Capsule Reviews: 'The Wild Robot,' 'We Live in Time' & 'The Order'

by Philip Price

The Wild Robot

Photo: DreamWorks/Universal Pictures

Bold in that it doesn't shy away from the unforgiving nature of ... nature. The first hour of “The Wild Robot” is a truly beautiful, honest, sometimes crushing take on parenthood's hardships and rewards. The often unforgiving and overwhelming choices you and your partner have to make in choosing to take the more challenging, difficult but ultimately more rewarding path in favor of the dismissive, absent option that undoubtedly causes lifelong repercussions is a daunting weight that overshadows every decision after seeing that sweet little face for the first time. I want to think the choice seems obvious to all, and the truth is most of us land somewhere in the middle because we're all imperfect, but we all know actions speak louder than words, and the "try" is often as good as the "win"; deciding to take action in the first place is half the battle. The final half-hour devolves into plot machinations and loses the metaphor in favor of what feels like a rushed resolution, but man - the migration sequence alone is a litmus test of the soul. Full-on waterworks for this beautiful, in all aspects, movie.

---

We Live In Time

Photo: A24

Director John Crowley (“Brooklyn”) does warm and fuzzy without devolving into mawkish and melodramatic; crafting Hallmark-like weepies with a gorgeous eye and genuinely affecting performances that ground the aspects typically made overripe. “We Live in Time” hues closer to this territory than Crowley has previously, but while having seen this story told even with such standards before, what is most striking about this effort - besides the inherent charm of Andrew Garfield and the unabashed Britishness of it all - is Crowley, screenwriter Nick Payne and editor Justine Wright's structure choices. The nonlinear sequencing initially seems like a gimmick in order to break up the monotony of this familiar series of events but reveals itself instead as a tool to illustrate how the intervals between the effortless and the tough are never as vast as they feel in the moment. When looking back, memories rarely adhere to a timeline but are simply a collection of moments that mean the most to us.

---

The Order

Photo: Amazon MGM Studios

​For whatever reason I watched this thinking it was an S. Craig Zahler film rather than a Justin Kurzel one. This may have heightened my expectation, given Zahler's penchant for hard-nosed genre fare that tends to be evocative of the ‘70s. This wasn't to doubt Kurzel, who is no stranger to bleak and brutal and generally possesses a better handle on scope; Zahler has been more consistent in this zone, and therefore, I hoped for the streak to continue. Zahler's version of “The Order” would undoubtedly be a less restrained affair, but Kurzel's no-frills approach to the storytelling lends authenticity to the proceedings and, more precisely - the characterizations of our two opposing forces. This eerily timely tale about men so threatened by change that they allow privilege to overcome decorum (to put it nicely) is an unsettling reminder of the evil that entices as realized through sweeping, mournful moments and the most assaulting and aggressive of shootout sequences. The balance of pensive and explosive is exceptional.