The Invitation : My Review

I saw a great thriller this weekend called The Invitation.  It stars Logan William Green as Will who along with his girlfriend Kira (Middle of Nowhere's Emayatzy Corinealdi) are invited to a dinner party thrown by his ex-wife Eden and her second husband David.  Good food and great conversation are not the only things on the menu, unfortunately. There are diabolical plans afoot and Will seems to be the only member of  the dinner party who senses this. I'm not going to spoil this movie because I want you all to watch for yourselves. But yes it is a thriller, not too gory but extremely suspenseful and well worth the price to stream it.

Taut thrillers are hard to come by nowadays and trust me when I say The Invitation is a hard one to turn down.

I Smile Back : My Review

Sarah Silverman stretches her dramatic chops in this uneven story of an upper-class suburban wife and mother who struggles with depression and addiction.

Laney Brooks seems to have it all: cute kids, a successful husband, and a sprawling home but seems to be on a quest to ruin it all with her coke snorting, drinking, and adulterous ways. Giving up lithium has not served Laney well. Movies about addiction and depression can work, but this script was all over the place just like its lead character. Just when you think that Laney is going to get the help she needs after stooping so low as to dry hump one of her daughter's stuffed animals (don't ask), cursing out another parent, and meeting her friend's husband for quickies at hotels, after what seems like all of  5 minutes of normalcy she is back to snorting, drinking, and screwing around. The slide back into crazy town happens after a meeting with her estranged father who left Laney at the age of nine, remarried , and now has a daughter who is in elementary school. How weird is that?

This movie is only an hour and twenty-five minutes, and the ending is beyond ridiculous.  I commend Sarah Silverman for wanting to grow as an actress, but she will have to do better than this. Way better.