Once more, there’s quite a variety of films for you this month! From emotional dramas to rom-coms, thrillers to animation, it’s been a month of genre-bending enjoyment with not a bad film in sight. And so, without further ado…

This month’s TTRs consists of: The Ballad of Wallis Island; Goat; The Good Boy; Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die; The Love Hypothesis; The Mastermind; Regretting You; The Secret Agent.

Director: James Griffith
Writers: Tom Basden, Tim Key, based on their short film The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island
Cast: Tom Basden, Tim Key, Carey Mulligan, Sian Clifford, Akemnji Ndifornyen

A lottery winner invites his favourite musician to play a show on the small island he lives on while attempting to reunite the musician with his professional and romantic ex-partner. Although there’s a strong undertone of pathos to this film, particularly from Tim Key’s performance as Charles, an endearing, if cringey, character. It’s very heartwarming and cutely funny, with the humour proving to be a relatable defense mechanism for a grieving Charles. The jokes and puns are a little cheesy but still often laugh-out-loud funny. The music is absolutely beautiful, giving me almost the same feelings as when I first watched and heard the music of the film musical Once. A delightful little film that feels simultaneously like a warm hug and a kick to the heart.

Director: Tyree Dillihay
Writers: Aaron Buchsbaum, Teddy Riley
Cast: Caleb McLaughlin, Gabrielle Union, Aaron Pierre, Nicola Coughlan, David Harbour, Nick Kroll, Jenifer Lewis, Patton Oswalt, Jelly Roll, Jennifer Hudson, Sherry Cola, Eduardo Franco, Andrew Santino, Bobby Lee, Stephen Curry

Considering the meaning and animal relation of the acronym GOAT (greatest of all time), it was only a matter of time before someone actually made a film about an actual goat with asperations of being the GOAT, and in this film, said goat wants to be the GOAT of a fictional basketball-adjacent sport known as roarball. The animation design is decent, the same technique used for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and K-Pop Demon Hunters, and thus has a similar fighting-the-odds vibe to it. The characters are fun and clear-cut, easy enough for kids to distinguish and follow along as the moralistic choices of some characters become less black and white. It’s a nice, simple tale with a strong message of following one’s dreams and working hard to achieve them.

aka Good Boy, aka Heel
Director: Jan Komasa
Writer: Bartek Bartosik, Naqqash Khalid
Cast: Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, Anson Boon, Kit Rakusen

An interesting film that blurs the line of right and wrong to the point you may need glasses to see it, a man and his family imprison a criminal teen in their basement in order to rehabilitate him. Considering the problems society has with wayward, even dangerous, youngsters, it’s an interesting look at the extremes some would go to in order to protect society at large. It gets to a point, after you’ve seen some of this kid Tommy’s actions, that you almost – almost – want to condone what Chris, the patriarch of the family, is doing. It’s also interesting how it all plays out and the eventual outcome, making for quite the social experiment. Stephen Graham can do no wrong in any performance, and his portrayal of Chris is one of great understanding that Chris fully believes in his mission, while Anson Boon is great in the most frightful way as Tommy. The film might leave you with more questions than answers, and that’s not a bad thing.

Director: Gore Verbinski
Writer: Matthew Robinson
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Tom Taylor, Juno Temple

In one of the most genre-bending films I’ve seen in some time – horror, sci-fi, comedy, romance, and more -, Sam Rockwell stars as a man from the future who goes back to a time when humanity is just reaching the point of no return with AI and its eventual dominance. It’s not the most original premise in spite of how relevant it is in the zeitgeist, and it tries to do a lot to make itself more unique with a variety of characters and backgrounds, but it comes across as a little too in-your-face with the social commentary. Because of its genre bending it has to balance various tones, from the seriousness of the demise of humanity to the comedy that is typical of many american films that want to be serious but are afraid to be fully so, and it struggles to strike that balance. Perhaps it stems from a fear of alienating the audience with its realistic its subject matter. The plot itself is like a stream of consciousness, except the consciousness has been smoking some weed for a while, like if Pineapple Express met A.I: Artificial Intelligence via Hot Tub Time Machine.

Director: Claire Scanlon
Writer: Sarah Rothschild, based on the book by Ali Hazelwood
Cast: Tom Bateman, Lili Reinhart, Rachel Marsh, Jaboukie Young-White, Nicholas Duvernay, Arty Froushan

A woman pretends to date a much-hated colleague to convince her friend that she has moved on from a crush on a mutal friend. Sound familiar? Well yeah, the fake-dating trope is well overdone at this point in both film and literature, so there has to be some other uniqueness about it to make it stand out from the rest. The uniqueness in this film comes from Lili Reinhart’s performance as the loveable and charming Olive. It’s not often this kind of film has a female lead that is actually beliveable and, dare I say, relatable. Tom Bateman’s Adam – “Dr. Evil”- is cold and unfeeling, which makes sense opposite Olive’s warmth and friendliness, but the reasoning for the way he is is kind of skimmed over and doesn’t really seem like a worthy reason for being, for want of a better word, an asshole. The story and other characters more or less fall in to place, with a few unlikely events feeling like loose staples trying to hold the plot together, but on the whole its a standard nice chick-flick. (Also, FYI, the book is based on a Reylo [Rey and Kylo Ren from Star Wars] fan-fic ship, and Adam is named after Adam Driver who played Kylo Ren, and Tom Bateman is married to Daisy Ridley who played Rey. Nice work, casting directors!)

Director: Kelly Reichardt
Writer: Kelly Reichardt
Cast: Josh O’Connor, Alana Haim, Hope Davis, John Magaro, Gaby Hoffmann, Bill Camp

Set in 1970 in the US during the Vietnam War and going so far as to embody the naturalistic filmmaking of the time, Reichardt’s (anti)heist film sees JB Mooney, a family man, struggling for money organise the theft of some art from a museum he frequents. The most interesting thing about this film is seeing how it all goes wrong, and not every heist has to be a huge action-filled operation. It has a good, even tone throughout, though it gets a little slow in the third act as things start to come to a head for JB. Other than the quality of the film’s visual definition, you’d be forgiven for thinking this film was made in the 70s. Josh O’Connor gives yet another great performance in yet another artsy film, and at this point I am begging him to do something a little more uplifting and modern to convince me he can do more than just brood.

Director: Josh Boone
Writer: Susan McMartin, based on the book by Colleen Hoover
Cast: Allison Williams, Dave Franco, Mckenna Grace, Mason Thames, Scott Eastwood, Willa Fitzgerald

After the death of her husband by whom she got pregnant at just 17, Morgan (Williams) and her now-teenaged daughter Clara (Grace) have to navigate their new normal, something that proves more difficult when secrets come to light and Clara begins to spend more time with Miller (Thames), a classmate with a girlfriend. The thing I liked most about this film is that is shows just how messy life, and death, can be, with people literally taking secrets to their graves and how complicated relationships, both old and new, can be. While Allison Williams and Dave Franco put in great performances, it’s Mckenna Grace’s well-rounded performance as Clara that really pulls the film together. It’s both heartwarming and heartbreaking with a satisfactory ending (I also might be a tad biased because I love Mckenna Grace and Mason Thames together). I’m not enirely sure how the title relates to the film, but I don’t think you’ll regret watching it.

Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Writer: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Cast: Wagner Moura, Carlos Francisco, Tânia Maria, Robério Diógenes, Alice Carvalho, Gabriel Leone, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Udo Kier

At 161 (2 hours 41 minutes) long, one might think this political thriller may stretch things out too much, but it is quite the opposite, the pacing and story filling it out very nicely. Set in the late 70s during the Brazilian military dictatorship, an ex-professor and widowed father is hunted while trying to escape persecution, getting his deceased wife’s family and people he meets along the way caught up in things, too. Critically lauded across the board, The Secret Agent is very much a stunning film that, if you’re unaware of the military dictatorship, sheds a lot of light on the politcal agenda while still being a tense thriller (even featuring the strange story of a hairy leg attacking people, a story originally published in a newspaper to covertly report on the corruption of the police while being censored). Wagner Moura gives a prominent performance, and it’s little wonder this film and Moura were nominated for a slew of awards.