Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo in Wicked: For Good
WICKED: FOR GOOD
There are obviously plenty of reasons to want to see Wicked: For Good, including, but hardly limited to, your need for closure on director Jon M. Chu's two-part Broadway adaptation and, if you were a fan of last November's Wicked, the chance to again spend two-plus hours in an Oz re-imagined with Stephen Schwartz songs, CGI, and more talking animals than L. Frank Baum's one cowardly lion.
For my money, though – and I very much liked part one – the only real reason to see Chu's musical continuation is Ariana Grande, who deepens her portrayal of Glinda (née Galinda) to such a degree that both the character and the performer feel remarkably fresh, almost as though we're meeting them for the first time. Grande makes the bad bits better and the good ones transcendent, and when Glinda shares scenes with her presumably wicked bestie Elphaba, co-star Cynthia Erivo doesn't merely come to life in ways she doesn't elsewhere; she looks palpably relieved.
With her mischievous, loopy line deliveries and check-me-out physicality that played into dumb-blond stereotypes while simultaneously outclassing them, Grande was the unquestionable comic highlight of Wicked I. (She also elicited my sole out-loud laugh in II with her bitchy, out-of-nowhere crack implying that Dorothy Gale from Kansas was kind of a pain in the ass.) Yet it still wasn't clear how well Grande's routine would work within the far-darker confines of a part deux, particularly for those of us not previously acquainted with the stage musical. Turns out, it works magnificently. There's just enough of last year's über-chipper, pretty-in-pink egoist left to make Grande's Glinda deeply affecting when facing the limitations of her power and her complicity in Elphaba's ordeal. And when Glinda makes a rash suggestion regarding the best way to ensnare her friend, Grande, letting the enormity of the betrayal sink in, drops her timbre by nearly a full octave and suddenly seems wholly, vulnerably, heartbreakingly unrecognizable – to us and herself. Even disregarding those glorious vocals (as if you could!), and especially when paired with Erivo, Grande's is a thoroughly stunning performance, and the only way it might've appeared better is if the movie came anywhere close to matching her.
Lots of fans were concerned, if not mortified, when they initially learned that Chu's Wicked would be broken up into two separate films covering one act of the musical each, arguing that there wasn't enough material to sustain what would encompass almost five collective hours. (From what I understand, the stage version clocks in at two-and-three-quarter hours with intermission.) Not knowing what I was getting into and enjoying myself immensely, part one's two-hours-40 didn't feel too long to me. For Good runs a half-hour shorter yet feels an hour longer, primarily because – you were right, fans – there just isn't enough going on. Wicked Witch of the West Elphaba is out to save Oz's animal population and prove the Wizard a charlatan, everyone else wants to stop or save her, and barring the creations of a Scarecrow and Tin Man here and there, so it goes for 130 distractingly lengthy minutes
Chu's sequel spins its wheels in its first scene, a blockbuster-minded waste of time involving Elphaba and the flying monkeys and the pour souls schlepping away at building the Yellow Brick Road. But as we're gradually re-introduced to the tale's significant supporting figures – chiefly Jonathan Bailey's Prince Fiyero, Marissa Bode's now-governor Nessa, Ethan Slater's munchkin Boq, Michelle Yeoh's sinister Madame Morrible, and Jeff Goldblum's “wonderful” Wizard of Oz – you realize it's not just the marking-time set pieces that are slowing events down to a crawl. Everyone, Grande and Erivo included. seems weirdly directed to draw out the pauses in their exchanges, filling what should've been snappy banter with portent, and ladling so much oppressive gloom onto their readings that the conversations grow as murky and dour as cinematographer Alice Brooks' unfortunate lighting choices. The actors do an awful lot of glowering, and no one suffers from this approach more than Erivo. She had oodles of varying notes to play (and, of course, sing) the first time around. Yet unless she's engaged in naturalistic rapport with Glinda, Erivo's Elphaba, here, is nothing but threatening poses and posturing – Wicked: The Photo Shoot.
To be fair, I'm ignoring Erivo's love scenes opposite Bailey … and can anyone blame me? Rarely have I seen performers less convincing, or less connected, playing mutual passion, and their “As Long as You're Mine” number is an embarrassment made worse by Chu's head-scratching decision to have Elphaba put on clothes – specifically a chunky, floor-length, scratchy-seeming shawl – before she and Fiyero consummate their love. (On a related note: Am I the only person who hoped to never, ever have to consider the sex lives of Oz figures?) Thankfully, this icky sequence is as unwatchable as the movie gets, despite Yeoh's stabs at singing briefly make it unlistenable. But it's also hard to argue that there isn't one song presented with the snap of any of Chu's first-act efforts. Even Wicked die-hards will likely admit that, “For Good” excluded, Act II is noticeably light on enchanting tunes, and sadly, Chu's direction of them is similarly uninspired. He does have some fun, overextended though it is, with the mirror imagery on Glinda's actually-kinda-lovely debuting solo “The Girl in the Bubble,” and smartly stays out of Erivo's and Grande's way on their (sub-)titular duet. Dazzling vocals notwithstanding, the rest of For Good's numbers, including Elphaba's own newly devised solo “No Place Like Home,” are eminently forgettable – or, in the case of “As Long as You're Mind,” things you wish you could forget.
Musical-theatre folk are intimately familiar with the concept of “second-act problems.” This term is used in conjunction with shows that front-load all their best material – songs, jokes, plot complications – into Act I in the hope that audiences (and the producers ponying up the dough) won't bolt before intermission. If they stick around, the high of the first act will theoretically carry them through to the curtain call, and the lesser stuff won't have mattered much. I can't speak definitively on this, but Wicked seems like one of those shows. Consequently, because of the films' two-part structure, Wicked: For Good was almost preordained to be exclusively second-act problems, and they're problems we perhaps wouldn't have noticed so keenly in, say, a three-hour presentation of Wicked in toto. (Pun intended.) Thank Good-ness, then, for Glinda all throughout, and for her heavenly final duet with Elphaba that reminds us, despite all the anxious activity surrounding them, that this friendship – conjoined with the unmistakable off-screen friendship between its leads – holds the heart to this behemoth musical adventure. Chu's closer may not be the hoped-for grand finale, but it's most certainly Grande.
RENTAL FAMILY
By all rights, Rental Family should be unendurable. Lord knows its trailer is.
I presume you've seen it? This thing has preceded most every movie, regardless of genre, I've attended since July. In it, our reigning American gentle giant Brendan Fraser is hired by a Japanese outfit as a stand-in figure for any number of uncomfortable predicaments: a grieving attendee at a funeral; a video-game ally for a shut-in; a faux groom saving face with the parents of a lesbian bride. This is an honest-to-God profession in Japan – a country, as the film informs us, with veritable epidemics of loneliness and depression and little trust in psychotherapy – and Brendan's chief case is that of a mixed-race pre-teen girl for whom Fraser is contracted to be her long-absent father. It's only a slight exaggeration to say that, every time I've been forced to sit through this preview, I've throw up in my mouth a bit, nauseated by its star's overblown facial contortions and the promise/threat that not one genuine surprise would be forthcoming. Obviously, this advertised laughing-through-tears endeavor was gonna climax, emotionally, with the poor young thing learning the truth of her “dad's” chicanery, and we were gonna be expected to weep. But why? The heartbreak of this American actor having to regretfully leave his make-believe half-Japanese charge whom he has learned to love was Built. Into. The. Freaking. Plot.
The good news about director/co-writer Hikari's and co-screenwriter Stephen Blahunt's movie is that, over the course of 110 minutes, it's nowhere near as sickly as its advance two-minutes-plus suggested – a nice reminder that bad movies aren't necessarily superior in trailer form. (Interestingly, and blessedly, not all of Fraser's most egregious mugging in the trailer – nor all of Hikari's most noxious inclusions, such as that winsome gleaming-tooth bit – made it to the final cut.) The better news is that there's a pretty interesting film buried inside Rental Family, even if it's never fully located. At no point during Hiraki's pushy comic tearjerker did I truly enjoy myself. Watching it is like viewing a multi-cam broadcast sitcom that forgot to include the laugh track, and despite two or three legitimately touching moments, this easy crier's eyes stayed resolutely dry. Yet beginning with the movie's basic setup, there are fascinating fringe touches and unexpectedly elegant detours, as well as a few Japanese actors who hopefully gave Fraser a few tips on subtlety and modulation. Thank the gods, the Oscar winner's latest isn't The Whale. But in this naturalistic role, he's continuing to subject us to Whale-level telegraphing – as if hoping to be still be seen under many pounds of prosthetics – and one can only pray that playing a trying-too-hard actor will inspire Fraser to start trying a bit less.
Because even though Brendan Fraser has never been accused of being a great actor, he was pretty great once, right? He was charming, empathetic, and helplessly likable, and handily pulled off his roles in Encino Man and School Ties and Gods & Monsters and George of the Jungle and The Mummys and Crash (yeah, I said it) through sheer force of offhanded, earnest charisma. There was no sweat in Fraser's performances, which is likely why they were habitually underrated. Working against the imposed, noxious, latex-ridden melodrama of Darren Aronofsky's The Whale, Fraser had almost no choice but to over-emote. And while that choice likely scored him his Academy Award, it's a terrible decision regarding his role as Rental Family's Phillip Vandarploeug, an American actor living in Japan for seven years who, apparently, (a) hasn't been told that his is the worst screen name for an actor ever, and (b) lacks sufficient talent, and even professional courtesy, to maintain a career.
Considering that the script is so vague about what is and isn't meant to be funny, it's hard to tell if there's a joke in this middle-aged man being late to every audition and gig he lands; at some point over seven years, given his track record, employers would simply stop calling. But Phillip secures his job with the “Rental Family” service because they need “a token white guy,” even though there have to be thousands of them in Japan without Phillip's chronic tardiness issue. As far as the acting is concerned, and beyond the cheesy toothpaste commercial we're shown, the guy initially balks when asked to play Rental Family's plot-dependent father figure because “I never grew up with a father,” and consequently doesn't know how to pretend to be one. Seriously, Phillip? With all those acting books we see lining the shelves of your tiny Tokyo apartment, you never once cracked open All My Sons or Death of a Salesman? Laurence Olivier would slap your face. He would also slap it for Phillip's decision to hide in a bathroom stall rather than engage in the fake-groom role he was contractually assigned to. I get that Hiraki and Blahunt are going for broad comedy while also trying to demonstrate Phillip's deep misgivings with this Japanese human-replacement career. But that makes events all the more loathsome when, after he bonds with his entrusted pre-teen Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), Phillip proves to not only be the right man for the job, but a man who can save the entirety of Japan from itself.
As the previews indicated, yes, Phillip will be hated by Mia before he's grudgingly accepted .. and then, as the previews don't indicate but we could all figure out, the two will find themselves Bonded Forever. Yet Phillip's White Savior-ism is only getting started. The man will prove to Mia's mom (Shino Shinozaki) that honesty, when trying to get her daughter in the best-possible school, is preferable to obsequiousness. He'll prove to his Rental Family employer Shinji (Takehiro Hira) that setting employees up to be hired apologists is a losing strategy. He'll prove to his fellow employee Aiko (Mari Yamamoto) that her assumed roles as lovers to spineless adulterers are degrading. He'll prove to dementia-ridden film legend Kikuo Hasegawa (played by Japanese film legend Akira Emoto) that, despite familial custom, he doesn't have to bend to the will of his demanding daughter. It would be enough, in the manner of so many triumph-of-the-underdog movies, for Phillip to inspire his adversaries to become better people. Rental Family is specific in having Phillip make his adversaries better Japanese people – essentially bettering an entire country's habits and mores – and hopefully no additional words are necessary regarding how offensive that concept is.
So why, in the end, did I not abjectly abhor this movie? I'm still trying to work that out. It certainly has something to do with the caliber of supporting talent, given the completely honorable, occasionally inspired performances by Hira, Yamamoto, Emoto, Shino Shinozaki as Mia's mom, and Tamae Ando as Phillip's frequently solicited prostitute. (Along with images of Oz characters getting it on, I don't ever again want to see shirtless Brendan Fraser in bed with a lovely Japanese hooker half his age – or, worse, sharing a bathtub with her.) Cinematographer Takurô Ishizaka's handheld shots are a nice alternative to prototypical studio-dramedy smoothness, and he takes full advantage of Japan's cherry-blossom season; Schitt's Creek's David Rose would be in paradise. Pre-teen Gorman, as Mia, is certainly cute … and let's leave it at that. And every once in a while, we're treated to hints about what Hikari's movie might've been without so tight a grip on its sentimental leanings. Aiko's escalator ride home after a brutal paid encounter. Kikuo's late-in-life demand for a road trip. The extent that Shinji has taken work home with him. Rental Family itself didn't affect me. But if you read between its Americanized lines, there's a fantastically intriguing, darkly funny, even moving film in there. Somewhere.
TRAIN DREAMS
At present, I find it impossible to separate my thoughts about Train Dreams from the manner in which I first saw the film. After hitting the sack at 9 p.m. this past Thursday – the end of a long work day, and also my ideal bedtime – I woke up at 4:30 a.m. wide awake. A half-hour later, realizing continued sleep was impossible, I logged onto Netflix for a 5 a.m. viewing of director/co-writer Clint Bentley's meditative drama about a logger in the Pacific Northwest that I'd heard was excellent and gorgeous, but largely narrative-free. (It played at Davenport's The Last Picture House in advance of its Netflix debut, and can still be seen, for a few more days, at Iowa City's FilmScene,) Knowing the film was something I'd planned to review, I figured it would either be a title I could get out of the way really early, or, if it wasn't working for me, something I could fall asleep to and resume later.
I did not sleep. I might not have blinked. I'm not certain how Bentley's film will play without total involvement and attention, whether in a darkened public auditorium or through whatever ideally darkened surroundings you can replicate at home. Train Dreams, though, absolutely knocked me out: It's like The Tree of Life meets The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford meets the less-raunchy parts of Cuarón's Y tu mamá también, with just a soupçon of The Life of Chuck – but only a soupçon, as a larger dollop might prove fatal. None of those name-checked titles are likely to secure Bentley's film any more eyeballs than Netflix's and Richard Linklater's recently released Breathless salute Nouvelle Vague is probably getting. But huzzah to the streaming service for acquiring it anyway, because this astonishment will, now, no doubt secure more viewers than a theatrical-only release would've amassed. Like me, a few of them might even be moved to watch the movie a second time, this time with the advance knowledge that they're watching one of the very finest movies of 2025.
Adapted from author Denis Johnson's 2011 novella that, in slightly altered short-story form, won a 2003 O. Henry Award, Train Dreams tells the life story, practically from his late-19th-century birth to his 1968 passing, of one Robert Grainer (Joel Edgerton, in a devastatingly subtle, unimprovable performance). An orphan sent to live with relatives at – as explained in Will Patton's kind, sobering narration – age “six or seven,” Robert grows up to be a train laborer and logger, helping cut down trees in the Pacific Northwest for incipient cross-country railroads. Egged on by a cousin whom we never meet, he attends a church service, and finds himself unexpectedly courted by a lovely young woman named Gladys (a perfectly cast Felicity Jones, better than ever before). They eventually marry. They have a daughter named Kate. They build a cabin facing a beautiful lake. Every few months, for extended periods of time, Robert leaves his wife and child to resume his logging work. Eventually, there's tragedy. There are glimmers of hope. There's always the work. And then Robert dies. That's the “plot” of Train Dreams. It's all the plot this astonishing experience requires.
I will never forget Viola Davis' 2017 speech when she won the Academy Award for Fences, expressing her gratitude for becoming an artist by saying, “We are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.” In Train Dreams, Bentley, his co-adapter Greg Kwedar, and their unimpeachable cast and creative team celebrate what it means to live a life – though not necessarily a remarkable life. Robert, as we're told, leaves the world with about as little fanfare as he entered it. He enjoyed moments of transcendent happiness living with Gladys and Kate; in the manner of the omniscient Y tu mamá and Life of Chuck narrators, Patton informs us when, still a young man, Robert was the happiest he would ever again be. He found occasional pleasure in his work, and those toiling alongside him, among them the aged logger Billy (John Diehl) and the explosives expert Arn (a staggeringly fine William H. Macy). He endured moments of paralysis that would haunt him forever, as when he failed to stop a group of thugs from tossing a Chinese laborer (Chuck Tucker), for no apparent reason, off a bridge to his death. He holds innumerable regrets regarding not being with his family when they needed him most. He finds solace and kinship in unanticipated friends: a Native American storekeeper (Nathaniel Arcand); a widowed forestry-services employee (Kerry Condon). Robert Grainier wasn't anyone special. He simply was. Which alone, as the movie makes abundantly clear, makes him special.
It's been a long time – 2022's Aftersun might be the most recent example – since I've seen a film that reduced me to such a blubbery wreck without doing anything that could rightfully be called manipulative. Composer Bryce Dessner delivers a beautifully melancholic score; cinematographer Adolpho Velosco provides large-scale outdoor images to drop your jaw; Robert endures harrowing travails; there are casualties aplenty during the man's work tenure. (I never knew there were so many ways for railroad workers and loggers to perish 100-odd years ago … and perhaps today, as well.) But I didn't outright sob until the blackout right before the end credits, when the enormity of Bentley's achievement truly hit me, suggesting that a collection of found moments in an individual life essentially is a life – the fragments we remember, for good and ill, that ultimately define us. There's beauty here, as well as ugliness, and euphoria, and horror, and enlightenment, and confusion, and perseverance, and basic getting-through-the-day banality. It's all tied together, which Robert sees, and we see, when the film takes him to the physically highest place he's ever been toward the climax – and then, in those moments before the final blackout, takes him higher still. Sometimes you need many hundreds of feet, if not literal miles, to see things as they truly are. Train Dreams made my soul soar.
