Except for two irksome elements, Mariska Hargitay‘s My Mom Jayne (Max) is an emotionally affecting doc about identity — both suppressed (Mariska’s) and misunderstood (in the case of Mariska’s late mom, Jayne Mansfield) — and emotional closure by way of family ties and genetics.
It’s a little too weepy and whiney here and here. There is always an urge among modern women to turn women of the past into victims. But the doc settles in and touches bottom by the end.
In plainer terms, it’s about (a) the 61 year-old Mariska delving into who her famous blonde bombshell mom (who died in a horribly violent car crash at age 34) really was deep down, and (b) how Mariska came to discover that her biological dad wasn’t Mickey Hargitay, her putative father who was married to Mansfield between 1958 and 1964 and who raised Mariska after Mansfield’s death.
Mariska’s actual dad is a Brazilian-Italian lounge singer named Nelson Sardelli, whom Mansfield had an extra-marital affair with in mid ’63 and early ’64.
Mariska didn’t get around to facing the truth about Sardelli until the early 1990s, a year or so before she turned 30. For structural and dramatic reasons the doc holds his information back until the final 25 minutes or so.
Irksome element #1 is that as a young child Mariska (aka Maria) appeared to have been adopted, as her eyes and hair were much darker than those of her siblings. Any stranger would have taken one look at young Mariska and presumed she wasn’t from the same gene pool as her two brothers, Miklos and Zoltan, whose natural father was Mickey Hargitay; ditto her much older sister, JayneMarieMansfield, from her mom’s first marriage.
Mariska’s biological dad, the Neapolitan-featured Sardelli, was born in Brazil and is of Italian descent. Hence Mariska looked vaguely like a daughter of southern Italy or Sicily. She certainly bore no resemblance to her Hungarian body-builder caregiver “dad”, who was born in Budapest. It’s odd how this obvious biological fact was ignored or denied for as long as it was. Which just goes to show that if there’s a strong enough will, denial can be a very powerful force in people’s lives.
Irksome element #2 occurs when Mariska interviews actor Tony Cimber (born in ‘65), the son of Jayne and her third husband, Matt Cimber, a film director and promoter.
Mariska confronts Tony with stories about some ugly behavior that happened between Jayne and Matt, mostly a result of Matt’s provocation (presumably domestic violence and bruisings). She seems to be asking Tony to atone for these incidents or perhaps even accept responsibility for his father having struck Jane — a bizarre idea, to say the least. Tony says he’s not going to “own” his father’s behavior, as he doesn’t see how this could lead to anything that would heal or cleanse. Mariska’s non-verbal but emotionally readable response is one of seeming disapproval or disappointment.
HE to God: In what realm do you look at the son or daughter of an acknowledged shithead and say, “You need to face the fact that your parent was an abusive person, and so perhaps you need to apologize for this.” WHAT?
Rather than deifying Superman/Clark Kent as a true-blue heartland innocent who believes (or once believed back in Chris Reeve‘s day) in truth, justice and the American way, Gunn is trying to “woke” up this decades-old tentpole franchise.
Superman is an immigrant…wokey-wokey! Just like some guy from Nicaragua swimming across the Rio Grande in the dead of night. Just like young Vito Corleone arriving at Ellis Island at the turn of the century. Just like Elon Musk arriving in Canada from South Africa in 1989.
Cut the shit…Superman has never been and never will be “an immigrant.” He’s a saintly, goody-two-shoes, all-powerful alien from another planet…a visitor with powers well beyond those known to mortal men. He isn’t an Eastern European Jew fleeing from hate and oppression.. He isn’t a Gaza Palestinian looking to escape Israel’s wrath. He hasn’t crossed the Mexican border while listening to Tejano music. He’s a musclebound, axe-blade handsome, red-cape-wearing whiteboy who zips around and wows the womenfolk.
Seriously: When immigrants arrive in this country, legally or illegally, they start at the bottom of the social totem pole. They take the shittiest, grubbiest jobs that pay the least. Superman, by contrast, was way ahead of the eight ball when he on.arrived from Krypton. So he’s no “immigrant”. He’s a solid, square-shouldered, good-looking guy with a big, swinging Krypton dick….flyin’ faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, an ability to leap tall buildings with a single bound.
“Superman is the story of America,” Gunn has toldThe Hollywood Reporter. “An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country”….bullshit!
Gunn has explicitly framed Superman “as an immigrant, emphasizing that he is not from Earth and must navigate a new world and culture“….bullshit, James! This allows Superman “to explore themes relevant to the immigrant experience, such as adapting to a new environment, dealing with prejudice, and finding a sense of belonging”….you’re full of it!
Gunn: “For me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.” Agreed but so what? This world is rough, and if a man’s gonna make it he’s gotta be tough.
“The problem is that saving 200 pounds a month for a deposit on your first property makes very little sense when the price of that property grows by tens of thousands every year.
“This sense of the things you actually want speeding away from you on a train you’ll never catch…this is the real driving force behind the popularity of politicians like Mamdani.”
I still think Mamdani’s assured victory in the forthcoming New York mayoral election is a one-off.
Originally posted on 3.4.10: The Warner Bros. logo fanfare music that begins Lewis Milestone‘s Ocean’s 11 (1960) is the most enjoyable part of the film, hands down.
The second best part is Saul Bass‘s animated casino-attitude title sequence. Obviously old-school by today’s standards, but you can sense the smooth cocky mentality of late ’50s showbiz culture — the hold-the-clyde, chickie-baby attitude of Frank Sinatra and those those godawful orange sweaters he used to wear as he lounged around with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. The mob guys who used to run things in Las Vegas would cater to the Rat Pack’s every whim, and there were always accommodating broads to hand out back rubs and…uhm, whatever else.
HE never even came close to a whiff of this kind of life (way before my time), but I can imagine.
If there’s one ’90s movie I’m determined to never, ever watch again, it’s Adrien Lyne‘s Indecent Proposal (’93). It was bad enough sitting through it the first time.
I lost it early on when Demi Moore‘s narration track used the term “dream house”. (Anyone who says those two words in that sequence deserves an instant, life-long demerit.)
Robert Redford‘s John Gage was supposed to be an odious millionaire, but there was no believing that because Redford can’t do odious, much less icky — it’s not in him. No matter the role (and I’m not counting Little Fauss and Big Halsy), he always played fair-minded straight-shooters.
As a testament to its own cynicism, Indecent Proposal uses a two-headed coin in the exact opposite way that Only Angels Have Wings uses one, which is interesting.
Just before his million-dollar night with Moore is about to commence on a yacht, Redford/Gage offers to forget the whole deal based on a coin toss — heads she submits, tails she walks.
Redford flips a half-dollar coin and it comes up heads, and so Moore stays and fulfills the deal by “doing” him every which way. At the finale he gives the coin to Moore for good luck. She flips it over and realizes it has heads on both sides. Redford/Gage therefore confirms that he’s a dishonest, manipulative shit.
Posted in 2018: The realm of Only Angels Have Wings is all-male, all the time. Feelings run quite strong (the pilots who are “good enough” love each other like brothers) but nobody lays their emotional cards on the table face-up.
Particularly Cary Grant‘s Geoff, a brusque, hard-headed type who never has a match on him. He gradually falls in love with Jean Arthur but refuses to say so or even show it very much.
But he does subtly reveal his feelings at the end with the help of a two-headed coin. It’s not what any woman or poet would call a profound declaration of love, but it’s as close to profound as it’s going to get in this 1939 Howard Hawks film. If Angels were remade today with Jennifer Lawrence in the Arthur role she’d probably say “to hell with it” and catch the boat, but in ’39 the coin was enough. Easily one of the greatest finales in Hollywood history.
HE to friendo who’s seen JamesGunn’s Superman: “How can you even stand to watch another DC Superman film? How can you let that shit into your soul? The endless reliance upon DC formula, remaking and remaking and remaking it all over again, is poison in the bloodstream.”
Friendo: “If I had a magic wand and could eliminate the blockbuster culture of the last 45 years, I would. But the poison didn’t start with comic-book movies. It started in the early ‘80s. And yet the bottom line is that some comic-book movies are good. That said, I’ve no doubt Superman will be trashed into the ground.”
Born on 7.18.61, Elizabeth McGovern was around 18 when she played Jeanine Pratt in Robert Redford’s OrdinaryPeople (9.10.80). A lively career followed, and 45 years have since flown by. McGovern is now about to begin a six-week run in Ava: TheSecretConversations at the New York CityCenter (131 W. 55th Street).
On-stage she resembles the older AvaGardner, wearing a dark and tidy OnTheBeach wig. This Ava actually half-resembles the brunette Elizabeth McGovern who appeared in Cannes in 2012. But she’s gone gray in recent years and is making no effort to hold onto a semblance of her former self.
The truth is that McGovern currently looks like a blend of Jessica Tandy in TheBirds and that care-worn woman who came to take Blanche Dubois to the mental hospital during the finale of AStreetcarNamedDesire.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
McGovern is roughly Demi Moore’s age (actually a year older), but she sure as hell hasn’t been taking Substance injections. We’re simply accustomed to famous actresses looking a little bit better for wear, and it’s a wee bit jolting when, out of costume and sans makeup, they appear to be more or less their natural age. Which is not a crime — just a surprise.
Just for clarification’s sake, Dennis Hopper directed The Hot Spot. To further clarify, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. Okay, maybe I did see it and put it out of my mind. But if not, maybe I should? A sexually simmering, small town noir-slash-potboiler, based on “Hell Hath No Fury“, a 1953 novel by Charles Williams, who also co-wrote the screenplay.
No firm release date for Apple’s The Lost Bus, but with Paul Greengrass directing you know it’ll be fairly decent, at worst. Greengrass (United 93) doesn’t fool around.
A bus driver (Matthew McConaughey) has to navigate a bus carrying children and their teacher (America Ferrera) to safety through the 2018 Camp Fire, which became the deadliest fire in California history.
I’m not going to say that I loathe and despise Marvel’s Fantastic Four: First Steps sight unseen, as that wouldn’t be fair or wise, much less patient.
And yet I do kinda feel this way. The light-blue color scheme — it’s basically The Jetsons within a Marvel universe — makes me feel nauseous. But let’s not go there until it screens.
I can at least say this: As one of the Fantastic Four is played by Joseph Quinn, who is destined to sully, vandalize and perhaps ruin the memory of George Harrison when Sam Mendes‘ quartet of Beatles biopics comes out in ’27…I can at least call myself a Fantastic Four hater because of Quinn alone.
Snapped last night inside the big Danbury AMC, prior to catching Ballerina. Obviously the people behind FantasticFour: FirstSteps (Disney, 7.25) have no shame. Has Pedro Pascal ever said no to anything or anyone? And the gingered Joseph Quinn, who will play the physically dissimilar George Harrison for Sam Mendes later this year…this, ladies and germs, is whoredom personified.
Imagine trying to follow or make sense of this Warner Bros. release on its own terms (and with shitty AMC multiplex sound to boot!) when it opens next week.
So now that the cat is out of the bag and the Superman review embargo is totally blown, will the trades follow suit today with their own reactions (whether positive, comme ci come ca or negative)? Will trade reviewers try to go a little easy out of sympathy, given the vitriolic tone of Schager’s review?
Here’s Schager’s review: Just as the seemingly indestructible Man of Steel is fatally weakened by kryptonite, so too is the once-unbeatable superhero genre gravely threatened by audience fatigue.
Tasked (alongside Peter Safran) with reinventing Warner Bros’ DC movie brand with an all-new “DC Universe,” director James Gunn strives to combat such lethargy with Superman, a rambunctious reboot of the Action Comics icon that, tonally and narratively, is the exact opposite of Zack Snyder’s grimdark predecessors.
It’s a big swing in a polar-opposite direction, and one that, alas, turns out be as big a whiff, resulting in a would-be franchise re-starter that resembles a Saturday morning cartoon come to overstuffed, helter-skelter life.
Superman’s hero is no brooding Snyder-ian Christ figure; rather, he’s a sweet and sincere do-gooder who uses the word “dude,” takes time out of fighting behemoths to save squirrels from harm, and believes that viewing everyone as beautiful is “punk rock.”
The same goes for Gunn’s film, which is set on an Earth overrun by metahumans, the most powerful of which is Superman (David Corenswet), who at outset crash lands in the Arctic after losing his first-ever fight to an armored adversary known as the Hammer of Boravia—a country whose attempts to start war with neighboring Jarhanpur was recently thwarted by Superman.
Dragged to the Fortress of Solitude by his caped canine companion Krypto, Superman is nursed back to health by his lair’s robot minions, all as he listens to an incomplete recording made by his parents that accompanied him on his initial journey to our planet.
Superman is soon back in the fight, although he doesn’t initially realize that his true enemy is Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), whose unparalleled knowledge of the Kryptonian’s moves and instincts allows him to successfully direct the Hammer of Boravia in their clashes. Following this battle, Superman wrestles with growing political and public outrage over his rash unilateralism, and bristles at the nasty social media campaigns ruining his reputation.
He receives merely moderate support from Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), his Daily Planet colleague as well as his girlfriend, whom he grants an interview only to immediately regret it. Everyone has doubts about the noble titan, including Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), who dubs him a “wuss” for wanting to study rather than kill a fire-breathing goliath, and who is partners with genius Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi) and warrior Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) in a trio he’s desperate to dub the “Justice Gang” (and whose headquarters is the classic Super Friends Hall of Justice).
Luthor is in league with the president of Boravia, whom he visits via portals through a “pocket universe” that he’s created, damn its potential to beget a reality-destroying black hole. He’s also determined to turn humanity against Superman by executing a scheme that raises nature-vs.-nurture questions this tale doesn’t seriously address.
Despite his enmity for metahumans and, particularly Superman, Luthor is aided in his quest by two superpowered minions, the nanotechnology-enhanced Engineer (María Gabriela de Faría) and the mute, masked Ultraman, who partake in some of Gunn’s elastic, hyper-speed skirmishes.
Superman doesn’t skimp on the high-flying action, to a fault; the film is so awash in over-the-top CGI insanity that its slam-bang mayhem loses its punch. Not helping matters, the charming Corenswet looks the part but, in the shadow of Christopher Reeve (whose son Will cameos) and Henry Cavill, he comes across as relatively slight—a situation exacerbated by the all-over-the-place nature of his saga.
Superman doesn’t establish its scenario so much as it situates viewers in media res and then asks them to hold on for dear life as it whiplashes about from one out-of-this-world locale and incident to another. While verve isn’t in short supply, substantiality is; by not first building a foundation for its fantasy, the film feels as if it’s operating in a comic-book sandbox devoid of any (literal or figurative) gravity.
That continues to be the case as Superman finds himself at the mercy of Luthor and is compelled to partner with the Justice Gang as well as Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), a shapeshifting creature whom he meets in an interdimensional prison that boasts an “anti-proton river,” and who asks him to rescue his giant-headed infant son from Luthor’s minions.
DC Comics die-hards may delight in Superman’s endless geekiness but everyone else is apt to feel adrift or, at least, along for a frenetic, flimsy ride that only feigns interest in actual emotion. Superman and Lois’ relationship gets about as much attention as do sequences in which the Daily Planet reporter flies a spaceship. And interjected into the middle of colorful chaos and madness, a trip back to Smallville to visit Ma (Neva Howell) and Pa Kent (Pruitt Taylor Vince) is too sketchy to generate aww-shucks pathos.
Unfortunately, the proceedings aren’t better when it comes to humor; though Gunn continues to be adept at balancing multi-character concerns, his script — unlike his superior Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy and 2021’s The Suicide Squad — delivers scant amusing one-liners or gags, save for cute Krypto’s habit of excitably wrestling and licking Superman at the least opportune moments.
With a chrome dome and a cocky sneer, Hoult makes for a faithful Luthor. However, as with Brosnahan and Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen—who has a straining-to-be-funny subplot involving Luthor’s selfie-loving girlfriend Eve (Sara Sampaio)—his performance is overwhelmed by the material’s endless sound and fury.
Zipping this way and that, Superman gets tangled up in fanciful nonsense that soon renders the entire affair superficial and silly. Similar to Snyder and Joss Whedon’s misshapen Justice League, Gunn’s spectacular overpopulates itself with heroes and villains it has neither the time nor the inclination to develop. Consequently, everyone and everything is two-dimensional, no matter that the director’s imagery is sharp and vibrant.
John Williams’ classic theme from Richard Donner’s 1979 Superman is heard (in different forms) throughout, yet it’s incapable of lending the scattershot film the magic it needs. Biting off more than it can chew, Gunn’s wannabe-blockbuster eventually resorts to setting up future franchise installments via quick-hit appearances from Maxwell Lord (Sean Gunn) and Supergirl (Milly Alcock). That’s not to mention by highlighting second-banana figures like Mister Terrific at the expense of fully establishing the altruistic heart of its protagonist, whose path toward self-actualization is mostly an afterthought.
Looking ahead rather than focusing on the here and now, this attempt at reimagining DC’s movie series ultimately proves to be more of the same old interconnected-universe bedlam that, at this point, is perilously close to going out of fashion.
WB’s Superman review embargo ends on Tuesday, July 8 at 3:00 pm eastern.
