julia roberts – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

AFTER THE HUNT – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

October 25, 2025October 25, 2025 Valerie Kalfrin After the Hunt, andrew garfield, ayo edebiri, chloe sevigny, julia roberts, luca guadagnino, Michael Stuhlbarg, Nora Garrett

Blond, poised, and enigmatic, Julia Roberts as an Ivy League professor draws the focus of After the Hunt, an academic potboiler that spends too much time on the radiant star instead of the character that sets the plot in motion. The drama explores the aftermath of a rape accusation that rocks one woman’s comfortable world. Yet its discussions of diversity, truth, and ethics end up feeling more superficial than probing, reduced to buzzwords like “the feminist generation gap” and “shallow cultural moment” instead of actual depth.

Reviews

AFTER THE HUNT – Review by Susan Granger

October 21, 2025October 23, 2025 Susan Granger After the Hunt, andrew garfield, ayo edebiri, chloe sevigny, julia roberts, luca guadagnino, Michael Stuhlbarg, Nora Garrett

Set on the Yale campus, Luca Guadagnino’s cryptic After the Hunt revolves around two professors – married to one another – and a grad student who claims she was sexually assaulted after she is accused of plagiarizing her doctoral dissertation on virtue ethics. That much is clear; the rest is decidedly murky.

Festivals Reviews

AFTER THE HUNT (NYFF 2025) – Review by Diane Carson

October 5, 2025October 11, 2025 Diane Carson After the Hunt, andrew garfield, ayo edebiri, chloe sevigny, julia roberts, luca guadagnino, Michael Stuhlbarg, NYFF 2025

Some films promise more than they deliver to the disappointment of those who welcome weighty issues decisively tackled. Director Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt qualifies with its exceptional cast, substantive conflicts, and high profile setting, all to no avail as the film chases after a clear presentation of characters awash in acrimonious crises. The jumbled ideas are as muddled as the relationships in a film with no semblance of constructive insight into the university world or its affected individuals. Promoted as a “twisty psychological thriller,” it is, more accurately, a confused, erratic indulgence.

Reviews

LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND – Review by Susan Granger

December 12, 2023December 14, 2023 Susan Granger Charlie Evans, Ethan Hawke, Farrah Mackenzie, julia roberts, Leave the World Behind, Mahershala Ali, Myha’la Herrold, netflix, Sam Esmail

Leave the World Behind is a paranoid, tension-filled, futuristic nightmare. The story begins in a Park Slope, Brooklyn apartment, where early-rising advertising executive Amanda Sandford (Julia Roberts) awakens her professor husband Clay (Ethan Hawke) and teenage children – Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) and Archie (Charlie Evans) – with a surprise: she’s rented a luxurious Airbnb on Long Island for the weekend.

Reviews

TICKET TO PARADISE – Review by Susan Granger

November 8, 2022November 7, 2022 Susan Granger Billie Lourd, george clooney, julia roberts, romcom, Ticket to Paradise

Booking Ticket to Paradise is for those of us who yearn for an old-fashioned romantic comedy, starring two of the most appealing movie stars from yesteryear who still have impeccable chemistry. Bali is certainly beautiful but is living in paradise enough to sustain a marriage over the long run? It’s predictable and formulaic but there are enough amusing chuckles along the way to justify a visit.

Reviews

TICKET TO PARADISE – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

October 24, 2022October 27, 2022 Valerie Kalfrin george clooney, julia roberts, romcom, Ticket to Paradise

At one point in Ticket to Paradise, George Clooney and Julia Roberts hit an outdoor dance floor. He bobs his head up and around like an owl startled from a burrow. Both do the running man, wiggle their arms in a wave, and jump around to early 1990s hip-hop while Roberts uncorks that distinctive laugh. Such goofy shenanigans are few in Ticket to Paradise.The film is pleasant enough if you’re satisfied watching two well-loved stars coast on their charisma in a gorgeous tropical setting.

Reviews

TICKET TO PARADISE – Review by Susan Kamyab

October 22, 2022January 23, 2023 Susan Kamyab Billie Lourd, george clooney, julia roberts, romcom, Ticket to Paradise

It’s kind of hard to say no to anything with George Clooney or Julia Roberts. But when they team up for a rom-com, I’m sold! Like most romantic comedies, I’m sure you see where this story is going. When it comes to rom-coms, it’s not the predictability that is the issue, it’s whether or not we are served a fresh perspective and/or a handful of laughs. Ticket to Paradise offers nothing new story wise and, sadly, not a whole lot of laughs.

Reviews

TICKET TO PARADISE – Review by T.J. Callahan

October 20, 2022 T. J. Callahan george clooney, julia roberts, romcom, Ticket to Paradise

Julia Roberts and George Clooney reunite on the big screen in Ticket to Paradise, a romantic comedy that is so full of cliches it’s like a cheap knockoff. You don’t need to purchase a ticket to this paradise to know where the film is going. Basically it’s bickering and buffoonery. In the end, everyone lives happily ever after…except maybe the audience. You can’t please everyone. A mid movie doze was my Ticket to Paradise.

Reviews

THE MARTHA MITCHELL EFFECT – Review by Jennifer Merin

June 28, 2022June 29, 2022 Jennifer Merin Anne Alvergue, Cinema Citizen, Debra McClutchy, gaslit, john mitchell, julia roberts, martha mitchell, netflix, Richard Nixon, sean penn, STARZ, The Martha Mitchell Effect, watergate

This June marks the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in and the political scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s eventual resignation from office on August 8, 1974. It was a turning point in US history, one in which Martha Mitchell played a role, Martha was the whistleblower wife of former US Attorney General John Mitchell, a close Nixon advisor and ally who was jailed for his complicity in the Watergate case. Two films currently in release commemorate the Watergate events and era by taking another look at Martha’s perspective on Watergate, how it happened and its impact on our nation.

Reviews

HOMECOMING Season One – Overview by Martha P Nochimson

June 27, 2019June 27, 2019 Martha P. Nochimson (Archived Contributor) 0 Comments eye on media, hbo, homecoming, julia roberts, Stephan James

As far as I know, there will be two seasons of Homecoming, so it is still possible that this wonderfully innovative beginning will collapse into a formulaic conclusion in the next season, marooning us in the older thriller world of simplistic right and wrong. (I hope not.) But the series thus far is so tantalizing that a discussion of the way it touches on current anxieties and blind spots in contemporary America is not premature.

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