Focus Features
MOVIE REVIEW
Honey Don’t! (2025)
I don’t know what’s with writing and domestic partners Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s weird obsession with lesbians, especially ones that look like Margaret Qualley. Following “Drive-Away Dolls,” they return with “Honey Don’t!,” yet another very blah entry in their supposed sapphic noir trilogy.
Caesar Films
MOVIE REVIEW
Megalopolis (2024)
The kindest way to describe “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s latest grasp at relevance, is that it is somewhat late-career Felliniesque, with its Art Deco production designs, costumes that range from ancient Greek to prerevolution French and the decadent life-as-circus motif. But let’s face it. Late-career Coppola gonna late-career Coppola. The film is bloated, unfocused and self-indulgent.
Sean McElwee
MOVIE REVIEW
Spin Me Round (2022)
The Jeff Baena strolling players, Aubrey Plaza first among equals, return for “Spin Me Round,” a dark screwball farce screened at SXSW in which rich people are always the ones having all the fun. Mr. Baena also returns to Tuscany, where he put Ms. Plaza into a 14th Century convent for “The Little Hours” without changing her comedy one bit; and to black comedy, after 2020’s “Horse Girl” used the director’s same basic style to be serious about mental health and trauma. But the course correction to swap these destinations back and forth in Mr. Baena’s cosmos of unnerving, petulant characters simmering with eccentricity might be only an inch or two.
Low Spark Films
MOVIE REVIEW
Emily the Criminal (2022)
The U.S. economy looks all set to claim another scalp in "Emily the Criminal," when it forces Emily (Aubrey Plaza) to turn to crime as a way to unblock her cash flow crisis. Already hassled and disrespected in the low-waged catering trade, her interviews for other employment are tripped up by a prior conviction for aggravated assault: hide it and the interview ends badly, own up and there's hardly an interview at all. More profitable, and precarious, opportunities come her way via a syndicate of well organized Middle Eastern gentleman and their fake-credit-card operation. Suitably trained, Emily becomes expert at the art of buying something expensive on a dodgy card and getting out before the alarms go off.
Sundance Institute
MOVIE REVIEW
The Little Hours (2017)
Watching Aubrey Plaza shout at people ranks high on my personal list of reasons to turn out for movies, only slightly behind the joys of Tracy Letts being cruel and vindictive. In “The Little Hours” she shouts and swears like a stevedore, a raucous deadpan dynamo restrained by a 14th century nun’s habit and wimple in the same way that a tin can constrains an atom bomb. Jeff Baena’s film transfers a bunch of thoroughly modern comics — Ms. Plaza, Molly Shannon, Nick Offerman, Kate Micucci, several others — to Middle Ages Tuscany with their vocal patterns and wry exasperations intact, for a tale sliced out of Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron” that drips with frustrated desire and the sins of the flesh. Hit or miss, it’s at least a reminder that American sex comedies weren’t always modern-dress bosses and bridesmaids, or offcuts from the Judd Apatow factory.
MOVIE REVIEW
Monsters University (2013)
Disney/Pixar
Caveat: This review of “Monsters University” will spare no spoilers. These are ultimately immaterial to your enjoyment, but by all means read no further if you do not wish to be spoiled. Alonso Duralde over at The Wrap very aptly compares the film with “The Internship,” and that comparison is not as far-fetched as one might think. The two aren’t almost identical, say, the way that “Olympus Has Fallen” and “White House Down” are: “Monsters University” is naturally far superior just as one would expect from anything by Pixar. If nothing else, it’s actually hilarious whereas “The Internship” was not. Nevertheless, both films involve a lovable odd couple rallying a squad of misfits through a series of obstacles in hopes of attaining the holy grail — in the case of “Monsters University,” seats in the prestigious scare class as opposed to lucrative full-time gigs at Google.
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