The latest film releases are Poor Things, The Boy and the Heron, Origin, and Waitress. Weighing in are Christy Lemire, film critic for RogerEbert.com and co-host of the YouTube channel “Breakfast All Day,” and Alonso Duralde, co-host of “Breakfast All Day.”
Poor Things
In Victorian England, a mad scientist brings a woman back from the dead. This stars Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo, and Rami Youssef.
Lemire: “It is my favorite movie of the year. … If you think you even know what this is, based on the trailers — I promise you, you don't. There is so much more going on here. And it is so wild and outlandish and surprising and beautiful over and over again.
… You have Emma Stone as a woman on a journey of exploration. She has been protected and controlled throughout her life. And as she travels from place to place and evolves as a person, she comes fully into her own, and it's just thrilling.”
Duralde: “This is a movie that is grotesque and madcap, but at the same time, deeply human and moving and really rooted in a woman's journey through her life and of self discovery. It's also my favorite movie of this year. It is just visually a treat, and plays around with what would and wouldn't be found in that era. … It has a sense that anything is possible, but at the same time has real stakes to it.”
The Boy and the Heron
In this animation by Hayao Miyazaki, a boy’s mother is dead, but a heron says otherwise.
Duralde: “Describing the plot of a Miyazaki film, under the best circumstances, is generally like trying to recount what happened to you in a dream. And this is probably one of his least easily-followed narratives. But it still makes sense if you just go with it.
… It has the otherworldliness and the anthropomorphic animals of something like Princess Mononoke. … It is hauntingly beautiful. His films are always just like watching a series of beautiful paintings. I could watch a bicycle go down a country path in a Miyazaki movie and just take in all the detail. But this is about a young man during the World War II era, dealing with family trauma, dealing with a national crisis. … This is another masterpiece from our greatest living animator.”
Lemire: “There might be too many ideas and too many weird creatures, it's almost overwhelming, and you can't take it all in. … There's such delicate artistry … but there's also horrific imagery. … You have super cute, adorable little creatures … but you also have really frightening predatory parakeets.”
Origin
Directed by Ava Duvernay and starring Niecy Nash and Jon Bernthal, this film is adapted from and literally about Isabel Wilkerson’s book called Caste: The Origins of our Discontents. Actress Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays the author on her journey of writing the book.
Lemire: “It feels like two different movies slammed against each other in a really clunky way. … Because you have Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor playing Isabel Wilkerson … as she is writing this book and she is researching this book, but then also undergoing tremendous personal loss … that helps fuel her and drive her in this mission. And I feel like it needed to be one or the other.”
Duralde: “I think here, if [Duvernay] had picked either going full-on dramatization or full-on documentary, she could have come up with something. And there are certainly moments here that are gonna stay with me. There's one scene with Audra McDonald that is incredibly powerful. The segment … with the child in the swimming pool, it has a brutal power to it. And those moments make you realize how much of the rest of the movie just isn't quite working.”
Waitress
This comedy-drama is a live stage recording of the 2015 Broadway musical Waitress, with songs from Sara Bareilles. The 2015 performance was based on writer Adrienne Shelly’s 2007 indie film of the same name. Shelly was murdered before her film came out.
Lemire: “There's a real clever way with the staging, in terms of people coming in and handing a person a prop, or taking a person's jacket off, or moving a couch to make way for the next set. So you feel like you're right in the middle of it all. But then when it breaks from that, after [Sara Bareilles’] signature song, ‘She Used to Be Mine,’ the camera is at the back of the stage, and you see her silhouette in the spotlight, and you see the whole crowd come to its feet because this is like her big moment. And that is so striking.”
Duralde: “Not all movies loan themselves to being musicals. And we've seen so many efforts at that in the last couple of decades. But this one? Absolutely. If you were to approach this material for the first time, you wouldn't know that it wasn't always a musical. It's all very organic.
The cast is really terrific. Sara Bareilles is heartbreaking, and the songs that she does are so beautiful. Drew Gehling, as her OBGYN that she winds up having an affair with, has a wonderfully gawky presence, but also very heartfelt and romantic. Dakin Matthews [is] the crusty owner of the diner, who Sara Bareilles’ character can see his softer side.
And I think that as opposed to a lot of other filmed musicals, there really are some cinematic choices here, like you see occasional slo-mo even, in certain moments where pies are being made or whatever, which is not something you usually get when someone is filming a Broadway show. So this is all very well done.”