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Born on the Fluff of July

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Unicorn Wars

by Daniel Baldwin

Blood. Steel. Pain. Cuddles.

That’s the motto constantly being pummeled into the minds of the teddy bear soldiers by their theocratic, fascistic leaders. Their enemy? The unicorns, a seemingly peaceful race that resides within a natural wooded paradise called the Magic Forest. The bears want what the unicorns have and they aim to take it with deadly brute force. Emphasis on brute.

Albert Vazquez’s animated Spanish-language war satire is, simply put, a sight to behold. Vazquez takes all of the hallmarks and horrors of Vietnam War cinema and wraps them in a lusciously cartoonish new skin, rendering incredibly grisly terrors all the more potent. Too often, societies send their children off to fight their wars and what is more child-like than a teddy bear? Instead of putting guns in the hands of human teens, Vazquez arms impressionable teddies with bows, arrows, knives, and grenades, sending them off to destroy the natural world around them for its resources.

If it sounds like a scathing indictment of human behavior for the entirety of our history, that’s because that is exactly what it is. Man’s inhumanity to man is on full display here in numerous ways, both in a war between two vastly different cultures and in how the bears treat one another. Nearly all the film’s main characters are a vicious miserable lot, despite their Care Bear-ish looks. Every punch, stab, shot, bludgeoning, and impalement packs a wallop as it lays the horror of war bare for all to see. Pun intended.

If Unicorn Wars has any major failings, it’s that its crude sexual humor sometimes undercuts the deathly serious satirical message. The unicorns are also underdeveloped. The film cannot decide whether to showcase their side of all this or just leave them as an enigmatic (and largely peaceful) race. As a result, an early subplot involving a few unicorns peters out by the midpoint of the film and never really resolves in any meaningful way.

Vazquez is aiming for something as potent as Watership Down and The Plague Dogs here. While his reach ultimately exceeds his grasp, he still manages to conjure up a very striking and occasionally moving piece of adult animation – right down to an absolutely haunting final sequence. That Unicorn Wars is only his second feature makes it all the more impressive. Keep your eyes on this filmmaker, folks.

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Love, Life Lessons & Basketball

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Champions

by Matt Weiner

A team of ragtag misfits has to come together to win the big game, but not before they teach their washed up coach a thing or two about the power of teamwork in the process.

Yes, Champions is a remake of an older film, but it’s somehow not The Bad News Bears. In this case, it’s the 2018 Spanish hit Campeones. The kids are just as foul-mouthed, but this time the twist is that disgraced professional coach Marcus Markovich (Woody Harrelson, delivering a solid replacement-level version of classic Prickly Harrelson) has to work with a rec basketball team of intellectual disabled players as his court-ordered community service.

With a regional championship game looming in Canada for the Special Olympics, Marcus needs to juggle getting his own life and career back on track, dating new love interest Alex (Kaitlin Olson) and showing up for his team. The outcome of the game might be up in the air, but you can rest easy knowing that lessons are learned, love is found and use of the R-word is kept to a minimum and only to show personal growth. Neat.

While they might deserve a less stale vehicle to show off their skills, the performances from the actors with disabilities all rise above the cliched story (especially foul-mouthed Cosentino, played by Madison Tevlin, and Kevin Iannucci as Johnny, who gets caught in the middle of Marcus and Alex’s not-so-casual fling).

The team’s interactions with Marcus and one another make for the few genuinely earned emotions in a story that otherwise seems to exist to remind viewers in 2023 that people with intellectual disabilities also deserve to be treated with respect.

Olson is another acting standout. Her sharp comic timing wasn’t in doubt thanks to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but it’s surprising to see how much she shines in this kind of role. That is, surprising in the sense that she’s such a natural, refreshing fit that it seems impossible she hasn’t led more romantic comedies.

With Bobby Farrelly as director, it’s hard not to compare Champions to elements of past Farrelly Brothers work. We’re a long way from There’s Something About Mary – and let’s not speak of the inexorable Shallow Hal – but this film exists firmly and bizarrely in an era not so removed from that time. (A heartwarming sports comedy about Special Olympics athletes isn’t even new ground for the Farrellys – 2005’s The Ringer mixes up the beats but its basic dignity message about people with disabilities is the same.)

That Champions is appearing now feels less an indictment of Hollywood feet-dragging than a not-so-gentle suggestion that perhaps we’ve moved beyond needing generic sports movies with entry-level calls for respect to move the needle for any holdouts.

Champions does itself no favors by substituting coarseness for meanness. That’s preferable to what this movie might have looked like a few decades ago, but it manages to neuter the comic touch of Farrelly and writer Mark Rizzo while dulling any interesting edges at the same time. (For example, an ongoing plot about a manipulative employer taking advantage of discount labor gets reduced to deus ex machina to set up the final game.) It’s an odd twist that Peter Farrelly’s recent solo effort Green Book won the Academy Award for Best Picture. And yet Bobby’s Champions might be the film that traffics in fewer broad stereotypes. That’s a win worth celebrating on its own. Just don’t expect the taste of victory to linger longer than the closing credits.

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Senior Pictures

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Therapy Dogs

by Rachel Willis

Writer/director Ethan Eng (along with co-writer Justin Morrice) crafts a slice-of-life look at adolescence with his debut feature, Therapy Dogs. Eng and Morrice also play fictionalized versions of themselves, two friends seeking to document the truth about high school as they embark on their senior year.   

Your enjoyment of Therapy Dogs will likely rest entirely on whether or not you find the antics of adolescent boys annoying. There are the things that seem typical: drinking and parties and pot. Then, perhaps, the not so typical: exploring abandoned buildings and making dumb decisions like jumping off a railroad bridge into the water (which may or may not be deep enough for such a drop).

One thing the film highlights is that boys in 2019 are very much like the boys with whom I went to school in the mid- to late-1990s. And as the 90s have come back around in fashion, if not for the presence of cell phones, I might have thought I was watching something from my own adolescence.

The film runs the gauntlet of found footage style adventuring but at times appears more adept. The naturalism will occasionally give way to something more subtle. These are the moments when it’s unclear who’s behind the camera. Is this still part of the boys’ senior film, or does it represent the presence of an omniscient narrator? Regardless, it works to help hold together the disjointed segments.

The success of the film lies in its accuracy around the portrayal of teenagers, particularly boys, as they ponder the future and wonder what lies ahead. Though the film jumps around and never seems to settle on a plot, you come to realize that there is a commentary on growing up and how baffling it is that so many boys survive such bad choices.

Teenage boys are essentially teenage boys. Though teenagers today have different pressures than those of past generations, they still make stupid decisions, crack each other up with bad jokes, tell “epic” stories, fight, and eventually – if they survive their poor decision making – grow up. Eng captures it all in a way that feels as familiar as it does unique.

There are some filmmaking choices that are just as likely to be off-putting as they are to be engaging, but there’s no denying that the movie’s realism is what makes it relevant. This is an ageless tale of youthful exuberance that brings its own distinct perspective.

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On the Ropes

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Punch

by Christie Robb

If Tim Roth is attached to a project, I’m intrigued. In Punch, he’s playing Stan, the alcoholic father of 17-year old up-and-coming boxer Jim (Jordan Oosterhof). Stan’s been training Jim since elementary school. It’s a familiar story—small town kid hoping to get out by nurturing his athletic talent. 

In this case, the small town is located in picturesque New Zealand and what the town has going for it in terms of rolling grassland and beaches is more than ruined by the small-minded racism and rampant homophobia of its residents. 

One day, while blowing off his training to pursue his true passion of shooting footage for music videos, young Jim is stung by a jellyfish and is rescued by Whetu (a resplendent Conan Hayes). Whetu is both Maori in what appears to be a majority White town and openly gay.

Jim will have to navigate his growing feelings for Whetu, the pressure of his dad’s dreams for his future, and the demands of all the various folks around town who want to define the man he will become.

The first feature written and directed by Welby Ings, Punch‘s story and timeline feel a bit uneven. Most of the film has a meandering, dreamy pace that is an appropriate touch for the organic way the boys’ relationship develops.  But, this is set in contrast to the ticking clock established at the beginning of the film with an upcoming crucial boxing match and, later on, by Stan’s growing ill health.

Some of the character development is uneven as well, and sadly Roth is a let down here as Stan veers dramatically from a tyrannical figure to an empathetic shoulder for Jim to cry on without earning that moment. Similarly, the ending seems abrupt and also, perhaps, not quite earned. 

Matt Henley’s cinematography, though,  is atmospheric and gorgeous and elevates the film, especially in the scenes  Whetu and Jim spend together. They are a delight to watch.

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Rising Up to Meet You

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The Quiet Girl

by George Wolf

This has been a fan-fecking-tastic awards season for the Emerald Isle. Multiple Oscar nominee The Banshees of Inisherin has racked up plenty of other noms and wins these last few weeks, and the sublime short feature An Irish Goodbye is a recent BAFTA winner and leading Oscar contender ahead of Sunday’s ceremony.

But the hometown favorite might well be The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin), up for a Best International Film Oscar after winning seven of its ten nominations at the recent Irish Film Awards.

So yes, it’s feckin’ good, and it’s so exquisitely, heartbreakingly Irish.

In fact, the feature debut from writer/director Colm Bairéad is the first Irish language film to be nominated for an Oscar, but it begins speaking through the subtle foreshadowing of a cuckoo’s song – the bird known for laying its eggs in the nests of others.

And in rural Ireland circa 1981, young Cáit (an astonishing debut from Catherine Clinch) is sent away from her dysfunctional family to live with “her mother’s people” for the summer. Middle-aged couple Seán (Andrew Bennett) and Eibhlín (a marvelous Carrie Crowley) have never met the shy and introspective Cáit, but they welcome her into their home.

Seán spends most days working the farm, so Eibhlín tends to Cáit with an unconditional affection she has never known, and the young girl begins to blossom. But after Eibhlín declares “if there are secrets, there is shame,” Cáit discovers a secret that permeates the farmhouse.

Like Belgium’s Close (also up for Best International Feature), The Quiet Girl features a terrific debut from a child actor and is draped in a tender stillness that gently cradles the building of its central relationship. Clinch and Crowley are absolutely wonderful together, rendering it nearly impossible not the care whether this wide-eyed young girl and her wounded mother figure will feel safe enough to open their hearts.

In adapting Claire Keegan’s novella, Bairéad’s storytelling is confidently restrained and overflowing with compassion, as it builds to one of the most quietly devastating final shots in years. The Quiet Girl is an intimate, beautifully realized take on finding what we need to heal our pain – and knowing when to rise up and meet it.

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Gator Bait

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Unseen

by Hope Madden

Two young Asian women are separated by 1400 miles but connected by their invisible daily struggle against countless racist, misogynistic slights. And also, this phone call, placed blindly by Emily (Midori Francis, The Good Boys, Oceans 8) to Sam (Jolene Purdy, Orange Is the New Black).

Emily stepped on her glasses in her hasty escape from ex, Charlie (Michael Patrick Lane). Her hands are zip-tied, she can’t see, she’s in the middle of the Michigan woods, but she has her cell phone. If she can get anyone on the line, maybe they can be her eyes and guide her to safety.

To a degree, this is a gimmick exploited in Randall Okita’s 2021 See for Me, but director Yoko Okumura makes it work somewhat organically when Emily reaches Sam, a misused Tallahassee convenience store cashier who’d recently misdialed looking for a pizza. 

Sam doesn’t believe the call is real, then doesn’t think she could possibly be the best person to help, but eventually relents. What follows is often tense, frequently poignant, sometimes a bit forced, but ultimately charming and satisfying. Even in moments where the contrivance is pulled a little thin, Gator Galore employee Sam anchors the antics emotionally and logically. While you are eager for Emily to survive, it’s Sam you’re rooting for.

Mainly (and wisely), writers Salvatore Cardoni and Brian Rawlins’s script puts the point of view someplace audiences can understand – a gas station convenience store. This simplifies things because it’s a very common, almost comforting location for a horror story. And, although we may or may not have been in the woods of Michigan running frantically and blindly from a maniacal ex, we’ve all been to a gas station convenience store.

Likewise, Purdy’s performance feels real, regardless of the absurdity of her situation.  Here is where the film struggles slightly, though. What goes on inside Gator Galore is a broad, garish, Gators n Guns adventure that crosses over to comedy, albeit incredibly tense and horrifically frustrating comedy. These scenes work, developing a hateful and sadly recognizable tension that launches the film’s anxiety toward its truly satisfying conclusion. It just sometimes feels like whiplash against the far more traditional wooded survival horror going on at the other end of the line.

Back in Tallahassee, Missi Pyle is, per usual, the ideal candidate to play entitled trash who truly believes that her slightest whim is of so much more value than any other possible situation that murder would be justifiable. I mean, is it even murder when you’re being so inconvenienced by a convenience store employee?!

Unseen is an angry film. Okumura’s is an angry voice, but it finds comfort and salvation in community. The film takes aim at casual racism, gaslighting and toxic white privilege but never lets anger overshadow her central relationship.

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Frenemy Mine

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Creed III

by George Wolf

Re-igniting the Rocky franchise by way of Apollo Creed’s son was a genius move by writer/director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan. Better still, 2015’s Creed was a tremendously effective example of honoring the past while looking toward the future.

Coogler stepped aside for Creed II five years ago, and while that film seemed a bit more calculated, it had the sentiment, heart and conviction to come out a winner. Plus, it gave the Rocky Balboa character a respectful signal that things would be moving on without him, a choice that seems right (well, mostly right) for Creed III.

Jordan again brings the fire in the title role, and also makes a fine debut behind the camera, directing a somewhat wandering script from Keenan Coogler (Ryan’s brother) and Zach Baylin (an Oscar nominee last year for King Richard).

We find Adonis and Bianca (Tessa Thompson, always a treat) Creed now parents of young Amara (Mila Davis-Kent) and transitioning to new professional roles. Bianca’s now more of a music producer than a performer, and “Donny” has similarly retired from the ring to open a gym and manage new heavyweight champ Felix Chavez (Jose Benavidez).

And then Donny’s childhood friend Damien “Dame” Anderson shows up, which means Jonathan Majors shows up. And neither one of them are playin’.

Majors commands the screen with a portrait that recalls Max Cady in Cape Fear. Like DeNiro, Majors makes sure Dame’s early smiles don’t mask the violent intent of his Adonis agenda. A fateful event years earlier put the two young friends on different paths, and Dame has come to take what he feels should have been his all along.

Jordan, Coogler and Baylin wisely realized that after two Creed films built around Rocky bloodlines, it was time to freshen the stakes. And aside from one blatant bit of contrivance, this new feud has roots that feel authentic, thanks in large part to the terrific performances from both Majors and Jordan.

But the film has shaky legs when it strays from the two rivals. Threads about Amara’s interest in fighting and Mary-Anne Creed’s (Phylicia Rashad) health problems seem desperate to find some resonance. And though Rocky’s name is mentioned once or twice, he’s strangely missing from the one moment when it would make the most organic sense to include him, even in passing.

Director Jordan steers the ship gamely, keeping his eye on where these films deliver their emotional highs. It’s the same place his camerawork will impress the most: the ring.

By now, we know the torrid pace of the action, the superhero stamina of the fighters and the stilted commentary from the ringside announcers will be less than authentic. But here, the boxing sequences accept their cinematic pass and soar, elevated by Jordan’s new vision. The camera bobs, weaves, and clinches, with blows landing even harder via slow-motion and one completely stop-the-presses sequence that wows unlike anything seen in the entire Rocky universe.

Nearly fifty years later, who could have imagined that surprise Oscar winner would have such a legacy? But Creed III is more proof that this is Donny’s time to fly now. And Jordan’s.

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Big Fish

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Blueblack

by Rachel Willis

An encounter with a wild blue grouper sends 8-year-old Abby on a lifelong mission to understand, and save, the ocean ecosystem in writer/director Robert Connolly’s feature, Blueback.

We follow Abby through three stages of her life. The first – and shortest – at age 8 is precociously played by Ariel Donoghue. Teenage Abby, played by Isla Fogg, is who we spend the most time with as she reconciles her love of the ocean with her mom, Dora’s (Radha Mitchell), overt activism. A contemporary framing story follows the adult Abby (Mia Wasikowska) as a marine biologist who returns home after Dora (the older version portrayed by Elizabeth Alexander) suffers a stroke.

On paper, this seems like a lot to contend with, but Connolly handles each stage well, ping-ponging primarily from adult Abby and teenage Abby with a skillful touch. There’s never any confusion as to where we are in time, as both Fogg and Wasikowska cement us with the character (as do Mitchell and Alexander with Dora). Both depictions are so strong as to convince us that we’re watching the same woman across time.

The movie’s biggest problem is overstuffing the scenes of teenage Abby’s life, leaving too little time for both the framing story, and the fish that gives the film its name. Though Eric Bana is a fine actor, his character Macka feels extraneous. There are other characters with whom our time is better spent.

Because we spend so little time with the grouper, there’s never the sense that we’re connecting with an animal in the way other films showcase the human-animal bond. It’s possible it’s simply hard to make a girl and her fish land the same way as a boy and his dog, though I imagine those who saw My Octopus Teacher might beg to differ.

Despite the film’s tendency to take on a little too much regarding its worldbuilding, it’s still an effective exploration of family and community, and how we relate to the natural world. There are those who seek to exploit it for everything it’s worth, while others wish to preserve it for future generations.

There’s a sense that for each piece of the world we lose, more than we can ever imagine is lost along with it. Abby and Dora hope to preserve that which connects us to something bigger than ourselves. The theme is always one worth repeating, and Blueback adds a unique perspective to the mix.

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Ritchie Stew

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Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

by Hope Madden

Guy Ritchie’s latest, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, is neither the crisscrossing schemery of 2019’s The Gentlemen, nor the dour action plodder of 2021’s Wrath of Man. Although it has elements of both.

Like the former, the film delivers an incredibly talky tale of flippant action shenanigans undertaken by varying teams at cross purposes and boasts a delightful turn from Hugh Grant. Like the latter, it’s not very good and stars Jason Statham.

Statham plays Orson Fortune, a cantankerous special agent whose skillset is the only thing standing between some unknown item recently stolen and, you know, whatever it might do to the world.

That is the fun part. Fancy lad Nathan Jasmine (Cary Elwes) pieces together the team tasked with finding and returning the missing “handle” although no one knows what it is, so determining that bit will be useful as well. Figuring out who took it, why they took it and what they mean to do with it, then stopping them from doing it, whatever it is, represents the balance of the job.

Who’s to help Mr. Fortune? Bugzy Malone (rapper and regular Ritchie contributor) and Aubrey Plaza (the only truly new flavor in Ritchie’s crockpot of leftover ideas).

Plaza contributes that uncomfortable comedy she does so well, although it sometimes feels like she’s actually performing in a different film that has somehow broken into Ritchie’s movie. Still, she’s at least a lively and amusing distraction, although I can’t say she has real chemistry with anyone onscreen besides Grant.

Grant’s a hoot no matter whose scenes he is stealing, and Josh Hartnett surprises in a comedic role that would be more fun if it didn’t feel borrowed directly from (the entirely superior) The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

There are a few laugh-out-loud moments, and some scenes that push the film toward parody, although Ritchie and crew cannot land on a tone. Everything feels more like a brainstorming session than a finished film. Nobody gels, nothing hangs together. The action is just this side of exciting, the humor lands about 40% of the time, and one scene pulls directly from Team America: World Police.

Mainly Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre just made me wish I was watching Team America.

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Three Men and a Baby

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The Donor Party

by Tori Hanes

Ah, the days of early aughts romcoms. Do you remember turning off your brain for 90 full minutes while the cinematic equivalent of white noise lulled you? Could it be considered brave for a film released in 2023 to pivot on its heels back to this genre of gooey nothingness? If so, The Donor Party by director Thom Harp deserves a Purple Heart.

Following wanna-be mother Jaclyn (Malin Ackerman) through her misguided – and frankly, morally challenged – quest for self-insemination, The Donor Party does little to endear itself to audiences through its clunky plot. The hook- one night, three unknowing sperm “donors”, and a woman watching her biological clock click closer to midnight- is one better left in the aughts.

The story bobs and weaves awkwardly, causing fatigue for both the audience and, seemingly, the performers. The cutesy setup of quirkily tricking men into fatherhood immediately stings and continues to rest like a hot iron branding the forearm.

The film finds its footing through the natural chemistry and charisma that the performers practically beg you to acknowledge. Having pulled a crew of stealthily loaded comedic talent, Harp allows for long moments of play from his actors. In these beats of palpable improv, the humor, depth, and charm of The Donor Party shimmers.

Rob Corddry, Bria Henderson, Erinn Hayes, and Dan Adhoot bring a warmth and passion so rarely seen in mid-to-low-budget romcoms that it’s occasionally staggering. A particular scene with Erinn Hayes (who plays up-tight, accidentally drugged host Molly) lamenting to Jacyln about her march toward stagnation while high off her rocker in a pool strikes as one of the more sincere moments in the recent memory of movies.

It’s fun. The story gets caught up in itself at the expense of any sort of meaning, the plot feels icky at times, but Harp couldn’t have picked a more affable crew. If you’ve long missed the washing glow of aughts-based goof, The Donor Party is for you.