When you break it down, there are ultimately two categories of film director – journeymen and artists. As you might have guessed, there’s a vast chasm of difference between them. With the first batch, these are filmmakers like Doug Liman, Ron Howard, Don Siegel, Martin Campbell, and Ernest Dickerson. Instead of a particular stylistic flourish or interest in recurring themes, their focus is on craft. I wish I could credit properly the person who said it, but they said directors like this won’t make an exquisite sculpture, but they’ll build you a damn fine park bench.

Artists are different. Here, you get directors like Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Akira Kurosawa, Chloe Zhao, and Steven Spielberg.* Within five minutes of watching their work, you have a pretty good idea of who they are, what interests them, and how they view the world. To be that good, they have to be cognizant of the financial and practical aspects of production, but those aspects aren’t the engine that runs them. 

To be sure, one isn’t better than the other. I’ll go to bat any day of the week for Escape from Alcatraz or Apollo 13, just like I love Do the Right Thing or The Irishman with all my heart. But as a movie nerd, I dig it when I start to figure out a filmmaker’s oeuvre** after a few films. When that happens for me, I can see someone that, barring the total collapse of civilization, will be making interesting art for years. One of those artists is Nicola Rose, and she’s directed Magnetosphere, a film that feels undeniably hers.

There are a few things that Maggie (Shayelin Martin) knows with total, metaphysical certainty. The first is that being thirteen years old sucks in a wide variety of ways. Her family has moved her from one end of Canada to another. The new house? A total dump (it isn’t). The new city? A hellhole (it’s not). Maggie’s mother Helen (Tania Webb) advises her to cool down and give it a try. Maggie’s father Russell (Patrick McKenna) sings at her and bombards her with Dad jokes. Maggie’s little sister Evie (Zooey Schneider) is just happy to be along for the ride. Despite the persistent condition of being highly annoying, Maggie loves her family.

The second thing Maggie knows is that she lives with a neurological condition known as synesthesia. When one of her senses is triggered, another sense will simultaneously kick in. She can taste colors, see sounds, and everyone she knows has a unique color palette that leaps and pops off them. Maggie has never been formally diagnosed, and she’s never told her parents how she perceives the world. Why would she? As far as she knows, anything that brands her as different is bad.

The third thing Maggie knows is that she’s deeply, head over heels in love. The object of her affection is Travis (Steven He). He’s an actor in “The Pirates of Penzance,” a community theater musical that her father just so happens to be directing. Maggie has been non-volunteered by Russell to be his assistant director, so she can’t help but see Travis every day. Also, Travis is a grad student, and he views Maggie as an awesome kid sister. It’s a conundrum, and Maggie will obsess over it at great length to Wendy (Mikayla Kong), her new friend at school who happens to nurse a crush of her own.

I saw Nicola Rose’s debut feature Goodbye, Petrushka back in 2023. She had an ambitious concept and a modest budget. The end result was goofy, creative, and charming. The same goes for Magnetosphere, and I think to understand Rose’s work, you need to understand that she’s very good at camouflaging simple, profound truths in huge, ridiculous moments.

For example, there are a number of sequences involving Russell, the musical troupe that increasingly relies on sock puppets to deal with actors dropping out, and improv GOAT Colin Mochrie as Gil, a wacky handyman who’s also a polymath. I initially thought, “Jesus, these scenes are broad and loud AF.” They’re supposed to be. First, Rose establishes that Maggie’s point of view is the POV of the movie. Thirteen is not traditionally a nuanced and contemplative age. Everything is huge because it’s an age of firsts. First best friend, first love, first heartbreak. Plus, for every comedy moment, there’s a quieter moment where we see how Maggie views the world for good or ill. Those moments feature lovely animation that’s so deliberately chosen, we intuitively understand what Maggie is feeling and experiencing.

Rose’s screenplay functions along similar lines. She knows that thirteen is the moment in our lives of maximum cringe. Every single thing holds the potential for humiliation, and we desperately yearn to be accepted, to be normal. That’s why the character of Gil exists in the first place. He’s an enthusiastic goofball. He’s weird. He’s perfectly comfortable with it, and it’s a lesson to Maggie. Her synesthesia, her art, her awkwardness, her everything isn’t normal. It’s better than that, it’s who she is. The perceptive and compassionate script reminds us that normal never existed, and the sooner we embrace our weirdness, the better we’ll all be. Speaking of perceptive and compassionate, the script does an outstanding job navigating how Maggie feels toward someone double her age. To be sure, Maggie’s crush on Travis is awkward as hell. The script realizes this, and it simultaneously takes Maggie’s feelings seriously while paying everything off in a way that makes sense. Budding screenwriters can learn from this script. 

The cast does good work, but the one I’d like to focus on is Shayelin Martin as Maggie. Child actors can be an extremely mixed bag. I suspect that’s partially due to limited life experience, and partially due to the fact that screen acting requires focus, discipline, and experience. Once in a while, great ones come along, and Martin does great work. She’s never overly broad or one note. Instead, her performance is smart and layered. She’s subtle when she needs to be, and the emotions she displays feel real. It’s fiendishly hard to convincingly portray the kind of person you’d encounter during an ordinary day, and yet, Martin pulls it off. 

Magnetosphere could only have been made by an artist. If Nicola Rose wanted to make a Marvel movie, a thriller about a cop on the edge, or a slasher movie,*** fine. I’m sure she’d do good work. As far as I can tell, she’s an artist, one locked into making the kinds of movies that only she can make. That’s what Magnetosphere is, a jewel of a movie that’s goodhearted and silly as hell. Trust me when I tell you it’s worth seeking out. 

*An artist doesn’t have to have a long and varied filmography. The only movie Charles Laughton ever made was The Night of the Hunter, and it’s one of the greatest films in the English language.

**See? Told you I was a movie nerd.

***I suspect that with every film she makes, she’ll include animation and puppetry. That means there’s a non-zero chance she makes a puppet-themed slasher movie!

Tim Brennan Movie Critic

Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.