Justin Chang

I didn't believe that Emma could be capable, or even almost capable, of the horrific act in question.

Borgli previously made the 2023 film Dream Scenario, which starred Nicolas Cage as a nebbishy university professor who inexplicably began haunting the dreams of those around him.

Like the drama, it was a darkly amusing yet conceptually half-baked comedy about the power of suggestion and the ease of villainizing someone for something they didn't actually do.

You could say both of these movies are loosely about cancel culture, something of which Borgli may have some first-hand knowledge.

In 2012, he wrote an essay for a Norwegian magazine about his relationship with a teenage girl who was ten years his junior, in which he sought to grapple with a long-standing taboo and defend his actions.

That essay recently resurfaced online before the rollout of the drama, unsurprisingly stirring fresh waves of outrage.

Is humanity capable of authentic change or redemption?

In a way, Borgli sidesteps that question.

His great skill is for wringing tension, dread, and squirm-inducing comedy from ugly situations.

And the drama is most successful not as a character study or a moral inquiry, but as a wedding stress movie.

It's about the horrors of having to worry about DJs, photographers, and florists when you're not even sure you're going to have a marriage at the end of the day.

In a way, Borgli is trying to skewer the empty flash and pump of certain social rituals, which serve only to keep us from really talking about the things that actually matter.

He ends the movie on a faintly hopeful note that Charlie and Emma will ultimately move past this crisis.

though he doesn't rule out the possibility that they might look back at their marriage and see it as the actual worst thing they've ever done.

Project Hail Mary is about an astronaut who finds himself abandoned in outer space, where he bonds with a cute alien who tries to help him save Earth from climate change.

I hate to describe a movie as a mashup of this and that, but sometimes there's no way around it.

This film is basically The Martian meets E.T.

by way of Interstellar.

That's a handy way of summing up its appeal, but it also points to its very real limitations.

I had high hopes for Project Hail Mary, but it's the most derivative and carefully manufactured crowd-pleaser I've seen in a while.