Wicked: For Good (2025, PG)

*Premise spoilers (which include spoilers for Part 1)*

It’s here!!! You’d best believe I’ve been flailing and hand-flapping every time I’ve watched the trailer. I had too much other stuff going on to get to this movie opening weekend, but I was able to run out and catch it this week, and it was absolutely lovely.

Five years after the events of Wicked: Part 1, Elphaba fights to liberate oppressed Animals by day and lives in hiding by night. She’s searching for a way to expose the Wizard as a fraud. However, Glinda is helping to prop up that fraud—now known as Glinda the Good Witch (despite having no real power herself,) she’s the Wizard’s right-hand woman, reeling at the anti-Elphaba propaganda she’s made to spout. She’s engaged to Fiyero and on the verge of getting everything she’s supposed to want, but things aren’t over yet between the two old friends.

Personally, while I loved the film, I think it’s a little weaker than Part 1, if only because the first act of the musical is stronger than the second. The plot meanders at times, there are moments that get a little too silly, and although I enjoy both the brand-new songs in the movie (one written for Elphaba, the other for Glinda,) neither of them have completely grabbed me yet—we’ll see if the new songs win me over on repeat listens. Like the first film, this one is pretty beholden to the source material but also expands on it in interesting ways. Here, I like some added interactions between Elphaba and Glinda, I enjoy the role that Animals play in the story, and the climactic sequence leading to “For Good” is simply gorgeous.

As with the first film, the costumes are a delight and the score is exquisite—not just the singing performances, which we’ll get to in a moment, but the orchestral score and the way various musical themes are woven in where you may not expect them. It’s so nice to return to this world, and it’s interesting to see how, five years along, the police-state aspects of Oz are much more out in the open, with press secretary Madame Morrible printing propaganda posters to maintain the fear of Elphaba and Animal refugees attempting to flee from Oz.

The cast remains exquisite. While Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Yeoh are still the weakest singers in the group, they’re both stellar as the Wizard and Madame Morrible. Marissa Bode and Ethan Slater continue to turn in fine work as Nessarose and Boq, with their story coming to a head. As the plot of The Wizard of Oz gets folded into the film, those characters are kept largely out-of-focus for various reasons, but I enjoyed Colman Domingo’s brief appearance as the Cowardly Lion. Jonathan Bailey is just so damn good as Fiyero—his acting and singing are both excellent, and he’s consistently great in scenes with Glinda and Elphaba alike.

But of course, in the end, it’s all about the witches. Ariana Grande-Butera gives such a beautiful performance as Glinda, who’s getting everything she wants at the cost of what she really needs. Even as Glinda makes stunningly bad choices—out of ambition, desperation, or hurt/anger—she remains comprehensible. I’ve always loved Glinda’s part in “Thank Goodness,” and she doesn’t disappoint. And Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba…my god! She’s just a knockout: fierce, flawed, and principled. “No Good Deed” near about blew the roof off the theater! Because they’re on opposite sides of the Wizard’s fascist regime, we don’t see Elphaba and Glinda together as often in this film, but whenever Erivo and Grande-Butera share the screen, it’s simply electric.

Warnings

Thematic elements, violence, and mild sexual content.

Other Doctor Lives: Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans (2019, TV-PG)

Okay, so Horrible Histories was a British kids’ show that did comedic sketches about various historical events. This is a feature-length movie they made about five years after the series ended. I haven’t seen any of the sketch show, so I’m not sure if the film included some of the same actors—I just know that Ncuti Gatwa only appears in this movie.

In ancient Rome, a studious young man named Atti is forced to join the army after he accidentally gets on Nero’s bad side. He’s sent to Britain, where the Celtic warrior Boudicca is urging the different tribes to join together and defeat the Romans. When Atti is captured by an aspiring young warrior named Orla, wouldn’t you know it, the two discover they might not be so different after all.

Knowing that this is an offshoot of a show geared toward kids makes sense. The comedy is fairly broad, relying a lot on character archetypes, easy jokes, and some gross-out humor. It’s fairly silly, and the story is flimsy. There are also a handful of so-so musical numbers that don’t add very much to the proceedings.

There are a number of Roman numeral jokes, like the trainer urging all the gladiators to “give it CX percent” in the arena. There’s a running gag of Nero trying to murder his mother—she’s ruled as his regent since they murdered Nero’s father, but now that he’s come of age, she’s reluctant to step aside and let him take his full power as emperor. One joke I do like is when someone explains to the Celts what a cat is: “It’s a Roman thing—like a small furry dog, only it doesn’t really like you. It just pretends to like you to get food.” Hehe!

A handful of familiar faces here, as there is with most anything British. Orla is played by Emilia Jones, who I first saw as a kid in the Eleventh Doctor story “The Rings of Akhaten,” but who more recently played the lead role in CODA. Her father is played by Nick Frost, while Katy Wix (Barbara from season 3 of Ted Lasso) appears in a small role as a “reporter” covering the Celtic warrior’s growing following. For the Roman characters, we’ve got Rupert Graves (who I know best as Lestrade on Sherlock) as a general who makes very self-important speeches with a lot of contradictory commands, and Warwick Davis pops up briefly as the gladiator trainer. And in another bit I like, Derek Jacobi has a cameo as Emperor Claudius, which is (I assume) a winking nod to his iconic role in I, Claudius.

Ncuti Gatwa has a small supporting role as Timidius, one of Atti’s pals in the army. For most of his screentime, he’s paired with another soldier named Dimidius. They’re the ones who notice Atti’s missing after he’s taken by Orla, and whenever we check back in with the soldiers, we mainly follow Timidius and Dimidius.

In their dynamic, Dimidius is the dumb/dim one—hence his name—so he gets the brunt of the jokes. This leaves Timidius as the slightly long-suffering straight man. But as we’ve seen from Doctor Who and Sex Education, Gatwa can definitely go big, but he can also go small and still be really effective. When they’re looking for Atti and Dimidius frets, “You don’t think he was eaten by a tiger?”, I like Timidius’s gently deadpan response, “I’m not sure there’s tigers in Britain.” He gives good Did you really just say that? face!

Accent Watch

Sounds like his usual Scottish to me.

Recommend?

In General – Eh, not really. Kids who are into historical comedy might be into it, but it wasn’t for me.

Ncuti Gatwa – Not a must. Gatwa’s performance here is cute and fun, but it’s a pretty small role and he doesn’t have that much to do.

Warnings

Violence, gross-out humor, and thematic elements.

Y tu Luna tambien: Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025, R)

*Premise spoilers*

*Note: other characters in the movie have their own view of Molina’s gender, but I’m going to use she/her pronouns. It’s definitely what she would want!*

We’re taking a break from 3Below today, because there’s a new Diego Luna project to talk about! I’ve been waiting on this one for a long time—I’m glad that it’s finally here, and that my local theater got it right away.

Amid the military dictatorship of Argentina in the 1980s, an imaginative window dresser named Molina, arrested for “public indecency,” is transferred to a political prison, where she’s placed in a cell with a revolutionary named Valentin. Immediately, Valentin is annoyed by Molina’s noise, gaiety, and non-Marxist views, but she gradually wins him over by telling him the story of her favorite old movie, which she uses to mentally escape their dangerous circumstances. Unbeknownst to Valentin, the warden put Molina there in the hope that she can learn valuable information he’s hiding. But as the days pass, Molina becomes less certain of whether she wants to succeed.

As a musical, director Bill Condon takes a similar approach to what he used in another Kander & Ebb show he adapted for the screen, Chicago. As with Chicago, the musical numbers here are primarily limited to fantasy sequences—mostly in the technicolor-soaked recreation of Molina’s movie, but there are a few that are purely in Molina’s head. Molina and Valentin still get in on the movie scenes, since Molina “casts” them both in a role for her retelling, but for the most part, the musical sequences are a vehicle for Jennifer Lopez as Ingrid Luna, the old-Hollywood actress that Molina is obsessed with. She does the lion’s share of the singing and dancing, both in the movie-within-a-movie and in the other fantasy scenes, and she doesn’t disappoint.

However, I’ll admit that, as a musical, this film falls slightly flat for me. That’s because Molina’s favorite movie isn’t very good. It’s a bit of a Drowsy Chaperone technique, since Molina knows that it’s cheesy and oversimplified but adores it anyway, only the film doesn’t fully commit to the bit. While the movie scenes don’t have a strong enough story to really keep my attention, they’re also not over-the-top enough to make it a parody. There are a few really standout musical performances here, especially Molina singing “She’s a Woman” and La Luna leading her in “Where You Are.” On the whole, though, this is a musical where the dialogue scenes captivate me a lot more than the singing and dancing.

That said, I still really liked the movie, because the dialogue scenes are so good. Tonatiuh is a fantastic Molina—fanciful, sensitive, and strong-willed. She’s abused and harassed by the guards, who view her as a homosexual man. Part of the reason she idolizes La Luna is because Molina longs to be her, and her memories of the movies help Molina maintain her spirit despite her bleak, dangerous circumstances. Tonatiuh’s acting is terrific throughout, and their singing voice is lovely.

Tonatiuah also plays wonderfully off Diego Luna’s Valentin. Much more serious than Molina, Valentin at first tries to lay down the law—no talking while he’s studying, and no talking while he’s thinking about his studies. When Molina starts telling him about the La Luna movie, Valentin declares that he hates musicals, poking fun at the movie’s plotholes and outdated gender stereotypes. Molina argues that she’ll stop telling him the story if he keeps mocking it, but Valentin starts to get drawn into the tale in spite of himself.

It’s much the same way with the dynamic between the two prisoners. Valentin doesn’t fully understand Molina—he thinks childhood trauma made her queer, and he thinks she’s demeaning herself when she talks about wanting to be a woman—but he treats her like a person, something she doesn’t get from anyone else in the prison. And both of them, somewhat in spite of themselves, begin to grow closer to one another. Valentin tries to teach Molina some of the principles of Marxism and urges her to stand for something. And although he considers his own fear and anguish to be “weakness,” he opens up to her about it, admitting that his emotions are coming out like a “leaky faucet.”

This is a really beautiful performance from Luna. Andor comparisons are understandable, especially from the Narkina 5 arc, but Valentin is a very different sort of character than Cassian. He’s alternately gruff and personable, he’s idealistic and scholarly, he’s screwed his courage to the sticking place and will suffer whatever he has to for the cause, even as that terrifies him. When he lashes out in anger at Molina, he startles himself with his actions and is ashamed as he pulls back. At his most vulnerable moments, he both seeks comfort and offers it. From start to finish, Luna and Tonatiuh are just spectacular to watch together.

Luna’s other “role,” as it were, is the part Molina assigns for Valentin in the movie she’s telling him about. In the movie-within-the-movie, he plays Armando, La Luna’s love interest in the film. This role isn’t nearly as meaty as Valentin is, but it is where Luna gets in on the musical side of things. Mostly, that means dancing in multiple scenes with Lopez, and he does get one solitary song: “An Everyday Man.” As with The Book of Life, Luna isn’t the strongest singer, but his voice is gentle and pleasant. It’s fitting for the song, which is about Armando showing La Luna’s character the simple beauty of “everyday” life in the small village where both of them were born.

Recommend?

In General – I think so. Even if I don’t think it measures up to some of the other movie musicals from recent years, I still really like this film, especially the central relationship.

Diego Luna – Yes! I love Luna’s performance as Valentin—so layered, and it’s compelling to watch his journey.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, violence (including torture and references to rape,) brief sexual content, language (including homophobic slurs,) smoking, gross-out stuff, and disturbing images.