Movie review: Materialists (2025)

Genre: Romantic Dramedy  

Director: Celine Song  

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Marin Ireland  

Running Time: 117 minutes  

Synopsis: In New York City, thirtysomething and single Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a successful matchmaker, working for an agency managed by Violet (Marin Ireland). While attending the wedding of a couple she matched, Lucy meets handsome and wealthy Harry (Pedro Pascal), and bumps into her former lover John (Chris Evans), who is still a penniless struggling actor. Lucy approaches dating and relationships analytically, and in Harry she finds the rich man she always wanted, although her connection with John is naturally warmer. A sudden crisis at work forces Lucy to re-evaluate her priorities.

What Works Well: This unusually intelligent rom-com abandons frivolous cliches and instead bravely delves into the crass transactional economics of relationships. Matchmaker Lucy is uninterested in chemistry and love, just the stats of wealth, education, upbringing, and physical attributes. Ticking the right materialistic boxes on both sides of the ledger means a match is made, money is paid, and clients are happy. Harry represents what she believes she craves and Harry is what she left behind, and while both will test her values, her difficult-to-match client Sophie (Zoë Winters) is about to severely disrupt the success formula.

What Does Not Work As Well: The running time needed a trim. Director Celine Song's script is generally sharp, but succumbs to repetitiveness with the flabby pacing. Some logic lapses emerge within Lucy's mathematical world, the certainty that only a wealthy man will satisfy her crumbling quickly into contradictions once Harry starts his pursuit.

Key Quote:

John: Why does anybody even get married?

Lucy: Because people tell them they should, and because they're lonely, and because they're hopeful.

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Movie Review: Pain Hustlers (2023)

Genre: Business Drama

Director: David Yates

Starring: Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Andy Garcia, Catherine O'Hara, Jay Duplass

Running Time: 123 minutes

Synopsis: In Florida of 2011, single mom Liza Drake (Emily Blunt) is financially struggling to look after herself and her daughter Phoebe. She accepts an offer from executive Pete Brenner (Chris Evans) to join fledgling pharmaceutical firm Zanna. The company's one approved product is Lonafen, a fentanyl-based cancer pain medication developed by owner Dr. Neel (Andy Garcia). Liza's hustle snares the prescription business of Dr. Lydell (Brian D'Arcy James), and soon the big money starts rolling in. Neel's behaviour becomes more eccentric, while Liza and Pete push the limits in incentivizing doctors to prescribe the medication.

What Works Well: Inspired by actual events at Insys Therapeutics chronicled in Evan Hughes' book, this is a glossy inside look at the scuzzy profits-before-people pharmaceutical industry. Adopting some of the jovial tones from The Wolf Of Wall Street, director David Yates crafts a compelling and fast-paced rags-to-riches business story built on the hustle to sell product - in this case a synthetic opioid approved for sale based on dubious studies. Emily Blunt is excellent in personifying the greed version of the American Dream, as Liza builds a team of dropouts - including her mother (Catherine O'Hara) - snaring third-tier doctors happy to take a cut in the form of "appearance fees".

What Does Not Work As Well: It's all fun and games until someone dies, and here the victims are a sketched-in afterthought. Blunt is asked to carry the entire dramatic load, as Dr. Neel quickly devolves into a cartoon character and Chris Evans is unable to find a real person in the lightweight Pete Brenner. The portrayal of Liza's relationship with her mother is scrappy at best.

Conclusion: Sickness and suffering as an opportunity for slick success.



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Movie Review: The Gray Man (2022)

An action chase thriller, The Gray Man is brimming with spectacular set-pieces at the expense of everything else.

In 2003, a convicted murderer known only as Six (Ryan Gosling) is recruited by the CIA's Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) to join the Sierra shadow assassination program. By 2021 Fitzroy has been forced to retire and Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page) is taking over, intent on shutting down Sierra. He uses Six and agent Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas) to kill Four in Bangkok, but Six secures secret files damaging to Carmichael and becomes the next target.

Carmichael and his subordinate Suzanne Brewer (Jessica Henwick) recruit ruthless independent assassin Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans), and he in turn places an international contract on Six. As the chase progresses across Europe, Six can only trust Fitzroy and Miranda as he seeks to stay alive and expose Carmichael's dirty secrets.

Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo (who also co-wrote the script), The Gray Man is a stunts-and-CGI show, with barely a plot to hang the action on. The quality of execution is stellar, with slick cinematography, vivid colours, and imaginative near misses as one town centre after another is reduced to rubble (Prague is particularly hard done by). Some of the lines of dialogue are razor sharp, both Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans having fun playing up sardonic twists.

But in the absence of any meaningful characterizations or just causes, the core is hollow. The digital files triggering all the violence are a sterile MacGuffin, and the yet-another-internal-CIA battle is an exhausted premise. The film settles into a boring rinse-and-repeat cycle of chases, fights, shoot-outs, explosions, and close quarters bone crunching battles, with a ludicrously high body count.

Six demonstrates a remarkable ability to survive a near death experience every six (ok, eight) minutes, and a more amazing ability to quickly recover from severe puncture wounds. An attempt to place a child (Fitzroy's niece) in danger never rises above the status of cheap ploy. Alfre Woodard does make a welcome contribution in her one scene as a retired British intelligence head. 

Six and Lloyd square off for the obligatory final mano-a-mano battle about two hours in. The can fight each other, but they cannot defeat the get-it-over-with-already gray haze.



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Movie Review: The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019)

A covert action drama and thriller, The Red Sea Diving Resort offers a fascinating story of surreptitious refugee resettlement, but lacks character depth.

In the late 1970s, Ethiopia is in the grips of a brutal civil war. Mossad agents Ari (Chris Evans) and Sammy (Alessandro Nivola) work with local organizer Kabede Bimro (Michael K. Williams) to secretly relocate Jewish-Ethiopians to Sudanese refugee camps for subsequent passage to Israel. But Sudan's authorities crack down, briefly arresting Ari and Sammy before the CIA's Walton Bowen (Greg Kinnear) secures their release. Back in Israel, Sammy decides he has had enough of secret missions.

But Ari is still passionate about helping Kabede rescue Ethiopian Jews, and secures the backing of his boss Ethan (Ben Kingsley) for the Mossad to take over an abandoned and secluded diving resort in Sudan as cover for large-scale marine evacuations of refugees. Ari convinces Sammy to join the operation, and assembles a team including agents Rachel (Haley Bennett) and Jake (Michiel Huisman). When actual tourists show up the evacuations becomes more complex, then local Sudanese army Colonel Abdel Ahmed (Chris Chalk) starts to get suspicious about the resort's activities.

Inspired by real events and carrying echoes of Argo complete with all the unnecessary Hollywoodizations, The Red Sea Diving Resort enjoys quick pacing and a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction vibe. Writer and director Gideon Raff injects regular thrills and close calls to juice the action, and teases out the absurdity of secret agents actually entertaining clueless tourists in an enemy country.

While the events portrayed are memorable, the characters are not. The Mossad agents are loose interpretations of real people and largely devoid of meaningful background. Ari gets just the one stock scene to demonstrate a typical disintegrating family life due the perpetually absentee dad. Otherwise, Raff repeatedly plays the same two hollow notes of tension between Ari and Sammy. Ari operates on instinct and enjoys fast and loose improvisation; Sammy prefers more orderly mission planning. They bicker throughout, and that's the extent of human interest - the other agents could have been performed by robots.

A decent if not altogether successful attempt is made to avoid the white saviour trope. Kabede's character is a prominent events influencer, and narrates the film with often morose and overly solemn prose about the Jewish Ethiopians waiting for thousands of years to find Jerusalem. But give or take one kid and one outspoken mother, the refugees are reduced to huddled masses shuffled from here to there. And Jerusalem is treated like a mythical and perfect pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, with no mention of the real challenges experienced by the new arrivees in Israel.

When it comes to conveying danger, Chris Chalk does have fun in the antagonist role as the Sudanese intelligence officer menacingly sniffing something fishy at this waterfront. The Red Sea Diving Resort has no shortage of audacity, but mostly dives in shallow waters.



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Movie Review: Knives Out (2019)

A whodunnit crime mystery spiced with humour, Knives Out features an ensemble cast having fun in a convoluted Clue-like milieu.

In Massachusetts, celebrated and wealthy crime mystery author Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is found dead by apparent suicide, after the family had gathered at his mansion to celebrate his 85th birthday. Police detectives interrogate the family members, while private investigator Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is anonymously hired to investigate whether a murder was committed.

Potential motives for murder are soon revealed. Harlan was about to expose the extramarital affair of his son-in-law Richard Drysdale (Don Johnson), husband of Harlan's daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis). He was also terminating financial support for daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette); cutting entitled grandson Ransom (Chris Evans) out of his will; and firing his son Walt (Michael Shannon) as head of his publishing company.

But Benoit takes greatest interest in Harlan's quiet nurse and close confidant Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas). The daughter of an illegal immigrant, she is well liked by all the family members and incapable of lying, and Benoit trusts her to help connect the dots.

A throwback to old-fashioned Agatha Christie-type mysteries, Knives Out presents a rich cast of characters, plenty of reasons to suspect everyone, layers of lying, and clever detective work. Writer and director Rian Johnson assembles the puzzle with a light touch, the film never taking itself too seriously. A few good pinches of well-placed humour help to keep the mood airy.

The first two thirds of the film, mostly confined to the mansion, are excellent. Johnson expeditiously introduces all the characters, gives most of them reasons to kill, and recreates snippets of the evening before the death when Harlan was clearly cleaning house and putting his affairs in order, threatening the economic future of many heirs in the process.

The final act unravels with the late introduction of Chris Evans' Ransom characters followed by an ill-advised and poorly executed blackmail sub-plot, the film hitting the road and losing its assured footing in the process.

Within the labyrinth of greed and backstabbing fueling the mystery, Johnson does include snide contemporary social commentary. Marta is an immigrant and the one seemingly pure soul, her work ethic placing her at the center of the family and yet outside it. Harlan's will upturns everyone's expectations, forcing a fundamental reassessment of the economic power dynamic.

With a star name is almost every role each performer gets the one scene to shine, and they are all adequate with a hint of theatricality. Daniel Craig works hard with limited success at an exotic accent to project a vaguely foreign detective. Ana de Armas delivers by far the film's best performance as the conscientious nurse Marta, combining sly panicked comic timing with an ability to say plenty by not saying anything at all. When everyone else is busy revealing sordid secrets, it's wise to listen more and talk less.

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Movie Review: Push (2009)

A science fiction superhero thriller, Push crashes into an incomprehensible plot and burns on the fuel of witless character definition.

Various people who have enhanced psychic abilities are hunted down by an evil government group called The Division, made up of baddies who also have psychic powers. Nick (Chris Evans) a "Mover" who can manipulate objects with his thoughts, is hiding out in Hong Kong having been hunted all his life by Agent Carver (Djimon Hounsou). Now Nick is approached by young Cassie (Dakota Fanning), a "Watcher" who can see and draw snippets of the future.

Cassie needs Nick's help to locate Kira (Camilla Belle), a Pusher who escaped the Division after proving resilient to the strongest experimental injection. Kira and Nick have a history, but now she in possession of a case with mysterious contents that can bring down the Division and save Cassie's captive mother. In addition to Carver and his goons, a Chinese family featuring the intimidating Pop Girl (Xiao Lu Li) and men who can scream their enemies to death are also chasing the action.

Pushers, Watchers, Movers, Sniffers, Shifters, Wipers, Bleeders, Stitchers, Shadows...whatever. It takes no longer than 10 minutes for Push to collapse in a heap of nonsense overload, writer David Bourla and director Paul McGuigan clueless as to how to assemble a coherent narrative out of assorted hokum. Some of the visuals are impressive, but the film's style and good use of Hong Kong locations don't come close to saving the inept story.

Among the barely explained core elements are the reasons behind the prolonged war between two groups of psychics, the types of experiments being conducted by the Division, and why anyone is supposed to care. If weaponization is the objective, the current abilities on display by all sides, including stopping a hail of bullets with bare hands, influencing enemies to kill each other in a blink of an eye and predicting enemy movements, appear quite effective already.

Meanwhile, the film is riddled with internal inconsistencies related to how and when the psychic superpowers can be deployed. The case everyone is chasing takes pride of place as a most boring MacGuffin, and the bewildering revelation that it contains a serum already developed by the Division adds to the confusion. How or why a single syringe of a drug already in use will change the world order is a mystery abandoned for another day.

Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning are defeated by the material, while the other cast members don't even try and surrender quickly to superficial overacting. All the characters are dropped into the action with barely any background or context, with the notable exception of Cassie's mother, who is evidently central to the plot but never makes an appearance. She was doubtless being saved for the sequel, which was mercifully never pushed out.

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Movie Review: Before We Go (2014)

A whimsical romance, Before We Go is overly familiar and only mildly enjoyable.

It's past midnight at New York City's Grand Central Station. Nick (Chris Evans) is an aspiring trumpeter in town for an audition and debating whether to attend a party where his ex-girlfriend Hannah (Emma Fitzpatrick) will be present. Art consultant Brooke (Alice Eve) rushes through the station but misses her train home to Boston, while dropping and shattering her phone.

Brooke had her purse stolen earlier in the evening, and Nick himself is broke, but he anyway attempts to help her find a means of transportation. Their interactions are initially awkward as they are both wary of each other and hiding emotional traumas: Nick never got over Hannah, and Brooke's marriage is in trouble. As the night transitions into dawn with various misadventures, the two strangers start to become friends.

Directed by Evans in his debut behind the camera, Before We Go combines elements from many previous bittersweet romances including Brief Encounter, the Before Sunrise trilogy, and Lost In Translation. The film offers almost no original concepts. The two lover-to-be meet at a transportation hub, they are drawn together despite each struggling with emotional scars and self-doubt, and gradually they open up and become close as they share a few amusing, slightly wacky but ultimately harmless experiences over one long night.

The story of course is filled with unexplained coincidences, artificial meet-cute set-ups and forlorn stares into the distance as the personal problems of two souls lost in the night are magnified into crises. And while Nick and Brooke both carry appeal, the script (four writers are credited for a 95 minute movie) never resolves why a successful art expert would invest more than a second glance at a busker frittering his life away because of a failed relationship six years prior.

Despite the overwhelming staleness of the material, Evans and Eve make the most of what they have, and take turns trading scenes of sharing, at first laced with the frostiness of caution and later much more open and honest. Both actors do well in touching tender emotions without dipping into melodrama. Evans' directing is understated rather than flashy, and he makes good use of nighttime locations. A few clumsy edits make their way into the final cut.

Before We Go is an inoffensive story of an unlikely romance, but too obviously shallow and derivative to matter.

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Movie Review: Snowpiercer (2013)

A dystopian science fiction thriller, Snowpiercer shimmers with the story of human conflict and survival in a frozen future.

In the near future, the release of an experimental chemical into the atmosphere to lower soaring temperatures due to climate change goes wrong. A new global ice age is immediately triggered and all life is exterminated. The only survivors are on-board Snowpiercer, a massive ark-like train designed for human survival by genius scientist Wilford (Ed Harris), who predicted the catastrophe. The train is powered by a perpetual motion engine and continuously circumnavigates Earth.

Seventeen years pass. The tail section of the train contains "undesirable" passengers who clambered onto the train uninvited, and are now living in deplorable and overcrowded conditions. They include Curtis (Chris Evans), his friend Edgar (Jamie Bell), their spiritual leader Gilliam (John Hurt) and Tanya (Octavia Spencer), the mother of a young child. They are kept alive with daily doses of disgusting protein bars distributed by armed guards who separate them from the elites at the front. The train's snotty leaders are represented by the insufferable Minister Mason (Tilda Swinton).

When the elites initiate the latest round of forcible child abductions from amongst the undesirables, Curtis, Edgar and Gilliam spark a violent uprising with the intention of storming the front cars and taking control of the train. To pry open the security gates the rebels will need to work with expert gate control designer Namgoong (Song Kang-ho) and his 17 year old daughter Yona (Go Ah-sung), who are both drug addicts.

The first English language film directed by South Korea's Bong Joon-ho (who also co-wrote the script), Snowpiercer is a stunning cinematic achievement. Mixing human drama with expertly crafted thriller elements and superlative action scenes, the film offers unrelenting entertainment based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige. The set-up is efficient and compelling. Curtis and his cohorts are introduced and framed as oppressed third class citizens of the train, fed-up with mistreatment and confinement. They each have a background and a story to tell, but collectively they are at the end of their rope and ready to risk everything to overthrow the current order.

Once the storm-the-train plot is set in motion, the action is incessant and drives forward in tandem with the rebels as they progress towards the front. Pitched battles are fought in confined quarters, tactical surprises are sprung and acts of heroism abound. The gore is kept to a manageable level, but there is no mistaking the intensity of this fight for control and dignity.

As the fate of the rebellion ebbs and flows in each successive cabin, the internal and external set designs offer a feast for the eyes and the mind. The ragtag rebels are suddenly exposed to the middle class cabins, including the water manufacturing plant, restaurant services (complete with sushi bar), children's school classes, an aquarium for harvesting seafood, and copious quantities of beef. They also unhappily stumble upon the source of their protein bars.

Meanwhile, as the unstoppable train streaks through the landscape, the glimpses of outside scenery are breathtaking. The Earth is reduced to one destroyed and uninhabitable ice field, the beauty of absolute frozen whiteness juxtaposed with the horrific absence of life.

Snowpiercer is an allegory for social structures and interdependencies, visiting the terrain of Animal Farm and 1984. Who gets to lead, who gets to be exploited, the symbolism of the all-powerful godlike leader and how the head and the tail interact - or not - for the greater good are familiar themes, but rarely has a film dealt better with eternal existential questions about the collective human condition.

Chris Evans find one his best career roles as reluctant rebel Curtis Everett. Evans gets to combine brains with brawn as Curtis steps up to the role of frontline leader, and he emerges as a bonafide circumspect protagonist. Tilda Swinton as the conniving Minister Mason is the other standout performer.

Curtis' disruptive actions open Snowpiercer's doors literally and figuratively, and as always, it's up to every individual member of a social order to choose which of the available doors to walk through, with consequences ranging from inspirational to disastrous.

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Movie Review: Fantastic Four (2005)

A lame superhero movie, Fantastic Four suffers from a cheap look and feel, stiff dialogue, uninspired casting and a profound lack of style.

Scientist Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and his lifelong friend Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) secure funding from narcissistic tycoon Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) to conduct an experiment near explosive cosmic clouds in space. Victor is dating his employee Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), a genetics researcher and Reed's former sweetheart. Along with Sue's daredevil brother Johnny, they all travel to Victor's space station. Something goes terribly wrong and they are all subjected to intense radiation. Victor's business empire is ruined by the debacle.

Back on Earth, the side effects of the radiation exposure becomes apparent. Reed's body gains incredible elasticity, Sue can bend light and appear invisible, while Johnny can set himself on fire and fly at supersonic speeds. Ben is permanently damaged, gaining superhuman strength but a monstrous appearance with a hard outer shell. Meanwhile Victor's body starts a slower transition to an alloy-like structure with enormous powers. Reed tentatively reignites his romance with Sue and attempts to invent a machine to reverse the DNA transformation, while Victor unleashes an evil plan.

It took about twenty years to bring Marvel's Fantastic Four to the big screen, and the film feels about twenty years out of date. Directed by Tim Story with a distinct absence of panache, this is a flat exercise in painting superheroes by numbers. The production sometimes slips into television-level territory, with cheesy special effects, sets that would have looked modern in the 1980s, and dull, static execution with bursts of over-the-top CGI.

The story is insipid, the science barely explained, and after the super powers are introduced, the film needs to kill about 60 minutes of not much happening before lumbering to a yawn-inducing let's- stand-in-a-circle climax.

Saving the exercise from a total loss are Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis giving their all to serve an undeserving cause. Alba and Evans as the sister and brother pair of Sue and Johnny Storm are the only source of energy and provide some wit and edge. Chiklis manages to convey a modicum of emotion from behind the The Thing's rhinoceros facade, and is the one character given a bit of a moral challenge by a script that otherwise seems more machine manufactured than human written.

Fantastic Four is a fumble, and far from fantastic.

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The Movies Chris Evans

All movies starring Chris Evans and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Fantastic Four (2005)

The Nanny Diaries (2007)

Push (2009)

The Losers (2010)

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

The Iceman (2012)

Snowpiercer (2013)

Before We Go (2014)

Gifted (2017)

The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019)

Knives Out (2019)

Don't Look Up (2021, uncredited)

The Gray Man (2022)

Pain Hustlers (2023)

Materialists (2025)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Gifted (2017)

A low-key thought-provoking drama, Gifted presents a difficult social dilemma and explores it with requisite tenderness and some cutting humour.

In Central Florida, Frank Adler (Chris Evans) lives in a trailer park and repairs boats while trying to give his seven year old niece Mary (Mckenna Grace) a normal upbringing. Frank's sister and Mary's mother, a math prodigy, committed suicide and left Mary in Frank's care. Frank and Mary's closest friend is their pragmatic and outspoken neighbour Roberta (Octavia Spencer). Once Mary starts attending school, her own superlative math skills are quickly noticed by Grade 1 teacher Bonnie Stevenson (Jenny Slate).

Frank and Bonnie start a romantic relationship, but he rejects all attempts to enroll Mary in a school for gifted children, insisting that she should be treated like any normal kid. But Frank's wealthy mother Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan) has other ideas. After a long period of estrangement she shows up from her privileged Massachusetts life and insists that her granddaughter be given every opportunity to fulfill her potential. Frank resists, triggering a custody battle.

Directed by Marc Webb, Gifted possesses surprising natural warmth. Thanks to a stellar Tom Flynn script and excellent performances from Chris Evans and 10 year old Mckenna Grace, the film radiates a genuine glow, where family relationships matter, adults and kids behave as they should, and even in the heat of a court battle, civility is maintained.

While the icy cold Evelyn is the closest thing to a villain, Flynn and Webb make sure to give her time and space to put forward her case. Evelyn herself was a math genius, her career interrupted by domestic duties and the expectations of a different era. Now she wants to ensure Mary is given the financial support and environment to reach her obviously tremendous potential, and it's difficult to argue with her intentions.

Standing on the other side is a seemingly rock solid relationship between uncle and niece, the dynamics between Frank and Mary captured with exquisite honesty. Mary may be brilliant at math but she is still a kid and behaves as such, while Frank was dropped into a parental role he never anticipated. The bond between them is formidable, captured with stunning grace in a quite breathtaking silhouette scene against a setting sun with Mary playfully climbing all over Frank - her literal life anchor.

The film sets up its central conflict of who gets to decide what is best for a gifted child and plays with the options, avoiding lectures and easy answers. The last act stumbles a bit in search of a tidy ending, but does offer one delicious final sting in the tug of war between mother and son, the equation featuring parenting, mathematics and familial pride as variables suddenly stripped to its essentials.

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