danieljfarthing

The three main performances in light teen rom-com "Sweethearts" are solid - the rest of it is forgettable guff. Small-town platonic BFFs (sigh) Keirnan Shipka (rising star - with good reason) & Nico Hiraga go to college together while maintaining respective long distant romances from high-school... that they both plan to end over Thanksgiving with the help of 3rd BFF Caleb Hearon (who has 'coming out' issues of his own). Shipka, Hiraga, Hearon, and the support cast are likeable, but wasted in a tepidly mediocre movie with particularly weak & patchy writing from Dan Brier & Jordan Weiss. This is Weiss' debut as director... she may subsequently never get another shot.

Dumb, unoriginal, predictable, & implausible actioner "G20" delivers as intended... this turd was always gonna stink. At a South African G20 summit US President Viola Davis is taken hostage (with hubbie Anthony Anderson, her teen kids, and 19 other world leaders) by Aussie mercenary Anthony Starr (channelling the Hemsworths) and his cronies - yet Davis & family break free to heroically save the day (yay America!) as Bruce Willis "Die Hard" equivalents. But this is NO "Die Hard" and Davis is NO Willis. The three-person writing team puke up an awful crayon-level screenplay - not helped by Patricia Riggen's meh direction. It's pathetic - but is that a surprise?

Crispin Glover's hook was playing odd men in odd films, with perhaps none odder than 1991's supposed comedy "Rubin And Ed". Desperate salesman Howard Hesseman (the film's best aspect) tries dragging bizarre loner Glover to a pyramid-scheme seminar, but instead Glover drags HIM to the Utah desert to bury his decomposing cat (that apparently died in distressing circumstances). They squabble & fight but gradually bond... though not quite stereotypically. It's quirkiness & distastefulness may be original, but it still stinks. No wonder writer / director Trent Harris' career never really took off after this debut. It is a turd. An odd turd. Flush it far away.