CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 10-23-26
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My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review four new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, October 23rd, 2026.
I have said this before, and I'll say it again: Laika may very well be the finest animation studio working anywhere in the world today. Their track record is extraordinary. Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Missing Link, and one of my favorite animated movies of all time, the magnificent Kubo and the Two Strings, are all remarkable achievements in the painstaking, beautiful art of stop-motion animation.
And now comes Wildwood, their biggest, most ambitious, most technically complicated movie yet, and quite possibly their masterpiece. It's a sweeping, spectacular fantasy adventure filled with unforgettable characters, genuinely frightening imagery, wonderful humor, political and social commentary, and an emotional depth that caught me completely off guard.
I was overwhelmed by this movie. I laughed, I was frightened, I was moved, and yes, I cried. It's one of the best movies of 2026, and one of the most extraordinary animated films I've seen in years.
Based on the 2011 novel written by Colin Meloy, the lead singer and songwriter of the Decemberists, and illustrated by Carson Ellis, Wildwood has been in development at Laika for more than a decade.
The screenplay is by Chris Butler, and the director is Travis Knight, the enormously talented filmmaker responsible for Kubo and the Two Strings, who also directed the very entertaining live-action Masters of the Universe earlier this year.
Knight is also one of the driving forces behind Laika, the Oregon-based animation studio that continues to demonstrate just how much can be accomplished through an art form that requires an almost unimaginable amount of patience, craftsmanship, and dedication.
Wildwood runs approximately 132 minutes, making it the longest stop-motion animated feature ever made, and practically every frame is filled with so much visual information that I honestly don't know how they managed to pull it off. Hundreds of artists, animators, designers, and technicians spent years creating this world, and the result is breathtaking.
Now, I want to make something very clear right from the beginning. This is not your typical animated family movie, and it's certainly not something you should casually drop the little kids off to see. Wildwood is rated PG-13, the first Laika feature to receive that rating, and it earns it.
There's violence, some profanity, disturbing imagery, and a great deal of darkness involving death, grief, sacrifice, and the terrible things people are willing to do to get what they want.
In fact, the opening sequence is downright shocking. During a violent rainstorm, a crying little boy walks onto a balcony, removes his robe, and throws himself off the building. It's a horrifying image, particularly for the opening of an animated movie, and although we eventually discover that the child is an artificial creation rather than an actual human being, that doesn't make the sequence any less disturbing.
It establishes immediately that Knight and his collaborators aren't interested in making a cute, cuddly adventure about talking animals. They're going somewhere much darker.
The story follows thirteen-year-old Prue McKeel (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee), a smart, independent, occasionally stubborn girl living in Portland, Oregon, with her parents and her infant brother, Mac. Her parents, voiced by Jake Johnson and Maya Erskine, are a couple of rather laid-back, vaguely hippie-ish Portland types, and the film has a lot of fun with the city's particular cultural personality.
One day, despite her parents' warnings, Prue takes Mac out on a bicycle ride, and while they're enjoying themselves, an enormous murder of crows suddenly descends from the sky, snatches the baby, and carries him into a mysterious forest known as the Impassable Wilderness. It's a spectacularly frightening sequence, with echoes of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, and it sets the adventure in motion.
Terrified of what her parents will say and determined to rescue her brother, Prue enters the forbidden woods with Curtis Mehlberg (Jacob Tremblay), a nervous, nerdy, but goodhearted classmate who becomes her reluctant companion.
What they discover is an enormous, enchanted world filled with talking animals, mystical creatures, elaborate societies, and several factions that are on the verge of a devastating civil war.
There's the South Wood, with its elaborate political structure and rather sinister government, the North Wood, various bands of rebels and outlaws, and an army of vicious coyotes. The entire place is filled with secrets, competing loyalties, and characters whose motivations aren't always what they initially appear to be.
Behind the kidnapping is Alexandra (Carey Mulligan), a once-benevolent governess who has been consumed by grief following the death of her son. She's become involved with dark magic and has a terrifying plan involving Mac, a forbidden ritual, and the possibility of bringing her own child back to life.
Prue and Curtis eventually become separated, with Prue finding herself caught up in the political struggles of the forest while Curtis is drawn into Alexandra's increasingly dangerous world.
The movie introduces an astonishing collection of characters along the way, including Brendan, the Bandit King (Mahershala Ali), a giant golden eagle known as the General (Angela Bassett), a wonderfully funny rat named Septima (Awkwafina), and a wise old owl called Owl Rex, voiced by Richard E. Grant.
There are also coyotes voiced by Charlie Day and Tom Waits, a power-hungry political figure voiced by Jemaine Clement, and numerous other characters brought to life by an exceptional voice cast.
Peyton Elizabeth Lee is terrific as Prue, giving the character the necessary intelligence, determination, vulnerability, and occasional frustration. Tremblay is equally good as Curtis, whose transformation from an awkward, frightened kid into somebody capable of genuine courage is one of the movie's most satisfying elements.
And Mulligan is outstanding as Alexandra, making her a frightening antagonist whose grief and desperation give her actions a tragic dimension. The voice performances are consistently strong, and the filmmakers give these characters personalities that go well beyond the usual collection of funny voices you get in animated movies.
There's a wonderful line spoken at one point when a character looks at something particularly bizarre and says, "I don't know whether this is terrifying or adorable." That pretty much sums up the entire experience of watching Wildwood.
One minute you're laughing at some wonderfully eccentric animal or an absurd bit of bureaucratic nonsense, and the next you're watching something that feels like it belongs in a genuinely creepy horror movie.
There's dark humor involving sacrificial knives, some wonderfully silly exchanges between the various inhabitants of the forest, and a great deal of satire directed at everything from political corruption to Portland's laid-back, spiritually enlightened culture.
But the humor never undermines the danger. The stakes are real, the characters can be hurt, and the movie isn't afraid to deal with loss, betrayal, and the consequences of selfishness. The literary and cinematic influences are everywhere, and I mean that as a compliment.
There's a great deal of C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia in the idea of children entering a hidden magical world with its own complicated history and political conflicts.
There's J.R.R. Tolkien in the enormous scope of the adventure, the competing armies, and the ancient forces threatening to destroy everything. You can see elements of Enid Blyton's children's fantasies, and there's certainly some Jim Henson in there, particularly the darker, stranger qualities of Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal.
But Knight and his collaborators take those influences and create something that feels entirely their own. The world of Wildwood is so carefully imagined, and its inhabitants so beautifully designed, that you believe in the place almost immediately.
And visually, this movie is simply astonishing. The cinematography is by the great Caleb Deschanel, and the lighting, compositions, and camera movements are extraordinary. Every character has been designed with an almost obsessive attention to detail.
The feathers on the birds, the fur on the animals, the textures of the clothing, the bark on the trees, the leaves, the mud, the weapons, the buildings, and the enormous variety of creatures that populate the forest are all meticulously realized.
Remember, this is stop-motion animation. These aren't simply images generated by a computer. These are physical characters and environments that have been designed, constructed, lit, photographed, and moved incrementally, frame by frame, by artists who have devoted years of their lives to making this movie.
The amount of work involved is almost impossible to comprehend, and the fact that the result feels so fluid and alive is a testament to the extraordinary talent at Laika.
There's a small moment early in the film that I absolutely loved. As Prue rides her bicycle through Portland, there's a sign outside a business encouraging people to enjoy handmade art before it's gone forever. It's a funny little background detail, but it also feels like a statement about the movie itself.
At a time when artificial intelligence and digital technology are increasingly dominating conversations about the future of art and filmmaking, here's a studio employing hundreds of actual human beings to create something with their hands, their imaginations, and their extraordinary skills.
Laika's movies have always been celebrations of craftsmanship, but Wildwood takes that commitment to an entirely different level. The film is practically an argument for the continued importance of handmade art, and the evidence is right there on the screen.
The movie also has a surprisingly powerful political dimension. The various factions within the forest are divided by class, power, ideology, and competing ideas about who deserves to rule. There are corrupt officials, manipulative leaders, frightened citizens, and individuals willing to sacrifice practically anything to maintain control.
Although the novel was published in 2011 and the movie has been in development for years, the material feels remarkably relevant to the political and cultural climate we're living through right now, particularly in America.
The struggles over authority, the manipulation of fear, the willingness of people in power to exploit others, and the destructive consequences of unchecked ambition all have an uncomfortable contemporary resonance. The movie doesn't turn into a lecture, but the parallels are there, and they give the fantasy an additional layer of meaning.
And then there's the climax. My God, the climax. The final stretch features an enormous battle involving thousands of characters, flying arrows, guns, catapults, explosions, fire, and armies of creatures attacking from every direction. Birds swoop through the air, trees seem to come alive, and the forest itself becomes part of the conflict.
It's one of the most spectacular action sequences I've ever seen in a stop-motion animated movie. The staging is remarkably clear, the scale is staggering, and the attention to detail is almost absurd. You can see individual feathers moving, the textures of the weapons and costumes, and the physical impact of the violence on the environment.
And because the movie has spent so much time developing its characters and establishing what's at stake, the sequence isn't just an empty display of technical wizardry. You're emotionally involved in what's happening. You want Prue to save her brother, you care about Curtis, and you understand what the various characters stand to lose.
What impressed me just as much as the action, though, was the emotional material. Prue is a young girl carrying an enormous burden of guilt because she believes she's responsible for her brother's disappearance. Her journey is about courage, certainly, but it's also about responsibility, forgiveness, and discovering that the world is far more complicated than she ever imagined.
The story deals with parents who make terrible decisions out of love, people whose grief transforms them into monsters, and children who are forced to confront circumstances that would overwhelm most adults.
There are moments of genuine heartbreak, and I found myself unexpectedly moved by several scenes. I actually cried during this movie, something I certainly wasn't expecting when I walked into a stop-motion fantasy about a girl chasing a bunch of crows into the woods.
The film is long, and at more than two hours, it certainly asks for a commitment, particularly from younger viewers. But I never felt that the scope was excessive or that the filmmakers were simply showing off. There's a tremendous amount of story here, and the various characters, subplots, and political conflicts gradually come together in a satisfying way.
The combination of adventure, horror, comedy, and emotional drama is handled with remarkable confidence, and Knight understands when to let the visuals tell the story without burying everything under dialogue.
There's also a lovely closing-credits song from Colin Meloy, bringing the whole thing back to the artist whose imagination helped create this world in the first place. And during the credits, we get a glimpse of the actual process of constructing and animating some of the characters. Watching the artists at work only makes the achievement more impressive.
Wildwood is a remarkable motion picture, a grand fantasy adventure that deserves to be mentioned alongside some of the best examples of the genre. It's frightening, funny, emotionally powerful, politically relevant, and visually overwhelming, but what makes it special is the genuine heart beneath all that extraordinary craftsmanship.
Laika has once again demonstrated why they're one of the most important animation studios in the world, and Travis Knight has delivered a film of enormous imagination and ambition.
I loved Wildwood. It's one of the best movies of the year, one of the finest stop-motion animated films I've ever seen, and a spectacular reminder of what talented artists can accomplish when they're given the time, resources, and freedom to create something truly extraordinary. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I'm not exactly the world's biggest fan of comic book movies. I think I've made that pretty clear over the years. But I am a big fan of horror movies, particularly the kind of nasty, disturbing, flesh-crawling body horror that filmmakers like David Cronenberg have been exploring for decades.
So when I heard that DC Studios was making a movie about Clayface, one of the more unusual villains from Batman's rogues' gallery, and that it was going to be an R-rated psychological horror thriller rather than another wisecracking superhero adventure, I was intrigued. And for about the first third of the movie, I was actually having a pretty good time.
Unfortunately, what begins as an imaginative, gruesome examination of a man literally losing his identity gradually turns into a generic gangster revenge thriller that borrows heavily from several much better horror movies. By the final act, I was bored.
Clayface has some terrific special effects, a few genuinely disturbing sequences, and some good performances, but it eventually abandons practically everything that makes its central character interesting.
This is the latest film from the newly reorganized DC Studios, with James Gunn and Peter Safran overseeing a cinematic universe that they're apparently determined to expand beyond the usual collection of superheroes saving the world. And I actually think that's a good idea.
There are plenty of interesting characters in the DC catalog who could support different kinds of movies, and Clayface certainly seems like a natural choice for a horror film.
The movie is directed by James Watkins, who made the extremely disturbing Eden Lake and the atmospheric supernatural thriller The Woman in Black. The screenplay is credited to Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, with Flanagan originally developing the project before scheduling conflicts prevented him from directing.
Flanagan has done some terrific work with horror, including Doctor Sleep and Gerald's Game, and Matt Reeves, who directed The Batman with Robert Pattinson, is one of the producers. So there's considerable horror filmmaking talent involved here, and the movie certainly doesn't shy away from its darker material.
And make no mistake, this is an adult horror film. It's rated R, with explicit violence, nudity, and some pretty gruesome makeup effects.
Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a handsome, successful young actor from Gotham City who's just received an Academy Award nomination and appears to have the world at his feet. Unfortunately, he makes the rather serious mistake of spending the night with a woman (Ruby Sear) who happens to be involved with one of Gotham's most powerful and vicious mobsters.
When the gangster discovers what's happened, he and his henchmen decide to teach Hagen a lesson by taking a straight razor to his face. And I mean they really go to work on this guy. They slice open his cheeks, carve up his lips, and mutilate his face in a sequence that's brutally graphic and genuinely difficult to watch.
His acting career is destroyed, his agent abandons him, his money disappears, and he loses practically everything that once defined his life. He's a movie star whose entire existence has been built around his appearance, and now he can barely stand to look at himself in the mirror. It's a terrific setup for a psychological horror movie about vanity, identity, and celebrity.
Desperate to reclaim his old life, Hagen discovers Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), a brilliant but controversial scientist who's been experimenting with a substance capable of manipulating and reconstructing human tissue. Hagen volunteers to become a test subject, and the treatment initially appears successful.
His face begins to heal, his disfigurement disappears, and he seems to be getting his life back. But there are some rather unpleasant side effects. His skin becomes soft, rubbery, and increasingly malleable, almost like wet clay.
His facial features begin shifting on their own, his eyes and mouth occasionally seal themselves shut, and he discovers that he can actually manipulate his appearance by physically molding his face into different shapes. Meanwhile, the experimental treatment begins affecting his mind, producing increasingly violent and psychotic episodes.
Now, this is where Clayface is at its best. The scenes involving Hagen's physical deterioration and his desperate attempts to control his changing face are wonderfully creepy.
There's a particularly nasty sequence aboard an airplane when his facial features begin melting together, and he has to use scissors to cut open the skin that's sealed over his eyes. It's disgusting, painful-looking, and exactly the kind of imaginative body horror I was hoping to see.
Other sequences involve his face sliding out of position, his features stretching and collapsing, and his skin behaving like some horrible combination of rubber, putty, and living tissue. The makeup and visual effects are terrific, and the scenes involving Dr. Corr's experiments, with their needles, injections, and disturbing physical reactions, are genuinely unsettling.
Naomi Ackie is very good as the scientist, bringing intelligence and emotional credibility to a character who could easily have become another generic mad doctor. I've become a big admirer of Ackie. She was terrific in Blink Twice and Mickey 17, and she's an actress with a terrific screen presence.
Max Minghella plays John Borrelli, a Gotham police detective involved with Corr who's investigating the increasingly bizarre events surrounding Hagen, and Eddie Marsan is quite good as Hagen's agent, one of the people who abandons and betrays him when his career collapses.
Tom Rhys Harries is also effective, particularly in the early scenes when Hagen is trying to come to terms with his disfigurement. The problem is that the screenplay never makes Hagen particularly sympathetic or interesting beyond his initial circumstances.
His suffering is certainly unpleasant, and the physical transformations are fascinating, but there's a difference between feeling sorry for a character and actually caring about him. As the story progresses, Hagen becomes less of a person and more of a convenient device for moving the increasingly familiar revenge plot forward.
And that's where the movie really falls apart. Once Hagen discovers that he can assume the appearance of other people, he begins tracking down everybody who wronged him, including his former agent, the mobsters responsible for his disfigurement, and various other individuals connected to his downfall.
What began as a disturbing body horror movie suddenly becomes another revenge thriller about a man systematically eliminating his enemies. The problem isn't simply that we've seen this kind of story a million times before. It's that the filmmakers gradually abandon the most interesting visual and psychological aspects of Clayface himself.
Instead of watching Hagen physically manipulate his features, struggle with his deteriorating body, or experience the horrifying consequences of his transformation, we start watching him effortlessly change from one person into another.
There's an extended sequence involving a nightclub and a group of gangsters where Hagen moves from body to body, appearing as different men and women while his enemies struggle to figure out who's actually attacking them.
At this point, the movie begins resembling The Hidden, Jack Sholder's terrific 1987 science fiction horror thriller about an alien parasite that moves from one human host to another. It also reminded me of Wes Craven's Shocker and Gregory Hoblit's Fallen, the underrated supernatural thriller starring Denzel Washington.
All three movies involve variations on the idea of an evil presence moving between human bodies, and The Hidden remains, for my money, the best of the bunch. But those movies actually build their suspense around the mechanics and consequences of their central gimmicks.
Clayface simply starts allowing Hagen to change appearances whenever the screenplay needs him to, and eventually he seems capable of changing his clothing along with his body. Apparently, the experimental skin treatment also comes with a complimentary wardrobe.
What happened to all that wonderfully disgusting stuff involving the melting face? What happened to the scissors, the shifting features, the rubbery skin, and the physical horror of a man whose body is literally falling apart? Those were the elements that made the first part of the movie interesting.
By the final third, Hagen is essentially a supernatural body-jumper, and the filmmakers seem much more interested in staging shootouts, confrontations, and elaborate revenge sequences than exploring the terrifying implications of his transformation.
The special effects become less inventive, the violence becomes more conventional, and the story settles into a series of predictable encounters with cardboard gangsters who might as well have wandered in from a dozen other crime thrillers.
And here's another strange thing about Clayface: if you removed the occasional references to Gotham City, you'd barely know this was connected to the DC Universe at all. There's no real sense of Batman's world beyond the setting, and the movie doesn't feel particularly interested in its comic book origins.
Now, that doesn't bother me in principle. Considering how tired I've become of superhero movies, I was perfectly happy to watch a standalone horror film that didn't require me to memorize the histories of seventeen different comic book characters.
But if you're going to take a fascinating Batman villain and turn him into the subject of a self-contained horror movie, you'd better have something interesting to do with him. And beyond those early transformation sequences, Clayface doesn't.
There's an entire psychological horror film waiting to be made about the relationship between physical appearance and personal identity, particularly in an industry as obsessed with youth, beauty, and celebrity as Hollywood. Instead, the movie introduces those ideas and then tosses them aside in favor of a routine revenge story.
There are things worth admiring here. The opening is strong, the initial disfigurement is genuinely shocking, the early body horror effects are terrific, and Naomi Ackie and Eddie Marsan provide some welcome support.
But the movie becomes increasingly derivative as it goes along, and by the time Hagen is effortlessly jumping from one appearance to another, practically everything that made the premise distinctive has disappeared.
The result is a film that doesn't quite succeed as psychological horror, doesn't offer anything particularly fresh as a revenge thriller, and doesn't make especially interesting use of its comic book origins.
I can't recommend Clayface. It's a movie that starts with a face being horribly destroyed and ends up losing its own identity in the process. And considering what this particular character is capable of, that's a pretty disappointing transformation.
Oh, and also, I saved this for last. To the makers of Clayface: I've already seen Sam Raimi's Darkman, so, yeah, thanks anyway.- ⭐️⭐️
I have to admit that I walked into Klara and the Sun, the new futuristic science fiction film from director Taika Waititi, with a certain amount of dread. I've had a complicated relationship with Waititi's movies over the years, and the more successful he's become, the less I've liked his work.
He's a filmmaker who specializes in quirky characters, strange fairy tales, oddball comedy, and supposedly subversive social commentary, all delivered with a smug, self-satisfied attitude that I find increasingly irritating.
His latest film, based on the bestselling 2021 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, is about artificial intelligence, loneliness, mortality, and the relationship between humans and robots. It has a terrific premise, a genuinely entertaining opening, and an absolutely wonderful central performance by Jenna Ortega.
Unfortunately, after about the first half hour, it becomes another example of Waititi's inability to leave well enough alone. What begins as an intriguing science fiction fable gradually turns into a manipulative, heavy-handed, and painfully sentimental mess. By the final third, I couldn't wait for it to end.
Now, I haven't read Ishiguro's novel, so I can't speak to the accuracy of the adaptation, which Waititi co-wrote with Dahvi Waller. But I can certainly speak to Waititi's career, because I've been watching his movies for years.
I thought Eagle vs Shark was an interesting little film, and I enjoyed What We Do in the Shadows, which he made with the very funny and talented Jemaine Clement, one of the guys from Flight of the Conchords.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople established Waititi's particular sensibility, although I thought it was just okay, and he should thank his lucky stars that he had Sam Neill delivering such a terrific performance.
Then came Thor: Ragnarok, which was somewhat refreshing compared with other Marvel movies, although it was already overloaded with Waititi's snarky, self-conscious humor.
I didn't like Jojo Rabbit, despite its enormous success and the Academy Award Waititi won for adapted screenplay. I found its satire obvious, its treatment of its subject matter smug, and Waititi's performance as a buffoonish Adolf Hitler obnoxious.
Thor: Love and Thunder was essentially more of the same, and Next Goal Wins, his dreadful sports comedy starring Michael Fassbender, was one of his worst efforts. And, of course, he always seems to find a way to insert himself into these movies to make a few additional smart-ass comments.
Klara and the Sun takes place in an unspecified future, sometime after World War III, in a society where artificial intelligence has become part of everyday life. Robots called Artificial Friends, or AFs, are manufactured to provide companionship to lonely children, while genetic engineering has created a rigid social hierarchy.
Wealthier families can have their children "lifted," a process that enhances their intelligence and supposedly gives them an advantage in life. Unfortunately, the procedure can also cause serious illness and even death. It's an interesting concept, particularly the idea that parents are willing to risk their children's lives to make them smarter and more successful.
There's certainly plenty of material here for a sharp satire about class, privilege, technology, and the absurd expectations parents place on their kids.
Jenna Ortega plays Klara, an older-model Artificial Friend who lives in a secondhand robot store managed by a wonderfully funny Natasha Lyonne. Klara is powered by sunlight, which she regards with an almost religious sense of gratitude and devotion.
Every morning, she looks toward the sun and thanks it for giving her life. She's curious, innocent, observant, and genuinely fascinated by the world outside the store. She's also becoming obsolete, because newer, more sophisticated robots are being introduced, and customers are increasingly uninterested in the older models.
The opening sequences involving Klara, the other artificial companions, and Lyonne's increasingly desperate attempts to sell them are easily the best parts of the movie. They're funny, inventive, and surprisingly touching, and the relationships between these outdated machines have more personality than most of the human relationships that follow.
Eventually, Klara is chosen by Josie (Mia Tharia), a fourteen-year-old girl who lives with her mother, Chrissie (Amy Adams), in a beautiful, isolated home in the countryside. Josie has undergone the lifting procedure and is suffering from a mysterious, debilitating illness.
Her older sister has already died from complications related to the same process, and Chrissie is terrified of losing another daughter. Klara moves into the household, where she begins learning about human behavior, relationships, and the world beyond the store.
She also meets Josie's best friend, Rick (Aran Murphy), a bright, thoughtful young man who hasn't been lifted and is therefore considered socially inferior, despite being perfectly intelligent. Rick builds mechanical birds, understands technology, and has a genuine affection for Josie, but his future is limited by a society that places enormous importance on artificial enhancement.
As Klara becomes increasingly devoted to Josie, she begins to believe that the sun possesses healing powers that might save her friend's life. She observes enormous industrial machines that pollute the atmosphere and block the sunlight, and she develops a plan involving a distant barn, a dangerous journey, and a sacrifice she believes will help restore Josie's health.
Meanwhile, a mysterious scientist named Capaldi (Steve Buscemi) is working with Chrissie on a disturbing contingency plan that could allow Klara to become something more than a companion if Josie dies. There's a lot going on here involving artificial consciousness, the replacement of loved ones, parental grief, and whether human individuality can ever truly be duplicated.
These are fascinating ideas, but the screenplay gradually reduces them to a series of increasingly obvious emotional and philosophical statements.
The early scenes between Klara and Josie are quite good, largely because Ortega and Tharia establish a believable friendship. I particularly liked the way Klara has to process her surroundings before moving through unfamiliar spaces, and how ordinary things that humans take for granted become enormous challenges for her.
There's a sequence involving Klara trying to cross a field of wheat that's both amusing and strangely affecting. Ortega's physical performance is remarkable. Her movements are precise without becoming mechanical, her expressions are subtle, and her enormous, observant eyes communicate an extraordinary amount of emotion.
She makes Klara seem genuinely innocent without turning her into a cartoon, and her unwavering optimism becomes increasingly moving as she encounters the selfishness and cruelty of the human world.
Unfortunately, once Waititi moves beyond the initial setup, his worst instincts take over.
There's an extended sequence involving a gathering of wealthy, genetically enhanced teenagers and their artificial companions that's almost unbearable. The young actors are dressed in ridiculous costumes, given bizarre hairstyles, and encouraged to mug shamelessly for the camera.
Everybody behaves like an obnoxious caricature, and the scene goes on forever. The humans mistreat the robots, the social hierarchy is emphasized, and we're repeatedly reminded that these privileged children are selfish, cruel, and emotionally stunted. Fine. We get it.
The problem is that Waititi doesn't trust the audience to understand any of this without hammering the point home through exaggerated performances and dialogue that has all the subtlety of somebody hitting you over the head with a shovel.
Rachel House, a regular in Waititi's movies, plays the family's housekeeper, Melania, and she's clearly supposed to provide comic relief, but even her scenes feel strained.
Amy Adams, meanwhile, is almost completely wasted as Chrissie. Adams is one of our finest actresses, and she certainly understands how to portray grief, desperation, and emotional conflict. But the character is so generically written that she has very little to work with beyond being a frightened, occasionally selfish mother who will do anything to save her daughter.
The screenplay keeps trying to give her additional depth through the death of her older child and her involvement with Capaldi, but the material never develops into anything particularly interesting.
Buscemi is similarly underused, playing a mysterious scientist whose involvement in the story should be considerably more disturbing and thought-provoking than it actually is. The film raises some fascinating ethical questions about replacing a human being with an artificial copy, then treats those questions with an astonishing lack of imagination.
And the movie isn't particularly original visually, either. Waititi borrows so heavily from other filmmakers that I sometimes felt like I was watching a collection of scenes from much better movies.
The exaggerated camera angles, distorted lenses, frantic editing, and grotesque comic characters are straight out of Terry Gilliam, although without Gilliam's imagination or visual discipline. The whimsical production design, peculiar costumes, and artificially stylized environments owe an enormous debt to Tim Burton, while the futuristic city looks like a watered-down version of the Los Angeles from Blade Runner.
It's as if Waititi took a large helping of Gilliam, added a generous portion of Burton, threw in a little Douglas Trumbull, and decided that the resulting mixture constituted an original visual style. It doesn't. And because the satire is so obvious and the comedy so self-conscious, the movie often feels like third-rate Terry Gilliam.
The frustrating thing is that we've had several much better movies exploring similar ideas about artificial intelligence and human relationships. After Yang was a thoughtful, beautifully restrained examination of memory, grief, and the humanity we project onto machines. The Wild Robot approached the subject with genuine imagination and emotional intelligence.
More recent films like Hoppers, The Assessment, and Mercy have also explored aspects of technology, identity, and our increasingly complicated relationship with artificial systems.
But the movie I kept thinking about was Companion, the terrific, darkly funny thriller starring Sophie Thatcher as an android who doesn't initially understand what she really is. That movie was a sharp, nasty, and surprisingly sophisticated examination of toxic relationships, manipulation, and the horrible ways human beings treat one another.
It managed to say more about humanity through its artificial protagonist than Klara and the Sun accomplishes with all its speeches about love, sacrifice, and the meaning of existence.
And yet, through all of this, Jenna Ortega remains absolutely terrific. I've become a tremendous admirer of this young actress, and she continues to demonstrate an extraordinary ability to elevate material that doesn't always deserve her. She has a wonderfully expressive face, terrific comic instincts, and a remarkable commitment to whatever character she's playing.
Here, she never loses sight of Klara's essential innocence and sincerity, even when the movie around her becomes increasingly ridiculous. She makes you smile, she makes you laugh, and there are moments when she genuinely breaks your heart. It's a carefully controlled, emotionally intelligent performance that provides the film with practically all of its humanity.
Natasha Lyonne is also a delight in the opening section, bringing her usual eccentric energy and comic timing to the store manager, and I almost wished the entire movie had remained in that shop with those wonderful, outdated robots.
But Waititi can't resist turning everything into a grand statement about humanity, and by the final act, the sentimentality becomes overwhelming. The material involving Klara's devotion to the sun, her attempts to save Josie, and the possibility of replacing a dead child with an artificial duplicate should be devastating.
Instead, the movie becomes ponderous, repetitive, and emotionally manipulative. Waititi seems determined to manufacture profound feelings rather than allowing them to emerge naturally from the characters. It's a problem I've had with his work for years: the sense that he's constantly standing behind the camera, congratulating himself on how clever, funny, and emotionally perceptive he's being.
There's a condescending quality to his humor and storytelling that I find exhausting, and it becomes especially irritating when he's trying this hard to be sincere.
Klara and the Sun begins with a genuinely promising premise, an entertaining opening, and a central performance that deserves a much better movie. Jenna Ortega is outstanding, Natasha Lyonne provides some welcome laughs, and there are interesting ideas scattered throughout the screenplay.
But the further the film moves away from its initial setup, the more it collapses under the weight of Waititi's heavy-handed sentimentality, recycled visual style, and self-satisfied approach to comedy and drama.
What should have been a moving, provocative science fiction fable becomes an overlong exercise in manufactured emotion. Ortega almost saves it single-handedly, but even she can't overcome a filmmaker who seems more interested in demonstrating his own cleverness than telling a compelling story.
I can't recommend Klara and the Sun. For all its talk about artificial intelligence and the meaning of humanity, it's a movie that feels strangely artificial itself. - ⭐️1/2
Every once in a while, a movie comes along that's so unusual, so wonderfully strange, and so completely unlike anything else playing in theaters that you almost don't know what to make of it at first. Wicker is one of those movies.
It's a romantic fantasy, an adult fairy tale, a very bawdy British comedy, and a surprisingly touching examination of love, jealousy, insecurity, and the ridiculous things people do to each other in relationships.
It's also about a lonely fisherwoman who has a husband made entirely out of wicker, and who discovers that her handmade husband is a considerably better lover, companion, and human being than most of the actual men in her village.
Now, that's a premise you don't encounter every day. And while the movie occasionally gets heavy-handed with its symbolism, it's beautifully made, frequently hilarious, sometimes genuinely disturbing, and filled with terrific performances. I liked it a lot.
Based on Ursula Wills-Jones' short story The Wicker Husband, the film is written and directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, who have created a peculiar world that seems to exist somewhere between a medieval English village and a particularly naughty Brothers Grimm fairy tale.
It's a small farming community with rigid social rules, an established hierarchy, and a population of people who don't even have names. They're identified by their occupations and relationships: the Tailor, the Tailor's Wife, the Baker, the Baker's Wife, the Innkeeper, and so on. Everybody has a specific place in this society, and anybody who doesn't fit into the established structure becomes an outsider.
The film establishes its unusual tone immediately with a hilarious bit of voice-over narration involving a fish seeing its own reflection and developing some rather inappropriate desires toward itself. It's a surprisingly filthy little story that, in about two minutes, establishes the movie's attitude toward love, desire, vanity, and the absurdity of human behavior.
Olivia Colman plays the Fisherwoman, a lonely, unkempt, middle-aged woman who lives in a filthy little cabin near the water and makes her living selling fish. She smells terrible, she doesn't particularly care what anybody thinks about her, and she's treated like a social outcast by practically everybody in town.
The other women mock her appearance, her smell, and the fact that she doesn't have a husband. The only person who treats her with any genuine kindness is the Basket Weaver (Peter Dinklage), a quiet, mysterious craftsman who lives on the outskirts of the community.
Eventually, after enduring one humiliation too many, the Fisherwoman visits the Basket Weaver and asks him to make her a husband. Out of wicker. And, remarkably, he does.
The resulting Wicker Husband, played by Alexander Skarsgård, is a tall, handsome man made entirely of woven willow and wicker. Through some unexplained fairy-tale magic, he comes to life, and from that moment, his entire existence is devoted to the happiness of the Fisherwoman.
He loves her unconditionally. He doesn't lie, complain, cheat, or have a selfish bone in his body, assuming he has bones at all. He fixes things around the house, helps with her work, recites poetry, and expresses his love with an honesty that borders on the philosophical.
And he's also an absolutely spectacular lover. The two of them engage in such enthusiastic, loud, and prolonged sexual activity that the entire village can hear them. Suddenly, the smelly, lonely woman everybody has been mocking is having the time of her life, emotionally and sexually, and the rest of the community doesn't know what the hell to do about it.
What makes this setup so funny is the effect the Wicker Husband has on everybody else's relationships. The women begin to realize that their own husbands aren't nearly as attentive, loving, or sexually satisfying as this man made out of sticks.
The men become resentful and threatened by a creature who apparently exists solely to make his wife happy. There's a wonderful series of scenes involving the Baker (Ben Ashenden) and the Baker's Wife (Ella Bruccoleri), whose marriage is filled with frustration, resentment, and a rather obvious lack of sexual activity.
The Baker delivers a hilarious monologue about what he wants from a woman, what he believes he's entitled to, and why this wicker monstrosity is ruining everything for the rest of the men. It's a perfect example of how the movie uses outrageous comedy to expose the hypocrisy and selfishness hiding beneath supposedly respectable marriages.
The closest thing the movie has to a traditional villain is the Tailor's Wife, played by Elizabeth Debicki, who is absolutely spectacular. I've been a fan of Debicki for years. She's been wonderful in movies like Widows, Tenet, and MaXXXine, and her portrayal of Princess Diana in The Crown was extraordinary.
She's one of the most consistently interesting actresses working today, and I think she gives the best performance in Wicker. Her character is manipulative, bitter, jealous, and determined to destroy the Fisherwoman's newfound happiness, largely because she can't stand the idea that somebody she considers beneath her has found something she herself doesn't possess.
Debicki plays the role with a combination of icy superiority, suppressed rage, and wicked comic timing. She's funny, frightening, and capable of making even the smallest glance feel like an act of aggression.
There's a particularly terrific scene involving the Fisherwoman and the Tailor's Wife picking berries together, during which Colman's character recalls a disturbing childhood incident involving the Tailor's Wife, a young boy, and a game of pretend marriage that ended in tragedy.
The conversation begins almost casually but gradually becomes a confrontation about their shared history, the cruelty of childhood, and the shifting balance of power between these two women. It eventually leads to a punch, but what's remarkable about the sequence is how much tension Colman and Debicki generate through their dialogue, expressions, and silences.
It's one of the best scenes in the movie, revealing how deeply their resentment runs and how long these two women have been carrying around their feelings about each other.
As the Fisherwoman's relationship with her wicker companion develops, the movie becomes increasingly interested in the nature of love itself. Is a relationship genuine if one person exists entirely to satisfy the other? Can somebody who never lies, never disappoints, and never acts selfishly really be considered human? And what happens when jealousy and suspicion begin to contaminate a relationship that initially seems perfect?
The Wicker Husband gradually becomes more thoughtful and philosophical, and complications arise when the appearance of a wicker baby raises uncomfortable questions about fidelity and trust. I won't reveal where any of this leads, because the film takes some surprisingly dark turns, but the central idea is beautifully expressed in one of Colman's lines: "It's easier to believe the bad than the good." That's really what the movie is about.
People are so accustomed to disappointment, betrayal, and selfishness that they sometimes find it impossible to accept genuine affection, even when it's standing right in front of them.
Colman is, as usual, magnificent. She's funny, vulnerable, stubborn, occasionally filthy, and completely believable as a woman who has spent her entire life being dismissed by everybody around her. There's something moving about watching this character discover that she's worthy of affection and happiness, and Colman never turns her into a sentimental caricature.
Skarsgård is equally impressive in a role that could easily have become a ridiculous gimmick. He's been doing some fascinating work in recent years, whether it's The Northman, Succession, The Legend of Tarzan, or his remarkable performance in Pillion, one of the best movies of this year.
He has an extraordinary ability to disappear into strange, challenging characters, and here he manages to make a man constructed entirely out of wicker seem more emotionally authentic than most of the flesh-and-blood people surrounding him. His gradual development into something resembling a fully realized human being is beautifully handled.
Peter Dinklage is also outstanding as the Basket Weaver, a character who gradually takes on an almost godlike significance because of his ability to create life. Richard E. Grant turns up briefly as the village's eccentric, spectacularly incompetent doctor, and there are wonderful little comic performances scattered throughout the supporting cast.
But I was especially delighted to see Phil Daniels playing the Butcher. Now, whenever I see Phil Daniels, I immediately think of Quadrophenia, Franc Roddam's magnificent 1979 film based on The Who's rock opera. I first saw that movie more than four decades ago, and Daniels' performance as Jimmy, the troubled, rebellious young Mod, has been permanently burned into my brain ever since.
It's one of the great performances by a young actor, and if you've never seen Quadrophenia, you absolutely should. Daniels has continued working steadily in British television, theater, and film, and seeing him pop up here was a real treat.
He has some terrific moments, and his final scene as the Butcher is spectacularly crazy, not just because of what happens to the character, but because of the wonderfully committed way Daniels plays it.
Technically, Wicker is gorgeous. The cinematography by Oscar winner Lol Crawley gives the village a rich, earthy, storybook quality without making it feel artificially precious. The production design is remarkable, particularly the construction of the Wicker Husband himself and the detailed homes, shops, and landscapes that establish this peculiar little society.
But I especially want to mention the musical score by Anna Meredith, the Scottish composer whose work combines acoustic instruments with experimental electronic sounds. She previously contributed terrific music to Eighth Grade and Tuesday, the remarkable Julia Louis-Dreyfus film from a couple of years ago.
Her score for Wicker is one of the best I've heard in 2026. It's playful, unsettling, romantic, and occasionally bizarre, perfectly complementing the movie's constantly shifting tone. Meredith hasn't composed a huge number of film scores, and I sincerely hope she does more of them.
Now, not everything in Wicker works. Some of the allegorical material about patriarchal traditions, sexual jealousy, and the hypocrisy of marriage becomes a little too obvious, and there are moments when the filmmakers seem determined to make absolutely certain that everybody understands the symbolism.
A few of the darker developments feel somewhat forced, and the movie occasionally becomes more interested in delivering its message than allowing the characters to discover things naturally. But these are relatively minor complaints in a film that's so inventive and willing to take chances.
And make no mistake, this is very much an adult fairy tale. It's rated R, there's plenty of sex, some wonderfully filthy dialogue, bawdy physical comedy, and a few genuinely disturbing moments involving cruelty and violence. But it's also sweet, funny, and ultimately rather moving.
Wicker is one of those unexpected little discoveries that I love finding at the movies. It seemingly came out of nowhere, was picked up for distribution earlier this year, and deserves a much bigger audience than it's likely to get.
With wonderful performances, gorgeous cinematography, an outstanding Anna Meredith score, and a strange combination of raunchy comedy and genuine emotion, it's a movie that feels completely original.
It's not perfect, but it's funny, beautifully made, occasionally shocking, and unlike anything else you're likely to see this year.
I absolutely recommend Wicker, and I hope you'll take a chance on this delightful, filthy, deeply peculiar little fairy tale. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
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