Tag Archives: Sebastian Stan

KARYN KUSAMA’S DESTROYER

DESTROYER—a new template for sunshine noir and one of its greatest cinematic exponents since Chinatown—is the deeply evocative redemption song of an undercover cop (Nicole Kidman, jagged, reeling, transformed) on a contemporary odyssey across Los Angeles, finally making sense of a life marked and almost ruined by an act of hesitation seventeen years ago.

As director Karyn Kusama told a Film Independent Presents audience earlier this month at the Arclight Hollywood, “We all love genre, we all love criminals, but these kinds of movies get a little too easy… We want to see the consequences, the toll.”

Kusama was speaking for herself and her writers—her husband Phil Hay and his writing partner Matt Manfredi—and all three will return to the Arclight this week for post-screening Q & A’s, followed by Nicole Kidman during the first weekend in January.

DESTROYER

Now playing.

NICOLE KIDMAN and KARYN KUSAMA Q&A

Saturday, January 12, after the 7:30 pm show.

Cinerama Dome

Arclight Hollywood

6360 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles.

 

NICOLE KIDMAN Q&A’s

Friday and Saturday, January 4 and 5, at 7:30 pm.

KARYN KUSAMA, PHIL HAY, MATT MANFREDI IN CONVERSATION

Wednesday through Sunday, December 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30, following the 7:15 pm shows.

Arclight Hollywood

6360 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Top: Elvis Mitchell, Karyn Kusama, Phil Hay, and Matt Manfredi at the Film Independent Presents screening of Destroyer at the ArcLight, Hollywood, December 12, 2018.

Above: Kusama, Arclight, December 12, 2018.

Arclight photographs by Araya Diaz/Getty Images, courtesy the photographer and Film Independent Presents.

Below: Nicole Kidman and Sebastian Stan (back to camera) in Destroyer.

Kidman and Stan photograph courtesy Annapurna Pictures.

I, TONYA

“All of the characters are rebellious and wrong-headed, and I wanted the screenplay to be that, too.” — Steven Rogers, screenwriter of I, TONYA, at the Film Independent screening at LACMA, December 8.

I, TONYA—director Craig Gillespie’s biopic of the infamous Tonya Harding and cohort—is a complicated film of multiple subjectivities. Wildly entertaining on one hand, yet occasionally squirm-making in its depiction of parental and spousal sadism as a component of a laugh-riot mockumentary.

“This never happened,” a gun-wielding Tonya (Margot Robbie) says as she glares into the camera, just before giving chase to her violent joke of a husband (Sebastian Stan) and blowing a hole through a kitchen cabinet. It’s one of the few times Tonya gets her own back during her three years with Jeff Gillooly, whom she married in order to escape the years of abuse dished out by her grenade-launching-helicopter-mom-from-hell (Allison Janney, peerless).

Tonya’s solace was figure skating, the one thing she truly excelled at. But—according to the panels who judged her performances and the media that covered them—excellence wasn’t enough. Tonya had the bad taste to be born poor, and all the choices that followed—the homemade outfits, the blue eye shadow, the crass corporate rock playlist that accompanied her out on the ice—prevented her from getting the scores she deserved in a sport where success is predicated on image as much as skill.

 

I, TONYA, now playing.

ARCLIGHT HOLLYWOOD, 6360 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles.

arclightcinemas.com/movie/i-tonya

arclightcinemas.com/en/news/itonya

LANDMARK, 10850 West Pico Boulevard, Rancho Park, Los Angeles.

landmarktheatres.com/los-angeles/i-tonya

I, Tonya editor Tatiana S. Riegel, screenwriter Steven Rogers, and Film Independent curator Elvis Mitchell at the I, Tonya at LACMA, December 7, 2017. Images courtesy of WireImage and Film Independent.

Tatiana S. Riegel, Steven Rogers, Elvis Mitchell, MS Stage