Netflix And Chill: Emilia Pérez (2024)

I assure you that I had this scheduled for a viewing for some time before it came away as the big winner at the 2025 Golden Globes ceremony. Emilia Pérez ended up on my radar when it started to garner praise in the second half of last year, but I wasn't sure when I would get a chance to finally see it. That chance came around when it dropped on Netflix, but I ended up waiting a while as other feature films from 2024 continued to vie for my attention.

This is the story of the titular Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascón), who starts the movie as a cartel kingpin known as Manitas. Manitas wants to disappear, wants a whole new life, and wants their family to be safe. They enlist the help of a lawyer named Rita (Zoe Saldaña), and everything soon falls into place. Years pass, and Rita ends up working for her former employer once more, this time ensuring that her wife (Jessi, played by Selene Gomez) and children move in with her, offering the explanation that Emilia is a caring cousin of the apparently-dead Manitas. Emilia also looks to use her ill-gotten money to start helping those who have had their lives destroyed by crime and cartels, but things grow more complicated as she watches Jessi start moving on with her own life in a way that could lead to the family moving away.

There are a number of different elements here that are worthy of consideration. First of all, writer-director Jacques Audiard (although there are a number of other names involved here throughout the writing process) is someone who hasn't really made a bad movie yet, from the seven or eight that I have seen by now. Secondly, this is a musical. Third, and arguably the most important, is . . . well, I think I should use a whole new paragraph to discuss that.

As women try to make progress in Hollywood, and as other people start to push for representation in films and on TV, there's a reasonable argument made about leaving room for them to make mistakes. Equality will only be real when all film-makers have the same time and space as white male film-makers, who all tend to get another chance after delivering something that either under-performs or outright stinks. I would say that this also applies to the LGBTQ+ community, in general, and, to get to my point as it relates to this film, the portrayal of transgender characters. I wasn't really sure if Emilia Pérez really was about a trans woman, or whether it was about a criminal going to extreme lengths to move on from an old life. Both of those things could be true, or neither. Either way, Emilia Pérez isn't actually, from my own limited perspective, a film featuring a transgender lead character that stays focused on the transgender experience. It's actually very familiar territory, but that territory looks different with this main character at the heart of it. I would also say that it's not really that great a film, but I hope that it becomes one of many such films that keep pushing for equality and representation of those who would have previously not been so celebrated for their involvement, on either side of the camera, with these kinds of stories.

I cannot fault the cast, and particular praise should go to both Gascón and Saldaña. The former does a great job of showing how her new life provides a real mix of regret and relief, the latter goes through a very similarly turbulent journey for very different reasons. Gomez is also very good, but fares better when her character isn't as central to things as she becomes in the third act. Adriana Paz is the last person I have to mention, making a strong impression with her few scenes, showing a brilliant mix of vulnerability and self-protection that Emilia admires, and is moved by, and there's also a role for Édgar Ramírez that doesn't really let him do much.

The pacing works quite well for the 132-minute runtime, and the performances ensure that every scene has something compelling in it, but the songs never feel strong enough, moments of real creativity and visual flair are few and far between, and anyone who has seen more than a handful of films will know where things are going by the time we get to the halfway point (if not before).

Maybe that's why Emilia Pérez is worth celebrating though. Maybe it's a film with a transgender character at the heart of it that is happy to not be any kind of super-sharp and super-smart modern classic. Maybe it's progress to have a film like this that is just okay. Or maybe I'll need to revisit it one day, and perhaps see something more worthwhile in it.

6/10

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Amsterdam (2022)

Writer-director David O. Russell seems to be coasting along lately, to put it nicely. His films have become an excuse for an ensemble cast to put on some glad rags and have some fun together, but without saying anything of substance. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, not every film needs to be substantial, but it’s odd that they are still being presented as praiseworthy and interesting when they, sadly, are not. 

Maybe I am part of the problem, considering I gave American Hustle a pass and genuinely enjoyed Joy, neither of which were on a par with his better films. So this disappointment was probably inevitable, and I suspect many others will have felt the same way when they finally watched Amsterdam, a pretty, but ultimately hollow, distraction.

The plot is more convoluted than it needs to be, which is why I am not going to properly summarize it here. Let’s just say that a suspicious death alerts one or two people to the idea that certain individuals may be plotting to overthrow the US government. This puts the people (played by Christian Bale, John David Washington, and Margot Robbie) in a lot of potential danger.

This material could have been done any number of ways, from tense thriller to farce, from straightforward historical drama to action movie, but Russell, in all his wisdom, decides to do just what he’s done before. You get some humour, you get a lot of drama, and you get a cast allowed to indulge themselves as long as the director is also happy with their work.

As for the cast, it’s more of a mixed bag than you might think. Bale doesn’t feel enjoyable in his main role, his character defined by the false glass eye he wears, but both Washington and Robbie improve every scene they are in, both avoiding that sensation of just repeating tics and tricks from their own back catalogue that Bale conveys. Zoe Saldaña is good in her small role, Robert De Niro is fun without being funny, and Timothy Olyphant brings the added bonus of, well, being Timothy Olyphant. If there is ever a film in which I don’t welcome the appearance of Olyphant then I want to be slapped repeatedly around the face until I see sense again. There are also supporting turns from Rami Malek, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift (just a cameo, really, but she’s decent), Alessandro Nivola, Matthias Schoenaerts, Anya Taylor-Joy, Michael Shannon, and Mike Myers.

The production design is very good, as are the wardrobe choices and the musical score, but this is a film that needed more than just the visual distractions and a couple of key performances to make it worthwhile. It needed a better-written, and better-performed, lead, and it needed a much better approach to the story, which is an interesting and intriguing tale. Instead, we get to once again look on as Russell and his cast appear to be enjoying some in-jokes that nobody else is privy to. To sum up . . . disappointing, but pretty.

4/10

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Avatar: The Way Of Water (2022)

Over a decade has passed since James Cameron asked us to put on 3D glasses and join him on a romp around the planet of Pandora. As much as I loved the cinematic experience of Avatar, and I still think it holds up as a visual wonderland that is well worth watching on a big screen, it's hard to argue against people who point out that the film made no major cultural footprint, despite it spending a bit of time as the highest-grossing blockbuster movie in modern cinema. Yeah, we got some jokes and references, but then it all just . . . faded away. 

Now it's all back, and it's back in a big way. While it's unwise to ever bet against Cameron, many balked at how much this had to make to just break even. The fact that it's now on target to do more than that, and probably give Cameron yet another chance say he is the helmer of the highest-grossing movie of all time, is unbelievable. And yet . . . it's in line with how Cameron works. 

Jake (Sam Worthington) is now living happily with Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) on Pandora. They have three children of their own, two boys named Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo'ak (Britain Dalton), and one daughter named Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as an adopted daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), and the constant company of a human boy, Spider (Jack Champion), who was left on Pandora because he was too young to be transported back to Earth when he was a child. Everything is wonderful, which means it's all about to be spoiled. Enter Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the big bad from the first movie who is, with a small team of his fellow soldiers, sent back to Pandora in Na'vi form. Jake opts to take his family away from their forest home, asking permission from another tribe (led by Tonowari, played by Cliff Curtis, and Ronal, played by Kate Winslet) to hide away and make their new home in an idyllic reef environment. But trying to stay out of a fight doesn't stop the fight landing on your doorstep.

It’s hard to think of the best way to review Avatar: The Way Of Water. It isn’t a great movie, especially with a lot of it rehashing what we got in the first film, but it is a great cinematic experience, and that is what Cameron specializes in. In an ideal world, I would list all of the VFX and art department people here, as well as the production designers, stunt crew, and all of those who won’t receive their due credit while Cameron, who is certainly no slouch when it comes to pushing film-making tech above and beyond the limits of our imagination, gets to return to his throne and proclaim himself “king of the world” again.

The cast all do what is asked of them, but part of the fun comes from not recognizing them. Worthington and Saldaña are fine, but it’s more impressive to not realise when Curtis and Winslet appear. And it’s a delight to see Sigourney Weaver magically made youthful in a way that is equally realistic and magical. Lang is a great villain, once again, and the younger cast members, those already mentioned above, plus Bailey Bass and Filip Geljo, all seem good enough under their layers of motion capture. Champion is good as definitely not a feral kid lifted from the Mad Max movies, and there are one or two enjoyable scenes featuring Brendan Cowell and Jemaine Clement, actually allowed to play their characters in standard human guise.

The 3+ hour runtime may be offputting, but this isn’t a film that drags. The majority of the runtime provides plenty of spectacle and beautiful details to pick up on, and the action beats are brilliantly done, with the last 40 minutes or so being one extended battle scene that guarantees most viewers will feel surprisingly energised as the end credits roll.

Not only does Cameron, who co-wrote the screenplay with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, rehash the main conflict for our hero this time around, he also revisits the themes of environmental awareness, living in harmony with a precious planetary ecosystem, and showing the value in traditional ways and community spirit. Is it all also problematic blue-faced cultural appropriation? That charge has been levelled against it, but I think that Cameron and co. put such hard work into creating an entirely fictional world, influenced by the history and many cultures of our own planet, that you have to accept it as it is presented; pure sci-fi.

Maybe it’s a sign of me being won over by the advertising, or maybe I just really enjoyed the whole cinematic experience THAT much (once I told someone to turn their phone off after tolerating the bright light of their screen for half an hour - aaaaaaarrrrgggggh), but this is the kind of escape that shows how far movies can transport us. It isn’t perfect, even the technical side of things can seem a bit rough occasionally (the HFR can take some getting used to, some of the colours clash horribly, and a number of shots are framed horrible due to the difference in size between any human characters and the much taller Na’vi), but I would easily rewatch it today if I had the time. And I will be keen for whenever we next get an opportunity to revisit Pandora. 

James Cameron may not know much about subtlety or self-restraint. Fortunately, he knows how to deliver eye-popping, jaw-dropping, cinema on a huge scale.

8/10

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