Movie Reviews
Movie Review: ‘The Assessment’
(L to R) Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Olsen in ‘The Assessment’, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo credit: Magnus Jønck. © 2024 Number 9 Films Assessment Limited, TA Co-Production GmbH, ShivHans Productions, LLC, TA2022 Investors, LLC, Tiki Tāne Pictures, LLC. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
‘The Assessment’ receives 7.5 out of 10 stars.
Opening in theaters on March 21st, ‘The Assessment’ is the sort of thoughtful, low-key but sometimes too dense science fiction movie that largely stays in the indie space since it’s unlikely to attract a giant blockbuster crowd.
Yet it’s somehow reassuring that in an age where IP is king and originality can be scarce at your local cinema, something like this can still hit screens.
Related Article: Alicia Vikander and Director Fleur Fortuné Talk ‘The Assessment’
Does ‘The Assessment’ pass the test?
Alicia Vikander in ‘The Assessment’, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo credit: Magnus Jønck. © 2024 Number 9 Films Assessment Limited, TA Co-Production GmbH, ShivHans Productions, LLC, TA2022 Investors, LLC, Tiki Tāne Pictures, LLC. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
‘The Assessment’ probably works best if you like your science fiction with some brain matter behind it; but there is also a deep well of emotion running here.
In the mold of Aldous Huxley in particular, its story of a climate-ravaged world that is struggling to survive in the wake of enormous damage done by mankind, it also posits a society that has adapted to dwindling resources by development of a miracle drug that can ward off disease and slow down aging.
But it’s also a tightly-controlled authoritarian regime where dissent is punishable by exile to the savage wastes outside the habitable domes where those who have the resources and are willing to both contribute and obey dwell.
In reality, though, the movie’s focus is much tighter –– it’s the tale of a couple who wish to have a child (reproduction through any method than some asexual fertilization process following a strict assessment period is forbidden) struggling with the unusual demands of the woman sent to test their suitability to be parents at all.
What transpires is a chaotic, testing battle of wills between the two prospective parents and the assessor, who tests them in ways they probably weren’t expecting; this is more than just checking to see if they’ve baby-proofed the wall sockets.
Script and Direction
Fleur Fortuné, director of ‘The Assessment’, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Written by Nell Garfath Cox, Dave Thomas (who collectively work as filmmaking team Mr. and Mrs. Thomas) along with John Donnelly, this is a cold, thoughtful movie that tells its story with enough human emotion to keep it from feeling like a film school test case. We’re introduced to the central pair through their daily lives as scientists and lovers, but the plot proper doesn’t kick in until the Assessor, played by Alicia Vikander arrives.
As director, music video helmer Fleur Fortune, who has also worked on short films, brings a careful touch to the film, which walks the line of being too intellectual with some skill. She has a keen eye for a visual and also gets great work out of some very good actors. There’s a real melancholy to the movie, even as the color palette is warm and inviting.
Cast and Performances
Elizabeth Olsen in ‘The Assessment’, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo credit: Magnus Jønck. © 2024 Number 9 Films Assessment Limited, TA Co-Production GmbH, ShivHans Productions, LLC, TA2022 Investors, LLC, Tiki Tāne Pictures, LLC. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Elizabeth Olsen brings quiet grace to Mia, one half of the couple looking to reproduce, yet when scenes call for her to explode with anger, frustration or sadness, she’s more than up to those tasks also.
It’s Mia’s journey we’re truly on, from meeting her as a young girl abandoned by her mother to the grown woman who is willing to go to whatever lengths to both help society prosper and achieve her own aims, but comes up against some very tough home truths.
As Aaryan, Himesh Patel is dedicated and subtle, a man who will do anything for his wife, but who finds himself conflicted when the challenge of having the assessor in their home becomes all too strange.
Himesh Patel in ‘The Assessment’, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo credit: Cristina Rios. © 2024 Number 9 Films Assessment Limited, TA Co-Production GmbH, ShivHans Productions, LLC, TA2022 Investors, LLC, Tiki Tāne Pictures, LLC. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Yet beyond the main pair, this is really Alicia Vikander’s film on a pure performance level. Playing Virginia, the state-appointed assessor whose task it is to decide across seven days whether Mia and Aaryan should get to have a child, she gives a tour-de-force acting class.
Switching from bureaucratically efficient to childishly wild in just a few scenes, Vikander here throws herself into the role and brings a truly complicated person to life.
Stealing the one scene in which she appears is Minnie Driver as Evie, who is old enough to remember the time before the world was ravaged and is soundly cynical about humanity’s chances now, not to mention scathingly critical of those who wish to bring more people into it.
It’s a superb turn from the actor, who spins a vision of a world so bleak that you both recoil from it but sometimes find yourself wishing the movie could expand to show it.
Final Thoughts
Elizabeth Olsen in ‘The Assessment’, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo credit: Magnus Jønck. © 2024 Number 9 Films Assessment Limited, TA Co-Production GmbH, ShivHans Productions, LLC, TA2022 Investors, LLC, Tiki Tāne Pictures, LLC. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
‘The Assessment’ will certainly be a tough watch for some; not just because of what happens in the movie, but also because of the subjects it addresses, including the control of women, the battle for resources and the challenges that parents of any type face.
Yet if you allow yourself to sink into its world, you’ll be rewarded.
“Would you pass?”
Showtimes & Tickets
In a climate change-ravaged world, a utopian society optimizes life, including parenthood assessments. A successful couple faces scrutiny by an evaluator over seven… Read the Plot
What is the plot of ‘The Assessment’?
In the near future, prospective parents must pass an initial test to prove their suitability for parenthood, and then endure a seven-day live-in visit from a facilitator known as the assessor who will put them through the wringer in all kinds of imaginable and unimaginable situations where, at the end, they will either get a passing grade — or not. Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) are assigned an assessor named Virginia (Alicia Vikander), and as they begin the uncomfortable tests, their relationship begins to crumble.
Who is in the cast of ‘The Assessment’?
Alicia Vikander in ‘The Assessment’, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo credit: Magnus Jønck. © 2024 Number 9 Films Assessment Limited, TA Co-Production GmbH, ShivHans Productions, LLC, TA2022 Investors, LLC, Tiki Tāne Pictures, LLC. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
List of Alicia Vikander Movies and TV Shows:
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Director: George Miller
Writers: George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris
Stars: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult
Synopsis: In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a woman rebels against a tyrannical ruler in search for her homeland with the aid of a group of female prisoners, a psychotic worshipper and a drifter named Max.
“As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken. It was hard to know who was more crazy: me, or everyone else.” No better words describe the world of the Wasteland, a place plagued by war and famine and the complete collapse of society. In this world, the rules are clear: there are none. Survivors will do what they must to make it another day, even as fanatics and those establishing power across the Wasteland oppress more and more desperate people just wanting a morsel of what’s left. After an initial look into this destabilization in 1979’s Mad Max and a display of the monstrous nature of humanity, director George Miller expanded the Wasteland across its sequels The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome. Each movie showcased the best and worst of people, and the sickly approaches they would take to see the next day.
In Mad Max: Fury Road, this insidiousness is explored through the warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), who controls the supply of water in the Wasteland and gives very little to the thirsty, starved people below his Citadel. He has established himself as a divine being with a cultish following that hangs on his every word. His brethren, the War Boys, are malnourished and brainwashed men and women who live on ‘blood bags’ (people with enough blood still to ‘donate’ so the War Boys can keep going) and drive in Immortan’s name by worshipping him and honoring their ‘god,’ the V8 engine. When going after enemies and factions that may threaten them, they are willing to give their lives in the Immortan’s name, hoping to be ‘witnessed’ and ride to Valhalla to join the heroes of all time.
Like every movie in the series, this rule is eventually challenged by someone who decides they have had enough. In Fury Road, that’s Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a War Rig driver hauling cargo who decides to drive off-road, with the Immortan realizing quickly that Furiosa is also driving with his harem of wives (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoe Kravitz, Courtney Eaton, Riley Keough), and gives chase to her with his War Boys, like Nux (Nicholas Hoult), who hope to catch her and find favor in the Immortan’s eyes. And much like his involvement in the previous installments, Max (Tom Hardy) is in the middle of the action, as a blood bag to Nux at first and then driving along with Furiosa looking for a paradise within the ruins of the Wasteland.
All of this leads into one of the best action movies of the 21st century and, by extension, one of the finest ever made, with an ample amount of solid characterization, terrific dialogue that’s endlessly quotable, and phenomenal direction from Miller. Once Furiosa drives the War Rig out of the Citadel limits and towards Gas Town, the movie refuses to relent, even for a second. Powered by Tom Holkenborg’s thunderous score that is even personified in the movie in parts by the thrashing of the Doof Warrior’s flamethrowing guitar, Fury Road moves from one incredible setpiece to the next, from a chase where they battle the Buzzards, a rival faction, to one of the most visually spectacular sandstorms ever put to film, two brilliant canyon runs, and a tense nighttime sequence as the War Rig moves through a swamp. With the combination of John Seale’s incredible cinematography and fantastic visual effects, Fury Road soars as an action spectacle.
Yet throughout it all, the movie never forgets its characters, who are given ample development as the world around them goes to an even lower depth of hell. Everyone is broken, and trying to find some form of redemption and absolution for the things they have witnessed or the mistakes they have made, and wanting to be better people despite the world telling them they can’t. From Max’s tortured psyche due to his past failures to save everyone to Furiosa’s shattered past and lost family waiting to be found, to the wives of the Immortan Joe who find themselves at the precipice of a life with no shackles and futures that aren’t relegated to being child bearers for the warlord, and even Nux, a War Boy realizing his pursuit for Valhalla is more than pleasing a man who cares little for everyone else; the storytelling creates an emotional journey for them that by the time the credits roll, leaves audiences with a new set of favorites in the franchise.
10 years later, it’s no surprise that Mad Max: Fury Road has achieved the status it has in the pantheon of action cinema. A relentless two hours crescendos in a magnificent final chase in the other direction, with some of the finest stunt work and vehicular carnage of the century, giving every character a chance to shine and be a prominent part of the rampage, even incorporating that guitarist on a rig just powering everything with a crew of drummers behind him, and with a fascinating character piece that followed with 2024’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, it creates a picture perfect arc for the character as well. In the end, it rides eternal, shiny and chrome.
Grade: A+
Movie Reviews
Movie review: “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning' still thrills after slow start – UPI.com
1 of 5 | Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) hangs on in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” in theaters May 23. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures
LOS ANGELES, May 14 (UPI) — Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, in theaters May 23, delivers on the level of the franchise’s most recent films once it gets going. It does, however, have the slowest start of all eight Mission: Impossible movies.
In 2023’s Dead Reckoning, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) took on the villainous Gabriel (Esai Morales) to retrieve the key that unlocks the source code of the rogue artificial intelligence known as The Entity. Final Reckoning opens two months later, with Ethan unsure what to do with such power.
As The Entity holds hostage all of cyberspace and the world’s electronics, including military weapons, there is a deadline before the AI will control the world. That is, if Ethan doesn’t stop it first.
The plan to destroy The Entity requires Ethan’s teammates, hackers Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell) and Gabriel’s turncoat assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff). The mission is complicated by U.S. President Sloane (Angela Bassett) sending agents to recover The Entity’s controls for U.S. purposes, which Ethan knows will backfire.
The missions live up to the movie’s title by devising ways to keep making the task harder for Ethan. For example, he’s already diving to crushing depths to activate computers in a sunken submarine when the sub rolls towards an abyss.
Not only does this add another ticking clock to his task, but the water level rotates around Ethan and causes missiles to fall and shift, blocking his path and exit route.
The climax, which has already been shared during the film’s publicity, features Ethan hanging from a propeller plane. The scene is more than just a spectacle — writer/director Christopher McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen craft a sequence that justifies the stunt and continues to build as the pilot attempts many different ways to shake Ethan.
Final Reckoning does play the same trick one too many times, where Ethan’s team goes to meet someone and finds someone else waiting for them. The second and third iterations lack surprise, but the interlopers at least complicate Ethan’s plan, necessitating some fun improvisation.
Leading up to such sequences, this Mission: Impossible unfortunately becomes tedious and repetitive. The problem could easily be solved by cutting 40 minutes out of the film — which would still leave it at over two hours long.
Final Reckoning recapping Dead Reckoning is the least of these worries, as it gets handled before the title sequence, which admittedly comes some 20 minutes in. What does become redundant are long sequences of Ethan walking through a war room looking at models as the DEFCON clock ticks down to The Entity’s takeover.
Ethan explains to Gabriel, then to the President, then to Admiral Neely (Hannah Waddingham), how dangerous The Entity is. There’s buildup and then there’s just wallowing, and this leans towards the latter.
He keeps warning that The Entity expects them to act a certain way and advising they should instead surprise the AI. He says it enough times that the audience has surely caught on, if not The Entity itself.
Furthermore, The Final Reckoning becomes the most convoluted of all the Mission: Impossibles, which is no small feat, by connecting the plot to all seven previous films. It is an odd choice in a series predicated on standalone entries, and a mistake also recently criticized in the James Bond films starring Daniel Craig.
Bringing back some characters from previous entries is fun and gives them satisfying character arcs to imagine in the time between films, while others concoct unimportant connections. Just let some people be new characters.
For example, tying in The Entity with the Rabbit’s Foot from Mission: Impossible III is wholly unnecessary. The Rabbit’s Foot was one of that director J.J. Abrams’ trademark unanswered mysteries, so saying now that it was a component of The Entity adds little to the current film.
The pieces of The Entity could be any Maguffin. Making Ethan feel responsible for it just forces more spurious connections. Ethan was going to stop The Entity anyway, whether he indirectly helped build it or not.
This is not to criticize the scenes explaining the missions, which effectively establish the impossible tasks at hand. Those scenes are not included in the superfluous 40 minutes of exposition.
Potentially interesting threads are also abandoned, such as a doomsday cult that worships The Entity but never becomes a factor in the mission.
When the screen expands to fill the entire IMAX frame, rest assured the show is about to start — and it is worth it. The unfortunate issue is that it happens about 80 minutes into the film, not including a few earlier IMAX shots of The Entity’s core. The submarine is the first proper IMAX action scene.
During the intense scenes, the film has a sense of humor about its own tropes of deadlines and cutting wires. It’s only when it’s taking itself seriously that it drags.
Gabriel becomes more of a mustache twirling, cackling villain in this film. It’s motivated by his loss in Dead Reckoning but still a drastic shift, though the film has a sense of humor about his behavior too.
The second half of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning makes up for earlier mission failures, and this level of craftsmanship is still worth experiencing. Otherwise, the script problems would be unacceptable.
Written and directed by first-time filmmaker Lim Dae-hee, Holy Night: Demon Hunters follows three underground demon hunters, operating like private investigators who are too unorthodox to be cops and too accepting of the occult to be associated with the church.
The demon-hunting trinity is led by Ba Woo (Ma Dong-seok), a beast of a man capable of solving most of his problems with his bulking fists. Whatever slips through Ba Woo’s fingers is typically dealt with by Sharon (Seohyun), a woman who can sense and exorcise demons. Then there’s Kim Goon (Lee David), a demon hunter in training who is the team’s tech support.
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A neuropsychiatrist named Jung-won (Kyung Soo-jin) is trying to help her sister Eun-seo (Jung Ji-so) who is in desperate need of an exorcism. With the church unable to assist with their stance on exorcisms, it’s up to Ba Woo and his team to save Eun-seo.
It feels like Holy Night: Demon Hunters is the second installment of a franchise that nobody knew about. A prequel webtoon called Holy Night: The Zero is available on Naver Webtoon and is currently 13 episodes long. The webtoon could add more depth to the film since Holy Night: Demon Hunters seems to struggle to keep your interest for its measly 92-minute duration. Like Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales though, viewers shouldn’t have to read or watch something else to fully appreciate a director’s vision.
The action horror film teases a real-world takeover by not only demons but Lucifer himself. The credits introduce the audience to every demon that could come into play. Holy Night: Demon Hunters barely scratches the surface of the ideas it introduces, so it’s a bit confusing why so many aspects are shown and not utilized. The film then decides to vaguely describe semi-intriguing backgrounds for characters barely seen through to completion.
Ba Woo is using all the money he’s making as a demon hunter to build an orphanage. He grew up as an orphan. And the people from the orphanage he grew up in were slaughtered by his best friend, whom he viewed as a brother. The two of them gained a demonic power, and Ba Woo used his power for good while his brother became a demon.
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The majority of the rest of the film is devoted to Eun-Seo, her exorcism, and which demon has possessed her. The exorcism Sharon uses on her is broken down into six stages (and a piece of bamboo since it thwarts off demonic energy for whatever reason). The six stages of exorcism are presence, deception, break point, voice, clash, and expulsion.
Most of the characters in the film are underdeveloped. Ba Woo is a big, buffed dude struggling with both literal and inner demons inside of him. Sharon is in the same boat, and her power could easily sway her to the dark side. Apart from asking for a raise and being the most sympathetic of the bunch, Kim Goon doesn’t do much.
Jung-won is so annoyingly written. The character is meant to be a burden by being in the room during the exorcism for no reason other than being an obstacle, making stupid decisions at every turn, and being an inconsolable crier at every turn.
The VFX in the film is a mixed bag. Sometimes they look almost great, like when Ba Woo punches demon-possessed people, as smoke seeps from their bodies or the weird shadow demon that haunts him throughout the film. But the CGI highs come with a lot of visual lows, and Holy Night: Demon Hunters struggles with decent-to-janky CGI the majority of the time.
Holy Night: Demon Hunters is a punchier version of Constantine. There are some fun sequences, but the film is a bummer overall. Ma Dong-seok typically chooses great projects to be a part of, and it’s unfortunate that Holy Night: Demon Hunters feels so rushed and incomplete. A big dude storming around the city punching demons into submission sounds so awesome, but somehow Lim Dae-hee turned it into this thin, dull, and lifeless attempt at purification.
NEXT: Capcom Censors Oyu’s Extra Costume In ‘Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny’ Remaster
Holy Night: Demon Hunters (2025), Capelight Pictures
PROS
- Ma Dong-seok
- Some of the action and VFX are fantastic
CONS
- Mutilates a fun concept
- Makes 90 minutes feel long
- Thin story
- Little to no character development
- Opening credit terminology seems longwinded for no reason
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