Arco, 2025.

Directed by Ugo Bienvenu.
Featuring the voice talents of Juliano Krue Valdi, Romy Fay, Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg, Flea, Roeg Sutherland, America Ferrera, Zoya Bogomolova, and Wyatt Danieluk.

SYNOPSIS:

In 2075, a girl witnesses a mysterious boy in a rainbow suit fall from the sky. He comes from an idyllic far future where time travel is possible. She shelters him and will do whatever it takes to help him return to his time.

With a prologue set far in the future, co-writer/director Ugo Bienvenu (unmistakably inspired by the striking works of Hayao Miyazaki and penning the screenplay with Félix de Givry) depicts the world of Arco as a riff on the earliest civilizations. Climate change has ravaged Earth, where the old ways are new again; there appears to be no more traditional technology or much of anything beyond living within one’s natural environment. However, humanity has learned that homes should be built as circular structures on platforms in the sky, to relieve the surface of various environmental pressures and allow it to heal continuously.

The other twist is that this new civilization has apparently developed or acquired time travel technology, traveling into the past to learn what went wrong and how not to repeat it, and to prevent the planet from spiraling into another devastating crisis. That is the job of the titular Arco’s (voiced in the English-language version by Juliano Krue Valdi) family (with parents voiced by Roeg Sutherland and America Ferrera in the English-language version), as the 10-year-old boy is considered too young to join them on these time-traveling expeditions to amass knowledge that has been depleted or lost.

Naturally, this leaves Arco feeling frustrated and distant from his family, even though they are generally around quite a bit to provide for him. Arco doesn’t have the patience to wait until he comes of time-traveling age, though, stealing his sister’s flying cloak (they are brightly colored, resembling rainbows), soaring his way unintentionally until the year 2075, when climate change is seemingly at its most dangerous and when robots have taken over the majority of the workforce.

While on the run from a trio of comedic relief twins looking to capture him or the diamond that gives the cloak the ability to time travel (play by the amusing trifecta of Will Ferrell, Flea, and Andy Samberg in the English-language version, with their blending together and sounding alike as they bumble their way through their objective), Arco befriends the similarly aged Iris (voiced in the English-language version by Romy Fay) who is, unsurprisingly, fascinated by his eccentric attire but also curious about him and why he is asking what year it is.

Considering that Iris’ parents (voice in the English-language version by Mark Ruffalo and producer Natalie Portman) are often working in what’s left of the city, and only around via holographic projections through the technology of robot caretaker Mikki (also voiced by a combination of Mark Ruffalo and Natalie Portman), it’s tantalizing to be around another human. Even at school, there are no teachers; robots give lectures through a virtual reality component. And although one student appears to be interested in her, Iris generally comes across as isolated and lonely in a world where outdoor play is minimal, given the nonstop storms and wildfires terrorizing the planet.

Not only is Iris determined to help Arco find the diamond and the methods to fly back to his time correctly, but she also seems to want to join him to get away from this depressing state of near-future life and constant damage being done to the Earth. A future with almost nothing in the way of modern technology sounds like a reprieve. Perhaps that’s part of what the filmmakers are saying: in a world where AI threatens to take over everything and do more harm than good with no foreseeable way of, at the very least, reducing the damages wrought by climate change, maybe society has to circle back around to a somewhat ancient civilization lifestyle. In a more common juxtaposition, she also seems jealous that he gets to be in his parents’ presence as much as he does, whereas he is mostly frustrated that they believe he isn’t ready to time-travel with them.

Although there is much to ponder about Arco‘s timely and imaginative messaging, which perhaps most importantly chooses optimism and hope, this is also a visually resplendent, colorful, humorous tale of bonding and trial and error. The presence of Will Ferrell alone should be enough to tell parents this is not all doom and gloom, even if the mature themes are welcome and should have children curious about current critical events.

Even at 88 minutes, it slightly drags in the back half until reaching an emotional wallop of an ending that would have been more effective if the rest of the film were more interested in the sci-fi dynamics than solely these two kids hanging out and avoiding a trio of comic relief dopes. Arco is still moving and lightweight fun, though, even if it doesn’t capitalize on all its wondrously creative ideas.

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

Robert Kojder

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

Allison Mack is addressing “the bad things she’s done” as a high-profile member of the “sex cult” NXIVM in a new podcast.

Released Monday, “Allison After NXIVM” is a seven-episode series that features the former “Smallville” star detailing her time as a young actor and how she became involved in the purported self-improvement group, as well as her role in manipulating women into becoming sex slaves for NXIVM leader Keith Raniere and the eventual criminal fallout.

“I don’t see myself as innocent,” Mack says in an early episode as she acknowledges using her success as an actor as “a power tool … to get people to do what I wanted” and that she was “very effective in moving Keith’s vision forward.”

In a later episode, she accepts claims that she was a “harsh monster” during her time at NXIVM.

“I was not kind and I was aggressive and I was abusive,” Mack says. “I was harsh and I was callous and I was aggressive and forceful in ways that were painful for people. [I] did make people feel like they had no choice and was incredibly abusive to people, traumatic for people.”

In 2019, Mack pleaded guilty to racketeering charges related to her role in NXIVM and its subgroup DOS, a so-called “secret society” of women who were branded with Raniere’s initials and forced to have sex with him. Mack was among one of the “masters” in the group, a lieutenant tasked by Raniere with recruiting and coercing other women. She was sentenced to three years in federal prison in 2021 and was released in 2023. (Raniere is currently serving a 120-year sentence after being convicted of sex-trafficking and other charges.)

But while she acknowledges that “100% all those allegations are true,” she also contends that she is “someone who cares deeply and wanted very much to grow and wanted very much for everybody that I was involved with to grow. … [B]oth of those things are true about me.

“I definitely recognize and admit that I was abusing my power,” Mack says. “But I also can’t negate the fact that there was a part of me that was altruistic and was desperate to help people. [I] wanted to be better, and I was willing to do anything to be better in myself and to help other people be better.”

The podcast series also touches on what Mack has been up to since being released from prison. She is pursuing a master’s in social work and looking into PhD programs in expressive arts therapy. She is also working at a nonprofit to help bring creative arts such as music, theater and poetry to prisons.

Over the summer, Mack got married to Frank Meeink, a prominent former neo-Nazi who now speaks out in support of racial diversity and acceptance. The couple met in a dog park not long after Mack’s release from prison in 2023. According to the podcast’s host, Natalie Robehmed, Mack now goes by Allison Meeink.

Robehmed also mentions that “Allison After NXIVM,” which is the latest installment of the true crime podcast “Uncover,” came to be after Mack reached out to journalist Vanessa Grigoriadis following her release from prison, hoping to tell her own story for the first time. Grigoriadis, who serves as an executive producer on the series, had interviewed Mack before her arrest.

NXIVM also has been the subject of the 2020 documentary series “The Vow” and “Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult.”

“Predator” and I got off on the wrong foot. I’m not talking about the new movie, but rather the 1987 original, and by extension the whole franchise. I rented the film hoping to enjoy some action-movie interaction between two future governors: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura. Unfortunately, there was little to no interaction between the two, and Ventura’s character got picked off by the Predator earlier than I would have liked. I spent the rest of the movie sulking, and never really became a fan of the series.

Flash forward to 2025. I wasn’t really looking forward to “Predator: Badlands” in and of itself, but after the dismal October we just had at the domestic box office, I’ll take a hit wherever I can get it. Which is probably why I liked the movie as much as I did. There’s not a lot for me here, but I needed to get excited about “something,” so the film’s greatest strength may be its good timing.

The film follows Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), an aspiring young Predator (or “Yautja”) on the faraway planet of Yautja Prime. Dek desperately wants to go on a successful hunt to earn the approval of his father Njohrr (Reuben De Jong), as well as… living privileges, because Yautjas that don’t complete successful hunts are put to death. Njohrr wants relative runt Dek put down anyway, but he flees to the planet Genna, home to the most high-value trophy in the known universe, the Kalisk. He vows to not return without killing the Kalisk for himself.

Dek doesn’t fare well on the hostile Genna, but an opportunity presents itself in the form of Thia (Elle Fanning), a synthetic human that had been part of a party trying to find and exploit the Kalisk for their corporate overlords (I won’t say which corporation, but it’s a big deal). The Kalisk overpowered Thia’s team, leaving her as the sole survivor, and she’s worse for wear, missing the entire lower half of her body. She and Dek make a deal: he’ll help her get her body back and help her reunite with her also-damaged “sister” Tessa (also Fanning) and she’ll help him take down the Kalisk.

Dek and Thia start off as uneasy allies, but as they overcome obstacles together, their bond turns into friendship. All this despite Thia being half of a smart-alecky robot and Dek coming from a race that forbids emotions. Which presents kind of a huge problem for me, in that neither character is from a race that I feel is worth preserving. Thia is so artificial that there’s literally another of her, and even though we ultimately see that there’s some good in Dek, sorry, the universe would probably be better off without kill-obsessed Predators.

I know I’m supposed to like “Predator: Badlands” because of the way the alien and the robot learn what it means to be human. Honestly, I was rolling my eyes at those parts. I like the movie because Thia’s jokes were hitting for me and I liked the action. The upside of all the characters being either robots or aliens is that the film can be as violent as it wants and still get a PG-13 rating as long as all the gore is in the form of either sparks or slime. “Predator: Badlands” is fine as an action movie for people who could use a half-decent action movie, but just as with Thia’s body, don’t expect it to be more than “half” decent.

Grade: B-

By the way, I later found another movie from 1987 with both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura. In this one, their characters do interact. They even go head-to-head with one another in a fight, where one presumably kills the other. That movie is called “The Running Man.” And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a new version of that property coming out Friday.

“Predator: Badlands” is rated PG-13 for sequences of strong sci-fi violence. Its running time is 107 minutes.

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.