Three major problems hamper Make a Girl as a film. The first is its very premise. Akira offhandedly makes Zero, a literal living, breathing girl, from nothing. Born a teenager, his lab-grown girl already knows at birth all the information needed to live in human society (like language skills and critical thinking)—even if she lacks the experience to use that data correctly. And to be clear, this isn’t an everyday occurrence in the world of this film—other people aren’t just going around making teenagers on a whim.

Despite this, no one bats an eye at the fact that Akira created life. His friends give little more than an exasperated sigh, and his scientist peers find her interesting but not much more. What he has done logically has world-shaking implications, but there’s no government interference or societal outcry. People just don’t seem to think it’s much of a big deal.

Stemming from the problems with the premise, we have the next major issue: the tone. Much of the film is silly and lighthearted, focusing on Zero adjusting to living in human society and trying to figure out her role as Akira’s girlfriend. It’s so lighthearted that, given the should-be-serious subject material, it rings false. It almost feels like there is some major twist in the works—like the whole world is fabricated or a dream or something similar. It’s incredibly challenging to suspend disbelief. Then comes the final climax, which is so intense and graphically violent that it feels like part of a different (and much more interesting) film.

And here we reach the final issue plaguing the film: its theme. When it comes down to it, Make a Girl is focused on the question of free will. Does Zero love Akira because she was designed that way, or are her emotions all her own? But more than that, how can she prove it one way or the other? That is the personal dilemma at the core of the film. The problem is that rather than truly develop and explore this conundrum, the film jumps directly to the most extreme way of testing it. And while it makes for an exciting, visceral climax, the movie does little thematically to lay the groundwork for such an overreaction.

Of course, the film isn’t all bad—even within the problems stated above are more than a few interesting elements. One interesting aspect of the film is that its hero and villain face the same struggles. Both are bashing their heads against a wall in an attempt to even start to understand the greatest scientific mind of the previous generation: Akira’s mother. Both are going to evermore extreme lengths to try and progress—to step out from the shadow of such a great woman. But the pressure is soul-crushing and leads both to do things they come to regret. When it comes down to it, their core problem is the same: neither can understand Akira’s mother’s thought process and thus can’t continue her work or even build upon it.

Another interesting development is its investigation of love. While romantic love is the catalyst, the film focuses on familial love as well. It also does some fun playing around with the idea of love triangles, childhood best friends, and the ways people use their roles in other people’s lives to fill the voids in their own. Basically, it explores how love can let you see the world in a new way—and can change your life to make you a more balanced and productive person in the process.

On the visual side, Make a Girl is a mixed bag. There are times when the 3D animated film truly does look like a traditionally animated film—however, the majority of the time, it does not. That doesn’t mean it looks bad, however. The more action-packed the scene, the more stunning the film becomes. On the other hand, some noticeable wide shots that are a bit odd. Despite the 3D models used in the film, the characters seem under-detailed. There are also some strange frame-rate drops in the animation.

The music is not bad, but it is definitely forgettable. I honestly can’t remember a single bar of it—or even a moment where the music stood out in the least—positively or negatively.

In the end, Make a Girl has an undercooked premise, inconsistent tone, and underexplored theme. The animation itself is likewise filled with ups and downs in the quality department. It is, simply put, a film with some interesting ideas but poor execution.

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.

Joy, 2024.

Directed by Ben Taylor.
Starring Thomasin McKenzie, Bill Nighy, James Norton, Charlie Murphy, Rish Shah, Cecily Cleeve, Eoin Duffy, Mariam Haque, Abbiegail Mills, Olivia Sellers, Joanna Scanlan, Tanya Moodie, Ella Bruccoleri, Douggie McMeekin, Miles Jupp, Louisa Harland, and Toby Williams.

SYNOPSIS:

3 trailblazers: a young nurse, a visionary scientist, and an innovative surgeon face opposition from the church, state, media, and medical establishment in their pursuit of the world’s first ‘test tube baby,’ Louise Joy Brown.

With several competing plot threads and perspectives, Ben Taylor’s directorial debut (but not without plenty of prior experience working on television), Joy – the story of the first-ever baby birthed through IVF (in vitro fertilization) methods – overcomes such a scattershot narrative through sincerity and a pair of winning, affecting performances from a conflicted, sacrificial, and determined Thomasin McKenzie a nuanced Bill Nighy.

From a script by Jack Thorne (seemingly a screenwriting journeyman, having dabbled in television, other Netflix originals such as Enola Holmes, and other period pieces centered on life-changing accomplishments like The Aeronauts) with story contributions from Emma Gordon, Rachel Mason, and Shaun Topp, there is a case to be made that this inspirational story could have benefited from the limited series treatment given how much these filmmakers are trying to tackle.

Rather than stick to scientific research and problem-solving (while also using interactions with test subjects to break down scientific babble for the average viewer with a light and amusing touch), the film admirably cares about the life of nurse Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie), her reasons for getting involved with IVF research, and how that cuts her off from a disapproving, conservative mother played by Joanna Scanlan. The film is also interested in depicting how she became close to the numerous human test subjects, bonding over their personal lives and taking the occasional field trip.

Front and center of the research is Bob Edwards (James Norton), who also becomes the public face, trying to push back against conservative media, public, and medical boards that don’t see finding a way to give infertile women a choice as important science. This typically blows up in his face, as he is unable to sway minds and earn additional funding, something that gradually begins to wear him down mentally. Meanwhile, outstanding surgeon Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy) is convinced to join them, also serving as a source of wisdom for Jean and Bob, each going through personal and professional strife. His incisions and various surgeries are also sensitively and educationally captured without bordering on gratuity.  

There is a moment where Jean, moderately religious, also has to look inside at the other side of that choice, abortion, which her coworkers also perform and is a procedure that initially makes her uncomfortable. A large part of this is also due to her mother threatening to never talk to her again if she continues working with these “heathens,” but this mostly goes underexplored. The mother-daughter estrangement is also unconvincingly resolved, eventually playing to a sappy beat.

Similar issues persist throughout Joy, which is simply trying to broadly do too much with too many characters, meaning that plenty of it doesn’t feel as emotionally involving as it should be. There is an entire romantic subplot involving Jean and a coworker, there to convey something important about who she is, but it’s also servicing the plot without adding characterization. Some test subjects are also revealed to have some dark backstories that tie into a greater understanding of how infertility can destroy personal lives and marriages, but also frustratingly gloss over those people as characters here.

However, the decade-encompassing story (despite none of these characters actually aging) is remarkable and affecting; Joy is a slice of history one is happy to have learned more about, wrapped up in a film that might have worked better off in another format or as a documentary. Regardless, Thomasin McKenzie elevates the material, especially in some of her final scenes, as succeeding in this research is also personal to her.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

Even before Denis Villeneuve’s big-screen, two-part 2021 film introduced it to moviegoers who had missed David Lynch’s enjoyably bonkers 1984 adaptation, Frank Herbert’s “Dune” had become exploited IP.

Herbert completed six novels before his death in 1986; 17 more have been written by his son Brian and Kevin Anderson. But it was the Villeneuve film that launched the brand into the franchise-mad universe of 21st century show business, where any well-performing work of sci-fi or fantasy — and “Dune” is both — is practically required to breed a network of sequels spinoffs and merchandise (Lego Atreides Royal Ornithopter, $164.99; Funko Pop! Paul Atreides, $11.99).

If you’re not familiar with the films or the books, the new HBO series, premiering Sunday, will not do you the favor of supplying much context. It does take place 10,000 years earlier, yet in most respects, life in this far-flung network of planets seems to have changed little in 100 centuries. On either side of that temporal divide, we’re in an essentially feudal society of royal houses and hereditary emperors, clothed in the medieval trappings that have ruled science-fiction fantasy from “Flash Gordon” to “Star Wars” and beyond.

Spice, a super-duper special element that has mind-altering, mind-enhancing powers and is the key to space travel, is already the most valued substance in the universe and is at the bottom of what drives the story’s antagonisms, skulduggery and power plays. It’s “Game of Thrones,” with spaceships and sandworms.

The main, and most interesting characters, not to say the star power, in this space opera are Valya Harkonnen, played by Emily Watson, and her sister Tula, played by Olivia Williams. The Harkonnens (the bad guys in “Dune,” or maybe just the worse guys) are, in this era, a disgraced house, banished to a far off, snowbound planet because great-grandpa deserted in the war against the “thinking machines.” (I do appreciate the anti-AI stance.)

In what counts as the present day — there is an earlier timeline in which young Valya is played by Jessica Barden and Tula by Emma Canning — the sisters have lifted themselves to positions of influence by way of the newish Sisterhood, later the Bene Gesserit; they’re nuns, basically, who have learned to bend minds. Such supernatural activity is accompanied by extreme close-ups of an eye, occasioning thoughts of Sauron, and sometimes an unintelligible voice that occasions thoughts of the Beastie Boys’ ”Intergalactic.”

Valya has become the Mother Superior, Tula a Reverend Mother. The two don’t agree on everything, or many things. Valya, a by-any-means-necessary, push-ahead sort, is continuing the late founder’s plan to use a “genetic archive” to implement a long-term plan to breed “better leaders” — which is to say, “leaders we can control.” (The name for this is eugenics, and it is a bad thing that imagines it’s a good one.) Tula, the more sensitive sister, reckons the human cost of their multiple machinations.

The little sisters of the Sisterhood — the novices are an appealing, heterogeneous lot when they get a little screen time — are being trained as “truthsayers,” provided to the heads of different houses to act as human lie detectors. There’s also, per the title, a prophecy, a deathbed vision by Valya’s predecessor of an apocalyptic “red dust” storm that will wipe out … something. The order, or maybe everything? Prophesies are, of course, endemic to these sorts of stories, but they are a poor basis for governance and rarely do anyone any good. Just ask Oedipus, or Macbeth.

Mark Strong plays Emperor Javicco Corrino, ruler of the “known universe,” who is busy completing the arranged marriage of his daughter, Princess Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) to a 9-year-old princeling from another house, which will earn him a dowry of rocket ships he can use to destroy the Fremen. (Ynez is also, confusingly, going off to train with the Sisterhood.) The Fremen, whose home planet is Arrakis, where Spice is mined, bedevil the miners and the troops that protect them and, as the indigenous population battling imperial usurpers, are the faction you should root for. I can’t say whether they’ll make an actual appearance in “Prophecy” — only four episodes of six were made available to review — but they’ll still be fighting this fight 10,000 years hence, when it becomes the main business of the original “Dune,” and you can catch them there.

Emperess Natalya (Jodhi May) and Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong) in “Dune: Prophecy.”

(Attila Szvacsek / HBO)

Attaching himself to Corrino is Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), the sole and miraculous survivor from a campaign on Arrakis — the Iraq war of “Dune” — who has gained special powers that make him dangerous to cross, like Billy Mumy sending people to the cornfield in that “Twilight Zone” episode. He’s one of those sci-fi characters whose normal Earthman name distinguishes him as a plebe among patricians. Which does not mean he’s not a horrible, fanatical person. Other male characters include Ynez’s half-brother Constantine (Josh Heuston), with whom she does drugs on the night before her wedding; the Harkonnens’ cousin Harrow (Edward Davis), who has some whale fur he’d like to sell you; and Corrino’s “swordmaster” Keiran Atreidas (Chris Mason), who fences and flirts with Ynez. Ten thousand years later, Paul Atreides will become the messianic hero of “Dune.”

Sisterhood is powerful. In a nice change from recent Earth history, women are the series’ defining force, before and behind the camera. Diane Ademu-John developed the series; Alison Schapker is its showrunner, Anna Foerster the primary director. Its many female characters — so many, good, bad and mostly in between — not only demonstrate power, but, so you don’t miss the point, talk about it. Along with the Harkonnen sisters and their young trainees, who are not shy about expressing an opinion, there are Ynez, who is no pushover, and her mother, Empress Natalya (Jodhi May), who tells her emperor husband, “There was a time when you took my views seriously and the Imperium was stronger for it.” She seems ready to make herself heard again.

The TV series is made in the image of the Villeneuve film, with downward adjustments for budget and such. In the episodes I’ve seen, the action takes place largely indoors — it’s less “Lawrence of Arrakis” than it is, you know, a premium cable show. Like the movie, whose commercial and critical success suggests people approve, it’s pokey and self-serious and almost entirely devoid of humor. There are a few lower-depths, bar-set sequences to change the mood, and some HBO-brand sex scenes that feel imported from a different known universe altogether. But as they involve characters talking about revolution — once again, it’s the Rebels vs. the Empire — they don’t exactly lighten it.

As is the case with many films in which classically trained actors are called upon to elevate genre material, “Prophecy” comes across as simultaneously grand and silly — which, after all, didn’t stop “Star Wars” from taking over the world. (Probably, it helped.). Watson and Williams, respectively aggressive and deceptively passive, attack their roles with commitment. It isn’t Shakespeare, but they play it as if it were.