Love Hurts

Love Hurts

Posted on February 6, 2025 at 12:52 pm

B
Lowest Recommended Age: Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating: Rated R for strong/bloody violence and language throughout
Profanity: Constant very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: None
Violence/ Scariness: Constant peril and violence, many graphic and disturbing images, characters injured and killed, knives, guns, taser, and a lethal straw
Diversity Issues: Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters: February 7, 2025
Copyright 2025 Universal

As the poem goes, in this action/comedy/romance starring two Oscar winners, the character played by Ke Huy Quan is bloody but unbowed. As the old Timex commercial goes, he takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

Quan plays mild-mannered realtor Marvin Gable, whose passion is finding homes for his clients. He tells them how much he loved moving into his home and how he wants to create that same feeling of joy, comfort, and safety for them. When he wins the regional realtor of the year award, it brings him to tears. He says that his work as a realtor has given him meaning

And then Marvin receives a handmade valentine that simply says, “I’m back.” Based on this and so many, many other movies, including the recent “Back in Action,” plus “The Family Plan,” “Spy Kids,” and even Viveca A. Fox in “Kill Bill,” you’d think every block in suburbia has a neighbor with a history as an assassin or spy.

As the realty firm’s Valentine’s Day party goes out outside his office door, Marvin is visited by someone from his past, a poetic hitman known as Raven (Mustafa Shakir, making a strong impression in action scenes and more sensitive moments as well). A local gangster named Knuckles (Daniel Wu), who happens to be Marvin’s brother, Alvin, has sent a bunch of tough guys after Marvin. Knuckles thinks Marvin can lead him to Rose (Ariana DeBose). Marvin was ordered to kill her for stealing from Knuckles, but instead he told Knuckles Rose was dead and let her escape. Knuckles has also received a valentine, and he wants Rose captured alive. He does not know that his top henchman, Merlo (Cam Gigandet) wants Rose dead so she cannot reveal that he was the one stealing from Knuckles.

All of this means that we are in for one bone-crunching literal back-stabbing (and other stabbing of body parts, too, including a hand and an eye) after another, plus lots of kicking, punching, bone-crunching, body part slicing, knives, darts, guns, a taser, a giant fork and spoon (production designer Craig Sandells really nails the Pinterest aesthetic staging of homes for sale), and, surprisingly, a lethal boba tea straw. The poster boasts that this film is from the producers of “Nobody” and “Fright Night,” and Quan says this is a tribute to the Hong Kong action films of Jet Li, Jackie Chan, and his other favorites, which means it is bloodier and more graphic than most action comedies. A lovable character is murdered. So is an innocent bystander who tries to help.

Quan and DeBose have endlessly appealing screen presences and the fight scenes are superbly choreographed. There are many touches of humor and even charm, an assassin finding love with Marvin’s depressed assistant (Lio Tipton), Marvin using his karate chop skills to plump the accent pillows in the house he is showing, some clever use of available objects in the fight, especially when Marvin keeps trying to protect his precious award certificate. But the brutality of the fight scenes is so intense and disturbing that it will outweigh the lighter moments for many viewers.

Parents should know that this movie has constant strong language and constant very graphic and bloody fight scenes with characters badly injured and killed.

Family discussion: What did Marvin like about being a realtor? What does it mean to say “hiding isn’t living?” What creates a “beautiful monster?”

If you like this, try: “Bullet Train”

Related Tags:

 

Action/Adventure Comedy movie review Movies -- format Movies -- Reviews Romance
You’re Cordially Invited

You’re Cordially Invited

Posted on January 30, 2025 at 5:00 pm

C
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: Rated R for language throughout and some sexual references
Profanity: Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking and drunkenness
Violence/ Scariness: Comic peril and violence with some grisly wounds
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: January 31, 2025

There are so many brilliant, funny, wildly talented people in and behind this movie that it is difficult to understand why it is so hard to watch.

Writer/director Nick Stoller is responsible for comedy hits like “Get Him to the Greek,” “The Muppets” (2001), and “Yes Man” along with lesser entries like “Zoolander 2” and “Night School.” He filled the movie with top comedy powerhouses Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon, supported by immensely talented up-and-coming performers Geraldine Viswanathan (“The Broken Hearts Gallery,” “Blockers”), Meredith Hagner (“Bad Monkey”), Jimmy Tatro (“Theater Camp,” the under-appreciated television series “Home Economics”), and solid supporting comic actors Fortune Feimster, Jack McBrayer, and Rory Scovel, plus the very funny stand-up comic Leanne Morgan and Keyla Monterroso Mejia, a standout in this month’s “One of Them Days.”

But one crucial ingredient is missing: the stakes. The entire premise for the film is that a luxury island destination off the coast of Georgia has been double booked. Why? Because the elderly lady who took one of the reservations had a heart attack and died before she could write it down with a working pen in the hotel’s calendar book. Fun, right? It is close to impossible to care which bride gets what services and even more difficult to care about any of the people who do care about it.

There is single dad Jim (Ferrell), whose entire life has revolved around his daughter, Jenni (Viswanathan) since her mother died when she was a little girl. It is supposed to be both funny and endearing that she is his whole world. It is not. For example, the two of them have a “cute” little musical number they like to perform together, apparently without ever having listened to the lyrics. It’s “Islands in the Stream,” which is of course a love song duet with the couple singing about making love.” Ew. Jenni wanted her best friend and maid of honor Heather (Mejia) to make all the plans, so Jim has not confirmed any of the details.

In the other corner is reality television producer Margot (Witherspoon), who does not get along with anyone in her family except for her baby sister Neve (Hagner), who is her favorite person in the world. As a producer and, if this is not redundant, control freak, Margot has made three visits to the island to nail down everything up to and including the canapés. And as someone who feels her family does not appreciate or approve of her, she is ready for battle over every one of those details.

Both have emotional attachments to the venue. Jim and his late wife were married there. Margo and Neve spent summers on the island with their late grandmother. At first they try to get along but very soon this leads to a succession of petty, silly, and mostly dull efforts to obliterate each other, with escalating hijinks that make these people more and more unpleasant. A bride gets hit in the face, leaving a huge bruise. A wedding party gets knocked into the water. There is a sharp contrast between the slapstick and the exquisite music (not “Islands in the Stream” — the soundtrack also features a gorgeous song from Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” and operatic selections). It is a nagging reminder of the gulf between the meaning of the events, which even the couples seem to have overlooked, and the ridiculous pettiness of the conflicts.

Parents should know that this movie has a lot of very strong and crude language with sexual references. There is also a lot of comic peril and violence. No one is badly hurt but we do see some bloody woulds and a bad bruise.

Family discussion: Would you want to attend either of these weddings? What weddings have you been to that you especially enjoyed?

If you like this, try: better movies with the cast including “The Broken Hearts Gallery,” “Stranger than Fiction,” and “Legally Blonde”

Related Tags:

 

Comedy Family Issues movie review Movies -- format Movies -- Reviews Romance
We Live in Time

We Live in Time

Posted on October 17, 2024 at 5:28 pm

B
Lowest Recommended Age: Mature High Schooler
Profanity: Rated R for language, sexuality, and nudity
Alcohol/ Drugs: Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness: Cancer and cancer treatment, sad death of a parent, car accident with injuries
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: October 18, 2024

“We Live in Time” tries so hard to be a better movie that it seems churlish to point out that it just isn’t. The movie goes back and forth between three different time periods in the relationship of guy with soulful eyes and a boring job with a cereal company Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and successful and very creative chef and life force Almut (Florence Pugh). If it was told in a straightforward chronological manner with less talented and charismatic actors, it would just be a soapy second-rate streamer.

Copyright 2024 A24

But it is told elliptically, so at the very beginning of the film, before the “how did they meet” and rest of the backstory, we learn that Almut has cancer for the second time. She knows how brutal the treatment will be and this sets up the existential questions of the movie: will/should she choose quantity of time or quality of time? How will she make the time she has meaningful? This sets the stakes, and then we go back to learn their story. This is where the movie star gloss may keep audiences from noticing that there is less than meets the eye.

Tobias, in something of a daze as he tries to sign divorce papers in a hotel room, leaves in a bathrobe to find a working pen and is hit by a car when he wanders onto a highway. Almut is the driver. This is one of the most contrived and least appealing meet-cutes in movie history, especially factoring in an awkward misunderstanding about Tobias’ marital status.

Almut has her own restaurant, specializing in Bavarian-English fusion cuisine. This is one of the many details in the movie that are intended to be meaningful and/or character-defining but are not. We do not understand why her job is important to her or what it reveals about her, and the same goes for a mid-movie revelation to us and Tobias about something she excelled at in her teens and then left behind. Tobias has a job that seems meaningless to him. We suspect it may be lucrative or demanding, but none of that matters to the story. Nor does his brief description of what happened to the wife he was divorcing the night Almut ran into him. His job in the story is to have his eyes well up with tears and be lop-sidedly supportive of his wife, and Garfield does as much with that as a top-level movie star can do.

The primary indicator signaling the different time periods is Almut’s hairstyle and where they live. We see them meet. We see her first diagnosis, when she is given a choice between lowering the risk of recurrence or keeping the possibility of giving birth. We see her pregnancy and the emotional and hilarious childbirth in an unusual location. And then we go back to what she does after the second diagnosis and the strain it puts on her marriage. But even with the existential questions about what we do with the time we have and how we cope with terrible loss, the movie does not earn its jumbled storyline, which is more confusing than illuminating. More important, the screenplay is not up to the level of its vastly talented and charismatic stars.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong language, explicit sexual references and situations, nudity, cancer and cancer treatment, the sad (offscreen) death of a parent, and a car accident with injuries. Characters drink alcohol.

Family discussion: Almut was faced with two difficult decisions following her diagnoses. What do we learn about her from the choices she made? What did she learn about herself? What does the final scene tell us about Tobias?

If you like this, try: “Love Story,” “Terms of Endearment,” and the stars’ comic book movies, “The Amazing Spider-Man” and “Black Widow

Related Tags:

 

Drama movie review Movies -- format Movies -- Reviews Romance
My Old Ass

My Old Ass

Posted on September 19, 2024 at 5:19 pm

B +
Lowest Recommended Age: Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating: Rated R for language throughout, drug use and sexual material
Profanity: Very strong language used by teens and an adult
Alcohol/ Drugs: Teen drug use
Violence/ Scariness: Reference to sad death, some family conflict
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: September 20, 2024

I don’t think there is a sadder sentence than this one: “I thought I would always be able to go back.”

We all know that feeling, captured memorably in the last act of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” When Emily gets a chance to revisit a day from her early teen years, the mingled joy, nostalgia, and regret for taking every part of that life for granted are overwhelming. Something like that happens to Elliott (a terrific Maisy Stella) on her 18th birthday. Instead of dinner with her family, Elliott (a terrific Maisy Stella) goes off with her friends for a celebration involving some sketchily-sourced mushrooms. While her friend Ro (Kerrie Brooks) dances and her friend Ruthie (Maddie Zeigler) zonks out, Elliott has a conversation with…her future self (Aubrey Plaza), age 39.

Copyright 2024 Indian Paintbrush

If you were 18, what would you ask your future self? (Don’t ask for stock tips; that’s off limits.) If you had a chance to talk to your 19-years-younger self, what advice would you give? If you were 18, what advice would you take?

Elliott’s family owns a cranberry farm in a spectacularly beautiful section of Canada. But all she can think about how how excited she is to be leaving — she is about to go to college in Toronto and she has a been dreaming of the excitement of independence in a big city for as long as she can remember. Her middle brother, Max (Seth Isaac Johnson) loves the farm and is happy to be the one to take it over when his parents retire, but Elliott cannot wait for what she considers her real life to begin.

Older Elliott has had almost two decades of that “real life.” The wonderful Aubrey Plaza does not often get a chance to show the kind of warmth she does here, and it is a pleasure to see. Her 39-year-old Elliott is fragile in a way the younger version is not. She insists she is happy with her life (and proud to be a near-40-year-old PhD student) but she has clearly experienced some difficult times. The least successful moments in the film are a few brief indications that humans have had some setbacks in the next 29 years. They seem to be from an earlier draft that someone forgot to leave out.

The one very clear piece of advice older Elliott is very firm about is telling her younger self to stay far away from anyone called Chad. This is a mystery because younger Elliott has no idea who that might be and she is exclusively attracted to girls, so she cannot imagine how anyone named Chad might be a problem.

And then Chad (Percy Hynes White) suddenly appears, as Elliott is skinny dipping in a pond. He is her parents’ summer hire for the farm. And he is…irresistible. Despite her promise, despite her resolve, despite her fundamental notion of herself as exclusively gay, his patient kindness and “symmetrical face” are intoxicating.

Older Elliott has somehow managed to put her phone number in younger’s cell (as My Old Ass), so they are able to have some conversations and text exchanges, and older keeps reminding younger to have nothing to do with Chad. She also tells younger to be nicer to Mom (a lovely Maria Dizzia) and her brothers. For those last few days before she leaves for college, younger Elliott takes time to realize how much she has at home and how much she will miss everyone and everything. One of the toughest parts of growing up is realizing that you will not always be able to go back, and, as Emily says in “Our Town” that no one is able to appreciate it while it is happening. “My Old Ass” conveys all of this with welcome heart and humor.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong language, teenage drug use, and sexual references and situations.

Family discussion: What would you tell your younger self? What would you ask your older self?

If you like this, try: “17 Again”

Related Tags:

 

Comedy Coming of age Drama GLBTQ and Diversity movie review Movies -- format Movies -- Reviews Romance
Twisters

Twisters

Posted on July 17, 2024 at 1:33 pm

B +
Lowest Recommended Age: Middle School
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for intense action and peril, some language and injury images
Profanity: Some strong la
Copyright 2024 Universal

24 years ago, a cow flew across the screen and “Twister” became an instant summer movie classic. “Twister” had the magical combination of romance and action with then-state-of-the-art special effects, a human storyline just hefty enough to add urgency without disrupting the real reason we’re there (see above: flying cows), and two future Oscar-winners, Helen Hunt and Philip Seymour Hoffman, along with Bill Paxton, Carey Elwes, and Lois Smith, who adeptly set the tone at the sweet spot between drama and melodrama.

The ingredients that made that storyline work were the ideal recipe: take one pair of parted lovers (the about to divorce storm chasers), some human conflict to unite them (Elwes’ arrogant rich guy), and some beyond-human conflict to unite them even more (see: the title, reference to the ). Add in one newbie to be the receptacle for exposition dumps and for us to look down to even though in real life we would be even more terrified (Jami Gertz, rising above a thankless role). Result: almost half a billion dollars in worldwide box office. Also result: a somewhat sequel, trying to rekindle the magic.

It begins with a nod to the original, which ended (spoiler alert) with the Hunt and Paxton characters successfully launching “Dorothy” (yes, a reference to the Kansas girl who was whisked to Oz via twister). Dorothy was dozens of little data-collecting chrome balls that provided previously unavailable information about the structure of these terrifying, vastly destructive storms. Tornadoes, for those who did not pay attention during the exposition part of the first film, are violently rotating columns of air that reach both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. They look like a stormy vortex in the distance, they travel very fast, and they cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to property and crops every year. As briefly acknowledged in this new film without any suggestion of climate change as the precipitating (in both senses of the word) factor, the number of storms is increasing.

The opening of “Twisters” takes place five years ago, when a much-too-cheerful and therefore much-too-risk-taking group of students is still working with the Dorothy machine. It is led by Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), who is a scientist but also has something of a second sense about storms and the direction they will take. She is hoping to get a grant to help her not just understand twisters but to extinguish them, using the same ultra-absorbent material found in disposable diapers. The group is much too adorable and foolhardy to be there for any purpose but to teach our heroine a very painful lesson. The only survivors are Kate and Javi (Broadway’s Anthony Ramos of “Dumb Money” and “In the Heights”).

In the present day, Kate lives in New York, with businesslike clothes and hair. Her only connection to twisters is safely via computer screens. Javi shows up with some new technology developed by the military. He wants her to come with him to get the first 3D mapping of what goes on inside the twister vortex. At first she says no, but when he reminds her of how many lives can be saved, she agrees to join him in Oklahoma for a week.

There they run into hotshot YouTube stars and self-proclaimed “tornado wrangler” Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and his ragtag gang, who seem to be out there for thrills and likes. Poncho-wearing fans happily buy their merch and track them as they track the storms with go-pros, a drone, and fireworks they shoot up inside the vortex for fun.

“Twisters” gently updates the technology to the era of cell phones and MRIs, noting that these days “anyone with a $10 weather app” can be a storm chaser. The insertion of a class developer villain making “all-cash offers” to the locals is clumsier. Should they have the option to go somewhere else? And what is he going to do with land that has driven long-time residents out due to extreme weather hazards? While we’re on the subject, shouldn’t there be more storm shelters in these communities?

Like the original, this film lightly sprinkles the emotions of the characters just enough to keep us going between the special effects. The role of exposition dump character this time is played by Ben (Harry Hadden-Paton), a British journalist who is writing about Tyler’s group. Instead of former spouses, Kate and Javi are former colleagues sharing some survivor guilt and Kate and Tyler are in the classic Pride and Prejudice dynamic as they discover their first impressions (BTW the original title of P&P) are not accurate. Oh, if only we had super-powerful military-grade diagnostic machines to examine each other.

We also have a wise and kindly older family member to visit for some moments of respite, in this case, replacing the wonderful Lois Smith in the original, and here the also wonderful Maura Tierney as Kate’s mother.

So, let’s get to what really matters: how about the special effects? They are excellent. Cows do not fly, but a lot does, including large vehicles and roofs. A wind farm is an especially good spot to let us see the impact of up to 360 miles per hour. If there is less excitement on screen, it is due to CGI fatigue in the audience, not the believability of what we see. (Steven Spielberg is one of the producers.)

“Twisters” will not rise to the level of its predecessor, but it is an entertaining summer popcorn pleasure that will continue to build Powell’s stature as one of Hollywood’s most appealing young stars.

Parents should know that this movie has extended and sometimes very scary action sequences of the most severe weather. Characters are injured and killed and there are some graphic images.

Family discussion: What was your first thought when you saw Tyler and his crew? What’s the difference between a tamer and a rustler? How do you know when fear should push you forward?

If you like this, try: “Twister” and documentaries like “Stormchasers” and the Nova episodes “Oklahoma’s Deadliest Tornadoes” and “Deadliest Tornadoes”

Related Tags:

 

Action/Adventure Drama movie review Movies -- format Movies -- Reviews Romance Series/Sequel
THE MOVIE MOM® is a registered trademark of Nell Minow. Use of the mark without express consent from Nell Minow constitutes trademark infringement and unfair competition in violation of federal and state laws. All material © Nell Minow 1995-2025, all rights reserved, and no use or republication is permitted without explicit permission. This site hosts Nell Minow’s Movie Mom® archive, with material that originally appeared on Yahoo! Movies, Beliefnet, and other sources. Much of her new material can be found at Rogerebert.com, Huffington Post, and WheretoWatch. Her books include The Movie Mom’s Guide to Family Movies and 101 Must-See Movie Moments, and she can be heard each week on radio stations across the country.

Website Designed by Max LaZebnik