Category: Film Reviews by Amy

Thunder Force (PG-13)

With Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer playing middle-aged lady superheroes, Bobby Cannavale playing all the ego and Jason Bateman playing a half-crab man, Thunder Force really should have been a better movie than it is.

I had such hopes after Superintelligence, the Ben Falcone-directed Melissa McCarthy movie that hit HBO Max a few months back. That movie was so above average and genuinely enjoyable that I let myself get way too excited for this movie, forgetting all about my letdown at Tammy and The Boss.

As it is, I won’t even pretend I’m being completely objective about this movie; I like McCarthy and Spencer and all the other players here too much not to grade on a curve. And it helps that this movie is on Netflix, so if you already have a Netflix subscription it basically only costs your “what should we watch, I don’t know, this looks promising” time.

The comic book-like premise here is solid: Once upon a time (March 1983) a cosmic ray struck the Earth, giving superpowers to people genetically predisposed to be sociopaths. These people, called Miscreants, have basically an unchecked ability to cause mayhem, as no good-guy superpower-having people exist to stop them. After young Emily (Bria D. Singleton) loses her parents to a Miscreant attack, she vows to make it her life’s mission to find a way to stop them.

First, however, she has to make it through school, which is not easy when you’re perceived as a nerd. Luckily, Emily has a friend in Lydia (Vivian Falcone), who might not be a star student but is willing and able to stand up to anyone picking on Emily. The girls remain close friends until high school, when Emily’s single-minded studiousness and Lydia’s lack of direction pull them apart.

Still, decades later, when their high school reunion approaches, Lydia (McCarthy) is pretty excited to see Emily (Spencer), who is now a rich and famous scientist type. True to old patterns, Emily forgets all about the reunion, so Lydia goes to her science lab/office to retrieve her — which is how Lydia, a “what does this button do?” type, accidentally gets injected with Emily’s superpowers-creating serum. Emily had planned to give herself super-strength and invisibility to help her fight the Miscreants. But now Lydia has the super-strength and Emily has the invisibility and they must work together, with the help of Emily’s super-smart daughter Tracy (Taylor Mosby), to fight a Miscreant called Laser (Pom Klementieff). Because they decide they need cool names to go with their powers and supersuits, they dub themselves “Thunder Force.”

Bobby Cannavale, playing a politician trying to get people to call him “The King,” and Jason Bateman, as a sometime criminal who has crab arms and is conflicted about his Miscreant status, also show up, as does Melissa Leo as Emily’s security officer. And, just writing this, I’m sort of excited about this movie all over again — sounds great! Except, parts of the movie just don’t click, like Leo, who always feels a step off from what the movie needs her to be. Or like parts of Bateman’s whole crab-arms thing, with jokes that go on too long or seem to trail off. Elsewhere it feels like jokes and character notes are left unexamined. The whole movie has a frustrating “not exactly there” feel.

That said, while writing this review, I did go back to check this or that fact in the movie and found myself watching whole scenes. So maybe the key is expectations; go in expecting nothing more than an hour and 46 minutes of new content that you’ve already paid for and maybe you’ll be suitably amused. B- because this thing has its moments and I’m definitely going to wind up watching it again.

Featured photo: Thunder Force

A look at the movies vying for Best Documentary Feature at this year’s Oscars

I would have thought the Best Documentary Feature category in this year’s Oscars was all sewn up.

My pick in this category would be Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, another solid entry from Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions (which won last year’s documentary Oscar with the excellent American Factory).

Crip Camp, which hit Netflix about a year ago, is an absolute winner that is both the story of an upstate New York summer camp in the 1960s and 1970s that served campers with disabilities and the story of the civil rights activism by those campers that led eventually to the Americans with Disabilities Act and the access it granted. Many of the counselors were former Camp Jened attendees; the camp was a place where they could be themselves, enjoy the same cultural swirl of music, politics and big ideas (and teen romance) that the rest of their generation was immersed in and be free of well-meaning but often overprotective parents. One of the attendees turned counselors turned activists, Judith Huemann, eventually becomes the movie’s focal point and feels like one of those giants of American history that I was shocked to just be learning about. The movie is still available on Netflix.

A look at the various Oscar prediction websites suggests that my favorite isn’t a runaway sure thing and each of the other nominees have a fair amount of support.

Collective, which is also nominated in the International Feature Film category, would be my second-place pick and is a worthy competitor. This documentary tells the story of the aftermath of a music venue fire in Romania. Not only does the fire expose the scandal that led to unsafe conditions at the club but the subsequent deaths of people wounded in the fire helps to expose the problems in the state’s health system that makes hospitals seem like germ incubators. The documentary focuses both on the Sports Gazette, a sports-focused newspaper that helps to uncover the scandal, and on the new minister of health battling deeply rooted problems in the bureaucracy in his attempts to make amends and provide better care for the people of the country. The movie makes the case for old-school, follow-the-facts journalism. It is available for rent (including via Red River Theatres’ virtual cinema) and on Hulu.

Amazon Prime’s Time is a more intimate movie than the previous two (though it has plenty of big issues attached) but it is a solid piece of storytelling. The movie tells the story of Sybil Fox Richardson, and her children as they deal with the decades-long incarceration of her husband and their father, Rob. Rob and Fox have six sons, who Fox had to raise on her own after Rob was sent to jail for 60 years for a bank robbery (for which she also spent a few years in jail). The movie features her own home movies of those years, through which we can see her boys grow up and Fox become a force of prison reform activism while also building a career, taking care of the boys and working to bring Rob home. Fox is a compelling personality and the moments when her rage at the system breaks through her perfect composure are more insightful than a dozen think pieces on prison reform.

The Mole Agent, available on Hulu, doesn’t have the heft of those movies but this tale of elderly residents of a Chilean nursing home has moments when it transcends its sweet comedy. Here, 90-something Sergio agrees to work for a private investigator as a spy. He checks into a nursing home to find out if the client’s mother is being mistreated and stolen from and what he discovers is a community of people — mostly women — who have been sort of forgotten. The movie has funny moments — Sergio doesn’t always have a handle on the technology he’s given to make his reports but he is a huge hit among the lady residents, with one woman planning their wedding — and the charm helps to soften the blow of the vein of sadness throughout.

My Octopus Teacher, a Netflix documentary, is probably the lightest-weight of the nominees. I heard somebody on a movie podcast describe it as basically a nature documentary and I agree that its photography of life in what the narrator calls an underwater “forest” off the coast of South Africa is its strongest element. The narrative structure comes from the “friendship” between Craig Foster, a filmmaker suffering from burnout, and an octopus he encounters. He follows her, studying her progress during her roughly year of life, with bits of Foster’s life and his relationship with his son sprinkled in. Personally, I feel like an even shorter movie that was more tightly focused on just the octopus would have been even more lively, but the visuals are lovely.

Oscar movie viewing update
If you’re not quite ready to venture back to the movie theaters, you can add Judas and the Black Messiah to the list of Oscar nominees available from your house. The movie, which had a month-long run on HBO Max when first released, is now available for rent for $19.99.

For other movies, Oscar completists can turn to Red River Theatres (redrivertheatres.org) to view some of the harder to find nominees. In addition to Minari, The Father and Collective, Red River’s virtual cinema is screening the Oscar shorts ($12 per category or $30 for all three categories, 15 nominated shorts plus some extras) and, this Friday, is scheduled to start screening International Feature Film nominee The Man Who Sold His Skin.

Featured photo: Crip Camp

Godzilla fights King Kong in Godzilla vs. Kong — what, you wanted me to be all “visually stunning allegory about humanity’s bravado in its relationship with the natural world”?

I mean, sure, I guess that’s in there (the allegory, sorta; the visuals have their moments even if they’re never quite as awe-inspiring as, for example, that parachute jump in the 2014 Godzilla). You can find the deeper meaning if you try really hard to pick it out, like you’re digging out the mushrooms from a steak and cheese sandwich, but why bother? Either you’re watching this “monsters fight!” movie at a movie theater on one of your extremely rare trips to a theater in this past year or you’re watching it for a fun movie night at home (the movie is on HBO Max until the end of April). Why muddy either of those all-cheese-no-broccoli experiences with, like, “deeper meaning” or “multi-dimensional characters” or “consistently engaging story-telling”?

There are, to some extent, two movies with two sets of characters happening here. In the Kong movie, Hollow Earth explorer Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgard) gets Kong scientist Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) and her adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle) to bring Kong from his Truman Show-like Kong habitat on Skull Island to the entrance of a tunnel that will take the explorers into the land-before-time-ish world that exists inside the Hollow Earth (which is where everyone assumes the Titans, as all the giant monsters are called, came from at some point). Apex, a bad-guy corporate entity, has hired Nathan to find the power source that serves as this inner world’s sun so they can power a Godzilla-fighting weapon, which I don’t think was spoiled in the trailers, so I won’t spoil it here except to say it turns out to be pretty fun. Nathan uses Kong as a guide to the Hollow Earth power source because homing pigeons something something and Ilene and Jia come too in part because Jia and Kong are friends and can communicate via sign language — and I feel like the “King Kong speaks sign language” element of this story isn’t developed nearly enough. I feel like being able to talk directly to a Titan and find out what it wants would be a bigger deal.

Meanwhile, teen Madison (Millie Bobby Brown), who was in the last Godzilla movie, and her buddy Josh (Julian Dennison) track down Titan-conspiracy podcaster Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry). He has been covertly reporting on Apex, and Madison agrees with him that they must be doing something shady if Godzilla attacked an Apex facility after years of peaceful coexistence with humanity. This is the quippier of the two halves of this movie.

Godzilla and Kong get two big battles against each other, Kong gets to romp through Hollow Earth and both creatures get to fight other stuff. The monsters are fun, the humans are silly and the movie seems aware of this — never requiring us to take the humans too seriously or forgetting that the only characters we really care about are the giant gorilla and the giant lizard.

I think there are two ways to approach this movie. One is to spend time wondering which characters you’re supposed to remember from previous Kong and Godzilla movies and how this fits in to the overall cinematic universe (Legendary Entertainment’s MonsterVerse, apparently, according to a Wikipedia article and I think reading the Wikipedia entry about the MonsterVerse when one of these films is released is the only time I ever read or hear any MonsterVerse discussion). I was maybe trying to do this for the first 20 or so minutes but quickly gave up. The other, more fulfilling way to view this movie is to passively enjoy the scenes that aren’t Godzilla fighting Kong and then turn up the TV and pay close attention for the scenes that are about Godzilla fighting King Kong. Or Godzilla or Kong whomping other things. Big monsters fighting, that’s what I’m here for, and on that this movie basically delivers. Think of the rest of the movie as an opportunity to get more snacks, chat with your movie-watching companions or look up stuff about the MonsterVerse. This movie is a solid B during monster fights, an indifferent C otherwise, so — let’s call it a relaxed, good-time B-.

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of creature violence/destruction and brief language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Adam Wingard with a screenplay by Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein, Godzilla vs. Kong is an hour and 53 minutes long and distributed by Warner Bros. It is in theaters and streaming until April 30 on HBO Max.

Featured photo: Godzilla vs. Kong

Anthony Hopkins is heartbreaking and Olivia Colman is heartbroken in The Father, a sad but excellent movie that is nominated for six Oscars.

Anthony (Hopkins) is a retired man living in London and Anne (Colman) is his daughter — this much feels certain. But, after a fight with yet another caregiver, has Anthony gone to live with Anne or has she come to live with him? And is it just her sharing the apartment with the increasingly agitated Anthony, who feels certain she’s trying to wrest his flat from him, or is her husband (maybe Mark Gatiss or maybe Rufus Sewell) there as well? Anthony and the patient if increasingly despondent Anne frequently butt heads, leading Anthony to tell whomever’s around how much better he gets along with his other daughter Lucy — but Anne’s silence whenever Lucy is mentioned suggests that there’s more to her absence than just a busy schedule.

That Anthony is constantly losing his watch may sometimes feel a little too nail on the head for his lost grip on time — he relives moments over again and forgets who people are or how long it’s been since he’s seen them last. He is a man grasping at sand and still sinking. The movie (and Hopkins’ strong performance) lets us feel his confusion, frustration and sense of complete disorientation. The story has the build of a psychological mystery thriller and works even though we understand what the mystery is that Anthony seems unable to unwravel.

Likewise, Colman puts us inside of Anne’s grief. Her love for her father, their relationship difficulties, her frustration with his limitations, her conflicted thoughts about what is truly best for him (and for her) — we can see all of this, often just from a look on Colman’s face or the way her eyebrows raise during a smile. The very last time she’s on screen, she gives this little nod that does the work of a whole speech.

The Father is not a fun movie but it is exceptionally well-made and so well-performed that it is an engrossing watch even when it is achingly sad. A

Rated PG-13 for some strong language and thematic material, according to the MPA at filmratings.com. Directed by Florian Zeller with a screenplay by Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller (from the play of the same name by Zeller), The Father is an hour and 37 minutes long and is distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. It is screening in theaters (including via Red River Theatres’ virtual cinema) and available for rent.

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Especially special effects

The Oscar’s visual effects nominees offer some good examples of films that were able to transcend the “TV-ness” of 2020.

Because the nominees provide great answers to “what should we watch tonight?” I’m spending the pre-awards ceremony (on April 25) weeks running through this year’s nominees. I previously discussed two of the visual effects nominees — Tenet (available for purchase and coming to HBO Max on May 1) and Mulan (available on Disney+ and for purchase). Both wowed with their visuals, Mulan perhaps more for costuming (for which it’s also nominated) and set design. Tenet’s coolest element is its use of characters traveling in opposite directions through time in the same scene (and if that makes no sense, buckle up for the “time travel and stuff”-ness of this movie), which would probably make it my pick in this category.

Other visual effects nominees:

• Love and Monsters It’s so cool this sweet, sorta silly creature movie/love story got a nomination. A 20-something guy hikes through some 80 miles of a monster-infested California to see the girl he’s loved since high school in this fun, sort of optimistic movie with an “end of the world” premise. The monsters are pretty well-rendered too. The fun movie night movie is available for rent or purchase.

• The Midnight Sky I can see why this total bummer of a George Clooney movie received a nomination: It features bleakly beautiful shots of the Arctic (where Clooney’s scientist is the final remaining human — maybe) as well as a storyline that takes place on a spaceship with occasional scenes of weightlessness and space-walks. But I have a hard time recommending this downbeat end-of-the-world movie (available on Netflix, if you’re in just too good a mood).

• The One and Only Ivan This Disney+ family live action film (or, you know, “live action” since the photo-realistic animals are CGI creations, according to a New York Times story) is based on the true story of a gorilla named Ivan who made art. The Ivan here (voiced by Sam Rockwell) is the star attraction in a fading mall circus run by human Mack (Bryan Cranston) and filled with other animals (voiced by the likes of Helen Mirren, Phillipa Soo, Chaka Khan, Ron Funches and Danny DeVito). This older elementary family movie is probably adequately entertaining for family movie night (despite some moments of sadness with sick moms and poachers and the like).

I discussed where to find best picture and best animated feature nominees and the films that received acting nominations in the March 18 issue and last week (March 25) tackled most of the other “mainstream movie” categories. (Find them all at hippopress.com.) Programming updates: Red River Theatres in Concord now has multi-category nominee The Father available via its virtual cinema as well as fellow nominees Minari and Collective. Nominated short films may be available as well starting April 2.

Featured photo: The Father

So many nominees, so many streaming platforms

Every Oscar season is a little bit weird.

Some years, it feels like every nominee came out in the final month of the year. Some years, it feels like the winners have been known for so long there’s no real contest. Some years — my least favorite kind of years — a significant number of nominations aren’t available at all for the movie-going public until months after the award ceremony, when you’ve completely forgotten about the movies.

This year, most of the movies are fairly accessible, and not just in the “if you’re willing to drive to Boston” sense but accessible even if you aren’t completely comfortable leaving your house just to fill out your Oscar ballot (nominees were announced March 15 and the awards will be handed out April 25). In last week’s issue of the Hippo, I laid out how to find the feature films in many of the major categories. As of this Friday, March 26, when The Father will hit VOD, the only nominee in the best picture, animated feature or acting categories that you can only see in theaters is Judas and the Black Messiah (which was on HBO Max for a month). Find my full listing of those films on page 33 of last week’s paper. One update: Minari, nominee for best picture and in five other categories, is also available via Red River Theatres’ virtual cinema; see redrivertheatres.org for information.

Here are some of the “odds and ends” releases — some more of the feature films outside the best picture and acting categories that managed to snag a nomination or two.

• News of the World This Tom Hanks downbeat Western is, you know, fine. Hanks plays a Hanks character carrying a bunch of grief through post-Civil War Texas as he tries to bring an orphaned girl to her family. The movie received nominations for cinematography, original score, production design and sound and is available to purchase. It’s not the best movie night you’ll ever have but it’s also not the worst.

• GreyhoundI feel like this is a good place to mention the other Tom Hanks 2020 release that is both respectable and sorta forgettable. Hanks plays a World Ward II Navy captain who is leading a convoy of ships through the Nazi-sub-filled Atlantic Ocean. This movie, which is nominated for sound, is basically a chase movie and the only character who really matters is “Captain Tom Hanks.” It is absolutely fine while you watch it — which you can on Apple TV+— and will vanish from your mind almost as soon as it’s done.

• EmmaAnya Taylor-Joy is the titular Jane Austen heroine in this very fun adaptation that was one of my favorite pre-pandemic 2020 releases. It has a specific look to costumes and set design and it’s no surprise that it received nominations for costume design and makeup and hairstyling. It is currently available on HBO and it is available for purchase.

• Mulan Disney’s live-action Mulan is probably going to be remembered more for how the movie was released (on Disney+ for an extra fee, the first of Disney’s films to be released that way) than the movie itself, which wowed me with its visuals and underwhelmed me with its story. I totally support its nominations for costume design (the costumes are “press pause and gaze” beautiful) and visual effects.

• Pinocchio Roberto Benigni stars as Geppetto in this live-action Pinocchio adaptation (which I haven’t yet seen) that scored two nominations: one for costume design and one for makeup and hairstyling. It is available for rent or purchase and appears to have both an original Italian audio/English subtitles track and an English-dubbed audio track.

• Da 5 Bloods One of the disappointments of this year’s nominations was that this Spike Lee movie didn’t earn any acting nods (in particular for Delroy Lindo). It did get one nomination, original score for Terence Blanchard. The movie is worth seeing, even if it probably needs a big screen to capture all of what Lee was doing; it’s available on Netflix.

• Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga This (and Emma) might be my favorite of the one- or two-off nominations; this sweetly goofy Will Ferrell movie has grown on me since I first saw it, especially the mid-movie song-mash-up featuring assorted Eurovision stars. The song “Husavik,” the big climactic number sung by Elizabeth Banks’ character, Sigrit, is nominated for original song, which hopefully means someone will perform it at the Oscar ceremony. The movie is available on Netflix.

• The Life Ahead Sophia Loren stars in this Italian movie that is still on my “Oscar nominees to watch” list. It’s available on Netflix and has a song, “Lo Sí (Seen),” nominated in the original song category.

• Tenet Christopher Nolan’s timey wimey movie did have some impressive elements, most notably the fight scenes. It makes sense that this movie would garner a visual effects nomination and, sure, production design, why not, for all those sleek locales. It is currently available for rent or purchase and will be on HBO Max May 1.

• The White Tiger This year’s screenplay nods were basically all of the best picture nominees (minus Mank) plus One Night in Miami (which should have been a best picture nominee), Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (I mean, what can you say; 2020 was a year) and this movie, based on the 2008 novel by Aravind Adiga that won the Man Booker Prize. Available on Netflix, The White Tiger features a strong performance by Adarsh Gourav as a man in India attempting to break free of crushing poverty and the demands of his village. It’s an occasionally tough but definitely worthwhile watch with moments of humor.

Featured photo: Emma

Zack Snyder’s Justice League (R)

Warner Brothers asks for a do-over of their 2017 DC supergroup movie and thus presents Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a movie that will make you say, “Oh, now I get it.”

You probably know the widely reported story here: Director Joss Whedon finished the 2017 Justice League after original director Zack Snyder stepped away due to the death of his daughter Autumn (to whom this movie is dedicated). Reshoots led to (1) a terrible moosh-face on Henry Cavill because they had to get rid of his Mission Impossible mustache digitally, (2) what seemed like (still seems like? who knows) the end of the whole Batfleck phase of Batman, and (3) a bunch of Wonder Woman fans (including me) being annoyed at how that movie subjected the mighty warrior to some real shady male-gaze shots.

This “Snyder cut,” as the internet’s been calling it for years, is a re-editing of the film that uses Snyder’s original footage (plus some new scenes shot in 2020, according to various media reports) and sends the Whedon-y stuff (including that distracting “no mustache” face) to the Phantom Zone with Joss himself (who has bigger problems now). The new movie is four hours long (which is twice as long as the original) and has a different Big Bad and a different group dynamic among all the superheroes it brings together. It is also, surprisingly, better and has a more interesting story.

The bones are sort of the same as the 2017 version: Batman (Ben Affleck), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), The Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) — and eventually Superman (Cavill) —come together to fight a scary guy. That guy, Steppenwolf (voice of Ciaran Hinds), comes to Earth searching for three “Mother boxes” that, when put together, create the Unity, which is a glowy thing that looks like some kind of expensive STEM toy and that when activated will burn Earth to a cinder.

The Snyder Cut adds the wrinkle that Steppenwolf’s plans aren’t just scorching for his own gain. He’s attempting to deliver a hellishly terraformed Earth to Darkseid (voice of Ray Porter), an even bigger badder galactic conqueror who is particularly interested in Earth, the one place he was defeated millennia ago. Humans, gods (of the Zeus variety), Amazonians, Atlanteans and at least one Green Lantern worked together to defeat Darkseid and keep him from obtaining a thing hidden on Earth (a magic formula that’s sort of crop-circled into the rock layer of the planet) that would allow him to control everyone and everything in the universe.

Here, we also learn a lot more about each of our heroes. The Flash and Cyborg get mini-origin movies folded in to this tale and we get to know more about Aquaman. Wonder Woman is the character we’d recognize from her standalone films. We learn more about everybody’s individual environments, which means more Themyscira, more Atlantis, more Barry Allen (The Flash) being the peppy fun ray of sunshine that this movie needs. We also see more about their motivations for joining Bruce Wayne’s frantic quest to create a band of Earth protectors, and the “death” of Superman in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice becomes more meaningful both emotionally and for this movie’s plot. And while the movie jettisons the quippiness that was so at odds with the bleakness in the 2017 movie, it manages some surprising lightness and even moments of optimism.

I’m not sure how this was all ever going to fit in one movie. (Maybe by regular-speed-ing the slow motion? There is a lot of slow-mo here.) I can see exactly how it would fit into two movies, like Justice League and Justice League: Darkseid or something, one a little over two hours and one a little under two hours. The movie is also divided into parts — six parts and an epilogue, so if four hours feels like too much you could watch it a few “episodes” at a time. While I (surprisingly) enjoyed watching the movie in one sitting, I don’t think it’s necessary to consume it that way. There are a lot of little moments, a lot of Easter eggs that set up interesting possibilities even if you don’t know every bit of comic book lore.

There are several articles out there on the internet (including a pretty fascinating one on vanityfair.com) that explain how this movie was meant to be the middle of this particular series of DC movies and how this story set up two films that were to have come after. The most miraculous accomplishment of Zack Snyder’s Justice League is that it left me more than a little interested in seeing those two movies. B

Rated R (though I can’t figure out by whom it is rated or specifically why, I suspect for language; though ultimately rather hopeful for a Snyder movie, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is at least as dark as The Dark Knight). Directed by Zack Snyder with a screenplay by Chris Terrio, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is four hours and two minutes long and is available on HBO Max.

Sound of Metal (R)

A drummer suddenly loses his hearing in Sound of Metal, a superbly well-crafted movie that has been nominated for six Oscars.

Ruben (Riz Ahmed) is a drummer in a duo with his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke) who goes from experiencing some fleeting auditory weirdness to sudden loss of almost all his hearing. It’s during a gig that he’s forced to finally tell Lou that he’s lost about 75 percent of his hearing and likely to lose more. Ruben and Lou’s life seems built around their music — they live and tour in an Airstream and the concerts appear to be their main (and only, probably) form of income.

Thus faced with the loss of what Ruben feels is his whole life, Ruben is understandably panicked and Lou is afraid that this will affect his sobriety (we learn he is four years in recovery from heroin use). Ruben’s sponsor helps get him into a recovery program for people who are deaf. Though he initially resists, Ruben decides to stay — meaning that Lou must leave him — and spends weeks learning, as the program’s leader Joe (Paul Raci) puts it, how to be deaf. We see him learn sign language and teach kids drumming. But his urge to get back to his life — music, touring, Lou — never subsides.

Ahmed, who along with Raci received one of this movie’s two acting nominations, is absolutely excellent here. (This is a particularly strong leading actor year; Ahmed, Chadwick Boseman and Stephen Yeun are three standout Oscar nominees.) He does an excellent job conveying the panic and fear that come with discovering something has suddenly changed, dramatically, with your body and its ability to do something you took for granted. He also makes us feel Ruben’s mix of emotions as he learns how to navigate his life with greatly reduced hearing but also still yearns to get back to his life as he knew it.

Also nominated for film editing, original screenplay and best picture, Sound of Metal feels like a sure-thing win in the sound category (this year, sound mixing and sound editing have been combined into one category). The movie masterfully weaves the world as Ruben hears it into the story, putting us in his head and letting us experience his frustrations and his moments of joy. A

Rated R for language throughout and brief nude images, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Darius Marder with a screenplay by Darius Marder & Abraham Marder, Sound of Metal is two hours long and distributed by Amazon (where it is available via Prime Video).

Featured photo: Zack Snyder’s Justice League