Liars and Saints

 Julianne Moore plays people who are not particularly strong; the people face obstacles; the obstacles grow and grow. At some point, the facade crumbles; good manners are tossed aside; something feral pops up on screen. Here are a few of the electrifying moments. A woman snaps at her husband, who refuses to acknowledge that dementia is "knocking on the door" ("Still Alice"). A woman breaks down because her spouse is dying, and the illness makes her consider how deficient she herself has been ("Magnolia"). A near-catatonic housewife sobs on her toilet as she confronts the fact that she can't "wear a nice face" for her child's party ("The Hours"). You might not think of Sarah Palin in this category, since Palin rarely cries in public. But Julianne Moore spotted something in Palin that others had overlooked. The embarrassing moments--the Couric interview, the reference to "Senator O'Biden," the allusion to Elizabeth I...

 Marriage-to-me means that you have to rent "Dear Evan Hansen," which "Smash Cut" tagged as "one of the worst movie-musicals of all time." My husband was a good sport. For approximately one hour, approximately the length of Act One, my husband was enthusiastic. "I don't think Ben Platt looks thirty!" he said. "Do you think he looks thirty?" A big treat arrived when Danny Pino, a former star of "Law and Order: SVU," wandered into the story. "Wait," said Marc. "Detective Amaro is married to Amy Adams now? And he was once married to Laura Benanti? Lucky guy...." But I knew Marc was getting tired when he began to refer to Evan as "Connor." And I understood this. Evan had "CONNOR" printed on his cast, and this seemed to function as a name-tag, and the movie just feels so very, very long. Everyone in my house was delirious for "Words Fail," the endless, formless soliloquy Platt d...

 "Maggie's Plan" is a deft, ironic journey story by Rebecca Miller, daughter of Arthur Miller. Maggie, our star, would like to have a child on her own. She falls in love with Ethan Hawke, who seems to be in the dying stages of a marriage to Julianne Moore. The single-mom plan evaporates. Maggie finds herself married to Ethan Hawke. All is well! But this is just the end of Act One. Years into the marriage, Maggie discovers she is still unmoored. Ethan Hawke may be *technically* divorced from Julianne Moore, but the two still love to gab on the phone about whether Moore should accept various academic appointments in Denmark. (The two are wonderfully self-absorbed academics, and their specialty is "crypto-fictive narratology.") In one brutal scene, Ethan Hawke has Maggie pick up his--his!--kid from Dalton (it's basically Dalton)....because Ethan has a work call. Later, it emerges that Ethan's work call was canceled, and Ethan spent the hour chatting with Ju...

There's a poem by Ammons: One can't have it both ways and both ways is  the only way I  want it. Ambivalence is the human condition, and that's consistently on display in "Gloria Bell." Our title character complains to a woman administering a "wax"--OW! OWWW!!!--and yet, in the next moment, Gloria is requesting further pain. ("A little more off the sides....please....") When advised not to call her (terrible) boyfriend again, Gloria says, "I won't," in a noble, serious way, and it's very clear that she is really saying I WILL! I WILL!!!! "I said I quit smoking," says our heroine, as she lights up a new cigarette. Gloria is (intermittently) a wreck, a mess. Gloria, c'est moi! At a certain point in a career, an artist can be taken for granted. This is sometimes called the Meryl Streep Phenomenon (in reference to the many, many years Meryl went between her two most recent Academy Award wins). That s...

Goodness! "Gloria Bell." What happens? A woman in her late fifties meets a guy and goes on some dates, then ends up alone. And yet the movie feels revolutionary. Why? -The sex. It's standard in a movie to ignore sex unless the participants are far, far from middle- or  old-age . In "Gloria Bell," however, we watch Moore's character mid-coitus. We watch and watch. In Hollywood, it's standard to focus on the young  woman,  and to have her make some alluring, soft, moaning sounds. Nothing extravagant. But, in "Gloria Bell," Julianne Moore does not seem  interested  in giving you a pleasant, tasteful fantasy of pseudo-sex. Instead, she scrunches up her face and makes some loud, unusual noises. It's not as if you're in a Katy Perry video. It's as if you're watching something from actual life. The camera has dared to go somewhere that counts as "terra nova." Revolutionary! -The solitude. We spend so much of our lives alo...

She's back! "Gloria" has earned rhapsodic reviews. So it's time to revisit what we all know and love about Julianne Moore. * She did not think that she would win an Oscar for "Still Alice." She thought it would go to Marion Cotillard, for that movie about unemployment. The unemployment movie was definitely better than "Still Alice"--the script for "Alice" is sort of a mess--but how could anyone ever "vote down" Moore's performance? In a way, Moore's achievement in "Still Alice" is *especially* staggering--because she was working with not-great material. * Moore does not like the "strong female character" cliche. "Strong?" she asks, over and over again. "We're all weak. We're all struggling. The act of living *with weakness and pain* -- persisting despite real baggage -- that's what is interesting." God Bless Moore for that! (I think she may have honed this observati...