It might be a little much to claim that Ryan Gosling is singlehandedly reinventing American masculinity onscreen. On the other hand, he has followed up his global triumph in Barbie (and winning of the Oscar in all our hearts with his performance of I’m Just Ken at the Academy Awards) with The Fall Guy, during which he …
I’m as much a fan of rom-coms as of any other genre mix. As long as the narrative doesn’t fall into the usual formulaic traps and quickly becomes just another cheap, forgettable variation of a story watched and rewatched countless times, I always find myself open-minded and ready to be …
The Fall Guy is the newest action spectacular from Bullet Train’s David Leitch, and in so many ways, it is a love letter to movies and stunts. Starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Winston Duke, the film is a meta look at the physical business behind making movies. A huge part of that is music, and The …
Challengers was one of the most anticipated films of 2023, but it was postponed to the following year due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. However, the enormous anticipation for Luca Guadagnino’s new movie (Call Me by Your Name, Suspiria, Bones and All) never faded, especially considering it stars one of Hollywood’s biggest young celebrities of today, Zendaya (Dune: …
Stuntmen do very impressive work on movies, and the better they are, the less likely you are even to notice them. While rumblings about an Oscar for stunts finally being given out have led nowhere, the best boost to this particular section of the industry is the big-budget blockbuster The Fall …
Everyone expects that the end of the world – or at least of civilization as we know it – will come about in a big, transformative way. An extinction event or an apocalyptic end to all we know and love has been predicted by many science fiction stories and zombie …
French Girl, starring Zach Braff, Evelyne Brochu, and Vanessa Hudgens, is a rom-com where love crosses borders. Zach Braff is Gordon Kinski, a love-struck English teacher planning a proposal to his girlfriend Sophie, played by Evelyne Brochu. Things go awry when, instead of being proposed to, Sophie is whisked away to Quebec with a dream job offer …
Fish out of water comedies are fun because it’s inherently interesting, and often quite funny, to watch people try to adjust to a life they’ve never known. In some cases, it’s the chance for someone to experience unprecedented luxury and comfort without ever having been able to fathom that kind …
The Indigo Girls are having a bit of a moment right now. I don’t know if there has ever been a time when they weren’t having a moment, but between “Closer to Fine” appearing in Barbie and the documentary It’s Only Life After All that also released last year, the pair has been in the …
Love stories often rely on two characters being in the right place at the right time. Falling Into Place – a melancholic slow-burn love story from writer/director Aylin Tezel – follows in the timeless vein of the recent phenomena Normal People and One Day: the meeting of its characters may feel like destiny, but trials of time, …
Sundance thrives on a level of strangeness within their films. Some premises are so absurd one wonders if they can be successful. This year’s festival alone offered plenty of surrealist entertainment. Movies like Presence, Loves Lies Bleeding, and Freaky Tales delivered a level of hyper-stylized fantasy. It helped the festival to give audiences …
The Lobster, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and written by Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, is the most interesting film regarding modern relationships. It takes a look at dating and gives it a dystopian twist. The film is an absurdist dry comedy set in an alternative world where single people go to a place called The Hotel. …
Before I begin this review of Anyone But You, I must include the full disclosure that I am a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic by nature. There’s always a soft spot in my heart for romantic comedies. I’m not over the moon for all of them, but I tend to enjoy them a …
Director Peter Hutchings turned heads (in the best way!) with his adaptation of the popular romance book The Hating Game, starring Lucy Hale and Austin Stowell. The indie rom-com was so successful it was even the number-one movie on the US charts for a bit of time. Hutchings is back with another exciting romance, Which Brings Me to You, …
True to its name, Role Play is an uninspired affair disguised as something more exciting. Its hybridization of the action and comedy genres has worked plenty of times in the past – Kick-Ass, Spy, Hot Fuzz, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and the 21 Jump Street films to name but a few examples. While they are all focused on …
Both 2013 and 2014 were years of incredible loss for me. My mother was diagnosed with ALS and died from complications related to that. I went through a divorce. I suffered a stillbirth at 35 weeks of pregnancy. It felt like at every turn, there was something to grieve. The …
Witty repartee and sexy chemistry spark like fireworks on bridal flowers in Anyone But You, a breezy rom-com down under starring Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney. Anyone But You is a sexy second-chance enemies-to-lovers fake dating contemporary romantic comedy novel come to life in the best ways possible. It’s got beautiful people with fantastic chemistry, a …
The Taste of Things (or La Passion de Dodin Bouffant) is a new French-language film by director Trần Anh Hùng and distributed by IFC Films in the US. France has submitted it for the best International Feature at the Academy Awards, and it recently made the Oscars shortlist. For myself, I love a great cooking …
Since the induction of moving pictures on a big screen, people have lined up to watch other people fall in love. The romantic relationship depictions between two people, sometimes with some humor thrown in for good measure, have brought people venturing to the movies for the chance to fall in …
Forget roses and grand gestures, Last Call for Istanbul simmers with a forbidden love that’s as intoxicating as Turkish coffee on a rooftop overlooking the Bosphorus, or in this case, New York City. Beren Saat and Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ deliver a slow-burn romance punctuated by moments as thrilling as a whirlwind taxi …