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Movie Review: ‘Diane’

April 5, 2019 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Mary Kay Place, 71, gets the role of a lifetime in Diane, the engine of New York Film Festival director Kent Jones’ character-driven, Martin Scorsese-produced study of a woman who has become a supporting player in her own existence. It’s a bold choice in contemporary American films, to put a postmenopausal woman on the verge of a polite nervous breakdown at a downbeat drama’s center. Because Place, best known as the single businesswoman desperate to conceive in The Big Chill, has such a warm and genuine touch, Diane’s story is one of late-day awakening rather than one long stretch of kvetch.

The script meanders through a series of modestly dramatic events as Diane drives her battered sedan from one errand to the next through frigid, rural wooded Massachusetts. The roughest comes when she visits her only son, Brian (Jake Lacy). She totes his laundry to his chilly crash pad. When he shambles out of the bedroom, he’s equally unkempt and resents his mother’s “helpful” intrusion.

Brian’s an addict, and she scans him with her gimlet eye, trying to assess if he’s using again or just tired. It’s so hard to be a mother helpless to heal her once-beautiful child. It’s clear, through script and direction, that this is a dance they’ve been doing for ages, long after Brian should have taken control of his own life. “Take a shower and get cleaned up,” she nags in frustration. The ruts in their relationship — the hopes and disappointments of a mother who has seen her beloved son relapse, and who sees before her both the boy and the cracked man he has become — are heartbreakingly rendered.

Add another wrinkle to Diane’s face.

[Click here to see my AARP interview: ‘Mary Kay Place Gets Her First Lead Role’]

The do-gooder continues on her circuit: delivering casseroles to neighbors experiencing rough times, heading to the soup kitchen to ladle stew for the less fortunate, and visiting her terminally ill cousin Donna (the incandescent Deirdre O’Connell, 67) at the hospital. The pair radiate a long, comfortable kinship that transcends blood.

Diane and Donna have spent their lives sitting across from each other, playing cards, kibitzing and advising — and avoiding addressing a personal betrayal perpetrated by Diane that continues to gnaw at her. Diane is good — warm, caring, community-spirited. But she’s not as good as she might have been if she hadn’t made one big mistake she has regretted all of her life.

Watching Donna wane, along with their close-knit family’s elders, Diane belatedly realizes that all the consoling of others will not heal what’s cracked within her. Diane gets trashed at a bar for locals. She boogies down and, seemingly, rekindles the spark that she has lost, the joy in the moment. It has been a long time since she has loved herself, if she ever did, and there’s a glimmer of hope. There’s still time for Diane to star in the movie of her life.

[This review originally appear on AARP]

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: aarp, Aging, best actress, Diane, Kent Jones, Martin Scorsese, Movie, movie reviews, Tribeca Film Festival

What Women Want: More Movies by and About Women

June 17, 2014 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Writer-director Rachel Israel

Writer-director Rachel Israel

Rachel Israel is an up-and-coming Columbia University educated director who has joined with Tangerine Entertainment to write and direct an autistic love story, Keep the Change. The project builds on Israel’s short film, casting actors with developmental delays in the lead role of a high-functioning autistic man (Brandon Polansky) who falls in love with a more developmentally challenged young woman (Samantha Elisofon) when he attends a support group. Echoes of The Fault in our Stars, anyone?

Tangerine Entertainment is the brainchild of Anne Hubbell and Amy Hobby with the mission to see that more films directed by women get shepherded through the production process and onto the screen. They are joining with Summer Shelton (Little Accidents) to produce. Tangerine’s latest project, Lucky Them, with Toni Collette and Thomas Hayden Church, is currently in theaters after playing the Toronto International Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival.

Below is a three-minute video of Israel discussing the making of the short that inspired the feature, and using non-actors with disabilities in the lead roles. At one point, she says of their ability to improvise: “The best material is the material I didn’t write.”

“Keep The Change” from CUFF 2014 on Vimeo.

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: Autism, Autistic Romance, Rachel Israel, Tangerine Entertainment, Toronto International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival

Tribeca Q&A: #CoulsonLives and Clark Gregg knows why…but he’s not telling, yet.

May 1, 2013 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Clark Gregg at the Tribeca Film Festival (photo by Thelma Adams)

Clark Gregg at the Tribeca Film Festival (photo by Thelma Adams)

 

You could almost walk by “The Avengers” star Clark Gregg without knowing he’s a movie actor. Not exactly something you could say about Chris Hemsworth of “Thor.”

Sure, you’d wonder, ‘Where do I know that guy with the high forehead from?”

Maybe you’d think it was your high school science teacher, or a guy your girlfriend dated back in college, or someone that stood in front of you in line at Whole Foods.

As Gregg sat across from me at a café table at 55 Gansevoort Street during the Tribeca Film Festival, there’s an instant feeling that we’d known each other forever. That’s because he’s a very good actor, and his forte is playing regular guys – like Agent Phil Coulson.

What’s behind this everyman’s staying power from his first role in “Iron Man” through his expanded story arc in Joss Whedon’s “The Avengers?”

In his characteristically humble way, Gregg told me: “Mostly I’ve been mystified myself.
“I had a tiny role in “Iron Man” but there was a rapport between me and Tony Stark,” Gregg continued. “I grew up reading comics. I could have died right there and been happy. But when Joss Whedon said I was going to be in ‘The Avengers,” I thought my character was going to bring in a java.”
Agent Coulson has a lot more to do in “The Avengers” than carry coffee. Coulson is critical to the storyline. So, talking to Gregg, I was curious: I’d just seen Agent Phil die an apparently grisly death last summer. How was he going to star in Whedon’s TV movie, “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D?”

“It seemed like I was pretty dead,” nodded Gregg. “I was waiting for a last minute rewrite from the governor!”

But, unlike a “Game of Thrones” character –Sean Bean’s Ned Stark for example – this was not the end for Agent Coulson. Sure, there was a lot of blood, but there was no death rattle, no final shot of eyes wide open. The fans demanded his return — and writer-director Whedon gave them what they wanted.

“There’s something people like about this guy,” said Gregg. “Joss picked up on it. Coulson is a fanboy himself. Whedon fans started this movement – the ‘Coulson Lives’ hashtag. All over the world, fans painted ‘Coulson Lives’ on bridges. It was a kind of civil disobedience. ‘Colson lives; Fury lies.’”

So, how did Coulson survive? Leave it to the comic book conspiracy theorists. “The superhero collector’s cards were in the locker, not on his body, is one of the theories,” said Gregg. “The fact that the fans refusal to let Coulson die was so moving to me. I think it was because he was them: he was the fanboys’ avatar.

“There are people around the Avengers that don’t have their invincibility,” explained Gregg. “These normal folk have to step up, especially when the superheroes were acting like diva bitches.”

At the “Iron Man 3” premiere last night, Whedon confirmed that Agent Phil Coulson survives and stars in the upcoming TV spinoff: “We’ve finished the pilot,” Whedon said. “Agent Coulson is in it. We will explain why in the pilot, and it is wonderful and [Gregg] is phenomenal in it. And we should find out in the very near future whether or not everyone gets to enjoy it as much as we already have.”

Gregg happily discussed Coulson, but on the front burner was the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of his own heroic effort to write, direct and star in “Trust Me,” a dark comedy with Sam Rockwell, Amanda Peet and newcomer Saxon Sharbino.

“It’s the story of a second-string Hollywood agent who finds the next big teen thing,” said Gregg, “and goes to some very dark places to sign her as a client.”

Gregg hatched the idea over the years while working with a couple of young actors. He became “obsessed with the people who handled them, their agents, struggling in Hollywood’s minor leagues. The script came out in this feverish burst. It was more noir and complex and expressed more ambivalent feelings that I have about the star system. I started to write something goofy for fun, and ended up with an aging loser in his fifties desperate to create a break. And, then, I had to play the guy, too.”

Circling back to the world of Marvel, Gregg said, “part of this new story appeals to the Comic Con/”Avengers” crew: this loser agent is so desperate for his last shot that when he finally discovers this prodigious talent, he starts to lose his grip on reality. We are in his head and we start seeing what he sees:  whether it’s fantasy, or the alternative sci-fi vampire movie within a movie.”

If it sounds a little like “The Twilight Saga,” it should. “The movie is like ‘Twilight,’” explained Gregg. “Only it’s classier in that Ang Lee is directing Sir Ben Kingsley and Helen Mirren. Of course, I didn’t have the budget for them, but they’re mentioned.”

Any hopes to hit the award circuit with “Trust Me” like Lee, Kingsley and Mirren? “I’ll take a Razzie,” Gregg joked. “I don’t care.”

Filed Under: Celebrity, Movies & TV Tagged With: C, Clark Gregg, Coulson Lives, Interview, Joss Whedon, Razzie, The Avengers, The Twilight Saga, Tribeca Film Festival, Trust Me

“2 Days in New York” Trailer

April 14, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

If you have a chance to see this movie at Tribeca, bet tickets….otherwise you’ll have to wait until August. Funny and fresh:

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: 2 Days in New York, Chris Rock, Julie Delpy, Trailer, Tribeca Film Festival

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