Colin F. and Margot R. Go on ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’ – Shall We Join Them?

September 16, 2025

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The colors are Bold, that’s for sure (CREDIT: Sony Pictures Entertainment)

Starring: Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Kevin Kline, Lily Rabe, Jodie Turner-Smith, Billy Magnussen, Sarah Gadon, Hamish Linklater, Chloe East, Yuvi Hecht

Director: Kogonada

Running Time: 109 Minutes

Rating: R for Some Naughty Words Here and There (Though It’s Giving PG Energy Otherwise)

Release Date: September 19, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: On his way to a wedding, a man named David (Colin Farrell) picks up a vehicle from a car rental agency operated by a couple of oddballs (Phoebe Waller-Bridge and an unrecognizable Kevin Kline). At the ceremony, he’s introduced to Sarah (Margot Robbie), who lives in the same city as him. They have a meet-sorta-cute, but they’re ready to head straight home afterwards, that is, until his car’s GPS (voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith) promises to take them on – as the title specifies – A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. This adventure consists of walking through a series of freestanding doors that allow them re-experience key moments from their pasts. Is this the universe – or that car rental place – going out of its way to bring these two together? If that is indeed what is fated to happen, then they’ll have to learn to let go of all their baggage along the way.

What Made an Impression?: All the Typical Doors: A Big Bold Beautiful Journey offers the sort of nakedly magical realist premise that you just have to buy into if you want to derive any sort of enjoyment out of it. If you’re into that thing in general, you’ll be happy; if you’re not, you won’t be convinced otherwise. If you’re somewhere in the middle, you might feel flashes of inspiration, but probably not much more. It would help if there were more depth to David and Sarah’s characterizations, but alas, their motivations don’t amount to much beyond “they can’t get over their heartbreaks.” Farrell and Robbie are charming enough guides through this fantasy, but if it’s transcendence you’re after, ABBBJ doesn’t quite deliver.
On the Other Side: So yeah, I didn’t exactly love A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, but I did come away with it thinking that you could probably make a decent TV spinoff out of it … if it were focused on the car rental duo, that is. Waller-Bridge and Kline give the sort of lightly mysterious, slightly demented performances that are perfect in a small batch, but would derail the whole proceedings if they were in more than two scenes. Or, they could work in a bigger dose, it would just completely alter the overall tone. Ergo, my desire to see what these two are up to when not interacting with David and Sarah.
Exactly What It Says on the Tin: One last fair warning: this movie is filled with so many on-the-nose touches that its septum might completely buckle from all the weight. Someone literally tells David to “be open,” a hotel is called the “Timely Inn,” a cover of Pete Townshend’s “Let My Love Open the Door” plays towards the end. I would assume these were all meant to be jokes if everything else weren’t so earnest. But feel free to assume that someone did a dad joke-focused revision on the script and laugh as much as you want to.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is Recommended If You Like: Theater kid energy, Curling up on the couch with your parents, The music and whole vibe of Laufey

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Doors

‘Nickel Boys’ Lets You in on the Action

December 12, 2024

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If I had a Nickel for every Boy… (CREDIT: Courtesy of Orion Pictures)
© 2024 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Starring: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs

Director: RaMell Ross

Running Time: 140 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Racism and Authoritarianism

Release Date: December 13, 2024 (New York Theaters)/December 20, 2024 (Los Angeles Theaters)

What’s It About?: Young Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) has a promising future ahead of him in 1962 Florida. He’s excited about heading off to college, but then an unfortunate encounter leads to a false accusation and a stint at the brutal reform school Nickel Academy, where he befriends a fellow student/inmate named Turner (Brandon Wilson). Elwood seems more or less confident that he’ll be able to leave eventually, although the truth soon hits him hard as he realizes that he’ll need to be particularly crafty if he wants to return to a life of freedom anytime soon. Meanwhile, the much more hardened Turner has come to accept that the only way to escape before “graduating” is in a body bag. And as bad as all that sounds, occasional flashes to the future reveal that even darker practices are afoot at this institution.

What Made an Impression?: The Power and Limits of POV: If you’re a scholar of filmmaking techniques, you’ll notice something right away that makes Nickel Boys unique. On the other hand, if you’re a complete novice regarding the language of film, you still might notice something, even if you don’t quite have the vocabulary for it. That’s because director/co-writer RaMell Ross and his cinematographer Jomo Fray decided to shoot this whole dang thing from a first-person point of view, as if the camera were strapped to the heads of a couple of the main characters. We mostly follow Elwood’s perspective, but about halfway through, it alternates between his and Turner’s POV. I found this approach more interesting than mesmerizing, although I have noticed that plenty of my colleagues were much more blown away. While it didn’t work on me as well as it could have, it’s definitely not ostentatious; Nickel Boys is essentially about the reconstruction of traumatic memories, so it makes sense to strictly limit the available information in this fashion.
Digging Up the Dirt: So is there any chance that Elwood and/or Turner make it out of Nickel alive? Feel free to skip this paragraph if you want to go in having absolutely no idea, but if you don’t mind being teased a bit more, I will say that the glimpses of what happens decades later are both seamless and tantalizingly detached. They’re focused on a surreptitious investigation into Nickel that has the “trust no one” vibe of classic X-Files. There aren’t any aliens of cryptids, but there’s enough institutional malfeasance to make it feel unnervingly supernatural. The ideas at play in this movie won’t come as a surprise to anyone whose eyes are open, but chances are it will still leave you with a feeling you won’t be able to shake.

Nickel Boys is Recommended If You Like: Big Formal Swings

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Points of View