THE WEDDING BANQUET

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B+

It’s probably safe to say that Ang Lee’s international breakout 1993 original The Wedding Banquet is not a broadly famous movie. It’s probably also safe to say that film is widely appreciated among aficionados of queer cinema, international or otherwise. The film was notable for several reasons, not least of which was its nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (which it lost to the Spanish film Belle Epoque). It has charm to spare, although one particular plot point, which was played at the time as borderline innocent but by today’s standards crosses a line into sexual assault, has aged rather poorly. Overall, this makes the original Wedding Banquet an incredibly progressive film for its time.

Enter director and co-write Andrew Ahn (Fire Island), who has reimagined The Wedding Banquet for 2025 sensibilities with mostly great success. The broad strokes remain the same, but many of the details have been reconfigured. Instead of the bride who marries a gay man for a green card being a desperate tenant, this time she’s part of a lesbian couple: Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone) are trying to start a family using IVF, now disappointed by the failure of a second attempt. Chris (Bowen Yang) has been best friends with Angela since college, when they made a single attempt at straight sex; he’s now coupled with Min (Han Gi-Chan), whose family fortune inheritance is conditional to his involvement with the family business.

Said business is managed by Min’s grandmother, Ja-Young (a stupendous Youn Yuh-jung, Best Supporting Actress winner for Minari), a very stern woman who makes a stark contrast with Angela’s per formatively supportive mother, May (Joan Chen). Ja-Young is the catalyst for one of the best and most unexpected twists of this version as compared to the 1993 original, as it pertains to the attempted ruse—I won’t spoil it here.

Evidently by virtue of Angela and Chris being best friends, both couples are also very good friends—so much so that Chris and Min are living in the garage of Lee and Angela’s house. Side note: ff Min has access to a fortune, why he would be living in someone’s garage remains a mystery. Min is an evidently very talented artist and Chris’s life lacks direction, so maybe it’s just the lifestyle they’re choosing, although it still doesn’t make a lot of sense under scrutiny. All of that regardless, the depiction of a gay male couple and a lesbian couple being such close friends is maybe my favorite thing about this movie. I can’t recall ever seeing that in cinema before, at least not where all four people are the principal characters.

I do think the Chris character is a bit awkwardly underdeveloped. I could never make any real sense of what his problem is, why he has such insecurity that he won’t accept Min’s proposal of marriage. Min is perhaps the most open-hearted of the four characters, the kind with the potential to provide a lot of comedy—and, although there is plenty of comedy, The Wedding Banquet is not quite as funny as I expected or hoped. Han Gi-Chan as Min is fun but rarely funny; Yang gets perhaps the most chuckles with subtle gestures and expressions executed with finesse; Kelly Marie Tran (The Last Jedi) is convincingly messy as a woman terrified of being a bad mother; and Gladstone brings an almost incongruous gravitas to a film meant to be a romantic comedy. She’s a stellar actor but not the funniest person in the world.

Where The Wedding Banquet isn’t funny, however, it is repeatedly surprisingly touching, and I shed several tears over several different scenes. To the credit of Ahn and his co-writer James Schamus (who wrote the original), the many narrative threads in this film come together with impressive precision. Among the ensemble cast, Bowen Yang is really the only one with a true understanding of comic timing, which leaves this film feeling a bit more like a sweet dramedy than a straightforward comedy.

But even if I didn’t get quite the vibe I was hoping for, this is an incredibly satisfying watch, just for different and unexpected reasons. Some narrative turns are predictable if you have seen the 1993 film; some are not, and those changes serve this new version well. This is not a film that will make its mark on cinema history the way the original did, as that one was genuinely groundbreaking, poorly aged flaws notwithstanding, and the same cannot really be said of this one. Still, most of the characters feel real and multi-dimensional—especially Angela and Lee as a couple. The four of them are ultimately served up as an excellent example of found-family, a ragtag group of people who care deeply for each other in ways that are thicker than blood. It’s a uniquely satisfying representation of possibility.

“Love makes a family” is more than just a platitude. It’s also a movie!

Overall: B+

A NICE INDIAN BOY

Directing: A-
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

Full disclosure, it’s a bit more difficult for me to be objective in my assessment of A Nice Indian Boy than it is for most films. Setting aside the myth that true objectivity even exists, this is a film that really hits home for me: it’s about a white man who marries a South Asian man in an Indian wedding that’s made as gay as a traditional Indian wedding can be made. And, I am a white man who married a South Asian man in an Indian wedding as traditional as we could make it. Some of it was modified in ways it would have had to have been regardless of our sexuality: truly traditional Indian weddings last for days; ours lasted an afternoon. The same goes for the wedding that occurs in this movie, but which featured very specific, Hindu rituals that I performed in my own wedding to my husband.

It’s an unusual thing indeed, to see a film so steeped in South Asian culture, and yet even as a white guy, see so very much of my own experience reflected in it. A pretty significant subplot involves multiple characters’ love of the very famous 1995 Bollywood movie Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (translated as The Brave-Hearted Will Take the Bride), commonly abbreviated as “DDLJ”—and, very specifically, its signature song, “Ek Duke Ke Vaaste” (“For Each Other”). I have seen that film only once, myself; but that song has been a staple of my Hindi music playlists for a solid two decades. It has had a particularly nostalgic place in the hearts of South Asians the world over for thirty years that I could never access, but it also has a very particular nostalgic meaning to me personally.

A Nice Indian Boy does push the bounds of plausibility a tad, but therein lies the magic of movies, I suppose. Only once did I feel a bit dubious about the meet-cute setup between Naveen (Karan Soni) and Jay (Jonathan Groff), as they actually meet in a temple, Jay showing up to pray to the elephant god Ganesha, as though he were a natural practicing Hindu. But, not long after that, we learn that Jay, now orphaned due to his parents having been older when they took him in, was adopted by Hindu parents. So then, I though: okay, I guess I buy that.

Soni and Groff are well-cast and have clear chemistry, Soni as someone still struggling to overcome shame and embarrassment; Groff as someone self-assured after the heard-learned lessons of a youth spent in foster care before finding the parents who ultimately welcomed him home. I’d love to learn more about Groff’s unique experience, but the fact of his parents’ deaths makes it easier for the story at hand to focus on Naveen and his family.

A Nice Indian Boy is arguably more sweet and romantic than it is funny, although it is also plenty funny. I just wish I had known to bring in plenty of tissues—I cried a lot more than I expected to. It is perhaps to this movie’s greatest credit that all the tears were shed in response to touching and heartwarming turns of events, as opposed to anything sad or tragic. It is told in five chapters, starting with Naveen and Jay meeting and then going on a sweetly awkward first date. In a particularly well-executed scene at a bar, Jay surprises Naveen by admitting that he’s nervous. The special thing about Jay is his comfort with simply acknowledging such things, while Naveen still has much to learn on that front.

Naveen and Jay are very well rounded, flawed and adorable characters. But what truly makes A Nice Indian Boy special is the cast that rounds out Nareen’s family: his parents, Archit and Megha (Harish Patel and Zarna Gang), have had six years to come to terms with a son who is openly gay—so much so that, in fact, they spend a lot of time watching the gay cable channel—but, until now, no experience meeting one of his boyfriends. Naveen also has an older sister, Arundhathi (Sunita Mani), struggling with the loveless marriage her parents arranged and now resentful of how much more effort to be open minded her parents are being about their son than they seemed to have been when they married off their daughter.

It would be easy to make these characters one-note punch lines, but in all three cases, they bring a level of humanity not usually given to such supporting characters, particularly in romantic comedies—even good ones. These characters feel like real people, ones that you might meet in reality. Archit and Megha’s unusual acceptance of their gay son does not change that. These are simply loving parents who are making an effort, often stumbling adorably along the way. Archit in particular has a lovely arc in the story, never overtly judgmental of his son but with some clear discomfort, which feeds into Naveen’s discomfort with himself.

There is an on-again, off-again, on-again arc between Naveen and Jay that feels tied a little too neatly, but it’s the ensemble cast, including loving and colorful friends on both their parts, that really sells their story. There is real and believable development among all of the principal characters, concisely written by Eric Randall as adapted by the play of the same name by Madhuri Shekar. A Nice Indian Boy runs a brisk 96 minutes, which gives it a key thing in common with Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag (an otherwise very different movie—except that it’s also very romantic): it packs a lot into a lean runtime, without every feeling rushed.

I couldn’t tell you yet whether I will wind up seeing A Nice Indian Boy many more times, or if it will become a long-lasting favorite. It might. All I can tell you for certain is that I was deeply moved by it, on a very personal level, and I would recommend it to absolutely anyone. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll love it either way.

I don’t know if you’ll fall in love with this movie but I would encourage you to find out, because I sure did.

Overall: A-

ANORA

Directing: A
Acting: A+
Writing: A
Cinematography: A
Editing: A

It’s so rare, and so deeply satisfying, when a movie actually lives up to the hype. Anora is everything it promises to be and more.

It’s also very much a riff on the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman, a movie as beloved as it is quite rightly criticized as a vapid look at sex work. Anora takes the concept of a rich guy who woos a sex worker with the promise of riches in exchange for exclusivity, and makes it grittier, more real, with both more authentic joy and more authentic sorrow. Instead of a high-end Beverly Hills escort played by Julia Roberts, we get a no-nonsense Brooklyn exotic dancer played by Mikey Madison—who is a revelation in the role.

And in the case of Anora (Ani for short), the fairy tale begins to crack fairly early on. She’s on the job when she meets Ivan (a stupendous Mark Eydelshteyn), a young Russian man with money to burn. He buys a lap dance, then invites her to his giant home, and within days he’s asking her to be his “boyfriend” for a week. Within that week, he proposes to her, convinces her he’s serious, and flies her with some friends to Las Vegas, where they do indeed get married,

This is all extended setup, and it last probably a good hour into the movie: Ani being taken in by a whirlwind fantasy life moving so fast she doesn’t even have time to consider whether it’s too good to be true. All the while, Ivan has an irresistibly sweet, youthful exuberance that is easily mistaken for innocence. It’s just as easy to be taken in by it as a viewer as it is by Ani as a character, which is testament to Eydelshteyn’s performance.

It’s when Ivan’s parents catch wind of this marriage that things take a turn. He is visited by two men we would reasonably read as henchmen, working for Toros (Karren Karagulian), the handler hired by Ivan’s parents. But Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov) get far more than they bargained for when they come face to face with Ani, who is having trouble processing the idea, suddenly presented to her, that her marriage is a sham.

This turn in the plot, though, would in just about any other movie get scary and violent. Garnick and Igor, as it turns out, are not interested in violence—only in getting Ivan and Ani to sign paperwork to annul their marriage. It’s Ani who turns out to be unexpectedly wild, a young woman with ample experience not taking anbody’s shit, and she’s the one who get surprisingly violent. This is an extended sequence in Ivan’s house, and it is hilarious.

Garnick and Igor have such trouble containing Ani’s outbursts—which, to be fair, are reasonable under the circumstances—that Toros is forced to leave the performance of a baptism to assist. He’s astonished at how beat up Garnick and Igor are when he arrives at the house, and instead of being on board with Ani being tied up like he would be in most movies, he’s aghast. The other two struggle to convince him it would be a mistake to untie her.

Writer-director Sean Baker has made easily his best movie since his masterful 2015 breakthrough Tangerine. I wasn't quite as huge a fan of his next two films, The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021), which were both very good but not quite as incredible as many other critics asserted. With Anora, Baker adds to a truly impressive body of work and, so far at least, makes possibly his crowning achievement. It’s beautifully shot, beautifully acted, expertly edited, and its sexual frankness only adds to its quality.

It doesn’t take long to find online discourse about whether Anora is “feminist,” which misses the point. This is not what the story is concerned about, but rather with telling a nuanced story of a stripper who is neither ashamed nor explicitly proud of her job. She’s just matter-of-fact about it, about the line of work she’s in, and even about the clear talent she has (and yes, pole dancing takes talent). I would argue that alone is a feminist take.

Anora exists in a fully realized world, which is both very specific and something you can’t look away from. And this is Ani’s story from start to finish, Ivan much more a part of it in the first half than in the second, during most of which Ani, Toros, Garnick and Igor are searching the city for him. Igor in particular proves a surprisingly tender character for someone clearly meant to be a villain, and how he relates to Ani over time evolves organically until he plays a part in the closing scene of the film that is bittersweet at best and tragically sad at worst. In either case, he’s the one character who offers Ani any truly genuine intimacy.

There’s a lot of sex in Anora, particularly in its first half, when Ani is falling in love with Ivan. The fantastic trick Sean Baker pulls off is that it’s never gratuitous, at least not in the context of storytelling—not even when Ani gives a kind of performance in Ivan’s living room usually reserved for a private room at the strip club. In every case, it moves the story forward, and has a refreshing frankness about how sex plays an undeniable part in people falling for each other.

There have been many characterizations of Anora as “Pretty Woman meets Uncut Gems.” I would push back a bit on that characterization, as Uncut Gems is an unbearably tense and stressful portrait of a gambling addict you’re desperate to see make the right decision even once and he never does. Anora gets somewhat similarly frantic in its second half, but it’s far funnier and nowhere near as stressful. What it does do, on the other hand, is end with a couple of extended, quietly profound scenes that really drive home the inability of Ani to escape the trappings of her social and economic class, no matter what gets disingenuously promised to her.

Anora is a movie that passes no judgment on any of its characters, even while plenty of them—especially Ivan’s parents–are passing judgment on her. Mikey Madison is a star among stars in this movie, all of them giving unforgettable performances, and this is a stellar movie I won’t soon forget,

The promise may be too good to be true but this movie isn’t.

Overall: A

FALLEN LEAVES

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B

Fallen Leaves is reveiving virtually universal acclaim, and I’m over here thinking: I must be missing something. It’s fine, but with all due respect, it has yet to strike me as being something particularly special. This is a very simple, surprisingly short (81 minute) tale of two middle-aged people awkwardly falling in love.

This film is being billed as a “romantic comedy.” Romantic, I can get on board with it being. I got a light chuckle out of it maybe three or four times. Otherwise, I’ll concede that Fallen Leaves has a unique sort of sweetness to it. This is about two people who lead very solitary lives, one a little more content with the solitude than the other. They meet at a karaoke bar, and in this particular scene, I did enjoy the furtive glances back and forth between a man and a woman who seem subtly taken aback by how attractive they’re finding each other.

We never learn the names of the characters, but Ansa is played by Alma Pöysti, who is 42; and Holappa is played by Jussi Vatanen, who is 45. Curiously, the story seems to be set over-so-slightly in the future: after getting fired at her supermarket job for taking expired food, Ansa is seen in the kitchen of a bar where she’s hired as a dishwasher, and a 2024 calendar is seen hanging on the wall. This might seem an insignificant detail given how close we are indeed now to 2024, but for the many scenes in which Ansa’s radio plays news reports of Russian attacks in Ukraine.

I had difficulty ascertaining the point of these news clips, in the middle of a love story between two people in Helsinki, Finland. Granted, Finland is the scandinavian country—indeed, the European country—with by far the longest border with Russia. But, there is no political element to the story here otherwise, and if there were supposed to be some symbolic element to these news briefs of war, they sailed right over my head.

Furthermore, the performances across the board are rather flat, muted, almost monotone. This was clearly a deliberate choice, something that happens in a lot of independent and/or foreign films. I wonder how this film is playing in its native Finland. Critics in America are loving it. Am I just jaded after being in my own relationship after twenty years? I’m inclined not to think so, but I’ve been known to be off base about things.

Holappa is a heavy drinker. Ansa doesn’t much care for it. Before they confront that issue, far more minor things occur that result in persistent missed connections: Ansa’s written phone number falling unnoticed out of Holappa’s pocket. Ansa’s playful but ill-advised decision to wait until their second date to tell Holappa her name. They both get fired from their jobs, although Holappa’s drinking is a good reason for it.

That’s not especially a spoiler. There aren’t any major plot turns in Fallen Leaves, which is appealingly unsophisticated in its execution. There’s not a lot to unpack here, really. Nor is there much in the way of emotion. Some movies are wildly emotionally manipulative; Fallen Leaves is the antithesis of that approach. Some might argue that this beautifully underscores the very simple love story at play, one about two people finding love much later in life than most people do. I would argue that this is just a pleasantly simple, straightforward love story and there doesn’t seem to be any more to it than that.

Yep. That’s about all that’s going on here.

Overall: B

WHAT HAPPENS LATER

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

For a split second I found myself thinking: wouldn’t it be great if Tom Hanks had been cast in this movie with Meg Ryan? But then I got a few minutes into What Happens Later, Meg Ryan’s second directorial feature film and her first film acting role in eight years, and I realized Tom Hanks wuold have been horribly miscast in the part. For the character of Bill, a man who displays a playful cynicism, David Duchovny is perfectly cast. We can just hold out hope for a another pairing of Meg and Tom in some other movie before they die.

In the meantime, Ryan and Duchovny have fantastic chemistry, and it’s great fun to see them onscreen together, in a film that charms in a way few romantic comedies manage. Some might find What Happens Later to be too cute for its own good, and those people might have solid arguments. Personally, I rather enjoyed it, and found this movie to exceed my expectations.

Granted, Meg Ryan’s direction does eventually take us to a few moments a little too deep into the “magical thinking” that Bill consistently scoffs at, particularly in a scene where Bill and Willa (Ryan) take turns shouting at the universe from inside a snowed-in regional airport. The two characters have indeed endured a long series of irritations up to that point, but the level of outburst on both their parts feels unearned.

Such a moment is just a temporay speedbump, however, in the infectiously engaging dialogue that otherwise permeates What Happens Later, co-written by Ryan, Kirk Lynn, and Steven Dietz, the playwright upon whose 2008 play, Shooting Star, is based. It’s always a delight when a film based on a play actually works, and this one works so well as an adaptation, with filming locations in an actual airport, that it’s difficult to imagine it working as well on a live stage.

Ryan and Duchovny are both casually naturalistic performers, and are thus quite believable as a couple of aging, sometimes cranky ex-lovers who run into each other during passing layovers at the same airport. Usually romantic comedies are amusing at best, not eliciting a lot in the way of genuine laughter, but I laughed more than usual at this one—largely on the strength of its two lead performers. Well, them and the third of only three speaking parts in this film, the airport announcer (“Hal Liggett,” a credit apparently a pseudonym), who consistently respoonds to Bill and Willa’s questions in subtly funny ways.

Holing an audience’s attention for an hour and 45 minutes with only two characters is no easy task, but What Happens Later makes it seem easy. I had a lovely time just hanging out with these two, and appreciating the telling of a story like this with older actors. Although we learn that they had been in a serious relationship in their twenties, we never do learn their current age, although there is a sarcastic reference to Bill being “well into my fifties.” The two actors are in their early sixties, both looking their age and looking good—a rare Hollywood combination.

Ryan, for her part, plays a character less flightly than in her previous romantic comedy parts, in spite of Willa the character being, as Bill puts it, into “magical thinking,” putting her faith in “woo woo,” unscientific ideas. But, at her age, Willa is also hardened a bit, worn by the ups and downs of life, as is Bill, and the two characters catch up on the decades they’ve missed in each other’s eyes, as well as reexamine their previous relationship with each other, what worked about it and what didn’t.

In a fairly refreshing way, What Happens Later—a title that is both frustratingly vague and perfect for this story—ends without the typical burst of romance that ends most romantic comedies. It still ends on a charming note, with a bit of hope for these two and their connection to each other. I’d say it gives me hope for the movies, except that I was literally the single person watching it in the movie theater—because, these days, this is the type of movie audiences see no need to eventize in cinemas. Which is to say: this will be one to watch for when it hits a streamer near you.

It’s a good time just hanging out with these two.

Overall: B+

BROS

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

I really wanted to love Bros. And I did like it—it even made me laugh more than most comedies do. And I am a genuine fan of Billy Eichner, his overt obnoxiousness on Billy on the Street being a definitive part of his brand and appeal. And Bros is made for people who love romantic comedies, and even quite knowingly moves through all the same beats as any mainstream film of the genre. This is a film made for everyone lamenting the decline of romantic comedies, and it manages to scratch that itch by being just as serviceable a specimen as any other.

I just wanted it to be better than “serviceable,” which is, admittedly, a tall order. How many “great” romantic comedies are there out there, really? When Harry Met Sally… (1989) is arguably the best ever made; Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) seems largely lost to history and now rendered criminally underrated (seriously, if you’ve never seen that one, find it and watch it). Moonstruck (1987) is a straight up masterpiece. How long has it been since another romantic comedy came even close to the quality of these examples? Even the American Film Institute’s top 10 romantic comedies lists nothing more recent than 1993 (and Sleepless in Seattle is fun, but, if that makes the top ten of all time? this is not a genre known for most people’s best work).

How does Bros compare within a 21st-century context, then, which, frankly, lowers the bar? Four years ago Collider compiled a list of the best romantic comedies of the 21st century, and a lot of them are better films. The crucial difference with Bros is, of course, that it centers a same-sex couple instead of a straight one. And a whole lot has been made of how that breaks new ground, this being “the first American gay romantic comedy from a major studio featuring an entirely LGBTQ principal cast”—which is, it must be said, a lot of qualifiers. After all, Fire Island was already released this past spring, and it fits all but one of those same qualifiers, the only difference being it was released on Hulu. And that movie is certainly as good as Bros; some might say it’s better (on average I liked them about the same, for slightly different reasons) and they would have solid arguments to stand on. Hell, that one stars Bowen Yang as one of the principal characters, and he’s also in this movie.

And not for nothing, but Fire Island has a leg up on Bros in that its principal characters are mostly people of color. Bros is a little self-conscious about its “diversity casting” (a loaded term if ever there was one) while never directly addressing how it still centers white characters—which in itself is not necessarily something to criticize it for, except for how it quite blatantly “checks all the boxes,” or at least all the boxes it can, in its supporting cast. Eichner’s Bobby character is the Executive Director of an LGBTQ+ museum (was it absolutely necessary for him to the the Executive Director?), but the rest of his Board consists of two trans women (one White and one Black), a Black non-binary person, a White bisexual man, and a White lesbian. This is a knowing nod to the obsession with “covering all the bases,” like the self-conscious diversity of models on a college brochure, while still managing to actually check a lot of the boxes. (Incidentally, this Board does not include any people of color who aren’t Black, nor does it have any intersex or asexual people—which, I would bet anything, it would if the movie were made another ten years from now.)

The museum itself is a clear way for the film to “educate” viewers on queer history, which I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, this aspect of Bros did not teach me anything I didn’t already know, which made it feel kind of like a movie made to educate straight people. On the other hand, plenty of queer people also don’t know their own history, and if this movie teaches them anything at all, I’m not going to complain about that. That said, Eichner has so many extensive monologues in this movie—this guy talks, and talks—that a lot of the time, in the museum scenes, he’s throwing out so much information so fast that it often feels, again, like checking off boxes.

Bros opens with one of Eichner’s monologues, by the way, his being a podcast host (of course) offering an excuse for an introduction consisting of a large amount of voiceover. This opening bit kind of goes hard, though, which Eichner’s delivery that’s both rapid and extensive, and I got a little stuck on the idea that a solo podcast host, who evidently doesn’t even have guests on, would be a wildly popular one with a million subscribers. Bros barely gives an indication of the basic premise of his podcast (again, queer history), then mostly shows him waxing poetic about his frustrating sex life, what it’s like being gay these days, or answering live listener calls. Why the hell would so many people be listening to this?

It should be noted that Bros may be a gay story in which all the queer characters are (quite pointedly) played by queer actors, and all of that is indeed stuff to be proud of. But the director, Nicholas Stoller, is not gay, and I think this actually makes a difference, Eichnier having co-written the script with him notwithstanding. (Side note: Fire Island was directed by Andrew Ahn, an openly gay Asian American man.) There’s been an element of a lot of the press and buzz for Bros that feels a lot like straight guys patting themselves on the back for helping their queer friends get their movie made. And it’s not to say they have no reason to be proud of this movie, but there has been this widespread industry expectation that the movie will be a hit, and its opening weekend earned 40% less than projected. There is already hand-wringing about whether this means audiences aren’t “ready” for a movie like this, but there remains the possibility that the film just isn’t as great as everyone who made it thought it was.

And I know I’ve spent a lot of time picking it apart here, but I must stress that I did enjoy this movie. The more salient point is, I enjoyed it about as much as any average romantic comedy—the key word here being “average,” although I would even say this was above average, not that there’s a high bar there either; it doesn’t take much for a romantic comedy to rise just slightly above mediocrity. And to be fair, there’s a lot of things I did love about Bros, not least of which was its acknowledgment of how gay relationships are actually different from straight ones (yet no less valid); its sex scenes just as frank as any in a romantic comedy about straight people; and its unusually honest depiction of day to day queer life. (Although, and I’m sorry for constantly making the comparison in spite of its inevitability, Fire Island has a lot more casual drug use. Bros does depict the use of poppers in a sex scene, though, treating it as just a normal part of it, which for many it is.)

Plus, Bros does have a lot of very effective punch lines, and I laughed a good amount at it—albeit a little further into the film than I would have preferred; that opening sequence with the podcast-host voiceover really had me worried the movie would be actively bad. Thankfully, although there are many valid criticisms, the movie is actively good. And to be fair, it’s not trying to be anything it isn’t, either; the film itself doesn’t seem to think it’s any paragon of cinema, and only tries to offer what fans of romantic comedies want. And by and large, what those fans want is something of a specific formula, which this very much is.

Eichner’s love interest is Aaron, played by Luke Macfarlane, a guy largely known for Hallmark Channel romantic comedies—so, another example of slightly in-joke casting. Eichner plays a character I would likely find insufferable in real life, but these two men have genuine chemistry, which alone goes a long way toward making Bros work overall. It’s heartening to see even two perfectly attractive men (granted, one is much “hunkier” than the other) struggling to overcome very different insecurities, and sort of tentatively succeeding. Honestly, I would happily watch Bros again, and would likely enjoy it even more a second time, having already gotten the criticisms out of my system and allowing myself just to give into it without intellectualizing what is just meant to be a fun time at the movies. Which, to be fair, is exactly what this is in the end.

It’s unapologetically queer, unapologetically romantic, and unapologetically formulaic.

Overall: B

HAPPIEST SEASON

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Listen, Happiest Season won me over in a way that I truly never expected, even after about a third of the way into the movie. But let’s get the truly negative out of the way first, because we have to talk about that absolute turd of a title. It bears repeating, because I literally keep forgetting it: Happiest Season? What kind of generic-holiday randomized generator title is that? I hate it. It sounds like a spit balled title place holder that no one bothered to replace.

For much of the first half of this movie, I found myself thinking about how great it is to be getting a Christmas romantic comedy that features a gay couple, and how great it would be to have such a movie that is special enough to be rewatchable every Christmas, and . . . this movie is not it. Except, maybe it is? It pains me to say: probably not. But not because it’s not worthy. It’s because the title sucks. It sounds like the title of the holiday episode of a third-tier network sitcom.

So, please. Please, please, please! Forget about the title. Or wait, strike that. Write the title down! HAPPIEST SEASON. Put it somewhere you can reference it easily, lest you fall victim to how forgettable a title it is. Because this film is absolutely worth watching.

Directed and co-written b Clea DuVall, in her sophomore feature film effort, I’m still not convinced directing is her calling. This was my biggest issue with the film early on, that its direction was adequate at best. Sometimes, however, a script can make up for a lot, and the writing here absolutely does that. Granted, I have a specific bias here: as a gay viewer, I can not only relate to the issues related to coming out to one’s family, but in the end, I was deeply moved by this story. As such, I can see a pretty widely varied response among audiences, depending on their own personal experiences. To be sure, anyone with the slightest capability of empathy, this movie will work. But this movie will also really speak to some people in a way it just can’t to others. And I am definitely among those some people.

Luckily, Happiest Season also has a great cast. The gay couple at the center of it are Abby and Harper, played respectively by Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis. They make a believable couple, although I found Davis’s height occasionally distracting. Abbey’s sisters Sloane and Jane are respectively played by an uptight Alison Brie and a rather funny Mary Holland; stepping into the role of the sisters’ parents are Victor Garber and Mary Steenburgen. We even get Aubrey Plaza as one of Abby’s exes, and best of all, Daniel Levy as Harper’s close friend. This movie would not have suffered without a gay male character to throw a bone to the gay men in its audience, but I sure was delighted to see him, and he provides a good amount of the comedy, without ever quite overdoing it.

In fact, Levy’s character John is essentially the heart of the movie, being the caring friend that every decent person deserves. Abby could use a friend of the same caliber, and does not seem to have one; she’s far too preoccupied with keeping up appearances for the sake of her dad’s campaign for mayor of his town. And this is another thing I love about Happiest Season (ugh, that title!): it breezily sidesteps gay clichés from start to finish: no melodramatic histrionics, and no reducing family members to small-minded caricatures. They aren’t even presented as especially conservative, and when it comes to how scary it can be for a person to come out, this is a key point: the family doesn’t have to be conservative for it to be a frighteningly uncertain prospect.

DuVall, to her credit, offers a great deal of empathy for Abby, even as she basically makes by far the shittiest choices, often to the detriment of her partner. But the broader point is that a person must be ready for such a huge step, and this actually fits perfectly with movies about the spirit of Christmas: the spirit of giving and of goodwill. Considering this is a romantic comedy—albeit one that made me cry much more than expected—it’s no spoiler to say that things work out in the end. The predictability here is immaterial; the very real struggle before such inevitably happy endings is what we are meant to understand. And we are still reminded that not every story is so happy, as told by Harper’s friend John. This isn’t his story though; it’s Abby and Harper’s, and Christmas movies must end with uplift. Happiest Season delivers on that front, in more ways than one.

Just be sure to write that title down so you know what to look for when you go looking for it on Hulu.

You’ll be happy you watched it this season.

Overall: B+

YESTERDAY

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: C
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

A movie whose premise hinges on the entire back catalog of The Beatles should really be more clever than this. What we have instead is something written by the writer of Love, Actually (Richard Curtis) and directed by the director of Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle), to create a product of combined influences that is shockingly tepid for something featuring such historically vital material.

The strangest rub is, in nearly every aspect except the story, Yesterday has ample charms. It’s clearly made by competent people, very well shot, and the acting almost elevates the spoken material. Almost. Himesh Patel, as Jack Malik, evidently the only person in the world who remembers The Beates from an alternate reality apparently lost during a 14-second global blackout, gives a winning performance. He’s a talented singer and he plays The Beatles songs well. And the songs, the music — of course, those are always a blast to hear. The movie is really only particularly fun when Jack is playing Beatles songs.

That’s of no fault of Lily James, who is also lovely as Ellie, Jack’s longtime local manager and subject of unrequited love. It’s just that their backstory isn’t that interesting. Before the aforementioned blackout, Jack is a struggling musician who writes his own songs, and his songs are entirely forgettable. The result of being introduced to them as such characters is that, until Jack starts singing “Yesterday” and discovers no one has ever heard of it, their story is entirely forgettable too.

Honestly, even the use of Beatles songs is a hugely missed opportunity. There is so much contextualizing, and investigating of how the meaning of these songs of unparalleled influence might be changed by their never having existed until 2019. Instead, Yesterday keeps it’s focus on how they are widely regarded as the best songs ever written, and on that basis alone, even in 2019 it results in Jack becoming an overnight superstar. I have my doubts as to whether it would really play out that way, and particularly so quickly.

I don’t suppose that matters, for some. If the movie is fun then it’s fun, right? And surely, casual fans of The Beatles will find this movie fun, people who don’t think much about the history and import behind them. But I would consider myself a casual fan of the Beatles, but also a pretty hardcore fan of movies, and I prefer movies make some sort of sense. I don’t require and explanation for every little thing; this movie provides no information whatsoever as to how or why this global, 14-second blackout happens, and I’m fine with that. But I am also aware of the broader history of pop culture and the place The Beatles have in it, and therefore have a desire for an alternate universe in which it doesn’t exist to interrogate more than just how that music brings fame and fortune. That seems to be the only thing about The Beatles that this movie is interested in.

Sure, it has its cute moments. Ed Sheeran plays a significant supporting role as himself, the guy who discovers Jack’s “talent” and helps launch him into fame. Kate McKinnon is an easy satire of money-hungry Hollywood agents. Jack keeps discovering random other things this no longer existing in this alternate reality: Coca-Cola, cigarettes. And to be fair, for many viewers it will be easy to appreciate what this movie is, as opposed to what it should or could have been. I still wouldn’t tell even those people it needs to be seen in a theatre — you can enjoy it just as easily on your streaming service of choice in a couple of months. But I fall firmly in the camp that can only see this movie’s unrealized potential. In a better writer’s hands, it could have been something great, something actually worthy of the buzz it generated when the trailer first started appearing.

You might wonder why that buzz never lasted. Those of us who have seen the movie can easily see why. It’s because even though Yesterday is fine, no movie based on the hits of The Beatles should ever be just fine. They deserve better.

Otherwise wonderful Lily James and Hamish Patel cannot be saved by The Beatles in an alternate reality.

Overall: B-

LONG SHOT

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Long Shot is the kind of movie that can easily be criticized on many merits, in ways that I could even probably agree with, but whatever, I enjoyed it!

The greatest defense I can give it, which is perhaps equal parts fair and lame: this movie delivers on its promise, which is simply that it’s a fun, laugh-out-loud romantic comedy. It certainly has a premise that sets it apart, with Charlize Theron as Secretary of State Charlotte Field, who falls for the speech writer she hires who she also happened to babysit as a kid, Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen). Granted, it’s not new to set a romantic comedy in the upper echelons of Washington politics (see The American President (1995)), but I can’t recall any other that revolves around the most powerful woman in the world.

Now, okay, yes, it is a bit of a trope to see the stunningly beautiful woman falling for the shlubby man — hell, Seth Rogen himself already did it twelve years ago with Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up, which was about as good as this movie is. And truly, nothing in Long Shot is even remotely realistic.

But, after some introductory scenes that set all the pieces of the plot into position with pretty clumsy contrivances, Long Shot totally won me over. The movie and its audience both get its sea legs, and the charisma of its lead actors, as well as the surprising chemistry between them, conspire to sell the movie as a good time for a couple of hours.

I’ll still nitpick, of course. I like to assume that’s what you’re here for! I didn’t love the character of Maggie (June Diane Raphael), one of Charlotte Field’s key staffers, playing the part of the resentful bitch, going out of her way to sabotage the relationship. I don’t fault June Diane Raphael for taking the part — we’ve all got to pay the rent, and she does well with what bullshit she has to work with — but truly, what purpose does that serve?

And then there’s Fred Flarsky’s best friend, Lance (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), who seems little more than a pawn in an exercise in pandering “both sides-ism.” A black conservative Republican who exists to teach his white best friend about empathy and “seeing things from other people’s point of view”? Are you kidding? I’m not saying no such black people exist — but the idea that he would be best friends with a character like Fred, whose very purpose as a journalist exists to expose the seedy underbelly of Republican corruption and hypocrisy, is a bit more of a stretch.

Okay, so Long Shot is far from perfect. It works, and works well, when it focuses on the relationship between Charlotte and Fred, and how they handle the special political circumstances surrounding them. This includes Charlotte working for a president (Bob Odenkirk) who got the job with no political experience and used to be a TV star. Sound familiar? The clever twist here is that President Chambers, instead of being a reality show host, was previously the star of a TV drama on which he played . . . the president.

There are some elements of the story which, in a pre-Trump world, would have pushed the limits of believability. But, love it or hate it, we now live in a world in which a movie can show a hacked video leak involving semen on a beard does not ruin political career, and you can still think, Yeah, I can see it. (Side note: thankfully, that’s the only bit of gross-out humor involving bodily fluids in the movie.) Now, such a thing not ruining a woman’s political career? That might just still be a little too unrealistic.

But who watches these movies, particularly romantic comedies, for realism? Nobody! That these are fantasies is in their DNA, literally in the script. Long Shot does want to have things both ways in multiple contexts, from its only-occasional nods to rampant sexism in American politics while presenting an arguably sexist story arc, to its eagerness to be accessible to audiences of all political persuasions. These aren’t things that have to tear a movie down, however. I mean, why shouldn’t we all be able to enjoy this movie?

And really, that’s what makes Long Shot work — unchallenging in spite of being set in the world of American politics, it’s basically the very definition of escapism. Generally speaking, it’s escapism done well. I found my heartstrings getting tugged by it, anyway.

They’ll win you over if you let them.

Overall: B

ISN'T IT ROMANTIC

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Isn’t it Romantic wants you to think it’s a meta-send-up of typical romantic comedies, when really it’s a straight-up typical romantic comedy itself. In a way, it’s to its credit that it’s basically unapologetic about it; that’s kind of the point. This is a movie that has it both ways, has its comic cake and eats it romantically too, and basically gets away with it.

There’s also a strange aspect of Isn’t It Romantic, where it has some delightfully irreverent quips that made me laugh surprisingly hard, mixed fairly evenly with an almost slavish devotion to the very romantic-comedy tropes it’s ostensibly poking fun at. It all comes out to an average of general blandness in the end: the gut-busting quips barely falling short of being memorable; the tropes not quite overused enough to bog down the story completely.

To be sure, it’s fun to see an actor like Rebel Wilson as a leading lady, and kind of a kick to see the likes of her learning her lesson about shallowness when she initially pursues a relationship with the gorgeous Liam Hemsworth as opposed to everyman Adam Devine.

Wilson’s character, Natalie, gets mugged on the New York City subway and knocks herself in her attempt to run away. When she wakes up, after having spent most of the work day complaining to her assistant (Betty Gilpin) about how much she hates romantic comedies, she now finds herself in the middle of one. She figures out along the way that she must play the part of a romantic comedy leading lady, right down to her apartment suddenly becoming posh and huge, and being romantically pursued by a beautiful billionaire.

Before Isn’t It Romantic plunges Natalie into this fantasy universe, we are introduced to her living in her crappy Manhattan apartment, with a borderline mangy dog that won’t obey commands, and working in a dingy office as an architect with disrespectful colleagues. Natalie’s “real world” is just as much a part of the fantasy as the movie we’re watching, full of background and back story details that are all just as contrived as any romantic comedy.

The slight bummer of Isn’t It Romantic is its lost potential, and how, when it comes down to it, several of the very romantic comedies referenced by this three-writer script come to mind as definitively superior films to this one. Great romantic comedies are hard to come by, but this one doesn’t try all that hard to be one of them. It thumbs its nose at them with a wink, while riding on their coattails.

The players are all pleasant enough, at least, even if a lot of the scenes come across as a tad under-rehearsed. One thing this movie very much has in its favor is how brief it is — historically, a movie that clocks in at under ninety minutes is a bad sign, and this one is 88. For a movie like this, though, that turns out to be perfect, as far too many romantic comedies drag the story on for two hours and then some, with the humor spread thin as a result.

Isn’t It Romantic has its fun right out of the gate, with an opening scene featuring Jennifer Saunders as Natalie’s mom, who gets one of the funniest lines in the movie. It was apparently inevitable, though, with this movie following a by-the-numbers story arc, for it to sag a bit in the middle. The quips and gags start to dry up; there’s a slight bit of a slog; and then there’s a delightful song and dance number in a karaoke bar.

This movie isn’t quite revolutionary, but it works on its own terms. I just wish its terms aimed a little bit higher.

It’s not as hard to figure out as Natalie thinks it is.

Overall: B