Remarkably Bright Creatures: A character-driven charmer

Remarkably Bright Creatures (2026) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five); rated PG-13, for brief profanity, fleeting drug use and dramatic intensity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang 

Author Shelby Van Pelt must be pleased; book-to-film translations aren’t often treated with this much respect.

 

Although Tova (Sally Field) finds it difficult to share her private anguish with anybody else,
she confides everything to Marcellus, the Giant Pacific octopus who resides in the
oceanarium where she works ... and he understands far more than she could imagine.

Granted, director Olivia Newman’s script — co-written with John Whittington — changes some minor details, and compresses events; that’s to be expecting, when turning a 368-page book into a 111-minute movie.

But the buoyant, rapturous result definitely captures the story’s heart, and all three key characters are portrayed marvelously. The supporting players also are well cast; my only complaint is that we don’t get to spend enough time with some of them.

 

(Just in passing, one must acknowledge the unlikely coincidence of getting two octopus-themed films in such short order, following 2020’s My Octopus Teacher.)

 

The film opens with a voice-over introduction by Marcellus (voiced gravely, and oh-so-perfectly by Alfred Molina), a Giant Pacific octopus who is the star attraction at the (fictitious) Sowell Bay Oceanarium, in Washington’s Puget Sound. He morosely begins by acknowledging that this morning is “Day 1,404 of my captivity.”

 

Marcellus laments that he is “subservient to a species beneath me in every possible way,” and has little use for the throngs of people who visit each day. That’s particularly true of the grimy, obnoxious young children who press their noses against the glass tank, or lick it, and leave greasy fingerprints that become a “tiny mural”: an admittedly disgusting image that Newman highlights from Marcellus’ point of view.

 

(One must admit, were an octopus — or any other critter — to be that sentient and intelligent, such on-display captivity would be an ongoing nightmare.)

 

Marcellus makes an exception for Tova Sullivan (Sally Field), the elderly janitor/cleaner who, after hours, spends each evening lovingly wiping all the aquarium glass, scraping chewing gum from the floors, and otherwise washing, buffing and scrubbing everything thoroughly. She’s particularly fond of Marcellus, and confides in him, somehow feeling that he understands her.

 

To a degree, he does. He recognizes that she carries a deep sorrow: “I felt the hole in her heart.”

 

Marcellus also is quite the escape artist, able to slip out of his tank when impelled by boredom or curiosity. We suspect that he periodically visits other tanks, while pointedly avoiding the one that contains savage wolf eels.

Words on Bathroom Walls: Profound thoughts

Words on Bathroom Walls (2020) • View trailer 

Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, sexual candor and brief profanity

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.11.20 

Films concerning mental illness generally rely on actors to convey the disease’s twitchy instability, erratic behavior and the often heartbreaking frustration that comes from self-awareness: Mary Stuart Masterson (1993’s Benny & Joon) and Bradley Cooper (2012’s Silver Linings Playbook) come to mind.

 

More than anything else, Adam (Charlie Plummer) wants to lead a "normal" life ...
which means that he insists on keeping  his mental instability secret from Maya
(Taylor Russell).

Our sense of such characters remains mostly external; we rarely experience the unreality of their shattered senses. Skillful authors can depict that in a novel, but it’s much harder to convey visually, without the result becoming silly … or, even worse, trivialized.

 

Director Thor Freudenthal and scripter Nick Naveda deftly avoid such pitfalls, with their sensitive, shattering — and, at times, even chilling — adaptation of Julia Walton’s 2017 novel. Thanks also to a strong cast, this saga of teenage schizophrenia is illuminating, sobering and, yes, heartwarming.

 

That said, the book’s fans will note that while Naveda retains the essential plot points, he has taken serious liberties with details. Numerous characters have been dropped, and key events have been altered. (Rather crucially, the significance of the book’s title has been tampered with.) It’s perhaps safer to say that this film is inspired by Walton’s novel, rather than faithfully adapted from it.

 

Much the way Walton presents her story as a series of journal entries, Adam (Charlie Plummer) narrates his saga during a series of sessions with an off-camera psychiatrist (never revealed). He’s a standard-issue high school kid with a doting single mother (Molly Parker, as Beth); the two of them have become a “team” after being abandoned by his father.

 

Charlie’s a bit on the nerdish end: mildly unkempt, with long, straggly hair that frequently obscures his eyes. Partly in an effort to cheer up his mother, following the breakup, he experimented with cooking, and has developed considerable culinary talents; he dreams of becoming a chef in a posh restaurant.

 

But Charlie has become increasingly dogged by often terrifying illusions, always triggered by black mists and a growling, disembodied voice emanating from open doorways. He and his mother pursue various drugs and therapies, none of which slows his frightening slide into mental instability.