Martinez Tribune The website of the Martinez Tribune.
BY TYLER HENSON
Two of the best movies of the year are currently playing in theaters. Stop motion wonder Wildwood offers an emotionally powerful and visually resplendent fantasy adventure, and the innovative documentary You Can See Everything takes viewers on an absolutely engrossing journey into the kaleidoscopic world of Elizabeth Holmes. The latest DC Studios release Clayface, which sought to break some of the comic book movie mold, turns out to be disappointingly thin. Read more below.
This weekend will see the release of Godzilla Minus Zero, the hotly anticipated follow up to Godzilla Minus One (2023), and The Cat in the Hat, a Warner Bros. Animation production based on the Dr. Seuss classic. This critic has been out of commission these last two weeks, but we’re looking to catch up on a few titles we missed, including Street Fighter and Wicker. Look forward to more next week.
Wildwood (132mins)
Oregon-based stop motion animation company Laika has outdone itself. Their latest film, the fantasy adventure Wildwood, is not only their most ambitious production to date, it’s also one of their best. Set in Portland (and brilliantly recreating the city’s most famous landmarks and geography), the story follows young Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), who loses her baby brother after disobeying her overprotective parents. The child is swept up by a murder of crows and taken to a magical kingdom in the woods. Prue follows and finds herself caught up in the political intrigue of this divided world, which is teetering on the brink of war.
Laika’s sensibility has always tended towards the dark and grotesque. Their most famous creation, Coraline (2009), is one of the creepiest of kids’ films, and even their lighter fare, such as The Boxtrolls (2014), happily indulges in gross outs you wouldn’t find in Disney. Wildwood sees them pushing into higher levels of thematic maturity and storytelling complexity. Prue is not a Disney princess. She is flawed, a bit dour and sad, and she struggles with her choices and their consequences. The world she enters may be filled with talking animals and magical creatures, but it is not overly cutesy, nor is it at all innocent. It is a place where violence, death, grief, loss, and tragedy are present and real.
Director Travis Knight and writer Chris Butler, working from an illustrated novel by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis, have obviously taken influence from Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke (1997). As in Miyazaki’s masterpiece, every character in Wildwood is treated with humanity. The central conflict has multiple sides, each inspiring sympathy. There is a villain, Alexandra (Carey Mulligan), but she is motivated by causes far more complicated than evil. And if the film sounds like nonstop, oppressive doom and gloom, potential viewers should know it also contains a great deal of humor. An extensive variety of supporting characters keep the story lively, and the visuals – painstakingly hand-crafted and lovingly animated frame by frame by arguably the most talented team of stop motion animators in the world – are absolutely breathtaking. This is the crowning achievement of Laika’s dedicated artisans, and one of the best films of the year.
You Can See Everything (174mins)
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s You Can See Everything has already become something of a phenomenon. It’s one of the most seen, most discussed, most successful documentaries of the year. If you haven’t seen it yet, you must. Ostensibly a portrait of Elizabeth Holmes, the now infamous tech wunderkind who was convicted of fraud in 2022, the film begins as a document of Holmes’ life in the weeks prior to the start of her 11-year prison sentence, and over the course of a nearly three-hour runtime evolves into something much deeper and more elusive.
Fielder, co-director and onscreen interviewer, is best known as a comedian from shows like Nathan For You (2013-2017). He is not the first person one might expect to tackle a subject like this. Incredibly, he has turned out to be something of a perfect match. Fielder’s comic persona, a combination of slow-witted awkwardness and disarming, open ingenuousness, makes for endlessly fascinating interactions with Holmes and her husband Billy Evans. They are an odd, intense, somewhat frightening pair, insisting fully on their own truth and reality, which is that Holmes is an innocent victim who has never once told a lie. Fielder seems like an easy mark. But as he dodges obvious manipulations, questions them in a simple and straightforward way, and plays the fool, it results in hilarious moments of contradiction, frozen panic, and an almost pleading insistence on claims that are plainly untrue.
Then a more disturbing implication begins to surface… do these people even realize the difference between a truth and a lie? Can a person lie, but actually believe in the lie so completely that, for them, it actually becomes the truth? There are numerous developments over the course of this movie that must not be discussed here, because the experience of seeing them happen and being utterly surprised by them is just too good to spoil. Fielder does not to try to condemn his subjects or make any judgments on them. He only wishes to know the truth of who they are as people, beyond public perception, beyond the versions of themselves they try to present. It is vastly illuminating and also profoundly ambiguous, as Fielder’s investigation into these baffling inner lives leads him towards some horrifying insights on the malleable nature of human perception itself. This critic came out of the film in something like an altered state, contemplating my own limited, subjective experience of reality. You Can See Everything is an astonishing achievement, perhaps the best film of the year, and certainly one of the greatest documentaries ever made.
Clayface (109mins)
The DC Universe continues a shaky track record with Clayface. Set in Gotham City, official stomping ground of Batman, this villain origin story follows an actor named Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) who turns to an experimental nanotech scientist, Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), for treatment following a disfiguring attack on his face. As his body mutates from the treatment, he finds he can morph his appearance, heal from any wound, and transform his appendages into deadly weapons. Swearing vengeance on those who wronged him, Hagen’s sanity begins to deteriorate as he picks off the people responsible for the destruction of his life.
Following Superman (2025) and Supergirl (2026), Clayface marks the third entry in what is planned as a new long-form cinematic narrative arc, similar to the MCU. Apparently, the current lineup is separate from previous DC films like Wonder Woman (2017) and The Suicide Squad (2021), and even distinct from ongoing concurrent franchises like The Batman (2022). Huh ? Clayface is also distinguished by its grimmer tone and more violent content, which stands in extreme contrast to the bright and optimistic Superman. This is a revenge thriller, a crime film, a bloody and grotesque horror film, and a tragic romance all rolled into one.
The film deserves credit for doing something different. Hagen’s fall from grace and his star-crossed love affair with Caitlyn inspire sympathy, and his bodily mutations are often creatively nauseating. The most effective scene features his eyelids sealing shut, prompting an excruciatingly ghastly effort to reopen them with a small pair of scissors. This critic found himself shielding his own eyes from the screen as this moment unfolded. But such highs are, disappointingly, few and far between. There is an excessive amount of care put into the plot, with a lot of time spent on character development and motivation. Normally, this would be laudable, but here all it means is that it takes a long time before we get to the point. The whole concept is… well, kind of silly. The film just doesn’t provide enough reason to take it that seriously. As an establishing entry in a nascent franchise, it is refreshingly free of the homogenized feel of a Marvel movie, but Clayface never quite rises to the level of its own ambition.
Other Mommy (93mins)
An uninvited guest is living in the Martin household and it looks an awful lot like the mom of young Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark). This ‘other mommy’ talks to her at night, plays games, and begs Bela, “let me into your heart.” Something’s definitely not right here… Her real Mommy (Jessica Chastain) and Daddo (Jay Duplass) are loving parents, but Bela can sense something has come between them. Mommy and Daddo are drifting apart, causing Bela to grow closer to Other Mommy. Once they learn of Other Mommy’s existence, Mommy and Daddo are going to have a heck of a time freeing their daughter from its insidious grasp.
For its first half hour or so, Other Mommy is quite a creepy and exciting tale. It begins without a great deal of setup or exposition, relying mostly on subtext to establish its concept, characters and relationships. Some excellent performances help to clarify everything. Duplass and Chastain exchange some loaded looks that speak volumes, child actor Clark accomplishes the impressive feat of carrying entire sections of the story on her own, and Chastain’s unblinking stare and unnaturally wide smile as Other Mommy bring a palpable chill to the screen.
The film moves fast. Unsustainably fast, as it turns out. By about the one hour mark, it’s all too obvious that we’ve run out of story to tell. The movie is simply lurching from one special effects set piece to another and setting off elaborate scare sequences under the flimsiest pretenses, attempting to draw itself out to feature length runtime. There was a good idea here. The doubled parent and alienated child bring to mind the dark fairy tale ambiance of Coraline (2009) and Other Mommy’s reality-bending supernatural powers are reminiscent of Pennywise in It (2017), her games a mixture of innocent play and deadly menace. But the film neither invests nor frightens as effectively as its inspirations, and its potential is exhausted long before the credits roll.
Forgotten Island (109mins)
DreamWorks Animation, and the directing team behind Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), dip into Philippine mythology for this hyperactive comedy adventure. Two trouble-making best friends, the rambunctious Jo (H.E.R.) and bookish, responsible Raissa (Liza Soberano), fall through a magical portal and become trapped on a mystical island populated by folk tale creatures. They make friends with a misfit dog-boy named Raww (Dave Franco), get chased by a menacing vampire called Manang (Lea Salonga), and discover the memory demon Batiba (Jenny Slate), who can return them home provided they’re willing to sacrifice their most precious memories together.
The impact of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) can be felt all over this movie. Spider-Verse borrowed the visual techniques of comic books and translated them into fast and colorful 3D motion. Forgotten Island does the same with Japanese sources. Most of its manic stylization comes from the pages of manga and the 2D world of anime. The lively visuals are combined with comedic cultural reference points that include 80’s action movies and 90’s hip hop. Since this is a DreamWorks film, aimed primarily at teens and twenty-somethings, it goes a little farther with its adult content. The humor is slightly more suggestive, and some of the action is scarier than would be allowed in an all-ages Disney production.
There is clearly a youthful target audience for this movie, and based on the reaction heard by this critic in the theater, it seems to play well to that audience. But you must know a shocking fact; you’re reading the opinion of someone who didn’t like Spider-Verse. The problems I had with that film are repeated in Forgotten Island. The characters have charm and personality, but the animation is too busy and the story is overwrought with action climaxes. After a certain point, it becomes exhausting and repetitive. Maybe it’s age. The visual overstimulation probably works better on younger eyes.
All of the above movies are currently playing at the Contra Costa Cinema. You can visit https://contracostacinema.com for both current and upcoming showtimes.
