Movie Reviews
‘Magpie’ Review: Daisy Ridley in a Thriller About Motherhood, Loneliness and a Husband with a Fatal Attraction
How distraught is Annette, the severely troubled British mother of two played by Daisy Ridley in “Magpie?” She has gotten a short angular haircut, one that might, in another context, be the height of chic (very Isabella Rossellini). Except that the movie uses it as a symbolic expression of her trauma, like Mia Farrow’s iconic Vidal Sassoon cut in “Rosemary’s Baby.” Annette, who’s on some serious medication, looks at a mirror until it breaks. Does she have telekinetic powers? No, she broke it with her hand (which bleeds into the sink), but the force of her repressed rage is palpable. Ben (Shazad Latif), her British Indian husband, is a noted author, and every comment she makes about his work is a sly dig. She speaks in brief, clipped “civilized” phrases. At one point a bird crashes into the window of her home. The whole atmosphere of the film is drenched in her cold anger.
Annette is suffering from something profound, but it’s not an illness. It’s the blues that can overwhelm mothers who are raising young children and feel alone, isolated, maybe abandoned. Ben, it turns out, committed a primal sin, and it was simply this: After their son, Lucas, was born, he went away for months to research a book, with no awareness of how much Annette needed him. He put all the responsibility on her, and when he returned, she was never the same.
The complex and even traumatized undercurrent that some mothers experience isn’t merely a good subject for a movie; it’s one that’s long overdue. Yet “Magpie” presents Annette to the audience in a way that seems rather extreme, and the entire movie is like that. Most of us don’t blink an eye at cinematic real-estate porn, but the house that Annette and Ben have in the country outside London is as huge and roomy as a museum. When Annette goes to lunch with a former colleague, the stiltedness of their connection — and the sound of Lucas crying in the restaurant — infuses every moment with awkwardness. And then the plot kicks in. Annette and Ben’s daughter, Matilda (Hiba Ahmed), who’s around eight, has been cast in a big-budget costume drama, where she’s set to play the daughter of the main character, who’s being portrayed by a glamorous Italian movie star named Alicia (Matilda Lutz).
Ben is chaperoning Matilda on set, and we’re cued, from minute one, to see that he and Alicia have a connection (a lot more of one than he seems to have with his wife). In case we miss the point, a tabloid website runs a paparazzi shot of the two them, asking who Alicia’s new “mystery man” is…and it’s only the second day of the shoot. Much of “Magpie” feels overstated yet underwritten. It’s fine that the film shows us Ben’s interest piqued by a celebrity sex tape of Alicia. But does it have to underline the point by having him masturbate to it in the shower, and having Annette hear him through the door? As Ben and Alicia develop a mutual crush, the atmosphere the film seems to be going for is gloomy indie “Fatal Attraction.” And my thought was: “Fatal Attraction” was a lot subtler.
As “Magpie” goes on, though, a funny thing happens. You begin to settle into the film’s overly telegraphed style, its mixture of obviousness and enigma. You accept that this is not Hitchcock, or even Adrian Lyne. The first-time director, Sam Yates, working from a utilitarian script by Tom Bateman, slathers on mood, yet there’s a primitive charge to the film’s no-frills staging. You want to see what’s going to happen next. And Daisy Ridley, whose idea the movie was based on, knows exactly what she’s doing. She dares to play Annette as brittle and “unreasonable,” because that’s just how a man like Ben would view her. He doesn’t realize that he’s the problem: his entitlement, his cluelessness about what mothers actually go through. He just wants to leave it all behind and plunge into an affair with Alicia, whose attentions are so flattering. The two begin to text, flirtatiously and then ardently. He thinks that he’s found a way out of his doldrums. But he has no idea what’s really happening. And neither does the audience.
Shazad Latif, with his tall handsomeness, his gentle grin, and his man-bun, plays Ben as someone who has worked hard to be sensitive, and therefore thinks that what he wants he deserves. But he’s deluded. He is, on the film’s own terms, toxic, but “Magpie” isn’t a harangue. It’s a thriller, and for all the Screenwriting 101 simplicity of many of its scenes, it builds toward a climax that’s disarmingly fun and satisfying. It’s one of those “Usual Suspects”/”Saltburn” twists, which means you have to accept that there’s a certain only-in-the-movies logic to it. But when the twist arrives, it has a crowd-pleasing resonance. It’s not just about playing games. It’s about a mother saying how much she wants to be loved.
When I spend time around fellow writers, regardless of their achievements, conversation is much the same as in any other context. When I watch groups of fictional writers in films, they are continually striving to outdo one another, to show off their brilliant intellects. It’s a constant process of trying too hard, and it’s exhausting. To his credit, Dustin Hoffman, who plays established literary genius David in this torrid tale of family conflict, doesn’t come across this way, rising above the clumsy script thanks to his patient approach. The same cannot be said of the other actors, all of whom have proved their talent elsewhere yet seem seduced by the notion that this is how intelligent people behave.
The plot here is fairly simple, and not without potential. David’s son Jacob (Tom Sturridge) is a copywriter and successful creator of jingles, but after his wife Elise (Alison Brie) wins a major award, he starts getting insecure, wanting to prove that he can make it as a proper literary type. The obvious way to do this seems to be to write a biography of David, but David has no interest in engaging with this. He provides a number of reasonable justifications for this. Underlying them is the fact that we all tend to frame ourselves in different ways for different people. What one might be willing to say to the great anonymous public is not necessarily something one might feel able to say to one’s son.
This stalemate is broken by the arrival of John (André Holland, fresh from the similarly awkward – but smarter – The Dutchman), an old friend of Jacob whom David remembers fondly. At Elise’s instigation, a secret deal is made: John will look after the increasing fragile older man during the day and, in the process, extract his stories from him, giving them to Jacob for his book. John agrees to this because he needs the money Jacob offers him, and it seems like a sweet deal. It immediately sets up a power imbalance, however.
Complicating matters further are John’s past as a literary protégé who failed to fulfil his promise; the fact that he was once in a relationship with Elise, whose dissolution she regrets; and the pressure that she’s under to match her great success, from an agent who subscribes to the popular but rather tedious belief that inspiration is most easily found in bad behaviour.
Another way writers in films differ from those in the real world is that for them, critical success comes with money, so they don’t have to write very much. A good deal of this film is spent listening to them whine about how hard it is, as if under the misapprehension that it’s not really a form of work. Sturridge is particularly unfortunate; between this and Jacob’s whining about issues with his parents, he doesn’t get much else to do. Brie has a little more to work with as the film flirts with the idea that we’re caught up in Elise’s imaginary scenarios, but this doesn’t really convince. Holland manages to salvage something, but it’s only Hoffman who is really able to interject some energy into proceedings – ironic given that he spends a lot of his scenes in a haze of cannabis smoke.
It’s not terrible. Writer/director Alex Vlack frames scenes nicely enough and all the technical work is carried out to a good standard. There’s just little reason for viewers to invest. Like its characters, it’s intent on trying to communicate cleverly, but has very little to say.
Reviewed on: 04 Jul 2026
Movie Reviews
1986 Movie Reviews – About Last Night, Big Trouble in Little China, The Great Mouse Detective, Howling II, Psycho III, Under the Cherry Moon | The Nerdy
Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1986 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1986 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1986 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
This time around, it’s July 4, 1986, and we’re off to seeAbout Last Night, Big Trouble in Little China, The Great Mouse Detective, Howling II, Psycho III, and Under the Cherry Moon.
About Last Night
St. Elmo’s Fire was awful. This feels like a make-good for two of the actors.
Danny Martin (Rob Lowe) meets Debbie Sullivan (Demi Moore) and their chemistry is electric and immediate. They waste no time becoming serious, and moving in together, despite neither of them having ever had a serious relationship. They quickly discover it’s not quite as easy as just sharing an apartment like you do with a roommate.
I didn’t love the movie (mainly due to Jim Belushi’s Bernie character), but I did enjoy it far more than I anticipated.Moore and Lowe’s on-screen chemistry really clicked far more than most on-screen couples.
It’s a good character study, and keeps you engaged. Is it essential viewing? That’s up to you.
Where to watch: Available to stream.
Big Trouble in Little China
If there was ever a poster child for a movie that found a second life in rentals and on cable, this is it.
Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) is a over-the-road trucker with a lot of thoughts on life and how important reflexes are. While making a delivery in Chinatown, he gets sucked into a situation with an ancient Chinese evil trying to regain its humanity, and all Jack really wants is to get his truck back.
John Carpenter wasn’t quite a household name, but with films such as Halloween, The Thing and Escape From New York to his name, people were taking notice. Teaming with Russell for another outing seemed like it would be another win, but this one proved just a little too odd for mainstream audiences. Once it got into our homes, however, everyone fell in love with it.
As Jack Burton always says, it’s a must-see for any 80s journey.
Where to watch: Available to stream.
The Great Mouse Detective
I had never seen it, and as Disney films go, I would have been fine keeping it that way.
Set in Longon in 1897, a young mouse named Olivia Flaversham witnesses her toymaker father get kidnapped. She seeks out Basil of Baket Street, also known as the Great Mouse Detective. Along with David Q. Dawson, recently returned from serving in the military in Afghanistan, the three of them try to stop Professor Ratigan from replacing the Queen.
It’s just a Sherlock Holmes story, but with mice. I didn’t find anything that compelling about it. It was pretty enough to look at, but the story just left me fairly empty.
Where to watch: Available to stream.
Howling II
I… have a lot of thoughts.
Following up on the end of the The Howling, Ben White (Reb Brown) buries his sister Karen White, and quickly learns she was a werewolf. He teams up with werewolf hunter Stedan Crosscoe (Christopher Lee) to take down Stirba (Sybil Danning), the queen of the werewolves who is about to celebrate her 1,000th birthday, and stop the spread of the werewolf curse.
On paper it sounds fine, in execution it is just… horrible. Poorly lit, horrible acting, low-grade effects, and costuming that leaves you more confused than anything else.
Avoid at all costs.
Where to watch: Available to stream.
Psycho III
I have to admit, so far these sequels haven’t been horrible.
Following up shortly after the vents of Psycho II, Norman (Anthony Perkins) is still hiding the body of Emma Spool, and having issues again with seeing “Mother.” He hires drifter Duane Duke (Jeff Fahey) to run the motel. He also meets Maureen (Diana Scarwid), a nun on the run after she accidentally kills one of her sisters. With a new woman in his life, Mother has some thoughts on what Norman should be doing.
In general I actually enjoyed this new outing in the franchise, although it feels it missed some opportunities at the end of the story of Norman and Maureen working together. What if Maureen had actually been the one manipulating Norman this time? There was another movie lurking in the background that sadly never gets broached.
What we did end up with, however, was entertaining.
Where to watch: Available to stream.
Under the Cherry Moon
This film was unfairly maligned.
Christopher Tracy (Prince) and Tricky (Jerome Benton) as wooing women in France in hopes of getting enough money to head back to Miami one day. When Christopher hears about Mary Sharon (Kristin Scott Thomas) inherting a trust fund of $50 million for her 21st birthday, she becomes his next mark, but little does he know how it will end for him.
Following Purple Rain, Prince could do no wrong in Hollywood and was given a blank check for his next film. Audiences and critics did not warm to this film as it wasn’t Purple Rain 2 and it lived with a bad reputation for years.
I hadn’t seen it in 35 years or more when I watched it for this report, and… I really enjoyed it. It’s over-the-top, but in the right way. Prince was clearly paying homage to the silent movie romance films, and it works for what it is. Is he a great actor? No. Does it work for this film? Yes.
Honestly, this may be one of the most enjoyable films I’ve had in this project in several weeks. It’s worth a reassessment.
Where to watch: Available to stream.
1986 Movie Reviews will continue on July 11, 2026, with Club Paradise.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: ‘Minions & Monsters’ is a very yellow mash note to Hollywood – Sentinel Colorado
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This image released by Universal Pictures shows a scene from Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters.” (Universal Pictures via AP) -
This image released by Universal Pictures shows minions with the alien character Goomi, voiced by Trey Parker, right, in a scene from Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters.” (Universal Pictures via AP) -
This image released by Universal Pictures shows minion Henry, voiced by Pierre Coffin, left, and Goomi, voiced by Trey Parker, in a scene from Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters.” (Universal Pictures via AP) -
This image released by Universal Pictures shows a scene from Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters.” (Universal Pictures via AP)
Every once in a while, Hollywood gets high on its own supply and makes a love letter to moviemaking. It happened recently with Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” and George Clooney’s “Jay Kelly.” Now it’s time for the unlikeliest of love-letter writers: canary-yellow, gibberish-speaking, overall-wearing mini-monsters.
“Minions & Monsters” — the third chapter in the ongoing standalone adventures of the “Despicable Me” pint-sized enablers — is about the sheer greatness of moviemaking, and it’s a navel-gazing misfire. Few industries — maybe journalism, sure — is as enamored at making its profession seem heroic.
The Minions this time find themselves at the dawn of both the movie business in Hollywood and the last push by suffragists to get the vote. It’s a weird confluence that writers Brian Lynch and Pierre Coffin fumble.
The movie has playful references to old screen gods — Harold Lloyd dangling from the hands of a clock and Charlie Chaplin swallowed by the gears of a mechanical system — along Hollywood nods to “Casablanca” and the punny title “The Good, the Bad and the Stupid” — but the kids in the audience won’t get them and their parents are just too tired. Harold Lloyd jokes don’t hit as hard in 2026.
Two of the legion of faceless Minions step forward this time — best friends James and Henry, creative misfits amid a smear of yellow drones — to unite and make a movie. (Who knew there was a Minion counterculture?)
Things go very well at first — turns out adding a Minion or two to a cowboy or a heist movie makes them instant kings of the box office — and they soon move into a Beverly Hills mansion and become insufferable. James dreams of winning an Oscar, which in this case is a statuette of a gold banana, a Minion obsession.
But they hit a wall when silent movies turn to talkies. And since they spout nothing but nonsense — “Fantastico” “miso soup” and “vamos” — can’t make the transition. They’re dumped out of the studio system.
That’s when James and Henry finally get the plot going: Make their own killer monster movie by conjuring up real monsters. The first one they try turns out a little weird: The gigantic, fearsome octopus-dragon they request turns out to be a cute green Funko Pop-like critter called Goomi, voiced by Trey Parker. Goomi promises to find them some real monsters. But should we trust him?
Coffin, making his first solo directing effort after co-helming all three “Despicable Me” films and the first “Minions,” voices all the Minions — he must be fun to have at parties — and is an assured hand. The violence levels are a little high for PG, including a beheading and various impalings, plus the usual senseless mayhem.
The screenwriters have included a romantic subplot involving a suffragette voiced by Zoey Deutch who falls for a robot-alien (standout work by Jesse Eisenberg) in a storyline that makes less and less sense. And the framing device — a museum tour guide explaining how Minions shaped Hollywood — sags awkwardly.
Adults can keep awake looking for the Easter eggs Coffin has left for serious cinephiles: “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” “Steamboat Bill, Jr.,” “A Trip to the Moon,” “Metropolis,” “Citizen Kane” and “The Blob.” Maybe the best moment in the movie is almost a throwaway: Director George Lucas, appearing as himself.
“Hooray for Hollywood” is on the soundtrack and that might have been the subtitle for the movie itself. There are some people whose eyes get moist thinking about picking up a film camera and following their muse, having their work play in a dark theater to cheers. And then there are others who just want to get on with it already. “Vamos!”
“Minions & Monsters,” a Universal Pictures release that opens in theaters July 1, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for “violence/action, language, and rude/macabre humor.” Running time: 90 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
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