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There is no Nick Offerman that can save this film. Sure, his acting, and the one of the kid that plays the son, they are both good, but you would somehow need to be in the target audience for this film, and i really do not know who that is.

Sovereign is the story of a guy who thinks he is a "sovereign citizen". This is a grassroots movement that is essentially anarchism with a whole bunch of delusions and ignorance thrown in; people who believe that they are afforded specific unalienable rights by the holy Constitution, which means they do not answer to any legal body, i.e. The government. And as such make up laws, give themselves titles, drive without license or insurance, and completely refuse to acknowledge the reality that surrounds them.

So, i question; why would you entertain this film. What kind of morbid interest do you have in what is essentially a paranoid schizophrenic's mental delusion, to want to watch this story. I mean, the film is well acted, but the subject is just not relatable. You might as well find a film about people who think the earth is flat, or whatever weird cult of the week is popular.

Really not my thing. Would not recommend.

Protagonist Shula is driving home one day, when she finds the body of a dead relative in the middle of the road.

This event triggers the appearance of her *vast* extended family, all of which are fairly horrendous people, from the ignorant to the bigot to the superstitious, and Shula has to grin and bear it because they are family.

.. i mean .. it's competently made. It's reasonably well shot and it's definitively well acted. But this film (the majority of which is in, i think Nyanja, or some other Zambian dialect) is so culturally distant from me, that i simply cannot enjoy it. There is no way that i can ever project myself onto the protagonist, to understand what she feels, to share in her decisions. I felt more at easy with 1950s films from japan, in comparison to how i feel with this film.

It's not for me. And it's probably not for you either.

I would say that, by the end, this film did get better. But .. it was really near the end.

The premise is of Tom (Coogan), a teacher in a private school in Argentina. Tom is a broken man, content to keep his mouth shut and his head down - perfect for the headmaster (Pryce) during the tumultuous times of the 1976 Argentinian coup.

After initial disappointing results in the school, Tom finds by chance a penguin caught in an oil spill, and is forced to adopt it. The penguin is beloved by everyone who meets him, and this acceptance brings a new life in the heart of Tom, who decides it's time to start living again.

The premise is decent, but the film is slow. The character of Tom is not radically bad at first, so it takes a long time to portray him accurately in order to have a meaningful character arc.

The film as a whole takes a really long time to get to the good part, and the acting of Coogan is just ok, at least for the first half of the film. To be fair, he's not got much material to work with.

All in all, i wouldn't recommend this. While some historical insight into the Desaparecidos is always interesting, the main plot is not comparable in quality to, say, Dead Poets, or even to a number of lesser works.

Unless you got a yearning for southamerican politics (of which there isn't even that much here) or just absolutely adore penguins, i would skip this one.

My vote: 6/10.