Regretting You
Rating: M - Drug use & sex scenes
Director: Josh Boone
Starring: Alison Williams, Dave Franco, McKenna Grace, Mason Thames
6/10

Regretting You is a film that is kind of about grief, kind of about young love, lost love, and kind of about mother/daughter relationships.

But it’s mostly about the insane drama that can be achieved when you dial all of these factors up to an 11.

It follows mum Morgan (Alison Williams) and daughter Clara (McKenna Grace) after they lose Morgan’s husband and sister (Clara’s aunt and father).

Morgan discovers the devastating reason her husband and sister were together at the time they died while wanting to protect her daughter from the truth, and Clara navigates her own grief and guilt following the accident while starting a relationship of her own.

Morgan’s sister’s boyfriend (Dave Franco) is left reeling from the loss with their infant son. So much drama follows and it is everything you want from this kind of movie.

The theatre experience for this movie was absolutely a 10/10 - at first, I thought me and my friend were alone in our melodrama but very quickly the audience was gasping, laughing and crying at all the twists and turns along with us.

It hits all the heartstrings, the romance is pretty wholesome, the male love interests have some great swoon-worthy lines, and Williams and Grace deliver both gut wrenching moments and some great laughs.

The soundtrack was pretty good too, although it made me feel old (the direct comparison between The Killers and Role Model was pretty harsh).

Anyone who saw Dave Franco's last film Together may experience unintended brief concern in certain scenes, but I am ecstatic to report no one gets horrifyingly glued together at an inconvenient time in this movie.

I’d recommend this as a perfect accompaniment to a girls night out with a glass of wine. 6/10

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Rating: M - Offensive language, sex scene & mental health themes
Director: Scott Cooper
Cast: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Stephen Graham
7/10

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere follows the one and only Bruce Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White) as he returns to his hometown after touring, and writes the album Nebraska.

This music biopic has all the staples: vague explorations of mental health, daddy issues with a seemingly out-of-nowhere resolution, a cool female character undeservedly experiencing a situationship from hell and an actor who, as it turns out, can sing really well.

What sets Springsteen apart is its solid and empathetic exploration of the superstar’s childhood, and roots of the complicated relationship with his parents.
We see him return to his hometown, play guitar with local bands, start seeing his friend's sister, and follow his process as he writes and records these tracks.

The recording sessions are quite interesting too, with Springsteen trying to communicate what he knows the music should sound like to his team who are deeply confused about the new artistic direction, but are going out of their way to see the project through.

Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) is a nice guy in this, which we love to see. After the Amy Winehouse, Bob Dylan and Robbie Williams biopics it’s refreshing watching guys just be nice to each other.

This film has some solid romance, too.

The film switches from showing to telling in the last quarter, and suffers for it. It does such a great job of showing how Springsteen’s mind is working that some attempts at story closure are jarring. The resolution for the deteriorating mental health plot line is a short therapy scene that could have benefitted from more time or dialogue, and I felt the resolution of the father/son plot line is a little too neat for something that held incredible nuance up until that point.

That said, the first two thirds of this movie are strong, and an intriguing character study.

Honourable mentions: Between this and The Iron Claw, I think Allen White is taking on Miles Teller’s (The Spectacular Now, Whiplash) current record for most panic-inducing/disturbing driving scenes. Also, this film depicts the best songwriting process since K-Pop Demon Hunters’ Takedown.

I highly recommend this for any musos or music lovers, a solid story of creating, music-making and navigating the industry with authenticity. 7/10