Rodriguez, Gina (1984- )

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    ‘Players’ Review: Running the Rom-Com Playbook

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    Gina Rodriguez stars in a Netflix movie that recalls the charms of the genre’s heyday.“Players” is an old-fashioned romantic comedy, which means you know the end from the start. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature, a well-deployed one in this case. Practically since Shakespeare, the point of rom-coms is their predictability, and that’s what I love about them. Enemies become lovers, friends become lovers, or we all learn a valuable lesson. Those are the options.The distinctions lie in the specifics, and rom-coms succeed on how memorable those specifics are: enduring a weird Welsh roommate, faking a climax in Katz’s, skewering terrible Christmas sweaters, falling in love over the radio, leading your colleagues in “Thriller” at a work function, enjoying the dulcet strains of AOL’s dial-up tone. I’m showing my age with these references, but you get the idea — the reason we love the great rom-coms are the peculiarities of everyday life that they surface, the minor characters and strange inconveniences that make the characters feel, if not quite relatable, at least like a fantasy version of the lives we are already leading. Which means, of course, that we could find love too.“Players,” directed by Trish Sie and written by Whit Anderson, does not quite rise to the level of memorable specifics; I experienced déjà vu more than once while watching it. Most of its characters are journalists, a time-tested rom-com career that, in the universe of these movies, seems largely decoupled from what it’s actually like to work for a newspaper, or magazine, or website. (Look, I would know.)But if it’s both familiar and a little forgettable, “Players” is fun to watch. Our heroine is Mack (Gina Rodriguez), short for Mackenzie, a sports reporter who works for what appears to be a New York alt-weekly that still has the budget to cover bizarre local sports such as “chess boxing.” She is the consummate cool girl: 33 years old, both a total hottie and a total tomboy, unable to do things like make a real meal or read a book. She spends her nights at the bar and knows way more about sports than her friends, all guys: Adam (Damon Wayans Jr.), who writes about local politics; Brannagan (Augustus Pew), an obit writer; and Brannagan’s little brother (Joel Courtney), whom everyone calls Little. The foursome have an elaborate unwritten set of plays that they run to help one another pick up people at the bar. Hence the title.Mack and Adam dated in college, but they’re just friends now. Mack has set her sights on Nick (Tom Ellis), a Pulitzer finalist war correspondent whom she soon realizes is a real grown-up. Maybe she’s ready to settle down? Ever the helpful companions, the group suits up to help her land her man — but the course of true love, et cetera, et cetera.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Gina Rodriguez Put Mumford & Sons on Her Birth Playlist

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      The actress spent her pregnancy making a new TV series, “Not Dead Yet,” and watching “WandaVision.”In the ABC sitcom “Not Dead Yet,” premiering Feb. 8, Nell Serrano is an obituary writer who, according to the subject of one of her assignments — yes, she’s visited by the dead — envies other people’s happiness.Gina Rodriguez, who is expecting her first child, spoke with us last month, saying that she’s in a different, happier place than Nell, whom she plays, but she knows things could change at any time. “I’m learning at every single turn,” she said.Previously the star of the CW television series “Jane the Virgin” and heard in the title role of the Netflix animated series “Carmen Sandiego,” Rodriguez shared some of the music on her birth playlist, as well as other things that have been helping her get by, including “WandaVision” and “Be Here Now.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “WandaVision” I started watching the show during my pregnancy. At first I was like, what is this show? It’s a take on “I Love Lucy”? And then I saw that it’s all wrapped up in her grief. The power of human emotion and the unconscious decisions that we make when we’re in these spaces of love and longing and grief are just wild and awesome. Its portrayal of a human journey through the possibility of action based on an unconscious emotion is really interesting to me.2. Ram Dass My husband discovered Ram Dass and brought him into our relationship. I find the way he viewed the world and the journey he went on to be very helpful to me. We have, like, 14 copies of his book “Be Here Now,” because it’s our No. 1 present we give people. Every time I listen to the audiobook “Becoming Nobody,” I learn something new, and I’m reminded that I fall right back into things, such as feeling like my identity is my everything and my ego gets attached to the identity.3. Failure In my production company, we want to create a safe space for failure because it’s only in failure that you learn. And if you don’t get another chance after failure, it is such an unfortunate missed opportunity for growth. When you have a space where you can fail, you do better, you get stronger and you say, “OK, I’m not going to do it like this, I’m going to try it like this. Or that path didn’t work, let’s try this next path.”4. “The Dawn of Everything” I have always been interested in the history of humankind. It’s so interesting that every time we personify people of the past, they’re not as intelligent and not as civilized. I picked up David Graeber and David Wengrow’s “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” on a Barnes & Noble shopping spree. It’s riveting. It presents such an interesting perspective on the history of humanity, and it makes me think about everything just a little bit more.5. Bidet When we remodeled our home, we had a combination toilet/bidet put in our primary bedroom. It is a game changer. When we go overseas and the bidet is a separate unit, I’m like, this is fabulous. It should be like this everywhere.6. “My Brilliant Friend” After we shot “Annihilation,” Natalie Portman gave me Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels series as a wrap gift. I have read each of them multiple times. Starting with “My Brilliant Friend,” they are the most whisk-you-away, escape-into-another-person’s-world books. I love them so much. It was the best wrap gift I’ve ever gotten. And I always think about Natalie when I read them.7. Mumford & Sons I have a playlist of songs to listen to when I give birth. Several Mumford & Sons songs are on the playlist, including “Little Lion Man,” “Awake My Soul” and “I Will Wait.” They sing like they’re connected to the center of the universe. It makes me feel a sense of closeness to my ancestors, even though it’s not the kind of music my ancestors listened to. There’s just a spirituality to their music. Whether they were writing that or not, that’s what I respond to.8. Bad Bunny My fellow Puerto Rican artist is definitely the music of my ancestors. I think he is super innovative. He’s been able to introduce styles of music, such as merengue, that haven’t been popular in the United States. Bad Bunny makes me feel every nostalgia under the sun of my childhood. And I just think he’s super, super talented.9. Oregon After we started visiting friends in Bend, we fell in love with Oregon, which is now our second home. We try and spend half the year there. It’s such a beautiful state. There are so many different climates and things to see — the mountains, the coast, the woods. I saw my first owl in Oregon. I grew up in Chicago and Puerto Rico. We weren’t seeing owls.10. Oahu Hawaii feels like home. It feels like Puerto Rico. There is a oneness of Mother Nature there that feels like the center of the forest, but it’s beach, and it’s jungle, and it’s water and ocean. Oddly, you find a lot of people who vacation in Hawaii in Oregon, and vice versa. They feel like polar opposites, but they tend to draw people with the same kind of yearning for Mother Nature. More

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      in Movies

      ‘I Want You Back’ Review: Scheming Hearts

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      Jenny Slate and Charlie Day play strangers who team up to win back their exes in this pleasantly run-of-the-mill rom-com.Directed by Jason Orley, “I Want You Back” is a throwback rom-com about the love lives of straight people, and its jokes hit about as much as they miss. The story is mediocre and formulaic, yes, but pleasantly so. And it shows not only ladies dealing in blubbering heartbreak, but guys going through it as well.Peter (Charlie Day), a manager at a nursing home company, is dumped by Anne (Gina Rodriguez), his English-teacher girlfriend of six years. In the throes of a quarter-life crisis, Anne finds him complacent and shacks up with the alluringly bohemian Logan (Manny Jacinto), who dreams of Off Broadway fame but settles for directing school plays.Meanwhile Emma (Jenny Slate), a flighty receptionist living with college students, is given the boot by Noah (Scott Eastwood), a personal trainer who has fallen for a more emotionally mature pie shop owner.Commence the weepy despairing and Instagram stalking.A commiseration-and-karaoke-filled friendship unfolds between Emma and Peter, prompting some mutually beneficial scheming to break up their exes’ new relationships: Peter will pull Noah back into bachelorhood and Emma will seduce Logan. It sort of works, though primarily as a conduit for self-discovery. High jinks also ensue, as when Emma, endearingly delusional (Slate’s forte), volunteers for Logan’s new production and takes the stage for a bizarrely sincere rendition of “Suddenly, Seymour.” Or when the paternal Peter, high on MDMA, goes diving into a hot tub off a rooftop with girls half his age.Orley and the screenwriters Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger (the duo behind “Love, Simon”) build out a not entirely shallow ensemble story, even if they rely on new archetypes for their modern lovers, like the late-blooming messy woman or the sensitive guy with baby fever. “I Want You Back” isn’t particularly clever or emotionally stirring, but it does briskly deliver on the corny promises of the genre, navigating relatable relationship issues by the least relatable means.I Want You BackRated R for some rear-end nudity, brief sex scenes, drug use and language. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More

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      ‘Awake’ Review: Eyes Wide Open

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      Humanity may lose the ability to sleep in this Netflix sci-fi thriller, but rest assured viewers won’t have this problem.There is no getting around it: Mark Raso’s “Awake” is bad. But at least it’s so bad that it’s often ludicrously laughable: Netflix may well have a cult turkey on its hands.Sleep deprivation is common nowadays. A disaster movie in which the condition spreads so much that it becomes an extinction event — because staying awake leads to exhaustion, impaired cognitive abilities, madness and, eventually, death — feels like a plausible waking nightmare for many viewers. It’s an intriguing premise that “Awake” quickly and fatally squanders.It happens without warning: all electronics suddenly cease to function and nobody can fall asleep anymore. It takes only a couple of days for civilization to go to pot, with the obligatory tattooed dirtbags and freed felons roaming by-the-book desolate streets.Oddly, 10-year-old Matilda (Ariana Greenblatt) seems unaffected and is able to catch some Z’s, much to the surprise of her mother, Jill (Gina Rodriguez, who got much better action in “Miss Bala”). Matilda soon attracts unwanted attention, first from a crazed religious congregation, then from Dr. Murphy (a slumming Jennifer Jason Leigh), an amoral military psychiatrist — the pastor and the doctor are equally reprehensible in this scenario.The lack of explanation for the events (maybe it was some kind of “solar flare,” Dr. Murphy ventures) might have helped turn “Awake” into an apocalyptic fable à la “Blindness,” but the film is relentlessly, clumsily pedestrian.Jill, who happens to be a vet, goes full mama bear to teach her kid how to survive. A gun can be used “not just for people but for animals, too,” she helpfully tells Matilda. As if that line weren’t chuckle-worthy enough, Jill conducts her firearm instruction in the middle of an abandoned library and almost hits her teenage son, Noah (Lucius Hoyos), who had been lurking in the racks. The new world is in safe hands.AwakeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More