Thelma Adams: Novelist, Critic, Oscar Expert

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Review: Keira Knightley Awakens Seattle in ‘Laggies’

October 30, 2014 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Keira Knightley dresses down (and out).

Keira Knightley dresses down (and out).

“Suck it up, go with your gut.” That’s the advice Seattle late twentysomething Megan (Keira Knightley) gives to adolescent Annika (Chloe Grace Moretz) at the end of Lynn Shelton’s most commercial movie yet, Laggies. Shelton herself has followed that mantra, pioneering a successful indie career by going with her gut. She’s a generous filmmaker, giving female characters dimension and detail without sacrificing the crispness of her men.

Shelton has created a cottage industry in Seattle making films that are cool, contemporary, and just a little bit angsty without being all tattooed-edgy. I loved the sibling issues raised, and the actresses engaged — Rosemarie DeWitt and Emily Blunt — in the prickly yet tender comedy Your Sister’s Sister. I sighed during the uneven masseuse dramedy Touchy Feely, also starring DeWitt, a yeasty bread that refused to rise. Everyone makes mistakes, though women directors often don’t get a second chance.

But Shelton, who directs both TV (the upcoming Fresh Off the Boat) and has three film scripts in development, sucked it up, undeterred. And along came the Sundance hit Laggies, slang for folks that are lagging behind but don’t have the true philosophical entropy of slackers. It’s a more temporary condition.

The comedy, which Shelton directed from Andrea Seigel’s sexy, sweet-natured screenplay, opens briskly. Megan escapes a claustrophobic wedding reception in which her sympathetic beau (Mark Webber) has just tried to kneel down and propose. He’s doing the right thing, but Megan instinctually recoils: How can it feel so wrong? Is that all there is, my friend? What happened to flat-out fun on the modern woman’s rush to career, love, marriage, and a baby carriage?


Read More on IndieWire’s “Women and Hollywood” blog…

Filed Under: Criticism, Movies & TV Tagged With: Chloe Grace Moretz, Keira Knightley, Lynn Shelton, Review, Sam Rockwell, Women Directors

Toronto Critic’s Pick: Benedict Cumberbatch Bristles with Brilliance in ‘The Imitation Game’

October 5, 2014 By Thelma

Cumberbatch as Alan Turing

Cumberbatch as Alan Turing


Taking its place among those handsome biopics the British do so well, The Imitation Game tells the fascinating (and ultimately tragic) story of mathematician Alan Turing. A day after the UK enters the Second World War, the Cambridge-educated Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) arrives at Bletchley Park, a top-secret center for breaking military codes used by the Germans — and is soon put to work on cracking a heretofore impenetrable code called Enigma. As presented by director Morten Tyldum (Headhunters), the mercurial Turing is impatient with social conventions and the accepted chain of command. And he is harboring his own risky secret: he prefers bedding boys to girls, resisting even the charms of Joan Clarke, a particularly fetching fellow code-breaker (played by Keira Knightley).

Cumberbatch, as you might expect, bristles with brilliance in the role – and should be considered an Oscar frontrunner. We’ve seen him as Sherlock Holmes, so we never doubt that he packs more brainpower than anyone else on the Enigma-busting team. But, unlike the emotionally cold sleuth, Turing is a real-life historical figure, sensitive and troubled. He feels deeply and passionately for his life’s work, and tears often flood his eyes, a repressed stammer forcing itself on his lips. The performance bears so many shades of varying emotion, on the surface and deep below, that it is nothing short of miraculous.

Among Turing’s many challenges, so vividly embodied by Cumberbatch, is one of identity: who he is, must remain an enigma. The mathematician and crossword-puzzle fanatic cannot make public his proclivities, no more than he can share who he fully is: A genius of visionary foresight into the still-embryonic field of artificial intelligence, and one of the pioneers behind the development of the modern computer.

While ultimately breaking Enigma, and turning the tide of the war in the Allies favor, Turing did not survive to enjoy the ascendance of democracy in his post-war life. In 1952, the police charged him with gross indecency after he acknowledged that he was in homosexual relationship. A judge imposed a sentence of chemical castration. He committed suicide a year later.

Some may know Alan Turing from the play turned TV film Breaking the Code, starring Derek Jacobi, or the movie Codebreaker or even the recent musical, A Man from the Future,composed by two members of the Pet Shop Boys. Yet, with cult-star Cumberbatch in the lead, the Turing triumph and tragedy will reach a much wider audience. Hopefully the film’s message of hard-won tolerance, and the sacrifices made by lesser-known martyrs to the cause, will bolster the continued struggle for equality for all.

The Imitation Game opens in theaters on Nov. 21

Filed Under: Celebrity, Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: Alan Turing, Benedict Cumberbatch, best actor, best picture, Best Screenplay, biopic, Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game

Yahoo! Movies: Adams on Reel Women: Five must-see leading ladies out of TIFF

October 2, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Keira Knightley (Left) in “Anna Karenina”, and Laura Linney and Bill Murray (Right) in “Hyde Park on Hudson”. (Photos: Focus Features)

This year’s Toronto International Film Festival was rife with strong and varied women’s roles. Here are just a few that will pop and will be buzzed about in the Oscar race and beyond.

Marion Cotillard, “Rust and Bone”: This is a movie about transformation. A woman who works at Marineland in France has a horrible accident with an orca. As a result, she loses her legs below the knees and hits the bottom she was heading for when she was physically whole but emotionally lost. The remainder of the movie shows her slow progress on a journey that doesn’t require legs: the journey to spiritual wellness. A scene in which she finally returns to Marineland, perched on steel prosthetics, and, well, dances with the whale is magical without being sentimental. The camera loves Cotillard, but her physical beauty does not make her lazy. She acts quietly, subtly, a musician who knows her range. In this role, she defies the audience to like her as she casts off the armature of her looks and dives deep. It doesn’t hurt that this is the type of role — the “My Left Foot” affect — that ensures Oscar nominations if not outright wins. Cotillard will be among the five final nominees for best actress.

Laura Linney, “Hyde Park on Hudson”: This is the performance I feel I have to rally behind because of its subtle beauty and deeply felt realization. As Margaret Suckley, a fifth cousin turned secret lover to President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Bill Murray), Linney plays a faded daisy. She shows every wrinkle in a face that would have been plainly pretty but has passed its marital sell-by date. She wears dresses that have seen wear in a limited wardrobe, hats that are unflattering, home-styled hair. Linney knows what she’s doing, and she doesn’t give this woman any more power than she would have had. She is like an Edith Wharton character, a Lily Bart; and as she enters the world of FDR, the president of the United States, she feels the weight of being a poor relation in the court of the Sun King. She is outmaneuvered at every point, and yet her love, her sensitivity, her sense of a spinster’s rebirth at an unexpected opportunity that takes her out of the musty cedar closet of her life and puts her in the center of the president’s household — all are real. While there is general acclaim for Bill Murray’s wily, wise FDR, there has been an underlying critique of Linney’s character and characterization. Hers is the more difficult role, and modern women may not have the patience for this passive spinster. However, her pain and relative powerlessness are real verging on tragic, and Linney draws her finely and with honor.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, “Smashed”: I have written about Winstead’s performance as a young married kindergarten teacher who reaches that post-college tipping point when she realizes that she’s not just hard-partying but an alcoholic. That she reaches this awareness ahead of her equally “fun loving” husband (well played by Aaron Paul) makes her climbing the first wrung of her 12 steps all the more difficult. The tall, brunette all-American beauty, the star of “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” imbues her teacher with an extraordinary ordinariness, quick to smile and slow to judge. She is our best friend, our next-door neighbor, the woman we laugh with at the supermarket checkout stand about the latest cover of the National Enquirer — and yet her pain is as deep as that of the denizens of “Leaving Las Vegas.”

Keira Knightley, “Anna Karenina”: Knightley dons the hats, veils, and upholstery silks of one of literature’s major heroines, a character played in the past by Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh. Working with her “Atonement” and “Pride and Prejudice” director, Joe Wright, and a Tom Stoppard adaptation of the Leo Tolstoy novel, Knightley is part of a production that breathes fresh air into the tragedy of a virtuous wife and mother who falls into a spiral of passion with dashing Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Knightley wears the costumes and jewels — they do not wear her. The actress brings humanity, a warmth and intimacy, that make this historical character relatable to lonely wives who play with the fire of passion outside their marriages and burn with the consequences in any era. She gives Anna a contemporary urgency, and following on her overlooked turn in “A Dangerous Method,” she has become a top contender for the 2013 best-actress Oscar.

Jennifer Lawrence, “Silver Linings Playbook”: in the year’s strongest one-two punch, Oscar-nominee Lawrence proves that her “Hunger Games” box office muscle as Katniss Everdeen is not her only trick. In the latest movie from “The Fighter” director David O. Russell, Lawrence plays Tiffany, the mystery woman whom Bradley Cooper’s bipolar Pat Solitano befriends when he returns home after a stint at a mental institution. They meet cute and ultimately enter a dancing competition together. Sexy, crazy, and dancing? And uplift? How can Lawrence not compete? I would still love to see an Oscar nom for Lawrence’s “Hunger Games” performance, but this appealing role will surely land Lawrence a second best-actress nomination following “Winter’s Bone” and possibly a win.

More to love: Nina Hoss, “Barbara”; Greta Gerwig, “Frances Ha”; Emmanuelle Riva, “Amour”; Ana Moreira, “Tabu”; Macarena Garcia, “Blancanieves”; and Emayatzy Corinealdi, “Middle of Nowhere.”

Filed Under: Celebrity, Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: Interview, Jennifer Lawrence, Keira Knightley, Laura Linney, Marion Cotillard, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Oscar, TIFF12

TIFF Countdown – 17 Days – Movie Trailer “Anna Karenina”

August 20, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

A year ago I hung out with Keira Knightley at the Sony Pictures Classics party at Creme Brasserie in Toronto, talking about “A Dangerous Method” when we were interrupted by Vogue’s John Powers asking Keira about her frock, and co-star Viggo Mortensen playfully approaching in a silly hat. It was one of those moments that I treasure at TIFF, the kind of privileged access that makes me laugh when fellow critics complain about the job. Really! It was a moment when I actually found a pause between the fluff to discuss with an actress I adore — Keira — the arc of her career, and what parts there are for women, even beautiful, intelligent, talented ones. That’s when she first told me she was going to shoot “Anna Karenina” with Jude Law and Aaron Johnson and Kelly Macdonald. Joe Wright was directing, and I loved “Atonement” and his “Pride and Prejudice.” And, now, here’s the trailer for Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina” and, yes, I’m breathless in anticipation although I confess it’s one of those novels I’ve started and regret I never finished.

Filed Under: Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: A Dangerous Method, Anna Karenina, Focus Features, Jude Law, Keira Knightley, movie trailers, Oscars, Sony Pictures Classics, TIFF, Viggo Mortensen

Viggo Mortensen Reveals How He Became Freud in ‘A Dangerous Method’

January 2, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Sigmund Freud, Viggo Mortensen, A Dangerous Method, David Cronenberg, Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley

Viggo, Siggy; Siggy, Viggo

Here’s my interview with Viggo for Yahoo! Movies the day he won the Golden Globe nomination for playing Freud in A Dangerous Method:

Fresh from his Golden Globe supporting actor nomination for playing the proud papa of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, “A Dangerous Method” star Viggo Mortensen, 53, talked exclusively to Yahoo! Movies about brilliant thinkers — Freud, Carl Jung and director David Cronenberg — and his A-list co-stars Michael Fassbender and Keira Knightley.

Thelma Adams: At the movie’s core is a mentor/pupil, father/son relationship between Freud and Jung. You’ve now made three movies with Cronenberg — “A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises” and, now, “A Dangerous Method.” Is there a parallel?

Viggo Mortensen: To some degree it’s similar in the sense that, to start with, Jung and Freud had a great deal of affection for each other. With David, our friendship is first and foremost: respecting and liking, and a similar sense of humor. I’ve learned a lot and stretched with him. In “Eastern Promises,” he asked a lot of me and I asked a lot of myself.

TA: And with Freud, is there more scrutiny because it’s a historical character whose reputation precedes him?

VG: Freud was even more of a stretch. And, as for my friendship with David, at least so far we haven’t had the oedipal thing that was played out by Jung and Freud. We get along and hopefully we’ll continue to do so.

TA: Do you have any plans to collaborate again?

VG: David always has a couple of things cooking. One possibility is to do a sequel to “Eastern Promises.” The end left you wondering what would happen to my character now in that criminal London subculture. It was an ending that asks for, or allows for, a sequel like the “Godfather,” like Michael Corleone. What will happen next? I’m not a fan of sequels, although “Godfather 2” was as good as the original, maybe somewhat better. With David you can count on something interesting. He’s never done a sequel before. It’s not like with Woody Allen where he gets to do a movie every single year.

TA: That may not be a bad thing — some times I wish that Allen would take a year off and meditate…..MORE….on the Yahoo! Movie website

Filed Under: Celebrity, Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: Best Supporting Actor, David Cronenberg, Keira Knightley, Michael Fassbender, Oscars 2012, Viggo Mortensen, Yahoo! Movies

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