News & Movie Review

How It Ends (2021) Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein (her creative and life partner) write and direct their sixth film together, again under their cutely named Mister Lister Films production company. Not even a pandemic could keep them from making an indie with “How It Ends,” a sunny, flighty existentialist seriocomedy about the day before the apocalypse. It’s not quite as bleak as 2012’s “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” which paired Keira Knightley and Steve Carrell mixed with a whole ensemble, but more of a romantic comedy about self-love with the same Armageddon backdrop. Zoe Lister-Jones (2017's "Band Aid" ) stars as a coder named Liza, ready to embark on a solo journey through Los Angeles neighborhoods with her metaphysical younger self, played by Cailee Spaeny (an impressive rising talent who was one of the leads in Lister-Jones’ 2020 reboot-sequel “The Craft: Legacy” ). It’s the last 24 hours of Earth in existence before a meteor blast, and her plan with...

Good on Paper (2021) In archaic and more idealistic times, “Good on Paper” would have been a sweetly schematic romantic comedy. You know the kind, where a meet-cute leads to “will-they-or-won’t-they?” tension and temporary obstacles, all ending in a race to the airport for a public declaration of love. Fortunately for us, stand-up comedian Iliza Shlesinger’s stranger-than-fiction dating anecdote didn’t quite go that way, and fortunately for her, writing the feature script for this subversive anti-romantic comedy must have been cathartic. It’s refreshingly more personal and formula-breaking than any high-concept romantic comedy tends to be, and with “Good on Paper,” Shlesinger’s unapologetic honesty and self-deprecation come through in her first leading role. This is her “Trainwreck,” albeit with a so-crazy-it-must-be-true hook involving a whip-smart, career-focused comic eventually falling for a serial liar who doesn’t even look the slick part.   Iliza Shlesinger plays a version o...