wild, and unruly state of mourning. She roams the earth, trying to find solace by depriving other mothers of their children so that they can all create a circle of lamenting women in solidarity. She commits an act of violence because she can’t bear the fact that she brought the dark omen on herself. She killed her children with her own hands and thus has been cursed forever. To pass on the curse, she has to kill as many children as she can and create more vengeful mothers— angry spirits that find no rest just like hers. It’s the antithesis of suffering in silence like good women do. It’s the antithesis of a good, religious woman accepting loss with piety and faith. It’s how I like my women the most, especially mothers. Raging and messed up. Violent and unforgiving. It aches me to see people in sorrow controlling their gigantic feelings of misery and despair, I never resonate with that. As I left a family in which I was a co-parent, I didn’t grieve in silence. I didn’t shut up about it. I was a walking ball of rage and despair. That’s why I admire La Llorna’s monstrous anguish and distress.
Special Effects Makeup Artist Gage Munster constructs a tapestry of a face. La Llorona’s black silicone tears pour down constantly looking fresh, thick, and gooey. Munster also creates a wet look with a pale face that showcases her endless state of drowning, a mourning mother never finding peace or rest so her drowned corpse is as white as starch but also glazed like she has been in the river for decades but seeming like she has just fallen yesterday. Grief is tricky, and La Llorona’s look captures the marks it has left on her. Those cheeks, tear-stricken, and engraved with her constant wailing look like cracked porcelain. It scares me, how suffering eats at the soul and the body of a dying woman. And what worse heartache than taking the life of her child? There is no word to describe the regret she must have felt then. La Llorona’s face and her black, tarry tears sum it all.
Splice: Will a Modern, Accomplished Career Woman of Science Love an Imperfect Child?
In Splice, Elsa (Sarah Polley) creates a creature using her hybridized DNA with other species. The result is Dren (Delphine Chanéac), a human-animal hybrid that resembles a modern Frankenstein monster. Splice is a cautionary tale -like Mary Shelley’s story in the past— of science gone too far, of motherhood, and how a modern, successful, and highly judgmental woman bearing a child can let her disappointment with her creation -her offspring- get in the way of her maternal love. What Elsa has been aiming for with Dren is slightly ambiguous. Has she been seeking perfection and scientific excellence? Was she playing god? If that is the case, then why has she been accepting of Dren’s earlier stage of development with her less human features and rejecting Dren’s more feminine evolution into a sexual entity? Why did that threaten her?
The relationship between Dren and Elsa compels and fascinates me. I’ve seen it everywhere. Mothers and daughters fighting and loving each other. Beauty queen mothers reject daughters who fall short of their impossible standards or relentlessly push them toward unattainable ideals of perfection. Brilliant mothers distancing themselves from less gifted daughters piling up bitterness like excess stomach acid in their souls. From the moment Dren develops signs of rebellion and stubbornness, Elsa takes some drastic measures and their relationship quickly escalates into pure feminine antagonism. Both women aim to assert control and dominance, leaving the sole male of the story, Clive (Adrien Brody), isolated and helpless. This sounds familiar, like my complicated relationship with my mother whom I have always revered and worshiped, and yet as I grew older, our dynamics shifted. It scared me to think one day I would have a daughter, beautiful and brilliant like my mother saw me in my childhood and young adult years, only to turn into a raging mid-thirties woman, as she struggles now trying to navigate our relationship.
Director Vincenzo Natali designed Dren after a hairless mouse, a product of a scientific experiment that fascinated him. For some reason, the character design: hairless, nude, with a stingy zinger, and animalistic clicking sounds, along with the gender metamorphosis at the end disturbed me. There is something vulnerable about Dren. It’s inexplicable but Natali describes her as a product of many fathers, but it’s not that simple. Dren carries a sensitive ethereal presence about her like she has just come out of the womb but never grew out of that fetus status. The moment I see her, something tugs at me and I want to wrap her in a swaddle and carry her to safety. Then I remember her lethality and that scares me away from her. Dren’s physicality works for and against her, which makes her an even more haunting character. She can hurt others viciously, but they can also easily shift the power balance and hurt her more.
Immaculate: Motherhood As a Way to Control Women’s Bodies
In one scene from Immaculate, Sister Cecilia—a role where Sydney Sweeney plays another manifestation of the Madonna/Whore complex for the audiences— discovers that she is pregnant, despite being a virgin. As she is interrogated about her sexual past and her claim of celibacy, the scene becomes increasingly uncomfortable. A beautiful, young, innocent-looking girl with zero makeup on, dressed in a nun costume that makes her appear eerily virtuous and saintly, is humiliated, embarrassed, and angry. A group of men; old, powerful zealots group on the girl and question her like detectives. In the next scene, she discovers the lack of agency and ownership over her body which suddenly becomes a vessel for what she is being told is God’s seed implanted in her; a pregnancy without sexual intercourse. Cecilia is thrust into a forced state of adoration and worship, her body becomes a sacred temple that she dares not abuse or harm. Motherhood becomes a tool of oppression, a way to control a young woman’s body and force her into an existence that she no longer wants to partake in.
I identify with Cecilia like every young woman I’ve known or met who had to endure an unwanted pregnancy. The state of worship that a pregnant woman undergoes, disregarding her discomfort or her doubts about her state and the changes that happen to her body, forces her to continue a pregnancy she is otherwise doubtful or unsure of. Cecilia’s dissonance with her body and her position is gaslit by everyone around her, she is not allowed to object or express concern or unease, even though the body probed, examined, and protected is hers. Yet external forces of men and women allies, those protectors of the feminine body in all its reproductive mystique, don’t seem to let it go. They don’t want to allow her access to the one she should completely have control over; her body, and her decision to be a mother or not. I sympathize with her loneliness and helplessness, it frustrates me —a woman childless by choice, unwilling, stubbornly, to seek medicated ways to make her reproductively challenged body more accepting of alternative pregnancy choices—to see her struggling against those forcing her to accept her fate and indulge in the celebrations submissively.
Elisha Christian’s cinematography is haunting and fascinating, yet what makes the movie more relatable and intimate is Sweeney’s innocent face and beautiful features framed through the lens. Director Michael Mohan creates a halo around her face so that, in some scenes, she is more of an iconic religious female figure rather than simply a young girl devoting herself to a convent.
Production designer Adam Reamer talked about the religious symbols surrounding Cecilia. The way I observe her walking through long, dark corridors stands out. Long shots and wide angles frame her as a little girl trapped in vast spaces, confined within gigantic institutes. These spaces exert fear in her heart—not just of institutionalized religions where individuality doesn’t matter, but also of her own body and what it harbors, bears, or delivers. If any actress other than Sweeney had been picked for this role, it wouldn’t have been that effective, as her ability to shapeshift between a coy seductress and an innocent fair maiden is incomparable to the modern talent of her generation.
Conclusion and Afterthoughts:
Motherhood is scary for a woman who has not crossed the dark tunnel of childbirth, so what motivates women like me who have not experienced pregnancy and childbirth to write about motherhood? What motivates any female filmmaker to capture a fleeting topic that has never been part of her life on the screen? I approached motherhood as Icarus approached the sun, analyzing horror movies, and looking for clues in between the lines. But after the end of the experience, I felt empty. Motherhood is something no longer on my radar. Polycystic Ovary Syndrome has accompanied me all my life, walking side by side like a shadow, and unlike many women who suffer from the same disorder, I didn’t freeze my eggs. I never even wanted to. It felt bizarre to me that something I feared so badly would be something I would go to extreme lengths to preserve. Unlike my mother who married young and had me a year after marriage, I never even got married. And as she enjoyed a young motherhood, mine would’ve been what they scientifically call geriatric pregnancy, as I navigate the final years of my thirties.
I can’t even fathom how that makes me feel. My emptiness has no root in regret but rather an otherness that surrounds me and suffocates me with a knot so tight that sometimes it leaves me unable to breathe. I tried every trick up my sleeve to be a normal woman, to have normal relationships, and to take the safe route of work, marriage, and children. But all my pursuits failed. I ended up the dark, raging, lonely poet with all kinds of bizarre feelings and relationships, mothering myself rather than my nonexistent children, and failing to find a catalyst for the aching in my soul.
Director: Peter Hastings Writer: Peter Hastings, Dav Pikey Stars: Pete Davidson, Poppy Liu, Lil Rel Howery
Synopsis: Dog Man, half dog and half man, he is sworn to protect and serve as he doggedly pursues the feline supervillain Petey the Cat.
Dav Pilkey published the final Captain Underpants book in 2015, ending the series’ twelve-book run, which lasted almost twenty years. These children’s books were interactive action graphic novels every kid had to get when the Scholastic Book Fair came into town. The end of the series was followed by a commercially and critically successful Captain Underpants film in 2017 and a TV show that ran for 3 seasons, which was also positively reviewed. However, when it came to the bookshelves, something was missing when Captain Underpants was taken off. Luckily, Pilkey didn’t make fans of the style wait long as Dogman released only a year after the end of Captain Underpants run and, in only 9 years, the spin-off series has surpassed its predecessor with 13 books being released and is already finding a home on the big screen.
The film Dog Man is the origin story for the media-proclaimed “Supa cop.” After an explosion injured police officer Knight and his sidekick and K9 best friend Greg in opposite ways, two surgeons decide to combine the only usable parts of the two—Knight’s body and Greg’s head—to create Dog Man—a police officer with the body of a human and the head and brain of a dog.
Told in breakneck pace, Dog Man, while energetically fun, sadly doesn’t live up to Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie. Truthfully, this film was more of what I believed the original Captain Underpants movie would be – one that felt like the ever-popular graphic novels were transformed onto the screen. Captain Underpants effectively launched a successful television show because the film did more than just what the novels gave them; there was an expansion into the lore and characters while keeping the same whimsical sense. In the case of Dog Man, the whimsy along with bizarre language, pacing, and story felt too abundant at times, and many of the qualities that make the books such an easy and exciting read became lost in translation.
That’s because, for the novel, the audience can go at their own pace. The film’s beginning flies by so quickly that there isn’t enough time to breathe and take in what is happening. Dog Man is attempting to catch his arch-nemesis Petey (Pete Davidson), an orange cat whose goal is to be as evil as possible and the same cat who caused the explosion creating Dog Man. Told through montages of Petey being caught, escaping Cat Jail, and repeating, these scenes zip by with no time to engage, or even enjoy, much of the hilarity that primarily works. Many of the side characters, such as Chief (Lil Rey Howery), Sarah Hatoff (Isla Fisher), and Mayor (Cheri Oteri), provide enjoyable dialogue of people dealing with this bizarre situation, and many of these characters have some sort of goal that is made apparent and provide depth to the story. However, Dog Man and Petey’s duels, which should be the film’s high point, feel stale, and while kids may enjoy the chaos of the two rivals’ feuds, it can become exhausting over time.
It isn’t until Petey’s attempt at cloning himself, only to make a child version of himself that takes 18 years to grow into an actual clone, that the film slows down. When Li’l Petey (Petey’s clone voiced by Lucas Hopkins Calderone) is introduced, the audience can finally breathe; the pacing slows drastically, and the plot regains structure. Li’l Petey ruins Petey’s plan to revive a dead telekinetic fish named Flippy (Ricky Gervais), who Petey ultimately abandons in the street. Dog Man saves Li’l Petey from death and brings him home, teaching him how to enjoy life and what it offers.
When Flippy is successfully brought back to life and sets out to destroy all do-gooders, there is reflection in both Dog Man and Petey as they must work together, causing both to discover what matters to them most in order to defeat the evil fish and his army of buildings brought to life. While there is an attempt at an emotional climax involving fatherhood and the search for the beauty of life, the characters themselves weren’t fleshed out or interesting enough to make these moments work on anything more than surface level, which, as stated earlier, is because this film isn’t much more than the book brought to the screen. This isn’t meant to be a knock for Pilkey’s vision; it’s just that what he creates on paper doesn’t translate perfectly to the big screen. Why Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie worked as well as it did was because it adapted the source material and made it into something that worked for all audiences, whether you were a fan or not. Unfortunately, Dog Man’s case, there is not much that an average movie-goer can connect with overall.
On the other hand, like Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, the animation here uses exciting 3D characters, and the 2D book aesthetic utilizes every visual space. At the very least, Peter Hastings accomplishes bringing Dav Pilkey’s graphic novels to life. Even if the film may be disorganized at points, visually, there is something worth looking at, and for fans of the franchise, something that feels familiar. Even someone new to the franchise’s zaniness should be able to engage visually, even if the story doesn’t connect.
This is why, even though there is a lack of visual focus that would make you believe a dog actually made the film, Dog Man still finds a way to be, at times, enjoyable. The animation is as engaging as the books are, keeping Dav Pilkey’s vision front and center, and once Li’l Petey is introduced, the film story finds a modicum of structure. However, the shallow story can accentuate some of the overzealousness visually, causing audiences to feel exhausted only part way into the film. It’s an enjoyable time for kids, but unless you are familiar with or are a fan of the franchise, this might be one to keep in the doghouse.
On this episode, JD and Brendan review the comedy-horror film from Josh Ruben in Heart Eyes! It might not be the greatest as a horror film, but as a rom-com it’s really funny and charming. It’s a compelling duality that offers some compelling intrigue, even if it is a bit jarring at times in the film.
Director: Scott Derrickson Writer: Zach Dean Stars: Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sigourney Weaver
Synopsis: Two highly-trained operatives become close after being sent to protect opposite sides of a mysterious gorge. When an evil emerges, they must work together to survive what lies within.
The Gorge is undeniably entertaining but feels like a collection of incomplete ideas hastily stitched together. The leads are charming and share genuine chemistry, while the opening sequence delivers action and occasional thrills. Yet, just as a scene transitions into an exciting development, it is often undercut by a lazy explanation.
To make matters worse, the film seems unsure of its own identity, veering wildly from an ’80s coming-of-age indie comedy to a flimsy monster movie that rigidly follows the genre playbook—step by step, as Sgt. Al Powell would say. The Gorge is frustrating, and the filmmakers missed the mark on their potential.
This is a 10-part miniseries crammed into a 120-minute film.
The Gorge follows former United States Marine Levi (Whiplash’s Miles Teller), one of the three greatest long-range snipers the world has ever known. Now a mercenary who occasionally works for the government, Levi is haunted by his dreams, relying on three and a half ounces of whiskey each night to manage his nightmares. And no, he can’t take prescribed medication—its side effects would compromise his professional abilities.
Levi is approached by Bartholomew (Sigourney Weaver), a government “spook” who loves his Army record and the fact that if he dies on this mission, no one will care. Levi accepts, flown to an undisclosed location to live in a lookout tower to relieve J.D. (Sope Dirisu), who has been manning his post for over a year, and to keep an eye on a narrow valley encased by fog.
According to J.D., Levi is taking over and securing the gates of hell.
Across from the edge of a deep, impenetrable gorge with slippery rock walls stands Drasa (Furiosa’sAnya Taylor-Joy), a Russian mercenary and Levi’s Eastern counterpart. She has just said goodbye to her father, who is dying of cancer. Drasa and Levi begin communicating through pen and paper—a detail that, I’ll admit, is rather adorable—until they witness what emerges from the gorge. Then, all hell breaks loose.
The Gorge was directed by Scott Derrickson and written by The Tomorrow War’sZach Dean. Both of those films were well-received, featuring tighter, more coherent storytelling and a clear sense of identity. Dean’s script borrows tropes from various genres, attempting to graft them onto a horror backdrop that never quite fits. Meanwhile, Derrickson, who captivated audiences with The Black Phone, fails to create the sense of unease that should be a staple of any monster film.
Instead, both seem more preoccupied with a romance that never earns its keep.
Yes, Teller and Taylor-Joy’s chemistry is simply that of two good-looking people finding each other attractive. The film’s most entertaining scene has them flirting across the gorge while firing guns at monsters creeping up the walls—a spectacle that serves as the most blatant metaphor for sex since Mr. & Mrs. Smith, with both of them spraying bullets all over the gorge. Yet, the script bypasses any meaningful overtures to establish real love, instead relying on a single night in bed as justification for them risking their lives for each other.
We learn nothing about these characters that would help us understand their motivations or actions. Instead, the film uses this lack of depth as an excuse to propel them into increasingly absurd action sequences, all in pursuit of uncovering the “truth” behind why they’re there—the most cornball example of action-plot maneuvering since Independence Day.
They even manage to turn on modern computer systems despite supposedly being shut down since World War II.
Oh, and somehow, they have an endless supply of bullets without reloading, show zero signs of trauma, and keep going strong after 72 hours of nonstop fighting against creatures, bad guys, and the impending end of the world? The Gorge leaves no room to breathe, explore character motivations, or develop into something truly thrilling, meaningful, or honest.
Instead, it strings together loosely connected plot holes with clichés that feel more like cinematic CliffsNotes than a story you can fully immerse yourself in—for better or worse.
You can stream The Gorge on Apple TV+ on February 14th!
On this episode, we talk about all the trailers we got at this year’s Super Bowl, including The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Thunderbolts*, Jurassic World Rebirth, Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon and Hurry Up Tomorrow!
Director:Dougal Wilson Writers:Mark Burton, Jon Foster, James Lamont Stars: Hugh Bonneville, Ben Whishaw, Antonio Banderas
Synopsis:Paddington returns to Peru to visit his beloved Aunt Lucy, who now resides at the Home for Retired Bears. With the Brown family in tow, a thrilling adventure ensues when a mystery plunges them into an unexpected journey.
It’s futile to think that Paddington in Peru could ever be as good, if not better, than Paddington 2. Yet many moviegoers were ready to throw in the towel and prematurely qualify the latest installment in Heyday Films’ adaptation of Michael Bond’s children’s stories as a disappointment because director Paul King went on to make Wonka, and Sally Hawkins did not return to portray Mrs. Brown. Why would you ever doubt one of the most lovable characters in all of children’s media, one who has stood the test of time and became a staple of British culture long before King brought him to life on the screen in 2015 is beyond me, but such is the Film Twitter bubble, I guess.
Of course, you can’t top Paddington 2. That film will likely be considered one of the greatest sequels in cinema history a few decades from now (many already strongly think it is). But does Paddington in Peru truly need to? Absolutely not, especially when what’s on-screen retains the same charm and imagination that King laid forward in the first two movies, even if Sally Hawkin’s absence does linger on the family dynamic. With respect to Emily Mortimer, who gives a fine portrayal of Mary Brown, the relationship she has with Hugh Bonneville’s Henry Brown, alongside her children Judy (Madeleine Harris) and Jonathan (Samuel Joslin), doesn’t connect as strongly as it did when Hawkins played the character.
But that’s about the only glaring “flaw” Dougal Wilson’s endearing third entry in the Paddington saga has. It retains the same levels of charm and wonder as the first two movies, notably in the wondrous visual language returning cinematographer Erik Wilson gives to Windsor Gardens as the titular character (voiced again by Ben Whishaw) has since he became a British citizen from the last time we left him in the arms of Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton). How a marmalade-loving bear can receive citizenship in the United Kingdom, I have no idea, but it’s part of what makes these movies so ineffably fun. Paddington is a British icon, after all, so why can’t he become a citizen? There’s your answer.
However, the celebration in the Brown household is short-lived when Paddington receives a letter from The Reverend Mother (Olivia Colman) of the Home of Retired Bears that tells him his Aunt Lucy has gone missing. With Mrs. Bird (Julie Walters) tagging along, the family travels to Peru, hoping to reunite Paddington with his beloved aunt. Upon their arrival, they are quickly thrust into a treasure hunt after the discovery that Lucy ran away from her home in search of the mythical El Dorado, which gold-obsessed boat captain Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas) is also looking for with his daughter Gina (Carla Tous).
This classic treasure-hunting story doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but neither did the first two installments. I don’t recall Paddington and Paddington 2 being movies that took drastic risks with their storytelling. How they were executed made these films impact young and old audiences alike. King took what looked like a simple story on the surface and elevated it with note-perfect humor and eye-widening aesthetics that profoundly touched generations of children and might even make some of them believe in the magic of moviemaking. There hasn’t been a great live-action family franchise in forever. Studios have grown out of touch with what truly resonates with children and gives them genuine emotional power, especially in the live-action world. They’d rather spend money on Harold and the Purple Crayon or Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, equally horrific pictures that set the now stale world of children’s cinema back to potentially irredeemable depths.
That’s why it feels so special to have Paddington go, this time around, on a larger-than-life adventure with set pieces inspired by Indiana Jones, Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, and perhaps splashes of James Gray’s The Lost City of Z. There are obvious visual cues sprinkled throughout, but even for the children who are uninitiated to adventure cinema, Paddington in Peru has enough highly-imaginative sequences of pure whimsical energy that it becomes hard to resist what Wilson ultimately offers in front of us, especially when the titular character hasn’t lost his comedic touch from the second film, despite a change in the director’s chair.
A shipwreck sequence with Paddington attempting to drive the boat but further endangering it to be destroyed by the moving rapids? This is Paddington’s homage to Herzog’s film, and anyone who isn’t grinning ear-to-ear during this sequence may not like cinema. I don’t make the rules. Or how about an entire climax set in front of the entrance to El Dorado featuring a boulder, marmalade-loving llamas, and a rare, venomous spider? Absolute peak, if I do say so myself. What makes both of these scenes work so well isn’t so much the well-timed humor of Whishaw’s vocal turn as Paddington but how Wilson always communicates with Erik Wilson’s camera to continuously be in service of the protagonist’s actions.
Notice how he stages the climax. We always follow Paddington despite often showcasing Cabot running after the bear. How the camera moves during a specific moment where he attempts to hide (without much success) from the antagonist side-scrolls to his angle and never breaks it until editor Úna Ní Dhonghaíle cross-cuts to the Brown family’s antics on a moving plane dubbed as “The Miracle.” Rarely have we seen, in modern family cinema, such impeccable precision in its cutting, where every single editorial choice creates a level of tension and excitement as Paddington’s journey reaches its death-defying conclusion. It’s always in service of the story, first and foremost, and nothing else.
It, of course, stays well within the confines of family entertainment, but one can’t deny the formal edge it has over literally every other live-action children’s offering made in this decade. The exterior shot of the plane traveling to Peru visualizes the aircraft through papier mâché, while the finale is all about celebrating the legacy of adventure films, putting Paddington in a series of mild thrills that Wilson elevates through surprisingly kinetic visual style and dynamic editing. There’s always a sense of play in how the camera moves within the scene or in how Dhonghaíle cuts from one frame to the next. It always focuses on the protagonist, and that’s primarily why these movies have always worked like a charm.
Yes, the family dynamic between Paddington and the Browns remains rock-solid. And the additions of Olivia Colman, Antonio Banderas, and Carla Tous all bring newfound vigor to the proceedings. Banderas revels in a Phoenix Buchanan-type performance (though Hunter’s ‘other selves’ are descendants haunting his mind as ghosts, not disguises to foil Paddington et al.) and has tons of fun attempting to overcome his family’s curse, while Tous impresses in a genuine breakout turn. I wonder how different it would’ve been had Rachel Zegler stayed on the project (she was sadly forced to exit, as the film was shot during the SAG-AFTRA strike), but I doubt the relationship between father and daughter would’ve been as genuine as it feels here.
Above all else, though, there’s Paddington, and Whishaw brings the same soft-heartedness as he did in the first two movies and gets even more emotional than the second film’s ending upon finding out what El Dorado holds in store for him. What it is, I will not tell you. But when you discover it on your own, it will be very difficult to hold back tears. There wasn’t a dry eye in the cinema during a sold-out promotional screening, myself included. Sometimes, it feels right to cry, especially when you have Paddington at your side, reminding us that there is always good to be found in a world that feels drearier by the minute. In that sense, Paddington in Peru arrives at the perfect time and is primed to capture our hearts yet again for some much-needed escapism from the dark clouds of reality.
Navel-gazing cynics may nitpick at elements they really shouldn’t care about because when such joyful exuberance reminds you of life’s pleasures, perhaps it’s best just to sit back and have fun. Some movies demand it. Paddington in Peru is undoubtedly one of those.
On this episode, JD and Brendan discuss the action-comedy Love Hurts, starring the great Ke Huy Quan! After winning an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All At Once, an award he wholly deserved, we’ve been eagerly anticipating what Ke Huy Quan’s career would look like as he ventures into a new phase of his career. Let’s just hope there’s more opportunities available. We love him, but this one hurt.
Review: Love Hurts (4:00) Director: Jonathan Eusebio Writers: Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, Luke Passmore Stars: Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, Daniel Wu
The “actor’s showcase” – much like the “oh, the places you’ll go” dramatic framework that I wrote about in this series’ first volume – is nothing new to the Sundance Film Festival, nor to cinema at large. Just as there were a great many films in this year’s program that followed characters navigating foreign environments, even more can be classified as features hinging on their lead performance(s) for dear life, some too dependent while others afford their stars the chance to revel in the spotlight, to display their chameleonic chops for a broad audience of viewers who might only be familiar with one aspect of their work, perhaps even one performance. It’s as thrilling to watch Rose Byrne, a comedic genius in films like Bridesmaids and Neighbors, transform into a woman whose life rapidly crumbles around her in Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You as it is to see Josh O’Connor go from his scruffy horn-dog tennis pro in Challengers to a subdued, broken farmer looking to rebuild his small world in Max Walker-Silverman’s Rebuilding (much like what the writer-director managed to achieve with Dale Dickey and Wes Studi in 2022’s A Love Song).
To the latter point, it’s even more exciting when one actor takes center stage, yet has an equally-compelling scene partner (or two) in their midst throughout the film in question, a fate that many of Sundance’s brightest stars were blessed with this year. Take Rachel Abigail Holder’s Love, Brooklyn (C+), for instance. A modest drama about adults that fits a similar mold to the André Holland-starring Exhibiting Forgiveness, which premiered at Sundance last year, Love, Brooklyn also stars Holland, though the artist he plays here isn’t working with paint, but toying with words and with hearts. He plays a writer named Roger, one whose deadlines seem to shift on the daily, simply based on how uninspired he’s feeling one afternoon and how horny he happens to be the following night. He toggles between a few different locations, never putting down definitive roots in any of them yet feeling endlessly-enamored by the city in which he’s lived for some time (you get one guess as to which city that is.) Roger can be found staring blankly at his laptop in his own apartment one moment, puttering around a park with his ex Casey (Nicole Beharie) the next, grabbing a coffee with his romantically-conflicted pal Alan (Roy Wood Jr.) a few hours later, only to end up sleeping with Nicole (the excellent DeWanda Wise) to cap off the busy day. That Roger never sleeps over doesn’t necessarily add a layer of complexity to their undefined relationship, but it certainly leaves things open for the fate of every character that appears here. “I want everything, and I want nothing,” Beharie’s Casey drunkenly tells Roger, who remains drawn to her but isn’t willing to admit that his heart ultimately lies somewhere in the void between two flirtationships. Is he keeping the door ajar for both in case one doesn’t work out, giving the other a chance to live on? Is either woman willing to wait out his indecisiveness? Is this idea of wanting everything and wanting nothing, therefore not knowing what one wants at all, really the only thing driving this film’s ambitions?
Holder, working from a script by Paul Zimmerman, may be a bit too indecisive for her picture’s own good, as Love, Brooklyn is almost too true to real life in most of its dialogue-driven set pieces, while its less significant narrative and stylistic choices – the uber-cinematic Brooklyn we see here is damn-near devoid of traffic and people despite every day looking like it has thermostat privileges and has set the outdoor temperature to a balmy 74 degrees – make it abundantly clear that we’re operating in the confines of a movie set. If only those lines were somewhat blurred, much like the relationships the film hinges on. Then at least we’d be compelled to see where things went, whether backwards, sideways, or upside-down. In any case, the trio of Holland, Beharie, and Wise are all aces, both separate and together, with Holland further cementing himself as one of independent cinema’s finest talents and Beharie and Wise continuing to please viewers anytime they appear on screen, the audience immediately becoming aware that what they are about to watch is at least of some merit. If only their presences had stronger, more Brooklyn-appropriate material to work with.
A bit farther upstate – not to mention a few decades back – sits Plainclothes (B-), Carmen Emmi’s directorial debut about an undercover cop who meticulously lures gay men into shopping mall bathrooms, only to apprehend them as soon as they are most vulnerable. Fittingly, it’s when Lucas (Tom Blyth) is really hitting his stride on the job that the proverbial rug is ripped out from under him by Andrew (Russell Tovey), a mysterious, closeted man to whom Lucas is drawn. Taking place in Syracuse, New York well into the 90’s, Plainclothes isn’t quite the Cruising homage it aims to be, but it’s all the better for it, Emmi noting and thus utilizing similar tropes to what the great William Friedkin realized in his 1980 crime drama starring Al Pacino, all while getting experimental along the way. Emmi and his cinematographer Ethan Palmer run the footage gamut here, from digital photography to surveillance footage that seems to have been ripped directly from a shopping center’s security tapes, home videos that position Lucas as a boy who has never accepted himself en route to becoming a man, and the once-updated version of 8mm film, Hi8. This tactic provides Plainclothes with a grainy, claustrophobic air that exists in lock-step with its dramatic tension, which Blyth and Tovey steadily realize as the film’s central illicit affair inches toward catastrophe.
It’s Blyth, in particular, who is awarded the showcase here, expanding on the tortured young man role he’s already once inhabited. His breakout came in 2023’s Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, in which he played a young Coriolanus Snow, the dictator played by Donald Sutherland in the original Jennifer Lawrence-starring quadrilogy. In the surprisingly solid prequel, Blyth went toe-to-toe with and often overshadowed his co-star, Rachel Zegler, by exhibiting a quiet, kind resolve in a character audiences were familiar with as the franchise’s Big Bad, only to give way to the brooding darkness fans of Suzanne Collins’ books and the original four movies expected him to have. In Plainclothes, Blyth’s Lucas is often seen in close-up shots that only slightly overstep the boundaries actors should be afforded when it comes to displaying their character’s internal conflicts, though the battle between Lucas’ duties as a cop and his desires as a human being are never not clear thanks to Blyth’s chameleonic demeanor over the course of the film’s runtime. If Plainclothes is often nothing more than an indie triumph for its star, whose own stardom continues to burgeon, then it’s a resounding success.
The problem with Rashad Frett’s Ricky (C-)is that its ceiling is rarely anything more riveting than Plainclothes’ floor, which might not be a problem if the film’s star wasn’t as excellent and compelling as Stephan James. The actor, best known for his astonishing breakout performance in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, plays Frett’s titular character in a similar fashion to how he played Beale Street’s Fonny, communicating with his eyes, his furrowed brow, and with a mouth that can’t always find the words, yet still speaks louder than any verbiage could. Despite having recently been released from prison, James’ Ricardo “Ricky” Smith is struggling to truly feel as though he’s able to live freely on the outside, a common trope used in films set behind bars or films about those who have recently gotten out. but tasking James with manifesting such emotional baggage is Frett’s true stroke of genius here; Ricky’s focus on recidivism – a convict’s tendency to reoffend – especially drives that home, as Ricky is forced to navigate the tribulations of working with a parole officer and his home life while searching for employment, a difficult balance that James strikes with poise and the evident pain of a wounded soul.
The problems with Ricky have far less to do with James’ lead performance and Sheryl Lee Ralph’s astonishing turn as Joanne, the aforementioned P.O., and more with the film’s telegraphic nature. If Frett is the quarterback here, that would make James his frustrated receiver, as the debut director is prone to point out his target before passing the ball. Sometimes that’s in setting up a painfully obvious [redacted] that alters Ricky’s fate in the immediate future; other times, Frett seems to be… well, fretting, not knowing which subplot to stick to, instead adding dozens and hoping each work in service of the emotional wallop he’s desperate to drive home. To be clear, there certainly is a devastating quality to Ricky. It just happens to be in regards to wasting excellent work from its star and not in the narrative itself, at least not seamlessly.
Director:Bernard MacMahon Writers:Bernard MacMahon, Allison McGourty Stars: John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant
Synopsis: The film traces the journeys of the four members of the Stairway To Heaven rockers through the music scene of the 1960s and their meeting in the summer of 1968, culminating in 1970.
As far as estate-approved (or, in more politically correct terms, “authorized”) documentaries go, Becoming Led Zeppelin is likely the least offensive of the bunch. Do we learn anything new about the band’s formation? For those unfamiliar with Led Zeppelin, you’ll probably think the documentary is insightful. On the flip side, hardcore fans may not find anything of note, yet will probably give it five stars anyway. Does it go deep enough to warrant a two-hour runtime and an IMAX exclusive run? Not really. Is it still somewhat interesting enough? I certainly found value in Bernard MacMahon’s exploration of how John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and John Bonham became a powerhouse in rock music, even when the odds were stacked against them.
It’s a tale as old as time. Newfound friends with talent in various instruments form a band that wants to be at the forefront of a revolution in music. The press scolds them, and the mainstream audience doesn’t get what they’re doing, leading to a particularly hilarious moment that sees the band play live in front of a crowd that covers their ears and looks at the stage utterly perplexed. Yet, in the underground sphere, they experienced a success never-before-seen that eventually touched the mainstream consciousness with the arrival of their second studio album, Led Zeppelin II. For those looking for a complete picture of the band’s history, MacMahon doesn’t offer much in that regard. He stops after the release of II because the rest, as the kids say, is history. Instead, Becoming Led Zeppelin is all about their origin story, examining how they carved a place in rock music history.
Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say “examines” in a purely academic sense since most of it is told through anecdotes from the talking head testimonies of Plant, Page, and Jones. MacMahon also gives a decent amount of space to the late Bonham by way of an archival interview that has never been heard previously. The band’s drummer lived a relatively secluded life and gave few interviews throughout his sadly short time on this Earth. That’s why it feels so important to include his own words in the documentary, as a testament to his lasting legacy and a recognition of the energy and talent he brought to Led Zeppelin that otherwise wouldn’t have given them the distinct sound they had.
Even if MacMahon’s documentary doesn’t cover their most influential album, Led Zeppelin IV, one who watches Becoming Led Zeppelin with a personal connection with the band will always contrast what the figures say with their lived-in experiences of discovering their music. For me, as for many people, their first experience was IV, and specifically “Rock and Roll.” When Bonham’s intro widened my ears, it forced me to explore corners of music I never expected to discover and hear what true “rock” really is. That’s why hearing Bonham and letting him discuss his upbringing in the documentary is far more respectful than having Page or Plant speak on his behalf. Instead, MacMahon has them react to his interview and show them footage they’ve never seen.
The camera lightly pans as they see and hear things the estate had in possession but have personally not listened to or observed until they sat in front of the filmmaker and began work on the documentary. It feels honest when Page discusses their first festival in London, having never seen the raw material and remembering their earlier days as young adults quickly thrust into a voracious world primed to eat him alive. It did, but the movie never explores this, let alone talks about the band in a broader context beyond their musical creations. There’s a brief mention of drug use with the throwaway line, “We did a lot of drugs.” Duh. Still, it completely sanitizes Bonham’s personal struggles, which sadly led to his demise, and is deathly afraid of criticizing any aspect of their frequently debaucherous behavior.
That’s where the “estate-approved” part of the whole package comes in. It’s all about painting them as saints and less about excavating a knife to genuinely explore the band beyond their successes and showcase them as the flawed, tormented geniuses they all are. Of course, this sanitization doesn’t feel as egregious as making Mike Love the hero of Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny’s horrendous The Beach Boys hagiography. However, the PG rating of MacMahon’s IMAX documentary ensures that the movie never discusses elements the surviving band members don’t want to recall. That’s fine, in isolation, if these stories weren’t publicized. But they were, which makes this film feel particularly gutless, especially in our current era of incuriosity where challenging beliefs and preconceptions seems unwelcomed.
I won’t deny their musical prowess and how they paved the way for avant-garde innovation to be accepted within what is considered “popular music.” The movie certainly discusses this through Jimmy Page explaining how it was important to break all expectations on their single for Led Zeppelin II, “Whole Lotta Love.” This section is the best technical exercise MacMahon gives to the movie: a sequence of visual and sonic euphoria where the song is played in full after Page talks about how it was structured differently from the usual verse/chorus patterns. It’s a richly layered and well-executed moment, and well worth the price of admission to experience this explosion of color and sound on IMAX. Still, it’s the only moment of note that justifies wanting to see this documentary in a large format.
The rest of it is hit or miss. The anecdotes are fun, and it’s great to see the band members discuss their meteoric, almost overnight, rise in their own words. However, these only go so far when the director isn’t allowed to actively question the figures and talk about Led Zeppelin beyond the façade they want to paint in. Any “authorized” movie or documentary will not be a complete portrait of the people they depict since they don’t want any negativity, which will critically flesh out the story to be discussed. It’s why Ezra Edelman’s nine-hour-long “estate-approved” documentary on Prince will never see the light of day because thefilmmaker unearthed stories of abuse from the singer that the estate does not want the public to know, thus leading Netflix to cancel the release of the documentary altogether.
What good is documentary filmmaking for if we’re not allowed to properly document and question the people we’re talking to for our films? Sure, it can discuss the highs, but it should undoubtedly do more thanthe bare minimum. Of course, that may mean fans won’t eat it up because the “saints” they’ve envisioned them as will be immediately broken as soon as MacMahon does more than us, the remaining members as fodder so they can pat themselves on the back. And all we want is to please the fans, right?? Right???
After Peter Clifton and Joe Massot gave us the ultimate Zeppelin experience and put us inside their ever-shifting headspace with the experimental concert film The Song Remains the Same, one hoped MacMahon would give the band a full-fledged portrait that’s more complicated than the central figures talking about how great they are. We knew that already, but what about everything else? The estate has spoken. These stories won’t be released anytime soon, and probably never.
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