Ne Zha is a film that captured my curiosity after seeing its performance at the worldwide box office. Like The Wandering Earth earlier this year, Ne Zha is a work of mainstream Chinese cinema that broke big enough in its own country to land within the top ten for the year so far. I have seen hundreds upon hundreds of foreign films, but I realize most of those fall into the art film category; it’s actually quite rare for me to engage with a film actually made specifically with the mainstream audience of another culture in mind.

The story itself is based upon Chinese mythology, the tale of a young boy who should have been born of a heavenly pearl but is instead imbued with the forces of a demonic orb. His parents are devastated by the switch but have been just as desperate for a child and decide to continue raising the boy. Unfortunately, that orb had been cursed to be destroyed after three years, and the parents decide to raise Ne Zha to be ignorant of both his origin and his fate.

This feels like China’s closest equivalent to a Dreamworks film, a work with something to say about good and evil that should appeal to all ages. However, it is absolutely bogged down by a crude, childish sense of humor. These jokes are ever-present and rarely funny. A key sequence nearing the film’s climax is resolved with a fart joke. Another cheap joke finds Ne Zha terrorizing his community right after his birth, causing the most masculine-looking man in the crowd to scream like a woman. Then this happens again, and again, and again.

This is really jarring because the moral message seems to be coming from a much better place. This is the tale of two beings rising above their origins while still faltering due to the baggage they carry. The view of morality shifts in surprising ways, and there’s a lot to dig into when not being overwhelmed with crudeness.

The animation here is a strange beast. The fluidity of the motion is fine, which is good considering this is largely an action movie. However, most of the scenes have stale camera work and similarly lacking backgrounds. Much of the movie looks like characters standing in front of a flat background while the camera refuses to move. It shakes out of this on rare occasions and especially during the final battle, but this is clearly a company that has decent technology and little experience to put it to use.

Despite the flaws, I found it strangely charming. I think this is due to the characters. Ne Zha is enjoyable in his devilish mischief while carrying the extra complexity of still being driven to improve his relations with a small community that naturally scorns him. His rival, Ao Bing, is much more collected, being born of the pearl – but he is similarly born of a much-maligned race of dragons. Their conflict is striking, as they appear to be the only two that can possibly understand the other’s experience and form a friendship while being seemingly doomed to fight each other. Just as strong is Ne Zha’s relationships with his parents. His father Li Jing is always at a distance, but mother Yin is compelled to try and connect with her son, if only to bring him some pleasure in his short life.

All in all, Ne Zha can be charming at the right times and annoying at its worst. It’s a fine enough animated film and it’s good to see something like this coming from a foreign market. There’s enough promise here to have hope that this company can eventually produce something that transcends beyond a mere curiosity for audiences outside the Chinese market.

3 Stars Out of 5

Hustlers is one of those delightful surprises that pops up now and then, a film directed by a relative unknown with a plot that renders simple advertising inadequate for daring to explore a controversial subject matter with an uncommon amount of depth. This is the story of a group of strippers who begin drugging and robbing rich men after the 2008 financial crisis, a tale that unfolds with surprising grace.

The risk of a film about strippers is the overwhelming presence of the male gaze; even with Lorene Scafaria directing, there’s still the worries of outside pressures enforcing a certain focus. The film is indeed loaded with sexy scenes (as far as my rather gay eyes can tell), yet these moments are cast in an empowering light. Jennifer Lopez plays Ramona Vega as a woman in full control of her situation, suggesting she’s the one actually exploiting the men who lob money at her simply for moving a certain way. A stellar pole dance to Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” sets the tone, Ramona taking center stage while being at a safe distance from the cheering crowd. Dollar bills cover the stage and, when she finally approaches the edge, more money floods her way. Ramona may be the center focus for the men, but the film is really guiding our focus to the surprising amount of cash covering the set.

This film doesn’t intend to mislead its audience about the plights of women in this business. This film is framed with an interview, the type of element many stories based on true events use to remind us that they really happened. Hustlers instead uses these moments to add effective punches. An early scene finds Constance Wu’s Dorothy calling out the interviewer for suggesting Ramona was manipulative from the beginning and therefore attempting to paint strippers in a bad light. These scenes reinforce the fact that women like Dorothy and Ramona are fully in control of their own agency. By so perfectly establishing Dorothy as a real woman, it makes her most desperate moments all the more devastating.

Hustlers is loaded with a surprising amount of heart; it simply would not work as well without the chemistry between Lopez and Wu. Their first scene together finds Ramona almost literally taking then-new girl Dorothy under her wing by engulfing her in a fur coat as they sit together on a cold roof and discuss technique. This evolves into a genuine friendship, the two becoming close enough that they almost seem like family at a certain point. This makes the inevitable collapse that the interview scenes allude to all the more heartbreaking.

A lot of this works by keeping entirely focused on women. Despite performing for men, there is not a single important male character in this cast. As such, we really get into the soul of what guides these women. A simply hilarious scene finds the women getting ready for work and talking about their total disinterest in actual sex, with Cardi B’s Diamond pulling out a new vibrator and suggesting it to be a better lover than any man. There are enough scenes with the women simply preparing for work that the film showcases how mundane this whole experience is from their perspective.

All of this is backed up by surprisingly proficient stylistic and technical precision. The editing here is key to the entire experience, time passing in montages and no second ever being wasted – I can’t think of a single moment where I felt that the movie was missing a beat. Despite the high stakes, Hustlers knows when to play to comedy, and a lot of the best jokes exist within the cuts – one scene finds the two leads testing out a new mixture for their drug followed by an immediate shot of the two sprawled out on the floor.

For a film about strippers, Hustlers has a fantastic eye for costume design. Fur coats and fine jewelry operate as signifiers that everything these women do is worth it to be able to survive comfortably in this system. I particularly like Dorothy’s outfit during the interviews, wearing a chain bracelet with a powerful rattle. This is a reminder that extravagance is sometimes justified as a form of self-love, especially for those so used to struggling day to day.

Hustlers is the rare semi-mainstream American film that actually embraces the technical elements of the medium to stellar results. Telling a story as timely as ever through the eyes of a group commonly treated as if they’re on the lowest rung of the social ladder, it transcends expectations to become a powerful take on America as it is today. By keeping so ground-level, Scafaria makes a stronger statement about the failure of the American Dream than so many others that only approach the subject from a heightened level. Equally joyous and moving, Hustlers is a film that demands to be seen.

4.5 Stars Out of 5

The Goldfinch is an adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Donna Tartt. After exposure to this film, one might walk away convinced that literature as an art form must have died a decade ago if this was even on the shortlist for best of 2014; having never read the book, I desperately hope some key feature got lost in translation, as even the most basic plot developments are laughable conceited.

John Crowley’s adaptation is Oscar Bait in the most obvious form. This term is commonly misused as an indicator of bad quality, but this film exemplifies the most negative associations. The hook is painfully on-the-nose, following a young boy named Theo who survives a terrorist attack but loses his mother, eventually falling into drug addiction after a tumultuous childhood. The bombing happened at a museum where he ended up stealing a painting in his haze. This is the type of film where a character will go unquestioned while arguing the value of art over human life.

Everything is all so very pointedly poignant and infuriatingly coincidental; this story spans several locations and eras, yet every major character from Theo’s childhood pops up in his adult life. The inciting incident for the adult side of the plot has his childhood friend’s older brother recognize him on the street almost a decade later; this is a character who I believe only appeared in one earlier scene for all of fifteen seconds. How does he recognize Theo?

Nothing that happens in this movie seems to be guided by Theo himself. He survives a bombing and is dragged to Las Vegas by his father before he is eventually dragged into the affairs of the other characters as an adult. He has so little agency that the only major action he does simply serves as the basis for the time skip.

Somehow not the worst of all these various threads is Theo’s engagement. He gets engaged to a woman he doesn’t love simply because he likes her family – she similarly doesn’t actually love him. How are we supposed to believe this? This leads to a moment where he catches her cheating (surprise surprise, it’s with yet another character from his childhood), but that carries no weight since we have barely spent any time at all with these characters as a ‘couple.’ Theo is so focused on an actual love interest that it exposes this entire sequence as an obvious red herring, existing purely to show how supposedly harried his life has become.

And, again, it gets worse from there.

This is a film loaded with capital-A Acting. Nicole Kidman is painful to watch here, her face constantly contorted with deep thought and concern, always speaking in a near-whisper. Jeffrey Wright carries a similar softness, as if Theo would be blown away by a normal volume. Really aiming to outclass these performances, Finn Wolfhard hams it up with a bizarre Russian accent – this at least offers something enjoyable, if not for the intended reason. Ansel Elgort is so plain that he barely registers, though that admittedly fits his function as the adult Theo.

What really highlights the pure lack of substance to any of The Goldfinch‘s design is the costumes and sets. Take almost any still frame from the first thirty minutes and it’s nearly impossible to tell in what era this story takes place. Nothing about the way people dress suggests the modern day. It’s as if Crowley just desperately wanted to make another period piece after Brooklyn and didn’t care that the story he was adapting took place in an entirely separate era. Otherwise, it’s a completely misguided attempt at making something timeless that instead becomes shapeless, a representation of the filmmaker’s complete misunderstanding of the era they are literally living in. The strange truth is that this is a film that looks pretty good but the images are in such stark contrast to the narrative that it elicits little beyond confusion.

The Goldfinch is a total mess, an obvious attempt to win awards while putting in little effort to actually say anything meaningful. Complaining of style over substance is a tired argument, as it’s usually used to deride effective genre pieces for having a minimal plot. This, on the other hand, is an actual example of a work that favors style at the expense of its substance; nothing in the aesthetics matches the narrative thrust. This borders on being a sappy after-school special about traumatized youth that has as many pulpy turns as a soap opera – coating that with expensive costumes does nothing but suggest the filmmakers don’t understand the story they are trying to tell.

1.5 Stars Out of 5

The first of these It films, which really ought to have been titled Chapter One from the get-go, was one of the most surprisingly fun horror movies in recent years due to its mixture of standard horror thrills with an engaging coming-of-age adventure. Pennywise and his cavalcade of monstrosities are never all that scary, but I also don’t believe that to be the franchise’s biggest appeal. In many ways, it is a fantastic journey split between two distinct eras – it just happens that this particular quest has dropped the usual hobbits and dragons for modern people and an illusory killer clown. In other words, It works best as a dark fantasy with a horror coating.

The original novel is a massive tome and, when the first half came out, it seemed logical to divide the work between the past and the present. That ultimately worked for the first film – if they wanted to, that story could have easily stood alone. However, this split has exposed certain structural issues with the adult half.

The concept of memory is at the heart of this story, and it is now absent in the first half and overbearing in the second. This story runs on parallels, and what can be striking when you immediately compare the past and present is repetitive when you get all of one and then the other. Chapter Two unfortunately still tries to directly parallel the two eras, and it ends up bloated with flashback sequences that really add little besides some fun set pieces. What results is a film more formulaic than a subpar crime show, the second act becoming a tiring cycle of adults returning for a childhood object before flashing back to a scene in the same general location with the monster and then back to the present with a similar encounter. There’s no real tension to these flashbacks, as we have already seen the conclusion of that side of the story. They attempt to justify this because the characters are only now regaining these memories, but it’s simple retreads for the observer. With so many characters, the experience turns surprisingly dull.

Beyond feeling largely unnecessary, the flashbacks have a fair share of technical flaws that don’t seem present in any other part of the film. The audio mixing is off, with Jack Dylan Grazer’s lines feeling glaringly dubbed over. Even worse, they attempted to digitally de-age these young actors and the result is as uncanny as any of the monster’s forms.

These flaws feel especially odd considering the rest of the movie is rather well-polished. This is horror as a rare high budget spectacle, and most of these individual sequences work surprisingly well in a vacuum. The filmmakers clearly had fun cobbling together a hundred creepy designs and situations, from the familiar leper to a grotesque old lady. None of these are particularly scary but they’re certainly fun to look at in a macabre way. The film additionally has some stellar transitions, from the night sky transforming into the underside of a puzzle and a fantastic matching shot of Eddie’s two actors.

The most surprisingly strong element is the acting; the cast brings depth to what was at risk of being standard popcorn horror fare. Bill Hader and James Ransone especially have great chemistry as Richie and Eddie, both adding a certain playfulness that makes the experience more lively than most other horror I have sat through this year. Their range allows key tonal shifts and spot-on delivery, ensuring this rather silly film never takes itself too seriously.

Though it’s easy to lose him beneath all the clown makeup, Bill Skarsgard is still the center attraction. Between his startling physical presence and command over his voice, he truly brings the clown to life. His plain-faced confrontation with Bev is a perfect showcase of his raw talent, but he really steals the scene as he lures a young girl beneath the stands at a sports game. Pennywise is a classic villain and it’s hard to imagine anyone doing a better job.

Even with these strong features, there are some moments that feel entirely misplaced. One particular horror scene suddenly drops “Angel of the Morning” during what was otherwise one of the better sequences and I honestly have no idea what the filmmakers were going for. This movie clearly toes the line between traditional horror and horror-comedy, but this leans into the entirely random. Another sequence has a character shout “Here’s Johnny” and, again, it’s so jarring it immediately took me out of the moment. Brechtian technique can be effective but these were the wrong moments to break the fourth wall.

The real elephant in the room is that the novel really doesn’t seem to be the best source material for a film, even one that runs well over five hours altogether. The people involved really seem to be doing the best they can with what they have. This is Stephen King at some of his most self-indulgent, twisting a tale of cosmic powers all situated among a group of friends in a small town. There is a monster that feeds on fear that seems happy to kill most of its prey within minutes yet repeatedly lets the central characters escape for no adequately explained reason. What is the monster’s goal here, exactly? A bit of research suggests there are cosmic elements in the source that the filmmakers must have been too embarrassed to include, but removing this instead makes the monster seem entirely incompetent as a villain. I cannot buy him as a threat when he passes up so many opportunities to finish off the Losers.

It Chapter Two is seriously flawed, yet that comes down almost entirely to a questionable structure and some odd edits. Otherwise, it’s a far more fun ride than most standard horror movies and, even at nearly three hours with a repetitive rhythm, I somehow never felt like it was too long. I wouldn’t be surprised if a re-edit mashing the two films together actually turns out better than either half on their own; there is a lot here that really works.

3 Stars Out of 5

I feel like little should need to be said about this movie after mentioning that the first real ‘scare’ of the films involve an atrocious CGI fish lashing out and literally screaming at a teenage girl. Unfortunately, it would be misleading to stop there, for such an absurd moment suggests this to be the type of film that is just so bad that it has to be enjoyable. Make no mistake – this absolute train wreck of a movie is so poorly shot that several sequences are nearly impossible to discern. This is a visual disaster backed by atrocious writing.

47 Meters Down: Uncaged follows teenage Sasha, the class loser that everyone hates. We know this because the film opens with her being thrown into a pool and it’s clear her stepsister is embarrassed by her presence. Why she’s so mistreated is never elaborated upon and this trait is all but forgotten as the actual narrative begins. More than likely, it’s a cheap attempt at forcing our sympathy for a character otherwise entirely devoid of a personality.

After fifteen minutes of setup loaded with absolutely bizarre shots of the bikini-clad protagonists, we finally get into the meat of the film as the girls dive into the underwater ruin. This is where the film pulls out its most mesmerizing trick by making its diverse cast entirely indistinguishable. It’s a rare moment when the camera is steady enough and the lighting actually present to get a handle on which character you’re actually looking at. Their faces obscured by clunky masks, the women are all but reduced to their bodies.

So many of the deaths in this movie are set up more like comedy bits, carrying nothing resembling tension. These moments seem to be aiming for the most rudimentary sort of jump scare, but the action passes so quickly that I hadn’t yet processed any attempt at horror by the time it was gone. When we actually do get the characters actively engaging with the sharks, the animals just seem to inexplicably wander away at the last second. That screaming fish was somehow the one thing to catch me off guard, and that’s only thanks to the idea being so ridiculous I would have never expected it to happen.

There are other moments that I’m sure were supposed to be scary as the film cuts between a shark in pursuit and a girl fleeing, but the water is so murky and the camera so unstable that most of these scenes are visually incomprehensible. The camera tends to linger way too close to the subject that it ends up obscuring the surrounding action.

Tons of distracting plot developments pop up throughout the film. The four girls are exploring this ruin because Sasha’s father is researching it, and they naturally run into him and his two assistants because the film needs a higher body count. They have been working down here for a bit now yet the water appears to be absolutely infested with sharks – naturally, they seem totally unaware of this presence until the girls arrive and then everything falls apart immediately.

The relationships between any of the characters are as murky as the cinematography. Sasha just immediately seems to become one with the group despite the film’s insistence that she’s some sort of outcast even with her stepsister. There’s a fantastic glance between her and the bully near the end that is absolutely devoid of any meaning – this bully wasn’t one of the girls to journey into the ruin, she has absolutely no reason to have changed her opinion on Sasha. What is the point of this shot?

47 Meters Down: Uncaged is the type of low effort work that feels like it would fit perfectly on a specialty cable channel – how it was released theatrically or cost $12 million to make is beyond me. Outside the bare-bone narrative that could be acceptable under the right circumstances, it’s simply an unpleasant film to observe. The PG-13 rating is written into the film’s DNA, each of these horrid stylistic choices clearly existing solely to mask the violence and clouding the entire film as a result. With images as indistinguishable as the characters, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged takes a whole lot of time to do absolutely nothing interesting.

1 Star Out of 5

A movie like The Angry Birds Movie 2 is all but doomed from the start, being based on a property that really offers nothing in terms of narrative or aesthetic potential while having enough familiar imagery that the film can’t step too far away to dive into unexpected places. This is a work required to hit certain beats to be familiar as an adaptation while none of these beats actually add up to anything meaningful.

Red and friends must unite with their rival pigs to rescue both of their islands from a psycho bird that wants to force both into fleeing. Wacky hijinks ensue. This is the type of children’s film that rarely inspires to anything beyond a few laughs.

Sony Pictures Animation and Imageworks have always been easy to write off as a second-rate animation studio, creating a set of films happy to settle into that inoffensively mediocre zone while also gifting us the abominable Emoji Movie. Late last year, they shattered everyone’s expectations by releasing one of the best movies this decade with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – how were they able to turn so quickly?

Even The Angry Birds Movie 2 shows a certain level of craft that seems beyond its premise. The fluidity of the animation and editing is at times surprising; despite the limiting factors of the source material, the people involved with the movie were clearly working hard to make the best of it. This is a work with pretty spot-on comedic timing (when it’s not grinding to a dead halt to really drive home that it just made a joke) – the problem is that many of the jokes land flat anyway.

This is a movie in constant conflict between presentation and substance. The stellar animation is brought down by the overly basic visual design while jokes jump between truly clever visual gags and an endless cycle of pig butts. There is a plot here, but the series feels like a series of disparate vignettes.

The most emblematic moments of this film come with an almost entirely disconnected b-plot as three baby birds get caught up in misadventure as they try to rescue three eggs. Several of these scenes are legitimately hilarious, especially one that involves a snake, but they also have no functional narrative purpose. Every scene in this movie feels so randomly constructed.

As such, the characters don’t really have much room to grow. Central figure Red is desperate for adoration and crushed when people pay him little mind after the truce between bird and pig. Thus, he is guided to prove himself by saving the island again. A new love interest is brought in, but that amounts to little of value besides adding a rare female face to this male heavy cast. The other characters mostly exist to set up bits than to be real characters.

The Angry Birds Movie 2 is a surprisingly competent film saddled with the most subpar source material. With what they were handed, the studio did a fantastic job – the question is why this studio keeps failing to invest in better stories to match their animation. So few animated movies get released every year and it’s a shame that such a company appears so eager to accept whatever generic screenplay comes their way. There’s promise here, but nothing can be done with it when they’re asked to do so little.

2.5 Stars Out of 5

Good Boys follows a certain familiar formula to the letter, a crude coming of age comedy about a group of youths caught up in quirky hijinks as they attempt to attend a party. The formula is tweaked just enough, tracing the same ground but with tweens in place of the usual teenagers. Adhering to this formula can still work; Booksmart is one of the year’s best films, surprisingly poignant while managing the same level of absurd humor. Good Boys, unfortunately, wastes too much time exploring the same joke over and over again.

For the team behind Good Boys, it’s apparent that nothing is funnier than kids failing to understand the purpose of an object. This joke is repeated throughout with little variation; they discover a new sex toy and obliviously use it for some unintended purpose. It’s funny enough the first time but it wears thin by the end of the first act and continues until the final shot of the movie – a final shot which also happens to appear in the trailers. Crude humor can be fun, but the setup and punchline is always the same.

Throughout, I had difficulty believing Max, Lucas, and Thor as anything beyond caricatures. They speak with a certain flow that I can only believe as adult writers attempting to imitate children without ever speaking with any. Do preteens actually proudly refer to themselves as ‘tweens’ to differentiate themselves from children? That word always read to me as a marketing term more than anything else. Likewise, I don’t remember viewing the gap between 5th and 6th grade as some huge gap that proved my maturity. It’s a trope I’ve seen in shows like South Park, but that’s also a work that exaggerates those differences; Good Boys seems convinced that it is partly grounded in these matters. Enough small lines ring falsely enough that I couldn’t ever take these characters seriously.

Similarly, Thor’s parents seem to just leave sex toys lying around to be easily accessed. I can believe that, sure, but then I can’t really believe these kids are so ignorant that not one realizes the purpose of these toys. Not one of these boys has snuck a copy of Grand Theft Auto under their parent’s noses, or stayed up late to watch Adult Swim or South Park? I was their age when I watched my friends beat people up with sex toys in San Andreas – and I was one of those kids who didn’t say bad words out loud until the end of high school. This information has only become more accessible for these technologically connected kids. Even without knowing the specific purpose, they should at least have enough intuition to be discomforted.

In other words, the central premise of this movie is built around an idea of ‘tweens’ being far more ignorant than they are. The conflict is kicked off by an action that legitimately makes no sense at all, as the boys use a drone to spy on a neighbor simply to learn how to kiss. These neighbors even call them out for not just googling ‘kissing.’ They had literally already watched a porn video at this point, how am I supposed to believe their next step is to pull out a drone they know they shouldn’t touch? At least come up with some stupid excuse like the internet going down.

Despite all of this disconnect, I still had a reasonable enough amount of fun with this movie, especially when it escaped the trap of sex toy jokes. Both sets of college kids offer good bits to play off of; the trio treating Hannah and Lily as drug fiends is riotous, especially as it leads to a chase sequence, while a scene as the boys are coerced into visiting a frat house is one of the funniest this year.

It also does a fair enough job exploring some emotional depths as the boys fight with each other and are confronted with the fact that many young friendships are based more in convenience than actual similarity, though that is naturally saddled by the disconnect from these characters. The film never gets too caught up in these emotions, having fun with montages that suggest some grand change that is immediately undercut. It’s not much, but this film is so much better when it steps outside of prop gags.

To counter all these writing flaws, the three young leads actually do a great job pulling off their individual characters. They’re given a sometimes weak script but deliver their lines with perfect timing. It’s a strange case where the performances are more believable than the roles, which makes it easy to overlook the idiot ball being tossed around so recklessly.

Good Boys is a bit too familiar and much of the new ground it attempts to tread is brought down by the filmmakers not quite pinning down the age of their characters – their ignorance suggests characters far younger while several of their actions would be more fitting for teenagers. Writing convincing child characters is a difficult job, and Good Boys struggles like so many others before it. Despite this, the actual production is convincing enough that this can be an enjoyable experience for anyone looking for some crude fun – you just have to accept the characters are kind of amorphous so they can fit into a bunch of disparate scenes.

And, who knows, maybe the fact I watched Robot Chicken and played Grand Theft Auto when I was in sixth grade is some horrifying sign I had a broken childhood and my disconnect is entirely unique.

3 Stars Out of 5

Lulu Wang’s The Farewell offers up an immediately gripping premise and executes it flawlessly, tackling a heavy topic with both grace and levity. Young Chinese-American Billi, already struggling with accepting the fact that she has been rejected for a Fellowship, is devastated to learn that her grandmother back in China is dying of cancer and is baffled when she learns that her family intends to never tell Grandma Nai Nai. Instead, they are planning a fake wedding as an excuse to bring the family together so she can be blissfully ignorant in her final months. Billi is conflicted, stuck between worlds on so many levels.

Culture clash rests at the heart of this movie, with both sides offering up compelling arguments. What results is one of the most bittersweet experiences I have had with cinema. Every joyful moment Nai Nai experiences highlights the tragedy for the rest of the family. People break down in tears and are forced to mask their devastation as bliss to avoid suspicions. The film never tries to answer whether one option is better than the other, instead supplying reasons for Billi to go along with her family despite her disagreements. There’s no solid answer for grieving.

The emotional weight is flawlessly captured by Anna Franquesa Solano’s cinematography. The central figures are commonly framed with an expansive background, only a small piece of the full picture. Several shots are neatly arranged to feature the entire family, grandma crowded at the center while the younger cousin is often captured playing with electronics a few steps back.

Wang plays as much in the sonic landscape. The score is loaded with melancholic vocal pieces and striking strings. The music is allowed to overtake the scene at key moments, evoking emotions that can’t be expressed with diegetic sound.

The editing and transitions are key in balancing the humor and drama of the piece, bubbling turmoil cut down with mundane shots of Nai Nai going about her day. The Farewell draws out several of its shots, making great use of deep space to lessen the need for cutting as several characters manage to carry a conversation within the frame. The Farewell only cuts when it is required, capturing the aesthetics of the slow cinema movement without ever feeling slow itself. Between her visual composition and tackling of family dynamics, Lulu Wang has really captured what makes Hirokazu Kore-eda’s works so compelling.

The dire concept is balanced with Nai Nai’s charm. Free of the knowledge of her death, she’s happy to act as her usual self. The way she speaks to Billi seems a bit callous until it’s clear Billi is happy to go along. Nai Nai is granted a certain bluntness in how she speaks with others, which helps raise the tension (and comedy) when she’s so quick to point out that everyone looks sad.

This is an ensemble piece and the performances are largely phenomenal. Awkwafina captures the air of a young woman lost with a sense of aimlessness, seemingly the black sheep in her family. The quiet tension in her gaze as she reluctantly plays along says so much. Nai Nai can only be as charming as her actress, and Zhao Shuzhen does wonders. Even the less central figures get their moments to shine, such as Diana Lin as Billi’s mother who can’t hide the distance she feels with the family she married into. Chen Han and Aoi Mizuhara are given little dialogue as the ‘engaged’ couple, but both say so much with that silence. Chen Han spends most of the film bawling his eyes out, as if being so central in the sham gives him the most freedom to express emotionally what he can’t say with words. Aoi’s Aiko appears dazed, unable to communicate with almost anyone due to a language barrier and likely overwhelmed with the scenario.

If this is not the best movie of 2019, it will only be because this year will have graced us with two true masterpieces. Matching a powerful theme with stellar artistry and a wonderful cast, The Farewell is a prime example of how to do drama properly. It’s not as simple as telling a compelling story, but reinforcing it from every angle. The concept, theme, technique, performances, everything works in perfect harmony to craft an emotionally riveting experience. Though this is not a long film, every image and every moment is so densely packed that it offers an endless supply to ponder over. To be brought into another’s view of the world and learn so much while also being thoroughly engaged, The Farewell is a perfect example of why movies are a perfect art form for capturing emotional truths that can’t be expressed in words.

5 Stars Out of 5

Richard Linklater’s latest work follows Bernadette Fox, a neurotic architect pushed to the breaking point when her daughter Bee suggests they go on a family trip to Antarctica over winter break. She spars with a nosy neighbor and hoards pills while ranting about her anxieties to an unseen personal assistant over email. All attempts to help form her husband Elgin are soundly ignored.

Everything about Where’d You Go, Bernadette suggests this should be a quirky experience. Antarctic trips, a bizarre estate, snobby rival parents, and a singular lead are all the right ingredients, yet every artistic choice seems designed to reduce these elements to the slightly mundane. Bernadette borders on lifeless, squandering its eccentricities while likewise failing to settle on a clear message – all of which is amplified when the film attempts to throw in some shocking turns that really don’t go anywhere.

Cate Blanchett is the one high note of this film as Bernadette; she fully embodies this character with a wonderful display of introversion and sometimes raving hysteria. She has a commanding presence that dominates the screen – which would be more compelling if the other actors didn’t appear to merely fold over while in her presence. Billy Crudup feels especially underwhelming as Elgin, his eyes darting around like an embarrassed teenager during at least one key conflict. Several of his lines feel rushed or wooden, and I wonder how many takes they shot to settle on what ended up in the final product. Kristen Wiig and Zoe Chao are cast as stereotypical gossip moms, a cliche that offers little room for nuance in their performances. It’s difficult to take the larger-than-life Bernadette seriously when everyone that surrounds her feels so underdeveloped. Who wouldn’t turn into a neurotic mess while surrounded by these bland cutouts?

The dip in quality anytime other characters are alone on screen is palpable. What I’m imagining were intended to be heartfelt moments between father and daughter as they search for a missing mother instead carry all the weight of an after school special. Their poor acting is paired with a nauseatingly saccharine score, the type of light music you could imagine a church pianist chiming in with during opening prayer to signal that something important is being said.

What doesn’t help these late discussions is that the film juxtaposes their search with scenes of Bernadette doing just fine on her own. It’s difficult to care about Elgin and Bee’s panic when we know they have no need. This ending is especially difficult because the opposite also wouldn’t have worked – the film is too centered around Bernadette that it couldn’t simply cut her presence out for the final act.

Even the visual elements feel unbalanced. Shots of nature and the house lend an air of gravity, yet the actual scenes between characters have such basic presentation. With the aforementioned score, the film teeters dangerously close to feeling like a soap opera – made worse when combined with the half-hearted attempts at quirk.

It’s honestly hard to understand how a movie with all these disparate elements falls so flat. The secondary actors aren’t incapable – they have plenty of better performances to prove otherwise. Director Richard Linklater has made three films that feature regularly in my all-time top 100, so it seems similarly unlikely that the blame falls squarely on his shoulders. His best works have a meditative quality, so it makes sense that he would have connected with the deeply troubled Bernadette. Yet he stumbles anytime he has to get out of that character’s head, which is particularly surprising considering his best work consists of finding meaning in the smallest of moments.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette is an unsure, tonal mess buoyed by a strong Cate Blanchett. It’s the type of work that feels just off in nearly every category. It can be fun in its moments, but any grander purpose is muted by odd choices, some of which are so questionable I legitimately had to stifle laughter near the climax due to how poorly it managed emotional weight.

2 Stars Out of 5