You Can See Everything: Enough people have seen You Can See Everything at this point to compromise the walls of secrecy that A24 put up around this project while Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim spent the last 3 years quietly putting it together. In the interest of not contributing to the spoiler-driven dialogue that's all over the internet right now, I'm going to avoid discussing the events of the film in any specific detail. What I will say is that I feel that what Fielder and Oppenheim did here is absolutely brilliant. Elizabeth Holmes is this figure that's really difficult to get a read on and by simply following her and her spouse Billy Evans around during the months leading up to her going to prison in 2023 then circling back in 2025 to see what's transpired since she began serving her sentence for defrauding investors in Bryan, Texas, she manages to become an even bigger enigma. The conversations/debates that can be had about perception vs reality when it comes to every single aspect of Holmes' life from the origins of Theranos to what she's doing now, whether or not Fielder has become sympathetic towards her plight after spending so much time with her and Evans' actions-particularly after she goes to jail are plentiful and there's no doubt in my mind that plenty of people have had time upon leaving the theater. On top of the fascinating conversations its producing, the movie is incredibly funny at times and gripping to the point where its epic runtime (174 minutes) absolutely flies by. The Oscars pundits believe it has a real chance to become the first documentary ever nominated for Best Picture and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it ended up happening.
Grade: A
Street Fighter: Move over Resident Evil, another great video game adaptation has arrived on the scene. Street Fighter takes pride in being a hyperactive live action martial arts cartoon that celebrates the pervasive horniness, lowbrow comedy and self-aware ridiculousness that made 90's action movies tick without ever sinking into obnoxious meta commentary territory. As a purveyor of lizard-brained movies from all eras, it was such a joy to watch a movie that was bursting at the seams with passion and enthusiasm for this underutilized form of art. It also didn't hurt that the frequent fight scenes are playful, dynamically choreographed rippers and the technical elements are tremendous (special shoutout to Ken Seng's crazy vibrant cinematography and the stunning hand drawn animation that was used for the flashback sequences). I would be delighted if Kitao Sakurai got the chance to make 10 more of these movies.
Grade: B+
Whalefall: "Austin Abrams gets swallowed by a whale" is one of the most inherently ridiculous sales pitches of any movie released this year. Once you look past the goofy logline, Whalefall reveals itself to be a sentimental, melodramatic survival story about a young man trying to make peace with the rocky relationship he had with his late father (Josh Brolin) while simultaneously trying to escape from the belly of a whale before his oxygen tank runs out (he was looking for his diver father's remains underwater when he gets swallowed by the whale). The visceral sound design, impressive practical sets that vividly bring various parts of the whale's insides to life and tight closeups of his grimacing face do a great job of immersing the viewer in the uniquely dire form of suffering Abrams' character is experiencing and while it's unbelievably corny at points, the father/son story is coming from a sincere enough place that I didn't feel compelled to groan or roll my eyes all that much at all of the sappiness on display. I will say that I do think it'll play way better in a theater than at home, so any interested party should try to make it out to theater sometime in the next week and a half or so before it gets cast out to sea to make way for all of the high-profile November releases.
Grade: B
Clayface: In the interim at least, James Gunn and Peter Safran will retain their jobs as the heads of DC Studios at the now Skydance-controlled Warner Brothers. This development didn't surprise me all that much as Gunn and Safran are still very much locked into the early stages of their overhauled DCU and all of the ballyhooing about the mixed bag reception and massive box office failure of Supergirl got wiped out immediately by how big of a home run Lanterns was for HBO/HBO Max. Clayface, which marks the third Gunn and Safran-backed DC movie to hit theaters, is another win for the duo that could end up helping their case to remain as the heads of the superhero brand for the foreseeable future.
Clayface focuses on Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), a young man who clawed his way out of the gutter in Gotham to become a celebrated actor, only to find himself becoming the kind of monster he grew up fearing after voluntarily signing up for an experimental procedure that he hopes will fix his face that became disfigured following an attack by a powerful mobster (David Dencik). Rhys Harries does a terrific job of capturing the subtle sadness derived from a life full of stinging betrayals that lies behind his slow but steady transformation from decent man to vengeful maniac, Naomi Ackie is her reliably great self as the kind scientist developing a potentially revolutionary nanite technology designed to rapidly restore damaged tissue in the body who Hagen's procedure then quickly grows quite fond of him at a time where not very many people want anything to do with him and having the film play out like a tragic spin on a classic vigilante tale without holding back on the gnarly R-rated body horror transformations and bloody kills the marketing teased was a great creative choice by director James Watkins that helps further establish its unique identity.
Honestly, the only real missteps Clayface makes are in its choppy opening 20 minutes that feels like an extended montage designed to rapidly establish Hagen's success as an actor, the circumstances that led to the attack and players who he'll extract revenge on later in the movie. Whether that was a deliberate choice by Watkins to get to the true heart of the story as quickly as possible or an unintended side effect of the reshaping of the movie that took place once he decided to cut the flashback scenes involving Hagen's childhood is a mystery that we'll probably never get the answer to, but kudos to him for staging such a swift, graceful recovery and delivering a movie that is ultimately pretty great.
Grade: B+
Wicker: Writer/director duo Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson (Save Yourselves!) clearly had a lot of fun putting together this farcical period fable about an ostracized fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) who sends her entire remote seaside village into a state of disarray when she commissions the local Basketmaker (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband (Alexander Skarsgård) out of wicker. There are some big laughs and quite a bit of charm present as Wicker examines how this unusual relationship completely challenges what the village knows about love, gender roles and sex and the prosthetics/VFX work that went into bringing the film's wooden humanoid creations to life are stellar, especially when you consider that this is an indie production with a budget of roughly $10 million. It's easy to see why this has been playing so well with audiences since it debuted at Sundance back in January and I fully expect this to become a cult favorite in short order.
Grade: B
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