The latest film releases are Young Woman and the Sea, Jim Henson Idea Man, In A Violent Nature, and The Young Wife. Weighing in are Alison Willmore, film critic for New York Magazine and Vulture, and William Bibbiani, film critic and co-host of the Critically Acclaimed Network of podcasts.
Young Woman and the Sea
This Disney-produced biopic stars Daisy Ridley as Trudy Ederle, who became the first woman to swim across the English Channel in 1926. This was originally slated to go straight to Disney+, but now it’s getting a theatrical release.
Willmore: “It is an inspirational sports drama of the sort that Disney … used to make a lot more … like Cool Runnings, or more recently, Queen of Katwe. … When you watch this movie — and it's this sturdy, nicely acted, uplifting story that's got this exciting act of endurance swimming — I think it feels like a shame that these movies just don't seem to have a place out there anymore.
And it understands something that Nyad — which was last year’s other endurance swimming film — didn't quite understand, which is that endurance swimming is incredibly challenging. It's dangerous. It's this amazing feat of human accomplishment. But it's also not that exciting to watch for long stretches of time.
And so it builds a lot of drama around this character’s attempts to cross the English Channel. It's also set in the 1920s, so she has a lot of period sexism to overcome. All of these characters are basically being like, ‘Women can't be in the water, their delicate bones will dissolve.’ And she has to prove them wrong. And … it's certainly not going to do a lot that's surprising. At the same time, I just really enjoyed watching it.”
Bibbiani: “The irony is that this movie was originally supposed to go straight to streaming. And then apparently, they actually watched it and realized, ‘Oh, wait, this is great.’ So they're giving it a chance in theaters, and I do hope it makes a splash in theaters. … This is a good old-fashioned crowd pleaser. You can just feel the entire audience just really get swept up in it. And you're cheering. You're you hate all the right people because they're just so overtly sexist. It's so efficiently told, it's beautifully filmed, the score is very sweeping.
It also follows the grand Disney tradition of not letting history get in the way of a good story. Because if you actually look up the reality of this tale, they take a lot of liberties in order to make the story stronger. And they actually, I think, do that in the right way. It's not super disrespectful. It makes you want to know more about it.”
Jim Henson Idea Man
This documentary centers on the man who created The Muppets and Sesame Street, and directed The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth in the 1980s. Jim Henson’s family gave director Ron Howard full access to their archives.
Bibbiani: “It's a lot of his career basically from beginning to end. He was a very creative person. He got into … Muppeteering … just because he wanted to break into television. … So you get to see how his original weird ideas for nightclubs and things gradually morphed into what he was able to actually do. …
… It's a film about how Jim Henson was really quite great. But this is the hagiography where there's a part of you that's like, ‘Surely he annoyed someone, right?’ At some point in his career, he wasn't perfect. The only thing in this movie that’s even mildly critical of Jim Henson is that his marriage ended. But they really don't engage with why, other than work. … And yeah, fair enough. And I'm not saying they need to take down Jim Henson, but it can't help but feel like a big ol’ commercial for the stuff that's currently on Disney+.”
Willmore: “There's something a little striking about the fact that this is a whole movie about how inventive this person was, how they brought this incredibly 60s-70s sensibility to their work, and to the studios, and to television … and really just blew people's minds in terms of what you could accomplish. … It's hard not to fall in love with all of the footage that you get to see here. You're watching people as they are creating Sesame Street, as they are creating The Muppet Show. And it is magical.”
In A Violent Nature
This gory slasher flick is about a group of teens who steal a locket in the woods, which brings to life the victim of a decades-old crime. The spirit crawls out of a bed of dead leaves to pursue his victims and retrieve the locket.
Willmore: “There is actually very little dialogue in this movie. We mostly follow the killer, whose name is Johnny, who does not speak, and who is this undead force of violent vengeance, and just mostly is trudging through the forest in beautiful sun-dappled scenes … before he kills someone in about as violent a way as you will ever see. The kills in this movie, when they happen, are so memorably disgusting that they really have been seared in my brain. … It really does try and get inside a very familiar sort of film by just following the undead bad guy, and offering this almost meditative experience, broken up by scenes of just incredibly gruesome gore.”
Bibbiani: “I love this movie, actually. … It's really contemplative. … It's about how this undead ghost … has a certain beauty in and of itself, even though the kills are really exceptionally gruesome in a very glorious way. … If you're squeamish, avoid this movie. This is not for you. If you're a horror fan who loves the slasher genre, wants to see a different take on it, but also wants to see it done really, really, really well, I would highly recommend In A Violent Nature. This is one of my favorite horror movies.”
The Young Wife
Set 10 years in the future, this features Kiersey Clemons as Celestina, a young bride dealing with the anxieties of entering a marriage. Musician Leon Bridges plays her flaky boyfriend.
Bibbiani: “Kiersey Clemons is hosting a party — it's not supposed to be a big to-do, but it keeps ballooning outside of her control — to celebrate her nuptials. They're getting married today. And everyone around her wants something from her. … The grandmother is contemplating assisted suicide. It's so overwhelming. And that's the movie at its best.
… By setting this movie in the near future, it addresses some things that I think young people in particular are very, very nervous about, which is literally anything in the future. Whether it's a marriage, or money, or climate change, or politics, or whatever, everything feels incredibly overwhelming all the time. And this is a movie that condenses that into a single day. And I felt very connected to it.”
Willmore: “It felt like [this film] was not quite finished, like it was almost 95% there and never quite ties things together. Though I feel that does speak to the experience of its main character, who is constantly getting pulled from one experience to the other. … It uses this slight futurism to speak to this idea of what it means to be trying to build a life on top of what feels like impending disaster, which I think is something that a lot of people feel these days. … One of the recurring things in this movie is that people have trouble getting to the house because of flooding, it keeps washing out the normal roads.”