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.

Tigertail: The sad price of detachment

Tigertail (2020) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.15.20

Reprimands intended to be helpful, but delivered with too much irritation, can have devastating consequences.

Try as she might, Angela (Christine Ko) can't begin to connect with herfather, Pin-Jui
(Tzi Ma), who has spent decades burying his emotions so far, that they may be irretrievable.

Writer/director Alan Yang’s Tigertail — a Netflix original — is a quietly heartbreaking depiction of how emotional isolation can be transmitted from parent to child, to the ongoing detriment of both. Tang’s approach is methodical and unhurried; even at an economical 91 minutes, his film can feel slow (particularly during the initial half hour).

But the payoff is worth the investment; the final few minutes are surprisingly powerful. There may not be a dry eye in the house.

Yang’s script traces key events in the life of his protagonist, Pin-Jui, during three time streams: young childhood, early adulthood and post-retirement. The latter phase is played by the magnificent Tzi Ma, whose finely shaded portrayal of withdrawn stoicism is conveyed mostly through sad eyes and a slumped frame (even, seemingly, when he stands erect). They depict silent resignation; this is a man who has completely abandoned any effort to find joy in life.

Given that he seems to have built a comfortably middle-class life, how could this possibly be? What could have happened?

We initially meet Pin-Jui as a little boy in Taiwan (played by Zhi-Hao Yang) — at the time, still under Chinese communist rule — living with his grandparents and helping work their vast rice fields. His father is dead; his mother is elsewhere in a nearby city, struggling to find work, in order to reunite with her only child. The boy misses her, and occasionally hallucinates seeing his parents in the distance, working the same rice field.

Harsh reality brings tears to his eyes, which his grandmother (Li Li Pang) curtly dismisses:

“Crying never solves anything. Be strong. Never let anyone see you cry.”

And there it is: the seed from which bitter fruit will spring, decades later.

But not immediately. The middle time stream finds Pin-Jui (now played by Hong-Chi Lee) toiling alongside his mother, Minghua (Yang Kuei-mei), in a sugar factory. The work is hard — and dangerous — but they lead an acceptable, if meager existence. And Pin-Jui has been lucky enough to re-connect with childhood friend Yuan (Yo-Hsing Fang); the two are deeply in love.