Corey Stoll

WHAT WE DO NEXT: searing performances, as the dominoes fall

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Corey Stoll in WHAT WE DO NEXT. Courtesy of Magano Movies and Media.

Writer-director Stephen Belber’s taut drama What We Do Next featured the best acting ensemble at Cinequest, with searing performances by Karen Pittman, Michelle Veintimilla and Corey Stoll.

I was familiar with Corey Stoll’s work since his turns in House of Cards and Homeland, but Karen Pittman (The Morning Show, Yellowstone) and Michelle Veintimilla (Seven Seconds, Gotham) were revelations.

The story unfolds in seven segments over a a span of years. It opens with Sandy (Pittman) compassionately counseling a teenage Elsa (Veintimilla) to survive abuse from Elsa’s father. Years later, the lawyer Paul (Stoll) reconnects with Sandy, now a rising NYC politician; the two game out how an innocent miscalculation years before could erupt into a career-killing political scandal today. Each of the characters becomes more entangled by the choices of the others, and the dominoes fall.

What We Do Next explores the difficulty that those traumatized and ill-equipped by upbringing have navigating the legal system and making constructive choices.

I am not unfamiliar with political crisis management, and most segments of the story rang true.

I attended What We Do Next’s world premiere at Cinequest, with Stephen Berber in attendance. After four days rehearsal in the producer’s backyard, What We Do Next was shot in six days – in a COVID bubble in Louisville. I’ll let you know when What We Do Next is released theatrically or on demand.

DVD of the Week: Midnight in Paris

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With Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen has made his best movie since 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters. It’s a funny and wistful exploration of the nostalgia for living in another time and place – all set in the most sumptuously photographed contemporary Paris.

Successful but disenchanted screenwriter and would be novelist Owen Wilson accompanies his mismatched fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where he fantasizes about living in the artistically fertile Paris of the 1920s. Indeed, at midnight, he happens upon a portal to that era, and finds himself hanging out with the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Stein. He meets Marion Cotillard, a 1920s gal who is herself nostalgic for the 1890s.

Midnight in Paris shines because of the perfectly crafted dialogue. McAdams’ every instinct is cringingly wrong for Wilson. She is enraptured by the pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, who couldn’t be more insufferable.

As usual, Allen has attracted an excellent cast. Owen Wilson rises to the material and gives one of his best performances. Corey Stoll is hilarious as Hemingway and Adrien Brody even funnier as Salvador Dali. Cotillard is luminous.

It makes my list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.

Midnight in Paris: Woody’s best in a long, long time

by

With Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen has made his best movie since 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters.  It’s a funny and wistful exploration of the nostalgia for living in another time and place – all set in the most sumptuously photographed contemporary Paris.

Successful but disenchanted screenwriter and would be novelist Owen Wilson accompanies his mismatched fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where he fantasizes about living in the artistically fertile Paris of the 1920s.  Indeed, at midnight, he happens upon a portal to that era, and finds himself hanging out with the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Stein.  He meets Marion Cotillard, a 1920s gal who is herself nostalgic for the 1890s.

Midnight in Paris shines because of the perfectly crafted dialogue.  McAdams’ every instinct is cringingly wrong for Wilson.  She is enraptured by the pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, who couldn’t be more insufferable.

As usual, Allen has attracted an excellent cast.  Owen Wilson rises to the material and gives one of his best performances.  Corey Stoll is hilarious as Hemingway and Adrien Brody even funnier as Salvador Dali.  Cotillard is luminous.

It makes my list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.