The Wild Robot (2024)

Score: 5 / 5

One of the most beautiful animated movies yet made is also one of the most spiritually satisfying. The Wild Robot, released along with the news that DreamWorks is downsizing and beginning to outsource its artists, feels like the ending of an era on the highest note possible. Partial as this reviewer is to Disney animation, occasionally a film from another studio will capture my attention and my heart: Sony/Marvel's Across the Spider-verse, Toho's Your Name, or Laika's Kubo and the Two Strings come immediately to mind, though there are many more. I haven't cared much about releases from DreamWorks since they released 2D masterpieces like The Prince of Egypt, The Road To El Dorado, and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.

But The Wild Robot slows things down and allows you to soak in its transcendent spectacle. Every image sparkles with knowing color grading, endlessly detailed minutiae, and ever deeper... well, depth. Watching it on the largest screen possible is akin to staring at a nature documentary about a coral reef, bursting with authentic, earned life even as it dazzles you with its own splendor. Like a living painting, it breathes life in a strange, somewhat indescribable way. In fact, my only gripe about the film is that, after it's over and you've come back down to earth, you quickly remember how flat and silly most other animation is by comparison. You could pause it at any moment and frame the image on your wall. Hell, you could watch it without sound and still be moved to tears.

Not that I recommend that. Its sound design is exquisite, and its voice acting even more so. Lupita Nyong'o voices the title character, Roz, a robot who crash-lands onto an island wilderness, seemingly in the Pacific northwest. Programmed to assist any human in every conceivable way, she hunts for a master with determination and fervor: encountering only woodland animals, she scares and upsets all of them in increasingly hilarious ways until she finally sits down and simply absorbs the world around her. Eventually coming to, she surprises the animals by having learned their language. Now the only thing stopping her from fulfilling her mandate is her generally off-putting insistence on assistance. After all, not everyone wants to be helped.

Apart from her silly and heartwarming encounters with a local opossum (Catherine O'Hara) and her children, a surly grizzly bear (Mark Hamill), beaver (Matt Berry) and fox Fink (Pedro Pascal), who becomes her most unexpected ally, Roz befriends all the critters on the island while also learning that nature isn't always nice to even its hardiest denizens. In fact, one of the things I loved most about this film was how unafraid of facing death it is; death isn't always welcome in children's fiction, but the best works never shy from it. The Wild Robot knows its audience deserves unvarnished truths about life and death, growing up and losing innocence and family and friends, and about our cultural losses of innocence when it comes to the ways humans are negatively impacting the environment. 

Before you get up in arms about politics infecting kids' media, I'll derail your tirade by noting that there is very little explicit ecocriticism here, relegated as it is to much later plot developments involving a deadly winter storm, a difficult migration south, and the reason robots this advanced exist on Earth at all (spoiler alert: it feels like early steps that might lead to the horrific state of affairs in the likes of WALL-E). Thankfully, that's not the only progressive element to this nuanced, endlessly layered story. Apart from the subtle issues of immigration, differently-abled communities, and linguistic social barriers, the film leans heavily -- that is, as a primary thematic element -- on found families and the crucial, universal need for friendships of unusual, surprising dynamics. Demonstrated integrity, consistency, and kindness are the currency of the day, and this movie champions community-building in every scene.

To describe the plot proper is not to spoil this film, but I won't summarize anything else here. Roz's relationship with her surrogate child, a gosling named Brightbill (Kit Connor), is born in the most horrific tragedy, cultivated in the joys and trials of childhood, forged in the treacherous crucible of adolescence, and reaches the kind of spiritual climax that can only be described as epic in the most classical sense. He's a runt, she's a freak, and they know instinctively that they need each other to survive; they learn to want each other to survive. And if you think I'm not tearing up as I write this....

Incandescently perfect as this film is for its entire runtime, nothing prepared me for the emotional wallops of its climax, which also includes apocalyptic disaster, invasion of highly advanced predators, and the threat of annihilation on multiple fronts, or how Roz as one of the most archetypal stock characters -- the protecting, providing mother, and a stoic robot at that -- goes on the most empowering and disturbing developmental arc I've seen from an animated character in my life. 

A film for kids about hot topics like climate change, immigration, disability, and broken families could so easily have been just that, flat and obvious, churned out of a major studio known for (let's be honest) a lot of grotesquely rendered, ideologically insipid movies for a reliable profit and then forgotten by the next year. But this movie, on literally every level of production, was clearly a labor of love. It's evidenced in every sense we as humans possess, and you can even feel it somewhere further inside, so deep it can only be proof we have a soul.

Overdramatic? I don't think so. Watch and see for yourself.

The First Omen (2024)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Rarely have I been so gobsmacked. If you had told me that in spring 2024 -- less than a month apart -- we'd get two supernatural Catholic horror films, I'd have added it to my bingo card. If you had told me they'd both be essentially the same story but designed and presented in radically different ways, I'd have laughed at you. If you had told me one of them would be a prequel to the 1976 classic The Omen, I'd have called you crazy and called for backup. That film, somewhat overshadowed in cultural memory by The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby, launched three sequels best left ignored and one 2006 remake that I actually quite like (there's nothing wrong with a simple, straightforward remake done with updated filmmaking techniques and a new cast). There was also a fabulous 2016 sequel series on A&E entitled Damien that sadly lasted only one season before cancellation. But a standalone film prequel so long after all those efforts to revitalize the franchise? And one that, perhaps most shockingly, is intensely faithful to the original and its aesthetic while also setting itself up as a formidable and accomplished production on its own merit? Again, I am still gobsmacked.

For those interested in its contemporaries, we'll talk a bit about Immaculate right away. The ground each film covers is roughly the same: a young, new nun joins an Italian convent only to witness abuse and supernatural scares before discovering a conspiracy to create an Antichrist centered on her. But, even apart from the wider context of meaning associated with The First Omen, the former seems interested in paying homage to giallo and nunsploitation while the latter -- still trafficking in the same material -- feels visually and aurally rooted in the '70s. The differing aesthetics manifest differently, of course, and while both films are disturbing and frightening, Immaculate relies a bit harder on conventional jump scares to unnerve and delight its audience. The First Omen, conversely, attempts to earn its scares in a more original way, pushing a darker agenda and seeking the kind of brazen novelty that makes the scares in the original film so memorable. My point of divergence between the two films comes at the climax and finale of each: The First Omen, by nature of what it is, has to blend into the opening of the 1976 film (which it does!), whereas Immaculate is free to bring its insane story to its full potential, culminating in one of the most shocking and empowering and liberating endings of an original horror movie I've seen in a long time.

Taken on its own, The First Omen gets a lot right, even with its somewhat prescribed plot (the typical danger of prequels). Director Arkasha Stevenson's feature debut is a love letter to the original film, honoring it through references and homages to the likes of Gregory Peck, of course, but also through its unnerving tone and emotional vibes. Its strong visual stylizations (featuring appropriately grandiose cinematography by Aaron Morton -- No One Will Save You and 2013's Evil Dead -- and some really slick editing) feature dizzying aerial views of Rome accompanied by wailing operatic music (the music by Mark Korven of The Witch and The Lighthouse is notably strong here, which is crucial considering the original film's landmark soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith). There's a purposeful, melancholic, almost lamenting energy to this film, helped by the moaning music and somewhat '70s-tinged camera with earthy colors, emphasizing the serious tone of this story in ways that we don't see a lot anymore; consider the funhouse, Gothic, even camp atmosphere of recent religious horrors like The Pope's Exorcist and The Nun. This is most decidedly not that.

Important to this distinction is this film's focus on earned drama with deadly stakes more than on scares. Its uniformly great cast, led by an astonishing Nell Tiger Free (of M. Night Shyamalan's series Servant) as the novitiate Margaret and featuring Bill Nighy and Ralph Ineson, leans into the physicality of this film, carving out fascinating and always slightly original reactions to the otherwise predictable ooga-booga. The abbess (Sonia Braga) is less bitchy and more coldly matter-of-fact than we might expect, there is a priest who seems pretty gay (Father Gay-briel, if you please) and a cardinal whose kindly demeanor offers no hint of malice, and even the nuns in general are much less strict than we typically see. She befriends a mentally ill orphan only a bit younger than herself named Carlita (newcomer Nicole Sorace in a powerhouse performance) who is far more important than we might at first suppose.

There is a lot here to talk about for fans of the original, and this is the kind of prequel that makes you immediately want to go home and pop in the original to continue the story. Doing so would only heighten both films, as this feels like an aesthetic companion piece that also deepens our understanding of the plot of the original while emphasizing certain thematic conceits that were present in the original if not fully explored. Moreover, like Immaculate, this film seems eager to pounce on contemporary American anxieties about women's bodily autonomy -- especially in a religious context -- in the wake of Roe v. Wade's overrule. Underlining the hypocrisy of religion, especially Catholic traditions, doesn't end there, bleeding as it does into the plot itself: the conspiracy at work in this convent is unique in its aims and shockingly believable in today's political games. An institution perverting its own purpose to gain adherents and clout? Through fear? Yeah, this one hits a little close to home. Not bad for a late-in-coming prequel set in the '70s with a whole lot more on its mind.

Emma. (2020)

Score: 4.5 / 5

There are those adaptations that only work well if you are a fan of the source material, and then there are those that seem catered to wider audiences. We tend to think of film adaptations as needing to be widely accessible by definition, and in this process the "original fans" -- of books, usually -- tend to think of these as watered-down, less insightful, or even overwrought bastardizations of their beloved novel. Adaptations of Jane Austen's works, however, seem to be generally blessed with favorable reception, whether through the medium of PBS or BBC specials, direct cinematic translations, or even modernized, loose versions inspired by her characters and plots.

Though I am by no means a huge Austen fan, I've enjoyed her novels enough and most film adaptations a bit better. And with the exception of Joe Wright's magnificent Pride & Prejudice in 2005 -- and perhaps another or two, including Love & Friendship (2016) -- Autumn de Wilde's new Emma. might be one of my favorites. I make this distinction for several reasons, primarily that de Wilde's aesthetic is so pure and she carries it through with such integrity that I occasionally forgot this was Austen material. It feels more like an arthouse comedy, an offbeat indie flick made as a hyper-stylized period rom-com, and in that regard it is magnificent.

I'm grateful to have recently read Emma -- a local theatre is producing it this month -- because Austen's many plots and characters hopelessly interweave in my memory. The story is, essentially, about the proud and selfish title character who decides to meddle with the lives of people around her. Specifically, she thinks she has a knack for matchmaking and manipulates everyone around her, friends and otherwise, into enacting her perverse romantic whims. Her schemes fail more than succeed, and she is suitably punished by the climax before all is forgiven and all comes to a happy ending. Well, an arguably happy ending; Austen doesn't really have fairytale conclusions, and her portraits of love are not quite idealized.

Though I personally find Emma a troubling character, here she is portrayed by a magnificent Anya Taylor-Joy (brilliant leading actress of The Witch) as a wickedly intelligent, surprisingly well-intentioned young woman who has the impeccable timing and social strength of any Internet "influencer" worth her followers. Her every beat is calculated, every expression measured and controlled. She imbues the spoiled brat of a character -- unlikable even in the novel, Emma is pampered and wealthy to the point that she herself feels no need to marry but determines to match up everyone she knows -- with surprising earnestness and even a certain innocence I found fabulously intriguing, if not quite endearing. Taylor-Joy's ability to combine smug self-righteousness with absolute incompetence breathes new life into the character and, by extension, the film.

The same may be said for director de Wilde, who approaches the proceedings with a pretty straightforward period piece method. In fact, while she captures a fine blend of humor and manners as in any worthwhile Austen adaptation, she manages too to make a profoundly charming work of its own merit; gorgeous costumes, bright lights, brilliant performances, and sharp editing buttress a film that presents its warm heart on its sleeve. It builds pieces and routines that at first feel a bit odd, but by the end are comfortably pleasant. Alternately cold and warm when it needs to be, the camera nevertheless views these characters with humanity and honesty, daring us to treat these characters -- almost caricatures in their universal ridiculousness -- as our friends.

But de Wilde complicates this by presenting them to us behind a veneer of rigid and distractingly artificial Regency society. Bold colors and textures, enormous feathered hats, and sometimes true-to-life unflattering clothes awe our eyes even as we see the damaging (and damning) suppression of real emotions and fruitful communication. In this way, this film feels more authentic and true to Austen than other adaptations I've seen, yet also feels more urgent, immediate, and accessible than others. Without, that is, sacrificing anything to modern sensibilities or pop culture.

Detective Pikachu (2019)

Score: 3 / 5

Who knew we'd get a live-action Pokemon movie? Who knew we'd actually enjoy it?

When Tim, a coming-of-age insurance salesman searching for his purpose, learns that his detective father died in a car crash, he travels to Ryme City to collect his father's belongings. En route, he meets fluff columnist Lucy, looking for her own big break, and the two begin investigating the detective's death after meeting his father's Pokemon partner, a Pikachu only Tim can understand in English. The amnesiac Pikachu hints that Tim's father was on to some dark dealings in the heart of Ryme City.

It's all fairly standard noir stuff, and the detective story itself tends to fall dramatically flat. What makes up for the forced narrative, though, is the gorgeous detail that went into Ryme City itself. The city breathes with seedy life, glistening with fluorescent reflections and always doused with a grimy dew. Its atmospheric presence provides a striking backdrop to the drama and comedy of the oddball duo launching their investigation. Ryan Reynolds voices the animated Pikachu, and here he tends to offer a PG-version of his Deadpool riffs. Sometimes clever, often silly, it all makes for a solidly diverting 100-ish minutes.

What I found most fascinating ,though, was the beautifully realized Pokemon in live action cinema. The animated beasts look more or less natural in the world of flesh and sunlight. And while it's been many, many years since I've seen those cartoon animals on cards (I lost interest quickly after the first collection of 100), I could recognize some of them instantly due to the artistry and fan service that went into their design. I may never need to see this movie again, but I left the theater satisfied and smiling, and sometimes that's more than enough.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)

Score: 4.5 / 5

John Madden has done it again, following up his fabulous The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) with a sequel that's slightly more kinetic and spectacular but which has lost none of its pure heart and spirit of joy. Where the first was a fantastic foray into the unknown, this second concerns the aftermath of that: getting comfortable with a new and exciting world, and reconciling a personal victory with interpersonal affection.

I think it would be fair to say the first film focused more on Tom Wilkinson (who is obviously not in the sequel) and Judi Dench, each trying to declare something about themselves in the midst of cultural changes. This film, on the other hand, seems to focus more on Maggie Smith and Dev Patel, attempting to make the best possible choices for themselves and the ones they love. In this way, the film straddles the vastly different problems facing two generations. In the first, Patel's character was primarily comedic and an aggressive plot device; in this, he takes center stage as a troubled fiancée seeking to win back his love from a perceived threat to his financial success and social status. Amidst the celebrations of youth and love, we follow Maggie Smith in her efforts to help the young man save his business and his romance. Having grown very fond of her young friend, she also keeps hidden some potentially devastating medical news from everyone at the hotel.

Much like the first film, this picture has raucous comedy, including farcical car chases and pitch-perfect one-liners popping off every few minutes. In sharp contrast, it also has striking moments of somber reflection and introspection, mostly delivered by Maggie Smith. Lillete Dubey, playing Dev Patel's character's mother, has some really nice dramatic scenes with Richard Gere, too, which I was ready for back in 2011. Beautiful costumes, fabulous lighting, and breathtaking sets decorate this picture in ways that might even surpass the first installment. The engagement parties are notably spectacular, especially the one which culminates in a rousing mass dance. Dev Patel might have won my heart up on that stage.

I could keep going, but you get the idea. I loved it, I hope there's another, I cried a lot, I laughed a lot, and I left feeling lively and affirmed. I should say, though, those last few minutes are brutal. Maggie Smith's voice-over about death and love and life is timeless and poignant and devastating and everything cliché I could possibly say. And yet it is perfect. Okay, I'll stop before I cry again.

IMDb: The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)

Score: 4.5 / 5

John Madden (director of Shakespeare in Love (1998), Proof (2005), The Debt (2010), Mrs Brown (1997), and Ethan Frome (1993), if you didn't know) heads this delightful excursion into another world. A ragtag group of retirees find themselves in search of something they've been missing their whole lives: life. So they pack their bags for India and the promise of a luxurious hotel "for the elderly and beautiful." After arriving at their dilapidated destination, romance and comedy ensue in one of the most memorable adult fantasies in recent history.

A dream cast creates this ensemble picture, and their respective wits increasingly sharpen each other for the two-hour running time. Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, and Maggie Smith display their comic and dramatic selves in masterful performances that drive straight to the heart. Supporting these four are Penelope Wilton, Ronald Pickup, and Celia Imrie, who each display fabulous comedic timing and sassy characterizations. Dev Patel (whom I only remember from 2008's Slumdog Millionaire) expertly plays the optimistic, almost manic hotel manager.

Ensemble casts are beautiful when each member is given ample time to shine, though this is understandably difficult to accomplish. Madden succeeds in balancing his A-listers with his unknowns, and allowing each to perform at their relaxed and intelligent best. And though there is some criticism that the film employs racist and ageist stereotypes, I think that for every stereotype it hints at (never overt or condescending) it also depicts the realities of the cultures in question. India may be the exotic Other of the film, but so are the "invading" Westerners, in a way, who carry most of the film's social baggage with them. And the infectious joy flooding off the screen highlights diversity and community, rather than humorous riffs off cultural differences. Ultimately the film explores the psychology of older people attempting to reclaim their lives; the fact that they are in India is merely a symbolic manifestation of their place in an unfamiliar world. Madden obviously admires it for its unique beauty, and graciously shares that vision with us.

 With its script of hilarious one-liners and occasionally heightened dialogue, the film sparkles at every turn. It feels neither forced nor trivial in its expertly weaved pattern of drama and comedy. Though the romantic element is by no means original, Madden keeps a relaxed grip on its reins. He isn't interested in geriatric titillation, but rather in a notion that increased age should not equate to increased torpidity. These characters are yearning for something more; as such, they are both desperate and vulnerable. They are also relatively alone in a strange country with only each other to lean upon. Despite these extreme internal forces, each character bravely reaches out in order to make some sense of their new lives. And the actors capture every nuance of that complex identity.

IMDb: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel