Review: 'Ticket to Paradise'

By: Christopher James

It's an Ocean's Eleven reunion, as George Clooney and Julia Roberts headline "Ticket to Paradise"They don’t make them like they used to.

I’m talking about movie stars, not movies. From frame one of Ticket to Paradise, Universal’s new romantic comedy, George Clooney and Julia Roberts have not just expertly defined their “love to hate” relationship. They’ve also reminded the audience that movie stars like them don’t exist anymore, and it’s a damn shame. Clooney’s twinkly eye and Roberts’ infectiously wide grin both make them instantly recognizable. However, both actors are shrewd enough to know how to use their movie star gifts for maximum effort. Ticket to Paradise hardly reinvents the wheel, but it is a breezy enough excuse to reunite the Ocean’s Eleven co-stars for an incredibly fun and funny trip to Bali.

The stage is set pretty quickly.

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Tweetweek: Sleepovers, time loops, and one very gay summer

First, two tweets that stunned us in their perceptiveness. Exactly right on both counts.

Long overdue rewatch of A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and it occurs to me that the exact same narrative material that is dealt with here in 96 minutes would now cover five seasons of a ‘prestige’ streaming drama.

— Jeff Billington (@faces_of_jeff) June 30, 2022

the multiverse and time loops displaced time travel as a genre bc we no longer agree on the past or believe in the future, just infinite minuscule variations on the present

— Tony Tulathimutte (@tonytula) July 5, 2022

More curated and mostly amusing tweets for you after the jump featuring George Clooney's batsuit, Barbie sleepovers, a perplexing Dianne Wiest situation, Alien  & Predator trivia, the summer of 92 at the movies, and more ...

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Podcast: West Side Story, The Tender Bar, Don't Look Up... and Faye Dunaway?

Nick and Nathaniel reunion finale (part 3 of 3). Dear readers we hope you've enjoyed this epic talk between your host here and the long lost Nick Davis. Here's the final part in which we talk more 2021 movies plus a discussion of Gena Rowlands and Faye Dunaway due to the new class Nick is teaching.

 

78 minutes
00:01 Lana Wachowski going full meta in Matrix Resurrections
10:15 Nick's trouble with Leos Carax's Annette  (with some Pola X history)
17:50 Tony Kushner's reworking of West Side Story and its redux performances. Plus a bit of In the Heights thrown in for reasons Nathaniel objects to
32:00 France's Petite Maman  and Austria's Great Freedom 
39:30 Adam McKay's Don't Look Up and its limitations as well as the harsh critical response
47:00 An extremely odd double feature: Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch and George Clooney's The Tender Bar 
          BIG ACTRESSEXUAL FINISH
1:01:06 Nick is teaching a class called "Female Performance in Modern Hollywood" so we discuss our favourite Faye Dunaway and Gena Rowlands performances (with very brief asides to several other post-Method actresses)

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify or download the attachment below. If you missed our previous recent discussion covering a full dozen 2021 movies, that's here. 

West Side Tender Bar with Faye

Review: "The Tender Bar" Is Sweet, But Slight

Ben Affleck becomes a surrogate Uncle in George Clooney's latest directorial film, "The Tender Bar."

By: Christopher James

Can two movie stars squander each other’s talent? George Clooney directs Ben Affleck in Amazon Prime’s latest movie, The Tender Bar, a navel-gazing tale that takes every cheap shot possible to drum up emotion. Lucky for it, cheap shots can still be effective. Parents around the world will be charmed by the ‘70s set, decades spanning family drama. After all, Ben Affleck and director George Clooney are front and center in the movie’s marketing. Though effective in fits and starts, the wistful sentimentality curdles with time. 

Once they run out of money, single mother Dorothy Moehringer (Lily Rabe) returns to her Long Island home with her tail between her legs and her son, J.R. (Daniel Ranieri), in tow...

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AARP "Movies for Grownups" Nominations & Winners

by Nathaniel R

George Clooney is the Career Achievement Honoree this year at the Movies for Grownups Awards

The AARP's "Movie for Grown-Ups" dont get much press. That's probably because the media in general is populated with younger people or in competition to snag as many young eyeballs as possible. But the groups nominations are interesting primarily because their very raison d'etre forces them to be different from the norm. They advocate for the 50+ crowd and fight ageism in the film industry so their nominations naturally can't be copied and pasted from other prizes. This directive frees them from the restraints that shackle a lot of critics and industry groups (who all want to predict or influence the Oscars on some level, even if they vehemently claim to be above that).

Unfortunately it doesn't free them from all the other standard awards show problems like recency bias, prizing dramas and message movies above other genres, and questionable taste. You'll see the recency bias in raging force this time, in that most of the movies they're honoring either aren't released yet or are just starting to let non-festivalgoers see them. In fact, the only pre-awards season title that receives multiple nominations is Da 5 Bloods though there are a few single nominations in specialty categories for other early birds (Emma, Bacurau, A Secret Love, Bad Boys for Life)

UPDATD 3/8 Their awards will be broadcast on March 28th on PBS but they've already announced their winners which you can see below...

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