Café au Lait (1994)

★★½
Capsule Review

Lola (Julie Mauduech) is pregnant, and the question of who the father is dominates the story early. There are two possibilities, but the answer to the question is resolved before we expect it. Rather than keep us in suspense, director Mathieu Kassovitz (who also wrote and stars) uses the question to examine how the two potential fathers feel drawn to Lola and how the men might feel about each other. His story creates an interesting dynamic that sees Felix (Kassovitz) and Jamal (Hubert Koundé) at first as competitors and eventually as partners to ensure Lola's comfort during the later stages of her pregnancy. Their collaboration is tenuous at best, resulting in outburst and reconciliation and back again. The actors are good enough to perform what the script asks of them, but there isn't much narrative thrust to make for an engrossing story. The actors and costar Vincent Cassel as Felix's friend would reunite in La Haine, which is nothing like Café au Lait and much more accomplished.

© 2023 Silver Screen Reviews

The Last American Virgin (1982)

★
I had a Karen once. Her name was Maria, so I get it. The Last American Virgin has this reputation for being brutally honest about the unfairness of unrequited love and the heartache that follows when the realization settles in that all your best intentions were for naught. Writer and director Boaz Davidson culminates his T&A show with this hard lesson, but he doesn't earn it because of his inability (or unwillingness) to present his characters as anything other than sex-starved teens looking for their next fix. The denouement is there for shock value. It does not serve the purpose its defenders say it does because the characters are shallow, the narrative is scattershot, the sex is sleazy, and the acting is substandard, which prevents us from being truly invested in the story.

Roofman (2025)

★★★
Capsule Review

The true story of "Roofman" is the kind that would lend itself to a good movie if handled right, and Derek Cianfrance's Roofman is up to the task. It's a funny, lighthearted and fictionalized version of the actual events, which featured an escaped convict who hides out in a Toys R Us store (the Circuit City next door in real life) and befriends and eventually dates a local woman. Channing Tatum is Jeffrey Manchester, an Army veteran who went on a crime spree by robbing McDonald's restaurants but notably not abusing the employees in the process. After a prison escape, he hides out in the famed toy store and meets Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst) and begins a courtship that he balances with his outlaw status. They have great onscreen chemistry. The details of how Manchester carves out his hiding place and passes the time while hidden are presented here in plentiful and meticulous fashion.

© 2025 Silver Screen Reviews

Christy (2025)

★★★★
I looked up Christy Martin's fight record after I finished watching the biopic Christy and was amazed by her win-loss totals. I then watched her 1996 match against Irish boxer Deirdre Gogarty, which took place on the undercard for the Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno main event. It was an astonishing display of athleticism and a technical masterpiece. Writers Mirrah Foulkes and David Michôd and director Michôd bring Christy Martin's turbulent life to the big screen to chronicle her beginnings in amateur boxing competitions to the professional stage in Las Vegas and beyond. It was a life of triumph and shocking lows that almost came to a tragic end. It's a remarkable story on its own, but to see Sydney Sweeney embody the role so effectively as Christy is to see an actress take a big leap forward to challenge herself and convey all the pain and tragedy of that story into a gripping narrative.

Scream 3 (2000)

★★
The below review was written in 2000. After my rewatch, I looked at this review and decided to repost it and not write an update, since it largely explains my current feelings about the movie.

The first two Scream movies were all about being self-aware. They knew the conventions of horror movies and poked fun at them too. What they didn't do was fall victim to them. Scream 3, on the other hand, is a by-the-numbers slasher flick that offers a few chuckles but otherwise doesn't have anything new to say. Even with the same director and the main actors of the series returning, Scream 3 falls short of expectations. Maybe that's because Kevin Williamson didn't write this installment. Ehren Kruger (any relation to Freddy?) has the screenwriting credit. Williamson does have a producer credit, though I have to wonder how much he was involved with the production, because this entry isn't as fresh as the first two.