The Wild Robot ★★★★★
Directed by Chris Sanders. Voices of Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara, Matt Berry. G cert, gen release, 102 min
DreamWorks Animation celebrates its 30th anniversary with the best feature cartoon from a major studio in many years. Nyong’o voices a robot who, cast adrift on an island packed with wildlife, becomes stand-in mother to a young goose. The core theme here is the trials of parenthood — and particularly of motherhood. “I do not have the required programming for this,” Roz bleeps. “Nobody does,” her possum pal replies. Parents will see analogues for all the painful partings of adolescence and early adulthood. Children will get a sense of challenges ahead. All rendered in beautiful painterly animation. Full review DC
Woman of the Hour ★★★★☆
Directed by Anna Kendrick. Starring Anna Kendrick, Daniel Zovatto, Nicolette Robinson, Tony Hale. Netflix, 94 min
Kendrick’s auspicious and absorbing directorial debut concerns Rodney Alcala (Zovatto), a serial rapist and killer who was in the middle of a violent murder spree when he appeared on the game show The Dating Game in 1978. Alcala, who died in jail in 2021, may have killed as many as 130 women and girls, a grim statistic at odds with his jaunty pop culture moniker, the Dating Game Killer. Kendrick and cinematographer Zach Kuperstein carefully frame every terrifying scene to excise gratuitous detail and give the female characters agency as they fight to survive. First-class work. Full review TB
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The Apprentice ★★★☆☆
Directed by Ali Abbasi. Starring Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Martin Donovan, Maria Bakalova. 15A cert, gen release, 122 min
Interesting, low-energy study of the early days of Donald Trump (Stan) as a protege of ruthless lawyer Roy Cohn (Strong). Neither man is exactly attempting an impersonation. Strong, offering a less self-doubting aggressor than his Kendall Roy in Succession, fires through the uptown streets like a barracuda through prey-rich water. Stan, dealing with a much more familiar figure, rations his appropriations to softened consonants and that weird mouth affectation that suggests an unfulfilled inclination to whistle. The film feels a tad stranded between evisceration and cold neutrality. But the performances keep it afloat. New York of the grim 1970s is convincingly evoked. Full review DC
Every Little Thing ★★★★☆
Directed by Sally Aitken. Featuring Terry Masear. Prime Video, 93 min
Hummingbirds are captured in all their tiny majesty in this gorgeous, macro-lensed, life-affirming documentary. The winged cast includes little motherless Jimmy, who has fallen out of his nest; Sugar Baby who has been damaged by the family who found her; and Mikhail, who shares a cage with love interest Alexa, oblivious to the fact that she is an entirely different species. Orphaned babies are fed through 22 gauge catheters. Wings are bathed with cotton buds. “If they don’t do everything right, they die,” Terry Masear, a species specialist, explains. Endlessly delightful. Full review TB
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