Culture Representation: Taking place in Charlotte, North Carolina, the dramatic film “The Forge” features a predominantly African American group of people (with some white people, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A young adult man, who is angry over his father’s abandonment, finds purpose and meaning in his life when his boss becomes his religious mentor.
Culture Audience: “The Forge” will appeal mainly to people who can tolerate faith-based films that are preachy but well-meaning.
Priscilla Shirer in “The Forge” (Photo courtesy of Affirm Films)
“The Forge” is a pleasantly formulaic faith-based drama that tends to be preachy and mundane. However, the acting is solid, and the characters are likeable in this story about a young man who finds his identity and purpose. Viewers should not expect any surprises in this movie.
“The Forge” was directed by Alex Kendrick, who co-wrote “The Forge” screenplay with his brother Stephen Kendrick. The movie takes place in Charlotte, North Carolina, but was actually filmed mostly in Albany, Georgia. “The Forge” has some unflattering clichés about African Americans in urban areas. It’s yet another movie about an “at risk” young African American man raised by a single mother because his father abandoned the family.
These tired and over-used stereotypes would be offensive if “The Forge” didn’t have a balance of positive and realistic portrayals of African Americans. The fact of the matter is that most African Americans are not criminals or addicted to drugs. Most African American fathers are not deadbeat dads. Thankfully, “The Forge” does not depict the movie’s protagonist as a criminal but as someone who feels lost and in search of a purpose in life, which is something that many people can relate to, regardless of their racial or ethnic identity.
The movie begins by showing 19-year-old Isaiah Wright (played by Aspen Kennedy) playing basketball with some of his friends. It’s soon revealed in “The Forge” that Isaiah is addicted to playing video games. Isaiah is a good guy, but he doesn’t have any direction or goals in his life since he graduated from high school a year earlier. He lives with his divorced mother Cynthia Wright (played by Priscilla Shirer), who is so bitter about the divorce from her ex-husband Darren (played by Michael J. Patterson), she doesn’t even like to talk about him. Darren hasn’t had contact with Cynthia and Isaiah for several years.
Cynthia has had enough of Isaiah living rent-free in her house and not doing anything productive with his life. One day, Cynthia tells Isaiah: “If you don’t want to go to college, that’s fine. But you’ve got to get a job.” She also tells him that his days of living rent-free in her home will soon be over. Cynthia adds sternly, “You’re not going to spend all of your graduation money on video games and sneakers.”
The trailer for “The Forge” reveals about 90% of the plot, including the way that Darren shows up in Isaiah’s life after not seeing or communicating with Isaiah for years. Isaiah gets a warehouse job at Moore Fitness, a successful company that makes about 205 different fitness products. Moore Fitness is facing stiff competition from a company called Slayer Sports, which is aggressively going after an exclusive contract with GymFit, the biggest client of Moore Fitness. If Moore Fitness loses GymFit as a client, then Moore Fitness will be in serious danger of going out of business. You can almost do a countdown to the “race against time” scene that you know is coming as soon as the contract deadline is mentioned in the movie.
Isaiah is personally hired by Moore Fitness owner/founder Joshua Moore (played by Cameron Moore), who has a chance encounter with Isaiah when Isaiah is in an office reception area to fill out a job application. Before Joshua hires Isaiah, he takes Isaiah out to lunch and tells Isaiah that Isaiah must answer three questions in order to be hired at Moore Fitness: “In what ways do you want to grow in the next year?” “What kind of man do you want to be?” “What do you want people to think when they see you coming?”
Joshua is happily married to Janelle Moore (played by B.J. Arnett, Cameron Arnett’s real-life wife), who is the company’s human resources manager. It should come as no surprise that Joshua and Janelle have a tragedy from their past which explains why Joshua has taken such a keen interest in Isaiah. You know where all of this is going, of course.
Joshua becomes a mentor/father figure to Isaiah, who learns the value of hard work and personal integrity on the job and under Joshua’s guidance. Isaiah befriends some Moore Fitness employees who are nice but have generic personalities and don’t get enough screen time to be fully developed characters. Joshua also leads an all-male Christian group called The Forge, which has prayer circles on a regular basis. The Forge meets at a local church, where church employee Jonathan (played by Jonathan Evans) is also part of The Forge. Isaiah’s addiction to playing video games is handled in an entirely predictable manner after he becomes a responsible adult.
“The Forge” is a very patriarchal movie that tries to give meaningful screen time to Cynthia, who works at a hair salon, which has its own prayer group that consists entirely of women. One of the outspoken people in the salon’s prayer group is Miss Clara Williams (played by Karen Abercrombie), who is somewhat of a sitcom-ish stereotype of an elderly woman who says whatever is on her mind because she’s at a point in her life where she doesn’t really care what other people think of her. The scenes of Cynthia at her job are not pointless, but they don’t have as much impact as the scenes with Isaiah and his relationship with Joshua.
Some of the scenes in “The Forge” are very corny, while other scenes are very realistic. It’s a mixed bag of a movie that has its heart in the right place. Skip watching “The Forge” if you don’t want to hear religious lectures in a movie. But if you tolerate or like these types of movies, then “The Forge” has enough to offer that is familiar and entertaining.
Affirm Films released “The Forge” in U.S. cinemas on September 23, 2024.
Some language in Portuguese and Spanish with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in the 2010s in Brazil and in Argentina (with a brief flashback to the 1980s), the comedy/drama film “My Penguin Friend” (inspired by true events) features a predominantly Latin group of people (with a few white people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Brazilian fisherman João Pereira De Souza rescues a migrating Argentinian penguin from an oil-spill health hazard, and the penguin returns to visit him every year.
Culture Audience: “My Penguin Friend” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and heartwarming stories about the bonds that can develop between humans and wild animals.
Alexia Moyano in “My Penguin Friend” (Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions)
“My Penguin Friend” won’t rank among the very best movies about adorable penguins, and the cast members’ performances are mismatched. However, this comedy/drama (based on a true story) is pleasant enough to watch as family-friendly entertainment. “My Penguin Friend” (formerly titled “The Penguin and the Fisherman”) tends to get a bit repetitive, and some of the pacing is sluggish, but it’s sufficiently enjoyable and doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not.
Directed by David Schurmann and written by Paulina Lagudi and Kristen Lazarian, “My Penguin Friend” begins sometime in the early 1980s, in Ilha Grande, Brazil. That’s where fisherman João Pereira De Souza (played by Pedro Urizzi) and his wifeMaria (played by Amanda Magalhães) live with their son Miguel (played by Juan José Garnica), who’s about 6 or 7 years. They are a happy family living in a modest home.
Miguel will soon have a birthday. His close friend Calista (played by Beatriz Lima) has shown him a small gift-wrapped box that she says is her birthday gift to him. Calista makes Miguel promise that he won’t open the gift until his birthday.
Sadly, Miguel won’t live to see his upcoming birthday. One day, João takes Miguel on a rowboat excursion in the ocean. They get caught in a sudden storm that overturns the boat. João does his best to save Miguel, but the current is too strong, and Miguel drowns. Some of the movie’s visual effects in the ocean scenes are hit-and-miss when it comes to being convincing.
About 30 years later, João (played by Jean Reno) and Maria (played by Adriana Barraza) still live in the same house. João feels extremely guilty about Miguel’s death. João and Maria did not have any more children. João still works as a fisherman. And although he has fisherman colleagues, he is introverted and somewhat emotionally withdrawn because Miguel’s death has left him a somewhat broken person.
One spring day, João finds a male penguin that is covered in oil from an oil spill. João takes the bird home and cleans him up. He decides to keep the bird until the penguin is well enough to be put back in the ocean. Maria isn’t thrilled to have this wild bird in the house, but João says the penguin will be in the home for only a few days.
A week later, João and the penguin have developed a friendly bond. João aks for “one more week” to keep the penguin, which he eventually names DinDim. You know where all of this is going, of course. That week turns into more weeks.
João doesn’t keep DinDim in captivity. He also doesn’t treat DinDim like a possession that only he can own. DinDim is allowed to roam around wherever he wants. DinDim often follows João around and sometimes goes with João on fishing trips. DinDim becomes a well-known fixture in the João’s community, which includes a now-adult Calista (played by Thalma de Freitas), a widow who has an underage daughter named Lucia (played by Duda Galvão).
One day, João has noticed that DinDim seems to have left the area for good. João assumes that he might never see the penguin again. But to the surprise of João and many other people, DinDim comes back to visit João every year, around the same time of year when DinDim first came into João’s life.
Where did DinDim come from? And where does he go when he’s away from Ilha Grande? It’s revealed fairly early on in the movie that DinDim is part of a community of penguins being studied by marine biologists in Patagonia, Argentina. His annual migration to Brazil to visit indicates that penguins have emotional intelligence that might be underestimated by people who think that penguins aren’t capable of having emotions.
Three marine biologists in particular are the focus in the parts of the movie that have to do with DinDim’s life in Argentina. They are Adriana (played by Alexia Moyano), the analytical leader of the trio; headstrong Carlos (played by Nicolás Francella); and eager-to-please Stephanie (played by Rocío Hernández), who is the youngest and least-experienced of the trio.
Eventually, a freelance TV journalist name Paulo (played by Ravel Cabral) finds out the amazing story of DinDim migrating thousands of miles every year to visit João. Paulo wants to do a feature story on João and DinDim. At first, João doesn’t want to be interviewed. However, he eventually changes his mind when Paulo agrees to João’s request that Paulo’s story needed to mention that DinDim comes and goes as DinDim pleases.
The best scenes in “My Penguin Friend” are obviously those between DimDim (who was played by various real penguins) and João, who treats this penguin like a friend and a child. I João’s relationship with DinDim is clearly João’s way of trying to heal some of João’s wounds about losing his son Miguel. The movie barely scratches the surface of how Miguel’s death affected the marriage of João and Maria. That aspect of these characters’ lives could have been explored better in the movie.
Likewise, all of the supporting characters to João and Maria are a bit generic. It doesn’t help that many of the people playing these characters have a lot less acting skills than longtime actors Reno and Barraza. It results in several somewhat awkward scenes where Reno and Barraza clearly give the best performances, while other members of the “My Penguin Friend” cast struggle with saying their lines in ways that are realistic and believable.
Despite some stiff acting from some of the cast members, “My Penguin Friend” can maintain viewer interest because of the heart of the story: the unusual friendship between a human being and a penguin. The movie sends a great message that wild animals should not be kept trapped inside people’s homes and exploited for money and/or attention. It’s a simple but effective story of two beings who form an unlikely and emotionally meaningful bond by being themselves.
Roadside Attractions released “My Penguin Friend” in U.S. cinemas on August 16, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Ireland, France and briefly in Norway, from 1911 to 1989, the dramatic film “Dance First” (a biopic of writer Samuel Beckett) features an all-white group of people representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Samuel Beckett leaves his native Ireland to live in France as a writer, and he becomes entangled in the French Resistance against Nazis and personal problems in his love relationships.
Culture Audience: “Dance First” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of Beckett and the movie’s headliners, but the movie leaves out a lot of information about the work that made Beckett famous.
Fionn O’Shea in “Dance First” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
“Dance First” (a biopic of writer Samuel Beckett) crafts his life story like a stylish but uneven patchwork quilt. The cast members’ performances can keep viewers interested when some scenes drag with monotony. The movie mostly ignores his creative talent.
Directed by James Marsh and written by Neil Forsyth, “Dance First” gets its title from this quote attributed to Beckett: “Dance first, think later.” Beckett (who was born in Foxrock, Ireland, in 1906, and died in Paris in 1989) was best known for his plays “Waiting for Godot” and “Endgame,” but he also wrote novels, poems and short stories. Beckett also worked as a theater director.
“Dance First” (which was filmed in black and white) had its world premiere at the 2023 San Sebastian International Film Festival. In the production notes for “Dance First,” director Marsh has this description of the movie: “It’s an unusual biography of Samuel Beckett, unusual because it reviews his life through the lens of his mistakes.” The movie’s synopsis reads, in part: “Literary genius Samuel Beckett lived a life of many parts: Parisian bon vivant, WWII Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband, recluse. But despite all the adulation that came his, way he was a man acutely aware of his own failings.”
The problem is that by focusing mostly on Beckett’s failings and mistakes, “Dance First” comes across as an incomplete picture that ultimately does not do justice to Beckett as a well-rounded and complex person. The movie goes out its way to sideline meaningful insights to Beckett as an artist, which is the aspect of his life that has the most public interest. Instead, “Dance First” is a series of scenes showing how his relationships mostly made him feel sad or restless.
“Dance First” is divided into five chapters, with all but one named after a pivotal person in his life. For the purposes of this review, the real people will be referred to by their last names. The characters in “Dance First” will be referred to by their first names.
“Dance First” opens with a scene taking place in 1969, when 63-year-old Samuel (played by Gabriel Byrne) is in Oslo, Norway, to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. (“Dance First” was actually filmed in Belgium.) Sitting next to Samuel at the ceremony is his wife Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil (played by Sandrine Bonnaire), a French pianist who married him in 1961. As Samuel is being praised on stage, he looks disgusted and mutters to Suzanne, “What a catastrophe.”
Samuel angrily strides on stage to accept the prize, which he grabs as if it’s a worthless trinket. He then quickly walks out of the venue, climbs up on a water tower, and finds himself in a desert-like area where he sees a man (also played by Byrne), who looks just like him. That’s because the other man is also Samuel, who is seen talking to himself in interlude scenes for the rest of the movie, which shows him from the ages of 5 to the last year of his life at age 83.
It’s always a risk when a movie wants to be a serious dramatic biopic but then introduces fantasy elements that have a main character talking to a physical embodiment of himself. This risk doesn’t quite pay off in “Dance First,” because it comes across as a gimmicky distraction. The two Samuels often argue with each other, which is the movie’s way of showing that Samuel has inner conflicts.
The “real” Samuel is stubborn and cranky in old age, while “alter ego” Samuel is somehow wise enough to know what the future holds and gives the “real” Samuel advice that the “real” Samuel doesn’t necessarily want to hear. The entire movie has an off-kilter tone of making the “real” Samuel look back on his life, with the “alter ego” Samuel trying to make him feel shame and regret for his mistakes.
The “real” Samuel tells “alter ego” Samuel that he doesn’t deserve this Nobel Prize, so he wants to give the prize money to charity. The “real” Samuel then starts to have memories of people from his past, as a way to determine whom he should contact to possibly donate the money. It’s supposed to give Samuel’s reminiscing an extra layer of gravitas, but it just further muddles the story.
“Dance First” then takes a detour into a chapter called “Mother,” because Samuel says “it all starts with mother.” This chapter of the movie begins by showing Samuel’s childhood at age 5 (played by Cillian Hollywood) and age 10 (played by Caleb Johnston-Miller), when he was raised by two very different parents. Samuel’s mother May Beckett (played by Lisa Dwyer Hogg) is domineering and overly critical. (In real life, Samuel Beckett’s mother’s first name was Maria, and she worked as a nurse.) May constantly corrects Samuel on how he pronounces and writes words.
Samuel’s father William Beckett (played by Barry O’Connor), who is barely in the movie, is kind and loving. In real life, William Beckett was a quantity surveyor. There are some brief scenes of William doing thing such as walking with boyhood Samuel in a field, but the character of William remains a mostly passive presence who does nothing to stop May’s psychological torment of Samuel. In real life, Samuel Beckett had a brother named Frank, who was four years older that Samuel, but Frank is erased from this movie’s story.
Predictably, the negative parental experiences have more of an impact on Samuel. As a teenager and young adult, Samuel (played by Fionn O’Shea) and May continue to clash with each other. By now, Samuel has become an aspiring writer, but his mother seems to relish in humiliating him with cruel critiques. In one of the movie’s more dramatic scenes, May thinks that something Samuel wrote is an unflattering depiction of her.
“You’re demonizing me!” May yells at him. Samuel replies, “You only imagine it is you because the whole world is you.” It’s implied by not said aloud that May is a narcissist who might have a mental illness or personality disorder. Samuel’s love/hate relationship with his mother and his need for her approval will play out in different ways with other women in his life, particularly the woman would become his wife.
In other scene, teenage Samuel asks May if she read something that she wrote. She replies with disapproval that what he wrote was too sexually provocative. “There will always be a call for titillation,” May says dismissively.
When he asks her again, “Did you read it?” May snarls with contempt: “What a waste!” May hurling this insult at Samuel is a memory that is shown more than once in the movie at different points in Samuel’s life. There are a few flashbacks of May shouting “What a waste!,” as a way to show how Samuel has long-lasting emotional scars from being verbally abused by his mother.
When young adult Samuel announces to May that he wants to move to Paris to become a writer and will never go back to Ireland, May makes this bigoted and bizarre remark about continental Europe: “The continent is populated almost entirely by homosexuals.” Samuel says that May is flawed if she thinks she can control him. “I gave you everything,” May says indignantly. Samuel replies, “I hope for your sake it’s not true.”
This is the type of dialogue that you might expect from a second-rate soap opera, not a biopic about a “literary genius.” But it goes on like this for the rest of “Dance First.” Much credit should be given to the talented cast members who do the best they can with the often-cringeworthy lines that they have to utter.
The movie’s chapter “Lucia” shows Samuel as a college student in Paris. Samuel meets a young woman about the same age named Lucia Joyce (played by Gráinne Good), a singer/dancer who happens to be the daughter of acclaimed author James Joyce (played by Aiden Gillen), who is one of Samuel’s idols. There’s a scene where Samuel verbally gushes over James like a fanboy. However, James seems somewhat jaded and unimpressed by this young admirer, who ends up working with James as an assistant. Samuel and Lucia have a doomed romance that is also given the soap opera treatment in this movie.
The movie’s chapter “Alfy” is about the period of Samuel’s life when he joined the French Resistance against the Nazis. The chapter’s namesake is Alfred Péron (played by Robert Aramayo), a French Jew who befriends Samuel. In real life, Péron was Beckett’s French teacher when Beckett was a student at Trinity College in Dublin. It’s in this chapter that Samuel meets young adult Suzanne (played by Léonie Lojkine), who becomes his most trusted person to give him advice and evaluations for his writing.
The chapter titled “Suzanne” shows the troubled marriage of Samuel and Suzanne, who have a better relationship as artists than as spouses. Samuel is chronically unfaithful to Suzanne, but another woman unexpectedly captures his heart when they begin a relationship in the late 1950s: Barbara Bray (played by Maxine Peake), a British widow who worked as a script editor for the BBC. Barbara is warm and understanding as an obvious counterpoint to Suzanne, who can be cold and critical.
Samuel and Suzanne were dating each other but not yet married when Samuel got involved with Barbara. Samuel ultimately choses to marry Suzanne The movie shows Samuel and Suzanne eloping in a very simple civil ceremony. Barbara takes the rejection in stride and continues to be involved with Samuel, although the movie makes it look like their relationship became platonic in their elderly years.
According to “Dance First,” Samuel married Suzanne because he felt that Suzanne was better than Barbara for giving brutally honest reviews of his work. A Freudian psychologist would have a field day in an analysis of how the dynamics between Samuel and Suzanne are a repeat of the dynamics between Samuel and his mother, although Suzanne was not as vicious as Samuel’s mother.
The chapter titled “Le Fin” (which means “The End” in French) shows the last years of Samuel’s life. By the time the movie reaches this point, there are major milestones and artistic achievements that the real Beckett had that are never seen in the movie. Byrne and Bonnaire give fine performances as a married couple who have learned to live with a very flawed marriage. However, the artistic bond that holds the marriage together is woefully underrepresented in “Dance First.”
It’s frustratingly counterproductive to make a movie that revolves largely around a marriage where the spouses’ only enduring respect for each other is as artists, but then the movie never bothers to show meaningful scenes of them creating this art that is so important to them. There are some bland scenes of Samuel using a typewriter, or Suzanne reading snippets of Samuel’s work back to him and telling him what she thinks. Even though the movie’s black and white cinematography looks great, “Dance First” is not the movie to see if you want to get fascinating behind-the-scenes stories about how the real Beckett created his most influential work. “Dance First” is told in chapters, but it’s like reading a biography where many of the chapters that should be there were deliberately removed.
Magnolia Pictures released “Dance First” in select U.S. cinemas on August 9, 2024. The movie was released on digital and VOD on August 16, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Little Rock, Arkansas, the dramatic film “Crescent City” features a predominantly white group of people (with some African Americans and Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Two macho cops reluctantly work with a new female partner in their hunt to find a serial killer who beheads the murder victims.
Culture Audience: “Crescent City” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and enjoy watching low-quality murder mysteries.
Alec Baldwin in “Crescent City” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)
Trashy and idiotic, “Crescent City” is an embarrassment to crime dramas. This awful and stupid movie is filled with substandard performances in a poorly written story about police on the hunt for a serial killer. A plot twist at the end is laughably bad.
Directed by RJ Collins and written by Rich Ronat, “Crescent City” is an example of lazy filmmaking combined with cast members who mostly look like they don’t really want to be there but they need the money. The entire story is creatively bankrupt and just plods along with gruesome discoveries of beheaded corpses in between the movie’s tawdry scenes where people spew unrealistic and flat-sounding dialogue.
“Crescent City” takes place in the capital city of Little Rock, Arkansas, which had a population of about 202,000 people, as of the 2022 census. (“Crescent City” was filmed on location in Arkansas, which is probably the most authentic-looking thing about the movie.) What’s weird and off-kilter about the marketing of “Crescent City” is that this description is in the movie’s synopsis: “When a small Southern town is terrorized by a serial killer everyone becomes a suspect … including the police.”
Since when is a city with a population of about 202,000 people considered a “small town”? It’s almost as if the studio’s marketing people couldn’t even bear to watch this movie and decided any old generic synopsis would do. For anyone who has the misfortune of watching this tacky film, “Crescent City” is just a pile-on of mindless scenes and unappealing characters.
The beginning of “Crescent City” shows a TV news report that there have been three murders in Little Rock in two months. It’s later revealed that the police suspect the same person is causing the murders because all of the victims are found decapitated with a mannequin’s head placed near each dead body. This murderer has been targeting men and women between the ages of 20 and 40.
One of these murders is shown near the beginning of the film. An unidentified man in his 30s (played by David Lipper) is shown standing near a house’s swimming pool. He appears to be in a stupor from drugs and/or alcohol. A mystery woman is seen emerging from the pool. She walks up behind the man and then slits his throat. It’s revealed at the end of the movie who this person is.
The lead investigator in the Little Rock Police Department is Brian Sutter (played by Terrence Howard), who seems to be an upstanding family man, but he’s got some disturbing secrets. The first time that Brian is seen in the movie, he’s sitting in a church pew with his wife Elena (played by Reema Sampat) and their daughter Mila (played by Madonna Akhtar), who’s about 5 or 6 years old. Brian is unnerved during the church service because he keeps having flashback visions to a drug bust that went terribly wrong.
The information about this drug bust gradually comes out during the movie, until the full truth is revealed. It’s enough to say in this review that a known drug addict/drug dealer in the area named Mrs. Crawford was being raided in her trailer park home for possession of meth and cocaine. She had a 17-year-old son named Benjamin Harrison, who was shot to death during this drug bust.
Brian’s cop partner is Luke Carson (played by Esai Morales), a misogynist who is loyal to Brian and has some serious anger issues. The boss of Brian and Luke is Captain Howell (played by Alec Baldwin), who is as cliché as cliché can be. Captain Howell’s role in the movie consists mostly of sitting at a desk and giving orders.
One day, Brian is in a public restroom when he sees a graffiti message written on a wall: “For sexual salvation Secrets666.com.” Brian tries to wipe off the graffiti until a janitor named Gopal Sharma (played by Anjul Nigam) enters the room and tells Brian that he will remove the graffiti because it’s his job. This scene is so awkwardly staged, you just know that the graffiti message will play a role later in the movie.
Meanwhile, another murder victim is soon found. His name was Richard “Ricky” McCallum (played by Eduard Osipov), who was discovered beheaded in his car, with a mannequin’s head on the front passenger seat. Ricky’s grieving wife Marcy McCallum (played by Nikita Kahn) is questioned by Brian and Luke. Brian asks Marcy if Ricky had been cheating on her because condoms were found in the car. Marcy says no and insists that she and Ricky had a good marriage.
With no progress being made in this serial killer investigation, Captain Howell tells Brian and Luke that they will have a new partner who has been assigned to help. Her name is Jaclyn Waters (played by Nicky Whelan), a detective who has transferred from Tulsa, Oklahoma, but she’s originally from Australia. Brian and Luke don’t like being forced to work with this “outsider,” but they have no choice.
Their mistrust of Jaclyn grows even more when Brian and Luke find out that she’s really an investigator from internal affairs, as already revealed in the “Crescent City” trailer. The trailer also reveals that Brian and Jaclyn begin having an affair with each other. It’s really just an excuse to show Whelan in cleavage-baring lingerie in fake-looking sex scenes.
Soon after Brian, Luke and Jaclyn begin working together, a young woman named Sabrina Harris (played by Rose Lane Sanfilippo) is at the police department to report that her roommate Vanessa Perkins (played by Ciel Shi) is missing. Sabrina says that Vanessa used a Sex Addicts Anonymous website called Secrets666.com. Brian recognizes that name because he saw it on the graffiti in the bathroom just a few days before.
Brian, Luke and Jaclyn are then shown breaking into an abandoned house without a warrant. And what a coincidence: There’s a decapitated body in a bathtub, which has a mannequin’s head nearby. The murdered person is Vanessa. With no explanation whatsoever, Brian concludes that the serial killer is also a sexual sadist.
The owner of the house is listed as Robert Hedges, who was also beheaded. He was murdered 20 years ago. The prime suspect in Robert’s murder was his son Charlie Hedges, who has been missing ever since Robert’s murder. When Robert’s name is mentioned, Luke says to Brian and Jaclyn that he knows what it must feel like to want to get rid of a father because his own father was abusive to him when he was a child.
The rest of “Crescent City” is just one ludicrous scene after another, with many plot holes and obvious red herrings. Jaclyn creates an escort website to go “undercover” as a sex worker. It leads her to encounter a suspicious creep named Travis Reed (played by Weston Cage Coppola), who wears a mask that covers the lower half his face.
The detectives also question a shady-looking clergyman named Pastor Lawson (played by Michael Sirow), a preacher for the Methodist church where the Secrets666.com sex addicts have their meetings. And there’s a scene in a bar with Luke picking up a stranger named Tanya Nelson (played by Danielle Druz) and having sex with her in a bathroom at the bar. It won’t be the last time that Tanya is in the movie.
As already shown in the movie’s trailer, Brian and Jaclyn—at separate times—look like they could guilty of being involved in the murders. And as soon as they come under suspicion, you know that the truth isn’t that obvious. Still, even with these attempts to introduce multiple possible suspects, it’s fairly easy to figure out who the real culprit is, based on how the evidence is planted to frame certain people who are not guilty.
In a movie that is dragged down by several lackluster performances, Howard’s acting in “Crescent City” is possibly the worst of the bunch. He shows no emotional connection to his character Brian, who is supposed to be complicated and morally conflicted. Howard looks extremely bored for most of the movie. And when he does have to show any emotions in a scene, it looks forced.
Luke is such a repulsive and soulless character, Morales doesn’t have much to work with in depicting this obvious cretin. Whelan seems to be in the movie to portray the filmmakers’ sexist stereotype of a female cop whose character is defined by sleeping with a married co-worker and going undercover as a sex worker, so she will be in scenes where she’s scantily clad. In addition to the rotten plot and idiotic dialogue, “Crescent City” has sloppy editing and horrible audio dubbing. If the “Crescent City” filmmakers didn’t care about making a good movie, then you shouldn’t care about watching this garbage.
Lionsgate released “Crescent City” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on August 16, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed part of England, the dramatic film “Blackwater” (based on the 2017 novel “The Breakdown”) features an all-white group of people representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A married schoolteacher sees a woman slumped in a car at night and later finds out the woman was dead in the car, and this witness starts to get harassed by a mysterious stalker.
Culture Audience: “Blackwater Lane” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners or the “Breakdown” novel, but the movie collapses under the weight of its own stupidity.
The time-wasting mystery thriller “Blackwater Lane” is an inferior adaptation of B.A. Paris’ popular 2017 novel “The Breakdown.” This soulless movie ruins the book’s story with a nonsensical narrative and lackluster acting. It’s one of those movies that goes around in annoying repetitive circles until the movie’s predictable and ridiculously staged ending.
Directed by Jeff Celentano and written by Elizabeth Fowler, “Blackwater Lane” takes place in an unnamed part of England. (The movie was actually filmed in Suffolk, England.) In “The Breakdown,” the three main characters are British. But because “Blackwater Lane” is an American production, the movie changes the main characters to all be people who were raised in the U.S., in order to explain their American accents.
“Blackwater Lane” is named for the street that is the location of the crime scene that’s the catalyst for the story’s mystery. The three main characters in “Blackwater Lane” are:
Cass Anderson (played by Minka Kelly), a former actress who is now a drama teacher at a high school. Cass is soft-spoken and has a gentle personality. It’s mentioned that Cass is half-British and half-American and was raised in the United States, but she’s currently living in a castle that she inherited from the British side of her family.
Matthew Anderson (played by Dermot Mulroney) is Cass’ American husband. It isn’t made very clear what Matthew does for a living, but he’s been spending a lot of time renovating the castle. Matthew and Cass have no children but have been trying to start a family.
Rachel (played by Maggie Grace) is Cass’ best friend. Just like Cass, Rachel is also a half-British and half-American person who was raised in the United States. Rachel is a confident extrovert who is a bachelorette career woman who works at an unnamed office job.
One rainy night, Cass is driving on Blackwater Lane when she sees a woman in her 30s or 40s slumped over in the driver’s seat of a car parked on the side of the road. Cass slows down to take a closer look but doesn’t get out of her car. Is the woman dead or alive? Cass doesn’t know, and she’s the only driver on this deserted and desolate road.
Ultimately, Cass decides to drive away without telling anyone or doing anything to find out if the woman in the car needs help. Cass also doesn’t tell anyone what she saw until she sees a TV news report the next day that the woman in the car was found dead in the car. Police suspect foul play. A medical examiner report later determines that the woman had been murdered.
The murder victim’s name is Jane Walters (played by Sally Blouet), and her next of kin are her husband Alex Walters (played by Kris Johnson) and 2-year-old twins. The police estimate that Jane died between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. because she called Alex at 10 p.m. that night. Cass feels increasingly guilty about not checking to see if Jane was still alive and not reporting immediately that she saw Jane in the car.
It turns out that Jane was a co-worker of Rachel’s. Jane recently left the company and Cass actually briefly met Jane at the company’s going-away party for Jane. The movie reveals if Cass eventually tells anyone else what she saw on Blackwater Lane that night. In the meantime, Cass begins to be harassed by a mysterious stalker, who seems to have access to her home and who makes menacing phone calls to her. This harassment happens when Cass is alone and she can’t prove what happen, so Alex begins to question her sanity. How cliché.
There are half-hearted attempts to try to introduce possible suspects. Susie (played by Pandora Clifford) is a talkative British friend of Cass and Andrew. John Collins (played by Alan Calton) is a tennis coach for the wealthy people in the area. Andrew (played by Judah Cousin) is a student of Cass’ who seems to have an obsessive crush on her.
“Blackwater Lane” is filled with shallow scenes that don’t really go anywhere. The movie’s plot twists are crammed in the last 20 minutes and are sloppily filmed. In the end, the villain or villains of the story can be very easy to predict once you see that “Blackwater Lane” has nothing clever or inventive to offer.
Lionsgate released “Blackwater Lane” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on June 21, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Germany and in the United States, from 1986 to 1998 (with some flashbacks to previous years), the dramatic biographical film “Girl You Know It’s True” (based on the story of pop duo Milli Vanilli) features a cast of white and black characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: German native Rob Pilatus and French native Fabrice “Fab” Morvan form a pop music duo called Milli Vanilli and agree to German music producer Frank Farian’s demands to pretend to the world that Pilatus and Morvan sang the vocals on Milli Vanilli’s first album.
Culture Audience: “Girl You Know It’s True” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Milli Vanilli, late 1980s pop music and dramas based on real-life celebrity scandals.
Matthias Schweighöfer and Bella Dayne in “Girl You Know It’s True” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)
The biopic “Girl You Know It’s True” has both tawdriness and gravitas in chronicling the rise and fall of lip-syncing pop duo Milli Vanilli. Some scenes are very rushed, but the acting is solid, and there’s some satirical comedy that’s handled well. The movie’s combination of tabloid spectacle and tragic downfall can be expected because it’s a reflection of the real-life story of Milli Vanilli, a musical act that flamed out after just two years of hit-making stardom, when it was revealed in 1990 that the two members of Milli Vanilli didn’t sing any of their vocals on their smash debut album. In 1998, former Milli Vanilli member Rob Pilatus died of an overdose of alcohol and prescription medication, after years of battling substance abuse. Pilatus’ year of birth has been disputed, but he was believed to be 32 or 33 when he died.
Written and directed by Simon Verhoeven, “Girl You Know It’s True” was released less than a year after the 2023 Paramount+ documentary “Milli Vanilli” (directed by Luke Korem), which has a fuller story than this low-budget biopic. Several of the people who participated as interviewees in the “Milli Vanilli” documentary are among the associate producers for “Girl You Know It’s True” and are portrayed by actors in this biopic: Ingrid Segieth, who was part of Milli Vanilli’s music production team; Brad Howell, one of the singers who did the real vocals on Milli Vanilli’s first album; Todd Headlee, who was part of Milli Vanilli’s management team; and Carmen Pilatus, who was the adoptive older sister of former Milli Vanilli member Rob Pilatus.
Also listed as an associate producer of “Girl You Know It’s True” movie is John Davis, one of the singers who did the real vocals on Milli Vanilli’s first album. Davis died in 2021, at the age of 66. Two of the co-producers of “Girl You Know It’s True” are Fabrice “Fab” Morvan (one of the former members of Milli Vanilli) and Milli Vanilli fraud mastermind Frank Farian, who are obviously two of the main characters in the movie. In real life, Farian died on January 23, 2024. He was 82.
Because so many of the real-life people involved with Milli Vanilli were also involved in the making of “Girl You Know It’s True,” this movie is essentially an authorized biopic. Most of Milli Vanilli’s hits (the original recordings and/or versions recorded by the movie’s actors) are in the movie, such as “Girl You Know It’s True,” “Blame It on the Rain,” “Baby Don’t Forget My Number” and “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You.” The recreations of Milli Vanilli concerts and music videos are mostly faithful to what they looked like in real life, but you never forget that you’re watching actors. For the purposes of this review, the characters in this movie are referred to by their first names.
“Girl You Know It’s True” opens with Rob (played by Tijan Njie) and Fab (played by Elan Ben Ali) lounging in a recording studio in Germany and looking back on their Milli Vanilli journey in a somewhat morbid context. In these hindsight scenes, Rob is supposed to be a “ghost” who shares the narration with Fab, who says in the introduction, “There’s another side to the story” about the Milli Vanilli scandal. Actually, there’s nothing in “Girl You Know It’s True” that hasn’t already been revealed in documentaries and news reports.
Rob is the more flamboyant, reckless and extroverted member of the duo. Fab is quieter, more thoughtful and more level-headed. It’s shown repeatedly that they both treated each other like brothers. However, “Girl You Know It’s True” (which is somewhat jumbled in the beginning of the movie) only shows Rob’s childhood and his family. Fab’s childhood (he was born in 1966 in Paris) is never shown. In real life, Morvan has given interviews saying that he had an unhappy childhood, and his family was not supportive of him wanting to be an entertainer. In the movie, Fab is shown making phone calls to his mother.
Before showing the early years part of Rob’s life, “Girl You Know It’s True” does a quick run-through of the origins of music producer Frank Farian (played by Matthias Schweighöfer), the music producer who created the Milli Vanilli concept and co-wrote much of Milli Vanilli’s songs. As Fab says in a voiceover: “Without this guy, our story wouldn’t have happened.” The movie then does a brief flashback to 1953 to Kirn, West Germany, to show 12-year-old Frank (played by David Verhoeven) playing outside somewhere. This scene lasts for less than two minutes before the movie abruptly fast forwards to 1973, when 32-year-old Frank is working as a producer with the German pop/R&B group Boney M, his first big successful music act.
Boney M’s best-known songs (which were mostly hits in Europe in the late 1970s and early 1980s) included “Daddy Cool,” “Ma Baker,” “Belfast,” “Sunny,” “Rasputin,” “Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord” and “Rivers of Babylon.” Boney M, just like Milli Vanilli, was later exposed as a lip-syncing music act whose songs were sung by other people because Farian wanted more physically attractive people to be presented as the singers instead of the real singers. There are implications of racial exploitation in both cases, because Farian was white and Boney M and Milli Vanilli were black.
As a child, Rob (played by Romeo Guy Da Silva) wasn’t fully accepted by the racist people in the community where he grew up in Munich because he was biracial. (His single mother, who gave him up for adoption, was white. His father was black. What the movie doesn’t mention is that Rob’s mother was a stripper.) Rob lived in an orphanage for the first four years of his life until he was adopted by spouses Hans Pilatus (played by Thomas Bading) and Antonie Pilatus (played by Ulrike Arnold), who considered themselves to be progressive because they adopted a child of another race.
“Girl You Know It’s True” downplays the racism that Rob experienced as a child. By most accounts, in real life, Rob was viciously bullied by people in his school and other people in the community because he wasn’t white. However, in the movie, the only “racism” that Rob experiences as a child is he gets hostile stares from white people who look at him as if he’s some type of alien.
Rob is very close to his adoptive sister Carmen (played by Tijan Marei), who has to tell underage Rob that he’s not related to Boney M, a group that he greatly admires and is one of the few black German entertainment acts that he sees on TV. Carmen is also the one who tells Rob that his biological father is an American military soldier who had a short-lived relationship with Rob’s biological mother. Years later, after Milli Vanilli became famous, this biological father—Andrew Harrison (played by Cornell Adams)—makes his identity known.
“Girl You Know It’s True” then fast-forwards to 1986 and 1987 in Munich, during the early years of Rob and Fab’s relationship. The movie depicts Rob and Fab (a recent immigrant from France) meeting at an audition to be backup dancers for a pop singer. The two young men instantly become friends and move in together, as they struggle to make it in showbiz. Rob is depicted as the one who came up with the idea for them to get their famous long braids because he said that all superstar music artists have well-known hairstyles.
As Rob and Fab live in obscurity and poverty in Munich, successful music producer Frank is doing an interview with a magazine journalist named Ingrid Segieth (played by Bella Dayne), who asks him if the rumors are true that the members of Boney M aren’t the real singers of Boney M songs. Frank gets defensive and tells Ingrid that no other media outlets have questioned Boney M’s validity. Ingrid then goes from interrogating Frank to asking if she can work for him.
The movie shows what happened in real life: Ingrid, whose nickname was Milli, became Frank’s lover and his most trusted assistant. What’s fabricated or exaggerated for the movie is a scene where Ingrid sees Rob and Fab dancing at a Munich nightclub and tells Frank about this charismatic and good-looking duo. Frank then invites Rob and Fab to his studio. More likely in real life, Frank found out about Rob and Fab through some of the local media exposure that the two pals were getting as dancers and DJs.
During this first meeting, Rob and Fab assume that Frank is interested in them to be singers for his next album project. But, as the movie depicts, Frank had already planned (with Ingrid being in on the plan from the beginning) for this album to be recorded by other singers, while Rob and Fab would be “front men” impersonators because of Rob’s and Fab’s good looks. “Girl You Know It’s True” makes it look like Frank thought of the name Milli Vanilli because it was a combination of Ingrid’s nickname Milli and because she was eating vanilla ice cream during this first jubilant meeting where Fab and Rob agreed to work with Frank.
All of the real singers of the first Milli Vanilli album were from the United States: Brad Howell (played by David Mayonga), who did the vocals that Rob Pilatus lip synced in public; Charles Shaw and John Davis (played by Samuel S. Franklin), who did the vocals that Morvan lip synced in public; and twin sisters Linda Rocco (played by Ramona Gianvecchio) and Jodie Rocco (played by Bonita Lubliner), who both did backup vocals on the album. In real life, Shaw was the first to go public (in 1988) about Rob Pilatus and Morvan not singing on Milli Vanilli’s first album. But by Shaw’s own admission, Farian paid him off, and Shaw retracted his statements at the time. Shaw (who is mentioned but not depicted by an actor in “Girl You Know It’s True) was replaced by Davis.
In “Girl You Know It’s True,” Frank offers to pay for everything to develop the career of Milli Vanilli. But when Fab takes a closer look at the contract and sees that he and Rob will not be singers on the album, Fab is hesitant to sign the contract and thinks an attorney should look at it. By contrast, Rob is eager to sign the contract because he wants to be a star as quickly as possible. Rob tells Fab that they can convince Frank to have Rob and Fab sing vocals on the second Milli Vanilli album.
Many people watching the movie know the rest: Milli Vanilli’s 1989 debut album, “Girl You Know It’s True,” was an instant smash, first in Europe (where the album was released in 1988, under the title “All or Nothing,” with a slightly different track listing) and then in several other continents. As depicted in the biopic, Rob and Fab relocate to Los Angeles, where they get caught up in a “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll” lifestyle. (“Girl You Know It’s True” was filmed in Los Angeles, Munich and Berlin.) Rob is shown as the Milli Vanilli member who became seriously addicted to drugs (especially cocaine) and living a hedonistic lifestyle.
In the movie “Girl You Know It’s True,” Milli Vanilli’s manager Benny Dorn (played by Ashley Downs) is depicted as an opportunist who knew about the singing scam, but only after the first Milli Vanilli album was recorded. In real life, Sandy Gallin (who died in 2017, at the age of 76) was Milli Vanilli’s manager at the height of Milli Vanilli’s fame. It can be assumed that Gallin’s name was changed for this movie for legal reasons.
Gallin’s real-life assistant at the time was Todd Headlee (played by Graham Rogers), who is portrayed as someone who spent more time with Rob and Fab than anyone else in Milli Vanilli’s Los Angeles entourage. There’s also a vocal coach named Lisa (played by Natasha Loring) who is part of Milli Vanilli’s Los Angeles-based team. Todd and Lisa are portrayed as enthusiastic employees who did not know about the lip syncing scam until it could no longer be kept a secret. Even so, Lisa noticed early on that Rob’s and Fab’s heavy European accents and real vocals didn’t match what was heard on the recorded songs that were released under the Milli Vanilli name.
Kevin Liles (played by SteVonté Hart), one of the writers of the “Girl You Know It’s True” song, has a small role in the movie, which depicts Liles’ early career in the music industry, before he went on to high-ranking positions at Def Jam, Island Def Jam and Warner Music Group. Liles is one of the executive producers of the movie “Girl You Know It’s True.” As shown in the movie, he and the co-writers of the song “Girl You Know It’s True” were involved in a copyright legal dispute with Frank, who initially used the song for Milli Vanilli without permission.
Throughout the Milli Vanilli fraud, Frank is depicted in “Girl You Know It’s True” as a tyrannical control freak who was paranoid about people finding out about the scam and who would fly into rages if he thought he was losing control over Rob and Fab. For example, Frank is furious about Rob and Fab’s move to Los Angeles because Frank won’t be able to supervise them as much as he would if Rob and Fab stayed in Germany. Ingrid is depicted as a cheerful accomplice who repeatedly describes this scam as being one big “art project.”
Milli Vanilli was signed to Arista Records in the United States. In the “Girl You Know It’s True” movie, Clive Davis (who was president of Arista at the time) is not portrayed by any actor, but he is mentioned as someone who knew about the fraud all along. The record company executives who appear briefly in the movie are depicted as soulless and greedy corporate types. “Girl You Know It’s True” undoubtedly portrays Frank as the person who is most to blame for the scandal, but the movie lets a lot of other people off the hook (such as Segieth and record company executives) too easily.
As for the performances in the movie, Njie is more convincing as Rob than Ben Ali is as Fab. That’s because Njie has a credible German accent, while Ben Ali’s French accent isn’t very consistent. Still, Njie and Ben Ali have very good chemistry together and effectively portray the brotherly bond between Rob and Fab. There’s also some comic relief in the film when Rob and Fab bicker over petty things, or when something ridiculous happens that can only happen to people living an over-the-top celebrity lifestyle.
“Girl You Know It’s True” checks all the boxes of well-known moments in Milli Vanilli’s career. These moments include the notorious Club MTV concert on July 21, 1989, when the on-stage recording malfunctioned and Milli Vanilli cut short the concert in embarrassment; Milli Vanilli winning the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in February 1990; and Milli Vanilli returning the Grammy Award in shame at a press conference held in November 1990, after Milli Vanilli was exposed as lip syncers. Farian had gone public with the scam in a separate press conference held six days earlier because Milli Vanilli had threatened to go public first if Farian didn’t let Rob Pilatus and Morvan sing on Milli Vanilli’s second album.
Although “Girl You Know It’s True” has plenty of these expected career moments of Milli Vanilli, what’s missing from the movie is a deeper sense of who these people were apart from their music careers. It’s mentioned briefly that Frank Farian grew up in poverty, but there is no information on what led up to him becoming such a big fraudster in the music business. Likewise, Rob and Fab are hardly shown interacting with anyone who isn’t making money off of them or who isn’t a hanger-on. It might be the movie’s way of showing how empty a celebrity’s life can be without real friends or family for emotional support. But it still comes across as a little too superficial, when lesser-known aspects of Milli Vanilli’s lives could have been explored in this movie.
Milli Vanilli’s post-scandal existence is rushed in at the end, with no depiction of Rob and Fab’s real-life failed attempted comeback under the stage name Rob & Fab. There’s a brief portrayal of Rob’s downward spiral, including his three-month prison stint in 1996, for assault, vandalism and attempted robbery. Ingrid is shown asking Frank for money to help Rob with these legal problems, and she is the one to take Rob home when he is released from prison. As it stands, “Girl You Know It’s True” competently follows the usual celebrity biopic formula. This movie could’ve gotten so many things wrong in telling this real-life story, but “Girl You Know It’s True” gets things mostly right.
Vertical released “Girl You Know It’s True” in select U.S. cinemas on August 9, 2024. The movie was released in Germany on December 21, 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place in 2006 (with some flashbacks to 2005), the dramatic film “A Place Called Silence” (a remake of the 2022 movie of the same name) features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A serial killer goes after people who are connected in some way to a mute girl in high school.
Culture Audience: “A Place Called Silence” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and the original version of the movie, but this remake is full of plot holes and unrealistic scenarios with substandard performances.
Janine Chang in “A Place Called Silence” (Photo courtesy of Niu Vision Media)
“A Place Called Silence” is a very unnecessary remake of the 2022 thriller of the same name. In this story about a serial killer whose targets include teenage bullies, the 2024 sloppily edited version of the movie has ridiculous plot twists with exaggerated acting. In fact, the last 30 minutes of the two-hour “A Place Called Silence” could be considered an unintentional comedy because of how the movie expects viewers to believe all the idiotic things that are on display, like a parody of a bad movie.
Sam Quah wrote and directed both versions of “A Place Called Silence.” The 2022 version takes place in Malaysia. The 2024 version takes place in China. The timeline for the 2024 version of “A Place Called Silence” is set mostly in 2006 in an unnamed Chinese city, but there are some flashbacks to 2005.
Near the beginning of 2024’s “A Place Called Silence,” it’s mentioned that the city was devastated by a tsunami that took place in 2005. Much of the movie’s plot is centered on Jing Hwa High School, a school for girls. The beginning of the movie shows the school having a memorial assembly to pay tribute to the school’s students and employees who died in the tsunami.
It isn’t long before it’s shown that the school has a clique of about six to eight “mean girl” bullies. These bullies have taken a mute student named Chen Yutong, nicknamed Tong (played by Wang Shengdi), to an empty classroom, where they have hung her up on a wall and are smearing gel glue all over her face and body. The leader of these hateful girls is Zhong Xiaoqing (played by Gu Mingyi), who seems to be the one to come up with the plans to inflict terror on the bullies’ victims.
A Jing Hwa High School teacher named Mrs. Zhang (played by Cheng Mo), who is unaware of this particular physical assault, is very concerned about Tong’s safety because she knows that Tong has gotten verbal bullying by this “mean girl” clique. Mrs. Zhang tells the school’s principal Au Ziumin (played by Liu Xiaohai), who doesn’t seem to want to get involved. He thinks that any bullying that’s going on is harmless teasing that isn’t serious enough to punish the bullies.
Tong manages to escape from the bullies who attacked her. However, three of the girls (including Xiaoqing) involved in this attack go missing. The movie shows that the serial killer, who wears a hooded raincoat, has been killing these “mean girls,” one by one, usually by bludgeoning them to death with a sledgehammer. The killer’s identity is revealed in the last third of the movie, but that revelation still has some twists.
Tong is an only child who lives with her widowed mother Li Han (played by Janine Chang) in a shabby apartment building. Han is very protective of Tong, but Han has some secrets that some people might or might not know. One of the reasons why Tong is taunted at school is because Han used to be an accountant, but Han now works as a janitor at the school. It’s explained in the movie why this family has had a change in financial fortunes.
Some other characters play pivotal roles in the movie’s plot, which gets annoyingly convoluted as it lurches along to a messy ending. Dai Guodong (played by Francis Ng) is the police detective in charge of the murder investigation. Lin Zaifu (played by Eric Wang) is an introverted former school employee whose teenage daughter Lin Huijun (played by Xu Jiao, seen in flashback scenes) died in 2005. Mrs. Xu (played by Cai Ming) is the shrill and meddling landlord for Huijun.
“A Place Called Silence” could have been a much better movie if it didn’t try to cram in so many “surprises” in the last 30 minutes of the film. The action scenes—particularly those involving a car chase and kidnapping—are poorly conceived and look very fake. Even worse is a suicide scene that looks extremely phony and exploitative.
There’s a mid-credits scene that’s supposed to add the “shocking” reveals in the plot, but it comes across as pretentious and contrived. “A Place Called Silence” tries to have artsy cinematography, but a stylish-looking movie is just superficial if the story is garbage, the film editing is incoherent, and the performances are not impressive. The 2024 version of “A Place Called Silence” is yet another remake that didn’t make improvements from the original film and instead made things worse.
Niu Vision Media released “A Place Called Silence” in select U.S. cinemas on August 2, 2024. The movie was released in China on July 3, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in 1918 in California, the comedy/drama “Coup!” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one African American and one person of Arab heritage) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A mysterious con man assumes the identify of a dead chef to infiltrate and cause havoc in the household of a wealthy, politically progressive journalist.
Culture Audience: “Coup!” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and comedies/dramas that poke fun at social class snobbery.
Sarah Gadon and Billy Magnussen in “Coup!” (Photo courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment)
As a satire about social class biases, “Coup!” loses its edge in the last 15 minutes. However, this comedy/drama (about a con artist who works as a chef for a wealthy family in 1918) has enough entertaining performances to keep it mostly afloat. “Coup!” had its world premiere at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival.
Written and directed by Joseph Schuman and Austin Stark, “Coup!” has a concept that’s familiar in stories about con artists who set out to fool and possibly steal from rich people: The fraudster usually targets wealthy people not just for monetary reasons but also to prove that these wealthy targets aren’t as smart as they think they are. Money can’t buy class, but the con artists also want to show that money can’t buy intelligence.
“Coup!” never reveals the real name or personal history of the middle-aged con artist who’s at the center of the story. In the beginning of the movie, the con artist (played by Peter Sarsgaard) is seen in a residential room where a professional chef named Floyd Monk is seated at a table. Floyd (who’s about the same age as the con artist and slightly resembles him) is dead, with a bullet wound on the left side of his head. There’s a gun on the table.
The con artist mutters some comments in a tone that sounds as if he knows Floyd and thinks it’s a shame that Floyd had to die this way. The con artist then takes Floyd’s photo identification and other personal items, with the intent to assume Floyd’s identity. For the rest of the movie, this fraudster is only known as Floyd Monk. Was Floyd’s death a suicide, accident, or murder? The answer is revealed toward the end of the movie.
The fake Floyd Monk is then seen going to a mansion in a remote wooded area on a small fictional island called Egg Island, which is located somewhere in California. (“Coup!” was actually filmed in New Jersey.) The fake Floyd goes to this mansion because he knows the real Floyd was supposed to start a new job as chef for the family who lives at the mansion.
The mansion is owned by a politically liberal, muckraking journalist named Jay Horton (played by Billy Magnussen), a wealthy heir who lives in the mansion with his socially tolerant wife Julie Horton (played by Sarah Gadon) and their two somewhat spoiled children: Molly (played by Willa Dunn) and Tom (played by Callum Vinson), who are very close in age to each other. Molly is about 5 years old, while Tom is about 4 years old.
Also living on the property are three servants, who have their own living quarters, separate from the mansion. Catherine McMurray (played by Kristine Nielsen) is an authoritative governess, who sees herself as the enforcer of the household’s strict rules. Ruth Tidwell (played by Skye P. Marshall) is an obedient maid. Kaan (played by Faran Tahir) is a loyal chauffeur.
During this period of time in 1918, World War I is still happening (but would end in November of that year), and the world was affected by a pandemic of influenza, also known the Spanish flu. In scenes that will remind people of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns of 2020, there is paranoia about getting infected, as people wear masks and are under strict quarantine. In the beginning of the story, isolated Egg Island hasn’t been affected by the influenza outbreak, but that situation will eventually change.
Jay expects Julie to share the same political beliefs as he does. Jay wants his family to be known as vegetarians, pacificists and “conscientious objectors” to World War I. In multiple scenes in the movie (including early on in the story), Jay is seen typing angry letters to the editor of a newspaper called the Progressive Tribune. In one of the letters, Jay rants that the president of the United States is focused on the war in Europe, when the “true killer” is “the flu from Spain.”
Jay believes that America’s employers aren’t giving the average employees enough protection from influenza. “The real victims are the workers,” Jay says in one of his letter rants. Much of the comedy in “Coup!” derives from how Jay seems to always want to portray himself as an advocate for working-class people, yet he doesn’t necessarily apply those same preachy ideals in his own household when it comes to his own employees.
It’s eventually revealed that Jay has ambitions to run for governor of California. Jay admires and is envious of progressive liberal Upton Sinclair (played by Fisher Stevens), who is mentioned several times in the movie. People who know about California’s history will know probably know about Upton Sinclair’s involvement in California politics and Sinclair’s candidacy for governor of California.
When the fake Floyd meets Jay for the first time, there’s immediately a rivalry to see which one can outwit the other. Jay is somewhat suspicious that Floyd has arrived a day later than expected. Floyd makes an excuse that there was a mixup with his travel paperwork. When the fake Floyd shows the real Floyd’s photo ID, the real Floyd’s photo is blurry enough for the fake Floyd to convince anyone who sees the ID that he’s the one in the photo.
Jay desperately needs a chef for the household, so he puts his suspicions on hold for a while. Floyd immediately charms Julie. However, Catherine is a lot less impressed and notices that this new chef doesn’t like to follow rules and seems unfamiliar with cooking in a kitchen. The con artist is able to talk his way out of people questioning his qualifications and experience.
It doesn’t take long for Floyd to start to erode the authority that Jay wants to impose in his household. First, Floyd befriends Ruth and Kaan by planting ideas in their heads that they should demand raises and better living conditions. When it’s reported that influenza has spread to Egg Island, the household goes under quarantine, thereby making grocery trips or any trips outside the house more of a hazard. Through manipulations and some sabotage, the fake Floyd uses this quarantine to his advantage.
Publicly, Jay has political views that could be considered socialist. Privately, Jay has an attitude that’s very similar to the elitist capitalism that he likes to rant against in his writing. The mansion’s swimming pool is symbolic of the social class divides. Jay has a rule that the servants cannot use the swimming pool, but Floyd breaks that rule anyway by swimming in the pool in front of Jay.
The quarantine causes tensions to rise in the household and the power struggles to escalate between Jay and Floyd. Without giving away too many details, it’s enough to say that at one point, the household experiences a food shortage. And that’s a problem when Floyd thinks the family should start eating meat that can be obtained by hunting wildlife in the woods, while Jay wants the family to stick to their vegetarian principles.
Adding to the growing discord in the household, Julie seems to be attracted to Floyd’s rebellious spirit. Late one night, Julie sees Floyd, Ruth and Kaan having small party in the mansion, where they’re playing cards and drinking alcohol, which is against Jay’s rules. Instead of scolding these employees, Julie asks to join them instead.
“Coup!” has a tendency to get repetitive in making its point about how politically liberal rich people who think they’re enlightened and progressive can actually be extremely hypocritical. The biggest flaw in the movie is not enough is known about the con artist to really understand his motivations for this elaborate fraud. At a certain point in the story, it’s obvious he’s not playing these con games for the money. Why is he putting himself at risk for this fraud? What are his personal stakes? Don’t expect “Coup!” to answer to those questions.
The performances in “Coup!” are commendable but not particularly outstanding. Making the protagonist (the con artist) such an enigma is a big risk that doesn’t quite pay off in the movie and at times becomes frustrating if viewers want a substantial reason to care about the protagonist. Some viewers will also have a problem with how a certain showdown ends and is dealt with in the story. In addition to watchable performances, “Coup!” has very good cinematography, production design and costume design. It’s the type of film that is perfectly fine to watch to pass some time, but it isn’t an award-worthy movie that’s destined to be a classic.
Greenwich Entertainment released “Coup!” in select U.S. cinemas on August 2, 2024. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on September 3, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the late 2010s in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the comedy/drama “Kneecap” (a biopic of the rap group of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A schoolteacher and two hoodlums become unlikely musical partners in Kneecap, a rap trio that causes controversy for its pro-Irish, anti-British rhetoric.
Culture Audience: “Kneecap” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and biopics about rebellious underdogs.
Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh and JJ Ó Dochartaigh in “Kneecap” (Photo by Ryan Kernaghan/Sony Pictures Classics)
The comedy/drama “Kneecap” is partly a musical biopic, partly a call for Irish pride, and partly a celebration of rebellious hedonism. The members of Kneecap credibly portray versions of themselves. This isn’t the type of movie where it looks like the non-professional actors are struggling to keep up with the professional actors. This is a movie where everyone performs in a seamless and realistic way that might make some people squirm but it will be hard for viewers to look away.
Written and directed by Rich Peppiatt, “Kneecap” had its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival (where it won the NEXT Audience Award) and later premiered at the 2024 SXSW Film &TV Festival and the 2024 Tribeca Festival. The movie (which takes place in the late 2010s in Belfast, Northern Ireland) is an origin story of Kneecap but also a ragtag history lesson on the fight for the United Kingdom to make Irish an official language in Northern Ireland.
The voiceover narrator of “Kneecap” is Mo Chara (the stage name of Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, who plays a version of himself in the movie), who is heard telling a wild story something that happened in the youth of his best friend/musical partner Móglaí Bap (also known as Naoise Ó Cairealláin, who plays a version of himself in the movie). According to Mo Chara, the baptism of Móglaí Bap happened outdoors in a wooded area at night.
Móglaí Bap’s parents Arló Ó Cairealláin (played by Michael Fassbender) and Dolores Ó Cairealláin (played by Simone Kirby) are caught off guard when a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) helicopter suddenly appears in the air to take Arló into custody? Why? Because Arló is an outlaw Irish Republican Army (IRA) member, who is considered to be a terrorist.
It’s later explained that Arló abandoned the family and went into hiding. He didn’t contact Móglaí Bap/Naoise and Dolores for years. Eventually, Arló was presumed dead and a funeral service/memorial was held for him. There’s a running joke in the movie about Arló’s mysterious disappearance. Chara says of Móglaí Bap/Naoise’s chaotic childhood: “I mean, what fucking chance did the wee boy have?”
“Kneecap” has a lot of surrealistic imagery that’s meant to be a reflection of the drug-addled perspective of the Kneecap protagonists. The movie has a constant stream of scenes where drug abuse is either mentioned or shown. After a while, it gets a tad annoying because “Kneecap” over-relies on drug jokes and comes dangerously close to making it overtake the story when there are much more interesting aspects to these characters.
As kids at about 7 or 8 years old, Móglaí Bap/Naoise (played by Aidan McCaughey) and Mo Chara/Liam (played by Cillian Kernan) irst come into contact with drugs when they’re on a street and a drug dealer, who’s being chased by police on foot, throws a bag of marijuana at bystanders Naoise and Liam to get rid of this evidence.
The police run by without knowing that the two boys now have this drug dealer’s marijuana stash. As a prank, altar boys Liam and Naoise spiked the communion juice with this marijuana at their church. An adult Liam then smugly says in a voiceover: “Next Sunday, the congregation doubled.”
As young adults, Liam and Naoise are drug-abusing partiers and small-time drug dealers who spend a lot of time in nightclubs. Naoise and Liam are very proud of their Northern Irish heritage and prefer to speak Irish instead of English. The two pals are at a nightclub that gets raided. Naoise (who is high on ketamine) escapes. Liam (who’s high on Ecstasy) gets arrested.
Liam is brought in for interrogation at a police station, which has provided an Irish-language interpreter named JJ Ó Dochartaigh (playing a version of himself), who has a day job as music teacher at a local high school. During this interrogation, JJ notices that Liam has a notebook, which has handwritten lyrics as well as a sheet of psychedelic drugs. JJ takes the sheet of drugs home with him because he likes to get high too. JJ hides his drug use from his co-workers, his students and his loyal wife Caitlin (played by Fionnuala Flaherty), who still suspects that JJ has secrets.
Liam is eventually released from police custody. When he reunites with Naoise, these two troublemakers continue to raise some hell. While on a street one day, Liam sees some Royal Irish Rangers, a light infantry regiment of the British Army considered to be the enemy of the IRA. Liam insults these Rangers, who then chase him on foot on the street.
JJ happens to be on driving on the same street when he sees that Liam is in trouble. JJ comes to the rescue by giving Liam a car ride to escape from the Rangers. They soon meet up with Naoise. JJ tells Naoise and Liam that he saw the lyrics in Liam’s notebook and thinks that Liam has real talent. JJ suggests that they make rap music to the lyrics in the Irish language.
At first, Naoise and Liam are skeptical and laugh at the idea because they think the chances are slim to not that an Irish-language rap act can make it big. But when JJ mentions that he has a small recording studio that Naoise and Liam can use, Naoise and Liam take up JJ on his offer, and the three of them end up forming a musical group called Kneecap.
JJ becomes Kneecap’s DJ (with the stage name DJ Próvai) and wears a ski mask when performing with Kneecap in public, because he doesn’t want people who know he’s a schoolteacher to find out that he’s been moonlighting in this radical rap group. Kneecap’s recording sessions are drug-fueled binges where they write songs and make music in between using drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, Ecstasy and ketamine.
“Kneecap” has a subplot about Liam getting sexually involved with a domineering and sassy young woman named Georgia (played by Jessica Reynolds), who likes to act as if she doesn’t really like Liam. She uses light S&M techniques on him during their sexual encounters to show him that she’s the one who’s in charge in their relationship. Liam is relatively inexperienced and tolerates it all because he falls in love with Georgia.
And what a coincidence: Georgia’s mother is Detective Ellis (played by Josie Walker), the same officer who’s leading the investigation to find Arló and to bust the drug dealing of Naoise and Liam. Detective Ellis doesn’t believe that Arló is really dead. And neither should viewers of “Kneecap,” since there’s no way a movie like this would have a star like Fassbender and just have him do a few flashbacks scenes as a cameo. The truth of what happened to Arló is eventually revealed in “Kneecap.”
“Kneecap” is about as “in your face” as it gets when it comes to depicting the sex, drugs and hip-hop lifestyle if Kneecap. There’s also a subplot about Naoise and Liam clashing with members of an activist group called Radical Republicans Against Drugs. A lot of it is played for laughs and should not be take too seriously. However, some viewers might be offended if they think the movie makes this hedonism look glamorous. If anything, the movie probably tones down or leaves out a lot of naughty things that really go on behind the scenes with Kneecap.
As for the music, whether or not a viewer likes rap, the performances (especially on stage) are electrifying. (Kneecap songs on the “Kneecap” soundtrack are “Belfast,” “C.E.A.R.T.A.,” “H.O.O.D.,” “Amach Anocht,” “Sick in the Head,” “Better Way to Live (featuring Grian Chatten), “Guilty Conscience,” “Thart Agus Thart” and “Parful.”) Even the admitted hooligans of Kneecap have a purpose that’s bigger than just getting wasted on drugs. They see themselves as staunch warriors of Irish pride who advocate for adding the Irish language as an official language in Northern Ireland instead of having only English as Northern Ireland’s official language. The story of “Kneecap” takes place during the controversies of turning this initiative into the law.
The slapstick comedy and serious political commentary don’t always blend well together in “Kneecap.” However, the principal cast members’ performances work quite well with the movie’s often madcap tone. Fassbender, who doesn’t do a lot of comedies, looks like he’s having a lot of fun in this role as a deadbeat dad who think he’s made sacrifices for a noble cause. “Kneecap” is perhaps most relatable to a specific audience who is at least familiar with Northern Irish culture. However, the movie can also be recommended viewing for anyone who likes bawdy comedies about “underdogs” who find a way to triumph against an oppressive system.
Sony Pictures Classics released “Kneecap” in U.S. cinemas on August 2, 2024. The movie was released in Ireland on August 8, 2024.
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.
