THE LAST SHOWGIRL Review, THE ROOM NEXT DOOR Review — 2 Astounding Performances
Lisa Johnson Mandell’s The Last Showgirl review and The Room Next Door review alert you to two of the best performances of the year — and they’re both in the same film! Find out which movie is just meh.
The Last Showgirl review
Former Bay Watch babe Pamela Anderson flexes her heretofore unseen acting prowess in this gritty film about a Las Vegas showgirl at the end of her career. Her performance is staggeringly raw, unfaltering and authentic.
The Last Showgirl was shot in Las Vegas over a 16-day period, and follows the lives of those involved in the last glittering, long legged, tasseled, pastie, feathery headdress extravaganza revue on the Las Vegas Strip. Denizens of the Strip will be reminded of the record breaking show Jubilee!, which strutted its last in 2016. In fact, some of the former Jubilee! dancers were in the cast.
Anderson is sublime in her role as Shelly, a not too brilliant working girl, reluctantly facing the fact that she’s aging out of a profession that has, in and of itself, aged out. The life that she’s known for more than 30 years is coming to an inevitable end, and she and her showgirl/cocktail waitress friends awkwardly navigate the new reality.
Director Gia Coppola does an excellent job of not sanctifying her characters, and therefore making them more real. Shelly has, and continues, to make both good and bad decisions. At times she is so heartbreaking enveloped in her own problems she refuses to help others. At other times, she tries a tad too hard.
Anderson’s appearance is raw and real, as her lipstick creeps into her lip lines and her raccoon eyeliner smudges, or when she’s at home and hardly wearing any makeup at all. Anderson has been going without makeup in public for some time now, and it’s refreshing, giving the rest of us inspiration to let our inner light shine through all the artifice.
But Anderson is not the only standout in this well calculated indy. Look for other career best performances from Dave Bautista, (believe it or not) and Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays a garishly made-up, former showgirl cocktail waitress with a gambling problem. Both Anderson and Curtis should be in the running for Oscars. They are that good.
Rated R
1 Hour 29 Minutes
The Room Next Door review
Expectations are high when sublime, Oscar winning actresses like Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton are cast in writer/director Pedro Almodovar’s second English language outing.
Perhaps a little too high, in my estimation. What I saw on the screen surprised me, and not in a good way.
Moore plays Ingrid, a successful author, who reconnects with her old friend Martha (Swinton), a battlefield photo journalist who confesses she has stage three cancer.
It feels glib from the outset. Aren’t there any other professions for highly motivated women on the East Coast? We’ve seen these played out ad nauseam on screens both large and small of late.
When it becomes inevitable that Martha is going to lose her battle with cancer, she asks Ingrid to accompany her to an impossibly chic house she’s rented in Woodstock. She wants Ingrid to be in the proverbial room next door when she takes her own life, and comes up with a plan so that authorities will not accuse Ingrid of murder. Ingrid agrees.
The cinematography and art direction are full of vibrant color—warm, bright and beautiful. Unfortunately the script and its dialogue are not. The characters feel cold, pretentious and unengaging. The actors seem to be reciting prepackaged, carefully memorized lines to each other, rather than interacting in a believable way.
Example: “I will not go out in mortifying anguish,” says Martha as she explains her plan for self-euthanasia.
I never buy it when every line is a deep thought, a profound pronouncement, or a wistful, perfectly crafted reminiscence. No one, not even erudite New Yorkers, relate like that. Neither Martha nor Ingrid appear multidimensional nor believable.
It appears that The Room Next Door was meant to be a deep and tender exploration of the many attitudes about love and death. There is an audience that will relate it. I’m just not part of it.
Rated PG-13
1 Hour 47 Minutes
If either The Last Showgirl review or The Room Nextdoor review encourages you to make a trip to your local cineplex, find times and tickets at Fandango.com.
Lisa Johnson Mandell’s The Last Showgirl review and The Room Next Door review alert you to two of the best performances of the year — and they’re both in the same film! Find out which movie is just meh.
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