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A Good Woman

Time Out says

Mike Barker’s film takes great pains to keep the relationship between its two central characters—a Mrs. Erlynne and a Mrs. Windermere—shrouded in mystery. So the revelation, midway through the movie, will come as something less than a bombshell for anyone who read Lady Windermere’s Fan in high school. A Good Woman scrambles the order of Oscar Wilde’s narrative and gives the proceedings a Merchant-Ivory gloss by transporting them to Amalfi, playground of the rich during the 1930s: lots of cloche hats and posh accents.

Helen Hunt stars as glamorous, middle-aged Mrs. Erlynne, who descends upon the coastal village where a coterie of English and American tourists pass their holidays drinking and gossiping. She is courted by wealthy, good-natured Tuppy (Tom Wilkinson), but everyone assumes she’s having an affair with handsome young Mr. Windermere (Mark Umbers), while Lord Darlington (Campbell-Moore), a clever rou, makes moves on girlish Mrs. Windermere (Johansson).

It’s a capable team of actors, curiously miscast. Even done up with blood-red lipstick and plunging dcolletage, Hunt is too pert and pleasing to impress as Mrs. Erlynne. Campbell-Moore hasn’t the sharpness for Darlington, and Johansson—well, let’s just say that after her unforgettably sultry turn in Match Point , audiences may find her a less than credible ingenue. Wilde’s wit and heart are more or less intact, but the whole stylish exercise seems rather beside the point. (Opens Fri; see Index for venues.) —Tom Beer

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MPAA Rating

Produced by, released by, a good woman (2004), directed by mike barker.

AllMovie Rating 5
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Synopsis by Mark Deming

Characteristics, related movies.

A Good Woman

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Helen Hunt (Mrs. Erlynne) Scarlett Johansson (Meg Windermere) Tom Wilkinson (Tuppy) Milena Vukotic (Contessa Lucchino) Stephen Campbell Moore (Lord Darlington) Mark Umbers (Robert Windemere) Roger Hammond (Cecil) John Standing (Dumby) Giorgia Massetti (Alessandra) Diana Hardcastle (Lady Plymdale)

Mike Barker

A 1930s American socialite creates a scandal in the expatriate high society of the Amalfi Coast of Italy when she forms a secretive relationship with a wealthy American unbeknownst to his young wife.

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More about A Good Woman

A wet teabag of a movie, A Good Woman reworks Oscar Wilde's Lady Windemere's Fan as a jazz-age drama set in the …

A Good Woman 2004

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Connie Ogle, Miami Herald : The barbs fly with zest and impeccable comic timing in A Good Woman. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times : A Good Woman suffers from a staggeringly bad miscasting of its central role and from a cut-and-paste screenplay that substitutes random insertions of Wilde epigrams for character. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune : A Good Woman has the will to adapt Wilde to a fresh milieu, but not the way. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle : Something is wrong with A Good Woman: The lightning never strikes. It's never quite alive. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution : A stunning setting, clever dialogue, gorgeous period costumes by John Bloomfield (he did last year's Being Julia) and a honey of a performance by Wilkinson as a practical man of great means who sees nothing wrong in being wanted for his money. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club : A wet teabag of a movie. Read more

Bill Muller, Arizona Republic : All the fun in A Good Woman occurs off in the corners, while the action in center-frame does little to capture your fancy. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe : A Good Woman above all lacks the joyful, lucid anger that lights up Wilde's plays -- the sense that beneath the witticisms he's telling it like it is to people who aren't used to hearing it. Read more

Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times : A Good Woman won't ruin anyone's day, but it won't make anyone's either, and it won't get the great Irish playwright anything like the admiration his work deserves. Read more

Bruce Westbrook, Houston Chronicle : For those in the mood for love, A Good Woman is more than good. It's one of the best films of the new year. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor : [Tom] Wilkinson artfully deepens a character who in Wilde's original play was rather boobish. It's a marvelous performance in a pretty good film. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly : An unsorted pile of misappropriated period-piece conventions. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press : Rarely have so many regularly employed professionals created something so utterly undistinguished as A Good Woman. Read more

Mario Tarradell, Dallas Morning News : For the eyes, it's a cinematic banquet filled with the colors, wardrobe and scenery of 1930s Italy. For the mind, it's a sleek, intelligent story about love and money. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly : Wilde himself would have rolled his eyes at Mike Barker's shallow effort to spiff up the play for transatlantic markets. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday : The movie's attempt to update the play from Victorian England to 1930s Italy is so clumsy, tedious and pleased with itself that you wish Wilde himself would return from the dead to fire a few cogent, lethal bon mots at its backside. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger : Wilde isn't supposed to be lovely, or charming. He's supposed to be funny, wicked, rude and as full of serious feeling as a lavender butterfly. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News : Besides the consuming, universal glibness of its characters, A Good Woman is also undermined by some ditsy casting. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews : Although the narrative of A Good Woman exists primarily as an excuse for Wilde's dialogue, it works well enough to satisfy in its own right. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch : Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail : ... willfully odd movie ... Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star : Read more

Time Out : Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today : The source material and supporting actors make A Good Woman a fairly good movie. But the performances by Helen Hunt as an aging seductress and Scarlett Johansson as a young bride are closer to mediocre. Read more

Derek Elley, Variety : Read more

Jessica Winter, Village Voice : This Good Woman is an amiable drama queen, sluggish of gait and reliant on retail therapy. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post : A clever rearranging of Oscar Wilde's first great play, Lady Windermere's Fan. Read more

Good Woman, A (Spain/Italy/Luxembourg/United Kingdom/United State, 2004)

It has taken this workmanlike adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play, "Lady Windermere's Fan," more than a year to reach U.S. movie screens. The reason it's here now probably has less to do with a sudden interest in Wilde than it does with the white-hot rise to stardom of one of its leads, Scarlett Johansson. The actress made the movie as she was on the rise, and it showed at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival (a year after Lost in Translation and The Girl with the Pearl Earring ). But it wasn't until last year that Johansson's art house popularity spilled into multiplexes, and now she's the kind of commodity that Lions Gate Films sees a chance to exploit.

With Oscar Wilde plays, there are two givens. The plot will revolve around some kind of mistaken identity and the dialogue will be so witty that no one will care much about the story. Like The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband , A Good Woman (the film's title, not the play's) fits those criteria. The movie succeeds because screenwriter Howard Himelstein keeps Wilde's best lines intact and the actors speak the words with practiced confidence.

Mrs. Erlynne (Helen Hunt) is an American woman of ill repute seeking refuge in Italy around 1930. Shortly after her arrival in Europe, she latches onto a wealthy young American abroad named Robert Windermere (Mark Umbers), who is newly married to the naïve, pretty Meg (Scarlett Johansson). But Robert's clandestine meetings with Mrs. Erlynne are not what they appear to be to the prying eyes of gossipy friends and neighbors, and the checks he writes aren't for services rendered. Meanwhile, the charming Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell Moore) has his eyes on Meg, and sees a way to use Robert's apparent infidelity to his advantage. And a liberal aristocrat (Tom Wilkinson) thinks there's a softer side to Mrs. Erlynne that everyone else is missing. From there, the story plays out as expected, with secrets being revealed and concealed. One refreshing twist is that not everyone knows everything by the time the final reel has unspooled.

In terms of recent Oscar Wilde adaptations, this one is a little above The Importance of Being Earnest , but not on the level of An Ideal Husband . The viewer's chief enjoyment of Mike Barker's interpretation is the conversation, so those who don't appreciate literate, talky motion pictures will be bored by what this one has to offer (unless they become mesmerized by the copious cleavage on display). Lines of note include: "Bigamy's having one wife too many. So is monogamy," "The best way to keep my word is never to give it," "My own business bores me. I much prefer other people's," "Modern marriage thrives on mutual deception," and "You have no redeeming vices."

Helen Hunt, like Julianne Moore in An Ideal Husband , is an American actress playing a mysterious woman whose entrance into a stale community stirs things up a little. It's a near-perfect performance for Hunt, the frequency of whose screen appearances has dwindled of late. Johansson is nearly as good as the innocent Meg, who believes that she knows her husband because they have been married for a whole year. Tom Wilkinson brings a mixture of good humor and momentary pathos to the character of Tuppy. British veteran John Standing has a supporting role as another of the indolent British expatriates.

Although the narrative of A Good Woman exists primarily as an excuse for Wilde's dialogue, it works well enough to satisfy in its own right. There's nothing surprising about the twists that Wilde has built into the story, but it's interesting to view how the misunderstandings shake the foundations of the characters impacted by them, and to see how each of these individuals develops. A Good Woman is good enough to have warranted an art-house distribution before now, but at least the film has not been lost on a distributor's dusty shelves or relegated to a straight-to-DVD release. The dialogue and performances are worth more than that.

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Eye For Film >> Movies >> A Good Woman (2004) Film Review

A Good Woman

Reviewed by: Scott Macdonald

Only a true cynic would fail to get something from Mike Barker's A Good Woman, a slightly lifeless adaptation of Oscar Wilde's famous play Lady Windermere's Fan. Full of zesty barbarous language and wordplay, it reminds me of why Wilde is so revered. This adaptation ended up by turning me into a fan.

The film's setting has been altered to a lazy Italian village in the early Thirties, complete with all the matching cliches, languid mid-European mood music, stereotypical sunset-kissed architecture and a quickly glanced, suitably sombre funeral as an opener.

It is the story of a young married couple, the 20-year-old Lady Meg Windermere (Scarlett Johansson) and her well off husband Robert (Mark Umbers). A woman enters their lives, a notorious supposed man-eater, Mrs Stella Erlynne (a luminous Helen Hunt), who makes no bones about how she earns her living, accepting "favours" from well off men. And there are none more well off than Tuppy (Tom Wilkinson), a lordly man, married twice already - who's "sentiments lead to settlements" - who has fallen head over heels for Stella. The other gossip mongering lords and ladies of the village soon set to work on Mrs. Erlynne, setting the young married couple's ears aflame with cutting insults and superbly fluid language.

The Good Woman of the title, Mrs. Erlynne, ganders our sympathies immediately and it becomes readily clear that all is not well behind those piercing, wounded eyes. Early on, she is seen pawning her jewellery in New York, in an effort to leave it all behind, to head to Italy, where the "rich and famous" dwell."Poor, and infamous...close enough", she murmurs. The scandalous woman has more to do, than merely bartering sex for cash. Oh, much more than that is on her mind.

Her reasons have to do with Lady Windermere, whose missing fan becomes the quintessential McGuffin. Johansson is, without doubt, the weak link in the cast. She does not appear as a gentle-minded, innocent soft touch, with "no redeeming vices," which the movie would require, in order for the plot to mesh well. Then again, she is great eye-candy in her Thirties Italian fashion, pouring sex appeal into the pot with a ladle.

One of A Good Woman's most enjoyable traits is the social universe that has been created. Contessa Lucchino (Milena Vukotic) - along with her four dogs, reminds me, if only subjectively, of A Fish Called Wanda - takes substantial pleasure in plopping her nose into the affairs of others, violently stealing her ornithologist niece's binoculars for spying, and a grand network of colleagues and contacts feed her lust for information and hearsay. Then again, she dryly notes of the secrecy involved. "If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world," quoting Blaise Pascal. Or better still, Mrs Erlynne completely ignores the cronyism of the characters, quickly snipping Meg down a peg or two with, "If we're always guided by other people's opinions, then what's the point of having our own?"

If "people like to talk", then Barker should let them do so, since the best moments are when the characters openly share their witty and cynical views of the world. Along with the Contessa is another of Wilde's spokesmen, Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell More), a charming, witty and impeccably mannered cad and hypocrite. While cheerfully and continuously preaching the lack of desire to be with anyone, he makes it his life's work to seduce the vulnerable Meg through the posture of friendship. He's the kind of friend that men love to be with and women also love, until he's had them in his bed.

The real issue I have with the film is that, aside from some well-delivered barbs, much of the real charm of the story has gone missing. Also, it goes on too long (even at a faint 90 minutes), with a flabby and uninvolving back-end. Just when you want the Idiot plot to finish, it continues for at least another 15 minutes. Thankfully, the reason for the characters saying nothing, when honesty would suffice, is a good one.

All in all, it's a cheerful, well-produced film that overstays its welcome and makes little effort to transcend the material.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, a good woman is hard to find.

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The sight of Sarah Bolger ’s bare neck and shoulders flecked with rivulets of blood and bits of human tissue is a riveting one, hence an apt hook on which to begin this unrelenting thriller. Here she’s about to try to shower off the matter, and she does so with a matter-of-factness that suggests she’s not anybody’s guilt-ridden Lady Macbeth. She’ll shed blood if she has to, and over the course of this picture she’ll get pretty good at it.

The movie flashes back to the not-so-vague miseries of this character’s life—she’s also named Sarah—not too long before. She’s a new widow! Her husband was mysteriously murdered! The youngest of her two children has stopped talking! Her own mother is a scolding drudge! People in her council flats development think her husband was a drug dealer! And so on. Things get markedly worse when a real drug dealer, the tattooed and mouthy Tito, storms into her place trying to avoid some kind of trouble and decides that her joint would be not just a great place to take a nap but to store some narcotics he’s nicked from a local crime lord. “It’s not east, what we do,” Tito—who has apparently adopted his name from that of the Eastern European leader, or something—petulantly protests to Sarah, a little before trying to rape her. This does not go well, for him.

“A Good Woman Is Hard To Find,” directed by Abner Pastoll from a script by Ronan Blaney , is not the glib girl-power vengeance fantasy it could well have been. It’s not as easy as that, but you actually kind of wish it were a lot of the time. Sarah is not a natural born killer, nor a wunderkind at dismembering a corpse, which she is compelled to do at one point. She’s also not quite as exemplary a moral actor as one would wish. Eventually the local crime lord who’s searching for Tito picks up his scent near Sarah’s place, and when he and his thugs start menacing Sarah, a couple of noble sanitation workers come to her aid, and she just runs off with the kids and allows those fluorescent-yellow-jacketed knights take brutal beatings.

But then again, consider what Sarah’s up against. At one point the cops come into her place and turn it upside down for the express purpose of messing with her. As Henry Fonda put it in John Ford ’s “ My Darling Clementine ,” “What kind of a town IS this?”

It’s a town whose local crime lord—played by Edward Hogg , whose name suggests exactly what he does with his screen time—unfortunately, talks like a character in a bad Tarantino knockoff, asking one of the lugs he tortures to give him an example of a metaphor and then inflicting great pain when the kid replies with a simile.

I cannot lie, though. As cranky as much of the movie made me, Pastoll, Blaney, and especially Bolger all contrive to deliver as satisfying a climax and dénouement to this saga as one could hope for. So there is that.

Available on VOD today, 5/8.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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A Good Woman

A Good Woman Review

13 May 2005

A Good Woman

Didn't this Oscar Wilde play used to be funny? The zingers ("Her hair turned quite gold with grief") are still here. But we don't remember quite so much Sturm und Drang in the piece, an arch comedy of manners - or so we'd always thought - about marriage, sex, class and social-climbing, in which a misunderstanding fanned by indiscretions, mischief and malice is almost the undoing of a good woman.

Getting out of Victorian England to go international, this British-Italian production transforms the honeymooning Windermeres (Scarlett Johansson and Mark Umbers) into fabulously wealthy Americans, human catnip to an older set of worldly wags, whose lives are knocked out of whack when notorious courtesan Mrs. Stella Erlynne (Helen Hunt) arrives. She's been run out of New York society penniless and, although far from a pollo primavera, is hellbent on snaring another rich man to keep her in the style to which she has become accustomed.

Mrs. E improbably gets her crimson claws into clean-cut Robert Windermere (Umbers), and in no time at all he's providing her with a villa, accounts at smart shops and ridiculous wads of money. Naturally, the yacht club is abuzz, and the young wife is the last to know.

Typically, the American stars are supposed to be the draw, but it's the Euro thesps in support who have the best lines and know best what to do with them, as they sit around card tables gargling gin and gossiping. Wilkinson's affable, knowing aristocrat "Tuppy" effortlessly steals the show. But Hunt, while often terrific in some things (she has an Oscar to prove it), is a miscast disaster here, pinched and unpleasant playing a woman supposed to be so alluring and fascinating that men fall at her feet.

Proposing that a young man would do the dirty on his bride with a hardened tart old enough to be her mother - wherein, of course, hangs the tale - beggars belief. And, frankly, who cares about any of them? The characters are largely so lifeless here that their deceptions merely become tiresome.

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Critics have panned Jerry Seinfeld's 'Unfrosted.' One called it 'one of the worst films of the decade.'

Jerry Seinfeld's directorial debut, "Unfrosted," is out now on Netflix.
Critics said that the movie is filled with gags but doesn't have a clear, interesting story.
Some said only few moments in the movie are actually funny.

Jerry Seinfeld 's new movie "Unfrosted," about the creation of Pop-Tarts, has been flooded with negative reviews, leaving critics wondering why the comedy movie isn't very funny.

Seinfeld's directorial debut is framed as a comedic take on more serious brand biopics that have become popular in recent years, including movies such as " Air " and "Blackberry."

Instead of recreating real-life events, Seinfeld's film features bizarre, fictional moments.

Seinfeld recently stirred controversy after telling the New Yorker that TV comedy had been ruined by "the extreme left and PC crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people."

" Unfrosted " appears to respond to this, as many critics said the movie is filled with uninhibited jokes that overtake the story. But, according to them, there are a few moments in the film where the jokes land.

Here's what critics have said about "Unfrosted," which is streaming now on Netflix.

Some critics were positive and said the film had some truly funny moments.

"Unfrosted" currently has a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score of 42% and an audience score of 53%.

Despite this, the film debuted with a rotten rating (to have a fresh score, more than 60% of the reviews need to be positive). Some critics did enjoy the film.

The Guardian 's film critic Peter Bradshaw said the film was "amiable and funny."

Meanwhile, The New York Times selected the movie as its Critic's Pick for the week. In its review, Amy Nicholson wrote, "The jokes spill forth so fast that there's no time for the shtick to get soggy."

However, most were not as nice.

One critic described it as "one of the worst films of the decade ."

The Chicago Sun-Times entertainment columnist Richard Roeper wrote that the film was "one of the worst films of the decade so far."

William Bibbiani, a critic for The Wrap , began his review: "Jerry Seinfeld's new comedy 'Unfrosted' is an impressive film. It's not a good film, and it's not a funny film, but if you watch the first three hours on Netflix and then pause it, you'll find that somehow only one hour has passed. And that is pretty impressive, in a boring way."

The Telegraph film critic Tim Robey described his viewing experience as "trapped in a writers' room full of stale air."

"When we reach minute 25, and not one joke has sparkled, you dream of escape," he said.

Critics said "Unfrosted" doesn't give any insight into the creation of Pop-Tarts.

If you are interested in the history of Pop-Tarts , this movie is not for you. Some critics have described the movie as "hollow," arguing that the story has nothing to say about Pop-Tarts, the cereal business, or even brand biopics.

Daily Beast critic Nick Schager wrote: "With no inspired perspective on its subject matter, the film proves a soggy attempt at deriving humor from a breakfast-wars premise that seems better fit for a five-minute Saturday Night Live sketch."

Ross Bonaime, Collider 's senior film editor, wrote, referring to "Seinfeld": "Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that the man who created a 'show about nothing' has also made a movie that feels as hollow as a Froot Loop. Seinfeld has made a directorial debut that ends up feeling like a bowl of sugary cereal: not a terrible thing to eat, but not as fulfilling or substantial as you might've hoped it would be."

Critics say the movie sacrifices the story for jokes that aren't good.

The one thing "Unfrosted" offers is jokes and gags and, according to critics, there's a lot of them.

Bonamine wrote that the bizarre storylines in the movie are used to drop more jokes and "an absurd amount of cameos" rather than telling an interesting story.

"It's as though Seinfeld and his team crafted the jokes they wanted to tell within this world, then created a flimsy story around it to collect them all," he wrote.

Bibbiani wrote: "There's a non-stop cavalcade of celebrity cameos which aren't funny because, for the most part, the whole joke is that they're celebrity cameos. The humor is thuddingly blunt, and the punchlines constantly call attention to themselves, which robs them of their punch."

Kate Stables wrote for GamesRadar : "The mad rush to see how many jokes, pastiches, and celebrity cameos it can pack in (there's a terrific Mad Man interlude) produces a periodically frantic feel, amped up by the many 60s hits on the soundtrack."

Critics say the tone of the movie is all over the place.

Many critics also said the movie failed to have a consistent tone because of the absurdity of the jokes.

Bonamine wrote that the cinematography sometimes made the movie look like a "candy-colored dream world," while other moments felt like a "single-camera sitcom."

The Times of London film critic Kevin Maher wrote: "The tone, however, is scattershot at best, and the film swings between madcap Willy Wonka-style fable and soft corporate satire."

Danny Leigh, a Financial Times critic, concluded his review that the movie feels like it was constructed for Seinfeld's own enjoyment.

"What strange mix of nostalgic boomers, under-12s, and Seinfeld completists is the target audience for a film that plays like a comedy for kids, but with running gags about Walter Cronkite's drinking?" he wrote. "Then you get the joke. It has been made for the only person on earth it could also have been made by: Jerry Seinfeld. He still can't act, and I'm really not sure he can direct either, but he has the gift of a true auteur for making a movie in his image."

"Unfrosted" is filled with cameos, but only a few standouts.

"Unfrosted" boasts a big cast of major names, including Jon Hamm, Hugh Grant, Melissa McCarthy , Bill Burr, Peter Dinklage, and Fred Armisen. However, only a few actors stand out.

Bibbiani said Grant , who stars as the man under the Tony the Tiger cereal mascot, "has the film's only consistently funny subplot."

Bradshaw wrote: "There are also nice supporting roles and cameos, including an extraordinary dual walk-on from Jon Hamm and John Slattery, recreating their ad exec Mad Men personae Don Draper and Roger Sterling."

Schagor wrote that one of the child actors, Eleanor Sweeney, "manages to one-up the film's cavalcade of stars" in one scene.

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Music Review: Sia soars with first solo album in 8 years, ‘Reasonable Woman’

This cover image released by Atlantic Records shows “Reasonable Woman” by Sia. (Atlantic Records via AP)

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A whole album of Sia singing alone is great — great, don’t get us wrong — but Sia paired with the icon Chaka Khan? Fire. Their new duet “Immortal Queen” is everything you’d want in a combo of Sia and Khan — dueling soaring voices, preening egos and insane lyrics about time travel and robot servants.

“In one thousand million years/I’mma still be everywhere,” they sing. “Before planet Earth was here/I was riding a lightyear.” To which we bow and say: Yas, queens.

“Immortal Queen,” out Friday, is just one of the highlights of the super 15-track “Reasonable Woman,” Sia’s first solo album since 2016 and following her work on the movie “Music,” a Christmas album, her writing for others like David Guetta and Pink, and the supergroup album “LSD.”

Sia hasn’t lost a step, apparently able to write three bangers before breakfast. The new solo album is packed with the Australian’s trademark mix of tropical pop, hip-hop, house and a hint of ska, combed with her distinctive, sky-high voice and ear for the bombastic.

It also contains her songwriter’s ability to switch from hurt and broken (”I Forgive You”) to ecstatic lover (“Towards the Sun”) to vengeful, hell-releasing angel, like on “I Had a Heart,” with the lyrics “You lost me to cruelty/You questioned my beauty/Counting my calories.” The song “Little Wing” sounds like Sia counseling a former mentee who has hit a bad patch: “Keep trying/I know soon you’ll be flying.”

But on this outing, the ever-masked, forever catchy Sia is most interesting with others. In addition to the Khan duet, the best songs are “Dance Alone” with Kylie Minogue, “Incredible” with Labrinth and “Fame Won’t Love You” with Paris Hilton, two famous women complaining that “fame won’t love you like a mother, like a father should.”

Sia leans on a frequent collaborator, songwriter-producer Jesse Shatkin, who together made the megahit “Chandelier,” and the albums “Music” and “This Is Acting.” They flirt with Bollywood in “One Night” and hip-hop with “Champion” alongside vocal guests Tierra Whack, Kaliii and Jimmy Jolliff. Greg Kurstin, co-wrote and produced four tracks, while Benny Blanco helps produce the burst of sunshine that is “Go On.”

It’s not unreasonable to say “Reasonable Woman” is the sound of a comfortable Sia rarely shifting out of third gear, but note: Her third gear is way higher than most artists ever dream about.

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Elisabeth Moss embraces her best role yet as a secret agent in 'The Veil'

David Bianculli

Elisabeth Moss plays British spy Imogen Salter in The Veil. Christine Tamalet/FX hide caption

Elisabeth Moss plays British spy Imogen Salter in The Veil.

The new FX on Hulu series The Veil is a spy show about several different spy agencies – from the United States, England and France – all after the same goal. They want to discover the details of a suspected new Sept. 11-type terrorist plot, reportedly emanating from the Middle East, and stop it before it happens.

Sometimes these organizations work together – sometimes they work against one another. But throughout, the agent who is most crucial to cracking the case is a British superspy temporarily going under the name of Imogen. She's played by Elisabeth Moss , of Mad Men and The Handmaid's Tale , and by the end of the six episodes of The Veil, I was convinced that this is Moss' best role, and best performance, yet. She's amazing.

As a secret agent, Imogen has plenty of secrets of her own, which unfold slowly as the miniseries progresses. She's a damaged soul with a haunted past – which, for her latest mission, turns out to be a valuable asset. She's been charged to locate and befriend a woman who recently surfaced in a refugee camp on the Syrian and Turkish border.

Elisabeth Moss: From Naif To Player On TV's 'Mad Men'

The woman, going by the name Adilah (Yumna Marwan), claims to be of Algerian descent, and from France — but several spy agencies suspect her of being the elusive mastermind behind the rumored imminent terrorist plot. Imogen's mission is to locate Adilah, who is held under guard at the camp after being attacked and stabbed by other refugees. Imogen offers to help Adilah escape, while getting close enough to try to ascertain her true identity, motives and target.

Elisabeth Moss and Yumna Marwan are more alike than either initially suspect in The Veil. Christine Tamalet/FX hide caption

Elisabeth Moss and Yumna Marwan are more alike than either initially suspect in The Veil.

The terrorist Imogen is hunting is known as Djinn al Raqqa – in folklore, a shape-shifting genie who can assume any form. Is Adilah actually Djinn al Raqqa hiding in plain sight? Or is she as innocent as she claims? Imogen, a shapeshifter of sorts herself, uses all her spycraft skills to earn Adilah's trust, by helping her in her quest to cross borders and return to Paris, where her young daughter awaits.

Their journey is fascinating, with each probing to learn the other's secrets while protecting her own. It's a bit like Homeland where you, the viewer, are unsure of each character's true motives. And as the two women go off the grid and spend time with each other, avoiding all the authorities trying to locate them, their relationship keeps deepening.

In that way, The Veil is a bit like Thelma & Louise . Except, sometimes, it's more like Thelma v. Louise. Both characters are delightfully unpredictable. In one scene, Imogen takes Adilah to a smuggler they hope will give them new passports and identities to get to Paris. Imogen's plan is to have them pose as singers and belly dancers. But their proposed cover is at risk when the smuggler decides to test them a little by demanding that Adilah display her skills — which she does, leaving both Imogen and the smuggler suitably impressed.

These two actors are incredibly nuanced and well-matched in these roles – captivating as adversaries, and even more so if and when they decide to become allies. The writer and creator of The Veil , Steven Knight from Peaky Blinders and All the Light We Cannot See , explores their relationship brilliantly. But he also keeps escalating the terrorist plot, and following the many agents and agencies trying to crack it. One special standout here is Josh Charles, from The Good Wife and Sports Night, who is cast as an aggressive CIA agent on French soil – an ugly American in Paris. He plays his part perfectly.

Even so, The Veil, at its core, is the story of two shape-shifting survivors who are more alike than either of them suspected – and whose realization of that fact may, or may not, stop a horrifying terrorist attack. It's quite a voyage – and quite a drama.

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Elisabeth Moss Stuns in FX’s Fascinating Spy Thriller ‘The Veil’: TV Review

By Aramide Tinubu

Aramide Tinubu

Elisabeth Moss Stuns in FX’s Fascinating Spy Thriller ‘The Veil’: TV Review 6 days ago
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"THE VEIL" -- Pictured: Elisabeth Moss as Imogen Salter. CR: FX

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Armed with a mostly believable English accent, Moss is exceptional. Imogen is the persona her character now inhabits. Yet in hauntingly quiet moments when the secret agent is alone, the shadows of her true self and anguish-tinged fragments of her past briefly make themselves known. Despite her profession and personal experiences, Imogen never comes off robotic and unfeeling, a testament to Moss’ mastery of the character. Driven by her desire to understand Adilah, Imogen never stops searching for her humanity in the face of her perceived egregious transgressions.

Despite the comedic scenes involving gripes about France’s 35-hour workweek, the CIA’s often overblown reactions to any new revelations and a tech guy with putrid body odor, “The Veil” is no comedy. Stuck together in a tenuous truce and deeply skeptical of each other, Imogen and Adilah slowly reveal the shocking pieces of their different lives. These mirroring paths make them more similar than not, although they might be reluctant to admit it. Episode 5, “Grandfather’s House,” concludes with a breathtaking confrontation between the two women. It showcases how individual experiences and perceptions contribute to our interpretation of what’s true and possible.

The six episodes of “The Veil” are flawlessly paced and thoughtfully executed. Elegantly placed clues gradually shed light on Adilah and Imogen’s past lives, which are fully exposed in the final hour. In the end, the show is a reminder that though we may be taught to navigate life in black and white, our choices are frequently born somewhere in the gray.

The first two episodes of FX’s “The Veil” premiere April 30 on Hulu with new episodes dropping weekly on Tuesdays.

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"The Fall Guy" review: Ryan Gosling takes a lot of hits — and makes one, too

Ryan Gosling in "The Fall Guy" (Photo: Universal)

"The Fall Guy" is many things: a corker of an action flick, a love story, a Hollywood parody, an ensemble comedy, a Ryan Gosling star vehicle, an ad for big trucks, and a loose adaptation of the ‘80s TV series of the same thing, to name a few. But above all else, it’s a love letter to stunt performers.

And with that love as its guiding light, it benefits from all the things that make stunt people invaluable to moviemaking. It’s got brains. It’s got guts. It’s got a bizarre blend of precision and recklessness. Most of all, it has – courtesy of Gosling, stuntman-turned-director David Leitch and the rest of its cast and crew – a palpable desire to entertain , to do the most engaging thing at every moment, whatever that moment might demand.

So yes, this is a movie that set a world record for the most cannon rolls in a vehicle (performed by stuntman Logan Holladay). But it’s also a movie that has Gosling cry alone in a massive truck to Taylor Swift’s "All Too Well," gives our heroes a dog buddy named Jean-Claude whose commands are all in French, and again and again sincerely defends the artistic merit of a movie called "Metal Storm" in which a human man named Space Cowboy and an alien woman named Alienana fall in love despite the epic space war brewing all around them.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a hoot. And it’s your must-watch movie of the weekend.

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About "The Fall Guy": He’s Stunt Ken, anywhere else he’d be a 10

"The Fall Guy" follows Colt Seavers (Gosling), a highly regarded stuntman who works primarily as the double for insufferable Hollywood star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). When we meet him, he’s flying high both literally and figuratively, falling in love with cameraperson and aspiring director Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt) and planning to head off to a beach somewhere with her just as soon as he finishes this one reshoot – a gasp-inducing fall of hundreds of feet. What could go wrong?

Emily Blunt in "The Fall Guy." (Photo: Universal)

Obviously, something does, and 18 months later, Seavers is working as a valet parking attendant and pining for Jody, whose attempts to support her paramour went nowhere when the depressed Seavers shut her out while recovering from his injury. But like "John Wick" before him – the movie that gave Leitch his start as a producer and uncredited co-director – just when Colt thinks he’s out of the game, someone from his old life is determined to drag him back in.

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That person is Gail Meyer ("Ted Lasso" star Hannah Waddingham), Ryder’s producer, who calls him and says she desperately needs him to fly to Australia or they won’t be able to finish "Metal Storm," and by the way, Jody asked for him specifically. But that’s news to Jody, and when a jet-lagged Colt corners Gail – having already performed that record-breaking series of cannon rolls – she confesses that in fast she needs him to find Ryder, who’s mixed up with some unsavory types and has disappeared.

From there, chaos ensues. Cars chase other cars. Things blow up. Boats jump through flames. Jean-Claude the dog has many commands issued to him in French. And Jody and Colt circle each other, talking about everything but the fact that they still want to smooch each other a lot.

See "The Fall Guy" for: great action, good jokes and a marvelous leading man

As directed by Leitch, the worst you can say of "The Fall Guy" is that it has a tendency to underline its own good qualities in a way that ever-so-slightly diminishes them. Jean-Claude the dog is riding in the car? Buckle him in. Good. But then Leitch has Gosling cover the dog’s eyes when something scary is happening, and gives the dog perhaps a few reaction shots too many, and the pure, goofy charm of the seatbelt moment sours somewhat.

But as far as overarching flaws go, overenthusiasm is a great one for a film to have. And while it’s a flaw, it’s also an asset, especially when stars like Gosling and Blunt are on hand to keep the relationships honest, all while they've got the charm turned up to 11.

"The Fall Guy" is a lot of movie, an adrenaline-laced torrent of fun and flame. The stunts, unsurprisingly, are excellent, and shot with gratifying clarity; no dizzying Marvel-esque swirling or shaky handheld camerawork here. They are extensive, ambitious and inventive – a car chase involving Ryder’s kidnapped assistant ("Everything Everywhere All At Once" standout Stephanie Hsu) is a particular highlight, as is a battle that pits Colt and his best friend and stunt coordinator Dan ("Black Panther" star Winston Duke), armed with prop weapons, against some scary henchmen and their very real weapons.

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in "The Fall Guy." (Photo: Universal)

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That overzealousness is also found in the storytelling (so many twists!), the production and costume design, the sound and score, and is even shared by the characters themselves. A tipsy Jody belting out Phil Collins’ "Against All Odds" to let her broken-hearted flag fly comes to mind, especially as her karaoke moment underscores that aforementioned wild car chase. And there’s that Taylor Swift moment, which, for all the film’s shoot-em-up and blow-em-apart antics, is as close to the film’s mission statement as anything else.

"The Fall Guy" is all about going for it without hesitation – about skipping the VFX and doing the real thing, about feeling the feelings, having the hard conversations, experiencing the joy and the pain, drinking spicy margaritas and making ridiculous movies.

Because ridiculous movies make people feel the big feelings too. And long after the pyrotechnics have been spent and the cannon rolls have been counted, they’ll remember those feelings all too well.

"The Fall Guy" is now playing in theaters everywhere. 125 minutes. Rated PG-13. Director: David Leitch. Featuring: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Winston Duke, Hannah Waddingham, Aarton Taylor-Johnson, Stephanie Hsu.

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The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time.