171 Best Releases From the Genre Romance (Page 3)

The spate of recent live-action Disney remakes has run the gamut in quality from pleasantly diverting (Cinderella, Pete’s Dragon) to unwatchable abominations (The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast.) Even the most well-received entries of the bunch struggle to find reasons they should exist in the first place. Rob Marshall’s The Little Mermaid is no different, but for one crucial factor that sets it apart from the rest: Halle Bailey as Ariel. Bailey is so captivating and winsome in the titular role that this remake almost feels worth it just to launch her into movie stardom. Unfortunately, sub-par CGI effects and clunky changes to Howard Ashman’s classic songs often make it feel like Bailey is left to carry the movie on the strength of her remarkable talent alone. With a shaggy runtime of two hours and fifteen minutes—a full hour longer than the original cartoon—it’s a heavy load for one performer to bear. Continue Reading →

Folks, maybe I’m wrong, but I just don’t think we’re ready for Nazi redemption stories yet. Granted, there have already been a few, but those were from a time when the threat was neutralized. Now, in our current upside down world, they’re being normalized by both the media and Republican politicians, some of whom, like Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, would rather pretend they don’t know what “white nationalism” is than denounce it. We really don’t need a “but what if they can change?” story right now. But Paul Schrader is doing it anyway with Master Gardener, a movie that is surely well-intentioned, but ill-timed at best, and clumsy and borderline offensive at worst. Continue Reading →

Max’s latest docudrama is just one of many times real-life killers have been given attractive makeovers for TV Premiering tomorrow on Max is Love & Death, the second (after Hulu’s Candy) of two miniseries in one year focusing on the 1980 murder of Texas housewife Betty Gore by her friend Candy Montgomery. Whereas Candy took a nuanced approach to the case, Love & Death is decidedly pro-Candy, treating her as a victim of circumstance, even though she (a) struck Betty Gore 41 times with an ax, (b) had no injuries to back up her self-defense claim, and (c) had been sleeping with Betty’s husband. That generosity extended to the casting. The real, thoroughly average Candy Montgomery, as did many people when cigarette smoking was still popular, looked older than her 30 years, and the tight perm and extra large glasses frames she wore didn’t help (whoever talked her into that hairstyle should have been brought up on charges themselves). In Love and Death, she’s played by the ethereally lovely Elizabeth Olsen, whose saucer eyes immediately convey innocence. While Hulu’s version of Candy was played by Jessica Biel, another implausible choice, an attempt was made at drabbing her down. Olson’s babydoll face is unencumbered by either a wig, or unflattering glasses. If not for the fact that her character’s name is Candy Montgomery, you wouldn’t know who she’s supposed to be at all. Continue Reading →

Forty years on, Adrian Lyne's tale of welding, dancing, dreaming, and cold-shoulder sweaters still leaves us all feeling like maniacs. Personally, the notion of referring to films as "guilty pleasures" has always struck me as slightly absurd—if a movie can touch, thrill, amuse, arouse or otherwise entertain you in some way, don't feel guilty about it.  So when I say that I've been a huge fan of Flashdance since its original release in 1983 (and can confirm, via the new 40th anniversary 4K UHD release from Paramount Home Video, that I still adore it), I feel absolutely no guilt or shame. Sure, the film is as preposterous a concoction as has ever been placed before a camera, assembled in such a calculating manner that you practically hear the gears grinding away in the background. But every time I've watched it over the years—and that's a lot—I find myself falling under its goofy spell once more. Continue Reading →

There’s been no shortage of pieces lately decrying the state of the romcom—is it on life support? Dead? In danger? If you’ve been lamenting the dearth of gems like You’ve Got Mail and Bridget Jones’s Diary, then Hulu has good news for you with its release of director Raine Allen-Miller’s feature debut: Rye Lane. It’s a quick and quippy romp through London’s Peckham neighborhood as two heartbroken twentysomethings bond over breakups and, far more deliciously, how to get back at their rotten exes. It’s a return to form that doesn’t feel stuck in the past. Rather, it’s a joyful reminder of why everyone loves a rom-com to begin with.  Continue Reading →

Among the increasingly insane and dangerous culture wars we’ve found ourselves thrust into in recent years is whether or not merely explaining to a child what it means to be queer or transgender is inappropriate. For the rational-minded, it teaches children empathy and acceptance. For those less so, it’s akin to showing them pornography, and corrupting their innocence. The word “grooming” is used, although no one seems to know exactly what that means, except that it’s inflammatory and effectively shuts down any hope of a productive conversation. Continue Reading →

Though I had in my younger days a pretty low bar as to what funny meant, Adam Sandler was quickly filed under “not for me.” I could take him in bite-sized portions on Saturday Night Live, but his brand of aggressive man-child comedy was far harder to take in feature-length films, particularly when quoted or imitated ad infinitum by men who weren’t professional comedians. To say that I greeted the announcement that he was cast as the leading man in the romantic comedy The Wedding Singer with skepticism would have been an understatement; I fully expected that it would be a “romantic comedy” made strictly for the guys, where the leading man would have to change in no appreciable way to get his co-star to fall madly in love with him. Continue Reading →

Sundance's Midnight section offers up a trio of films--My Animal, Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls, and Talk to Me--with strong ambitions, if not always executions. The Midnight section at Sundance has always been interesting. It’s a collection of movies who's fates vary greatly. Some end up instant horror classics. Others immediately get lost in the ever-evolving landscape of modern cinema. This year’s lineup is no different. Although the selections featured in this dispatch vary in quality, each features something palpable and commendable.  If you take a horror or queer cinema history class, one of the first things you learn is monster movies of the 1940s and 1950s were heavily queer-coded. Ghastly beings, from vampires to Frankenstein’s monster, were depicted as both dangerous and alluring, misunderstood yet manipulative. The werewolf is likely the best example of the queer monster of the era, traditionally depicted as hating their lycanthropic form and wanting to repress it as much as possible. Continue Reading →

In the climactic monologue of the original Magic Mike, Mike Lane (Channing Tatum) says, “I don’t want to be a forty-year-old stripper.” It’s an affecting scene that shows that Mike understands the dead-end nature of his current lifestyle and his desire to escape, and it makes the ending where he gives stripping up a satisfying one.  Continue Reading →

A pair of films out of the festival chronicle friendships new and old with differing degrees of success. While last year’s Banshees of Inisherin examined the end of a long friendship, Anthony Chen’s Drift depicts the slow but hopeful beginning of a new one. Banshees focused on a connection built out of commonality--same island and neighbors, similar life circumstances and concerns. By contrast, Drift revolves around a duo who don’t fit with each other or their surroundings. One, Callie (Alia Shawkat), is an American tour guide defined by her warm and non-judgemental demeanor. The other, Jacqueline (Cynthia Erivo), a Liberian-British refugee, is more guarded and grounded down. Unfortunately, Chen’s awkwardly plotted aims at political statements too frequently get in the way of what seems to be a wonderfully compassionate burgeoning connection between these two women. Chen is a bit out of his depth here unlike with his wonderful debut Ilo Ilo. Despite that film deftly exploring similar themes like class, immigration, and a friendship between two disparate parties, Drift never succeeds in the same way.  Continue Reading →

A household name (and one of the most in-demand creators of color) in network TV and Hollywood over the last decade, Kenya Barris has shepherded tv sitcom universes like Black-ish/Grown-ish/Mixed-ish, collaborated on box office smashes like Girls Trip, and developed franchise revival attempts like Shaft and Coming 2 America. Within these projects, his central preoccupation has been negotiating authenticity in relation to race, class, family, and the self. Continue Reading →

The market for romantic comedies surrounding weddings is right up Jennifer Lopez's avenue. Last year it was Marry Me. Before that, it was The Wedding Planner. But whether she was piercing hearts with her eyes in Out of Sight, or turning up the heat with her performance in Hustlers, Lopez continues to surprise us with her versatility. Shotgun Wedding is more com than rom, allowing Lopez to exercise her killer comedic timing, along with an all-star cast present for a destination wedding that goes sideways. Continue Reading →

The first films we saw in this year's festival deal with the anxieties of parenthood and personhood. (This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.) Film festivals, Sundance in particular, are often the domain of the solid three-star movie -- unremarkable but workable indies and debuts that prove the arrival (or resurgence) of a major talent, albeit without the polish that would make the work they're bringing you feel complete. And that was certainly the case for my first day at (virtual) Sundance, with a quartet of titles covering similar thematic ground and running out of steam long before the end credits roll. Put together, this crop of films collectively explored the loneliness and isolation of the human experience, not to mention the specific vagaries of (cis)womanhood, especially where children are concerned. And they were... okay, I guess? Continue Reading →

When people sit down to analyze the career of maverick filmmaker Sam Peckinpah, his 1972 thriller The Getaway is usually found wanting, and remembered mainly for the scandalous affair that developed between co-stars Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw. Coming smack in the middle of a filmmaking stretch that was preceded by the highly controversial The Wild Bunch (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971), and followed by the wildly idiosyncratic Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), it feels like an exercise in playing it safe from a director not exactly famous for doing such things. Despite that, it still works as a solid crime thriller that demonstrated that Peckinpah could play by Hollywood’s rules if he wanted to do so. Continue Reading →

While they say that love is eternal, eventually, even the greatest of love stories come to an end. Marriage vows foretell the reality of “to death do us part.” It’s an inevitability rarely explored in cinema, and even then, only in schmaltzy melodramatic weepers. Fortunately, Michael Showalter’s Spoiler Alert is free of schmaltz. Instead, the film deftly explores the process of a couple dealing with a terminal illness amid all the usual messiness of a real relationship.  Continue Reading →

While movies seem to be getting increasingly chaste, it’s a comfort to know that joyful, consensual sex still has a place on television. D.H. Lawrence’s 1928 novel tells the story of Lady Constance Chatterley, married to a minor lord whose injuries in World War I have left him paralyzed from the waist down. While its themes of classism, a declining nobility, and the dangers of industry were nothing new, the explicit (for the times) sexual content was enough to get the book banned from at least five countries, including the US. Nearly a century later, it still feels just as revolutionary. Not the sexual content—you can find books much more scintillating in the average grocery store—but the fact that Lawrence was celebrating sex and pleasure for its own sake.             Continue Reading →

At this moment, combining Lindsay Lohan and Christmas movies sounds like a gift to viewers. It worked for Vanessa Hudgens with The Princess Switch. Her fellow Mean Girls co-star Lacey Chabert has cornered the market. Now Lohan returns from a 3-year acting hiatus after various setbacks to take on the holiday season in the direct-to-Netflix fluff Falling for Christmas. It seems a sure thing for loyal Netflix and chill folks. Unfortunately, the film fails to capture any true romance, landing flat on its face.   Continue Reading →

Park Chan-wook fans can rest assured that the director who gave us the twisty, blood-soaked passions of Oldboy, Stoker, and The Handmaiden has returned with another romantic crime-fueled drama. His latest, Decision to Leave, is high-grade neo-noir, the newest installment in Park’s ongoing exploration of the genre.   Continue Reading →

Near the beginning of Bros, Bobby Lieber (Billy Eichner) meets with a Hollywood executive. The exec wants our protagonist to write a script for a gay rom-com. The executive is after something easy, a script that is palatable to straight audiences, a story about “nice gay guys.” Bobby, of course, isn’t having it. He tells the executive that gays have different stories than straight people before leaving, movie deal dead in the room.   Continue Reading →

James Nguyen hammers down the end of his bad-movie trilogy with a true stinker of birdemic proportions... and not in a fun way. (This review is part of our coverage of Fantastic Fest 2022.) With its stilted acting, incompetent screenplay and direction, and special effects that looked like someone puttering around with After Effects for the very first time, James Nguyen’s "ecological horror" film Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010) became a cult favorite among bad film fanatics, especially latecomers to the hoopla surrounding The Room looking for something they could claim as their own. Continue Reading →

Most of Generation X has received our AARP memberships in the mail, as our lurching journey down the road towards irrelevance comes to an end. Both the smallest generation in numbers, and the first generation to not do better than our parents financially, we’ve long been caught in the middle of the endless battle for dominance between Boomers and Millennials, and now with Gen Z steamrolling over them both, we’re fading out of the cultural picture altogether, like Marty McFly’s brother and sister. Continue Reading →