Andrew Stevens pays loving but not hagiographic tribute to his late mother, famed actress Stella Stevens, in his documentary recently showcased at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. The film convincingly makes the case that its subject, best known for her performances in such pictures as The Poseidon Adventure and The Nutty Professor, is severely underrated, both as an actress and social activist. Stella Stevens: The Last Starlet aims to rectify that perception and, thanks to numerous clips of her work and effusive commentary by the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Vivica A. Fox, it succeeds beautifully.

The filmmaker (who appears frequently) admits that his relationship with his mother was rocky, to say the least, in the early years. Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, Stevens got married at age 16 and had Andrew, her first and only child, six months later. The marriage soon dissolved, and when she moved to Hollywood to pursue an acting career, she took Andrew to California with her illegally. His father and grandfather later showed up and spirited him away, resulting in an ugly custody battle and Andrew not having a real relationship with his mother until he turned 16.

Stevens was soon signed to 20th Century Fox, where she was groomed to be a starlet in the mold of Marilyn Monroe and Mamie Van Doren. Her sexpot image was further confirmed when she appeared as a Playboy centerfold, though she had desperately tried to purchase the nude images back from Hugh Hefner, who refused.

Her career quickly took off thanks to such films as Li’l Abner, in which she played the wonderfully named “Appasionata Von Climax,” and the musical Say One for Me with Bing Crosby, for which she received a Golden Globe award for New Star of the Year.

“Some of the most fun parts I’ve played are nymphomaniacs,” Stevens amusingly points out in one of many interviews featured here. Some of them are shown via archival clips from various talk show appearances, while others are recreated using a lookalike actress (Lindsie Kongsore). While the device is jarring at first, it admittedly breathes life into Stevens’ words. But the filmmaker gets too carried away with it at times, as when he unnecessarily uses an actor to play a film critic reading an excerpt from a review.

There are plenty of juicy anecdotes and revelations in the documentary, one of the most priceless being Stevens’ account of co-star Bobby Darin getting a much noticeable erection while they shot a kissing scene. She also reveals that she had no desire to appear with Elvis Presley in Girls! Girls! Girls! and only agreed to do it after she was promised that she would get to play opposite Montgomery Clift in her next film. The Clift project never materialized, and she could never bring herself to watch the Presley one.

We learn of her many romances, including an affair with the notorious and very much married Hollywood fixer Sidney Korshak and a lengthy relationship with actor Skip Ward, who took financial advantage of her and was frequently unfaithful.

The documentary makes a strong case for Stevens’ talent — particularly her formidable comic chops, as illustrated in numerous clips of her work, including from an episode of Bonanza for which she won acclaim. She held her own opposite Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor and sparkled in the old-fashioned comedy How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life opposite Dean Martin, with whom she had previously appeared in the Matt Helm spy spoof The Silencers. She received critical acclaim for her exuberant turn in Sam Peckinpah’s 1970 The Ballad of Cable Hogue, though the film was a flop. When she did appear in hits, such as the hugely popular disaster pic The Poseidon Adventure, it didn’t give her career much traction.  

She later became an iconic figure for Black audiences, thanks to her groundbreaking interracial love scene with Jim Brown in the blaxploitation hit Slaughter and her campy villainous turn in Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold. But what she really wanted to do, as they say, was direct. She finally got her chance in 1989 with an indie feature called The Ranch, starring her son Andrew (he later returned the favor, directing her in the 1991 B-movie The Terror Within II), and a feminist-themed documentary, The American Heroine, which was never released.

Besides the ample clips from her roles and television appearances, the documentary includes fascinating home movies, personal photographs, and insightful commentary from various figures including film historians Leonard Maltin and Courtney Joyner. But it’s Tarantino who unsurprisingly proves the highlight, articulately gushing about Stevens’ performances with the passion of a true fan. (Introducing The Last Starlet at the festival, Andrew admitted that he basically handed the ball to Tarantino and let him run with it.)

While Stevens’ big-screen career eventually fizzled, she never stopped working, appearing in dozens of direct-to-video movies and TV series until her final appearance in something called Megaconda in 2010. “If the idea of being an actress is to work, she worked. She worked a lot,” Tarantino points out.

Her final days were sad ones, as she slowly succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease until her death at 84 in 2023. Much to the consternation of her son and her many fans, she was not included in the Academy Awards’ annual “In Memoriam” segment and never received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The latter is a rebuff that should be corrected — especially if Stella Stevens: The Last Starlet gets the exposure it deserves.

Jesse Eisenberg delivers a story tethered to the human condition of longing for something “else” or “more” in the triumphant A Real Pain. Directed, written, and starring Eisenberg, the film perfectly balances dry humor and understated, character-driven drama. At a well-paced 90 minutes, the story never overstays its welcome. Instead, the story succeeds because, despite its brevity, it streamlines a beautifully executed narrative that needs no more or less than what it’s being given. 

A Real Pain follows David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin), two cousins who could be mistaken for brothers for how closely they grew up together. However, despite being born mere weeks apart, they’re polar opposites. Despite this, they share an often exasperated fondness for one another—with David, in particular, keeping a watchful eye out for Benji. In order to honor their late grandmother, the two embark on a tour of Poland to explore their family history while paying their respects at their grandmother’s childhood home. 

There’s a simplistic, linear structure to the film that could easily be mistaken as dull. But the rapid-fire dialogue and meditations on life and losses embolden the otherwise straightforward story with unexpected vigor. Eisenberg and cinematographer Michał Dymek shoot everything from the bustling airport to the Polish countryside with grace as we move forward along with these characters. 

However, while the direction is confident and observational, especially when highlighting the magnitude of emotions Culkin’s face bears while still withholding, the writing pulls it all together. The script is simply remarkable in its conscious depiction of vulnerability that’s almost too raw to watch. Eisenberg’s script feels personal, even if it’s fictional, and it’s best seen in the relationship between Benji and David. 

Despite his constant proclamations of how much he loves his cousin, how close they are, and how integral David is in his life, Benji is quick to punch down and belittle. He tells David that no one likes to walk alone when talking about another traveler, yet leaves him in the dust to speak with her instead. He calls out his insecurities in public while telling him that he has no problem with his cousin’s shortcomings. Eisenberg captures the grind of it, shoulders hunching further and further as he either apologizes for Benji’s behavior or watches in amazement as Benji somehow pulls off being a brazen ass with little consequence. 

And that’s because as impulsive and self-righteous Benji is, so many of his tirades have just enough truth to make them justifiable. Even while so many of us would shrink away from the kind of conflict he so vigorously chases, we can’t deny that he comes from a place of honesty. It’s the critical difference between Benji and David. David believes there’s a time and place to express pain and grief. Benji unleashes it all like a tidal wave. 

It’s what makes the centerpiece moment of the film, a taut and revealing dinner, all the more poignant. While it seems like David is getting his moment to unload and overshare, as Benji might, with no repercussions, the dynamics of the group tour remain unchanged. It’s a brilliantl sequence that shoulders the weight of the tension into a precarious position. We understand why Benji draws people in. And, aided by Culkin’s tumultuous performance, we feel for him and the hurdles he’s grappling with. But it’s hard not to feel how David wilts in his presence viscerally.

There’s just such honesty when David tells others or even Benji himself about the envy he harbors. It’s a profoundly relatable phenomenon. The ability to adore someone and yet be jealous of what you perceive they have that you don’t. In my pettiest, ugliest moments, I long to be prettier. I want to be thinner and have a life that affords me more time, money, and energy to achieve a desired weight. Sometimes, I wish to be more naturally funny and intellectual. I long for all of these elements that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things because we’re all largely longing for something that would make us, in our own mind’s eye, better than the sum of our parts. It’s so frustratingly human for us to do so. 

A Real Pain captures that bruising frustration. The film is still wickedly funny, with Culkin’s wry and motormouth delivery landing some searing punches. But any longevity the film has is due to the script, which is far more revealing and prickly than trailers might suggest. Introspective yet light on its feet, it speaks to any of us who’ve ever struggled to find our footing in a dynamic. To call the relationship between Benji and David toxic would dismiss the writing. Instead, it showcases the messiness of what comes when we grow up along someone only for our paths to minutely diverge over time until what we miss isn’t what have in the present but who we had in the past. 

Aided by two dynamic central performances, A Real Pain is a vibrant character study. With cutting humor and well-paced introspection, the film allows grief room to breathe without any easy answers. Love and mourning are messy, and Eisenberg’s script honors this. 

A Real Pain is out now in theaters. 

Images courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

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NEW YORK (OSV News) – Why not make a Christmas-themed action flick starring Dwayne Johnson as Kris Kringle’s chief bodyguard? The answer to that question is revealed in “Red One” (Amazon MGM).

The attempt to put Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons) in the middle of a lot of frenetic brawling and then wrap the whole thing up with a climactic sleigh chase leads to a hopelessly unbalanced tone in this ill-conceived holiday offering. Despite a conversion story for one of the main characters, moreover, this is far too hard-edged a production to be in any way family-friendly.

After St. Nick is kidnapped, Johnson’s Callum Drift and his team trace the breach of North Pole security that enabled the abduction to gifted but mercenary internet hacker Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans). Since cynical Jack has, since childhood, denied the very existence of the Jolly One, however, it soon becomes clear that, for all his moral shortcomings, he was acting inadvertently.

Belatedly realizing what a catastrophe he’s helped bring about, Jack agrees to help Callum and his boss, Zoe (Lucy Liu), catch the real culprit. But straight-arrow Callum has taken an instant dislike to this shady scoundrel, and only agrees to team with him under orders from Zoe. So the newly-minted odd couple take up the chase.

Clues eventually lead them to one of Santa’s long-standing adversaries, a shape-shifting witch called Gryla (Kiernan Shipka). With Santa neutralized, she plans to ruin the impending holiday by punishing every person on his naughty list. Needless to say, that means a host of potential victims around the world.

The mayhem Gryla’s nefarious plot unleashes remains thoroughly stylized throughout and the values put forward in an almost preachy way by Chris Morgan’s script are respectable from a Judeo-Christian perspective. Thus Gryla is about retribution, but Santa, who sees the inner child in even the most wayward grown-up, is about mercy and forbearance.

As for Jack, isn’t it high time he worked on being a better father to his mildly misbehaving son, Dylan (Wesley Kimmel)? The lad’s mom, Olivia (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) — to whom, we learn, Jack was never married — certainly thinks so.

All well and good. Yet, cinematically, director Jake Kasdan never finds his footing. Nor does it seem likely that he ever could have, since early scenes alternately set in Aruba and at the site of Santa’s captivity may have viewers of a certain age imagining the effect of Father Christmas wandering into an episode of “Miami Vice.”

To put it another way, Dasher and Dashiell Hammett simply do not mix.

Additionally, “Red One” is a good reminder that not every Yuletide movie is geared toward youngsters. In this case, the screenplay’s vulgar vocabulary, while certainly not excessive by Hollywood standards, does flag the proceedings as strictly off-limits for kids.

The film contains considerable bloodless violence, fleeting partial nudity, references to a character’s out-of-wedlock birth, about a dozen instances each of mild swearing and crude language, at least one rough term and a couple of crass expressions. The OSV News classification is A-III — adults.  The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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