Heads of State

Heads of State

Posted on July 1, 2025 at 6:16 pm

B-
Lowest Recommended Age: Middle School
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of strong violence/action, language and some smoking
Profanity: Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness: Extended peril, violence, and mayhem, with disturbing images. Characters use guns, knives, martial arts, and bombs. There is a plane crash. Characters sacrifice themselves. A lot of people killed for a PG-13.
Diversity Issues: Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters: July 2, 2025
Date Released to DVD: July 2, 2025
Copyright 2025 Amazon MGM Studios

“Heads of State” is an action comedy starring John Cena as Hollywood action star turned US President Will Derringer, Idris Elba as military turned British Prime Minister Sam Clarke, and Prianka Chopra-Jonas as British super-spy and lover of silly puns, Noel. Will is a friendly, optimistic guy who may not know much about politics or policy but brings his skills as a communicator to the White House. He has high approval ratings from American voters. And some of the movie’s best jokes are the titles and descriptions of his blockbuster movie franchise, where he is referred to as “the venom in denim.”

This does not impress Sam, whose approval ratings are sinking, and who believes, understandably, that the job requires seriousness, thorough study, and substance rather than popularity. Sam says that Will still hasn’t figured out the difference between a press conference and a junket to promote a film. “You know your lines but you’re not believable in the part,” Sam says.

This is, of course, just the right set-up for antagonists-to-BFFS on a journey, a relationship forged by common enemies. With three powerhouse performers so well cast for comedy and action, the movie is guaranteed to be entertaining, despite predictable twists. For me, the balance tipped too far into the carnage for an action comedy, with dozens and dozens of anonymous bad guys mowed down, and the comedy not as sharp as it should be. On the other hand, there are a lot of cool locations, the action scenes are exciting, Jack Quaid shows up midway though (and in a mid-credits scene) to liven things up, so all in all a pleasant streaming time-waster.

It begins with the real-life annual food fight, La Tomatina in Buñol, Spain,  with participants hurling tomatoes at each other. Noel is under cover as a television journalist covering the event, but she is really there to track down an international arms dealer named Victor Gradov (Paddy Considine). But Gradov is clever and has decoys to distract them. Things go badly. Sam’s intelligence briefing reports that they have all been killed.

Will is arriving to meet with Sam before they go to a NATO meeting with other world leaders. The aides to both men urge them to try to be cordial, but the always cheery Will bears a grudge over Sam’s support for his opponent and Sam has no respect for Will’s superficial grasp of the issues. The aides decide that Will’s giving Sam a ride to the meeting on Air Force One will be a way to show good will and solidarity.

But Gradov’s thugs have taken over the plane. It crashes and explodes and the two heads of state are assumed to be dead. They survived, thanks to the sacrifices of the Secret Service. In order to make sure they are not attacked again they have to stay off the grid and walk through Belarus.

There are various encounters along the way, with fight scenes to determine who is “gym strong” vs. “strong strong.” The highlight, as noted above, is Jack Quaid as a US operative in a safe house, whose character deserves a movie of his own.

Parents should know that this film has a lot of mayhem for a PG-13, with many characters killed, mostly but not all anonymous bad guys. There are guns, knives, martial arts, explosions, plane crashes, and chases. Characters use some strong language.

Family discussion: What were Sam’s and Will’s most valuable qualities as world leaders? How could they improve to be better?

If you like this, try: “My Fellow Americans,” with Jack Lemmon and James Garner, and this year’s “G20” with Viola Davis and the wildly deranged “Rumours” from director Guy Madden

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Bride Hard

Bride Hard

Posted on June 18, 2025 at 5:51 pm

B-
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: Rated R for sexual references and some violence
Profanity: Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking and drunkenness
Violence/ Scariness: Extended peril and violence, assault weapons, grenades, knives, explosives, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: June 20, 2025

The concept almost sells itself: “Die Hard” but if Bruce Willis was a bridesmaid. The problem with a concept that almost sells itself is executing a film that fully delivers on it. “Bride Hard” is more concept than delivery, but it is still silly fun.

Copyright 2025 Magenta Light

“Pitch Perfect” series co-stars Rebel Wilson and Anna Camp star as childhood best friends Sam and Betsy. 30 years after Sam moved away (to Australia, apparently, given her accent), and they have remained close, though not been in touch as often as Betsy would like. Now Betsy is engaged, and Sam is her Maid of Honor and in charge of her bachelorette party, which has been moved at the last minute to Paris. Sam has to leave in the middle of the celebration due to her job, which is not, as she tells everyone, a cat show entrepreneur, but a spy.

While Betsy and her other bridesmaids are drinking with the male strippers, Sam has gone rogue. Instead of spying on the bad guy who is receiving a bio-weapon, she goes after him to retrieve it, showing us that she is impulsive, dedicated, fearless, and extremely good at improvising tactics based on what is available. Next stop, the wedding, at a private island off the coast of Georgia. Betsy’s fiancé Ryan (Sam Huntington) is from a very wealthy family and the island is where they have the whisky distillery that has been in the family for hundreds of years. Betsy, disappointed in Sam’s disappearance in Paris, has now made Ryan’s sour sister Virginia (Anna Chlumsky) her Maid of Honor. The other bridesmaids are pregnant Zoe (Gigi Zumbado), here-to-get-laid-and-drunk Lydia (Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph, the highlight of the movie).

And then the guys with guns arrive, and if this is sounding a bit like Jennifer Lopez’s “Shotgun Wedding” (which, coincidentally, was directed by “Pitch Perfect’s” Jason Moore), you have the right idea.

Kurt (Stephen Dorff) takes everyone hostage, and this gives Sam the chance to save the day. There are moments where the concept comes together, as when Sam uses plugged-in curling irons as nunchucks, and when the bridesmaids join together to give Sam backup. Stephen Dorff gives one of his best performances as the menacing leader of the bad guys. The process for getting what the bad guys came for is dragged out to allow more time for shooting and stunts. That may be a plus for action fans, but I found it slowed the pace of the film. Wilson is game, but her signature understated delivery does not work as effectively in the scenes focusing on the friendship with Betsy, both under strain and still vibrant. What works best is the interaction of the bride and bridesmaids, whether they are getting snockered, annoying each other (Chlumsky is on point as the competitive rich girl), or just engaging. in BFF-iness. As silly as it is, seeing them all come together to support the bride and go after the killers, beats watching the gift opening at a bridal shower.

Parents should know that this film includes extended action-style peril and violence with assault weapons, grenades, explosives, knives, and other weapons. Many supporting characters are killed and a main character is wounded. Characters drink and get tipsy and use strong language. There are crude sexual references, mostly humorous.

Family discussion: What profession would you pick as your cover if you could not tell people what your job was?

If you like this, try: “Shotgun Wedding” and the “Pitch Perfect” movies

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The Phoenician Scheme

The Phoenician Scheme

Posted on May 29, 2025 at 5:30 pm

C
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violent content, bloody images, some sexual material, nude images, and smoking throughout
Profanity: Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking and smoking
Violence/ Scariness: Graphic violence with disturbing images, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: May 30, 2025
Copyright 2025 Focus Features

You say you want to see a very smart, darkly comic film about the daughter of an unscrupulous businessman who before the story begins has joined a religious order but over the course of the story learns that she can do more to help people in his secular world and becomes drawn to a young professor? Then I suggest you watch the brilliant film “Major Barbara,” starring Wendy Hiller and a young Rex Harrison and with a very young Deborah Kerr, based on the classic play by George Bernard Shaw.

Or, if you would like to see a movie that skitters along the surface of some of those themes without having much to say about them but looks gorgeous, in fact so exquisite that if it starts to drag, which it does, we wish the actors would get out of the way so we could better absorb the beauty of the settings. In other words, we’re in the bento box movie world of Wes Anderson.

What bothers me third-most about Wes Anderson films is the way the characters speak the mildly arcane dialogue in constant near-robotic deadpan. What bothers me second-most is that the dialogue delivered in monotone is not just mildly arcane but pretentiously so, as though the twee-ness indicates both comic sensibility and deeper meaning. There can be humor in saying extreme things with a flat delivery, as though you’re politely asking to pass the butter, can be funny, but not always and not for a whole movie. What bothers me most is the way many people emperor’s-new-clothes the films, believing that the humor and deeper meaning they discern is somehow invisible to the less sophisticated instead of non-existent.

Benicio Del Toro plays Zsa-zsa Korda, a wealthy, powerful, and corrupt businessman, who says his two imperatives are “Who could lick who (or whom)?” (measuring success by beating the competition) and “If something gets in your way, flatten it” (the ends justify even scorched-earth means).

There are those who have similar guiding principles, or lack of principles, and therefore, as we see in the first scene, when an explosion on Korda’s airplane blows a big hole in the hull, and also in one of his aides, slicing his top half from his bottom half. Korda then goes into the cockpit and fires his pilot, in both senses of the word, dismissing him from employment and jettisoning him via ejector seat. Korda survives the crash landing with injuries. He knows more murder attempts are coming, and so he reaches out to his daughter Liesel (Mia Threapleton, daughter of Kate Winslet). She is about to take orders as a nun, and throughout the film she wears a snowy white habit, though as it goes on she also sports colorful eye shadow and bright red nail polish. Korda also has nine young sons, some adopted. His only interest in them is the thought that there are so many of them, odds are one will be brilliant.

Anderson’s two most recent films were episodic, like nested dolls. This one is slightly more linear, but still in chapters as Korda visits a series of characters in very different settings played by stars like Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston (as American brothers in college sweatshirts), Scarlett Johansson as Korda’s second cousin and possible future wife, Jeffrey Wright as a ship captain, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Korda’s rival and half-brother. There are various murder attempts (the characters refer to them as assassination attempts, but that seems grandiose for a businessman, even one who is rich and powerful and has done evil things, because the term refers to the killing of an important person for political or religious reasons). And Korda and Liesel are accompanied by a character played by Michael Cera, introduced as a tutor brought on to teach them about insects (do not try to make this tie into anything except the overall anemic randomness that translates to “and then this character appears.” He plays a more important role as the story goes on and is the closest the movie comes to having a bright spot. It’s not that it has style and no substance. It has style and anti-substance.

Other than the settings, of course, which are fabulously imagined and entrancingly detailed. (As always with Anderson, look at the titles and covers of the books the characters read.) The movie might work better with no dialogue, just the visuals and the music.

Parents should know that this movie has a lot of peril and violence with some graphic and disturbing images. The movie includes guns, knives, bombs, fire, plane crashes, and quicksand. Characters are injured and killed, including references to a murdered parent. Characters are corrupt and murderous. they behave badly in business and with family, and they drink and smoke. Characters’ religious beliefs are not meaningful or sincere.

Family discussion: Why does Liesel stay with her father? What does she hope to achieve and how does that change? What do we learn from the names of Korda’s projects? From his mottos?

If you like this, try other Wes Anderson Films, especially “The Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

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Bad Shabbos

Bad Shabbos

Posted on May 23, 2025 at 5:32 pm

B +
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: Not rated
Profanity: Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Alcohol, medication
Violence/ Scariness: Accidental death, some disturbing images
Diversity Issues: A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: June 6, 2025
Copyright 2024 Menemsha Films

The title makes it clear. Like “Bad Teacher,” “Bad Santa,” and “Bad Day at Black Rock,” this is a very dark comedy about an evening that does not go well. And then it goes extremely not well.

There’s a lot of pressure on this Friday night shabbos (Sabbath) family dinner at the home of religiously observant Jewish parents Richard (David Paymer) and Ellen (Kyra Sedgewick). Joining them are their three adult children, David (Jon Bass), Abby (Milana Vayntrub), and Adam (Theo Taplitz). Just about everyone is hiding something or worried about something or lying about something or all of the above.

Abby brings her boyfriend, Benjamin (Ashley Zukerman). She does not want her parents to know that they drove, which is forbidden on the Sabbath. David brings his fiancee, Meg (Meghan Leathers). Richard and Ellen are not happy that Meg is not Jewish, though somewhat mollified because she is studying Judaism with plans to convert. This dinner will be the first time Meg’s Catholic parents from Wisconsin meet David’s family and everyone is concerned about how that is going to go, especially since Meg has not told her parents that she is going to convert. Contributing to the pressure on David and Meg, it seems everyone in town knows about the expectations for this meal. They stop at the legendary Barney Greengrass deli to pick up challah (the braided bread traditionally eaten at Shabbos dinner), where they are waited on by real-life Gary Greengrass, who learned about the meeting of the two sets of parents from Richard. At the apartment building, the affable doorman, Jordan (Wu-Tang’s Method Man, in an irresistibly charming performance) says that “Richie” has told him all about it, and that David’s family is his favorite. Method Man just about steals the film as the ultimate ride or die friend of the family.

The family’s youngest son is fragile, highly sensitive Adam, who does not have a job and still lives with his parents. Richard and Ellen are constantly trying to reassure him that he is doing fine and loved by everyone, but he is only too aware that his family is worried and perhaps a little disappointed. He takes the anti-anxiety psychotropic drug Klonopin, and apparently some other medications as well. It is clear that at least some members of the family are concerned that his behavior might be disturbing for Meg’s parents. He is probably imagining a scene like the one in “Annie Hall,” where Woody Allen’s New York Jewish character meets Diane Keaton’s very Christian midwestern family, and imagines they see him as an Orthodox Hassid.

So, a lot of pressure. And then, as noted, things get very, very bad. As Meg’s parents, John (John Bedford Lloyd) and Beth (Catherine Curtain) are on their way, one of the people in the apartment is accidentally killed, implicating Adam. And then, along the lines of the recent “The Trouble with Jessica,” the group decides not to call an ambulance or the police but somehow cover it up, and the rest of the film is farce.

In “The Trouble with Jessica,” the people at a dinner party decide to cover up a death for selfish reasons. What gives “Bad Shabbos,” a lighter tone is the way the family immediately decides that their priority is protecting a vulnerable person and, of course, not making Meg’s parents think that they are the kind of people who have dead bodies in their apartment. Their logic — and their morality — may be wobbly, but it is hard not to sympathize with them. There is an extremely sweet moment when Meg delivers the d’var torah (a brief discussion of the meaning of a passage from the first five books of the Bible) to demonstrate what she is learning in her class. And it is very funny that the family keeps trying to persuade John and Beth that every unusual action is part of their tradition, expecting that anything Jewish is so unfamiliar to them they will just try to be polite and go along with it.

What makes the film especially engaging is the way it gets the details of a New York Jewish shabbos meal right. The tone of the film may be heightened, exaggerated for comic purposes, but unlike too many other portrayals this film never makes the characters into caricatures and the details are precise and affectionate. It’s very dark, but it is also very funny.

Parents should know that this is a comedy about a dead body and the lies and cover-ups in response to an accident. Characters use some strong language. They drink wine and misuse medication. There is an accident and brief disturbing images. A character struggles with mental illness.

Family discussion: Why did the family agree to lie? Were they right?

If you like this, try: “Round and Round”

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The Ballad of Wallis Island

The Ballad of Wallis Island

Posted on April 3, 2025 at 5:40 pm

B +
Lowest Recommended Age: Preschool
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for some language and smoking
Profanity: Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking and smoking
Violence/ Scariness: Reference to sad death
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: March 28, 2025

Come on, admit it. Somewhere secretly stored away in your heart, you know what you would do if you won the lottery. “The Ballad of Wallis Island” is a wonderfully warm and touching film about a male nurse who won the lottery twice. The first time, he and his wife travelled all over the world. The second time, now a widower, he decided to spend it all on a concert for an audience of one, reuniting his all-time favorite musical duo for a performance on a very remote island.

Copyright 2025 Focus

That duo is McGwyer & Mortimer, who last performed together 15 years earlier. Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden, also co-screenwriter and composer of the songs) is cynical and detached. He has no idea what he is getting into, even when it turns out he has to disembark from the small boat bringing him to the island by wading to the shore. He assumes that Charles Heath (co-screenwriter Tim Key) is something like a bell boy come to carry his bags. And Charles’ natural awkwardness, compounded by five years of near-complete solitude and being overwhelmed by the presence of his idol, is no help in clarifying the situation.

Furthermore, Charles has not told Herb that Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) is coming and the performance will be the songs they recorded together. Also, she is married and living in America, where she now sells chutney at the farmer’s market.

Herb needs the £500,000 Charles is paying to make his next solo record. So, even though each new piece of information he learns about the gig is increasingly distressing, he agrees to stick it out, with the exception of the time he tries to leave and finds out that the one boat that takes people to the mainland does not come in bad weather. He is stuck. And then Nell arrives, with her husband, Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen), an easygoing American who spends just long enough at Charles’ house to unsettle Herb and then departs for a birding tour.

This gives Herb and Nell a chance to practice for the upcoming performance. And it gives Charles a chance to go from extremely annoying to less annoying to endearingly annoying.

That’s a tricky challenge for any actor, but Key and Basden created these characters to play to their strengths as performers and it works beautifully. Key shows us that Charles is shy, lonely, sad, and vulnerable. He is not good at showing how much he cares. Basden shows us that Herb is lonely, too, and his songs are everything a character with Herb’s level of success should have in his set list. Mulligan harmonizes beautifully and we see what her experience after the break-up has been when she says what she misses is the music, allowing Herb and us to fill in what she leaves out: she does not miss him. Seeing each other does, though, allow them both to go forward with a better sense of what they have and what they want.

Sian Clifford is terrific as the proprietor of the tiny local store on the island, which never has anything the mainlanders want, like rice to cure a phone that fell in the water (“We have pasta?” she asks hopefully) or a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. We may all wish for a visit to Wallis Island when the movie ends.

Parents should know that this movie has strong language, smoking and drinking, and some mild sexual references.

Family discussion: If you won the lottery, what would you spend the money on? Why is the music so important to Charles? Herb left two things for Charles — what was the reason for each of them? What will Herb do next?

If you like this, try: “Once” and “Sing Street”

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