Movie Review: Goodbye June (2025)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Kate Winslet  

Starring: Kate Winslet, Andrea Riseborough, Toni Collette, Helen Mirren, Timothy Spall, Johnny Flynn  

Running Time: 114 minutes  

Synopsis: In England, elderly cancer patient June (Helen Mirren) is hospitalized just before Christmas, and doctors determine that her death is near. Her family gathers, including husband Bernie (Timothy Spall), daughters Julia (Kate Winslet), Molly (Andrea Riseborough), and Helen (Toni Collette), and son Connor (Johnny Flynn). The responsible Julia and highly strung Molly are barely on speaking terms, while Helen is into new age mysticism and Connor suffers from anxieties. From her hospital death bed, June tries to bring the family together.

What Works Well: In her directorial debut, Kate Winslet tries to inject a few flashes of style into the sappy and mundane material, but is hampered by a limited number of sets (most of the drama takes place around June's hospital bed). The stellar cast members do deliver steady performances, and each family member gets a few moments to shine. A bit of spiky humour breaks through the gloom.

What Does Not Work As Well: Quite inferior to similar families-waiting-for-death dramas like Two Weeks, Blackbird, and His Three Daughters, here the characters are stereotypes, the emotions superficial, conflicts are contrived, and the public hospital is remarkably tidy, empty, and attentive. Seemingly intractable years-long disputes are resolved by saccharine soliloquies ("I envy you" is matched by "I work so hard") before being sealed with a hug. The running time is a solid 20 minutes too long, and to triple underline "harried mom" and "circle of life" tropes, most scenes are cluttered with gaggles of children being shuffled in and out of cars and strollers.

Key Quote:

June: Maybe if I'm lucky I'll come back as snow.

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Movie Review: Lee (2023)

Genre: Biographical Drama  

Director: Ellen Kuras  

Starring: Kate Winslet, Josh O'Connor, Alexander Skarsgård, Andy Samberg, Marion Cotillard  

Running Time: 116 minutes  

Synopsis: In 1977, renowned wartime photographer Lee Miller (Kate Winslet) is at her home in England answering questions from an interviewer (Josh O'Connor). Flashbacks reveal her story starting in France of 1938, where she gives up a modeling career and takes up photography. She starts a romance with artist Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård) and they relocate to England, where Lee secures a job with Vogue magazine covering the homefront during World War Two. She befriends Life photographer David Scherman (Andy Samberg), and with D-Day looming, finally secures a reassignment to the front lines. In Europe, Lee's cameras capture the horrors of war, from badly wounded soldiers to the chaos of combat - and more.

What Works Well: A committed Kate Winslet portrays Miller as a woman determined to break down barriers, and traces an arc from the glamour of the pre-war French countryside to the grim sites of unimaginable atrocities. In the 1977 scenes, Winslet barely conceals entrenched trauma, smoking and alcohol repurposed from objects of picturesque pleasure to failing facades. Director Ellen Kuras finds intensity in the under-fire scenes in France, but bullets and explosions are also just a prelude to what awaits deeper in Europe.

What Does Not Work As Well: Despite a valiant effort, Winslet struggles to express the naive courage required for a woman in her early 30s to venture into war, defaulting to world-weary determination rather than young adventurism. By definition, this is the story of an observer rather than an instigator, and while Miller is admirably portrayed as an early feminist challenging man-made rules, the strength of the material resides more in the historic wartime milieu than within the photographer.

Key Quote:

Lee: There's so much life in a person's eyes. Right up until the moment that there isn't.



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Movie Review: Blackbird (2019)

Genre: Dramedy

Director: Roger Michell

Starring: Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Mia Wasikowska, Sam Neill, Lindsay Duncan

Running Time: 98 minutes

Synopsis: Suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease), Lily (Susan Sarandon) has decided to end her life. She invites her family over for a final weekend reunion. Joining Lily and her supportive husband Paul (Sam Neill) are their grown daughters Jennifer (Kate Winslet) and Anna (Mia Wasikowska), Lily's life-long best friend Liz (Lindsay Duncan), plus Jennifer's husband and son, and Anna's girlfriend. The weekend features a mix of sadness, celebration, humour, and no shortage of flashpoints.

What Works Well: This remake of a 2014 Danish movie enjoys a stellar cast in top form, with Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, and Mia Wasikowska shining brightest. Director Roger Michell embraces the theatrical setting (most of the scenes take place at Lily and Paul's home), but the performances remain organic and subdued, capturing the awkwardness familiar from most family gatherings. Lily's life-ending decision casts the most obvious thematic shadow, but other issues are also explored, including a dysfunctional sibling relationship, murmurs of resentment between daughters and their mother, and a life-long friendship with a twist. Dashes of humour, brisk pacing, and idyllic cinematography add a quiet sense of quality.

What Does Not Work As Well: The sorrowful melodrama knob is steadily turned up in the final act, overwhelming more subtle family dynamics.

Conclusion: A reunion weekend enriched by the complexities of life - and death.



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Movie Review: The Dressmaker (2015)

A comedy-drama-romance, The Dressmaker enjoys sly western-noir moments, but chooses to sprawl and never settles on an even tone.

In the 1950s, Paris-trained dressmaker Tilly Dunnage (Kate Winslet) returns to the tiny Australian outback town of Dungatar seeking revenge. Years earlier, when Tilly was a little girl, she was falsely accused of causing the death of a young boy and driven out of town. She is now treated with suspicion as an outcast, although Tilly's memories of her childhood are blurry and she believes she may be cursed. Her crusty - and fiesty - mother Molly (Judy Davis) is well on the way to losing her mind and is of little help.

After reconnecting with local crossdressing police officer Sergeant Horatio Farrat (Hugo Weaving), Tilly causes a stir with her couture dresses and finds an ally in hunky Teddy McSwiney (Liam Hemsworth), who cleans the local sewers. She wins over the town's women by designing ravishing gowns for them, but her real objective is to reveal the truth about the men who wronged her, and to seek justice, frontier style.

An Australian production directed and co-written by Jocelyn Moorhouse, The Dressmaker has subversive fun with a familiar revenge theme. Vaguely riffing on High Plains Drifter, the style is an unapologetic mix of noir imagery assembled onto Sergio Leone-inspired framing. But this is a search of justice without guns and threats: Tilly's secret weapon is dressmaking, and she deploys frocks to disrupt and unhinge her enemies. Along the way secrets are revealed, hypocrisies shredded, lies laid bare, with still room for romance, humour, one unexpected shock, and plenty of idiosyncratic behaviour.

Unfortunately, the plot is also cluttered with distractions riding on poorly defined secondary characters. Tilly uses a rivalry between Dungatar and the adjacent town of Winyerp to her advantage, starting with a football match and ending with a particularly confusing amateur theatre wardrobe contest. The antagonists are short-changed into cartoon characters, including the town chemist and his wife, a local councillor, and a visiting eligible bachelor and his mother. The town's women are sketched-in and largely interchangeable.

All the padding extends the running time towards two hours and dulls the impact of Tilly's quest to understand her past. Unperturbed, Kate Winslet rides the unruliness with knowing determination, her central performance a nod to classic avengers three chess moves ahead of their victims. Judy Davis is delightful as the mom not quite sure what is going on but anyway intent on disrupting it. 

This dress is attractive, but also a bit too frilly.



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Movie Review: Sense And Sensibility (1995)

A romantic drama with hints of humour, Sense And Sensibility adapts Jane Austen's novel with a breezy attitude and polished aesthetic.

It's late in the 18th century in England, and the death of Mr. Dashwood (Tom Wilkinson) leaves his second wife Mrs. Dashwood (Gemma Jones) and her daughters Elinor (Emma Thompson), Marianne (Kate Winslet) and young Margaret on a much reduced income. The two older sisters are close friends but opposites in personality. Elinor is thoughtful, circumspect and getting dangerously close to being designated a spinster. Marianne is passionate, extroverted and believes in true love.

The Dashwoods have to give up their lavish home and most of their servants, and they relocate to the snug cottage of the kindly Mr. and Mrs. Middleton. In the process Elinor meets and starts to fall in "like" with the potentially wealthy but profession-less Edward Ferrars (Hugh Grant). However, events conspire against their budding relationship.

Marianne's fortunes start to look up when she meets Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman), who may be interested in her, but before he can act she is literally swept off her feet by the dashing John Willoughby (Greg Wise). But with money, class, long-held promises and family expectations at least as important as love, the path to marital happiness for the Dashwood sisters is nothing if not complicated.

First-time script writer Emma Thompson and producer Lindsay Doran wrestled with Austen's prose and simplified the book into cinematic cohesion. With foreign director Ang Lee providing an agile perspective, the trio produced a surprisingly accessible package. While the story remains largely obsessed with women finding husbands and not a single character appears to have a vocation worth mentioning, Sense And Sensibility creates a thriller out of mysteries of the heart.

The multiple and often overlapping possible love matches for Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are surprisingly engaging, and of course not a single relationship comes without layers of complexity. The affable Edward appears to be prevented from fully pursuing Elinor because she is penniless and his mother won't allow it, but a much deeper secret will be revealed to Elinor, shaking the very premise of their bond.

Marianne suffers deeper cuts. Her two suitors could not be more different. Colonel Brandon is calm, collected and almost too easy to overlook as unsuitably serene for her disposition. Willoughby by comparison is a romantic wild heart, and once he enters her life she can see no one else. However, both men have stunning backstories to be revealed at the appropriate time, and only after Marianne's young heart is exposed to the dangers of intense love and her health compromised.

And the warm core of the story is a tender relationship between Elinor and Marianne built on sisterly love, support and respect. With the men frequently absent to build up the mystery around their motivations, Elinor and Marianne harbour the one genuine, constant and palpable bond.

Thompson and Winslet bring the two sisters to life with superlative performances. Thompson internalizes the fortitude expected of an older sister but still shines in the few scenes where Elinor's emotional defences finally break. At just 19 years old and in one of her earliest roles, Winslet finds the unabashed expression of an arts-loving young woman willing to challenge the social conventions of her day.

Director Lee ensures the men do more by staying within themselves, both Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant conveying polite but complex characters with more going on in their lives than first meets the eye. Although most of the drama occurs indoors and through scenes of dialogue, Lee does include plenty of beautiful English scenery, and a few pivotal scenes are staged on stormy moors with Marianne's impulsive passions landing her in physical predicaments and in need of rescue.

Thompson's script measures out the reveals at appropriate intervals to keep the drama simmering, and enough secondary characters populate the margins to provide a base level of caustic humour and social commentary. The labyrinthian love entanglements provide avenues to expose gender, class and economic divides buffeting the pursuit of happiness.

For the Dashwood girls finding a suitable man is almost the easy part. Not immune from being victimized, the sisters will build their true character by deftly navigating around societal expectations, using Sense And Sensibility to expose true intentions.

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Movie Review: Triple 9 (2016)

A crime thriller, Triple 9 features stellar action set-pieces, but also a large cast struggling against a convoluted and context-free plot.

In Atlanta, Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor) leads a gang of ex-military types conducting high-risk heists for Russian crime lord Irina Vlaslov (Kate Winslet), who holds Michael's young son as leverage. He calls upon corrupt cops Marcus (Anthony Mackie) and Franco (Clifton Collins Jr.) to join his crew to steal a bank safety deposit box. Detective Jeffrey Allen (Woody Harrelson) starts to investigate, while Irina demands Michael immediately start planning a follow-up theft of critical records from a Homeland Security building.

Jeffrey's nephew Chris (Casey Affleck) is an honest cop and Marcus' new partner. They tangle with a group of tough street gang members, including Luis Pinto (Luis Da Silva). To create a diversion for the Homeland Security heist, Michael's crew decide an "officer down, code triple 9" incident is required to draw police resources to the wrong side of town. Chris is selected as the victim to be shot, but little will go according to plan.

Triple 9 features three well-executed action set-pieces, neatly placed at the start, middle and near the end of the film. The first establishes the pace with Michael's gang pulling off the audacious bank break-in followed by an insane car chase. The second is an incidental but still impressive house search followed by a street chase and fire fight as Chris and Marcus go after a member of Pinto's gang in a hostile neighbourhood. And the finale is the double whammy of the code triple 9 incident overlapping with the Homeland Security theft.

In these scenes director John Hillcoat excels in delivering cohesive thrills, but the film struggles during all the in-between sections. The Matt Cook script drops in on all the characters essentially mid-flight and never pauses to set a meaningful context. The people, places and relationships are sketched in using the broadest of strokes, and as a result it is exceptionally difficult to care about any of them.

The central plot supposedly driving all the action involves the evil Irina attempting to free her barely-seen but highly influential husband from an overseas prison by getting her hands on some vaguely defined records, a classic example of a hastily slapped together, needlessly complicated yet still utterly flimsy MacGuffin.

The effort to portray Michael as a victim lands with an unconvincing thud, his semi-hostaged child (the mother is Irina's more chill sister Elena, played by Gal Gadot) a lame device to garner sympathy. Chris is supposed to emerge as the honest core of the story but he is dramatically under-defined, while a myriad of greasy bad guys, bad cops, and bad guys who are ex-cops, all with labyrinthine personal connections, clutter the screen. By the time it becomes clearer who is who, most of them are dead anyway.

Woody Harrelson adds his distinctive brand of caring by not caring, here as a drug-addicted detective unpeeling the rash of daring heists, while Kate Winslet's turn as a Russian mob boss borders on cartoonish.

Triple 9 does feature a triple header of accomplished highlights, but these are strung together with saggy material.

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Movie Review: Collateral Beauty (2016)

A drama with touches of humour addressing the consequences of personal loss and profound grief, Collateral Beauty is well meaning but excessively sententious.

In New York City, marketing executive Howard (Will Smith) is still in a deep depression two years after the death of his daughter. To try and cope with his grief he writes angry letters to the abstract concepts of Death, Love and Time. His business partners Whit (Edward Norton), Clare (Kate Winslet) and Simon (Michael Peña) are facing a deadline to sell the company, but cannot seal the deal without Howard, the majority shareholder.

In desperation the partners decide to hire struggling theatre actors to engage with Howard, either to snap him out of his funk or prove he is incapable of functioning. Brigitte (Helen Mirren), Amy (Keira Knightley) and Raffi (Jacob Latimore) agree to impersonate Death, Love and Time respectively. Howard does take the initiative to join a support group managed by Madeleine (Naomie Harris), while the hired actors learn that Whit, Clare and Simon are facing personal issues of their own.

Death is part of life, love persists despite everything, and time is precious and should not be wasted are universal themes straight from the bottom shelf of simplistic self-help pop-psychology. Collateral Beauty wears these concepts with utmost reverence, and weaves around them a saccharin story befitting the excessively maudlin mood.

The clunky plot is an excuse to construct the rickety device of actors impersonating abstract concepts and ambushing Howard in street-level interventions. And it's no surprise whatsoever when backstories are introduced for Whit, Clare and Simon to double down on the sappiness of Howard's ordeal and give the hired actors more people to fix, Hollywood style.

But it's not all totally bad. Director David Frankel, working from a spec script by Allan Loeb, has an embarrassment of acting riches at his disposal, and makes reasonably good use of the talented cast given the emotional immaturity of the material. The shortish running-time of 97 minutes is shared equally among the many of stars on display, and most of them get at least a couple of scenes to shine. Helen Mirren appears to have the most fun as a never-will-be actress romping through the role of Death.

The perfectly sparkling locations featuring New York City decked out for Christmas fit perfectly within the film's simplistically magical ethos, but Loeb's dialogue exchanges needed at least one more thorough polish to scrub away the many awkward artificialities.

Collateral Beauty tries to achieve a whimsical fairytale vibe, but lands firmly on the wrong side of cloying.

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Movie Review: The Life Of David Gale (2003)

A mystery and drama about capital punishment, The Life Of David Gale stimulates debate, but easily manages to outsmart itself.

In a Texas prison, death row convict David Gale (Kevin Spacey) selects reporter Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet) for a series of exclusive interviews in the three days leading up to his execution. Sentenced to die for murdering fellow anti-capital punishment activist Constance Harraway (Laura Linney), he recounts his story in flashback. Gale was a respected university professor of philosophy, and along with Constance, a member of DeathWatch, a group advocating for the end of capital punishment.

Gale's fiery and argumentative personality made him a perfect spokesperson, and he debated capital punishment with the Governor on television. But Gale's marriage was in trouble, and he succumbs to a quickie with ex-student Berlin (Rhona Mitra), who promptly accuses him of rape. He loses his family and his career, but continues helping Constance. As Bitsey learns more about Gale, she notices a mysterious stranger in a pick-up truck tailing her every movement, and starts to suspect there is more to Gale's story than meets the eye.

Directed by Alan Parker and written by Charles Randolph, The Life Of David Gale glances off its target. Intended as a stunning winning hand to demonstrate the vulnerability of government-sanctioned killing, the story builds towards a couple of well-telegraphed twists that are nowhere near as clever as Parker and Randolph believe them to be. The Life Of David Gale ties itself up in a moral pretzel of its own making, unintentionally sparking in wild-eyed fashion distracting debates and comprehensively diluting any impact.

And yet there is no denying the craftsmanship on show. Parker constructs a solid drama, wrapping the mystery of Constance's death around a flawed man trying too hard. Spacey and Winset are in decent form, and the film does suffer from her absence in the flashback scenes. The grim rain-lashed grey aesthetics around the prison and the nearby town add to the film's appropriately dour mood, and provide a contrast with the slick academic milieu occupied by Gale in better days.

Bitsey and her sidekick, chain smoking intern Zack Stemmons (Gabriel Mann), enjoy some amateur detective moments, and stumble upon Nico (Melissa McCarthy), the wacky yet opportunistic current resident of the house where Constance died. The puzzle of the cowboy stranger in the pickup truck (an almost silent Matt Craven) adds just a touch of personal danger before weaving into the convoluted explanation of Constance's demise. Unfortunately for David Gale and all others involved, the closer The Life Of David Gale gets to the moment of death, the quicker it unravels.

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Movie Review: Steve Jobs (2015)

An honest portrayal of a deeply flawed genius, Steve Jobs presents the portrait of the man through a unique structure, revealing his passion, obsession, and distinctive character traits.

The film is divided into three chapters, each depicting the anxious period just before a key product launch in the remarkable career of Jobs (Michael Fassbender). The same group of people interact with him prior to each presentation:

• Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), his marketing executive and chief confidant. 
• Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), the Apple co-founder, seeking recognition for Apple's early success and navigating a strained relationship with Jobs.
• John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), the executive brought into Apple by Jobs, as well as Jobs' mentor and sometime nemesis.
• Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg), a long-term member of the Apple technical design team.
• Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston), Jobs' former girlfriend and the mother of his daughter Lisa.
• Lisa herself, from child to young adult.

The three product launches are the Apple Macintosh in 1984, which Jobs predicted would be a mass market success (wrong) and revolutionize the industry (eventually right); the first NeXT computer in 1988 after Jobs was ousted from Apple; and the Apple iMac in 1998, after he returned to the company and embarked on a remarkable run of success that transformed Apple into one of the largest and most successful business behemoths in history.

Directed by Danny Boyle, written by Aaron Sorkin and based on the Walter Isaacson book, Steve Jobs is an exhilarating talk fest. A series of rapid fire conversations in the build-up to high-stakes product launches, the film succeeds in highlighting the exhausting essence of a detail-obsessed man who both saw and defined the future of consumer electronics, and never yielded to what was convenient in pursuit of his vision.

The three-chapter structure traces Jobs' nuanced transformation as he ages and is buffeted by the realities of the business world. Although his core beliefs never change, he softens around the edges, listening just a bit more to the often exasperated Joanna, growing more accepting of Lisa's role in his life, and mending a few, if not all, damaged fences, notably with Sculley.

Sorkin's script is brilliant, the prose sharp but not overwhelming. The dialogue, while essentially made up, teases out all aspects of Jobs' insecurities and obstinacy, and the collision of his quirks with his objectives. Sorkin and Boyle never shy away from Jobs' stubborn obsessiveness with details that may not matter to anyone else, with Hertzfeld a regular victim, nor from Jobs' unwillingness to ever share the limelight or open a crack of recognition coveted by Wozniak.

The film also reveals Jobs' streak of ruthlessness in navigating the unforgiving waters of high stakes business, sometimes losing out in a big way (his ouster from Apple), and at other times charting a devious course back to glory (hyping an essentially empty NeXT cube to win an invite back to run Apple).

All the performances are perfect, with Fassbender getting into Jobs' skin and projecting a layer of arrogant confidence covering up a mass of complex unresolved issues. Winslet matches him word for word, comfortably finding Hoffman's courage in recognizing her role as the one person who can sometimes reach an often impossible man.

Steve Jobs is a worthy homage to a reluctant father, dismissive boss, traumatized orphan, friend to very few, unapologetic ideas poacher, and a legend possessing a laser focus on the concept of closed-system designs that would go on to dominate the world.

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Movie Review: The Mountain Between Us (2017)

A survival adventure, The Mountain Between Us is a two-person character study that intermittently connects but also drags on for too long.

Photojournalist Alex Martin (Kate Winslet), traveling to her wedding, is stranded at an airport when her flight is cancelled due to an incoming storm. She spots fellow traveler Dr. Ben Bass (Idris Elba) on his way to perform a surgery and equally frustrated by the delays. Alex and Ben team up to charter a small plane from grizzled and dishevelled Vietnam War veteran Walter (Beau Bridges) and his dog.

Walter does not file a flight plan, and during the flight suffers a stroke. The plane crashes in the remote snow-covered mountains in a Utah wilderness area. Ben, Alex and the dog survive, although Alex suffers a broken leg. They shelter for days in the half-destroyed plane cabin against the bitter cold, but help does not arrive. With food running out, and against Ben's wishes, Alex insists that they need to leave the crash site and start descending the mountain to reach help.

Directed by Hany Abu-Assad as an adaptation of the Charles Martin novel, The Mountain Between Us is a chilling drama about surviving the elements and unanticipated closeness with a stranger. The hip-deep snow, unimaginable cold, blinding storms, injuries, wild animals and isolated mountains provide plenty of physical challenges for Ben and Alex to overcome. And Abu-Assad doesn't hide from some awkward details: how does a woman with a broken leg urinate in a cramped cabin with a strange man for company?

But of more interest is the connection that needs to be forged between two travelers with nothing in common, and indeed plenty of rub points. Alex is talkative, inquisitive and a risk-taker. With her chase-the-story instincts, she is unable to sit still and await rescue, despite a broken leg. Ben is quiet, reserved, cerebral and slow to share anything intimate about himself. Applying the methodical logic of a surgeon, he finds Alex's impulsiveness grating.

The fact that Alex instigated the ill-fated charter adds to the strain between them. The journey from frigid distance to the warmth of dependency underpins the film, and of course their contrasting character traits will need to merge in the name of survival.

Abu-Assad gets the most out of the story, but at 112 minutes, there is more film than plot. There are only so many arguments and encounters with near death that two people can carry, and by the time a bear trap snaps, an inevitable tired sense of "what else" creeps into the film. The denouement back in civilization also drags out longer than needed.

Kate Winslet and Idris Elba easily maintain watchability, the two stars enjoying several emotional highlights. Winslet gives Alex a stubborn vivaciousness, while Elba allows the cover of calm silence to regularly lift and reveal hidden pain and frustrations within. Beau Bridges as the pilot and Dermot Mulroney as Alex's husband-in-waiting get a few scenes, but the real co-star is the dog, who provides essential companionship without undue cutesiness.

The Mountain Between Us is worth traversing, but it is a bit of a trudge.

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Movie Review: Movie 43 (2013)

A distressingly bad comedy, Movie 43 features 14 unrelated sketches, a galaxy of star names who should know better, and maybe one genuine laugh.

The one common thread is a struggling writer pitching this movie to a producer on a Hollywood lot. The sketches include a blind date between an anxious woman and an eligible bachelor with a testicle-like growth on his neck; two lovers quarreling in the supermarket while the announcements microphone is on; a young adolescent girl getting her first period while at the house of a friend; an all-black high school basketball team getting ready for their first big game against a white team; a blind date which descends into a high stakes truth or dare fiasco; two men kidnapping a leprechaun; a digital music device in the form of a full-sized naked woman with the potential to mangle male anatomical parts; and a woman competing for her man's attention against a vicious animated cat.

Some of this sounds funny in writing, but thanks to witless execution and sloppy writing, none of it is remotely funny on-screen. An army of writers and directors put this mess together, with Peter Farrelly the culprit-in-chief. The stars briefly on parade include Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Gerard Butler, Emma Stone, Elizabeth Banks, Richard Gere, Dennis Quaid, Uma Thurman, Halle Berry, Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber and Chloë Grace Moretz.

Movie 43 descends quickly to the land where cheap vulgarity and rampant offensiveness are mistaken for laughs, and while there may be an audience pathetic enough for this kind of dross, what remains incredible is that so many respected names chose to associate with this fiasco. Filmed over several years and with none of the actors having full visibility or understanding of the full project, this will remain an embarrassing blot on many resumes.

Movie 43 has a title that means nothing, and is an exercise in execrable excrement.

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Movie Review: The Holiday (2006)

A Christmastime romantic comedy with two love stories unfolding simultaneously in London and Los Angeles, The Holiday offers soothing vanilla entertainment and achieves all its objectives in an attractive, star-filled package.

In London, the emotionally fragile Irene (Kate Winslet) works for the Telegraph newspaper and harbours a hopeless crush on work colleague Jasper (Rufus Sewell). He keeps her hanging as a side-interest while pursuing romance and marriage with another woman. In Los Angeles, the independent and confident but emotionally cold Amanda (Cameron Diaz) is a producer of movie trailers; she kicks out her live-in boyfriend Ethan (Edward Burns) once she discovers his infidelity. With Christmas approaching, both Irene and Amanda decide on a break. They connect online and agree to a two week house exchange.

Amanda is quickly lonely at Irene's small and quaint cottage in the English countryside, but her mood brightens considerably when the half-drunk Graham (Jude Law), Irene's brother, unexpectedly stumbles through the door. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles Irene meets her next door neighbour, the elderly Hollywood screenwriter Arthur Abbott (Eli Wallach). She also connects with Miles (Jack Black), a film score composer. Amanda and Graham jump into a physical relationship before settling down to get to know each other, while Irene is more circumspect. She helps Arthur rediscover his passion while he helps to rebuild her self-esteem, and she starts to befriend the jovial Miles.

Directed and co-written by Nancy Meyers, The Holiday is an inoffensive and high quality double romantic comedy. Within the confines of the genre, the premise is reasonably fresh, the humour understated, the performances generally excellent, and the film oozes a rich syrup of distinction.

Meyers gains the bonus of two stories in one movie, and avoids many of the cringe inducing cliches that often plague romantic comedies. The Holiday has are no contrived misunderstandings and no sudden conflicts between the lovers that need to be resolved before the end credits. Instead the romance progressions are remarkably calm, and the film offers four mature, life-tested adults (and one older gentleman) grappling with disappointments, opportunities and affairs of the heart.

The film finds a few highlight gems. When Amanda decides to track down Graham at his house and uncovers his backstory, what she finds is a perfectly imperfect set-up. Graham is at once made more real and more complicated, offering much more than Amanda bargained for and redefining her parameters of what love can mean. The comedy highlight is a three-way overseas phone call with Iris discovering the hazards of call waiting while trying to simultaneously communicate with her brother and Amanda.

Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz and Jude Law deliver accomplished and committed performances, with Diaz perhaps emerging with the best glow and impeccable comic timing. Jack Black suffers in comparison and is often out his league, not helped by an underwritten role. Eli Wallach adds a potent shot of veteran talent, as his Arthur Abbott takes on the task of educating Irene about the power that resides within women through Hollywood's back catalogue.

At 15 minutes over two hours, the film is overlong, and suffers from a gloss that may be too shiny, situations and locales a little too perfect, and characters too likeable. But The Holiday is a greeting card of a film, the type that warms the heart and induces a smile when delivered with care and genuine affection.

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Movie review: Labor Day (2013)

A romantic drama, Labor Day is the tender story of an unlikely love blossoming under emotional stress. Director Jason Reitman and stars Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin deliver a quiet, moving exploration of two damaged souls connecting in remarkable circumstances.

The film is set in a calm suburban New England town in 1987. Severely depressed since her husband left her, Adele Wheeler (Winslet) is raising her 13 year old son Henry (Gattlin Griffith) on her own. At the start of the Labor Day long weekend, escaped and injured convict Frank Chambers (Josh Brolin) forces his way into their house to hide for a night, intending to jump onto a train the following day.

But Frank is not a naturally violent man, and his surprisingly affectionate treatment of Adele and Henry touches a chord. She is desperate to reconnect with a man, Henry longs for a father figure, and with fewer trains running on the weekend, Frank ends up staying longer than expected. He makes himself useful around the house, and a family dynamic starts to evolve. But the police search for Frank is incessant, nosey neighbours start to notice that things are different at the Wheeler's place, and Adele may still find herself in peril for harbouring a fugitive.

Directed and written by Jason Reitman, Labor Day is a beautiful film, a journey into the mysteries of love where a connection can blossom in the unlikeliest contexts. Reitman fills the movie with delicate scenes of normalcy in an abnormal weekend, life progressing despite the confluence of one woman's depression with one man's desperation. As Frank settles in for what should be a short stay at Adele's house, he should not want to be there any longer than necessary and she should not want him to stay a moment longer than he wants to, and yet both feel the tug of the human heart drawing them together.

Simple as the main story is, Reitman also has secrets to reveal, in the form of the events that drove Adele into depression, and separately, the crime that landed Frank in prison for murder. One of these histories is primarily revealed in one heart-wrenching scene, while the other unfolds through enigmatic snippets of events that will only be assembled late in the film.

Meanwhile, Henry as an adult (portrayed by Tobey Maguire) narrates the film, and the young teenager becomes the third point in the triangle of affection, needing both a better functioning mother and a resourceful father figure. Henry's reaction to the quickly evolving adult emotions around him, including the insecurities that arise when his mother's attention suddenly reorients to Frank, add to the film's impact.

The performances from Winslet and Brolin are exceptional, allowing the drama to unfold with no dramatics. Instead they both portray less than perfect people struggling against a flawed present and weighing the risks that need to be embraced for a better future.

Labor Day finds an emblematic highlight in the unlikeliest of scenes, Frank making good use of over-ripe peaches and guiding Adele and Henry through the process of preparing a pie. What comes out of the oven is not just a perfect pie, but a perfect film.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Reader (2008)

A romantic drama set in post-World War Two Germany, The Reader is a passionate story of first love, retribution, and the lingering ghosts of the Holocaust.

Starting in 1995, the movie is told in flashback from the perspective of middle aged German lawyer Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) who is about to visit with his grown daughter Julia (Hannah Herzsprung). Back in 1958, the teen-aged Michael (David Kross) is struggling home from school, feeling very sick. He almost collapses in a building doorway. Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), a tram conductor in her mid thirties who lives in the building, helps him to find his way home. After recovering from a bout of scarlet fever, Michael returns to thank Hanna. They start a passionate affair, despite the difference in age.

Whenever they meet, Hanna asks Michael to read to her from the literature books that he is studying at school, and their relationship revolves around his reading from a variety of texts and episodes of intense sex. But within a few months Michael starts to get distracted by attractive girls more his age at school, and the relationship with Hanna ends abruptly on a sour note.

In 1966, Michael is a law student, studying with Professor Rohl (Bruno Ganz) about the moral responsibilities of German citizens during the Holocaust. As part of the course, Rohl exposes his students to the on-going trial of concentration camp prison guards, accused of enabling the death of hundreds of inmates. The trial courtroom holds a shocking surprise for Michael, as the past, the present and future suddenly collide.

A German - American co-production directed by Stephen Daldry from a screenplay by David Hare based on the book by Bernhard Schlink, The Reader is an intricate examination of the ripple effects of the Holocaust through generations of German society. This is an engrossing, sometimes intense film, distilling a nation's self-reflection down to individuals seeking difficult answers through the thickets of past atrocities and a growing moral outrage.

Hanna was old enough to play a role in the closing years of the war, Michael was born during the war, while for his daughter Julia, the war is just a dark part of history. The struggle to understand how Germany stood still and allowed mass barbarity to unfold echoes down the years. For Hanna it's personal anguish, for Michael it's real and emotional connections with his parents' generation, and for Julia it's about understanding the silent shadows that haunt her father.

Michael also has to decide how much he should reach back into history and contribute to his country's grapple with its dark past. He has an opportunity first to influence and then to educate and soothe, and his decisions will have both predictable and unforeseen implications.

The Reader gives voice to Holocaust survivors through the character of Ilana Mather (played by Alexandra Maria Lara as a younger woman in 1966 and Lena Olin as an older woman in 1988). At the trial witnessed by the Michael as a law student, Ilana finds some measure of justice more than 20 years after she was supposed to die. But Michael will realize that while Ilana may have cheated death, the chill in her heart is eternal.

The film draws parallels between literal and metaphorical illiteracy. Is not knowing to read any excuse for not understanding the pages of an unfolding history? Hanna has to decide how much responsibility her generation has to assume for the genocide of millions, in a case of a mammoth collective wrong resulting from an infinite number of seemingly honest individual decisions.

Kate Winslet won the Best Actress Academy Award for her role as Hanna. It's a stunning performance, spanning 30 years in the character's life, and Winslet is as convincing as a bus conductor in her 30s, still burning with passion and unresolved secrets, as she is as an elderly woman in her 60s, having paid her dues and reconciled with her past. The Reader hinges on the twitching internal torture playing out behind Hanna's eyes, and Winslet conveys the agonizing conflict between duty and horror, where once they were the same thing but in the cold light of defeat have formed a scar on the face of humanity.

Thoughtful and provocative, The Reader is an impressive masterpiece.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Kate Winslet

All movies starring Kate Winslet and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Sense And Sensibility (1995)

Titanic (1997)

The Life Of David Gale (2003)

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)

The Holiday (2006)

The Reader (2008)

Revolutionary Road (2008)

Contagion (2011)

Carnage (2011)

Movie 43 (2013)

Labor Day (2013)

Steve Jobs (2015)

The Dressmaker (2015)

Triple 9 (2016)

Collateral Beauty (2016)

The Mountain Between Us (2017)

Blackbird (2019)

Lee (2023)

Goodbye June (2025)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.