Watched Bugonia and El Cautivo (The Captive) on the plane home Saturday (damn, Iberia, superior airline, but too bad they code-share with American, oh well).
Bugonia was MUCH, much better than I expected. Jesse Plemons was OUTSTANDING, and the only film with Emma Stone that I couldn't ever finish was "Poor Things". So, I started Bugonia figuring that I might have to bail, but au contraire, it was VERY good...excepting that the ending was too longish and ham-handed, which also seems to be requirement for every film that hits the big screen these days. Whatever happened to subtility?? Again, Plemons, who you will remember as "Todd" in Breaking Bad and also from a season of Fargo, the TV series.
The Captive was maybe not as good, but if you like long, foreign language, historical potboilers this one is for you, and I see that it's coming to Netflix streaming early in 2026. It's a lightly fictionalized (I assume) account of a young Miguel de Cervantes who spent 30 years as a Christian soldier captured (and later seduced) by a Muslim Bey in Algeria in the latter half of the 16th century. It's fun to pick out the role models in the film for the eventual Sancho Panza and Don Quixote. Maybe a mite too long, but that's what fast forward buttons are for. Another note for those of you who speak some Spanish, quite interesting to listen to "real" Castellaño (Spanish from Spain - sort of the equivalent of what British English to the English spoken in North America).
Bugonia was MUCH, much better than I expected. Jesse Plemons was OUTSTANDING, and the only film with Emma Stone that I couldn't ever finish was "Poor Things". So, I started Bugonia figuring that I might have to bail, but au contraire, it was VERY good...excepting that the ending was too longish and ham-handed, which also seems to be requirement for every film that hits the big screen these days. Whatever happened to subtility?? Again, Plemons, who you will remember as "Todd" in Breaking Bad and also from a season of Fargo, the TV series.
The Captive was maybe not as good, but if you like long, foreign language, historical potboilers this one is for you, and I see that it's coming to Netflix streaming early in 2026. It's a lightly fictionalized (I assume) account of a young Miguel de Cervantes who spent 30 years as a Christian soldier captured (and later seduced) by a Muslim Bey in Algeria in the latter half of the 16th century. It's fun to pick out the role models in the film for the eventual Sancho Panza and Don Quixote. Maybe a mite too long, but that's what fast forward buttons are for. Another note for those of you who speak some Spanish, quite interesting to listen to "real" Castellaño (Spanish from Spain - sort of the equivalent of what British English to the English spoken in North America).
