For Groucho's fresh picks every week, listen on Soundcloud and subscribe! Look for the "Screen Scene" review segments for my weekly recommendations.
The Best Films of 2020 according to Groucho are now...listed! If you like what you read here, share the love: tell your friends to subscribe to Groucho Reviews' YouTube channel as well as liking the Facebook page, grouchoreviews on Instagram, and Twitter handle...
[SPOILER-FREE:] Laugh-out-loud funny...transcends offensiveness by holding a mirror up to the very worst of human impulses, making us laugh at crimes against humanity not because the satirists don't care but precisely because they do. 
A very sweet, very entertaining blend of whimsy and peril. 
Has the benefit of relevance to the current news cycle, but it’s about something much larger even than the famous convicted felon who threw his weight around Hollywood. 
As long as Faxon and Rash...stay in this pitch-black pocket of uncomfortable truth-telling, Downhill retains its power. But since this is an American comedy... 
Practically dares its audience to make the mistake of taking it seriously, and yet it’s a bizarrely uplifting story of credibly tough women...survivors all, supporting each other to vanquish a sneering, preening abuser whose time’s up. 
Contemplating any of this action-comedy camp in real-world terms...would be a maddening mistake. Accept Lowrey’s assessment that 'Violence is what we do,' or pick another movie. 
Attempts to thread the needle of a moving anti-war film in that narrow space between...[war as] thrill ride and the filmic wizardry that, when examined too closely, rings as hollow as a war machine rapped with a wrench. 
Aside from Gerwig's own comic and dramatic sensibilities (which never intrude on Alcott) and a stellar cast, her Little Women adopts a bold narrative approach to retelling Alcott’s two-volume story. 
[SPOILER-FREE REVIEW:] If Abrams has topped himself, it's by making a Star Wars film that's even more of a multiplex-filling Hollywood widget than his first. 
If The Next Level plays fast and loose, it also makes an effort to prompt viewers to reflect not only on the freedom of fantasy, but on the fraught but essential relationship of mind and body. 
If the film’s psychology and dialogue remain frustratingly basic...the viscerally effective audio-visual approach amplif[ies] the story’s emotional intimacy in ways the situations and mostly platitudinous dialogue sometimes fail to do. 
Knives Out cannot help but be fanciful fun, particularly for murder-mystery fans...Johnson adds ballast to what would otherwise be a lightweight tale by suggesting sociopolitical allegory. 
Pointedly setting up its own Turkey Day-teasing Truth & Reconciliation Commission about a proud nation’s not-so-proud past...Frozen II arrives just in time for Thanksgiving as an entertainment parents and kids can be thankful for. 
The Nicholas Searle novel Hatcher adapts features a shopworn story with easily anticipated plot twists, resulting in a soggy and largely pointless exercise that gets by on its consummate cast and some witty dialogue. 
In some ways, Doctor Sleep has to feel like a pop cultural footnote, but that's not fair to what's a ripping yarn in its own right. 
Wild-ride entertainment that’s by turns funny, squirmy, horrifying, and poignant, all in service of a zeitgeist-y story of working-class frustration...boiling over in ways the blithely wealthy can no longer ignore. 
Audiences can’t be blamed for turning off their brains and focusing on the aesthetic trappings...in this film featuring a flying protagonist, nothing really lands. 
The filmmaker contemplating his own creation as a man and an artist...plays as a poetic remembrance of things past, a reconciliation of self, powerfully capturing the emotional essence of keenly formative experiences and deep loves. 
Joker isn’t the film to seriously tackle the issue[s]--it's more concerned with flair than genuine inquiry--but Phoenix’s pained, raw-nerve performance is one for the ages. 
A primer...proves most valuable by gathering a number of Miles’ friends, lovers, musical collaborators, admirers, and musicologists...to share their recollections and perspectives on Davis, his musicality, and his personality. 
[Grazer:] I feel like Fionn, not only on set but just in life, showed me the ropes as like a brother would do. 
I feel like most of the discussion about the character on this one was about hair. (Laughs.) Hair and facial hair....And they told me to take a look at Chris de Burgh videos. 
I don't want to be on my own island...I'm here to collaborate, not to just be the Grand Poobah of costume design. 
[Burns:] 'The only thing more powerful than telling someone a story they don't know is telling someone a story that they thought they knew'...Whenever I could I used the language and the facts that are in the report to tell the story of the program. 
I'm interested in a democratic narrative...Anyone who is on the screen is interesting. Right? Everyone has their own story. 
I was very lucky to be raised by two strong and very generous women...[Cleo] embodies, in one hand, those scars that I share with my family, but in the other hand, those scars that I share with a whole society. 
The more you think about [your parents], the more contradictory they get...A lot of people find themselves in this film. You'd expect it's such an unusual, eccentric story, but... 
Who wants to be directed by their father? Particularly at an age when—the fun part of being 21 is that you fire your parents. Y'know, you're free of them. 
[I] immediately felt a sort of uncanny personal relationship to it: the characters, the sense of love in this really great struggle...a lot of pain. [Richard Ford] somehow wrote about this very difficult situation with a great amount of compassion. 
I'm trying to make a group of movies that represent as many different aspects of contemporary life as I can. 
