Naomi Ackie Archives | Deep Focus Review

Sorry, Baby

Brian Eggert — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:42:16 +0000

Listen to the audio version of this review. With Sorry, Baby, writer-director-star Eva Victor rethinks how cinema portrays and processes trauma, and it’s not with sensationalism or buzzy terminology, but with restraint, humor, and compassion. Victor stars as Agnes, a literature professor working at the same New England college where she once attended grad school and survived a sexual assault. The film explores what it means to feel stuck and unable to see a path forward. Victor acknowledges that it’s impossible to anticipate or shield against every terrible thing that might happen, and when something does occur, how one responds is often an unconscious reaction. Some people repress the experience, only for the feelings to return with a vengeance, while others try to confront it directly and endure the psychological collision. Regardless, trauma reframes self-image, raising introspective questions: Agnes wonders how she would have been different had this never happened to her. Should she mourn the version of her that might have been? Sorry, Baby doesn’t pretend to offer answers. Instead, it gently observes how healing can emerge out of supportive friendships, empathetic strangers, plenty of time, and perhaps also a kitten. Sorry, Baby is structured into chapters, each covering […]

The post Sorry, Baby appeared first on Deep Focus Review.

Mickey 17

Brian Eggert — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 18:19:25 +0000

“Nice knowin’ ‘ya. Have a nice death. See you tomorrow.” In Mickey 17, Robert Pattinson’s character dies over and over. He’s an Expendable class of worker enlisted for perilous tasks no one else could perform without mortal consequences. Part crash-test dummy, part subject for clinical trials, part replaceable human capital, Mickey Barnes often dies on the job. When he does, the scientists overseeing a planet colonizing mission squeeze out another Mickey from a human-grade Play-Doh Fun Factory. His memory and body identical to earlier iterations, Mickey survives in a series of cloned copies whose raw materials come from organic waste. His existence prompts questions about whether he’s human or something else, whether his life has the same value as other, non-cloned people. But that barely scratches the surface of the ideas loaded into Mickey 17, a visionary achievement. Here’s a film so inspired, darkly funny, harrowing, energetic, and overflowing with story and themes that it’s bound to be polarizing—alternately deemed messy and unfocused or inventive and original. In the best ways, the experience brought to mind the work of Terry Gilliam, the Wachowskis, and, of course, Bong Joon-ho. Bong is the film’s writer and director. The South Korean auteur is […]

The post Mickey 17 appeared first on Deep Focus Review.

Blink Twice

Brian Eggert — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 20:13:05 +0000

An attractive billionaire who’s had to make a public apology in the past for his vague “abuse of power” and “regrettable behavior” invites you onto his plane for a getaway to his private island. Joining you will be a few of his hard-partying inner circle and other young women. Do you heed the obvious and all-too-familiar warning signs, or take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? Frida, the protagonist of Zoë Kravitz’s tightly wound yet also disjointed directorial debut Blink Twice, resolves to take the trip, finding tech magnate Slater King (Channing Tatum) irresistible. Played by Naomi Ackie, Frida is tired of working dead-end jobs with her friend and roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat), where their boss reminds them, “Smile, ladies.” But they exchange one objectifying remark for another when the unofficial tagline of their paradise getaway—“Are you having a good time?”—morphs into a creepy refrain. It’s not so much a question as a controlling mechanism, designed as both an order and a safeguard. Keeping up a pleasant appearance in the face of an unthinkable nightmare becomes the theme of Blink Twice. It means remaining a compliant, pretty thing that doesn’t ask questions and ignores whatever chilling lessons the past might teach. Kravitz and […]

The post Blink Twice appeared first on Deep Focus Review.

Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker

Brian Eggert — Sat, 21 Dec 2019 03:12:28 +0000

If Rian Johnson upset a segment of Star Wars fans by subverting expectations and taking the franchise in a new direction with The Last Jedi (2017), then J.J. Abrams could be faulted for not following the new course with his sequel, Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker. Johnson’s divisive film introduced alternative ideas and thematic deviations into the Star Wars mythology, inventing sometimes oddball story elements (Leia using the Force to pull herself through space) that clashed with the first six episodes overseen by George Lucas—whose integrity Abrams jealously preserved in his entertaining 2015 reboot, The Force Awakens. Some of The Last Jedi‘s detractors felt that while change is welcome and needed for a franchise to endure, Johnson’s film did not follow the episodic progression implied with Star Wars’ roots in Saturday matinee serials. The Last Jedi is a well-made film, often gorgeous and thrillingly acted, but in the sequential order of things, it sticks out like a sore thumb. After Johnson’s film incited ridiculous protests and online petitions to have it stricken from the canon, the Disney overseers have attempted to course-correct with The Rise of Skywalker, a cinematic apology to fans for tampering with their hallowed grounds. […]

The post Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker appeared first on Deep Focus Review.