Rosaline

 Rosaline (2022)

Starring Kaitlyn Dever, Isabela Merced, Kyle Allen, Sean Teale, Christopher McDonald, Minnie Driver, and Bradley Whitford

Directed by Karen Maine

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Dear Evan Hansen

 Dear Evan Hansen (2021)

Starring Ben Platt, Katilyn Dever, Amandla Stenberg, Nik Dodani, Colton Ryan, Danny Pino, Juliannę Moore, and Amy Adams 

Directed by Stephen Chbosky

Written by Steven Levenson

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

The Front Runner

The Front Runner (2018)

Starring Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons, Mark O'Brien, Molly Ephraim, Sara Paxton, Kaitlyn Dever, Alfred Molina, Mamoudou Athie, Josh Brener, Tommy Dewey, Ari Graynor, Bill Burr, and Kevin Pollak

Directed by Jason Reitman

Written by Jason Reitman

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: B-

Booksmart

Booksmart (2019)

Starring Beanie Feldstein, Kaitlyn Dever, Jessica Williams, Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte, Jason Sudeikis, Billie Lourd, Diana Silver, Skyler Gisondo, Molly Gordon, Noah Galvin, and Austin Crute

Directed by Olivia Wilde

Written by Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel, and Katie Silberman

Click here for my Letterbox review

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Beautiful Boy

Beautiful Boy (2018)

Starring Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney, LisaGay Hamilton, Kaitlyn Dever, and Amy Ryan

Directed by Felix Van Groeningen

Written by Luke Davies and Felix Van Groeningen

Summary (in 500 words or less):  The college-aged son (Timothée Chalamet) of a concerned father (Steve Carell) deals with a debilitating addiction to crystal meth.

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: C+

Detroit

Detroit (2017)

Starring John Boyega, Will Poulter, Algee Smith, Jacob Latimore, Anthony Mackie, Jason Mitchell, Hannah Murray, Kaitlyn Dever, Jack Reynor, Ben O'Toole, Nathan Davis, Jr.,  and John Krasinski

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Written by Mark Boal

***This film is currently streaming via Hulu***

Summary (in 500 words or less):  Riots in 1960s inner city Detroit create great tension between the police and the African American residents in the community.  One evening, three Detroit police officers invade the Algiers Motel after a supposed sniper attack and create a brutal night from hell for a group of innocent young men and women.

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - Laggies

Laggies (2014)

Starring Keira Knightley, Chloë Grace Moretz, Sam Rockwell, Mark Webber, Jeff Garlin, Ellie Kemper, Gretchen Mol, and Kaitlin Dever

Directed by Lynn Shelton

***This film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime***

Laggies started out so promisingly with laughs coming quite rapidly in the film's first few scenes.  However, as the tale of aimless twenty-eight year-old Megan (Keira Knightley) progressed, its humor began to cease which is a real shame because I think Knightley and Chloë Grace Moretz are giving some of their best performances in this flick.

Megan is college educated and could be a therapist should she so choose, but instead she spends her days twirling a sign outside her dad's tax prep business.  She's been with boyfriend Anthony (Mark Webber) since high school, but her general malaise is a bit off-putting to even him.  While attending her best friend's wedding, Megan runs out in a bit of a panic and heads to a local liquor store where she meets Annika (Moretz) who asks Megan to buy liquor for her and her high school friends.  Megan obliges and ends up spending the night hanging out with the teenagers, having a blast in the process as she remembers the "good old days."  When Anthony pleads with her a few days later to attend a conference that will help better herself, Megan instead meets up with Annika for the week and end up spending a lot of time together with trying to better one another's ho hum lives.

Keira Knightley is really coming into her own as of late and Laggies is no exception.  Here she completely embodies the lackadaisical Megan with her acting feeling wholly natural and completely unforced.  Moretz is also quite good, although her character is admittedly a little less developed and haw much less room to grow.  Together, the two have a nice rapport and movie certainly is aided by the two actresses.

Unfortunately, the film itself isn't quite as humorous as it would like you to think it is.  It also doesn't help that the premise itself isn't quite as believable as it would like you to think it could be either.  Would the father (Sam Rockwell) of Annika really be okay with a woman more than ten years her senior hanging out with his daughter?  And while Knightley sells the prospect of a romantic relationship with Rockwell's character, when the film begins to travel down that road it just seems a bit silly.  So, despite some really solid performances, Laggies doesn't quite work.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - Men, Women & Children

Men, Women & Children (2014)

Starring Adam Sandler, Jennifer Garner, Rosemarie Dewitt, Judy Greer, Dean Norris, Kaitlyn Dever, Ansel Elgort, Timothée Chalamet, Olivia Crocicchia, Elena Kampouris, Dennis Haysbert, J.K. Simmons, and Emma Thompson

Directed by Jason Reitman

Are you aware that the internet can pose a dangerous threat to our youth?

Are you aware that the pressures of being a teen nowadays are amplified exponentially by the power of social media and texting?

Are you aware that some people get so lost in the internet worlds of role-playing games and pornography that they lose touch with their actual reality?

If you've been living under a rock for the past ten years, then writer-director Jason Reitman's Men, Women & Children is the movie for you!  However, if you're anything like me and pretty much everyone else, I'm sure that none of the above questions are altogether surprising.  Reitman seemingly thinks that these notions are somewhat new as he tries to present all of them to riveting, shocking, and dramatic effect.  Unfortunately, we've seen this story before in both movies and television -- and we've seen it done much better.

This is one of those movies where you simply try to guess at the beginning which teenager is going to commit suicide and which one is going to get pregnant because you know it's going to happen -- and, sure enough, Reitman doesn't do anything to reinvent the wheel because halfway through the flick someone gets knocked up and three-quarters of the way through we witness the suicide.  Neither of which surprise us in the slightest as we could see them telegraphed from the film's opening five minutes.  Reitman hasn't crafted characters here, he's simply created stereotypical avatars of what he must think sex-crazed teens (Olivia Crocicchia, Timothée Chalamet) or loner teens (Kaitlyn Dever) or jock teens (Ansel Elgort) or overprotective parents (Jennifer Garner) or cool parents (Judy Greer) or emotionally detached spouses (Adam Sandler, Rosemarie Dewitt) are really like.  He then tosses in a tongue-in-cheek British narrator (Emma Thompson) to spout pithy remarks about the goings-on which confused the heck out of me as I couldn't tell whether Reitman was trying to craft something serious or whether this whole film was just an awful attempt at satire.

Across the board, some typically solid actors are left wallowing.  Kaitlyn Dever (so good in Short Term 12) and Ansel Elgort (quite a charming surprise in The Fault in Our Stars) fare the best, but maybe it's simply because their roles felt the least cookie cutter.  Also, would it be too hard for Judy Greer to land some more gigs?  She makes the best of her part as a mom who posts risqué pictures of her daughter on the internet by imbuing a bit of heart and personality into the film -- something that Men, Women & Children is missing in spades.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - The Spectacular Now

The Spectacular Now (2013)

Starring Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Brie Larson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Bob Odenkirk, Kaitlyn Dever, Masam Holden, Dayo Okeniyi, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Kyle Chandler

Directed by James Ponsoldt

In this day and age when teens flock to movies like the Twilight and Divergent series that supposedly tell stories to which they can relate, I can't help but think we're also in the midst of a great era for dramas focused on the regular everyday stories of American youths -- you know, without vampires, werewolves, and dystopian governments.  I may not have loved 2012's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but it was a film I could appreciate for what it brought to the table in its surprisingly dark and somewhat depressing look at teenage angst.  2013 ushered in The Way Way Back which proved to be another solid piece that gave new energy to a coming-of-age tale.  

Towering over both those films, though, is The Spectacular Now, a flick that earned significantly less dough at the box office than either of those aforementioned flicks, but is a gem that absolutely should be seen.  Led by two fantastic performances from Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley, The Spectacular Now is a touching look at young love and how early relationships can shape us into the person we grow up to be.  Teller is Sutter Keely, a hard-partying high school senior whose mixture of class clown-ish/cool guy demeanor masks the fact that he can't make it many hours throughout the day without sneaking a drink from his secret flask of alcohol stashed in his pocket.  His girlfriend Cassidy (Brie Larson) has just left him for Marcus (Dayo Okeniyi), the quarterback of the football team and the class president, in the hopes of finding a more serious relationship as she heads off to college.  While this upsets Sutter and certainly was a blow to his esteem, it doesn't stop him from partying even harder in an attempt to find a lady to latch on to even if it's just for a night.

After a night he can't remember, Sutter finds himself sprawled out on some unknown yard, discovered by Aimee (Shailene Woodley), a mousy, smart, yet certainly attractive senior at Sutter's school as she performs her morning paper route.  While the two had maybe seen each other in passing, they definitely belonged to different social cliques.  However, with Sutter woman-less, he sees an opportunity to perhaps make his ex feel a little jealous that he's moved on from her.  Although their relationship begins thanks to a somewhat deviously selfish notion on Sutter's part, he begins to find himself falling for Aimee's simplicity and mild-mannered nature -- the complete opposite of his lifestyle.

Director James Ponsoldt previously directed 2012's Smashed and my complaint about that film was that Ponsoldt didn't allow his camera to linger long enough in certain scenes in order to gain the full emotional impact that the story inherently had going for it.  Ponsoldt has certainly learned his lesson as The Spectacular Now is rather beautiful in its usage of simplistic long takes, taking its time to allow the story to unfold.  There's a naturalness to the dialog that almost languidly and off-the-cuff transpires between leads Teller and Woodley that gives you a sense of improvisation, never feeling forced and creating an incredibly believable world these two characters inhabit.

While I knew Shailene Woodley from her role in The Descendants, Miles Teller was a new face to me -- although I'd apparently seen him before in a film called Rabbit Hole.  What a breath of fresh air Mr. Teller is.  First, it should be mentioned that nearly all of the main actors playing teens here are in their mid-to-early twenties, yet they all believably jumped back into the roles of high schoolers.  That's what took me by surprise first as I found myself checking Teller's age while watching the film to see rather selfishly if I could place him on my Best Younger Actor/Actress list at the 2013 RyMickey Awards.  Second, Teller lands on a perfect mix of smarminess, cockiness, and angst-i-ness for his character of Sutter.  Sutter outwardly seems to have it all, but his constant drinking obviously hides an inner disappointment in himself and Teller captures that wonderfully.  When he finally is able to open up to Aimee, the more mellow side of Sutter rings just as true as the "bad boy" side.

Admittedly, upon her introduction, I was slightly disappointed by the obvious way the filmmakers decided to portray Shailene Woodley's Aimee.  She was given more homely clothes, wore significantly less make-up, and had more tussled hair than Sutter's ex-girlfriend Cassidy.  It just seemed like too obvious a set-up for the audience -- "See!  Aimee is the nice girl!"  However, as the film progressed, I appreciated the fact that Aimee as a character didn't change.  She stayed the down-home, sweet, and calming presence that we first witness from her.  Yes, Sutter opened her eyes to love, but she was strong enough to recognize that she didn't need to change for him.  For some reason, this felt rather refreshing and Woodley's performance was subtle and gentle, lacking a showiness that we so often see.

The script isn't quite flawless -- there's a subplot involving Sutter's estranged father that plays out a little too melodramatically to work with the rest of the film, as an example -- but the relationship between Sutter and Aimee and the camaraderie between the two actors that play those characters more than makes up for it.  The Spectacular Now is one of those under-the-radar films that you may not have heard of, but is absolutely worth seeking out.

The RyMickey Rating:  A-

Movie Review - Short Term 12

Short Term 12 (2013)

Starring Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr., Kaitlyn Dever, and Keith Stanfield

Directed by Destin Cretton

I'm not sure there's a movie created that doesn't want us to connect with its characters.  I'm not saying we have to like the personalities that a film presents, but the goal of a filmmaker and screenwriter is to get us to feel something about the people onscreen whether that be a good or bad attachment.  Destin Cretton's Short Term 12 had me empathizing with what I saw more than any other movie I've seen (thus far) from 2013 and it's that type of emotional rawness I've been waiting to see this year.

Grace (Brie Larson) is the lead supervisor at a temporary shelter (a "Short Term" facility) for troubled foster teens.  She's quiet and private, yet darn good at what she does, garnering much respect from both the kids and coworkers she helps.  However, while Grace desperately tries to get "her kids" to open up to her, she has an incredibly difficult time following that guidance herself, particularly to her long-term boyfriend and co-worker Mason (Delawarean John Gallagher Jr in an understated, yet important role).  Grace isn't without her share of baggage (of both the old festering and new panicky kinds), yet she pushes everything unhealthily inward.

I'll leave the summary segment of this review at that as Short Term 12 is better to just see unfold in the natural and simplistic, though never "easy," way its story is unveiled.  Along the way, we meet two foster kids in particular who resonate with both Grace and the audience -- eighteen year-old Marcus (Keith Stanfield) who is on his way out of Short Term 12 and the younger Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) who is just beginning her stint there.  Both Marcus and Jayden shape Grace's life in ways she likely never would have dreamed possible, yet in a manner that never rings false or condescendingly sentimental.  Writer-director Destin Cretton could've easily taken any one of his characters down the cheap path of maudlinness, but that never happens for a second.

Cretton also gets amazing performances from his cast.  Brie Larson is fantastic as Grace, perfectly balancing the somewhat tricky aspects of a character that asks her to console others despite the fact that she can't do the same for herself.  Her Grace has a quiet strength that makes it all the more difficult to watch as we long for her to reconcile with her past and come to peace with whatever demons may have crossed her path.  We want to console her...and that's not a bad thing at all.

Adding to the across-the-board acting superlatives, both Keith Stanfield and Kaitlyn Dever give bravura performances.  Stanfield's Marcus is quiet (much like Grace), but it's moreso out of defeat than anything else.  He's been at Short Term 12 for a not-so-short term and his sense of worth has been deflated exponentially.  Stanfield so easily could've taken this his character in an overly harsh or overly sympathetic direction, but he finds the happy medium and embodies what I think may be one of the best characters we've seen onscreen this year.  Young Ms. Dever takes the the opposite approach with her Jayden who's not afraid to get rambunctious, yet eschews that bellowing personality at times in order to show that she's really just a young girl unable to cope with what the adults around her have put her through.  Both get scenes that had me this close to tears simply because in the short time I'd been given to get to know these characters, empathy had taken root.

And that empathy is what makes Short Term 12 the winner that it is.  This film could've easily turned into an ABC Afterschool Special if it so desired, but Dustin Cretton instead creates an authentic atmosphere with characters who never once feel "forced" into any action they're undertaking onscreen.  Dialog never rings false, so much so that I sometimes found myself marveling at the sheer simplicity of what Cretton wrote -- how did the most basic of words convey so much emotion?  Because of this naturalness, we in the audience immediately become intimately involved with the film...and it's really a beautiful thing.

The RyMickey Rating:  A