Some romantic holiday melancholy with ‘Carol,’ 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.
There are several strong new releases this week, including Marielle Heller’s parenting parable “Nightbitch,” starring Amy Adams; Jeffrey Reiner‘s playful thriller “Lake George,” starring Carrie Coon and Shea Whigham; Joshua Oppenheimer’s apocalyptic musical “The End,” starring Tilda Swinton, George MacKay and Michael Shannon; Magnus von Horn’s “The Girl With the Needle,” Denmark’s entry for the Academy Award for international feature; and Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada” starring Richard Gere.
Jutin Kurzel’s “The Order” is also making its way to theaters this week. Written by Zach Baylin and based on the nonfiction book “The Silent Brotherhood” by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, the film tells the story of real-life white nationalist leader Robert Jay Matthews (Nicholas Hoult), who was growing in power and influence in the early 1980s, and the FBI agent assigned to stop him.
I spoke with Kurzel, Hoult and co-star Jude Law for a story on the film and its unsettling power. In one particularly chilling scene, Matthews gives a rousing rally speech that had to be delivered with conviction by Hoult.
“I remember that scene distinctly because it was the first time it felt scary,” said Hoult. “The power of it, because it felt fairly real in an odd way. There was something there where we were all a little bit shook up by that because we hadn’t done anything of that nature in the shooting until then. And all the actors in that room, everyone was very committed and brought a lot of energy. So it was suddenly something where you’re like, ‘This is kind of beyond us in a way.’”
Kurzel added, “On the day, it was very confronting. Nick is so brave. He had to suddenly really go into a space where he had to be very convincing, and he had to really reach out to this crowd. And you could feel it in the room. You sort of go, ‘Oh, I get it,’ a kind of building feeling in a group because it was really dynamic, and it felt extremely dangerous.”
With thrilling action-set pieces, the methodical patience of an investigative procedural and a startling sense of contemporary relevance, “The Order” is a movie that shouldn’t be overlooked.
“It was this untold story that seemed, first of all, very important to shed light on, but also that had all these terrifying threads of relevance to today,” said Law, also a producer on the project. “It seemed exciting to be able to tell a story in the past that somehow reverberated in the present. And then folding that into a genre piece that reminded me of films I went to, real crowd-pleasers of the ’70s and ’80s that are a thrill to watch. To me, that’s a real sweet spot.”
Todd Haynes’ ‘Safe’ and ‘Carol’
The second event in the new screening series put on at the Egyptian Theatre in partnership with the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. is on Monday, with a double bill of Todd Haynes‘ 1995 film “Safe,” starring Julianne Moore, and 2015’s “Carol,” starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Both films will be presented in 35mm, and Haynes will be present for a Q&A in between with The Times’ own Joshua Rothkopf.
“Safe” is the story of a Los Angeles housewife (Moore) who seemingly becomes allergic to the modern world and her own banal lifestyle, diagnosed with an immune disorder referred to as “20th-century disease.” In his original review of the film for The Times, Kenneth Turan called the movie “elegantly unnerving” and added that “[Haynes] has created not a simple cautionary tale about the air we breathe but a withering portrait of American society, an attack on the sterility and toxicity of modern life and the profound sense of malaise that can foster. Subtlety is the rarest quality in today’s filmmakers, and ‘Safe’ demonstrates why it is valuable as well as scarce.”
“Safe” was only Haynes’ second feature film, following his 1992 Sundance grand jury prize-winning debut, “Poison.” In an interview at the time, he said, “I don’t want to make people feel better. I have a hard time making movies that affirm life and say life is a good and happy place. That’s not true about the world. Right now it’s a really scary time. The political climate is constricting daily. I’d love to feel more hopeful, I really would.”
Adapted by screenwriter Phyllis Nagy from Patricia Highsmith’s novel “The Price of Salt,” “Carol” has become something of a new holiday classic for its setting around Christmastime. The film is a tender and achingly romantic story in which a disaffected 1950s housewife (Blanchett) and a timid store clerk (Mara) find something together that unlocks them both.
Reviewing the movie, Turan wrote, “Haynes understands that swooningly beautiful traditional technique bolstered by thrilling performances creates the greatest impact. He has made a serious melodrama about the geometry of desire, a dreamy example of heightened reality that fully engages emotions despite the exact calculations with which it’s been made.”
David Chase’s ‘Not Fade Away’
On Saturday at the Aero, the American Cinematheque will have an exclusive screening of the black-and-white version of David Chase’s 2012 film “Not Fade Away,” a tale of a 1960s New Jersey rock ’n’ roll band (including John Magaro and Jack Huston) that never quite make it. The movie was largely overlooked when it was initially released because it was not what audiences expected from Chase right after “The Sopranos.” A Q&A will include Chase, executive producer and music supervisor Steven Van Zandt and producer Mark Johnson, moderated by Cameron Crowe.
In his review at the time, Gary Goldstein wrote that the film, “proves a warmly reflective, diligently crafted and confidently digressive flashback … ‘Not Fade Away’ is a stirring snapshot of America from 1963 to 1968 and the many rock ’n’ roll thrills, cultural and political watersheds, and whirling emotions that erupted in between.”
Nicole Sperling spoke with Gandolfini for a heartfelt profile now all the more bittersweet by the fact the actor would be dead barely six months later. Describing his role in the film as “an homage to my old man,” Gandolfini added, “My father wasn’t as antagonistic [as his character] but he was old-school — Brooklyn, cement mason, bricklayer. He didn’t understand me or my generation. He took care of his family, took care of his children. What we as children didn’t realize is our father was a man who had dreams, aspirations and maybe there were things he wanted to do and places he wanted to go and he couldn’t because he had a family. When I realized that as a kid, I wished I was a better son.”
Points of interest
‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ in I.B. Technicolor
On Friday and Saturday, the New Beverly Cinema will be showing an I.B. Technicolor 35mm print of Peter Hunt’s “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” from 1969. The only outing in the James Bond franchise with George Lazenby in the leading role, the film also stars Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas.
Largely because it was Lazenby’s only time as Bond, the film’s reputation lagged for many years, but it has more recently become the aesthete’s choice. Filmmaker Christopher Nolan spoke about how much he likes the film while promoting his own “Inception,” and Steven Soderbergh once wrote, “For me there’s no question that cinematically ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” is the best Bond film and the only one worth watching repeatedly for reasons other than pure entertainment.”
Given that the film has had such a wayward reputation for so many years, it is a bit of a surprise to read Charles Champlin’s original Times review and discover how enthusiastic he was for the picture, writing: “‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ is by a long shot the very best of the James Bond epics. … Admittedly he has probably only graduated to a more cerebral form of comic strip or a higher grade of cardboard. But in his own terms he’s oddly touching and, at the end, a figure of considerable sympathy.”
Pablo Larraín’s trilogy of tragic women
Also on Saturday at the Aero will be a triple-bill of Pablo Larraín’s trilogy of films on tragic women of the 20th century, with 2016’s “Jackie,” starring Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy, 2021’s “Spencer,” starring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana and the new “Maria,” starring Angelina Jolie as opera singer Maria Callas.
A Q&A with Larraín will be moderated by Stewart herself.
In other news
Hollywood’s casual moviegoer problem
If you’ve read this far into this newsletter, you are likely part of the 12% to 15% of the theatrical audience that are frequent moviegoers. Which means most of the audience is a lot less regular. Samantha Masunaga wrote an intriguing (and somewhat troubling) story this week about Hollywood’s problem with retaining the casual moviegoer.
The narrowing of theatrical windows, the dominance of only a handful of titles on a majority of screens at any moment, the limited selection and the fact that many people have simply gotten out of the habit of going to the movies are a few of the reasons for this problem.
‘Anora’ and ‘I Saw the TV Glow’ lead nods for Spirit Awards
Sean Baker’s “Anora” and Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow” lead the nominations for the Spirit Awards this week with six each. Sean Wang’s “Dìdi” brought in four nods, while “Sing Sing,” “Janet Planet” and “The Apprentice” each garnered three.
In arguably the biggest surprise of the announcement, “The Brutalist,” which would have been expected to appear in more categories, earned only a single nomination for director Brady Corbet.
