Wednesday
Jun062018
Months of Meryl: Before and After (1996)
Wednesday, June 6, 2018 at 11:00PM John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.
#23 —Dr. Carolyn Ryan, a suburban pediatrician attempting to keep her family together after her son becomes a prime suspect in his girlfriend’s murder.
MATTHEW: In a 2000 Entertainment Weekly profile that took stock of her screen efforts to-date, Meryl Streep amusingly and very appropriately described Before and After, Barbet Schroeder’s 1996 small-town crime drama, as “an airless thing.” Truer words, etc.
Before and After is one of those forgettable Streep misfires that appear with a bit more frequency in the latter half of her vaunted career. The tell-tale signs are all here: an appealing but hardly virtuosic director seemingly working on autopilot, bestselling literary source material that maybe didn’t cry out for cinematic treatment after all, and a Northeastern setting in close enough proximity to her Connecticut domicile...