Film Review: “Winner”

Entertaining whistleblower story offers strong performances, few insights

NSA contractor Reality Winner (Emilia Jones) makes a crucial decision as she leaves work for the day.

Whether you think she’s a traitor or a hero, you can’t argue that Reality Winner’s story is the stuff of Hollywood screenplays. Last year HBO premiered Reality, a docudrama based on a 2022 play that featured actual dialogue from FBI transcripts. Now Winner, a fictionalized, far less serious but no less entertaining take on the young woman’s story drops on streaming services. The picture may be a bit too blithe for its own good, but if you’re at all fascinated by Winner–and it’s hard not to be–you should give it a watch.

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Film Review: Blockers

Don’t let anyone Block you from seeing this smart, funny comedy

Parents Mitchell (John Cena, l.), Lisa (Leslie Mann), and Hunter (Ike Barinholtz) try to figure out what their daughters are up to on prom night. 

The teen sex comedy is given a refreshing update in Blockers, director Kay Cannon’s feature film directorial debut. Cannon, an actress and screenwriter best known for the Pitch Perfect series, brings a welcome feminine touch to a genre that’s typically directed by men, for a teenage boy audience (e.g., American Pie). Here, though, working from a script by brothers Brian and Jim Kehoe, Cannon’s focus is a trio of teen girls, friends since kindergarten, and their somewhat hastily made pact to lose their virginity on prom night. That the trio’s well intentioned but clueless parents set out to stop them (hence the film’s title) brings a layer of fun to the proceedings that widens the film’s audience from rebellious teens to adults, who may find themselves alternatively relating to the girls or the parents at any given moment. Continue reading “Film Review: Blockers