Prett good explainer of why one needs to call “The Curse of La Llorona” “bastardized” as I did in my review.
VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) Tweeted:
La Llarona is the stuff of legend and she will make her way to the screen once more in @LaLlaronaMovie https://t.co/YZdOTJq34M https://twitter.com/VanityFair/status/1119918777980866562?s=17
From Discover on Google https://www.indiewire.com/2019/04/kevin-brownlow-film-preservation-lost-silent-movies-cuba-1202060615/amp/
Last night’s “An Evening with Richard Dreyfuss” at the Florida Film Festival was another of those delightful highlights of many a film festival — a public celebration of the life and work of a big screen legend.
Festivals premiere movies, host Q & As with up and coming filmmakers and stars, and panel discussions on the state of cinema, indie cinema and acting. But it is “victory lap” events like this that I’ve always enjoyed, as both a spectator, and on occasion, as a participant — doing the interviewing, moderating questions from the audience.
I led the Q & A with R.D. at the Festival’s home base, the Enzian Theater, after a screening of “The Goodbye Girl,” one of two classics Dreyfuss starred in during his breakout holiday season of 1977. The other Winter of Dreyfuss hit featured him staring — in perfect slack-jawed awe, gaping at the impossible — while sitting in a power company pickup truck at a railroad crossing in the dead of night in BFE, Indiana.
Dreyfuss was full of anecdotes about Neil Simon, whose life and career the festival wanted to celebrate with this event, as well as “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” “Close Encounters,” “Jaws” and “Down and Out in Beverly Hills.”
He talked about his Dreyfuss Civics Initiative, about taking years off from acting to study up on the subject,
He wanted to set the record straight on his alleged “feud” with Robert Shaw on “Jaws,” his efforts to acquire a reputation for being hard to please (A way to set himself apart from his late ’60s/early ’70s peers, he says.) and how he always thought of Simon as “my personal writer, my guy.”
Others may have heard versions of how “The Goodbye Girl” came to be, but I hadn’t, and most of the sell-out crowd there hadn’t. So we got into that.
In 1976, Dreyfuss recalled, the great Mike Nichols had lined up the already great Robert DeNiro to star in a Neil Simon script titled “Bogart Slept Here.”
It was based, Dreyfuss said, on Dustin Hoffman’s overwhelmed-by-fame-and-life experiences after blowing up in “The Graduate.”
“And they’d looked at like three weeks of rushes, and Bobby DeNiro wasn’t funny.”
This was long before “Midnight Run” and “Analyze This” found DeNiro’s funnybone. ‘
Nichols had to fire him, and Simon agreed. They brought in Dreyfuss for a table-read, and Simon asked him what he thought of “Bogart Slept Here.”
Dreyfuss says he pointed out “the obvious” to Nichols and Simon. That “nobody is going to feel sorry for a MOVIE star who’s having trouble” with his marriage, his loss of privacy, a career that had turned into a smorgasbord of choices. “Because he’s still a MOVIE star.”
“Neil said, ‘You’re right.’ They killed the project, basically right there.”
But Simon, the most prolific playwright/screenwriter of his generation, said he’d come with something else. “Three weeks later, he handed me ‘The Goodbye Girl,’ written with me in mind, I guess in my voice.”
Nichols had moved on, theater projects and film projects that failed to materialize.
Herbert Ross was brought in, and Simon’s then-wife Marsha Mason (already an Oscar nominee for the very fine “Cinderella Liberty,” NOT scripted by Neil Simon).
It became a career-making movie for Ross and Dreyfuss, with Oscar nominations as best picture, best screenplay, best actress (Mason, who won the Golden Globe that year) and best supporting actress (Quinn Cummings) — and an Academy Award for child-actor turned American EveryMensch — Richard Dreyfuss.
One other tidbit Dreyfuss mentioned about the movie stood out. They shot “probably two thirds” of the actor Elliot Garfield’s performance in a gay camp “Richard III,” the disastrous play Dreyfuss’s character comes to New York to star in (“off off OFF Broadway”). The footage “is somewhere in Warner Brothers’ vault, the negative anyway.”
THAT, I’d pay to see.
And the unknown actor in the play who runs Richard through at the Battle of Bosworth Field in the play’s climax? “A few years ago, Powers Boothe comes up to me at some event and tells me ‘I killed you in ‘Richard III.’ I had NO idea!”
Dreyfuss was a delight, and everything you’d want in a screen legend — anecdotes, a little edge, and the perspective of somebody who has been in on everything from The Birth of the Blockbuster to the Golden Age of Netflix.
I can’t find the Orlando Live Streaming archive of the chat, but when I do, I’ll link to it. Good audience questions, and a lot of funny responses from of the funniest guys the movies have ever produced.
Photos by Jim DeSantis of the Fla Film Festival and Kim Waddell.
“Daddy Issues” is a bubbly, bubble-gummy and seriously sexual West Hollywood tale of two lovely young lesbians in love.
Director Amara Cash and screenwriter Alex Bloom treat the characters like candy — some sweet, some sour (and decidedly kinky) — and keep the production design candy-colored in this moony romance set to a girlishly pop music beat.
Maya (Madison Lawlor) is a 20something pink-haired pixie, an aspiring “modern” cartoonist whose drawings are every bit as fanciful as the way she dresses, dyes and decorates herself. They’re “queer pixies,” just like her. She longs to “study in Florence,” as if there are no places to study cartooning in Greater L.A.
But Mom (Kamala Jones) isn’t financing this “a two yr Lez-Cation,” no matter how much Maya pleads “I don’t belong here” and that she needs to be “where people understand and appreciate me.”
OK, Mom has a point. A model-thin gay girl living on the edge of West Hollywood? Girl, people understand you.
Yes, she’s just being dramatic. Maybe that’s because Maya is still young enough that her sex life is mostly coy flirting/teasing games on Grindr. But she has found her fantasy ideal.
That would be the smouldering, sexy coquette Jasmine (Montana Manning), who designs, sews and sells hipper-than-hip (mostly black) clothing online, sharing a whole lot of her active, popular, partying life online — sprinkled with a smidgen of her LaLaLand philosophy.
“Follow your dreams or they’ll chase you.”
Long before Jasmine “checks in” online and thus reveals her actual location, Maya is “cybersessed” with her. The rave/party she gets into puts the two on a planned collision course.
And damned if these two lithe, very pretty young things don’t hit it off when they do collide.
But Maya’s young and in love. And as wide as her pale blue eyes are around “Jazzy,” she’s not picking up the signs.
Their first sexual encounter is underscored with Vivaldi on the movie’s soundtrack, and the insistent buzz of angry messages on Jasmine’s phone.
“You’re LATE” the messenger named “Daddy” barks onto Jasmine’s screen.
Oh yeah, Jasmine is on the sexuality spectrum, or is as far as “Daddy” (Andrew Pifko) is concerned.
He’s much older, well off and bossy.
“Put on the blue outfit” he orders, when they finally hook up. “Does someone want their allowance?”
In a garage apartment Dr. “Daddy” keeps padlocked until Jasmine visits, we see what appears to be a tweenage girl’s bedroom — pastels and bows and froufrou all around. Dressed in little girl outfits, Jasmine goes gamine-aged sex kitten for her “Daddy.”
And then “Daddy Issues” gets downright weird.
Filmmakers Cash and Bloom pack a lot of characters and plenty of chewy/funny or sexy-swooning scenes into this 80 minute dramedy.
Both women have Daddy issues, as Maya’s left her home years ago and mom’s new husband is always walking in on her. Even Jasmine’s older-man-on-the-side has Daddy Issues. His disapproving father (veteran character actor Monte Markham) seems to have a pretty good handle on his son’s psyche.
Simon (Pifko) is a surgeon, and anything that he doesn’t control sends him into a (sped-up action) manic tailspin of hysterics and drugs.
And the mothers? They’re a trip. Jasmine’s (Jodi Carol Harrison) is a manic drunk, ready to marry the first biker who says “Let’s go to Vegas.”
The script finds fun in an over-the-top frat-bro attempting to pick up Maya (“We’ll do extreme brunch. You extreme brunch?”) and poignancy in Maya’s naive tumble for the more world-wise Jasmine.
Jasmine may not want to get “serious,” but her design business doesn’t take off until her new “muse” inspires a radical re-design in the clothing line — cartoonish and colorful, like the pale-eyed pixie with the pale pink hair.
The leads are dazzling, although Pifko’s arch take on kinky Simon suggests there’s more in the closet that’s going to require unpacking before this guy can feel “normal.”
The Cliff Notes psychology of “Daddy Issues” works against it,and it’s hard to keep the tone as airy as the colorful production design and pop tunes that underscore much of the film insist it is.
But this one is too interesting, funny and aggressively/transgressively sexy — if there even is such a thing these days — to pass by.
MPAA Rating: unrated
Cast:Madison Lawlor, Montana Manning, Andrew Pifko
Credits:Directed by Amara Cash, script by Alex Bloom. A Gravitas Ventures release.
Running time: 1:21
I saw “The Curse of La Llorona” with a half-full house Thursday night, so I am guessing the answer to that is “Yes.” “The Weeping Woman” should best “Shazam” at the box office, dethroning the WB comic book title.
The ceiling has been raised on horror the past few years, mainly due to franchises, brands that fall within “The Annabelle Universe” or “The Conjuring Universe” or “Blumhouse” producing the film.
“La Llorona” won’t ride in on a tidal wave of great reviews. It’s well-acted and well-crafted and I thought those facts trumped any weariness of the film sticking to that demonic possession formula.
Variety is saying it’ll manage $20 million and be neck-and-neck with “Shazam!” probably, and the Wed-Sunday release of the inspiring faith-based drama “Breakthrough.”
Box Office Mojo is countering with a $17 million prediction, while acknowledging that it did a quite-healthy $2.75 million Thursday night.
I say $20 million, easily. Maybe $25-30.
“Breakthrough” is a sweet picture with a pretty good cast and should have a decent weekend, but you never can tell with this genre. The angrier the movie, the more Fox News/Trump Christians show up. And it’s not angry. Not that angry, anyway.
About $13 million is the safe guess most prognosticators are sticking with, though I think Wed-Sunday it could pull more.
Disney’s “Penguins” Earth Day doc is the best movie for kids out right now. Take them to see it and shock the lowball ($4-5 million) predictions for this cute and dramatic documentary.
“Shazam!” is winding down, and last week’s new releases are doomed to fade pretty quickly. “Hellboy” especially, but “Little” too — a bit, anyway.
Fans of “classic” “Star Trek” probably haven’t forgotten it. But some have, and generations that got hooked on “The Next Generation” and “Voyager” and “Deep Space Nine” etc. quite possibly never knew this.
But Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played the communications officer, a role basically reduced to interstellar receptionist, was the one member of that cast who truly changed history.
“Nichelle Nichols: Woman in Motion” is a warm, sentimental and delightful new documentary that aims to refresh our memories.
The “Woman in Motion” of the title is the give-away. It wasn’t just that this fledgling actress was one of the few African American women to be on a regular TV series in the ’60s, and thus a role model. She had a company, post-“Trek,” that was her instrument for altering the way we look at astronauts.
Todd Thompson’s documentary reminds us that NASA approached the once-and-forever “Lt. Uhura” of the Star Ship Enterprise after Nichols had noted “I don’t see my people here” after meeting real astronauts.
NASA hired Nichols, through her “Women in Motion” company, to encourage, cheerlead and in-person recruit women and people of color to apply to the agency, famed for its white guys in white suits, or at least white shirts and ties, since its birth.
And overnight — in mere months — the culture changed.
“Woman in Motion” is “Hidden Figures” in documentary form, covering just as much of Nichols’ personal life as she deems necessary (she is a producer on the film). So, no gossip, just a recounting of her upper middle class Chicago childhood of ballet lessons and a call to perform.
She sang in Duke Ellington’s band, transitioned to acclaim on Broadway and got her first “break” on TV in an episode about racial prejudice in a Gene Roddenberry TV series that preceded “Trek.”
Once she got on the show, she remembers the disappointment at the scope of the role. She’s often told the story of meeting Martin Luther King, Jr., who convinced her not to quit.
She was making an impact more than she ever realized.
Backed by a thrilling score by Colin O’Malley, Thompson & Co. use clips from the series (a biting and funny “Hailing frequencies open” mosaic and montage), snippets of her autobiography as a book-on-tape, archival interviews and a lengthy for-the-film conversation, graphics and testimonials to make their case.
Thompson’s film underlines and underscores Nichols’ undeniable contribution to broadening NASA’s horizons and drumming up interest in STEM education among minority students all over America with her work. Years of involvement — visits, public service announcements, talk show appearances on the agency’s behalf — cemented her legacy.
The “testimonials” delightfully back that up. Current and former astronauts, including former NASA chief Charles Bolden, sing her praises. Vivica A. Fox, who hits sci-fi conventions with the lady from time to time (“Independence Day” opened that door for Fox), recalled meeting her as being like meeting “a queen.”
Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, co-stars George Takei and Walter Koenig, “Hidden Figures” producer Pharell Williams, Rev. Al Sharpton, Congresswoman Maxine Waters and former Senator Bill Nelson all marvel how just one actress, from an admittedly beloved and iconic TV series, could have inspired so many and triggered a change in one of America’s highest profile government agencies.
Roddenberry and others (screenwriters for the series) may have been drawn to her gorgeous looks, exotic eyes and dancer’s posture and poise (“and legs”). But they can’t have known how far Nichols would take that big break and how righteously she’d spend her pop cultural capital.
“Woman in Motion” tracks Nichols from that first year of involvement with NASA, through the Challenger disaster and beyond, and lets its star add one last teachable moment to her decades-long mission, one that helps the film transcend its natural “Star Trek” fan appeal.
What good is popularity if you don’t try to do some good with it?
MPAA Rating: unrated
Cast: Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Michael Dorn, Charles Bolden, Maxine Waters, Sen. Bill Nelson
Credits:Directed by Todd Thompson, script by Benjamin Crump, Joe Millin and John McCall. A Stars North release.
Running time:
The faith-based cinema of today seems to be breaking into two paths in search of that audience.
There’s the angry victimhood/revenge Christianity, films that follow in the wake of the “Left Behind” movies — dogmatic and political — “God’s Not Dead,” “The Case for Christ,” “Unplanned,” etc.
And there are the movies that are less about dogma and more about what the songwriter called “the quiet faith of man (and woman) — “Soul Surfer,” “Miracles from Heaven” and the new medical miracle drama “Breakthrough” stick to that path.
It offers up a dysfunctional (whether they admit it or not) family, a schism within a Protestant church between traditionalists and a hip, Christian “worship band” and skinny-jeans-and-sneakers wearing preacher.
There’s more respect than love between married former missionaries Joyce (Metz) and Brian (Josh Lucas). Their adopted son acts-out and swears.
And all these conflicts are brought to a head when that kid, the slacking-on-his-schoolwork, pushing adoptive mom (Chrissy Metz of “This is Us”) away, ball-hogging basketball hot dog John (Marcel Ruiz) falls through Lake St. Louis on a winter’s day in suburban Missouri.
Three boys went under on that Martin Luther King Day. Only two came up.
The paramedic (Mike Colter) who fished him out was ready to give up looking.
The heroic emergency room team couldn’t get his cold corpse to spark a pulse.
But Mom, praying, weeping and shrieking at the Almighty to “Breathe life into John!” does what no drug or cardiac paddles can.
And when the specialist (Dennis Haysbert) he’s airlifted to bluntly expresses doubts that the kid, who hadn’t breathed for 20 minutes or more, will “survive the night,” Joyce won’t hear it. She fights for her kid the way you’d hope any parent would.
“I need you to go and be the best (doctor) for John. And just let God do the rest!”
She’s won’t tolerate “negativity” in John’s room by the other doctors and staff, or in the waiting room where classmates, family friends and church members gather.
And the one guy who gets that is that California punk preacher with the pricey haircut and hipster shoes that she’s been feuding with. Every word in that description fits Topher Grace (“That ’70s Show”) except for preacher.
But damned if he doesn’t pull it off. This is pastor as grief-counselor, rallying support for a family that’s kept him at arm’s length, accepting Joyce’s power-of-prayer game plan at face value and providing what faith is, at its most fundamental, supposed to provide — comfort.
Actress turned director (TV’s “House of Cards,” “The Americans”) Roxann Dawson balances the hospital room action with the impact finding the lost boy had on the faithless paramedic. There are beautiful moments that capture the quiet terror of death by drowning.
There’s probably too much effort to play up the “miracle” invoked here, even though the film’s short (72 hour) timeline tends to undercut anything supernatural.
The viewer can take the “truth” of this story with as many grains of salt as seems appropriate — a Christian family sending their son to a Christian school, a child treated at a Catholic hospital, the first “miracle” witnessed only by the mom, the second by Mom and her preacher.
It doesn’t mute the movie’s impact to shrug all that off to medical flukes and what we don’t still don’t know about the improved survival odds of drowning in ice cold water.
The marriage here gets only as much scrutiny as the movie can stand. Joyce is diabetic and Metz only plays her in a couple of notes — judgmental, bossy, a tad shrill.
Josh Lucas is too good an actor to play husband Brian as disconnected as he does (a tad effeminate, in a couple of scenes, which we never see from Lucas) by accident. There’s a casting mismatch on top of that that’s also distracting.
And “Breakthrough” runs on, past its climax — and begins with a “Please love our movie” message from the filmmakers (Steph Curry is a producer) and cast.
But all those quibbles don’t ruin the movie or spoil this story’s power to move.
Metz makes us feel a parent’s worst nightmare, and you’d have to be made of stone to not be moved by her moments of truth, leaning hard on her faith, reassured when it gets her through.
That makes “Breakthrough” a touchingly uplifting movie in a cinema — especially a faith-based cinema — that could really use one.
MPAA Rating: PG for thematic content including peril
Cast: Chrissy Metz, Josh Lucas, Topher Grace, Marcel Ruiz and Dennis Haysbert
Credits:Directed by Roxann Dawson, script by Grant Nieporte. A 20th Century Fox release.
Running time: 1:58
I missed this trailer when it dropped a while back. But you can catch up on such ads for an older audience, or a faith-based crowd, when you go to a showing of the faith-based “Breakthrough.”
A lot of wonderful players are getting a chance to make movies tailored to their audience as they age, part of the business model of “unserved niche” studio STX. Could be cute.
Love Keaton, Grier and Weaver, and Bruce McGill — another favorite I’ve tracked down for interviews over the years, star in this May 10 release.
They’ve never been anybody’s idea of “trouble.” Until now. Graduation night, these “Booksmart” young ladies are going “Girls Gone Wild” — Olivia Wilde.
The screen beauty takes a turn behind the camera for this “Superbad” meets “Ghost World.”
“Booksmart” looks pretty damned funny and opens in limited release May 24.
Man, I don’t know what first-time feature director Michael Chaves did to scare the hell out of the kids he cast in “The Curse of La Llorona.” Judging from the utterly convincing looks of unfiltered terror and the blood-curdling screams he elicited, I don’t think I want to know.
Whatever else they manage in their performances –and they’re kids, so “uneven” is the best word to sum up their work in general — the children in this ghost story sell it. If you don’t have hairs rising on the back of your neck at half a dozen points in this Hollywood bastardization of a Mexican folk legend, you must be bald. Or made of stone.
Yeah, it works. And yes, the script strictly adheres to the horror movie “Battle a Demon” Stations of the Cross. But it’s refreshing to see a movie, even one with few real surprises, whose filmmakers take such exacting care on the details that it still ticks over like a finely-tuned engine.
“The Weeping Woman” is presented here as a Mexican boogey-woman, the unseen menace you threaten your kids with.
“Finish your chores/homework/vegetables or La Llorona will get you!”
A prologue establishes who she was, a 17th century rural beauty who married well, and when she realized her husband was cheating on her, drowned their little boys in a river.
She is seen as a wraith in a veil, “cursed to roam the Earth looking for children to take their place.”
Linda Cardellini (“Green Book”) is a widowed L.A. social worker whose husband was a cop killed in the line of duty. She’s barely keeping things together with her two-story house (with pool) and two young children (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen, Roman Christou) when a troubling case forces her to focus and then takes over her life.
A recovering alcoholic (Patricia Velasquez) loses custody of her kids after the social worker and a cop drop in to check on them. The woman is a wreck, her house alight with candles, decorated with crucifixes and the like, her little boys locked in a closet. They have burns on their arms.
“Your mother did that to you?”
“No, it wasn’t her.” Something the boys won’t speak of did this. “We’re not safe anywhere,” one declares, and sure enough, they’re lured out of foster care and wind up dead in the river.
Making matters worse, Anna’s overly curious son (Christou) hears the crying and sees the apparition responsible. La Llorona (Marisol Ramirez, in some marvelous creepy makeup) has her next pair of kids picked out.Those “stations of the (horror movie script) cross” I mentioned — plot points that most movies of this genre embrace — include children in jeopardy, a single parent (usually) at a loss or in denial over what to do, a priest “explainer” (played in New Line’s “Annabelle” universe, and here by Tony Amendola), a third party “exorcist” or whatever you want to call them (often played by Lin Shaye, but Raymond Cruz has that gig here), elaborate rituals and holy relics used in the battle, and a creaky old house/apartment/church etc. as a setting.
Director Chaves overcomes that predictability with some whizbang tracking shots, chasing the children through the squeaky-floored house, menacing others in the dim yellow (1970s setting) flickering lights of a foster home/orphanage, yanking characters across the room or down stairs.
Drowning is a particularly awful way to die, so you know there’s going to be a harrowing scene or three of children and adults struggling underwater. Extreme close-ups of dripping faucets and acidic teardrops are thrown in for good measure.
What’s most refreshing here is the effort made to Americanize/Hollywoodize a classic Mexican ghost story, with an Hispanic villainess or two, and an equal number of Hispanic heroes our widow must turn to.
‘The terror is universal, the character’s as “American” as anybody else. No matter what some people say.
The third act has some nice jolts, a few laughs and entirely too much “gear” — talismans, Holy water, etc. — to sustain the creepy tone the film builds up to that point. So they go for laughs, and land a few.
But the bottom line for every horror tale is the same. Does it chill, get those hairs on the back of your neck to stand up? Is it satisfying, in either a righteous or abandon-all-hope climax?
Don’t cry for “La Llorona.” She gets a wet, dirty job done.
MPAA Rating:R for violence and terror
Cast: Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Tony Amendola, Patricia Velasquez, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen, Roman Christou
Credits:Directed by Michael Chaves, script by Mikki Daughtry, Tobias Iaconis. A Warner Brothers/New Line release.
Running time: 1:33
