Movie Review: Find Me Falling (2024)

Genre: Musical Romantic Dramedy  

Director: Stelana Kliris  

Starring: Harry Connick Jr., Agni Scott, Ali Fumiko Whitney  

Running Time: 94 minutes  

Synopsis: After a failed album, music star John Allman (Harry Connick Jr.) retreats to Cyprus and buys a small house near a cliff known as a suicide hotspot. He meets police Captain Manoli, local chanteuse Melina (Ali Fumiko Whitney), and his old flame from pre-fame days Sia (Agni Scott). Much as John wants solitude, he reignites a romance with Sia and is drawn into the lives of the locals, where surprises and complications await.

What Works Well: The combination of mild humour rubbing shoulders with despair, exemplified by the suicide hotspot generating a steady stream of tragi-comic subplots, creates a warm narrative of love lost and found. The romance embraces adult themes, both John and Sia gradually confronting their regrets and again finding themselves at thorny crossroads. The Cypriot village locations are organically scenic, and director Stelana Kliris conveys a sense of culture with the help of a mostly local cast. 

What Does Not Work As Well: The writing is simple and at times cringey, with the moments of conflict and misunderstanding most susceptible to landing with a hollow clang. Harry Connick Jr. is an amiable presence but does not so much act as just wander through his scenes.

Conclusion: Tender, romantic, nostalgic, and frivolous.



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Movie Review: Copycat (1995)

Genre: Serial Killer Thriller

Director: Jon Amiel

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Holly Hunter, Dermot Mulroney, Harry Connick Jr., Will Patton

Running Time: 123 minutes

Synopsis: In San Francisco, criminal psychologist Dr. Helen Hudson (Sigourney Weaver) is suffering from agoraphobia a year after narrowly surviving a brutal assault by serial killer Daryll Lee Cullum (Harry Connick Jr.). With Callum now in prison, Inspector MJ Monahan (Holly Hunter) and her partner Inspector Reuben Goetz (Dermot Mulroney) seek Helen's help to capture a new serial killer preying on women. Hudson deduces the assailant is copying the methods of famous serial killers from the past, but there is also a more sinister motive behind the killings.

What Works Well: László Kovács' classy cinematography enhances slick production values, and director Jon Amiel keeps the action moving and never far away from the next thrill. The excellent duo of Sigourney Weaver (sophisticated but traumatized) and Holly Hunter (whipsmart but jaded) are complemented by a sinister and unhinged Harry Connick Jr. performance. Dr. Hudson's house is an architectural beauty and almost makes agoraphobia an attractive proposition. 

What Does Not Work As Well: Most of the plot details do not withstand retrospective scrutiny, the killer's identity is at first vague then irrelevant, and a side-plot involving MJ's ex-romantic interest Inspector Nicoletti (Will Patton) is only irritating. Given the narrative intentions, the psychotic Daryll Lee Callum deserved much more visible involvement.

Conclusion: Superficially attractive but substantively lacking a cutting edge.



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Movie Review: New In Town (2009)

A tedious romantic comedy, New In Town scours tired fish-out-of-water ideas and comes up empty.

Miami-based food company executive Lucy Hill (Renée Zellweger) is dispatched to rural New Ulm, Minnesota, to oversee cost-cutting and automation at a food packaging plant. She finds it hard to acclimatize to the frosty weather and the country folk, although well-meaning local assistant Blanche Gunderson (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) tries to help her new boss feel welcome.

Lucy clashes with plant superintendent Stu (J.K. Simmons), and manages to insult widowed union representative Ted (Harry Connick Jr.). But gradually she warms up to the simpler and more genuine way of life, and a romance blossoms with Ted. When the corporate honchos decide to shut down the plant, Lucy has to find a way to fulfil her career ambitions without losing her new friends.

Yet again recycling the exhausted premise of a big-city career woman caught in the hinterlands, New In Town does not seem to even be trying. Director Jonas Elmer tries to extract laughs from inane situations, such as a high powered executive like Lucy demonstrating utter cluelessness by failing to plan for the weather at her travel destination, and walking through a processing plant in high heels. Local culture is packaged into stereotypes of accents and nosiness, quirky habits like scrapbooking, long-running arguments about tapioca recipes, and bringing Jesus into every conversation.

Of course Lucy and Ted start off on two wrong feet, he becomes her knight in shining pick-up truck, she helps with his daughter's prom night, but only after shooting him in the rear-end during a hunting trip. Some chuckles can be found within the dross, and the trio of Zellweger, Carrick Jr., and Simmons struggle gallantly against the feeble material. But ultimately, any comedy extracting buckshot out of bums is close to the bottom.

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Movie Review: P.S. I Love You (2007)

A romantic drama with some humour, P.S. I Love You explores the depths of grief with a polished wink. The romance is heartfelt, but the movie suffers from bloat and some drudgerous pacing.

New Yorkers Holly and Gerry Kennedy (Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler) have been married for nine years. They bicker about money, jobs and when to have a baby, but they are still very much in love. When Gerry dies due to a brain tumour, Holly is devastated and left without her soul mate. Her mother Patricia (Kathy Bates) as well as best friends Denise (Lisa Kudrow) and Sharon (Gina Gershon) do their best to console her. Bartender Daniel (Harry Connick Jr.) also offers a shoulder to lean on.

On her 30th birthday Holly receives the first of 10 pre-arranged letters from Gerry, encouraging her to be adventurous and visit his home town in Ireland. While the letters keep her emotionally tied to her deceased husband, she also starts to emerge out of her depression, reuniting with Gerry's parents and meeting his hunky best friend William (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). But finding her new calling in life will be a challenge.

Demonstrating courage to introduce the central couple then kill off the guy within the first 10 minutes, P.S. I Love You immediately dares to be different. Director Richard LaGravenese co-wrote the script adaptation of Cecelia Ahern's book, and allows the love between Holly and Gerry to wash over the grieving widow through a series of flashbacks as she follows his advice in the mysteriously delivered letters.

Gerry's immense continued influence in Holly's life is also conveyed in his occasional post-death presence at their apartment and in her bed, her longing for his voice, touch and companionship emerging as palpable and painfully real.

But LaGravenese also overstates the strength and scope of the story. P.S. I Love You extend to a wholly unnecessary 125 minutes. The editing is flabby, and on several occasions songs are belted out almost in their entirety to pad the running time. The tired cliche of Ireland as a magically perfect place filled with nothing but rolling green hills and jolly salt-of-the-earth types is trotted out for another outing.

Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler try their hands at romance with mixed results. They convince as a committed couple, and Swank allows herself to drown in a sea of grief and seething anger at life's unfairness. But they are on much less secure ground in the flashbacks to their earliest meetings as 19 year olds. Both actors are well into their 30s and poor impersonators of footloose teens.

The supporting cast provides good touches of humour. Lisa Kudrow's Denise is on a single-minded mission to find a husband using a utilitarian checklist, and Harry Connick Jr.'s Daniel does not allow the missing filter between his brain and mouth to impede his confidence.

Mixing pathos with playfulness, P.S. I Love You is a poignant if somewhat ponderous postscript.



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Movie Review: Hope Floats (1998)

A drama about the consequences of a shattered marriage and going back home, Hope Floats is a dreary descent into doldrums.

In New York City, Birdee (Sandra Bullock) is embarrassed on a trashy daytime television talk show when her supposed best friend Connie (an uncredited Rosanna Arquette) reveals she is having an affair with Birdee's husband Bill (Michael Paré). Birdee packs up her young daughter Bernice (Mae Whitman) and heads back to her tiny hometown of Smithville, Texas, to live with her mother Ramona (Gena Rowlands).

In her high school days Birdee was the local beauty queen. Now after a period of sulking she gets reacquainted with a town that has barely changed, and faces some backlash for her prior haughtiness. She meets wood craftsman Justin Matisse (Harry Connick Jr.) who has had a crush on her since school days, and he initiates a romantic pursuit. Meanwhile young Bernice encounters school bullying issues and hopes her father Bill will come back.

No amount of small town charm, flashes of humour and movie star glamour can save Hope Floats. In one of his few directing excursions, Forest Whitaker delivers a boring and overlong story of a woman coming to terms with the end of her marriage. The film runs out of things to say about 30 minutes in, and once handsome and available Harry Connick Jr. shows up, the ending is predetermined but the tortured Steven Rogers script has to trudge through plenty of nothingness to get there.

And so Whitaker gets busy with a mundane and ultimately pointless subplot about Bernice tangling with the school bully. Birdee plays hard-to-get with Justin to run down the clock when she is not taking turns shouting then hugging with Ramona and Bernice. Birdee's father, confined to a seniors' home and suffering from Alzheimer's disease, is another narrative dead-end.

Sandra Bullock tries hard to save the movie but to no avail, although Whitaker takes time to occasionally capture his star with the light hitting her perfectly ruffled hair just-so for the full glamour effect. Actually filmed in Smithville, the local charm quotient is lower than it should be.

Hope Floats is mopey bloat.

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