"The Savages", Also Revisited

Chris Feil continues his look at the films of Tamara Jenkins...

The Savages came nearly a decade after Tamara Jenkins arrived in 1998 with Slums of Beverly Hills, and the wait found the writer/director’s onscreen family dynamics develop to something tougher. Turns out time brings a whole host of concerns both harder to reconcile and compromise with, both in fiction and real life. Though it deals with timeless issues like family and aging, The Savages is also quite of its time, though in subtle ways it has maybe taken over another decade to see. What’s always been clear is that the film is miraculous.

Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman star as adult siblings and unfulfilled creatives Wendy and Jon Savage, forced to care for their estranged and formerly abusive father as he succumbs to dementia. Jenkins again is fascinated with our unfortunate bodies and social pretenses, this time with the film’s humor taking a more refined, unflinching swing at our very human shortcomings.

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Beauty vs Beast: Boxing Buddies

Jason from MNPP here - while we're all sitting patiently on our hands waiting for Black Panther to hit theaters this weekend let us use the occasion of today's "Beauty vs Beast" to gaze backwards in Ryan Cooglar's filmography to the flick that no doubt gauranteed him this Marvel gig, 2015's great big crowdpleaser Creed. Coming nine years after Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone's original "goodbye" to the character that gave him his career, Cooglar's Creed opened the franchise up and breathed new life into the Philadelphian boxing saga via Michael B Jordan's Adonis, son of Rocky's deceased opponant and friend Apollo, and with Adonis' attempt to find selfhood in the shadow of his legendary father. The relationship between Rocky & Adonis formed the core of the film, it was one fraught with tension, which brings us to...

survey solutions

PREVIOUSLY Nobody was going to beat The Lovely Laura Linney on her birthday, not even Mark Ruffalo's probable finest performance opposite her in You Can Count On Me - she scored a sizeable 70% of your vote in the end, proving you can indeed count on her. Said RV:

"One of the all time great screen pairs -- both so flawed, both so connected to each other. Lonergan's uncomfortable (for me, maybe not for him) commitment to Casey Affleck aside, he deserves enormous credit for providing such rich writing and understated directing to two amazingly talented performers. "

Beauty vs Beast: Sibling Rivalry

Jason from MNPP here wishing us all the happiest Lovely Laura Linney Day! Today Linney is celebrating her 54th birthday, which means we're celebrating as well because she's a national treasure that one. But that happiness and celebration might not last long, I ruin everything, because I'm about to force a horrible choice on you with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" contest and ask you to consider choosing between the siblings of Kenneth Lonergan's 2000 sibling masterpiece You Can Count On Me -- Linney's hometown mama and boss-schtupper Sammy versus Mark Ruffalo's home-crashing money-grubbing seatbealt-wearing Terry. Vote and then tell us why you voted how you voted down below in the comments!

surveys

PREVIOUSLY Last week's Best Actor contest handed Timothee Chalamet a win as sound (to the tune of 87% of the vote!) as his trounced competitor Gary Oldman's eventual win at the Oscars next month is assured, so let's just enjoy us getting it right anyway. Said hepwa (and this is a fine list that I'd love to hear if anybody has any of their own to add to this list, too):

"There are five great young male performances in the past forty years, in chronological order: Dennis Christopher in "Breaking Away", Michael O'Keefe in "The Great Santini", Timothy Hutton in "Ordinary People", River Phoenix in "Running On Empty" and now Timothee Chalamet in "Call Me by Your Name"."

To Me, You Are Perfect: Ranking the Stories in "Love Actually"

By Spencer Coile 

Every holiday season, we sit down with our favorite festive movies and return to the magic these films have to offer. Some turn to classics such as It’s a Wonderful Life or the various renditions of A Christmas Carol. Others favor Die Hard, Gremlins, or something a bit more contemporary -- The Family Stone, anyone? Regardless, we come back to our favorites for comfort and a jolly mood.

Love Actually, to me, is that Christmas movie. Using the “interwoven lives” structure that so many rom-coms have since used disastrously, Love Actually uses the formula with beautiful effect. The result is a kindhearted, giant hug of a film that always manages to lift the spirits. Put on your holiday hats as we rank the 9 storylines... 

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Thoughts I Had... Laura Linney in "Nocturnal Animals"

Chris here. We're pretty jazzed about Tom Ford's meta-noir Nocturnal Animals in these parts, even with (or because of) festival reactions are all over the map from negative to positive. Whether or not the film is a potential awards player, it did pick up the Grand Jury Prize in Venice and even the poor reviews call out Michael Shannon as a highlight. However, the buried lede in all of the conversation (and the just-launched trailer) is the buzzed about cameo by The Lovely Laura Linney, whose character shows up like this:

Praise the heavens, she's no longer a supportive wife trapped on a phone! And now she's letting her hair down up. Some takeaways:

• Category is: Oliver Stone First Lady Before She Betrays Him And Country Realness
• She's drowning in hair, pearls, and stiff fabric, yet her face is still luminous.
• The role may be small, but when has she ever gotten to go big even just if it's in costuming? Let's hope it's not just the look because we'd love to see her go wild.
• Linney is playing Amy Adams's mother, which could be as delightfully bonkers as the movie sounds if not for the depressing ageism repeated here. Linney is TEN years older than Adams, but in Hollywood years the math inexplicably adds up.
• But seriously: no husbands to concernedly call, Ninja Turtles to catch, or maiding to be done here. We're stoked to see her back in the game.

Anyway, since Animals isn't hers alone, feast on the trailer and try to decipher what the film is all about: