FilmWeek: ‘Project Hail Mary,’ ‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come,’ ‘My Father's Shadow,’ and more!

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It's film week on LA is 89.3 and the LA is tap Larry Mantle joined by critics Tim

Cogshell of alt film guide and synagogues.com and beyond Rio, July.

She's also in addition to her film film week critical duties.

She writes for Indie Wire and is the host of annotations, cultural criticism, podcasts.

With a companion, sub stack newsletter.

Let's get right into the films of the week and the biggie is Project Hail Mary.

It's adapted from the novel by the Martian's Andy Weir.

The film is directed by Phil Lorde and Christopher Miller, who were known for animated movies,

including the Lego movie and the spider verse of the Sony animation universe.

Ryan Gosling stars in Project Hail Mary, Tim, what did you think of it?

This is just an outstanding movie.

Everybody's going to love this movie.

Andy Weir is adapting here of course now.

This is not a hard science book.

That's not a hard science book of this movie.

I read that first book very hard science.

This is about the Martian.

The Martian.

This is not that.

Not nearly as much.

This has a whole lot.

Look, there's an alien made out of rock in this book.

So we're in a little bit of a different space here, although that's still relevant.

But I do want to say to some people, because a lot of people out there like me,

who are going to poke at this, that's not science, they're going to do that thing.

Don't do that, you're just going to ruin it for everybody.

This is wonderful.

It's endearing, it's heartfelt.

This movie is about this scientific thing, this space thing that has to happen to save the Earth.

But not only to save the Earth, to save this other planet for this little rock creature

that has the same thing happening to its planet.

The sun is being blocked out by these spots.

The movie opens this way.

This is already happening.

People are talking about it.

Brian Gosling is this elementary school science teacher.

And he's trying to explain this to his kids when these sort of men and black types show

up in the school.

All the stuff that we see in the trailer, because he's actually a PhD in bio-molecular blah,

blah, blah, blah.

Who knows what it is, right?

He's this genius guy who got a little too big for his purchase, and he got pushed out

of the academy.

But she knows that he's the only one that can save them.

Now, a good chunk of this movie takes place in space.

Indeed, this movie opens in space.

Yet, as we know from that trailer, we're going to spend a good chunk of time on Earth.

What's interesting about the way this movie is made, what I like about what these directors

have done, is they've taken this movie and they've broken it up in such a way that we

are going to build ourselves into seeing how this guy ends up in this story, because this

guy does not belong on a heroic mission to do anything.

But we know he is going to be there, and that's the thing.

That's what this movie is about, right?

This movie is about the human ability to do things that we do not believe for one second

that we can do, that we know we can't do.

We know we're going to fail, but we've got to do it, and we're going to do it anyway.

I love those kinds of movies.

I love movies that are about that, a lot of military movies are about that, but I love

them when they come from a different space, and this movie manages to put all that together

very, very beautiful playing Gosling.

You know, I've been watching that man since he was a boy, Goosebumps, I think, was an

interview with all those kids, Nickelodeon, all that kind of stuff, and I used to see this

kid.

Actually, this kid is great.

And he was a Mickey Mouse kid.

He really is just wonderful.

He is as good in this as Matt Damon was in that Martian, which is high praise.

Yeah.

And he has to be funny in this movie, a good chunk of it is just him in that animatronic

rock that he's acting against in this movie when we're not on Earth.

I think that this movie is definitely going to be one of those movies to, you know, science

nerds are going to do that thing that I was talking about, where they poke at it, but

don't do that.

Yeah, there's a lot of speculative science in this.

It's set ever so slightly in the future.

So, you know, let that go.

Yes, there are doing a lot of hard science in this, too.

This is the way you do this.

That same thing that happened in the Martian, if you assume that teaching thing that happened,

that happens in this film in a very literal way.

And then we have this movie that as much as I'm praising it now, goes on about 20 minutes

too long.

But this is what they do with that 20 minutes.

They give us three different endings.

Usually, you know, I'm on this show, I'm like, you look, you get one ending for movie.

Maybe too.

You indulge in it.

And all three of them are completely, and I'm like, that never happens with me.

You know, movie ends.

I'm like, movies over guys, whether you know it or not, this movie is over, but this

movie is not over.

And then it ends again.

And I'm like, wow, you got me, I'm so glad that you did not end this movie when I wanted

you to end this movie.

And then the movie is not over.

And I'm, wow, I'm so glad that this movie was not over.

When I thought that you should have ended this movie, that's how good these guys are

at putting this together.

Now, Tim, you're an educator.

You taught school.

So, did you feel like he was authentic, it really worked as him being a professional

educator?

Absolutely.

And particularly a professional educator with really small children.

I'm thinking this, he's like a third grade teacher.

Oh, wow.

I assumed he was a high school teacher given his science.

He's like these third graders and he's teaching these kids science and he doesn't in this

absolutely brilliant way and it's brilliant because the science that he's teaching them,

he's teaching us with the audience watching the movie.

And I'm thinking, you're thinking, I think I understand what the heck he's talking about.

Like this third grade, like these third graders are.

It's really quite clever.

Jack Taylor Mary is rated PG-13, it's in white release starring Ryan Gosling, directed

by Phil Lorde and Christopher Miller, written by Drew Goddard and Andy Weir.

Ready or not to, here I come is a horror comedy starring Samara Weaving, Catherine Newton

and Sarah Michelle Geller.

The film is directed by Matt Betnelly, Open and Tyler Gillette.

The Andrea, what do you think of Ready or not to, here I come?

Yes, well, you know, we know that these movies, this is obviously a sequel to Ready or

Not One and the point of sequel is to set up the next sequel, right?

So we kind of know the heroine to this movie is actually kind of a platonic romcom meets

body horror early in the film.

We get a nice brief cameo from the body horror guy, David Cronenberg, acting in the movie.

Acting in the movie.

Wonderful, as always.

Yeah, it's one of those, if you know, you know, moments.

He was in Star Trek Discovery, I believe, with the recurring role too, I think.

He may have a future in acting.

Yeah, he's doing it, yeah.

Yes, and so it's about these two sisters who band together, they find themselves in a sort

of satanic death cult, which is hunting them and they have a mission to kill them by a certain

deadline.

So the whole movie is about all of these near misses and how do they escape this really

crazy cult and it's, you know, it's, it knows what it is.

It's not a deep, you know, probing film.

It's about blood, guts, gory, and just silliness and it delivers on that.

All right, we're talking about Ready or Not Two, where you're right, come Tim.

You know, Ready or Not, John Carpenter made a film called Halloween, and then he made

Halloween too.

And the way he did that is right when Halloween ends, Halloween two begins, literally the next

morning, that's when that film picks up.

Now when John did that, he just kept making Halloween too.

You know, everybody was still there, they just kept on rolling.

That's what happens here.

This film picks up right where, Ready or Not, left off, didn't know there was seven years

ago.

Even though there are seven years apart and you know what, I couldn't tell.

Whole pandemic happened between those two movies.

They picked it up the next morning and I'm like, wow, you know, good work, guys.

And they bring in the sister care.

So what we're going to get in this movie, we're going to get everything we got in that

first movie.

It was seven years ago, people.

So go watch the movie, pull it yourselves together and it's very explosive movie, let

us say.

We're going to get the same stuff in this movie, only multiplied by about 10.

So there are a bunch of families instead of just one family that have to try to kill

these two girls instead of just one girl.

And you know, when that thing happens at the end of the first movie that was truly spectacular

and surprising, if you saw that first movie in 2019.

At the end of that movie, everyone was like, well, I didn't see that come here.

You are going to see that coming because you know, you saw the first movie.

So they have to simply triple down on all of that and they just do in this movie.

That's all they're doing.

Sarah Michelle Gala.

I'm sorry.

I'm just nuts about Buffy and Buffy just cannot go wrong so far as I'm concerned.

She's still Buffy in your life.

She's the matriarch in this movie and she's trying to get these people.

Look, we got to kill these girls.

What's wrong with you?

That's what we're doing.

And then, you know, it gets explosive.

We're talking about Ready or Not to Here I Come, seven years after the first film, this

is rated R, it's in wide release.

Coming up, we'll talk about my father's shadow, a film from Nigeria, which takes us back

to Lagos, 1993, a story of a father and his two young sons.

We'll also hear about the horror film, Undertone, Strying Nina, Carrie, that's all coming

up on film week on LA, 89.3 and the LA staff were back in just a month.

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It's film week on LA, 89.3 and the LA staff, I'm joined by critics beyond Rio, July and

Tim Cogshell.

Up next, a film set in 1993, Legos, Nigeria, my father's shadow, the film is directed

by a Canola Davis, Jr.

What did you think, Tim, of my father's shadow?

This is an absolutely beautiful and mesmerizing film, foreboding in a certain sort of way.

As we work our way into it, that sort of drifts away a bit and we find ourselves in this

extraordinary film, shot from the perspective of these two little Nigerian boys.

The co-writer on this film is the director's brother and this story is somewhat semi-autobiographical

to their story.

And the two boys are brothers who act in the film?

Yeah, wonderful.

Absolutely wonderful.

You can just acute as kids you ever did see.

When we first meet them, they're getting through all these little fights about everything,

the big brother is telling them, look, I'm not your servant.

You want to get together.

It's just one of those little things going on in their home alone and we wonder, where are

their parents?

And then in a sort of mystical, magical, almost sort of way, the father appears.

He's there.

And he's taking care of getting ready to go on yet another work trip.

The mother has gone to town.

The father says, okay, look, I tell you what, you guys are just going to come.

They're going to come with me.

We're going to go to Lagos.

And they are all excited to go with their father to Lagos.

And we have this long trip using all kinds of apparatus to get these kids to Lagos where

the father is going to pick up some money from this shop you did.

And that's all we're doing.

We're traveling with these boys in their daddy to Lagos.

As the world goes on around them, we see the newspaper.

There are political events that are happening.

The MKB election, all that kind of stuff.

There has been an uprising a bit of a massacre.

Now that massacre in this movie didn't actually happen, but it is a reference to a massacre

that did happen in Lagos more recently.

And all of that is going on and we have these little illusions to a number of things that

are going to happen.

It's just so beautiful.

The people are so beautiful.

And while it's a difficult sort of circumstance that we can see that these people live in, particularly

when we get to Lagos, somehow it continues to be beautiful.

And we ride this movie through.

It has a sort of moon light sort of moment to that thing in the ocean, which I keep saying

beautiful.

That's the correct word.

It sounds like it's incredibly atmospheric the way you describe it.

My father's shadow, beyondria.

It's incredibly dreamy.

And what it's doing visually is sort of playing with the passage of time.

So what is memory?

What is present tense?

These boys get to go into their father's world in Lagos and it's a day in the life.

So they're kind of learning about him.

But you realize at a certain point that it's also perhaps the adult them that's remembering

this day.

And I love the way it shifts from these really present moments to using of archival footage.

There's beautiful texture in the camera work.

And it's just gorgeous, gorgeous film.

But it's that moment when as a kid you realize your father is somebody else to other people.

And so they get to see like, oh, dad's got this whole other life I didn't actually know

about.

And to see how they make sense of that and process that is very tender and sweet.

We're talking about the movie My Father's Shadow with Stars as the father, Shepay, Durisu

and the two Ekbo Brothers, Ybuk and the brother, Godwin are the co-stars as well.

The film again, Okanola Davis Jr. is the director and with his brother, well, Davis,

they co-wrote the film.

It's unrated.

You can see it at the Los Felas theater on Sunday, March 22nd.

So it looks like it's just one day only to see this film.

So hopefully there'll be other opportunities to see it again and be at the Los Felas 3.

Your tone, another horror film this week's drawing Nina Kiri and Adam Demarco, the film's

written and directed by Ian Teweson, Tim.

This movie was so good that I blocked it from my mind.

I saw this movie at a midnight screening, Sundance I think, and it creeped me out and disturbed

me and it pops up on the sheet and I go, I don't need to see this movie and I queued

up the trailer.

And I saw the trailer and it actually chilled me when I saw the trailer.

Even though you've seen that movie, I saw that trailer and I was like, oh no, I've seen

this movie.

This movie really bugged me and it's going to bug all we radio people.

This movie sounds the way I sound in my own head right now with these hit songs on.

I really care if there's a podcaster, a young woman, her mother's dying.

She moves her podcast into her mother's home.

Pretty much she's the only walking around person in this movie.

Her mother is always in bed, relatively speaking comatose.

We hear her producing partner over the headphones and over the telephone.

But it's never seen.

We've never seen.

And a few other, and we also hear this audio.

So her partner sends her these audio files, 10 audio files and it's a paranormal podcast

that they're doing.

She doesn't believe in anything paranormal.

Her partner kind of does, wants her to listen to these files.

They're supposed to be of a fella who taped his pregnant wife while she was sleeping.

On these audio files, there are all kinds of paranormal noises and sounds, voices, things

you can play back.

All that kind of stuff that you can do.

So she's listening to these files and she's also pregnant and she also has a lot of stress

because her mother is dying.

So the film becomes about whether or not what she's hearing, she's hearing there or she's

hearing here.

I just took my headphones off.

Now now I'm in the room.

And that's what the brilliance of this film is.

This audio that scares you senseless, not jump scares.

There's a lot of good camera work in this too.

But it is the mastery of audio that will chill you to your bone in this movie.

And the movie is extremely ambiguous.

The movie is messing with the notion of whether she's doing this to herself or whether

or not there is something going on.

But of course, you start to ask yourself, wait a minute, wait, did I hear that?

Did you hear that?

Did you hear that I hear it?

Is she hearing what I'm hearing?

Am I, did you start looking around?

Is that behind me?

What is going on?

Wow.

That's how creepy of this movie is.

It's extremely effective.

This young woman.

And like I said, other actors, voice actors work here, so good work, voice actors.

But this young woman, all by herself in this movie, she's outstanding.

We're talking about Nina Carey, who's the star of the film.

This is by the way a feature directorial debut for the writer director Ian Twasin, Tim

talking about undertone.

The film is in wide release.

It's rated R. The thriller The Well, directed by Hubert Davis.

The film written by Michael Capelupo and Kathleen Hepburn.

Be Andrea, tell us about The Well, please.

Yeah, this is a spare Canadian movie about a dystopian world where the natural sources

of water are mostly poisoned.

And they give you a disease that's sort of a death sentence if you intake the water.

And it's about a family that is somehow found a well that is impervious to this.

And something happens that means they have to go out into the world beyond their little

commune.

And of course, danger becomes part of the scenario.

But what I like about this film is it's high concept, but it's simple because I feel

like a lot of these dystopian films, it's like there's so much new information you have

to like to spend disbelief about that you can't really do it.

But with this, it's really easy to get into the world and go with the characters.

And it's ultimately really about a family and how they survive and also about belonging

and who to bring into your community.

So I really enjoyed this.

It's a tight, it's a tight 90 minutes, the director Hubert Davis.

He made a documentary that was at Toronto a couple of years ago actually about the history

of black hockey players in Canada.

So this is a nice addition to his catalog.

The well, this film is a narrative feature.

It's available on demand and digitally from director Hubert Davis.

The well is unrated.

There was a number three film from Germany.

It's a mystery starring Paula Beer and Barbara Auher.

The film is written and directed by Christian Petzolt.

Tim, please share with us your thoughts on this.

Another very solid film from Petzolt, a fire recently, I think transit if I'm not mistaken,

not too terribly long ago.

Very, very strong film maker, Petzolt.

It makes these films about identity.

They're very particular.

It's very slow.

This film too is about identity.

That title is a reference to the Maurice Rovéle piece, which is an extraordinary piece,

beautiful, beautiful piece, relevant here because our lead character is a pianist.

He's a music student, also relevant because that piece, while beautiful, is extremely difficult

to play.

I've tried.

I can't do it.

And that matters here in the context of what's going on.

So another piece, that Frankie Valley song, come on, Mary Ann, with that crazy bass line

that starts at Frankie Valley in the fourth season piece, that's relevant here too.

Both that song and the way it's played, it comes up again and again and again.

This is what we have.

A young woman goes on this trip with her boyfriend and another couple.

She doesn't really want to go on this trip, sort of out to this rural area, and eventually

she irritates her boyfriend enough.

He decides to take her back.

He's taking her back.

There's a car accident.

He's killed.

He's left there in the middle of this field.

Another woman sees all of this, calls, who she needs to call, and helps that young woman

to her home.

She decides and convinces the ambulance people, the police in this rural community.

It would be better if she stayed here with me.

She's okay.

She's not hurt.

She's kind of lost her memory.

I'll take care of her.

Now, there's a thing that's going on in this film.

And what I like about this particular film is it's plainly obvious what's going on in

this movie.

The mystery is not that mysterious.

It's not that mysterious.

I realized that, too, is on purpose.

The opposite of what Petzl usually does, usually holds the mystery to the end of the film.

This one, he more or less tells you, this is what's going on.

And the other thing that he does is he gives us no shocks.

He gives us no horror.

He gives us nothing but the life of these people, both of whom have these giant chunks

missing from them, and they replace the chunks missing from their lives.

They're replacing something in their lives.

They're replacing something in her life, but that can't go on forever.

And that's what this film is about.

I thought it was, it's cold.

It moves very slowly, but it kept me.

It kept me.

We're talking about the German film, Milwaukee, number three from writer-director Christian

Petzl.

Biaundria.

Yeah, this is the third movie in a trilogy.

The first one was about water, the second one was about fire, and this one is about air.

And apparently he wasn't sure it was going to be a trilogy until he made the second one.

So that kind of gave me a certain interest in watching it.

I really love how it's basically a film that lives in the small details.

The meals, the routines, the silence.

There's almost this kind of hypnotic realism that feels really authentic.

My only issue with it was that at the end it felt, the emotional arc felt pretty unresolved

to me.

It just sort of like ended, but it didn't feel satisfying in the way that it resolved the

conflict with the characters.

And I should say that Paula Beer, do I have her name right?

Yeah, Paula Beer stars.

And she's also in a main character in these other two movies in the trilogy as well.

All right.

And there was number three, the unrated film can be seen at Lemley's Royal Theatre in

West Los Angeles.

Coming up, we'll hear about the documentary, Bella.

This woman's place is in the house.

I think we heard a bit about that at a festival that it screened.

I want to let you know you can see that on the PBS app.

Also the documentary space woman about Eileen Collins and her achievements in the space

program.

This week on LAS 89.3 and the LAS app we're back momentarily.

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Filming on LAS 89.3 and the LAS app, Larry Mantle with Critics Tim Cogshell and Beyondreo

July, next up the documentary, Bella.

This woman's place is in the house.

It tells the story of Bella Abzug and of course her time in Congress.

Three term member of Congress, highly influential, became a national figure on talk shows and

public policy debates.

The documentary is directed by Jeff L. Lieberman.

Tim, what did you think?

I absolutely adore this doc, which is of course made by people who love Bella Abzug as it

happens.

Are you not going to make a doc?

Although the edges and the rough hue of Bella Abzug is in this movie, Bella was a big

boisterous woman with a big voice, unapologetic and usually kind of right, Bella.

I first came to know Bella Abzug as a child.

My aunties and my mom were big ERA people, ERA people, Equal Rights Amendment people.

In the early 70s, when all of that was happening all around, and Shirley Chisholm's run for

president, run for the Democratic nomination for president, that too.

That's when I first came to know that there was a human being called Bella Abzug and my

mother loved her and all my aunties loved her and I came to love her too.

One of the reasons why they all loved her is because she was one of the few who fully

supported Shirley Chisholm's run for that Democratic National Convention.

A lot of black folks and the Democratic Party were against Shirley Chisholm, not Bella.

Bella was down.

Of course, Bella is represented in this movie with all things related to Equal Rights for

Women, but not just that.

What I did not know about Bella, I got from this film, how she was involved in the Civil

Rights Movement all the way back to the 1950s.

Bella was on the team to try to save Charles Meeks of a young black man who was killed

for blah, blah, blah and all that kind of stuff.

But Bella was on that team and involved in many of the pivotal civil rights movements of

the 1950s and 60s as she was working her way into the women's movement.

This film, I don't know how these people do it.

There's footage of Bella Abzug when she's 14 years old in this movie.

She's born in 1929-1998.

She's 14 years old and there's a Kodak footage of her.

She was beautiful, by the way, and say what is red, lipstick, oh my God.

And I can see why her husband fell in love with her.

Another figure in this movie is her husband, who from the very first time he saw her supported

Bella Abzug, his name is Abzug, and every single thing that she did was often on those

television shows with her.

He's an important figure here because without a guy like him behind her, Bella would have

even more difficult time.

The thing about the Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary, her husband is a major figure in that

too.

Same thing happened to Bella that happened to Ruth.

She couldn't get into Harvard because Harvard didn't let women in, so she had to go to

Columbia.

Had to go to Columbia because she went to Columbia and say had to go to Columbia.

And became a lawyer.

And it was becoming a lawyer that really gave her the leverage to do many of the things

that she did later because she had that power.

Little was relevant in that equal rights movement, and I literally laid eyes on her once in

the early 70s, when she came to St. Louis to do battle in a debate with Phyllis Schlaffley,

who was Phyllis Schlaffley.

Oh wow, yeah.

And that was a nightmare.

I'll tell you that.

Oh, bad.

So this movie, yes, is absolutely a beautiful movie about Bella follows her to the end of

her life.

Her daughters are in the film.

Barbara Streisand, Lily Tomlin, all Renee, Joseph Bologna's wife.

I forget what her name is, the actress in the film.

Renee Taylor.

Renee Taylor.

Thank you very much.

It was Mary to Joseph Bologna.

And they were big supporters of her.

Barbara Streisand and all of the sort of Hollywood types that you can remember.

She did battle with a lot of folks, Bella, and a lot of folks in the Democratic Party.

It's funny.

We talk about folks in the Democratic Party today, Ocasio Cortez and others.

But somehow we've forgotten about Bella Absurd.

These women stand on a foundation that this woman built.

Well, and it's interesting you mentioned AOC because, of course, Absurd was total New Yorker.

And that I'm sure is part of the documentary as well.

Bella, the woman's place, or excuse me, this woman's place is in the house, a documentary

that is now streaming on the PBS app, it's rated TV 14.

The documentary, Space Woman, tells the story of Eileen Collins, a very important figure

in the American Space Program, the first woman to pilot and command a spacecraft beyond

real.

Yes, I feel like every time I'm on this show, I'm saying this is a really important woman

I've never heard of who has made a had a documentary made about her.

And this is another example of that.

I literally had never heard of Eileen Collins before this documentary.

I'm not really big into space.

So I mean, I certainly heard of Sally Ride, who'd also recently had a documentary made

about her.

I didn't know about this commander.

It's an interesting story in that it shows the sort of archival of how the press treated

women when they were first breaking into the astronaut field.

But this documentary actually interviews her family quite extensively, including her

daughter.

And a lot of the movie is about her relationship with her daughter and what her daughter

knew about every time her mom was going into space as a kid and how she dealt with not

knowing whether her mom was going to come back.

And it's actually quite interesting.

It feels pretty unfocused at times like the animations feel very tacked on and sort of

not beside the point, but you know, it's a really compelling subject.

And it's based on the memoir written by Eileen Collins, which came out a few years ago.

This woman is unrated, it's directed by Hannah Berryman.

And you can see it at the Coast Film and Music Festival in Laguna Beach this Saturday.

Slanted, horror comedy starring Shirley Chen and McKenna Grace.

The film is written and directed by Amy Wang.

Tim.

Well, this is going to be a body horror film.

It's going to become a body horror film.

But before it becomes a body horror film, it's a very interesting film about race and

American.

And it speaks to something that has been being spoken to about race and America in terms

of narrative stories.

For a very long time, I'm thinking of George Skyler's Black No More, which is a book I think

from the 30s, I'm not mistaken, that George Skyler wrote about a doctor who created this

situation.

So the Black people could turn themselves white and blah, blah, blah, and what goes on.

And then I'm thinking of Black like me.

Yeah, I remember that book very well.

Am I not a film from, too?

That was based on a, he actually did that.

He did it.

He was actually a white man who darkened his skin to go out in the world and to purportedly

share for white readers what it was like.

How different his life was being perceived as a white man.

And so these notions have been around for a long time.

That notion is in this film, a young Chinese girl.

We meet her when she's actually a child arriving with her family.

And she grows up.

We meet her again.

She's a teenager.

And there's this process that she can use to change herself fully and completely to a white

person and a mechanic plays her in that film.

And then we get that film.

Like I said, though, it slips into a body horror film.

And frankly, I don't think I needed the body horror film.

Did it lose the social commentary when it did that?

Except for when somebody's actually saying it.

And that we don't need either.

Yeah, slanted is the movie we're talking about.

Beyondria?

Yeah, I mean, it gets into body horror territory, but the problem I had with it is that

it doesn't go far enough.

It's quite timid.

And you know, it's a really perplexing concept of, that's quite baffling to me of that this

girl feels so excluded at school that her only solution to that is becoming white.

And it doesn't really track with the character development of the parents.

Like they and still in her a love of Chinese culture, they're very loving towards her.

So it just doesn't make any sense that that would be her her step.

And yeah, I didn't really enjoy this.

It felt like too little of one thing and too much of another.

And I will also say there's a book that came out in 2024 by Nicole Leune called One

of Our Kind, which is based on this similar idea.

And that book is terrible.

So not both of them at the same time.

You get a two four here.

What it is rated are you can see it in select theaters for our film week critics.

I'm Larry Mantle.

Thanks so much for joining us on film week.

Hey, everybody.

It's Kai.

Rizzo, the host of Marketplace inviting you to come see me live on stage at the Aratani

Theater on Sunday, March the 29th for an afternoon of digging into the headlines of

this economy and this moment.

The only thing that's going to be missing is you unless you get tickets right now.

Visit LAS.com slash events.

Hope to see you there.