It ends with us

August 30 – September 3

5 evening shows!

7:00 pm nightly
2024 ‧ Romanice / Drama
PG — 2 h 9 m

Blake Lively stars in It Ends with Us, an adaptation of the Colleen Hoover novel, where a young flower shop owner navigates a new romance and her traumatic past, in a high-emotional-stakes drama directed by and also starring Justin Baldoni. Hoover’s novel, which has spent more than two years at the top of the New York Times best-seller list, drew criticism for its depiction of intimate partner abuse. Some readers found the focus on Lily’s relationship with her abuser, Ryle, to be manipulative. Others blamed the publicity machinations for falsely advertising the novel as a love-triangle romance.

But a strength of both the novel and Baldoni’s screen translation is how firmly the filmmaker anchors us in Lily’s perspective, which eases viewers into the most violent parts of the story. It Ends with Us is a saga of love and romance that’s also about some very serious dark things. It’s an avid and emotional movie that pulls you right along. This smart and sensitive movie version will more than satisfy the millions who’ve picked it up and found a bible of sorts for abuse survivors.

It’s a story of how people repeat bad patterns in their lives, even (or maybe especially) when they don’t realize it. And the way this is conveyed is at once the essence of soap opera and quite emotionally shrewd. It heightens the twists that life will throw at you. And in the case of It Ends with Us, it gives Blake Lively the chance to play a woman who tries to make the right choice but has to wake up from the dream she’s been living in — maybe her whole life — to do it. By the end, we’re watching a different movie than the one we thought we were. But it’s still a love story, just one about learning to love yourself.