‘Sorry, Baby’ (2025)
Eva Victor’s Ipswich-shot tale of sisterly bonds and trauma survival is on the big screen in the Boston area only at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, but is now online for a theater-run sticker price, down from an initial $20. The intimate affair focuses on the relationship between Agnes (Victor) and Lydie (Naomi Ackie, “Mickey 17”), grad school besties at the same small fictional New England college – called Fairpoint – where Agnes hopes to spin her adjunct-lecturer gig into a full-time faculty position. (“Lolita” is her thing, and also an arc that leans into bigger plot developments.) Lydie, a New Yorker and expectant parent with her partner (the fiery E.R. Fightmaster), is crashing with Agnes in her humble but quaint New England abode while visiting the campus for a workshop. (The child in Lydie’s belly is the baby of the title). Their conversations are rich and revealing; you could think of “Sorry, Baby” as “My Dinner with Andre” (1981) if directed by Miranda July. The pair’s reunion and academic pursuits take an unsettling shift at Agnes’ review session with her advising professor (Louis Cancelmi), a man who appears kind, astute and intellectually attentive. The meeting gets moved from his office to his house, and though we never see what transpires inside, we know from the time-lapse lens trained judiciously on the stoop that Agnes is there from midday until well into the evening. When she finally stumbles out, she is disoriented and clearly traumatized. Back home, it doesn’t take much for Lydie to know what happened. Both moments are conceived and shot by Victor with subtlety and an emotional precision that resonates profoundly through the rest of the film as the bigger wheels of the college administration looking into Agnes’ complaint and Agnes reporting for jury duty victimize her over and over again. Overall, though, the film is less about putting power-wielding predators on trial and more about the power of sisterhood, quiet compassion and the courage to persevere. Excellent in a pointed yet small role as a sandwich shop owner is John Carroll Lynch (“Fargo”). So too is Lucas Hedges, no stranger to the North Shore (“Manchester by the Sea”), who pops in now and then as Agnes’ far-flung neighbor and occasional hookup. If you’re thinking Victor must be an ingrained local, stop right there; they were born in Paris and raised in California, shooting here for our renowned collegiate backdrop. “Sorry, Baby” marks Victor’s directorial debut. It’s a competent and impressive one that should have many awaiting their sophomore effort. (Tom Meek)
On Amazon Prime Video.
‘Boys Go to Jupiter’ (2024)
Animated feature films were once among the most prohibitively expensive forms of art – one that required the full might of the Disney-Industrial Complex to crank out successfully. Now, thanks to advances in computing, the medium has become democratized; last year’s Oscar-winning, word-of-mouth sensation “Flow” was crafted by a tiny crew using consumer-grade software. “Boys Go to Jupiter,” the debut from writer-director-animator Julian Glander, is even more intimate, a handmade CGI coming-of-age fable with more heart and personality than a decade’s worth of Pixar films. The plot, such as it is, follows Billy 5000 (voiced by Jack Corbett), a teenage high school dropout with plans to fund his dreams via delivery-app hustle. Billy’s shaggy-dog story is incidental to the peculiar characters he encounters in his travels: an orange juice magnate who may or may not be a genetically mutated dolphin (’90s comedy icon Garofalo), the winsome proprietor of a decrepit, dinosaur-themed minigolf course (Joe Pera, of TV’s “Joe Pera Talks to You”), an interdimensional food blogger (Rookie editor Tavi Gevinson), and so on. The voice cast is a veritable who’s who of contemporary alt-comedy, including Julio Torres (“Problemista”), Eva Victor (“Sorry, Baby,” see above), Sarah Sherman (“Saturday Night Live”) and Cole Escola (Broadway’s “Oh, Mary!”). They all move through the dreamy, candy-colored ambiance depicting the liminal weirdness of Florida’s teenage wasteland as a wash of vaporwave synths and tacky roadside attractions. At times the animation betrays its homespun origins, looking a bit too much like a third-party Nintendo Switch game. But what “Boys go to Jupiter” lacks in polish it more than makes up for in expressive character design, inventive visuals and absurdist dialogue (“Nobody invented Gatorade. It’s a liquid. Like milk.”). It also deftly captures the bleakness of growing up in a modern techno-consumerist society, with grindset YouTubers influencing impressionable youths to spend their free moments doing menial work for a company rather than hanging with friends. Those accustomed to more conventional plotting may find their patience tested, but viewed through a sufficiently cockeyed lens (and perhaps a little chemical augmentation) “Boys Go to Jupiter” is one of the most charming, affecting and utterly singular animated films of the year. (Oscar Goff)
At Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square.
‘Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass’ (2024)
The first feature from the Brothers Quay in 20 years delivers the trippy, eerie goods that one would expect from the filmmaking twins known for the precision of their macabre, stop-motion puppetry and intricate sets that often evoke Kafka and Grand Guignol. A blend of live action and stop-motion animation, the dark gothic tale told in seven chapters has Bram Stoker trappings but is based on a Bruno Schulz story – as many of Quay endeavors are. It follows a man named Josef on a train en route to a sanatorium in the Carpathian mountains, where his father is ailing. Time and space inside the asylum’s never-ending maze of hallways fold inward as dreams and reality merge, conflate and separate. Some of the imagery is grimly provocative and other times daringly erotic – there’s a topless burlesque performer leading a parade of depraved businessmen slithering on their bellies, and plenty of naughty keyhole peeping. “Sanatorium Under the Sign” is surreal and provocative, to be sure, but the heavy reliance on black-and-white photography and uneven interweaving of animation and live action pulls the viewer out the experience more than Quay projects such as the infallible “Streets of Crocodiles” (1986, also based on a Schulz story). The orchestration to Timothy Nelson’s viscerally haunting score and editing is uncanny, but not enough to raise the Brothers Quay’s already high bar. (Tom Meek)
At The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harvard Square, Cambridge.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
Cambridge writer Tom Meek’s reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in WBUR’s The ARTery, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom is also a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and rides his bike everywhere.
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