The defence The Sentimental Softie
“Sincerity is not manipulation.”
The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.
Back to trending 
Tallulah
Drama · Comedy · 2016
Desperate to be rid of her toddler, a dissatisfied Beverly Hills housewife hires a stranger to babysit and ends up getting much more than she bargained for.
Movie details
Tallulah
“Life can be a real mother.”
2016 Drama · Comedy 1h 51m
Critical arithmetic
One number, for now.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
TMDB
6.7 / 10
Community rating
Desperate to be rid of her toddler, a dissatisfied Beverly Hills housewife hires a stranger to babysit and ends up getting much more than she bargained for.
CriticWise case file
What this film says about your taste.
Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.
The archetype split
Who fights over Tallulah?
For the defence
The Sentimental Softie
“You came to feel something, and you will.”
Read their case For the prosecution
The Popcorn Loyalist
“Big screen, big feelings, no apologies.”
Read their objectionThe split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.
Taste neighbourhood
Nearby on the taste map.
TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.
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Grady is a 50-ish English professor who hasn't had a thing published in years—not since he wrote his award winning 'Great American Novel' 7 years ago. This weekend proves even worse than he could imagine as he finds himself reeling from one misadventure to another in the company of a new wonder boy author.
The Chumscrubber
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The Chumscrubber is a dark comedy about the lives of people who live in upper-class suburbia. It all begins when Dean Stiffle finds the body of his friend, Troy. He doesn't bother telling any of the adults because he knows they won't care. Everyone in town is too self consumed to worry about anything else than themselves. And everybody is on some form of drug just to get through their days.
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After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.
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A single mother's life is thrown into turmoil after her struggling, rarely-seen younger brother returns to town.
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
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When a bestselling celebrity biographer is no longer able to get published because she has fallen out of step with current tastes, she turns her art form to deception.
Wilson
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Middle-aged and divorced, Wilson finds himself lonely, smug, and obsessed with his past.
Mysterious Skin
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A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth.
S.F.W.
Comedy · 1995
An alienated and misanthropic teenager gains sudden and unwanted celebrity status after he's taken hostage by terrorists where his indifference to their threats to kill him makes news headlines.
The Grifters
Crime · 1990
A small-time conman has his loyalties torn between his estranged mother and his new girlfriend, both of whom are high-stakes grifters with their own angles to play.
A Thousand and One
Drama · 2023
Struggling but unapologetically living on her own terms, Inez is moving from shelter to shelter in mid-1990s New York City. With her 6-year-old son Terry in foster care and unable to leave him again, she kidnaps him so they can build their life together. As the years go by, their family grows and Terry becomes a smart yet quiet teenager, but the secret that has defined their lives threatens to destroy the home they have so improbably built.
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Names above the title
The people responsible.
Cast & crew
Directed by
Sian Heder
Written by
Sian Heder
Elliot Page
Tallulah
Allison Janney
Margo
Tammy Blanchard
Carolyn
Evan Jonigkeit
Nico
Uzo Aduba
Louisa Kinnie
David Zayas
Detective Richards
John Benjamin Hickey
Stephen
Court is in session
Put Tallulah on trial.
Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.
The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist
“The strings are showing.”
Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.