Inside Out 2, Kinds of Kindness, Hit Man

Overwhelming to the point of a mild panic attack, Inside Out 2 nevertheless offers a hell of an emotional journey, much like its main subject: puberty.

It also functions as a very decent sports movie, as teenage Riley is now a promising ice hockey player, who has dreams of making it big and over the course of a summer selection weekend badly wants to make the team of her new high school.

It’s fitting enough that the new Pixar movie always looked like it could be a winner. Even though the original Inside Out is now nine years old, the movie is still incredibly popular. And rightly so.

Inside Out mixed artistic inventiveness with a truly emotional story, about young Riley who is uprooted from her Midwest life and moved to San Francisco. After which her emotions - Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness - conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house, and school.

In Inside Out 2 we meet Riley, when she’s just been hit by puberty, which means that over the course of the movie she encounters all kinds of new emotions, like Anxiety, Envy, Ennui and Embarrassment.

Inside Out 2 is written by Dave Holstein and Meg LeFauve and directed by Kelsey Mann. It boasts the voice talents of Maya Hawke (Anxiety), Kensington Tallman (Riley) and Amy Poehler (Joy).

Inside Out 2 is set two years after the original movie, but what works in its favor is the idea that all the emotions on display are still very recognizable to the original audience, both young and old(er).

Coupled with the animation skills of Pixar’s best and brightest, this is definitely a follow-up worth seeing on the biggest screen available, the colors almost literally jumping from the screen at every possible opportunity.

The fact that it doesn’t quite hit the artistic dizzy heights of the first movie shouldn’t disqualify it from your must see-list. 

On the one hand, its very emotional, in the same way that puberty is or was for most of us. On the other it suffers from the same problem as numerous other sequels: there are so many characters, both old and new, that the movie at times simply feels overcrowded to the point of an emotional breakdown.

In the end the main conflict plays out, not so much on the ice, but inside Riley’s mind, between the original Team Joy, who are staging a comeback after being both blindsided and sidelined by the up-and-comers (sponsored by Puberty) of Team Anxiety, who are planning for Riley’s future, without having arrived at Maturity yet. 

I admit to experiencing some conflicting emotions, as the first Inside Out quite openly dealt with important mental health issues in a family friendly animation movie, while the gist of this movie seems to be that wanting to win at all costs is, well, very important too. 

(Even though the movie also pushes back to this idea towards the end, it still left me, a European, a little curious about the intentions of the filmmakers.) 

Still, despite my reservations, Inside Out 2 is also a brisk and breezy movie, that barely crosses the 90 minute mark, never outstays its welcome but actually leaves you wanting more. And I’m sure that also means wanting to revisit the movie at some point for further analysis.

So, just as good is not the enemy of great, great is not the enemy of perfect, and in the end Inside Out 2 is, at least to me, a four star follow-up to its five star predecessor.

Disney made the mistake of sending Pixar movies like Soul, Luca and Turning Red straight to streaming. Elemental got Pixar fans back in the habit of going to theaters. After a slow start it legged out like a champ.

And now it’s time for Inside Out 2 to capitalize on the goodwill Pixar has once again built up. 

Here’s the trailer: 

Note: Inside Out 2 is released in most of the world later this week, with some other countries to follow in the coming months.

Kinds of Kindness (Yorghos Lanthimos, 2024)

Kinds of Kindness presents the kind of bravura filmmaking that Yorghos Lanthimos and his frequent collaborator Emma Stone have become known for.

First they made The Favourite together, which garnered ten Oscar nominations and won Olivia Colman her well deserved Oscar. 

Then came Poor Things, which won four statues out of a possible eleven, including Stone’s second Academy Award for her jaw dropping role as Bella Baxter.

If the trend continues this could be the year Jesse Plemons wins for best actor, as he dominates the first two parts of Kinds of Kindness plus he already won the best actor prize at Cannes.

Kinds of Kindness is a trilogy of films that all run about 55 minutes, in which the same main cast members play different characters each time we meet them.

Apart from Stone and Plemons they include Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn and Mamoudou Athie.

In the first story a man (Plemons) who has no choice tries to break free from his predetermined path. 

In the second a cop (Plemons again) questions whether his wife (Stone) is still the same person after she went missing at sea. 

And in the third a woman (Stone) searches for an extraordinary individual (Margaret Qualley) prophesied to become a renowned spiritual guide.

In theory you could play all three segments separately and enjoy them for what they are, especially the second one, which is a neat little horror story, possibly inspired by the series Lost and the movie Annihilation by Alex Garland.

The first and the third, however, are loosely connected, but I’ll let you find that out for yourself when you see it.

Your mileage on these bizarro adventures may vary, but let me just say that good is not the enemy of great, just as great is not the enemy of perfect.

Kinds of Kindness does however make Poor Things look like a feelgood movie. It should have been called Kinds of Unkindness to begin with, as all three stories are firmly set within Lanthimos his sadistic universe.

It’s a tough uncompromising movie, that asks hard, existential questions without even remotely bothering to answer them. It’s closer in spirit to early movies like Dogtooth and The Lobster than to his later, more mainstream work. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise, as it is co-written by Efthimis Filippou, who also wrote those two with Lanthimos.

To some that may be a blessing, to others, perhaps, a curse. Plemons excels in the first part, while Stone takes the reigns in the final stages of the movie. It’s masterfully shot by the great Robbie Ryan and expertly edited by Yorgos Mavropsaridis.

Kinds of Kindness takes no prisoners. It doesn’t try to be likable or ask for your permission to outstay its welcome. I don’t think its perfect, but I loved every second of it and at some point I will want to see it again to see how it holds up the second time.

Next up Lanthimos, Stone and Plemons will team up again for a new movie called Bugonia. I can’t hardly wait.

Note: Kinds of Kindness premiered at Cannes, is playing the festival circuit and is out now in Greece and Italy, with rest of the world to follow in the next couple of months.

Hit Man is a romantic crime comedy that’s now on Netflix in the United States.

It stars Glen Powell (Anyone But You) as a New Orleans college professor called Gary Johnson, who moonlights as an electronics technician for the cops when they stake out ordinary people seeking a hit man to get rid off their spouse.

When the usual fake hit man gets suspended, Gary has to fill in at the last moment, and it turns out he is rather good at his new job, with lots of folks going to jail to prove it.

Things get more complicated when he is befriended by Madison (Adria Arjona), who wants to have her abusive husband killed. Gary talks her out of it and when she calls him a couple of weeks later - still not knowing is real identity - they go on a date and fall in love.

Then Madison’s husband turns up dead anyway and things get really complicated. One of the central questions (apart from who did it) being what will happen when Madison finds out who Gary really is.

Hit Man is a playful movie about reality vs fantasy, and the difference between who we are and who we want to be. 

The film is directed by the great Richard Linklater (Boyhood), who co-wrote the script with Glen Powell. It philosophizes a lot on the essence of self (nerdy Gary’s cats are called Id and Superego) but in a lighthearted way and the script is full of witty dialogue. 

Powell, who was great in Top Gun: Maverick, gets to slip into a lot of different disguises (so for cinephiles: this is also a movie about acting), while for the lesser known Arjona the film works as a veritable showcase for her versatile talents. 

Hit Man is a romantic crime comedy with a warm beating heart and two highly attractive lead actors whose chemistry is a joy to behold. 

Note: Hit Man is on Netflix in some parts of the world, including the US, but it is in theaters in other parts. Check your local listings!