‘Next Goal Wins,’ ‘Wonka,’ and More | Bite-Sized Reviews

In this edition of Additional Bite-Sized Reviews, I give you my thoughts on 1) a film about football that underwhelmed me, 2) a prequel that surprised me positively, 3) a so-so Apple TV+ Film, 4) a film starring Robert De Niro and Kevin Bacon, and, finally, 5) a sequel to a film series that has pretty much lost me at this point.

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F.A.Q.

• What are Additional Bite-Sized Reviews?
  – My movie and television catch-up review series ‘Additional Bite-Sized Reviews‘ is an evolution of the Overview-article section previously titled ‘What I Didn’t Write About.’ In articles such as this one, I will provide my readers with my thoughts on select new films, new shows, or even classics that I feel like giving my thoughts on relatively briefly, since I don’t have the time to dedicate thorough reviews to them at this point in time.
• Why do the bite-sized reviews not include either a letter grade or a review score?
  – In my full and thorough reviews, I like to score or grade what I watch. But since these reviews aren’t as detailed, I think it is fairer to the films and shows to simply just decide whether or not to recommend them. I guess you could say this is the only type of review that is basically ‘scored’ with the classic thumbs-up/thumbs-down-method on my site, though sometimes my recommendation answer comes with a caveat.

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Next Goal Wins | Film | Directed by Taika Waititi | Screenplay by Taika Waititi and Iain Morris | Release Year: 2023 | Recommended?: No, watch the documentary instead.

Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins is an adaptation of the documentary of the same name, which tells the story of how a Dutch-American football manager, Thomas Rongen (played by Michael Fassbender), took over the head coaching job with the national football team of American Samoa — which was, at that point, regarded as one of the worst national teams in the world — in an effort to transform them into a football team that can not only score but also win.

On paper, this narrative feature adaptation of the true story behind Next Goal Wins should be right up my alley. Not only is it a film all about the world of football, of which I am a huge fan, but it also features a phenomenal lead actor in the lead role (who, last year, received a fair bit of praise from me in my review of David Fincher’s The Killer), and, on top of that, this is a film from Taika Waititi, the director of Jojo Rabbit, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and Thor: Ragnarok (all three of which I liked). But, just like football isn’t won on paper, the same is true of films. Sometimes films that should work can underwhelm significantly, and that is indeed what happened here with Next Goal Wins.

That said, in execution, I’ve now struggled with Taika Waititi in his last two films. While I admittedly did like parts of his Thor: Love and Thunder, I thought the extent that he leaned into his irreverent and silly comedic style seriously hindered the film’s more serious elements, which should’ve been the film’s primary focus given the nature of the film’s antagonist and the storyline revolving around Portman’s character, but I digress. For Next Goal Wins, it isn’t so much a tonal clash that bothers me, but, once again, I feel that Taika Waititi’s comedic shtick, and his insistence on letting it flow freely throughout the film, almost completely derailed the film and did a disservice to the inspiring true story. Oncemore, Waititi opts for a self-insert element and here it completely took me out of the film. Like many football story adaptations, I don’t think it represents the sport particularly well. There is an over-the-top element to it that I don’t think represents the people of the true story very well. I also think there is some seriously questionable stuff here with regards to the way the film puts overweight people in positions to be laughed at for looking out of place — that stuff isn’t cool, that’s mean.

I will say that I don’t think it’s outright awful, though. Though I do think Fassbender is miscast for the role, he does an adequate job in the film. On the plus side, I loved how the late stage of the film showed how the true story was being passed on through generations — I thought that was a sweet moment in a film that otherwise didn’t work for me.

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Wonka | Film | Directed by Paul King | Screenplay by Simon Farnaby and Paul King | Release Year: 2023 | Recommended?: Yes.

Envisioned as a prequel to Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory novel about the beloved but strange chocolatier, Paul King’s Wonka follows Willy Wonka (played by Timothée Chalamet), a young man and aspiring magician and chocolatier, as he arrives in a new city hoping to establish his own chocolate shop. However, when he becomes strapped for cash, Willy is tricked into agreeing to enter into a contractual relationship with a boarding house and laundrette run by a woman named Mrs. Scrubitt (played by Olivia Colman), who thrives on tricking people. To successfully become the chocolatier he is destined to be, Willy Wonka will have to find a way out of Mrs. Scrubitt’s clutches and a way to overcome the chocolatier establishment that conspires with law enforcement to keep him down. 

Never doubt Paul King! Although it didn’t seem like a great idea to take another stab at the story of Willy Wonka after Tim Burton’s divisive adaptation, which featured a performance from Johnny Depp that also split opinion, I have to admit that I feel like both Paul King and his lead Timothée Chalamet (Chalamet has two speeds in this film, 1) the charming young man and 2) the excitable and quirky motormouth that is so easy to love) did a pretty wonderful job. Of course, King’s film is a prequel and a full-blown musical (even though the marketing didn’t fully let viewers in on that) and is thus not as much of a 1-to-1 comparison as Burton’s film was to the absolutely terrific and iconic Mel Stuart adaptation from 1971 which featured a note-perfect Gene Wilder performance. But I think King has crafted an utterly delightful and charming family film with some great lessons for children about how the world works, but also there is definitely a political heartbeat to this about the efforts of the establishment to prevent the little guy from climbing the social ladder that I thought worked really well. It features some fun and catchy songs that, however, aren’t very memorable in the long run, and it utilizes the classic “Pure Imagination” tune to great effect. It also features solid effects work and a delightful supporting cast (though I was surprised by just how little we actually saw of Hugh Grant’s Oompa Loompa given he was all over the trailers). It’s not quite at the level of Paul King’s Paddington films, but I thought it was a fairly good film and easily the second-best film about the titular chocolatier yet. 

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Fingernails | Film | Directed by Christos Nikou | Screenplay by Christos Nikou, Sam Steiner, and Stavros Raptis | Release Year: 2023 | Recommended?: Unsure.

Christos Nikou’s Fingernails is a romance drama with a science-fiction twist. In this film’s version of reality, couples can book a test to determine whether they are truly in love or not, or if only one of them are. What people have to do to get the test done is to have a fingernail from each person doing the test be forcibly removed. In the film, we follow Anna (played by Jessie Buckley), an unemployed school teacher, who gets a job at the company made famous by the fingernail test. Anna has previously passed the test with her current boyfriend, but, since she becomes more and more friendly with a co-worker, she starts to wonder if she is still in love with her partner or if she now fancies her co-worker.

I really wanted to like this much more than I did. I think Jessie Buckley is a great actress, and she does a decent job here. But despite the very good and talented cast, which also includes Riz Ahmed and Jeremy Allen White, the film doesn’t do enough with its ‘can-computers-tell-true-love’ premise. Like others have suggested, it seems scared of its own idea about removing fingernails violently. There are moments of comedy that kind of work here and there, but it does feel like the film runs out of new ideas about, say, an hour into the film. I didn’t hate it by any means, it just isn’t quite good enough to be recommendable. Again, it’s definitely not a complete dud, I just think it should’ve been better given the intriguing premise and the talent involved with it.

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Transformers: Rise of the Beasts | Film | Directed by Steven Caple, Jr. | Screenplay by Joby Harold, Darnell Metayer, Josh Peters, Erich Hoeber, and Jon Hoeber | Release Year: 2023 | Recommended?: Not really, but I guess it depends on your level of interest in these films.

This latest Transformers live-action release comes from the director of Creed II, which I enjoyed a fair bit. This entry in the series is a prequel to the 2007 Michael Bay film, and it takes place in 1994, where we meet a struggling New Yorker named Noah Diaz (played by Anthony Ramos), who tries to steal a Porsche only to find out it is an Autobot, and, then suddenly, he becomes involved in a world-threatening mission alongside Autobots and Maximals, the latter of which has these ‘beast modes,’ with one being able to turn into a giant mechanic gorilla.

Rise of the Beasts is neither the best of these nor, frankly, the worst. I think this is at best ‘okay,’ but it didn’t fully win me over to the side of calling it that or being a fan. There are so many exposition-heavy scenes, the stakes are never really felt because the most famous major characters put in jeopardy here are also in the films that this flick is a prequel to, and, frankly, even though I saw this a couple of months ago, I’ve almost completely forgotten about the film. It doesn’t justify its existence or feel particularly distinctive except that it’s the one about the King Kong transformer. If they could’ve shaved maybe fifteen minutes off the runtime, then this could’ve been a light recommendation, but, as it is, I can only really recommend this to big fans of the series (and if I’m being honest, I probably was one once upon a time, but it’s struggling to win me back).

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Sleepers | Film | Directed by Barry Levinson | Screenplay by Barry Levinson | Release Year: 1996 | Recommended?: Unsure.

Based on Lorenzo Carcaterra’s book of the same name, Sleepers is a drama that is genuinely tough to watch from time to time. It tells the story of a group of young boys in 1960s New York City, who cause a serious accident and are sent to a juvenile detention center, where they become victims of sexual abuse from its sadistic guards led by Sean Nokes (played by Kevin Bacon). Years later, we also follow along as the group of boys have now become men and are directly involved in a legal case surrounding the murder of one of the guards from the juvenile detention center.

This is a tale of two halves. The first half of Levinson’s film — i.e. the section where we follow the kids in their local community and in the juvenile detention center — is really effective as it completely holds your attention and is, eventually, quite tough to watch once Kevin Bacon’s hateful character appears. Then, in the second half, once we meet the adult versions of the main characters on the other side of a time jump, I don’t think the adult cast members naturally click, there is a lack of energy to the courtroom drama as well as the build-up to it, and the ultimate outcome is made to feel inevitable. Kevin Bacon delivers a loathsome and slimy performance and is thus effective, and I also think Robert De Niro is fairly good throughout the film. But the film fails to get us into the heads of the main characters in the second half, which is surprisingly undramatic. 

I had never even heard of this film before, so I was shocked when I saw the cast and crew list, including Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro, and music from John Williams. Upon reading about it, it appears that the truthfulness of the narrative and the so-called ‘true story’ has been called into question. Given its relationship to ‘truth’ and the ineffective second half, it kind of makes sense that this has mostly been forgotten. But I can’t shake the feeling that this could’ve worked much better if the narrative had been structured differently (and had certain characters been recast).

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– Reviews Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.