Mubi Monday: Sorry, Baby (2025)

If you're going to tackle the kind of subject matter tackled in Sorry, Baby then you need to be confident in your abilities. There's a delicate touch required to create something that ends up being smart, a bit funny, and often tinged with deep sadness. Writer-director-star Eva Victor has that delicate touch, leading to Sorry, Baby being one of the most well-crafted and brilliant feature debuts I have seen in years.

Victor plays Agnes, a young woman who seems to be most content when able to spend time with her friend, Lydie (Naomi Ackie). It soon becomes clear that something happened in the recent past to strengthen their bond even further, but what exactly that is won't be revealed until later in the movie. Lydie is in new and scary territory, in love with someone and pregnant via a sperm donor, but Agnes has now been made fearful of environments that she has been familiar with for years. And it's not fucking fair, not in the slightest.

Given how great her performance is here, and her mannerisms, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Victor is actually the result of some mad scientist's attempt to clone Julianne Moore. That's a bit flippant, I know, but I mean it as a major compliment. Victor has that same ability to move between serious and more light-hearted moments with equal ease, and a relatively calm exterior that has the potential to crack and explode any minute. She's helped here by co-starring with the brilliant Ackie, and there are superb supporting turns from Kelly McCormack (being hilariously paranoid and always comparing herself to others), Lucas Hedges (a neighbour who may also be a potential partner), Louis Cancelmi, E. R. Fightmaster, and John Carroll Lynch.

You might already know what Sorry, Baby is really about, but I'm not going into any more detail here. The construction of the screenplay sandwiches the main event between scenes that show how Agnes struggles to deal with her new way of viewing the world, and whether or not she wants to spend much time outside of her own home. One scene in particular, showing Agnes almost processing part of her pain and thinking out loud when questioned during consideration for jury duty, is a masterful distillation of the trauma, scars, and repercussions stemming from one crime that has her still, somehow, giving equal consideration to how it will affect others around her.

Sometimes it's important to dive into more aspects of a film, especially when trying to convey to others just how good it is. Sometimes it's important to recognise that the film itself is just part of an ongoing conversation that needs to keep happening until our society undergoes a seismic shift in attitudes and morality. And there are times during that conversation when you should shut up and listen. Watching Sorry, Baby feels like a time for many to shut up and listen. And I would be doing it a disservice if I spent any more time here waffling on about my own reaction to it. 

Seek it out immediately. You'll be glad that you did.

10/10

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Mubi Monday: Mid90s (2018)

Jonah Hill moves from star to writer-director with this nostalgic look at the life of a young boy who finds his place among some skateboarding kids who, let's try to be polite here, mostly don't seem to have any clue about the work-life balance attitude they will need to get through approaching adulthood.

Sunny Suljic plays Stevie, the young boy who spends a lot of his time trying to avoid being beaten up by his older brother (Ian, played by Lucas Hedges). But as well as being afraid of his sibling, Stevie obviously looks up to him, and that may well be the male figure he tries most to emulate on his way to finding himself, until he starts to hang around with some boys who enjoy spending their time skateboarding and generally trying to impress one another. A couple of the group members have ideas about things they want to do well in life, another couple can't really see themselves beyond the image they have established within the group. Such is teenage life.

The influences on Hill are obvious throughout his feature directorial debut, which is at least accomplished and more mature throughout than many might expect. Although nostalgia is at the heart of things, this is a film that feels more like a patchwork of other films than the semi-autobiographical experience it's supposed to be. Kids is a big touchstone, as is This Is England (both acknowledged by Hill as some of the main influences). In fact, despite the skateboarding aspect of the plot, this hews a lot closer to This Is England than any other film that Hill decided to use as a "template" for his tale.

Unfortunately, there's nothing new here, which would be fine if it didn't all feel slightly stale and overdone. For me, if I want to watch some skateboarding teens then I will watch some of the fine documentaries that have been released over the years. If I want to see turbulent teen years onscreen then I can pick from literally hundreds of other movies. And if I want something to identify with then, well, I'll obviously be looking at the home-grown UK films that seek to capture snapshots of past decades. Mid90s is perfectly fine, for what it is, but there's no single aspect of it that can't be found, in a better form, in many other movies.

Suljic is good in the lead role, and I hope to keep up with whatever he does after being impressed by his last few movie roles, and the rest of the teens he befriends do fine. Na-kel Smith fares the best, thanks to the script, but the performances from Olan Prenatt, Gio Galicia, and Ryder McLaughlin are all on the nose. Alexa Demie is the one young girl featured in the cast, she does well, and Katherine Waterston puts in another performance that fails to convince me why she is ever the first choice for any role, aside from her surname. But it's Hedges who is actually given the best role, which makes it more disappointing when his character is not explored further. He's more complex than his younger brother, and has seen more that is only mentioned in passing once or twice. His past would seem to make a better film than the main character's present, but that's not the movie we are given.

Despite what I have said here, in terms of my own ultimate ambivalence towards the film and my preference for the Shane Meadows work it got me thinking of, I can see why this will obviously appeal more to American viewers who can have their own teen experiences to feel nostalgic for, accompanied by an appropriate selection of tunes from that era. It didn't work that well for me but, then again, I am not the target audience.

6/10

Americans can already buy it here.

Lady Bird (2017)

Lady Bird is a film I assumed I was going to love. Written and directed by Greta Gerwig, who I have been a big fan of for years now, starring Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf, both great actresses, and it has already been on the receiving end of a lot of love. I was ready to be impressed.

And I was.

Saoirse Ronan plays Christine, a young woman who wants to go by the name Lady Bird, who wants to get away to university and start her life properly, and she has the standard troubles of a teenage girl while her parents (Laurie Metcalf and Tracy Letts) try to deal with their own problematic situation. That's really all there is to it.

Staying in very familiar territory for her solo directorial feature (she previously co-directed, co-wrote, and co-starred in a film with Joe Swanberg), Gerwig certainly has a feel for all of the characters in this tale. There are moments that feel authentic, here and there, but a lot of the moments feel as if they're very much based in a cinematic reality.

Ronan is superb in the lead role, perfectly portraying the strange mix of curiosity, confidence, nerve-wracking insecurity, restlessness, and frustration and anger that makes up most of our teenage years. Metcalf and Letts are equally superb as the mother and father who have different approaches to their interactions with their daughter. The other young co-stars also do very well, with solid turns from Beanie Feldstein, playing the best friend, Lucas Hedges and Timothee Chalamet as two young men Lady Bird finds herself attracted to, and Odeya Rush as a "cool girl" who ends up an unlikely friend of Lady Bird.

All of those performances were enough to impress me, as were many chunks of the script. It was all good, if a bit familiar. But there was something else here, something that I haven't noticed anyone else mention, despite it seeming blindingly obvious. Without focusing on a pink dress or the opportunity of a perfect date, Gerwig has given audiences a John Hughes movie for the 21st century. Ronan is a stronger lead than Molly Ringwald, Eric Stoltz, or . . . Molly Ringwald, but she's given a character very close to those '80s souls that were also desperate to change the direction of their lives. It's even commented on more than once that she, according to some (including Lady Bird herself) lives on the wrong side of the tracks.

It's nice to see such a movie dressed up enough to gain a good bit of critical and commercial acclaim, but that's also a slight problem for the film. It tries to feel natural and realistic while also using characters that often feel indelibly like movie characters.

I was impressed by Lady Bird, I liked it a lot. But I still prefer the likes of Some Kind Of Wonderful and Pretty In Pink.

7/10

I THINK this is where the Blu ray will be available to buy.
Possibly here, in America.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

I HOPE that anyone who knows me, even a little bit, knows that I am never a contrarian just for the sake of stirring the pot or getting people into a state of anger. In fact, I try as often as I can to ignore the extreme negatives and positives you can find everywhere on the internet and continue to just form my own opinion about movies, which is the way everyone should do it (then you can have more fun later discussing things with those who agree, and those who don't).

So I didn't make the decision lightly to label the much-loved Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri the worst film directed by either of the McDonagh brothers. You have to remember two things here. First of all, I am one of the few people who really enjoyed War On Everyone. Second, I am not saying this is a terrible film. It's still better than Transformers: The Last Knight, for example. Just not by that much.

The plot revolves around Frances McDormand's character, Mildred. She has been waiting too long to get any justice after her daughter was raped and murdered. So she decides to use three billboards situated on a fairly quiet road to question the work ethic of Sheriff Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). This upsets Willoughby and his staff (particularly the dim and abusive Dixon, played by Sam Rockwell), it upsets Mildred's son (Lucas Hedges), and it starts to turn the town against Mildred as they fail to understand why she would make such a statement.

The performances in this film are, for the most part, pretty great. McDormand does brilliant work, Rockwell is as great as ever, and Harrelson does well (when he isn't delivering lines in voiceover like he's reading the back of a packet of Coco Pops). Caleb Landry Jones is also very good, playing the lad responsible for leasing out the billboard space, Hedges is excellent as the teenage son watching his mother make a stand he doesn't see as being of any use, Peter Dinklage is a lot of fun as someone hoping to take Mildred out on a date, and John Hawkes is an a-grade asshole. The main weakness in the film is Abbie Cornish, who gives what feels like a half-hearted performance, hampered by the fact that she is also given the worst of the dialogue in the film and just seems far too young for her character (she plays the wife of Harrelson's character).

Direction is good enough, with McDonagh really pulling out the stops in a couple of moments that hammer home (almost literally) some of the damage that characters are willing to inflict upon one another, and there's definitely an interesting theme being clumsily explored here, but it's all almost undone by the script, surprisingly enough. While there are gems here, especially in the scenes that have McDormand interacting directly with the local law enforcement, there are also lines that drop in the middle of scenes like anvils looking for a Wile E. Coyote to squash into an accordion shape. And that's just individual lines I am talking about (poor Cornish, I felt genuinely sorry for a couple of the lines that she had to deliver, which could have only been made a bit less cringeworthy if McDonagh had given her any decent characterisation beforehand). As the film starts to develop in the overlong second half, everything starts to become more heavy-handed and also a bit, well, implausible and ridiculous. What began as a small, impactful, drama turns into something that feels unsure of how far it wants to take things, and in what direction it wants to go. Yes, this is in line with the main characters but it doesn't feel deliberate or well thought out. It feels careless, displaced, and even rather immature.

There's enough here to enjoy, and I feel sorry for those trying to dismiss the movie as something it isn't (I can't say any more because of spoilers), and I still encourage people to support the McDonagh brothers ahead of so many other writers and directors who never try to engage and challenge their audience, but this didn't work half as well for me as it seems to have worked for so many others.

6/10