Brown, Millie Bobby (2004- )

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    In ‘The Electric State,’ Jolting a Robot to Life

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    How the makers of a new Netflix science fiction movie enhanced the look of the cute, round-headed bot at its center.Kid Cosmo’s head is enormous, as robot heads go. The primary nonhuman hero of the film “The Electric State” (on Netflix March 14), Cosmo has a bright yellow globe of a head the size and shape of an exercise ball, propped atop an incongruously spindly frame.Cute? Yes. Mechanically feasible? Not really.Cosmo’s character was inspired by Skip, the similarly bigheaded hero of Simon Stalenhag’s graphic novel. A cult hit when it was first published in 2018, the book “The Electric State” is set in an alternate 1990s universe after a mysterious war has ravaged the California landscape, leaving the husks of enormous drones and robots in its wake.“Simon Stalenhag’s work is what attracted me to this movie to begin with,” said Matthew E. Butler, the film’s visual effects supervisor. “But his designs are often aesthetically cool and engineeringly impossible.”In the film, Cosmo and his young companion, Michelle, played by Millie Bobby Brown, embark on a journey across the American West to find Michelle’s brother. Along the way, they meet up with scores of other robots, many just as improbably designed as Cosmo.Of course, Cosmo doesn’t really need to make mechanical sense in either the graphic novel or the feature film, given the flights of physics fancy regularly found in both mediums. But Anthony and Joe Russo, the film’s directors, wanted to ground their movie in reality, even more so given the story’s 1990s setting (think Orange Julius and MTV News with sci-fi enhancements), and the film’s fanciful robots, which include a midcentury postal carrier (voiced by Jenny Slate) and an urbane Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson).Millie Bobby Brown as Michelle, with Cosmo (voiced by Alan Tudyk)NetflixWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Damsel’ Review: Yet Another Strong Female Lead

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      Millie Bobby Brown is a daring princess in a fairy tale that unspools its surprises far too soon.“There are tales of chivalry, where the heroic knight saves the damsel in distress,” a young woman’s voice intones as “Damsel” begins. “This is not one of them.”Oh, well, thank goodness, I thought, sarcastically and, perhaps, a bit uncharitably. Somewhere in my head I heard Miranda Priestly: Strong female lead? Groundbreaking.I like a scrappy heroine as much as anyone, but leading with that foot — we’re not like the other girls, we’re the cool girls — is starting to feel stale. “Damsel” isn’t bad, but it feels a bit gnawed upon. Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (“28 Weeks Later”) from a screenplay by Dan Mazeau, it’s an action movie starring Millie Bobby Brown as Elodie, a princess from a poor kingdom ruled by her father (Ray Winstone) and stepmother (Angela Bassett). She consents to marry the handsome prince from a much wealthier realm, only to discover something far darker is at play here.There are elements of “Damsel” — including a few shots — that remind me of one of the best feminist action movies in recent memory: “Ready or Not.” In that film, released in 2019, the heroine marries into a rich family, only to discover their family traditions include a pretty horrific ritual that she must endure to survive till morning. This plot runs along similar lines, but in a fairy-tale kingdom where Robin Wright is the queen and also there are dragons. (One bit also echoes “Eyes Wide Shut,” but this is not that kind of movie.)Elodie is a princess in the latter-day Disney mold: a smart girl who can ride horses, read books, decipher a map and outsmart a trap. She is resourceful and strong and spends a lot of time figuring out how she can escape. At the beginning of the film, she is obedient and obliging and corseted; by the end, she is in a much smaller skirt and taking no guff. In short, she has become self-actualized.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Enola Holmes 2’ Review: A Clever Force of Nature

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      Millie Bobby Brown delivers an understated, playful performance in this young-adult mystery sequel.Enola Holmes is back, and she’s ready for both her first official case as a detective and, work schedule permitting, some romance. Millie Bobby Brown delivers an understated, playful performance in the follow up to the Netflix young-adult mystery “Enola Holmes.” This time around, the director Harry Bradbeer and the screenwriter Jack Thorne forgo prolonged dialogue when Enola breaks the fourth wall, making more room for Brown’s intense looks and physical gestures to resonate.Working in the shadow of her famous brother, Sherlock (Henry Cavill), Enola realizes that independent, professional women are treated more like suspects than like trusted investigators in Victorian England. So it makes sense that her first case comes from a fellow young woman, Bessie (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss), who needs to track down a missing co-worker at a matchstick factory where women workers are mysteriously dying of typhus. (This plot point was inspired by the women who orchestrated the 1888 Match Girls Strike in London.)Sherlock himself is working on a case of stolen government funds, and the siblings eventually discover their cases are in fact linked. As Enola finds she can hold her own, both alongside and without her brother, a sheltered girl gives way to a young woman who embraces the literal and figurative fighter in her, finding solidarity with working-class women in the fight for women’s rights in the process. As Edith, a suffragist leader and jiu-jitsu master played by a steadying Susan Wokoma, proclaims in the film: “You can’t control Enola. She’s a force of nature.”Speaking of the movie’s well-choreographed fight scenes, when Enola’s mother, Eudoria (a delightful Helena Bonham Carter), and Edith band together to beat the heck out of grown-men assailants, one can’t help but cheer on this Y.A. feminist tale as a welcome addition to the Sherlock Holmes universe.Enola Holmes 2Rated PG-13 for moderate violence. Running time: 2 hours 9 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More