Netflix And Chill: Office Romance (2026)

If you're not a fan of "the c-word" then you may not enjoy Office Romance as much as I did. I've always found it to be the strongest of the swear words, but it's also used much more casually in Scotland than anywhere else in the United Kingdom, in my experience. That aside, Office Romance is a rom-com that generally maintains a nice balance between the rom and the com, and then adds some extra sauce for some unexpected belly laughs.

Jennifer Lopez is Jackie, the CEO of Air Cruz (and also a qualified pilot). Her company has a strict policy against any relationships between colleagues, which should help her fight back against a frivolous lawsuit that has competitors accusing her of winning contracts by sleeping with people she is conducting business with. The other thing that should help her fight back is Daniel Blanchflower (Brett Goldstein), an in-house lawyer who is pretty great at his job. Unfortunately, Jackie and Daniel start to feel a very strong connection, which would ruin everything. It won't be bad if they can keep everything secret, but the likes of heavily-pregnant Sydney Bloom (Betty Gilpin), who has been alongside Jackie for many many years, can definitely sense something different in the workplace.

While director Ol Parker does a perfectly fine job behind the camera, and somehow manages to deliver something that feels like a proper film, as opposed to the Netflix feature products we've seen landing on there so often (which, to be fair, seems to be something that, with the likes of this and Apex, is changing for the better). It's the screenplay, co-written by Goldstein and Joe Kelly, that really makes this work though, working with plenty of familiar rom-com tropes while allowing the leads to feel like more well-rounded and sexual creatures than the more chaste figures we so often see in this kind of thing.

Goldstein also does well to have faith in himself when it comes to his main acting role. I have enjoyed him for some time now, but he's not who you might think of first when you envision a rom-com with Jennifer Lopez as the female lead. It works very well though, his Britishness and awkwardness juxtaposed with everyone around him in a way that makes you believe why Lopez would start to notice him. As for our Jenny From The Block, she can do a rom-com role in her sleep, and she gets to play a fantastic mix of professional, desirable, and passionate here. It's also great to see a film where the female lead is a decade older than her male counterpart, although Lopez doesn't look even close to her actual age. Gilpin is a hoot in her main supporting role, giving scowls and glares to almost everyone around her, Mary Wiseman is entertainingly over-sharing in most of her scenes, Tony Hale is a lot of fun as a put-upon HR worker, and you also get the likes of Jodie Whittaker, Edward James Olmos, Bradley Whitford, Amy Sedaris, Roger Bart, Will Sasso, and a few other familiar faces, filling out the enjoyably varied and sprawling cast. 

This is a perfect film for couples to enjoy together, which is what the best rom-coms should be. There are two leads you will find it easy to root for, an enjoyable storyline with enough obstacles to make things difficult for everyone without ever making things complicated, and a lot of great gags. Again, it won't work for those averse to some very bad language, and there's one visual gag that is hilarious because of how shocking and unexpected it is, and the revelations about the character played by Jodie Whittaker seem a bit odd and out of place, admittedly, but this is one I will happily recommend to most people looking for an enjoyable way to spend just under two hours. 

8/10

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Netflix And Chill: Woman Of The Hour (2023)

Based on the strange true story of a woman being matched up with someone on a TV dating show who turned out to be hiding a lifestyle of horrible rape and murder, Woman Of The Hour is the directorial debut of Anna Kendrick, who also takes on a lead role, and it's good enough for me to already want to see much more from her.

Kendrick plays Sheryl Bradshaw, an actress struggling to find any job opportunities in the 1970s. She doesn't want to conform to what every male studio exec seems to be looking for though, which means it may be time to give up on her dream. Her agent convinces her that appearing on a TV dating show will be a bit of a boost for her, at least getting her onscreen and raising her profile slightly. That also requires conforming to certain expectations, however, and Sheryl soon annoys show host Ed (Tony Hale) when she starts to cut loose and have more fun questioning her potential suitors, highlighting their weaknesses and misogyny with wit and intelligence. One man manages to stay ahead of the others though. That's Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto), but a female audience member (Laura, played by Nicolette Robinson) believes that he is responsible for the rape and murder of someone she used to know.

What could have been an enjoyable, but fairly simple, idea - woman meets man on dating show without being aware of his horrible crimes - is turned into something much more, thanks to both the screenplay by Ian McDonald and the direction by Kendrick. This isn't just a look at a horrible series of crimes, nor just an exploration of circumstances that led to a now-infamous TV appearance. It's a look at double standards and sexism, and how those things have contributed to, and continue to contribute to, the abuse and deaths of so many women.

Kendrick allows viewers to notice and become bothered by every slight dig, every micro-aggression, and every moment of discomfort, laying down a path that she clearly illustrates can take someone vulnerable right into major danger. I cannot think of one man here who comes out of this looking like a good guy, but that's very likely to be something that can be said by most women, particularly back in the 1970s, but also here and now.

Playing to her strengths in front of the camera, Kendrick allows herself to become stronger as she becomes emboldened by one or two supporting comments and reactions from others. Her character has clearly gone beyond some kind of breaking point when it comes to her mistreatment at the hands of men, and it's a cheering victory to watch her make some guys squirm while she starts asking them questions with more depth and challenge than the usual TV show fluff. Zovatto is chilling in his role, but also able to turn on some charm for moments that have him getting close enough to his victims until he's ready to strike. Hale is an enjoyable bundle of 1970s prime-time misogyny, Robinson does a great job of portraying her traumatic reaction to the reveal of the dating show contestants, and both Matt Visser and Jedidiah Goodacre do a very good job as the other two bachelors made to look bad by Rodney. It's also worth mentioning the fantastic performance from Autumn Best, playing someone who was pivotal to the eventual case made against Alcala.

I knew about the main "hook"for this film, and hoped I would enjoy it. I ended up being pleasantly surprised by how well it showcases and criticises the many every day pitfalls of the female experience. And it really helps that Kendrick plays her role in a way that allows her to subtly move further offscreen as we eventually get to know someone who is equally deserving of the spotlight and the honorific title used by the film.

8/10

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Prime Time: Being The Ricardos (2021)

Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, Being The Ricardos is a film I was keen to watch for the past few years. A look at the career and relationship between Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), I was interested in everything to do with this. Lucy and Desi were huge stars who helped to reshape the landscape of television comedy, the casting intrigued me, and Sorkin is often a brilliant writer able to convey a lot of information in entertaining and sharp dialogue. 

The framework here is quite simple. We are shown a hectic time, and an important time, in the lives of Lucy and Desi. We also cut to some footage of people in the present talking about what they remember from their days witnessing the power couple make their show. Alongside our main stars are a couple of important supporting characters (played by J. K. Simmons and Nina Arianda), there’s a young writer (Alia Shawkat) who looks up to Lucy, but also has an idealism that doesn’t always take into account the diplomacy sometimes required to get the show made, and Jess Oppenheimer (Tony Hale) keeps trying to find a balance between the instincts of his stars and the feedback from the money men.

I won’t say that this is a bad film. The structure is a good choice, the key moments stringing the plot together work well, and it manages to celebrate the two main characters while also showing their problems. It isn’t great though, and that comes down to both the casting and the writing.

I really enjoy Kidman in many of her movie roles, but there’s a reason why she hasn’t had much success when trying her hand at comedy. Admittedly, this isn’t a comedy, but you have to believe how funny Lucille Ball can be when you see some of her famous moments being recreated onscreen, and Kidman just cannot manage it. Perhaps wary of looking too silly, or maybe not directed well enough by Sorkin, Kidman never really feels like Lucy when she has to be LUCY, although she does a perfectly good job of showing us the woman behind the TV persona. Bardem has a similar issue, although he also feels a bit weak whether portraying Desi the performer or Desi the man. The better performances come from Simmons and Arianda, both convincing as people and comedic performers, and Shawkat, who spends a lot of time being depressed by the constant crush of reality as she attempts to convince those around her of the importance of their platform. Hale is fine, but his character is the least interesting of the main bunch.

Sorkin’s dialogue just doesn’t work here though, and perhaps he would have been wise to get the structure in place and then pass the framework along to someone else. Everything that reveals actual truth about our leads is often presented in a heavy-handed and underlined way, and the mention of how Desi helped to revolutionize the TV sitcom is so horribly shoe-horned in that it feels like a clumsy segue in an improvised skit. The direction is disappointingly flat and lifeless, ensuring that Sorkin can be blamed for this being far below par for almost everyone involved.

There are still moments that work, especially when everything starts to tie together on the way to the final scenes, and Lucy and Desi are certainly worthy of the 131-minute runtime, but I won’t ever want to rewatch it. Maybe a book or documentary will serve them better, and I intend to find out when I have the time (so any recommendations are welcome).

5/10

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Inside Out 2 (2024)

Just to be clear at the start here, I was one of many people who figured that we really didn't need a sequel to the wonderful Inside Out. The first film was another instant classic from Pixar, although it was released in between a few movies that people might argue rank as some of the weakest from them, and the story felt complete. There's a great hook here though, and a natural progression that allows the film to feel as insightful and brilliant as the first film.

Here's the simple, and simply brilliant, premise. Riley Andersen, the lead of Inside Out, is now starting her journey through her teenage years. Her emotions now also take care of her sense of self, an important area that uses her memories and experiences to help her turn into the kind of person that she wants to be. Joy (Amy Poehler) wants to keep everything positive, and get rid of all the negativity, but she ends up with a much tougher job when the core emotions are joined by some new emotions - anxiety (Maya Hawke), embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and envy (Ayo Edebiri). This extra turmoil happens inside Riley as she is heading with her friends, Bree and Grace, to a weekend ice hockey camp that she hopes will lead to her joining the team.

This isn't as good as the first movie, but the criticisms I could list here seem to work for it. The animation and plotting feel a bit messy at times, which is perfectly in line with how everything feels as a teenager. Writers Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein (developing a story idea by LeFauve and director Kelsey Mann) do a good job of further developing an internal world that perfectly correlates to the external attitude and behaviour of the main character. Mann came up through the ranks of Pixar in the standard way, and he shows that he's been taking plenty of notes while making his way up the ladder. This is so good that I am tempted to forgive both him and LeFauve for their work on The Good Dinosaur.

As expected, the voice cast all work brilliantly in their roles. Poehler remains perfect, as do Phyllis Smith (Sadness), Lewis Black (Anger), and Tony Hale (Fear). Hawke, Hauser, Edebiri, and Exarchopoulos are great additions, as is Liza Lapira (getting a couple of fun moments as Disgust), and it's also worth praising Kensington Tallman (Riley), Grace Lu (Grace), Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green (Bree), Diane Lane (Mom), Kyle MacLachlan (Dad), Lilimar, Yvette Nicole Brown, Ron Funches, James Austin Johnson, and everyone else involved in bringing this bright and surreal story to life.

If you enjoyed the first movie as much as I (and many others) did then you can be happy that people found a way to craft a sequel that feels natural and absolutely in line with the first film. It's not quite as sharp, not quite as tidy, and not quite as emotional, but teenagers rarely are. There's no need for a third instalment, but I'm very happy that we have two Inside Out movies of near-equal quality.

8/10

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Shudder Saturday: What Josiah Saw (2021)

An enjoyably dark slice of Southern gothic, What Josiah Saw is a well-acted and nicely constructed piece of work that leaves you with a lot to mull over by the time the end credits roll. It may be telling that I almost forgot to tag this review with the word "horror", and there's certainly a number of elements that allow it to sit comfortably within that genre, but I'm not being negative about it when I say that it's full of moments of heavy drama.

Robert Patrick is Josiah Graham, the patriarch of a family that we soon see as being deeply troubled. Whether or not that trouble is caused by Josiah himself is hard to say, but it certainly seems that way. Josiah stays at home with one son, Thomas (Scott Haze). His other son (Eli, played by Nick Stahl) has got himself in some trouble, giving him a criminal record and a bad debt that hangs over him. He has a chance to put things right, but it may come at a terrible cost. Then there's Mary (Kelli Garner), a young woman desperate to have a baby with her partner, Ross (Tony Hale). Mary had a procedure to make her sterile when she was a younger woman, but now is desperate to adopt and have her own family. A financial offer made for the family home leads to Eli and Mary heading back there, reluctantly. Maybe this can mean a fresh start. If they can all escape the past.

Written by Robert Alan Dilts,  his feature debut no less, this seems to be a natural progression from the 2009 short, Eliki, that he also worked on with director Vincent Grashaw, also making his feature debut here. Having not seen that film, unfortunately, I don't know if this is a full expansion of that or if it is just connected by the collaborative work of Dilts and Grashaw. Whatever the level of progression, it's clear that both men work very well together. Within both the script and the direction, patience is key. The pacing allows for some impressive moments dotted throughout each main sequence (the structure basically provides a main chapter for each of the three Graham children), and there's a satisfying, if disturbing, ending that answers all of your questions, albeit in a way that may seem open to interpretation to many viewers.

Grashaw helms himself immensely by assembling a superb cast. Patrick may not be in too many scenes, when you add up the runtime, but his presence casts an impressive shadow over everything. That's what his character does, but it helps that Patrick himself can add his unnerving presence to it. Stahl is also excellent here, although I don't want to accidentally insult him by calling him a great fit for his role. It's true though, and he has that perfect mix of desperation, the desire to please those above him in the pecking order, and a strong core of self-preservation. Garner is equally good, and her character is equally troubled in ways different from her brothers. I would say that Haze is the weakest of the bunch, but his performance isn't actually bad. It's just the way he has to play things in the third act, hampered by a script that forces him into a position that feels much more generic than anything seen in the rest of the movie. Hale does well in his supporting role, and there are a couple of scenes that make good use of Jake Weber, but the focus always moves back to the members of the Graham family, ensuring that it's Patrick, Stahl, Garner, or Haze who carry the majority of the scenes.

I don't want to spoil anything for viewers going into this blind, but it's worth warning people that the heart of What Josiah Saw contains subject matter that could upset some viewers. I wouldn't normally mention this, not when it comes to horror content in a horror movie, but the fact that this so often feels like a straightforward drama gives everything a bit more of an impact. It's a film that spends a lot of time delivering light punches, and then winding up to deliver some absolute hammer blows in the third act. You may be left reeling by the end of things, but you should also begrudgingly admire such a skilled and confident display of strength.

8/10

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Ani-MAY-tion: Batman Ninja (2018)

Okay, first point to be made here, I watched the American version of Batman Ninja, which was apparently rewritten by Leo Chu and Eric Garcia into something fairly different from the Japanese version, written by Kazuki Nakashima. It's hard to imagine how different the two incarnations could be, especially given how the direction from Junpei Mizusaki does such a great job of reworking the familiar Batman imagery in something much closer to the traditional style of anime, but it may well be worth checking it out when I have the time and opportunity.

Let's get to the plot. Batman is thrown into Feudal Japan, all thanks to a time machine created by Gorilla Grodd. Various villains have already staked their territorial claims, with The Joker being the one who seems to be the one with the best plan for ruling all (of course). But don't count out Penguin, Two-Face, Deathstroke, or, indeed, Gorilla Grodd himself. Any one of them could have a surprise up their sleeve to try and gain the upper hand over the others. Batman will have to rely on his ingenuity, some older battle tactics, and some other creations that I won't spoil here.

This is absolutely superb stuff. I've been a fan of most of the animated Batman movies that I have seen over the years but the recent twists on the material (I am thinking mainly of this outing and Batman: Gotham By Gaslight) have allowed film fans to get their usual dose of batty action without it feeling too repetitive and stale. Give me another example of this, even if it turns out to be an interesting failure, over something like Batman: The Killing Joke. Give me another pairing of Batman and Scooby-Doo over that.

Guided by Mizusaki, who has a small selection of projects on his CV so far, the look and feel of this is a perfect blend of the two worlds. That seems to be thanks to Takashi Okazaki, the man responsible for the character and background designs, and probably best known to anime fans for being the creator of Afro Samurai. Things start off with nice detailing throughout, drawing viewers into the world, and then the creative visuals just keep building throughout, leading to a third act that is delightful and potentially surprising (certainly to those who thought this would be more in the DC aesthetic than anime).

The voice cast all do decent work. Again, I am talking of the American version here. Roger Craig Smith isn't the best Batman, most of us will know who has the best voice for the role, but he's good. Tony Hale is a very good actor for The Joker, and Tara Strong has fun in the role of Harley Quinn. You also have Grey Griffin as Catwoman, Tom Kenny as Penguin, and Fred Tatasciore as Gorilla Grodd. Some of the cast members voice multiple roles, as standard, and there are others who also put in good work alongside the main players.

I encourage all fans of animation to check this one out. Every scene is beautiful, although I will try to avoid trotting out the old expression about being able to hang every frame up as a painting (but . . . yo could though), the storyline is well put together, the action beats are impressive, and it's yet another top-notch animated outing for The Dark Knight.

9/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

April Fools: The Heat (2013)

Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy are the odd couple thrown together in this standard buddy cop comedy that ends up providing a fair amount of chuckles, thanks to the talents of the cast and a consistently amusing, if not outright hilarious, script.

Bullock is Agent Ashburn, a Fed who takes great pride in her work. Well, it's basically all she has in her life. Except for her cat, which actually belongs to her neighbour. When a big case takes her to Boston it's not long until she bumps into the aggressive and unorthodox Mullins (McCarthy). Which means, of course, that the two of them have to work together to crack the case.

Director Paul Feig, who scored a huge hit with his previous movie, Bridesmaids, proves here that he has a knack of working well with talented comedic actresses. Or that he has a knack of working well with talented female writers, as it's Katie Dippold who wrote the script. Or maybe he just does well when paired up with McCarthy, who was one of many highlights in Bridesmaids, of course.

I've always been a fan of Bullock, and I think she's particularly good in comedic roles. The Heat reminds people of just how good she is with the right material. McCarthy gets most of the big laughs, of course, but Bullock does well as the uptight agent who might just learn to loosen up a little bit over the course of the movie. McCarthy really shines here, unlike her turn in the misjudged Identity Thief, and I hope she considers clearing her schedule for any future opportunities to work with Feig, who obviously knows how to get the best out of her.

While none of the other main characters are played by any BIG names, I must say that the supporting cast had a great selection of talent. Marlon Wayans, Michael Rapaport, Bill Burr, Thomas F. Wilson, Jane Curtin and others all join in with the fun, and everyone seems to have a good time.

The script could have been sharper, the film could have been tightened up a bit (the runtime is just under two hours), and there's a fine line being walked between filling the movie with cliches and having fun with them, but there's plenty here to enjoy, especially for fans of the two leads.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Heat-Blu-ray-UV-Copy/dp/B00DHB410E/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1391201784&sr=8-2&keywords=the+heat