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Unforgettable Reviews

“Unforgettable” is an entertaining, basic film that plays on women’s fear of playing by society’s rules, the ensuing anger when she is not rewarded, a woman’s fear of sacrificing some independence in exchange for accepting traditional roles

Full Review | Jun 12, 2024

[Unforgettable] hits all the right notes and never stops to make excuses for itself.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 29, 2021

Even worse than the previous movie with this title.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 3, 2021

It was fun, silly, and it looks good.

Full Review | May 12, 2020

It's totally watchable.

A laughably written script which lacks the kind of menace and supplemental character development to make this anything more than camp dressed up in haute couture.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 9, 2019

The film ignores the race of the characters completely, but ( ... )the narrative reinforces institutional systems that endanger women of color and protect white women.

Full Review | Mar 10, 2019

An entertaining exercise in over-the-top camp that's played with a straight sincerity that makes it deliciously satisfying.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 20, 2018

With the movie industry recycling old movie plots one after another, it makes you wonder, have they run out of original ideas?

Full Review | Nov 12, 2018

There's not an original thought in Unforgettable, but there is one crazy performance by Katherine Heigl and succession of absurd moments played with straight face.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 31, 2018

Terrible. This could be the worst movie of the year...

Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/5 | Oct 16, 2018

[Making Julia cheesier] would have ruined the one thing Unforgettable has going for it, but it also would have made [her actions] seem less impossible by comparison.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Oct 12, 2018

A terribly written, dull, and an overall poor excuse for an erotic thriller making this its title minus its prefix.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 30, 2018

Unforgettable is one of those glossy, silly thrillers that is nevertheless entertaining.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Aug 28, 2018

Probably best seen with your girlfriends after cocktails. It's glossy cinematic junk food that falls in the "guilty pleasure"category.

Full Review | Aug 21, 2018

Two-thirds of the way into Unforgettable, I was done. Finished. The movie had nothing to offer me except another 30 minutes of blank stares, both by myself and the characters.

Full Review | May 8, 2018

Unforgettable is a very forgettable movie.

Full Review | Jan 30, 2018

In general the film is somewhat entertaining and has some parts that manage to catch the attention of the viewer; however, it is not able to match the results obtained in other similar, better made films. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Dec 28, 2017

Even with stumbles, the film was a fun ride, and Heigl's crazy-ex foolery is well worth the price of admission.

Full Review | Dec 21, 2017

By some sort of weird default, UNFORGETTABLE's title winds up being ironic. I only wish I could forget what I saw.

Full Review | Dec 19, 2017

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Review: ‘Unforgettable’ Serves Up Yet Another Crazy Ex

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By Neil Genzlinger

April 20, 2017

As the thriller “Unforgettable” wends its way toward its not very thrilling climactic scene, we are forced to ask: Why do people keep making essentially the same “crazy ex-” movie over and over again?

This one has two accomplished stars, Rosario Dawson and Katherine Heigl , and Ms. Dawson, especially, does creditable work, but it doesn’t matter because the format is so numbingly familiar. Ms. Heigl, looking carved out of ice, plays Tessa, who has not been coping well with her divorce from David (Geoff Stults). When he develops a serious relationship with Julia (Ms. Dawson), Tessa sets a diabolical plot in motion.

The setup may vary — sometimes it’s an unbalanced roommate, or a surrogate mother , or a sexy nanny who gets that homicidal look in the eye — but it’s the same three-cornered dynamic. Here, both the director (Denise Di Novi) and the writer (Christina Hodson) are women, yet that doesn’t translate into a reimagining of the tired formula. Tessa and David have a young daughter (Isabella Kai Rice) who becomes a pawn in the deadly game, and Julia is given a back story involving an abusive boyfriend, but the tale still plays out the same way these yarns always do.

That’s dismaying, because although this is a female-centered movie, the women’s roles are not exactly empowering. The formula demands that one character be bonkers and that the other not be smart enough to realize how unhinged her adversary is until it’s too late. It’s woman in jeopardy meets woman on the verge, a reductive brand of thriller from another decade, freshened here only with the addition of a plot element involving Facebook.

Movie Review: 'Unforgettable'

The times critic neil genzliger reviews “unforgettable”..

In “Unforgettable” a woman is terrorized by her boyfriend’s ex-wife. In his review Neil Genzliger writes: As this film wends its way toward its not very thrilling climactic scene, we are forced to ask: we are forced to ask: Why do people keep making essentially the same “crazy ex-” movie over and over again? Rosario Dawson does creditable work, but it doesn’t matter because the format is so numbingly familiar. The formula demands that one character be bonkers and that the other not be smart enough to realize how unhinged her adversary is until it’s too late.

Unforgettable Rated R for violence and a few vulgarities. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.

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‘unforgettable’: film review.

Rosario Dawson and Katherine Heigl face off in 'Unforgettable,' a suspense thriller that marks veteran producer Denise Di Novi’s directorial debut.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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For Rosario Dawson and Katherine Heigl’s characters in Unforgettable , phony civility gives way, as it inevitably, cathartically must, to full-blown smackdown . They’re the warring queens in this well-appointed fairy tale, the beloved new girlfriend and the barely tolerated ex-wife, one good and one very, very bad. Played with utter conviction, neither is as self-assured as she seems, but they’re both ready to take it to the limit as director Denise Di Novi steadily turns up the heat on a lethal bouillabaisse of sex, domesticity and juicy archetypes — a recipe that’s equal parts Fatal Attraction , Charles Perrault and Nancy Meyers.

At the helm for the first-time, and working from screenwriter Christina Hodson’s slick balancing act of aspirational romance and dark psychology, longtime producer Di Novi enlivens the generic mix with a tinge of camp and a sure grasp of mean-girl dynamics; Heathers , after all, was one of her first producing credits. Poised to make a box-office killing, the glossy femme-centric thriller has a sharper edge than the setup, giddily teetering on retrograde nonsense, might suggest.

Release date: Apr 21, 2017

First and foremost, “It’s not about David,” as Dawson’s character, Julia Banks, tells Heigl’s Tessa Connover in the heat of battle. That would be David Connover (Geoff Stults , of Grace and Frankie ), the story’s prince. Like most fairy-tale princes, he’s handsome, has a castle (Southern California real estate, inherited and decidedly luxe ) and is as dull as freshly laundered dirt. A former Wall Street hotshot turned Main Street entrepreneur, he owns a microbrewery . Of course. He’s a catch, as your grandmother might put it, but the jury’s out on whether he’s much of a prize.

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DVD & Streaming

Unforgettable

Drama , Mystery/Suspense

Content Caution

In Theaters

April 21, 2017
Rosario Dawson as Julia Banks; Katherine Heigl as Tessa Connover; Geoff Stults as David Connover; Isabella Rice as Lily Connover; Cheryl Ladd as Helen; Simon Kassianides as Michael Vargas; Whitney Cummings as Ali; Robert Wisdom as Detective Pope

Home Release Date

July 25, 2017
Denise Di Novi

Distributor

Warner Bros.

Movie Review

Becoming a stepmother isn’t for the faint of heart, even under the best of circumstances. But when your soon-to-be new husband’s ex-wife is an obsessive, jealous, devious, unhinged psychopath, well, that makes things even harder.

That’s the situation Julia Banks faces in her relationship with David Connover. He’s an absolute dream come true for Julia. Especially, compared to her last relationship with Michael Vargas, who beat Julia so badly that she had to get a restraining order against him.

Julia’s determined that this relationship is going to be different. Better. As perfect as she can possibly make it. So much so that she’s moved from San Francisco to live with David in Southern California before they tie the knot. She’s all in, and she’s ready to leave her grim past behind (even if the nightmares and flashbacks about it still haunt her almost daily).

Julia knew that being a stepmother to David’s young daughter, Lilly, was going to be an adjustment. For her. For Lilly. For everyone. She also knew from David that his icily beautiful ex, Tessa, had some, um, issues.

And, boy , does Tessa have issues .

In fact, David himself doesn’t even know how deep his ex-wife’s instabilities go. But Julia and David are about to find out what happens to an obsessive, jealous, devious, unhinged, psychopathic ex-wife when her former husband tries to move on with someone new.

Let’s just say that Tessa’s not about to yield her old life—especially when it comes to her daughter, Lilly—easily.

Or maybe at all .

Positive Elements

David and Julia are deeply committed to each other. Though they’re living together, it’s clear that they’re moving quickly toward marriage.

Tessa deviously seeks to undermine their relationship first in subtle ways, then in much more significant ones. When odd, unexplainable things begin happening—Julia’s phone disappears, then her engagement ring does as well—it slowly begins to drive a wedge between the couple. Julia’s rightfully paranoid, but David struggles to believe and accept his fiancée’s growing sense that Tessa is behind all the weird things that are happening. In the end, though, David sides with Julia, whose suspicions of Tessa are well-founded. And Julia will do anything to defend him from the ferocity that Tessa eventually unleashes.

Julia also does her very best to be a kind, gentle and understanding mother-figure to little Isabelle (who’s perhaps 8 or 9 years old). Lilly is chilly toward her future stepmom at first, but Julia’s consistent love and compassion in simple ways eventually defrost the little girl’s heart. It becomes increasingly apparent that Tessa’s parenting style is rigid, legalistic and emotionally abusive to Lilly. Julia, in contrast, is a natural when it comes to being a loving mom.

Tessa, for her part, is a damaged, deranged train wreck of a human being. Obviously, that’s not good. Still, we see that she’s become that way in large measure because of her own mother, Helen, who’s similarly mean, manipulative, perfectionist and driven above all by the need to present an unblemished image to the world. In that sense, the film painfully illustrates how a parent’s extreme character flaws influence the next generation negatively—a cautionary message of sorts.

Spiritual Elements

A song on the soundtrack repeatedly emphasizes the word “blessings.” What appears to be a Buddha statue is visible in the background of one scene.

Sexual Content

Three lengthy sex scenes include explicit movements, but characters remain more or less strategically covered (though we do see a lot of a woman’s leg and a man’s bare chest in one scene). Characters have sex in several places: a bed, a car, a public restroom. One of those scenes also visually suggests oral sex. Elsewhere, there’s a similar suggestion (implied but not fully shown) of a woman masturbating during an online chat session.

Julia and David kiss frequently and passionately. They’re also repeatedly shown in bed together, though often with space between them that’s obviously intended to represent the growing problems in their relationship.

Tessa invites Julia to have lunch with her. During a deliberately manipulative conversation, Tessa goes on and on verbally about how her sex life with David was the primary glue in their relationship. She says he was so insatiable in that area that she was often worn out.

Julia and Tessa both wear various revealing and skin-tight outfits throughout the film. We see an unclothed woman begin to get in the bathtub. (The camera briefly glimpses her bare rear and the side of her breast.) Tessa looks at sensual (but not nude) pictures of Julia on the latter’s phone. Tessa eventually sends one of those pics to Michael (posing as Julia).

Julia eventually learns that Tessa’s father had an affair with a younger woman and abandoned the family, which was the catalyst for Tessa having a psychotic episode as a teen. Tessa steals a pair of Julia’s lacey underwear from the other woman’s dresser as part of an attempt to frame her. Someone else makes a joke about “granny panties.” There’s also a revelation about Tessa having cheated on David while they were still married.

Violent Content

This movie builds slowly but inexorably toward its forgone conclusion: a massive melee between Julia and Tessa. Their mutual beat down is a savage one, with Julia and Tessa trading physical blows, throwing each other around and basically bashing each other with whatever is at hand. Tessa nearly breaks one of Julia’s legs hitting her with a fireplace poker. Julia rams Tessa’s head into a glass-framed picture, which shatters and temporarily knocks Tessa out. There’s choking and desperate attempts by both women to get at the other’s face. Tessa ends up with multiple deep scratches on both sides of her face, the sight of which utterly horrifies the perfectionist beauty when she eventually catches sight of herself in the mirror.

Before that final encounter, Tessa tries to paint Julia as the violent one by throwing herself down a flight of stairs, then claiming Julia pushed her (which she didn’t).

[ Spoiler Warning ] Tessa has a shocked moment of shame and, perhaps, a kind of clarity after she sees herself in the mirror. Julia is holding a butcher knife in front of herself to ward off Tessa, and Tessa embraces her purposefully, plunging the blade suicidally into her stomach. Her dying request to Julia is, “Please, don’t let Lilly remember me like this.”

Throughout the film, Julia has disturbing flashbacks of her ex, Michael, hitting her. When Michael finally shows up at her house (which Tessa has masterminded, of course), he again beats her horribly, slamming her face into a cabinet which instantly bruises and slices it. He also pulls her hair back harshly to hold her head in place while he menaces her.

Elsewhere, a man is slashed with a knife, stabbed in the leg and finally stabbed fatally in the chest. Another character is brutally knocked out, bloodying that person’s face and head, with that aforementioned fireplace poker. Someone has his mouth and hands taped up as well.

Crude or Profane Language

Four spoken f-words, two shown written out on a computer screen. Four s-words. God’s name is also abused four times. There’s one use each of “d–n” and “h—.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

David is in the process of fulfilling his vocational dream: opening his own brew pub. Several scenes take place there, and various characters are shown drinking beer and champagne. Elsewhere, characters drink wine (sometimes alone). We also see Tessa and Julia drinking margaritas at lunch together. Still another scene pictures someone with a martini glass in hand. We hear someone refer to scotch.

Verbal reference is made to the fact that Julia has quit smoking. During a stressful moment, we see her with a pack of cigarettes in her hand. Her pensive expression seems to denote temptation, but she doesn’t cave in to it. Tessa, for her part, puffs and exhales dramatically from an e-cigarette.

Other Negative Elements

Tessa’s devious actions are practically a case study in identity theft. She purloins Julia’s smartphone, then downloads its contents onto her laptop. There’s nary a detail from Julia’s life that’s not on her phone, much of which Tessa uses against her.

Tessa discovers Julia’s connection to Michael Vargas, for instance. Tessa also creates a fake Facebook page for Julia, which Tessa uses to contact Michael while posing as Julia (as well as trying to frame Julia in other ways as well.)

The only way Tessa knows how to “love” her daughter, Lilly, is through strict control and discipline. Tessa’s furious that Lilly is gravitating toward Julia emotionally. Not surprisingly, Lilly chooses to be with Julia instead of Tessa in a tense scene, and Tessa eventually punishes her daughter harshly for that choice by cutting off her long hair and shaming her.

Julia asks her coworker and friend Ali to help her get some information on Tessa. Ali says that sometimes it’s good to have a former convicted hacker on staff. Eventually, Julia learns dark details of Tessa’s past as well.

For much of the movie, Julie is afraid to tell David the story of what happened between her and Michael, at times lying about it.

Unforgettable might better have been titled Totally Predictable . There’s no nuance or mystery here. The only question is how intense the preordained claws-out fight between Julia (Rosario Dawson) and Tessa (Katherine Heigl) is going to be.

It’s pretty intense, I guess. The audience I saw the film with was certainly “oooh”-ing it up each time one woman landed a fierce attack on the other, like it was particularly high-stakes pro wrestling match.

But if we step back from that overwrought, violent melodrama for just a moment here, we might have time to ponder this question: Do we really need to see a movie about two women locked in mortal combat?

In addition to that philosophical question, there’s content aplenty here as well. Multiple sex scenes narrowly avoid full nudity; but there’s no question at all about what’s going on. Add in Julia’s abusive ex returning to pummel her brutally once again—the very thing that’s given her nightmares throughout the film—and you’ve got a movie that pummels moviegoers as well.

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

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Film Review: ‘Unforgettable’

Katherine Heigl is terrific playing against type as a psycho ex in a thriller that isn't memorable enough to deserve the performance.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Photographer 1F763663 first look for scoop 12.26.16UNFORGETTABLE PhotographerUNF-04788rc(L-r) ROSARIO DAWSON as Julia and KATHERINE HEIGL as Tessa in Warner Bros. Pictures dramatic thriller "UNFORGETTABLE," a Warner Bros. Pictures release.Photo by Karen Ballard

When Nat King Cole sang “Unforgettable,” he meant the word as a compliment. Not so the Hollywood movie of the same name, in which two crazy exes refuse to be ignored as they attempt to ruin Rosario Dawson ’s wedding — one, played by Katherine Heigl , so icily sociopathic that it’s too bad the borderline-campy movie wasn’t willing to go full tilt into B-movie “psycho-Barbie” territory.

A strange choice of directorial debut for longtime Tim Burton enabler Denise Di Novi (whose credits include producing “Heathers,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “Crazy, Stupid, Love”), “Unforgettable” is anything but what its title suggests, dissipating into vapor as soon as the credits roll. But it’s tawdry “Sleeping With the Enemy”-style fun while it lasts, boasting a better cast and splashier production values than the next closest Lifetime movie, while being so ridiculous at times that audiences can’t help but talk back to the screen.

Dawson plays Julia Banks, a big-city writer about to settle down with ideal beau David (Geoff Stults) in the tony small town where he raised his daughter Lily (Isabella Kai Rice). No one mentions skin color or class, but Julia clearly feels out of place in this community, especially when mentally sizing herself up against Heigl’s character, seemingly perfect Stepford ex-wife Tessa Connover.

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Casting means everything in this movie, and Di Novi’s against-type use of the popular “Grey’s Anatomy” star savvily exploits the actress’s prickly reputation within the industry. Say what you will about Heigl, but it’s a strange testament to her talent that once you’ve seen her as a villain — one who practically weaponizes her mannequin-worthy physique and wrinkle-free forehead — it will be hard to go back to picturing her as the innocuous girl next door.

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In Tessa, Heigl has taken a rather thinly written character and elevated her to someone you wouldn’t want to bump into at your child’s next PTA meeting. She’s not quite bunny-boiler imbalanced, though she’s doing her best to land Tessa in the pantheon of all-time scariest exes, intending her creepy, conniving stare to haunt beyond the end credits. When it comes to Tessa’s strategy for disrupting Julia’s life, however, the movie squanders her character’s deliciously bitchy potential.

Julia may have moved on romantically, but she’s still haunted by the trauma of her previous relationship to Michael Vargas (Simon Kassianides), an aggressive bully who beat her so badly she had to get a restraining order. Now he’s dead, which we learn in the opening scene, set in a police interrogation room, where cops suspect Julia of having killed her ex. How else to explain the facts that she’d been sending him intimate photos via Facebook, a pair of her panties was found in his car, and her prints were all over the murder weapon? The answers are available in Julia’s version of events, which take us back to the days before she met Tessa — and before Michael re-entered her life.

“Unforgettable” is vaguely like last year’s “The Girl on the Train” (though nowhere near as garbled and ridiculous) in the way it half-heartedly teases the possibility that Julia could be guilty before revealing an explanation so elaborate and implausible we can’t help but roll our eyes. While Julia keeps it to herself that she’s been experiencing flashbacks to past beatings, Tessa is unsettlingly intuitive in reading her new foe and sees a sadistic opportunity in Julia’s trauma.

Since Julia doesn’t use Facebook (making her perhaps the only contemporary dot-com writer without a social-media presence), Tessa steps in and creates a profile, using it to contact Julia’s abusive ex. She steals Julia’s phone and stockpiles sexy photos, which she further uses to rile him up, then breaks into the house to collect her intimate belongings, including lingerie and the family-heirloom engagement ring David gave Julia — which Tessa believes she deserves.

If this were the 18th century, Tessa would be a witch, tossing Julia’s possessions into her cauldron while she whips up a spell, but in this day and age, she’s the world’s scariest soccer mom, exerting her controlling tendencies on David’s young daughter, Lily, who has the misfortune to be caught between the two women in her daddy’s life. Julia is worried that Lily won’t accept her, and Tessa does her best to ensure it, crashing family dinners and offering expensive perks — such as horseback-riding lessons — with which Julia can’t compete.

Such competition is a genuine concern for many modern relationships, and one that Di Novi and screenwriter Christina Hodson have woven throughout the film, which may as well be the contemporary equivalent of a classic Hollywood “women’s picture,” considering the way it shrewdly exploits certain feminine anxieties. The way Di Novi anticipates what her audience wants — especially in the nonverbal communication between its two rivals — shows an intelligence that’s nevertheless undercut by the film’s approach to Julia’s history of abuse.

Tessa’s the type who can’t seem to distinguish between love and possessiveness, which is clear from the obsessive-compulsive way she brushes her daughter’s hair (evidently she gets it from her mother, played by Cheryl Ladd with a concentrated control-freak aura that nearly makes Tessa into a sympathetic character). But what does Tessa hope to achieve by her scheme? It’s all rather convoluted and can’t possibly go as planned, since it hinges on the wild card of introducing Julia’s unstable violent ex-boyfriend into the mix.

Basically, what we’re really waiting for is the moment in which the two women throw down in what could have been the catfight of the century, though Di Novi stops just short of crossing the line to truly twisted territory. While that might be adequate for the casual megaplex crowd, it prevents “Unforgettable” from delivering the kind of transgressive oh-no-she-didn’t scene (à la “Gone Girl’s” throat-slitting) that would have made this a thriller to remember.

Reviewed at AMC Century City, April 7, 2017. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 100 MIN.

Production: A Warner Bros. release and presentation of a Di Novi Pictures production. Producers: Denise Di Novi, Alison Greenspan, Ravi Mehta. Executive producer: Lynn Harris.
Crew: Director: Denise Di Novi. Screenplay: Christina Hodson. Camera (color): Caleb Deschanel. Editor: Frédéric Thoraval. Music: Toby Chu.
With: Rosario Dawson, Katherine Heigl, Geoff Stults, Cheryl Ladd, Sarah Burns, Whitney Cummings, Simon Kassianides, Isabella Kai Rice, Robert Ray Wisdom.

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CinemaBravo

‘unforgettable’ review: sarah geronimo’s best performance to date.

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From designing captivating graphics to managing social media buzz, I’m a force fueled by passion for film and creativity. Join me on a cinematic journey where every frame tells a story and every decision creates a masterpiece.

Perci M. Intalan and Jun Lana’s Unforgettable makes an extraordinary masterpiece through an adorable and heartwarming performance by Sarah Geronimo.

Unforgettable takes us to a wonderful journey of a special girl named Jasmine and her newfound dog, Happy. They take on a long journey to visit her diseased grandmother in Baguio in the belief that bringing the dog to her could heal her. As they walk an incredible distance, they face all kinds of challenges and run into many strangers and help them along the way. This is the film that will take you to a new journey in the discovery of love, friendship and family.

Popstar royalty and box-office queen Sarah Geronimo is no doubt the best choice for the role. Sarah’s performance makes you understand Jasmine’s condition. She shows a heartwarming portrayal especially in her bond with her Lola. It is one pure love that’s real and unconditional.

Sarah proves that she could carry a film even without a love team. Her performance here is unexpected as it’s all out with a heart. She might be a suitable contender for an award as Best Actress—truly an unforgettable performance from the one and only Sarah G.

There are many scenes that make the whole crowd laugh, smile, and cry. The story of ‘Unforgettable’ is sweet and simple yet brings a heartful of impact that matches the great performance of the cast—let alone the cameos that are all memorable. These guest appearances by several big stars in offbeat bit roles make the film a lot more entertaining to audiences.

It brings us to an unforgettable journey of what love is. There is so much to learn from the film because all the characters successfully give out its message effectively.

This masterpiece is creatively directed by Lana and Intalan, one of the most sought after tandem in the local film industry. It is more than a tear-jerking family drama that everyone deserves to see, fan or not.

‘Unforgettable’ is Sarah’s best film so far. It’s as if this is not her first time to do a dog movie! Featuring Happy (played by the popular wonder dog, Milo) makes the story complete as it adds more color to everything, including Sarah herself.

Bring your tissues with you and prepare to cry in this amazing film starring Sarah Geronimo. ‘Unforgettable’ brings out a lot of emotions as it carefully balances entertainment and lessons in life. Worthy of your time and money, this is the film suitable for the whole family and friends.

Directed by Perci M. Intalan and Jun Lana Unforgettable stars Sarah Geronimo, Gina Pareño, Ara Mina, Meg Imperial, Yayo Aguila, and Kim Molina. Rated G by the MTRCB.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, unforgettable.

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In the annals of cinematic goofiness, "Unforgettable" deserves a place of honor. This is one of the most convoluted, preposterous movies I've seen - a thriller crossed with lots of Mad Scientist stuff, plus wild chases, a shoot-out in a church, a woman taped to a chair in a burning room, an exploding university building, adultery, a massacre in a drugstore, gruesome autopsy scenes and even a moment when a character's life flashes before her eyes, which was more or less what was happening to me by the end of the film.

What went wrong? The movie has been directed by John Dahl , a master of noir, whose " Red Rock West " and " The Last Seduction " were terrific movies. "Seduction" starred Linda Fiorentino , who is back this time. Her co-star is Ray Liotta , from " GoodFellas ." The supporting cast includes the invaluable Peter Coyote and David Paymer . It's a package with quality written all over it. But what a mess this movie is.

The premise: Liotta is a Seattle medical examiner, working with the police. Everyone in town believes he murdered his wife, but he got off on tainted evidence. "Wear a crash helmet if you go out with him," a woman advises Fiorentino. She is a university researcher whose experiments with rats indicate that the brain stores its memories in a spinal fluid that, if transferred to another rat, gives that rat the first rat's memories - but only when there's a strong stimulus to trigger them. A cat, for example, to chase it through a maze.

Liotta hears Fiorentino explaining her theory, and sees a way to clear his name and discover his wife's murderer.

He will inject himself with his dead wife's brain fluid, mixed with Fiorentino's secret elixir, while he's in the room where his wife was murdered. The stimulus will kick in, and he'll witness her murder through her memories.

How does he obtain her brain fluid? Well, luckily, it's stored in a clear vial in the evidence room of the police department, so he can simply steal it. Good thing this stuff has a long shelf life, eh? And so Liotta is off on his quest. Soon he's joined by Fiorentino, who warns him that 30 percent of the rats in her experiments have died of heart attacks. No problem: He takes a nitroglycerin pill, to reduce his risk of a heart attack, right before injecting himself.

The plot careens through an endless series of astonishing developments. Fans of those old horror films of the 1930s will remember that all a Mad Scientist has to do is inject himself with a miraculous substance, and it works perfectly, almost every time.

That's what happens here. Liotta drains brain fluid from corpses.

From comatose cops. From a victim of the drugstore massacre (she was an art student, so he learns he can draw - and sketches her murderer). And the fluids kick in right on time.

It's never really explained how he deals with four or five conflicting sets of memories, all sloshing around in his brain. No matter. His mental life resembles a human channel-changer. All he needs is a stimulus, and whoosh! - he has a flashback. Sometimes he thinks he is a killer, and repeats old crimes. Meanwhile, the list of suspects grows shorter because, as we all know, the secret killer has to be someone in the movie, and there are only so many possibilities.

Fiorentino played one of the most forcible women in recent movies in "The Last Seduction." As her punishment, she now plays one of the least. Get this: The movie's device for keeping her in the picture is that because Liotta may have a heart attack, she'll follow him around to be sure he's OK. That puts her on the scene for a series of amazing revelations, and gives us someone to explain the ending, which functions without any question as the single least appropriate intro in history for Nat King Cole's "Unforgettable." The actors play this material perfectly straight, as if they thought this was a serious movie, or even a good one. That makes it all the more agonizing.

At least in the old horror films, the actors knew how marginal the material was, and worked a little irony into their performances.

Here everybody acts as if they're in something deep, like a Bergman film, or "Chicago Hope." I have nothing in principle against goofy films. Hey, I'm the guy who liked " Congo ." But "Unforgettable" is truly strange - a movie that begins with an absurd premise, and follows it doggedly through a plot so labyrinthine that at the end I found myself thinking back to Fiorentino's experiment. The first rat couldn't find its way through the maze, and was cornered by the cat. The second rat, after an injection of brain fluid, zipped through the maze. Trying to find my way through this plot, I felt like the first rat.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Rated R For Strong Violence, Language and Nudity

111 minutes

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Unforgettable.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 2 Reviews
Kids Say 2 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Trashy thriller about mean people has violence, sex, more.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 17+?

Bloody wounds, blood stains. A man hits a woman, punches her, slams her up again

Two fairly graphic sex scenes include thrusting but no graphic nudity. In anothe

A few uses of "f--k," both spoken and written. Also one or two uses of "s--t," "

Main character runs a brewery. Several scenes of social drinking. Reference to a

Apple iPhone and Facebook are part of the plot.

Any Positive Content?

The only takeaway of note is a cautionary one: Don't put all of your most sensit

The characters barely even seem like actual humans, much less anyone with admira

Violence & Scariness

Bloody wounds, blood stains. A man hits a woman, punches her, slams her up against a wall, and pushes her down. Characters are stabbed in the leg and chest and hit with a fireplace poker. First-person flashbacks to an abusive ex. Some scary stuff, jump-shocks. A woman falls down the stairs.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two fairly graphic sex scenes include thrusting but no graphic nudity. In another scene, a naked bottom and partial breast are shown as a character prepares to step into the tub. A woman masturbates, touching herself under her robe (implied, not shown). Sexual innuendo/sex talk. A woman mentions having an extramarital affair. Kissing. Couple in bed together.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

A few uses of "f--k," both spoken and written. Also one or two uses of "s--t," "hell," "damn," and "oh my God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Main character runs a brewery. Several scenes of social drinking. Reference to an alcoholic father. Main characters drink two margaritas each at lunch (no ill effects). Character hides a pack of cigarettes. A woman drinks wine alone.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Positive messages.

The only takeaway of note is a cautionary one: Don't put all of your most sensitive information on your phone.

Positive Role Models

The characters barely even seem like actual humans, much less anyone with admirable character traits.

Parents need to know that Unforgettable is a thriller about a woman ( Katherine Heigl ) who tries to ruin her ex-husband's new relationship. Things get pretty violent; there are scenes of a man beating up a woman (punching and throwing her) and her stabbing/slicing him. Other characters are stabbed and hit with a fireplace poker -- bloody wounds and blood stains are shown. There are two fairly graphic sex scenes; while neither of those includes graphic nudity, there's partial nudity in another scene (bottom, part of a breast) when a woman prepares to step into a tub. Masturbation is implied, and there's kissing, innuendo, and sex talk. Language isn't frequent but does include a few uses of "f--k" and "s--t." Characters drink socially on several occasions, and one character drinks alone, while another hides cigarettes. Apple iPhones and Facebook make prominent appearances, since a key part of the plot involves social media manipulation (which leads to the movie's only notable takeaway: Don't put all of your most sensitive information on your phone!). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (2)
Kids say (2)

Based on 2 parent reviews

It sucked!!

Decent thriller movie delivers a lot of sex, some frights, and barely any logic., what's the story.

In UNFORGETTABLE, divorced dad David ( Geoff Stults ) is engaged to his new girlfriend, Julia ( Rosario Dawson ). Julia starts to get to know Lily (Isabella Kai Rice), David's daughter from his former marriage to blonde, perfect Tessa ( Katherine Heigl ). Julia is on edge because the restraining order against her abusive ex, Michael (Simon Kassianides), has just come to an end. But Tessa begins making her life difficult, too. In a crazy attempt to salvage her relationship with David, Tessa sets up a fake Facebook page for Julia, contacts Michael, and starts using Lily to subtly play Julia against David. When things turn violent, will Julia have enough evidence to prove that Tessa is behind it all?

Is It Any Good?

A better title for this terrible thriller would have been Unforgivable . Hamstrung by clueless writing and directing, it fails on just about every level, trying to wring thrills by pitting mean characters against dumb ones. Unforgettable -- which, by the way, is a title that has nothing to do with anything in this story -- has the kind of painfully awkward dialogue that makes you think the screenwriters weren't comfortable, or even familiar, with human conversation. It also seems to have no idea how life in general works. One character keeps her birth certificate, passport, and other sensitive data on her phone, which is easily stolen (and this after she's already been victimized).

Characters who are supposed to be in loving relationships don't share crucial information with each other; the result is that it's difficult to care about them on a basic level. And then, when the thriller stuff kicks in, it's impossible not to laugh. The camerawork by director Denise Di Novi (a veteran producer making her directing debut) is clumsy and dull; she vaguely attempts to borrow from many other permutations of this formula but doesn't seem to have any idea why those things ever worked. For some, Unforgettable could be a so-bad-it's-funny experience, but for many, it will just be aggravatingly bad.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Unforgettable 's violence . Do you think all of it was necessary to the story? Why or why not? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

How does the movie depict sex ? Does it have anything to do with love, affection, or trust, or are there other motivations? Parents, talk to your teens about your own values regarding sex and relationships.

In what ways could the characters have avoided this entire situation? Talking to one another? Protecting their online identity ? Anything else?

What's the best way for kids (and adults!) to stay safe online?

How is this movie similar or different from other thrillers you've seen? What's the appeal of this kind of story?

Movie Details

In theaters : April 21, 2017
On DVD or streaming : July 25, 2017
Cast : Katherine Heigl , Rosario Dawson , Geoff Stults
Director : Denise Di Novi
Inclusion Information : Female directors, Female actors, Black actors, Indigenous actors, Latino actors
Studio : Warner Bros.
Genre : Thriller
Run time : 100 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : sexual content, violence, some language, and brief partial nudity
Last updated : September 30, 2022

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

‘Unforgettable’ Is An Enjoyable Genre Exercise Starring Katherine Heigl As A Psycho Ex

One of the realities of film criticism is that a lot times you end up sitting through movies you would never seek out as a paying moviegoer. Sometimes those movies are so much better than you expected that you want to shout it from the rooftops. ( Brooklyn comes to mind here.) Those reviews are the most fun to write, for the movies that feel like they need you. Other times you get movies like Unforgettable , a surprisingly well-executed version of exactly what you assumed it would be. Which is to say, it’s a “psycho ex” movie that’s fun, but doesn’t exactly reinvent the genre. It’s a better ending away from being perfect pulp, something Manny Farber would’ve called “ Termite Art .” It’s fun while it lasts, let’s say (the opposite of its title, basically). Sometimes that’s enough, but your mileage may vary.

Rosario Dawson plays Julia Banks. She’s gotten over an abusive relationship and has moved down to Malibu to be with her dream fiancée, David (Geoff Stults) and his daughter, just as her restraining order against the last guy expires. But it’s not Julia’s ex that’s psycho of the genre, it’s David’s, his steel-eyed Barbie doll ex-wife, Tessa, played by Katherine Heigl. Now, I could’ve guessed from the trailer that Tessa would spend the whole movie trying to sabotage Julia, and that she’d be doing it over some dude, specifically some insanely bland vanilla man, a Caucasian aspirational husband-bot straight from Crate & Barrel’s Josh Duhamel collection. You know the type. He’s tall. Wears watches. Drives a nice car and doesn’t talk too much or make a big deal about all the money he’s got. David is a Stanford grad who left his job at Merrill Lynch to start a brewery. He’s got money, but also dreams. Earthy, vaguely creative ones, involving investors and hops.

The surprise of Unforgettable is how much fun Katherine Heigl is in it. It turns out she’s much more enjoyable playing the unhinged ex-sorority girl ice queen than she is playing the playful relatable™ rom-com heroine. The concept isn’t much — Unforgettable is basically a gender-swapped thriller version of Daddy’s Home (it’s mom vs. stepmom!), or Big Little Lies minus premium cable and artistic pretensions .(I bet Tessa’s dumb daughter has never even heard of Leon Bridges.) But Tessa’s acts of delicious sabotage are consistently entertaining. She masters both a truly wicked catfishing scheme and subtle gaslighting, like telling Julia conspiratorially, “You guys are so much better, David and I had nothing in common. It was mostly just a physical connection.” In another nice touch, Tessa has a belittling rival of her own — her mother, played by Cheryl Ladd — who tells Tessa awesomely undermining things like “time doesn’t exist at your age,” and “Tessa, that was beneath you!”

The cruelly hilarious Ladd scenes are some of the best in the movie, making you pity Tessa even as you root against her. Unforgettable ‘s great strength is being able to manufacture those scenes of sabotage that are jaw-dropping without inviting complete dismissal. It never quite gets over the top enough that you think “Oh f*ck off” and check out. Likewise, the two principals are both calculating, but the story never resorts to them getting hysterical, a credit as much to the acting and direction (from veteran producer Denise Di Novi) as the writing (from Christina Hodson and David Leslie Johnson). Meanwhile, David’s thorough blandness and unrelentingly caring pep talks are almost an in-joke on the genre, such that I kind of wish they’d gone full unobtanium and just named him “Handsome Macguffin.”

I also wish Unforgettable had been a little more bold at exploring the racial component that it occasionally hints at. The first time Julia cooks for David’s daughter, she refuses to eat. Tessa says “it’s probably too spicy for her,” which is a master class in subtle racism. At the same time, Unforgettable ‘s visibly Latina character is disappointingly named “Julia Banks.” Later in the film, Julia calls the police during a fight at Tessa’s house, never acknowledging what might happen if the cops showed up to a white lady’s house and find a brown lady holding a weapon there. It feels a little like Unforgettable wants to have it both ways, using race for subtle jabs but ignoring it in places where it might get too complicated.

A satisfying ending is a must for pulpy genre films, and Unforgettable ‘s is… close. But it resorts to cheap violence in ways that the rest of the movie didn’t, and the resolution is far more faithful to the genre itself than it is to this story in particular. Which is maybe for the best. It’d be a real shame if a truly great movie got saddled with a horrible nothing-burger title like “ Unforgettable .” By the way, who keeps coming up with these generic titles that remind me of completely unrelated songs? Did you think you were going to Trojan Horse a psycho ex thriller on some people who came looking for a Natalie Cole biopic? Stop this madness.

Unforgettable Review

21 Apr 2017

100 minutes

Unforgettable (2017)

There was a time in the mid-to-late-Noughties when, if you went to see a romcom, the chances were it would star Katherine Heigl. She’s been quiet for a while, but this is her vaunted (adding the word “much” feels like a step too far) return. And it’s the funniest film she’s made in years. Sadly, it’s a psychological thriller.

Unforgettable lives up to its name, but not for the right reasons.

Proceedings start well enough. We meet Rosario Dawson’s writer, Julia, in a police interview room — her face cut and bruised, with a detective presenting her with solid evidence suggesting she murdered her ex. Cut to six months earlier, and we begin to find out how she got there, starting with her moving from San Francisco to southern California to move in with her fiancé David (Geoff Stults). He’s set up a craft brewery, presumably because that seemed fresh and on-trend when the script was written. But there’s a wrinkle in this perfect new life — his jealous ex and mother of his child, Tessa (Heigl), who’s less than delighted about Julia’s existence and newfound role in her daughter’s upbringing. Cue tense early exchanges that soon build up to all-out domestic warfare.

It’s a solid premise for a perfectly decent thriller, but it all too quickly loses its way, presenting too many ludicrous moments with a perfectly straight face — most memorably a sex scene between Julia and David that’s intercut with Tessa masturbating as she plots Julia’s downfall. And plot contrivances abound. When two key moments hinge on characters simply leaving their phones unattended in public (once on a table, once on a car dashboard), it’s not unreasonable to wish for a more inventive (or realistic) script.

But the biggest problem lies with Heigl, although it’s not necessarily her fault — more the way her character is presented. The more we learn about Tessa, the less believable she becomes, and the more out of place she feels — a malfunctioning Stepford wife in a trashy thriller. It’s a less than auspicious return — it seems we’ll have to wait just a little longer for her true comeback.

Movies | 09 04 2018

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Saving lives through K-Dramas

Movie Review: Unforgettable (2016)

I will never be able to listen to Dust in the Wind by Kansas the same way again after watching this movie.

Unforgettable starts in a way that’s very typical of first-love-themed Korean movies. The movie opens with a radio DJ receiving a letter from someone with a very familiar name – Soo-ok. As he reads the letter on air, he realizes that the letter is from the same Soo-ok he knew. Unbeknownst to him, his friends are also listening to his show and from there, they take a trip down memory lane – specifically to the summer of 1991.

We meet five youths with seemingly different personalities who grew up in a small island town. We are promptly introduced to our main storyteller, the silent type Beom-sil (Do Kyung-soo) and to his friends, the comic type Gae-duk (Lee David), the frank type Gil-ja (Joo Da-young), the athlete type San-dol (Yeon Joon-seok), and the naïve type Soo-ok (Kim So-hyun). All of them are archetypes we usually see in a youth movie. Same goes with the first half of the movie. It is filled with the summer squad’s adventures and misadventures, secret and not-so-secret crushes, and idealistic conversations while enjoying the sea breeze.

What I like about this part of the movie is its nostalgia-driven narrative. Their ‘typical’ because it’s what common people experience too. They want the audience to remember their own memorable summer vacations spent with friends. And I thought all along that this is what the movie is aiming for. But as the second half starts, the real theme of the movie finally creeps out on the forefront.

I know for a fact that this movie is a coming-of-age film but I didn’t expect it to use the “major character death” card to show how our summer squad would grow from typical teenagers to adults. I didn’t notice any signs, hints, or foreshadowing of any kind that led to Soo-ok’s decision after she discovered the truth about her condition. She’s bubbly, optimist, and innocent just like any other Korean movie female leads. The scene where she jumped off into the sea left me in shock but I think it lacks the impact it’s aiming for.

The scenes that followed make up for it, however. Her death was used to test the shaky relationship of the rest of the Unforgettable squad. Beom-sil, of course, took it the hardest since Soo-ok is her first love and he witnessed firsthand what triggered Soo-ok to do that decision. The rest of her friends felt guilt for losing her without saying their apologies.

I believe the movie is at its best during the mourning scene up to the funeral scene. These island kids learned with sloppy hands how to do mourning rituals. Something that they’ve never done before nor takes seriously. It’s their wake-up call that they’re not invincible and that they don’t have infinite time to do the things they want and say the truths from their heart. The funeral scene is when the movie fully tugged my emotional strings. I lost it and bawled with them as they bid farewell to their friend and their youths as well.

On the whole, the movie isn’t perfect. It is unpolished for the most part but it is nonetheless a good movie to watch if you’re looking for a nostalgic-filled story and if you badly needed a good cry. Because that’s what Unforgettable will surely give you.

Post-credits Afterthoughts

-The casting for their adult version is goooood. Especially with Lee Beom-soo as adult David Lee. The resemblance is uncanny. And of course, special credit also goes to the rest of the adult cast: Park Yong-woo, Park Hae-joon, and Kim Ji-ho.

-Park Jeong-min is a delightful addition to this movie. I’ll really recommend watching his movie with Kim Go-eun, Sunset in My Hometown .

-The music is nicely interwoven in this film. Listen to Kim So-hyun’s version of the classic song, Violet Fragnance:

-These quotes:

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Published by maknaeahjumma

I'm an introverted Leo who has a childlike wonder with all the whys and hows in dramaland. I'm a society slave by day, fiction writer by night and a self-confessed fangirl in between. Remember when life gets tough, a little bit of escapism doesn't hurt. View all posts by maknaeahjumma

Unforgettable Is the Opposite of Its Title

The female-stalker movie starring Rosario Dawson and Katherine Heigl is just going through the motions.

Rosario Dawson in a still from <em>Unforgettable</em>

Among the less-noted cardinal rules of cinema is that any movie that takes the title Unforgettable will prove to be anything but. Do you remember the 1996 Unforgettable , in which Ray Liotta tried to solve his wife’s murder with the help of a memory-enhancement drug? Of course you don’t. I doubt even Liotta does. How about the 1997 romance starring Faith Roberts? Or the 2014 Bollywood drama? At least four different South Korean movies have been released with the English title Unforgettable , and I certainly don’t recall any of them. A TV police procedural by the same name proved unmemorable enough that CBS and A&E cancelled it three times between them.

The streak is in no danger from the latest entrant in this particular microcategory, the new “erotic thriller” (it fulfills neither promise) Unforgettable , starring Rosario Dawson and Katherine Heigl. The premise is a simple one: Julia (Dawson) is engaged to be married to David (Geoff Stults). But David’s ex-wife, Tessa (Heigl), still dreams of a reconciliation and insinuates herself into Julia’s life in escalatingly psychotic ways. Throw in an adorable child from the first marriage (Isabella Rice) and a dark secret from Julia’s past, and the movie practically writes itself.

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I could go into further detail, but there’s little point. This is a film that gives away virtually every plot twist in the trailer . And why not? It’s not as though any of them comes as a meaningful surprise.

As a cinematic subgenre, the woman-stalker thriller is hardly among the most elevated, though it has had its moments of cultural relevance, from Play Misty for Me (1971) to Fatal Attraction (1987) to Single White Female (1992). But Unforgettable scarcely aspires to that level, content to go through the same tired motions as the spate of second-rate, post- Attraction knockoffs from the early 1990s— Poison Ivy , The Crush , Mother’s Boys , and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle among them. Worse, it uses domestic abuse and assault as a cheap narrative “device,” a decision that looks even worse after the way the subject was deftly handled by the HBO series Big Little Lies .

First-time director Denise Di Novi has been a successful producer for decades, but her work here is utterly perfunctory—except, that is, when she turns the soundtrack’s vibrato-throb up to 11 in an effort to generate suspense that has not been earned by anything taking place onscreen. And while Dawson and Heigl are both fine, neither offers anything creative or unexpected: a wink, a flash of sly charm, a hint of deeper, theatrical malevolence. Just because this was never going to be more than a B-movie doesn’t mean it had to coast its way to a C-minus.

It doesn’t help matters that neither female lead has any noticeable chemistry with David, the theoretical object of both women’s desperate ardor. As played by Stults, he’s dull, self-absorbed, and mildly testy, a former broker for Merrill Lynch who seems to believe everyone in his life should be happy taking a back seat to his boyhood dream of launching his own brewery. He’s like a walking MacGuffin , or perhaps an advertisement for the fantasy that any man, regardless of inherent appeal, might luck his way into marriage with not one but two movie-star beauties.

Are there worse movies out there? Sure. Unforgettable has its occasional guilty-pleasure moments—more than a couple of them supplied by Cheryl Ladd, who plays the psycho-perfect mom responsible for making Tessa herself so psycho-perfect. But this movie is strictly late-night cable fare, not anything worth dragging oneself to the multiplex for. Title notwithstanding, it’s forgettable in every way, and—to paraphrase the great Nat King Cole, who got us into this mess in the first place—forevermore that’s how it’ll stay.

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The Kind and Tender Heart of ‘Unforgettable’

October 28, 2019

There’s a breath of fresh air in directors Jun Lana and Perci Intalan’s ‘ Unforgettable ’ with Sarah Geronimo. It is a film that is unashamedly good-natured and cheerful that it really stands out in a cinematic landscape that is filled with all-too-real depictions of the world in all its cynical and jaded glory. ‘Unforgettable’ serves as a reminder that there is still goodness around us and that all it takes is just a little bit of kindness.

The story revolves around Sarah Geronimo’s Jasmine, a young woman with an unidentified mental disability. It is unclear or unspecified whether she has asperger's or if she’s in the spectrum of autism but it seems likely. She lives alone with her grandmother, played by Gina Pareno, in Baguio in relative peace. But when Jasmine’s grandmother gets tuberculosis, Jasmine must move to the city to live with her sister Dahlia (Ara Mina) while her grandmother gets better in the hospital.

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But unlike her grandmother, Dahlia is not tolerant nor understanding of Jasmine’s condition. Dahlia finds Jasmine spoiled as her condition makes her prone to tantrums when she doesn’t get what she wants, and she has a tendency of being tactless because of her inability to read social cues. Jasmine is frank, candid, and honest, and in a society that favors politeness over all, it can get her into a lot of trouble.

When Jasmine comes into contact with a dog, one that somehow looks exactly like her grandmother’s dog from her stories, Jasmine insists on bringing the newly named “Happy” to her lola in Baguio against her sister’s wishes. ‘Unforgettable’ then becomes a road trip movie from Manila to Baguio where Jasmine and Happy meet a whole bunch of people (all played by big stars like Yayo Aguila, Kim Molina, Anne Curtis, Marco Gumabao, Dennis Padilla, Alessandra De Rossi, and so on) and their lives are all enriched by each others interactions.

At the center of it all is Sarah Geronimo who gives a fully committed performance as Jasmine. Even without specifying her condition, Geronimo manages to competently portray the signs of autism: inability to make eye contact, inappropriate social interactions, monotonous speech, intense focus on one topic, and behavioural disturbance (such as tantrums). Sarah Geronimo commits fully to the character while fully utilizing her charisma to keep Jasmine from being comical or a caricature.

Because of this committed performance, not everyone shines when working alongside a character who has a difficulty connecting. The most successful of her co-stars to truly shine in their roles and engagement with Sarah Geronimo as Jasmine are Ara Mina, who wonderfully captures the frustration of someone who doesn’t understand her sister’s condition; Yayo Aguila and Kim Molina, who show a hilarious and heartwarming relationship as a provincial mother-and-daughter tandem that serves to gain the most from their meeting with Jasmine; and Anne Curtis and Cherie Gil, whose cameos feel like tongue-in-cheek parodies of themselves or characters they’ve played.

Of all the others who did not fare as well, the episode of Dennis Padilla as a taxi driver with less than good intentions comes off as really off putting in performance. It’s such an over-the-top by Padilla in a scene that’s difficult to sympathise with. It’s the most off-putting in all of the film.

Otherwise, ‘Unforgettable’ is just a lovely feel-good movie about the power and magic of kindness and tenderness. There is an almost ‘Forrest Gump’ feel to the movie with a delightful Filipino flavor. The staging and coverage of many of the scenes feels better suited to television and streaming than it does to cinema. The narrative is so focused on the personal and intimate aspects of Jasmine’s tale that it never really fills up the whole cinema screen. I feel that this would be strongest in the small screen where the closeness to the subjects would greatly benefit the storytelling. As a movie, it feels small.

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But it’s great to have a film like this; one that reminds us that the world really needs a bit more kindness. It’s a refreshing reprieve from the string of dark and cynical movies we’ve been seeing lately. In this regard, a bit of escapism won’t be so bad, especially if you have the charming Sarah Geronimo taking the lead.

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Strange Darling Review: Ingenious Oddball Thriller Is Visually Astounding

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Strange Darling delivers a unique, visually arresting horror thriller experience that keeps viewers engaged and on their toes throughout.
Director JT Mollner, cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, and a talented crew create a darkly captivating narrative that blends suspense, humor, and sick terror together seamlessly.
Filled with twists, surprises, and clever storytelling, this film is a must-see for those looking for an unforgettable cinematic experience, even if you aren't a horror fan.

Disjointed storytelling isn't always the best way to create a thriller, a genre which generally relies on building and sustaining tension; taking a nonlinear approach is risky, as it could disrupt the tension and disturb the pacing. The gritty new horror thriller Strange Darling not only takes that route but ups the ante, injecting steroids into the narrative device in ways that we won't spoil here . Stephen King has already praised Strange Darling — partly named after the lovely tune that plays over the film's spellbinding opening-credit sequence — as a "clever masterpiece," and why not? It pretty much is.

You're in for an utterly unique treat with Strange Darling , especially since acclaimed performer Giovanni Ribisi is involved. But you won't only spot him in front of the lens this time around. He's the co-producer here and also the skilled director of photography under the direction of writer and filmmaker JT Mollner ( Outlaws & Angels ). They create a visually arresting and downright hypnotic film that's admittedly dark as hell but also incredibly gripping, even if you're not necessarily a horror fan . This is indeed clever storytelling at its finest.

See Strange Darling Blind as a Bat

Strange Darling (2024)

A twisted one-night stand spirals into a deadly game of cat and mouse when a relentless predator chases an injured woman through the Oregon wilderness.

A relentlessly entertaining movie with a surprising sense of humor that balances the intensity and darkness.
A small and perfect little cast, with everyone committing all they have.
Strange Darling is ingeniously written and structured, and one of the most visually thrilling films in recent memory.

Another mastermind in horror, Mike Flanagan, has also sung his praises for Strange Darling but stressed the importance of going into a groundbreaking feature like this blind. Amen, brother. So we certainly won't give anything juicy away, but it's important to recognize, well, a number of components that collectively make up this astonishing end result. First off, the cast, which is all about quality and not quantity, is remarkable. They sculpt their characters with so much emotion and complexity despite a lack of exposition.

In fact, the characters played by the two main performers, Willa Fitzgerald ( Reacher ) and Kyle Gallner ( Smile ) , are never named. Fitzgerald is "The Woman," while Gallner is "The Demon." But nothing is as it seems in Mollner's purposefully jumpy narrative that might leave you double-taking at certain title cards. Yes, the film is also divided into chapters, but in a way that's not just stylish artifice — and make sure you're paying attention when one section ends and another begins . You can take your eyes off some movies and be perfectly fine, but Strange Darling benefits from committed viewers who presumably aren't half-watching while scrolling on Instagram.

Split image of Mad Max: Fury Road, Fast Five, and Death Proof

The Best Car Chases in Movies, Ranked

Many of the best car chases in movie history were surprisingly simple to shoot, needing only a hood-mounted camera and drivers with nerves of steel.

There isn't a lot of time for phone scrolling in this tight 96-minute runtime, anyway. After the artsy opening, we're thrust right into the thick of a murderous car chase involving The Woman attempting to outrun The Demon, who happens to be armed with a terrifying long-range rifle. But what led to such turmoil? Just when your expectations are all set for what's to come (and what might have already transpired), think again.

Mesmerized by a Brilliant Visual Design

While Strange Darling is more of a (very grisly) thriller, its ingenious narrative machinations bring to mind one of the best horror films of the past decade, Zach Cregger's recent masterpice Barbarian . In our recent interview with Mollner, the filmmaker also cited Steven Spielberg's pre- Jaws classic, Duel, as an influence on Strange Darling , which is certainly plain to see. But even then, this feels like a truly original cinematic experience.

Editor Christopher Robin Bell has worked with Mollner before, but he outdoes himself here and incorporates everything he learned in the editorial department on shaky action films like United 93 and The Bourne Ultimatum . Jarring editing heightens Ribisi's gorgeous framing and the breathtaking work from colorists Scotty Cross and George Koran to further keep you on your toes. The rhythm and flow of this journey is purposefully bumpy, with Craig DeLeon's bombastic musical score keeping our blood pressure spiked in the best possible way, all while The Woman continues her escape plan across rural, secluded terrain.

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Unforgettable Film Shoots Humor Throughout Its Darkness

Mollner's new film is also bolstered by deliciously scene-stealing performances by a few familiar faces in small doses , such as Ed Begley Jr. ( Better Call Saul ) and Barbara Hershey ( Black Swan ) playing a hippie-like couple living in peace out in the 'burbs — that is, until death comes knocking on their door, quite literally, in the form of The Woman running from her terrifying gunman. The reliably hilarious Begley ( Pineapple Express, Arrested Development, A Mighty Wind ) brings a great sense of humor to the film . And there's another familiar performer from the Breaking Bad universe who makes a sensational little appearance later in Strange Darling as well, but we won't spoil it here.

Related: Exclusive: Kyle Gallner Talks Dinner in America and Playing an Angsty Punk on a Journey

Here's the point: Whether it's a sprinkling of dark comedy or a rapid return to the thrilling, blood-soaked violence that this film's promotional campaign promised, Strange Darling is relentlessly entertaining all the way through. It has a timeless kind of vintage feel, mysterious and archetypal characters with great bits of dialogue, and tons of suspenseful surprises, but above all, it's the thrilling visual experience that will remain unforgettable . Let's hope Mollner and Ribisi continue to team up behind the lens for future projects. In the meantime, and we'll reiterate, you don't have to be horror-obsessed to soak up the pleasures of this one.

Produced by Miramax and Spooky Pictures, from Magenta Light Studios, Strange Darling can be seen only in theaters beginning Aug. 23, 2024.

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Megalopolis Is a Work of Absolute Madness

This review was originally published out of the Cannes Film Festival on May 16, 2024. We are recirculating it now timed to the release ( and recall ) of Megalopolis’s theatrical trailer . The film is scheduled to be released in theaters on September 27, 2024.

The moment when an actual live human walked out in front of the movie screen to pose Adam Driver’s Cesar Catilina a question (which Cesar, in the film, proceeded to answer) might, in retrospect, be one of the less bizarre moments in Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis . The director’s supreme dream project, which he’s been trying to get off the ground for four decades, arrives at Cannes trailing clouds of speculation, skepticism, and controversy. It bears the marks of all the years Coppola has spent trying to make it, with elements that feel like they’ve been patched in from different periods in his filmography: a bit of The Godfather here, a bit of Tucker: the Man and His Dream there. But the movie also feels older than that. Watching it, you sense the imagination of someone who came of age in the 1950s, with its visions of scientific progress, innovative design, and space-age wonder. How odd and curiously apropos that when we do see glimpses of Coppola’s city of the future in this 2024 film, it doesn’t seem too far from something we might have seen on The Jetsons . Megalopolis comes to us as the (perhaps final) testament of an artist now in his 80s, but sometimes it feels like the fevered thoughts of a precocious child, driven and dazzled and maybe a little lost in all the possibilities of the world before him.

There is nothing in Megalopolis that feels like something out of a “normal” movie. It has its own logic and cadence and vernacular. The characters speak in archaic phrases and words, mixing shards of Shakespeare, Ovid, and at one point straight-up Latin. Some characters speak in rhyme, others just in high-minded prose that feels like maybe it should be in verse. At one point, Adam Driver does the entire “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet . Why? I’m not exactly sure. But it sure sounds good.

The plot, for all its love of science and reason, is a miasma of magic, melodrama, corny emotionality, and gangster-movie politics. It lands us right in the middle of a debate between visionary architect Cesar and this alternate-universe New York’s Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) over how to use their limited resources when they’re already wracked by debt. Cesar, inventor of a living building substance called Megalon, dreams of a self-sustaining city of the future that will organically grow with its inhabitants. Cicero, already plagued by scandal and booed wherever he goes, wants to help his angry and anxious citizens now. “Don’t let the now destroy the forever,” Cesar insists to the mayor.

Coppola, who once planned on adapting Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead , clearly sides with the dreamer, but Cesar is an imperfect vessel. He possesses tremendous powers — in the film’s bravura opening sequence, we see him stop time as he leans precariously off the Chrysler Building — but he’s also an egomaniac, absorbed in his own brilliance and unable to compromise or care for those below him. It’s an ideal role for Driver, who combines haughtiness and neurosis better than any other actor of his generation. Cesar’s life begins to change with the arrival of Cicero’s party-girl daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), the only other person who sees his ability to pause time, and who seems to have the same power herself. She is drawn to his brilliance, but of course, a romance also blossoms between them. There is little chemistry between the actors, but their love feels more like a metaphoric one than an actual one.

There are echoes here of the central conflict in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis , the granddaddy of all City of the Future movies, with its own clash between an aloof, opportunistic leader and a brilliant, possibly mad scientist, ultimately brought together by love. There, as in Megalopolis , the citizens were at the mercy of the elites’ hedonism and warfare. But Coppola spends more time among the elites than Lang, who sent his protagonist into the caves beneath Metropolis to witness the physical and spiritual toll of the industrial utopia above. Of course, extended visions of squalor and despair would have worked against this cinematic ode to those who dream of the future. But this is a movie about ideas more than people; everything in it feels purposefully unreal and fanciful, as if the whole thing were taking place inside its creator’s head. It basically is: Coppola is more interested in the debate over the future than he is in presenting any answers.

At the same time, it’s no surprise that the director of The Godfather films is drawn to the court intrigues of the wealthy. It’s in this world that we find Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), a beautiful financial journalist intent on accruing wealth and power for herself. She starts off as Cesar’s mistress, but soon marries his uncle, Hamilton Crassus (Jon Voight), the richest man in the city. Meanwhile, Crassus’s constantly shape-shifting grandson, Clodio (Shia LaBeouf, in ever-rotating costumes), schemes to inherit all the family money for himself, ingratiating himself into the city’s subcultures in an effort to gain influence. Much of this scheming happens during sequences of unchecked bacchanalia, with scantily clad partygoers clearly meant to evoke Roman-style decadence and decline. At their best, these scenes have an otherworldly inventiveness that gets at their intoxicating, anything-goes appeal. At their worst, they come across as choppy shots of awkward extras gyrating listlessly.

Megalopolis is often caught between its own dreams and what is merely possible. It certainly has moments of dazzling invention. When Cesar travels by night into the darker, less glitzy corners of the city, he passes by giant animated statues: Blind Justice leans exasperatedly against a wall, her scales tipping wildly off balance; a figure of a man in chains holding a tablet totters, the tablet breaking into pieces. A man gently braids the hair of a woman surrounded by angelic nurses, and we then see that she was never there, that he’s alone in a dingy room lost in his memories. By the time the aforementioned live-audience element arrives (and who knows if that will be replicated when the movie gets released in actual theaters), it’s certainly notable, but it’s so in keeping with the film’s incessant, go-for-broke quality that the audience accepts it matter-of-factly: Oh, so that happened . The occasional dissolves that made the fever dreams of Apocalypse Now and Bram Stoker’s Dracula so gorgeously disorienting here take over entire sequences. In those pictures, these were stylistic flourishes. Here, it’s all flourish, all the time.

But then there come scenes that feel rushed, undernourished, and underpopulated. What made Coppola’s earlier epics of family power and backstabbing so compelling was his ability to compose his narratives in depth: We always felt that there was a whole world thrumming with murderous vitality behind the key characters. The director’s difficulties in getting Megalopolis made — not just the many decades it took to get the project off the ground, but the very real challenges of this particular shoot — have been documented elsewhere. He’s talked openly of having to cut corners and work with a smaller crew after what started off as a more ambitious production. At times, we can tell. Crowd scenes can be sparse. Seemingly major characters drop out of the story. For all the visual grandiosity, the digital cinematography is sometimes flat and overly bright, which in turn reduces depth and detail and makes things feel one-dimensional. We know Coppola has an eye, and he and cinematographer Mihai Malaimare have done fine work together in the past. Maybe there are future cuts of this film that will flesh things out more. Or maybe sometimes the reality of the now just defeats the possibilities of the forever.

Megalopolis is filled with quotations and lines that feel like quotations. Among the aphorisms that drift in is one attributed to Marcus Aurelius: “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” Interestingly, the quote does not appear anywhere in Marcus Aurelius; apparently, Leo Tolstoy once cited it as coming from the Stoic Roman Emperor, and everybody just accepted that as fact. So, it’s a fake quote! But a beautiful one nonetheless, presumably warning against the dangers of going with the crowd but also of the dangers of going mad in one’s opposition to the crowd. But hearing it in this film, I imagined an extra comma in there, between escape and finding : “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape, finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

It totally reverses the meaning, but it would be in keeping not just with this movie but Coppola’s career in general. Over and over again, he very consciously leaps over the edge with each new project. He admitted to going insane making Apocalypse Now . I’ve written elsewhere that I thought he’d lost his mind with Bram Stoker’s Dracula , a movie I now consider a masterpiece. Surely the man who staked his entire studio on One From the Heart — the beautiful, woozy, unforgettable, financially dead-on-arrival One From the Heart — wasn’t thinking clearly. And so, he’s done it again, and perhaps exceeded himself. Megalopolis might be the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy every single batshit second of it.

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‘Strange Darling’ Review: JT Mollner’s Deconstructed Date Night Will Make You Love the Movies Again

Alison foreman.

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A single line — paraphrased by countless pornos but said verbatim at a key turn in “ Strange Darling ” — unlocks the heart of JT Mollner ’s razor-sharp psychosexual thriller.

“I’ve never put it THERE before,” says someone in a scene that shouldn’t be described.

An excruciating chase film , a terrifying puzzle-box whodunit, and a testament to romanticizing even the darkest cinema in glowing 35mm , “Strange Darling” is an outright triumph. That much you can know now, although the following review treads very carefully to avoid spoilers.

Audiences going in with the least knowledge of what you could call a gut-wrenching date night will have the best crack at enjoying this movie in theaters — but there’s more than plot to recommend Magenta Light Studios’ jaw-dropping first feature. Yes, writer/director Mollner’s exacting script is a lean, mean vivisection of humanity’s never-ending hunt for a serial killer. Told nonlinearly, with chapter names signposting its story out of order, “Strange Darling” plays like an even more volatile “Pulp Fiction,” cocaine included.

But it’s also proof that actor Giovanni Ribisi has been hiding out as one of Hollywood’s greatest living cinematographers — a fact laid to bare in some of the most beautiful murders this side of Dario Argento’s “Deep Red.” The main cast further asserts themselves as top talent in the kaleidoscopic world of meta-performance. After a brief black-and-white vignette sets the stage with an instantaneous jump-scare, you’ll meet “The Lady” ( Willa Fitzgerald ) and “The Demon” ( Kyle Gallner ) in an opening sequence that feels ripped from the throat of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

The Demon might not catch up to her yet, but you’ll still feel the breath trapped in your throat as the seething actors and red-on-red shades emanate an angry delirium. Mollner begins his six-parter smack-dab in the middle with “CHAPTER 3: CAN YOU HELP ME? PLEASE?” but the filmmaker clues the audience in on a couple of other things before that. A tightly written crawl says the nightmare you’re about to witness is based on a true story (it’s not) and that it chronicles the last days of an especially sadistic murderer (that part is true… technically ).

Before saying anything of his nightmarish story, Mollner makes a point of including another slate: “SHOT ENTIRELY ON 35MM FILM.” That self-indulgent choice in a horror movie might make some cinephiles scoff, but Ribisi earns the recognition. This isn’t Mollner’s first rodeo — the writer/director made “Outlaws and Angels” before this — and he knows what he’s got. As the tension builds past what even the characters can take, their director wants your eyes open enough to admire what his director of photography has achieved. The lighting and relighting of a single wig in this film deserves its own featurette.

Editor Christopher Bell proves equally essential, assertively reorienting audience perspective with an almost comic relentlessness. Bell’s scalpel-like cuts are meant to screw with your head. That may prove too challenging for some viewers, who will already be high on a supply of arresting violence and original tracks by alt-rock musician Z-Berg. And yet, the dreamy core of “Strange Darling” will push real genre fans forward — finding revelatory relief in comedy so black it could make even a non-smoker want a cigarette.

Electric and unforgettable, “Strange Darling” lives up to its maddening moniker. In a summer movie season that’s been middling at best, this is a must-see — a feat of filmmaking so extraordinary you’ll wonder if it could ever truly be spoiled. You’ve met this man and this woman. You know these tropes and their horrors. But in this exceptionally slippery film, somehow never once losing its traction, you’ve never seen “it” put “ THERE ” before.

From Miramax, Spooky Pictures, and Magenta Light Studios, “Strange Darling” is in theaters August 23.

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Unforgettable movie review & film summary (2017)
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Perci M. Intalan and Jun Lana's Unforgettable makes an extraordinary masterpiece through an adorable and heartwarming performance by Sarah Geronimo. Unforgettable takes us to a wonderful jour…
Unforgettable (2017 film)
Unforgettable is a 2017 American drama thriller film directed by Denise Di Novi (in her directorial debut) and written by Christina Hodson. The film stars Rosario Dawson, Katherine Heigl, Geoff Stults, Isabella Rice, and Cheryl Ladd, and follows a divorcée who begins to torment her ex-husband's new fiancée.
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Unforgettable rests in an uncomfortable area: not fun enough to be a trashy/campy movie like a No Good Deed or Obsessed (perhaps Idris Elba is the x-factor?), or even like a made-for-TV Lifetime stalker thriller like Stalked by my Doctor (imagine Eric Roberts in the Katherine Heigl role!), and it's not unique or interesting enough to be good.
Unforgettable: Movie Review
Unforgettable: Movie Review "Unforgettable" provides all the basic elements for a great feel-good movie. Bolstered by a tried-and-true cast and simple dilemmas, the film does enough to be emotional and moving even with its short running time.
Unforgettable
Unforgettable starring Katherine Heigl, Rosario Dawson, Geoff Stults is reviewed by Matt Atchity (Rotten Tomatoes), Christy Lemire (http://www.ChristyLemire....
Unforgettable Movie Review
Trashy thriller about mean people has violence, sex, more. Read Common Sense Media's Unforgettable review, age rating, and parents guide.
Movie Review: Unforgettable
Movie Review: Unforgettable Rosario Dawson and Katherine Heigl in a slick but predictable girl fight.
'Unforgettable' Movie Review: Katherine Heigl Tortures Rosario Dawson
Those reviews are the most fun to write, for the movies that feel like they need you. Other times you get movies like Unforgettable, a surprisingly well-executed version of exactly what you ...
Unforgettable Review
Read the Empire Movie review of Unforgettable. Scuppered by a lazy script that fails to effectively build tension, Unforgettable lives up to its...
Movie Review: Unforgettable (2016)
Movie Review: Unforgettable (2016) I will never be able to listen to Dust in the Wind by Kansas the same way again after watching this movie. Unforgettable starts in a way that's very typical of first-love-themed Korean movies. The movie opens with a radio DJ receiving a letter from someone with a very familiar name - Soo-ok.
Unforgettable Is the Opposite of Its Title
The female-stalker movie starring Rosario Dawson and Katherine Heigl is just going through the motions. By Christopher Orr Rosario Dawson in a still from Unforgettable ( Karen Ballard / Warner ...
The Kind and Tender Heart of 'Unforgettable'
Otherwise, 'Unforgettable' is just a lovely feel-good movie about the power and magic of kindness and tenderness. There is an almost 'Forrest Gump' feel to the movie with a delightful Filipino flavor.
Strange Darling Review
Strange Darling delivers a unique, visually arresting horror thriller experience that keeps viewers engaged and on their toes throughout.; Director JT Mollner, cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, and ...
Review: Francis Ford Coppola's 'Megalopolis' Is Totally Nuts
This review was originally published out of the Cannes Film Festival on May 16, 2024. We are recirculating it now timed to the release of Megalopolis's theatrical trailer.The film is scheduled ...
'Strange Darling' Review: JT Mollner's Deconstructed Date Night Will
Film Review. Starring Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner, Barbara Hershey, and Ed Begley Jr., this psychosexual horror is a cinematic masterpiece. ... Electric and unforgettable, "Strange Darling ...

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Reviewed at AMC Century City, April 7, 2017. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 100 MIN.

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Directed by Perci M. Intalan and Jun Lana Unforgettable stars Sarah Geronimo, Gina Pareño, Ara Mina, Meg Imperial, Yayo Aguila, and Kim Molina. Rated G by the MTRCB.

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