FILM STARS DON'T DIE IN LIVERPOOL: 4 STARS
By the time actress Gloria Grahame passed away in 1981 at age 57 she was largely forgotten. A new film, âFilm Stars Donât Die in Liverpool,â aims to remind of us of the Oscar winnerâsâshe won the Best Supporting Actress award in 1952 for The Bad and the Beautifulâlife, legacy and love.
When we meet Grahame (Annette Bening) sheâs in the âwhatever happened toâ phase of her career. Hollywood is a distant memory and sheâs now trading on whatever cachet her name still holds, performing âThe Glass Menagerieâ in English regional theatres. Ailing, she calls on Peter Turner (Jamie Bell), a former lover and much younger man who once moved to New York to be with her. Heâs now back at home in working-class Liverpool, struggling to make it as an actor.
As Grahame becomes sicker and sicker the movie moves along a fractured timeline to tell the story of their love affair and how sickness shattered their bliss and eventually brought them together again.
Director Paul McGuigan uses some slick camera tricks to jump around in time from the first blush of their relationship to the end and every point in between. Doors open in the present to reveal a scene in the past. Itâs showy but dreamy, as though we are hopscotching through Peterâs memory.
Bell is a sweet, sensitive and thoughtful boy-toy who sparks with Bening. Heâs very good but this is Beningâs movie. Her Grahame is a wonder, effervescently flirty one second, frail the next. She is the keeper of a heartbreaking secret agenda and a vain woman facing the abyss. Itâs remarkable stuff that sits comfortably alongside her stellar recent work in âThe Face of Love,â â20th Century Womanâ and âRules Donât Apply.â
âFilm Stars Donât Die in Liverpoolâ is a three Kleenex film that will make you want to go back and check out Grahameâs real-life movies. If you havenât already, check her out as the temptress with an eye for James Stewart in âIt's a Wonderful Lifeâ or as Ado Annie in Oklahoma! She was a great talent and Bening does her justice.
MAZE RUNNER: THE DEATH CURE: 1 STAR
You may be forgiven if you, like me, thought about going to see âThe Maze Runner: The Death Cureâ to catch up on what happened to Shailene Woodleyâs character Tris Prior.
Please be advised you have the wrong franchise.
Back in the day of the young-adult-in-peril dystopian trilogies, screens were filled with good looking young actors fighting for survival in movies like âThe Maze Runnerâ and âThe Divergent Series.â Of the bunch of them, only âThe Hunger Gamesâ distinguished itself as a go-to movie. The others kind of blended together to form one long post apocalyptic action series that resembled an anti-utopian Guess ad with automatic weapons and artfully tousled hair.
Since the new film, âMaze Runner: The Death Cure,â assumes youâre up to speed with the story Iâll save you the trouble of having to binge watch the first two movies.
Hereâs the catch-up:
Based on a series of wildly popular YA books, 2014's âThe Maze Runnerâ sees Thomas, played by âTeen Wolfâsâ Dylan OâBrien, plopped into a community of young men surrounded by a labyrinth. The rebellious Thomas wants to see if there is a way to navigate through the ever-changing maze that stands between the boys and whatever is happening in the outside world.
The following year âThe Scorch Trialsâ saw the virtuous Thomas and his gang take on the worst people in the world, W.C.K.D., a group of evildoers that appear to use an Instagram acronym as their name.
After a three-year wait Thomas is back with his stylishly dishevelled hair and chiselled face to break into The Last City, a fortified town where doctors work to find a cure for a plague that turns people into snarling zombies. The good doctors, including Thomasâs former flame Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), are experimenting on the Maze Runners who are immune to the disease. In particular Thomas wants to rescue Minho (Ki Hong Lee), a pal being mercilessly poked with needles in search of a cure.
âMaze Runner: The Death Cureâ features lots of ominous music, attractive stars in motion, dusty dystopian landscapes and something gets blown up or shot at every 10 minutes or so. Whatâs missing is the emotional content that might make you care about Thomas and company. The movie really wants you to love the characters. The camera endlessly caresses their determined and often tearstained faces but the ham fisted big emotional moments are as empty as the jars of gel thrown in the trash after being used to poof up the castâs hair. The characters are mannequins mouthing generic dialogueâspeeches begin with, âI know you have no reason to trust me,â and every few minutes someone says, âWe have to get out of here!ââfor two hours and twenty minutes. Think what else you could do with that time!
HOLLOW IN THE LAND: 2 ½ STARS
Look the word hardscrabble up in the dictionary and youâre likely to find a picture of âHollow in the Landâsâ Alison Miller (Dianna Agron). She lives in the kind of backwater industrial town where everyone knows her business. And thereâs a lot to talk about. Her father is locked up, jailed for an alcohol fuelled crime spree that ended in the death of the son of the local mill owner.
Mom is a long distant memory, having run off, leaving Alison to care for her teenage brother Brandon (Jared Abrahamson). Heâs a handful. âYou know one of these days youâre going to do some real damage, smart ass,â a local cop (Michael Rogers) tells him when heâs picked up for fighting, âand youâll have bigger problems than some paperwork. Youâll be sharing a cell with your old man in no time.â
When the neighbours arenât talking about the Millerâs troubled family history theyâre gossiping about Alison and her girlfriend Charlene (Rachelle Lefevre).
Alisonâs life is further scrutinized when Brandon lands in deep trouble. The day after his girlfriend Sophieâs violent, drunken father (John Sampson) walked in on them having sex, the old man winds up dead and Brandon is the chief suspect. Convinced of his innocence she launches her own investigation only to wind up under the microscope herself.
âHollow in the Landâ is more of a snapshot of life in a small town than it is a murder mystery. The procedural aspects of the story are less interesting than the characters, which are brought to vivid, scrappy life. Argon, best known as high school cheerleader Quinn Fabray on âGlee,â brings grit to Alison, playing her as determined yet emotionally damaged.
âHollow in the Landâ will be compared to the equally grungy âWinterâs Bone.â Like that movie, writer-director Scooter Corkle paints a drab picture of life in this town, creating a backwoods neo-noir with some nice details, but never really satisfies narratively.