2 Best Movies to Watch by Recai Karagöz

With stunning art, an exciting heist, and a steamy romance between a good girl detective and bad boy billionaire, Art of Love could have leaned into the sleek and campy tension of the original 2005 Mr. & Mrs. Smith. There’s some of it here, with the investigation bringing up her previous, sensual memories of the romance that was, and Esra Bilgiç and Birkan Sokullu looking so, so gorgeous dressed in the most stylish outfits. But the film mostly plays out in generic Netflix fashion, with the characters replaying dated clichés, and not actually dealing with the emotional betrayal that should have marked Güney’s abandonment. Art of Love is at least beautiful to look at.

Genre: Action, Drama, Romance

Actor: Birkan Sokullu, Esra Bilgiç, Fırat Tanış, Hakan Ummak, Nil Keser, Osman Alkaş, Ushan Cakir

Director: Recai Karagöz

Rating: PG-13

Unfortunately, it isn't enough to have cartoonishly attractive people do silly things in the name of love for an entire feature film. This premise is undeniably fun at first: the pace is snappy, the locations are pretty, and there are more than a few intentional laughs buried within the film's fast-paced dialogue. But the longer Love Tactics 2 goes on, the more idiotic its characters seem and the more it feels like they don't actually deserve the love they supposedly earned in the previous movie. It greatly underestimates how frustrating it is to watch people fail to communicate over and over again, not out of any goodwill, but out of pure pride and jealousy. Sure, the leads provide plenty of eye candy, but after seeing how little they actually get to work with, watching them becomes an act of secondhand embarrassment.

Genre: Comedy, Romance

Actor: Atakan Çelik, Bora Akkaş, Ceyhun Mengiroğlu, Demet Özdemir, Deniz Baydar, Hande Yılmaz, İpek Tuzcuoğlu, Kerem Atabeyoğlu, Melisa Döngel, Şükrü Özyıldız

Director: Recai Karagöz

Rating: PG-13