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: Lonely Planet (2024)

Genre: Romantic Drama  

Director: Susannah Grant  

Starring: Laura Dern, Liam Hemsworth  

Running Time: 96 minutes  

Synopsis: Suffering from writer's block and a disintegrating relationship, celebrated author Katherine Loewe (Laura Dern) attends a writers' retreat at a secluded resort in Morocco. She keeps to herself and avoids group activities to focus on writing. Also in attendance is up-and-coming writer Lily Kemp (Diana Silvers), whose first book was a surprise best-seller. She is accompanied by her boyfriend Owen (Liam Hemsworth), an equity manager and a misfit in this crowd. As Lily starts to enjoy herself in the company of other writers, Owen and Katherine are drawn together.

What Works Well: In what is essentially a travelogue, the Morocco locations are attractively filmed and add plenty of colour, despite the absence of meaningful local characters. Laura Dern delivers a psychologically haggard and lived-in performance as a woman experiencing multiple fractured pillars in her life.

What Does Not Work As Well: The pace is slow as the linear narrative defaults to a series of samey conversations between Katherine and Owen. Both are disillusioned, resulting in a suffocatingly mopey mood. Owen's sorrow is a result of being cold-shouldered by the literati, contextually undermining the older woman-younger man romance since Katherine is a more famous author than Lily. A one-dimensional Liam Hemsworth struggles to find depth in Owen, while the supporting characters are truncated at cursory introductions.

Key Quote:

Lily (to the group of writers, referring to Owen): He only reads Sports Illustrated.

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Movie Review: The Son (2022)

Genre: Mental Health Drama  

Director: Florian Zeller  

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Kirby  

Running Time: 123 minutes  

Synopsis: In New York City, successful executive Peter Miller (Hugh Jackman) is in a happy relationship with his second wife Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and their new baby. Peter's routine is disrupted when his frazzled ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) reveals that their 17 year-old son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) has missed school for the past month. Nicholas admits to having trouble coping with life and asks to move-in with his dad, forcing Peter to confront his responsibilities and expectations.

What Works Well: Co-writer and director Florian Zeller adapts his stage play to the screen, and succeeds in exposing the heartbreaking complexities of a mental health crisis. Nicholas' troubles land upon adults ill-equipped to recognize, much less deal with, a youth in crisis, and the cascading effects of ignorance, miscommunication, denial, self-doubt, and guilt derail the family towards successively darker places. Zen McGrath is haunting in his portrayal of a young man enveloped by depression, while Hugh Jackman throws himself into the role of a father trying hard but often in all the wrong directions. Anthony Hopkins leaves a lasting impression in his one scene as Peter's father, emboldening inter-generational behaviours.

What Does Not Work As Well: The storytelling choice to centre the perspective on the dad Peter rather than the son Nicholas steers the drama towards cold observation rather than intense involvement. For a seemingly well-educated couple, both Peter and Kate appear densely obtuse in failing to appreciate what Nicholas is going through, with Peter in particular often following the path of most damage. Several scenes succumb to overly-theatrical emotions. 

Conclusion: A knowingly frustrating and effectively uncompromising portrayal of a distressing affliction.

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Movie Review: October Sky (1999)

Genre: Biographical Drama  

Director: Joe Johnston  

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Laura Dern  

Running Time: 107 minutes  

Synopsis: In October 1957, the world is mesmerized by the surprise Soviet launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first satellite. In the small mining community of Coalwood, West Virginia, high school student Homer Hickam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is inspired to start building his own amateur rockets. He receives support from teacher Miss Riley (Laura Dern) and a small group of friends, but his father John (Chris Cooper), the mine's manager, wants Homer to stop dreaming and focus on a mining career.

What Works Well: The adaptation of Hickam's book combines inspirational ambition with a gritty small town environment to forge a heart-warming story, spiced with thorny family dynamics and moments of humour. Joe Johnston directs with an economy of purpose, and a young Jake Gyllenhaal capably portrays a young Homer Hickam stubbornly seeking to define his own destiny. In a setting where all young men are expected to follow their dads into the mine, the father-son tension crackles beneath the scientific experimentation, as Homer's defiant determination to launch rockets high into the sky translates into a college scholarship lottery ticket.

What Does Not Work As Well: In this small town, the winds of predictability are strong.

Conclusion: Shoots for the stars, and hits the target.



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Movie Review: Rambling Rose (1991)

Genre: Drama

Director: Martha Coolidge

Starring: Laura Dern, Robert Duvall, Diane Ladd, Lukas Haas, John Heard

Running Time: 112 minutes

Synopsis: During the Great Depression in rural Georgia, Rose (Laura Dern) is hired as the live-in housekeeper for Mr. and Mrs. Hillyer (Robert Duvall and Diane Ladd) and their three children, including 13-year-old Buddy (Lukas Haas). Rose is escaping a troubled background where she was forced in to prostitution. She falls in love with Mr. Hillyer, and in turn Buddy develops a crush on Rose. Mrs. Hillyer grows to admire the sexually spirited but good-at-heart Rose, and defends her through a series of misadventures.

What Works Well: The adaptation of Calder Willingham's book is enlivened by the quirks of the Hillyer family. Mrs. Hillyer is a slightly deaf early feminist studying for a Master's degree, Mr. Hillyer is stern but loving, and the kids are smarter and sassier than their age suggests. With Rose's thunderbolt sexuality a perfect catalyst, most of the family's actions and reactions are unconventional, allowing director Martha Coolidge sly access to humorous sparks amidst the undercurrents of lust and romance. Laura Dern (liberated but frazzled) and Diane Ladd (progressive but vulnerable) deliver standout performances.

What Does Not Work As Well: The structure is episodic and ultimately repetitive, the second half noticeably losing momentum with underdeveloped secondary characters rotating in and out of random shenanigans. The bookend structure featuring the grown-up Buddy (John Heard) adds nothing, and the final scene is painfully misguided.

Conclusion: This rose has both beauty and thorns.



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Movie Review: 99 Homes (2014)

An economic crisis drama, 99 Homes burrows into the human carnage caused by a financial mess, the American Dream in tatters while schemers accumulate wealth.

Orlando is in the grips of the 2008 Great Recession triggered by the sub-prime mortgage default crisis. Labourer Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) can no longer find work, because no new homes are being built. He lives in his childhood home with his mother Lynn (Laura Dern) and young son Connor, but is well behind on the mortgage payments. Nash is unable to convince the court to give him more time, and is summarily evicted. Realtor Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) takes ownership of the house on behalf of the bank.

Nash moves his family to a cheap motel, and in a chance encounter Rick offers him a job to help with all the properties controlled by the realtor. Nash proves capable, and Rick gives him more responsibilities, then a cut of the commissions and expenses flowing from banks and government agencies. Nash is suddenly making a lot of money and dreaming of getting his house back, but he is also actively helping Rick evict families out of their homes.

Carver: Don't get emotional about real estate, they're just boxes, little boxes, big boxes. The more boxes you own the better.

For every dollar lost a dollar is made, and 99 Homes is a wide-eyed look at an epic net-zero game. Director Ramin Bahrani co-wrote the script with Amir Naderi, and delivers a powerful story of fundamental economic destruction: families being thrown out of their homes according to court orders, sheriffs doing the dirty work, realtor Carver orchestrating the tragedy, his crew of cleaners immediately placing lifelong belongings on the curb. Barhrani injects remarkable pain into these scenes, exposing a nation haemorrhaging empathy one middle class residence at a time. 

While ex-homeowners become desperate motel tenants, Carver is accumulating wealth by skimming wherever he can, charging the government for unneeded repairs, and pocketing commissions by flipping homes. Once Nash gets in on the action he too finds it intoxicating, and he profits from the graft. He also turns from eviction victim to instigator, his transformation excruciating because it resonates as a rational deal with the devil in desperate times.

Carver: Only one in a hundred's gonna get on that ark, son. Every other poor soul's gonna drown.

Conveying darkness at the drama's core, Michael Shannon gets the best lines and stands tall as the antagonist exploiting a broken system. His Carver is just the latest incarnation of the expert recognizing there is money to be made in times of mass misery. Andrew Garfield matches him in a performance requiring first bewilderment then recalibration. In comparison to the two leads, Laura Dern is stranded in a poorly defined role as Nash's mom.

Carver: Don't be soft. Do you think America give a flying rat's ass about you or me? America doesn't bail out the losers. America was built by bailing out winners. By rigging a nation of the winners, for the winners, by the winners.

In addition to a few logic gaps - like why Nash stays at that scuzzy motel when the money starts flowing - 99 Homes unfortunately backs away from fully doubling down on a toxic definition of capitalism. The final act introduces corrupt politicians and large scale developers colluding in a dizzying deal involving hundreds of properties, with Nash and Carver maneuvering to maximize their profits. But Nash retains a flicker of compassion, leaving him conflicted when one owner makes a final stand. When money is gushing in one direction only, hesitation and self-doubt are a sure path to drowning.



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Movie Review: Little Women (2019)

An adaptation of the classic Louisa May Alcott book, Little Women is a coming-of-age tale with a focus on women carving out identities while grappling with personal and societal expectations and economic realities.

The film unfolds non-linearly across multiple time zones and locations. In simplified form, the March sisters are from a relatively poor Concord, Massachusetts family and growing up in the shadow of the Civil War. Jo (Saoirse Ronan) is fiercely independent and an aspiring writer. Meg (Emma Watson) loves acting and is a romantic at heart. Amy (Florence Pugh) is a painter and wants to marry well. The youngest Beth (Eliza Scanlen) is a talented pianist. With their father (Bob Odenkirk) serving in the war, Marmee (Laura Dern) instills in the girls a strong sense of service and selflessness.

The Marchs are neighbours of the wealthy and kind Mr. Laurence (Chris Cooper), whose grandson Theodore (Timothée Chalamet) becomes friends with the sisters and falls in love with Jo. She sets out to seek her fortune as a writer in New York, where she meets publisher Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts) and clashes with academic Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel). Amy heads to Paris for a cultural trip with Aunt March (Meryl Streep). Meg marries a struggling tutor and starts a family. But a sickness will pull the sisters back home to confront unexpected futures.

The sixth cinematic adaptation of Alcott's novel, the 2019 version is a sprawling and ambitious effort infused with a feminist edge. Clocking in at an overlong 135 minutes, writer and director Greta Gerwig takes her time to fully define the four sisters as rounded characters, and chases down their dreams, trials and tribulations on the path to womanhood. Along the way the sisters bicker, fight and support each other, all underpinned by warm foundations of familial love.

Gerwig structures the film as a dizzying jumping exercise, restlessly bouncing between various points of history in the lives of the four sisters. As a result Little Women rarely flows, some scenes spending a matter of seconds in one time and place before the next scene leaps to somewhere else with someone else at a different time.

But the fine work of the talented cast and the investment in characters does pay off in the final third, where the sometimes scattered narrative puzzle pieces start to come together. The film achieves poignant peaks of genuine emotion built on the discrete strengths and weaknesses of the March sisters, and Gerwig presents a satisfyingly wide array of personal achievements mixed with shades of disappointments, all built on honest passion.

While the emphasis on feminism is sometimes speechy and jarring, here it means the freedom to choose a future vision to pursue, and to defend that choice. And while no two dreams are alike, the sisters pragmatically understand their future, like their past, involves compromise and is not meant to be perfect. Gerwig also places admirable emphasis on economics as an essential part of future plans. Balancing the romantic pursuit of love, marriage's role as an economic benefit emerges as a theme.

Little Women enjoys stellar production design, the film recreating interiors and exteriors of the mid to late 1800s with an easy sense of place and time. This is a period piece unafraid to march into the open, as the March sisters stride into a post-war world with every intention to help define it.

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Movie Review: Marriage Story (2019)

A family drama, Marriage Story is a hard look at a divorce case dissolving from amicable to hostile.

The marriage of Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) Barber is falling apart and heading for a divorce. He is the director of a small but well-regarded New York City theatre company. She is his star actress, having give up a possible movie career. They have an 8 year old son Henry, who still prefers a parent to sleep next to him and is late in learning to read.

Nicole now perceives Charlie as self-absorbed and neglectful of her career. She relocates to Los Angeles, taking Henry with her, and starts filming a television pilot. Although they had promised not to use lawyers, Nicole hires the high-powered Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern) and files for divorce. Charlie is shocked, and counters by hiring the laid-back Bert Spitz (Alan Alda). The custody battle hinges on whether the family is based in Los Angeles or New York, and through the legal process all the irritations between the couple come flooding out.

Although Marriage Story is far from original, it is earnest and elevated by sincere performances. Director and writer Noah Baumbach revisits terrain he already traversed in The Squid And The Whale (2005), and earlier made familiar by films like Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and A Cool Dry Place (1998).

The focus this time is on the disruptive and expensive impact of aggressive lawyers in the domestic break-up. From the moment Nora sinks her hooks into Nicole, the divorce trajectory turns from a tentative drift to a swelling avenue of bitterness, with the lawyers the only beneficiaries. Baumach's script allows the depth of Nicole's unhappiness to be revealed in layers, and perhaps her reaching out to Nora was suppressed resentment bursting forth.

The issues generated by Charlie's ego and Nicole's unheralded sacrifice festered for years, and are now exposed in long dialogue scenes. Some work better than others. Nicole revealing the marriage's history to Nora in a long take is simply captivating, with Johansson mesmeric. Later the couple's attempt at civil discourse turns into a emotional shouting match and does not quite land, Driver willing but not quite able to convey the intended anguish.

Laura Dern makes a sharp impression as a barracuda in high heels. Ray Liotta gets a couple of scenes as the legal weapon Charlie considers using for the battle ahead.

A few moments of humour are sprinkled throughout the drama, but Baumbach allows the film to creep to an astonishing 136 minutes. The Los Angeles vs. New York debate drags on for far too long, and a knife incident is a needless distraction. A couple of wholly unnecessary songs add to the tedium.

Sifting through the debris of a once happy union, Marriage Story conveys the unfortunately all-too-common pain and sorrow of breaking up, made much worse by lawyers smelling profit.

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Movie Review: Cold Pursuit (2019)

A revenge thriller laced with dark comedy, Cold Pursuit applies a fresh gloss to the traditional lone avenger narrative.

In the fictional small ski resort town of Kehoe, Colorado, Nelson Coxman (Liam Neeson) is the local snowplow operator and a rugged man of few words. His quiet life is shattered when his son is killed by a drug gang, straining his marriage to Grace (Laura Dern) to the breaking point. Nelson tracks down local gang members one by one and extracts the ultimate revenge.

The thugs are all working for Denver-based drug kingpin Trevor "Viking" Calcote (Tom Bateman), a second generation mobster now hiding behind expensive suits and a stunning home, while obsessing about the diet and health of his young son. Viking mistakenly believes his crew is being attacked by the rival gang of Native American drug lord White Bull (Tom Jackson). A long-standing peace between the two gangs is shattered and a war of reprisals erupts, with Nelson still doggedly working his way towards full retribution.

With Liam Neeson's annual forays into action territory growing increasingly more routine, Cold Pursuit is an icy breath of fresh air. Director Hans Petter Moland remakes his own Norwegian vigilante film In Order of Disappearance, and in the process shakes up the formula with intriguing locations, interesting villains, and most of all a streak of virulent humour.

The snow-covered small-town setting offers opportunities for some breathtaking visuals, and Nelson's profession of clearing a ribbon of road through mounds of snow represents the aspiration of continued connectivity to civilization. Not to mention giving Nelson access to plenty of heavy machinery capable of causing severe damage to people and equipment.

Breaking open one man's vengeance story into a larger inter-cartel war risks diluting focus, but here works beautifully, helping to introduce a myriad of engaging characters. The responsibility for dishing out violence, action and humour is shared, and interwoven backstories of generations past come to the fore to enrich the film.

The humour is sourced from a commitment to unexpected details. Every character death is accompanied by a dedicated epitaph. Viking's smarminess is off the scale, his witty quips enforcing his delusional belief in his own mythology of respectability. Viking's only match is his ex-wife Aya (Julia Jones), and they are locked into the most domestic of custody battles.

Nelson's formerly gang-connected relative "Wingman" (William Forsythe) has a humourless eagle-eyed wife (Elizabeth Thai) desperate to ensure her husband does not get sucked back into bad habits. And on the edges of both gangs are quirky characters feeding subversive tensions, including a closeted gay relationship that proves pivotal.

Not all the pieces fit together. Laura Dern is largely wasted as Nelson's wife. A couple of local cops (Emmy Rossum and John Doman) are understandably overwhelmed by the outbreak of violence in their picturesque community. She is much more interested in playing detective than he is, but overall their story is superfluous. And the editing of the larger action scenes is muddled, Moland seemingly overwhelmed once the action moves beyond the more intimate one on one showdowns.

But despite some missteps Cold Pursuit is a wintery blast of blood-soaked fun, finding firm traction in the snow-covered terrain.

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Movie Review: The Founder (2016)

A fast-paced and surprisingly engaging story about empire building in post-war America, The Founder explores the origins of one of the world's most iconic food brands.

It's 1954, and Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) has spent his career as a traveling salesman, often neglecting his wife Ethel (Laura Dern). Now he is trying to sell modern milkshake machines to restaurants, with little success. When he unexpectedly receives an order for eight machines from one restaurant in San Bernardino, he drives over to investigate.

He finds an enormously popular local restaurant called McDonald's, serving standardized burgers, fries and shakes in large volumes, thanks to a fine-tuned food production system devised by brothers Mac (John Carroll Lynch) and Dick (Nick Offerman) McDonald.

Ray spots a business opportunity for rapid expansion and franchising across the country. The brothers are reluctant, especially Dick. But they eventually offer Ray a strict contract to head up expansion efforts while they maintain control over every decision. After a slow start Ray hits on a formula combining the efficient food production system with a family-run ethos, but his plans for rapid success are thwarted by the conservative brothers.

Directed by John Lee Hancock, The Founder is a warts-and-all look at the brilliant businessman who invented fast food burger chains, and a refreshing business story that is mostly about business, rather than any contrived romance or character quirks. Kroc spotted the opportunity within the food production system conceived by the McDonalds brothers, and his genius was to extrapolate one elegant concept, designed to produce consistent food fast, into a business behemoth.

The Founder reveals the sharp claws and ruthless attitude needed to create a big-time business. Far from a puff piece, the Robert D. Siegel script is unblinking when it comes to Kroc's character. This is a relentless man with oceans of persistence and no limits on ambition, hardened by years on the road having doors slammed in his face. Comfortable ignoring and often belittling his wife, he first charms Mac and Dick and later plays extreme hardball to gain control of the chain that holds their name -- all with a smarmy smile. Neither squeamish nor necessarily principled, when it's time to trample on others, Kroc is in his real element.

The Founder could have done more to flesh out some of Kroc's allies and associates who helped him thrive. Harry Sonneborn (B.J. Novak) gets one pivotal scene, reorienting Kroc's focus from restaurants to real estate, but otherwise disappears. Long-time partner Fred Turner (Justin Randell Brooke) barely registers. Joan Smith (Linda Cardellini) fares better as the woman who catches his eye as his expansion plans catch fire.

In the central role Michael Keaton is full of energy, and marginally overacts. John Carroll Lynch and Nick Offerman counterbalance Keaton's animation with laid-back representations of old-fashioned (and soon endangered) values.

Ray Krok generated immense wealth from selling mass-produced junk food using someone else's invented process. The Founder is an astute microcosm of what it takes to will the American dream into reality.

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Movie Review: A Perfect World (1993)

An escaped prisoner chase drama, A Perfect World is an engrossing study of an unlikely surrogate father-son relationship blossoming under the most unlikely circumstances.

The setting is rural Texas on Halloween, 1962. Convicted killers Butch Haynes (Kevin Costner) and Terry Pugh (Keith Szarabajka) break out of prison, seize eight year old boy Philip Perry (T.J. Lowther) hostage, and escape in a stolen car into the sparsely populated countryside. Butch is smooth and cerebral, Pugh is gruff and uncontrollable, and soon they have a showdown. Butch emerges victorious and continues his escape with Philip for company.

Grizzled Texas Ranger Red Garnett (Clint Eastwood) is tasked with tracking down the escapees, and he is unhappy to be joined by criminologist Sally Gerber (Laura Dern) and an FBI sniper (Bradley Whitford). Red commandeers the Governor's high-tech trailer as his command-post-on-wheels for the chase. On the road, Butch and Philip warm up to each other. Both grew up without stable father figures, and Butch revels in playing a protective and fatherly role. Philip starts to enjoy the freedom of being away from his strict Jehovah's Witness mother, but Red will not give up his dogged pursuit.

Directed by Eastwood and written by John Lee Hancock, A Perfect World is a lyrical masterpiece. Featuring some of Costner's best acting work, a robust quest-for-freedom story, and the subtle forging of a man-child bond under duress, the film is a deep breath drawn from the air of making things right under all the wrong conditions. At two hours and twenty minutes, the pace is relaxed, the scenes extended to allow the emotion to seep through the narrative fabric and leave a rich impression.

Eastwood invests deliberate time to bring Butch Haynes to life as a memorably complex cinematic anti-hero. Butch was handed a bum deal early in life, and he made the worst of it, but given an unlikely opportunity to make some amends, he will take his shot to deliver what he never received. He effortlessly slips into the role of father and mentor, teaching, guiding and empowering Philip. Against the wide open Texas backdrops, the intimate scenes between Costner and youngster T. J. Lowther are some of the most affecting and honest screen portrayals of interaction between man and child.

And yet despite revealing the potential for rounded edges, Butch never loses the essence of who he is as a ruthless criminal, and the film wickedly drives to its conclusion about what, exactly, makes for a perfect combination of attributes in the world of men and boys.

The team in pursuit led by Eastwood's Red Garnett offers kinetic energy, internal tension, and no small amount of comic relief, as Philip's would-be rescuers struggle to catch up with Butch's cross-Texas excapade. Garnett is a mature and relatively settled-down version of Dirty Harry transported to rural Texas, while Laura Dern's Sally Gerber is the early-version psychological profiler trying to get into the criminal mind. Sally is obviously the polar opposite of all that Red stands for, and the evolution of their relationship adds an extra dimension to the film.

Expansive in ambition and scope yet affectionate and personal in scale, A Perfect World combines the best of both worlds.

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Movie Review: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

The eighth episode in the original Star Wars saga and the second in the sequel trilogy, The Last Jedi is a magnificent achievement, brilliantly combining the series' familiar elements with original ingredients and powerful plot developments.

Picking up events immediately after The Force Awakens, the resistance fighters led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) are routed, and the evil forces of the First Order under the command of General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) are moving in for the final kill. Ace resistance pilot Poe (Oscar Isaac) leads a daring bombing counterattack but incurs heavy losses.

Meanwhile Force-sensitive scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) track down the legendary Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), now the last known Jedi, on a remote planet. Rey pleads with Luke to come to the rescue of the resistance. He refuses, having still not come to terms with failing to prevent his nephew Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) from turning to the dark side under Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis). Rey starts to experience Force-enabled face-to-face communications with Kylo, and they try to influence each other towards opposite sides of the Force.

Leia is severely wounded in battle, and Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo (Laura Dern) takes over command but immediately clashes with the hot headed Poe. With Rey and Kylo having an in-person audience with Snoke, former stormtrooper turned rebel Finn (John Boyega) and resistance maintenance worker Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) team up for a mission to secure the services of a hacker who can help the remaining resistance ships escape. Their search yields the services of the seemingly capable DJ (Benicio del Toro), but things are about to get much worse for the decimated rebel army.

After the relatively disappointing warmed-over rehash offered by The Force Awakens, Rian Johnson takes over as writer and director and delivers a spectacular boost to the franchise. The Last Jedi is best described as fearless, introducing new Force capabilities, one of the best lightsaber battles in the series within Snoke's inner sanctuary, a stunning landing pad for one essential arc, stirring acts of bravery and sacrifice, and a marvellously tense Force-enabled connection between Rey and Kylo, pregnant with possibilities.

And nothing is taken away from the action set-pieces, here delivered with a searing creativity and clarity of execution. Johnson pushes away from the familiar and finds new showdowns and genuinely thrilling battles, including Poe's bombing raid; the First Order all but annihilating the rebel fleet; a slow but existential space chase; and a finale at a previously abandoned resistance base that features several epic confrontations.

The narrative is pushed forward with Luke and Kylo both offering versions of where it all went wrong, and Luke forced to define his true legacy in unexpected but faultless fashion. Rey makes progress in coming to terms with her origins and role in the unyielding struggle between good and evil. Gradually Poe and Finn unite with Rey at the centre of the story, and now they are joined by the unlikely and disguised heroism of Rose.

The Last Jedi is not without its faults. The running time of 152 minutes is excessive, Finn and Rose's side quest to the casino planet a particular bloat culprit, and some of the multicultural preachiness is flagrant. But Johnson also introduces a mean streak of humour to combat the slow parts. The noisy robot BB-8 and the perpetually worried Porg furry creatures are deployed in just the right doses, and several other characters and creations make timely contributions.

Despite the large cast, a few performances do stand out. Adam Driver emerges as a magnetic presence, the uncertainty within him bursting out in prodigious directions. Daisy Ridley and Benicio del Toro are the other notable cast members, Ridley mixing the perilous unknowns of Rey's ancestry with grim determination, del Toro luxuriating in DJ's confidence as an enigmatic man who can code break his way out of any situation.

With John Williams contributing another iteration of cinema's most beloved music score, The Last Jedi travels at lightspeed to claim a place as one of the most satisfying entries in the legendary series.

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Movie Review: Wild (2014)

One woman's literal and figurative journey to painful self-discovery, Wild is an exquisitely constructed drama, capturing the heart and intellect of a struggle to re-calibrate a life gone astray.

Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) places her life on hold and embarks on a solo hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, a 1,000 mile journey from the deserts of California to the Oregon rain forest. Along the way, she confronts her demons, seen in flashback snippets. Cheryl and her brother Leif were raised by their mother Bobbi (Laura Dern), a victim of spousal abuse who had little to offer her children except plenty of love, nurturing and a sunny disposition. Cheryl marries Paul (Thomas Sadoski), but the marriage has fallen apart after she descended into a life of drugs and random sex with strangers. Along the trail Cheryl has brief encounters with a variety of other locals and strangers, some funny and others scary, and pushes through the pain barrier and her own fears and inexperience, seeking to come to terms with her life.

Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée and written by Nick Hornby, Wild is an adaptation of Cheryl Straid's best-selling non-fiction book describing her 1995 hike. The film starts at the Mojave Desert trail head in southern California and ends 94 days later at the border between Oregon and Washington. And while there are plenty of on-trail experiences as the over-equipped but under-trained Cheryl grapples with what it means to live rough day and night, the important events are taking place in her head. Vallée and Hornby shine in opening up Cheryl's psyche, revealing her memories, thoughts, self-doubt and self-castigation through flashback fragments that slowly coalesce to create a picture of a life in need of a serious intervention.

Unlike the intolerably self-indulgent Elizabeth Gilbert in the saccharine Eat Pray Love, Cheryl knows she has messed up in the worst possible way. Her sex and drug addictions have destroyed her marriage and her remaining friends are pleading with her to get a grip. She embarks on the trail to find out what happened to the girl raised by Bobbi on nothing but love and optimism. The answers are not easy, but the film offers up moments of genuine and emotional discovery, driven by little surprises of achievement, fear and anxiety on the hiking trail.

Cheryl meets a gruff farmer who could have been menacing but who proves that looks and first impressions can be deceiving. Other encounters with an initially naked man, another solo woman, and a group of young men are just as enlightening. She encounters hunters who must be descendants of the Deliverance natives, and overcomes jagged rocks, exhaustion, dehydration, ill-fitting hiking boots and deep snow. She is happily stunned to learn that she has outlasted much more experienced hikers on the trail. All the while the memories are churning, the forces that defined her life become clear, and a path to salvation is charted.

Reese Witherspoon delivers a raw, honest performance, finding Cheryl's trauma and staying true to the reality of a woman stoically charting a new course in the company of herself. Laura Dern has a relatively short but pivotal role as her mother Bobbi. With a free and airy performance, Dern conveys what it means to be a perpetual idealist in the service of her children. Both women received Academy Award nominations.

Wild ends with unnecessary and rushed narration that appears too eager to package up Cheryl's story in a neat box. It's an unfortunate tone to conclude her adventure on, because Wild is about the universal human instinct to strike out in anger, in depression and in a mad search for recovery. Good or bad, wild instincts contribute to life, but rarely in an orderly manner.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Fault In Our Stars (2014)

A romantic drama, The Fault In Our Stars sets a teenage love story in the world of terminal disease. The film is squarely aimed at the young adult market and never rises above carefully constructed emotions designed to elicit sighs and tears in just the right amounts at just the right time.

In Indianapolis, teenager Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) is a cancer survivor who made a miraculous recovery from the edge of death. She now lives day to day with her defective lungs requiring continuous breathing through tubes connected an ever-present portable oxygen tank. Her parents Frannie (Laura Dern) and Michael (Sam Trammell) encourage her to join a support group where she meets the hunky Augustus "Gus" Waters (Ansel Elgort), and a romance blossoms between them.

Gus has an artificial leg as a result of his own previous bout with cancer. Hazel introduces him to her favourite book An Imperial Affliction by the author Peter van Houten (Willem Dafoe), now a recluse living in Holland. Gus helps Hazel connect with van Houten, who invites her to drop in on him and discuss the book should she ever be in Amsterdam. Despite Hazel's frail health, the relationship with Gus becomes ever more serious and soon they are joined by Frannie for a trip to Amsterdam, where complications await.

Directed by Josh Boone and adapted from the John Green book, The Fault In Our Stars is earnest in its intentions but also almost mechanical in its execution.  For anyone outside the target age group of 12 to 17, it's easy to appreciate the effort but difficult to fully invest in the obvious connect-the-dots story evolution. The attractive stars, the wistful narration, the modern caring parents, the terminal disease, the puppyish love, the trip of a lifetime to a European dream destination, and the caustic author who shatters the illusion that anything matters. Of course it all culminates in true romance and true tears due to true tragedy.

Boone makes the best of the material, directing with restraint and avoiding most of the obvious cliches, except for a jaw-droppingly obvious travelogue montage of Amsterdam and a clumsy side-trip to Anne Frank's house where romance awkwardly erupts in the attic. He is helped enormously by Shailene Woodley, who does shine as Hazel and carries the film through all its patches, never overselling the tough survivor elements and displaying enough warmth as a believably precocious teenager. Ansel Elgort is not as convincing, Willem Dafoe pulls his performance from the scorched drawer, and Laura Dern is relegated to worried but nevertheless reasonably cool mom.

The theme of life and love carrying on and emerging from the wreckage of horrid disease is predictably uplifting, and the film carries its message on its sleeve: it's better to experience the full joys of life despite the inevitable moments of despair than to surrender to emotional numbness in anticipation of the end.

The Fault In Our Stars is efficient to a fault. It delivers on all its calculated promises with admirable quality, and does little else.

All Ace Black Movie Blog Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Laura Dern

All movies starring Laura Dern and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974, uncredited)

Blue Velvet (1986)

Rambling Rose (1991)

Jurassic Park (1993)

A Perfect World (1993)

October Sky (1999)

I Am Sam (2001)

Recount (2008)

The Master (2012)

The Fault In Our Stars (2014)

99 Homes (2014)

Wild (2014)

The Founder (2016)

Downsizing (2017)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Cold Pursuit (2019)

Marriage Story (2019)

Little Women (2019)

The Son (2022)

Lonely Planet (2024)

Jay Kelly (2025)

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