Movies

Inside Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson’s Bromance in ‘The Highwaymen’

March 28, 2019 By Thelma Leave a Comment

I never envisioned Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson as the stuff of bromance, two great tastes that go great together like chocolate and peanut butter or rum and coke. But, in Netflix’s new movie The Highwaymen that premiered at SXSW over the weekend, and will begin to stream on March 29th, the manly movie stars get bromantic as retired Texas Rangers Frank Hamer and Maney Gault who tick off the miles together in a cherry vintage sedan in pursuit of lover law-breakers Bonnie and Clyde.

The Highwaymen rides in on a well-worn track – as the miles increase on the odometer, the friendship takes shape and the men sitting side-by-side discover through a mutual goal that they have more in common than they might have believed during the opening credits. The road bromance has long been a Hollywood staple – and it appears ageless. (And is good for maturing talent: Costner is 64; Harrelson is 57).

The genre doubles the star power of a movie to give it a four-fisted box office boost, or expand the audience reach like a marketing Venn diagram. One recent example is Green Book, which took a critical beating on its way to its crowd-pleasing Best Picture Oscar by serving up Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali packed together in a 1962 Cadillac deVille driving through the hostile South.

Among my favorite vintage road-mances are Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in Road to Morocco and many other roads traveled, Robert Redford and Paul Newman relying on literal horsepower in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the pairing of grumpy bounty hunter Robert DeNiro and prissy mob accountant Charles Grodin putting each other through hilarious hell on a transcontinental train ride in Midnight Run.

Or take Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, who famously despised each other off-screen, making sweet movie music together in Hollywood or Bust – a movie where Federico Fellini’s sex goddess Anita Ekberg was only a blip between the two male leads.

Great on-screen chemistry between two men is the same genie in a bottle that characterizes a romantic spark. The arc is often one of mutual estrangement if not outright dislike or distrust, followed by a series of trials that test and ultimately strengthen the pair’s bond, and then an acknowledgement that there’s mutual dependence if not outright affection.

Unlike romance, this connection is rarely sealed by a kiss but by a grudging gesture, as it is on the side of that dusty long Texas road at the end of The Highwaymen (no need for spoilers here). Mush is for chick flicks.

And, in the case of The Highwayman, so is direct eye contact. Keep your eyes on the road, dude.

The chemistry works for Costner and Harrelson because in many ways they are actors of contrasting talents.

Still square-jawed handsome if a little stockier, Costner has built a career largely, though not entirely, on leading men parts like Hamer – personified as G-man Eliot Ness in The Untouchables on the hunt for Al Capone, or as the loyal defender at Whitney Houston’s side in The Bodyguard.

Costner is the epitome of the stoic American leading man in the Gary Cooper/Gregory Peck vein, born to play the pack’s strong-but-silent alpha dog. And age has not dimmed this, even if the opportunities are fewer and far between. (Maybe Netflix will fix that).

On the other hand, Harrelson is the more volatile and unpredictable – a character actor who also plays lead. He has a penchant for drunks and thieves in movies like The Glass Castle and Natural Born Killers. But in his moving role as the embattled and terminally ill sheriff in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri he displays his talent as a powerful ensemble player capable of flying his most intimate feelings in front of the camera.

Because, in this crime drama, they both play older-and-wiser-and-slower characters, there’s an appealing mellowness to their interactions. Harrelson’s Gault is not the full-on crazy of the actor’s earlier career. And yet he’s still the gunpowder to Costner’s flint, the less stable element. His character’s volatility and emotional accessibility ultimately humanizes the stick-up-his-ass aspect to Costner’s Hamer.

That imbalance, that interaction, enables the bromantic chemistry. One doesn’t require music welling up, or a swooping crane shot, to see that these men connect, really connect. And, because they’re manly men with pistols on their hips, love means never having to explain yourself.

One element that separates bromance from romance: the protagonists need never ask that dreaded questions: How do you really feel? In this case, they just nod, spit and drive off in the same direction.

[This column first appeared on RealClearLife.com]

Movie Review: Gloria Bell

March 25, 2019 By Thelma 1 Comment

Props to Julianne Moore, 57, for producing an English-language remake of the uplifting 2013 Chilean film Gloria — which earned 19 international awards, a 99 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating and an AARP Movies for Grownups award nomination — helmed by the same talented director, Sebastian Lelio (whose transgender drama A Fantastic Woman grabbed the foreign-film Oscar last year). As the title character in Gloria Bell, stunning ginger beauty Moore dons big specs and strains to be an ordinary Orange County, Calif., divorced grandmother muddling through midlife. As if!

There is huge ambition here, reflecting the plight of Hollywood’s mature and most talented leading ladies as they search for material that will put them front and center, carrying the narrative arc they so richly deserve. Time and again — in the tragic early-Alzheimer’s drama Still Alice, for which she won the best actress Oscar in 2015, and the overlooked 2018 Bel Canto — Moore has sought roles that matched and amplified her unique talents: sharpness, grace, attention to detail, a bold desire to bare all and an iciness that would have made her, with a bottle of peroxide, an ideal Hitchcock heroine.

The hardest challenge for this extraordinary actress is playing ordinary and quotidian. Whether singing along to Olivia Newton John’s “A Little More Love” in her sensible sedan on the freeway or negotiating insurance claims in a nondescript modern office, Moore channels her inner awkwardness and vulnerability. At night, Gloria Bell tries to shed her self-consciousness and push away loneliness by going solo to a suburban disco, where she can surrender to the beats of her youth. At the bar she picks up Arnold (John Turturro, 62), an allegedly divorced ex-Marine. He can dance, and she likes where he leads, even if it’s only in circles under a disco ball. They tumble into bed for a series of encounters made all the more stiff by the actors’ lack of chemistry (they are old friends in real life, and that familiarity may have made the intimate scenes easier on the players, but for the viewer they’re hardly erotic).

The surrounding ensemble — led by Michael Cera as Gloria’s son; Brad Garrett, 58, as her larger-than-life ex-husband; Holland Taylor, 76, as her mother; and Jeanne Tripplehorn, 55, as her ex-husband’s wife — are top-notch. And it’s through Gloria’s interactions with these characters that the film addresses all-too-common problems for contemporary American women over 50 that go beyond dating and discos: the cloak of invisibility that can come after the kids are raised, the meaningful career long ago set aside, and the husband who has moved on to a younger wife and, perhaps, a new family.

In this carefully crafted character study, Moore sketches this woman who’s struggling to make a satisfying life with solo dinners, trying new things like zip-lining, and escaping to Las Vegas to capture true romance in the least authentic setting possible. The drama concludes with Laura Branigan’s 1980s anthem “Gloria,” as Moore’s divorcée finally dances to her own beat. While that moment is liberating, the strain of this extraordinary, luminous actress attempting to squeeze into a suburban shell pinches, leaving Moore still searching for her Hollywood groove.

[[This review first appeared on AARP]]

Why Tyler Perry Earns the Title of Hollywood’s Last Auteur

March 21, 2019 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Tyler Perry, the producer, writer, director and star, is the critical elephant in the room as Hollywood elites discuss diversity. With Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral, which had opened on March 1 for a $27M weekend and has amassed $60M in three weeks, his auteur career is far from finished – but the industry continues to bury him in an un-remarked grave.

Consider the sheer numbers of his output. Perry, 49, who also owns his own Atlanta-based studio, has produced 15 films with Lionsgate since 2005, starting with the 103-minute crowd-pleaser Diary of a Mad Black Woman. He has directed 21 features, written 15 and played the lead in 12.

The disconnect between audiences receptive to Perry’s mouthy cross-dressing matriarch who tells it like she sees it and his critical assessment is stark. His Rotten Tomatoes score for that first 2005 Madea outing was 16 percent rotten from 114 reviewers and, among audience members, 86 percent liked it.

“Perry doesn’t have any delusions of artistry, and potentially, at least, that’s refreshing,” said Stephanie Zacharek, who was then at Salon and now at Time. “But any points he earns for lack of pretense are immediately gobbled up by his lack of subtlety.”

Chiming in, the New York Post‘s Lou Lumenick was more succinct: “stay clear of this mess.”

Messy? Yes. But a profitable mess.

Since Madea’s feature debut, movies that Perry directed have grossed nearly a $1B nationally – with hardly a ripple in the global box office. He ranks 49 in the list of top-grossing directors at the domestic box office, and 92 in the top grossing domestic screenwriters. The average take of his sprawling comedies is $45M.

In 2011, Forbes Magazine ranked Perry the highest paid man in entertainment. Wow.

Over a decade ago, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, earned a cool $50.6 M despite opening eighth in theaters. In 2016, Boo! A Madea Halloween opened at number 2 and went on to gross $73M.

Reviews for the latter were a snark-fest, including this backhanded compliment from Jesse Hassenger at the AV Club: “Madea remains a distinctive, weirdly compelling character. Maybe someday Perry will make a good comedy for her.”

Perry has never won an Oscar but he did pick up a 2018 Razzie for worst actress in Boo 2! A Madea Halloween. He won some respite in 2019 from the group for his small role as Colin Powell in Academy darling Adam Mckay’s Vice, for which he earned the Redeemer Award.

So, he’s redeemed when he appears very low on the cast list in a white Oscar film – but not when he’s the lead in his own wacky yet popular movies. And, not only has he created a space where he can control his output by wearing many hats, he’s cast a number of African American leads when there were few opportunities available in mainstream films.

Starting with Perry’s first Madea outing, Kimberly Elise had a starring role with her own plot arc. He has cast a string of leading ladies including Angela Bassett, Gabrielle Union, Jurnee Smollett, Brandy, Viola Davis, Tasha Smith, Thandie Newton, Alfre Woodard, Mary J. Blige, Taraji P. Henson and Jill Scott, among many others. He built movies that were not only inclusive but empowering, creating opportunities and showcases for actresses that would go on to win Oscars.

Among actors, potential future 007 Idris Elba was a Perry star, as well as Blair Underwood, Louis Gossett Jr, Shemar Moore, Malik Yoba and Michael J. White.

From a storytelling standpoint, Perry’s movies seesaw from comedy to tragedy, cross-dressing farce to PG-13 romance and from melodramatic to evangelical. They’re not subtle. They shouldn’t work but the audiences that continue to attend Perry’s films and talk back to the screen in a communal call-and-response are beyond the sphere of the critics.

It’s easy to pick Perry’s films apart – but what holds them together? That’s something the industry needs to assimilate because Perry has planted his flag on a profitable shore of popular culture.

Hollywood is only belatedly, reluctantly recognizing the diversity of its audience — and only if it conforms to their preexisting notion of what defines Culture.

However, to quote Madea, “Mama don’t play.” Will Perry conform? Hell no! With this level of consistent success, the guy is doing something right in a major way. With a 16 score on RT, somebody’s missing the point – and it’s not Perry.

Critic’s Pick: ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’

February 17, 2014 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Bill Murray whisked onto the stage wearing a small black hat and funeral formal wear to introduce Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” at the opening night of the Berlin International Film Festival. Murray proclaimed that this was Anderson’s best movie. “It will blow the hair right off your head,” he told the overflow crowd at the Friedrichstadt-Palast with the kind of hyperbole audiences get accustomed to at premieres.

Right, Bill. We’ll be the judge of that!

But here’s the surprise: Murray was absolutely right!

The “Moonrise Kingdom” director has conquered scale and story, and found a perfect balance between humor and deep emotion. His antic period piece about a “liberally perfumed” concierge of a once-grand Eastern European resort, Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), and his lobby boy protégé, Zero Moustafa (newcomer Tony Revolori), is charming, wondrous, nostalgic and dazzlingly original.

At the center of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is a radiant character study, illuminated by a brilliant yet soulful performance from Fiennes. In his best comic turn to date, Fiennes inhabits a man dedicated to his profession and a fading social order beautifully described in voiceover: “His world had vanished long before he entered it.”

Fiennes gives color and depth to his preening gallant with a penchant for elderly women. Sure, he is blond, vain, and needy, but he also has an abundance of old-world charm. And he demonstrates a genuine affection as he services the elderly widows that regularly visit his hotel. So, if they leave him lavish gifts, does that really diminish their passion?

The plot thickens, as it must, when one of these tottering grande dames (played by Tilda Swinton in aging make-up that would have made Leonardo DiCaprio’s J. Edgar Hoover swoon) dies under dodgy circumstances. Her will names Gustave as a beneficiary, setting into motion her avaricious son (Adrien Brody) and his vicious henchman (Willem Dafoe). The pair pursues Gustave to The Grand to squash him like an unwanted codicil.

All of this is fun and fluid, fueled by marvelous set pieces: a slalom chase down a snowy mountain with sled and skis, a Rube Goldberg of a jail break, a reading of the will straight out of a cockeyed live version of “Clue.” The supporting characters curtsy in and out: Swinton and Murray, F. Murray Abraham and Edward Norton and Bob Balaban and Jeff Goldblum, Saoirse Ronan as the Lobby Boy’s beloved baker.

Anderson has mastered a hipster Barbie Dream-house style of set and costume design in movies like 2012’s “Moonrise Kingdom.” Bolstered by a dry wit, with an irony allergy and an ensemble cast of regulars, his movies can come perilously close to being “twee.” The danger is that they glitter like groovy snow globes, but never achieve the kind of emotional resonance toward which Anderson is reaching.

That’s absolutely not the case here. The whole is larger than the set pieces, although those work, too. And Anderson has scaled new heights at the corner of storytelling and emotion. The love he clearly feels for his characters — flawed though they are, petty, vindictive, with an array of sexual peccadilloes and peculiar hairstyles — flows from the screen and seduces the audience.

And, while the elements reflect the merits of “Moonrise Kingdom,” or my favorite, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” Anderson paces it perfectly. He gets the balance right between the big and small characters, reveling in the set decoration and costumes but not tripping over the furniture or becoming tangled in the wigs.

The danger here — like Murray’s superlative pronouncement at the premiere’s start that this is Anderson’s best — is to raise expectations too high. This is delicate fluffy stuff, a glorious pastel macaroon of a movie. And it should be savored, not over-thought or overcooked.

Dark Shadows in Bright Suburbs: Why I Grew up Watching ‘Dark Shadows’

May 20, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Dark Shadows, Johnny Depp, Barnabus Collins

Barnabus Collins: He bites; he scores (Everett Collection)

In seventh grade, I had a routine: go to my friend Katy’s house, do our advanced math homework, play Yahtzee and watch “Dark Shadows.” After the credits, I would run the three blocks to my suburban San Diego cul de sac under the bright Southern California sun in abject terror, unaffected by the sound of the marching band practicing on the football field. The next day, I’d do it again. Algebra. Barnabas. Terror. Supper. “Laugh in” and “All in the Family.”

I had been too young in 1966 to watch from the beginning, so cracking the giant casket of DVD’s of the complete original series that ran from 1966 to 1971 had the feeling of opening an old yearbook, or a photograph album. Just the spooky theme music and the image of the dark waves crashing on the Maine coast, inspired memories of math homework and flat-out fright. When the front door of Collinwood opened, it was a happy homecoming to that formal black-and-white foyer that was straight out of a Hammer horror set.

From the first episode, with the foreboding voiceover spoken by the orphan Victoria, I slipped into the warm bath of the past: the glacial pace of a soap opera that stretched daily from Monday through Friday, parsing out some thrills, letting slip a cookie fortune’s worth of new information, building to that end-of-week revelation that would leave the viewer breathless for Monday. At the end of each episode, there’s often a tease for “The Dating Game,” or that ‘new’ show “The Newlywed Game.”

But, more than nostalgia, the show holds up. It has its surprises — a scene at the local pub bursts into wild sixties frug dancing that could come out of a beach party movie. The characters drink and spew familial bile that goes back decades, if not centuries. A woman cries in the night, inconsolable. Portraits stare down from the formal drawing room walls with bad intent. It’s completely addicting. And I haven’t even gotten to my favorite part yet — the portals in the house between the past and present that allowed the actors to play the dual roles so beloved by more mainstream soaps.

I loved the series when I was young because it showed a world where the ocean wasn’t the surfer paradise of the Pacific, but the brooding, relentless, frigid Atlantic. That unforgiving waves crashing on a rocky coast were where you’d land if you jumped off the cliff. And characters were always standing on that precipice, contemplating bleakness, or discussing in urgent whispers how they want to get out of Collinwood and contemplate jumping themselves. Why had all those governesses leapt from that spot to their doom in the past?

The irony was that, as an oddball teen who shunned the sun, I had those same feelings of foreboding, and the desire to escape a suffocating home, without the external justification. Nothing could have been less scary than those repetitive sunny seventy degree days, my ranch house with the basketball hoop hammered over the garage, the breakfast nook where we ate our meals regularly at 5:30 p.m. while the Vietnam War appeared in nightly installments on the evening news.

I think that was part of the reason that for me, and possibly for director Tim Burton who lived two hours north in land-locked Burbank, the show had such a tremendous appeal and resonance. Wholesome suburbia struck me as so much scarier, and the gloomy, death-obsessed supernatural soap, “Dark Shadows,” provided release.

This essay original appeared on Yahoo! Movies

2

3

Next Page »