Tag: Romance

REVIEW: ‘Big Bold Beautiful Journey’ doesn’t live up to its title

Colin Farrell is back in another romantic fantasy film more than a decade after starring in 2014’s “Winter’s Tale.” Thankfully, this movie is better, but… that’s a really low bar.

Farrell’s latest film features him in a role opposite fellow Academy Award nominee Margot Robbie. In “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,” both Farrell’s David and Robbie’s Sarah are single and end up mingling at the wedding of a mutual friend.

After the ceremony, Sarah’s rental car breaks down, and she ends up getting a ride from David, who picked up his own vehicle from the same mysterious agency. The car’s GPS then guides the two on a mystical adventure.

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REVIEW: Celine Song’s sophomore effort ‘Materialists’ disappoints

A film from A24, written and directed Celine Song who helmed the wonderful “Past Lives” from 2023? On paper it looks like a slam dunk. Unfortunately, that’s not quite the case.

In Song’s second feature film, Dakota Johnson stars as a matchmaker in New York City named Lucy. She works for a company that specializes in setting up dates between similar people. Basically, it’s an in person dating app, but the app is a human match manager with an office.

Work is going well enough, but Lucy herself has been single for a while. That changes, though, when she meets the charming and understanding Harry (Pedro Pascal), and the two start dating. At the same time, she meets up and starts talking with former boyfriend John (Chris Evans).

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REVIEW: ‘Snow White’ is an aggressively mediocre remake

Hi ho, hi ho, a walk through the uncanny valley we go.

The latest adaptation of the “Snow White” story and the most recent in a string of live action remakes of classic Disney animated features stars Rachel Zegler in the titular role. After the loss of her mother, Snow White, a princess, sees her father get remarried to a mysterious woman (Gal Gadot).

A short time later, Snow White’s father disappears and is assumed dead, allowing the woman to assume power as queen, to which she uses to become an authoritarian ruler. Seeing her stepdaughter as a threat, the Queen sets out to have Snow White killed, but the princess escapes and on the outskirts of the kingdom, meets new friends and allies.

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REVIEW: While not Guadagnino’s best, ‘Queer’ is a quality drama

Luca Guadagnino has helmed several well-made romantic dramas over the last few years, and now adds one more to the growing list.

Like other pictures he’s done, Guadagnino’s latest, “Queer,” is inspired by a book. The novel in this case has the same name and is a semi-autobiographical piece by American author William S. Burroughs. In the film, the author is the inspiration for the lead character William Lee (Daniel Craig).

William is a man residing in Mexico City during the 1950s and lives a life of addiction. He is an alcoholic, a heroin user and seeks casual sex regularly. It’s clear he’s looking for some sort of fulfillment in his life, and he may just find it in a new relationship he begins with another man, Eugene (Drew Starkey) early in the film.

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REVIEW: Funny. Provocative. Intense. ‘Anora.’

So, this film is sort of like “Pretty Woman,” if things went really off the rails, and Richard Gere was Russian.

Well, there are actually quite a few more differences all things considered. In “Anora,” Mikey Madison stars as the titular character who makes a living as a stripper and escort. Her day-to-day routine of working at a Manhattan club is interrupted when she’s hired by Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.

Initially hired for her escort services, Ivan later continues to pay Anora, or Ani as she likes to be called, to be his live-in girlfriend. After spending more time together, he ends up marrying the young woman. However, Anora’s new life in luxury is threatened when Ivan’s family finds out, and are furious at the news.

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REVIEW: ‘My Old Ass’ overplays generic romance angle

It’s usually a good sign for a movie when Aubrey Plaza is in the lineup. When that’s the case, though, one usually expects her to have more screentime.

Plaza’s time in “My Old Ass” is rather limited, though, as the main star of this movie is Maisy Stella, who plays the character Elliott. A teenager in rural Canada, Elliott is wrapping up a summer of working on her family’s farm before going to Toronto for college.

Before she takes off, her and her friends decide to experiment with some hallucinogens and in Elliott’s case, her trip allows her to speak with her older self (Plaza). Now with a connection to her future personality, she starts getting advice about her future while also sparking a new relationship in her present.

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REVIEW: Love story saps sharpness from ‘Society of Magical Negroes’

I feel like the organization in this movie was the JV version of The Brotherhood from “Undercover Brother.”

Justice Smith stars in this film as Aren, an artist who focuses on sculpture creations, mostly out of yarn. Unfortunately, Aren’s career hasn’t taken off, and his latest attempt at showing his work at a gallery ends in failure.

However, after the event, Aren meets a man named Roger (David Alan Grier), a member of the American Society of Magical Negroes who wants the struggling artist to join. The organization assigns African Americans to assist white people and make them more comfortable around people of color. Aren joins, but his first assignment gets complicated because of a love interest.

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REVIEW: ‘Poor Things’ is positively weird and wonderful

When director Yorgos Lanthimos makes a film, you can usually expect it will make a person laugh, think and be taken aback. “Poor Things” is another example, and it’s also pretty damn good.

Willem Dafoe portrays scientist and surgeon Dr. Godwin Baxter in the film. Early on in the movie, we learn that the latest experiment by Dr. Baxter, a sort of Frankenstein-like mad scientist, was the resurrection of a young woman who had jumped off a bridge.

To do so, Baxter utilizes a brain that he recovered from the baby that the woman was pregnant with and calls the revived being Bella (Emma Stone). The experiment results in Bella getting a crash course in living, as her intelligence rapidly develops while she’s learning about life experiences and the world around her.

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REVIEW: Inconsistencies causes ‘All of us Strangers’ to struggle

Sometimes you want so badly to enjoy a movie, and it just doesn’t work out. Enter “All of Us Strangers.”

The character Adam (Andrew Scott) is at the center of this U.K.-based drama. A writer who resides in London, Adam is in a melancholy state at the start of the film as he finds himself reflecting on the death of his parents who passed away when he was young.

When visiting his childhood home one day, though, by unexplained circumstances, Adam sees his parents as they were just before they died. As he’s reconnecting with his parents, he also meets a new resident in his apartment building who he starts a relationship with.

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REVIEW: ‘Past Lives’ is a romantic drama triumph

One of the most common aspects of the human experience is considering how different things could be if one made a different choice or a life event went an alternate way.

In stirring fashion, “Past Lives” writer/director Celine Song explores this concept, that boils down to the simple words “what if.”

The film, inspired by Song’s own life, centers on Nora (Greta Lee), a woman whose story began in South Korea before her family immigrated to Canada when she was a pre-teen. When she was growing up in South Korea, she was close friends with a boy named Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), but the two lost contact.

The two reconnect a dozen years later via social media and begin speaking regularly via Skype, but again are unable to consistently stay in touch as life takes them on different paths. The movie then follows up with the characters in the present day, when Hae Sung is able to visit Nora. who’s now a married writer in New York City.

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