the last movie star movie review

The Last Movie Star (I) (2017)

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The Last Movie Stars Traces the Legacy of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in Six Dazzling Parts

I f you think Paul Newman is the coolest, Ethan Hawke ’s superb multi-part documentary The Last Movie Stars is for you. And if you only sort-of know the work of his wife, Joanne Woodward , The Last Movie Stars is absolutely for you, for two reasons. To understand Newman as both an actor and a man, you need to know something about the woman whose influence helped make him one of the most charismatic performers of the late 20th century. But there’s something else: Woodward was one of the finest actors of her era, but for various reasons—being a mother to six children chief among them—she never had the big Hollywood career she deserved, even though she was a star before most people knew who her husband was. The story of Newman and Woodward is one of the great Hollywood stories, as distinguished from a great Hollywood romance: their partnership was so distinctive, so whole, and at some points so rocky, that to sentimentalize it only does it a disservice.

Hawke has deep affection for these two performers, as stars and as people. But if The Last Movie Stars, airing on HBO Max, is a work of great warmth, Hawke easily steers clear of turning it into hagiography. Hawke was approached by Woodward and Newman’s surviving children, who wanted to ensure that their parents’ work, and their extraordinary but far-from-perfect life together, wouldn’t be forgotten. Hawke didn’t know the couple personally, but as a teenager in New Jersey, he would sometimes see them around his school, which one of their children attended. To him, they seemed the model husband-and-wife team, two working actors who had built a seemingly idyllic partnership. The Last Movie Stars explores both the truth and the fallacies behind that image, and even though several of the Newmans’ surviving children appear in the documentary, speaking candidly about their parents’ flaws as humans, Hawke shapes it all into a voyage of exploration , not of muckraking. Illustrated with film clips and archival footage that breathe life into the story, this is a portrait of two people who loved their craft and each other, in almost equal measure. It’s also a reminder that marriage isn’t for the faint of heart—and even those unions that look great from the outside always carry their share of heartache.

The Last Movie Stars consists of six episodes, each one running roughly an hour. That’s a lot of Newman and Woodward. But once you start digging in, you realize this thing could almost stand to be longer, particularly given the way Hawke frames the material. The backbone of The Last Movie Stars is a vast set of interviews with key players in Newman’s life and career , conducted by Rebel Without a Cause screenwriter Stewart Stern. Newman had originally intended to use the interviews to write a memoir, only to change his mind; in 1998, 10 years before his death, he burned the tapes. (Around the same time, he burned his tuxedo in the driveway of the family’s Connecticut home, which tells you something about his relationship to fame.) Fortunately, Stern had had the tapes transcribed, and so the voices of the people who worked with or were close to either Newman, Woodward or both—among them Sidney Lumet, Martin Ritt, Gore Vidal, and Newman’s first wife, Jackie Witte—survived on paper, at least. For Hawke, The Last Movie Stars was partly a pandemic-era project, and so he gathered friends, colleagues and family members via Zoom to talk about Newman and Woodward and their dual legacies. Stern’s transcripts are brought to life by some of Hawke’s fellow actors: Laura Linney reads the words of Joanne Woodward, and George Clooney gives voice to Newman’s.

If Hawke’s method is complicated to describe, the result is wholly engaging and intimate. (Hawke has a gift for making offbeat, exhilarating documentaries: his 2014 Seymour: An Introduction , a portrait of New York piano teacher Seymour Bernstein, traces the inherent meaning of creativity in everyday life.) The Last Movie Stars dips and swerves between Newman and Woodward’s personal and professional lives, noting the points of disharmony as well as accord. The two got to know one another while working on the Broadway production of Picnic in 1953. Newman was required to dance onstage and didn’t know what he was doing; Woodward, an understudy, stepped in to help, and the duo’s relationship—which, they themselves make clear, included a bang-up sex life—took flight, even though Newman was married at the time, to Witte.

Those who like their true-love life stories clean and tidy should brace themselves: Newman and Woodward were nearly five years into their union when Newman finally left Witte, shortly after the birth of Witte and Newman’s youngest child, Stephanie, who speaks frankly on-camera about how much Newman’s deceit damaged the family and hurt her mother. (Newman’s son from that first marriage, Scott, died from a drug overdose in 1978.)

But Stephanie also has Joanne Woodward tattooed in flowing script on her forearm. Because if, as this documentary reveals, Newman was often remote and disconnected—both with his children and with Woodward, the love of his life—it was Woodward who held the extended family together, coming to love Newman’s first three children as much as she loved the three that she and Newman had together. Newman, who from the beginning looked celestially beautiful onscreen, and who learned to become a terrific actor after a rocky start, wasn’t always the best father. But it’s entirely possible that Woodward, who put her own career on hold to do her best by six children, was the more innately gifted actor. In several clips culled from talk-show interviews of the 1970s and ‘80s, Woodward speaks with daring forthrightness—for that time, or for this one—about the cost of what she gave up, despite how much she loved her children.

Though The Last Movie Stars is fantastically revelatory about this couple’s life together, which they took great pains to keep private during their 50-year-marriage, it’s still the movie clips that tell the most important part of the story. Newman was a dazzling screen presence in pictures like Hud , Cool Hand Luke , and The Verdict, to name just three of many. In some of these performances, he radiates an earthy carnality; in others, he betrays the universal insecurities and doubts of the aged, of people who may know in their hearts they didn’t do as well as they could have by those around them.

Woodward was a different kind of actor, and her career took a wholly contrasting shape. Her big successes came early: she won an Oscar long before her husband did, for her role in The Three Faces of Eve, released in 1957. In the movies she made in her youth, like The Sound and the Fury and The Long Hot Summer, as well as the later TV-movie roles she took on when those constituted the only work she could get, she always seemed to glow from within, and her voice was the equivalent of a seashell’s pearlescent interior. As her husband did, she worked at her craft. (Both had studied with Method guru Sanford Meisner.) But her spirit, animated by her own innate sexual electricity, was the wellspring of all she brought to bear onscreen or onstage.

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The LAST MOVIE STAR Review — Burt Reynolds’ Swan Song is a Real Treat

The Last Movie Star review— Lisa Johnson Mandell says Adam Rifkin’s film, Burt Reynolds swan song, is a poignant and entertaining treasure.

Now available on Showtime On Demand and Amazon Prime , The Last Movie Star is a clever and gentle homage to Reynolds’ real life career. He plays Vic Edwards, a former international star, possibly the biggest in the world. Vic finds himself down on his luck after having self-destructed in various ways, as superstars do. He’s bitter and disappointed in himself and in life, but he always manages to maintain his trademark self deprecating humor.

Vic is taken by surprise when he’s invited to a seemingly prestigious film festival to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. He’s hesitant to go, but his old pal Sonny, (played wonderfully by Chevy Chase ) pushes him to, so he reluctantly agrees and heads to Nashville.

Upon arrival, he’s shocked and embarrassed to discover the affair is rather low budget — it’s less a film festival and more just a bunch of cinema geeks who excitedly gather to show movies in the back room of a bar. But the fans are devoted and are elated that their idol actually showed up.

Humiliated by how far he’s fallen, Vic goes on a soul searching journey, and in the process unexpectedly bonds with his sweet natured hosts. Clips from Vic’s (Burt’s) performances in Smokey And the Bandit , Deliverance and more, add to the heartfelt, genuine, truly funny and moving moments of the film.

Ariel Winter , Ellar Coltrane and Clark Duke round out the cast, and are all terrific. Take a look at director Adam Rifkin’s The Last Movie Star — you won’t regret it.

The Last Movie Star review— Lisa Johnson Mandell says Adam Rifkin’s film, Burt Reynolds swan song, is a poignant and entertaining treasure.

1 Hour 34 Minutes

Lisa Johnson Mandell

[…] of all, major kudos go to writer/director Brian Cavallaro (Against The Night, The Last Movie Star), for making a film on a $10,000 budget. People spend more than that on GIPHYs these days. Filmed […]

Review: Newman and Woodward, Mr. and Mrs. Movie Star

Ethan Hawke’s HBO Max documentary “The Last Movie Stars” examines two great actors in their own, and many of their friends’, words.

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By Mike Hale

Ethan Hawke begins “The Last Movie Stars,” his six-hour documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, with a video-conferenced gathering. Peering into a laptop, his pandemic hair curling over his shoulders, he welcomes a similarly informal procession of actors to his project: George Clooney, Laura Linney, Billy Crudup, Oscar Isaac, Zoe Kazan, Sally Field, Sam Rockwell and many others. It’s like watching a cast gather for an early-morning table read.

“The Last Movie Stars,” which premiered Thursday on HBO Max , is the story of two of America’s most honored and most famous performers, as well as the story of a particularly public, highly fraught half-century marriage. It’s a sprawling, complicated tale, and Hawke — who took it on at the request of one of Newman and Woodward’s children — responds to the challenge with an approach that’s both exhaustive and disarmingly casual. Profiling two icons of cool , he doesn’t try to match them. He adopts the role of enthusiastic fan and master of ceremonies.

The result, though it loses momentum across its six episodes, is charming, entertaining and, for the eyes, addictive. The series is in part a traditional, chronological biography, and Newman and Woodward are constantly onscreen in film and television clips, outtakes, interviews and home movies. That’s a critical mass of beauty and personality that not many documentaries can match.

What makes the show different, though, is the large group of Hawke’s colleagues who take part. They take the place of the scholarly talking heads you would usually find in a historical documentary, and part of their job is to serve as interlocutors and sounding boards for Hawke’s musings on Newman’s and Woodward’s lives and careers.

But for the most part, they’re there not to talk but to act. Hawke was given access to transcriptions of a trove of interviews conducted for an oral history that Newman never completed. ( A book based on the material is scheduled for publication this fall.) So the story is told on the soundtrack through excerpts from these vivid, surprisingly frank interviews, read by Hawke’s cast: Clooney as Newman, Linney as Woodward, Brooks Ashmanskas as Gore Vidal, Vincent D’Onofrio as Karl Malden, Bobby Cannavale as Elia Kazan and so on. A biography of two consummate actors becomes an exercise in performance.

What will draw the most attention in “The Last Movie Stars” is probably its account of Newman and Woodward’s difficult personal lives: the five years they carried on an affair while he was still married to his first wife; the ravages of his alcoholism and the toll of his insecurities; the effects on their children of their commitments to work (and later, for him, to auto racing and philanthropy).

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Review: the last movie star.

The film is a collection of old-fogey clichés, with a narrative that mixes a career retrospective with a road trip.

It’s unseemly watching Burt Reynolds, one of the greatest movie stars, beg for sympathy in writer-director Adam Rifkin’s The Last Movie Star . The film bears a resemblance to Daniel Noah’s Max Rose , as both are vehicles for their stars to explore their own legacies within a thinly fictional framework. But in Max Rose , Jerry Lewis had the sense not to overtly soften his character’s crustiness, maintaining his dignity and reminding viewers that he was still a vital actor despite the production’s pervading mediocrity. Reynolds still has his characteristic comic-masculine force, and he can still throw a line away with masterful panache, but he allows Rifkin to enable his self-pity.

The film begins on shameless ground, with Vic Edwards (Reynolds), a movie star with the same career ups and downs as the actor playing him, giving an interview in the 1970s. We see archive footage of Reynolds himself, who reinvigorated his career in the late ’60s as a fixture of the talk-show circuit, perfecting faux modesty as the ultimate kind of egotism—a pose that inspired countless subsequent stars. Rifkin then cuts to a stark close-up of Edwards in the present day, the implication of this edit being unmistakable: that this icon is now old . It’s then revealed that Edwards is at a veterinarian’s office having his old dog put down, though Rifkin does practice a bit of restraint in eliding Edwards’s goodbye to his pet. A hard cut, from Edwards regarding his dog in the examination room to the man tossing the pooch’s empty collar into the passenger seat of his car, is the most moving moment in the film.

The Last Movie Star is mostly a collection of old-fogey clichés though, with a narrative that mixes a man’s career retrospective with a road trip featuring the requisite bonding session with an attractive young woman who will prove to Edwards that life is still worth living, no matter how much of it may be in his rearview mirror. The obligatory millennial is Lil (Ariel Winter), who embodies every stereotype about 21st-century “kids these days,” as she’s melded to her smartphone, tatted up, perpetually clad in revealing clothing, and in love with a hipster poser who’s obviously a douchebag.

Reynolds and Winter, both sensitive, intuitive actors, have an authentic rapport that threatens to transcend the shopworn material, but Rifkin’s schematics get in their way, condescending to both of them for their respective ages, while exploiting Reynolds’s stardom for unearned nostalgia. Rifkin’s aiming for a comic version of Wild Strawberries , which is obvious when Edwards awkwardly interrogates past Reynolds characters, but he ends up with a pale sitcom imitation of Scent of a Woman and About Schmidt .

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Ethan Hawke-Directed Doc ‘The Last Movie Stars’ Lets Us Bask in Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s Glow: TV Review

By Daniel D'Addario

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Deep into “ The Last Movie Stars ” — a six-episode HBO Max documentary series directed by Ethan Hawke — Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward appear on the cover of a 1980 issue of McCall’s magazine. In the headline, his name comes first, then hers, then a reference to “their very private marriage.”

This may come as a surprise, even as the order of names, and Newman’s face forcing Woodward’s to the cover’s bottom half, make perfect sense. With movies like “Cool Hand Luke” and “The Hustler” in the canon, and Newman’s face smiling benevolently across every American salad-dressing aisle, the scope of his fame made the world see the accomplished Woodward as his wife before she was an artist. But “private”? Really? The pair’s marriage was widely discussed and covered by the press; they worked together frequently and appeared as a proto-Tom and Rita, the vision of successful marriage, Hollywood style.

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Hawke lacks access to his subjects: Newman died in 2008, and Woodward has lived with Alzheimer’s disease for many years. But he finds a way forward. Throughout “The Last Movie Stars,” titled after writer Gore Vidal’s description of the Oscar winners, Hawke builds the case, first, that Newman and Woodward used art to probe their relationship. More movingly still, Hawke conveys the shared but unequal sacrifice both spouses made so that their long-standing partnership could be a greater entity than either could be on his or her own. The headline ends up making sense: The pair lived in public, but had unknowable inner perspectives that Hawke’s series only now brings to light.

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Newman, who struggled with alcohol use, and who viewed himself and Woodward as “a couple of orphans” from their first meeting, used a planned memoir to come to a better understanding of himself; for reasons obscure perhaps even to him, he eventually burned the tapes, though some transcripts survive. Hawke, an outsider to the family, conscripts notable friends to narrate and comment on these transcripts, giving intimate insight into the stars’ thinking. Here, George Clooney plays Paul, with Laura Linney as Joanne.

There’s a shagginess that warms and distracts; the early-COVID vibes of Hawke convening pals on Zoom can feel as jarring as the images of young Newman and Woodward are nostalgic. But this hominess eventually fits two stars whose rural-Connecticut-based lives and images were rooted in performed authenticity. And Hawke’s volubility — at one point confessing to his daughter (and “Stranger Things” actor) Maya that he’s figuring out what the project is about as he makes it — is an intriguing match with a couple who recorded their most personal thoughts about each other.

Those thoughts can scorch: Linney, as Joanne, reflects upon spending Christmas Eve preparing presents alone, after her husband, known to the public as a devoted family man, has drunk himself insensate. Or they can be anguished, as we see in Clooney’s Paul after the death of son Scott Newman from substance abuse. Various Newman children offer loving but frank assessments of their parents, with a daughter of Newman’s abortive first marriage saying, “I can be disgusted with my dad when I think of my mom.” (Woodward tells us that all her children are loved, but that she might not make the choice to sacrifice her artistic self to parenthood if she could live life again — a chewily complicated thought.)

Yet what comes through clearest here is not rancor but a desire to think things through, a sense that marriage, fully realized, is a process of understanding oneself better through another’s eyes. That Newman and Woodward were often doing so on screen is a bonus. Hawke and editor Barry Poltermann cleverly marshal footage, with both partners’ work generously layered in. Newman drawing on personal demons in “The Verdict,” and Woodward her subsumption into marriage in “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,” forged late-career triumphs out of sorrow.

Newman is a star for the ages, and the real pain we learn he felt and caused adds shading and dimension to our understanding of him. For many, though, Woodward will be hazier, and it’s her story that will break viewers’ hearts. Deep in the pair’s public life, Woodward accepts an acting award presented to her by her husband; the event has found a way to point the spotlight away from her even in her triumph. “It’s not all that easy being the husband of a famous motion picture star,” Newman quips as the crowd fawns; by inverting the expectation that Woodward is the plus-one of a star, the joke carries with it a real sting.

Hawke is a fascinating choice for this project: For one thing, his own movie-star marriage, to Uma Thurman, ended in divorce, lending wistfulness to observations about a particular sort of creative support. (He has remarried, and wife Ryan Hawke appears on camera and is credited as a producer.) Furthermore, Hawke’s image is that of the perennial student, earnestly devoted to honing his craft, in compelling contrast to Newman’s tossed-off charm.

This yields something special though: Hawke seems mystified by what it must have taken to make stardom, and marriage, look so easy, even as both partners paddled madly beneath the surface. This documentary series may not convince you its subjects were the last movie stars; their mastery of showing what they wanted the world to see feels utterly contemporary. But they’re unusually gifted ones — as, after spending six hours in their company, you’ll leave “The Last Movie Stars” wanting more.

All episodes of “The Last Movie Stars” will launch on HBO Max on Thursday, July 21.

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‘The Last Movie Star’ Review: Burt Reynolds Shines in His Swan Song

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

What we have here isn’t much of a movie. In fact, it would be generous to dismiss it as threadbare. But The Last Movie Star stars Burt Reynolds in the title role. It’s perfect casting. Reynolds rode the box-office pinnacle in the 1970s and 1980s in vehicles as diverse as Smokey and Bandit and Deliverance , still his best screen performance tied with his comeback turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 landmark, Boogie Nights , for which the actor received his first and only Oscar nomination. Reynolds never much liked his porn master role in Boogie Nights , which proves again that actors are rarely the best judge of their own work.

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In The Last Movie Star , Reynolds looks frail at 82, but his eyes are alive with witty challenge as he plays Vic Edwards, a superstar who started as a stuntman, much like Reynolds himself. Now a virtual recluse, Vic is coached out of his shell by his friend Sonny ( Chevy Chase ) to accept a Life Achievement Award at a Nashville festival of his films.

Instead of getting A-lister treatment, Vic is put up at a dump motel and taken to a bar where fanboy amateurs (Clark Duke, Ellar Coltrane) run the “big” show. Vic spars with Lil (Ariel Winter), a Goth millennial assigned as his personal assistant. A few good jokes sneak in, and it’s fun to watch Reynolds comment wryly on clips from his golden oldies, from Gunsmoke to talk show appearances with the likes of David Frost.

But as soon as Vic decides to hit the road to Knoxville, his birthplace, sentiment infects the film like a virus. Writer-director Adam Rifkin clearly has affection for his star, but he’s put him in a leaky vehicle that sinks way before the journey ends.

Sam Elliott handled a similar role with more style, emotion and dramatic heft in last year’s The Hero . But Reynolds, let’s not forget, really is a movie star. And a great one. The pleasure of his company is still an exuberant gift. He deserves more than an opportunity missed.

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The Last Movie Stars

“The Last Movie Stars” is actor/director Ethan Hawke’s nonfiction series on acting, creativity, Hollywood, marriage, and a lot of other subjects. It will be catnip to anyone who’s interested in Paul Newman , Joanne Woodward , and 20th century American acting, cinema, theater, and politics. Newman, of course, was a sought-after leading man in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, and eventually won the respect he craved as an actor. His wife Woodward had critical acclaim from the start (Newman, to his credit, was her number one fan) but suffered from inverse feelings of inferiority: Newman became one of the biggest stars in the world, drew what a wife would consider to be the wrong sort of attention from women, and continued to be a star well into his seventies, while Woodward increasingly had trouble getting lead roles in projects that Newman wasn’t attached to.

The project draws heavily on transcripts of recordings of interviews Woodward and Newman did with screenwriter Stewart Stern (of “ Rebel Without a Cause ” and the Woodward-Newman classic “Rachel, Rachel”) for a never-finished personal history project. For unknown reasons, Newman destroyed most of the tapes, and the handful that were remained were unusable, so Hawke assigned actors to read the salvaged transcripts. George Clooney plays Newman, Laura Linney plays Woodward, and assorted supporting performers play actors, directors, and writers who knew the couple. Every one of the voice performances succeeds as both an approximation of the person’s sound and an interpretive bit of character work (Brooks Ashmanskas’ version of Gore Vidal , in particular, is eerily on-point).

The end product suggests a hybrid medium. It’s as if a radio play or podcast had been set to clips from the stars’ films and period-appropriate documentary footage of Hollywood, New York, and points in between. Occasionally we’ll see photos from Woodward and Newman’s family albums, bits of home movies, and snippets of Hawke and the voice-actors discussing the material via Zoom (Hawke started production during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic).

The six-hour series follows the two actors from their first appearance together in the same New York stage cast (they were already dating at the time, even though Newman was still married to his first wife, Jackie Witte) through the final years of their lives. Along the way, “The Last Movie Stars” surveys the changing times. All the expected high points get touched on, from Woodward and Newman’s most acclaimed performances on the stage and screen (including Woodward’s Oscar for “The Three Faces of Eve” and Newman’s belated recognition for “ The Color of Money “) to their civil rights activism and Newman’s forays into race car driving and gourmet food products (Newman’s eldest daughter Nell founded Newman’s Own, which gives all profits to charity).

But the series doesn’t shy away from the strain placed on the marriage by Newman’s stardom and drinking and self-destructive behaviors, or the many tragedies they endured together, including the 1978 death of Newman’s only son Scott of a drug overdose, which led them to create the Scott Newman Center for rehabilitation. (The center finally closed in 2013 .) And it’s quietly revelatory to hear all Newman’s children speaking so frankly about him and Woodward, from their apparently insatiable sexual appetites (for extra privacy, their bedroom had two doors) to the unsavory start of the marriage (“I can be disgusted with my dad when I think of my mom,” says Stephanie Newman, whose mother is Jackie Witte, “But it isn’t the only feeling.”)

The series is most original and affecting when it’s exploring the dynamics of a marriage between two gifted and famous artists who had many children and stepchildren even though they might not have been cut out for the job. Woodward admitted to Stern “I’m not a natural mother” and told him, “I hope the children understand that though each and every one of them were adored, if I had it to do all over again, I might not have had children. Actors don’t make good parents.”

“The Last Movie Stars” also explores Newman’s muted personality and relative emotional inaccessibility, in relation to his children, wife, friends, and relatives. Acting released something in Newman that remained caged when footlights or cameras weren’t on him. He didn’t weep for anyone or anything until his daughter Nell was born. The rascally, flirty screen persona that he devised in the 1960s was nothing like the real man. He told Stern that “Joanne gave birth to a sexual being” when she married him, and that “Newman as sexual object was invented.”

You feel the weight and length of the six hours, but not in a bad way. Watching the series is like reading one of those engrossing doorstop-sized biographies that wants to say everything that could possibly said about its subject, and that takes a while to get through. There’s material that could’ve been trimmed for flow and/or running time. But that would mean losing insightful present-day digressions that contribute to the sense that Newman and Woodward are significant cultural figures whose work continues to inspire. Many of the least on-point bits are the most quotable, as when Vincent D'Onofrio (who voices director/actor John Huston ) says that if you tell yourself when you’re young that you’re going to be an artist and stick with it, in 20 years “you’re gonna be a f**kin’ artist.”

The backbone of the series is the story of two talented people with strong personalities coming together early in their adult lives and staying together right up to the end, grappling with challenges brought on by success, and enduring tragedies that have ended other unions. If Ingmar Bergman hadn’t already directed “Scenes from a Marriage” (and if HBO hadn’t remade it as a series) the title would’ve worked here—and there would have been a meta layer superimposed over it, thanks to the way Hawke and a team of editors deploy scenes from Woodward and Newman’s films to do more than one thing at a time. Like Mark Rappaport , who pioneered the nonfiction film essay about Hollywood stars in “Rock Hudson’s Home Movies” and “From the Journals of Jean Seberg ,” the filmmakers don’t just place film clips where they’re chronologically supposed to fall: they also use them to comment on whatever is being discussed.

This device never feel forced, because the supple cutting leaves room for us to make our own connections; at its most straightforward, the editing evokes the thought processes one might have while watching a film that stars an actor you know a lot about, and thinking about how a scene echoes an incident in their life, and wondering if the echo is incidental or intentional. One episode overlays a discussion of Newman’s artistic inferiority complex with a scene from “Paris Blues,” a film about interracial friendship and romance in the 1960s Paris jazz scene. Newman’s costar and friend Sidney Poitier , playing a composer and trumpeter, listens to Newman’s character play a trombone solo then says he’s going to give his part to an oboe player. Newman’s character wants Poitier’s to say the performance was great. Poitier won’t do it, allowing only that “It’s good, man … It’s better than bad.” This series is way better than good. It’s easy to imagine people who know nothing about Newman and Woodward being mesmerized by it.

On HBO Max today.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Only a Star Could Make The Last Movie Stars

The sweatiest, most homework-y moment of any documentary project is the hard work of setting the stakes, that necessary introduction that tends to rely on sweeping generalizations about time and human nature. A six-part series on the lives of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, directed by and prominently featuring Ethan Hawke, could’ve instantly slipped into plaintive nostalgia for a bygone era or underexamined hero worship for the towering legacies of two icons. The title alone, The Last Movie Stars , feels a bit like a joke when articulated by a man with a lengthy “awards” section on his own Wikipedia page. But the docuseries, which premiered in full on HBO Max on July 21, runs on Hawke’s intense curiosity and enthusiasm for his subjects. He showcases Newman and Woodward’s work with a consistent, careful, critical assessment, and the result is personal and loving, especially in the many sequences that dwell on the darker, less flattering qualities of its two subjects.

The foundational material for The Last Movie Stars comes from a massive collection of interviews Newman helped collect as part of a potential memoir project. Although he eventually destroyed the tapes, one of his children gave Hawke the boxes and boxes of transcribed interviews with over a hundred of Newman and Woodward’s friends, family, and collaborators. Hawke makes two choices about those transcripts that shape what eventually becomes The Last Movie Stars : He asks other celebrities to narrate them, and he includes his conversations about the project in the series itself.

The combination of those choices is astonishingly canny. In long stretches, the series has all the satisfying, weighty gravitas of a Ken Burns documentary. George Clooney provides the voice for Paul Newman; Laura Linney reads for Joanne Woodward. There is a reason Burns’s signature device — an actor reading well-chosen material over a sequence of still photographs — is so often imitated: There’s an arresting sense of seeing someone from the inside and outside all at once. The interviews also include Zoe Kazan as Newman’s first wife, Jackie McDonald; Josh Hamilton as George Roy Hill; Bobby Cannavale as Elia Kazan; director Tom McCarthy as Sidney Lumet; and Brooks Ashmanskas as a gloriously plummy Gore Vidal. They give The Last Movie Stars a gentle, old-fashioned quality, both gossipy and gracious.

By including himself and his conversations with colleagues, Hawke gets to hop over all that slow, obligatory table-setting in the first eight minutes. He tells Clooney and Linney roughly how the project will work, neatly doubling as an explanation to the audience; he tells actor Billy Crudup about the discovery of the interview transcripts, and Crudup and Hawke mirror each other’s shocked delight, forestalling any need to explain why the series feels worthwhile. Hawke does not deny that Newman and Woodward are giants of American film history, but The Last Movie Stars is not solely powered by their legacies. “We’re having fun revisiting the generation before us,” Hawke says. As a documentary framing, it is simple and it is potent.

The Last Movie Stars spends most of its time on Newman and Woodward, presenting and unpacking their lives from a dozen different angles. There are biographical portions told through the transcripts and conversations with their children and grandchildren. There are extended considerations of several of their films, their iconographies, and their career trajectories. Their biographies are almost always presented as part of a larger critical argument about the “real” Newman and Woodward, and that argument feeds back into other revelations about their lives. It’s not just that Woodward was lauded as the more successful actor before Newman’s career took off, for instance; it’s that Woodward’s instinctive, naturalistic performances triggered specific areas of anxiety for Newman, which then fed into his own dissociative awareness of wearing emotion externally rather than producing it from within. That feeling of being second-rate fueled Newman’s ambition, tangled with the way he worshiped Woodward, and fed into his alcoholism and later obsession with racing cars. Then there’s Woodward, whose career was on a moonshot trajectory until she took a backseat to Newman following the birth of her children. Among other things, she says that while she loves her children dearly, she might not have chosen motherhood if she could do it all over again. Taken from a distance, the close readings of their lives bleed into each other in ways that feel inevitable but are actually the result of Hawke’s careful, fluid analysis.

The Last Movie Stars is romantic about the power of acting, respectful and almost rhapsodic about the work and appeal of transformative performances. But more than that, it is awed by the challenge and romanticism of Woodward and Newman’s long marriage — the way that, as Hawke’s daughter Maya describes it at one point in the series, the relationship itself can become a third person, entirely separate from either individual. But there is little empty hero creation in The Last Movie Stars ; it is just as interested in considering the hagiography around Woodward and Newman as it is in celebrating their lives. At several points, Hawke refers to the project as “a film,” and it’s unclear whether he originally intended it as a feature-length project or the term is a quirk of how he speaks. Regardless, The Last Movie Stars benefits from the series-length treatment. It’s an indulgent project, but it’s thoughtful enough about episodic shape to justify the run time. By the end, it cannot help but trend toward a touch of mysticism, and yet it’s hard to begrudge Hawke’s bald fondness.

The most compelling achievement of The Last Movie Stars , though, is its ability to incorporate Hawke and his collection of contemporary Hollywood figures in a way that shifts and deepens the project without ever distracting from its central subjects. The bulk of the series is a striking, thoughtful exploration of two people from a previous generation in Hollywood. But quietly, in its negative spaces, it is a series about contemporary stardom, what it means to be an actor, and the nature of Hawke’s curiosity and critical eye. If one pitfall of the prestige historical docuseries is its similarity to homework, the other is the appearance of a false objectivity, like a god from on high staring down on the course of human events. There’s none of that here. It’s charming to be led into these stories by an engaged tour guide, but every tour gets better when you start to get a hint — just a little — of the guide’s sense of self. “What are you learning about yourself, making this?” Zoe Kazan asks Hawke late in the series. He doesn’t respond, and any answer would make that moment too centered on him. The series itself is his best response.

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The Last Movie Star

I guess it’s too late for that, because it’s out on video today and you probly never heard of it. But it kinda fits the subject matter to be a shabby little obscurity getting by on alot of heart. See, Burt plays 80 year old former six-years-in-a-row box office champ Vic Edwards. He still has money and a nice house, but he lives alone, hobbles around like he’s someone who won’t be walking for long, and people barely look at him anymore. He’s like a super hero who’s lost his powers. He can’t get what he wants by strutting around and smiling at women. He’s much more likely to creep them out than impress them.

The movie opens with a real clip of handsome, charming young Burt on TV telling a funny story, casually taking in the adulation of the audience, then smash cuts to Vic skinny and wrinkled and having to put his dog to sleep.

He gets invited to accept a lifetime achievement award at a film festival in Nashville. It’s not his kind of thing, but he’s from Tennessee, and he’s lonely, so his friend (Chevy Chase, MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN) convinces him it would be a good thing to do. But when he gets there the hotel is shitty and he’s being driven around by a rude, phone addicted young drama queen named Lil (Ariel Winter, KISS KISS BANG BANG , SPEED RACER ) who barely wears pants and only knows that he’s “this old guy” but she’s doing it for her brother Doug (Clark Duke, SUPERBAD , KICK-ASS ), founder of the “festival,” which is actually a bunch of young movie nerds at a bar watching Vic Edwards movies on a tiny fold up screen. Vic shows up and they applaud him and take selfies with him and he humors them for a Q&A but then he steps out, has some whisky, and things go south.

Doug and his friend Shane (Ellar Coltrane, BOYHOOD , BLOOD MONEY ) are world class Vic Edwards nerds. They welcome him with awed excitement and apparent cluelessness about the uncomfortable situation they’ve put him in by making it sound like a prestigious event. I think they ring a little more true than your usual trivia-spewing-#1-fans-of-fictional-movie-stars in movies because Vic is so much Burt. They’re all wearing t-shirts silk-screened with the Bandit’s smiling face and their enthusiasm is similar to how people like us would react if we somehow got Burt Reynolds to come visit our bar. It actually reminded me alot of Cinefamily (RIP) with their sincere fandom and leather couches (though the Silent Theater of course has a real movie screen).

Vic quickly ditches the festival, but then decides to take a detour into his home town of Knoxville. It’s kind of a buddy movie between him and Lil, who still drives him around and they kind of hate each other until they don’t. He witnesses parts of her messy love life and he tries to give her good advice, which obviously doesn’t land right away. But it’s cool to watch her be surprised and impressed when people start to recognize him and it becomes more real to her what a big deal he is to some people.

A week or two ago I was at a library sale and I bought the SHARKY’S MACHINE soundtrack on vinyl. Both the grey haired lady who rang me up and the one who checked my receipt at the door said “Is that Burt Reynolds?” and had a combination “that takes me back” and “hubba hubba” reaction that they clearly could not control. It’s a real phenomenon that’s from before my time and I’m from way before Lil’s time and this is captured well in THE LAST MOVIE STAR.

But if it was just about “it’s sad to be a fading celebrity” that would be kinda empty. Luckily there’s much more to it than that. He’s not big on telling Hollywood stories, as much as those boys want him to be. The story is more about his regrets, and coming to terms with and apologizing for mistakes he’s made now that he realizes he might be getting toward The End (or the outtakes I guess if life is a Hal Needham picture).

The story is kinda shaggy but very likable and then all the sudden it comes together in a surprisingly emotional way, where he faces some of the heartbreaking shit that life throws at you and reveals himself to Lil in a way that really connects them.

This is very much a low budget indie drama. It’s not as clunky as the International Nashville Film Festival itself, but follows a similar pattern of overcoming any of its shortcomings with its sincerity. Burt gets to be a funny grump in the face of his depressing life, but also he goes through some real emotional growth. It’s great to see him get a chance as an octogenarian to do a real role, one that plays off of the iconic persona we remember while necessarily being so very different. Vigor replaced with feebleness, swagger replaced with resigned embarassment, smugness replaced with real humanity. And also it’s nice that he gets to celebrate his career in this way, and sort of stand up for it as something that still has some relevance or at least is worth still appreciating.

P.S. Here’s a weird thing: Lil is an artist, and Vic looks through a book of her art and I thought “That looks like Clive Barker art.” And yes, it turns out somehow they got Clive Barker ( BRADLEY COOPER’S MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN ) to provide all of her artwork for the movie.

P.P.S. A couple summers ago I was in Knoxville for a wedding. The first night there we went to some speakeasy and talked to a couple of locals and they told us a movie was filming in town and after trying to describe who was in it we figured out they were talking about Chevy Chase and Burt Reynolds. And the next day at breakfast I overheard some people talking about seeing Burt and what movies in and I think they might’ve said he grew up around there, but if so that is not accurate, he grew up in Michigan and Florida. Maybe they said he filmed one of his old movies around there, I can’t remember. Anyway I did some research and found an article from the local newspaper that said the movie was called DOG DAYS and directed by Adam Rifkin. I was surprised it was a director I knew about and enjoyed the work of.

Since I was in town for several days and had some time to myself I made it my goal to see Burt Reynolds. I kept searching Twitter for Burt sightings and wandered around town, but nothing ever materialized. Oh well.

But on the way out of town we got to the airport, which has always been very quiet and peaceful in my experience, and there were people everywhere. Extras. They were filming right there. I hung around on the side and tried to get a look, but just saw crew and extras. I overheard some other travelers asking an airport employee about the filming and I thought I heard her giving some unfortunate news about Burt being a dick. But apparently I misunderstood.

And it was funny to have this experience because it ruins some of the movie magic. Because now I know that when Burt and Chevy are hanging out in Hollywood at the beginning they are in fact in Knoxville in front of Tupelo Honey Cafe where I had some delicious rosemary peach lemonade. And after Vic goes inside LAX he’s actually in the McGhee Tyson Airport in Knoxville, and when he lands at the Nashville airport he’s actually still in the Knoxville airport. But eventually he actually goes to Knoxville in the story (it’s Vic’s home town, even if it’s not Burt’s) so they get to stop pretending it’s somewhere else and show the Sunsphere (that World’s Fair tower thing that was on The Simpsons , but I had brunch inside it and there were no wigs).

I know all you L.A. and maybe New York people are immune to it, but I’m in Seattle so I’m a dork who’s still excited to see movies filmed in places I’ve seen with my own eyes. But also I think it’s cool they filmed in Knoxville-for-Nashville just because you don’t see it every day, it’s interesting scenery that hasn’t really been worn out.

SIFF review: Unforgiven (2013 Japanese remake)
Hellraiser: Bloodline

20 Responses to “The Last Movie Star”

March 27th, 2018 at 1:05 pm

Ugh you lost me at “love letter”

I do love that the director of Psycho Cop Returns still gets to make movies.

March 27th, 2018 at 1:52 pm

But you had me at “the SHARKY’S MACHINE soundtrack on vinyl”, if not before.

I don’t want to pre-empt anything if this is bringing in week of Burt love, but the opening credits of SHARKY’S MACHINE with Burt walking through the ruins of Atlanta to Randy Crawford’s Street Life is one of the great 80s openings.

March 27th, 2018 at 3:18 pm

Have you seen THE HERO, with Sam Elliot? This feels like it’s basically the same movie as that one.

March 27th, 2018 at 4:43 pm

I’m not in NY or LA, but I am in Toronto and I’ve accidentally walked through a street while they were filming the TV show SUITS — not once, but twice.

March 27th, 2018 at 5:03 pm

I might have to check this one out from the review. I seem to like lots of these older stars playing with their fame and persona movies than other people–e.g. besides obvious ones like SUNSET BLVD., I liked Pacino in DANNY COLLINS and the movie a lot more than most people seemed to. Plus, I’m a big fan of Burt Reynolds. He’s more idolized by the older generation where I grew up in the South, but I still enjoy GATOR, WHITE LIGHTNING, DELIVERANCE, and all the other ’70s Burt classics especially.

On the low-budget tip, I saw Soderbergh’s UNSANE yesterday and loved it. I think most horror/psychological thriller fans will enjoy it. I hope you’ll check it out, if you haven’t already, for a future review, Vern.

March 27th, 2018 at 6:36 pm

The vast majority of films I see might as well be shot on the moon, for all the familiarity I have with the locations. For the rare handful of films that have been shot in and around my neighbourhood, it’s been fascinating to see places I’m intimately familiar with get chopped up and mixed around to suit the needs of the movie.

March 27th, 2018 at 8:55 pm

I come from Indiana, which any time it seems to be in a movie is either set in a town that doesn’t exist. David Cronenberg shot A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE in a small town in Ontario, but it’s set in a town in Indiana with the same name. STRANGER THINGS is likewise in Georgia but set in a town south of Indianapolis that doesn’t exist either. The times I can think of movies have been shot in Indiana for Indiana were sports movies, like HOOSIERS (my grandmother attended the high school it was shot in) or BREAKING AWAY.

March 27th, 2018 at 10:48 pm

Apparently Burt Reynolds was on German TV last week to promote this movie, as far as my mother told me, although I can’t seem to find a startdate anywhere.

In terms of movie locations: I once saw a movie that took place in Amsterdam, but at one point the protagonist walked out of a building, that was actually in Cologne. That was cool, because I usually never get to say: “Hey, I know that place from real life!” Although after my 2nd visit in Toronto, I was actually able to spot it as fake New York in movies. Never ran into any movie there, though. Although I tried really hard, because in 2012 they were shooting PACIFIC RIM when I was there.

March 27th, 2018 at 11:39 pm

Burt made some strange choices in the late 70’s that must haunt him until this day. People got so used to the clown that when he started making serious movies again the only ones that went to see them were us old farts who always prefered him without the Stetson. SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT is gold, and I do watch CANNONBALL RUN once in a while, but about that’s it. NAVAJO JOE, SHAMUS, THE LONGEST YARD, WHITE LIGHTNING, DELIVERANCE, SHARKY’S MACHINE, STICK and HEAT, that’s the Burt we want to see!

March 28th, 2018 at 2:28 am

I didn’t read the review yet, avoiding spoilers…but this movie might be a bigger deal than you may assume.

My Facebook feed is lit up with it, for one thing. And one of the major theaters around is doing a full week of Burt Reynolds movies to promote it for another. I live in Los Angeles, so that “revived has been star” thing always seem to hit more of a note here…but still, I am seeing more about this movie online than I am the upcoming AVENGERS movie as well as READY PLAYER ONE…which is opening tomorrow I think. I am seeing about 4 times as much publicity for the Burt movie than I am either of those!

Anyway, I’m excited about it. More for Adam Rifkin than for Burt. Rifkin truly has an oddball filmography…thats for sure!!

March 28th, 2018 at 8:53 am

I wish I had more to say about this movie.

I always liked HUSTLE, Burt’s other movie with Robert Aldrich and a bleaker but more romantic take on the cop-hooker pairing at the centre of SHARKY’S MACHINE.

As to recognising places in movies, my grandparents used to farm about 5 or 6 miles from Trencher’s Farm, of STRAW DOGS fame, and leaving aside the portrayal of Cornish folk as inbred maniacs, it remains one of the incidental joys of the film to see Dustin Hoffman moving around in places and landscapes I know.

This on set report from John Doyle – a local news fixture of my youth – in which he interviews a cold and bedraggled Peckinpah sheltering under a granite wall is priceless:

March 28th, 2018 at 1:53 pm

I read your review yesterday but didn’t get to the movie until this afternoon. I had high expectations and your article pretty-well cinched the deal that I was going to like it, but I didn’t expect the emotional punch I got. I do hope to see a “Deliverance” review from you some day. That one gets talked about for all the wrong reasons. On a completely different note, maybe a write-up on “Smokey and the Bandit Part 3”?

March 28th, 2018 at 3:43 pm

Weird cosmic shit: I watched Logan Lucky this morning, and since it’s a 2017 version of a ’70s Burt movie, I spent the better part of the day thinking about Burt. Then this review for a movie I didn’t know existed…

These “meta-tributes to an old actor” movies have become a weird thing unto themselves. And in two recent cases the actor died right after making them (Harry Dean Stanton and Jerry Lewis. Thankfully Sam Elliot just looks a lot older than he is). So now i’m going to be worried about Burt…

March 28th, 2018 at 4:56 pm

I don’t think I’ve heard of this movie before, but now I want to see it.

March 31st, 2018 at 7:30 am

I’m in my 50s, and developed my love of movies from my father, who is still alive. He took me to a matinee of Winny the Pooh, and after it was over, he said “You wanna see the next movie?” I said yes, and it was Thunderball. We saw a double feature of The Mechanic (original) and Chato’s Land, which cemented my fondness for Charles Bronson. One evening, he told my mom we were going to a Disney movie…instead we saw a double feature of Hustle and The Longest Yard. I love my dad.

April 1st, 2018 at 7:23 pm

When Burt was on Conan (great interview btw but when aren’t his talk show appearances not worth it?) he brought some clip with him and Chevy Chase shooting the shit and I had no idea how much I wanted to see a film with 2 of the most misunderstood movies stars from my childhood eating and bullshitting in their twilight years. It looked pretty damn good.

September 6th, 2018 at 6:12 pm

Interesting that jojo predicted Burt’s death in a weird way. I watched this movie a couple of months ago and really enjoyed it. I’m glad he was able to go out on a high note. (I hope there’s not another steaming pile in someone’s vault, a Canadian Bacon or Wagons East!) He was a hell of a presence, and a frequently, maybe surprisingly, good actor.

September 6th, 2018 at 7:17 pm

R.I.P. Burt Reynolds

Really surprised by the negative reception this one is getting (not here) because I thought it was pretty great and an even better career topper for great entertainer

March 16th, 2022 at 11:44 am

Lovely picture!

I had a few tears in my eyes when the clerk gave him that suite and explained “Vic Edwards is a living legend.”

That is what I call paying respect!

And hell, Burt is / was a living legend! I miss him.

March 16th, 2022 at 5:33 pm

It is kind of a crazy notion that Clive Barker is enough of a Burt Reynolds fan to want to get in on a Burt Reynolds love letter movie (would it be more or less weird if he was a big Ariel Winter/Modern Family fan?). I suppose it makes a kind of sense; Clive’s always been a bit Horny on Main and Burt was the preeminent sex symbol of his time, so maybe Mr. Hellraiser had his own ‘this takes me back/hubba hubba’ reaction, if that’s not reading too much into things. Does Burt Reynolds, as a rule, do it for gay men? I can’t see why he wouldn’t. I mean, fellas, what more are you asking for?

Eh. I need to write a book, get popular enough that people are really shocked how much I’m into Carly Rae Jepsen.

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'The Last Movie Stars' offers an intimate portrait of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward

David Bianculli

A new six-part documentary, directed by Ethan Hawke, pulls from interviews with the couple as well as with their Hollywood friends to provide an unvarnished view of their careers and lengthy marriage.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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‘The Last Movie Stars’ Review: Ethan Hawke Directs An Intimate Look Into The Life Of Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward

The ubiquity of Paul Newman endures, from his iconic performances in films like “ Cool Hand Luke ” and “ Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ” to his charity food line Newman’s Own, to his voice performance in Pixar’s “ Cars .” But what of his wife and longtime creative partner, Joanne Woodward ? You might know his famous quip about their long-lasting marriage, “why go out for hamburger when I have steak at home?” — but for an actress whose impact on the craft of screen acting was as Earth-shattering as fellow Actors Studio classmate Marlon Brando , Woodward’s legacy remains somewhat obscured by Newman’s starshine luster.

READ MORE: ‘The Last Movie Stars’ Exclusive Clip: Ethan Hawke’s Doc Shows The Intimate Truth Of An Iconic Hollywood Marriage

Taking its name from a moniker bestowed on the couple by their good friend Gore Vidal , Ethan Hawke ’s mosaic-like six-part docuseries “ The Last Movie Stars ” not only chronicles the life, work, and everlasting love of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, it sets out to balance the scales. To show that without Joanne Woodward, there would be no Paul Newman the icon, Paul Newman the sex symbol, or Paul Newman the man. It shows how their stories are inexorably linked together.

Early in the fifth episode, Hawke discusses with his daughter Maya Hawke his struggle to figure out what this project is really about. “Is it about what a stud Paul Newman is, or is it about how women get demolished by a male-driven culture?” he posits. Maya reminds him of some relationship advice he once gave her: there are always three people in a relationship and that the relationship is the third person, a creation of the two people together. This becomes the thesis of the project.

Brought on board by one of Newman and Woodward’s children, director Hawke waded through a ton of archival material, from home videos, television appearances, and even their films to craft their story. The key in all this material was an abandoned memoir Newman had been working on in the ’80s. He hired his friend, screenwriter Stuart Stern , to interview everyone in his life, including directors like Sidney Lumet , George Roy Hill , Martin Ritt, Arthur Penn , and Elia Kazan , co-stars like Robert Redford , and even his ex-wife Jackie.

These transcripts are brought to life like a radio play through voice performances. Some in the voice cast had direct relationships with Newman and Woodward, others with Hawke . Laura Linney , who was mentored by Woodward early in her career, voices Joanne, while George Clooney voices Paul. While each is effective, you never quite forget you’re hearing actors speak their words, especially when contrasted with archival footage of their actual voices.

The relative anonymity of the directors featured allows the rest of the voice cast a bit more leeway, with wonderful vocal performances from Bobby Cannavale , Josh Hamilton , and Tom McCarthy. The most impactful of these voices is Zoe Kazan as Newman’s ex-wife Jackie, whose clear-eyed assessment of the dissolution of their marriage, and then eventual death by drug overdose of their son is truly sobering.

Through the six episodes, Hawke traces how Newman and Woodward met, their ascension to movie star status after her Oscar win for “ The Three Faces of Eve ” and his breakthrough roles in “ Hud ” and “ The Hustler, ” and the creative and romantic ups-and-downs of their five-decade long partnership. He expertly weaves footage from their films that, when paired with the memoir audio, takes on autobiographical layers, unearthing them like an archaeologist finding these layers hidden in plain sight. We see this in the electricity in their first collaboration, “The Long, Hot Summer,” and in the bittersweet complexity of their relationship in the obscure drama “ Winning .”

While the doc’s exploration of Newman’s superstardom in the 1960s is strong, Hawke’s careful examination of how motherhood affected Woodward’s stardom is raw and powerful. In one stirring interview, Joanne reveals that despite her love for her children, had she known what it would do to her career, she might not have had them. She channels this rage into her collaborations with Newman as director in films like “ Rachel, Rachel ” and especially “ The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds ,” a role that haunted her home life. Hawke also gives special attention to Woodward’s television work, for which she earned nine Emmy nominations and three wins. Much of her television work, which pushed social and political boundaries, is not widely available in the streaming age, whereas most of Newman’s films are. Unfortunately, this continues to perpetuate the inequality of their status within the zeitgeist.

This imbalance, among other factors, weighed heavily on their marriage. Unlike the many projects about famous people that come with a stamp of approval from their estate, “The Last Movie Stars” is not afraid to show the complexity of truth. There is no desire to perpetuate a fantasy, to print the legend. The family is fully on board with exposing the difficult times and hard work that went into the success of the subjects’ long marriage.

Working over Zoom, Hawke is clearly a skilled interviewer, pulling honest conversations from Newman and Woodward’s family members. Stephanie, Newman’s daughter from his first marriage, speaks candidly about the pain he caused her mother by having an affair with Woodward for five years before their divorce and his remarriage. But she also speaks lovingly about how Woodward worked hard to blend their families.

Newman and Woodward’s daughters openly discuss both the intense sexual passion their parents shared, but also how miserable much of their home life was, including revealing what it was like living with a father who was a high-functioning alcoholic. Their daughter Melissa directly addresses this aspect of the doc, sharing that she feels a little guilty dismantling the idea that their marriage was a simple happily ever after, but that the work they put in to make it last deserves more credit than that.

Not only does Hawke use Zoom to conduct interviews, but this method also allows for a peek into his creative process. There is a real joy in seeing his passion as he tells Newman and Woodward’s story to his creative collaborators over the video app. You feel the appreciation they all have for Newman and Woodward as innovative artists, but you also see the power of sharing stories directly with each other. The power of conversations. The power of wading through living history.

The patchwork quality of archival video and film clips combined with Zoom footage adds a warmth to this project that the smoother Ken Burns -style documentary can never achieve. Who wouldn’t want to see Ethan Hawke and Martin Scorsese share a laugh while an image of Gene Tierney in “ Leave Her To Heaven ” is clearly visible on Marty’s bookshelf?

The final episode uses two films to tie up their creative and personal achievements: “ The Color of Money ” and “ Mr. and Mrs. Bridge .” Newman finally won his Oscar for the former, while the latter was the last of 16 film collaborations between Newman and Woodward. In each, their artistry reached a pinnacle, and Hawke argues, so did their growth as people. Each project was not a ploy for awards or money, but about their dedication to the craft. When asked by a television reporter around this time if she loved the same things about Newman now as she did when they first met, Woodward replies she didn’t love him when they met. They didn’t know what love was. They had to grow up together to know what it really means.

In the final episode, Zoe Kazan asks Hawke what he learned about himself while making this documentary. Before revealing his answer, Hawke cuts away to interviews with Newman and Woodward’s grandsons, who share stories of love, not of fame. As the series ends, Hawke’s voice reads the words of Tennessee Williams, “We are saved only by love.” And so it was for Paul and Joanne, whose body of work is more than just the films they made and awards they won. It is the life they built together that will remain their greatest legacy. I suspect it is through this lens Hawke reflected on his own life, and this is what we’re meant to learn from his journey. [A]

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The Last Showgirl Reviews

Pamela Anderson lends a real humanity and glowing optimism to Shelley.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Sep 9, 2024

The Last Showgirl delivers a superb launching pad for an actress in a new era of her career.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 8, 2024

The final word must go to the director – in an unusually crowded field, she has released the best Coppola film of the past 13 months.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 8, 2024

“The Last Showgirl” is a film about beauty and truth and love. It broke my heart as much as it uplifted it.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2024

The Last Showgirl is an unflinching character study with an exciting lead performance from Pamela Anderson, gorgeous cinematography, and perfect soundtrack choices.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Sep 8, 2024

Anderson sinks her teeth into Coppola’s creation, showcasing immense vulnerability, whilst maintaining a sense of camp likeability that has so often linked it herself to her career.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 8, 2024

A forgettable, empty trifle at just 85 minutes, failing to give us enough of anything and certainly, sadly, failing to prove Anderson’s mettle as a dramatic actor.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 7, 2024

A shallow and slender tale of lousy dreams, worse decisions, and painful regrets, all of it predicated on a lead turn that’s too one-note to wow.

Full Review | Sep 7, 2024

Coppola is less interested in the glittering lights of the city than in letting the camera stay on Anderson’s face––a mix of heart-tugging optimism and deep pain.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Sep 7, 2024

Having spent three decades cast as eye candy and ditzy blondes, there is no question that this is the most demanding, layered role of Anderson’s career. It’s also one that she lands spectacularly.

With stunning performances, perfect needle drops, and thoughtful, loving direction, The Last Showgirl is a stylish, emotional, and visually striking work, and a worthy exploration of its impossible protagonist.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 7, 2024

Pamela Anderson stuns in Gia Coppola's The Last Showgirl, a melancholic melodrama about a closing Vegas show that manages to hit all the right moves.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 7, 2024

The Last Showgirl is both the role of a lifetime for Anderson, one that can fully capture her incredible emotional intensity and vulnerability, and (we can only hope) the start of a brand new career for her.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Sep 7, 2024

Anderson is a remarkable in this role, which fits her own natural optimism but also gives her the chance to play her emotions laid bare. She will break your heart.

This is, above all else, a chance for Anderson to rebrand herself with the role of a lifetime.

The Pamaissance is here.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 6, 2024

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‘the last showgirl’ review: pamela anderson mines pathos as an abruptly unanchored las vegas performer in gia coppola’s mood piece.

Jamie Lee Curtis and Kiernan Shipka also star in this peek behind the sequins, feathers and neon at the lives of women once their dreams dissolve.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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'Friendship' Review: Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd Have Made the Next Great Cult Comedy | TIFF 2024

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When was the last time you truly laughed throughout an entire comedy? Not just a few chuckles, but tears streaming down your face, side hurting, just absolutely losing your shit? As part of this year’s Midnight Madness program at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, one such movie had its debut, one of the most hilarious comedies to come out in quite some time : writer-director Andrew DeYoung ’s Friendship . Featuring Tim Robinson in his first starring film role, as well as Paul Rudd , Kate Mara , and Jack Dylan Grazer , Friendship truly has all the makings of a future comedy classic.

What Is 'Friendship' About?

Kate Mara looking at a smirking Tim Robinson with exasperation

Robinson leads this wild comedy as Craig Waterman, a fairly boring suburban father and husband. Craig buys all his clothes at the same stores, he works for a company that helps make brands more addictive, and one of his biggest points of pride is getting a speed bump installed in the neighborhood. Craig doesn’t really have any friends , instead opting to stay at home with his wife, Tami (Mara), and son, Steven (Grazer). But when Craig delivers a missent package to his new neighbor, Brian (Rudd), he finds a cool new friend.

Brian is a local weatherman with a mustache, plays in a punk band, and explores the town’s sewers for fun. To Craig, Brian is just about the coolest guy he’s ever met. But Craig’s attempts to impress his new friend and be as cool as him could not only be a problem with his buddy, but could have repercussions in the rest of his life as well.

DeYoung makes his feature debut with Friendship , after directing episodes of The Other Two , Our Flag Means Death , and Pen15 , and having directed and co-written the comedy special Would It Kill You to Laugh? starring Kate Berlant and John Early . At the post-screening Q&A, DeYoung mentioned how the film was about 90% on the page, and the lead part was written for Robinson, which shows just how exceptional DeYoung is at writing with a specific comedian’s voice in mind. DeYoung also said that he wanted to shoot this film like Paul Thomas Anderson ’s The Master , and considering the dynamic between Craig and Brian, this is a perfect choice, and in a way, this actually does sort of seem like the comedy equivalent of that PTA film.

Tim Robinson Is Ready to Become a Comedy Movie Star

Friendship manages to capture the same weird specific vibe that I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson has, but also without feeling like a bunch of sketches tied together. Even frequent ITYSL guests Conner O’Malley and Whitmer Thomas each get some great moments. DeYoung centers all of these great jokes and ideas around this slow degradation of Craig’s life, as he attempts to fit in, be cool, or try to impress someone. Each scene manages to find a way to further this story and Craig’s desperation to be liked, while also being brilliantly hysterical.

But it’s the delivery from Robinson in every moment that makes Friendship so ingeniously funny. Robinson can make any line or moment funny simply by his inflection or his unique way of handling a scene. Friendship isn’t really packed with obvious jokes, but rather, puts Robinson in frequently serious situations, and steps back while Robinson makes these moments his own. In his first major film role (apologies to Ugly Sonic in Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers ), Robinson elevates each scene with his own way of seeing things , which leads to some strange and wonderful moments. For example, his way of hanging out with Brian and a bunch of his friends is so unbelievably strange and awkward, it’s impossible not to laugh. Meanwhile, one of the funniest moments you’ll see in a film comes from Craig’s exploration of psychedelics and how the film subverts your expectations. Friendship is a prime example that Robinson should become one of our biggest comedy movie stars, showing how he can make any scenario or moment even greater than it was on the page.

Equally impressive is the rest of the cast, who are mostly playing these situations straight, yet manage to find their own laughs within the moment. Rudd is particularly great as the ideal friend to Robinson’s Craig , yet maybe isn’t really as cool as Craig might think. Rudd plays Brian almost as if he’s trying to be the guy everyone would want to hang out with, and his frustration with Craig later in the film makes for a great dynamic between these two. Maybe the most difficult job must be to play the straight woman alongside Robinson, but as his wife Tami, Mara plays the role completely straightforward, a fairly normal person trying to live her life, despite all the weirdness Craig has going on around him. It’s a role that could’ve been thankless, but Mara makes it soar. Also wonderful is Grazer as Craig and Tami’s son, who pops in from time to time, revealing some new aspect of who he is that we’re only on the fringes of. In fact, DeYoung’s script writes this story as though there are all these other stories happening that we never quite focus on, putting these secondary characters’ stories together in our heads, fleshing out this wild suburban life.

'Friendship' Is a Future Cult Comedy Classic in the Making

Tim Robinson smirking at someone in an orange shirt

While so many comedies these days go straight to streaming, where they’ll likely be watched by people solo in their homes, Friendship makes the case for films like this to be seen in a theater with as many people as possible. Granted, Midnight Madness TIFF was clearly packed with existing Robinson fans, hanging on his every delivery (what other audience would give a round of applause for an appearance by O’Malley?), but this is the type of strange comedy that could find a cult following if given a theatrical release. When watching Friendship with a packed house, it was hard for me not to think of going to the movies, feeling and hearing the surprised, overjoyed reactions from the crowd watching Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy or Bridesmaids for the first time. Friendship is probably too weird to find that massive of success, but it will certainly be a film that finds its audience of diehard fans who recite it for years to come. And frankly, if this goes directly to streaming, it will be a damn shame to lose that experience for its audience.

From Robinson’s way of exploring each scene to DeYoung’s bonkers screenplay that knows how to play to its actor’s strengths, Friendship feels ready to become the next great cult comedy hit.

Friendship (2024)

Andrew DeYoung's Friendship is a future comedy classic in the making, led by a terrific Tim Robinson stealing every scene he's in.

Andrew DeYoung knows exactly how to elevate his actors to their sense of humor perfectly.
Tim Robinson proves himself to be one of the funniest comedic actors working today.
Paul Rudd, Kate Mara, and Jack Dylan Grazer find ways to be equally as hilarious as Robinson.

Friendship had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

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The last showgirl review: pamela anderson stuns in gia coppola's melancholic vegas drama [tiff].

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Pamela Anderson's New Movie With Liam Neeson Is What Her Career's Needed For 28 Years

Guillermo del toro’s hellboy 3 chances get blunt response from comic book creator ahead of second movie reboot, "i just about died": mike flanagan recalls stephen king's glowing review for his underrated horror movie adaptation.

Entertainers - true entertainers, the ones that command the stage with sheer force of will - have long been a dying breed, especially in Las Vegas. As the town has become a debauched Disneyland, there’s less emphasis on Show Business and more on merchandise, celebrity, and excess. Pamela Anderson’s Shelley is facing this slow death head on in The Last Showgirl when her long-running Vegas show Le Razzle Dazzle is set to close and she’s sent into an existential crisis.

The Last Showgirl

Le Razzle Dazzle is the last of its era, the kind of show where the women wear elaborate sequined costumes bejeweled to the heavens. Shelley is the longest-serving member of the show, a mentor of sorts to its younger dancers, including two played by Kiernan Shipka and Brenda Song. Jamie Lee Curtis stars as Annette, a former Le Razzle Dazzle showgirl turned casino cocktail waitress, a reminder of what Shelley is on the brink of as the show closes.

Pamela Anderson Gives The Performance Of Her Career In The Last Showgirl

Close up of Pamela Anderson holding a cigarette between her teeth in The Last Showgirl (1)

Le Razzle Dazzle is Shelley's life, so much so that her estranged daughter Hannah went to live with a family friend when she was younger, her mother incapable of handling raising a daughter and starring in a hot Vegas show. It slowly becomes clear, though, that the Le Razzle Dazzle Shelley believes in is something that only exists in her head. Like her entire life, it's now of a bygone era.

Shelley's wood-paneled home is distinctly eighties. She still uses a portable cassette player and watches old showgirl performances on a projector in her gaudy living room, dancing along with them. Shelley oozes Vegas, but when she's faced with what Vegas is now, she's reticent to accept it.

It's a crowning moment for Anderson, deservedly so, and an ode to the oft-overlooked showbiz workers that keep Sin City running.

What Vegas is now is explored through Shipka and Song's characters. When the former auditions for a new show that advertises itself as a hedonist's paradise, she shows Shelley the audition routine. Anderson's character is appalled at the overtly sexual nature of it, decrying it as below her and her fellow performers. But when her daughter sees Le Razzle Dazzle for the first time, she confronts Shelley about the show being just as provocative as everything else in Vegas.

Still, Shelley insists Le Razzle Dazzle is different. It's classy. It's not like the girls now, who grind on chairs and slap their asses. The dancing Shelley knows is an art, one that she has perfected over decades. She can't face the truth that not only has Vegas morphed into something new, but that she actively played a role in its evolution, for better and worse.

As this truth dawns on her, it's heartbreaking to watch Anderson's character reckon with the life she chose for herself, even as she remains steadfast in her love of the craft. As Shelley reexamines her life, we see her attempt to reconnect with her daughter and figure out what her role in Le Razzle Dazzle really means to her after all these years.

That meaning may lie partially in Hannah, played delicately by Lourd, who is studying to be a photographer. When she tells Shelley, who she calls by her first name, that her adoptive mother insists she be a graphic designer instead, Shelley pushes back on this. It's easier to follow your dreams, she says, than to do something you hate every day. Shelley doesn't want to do something she hates every day - she wants to dance.

Collage of Pamela Anderson in Barb Wire and Liam Neeson in Taken

Pamela Anderson has been cast as the female lead opposite Liam Neeson in the Naked Gun reboot, and it's her best career move in decades.

Throughout The Last Showgirl , director Gia Coppola shows Shelley in empty parts of Vegas, smoking cigarettes or spinning around to music we can't hear. The daylight is muted, the neon losing its luster. When she's not shooting the Vegas skyline from afar, Coppola hones in on the faces of her actors as they watch the world around them transform into shapes they don't recognize.

Each actor brings something special to the film. Dave Bautista is subtly affecting as Shelley's ex (also Hannah's father), while Curtis is fearless and hysterical as Annette. It's the relationship between Shelley and Shipka and Song's characters that hits the hardest, though. Despite serving as a mother figure to them, it's a transient role, one that shifts between them.

At one point, Shelley is incapable of being there for Shipka's character. At another, Song's must intervene when Shelley is at her lowest. Shelley pushes those who love her away. Contrasted against her relationship with Hannah, which she so desperately wants to work, it's clear Shelley is still learning how to take of herself before anyone else.

The Last Showgirl isn't perfect - it's melodramatic by design, and it wears its heart on its sleeve. But Anderson's raw and unfiltered performance, one clearly tailor-made for her, makes up for the film's weaker elements, as does the chemistry between the cast. It's a crowning moment for Anderson, deservedly so, and an ode to the oft-overlooked showbiz workers that keep Sin City running.

The Last Showgirl premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The film is 85 minutes long and not yet rated.

A seasoned showgirl must plan for her future when her show abruptly closes after a 30-year run.

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The Last Movie Star movie review (2018)
Adam Rifkin's "The Last Movie Star" is designed not just as a vehicle for Burt Reynolds, but as a meditation on Reynolds' fame.Using elements of Reynolds' actual biography, including footage from Reynolds' films, "The Last Movie Star" is the story of an actor who, despite his fame and good fortune, feels he never quite lived up to his potential.
The Last Movie Star
The Last Movie Star
The Last Movie Star (2017)
The Last Movie Star: Directed by Adam Rifkin. With Burt Reynolds, Chevy Chase, Macy Whitener, Ariel Winter. An aging former movie star is forced to face the reality that his glory days are behind him. On its surface, the film is a tale about faded fame. At its core, it's a universal story about growing old.
Review: Burt Reynolds Confronts His Past in 'The Last Movie Star'
R. 1h 34m. By Ben Kenigsberg. March 29, 2018. "The Last Movie Star" centers on Vic Edwards (Burt Reynolds), an alcoholic, washed-up actor who travels to a Nashville film festival to receive an ...
The Last Movie Star Reviews
Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | May 21, 2019. Hollywood great, Burt Reynolds embraces the twilight of his career with The Last Movie Star. Adam Rifkin's poignant comedy sees the ageing movie ...
The Last Movie Star (2017)
2/10. a pointless exercise for everyone involved. dave-mcclain 8 April 2018. "The Last Movie Star" (R, 1:34), originally titled "Dog Years", is a 2017 drama written and directed by Adam Rifkin and filmed in Tennessee. It's about an aging movie star who still has some lessons to learn about fame.
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The (elderly) Burt Reynolds vehicle The Last Movie Star strikes a note of banality in its first sequence from which it rarely deviates. Wearing a face as stiff as a death mask, Reynolds's faded ...
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Palm Springs Film Review: 'The Last Movie Star'. Burt Reynolds is the titular fictional icon in Adam Rifkin's affectionate but uneven seriocomic tribute to a washed-up celebrity. Nobody played ...
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Vic Edwards (Burt Reynolds) was the biggest star in Hollywood, a college football legend turned stunt double turned leading man. Now, in his eighties, he's convinced by an old friend (Chevy Chase) to accept an invitation to receive a Lifetime Achievement award at a two-bit film festival in Nashville. The trip launches him on both a hilarious fish-out-of-water adventure and an unexpectedly ...
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The Last Movie Star review— Lisa Johnson Mandell says Adam Rifkin's film, Burt Reynolds swan song, is a poignant and entertaining treasure. Rated R. 1 Hour 34 Minutes. Lisa Johnson Mandell is an award winning journalist, author and film/TV critic. She can be heard regularly on Cumulus radio stations throughout the US, and seen on Rotten ...
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The Last Movie Star is mostly a collection of old-fogey clichés though, with a narrative that mixes a man's career retrospective with a road trip featuring the requisite bonding session with an attractive young woman who will prove to Edwards that life is still worth living, no matter how much of it may be in his rearview mirror. The obligatory millennial is Lil (Ariel Winter), who embodies ...
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"The Last Movie Stars" is actor/director Ethan Hawke's nonfiction series on acting, creativity, Hollywood, marriage, and a lot of other subjects. It will be catnip to anyone who's interested in Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and 20th century American acting, cinema, theater, and politics. Newman, of course, was a sought-after leading man in the ...
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A six-part series on the lives of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, directed by and prominently featuring Ethan Hawke, could've instantly slipped into plaintive nostalgia for a bygone era or ...
The Last Movie Star
Well, then THE LAST MOVIE STAR is for you. Writer-director Adam Rifkin (THE DARK BACKWARD, PSYCHO COP RETURNS, THE CHASE, DETROIT ROCK CITY, writer of MOUSEHUNT and SMALL SOLDIERS) devised the movie as a love letter to Burt's career and a chance to show that he's a legit actor. He wrote it for him and told him he would only make it with him.
'The Last Movie Stars' offers an intimate portrait of Paul Newman ...
A new six-part documentary, directed by Ethan Hawke, pulls from interviews with the couple as well as with their Hollywood friends to provide an unvarnished view of their careers and lengthy marriage.
The Last Movie Star
The only really memorable one was Boogie Nights, where he was not even the star, but just a porn producer. "Oh, what it might have been" was lamented in real life and brought to life in the wonderful and heart-breaking film, The Last Movie Star. I was skeptical of this movie at first, and yes, it was hard to watch from the very beginning.
'The Last Movie Stars' Review: Ethan Hawke Directs An Intimate Look
Taking its name from a moniker bestowed on the couple by their good friend Gore Vidal, Ethan Hawke's mosaic-like six-part docuseries "The Last Movie Stars" not only chronicles the life, work, and everlasting love of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, it sets out to balance the scales. To show that without Joanne Woodward, there would be no ...
The Last Movie Star (2018)
The Last Movie Star (2018), Drama released in English language in theatre near you. Know about Film reviews, lead cast & crew, photos & video gallery on BookMyShow.
The Last Showgirl
The Last Showgirl is an unflinching character study with an exciting lead performance from Pamela Anderson, gorgeous cinematography, and perfect soundtrack choices.
'The Last Showgirl' Review: Pamela Anderson Peels Away the Vegas Glitz
'The Last Showgirl' Review: Pamela Anderson Mines Pathos as an Abruptly Unanchored Las Vegas Performer in Gia Coppola's Mood Piece. Jamie Lee Curtis and Kiernan Shipka also star in this peek ...
"The Next Wall-E": 2024 Animated Sci-Fi Movie Scores Rave First Reviews
The praise for The Wild Robot bodes well for the film and for DreamWorks. Not since 2022's Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has DreamWorks had a film that was well-received by both critics and general audiences.Kung Fu Panda 4, Trolls Band Together, and Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken all fared much better with general audiences than with critics. DreamWorks' and Netflix's uplifting Orion and the ...
The Last Showgirl review: Pamela Anderson is 'a revelation' in ...
Pamela Anderson is a revelation and Jamie Lee Curtis is funny and heart-rending in Gia Coppola's poignant, Las Vegas-set The Last Showgirl. Anderson plays Shelley, a dancer who has been in the ...
'Friendship' Review: Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd Have Made the Next
Robinson leads this wild comedy as Craig Waterman, a fairly boring suburban father and husband. Craig buys all his clothes at the same stores, he works for a company that helps make brands more ...
The Rich History Behind Pamela Anderson in 'The Last Showgirl'
Indeed, The Last Showgirl, directed by Gia Coppola, marks Anderson's most substantial work in film to date, one for which she is receiving strong reviews. The BBC called the 57-year-old actor a ...
The Last Showgirl Review: Pamela Anderson Stuns In Gia Coppola's
Throughout The Last Showgirl, director Gia Coppola shows Shelley in empty parts of Vegas, smoking cigarettes or spinning around to music we can't hear.The daylight is muted, the neon losing its luster. When she's not shooting the Vegas skyline from afar, Coppola hones in on the faces of her actors as they watch the world around them transform into shapes they don't recognize.

The Last Movie Star (I) (2017)

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