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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Daddio’ on Netflix, a contrived but enjoyable actor's duel between Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn

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8 months ago

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Daddio’ on Netflix, a contrived but enjoyable actor's duel between Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn

Daddio (now on Netflix) is what you call a good ol’ two-hander, a single-setting drama consisting of one drawn-out conversation between two people. Some consider My Dinner with Andre to be the benchmark for this storytelling method, which ends up being a test for all parties involved: Can the filmmakers put together a compelling narrative with just dialogue? Will the actors make the most of the intense focus on their performances? And will the audience hang with the minimalist structure and presentation without being tempted to go back to the streaming menu and find something with a little more physical movement? Writer/director Christy Hall and stars Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson are hopefully up for the task.

DADDIO: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We never learn her name, but the credits call her – I dunno, should we cringe at this? – Girlie (Johnson). She hops in a cab at the airport, destination Midtown New York City. It’s nighttime. The taxi is an old-school, battered yellow cab, not a Tesla or a Subaru driven by some Uber part-timer. No, behind the wheel is Clark (Penn), a weathered and lightly salty seen-it-all Noo Yawker type who heavily peppers his speech with profanity. He grumbles at another cabbie who honks at him, beefs about the Uber guys (“These f—in’ apps”), tells his passenger, “You f—in’ won, sweetheart, you did.” Ugh. Travel and the airport suck the life outta you and now you gotta listen to Mr. Chatty Cabbie here, going on about how people always stare at their phones, so if you pick up your phone you’re all extra self-conscious about looking at it instead of engaging in conversation you might not want to have.

At least Clark isn’t boring, or too boorish. (OK, maybe he’s a little boorish. But it’s forgiveable.) He isn’t a talk-about-the-weather-or-that-new-Netflix-show kind of guy. No, he waxes about how an increasingly cashless society means he gets smaller tips these days, how salt and tea used to be currency – and how “Girlie” strikes him as someone who can “hold her own.” He’s right about that, because she doesn’t shrink away from his crass tone, and if she’s initially a little annoyed by his blahblahblah, she soon leans into it, realizing that this might not be the usual dull conversation between two people who only seem to have basic biology in common. 

Now, I’m not saying Clark could be the star interrogator for the homicide squad, but he notices the details (a variety of cues tell him that “Girlie” is coming home to New York rather than visiting) that allow him to ask relevant questions (“Where’d you go for a visit?”). She shares that she visited her half-sister in Oklahoma, where they grew up, which leads to the story about how she ended up in New York and who her parents are and to the “daddy issues” that Clark sniffs out like a drug dog that just found a brick of cocaine in a pile of luggage. Meanwhile, she texts with an unnamed lover who seems rather needy and desperate to see her – and then sends her a dick pic, because all he wants is sex, it seems. Clark sniffs that out too, including the little fact that her desperate lover is married. He knows these things, because he was the guy who’s been married and had things on the side. And now this conversation is interesting, not, as the lady once put it, the usual mindless getting-to-know you chitchat. 

DADDIO MOVIE STREAMING
Photo: ©Sony Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Locke was more of a one-and-a-half-hander, since Tom Hardy spends the entire movie in his car making phone calls (of increasing urgency, I might add).

Performance Worth Watching: In a movie that encourages a degree of performative acting, Johnson is a degree or two less performative than Penn. Johnson, winner of Saddest Eyes in Hollywood five years running, makes the most of a movie heavily stocked with studious closeups. 

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Memorable Dialogue: “Girlie” puts an edge on her end of the convo after Clark makes a comment about her “lifting her leg” on things in order to claim her territory: “I don’t mind squatting.”

Sex and Skin: A few brief over-the-shoulder shots of “Girlie”’s sexting yields female toplessness and graphic male underwearlessness.

DADDIO SEAN PENN
Photo: Everett Collection

Our Take: How much one enjoys Daddio depends wholly upon one’s desire to spend 100 minutes in tight quarters with Penn and Johnson, to the point where you can almost smell their breath (and are thankful for the moment when Clark shares a stick of gum with his passenger). Save for a standout extended cameo in Licorice Pizza, Penn’s output has been marginal for a decade, and it’s good to see one of the most intense actors in the game sink his teeth into a meaty, character-driven role, even if he leans into some of the contrivances of the stagey setup. Quietly becoming one of the upper-tier actors of her generation, Johnson avoids such temptations, holding back a little more, playing her character coy without cliche, and maintaining a run of strong performances including Cha Cha Real Smooth and The Lost Daughter (not to mention the surely intentional comedy of the Madame Web press tour). 

You may need to forgive the film for its tendency to play out in a predictably quasi-literary fashion, where the dialogue is overly thick with metaphor and double-entendre, and the characters are heavily fortified with irony. Clark comes off like the overconfident older not-a-gentleman who likely masks some insecurities, “Girlie” is surely more worldly than she seems, and when they talk about the “ones and zeros” of her computer-programming career, they’re obviously talking about more than just computer programming. But Penn and Johnson make sure these prickly, but endearing characters aren’t privy to simple definitions, and while Hall’s script tends to feel more capital-W Written than natural, and not particularly profound in its observations of Men And Women And What Makes Them Tick, the two actors find enough pathos in their exchanges to make the film feel, if not cathartic, at least moderately satisfying. 

Our Call: Daddio is no game-changer, but a lot less has been done with a hell of a lot more than one setting, two talented actors and a rock-solid script. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Movie Reviews

‘Ballerina’ movie review: Ana de Armas is spectacular in a middling ‘John Wick’ spin-off

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3 hours ago

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June 13, 2025

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‘Ballerina’ movie review: Ana de Armas is spectacular in a middling ‘John Wick’ spin-off

This image released by Lionsgate shows Ana de Armas in a scene from “Ballerina.”
| Photo Credit: AP

Following her stints in action films like No Time to Die and The Gray Man, Ana de Armas gets to bring bullet-spewing, flame-throwing, grenade-exploding mayhem upon a gazillion men in Ballerina. Still, it seems her most formidable triumph comes from the fact that her character Eve Macarro refuses to be just a ‘female John Wick.’ Female assassins aren’t really hot commodity for studios at the moment (must one blame Black Widow?), but Lionsgate persistently selling it as a John Wick film (‘From the World of John Wick’ prefixes the title) isn’t unjustified either. The Babayaga casts a long, unmatchable shadow, which is why it’s quite something to see Eve end up standing on her own feet. Could we say the same about the film? Unfortunately, Ballerina may not survive that face-off.

Ballerina begins by telling us who Eve is, and the film justifiably takes the necessary time for this crucial backstory. After Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), the vicious leader of the Cult, killed her father, a young Eve (Victoria Comte) trains to become a ballerina assassin with the Ruska Roma in New York, under the care of the Director (Anjelica Huston, reprising her character from John Wick: Chapter 3) and Nogi (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), a mentor at the establishment. 12 years later, Eve is a killing machine who, as one would expect, crosses paths with the Cultists who killed her father and seeks vengeance, a quest that introduces us to an unknown world where it seems like Eve might be out of her depths.

From here, director Len Wiseman’s film, written by John Wick 3 & 4 scribe Shay Hatten, goes full throttle as we flip through some grand action set pieces. Be it the fight sequence inside The Continental (where we are introduced to Norman Reedus’ Daniel Pine, whose story further pushes Eve to seek vengeance) or the long climactic sequence in a snowy riverside village, there’s seamless and innovative action choreography. However, what truly sells this action is how Armas’ Eve is written.

Right at the beginning, Nogi teaches Eve to embrace her slight frame and the weaknesses she naturally carries. And so, Eve relies upon speed, spatial awareness, fluid body movements and impeccable accuracy. While she struggles to best her enemies initially, she finds her peak momentum during a spectacular fight at an ammunition store, and it’s quite riveting to see an assassin who grows into herself. It also helps that Armas plays Eve with a perceptible wide-eyedness. A ballerina key toy becomes a symbol of how Eve looks at her life under the Ruska Roma. She yearns for freedom and to win over her fate, as she tells John Wick in a scene, but also to seek the truth of what happened to her father (interestingly, her Latin tattoo translates to ‘Light amidst darkness,’ while her father’s tattoo denoted self-conquest). 

‘From the World of John Wick: Ballerina’ (English)

Director: Len Wiseman

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Cast: Ana de Armas, Keanu Reeves, Gabriel Byrne, Catalina Sandino Moreno, and Norman Reedus

Runtime: 125 minutes

Storyline: A young assassin takes on a secret cult to avenge her father’s death

The issue with Ballerina is that, in attempting to stay true to the world of John Wick while also carving an identity of its own, the film falls in line with the notion many confuse John Wick to be: a trigger-happy adrenaline junky’s wet dream. John Wick is more; these were narratives propelled by the rage, grief and world-weariness behind Keanu Reeves’ sulky, cold eyes. There’s very little of that going for Ballerina, as Armas’ character is thrust into action set pieces even before she can hold control of the frames.

While it is unfair to wish Eve fit like a glove in a world John took four films to get accustomed to, Ballerina’s attempts at establishing the dynamics between the protagonist and the secondary characters, like Winston, the Director, or even the Chancellor, are hardly effective; all we get are some juvenile exchanges.

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This image released by Lionsgate shows Ana de Armas in a scene from “Ballerina.”

This image released by Lionsgate shows Ana de Armas in a scene from “Ballerina.”
| Photo Credit:
Murray Close/Lionsgate

Surely, one cannot pit a two-hour film against a three-episode series when it comes to character development, but the thought of characters from The Continentaldoes arise, especially when you meet the present-day Winston (Ian McShane) and Charon (the late Lance Reddick). Also, if that series moved away from Chad Stahelski’s John Wick films, Ballerina attempts to be at the more pulpier extreme.

The simplicity of the plot isn’t the question here — the John Wick films didn’t work for their plot — but a lack of ambition. It’s absurd how contrived and convenient the world of Ballerina seems for the newbie protagonist. She fights hundreds of Cultists with guns and flamethrowers, uses ice-skating shoes as shurikens, and throws grenades in close quarters (and somehow keeps her head), and while all that riveting action impresses you in the moment, the effect hardly lingers.

Instead, what you are left wondering is how John Wick’s appearance fits into the larger scheme of things, since the film is set between the events of the third and fourth John Wick films. Seems like John somehow found time for this side quest even when he was declared excommunicado.

From the World of John Wick: Ballerina is currently running in theatres

Published – June 13, 2025 07:21 pm IST

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Movie Review: To be Pretty, Young and Italian, Figuring It Out at “Diciannove”

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1 day ago

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June 12, 2025

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Movie Review: To be Pretty, Young and Italian, Figuring It Out at “Diciannove”

Giovanni Tortorici’s “Diciannove” is a dreamy, drifting odyssey into a time in youth when one discovers the meaning of “the world’s your oyster.”

It’s about a young Italian with choices at an age when you know it all and you know nothing and you follow your impusles, figuring everything out on the way — 19.

That’s what the movie’s title means, and that’s the year we float through with our middle class Italian anti-hero, Leonardo (Manfred Marini). He will wander from Palermo to London, Siena to Turin, changing majors and colleges, getting pass-out drunk with friends and family, debating professors and reading 14th century Italian writers.

He will start writing himself, experiment with solitude and sexuality and ponder suicide and perhaps becoming a rent boy to make ends meet.

Yeah. “Nineteen.”

We meet him as his mother is the first to label him a disorganized, doesn’t-sweat-details “moron,” on his way to join his sister (Vittoria Planeta) in her shared apartment in London. A few days of drunken clubbing, getting chewed-out for not helping around the house, eating others’ food and the like and that London university degree in “business” goes out the window like the dream it was.

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He applies online to a university in Siena, sets off to study literature, buys books and fails to avoid coming off as a standoffish loner.

“I want to commit suicide,” he writes and recites (in Italian with English subtitles). “I want to kill myself…I want to die…I want to croak…Snuff it…Pass away.”

Writers and their “mantras.”

Of course, it’s all a phase as this poster child for the arrogance of bourgeois youth takes exams without attending lectures, composes a jeremiad against his professor, but chickens out of distributing it, begs mom for money and gets chewed out by his dad as he walks the streets of the old city, buying books and thinking and just generally “figuring it out.”

It’s a mesmerizing movie, in its way, a chronological stream-of-consciousness dissection of a very specific “type” — Western, indulged, pretty enough to attract attention, careless with how he uses it, too removed from his contemporaries to care or commit.

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Semi-autobiographical or not, our writer-director has picked his target and hit it in delivering a portrait of youth that tries everything before settling on one thing to make the “fanatical” focus of one’s life. Realizing “We’re not as interesting as we think we are at 19” is just a bonus.

Rating: unrated, nudity, sexual situations, teen alcohol abuse, smoking

Cast: Manfredi Marini, Vittoria Planeta, Luca Lazzareschi and
Zackari Delmas

Cfedits: Scripted and directed by Giovanni Tortorici. An Oscilloscope Labs release.

Running time: 1:48

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About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine

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The Unholy Trinity (2025) – Movie Review

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2 days ago

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June 11, 2025

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The Unholy Trinity (2025) – Movie Review

The Unholy Trinity, 2025.

Directed by Richard Gray.
Starring Pierce Brosnan, Samuel L. Jackson, Brandon Lessard, Veronica Ferres, Gianni Capaldi, Q’orianka Kilcher, Tim Daly, Ethan Peck, Katrina Bowden, David Arquette, Anthony J. Sharpe, Beau Linnell, Isabella Ruby, Eadie Gray, Stephanie Hernandez, Dylan Brosnan, Paris Brosnan, Stu Brumbaugh, Tina Buckingham, Nick Farnell, Chuck Mathews, Scott McCauley, and Tim Montana.

SYNOPSIS:

Buried secrets of an 1870s Montana town spark violence when a young man returns to reclaim his legacy and is caught between a sheriff determined to maintain order and a mysterious stranger hell-bent on destroying it.

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With a title like The Unholy Trinity, one might be led to believe that director Richard Gray (and screenwriter Lee Zachariah) would have a significant degree of characterization of the individuals within that triangle. Instead, it more or less coasts on nabbing some recognizable faces in Pierce Brosnan and Samuel L. Jackson to appear in it, while serving as a muddled, bland search for gold, which is really a search for a particular home that is believed to have it buried under.

Young Henry Broadway’s (Brandon Lessard) father built the home. It also turns out that he has constructed numerous buildings within this small Montana town, making the search more difficult for Samuel L. Jackson’s St. Christopher, a man with a history of interaction with him, as evident from his casual smile while watching his execution. Moments before, Henry’s father proclaims his innocence and urges his son to enact vengeance by killing the sheriff who supposedly framed him. The wrinkle in that plan is that the sheriff is already dead, leaving Henry unsure of what to do next as he befriends the new sheriff, a soft-spoken and weary Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan).

That’s a whole lot of convoluted storytelling for a film that’s about buried treasure, and that’s without getting into pasts revealed through exposition and other plot elements including Gabriel’s secret alliance with indigenous Running Cub (Q’orianka Kilcher), whom an angry mob led by Gideon (Gianni Capaldi) has accused of wrongdoing and wants to kill. This is also meant to be somewhat of a coming-of-age story for Henry, who stumbles into his first sexual encounter in a brothel and then wonders if God is punishing him for doing so when a shootout arises.

Speaking of that, The Unholy Trinity is a bit of a disjointed narrative mess that occasionally erupts into serviceable action, even if there is no reason to invest in any of this. It’s a boilerplate Western that only comes alive when Samuel L. Jackson is sayinb “screw it”, putting on an anachronistic, charismatic performance, seemingly aware that this material is generic and needlessly complicated. Pierce Brosnan also brings some class to the proceedings as a dignified sheriff trying to ward off trigger-finger heavy mobs and do right by those deserving.

Perhaps the most glaring fault is that Brendan Lessard is a blank slate as Henry, uninteresting and dragging everything down around him. Whether it’s his quest for vengeance or being placed into a predicament between St. Christopher and Gabriel regarding the gold, Henry is a boring character, difficult to muster up any enthusiasm for, and get behind. If anything, once more is revealed about St. Christopher, he’s the one worth rooting for, although it’s unclear if that’s actually what the filmmakers intended. The Unholy Trinity is a cut above the usual cheap garbage that typically comes from this primarily straight-to-VOD genre nowadays, but that’s far from gold.

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Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

 

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