We're All Going to the World's Fair (2022)

Direction: Jane Schoenbrun
Country: USA

Jane Schoenbrun’s coming-of-age horror experience, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, is a psychological, sleep-inducing manipulation where technology addiction, extreme loneliness, and mental illness go together. However, and despite the interesting combination, the film is as exciting as watching grass grow.

The introverted Casey (Anna Cobb) is a reclusive teen who spends her lonely days in an attic bedroom, completely immersed in the Internet. Fascinated by horror movies and the paranormal, she decides to participate in an obscure online game known for causing unexpected symptoms and reactions. They may as well have access to her dreams. One day, she receives a message from JLB (Michael J. Rogers), a former gamer who warns her of the danger. 

World’s Fair is the type of horror avatar for our times - deceptive, darkly conspiratorial, infinitely tedious; its atmosphere should be scary but remains inert. Hence, whatever the big secret would be with this role-playing game, I was quickly itched by the desire to go surfing on other screens. The idea is not bad, but Schoenbrun lacks cinematic arguments, approaching the topic with a minimalistic style in need of a stronger grip and more captivating scenarios. With no hesitation: “I DON’T want to go to the World’s Fair!”.

Bad Roads (2022)

Direction: Natalya Vorozhbit
Country: Ukraine 

Bad Roads consists of four disturbing episodes that take place in the dangerous roads and corners of the war-torn Donbass region in Eastern Ukraine. They barely connect, but the most attentive will find a thin, almost invisible thread bridging the stories. A tipsy school headmaster (Igor Koltovskyy) tries to cross a Russian checkpoint with no passport and a dummy Kalashnikov in the trunk; a worried grandmother (Yuliya Matrosova) tries to convince her teen granddaughter (Anna Zhurakovskaya) to return home as she keeps waiting for her missing soldier boyfriend outside at night; a captive journalist (Maryna Klimova) is taken by Russian soldiers to an abandoned spa to spend the night; and a young woman (Zoya Baranovskaya) pays a high price for having run over a hen while driving. 

This bleak film unfolds with undiminished broodiness and an overall sadness that pierces. Humiliation is the world of order here in a desperate multi-layered odyssey where madness takes over sanity. First time director Natalya Vorozhbit turns her focus to the traumatic happenings, capturing the insanity of war with brutal clarity. The acting is strong and the images pretty capable, suitably obscured to bring about the right atmosphere. 

And to think that the harshness found on these Ukrainian roads became unbearable today with this magnified, inglorious war in East Europe, is even more painful. The apprehension and heaviness in Bad Roads may put you off, but it won’t leave you indifferent.

Ambulance (2022)

Direction: Michael Bay
Country: USA 

Ambulance, an American remake of the 2005 Danish film of the same name, has director Michael Bay at the helm, who adopts the same artificial restlessness of his other actioners such as The Rock (1996), Armageddon (1998), and Transformers (2007). It’s all cooked with stale ingredients, and the film fails to convince. This low-grade heist movie exhibits an apparent yet constant verve that makes us tired, especially if we consider that the intended twists are devoid of brilliance.

The eruptive yet unproductive dialogue and oft-repeated strain are maintained throughout, mostly involving the three protagonists: Danny Sharp (Jake Gyllenhaal), an experienced bank robber; his adoptive brother Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who joins him in a desperate attempt to collect the amount needed for his wife's surgery; and Camille Thompson (Eiza González), a coldly efficient paramedic made hostage by the other two in a highjacked emergency ambulance.

Playing with a fast editing, the film follows this car racing through the streets of L.A. with the SIS and the FBI right on its heels. All the floodgates to escape them revealed problems, and the director never backed down from any melodramatic string. Any possibility to create suspense became thwarted by a series of unsavory scenes delivered at nauseating breakneck speed. It’s just about pulling the wool over your eyes. 

This is a very conventional cat-and-mouse thriller that doesn't go anywhere. Now and then, the mischievous eloquence of its characters can still feed a few smiles among the long list of regrets, but this Ambulance quickly got its engine flooded and conked out. You'd have to tie me to a chair to make me see it again.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

Direction: Tom Gormican
Country: USA 

In this flamboyant farce, in which Nicolas Cage plays Nicolas Cage in a crisis of confidence, spreads out quick-fire situations laced with some fair moments of humor. Lively, slightly trippy, and with notes of self-mockery, the film references the actor’s real career in a few scenes, and even shows him kissing a younger and successful version of himself - an imaginary Cage likely from the ‘80s. This idea came out spontaneously from the actor while filming.

Indeed, his self-centric character feeds from the glory of the past, but is totally aware of the state of his declining career. In debt, he decides to accept a paid gig proposed by a longtime fan, the Mexican billionaire Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal). All he has to do is to take a flight to Spain and join him at his birthday party. They get along pretty quickly and even make plans for a future character-driven drama film about their relationship, but everything is compromised when Cage is recruited by the CIA to spy on his new friend. 

Tom Gormican’s sophomore feature reveals audacity in its conception and releases a certain energy, but sins by letting things down gradually. The last portion of the film results in a jarring collision of cheesy friendship and action-packed scenes mounted with panache, which only curbs the more attractive offbeat impulses offered at an early stage. However, it’s great to see an enthusiastic Cage returning to the right track with three decent films - Sion Sono’s Prisoners of Ghostland, Michael Sarnoski’s Pig, and this one - delivered over the course of one year. After having refused this ‘self’ role a few times, he just made his massive talent heavier and more conspicuous by accepting it.

The Good Boss (2022)

Direction: Fernando León de Aranoa
Country: Spain 

The keen sense of observation demonstrated by Spanish writer/director Fernando León de Aranoa (better known for the sympathetic working-class dramedy Mondays in the Sun, 2002) is on full display in The Good Boss, a timeless, biting comedy with Javier Bardem at the center. This film, an amusing caricature of the so-called corporate values and their politically incorrect behavior, marks the third collaboration between the actor and the director. Their last work together was in 2017, a mediocre biopic about the Colombian druglord Pablo Escobar titled Loving Pablo. 

Unlike the latter, the screenplay of this one was well driven, offering a dark yet funny portrait of Julio Blanco (Bardem), the manipulative heir and owner of an industrial scale manufacturing business. This well-spoken charmer appears to employ perfection and equilibrium in everything he does. But, at the very bottom, he’s completely alienated by his materialistic ambition; a sly opportunist who uses and abuses his employees whenever it’s convenient. 

While expecting the visit of a local committee that could give him a prestigious and financially advantageous business award, he deals with a series of problems: a recently fired middle-aged employee (Óscar de la Fuente) decided to camp outside the factory and protest vehemently against the unjust measure; a long-time production manager and childhood friend (Manolo Solo) can no longer be trusted at work since his wife is cheating on him; and an irresistible young intern (Almudena Amor) wants more of the boss's attention. 

The rapture of The Good Boss is fed by Bardem’s charisma, the smart and humorous lines, and the fluidity of the story. What we have here is playful cinema at its breeziest, one that combines incisive social commentary and a fierce, funny sneer.

Bull (2022)

Direction: Paul Andrew Williams
Country: UK 

Writer-director Paul Andrew Williams made his directorial debut in 2016 with London to Brighton, releasing now Bull, his fifth theatrical feature and finest offer so far. Dark hues and brutal violence dominate the screen, and most of the dread is coldly served by Neil Maskell (Kill List, 2011; The Football Factory, 2004), who embodies the title character - a ruthless fixer - with a minimalist yet intense performance.

Bull is the type of guy that hurts first and only then asks the questions. He returns home after a mysterious 10-year absence, seeking revenge on his former gang, led by his ruthless father-in-law, Norman (David Hayman). At the same time, he tries to find the whereabouts of his son (Henri Charles), taken away in those days by his erratic, heroin-addict wife (Lois Brabin-Platt). 

This brooding, monstrously barbarous thriller doesn't languish in the graphic, but makes sure to expose it to view, scene after scene. With a devilishly intelligent move toward the end, the film shows the evil that contaminates the hearts of these criminals. It will hook the viewers without sparing them.

Petrov's Flu (2022)

Direction: Kirill Serebrennikov
Country: Russia

Petrov’s Flu is a trippy comedy-drama that depicts a surreal day in the life of a Russian family. The script, based on Alexey Salnikov's 2018 novel The Petrovs In and Around the Flu, was written by director Kirill Serebrennikov (The Student, 2016; Leto, 2018) while he was under house arrest in today’s decadent and hopeless Russia.

This satire aims at a society where unworkable relationships with normalcy are pretty much in evidence - we have demonic possessions, violent murderous impulses, alien rescues, alcohol intoxication, governmental incompetence, racism, moral degradation, and more -  but the story is abstruse to the point of near-absurdity, being an accumulation of endless drama and fantasy that either doesn’t know where to go or how to properly take us to places.

The inarticulation between sections makes it structurally defiant a priori, and the vagueness in the dialogue only increases it. A zestful camera work never makes it less derivative, just like some of its most dynamic moments never lead to practical results. “Are you real or imaginary?” A kid asks the Snow Maiden at a New Year’s party… He struggles with confusion, and so are we.

Too many elements get lost in the sauce because it’s easier to denounce than construct something clear. Despite the prevailing dark tones, the awarded cinematography of Vladislav Opelyants revealed distinctness.

Happening (2022)

Direction: Audrey Diwan
Country: France 

With this immersive adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s novel L'événement, director/screenwriter and journalist Audrey Diwan plunges us into experiencing societal severity through the eyes of a brilliant Literature college student whose life and rights are impacted when she can’t get an abortion done in safe conditions. This happened in France in 1963, when the termination of pregnancy was considered a crime. The procedure became legal in that country in 1975. 

The film strikingly punctuates the realist drama lived by Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei), an unhesitating young woman who realizes she’s not prepared to have a child at that particular moment. Giving birth would absolutely destroy her life and a future career that is bound to be extraordinary. Anguished and lonely, she fights with everything she has. The narrative exposes several difficulties that come her way: having to hide the truth from her hardworking parents, the shame of talking to her friends about the problem, approaching the estranged man who got her pregnant, continuing or not her studies, the doctors’ hypocrisy, the unemotional abortionist, the health and criminal risks. 

It’s a visceral experience that, unabashedly, takes the podium for this particular topic, alongside European contemporary classics such as Vera Drake (2004) and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007). The unpredictability of the story, together with a sensitive performance by Vartolomei, a Franco-Romanian actor who announces herself as a major name to watch, are prime causes for not letting this one go.

Great Freedom (2022)

Direction: Sebastian Meise
Country: Austria

This deeply humane gay prison drama outlined with a few good twists and a clear message is based on a true story of love and sacrifice that spanned more than 25 years. In his path of desolation, Hans Hoffman (Franz Rogowski), a fearless man repeatedly imprisoned in the post-war Germany because of his homosexuality, shows impressive resilience in the face of the monstrosity of a prejudice that first hurts, then slowly kills. The infamous Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code, which made homosexual relationships between males a crime, only ended in 1994. 

11 years after his fictional debut feature (a shocking family drama called Still Life), Austrian filmmaker Sebastian Meise returns with confidence, demonstrating a sincere attention toward the characters in addition to conferring them a real human depth. He paints a picture of daily prison life with a different angle in mind. Thus, don’t expect that typical climate of terror that usually invades these detention institutions. 

Moved by genuine love and monumental compassion, Great Freedom becomes an accomplished picture as a result, succeeding beyond all possible sentimental trappings that are common to the genre. It manages to remain tense and focused, even in the hollows of its efficiently structured story. We have seen hundreds of prison tales with both virile and romantic bonds at the center, but none like this one. It’s a beautiful, sensitive and touching picture that more than deserves its place in the queer cinema history.

Father (2022)

Direction: Srdan Golubovic
Country: Serbia 

From Srdan Golubovic, the Serbian director of The Trap (2007) and Circles (2013), comes Father, another inspiring move made by a qualified filmmaker who deserves wider recognition. This engrossing and horrifically authentic drama is likely the deepest felt and most emotionally affecting of his works.

The story follows, Nikola (Goran Bogdan), a day worker from a small Serbian town who is caught in despair in the possibility of losing his two children to social services. Poverty, hunger, and the inability to collect the financial compensation he was entitled to when fired two years before, made his wife protest in a vehement and radical way, leading to agonizing circumstances. Against corruption and injustice, the humiliated, penurious Nikola decides to cross Serbia on foot toward Belgrade, where he intends to appeal.

There is so much going on in Father. The observation and exposition of the situation described, as well as the honesty with which it is told, make this moving story penetrate our hearts. So much persistence is needed to earn a crumb from an exploitative system that simply doesn’t do its job. And then, the final blow extends from political corrosion to the society and the individual. 

The film is remarkably interpreted by Bogdan, and well seconded by Boris Isakovic, who manages to get on our nerves while impersonating the condescending head of the local social service department. Few films can be said to truly capture the silent struggle of a father and the love for his family. However, be advised that even refusing to discard hope, Father is not the uplifting type at all.

The Northman (2022)

Direction: Robert Eggers
Country: USA 

After the excellent results obtained with The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019), American director Robert Eggers is abandoning the horror genre that allowed him to make a name for himself. His new film, The Northman, is an unengaging, mythologically charged story of revenge that takes place in 10th-century Iceland. Actors Willem Dafoe, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Kate Dickie team up again with the director but with minor roles, while the heavyweights Alexander Skarsgard, Nicole Kidman, and Ethan Hawke join him for the first time in this exhausting, Hamlet-(un)inspired epic in need of a better dramaturgical arc.

Eggers, who co-wrote the script with Sjón, takes us to the kingdom of King Aurvandil (Hawke), who is betrayed and slayed by his half-brother Fjölnir (Claes Bang). The king’s only son and heir to the throne, Prince Amleth (played as an adult by Skarsgard), manages to escape, swearing revenge. He returns many years after, in the company of an enslaved sorcerer named Olga (Taylor-Joy), to finally avenge his father’s death and free his mother, Queen Gudrún (Kidman). 

Denoting a certain grim integrity, the film has its visual beauty exceeded only by the gruesomeness of the violence. As for the rest, there’s a scarce amount of cleverness here. The adrenaline refuses to pump, even when multiple screams of rage burst from the Viking’s mouth, and the execution didn’t satisfy, with Eggers often showing indecision between pure rawness and the frivolous adornment that typically mark high-budget flicks. By comparison, David Lowery’s The Green Knight (2021) was as darkly medieval as this one, but brought much more mysticism and ambiguity to the setting. The Northman has a limited payoff after two hours, and not even an unexpected finale saves it from averageness.

X (2022)

Direction: Ti West
Country: USA 

X, the new slasher flick that will give horror fans another good reason to smile, was conceived by American writer and director Ti West (The House of the Devil, 2009; The Innkeepers, 2011; The Sacrament, 2013), who applies his own formula with surprisingly good ideas. 

The story, set in 1979 Texas, follows a porn film crew that rents a secluded farmhouse to shoot a low-budget film that is intended to revolutionize the genre. The problem is that the elderly couple that owns the place and lives next door - Howard (Stephen Ure) and Pearl (a completely transformed Mia Goth) - turns out to be as much violent as they are creepy. Everything gets transfigured when the decrepit yet libidinous Pearl, already attracted to the vicious actor Maxine (double role by Mia Goth), witnesses a scene from the movie by peeking through the window. 

Endorsing the patterns of several classics but endowing them with unbridled new audacity, this shocker also provides substantial gore. There’s even a fierce crocodile attack that challenges Spielberg’s Jaws. When you enter the theater, you don’t really know where you’re stepping, but you get what you paid for: a viscerally graphic parody that oozes and suppurates.

Sexual Drive (2022)

Direction: Kota Yoshida
Country: Japan

Kota Yoshida’s scrumptious comedy, Sexual Drive, is another curious triptych film coming from Japan, after last year’s Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. The film is an amusing sex-food hookup driven with skill, dynamism and humor. Although not always thrilling, it's excitingly cerebral and conveys an effective emotional undertow beneath its complex aphrodisiac food neurosis.

The first segment involves an apologizing man, Kurita (Tateto Serizawa), who visits his lover's husband to confess their passionate 3-year love affair. The second episode follows a woman suffering from panic disorder who accidentally hits Kurita while driving. In the last chapter, the latter character, who bridges the three stories, threats a married man on the phone, making him experience the same solitude his lover felt when he cancelled their rendezvous last minute. 

The menu includes natto, mapo tofu, and ramen with extra back fat, but extends the piquant pleasures beyond the palatable. If you’re into unpretentious, funny films that offer multiple scenarios as a 70-minute escapist entertainment, then the cinematic ingredients of Sexual Drive should be enough for you to have a good time.

7 Days (2022)

Direction: Roshan Sethi
Country: USA

7 Days, a confined yet colorful rom-com pulled out from the Covid-19 era, centers on two young Indian Americans - Ravi (Karan Soni) and Rita (Geraldine Viswanathan) - whose traditional parents set up their profiles on a popular dating website in hopes they find love and get married. He is abstemious, repressed, a compulsive cleaner and an impersonator, as well as an avid talker who only watches Bollywood. Much more aggressive in posture, she is a heavy drinker and meat eater, a terrible cook who is in a forbidden relationship with a married man.

Their hilarious first meet up - a picnic in an empty reservoir - doesn’t spark any chemistry, and to make things more uncomfortable and inconvenient, they are burdened with a stay-indoors order for a couple of days due to pandemic restrictions. Gradually revealing their true personalities, secrets and vulnerabilities, these two lonely and dissimilar beings suddenly realize they can fall in love if they care for each other and get in sync.

Co-written and directed by Roshan Sethi, and produced by the Duplass Brothers, the film is somewhat predictable but to the point, incorporating a few zany situations that really made me laugh. The two leads, keeping the excitement moving like a house afire, not only engage in sharp dialogue but also share moments of boredom, ecstasy and detailed observation. They turn the genre’s conventions into an up-to-date escapist flick, which, by the way, was shot in just one week.

Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle (2022)

Direction: Arthur Harari
Country: Japan / France / other 

There’s a certain appeal in the mental confinement of a man devoted to his cause to the point of denying the obvious. The French filmmaker Arthur Harari (Dark Inclusion, 2016) magnificently captures the topic in his sophomore feature, Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle, by telling the true story of a tenacious Japanese soldier who lived in a permanent state of belligerency on a Filipino island for thirty years, after the second world war was over. 

Eschewing any type of unnecessary flourish, this observant epic takes a heartbreaking look at a man’s spirit of duty, resistance, and ultimately delusion. Keen observation bleeds out of many scenes as we follow the incredulous soldier Hiroo Onoda (Yuya Endo / Kanji Tsuda), a man who never surrendered until ordered by the high-ranking official who had trained him, Major Taniguchi (Issey Ogata). Harari captures few battle scenes, almost conveying detached feelings when he does, as if not wanting them to overwhelm the deception and obstinacy of a soldier who fights an invisible war.

Unfolding with the enthrallment of some classics - directors Kon Ichikawa and Masaki Kobayashi are probably influences - the film is a seamless, nearly absurd, and pity-free account of a particular war episode that is, nevertheless, quite touching.

The Tale of King Crab (2022)

Direction: Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis
Country: Italy 

The Tale of King Crab, a slow-burning folk tale, is more entertaining and atmospheric than essential viewing. What I've just said doesn’t take away the merits achieved with the categorically photographed images (the film was shot in 16mm), a sublime mise-en-scene that feels completely appropriate for the 19th-century ambience, and the volatile moodiness and cinematic poetry that, despite the slow pace, provide a certain rhythmic backbone to the story. 

Co-directed and co-written by Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, who sign here their first fictional feature, the film tells the legend of Luciano (newcomer Gabriele Silli), a depressed man who returns to his secluded hometown in the Tuscia region, after a period of time spent in Rome. Seen by the villagers as a drunkard, a madman, an aristocrat, and a saint, Luciano takes the path of gold-digging adventure after being extradited to Tierra del Fuego, in the far south of Argentina. 

This bittersweet picture is as odd as it is mesmerizing. Even if over-ambitious at times, it still unveils disenchantment, disgrace, survival, and avidity with a personal touch. Yet, some connotations with Lucrecia Martel’s Zama and Werner Herzog’s Aguirre are not unreasonable. Crab is not an easy chew. But if you find a way to crack open its austere exterior, there is a treasure to be found.

Windfall (2022)

Direction: Charlie McDowell
Country: USA 

An unremitting establishing shot remains stationary during the opening credits of Windfall, a meager thriller directed by Charlie McDowell (The One I Love, 2014; The Discovery, 2017) and starring Jesse Plemons, Lily Collins, and Jason Segel. The beautiful vacation house we see in that shot, and its surroundings, become the setting of a conflict between the selfish tech billionaire (Plemons) who owns it, his unhappy wife (Collins), and the inexperienced burglar (Segel) who attempts to steal from them. 

The characters feel so at ease in the face of this situation that the film becomes instantly discredited. Moreover, the dialogues are pretty insipid and nearly every single scene feels tediously long and counterfeit, all good reasons to make us indifferent about the characters. 

About halfway, an unexpected occurrence creates the erroneous sensation that the film would turn for the better. The proceedings remained dull just the same, whereas the final twist, more than predictable, is dispassionate. Windfall is a huge misfire. It’s that kind of desensitized picture that proves unworthy of a big screen experience.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Direction: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Country: USA 

This strenuous eccentricity from the directors of Swiss Army Man, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, translates into a three-part Matrix-style fantasy where human bodies can be controlled by other universes. But there are positive messages delivered within the zaniness of its parallel realities. 

Brimming with a spiraling energy and packed with humor, this story follows Chinese immigrant Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), a messy laundromat owner who’s not on good terms with her patient husband (Ke Huy Quan), nor with her lesbian teen daughter (Stephanie Hsu). Her conservative and cranky father (James Hong) is another trouble, but what’s really giving her heebie-jeebies is the laundromat’s cheating taxes and the IRS worker (Jamie Lee Curtis) who’s dealing with the case. In a split second, she gets involved in a spiral of requests and flashbacks from other universes in which she also plays a role. 

Having the sci-fi aspect blending with faster-than-Bruce-Lee kung fu scenes, the creators pile a few too many additional oddities into the mix, but the film supports its wild premise with a skillful direction and fine responses from the stellar ensemble cast. To my surprise, among oodles of unhinged sequences, I ended up enjoying this chaotic and far-fetched movie, which also happens to be conceptual and deliciously satiric.

The Outfit (2022)

Direction: Graham Moore
Country: USA

Graham Moore, the award-winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game (2014), makes his directorial debut with The Outfit, a diverting Hitchcockian picture that packs a gut-level wallop in the name of entertainment. This atmospheric crime thriller set in 1956 Chicago is tailored like a classic, relying on sharp and quick story turns to prevent you from dwelling on any possible inconsistency.

At the center of the narrative is Leonard (Mark Rylance), a middle-aged English tailor who is somehow involved with the Chicago organized crime as he lets the men of Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Beale), a powerful crime kingpin, use his store both as a refuge and a point of communication. One night, Roy’s son, Richie Boyle (Dylan O'Brien), and his dubious associate, Francis (Johnny Flynn), have a misunderstanding about a tape that uncovers a snitch inside their gang. Blood is shed, and Leonard is forced to cover up the murderer. This submissive and meek man is also opaque and calculative. Always listening and barely talking, he has to find a way to save himself and his beloved receptionist, Mable (Zoey Deutch), from a bigger imbroglio. 

Although I wish that very last section wouldn’t exist, the film’s controlled cynicism quietly penetrated my mind, leaving a good mark. Rylance (Bridge of Spies, 2015; The BFG, 2016) is excellent, and Flynn (Beast, 2017; Emma, 2020) makes for a truly insidious villain.

Marvelous and the Black Hole (2022)

Direction: Kate Tsang
Country: USA

Marvelous and the Black Hole marks the feature debut from writer-director Kate Tsang, who had difficulty wrangling the material amassed and finding a way through it. Loosely based on her teenage years, the film depicts an atypical friendship between an angsty Chinese American teen, Sammy (Miya Cech), and a cranky magician woman, Margot (Rhea Perlman), who becomes her mentor. 

In spots, the friendship between these two multi-generational characters brings the coming-of-age dark comedy Harold and Maude to mind, even if massively undarkened and smaller in interest. Here, death is replaced with magic, but Tsang’s move, being thin in dialogue while sputtering out cacophonous doses of anger and insurgent mood, feels secondhand, disguising elementarily formulaic tactics behind an apparent forthright posture.

I cannot say it's not well-intentioned and kind in nature, I just wasn’t particularly stricken by its attempting spells, which felt more conventional than magical. Both execution and performances never cut above most buddy movies, and the results, far from groundbreaking, leave you stuck on the cusp of an outburst of teen’s exasperation, which, by the way, is the film’s weakest spot.