A Christmas Cracker

My thoughts on Babygirl, The Fire Inside and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

At first glance, Romy Mathis, the central character of Babygirl, seems to have it all—a loving family, a lavish apartment in New York City, an even more impressive place in the country, a job as the CEO of a robotics company where she almost comes across as the most successful product and she is portrayed here by none other than the divine Nicole Kidman. Alas, as we discover from the opening scene—in which she and her theatre director husband (Antonio Banderas) have sex that proves not to be that great for her—there is a streak of discontentment that is frustrating her seemingly perfect existence. One day, while heading to work, she sees a young man on the street essentially taming an upset dog with nothing more than a few words and a cookie and is then surprised to later find that the guy, Samuel (Harris Dickerson), works as an intern at her company and that she has been dragooned into a program in which she is to serve as her mentor. Although she endeavors to keep things professional at first, she finds herself idly wondering about whether he could handle her in the same way as he did that dog. Not lacking in self-assurance, Samuel picks up on this and before too long, the two are embarked on a passionate but undeniably toxic sexual affair in which the in-office power dynamics are neatly reversed so that he is the one giving the orders and she is the one meekly crawling on the floor and lapping up saucers of milk. For a while, this position of submission seems to be just what Romy has needed in her life but as the affair gets progressively kinkier, the escalating risks threaten to destroy everything in her life and she has to figure out whether it is all worth it or not.

Babygirl is the new film from writer-director Halina Reijn, whose previous effort was the grisly 2022 dark comedy Bodies, Bodies, Bodies and while it does mark an improvement upon its predecessor, it ends up leaving viewers as unsatisfied as its main character is after the aforementioned opening scene. The key problem is that while it revolves around any number of potentially intriguing ideas involving age, gender and power dynamics in the #MeToo era, the observations that it offers up regarding them prove to be surprisingly shallow and simple-minded as things progress—outside of the obviously larger budget and higher caliber of star power, there is precious little difference between this film and the kind of low-rent direct-to-video erotic thriller that used to keep the likes of Shannon Tweed and Joan Severance in cigarette money a couple of decades ago. Neither the dramatic moments nor the bits of satire strewn throughout amount to much and while the erotic scenes are steamy enough on a purely superficial level, they lack any of the sense of electricity or danger that would have given them the impact that they are clearly striving to achieve. Not surprisingly, the performance by Kidman is the best thing here—she is also the one with the closest approximation to a fully fleshed-out character—but even it doesn’t quite click to the degree that it should because while you can certainly buy her as a high-powered CEO finding some kind of fulfillment in an affair based around her sexual and emotional debasement, you never really believe the compulsive attraction that she is supposed to feel for someone who seems to have little else to offer beyond being young and superficially hot. Put it this way—if you choose to see one movie that contains elements of domestic drama, kinky sex and oddball humor that features Nicole Kidman in an outwardly ideal but inwardly unfulfilling marriage with someone played by a member of the cast of Interview with the Vampire and set against the backdrop of New York City during the holidays, you should opt to go with Stanley Kubrick’s still-misunderstood 1999 masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut instead of the heavy-breathing designer hooey on display here

.One of the true delights of the job of a movie critic is settling down to see a film that, by all accounts, looks like just another run-of-the-mill genre piece on the surface but which eventually reveals itself to be something entirely different and altogether more satisfying. That is certainly the case with The Fire Inside, a film that may seem like a standard-issue inspirational true-life sports drama at first—the kind that you and I have seen dozens of times before—but which proves to be anything but ordinary as it goes on. It tells the story of pioneering female boxer Claressa “T-Rex” Shield and when we first see her, she is a young girl (played by Jazmin Headley) living in near-poverty in Flint, Michigan when she goes into a local gym one day with the desire to learn about boxing. Inevitably, no one there pays her any mind but her determination and natural abilities soon catch the eye of one of the trainers, ex-boxer Jason Crutchfield (Bryan Tyree Henry), and, after having some initial misgivings, he decides to take her on. When the film picks up a few years later, Claressa (now played by Ryan Destiny) has taken the sport by storm, culminating in a trip to the 2012 London Olympics, where she becomes the first U.S. woman to win a gold medal in boxing at the age of 17.

In most cases, her Olympic victory would mark the triumphant conclusion to the film but The Fire Inside has a lot more going on for it. What I have described covers roughly the first half of Barry Jenkins’s screenplay, which is not interest in supplying simple uplift. Instead, it delves into more troubling waters as Claressa returns home to her still-decimated community and finds that, unlike most of her fellow Olympians, she is unable to monetize her victories in order to help her family out poverty—female African-American boxers are considered to be not nearly as marketable as gymnasts or ice skaters. This is an aspect that almost never gets discussed in any capacity in a sports movie and it feels like a breath of fresh air to see it not only tackle this angle but to do so in a way that is just a captivating as the actual boxing sequences. The screenplay also provides a surprisingly penetrating and nuanced look at the difficulties of being a female athlete in general—the inescapable fact that the ability to smile and look conventionally pretty is considered more significant, at least from a marketing perspective, than actual excellence in one’s sport, even on the Olympic level—as well as the particular challenges face by Claressa, whose young age meant that a.) she was often fighting people twice her age and b.) would sometimes respond to obstacles in her path with teenaged obstinance.

In addition to Jenkins’s standout screenplay, the film also benefits mightily from a couple of highly impressive debuts on both sides of the camera. This is the directorial debut of Rachel Morrison, a cinematographer who has worked in the past with Ryan Coogler, and while it should be no surprise that the results, shot by Rina Yang, look fantastic (this is the first Amazon-MGM co-production in memory that feels like an actual big-screen movie and not something destined to be seen only on a streaming service), what proves to be even more impressive are her obvious gifts at telling this story in a lively and propulsive manner without resorting to the usual cliches and with handling actors. Of course, with a consummate pro like Henry (who turns in one of his very best performances here in a turn that sidesteps all the usual cliches as his character negotiates the sometimes tricky circumstances of his personal and professional relationship with his fighter), that is easy enough but she get equally astonishing work from comparative unknown Destiny, who burns up the screen with the kind of charismatic intensity not seen since Michelle Rodriguez burst onto the scene with Girlfight and also handles the more difficult dramatic moments with astonishing grace and nuance. Thanks to their combined efforts, The Fire Inside takes a narrative that could have resulted in an extra-ordinary film and makes it into something extraordinary

.It has been 16 years since the last time that we have been able to witness the misadventures of the plasticine duo of Wallace & Gromit and considering the number of recent legacy sequels and franchise revivals that have proven to be misfires, I suppose it is only natural to approach their return with a certain amount of wariness. Happily, it is unnecessary because Nick Park & Merlin Crossingham’s Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, their first feature-length adventure since 2005’s Curse of the Were-Rabbit, is a straight-up delight, an alternately hilarious and heartfelt return to form that has more than its share of charm as well as laughs for viewers of all ages. This time around, the mild-mannered, cheese-loving inventor Wallace (Ben Whitehead), inspired by the rise in smart technology, has gone on a creating tear, building an endless array of contraptions as a way of making life easier for his lifelong canine companion, Gromit. Alas, what he fails to realize is that his creations—such as a gardening gnome, dubbed Norbot, meant to take over for Gromit’s relaxing puttering and a machine that automatically pets him—are only serving to alienate his friend and create a heretofore unthinkable distance between them. To make matters worse, Feathers McGraw, the fiendish thieving penguin whose attempt to steal a valuable diamond from a nearby museum was thwarted by the duo in the short The Wrong Trousers, has just escaped from the zoo where he has been stewing for the past 10 years. Inevitably, revenge is on his mind and his chosen path to getting it comes through taking an army of Norbots, which Wallace has created to form a cottage landscaping business (“Gnome Improvements”), and reprogramming them to cause havoc that will land him in jail instead. Will Wallace learn the error of his ways? Will Gromit figure out a way to save the day? Will there be groan-worthy visual and verbal puns delivered throughout?

If you are familiar with the previous films featuring the duo, then you pretty much know the answers to those questions. Indeed, this is a movie that is more like the cinematic equivalent of a cozy, familiar sweater than a work of boundless innovation and while that might be a flaw in a lot of other films, it feels more like a virtue here. While the storytelling may not quite have the snap of the original shorts or even Curse of the Were-Rabbit and the narrative thrust about the perils of blindly following technological advances may strike even younger viewers as bit familiar, it soon settles into an alternately comfortable and delightful groove with a pace that somehow manages to come across as both frenetic (the whole film clocks in at about 75 minutes) and charmingly laid back, a lovely vintage-influenced visual style (even Wallace’s hi-tech inventions have an appropriately scrappy, handmade feel to them) and a screenplay that manages to cram so many gags (ranging from pop-culture riffs to unapologetic dad jokes) into the margins that catching them all will require a couple of viewings. Best of all, thought, is the eternally endearing relationship between the titular duo—they maybe be lumps of plasticine painstakingly moved about by an army of animators but they manage to convey a more convincing depiction of love and friendship than most recent movies featuring flesh & blood actors that I could name. As I said, Vengeance Most Fowl may not be the greatest of the W&G films but that says less about the film itself and more about the quality of the franchise as a whole because this is a film that will leave you laughing and smiling—and even feeling a bit emotional to boot—from beginning to end.