Tag Archives: Charles Melton

Time of the Season for Loving

May December

by Hope Madden

I’ve missed Todd Haynes.

He hasn’t gone anywhere, and I don’t mean to imply that what he’s made in recent years is bad. In 2021 he made a remarkable documentary on The Velvet Underground, and his previous two narrative features – Dark Waters and Wonderstruck ­– were worthwhile and interesting. They just weren’t very Todd Haynes.

Perhaps after his 2015 masterpiece Carol, the capstone to a string of magnificent and unusual films (Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Far from Heaven and I’m Not There), it was time for Haynes to find his stride with a more mainstream audience.

May December feels more like Haynes of old: a sultry situation masquerading as hum drum, populated by Tennessee Williams-esque damaged beauties wanting, wanting. Plus, Julianne Moore.

Moore, who stunned in both Safe and Far from Heaven, returns to Haynes-land as Gracie. Years back, beautiful Gracie went to prison for loving the wrong man. Well, boy. 7th grader, actually. Indeed, she had Joe Yoo’s (played in adulthood by Charles Melton) baby behind bars. But after prison, Gracie and Joe built a life together. Their oldest daughter is in college now, and their twins Charlie (Gabriel Chung) and Mary (Elizabeth Yu) are just about to graduate from high school.

Soon-to-be empty nesters, Gracie and Joe welcome (if somewhat reluctantly) TV star Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) to their home. In just a few weeks, Elizabeth will play Gracie in a new independent feature film about Joe and Gracie’s life.

Portman is magnificent, biting into a role with more salty meat than anything she’s handled since Black Swan. Elizabeth is, of course, not what she appears to be. But what’s magical in Portman’s performance is the way the actor utilizes odd moments to reveal who Elizabeth truly is.

Moore is characteristically brilliant and wonderfully enigmatic. Elizabeth’s goal is to understand Gracie, which makes that the main goal of May December, but Moore’s not giving an inch. Is Gracie the master manipulator people might believe, or is she the babe in the woods she projects? Or is human nature more complicated than that, no matter how much movies and actors and audiences try to believe otherwise?

The whole cast impresses, but it’s Melton who truly surprises. The one innocent in the film, stunted by a lifetime of repressed and lived trauma, his Joe is the heartbreaking emotional honesty in a film that flaunts insincerity.

The filmmaker, working from a script by Samy Burch and Alex Menchanik, finds wry humor in the soap opera nature of the tale. It’s a morally ambiguous, gorgeously realized character study. It’s so good to have Todd Haynes back.

Hot Childs in the City

The Sun Is Also a Star

by George Wolf

Every time I see the latest Young Adult romance fantasy on the big screen, I end up thinking about Barton Fink getting reprimanded for not sticking to the formula.

“Wallace Beery! Wrestling picture!”

Credit The Sun Is Also a Star for trying to stray outside the usual lines, even as it hits those same formulaic goalposts.

Natasha (Yara Shahidi) and Daniel (Charles Melton) are great-looking (and somehow, single) teens in New York City. Hers is a family of Jamaican immigrants facing deportation in 24 hours, while his Korean family runs a black hair care store in the neighborhood.

‘Tasha “doesn’t believe in love,” but meeting Daniel gives him the chance to win her over while she explores a last option to stay in the U.S.

Yes, there’s voiceover essay reading, yes he realizes her specialness after one faraway glimpse, and yes they both have to break free from the lives their parents have planned for them. Yes, in a city of millions they keep stumbling into idyllic situations where they’re all alone. Yes, it’s based on a YA novel and yes, some of the dialog is downright cringeworthy.

You knew much of that already (because “wrestling picture!”), but the film does mange to score some little victories.

Best of those is the assured direction from Ry Russo-Young (Nobody Walks, Before I Fall) , who keeps NYC’s melting pot as an ever-present supporting player. Paired with the diversity of the cast, the undercurrent of real lives upended by immigration policies comes in surprisingly deft waves.

But as Daniel waxes on about fate and the need for chemistry, it eventually becomes clear that Shahidi and Melton – both promising talents – don’t have enough of it.

That’s a problem, and it stands at the top of the list of things this film is selling that you just can’t buy.