Julia Roberts is one of the biggest female movie stars of all time. With a career box office north of $2 billion she, and her megawatt smile, were the stuff of blockbusters throughout the 90s and early 2000s. She was everywhere, and then, somewhere around the time Jennifer Lawrence was celebrating her thirteenth birthday Roberts stepped away. Not completely, but she jumped off the Hollywood treadmill, doing what movie stars who have nothing left to prove do.
That is, whatever she wanted. She stayed out of view, voicing a couple of animated movies and popping up in the occasional film, some high profile—like the ensemble of Ocean’s Twelve—some not—like Fireflies in the Garden—but the days of solo Pretty Woman-esque success were, by her own choosing, behind her. By and large her choices became a bit more eclectic as she relied less on the famous smile and more on flexing her acting muscles. Since 2004’s Closer her filmography has been splintered between crowd pleasers like Eat Pray Love, dramas like August: Osage County and misfires like Secret in Their Eyes.
This weekend she’s back working with the director who helped make her famous starring in Mother’s Day, her fourth collaboration with filmmaker Garry Marshall. The pair make a movie roughly every ten years, from 1990’s Pretty Woman to Runaway Bride in 1999 to 2010’s Valentine’s Day to this year’s entry, and their combo usually delivers big box office.
In between her the commercial films she makes with Marshall, Roberts makes a movie a year and while they haven’t always connected with audiences many are worth a look.
Duplicity is a romantic comedy about espionage. Imagine if Rock Hudson and Doris Day starred in Mission Impossible. Instead you have Roberts as an experienced CIA officer looking for a change and Clive Owen as a charming MI6 agent. Both left the world of international intrigue for the infinitely more profitable task of corporate security. Together they launch an elaborate plan of corporate dirty tricks to steal a top-secret formula that will revolutionize the cosmetics industry. Roberts and Owen are witty and charming and Duplicity, with its entertaining performances and stylish look, is a bit of fun despite its convoluted story.
August: Osage County, an all-star remounting of Tracey Letts’s hit Broadway play, gives Roberts her juiciest role in years. As Barbara she’s a bit of an enigma. She’s a jumble of mixed, complicated emotions, capable of both great kindness and compassion but able only to express herself through tough love. When she explodes she lets loose a lifetime of rage stemming from her mother’s (played by Meryl Streep) mistreatment. When they go head-to-head it is the clash of the titans and an unforgettable scene.
Finally, there’s Larry Crowne, a boomer comedy aimed at audiences with memories long enough to remember when gas only cost 54 cents a litre, none of your neighbours had foreclosure signs on their front lawns and Tom Hanks and Roberts ruled the box office. It’s an uplifting comedy about middle age, brave enough to tackle modern problems like downsizing and foreclosure, but non-challenging enough to weave all the bad stuff into a pseudo romantic comedy. Hanks and Roberts cut through the material like hot knives through butter and Julia treats audiences to one of her trademarked laughing scenes.
Does Garry Marshall work for Hallmark or does he just love holidays? In the last few years he has turned his lens toward “Valentine’s Day” and “New Year’s Eve,” movies that bundle stars of dubious box office power in big, glittery packages to celebrate the holidays with all the joy and emotional resonance of a Budweiser Clydesdale commercial.
This weekend he casts his maudlin eye toward “Mother’s Day,” a look at mother’s and daughters featuring a Holiday Parade Womb Float.
Marshall continues with the scattershot story telling of his other holiday movies, presenting the story montage style. It’s as though he’s surfing the net, jumping from site to site, looking for something interesting to rest on. Three stories randomly dovetail together with contemporary motherhood as the glue that binds them.
Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) is a divorced mother of two whose kids like her ex’s much younger wife (Shay Mitchell). Sandy’s gym is run by widower Bradley (Jason Sudeikis), a guy with kids of his own who dreads Mother’s Day. Then there’s Kristin (Britt Robertson), a young woman searching for biological mom, Home Shopping Network star Miranda (Julia Roberts). The final flower in the Mother’s Day bouquet is Jesse (Kate Hudson), an overstressed mom who, along with her doctor husband Russell (Aasif Mandvi), is trying to deal with an unexpected visit from her squabbling, judgemental parents (Margo Martindale and Robert Pine).
There’s more—it’s a Gary Marshall All-Star-Holiday-Extravaganza so there’s always more—like Jesse’s gay sister Gabi (Sarah Chalke), Timothy Olyphant as Sandy’s former flame and a Jennifer Garner cameo—which I suppose is appropriate because the holidays are supposed to bring everyone together are they not?
“Mother’s Day” is filled to over flowing with faux heart warming moments, like a Lifetime movie on steroids. It hits all the emotional hot buttons—a dead wife who also happens to be a veteran, abandonment, first love, an awkward dad, kids growing up too fast—and tops off the whole thing with two, count ‘em two, dewy-eyed American sweethearts, Roberts and Aniston. To avoid troubling the audience with actual human emotions Marshall runs the whole thing through The Sitcomizer™ to ensure maximum blandness and erase the possibility that viewers will see something they haven’t already witnessed a hundred times before.
None of that would matter much if the movie was funny but real laughs are scarcer than last minute Mother’s Day brunch reservations. A likeable cast is wasted on a movie that panders to greeting card sentiment and slapstick.
The best part of “Mother’s Day” is that it puts Marshall one closer to running out of holidays to cinematically celebrate. What’s next? Hug Your Cat Day starring Courteney Cox and Luke Perry?
“Secret in Their Eyes,” a loose adaptation of “El secreto de sus ojos,” the 2010 Argentian Oscar winner for Best Foreign film, stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts in a crime drama that made me want to close my eyes and take a nap. This one almost made me wish for the high drama and excitement of last week’s most boring movie “By the Sea.”
The “action” begins when Ray (Ejiofor) a former FBI counter-terrorism expert, blows back into Los Angeles claiming to have new evidence in a thirteen year old murder case. Now living in New York and working in private security, he is still obsessed with finding the killer of his colleague Jess’s (Roberts) daughter. For the better part of a decade he’s been working alone trying to come up with new clues. He’s uncovered something but needs to convince District Attorney—and former office roimance—Claire (Kidman) to green light a new investigation.
What follows is a number of close calls, 911 paranoia—complicating matters is the fact that the main suspect is a snitch providing info on a sleeper cell of terrorists—and some tepid flirtation between Ray and Claire.
Told in a series of flashbacks between present day and thirteen years ago during the active investigation of the crime—with the occasional flashback within a flashback—“Secret in Their Eyes” is a confused mess. Ray has sprigs of gray hair on his head so it must be the present day. Or is it? Do I still care? Nonetheless the story plods along unaffected by the urgently emotional performances by the three leads.
Roberts stands out (and not in a good way) in a stripped-down Academy Award grab of a role while both Ejiofor and Kidman are uncharacteristically dreary. All three allow melodramatics to turn what might have been a good procedural into a soap opera.
The most interesting case in “Secret in Their Eyes” isn’t the murder case but the case the film makes for not remaking perfectly good Oscar winners.
And you thought your family get-togethers were weird.
Take the worst family dinner party ever, times it by infinity and you can begin to imagine the discomfort and distress at the Weston clan table. “August: Osage County,” the all star remounting of Tracey Letts’s hit Broadway play never met a disparaging remark it couldn’t place in the mouth of one of its mean-spirited diners.
The film reunites the Weston sisters, Barbara (Julia Roberts), Karen (Juliette Lewis) and Ivy (Julianne Nicholson) along with soon-to-be ex-husbands, grumpy granddaughters and secret lovers, with their pill-popping mommy dearest Violet (Meryl Streep). They come together when Dad (Sam Shepard) goes missing, but his disappearance is simply a backdrop to bring this desperate group of people together and allow them to wallow in their dysfunction.
“August: Osage County” is ram-packed with unlikeable characters played by likeable actors. There’s more baggage on display here than at any airport carousel and while it is occasionally difficult to buy in to the level of petty behavior displayed by Violet and her prey, the vindictive dialogue often does sound delicious rolling off the tongues of these actors.
A case in point is the dinner scene. It features the best example of ensemble acting on screen this year, giving everyone around the crowded table a chance to show what they can do. Chris Cooper’s rambling, extended saying-of-grace is worth the price of admission, but the powerhouse back-and-forth between Streep and Roberts is the main attraction.
Roberts hasn’t had a juicy role like this in years. Her Barbara is a bit of an enigma. She’s a jumble of mixed, complicated emotions, capable of both great kindness and compassion but seems only to express herself through tough love. When she explodes she’s letting loose a lifetime of rage stemming from her mother’s mistreatment.
When they go head-to-head it is the clash of the titans and an unforgettable scene.
Streep is shrill, and purposefully so, but it is far from a one note performances. For instance a porch swing monologue shows her mastery of the form. What could have been an interminable acting class monologue is transformed into an epic bit of storytelling with more range and character development in the five minutes it takes to play out than most movies contain in their entire running time.
“August: Osage County” sometimes feels like you’re watching “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” with all the tender parts removed. Unhappy people abound and so do inappropriate situations to the point where it becomes hard to imagine that this much dysfunction could be squeezed into one story, but director John Wells holds steady, creating a setting where this kind of behavior can thrive.
Only a misplaced smile in the film’s closing minute feels out of place. It’s an attempt at a Tinsel Town feel good moment in a film that has been uncompromising it its world view up until a final, unnecessary Hollywood touch.
Hollywood is full of hyphenates, the kind of people who introduce themselves as a model-actor-writer-waiter-personal-trainer-dog-walker.
Lately there is one Tinsel Town citizen, however, who has actually earned every word in his hyphenated title.
Tracy Letts is an actor-writer-producer-Pulitzer-Prize-winner who is going to have to get longer business cards if he gets any more successful. You may not recognize the name unless you pay attention to the end credits of Homeland (he plays Senator Andrew Lockhart on the popular show) or if you know who won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
He’s a multi-talent with a shelf of awards, some heavyweight acting credits and a new movie screenplay on his resume.
His latest project, the script for August: Osage County, puts words into the mouths of some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. The film brings together the Weston sisters, Barbara (Julia Roberts), Karen (Juliette Lewis) and Ivy (Julianne Nicholson) with their pill-popping mommy-dearest Violet (Meryl Streep).
As a writer Letts says inspiration came from Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner and Jim Thompson, which might explain the dark vein that runs through his work.
How twisted are his plays? “Everybody in Tracy’s stories gets naked or dead,” says his mom, author Billie Letts.
Tracy jokingly says that his mother is “a liar” for saying that, pointing out that “not all of the people in my plays wind up naked or dead.”
Still there is no denying that his screenplay for Killer Joe, the 2011 Matthew McConaughey thriller, is written with what Roger Ebert called, “merciless black humor.” The story of a corrupt cop and a bad insurance claim earned critical praise even if the Women Film Critics Circle cited the film for its presentation of what they called “the worst female and male images” of the year.
According to Entertainment Weekly his script for Bug, starring Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon as a lonely woman and unhinged war veteran trapped in a bug infested Oklahoma motel room, contains an “enjoyably icky heart.”
Tracy Letts seems willing to take on any challenge to add to his hyphenate status. There’s just one thing you can’t ask him to do. “I don’t act in the stuff that I write,” he says. “I have no interest in doing that.”
Humphrey Bogart used to say you weren’t a star until they could spell your name in Karachi and while there’s nothing tricky about the order of the letters in Daniel Craig’s name I’m not sure if people in Karachi spell his name D-a-n-i-e-l or J-a-m-e-s-B-o-n-d. That’s my long winded way of asking, “Is Craig a movie star or are his movies the stars?”
He has all the attributes of a movie star. He’s good looking, the camera loves him and Del Monte Foods once launched an ice pop molded in his image but I’m not sure if people say, “Man, I gotta see the new Daniel Craig movie,” as much as they pronounce, “Man, I gotta see Insert Iconic Title Here.”
But, you say, millions of people flock to see some of his movies. That must mean he’s a movie star, right? Well, no, not exactly.
In recent years Craig’s biggest successes have been in films that almost sell themselves. He’s a great James Bond, perhaps the most interesting of the Connery replacements, but he can’t rightly lay claim to the Bond box offices grosses. Who can? Bond, James Bond. That’s who. It’s a recognizable brand no matter who is on the poster.
It is a fact that Craig can hold the lead in a movie. He’s a powerful presence with acting chops to spare—he’s earned good reviews for serious movies like Love is the Devil, Elizabeth, The Mother and Enduring Love and praise for his work in bigger Hollywood pictures—but being a good actor is just one element of being a movie star.
Box office grosses are important to maintaining status as a movie star, but I’m talking about something more ephemeral, something that has nothing to do with dollars and cents but lots to do with sense and sensibility.
A movie star should be bigger than the movie or character they are playing. Years ago people went to see John Wayne movies regardless of title or content. Wayne was a movie star, an actor who transcended his characters, filling the screen with his, well… Wayness.
There aren’t that many performers these days who can create that kind of excitement on the strength of their name alone. Tom Cruise used to inspire lineups. No more. Julia Roberts, ditto. Jim Carrey, not so much. They are big stars, but their time as movie stars, quote, unquote, is over. Will Smith and Johnny Depp are movie stars (although I wish Johnny would make Captain Jack walk the plank and move on). Their movies are events, not simply because of premise, but because they came to work with their indefinable movie star-ness in hand.
Craig has four movies set for release 2011, which is a pretty movie star thing to do, but none of them could be described as “a Daniel Craig movie.”
This weekend Cowboys & Aliens looks primed to do well on the strength of a catchy trailer and cool premise. December’s double hit of The Adventures of Tintin and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are both franchises waiting to happen and Dream House, a psychological drama directed by Jim Sheridan which has been sitting on the shelf for over a year, has zero buzz.
It’s that last movie, set for release in September, which proves my point. His other movie releases this year are hotly anticipated high profile pictures based on popular preexisting material—a graphic novel, a beloved comic series and a cultural phenomenon. Dream House stands alone as the film which will rise or fall based on Craig’s star power, and yet it has almost no public awareness.
John Wayne never released a film that had zero public awareness, and if Craig was an honest-to-goodness movie star, he wouldn’t either.
“Larry Crowne” is a boomer comedy. Squarely aimed at audiences with memories long enough to remember when gas only cost 54 cents a litre, none of your neighbors had foreclosure signs on their front lawns and Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts ruled the box office.
Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks, who also directs), the man not the movie, is the kind of guy proud to wear his My Name Is tag. That is, until the day U Mart downsizes him because he doesn’t have a college education. Divorced and stuck with a house that isn’t worth what he owes on it he turns his life around by going back to school and getting an education in life and love from teacher Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts).
“Larry Crowne” has an old fashioned feel to it, like a nineties sitcom updated with references from the 2000s. There’s something reassuring about seeing old pros Hanks and Roberts effortlessly glide through threw this like hot knives through butter, but occasionally the material feels a bit out of date.
Larry’s classmate, played by the charismatic Gugu Mbatha-Raw, takes great pains to update his look, but unfortunately her efforts didn’t extend to the script. He may start wearing his shirts untucked and show up at school with a jaunty scarf around his neck, but when a blogger is the villain of the piece and facebook and twitter are blamed for running kid’s attention spans (really grandpa?) you get a story that feels out of step in 2011.
Tom Hanks has been playing the “Da Vinci Code’s” oh-so-serious iconology professor Robert Langdon for so long now it’s easy to forget that he was once known as an accomplished comedic actor. Here he turns the dial back to movies like “Joe and the Volcano” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” playing a likeable character you want to root for. He brings the funny but also oozes an everyman charm that makes it hard not to get onside with the character.
The combination of Hanks and Roberts (yes, she does have her trademarked laughing scene), backed by a talented, quirky and eclectic supporting cast including Cedric the Entertainer, George Takei, Pam Grier and Bryan Cranston (who is actually wasted here as Julia’s one-note porn loving husband), elevates what might have been a simple sitcom premise into something that is occasionally touching and more often than not sweetly funny.
“Larry Crowne” understands its audience. It’s an uplifting comedy about middle age, brave enough to tackle modern problems like downsizing and foreclosure, but non-challenging enough to weave all the bad stuff into a pseudo romantic comedy that makes great use of its cast. It’s timely enough, but its sunny “it’s never too late to change your life” outlook is pure Hollywood.
You’ve read the book or know someone who has. Oprah endorsed it and it spent more than three years on the New York Times Bestseller List before Brad Pitt snapped up the rights, hired Julia Roberts and turned it into one of the most anticipated movies of the summer. “Eat Pray Love,” the picturesque story of one woman’s search for enlightenment, is part road trip movie, part self help guide and part food porn. By the movie’s end you may have reservations about her journey, but you’ll also want to make reservations—for a trip and a visit to a great Italian restaurant.
Julia Roberts plays Liz Gilbert, a New York City writer with a seemingly perfect life. Career wise she’s in demand, she has a loving husband (Billy Crudup) and a beautiful home. Under the surface, however, she’s unhappy and one day makes the shocking decision to leave it all behind and spend a year travelling, first to Italy, then India and finally Bali. Along the way she learns to build meaningful relationships, how to forgive herself and how to nourish not only her body but her soul as well.
“Eat Pray Love” is a big expensive movie about introspection. The film’s style is sweeping and bold—ie: lots of crane shots and clever editing—but director Ryan Murphy keeps the focus of the story where it should be, on Liz’s internal search. He has found smart ways to illustrate her various epiphanies, visualizing her mental breakthroughs. For instance on the Indian ashram where she learns to forgive herself for breaking her ex-husband’s heart, Murphy stages the scene between Roberts and Crudup as a conversation during the wedding dance they never had. It’s magic realism, which unless you’re Terry Gilliam, is very hard to pull off, but the scene works remarkably well. It’s both cinematic and intimate, all set to the tune of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.”
At the heart of the film is Roberts. She brings her movie star likability to a character that could easily be written-off as self centered in her single minded search to figure out her life. Her presence helps separate “Eat Pray Love” from the run-of-the-mill big screen romance. This would have been a much different movie if Jennifer Aniston or Kate Hudson had signed on to play the lead, but Roberts brings with her a light-gravitas. I know it’s a contradiction, but she knows how to play the comedy aspects of the story but also wades in knee deep for the dramatic scenes. She’s in every scene—almost every frame—of the picture providing an anchor for the film’s flighty story.
She’s working opposite some heavyweight performances. Richard Jenkins as the plain talking Texan searching for enlightenment in India is a lock for a Best Supporting Actor nomination and Javier Bardem oozes charisma and vulnerability as Felipe, the love interest. He says the words “It’s time,” with more romance there than in any ten rom coms we’ve seen recently.
At one point during the film a character says, “Americans know entertainment but they don’t know pleasure.” “Eat Pray Love” proves that the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
