Only Good Things (Apenas Coisas Boas) 💩, dir. Daniel Nolasco, 2025, Brazil, 104 min., in Portuguese with English subtitles
Friday, July 27, 2025, 8:15 pm, Roxie Theater
🇺🇸 U.S. premiere
⚠️🔞 content advisory: violence, brief explicit sex
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| Only Good Things (Apenas Coisas Boas) |
We start off in 1984 (according to IMDb) with a young man, Marcelo, riding his motorcycle down deserted country roads (literally passing only one other vehicle) in the central Brazilian state of Goiás, near the national capital city of Brasilia. Suddenly, a television set falls from the sky, right on Marcelo and his motorcyle. Is that a metaphor for something? I suppose it could be, but the dots never connect. Local rancher Antônio find Marcelo and nurses him back to health, and they begin a romance. Antônio is involved in a spiteful dispute with his bitterly homophobic father, who happens to live on the neighboring ranch and wants to drive Antônio out of the area.
Bad things happen (I won’t give too many spoilers), and then suddenly we’re at present day, in 2024, in an unnamed city, in a luxurious high-rise apartment. How did we get from subsistence in the remote countryside to luxury living in the city? No idea. Apparently some bit of river magic poofed them there. But all is not picture-perfect, with signs of some serious off-screen possible violence. Did Antônio murder Marcelo, or did Marcelo just wander off? Should we even care?
The story centers on Antônio, who is as unlikable as he is inscrutable. He engenders neither sympathy nor even interest, except for the morbid curiosity of whether the story will ever actually have a point. (Short answer: no) The acting repeatedly substitutes waaaaaaalllllllllkkkkkkkking very sloooooooowly and talking equally slooooooowly for actually doing or saying anything of substance. The story is crap, the characters are crap, and — surprise, surprise! — the whole movie is crap. Vigorously and enthusiastically NOT RECOMMENDED.
• IMDb • trailer • official website • Antonio Goias
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