Brittany O'Grady Archives

Review: ‘The Best You Can,’ starring Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick

November 28, 2025

by Carla Hay

Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick in “The Best You Can” (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)

Directed by Michael J. Weithorn

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, the comedy/drama film “The Best You Can” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A divorced security guard and an unhappily married urologist develop an unlikely friendship and growing romantic feelings for each other, as the urologist’s husband has failing health.

Culture Audience: “The Best You Can” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and comedy/drama movies about people who find love in middle-age.

Kyra Sedgwick, Judd Hirsch, Olivia Luccardi and Kevin Bacon in “The Best You Can” (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)

“The Best You Can” is a predictable but appealing comedy/drama about a divorced security guard and an unhappily married urologist whose unlikely friendship turns into something more. The performances and amusing banter are the main reasons to watch. This is the type of movie where you know how the story will end within the first 15 minutes of watching. The trailer for “The Best You Can” also gives away about 85% of the movie’s plot.

Written and directed by Michael J. Weithorn, “The Best You Can” had its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. The movie takes place in New York City, where “The Best You Can” was filmed on location. “The Best You Can” is the first movie that real-life spouses Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have co-starred in together since 2004’s “The Woodsman.” Bacon and Sedwick (who’ve been married since 1988) are also two of the producers of “The Best You Can.”

The concept for “The Best You Can” is fairly simple, but it gets stretched by a lot of the up-and-down relationships and ambivalent feelings that the main characters experience with each other. Dr. Cynthia Rand (played by Sedgwick), the urologist in this story, is stuck in a crumbling marriage to retired attorney Warren Rand (played by Judd Hirsch), who is 83 years old. Cynthia met Warren when she was in her early 30s, and he was 57. They do not have any children together.

Warren was the assistant chief counsel to the committee that investigated the Watergate scandal in 1973. It’s Warren’s main claim to fame. He’s been trying for years to get a book published about his Watergate experience. His latest manuscript has been rejected by a book publisher, which considers the book’s topic to be irrelevant to today’s book consumers.

Cynthia, who is now in her late 50s, is Warren’s second wife. He divorced his first wife to be with Cynthia. It’s implied that Cynthia and Warren fell in love and started their affair while Warren was married to his first wife. Warren has a middle-aged adult daughter named Rosemary (played by Heather Burns) from his first marriage.

Not surprisingly, Rosemary (who is only 12 years younger than Cynthia) doesn’t like Cynthia because Rosemary blames Cynthia for the breakup of Warren’s first marriage. Luckily for Cynthia, she doesn’t have to see Rosemary very often because Rosemary (who is a married mother of a tween-age son) lives in Phoenix. Even with this long distance between Cynthia and her stepdaughter Rosemary, the two women still have a tense relationship.

The marriage of Cynthia and Warren is dying because Cynthia has fallen out of love with him. Warren can be cranky and demanding, but he isn’t abusive. Cynthia is starting to have doubts about their age-gap marriage, as well as regrets about her and Warren’s decision not to have children together. Cynthia worries that she doesn’t have much to show for her life except for her career, a comfortable place to live, and a marriage to a man she no longer loves.

There are indications that Warren has dementia. Cynthia privately admits to herself that she’s not emotionally equipped to be Warren’s caregiver. She thinks she’s still young enough to deserve to be in a passionate and vital marriage. However, Cynthia doesn’t want to divorce Warren out of loyalty and because she is the type of person who doesn’t like to admit failure.

Meanwhile, Stan Olszewski (played by Bacon), who is in his mid-to-late 60s, knows all about failure in personal relationships. He’s a divorced dad who is estranged from his 20-year-old daughter Sammi (played by Brittany O’Grady) because he was an absentee father for most of Sammi’s life. Stan and his ex-wife (Sammi’s mother) got divorced when Sammi was 10 years old. After the divorce, Stan lived for two years in Colorado before moving back to New York. During the course of the story, Stan tries to reconnect with Sammi, who is an aspiring singer/songwriter.

Stan is a former police officer who now works for a company called Brooklyn Private Security Patrol, where his job is to drive around neighborhoods for safety checks and to respond to any calls for security protection. In the beginning of the movie, Stan is in a medical exam, where he has been diagnosed with having an enlarged prostate, a medical condition that causes the urge to urinate more often than usual. He is prescribed Flomax and is urged to see a urologist soon, or else his enlarged prostate could result in prostate cancer.

Because of his enlarged prostate, Stan urinates on strangers’ lawns while he’s working. Because he works at night, people usually don’t see him committing this crime. One night, Stan responds to an intruder alert at the home of Cynthia and Warren. It’s a false alarm, but Stan stays a while because he asks to use the restroom in the couple’s house. When Stan mentions that he often has to urinate, Cynthia correctly assumes that Stan has an enlarged prostate. She tells Stan that she’s a urologist and gives him her business card.

Stan makes an appointment with Cynthia, but he doesn’t have enough health insurance to cover the cost of the exam. Cynthia offers to give a price discount to Stan through a “friends and family” medical discount plan that her job provides. Stan is grateful. He and Cynthia start talking about their personal lives and find out that they both have the same birthdate: December 24.

Cynthia and Stan exchange their private contact information. They communicate with each other mostly online and sometimes through phone conversations. It’s the start of a platonic friendship. They flirt a little, and then flirt some more. And it isn’t long before Stan and Cynthia have romantic feelings for each other that neither person wants to admit to right away.

The tentative romance of Stan and Cynthia is a stereotypical case of “opposites attract.” Stan likes to get drunk and smoke marijuana. He admits to Cynthia that he was a hellraiser in his youth, when he was arrested at least once. Cynthia has a history of experimenting with drugs, but she’s a lot more health-conscious than Sam. She likes to keeps her life orderly, in contrast to Stan, who’s accustomed to his life being a bit of a mess.

“The Best You Can” rolls along like a reliable vintage car, with some subplots that elongate the journey along the way. Shortly after Stan meets Cynthia, he begins a “friends with benefits” relationship with a free-spirited grocery store cashier named CJ Moretti (played by Olivia Luccardi), who’s about 30 years younger than Stan. Even though Cynthia has no right to be possessive of Stan, she’s jealous of his relationship with CJ and is offended that he’s dating a woman who’s young enough to be his daughter. Cynthia’s attitude is very hypocritical because Cynthia and Warren have a big age gap in their relationship too.

In a typical sitcom-ish scenario, Cynthia finds herself on a “double date” dinner with Warren, Stan and CJ, for reasons that are shown in the movie. There’s also a somewhat unnecessary subplot of Warren having trouble finding a reliable assistant to help him with his book. And there’s some drama because Rosemary and her family are moving from Phoenix to Cleveland, where Rosemary wants to put Warren in an assisted-care facility.

“The Best You Can” has moments that are very cliché, but the acting is solid and engaging. Because they are married in real life, Bacon and Sedgwick have an easy chemistry with each other that makes the romance between Stan and Cynthia very believable, even though it’s questionable how long the romance between Stan and Cynthia can really last. The supporting cast members (including Ray Romano as Cynthia’s doctor colleague Doug) give perfectly fine performances, but nothing about “The Best You Can” is award-worthy.

The movie doesn’t gloss over the moral dilemmas of an extramarital affair, but “The Best You Can” reaches a conclusion that makes this affair less ethically problematic. (Think of the most obvious thing that could happen, and that’s what happens.) “The Best You Can” can be commended for tackling difficult subject matter (what can happen to a love-starved spouse who’s stuck in a moribund marriage to someone in ill health) that usually isn’t seen in most movies about romantic love. “The Best You Can” doesn’t do anything groundbreaking, but it offers some bittersweet and candid moments showing there’s no age limit on experiencing the awkwardness and thrills of a new romance.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released “The Best You Can” on digital and VOD on November 25, 2025. Netflix will premiere the movie on December 25, 2025.

Review: ‘Sometimes I Think About Dying’ (2024), starring Daisy Ridley, Dave Merheje, Parvesh Cheena and Marcia DeBonis

January 26, 2024

by Carla Hay

Daisy Ridley in “Sometimes I Think About Dying” (Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories)

“Sometimes I Think About Dying” (2024)

Directed by Rachel Lambert

Culture Representation: Taking place in Oregon, the dramatic film “Sometimes I Thing About Dying” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A very introverted woman with an almost non-existent social life has to decide how much she will open herself up to love when a co-worker begins courting her.

Culture Audience: “Sometimes I Think About Dying” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Daisy Ridley and low-key, independent films that have observations about loneliness and personality disorders.

Dave Merheje and Daisy Ridley in “Sometimes I Think About Dying” (Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories)

“Sometimes I Think About Dying” is a unique portrait of social anxiety and depression. This quiet and slow-paced drama won’t appeal to everyone. However, viewers with the patience to watch the entire movie will see an interesting awakening in the painfully shy protagonist, who has to learn to get out of her head and experience more of life.

Directed by Rachel Lambert, “Sometimes I Think About Dying” is based on the 2019 short film of the same name. Stefanie Abel Horowitz, Kevin Armento and Katy Wright-Mead wrote the screenplays for both movies, but Horowitz directed the short film. The feature-length version of “Sometimes I Think About Dying” had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. The movie was filmed in Oregon and the city of Longview, Washington.

In the feature-length “Sometimes I Think About Dying” (which takes place in an unnamed city in Oregon), the central character is Fran Larsen (played by Daisy Ridley), a depressed introvert whose life is a bland routine. Fran, who is in her late 20s, works at her office for a small business called CB Port Authority. Fran does administrative work (whatever she does in her job, she uses a lot of spreadsheets) in a non-descript cubicle. There are less than 15 people who work in this office. After her work shift, Fran usually just goes home to her modest house and doesn’t communicate with anyone.

Fran has a secret interior life where she thinks about scenarios in which she is dying or is already dead. The movie is punctuated with glimpses of these morbid fantasies. In one scenario, a snake is on the floor in the office, with Fran’s back to the snake, as if she’s unaware that the snake could pounce at any moment. In another scenario, Fran is a corpse on a beach. In another scenario, she’s dead in a wooded area.

Fran is very shy and keeps mostly to herself at work. In the beginning of the movie, a co-worker named Carol (played by Marcia DeBonis) is retiring, so the co-workers have gathered in the break room for Carol’s going-away party. Carol gives away some of her office supplies and says in a gloating voice, “I’m going on a cruise!” In a retirement greeting card signed by all the co-workers, Fran’s written message inside the card is a very basic “Happy retirement.”

Other people who work in the office are cheerful supervisor Isobel (played by Megan Stalter), nerdy Sean (played by Sean Tarjyoto), eccentric Doug (played by Jeb Berrier), self-assured Garrett (played by Parvesh Cheena) and eager intern Sophie (played by Brittany O’Grady). After Carol now longer works at the company, the dynamics in the office change with the arrival of Robert (played by Dave Merheje), who is Carol’s replacement.

Robert, who is in his late 30s or early 40s, seems to be almost immediately attracted to Fran, who is slow to pick up the social cues that Robert wants to start a conversation to get to know her better. In text messages, Robert asks Fran some questions about office supplies. He confesses that he’s never had a job before. Most people would be curious to know why, but Fran doesn’t ask.

Eventually, Robert establishes a little bit of rapport with Fran when they find out that they both like cottage cheese. Fran shows she can be nitpicky when she corrects Robert and says that cottage cheese is technically not cheese. “It’s a curd. I Googled it,” she states matter-of-factly.

Robert asks Fran out on a date. She says yes. Robert and Fran see a movie and then have dinner on this first date. Over dinner at a restaurant, Robert says he’s a big fan of movies, and he liked the film that they saw. Fran admits she didn’t like the film.

The waitress who serves them at the restaurant is named Amelia. She invites Robert and Fran to a small get-together that she has on Saturdays. It turns out to be a murder mystery game, which is somewhat ironic because Fran spends a lot of time thinking about herself dying in gruesome ways.

It’s very difficult for Fran to open up about herself to anyone. The most that she will tell Robert is that she grew up in Hawaii, she likes to cook, and she’s never been in love. Meanwhile, Robert tells her that he’s been divorced twice and that he hasn’t figured out marriage yet.

“Sometimes I Think About Dying” doesn’t have a big, sweeping plot. There are several scenes in the movie that show how isolated Fran is when she’s at home. And even when she’s with people (such as in her office job), she still seems very alone because she’s lost in her thoughts and not sociable. She’s not rude, but she doesn’t seek out people’s company, and she rarely initiates conversations with other people.

“Sometimes I Think About Dying” does not follow a predictable formula that’s usually in movies about lonely single people, so this film will simply be too boring for some viewers. However, Ridley gives a very good depiction of how people who feel invisible (by choice or by circumstance) often behave. This is not a typical story where someone is going to swoop in and “rescue” Fran from her social anxiety. Instead, the movie excels at showing in nuanced ways how human connections can be terrifying to people who are also afraid to confront their own insecurities.

Oscilloscope Laboratories released “Sometimes I Think About Dying” in select U.S. cinemas on January 26, 2024.

Review: ‘Above Suspicion’ (2021), starring Emilia Clarke, Jack Huston and Johnny Knoxville

May 30, 2021

by Carla Hay

Jack Huston and Emilia Clarke in “Above Suspicion” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“Above Suspicion” (2021)

Directed by Phillip Noyce

Culture Representation: Taking place in Kentucky from 1988 to 1989, the crime drama “Above Suspicion” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A drug-addicted woman becomes a confidential informant to the FBI, and complications ensue when she gets emotionally involved with the FBI agent who is her contact.

Culture Audience: “Above Suspicion” will appeal mostly to people who don’t mind watching predictable and pulpy crime movies that put more emphasis on being tacky than being suspenseful.

Johnny Knoxville and Emilia Clarke in “Above Suspicion” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

The cheap-looking and tawdry drama “Above Suspicion” is based on a true crime story, but the movie foolishly gives away the ending at the very beginning of the film. In other words, if viewers don’t know what happened in this case in real life, they’ll know exactly what the outcome is in the movie’s opening scene, which has a morbid “voice from the dead” narration from the movie’s main character. “Above Suspicion” just goes downhill from there.

Directed by Phillip Noyce, “Above Suspicion” is one of those “flashback” movies where the narrator is telling what happened in the past. And in this movie (which takes place in 1988 and 1989), the narrator tells viewers that she’s already dead. Her name is Susan Smith (played by Emilia Clarke), a divorced mother of two children. She was in her late 20s when she died.

In these flashbacks of her life, Susan is a cocaine-snorting, pill-popping, marijuana-smoking ne’er do well who makes money by committing fraud. She’s been collecting government welfare checks from the state of West Virginia, which she’s not entitled to have because she actually lives in Kentucky, where she gets welfare checks too. And occasionally, Susan sells drugs to make money.

In the movie’s opening scene, Susan says in a voiceover: “You know what’s the worst thing about being dead? You get too much time to think. Thinking is painful. Knowing things is painful.”

To serve as a warning to viewers, a better way to open this movie would have been: “You know what’s the worst thing about a brain-dead movie? It wastes too much time. Watching it is painful. Knowing this movie could be so much better is painful.”

And sitting through all the cringeworthy lines that stink up this movie is painful. Chris Gerolmo wrote the “Above Suspicion” screenplay, which is based on journalist Joe Sharkey’s 1993 non-fiction book of the same name. People who’ve read that book will probably find this movie difficult to watch because it takes what was fascinating about this true crime book and turns it into a trashy melodrama.

Clarke, who is British in real life, attempts to give a believable and edgy performance as a Kentucky mother who’s lost her way in life and ends up falling for and clinging to a seemingly straight-laced married FBI agent. But there are moments when Clarke’s true British mannerisms come through, such as when she slips up and says the word “whilst” instead of “while” during one of the many scenes where her Susan character is yelling at someone. “Whilst” is not the kind of word that would be in the vocabulary of a Kentucky hillbilly like Susan.

Because “Above Suspicion” reveals in the opening scene that Susan is dead, the rest of this 104-minute movie is really just a countdown to Susan’s death. Given the lifestyle that she leads and what’s at stake when Susan gets involved with a married FBI agent with a squeaky-clean reputation, it’s not hard to figure out how she’ll die. And it won’t be from a drug overdose. If viewers don’t know what happened to the real Susan Smith in this case before they see “Above Suspicion,” it’ll become pretty obvious what her fate will be soon after this movie begins.

Susan lives in a dirty and disheveled house in Pikeville, Kentucky, with her sleazy ex-husband Cash (played by Johnny Knoxville), who’s a small-time drug dealer. They’re still living together because they can’t afford to get their own separate places. (In real life, the name of Susan’s ex-husband was Kenneth, but he really was a drug dealer.) Susan and Cash’s two children—an unnamed daughter who’s 7 or 8 years old (played by Lex Kelli) and a son named Isom who’s 5 or 6 years old (played by Landon Durrance)—don’t say much, probably because they’re shell-shocked by living in such a dysfunctional home.

Someone who does talk a lot is Susan. She and Cash have arguments and physical fights with each other, and she gets irritable or impatient with almost anyone who crosses her path, except for her children. Two other people who live in Susan and Cash’s dumpy house are an unemployed couple in their 20s: Joe B. (played by Karl Glusman) and his girlfriend Georgia Beale (played by Brittany O’Grady), who don’t seem to do much but sleep all day. Joe met Cash when they were in prison together. Cash is the one who invited Joe to stay at the house after Joe got out of prison. Needless to say, Susan isn’t very happy about it.

In one of the movie’s early scenes, Joe makes inappropriate sexual comments to Susan, who understandably gets upset. Joe also calls her “Susie,” which she hates. But then, Susan also takes her anger out on Georgia about it. Susan bursts into the room where Georgia is sleeping and berates her about Joe being a creep. As Susan storms back out of the room, she screams at Georgia, “Pay me my rent money, bitch!”

Joe actually has been making money, but in an illegal way. He’s secretly a bank robber who has been targeting banks in cities near Pikeville, with Georgia’s help as his occasional getaway driver. Susan knows this secret because Joe’s red Chevy pickup truck fits the news media’s description of the getaway car. And she’s found Joe’s stash of cash with the guns that were used in the robberies.

“Above Suspicion” has some druggie party scenes that are exactly what people might expect. And it’s only a matter of time before fights break out at these parties. Susan’s volatile younger brother Bones (played by Luke Spencer Roberts) predictably gets in one of these fights, which leads to a particularly violent scene that was fabricated for this movie, just to add more melodrama.

Susan says in a voiceover: “Welcome to Pikeville, the town that never lets go.” She also says that in Pikeville, which is plagued by drug addiction, there are two main ways that people make money: “the funeral business or selling drugs.” And earlier in the film, this is how Susan describes herself: “I was a regular girl once. But things go wrong, as things will.”

Susan’s life takes a fateful turn when she meets Mark Putnam (played by Jack Huston), an ambitious and fairly new FBI agent, who has transferred to Pikeville to investigate the bank robberies. When Susan first sees Mark, who’s two years older than she is, she describes him like a hunk straight out of a romance novel. It’s lust at first sight for Susan.

And when Susan finds out that Mark is the FBI agent leading the investigation into the robberies, she sees it as an opportunity to get to know him better. It isn’t long before she drops hints to Mark that she knows who the bank robber is, but she’s afraid to be exposed as a snitch. Mark offers to pay Susan for bits and pieces of information, and she becomes his main confidential informant.

Susan dangles enough tips for Mark to investigate to keep him coming back for more. There’s an ulterior motive, of course. Susan wants to seduce Mark. And because Mark is so different from the men she’s used to being involved with, Susan starts to fall in love with him. However, it’s debatable whether it’s true love or if it’s Susan just wanting a ticket out of her dead-end life. At one point, when Mark asks Susan what she wants most in her life, she answers, “Rehab and money.”

Susan knows that Mark is happily married and has a baby daughter with his wife Kathy Putnam (played by Sophie Lowe), but that doesn’t seem to deter Susan from having a fantasy that Mark will eventually leave Kathy to be with Susan. When Susan and Mark meet in out-of-the-way and deserted places in other Kentucky cities such as Portersville and Martin, it’s just like the clandestine way that secret lovers meet. Susan starts to tell Mark that they both make a great team, but she wants to make their “partnership” about more than FBI work.

“Above Suspicion” portrays Susan as toning down some of her vulgar and mean-spirited ways to try to seduce Mark. She gives him a lot of flattery and attention. And anyone watching this movie will not be surprised when Mark starts to fall for Susan too because he’s become slightly bored with his marriage. But Mark doesn’t feel so strongly about Susan that he wants to leave his wife. Mark has a big ego, and he enjoys being with someone who fuels that ego. Huston’s portrayal of Mark is as someone whose top priority in life is being the best at his job and getting recognition and praise for it.

Even if Mark were an available bachelor, Mark and Susan’s relationship has too many other issues, including a power imbalance and a difference in their social classes. And most troubling of all for Mark’s career is that getting sexually involved with Susan is a breach of ethics and an automatic compromise of the evidence that Mark is getting from her for this investigation. And once the investigation is over, where does Susan fit into Mark’s life?

Clarke and Huston (who is also British in real life) aren’t terrible in their roles, but they are hindered by a subpar screenplay. Huston’s Mark character is often written as two-dimensional, while Clarke’s Susan character displays over-the-top trashiness that becomes increasingly annoying, especially when Susan begins stalking Mark and his wife Kathy. It’s supposed to make Susan look emotionally needy, lovesick and vulnerable, but her obsession with Mark only makes her look mentally unhinged. As for Knoxville, his abusive Cash character is just another version of the scumbags that Knoxville usually portrays in movies.

There are some supporting characters in the movie that don’t add much to the story. Susan has a concerned older sister named Jolene (played by Thora Birch), who lives in West Virginia and occasionally calls Susan. Mark has a colleague named Todd Eason (played by Chris Mulkey), who’s retiring from the FBI in six months. There are an informant named Denver Rhodes (played by Omar Benson Miller) and an international drug dealer named Rufus (played by Brian Lee Franklin), who both appear in the last third of the movie.

Noyce’s direction of “Above Suspicion” aims for the movie to be gritty noir, but it’s really just low-budget junk. It’s very easy to predict how this story is going to end. And until that ending, which Susan already blabbed about in the voiceover narration, it’s just one scene after another of contrasting Susan’s riff-raff life with Mark’s law-enforcement life. These two worlds end up crashing in the most horrific of ways. And it’s too bad that the overall result is that “Above Suspicion” is a cinematic train wreck.

Lionsgate released “Above Suspicion” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on May 14, 2021. The movie was released on Blu-ray and DVD on May 18, 2021.