SORRY, BABY (A) - Eva Victor announces her grand presence as writer, director and star of this bleak comedy about an academic working through the PTSD of a sexual assault, through deadpan humor and the simple passage of time.
Victor -- tall, gangly and droll -- is captivating in this story told slightly out of order such that the actual assault has maximum impact, even though it is passively rendered from a cold distance. What is important here is how Victor's character -- Agnes, a literature professor -- copes in her own way, on her own schedule. (Three years have passed since the incident.) She mainly leans on her friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who soldiered through the Ph.D program with Agnes, under the creepy mentorship of the predatory author/professor Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi).
Lydie is patient with Agnes, even though Lydie is busy with her own partner and their plans to start a family. Agnes flails for emotional support, seeking a cure for the numbness that blankets her days -- she adopts a kitten; she starts sleeping with her nerdy neighbor, Gavin (Lucas Hedges); and she is blessed with the kindness of a random stranger (John Carroll Lynch), who talks her through a panic attack, which is triggered by another former classmate (Kelly McCormack) who lets slip that she had sex with Decker back in the day, too.
All of this might sound complicated or oppressive, but Victor makes sure that it is not. Her off-kilter dialogue and offbeat delivery makes this drily funny but not frivolous. It is moody but not glum. Agnes simply does not fit in with polite society, as exemplified by her awkward monologue in court explaining why she probably can't be unbiased as a potential juror. She is aimless but not hopeless.
You might identify with her futility in the face of a world -- her personal one, our shared dystopia -- knocked off its axis at the moment. What is the proper response?
This is assured storytelling. Victor hesitates a bit after the film's climax, fiddling with a couple of false endings, but you can't fault her for following the natural path of this unique character to whatever conclusion she sees fit. Victor and Agnes have earned that.
THE BALTIMORONS (A-minus) - Michael Strassner co-writes and co-stars as an out-of-work comedian experiencing, essentially, one long 24-hour meet-cute with an older woman.
Strassner, a Baltimore native, teamed up on the script with Jay Duplass, who directs here like a man smitten with the city, exploring its municipal beauty and its working-class neighborhoods. He follows Strassner as Cliff, who accidentally knocks out a tooth on Christmas Eve and must leave his fiance and her family for emergency intervention by an older dentist named Didi (Liz Larsen), whom he falls for.
Didi, old enough to be Cliff's mother, is charmed by the big goof and flattered on a day when she found out that her ex has married a younger woman. Strassner and Larsen thus dominate the movie with their overnight urban adventure that includes an urgent search for soft-shelled crabs.
Cliff is a controlled mess. In the opening scene, we see a comically unsuccessful suicide attempt. He is six months sober and still reeling from being kicked out of his improv group for criticizing a fellow member, though his best pal in the collective is begging him to return to perform his popular Baltimorons routine. It's not spelled out at first, but Cliff's relationship is on shaky ground as well.
Cliff and Didi are constantly coming to the rescue of the other. Even after the tooth gets a temporary fix, Cliff's car gets towed, and later Didi will get pulled over by a traffic cop. In between, they go to her ex's house, where Cliff helps ease the social awkwardness that involves not only the new wife (Mary Catherine Garrison from HBO's "Somebody Somewhere") but Didi's grown daughter and granddaughter. (The ex will be one of two grievance-addled middle-aged white men who get lightly singed with one-liners.)
Strassner is a natural comedian and Larsen (a journeyman with 17 "Law & Order" TV credits) has an Ellen Barkin buzz about her. This is in many ways a traditional romantic comedy, albeit with gloomy undertones. The Christmas milieu is more menacing than mirthful, and Duplass thankfully does not overdo the holiday shtick (he relies on muted decorations and inoffensive jazzy renditions of a few yule classics). The director -- continuing an older-woman fetishization we saw between him and Edie Falco in 2018's "Outside In") -- keeps the momentum going for 100 lively minutes.
A viewer will have to tolerate Cliff's goofy demeanor for that length of time, as well as Didi's bashful parrying of Cliff's come-ons, but there is substance here to each character's personal growth that gets unpacked from their heavy baggage in a short time span. (For him, sobriety provides some clarity; for her, a few drinks loosen things up.) It's an impressive debut for Strassner and a welcome big-screen platform for his co-star. Score another one for the Duplass film factory.
BONUS TRACK
A tender moment between Cliff and Didi is choreographed to the Gershwin tune "Someone to Watch Over Me," by Jordan Seigel and Lia Booth:
The grocery stores are doubling down on the Gen X music loops these days. Madness was known mostly for their biggest hit, "Our House." But perhaps their most infectious hit was their cover of "One Step Beyond," the title track from their 1979 debut album. The punk-inflected ska sound is hard to resist.
Date: September 20, 2025, 12:30 p.m.
Place: Sprouts grocery store, Albuquerque
Song: "One Step Beyond"
Artist: Madness
Irony Matrix: 5.6 out of 10
***
A week earlier, I let the radio dial settle on 92.9 FM in Rio Rancho, N.M., just outside Albuquerque, an oldies station that specializes in deep tracks and which doesn't try your patience with the same old classic rock and Motown hits. KDSK has a fondness for songs that barely cracked the top 20. I enjoyed a run on a recent Sunday afternoon. These are the kind of songs you probably haven't heard since they came and went from the airwaves about 50 years ago. The kind of tracks that make you say, "Wow. Remember that one?"
First up was "Pilot of the Airwaves," which peaked at No. 13 for a British woman called Charlie Dore, a sort of Stevie Nicks knockoff. It is driven by a corny church-choir vibe:
Next up was a band called Night with the propulsive pop of the derivative "Hot Summer Nights" -- No. 18, also in 1979. (Quarterflash would pull this style off much better a couple of years later.)
The biggest chart performer was the best song, "We're All Alone," which hit No. 7 in 1977 for Rita Coolidge, a longtime favorite. It's a Boz Scaggs song (from his blockbuster album "Silk Degrees") that Frankie Valli released as a single the year before. It's a lovely soaring ballad that neither man should have attempted, let alone released, which became clear in retrospect when Coolidge would go on to own it.
BONUS TRACK
The original "One Step Beyond" was by the Jamaican artist Prince Buster. His 1964 version was more lethargic but no less hypnotic:
Two classics for the price of one. Inspired to finally finish these reviews so that I can at least start a tribute to Robert Redford, who died this week at 89. Expect a fuller retrospective down the road.
UP IN THE AIR (2009) (A) - Everything comes together perfectly synchronized in this charming rumination on loneliness and loss and the hubris of flying solo through life.
George Clooney is classic Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a motivational speaker with a winning smile who flies around the country for an HR consulting firm, for the express purpose of firing people during layoffs. Remember, this landed during the depths of the Great Recession, and Jason Reitman recruits a few real laid-off people to play the victims of corporate downsizing.
Clooney is the middleman among a powerful trio of co-stars -- there is Jason Bateman as Ryan's wonderfully cynical boss; Anna Kendrick as Natalie, a whippersnapper who has come up with a plan to conduct the firings efficiently by video conferencing; and Vera Farmiga as Alex, a fellow random frequent flier, who trysts with Ryan whenever they can arrange to overlap at the same hotel in the same city on the same night. Clooney and Farmiga smolder as the hot middle-aged friends with benefits, and Kendrick is manic as the ball of neuroses who, before implementing her video scheme, must first travel with Ryan in order to get a firsthand feel for the in-person process.
This sets the table for the characters to confront their lingering demons: Ryan as the smug confirmed bachelor who thinks he's got life aced, and Natalie, the emotionally icy automaton who must deal with the breakup of her engagement while sitting face-to-face with the workers impacted by her careerist corporate manipulations. Their mentor-mentee banter is priceless -- Ryan deploys strategic stereotypes to guide her through airport security as efficiently as possible, and when he confronts Natalie about her aggressive keyboard flourishes, she responds curtly, "I type with purpose."
Reitman's screenplay (with Sheldon Turner) does not miss a beat across 109 taut minutes, and he builds to a third-act dramatic arc that upends the hero's (literal) journey. Ryan's goal is to achieve 10 million air miles to join a ridiculously exclusive club; his home is as much in the sky as it is in the barren apartment he keeps in the middle of nowhere (Omaha, Neb.). Reitman sends Ryan and Alex to Wisconsin for the wedding of Ryan's sister. Ryan seems estranged from his two sisters and out-of-place in the heartland (because he's out of place everywhere, you see), and he falls victim to the oldest tradition in the book -- being around a wedding and family digs up a well of emotion that he foists onto Alex, endangering their no-strings arrangement. (The cast is so overstuffed that some viewers might not appreciate the nuanced work of Melanie Lynskey as the bride and Danny McBride as the groom who gets cold feet and must sit for a talking-to from Ryan, the worst person to advocate for marriage and commitment. Good thing he's a bull-shitting motivational speaker.)
Reitman has a couple more twists to reveal in the homestretch -- Natalie will be confronted with the real-world consequences of her chosen profession, and Alex and Ryan must resolve their situationship. The filmmaker draws his characters so finely and deeply that the various fallouts from their interactions feel like gut punches. Ryan's tutoring of Natalie feels real beneath the wisecracks. There is not a false move here; it's just exquisite storytelling with both a brain and a heart.
BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969) (B+) - Were there three prettier people in 1969 than Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Katharine Ross? Were they believable back then as scruffy outlaws from the Wild West circa 1899? Let's not overthink a classic.
Redford and Newman chew up and spit out a script by William Goldman ("All the President's Men," "The Princess Bride") as swaggering bandits bedeviling the railroads before going on the lam. Butch Cassidy (Newman) is the head of a gang -- in an early scene he cleverly fends off a coup by a rival member (played by Ted Cassidy, Lurch from "The Addams Family") -- and Sundance (Redford) is a famed gunslinger. When a train robbery goes awry, this becomes a western road movie, with Butch and Sundance barely keeping one step ahead of the law.
It's a little difficult separating the former cultural phenomenon with the product on the screen as it stands 56 years later. There is the famous leapfrom a cliff into a raging river -- trapped on the cliff, Sundance is afraid to jump because he can't swim, to which Butch guffaws: "Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill ya!" And then there's the famous scene of a new contraption, the bicycle, with Butch and Etta Place (Ross) frolicking to the tune of "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" sung by B.J. Thomas. (Ross too often is treated like a third wheel in the film, pardon the pun.)
The film was a breakthrough for George Roy Hill, who would reunite with his two main leads a few years later with another touchstone, "The Sting," an even bigger hit. He keeps things loose, letting the charm of his cast buoy the narrative, without turning this into a farce. Hill has a firm grasp of the conventions of the western genre, which at that point was undergoing a "Bonnie & Clyde"-style correction at the onset of the American New Wave.
Redford and his feathered coif never quite come across as authentic, but the veteran Newman is all grit as the weathered bandit who knows he is running out of options. Ross rejoins the proceedings when Butch and Sundance decide to flee to Bolivia, believing that their scent will go cold while they knock off some easy prey, like the local banks. The culture clash is amusing without being condescending. The one-liners zing right up until the very end, when a hail of bullets and a freeze frame solidify our anti-heroes as Hollywood legends.
THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985) (A-minus) - This is an hour and a half of memorable moviemaking. Unfortunately, the film runs 95 minutes, and the gooey final five minutes are tough to swallow four decades after the film's debut.
John Hughes, fresh off his directorial debut a year earlier with "Sixteen Candles," brings back Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall to ground this group of five students with nothing in common -- Ringwald was the deb, Hall the nerd -- forced together at a Saturday detention. We also get Emilio Estevez as the jock, Judd Nelson as the juvenile delinquent, and Ally Sheedy as the beta emo chick. Hughes' task is to humanize these social caricatures and help them find some common ground.
Their eventual bonding unfolds over the course of the day and feels natural. Hughes has a couple of adults to serve as foils who get the students to rally together -- the great character actor Paul Gleason as the gruff vice principal and Second City alum John Kapelos as the sly janitor. The common denominator for each student: various levels of abuse from their parents. (Gleason's character stands in as the domineering father figure. Elsewhere, actual parents who appear briefly have a distanced "Peanuts" quality to them.)
It's a smart hook that allows each cast member to dig into an emotional monologue. Things can get pretty deep at times, and a viewer can be instantly transported back to those days of insecurity and self-discovery, which could rattle a teenager on a daily basis. But the real draw here is the humor, and the young cast is up to the task.
Even the fairly wooden Estevez shows nuance and a flair for delivering a one-liner. He snaps at Nelson's John Bender after the punk pulls out a joint: "Yo, wastoid, you're not gonna blaze up in here." And when the vice principal seems skeptical of prissy Claire's demand to go get a drink of water, lest she suffer from dehydration, Estevez's Andrew soberly intones: "I've seen her dehydrate, sir. It's gross." Hall is quite funny as the brainy nerd who makes quick assessments of his colleagues, and Sheedy is mischievous as the bizarre loner. (One way that Hughes drops the ball at the end is by having Claire give Sheedy's emo Allison a princess makeover, which causes Andrew to go instantly ga-ga over her. Hughes often had a compelling need to pair off his characters neatly through pat endings.)
Despite the MGM finale, "The Breakfast Club" holds up as Hughes' masterpiece. He captures the essence of high school in a single day, balancing cliches with insight, mixing raw angst with silly antics. It lets you return to those days protected by the armor you've built up in adulthood.
PRETTY IN PINK (1986) (B-minus) - John Hughes wrote this, but he handed off directing duties to Howard Deutch, who launched his career directing middling mainstream comedies. If only it didn't feel so dated.
Ringwald is Andie, the boho poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks (literally the opening camera shot), who becomes the object of affection for one of the "richies," Blane (pouty Andrew McCarthy). But Blane keeps getting drawn back to his privilege by his sniveling pal
Steff (a hammy James Spader, below). And Andie is hounded by her puppy-dog pal,
Duckie (Jon Cryer, making his bones), who pines for her but must settle for the wise
counsel of the older hipster record-store owner Iona (Annie Potts).
It's getting difficult to remember a time back in the day when there was such a distinction between the cool kids and the outcasts, the rich and the poor, and why the differences seemed to matter so much. Maybe that still plays out today, but I doubt it. (For one, schools seem more specialized these days.) Andie is mocked for sewing her own outfits rather than buying off the rack (Annie Hall 2.0). She doesn't want Blane to drop her off at home because she is embarrassed for him to see where she lives; yet the vintage Volkswagen Karmann Ghia in the photo above belongs to her, not Steff or Blane (albeit with dents and dings).
If I were Andie, I'd be more embarrassed about my father who mopes around the house all day missing Andie's mother. Veteran Harry Dean Stanton drops his typical thug persona to play the lachrymose dad who must be mothered by his daughter. He is a humiliated basket case, who is pummeled by Hughes' sappy dialogue at every turn.
The film has its moments. Potts and Cryer are adorable as two generations of new-wave hipsters. Cryer lip-syncs and nerd-dances to Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness." Potts rocks the eyeliner and plastic dresses. Ringwald bites her lip and shoots glances at the corner of the ceiling, oozing an appealing innocence. McCarthy is as cute as anything on the screen. The narrative builds to a Hollywood ending, complete with an iconic wink to the camera at the very end. And the music is ice cool. But everything here comes across as an anachronism. (Even the DVD extras, of the cast reminiscing in 2006, seem like they were created a lifetime ago.)
The first time I remember ever feeling "old" was on opening night of this film. I was 23 and surrounded by teenage Ringwald fans. I felt like the creep leering after an 18-year-old movie phenom. Now I am old, and I can't help thinking that this quaint little movie is just lost to a bygone era.
BONUS TRACKS
Simple Minds had the big hit with "Don't You (Forget About Me)," of course, which bookends "The Breakfast Club's" credits. Here, though, is the memorable dance/chase montage to Karla Devito's "We Are Not Alone":
The Psychedelic Furs with the classic earworm, "Pretty in Pink":
The anthemic new-wave synth symphony "If You Leave" by OMD is just perfect for the climax of "Pretty in Pink":
It's as good an excuse as any to delve deeper into the "Pink" soundtrack and pluck out "Left of Center" by Suzanne Vega, who fits into the same era cubbyhole as Ringwald:
SPLITSVILLE (B) - Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin team up again after their refreshing debut "The Climb" and return to the twinned concepts of infidelity and male friendship. This one starts out promising but gets pretty silly by the end.
The pair again co-wrote the script and star together. Covino directs and plays Paul, a rich jerk married to a beautiful woman, Julie (Dakota Johnson), with a precocious little genius son. Paul's best friend, Carey (Marvin), has just been dumped by his wife of one year after she is rattled by a brush with death on a car drive to see Paul and Julie. Distraught, Carey takes advantage of Paul and Julie's proclaimed open marriage and sleeps with Julie. Everyone proceeds to flip out.
Carey's wife, Ashley (Adria Arjona), wants to be sexually adventurous, and Carey eventually returns home and keeps house with her various oddball boyfriends, most of whom quickly become her exes. Carey claims to be embracing Ashley's opening up of their flailing marriage, but he can't shake his feelings for Julie in the wake of their one-off tryst. Meantime, Paul's financial empire threatens to come crashing down, turning their living situation upside down.
This is all played quite broadly, and Covino and Marvin have several plot twists up their sleeves. You cheer for them to pull it off while they stage some truly funny scenes. But the basic premise gnaws at you -- what are these gorgeous, thoughtful women doing with these weird shlubs in the first place and why can't the women quit them? (The excessive male nudity might offer a few hints.) Arjona is full of life, and the film can barely contain her. Johnson commits to the uber-indie project and gives a rounded performance as a wife and mother who yearns for more than just her cushy life.
Covino and Marvin are inventive, and their script seems peppered with improvised moments full of sly observations about relationships, both romantic and platonic. And there is an epic fight between the two men that drags on as they smash through rooms in Paul's house and eventually through a plate-glass window. It is cleverly choreographed for maximum credibility and comedic ordinariness.
It would give too much away to explain how the narrative gymnastics exhaust the capital that is banked in the first half of the movie. Covino and Marvin have a Duplass brothers aesthetic with a Jim Cummings edge, a devotion to a nerd bro code. They are clever and funny. This sophomore effort feels like a bit of a fork in the road. Let's see where they head next.
BONUS TRACKS The film opens, appropriately, on a '70s vibe, Kenny Loggins and Stevie Nicks' hit "Whenever I Call You Friend":
The closing credits return to the '70s with Steve Forbert's passionate Dylanesque ballad "Romeo's Tune":
Then there is this Polish disco-era curiosity from ORM, "Pasky Z Cívek Odvijim":
DEVO (A-minus) - Everything you could want in a documentary about Devo -- if that's what you are looking for -- can be found in this energetic and comprehensive biography of the band, featuring its two leaders, Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale. The story might give you a new appreciation for the nerdy new-wavers.
Chris Smith -- the entertaining director behind "American Movie," "The Yes Men," "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond" and "Fyre" -- takes a zippy approach, starting out with a deep dive into the Akron, Ohio, band's origins, which grew out of the 1970 Kent State massacre by the National Guard. The group was deeply committed to the concept of "de-evolution," the idea that human culture has peaked, and now it is declining -- a theory that has only gained traction as the generations have devolved in the past 50 years. The members of Devo (who tend to put the emphasis on the second syllable) also were pioneers in not just electronic music but in video production; they considered themselves an art collective devoted first to film and second to music.
That visual sense probably led to their well-timed big break at the start of the '80s. "Whip It" was their only top-40 single (in 1980), and it not only got new life the next year when MTV debuted, but the band was ready with plenty of video content for the hungry new channel, which added to the rotation the band's films made for their early releases. The documentary does not shy away from the band's demise as the '80s trudged along and the new-wave pioneers struggled to write more great hooks, while their shtick wasn't so weird anymore.
Mothersbaugh would go on to score "Pee-wee's Playhouse" and many movies, for Wes Anderson and others, and Casale directed music videos. Their brothers from the band would participate in an audio/video project. All appear here either in new interviews or in clips (Bob Casale and drummer Alan Meyers have died). The music is strong; they were more than one-hit wonders. Smith recognizes the band's connection to the late-night show "Fridays," with a few clips, including "Through Being Cool" and "Jerkin' Back and Forth." Those and other earworms are fun to revisit while learning the backstory of some devoted, if rather silly, artists.
DIANE WARREN: RELENTLESS (A) - This is a friendly career
retrospective of the songwriter behind oodles of mega hits on mainstream radio, going back to the 1970s.
Diane Warren is a classic punk who writes adult-contemporary songs. She is unleashed here in all her F-bomb glory -- admired, beloved and feared by some of the titans of pop music of the modern era. Here is a small random list of artists who have recorded her songs: Cher, LeAnn Rimes, Brandy, Belinda Carlisle, Chicago, Aerosmith, Jennifer Hudson, the Pretenders, Cheap Trick, the Smithereens, DeBarge (her first hit), Starship (her worst song), Gloria Estevan and Milli Vanilli.
Cher, Rimes and Hudson enthusiastically join the parade of friends/collaborators who explain the pitbull attitude of the woman who has been obsessed with songwriting since she was a child in Van Nuys, Calif. Former "American Idol" judge Randy Jackson is an especially enthusiastic colleague, and we also hear from old pals, including actress Kathrine Narducci from "The Sopranos."
We hang out with Warren in her overstuffed office, where the magic happens. (She still records demos on cassette.) We tag along as she bops around town, always accompanied by an old friend whom Warren hired to rescue her from a bad financial situation. We watch as Warren works out her psychological issues with her parents -- her mother constantly hounded her to become a secretary, but her father (who bought her her first guitar and a backyard shed to hang out in) was more supportive.
Your enthusiasm might flag once the milquetoast music starts flowing and the deluge of tunes, especially the formulaic hits of the '90s, begin to pelt your senses. But the star here is Warren and her truly relentless personality, which seems barely dimmed from her teen firepower, even as she now approaches 70. This is a fascinating character study by newcomer Bess Kargman, and you don't have to be a fan of the music to appreciate it.
BONUS TRACKS
Devo on "Fridays" with "Jerkin' Back and Forth":
More sick synth solos on "Through Being Cool":
Always a good excuse to spin "Girl U Want":
Diane Warren's list of hits seems endless. (Just those that start with the letter I go on and on. (I could go on.)) Here is Toni Braxton with "Un-Break My Heart":
To the battleships! Ending with the GOAT, Cher belting out "If I Could Turn Back Time":
