Why There Are No New Movie Stars: 'Sanctuary'
#226: "Sanctuary," "Fool's Paradise," "A Man Called Otto," "White Man Can't Jump," "Frances Ha"
Edition 226:
Hey movie lovers!
As always, you can find a podcast version of this newsletter on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening and spreading the word!
This week: Let’s talk movie stars, or why there aren’t any new ones popping up anymore. Maybe it’s because everyone is still watching Tom Hanks. Three new movies to hit, then two streamers including one of my all-time favs. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Scorcese is back with Leo and De Niro for what is surely the Best Picture frontrunner.
Sanctuary
My mind continues to linger on the National Research Group survey published a few weeks ago about movie stars. None of the top 20 actors who people said they’d be most likely to see in theaters were under the age of 40 (after Chris Hemsworth’s birthday in August, anyway). Names in the top 10 — Cruise, Denzel, Pitt, Julia — are for the most part the same stars who lead the box office 20 years ago.
Even if there’s reason to doubt the preciseness of these surveys, the list resonated because of how true it felt. Our upcoming summer movie slate will star the likes of Harrison Ford and Vin Diesel…not exactly fresh faces.
Whether it’s an intentional move by the studios, or their new, optimization-obsessed tech overlords, to suppress young stardom as a way to keep costs down, or whether it’s a byproduct of an era of superheroes and IP where the fictional characters are more important than the person playing them, the fact remains:
Hollywood isn’t good at creating new movie stars anymore.
The hosts of a recent podcast episode I listened to tried to comprehensively rank the 35 biggest movie stars under the age of 35, and the sad reality was no more than a handful of them could even be the face of a large, commercially successful movie. Even among that group, most are passengers carried by the popularity of the characters rather than their own persona — Tom Holland by Spider-Man, Austin Butler by Elvis, Daniel Kaluuya by Jordan Peele, etc. Each have fronted box office duds when they venture off on their own. (In the end the only under-35s I qualify are Chalamet and Robbie.)
Enter Christopher Abbott and Margaret Qualley, the stars of a new movie called Sanctuary. Abbott is best known as the too-nice guy boyfriend in HBO’s “Girls,” with a few impressive side performances in indies; Qualley announced her arrival in Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and the surprise Netflix hit “Maid,” but movie stars these two certainly are not.
That’s not due to inability though. This movie gives you all the material you would ever need to identify these two as true blue movie stars. At various times they are funny, charismatic, romantic, sexy, cruel, and straight up evil.
I suppose that’s the benefit of this movie’s construction, which is an acting showcase. Abbott and Qualley are the only two characters in the entire story, which takes place almost entirely in a hotel suite. Abbott plays an heir apparent to a large hotel chain, while Qualley is his high dollar dominatrix and, she believes, all-around performance coach. They simulate elaborate scenes of borderline emotional abuse that titillate Abbott, before things escalate further into increasingly high stakes psychological games where the line between real and fake becomes indistinguishable.
It’s not a brilliant movie, and I’m not even sure it would work were it not for the two mammoth performances at its center. But the duo charges up each scene with energy, tension and humor that makes it difficult to look away. It would be easy to see the same acting skills translate into future comedies, rom-coms or dramas.
The tragedy here is that Abbott and Qualley are uniquely qualified for a job that’s currently not open to applicants. This isn’t the 1990s, where Julia Roberts does Pretty Woman (another movie about a young sex worker) and suddenly has the Midas touch, or where Michael Douglas could basically make an entire movie star career out of erotic thrillers not much more complex than this one. Nowadays, there is no pathway for Abbott and Qualley to progress into bigger starring roles without donning a cape, putting on a motion capture suit covered in ping pong balls, or strapping themselves to the side of a real-life airplane.
For actors of their caliber, the choice between fame, fortune and fulfilling work has never been more stark.
Many readers of this newsletter, I know, will never see Sanctuary (which is fair). They don’t know who Abbott and Qualley are by name and have to Google photos of them to see if they recognize them from something.
If they don’t now, and they aren’t inclined to watch small indies or awards movies, there’s a good chance they’ll never be bowled over by what they can do on screen the way I was during this movie. And that’s a shame.
Something New
A Man Called Otto (Netflix): There is no testament to movie stardom in recent years more powerful than this — a book adaptation with very little sticker appeal other than its lead being Tom Hanks scoring $112 million at the global box office and then staying near the top of Netflix’s Top 10 for several weeks straight.
There’s no action, no car chases or gunfights, no secondary stars. The movie is basically a walking advertisement for the Boomer “they just don’t make ‘em like they used to” mindset, about a grumpy Get Off My Lawn guy who secretly has a big heart for people…so long as they’re weak and vulnerable. I would even be so bold as to say Hanks is miscast as the titular character, who should probably be much older, more menacing and less handsome, but apparently audiences still can’t get enough of Hanks being our kind old uncle.
To me, this is another failed example of book adaptation. Considering a book has so much more length with which it can insert nuance, it’s funny to consider how certain ‘literary’ elements — like one-dimensional quirky characters and very broadly written and overly dramatized flashback sequences — work on the page but not on the screen.
What this movie is, and why I think it’s resonating with a very particular subset of viewers, is a reflection of values. If you’re someone who thinks people should handle and mind their own business, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and knock the self-righteous down a peg, you’re going to enjoy seeing that embodied on screen. And if that’s you, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you probably also love Tom Hanks. Well, do we have the movie for you!
Fool’s Paradise (Theaters): Of course, movie stardom in the context of comedy in 2023 is so hopelessly out-of-date that it’s hard to even remember the days when Eddie Murphy or Jim Carrey could muscle a broad comedy to a couple hundred million at the summer box office. Charlie Day (of “Always Sunny” fame) writes, directs and stars as a modern day Charlie Chaplin-esque actor whose mental condition disables him from speaking.
His character passes through the various stations of the movie star cross, gloriously up and then painfully down in what would be an industry takedown a la The Player if the movie had any desire to prioritize message over dumb laughs.
Instead, it’s more like a stoner comedy where Day called on all his comedy pals to drop in for one day’s work on a single funny scene — Jason Sudeikis, Jason Batemen, John Malkovich, Adrien Brody, Kate Beckinsdale, Glenn Howerton, Edie Falco and the late Ray Liotta all feature. While not reaching the hilarious heights of “Always Sunny,” this movie is fun to both fans of the show and anyone eager to laugh at the peculiarities of Hollywood.
Something Old
White Man Can’t Jump (1992, Hulu): You may have seen that they re-made this movie, premiering on Hulu this week with Jack Harlow in the role of hustler basketball player made famous by Woody Harrelson (newcomer Sinqua Walls plays the Wesley Snipes part). I haven’t seen it, but based on the trailer and what I know about the production I’m fairly certain the new movie will be an abomination on a level that could ruin the original.
So rather than tune in, turn the clock back 30 years and return to the courts of Venice Beach in the early 90s, where Harrelson’s apparent dorkyness allows he and Snipes to make enough money hooping to impress a young Rosie Perez. Don’t just trust me, trust writer/director Ron Shelton, who also made crowdpleasers Bull Durham and Tin Cup.
Something to Stream
Frances Ha (Netflix): This Noah Baumbach-Greta Gerwig collab (the team behind the forthcoming Barbie) is on my list of my Hall of Fame movies I try to watch once per year. I’ve praised it in this newsletter before. You all know I love it. Except this was the first time watching this movie when I was older than the titular Frances, who is going through a quarter-life crisis, and suddenly I’m wondering if this is actually a horror movie??
It’s deeply bittersweet and unsparing in its take on growing up and coming to terms with not achieving your dreams, couched in what is essentially a rom-com between best friends. Still, New York City has never looked more alluring, painted in modern black-and-white and pumped to the tunes of David Bowie. It is the definitive ‘quarter life crisis’ movie, and gave us the first glimpse of Gerwig’s massive filmmaking talent.
Trailer Watch: Dune: Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Scorcese’s epic adaptation of the award-winning novel about Native American oppression has been spoken about in reverential tones ever since it was rumored to be finished almost a year ago. It was kept on the shelf to maximize both its commercial appeal (it will appear in theaters before moving to AppleTV+) and, one has to assume, its position as the presumptive frontrunner for Best Picture.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro feature prominently in this first trailer, Scorcese’s two favorite avatars, while the surrounding cast is comprised of both big Hollywood stars and lesser known Native American actors. The movie premiered at Cannes this past week and the reception only confirmed this movie will be awesome. Also, really sad. But awesome!