Movie Review: Jay Kelly (2025)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Noah Baumbach  

Starring: George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Stacy Keach, Emily Mortimer, Greta Gerwig, Isla Fisher, Jim Broadbent, Riley Keogh  

Running Time: 132 minutes  

Synopsis: Jay Kelly (George Clooney) has enjoyed a 35-year career as a movie star. He wraps-up filming on his latest production, and his manager and life-long friend Ron (Adam Sandler) expects Jay to quickly transition to his next project. But a chance encounter with Timothy (Billy Crudup), a former friend from acting school days, forces Jay to re-evaluate his life. Having neglected all his family relationships, he takes off to Europe with Ron and publicist Liz (Laura Dern) to get reacquainted with his daughter, but forging genuine human connections does not come naturally to a lifelong actor.

What Works Well: Reflecting aspects of star George Clooney's reality, this is an introspective, thoughtful, yet also peppy and often humorous examination of choices. The script (cowritten by director Noah Baumbach and co-star Emily Mortimer) is neither judgmental nor moralizing, and avoids pat resolutions. Achieving and sustaining movie star fame meant Jay was never a good father, and he gained much more from his friendship with Ron than he ever reciprocated. Decisions and actions are presented as realities and trade-offs rather than rectifiable regrets, and Jay's reflections are rich with in-the-moment dilemmas, awkwardness, and poignancy. The superlative cast includes Stacy Keach as Jay's father, Patrick Wilson as another actor managed by Ron, Jim Broadbent as a mentor, and Riley Keogh as one of Jay's daughters. Many of the supporting characters are provided with well-rounded lives to add depth, texture, and context.

What Does Not Work As Well: The running time is longer than it needs to be.

Key Quote:

Jay Kelly (acting a death scene): That's the crazy thing...everything you thought you were...isn't true.

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Movie Review: Greenberg (2010)

A drama and romance with some comic elements, Greenberg focuses on quirkiness caused by mental issues but is hampered by a lack of cohesion and an unconvincing romance.

Phillip Greenberg (Chris Messina) and his family use twentysomething and single Florence (Greta Gerwig) as a personal assistant, nanny and sitter to their dog Mahler. The Greenbergs depart to a multi-week vacation in Vietnam, leaving Florence in charge, although Phillip's undependable brother Roger (Ben Stiller) arrives from New York to stay at the empty house. Roger has just been released from hospital after suffering a nervous breakdown, and is intent on doing nothing for a while.

Roger and Florence are both lonely, meet at the house, and start exploring a relationship. Roger also reconnects with his old bandmate Ivan (Rhys Ifans), who is going through as trial separation from his wife, and Ruth (Jennifer Jason Leigh), an ex-girlfriend. Eric (Mark Duplass), another former bandmate, is still angry at Roger for botching a record deal 15 years prior. The dog Mahler suffers a serious illness, forcing Roger and Florence to spend more time together, but his erratic behaviour and mood swings are difficult to tolerate.

Written and directed by Noah Baumbach, Greenberg is a choppy experience. The initial focus on Florence works well, but Baumbach wants to tell the story of Roger, and the film quickly runs into trouble when the focus shifts. Whether due to his nervous breakdown or just his foul personality, Roger is shiftless, aimless, undependable, and temperamental, and it's difficult to see what Florence or anyone else would see in him to prompt a desire to have a relationship.

In the absence of a rational romance Greenberg offers precious little else. Roger's strained relationship with his former bandmates is promising context but the same conversation is repeated three times, and the health issues of the dog Mahler consume inordinate screen time as an excuse for Roger, who does not drive, to keep on calling Florence. Her excessive helpfulness and inability to ever stand up for herself is frustrating, but also the one explanation offered as to why she keeps accommodating his mood swings.

Greta Gerwig is far and away the the best thing in the movie as a free spirited woman starting to wonder if the prime of her life is slipping away, and Greenberg suffers most in its second half when Florence is absent for long stretches. Ben Stiller does little other than push moody button.

Greenberg aims for idiosyncratic, but stumbles into obnoxious.

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Movie Review: Frances Ha (2012)

A drama and comedy about millennial life drifting sideways, Frances Ha is a whimsical tale of catching up on growing up.

In New York City, Frances (Greta Gerwig) is a free-spirited 27 year old apprentice dancer, perpetually positive in an almost childlike manner, although life is passing her by. Financially struggling, Frances shares a close friendship with her roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner), and sacrifices a boyfriend to remain loyal to her lease commitments with Sophie.

But Sophie decides to move to a place of her own in a better neighbourhood, leaving Frances stranded. She moves in with Lev (Adam Driver) and Benji (Michael Zegen), and pins her financial hopes on more dance studio work over the Christmas period. But when told her services will not be needed, Frances visits her parents instead. With Sophie drifting further away and into a serious relationship with boyfriend Patch (Patrick Heusinger), Frances is forced to chart a new and more independent life path.

Directed by Noah Baumbach who also co-wrote the script with Gerwig, Frances Ha is an irresistibly quirky story of creeping adulthood. Beautifully captured in black and white, the film contains no traditional plot structure and instead ambles along with Frances, touching on the real but mundane concerns of finding money for rent, coming to terms with realistic career options, and friendship dependencies both genuine and superficial.

Frances: It’s like that thing where you are with someone and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it but it’s a party and you’re both talking to other people and laughing and shining and you look across the room and catch each other’s eye not because you are possessive or that it’s precisely sexual but because that is your person in this life.

Frances is an intriguing and immediately likeable character, still approaching life from the perspective of a playful girl rather than a grown woman, admitting  she has trouble letting go of places, and not yet fully acquainted with the concept of responsibility. She is also very much in Platonic love with Sophie. And Frances faces an inflection point when Sophie starts to make difficult grown-up decisions.

Sophie moves away to a neighbourhood she likes, compromises somewhat to solidify her boyfriend relationship, and is soon in a different orbit. Cut adrift, Frances goes into a freefall, and finds what she thinks is rock bottom during an aimless and wasteful overseas trips - the highlight of the film is a lowlight of irresponsible spur-of-moment decision making and jet lag.

Greta Gerwig is luminous as Frances, her performance finding the irrepressible inner child optimistically smiling at life's complexities while expressing them beautifully.

Frances: And it’s funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it’s a secret world that no one else knows about that exists right there in public unnoticed. 

Frances loves life and loves to embrace the goodness within it. She is still searching for her specific slice of contentment, but with her cheerful and indefatigable attitude, the Ha must mean more complete happiness is just around the corner.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: 20th Century Women (2016)

A coming of age drama, 20th Century Women is a sincere slice of life, capturing a time and place in the interlaced lives of five people.

It's 1979, in Santa Barbara, California. Jamie Fields (Lucas Jade Zumann) is 15 years old, transitioning from boyhood to adulthood. His divorced and progressive mom Dorothea (Annette Bening) runs a rooming house, and is worried she may not be able to properly guide Jamie on her own. The only adult male presence in the house is William (Billy Crudup), a tenant and handyman helping with home renovations. Dorothea turns to another tenant Abbie (Greta Gerwig), and Jamie's long-term friend Julie (Elle Fanning), and asks them to be more involved in Jamie's life.

Abbie is a free spirited aspiring photographer dealing with the aftermath of treatment for cervical cancer while embarking on a relationship with William. Julie often platonically sleeps with Jamie, and wants to remain close friends with him although she is sexually active with others. Julie and Abbie do engage more with Jamie, introducing him to the punk music scene, feminism and female sexuality issues, and Dorothea starts to regret what she asked for.

Directed and written by Mike Mills based partially on his experiences during adolescence, 20th Century Women is an often fascinating look at growing up in a perfectly imperfect environment. Capturing the awkward era 10 years on from the end of the 1960s, with Dorothea's hippie generation well and truly disillusioned and dealing with the wreckage of  broken relationships and life's unmet expectations, the film plays out against a backdrop of President Jimmy Carter lamenting a trend towards selfish narcissism, the punk music movement tearing itself apart three years after birth, and the ideals of feminism clumsily starting to seep into mainstream pragmatism.

Mills clearly intended the film as a salute to his mother, and as brought to life by a sparkling Annette Bening, Dorothea is a fascinating woman. Always well-meaning and trying to combine natural parental anxieties with a genuinely liberal approach and a willingness to move along with the times, she acknowledges her shortcomings and turns to others for help, although the consequences are not what she expected.

And guidance for her son, if that's what it is, comes from two other women who help make the film a uniquely character-rich experience. Abbie is simultaneously sad and lively, Julie is brooding and precocious, and they both represent women who came of age in the 1970s. They are benefitting from a new world affording them independence, sexual liberation, and career opportunities, but anyway struggling with home, health and relationship issues while trying to decipher the much more chaotic societal signposts. Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning are both perfectly cast and with Bening create a triumphant triangle of talent around the willing Lucas Jade Zumann as Jamie.

Billy Crudup is not as fortunate, the character of William somewhat underwritten as Mills focuses on the female influences. And somewhat understandably, the film rather peters out in its final chapter.

With multiple narrators providing various perspectives, and with subtle use of humour, flashbacks, and brief flash forwards, 20th Century Women is an eloquent look back at how the future is shaped, warts and all.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Maggie's Plan (2015)

A semi-serious romantic comedy, Maggie's Plan brings the subgenre down to earth with wry humour, a sprinkling of originality and flawed characters all around.

Maggie (Greta Gerwig) works as a liaison between students and business at an arts college. Unable to find a long-term relationship, she decides to have a baby using the donated sperm of pickle merchant Guy (Travis Fimmel). But she then meets and falls in love with anthropology professor John (Ethan Hawke), who is married to haughty Columbia University Professor Georgette (Julianne Moore) and the father of two young children. John is writing his first fiction book and finds Maggie an inspiration.

John divorces Georgette, marries Maggie and they have a child of their own. But it does not take long for the magic to disappear from their marriage, and John's book project comprehensively stalls. Georgette is jilted, but remains in close touch with John, leading Maggie to hatch a new plan in her quest for happiness.

Directed and written by Rebecca Miller, Maggie's Plan breathes organic life into the eternally tired rom-com formula. This is a story about three adults entering the midstream of life and carrying plenty of baggage, ranging from unmet expectations to ticking biological clocks, and more than capable of making a brand new set of mistakes. In celebrating the quirky foibles of her characters, Miller sidesteps most of the cliches that beset idyllic romances desperate to generate laughs.

Maggie always has a plan and always over-plans, a trait she recognizes but is unable to control. The plot is a succession of Maggie plans, from artificial insemination to marrying John and finally finding a way out of the misery of a marriage she thought she wanted. Greta Gerwig is delightful as the self-aware Maggie, always ditzy enough to make a right-sized mess out of every situation.

Georgette, to Maggie: I don't know what to say. You're a funny person. There is something so pure about you. You know, and a little bit stupid. And it's a kind of innocence. You know, just so unconscious. I can't help it. I like you.

Georgette is controlling, arrogant and yet loving and passionate, and Julianne Moore luxuriates in a Scandinavian accent and a complex performance as a smart woman deservedly dumped but only slightly resentful. John is mainly oblivious to the emotions of others and needs something different from each of Maggie and Georgette, the former an intellectual superior capable of pushing him and the latter a cheerleader and muse. Ethan Hawke is sympathetic as the struggling academic trampled by two women at a more assertive stage in life.

Maggie's Plan maintains a low-key, grounded tone, the humour anchored in the consequences of intricate life altering plans that sound good in concept, but never quite unfold as intended.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Greta Gerwig

All movies starring Greta Gerwig and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Greenberg (2010)

No Strings Attached (2011)

To Rome With Love (2012)

Frances Ha (2012)

Maggie's Plan (2015)

Jackie (2016)

20th Century Women (2016)

Jay Kelly (2025)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: To Rome With Love (2012)

An episodic comedy romance with some fantasy elements, Woody Allen's To Rome With Love offers mild amusement but minimal substance through four unrelated vignettes.

American tourist Hayley (Alison Pill) meets and falls in love with Italian lawyer Michelangelo. When Hayley's parents Jerry and Phyllis (Allen and Judy Davis) arrive in Rome for a visit, Jerry, a recently retired opera producer, discovers that Michelangelo's father Giancarlo, a funeral home director, has a magnificent singing voice, but only when he is in the shower.

Young student architect Jack (Jesse Eisenberg) lives with his girlfriend Sally (Greta Gerwig). When Sally's alluring friend Monica (Ellen Page) comes for a visit, Jack can't help but fall in love with Monica's seemingly sophisticated charms. John Foy (Alec Baldwin), a successful architect revisiting Rome where he once lived, provides spectral advise to Jack. John and Jack may be the same person, 30 years apart.

Antonio and Milly are newlyweds from a rural town who have just relocated to Rome to start a new life and seek better jobs. Inadvertently separated, Antonio finds himself in the compromising company of vivacious prostitute Anna (Penelope Cruz); he has to pretend that Anna is Milly in front of his stuffy relatives. Meanwhile Milly stumbles onto a film set and allows herself to be seduced by famous Italian movie star actor Luca Salta.

Leopoldo (Robert Benigni) is an average office clerk with a mundane life. One day he wakes up and inexplicably finds himself an unlikely celebrity, with media and paparazzi hordes chasing after him with microphones and cameras and documenting his every move.

A flighty exercise in saluting the ethereal beauty of a city, To Rome With Love is almost astonishing in its lack of depth. While all four stories offer a benign level of enjoyment, the film is the equivalent of flipping through a glossy travel magazine; the articles are at best quick glance-through fluff, the pictures professional but also exceptionally familiar. The entire exercise is wholly forgettable moments after it ends.

While none of the stories carry any impact, a couple offer some marginal entertainment. Allen sporadically infuses a common theme of unexpected but non-threatening interventions altering the planned course of life, with the diversions from a charted course coming with both a smile and no explanation needed. The imaginative elements of the film work well, John Foy as a ghostly presence drifting in and out of Jack's life and Leopoldo's sudden detour into an alternate celebrity reality carrying some intrigue.

Antonio and Milly experiencing a chaotic start to their life in Rome appears to be a parable for the temptations of the big city, and is less successful. Least interesting of all is Allen inserting his typical neurotic New Yorker persona into the Roman context. The tiresome opera-singer-in-the-shower story starts out as not funny and is then stretched well past its breaking point.

To Rome With Love is Allen at his flimsiest, offering some old-world eye candy with a side of empty calories.

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