October Movies Part 2: Forgotten Island, The Social Reckoning, The Love Hypothesis

I was on vacation for a few days so am trying to catch up on movies. Which is why I now present to you a real melange of reviews, ranging from gorgeous animation to biographical drama to steamy romcom. Let's get into it!

Forgotten Island: Written and directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, this is a very creative movie about two girls, Jo and Raissa (H.E.R. and Liza Soberano) in the Philippines who become best friends as children, grow into teenagers, and have one last adventure on the mythical island of Nakali where legendary creatures roam. Along the way, there will be themes of female friendship, found family, and discovering your purpose. All set to very bright and anime-esque animation, in a very unique setting, as everything takes place exclusively in the Philippines and draws extensively from Filipino folklore and mythology. As such, this should feel really unique and specific, right? Unfortunately, no.

The voice cast includes almost any Filipino actor who has become famous in Hollywood, but then we've also got folks like Dave Franco and Jenny Slate playing some of the creatures on the island because I guess fantastical beasts don't need to have a particular ethnicity. The two main characters are being voiced by Filipino-American actors, which sadly means that they have American accents, and according to my Filipino colleague, pronounce all the Filipino words with American accents, which was rather grating. It is very annoying to me when Hollywood Americanizes language like this - if your setting is the Philippines, why do your characters sound like they're from California? Oddly, the first 15 minutes of this movie, when the girls first meet, befriend each other, and grow up under the loving eye of Jo's grandmother (voiced by my girl Dolly de Leon), who is the one who tells them all the stories about Nakali, are the best part, when this genuinely feels like something you've never seen before. But once we get to the island, it just becomes a generic children's animated film, complete with weirdly cutesy characters that only seem to be there to encourage plushie sales. This movie is certainly trying to have a soul, but sadly, I don't think it fully succeeds.

The Social Reckoning: Speaking of soulless films, Aaron Sorkin is back as the writer-director of this movie where he explores how Wall Street Journalist Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Alan White) cultivated a source at Facebook named Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) in 2019, who ultimately became a whistleblower and testified before the Senate in 2021 about all the harm Facebook was causing with its algorithm designed to promote inflammatory and harmful content. That storyline runs parallel to a January 2021 practice session where Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) was meeting with his PR team to go over his responses for an upcoming Senate testimony about whether or not Facebook fact-checks political ads. If you discover something revelatory in this movie, it would mean you were living under a rock, because there's no new information here. We're treading old ground in terms of what a bane Facebook is to society and the many ways in which it has become a dangerous and immoral company that prizes profits over any other ethical obligation.

This movie is meant to be a serious drama, but to me it felt like an insane comedy because it is such a Sorkin film. The dialogue, the acting, the condescending tone and casual misogyny...it's all so terrible that it makes you laugh. White and Madison are great actors, but they have clearly been told to deliver the lines the way Sorkin intended and don't bother imbuing their characters with any nuance. Their scenes honestly feel like two Sorkin avatars talking at each other rather than the two real-life human beings they are meant to be portraying. Jeremy Strong therefore seems to be the only one doing any real acting here, but he is playing a man who is famously devoid of personality, so there isn't much he can do either. In a weird way, this movie feels like Facebook itself, with Aaron Sorkin as the demanding Zuckerberg who no one can say No to, while all the actors are Facebook employees, just showing up to collect a paycheck and turn a blind eye to the terrible work they are producing. So maybe that makes this film so Meta it's actually good? Wait no, it does not.

The Love Hypothesis: Based on the 2021 novel by Ali Hazelwood, writer Sarah Rothschild and director Claire Scanlon are here to offer us a diverting and sexy romance that follows all the usual tropes and gives us a happy ending (or two). Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman star as Olive and Tom, a biology grad student and a surly postdoc at Stanford who have to pretend that they are dating for...reasons. We all know the fake dating trope, and so yes, you can expect them to initially hate this idea but go along with it for a noble cause, and then to reluctantly catch feelings and realize maybe the other person isn't quite so hateful after all.

This movie is thoroughly charming, the actors have solid chemistry, and the supporting cast are also very fun and lovely, with Rachel Marsh playing Olive's best friend, Ahn, and providing the all-important female friendship that is so crucial to ensuring our heroine is a well-rounded human being and not just a woman in need of a man. It's a tale as old as time, but it's clear that a woman directed it with a very female gaze, which makes it oh-so refreshing. I can think of no better way to spend an afternoon than to lightly lust after these two beautiful people and watch them fall in love. I'm not made of stone, people.