Mary Oliver: An Uplifting Documentary

 

 

 MARY OLIVER: SAVED BY THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD (2026)

Directed by Sasha Waters

Kino Lorber, 91 minutes

 

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers

flow in the right direction, will the earth turn

as it was taught, and if not how shall

I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,

can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows

can do it and I am, well,

hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,

am I going to get rheumatism,

lockjaw, dementia?

Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And gave it up. And took my old body

and went out into the morning,

and sang.

 

 

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World is an uplifting documentary about the woman who might be the most famous poet in the history of Western society. There are many poets more renowned for their literary grace, more praised by scholars, more philosophically profound, more socially significant…. But have any been more embraced by ordinary folks, the sort who would rather endure a root canal than wrestle with iambic pentameter or trochaic meter?

 

Whenever someone professes to dislike poetry, somebody is bound to ask, “Have you ever tried Mary Oliver?” Chances are good that query will come from the last person in the room you would have expected to read poetry. Oliver (1935-2019) is generally considered a nature poet, though she was more than that. She eschewed fancy rhymes, meter, and structure for commonplace expression that evokes deeply emotional responses. In the film we watch Stephen Colbert struggle to recite from memory Oliver’s “The Summer Day.” He is fine until he gets to its most famous line, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” It took numerous takes before Colbert could recite that line without choking tears. Surely wise guys like John Waters or Steve Buscemi are not so sentimental. Wrong! They too worship the ground upon which Oliver sat among resplendent nature.

 

Numerous poet-talking-heads appear on screen. You might not recognize some of their names, but all sing Oliver’s praises. So do Helena Bonham Carter, Lucy Dacus, and Oprah Winfrey. Oliver won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984, a National Book Award in 1992, collected five honorary doctorates, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and countless other prizes.

 

Though Oliver was loved by millions, she was more guarded; director Sasha Waters reveals a lot about Mary’s wild and precious life. She was born in a Cleveland suburb, but hers was not a happy childhood. Details are sparse, but Oliver later spoke of being sexually abused as a child. Emily Dickinson sought solace in her room and front yard; Oliver retreated to nature. Some have compared Oliver to Dickinson, but to me she seemed like a plain-spoken Ralph Waldo Emerson with the ego stripped away. Oliver always listed Emerson and Thoreau as among her poetic inspirations, along with Millay, Whitman, the 13th century Persian/Sufi poet Rumi, and Elizabeth Bishop. She also admired haiku master Matsuo Bashõ (1644-94), which helps explain Oliver’s penchant for succinct verse.

 

Oliver tried college, but it didn’t take. She landed at Steepletop, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s home in Austerlitz, New York, where she befriended Millay’s sister and spent more than six years organizing Edna’s papers. She held multiple writer-in-residence positions (Case Western, Bennington, Sweet Briar, Bucknell, and others) but in Austerlitz she met photographer Molly Malone Cook, her lover, partner, and agent for 40 years. Mary and Molly moved to Provincetown in 1964, and Cape Cod became one of Oliver’s greatest joys and creative sparks. She was known to spend hours lost in local forests, sitting by the sea, wandering alone, and silently following her inner muse. It has been said that she loved the natural world, but such a statement is inadequate; Mary saw a personified Nature as her teacher and spiritual advisor. Oliver was spiritual, but not religious in any conventional sense. She had little time for dogma or doctrine.  

 

There is one glaring dodge in this otherwise superb documentary. Molly died in 2005 and Mary still had 14 years of life remaining. As has been documented, Cook’s death devastated Oliver. Shortly after Molly’s death, Oliver shocked those who knew her best by leaving Provincetown at the behest of her final partner Anne Taylor. Oliver moved to Hobe Point, Florida–north of West Palm Beach and south of Stuart–to be with Anne.  Waters and Oliver’s friends hinted that that the Taylor/Oliver relationship was toxic and that Mary disliked Florida, but details are sketchy. Why pull punches? An attempt to keep Oliver’s reputation intact? Taylor’s silence? Fear of being sued?  Perhaps none of it matters. Were Oliver here she’d probably ask, “… what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life,” tell us to give up worrying, go into the woods, and sing.

 

Rob Weir

Icelandic Film The Love That Remains is Missing More Pieces than One

 

 

 

  

THE LOVE THAT REMAINS (2025)

Directed by Hlynur Pálmason

STILL VIVID, 109 minutes, Not-rated (language, an up-the-dress shot)

In Icelandic, English and Swedish

★

 

My Wednesday posting is late because I needed to contemplate The Love That Remains. Director Hlynur Pálmason’s previous film, Godland, was among my favorite films of 2022. His latest reminded me of past days of evaluating submissions for the Northampton Film Festival. There were two categories of films I felt should tossed into the Coliseum with the lions: those whose point was how hard it was for the filmmaker to make the film, and those whose point might have been apparent to the director, but no one else. The Love That Remains is in the second category. 

 

I have had Icelandic friends, rank my trip to Iceland as among my best travel memories, read a lot of Icelandic folk tales and mysteries, and watch Icelandic TV shows and movies. To date, nothing Icelandic comes close to being as boring as The Love That Remains. It should have told me something to discover that only Panda won an award at the Cannes Film Festival; he won a Palm Dog for Best Lead Animal Actor. I’ll give the film one star because Panda, an Icelandic sheepdog, is cute and cuddly.

 

This film is ostensibly about a coming-apart-at-the-seams family in which Pálmason cast his own children as eldest daughter Ída, and her brothers, þorglis (THOR-glis) and Grímur as her younger brothers.  Anna (Saga Gardarsdóttir) and Magnus (Sverrir Guðnason) are the parents, though they are separated. Anna wishes to leave their coastal home and live in “the city,” which can only be Reykjavik, as its metropolitan area contains two-thirds of Iceland’s 350,000 residents. She fancies herself an artist and blames her isolation for why her art isn’t selling. I’m no expert on contemporary Icelandic art, but I hold open the possibility that Anna simply wasn’t a very good artist. Her work consisted of cutting metal sheets into geometrical shapes, placing them over pieces of canvas, weighting them down with wooden skids and rocks, and leaving them to the elements. At the end of the year there are rust patterns on the canvas. It’s conceptually interesting, but aesthetically unappealing.

 

Magnus is an involved separated husband and parent. He loves Anna and wishes to be with his children. Unless he’s at sea on a herring trawler, he’s at his old home frolicking with Panda, rough-housing with the boys, chatting with 17-year-old Ída, eating dinner with the family, trying to bed Anna, leading family outings, and dealing with things Anna would rather not (like getting rid of a troublesome rooster). When at sea, he’s morose and misses all five. (Let’s not forget Panda!) “Maggi,” as Anna calls him, is so betwixt and between that he’s surly and clashes with his ship mates.

 

These are things we can understand, but Pálmason throws in surrealistic elements, such as a giant rooster attacking a sleeping Magnus and a Joan of Arc dummy that comes to life and pulls out arrows shot into her by Anna and her children. For the record, only research told me the dummy was supposed to be Joan of Arc; it’s another of Anna’s “art” projects and looked like a soggy soft sculpture scarecrow with a tinpot head. (Gee, how could I have not seen Joan of Arc in that mess?) Anna is no happier with Magnus out of the house, except she only laughs when he’s there. The boys drop F-bombs and ignore her chastisements. Soon we realize that Ída is the closest thing to an adult in the household. What we never figure out is why Anna can’t live with a man who adores her, supports her art, and wants to co-parent.

 

That said, Saga Gardarsdóttir is the most interesting actor on the screen. She intrigues physically, as we can see world-weariness etched on her face. She is pale, blonde, heavily freckled, and tall (6’0) like many Icelandic women, and would have been 37 when the film was made. In the film, she dresses in an unkempt manner and looks as if 50 are rushing up to greet her with the intent of bypassing her 40s. Her aloofness and the fate of Magnus ultimately tell us as little about the collapse of a family as the film’s opening sequence of a crane lifting a roof from a shed. Slowly. Like the rest of the film. 

 

Rob Weir

Selena Fails to Capture Her Spark

 SELENA (1997)

Written and directed by Gregory Nava

Warner Brothers, 127 minutes, PG

★★

 

Thirty-one years after her murder, Selena Quintanilla Pérez remains the most popular Tejano singer of all-time. The Hollywood movie Selena is a recounting of her life–just not a very good one.

 Let me state from the outset my non-familiarity with arena-style Tejano music. I’m also fuzzy on how Tejano music differs from Norteña/o music other than the first is Tex-Mex and the other Mex-Tex. I know more about acoustic musicians like Tish Hinjosa (one of the nicest people on the planet), Carrie Rodriguez, Eliza Gilkyson, and Nanci Griffith. I state truth, not cultural insensitivity, when I say that it’s all Border music to my ignorant ears. My idea of a Border superstar is Linda Ronstadt. Okay, so I’m wrong about that!

Selena sent me to YouTube where I grasped her appeal, but it doesn’t change the fact that the movie is as flat as Panhandle Texas. It’s as if Director Gregory Nava, who also wrote the script, assumed that audiences would fill in the cinematic holes with preexisting reverence. Many viewers no doubt did so–and the movie made money– but most of Selena is a standard music biopic with all that genre’s strengths (the music) and all its weaknesses. (When was the last time you saw one that did not delve into the pitfalls of celebrity?)   

 Selena takes us from Selena’s childhood to her murder on March 31, 1995. Adult Selena is played by Jennifer Lopez; her childhood self is represented by young actor Becky Lee. You could get the gist of Selena’s bio by skimming Wikipedia, but I’ll save you the trouble. She was born in Texas and died there just 23 years later. Stage mothers are infamous in the entertainment field, but, Marcella Quintanilla Pérez (Constance Marie) was too busy keeping her music-obsessed husband Abraham (Edward James Olmos) from bankrupting the family through his own dreams of stardom. Abe had a band called The Dinos, but it played American doo wop and pop rather than Tejano material favored by Latinos in Gulf Coast Texas. Selena loved to sing even as a child and her precocious talent plowed a different road to fame, a family band with Selena as the frontwoman of a flashy, high-energy Tejano repertoire. The film opens with Selena thrilling a sold-out concert at the Houston Astrodome. 

 Then we back up in time to observe how the band Selena y Los Dinos came together. It consisted of Selena, her sister Suzette (Jackie Guerra), brother A.B. (Jabob Vargas), dad, and sometimes mom. Selena was the star, but her greatest skill was manipulating Abraham into dumping doo wop, moving to Corpus Christi, taking long bus tours to build audiences, hiring former heavy metal guitarist Chris Pérez (Jon Seda) to play blistering leads, allowing her to follow her own fashion muses (including wearing a bustier on stage), and blessing her elopement to Chris. Selena sang her family into fortune and became a Grammy Award-winning Tejano superstar. Selena even had her own boutique, salon, and merchandise stores that indirectly led to her death. A friend and superfan, Yolanda Saldívar (Lupe Ontiveros), was hired to keep track of merch and keep the books, but rancor ensued when it became obvious that Yolanda had been dipping her fingers deep into the family till. Her firing led to a meeting that ended with Yolanda fatally shooting Selena. (Yolanda is serving life with the possibility of parole.)

 It was a senseless killing, but we’ve seen this kind of biopic so many times that it’s nearly obligatory that the titular celebrity must die. To sustain what we already know will happen, more is needed. Lopez is perfectly fine as Selena, but the rest of the cast is too mannered and wholesome for its own good, including Olmos who is usually compelling. Selena’s family, even bullheaded Abraham, come off as a fluffier version of The Jackson Five. I couldn’t stop wondering who this script was for, Anglos or Mexican Americans; surely racism, language barriers (in Mexico), and Abraham's rigid Jehovah's Witness faith warranted more than a proverbial drive-by.  Aside from a stage set malfunction, Selena’s struggle to learn Spanish, and Yolanda’s rampage, there was very little grit to the film. Eleven years on the road and these and family feuds are all you’ve got? Bidi, bidi, bom(b) bom(b).

 Rob Weir

Eleanor the Great, or Eleanor the Pretty Good?

 

 

 

 

 

 

ELEANOR THE GREAT (2025)

Directed by Scarlett Johansson

Sony Pictures Classic, 98 minutes, PG-13 (language, inferences)

★★★

 

June Squibb’s later-in-life career was resurrected when she appeared in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska in 2013. She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress and has been in demand ever since. Some have dismissed her as a sort of Betty White Lite, though Ms. Squibb’s career has been far more substantive. White died at age 99 in 2021, so perhaps it’s time to crown Squibb as the queen of defying ageism, though she prefers pricking its hide with satirical barbs. At the same time, though, questions persist whether she lampoons ageism, or merely supplanted assumptions that the elderly are senile with stereotypes of comical cranks and rebels.

 

Scarlett Johansson made her directing debut in Eleanor the Great with June Squibb in the titular role. She plays Eleanor Morgenstein, a 94-year-old Jewish woman who has returned to New York City (from Florida) because her best friend and roommate Bessie Stern (Rita Zohar) has died. Shall we say that her new roommate, her daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht), is all the things Bessie was not: pushy, frantic, judgmental, and a terrible listener. Eleanor quickly surmises that Lisa is too busy to pay attention to her, a truth reinforced in flashback sequences in which Bessie pours out her Holocaust survivor’s guilt and pain. Lisa wants her mother to go to the local Jewish Community Center in the belief that it’s simply a benign holding cell for old Jews. (For the record, Ms. Squibb is Jewish, having converted when she married Charles Kakatsakis in 1959.) In a classic screw up, Eleanor accidentally wanders into a support group for Holocaust survivors and, when pushed to speak, appropriates Bessie’s stories as her own, a  feeble and misguided attempt to feel as if she belongs.

 

Eleanor’s moving story–it’s not hers, but her mind is obviously sharp enough to remember and recreate what Bessie told her–makes her an instant celebrity among the group. It also catches the ear of Nina Davis (Erin Kellyman), a college journalism student working through grief of her own; her mother has recently died and she has lost her moorings. Analogous to Lisa, Nina’s father Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a successful-but-harried news anchor. Despite gaps of age, religion, race, and experiences Eleanor and Nina become close friends. In Nina’s eyes, the world-wise Eleanor becomes a mother substitute.

 

All is well until Nina wishes to profile Eleanor for a class project. Eleanor plays her assumed role so well that Nina’s father wants to profile Eleanor for a news story. Nina is hurt as dear old dad is stealing her story and Eleanor reluctantly agrees to go on the air. As generally happens in movies and in life, the bigger the lie, the deeper the hurt, humiliation, anger, and psychological damage is left in the exposure wake.

 

The problem with a story such as this is how to end it. Johannson wiggles out of it, but only in a sort of way that leaves her open to accusations of schmaltz, romanticism, and contrivance. Each is a valid interpretation of Eleanor the Great. Johannson came in for criticism–some of it unkind. I wonder, though, if the larger problem lies in the genre often tagged comedy-drama. It’s hard to laugh your way out of cultural misappropriation, as many have found out when caught lying about combat experiences, family pedigrees, academic honors, or in the case of ex-Congressman George Santos just about everything! Johannsson and script writer Tory Kamen opted for a soft landing that is sentimental in a mawkish way. Isn’t this a circumstance that calls for drama, not smiles and fluff?

 

For all of this, Eleanor the Great ranks at the top end of so-so movies. Squibb is a portrait of being conflicted but naïve, Kellyman is moving as a broken-hearted not-quite-a-woman, and Ejiofor is convincing as the kind of newsman who eats nails for breakfast. In other words, they work well together because each is distinct. I’m not surprised that most critics found it hard to whip up enthusiasm for the movie, or that the box office was less than $5 million. But if we lash our swords to the wall above the fireplace, Eleanor the Great can be seen as Eleanor the Pretty Good.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (2023)

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Apple/Paramount Pictures, 206 minutes, R (violence, language)

★★★★★

 

In the 1920s/30s, Oklahoma’s Osage Indians were the richest people in America. Killers of the Flower Moon reveals the secret of its title in the film’s opening sequence. A medicine man is conducting a ceremony during a flower of the moon ceremony, a coming of spring ritual. In this one, though, there is also a lamentation on the decline of the Osage. As he finishes and shots ring out, one hits a marshy pond, and up from the ground comes a bubbling crude. A 1906 treaty ceded mineral rights to the Osage, and overnight they own one of the richest underground oil reservoirs ever discovered.

 

Killers of the Flower Moon is noteworthy in other ways. It might be the last great film from director Martin Scorsese. It was also a box office bomb for several reasons, not the least of which was Scorsese’s ego. He spent over $200 million dollars on the film and had trouble finding a studio to commit to that sort of budget. Apple Studios finally greenlighted it, but its distribution deal with Paramount Pictures was such that it didn’t stick in theaters for very long. With PR, salaries, residuals, and other costs it needed to yield about $600 million to break even, and its $150 million box office receipts didn’t make a dent in that. It didn’t help that movie was nearly 3 ½ hours long. Many people dodged it for that reason.

 

Yet, Killers of the Flower Moon is one of the best films of the decade. Scorsese wisely based the movie only partly on David Grann’s best-selling book of the same title. Grann focused on how the conning of the Osage gave rise to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The movie pays attention to this, but turns to the trial notes of Thomas Bruce White Senior (Jesse Plemons).  In practical terms this means the production crew fashioned a movie rather than trying to duplicate the totality of Grann’s non-fiction book. Instead, the film centers on the complicated relationship between Ernest Buckhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his Osage bride Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone).

 

Ernest is just back from combat in World War One. In 1919, he visits his brother Byron (Scott Shepherd), who works for their uncle William King Hale (Robert DeNiro). Though the Osage are so rich they buy cars and hire chauffeurs to drive them, they are deemed “incompetents” in need of white legal guardians to “manage” their money. Bryon and Ernest engage in direct robberies of Osage people, but discover that more can be made from graft, a talent at which Hale excels. Because the 1921 Tulsa race riot in which 300+ African American citizens were killed is fresh in everyone’s memories, the Osage seek gentler means of persuasion. But when their agent in Washington, D.C. is murdered and Osage bodies begin to proliferate in Oklahoma, tensions rise. This so-called Reign of Terror left more than 100 suspected murder victims, with roughly a third of them eventually traced to Hale. The movie glosses the extent of these, but zeroes in on Mollie’s family. Among the victims are her mother Lizzie Q (Tantoo Cardinal) two of her sisters, several kin, and nearly Mollie.

 

Ernest marries Mollie, just as Bill Smith (singer Jason Isbell) wedded her sister Reta. These marriages were engineered or approved by Hale, but Hale is given a Svengali-like treatment. Smith clearly cherishes Reta (Ja Nae Collins) as Ernest does Mollie. The open question is whether Ernest loves her more than he is afraid of his uncle. Eventually the Bureau of Investigation, the forerunner of the FBI, gets involved with savvy Native agent John Wren (Tatanka Means), prosecutor Peter Leaward (John Lithgow), and numerous others blowing the lid off the scam and murders. In all, there is a huge cast that includes Brendan Fraser and musicians Charlie Musselwhite, Sturgill Simpson, Jack White, and Peter Yorn in acting roles. Scorsese also included more than three dozen Native Americans in his film.

 

President Calvin Coolidge gets a shout out for supporting the investigation, but I won’t it is an absolute travesty that this film was nominated for ten Oscars and won zero, not even Robie Roberston for Best Original Score. The brilliant Lily Gladstone lost the Best Actress Oscar to Emma Stone, who did little more in Poor Things than appear naked. To use a baseball slogan, they wuz robbed.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

May December More Dull than Shocking

 

 

 

MAY DECEMBER (2023)

Directed by Todd Haynes

Netflix, 117 minutes, R (nudity, drugs, language, subject matter)

★★

 

May December is a Todd Haynes film based upon the true-life story of Mary Kay Letourneau in which she, a teacher, seduced 12-year-old student Vili Faulaau. When her crime was discovered, Letourneau was pregnant with their first child. She was sentenced to six years in prison for child-rape, which was reduced to 6 months on the condition she avoid contact with Faulaau. She violated her parole, was pregnant with their second child, and spent seven years in prison. She was 35 when she initiated sex with Faulaau, then a 6^th grader. The two married in 2005, shortly after she was released. They stayed wedded for 14 years until they divorced in 1999.

 

May December is a lightly veiled (in more ways than one) version of May Kay and Vili that relocates the affair from Washington State to Savannah, makes her student 13 instead of 12, and rechristens him as Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), who is Southeast Asian rather than Samoan. May Kay is fashioned as Gracie Atherton (Julianne Moore), who dumps her husband to play rockabye baby with Joe. Director Todd Haynes insisted that his movie was an homage to Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light (1963) and Persona (1966). Yeah, and I’m Henry VIII, I am, I am.

 

The film was reviewed positively, won a few awards, and Melton was singled out for excellence as a supporting actor at various cinema festivals. Yet, it was a box office bomb that lost 75% of its $20 million budget. It seems that audiences found the content creepy, no matter what the critics said. I wasn’t offended by the subject matter nearly as much as I was bored. A very old movie adage holds that if you’re going to go over the top, go way over. May December could have been done as camp and it would have been a better movie.

 

A filmmaker corollary says that if you intend to make a serious film and you aren’t Ingmar Bergman, be sure to have something to say. I generally like Julianne Moore, but May December turns her into a fading magnolia rather than a MYOB spitfire. She just wants people to see her and Joe as good Georgia neighbors and community members. Fat chance when they have three biracial kids, one a college student and twins in high school. You can imagine the hazing they undergo from peers who know the deeper story. As we meet Joe, he’s a big hunk, a lunk, and blue-collar guy with a flat affect.

 

Into their lives comes a movie company wanting to film their story. Sure, there’s nothing like having a famous actress, Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) coming to town to “study” for her upcoming role to protect one’s privacy. Berry talks to people all over Savannah about the Yoo family. Surprise! Gracie is viewed as immoral, a bad role model, and a criminal. It doesn’t help that her ex-husband badmouths her and is happy to play the role of victim, which wasn’t quite the case. Joe is cast in a victim’s role, something Berry presses him on. Did he ever feel he was groomed? Was Joe too young in 6^th grade? Did Gracie took advantage of him? He contemplates the last question, though he mostly rejects it. In more candid moments he admits to having enjoyed the sex. I’ll bet; what 13-year-old boy wouldn’t wish to get up close and personal with Julianne Moore? But he’s flirting with 40 now. 

 

Melton is the best part of the film. He plays Joe as a dim-bulb who, apparently, hadn’t thought about these matters before. That stretches credulity, but Melton almost makes us believe it. If only he hadn’t bedded Elizabeth/Portman, the story would have been more believable. (They are the pair that has the steamiest sex in the film.) Even less believable is his instant guilt, which doesn’t jive with the boredom he displays toward Gracie. We know from later in the film that Gracie and Joe separate, just before Gracie (like Mary Kay) dies from cancer.

 

The Mary Kay Letourneau story is a sad one that should have made for a dramatic retelling. “Boredom” is a word one would never expect from such material.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

  

STAGE DOOR (1937)

Directed by Gregory La Cava

RKO, 92 minutes, Pre-ratings system

★★★★

 

Stage Door is often tagged as a tragicomedy. Although something quite sad happens to one of the characters, this Gregory La Cava-directed movie is heavier on the second half of that portmanteau. The movie followed the script of a play written Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman that closed the year before the movie appeared. It made money and garnered Oscar nominations, but it was one of increasingly rare incidences in which the play earned more money.

 

If you allow for the fact that this is a Great Depression-era film, your viewing pleasure will increase. It follows the constant flow of aspirant and briefly successful actresses in and out of a boarding house controlled by a booking agency. The cast is large and impressive, though the fame of many of the headliners would come later. This older movie definitely passes the Bechdel Test, as it is a film about women talking to women. Most of the men in the Stage Door are cads. If you know anything about (if not, consult Wikipedia) Ferber or Kaufman, you can count on a lot of barbed, acerbic, and funny badinage between boarding house residents. It’s the kind of movie that could be labeled “catty,” but these women are more predator tigers than domesticated tabbies.

 

The principals include Judy Canfield (Lucile Ball), a good-times gal; Kay Hamilton (Andrea Leeds), who was a star for a season who hasn’t had a part in ages and needs money; Jean Maitland (Ginger Rogers), a sharp-tongued vixen prone to mean acts such as pilfering the silk stockings from Linda Shaw (Gail Patrick) and ruining what was likely an expensive gift from Linda’s beau, Anthony (Adolph Menjou). That was quite a nasty thing to do at a time in which good stockings sold for today’s equivalent of over $36.

 

There are several odd-fitting residents, including newbie Terry Randall (Katharine Hepburn), who Maitland and her hangers-on ridicule for using big words, her fancy wardrobe, and her polished demeanor. They assume she comes from money, but that’s only partially true. Her father is loaded, but cuts off her allowance when she insists on pursuing a stage career. They don’t know who her father is, so they assume she has a “sugar daddy.” The implication of that term is that Terry is a “kept” woman who exchanges sex for fancy duds. The irony of this is that just about every woman in the boarding house, except Terry, yearns to have a boyfriend who will treat them. I will again remind you that this is a 1936 movie. In the film the women are “man-hungry” and the men know it. Boyfriends are generally older than their dates, are well-heeled, are clearly trying to bed them, and play musical conquests from among the boarding house population. It’s a mutual exploitation society of sorts. Many of the men are somehow connected to the theatre (directors, producers, underwriters, etc.) and the women are literally hungry as well as looking for a husband. Only Hattie (Phyllis Kennedy) has the chutzpah to date a butcher!

 

The other oddballs are Southern belle Mary Lou (Margaret Early), who finds out the New York isn’t Louisiana.  Ann Miller also has role as “Annie,” a fan-girl companion to Jean who dreams of being a dancer. (Miller succeeded in that quest, though she lied about her age and was just 14 when she scored a part in Stage Door.)

 

As you can see, Stage Door had what might be called an A-level cast: Ball, Hepburn, Miller…. At the time, though, Eve Arden and Constance Collier–two of the residents– and Patrick were better known, and film critics tabbed Early for an Oscar nomination. In a way, a lot of 1930s’ movies were akin to the 1933 version of 42^nd Street in which understudy Ruby Keeler dances to fame. Hepburn-as-Terry gets a similar chance to show off her talent, courtesy of a lot of help from Eve (Eve Arden) and aging resident Ann Lutheir (Collier), though Terry has something more serious in mind.

 

It’s hard to do justice to films with a big cast. There are more serious things in the film–a tragedy, veiled critiques of backstage immorality, and sexism–but the writing is razor-sharp. Give it a try.

 

Rob Weir

Belushi, His Rise and Fall

 

 

 

 

BELUSHI (2020)

Directed by R. J. Cutler

Showtime, 108 minutes, MA (drugs, language)

★★★★

 

I would not be the first to say that Saturday Night Live simply isn’t very interesting anymore. After 51 years, so much has changed that it’s hard to see it as the pathbreaking comedy that it once was. Many oldsters, despite some brilliant cast restructuring during the decades– Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, Jeanene Garafalo, Joan Cusak, and Maya Rudolph top my list– the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players (Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Bill Murray, Garrett Morris, Gilda Radner, and John Belushi) has never been topped.

 

Note that this is my opinion and that I’m speaking of an ensemble cast. Ultimately, SNL viewers are like superfans of a sport; the “G.O.A.T.” is the stuff of barroom debates and who you pick often gives away your age. Gen Xers often cite figures such as Will Ferrell, Norm Macdonald, Jimmy Fallon, Amy Poehler as favorites; if you’re younger still, you might cite Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, or Mikey Day. I’d grant Pohler, but the rest strike me lame. Chacun ses goúts. But any way you slice it, SNL is now merely a TV “sketch” show; it lacks the rebellious out-of-control mania of Belushi and Radner. Once upon a time, Saturday Night Live was as close as American TV got to anarchy. Eric Idle hosted SNL several times. In his mind, only Belushi would have held his own as a member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. More fodder for barroom arguments (or coffee klatches for those of us who go to bed earlier).

 

For me, Gilda was funnier, but Belushi was the Harpo Marx of the cast, the guy who could walk on the set, raise an eyebrow, and people would laugh. Like Harpo, he could destroy a set before you could daub your eyes. Replace Harpo’s horn with a samurai sword and that’s Belushi, a brilliant physical comic. (Okay, Harpo never took drugs!) I had never seen the 2020 Showtime special, but Belushi is now on video and other streaming services. It comes close to explaining what made him tick and what resulted in his early death in 1982 at age 33. (At least he got past the 27 Club.)

 

I found parallels between Belushi and Kurt Cobain. Belushi couldn’t get past his belief that TV was homogeneous. It’s no secret that Belushi and Dan Ackroyd were pals, but few realize the depth of their friendship. It was so strong that each was ready to give up acting to tour as The Blues Brothers. That’s ironic as we learn from a look into John’s Wheaton, Illinois, childhood. He disliked Wheaton, but always stated his wish to be an actor. Belushi pushed SNL toward anarchy, but it was never far enough to suit him. (Or should I say the “suits” at NBC?) Shades of Cobain and his hatred of corporate rock.

 

An on-set legend holds that Belushi and Chevy Chase hated each other, but Chase is on screen saying nice things about John. I suspect that given Belushi’s erratic work habits that most cast members hated him at some point, but if you deeply hate someone you say no thanks when asked to comment on their legacy. Most of his SNL colleagues are on screen to sing his praises, including oft-exasperated producer Lorne Michaels.

 

Perhaps the biggest revelation is that John was a one-woman man. He fell in love with Judy Jacklin when they were in high school, married her, and leaned on her during his darkest drug-addled moments. We become voyeurs to the letters John wrote to Judy in which he bares his fears, anxieties, and depression. Behind all the craziness, Belushi was analogous to Robin Williams. In the end, Belushi was an addict and admitted to Judy he was so hooked that he couldn’t quit.

 

This is a very good biography of Belushi, though I disagree with a few of decisions made by director R. J. Cutler. It is a mix of real-life video and animation, the latter of which isn’t expertly drawn and seems like filler-looking-for-content. It also seemed a glaring omission to say little about Jane Curtin’s allegation that Belushi was a misogynist.   

 

Rob Weir:

 

Postscript: In many ways, the Showtime documentary was a farewell letter from his widow Judy. She became an actress and producer. Judy married Victor Pisano in 1990,  divorced him in 2010, and died of cancer in 2024.

You Hurt My Feelings is Flat and Dull

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOU HURT MY FEELINGS (2023)

Directed, written, produced by Nicole Holofcener

A24, 93 minutes, R (entirely for F-bombs)

★

 

You Hurt My Feelings isn’t a terrible movie, merely a relentlessly flat one. Director Nicole Holofcener, also wrote and produced a movie about an overdone subject and failed to do anything new with it. How many flicks have you seen in which a character gets in trouble for telling a white lie that escalates into a black one? If the moral of this tale is “tell the truth or a lie will come to bite you,” I doubt you’ll be tempted to throw confetti into the air to celebrate such a unique revelation.

 

I saw this one in the “new to video” bin at the local library, had never heard of it, and took it home because I like actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus. She plays Beth, a successful memoirist who is married to Don (Tobias Menzies), a therapist. The two are so devoted to one another that they finish each other’s sentences, share their food, and order one ice cream cone between them. All of this is to the shock of their grossed out 23-year-old son Elliot (Owen Teague). One wonders how Elliot got to be 23 without previously noting said behavior. Beth has a bad case of creative paralysis, which is obvious to her, her publisher, and a rival firm–both of whom reject the manuscript. She’s inconsolable, so Don tries to console her by telling her that her critics are idiots and that she’s a wonderful writer. 

 

Poor Don. He’s an ineffective burnt-out therapist, but it’s his fetish for socks that does him in. After lunch with his brother-in-law Mark (Arian Mayed), who has just been fired from his acting job, they cross a New York City street and enter a sock shop, where Don confesses that Beth’s latest writing effort is lame. Unbeknownst to either, Beth and her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) go into the store, as Beth wants to surprise Don with a new pair of socks. She overhears Don’s remark and silently exits. She is crushed and is convinced that her husband is a liar who can no longer be trusted. Sarah tries to soothe things, but fumbles the effort.

 

Excuse me for being a heel, but this hardly seems like an earth-shattering, irreconcilable situation to me. Toe the line and deal with it, say I. Instead, Beth festers like a foot fungus, treats Don like a worn-out insole, and begins to wonder if their marriage is over. About the only thing that redeems this movie at all is that scenes of inept therapy, both Don’s and that of the marriage counselor, are pretty funny. It’s even funnier to imagine that in the Big Apple that such lame shrinks could stay in business long enough to pay the rent. I’m led to believe there are a lot more star therapists than sock stores in Manhattan, but whadda I know?

 

Will Don and Beth forgive each other? In a movie whose dramatic moment occurs in a sock shop, you can guarantee that this “comic drama” will err on the side of weak comedy rather than gut-wrenching drama. Of course they do. So why not pull up your… never mind. To top the shared ice cream cone with an over-sweet maraschino cherry, not only does Beth revise her new memoir to great acclaim, her n’er do well son Elliot churns out a successful play with a role for Mark.

 

I know I’m not supposed to look for Logic 101 in a comedy, but I didn’t buy a thing in You Hurt My Feelings. Julia Louis-Dreyfus has all the emotional affect of a zombie, and Menzies is more hangdog than Huckleberry. If the therapy hadn’t been so bad, I might have fallen asleep. You Hurt My Feelings is a bad title, a bad script, and bad direction. For the record, even the socks looked boring.

 

Rob Weir 

 

 

 

The Roses a Good Guilty Pleasure

 

 

THE ROSES (2025)

Directed by Jay Roach

Searchlight Pictures, 105 minutes, R (language, sexuality, violence)

★★★★★

 

The Roses is a British remake of the 1989 film War of the Roses, which starred Kathleen Turner and Michael Doulgas. Readers of this blog know that I am not a fan of remakes, but this one surpasses the original. It’s a rare occasion in which the Brits remade an American film rather than vice versa. That’s good news for viewers, as British actors are generally more skilled than American celebs.

 

Without getting bogged down in history, the title pays homage to a 30-year struggle over the English throne between two cadet branches of the Plantagenet family, the House of York (whose emblem was a white rose) and the House of Lancaster (red rose). If you care, the winner was the Tudor family. Neither The Roses nor The War of the Roses was about that bloody 15^th century struggle over the kingship, but both movies had plenty of vitriol and fireworks.

 

The Roses refer to a modern family, Ivy (Olivia Coleman), a talented chef wannabe, and Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch), who hopes to become a major architect–two dreamers who were mad (made?) for each other. They meet in London, fall passionately in love, share their respective dreams of moving to the United States, marry, and ten years later, live in a spectacular home in Mendicino, California, with their twin children, Hattie and Roy. They exude the American Dream, aside from differing parenting skills: Ivy bribes the kids with gooey desserts and Theo is an exercise drill sergeant-as-dad. They have money, drink great wine, throw elaborate dinner parties, and have good friends, especially Amy (Kate McKinnon) and Barry (Andy Samberg), and Sally (Zoë Chao) and Rory (Jamie Demetriou).

 

They gather to celebrate Theo’s unveiling of the new naval history museum. It is truly spectacular, but it looks… well … a bit overdone, with its sweeping cantilevers and sail-like appendages. A freak tempest reduces the entire building and Theo’s career to rubble. At lightning speed, he is ridiculed as a dangerous egoist, becomes the butt of cutting jokes, and is blacklisted. The only question left is who gets sued. Ivy steps in and works like a plow horse to keep the family afloat. Theo has built her a nice restaurant, but to recover from the debt they are in, Ivy needs to upscale. A depressed, unemployed Theo passes his days drilling the twins into super-athlete shape. Soon, Ivy is a rising star in the food industry. (Make sure you’ve eaten before watching the film, lest you start stuffing sugar down your throat!) She’s on TV and magazine covers, is the toast of every city she visits, and opens new restaurants galore. Is Theo envious of her success? You bet your pencils and protractor he is.

 

Lionization notwithstanding, Ivy has become an absentee wife and mother. The war of the Roses begins with toxic jealousy, barely survives failed therapy, flirts with divorce, and settles into a Hatfields versus the McCoys feud in which each tries to outdo the other in cruelty. If it sounds grim, it’s not. Despite the dangerous and insidious games on the screen, The Roses is quite funny as long as you remind yourself, “It’s just a movie.” The movie’s success –and its big surprise ending – is due to the skill of Coleman and Cumberbatch. Like the stage-seasoned actors they once were, each has been schooled in nuance, accents, and drama.

 

Some audiences were turned off by the movie’s “meanness.” Sorry, viewers, but that’s on you, not the script or the direction of Jay Roach. The film is a hybrid black comedy and satire and if you don’t get the latter, you won’t get the humor. All those amazing houses and sets weren’t there to make you envious, they were lampoons of materialism and unfiltered ambition. The “war” of the Roses, like most actual wars, could/should have been avoided. Pay attention to Ivy’s desserts, which in their own way, are as architectural as Theo’s designs. You might wish to dive into them, but they are splendid illusions, inedible manifestations of an unchained id. Even sex is treated this way. Kate McKinnon is an out-of-control harpy who puts the moves on Theo no matter who is in the room. She’s over-the-top, but so is everyone else. The Roses isn’t a film, but it’s a very good guilty-pleasure movie.

 

Rob Weir