The Roses Review: A Wasted Opportunity Despite Colman and Cumberbatch's Chemistry

The Roses 

Directed by: Jay Roach

Written by: Tony McNamara

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman, Kate McKinnon

Release Date: August 29, 2025

The Roses (2025), starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman, aims for sharp satire but stumbles over lazy writing and implausible storytelling. Here’s why Jay Roach’s latest comedy fails to bloom.

A Comedy Built on a Flimsy Foundation

The Roses asks audiences to accept a setup that collapses under the slightest scrutiny. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Theo Rose, a world-class architect whose career is destroyed when a storm brings down one of his signature projects: a sailing museum topped with a massive wooden sail that crashes through the structure.

It’s a striking image, sure—but the logic doesn’t hold. Are we really to believe that a wildly successful architect wouldn’t account for basic weather conditions? Add to that the fact that architects design, while engineers and builders execute, and the idea of Theo being solely blamed for this disaster feels like screenwriting corner-cutting.

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Overnight Success, Overnight Failure

If Theo’s implausible fall from grace wasn’t enough, his wife Ivy (Olivia Colman) experiences an equally improbable rise. Her failing seafood restaurant, cheekily named We’ve Got Crabs, becomes an impromptu storm shelter. By sheer coincidence, one of the stranded diners is the world’s most influential food critic. Ivy’s cooking earns her a glowing review, and overnight she’s a culinary star while Theo is a professional pariah.

It’s an amusing contrast, but the lack of plausibility makes it hard to buy. Restaurants on the brink of closure don’t stock enough ingredients to feed a packed house during a storm. These details may seem minor, but they highlight the script’s laziness—problems that could have been fixed with minimal effort.

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Kate McKinnon’s Wasted Talent

One of the strangest missteps is Kate McKinnon’s role. While McKinnon is undeniably talented, her brief, out-of-nowhere appearances feel like filler rather than genuine comedy. In one particularly awkward third-act scene, she pops in, delivers an offbeat line, and vanishes, clearly inserted because director Jay Roach felt the film needed a laugh break.

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Chemistry That Can’t Save the Script

Despite the weak script, Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman are the movie’s saving grace. Their sharp banter, biting insults, and electric chemistry add genuine spark, especially in their flirtatious meet-cute. For a brief moment, it feels like The Roses might deliver a dark, screwball energy akin to The War of the Roses (1989). Unfortunately, those flashes of brilliance fade fast, leaving a comedy that feels forced and unfocused.

Why is Andy Samberg in this movie? He's filling the role played by Danny Devito in the 1989 version of this story, The War of the Roses, but where Devito felt essential to that film Samberg is awkwardy shoehorned into The Roses. He's supposed to be Benedict Cumberbatch's closest friend but the two have zero chemistry. I do like Andy Samberg but he is dreadfully miscast as a modern day yuppie lawyer. He's also given nothing to work with by a desperately overstuffed and still lazy screenplay. 

Allison Janney, on the other hand, brings it in a cameo as Ivy's divorce lawyer. Where the rest of The Roses flounders, unwilling to fully commit to the nasty tone of the 1989 movue, Janney plays her part as if she should have been cast in place of Olivia Colman. Janney's energy is pure mercenary comic savagery and I loved it. It's about the only thing I love about this otherwise desperately mediocre and inept film. 

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Final Verdict

The Roses is proof that star power and witty dialogue aren’t enough to save a film with a flimsy premise and lazy writing. While Cumberbatch and Colman give it their all, Jay Roach’s direction leans too heavily on contrivances and random gags, resulting in a movie that feels half-baked. Fans of the stars might find a few laughs, but most audiences will leave disappointed.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere — A Soulful Look at the Making of Nebraska

Springsteen Deliver Me from Nowhere

Directed by: Scott Cooper

Written by: Scott Cooper

Starring: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Odessa Young, Stephen Graham

Release Date: October 24, 2025

4.5 out of 5 stars

Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is a raw, poetic music biopic that captures Bruce Springsteen’s soul-searching journey through the making of Nebraska. Jeremy Allen White gives one of the year’s most powerful performances in this haunting portrayal of The Boss at a crossroads.

A Different Kind of Music Biopic

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is not your typical music biopic. Rather than tracing Bruce Springsteen’s entire life or career, Scott Cooper’s film zeroes in on a single, defining moment — the creation of Nebraska, one of the most personal and daring albums ever made by a major recording artist.

Coming off the chart-topping success of The River and standing on the edge of superstardom with Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen was poised to become an American icon. Yet, instead of leaning into commercial glory, he turned inward. The film powerfully captures this creative detour — a spiritual reckoning that would define the artist he became.

A Record Born from Darkness

Cooper’s film shows a restless Springsteen retreating to a secluded home in the woods of New Jersey. Still sweating from his marathon River tour, Bruce craves peace but finds none. His mind is haunted by old ghosts, regrets, and fears that can only be exorcised through music.

As Jeremy Strong’s Jon Landau shields Bruce from the pressures of record executives, he watches helplessly as his friend unravels. The industry demands radio hits — but Bruce is chasing something far more personal: truth, pain, and redemption.

Amid the creative storm, Bruce meets Faye (Odessa Young), a local woman whose quiet warmth offers a fleeting sense of connection. Their romance, tender but doomed, becomes another layer of emotional fuel for the songs that would make Nebraska timeless.

The Inspiration Behind Nebraska

What makes Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere remarkable is Cooper’s refusal to reduce the album’s genesis to tidy cinematic moments. The film doesn’t rely on obvious “aha!” inspirations. Yes, we see Springsteen watching Terrence Malick’s Badlands — the direct inspiration for the song “Nebraska” — but most of the music seems to emerge from deep within Bruce’s psyche.

In one of the film’s most striking interpretations, Bruce’s fascination with the story of Charles Starkweather reflects his fear of his own darker impulses. Cooper subtly suggests that Bruce identifies with the violence and isolation of his subjects — that his empathy comes from confronting his own emotional volatility.

The Father and the Ghosts of Home

Running beneath the entire film is Springsteen’s fraught relationship with his father, powerfully portrayed by Stephen Graham in what feels like an Oscar-worthy supporting performance. In monochrome flashbacks, we see a man broken by life — angry, volatile, but deeply human.

Bruce’s complicated relationship with his father is a dark undercurrent throughout all of Nebraska, culminating in the song My Father’s House, a broken hearted elegy that may not be fully autobiographical but carries within it all the hurt feelings and lasting love that defined Bruce’s love for his father.

Watching White and Graham give life to these two complicated men is devastating in its beauty and power. Lifetimes of emotions clash and when you see their final scene together in Springsteen Deliver Me from Nowhere, I dare you not to cry. A Father and a son unable to say the things they’ve always wanted to say coming out instead as tears.

Jeremy Allen White Delivers a Career-Defining Performance

Jeremy Allen White doesn’t look exactly like Bruce Springsteen — and that’s the point. His performance transcends imitation. What he captures instead is the essence of The Boss: the haunted eyes, the internal struggle, the yearning to express something too painful for words.

White’s performance feels lived-in, exhausted, and electric all at once. You can feel the tension in his shoulders and hear the weight of the songs in his silences. When he strums through “Atlantic City” or “Highway Patrolman,” it’s less an act of recreation and more a spiritual channeling.

A Film Worthy of the Album

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere achieves what few music biopics do — it matches the soul of its subject. Scott Cooper’s subdued, naturalistic direction mirrors the stark black-and-white poetry of Nebraska. The film is quiet, mournful, and deeply moving, avoiding Hollywood gloss in favor of honesty.

Like the album itself, this film is not about fame, but about isolation and redemption. It’s about a man confronting himself before he can face the world.

By the end, Deliver Me from Nowhere feels less like a biopic and more like an elegy — not just for a record, but for a version of Bruce Springsteen that had to die so the rest of his legend could live.

One of the best films of 2025 — and one of the most human.

The Cider House Rules: Cloying, Sanctimonious, and Unbearably Shallow

The Cider House Rules 

Directed by Lasse Hallstron 

Written by Lasse Hallstrom 

Starring Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, Michael Caine, Paul Rudd

Release Date January 7th, 2000 

Lasse Hallström’s The Cider House Rules turns complex themes of abortion, morality, and human choice into a syrupy sermon. A cloying, shallow Oscar darling that proves even the best actors can’t save a movie this hollow.

When Sentimentality Smothers Substance

Lasse Hallström’s cloying, simpering direction grates on my nerves. His 1998 feature Chocolat was arguably the nadir of his soft-focus, soft-headed romanticism. Hallström favors simple emotional beats over shading or moral complexity. He likes his dramas black and white—no gray, no grit, no blood. It’s drama for toddlers, scrubbed clean of anything that might sting.

But as bad as Chocolat is, The Cider House Rules may be even worse. Working with writer John Irving, Hallström adds sanctimony to his simplistic brew. Now, not only are his characters devoid of depth, they’re indignant about it.

The Cider House Rules takes the early, ugly years before Roe v. Wade—a time when women risked their lives for autonomy—and turns them into a homey parable about “doing what’s right.” The result is a Hallmark-card sermon about moral courage with all the danger and ambiguity stripped away.

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The Story: A Moral Dilemma Without Any Weight

Tobey Maguire plays Homer, an orphan raised in a New England orphanage by the kindly Dr. Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine). Larch, in addition to running the orphanage, performs secret abortions for desperate women. He begins teaching Homer medicine—and abortion—hoping the boy will carry on his work. But Homer, uncomfortable with the practice’s legality and morality, leaves to find his own way.

When Homer meets Candy (Charlize Theron) and her boyfriend Wally (Paul Rudd), he leaves the orphanage to work on their family’s apple orchard. With Wally away at war, Homer and Candy fall into a forbidden romance. But dark secrets emerge when one of the orchard workers, Arthur, impregnates his daughter Rose (Erykah Badu). Homer faces a moral crossroads that should carry devastating weight—but doesn’t.

Because under Hallström’s soft lighting and swelling strings, the story feels sanitized. Homer’s moral awakening—whether to help a woman abort her father’s child—plays like he’s deciding between steak or fish at dinner.

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Hallström’s Hallmark Aesthetic vs. Harsh Reality

Surprise: Hallström’s gauzy, sentimental style misses the point when tackling a rape-incest-abortion storyline. There’s no tension, no internal struggle, no real sense of consequence. The film desperately needs a director with emotional heft, not one obsessed with moral tidiness and gentle lighting.

Instead, every difficult decision feels preordained, as if made during a commercial break. The result is a movie that congratulates itself for tackling “tough” subjects while sanding off every rough edge.

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Oscar Night Regrets: The Great Michael Caine Robbery

If I sound bitter toward The Cider House Rules, I am—but my bitterness extends to the 2000 Academy Awards, where Michael Caine won Best Supporting Actor for this performance.

That year, Tom Cruise delivered one of the greatest performances of his career in Magnolia—a volcanic, vulnerable masterclass that laid bare the emptiness inside a man hiding behind charisma. Cruise’s work was electric and fearless. Caine’s was cozy and predictable.

When Caine won, it felt like Hollywood was rewarding comfort over challenge, tradition over innovation. The Cider House Rules was easy to watch, easy to forget, and utterly unworthy of that moment.

And that cloying line—“Goodnight, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England”—still makes me cringe.

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Final Thoughts

The Cider House Rules is the epitome of Oscar bait: a self-satisfied, sentimental drama that mistakes moral platitudes for emotional depth. It flatters its audience instead of challenging them, offering easy answers where none exist.

In a just world, this movie would’ve been forgotten. Instead, it stands as a cautionary tale of what happens when Hollywood mistakes sincerity for insight.

Despicable Me 3 Is Wildly Adequate: Illumination’s Masterpiece of Mediocrity

Despicable Me 3 

⭐️⭐️ (2 out of 5)

Directed by: Pierre Coffin & Kyle Balda

Written by: Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio

Starring: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Trey Parker, Julie Andrews

June 30th, 2017 

Despicable Me 3 is proof that even global animation hits can run out of steam. Steve Carell returns as Gru in a sequel that’s bright, loud, and utterly mediocre — a film that coasts on nostalgia and Minion merchandising more than storytelling.

The Latest from Illumination Is Awesomely Mediocre

Despicable Me 3 is so wildly mediocre, so achingly adequate, and so puzzlingly prosaic that I can barely bring myself to write about it. Honestly, I spent more time researching synonyms for “mediocre” than thinking about the movie itself.

The film represents the perfect middle ground between competence and boredom — a brightly colored void where jokes exist, animation happens, and absolutely nothing resonates. It’s the cinematic equivalent of eating plain oatmeal while watching a fireworks display through a fogged window. There’s noise and movement, but nothing of substance.

Illumination has always aimed to make movies that feel familiar enough to comfort kids and disposable enough to keep parents from complaining. With Despicable Me 3, they’ve refined that formula to a glossy art form. The result is a film that is perfectly fine — and utterly lifeless.

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Gru vs. Bratt: When Nostalgia Becomes a Gimmick

The story begins with reformed super-villain Gru (Steve Carell) continuing his new career as a hero, this time alongside his equally well-meaning wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig). Their target: Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker), a villain obsessed with the 1980s, complete with purple shoulder pads, bubble gum weapons, and a synth-heavy soundtrack.

The idea is mildly clever at first. The visual jokes — Rubik’s Cubes, keytars, moonwalks — hit a nostalgic sweet spot. But the novelty burns out fast. Bratt becomes a one-note character, and his endless dance battles start to feel like rejected sketches from a forgotten SNL episode.

The 1980s aesthetic should have offered room for satire or irony, but instead, it’s just a surface-level gimmick. There’s no commentary, no depth — just a parade of neon references that hope to distract you from realizing how little story there actually is.

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Double Trouble: The Twin Brother Nobody Asked For

Because one thin plotline isn’t enough, the movie introduces Gru’s long-lost twin brother, Dru. He’s got a head of golden hair, a sunny personality, and absolutely no reason to exist beyond giving Steve Carell another voice to perform.

The central joke is that Dru is handsome and terrible at being a villain. That’s it. The entire subplot rests on this one-note contrast. Even worse, the film tries to wring humor out of Gru’s cruel mother (voiced by Julie Andrews), who reveals she deliberately hid Dru’s existence from Gru. It’s a weirdly mean-spirited twist played for laughs — as if emotional neglect were the setup for a punchline.

Adding insult to injury, Gru’s mother also gets a recycled gag involving her ogling her swim coaches. It’s creepy, lazy, and completely unnecessary. This is supposed to be family entertainment, but much of the humor lands somewhere between tone-deaf and uncomfortable.

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Meanwhile, the Minions Are Still Here

Of course, no Despicable Me film would dare skip its real stars — the Minions. This time, they rebel against Gru and head off on their own misadventure, eventually winding up in jail.

Their subplot exists for one clear reason: to justify another round of Minion toys. The prison sequence includes two elaborate musical numbers, both of which feel like filler created to extend the runtime and give the marketing team something to work with. The Minions remain marketable chaos engines, but without the emotional anchor of Gru and the girls, they’re just noise.

When Despicable Me premiered in 2010, the Minions were fresh and funny — supporting characters with visual wit. Seven years later, they’ve become corporate mascots for prepackaged chaos, speaking in gibberish while executives calculate how many lunchboxes they can move.

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From Heartfelt to Hollow

The original Despicable Me had heart. Its central story — a villain softened by his love for three orphans — was simple but touching. You rooted for Gru because there was something human beneath the cartoon.

By the sequel, that emotional foundation had eroded, replaced by noisy spectacle and toy-friendly antics. Now, in Despicable Me 3, the series has reached its final stage of evolution: total emotional vacancy.

The movie isn’t hateful or incompetent, but it is aggressively safe. Every design choice, every joke, every musical cue feels pre-approved by a focus group. It’s a film made by talented people working within the most soul-crushing boundaries imaginable.

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When Mercenary Filmmaking Becomes the Point

At least when Pixar goes mercenary, there’s still a trace of artistry. Cars 3, for all its faults, had craftsmanship and genuine affection for its characters. Illumination, by contrast, seems content to coast on brand recognition.

Their philosophy appears to be: make it cute, make it fast, make it bright, and make it sell. The animators do fine work, the voice cast gives professional performances, and yet the movie still feels hollow — a product disguised as a story.

Millions of dollars and countless hours of labor have gone into creating something aggressively average. It’s not a failure, but it’s not a success either. It simply exists — an echo of better movies made by studios that still care about storytelling.

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Final Thoughts

Despicable Me 3 is competent, colorful, and completely uninspired. It never offends, but it never delights. It’s a film designed to be consumed, not remembered — the cinematic equivalent of a fast-food meal you forget five minutes after eating.

There’s no passion here, no spark of creativity. Just another round of Minions, another paper-thin plot, and another reminder that Illumination has mastered the art of making movies that are “good enough.”

Final Rating: ⭐️⭐️ (2 out of 5)

Technically fine, emotionally vacant — Despicable Me 3 is a monument to mediocrity in high definition.

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