"Gladiator II" and "Juror #2"

So, what have our seniormost senior directors been up to lately?

If you like the first "Gladiator" movie, you'll probably like "Gladiator II."    It's very much a retread of the first movie, starring a new hero named Hanno (Paul Mescal), whose wife is killed in a battle against invading Roman forces under General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), and ends up a gladiator owned by the conniving ex-slave Macrinus (Denzel Washington).  Acacius turns out to be married to Lucilla (Connie Neilson) from the first "Gladiator," and secretly planning to overthrow the degenerate twin emperors currently in charge of Rome, Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger).

I've missed good, old-fashioned action spectaculars like "Gladiator," where the director isn't afraid to kill off most of the cast, because they need to worry about sequels or setting up a franchise.  The killings here are also very graphic, and often very creative.  Hanno fights an opponent who rides a rhinoceros into the area.  Later, the Coliseum is flooded so that a naval battle can be reenacted.  I'm betting that when the actual Romans did it, they didn't put sharks in the water to chow down on the unfortunate combatants, but historically gladiators didn't typically battle to the death anyway, so historical accuracy wasn't really ever in the cards.  When we're out of the arena, "Gladiator II" isn't too interesting.  The characters are thin, though the excellent cast is very good at pretending they aren't.  Denzel Washington is the most fun to watch as the genial villain, Macrinus, who steals every single scene he's in.

I'm not a big fan of the original "Gladiator," but the movie assumes that I am, spending the whole opening sequence replaying the greatest hits from "Gladiator," and recycling a lot of the visual motifs.  There's a big twist that depends on a relationship from the first movie, and a character I didn't even remember existed.  It didn't really impact my enjoyment of "Gladiator II," except to remind me of the deficiencies of the original movie.  I suspect that the sequel may be a worse film, but I enjoyed it more because Ridley Scott and his collaborators were willing to lean into the spectacle and melodrama more wholeheartedly.  Scott's last few movies had me worried that he was coming to the end of his viability as a commercial filmmaker, but "Gladiator II" shows he still knows how to please an audience.        

 

Now, on to the latest Clint Eastwood film, which some are predicting is the last Clint Eastwood film.  "Juror #2" is a very old fashioned kind of courtroom drama and morality play, with a few scenes that contain direct echoes of "12 Angry Men" and other classics of the genre.  The titular juror is Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), a recovering alcoholic with a very pregnant wife, Ally (Zoe Deutch).  The case involves a woman who was found dead, with all signs pointing to her boyfriend as the perpetrator.  Justin comes to believe that he may have actually killed the woman in a hit-and-run, and his guilt drives him to influence the jury to find the suspect innocent.  Supporting characters include the district attorney (Toni Collette), the public defender (Chris Messina), the judge (Amy Aquino), and a juror who turns out to be an ex-police detective (J.K. Simmons).

"Juror #2" is very no-frills and matter-of-fact, with some good performances and decent enough writing for a legal thriller.  The filmmaking is sparse, as it usually is in Eastwood films, and though the editing is a little jarring for my taste, there are no major unforced errors.  The case and the way that events unfold are preposterous, but we see far worse procedural and legal mistakes every night on network television.  "Juror #2" is not about law or justice, but about putting the viewer in the shoes of a man facing an awful ethical dilemma, and getting them to empathize and relate, and it does that pretty well.  There have been a couple of attempts over the years to turn Nicholas Hoult into a leading man, and he's clearly got the acting chops for it.  However, I think he's a character actor at heart, and "Juror #2" benefits from that.  The movie is small, but sturdy, and a better swan song for Clint Eastwood than any of his films from the past decade.  

   

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The Age of "Adolescence"

Spoilers for the first episode ahead.

Netflix's "Adolescence" is being billed as a mystery or a thriller in some places, which is misleading.  It's a four-episode miniseries about a terrible crime, and there are certainly elements of suspense and tension, but we know who was responsible from very early on.  Instead, "Adolescence" is better characterized as a social drama, each episode covering a new development in the investigation and resulting fallout.  In addition, each episode is done in one nerve-wracking shot, with no cuts, and apparently no technical cheats.   

Created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, "Adolescence" is about a 13 year-old who is accused of murdering a classmate. Graham plays Eddie Miller, the father of Jamie (Owen Cooper), a sweet-looking kid who is arrested in the first episode by DI Bascombe (Ashley Walters) and DS Frank (Faye Marsay).  The second episode follows the detectives when they conduct interviews at Jamie's school.  The third is spent with Jamie while he's being interviewed by a child psychologist, Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty).  Finally, the fourth focuses on Eddie, his wife Manda (Christine Tremarco), and their daughter Lisa (Amélie Pease) dealing with the aftermath several months later.

"Adolescence" is designed to ask questions and spark debate, not to provide all the answers.  We get a rough idea of what happened and Jamie's probable mindset, but there is so much left unresolved for the audience to parse themselves.  We don't know why the victim's friend, Jade (Fatima Bojang), attacks Jamie's friend Ryan (Kaine Davis) during the school episode.  We don't know if the version of events relayed by Jamie to Briony during their session is truthful.  We don't know how much responsibility the Millers have regarding Jamie's actions.  We don't know what part his school environment or his friends might have played.  There's certainly a lot suggested by what we witness, but nothing confirmed.  The performances from the entire cast are excellent, with Stephen Graham anchoring the whole enterprise with heartbreaking commitment.  It's also hard to believe that this is Owen Cooper's first screen role, as he displays a remarkable amount of control over Jamie's shifting moods and mannerisms.    

I appreciate that "Adolescence" is keen on tackling current events and issues head-on.  Ripped-from-the-headlines media like "Law & Order" or the Netflix true crime docuseries are usually so sensationalized, it's a real surprise to find something that's approaching these subjects with real care and nuance.  The Miller family is completely ordinary, and the parents have no major domestic issues or personal problems, so you can't point to any of the usual suspects for Jamie's disturbing behavior.  There's more scrutiny placed on school and the internet, where adult supervision is lacking, social safety nets are failing, and kids are falling through the cracks.  Alarms have been raised for years now about how educational institutions have been in crisis post-Covid, and seeing the chaos up-close is a real eye-opener.  There's also a gentle, but pointed push for parents to be more involved in their children's lives, as a recurring theme throughout the show is that the well-meaning adults have little to no idea what's really going on with their kids.  

The UK has a long history of producing excellent social dramas, but Ken Loach and Mike Leigh have slowed down lately due to funding troubles, and it's been a while since I've seen a piece of drama that feels so immediate and so relevant to the lives of everyday people.  It's wonderful to have "Adolescence" carrying on in their footsteps.  I don't know that the one shot format adds all that much narratively, but it's all very well done.  And if the fancy filmmaking attracts more viewers, then I'm all for it.  I think we need much more media in this vein being produced, hopefully by creators as insightful and empathetic as the ones responsible for "Adolescence."

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"Conclave" and "Here"

Quick thoughts on two more prestige pics.

I probably wasn't in the best mindset to watch "Conclave," which is about the election of a new Pope in the present day.  Ralph Fiennes stars as Cardinal Lawrence, the Dean  of the College of Cardinals, and the one in charge of running the conclave.  Among the hopefuls are the liberal Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci), far right Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), popular African conservative Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), ambitious moderate Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow), and an obscure newcomer, Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz).  Isabella Rossellini also plays a minor role as Sister Agnes, who heads the nuns serving the assembled cardinals.    

"Conclave" is essentially a political thriller, full of secretive conversations and new information being revealed every few minutes.  I went in expecting a more earnest depiction of the conclave process, and what I got was closer to something out of an airport paperback.  The performances are good, and director Edward Berger does a great job of putting interesting things onscreen - the Vatican pageantry is on full display - but the handling of the material felt shallow.  Actual debate over doctrine and faith are explored to some extent, but are also totally dwarfed by the scandals involving the individual cardinals, and some very high-school level factionalism.  I was especially exasperated by the very last reveal about the newly elected pope, which just felt like a needless soap opera twist for the sake of having a final punchline.

Of the excellent cast, Fiennes stands out as the good man put in the terrible position of having to ensure a fair process, despite very unfair tactics being employed on all sides, while under unimaginable pressure.  His internal journey is the most believable and affecting part of the film, particularly when has to face his own faults and ambitions.  The plot machinations are otherwise far too contrived for me to take seriously, and I find myself classifying "Conclave" with the adaptations of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon novels instead of something like "The Two Popes," which presents a far more even-handed and approachable depiction of the modern day Catholic leadership.  I don't mind some liberties being taken for the sake of entertainment - and "Conclave" is certainly entertaining - but I was hoping that this film would also be a little more grounded and sober in light of the subject matter.  

On to "Here," which I wasn't planning on writing anything about originally, until I thought about it in the context of the rest of Robert Zemeckis's career.  Zemeckis is a director whose work is marked by technical innovations, who always seems to be pushing at the limits of what filmmaking can do.  "Here" is very much a film that fits into this mindset, and is built around the gimmick of the whole narrative playing out in a single location and within the frame of a single camera shot.  We move backwards and forwards in time, watching the lives of multiple families playing out, because the imaginary camera happens to look in on the living room of a house somewhere on the East Coast.  Occasionally, floating rectangular inset panels will change only parts of the frame, so we can see multiple points in time simultaneously.  

There's a ton of other effects work involved here, including many instances of digital de-aging, face swapping, CGI backgrounds, animation, and more.  The timeline of "Here" covers everything from the dinosaurs to the present day, but is primarily about the life of Richard Young (Tom Hanks), his parents Al (Paul Bettany) and Rose (Kelly Reilly), and his wife Margaret (Robin Wright).  Other people who inhabit the same house include an aviator in the 1900s, an inventor in the 1940s, and an African-American family in the COVID era, who we get glimpses of in counterpoint to the Youngs' story.  Richard and Margaret live out an eventful, but fairly typical suburban American life, full of disappointments and setbacks, but also many small joys and important milestones.  The de-aging work is pretty seamless, and it's fun to watch the various scene transitions play out.  

The narrative, however, never struck me as more than an interesting formal experiment.  Most of the heavy lifting of creating the film's visual language was already done by Richard McGuire, whose comic "Here" provided the source material for the film.  The script by Zemeckis and Eric Roth is well-intentioned, but very narrow in scope and too sentimental for my tastes.  All the men are frustrated dreamers of one kind or another, and nearly all the women are unhappy.  There's some humor and some subversiveness here and there - the kids are allowed to be real brats - but I was mostly reminded of Zemeckis' work on "Forrest Gump," and not in a good way.

The innovation is admirable, and I hope it wins a lot of tech awards, but "Here" isn't where I'll be returning anytime soon.

  

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"The Electric State" Ain't Great, But…

I knew that "The Electric State" was going to be a bad movie before I saw it.  The reviews are abysmal.  The reactions to the trailer elicited nothing but scorn.  How did Netflix spend in excess of $300 million on this thing?  However, I find the finished project fascinating.  It's another one of those ambitious, grandiose fantasy projects in the vein of "Tomorrowland," "Jupiter Ascending," and "Mortal Engines" that takes a lot of big swings and totally fails to connect.  And if you've been watching much dystopian media over the past decade, some of those swings are awfully familiar.

Joe and Anthony Russo have made a string of poorly received action projects in the wake of "Avengers: Endgame," including "Cherry," "The Gray Man," and the very expensive Amazon Prime series, "Citadel."  None of these have been especially bad, just nothing that remotely meets the expectations created by being from the directors of some of the most expensive and lucrative films ever made. "The Electric State," loosely based on a book by Simon Stalenhag, is another big effects spectacular that takes place in an alternate history version of the United States, in the aftermath of a failed robot uprising.  This is a version of the 1990s where humans spend most of their time living in virtual reality, piloting drones to do any physical fighting, while the remaining robots live in a dangerous "exclusion zone."    

Our hero is an orphaned teenager named Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown), who discovers that her younger brother Christopher (Woody Norman) might be alive, when she's contacted by a drone robot named Cosmo.  She goes looking for a doctor (Ke Huy Quan) in the exclusion zone who might know where Christopher is, and along the way meets a goofy veteran named Keats (Chris Pratt) and his robot pal Herman (Anthony Mackie), who work as smugglers.  In the exclusion zone, they also befriend a ragtag community of robots, lead by an animatronic Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson).  Enemies include the evil leader of the drone-creating Sentre corporation, Skate (Stanely Tucci), and the mercenary Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito).

What I primarily enjoy "The Electric State" for is its weird, fanciful worldbuilding.  This is a world where robots are very prevalent, so we have anthropomorphized pitching machines, jukeboxes, and construction machinery running around.  Most of the robots who went to war against humanity seem to have been advertising cartoon characters brought to life, which means that parts of the premise are awfully close to that old "Treehouse of Horror" segment, "Attack of the 50ft Eyesores," with Mr. Peanut filling in for Lard Lad.  And what kind of deal had to be struck with Planters to make a robot version of their spokes-legume part of this movie?!  There's a bipedal 7-Up can running around in the battle scenes, but not any other branded characters.  Who else was under consideration that turned the filmmakers down?  Bob's Big Boy?  The Energizer Bunny? Charles Entertainment Cheese?  

All due credit should go to the animators and effects professionals for making the movie's quasi-steampunk dystopian aesthetic look as good as it does.  Some of the bots are delightfully rendered, including a post office robot voiced by Jenny Slate, and a piano-playing taco, who is responsible for some of the film's terrible needle-drops.  Somehow, we get both "Don't Stop Believing" and "Wonderwall" in the same movie, even though "Wonderwall" was released after this movie is supposed to take place.  Despite it all, I thought that Herman and Keats made a perfectly respectable comedic duo, trading the kind of silly banter and terrible pop culture references that always seem to show up in movies like this.  Chris Pratt proves once again that he is really good at playing action doofuses, and "The Electric State" would be much worse without him.     

By setting their film in the 1990s, the Russo brothers try to provide some kind of an excuse for their retro-futurist visuals, but the whole thing is still an oddball mishmash of different influences.  Since Walt Disney is cited as the creator of the bots, this could take place in the same universe as Brad Bird's "Tomorrowland," and the use of IP and themes of internet addiction suggest ties to Spielberg's "Ready Player One."  "The Electric State" is much less sophisticated than either of those films, but as children's media it's more accessible than both.  Despite the allusions to "Astro Boy" and cameos by Billy the Big-Mouth Bass, "The Electric State" feels retro, but rarely nostalgic.  And while it has all the bad habits of all the other over-bloated YA dystopian films of the last decade, I don't find it any worse than any of the other films I've referenced in this review.

Yes, "The Electric State" is a bad movie, but it's not a terrible one, and I've seen plenty of equally unimpressive fare lately that hasn't attracted this much scorn. At least "The Electric State" is taking some hefty risks, though I suspect this will be the Russos' last blank check for a long time.   

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"Black Doves" For Christmas

Of all the new spy series that have come out recently, "Black Doves" is easily my favorite.  Part of it is Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw as the leads, playing a pair of spies who work for the same secret mercenary organization, the Black Doves.  Part of it is the effective blend of wry humor, potent melodrama, and a few good action scenes, and Christmas cheer.  Yes, the whole series takes place in London at Christmastime, when a series of assassinations and a dead Chinese diplomat spell trouble for everybody.

One of the victims is a man named Jason (Andrew Koji), who was having an affair with Helen Webb (Knightley), the wife of the UK Secretary of Defense, Wallace Webb (Andrew Buchan).  Helen has been undercover as an infiltrator into the UK government for years, playing the part of dedicated wife and mother, while feeding information to the Black Doves.  Her handler Reed (Sarah Lancashire) brings in an old friend of Helen's, Sam Young (Whishaw) to help protect Helen, as they search for the killers.  Sam had to leave London and his partner Michael (Omari Douglas) when a job went very badly in 2017, and is tentatively trying to reconnect.  Unfortunately his old enemies, including his old boss Lenny Lines (Kathryn Hunter), are also keen to pick up where they left off.  

Spy thrillers are usually pretty chilly affairs, featuring characters who have closed off their emotions so they can better compartmentalize the less savory parts of their occupations, and better deceive those closest to them.  This is not the case in "Black Doves," which is full of big emotions and heartfelt conversations at every turn.  Helen is truly in love with Jason, and she's furious and heartbroken that he's dead.  Wallace turns out to be truly in love with her, and Sam and Michael were truly happy and committed to each other before Sam's work got in the way.  Best of all, Helen and Sam are real friends who are affectionate and loyal to each other, even if they mostly spend their time together trying not to get killed.  They're operating in the kind of universe where everyone is unreasonably good at hand-to-hand combat, and there is an inexhaustible supply of baddies to fight, so most episodes have at least one big action scene to inject some excitement.  However, the relationship drama is equally as fun to watch, which I can't say about any other spy show I've seen lately.

The mix of tones and genres plays a big part in the watchability of "Black Doves."  I love the collection of characters that Helen and Sam interact with, from the no-nonsense Reed to a couple of mouthy local hired guns, Williams (Ella Lily Hyland) and Eleanor (Gabrielle Creevey), who they have to team up with for a mission.  The teamup really doesn't make sense if you think about it too hard, but the banter is so good, why would you complain?  Everyone is also terribly good at spycraft up until the point that they aren't, and there are plot holes everywhere, but the point here is to let veteran character actors like Kathryn Hunter say effortlessly cool lines, watch Keira Knightley be a righteous badass, and to root for Sam and Michael to get back together in spite of all their baggage.  I'm so glad that the writers don't let logic and reason get in the way. 

Ben Whishaw's had a good run lately and does excellent work here, but I haven't seen Keira Knightley in something that has matched her talents this well in far too long.  Helen is a complicated character, but I appreciate that she has such a passionate, active role in every episode, and there isn't a whole lot of time wasted on whether she's morally in the wrong for having an affair, or for being part of a secret spy organization in the first place.  This is not that kind of show.  This is the kind of show that assumes you're already familiar with all the usual spy tropes, have gotten a bit bored with them, and would like a different spin on the genre with a bit more black humor, a bit more irreverence, and a touch of Christmas tinsel on top.  Enjoy.

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It's "Saturday Night"

I write this review as an admirer of "Saturday Night Live," but I wouldn't count myself a fan.  I know enough about the early days of the show that I can recognize about 80% of the people being portrayed in "Saturday Night," but I don't know enough of the details to take issue with how they're portrayed - with one exception.  We'll get to that later.

Directed by Jason Reitman, who also co-wrote the film with Gil Kenan, "Saturday Night" covers the ninety nail-biting minutes before the first episode of the show, that would eventually be known as "Saturday Night Live," was broadcast on NBC in 1974.  The show's creator Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) is our main POV character, desperately trying to corral the crew, the writers, the NBC executives, and his temperamental cast to put on a show in spite of numerous setbacks.  Nothing is ready, everyone is unhappy, and Lorne is constantly being pulled in a dozen directions.  We're dropped into the chaos very much in media res, constantly being introduced to new characters and new issues as Lorne problem solves on the fly. 

John Belushi (Matt Wood) and Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) are at each other's throats, and Belushi won't sign his contract.  Lorne's boss Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman) wants product placement in the show, while his boss David Tebet (Willem Dafoe) doesn't want the show on the air at all.  Contributors like Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris) and Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun) aren't sure what they're doing there, while Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) and Valri Bromfield (Corine Britti) can't get a straight answer on whether they've been cut from the show.  George Carlin (Matthew Rhys), the very first guest host, refuses to participate in the sketches.  Also, the set is on fire, the lighting director quit, and nobody taped the rehearsal so it's the live broadcast or nothing.  And someone ordered a llama.

There's a very Aaron Sorkin feel to "Saturday Night," with a lot of walk-and-talks, torrents of dense dialogue, and everyone playing very fast and loose with the actual facts.  It doesn't bother me so much with a project like this, which isn't a serious portrayal of any important historical figures, but rather designed to be more of a feel-good trip down memory lane.  We know that everyone is going to pull together in the end and triumph, so we can enjoy the temporary flailing and inflighting.  The whole film feels like a half-remembered showbiz anecdote, with a lot of mythologizing, a lot of name-dropping, and a lot of screwing up of timelines.  I appreciate that it puts several unsung heroes, like writers  Michael O'Donoghue (Tommy Dewey) and Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), in the spotlight, and lets the less well-known actors like Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, and Kim Matula as Jane Curtin have their moments.

As I understand it, most of what's portrayed in "Saturday Night" actually happened at some point, but everything's been massively compressed into ninety minutes of cinematic madness, with a few key scenes that have been totally invented to pile on the drama.  So, the famous story of Lorne hiring Alan Zweibel (Josh Brener), a shocking encounter with Milton Berle (J. K. Simmons), and Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien) coming up with his Julia Child sketch all take place within minutes of each other.  We even get Andy Kaufman (Nicholas Braun) doing his Mighty Mouse bit as part of the pre-show.  Everyone's portrayed as larger than life, but they're all treated mostly with great affection and consideration.  The one exception is Jim Henson (Braun), who famously didn't gel with the "Saturday Night Live" sensibilities at all, and was hated by the writing staff.  He's way too much of a weirdo and a square here, and gets the worst subplot.    

Fortunately, the rest of the film comes off better.  The performances range from dead-on to passable, with an emphasis on getting the voices and energy right rather than the looks.  Only a few of the actors actually get enough screen time to give their characters much depth - LaBelle as Lorne, Sennott, as Shuster, and Matt Wood as Belushi.  Lamorne Morris gets my pick for MVP, for really helping to distinguish Garrett Morris, who I admit I knew nothing about going into the film.  The production design is also a lot of fun, resurrecting the television ecosystem of '70s, complete with all the old tech, the big hair, and the constant drug use.  The scripting is messy, but does a good job of setting up the stakes and keeping the momentum going.  When things go down to the wire, and the cast finally starts clicking with the material, it's a genuine thrill to see.  

"Saturday Night" was released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of "Saturday Night Live," and is exactly the kind of movie that you'd expect it to be.  It's probably a little too safe and self-important, but it also packs a whole lot of entertainment into one movie.  And the collection of talent assembled to pay tribute to the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players is really something.  For fans of SNL, this is a must-see, and for newcomers, it's a great introduction to an earlier era of comedy.  I suggest finding that first episode of "Saturday Night Live" before seeing the movie, because you're going to want to watch it right afterward.      

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"My Old Ass" and "Your Monster"

"My Old Ass" is a movie about a very specific time in life.  Elliott (Maisy Stella) is celebrating her eighteenth birthday by going camping with some friends.  She takes some hallucinogenic mushrooms, and suddenly her thirty nine-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza) is having a conversation with her.  Older Elliott offers some advice, like staying away from the cute guy, Chad (Percy Hynes White), who is working for the summer at her parents' cranberry farm, and spending more time with her family before she goes off to college in a few weeks.  

Written and directed by Megan Park, "My Old Ass" is a movie that snuck up on me.  It's incredibly sincere, despite the fantasy premise and lighthearted characters.  The grown-up Elliott drops a few hints about the future, but in a sly way where you can't tell if she's joking or not.  Plaza's been in a few projects lately that haven't had the best idea of what to do with her, but she's perfect as the untrustworthy mentor figure here.  After the mushroom trip, teenage Elliott discovers she can still talk to her older version on the phone, because she added her number to Elliott's phone while Elliott was asleep, under "My Old Ass."  The two develop a relationship that initially seems one-sided, but becomes wonderfully symbiotic and mutually helpful.  Maisy Stella carries the film with ease, and I look forward to anything she wants to do next.  

There's a lot of nostalgia in "My Old Ass," despite it taking place in the present day, in Southern Ontario.  Park seems to have constructed her ideal of what her teenage years could have been like.  Elliott is a lesbian with a supportive family and friends, looking forward to striking out on her own.  There's a great little romance in the mix, with one of the silliest, most winning fantasy sequences I've seen on film in a long time.  The pacing is very unhurried, and the sunny visuals are lovely.  Elliott's family lives in a lakeside community where everyone seems to get around by boat, and we see her constantly surrounded by nature.  Older Elliott urges her younger self to enjoy her time there while she can, and the audience should take that advice as well. 

On to "Your Monster," which is also about a young woman who finds herself talking to a possibly imaginary aspect of herself.  Melissa Barrera stars as Laura, an acting hopeful whose career trajectory was interrupted by getting cancer.  Her boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donavan) left her, and the musical they worked on together, with the expectation that Laura would play the lead role, is being produced without her.  Shattered by the breakup and recovering from surgery, Laura finds a literal monster (Tommy Dewey) living in her closet.  He's a grump at first, and wants her to leave, but eventually the two become friendly and maybe something more.    

Caroline Lindy wrote and directed "Your Monster," which turns out to be a unique combination of breakup movie and putting-on-a-show movie.  Laura decides she wants to be part of the musical, and crashes the auditions with unexpected results.  Barrera is the main event here, handily navigating the toxic relationship and rom-com tropes, and a few Broadway-style song numbers too.  She's a charming, lovable presence, even when she's deep in the breakup funk, crying through mountains of tissues.  I found the monster romance an interesting idea, but underbaked.  The visual of this quasi-werewolf guy cuddling with Melissa Berrera and sharing her Chinese takeout is fine, and the banter is cute, but I was hoping for a little more fleshing out of the monster as an actual character.  I don't feel like I had enough time with him to get to know him as well as I should have.    

"Your Monster" has some good ideas and takes its story to some unexpected places.  I like the  mix of multiple genres and the particular tone - very light and comedic, with just a few touches of horror and fantasy in the right places.  However, I wish the movie and its central metaphor could have given me a little more to chew on.  It's a fun watch with a great ending, but not very filling.      

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