The Screengrab : kathy bates

Michelle Pfeiffer, "Dangerous Liasons" Director Reteam for Colette's "Cheri"

Phil Nugent — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Michelle Pfeiffer turned 50 last year, and though the years haven't been that bad on her, her screen image has definitely cooled a bit. Her last couple of movies went straight to DVD, and her few other screen performances since 2001 have been in supporting performances (White Oleander, Hairspray, Stardust). Now she's starring as an aging French courtesan in Cheri, directed by Stephen Frears and adapted from the Colette novel. The movie is having its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, and Mick Brown's timely profile of Pfeiffer will do until somebody publishes her biography. The title character of Cheri is the son (Rupert Friend) of a colleague (Kathy Bates) who Pfeiffer's character, Léa de Lonval, agrees to educate in the ways of sex and love, with predictably bittersweet results. "Being in that stage of life wasn't something I really had to do a lot of research for,' Pfeiffer told Brown, "because I'm already there. Although in some ways it's a little bit harder to really understand and articulate to yourself, because you're right in the middle of it. Probably 10 years from now I'll be able to look at this phase of my life and be able to understand her journey more. But I think for a lot of women 50 is a very particular age. I'm not one that's ever really thought about birthdays, but this was a big one and I was not looking forward to it. But surprisingly it has left me feeling liberated in a strange kind of way. Sort of, the pressure's off."

For Pfeiffer, Cheri marks a return to the literary period-picture world of Dangerous Liasons and The Age of Innocence. Pfeiffer speculates that she fits into these movies about the social manners of an earlier time because "I'm good at disguising my feelings." Frears, who directed her twenty years ago in Liasons, says she was first on his list of actresses for the role, and "It's quite a short list… She is exactly the right age, and just by being beautiful herself, that struggle has been a large part of her. And she wears it very gracefully. She puts jeans and a cap on and she looks about 16. I remember saying to her when I met her, I think we're going to have trouble making you look old.' But she was just very good about it. She wasn't saying, 'Oh, go on, make me look younger,' like you might imagine Hollywood actresses do. She wasn't asking to conceal anything. The main problem was this great, great cameraman [Darius Khondji] who had been trained to make beautiful women look even more beautiful, and who was completely soppy – he kept saying, 'I can only make her look beautiful.' She was much more straightforward about it. I took my hat off to her."

As to her recent career slowdown, Pfeiffer claims to be okay with it ("Everyone slows down when they get to my age, but that's fine."), adding, "But there are fewer roles for all of us in the movie industry. They're making a fraction of the movies they used to make; and so many of them are either animation or these franchise films that you see more and more A-list actors doing. The middle-range financed film hardly exists any more." She lives outside Los Angeles, raises her kids, and checks in with her analyst. "I remember I had an acting coach, Milton Katselas, who I studied with when I was first starting out, and he would ask us, 'OK, how do you think this character would behave in this scene?' And you'd give your little explanation – 'Well, I think…' And then he'd say, 'OK, now how would you really behave in this scene?' And the first answer was almost always bullshit. But we don't even realise it."

Screengrab Review: "The Family That Preys"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:15:00 GMT

The operant notion amongst the publicists of my acquaintance lately -- and God bless them, every one -- seems to be: let's send Leonard screeners of movies to which he is not even remotely in the target demographic. Of course, I can't say exactly who the target demographic is for Sukiyaki Western Django. Martians, probably. I have a slightly better idea who the target demographic is for Tyler Perry's latest outing, The Family That Preys, and I'm damn sure it doesn't include me. And yet here we are! On the theory that someone has to review these things -- a theory that I'm not entirely convinced I agree with -- the job has fallen to me, and I will do the best I can possibly do under circumstances that would be a lot more trying if God hadn't invented the martini.

The plot of this one, such as it is, involves Alfre Woodard and Kathy Bates (for whom I briefly felt sorry for having to appear in this toxic waste dump, until I realized it would probably buy them both a new summer house), playing old friends who are faced with various family dramas, traumas, and scandals. In order to clear the air, get away from their allegedly comical families, and rebuild their friendships, they take a cross-country road trip of the sort that we haven't seen since Gone Fishin'. Of course, this makes it sound like the movie isn't just about Tyler Perry dressing up in a crazy outfit and acting wacky, which it is. There's no Madea in this one, but that doesn't stop Perry from hamming it up like gangbusters, upstaging people I've never heard of named KaDee Strickland and Rockmond Dunbar.

I certainly won't be the first person to say that these movies are essentially critic-proof; Tyler Perry isn't so much a filmmaker as he is a sort of institutional-grade entertainment producer, and time spent applying any kind of critical framework to his movies is as well-used as time spent complaining about the appetizer menu at Whataburger. If you're not the sort of person who sees Tyler Perry movies, you certainly shouldn't see this one, seeing as it's awful and all. But if you are, you probably didn't read this far anyway.

Screengrab Review: Surfer, Dude

Madonna On Film: Screengrab Celebrates Her Top Ten "Best" and Worst Performances (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

And now...the stinkers.

6. Marie in Shadows and Fog (1992), Elspeth in Four Rooms (1995)

As noted in Part One, Madonna works best in movies when used as spice in a cameo...except, of course, when the cameo is lousy. Yet, though these two performances are, in fact, terrible, it’s hard to judge Ms. Ciccone too harshly for either of them, given the fact that Lily Tomlin, Jodie Foster and Kathy Bates hardly fare much better in Woody Allen’s limp, pretentious Shadows and Fog, and nobody but the lucky actors in Robert Rodriguez’s section of the misbegotten omnibus film Four Rooms bothered to give a coherent performance, either.

7. Abbie Reynolds, The Next Best Thing (2000)

The only movie in Madonna’s filmography where she attempts to play a completely “normal,” contemporary human being (as opposed to a 1940s ballplayer, an S&M obsessed murder suspect, a tightrope walker, an elfin princess, a witch, an Argentine dictator, a kooky East Village free spirit, etc.), Ms. Ciccone earns low points here if only for somehow finding a way to make the song “American Pie” even more annoying than it already was. To be fair, I never saw this movie either, but my lovely Polish bride informs me that Madonna's performance here as a straight woman in a custody battle with her gay baby daddy features exactly one funny sight gag involving the Material Boobs, but otherwise earns its #7 spot fair and square, given Madge's complete lack of chemistry with friend and co-star Rupert Everett and the fact that she seems "like an automaton” throughout “like she always is.”

8. Eva Peron in Evita (1996)

While Ms. Ciccone may have worked harder on this role than any other in her cinematic career (even finally learning to sing after more than a decade as a successful recording artist) it is, in many ways, her most annoying performance, partly because she’s clearly so impressed with herself, partly because so many critics played along with the charade (even going so far as to award her efforts with a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical), but mostly because she transformed an ironic cautionary tale of the rise and fall of a dictator’s wife into a triumphant love story about the rise and rise of a plucky, ambitious gal (not unlike – hey! – Madonna herself!), all the while downplaying the nastier side of Peron’s (and her own) egomaniacal megalomania and its often toxic effect on the peasants who love her...thus deliberately undercutting the plot and theme of her own movie (not to mention Antonio Banderas’ role as spokesman for the downtrodden and future t-shirt model Che Guevara who, with no antagonist to play against, merely comes across like a whiny little bitch).

9. Rebecca Carlson in Body of Evidence (1993)

For all her onstage masturbation, conical Gauliter bras and nude photo shoots, Madonna has never really had a handle on sex. For her, the beast with two backs has nothing to do with joy, love, pleasure or fun, which makes this so-called “erotic” thriller such a complete slog as she fucks Willem Dafoe on shards of broken glass (hot!!!), spits out Razzie-winning lines like “Have you ever seen animals make love, Frank?” and reminds us that, apparently, being Sharon Stone isn’t quite as easy as it looks.

10. Gloria Tatlock, Shanghai Surprise (1986), Amber Leighton, Swept Away (2002)

For some reason, both of Madonna’s husbands (co-star Sean Penn and director Guy Ritchie) managed to distill all of Ms. Ciccone’s worst cinematic instincts into a pair of monumentally shrill, annoying, wooden performances in two of the worst movies ever made. Penn at least had the excuse of being drunk throughout production of Shanghai Surprise (though, sadly, I wasn’t drunk or stoned or, even better, unconscious while sitting through it), and I’m not sure what Guy Ritchie’s excuse was for making Swept Away, unless (as with his short BMW promotional film “Star”) he simply couldn’t resist the opportunity to publicly humiliate his beloved spouse. Given her total lack of chemistry with nearly every co-star in her career (except Rosie O'Donnell and, of course, her own reflection), it’s no surprise Ms. Ciccone fares no better with Penn in Shanghai or Adriano Giannini in Swept Away, which my wife summed up with a quote that could apply to any number of Madonna’s past and future cinematic blunders: “Painfully unfunny...another joyless performance.”

Click here for Part One

Bad Nudes Bare: Stars You Didn’t Need to See Naked

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Here's another list for you, and in this case, we can honestly say we're relieved we didn't have to do the research on this one. Courtesy of Papermag, it's Cinemaniac's Top Ten Worst Nude Scenes of All Time. Dennis Dermody speaks for all of us when he writes, "I like Philip Seymour Hoffman. I think he's a terrific actor. I've seen him at the neighborhood market and he seems quite pleasant, but I don't want to have that image of his big, bare, flabby ass branded on my brain, and now every time I see him that's what I'm going to see."

It's true that Hoffman's heaving hindquarters prove to be a hard image to shake in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, but Dermody has turned up some more obscure fleshy displays to sear into our memory banks. Any fans of Otto Preminger's Such Good Friends out there? "In the film, Dyan Cannon fantasizes about Burgess Meredith dancing naked in front of her with a book dangling from a chain to strategically cover his privates," writes Dermody. "It's enough to turn you off reading forever."

Dermody is also quite correct to single out Kathy Bates' mud-covered streak through the jungle in At Play in the Fields of the Lord over her much more innocuous hot-tub antics with Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt. But we have to guess he never caught Borat in theaters; fighting furball Ken Davitian is missing from the list.