Recxpectations: Mickey 17

Bong Joon Ho, director of Parasite, is back with his new movie “Mickey 17”. It follows the life of Mickey, an “expendable” who signed up to do the dangerous jobs on a space expedition and get reprinted/cloned whenever he dies.
I think it’s OK to watch the first trailer as it doesn’t really give away much.

EXPECT: A PREMATURE VICTORY LAP
The thing that immediately jumped out at me is that Mark Ruffalo’s character is clearly a take on Donald Trump (his followers even wear red hats) and it seems like Bong Joon Ho didn’t expect America to re-elect ol’ Donny Bankrupt. A couple of times, it’s mentioned that Ruffalo’s character lost his last two elections. The film seems like it was intended to show how far someone like Trump would go to regain the power that he wasn’t able to get his hands back on but, as we all know, Donny is the President again so I felt like the film wasn’t truly connected to what’s going on in the world right now.
The film is also a comedy and, for me, it didn’t feel like it had much to say about useful idiot’s and their cultlike following beyond, “This fucking guy, AMIRITE?!”

DON’T EXPECT: SUBTLETY OR DEPTH
Adding to the feeling that this film is gloating over a Trump loss that failed to happen is the fact that it has zero subtlety to it. It’s borderline cartoonish at times with how on the nose every moment is. There is no nuance here. For a moment, it seems like something might come out of the relationship with Ruffalo and Toni Collette, who plays his wife or maybe between the church/company and their man who seems to be Ruffalo’s consigliere but, sadly, nothing really happens with them.
In terms of depth, this film definitely struggles from the Curse of the Adaptation. There are a bunch of stories that feel like they were hacked away to get the novel down to movie size. (I could be wrong, I haven’t read the book.)
The film brings up ethical questions but doesn’t really follow through with them. It also totally whiffs on one of the more interesting conundrums IMO. All too often, elements appear that seem like they could be interesting but the movie just uses them to establish a necessary plot point and then brushes them aside. Admittedly, this feeling is subjective - I’m sure that people who get into the movie will disagree but I feel like they’re doing most of the heavy lifting rather than the film actually digging in.
”Mickey 17” is much better than the movie I’m about to use as a comparison but, in terms of making the most of the world that was built, it reminded me of “Downsizing”, a film that created a incredibly interesting world and then did nothing with it. Thankfully, Mickey’s story is interesting and fun to follow. “Downsizing” managed to create an world filled with possibilities and then followed the least interesting character for the entire film.

EXPECT: A WELL MADE FILM
What salvages the movie is the quality of the filmmaking. It’s a good looking film and the performances are all strong so I can foresee a lot of people who agree with the anti-Trump sentiment reading into the film and finding something to enjoy. In the wrong hands, this is just another clone movie that you skip over while trying to find something to watch on your favorite streaming service. The film is also helped by the comedic tone; nobody is going to take anything too seriously (a major problem with most clone movies) and it’s easier to ignore the lapses in logic.

EXPECT: AN OVERLONG MOVIE
At one point during the first third or so of the movie, I thought that it could have been a TV series. By the end, I was feeling like the movie was around an hour too long. It’s always hard to read an theater after a movie finishes but there was no clapping at the end of this one and there was just kind of a hush over the crowd that made me feel like most everyone was underwhelmed or maybe just whelmed.

Recxpectation: Heart Eyes

“Heart Eyes” - New Thing #1 - is a hybird rom-com / horror / comedy that features a killer who goes after couples on Valentine’s Day.

DON’T EXPECT: COMMITMENT TO A GAG
”Heart Eyes” is a film that seems like it wasn’t to satirize rom-coms and horror films but it doesn’t really stick to an approach. It sets up things that could be satire but then just plays it straight. It doesn’t really do much to turn rom-coms or horror films on its head. It doesn’t really combine the genres; it kind of just throws rom-com moments into a horror film. It’s mostly just kind of a cheesy version of both genres, highlighted by their go-to gag of playing really cheesy love songs to show how over-the-top they are being. The film also throws in a couple of random movie references; the jokes landed even if they felt forced in. The film did pick up some steam at the end with at least a few people in the audience started laughing out loud.
The film isn’t that different from the director’s previous movie, “Freaky” - a body swap / horror hybrid that was good enough but didn’t really make the most of the body swap angle.

EXPECT: A SLOW START
”Heart Eyes” starts off like so many horror films do but after that, it’s a long wait until things get going again. The next 40 minutes or so are basically the rom-com portion of the film and well, let’s just say you can feel free to go to the bathroom at any time during this section.

DON’T EXPECT: ANYTHING ALL THAT MEMORABLE
Ultimately, if you go in with low expectations, “Heart Eyes” does the trick of killing a couple of hours. Beyond that, it’s a movie that is competent, Nothing glaringly bad, like a Sony Spider-verse movie, but also nothing that you’ll talk about for too long once the movie is done.

Recxpectations: Conclave

Conclave (New Thing #5) is a film that takes us inside the Vatican and the election of a new Pope.

EXPECT: A LIBERAL FEVER DREAM
Megyn Kelly did her new schtick of getting DEEPLY offended by things as she claimed that Conclave hates Catholics, but I don’t agree. The film hates Catholics like Megyn Kelly. It’s very much opposed to the conservative wing of the Church.
So why am I, a fairly liberal fella, saying to expect a liberal fever dream? The film starts out as a kind of inside look into debates about the Church and its direction for the future but it quickly shifts gears and becomes more about palace intrigue and House of Cards-like maneuvering. By the end, it’s pretty much a full-on soap opera and wish fulfillment of liberal Catholics. I found it downright silly and completely unrealistic.

DON’T EXPECT: A THRILLER
I saw a couple places label this movie as a thriller but I found it to be anything but. Yes, it’s a tense drama at times but I don’t think it’s an edge-of-your-seat type movie. Similarly, it’s not much of a Whodunnit. It’s closer to a Columbo-style approach where you pretty much know who did what but they need to find a way to prove it but the proving it is never very difficult. More often than not, the question is “Should we look into it?”

DON’T EXPECT: THEOLOGICAL DEBATE
There are some monologues for each side - mostly the left - but, as I noted, that falls by the wayside once the focus becomes the palace intrigue. But my biggest disappointment was that it was pretty much just monologues. There wasn’t any debate between the principles. And, sadly, this is probably the most realistic thing about the movie. There aren’t many debates nowadays, just people lecturing their opinions to others and refusing to listen to any other opinions.

Ultimately, I found Conclave to be fine - this feels like, if there was a Black Mirror for Catholic church issues, this would be the premiere of season 3 (after they’ve used up their best material for the first two seasons.) In the end, though, I think I’m going to have to throw this near the top of the Not For Me list in 2025. (I know, it came out in 2024 but I saw it in 2025.)

Recxpectations: September 5

“September 5” (New Thing #4) takes the audience inside the control room of ABC Sports, who faces the daunting task of covering the hostage situation at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

EXPECT: A TENSE FILM, NOT A THRILLER
September 5 is compelling but because it focuses so much on the journalistic integrity angle more than the hostage situation, it’s more compelling than it is thrilling. Not to say that it doesn’t have it’s moments and still isn’t tense but I feel like people going in expecting an edge-of-your-seat thriller might be let down, especially by how much of the film is the details of the TV production.

EXPECT: STRONG, NOT SHOWY PERFORMANCES
An unrecognizable (to me, at least) Ben Chapin gets the most to work with but for the most part, everyone disappears into their roles. Well, I guess Peter Sarsgaard is Peter Sarsgaard but I feel like I always still buy him in his roles even when a lot of them are quite similar.

EXPECT: A TAUT STORY
September 5 clocks in at 95 minutes. Things get going pretty quickly and the pace is pretty steady throughout. The film opens with an explanation of the tech at work but I do wonder how younger audiences will respond given that the world has changed so much since this took place. The storyline focusing on networks sharing the live feed satellite and the crew waiting around until they can air live as opposed to not immediately jumping on the air to cover the on-going news might seem unreal given how people can stream from their phones nowadays.

Recxpectations: The Nickel Boys

The Nickel Boys (New Thing #3) is based on Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel inspired by the horrific findings at the site of the Dozier School for Boys site in the early 2010’s. The film mostly takes place in the 1960s and flashes forward to modern day.

EXPECT: FIRST PERSON POV
The film shifts between the first-person POV of the two lead characters, the cynical Turner (who has learned to play the game to make things better for himself at the school) and Elwood, a young man who is yearning to change the world and is only in trouble because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m not sure how I feel about the first person approach - it definitely makes the film more interesting but I wondered if, at times, it didn’t create more of a separation. It never feels gimmicky but I’m not sure it really elevated things either.

DON’T EXPECT: FLOWERY DIALOGUE
The Nickel Boys is very much a slice-of-life type film, and the dialogue stays true to the locale and the characters. This isn’t an Aaron Sorkin film where, inexplicably, everyone speaks in snappy one-liners and eloquent monologues. It’s blunt and to the point.

EXPECT: AN ADMIRABLE FILM, NOT AN ENJOYABLE ONE
I mean, given the subject matter of brutality at the Boy’s School, it shouldn’t be a surprise that this film isn’t necessarily a “crowd pleaser” but - again, probably because I kind of bumped on the first-person POV approach - it was a film I appreciated more than I was moved by. There’s also a story element that emerges midway through the film that I didn’t think really worked to elevate things.

EXPECT: AN ART FILM
I don’t believe this is a film that will have much crossover appeal. I wouldn’t say that the film preaches to the choir, but it’s a film that will be beloved by the target audience and could fall flat for the mainstream audience and skeptics.