Ella McCay: Savvy dramedy showcases a star on the rise

Ella McCay(2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for occasional profanity and fleeing drug content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

We don’t often get to witness such an extraordinary, star-making performance, but that’s certainly the case here.

 

(I vividly recall watching Emma Stone, in 2010’s rather modest Easy A, and knowing — with certainty — that she’d go far.)

 

When her father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson), once again lives down to lowest expectations,
Ella (Emma Mackey, center) has no time to react before her Aunt Helen (Jamie Lee
Curtis) — Eddie's sister — threatens to throttle him.

Actually, it’s not entirely fair to call Ella McCay a breakout role for star Emma Mackey — or Emma Margaret Marie Tachard-Mackey, to use her mellifluous full name — since she already made significant waves in the British 2019-23 TV series Sex Education. Even so, seeing her wholly inhabit this big-screen character — with every word, gesture, expression, flip of her hair and sideways glance so perfectly delivered — is enchanting.

Credit where due, Mackey is matched — scene for scene, moment for moment — by an equally riveting (and hilarious) performance by co-star Jamie Lee Curtis.

 

Writer/director James L. Brooks’ political-hued dramedy is an intentional throwback to classic, socially conscious screwball comedies such as His Girl Friday, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Sullivan’s Travels … but with a modern spin that reflects contemporary bureaucratic intransience. On top of which, Brooks also paints a deeply intimate portrait of estranged family dynamics and the difficulty of navigating — let alone moving beyond — festering old wounds.

 

The story is narrated by Julie Kavner — her gravelly voice immortalized forever as Marge Simpson — who cheekily breaks the fourth wall, during her introduction, to inform us of her role. Ella McCay (Mackey) debuts in mid-flurry, as a poised, caring, idealistic, ambitious and highly intelligent 34-year-old who happens to be Lt. Governor of an unidentified state. (Filming took place throughout Rhode Island.)

 

We’re scarcely given time to digest this, when her friend and mentor, affectionately known as Governor Bill (Albert Brooks), reveals that he has just accepted a cabinet position in the forthcoming presidential administration. He immediately resigns, leaving a breathless Ella to serve as governor for the remaining 14 months of his term.

 

However … with a little help from our narrator …

 

… we’re also whisked back in time, to Ella’s 16-year-old self, confronted by yet another extramarital scandal involving her father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson). It’s a crucial moment, and everybody is dressed to perfection; Eddie expects his family to stand united, at his side, as he confronts the reporters waiting outside the front door of their home.

Alien: Romulus — Been there, endured that

Alien: Romulus (2024) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for gory violence and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.1.24

This is what happens, when children recklessly steal a spaceship...

 

I greeted this ninth (!) Alien entry with a weary sense of Seriously? Must we do this again? 

 

Needing to reach another portion of this enormous space station, but with their sole path
blocked by scores of adult xenomorphs, Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and Andy (David Jonsson)
consider their limited options.

This franchise envisions a bleak and depressing future; most characters inevitably die horribly; the eponymous xenomorphs always rise again (if not in a given installment, then elsewhere in the universe); lather, rinse, repeat.

No matter what the set-up, the execution is resignedly predictable.

 

That said, and for the benefit of those who might be approaching this as their first Alien saga...

 

To his credit, director/co-scripter Fede Alvarez delivers a solid first act populated by a handful of reasonably well-crafted characters. (But given that every member of this small cast is in his/her early or mid-20s, one is tempted to re-title this film Alien: 90210.)

 

The second act also features a very clever nod back to the film that begat this franchise, accompanied by several familiar bars of Jerry Goldsmith’s score for that 1979 classic.

 

However ... Alvarez and co-scripter Rodo Sayagues then squander that good will with an eye-rolling third act that piles ludicrous atop preposterous, with a soupçon of ridiculous tossed in for bad measure.

 

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

 

Alien and 1986’s Aliens were game-changing events.

 

This is just a routine horror flick, albeit with impressive sci-fi trappings.

 

The year is 2142, which — in the series timeline — is one generation after Alien (2122) and not quite two generations before Aliens (2169). The setting: Jackson’s Star, a mining colony on a ringed planet with an atmosphere so thick that sunshine never penetrates. The vast majority of the colony’s inhabitants are underpaid laborers indentured to the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (the mostly unseen villains throughout this entire series).

 

The corporation has a nasty habit of changing the rules as it sees fit, which Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) discovers, to her dismay. She happily believes that — having served her required contract work hours — she now can travel to a much more hospitable world ... only to be told that her contract requirement has just been doubled. (Given Rain’s obvious youth, and the length of time necessary to hit her initial quota, we’re also clearly dealing with violations of reasonable child labor laws.)

 

Depressed beyond words, she’s susceptible when fellow miner and ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux) proposes a risky means of escaping Jackson’s Star. He and three others — his sister Kay (Isabela Merced), fellow miner Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and tech-savvy Navarro (Aileen Wu) — have detected a derelict Weyland-Yutani spaceship in descending orbit around the planet.

 

The hope is that it’ll contain functional cryo-pods, for the suspended animation sleep necessary during a lengthy journey to their desired distant planet. The plan, then, is to “borrow” the Corbelan — one of the mining operation’s utilitarian spaceships — to reach the derelict vessel, transfer its cryo-pods to their ship, and then just keep going.