Movies starring Chris Messina

After watching Ruby Sparks, I asked myself a question: Did I enjoy it as much as I did because it brings such a breezy perspective to a tired genre or because it offers a unique point-of-view of creativity and the writing process? I'm not sure Ruby...

Towelhead is a victim of the economics of movie-making. Despite being a critical success at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival (where is played under the name of Nothing Is Private), Towelhead has languished on shelves for a full year. With Warner Br...

It may be fair to consider Away We Go as Sam Mendes' penance for Revolutionary Road. The director's late-2008 Winslet/DiCaprio reunion was an immersion in bile - an acidic trip underneath the placid exterior of mid-20th century suburbia to a rot t...

Celeste and Jesse Forever wants to be marketed as an "anti-romantic comedy," but, despite its somewhat unconventional storyline, it's very much about what draws people together into relationships and what pulls them apart. It explores the reality o...

The connection between actor/director/writer Ben Affleck and author Dennis Lehane goes back nearly a decade. In 2007, Affleck made his directorial debut by adapting Lehane’s Gone Baby Gone for the screen. It was a high-water mark in both of the...

Professional sports are a mixture of athletic achievements and multibillion-dollar business elements. When it comes to sports-based movies, the vast majority focus on the former, often paying lip-service (if that) to the latter. Air joins the like...

Three Russians and three Americans living in harmony aboard the International Space Station (I.S.S.) – that’s the setup for Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s science fiction thriller, I.S.S. The film’s early scenes depict the day-to-day interaction...

There was hope in 2005 that Woody Allen had re-discovered his groove with the release of Match Point. Since then, however, he has slipped back into the sinkhole of mediocrity that kept him from greatness throughout most of the '90s and '00s. Unfo...

It’s hard to imagine that something as vapid and chaotic as Birds of Prey (full title: Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) transpires in the same “universe” (the DCEU) as Joker. With its John Wick-inspire...

When I was three years old and my playmates were happily watching Sesame Street and cartoons, I would sit in front of the television and gaze at the force of nature that was Julia Child (I also liked Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet). Her larger...