Jennifer Lawrence Is A Movie Star Again In 'No Hard Feelings'
#231: "No Hard Feelings," "The Bear," "Black Mirror," "Lone Star," "Man Of The Year"
Edition 231:
Hey movie lovers!
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This week: J-Law the movie star is back, with the very rare theatrical raunchy studio comedy! Then we have to give a shoutout to a couple very cinematic TV offerings, and give a nod to some July 4th-themed streaming recs. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” my all-time fav Ethan Coen is coming in hot with his first solo directorial project.
No Hard Feelings
Let’s remind ourselves for a second where Jennifer Lawrence was in her career in 2016. She was 26 years old, the highest-paid actress in Hollywood for the second consecutive year, the lead of a successful franchise (The Hunger Games), and a four-time Oscar nominee (with three coming in the lead actress category, including one win for Silver Linings Playbook). It literally cannot get bigger or better than that. In terms of actors born after 1990, she was THE movie star.
But that was seven years ago. In the intervening time she’s worked less (yay for her!), less successfully (Passengers…yikes), and weirder (also yay, but mother! is really out there). She got married, had a kid, and now at the ripe old age of 33 she seems somehow to carry herself like a world-weary veteran who has nothing left to prove and no f—s left to give.
From that spirit comes No Hard Feelings, a broad studio comedy about a loser local girl in Montauk who agrees to sleep with the high school-aged son of some rich summer interlopers in exchange for a free car. It’s the kind of dumb premise that no one would give second thought to if it was told from the perspective of the boy — and in fact movies about a boy who pursues an older girl to lose his virginity before going to college are literally a dime a dozen.
It’s Lawrence’s first true return to movie stardom, in the sense that the movie would not exist were she not in the lead role, and it’s hard to imagine too many other actresses with the juice to get it made in her spot.
If she cared about returning to her throne atop Hollywood, this is certainly not what she would’ve chosen. Studio comedies are reliable duds at the box office — $29 million worldwide so far, and that’s actually above expectation —and usually virtue-signaled into oblivion by critics (she’s a predator, poor kid!). For most of the movie, her character humiliates herself, so it’s certainly not boosting the movie star “wow I wish I were them!” cool factor either.
Her philosophy seems to be … who cares? And I love that. This role gives her a chance to have fun and to be funny, which she is naturally and hasn’t really had a chance to display on screen before in the same way. While there were no riotously funny moments (for me), I and the other people in my screening were laughing consistently through the whole movie. Let me tell you, for a broad comedy, that’s certainly not a given.
As I’ve said before, with comedies and horror movies the measure of success becomes binary. When someone wants to know whether this type of movie is good, they ask, “is it funny?” or “is it scary?” So mission accomplished, the movie is funny.
She has good chemistry with Andrew Barth Feldman, who will probably receive the biggest career bump from the project, and dotting the background are a handful of funny people: Matthew Brodrick, Natalie Morales, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Hasan Minhaj.
Of course, as is the case with almost every comedy, when the movie has to transition in its final third from simply funny situations into actual plot resolution territory, out of ridiculousness and into sincerity, it loses all its steam. It’s predictable and ~fine~ in the least impressive way. All that adds up in 2023 to a recipe for a classic streaming movie. I could easily see this one at the top of the Netflix Top 10 in a couple of months, but I doubt anyone will be quoting it with their friends 10 years from now the way we still quote Will Ferrell movies from the 2010s.
None of that matters to J-Law, I don’t think. She’s done it all. Now seems intent on upending expectations and doing whatever she wants. What a life! Revive the studio rom-com next please!
Something New
The Bear S2 (Hulu): This is a public service announcement for everyone, regardless of whether you’ve watched any episodes of the excellent FX drama “The Bear” before. Go watch Season 2, Episode 7 immediately. It’s one of my favorite TV episodes of all time, and literally made my heart leap and my eyes tear up in the way only the very best movies can….the power of visual storytelling at its finest.
The episode follows one of the show’s supporting characters, who is kind of a loser, “staging” (basically interning) for a three-star Michelin restaurant in Chicago. It’s an awesome personal story about fulfillment and finding purpose, but it also explains in a way I’ve never appreciated before EXACTLY why fine dining is special and worth the exorbitant prices. What else can I say, it’s a very very special half-hour of television.
Black Mirror: Beyond The Deep (Netflix): At 80 minutes, this episode from the latest season of the anthology thriller series “Black Mirror” is, for all intents and purposes, a feature length film. Its conceit is simple yet brilliant, and every time I watch a good episode of this show, I’m reminded of the ridiculous chorus of “there’s no good ideas for movies anymore” as an excuse for why most stuff sucks. I’m not sure why the economics of creativity “work” for TV but not for movies these days. I would’ve gone to see this in a theater.
The episode stars Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett as astronauts in the late 60s, in some alternate reality where we’ve developed a technology to allow the astronauts up on their spaceship to essentially plug themselves into avatar “replicas” on earth, so that they can spend time with their families and live a more normal life. Since we’re talking about “Black Mirror,” of course things go horribly wrong, with twists and turns to follow. It reinforced a couple key points that other feature-length stories can learn from. 1) You don’t have to explain everything! 2) Once you set up the rules of the world, you have to stick with them. 3) Decisions have consequences. 4) Audiences are capable of traversing complex emotional territory!
Great performances, sneaky layers of depth, and a gut-wrenching ending. Either this one or “Joan is Awful” are the best episodes of the new season.
Something Old
Lone Star (1996): I like to think of this movie as a spiritual prequel to No Country For Old Men, similarly about a sheriff in a Texas border town. The sheriff, played by the criminally underrated Chris Cooper, is trying to modernize the system of frontier justice used by ex-sheriff Kris Kristofferson as well as his late father, played in flashbacks by a super-young Matthew McConaughey.
It’s a murder mystery on the surface, but writer/director John Sayles picked up a Best Screenplay nomination for the way he weaves in the political implications of illegal border crossings, racial tensions, and family trauma. The slow boil of a plot fits the desolate setting well, and actually pays off in the end with some unexpected twists (although I have many questions about the ending, which I won’t spoil…but just know I have questions). Also, in a one-scene bit part, it’s young Frances McDormand! (The same year Fargo came out, which won her the first of four Oscars.) If you’re ever looking for a good movie to watch, do what I did this week and scroll back through the Best Original Screenplay noms, that’s where all the good stuff is.
Something to Stream
Man Of The Year (Max, Peacock, Tubi, FreeVee, PlutoTV): I was trying to think of a good July 4th movie recommendation that wasn’t obvious — Independence Day, Forrest Gump, The American President, Rocky IV, Top Gun etc. — and settled on this Robin Williams dramedy about a Jon Stewart-esque talk show host who runs for president on a lark, then wins. Williams is a supernova at the center, of course, but supporting performances from Laura Linney, Christopher Walken, Lewis Black and Jeff Goldblum round out a great cast, and director Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam, Disclosure) spins one of those funny stories with heart that generates nostalgia just by its tone. I would like to say this movie “restores your faith in the American experiment” but the truth is closer to wishing for the good old days when the biggest controversy about an election outcome could be a computerized voting system.
Trailer Watch: Drive-Away Dolls
Ethan Coen alert! After the famous brothers decided to pursue solo directorial projects, Joel headed off to make the prestige-y, black-and-white The Tragedy of Macbeth, while Ethan was working on this lesbian sex comedy — cementing what we always assumed each brother brought to their legendary partnership.
About a year ago, I actually got my hands on a script for this project (don’t ask me how!) and surprisingly didn’t like it when I read it. It didn’t click for me. I didn’t get it. But I was foolish to doubt one of my all-time favorite filmmakers! Through the lens of Coen’s camera and embodied by Margaret Qualley (quickly becoming a newsletter favorite) and Geraldine Viswanathan, with Pedro Pascal, Matt Damon, Beanie Feldstein, Colman Domingo and Bill Camp surrounding, everything clicked in my head. This movie is gonna rock.