Nimona

Year 17, Day 321 - 11/17/25 - Movie #5,188

BEFORE: OK, wrapping up that three-day weekend with Riz Ahmed, who carries over from "Encounter", but we're spilling into Monday, I realize. So I'm going to be on break again until at least Saturday, the plan was for two more November movies after this, but I could do four if any birthdays line up. If not, then it's 10 films in November and 10 in December, with seven of those 10 being Christmas-themed. That's a heavy dose of Christmas films, but it will clear a LOT of them off my list - the elves have been very busy finding connections and linking those little movies together. I recommend that you get yourselves some elves if you can, they're very useful. 

We have another Birthday SHOUT-out tonight to RuPaul Charles, often just known as RuPaul, born on 11/17/1960, so happy (umm, you do the math) xxth birthday to RuPaul!  I'm sorry I couldn't use him (wait, probably them) as a link but he's (they're) in only one other movie on my list, and that's a romance film. 

THE PLOT: When a knight in a futuristic medieval world is framed for a crime, the only one who can help prove his innocence is Nimona - a mischievous teen who happens to be a shapeshifting creature he's sworn to destroy. 

AFTER: I can't help it, I just came up with a rough plan for January - it's only 21 films but I can workshop it, maybe increase it. It starts with a One-Linkable film, which links to a film I've been trying and failing to get to, passes through "The Naked Gun" and "The Phoenician Scheme" and ends with a romance film. It sounds ideal, except I have no idea yet if that will work out - let me write it down, put a pin in it and try to circle back to it later on. First I have to build a romance chain for February and figure out where that STARTS so I can then determine where January needs to end. It's just one possible path to get through January, after all, and there could be hundreds, thousands of possible paths. Still, I'm going to keep that ONE path in mind, I couldn't have had the blind luck of stumbling upon that in the middle of November, could I? 

Let's get through tonight's review before I start making my charts and graphs to suss out all the possible futures for January 2026.  We have a very different sort of animated film today in "Nimona", which details a future that looks very medieval and futuristic at the same time. There are knights that protect a walled city, but also people have flying cars and jumbotron hi-def screens, and I assume computers, so it can't really be OUR future, but an alternate future? Or a future that will probably never come to pass? An alternate present? Honestly I'm not really sure. 

But in this future there's still some kind of royalty and heraldry galore, knights who ride on flying chariots and have bionic parts and laser swords. Somebody somewhere probably went just cuckoo nuts designing this world, I assume this was done for the graphic novel made by ND Stevenson. "ND" was born as Noelle Diana but now goes by Nate, so yes, we're dealing with a trans or non-binary person here, this kind of figures because the animated film is full of LGBTQ characters. I'm just noting here, not judging, I'm going to keep my thoughts on trans issues to myself because I've known one who really had themselves together and another one who, umm, not so much, so from where I sit I trust the judgment of about 50% of the trans people I know. But that's OK, I probably trust the judgment of about 50% of all the people I know in general.

The main character here is a knight named Ballister, who happens to be gay. The love of his life is another knight, Ambrosious Goldenloin (!!), who is a direct descendent of Gloreth, the female founder of the kingdom, while Ballister is the first commoner to be named a knight in service of the queen. (YASS, Queen!). Clearly there's a divide between these two in terms of status, but hey, opposites attract, right? Does that hold true for the gays as well as the straights? I don't know, you tell me - or is Ambrosious slumming?  Anyway, on the day of Ballister's coronation his laser sword goes all wonky and it kills the queen (Whoopsie!) and so he's forced to go on the run and hide out, because killing the queen is kind of a bad thing to do. Clearly he didn't mean to do this, so somebody else wanted to kill the queen and frame him for it, but who? 

Enter Nimona, a young girl with shape-shifting powers who finds Ballister in his lair and offers to become his sidekick, so they can do evil things together. Only that's not really what Ballister is all about, he just wanted to be a knight and do good deeds and now all this bad stuff had to happen. Well, second option, Nimona offers to help him get revenge on his nemesis, before realizing that the head knight trying to capture Ballister is also his boyfriend, or at least he WAS. Ambrosius is still taking orders from the Director of the Institute (for training knights) and she's really got a hold on him, you don't suppose she had anything to do with the murder, do you? 

There's evidence against the Director, but she manipulates her knights into destroying it. She also dismisses the accusations against her as "fake news" - I mean, she has a valid argument because when a shapeshifter is involved, it would be easy for the shapeshifter to look like her and star in a video making her look as guilty as hell, which she just happens to be. The public doesn't really know who to believe, so this feels very familiar to anyone following politics these days (or between 2016 and 2020, which is probably when this film was produced.). The Director is a stand-in for Trump, that's what I'm saying. "Deny everything and admit nothing" is followed by "Attack, attack, attack" and that's from the Roy Cohn playbook for sure. Then you just claim victory, regardless of the outcome, that's always Trump's strategy. 

Together Ballister and Nimona use her shape-shifting ability to get footage of The Director killing one of her loyal knights, and posts that for the public to see, which turns much of the kingdom against her. But the Director then finds proof that Nimona is actually the Great Black Monster that Gloreth defeated, which is why the kingdom's walls were built in the first place. Also the director claims to have evidence that shows Nimona was born in Kenya, not Hawaii. JK.  

There's an extended flashback sequence that shows how Nimona was friends with Gloreth, and we of course get some LGBTQ vibes from that as well, but Gloreth's parents couldn't handle her being friends with a lesbian shape-shifter, so that's about when Nimona was declared to be a "monster" way back when. Jeez, so much homophobia 1,000 years ago, I'm glad their society got past that and all, only they never really did, did they? The shapeshifting thing here is probably a metaphor for being trans, unless I miss my guess, so this is very forward-thinking and progressive for an animated film, more so than "Turning Red" was.  

Once again, Nimona becomes the Great Black Suicidal Trans Monster, and attacks the city because really, what other options does she have at that point? Maybe Godzilla attacked Japan because he was gay or trans and he had no other way to express his dissatisfaction with the homophobia he encountered in Tokyo, who's to say? The very conservative Director orders that the giant laser cannon be fired at the monster, even though that would also kill a fair number of the kingdom's innocent citizens. Yeah, another metaphor that shows that homophobia harms way more people than you think, and denying freedom to one group of people doesn't solve any problems, it just allows hatred and bigotry to infect society, which is toxic to our country in particular, in addition to being unConstitutional. The only good news is that the Director doesn't survive the encounter, and the kingdom's walls come down, meaning they can interact with other lands once again. (Yeah, this is probably another anti-Trump metaphor, my guess is that Trump was really on border issues and anti-immigration and building his wall when this project was first pitched.)

You may see other echoes of U.S. society reflected in this story, but that's my take, anyway.

Directed by Nick Bruno & Troy Quane  (directors of "Spies in Disguise") 

Also starring the voices of Chloe Grace Moretz (last seen in "The Eye"), Eugene Lee Yang, Frances Conroy (last seen in "Joker: Folie a Deux"), Lorraine Toussaint (last seen in "Concrete Cowboy"), Beck Bennett (last seen in "Balls Out"), RuPaul Charles (last heard in "Trolls Band Together"), Indya Moore (last seen in "Queen & Slim"), Julio Torres (last seen in "Together Together"), Sarah Sherman, Nate Stevenson, Mia Collins, Zayaan Kunawar, Charlotte Aldrich, Nick Bruno (last heard in "Spies in Disguise"), Troy Quane (ditto), Randy Trager (ditto), Christopher Campbell (ditto), Matthew J. Munn (ditto), Julie Zackary, Cindy Slattery (last heard in "Ferdinand"), Sommersill Tarabek, Lylianna Eugene, Karen Ryan,

RATING: 6 out of 10 Kwispy Dragon dolls

Encounter

Year 17, Day 320 - 11/16/25 - Movie #5,187

BEFORE: Just 14 movies left - so it's time to make some hard choices and lock in the final plan for the year. At one point my chain was short, and then I sought out some back-up plans, so now of course, it's too long. Time to trim it down. "The Tale" is a film I put into the November chain, another middle film I sandwiched between two films with the same actress - but I felt while it wasn't a romance film, but kind of relationship-oriented, maybe it belongs in February where it could serve as a valuable link. So it's out. The new "Smurfs" film is another one I put between two John Goodman films, serving as a link to the Christmas chain - but I see it connects a few other Christmas films that I'm not going to get to this year, so why not save it for next year when it serves a purpose? So that one's out, too. 

I stuck an extra Christmas film at the end of the year, so that put me one more over, but delaying those two above made up for that, and now I can put in ONE more Riz Ahmed film, which will bring his total for the year up to three, and he can make the year-end countdown. The issue then becomes, which Riz Ahmed film to add? I worked at a screening of "The Relay", and I've been waiting for that to stream on a platform where I wouldn't have to pay extra for it, that hasn't happened yet, so that one's on hold, too. Next we have "The Phoenician Scheme", which is the new Wes Anderson film, and I really really love Wes Anderson films, but it comes down to a choice between THAT film and "Encounter", a movie I already had in the schedule once this year and I dropped it, probably because I had too many movies scheduled for that month - or I got busy, who can remember?  If I delete a movie, I usually try to circle back to it as soon as I can - so that gives "Encounter" the edge tonight, also it seems a LOT harder to link to than "The Phoenician Scheme", which has a HUGE cast of very notable actors.  

So it pains me greatly, but I'm putting off the new Wes Anderson film until next year so I can make the best use of this year's slots and not have to cut any Christmas movies at the end or anything else from the middle of a three-film chain. I promise to get back to "The Phoenician Scheme" as soon as I can, ideally in January. I can't start the year with it, but I can make it a target between Jan. 1 and Feb. 1. So Riz Ahmed carries over from "Sound of Metal" and it's a three-day Riz Ahmed weekend. 13 slots left and 13 movies to fill them. 

THE PLOT: Two brothers embark on a journey with their father, who is trying to protect them from an alien threat.

AFTER: This is another very simple story - umm, if you want it to be, I guess. It's about a father who's a former Marine who kidnaps his two sons away from their mother. There's another man, possibly a stepfather seen at his wife's home, so there's definitely more to this story, but what exactly is going on is up in the air, maybe it's a bit for you to determine. 

The story that Malik tells his sons is that there's been an alien invasion, and parasitic organisms have taken over many humans, possibly up to half of the population. Those aliens are controlling the humans as if nothing is wrong, so life is appearing to go on as normal, however Malik claims to know differently, that he's been away from his sons working on a secret project to fight back against the aliens, and so far the best way for the uninfected to protect themselves is by using bug spray. Umm, sure, makes sense so far I guess. 

The kids seem to buy it, because their father seems pretty intense about it, plus he tells them that their mother has been infected and they'll have to circle back later to save her, but the best thing for them right now is to get away from civilization and go on a road trip. Now, of course, other answers are possible here, Malik might be telling them a story just to spend more time with his sons, or to kidnap them away from their mother and try to disappear with them. Another possible answer is that Malik is crazy, and actually believes there's an alien invasion going on, but only he can detect it.  

It's pretty clever writing to depict this in a way where all of the answers are possible, up to almost the end of the film. There is a definite answer and a resolution, I think, and it confirms that really only one of the theories about what's happening is possible - certainly not all of them. We get a few more clues when Malik calls to check in with his parole officer, Hattie, and a few more when his ex-wife is found by the authorities, tied up in the garage. Hattie visits a Marine friend of Malik's who describes the terrible conditions where they were stationed, and seeing Malik "eaten alive" by bugs. Well, sure, that could explain a few things. 

Still, once the authorities launch a state-wide manhunt and issue a reward for Malik's sons, this unforunately turns into just another chase movie, which is too bad. I'd like to think there was a way to make it about something more, but perhaps not. Like with "Ambulance" and "Queen & Slim" earlier this year, you just kind of know that the police are eventually going to come out on top. Look, for the end of the year wrap-up I just needed to know whether this qualified as a crime film or a sci-fi film, and at least I know now. 

Directed by Michael Pearce

Also starring Octavia Spencer (last seen in "Coach Carter"), Lucian-River Chauhan, Aditya Geddada, Rory Cochrane (last seen in "A Scanner Darkly"), Shane McRae (last seen in "Still Alice"), Janina Gavankar (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Misha Collins (last seen in "Over Her Dead Body"), Stefan Sims, Brennan Keel Cook (last seen in "The Pale Blue Eye"), Bill Dawes (last seen in "Adam"), Keith Szarabajka (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Antonio Jaramillo (last seen in "Memory"), Joanna Strapp (last seen in "Velvet Buzzsaw"), Kennedy Chrisette, Robert Morgan (last seen in "The Boys in the Boat"), Sherry McFarland,

RATING: 5 out of 10 imaginary meteors