Jay Kelly (2025)

We liked this comedy-drama a lot in which mega movie star George Clooney plays the titular mega movie star trying to connect with his daughter, much to the frustration of his beleaguered manager Ron, played by Adam Sandler, and the rest of the star's team. The terrific and enormous supporting cast includes Riley Keough and Grace Edwards as Jay's daughters, Laura Dern as his publicist, Billy Crudup as his friend Timothy, Stacy Keach as his father, Jim Broadbent as his mentor, Eve Hewson as an actress in one of his movies, Emily Mortimer as his hairdresser, Greta Gerwig as Ron's wife, Sadie Sandler as his daughter, and Patrick Wilson as his other client.

Director Noah Baumbach co-wrote the script with Mortimer and the beautiful cinematography by Linus Sandgren and production design by Mark Tildesley contribute to the glossy look of the picture.

I'm streaming Nicholas Britell's lively score on Apple Music as I write. And this fun list of trivia points includes that clips from a number of Clooney's own work appear in this movie.

Clooney was last blogged for Ticket to Paradise, both Sandlers for You Are So Not Invited to my Bat Mitzvah, Keough for Zola, Edwards for Call Jane, Dern for JT LeRoy, Crudup for Jackie, Keach for Nebraska, Broadbent for The Duke, Hewson for Flora and Son, Mortimer for acting in Mary Poppins Returns and she co-wrote and created the series Doll & Em, in which she plays a famous actress who hires her best friend as her assistant. Gerwig was most recently in these pages (for acting) for White Noise, Wilson for Millers in Marriage, Baumbach for directing White Noise and for co-writing his life partner Gerwig's Barbie, Sandgren for shooting Saltburn, Tildesley for production designing Empire of Light, and Britell for scoring She Said.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics, averaging 76%, are less star-struck than its audiences at 87. So far the movie has eight wins, including being one of the top ten movies of the year for both American Film Institute and National Board of Review, as well as 38 other nominations.

Jack and I streamed it on Netflix on December 17.

Oh. What. Fun. (2025)

Jack and I had some laughs with this light and fluffy Christmas movie which we chose partly because of Denis Leary and partly because we wanted a comedy. Michelle Pfeiffer's Claire is a boomer #tradwife of Leary's Nick who arranges every Christmas detail for her family, but they all take her for granted. Untrue to form, Leary plays a character who is not snarky. The cast includes Felicity Jones as their grown daughter Channing, Jason Schwartzman as Channing's husband Doug, Chloe Grace Moretz as Channing's sister Taylor, and Eva Longoria as Claire's TV idol Zazzy. Danielle Brooks and Devery Jacobs make solid cameos.

Director Michael Showalter co-wrote the script with Chandler Baker. The soundtrack is by Siddhartha Khosla but, although he's a prolific composer, his score is not available for streaming. The songs in the movie are, however.

Leary was last blogged for Draft Day, Pfeiffer for French Exit, Jones for The Brutalist, Schwartzman for The Last Showgirl, Moretz for The Addams Family, Brooks for The Color Purple, and Showalter and Khosla for The Idea of You.

Longoria is best known for 180 episodes for Desperate Housewives from 2004-2012, but has dozens of other credits and I gave her short shrift for her cameo in In a World... We both loved Jacobs in all 25 episodes of Reservation Dogs and lawyer/novelist Baker makes her screenwriting debut.

I'm glad we enjoyed this movie before checking it on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics and audiences scrooged it (yeah, I know it's not a word) with averages of 35 and 27% respectively. We streamed it on December 10 on Prime.