We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
ROOFMAN (2025)
In the late ‘90s, an Army veteran named Jeffrey Manchester went on a crime spree, raising money by entering fast food restaurants (usually a McDonald’s) in the middle of the night by busting through the roof, then hiding out in the place until the morning employees arrived. He would then hold up the employees and stick them in the walk-in freezer while he emptied the cash registers. Getting robbed can be quite a traumatic experience, but the employees often noted that Manchester had a very gentle and cordial demeanor when he was robbing them.
Of course, he went to prison for these crimes. But in 2004, he managed to escape by concealing himself in the undercarriage of an outgoing truck with a piece of plywood. He then spent several months hiding out in a nearby Toys "R" Us store and an abandoned Circuit City, where he set up a little hidden living quarters.
Directed by Derek Cianfrance, who also wrote the screenplay with Kirt Gunn, Roofman tells the story of Jeffrey Manchester, the title coming from the nickname he earned because of his robbery method. Manchester’s behavior was so audacious, his life story was crying out for the movie treatment, and Cianfrance definitely delivered the best movie you could possibly hope to get out of this scenario. Roofman is really good, highly entertaining – and might leave youw wishing you could spend some months hanging out in a Toys "R" Us.
Channing Tatum plays Manchester, a very clever man who makes some incredibly stupid decisions – and yet it’s difficult to fault him for his crimes because he’s a nice guy who clearly has a good heart. During his time living in the Toys "R" Us, he develops a soft spot for employee Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst) and even manages to gain access to the store’s scheduling system so he can help her rearrange her shifts when her hard-headed boss Mitch (Peter Dinklage) doesn’t go along with her requests.
Then, he makes the mistake of pursuing a relationship with Leigh while secretly living inside her place of employment.
We know all along that things are only going to work out for Manchester for a certain period of time (after all, if he got away with all of this and nobody learned his secrets, we wouldn’t have this movie), but it’s fun to watch him make his way through the situation... and to root for him to overcome the odds that are stacked against him.
Roofman is one of the best new comedy drama movies I’ve seen in a long time.
NONNAS (2025)
Also one of the best comedy dramas I’ve seen in a while, and also based on a true story, is the Netflix release Nonnas, which was directed by Stephen Chbosky from a script by Liz Maccie, based on the life of New Yorker Joe Scaravella.
Vince Vaughn stars as Joe, a man I could really relate to in some ways. Grieving the death of his mother, he gets lost in memories of his childhood, when his grandmother and mother would spend a lot of time in the kitchen, crafting delicious meals for their friends and family. I don’t exactly have memories like his, but I know what it’s like to get lost in memories after the loss of loved ones and to want to return to those days. Joe tries to get back what he’s lost by attempting to recreate meals his grandmother and mother would make, even though he doesn’t have the recipes.
Walking around Staten Island one day, he comes across a closed restaurant – and decides to use the insurance money his mother left for him to buy the place and re-open it. It will be called Enoteca Maria, in honor of his mother, and the food will be made by real Italian grandmothers. His hires: his mother’s best friend Roberta (Lorraine Bracco), former nun Teresa (Talia Shire), his mother’s hairdresser Gia (Susan Sarandon), and Antonella (Brenda Vaccaro), who he meets through his high school crush Olivia (Linda Cardellini).
While working on getting the restaurant up and running with the help of his friends Bruno (Joe Manganiello) and Stella (Drea de Matteo), a situation that has a lot of ups and downs to it, Joe also tries to pursue a relationship with Olivia, who he still has a crush on.
Nonnas is a really nice, charming movie, and exactly the kind of mostly-family-friendly entertainment that I would have enjoyed watching with some of the people I’ve lost in my life; my own mother and my grandmothers. I can’t watch it with them, but my girlfriend and I had a good time watching it together.
SMALLVILLE SEASON TWO (2002 – 2003)
In October of 1989, the Kansas town of Smallville was struck by a devastating meteor shower that made a mess of the place – and from the wreckage emerged a small boy, who was taken in by farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent (John Schneider and Annette O’Toole). The Kents named their adopted son Clark... and over the years, they realized that he is gifted with incredible strength and speed, gifts that Jonathan has encouraged him to hide from the world as much as possible for his own safety. As he makes his way through his teen years, Clark’s abilities are being more powerful and varied – and the meteor rocks have started having strange effects on some of the locals.
Those meteor rock effects allowed the TV series Smallville, created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, a “villain of the week” approach throughout season 1. The second season also gave teenage Clark Kent (Tom Welling) plenty of villains to face, but chilled out a bit, not giving him a different super-powered threat to face every single week. Instead, season 2 starts to build out the mythology a bit more while also giving the characters a lot of personal drama to deal with.
At the heart of season 2 is Clark’s journey of self-discovery. In the midst of the season, he discovers an underground cave system with what appears to be Native American writings on the wall – but these writings also match the alien language symbols from the spaceship he arrived in during the meteor shower. According to the cave drawings, a hero with the strength of multiple men and the ability to start fire with his eyes fell from the stars... and that hero sounds a lot like Clark himself, especially since he just discovered a “heat vision” ability. The episode that introduces heat vision is rather amusing, because it’s mixed with Clark’s teen hormones. The first time he starts a fire, he’s having a “hot for teacher” moment with biology teacher Desirée Atkins (Krista Allen) – a shady character he also gets into a relationship with Clark’s friend, billionaire Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum).
Despite the best efforts of his father, Lionel Luthor (John Glover), to drag him over into the dark side, Lex is a good guy... but his interactions with his scheming father and characters like Desirée give him a rough ride this season. He does appear to find love with Dr. Helen Bryce (Emmanuelle Vaugier), but even that causes trouble along the way.
The back-and-forth, “will they or won’t they?” mess continues with Clark and his crush Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk), while their friend Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack) hopes Clark will end up with her instead. Clark’s longtime buddy Pete Ross (Sam Jones III) discovers the secret of Clark’s abilities and promises to keep that secret. That promise is put to the test at times.
Some of the issues Clark has to contend with as the season goes on include the return of a homicidal shapeshifter, a girl who rejuvenates herself by feeding on the life forces of others, a "Jekyll and Hyde" type, meteor-enhanced bugs that cause people to engage in risky behavior, a guy who can make a duplicate of himself, the aforementioned Desirée Atkins, some characters who desperately want to confirm and expose his secret, a meteor-huffing athlete, meteor dust that makes people sick, a bullied classmate who may or may not also be an alien, and people who like to mess with Lana – including a clone of her deceased childhood best friend.
While Clark gets weak in the presence of most of the meteor rocks, which glow green, season 2 introduces the idea of red meteor rocks, which makes Clark act without inhibitions... and behave like a jerk.
One of the best action moments in the series comes when Martha Kent gets caught up in a hostage situation in the high-rise headquarters of LuthorCorp in the city of Metropolis. Since Clark doesn’t have the ability to fly yet, he has to infiltrate the LuthorCorp building by jumping from the roof of the building next door – which happens to be the headquarters of the Daily Planet newspaper.
Other great moments come out of Clark’s search for answers about his heritage. Not only does this search result in the voice of his alien father Jor-El (Terence Stamp) coming from the spaceship, but it also leads Clark to an illuminating meeting with Dr. Virgil Swann – who is played by former Superman actor Christopher Reeve in a wonderful guest appearance. It seems that, in the Smallville version of the story, Clark (or, as he was known on his home planet, Kal-El) was sent from the planet Krypton by his parents, who believed he could and should conquer mankind. That same divisive twist was also used in director James Gunn’s 2025 Superman movie, which has no connection to Smallville otherwise.
I really enjoyed the first season of Smallville, and found season 2 to be an even deeper, more interesting and satisfying viewing experience.
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