Review: 'You, Me & Tuscany' reminds us of why we watch rom-coms: Good-looking people in gorgeous places — and, as a bonus, sumptuous food

In some ways, “You, Me & Tuscany” is a thoroughly modern romantic comedy — in that it stars to impossibly good-looking actors and puts them in a situation that is less plausible than movies with dragons in them.

But in a couple of key ways, director Kat Coiro’s movie is old-fashioned, starting with the fact that you (for now) have to see it in a movie theater, rather than streaming it on Netflix or tuning into the Hallmark Channel and sitting on the couch, folding laundry while you watch.

Halle Bailey, having survived the live-action “The Little Mermaid,” stars as Anna, whose work as a house sitter is a stopgap for her getting back to some semblance of a real life. In some quick character exposition, we learn that Anna learned to be a chef from her mother, and had nearly completed her degree at a culinary school when she dropped out when her mother got sick. Her dream had always been to go to Tuscany, and she still has the plane ticket her mom bought for them before she died.

In a hotel bar, maxing out her credit card on dinner, Anna tells this story to a traveling real-estate executive from, you guessed it, Tuscany. Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor) shows Anna pictures of his villa, and the restaurant his father, Vincenzo (Paolo Sassanelli), has run for decades — the one Matteo has left behind to avoid following in the family business.

Anna takes this chance encounter as a sign to book that trip to Tuscany, and visit the town where Matteo’s family lives. Once there, she discovers the hotels are all booked up, for the town’s annual summer festival. With few options, she goes to Matteo’s villa — figuring he’d never go there — and sleeps in his bed.

The next morning, Matteo’s mom, Gabriella (Isabella Ferrari), and his Nonna (Stefania Casini) find the trespassing Anna. The accidental placement of a diamond ring on Anna’s hand leads to a misunderstanding, in which the whole family believes Anna is Matteo’s fiancee, and that her being in Tuscany means Matteo will be returning home soon.

Complicating the lie is the family’s neighbor, and adopted son, Michael (played by “Bridgerton” hunk Regé-Jean Page), who runs a nearby vineyard where Gabriella plans to stage Anna and Matteo’s wedding. Anna and Michael argue when they first encounter each other, but forced proximity allows them to soften toward each other — and Anna starts to worry she’s falling for him.

I haven’t said “spoiler alert” through any of this, because these plot points are all in the trailer — and besides, the script by Ryan Engel (who shares story credit with his wife, Kristin) is so welded to the rom-com formula that it would be a twist if any of that didn’t happen. 

But even an old formula still has its potency, with the right ingredients. And Bailey’s winsome smile, Page’s gorgeous abs and English charm, and the seductive images of Tuscan sunsets and Italian cooking are all the ingredients a trifle like this needs to be entertaining.

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‘You, Me & Tuscany’

★★★

Opens Friday, April 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some strong language and sexual material. Running time: 106 minutes.

Review: 'Andre Is an Idiot' is a funny and touching look at an iconoclast's refusal to take a cancer diagnosis lying down

Director Tony Benna’s “André Is an Idiot” is a documentary for those of us who have seen hundreds of movies about someone fighting back against cancer with nobility and poise — and chucks it all in the crapper and says, “Screw that.”

The person going through cancer here is André Ricciardi, an iconoclastic San Francisco advertising guy whose mind is as full and as unkempt as the massive halo of gray hair around his head. The hair was one of the first things to go when, in 2020, André was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. The movie gets its title from the comment his mother made when she learned of the diagnosis — that colon cancer is easy to spot, and that André was an idiot for not getting a colonoscopy earlier.

André’s story starts in 1995, with his marriage to Janice, a bartender at his favorite bar who needed to marry someone for two years to get her green card. What started as a bit of a joke — and a way for Andre to get free drinks — eventually blossomed into true love and resulted in two daughters, Tallula and Delilah, who were 19 and 14 when André got his diagnosis. 

Since André didn’t do parenthood in the normal way — bedtime reading for his girls was “Helter Skelter,” the book about the Manson family — he’s determined not to be normal in fighting cancer. And while Benna chronicles André’s exploits with chemotherapy, the movie also shows André’s devotion to smoking pot and cracking jokes about dying, both to Janice and to his best pal, Lee. 

Benna honors André’s irreverence by following in kind. Some of the hospital misadventures are depicted with dolls in stop-motion animation. And when André decides that his father would never in a million years appear in a documentary like this, Benna finds a hilarious and apt alternative (which I wouldn’t spoil for all the money in the world).

Avoiding poignancy in a cancer journey is as impossible as cheating death itself. Benna shows us André’s tenacity, Janice’s weary work as his caregiver, and their daughters’ quite mature understanding that their dad won’t be here for long. By avoiding the cliches of a cancer documentary, injecting André’s subversive humor and irascible charm, “André Is an Idiot” hits the heart more squarely than you expect.

(Also, if you see this movie and don’t make an appointment for a colonoscopy, you really are an idiot.)

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‘Andre Is an Idiot’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 10, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for language and references to drug use. Running time: 88 minutes.

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This review previously appeared on this site on January 24, 2025, when the movie premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Hamlet' sets Shakespeare's tale of grief and rage in modern London, and lets Riz Ahmed sink his teeth into a fiery performance

William Shakespeare wrote the play “Hamlet” around 1600, based on legends that date back 500 or 600 years earlier — and the marvel of Shakespeare’s longest and possibly best-known work is how it fits any era in which it’s made or set, including director Aneil Karia’s dynamic modern-dress version that’s propelled by an intense performance by Riz Ahmed.

The scene is London, starting with the death of the CEO of a major real-estate firm, Elsinore Properties. The CEO’s son, Hamlet (played by Ahmed), returns to England in the middle of a scenario that’s both ancient and current: The CEO’s brother, Claudius (Art Malik), is taking the company’s helm, and marrying his brother’s widow, Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha). Hamlet, guided by his father’s ghost, believes his father was murdered by Claudius, and that the only way to prove it is to pretend to be mad.

Michael Lesslie’s script takes Shakespeare’s play and strips it down to the essentials. Several familiar side characters are gone, such as Rosenkrrantz and Guildenstern. And Hamlet delivers the comments he would usually say to his trusted companion Horatio to two other short-term confidants: His friend Laertes (Joe Alwyn) and Laertes’ sister, and Hamlet’s former lover, Ophelia (Morfydd Clark). Also lurking about is Claudius’ sinister assistant, and Laertes and Ophelia’s father, Polonius (Timothy Spall).

As Karia, Lesslie and Ahmed imagine their “Hamlet,” it’s a story of a young man who’s been in the orbit of wealth for his entire life, coming to grips with how quickly loyalty and grief can fall short when power is up for grabs. Hamlet’s struggle, as always, becomes most clear in the soliloquy that begins “to be or not to be…,” which Ahmed delivers with an enraged shout while driving at dangerous speeds on the freeway. 

Karia, who directed Ahmed in the Oscar-winning 2020 short “The Long Goodbye,” gives us everything we need to understand “Hamlet” and nothing we don’t. Mostly, he clears the path for Ahmed to dig into the anger and frustration this character has held inside for centuries, making us understand Hamlet as a modern tragedy.

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‘Hamlet’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 10, in theaters. Rated R for some bloody violence, suicide, brief drug use and language.. Running time: 114 minutes.

Review: 'Palestine 36' depicts a harrowing case of oppression from 90 years ago, and finds parallels to current struggles

Judging on filmmaking craft alone, “Palestine 36” is a moving depiction of a people facing persecution and answering with rebellion — and the escalation of that rebellion into brutal violence and repression.

And because the people being repressed in the film are Palestinians, and the ones committing the violence are occupying British forces who are working with unseen Jewish settlers, people will see this movie — or, more likely, not see it — and argue over its historical accuracy or its parallels to what’s happening 90 years later to modern Palestinians in Israeli-occupied Gaza and the West Bank. 

As writer-director Annemarie Jacir tells it (and I stress that I’m merely describing her depiction of events here), the story begins with a young Palestinian man, Yusuf (Karin Daoud Anaya), finding work in Jerusalem as a servant to a prosperous Arab businessman, Amir (Dhafer L’Abidine), and his wife, Khouloud (Yasmine Al Massri), a modern Arab woman who writes blistering pro-Palestinian editorials under a male pseudonym. Amir and Khouloum also host dinner parties for the well-to-do of Jerusalem, namely the British colonists and the military occupation forces. 

Yusuf often travels back to his village, where his family is facing the loss of the land they have owned for generations. The fences keep edging closer and closer to their farm fields, with Jewish refugees from Europe trying to settle there. The British offer no help, and instead a junior bureaucrat, Thomas (Billy Howle), tells the village elders to get title deeds for their land — an impossibility, since there’s no documentation for their initial claim to the land. 

Then some of the Palestinian dock workers accidentally discover a cache of illegal rifles being shipped to the Jewish settlers. That convinces some Palestinians to take up arms themselves and begin a revolt. Meanwhile, Khouloum and other women rally at the British headquarters, where they get polite and meaningless reassurances from the British commandant — a role Jeremy Irons could play in his sleep, and here he kinda does.

Jacir filmed part of this movie in Palestinian territories — there’s a sentence it’s difficult to imagine anyone ever saying again — and those scenes capture the rough beauty of the place, and goes some way to explain why these characters would fight so hard to stay there. 

The movie includes some moments in history, such as the announcement by a British royal commission to recommend partition of Jews and Palestinians in the occupied British Palestine — a decade before the British tried another bloody partition, between India and Pakistan. And the movie ends with a brutal depiction of a real historical event, the massacre by British troops of the residents of the village of al-Bassa in 1938, at the height of the Palestinian revolt against British rule. 

How accurate is Jacir’s depiction of history? I’m not enough of an expert to give an answer. I also can’t attest to the historical accuracy of “Lawrence of Arabia” or “12 Years a Slave.” I can only judge on how the movie works as drama and cinema — and by those admittedly limited measures, “Palestine 36” is effective at depicting people fighting for the land they love, and at making us think about how the descendants of those people are coping with their struggles today. 

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‘Palestine 36’

★★★

Opens Friday, April 10, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for brutal war violence and language. Running time: 115 minutes; in English and Arabic with subtitles.

Review: 'The Drama' has the trappings of an edgy rom-com, but is only a provocation that tries to make light of a dark topic

No, I’m not going to tell you what the big reveal is in “The Drama,” writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s clumsily provocative movie in which an impending marriage hits a crisis point. I will say this much: From the moment the revelation is made, the movie goes off the rails, caught unsteadily between dark comedy and disturbing psychological drama.

The couple, Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson), are a week away from their nuptials, and the strain of their wedding preparation — travel arrangements for future in-laws, rehearsals with the choreographer, worries about the DJ — is starting to show  But they’re good-natured people, and apparently quite in love, so what could go wrong?

One night, as they’re tasting wedding menus and wine with their married friends, Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim), the four get into a semi-drunken conversation around one question: “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” Most everyone’s answers are slightly cringe-inducing, but nothing beyond the pale — until Emma tells them about something she did as a teen.

Like I said, I won’t repeat Emma’s answer, but it has the immediate effect of making Charlie think seriously about who he’s about to marry. It also had the effect of making me wonder whether Borgli had anything meaningful to say about the hot-button topic he was evoking, or whether he was just an obnoxious prankster who thinks he’s edgy or clever by making light of horrible things.

What follows in the movie shows Borgli (who made the Nicolas Cage comedy “Dream Scenario”) to be the prankster type. Where real humans might, I don’t know, postpone the wedding and book some intense therapy, Charlie and Emma try to carry on with the wedding. This becomes difficult when Emma tries to brush what happened under the rug, not seeing that Charlie is freaking out about what he’s learned. We see this because Borgli shows us, through flashbacks and imaginative daydream sequences, the worst-case scenarios playing out in Charlie’s head. 

Emma and Charlie act, for much of the movie’s run, as if love will let them overcome this crisis — and, similarly, the movie acts like the audience’s love for these two charming romantic leads will overcome the obstacles Borgli’s off-kilter choice has created. They’re good, but you feel like they’re being held hostage by a premise that doesn’t deserve all this attention. This is particularly true of Zendaya, who doesn’t get to perform her character’s most emotional scenes, as Borgli has cast another actor, Jordyn Cruet, to play a teen Emma in flashbacks.

The central conundrum of “The Drama” is that it raises a topic that’s so serious that it’s impossible to make funny — and then doesn’t want treat that topic with any seriousness. The awkward spaces Borgli’s “jokes” inhabit just sit there, as if the filmmaker never considered how awful it would be to laugh in those moments. 

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‘The Drama’

★★

Opens Friday, April 3, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language, sexual content, and some violence, including scenes involving gun violence and intense disturbing themes. Running time: 106 minutes.

Review: 'Fantasy Life' puts a law-school dropout among Martha Vineyard's idle rich, from a new director who isn't there yet but shows promise

I wasn’t bowled over by “Fantasy Life,” a New York-set comedy-drama in which actor Matthew Shear makes his writing and directing debut, but Shear shows enough promise as a storyteller that I want to keep an eye on what he does next.

Shear plays Sam, a law-school dropout who has been fired from a job at a big law firm. He goes to his therapist, Fred (Judd Hirsch), to talk out his sense of failure, and Fred responds with a job offer. Fred and his wife, Helen (Andrea Martin), who’s also Fred’s receptionist, have a son, David (Alessandro Nivola), who needs a live-in babysitter. With few other job prospects, Sam accepts. 

David, we learn, is a bass player who’s been offered a chance to tour Australia with a big-name headlining musician. David’s wife, Dianne (Amanda Peet), is a former actress who — for reasons of motherhood and depression — hasn’t had a role in a decade. 

Sam takes the job tending to David and Dianne’s three daughters, ages 6, 8 and 11, and even moves into a basement room when the family spends the summer on Martha’s Vineyard. Everyone seems cool with this arrangement, except for Dianne’s suspicious father, Lenny (Bob Balaban). But Dianne’s comfort level is challenged when Sam starts falling for her.

Shear has attracted a solid cast, and it’s a joy to see old pros like Hirsch, Martin, Balaban and Jessica Harper deployed as David and Dianne’s parents. It’s also a delight to see Peet, who hasn’t had a meaty movie role like this in a decade, give a standout performance as a woman who loves her children but is learning that they don’t fulfill her as much as she had hoped. 

“Fantasy Life” shows Shear feels comfortable in this atmosphere of idle rich folks summering at the Vineyard, among people who are oblivious to how their wealth insulates them from real-world problems. Shear doesn’t have any particularly probing observations about this world, but one senses he only needs one or two more movies under his belt to get there.

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‘Fantasy Life’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 3, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language, some sexual references and brief drug use. Running time: 91 minutes.

Review: 'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie' finds the key that unlocks the excitement and fun of Nintendo's franchise.

After a faltering first step with “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which was a cringe-inducing example of putting commercial product over storytelling, video game giant Nintendo and animation house Illumination Entertainment have found their way with “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” a sequel that’s more enjoyable if not any more coherent than its predecessor.

Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, and writer Matthew Fogel — all returning from the 2023 movie — jump right into the action, with a prologue that introduces the magical princess Rosalina (voiced by Brie Larson), caretaker of many baby stars. Rosalina faces down a robot monster piloted by Bowser Jr. (voiced by Benny Safdie), the evil son of the franchise’s villain Bowser (voiced by Jack Black), who was imprisoned in the first movie. 

Bowser Jr. has the triple goal of freeing his dad, plotting the universe’s destruction, and doing so in a way that will make Pops proud. Come for the colorful mayhem, stay for the Freudian psychology — not just the father-son dynamic of the Bowser family, but also some gentle sibling rivalry for Mario (voiced by Chris Pratt) and Luigi (voiced by Charlie Day), and some abandonment issues for Princess Peach (voiced by Anya-Taylor Joy).

Peach learns that Bowser Jr. has kidnapped Rosalina, and springs to action to leave the Mushroom Kingdom with her sidekick Toad (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key) to rescue her. Mario and Luigi, with their new dinosaur friend Yoshi (voiced by Donald Glover, not that you could tell), are put in charge of the Mushroom Kingdom, but an attack by Bowser Jr. puts them on a parallel path as Peach.

All the characters end up on various planets, modeled after the orbs that represent the game levels in “Super Mario Galaxy.” There also are cameos by other characters in the Mario universe, as well as a couple other Nintendo franchises. I won’t spoil any of the surprises here, though diehard Mario fans have already heard about a couple creatures who show up on the journey.

I rather disliked “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” when it came out three years ago. I placed most of the fault at Nintendo’s inability to give its corporate mascot a distinctive personality, in fear of offending players who put their own spin on Mario with every game. This movie’s Mario gets to show some spunk and soul, even with a bland non-presence as Chris Pratt voicing him. More importantly, Mario’s part of an ensemble here, and other characters — particularly Peach, Rosalina, and one figure whose presence I won’t divulge — get their turns to shine. 

Here, the action and animation are lively, the story speeds by at a jaunty pace, and the jokes — most of them inside jokes — are absurd enough to be funny for most ages. I enjoyed more of what “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” delivers than I expected to, and I think Nintendo fans will be delighted. 

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‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’

★★★

Opens Wednesday, April 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for action, mild violence and rude humor. Running time: 98 minutes.

Review: 'They Will Kill You' is generous with its cartoonish bloodshed, in service to a one-note action scenario

I have to appreciate the absurd amount of spurting blood and flesh-chopping mayhem Russian director Kirill Sokolov packs into his first Hollywood feature, the comic gorefest “They Will Kill You” — even if the script and pacing became a bit monotonous.

The movie’s central relationship is between Asia (Zazie Beetz) and her younger sister, Maria (played by Myha’la as an adult). In the prologue, they’re trying to escape a sadistic stepfather (Darron Meyer). Asia succeeds, but leaves Maria behind.

Ten years later, we find Asia finding work at The Virgil, a dark and foreboding residential hotel in Manhattan. The boss, Lilith (Patricia Arquette), lets her in, then locks the door behind them. In the script, Sokolov and co-writer Alex Litvak (“Predators”) drop broad hints that the rich clientele — including a beauty guru, Sharon (Heather Graham), and somebody named Kevin (Tom Felton) — are more than they appear. 

The same could be said for Asia, who we quickly learn is a prison-hardened fighter with one thing on her mind: Rescuing Maria, who’s trapped here as part of The Virgil’s service staff. Then come two surprises: Maria isn’t that eager to leave, and the residents — including Lilith and her handyman husband, Ray (Paterson Joseph) — have made a pact with the devil to attain immortality.

The important part is that Asia must fight her way out of several floors of The Virgil, and does so using a shotgun, a machete, a flaming ax, and whatever other destructive objects are at hand. Sokolov seems to find inspiration in everything from “Oldboy” to “Kill Bill” to “From Dusk Till Dawn” — but he’s not quite clever enough to bring his own distinctive style to the battle scenes.

There are other wasted opportunities in “They Will Kill You,” like reducing the usually alluring Graham to a special effect for the movie’s back half, and giving a good scenery-chewer like Felton little to work with. Everyone gets subsumed in the grimy, fetid atmosphere of The Virgil and Sokolov’s dimly lit horror show.

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‘They Will Kill You’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 27, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, language and brief sexual content/nudity. Running time: 94 minutes.