Culture Representation: Taking place in 2018, in an unnamed city in Brazil, the dramatic film “Mars One” features an all-Brazilian cast of characters (Latinos and black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A working-class family of four people navigate their individual problems and goals, which sometimes conflict with what other members of the family want.
Culture Audience: “Mars One” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in well-acted and intimate family dramas.
Camilla Damião and Cícero Lucas in “Mars One” (Photo bya Leonardo Feliciano/Array Releasing)
“Mars One” thoughtfully presents a realistic dramatic portrait of a Brazilian family of four people going through transitions on how they view themselves and what they really want out of their lives. It’s the type of movie that won’t satisfy viewers who are expecting a lot of melodramatics or wild plot developments. Instead, “Mars One” (which takes place in an unnamed city in Brazil) offers a peek into the lives of working-class Brazilians; their hopes and dreams for a better future; and how they deal with their present-day realities.
Written and directed by Gabriel Martins, “Mars One” had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, and was selected as Brazil’s official entry for Best International Feature Film for the 2023 Academy Awards. “Mars One” didn’t make the Academy’s shortlist for that category, but the movie is more than a worthy selection to represent Brazil. The movie takes place during a time of political transition in Brazil as being an almost parallel backdrop to the personal changes going in within the Brazilian family at the center of the story.
“Mars One” begins in October 2018, shortly after the election of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing politician who presented himself in his presidential campaign as a “political outsider.” (Bolsonaro is often called the “Donald Trump of Brazil.”) While Brazil is divided over this controversial election, a family of four will have their bonds tested by their own personal divisions.
Wellington (played by Carlos Francisco), the family’s proud patriarch, is a recovering alcoholic who works as a maintenance staffer for an upscale apartment building. His wife Tércia (played by Rejane Faria) is a vibrant and outgoing matriarch who works as a housecleaner. Wellington and Tércia have two children: Eunice (played by Camilla Damião), nicknamed Nina, is an emotionally sensitive college student, who’s in her late teens or early 20s. Deivinho (played by Cícero Lucas), who is about 13 or 14 years old, is studious and somewhat introverted.
Several of the movie’s scenes show the family members going about their everyday lives. Wellington is a respected senior member of his employer’s staff at his job, where he sometimes brags to his co-workers about what a great soccer player Deivinho is, and Wellington shows videos on his phone to prove it. Tércia follows a routine of taking the bus to work, where she has camaraderie with a lively co-worker named Tokinho (played by real-life social media star Tokinho), who likes to watch TV with her when they’re taking a break in a house that they’re cleaning. Eunice attends college classes and likes to dance at nightclubs in her free time. Deivinho hangs out with his friends and plays on a local soccer team, with Wellington usually cheering him on in the crowd and advising Deivinho like an enthusiastic coach.
But a few pivotal things happen that change the personal dynamics of these family members. Wellington is tasked with training a new employee named Flávio (played by Russo Apr), who will have an impact later on in the story. While eating at a diner in the city center, Tércia is traumatized after a prank is pulled on the customers by a hidden-camera TV show, which pretended that a suicidal man had ignited a stick of dynamite in the diner. Her family members don’t take this incident seriously when she tells them about it, but Tércia finds that this fake bombing incident is having negative physical and psychological effects on her.
At a nightclub, Eunice meets a confident woman close to her age named Joana (played by Ana Hilãrio), and they have an instant romantic attraction. Eunice and Joana begin dating and eventually make plans to move in together, which will be the first time that Eunice will not be living with her parents. However, Eunice (who doesn’t put a label on her sexuality) is afraid to tell her parents that Eunice is not heterosexual and that Joana is more than a friend to Eunice. Deivinho (who is a big fan of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson) is fascinated with a Mars exploration trip called Mars One. Deivinho dreams of being part of this exploration as an astrophysicist, instead of becoming the famous soccer player that Wellington wants Deivinho to become.
“Mars One” shows how these four family members handle their individual issues, sometimes with secrecy and shame, sometimes with defiance and determination. The underlying tensions and fears in these interpersonal dynamics have to do with feeling uncertainty over this existential question: “If your family can’t love and accept you for you are, what are the chances that other people will love and accept you for who you are? And is any of this acceptance just as important as self-acceptance?”
This well-acted movie (all of the performances look emotionally authentic) also artfully shows how people who feel stuck in a rut and want better futures for themselves can get caught up everyday burdens that sometimes blind them to small blessings that they have in the present-day lives. “Mars One” doesn’t depict any personal evolutions in contrived or calculated ways but how they happen in real life: naturally, often unexpectedly, and sometimes uncomfortably. It’s a well-made story that shows how self-acceptance or acceptance of others isn’t always automatic but can often be a bumpy but illuminating journey.
Array Releasing released “Mars One” in select U.S. cinemas and on Netflix on January 5, 2023. The movie was released in Brazil on August 25, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in India and the United Kingdom, the action comedy film “An Action Hero” features a predominantly Indian cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A famous action movie star goes on the run after he accidentally kills a corrupt politician, and the dead man’s brother goes after the movie star for revenge.
Culture Audience: “An Action Hero” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching action movies that make up for their simple plots with plenty of high-octane thrills and satirical comedy.
Ayushmann Khurrana and Jaideep Ahlawat in “An Action Hero” (Photo courtesy of AA Films)
“An Action Hero” is a completely predictable chase movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It manages to be entertaining because of its cheeky comedy, thrilling action and satirical take on celebrity worship of movie stars. Many of the stunts in “An Action Hero” are very over the top, which will either amuse or annoy viewers.
Directed by Anirudh Iyer and written by Neeraj Yadav, “An Action Hero” takes place in India and the United Kingdom in a non-stop action-adventure that tells the story of an international hunt for a movie star suspected of murder. The movie begins in India, where action movie star Maanav Khuranna (played by Ayushmann Khurrana) is being interrogated about his connection to the death of Vicky Solanki (played by Sumit Singh), a corrupt politician from Mandothi, India. The movie then switches flashbacks to show whot Maanav ended up in this predicament.
At the time of Vicky’s death, he was in the midst of contesting election results showing that he has lost his most recent election. Vicky was seeking out Maanav to get Maanav to give Vicky a personal endorsement, in order to use Maanav’s star power to possibly sway the results of the election. Vicky was also star-struck and desperately wanted a photo with Maanav. Maanav doesn’t want to get involved in politics, so he was actively avoiding Vicky, who went as far as showing up uninvited on the set of one of Maanav’s movies in Mandothi, and interrupting Vicky’s work.
One day, Maanav gets a new Ford Mustang as a gift. He’s eager to take his new car out for an evening drive. During this drive, Maanav notices that Vicky is following him on a deserted road. Vicky forces Maanav stop the car. The two men have a heated argument, which results in a physical brawl, where Maanav pushes Vicky back in self-defense. Vicky falls down, hits his head on rock, and dies instantly.
In a panic, Maanav quickly drives away, not noticing that one of his car’s side mirrors (which got broken off during the fight) has been left behind at the scene. Vicky is reported missing by his worried older brother Bhoora Solanki (played by Jaideep Ahlawat), a Mandothi municipal councilor. Bhoora tells investigators that Vicky had gone to meet Maanav.
Led by an inspector named Roop Kumar (played by Jitender Hooda), the local police arrive at the scene and find Vicky’s dead body. They also find the broken side mirror nearby. It doesn’t take long for the investigators to find out that Maanav is the new owner of a black Ford Mustang that has the exact same type of side mirror. Maanav has now become a person of interest in Vicky’s death and he is sought for questioning.
An enraged Bhoora is convinced that Maanav murdered Vicky. And so, Bhoora vows to get revenge by hunting down Maanav and killing him. Inspector Kumar is also leading a search to find Maanav, but Bhoora thinks the police are buffoons, and Bhoora wants to get his own brand of justice. Bhoora often berates Inspector Kumar, and he wages a public campaign to ruin Maanav’s reputation. The media has now branded Maanav as the chief suspect in Vicky’s death.
Maanav has fled Mandothi by taking a plane to Mumbai. While on the plane, there’s a satirical moment when Maanav meets real-life movie star Akshay Kumar, in a cameo as a version of himself. Akshay tells Maanav: “You’re going to win an Oscar for India some day.” Maanav confides in Akshay about why he suddenly left town. Akshay advises him: “I know from experience. Don’t tell anyone.”
After Maanav lands in Mumbai, he then takes another plane to London, where he hears on the news that police in India are looking for him. And, of course, Bhoora is hot on Maanav’s trail too. Most of the fight scenes in the movie (as already revealed in the trailer) involves Maanav’s conflicts with Bhoora, who has a group of thugs who are helping Bhoora.
Maanav also gets some help to evade the people who are after him. In London, Maanav gets assistance from his attorney Vishwas Patel (played by Siddharth Amar), who tell Maanav to lay low until they can figure out a way the best way for him to return to India to answer questions from authorities. Maanav also has a goofy personal assistant named Guddu (played by Pankaj Mathur), communicates with Maanav mainly by phone while Maanav has gone into hiding.
Maanav has a house in London, but it should come as no surprise that Maanav finds out that he isn’t going to be safe at his London home. The rest of “An Action Hero” involves Maanav getting mixed up with more shady characters, including Kaadir (played by Vaquar Shaikh), a notorious “fixer” for gangster Masood Abraham Katkar (played by Gautam Joglekar), who has a grudge against Maanav because Maanav did a TV interview saying that underworld gangsters are “irrelevant.” Maanav also enlists the help of two computer hackers: Sai (played by Neeraj Madhav) and Li Xian (played by Elton Tan), who might or might not be of any real help.
In between all the mayhem, the movie has a few musical numbers that poke fun at Bollywood action movies that force out-of-place song-and-dance numbers into action movies. In these sequences, Maanav sees himself as a hero who’s irresistible to women. Malaika Arora portrays Manaav’s leading lady for the song “Aap Jaisa Koi.” Nora Fatehi is Manaav’s leading lady for the song “Jehda Nasha.” Maanav is too busy trying not to get killed to really have a love interest in this story.
As the action here on the run, Khuranna carries the movie quite well, considering he has to portray a movie star whose action skills that he learned in movies are put to the test his “real life.” “An Action Hero” constantly lampoons Maanav’s “worth” as an action star, because on how well he can get himself out of predicaments. Don’t expect this movie to have complete realism, since much of it is quite cartoonish in how Maanav and the rest of the characters are portrayed.
“An Action Hero” is by no means an intellectual movie, but the movie is effective in poking fun at the media’s role in hyping celebrities while also seeking to “cancel” celebrities by always looking for celebrity scandals, only to try to build back up disgraced celebrities who are deemed worthy of making a comeback. The movie takes a sarcastic view of all the sensationalist, tabloid tactics that have become commonplace in mainstream media. These sardonic observations make “An Action Hero” slightly better than the usual formulaic action flick.
AA Films released “An Action Hero” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on December 2, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Seattle, the horror film “M3GAN” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latinos and Asians ) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A robot doll with artificial intelligence goes on a rampage against anyone who harms the 8-year-old girl who thinks of the doll as her best friend.
Culture Audience: “M3GAN” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching predictable but entertaining horror movies about killer dolls.
Amie Donald, Allison Williams and Violet McGraw (pictured at right) in “M3GAN” (Photo by Geoffrey Short/Universal Pictures)
“M3GAN” (pronounced “megan”) can now join the 1988 “Child’s Play” movie (which introduced the murderous Chucky toy doll) as one of the all-time most memorable “killer doll” movies, gaining legions of fans and inspiring countless horror costumes. “M3GAN” is the type of movie that you know instantly is the start of a franchise. It’s a campy, creepy and comical horror romp that delivers more laughs than genuine scares. Audiences should be in on the joke, which loses its impact with a somewhat weak ending. However, the killer doll’s sinister sassiness is worth seeing.
Directed by Gerard Johnston and written by Akela Cooper, “M3GAN” doesn’t go down the usual supernatural route to explain why the killer doll is so evil. Instead, “M3GAN” is a tale of human-made technology run amok. In that sense, the story is grounded in a reality and a persistent fear that technology with artificial intelligence will develop a mind of its own and do widespread damage. In this case, the damage is done by a 4-foot-tall terror doll named M3GAN, an acronym for Model 3 Generative Android. “M3GAN” also has social commentary on the effects of relying heavily on technology instead of human interactions for handling child care, learning, and developing relationships with other people.
“M3GAN” begins by showing a commercial for automated, furry toy pets called Purrpetual Pets, which can receive commands from mobile devices. The Seattle-based company that makes these toys is named Funki, which considers Hasbro to be one of its biggest rivals. One of the kids who has a Purrpetual Pet is an 8-year-old girl named Cady (played by Violet McGraw), who is playing with a dog version of a Purrpetual Pet in the back seat of a car while her parents are in the front seat.
Cady, her father Ryan (played by Arlo Green) and her mother Nicole (played by Chelsie Preston Crayford) are traveling by car for a family ski trip. It’s snowing heavily outside. Nicole is slightly annoyed by how Cady is so preoccupied with her Purrpetual Pet toy because Cady would rather talk to the toy than talk to her parents. Nicole comments, “What is the purpose of the toy if you have to play it on an iPad?”
The show is coming down so thick that Ryan (who’s driving) temporarily stops the car and doesn’t see the snow truck that plows head-on into the car. Ryan and Nicole die in this accident, while Cady survives. Cady is sent to live with Nicole’s sister Gemma (played by Allison Williams), who lives in Seattle and becomes Cady’s legal guardian. (“M3GAN” was actually filmed in Montreal in Canada, and in the Auckland area of New Zealand.) Gemma, who is single with no biological kids, works as a roboticist at Funki, and was one of the chief creators of Purrpetual Pets. In fact, Cady’s Purrpetual Pet was a gift from Gemma.
It’s an awkward life transition for this aunt and niece. Gemma is a workaholic who has no experience in raising a child. Cady is still grieving over her parents’ death. The movie doesn’t show Gemma grieving too much because Gemma is portrayed as someone who buries her troubles by working at her job. Now that Gemma has become Cady’s guardian, Gemma has to figure out a way for them to adjust to their new living situation.
Cady was homeschooled when her parents were alive. Gemma has to work during the day, so she has to find a local school that will fit Cady’s needs. Later in the movie, Gemma and Cady have an orientation visit to an alternative school that likes to teach classes outdoors. In the meantime, Gemma has to partially work from home to look after Cady. Gemma doesn’t want Cady to feel bored or restless.
To help Cady with her grief and new life transition, Cady has counseling sessions with a therapist named Lydia (played by Amy Usherwood), who is kind and patient with Cady. There’s another reason why this therapist is working with Cady: The parents of Cady’s deceased father Ryan are thinking about taking full custody of Cady. Lydia is evaluating Cady and Gemma to determine if Gemma can be a better guardian than the grandparents.
Because Cady has lost her parents and doesn’t have any friends in Seattle, Cady is understandably a very mopey child. It just so happens that Gemma has been working on a prototype for the M3GAN doll, which she shows to her co-workers Cole (played by Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Tess (played by Jen Van Epps) in their work space. They are all under pressure to come up with a hot-selling new toy because a rival company has copied the Purrpetual Pets toys and selling them for half the price of Funki’s retail sale price.
The CEO of Funki is an egotistical, impatient and frequently rude taskmaster named David Lin (played by Ronny Chieng), who is often accompanied by his “yes man” assistant Kurt (played by Stephane Garneau-Monten), who is usually nervous and jumpy. Kurt’s resentment over being treated like a doormat comes out in later in the story. David and Kurt attend a demonstration of how M3GAN works in the office space of Gemma, Tess and Cole, but the demonstration is a disaster: Cole forgot to put in a polypropylene barrier in M3GAN, so the doll’s head catches on fire and explodes. (No one is hurt in this accident.)
Meanwhile, at Gemma’s home, Cady is curious about the boxed toys that Gemma has on display, but Gemma tells Cady that Cady can’t play with the toys because they are collectibles. Cady is dejected until Gemma shows Cady a robot named Bruce that Gemma keeps in her garage. The robot can walk and talk. Cady is immediately entranced and tells Gemma: “If I had a toy like Bruce, I don’t think I’d ever need another toy again.”
And you know what that means: Gemma and her co-workers fast-track making M3GAN into a toy that will be sold as Funki’s most technologically advanced toy so far. The timing couldn’t come soon enough, because a worried Tess tells Gemma that David can’t find out they spent $100,000 on research and development money on M3GAN before M3GAN was approved. It should come as no surprise that Cady is chosen as the first child who gets to test out M3GAN before the Funki does an official launch of this new toy.
M3GAN, who looks like a girl but acts like an adult, has encyclopedic knowledge of facts and knows all the right things to say in dealing with people’s feelings. M3GAN also has an ability to record and mimic voices. This robotic doll appears to be the perfect combination of a tutor, babysitter and best friend for lonely Cady. In what seems to be a pattern for Cady, she becomes instantly attached to M3GAN, just like Cady was attached to her Purrpetual Pet.
M3GAN also sings pop songs to comfort Cady. These singing scenes are some of the funniest in the movie. If you waited your whole life to see an evil robotic doll sing David Guetta’s “Titanium” to cheer up a girl, and then the doll unleashes some murderous mayhem just minutes later to “protect” the girl, then “M3GAN” is the movie for you.
Why is M3GAN overly protective of Cady? During the testing process, Gemma gave this programming order to M3GAN: Protect Cady from all physical and emotional harm. Of course, this order backfires in the worst ways. Gemma finds out too late that M3GAN has superhuman physical strength along with superhuman intelligence.
Cady also becomes overly attached to M3GAN and doesn’t want to go anywhere without this doll. Cady is so fixated on M3GAN being her “friend,” Cady throws nasty temper tantrums if M3GAN can’t be with Cady at all times. If Cady is separated from M3GAN, Cady acts like an addict being told that the addict can’t have whatever is causing their addiction.
And because this is a horror movie, some of the characters get caught in the crossfire of the havoc that M3GAN wreaks. Gemma’s next-door neighbor Celia (played by Lori Dungey) gets on Gemma’s nerves because Celia has a problematic dog and has a habit of spraying unwanted pesticide on Gemma’s front lawn. At the alternative school, it doesn’t take long for a child bully named Brandon (played by Jack Cassidy) to target Cady.
Williams and McGraw are perfectly fine in their performances as Gemma and Cady, but they have both done versions of these characters in other horror movies. Chieng looks like he’s having fun hamming it up as David, the boss from hell. All the other supporting characters are adequate in their roles.
The real star of the movie, of course, is the character of M3GAN. The M3GAN character is a combination of work from actresses Amie Donald (who does the live-action work) and Jenna Davis (who does the voice work), as well as the work of the movie’s visual effects team. The facial expressions, body language and sarcastic comments of M3GAN show that this dangerous doll has a mind of its own. It’s often hilarious to watch other characters react to M3GAN when they figure out this that M3GAN is not a harmless toy.
One of the biggest flaws of “M3GAN” is that M3GAN doesn’t make her debut as a fully designed talking toy until about 30 minutes into 102-minute movie. And if you’ve seen the trailers for “M3GAN,” you’ve already seen some of the best parts of the movie. All of this might diminish viewer enjoyment of “M3GAN,” but these flaws don’t ruin the movie. “M3GAN” is by no means the best horror movie you can see in a year, but it’s the type of horror movie where people will get hooked enough to want to see the chief villain in other movies.
Universal Pictures released “M3GAN” in U.S. cinemas on January 6, 2023. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on January 24, 2023. Peacock will premiere “M3GAN” (including an unrated version of the movie) on February 24, 2023. The movie (including the unrated version) will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 21, 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Hong Kong, the romantic comedy/drama film “Love Suddenly” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Eight people who are connected to each other in some way have various ups and downs in finding love.
Culture Audience: “Love Suddenly” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching silly romantic comedies that have a lot of cringeworthy scenarios and conversations.
Karina Ng and Anson Kong in “Love Suddenly” (Photo courtesy of Just Distribution Company Ltd.)
“Love Suddenly” is just a poorly made ripoff of the “Love Actually” concept. Everything about “Love Suddenly” is embarrassing to all those involved. The movie is supposed to be a romantic comedy/drama, but some of the scenarios in “Love Suddenly” are actually very creepy, not romantic, such as presenting a Peeping Tom situation as being cute and endearing. Most people would not want to date someone they knew was spying on them in their bedroom without their consent. But don’t tell that to the filmmakers of “Love Suddenly,” who want to pretend that this voyeuristic crime is an effective way to get someone to fall in love with the voyeur.
Directed by Mak Ho-Pong, “Love Suddenly” focuses on eight people in their 20s and 30s. It’s easy to see that long before the movie is over, these eight people will be paired off into four love couples. Two of the people are already a couple at the beginning of the movie, but they argue, break up, and reunite multiples times in the movie. Viewers are supposed to wonder if this bickering duo will stay together or not. (We all know what the outcome will be in a predictable movie like “Love Suddenly.”)
The 2003 British film “Love Actually” takes place in and around London, close to Christmas. “Love Suddenly,” which is set in Hong Kong in the early 2020s, takes place close to Valentine’s Day. The eight people at the center of “Love Suddenly” act in ridiculous ways that are supposed to be amusing, but most of it just looks unrealistic and pathetic. And much of it is downright dull. Edmond Wong, Cheung Chun-Ho, Hayley Fu and Cyan Ho wrote the horrible screenplay for “Love Suddenly.”
Here are the eight people who are the movie’s main characters:
Wong Chung (played by Anson Kong) and Jenny, also known as Zoe (played by Karina Ng), are a dysfunctional couple who make a living by documenting their lives on social media. Their constant verbal conflicts (usually over jealousy or suspicion that someone in the relationship is unfaithful) gets very tedious, very quickly. There is absolutely no good reason presented in the movie for why this miserable couple is together, except that they have to put up a front for their social media business that they are in a happy and healthy relationship.
Pong Kong (played by Michael Ning) is a nerdy roommate of Chung and Jenny/Zoe. He has a crush on someone who has recently moved into the home as a fourth roommate: Shirley (played by Shirley Chan), a graduate student who previously lived in Australia. Shirley’s bedroom is right next to Kong’s bedroom. Kong becomes so obsessed with Shirley, he secretly bores a smale hole in his bedroom wall to spy on Shirley, who just so happens to be doing her graduate thesis on porn and the sex industry.
Jerome (played by Adam Pak) is a freewheeling bachelor, who works as a gigolo servicing women and men. He is hired by a shy, rich woman named Silver (played by Chloe So), who says she is very inexperienced in dating. Silver is so bashful about dating, she’s afraid of men touching her. You know where this storyline is going, of course.
Chi Ho (played by Edward Ma) is a ladies’ man who is dating two women at the same time. During a date at a restaurant with one of the women, she finds out that Ho has been cheating on her, so she stabs him in the hand with a restaurant utensil. Ho ends up in a hospital, where he is tended to by a nurse named Tin Tin (played by Roxanne Tong), who listens to Ho talk about problems in his love life. Tin Tin proudly declares to Ho that she is currently dating 10 men at the same time.
“Love Suddenly” throws in a bizarre and not-very-funny subplot of Silver’s domineering father Boss Dai (Cheung Tat Ming) disapproving of Jerome, who meets Silver’s father and mother (played by Yuen Kling Dan) during a family dinner. Boss Dai challenges Jerome to a drinking contest. If Jerome loses, he will agree to stop dating Silver. If Boss Dai loses, he will agree to stop bullying Silver. This drinking contest scene is nothing but terrible slapstick comedy that just wastes more time in this stupid and boring movie. “Love Suddenly” is 93 minutes long but feels much longer because the semi-torture of watching this dreck can’t end soon enough.
“Love Suddenly” is just scene after scene of idiocy, with none of it very comical at all. Jerome gets kidnapped by some of Boss Dai’s thugs. Chung plays a prank on Jenny/Zoe by setting her up to be caught on camera reacting to catching him in bed with another woman, who is in on the “joke.” Chung and Jenny/Zoe have an important videoconference meeting with a potential business sponsor (played by Benny Lau), but roommate Kong suddenly appears in the background, visibly wearing a strap-on sex device, which is one of Shirley’s “research” toys.
Sometimes, a mindless movie can be watchable if the cast members have the talent to make the scenes interesting. Unfortunately, the acting in “Love Suddenly” is not good at all, making the movie extra-painful to watch. Ladies’ man Ho and sexually adventurous nurse Tin Tin are the least annoying would-be couple, but these two characters have the least screen time out of the eight main characters. Ultimately, all of the characters in “Love Suddenly” (just like the entire movie) have all the substance of disposable and used candy wrappers on Valentine’s Day.
Just Distribution Company Ltd. released “Love Suddenly” in select U.S. cinemas on December 2, 2022. The movie was released in China on November 17, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Chicago, from 1968 to 1973, the dramatic film “Call Jane” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A lawyer’s wife becomes involved with the Jane network, a group of mostly women who provided abortion services in the Chicago area when it was illegal at the time.
Culture Audience: “Call Jane” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of stars Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver, as well as people interested in dramatic movies about what life was like for middle-class women in the late 1960s to early 1970s, before the Roe vs. Wade case in 1973 that gave federal legal protection for abortion in the United States.
Elizabeth Banks in “Call Jane” (Photo by Wilson Webb/Roadside Attractions)
“Call Jane,” a drama that takes place from 1968 to 1973, is both a look back into the past and a look into the present and future of anyone who cannot get access to a safe and legal abortion in the United States. When “Call Jane” had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in January of that year, abortion had federal legal protection in the U.S., ever since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade case in 1973. In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, with the court’s decision allowing individual states to determine their respective abortion laws.
“Call Jane” is told from the perspective of a fictional, middle-class woman who gets involved in the Jane network, an underground abortion network in Chicago, beginning in 1968, when she sought a illegal abortion for herself. Some of the comedic moments in “Call Jane” are awkwardly placed, and a few of the characters become dangerously close to being parodies. However, the movie is intriguing overall in portraying a pre-Roe v. Wade female perspective of abortion in the U.S.
Directed by Phyllis Nagy, “Call Jane” uses a lot of fact-based elements of the real-life Jane network and blends them into a story with fictional characters. The 2019 film “Ask for Jane” (written and directed by Rachel Carey) did the same thing, but “Call Jane” has a much higher caliber of talent in front of and behind the camera than “Ask for Jane.” Both films have flaws and are centered primarily on white, middle-class women, when the reality is that women of various demographics used the abortion services of the Jane network. However, “Call Jane” (written by Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi) is a better movie overall in every way and doesn’t look like a mediocre made-for-TV film in the way that “Ask for Jane” does.
In “Call Jane,” the main protagonist is Joy Griffin (played by Elizabeth Banks), a homemaker and wife of an attorney named Will (played by Chris Messina), who works in criminal justice. Joy and Will live in Chicago, and they have a teenage daughter named Charlotte (played by Grace Edwards), who’s about 13 or 14 years old. At the beginning of the movie, it’s 1968, and Joy is pregnant.
The movie’s opening scene shows Joy and Will are leaving a lawyers’ convention which has a police barricade outside because of anti-Vietnam War protestors outside. Joy sees police brutality against the protestors as she and Will drive off. He comments with some relief that Charlotte is too young to get involved in the anti-war, anti-establishment movement. Little does Will know that Joy will soon become involved in a “radical” movement of her own.
Joy thinks that she has an ideal life. She has a good and loving family. She helps her husband with his legal briefs. “Honey, you make me sound like Clarence Darrow,” Will says appreciatively.
One of Joy’s best friends is her neighbor Lana (played by Kate Mara), a widow whose daughter Erin (played by Bianca D’Ambrosio) is a friend of Charlotte’s. Lana identifies as a conservative Republican. It’s hinted that Joy is also a registered Republican, but Joy likes to think of herself as more open-minded and more liberal than most Republican mothers.
Things take a turn in Joy’s life one day, when she is dancing with Charlotte in the kitchen to a Velvet Underground song when Joy suddenly collapses. She’s rushed to a hospital, where she gets a grim diagnosis: Her pregancy is causing her to have cardiomyopathy (congestive heart failure), and the doctor says the only medical treatment to stop it would be to have an abortion.
However, in Chicago in 1968, abortion is legal only if it is approved by an authorized board of medical professionals. In Joy’s case, the decision is made by an all-male group of doctors. She’s told that she has a 50% chance of living if she does not terminate the pregnancy. The doctors vote unanimously to not approve the abortion.
Joy doesn’t get much help from Dr. Campbell (played by Joel Brady), her obstetrician/gynecologist, who tells her that another option to get a legal abortion would be for Joy to pretend that she’s suicidal. Dr. Campbell would then get notes from psychiatrists to approve the abortion. Dr. Campbell’s secretary has an even more dangerous suggestion: “Just fall down a staircase. It worked for me.” Fearing that she will die as a result of the pregnancy, a desperate Joy goes to a seedy abortion place in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood, but she backs out of the abortion, because she feels that the abortion will be botched by the unsavory people who are in charge.
Joy then finds out about the Jane network through flyers posted on a street. The flyers say, “Pregnant? Anxious? Get Help! Call Jane.” Joy calls the phone number on the flyer, and she discovers that the Jane network offers confidential and anonymous abortions. Because everything is illegal in this process, Joy sees firsthand that the paranoia and precautions involved in the Jane network are on the level of a well-coordinated spy network. People uses aliases and code names and are driven to secretive locations for the abortions.
Joy is terrified during her abortion, but after it’s over, she is surprised and relieved by the counseling and comfort that she receives from the women in the network. During her abortion experience, Joy meets several of the Jane network’s key players. They include strong-willed feminist leader Virginia (played by Sigourney Weaver), who founded the Jane network; outspoken Gwen (played by Wunmi Mosaku), who drove Joy to the abortion location; and compassionate Maeve (played by Evangeline Young), who is among the first women in the group to advocate for the Jane network to offer free abortions to women who can’t afford their price.
The only man who’s part of the network is an abortionist named Dean (played by Cory Michael Smith), who says he’s a doctor with training in obstetrics and gynecology. He is the person who performed the abortion on Joy. Dean’s bedside manner is often arrogant and abrupt to the women who are in his care, but the Jane network relies on him because none of the women in the group has medical training. Later in the story, Dean demands more money for his payment, so the women have to decide how much they need Dean to be a part of their group.
After talking to the members of the Jane network, Joy finds out how much help they need, and she decides to become a part of the network as a volunteer. Joy’s intention is to help other women, many of whom are even more desperate to have an abortion than Joy was. Joy keeps her Jane network activities a secret from everyone she knows who is not part of the network.
At first, Joy lies to Will by saying that she’s taking an art class, to explain her absences when she would usually be at home. When Will complains to Joy that she isn’t spending as much time at home like she used to do, Joy responds by saying, “I need to be with other people who think and do.” The trailer for “Call Jane” already revealed that Will finds out about Joy’s involvement in the Jane network. Will is concerned about Joy going to jail and worried about losing his attorney license if people discover that he knew about Joy’s illegal activities and did nothing about it.
“Call Jane” has some hokey “rah rah feminism” type of dialogue that sounds like made-for-TV slogans instead of realistic conversations. One thing that “Call Jane” does a much better job of portraying than “Ask for Jane” does is how the Jane network had a lot of in-fighting and disagreements among its members. One major point of contention was in how to decide who deserved to get free abortions. Virginia wants it to be a random selection from low-income women, while other Jane network members think the decision should be done on a case-by-case basis of who is the most in need.
The issues of race and socioeconomic class are also authentically discussed in “Call Jane.” Gwen, who is the only woman of color in the group, has to constantly remind the other Jane network members to think outside their privileged bubbles to have more empathy for people of different races and lower incomes who have worse abortion hardships than the average middle-class white woman. During a heated argument (in one of the movie’s best scenes), Gwen points out that African American women in the Chicago area are less likely to be able to afford a safe abortion and are more likely to die from botched abortions. Gwen calls it a form of “black genocide,” which Virginia scoffs at as a “batshit” concept.
As for Joy, she becomes friendly with Gwen, but it’s mostly a superficial relationship that doesn’t extend to Joy showing an interest in having Gwen in her life for the long haul. The movie has some racial stereotyping, by having Gwen show Joy how to smoke marijuana. It’s as if the movie is saying that out all the left-wing, progressive types that Joy is now hanging out with in the Jane network, the only black person in the group is the only person who needs to be singled out as a habitual pot smoker.
Joy’s main conflicts are with abrasive Dean, because she thinks he’s toxic to the group, and he doesn’t offer the compassionate care that she thinks the abortion patients deserve. In real life, the Jane network never had anyone die from the abortion services that the Jane network provided. It was important for the Jane network to also have a reputation for offering meaningful counseling to abortion patients, which is something most underground abortion groups didn’t do at the time. Joy eventually finds a way to deal with Dean, but the movie doesn’t do a good-enough job in convincing viewers that neophyte Joy comes up with this solution, and that other more-experienced people in the Jane network (even whip-smart leader Virginia) couldn’t think of it earlier.
If viewers are wondering if any of the characters in “Call Jane,” are based on real people, there are similarities to some of the real-life people in the Jane network. Joy is probably based in part on Judith Arcana (also known as Judy Pildes), a prominent Jane network member married to an attorney. Virginia is no doubt based on Heather Booth, who is credited with founding the Jane network. Gwen is most likely based on Marie Leaner, the most prominent African American member of the Jane network.
If people want to learn more about the Jane network by watching a movie, the best one is the 2022 HBO documentary “The Janes,” directed by Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes. (Arcana, Booth and Leaner are all interviewed in “The Janes” documentary.) Not as comprehensive as “The Janes” but worth seeking out is the 1995 documentary “Jane: An Abortion Service” (directed by Kate Kirtz and Nell Lundy), which had a limited release in theaters and was originally televised on PBS.
All of the cast members in “Call Jane” are very good in their roles, with Weaver being an obvious standout because of her acting talent and because Virginia has the strongest personality. “Call Jane” would have benefited from telling viewers a little bit more about the lives of Virginia and Gwen, who are the two Jane network characters other than Joy who get the most screen time and dialogue. In many ways, Virginia and Gwen are much more interesting than Joy, who comes across as a little bland, although Banks does an admirable job with the way the character was written. The biggest failing in “Call Jane” is not showing enough diversity in the abortion patients who get some kind of focus in the movie, when this diversity of abortion patients existed in real life for the Jane network.
Nagy’s direction of “Call Jane” is solid but occasionally disjointed. For example, the movie veers off into a very clumsily depicted and rushed plot development about Joy becoming the target of a police investigation, led by an undercover cop named Detective Chilmark (played by John Magaro), in a very short section of the movie. “Call Jane” should have spent more time on this plot development to bring more tension to the story. Before this plot development, the most tension that Joy gets from the Jane network is arguing with Dean.
“Call Jane” doesn’t have enough of anything that can be considered special or extraordinary filmmaking. And it’s not a movie that is going to change people’s minds about whether abortion should be legal or illegal. However, for viewers looking for a dramatic version of female empowerment taking place in the early years of the American feminist movement, “Call Jane” is a worthy option.
Roadside Attractions released “Call Jane” in U.S. cinemas on October 28, 2022. The movie was released on digital and VOD on December 6, 2022. “Call Jane” was released on Blu-ray and DVD on December 13, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Connecticut and New York City, from March to April 2020, the comedy/drama film “Alone Together” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, a food critic/journalist with an attorney boyfriend finds herself quarantining unexpectedly with a bachelor repairman when they are both double-booked at the same Airbnb rental house, and the awkwardness between these temporary housemates turns into a romantic attraction.
Culture Audience: “Alone Together” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star/writer/director Katie Holmes and don’t mind watching a clumsily made and extremely predictable romantic dramedy.
Katie Holmes and Derek Luke in “Alone Together” (Photo by Jesse Korman/Vertical Entertainment)
“Alone Together” is a trite and misguided dramedy about a would-be couple stuck quarantining in the same house during the COVID-19 pandemic. The only social distancing needed is for viewers to avoid this boring flop that fails to have any romantic sizzle. Katie Holmes is the writer, director and star of this formulaic dud, so she bears the responsibility for not being able to write and direct a great role for herself. The cast members’ performances aren’t terrible, but the movie’s storytelling is so unimaginative and substandard, it’s disappointing that the potential to make a witty and memorable film is completely wasted.
“Alone Together” takes place during a one-month period (March to April 2020), during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Keep that in mind when the “Alone Together” characters make big decisions about their lives in such a short period of time. The problem is that some of these life decisions don’t look completely believable and look too rushed, considering the personalities of some of the characters involved.
“Alone Together” had its world premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. Holmes’ feature-film directorial debut “All We Had” (written by Josh Boone and Jill Killington) had its world premiere at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. In both movies, Holmes as a director shows a knack for choosing talented cast members, but she needs a lot of improvement in how a director shapes the narrative of a film.
“Alone Together” is not as muddled as “All We Had” (a drama about a single mother who becomes homeless), but “Alone Together” has almost the opposite problem: It presents complicated life decisions in such an overly simplistic way, the end result is that “Alone Together” looks like an unrelatable, half-baked fairy tale. “Alone Together” earnestly wants to be a meaningful love story set during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the lack of believable chemistry between the two lead characters automatically makes this romantic dramedy a non-starter.
“Alone Together” begins on March 15, 2020, in New York City, at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdowns. A food critic/journalist named June (played by Holmes) is going on a getaway trip to an Airbnb rental house in Connecticut. Her boyfriend John (played by Derek Luke), who is a corporate attorney, booked this rental the week before, as a romantic vacation. But now, with the world under quarantine from a deadly disease, this trip has taken on a new meaning.
From the beginning, “Alone Together” has a series of contrivances to make June get in a bad mood at the start of the trip. When she goes to the subway station, a homeless panhandler (played by Mike Iveson) verbally abuses her when she ignores his begging for money: “The world is ending, bitch,” the panhandler snarls. “I shouldn’t have to ask you twice.”
The subways are delayed, so June decides to take an above-ground train. But when she gets to the train station, she finds out that the train she needs to take has cancelled all service for the day. June ends up using a Lyft car service to get to her destination, so traveling to the rental home costs a lot more than June expected.
While June uses hand sanitizer in the car (and she continues to use hand sanitizer throughout the movie, to show she’s conscientious about germs), the nosy Lyft driver (played by Neal Benari) inappropriately asks June if she’s married. June says no, but she says she eventually wants to get married and start a family. It’s later mentioned in the movie that June and John have been dating each other for a year.
When she’s in the car on the way to the Airbnb rental, June gets a text from John telling her that he won’t be able to join her at the Airbnb rental, because he’s staying in the city to look after his elderly parents during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The rental house has already been paid for, and June is almost there, so she doesn’t see the point of going all the way back to New York City.
The irritations for June continue: When she arrives at the house, she can’t find the key to the front door. And then, her phone battery dies. She also finds out the house is already occupied by someone who says he booked the same house the day before. You know where this is going, of course.
The house’s other rental occupant is Charlie (played by Jim Sturgess), a bachelor who has his own business repairing vintage items. His especially loves to fix up old motorcycles. And what a coincidence: Charlie lives in New York City too, and he’s rented the house to be by himself during the pandemic lockdowns during the same period time that June and John had the booked the place. June and Charlie predictably have a mild squabble over who has the right to be at the house, until they both agree to share the house for the duration that they have it booked.
“Alone Together” then goes through the tedious and snoozeworthy motions of June and Charlie bickering and being uncomfortable with each other, until they discover they actually like each other and have some romantic attraction to each other. Meanwhile, June is already annoyed with John for wanting to spend time with his parents instead of with her. And then, June gets jealous when she sees a social media photo of John looking cozy with one of John’s female co-workers named Carol.
June tells Charlie about John but almost makes John sound like an inattentive boyfriend instead of a loving and caring son. Charlie has some issues about falling in love because his most recent ex-girlfriend cheated on him and dumped him to be with another man. Even after Charlie tells June this information, she seems to have very little qualms about cheating on unsuspecting John with Charlie. Charlie also doesn’t seem to want to think too much about the consequences if Charlie and June hook up: Charlie is going to be involved with another woman who’s a cheater, and he’s going to be involved in emotionally hurting John.
In other words: “Alone Together” doesn’t give any good reasons for viewers to root for June and Charlie to be a couple. To make things worse, the dialogue in “Alone Together” is so bland and forgettable, it’s hard to believe that June and Charlie are connecting on a level other than physical attraction. It’s supposed to be an “opposites attract” situation where uptight, white-collar June and laid-back, blue-collar Charlie are supposed to find love with each other, despite their different lifestyles. It all looks so phony.
“Alone Together” also has some weird inconsistencies that are examples of the movie’s substandard writing and directing. When June first meets Charlie, she asks him, “Are you from Wisconsin?,” even though he has an obvious East Coast accent. Charlie later tells June that he grew up New York City’s Lower East Side, even though Sturgess (who is British in real life) has an American accent that sounds more like Charlie grew up in New Jersey.
The two-story house where June and Charlie are staying is big enough to have more than one bathroom, but there are multiple, fake-looking scenes where Charlie and June have discomfort from using the same bathroom. June is supposed to be such a germaphobe during the pandemic (before a COVID vaccine is available), she’s paranoid about using towels in someone else’s house. But then, there are multiple scenes of her not social distancing or not using any face protections when she’s around a stranger like Charlie during the pandemic. Charlie eventually makes face masks for himself and June, because it’s supposed to be a cutesy romantic gesture.
Charlie and June eventually open up to each other about their family lives. June’s only living relative is her widowed, unnamed grandfather (played by Ed Dixon), who is the father of June’s mother. There’s a scene where June sings “Blue Moon” to her grandfather when they chat on the phone during the quarantine. (During the movie’s opening credits, Holmes’ real-life daughter Suri Cruise sings a pitch-perfect and delightful version of “Blue Moon,” in one of the few highlights of this dud of a movie.) Charlie is close to his widowed mother Deborah (played by Melissa Leo), and she calls him during the quarantine too.
June’s best friend is named Margaret (played by Zosia Mamet), who tries to assure a worried and insecure June that John wouldn’t cheat on June with his co-worker Carol, because John is a good guy. Meanwhile, hypocritical June gets closer and closer to cheating on John with Charlie. June fails to see this double standard. The characters of June’s grandfather, Charlie’s mother Deborah and June’s friend Margaret are just sounding boards and are ultimately of no consequence to the story.
Even if the trailer for “Alone Together” didn’t already reveal that John (who is a very generic character) would show up unexpectedly at the house, it’s too easy to predict that this is how John will find out about Charlie. The movie then hems and haws with pseudo-suspense, as June has to decide if she will choose John or Charlie in this monotonous love triangle. And remember: June is making this decision after knowing Charlie for less than a month. “Alone Together” is trying desperately to be a smart independent film, but there’s no intelligence to be found from copying the same old tired clichés that can be found in a Hallmark Channel movie or a cheap romance novel.
Vertical Entertainment released “Alone Together” in select U.S. cinemas on July 22, 2022. The movie was released on digital and VOD on July 29, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Kolkata, India, the dramatic film “Subho Bijoya” features an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-classs and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A family reunion during the Durga Puja festival results in turmoil and bickering while the family matriarch has a brain tumor.
Culture Audience: “Subho Bijoya” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching predictable and long-winded family dramas.
Kaushik Ganguly, Devtanu, Kharaj Mukherjee, Manasi Sinha, Shweta Mishra, Amrita De, Churni Ganguly and Koushani Mukherjee in “Subho Bijoya” (Photo courtesy of Reliance Entertainment)
The concept of a family reunion is certainly not new as the plot for a movie. But in order for it to be interesting, the story and characters should be unique and engaging. Unfortunately, the family drama “Subho Bijoya” falls short in these areas. It’s just a rehash of so many other movies about family reunions where people argue, hold grudges, and are affected by a family member with a health issue. “Subho Bijoya” is just too sappy, too boring, and too long to make much of an impact.
Directed by Rohan Sen (who co-wrote the “Subho Bijoya” screenplay with Anubhab Ghosh), “Subho Bijoya” revolves around a family reuniting for the Durga Puja festival in Kolkata, India. (The words “subho bijoya” mean “good luck” in Bengali.) The family matriarch Bijoya (played by Churni Ganguly) has a brain tumor, and her doctors are suggesting that she get a biopsy. Bijoya’s husband Amarta (played by Kaushik Ganguly) wants the family to cancel its Durga Puja celebrations and not go out to any Durga Puja events.
However, Bijoy and Amarta’s daughter Uma (played by Koushani Mukherjee) suggests that the family members have their Durga Puja celebrations at the home of Bijoy and Amarta. The people at this reunion include Uma’s husband Aditya (played by Bonny Sengupta), also known as Adi; Aditya’s estranged younger brother Ahan (played by Devtanu); and Aditya’s older sister Aditi (played by Amrita De). Also at the reunion are Bijoy’s brother (played by Kharaj Mukherjee); his wife (played by Manasi Sinha); and their teenage daughter Mon (played by Shweta Mishra).
As expected in any movie about family reunions, it’s only matter of time before resentments and rivalries come to the surface. Aditya is angry at younger brother Ahan because Ahan cut off contact with Aditya for three years, with no real explanation. Ahan tries to get back together with an ex-girlfriend (played by Sayonima Roy), who is engaged to another man. Aditi is pregnant and separated from her husband, who wants Aditi to give their marriage another chance.
And you can almost do a countdown to when Bijoy ends up in a hospital. Speaking of keeping time, “Subho Bijoya” is so sluggishly paced and tedious, the average viewer will probably be checking what time it is on multiple occasions to see how much longer before the movie ends. Pity any viewers who don’t know in advance that “Subho Bijoya” has an unnecessarily long running time of 140 minutes. The entire plot of “Subho Bijoya” could have been been done in a movie that’s 90 minutes or less.
The cast members’ performances aren’t bad, but they aren’t great either. Everything in “Subho Bijoya” has been done too many times before in other family reunion movies that are of a much better quality. “Subho Bijoya” wants to be like a sentimental soap opera but lacks any sizzle or spark that will hook viewers into wanting to know what will happen next. The problem with all of “Subho Bijoya” is that viewers will already know what will happen next for each plot development that plods along until it’s inevitable conclusion. The hokey message at the end of the film sounds like it was lifted from a greeting card, which is the most emotional depth that this forgettable and trite movie can muster.
Reliance Entertainment released “Subho Bijoya” in select U.S. cinemas on December 9, 2022. The movie was released in India on December 2, 2022.
Available in the original Japanese version (with English subtitles) or in a dubbed English-language version.
Culture Representation: Taking place on the fictional island of Elegia, the Japanese animated film “One Piece Film Red” tells the story of pirates, a female pop star, and how her past connects to the present.
Culture Clash: The pirates get involved in a battle over the pop star, who wants to create a utopia for her legions of followers.
Culture Audience: “One Piece Film Red” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the “One Piece” franchise and adventurous anime films that have some social commentary.
Red-Haired Shanks in “One Piece Film Red” (Image courtesy of Crunchyroll)
“One Piece Film Red” is an exuberant adventure story that will please new and previous fans of the “One Piece” franchise. Beyond the thrilling action scenes is clever social commentary about blindly following anyone in power who promises a utopian existence. People don’t have to know anything about the “One Piece” franchise before seeing the “One Piece Film Red,” but it helps in understanding some of the characters’ motivations, backstories and personalities. The franchise follows the adventures of a group of pirates (some with superpowers) as they battle other people in search of a famous treasure called One Piece.
Directed by Gorō Taniguchi and written by Tsutomu Kuroiwa, “One Piece Film Red” opens with the Straw Hat Pirates going to the fictional island of Elegia. The captain of the Straw Hat Pirates is a teenager named Luffy, who is also known as Straw Hat Luffy or Monkey D. Luffy. He has an upbeat personality and, for better or worse, is often impulsive. A running joke in the “One Piece” series is that Fluffy’s enormous appetite frequently affects his judgment when he is hungry for food.
The Straw Hat Pirates have gone to Elegia to see a young pop star Uta perform in concert. She’s abut the same age as Luffy, who is in his late teens. Luffy has a past connection with Uta because he met her through her biological father: a pirate named Red-Haired Shanks, who is Luffy’s idol. About 12 years earlier, Red-Haired Shanks and his pirate crew were stationed in Luffy’s native land of the Goa Kingdom. That is how Luffy met Uta, who was being raised by single father Red-Haired Shanks.
However, during Red-Haired Shanks’ travels, he left underage Uta in Elegia shortly after Luffy met her. She was adopted and raised by a man called Gordon, the former king of Elegia. Red-Haired Shanks told people that he gave up custody of Uta because she wanted to pursue a singing career, and he believed that Elegia was the best place for her to receive training.
Uta has now become a world-famous pop star with millions of devoted followers. Her performances seem to have a hypnotic effect on people because she has control of Sing-Sing Fruit, which casts a trance-like spell on people who hear Uta sing. She has messages of positivity, which makes her a beloved celebrity. Uthe has announced that she’s planning to bring her followers to a paradise called Sing-Sing World, where she says there is peace and unity.
In order to follow Uta to this world, people have to be willing to leave their regular lives behind. And that makes her a threat to the World Government. Uta comes under attack from various entitities, while Luffy and his crew have to decide which side they will take in this battle. In order to fully understand Uta, they have to uncover more of what happened to her in the past. The movie features original songs performed by Ado as Uta’s songs.
“One Piece Film Red” not only has an intriguing story, but the movie’s visuals are also captivating and enhance viewers’ enjoyment of the story. The movie also has touches of comedy that lighten the mood and make the characters more relatable. “One Piece Film Red” has a lot to say about families, identities, and how they play a role in people’s perceptions of themselves and of society. It’s not a preachy film, but it’s not just mindless fluff either.
The voices of the “One Piece Film Red” characters are portrayed by different actors, depending on the version of “One Piece Film Red.” The original Japanese version (with English subtitles) has Mayumi Tanaka as Luffy, Shūichi Ikeda as Red-Haired Shanks, Kaori Nazuka as Uta (with Ado for Uta’s singing voice), and Kenjiro Tsuda as Gordon. There’s also a U.S. version, with the dialogue dubbed in English, that has Colleen Clinkenbeard as Luffy, Brandon Potter as Red-Haired Shanks, Amanda Lee as Uta, and Jim Foronda as Gordon.
“One Piece Film Red” has moments that will be confusing to people who don’t know anything about the “One Piece” series, but these moments aren’t crucial to undertstanding the overall arc of the story. The movie admirably doesn’t have a predictable ending. “Once Piece Film Red” looks like it will end one way, but then the last few minutes offer a surprise that’s a little bit of a cliffhanger and teaser for what’s next in the “One Piece” saga.
Crunchyroll released “One Piece Film Red” in U.S. cinemas on November 4, 2022. The movie was released in Japan on August 6, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of the U.S., the sci-fi comedy film “I’m Totally Fine” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Not long after her best friend/business partner dies, a 36-year-old woman finds out that an alien from outer space has embodied the form of her dead best friend.
Culture Audience: “I’m Totally Fine” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of stars Jillian Bell, Natalie Morales, and independent films that try too hard to be offbeat comedies but are actually quite dull.
Natalie Morales and Jillian Bell in “I’m Totally Fine” (Photo courtesy of Decal)
“I’m Totally Fine” is a one-note slog masquerading as a quirky comedy for people who think this type of independent film automatically deserves praise. The entire movie has this self-congratulatory, repetitive tone: “You’re supposed to laugh because this is a low-budget film starring fairly well-known actresses who’ve been in much better comedies, so their filmographies should make this movie funny too.” Spoiler alert: “I’m Totally Fine” is not funny.
The movie’s very thin plot gets stretched to the point where it breaks, and it goes from tedious sarcasm to sentimental mush. None of the movie’s emotional tone looks genuine or natural, despite the efforts of the co-stars, and it’s only made worse by the movie’s sluggish pacing. “I’m Totally Fine” (directed by Brandon Dermer and written by Alisha Ketry) looks like the type of movie that was made with an unfinished screenplay, with the hope that the cast members would be able to make goofy facial expressions and do some improvisation, in an attempt to make the movie interesting.
“I’m Totally Fine” (which takes place in various parts of the U.S., but you can tell that the movie was filmed in a limited part of California) is essentially about how a 36-year-old business entrepreneur named Vanessa (played by Jillian Bell) reacts when she finds out that an outer space alien (played by Natalie Morales) has shapeshifted into appearing as her dead best friend Jennifer Martinez, who has died less than a week ago. (It’s mentioned in the movie that Jennifer has not been buried yet.) The alien tells Vanessa that the alien has taken on a human form so that the alien can learn more about what it feels like to be human.
Vanessa and Jennifer co-founded a start-up company that makes organic soda drinks. They had just landed a distribution deal to have the soda sold in stores nationwide. And then, Jennifer died. (Her cause of death is not mentioned in the movie.) Vanessa has traveled alone by car to spend some time by herself to grieve at the house where Jennifer and Vanessa had planned to hold a celebration party because of the distribution deal.
Vanessa is surprised when employees of the event planning company that was hired for the party show up at the house to set up the party. There’s some haggling back and forth, because Jennifer was the one who signed the contract with this event planning company. The party planner in charge is named Susan (played by Karen Maruyama), and she informs Vanessa that Jennifer was legally the only one who could cancel the contract, if she did so with at least 24 hours notice. But, of course, Jennifer is dead, and there’s some arguing over whether or not Vanessa can cancel the contract. She can’t cancel, so the party is set up anyway.
It’s just an excuse for the movie to show grieving Vanessa alone at the house with plenty of alcohol. She gets drunk, of course. And so, when Vanessa sees the alien who looks exactly like Jennifer, the first reaction from Vanessa is to think that it’s just a drunken hallucination. But the next day, a hungover Vanessa again sees the Jennifer look-alike alien, who calmly hands Vanessa a cup of coffee. And this time, Vanessa thinks she’s having some kind of mental breakdown.
The alien tells in a robotic voice: “I know this is an odd encounter. My appearance resembles your perished companion. Unfortunately, Jennifer continues and will continue to be deceased. I am simply an extraterrestrial who has taken her form.” The space alien also calls itself a “species observation officer” who mission is to observe how humans live and how resilient they are.
The Jennifer look-alike alien expects Vanessa to give her a crash course on being human in “orientation sessions.” Vanessa finds out that this alien has some unusual quirks: The alien gets easily dehydrated by the sun, so the alien guzzles olive oil to keep hydrated.
The alien also says that its native planet consists of lightning, and the beings from this planet need a certain energy source: “We absorb the battery life of anything around us that has a battery life. We also absorb heat.” You can easily predict what happens to Vanessa’s cell phone when she needs it, or what happens when Vanessa and the alien decide to go on a road trip together in Vanessa’s car when they’re on a deserted road.
Expect to see a lot of “odd couple” clichés with grumpy and jaded Vanessa and the upbeat and naïve Jennifer look-alike alien. The movie has a small number of people in the cast, so most of the screen time is focused on these two characters. Vanessa has a musician boyfriend named Eric (played by Blake Anderson), who is concerned about Vanessa’s well-being and checks in with her occasionally by phone. During the road trip, the two travelers encounter an unnamed scruffy weirdo (played by Kyle Newacheck), who does what unnamed scruffy weirdos do in “trying too hard to be cool” movies like “I’m Totally Fine.”
There’s also some time-wasting nonsense about Vanessa, Jennifer and Jennifer’s younger sister Megan (voiced by Cyrina Fiallo, in a phone conversation) being fans of the rock band Papa Roach when they were teenagers. Vanessa gets jealous because she finds out all these years later that Megan and Jennifer went to see Papa Roach in concert for the first time, one year before Jennifer and Vanessa saw the band in concert. Jennifer had lied to Vanessa and told her that the Papa Roach concert that Jennifer went to with Vanessa was Jennifer’s first Papa Roach concert experience.
Vanessa gets so upset about this lie, it makes viewers think that even though Vanessa is 36, she has the emotional maturity of someone who’s 16. The movie runs this dull Papa Roach subplot into the ground. It should come as no surprise when a flamboyant party DJ named DJ Twisted Bristle (played by Harvey Guillén) shows up at the house, Papa Roach’s 2000 song “Last Resort” (the band’s breakthrough hit) is played, so Vanessa can teach the alien how to let loose at a party. Yes, this scene really is as stupid as it sounds. There’s some predictable drinking and drugging in this scene too.
Bell’s portrayal of Vanessa goes back and forth between trying to look like a grief-stricken person who’s rude and impatient to someone who’s whiny, spoiled brat who needs an alien to teach her how to get in touch with her sensitive side again. There are a few moments of juvenile-minded comedy that might give viewers some mild laughs, in the way that people might laugh at outdated jokes. Morales’ space alien performance is a weak imitation of the Coneheads. It quickly gets tiresome.
“I’m Totally Fine” wasted an opportunity to make the story concept into an amusing and edgy film. Instead, the movie is filled with idiotic scenarios and lackluster dialogue. For example, at one point in the movie, Vanessa says, “I am a strong, powerful woman, and I am perfectly capable of handling my mental breakdown,” as if it’s supposed to be a clever comedic moment.
“I’m Totally Fine” forces in some tearjearker scenes in the film’s last 15 minutes. It’s just a cheap ploy to make the movie look like it’s trying to convey “meaningful messages about life and humanity.” But by then, it’s too late, because this contrived human-alien friendship is as fake as an alien shapeshifter’s body disguise.
Decal released “I’m Totally Fine” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on November 4, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the fantasy comedy film “Darby and the Dead” features a racially diverse cast of characters (African American, white, Asian and Latino) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: After a popular but snobby girl in high school dies in a freak accident, she returns as a ghost to haunt her psychic former best friend to throw a tribute party for her, and the former friend goes from being a social outcast to being the most popular student in the school.
Culture Audience: “Darby and the Dead” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching teen comedies that are “dumbed down” for audiences, and lazily mix together plots that were in superior movies.
Riele Downs, Asher Angel and Auli’i Cravalho in “Darby and the Dead” (Photo by Marcos Cruz/20th Century Studios/Hulu)
The cringeworthy comedy “Darby and the Dead” is as fresh and funny as a rotting corpse. This dreadful dud relentlessly insults its characters and viewers, as it clumsily rips off ideas from better movies. It’s easy to see why 20th Century Studios dumped “Darby and the Dead” on a streaming service instead of releasing the movie in theaters: “Darby and the Dead” is the type of awful movie that viewers would want refunds for if they had the misfortune of buying movie tickets for it.
Directed by Silas Howard, “Darby and the Dead” (written by Becca Greene and Wenonah Wilms) was originally titled “Darby Harper Wants You to Know.” It’s about a psychic teenage girl who can see dead people and is then haunted by a former best friend while they argue about issues having to do with cliques and popularity at their high school. You don’t have to be a psychic to know that this subject matter has been so overdone with predictable endings in comedy films about teenagers, any movie with the same concept has do something special to stand out from the forgettable mediocrity of most of these formulaic teen films.
Unfortunately, everything about “Darby and the Dead” looks like it was made by out-of-touch adults who took the cheesiest aspects of teen comedies from the 1980s and 1990s and just shoveled it into “Darby and the Dead” while making a few technological updates for the early 2020s. “Darby and the Dead” has the benefit of some talented cast members, but they don’t have believable chemistry as friends or enemies in the movie. In “Darby and the Dead,” they look exactly like what they are: cast members in their 20s pretending to be teens in high school and trying too hard to be comical while saying their very unfunny lines of dialogue.
The title character of “Darby and the Dead” is Darby Harper (played Riele Downs), a sarcastic loner, who’s about 16 or 17 years old. Darby is also a psychic who lives with her widowed father Ben (played by Derek Luke) in an unnamed U.S. city. (“Darby and the Dead” was actually filmed in South Africa.) Darby’s constant voiceover narration gets annoying after a while, because what she thinks are witty observations are actually just dull rants from a teenager who doesn’t want to admit that she’s bitter about her life.
When she was 7 years old, Darby (played by Milan Maphike) witnessed her mother (played by Kim Syster) drown while they were both swimming in an ocean. The movie also shows a brief flashback of Darby (played by Emily Maphike), when Darby was about 13 or 14 years old. “I was never the same,” Darby explains about how the death of her mother changed Darby. “I see dead people everywhere. The dead needed my help.” Darby says she turned her back on the living world and started what she calls her “side hustle: counseling dead people.”
She calls herself a “spiritual messenger, of sorts” and the ghosts who still haunt Earth have “unfinished business.” Darby further explains what happened to the ghosts who received her help: “Spirits were able to cross over, which is pretty beautiful. Word spread in the purgatory circuit, and my after-school job took off. There’s no pay, but if dead people’s gratitude had value, I’d be [Amazon’s billionaire founder] Jeff Bezos.”
Now that it’s been established that Darby has such a huge ego, she thinks she’s the Jeff Bezos of the ghost world, Darby becomes quite insufferable for much of the movie, as she shows a mixture of self-pity and arrogance about being a pariah at her high school. On the one hand, Darby likes to brag about how she thinks she’s too smart and too special to mingle with the common people who go to her high school. On the other hand, it’s obvious that she desperately craves their approval.
One of the reasons why she’s treated like an outsider is that anti-social Darby talks out loud to the ghosts that no one else can see. Therefore, people wonder if Darby has some type of mental illness. When it comes to being shunned by her peers, Darby also puts a lot of blame on her former best friend Capri Donohue (played by Auli’i Cravalho), who is a classmate of Darby’s at Frederick Douglass High School. Darby says in a voicever that Capri is the “head phony” at the school, which Darby calls “a torturous realm, where I am forced to spend my days.”
Capri is currently the queen bee of the most popular clique in school. Capri’s three subservient sidekicks are Bree (played by Genneya Walton), Taylor (played by Kylie Liya Page) and Piper (played by Nicole Maines), whose personalities are indistinguishable from each other. Because Darby has a reputation for being weird, Capri ended their friendship. Capri and her “mean girls” clique also ridicule and insult Darby any chance that they can get.
Adding to the animosity between the two ex-pals is (teen comedy cliché alert) they both want to date the same guy. His name is James Harris (played by Asher Angel, in a generic teen boyfriend role), whom Darby describes as a “band geek” she’s had a crush on since sixth grade. However, when James went on “The Voice” TV talent show as a contestant and had his 15 minutes of fame, Capri suddenly took an interest in him, turned on the charm, and now Capri and James are dating each other. James has fallen hard for Capri, but Capri is not nearly as smitten. Capri is interested in James as long as she thinks that dating him will boost her popularity.
Meanwhile (teen comedy cliché alert), a new transfer student named Alex (played by Chosen Jacobs) arrives at the school. Principal Morgan (played by Anthony Oseyemi) tells Darby, of all people, to be Alex’s study buddy in school. It’s quite the unrealistic, meddling reach for a school principal to order a student to be a study buddy for another student who just transferred to the school. Alex is friendly, a little nerdy, and he likes a lot of the same entertainment and literature that Darby likes. And you know what that means.
Maybe the “Darby and the Dead” filmmakers didn’t want to use the tired teen-comedy stereotype of making two potential love interests get assigned by a teacher to be study partners, usually in a biology class. However, by having the school principal force this partnership, it just looks even phonier. At any rate, as soon as Alex meets Darby, and she is rude and standoffish to him, you know exactly what’s going to happen between these two characters later in the movie.
While Darby has voiceover rants about how Capri and her friends are horrendous snobs, Darby doesn’t see the irony that she is almost equally unpleasant and snooty to Alex when she rebuffs his attempts to become her friend. “I’m a lone wolf,” Darby curtly tells Alex. The off-putting tone of “Darby and the Dead” is that viewers are supposed to automatically love Darby’s rudeness because she’s the “underdog” of the story. However, Darby is such a terribly written character (she says multiple times she doesn’t like being around people who are still alive), there’s no good reason to root for her for most of the story.
As part of Darby’s “spiritual guidance” counseling sessions, “Darby and the Dead” has some awkward filler of Darby hanging out with two old men (who are both dead) that is embarrassing to everyone in these movie scenes. A better movie would have had more variety in the types of ghosts that Darby helps, but that would involve creative imagination, which “Darby and the Dead” sorely lacks. It actually comes across as a little creepy that these dead old men have gravitated to this underage teen.
Gary (played by Tony Danza) is a dead janitor who used to work at the high school, but he hasn’t passed on to the other side. He’s waiting for his widow to die and join him, so they can cross over to the other side of the spirit world together. There’s a stupid scene of Darby talking to Gary on the school bleachers, and he gives Darby some cash to pass on to his widow. This scene is as bad as it sounds.
Even worse: Gary introduces Darby to his dead friend Mel (played by Wayne Knight), who died of a heart attack but has not crossed over the other side yet. Mel’s wife died 17 years earlier. Mel is concerned that when he dies, his wife will see him in the body that Mel has now: older and with a lot more weight gain, compared to 17 years ago. Darby assures Mel that when he passes on to the next realm to reunite with his dead wife, Mel will be his “optimal self” (whatever that means). So now, viewers know that not only does Darby think she’s the Jeff Bezos of the ghost world, she also thinks she’s a makeover guru for the ghost world.
Capri’s death doesn’t happen until almost halfway through the movie, which takes entirely too long to get to this plot development, considering “Darby and the Dead” is marketed as a movie that’s mostly about what happens after Capri dies. Capri’s death is another badly written, phony-looking scene: In a school locker room, Capri is holding a plugged-in, hairstyling iron after stealing Darby’s clothes in a bullying incident. Capri accidentally falls down in a shallow body of water while holding the iron, she gets electrocuted, and dies.
You already know what’s going to happen next: Capri won’t cross over into the other realm, Darby can see Capri’s ghost, and the two teens spend a lot of time bickering and getting on each other’s nerves. Capri’s “unfinished business” is that she died before she could have her Sweet 17 birthday party extravaganza. Capri makes a deal with Darby: Capri will leave Darby alone if Darby turns the birthday party into a special tribute for Capri, and Capri will teach Darby how to become the most popular girl in school.
What about Capri’s boyfriend James? “Darby and the Dead” has more terribly staged scenarios over this love triangle. And let’s not forget Alex, who is waiting around and hoping that Darby will wake up and see that Alex is a much better match for her. There are absolutely no surprises in “Darby and the Dead,” which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the movie makes it all so boring and witless.
Downs isn’t horrible in the role of Darby. She’s just been saddled with a horrible script, and she’s just not able to make grumpy Darby all that endearing for most of the movie. There’s only so much whining and pouting that viewers can take from Darby, a teenager who’s actually fairly privileged and is, by her own admission, anti-social by choice.
Cravalho, who’s best known as a singer, might excel in musical roles, such as her voice-starring title role in Disney’s 2016 animated film “Moana.” However, live-action comedy doesn’t appear to be a strong suit for Cravalho, who is too hammy in “Darby and the Dead,” and she needs to work on her comedic timing. Not only is Capri dead for most of the movie, but Capri also has a dead personality. Cravalho tries too hard to be campy in this role, and her performance just doesn’t work well for how this mean-spirited and soulless character is written.
The rest of the cast members are serviceable and don’t do anything special. “Darby and the Dead” fails to impress as a movie that can portray teenagers in ways other than the usual, narrow movie stereotypes. To rephrase the title of a Nirvana song, the teen spirit in “Darby of the Dead” smells like bad filmmaking.
Hulu premiered “Darby and the Dead” on December 2, 2022.
