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: Our Friend (2019)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite  

Starring: Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson, Jason Segel  

Running Time: 124 minutes  

Synopsis: The story is told through multiple time jumps. In Alabama of 2013, Matt and Nicole Teague (Casey Affleck and Dakota Johnson) inform their two daughters that Nicole is close to succumbing to cancer. Matthew is a writer and Nicole is a theatre actress, and back in 2000 they were establishing their careers in New Orleans when Nicole's colleague Dane (Jason Segel) became a family friend. When Nicole was diagnosed in 2012, Dane moved in to provide support. Flashbacks also reveal the couple's previous struggles: work assignments kept them apart, and a near-affair threatened the relationship. 

What Works Well: Based on a true story, this is an honest celebration of friendship under exceptional stress. Dane's actions are selfless, and the sidekick perceived as a goof becomes the one person to step up and provide essential support to a devastated family. The trio of Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson, and Jason Segel excel in forging a triangle of support. All three are portrayed as essentially good people, but director Gabriela Cowperthwaite also invests in the wrinkles of Matt and Nicole's marriage, and the spikier edges of friendship.

What Does Not Work As Well: The frequent time jumps add unnecessary clutter and awkward truncations to what is an ultimately simple story. With insufficient content to stretch over two hours, several scenes are unnecessary while others linger well after the point is made.

Conclusion: Competent and well-intentioned without ever threatening to be exceptional.



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Movie Review: The High Note (2020)

Genre: Romantic Music Dramedy

Director: Nisha Ganatra

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Ice Cube, Bill Pullman

Running Time: 113 minutes

Synopsis: In Los Angeles, Maggie (Dakota Johnson) is the personal assistant to music legend Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross) but has ambitions to become a record producer. Grace's career has plateaued, and her manager Jack Robertson (Ice Cube) is plotting a Vegas residency. Maggie meets promising singer/songwriter David Cliff (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and helps him in the recording studio. A romance blossoms between them, but Grace notices that her assistant is distracted.

What Works Well: The villain-free plot avoids many romantic comedy cliches, and the focus on in-studio creativity and sound optimization is handled with controlled verve. Dakota Johnson brings an amiable screen presence to Maggie, and Tracee Ellis Ross (Diana's daughter) finds texture beneath a diva's veneer. Ice Cube contributes streaks of gruff humour, while Bill Pullman adds character nuance in a third act appearance as Maggie's father.

What Does Not Work As Well: The mix of music, drama, comedy, and romance never extends beyond a cordial mid-range, and it's eventually painfully obvious that both superstar Grace and potential star David are more interesting than central character Maggie.

Conclusion: A pleasant enough tune, but lacking long-term sonority.

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Movie Review: The Lost Daughter (2021)

A drama about the travails of motherhood, The Lost Daughter is a study of women's harsh challenges and deep regrets.

Middle-aged literature professor Leda Caruso (Olivia Colman) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, arrives for a vacation in Greece. She takes a room at the hotel managed by grizzled American Lyle (Ed Harris). At the nearby small beach where Will (Paul Mescal) runs the concession, Leda observes vacationing young mom Nina (Dakota Johnson) struggling with her demanding daughter Elena. Nina reminds Leda of her own frustrating days as a young mom (Jessie Buckley) juggling graduate studies with caring for two daughters.

Nina is part of a vacationing family from Queens with roots in Greece. Her shifty husband Toni (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) controls businesses in the area, and is frequently absent, leaving Nina bored and interested in Will. Nina's sister Callie (Dagmara Domińczyk) is pregnant, and her direct conversational style clashes with Leda's desire for solitude. Elena briefly goes missing at the beach, causing momentary panic. Leda intervenes, inserting herself into Nina's orbit while memories of the past continue to haunt her.

An excellent directorial debut for Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter is a soulful treatise on womanhood and the burden of childcare. Gyllenhaal adapted the novel by the anonymous Italian writer Elena Ferrante, and with help from a mesmeric Olivia Colman focuses beautiful lyricism on often neglected topics. 

The intersecting experiences of Leda, Nina and Callie explore motherhood from the multiple prisms of the past, present, and future, resulting in an impressive narrative scope. Mothers' insecurities, unsatisfied desire, and sense of inadequacy, along with the incessant demands of children, husbands getting away with doing less, and the seeming impossibility of juggling parenting with a career, all surface in haunting shadows. Leda observes Nina embarking on a familiar path, then moves from quiet bystander to a version of meddling, driven by a complex mix of caring, selfishness, arrogance, and self-righteousness. The past and present come together, Gyllenhaal interspersing the flashback scenes in just the right doses to artfully round Leda into a genuine and memorably flawed individual.

The drama unfolds through powerful naturalistic behaviours and familiar human dynamics. The vacationing Leda is not much of a people person, and a lot of what happens in Greece is conveyed through silent pauses. Olivia Colman expresses a range of emotions by under-communicating, Leda pulling back into a stern stance when faced with Callie's inquisitions. Her sense of entitlement does erupt in petty self-defeating episodes, first refusing to relocate her beach position to accommodate a family's needs, later picking a fight she cannot win with a group of disruptive youth.

Sexual desire at various life stages is another common theme. Young Leda and Nina are both unsatisfied with their husbands, and as they navigate child care responsibilities, they both seek better male companionship. And now Leda finds men like Lyle and Will potentially interested in her as a project and an enigma, but not necessarily as a person.

At 121 minutes the movie is marginally over-long, some scenes repeating the same notes, others altogether unnecessary. But in the final act, Leda's motivations and self-awareness come into sharp focus. In a moving acknowledgement of frailty, The Lost Daughter couples crushing responsibility with disruption of emotional balance, the consequences rippling into the future.



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The Movies Of Dakota Johnson

All movies starring Dakota Johnson and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Social Network (2010)

The Five-Year Engagement (2012)

A Bigger Splash (2015)

Fifty Shades Of Grey (2015)

How To Be Single (2016)

Our Friend (2019)

The High Note (2020)

The Lost Daughter (2021)

Materialists (2025)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Fifty Shades Of Grey (2015)

An erotic romantic drama, Fifty Shades Of Grey is a slight improvement on the book but is still an exceptionally poorly written bore.

Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) is about to graduate from her Portland-based university. She heads to Seattle to interview young business tycoon Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) for the student newspaper. Despite Ana's clumsy nervousness, the two are immediately attracted to each other. Christian initiates a few dates, but then darkly hints he is possessive and that Ana may want nothing to do with him.

He nevertheless starts showering her with gifts, then reveals he is only interested in a contract-based dominant/submissive sexual relationship whereby she would be his consenting sex slave. Ana is unsure, and takes her time reviewing and mulling over the contract while trying to understand why Christian cannot establish normal human connections. Without her committing to the contract they anyway initiate sex, and he introduces her to his playroom, filled with bondage, dominance and submission equipment.

The source material by E.L. James consisted of kitschy sex scenes stitched together with laughable prose, all originating as fan fiction. Yet the enormous commercial success of the books spawned an imperative for a film adaptation, and here writer Kelly Marcel and director Sam Taylor-Johnson sign up for the unenviable task of creating a viable movie out of tawdry erotica. They fail.

With plastic dialogue and character actions extracted from delusional reveries, Fifty Shades Of Grey is a slow motion fantasy in cold colours. The film stretches for a mind-numbing 128 minutes all bathed in blue, grey and black (except, of course, for the red playroom), while what passes for sensual music floods the soundtrack.

Within this milieu Jamie Dornan cannot manage anything other than a deer-in-the-headlights performance as Christian Grey, a supposed genius gazillionaire suddenly bamboozled by a woman who refuses to sign away her sexual freedom just because he demands it. Of course almost nothing will be known about Christian, because the script requires he stays silent and mysterious about his troubled past while Ana asks him essentially the same question for about two hours. Dornan can deal with the silent part, but rather than mysterious he is just blank.

Ana fares better, and in the hands of Dakota Johnson she is the one marginally tolerable part of the viewing experience. Whether intended or not, the film carries a feminist message of Ana only acquiescing to a man's obtuse demands after conducting due diligence and then on her own terms. Johnson does what she can with the flimsy material, at least for the parts when she is not naked.

The sex scenes are far fewer than in the book, but the second half does feature a steady stream of love making sessions ranging in kinkiness from vanilla to various forms of bondage, all filmed on the mainstream side of softcore. By the time Christian graduates to whipping, Anastasia decides she has wasted enough time with a man who can only express compassion through inflicting pain. In a non-ending meekly surrendering to the inevitable, she asserts her independence but unfortunately cannot escape the all-powerful clutches of the compulsory sequel.

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Movie Review: How To Be Single (2016)

A celebration of the ups and downs of singlehood from the female perspective, How To Be A Single does not stray far from romantic comedy conventions.

In New York City, paralegal Alice (Dakota Johnson) forces a temporary break from her boyfriend Josh (Nicholas Braun) in order to find herself. She befriends Robin (Rebel Wilson), who revels in the party lifestyle of being single. Alice's older sister Meg (Leslie Mann) is also single and dedicated to her career as a doctor. New-in-town Lucy (Alison Brie) dates obsessively in search of a husband, and meets her dates at the bar run by the dishy Tom (Anders Holm), an expert at one-night stands.

Alice quickly regrets leaving Josh, but he no longer wants her back. She eventually starts a relationship with businessman and single dad David (Damon Wayans, Jr.). Meg decides to have a baby on her own using donated sperm, but soon meets Ken (Jake Lacy) and they start to fall in love. Lucy repeatedly strikes out in her efforts to find a soulmate, and is oblivious to Tom's growing interest. Robin stays true to herself, living up a life of fun and hard partying.

An adaptation of the novel by Liz Tuccillo directed by Christian Ditter, How To Be Single only superficially tries to be different. The title and theme suggest an intent to not make the pursuit of a partner a central premise, but beneath the thin veneer, the film is a standard a rom-com: three of the four women spend the entirety of the film obsessing about men.

The exception is party animal Robin, who really is a girl who only wants to have fun, and never melts in front of the prospect of finding a soulmate. Alice, notionally the main character, quickly gets busy plotting how to enter or re-enter the lives of various men, despite opening the film by abandoning a man who adores her. She has a late-in-the-day awakening, but not before surrendering to all the cliches about women desperate to attract and please men.

At least Lucy is painfully honest about wanting get rid of her single condition as quickly as possible. Meg is the career woman who falls victim to the sudden urge to have a baby on her own, at which point a man enters her life. Her story almost belongs in a previous generation and has been told before in films like The Back-Up Plan.

How To Be Single delivers a steady stream of decent laugh, Ditter adds a few flashy directorial touches, the four actresses are likeable enough and share the screen time, ensuring limited dawdling. But ultimately, and to no one's real surprise, being single is a foundational part of yet another shallow story about the pursuit of cute couplehood.

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Movie Review: A Bigger Splash (2015)

A psychological drama about four people entangled in convoluted relationships, A Bigger Splash appears to have important things to say but fails to deliver when it matters.

Marianne Lane (Tilda Swinton) is an established music star recovering from vocal chord surgery. Only able to talk in a whisper, Marianne has retreated to the rustic Italian island of Pantelleria with her partner Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts) a documentary filmmaker and recovering alcoholic who attempted suicide a while back.

Their idyllic time away is interrupted when Marianne's former lover Harry (Ralph Fiennes) and his grown daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson) invite themselves to share the same house. Harry is a gregarious, larger than life music producer who was Marianne's partner for many years, and he actually introduced her to Paul. Now he may want to reclaim her love while preying on Paul's vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, Penelope oozes sexuality and proceeds to quietly stir the pot as well.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino, loosely inspired by 1969's La Piscine and financed by Italian film credit money, A Bigger Splash cannot quite shake the vague sense of a few stars gathering for a Mediterranean vacation and filming for convenience. Comprehensively too long at over two hours, the David Kajganich screenplay struggles to find content once the characters are set. There is a solid hour of time to kill between the initial introductions and the final act, and that middle segments drags with barely a pulse.

Guadagnino kills the time with plenty of pretty scenery, a lot of tasteful nudity and a few meaningful conversations, and finds a highlight with Ralph Fiennes doing a solo dance to Emotional Rescue by The Rolling Stones. But there is precious little narrative development to speak of, and the themes of love won and lost, jealousy, betrayal, depression, substance abuse, illicit liaisons and career loss are hinted at and then set loose in the Italian breeze, never to find context or shelter. The bolted-on sub-plot of Pantelleria serving as a landing spot for illegal migrants serves as a further reminder of how little progress is being made among the main characters

And when the emotions erupt into the open, the film takes a sudden leap from subdued to wild. Instead of arguments there is violence, and the film disintegrates into a half-baked investigation followed by a sloppy wrap-up. The four central performances are all excellent and maintain a basic level of interest, but the good acting alone does not paper over the structural weaknesses.

For all its tedious pretensions, A Bigger Splash is actually a smaller plonk.

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