Movies

The death of the director and actor Rob Reiner in violent and unexplained circumstances is one of the most horrific and surprising stories to have emerged from Hollywood in living memory. One of the reasons why its elites live in areas such as Reiner’s exclusive neighborhood of Brentwood in California is precisely so that they will not be subject to the possibility of random violence in a way that less wealthy Americans face daily. Yet if news reports are to be believed, Reiner and his wife Michele were the victims of intrafamilial strife: a situation that all the gated walls and security cameras in the world could not ameliorate.

Recently, a friend of mine found himself having a bad day for a reason I now forget. I made a lousy attempt to cheer him up. “Omnia in bonum,” I said to him – all things work together for good. The Latin phrase has served as a salve for me in hard times. Little did I know that I had just made things much worse. He was visibly shaken. I asked him what was wrong. I had unknowingly stirred memories of his parents’ difficult and traumatizing divorce, during which that same phrase had been used by them in a pointless attempt to assuage their children’s sadness. The idea that a phrase, a memory or an object can be simultaneously cursed for one person and blessed for another had never occurred to me. It has occurred to the Finnish filmmaker Joachim Trier.

Over the past couple of weeks, two expensive, auteur-driven films with big stars have been released at the American box office, both conscious throwbacks to the kind of Seventies cinema that isn’t supposed to be made any longer. In the case of Paul Thomas Anderson, his Leo DiCaprio-starring Thomas Pynchon fantasia One Battle After Another seems to have been a success by the skin of its (yellowed) teeth: it has already made over $100 million worldwide, helped by excellent reviews and strong word of mouth. But in the case of another A-lister, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the critical and commercial reception of The Smashing Machine has been rather more muted, suggesting that audiences know what they want from Johnson, and it sure as hell isn’t arthouse fare.

The new comedy Splitsville amusingly diagnoses several urgent social ills. The film mocks those who treat marriage not as an expression of solemn vows but as a ticket to unfettered happiness to be discarded at the first sign of discontent; it also excoriates those who view the institution as so meaningless – just a piece of paper – as to persist in the midst of openly acknowledged affairs, romances and one-night stands. In its own coarse, fumbling way, Splitsville has an instinctive sense of how human beings long for monogamy and order even while they court freedom and licentiousness. Splitsville stars Kyle Marvin and Adria Arjona as Carey and Ashley, a young couple who, 14 months after getting hitched, find themselves with different notions about the success of their union.

The third and supposedly final Downton Abbey picture released in American cinemas this Friday. Ominously subtitled The Grand Finale – oh how I wish, given the residual camp elements within the show, that it had instead been called The Final Curtain! – it supposedly wraps up the story of the Grantham family, the privileged idlers who inhabit the eponymous grand house, and their unusually devoted and long-serving staff, all of whom converse with their superiors on easy and intimate terms that bear precisely no relation to how the English upper classes have ever spoken (or been spoken to) by their servants in history. Still, if you’re looking for historical accuracy from Julian Fellowes’ Downton, you are not going to find it.

If viewers of Breaking Bad had taken bets during the show’s original run on which of the cast was likely to become a breakout action-film star a decade after the series finished airing, Bob Odenkirk would likely have been near the bottom of that list. The young actor Aaron Paul was perhaps the most obvious prediction, but Jesse Plemons, Dean Norris – even a grizzled and pumped Bryan Cranston – were all more predictable choices to do an alpha-male Liam Neeson-meets-Keanu Reeves act than the foppish comic relief Jimmy McGill, aka criminal lawyer (in both senses) Saul Goodman.

Weapons, Zach Cregger’s sophomore picture after the acclaimed Barbarian, was a conspicuous success story in its opening weekend: brilliant reviews, an A- CinemaScore from audiences (rare for the horror genre, in which anything above a B is considered a major hit) and, of course, a massive box office. Its first weekend gross was $43.5 million, an astonishing amount for a film without an existing intellectual property, A-list stars (although Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich and Julia Garner are hardly unknowns) or big-name director.

You may not have realized it, but the actress Lindsay Lohan has been quietly orchestrating a comeback over the past few years. In 2022, she signed a multifilm deal with Netflix that led to such forgettable pieces of fluff as the Oirish romantic comedy Irish Wish, and now she has returned in her highest-profile film in years, the Freaky Friday sequel, Freakier Friday. Lohan stars opposite the Oscar-winning Jamie Lee Curtis in what is clearly (and cynically) intended as a piece of four-quadrant fluff, and Disney will be hoping that the sequel recaptures some of the 2003 original’s box-office alchemy; it grossed $160 million worldwide on a $26 million budget.

A British film fan recently took to social media to share an unusual experience that had happened to her while visiting the Picturehouse cinema in central London. She was standing in the foyer, watching the trailer for the forthcoming superhero picture The Fantastic Four: First Steps, when she became aware of a middle-aged man standing next to her, enjoying the same preview. He then said, in apparent surprise, “Look! I’m in that!” She turned to him, expecting to see some character actor with a one-line role, and it was none other than Pedro Pascal: film and television star, self-appointed nemesis to J.K. Rowling and “the internet’s daddy.

Donald Trump is a cinephile, of sorts. Not since Ronald Reagan has there been a US President so visible in theater, with Trump making cameos in everything from Home Alone 2 to Zoolander. Yet just as Trump has been steadfast in his determination to Make America Great Again, so he has been equally keen to Make Hollywood Great Again, too. Initially, he appointed Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson and Jon Voight as “Special Ambassadors” to “a great but very troubled place.” Gibson and Stallone appear to have taken the honor on the chin, but Voight has been diligently organizing meetings and has now fed back his thoughts to the President. As a result, Trump has declared that he has his own, unorthodox plans to save the American motion-picture industry.