Fly Me to the Moon (Greg Berlanti, 2024)

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Woody Harrelson, Ray Romano, Jim Rash, Anna Garcia, Donald Elise Watkins, Noah Robbins, Christian Clemenson, Colin Woodell, Nick Dillenburg, Christian Zuber. Screenplay: Keenan Flynn, Bill Kirstein, Rose Gilroy. Cinematography: Dariusz Wolski. Production design: Shane Valentino. Film editing: Harry Jierjian. Music: Daniel Pemberton. 

The People vs. Larry Flynt (Milos Forman, 1996)

Woody Harrelson in The People vs. Larry Flynt

Cast: Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love, Edward Norton, Brett Harrelson, Donna Hanover, James Cromwell, Crispin Glover, Vincent Schiavelli, Miles Chapin, James Carville, Richard Paul, Larry Flynt. Screenplay: Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski. Cinematography: Philippe Rousselot. Production design: Patrizia von Brandenstein. Film editing: Christopher Tellefsen. Music: Thomas Newman. 

The People vs. Larry Flynt succeeds as a message movie, demonstrating that even the most obnoxious among us -- and Larry Flynt was certainly that -- deserves the protection of the First Amendment. Of course, the movie didn't have to do that for us; the Rehnquist Supreme Court did it, unanimously. (I have to wonder if today's court, with so many justices appointed by a president who railed against the news media as "fake" and referred to the press as enemies of the people, would do likewise.) Where the film falls down is in its efforts to be a biopic as well as a message movie. We get a glimpse of Flynt's backwoods Kentucky boyhood as a bootlegger who tries to keep his father from drinking up the profits, and we see how Flynt moved from strip club owner to magazine publisher, but none of this sheds enough light on how the flamboyantly defiant personality came together. Too much time is spent on Flynt's short-lived conversion to religion under the guidance of Jimmy Carter's sister, Ruth Stapleton (Donna Hanover), without tying it either to his past or to his emergence as a champion of free speech. But the portrayal of Flynt's relationship with Althea Leasure (entertainingly played by Courtney Love) does give us an insight into his mixture of rebellion and convention, as the two decidedly promiscuous people decide to get married. Nothing but love, it seems, can tame the beast. Certainly not the law. Woody Harrelson gets a chance to go over the top in the courtroom scenes, and he takes it wonderfully. Edward Norton is good, too, as Alan Isaacman, the Harvard-trained lawyer who has to put up with this yahoo. The People vs. Larry Flynt might have held together better if Flynt's story had been told from Isaacman's point of view instead of the somewhat glossy, somewhat reticent, somewhat too admiring account the screenplay gives us.  

Zombieland (Ruben Fleischer, 2009)

 

Zombieland (Ruben Fleischer, 2009)

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Bill Murray, Amber Heard. Screenplay: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick. Cinematography: Michael Bonvillain. Production design: Maher Ahmad. Film editing: Alan Baumgarten. Music: David Sardy. 

Zombieland feels so much like a parody of the series The Walking Dead that I had to check to make sure that the movie premiered before the first installment of the TV show. (It did. The series started on Halloween in 2010.) I think if the series had been as entertaining as the movie, I would have stuck with it past the three or four seasons it took for me to burn out on it. Because really there’s no way to take the notion of zombie Armageddon seriously, even though the idea of a viral plague of zombieism may have gained a scintilla of credibility after the Covid pandemic hit. Ruben Fleischer does many things right in the movie, starting with the casting. Woody Harrelson is one of those actors who always improve the movie they’re in, and Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin give him solid support. And Fleischer does something I appreciated: He gets most of the gross-out effects, the splattering of blood, brains, and body parts, over with in the opening credits so he and his screenwriters can just get down to concocting funny situations and lines for his characters: the nerdy Columbus, the Twinkie-jonesing Tallahassee, and the con-artist sisters Wichita and Little Rock. The idea of putting Columbus's “rules” on-screen to be splattered with blood and guts was inspired. This was Fleischer’s debut as a film director, and while he hasn’t quite moved beyond this first achievement, there’s still time. 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh, 2017)

Sam Rockwell, Frances McDormand, and Zeljko Ivanek in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Mildred Hayes: Frances McDormand
Bill Willoughby: Woody Harrelson
Jason Dixon: Sam Rockwell
Anne Willoughby: Abbie Cornish
Robbie Hayes: Lucas Hedges
Desk Sergeant: Zeljko Ivanek
Red Welby: Caleb Landry Jones
Chief Abercrombie: Clarke Peters
Charlie Hayes: John Hawkes
James: Peter Dinklage
Momma Dixon: Sandy Martin

Director: Martin McDonagh
Screenplay: Martin McDonagh
Cinematography: Ben Davis
Production design: Inbal Weinberg
Film editing: Jon Gregory
Music: Carter Burwell

Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell got the Oscars they deserved: Mildred Hayes's sour persistence and Jason Dixon's stupidity make them just short of caricatures; they needed the nuances provided by McDormand and Rockwell to come to any semblance of life. But the performer who gives Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri the grounding it needs is Woody Harrelson, one of those actors, like John Goodman or the late Bill Paxton, whose presence in the cast could make any movie just a little bit better. Chief Willoughby, the butt of Mildred's billboards, is not the dumb small-town police chief that we (and of course Mildred) first believe him to be. He's a more complex figure, who even achieves a measure of tragic grandeur with his suicide, carefully leaving a note on the hood he puts over his face to tell his wife not to remove it but to leave that to the police, and then leaving behind notes for his nemesis, Mildred, and for Dixon ("I'm dead now, sorry about that") that set the remainder of the film in motion. He gives McDonagh's acerbic screenplay a bit of warmth, though maybe not enough: I found Three Billboards a less satisfying film than the wonderful In Bruges (2008). But like that film, it has a fascinating texture provided by a supporting cast full of skillful players: Lucas Hedges as Mildred's somewhat exasperated son; Zeljko Ivanek as the desk sergeant trying to bring order out of the office chaos ("You do not allow a member of the public to call you a fuckhead in the station house"); Caleb Landry Jones as the advertising manager who gets the brunt of the town's protests and is tossed out of a window by Dixon; Clarke Peters as the level-headed new chief who manages to restore order after Willoughby's death; John Hawkes as Mildred's hair-trigger ex-husband encumbered with an air-headed girlfriend; Peter Dinklage as Mildred's suitor bearing up under constant reminders that he's a "midget"; and Sandy Martin as Dixon's demanding racist mother. There are also scenes that come out of nowhere, as when Mildred, tending the flowers at her billboards, carries on a tender, one-sided conversation with a deer that has wandered into the field and is watching her. In the runup to the Oscars, when it was a contender for best picture, Three Billboards encountered some criticism for not taking more seriously Dixon's treatment of black people, especially since the real town of Ferguson is in the same state as the fictional Ebbing. There's some justice to the charge that McDonagh is being insensitive, but satire is always insensitive. It's not a great film, I think, but maybe that judgment is premature. As Mildred says, "I guess we can decide along the way."