Fantasy

dir: Maggie Gyllenhaal

2026

Even if.

Even if there have been too many Frankenstein versions and movies lately. Even if not every part of what they were trying to do here entirely works. Even if the decision to make the framing device the soul of Mary Shelley trying to manipulate people in the (film’s) present, being 1936, is a strange and not entirely fruitful one.

Even then, I can see what they were going for, being the director, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Jessie Buckley as The Bride! of the title, and of course Christian Bale as Frankie.

They do well with their characters, our central duo. I’m not sure if they should make any sense whatsoever, but they do really struggle and struggle hard to get their characters across.

Bale would seem to have the greater struggle, but he does more than okay with a version of Dr Frankenstein’s creation that is not the elfin somehow ‘hot’ creature that Jacob Elordi played in Guillermo Del Torro’s recent version. No, he’s brutish and grotesque, with stitches, staples and deformities across his whole body.

And he balances a child-like goofiness with an insurmountable rage, along with some very human motivations, terrible as they are.

Then there’s Ida (Jessie Buckley). She’s hanging around with Chicago gangsters, having to put up with their bullshit, but she’s teetering on the edge of saying “no” when she would rather not do something, but she’s not quite there yet. As in, a horrible goon tries to force her to eat an oyster, which she hates, but she does it anyway, with predictable results.

This displeases the dipshit, and words are exchanged.

In some dark limbo, Mary Shelley (also played by Jessie Buckley) has just been hanging around alone since her death, but for whatever reason now she’s inspired to deliver her own sequel to her most famous book, but her apparent motivation is more so that she could never have gotten away with what she really wanted to write.

Now she really wants to create a new story, and also get revenge for downtrodden and voiceless women.

So she somehow possesses Ida, and gets her to speak random sounding (but obviously scripted) nutty phrases in a Tourette’s inflected manner, just before Ida launches off a set of stairs and dies a horrible death.

Either by coincidence or by design, Frankie arrives in Chicago because he wants to convince a genius mad scientist called Doctor C. Euphronius (Annette Benning, who’s excellent in something that could have come across as so fucking silly) to create a mate for him. Mate? Meat? Helpmeet? Helpmate?

He has been ever so lonely, you see, and he’s got no-one else to bone, so she’s meant to create someone for him to “marry”. I mean, think all of all the moral quandaries, the ethical complexities, the panoply of reasons why you shouldn’t…

Nah, she doesn’t, not at all. Frankie digs up Ida’s body, and Dr Euphronius resurrects her using technology, some black liquid, and maybe a quickly whispered prayer to Lord Satan.

dir: Marielle Heller

2025

In this ongoing series / festival of recent movies in the “maternal rage” sub-genre, which has seen something of a renaissance recently, there is this flick. These are important flicks with women in key roles, not only as the main character but as the writers / directors themselves, and I’m not even sure that they’re here because of awards-bait reasons (although that has to be a factor, because none of them were box office gold). I am interested in them because they carry very different messages about how women deal with the underlying disappointments that come with getting the brass ring we are constantly told they should want and need (it’s a biological imperative, don’t you know).

These ‘big three’ flicks I’m alluding to are If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Nightbitch and Die, My Love. There is no doubt Jennifer Lawrence is going to nominated; I hope and am pretty sure Rose Byrne will get a guernsey for If I Had Legs. I don’t think anyone was going to die on a hill over Amy, poor Amy getting any shiny ornaments for her mantelpiece for this flick.

First of all, the title. That’s a hard sell especially to the demographic you’re aiming at.

All these films are explicitly about the same thing; the regret that comes with becoming a mum, the resentment towards others who are not recent mothers; the resentment towards others who are recent mothers who seem to be doing it easier or have more support; doing everything for the household, the baby and themselves even if they’re not ‘single mothers’, it just feels that way; losing one’s sense of self; seeing the death of the illusions one had about themselves and their self-worth that isn’t connected to becoming a mother, and so on.

When I say these ideas are universally relatable, I mean many if not most mums might be able to relate through their own experiences, other lumps like me might acknowledge their righteous and justified rage, but not relate to it personally, but at least recognise how the “system” benefits me and jerks like me to the detriment of mothers everywhere.

When people talk about who does what in the home, within a family, within a couple with a new kid, the distribution of labour we know still falls along gendered lines. So almost nothing has changed on that front even if some guy somewhere emptied the dishwasher properly for once or brings the washing in from the line and dumps it all on the floor thinking the job is done: women / mothers are still “expected” to do everything regardless of whether they work or not and regardless of whether it’s crushing their souls or not.

Men are still like “but I worked all week, I need some time to relax?” or “but I spent all afternoon doing the lawns and building something out of stone and wood in the backyard, you can’t expect me to vacuum, make dinner, feed the baby and the dog, and give the kid their bath just because it needs doing”, and all is right in the world.

For us, for the guys. For the women who feel compelled to turn into wild animals in order to escape, well, I guess the story is different from their perspective.

This is a confused, confusing, all too pat, yet superficially ‘empowering’ version of this kind of story. It is less a desperate cry to be seen and heard, less a primal scream and more a personal story squeezed through an Oprah-like lens in order to make it more palatable to mass audiences, even mass audiences of women who could possibly relate but maybe shouldn't.

It’s not an easy watch, but not for the reasons you might think. I had actually tried watching this flick way, way earlier in 2025, and gave up because I was cringing so painfully that I couldn’t continue. So only now when I launched into this idea of reviewing these similarly themed movies to see what worked and what didn’t, did I force myself to continue watching it past its first 10 minutes.

dir: Daina Oniunas-Pusiċ

2023

A film about a dying teenager… It’s not a guaranteed barrel of laughs. I guess there’s this weird sub-genre of YA books adapted to movies about dying teenagers finding love (just before the end), but in general you’d think studios worry the subject matter is too confronting to get bums on seats in theatres.

What about… Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the great Julia Louis-Dreyfus? If I told you she was in it, would that entice you back into the cinema? She has a solid number of post-Seinfeld performances such that you would think a decent person wouldn’t have to mention what she’s most famous for. She’s been great in those Nicole Holofcener movies like Enough Said and You Hurt My Feewings, and there’s her amazing run on Veep.

Her performance is much neater and much more straight-forward here (even as the story becomes more fantastical). She plays the mother of a dying teenager, and she’s pretty much in denial about it despite the constant and unavoidable daily struggle to keep things together. She knows her daughter is dying, but she can’t even talk to her daughter about it, and sort-of avoids her, palming her off onto the nurse who looks after her (Leah Harvey). She has a nurse to look after Tuesday (Lola Pettigrew) during the day, but she spends that time pawning things, hanging out in cafes and sleeping on a bench in a park.

Why? Well, why not?

These are not the characters we first meet in this flick, not really. There’s another character I haven’t mentioned yet who plays the most central role, other than Tuesday. I don’t know if it’s a he, or how they choose to style themselves, but today’s the day you find out that Death Himself or Death Itself is an orange macaw. A parrot. The Parrot of Death (Arinze Mokwe Kene). Born of the void, he has no friends, but he has one task, and that is to visit the dying, wave his mighty wing at them, and then see them ushered out of this world.

He grows large, he grows small as needs be, he is greeted with relief, or hate, or fear, or scorn, but the result is the same.

dir: C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi

2023

I was not sure what this flick was going to be like, or what it was about, knowing nothing about it. But now I’ve watched it, and presumably that means I know something about it and have a relevant, informed opinion.

Well. I’m not sure how much I have to say about a flick set contemporarily, shot in black and white, that’s really about matrilineal matriarchal monarchies. I mean, I guess they’re better than the alternatives, but they’re still not a decent form of government.

I have to say “in general”, because I would be taking the piss if I implied that the point of the film is that we should all be living in matrilineal, matriarchal monarchies.

This film is just saying that, for these people, of the Iyi village, they need to keep being ruled by a matriarch, because of their connection to Mami Wata, who is a benevolent water spirit / deity who looks after them, thanks to their connection through their Intermediary.

Their Intermediary, sort of like a cross between a priestess and a conduit for Mami Wata’s will, is Mama Efe (Rita Edochie).

While the people believe in Mami Wata, and her earthly ambassador, they give of their bounty to her, out of respect, out of fear, to earn favour. Lots of reasons. And she in turn does…

She does stuff. She is regal, her belief is unwavering, and she does all the rituals they all love. She plays the hits, so to speak.