SYNOPSIS: In “It Ends with Us,” a new domestic abuse drama based on the bestseller of the same name by Colleen Hoover, and now playing in theatres, Blake Lively plays Lily, a young woman who relocates to Boston to find a new life, and romance with wealthy neurosurgeon Ryle (Justin Baldoni). When the ghosts of the past revisit themselves on her new relationship, Lily must take control and take charge of her own destiny.
CAST: Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Brandon Sklenar, Jenny Slate, Hasan Minhaj. Directed by Justin Baldoni.
REVIEW: “It Ends with Us” raises issues of the lingering, intergenerational effects of domestic abuse but is let down by its uncomplicated portrayal of the complex dynamics that motivate the characters. The film’s cycles of abuse themes are provocative, but director Baldoni (who also stars as Ryle), and screenwriter Christy Hall blunt the story’s impact by not digging deep enough. Abuse is a thorny, ugly subject, and nobody wants to see explicit representations of it on screen, but “It Ends with Us,” while well-meaning, simplifies the issue to the point of melodrama. Sincere melodrama, but melodrama none the less.
Lively is compelling as Lily, and her performance brings with it, when appropriate to the situation, heaping helpings of charm, warmth and courage. She nicely cast, as is Isabela Ferrer who plays young Lily in the flashback scenes. Ferrer not only looks like Lively but brings the same range to the role.
As Ryle’s sister and Lily’s BFF Allysa, Jenny Slate is also a welcome presence.
(MILD SPOILER ALERT) In theory Ryle is a walking contradiction. Charming and successful, he’s also a bit of a stalker with a violent streak. He’s a healer who breaks things when he gets angry. Baldoni plays him with a thin skin, as a man guided by his passions, for better and for worse.
Trouble is, the relationship at the heart of the film, between Lily and Ryle, always feels at arm’s length. Their meet-cute yearns to have a charming cat-and-mouse vibe, but other than some low-wattage sparkle, they don’t display a great deal of chemistry in this extended scene.
It doesn’t help that screenwriter Hall inserts exposition that is meant to be the kind of “naked truth telling” used so effectively in her movie “Daddio.” Unfortunately, the revelations feel less like “get to know you” confessions than hints of things to come later in the film.
When “It Ends with Us” takes a dramatic turn in its second hour, the stakes are raised and the culture of abuse themes come into focus, but over-all it feels padded by slo-motion montages (scored to the ironically named “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby” by Cigarettes After Sex), Hallmark style dialogue and romance movie clichés. Still, it’s hard not to root for Lily as Lively guides her on her emotional journey.
“Marcel the Shell with Shoes On,” is part poignant, part absurd and all wonderful.
In the new film, now playing in theatres, the resourceful, one-googly-eyed sea shell with a pink pair of shoes, voiced by Jenny Slate, searches to find community after a family upheaval. Marcel may be a one-inch mollusk, but his experience of loss, grief and joy feels more human and authentic than most films starring, you know, actual humans.
In this shell’s eye view, we learn that Marcel lives in an Airbnb, once the home of an unhappily married couple, now a stop-over for tourists. When they split, Marcel’s extended family disappeared, possibly taken accidentally in the couple’s rush to leave the house and their relationship behind.
Marcel and his grandmother Connie (Isabella Rossellini) remain, finding resourceful and often hilarious ways to survive and thrive in the mostly empty house.
When recently separated filmmaker Dean (Dean Fleischer-Camp, who directs and who co-created Marcel with Slate) and his curious dog move in, Marcel finds a friend and collaborator. Dean is taken by Marcel’s mix of curiosity (Have you ever eaten a raspberry?) and acumen and begins to document life in the Airbnb in a video he intends to post on YouTube. “It’s like a movie,” Marcel explains to Connie, “but nobody has any lines and nobody even knows what it is while they’re making it.”
As the video goes viral, Marcel wonders if this newfound fame can help him track down his family.
“Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” is shot documentary style, with beautiful stop-motion animation to bring Marcel and Connie to life. The star of the show is Slate’s heartfelt vocal performance, at once childlike and wise. Marcel is a singular character. Adorable, it’s as if he just wandered over from a Pixar movie, bringing with him personality to spare but also a level of self-awareness and empathy rarely played out on such a high level in family movies. It may be big screen entertainment about a mollusk, but it feels personal and intimate.
Rossellini brings warmth to Connie, in a performance that feels like a grandmother’s hug. Comforting and wise, and just a little bit forgetful, she is Marcel’s anchor and mentor. “Marcello, let’s forget about being afraid,” she says. “Just take the adventure.”
“Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” takes a silly premise, one that could sit on the shelf next to other kid’s talking-creatures movies, and elevates it with a sense of humanity and the transformational power of friendship.
This one-inch-tall character punches way above his height.
Marvel has familiarized fans with the concept of the multiverse, a metaphysical theory that sees a collection of parallel universes with alternate realities collide with our own. Marvel superhero superstars Doctor Strange and Spider-Man have both tripped the light fantastic in recent films. Joining them on a cinematic full tilt boogie trip into other worlds is Michelle Yeoh, star of the full tilt boogie sci fi mindbender “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” now playing in theatres.
The action begins in a suburban Southern California laundromat run by Evelyn Wang (Yeoh) and husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). The couple have a meeting with the IRS and the situation is dire. “You may only see a pile of receipts,” says bureaucrat Dierdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis), “but I see a story. I can see where this story is going, and it does not look good.”
The meeting takes a weird twist when Waymond shoves Evelyn into a broom closet, sending her off to another dimension to battle an evil spirit called Jobu Tupaki, armed only with a Bluetooth headset.
“I’m not your husband,” he explains. I’m another version from another universe. I’m here because I need your help. Across the multiverse I’ve seen thousands of Evelyns. You can access all their memories, their emotions, even their skills. There’s a great evil spreading throughout the many verses. And you may be our only chance of stopping it.”
And away she goes, off on an adventure involving multiple Evelyns as a chef, a martial arts expert and movie star. As she verse-jumps, she must absorb the powers of all her alternate personalities and bring them back to the IRS offices.
“Everything Everywhere All At Once” is the most aptly titled movie of the year. A frenetic assault on the senses, it is a wild and woolly adventure where the quirk factor is turned up to 11 and literally anything could happen. A universe where everyone has hotdogs for fingers? Check. A heartfelt conversation between two sentient rocks? Check. A bagel that contains the secrets of the universe? Check.
You can say a lot of things about “Everything Everywhere All At Once” but you can’t say you’ve ever seen anything quite like it before. An eye-popping reflection on the power of kindness and love to heal the world’s problems, it is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. The directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known collectively as The Daniels, mix and match everything from family drama and tax problems to martial-arts and metaphysics into a whimsical story that moves at the speed of light. The result is a singular film that milks intentionality out of its madness.
“I Want You Back,” a new rom com starring Jenny Slate and Charlie Day and now streaming on Amazon, begins with dueling break-ups.
Noah (Scott Eastwood) and Emma (Slate) have been together for 18 months. She’s comfortable and content. He’s an A-Type on the hunt for the next thing in life, who happens to appear in the form of Ginny (Clark Backo), the statuesque owner of a local pie shop.
Peter (Day) and Anne (Gina Rodriguez) are six years in when she blindsides him. He’s too complacent, she says as she dumps him. She wants a bigger life, one filled with excitement and she thinks she’ll find that with local theatre director Logan (Manny Jacinto).
Emma and Peter are dumped and devastated.
This is a rom com, so it is inevitable that the grieving Emma and Peter will meet cute. Turns out, they work in the same office tower and spend time in the same stairwell, crying and longing for their exes. When they finally meet, she is smeared with mascara, he has the toilet paper he used to wipe away his tears stuck to his face. They respond to each other’s pain and begin a platonic friendship.
They sing “You Oughta Know” at karaoke, get drunk and attempt to make one another feel better. “Dying alone is not so bad,” Emma says. “Having someone to watch you die is embarrassing.” They go to the movies, have lunch, lurk on their exes’ Instagram and hatch a plan. Emma will infiltrate Anne and Logan’s relationship as Peter makes friends with Noah and Ginny, both trying to drive a wedge in the new relationships. “They might not know they should be with us,” Emma says, “with all these new shiny people around.”
“It’s like ‘Cruel Intentions,” Peter says, “but sexier.”
“How is it sexier?”
“It isn’t.”
The chemistry Slate and Day share, as actors and characters, (NOT A SPOILER, JUST THE WAY ROM COMS WORK) make it clear who should be partnered with who by the time the end credits roll. This is, after all, a rom com so the outcome isn’t a secret. It’s all about the journey, how the two most likeable characters in the movie will finally find their happily ever after. “I Want You Back” offers up a fun journey that travels ground most rom coms have voyaged before, but does so with laughs and heart.
There are hijinks and farce—a proposed three-way tryst, a very uncomfortable hiding spot and unrequited love—but the clichés of Katherine Heigl-style rom coms are blunted with edgy humor topped off with a helping of romance. The movie allows Slate and Day to bring their unique comic gifts to the material while keeping it on the rom com straight and narrow.
“I Want You Back” doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but the eager cast keeps the predictable parts of the story interesting and very funny.
Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray have only worked together twice, but “On the Rocks,” in select Theatres now and on Apple TV+ on October 23, makes you wish they would become exclusive. She gets him in all his scampish glory, allowing the septuagenarian to revel in playing a smooth talking, lovable old scamp who drinks Cutty over ice and teaches his young grandkids to bluff at poker. Murray is the Michelangelo of mischief, a clown prince with heart and soul and Coppola knows how to mine it.
Set in pre-pandemic New York City, the story centers on Laura (Rashida Jones), an author and mom who discovers that she’s not as happily married as she thought. Her high tech businessman husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) is aloof, never home and when she finds a strange make-up case in his luggage, he makes a lame excuse straight out of “Cheaters 101.”
Her father Felix (Bill Murray), a loquacious, jet setting art dealer knows about infidelity. He’s a scoundrel who knows, for instance, that The Plaza is the best place to have an affair because it has exits on three different streets for a fast extra-marital escape. He’s not shocked Dean might be having an affair, he’s just surprised he’s doing it at the Soho House, a building he considers déclassé.
Over a birthday dinner at the ritzy 21 Club, at the table where Bogart proposed to Bacall, Felix suggests they investigate on their own, using his knowledge if the cheating mind to catch Dean in the act. In a cherry red sports car they set out on their mission—“This is wartime,” he says.—but the relationship they expose isn’t the one they expected.
“On the Rocks” isn’t a rom com or a screwball comedy or an adventure film. It’s a Sofia Coppola film, a movie that teleports the viewer into a heightened world of privilege while still mining a deep emotional core. And it’s laugh out loud funny, for a time anyway.
It is light, plot wise, but exists to showcase the chemistry between Murray and Jones. Their relationship is the real love story in the film, as fractured and dysfunctional as it may be. They look at the world through very different eyes but are bound by blood.
During the caper portion they have an almost Nick and Nora vibe, exchanging sharp, smart and funny repartee. Later when the action turns introspective, they get real, exposing their feelings in a raw, real and regretful way.
Murray is loose, droll and deadpan. He’s a walking, talking anachronism who says things like, “Women. You can’t live with them. You can’t live without them. That doesn’t mean you have to live with them,” and yet there is a bittersweet quality to the work that adds unspoken layers. It is a very particular performance and one unique to his style.
Jones plays off Murray with a different kind of performance. She’s warm, vulnerable and naturalistic, even when they are mid-escapade. The trick here is to not let Murray steal the show, and she ably manages to share the spotlight.
“On the Rocks” also features nice supporting work from Wayans who dials down his comedy instincts to play it straight and Jenny Slate as an over-sharer Laura bumps into now and again. Both bring much to the proceedings but the main attraction here are the leads. Coppola knows that and while the ending may be a bit pat, the endearing characters are the draw, not the story.
“The Sunlit Night,” a new Jenny Slate comedy now on VOD, feels like a throwback to the oddball indie films of recent decades. No detail is too twee, no setting too obscure. The viewer is reminded of a flood of titles like “Everything Is Illuminated” and “Amelie” come to mind, movies where the quirk factor is set to the max.
Jenny Slate plays Frances, a young woman following in the footsteps of her parents. All three are frustrated artists. “Maybe I’m not an artist,” she says. “Maybe I’m just the daughter of two other artists.” After one spectacularly bad day that sees her break up with her rich boyfriend, get critically savaged by her art professors, find out her lawyer sister is engaged and her parents (David Paymer and Jessica Hecht) are splitting up. As if that wasn’t enough, she gets denied an apprenticeship in Tokyo. Rather than live with her father in his tiny studio she accepts another, less than desirable offer—“He fired his last assistant and now he needs someone to paint a barn, using only the colour yellow.”—with reclusive artist Nils (Fridtjov Såheim) in the far, far north of Norway. “This is where you go when you are exiled,” she says.
Her new life in Lofoten takes some getting used to. She is a fish out of water, the sun never sets, small goats invade her trailer, and the job is a slog, essentially a large paint by numbers project that leaves her little or no time to work on her own paintings. Still, she finds time to explore the nearby Viking Museum run by ex-pat American (Zach Galifianakis) and, despite telling her mother that she is “closed for business, a potential love interest in Yasha (Alex Sharp), a Brooklyn baker who has travelled to the top of the world to give his late father, and not just the ashes, but the whole corpse, a traditional Viking funeral.
“The Sunlit Night” has something offer after a radical rethink following brutal reviews at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. It’s still a bit sloppy and a little too whimsically weird for its own sake, but Slate and a fun cameo from Gillian Anderson as Yasha’s mother do much of the heavy lifting. Most of the other characters seem to exist simply to add flavour to Frances’ rather colourless journey to find herself.
No amount of re-editing could get “The Sunlit Night” past the basic premise of outsiders navigating the strange Arctic Circle surroundings, but Slate brings charm to a story that otherwise may have been devoid of any realistic or interesting human behaviour.
You get three stories for the price of one in the 100% Louis CK-free “The Secret Life of Pets 2.” The episodic sequel to the 2016 animated hit front loads a lot of plot into its snappy 87 minutes but doesn’t forget to blend in life messages for kids on finding inner courage. “The first step in not being afraid,” says wily old sheepdog Rooster (Harrison Ford), “is acting like you are not afraid.”
Jack Russell Terrier Max, previously voiced by CK, now sounds like Patton Oswalt. He and his odd couple pal, the shaggy Newfoundland mix Duke (Eric Stonestreet), now must now share their Brooklyn home with a new roommate, their owner’s (Ellie Kemper) new baby Liam. The toddler’s presence raises Max anxiety level—”He is perfect,” Max says fretfully, “and I will keep him safe.”—until the family takes a trip to the country and he meets Rooster, a Yoda-like character who teaches him to be himself and not be an overprotective helicopter parent for Liam.
Meanwhile Max’s girlfriend, a vivacious Pomeranian named Gidget (Jenny Slate), must take lessons in how to act like a tabby from her catnip-loving feline friend Chloe (Lake Bell) to rescue Max’s favorite squeaky toy from an apartment overrun by cats.
Then, when Molly (Kiely Renaud) starts dressing bunny and former flushed pet Snowball (Kevin Hart) in cute superhero pajamas he believes the hype and behave like a movie crime fighter. His skills are tested when a brave Shih Tzu named Daisy (Tiffany Haddish) asks him to assist on a dangerous mission. “I don’t mean to sound dramatic,” she says, “but a poor defenseless animal needs saving.”
Themes of inner courage and facing fears are woven through each story and come together the last twenty minutes or so as the pets all join forces.
The Gidget and Snowball storylines have the kind of playfulness you expect from Illumination, the company that gave us the anarchic jellybean-shaped Minions. Max’s life-altering adventures on the farm, which take up a great deal of the scant running time, feels borrowed from other, better kid-friendly fare like the “Toy Story” franchise.
The voice work is a mixed bag. Ford is a howl as the gruff old timer who imparts life-changing advice. If they do another of these “Pets” movies he should graduate to main character status. Slate is a hyperactive bundle of energy and Hart and Haddish are a fun duo that add much spark to their segment. Oswalt, so distinctive in “Ratatouille,” doesn’t teach Max any new tricks.
“The Secret Life of Pets 2” feels like three episodes of a “Pets” television show banged together to (almost) feature length. Pet lovers may recognize and enjoy some of the behavior—a cat coughing up a hairball on her sleeping owner and the protective nature of Max and Rooster—but it won’t beat spending the day with your real-life, cuddly pet.
Theses days the word landline conjures up a specific retro feel. It harkens back to a time before everyone played Candy Crush on their mobile devices and when pay phones dotted the landscape. That’s the world where the new Jenny Slate dramedy “Landline” takes place.
It’s New York City, 1995. Dana Jacobs (Slate) is a layout artist at Paper Magazine when she isn’t at Blockbuster with her fiancée Ben (Jay Duplass) agonizing over what movie to rent. Younger sister Ali (Abby Quinn) is as free-spirited as her sibling is buttoned down.
“You’re like a piece of toilet paper stuck to my shoe,” Dana says to Ali. “You are the embodiment of constipation,” Ali snaps back.
Despite their differences the sisters bond when Ali discovers erotic poetry her father Alan (John Turturro) wrote for a woman who is not his wife Pat (Edie Falco). Their disgust for his actions brings them together, despite the fact that Dana has thrown off the shackles of engagement and embarked on a secret journey of self-discovery with Nate (Finn Wittrock). “I am flailing,” she says. “Trying to figure out if the life I have picked for myself is the one that I want.” “We are a family of cheaters!” Ali exclaims.
“Landline” uses infidelity as a backdrop for a study of partnership and family. Everyone’s relationship is teetering on the edge and yet this is a hopeful movie, a film that suggests monogamy is viable when given room to breathe.
“Obvious Child” director Gillian Robespierre brings a strong ensemble together, elevating the material with strong performances. Duplass is suitably milquetoast as Ben, the dull but lovable fiancée. Turturro and Falco breathe life into characters that in lesser hands might have been caricatures or worse, simply a plot device to support the sisters’ story.
The stars here, however, are Slate and Quinn. They look like sisters but their chemistry extends beyond the skin deep. Slate’s giggles and affectionate asides—“You’re a weird little bird.”—feel authentic, as though these two have a long shared history that predates anything we see on the screen. They bring humanity and sympathy to the film despite their foibles.
“Landline” is an engaging portrait of broken relationships in an analogue time. It’s a gently heart tugging story about the consequences of breaking relationship rules. There are jokes and there are tears but mainly “Landline” has a wistful tone that gets under your skin.
“Gifted” is the story of a fractured family. Like a hybrid of “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Little Man Tate” (with a taste of “Good Will Hunting” thrown in), it bases a family custody story around a child prodigy.
Chris Evans leaves his Captain America mask at Avenger’s HQ to play Frank Adler, a single man trying to give his niece Mary (Mckenna Grace) a normal life in a Florida coastal town. As the seven-year-old’s guardian, he enrols the high-spirited girl in public school. “Please don’t make me go,” she says. “No more argument, we’ve discussed this ad nauseam,” he replies. “What’s ad nauseam?” “You don’t know? Looks like someone need school.”
In school she outpaces all her classmates academically, particularly in mathematics. When her teacher (Jenny Slate) tries to stump her, asking what 57 multiplied by 135 is, the little girl pauses and says, “7695” off the top of her head. Then goes on to supply the square root. “87.7 plus change.” It is clear she is gifted, but her abilities raise concerns for Frank. “I promised my sister I’d give Mary a normal life,” he says. “She has to be here,” and not in the special school her grandmother (Lindsay Duncan) wants to place her in. “You are denying her potential.” Cue the custody battle.
“Gifted” doesn’t exactly reinvent the family drama wheel. Frank is the “quiet damaged hot guy,” Mary the precocious kid with a snappy line and many a heart tugging moments. We’ve seen all that before but it’s the chemistry between Evans and Grace that elevates the material. The poignancy of their relationship cuts through the film’s clichés, taking some of the saccharin edge off the story.
Evans is a superhero of a different sort in “Gifted.” As the protective uncle of a brilliant niece he is a fully engaged father figure. He’s a man who saw his sister’s brilliance turn her life upside down and does everything he can to avoid the same fate for his niece. It’s a nice, sensitive performance that provides a nice break from his Avengers’ work.
Grace offers up a nicely balanced blend of brains and childhood behaviour. She’s the smartest person in the room, but she’s also a child, prone to temper tantrums and confusion. Still she is capable of great insight. Why does she want to stay with Frank? “He wanted me before I was smart.”
The movie works best when it focuses on the surrogate dad and niece. There is nice supporting work from Jenny Slate as Mary’s teacher, Octavia Spencer (in her second film about gifted mathematicians) as the girl’s much older best friend and Duncan as the stern Evelyn do solid work, but this is a basically a two hander.
“Gifted” is a warm and funny family drama, a film so well cast it overcomes its conventional idea.
