6 Best Movies To Watch After Fun with Dick and Jane (2005)
Memory
Both the main characters in Michel Franco’s Memory are struggling to deal with the echoes of their past. Sylvia (Jessica Chastain), a recovering alcoholic and single mother to 13-year-old Anna (Brooke Timber), desperately wants to forget the unspoken traumas of her childhood. Saul (Peter Saarsgard), on the other hand, can’t grab a hold of his past. He’s powerless as early-onset dementia slowly but inevitably steals it from him. After their high school reunion, he wordlessly follows her home and spends the night standing outside her building. In turn, she visits him at the house he shares with his brother (Josh Charles) and niece (Elsie Fisher). Then she takes him for a walk and accuses him of participating in a rape that she endured at the age of 12, a crime that he has no memory of committing. Continue Reading →
A Haunting in Venice
The first two entries in director/actor Kenneth Branagh’s foray into Agatha Christie adaptation lost the magic of the English writer’s mysteries. With his third attempt, A Haunting in Venice, Branagh decides to make considerable changes to the story. Using the bones of Christie’s Hallowe’en Party, writer Michael Green changes the setting from a small town in the English countryside to a palazzo in Venice. Branagh emphasizes the gothic elements of Christie’s story, leaning on the horror of the location, the manic nature of the children’s Halloween party, and the gruesome moments before and after an unexpected death. Continue Reading →
You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah
You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah has a simple premise. Stacy Friedman (Sunny Sandler) wants her bat mitzvah, only a few weeks away, to be perfect. Using that premise, the film takes off, exploring the growing pains of middle school. Continue Reading →
Kill List
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn't exist. Continue Reading →
Spenser Confidential
Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg's latest exercise in macho posturing is both aesthetically and thematically ugly. “It would be so easy,” I whisper to myself. My finger hovers over the little red button that would close Netflix, and grant me freedom. “I made it through almost an hour. I’ve got more than enough to write about, my editor would never know the difference.” Instead, I poured myself a stiff drink and hit resume; blame a foolhardy dedication to craft or sheer stupidity, but I watched all one hour and fifty-one minutes of Spenser Confidential. Do yourself a favor: don’t make my mistake. Has director Peter Berg started making movies on iPhone? No, that would be an actual aesthetic choice; still, I’m scratching my head as to why Spenser looks like a poorly shot student film. A de-saturated, opening flashback is particularly ugly and juvenile, not just because we see the titular Spenser (Mark Wahlberg) beat up an unarmed man – an opening that’s all the more uncomfortable considering the star has done something similar in real life. But instead of leading to a prosperous career as a leading man, Spenser’s violence towards his police captain (at his home) lands him in prison – according to an enormous title card that reads “PRISON.” We cut to five years later, the day before this now ex-cop’s release. For some reason, global superstar Post Malone saunters into the frame, and eventually stabs Marky-Mark in the side with a rusty shiv. Continue Reading →
To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You
Netflix's sequel to To All the Boys I've Loved Before keeps the charm but loses some of its edge. Netflix's algorithmic approach to satisfying the needs of its many and sundry subscribers (and its willingness to pour untold millions of dollars into producing and distributing original content) often feels like they're fishing with a shotgun -- just spray and pray. But amid the field of mediocre teen rom-coms they've put out over the last few years (Tall Girl, anyone?), the streaming service struck gold in 2018 with To All the Boys I've Loved Before, a sweet, inclusive, effortlessly charming treacle that feels like if John Hughes had a 21st-century understanding of racial and gender dynamics, and the results were shockingly warm, inviting, and downright fun. Now, Netflix is putting out a sequel just in time for Valentine's Day, To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, and while the surprise is gone, Lara Jean's story holds onto just enough of its residual charm to entertain. Making a sequel to a rom-com is never easy; what happens after 'happily ever after'? Luckily, Jenny Han's bestselling YA book has two sequels (of which Netflix plans to make a trilogy), so there's a treacly blueprint to work from. As P.S. I Still Love You begins, perpetual wallflower Lara Jean (Lana Condor) and sensitive jock Peter (Noah Centineo) are beginning the furtive first steps of their relationship: going out on dates, showing each other off to their friends, and navigating the thorny question of when/how/if to have sex. The courtship period is done, now it's time to really find out of Lara Jean and Peter are meant to be together. This question is complicated by the arrival of John Ambrose McClaren (Jordan Fisher), Lara Jean's middle-school crush and one of the subjects of the clandestinely-mailed love letters that kickstarted this whole affair in the first place. He's smart, sweet, nerdy, and thanks to their mutual volunteer work at the local retirement home (populated by a spirited Holland Taylor as Lara Jean's carefree confidante), get plenty of time to meet-cute all over each other. Continue Reading →