“Jay Kelly” is a movie that may put some people off – it is a film starring George Clooney about an aging movie star who looks back on his life’s choices with some regret. Sounds way too inside-Hollywood on the face of it, right?
But it ends up that ‘Jay Kelly,” while it is about an aging movie star starring an aging movie star, really is about something much larger. Thank goodness – it is hard to feel sorry, and nobody should expect anyone to feel sorry for, someone who has been pampered and spoiled and who suffers from misplaced priorities.
“Jay Kelly” just uses that backdrop to explore the notion of choice and regret, and how we all have to set priorities in our lives and careers that make evident that nobody can have it all. The movie star conceit simply provides a framework through which movies illustrate these moments in time. “All my memories are movies,” Clooney’s Jay Kelly says at one point, and it is clear that he has trouble separating the moments when he was living and ones in which he was performing.
I think we all do that, no matter our profession. Sometimes we are who we are, and sometimes we act like the people we want people to think we are. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that. It is just being human.
Clooney is excellent in the title role. With one notable exception – the film version of “Good Night, and Good Luck” – I think he almost always is better in movies directed by other people, and he’s especially great when directed by really strong directors – Joel and Ethan Coen, Alfonso Cuarón, Alexander Payne, Jason Reitman, Steven Soderbergh, Tony Gilroy, and in the case of “Jay Kelly,” Noah Baumbach. And Clooney is surrounded by some excellent actors in supporting roles, including Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Jim Broadbent, and especially Adam Sandler, who plays his manager as someone deeply devoted to his client, though knowing in his heart that their friendship is founded on the economic reality that he gets 15 percent of Kelly’s wages.
I really liked “Jay Kelly.” I think you may, as well.
No surprise here – the second season of “A Man On The Inside,” the Netflix series starring Ted Danson, is every bit as charming as the first go-round. Season one had Danson’s retired, widowed and bored professor getting a new lease on life when a private investigator hires him to go undercover inside a San Francisco retirement home. In season two, Danson’s Charles Nieuwendyk goes back undercover – this time as a professor at a small college trying to protect a promised multimillion dollar donation by a tech bro.
Danson, as always, is charm personified – he is elegant even when he screws up (which he does, often), but he has an enormous heart that takes him in unexpected directions. There’s a terrific supporting cast, but in season two, the prize goes to Mary Steenburgen, a flighty fellow professor at the college whose free spirit captures Charles’ attention and heart. It helps that Danson and Steenburgen have been married for three decades and have a kind of joyous chemistry that leaps off the screen.
“A Man On The Inside” is just lovely. Only eight episodes, and another gem from Michael Schur, who gave us the innovative “The Good Place,” which also starred Danson.
That’s it for now.
Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you Monday.
Sláinte!
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