Movies for solace or distraction after days of devastation
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
This has been a devastating week in Los Angeles. The Times has provided exhaustive coverage of both the big picture and granular details, including many ways to donate and help out if you are able, and what to do if you have been directly impacted by the fires.
Nothing has seemed normal. Many movie theaters around town have suspended their operations as a safety precaution for their workers and audiences. Things are still not fully up and running. Vidiots announced they will be closed throughout the weekend. The American Cinematheque announced that the Aero in Santa Monica will remain closed through the weekend, events on Friday at the Egyptian and DGA theaters are canceled and the Los Feliz 3 will be open to show movies but without any special guests. The Academy Museum is taking a day-by-day approach in deciding when to reopen its theaters.
And somewhat improbably, the Bay Theaters in Pacific Palisades remain standing, though they are closed. As developer Rick Caruso confirmed to The Times via email, “The theater is fine.”
If only we could say the same for the rest of us, who remain in — at best — a state of nerve-jangled anxiety, while others have to figure out how to completely rebuild their lives. This is a time when movies can provide solace, simple distraction or sometimes a little of both.
‘Between the Temples’ in 35mm
One of my favorite films from last year, Nathan Silver’s “Between the Temples,” will be playing at the New Beverly on Wednesday and Thursday. Given that the movie is something of a self-conscious throwback to ’70s titles such as “Harold and Maude” and “Minnie and Moskowitz,” seeing the film in 35mm feels particularly apt.
Jason Schwartman plays Ben Gottlieb, the cantor at a suburban synagogue who has been unable to sing since the death of his wife. He runs into Carla Kessler (Carol Kane), his elementary school music teacher, who decides to enroll as an adult bat mitzvah student so she can take his classes. Their relationship, perhaps romantic, perhaps not, upends both of their lives.
Gary Goldstein recently spoke to Kane, who won supporting actress at the Gotham Awards and is nominated for supporting performance at the Spirit Awards. She said she was initially drawn simply to working with Schwartzman, but that, “Also, I just loved the fact that it was a love story between these two people where it was so unlikely. When you get to be a certain age, you’re mostly asked to play a grandmother, not the heart of the story; you’re peripheral in a lot of ways. I’ve had some great parts in my older age, but here was a role that was truly a fully three-dimensional woman.”
In a review of the film Katie Walsh wrote, “In ‘Between the Temples,’ Silver demonstrates the ability to evoke the unique tone and warmth of an Ashby film: a curated sense of humanity and a heightened sense of real life, refracted through a specific lens. But this is a distinctly Silver picture, funny and neurotic and, above all, compassionate.”
Points of interest
‘The Last Showgirl’
Directed with a gossamer sensitivity by Gia Coppola from a screenplay by Kate Gersten, “The Last Showgirl” is first and foremost a vehicle for an unexpectedly tender and vulnerable Pamela Anderson. Playing Shelly, an aging Las Vegas showgirl who is about to lose her job when the long-running show she has been a part of closes down, Anderson shows sides of herself as a performer that have never been seen before. The ensemble cast includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Kiernan Shipka, Brenda Song, Billie Lourde and Dave Bautista.
In reviewing the film, Amy Nicholson wrote, “Filmmaker Gia Coppola has constructed a dreamy character piece around Anderson and her dizzy megawatt grin. … It’s part of the current yen for movies that erect a flimsy hall of mirrors around a female icon to reflect how pop culture has warped their image. (See also “The Substance,” elevated into an awards contender solely on the strength of Demi Moore’s backbone.) But this is not a blood-and-guts show business exposé — it’s a diaphanous portrait of a woman who, like Anderson herself, wafts through life like a marabou feather. It’s less a story than a vibe.”
Anderson spoke to Yvonne Villareal as part of The Envelope podcast. As she said of her personal connection to the role, “I was looking at my own life and thinking: I don’t want to be defined by what has happened to me. I want to be defined by what I do. … And she’s all heart; wears her heart on her sleeve, is kind of a mess and makes mistakes. But she’s not a pushover. I could resonate with that too. I just loved the challenge. I thought that I could play this character with a lot of nuance and layers and really pour everything — all my life experience from childhood till now — into this character. There was a place for it all. And so I feel like it actually was such a relief to me. I felt like I could breathe after I did this film.”
‘Den of Thieves 2: Pantera’
Movies contain multitudes and sometimes what you need is to get your mind off things for a while — with a junky heist movie. The first “Den of Thieves” garnered a lot of unexpected support and a cult fan base. Now here comes “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,” with writer-director Christian Gudegast returning alongside stars Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. for another complicated caper.
In reviewing the first film, Katie Walsh wrote, “Gudegast’s twisty, turny tale of heists and homies is an action-packed romp with a good sense of humor and self-awareness. It’s rendered with a startling attention to detail, but one has to wonder if with that detail, he can’t quite see the forest for the trees.”
In reviewing the new film, Walsh notes,”If ‘Den of Thieves,’ was a kind of ‘Dumb Heat,’ then the sequel, ‘Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,’ pays tribute to another Robert De Niro thriller, “Ronin,” with car chases set on the hairpin turns in the hills of Nice, France, and a new crew of skilled thieves. ... And although [Gudegast] has a knack for inventive heists, the sequel does not boast the lore of its predecessor, and relies heavily on coincidence and deus ex machina to move things along. At a hefty 2 hours and 24 minutes, the film is flabby, not jacked, and lacking in an unpredictable live-wire element.”
‘Hard Truths’
Last week we mentioned a series of local appearances by British filmmaker Mike Leigh. His latest, “Hard Truths,” is in theaters now. The film follows a London housewife named Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) who takes her misanthropy out on everyone around her. In a rare sweep, Jean-Baptiste won lead performance awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. and the National Society of Film Critics.
In her review of the film Amy Nicholson said, “Leigh doesn’t tend to tell stories where people go through a massive character arc. Instead, he’s constructed this movie like a quilt. Every scene is a comment on the art of complaining. This is, believe it or not, a pro-complaining film. … Yet [Pansy’s] chronic issue is that she complains gratuitously, stacking her gripes into a wall so that even the people who want to help — a doctor, a dentist — give up.”
In a joint interview with Emily Zemler, Leigh and Jean-Baptiste discussed Leigh’s unconventional working methods, in which the actors become part of the writing process through extensive rehearsals without knowing where things will end up.
“You have to be willing to go into this process knowing that you don’t know what it’s about, and you don’t know how big or small your role is going to be,” Jean-Baptiste said. “And I think for a lot of actors, that’s like, ‘Oh, I might give up that whole time and I might only be in two scenes.’ It’s about the process when you say yes to working with Mike. But I love it.”
Leigh added, “My instructions are very clear: Don’t try and be interesting. Don’t try and make anything happen. You’re in character. Just react how the character would react. That’s the job. You’re not being a writer or a dramatist or an entertainer.”
In other news
Awards season shuffles along
This was meant to be a big weekend for awards season in the final push to Oscar nominations voting, but various events and announcements were delayed because of the fires. The Academy even pushed back the nominations announcement by two days to Jan. 19.
However, there were also the Golden Globes last weekend and then the announcement of nominees for the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Directors Guild Awards.
Glenn Whipp parsed the SAG Awards nominations, noting “as one of the most accurate precursors of the awards season [the actors branch is the motion picture academy’s largest faction], you can bet that those nominated are hoping Oscar voters follow this script when filling out their ballots.”
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