So “Northern Exposure” (1990-95) stole from “Local Hero” (1983)?

Posted on December 16, 2025 by Roger Moore

I’ve never made a secret of my ongoing affection for Bill Forsyth’s classic fish-out-of-water comedy “Local Hero,” the sort of pixiedusted picture that conjured an adoration for small town Scotland even in people who’d yet to venture there when it came out in 1983.

And there’s nothing like sitting down for a periodic renewal of my connection to “Northern Exposure” to remind me of the year (it felt longer) I spent in Kodiak, Alaska. It might be TV’s best “fish out of water” comedy, and it’s inspired movies and movie characters, plot threads and casting whims in many a film since its heyday.

But I never made the connection between the two until this latest dial-hop-stop for “Local Hero.” Historically, Russians have not been strangers to Alaska, from their efforts to colonize it to Old Cold War and New Cold War efforts to threaten it. When I lived there, Russian trawlers would drop in for a touch of unofficial “good will” shore leave, just long enough to shock the crew into how expensive Alaska’s version of America was to shop in. I toured a trawler or two that stopped in when I worked for the NPR station there, always with a a fishing trawler equivalent of the Party Hack/security officer (Zampolit) trailing me as I asked innocuous questions about what they were fishing for and how often they made U.S. port of call stops.

The 1994 “Zarya” episode of “Northern Exposure” is a straight-up knock-off of a “Local Hero” episode — a quaint coastal village gets regular visits from their favorite Russian. Cicely, Alaska wasn’t coastal, but the plot element was close enough to matter, and plainly taken from Forsyth’s film.

Forsyth could have co-created or directed episodes of the show, thanks to the matching tone and colorful eccentrics populating his corner of Scotland and Alaska’s version of “The Middle of Nowhere.”

Late period Cold War comic twists on the cliched “Red Menace” leaned on another Russian stereotype — the gregarious, big living, big loving, hard drinking and singing life of the party Tovarich. We’ll likely never see their like on film or TV again until Putin and his puppet have passed from the stage.

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Netflixable? Saudi son thinks “The Fakenapping” is How to Get Money Out of his Rich Dad

Posted on December 15, 2025 by Roger Moore

Flashes of competence adorn the new Saudi action comedy, “The Fakenapping.”

It’s not badly acted, and the few action beats make one wish director Amine Lakhnech had thrown in a few more car chases around scenic, modern after-dark Riyadh.

The plot is given away by the title. A son (Mohammed Aldokhe) is in hock to a loan shark, so he’s all ears when a sketchy pal (Yazeed Almahyul) suggests they fake a kidnapping to get ransom money out of Sattam’s miserly old man, Sulieman (Abdulaziz Al-Sokayreen).

A couple of goofy, inept Porsche-coveting lowllifes join the caper.

Sattam’s hapless yes-man-to-his-dad brother (Khaled Hweijan) and the brother’s greedy wife (Abrar Faisal) bicker over whether this is the best use of the fabric importer father’s under-the-table Saudi riyals.

But the subtitled translation is sloppy, with half the cast of characters never identified by name. The kidnapper accomplices aren’t ID’d at all. The “logic” of the plot doesn’t translate at times. And the finale makes less sense than the attempts to conjure up a “happy ending” out of all the greed, unpunished crime and family treachery of it all.

Aldohke is convincing as a father going through a divorce, doting on his pranks-loving little girl. But little is made of that plot thread and our leading man never works up what would pass for enraged and frantic that his character is meant to express in the latter acts.

A big fight is staged in which a chief henchman/bodyguard just stands by and let his mobster boss get smacked and grabbed into a wrestling tussle before finally — on cue — diving in.

Much of it is just “off” enough to not work. But as Saudi comedies and pretty much anything funny filmed in Arabic are rare, one can appreciate the effort.

I chuckled at the kidnappers making sure to provide a prayer mat and note the Qibla — the general direction of Mecca — to their victim. And I laughed at the realization — perhaps newer to the West than to the Middle East — that Saudi men who insist on dressing in a thawb, bisht and sandals are no damned good at chasing somebody, or getting away from anybody else. The shoes and all that cloth you have to gather up puts you at a disadvantage.

“The Fakenapping” isn’t very good. But it’s got possibilities. I’d keep an eye out for Amine Lakhnetch’s next outing. But he’d be well advised to spend some of that Saudi/Netfix money on paying for a more competitent closed caption translation than whatever Netflix is using now.

And if you’re going to put grown Saudi men into a chase on foot, the smart play is to make that stumbling, tripping, trapped in your “traditional” robes business a running gag.

Rating: TV-PG, mild violence, smoking

Cast: Mohammed Aldokhe, Yazeed Almajyul, Abdulaziz Al-Sokayreen. Saeed Al-Owairan, Abdullah Aldrees, Khaled Hweijan and Abrar Faisal

Credits Directed by Amine Lakhnech, scripted by Abdulaziz Alessa and Ahmed Amer. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:26

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Rob Reiner: 1947-2025

Posted on December 15, 2025 by Roger Moore

Like most people I’d care to know, I was shocked and saddened to learn of the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle this past weekend in Los Angeles.

It’s the sort of crime that makes one leap to a lot of wrong conclusions based on who he was, how outspoken he was and how insensate, venal and violent those who openly professed hatred for him in recent years have proven to be.

But it’s the holidays. The police are questioning an estranged family member. It’s a stressful time of the year amped up by the sorry state of the nation and the sleepless, alarmed national pysche. Who knows what happened?

Reiner was an early adaptor nepo baby, the son of famed wit and funnyman Carl Reiner, and he followed Dad into writing, acting and directing — surpassing many of the old man’s achievements by making a string of great to near great films in the ’80s and ’90s.

“Spinal Tap” to “The Sure Thing,” “A Few Good Men” to “Misery,” “When Harry Met Sally” to “Flipped.”

I interviewed a few times over the decades, first with “Misery,” where he seemed proudest of his “discovery” of the Great Great Kathy Bates, and the last time when he had the utterly magical “Flipped” that he brought to an AARP convention in Orlando and we spoke. Nobody saw it, and that’s a crying shame.

I often think of his directing career when I see evidence of another filmmaker of similar stature unable to make the deals, get the jobs, that they used to. Or in the obvious and most recent case, of 88 year old James L. Brooks’ films of the past 25 years, reaching a nadir with “Ella McCay,” underlining the ways even great filmmakers’ instincts fail and the ways the filmmaking/film audience times pass you by and you’re late figuring that out.

“Old guys (and gals) can’t direct comedy” is an old maxim of criticism whose lone exception is the ancient Brit Charles Crichton, whom John Cleese got to steer “A Fish Called Wanda” to glory. A couple of Reiner’s later films reached their (retiree, mostly) audience, but most just didn’t work.

But Reiner, in his long, storied prime, was a grand talent, a guy with instincts that paid off time and again — launching John Cusack’s career with “The Sure Thing,” joining forces with Stephen King for “Stand By Me,” squaring Cruise off against Nicholson in “A Few Good Men,” matching glorious and still funny geezers Morgan Freeman with Jack for “The Bucket List,” hunting for truth and bringing murderous racists to justice in “Ghosts of Mississippi,” casting Peter Falk, Robin Wright, Cary Elwes, Wallace Shawn, Andre the Giant, Mandy Patinkin, his pal Christopher Guest and wee Fred Savage and making “The Princess Bride” an all time children’s classic that their parents could enjoy.

No doubt those who hated the guy who came to fame as their least favorite liberal “meathead” will relish the way this murder is covered on their favorite oligarchical news operations. But those who followed Reiner’s work and his politics know that he never gave up on changing their minds. And almost nobody deserves this.

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Movie Review: A Tasty Tangled Web — “Sew Torn”

Posted on December 14, 2025 by Roger Moore

I once covered the first day of the first class of a brand new film school. Directing students were learning how to rehearse a scene with actors, and one of them finished his turn running the set when he asked the actors to switch roles — gender, age, plot and logic be damned — for another go.

The professor interrupted him and made a teachable moment out of this whim. At best, what the kid was trying was a gimmick. At worst, he would be wasting expensive production time on set for a movie that investors paid to turn out a ceratin way, in a way that amounts to a childish, unprofessional indulgence.

How you respond to the comic indie thriller “Sew Torn” depends on your tolerance for such gimmicks, and for pun titles.

First time feature director Freddy Macdonald, remaking a proof-of-conceit short film, hammers the viewer over the head with the parable he’s setting up, the “choices” our heroine/antu-heroine Barbara (Eve Connolly) makes which lead to four different outcomes spinning out of her moment of truth.

Is there a “right” and “moral” choice that will give her a happily ever after? Or will she have to break the rules, the law and rob and escape mobsters to commit “the perfect crime” to get there?

Barbara is a small town “mobile seamstress,” daughter of the seamstress who opened Duggen’s sewing shop and seamstress service. Haunted by her dead mother, whose own gimmick was a sort of forget-me-not machine-copied-from-a-photo embroidery pillow with a voice chip containing a loved one’s message, best wishes, etc.,

Barbara is trapped in her dead mother’s failing business dealing with a handful of eccentric to downright rude clients.

But one day, she skips out on a rude bride (Caroline Goodall) who is furious over a button on her “everything’s got to be PERFECT” wedding dress and stumbles across an accident/crime scene.

There are entangled, burning motorcycles, two battered and bloodied drivers crawling along the pavement, a couple of pistols in plain sight with busted bags of white power over the remote stretch of mountain road (This was filmed in Switzerland’s Tamina Valley). One rider has the busted half of a handcuff on one arm. The other handcuff half is on a briefcase.

We’ve seen a few movies and a lot of TV. We know the whole story without anybody telling us. Barbara’s stumbled into a “drop” gone wrong.

“Perfect crime,” Barbara narrates in her mind from the seat of her kitschy late model Fiat 500 with a giant needle and thread on the back. “Call police. Drive away.”

The “crime” part is driving away with that briefcase. We then see four different iterations of Barbara’s “choices” that have her trying to get paid and get out of the trap of her life with her wits and her three dimensional seamtress’s view of the world.

We watch her try to DIY her way out of jams — attempting to turn the tables on being held at gunpoint, weaving a web of thread that will give the two bad guys (Calum Worthy and Thomas Douglas) string-manipulated access to their pistols at the same time, setting snares and booby-traps, tying down her own hostage. using a needle and thread as a form of grappling hook, the works.

If it can be done with a thimble, thread, needle and tiny scissors, Barbara’s whe whiz who can manage it.

John Lynch plays the not-to-be-trifled-with — “He’s coming for me, then he’s coming for you” mobster. He will be her ultimate foil in these thought exercises in getting away with drug money.

Yes, it plays like a piece of theater workshopped into various finales. `And no, you never forget that what you’re watching is gimmicky. But so what? So is every “Knives Out” mystery.

It’s the script’s notion of problem-solving-by-sewing that sells this. That’s downright ingenious.

How will Barbara sew or thread her out of each jam is a fun way to conjure up suspense in a film that doesn’t have a lot of urgency, thanks to its rural setting.

We see the colorful currency, hear everybody speaking English and yet notice the (Swiss) mountains and architecture and ponder the curious and curious cliched characters and try to place this story in a logical place, and can’t.

Wherever this is, the great Northern Irish character actor Lynch (“The Secret Garden,” “In the Name of the Father”) seems both right at home and a scary aberration in a quaint, Swiss Miss TV commercial setting.

“Choices choices choices,” Barbara narrates. How will this gimmick pay off, and does it matter than she says “choices” three times in a movie where plainly a fourth option can be trotted out?

Who cares? It’s fun, and no matter how contrived, Macdonald and Connolly — of TV’s “Into the Badlands” and “Vikings” — keeps us engaged in a “Mouse Hunt” tale where the trick is to have the right thread and get it through the eye of the needle enough times to pay off.

Rating: unrated, bloody violence, profanity

Cast: Eve Connolly, Calum Worthy, Thomas Douglas, K Callan, Caroline Goodall and John Lynch.

Credits: Directed by Freddy Macdonald, scripted by Fred Macdonald and Freddy Macdonald. A Vertigo Release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:40

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Movie Review: Spending “Eternity” with…Miles Teller?

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Roger Moore

It’s a cheap shot to label “Eternity” an “endless” romantic comedy that only seems to go on and on forever and ever. But a script with 60 minutes worth of cute/sweet ideas about marriage and the afterlife — none of them that original — demanding 114 minutes of our time can rightly be described as its own form of cinematic torture.

It’s more thought-provoking than profound, rarely amusing but sentimental when it works, which isn’t anywhere near half the time.

And you can’t sit through it without remembering that nobody showed up to “Top Gun: Maverick” to see Miles Teller.

“Eternity” is an Elizabeth Olsen star vehicle in which she must choose — after death — whether to spend “Eternity” with her first great love (Callum Turner of “The Boys in the Boat” and “Masters of the Air”), who died in combat, or the man she married and made children, a family and a life with for 65 years (Teller).

In cinephile shorthand it’s “Always/A Guy Named Joe” meets “Defending Your Life” and the most obscure title of all, Alan Rudolph’s wistful fantasy “Made in Heaven.” And despite spending lots of time, energy and production cash on a sort of Pixar-inspired polytheistic/mass market realization of the afterlife, it’s more boring than any of its antecedents.

The one-liners are weaker than the sight gags and the great-loves-of-her-life plot rarely warms up enough to make the sale.

An elderly couple, charmingly played by Betty Buckley and Barry Primus, gripe and grouse their way to a grandchild’s “gender reveal” party for the baby that’s on the way. The long, slow Volvo wagon ride to the event is peppered with bickering over what “kids these days” celebrate — “Graduation from kindergarten?”

The “Seinfeld” shtick comes to an abrupt end when elder Larry dies. As Joan is terminally ill herself, at least he won’t have long to wait.

In heaven? No. He’s in the um, waiting area — The Junction — a vast complex of hi-rise condos overlooking assorted transit stations, escalators and a vast “sales” floor where endless variations of your ideal afterlife are pitched.

“Studio 54 World,,” “Queer World,” a “Man Free World,” “Beach World,” “Classic Pearly Gates,” “Catholic Heaven,” “”Weimar (Germany) World” (“without the Nazis”), “Capitalist Heaven” and “Smoker’s World: ‘Cause Cancer Can’t Kill You Twice” beckon.

Larry can’t choose until Joan gets there. Which will Joan choose? Larry could never convince her to move South, as “We’re not Florida people.” She was more into the mountains. So Larry can’t commit to any afterlife and sign on the dotted line with his A.C. — afterlife counselor (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).

Yes, co-writers Patrick Cunnane and (director) David Freyne’s Big Idea is imagining eternity as one big time-share scam, with high pressure sales pitches and any choice you make “final” and lots of catches in the fine print.

But Larry is forgetting the ribbing he took from his offspring, joker sons-in-law and others at that gender reveal party. Somebody passed around granny’s photo of her hunky first husband, the one who died “in the war.” A “lot better looking” than dad/granddad/great-grandad is the consensus.

Maybe Joan, who like Larry will arrive in The Junction in her “happiest version” of herself, young and beautiful, will choose Luke (Turner).

And once she picks up on what’s going on, Joan gives that some serious thought. Because Luke has hung around this Junction without making his own choice of an afterlife, beginning his “eternity” by waiting for the great love of his life to arrive.

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Movie Review: Forgettable and Regretable –“Ella McCay”

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Roger Moore

“Ella McCay” is a blandly-titled collection of randomly-scripted expressions of feelings, political frustration, character failings and over-acted monologues interrupting insufferable and incessant voice-over narration.

Its two tedious and under-edited hours play like an aimless attempt at a feel good streaming series most of us would go out of our way to avoid.

We don’t need reminding that “Terms of Endearment”/”As Good as It Gets” director James L. Brooks hasn’t made a movie worth seeing in this millenium. But his heart and motivations are in the right place, with a message that tracks all the way back to “Broadcast News.”

A whole lot of what’s wrong and why we “hate each other” in America stems from a male fear of smart, idealistic and ambitious women.

But this well-intentioned dramedy goes wrong right from the start and careens downhill from there.

Emma Mackey has the title role, playing first a wise and articulate beyond-her-years teen and later as an idealistic politico pushing a benefits-for “Mom Bill” and Tooth Tutor (visiting rutal families to pass out toothpaste, toothbrushes and dental visits to kids) initiatives as the youngest Lieutenant Governor her state has ever had.

The movie is about what Ella had to overcome to get there and her uncompromising “annoying” image that threaten to be her downfall just as she’s promoted to governor.

Brooks favorite Julie Kavner (he produces “The Simpsons”) is our aged on camera and off narrator, the governor-to-be’s secretary and gate-keeper and longtime state employee. Estelle remembers Ella’s idealistic youth as “a better time. We all still liked each other.”

Ella was the teen who confronted her feckless, philandering father (Woody Harrelson) and his enabling wife, her mother (Rebecca Miller) who holds onto the marriage against all logic.

“Please God, spare me LOVE,” teen Ella declares. But she isn’t spared.

Growing up with her fiesty tavern-owner Aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) Ella finds a future husband (Jack Lowden) in high school, a guy who feeds her ego and supports her unconditionally, as he sees a great future for her.

Adult Ella lost her mother, is estranged from her father and barely in contact with her online gambling guru/agoraphoic brother (Spike Fearn). “Ella McCay” is about a cascade of personal and political crises that descend on her the minute the popular governor (Albert Brooks) accepts a cabinet appointment in Washington.

He’s the one who reminds her how “annoying” a smart policy wonk like her is among politicos that spend all their time raising money to get themselves re-elected. And she is young and smart enough to point out to him why America descended into gridlock long before it embraced fascism.

“You can’t be popular and FIX anything!”

Ella staggers from one time-sucking personal-becomes-political crisis after another with only her aunt and her state police driver (Kumail Nanjiani) to confide in. Literally every other man in her life is a lifelong problem (her self-serving/”forgiveness” begging father) or fresh set of political and personal fires to fight.

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Series Preview: Bernthal & Tessa,  Cop & Reporter,  “His & Hers” takes on a Murder Mystery

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Roger Moore

A couple of my favorite actors paired up for a January thriller.

As it’s a series you can bet they will tease and cliffhanger out a 95 minute idea into six episodes.

Jan. 8.

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Movie Review: Korean Canadians, Kimchi and OkCupid — “The Mother and the Bear”

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Roger Moore

“The Mother and the Bear” may be the cutest thing branded “Korean” since BTS, or even the Kia Soul.

Sure, it’s a Canadian indie dramedy by a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker. But writer-director Johnny Ma brings an outsider’s view and respect for Korean manners, mores and Kimchi to this wistful fish-out-of-water romance.

Ma (“Old Stone”) taps into melodrama and magical realism for this adorable, feel-good mash-up of “While You Were Sleeping,” “Eat Drink Man Woman” and “The Wedding Banquet.”

The Korean ex-pat Sumi (Leere Park) has started a new life in Winnepeg, Manitoba, which newcomers nicknamed “Winter-Peg” generations ago. She copes with the snow and the cold and kind of ignores her mother’s endless calls from the Old Country. And then spies a bunny in an icy alley and notices what the bunny was hopping away from just as she was trying to snap a photo.

A bear causes Sumi to slip and hit her head. That brings Mrs. Sara Kim (Kim Ho-jung), a widow who runs a Korean guest house, over to see her comatose 26 year-old and get a taste of the compassionate and competent Canadian health care system in action. Dr. Jenny (Samantha Kendrick) gently reassures the mother as she puts Sumi in a medically-induced coma to aid her recovery.

Mrs. Kim, with a little boost from her Winnepeg sister Minji (Susan Hanson), starts to piece together her daughter’s life as she unpacks and decorates Sumi’s new/old apartment. No food in the fridge? Time to make Kimchi! No photos of family? Here’s a framed shot of Dad Sara flew over to park on her daughter’s mantel. But that window she keeps closing against the cold? That’s to let the cat in, she discovers. Eventually.

What Sumi really needs is “a husband to take care of her,” Mom thinks. That Korean hunk (Jonathan Kim) she bumps into, slack-jawed, and then faints in front of in a market will do. He takes her to the hospital. He must be a DOCTOR. No, “but my girlfriend is.”

Guess who turns out to be that doctor girlfriend? Guess what Mrs. Kim discovers when she ducks into the Tasty Seoul restaurant? Why, it’s the hunk’s Dad (Lee Won-jae), who disapproves of his boy’s choice of gorgeous blonde mate. And guess what comes about

Writer-director Ma tacitly acknowledges age-old “marry your own kind” racism that’s rife throughout Asia as a way of sidling into the bigger “disapproval” that we know is coming. He manages to avoid having the parents conspire to bust up the son’s relationship so that he’ll be ready to rebound with a nice Korean-born woman fresh out of a coma. What Ma conjures up instead is a “swipe right” scheme stage-managed by folks too old to know social media well but certainly old enough to know better than doing what they’re doing.

Yes, there are predictable twists aplenty in this script. But Kim (“Emergency Declaration”) takes her rare chance for a leading lady turn and runs with it. The easy laughs come from what we figure out and untraveled Mom doesn’t figure out about the daughter, from Sara’s naive appreciation of the many “other” uses of a boxed vibrator she unlacks and the ways she clumsily takes selfies of her Kimchi preps (a grand montage for foodies) and lets a young nurse coach her in the traditions of “swipe right” culture.

Sara gripes about “this AWFUL city” to Sumi’s friend and children’s art center co-worker (Amara Pedroso), frets over the Manitoba Maulers that bury her borrowed SUV under snow pretty much daily and decides that she can’t find jars for her Kimchi off the shelf — unless she buys gigantic jars of pickles — which she dumps to reuse. But this trip to an alien culture and the expats within it, with its daily visits to a sick child, is her way of coming into her own.

I love the taste of Winnepeg that “The Mother and the Bear” provides. I used to visit the hometown of Neil Young and the Bachmans of BTO on a regular basis when I lived just across the border, and all I remember about it was the even-colder-than-North-Dakota weather, the Chinese restaurants and jelly donut shops on every corner and the friendly people.

But dear Johnny Ma — dear, dear Johnny Ma. Using “Unchained Melody” for Sara to sentimentally sing along with — ironically or unironically — is cheating. Moviegoers have been crying over that tune since “Ghost.”

So yes, you will giggle at this quaint comedy and be charmed enough to want to reach out and pinch its adorable cheeks. But bring a hanky. I’m just saying.

Rating: unrated, adult subject matter, some profanity

Cast: Kim Ho-jung, Lee Won-jae, Jonathan Kim, Amara Pedroso, Samantha Kendrick and Leere Park.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Johnny Ma. A Dekanalog release.

Running time: 1:40

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Movie Review: “Merv” is the Canine Couples Counselor for Zooey and Charlie

Posted on December 10, 2025 by Roger Moore

Zooey Deschanel’s image was cast in tinsel way back when she co-starred in “Elf.” So if you’re making a holiday movie for Xennials to get sentimental over, you could do a lot worse than the perpetually perky wide-eyed pixie in bangs forever playing the “New Girl.”

In “Merv,” Deschanel takes second billing to an adorable terrier mix for a comedy about a couple struggling to move on or “just put aside our crap for Merv,” a dog who’s lost his spark because his humans broke up.

Paired up with Brit Charlie Cox, Marvel’s “Daredevil,” in the same bangs she’s famous for and in a shorts-skorts wardrobe one could swear she wore in “500 Days of Summer,” etc., Deschanel finds herself without a lot that’s fresh or fun or new to play, right down to the holiday setting.

But how many times can you rewatch “Elf?”

Anna (Deschanel) split from Russ (Cox) some months back. But the joint custody of their dog Merv is leaving the rescue pooch depressed. As Anna has to be tricked into dating by friends and Boston elementary school teacher Russ won’t let his principal (Chris Redd) set him up, they’re stuck and the dog is paying the price.

Maybe a trip South to the dog-friendliest beach in the world would do Merv good, Russ figures. Dog-friendly motels, canine-inclusive dining? As what dogs love most is being around other dogs, it’s worth a try.

Kure Beach it is! No, the “real” Kure Beach isn’t in Florida. It’s in N.C. I remember. I spent a week there one day. Didn’t notice any dogs. But never mind that.

Russ plays hooky from school but posts “Mervinator” dog vacay updates on Insta. That’s what makes opthalmologist Anna take a break to join them.

His parents (Patricia Heaton from “Everybody Loves Raymond” and Brit David Hunt) live nearby. So does a flirtatious blonde single mom/dog mom (Ellyn Jameson).

Even with endless pop and X-mas pop (The Eels?) tunes on the soundtrack, a spirited Barenaked Ladies sing-along and all the doggie puns you can eat — “Bark-a-rita” drinks, “Mutt Loaf” dog entres, “Bow-Oke” canina karoake and the like — there isn’t much to this. But you know what Xennials say about Florida.

“You go on vacation, but come back on probation.“

And trying to cross the viewer up by reaching a climax and drifting into anti-climax isn’t the cleverest trick in the bag of the screenwriting team that gave us “Suze.”

But when you’re trying to get by on 40somethings acting like 20sethings, almost cute dog tricks, a daft date scene, a line or two worth a grin, some middling sight gags and all those puns, “the lowest form of wit” since 1672, you’ve got to try something.

Rating: PG

Cast: Zooey Deschanel, Charlie Cox, Ellyn Jameson, Chris Redd, Jasmine Mathews, David Hunt and Patricia Heaton

Credits: Directed by Jessica Swale, scripted by Dane Clarks and Linsey Stewart. An MGM release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:45

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Movie Review: Poots and K-Stew film “The Chronology of Water”

Posted on December 10, 2025 by Roger Moore

Rookie director mistakes mute the effect of a powerhouse lead performance in “The Chronology of Water,” actress-turned-director Kristen Stewart’s feature filmmaking debut.

It’s an unblinking, in-your-face movie of the memoir by Lidia Yuknovich, which has developed a cult following thanks to its frank depiction of making art out of a childhood of abuse and adult life of trauma, addiction and sexual experimentation.

But while one can understand Stewart and her star’s Imogen Poots’ enthusiasm for the writer’s truth, Stewart’s decision to begin her movie by assaulting the viewer for the better part of the entire first act is blunder one.

We’re thrown into the maelstrom of Lidia’s youth and its adult consequences with blurry nudity in the water and images of blood in the pool which was our future writer’s first dream of glory — competitive swimming — and the bullying, “control” and sexual assault by her father (Michael Epp).

It’s graphic and more gross than shocking fever dream of an introduction, and lacking context we’re instantly in over our heads as viewers in a way intended to mimic how shocked and overwhelmed the child and teen Lida must have been.

But Poots’ voice-over narration, a filmmaking crutch often leaned on to suggest “writerly” subject matter, especially in the movies of novice filmmakers, is half-mumbled in the early scenes and that interior monologue dogs the movie from beginning to end.

Set in California, Texas and Oregon, the film is displaced in space and time thanks to the fact that it was filmed in Latvia and Poots plays Lidia from her late teens into her late 30s. When she meets the mentor who would give shape to her budding writing career — “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” author and lifelong “merry prankster” Ken Kesey (Jim Belushi) — we’re on more solid ground about the “where” and “why” if not the “when.”

The abuse of Lidia and her older sister Claudia started early, and the narrative connects us to the aftershocks of trauma to come by showing a recklessness in very young Lidia (played by Anna Wittowsky). A bicycle riding lesson sees her take her hands off the handlebars to “escape” pervert-bully Dad’s control and even injure herself.

His support for her swimming ambitions is just an opportunity to put her down when colleges only offer partial scholarships and “not a’ full ride.” If one lesser Texas school hadn’t approached her, she might never have escaped the creep. “Free” but stoned, drunk and promiscuous with both male and female classmates, she flunks out.

That’s how she follows her fellow escapee — her sister (Thora Birch) to Oregon where her diary-keeping fuels her new ambition. “I want to to write ‘The Sound and the Fury.'” And she’ll do it either as a memoir or a based-on-her-real-life novel.

Professor Kesey sees something in her and allows non-student Lidia into his class/workshop to create a group-written novel.

Go forth, he tells his charges between puffs on a student-rolled joint. “Write some bizarre sentences!”

Stewart wisely keeps all her focus on Poots in “The Chronology of Water,” and the “Frank & Lola,” “French Exit” and “Green Room” alumna does not disappoint. Poots makes even the pretentious passages of voice-over narration, “the yielding expose of a white page” and “I am a woman who talks to herself in lies,” feel lived-in.

As Lidia, she exults in teen triumph in the pool and mourns her stillborn first child from a premature marriage to a passive, sensitive would-be “James Taylor” singer/songwriger (Tom Sturridge).

Epp is perfectly vile as father Mike, whose wife their mother (Susannah Flood) drinks to pretend she doesn’t see the humiliation and sexual assault going on under their roof.

Whatever emotional connection adapter/director Stewart felt for this memoir, she got into the the spirit of the thing in cinematic terms. The book’s notoriety partly came from the naked woman photographed for the cover, and Stewart flirts with exploitation more than once — graphic scenes of Poots shaving to swim and drawing blood, masturbating inspired by the abuse, dabbling in S&M “submission” and teen swimmers facing public corporal punishment by taking a swat on their swimsuited bottoms for every pound they’re “over weight” from their unseen sexist brute of a coach.

Stewart shot the bottom-swatting in a way — girls poking their butts out for “punishment” — that would have gotten any male director canceled to Tristan da Cuhna.

Praised to the heavens in the rareified air of film festivals, “The Chronology of Water” can be more soberly appreciated on general release for Poots’ fearless, put-it-all-out-there performance than for Stewart’s early missteps and her thexploitive mania for the explicit and the repellent, “truth” or fiction.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, sexual abuse, sex, nudity

Cast: Imogen Poots, Thora Birch, Michael Epp, Susannah Flood, Tom Sturridge and Jim Belushi

Credits: Scripted and directed by Kristen Stewart, based on a memoir by Lidia Yuknovich. A The Forge release.

Running time: 2:08

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