Blake Lively Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Another Simple Favor,’ starring Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Andrew Rannells, Elizabeth Perkins, Michele Morrone, Alex Newell, Elena Sofia Ricci, Henry Golding and Allison Janney

April 30, 2025

by Carla Hay

Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively in “Another Simple Favor” (Photo by Lorenzo Sisti/Amazon Content Services)

Directed by Paul Feig

Some language in Italian with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place on Italy’s Capri island and briefly in the United States, the comedy/drama “Another Simple Favor” (a sequel to “A Simple Favor”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A lifestyle vlogger/author, who is invited to the wedding of a homicidal friend-turned-enemy, gets involved in another murder mystery case during the wedding celebration.

Culture Audience: “Another Simple Favor” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners; the book and movie “A Simple Favor”; and sarcastic dramedies about insecure and image-conscious people.

Cast members of “Another Simple Favor.” Pictured in front: Blake Lively and Michele Morrone. Pictured in back: Alex Newell and Anna Kendrick. (Photo by Lorenzo Sisti/Amazon Content Services)

“Another Simple Favor” doesn’t have the original zest of “A Simple Favor,” but it’s still an enjoyable watch for the performances and to see how the characters deal with the inevitable murder mystery. The movie crams in too many plot twists near the end. Leading up to these turns in the story, there’s enough snappy banter and intriguing “whodunit” sleuthing to keep most fans of these types of movies interested in seeing what will happen next.

Directed by Paul Feig and written by Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis, “Another Simple Favor” had its world premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. “Another Simple Favor” is a sequel to 2018’s “A Simple Favor,” which was directed by Feig and written by Sharzer, with the adapted screenplay based on Darcey Bell’s 2017 novel of the same name. Is it necessary to know what happened in “A Simple Favor” to watch “Another Simple Favor”? No, but it definitely helps because “Another Simple Favor” reveals many of the plot twists that happened in “A Simple Favor.”

In “A Simple Favor” (which took place in an unnamed U.S. city), the two friends-turned-enemies at the center of the story are neurotic and talkative Stephanie Smothers (played by Anna Kendrick) and smug and manipulative Emily Nelson (played by Blake Lively), who’ve been in a battle to outwit each other, ever since [spoiler alert] Emily faked her own murder. Emily faked the murder by staging Emily’s “disappearance,” then killing her estranged identical twin sister Faith McLanden (also played by Lively) by drowning her in a lake, and then going into hiding, knowing that when Faith’s body would be found, people would assume that the body was Emily’s. Emily tried to frame Emily’s husband Sean Townsend (played by Henry Golding) for the crime.

In “A Simple Favor,” Stephanie (a widowed mother) was a domestic lifestyle vlogger, while Emily worked in public relations at a fashion company. Emily and Sean have a bratty son named Nicholas “Nicky” Townsend-Nelson (played by Ian Ho), who was about 5 years old during the events that took place in “A Simple Favor.” Stephanie’s son Miles Smothers (played by Joshua Satine), who is about the same age as Nicky, became best friends with Nicky because they’re school classmates. Stephanie and Emily met because of the friendship between Miles and Nicky.

Why did Emily fake her own death? Sean was a one-hit-wonder novelist who became a university professor, but he wasn’t making enough money for Emily. The couple was heavily in debt, due to Emily’s overspending. Emily’s plan was find a way to get the insurance money from her faked murder and then start a new life under a new identity with Nicky.

During the investigation into Emily’s fake death, Stephanie played amateur sleuth and ended up having a romance with Sean. When Emily found out, she set out to ruin Stephanie’s life too. In the end, Emily made a confession that Stephanie secretly livestreamed, and Emily was arrested. The movie’s epilogue mentioned that Emily was convicted of murder and other crimes, and she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

All of this background information is a lot to know before watching “Another Simple Favor,” which starts with a not-so-great summary of the previous events that took place in “A Simple Favor.” Without knowing all the nuances of how and why the relationship changed between Stephanie and Emily in “A Simple Favor,” it will be harder for viewers to connect with these characters in “Another Simple Favor.”

“Another Simple Favor” picks up five years after the events of “A Simple Favor.” Stephanie’s role in exposing Emily’s crimes has now made Stephanie semi-famous and gotten her millions of followers on social media. Stephanie’s vlog is now named “A Pinch of Murder,” a combination of lifestyle advice and true-crime case solving. Stephanie’s slogan for the vlog is “Your one-stop shop for hot home tips and cold case flips.”

The movie begins by showing Stephanie on the Italian island of Capri while she is doing a livestream to tell her audience that she is under house arrest. She says, “I want to be clear: I did not kill Emily’s husband.” How did Stephanie end up as a murder suspect who’s under house arrest? And why is she in Italy? The movie then unfolds to show to what happened.

Stephanie has written a non-fiction book called “The Faceless Blonde” about her experiences with Emily. However, sales for the book have been disappointing. And Stephanie had to temporarily shut down her vlog because she got public backlash for exploiting her role in Emily’s murder case.

To promote the book, Stephanie does a book reading. In attendance at this book reading are her book agent Vicky (played by Alex Newell); Detective Summerville (played by Bashir Salahuddin), the lead police investigator in Emily’s criminal case; and three of the gossipy neighbors who were in “A Simple Favor”: Darren (played by Andrew Rannells), Sona (played by Aparna Nancherla) and Stacy (played by Kelly McCormack). And there’s someone else who shows up at the book reading: Emily. Of course, people start filming this surprise appearance of Emily on their phones, and the videos goes viral.

Emily makes her grand entrance and explains that she was able to get out of prison because her high-priced attorneys got the conviction reversed by successfully arguing that there was evidence tampering that led to her conviction. Emily, who got divorced from Sean while Emily was in prison, is now engaged to a wealthy Italian man named Dante Versano (played by Michele Morrone), whom she met years ago when they had a fling in Italy when Emily was in her 20s. Dante, who is described as madly in love with Emily, reconnected with Emily while she was in prison, and he paid for Emily’s legal defense that got her out of prison.

Emily has shown up at Stephanie’s book reading to invite her to the lavish wedding, which will take place on Capri and will be a first-class, all-expenses-paid trip for members of the wedding party. Emily wants Stephanie to be her maid of honor. Stephanie says no to the wedding invitation at first.

But with Miles away at summer camp, and Vicky pressuring Stephanie to do something bold to promote the book, Stephanie changes her mind and says yes to the wedding invitation. Stephanie instinctively knows that Emily holds grudges and might have a devious plan in mind for Stephanie. Just in case, Stephanie does a lot of livestreaming and video posting during the trip so that her millions of followers can keep track of what’s happening.

Sean and Nicky are guests at the wedding too. Nicky is still a brat. Sean is now a very angry and bitter person. He spends most of the wedding getting drunk and complaining about how horrible his ex-wife Emily is. There’s also a lot of tension at the wedding for other reasons: Dante’s domineering mother Portia Versano (played by Elena Sofia Ricci) disapproves of Emily and isn’t afraid to show it. Dante is also feuding with Matteo Bartolo (played by Lorenzo de Moor), a longtime business rival who is at the wedding.

As already shown in the movie’s trailers, there’s also tension because Emily’s estranged mother Margaret McLinden (played by Elizabeth Perkins) is an unwelcome guest but has shown up with Margaret’s older sister Linda McLinden (played by Allison Janney), who was invited to the wedding. The role of Margaret was played by Jean Smart in “A Simple Favor.” Margaret’s different physical appearance in “Another Simple Favor” is explained as Margaret having had “work done”—in other words, plastic surgery.

Which of Emily’s husbands will be murdered? This review won’t reveal that information since it was not revealed in the movie’s trailers. However, there are plenty of suspects and motives for people to frame someone for any murder that happen in the story. “Another Simple Favor” is a bit overstuffed with new characters, which might annoy or frustrate some viewers.

By taking the story from a generic suburban American location to the gorgeous locales of Capri, “Another Simple Favor” obviously looks a lot more glamorous than “A Simple Favor.” There are scenes in private jets and five-star resorts. “A Simple Favor” had retro-chic French music for the soundtrack, while “Another Simple Favor” has retro-chic Italian music for the soundtrack. But ultimately, putting “Another Simple Favor” in more luxurious settings is just dressing up a screenplay that’s messier than “A Simple Favor.”

“Another Simple Favor” also continues a few of the provocative storylines that were in “A Simple Favor.” Both movies show that despite Emily’s and Stephanie’s hatred of each other, there’s some underlying sexual tension between Emily and Stephanie. Emily kisses Stephanie in a seductive way in both movies. And people they know describe Emily and Stephanie as being obsessed with each other.

In addition, Stephanie isn’t as squeaky-clean as she appears to be. When Emily and Stephanie started to get to know each other as friends in “A Simple Favor,” Stephanie confessed to Emily that Stephanie knowingly committed incest years before Stephanie was married to her husband Davis (played by Eric Johnson), when Stephanie had sex with a man she had recently found out was her long-lost half-brother Chris (played by Dustin Milligan). Years later, when Stephanie and Davis were married, Davis noticed that Stephanie and Chris seemed too close for comfort, and he confronted Chris about it during a car ride. The car crashed and killed Davis and Chris.

Stephanie thinks that Chris and Davis were probably arguing about her during that car ride, so she feels guilty about both of their deaths. Emily uses that information to taunt and somewhat blackmail Stephanie, including calling Stephanie a “brother fucker.” In “Another Simple Favor,” there’s another incest incident. It’s not played for laughs, but it just seems tacky and unnecessary.

“Another Simple Favor” undoubtedly has a talented cast keeping things afloat when the scenarios get too campy or ridiculous. Kendrick and Lively have many more scenes together in this sequel, which is one of the few things in “Another Simple Favor” that’s better than “A Simple Favor.” Kendrick excels at playing dorky people pleasers, while Lively seems to be having fun hamming it up as self-absorbed Emily. Janney is a scene stealer as strong-willed Linda in “Another Simple Favor,” while other new characters in “Another Simple Favor” are hollow and aren’t nearly as interesting.

“Another Simple Favor” is prettier to look at than “A Simple Favor,” but the overall personality of the movie is more superficial. The end of “Another Simple Favor” hints that the filmmakers want another sequel. The novelty of these characters is now gone, so if the saga between Stephanie and Emily continues, they’re better off being in a situation that’s more credible and lasts longer than a wedding trip.

Prime Video will premiere “Another Simple Favor” on May 1, 2025.

Review: ‘In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni,’ starring Dina Doll, Emily Reynolds Bergh, Matthew Frank, Perez Hilton, Mia Schecter and Kjersti Flaa

April 19, 2025

by Carla Hay

“In Dispute: Lively v. Baldoni”

Directed by Chris Hackett

Culture Representation: The documentary special “In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” features a predominantly white group of people (with one African American) discussing the feud between “It Ends With Us” co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni over accusations that include sexual harassment, retaliation and defamation.

Culture Clash: Since December 2024, Lively and Baldoni (who is also the director of “It Ends With Us”) have been embroiled in multiple lawsuits against each other and with other people, with Lively accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment and retaliation, while Baldoni has accused Lively of civil extortion and defamation.

Culture Audience: “In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” will appeal primarily to people who want to get an incomplete and rehashed summary of this feud.

“In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” is yet another hastily assembled, cheap-looking documentary about a celebrity scandal that has less information than what anyone can find on Wikipedia. Everything about this documentary reeks of lazy, bandwagon-jumping filmmaking. It’s a dull rehash revealing nothing new and leaving out crucial facts about the Blake Lively/Justin Baldoni feud. Some of the people interviewed have questionable credibility.

Directed by Chris Hackett, “In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” has a total running time of 42 minutes, but most of it is a weak regurgitation of well-known facts, padded with interviews that aren’t meaningful. A sure sign of a poorly made documentary is when at least half of it consists of journalists from gossip media re-stating what’s already known and giving their opinions. Needless to say, no one in the inner circles of Lively and Baldoni and no one connected to the lawsuits is interviewed in the documentary.

“In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” mentions the basic facts of this feud. In August 2024, the Columbia Pictures drama “It Ends With Us” (based on Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel of the same name) was released in theaters and became a hit. According to Box Office Mojo, “It Ends With Us” had worldwide ticket sales totaling more than $351 million.

In the movie “It Ends With Us,” which takes place mainly in Boston, Lively plays a flower shop owner named Lily Bloom, and Baldoni plays a neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid. Lily and Ryle meet, fall in love, and eventually get married. After they’re married, Ryle is controlling and abusive to Lily, although there were hints that he was problematic before Ryle and Lily got married.

In addition to being co-stars of “It Ends With Us,” Baldoni and Lively had behind-the-scenes roles for the movie. Baldoni was the movie’s director. He is also a co-founder of Wayfarer Studios, the production company that bought the rights to the book “It Ends With Us” and is one of the production companies that financed the movie. Lively (who is not affiliated with Wayfarer) was a producer of the movie. Christy Hall wrote the adapted screenplay for “It Ends With Us.”

During the publicity tour for “It Ends With Us,” people noticed that Baldoni was doing interviews separately from the rest of the cast members, who all unfollowed him on social media. Lively got some criticism for promoting her liquor brand while doing interviews for the movie instead of talking about the more serious subject of domestic violence. In an interview to promote “It Ends With Us,” Lively admitted that her husband Ryan Reynolds (who is not listed in the movie’s credits) rewrote at least one scene in the film.

In December 2024, Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department against Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, with Lively alleging that Baldoni sexually harassed her while filming “It Ends With Us” by (among other accusations) unwanted kissing and inappropriate touching that was not in the script; graphic talk about his sex life and genitals; and coming into her trailer unannounced while she was breastfeeding her baby son Olin. The complaint also alleged that Baldoni and his public-relations team retaliated against Lively for speaking up about this alleged harassment. The alleged retaliation included engineering a smear campaign against Lively after the release of the movie.

The same day that the complaint was filed, The New York Times published an article that presented seemingly damning evidence (mostly text messages) to support Lively’s claims. “It Ends With Us” author Hoover and several of Lively’s former co-stars spoke out in support of Lively. Also in December 2024, Lively filed a lawsuit (which is separate from the complaint) against Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, who worked with Baldoni as his publicists during the publicity campaign for “It Ends With Us.”

As a result of all this negative publicity over Lively’s allegations, Baldoni was dropped from William Morris Endeavor (WME), the same talent agency that represents Lively. Liz Plank, who co-hosted the “Man Enough” podcast with Baldoni and Jamey Heath, quit the podcast after Lively’s legal claims went public. In December 2024, Baldoni (who describes himself as a feminist) then filed a libel lawsuit seeking $250 million in damages against The New York Times. All parties involved in these lawsuits are denying the accusations against them.

In January 2025, Baldoni sued Lively, Reynolds and the couple’s publicist Leslie Sloan for $400 million for civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy. Reynolds is a defendant in the lawsuit because Baldoni claims that Reynolds exerted too much control during the making of “It Ends With Us,” and Baldoni claims that Reynolds’ Nicepool character in 2024’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” movie was a cruel parody of Baldoni. In March 2025, Baldoni and Abel filed a separate lawsuit against publicist Stephanie Jones, who was Abel’s former employer.

“In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” is such a shoddily made documentary, it doesn’t mention that Baldoni was dropped by WME and that he filed a lawsuit against his former publicist because of this feud. The documentary doesn’t go into details about the publicists who are plaintiffs or defendants in these lawsuits. Instead, “In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” is just a collection of interviews with people who have little or no connection to any of the plaintiffs or defendants.

Aaron Boucher, a business owner in Hoboken, New Jersey, has a store that was used as the location for Lily Bloom’s flower shop in “It Ends With Us.” He talks briefly in the beginning of the documentary by saying predictable things about how he was thrilled to have his store used in the movie. Boucher has nothing important to say, unless you think it’s fascinating that he got photo of himself with Baldoni. The photo is shown in the documentary.

Emily Reynolds Bergh, the founder of R Public Relations, is apparently in this documentary because she describes herself as a big fan of “It Ends With Us” author Hoover. Reynolds Bergh gives generic comments about the lawsuits doing damage to the reputations of all the plaintiffs and defendants. She also says that if she were the PR representative for Lively or Baldoni, she would advise each of them to show more humility and vulnerability.

Freelance entertainment journalist Kjersti Flaa is in the documentary to comment on a previously unreleased 2016 video interview that she did with Blake Lively and Parker Posey for the movie “Cafe Society.” In the interview, Lively and Posey are rude to Flaa after Flaa congratulates Lively for her “bump” (pregnancy), because it was in the news at the time that Lively had announced she was pregnant. (The pregnancy resulted in the birth of Lively’s second child, Inez.)

Flaa released the video in August 2024, around the time that Lively was getting backlash for how Lively was doing publicity for “It Ends With Us.” Flaa titled the 2016 video interview this way: “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job.” The video went viral and got millions of views. What the documentary doesn’t mention is that Flaa has publicly denied she was part of a smear campaign against Lively. The documentary also doesn’t mention Flaa has said that just because Lively was rude to her in that interview, it doesn’t prove or disprove Lively’s legal claims against Baldoni.

Tia Streaty, an actress who worked briefly with Baldoni when he co-starred on the TV comedy/drama series “Jane the Virgin’ (which was on the air the 2014 to 2019), describes him as “very down-to-earth” and “considerate.” But this documentary is about the disputes over how Baldoni was as the director/co-star of “It Ends With Us,” not how he was in a TV series that he did years earlier. The interview with Streaty is ultimately pointless because she barely knew Baldoni. The documentary does not interview anyone who worked with Lively.

People from the media who are interviewed in the documentary are gossip blogger Perez Hilton, who seems to side with Baldoni; BuzzFeed senior writer Natasha Jokić, who seems to be on Lively’s side; and The Ankler reporter Matthew Frank, who seems mostly neutral and comments that neither side in the legal dispute will end up looking good. The documentary also includes videoclip montages of people commenting on social media about the feud. That’s another indication of how low-quality a documentary is: Many of the quoted “sources” are random strangers on social media.

“In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” also has an interview with intimacy coordinator Mia Schacter, who has never worked with Lively or Baldoni. Schacter looks at text messages between Lively and Baldoni that were released as “evidence” over Lively’s and Baldoni’s communication about an intimate scene in “It Ends With Us.” Schacter comments, “These texts made me think that at one point, she did feel a lot of trust with him.”

Schacter also points out that an “It Ends With Us” video outtake that Baldoni released of a slow-dancing scene between him and Lively only proves that he was trying to do things (such as kiss her) that weren’t in the screenplay. She also thinks it’s contradictory that Lively reportedly refused to have an intimacy coordinator, even though that was one of her demands in a contract for “It Ends With Us.” Some of the people in the documentary say that much of the evidence can be argued as being supportive of either side.

Attorney/legal analyst Dina Doll is the most outspoken commentator in the documentary and makes it clear that she thinks Lively’s case is more believable. Doll says about Baldoni’s libel lawsuit against The New York Times: “It’s not The New York Times’ job to give all sides of the story. You might not like that, but that doesn’t open them up to liability.” Actually, anyone who knows anything about ethics in journalism knows that a news report is supposed to get as many facts and as many sides of the story as possible.

Doll comments, “Blake Lively has the stronger case because all of Justin Baldoni’s arguments about fame and control don’t really refute her claim of sexual harassment.” With all these lawsuits filed in this massive feud, the documentary does nothing to give any real insight. At the time that this documentary premiered on TV, the only lawsuit that had a trial date announced was Lively’s lawsuit against Baldoni. That lawsuit is expected to go to trial in May 2026.

Doll is shown in the conclusion of the documentary saying: “The bigger loser is victims of domestic violence. This movie [‘It Ends With Us’] was about domestic violence, and nobody’s talking about domestic violence.” Anyone who watches “In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” will lose something too—valuable time in watching a shallow and insufficient documentary that barely scratches the surface of what could have been reported in this documentary.

Investigation Discovery premiered “In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” on March 31, 2025.

Review: ‘It Ends With Us,’ starring Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Jenny Slate, Hasan Minhaj and Brandon Sklenar

August 7, 2024

by Carla Hay

“It Ends With Us”

Directed by Justin Baldoni

Culture Representation: Taking place mainly in Boston and briefly in Plethora, Maine (with flashbacks to scenes taking place in Plethora, about 15 years earlier), the dramatic film “It Ends With Us” (based on Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Asians and black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A florist meets and falls in love with a charismatic neurosurgeon, who gives up his playboy ways to date her, but things get complicated when she sees a dark side to him, and she finds out that her high-school sweetheart is still in love with her.

Culture Audience: “It Ends With Us” will appeal primarily to people who fans of star Blake Lively and the book on which the movie is based, as well as romantic dramas that deal with serious topics such as domestic abuse and generational trauma.

Blake Lively and Brandon Sklenar in “It Ends With Us” (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures)

Talented performances from the principal cast members give emotional resonance to the melodrama in “It Ends With Us.” This worthy book adaptation effectively shows how abuse and generational trauma can be toxic when mixed with love and loyalty. “It Ends With Us” is a story that frankly displays, in sometimes heart-wrenching ways, how difficult it can be to leave an abusive relationship and how a public persona doesn’t always match someone’s true self in private.

Directed by Justin Baldoni and written by Christy Hall, “It Ends With Us” is based on Colleen Hoover’s best-selling 2016 novel of the same name. There’s a love triangle in the movie, where the three main adult characters are about 10 years older than they are in the book. Although there might be some fans of the book who won’t like that these characters’ ages are changed in the movie, people who see the movie can attest that making the characters older in the movie actually gives the story more poignancy. That’s because the relationship mistakes seen in this story can’t be blamed on the characters being too young and inexperienced when it comes to relationships.

The “It Ends With Us” begins by showing Lily Bloom (played by Blake Lively), who’s in her early 30s, driving to her hometown of Plethora, Maine, to attend her father’s funeral. Lily’s father Andrew Bloom (played by Kevin McKidd, shown in flashback scenes) was the mayor of Plethora and a well-respected member of the community. Lily’s widowed mother Jenny Bloom (played by Amy Morton) is happy to see Lily (who is an only child) but tells Lily that she wishes Lily would stay in contact with her.

Lily and Jenny have a complicated relationship that is later explained in the movie. Besides the fact that Lily has been avoiding her mother for years, it’s obvious that Lily has conflicted feelings about her father too. Lily has been asked to write a eulogy for her father, but she’s been postponing writing this eulogy. She’s expected to read the eulogy at the funeral.

On the day of the funeral, Jenny is disappointed to find out that Lily hasn’t written the eulogy yet. Jenny tells Lily just to write down and say five things that she loved about Andrew. At the funeral service, when Lily is in front of the crowded church, Lily tries to say something for the eulogy, but she can’t.

Lily makes a quick apology and leaves the funeral. Lily leaves behind the note paper where she was supposed to write five things she loved about her father. The five notation marks are blank.

The movie then fast-forwards to Lily sitting on the rooftop of an upscale Boston apartment building at night, when she’s startled to see a good-looking man (who’s in his late 30s) storming through the rooftop door and angrily kicking a chair. He’s suprised to see her there and says he’s sorry for this temper tantrum and explains that he’s had a bad day. Lily tells him that she doesn’t live in the building but she’s on the rooftop because she’s “just visiting.” She doesn’t say who she’s visiting in the building.

Lily eventually tells him the reason why she’s in Boston: She’s going to open a flower shop, which has been her lifelong dream. Lily says she’s been “obsessed with flowers” since she was a child. And she jokes that her name Lily Bloom might seems like a contrivance, considering her flower obsession, but she tells him that it’s her real name.

After some flirting, he introduces himself as Ryle Kincaid (played by Baldoni) and says he lives on the top floor of the building, next to his sister and her husband. Ryle then tells Lily that he’s a neurosurgeon. Her reaction is to laugh because she said she thought he was a “crypto bro” or an “expensive prostitute.” Ryle is intrigued by Lily, who is immediately attracted to him too, but she doesn’t really want to show it and is somewhat guarded with him at first.

Ryle turns on the charm and tells her they should play a Naked Truth game, where they tell each other an intimate secret that most people in their lives don’t know. Ryle tells Lily that the reason why he was so upset is because earlier that day, he operated on a 6-year-old boy who had been accidentally shot by his underage brother, but the gunshot victim died. Lily expresses sympathy and decides to open up to Ryle by telling him that she lost her virginity to a homeless guy named Atlas when she was in high school. Lily explains the homeless guy was a fellow student.

The movie has several flashbacks showing how the relationship developed between Atlas and Lily, who were each other’s first love when they were about 17 or 18 years old. In these flashbacks, teenage Lily is played by Isabela Ferrer (who has a striking resemblance to Lively), and teenage Atlas is portrayed by Alex Neustaedter. These flashbacks show Atlas and Lily had a tender romance where they treated each other with kindness and respect, even though some snobbishly cruel students at the school insulted Atlas and Lily as a couple because they knew Atlas was homeless.

Lily and Atlas kept their relationship a secret from Lily’s parents because she knew that her strict and controlling father would not approve of the relationship. Atlas was homeless at the time because he said his single mother kicked him out because she chose her abusive boyfriends over Atlas, who has a hand injury from when he tried to protect his mother from one of these abusers. Lily then confesses to Atlas that her father often hits her mother.

This shared trauma of coming from an abusive home ends up bringing Atlas and Lily closer together. Atlas tells her that after he graduates from high school, he’s enlisting in the U.S. Marines, but his dream is to one day move to Boston, which he thinks is the greatest city in the world. It’s implied in the movie that Atlas and Lily never had a bitter breakup. Their lives just went in different directions, and they didn’t stay in contact with each other after they graduated from high school.

“It Ends With Us” seamlessly goes back and forth between showing the present-day relationship that develops between Lily and Ryle and the past relationship between Lily and Atlas. During the first conversation that Lily and Ryle have on the apartment rooftop, he tells her up front that he wants to have sex with her but he’s not interested in falling in love. He also admits that he’s a playboy who’s not ready to give up his dating lifestyle.

“Love isn’t for me,” Ryle says. “Lust is nice though.” Lily asks Ryle about his overtly sexual pickup technique: “How many women as this worked on?” He answers with a cocky smile, “All of them.” Lily plays hard to get, which makes Ryle want her even more.

Meanwhile, Lily has to do a fixer-upper job for the retail space where she’ll have her flower shop in Boston. Her shop is called Lily Bloom’s, which has a bohemian chic decor. Lily’s first hire for the shop is a talkative and friendly neurotic named Allysa (played by Jenny Slate), who saw Lily’s “Help Wanted” sign before the shop opened and impulsively went into the shop to apply for the job. Allysa admits that she doesn’t like flowers (Allysa explains why, much later in the movie), but Allyssa is so impressed with Lily’s passion for flowers, Allysa says she wants the job anyway.

Lily instinctively likes Allysa as a person and hires her on the spot. Allysa and Lily quickly become best friends. Allysa and her multimillionaire husband Marshall (played by Hasan Minhaj) have a happy marriage, and they welcome Lily into their lives. It’s mentioned later in the movie that Marshall is a tech entrepreneur who sold his company for a nine-figure sum. Marshall is eager to impress people in his social circle to show how much he pampers and adores Allysa.

On the flower shop’s opening day, Lily gets her first customer: Ryle. And she’s in for a shock when she finds out that Ryle is Allysa’s brother. Allysa knows about Ryle’s playboy reputation. And when Allysa sees that Ryle and Lily have an intense attraction to each other, she warns Ryle to stay away from Lily. But you know where all of this is going, of course.

Lily, Ryle, Allysa and Marshall go on double dates together, such as bowling. After this bowling date, Lily tell Ryle that she just wants to be “friends” with him. However, Ryle practically begs Lily to let him kiss her so that he can “get it out of his system.” They kiss in a way that you know will lead to something more.

The first time that Lily and Ryle spend the night together, it’s after Lily went to Allysa’s birthday party. Even though Ryle and Lily have a hot and heavy makeout session at his place, Lily insists that she doesn’t want to have sex with him that night, so they spend the night together by cuddling and kissing in bed. Ryle is respectful and doesn’t pressure Lily into do anything sexual with him that she doesn’t want to do.

However, Ryle comes across as someone who is used to getting his way and knows what to say and do to seduce women. It’s only a matter of time before he and Lily fully consummate their relationship. (The movie’s sex and violence are subtle, not explicit.) Ryle also “love bombs” Lily by being very romantic and doing everything he can to convince Lily he’s the perfect love match for her.

The morning after Ryle and Lily spend their first night together, Allysa finds out when she comes over for an unannounced visit. Allysa is apprehensive about this budding romance, but Allysa also knows she has no right to interfere if Lily and Ryle say that they are happy together. Allysa tells Ryle that she doesn’t want Ryle to break Lily’s heart. Allysa tells Lily that she doesn’t want their friendship to be ruined if things don’t work out between Lily and Ryle. Ryle and Lily eventually tell each other that they love each other. Lily then moves into Ryle’s place.

One evening, Ryle and Lily have a romantic date at a new restaurant called Root. Lily is in for another shock when the restaurant owner comes over to introduce himself: He’s none other than Atlas (played by Brandon Sklenar), who is surprised to see Lily there too. Lily goes into a back room to have a private conversation with Atlas. They update each other on what’s been going on in their lives since they last saw each other when they were high school.

Lily and Atlas still have an emotional connection that’s hard to deny. Lily tells Atlas that Ryle is her boyfriend and she’s happy with Ryle. Atlas says he has a girlfriend named Cassie. When Lily rejoins Ryle at the dinner table, he can tell something is “off” with Lily. She doesn’t tell Ryle that the owner of the restaurant is Atlas, the guy she dated when they were in high school.

None of this is spoiler information because all the marketing materials for “It Ends With Us” reveal that much of the story is about this love triangle. What isn’t revealed is the trouble in Lily and Ryle’s relationship. On the surface, Ryle is loving and attentive. But he gets jealous easily, he has a bad temper, and he has some ways about him that are overly controlling when it comes to his relationship with Lily. The specifics of these problems won’t be revealed in this review.

Observant viewers will notice that Ryle has a tendency to make big romantic statements and gestures so he can be the center of attention and when he wants to prove to Allysa that he’s not a brother who’s a heartbreaker. The first time that Ryle tells Lily that he wants to seriously date her, it’s in front of Allysa. Later in the movie, after Allysa and Marshall have a big life-changing moment, Ryle uses it as an opportunity to propose marriage to Lily. These are all signs of Ryle being a narcissist.

When Allysa and Lily started to become friends, Allysa told Lily that Allysa’s mother gave birth to three kids in three years. Allysa and Ryle had a brother named Emerson, who died when Allysa and Ryle were children. Emerson’s death is a sore subject that Allysa and Ryle don’t really like to talk about, but it makes Lily more sympathetic to Ryle. Whether Lily wants to admit it or not, she seems to be attracted to emotionally damaged men with childhood traumas.

“It Ends With Us” is predictable in some ways but also has a few twists and turns that will surprise people who don’t know what happens in the book. All of the cast members, particularly Lively and Baldoni, give authentic-looking performances. Lively (who is one of the producers of “It Ends With Us”) portrays Lily with an exuberant spirit that fully embodies Lily’s compassionate, intelligent and independent personality. But it’s also a performance that skillfully shows how Lily’s self-worth gets eroded when she starts to question her judgment and blame herself for things that aren’t really her fault.

As an actor/director, Baldoni should be commended for directing a movie where he plays a character who is not necessarily the hero. However, there’s a still little bit of director vanity in the movie because of the frequent comments about how handsome Ryle is. Overall, it’s an adept performance in depicting how abuse comes in many forms, and it’s not always obvious to the people who are targets of the abuse. Many abusers also don’t think their abuse is as bad as it is because they also justify it by all pointing out all the “good” things they do for the people they abuse.

“It Ends With Us” shows the realities of how on the outside, a couple can look “aspirational” and “perfect,” but there are deeply troubling things about the couple’s relationship on the inside. It’s not a preachy movie that shows any crusaders who come to the rescue. “It Ends With Us” has more realistic scenarios of how loved ones of abuse victims are often powerless to help abuse victims who feel trapped and who stay in the abusive relationship.

Allysa and Marshall are the movie’s occasional comic relief on the surface. But the more sobering reality is that Allysa and Marshall are so busy trying to impress people by doing their own version of curating the “perfect couple” image, they don’t see signs when people close to them might be hurting. There are complicated ways to look at what Allysa and Marshall should or should not do, considering the fact that Lily and Ryle are adults who are responsible for their own lives and their own choices.

Lily’s mother Jenny represents the choices that people make to stay in an abusive relationship and how those decisions can affect children who are involved. Morton gives a wonderfully nuanced performance as a mother who is emotionally wounded and desperate for love and affection wherever she can get it—even if it means putting up with a loved one being awful to her. Jenny doesn’t fully comprehend or understand that Lily has been avoiding her partly out of resentment for Jenny staying in abusive marriage and partly because Jenny represents a past that Lily wants to forget.

Perhaps the biggest weakness of “It Ends With Us” is that it doesn’t do enough with the adult character of Atlas. Sklenar is very good in an underwritten role, where Atlas is mostly presented as a brooding and sensitive guy who’s pining for Lily. More scenes were needed to show more about who the adult Atlas is, instead of portraying him as mostly a lovelorn workaholic. The movie shows more about the teenage Atlas than the adult Atlas, even though much of the story hinges on the choice that adult Lily has to make between Ryle and the adult Atlas.

What saves “It Ends With Us” from being a standard soap opera with tearjerking moments is the empathetic and mature way it depicts how difficult it is for many people in abusive relationships to even admit that they’re in an abusive relationship. The insidious and complicated nature of most abusive relationships is that it’s very common for abusers to have a charming and apologetic side. The abusers make profuse apologies, promise to change, and remind their victims of the good times they had. These tactics often confuse the abuse victims and make their victims hopeful that the abusers will change and things will get better.

“It Ends With Us” also shows the harsh realities that many abusers and their victims don’t seek professional help for their problems. It’s especially true for people who want to maintain a certain public image and don’t want to do anything that would tarnish that image. It would be very easy and quite sexist to dismiss “It Ends With Us” as a weepy “chick flick,” rather than acknowledge that this story has a powerful message that applies to anyone: Instead of blaming abuse victims or abuse survivors about when or if they reported the problem, it’s important to remember that it takes tremendous courage to admit there’s a problem, ask for help, and do what is necessary to stop the problem.

Columbia Pictures will release “It Ends With Us” in U.S. cinemas on August 9, 2024.

Review: ‘The Rhythm Section,’ starring Blake Lively and Jude Law

January 31, 2020

by Carla Hay

“The Rhythm Section”

Directed by Reed Morano

Culture Representation: This globe-trotting action film, which is about a woman who becomes an undercover assassin to avenge the deaths of her family, consists of predominantly white (with some African American and Asian) characters representing the middle and upper classes of the United States and the United Kingdom.

Culture Clash: The protagonist, an American who’s been living in the United Kingdom for several years, wants revenge against an international terrorist group that sets bombs to kill innocent people.

Culture Audience: “The Rhythm Section” will appeal mostly to fans of lead actress Blake Lively, but her myriad of disguises in the film can’t quite cover up the movie’s far-fetched plot.

Blake Lively and Jude Law in “The Rhythm Section” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

If you were to believe Hollywood’s version of what female assassins are like in action dramas, then you’d think that they’re all extremely good-looking, emotionally damaged women (with a past or present drug problem) who don’t have families and have to be a prostitute or “kept woman” to a rich and powerful man at least once, in order to get information or to get revenge. When an assassin/spy movie’s main character is a woman who’s new to the game, she’s almost always trained by a man.

She usually has sexual tension or an affair with her trainer or another man who has some kind of supervisor power over her. And there’s always an excuse to present her in a scantily clad outfit (such as lingerie) or possibly nude in the movie. It should come as no surprise that these movies about female assassins/spies who prostitute themselves are almost always written by men. Think about how many times James Bond, Jason Bourne or “Mission: Impossible’s” Ethan Hunt have had to show their naked private parts or play a male hooker in their movies. Exactly. Zero.

When you take all of these sexist movie stereotypes about female assassins/spies into consideration, “The Rhythm Section” really is just another predictable rehash of the same old formula that seemed fresh with 1990’s “La Femme Nikita,” but has since been recycled so many times that movie audiences have rightfully become bored with it. Recent movie flops such as “Anna,” “Red Sparrow” and “Atomic Blonde” (with “The Rhythm Section” inevitably joining the list) are an indication that audiences are rejecting this concept that female assassins—no matter how badass they are in their gun-toting, disguise-changing ways—are still reduced to being sexpots who are following orders from men. With other more empowered action role models on screen, such as female superheroes, who needs these outdated portrayals of women who go undercover?

The main difference between “The Rhythm Section” and almost every female assassin/spy movie of this type is that “The Rhythm Section” is directed by a woman—Reed Morano, whose directing work on the first season of “The Handmaid’s Tale” earned her an Emmy Award. “The Rhythm Section” (which is a terrible title for an action movie) is based on the novel by Mark Burnell, who wrote the movie’s screenplay. It’s called “The Rhythm Section” because more than one character utters in the film: “Think of your heart as the drums and your breathing as the bass,” as a way to focus when they’re in a dangerous situation. Such pretentious tripe.

Near the beginning of the film, it becomes obvious that Stephanie Patrick (played by Lively) already checks three of the cliché boxes about female assassins in movies. Is she without a family? Check. Her immediate family (her parents and her younger sister and brother) have died in a plane crash three years before the story takes place.

Is she emotionally damaged with a drug problem? Check. She’s so traumatized over the loss of her family that she’s become a down-and-out drug addict. Is she a prostitute too? Check. She goes by the alias “Lisa” when she’s working as a hooker. Before the tragedy, Stephanie was an American who was living in England as a university student. Clearly, her student visa has now expired, just like this movie’s weak concept.

Somehow, a freelance journalist named Keith Proctor (played by Raza Jeffrey) tracks down Stephanie and poses as a client so that he can get into her apartment. He tells her that he doesn’t want sex but wants to tell her that the plane crash that killed her family wasn’t an accident. It was really caused by a bomb that was planted by a terrorist named Muhammad Reza (played Tawfeek Barhom), in yet another movie stereotype that portrays an Arab as a crazy terrorist.

Okay, stop right there. At some point, you have to wonder how stupid the filmmakers think viewers are, because there’s no way that a plane that has been exploded by a bomb, killing everyone (hundreds of people) on board, could be mistaken as an “accident” by government agencies investigating such a major tragedy. But in the world of “The Rhythm Section,” so many things are silly and illogical that there’s no point in trying to make sense of this sloppy mess of a story.

And in the world of “The Rhythm Section,” if you’re a journalist investigating this plane that was “secretly” bombed, you need to track down a drug-addicted prostitute whose immediately family died on the plane and convince her that she needs to help you find this mysterious terrorist, even though she’s so strung out that she can barely function. No joke. That’s what happens in the movie.

Proctor, who already knows Stephanie’s real name, then proceeds to invite her to his place and leave all of his keys with her, even though he knows she’s a drug addict who’ll be tempted to steal from him to get money for drugs. When she points that out to him, he tells her, “I can always change the locks.” It’s no surprise that things don’t turn out very well for Proctor. Before he’s out of the picture, Stephanie confesses to him that she feels guilty because she was supposed to be on the plane with her family, but she changed her mind at the last minute.

Stephanie goes away to a remote countryside in Scotland. And almost immediately, she’s tracked down by another man, who ambushes her. Despite being a messed-up junkie with no background in espionage, law enforcement, the military or intelligence gathering, Stephanie seems to have some kind of invisible radar where people think that she’s the perfect candidate to hunt down an international terrorist. The new man who wants Stephanie to be his terrorist hunter just goes by the name “B” (played by Jude Law), and his mission is to train Stephanie to become an assassin to find not only Reza, but also the head of the international terrorist group that sent Reza to plant the plane’s bomb. The group’s name is U-17, which sounds more like a submarine than a terrorist faction.

And off Stephanie and B go in the remote countryside, where he whips her into shape, as she huffs and puffs on morning jogs she doesn’t want to take. So, no drug rehab then? After some target practice, B’s way of training Stephanie to use a gun is to demand that she shoot him while he’s wearing a bulletproof vest. Viewers will also have to sit through several scenes where B seems to take pleasure in randomly starting physical fights with Stephanie, as a way to prepare her for her new life as a terrorist hunter.

Oh and by the way, as B tells her, Stephanie has to pose as a German spy named Petra, because Petra has disappeared and he needs someone to assume Petra’s identity. And why exactly does Stephanie agree to all of this and go away with this mystery person, who won’t even tell her his full name and says he used to be in MI6 but shows no proof? Are she and this movie’s screenplay that dumb? Yes.

It’s not long before another guy comes into the mix: Marc Serra (played by Sterling K. Brown), an American philanthropist who says he used to be in the CIA and he’s willing to help “Petra” track down the brains behind U-17, so he becomes a trusted advisor. He immediately notices that “Petra” doesn’t have a German accent, and she doesn’t really answer his question when he asks her why she doesn’t have a German accent. (Lively’s accent in the movie is kind of distracting, because it sounds like American trying too hard to sound British. She should’ve just stuck with her real American accent.) Stephanie and Marc are sexually attracted to each other, so of course that means ethics will be compromised and judgment will be clouded.

And even when she assumes a new identity, the movie isn’t done with showing Stephanie/”Petra” being a hooker yet. While disguising herself as a red-haired, high-priced escort, she visits a rich, arrogant businessman named Michael “Leo” Giler (played by Max Casella) in his New York City luxury apartment. B has told her to kill the guy. However, things might or might not go as planned. But that’s not before Stephanie strips down into dominatrix-type lingerie where she slinks and slithers around on Giler to lure him into her seduction trap.

As car chases, gun fights and explosions in several cities around the world act as filler to this very flimsy story, viewers might ask, “Where exactly is this movie going?” For long stretches of the movie, the answer to that question is “nowhere.” And then there’s the laughably bad ending that leaves you wondering how the actors could’ve kept a straight face while filming it. “The Rhythm Section” is an ironic title for this movie, which ultimately hits all the wrong beats and is off-balance from the start.

Paramount Pictures released “The Rhythm Section” in U.S. cinemas on January 31, 2020.