Private Life: Movie Review

Hilariously flawed people going through life.

Private Life is a bitter-sweet exploration of a marriage and two people’s struggles to conceive. I know from that description that you might assume that the movie would drag on, that it might not offer anything new to the thousands of characters that have struggled with those issues in many movies that came before this one. But this one is different, trust me. There’s a sharp wit to these characters who are very true to themselves.		2018 Directed by: Tamara Jenkins Screenplay by: Tamara Jenkins Starring: Kathryn Hahn, Paul Giamatti

Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Movie Review

Sad and somber, but funny and thoughtful – a profound triumph.

This is Melissa McCarthy as you probably aren’t expecting her; I don’t think anybody was prepared for this casting announcement last year. Can You Ever Forgive Me? is funny in some parts, but it’s mostly a solemn drama with a tragicomedy theme permeating its lead character. It’s 1991 and Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) is a formerly semi-successful, not really famous writer of biographies.		2018 Directed by: Marielle Heller Screenplay by: Nicole Holofcener, Jeff Whitty Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant

A Simple Favor: Movie Review

Slick style and ludicrous plot twists.

A Simple Favor is an entertaining, wild ride of twisting madness. It’s a movie full of contradictory tones, styles and characters none of which should be in the same movie, and yet they all belong in this movie. Director Paul Feig had a very clear vision, something like Gone Girl meets The Stepford Wives and it all worked. It mostly all worked. The maddening heights that the madness reaches can be maddening, but before we get there it’s a funny thriller about interesting people.		2018 Directed by: Paul Feig Screenplay by: Jessica Sharzer Based on the novel by Darcey Bell Starring: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively

Juliet, Naked: Movie Review

Smart, mature and very funny comedy-drama.

There is a unique quality to Nick Hornby movie adaptations: most of them are just as good as, if not better than the source material. I’m a huge Nick Hornby fan, and I am constantly delighted by how good the adaptations turn out to be. Juliet, Naked is no different, with a really well written screenplay which taps into the comedic, musically-inclined pathos that Hornby is famous for.		2018 Directed by: Jesse Peretz Screenplay by: Evgenia Peretz, Jim Taylor, and Tamara Jenkins. Based on the novel by Nick Hornby. Starring: Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke

Little Italy: Movie Review

Clichéd romantic comedy about family rivalry.

I’ve heard Little Italy most often being described as lazy, but I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Is it lazy to hire Emma Roberts, niece of Julia Roberts, in a movie which borrows from Mystic Pizza both on the surface and in its design? No, it’s more luck that the filmmakers were able to get a capable and known actress for their little movie about pizza. That’s what this movie was originally - a celebration of pizza and the unique cultural cross-section of Toronto’s Little Italy.		2018 Directed by: Donald Petrie Screenplay by: Steve Galluccio, Vinay Virmani Starring: Emma Roberts, Hayden Christensen

Crazy Rich Asians: Movie Review

A heart beneath all the glitz and glamour.

Crazy Rich Asians is an enjoyably funny romantic comedy because it succeeds with two distinct but equally important fundamentals of the genre: lead characters who are real, relatable, empathetic and decent people at their core, and supporting characters who are funny and/or conniving, and not necessarily decent people at their core. It’s a world of money and glamour and so much of both that it can be very hard to imagine that any humans actually live like this.		2018 Directed by: Jon M. Chu Screenplay by: Peter Chiarelli, Adele Lim Based on the novel by Kevin Kwan Starring: Constance Wu, Henry Golding

Eighth Grade: Movie Review

Loneliness and anxiety in one adolescent girl.

Eighth Grade really is a different type of movie. It’s not hyper-sexualized nor edgy and dark. It’s just about one girl and her intense struggles with her place in life. The intensity comes solely from the pressures she places on herself to be cool. There’s a heartbreaking realness to her very palpable anxiety and that’s where this movie shines. Eighth Grade puts words and an empathetic face to the universal concept of every-day nervousness.		2018 Directed by: Bo Burnham Screenplay by: Bo Burnham Starring: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton

The Catcher Was a Spy: Movie Review

Fascinating story, interesting style.

The Catcher Was a Spy is a curiously good movie. Not quite a biopic, not quite a spy thriller, it’s actually the best of both worlds. The look of a spy thriller with charcoal fedoras and charcoal suits lit up only by street lamps and the occasional car headlight combined with the content of a biopic, and very importantly, using the intelligence of a smart character.		2018 Directed by: Ben Lewin Screenplay by: Robert Rodat Based on the book by Nicholas Dawidoff Starring: Paul Rudd, Mark Strong, Jeff Daniels

Set It Up: Movie Review

Enjoyable romantic comedy with a playful cast, charming romance and amusing comedy.

A romantic comedy that knows it’s a romantic comedy that is both romantic and funny. Set It Up just radiates the type of enjoyable energy that romantic comedies should have. The actual romantic comedy plot, the one that viewers know will happen in the movie, stays on the back burner while the main plot plays out. The main plot is not just a distraction, it’s a funny, albeit simple, story that allows our two leads to meet, get to know each other, become friends and fall in love.		2018 Directed by: Claire Scanlon Screenplay by: Katie Silberman Starring: Zoey Deutch, Glen Powell, Lucy Liu, Taye Diggs

Tag: Movie Review

Exaggerated nonsense leaving the comedy and characters behind.

A group of grown men playing a game. Tag simultaneously believes that is so far-fetched the audience must be repeatedly told it’s based on a true story, convinced that nobody could believe it otherwise, and yet on the other hand, also felt the true story is too tame and then exaggerates it to the extreme. The movie jumps right into the game of tag: getting a job as a janitor for fun, destroying company property, trespassing, destroying personal property, breaking doctor-patient confidentiality, all in the first ten minutes.		2018 Directed by: Jeff Tomsic Screenplay by: Rob McKittrick, Mark Steilen Starring: Ed Helms, Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, Jake Johnson, and Hannibal Buress.

Alex Strangelove: Movie Review

From immature boys to a refreshing coming-out tale of first love.

Alex Strangelove starts off as the worst possible teen sex comedy. Immature boys so obsessed with losing their virginity to the point that they literally don’t talk about anything else but still throwing in homophobic jokes in between all the dick jokes. You’ll be wondering why you’re even watching and what decade you’re living in. The good news is that it’s not really a teen sex comedy, at least not in the same vein like all the other American Pie knock-offs.		2018 Directed by: Craig Johnson Screenplay by: Craig Johnson Starring: Daniel Doheny, Madeline Weinstein

Ocean's 8: Movie Review

A stylish film with comedy, crimes and fashion.

A satisfying spin-off of the Ocean’s franchise, Ocean’s 8 continues the trend of all-star casts and sleek heists. Those two attributes are the movie’s main highlights and writer-director Gary Ross knows it. It opens with a delightfully immoral Sandra Bullock (playing Debbie Ocean, the sister of George Clooney’s Danny Ocean) remorsefully explaining to the parole officer that she is ready to put crime behind her and live a quiet life. Cut to the freshly-released Debbie in a slinky black dress explaining that she’s got 45 bucks in her pocket so she can go wherever she wants.		2018 Directed by: Gary Ross Screenplay by: Gary Ross, Olivia Milch Starring: Sandra Bullock, Anne Hathaway, Cate Blanchett, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson

The Honor List: Movie Review

Very slow build to something more meaningful.

The Honor List stars Sasha Pieterse, Meghan Rienks and Karrueche Tan as three former best friends brought together after the fourth friend (Honor) dies. The beginning is reminiscent of Pretty Little Liars but the film is toned down into something a lot more real with no thriller/mystery element. It’s just three high school girls and a few mini adventures.		2018 Directed by: Elissa Down Screenplay by: Marilyn Fu Starring: Sasha Pieterse, Meghan Rienks, Karrueche Tan

The Kissing Booth: Movie Review

Familiar but likable rom-com.

The Kissing Booth seems to have found its audience on Netflix even if critics are largely panning this movie. I think some of the criticisms are fair, but some are pretty lazy – is this better than every teen rom com that came before it? Nope. It retreads some very familiar ground, but it also fits its genre like a well-worn but comforting glove.		2018 Directed by: Vince Marcello Screenplay by: Vince Marcello Based on the book by Beth Reekles Starring: Joey King, Jacob Elordi

Step Sisters: Movie Review

Whites vs Blacks in a lame comedy.

Apparently, the world of stepping is just so popular that we needed a movie that combined Step Up with Sydney White, Pitch Perfect and Dear White People, but doesn’t take any of the humour or originality. In fact Step Sisters is even advertised as being from the director of Drumline, the choreographer of Pitch Perfect and the producers of Dear White People and Straight Outta Compton.		2018 Directed by: Charles Stone III Screenplay by: Chuck Hayward Starring: Megalyn Echikunwoke, Eden Sher

Irreplaceable You: Movie Review

Dying girl drama with not enough comedy.

Irreplaceable You stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Abbie, a young woman diagnosed with terminal cancer. A drama (with touches of comedy) about her short journey towards death; it’s about her acceptance or unacceptance of her fate, her need to plan for life without her, and how she wants others to respond to her tragedy. Movies about dying girls all suffer as the same sort of melancholic dramedy and need a hook to set it apart.		2018 Directed by: Stephanie Laing Screenplay by: Bess Wohl Starring: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michiel Huisman

The Polka King: Movie Review

Bizarre, entertaining, half-baked.

The true story behind The Polka King is disturbing; the movie is a comedy. While those two facts can be successfully juxtaposed, it often results in an unsettling feeling, that something is missing. The comedy isn’t as funny as it could be, the tragedy isn’t as revolting as it could be. The result is a good, but half-baked tragi-comedy, light on everything but the polka music.		2017 Directed by: Maya Forbes Screenplay by: Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky Starring: Jack Black, Jenny Slate

Flower: Movie Review

Strangely sweet and heartwarmingly funny.

A dark romantic comedy where you never know if sane and normal happiness is just around the corner, or if eternal depravity is closer than you think. Life, as Flower contends, is always a mix of the two. This is writer-director Max Winkler’s second feature; his first, Ceremony, looked more like a traditional romantic comedy but with an acerbic bite as we followed tragic characters around. Sophomore effort Flower looks nothing like a traditional romantic comedy, presenting a more caustic bite and deeply flawed characters heading straight towards a tragedy.		2017 Directed by: Max Winkler Screenplay by: Alex McAulay, Matt Spicer, Max Winkler Starring: Zoey Deutch, Joey Morgan, and Kathryn Hahn

Game Night: Movie Review

Exteme action and some laughs.

These big-styled action comedies have a really tough line to straddle where the difference between larger-than-life fun and over-the-top ridiculousness can be really thin and many just fall off on the wrong side. The most notable recent success is The Horrible Bosses where even when reality is thrown out the window, the audience is willing to go along with it. Game Night is always slipping off the edge – each new action sequence is larger than it should be, but it never completely falls off.		2018 Directed by: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein Screenplay by: Mark Perez Starring: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams

Love, Simon: Movie Review

Heartfelt teen romance to fall for.

The marketing for Love, Simon has been catchy and clever. Their use of simple but cute puns hits the mark in just the right way, and the film doesn’t disappoint. It’s simple but cute and ultimately it’s a film that the world needs right now. A Hollywood romantic comedy for gay teens which feels like it should be a common genre by now, but in reality is hard to find on the big screen (even though the genre is thriving in the indie market, it’s just taken the big studios a bit longer).		2018 Directed by: Greg Berlanti Screenplay by: Elizabeth Berger, Isaac Aptaker Based on the novel by Becky Albertalli Starring: Nick Robinson, Katherine Langford

Entanglement: Movie Review

A twisting, original story of love and depression.

The main reason to watch Entanglement is because it’s different and unique. There are plenty of movies that are weird just for the sake of being weird, but Entanglement is only slightly weird with an actual story to tell – a story that’s grounded in universal emotions. Ultimately, it’s about loneliness, depression and love, and never hides those thoughts while sending us down a twisting, original path with some moments of brilliance and the occasional moment of nonsense.		2017 Directed by: Jason James Screenplay by: Jason Filiatrault Starring: Thomas Middleditch, Jess Weixler, and Diana Bang

When We First Met: Movie Review

Funny and cute.

A time travelling romantic comedy with shades of Groundhog Day and The Lake House. The fact that When We First Met doesn’t just immediately drive itself off a cliff is a mark of success in and of itself. That’s mostly thanks to the comedy of Adam Devine and the rest of the main cast. As romantic comedies go, the romance element is fairly predictable (trust me, it could have been a lot worse), but the film sticks to the comedy of the simple premise.		2018 Directed by: Ari Sandel Screenplay by: John Whittington Starring: Adam Devine, Alexandra Daddario

The 15:17 to Paris: Movie Review

A heroic ending with a muddled beginning and nothing in between.

Based on the true events of a terrorist attack successfully thwarted on a train from Amsterdam to Paris in August of 2015, The 15:17 to Paris is mostly a reminder that 5 minute events should not become two hour movies. Granted it does run 94 minutes, and director Clint Eastwood wanted to focus on the lives of the men before their heroic actions, but ultimately only the final 15 minutes were good and everything else he wanted to say got muddled in the mundaneness of life.		2018 Directed by: Clint Eastwood Screenplay by: Dorothy Blyskal Based on the book by Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, Spencer Stone and Jeffrey E. Stone Starring: Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, Spencer Stone

Permission: Movie Review

Relationship drama with unrelatable characters.

Permission is a relationship movie that’s supposed to be about that crossroads when you know you’re in love but you don’t know if you’re in love with the person that you’re supposed to be in love with. I’m not convinced that that’s an actual crossroads that many people experience, regardless, the film really just spends the entire run time trying to convince us that having sex with strangers is sexy. It’s not.		2017 Directed by: Brian Crano Screenplay by: Brian Crano Starring: Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens

Winchester: Movie Review

Hunting ghosts with guns.

It’s not common to see biographical films mixed with horror, and it’s also not common to see horror films based on real life. Don’t think of Winchester as anything but a horror film. The biographical element does provide a nice hook to get interested, but from there it delves straight into the horror genre. The Exorcist meets The Woman in Black meets any other typical horror movie you can name. Cheap thrills gives way to supernatural nonsense.		2018 Directed by: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig Screenplay by: Tom Vaughan, Michael and Peter Spierig Starring: Helen Mirren, Jason Clarke

A Futile and Stupid Gesture: Movie Review

Funny, witty, tragic - a great comedy.

A Futile and Stupid Gesture is about the life of Doug Kenney. The funny man behind the National Lampoon and a defining force of the comedy scene in the 1970s. By every definition of the phrase, an actual comic genius, who took the art of comedy to new highs, the other kind of high, and then the resulting lows. This is a truly great comedy; not only very funny but it’s actually about something more than just being funny.		2018 Directed by: David Wain Screenplay by: Michael Colton, John Aboud Based on the book by Josh Karp Starring: Will Forte, Domhnall Gleeson

Created Equal: Movie Review

A legal drama with something interesting to say.

Starring Aaron Tveit as a cocky lawyer and Lou Diamond Phillips as the quietly-confident representative for the Catholic Church, Created Equal does the important things right. A name cast to try and garner some interest in this small independent feature, but more importantly, it picks an interesting case and argues both sides. It picks apart the legal and theological arguments both for and against the church’s right to disallow women into the seminary.		2018 Directed by: Bill Duke Screenplay by: Ned Bowman, Joyce Renee Lewis, and Michael Ricigliano Jr Based on the novel by R.A. Brown Starring: Edy Ganem, Aaron Tveit

Crazy Famous: Movie Review

Successfully walks to the tightrope between nonsense and comedy.

Bob Marcus (Gregory Lay) will do whatever it takes to be famous – that includes stripping down to his underwear and using a trampoline to vault over the President’s security gate. Unfortunately, he was at Camp David and the President wasn’t there at the time, so it didn’t get him on the news, but it did get him a stay at a mental institution. That’s the premise for indie comedy Crazy Famous. Silly for sure, but it’s a funny, short, entertaining romp about sanity and government agents.		2017 Directed by: Paul Jarrett Screenplay by: Bob Farkas Starring: Gregory Lay, Richard Short, Victor Cruz and David Neal Levin

The Post: Movie Review

Enthralling timeliness about the fight for the freedom of press.

The timeliness of The Post, set in 1971, is distressing and eye-opening to say the least. The President (Nixon, but not a visible character in the movie) is throwing the 1st Amendment out the window as he’s trying to stop newspapers from publishing the Pentagon papers and banning reporters from covering his daughter’s wedding. Meanwhile the female president of The Washington Post was facing significant gender discrimination where none of the (all male) board members thought she was capable of leading the paper and would say so to her face.		2017 Directed by: Steven Speilberg Screenplay by: Liz Hannah, Josh Singer Starring: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts and Bradley Whitford

Molly's Game: Movie Review

Fast-talking, smart story of one accomplished woman.

Molly Bloom was a world-class skier, an academic over-achiever, a woman who built a legal multi-million-dollar poker business on her own wits and intelligence, and now she’s a felon. Molly’s Game is her story - all of her story, or at least the prescient moments from her first 36 years. It’s the highs and the lows and most importantly, how she got there.		2017 Directed by: Aaron Sorkin Screenplay by: Aaron Sorkin Based on the book by Molly Bloom Starring: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba

I, Tonya: Movie Review

Uproariously entertaining with astute insight into Tonya Harding.

Craig Gillespie, director of I, Tonya, opts for a comedic breaking-the-fourth-wall type biopic where characters in mid-action will either deny or confirm what they’re currently doing. When Tonya has a rifle aimed at ex-husband Jeff’s head, she says she didn’t do it. When Jeff slams Tonya’s fingers in the car door, he says he didn’t do it. But you know they did do most of it. The style works for a too-crazy-to-be-true true story.		2017 Directed by: Craig Gillespie Screenplay by: Steven Rogers Starring: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Paul Walter Hauser

Pitch Perfect 3: Movie Review

Ludicrous plot doesn’t fit the Pitch Perfect tone.

Given the poor reception that Pitch Perfect 3 has received, it would be tempting to say the series has gone out with a whimper instead of a bang, but no, the movie literally goes out with a bang. The Bellas are performing on a yacht, Fat Amy comes crashing through a glass ceiling, blows up the boat, and Amy and Beca jump into the water together. How do we get there? Well Fat Amy becomes a fighting ninja, the Bellas get kidnapped by an international assassin, while they’re touring with the USO in Europe.		2017 Directed by: Trish Sie Screenplay by: Kay Cannon and Mike White Starring: Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Brittany Snow, Anna Camp

Darkest Hour: Movie Review

A mini-roller coaster of boorish, comic and political statesman.

As Joe Wright has done in all of his previous films, particularly the period pieces such as Anna Karenina and Atonement, he perfectly captures the style for the setting. In Darkest Hour, it’s a sepia-toned British Parliament, with a hundred men all wearing black suits shouting about their ineptitude to stop the German advances of World War II. It’s May 1940, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is about to resign and Britain, and the world, need a new leader to help them defeat Hitler.		2017 Directed by: Joe Wright Screenplay by: Anthony McCarten Starring: Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas