Movie Review: If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Mary Bronstein  

Starring: Rose Byrne, Conan O'Brien, Christian Slater  

Running Time: 114 minutes  

Synopsis: Linda (Rose Byrne) is a therapist and the main caregiver for her young daughter, who suffers from an eating disorder. Her life gets more complicated when a gaping hole opens up in the ceiling of their apartment, forcing Linda to relocate to a cheap motel. With her husband (Christian Slater) always traveling, Linda's main support is her own therapist (Conan O'Brien), while the motel superintendent James (ASAP Rocky) tries to help. Just when the stresses of life appear to peak, one of Linda's therapy patients instigates another major crisis.

What Works Well: Writer and director Mary Bronstein explores the burden of motherhood and caregiving at an intimate, close-up, and exhausting level. With Rose Byrne finding a career peak, the camera stays close to Linda throughout, often neglecting others in the room, to probe deep into the psychology of navigating continuous, unrelenting, high stress levels. Lack of sleep, counterproductive attempts at help from others, and hostility from every source (her daughter's doctor, the hospital parking lot attendant, the motel receptionist) sap away her energy and ability to make sound decisions, and still the blows keep coming. 

What Does Not Work As Well: Linda does not help herself by escaping into substance use, and the spacey imagery emanating from the ceiling hole is carried to repetitive extremes. Despite a few moments of tenderness and humour, the overall dark-and-only-getting darker mood is overwhelmingly depressing.

Key Quote:

Linda (screaming at her therapist): I'm asking you what I'm supposed to do? Can you hear me?

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Movie Review: I Am Mother (2019)

Genre: Science Fiction  

Director: Grant Sputore  

Starring: Clara Rugaard, Hilary Swank, Rose Byrne  
Running Time: 113 minutes  

Synopsis: After a human extermination event, the droid "Mother" (voiced by Rose Byrne) oversees a technology-controlled bunker stocked with thousands of human embryos. Mother grows one embryo into a Daughter and raises her over the years. As a teenager, the lonely Daughter (Clara Rugaard) becomes increasingly restless, but Mother insists that the outside world is contaminated. Their living arrangements are disrupted when a Woman (Hilary Swank) from the outside pleads for entry into the bunker, and Daughter decides to let her in.

What Works Well: This Australian production starts with the solid opening premise of humanity's demise, and then deviously stretches the scope in unexpected directions. Writer Michael Lloyd Green is interested in themes of trust, responsibility, motherhood, species salvation, and the role of technology, but only gradually reveals the plot's specific intentions. The bunker's dark and mazy hallways accommodate survival essentials within the glistening aesthetic of a machine-controlled environment, and Clara Rugaard capably carries an acting load spanning from innocent wonderment to duty fulfillment.

What Does Not Work As Well: The pacing is slow, and the running time is 20 minutes longer than necessary. The clever resolutions still leave a few important plot holes unexplained.

Key Quote:

Mother: Humans can be wonderful.

Daughter: Then why did you only make one?

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Movie Review: Knowing (2009)

Genre: Science Fiction Thriller  

Director: Alex Proyas  

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne  

Running Time: 121 minutes  

Synopsis: Still grieving the loss of his wife, MIT astrophysicist John Koestler (Nicolas Cage) is raising his young son Caleb on his own. A time capsule from 50 years past is opened at Caleb's school, revealing a mysterious series of numbers written by troubled student Lucinda in the late 1950s. John breaks the code, which accurately predicted major global catastrophes from the past 50 years, with more to come. He connects with Lucinda's daughter Diana (Rose Byrne) and granddaughter Abby, and as calamities continue to occur as per the code, mysterious whispering strangers approach Caleb and Abby.

What Works Well: The march to cataclysm combines supernatural elements with themes of familial loss, religion, grief, and the debate between determinism and randomness. The school's time capsule is a clever introductory anchor, and director Alex Proyas keeps the mystery elements sharp as John grapples with the stunning implications of the deciphered code. The scale of potential disaster is global, but John and Diana's personal losses and individual-scaled suspicions allow the thrills to remain grounded.

What Does Not Work As Well: Two mass casualty events feature in the middle act, and the scenes of destruction succumb to marginal special effects and digital carnage more spectacular than convincing. The rushed late-in-the-final-act plot resolution explains everything and nothing, and a step-back from specifics exposes fundamental weaknesses in logic as the build-up to world-altering events passes mostly unnoticed.

Conclusion: When it comes to the end, to know or not to know is the question.



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Movie Review: This Is Where I Leave You (2014)

Genre: Comedy  

Director: Shawn Levy  

Starring: Jason Bateman, Jane Fonda, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, Rose Byrne, Corey Stoll, Katheryn Hahn, Connie Britton, Timothy Olyphant  

Running Time: 103 minutes  

Synopsis: Judd Altman (Jason Bateman) discovers his wife cheating, then his father dies. The family gathers for seven days of mourning, reuniting Judd with his mother Hilary (Jane Fonda), sister Wendy (Tina Fey), brothers Phillip and Paul (Adam Driver and Corey Stoll), and high school friend Penny (Rose Byrne). Hilary is an author known for exploiting her children's embarrassments; Wendy's husband is inattentive and she reignites a relationship with neighbour Horry (Timothy Olyphant); the irresponsible Phillip shows up with older woman Tracy (Connie Britton); while Paul and his wife Annie (Katheryn Hahn) are having trouble conceiving a child.

What Works Well: The extended Altman family antics provide a steady stream of humour, mainly because their foundational eccentric attributes and rub-points knowingly reflect widespread dynamics with only slight exaggerations. Jason Bateman conveys bemused calmness barely containing rage, and shares the spotlight with a terrific cast. Director Shawn Levy keeps the mood light and introduces new twists at a steady clip, nourishing the humour with revelations and affection as the Altmans occasionally rise above quirks and towards hidden strengths.

What Does Not Work As Well: Writer Jonathan Tropper has a few more characters than good ideas: several scenes declare bankruptcy and default to juvenile fistfights, while the rush to release tension through sexual escapades is quickly predictable.

Conclusion: This is where adult siblings confirm the wisdom of living apart.



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Movie Review: Wicker Park (2004)

Genre: Romantic Drama Mystery  

Director: Paul McGuigan  

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Diane Kruger, Rose Byrne  

Running Time: 114 minutes  

Synopsis: In Chicago, advertising executive Matt Simon (John Hartnett) is engaged to his boss' sister Rebecca (Jessica Paré) and about to head to China on a business trip. But at a restaurant he overhears the voice of his ex-girlfriend Lisa (Diane Kruger). They had initially met two years prior when he worked at a video equipment store, and were deeply in love when she inexplicably dropped out of his life. Now Matt postpones his trip and sets out to find Lisa, a search that will involve his best friend and shoe salesperson Luke (Matthew Lillard) and Luke's girlfriend Alex (Rose Byrne), a theatre actress.

What Works Well: This remake of the French movie L'Appartement successfully emphasizes style in a story of elusive romance, second chances, deception, and desperate longing. Director Paul McGuigan uses split screens, dreamy filtering, plenty of snowy urban landscapes, and frequent time jumps to convey interactions between fate, loss, love, and infatuation. The hypnotic aesthetics and complex narrative structure deepen the eternal soulmate search, and allow layers of revelations, secrets, and hidden agendas to unpeel with careful timing. Matt Simon's singular determination is a suitable role for Josh Hartnett, while Diane Kruger and Rose Byrne convey the challenge of contrasting perspectives.

What Does Not Work As Well: The plot is built on a tower of just-in-time coincidences, and demands questionable character decisions and actions (or non-decisions and non-actions) at almost every turn. The multiple flashbacks and variable points-of-view occasionally threaten coherence.

Conclusion: A pleasingly perplexing pursuit of passion.



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Movie Review: Juliet, Naked (2018)

A sharp-edged romantic comedy, Juliet, Naked enjoys a playful premise nibbling on life's suspended dreams.

In England, Annie (Rose Byrne) is the museum curator in the small seaside community of Sandcliff. She is getting exasperated with her partner Duncan (Chris O'Dowd), a college professor obsessed with obscure American independent musician Tucker Crowe (Ethan Hawke), who released the album Juliet in 1993 and promptly disappeared mid-tour. Duncan runs a website for other Tucker aficionados, trading rumours about the musician's whereabouts. 

In fact Tucker is living a quiet life in upstate New York. He is trying to remain close to his youngest son Jackson, to make up for having been an inattentive father to all his other children, including London-based Lizzie (Ayoola Smart), herself now pregnant.

The record company sends Duncan an early demo of Tucker's album, this one labelled Juliet, Naked. Annie sarcastically joins the online discussion and is stunned to be contacted by an appreciative Tucker, and they start an exchange of messages. She drifts further apart from Duncan, then has an opportunity to meet Tucker when he travels to London to visit Lizzie.

An adaptation of a Nick Hornby novel, Juliet, Naked provides witty commentary about breaking free from old shackles. Director Jesse Peretz keeps the mood light but mature for the breezy 105 minutes of running time, and the script (co-written by Tamara Jenkins) makes good use of the fictional Sandcliff as a picturesque but still grey English town. Like the characters, the locale appears bogged down in the past, while the soundtrack of angst-riddled 1990's rock (performed by Hawke) underlines a long-gone musical era still dominating the lives of Annie and Duncan.

After 15 years, Annie can no longer deny her relationship with Duncan has a good past but no future. She wants to start a family, while he is still acting like an adolescent with his single-album Tucker infatuation. Meanwhile, Tucker has abandoned music to focus on Jackson, a laudable commitment, except that he is also studiously avoiding mending fences with all his other children (young Jackson hardly knows he even has siblings). Annie, Duncan, and Tucker all need to find the courage to re-engage with today, and some will move forward more gracefully than others.

The secondary characters add colour and humour. Annie's flighty sister Ros (Lily Brazier) believes she is finding love with a different woman every night, while Sandcliff's mayor (Phil Davis) is an eccentric relic more suited for display in Annie's museum.

Compared to her sister and the men in her life, Annie is the only responsible adult in the room, and Rose Byrne is the standout performer, leveraging the anxiety of a biological clock ticking ever louder to kick-start a new chapter. Ethan Hawke can play characters like Tucker Crowe in his sleep, while Chris O'Dowd conveys a man with a teenager's psychology, still stuck in the posters-on-the-wall, hero-worship stage.

Astute and amusing, Juliet, Naked enjoys good acoustics.



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Movie Review: The Meddler (2015)

A mother-daughter dramedy about grief and letting go, The Meddler is comfortably predictable and enlivened by a sparkling Susan Sarandon.

After her husband died leaving her lonely but rich, middle-aged Mamie Minervini (Sarandon) moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles to be close to her single daughter Lori (Rose Byrne), a script writer. Both are still processing their grief, and Mamie cannot help but meddle in every detail of her daughter's life.

The exasperated Lori takes a break and moves for a few weeks to New York to film a pilot. Mamie fills her time by volunteering at the hospital, helping a technology store employee pursue night school, babysitting for Lori's friend Jillian (Cecily Strong), then organizing Jillian's vow renewals ceremony. She also meets and starts dating retired police officer Randall Zipper (J.K. Simmons). But she can only tolerate the separation from Lori for so long, and follows her to New York to meddle some more.

A light-hearted character study tracing a woman coping with profound loss and life's curves, The Meddler offers few surprises. But with Susan Sarandon in fine form and enjoying the internal consistency of irritating helpfulness, writer and director Lorene Scafaria stays close to fundamentals. The film avoids large emotional swings, operating instead within a narrow range of plausible eccentricity, and always anchored by a mother and daughter who care enough about each other to seek refuge in forgiveness.

Underlying themes, all tackled with a soft touch, include Mamie's slow journey towards giving herself permission to love again, and Zipper providing her the time and space to do so. Mothering spills into smothering when natural worries about a daughter's love life and career are unbound, while largesse is used as a shortcut to secure attention and relevance.

Humour is judiciously deployed, Mamie's cell phone, Zipper's chicken, Lori's dogs and Mamie's dinner back in Brooklyn with the animated family of her deceased husband all a source of chuckles. The blatant single company product placement and boosterism are less enjoyable.

The Meddler ends just a bit further ahead from where it begins. Mamie inches forward in her life as a widow and the mother-daughter bond strengthens while remaining a reliable source of love and vexation. The absence of major transformations ensures a relatively staid experience, but also rings true.



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Movie Review: Instant Family (2018)

A comedy with dramatic elements, Instant Family explores the complexities of foster parenting through the story of one couple taking on all they can handle.

Married couple Pete and Ellie Wagner (Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne) flip houses for a living, and have delayed having children. They decide to become foster parents and go through the required screening courses, where they meet social workers Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon (Tig Notaro). Although initially hopeful of fostering one young child, Pete and Ellie eventually take in 15 year old Lizzy Viara (Isabela Moner) and her two younger siblings Juan and Lita.

The three kids were raised in harrowing conditions with a drug addicted mother, now in prison. Isabela is surly and cold, unsure why a middle class white couple would take on the hassle of caring for three Hispanic kids. Juan is accident prone and Lita resorts to shrieking to get whatever she wants. Pete and Ellie do their best, but the road to learning instant parenting is bumpy. And once the children's mother finishes her sentence and cleans up, their challenges multiply.

Inspired by director and co-writer Sean Ander's real-life story of adopting three siblings, Instant Family is a sweet family-friendly comedy. The mix of laughs and serious incidents is well calibrated, and although the march towards a happy ending is assured, enough ups and downs happen along the way to maintain interest.

Moments of doubts, setbacks and accidents mix easily with cute silliness involving bathroom use, finding new routines and public temper tantrums. Pete and Ellie have to learn on the job what it means to support each other through the parenting obstacle course, all while under the judgmental gaze of the deeply sceptical Lizzy. She is mostly passing time until her mom is released and recovered enough to regain custody of the kids, and has no interest in establishing emotional connections with yet another set of temporary caregivers.

In addition to extending the film to close to two hours, Anders does overcook a few scenes in search of cheaper laughs. In the most egregious, Lizzy gets involved in a sexting debacle with a sleazy school janitor, leading Pete and Ellie to perpetrate two assaults within five minutes while abandoning Juan and Lita in the car, in a fine example of how not to parent.

In the middle of the learn-on-the-fly turmoil Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne make for an appealing pair, both quickly comfortable as a couple and leaning on their understated comic timing to project less-is-more humour. Isabela Moner excels as Lizzy and steals every scene she is in with a sassy performance of passive-aggressive teen angst justified by deep insecurities.

In support Tig Notaro and Octavia Spencer provide a social worker twist on good cop / bad cop, here Notaro's properly by-the-book version of fostering bounced off against Spencer's warts-and-all colour commentary about how it really works. Surviving an Instant Family requires deep-seated belief in the ideal, and imperfect navigation of the real.

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Movie Review: Neighbors (2014)

A raunchy comedy, Neighbors features a few nice touches about growing up, but is an otherwise juvenile exercise in party excess.

Married couple Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) are proud new parents of a young infant and have just purchased their first dream home in an idyllic quiet neighbourhood. They are stunned when within days, the house immediately adjacent is purchased by a rowdy fraternity, with college bros Terry (Zac Efron) and Pete (Dave Franco) in charge.

The loud parties start soon thereafter. Mac and Kelly initially try to play it cool and befriend the frat boys, but they are soon at their wits' end, and break a promise they made to Terry by calling the police. With Terry determined to create his own legend as a party monster, this triggers an all-out tit-for-tat war between the neighbours for the duration of the college semester.

Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne (playing up an Australian accent) share a smooth chemistry as the in-synch parents slowly adjusting to adulthood responsibilities but still determined to hold on to the hipness of youth. The scenes between them are easily the highlights of Neighbors, but unfortunately the film is less about the couple and more about the war of high jinx and wild antics with the rowdy frat boys.

And over at the frat house, director Nicholas Stoller does eventually include a few scenes with Terry and Pete questioning what the future holds once college ends, and challenging the ethos of all parties all the time. But these interludes are distractions, and the film is mostly about all the parties, all the time.

The script by Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien is determined to cram in as much drug and alcohol fuelled craziness as possible within 97 minutes, and the film descends into a grey haze of sameness. In the meantime, all the other members of the fraternity remain stock sex-obsessed and barely defined characters.

The better moments involve the college dean played by Lisa Kudrow, who harbours a dry and pragmatic approach to her job of keeping fraternities in line, measured by media headlines. Mac and Kelly's attempts at maintaining a sex life in the presence of a curious baby, noisy neighbours and frequent episodes of extreme drunkenness also hit the funny mark.

Unexpected Neighbors disrupt the suburbs, always with a lot of noise but not quite enough wit.

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Movie Review: I Give It A Year (2013)

A romantic comedy with a difference, I Give It A Year takes a subversive perspective on the genre and achieves edgy success.

The film starts with London couple Nat (Rose Byrne) and Josh (Rafe Spall) nine months into their marriage and already comprehensively in the emotional doldrums. In flashback, their troubles are revealed, starting with a messy wedding day punctuated by a best-man speech from hell courtesy of Josh's friend Danny (Stephen Merchant). Josh is a struggling writer, Nat is a high powered advertising executive, they share little in common, and their home life quickly descends into mutual irritations.

But their real challenges begin when Josh's ex-girlfriend social worker Chloe (Anna Faris) reemerges, and it's clear that they still have feelings for each other. Meanwhile Nat meets dashing rich executive and potential new client Guy (Simon Barker), and he aggressively pursues a romance. Josh is much more interested in Chloe, Nat is really interested in Guy, and the inconvenience of their young marriage is just getting in the way.

Directed and written by Dan Mazer, I Give It A Year is a less than serious shot in the arm for the rom-com genre, and it lands its punches exactly as intended. This is a foul-mouthed, no holds barred adult-oriented comedy, stressing the laughs much more than the romance, and finding many quite hilarious moments. Mazer sets out to dismantle as many cliches as he can find, and conjures up frequent scenes of awkwardness that nibble away at any notions of fluffy romance.

Merchant's unfiltered brand of politically incorrect comedy acts as a regular dose of disruptive steroids and contributes to the film's ethos. Elsewhere a clumsy attempted threesome does not work as well but makes the point of dispelling the thrill of that act. Much better is a ridiculously funny highlight featuring a delicious combination of two excited doves, a violinist, a platter of oysters and a ceiling fan.

The film's intentions are to demonstrate how a seemingly perfect union can takes a wrong turn, some temptations are too good to ignore, and mistakes of the heart can lead to domestic misery. It's all delivered with a self-deprecating tone, helped by an appealing Rose Byrne performance. She occupies the space where professional ambitions, opportunities for lust and the tug of faithfulness collide in a mushroom cloud of guilt. Rafe Spall plays his part, but is overshadowed by both Byrne and Anna Faris, who delivers the most honest performance as a down to earth woman unaware of her appeal.

The cast also includes Minnie Driver as a caustic and long-married mutual friend, and Olivia Colman as a less than helpful marriage counselor.

Playful and incendiary, I Give It A Year cheerfully sticks needles into the doll of familiarity.

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Movie Review: Spy (2015)

An action comedy, Spy serves as a star vehicle for Melissa McCarthy and offers travelogue-style Bond-parody antics with an extra dose of fun vulgarity.

Susan Cooper (McCarthy) is a frumpy CIA agent reduced to a supporting role, staying safely behind a desk to support the dashing Bradley Fine (Jude Law) as he tackles daring missions across the globe. While searching for a missing suitcase nuke, Fine is killed in action by the glamorous Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne), who is attempting to sell the weapon to the highest bidder. CIA boss Elaine Crocker (Allison Janney) learns that Rayna has uncovered the identity of numerous CIA agents and agrees to allow the unknown Cooper to go into the field, much to the chagrin of highly-strung star agent Rick Ford (Jason Statham).

Assuming various identities Cooper tracks down terrorist middleman Sergio De Luca (Bobby Cannavale) in Paris, and then saves Rayna's life in Rome. Rayna is suspicious but accepts Cooper into her inner circle as she travels across Europe connecting with global mobsters. Cooper tries to locate the bomb without blowing her cover, a job not made easier by a rampaging agent Ford.

Directed by Paul Feig, Spy offers up exactly what it promises. The idea of an insecure desk-bound support agent being suddenly thrust into a field role to stop the sale of a weapon of mass destruction is a perfect fit with McCarthy's burst-out-of-a-shell persona, and the film carries enough female empowerment messaging to ride over the bumpier patches. Matching agent Cooper against a female antagonist in Rayna is a clever touch, allowing the battle between women to draw out contrasts in sophistication, attitude and grit.

Cooper is provided with the briefest of background sketches, but enough to make the point: 10 years prior she was a top trainee, but the suave and self-centred Bradley Fine convinced her to remain as his support rather than take the lead role, a jab at men standing in the way of women reaching their potential. Cooper also laments the formative messages she received from her mother encouraging meek submissiveness.

The action scenes are plentiful, laced with violence and profanity but keeping humour as the primary target and often hitting the mark. It's mostly frantic, breathless stuff, more concerned with rushing around Europe than common sense, a female Bond on laughing gas.

McCarthy surrounds herself with excellent talent, Jude Law and Jason Statham nailing their roles with Statham getting a fair share of the best lines as an agent with one too many hissing stories about his incredible feats from missions past. Rose Byrne provides the necessary condescending counterbalance, her bemused verbal sparring with McCarthy a constant source of comic tension.

Filled with irrelevant but funny sidebars including a CIA HQ infected with bats and mice, Spy is polished silliness.

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The Movies Of Rose Byrne

All movies starring Rose Byrne and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones (2002)

Troy (2004)

Wicker Park (2004)

Marie Antoinette (2006)

Knowing (2009)

Bridesmaids (2011)

The Place Beneath The Pines (2012)

I Give It A Year (2013)

Neighbors (2014)

This Is Where I Leave You (2014)

Spy (2015)

The Meddler (2015)

Juliet, Naked (2018)

Instant Family (2018)

I Am Mother (2019, voice only)

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)

An intense character study spanning two generations, The Place Beyond The Pines takes an in-depth look at the complexities of responsibility, destiny and the lingering impacts of today's actions on the long term future.

In upstate New York, Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) is a low life drifter, good at only one thing: riding a motorcycle. Luke bumps into former girlfriend Romina (Eva Mendes) and learns that her infant son Jason is his child. Although Romina has moved on and is now with another man, Luke is determined to insert himself into her life to try and be a father. To earn an income he accepts a job at the ramshackle car repair shop of Robin (Ben Mendelsohn). But Luke seeks more money to try and impress Romina and buy things for Jason. He forms a bank robbery partnership with Robin, with Luke's motorcycle riding skills helping achieve smooth getaways.

Luke's misadventures with the law eventually result in a tangle with rookie police officer Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper). A trained lawyer and the son of a respected judge (Harris Yulin), Avery is ambitious, and the incident with Luke traumatizes him. He then stumbles onto a police corruption ring led by officer Deluca (Ray Liotta). Avery's career blossoms into power and politics at the expense of his wife Jennifer (Rose Byrne). Years later, Avery's neglected son A.J. (Emory Cohen) is in high school and drifting into a life of drugs, alcohol and parties. He meets and starts to befriend Jason (Dane DeHaan), now also a teenager at the same school.

Directed and co-written by Derek Cianfrance, The Place Beyond The Pines is long, moody and humourless. It is also a gripping drama, singularly focussed on the ambitions and failures of its central characters. Cianfrance creates detailed portraits of two men grappling with what life has to offer, and finds the compelling threads that connect the actions, motivations and destinies of Luke and Avery. And it's stylishly assembled, Cianfrance finding the neon, shadows, perspectives and camera angles to give every shot dynamic potential.

The film runs for 140 minutes, and it could easily have shed 20 minutes with no loss in quality. Cianfrance is a fan of pregnant pauses and gloomy stares punctuating almost every conversation, and while he goes searching for the rivers of anger and frustration boiling under the surface of dysfunctional relationships, he also stretches the ability of his story to carry weighty loads of profound meaning at every turn.

But the themes explored by the film are elaborate and often fascinating. Luke is desperate to find some meaning to rescue his sorry life, and unexpectedly finds it in Jason. His attempts to do good only lead to worse conflicts. Avery is also looking to define himself as something separate from his father, and without looking for it finds himself at a crucial fork in the road of life. He steers towards public good, but falls victim to insidious arrogance. Both men find elaborate ways to damage the most important relationships in their life, and hurt the people they love most. The sons inherit and then amplify the emotional bruises inflicted by their fathers, either propagating or repeating behavioural patterns with the added ferocity of a new generation.

In a movie fixated on its characters the performances have to be good, and the cast delivers. Ryan Gosling has the meatier role and creates in Luke a memorable tragic loser, who will find a way to make the wrong move at every opportunity. Bradley Cooper is more reserved as Avery, but does pull off a smooth transition from shaky rookie police officer to smarmy and power-hungry politician. Gosling and Cooper share just the one scene together, as they sequentially hand-off the first two thirds of the movie.

Eva Mendes gives Romania plenty of spirit while Rose Byrne takes Jennifer to more passive aggressive territory. The final third of the film loses star power and transitions to Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan as sons unknowingly living in the shadows of their fathers, and they are adequate.

Delving into some of the essential predispositions of the human condition, The Place Beyond The Pines is a rare combination of ambitious and intimate.

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Movie Review: Bridesmaids (2011)

A clever chick flick that borrows heavily from raunchy bromedies then dramatically outdoes them, Bridesmaids is a most enjoyable comedy, unique for investing in character development without losing comic momentum. Kristen Wiig of Saturday Night Live co-wrote and stars, and in the process establishes herself as a potential superstar movie comedienne.

Thirty-something Annie (Wiig) lives in Milwaukee, and is finding out what life at rock bottom looks like. Her small bakery business went bankrupt; she is stuck in a dead-end sales job; her room-mates are insufferable; her car is falling apart; and the one man who pays any attention to her uses her purely for sex. Lilian (Maya Rudolph), Annie's best friend since childhood and now working in Chicago, announces that she is getting married, and of course wants Annie to be the Maid of Honour.

Annie gets to know the other bridesmaids, and quickly finds out that Chicago socialite and control-freak Helen (Rose Byrne) also considers herself Lilian's best friend. Helen's life is as perfect as Annie's is shambolic, and the two are immediate frenemies.

Also among the bridesmaids are the stocky and aggressive Megan (Melissa McCarthy), who will become Lilian's sister-in-law; the blonde Rita (Wendy McLendon-Covey), who is stuck in an unhappy marriage, and the naive Becca (Ellie Kemper).

In preparing for the wedding Annie tries to be a good Maid of Honour, but everything she touches turns into an unmitigated disaster, from gown fittings (diarrhea) to the bachelorette trip to Vegas (kicked off the plane), to the shower (destroyed). Annie also manages to sabotage a frail relationship that was developing with police officer Nathan (Chris O'Dowd), who genuinely cares about her.

With the catastrophes mounting and the wedding looming, the friendship between Lilian and Annie is ruptured, and Helen is installed as the new Maid of Honour. Annie needs to find the incentive to pick up the pieces and reassemble her life.

At just over two hours, Bridesmaids is long for a comedy, but director Paul Feig (a veteran of TV sitcoms) uses the time wisely to nourish the characters and the narrative, and the film takes advantage of the available elbow room to work on a variety of levels. Most importantly, it is extremely funny, with some laughs, such as the sequence in the bridal shop, of the side-splitting, rib-cracking variety. Yes the humour is sometimes (or almost always) vulgar and related to body parts and fluids, and the vulgarity works brilliantly.

But the film is successful because it ventures beyond the laughs to create a triangle of stressed friendship between Annie, Lilian and Helen, and the script by Wiig and Annie Mumolo takes the time to probe how people, and therefore what they value in a friend, change over time. And finally Bridesmaids finds a heart by colouring in a lot of distress in the life of Annie, and becoming a rare example of a comedy that provides eloquent context for hilariously anguished behaviour.

A thoughtfully unapologetic romp, Bridesmaids leaves a trail of delectable destruction in its wake.

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