‘Mickey 17’ Mines Quite a Tale Out of a Deadly Existence

March 5, 2025

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Oh, Robert, you’re so fine (CREDIT: Warner Bros./Screenshot)

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Steven Yeun, Anamaria Vartolomei, Holliday Grainger

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Running Time: 137 Minutes

Rating: R for Violent Illnesses, Bloody Accidents, and Fictional Illicit Drug Use

Release Date: March 7, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Things aren’t going so well for Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) on Earth in the middle of the 21st century. So he decides to try his luck on an interstellar mission to colonize the distant planet Niflheim. But here’s the kicker: he’s signed up to be an “expendable,” meaning he carries out the most dangerous mission with the expectation that he is almost certainly going to die. But that’s no big deal, because a new version of him with all of his memories and the same personality is just going to be 3D-printed every time that happens. After a particularly blistering day, the 17th iteration of Mickey returns to his bed, only to find … Mickey 18! And that status quo just cannot stand, as multiples are not supposed to exist side by side.

What Made an Impression?: Pushed to the Limit… and the Limit and the Limit and the Limit: Mickey 17 is just the latest triumphant example of director Bong Joon-ho indulging his speciality of characters hanging on the economic precipice who wind up in absurd scenarios to achieve some semblance of peace and justice in this ridiculous universe. Mickey is in such dire straits because he and his buddy Timo (Steven Yeun) are impossibly indebted to a loan shark. And he ended up an Expendable because he basically didn’t read the dozens and dozens of pages of fine print. Now, he and the rest of the ship finds himself at the mercy of garish politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), aka Lady Macbeth by way of the Real Housewives of Outer Space. And the slop served on board the ship runs the full spectrum of the dystopian rainbow: from gray to brown to chrome to sepia. Mickey’s situation is not enviable in any way according to any reasonable analysis, but at least he has a droll humor about it all, not to mention a wildly enthusiastic and slightly unhinged girlfriend (Naomi Ackie). If you can see yourself in Mickey, you’re probably doing all right at not doing all right.
Our New Alien Neighbors: Niflheim is not a barren planet, as it’s populated by a species dubbed Creepers that are essentially giant pill bugs. If this were a B-movie from the 50s and 60s, the appropriate response to them would be, “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Monsters!!!!!!!!!!!!!” But if they had instead arrived on the scene in the 80s in the wake of E.T., we probably would have said, “Oh, I think they might actually be our friends.” In 2025, it’s a little more complicated, especially in one of director Bong’s signature loony landscapes. They’re kind of like the creatures from Arrival in their attempts to communicate with the humans, but a lot edgier and scrappier. And that’s the key that Bong continues to successfully play in: his influences are clear, but this isn’t quite something that moviegoers have ever quite had the opportunity before to experience or  make sense of.

Mickey 17 is Recommended If You Like: Any of Bong Joon-ho’s other movies, but you wished they’d been set on another planet

Grade: 4 out of 5 Mickeys

‘Juror #2’ Takes Us to Court and Asks: What Would You Do?

November 13, 2024

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TFW you’re Juror #2 (CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures/Screenshot)

Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Zoey Deutch, Chris Messina, Gabriel Basso, J.K. Simmons, Amy Aquino, Leslie Bibb, Cedric Yarbrough, Francesca Eastwood, Adrienne C. Moore, Chikako Fukuyama, Zele Avradopoulos, Drew Scheid, Kiefer Sutherland

Director: Clint Eastwood

Running Time: 114 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: November 1, 2024

I sure wouldn’t want to end up in the same predicament as Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), the titular Juror #2 of Juror #2. Watching the movie about him is already stressful enough! But maybe it’s a good way for us to prepare ourselves in case we ever find ourselves in the scenario in which we realize that we might be guilty of the crime at the heart of the trial we’re on the jury of, or a similar situation. It would still be a dilemma, make no mistake about it, but at least one we’ve now been able to visualize.

Grade: 10 Not Guiltys out of 2 Guiltys

‘Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken’ Explores What It’s Like to Be a Sea Monster Family Living Amongst the Humans

June 29, 2023

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What’s Kraken? (CREDIT: DreamWorks)

Starring: Lana Condor, Toni Collette, Jane Fonda, Annie Murphy, Sam Richardson, Colman Domingo, Jaboukie Young-White, Liza Koshy, Blue Chapman, Eduardo Franco, Ramona Young

Director: Kirk DeMicco

Running Time: 91 Minutes

Rating: PG for Colorful, Town-Upending Sea Creature Battles

Release Date: June 30, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: 15-year-old Ruby Gillman (Lana Condor) lives with her parents and younger brother in the oceanside town of Oceanside, but she’s not allowed to ever go in the water. She soon discovers why, as an impromptu attempt to save her crush from drowning results in her blowing up into a certain gigantic legendary sea creature. As it turns out, her mom Agatha (Toni Collette) chose to raise her kids on dry land to escape the eternal underwater struggle for power. But once Ruby discovers that her grandmother (Jane Fonda), who insists on being called “Grandmamah,” emphasis on the last syllable, is the Warrior Queen of the Seven Seas, she happily embraces her royal heritage. On top of all that, Ruby becomes fast friends with a new girl in town who’s also a mermaid (Annie Murphy), whose eagerness to please might just merit a little skepticism.

What Made an Impression?: Oh, Canada, That Explains Everything: One gag that I wish Ruby Gillman had leaned on a little harder is the Gillman family cover story. They’re non-human creatures living amongst humans, so they explain away their cerulean hue and swishy physicality by insisting that they’re from Canada. It’s like the Coneheads saying that they’re from France: there was nothing particularly French about those SNL aliens, just as there’s nothing particularly maple-filled aboot these krakens. But it’s delightful to witness their neighbors accept that claim at face value. Instead of serving as a running gag, though, it’s just an appetizer to the fantastical adventure.
It Runs in the Family: With its transformational premise, you’d think that Ruby Gillman is primarily a metaphor about adolescence, and I suppose it is. But what struck me more was the focus on conflicting parenting philosophies. Or rather, accidentally similar mothering despite a concerted effort to avoid the previous generation’s mistakes. Agatha appears to be much more sensitive to Ruby’s predicament than Grandmamah ever was to her, but she’s also just as insistent that her kids must live a particular way. In a key scene, Fonda and Collette throw down in a tête-à-tête that illuminates the importance of granting grace to our family members, especially in the face of a wider threat.
Where There’s a Will: Ruby Gillman brings the comic relief in the form of some reliable yukmeisters. First, there’s Sam Richardson as Agatha’s eternally positive brother Brill, and then especially, the good humor cranks up when Will Forte makes waves as the wary but determined old sailor Gordon Lighthouse. This is the sort of character whose maiden is the sea, as he devotes himself to hunting down underwater creatures with Ahab-like devotion. Forte excels at these types who exist on the fringes of society, and he’s a welcome joy to leaven the scary-by-PG-standards action.

Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is Recommended If You: Suspect that mermaids are hiding something

Grade: 3 out of 5 Tentacles

Ay Yai Yai, ‘Mafia Mamma’

April 12, 2023

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Mamma Mia! (CREDIT: Bleecker Street)

Starring: Toni Collette, Monica Bellucci, Sophia Nomvete, Giulio Corso, Francesco Mastroianni, Alfonso Perugini, Eduardo Scarpetta, Tim Daish, Tommy Rodger

Director: Catherine Hardwicke

Running Time: 101 Minutes

Rating: R for Screwy Violence and Awkwardly Self-Aware Sex

Release Date: April 14, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Kristin (Toni Collette) is just your typical American suburban mom with a steady job at an ad agency who longs to live out her own version of Eat Pray Love. She hardly knows her birth country of Italy, but she gets a chance to finally visit when the grandfather she never knew passes away. And wouldn’t you know it, Grandpa was a godfather, and control of the family’s operations has now been inherited by none other than Kristin. Could it be that all she needs to experience a midlife renaissance is brokering a peace between warring mafia factions? She’s going to find out soon enough, because passions run hot in Calabria, and nobody has much patience for a silly American who just wants to eat pasta and hook up with random hotties.

What Made an Impression?: Mafia Mamma is an absolutely outrageous movie. Nobody seems to have any idea how to behave appropriately in the pressure-filled situations they find themselves in. Kristin reacts pretty much exactly the same when she walks in on her husband having sex with someone else as she does when being shot at during a funeral. Which is to say: general annoyance that just gets added to the list of grievances that make her midlife crisis. And then there’s the scene when her video work call gets interrupted by an assassin, and the ensuing tussle climaxes with a nice bloody close-up of a detached eyeball plopping along the floor. This could be amusing, but it’s all so blunt. The timing is just way off.

I would love to be able to say that I enjoyed this movie. How could anybody resist Toni Collette! And it’s always nice to see Catherine Hardwicke continuing to work, even if she’ll probably never direct anything as massive as Twilight ever again. But sometimes you just have to accept that the people you’re rooting for don’t quite accomplish what they’re trying to pull off. It can be tough to get a violent screwball formula just right, so there’s no reason to dwell on it when it doesn’t work out.

Mafia Mamma is Recommended If You Like: Shaming people for never having seen The Godfather

Grade: 2 out of 5 Gelatos

At the ‘Nightmare Alley,’ the Circus Gets Pretty Dark

December 15, 2021

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Nightmare Alley (CREDIT: Kerry Hayes/20th Century Studios)

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, David Straitharn, Holt McCallany, Mark Povinelli, Mary Steenburgen, Clifton Collins Jr., Tim Blake Nelson, Jim Beaver

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Running Time: 150 Minutes

Rating: R for Some Gunfire and a Little Hanky Panky

Release Date: December 17, 2021 (Theaters)

If you can’t trust circus folk, who can you trust? Actually, if Nightmare Alley is to be believed, carnies are the only people who can be believed (well, most of them anyway). It’s everyone else who’s trying to pull one over on you. This movie is two and a half hours long, which is to say: it takes Bradley Cooper’s Stanton Carlisle way too long to realize the truth about Truth. That’s probably because he’s fooling himself.

The movie itself is pulling a trick on us as well. Considering its spooky title, and its writer-director, we’re primed for some horror, or at least something supernatural. But instead it’s a full-on noir thriller, with all the moral prisons, femmes fatales, and cigarettes to prove it. We first meet Stanton burning away his past, quite literally. Then he wanders into the local big tent, and it’s unclear if he actually has any plans for anything at this moment. Only later do his machinations come to the fore. He gets roped into a job, which at first pays him a mere 50 cents (it would have been a dollar if he hadn’t snuck into the geek show), but then that’s followed up by steadier employment at the next town, and soon enough he’s one of the top mentalists around. That trajectory eventually leads to him teaming up with a psychologist (Cate Blanchett) for a con to bilk some big, big money out of a rich man (Richard Jenkins) who’s overcome by Stan’s promises that he can commune with the dead. But of course, there’s enough doubt and double-crossing in the air for everything to go sideways.

By the end of the whole plot, Stan essentially circles back to his original destitute and anonymous status quo. I was struck by both the futility and durability of his con man nature. The Universe, or the Fates, or God or whatever, or simply the randomness of existence has decided that his deception can go only so far. And while his reach exceeding his grasp might send him down to rock bottom, he’ll find a way to survive in the gutter if he has to. But why not do it a little differently? If Stan were a real person, and he were my friend, I would remind him that he seems happiest when he’s just hanging out with the circus crew. He found a family, but the genre that he lives in has ensured that he’s a nowhere man who’s never fully at home anywhere.

Nightmare Alley is Recommended If You Like: Hucksters, Snow, Trenchcoats, Biting heads off chickens

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Cold Reads

Just How Dreamy is ‘Dream Horse’? Let’s Find Out!

May 17, 2021

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Dream Horse (CREDIT: Kerry Brown/Bleecker Street & Topic Studios)

Starring: Toni Collette, Damian Lewis, Owen Teale, Joanna Page, Karl Johnson, Steffan Rhodri, Anthony O’Donnell, Nicholas Farrell, Siân Phillips

Director: Euros Lyn

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Rating: PG for A Few Horse Troubles

Release Date: May 21, 2021 (Theaters)/June 11, 2021 (On Demand)

I watched Dream Horse right in the thick of Triple Crown season, so I was very much in the mood for some equine racing drama. (Or at least as much as I possibly can be in the mood in any given year.) But this is no American horse racing movie! No indeed, the action is across the pond in Wales. But that’s perfectly fine, because as far as I can tell (as someone who’s only watched the sport on TV and never in person), the Welsh racing courses look fairly similar to Churchill Downs, Pimlico, and Belmont Park. Much less familiar are those accents – I could barely understand what anyone was saying! Much of the cast members are Welsh natives, although the two leads are Australian (Toni Collette) and English (Damian Lewis), though they bite into the accents as heavily as everyone else. Despite this language-in-common barrier, the pastoral charms of Dream Horse still shine through. It’s an underdog sports story, after all, and that’s something I’m not inclined to resist.

The titular true-life thoroughbred goes by the name of Dream Alliance. His story is a bit of a cross between that of Seabiscuit and Secretariat (which is awfully convenient for American viewers). He comes from the humblest of beginnings, but his top-notch skills are undeniable. In his first race, he initially just bucks around in a circle. It takes his jockey about ten seconds to straighten him out and actually get him racing, but by the end of it, he’s within striking distance of the victory. It’s a moment practically tailor-made for whatever the Welsh equivalent of SportsCenter is.

But as awesome as Dream Alliance is, this movie is more about the motley crew surrounding him. They’re led by Jan Vokes (Colette), a bartender whose previous breeding experience consists of mere dogs and pigeons. She gathers a group of her neighbors to pool their money to raise Dream, and it’s a classic case of the hoi polloi crashing the dignified upper-crust party. Although nobody really seems to actually mind this rowdy crew that gets excited by things like stumbling across Andrew Lloyd Webber while taking a leak. This isn’t the upper crust so much as a relatively crustless society. Really, everyone seems to generally like each other, so the conflicts that do arise are thanks to the fateful whims of sudden injuries and limited finances. It all gets resolved with a classic prescription of “yearning for something bigger than your day-to-day life,” and the dosage is adequately effective.

Dream Horse is Recommended If You Like: Seabiscuit, Secretariat, Incredibly thick accents

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Lengths

I’m Thinking of Writing Things (‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ Review)

September 8, 2020

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I’m Thinking of Ending Things (CREDIT: Mary Cybulski/Netflix)

Starring: Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette, David Thewlis

Director: Charlie Kaufman

Running Time: 134 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: September 4, 2020

I’m Thinking of Ending Things features a couple of things that I REALLY love in a pair of crucial scenes: a furry doggie and a trip to the ice cream shop! But there appear to be sinister elements lurking beneath the surfaces, as Jimmy the fluffy border collie seems to be stuck in a time loop of shaking himself dry, and Jake (Jesse Plemons) and the young woman (Jessie Buckley) buy their frozen treats in the middle of a snowstorm. Ice cream might taste great year-round, but if you’re going to eat it in the winter, you’d probably want to do it while snuggled up at home! (Also, that girl at the ice cream shop hints at … something nefarious.)

Really, the entirety of I’m Thinking of Ending Things is about events that I love but that have something terrifying bubbling (barely) beneath the surface. Meeting your s.o.’s parents for dinner?! Great, but the time-space continuum seems to be coming undone. Having a conversation in the car about whatever the hell pops into your head?! I love it, but often this scene is so dark that I can’t see anything at all. Dancing in a school hallway?! Hurray! … but is the janitor okay?

You’re thinking of ending things? I’m thinking of making them last forever!

Grade: 45 Dog Shakes out of 60 Ice Cream Cones

‘Velvet Buzzsaw’: Something Killer This Way Arts

April 6, 2020

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CREDIT: Claudette Barius/Netflix

Not too long before I watched Velvet Buzzsaw, I discovered that its director, Dan Gilroy, has been married to one of its stars, Rene Russo, for nearly 30 years. I migh have previously known that fact, but I don’t think I knew about it as far back as Gilroy’s last film, 2014’s Nightcrawler, which also featured Russo acting quite excellently. Besides making movies together, they also have a daughter who’s already all grown up. I mention all this because I enjoy thinking about the familial background that can go into making a movie. And also, I find it more satisfying to think about the Gilroy-Russo family than I do to think about Velvet Buzzsaw. That’s not to say that Velvet Buzzsaw is bad, but rather, it’s just to say that I’m the type of person who generally finds it heartening to see even just a snapshot of any family life.

Anyway, it’s particularly interesting to think about this marriage in light of Russo’s death scene in Buzzsaw, which her husband wrote AND directed! Honestly, I think it’s the sign of a good relationship when you can orchestrate your spouse’s death onscreen but not do so in real life. It’s a pretty gnarly moment and probably the best realization of the movie’s concept of “killer art.” I got a real Wes Craven’s New Nightmare “art imitating life” vibe during Velvet Buzzsaw‘s first deadly set piece. It takes us a little while to get to all the moments of the paintings and pieces tearing up human flesh, but when they do happen, they’re impressively, lavishly staged. But I think I would have recommended getting to the gore a little more quickly, because before we get there, we don’t have much to latch on to, other than Jake Gyllenhaal (who, you may recall, was also previously directed by Gilroy in Nightcrawler) as a fellow named “Morf” lounging around naked with only a laptop to cover his naughty bits.

I give Velvet Buzzsaw 3 Thick Black Eyeglass Frames out of 5 Wax Families.

Movie Reviews: With ‘Knives Out,’ Rian Johnson Can Add the Whodunit to His Collection of Filmmaking Merit Badges

November 25, 2019

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CREDIT: Claire Folger © 2018 MRC II Distribution

Starring: Ana de Armas, Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfield, Katherine Langford, Jaeden Martell, Christopher Plummer, Noah Segan, Edi Patterson, Riki Lindhome, K Callan, Frank Oz, Raúl Castillo, M. Emmet Walsh

Director: Rian Johnson

Running Time: 130 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for A Few Explosions, Possible Poisonings, and (Attempted?) Stabbings

Release Date: November 27, 2019

If you’d like to dust off a musty old genre and guide it to unexpected new depths, then you might just want to call Rian Johnson. He’s already shown what new joys await in a neo-noir mystery, a time-travelling actioner, and the biggest franchise of all time, and now with Knives Out, he moves on to the whodunit, and the answer to that question is, “By golly, Rian Johnson has done it once again!”

Since every whodunit needs a murder victim and a set of suspects, Knives Out has a bounty of them. The recently dead man is super-wealthy mystery novelist (wink, wink?) Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), and the folks who might be responsible or maybe know something consist of his mother Wanetta (K Collins), his daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), Linda’s husband Richard (Don Johnson), their son Hugh Ransom (Chris Evans), Harlan’s son Walt (Michael Shannon), Walt’s wife Donna (Riki Lindhome), their son Jacob (Jaeden Martell), Harlan’s daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette), her daughter Meg (Katherine Langford), Harlan’s housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson), and his nurse Marta (Ana de Armas). While his employees generally get along with him, his family members all have reason to resent him (and they also keep mixing up which South or Central American country Marta is from). Naturally enough, there are also a couple of police detectives on hand (Lakeith Stanfield and Noah Segan) and an idiosyncratic private investigator named Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), who has been hired under mysterious circumstances.

CREDIT: Claire Folger

The trick that Knives Out pulls is that within twenty minutes, it reveals everything (or nearly everything) that happened in thorough detail. Harlan’s death is initially ruled a suicide, and we are shown pretty much unmistakably that he sliced his own throat, and everyone’s presence at that moment is accounted for. Done deal, then? Well, there’s still nearly two more hours of running time left. The script keeps itself honest thanks to one particularly telling character quirk: Marta’s “regurgitative reaction to mistruthing.” That is to say, whenever she lies, or merely even considers lying, she spews chunks. Thus, there is no other option than for the truth to similarly spill out, and there is no room for contrivances to keep the audience in the dark. But that having been said, information can be obscured and unknown unknowns can take some time to make themselves known. Ergo, Rian Johnson gives us the simultaneous joy of being let in on a little secret while also playing the guessing game.

CREDIT: Claire Folger

In addition to Knives Out‘s masterful mystery machinations, it additionally offers plenty of keen observations of human nature. There is the ever-timely message of the tension that emerges when the haves and have-nots bump against each other, as well as the chaos that can reign when fortunes swing wildly. Furthermore, there is an astute understanding of the difference between truth and honesty, and how the latter can help you survive when the former is hidden. All of this is to say, motivation matters a great deal in cinema, and in life.

Knives Out is Recommended If You Like: Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot, Logan Lucky

Grade: 4.5 out of 5 Colorful Sweaters

This Is a Movie Review: Nick Offerman and Kiersey Clemons Make Fine Father-Daughter Music in ‘Hearts Beat Loud’

June 8, 2018

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CREDIT: Gunpowder & Sky

This review was originally posted on News Cult in June 2018.

Starring: Nick Offerman, Kiersey Clemons, Toni Collette, Ted Danson, Sasha Lane, Blythe Danner

Director: Brett Haley

Running Time: 97 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for A Little Drinking Here, a Little Smooching There, and a Few Outbursts

Release Date: June 8, 2018 (Limited)

There is a certain strain of indie film of the past decade that has turned to stars of recent NBC comedies for its talent pool. I’m talking about flicks like The To Do List with Aubrey Plaza, or Sleeping With Other People with Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis, or The Skeleton Twins with Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, or Friends With Kids with Kristen Wiig and Adam Scott, or Girl Most Likely with Kristen Wiig (a mini Kristen Wiig subgenre has kind of emerged, in case you hadn’t noticed). These tend to be more low-key than the zippy antics on the likes of Parks & Rec, Community, and SNL, but the stars are talented actors who definitely have it in themselves to stretch and show off. But there is still often a sitcom-y hangout vibe at play that makes these parts not that big of a departure. The latest example, Hearts Beat Loud, certainly has that low-key style as well, but it transcends it a bit by starring Nick Offerman, one of the more idiosyncratic of the NBC comedy vets.

Offerman plays Frank Fisher, a sometime musician and owner of the struggling Red Hook Records. The resolutely hirsute Offerman has established himself as the man’s man of comedy, both in his work and personal life. He is known for his woodworking, and his most famous character, Parks and Rec’s Ron Swanson, is a staunch libertarian who has codified his rules for proper living. But his gruffness is usually tempered by a mischievous silliness. In Hearts Beat Loud, that takes the form of Frank not being the most diligent with his responsibilities and holding onto a dream of being a rock star. He tries to convince his daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons) to spend more time making music with him and less time obsessing over preparing for her pre-med college regimen, while she wants him to do a better job of keeping the family’s finances in order.

After a few blowouts, Frank and Sam eventually come to a compromise in which they are able to live and revel in the moment of what is a major transitional time for both of them. They get a little taste of success that might lead to something further, but there is also a sense of accepting and holding onto what is definitely real. The biggest charm of Hearts Beat Loud is perhaps its lived-in quality in Red Hook, an old shipping neighborhood in Brooklyn that is not so easily accessible available by public transport. As such, it has an out-in-the-boondocks feel even though it is not too far from away from more bustling areas. That there-but-not-there geographical situation is fitting for Frank and Sam’s life situation, and accordingly, Hearts Beat Loud, is a comfortingly empathetic viewing experience for anyone reckoning with major scholarly or professional transitions themselves.

Hearts Beat Loud is Recommended If You Like: Parks and Recreation, Record Stores

Grade: 3 out of 5 SoundClouds

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