Make it a John Hughes holiday plus the week’s best movies in L.A.
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
I suppose the biggest news around these parts this week is the announcement of Amy Nicholson as our new film critic here at the Los Angeles Times.
A veteran critic and reporter who was previously chief film critic at the LA Weekly and then MTV News, Nicholson said in a statement: “Hollywood is my joy, my fuel and my home. I’m honored to shoulder the Los Angeles Times’ legacy as the paper’s new chief film critic. And I’m eager to take a front-row seat as today’s creatives prove the enduring power of the big screen.”
As excited as we are to welcome Amy aboard as a colleague, we are also extremely excited to begin to read her work in our pages. She starts on Monday, so expect it soon.
Three from John Hughes
Two venues are featuring the work of John Hughes this week, bringing the spotlight back to the writer-director-producer whose work was always tinged by nostalgia even when it was newly released.
On Saturday and Sunday, the New Beverly will be playing a double-bill of 1986’s “Pretty in Pink,” and 1987’s “Some Kind of Wonderful,” both written by Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch.
Then Wednesday, the American Cinematheque wil screen 1987’s “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” written and directed by Hughes. All three films will be shown in 35mm.
“Pretty in Pink” may be the most fully realized of Hughes’ teenage high school stories, starring Molly Ringwald as a young outsider striving to find herself. The killer supporting cast includes Harry Dean Stanton, Annie Potts, Jon Cryer, Andrew McCarthy and James Spader.
Reviewing the film, Patrick Goldstein wrote, “John Hughes is one of the few filmmakers in Hollywood who remembers high school. … Hughes’ version, which serves as the setting for the delightful new comedy ‘Pretty in Pink,’ offers us a school-locker point of view, not raucous high jinks suggested by some studio marketing survey. Memory may have softened some of the rough edges, but high school is still a strange, forbidding landscape, full of kids saddled with volcanic emotions, uneasy bonds of friendship and a huge desire for acceptance.”
Goldstein added: “‘Pretty in Pink’ has its share of missteps, but it’s far from a cheery teen fairy tale. (And mercifully free of the dreamy, teen angst that almost capsized Hughes’ last film, ‘The Breakfast Club’). These kids have a bumpy ride, but this is one film that identifies with their passions instead of indulging them, giving us a perfect back-seat view of kids out cruising, not for kicks but for a hard-earned sense of pride.”
“Some Kind of Wonderful” starred Eric Stoltz, Lea Thompson and Mary Stuart Masterson in another tale set in high school. In reviewing the film, Sheila Benson noted its similarities to “Pretty in Pink,” while adding, “If, somehow, the John Hughes phenomenon — Hughes as writer/director/producer and architect of teen-age position-paper movies — had escaped you, ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’ would be as handy a place to begin as any. It is the John Hughes Greatest Hits reel. … At bottom, Hughes’ message for his kids is a decent one: withstanding pressure, being yourself, holding on to your own values. He seems to have access to the cream of the young crop of actors, even if they are over the hill as high schoolers. But it might be suggested that high school is a vein that Hughes has pretty well mined out.”
And indeed, Hughes would never again direct another film set during high school. His next effort, “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” starred Steve Martin and John Candy as two businessmen who become unexpected traveling companions as they make their way from New York to Chicago for Thanksgiving.
Reviewing the film, Sheila Benson wrote: “It’s best when Hughes turns the screen over to these two masters of physical humor: Candy, driving down a freeway at night, tripping out to Ray Charles’ ‘Doin’ the Mess Around,’ playing every instrument in the band on the car’s dashboard as he burns up the freeway — only too literally. Or the elegant Martin, his slim body contorted into a war dance of rage after his invective at a car rental agency has backfired, leaving him car-less. Fortunately, there is a lot of physical stuff in ‘Planes, Trains’ and a lot that turns on a combination of sight gags and the comedians’ hair-trigger timing. … There is no denying the craft of either Martin or Candy.”
‘A Star Is Born’ in 35mm
Continuing the tributes to Kris Kristofferson, the Vista Theater will be showing “A Star is Born” in 35mm Friday through Tuesday. A second remake of the classic Hollywood tale first tried in 1937, then again, famously, with Judy Garland in 1954, this 1976 update is credited to screenwriters Joan Didion, John Gregory Dunne and director Frank Pierson (who infamously clashed with star Barbra Streisand and producer Jon Peters). It moves the story to the world of rock-’n’-roll. Kristofferson plays John Norman Howard, a huge star, who discovers Esther Hoffman (Streisand) and helps set her on the road to success even as his own drinking and dissolution get the better of him. There are plenty of faults with this adaptation of the story, but the charisma and star power of Kristofferson and Streisand make it unforgettable. It’s also a very specific time capsule of late-’70s showbiz.
In his original review of the film, Charles Champlin wrote, “‘A Star is Born’ is not ‘A Star is Born’ and it is not a rock documentary or a rock epic and it is not a very successful movie unless you are one of that throng for whom Barbra Streisand, like Judy Garland, can do no wrong. … No movie that has notoriously involved so much blood, sweat, tears and money can be without merits and moments and ‘A Star is Born’ has some of each.”
Champlin added: “But movies work or they don’t. They achieve a life of their own that makes the process of filmmaking either spectacular or invisible and involves us as eyewitnesses to events rather than impersonations. ‘A Star is Born’ rarely stops seeming manufactured: It can’t disguise its manipulations or the process or the storytelling. You see the tangled strings, not the puppets.”
In a remarkable Times report on the staging of a stadium concert sequence in the film, Lee Grant wrote about how a large cadre of journalists were flown out to witness the production and served lunch with the stars on the 50-yard line of a football field. Kristofferson acknowledged that he found the project “scary, a tremendous responsibility. In this film, you see, I’m standing up for Janis [Joplin], Jimi [Hendrix], for every self-destructive artist. If I blow it, I have to answer to that.”
Elsewhere in the same story, Dunne explained how he and Didion stepped away from the project while retaining a percentage of the picture. As he said, “God knows how many writers have been on it since us. I hope it makes a bundle of money because we have part of it. I wish everyone well.”
Points of interest
Zoë Lund
On Monday, Mezzanine will have a celebration of writer and performer Zoë Lund at Now Instant Image Hall. Best known for her work with Abel Ferrara, starring in his 1981 film “Ms. 45” and co-writing 1992’s “Bad Lieutenant” (as well as playing a small, indelible role in the film), Lund also had a career apart from the filmmaker.
The program will feature the Los Angeles premiere of “Hot Ticket,” a short film made by Lund in 1993, along with “A Conversation with Zoë Lund,” an unreleased interview with filmmaker Douglas Buck.
There will also be readings of some of Lund’s poetry and writings.
‘Exhibiting Forgiveness’
The American Cinematheque will hold a screening of artist-turned-filmmaker Titus Kaphar’s “Exhibiting Forgiveness” on Monday, with an introduction from actor Lupita Nyong’o, comedian David Allen Grier, producer Stephanie Allain and Kaphar followed after the movie by a Q&A with Allain and Kaphar moderated by musician Flea.
As discussed at a panel earlier this year at Sundance, the entire cast of the film, including André Holland, Andra Day, John Earl Jelks and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, deliver riveting powerful performances in the semi-autobiographical story of an artist overcoming family trauma.
Reviewing the film, Robert Abele wrote: “In artist Titus Kaphar’s emotionally knotty, semi-autobiographical directorial debut about hurt and resilience — and, of course, making art — we get a refreshingly bone-deep view of how someone can be saved by the act of creation, yet flummoxed by its therapeutic limitations. … For a first-time filmmaker, Kaphar confidently dives into his story’s complications, maintaining a texture even when certain parts slip into melodrama. What’s also heartening is his conviction in letting a scene play through its natural emotional arc — especially the first cautious showdown between reunited father and son — and not interfering too much with what his stellar cast can do.”
‘Black Dog’
Playing for a limited one-week qualifying run at the Laemmle Noho is Guan Hu’s “Black Dog,” which won the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, as well as the festival’s more informal Palm Dog Award. Guan was nominated for best director at the upcoming Gotham Awards.
The film follows a man, Lang (Eddie Peng), who returns to his small town after a stint in prison and gets a job as part of a team of dogcatchers. (Acclaimed director Jia Zhangke has a role as well.) Soon enough Lang finds himself growing fond of an animal he was meant to destroy, as dangerous people from his past circle closer.
Writing out of Cannes, Joshua Rothkopf called the movie “a double study of redemption,” making a comparison to 1979’s “The Black Stallion” as “quiet stories about respecting the natural world and coming to an equal peace with its denizens. The backdrop is a tiny town on the edge of the Gobi Desert, a place of uneasy modernization, but the dynamics at play are universal. It’s a ravishing movie about life’s rituals, hopefully ones that we’re fortunate enough to share in the company of other species.”
In other news
A new season of ‘The Envelope’ podcast
The Envelope podcast returned this week, again hosted by myself and Yvonne Villarreal and joined this season by Kelvin Washington.
For this first episode, I spoke to Cynthia Erivo about Hollywood’s new adaptation of “Wicked” and how she made the show’s signature song “Defying Gravity” her own. Yvonne spoke to Saoirse Ronan about the films “The Outrun” and “Blitz.”
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