The always eminently watchable Rebecca Hall (The Man I Love, TV’s The Beauty) both anchors and buoys the tonally irregular but consistently thoughtful and compelling sci-fi comedy-drama The End of It, a feature debut for Catalan writer-director Maria Martinez Bayona.

Offering a near future that’s creepily plausible, resonant with recent headlines and nicely underplayed in terms of design, this posits Hall as Claire, a 250-year-old artist who’s kept looking like an elegant 30something thanks to sophisticated blood dialysis techniques and other kinds of high-tech, vaguely defined wizardry, available to a very select few.

However, when Claire grows bored with an effectively immortal life and chooses to die, her husband Diego (Gael García Bernal), 180-year-old daughter Martha (Noomi Rapace), and android personal assistant Sarah (Beanie Feldstein) react in various ways, ranging from supportive to angry. Running an attenuated 142-minutes, this feels slightly flawed by a script that doesn’t quite know how to play out its endgame and erupts with jarring flashes of spongey, overegged satire. Still, the performances and visuals consistently add value, and if this doesn’t sell many tickets IRL, it should haul in clicks as a streaming entity.

Shot mostly in the Canary Islands with the region’s searing, glaring Tropic-of-Cancer-adjacent light, freakishly black, volcanic soil and groovy mid-century-modernist buildings, the film suggests a future where the worst climactic disasters have been avoided. That, or the people we meet here are wealthy enough to have found a cushy little enclave to live forever without a care in the world. It seems they’re part of the select few, members of a vaguely alluded-to world order that provides the means to exist in a state of permanent, hedonistic ennui.

But the only way to get in on this immortality gig, or to be granted permission to have a baby, is for someone else to die. And since no one expires from, say, cancer or other now-curable diseases, and bones and organs can be replaced like car parts with artificial spares, people only pass when involved in freak accidents…or take their own lives.

On the occasion of her 250th birthday (she gets a cake with so many candles she can barely be bothered to blow them out), Claire is in a funk and just not enjoying any of this anymore. Having just replaced her last remaining natural bone, she takes stock. Years ago, she was an acclaimed artist whose work was a bit avant-garde and challenging. Now she designs jewelry, a remunerative but not very intellectually rewarding pursuit. (This plot point is a bit mean to jewelry designers.) Suffering an acute case of anhedonia, she decides that she will no longer have her blood work every day or any other kind of life-extending treatment and instead will just let nature take its course.

As grey hairs appear and other augurs of age become visible, Claire contends with the varied reactions of her small social circle. She couldn’t care less about the assorted colorful acquaintances who attended her birthday party, a cohort clad in an assortment of semi-minimalist clothes with funky little details and interestingly textured textiles, as if dressed in a mix of Comme des Garçons and Cos. (Costume designer Pau Auli’s work throughout is both witty and oddly covetable with its precise tailoring and subtle color palette.)

But it is more upsetting that Diego, her husband of many years, doesn’t get her reasoning at all, or even sees this as a personal rejection. Sarah, Claire’s relentlessly perky robot sidekick, similarly cannot compute why Claire would wish to undermine Sarah’s prime directive, to keep Claire alive. But she’ll do whatever it takes to keep her mistress happy, like some kind of humanoid golden retriever.

Only her daughter Martha, who shows up suddenly, having not seen her mother in 50 years, seems at peace with Claire’s decision. That turns out to be because she thinks this may be her chance to take Claire’s place as a breeding female in their society and has brought along an android baby to practice on, like some kind of 23rd century Tamagotchi that can be switched off and recharged whenever necessary.

Prone to wearing clothes that suggest an overgrown pre-teen herself, all frills, flounces and bright colors, Martha doesn’t look like great maternal material to Claire, although this judgmental attitude may be evidence of her own maternal deficiencies. The peevish sparring between the two of them gets a comic push from the fact that the two actors are very close in age (Hall is three years younger than Rapace), but like so many parents and children they remain stuck in a dynamic that formed sometime in adolescence and has never been outgrown.

The digs at the pretensions of artists, channeled through Claire’s decision to make her death a public spectacle in order to secure some future fame, are less amusing here because the blows never seem to quite connect with their targets. Also, one begins to suspect that a small budget prohibited the filmmakers from showing a wider view of this society, which also dampens any parodic purpose. Claire’s elective death therefore remains a problematic choice for some viewers, an act of vainglorious selfishness from a woman who was never terribly nice to begin with.

It’s lucky she’s played by Hall, who endows Claire with a spiky sort of wit and charisma, while her performance in the film’s final minutes packs a considerable emotional wallop and pathos to spare. The impact of that shocking final scene is sufficient to send viewers out feeling enervated after what’s been a pretty desultory final act. But even with these flaws, The End of It looks like it marks the beginning of an interesting career for its young writer-director, a talent with a strong visual sensibility and skills with actors.

“I’d like to be under the sea in an octopus’s garden…”

Remarkably Bright Creature
Directed by Olivia Newman – 2026
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan

Whenever you have a lyric from a C-list Beatle song running through your head while watching a movie, it’s not a good sign.

But halfway through Remarkably Bright Creatures, a new film starring Sally Fields, those words earwormed their way into my head, replacing, I fear, the heartwarming sentiment I was expected to feel.

Based on a popular novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures—or RBC hereafter—is narrated by a captive octopus named Marcellus, who makes observations from his tank in a seaside Washington town.

The digitally animated creature, voiced by Alfred Molina in a flat tone that itself sounds half-submerged, spends his days hiding from the grasping eyes and fingerprints of schoolchildren on field trips. By night, he communicates through touch and glance with the janitor, Tova Sullivan, played by Sally Fields, a widow with a tragic past. She hobbles around on a sprained ankle and debates whether to move into a retirement facility.

As you might guess, RBC is slight on dramatic material, relying instead on the commentary of Marcellus, the aging octopus; Tova’s interactions with her octogenarian friends; and the arrival in town of a struggling musician seeking the father he never knew.

The film reminded me of those BBC-produced cozy mysteries I’ve become fond of renting from the Pasadena Public Library: small-town atmospheres filled with chumminess and colorful characters. Those mysteries, however, have an unsolved crime to propel the plot. Aside from the struggling musician’s attempt to locate his wealthy, incognito biological father, RBC leaves the viewer with little to chew on—or, I suppose, suck on. Marcellus’s eight arms and clinging suckers not only allow him to move in unique ways, but also to comment on the other characters from the vantage of his tank, a POV oddity that becomes one of the film’s more troubling anomalies.

As usual with this geezer genre, there’s the sobering apprehension of familiar faces, Kathy Baker and Joan Chen in this case, whose wrinkles and tissue breakdown reminded me of my own softening jawline. Colm Meaney, playing a former Grateful Dead fanatic turned coffee-shop owner, serves as Sally Fields’s love interest; his Irish brogue further evokes those BBC cozies.

“She lives in a larger tank than me,” observes Marcellus of the fussy attendant. His periodic comments sprinkle the plot, easing along our understanding of the characters until the metaphorical enclosure around Sally Fields dissolves as she takes the aging Marcellus to the seashore and returns him to his own octopus’s garden.

What the ultimate public reception of RBC will be, I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought Project Hail Mary, with its spidery co-star in a beach-ball enclosure, would be popular either, so I suppose there’s hope yet for the movie and its slithering protagonist.

> Streaming on Netflix.

Not to shock anyone, but it’s important to disclose that I’ve never seen an episode of “The Mandalorian” (or any “Star Wars” show). But the breakout star of the series, “Baby Yoda,” aka “The Child,” aka Grogu, has become a ubiquitous pop cultural sensation, so it’s nearly impossible to go in completely cold to the big screen adaptation of the series, “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.” Still, I can report that it’s possible to go in colder than most and still maintain your footing, to alleviate any concerns of fellow casual “Star Wars” fans.

That’s because “Mandalorian and Grogu” director and co-writer Jon Favreau, and co-writers Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor, traffic in easily digestible tropes, archetypes and genre references. The story is like an old-fashioned film serial blown up to blockbuster proportions, set in a world that has dominated pop culture for almost 50 years. The remnants of a crumbling empire, a bounty hunter with a heart of gold, a cute green guy who wields the Force — what’s not to get?

How Mando (Pedro Pascal under the helmet) and Grogu linked up has been covered in the series, so if you’re a die-hard fan, there’s not a lot of repeat or recap. Essentially, what you need to know is that the story is set in the period between the original “Star Wars” trilogy (ending with “Return of the Jedi”) and the sequel trilogy (starting with “The Force Awakens”). The Galactic Empire has fallen, replaced with the New Republic. While former Imperial warlords drift about, trying to amass power, the New Republic sends out the Mandalorian to haul them back to headquarters to snitch on their comrades. Reparations and justice for corrupt and evil fascists — we simply love to see it.

Favreau’s film plays like another installment in the Mando and Grogu adventures: We meet up with them mid-raid, which results in a dead target, and doesn’t please his boss, Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver). Still, she sends them on to their next assignment, doing some dirty work for the criminal gangster organization the Hutts. Jabba’s son Rotta (Jeremy Allen White) is missing, and his aunt and uncle would like him back. While Mando hates to work for the Hutts, they’ve promised intel on a very promising, and very elusive, Imperial leader.

When they find Rotta (weirdly buff for a Hutt) in the fighting pits of the urban enclave Shakari — thanks to information from a food vendor voiced by Martin Scorsese — Mando is surprised to find that Rotta’s not inclined to return to his family. White’s actorly presence comes through in his vocal performance, lending the beleaguered fighter a sense of depressed world-weariness and poignant ennui.

But this plot point kicks off a narrative whirlpool in which “The Mandalorian and Grogu” finds itself trapped — Mando is knocked out cold, wakes up in an unfamiliar spot, and then has to fight a bunch of CGI beasties. This happens at least three times in the film, and it gets repetitive. The nods to Ray Harryhausen monster movies are appreciated, but it quickly loses its novelty.

The film takes its cues from those old timey epics, as well as from Westerns and samurai movies — anything with a lone fighter who lives by a code and has a desire to fiercely protect his loved ones. There’s an element of the classic Western “Shane” as Mando fights to protect his diminutive sidekick, and Pascal delivers his quips (“Fighting’s not a sport, it’s a last resort,” etc.) with John Wayne-style panache.

But with his helmet hiding his face (to take it off is shameful), and most of the characters computer-generated, our emotional touchpoint throughout remains a puppet — Grogu. With his huge eyes, baby coos and little shuffle, he’s been engineered to elicit cute aggression from audiences and everyone he encounters, including Rotta, and various creatures who help him along the way, resulting in a wave of deus ex machina story beats where someone swoops in to save the day. Over and over, Mando finds himself in a jam but we never think he’s in any real danger, because would this kiddie-skewing “Star Wars” actually force Grogu to grapple with grief?

Ludwig Göransson’s expressive score does much of the emotional heavy lifting too. He peppers in an electronic techno theme among the sweeping orchestral stuff for a feel that’s both ‘80s retro and distinctly modern; when the film pauses for Grogu’s moment of heroism it’s quietly atmospheric and curious. The score is the single best element of filmmaking on display, because the cinematography is a desaturated CGI mish-mosh.

Grogu’s cuteness may be a powerful force, but it’s not enough to sustain this big-screen leap, especially in a blockbuster this bloated, and frankly, dull. If it feels like a serial, maybe it should have stayed a series.

‘Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu’

2 stars out of 4

Running time: 2 hours 12 minutes

Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and action.

Where to watch: In theaters Friday, May 22.