Culture Representation: Taking place in Portugal and briefly in New York City, the horror film “Amelia’s Children” features a cast of white and Hispanic characters (with one Asian person) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: An American woman and her boyfriend visit his long-lost family in Portugal, where they find out dark secrets about his family.
Culture Audience: “Amelia’s Children” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching boring horror movies that bungle what are supposed to be shocking plot twists.
Carloto Cotta and Brigette Lundy-Paine in “Amelia’s Children” (Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing)
“Amelia’s Children” is a tedious horror movie with mostly wooden acting in a story that has more insipid moping than any real scares. The characters react to twisted family secrets in ways that are hard to believe. The movie’s ending is atrocious.
Written and directed by Gabriel Abrantes, “Amelia’s Children” begins with a darkly lit and muddled scene of a woman (played by Alba Baptista) putting drops of an unnamed liquid in her baby’s milk. The woman lives in a mansion in an isolated area. Her name is not revealed until later in the film.
However, it’s easy to figure out who she is about 20 minutes into the movie when the mansion is revealed to be a certain mansion in Portugal. The baby is abducted at night from the house by a young woman (played by Beatriz Maia) and a man, whose identities are also revealed later in the movie. It’s enough to say that these opening scenes at the mansion are flashback scenes.
In present-day New York City, a man named Edward Eifus (played by Carloto Cotta) has been trying to find out who his biological family members are. He gets a phone call from a Woodland Foster Homes employee, who tells Edward that information is unknown about Edward’s biological parents. Soon after getting this disappointing news, Edward’s live-in girlfriend Riley (played by Brigette Lundy-Paine) gives Edward an Ancestry DNA kit for his 31st birthday.
Not long after setting up a profile with the DNA kit, Edward is contacted by a man named Manuel Castro (also played by Cotta), who says they are both a sibling match. Manuel lives with his mother Amelia (played by Anabela Moreira) in Portugal. Manuel tells Edward that Manuel had an identical twin who was kidnapped as an infant. Manuel and Edward both deduce that they are long-lost twins.
Manuel invites Edward and Riley to visit Manuel and Amelia at their mansion in Portugal. It’s the same mansion that was shown in the beginning of the movie. Edward and Riley rent a car in Portugal to drive to the mansion.
When they get lost on a fairly remote road, Riley and Edward stop and ask for directions from an elderly woman named Señora Vieira (played by Rita Blanco) and her male companion (played by Valdemar Santos), who are street vendors. Señora Vieira and her friend both react with disgust and fear when they find out that Edward and Riley are going to Amelia’s mansion. Señora Vieira later shares some valuable information with Riley.
Now that it’s been established that Edward was the kidnapped twin, and the mansion has a sinister history, most of “Amelia’s Children” is a monotonous, drawn-out tease in revealing why Edward was kidnapped and what’s so horrible about his long-lost family home. Viewers can tell the difference between Manuel and Edward because Manuel has long hair, and Edward has short hair.
From the beginning, it’s obvious that there’s something very weird about Amelia and Manuel, who both sleep in a snuggly way in the same bed, even though the house is big enough for Manuel to have his own bedroom. Amelia (who looks like she’s had botched plastic surgery) later introduces Edward to her two financial managers (played by Sónia Balacó and Ana Tang), by saying: “This is my new boyfriend. Isn’t he handsome?”
Amelia is also touchy-feely flirty with Edward and Manuel, who both act as if it’s all perfectly normal. And here’s an example of the movie’s awful dialogue: Amelia tells Riley soon after they meet: “Time is a whore. Time eats us like potatoes. … You have very sensual lips.” Amelia also seems obsessed with looking as young as possible.
And how does Riley feel about the creepy and incestuous tone of this family? When Riley tells Edward that she saw Amelia and Manuel sleeping in an inappropriate way in the same bed, Edward barely reacts. When Riley has had enough of this bizarre family, and she wants to leave, Edward responds by saying that Riley is overreacting and insists that Riley stay. Amelia is worth €65 million, but since this is a horror movie, you just know that Amelia’s fortune isn’t the real reason why Edward wants to stay.
When a horror movie reveals early on who the chief villain is, it’s up to the filmmakers to make sure there’s still a certain level of suspense in what will happen next. Unfortunately, everything is fairly easy to figure out in “Amelia’s Children” once it’s obvious that Amelia is up to no good. Lundy-Paine does an adequate job in her performance, but the other cast members give performances that are forgettable or substandard. Cotta is especially stiff with his acting.
“Amelia’s Children” certainly has some effective locations for its production design. The movie also has serviceable cinematography. But the story is too flawed to be covered up by visual aesthetics alone. The movie dilutes its terror with an ending that is more “hokey” than “shocking.” This idiotic ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel to “Amelia’s Children,” but a sequel is highly unlikely, since most viewers of “Amelia’s Children” won’t like the movie enough to want this flimsy and disappointing story to continue.
Magnet Releasing released “Amelia’s Children” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on March 1, 2024. The movie was released in Portugal on January 18, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place from 1996 to 2004, in an unnamed U.S. state, the dramatic film “I Saw the TV Glow” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A lonely teenage boy befriends a teenage girl, who gets him hooked on a fantasy TV series starring young people battling a villain named Mr. Melancholy, and the show affects what happens to them as they get older.
Culture Audience: “I Saw the TV Glow” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and are interested in watching symbolic-heavy movies about depression and queerness.
Ian Foreman in “I Saw the TV Glow” (Photo by Spencer Pazer/A24)
“I Saw the TV Glow” isn’t as scary as it seems, but it’s a very original film about obsessive escapism and denial of one’s true identity. The plot has more mystery than suspense. Viewers must be willing to interpret the movie’s LGBTQ symbolism. “I Saw the TV Glow” had its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and later screened at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival and 2024 SXSW Film and TV Festival.
Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, “I Saw the TV Glow” explores themes about depression and queerness that are presented in ways that might be too abstract for viewers. “I Saw the TV Glow” has been described as a horror movie, but it’s really a psychological drama. There are a few brief horror-like images, in addition to one scene where someone has a mental breakdown. That does not make it a horror movie.
“I Saw the TV Glow,” which is told in chronological order, takes place from 1996 to 2004, in an unnamed U.S. state. (The movie was actually filmed in New Jersey.) “I Saw the TV Glow” begins by showing clips from a U.S. TV network called the Young Adult Network, which has a combination of original and acquired programming. One of the network’s more popular original shows is a weekly fantasy series called “The Pink Opaque,” which is set in America in whatever year that the show is on the air. “I Saw the TV Glow” pokes some fun at 1990s television, music and fashion in clips of “The Pink Opaque.”
It’s later explained in the movie that “The Pink Opaque” (and the show’s title characters) are two American teenage best friends named Isabel (played by Helena Howard) and Tara (played by Lindsey Jordan), who live in a typical suburban area but live secret lives where they battle a demonic force called Mr. Melancholy (played by Emma Portner), the show’s chief villain who gives Isabel and Tara an obstacle in each episode. Isabel is the more prominent person of this teenage duo. She is described as an “expert in demonology.”
In “I Saw the TV Glow,” the protagonist and narrator is shy and quiet Owen (played by Justice Smith), who narrates the movie in hindsight as an older teenager and as an adult. Sometimes, he talks directly to the camera during his narration. Sometimes, Owen’s narration is a voiceover. The movie also has captions spelled out in handwritten pink letters.
When Owen is first seen in the movie, he is a seventh grader (about 12 or 13 years old) and played by Ian Foreman. It’s during this period of time that Owen meets someone who will change his life. Seventh grader Owen is shown accompanying his mother Brenda (played by Danielle Deadwyler) to a polling place on Election Day. The polling station is in a gym of a local high school where Owen will be a student in two years. Brenda takes Owen into the voting booth with her and shows him how to vote.
It’s at this gym where Owen meets sarcastic Maddie Wilson (played by Brigette Lundy-Paine), who is a ninth grader (freshman), about 14 years old, at the high school. Maddie is sitting on the gym floor, reading a book about episodes of “The Pink Opaque.” Owen soon finds out that Maddie is an obsessive fan of “The Pink Opaque,” which airs on Tuesdays from 10:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. in the time zone where Maddie and Owen live.
Owen and Maddie start talking about “The Pink Opaque,” a show that Owen has not seen at this point because he’s not allowed to stay up past 10 p.m., especially on a school night. Owen (who is an only child) lives with his married parents in a stable, loving and middle-class home. His father Frank (played by Fred Durst) is not as close to Owen as Brenda is.
Maddie tells Owen that she and her best friend Amanda (also played by Portner) watch “The Pink Opaque” together at Maddie’s place. Maddie invites Owen to join them and suggests that Owen lie to his parents by saying he’s spending the night at a male friend’s house. Owen takes that advice and sneaks over to Maddie’s place to watch “The Pink Opaque” for the first time (in a basement room), as Maddie explains the complex world building that the show has. Maddie later tells Owen, “Sometimes, ‘The Pink Opaque’ feels more real than real life.”
Maddie’s parents are never shown in the movie. However, Maddie mentions that her parents “don’t give a crap” when she goes to bed. She also says that she has an abusive stepfather. When Owen spends the night at Maddie’s place for the first time, he has to sleep in the basement. Maddie tells Owen that Owen has to leave by dawn because if Maddie’s stepfather sees Owen there, “he’ll break my nose again.”
After Amanda has left for the night, Maddie also tells Owen that Maddie thinks Isabel from “The Pink Opaque” is “super-hot,” and Maddie “likes girls.” Owen doesn’t have any reaction to Maddie telling him that she’s a lesbian, but he does get confused when she asks him if he likes boys or girls. He tells her he doesn’t know but he knows he likes “The Pink Opaque.” When Owen is a teenager, he mentions “The Pink Opaque” to his father Frank, who replies, “Isn’t that a girl’s show?”
Owen explains in a voiceover that over the next two years, Maddie gave VHS tapes of “The Pink Opaque” episodes to Owen so he could watch the show without having to stay up past his bedtime. However, Owen and Maddie don’t become close friends until 1998, when Owen (played by Smith) is a freshman (about 14 years old) in the same high school where Maddie is now a junior (about 16 years old) and is now a loner at the school.
Maddie and Owen reconnect at her place to watch “The Pink Opaque” together. It’s during this reconnection that Owen finds out that Maddie and Amanda stopped being friends about two years earlier because Amanda told people that Maddie touched Amanda’s breast without Amanda’s consent. Maddie denies this sexual harassment happened but she was then shunned by many people because Maddie was “outed” as a lesbian. Maddie is still bitter over how the friendship ended and also seems angry that Amanda would rather spend time on the cheerleader squad than watch “The Pink Opaque.”
The rest of “I Saw the TV Glow” is about how Owen’s friendship with Maddie and how their fixation with “The Pink Opaque” affects their lives. Without giving away too much information, the movie is full of metaphors and symbolism of Owen’s self-discovery of his sexuality, even though he is not shown dating anyone in the movie. There’s a scene early on in the film of seventh grader Owen in an inflatable planetarium that has colors reminiscent of the LGBTQ Pride flag.
“I Can See the TV Glow” has some scenes that go on for a little too long. For example, there’s a nightclub sequence that starts to look like a music video because it shows the full song performance of rock band Sloppy Jane. Better editing was needed for this scene because it doesn’t fit the flow of a conversation that Owen and Maddie are having in a nearby room at the nightclub.
“I Saw the TV Glow” might get some comparisons to Schoenbrun’s 2022 feature-film debut “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair,” another psychological drama (with some horror elements) about a teenage loner who gets caught up in something on screen that becomes dangerous. “I Saw the TV Glow” obviously has a bigger production budget and a larger, more well-known cast than “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.” However, “I Saw the TV Glow” has a more abstract plot than “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.” Some viewers will be puzzled over what “I Saw the TV Glow” is trying to say.
In the role of Owen, Smith is once again doing a character who is whiny, insecure and often looking like he’s confused or about to cry. Owen is not a bad person, but he can be annoying. Lundy-Paine gives a better performance as Maddie, but there comes a point in the movie where Maddie’s personality becomes almost numb, so the movie loses a lot of Maddie’s initial spark and charisma. “I Saw the TV Glow” can be recommended to people who don’t mind watching offbeat movies with a unique vision and a heavily symbolic story about how secrets and lies can kill a soul.
A24 released “I Saw the TV Glow” in select U.S. cinemas on May 3, 2024, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on May 17, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of Earth (particularly in the fictional San Dimas, California) and in outer space, the comedy film “Bill & Ted Face the Music” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and a few Asians) representing the middle-class.
Culture Clash: Two middle-aged men who used to be rock stars face several obstacles when they try one last time to find a song that will save the world.
Culture Audience: “Bill & Ted Face the Music” will appeal primarily to fans of star Keanu Reeves and the previous “Bill & Ted” movies, but most people will be disappointed by this incoherent, not-very-funny sequel.
Samara Weaving, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter in “Bill & Ted Face the Music” (Photo courtesy of Orion Pictures)
After years of discussions, false starts and pre-production problems, the long-awaited comedy sequel “Bill & Ted Face the Music” has arrived—and it lands with the kind of clumsy thud that happens when the movie’s title characters use their time-traveling phone booth to crash-land in a different era. The movie is overstuffed with too many bad ideas that are sloppily executed. And the end result is an uninspired mess that brings few laughs.
The movie is the follow-up to 1989’s “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and 1991’s inferior “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.” “Bill & Ted Face the Music” is by far the worst of the three movies, which all star Keanu Reeves as Ted Theodore Logan and Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston. You’d think that with all the years that have passed between the second and third movies that it would be enough time to come up with a great concept for the third film. But no. “Bill & Ted Face the Music” writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, who also wrote the first two “Bill & Ted” movies, have added several new characters and unnecessary subplots as a way to distract from the story’s very weak plot.
In “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” the dimwitted duo Bill and Ted were high-school students in the fictional Sam Dimas, California, with dreams of making it big as a two-man rock band called Wyld Stallyns. Bill and Ted were on the verge of flunking out of school unless they got an A+ grade on their final history exam. Through a series of bizarre circumstances, they’re visited from another planet by someone named Rufus (played by George Carlin), who gave Bill and Ted a time-travel phone booth.
Bill and Ted used the time-traveling booth to collect real-life historical people (Napoleon, Billy the Kid, Ludwig van Beethoven, Genghis Khan, Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud and Joan of Arc), in order to bring them back to San Dimas as part of Bill and Ted’s school presentation for their history exam. Two British princesses from another century named Elizabeth and Joanna ended up as Bill and Ted’s girlfriends and decided to stay in San Dimas with Bill and Ted.
In “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey,” Bill and Ted fought evil robot replicas of themselves that were sent from the future to alter Bill and Ted’s destiny of becoming rock stars who can save the world. Along the way, the real Bill and Ted also battled with Death (played by William Sadler) by playing a series of games. Bill married Joanna, Ted married Elizabeth, and each couple had a child born in the same year. And (this won’t be a spoiler if you see “Bill & Ted Face the Music”) Wyld Stallyns also became a superstar act.
In “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” it’s explained in the beginning of the film that Wyld Stallyns’ success was short-lived. In the subsequent years, Bill and Ted made many failed attempts at a comeback. They are now unemployed musicians who are trying not to be bitter over their lost fame and fortune. But their wives are starting to get fed up with Bill and Ted’s irresponsible lifestyle.
Joanna (played by Jayma Mays) and Elizabeth (played by Erinn Hayes) are the family breadwinners because Bill and Ted blew all their rock-star money and don’t have steady incomes. Bill and Joanna’s daughter Wilhelmina “Billie” S. Logan (played by Samara Weaving) and Ted and Elizabeth’s daughter Thea Theadora Preston (played by Brigette Lundy-Paine) are both 24 years old and take after their fathers, in that they are both unemployed and not very smart but they are passionate about music.
The movie’s poorly written screenplay assumes that many viewers have already seen the first “Bill & Ted” movies to understand some of the jokes. But even people who saw the first two movies might have seen the movies so long ago that these jokes won’t land very well anyway. Some of the jokes in “Bill & Ted Face the Music” have a little better context if you saw the first two “Bill & Ted” movies, but references to the first two movies make the most sense in the scenes with the wives of Bill and Ted.
In the beginning of “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” a wedding reception is taking place where Bill and Ted give a toast to the newlyweds and then inevitably give a terrible music performance. The newlyweds are Ted’s younger brother Deacon (played by Beck Bennett) and Missy (played by Amy Stoch, reprising her role from the first two “Bill & Ted” movies), who was married to Bill’s father in the first movie in a May-December romance. Missy is not that much older than Bill, and in the first “Bill & Ted” movie, there’s a running joke that Bill lusts after his stepmother Missy.
In “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” it’s mentioned in a voiceover that in the years since the second movie took place, Missy divorced Bill’s father (who is not seen in “Bill & Ted Face the Music”), and then married and divorced Ted’s policeman father (played by Hal Landon Jr., who reprises his role as Ted’s stern father), who is now chief of the local police. And now, Missy is married to Ted’s younger brother Deacon, who is also a cop. These awkward family dynamics could have been mined for hilarious situations and more jokes in the movie, but they fall by the wayside because the movie gets caught up in some messy subplots that get tangled up with each other.
Bill, Ted, Joanna and Elizabeth are in couples counseling with Dr. Taylor Wood (played by Jillian Bell), who is baffled over why both couples want to be in counseling sessions with her at the same time, as if it’s a double date. Bell is a terrific comedic actress, but the dull lines she’s given in “Bill & Ted Face the Music” are so listless and unimaginative, that her talent is wasted in this film. It’s eventually revealed that unless Bill and Ted change their destiny, their wives will leave them and their children will be estranged from Bill and Ted.
How do Bill and Ted find out that they can change their destiny? It’s because someone from outer space comes to San Dimas to tell them the world is ending and can only be saved if Bill and Ted find the song that will not only unite the world but also restore reality as they know it. The visitor from outer space is named Kelly (played by Kristen Schaal), who is sympathetic to Bill and Ted and wants to help them. She has arrived on Earth at the behest of her mother called the Great Leader (played by Holland Taylor), a jaded matriarch who doesn’t have much faith that Bill and Ted can deliver the song that can save the world.
Bill and Ted’s time-traveling phone booth is brought back from outer space (with a hologram of Rufus, using brief archival footage of the late Carlin), so Bill and Ted jump back and forth to different times and places in their quest to find the song. Dave Grohl (of Foo Fighters and Nirvana fame) has a cameo as himself in one of these scenes. Meanwhile, the “world is ending” scenes include historical figures ending up in the wrong places or people suddenly disappearing, as if to show that history and reality are being warped into an irreversible void.
The movie also spends a lot of screen time showing Bill and Ted encountering different versions of themselves in future and/or alternate realities. These scenarios include Bill and Ted as old men in a nursing home; Bill and Ted with bodybuilder physiques in prison; and Bill and Ted as successful rock stars with fake British accents. All of these scenes mostly serve the purpose to show Reeves and Winter acting silly in various hairstyles, costumes and prosthetic makeup. However, almost none of these scenes are genuinely funny
And if all of that weren’t enough to overstuff the movie, there’s a simultaneous storyline with Billie and Thea doing their own time traveling. While in San Dimas, space alien Kelly met the two daughters and explained the urgency of how Bill and Ted have to save the world. In order to help their fathers, Billie and Thea decide they want to create the ultimate band that can accompany the Wyld Stallyns when they play the song that will save the world. Kelly provides Billie and Thea with their own time-traveling spacecraft, and so off Thea and Billie go to recruit top musicians to join the band.
They end up recruiting Jimi Hendrix (played by DazMann Still, doing a barely passable impersonation) and Louis Armstrong (played by Jeremiah Craft, doing an awful, mugging impersonation), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (played by Daniel Dorr, doing an average impersonation), plus two fictional musicians: Chinese violinist Ling Lum (played by Sharon Gee) from 2600 B.C. and North African drummer Grom (played by Patty Anne Miller) from 11,500 B.C. And because apparently no A-list superstars rapper wanted to be in this train-wreck movie, Kid Cudi (playing himself) is also in this makeshift band.
Meanwhile, the Great Leader grows impatient with the bungling Bill and Ted, so she sends a robot named Dennis Caleb McCoy (played by Anthony Carrigan) to assassinate Bill and Ted. The robot keeps announcing that his name is Dennis Caleb McCoy and that’s supposed to be a joke—but it’s a joke that gets old by the second time it’s said. And it comes as no surprise that Death (with Sadler reprising the role) is in this “Bill & Ted” movie too, which recycles some plot elements of “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.”
A huge part of the appeal of the first two “Bill & Ted” movies is that these characters were young and dumb. Their “party on, dude” attitude and antics were meant to be laughed at because it was a parody of how a lot of young people act when they have the freedom to be reckless. But now that Bill and Ted are middle-aged, their doltish mindset isn’t so funny anymore, which is why the filmmakers came up with the gimmick of having Bill and Ted’s children take up the mantle of being the “young and dumb” characters in this movie.
Lundy-Paine as Thea gives the better progeny performance, since she’s believable as Ted’s daughter. And even though her body language seems a bit forced and awkward at times, Lundy-Paine shows a knack for comedic timing. Unfortunately, Weaving is miscast as Bill’s daughter Billie, because Billie doesn’t look like she inherited any of the mannerisms that would make her recognizable as Bill’s daughter. In other words, her “dimwit” act is not credible at all. And it might be a compliment to say that Weaving is just too smart for this movie.
Reeves and Winter do exactly what you expect them to do: act like middle-aged versions of Bill and Ted. But the movie looks like it was thrown together haphazardly instead of being a great and original idea that writers Matheson and Solomon had the time to work on for all these years. You don’t have to see the first two “Bill & Ted” movies to understand what’s going on in “Bill & Ted Face the Music” because so much of the story is lazily written dreck that will confuse some people anyway. Seeing the first two “Bill & Ted” movies right before seeing “Bill & Ted Face the Music” might also underscore how much better the first two movies were.
And for a movie that’s supposed to center on music, “Bill & Ted Face the Music” has original songs that are utterly generic and forgettable. There used to be a time when a “Bill &Ted” soundtrack was sort of a big deal in the music business. Not anymore.
Just like the misguided “Dumb and Dumber” and “Zoolander” sequels that had the original comedic duo stars but came decades after the original movies, “Bill & Ted Face the Music” arrives too late and falls very short of expectations that weren’t very high anyway. Whereas the first “Bill & Ted” movie sparingly used the idea of Bill and Ted confronting their alternate-reality selves, “Bill & Ted Face the Music” over-uses this concept as filler for a shambolic, insipid plot that is the very definition of “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.” “Bill & Ted Face the Music” is like the equivalent of loud, screeching feedback from an amped guitar that is grossly out of tune and ends up creating a lot of unnecessary and irritating noise.
Orion Pictures will release “Bill & Ted Face the Music” in U.S. cinemas and on VOD on August 28, 2020.
