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Posts Tagged ‘Nicole Kidman’

“THE PROM”: Don’t be gay in Indiana

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 11, 2020| 1 Comment »

Andrew Rannells, Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman

“THE PROM”  My rating: B+

130 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Sabre-toothed cynicism and squishy-hearted sentiment are unusual bedfellows, but they get it on quite swimmingly in “The Prom,” Ryan Murphy’s winning screen adaptation of the gay-centric Broadway musical.

Here’s a movie I’d pay to see in a theater.  And I say that from the depths of my pandemic-panicked heart.

Simultaneously a celebration/sendup of show-biz hamminess and a touching coming-out story, “The Prom” depicts how a handful of Broadway has-beens and wannabes descend upon a tiny Indiana burg to champion the cause of a teenage lesbian named Emma (a winning Jo Ellen Pellman) who only wants to take her gal to the high school prom.

That simple desire is complicated. First, because the PTA president Mrs. Greene (Kerry Washington) would rather cancel the prom than let a gay couple attend; second because Emma’s squeeze is none other than Mrs. Greene’s daughter Alyssa (Ariana DeBose), who is yet to come out to her mom.

Meanwhile in New  York, Broadway diva Dee Dee Allen (Meryl Streep) has been trashed for  her new musical about Eleanor Roosevelt.

“What didn’t they like?” asked co-star Barry Glickman (James Corden), who plays FDR. “Was it the hip hop?”

Actually, no.  The critics find Dee Dee and Barry to be insufferably narcissistic. They need an image makeover, something that will let them “love ourselves but appear to be caring human beings.”  Hey, what if they help out that little gay girl in Indiana?

They are joined on their mission  by Angie Dickinson (Nicole Kidman), who after 20 years in the biz is still stuck in the chorus, and actor/bartender Trent Oliver (Andrew Rannells), whose career high point is his degree from Juilliard.

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“BOMBSHELL”: Fanny patters

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 19, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman

“BOMBSHELL”   My rating: B

108 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Simultaneously an insider’s look at Fox News, a record of the rise of Trump, and an examination of sexual harassment in the workplace, “Bombshell” can boast of terrific timeliness and a killer cast of women (and one man).

What it doesn’t have is much emotional pull — aside, of course, from the indignation it’s sure  to generate in response to the culture of crassness fomented by the late Roger Ailes.

Jay Roach’s film centers on three women struggling to forge and maintain careers at Fox  News.

Two of them — network stars Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) and Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) — are of course real people.  The third, a newcomer to the network named Kayla Pospisi (Margot Robbie), is fictional.

Early in Charles Randolph’s screenplay Carlson secretly meets with a couple of lawyers. She’s on thin ice at the network, both for her show’s ratings and her feminist inclinations (doing one broadcast sans makeup as a sort of statement of solidarity with women viewers). Her chafing at being Barbie-tized will likely lead to her demotion or dismissal; when that day comes she wants to have plenty of documentation about groping and sexual intimidation in the hallowed halls of Fox.

Meanwhile Kelly (Theron looks so eerily like the real Kelly that audiences will end up doing double takes) makes the mistake of daring to ask tough questions of then-candidate Trump and so becomes the public object of the Donald’s ridicule (“She had blood coming out of her whatever”). Suddenly she’s the story; it’s not a comfortable place to be.

Finally there’s Robbie’s Kayla, daughter of conservatives from Out West, evidently religious, and fiercely ambitious.  She learns the Fox ropes from her cubicle mate (Kate McKinnon), a closeted lesbian, but has to make a decision when given the choice of trading a blowjob for a promotion.

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“DESTROYER”: Overdone

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 31, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Nicole Kidman

“DESTROYER” My rating: C-

120 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Virtually everything about “Destroyer” — from its title to the plotting, dialogue and star Nicole Kidman’s Oscar-bait makeup transformation — screams overstatement.

Written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi and directed by Karyn Kusama, this joyless (and, let’s face it, off-putting) crime drama aspires to noir greatness but succeeds only in alienating with its blend of cliche and unearned angst.

Along the way it wastes Kidman, a hugely talented actress who here is limited to a sort of slow-burn psychosis.

When we first meet L.A. Police Det. Erin Bell (Kidman) she’s sleeping in her car, looking pretty much like death warmed over. Sunken eyes, sallow/blotchy skin, painfully projecting cheekbones, cracked lips.   Kidman is borderline unrecognizable; she could be a “Walking Dead” extra.

(In fact, we’re immediately reminded of Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning uglying-down for “Monster.”)

Some 16 years ago Bell was part of an undercover operation that went horribly bad. Her partner Chris (played in flashbacks by Sebastian Stan) was killed by members of the bank robbery gang the two had infiltrated.

Now Bell receives a threat in the mail…a $100 bill stained with purple dye from that long-ago bank job.  It can only mean that Silas (Toby Kebbel), the gang leader who vanished shortly after the deadly heist, has returned to settle the score with Bell.

Bell has to get him first.

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“THE BEGUILED”: Clinical, but not compelling

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 29, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Nicole Kidman, Colin Farreell

“THE BEGUILED” My rating: C+

93 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Riding a tsunami of high expectations (she’s only the second woman to be named best director at Cannes), Sofia Coppola’s “The Beguiled” is poised to become the Second Coming of feminist cinema.

Except that it isn’t. Not even close.

It’s not a bad movie. “The Beguiled” (based on the same novel as the 1971 Don Siegel/Clint Eastwood version) is fiercely atmospheric and slyly subversive. It’s been well acted and the physical production is impressive.

But it’s emotionally remote and something of a bore.  Don Siegel may have been a pulp filmmaker, but his melodramatic instincts were fun, at least.

Coppola’s screenplay offers some new dialogue but the plot arc is mostly faithful to the earlier movie and the novel.

During the Civil War, a handful of teachers and students at a Virginia boarding school for women discover a wounded Union soldier, Corporal McBurney (Colin Farrell). They sew up his mangled leg, intending to turn him over to the rebel home guard when he’s healed.

But the presence of a potent male sets off yearnings among the residents. Among them is the outwardly formidable headmistress (Nicole Kidman), a lonely teacher (Kirsten Dunst), a spoiled teen on the cusp of sexuality (Elle Fanning), and even a small girl (Oona Laurence) looking for a playmate.

The canny bluebelly works the situation, becoming to each woman or girl just what she requires in this testosterone-starved environment.

Those looking for a fresh feminist twist to the material will be disappointed.  There’s less about women’s theory here than about the dark corners of the human psyche: sexual fear and repression, jealousy, revenge, exploitation. (more…)

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“QUEEN OF THE DESERT”: Nicole of Arabia

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 6, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Nicole Kidman

“QUEEN OF THE DESERT”  My rating: C+

129 minutes | MPAA rating PG-13

“Queen of the Desert” is quite possibly the oddest film of director Warner Herzog’s wildly idiosyncratic  career.

A mash-up of woman’s picture, real-life biography and sweeping  “Lawrence of Arabia” images, it stars Nicole Kidman as Gertrude Bell, a British adventuress, diplomat, archaeologist and feminist who became an expert on the Middle East in the years before World War I.

We first encounter our heroine in 1888. The daughter of a steel magnate, she’s being groomed for a fitting marriage.

“You will not scare the young men with your intelligence,” her mother warns, but Gertrude is having none of it. She’s too independent, too strong willed to endure simpering aristocratic society.

(Kidman, now 49, plays Bell from age 21 to 40. Remarkably, she pulls off the youthful Gertrude, thanks to great makeup and God-given bone structure.)

Her exasperated father finally agrees to let her join the British embassy in Teheran where she soon finds herself falling for Henry  Cadogan (James Franco, struggling to maintain a Brit accent), a low-ranking staff member assigned as her escort. Henry’s prospects aren’t promising, but like Gertrude he loves the desert. And he’s not afraid of her independent streak.

Daddy, however, nixes this liaison, and a heartbroken Gertrude turns her back on romance, devoting herself to travels in the Middle East, crossing vast deserts with a handful of faithful local guides.

During her travels she runs across a young T.E. Lawrence (Robert Pattinson), working on an archaeological dig at Petra in Jordan. Years away from his exploits among the Arab tribes in the Great War, Lawrence already wears the native costume that will become his trademark.  He and Gertrude flirt innocently, but neither is looking for a relationship.

Over years Gertrude is befriended by the Bedouin. She also finds a lover — platonic — in married British statesman Charles Doughty-Wylie (Damien Lewis).

Eventually Gertrude is recognized by her government and with Lawrence is part of the commission that divides up the Middle East in the wake of the war.

 

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“LION”: Little boy lost

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 25, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Sunny Pawer

Sunny Pawer

“LION” My rating: B+

118 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Half Dickensian epic, half heart-wrenching domestic drama, “Lion” tells a real-life story so unlikely that it stretches credulity.

But it happened.

In 1986 five-year-old Saroo (Sunny Pawer, in one of the most astonishing performances by a young child ever captured on film)  was living with his widowed mother and two siblings in a rural area of central India.  His mother worked as a laborer (she literally lifted rocks all day); Saroo and an older brother stole lumps of coal from passing trains,  trading them for food.

On one nighttime outing, Saroo was separated from his brother and found himself locked inside an empty passenger train being driven more than 1,000 miles to Calcutta to be decommissioned.

Little Saroo didn’t know his family’s last name or the town he hailed from. Worse, he spoke only Hindi, while the Calcuttans spoke Bengali.

For months the child lived on the street — begging, stealing, avoiding capture by criminals seeking child prostitutes. After several close calls Saroo found himself in an orphanage where, miraculously enough, he was paired with an Australian couple, John and Sue Brierley (David Wenham, Nicole Kidman).

Relocated to middle-class comfort in Tasmania, the lost boy seemed to have washed up in paradise.  Not even the addition to the family of his troubled adopted brother, Mantosh — like Saroo an Indian orphan but with severe emotional and social issues — could seriously erode the fairy-tale quality of Saroo’s good fortune.

(By the way, John and Sue seem pretty good candidates for sainthood.)

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“SECRET IN THEIR EYES”: The passage of time, the dull ache of loss

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 19, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Julia Roberts

Julia Roberts

“SECRET IN THEIR EYES” My rating: C

111 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Some stories cannot be transplanted from one culture to another without losing much in the process.

Such is the case with “Secret in Their Eyes,” an American remake of an Argentine release which in 2010 won the Oscar for best foreign language film.

The story arcs of the two films are pretty much interchangeable. Both feature a chase through a packed sports stadium, and each ends with a head-spinning last-act revelation capable of inducing a tummy full of dread.

And yet the particulars are different enough that what worked magnificently in one version sputters and dies in the other.

This film from writer/director Billy Ray (“Shattered Glass,” “Breach”) is presented as two interlocking stories taking place in two decades.

In the present former FBI agent (now he handles security for the New York Mets) Ray (Chiwetel Ejiofor) returns to his old haunts in Los Angeles to complete some unfinished business.

For 13 years Ray has been haunted by the murder of young Caroline Cobb, whose mother Jess (Julia Roberts) was a colleague and investigator for the L.A. District Attorney’s Office.

Ray and Jess were part of a task force looking for terrorist activity originating in a local mosque. The most likely murder suspect was a oddball young man and a member of that congregation.

But the D.A. (Alfred Molina) kept throwing roadblocks in front of the murder investigation. Eventually it was revealed that the suspect was a confidential informant reporting on activities at the mosque. Killer or not, the powers that be are kept him out of the legal system. Given the rampant paranoia after 9/11, they decided that preventing another terrorist attack trumps solving a young woman’s murder.

Despite lacking legal authorization or jurisdiction, Ray and Jess (Roberts has dowdied herself into near-unrecognizability) went after the suspect on their own. They were cautiously abetted by Claire (Nicole Kidman), a new prosecutor for whom Ray had (and continues to have) a raging case of unrequited love/lust.

But the suspect vanishes and the trail went cold.

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“RAILWAY MAN”: The war that won’t fade away

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on April 27, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman

Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman

“THE RAILWAY MAN”  My rating: B- (Now showing at the Glenwood Arts)

116 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Knowing that the story told in “The Railway Man” is more or less true is essential to appreciating Jonathan Teplitzky’s film.

For there are moments here – lots of them – when I felt I’d been conned into a clumsily structured, overly earnest “lesson” film.

The story begins with a bit of deceptive  romance.  Sixtyish Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) is a British bachelor who loves trains.  He’s not a trainspotter, he emphasizes, but a “train enthusiast.”  This being 1980 in jolly olde England, there are plenty of trains to take pleasure in.

On one such train he runs into Patti (Nicole Kidman), a recently divorced woman whom he helps plana trip to Scotland.  Eric may not be terribly adept socially, but he apparently has the schedule of every train in Britain committed to memory.

As they cruise through the countryside, Eric regales her with bits of local history.  One town, he notes, was where the film “Brief Encounter” was shot…a nice observation since Eric and Patti seem to be living their own version of that classic movie.

So…”The Railway Man” is a sweet,  late-in-life love story?

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“STOKER”: Deconstrucing Hitchcock

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , on March 21, 2013| 1 Comment »

Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode

Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode

“STOKER” My rating: B- (Opens March 22 at the Glenwood Arts and Tivoli)

99 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Stoker” represents an extraordinary level of film craftsmanship.

Every shot, every color choice, every cut and transition, the soundtrack – even  the opening credits –suggest an almost obsessive determination to get all the details exactly right. On so many levels the movie is breathtaking.

Given this, why isn’t Korean director Park Chan-wook‘s first English-language film more satisfying?

I think it’s because in trying to give us a classic Hitchcock-style suspense film he (and his writer, the actor Wentworth Miller) has in fact given us a somewhat academic deconstruction of a Hitchcock-style suspense film.

Big difference.

 If you’re looking for thesis material “Stoker” is chock full of allusions, references and outright steals.

But for genuine suspense, go elsewhere.  Unlike Hitch, Park (whose best-known film in this country is probably the incest-and-savagery epic “Old Boy”) doesn’t allow us to identify with his characters. They might as well be specimens of exotic insects in glass jars.

Our heroine is high school senior India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska), whom we meet at the funeral of her beloved father, who has died in some sort of fiery car crash.

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