Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Pictured : Angela ( Olivia Wilde , centre) and Joe ( Seth Rogen , standing) listen to their guests with interest in a scene from the marital comedy, ' The Invite ', adapted from the 2020 Spanish film, ' Sentimental ' by screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack and directed by Olivia Wilde . Still courtesy of A24 (US) / Black Bear (UK) The Invite , adapted by screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack from Cesc Gay’s 2020 Spanish film, Sentimental (English title ‘The People Upstairs’), feels like a personal project for actress-turned-director Olivia Wilde. Wilde was publicly humiliated by or on behalf of her estranged husband Jason Sudeikis in the run-up to the release of her 2022 psychological thriller, Don’t Worry Darling , whose request for child custody was served to her while she was on stage at Comic Con. Wilde knows something of the pain of a relationship that has run its course. She channels this into her filmmaking. The bulk of The Invite is set ...

  In Sofia Coppola’s seventh film, the New York-based comedy-drama, On the Rocks , the writer-director is reteamed with her male muse, Bill Murray. Murray is the father Coppola never had, great with kids in small doses if this film is anything to go by but incapable of marital fidelity. Coppola’s actual father, Francis Coppola, the director of three Godfather movies as well as of Apocalypse Now and The Conversation , has been married to Eleanor for 57 years, so clearly this film is not autobiographical. Coppola apparently put some of her father’s somewhat outrageous opinions into the mouth of art dealer Felix Keane, played with relaxed é lan by Murray. You find yourself asking: ‘did he really know a tribe of women in Canada who kidnapped men and placated them by having sex?’ ‘That sounds like your fantasy,’ blocked novelist daughter, Laura (Rashida Jones) tells him. On the Rocks is what some people call a ‘low stakes’ drama, by which is meant that there’s barely any drama at all...