14 Best Movies To Watch After Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

It has been said that Walk The Line set up the “cradle to grave” music biopic genre in 2005. Then Walk Hard came along two years later to deal the killing blow. Yes, there have been financially successful attempts at the genre (Bohemian Rhapsody). Alas, they largely delivered creatively unsatisfying recitations of a tired formula that sanded down their subjects to make them more palatable and eliminate some of what made them so compelling (again, Bohemian Rhapsody). The few exceptions, say Elvis or Rocket Man, largely popped due to significant stylistic choices. Tearing a page out of their books, Better Man tells the story of Robbie Williams with a small twist. They cast the British singer as a CGI monkey. Can’t argue that’s not something different. The monkey is motion captured throughout by Jonno Davies, who also voices the star as a teen and young man. Adam Tucker provides singing vocals for young Robbie while the singer tackles the voiceover and sings for the fully adult (but still monkey-ified) Williams. It is a gimmick, for certain, but one that truly does enhance, not detract, from the storytelling. No one will miss the immediate subtext of the choice. The monkey provides a visual cue to Williams’ perception of himself as an outsider, whether among his classmates in Tunstall or with his Take That bandmates as they taste boy band fame. It also acts as a bit of self-recrimination, implying Williams, especially with his various addictions, could be a bit more animal than man. Alison Steadman and Jonno Davies get sudsy. (Paramount) The secondary, perhaps unintended, consequence proves most successful though. Making the pop star into a chimpanzee given life by computers and several actors frees the character from mimicry. Objectively, the audience knows Williams is not a tall chimp with a gift for dancing. Thus, from the jump, no one expects a mirror. The monkey is freed to author a character rather than slavishly recreate a real person. Continue Reading →

Sometimes, you end up respecting what a movie’s trying to discuss more than you enjoy the film itself. Case in point, Spellbound. In the new animated feature, Princess Ellian (Rachel Zegler) is on the eve of her 15th birthday. Sadly, the celebration is a bit muted this time around. That’s because her parents, Queen Ellsmere (Nicole Kidman, eventually) and King Solon (Javier Bardem, after a fashion), aren’t quite themselves. A year earlier, they encountered a whirling black cyclone in the woods. It turned the couple from attractive royal types into big, brightly colored, childlike monsters. Ever since, Ellian has been struggling to find a solution to their conversion while hiding it from the kingdom of Lumbria. Growing desperate after a meeting with the Oracles of the Moon and Sun (Nathan Lane and Tituss Burgess, both as hammy as you please) goes poorly, the Princess decides to drag her parents back to the Dark Forest of Eternal Darkness, where the curse began. As a plot goes, it’s fine. In practice, it often feels hobbled together from pieces of other films. There’s a bit of Brave here. A dash of How to Train Your Dragon there. If you squint, you can even spot some Frozen in its DNA. Fairy tales, by their nature, are remixed and rehashed from previous source material and other stories, so none of this is especially egregious. However, it isn’t what makes Spellbound interesting. Continue Reading →

Doppelganger films are a weird but fairly well-documented phenomenon at this point. They’re two films with eerily similar plots. However, their release dates happen so closely together, tarring either as plagiarism is unfair. And yet, their plots share eerie similarities. Think your Deep Impact and Armageddon or Dante’s Peak and Volcano. It happens again with the release of Your Monster, a modern-day echo of February’s Lisa Frankenstein. In this spin on the theme, Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera) survives cancer. Sadly, everything about her life that isn’t directly about her heart beating, her lungs respirating, and so on seems utterly decimated. Her boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) ditches her while she’s still in the hospital under the weakest of excuses. To make matters worse, he’s going forward with the musical he wrote for her and with her help. Instead of Laura, though, he’s cast some Hollywood dabbler, Jackie (Meghann Fahy), in the leading role. Her best (only?) friend Mazie (Kayla Foster) picks her up at release. It isn't long, though, before Mazie rushes off for some vague other commitment. That it comes moments after promising Laura she’ll be there no matter what only adds salt to the wound. Thanks to the break-up, she has to move back into her childhood home with her mom. Except mom is too busy globetrotting to even come home for her recovering daughter. And, of course, there’s still a chance that the treatment and surgery didn’t work. Continue Reading →

Engage in holiday self-care with some movies that put a stake in the heart of romance. Even if you're in a content, stable relationship, Valentine's Day can often feel like a bit of a joyless slog. Like a lot of holidays in the internet era, it's become less a day of celebration, and more another excuse to engage in conspicuous consumption and endless games of one-upmanship. Who got the biggest flower arrangement at the office? Who cares? Whether single or not, you may understandably feel as if all the fun and romantic flair has been squeezed out of the day. In keeping with that, consider this short list of bleakly funny, sad, or just plain horrifying cinematic takes on romance to get you in the anti-spirit. Continue Reading →

The Broadway adaptation defangs its best characters in a misguided effort to appeal to a new generation of viewers. Paramount’s new version of Tina Fey’s cult classic Mean Girls boasts a tagline many Millennials found downright offensive upon debut: “This ain’t your mother’s Mean Girls!” The movie, based on the Broadway musical adapted from the original 2004 film, makes it abundantly clear that it’s aimed directly at Gen Z from its very opening moments, which look like a vertical phone video straight out of TikTok. Fey, the writer of both versions of Mean Girls, hasn’t been without her fair share of controversies over the twenty years since the first film premiered. In a clear effort to avoid upsetting younger audience members who have grown up with more sensitive media, Fey kneecaps many of her own best jokes. The updated script is a wobbly attempt to satisfy fans of the original without offending newcomers. The set-ups where there used to be jokes still remain, but they’re empty husks strung together by mostly forgettable songs. Though not without its unique charms, the musical Mean Girls is glaringly unfunny. The music, written by Fey’s husband and frequent creative collaborator Jeff Richmond, does little to make up for the chasms where cutting punchlines have been removed. Richmond can write excellent, hilarious songs like the ones in 30 Rock and Girls5eva, but his compositions here are basic and feel uninspired. Most of the sincere songs revolve around bland messages about self-esteem that lack any insight into the actual emotional experiences of teenage girls. Emo outcast Janis ‘Imi’ike (Auli’i Cravalho, Moana), formerly a supporting character, gets what feels like four separate songs about the power of Being Yourself. Only “Sexy,” a playful number about Halloween costumes performed by ditzy beauty Karen Shetty (Avantika), stands out.  Continue Reading →

Yorgos Lanthimos directs a sumptuous adult fairy tale featuring Emma Stone at her very best. Here’s the thing about Yorgos Lanthimos: you’re either on board with him, or you’re not. Even in The Favourite, arguably his most accessible film, there’s a sort of joyful grotesqueness to it, leaving the audience laughing and wincing simultaneously. His latest offering, Poor Things, is his most visually dazzling film yet, with moments of stunning beauty and bittersweet insight, but still isn’t afraid to test the audience’s sensibilities. It’s a film about what it means to be alive, every little disgusting aspect of it.  Based on Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name, Poor Things opens in dreary black and white London, where eccentric scientist Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) is overseeing an experiment that’s both miraculous and horrifying. Baxter, whose face looks like it was carved into several pieces and then put back together the wrong way, has brought a woman back to life after she committed suicide. The woman, whom he’s renamed Bella (Emma Stone, with a magnificent pair of eyebrows), initially has the mind of a toddler, but she’s learning and maturing at an astonishing rate. Bella refers to Godwin as “God,” and so far knows no one and nothing else but him and their home together. Continue Reading →

The Trolls movies continue to indulge in their best and worst impulses in a third installment. The poster for this past summer's R-rated comedy No Hard Feelings had a reasonably clever tagline to explain the strained dynamic between the film's two leads. Against an image of Jennifer Lawrence squeezing Andrew Barth Feldman's cheeks, a single word is placed on top of each person's face: "Pretty" and "Awkward." Nothing revolutionary in design, but it gets the job done. Best of all, that tagline also makes for an apt descriptor for Trolls Band Together. The third entry in the Trolls trilogy (based on the popular 80s dolls), Trolls Band Together does indeed live up to the phrase “Pretty. Awkward.” The animators at DreamWorks keep coming up with gorgeous-looking environments for the titular critters to inhabit that look like they emerged from the wreckage of a craft store explosion. Unfortunately, the writing remains as stilted as ever. Continue Reading →

When I was around thirteen, two classmates, Christina and Taylor (their real names, it’s not like they’re going to read this), played a prank on me that resulted in my eating dog food. In retrospect, it could have been worse: nobody else saw it happen, and for whatever reason they kept it to themselves. But when I think about my teenage years (and I try not to much at this point in my life, other than at a superficial pop culture level), my mind often goes to that moment. Continue Reading →

The audaciously titled Dicks: The Musical comes with an equally eye-catching tagline, boasting the honor of being “A24’s first musical.” That’s bound to intrigue cinephiles everywhere. After all, not every movie studio is trendy enough to regularly sell out of logo festooned merchandise. Or even make hipster merch in the first place.  Continue Reading →

About 75 minutes into Flora and Son, its script veers toward the self-reflexive. “What movie are you in?” Flora (Eve Hewson) snaps. “One without you in it,” her son, Max (Orén Kinlan), replies. This sort of exchange fits holistically into writer-director John Carney’s latest. It’s self-aware, sure, but it’s not meta. Like most of the film’s writing, it is entirely transparent in its machinations, going so far as to declare them at points. Supporting characters largely function as symbols rather than people. Continue Reading →

John Carney's new drama is just one of a diverse collection of features at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the works being covered here wouldn't exist. Irish filmmaker John Carney made his big breakthrough in 2007 with Once, a film focused on the redemptive power of music and its ability to bring people, whether they are strangers or family, together in the pursuit of creating something that allows them to give voice to their once-buried hopes and desires. This was followed by Begin Again (2013), a film focused on the redemptive power of music and its ability to bring people, whether they are strangers or family, together in the pursuit of creating something that allows them to give voice to their once-buried hopes and desires. After that came Sing Street (2016), a film focused on the redemptive power of music and its ability to bring people, whether they are strangers or family, together in the pursuit of creating something that allows them to give voice to their once-buried hopes and desires. Continue Reading →

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 →