The Idea of You (2024)

The Idea of You is a bait-and-switch. Solene (Ann Hathaway) wonders, “What if I could just be the sort of person that goes camping by herself? What if all I need is [her daughter] Izz[y], and my artists, and my gallery, and my friends?” I wish the movie had been about this self-sufficient woman.  ...

After We Collided (2020)

After We Collided tries to emulate the success of popular romance novels, but the derivative storyline makes it difficult to become invested in the film. The forced romantic tension between the two leads feels contrived and unconvincing, and the lackluster execution, overreliant on clichés and tropes from other works, detracts from its overall impact and leaves...

Wasp Network (2019)

Wasp Network is "based on a true story," but its makers may have been looking at reality through beer goggles. For example, there is a character played by Ana de Armas, whom I would describe as a young Tiffani Amber Thiessen. During the epilogue, a photo of the corresponding real person is shown, and what we...

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a film whose pleasures lie not in what happens so much as how it happens. Early on, Howard (Walter Huston) spells out the plot in broad strokes: “Never knew a prospector yet that died rich … going with a partner or two is dangerous. Murder's always lurkin' about....

Branching Out (2024)

Branching Out could have been a nice little family drama, but they ruined it by putting the plot on autopilot and letting it settle into your average predictable Hallmark romance.   Amelia (Sarah Drew) is a single mother by choice. Her nine-year-old daughter Ruby (Cora Bella) is assigned, as a school project, to make a...

Tyson (1995)

Tyson makes a big deal about what it is that makes a man a hero or a coward, but the movie is too timorous to venture an opinion as to which category Mike Tyson (Michael Jai White) belongs in. According to Tyson’s first manager Cus D’Amato (George C. Scott), “It's what the hero does that...

Noaptea Ursului (2019)

Noaptea Ursului is Romania’s unnecessary, unintelligible answer to Richard Linklater’s Suburbia. Like Linklater, writer/director Paul-Razvan Macovei repurposed Waiting for Godot. The key difference is that Linklater took the despair of Beckett’s play and topped it: “His heroes aren't waiting as a mission, but as a lifestyle.” Macovei’s characters, on the other hand, have no style.  Suburbia...

Asphalt City (2023)

Starring Sean Penn, Tye Sheridan, Michael Pitt, and Myke Tyson, Asphalt City certainly runs the gamut from the tippy top of the acting profession, through the ‘good, not great’ category, and all the way down to ‘what the hell were they thinking?’  Early in his career, Sheridan would overperform when paired with a heavyweight like McConaughey...

The August Virgin (2019)

At first, I thought that The August Virgin (original title: La Virgen de Agosto) aspired to be, or at least wanted us to think that it was, a spiritual successor to "the comedies from the '30s ... these popular and apparently escapist comedies ... more advanced in terms of traditions and morals, with those wonderful...