Months of Meryl: Evening (2007)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.  

#36 —Lila Ross, an old friend of a dying woman.

JOHN: While Meryl Streep is fiercely protective of her and her family’s privacy, she made no secret about what she got her daughter Mamie Gummer for her 24th birthday: Lajos Koltai’s Evening. Adapted from Susan Minot’s 1998 novel by the author herself, along with writer Michael Cunningham (The Hours), Evening follows Vanessa Redgrave’s Ann, an elderly woman drifting in and out of consciousnesses on her deathbed as she recalls a distant memory from her long-ago youth. That memory stars Claire Danes as a twentysomething Ann on the day of her best friend Lila’s (Mamie Gummer) wedding to a man she does not love. Ann, Lila, and the latter’s brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy) are instead infatuated with Harris (Patrick Wilson), a strapping doctor that each will either screw or regret not screwing...

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Months of Meryl: Dark Matter (2007)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.  

#35 —Joanna Silver, a university patroness with a penchant for Chinese culture.

MATTHEW: On paper, the prospect of Meryl Streep offering her time and talents to an innovative Chinese director’s micro-budgeted filmmaking debut is immediately intriguing. Dark Matter sounds like a welcome divergence for an actress who has seldom strayed from inside Hollywood’s gates over the course of her 30 years in the industry. Noted opera helmer Chen Shi-Zheng’s first foray behind the camera is loosely based on the 1991 University of Iowa shooting, in which Gang Lu, a gifted Ph.D. graduate in the school’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, murdered five people on campus after being passed over for a prestigious dissertation prize, Shi-Zheng’s drama is a work of no small audacity, one in a scattering of American films that have dramatized the unrelenting pressure placed on young Chinese immigrants to provide and succeed in a country that has already stacked the deck against them.

But Dark Matter quickly dashes the hopes one might have harbored for Streep’s curious venture into post-Sundance indie cinema...

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Beauty vs Beast: Say U.N.C.L.E.

Hello and happy Monday, it's Jason from MNPP with our weekly "Beauty vs Beast" experience - tomorrow is Armie Hammer's birthday, and I don't know if you guys saw but I was kind of a Call Me By Your Name fan. But don't worry - we're never going to make you choose between Elio and Oliver (especially not for Armie's birthday, since he'd most likely lose that one by a substantial margin). No let's take a look back at Armie's other great gay romance (that's what it was, right), Guy Ritchie's underrated 2015 film of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. And yes I know that technically Henry Cavill's Napoleon Solo & Armie's Illya Kuryakin were (reluctant) partners, but do we really think if I put the film's actual villain played with swan-necked gusto by Elizabeth Debicki anybody would be beating her? I thought not. So let's make this a contest...

survey service

PREVIOUSLY Speaking of contests last week's Doubt-match was a bit of a doozy - over the course of the past seven days every time I checked on Amy Adams & Meryl Streep were about tied. But then what always happens happened - Meryl pulled ahead and stayed ahead and ended up with about 52% of the vote. Said Val:

"Does any of it matter once Viola Davis shows up, establishes her family's heartbreaking stakes, and commits grand theft movie all in under 10 minutes!? If nothing else Doubt should be appreciated as a rare moment where Streep seems knocked out by someone else's performance."

Beauty vs Beast: No Doubt

Jason from MNPP here ready to label this place "The Amy Adams Experience" for the day, because not only are we discussing the latest episodes of Sharp Objects but we're wishing her a happy 44th birthday while we're at it with this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast." Specifically we're looking back at her Oscar-nominated role as the watchful Sister James opposite her Oscar-nominated co-star some-Meryl-lady in John Patrick Shanley's 2008 film Doubt. Can you believe this movie's turning 10 in December? It doesn't seem that long ago, does it? Does the movie hold up, you think? (I mean besides Viola Davis, obviously.) But even besides that I need you to, heaven forbid, brush away your doubts long enough to come down with a vote on...

online polls

PREVIOUSLY My favorite Fassbinder was the subject of last week's poll and my favorite Fassbinder performance therein won - Margit Carstensen's TITULAR ROLE in The Bitter Tears of Perta von Kant sashayed off with about 3/4s of the vote over Hanna Schygulla's user-loser Karin. Said Jordan:

"Just caught this film for the first time recently thanks to a mention about it on this site and had one of those WHERE HAS THIS MOVIE BEEN ALL MY LIFE??!! moments. Stunning across the board. What Fassbinder, Ballhaus, and these women accomplished in a single room is really movie magic."

Months of Meryl: A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

 

#33 —Yolanda Johnson, a Midwestern songstress and longtime staple of the titular radio show.

MATTHEW: Two of the most revered artists in American cinema history, Robert Altman and Meryl Streep each built their lauded careers by probing into characters from countless corners of the world, driven by an ardent and undiminished interest in the micro — but never minor — idiosyncrasies of collective human behavior. For those who believe in the supernatural forces of fate, there is something undeniably kismetic in Streep and Altman’s first collaboration, which would turn out to be this mighty auteur’s valedictory effort. A Prairie Home Companion, Altman’s final film, is a moving backstage comedy that sketches out the (fictional) final broadcast of the historic and beloved Minnesota radio variety show of the title, created and hosted by Garrison Keillor, who also scripted the picture. (Keillor was fired from his program in November of last year over allegations of sexual misconduct.) Brimming, like all of Altman’s work, with an abundance of people and all their peculiarities, A Prairie Home Companion relies on the character-inhabiting talents of an irresistible and excitingly-paired ensemble, whose every member gets ample opportunity to ingest spirit and specificity into a wide array of oddballs and straight-men, from Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly’s ribald cowboys to Maya Rudolph’s quietly panicked and heavily pregnant stage manager to the pair of aging songbirds brought to fanciful, rueful life by Streep and Lily Tomlin.

As Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson, the two surviving members of a four-sister singing act, Streep and Tomlin are, quite simply, a match made in acting heaven...

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