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

September 16, 2025

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

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

If You Were Promised Robots and Got ‘After Yang,’ What Would You Think?

March 1, 2022

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

After Yang (CREDIT: A24)

Starring: Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Justin H. Min, Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, Haley Lu Richardson, Sarita Choudhury, Clifton Collins Jr., Ava DeMary, Brett Dier

Director: Kogonada

Running Time: 96 Minutes

Rating: PG for A Mortality-Tinged Milieu

Release Date: March 4, 2022 (Theaters and Showtime)

After Yang opens with a really rousing dance number that establishes an initial joyous note, although the rest of the film quickly settles into a much more reflective and melancholy mood. This is a near-future vision in which “techno-sapiens”serve as live-in babysitters, although the particular techno-sapien we get to know is really more of a big brother. For those of you who are so excited by the potential of robotics that you just can’t keep still, After Yang‘s opening choreography is for you. This dance session is an opportunity for the whole family – dad Jake (Colin Farrell), mom Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith), young daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), and android Yang (Justin H. Min) – to get up and really get moving. It also appears to be some sort of worldwide tradition that other families of four are participating in. It’s a delightfully colorful good time, and quite frankly, I wanted it to last forever.

I like to think that Yang’s family is also chasing that dancing high for the rest of the film, if only metaphorically. (Or perhaps literally as well.) The trouble is, Yang starts to break down, and he’s an older model, so it’s difficult to find a place that will get him back to his old self. That sends Mika into a funk, as she can’t find the strength to go to school without Yang to rely on. I know how she’s feeling. It’s like trying to shake your sillies out the way you’ve always done, but then you discover that your shins have suddenly become massively inflamed. Indeed, the entire family starts behaving like they’ve lost a limb.

But maybe they can grow a new one back? In Jake’s efforts to figure out what to do with Yang, he ends up on a sort of spiritual quest, as he examines Yang’s memories and seems to be traversing new planes of existence. He discovers that Yang may have somehow developed a fully human romantic relationship, but the real kicker is the alternate perspective it provides to his family history. After Yang is pondering the big questions that science fiction has been pondering for decades, centuries even. That examination can be sublime, but it can also be frustrating, because definitive answers never really come. Sometimes it’s best to just devote your energy to dancing it all off, but the journey you take when you can’t do that is likely to stick in your craw.

After Yang is Recommended If You Like: Just Dance, Home movies, Contemplation

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Memories