Berlinale #6: Kirsten Stewart in "Love Lies Bleeding"

by Elisa Giudici

LOVE LIES BLEEDING © Anna Kooris

A young woman hitchhikes along the edge of an American road, wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and carrying a backpack with her belongings. Jackie or Nomi? It's just one of the passages in Love Lies Bleeding that brings to mind Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls. The two films have a lot in common, starting with a rare attitude in American cinema: looking at an "unpresentable" American reality from within, while completely abstaining from any kind of judgment, morality, or dramatic commentary. Other similarities include the dream of the Vegas show (Jackie wants to participate in a bodybuilding competition) and a constant male presence as a judge and dangerous force. Director Rose Glass demonstrates the same ability as Verhoeven to make such bold and decisive choices, with a certain taste for the quip, that the film will inevitably be divisive.

With this introduction, I don't mean to say that Love Lies Bleeding is looking to reference Showgirls...

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Would you rather?

Jena Malone is expressing herself!Because we need an excuse to waste time following way too many celebs on Instagram, our biweekly poll. Would you rather?

• do bonding activities w/ your partner like Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody do? 
• visit elephants with Lupita Nyong'o?
• fall asleep in a compromising position with Kate Beckinsale?
• get all dressed up with LaKeith Stanfield?
• indulge in soft sleepy sensual stretches with Jena Malone?
• parachute out of a balloon with Pom Klementieff?
• relate to JLo with Sandra Bernhard?
• flip around with Aaron Taylor-Johnson?
• take a private jet ride with Keke Palmer?
• travel to Greece with Molly Ringwald?
• eat birthday cake with Michelle Yeoh?
• befriend a cat with Garret Dillahunt?
or
• have a pilates session with La Pfeiffer?

Pictures are after the jump to help you decide.

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Tribeca 2021: "Lorelei" review

by Jason Adams

It's always a thrill to see fantastically talented supporting actors who don't always get the leading roles they deserve actually get the leading roles they deserve. Director Sabrina Doyle's post-prison drama called Lorelei, which just debuted at Tribeca, gives us a two-fer on that front. It stars Pablo Schreiber (of Orange is the New Black and American Gods) and Jena Malone (of Donnie Darko and The Hunger Games and I could just keep going -- she's a long-time personal fave) as, respectively, the ex-convict looking to set his life straight and the girl he left behind. Lorelei starts out kinda obvious but ultimately ends up swerving, thanks to the sheer willpower of its leads and an openness by its filmmaker to follow an idiosyncratic path alongside them. It veers into far more interesting territory than you might first guess. 

Schreiber and Malone each have enormous screen presence, if not necessarily in the same ways...

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Horror Actressing: Jena Malone in "The Ruins"

by Jason Adams

I've talked a lot in my "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series about the ritualized magic that can be summoned on-screen when an actor can get across genuine fear to an audience, but I've talked less about that emotion's trickier parasitic twin -- when an actress is called upon to display weakness. Fear in the context of a horror movie is acceptable -- we show up to these films to live through our fears vicariously; to ride on the Final Girl's coattails through the thorny weeds of nighttime terrors and to triumph over them, standing tall in the dawn.

But weakness, weakness is a slap in the face. A character that makes the wrong decisions over and over again, one who doesn't seem capable in the moment of learning from them, well who wants to watch that? These characters make us angry, sometimes viscerally so -- think of the long standing sneers that've met Shelley Duvall's Wendy Torrance in The Shining or Judith O'Dea's Barbra in Night of the Living Dead. Queens the both, and yet their trembling lips and wet noses inspire such vitriol from so many. Well you can and should definitely add to the whimpering, simpering heap of queens Jena Malone's Amy in Carter Smith's 2008 "When Plants Attack!" film The Ruins.

Amy just can't seem to catch a break...

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Would you rather?

It's our time-wasting habit of sharing fav Instagram posts of the weeks via celeb fantasy questions. SO...Would you rather

... play on the red carpet with Audra McDonald and Mary Testa (and Billy Porter sorta) ?
... hot tub it with Grant Gustin in Mexico?
... enjoy fresh avocados with Zooey Deschanel?
... watch a Toronto Raptors game with Dan Levy?
... get political at LifeBall in Vienna with Lea Delaria & Alan Cumming?
... hit the drive-in theater with Jenny Slate?
... go backstage with U2 at an Elton John concert?
... snuggle with Katee Sackhoff? 
... check out old Elvis memorabilia with Baz Luhrmann?
... practice "red carpet self care" with Jena Malone?  

Pictures are after the jump to help you decide. 

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