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"Up Close & Personal" reminds me of nothing so much as those career novels for teenagers, in which a plucky youngster rises to the top, guided by a helpful mentor. The movie could as well be titled, "Tally Atwater, Girl Broadcaster." It tells the story of a poor young woman from Reno with an unhappy background ( Michelle Pfeiffer ), who fakes her resume to get a job on a TV station, and then plugs away until she's a network anchor. (To be sure, she's only the Saturday anchor - but she's still young.) During the years of her rise, which seem more like weeks or months, she's guided by a handsome local news director ( Robert Redford ), who was once a White House correspondent before he made the mistake of trusting a woman he loved.

If this sounds contrived and corny, it's because it is.

We're in romance novel territory. And yet alert readers will have noticed that I've appended three stars to my review, a sign of approval. The temptations are great to mock the cliches and melodrama in "Up Close & Personal," but the movie undeniably works as what it really is - a love story.

It didn't start out that way. It began as a screenplay by two tough cookies, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne , about the life of the late NBC correspondent Jessica Savitch, who climbed fast, partied hard and died when her car landed upside down in a stream.

"Up Close & Personal" is so different from the facts of Savitch's life that if Didion and Dunne still have their first draft, they probably could sell it as a completely different movie. Tally Atwater, the Pfeiffer character, doesn't party much, doesn't do drugs and doesn't die. (I am reminded of the time Samuel Goldwyn ordered a screenplay about the Lindbergh kidnapping: "Only, it can't be about kidnapping, which is against the Code. For legal reasons, we have to change the name from Lindbergh. And the kid's father shouldn't fly.") As the movie opens, Redford's character, subtly named Warren Justice, is a news director at a Miami TV station. He looks at a demo tape sent in by Tally Atwater, guesses that large parts of it are faked, and decides to give her a chance anyway - because if she wants it that much, she may have something.

Atwater turns up in Miami wearing the wrong hair and suit, obviously a naive outsider (at her first Meet Cute with Justice, she drops her purse and a tampon spills out). But Tally works hard and listens fast, is willing to make coffee and fetch dry-cleaning, and is very ambitious, angling for the weathergirl job even though, when she gets it, she throws up before airtime and freezes on camera.

Justice doesn't care: "She eats the lens." He brings her along slowly, with practical tips and lots of lectures about covering the news. And all the time a tension grows, between them and within us, because they apparently are falling in love and yet, for a long time, do not act on their feelings. This is an effective device too little used in modern movies, where one significant exchange of glances can substitute for months of courtship. Because they are good and attractive people and we like them, we want to them to fold into each other's arms, and when they do not, that makes the movie better - more romantic.

When it comes to its insights into television news, "Up Close & Personal" is superficial. It knows something about talent consultants and ratings services that advise stations on how to package their newscasts. It knows a little about how a local newscast goes on the air ("If it bleeds, it leads," Justice tells her). But large parts of it play as if the filmmakers learned about television by watching it. " Broadcast News " and " Network " are much more knowledgeable.

But this isn't really a movie about television. It's a movie about love. You could change the careers of the Pfeiffer and Redford characters and still have essentially the same movie. The director, Jon Avnet (" Fried Green Tomatoes ," ), is almost consciously going here for the broad movie star approach to movie romance.

Redford smiles a lot, as the camera lingers, to show his sincerity. Pfeiffer gets the obligatory makeover scene; she's blond as the movie opens, then becomes brunet so her on-camera image will seem more serious - and of course the first brunet scene has her looking all wrong, after which she looks ravishing for the rest of the movie. There are many lush backdrops for their conversations: the surf, sunsets, skylines. There are sweet little things that happen between them that they cherish. And there is sadness, of course, because bittersweet love is the best kind of all, especially for audiences, who would rather feel sorry for characters they like than happy for them.

The supporting cast is first-rate. Stockard Channing plays a hard-as-nails older anchor who is pushed aside by young Tally, and goes off uncomplainingly to a station in Cincinnati ("It's nobody's fault. That's how it works."). Kate Nelligan (who could have been the lead in a movie based on the real Jessica Savitch) plays one of Redford's former wives, a Barbara Walters clone, in a role that avoids almost all the usual cliches about former wives. Joe Mantegna is a crab-leg-sucking broadcast agent, using clout and connections to win better deals for his "talent" (the TV word for on-air newspeople). And Glenn Plummer fills the obligatory role of the little guy who admires the heroine and is a loyal sidekick. He's the cameraman who gets locked inside a prison with Tally; they stay on the air live during a riot, and that's her break into the big time - although, truth to tell, she doesn't do a very good job of covering the riot.

The distributors of "Up Close & Personal" are wise. In their ads for the movie, they're downplaying the TV aspects of the movie, and underlining the romance. Who knows? Maybe the film will play like those old "Girl Reporter" books, and a future Connie Chung, now 13, will go to see it and decide to become an anchorwoman. At some point, she probably also should read up on Jessica Savitch.

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Film credits.

Up Close And Personal (1996)

Rated PG-13 For Brief Strong Language, Some Sensuality and Depictions Of Violence

124 minutes

Robert Redford as Warren Justice

Michelle Pfeiffer as Tally Atwater

Stockard Channing as Marcia McGrath

Joe Mantegna as Bucky Terranova

Kate Nelligan as Joanna Kennelly

Glenn Plummer as Ned Jackson

Directed by

Joan Didion
John Gregory Dunne

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Up close and personal, common sense media reviewers.

Glitz! Glamour! Love! TV news ethics?

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The lead characters pay at least some lip service

A prison riot, with vicious beatings shown at a di

Bedroom scenes; a montage of lovemaking, but with

One F-word, "s--t" numerous times, and v

Plugs for real-life network anchors and TV enterta

Social drinking.

Positive Messages

The lead characters pay at least some lip service to compassionate and well-informed journalism. Warren is an overconfident womanizer (pre-marital sex with Tally, post-divorce sex with Joanne). Sally doesn't seem able to do a good job without his controlling presence.

Violence & Scariness

A prison riot, with vicious beatings shown at a distance or on fuzzy monitors, and the heroine threatened. Glimpses of dead bodies afterwards. Ditto for a South American shootout.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Bedroom scenes; a montage of lovemaking, but with little more explicitly shown than bare shoulders.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

One F-word, "s--t" numerous times, and vulgar reference to female breasts.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Plugs for real-life network anchors and TV entertainment and trade magazines.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that there is sex between the two lead characters, one of whom is a domineering, twice-divorced man, the other a former beauty queen who fakes her journalistic credentials to get a job in TV. Despite the dangers of being too near an open mic, characters swear pretty frequently for a PG-13 movie. You'll find violence in a prison uprising and in battle zones, and there are subplots about authority figures -- governors, local politicos, even a White House -- that are corrupt and need to be exposed. A key character is killed along the way. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

Sallyanne Atwater ( Michelle Pfeiffer ) is a former beauty contestant from Nevada who becomes the personal assistant to hotshot Miami news producer Warren Justice ( Robert Redford ). Justice mentors his ambitious protégé, first as a weather girl, then as a field reporter. Sally has to call herself Tally, because that's how a misprint on the station's teleprompter introduced her. Warren still occasionally sees his ex-wife (Kate Nelligan), but he falls for Tally. They often clash and eventually Warren leaves the station when his pride is hurt. But when a story they're supposed to be working on together turns dangerous, Warren comes riding back like a white knight to rescue Tally.

Is It Any Good?

The good news: Up Close and Personal is a sumptuously old-school, glossy, larger-than-life romance that Hollywood does so well. The bad news: It's a sumptuously old-school, glossy, larger-than-life romance that Hollywood does so well -- meshed uncomfortably with portrayals of crusading TV news reporters and their coverage of riots, wars, and politics.

The two-faced script focuses more on Warren's romance with dream-girl Tally than news journalism, and it's the man who takes the lead in just about everything. Tally can't seem to make a right move without Warren's constant coaching and criticism. Yet some kids who get into the film's charming leads and whirlwind pace might be tempted towards journalism as a career.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the messages of journalistic substance over style, and Warren's boot-camp lessons in being a crusading reporter. Do his arrogant actions match his heroic words? Would he seem so brash and compelling if he were played by an actor far less handsome than Robert Redford? Does the news you watch follow his sterling example? You could also have kids read about the life of Jessica Savitch and determine if the lessons in that story are at all similar to the ones in this movie.

Movie Details

In theaters : January 3, 1996
On DVD or streaming : September 14, 1999
Cast : Kate Nelligan , Michelle Pfeiffer , Robert Redford
Director : John Avnet
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Touchstone Pictures
Genre : Drama
Run time : 124 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : brief strong language, some sensuality and depictions of violence.
Last updated : April 4, 2022

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Up Close & Personal Reviews

It is an engaging, almost endearing, film with plenty of issues, but none of those problems generate any kind of animus, just a vague sense of disappointment that it wasn’t ever so slightly better.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 4, 2022

Up Close and Personal isn't even a particularly good movie, but it's more revealing than most other films about the degradation of what used to be called "the press."

Full Review | Dec 4, 2020

What Up Close and Personal" is really about is the chemical reaction set off between Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford. In a love story, if your two stars don't click, all is lost. When they do--as they do here--nothing else really matters.

Full Review | Feb 23, 2018

Is it worse as a love story or as a drama about the sorry state of television news? The answer: It's a tie.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Jan 16, 2013

Full Review | Original Score: C | Sep 7, 2011

Glitz! Glamour! Love! TV news ethics?

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 15, 2010

A perfectly respectable effort, but with all the talent involved it could have been better.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 23, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 5, 2005

Bland TV expose loosely based on the life of Jessica Savitch

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 29, 2005

Final proof that "based on actual events" means absolutely nothing.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 17, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 24, 2005

There is no real sexual tension between [Pfeiffer and Redford] from the get-go, so when they finally do get together, it feels forced, ungenuine.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 28, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 4, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 7, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 4, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 18, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 15, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 10, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Jun 5, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | May 14, 2003

Looking at Film from Every Angle

Review: Up Close and Personal (1996)

Wesley Lovell

Up Close & Personal

Joan Didion, John Gregory Dunne (Book: Alanna Nash)

Robert Redford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Stockard Channing, Joe Mantegna, Kate Nelligan, Glenn Plummer, James Reobhorn, Scott Bryce, Raymond Cruz, Dedee Pfeiffer, Miguel Sandoval, Noble Willingham, James Karen

MPAA Rating

Original preview, buy/rent movie.

Romantic dramas are a dime a dozen. Good ones are exceedingly rare. Toss in the added frustration of news-oriented plotlines and you have Up Close and Personal , a film that wants to succeed, but never quite figures out how to be great.

The story follows a young reporter (Michelle Pfeiffer) as she earns her big break under the tutelage of an experienced newsman (Robert Redford). As the two grow closer, the reporter launches a captivating career that culminates in an award being given in her honor. Success and tragedy follow her in equal measure as mentor and mentee eventually change positions, leaving the relationship between the pair fraught with roadblocks of assorted shapes and sizes.

Pfeiffer and Redford have good chemistry together and the film has a lot of poignant things to say, but it’s the romantic elements that often derail the story even when they ultimately bolster the finale. While films like Broadcast News are closer to the style of journalism-targeted pieces we would prefer to see, ones that at least try to tackle some difficult issues, this film gets bonus points, especially when as lovingly executed as it is.

Jon Avnet is the kind of journeyman director who turns out compelling pieces that sometimes feature frustrating flaws. Beginning as the writer of Risky Business in 1983 and putting forth Less Than Zero four years later, it was his directorial debut in 1991 that set the tone for the rest of his career, the engaging and uplifting Fried Green Tomatoes . Up Close and Personal came along five years later and ended up being his second-highest grossing directorial effort, earning his film an Academy Award nomination for the popular song “Because You Loved Me” from powerhouse songwriter Diane Warren and sung by Canadian chanteuse Celine Dion.

Unfortunately for Avnet, Dion’s chart-topping single was significantly more popular than the film itself. Avnet tried very hard to position his romantic story into a conscientious space by exploring the dog-eat-dog world of local and network journalism. The film isn’t a hard-hitting piece of journalism, nor is it entirely a wasted piece of fluff. This blend of Broadcast News and Sleepless in Seattle tries to play both genres together, though it doesn’t entirely succeed.

Up Close and Personal is a late-career blip in Redford’s storied filmography and Michelle Pfeiffer has had bigger successes before and after the film. However, if you’re interested in seeing the pair work together, this is a great opportunity. It is an engaging, almost endearing, film with plenty of issues, but none of those problems generate any kind of animus, just a vague sense of disappointment that it wasn’t ever so slightly better.

Review Written

March 29, 2021

Up Close & Personal

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Robert Redford leads two lives: movie star and maverick. Here’s a guy who founded the Sundance Institute in 1981 so that independent filmmakers could stick it to Hollywood. How can he work for the merchants he moved to Utah to escape? How can the probing director of Ordinary People and Quiz Show lend his acting talent to Indecent Proposal and Sneakers ? Is the Sundance Kid a schizo? Hardly. Redford is a master at using the mainstream to his own subversive ends. It is often more effective than preaching at the choir.

After closing a rebel festival at Sundance, Redford opens in Up Close and Personal, a crowd-pleasing love story set against the background of television news and buffed to a high gloss by director Jon Avnet ( Fried Green Tomatoes ). Redford plays Warren Justice, a hard-ass network legend on the decline. Once, Warren covered the White House; now he’s a news director in Miami teaching the ropes to smitten neophyte Tally Atwater, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. Their passion stalls when she zaps up the ladder to Diane Sawyer-dom in Philadelphia and New York and he stays stuck in the boonies. Without discounting the pleasure of watching two glamorous stars orbit a moonstruck romance, this is a soap opera.

Redford makes it more. In 1937, Fredric March and Janet Gaynor broke hearts as falling and rising movie icons in A Star Is Born, a film shown this year at Sundance in tribute to its wildman writer and director, William Wellman. “Wellman is really special to me,” says Redford. “What these pioneers put on film was based on nothing other than their own experience. I find that a very interesting time.”

Time, of course, leads Hollywood to repeat its successes. A Star Is Born was remade deftly in 1954 with Judy Garland and James Mason, and disastrously in 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. The fact that Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, the married screenwriting team who worked on the 1976 version, also wrote Up Close and Personal doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Nor do the additions — a dash of satire out of Broadcast News and a blurred allusion to Jessica Savitch, the substance-abusing newswoman who fell for her television mentor, split from him, suffered a breakdown and died in a car wreck in 1983.

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The Savitch parallels have been played down considerably, perhaps owing to Almost Golden, the highly rated 1995 cable movie in which Sela Ward played Savitch. Pfeiffer’s inexperienced Tally is a lighter, less neurotic character, a Nevada waitress with a needy sister (Dedee Pfeiffer, Michelle’s actual sister) and an ambition more conventional than killing. At her interview with the impatient Warren, Tally tears the sleeve of her suit, drops her purse and shows a demo tape of herself with bad hair and worse makeup, purring, “Why hire me? Because I’m going to be a star.” Pfeiffer shows a buoyant comic spirit, wickedly teasing her own history as a former Orange County, Calif., beauty queen.

Warren hires Tally as a gofer before giving her a shot as a weather girl. She’s a disaster at both jobs, but as Warren says, “She eats the lens.” Under Warren’s tutelage, she learns to stand firm against newscasting rivals Marcia McGrath (a superbly coiled Stockard Charming) and Joanna Kennelly (Kate Nelligan), Warren’s ex-wife, a prison riot and the drift of news into crass infotainment.

Here’s where Redford comes in. Despite the fashion parade, the love montage and the tear-jerking ending that Avnet lays on, Redford makes Warren an abrasive fighter against the system. Defying the Star Is Born tradition of playing his character as a boozer, a head case or a suicide, Redford portrays him with his talent and zest intact. It’s the news that got small and sleazy. The networks reject Warren out of fear. As one exec tells him, “You’ve got this bad habit of calling an asshole an asshole.” Warren teaches Tally to push past the sound bite to get at the truth. Whether it’s in the rebel atmosphere of Sundance or in the sleek sentimentality of Up Close, Redford is hellbent on doing the same thing. If that’s working both sides of the street, let’s hope it’s a trend.

When I got up close with Robert Redford at Sundance, he didn’t temper his contempt for television news: “We’re suffering from too much information. It’s a bombardment of hype that leaves no time to process. After so many drops of water on the forehead, after so much torture, the public says, ‘Fuck it,’ and gives up. Truth has become an anachronism.”

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Do you think a Hollywood love story like “Up Close” can help get that point across?

It would be too hard to go to work just to satisfy a commercial formula. My character has a very strong belief, an arrogance even, in how the news should be done, having less to do with show business and market share and more to do with the truth.

Isn’t that akin to you at Sundance?

Sundance is all about protecting an independent vision from being sliced, chopped or smashed by a merchant mentality to whom profit is all If filmmakers want to remain independent of the studios, we’ll help them find financing. If they want to go into the mainstream, we’ll help them prepare for what’s likely to happen.

So the studio system isn’t the enemy?

Some people thought I was creating a camp for insurgents, which was never true. Sundance is really a supplement to what Hollywood has to offer. Hollywood is not totally monolithic, but its rules come out of polls and demographic studies. I’m interested in the humanistic side. Sneakers is very entertaining, but it also brought in the danger of computers in the wrong hands. [ Skeptical look from yours truly. ] OK, it was thin, but the theme was there, and it justified my doing it.

You’ve become a target in some quarters for allegedly using Sundance as an ego trip, a way of thinking well of yourself.

When you become that much of a target, it has to mean some measure of success. The fact is, I’m here because it means a great deal to me. It’s something I feel I have to stay with to keep the core purpose intact. Otherwise it can be taken over by fashion, by other people’s agendas and by size.

Was it the founding of Sundance that curtailed your acting career so much since 1980?

I was offered too much formula — cartoon versions of life. As a result, I put my energies into Sundance for 10 years at the expense of acting. I turned down stuff for so long that people said, “Aw, the hell with him.” If actors don’t work, something goes off. I want to do more acting.

Your next movies — Shooter” and “The Horse Whisperer” — are studio films. How come you, the Thomas Jefferson of Sundance, never act in any independent films yourself?

I would. No one’s asked me.

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March 1, 1996 Up Close and Personal By JANET MASLIN n ``Up Close and Personal,'' Michelle Pfeiffer morphs gorgeously from tacky would-be television-news talent at a local Miami station to sleek, glamorous network swan. Her transformation is overseen by Robert Redford, who might as well be saying ``Here's looking at you, kid,'' with every appreciative gaze. These two stars, well matched and vastly charming, also happen to be playing actual grown-ups, with knowing dialogue supplied by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. Ms. Pfeiffer, when the inevitable love affair is consummated: Why didn't we do this before? Redford: Because it was always going to be this hard to stop. Sighs are appropriate, even if a healthy skepticism is also in order. ``Up Close and Personal'' is mostly toothless, especially in comparison to the cautionary tale of Jessica Savitch, which provided a tiny, sugar-coated kernel of inspiration. (Ms. Pfeiffer's character never succumbs to uncontrollable ambition or falls apart on the air, as Ms. Savitch did.) And when this rueful love story strains for high drama, it takes on bilge very quickly. Yet ``Up Close and Personal'' still works as an alluring throwback to the days when movie-star romance really lighted up the screen. Its guilty pleasures are ones we all remember and plenty of us miss. ``Up Close and Personal'' suits the directorial style of Jon Avnet, whose films (``Fried Green Tomatoes,'' ``The War'') are stronger on atmosphere than believable narrative. But appealing characters and a tart view of television news are enough to hold the interest here, at least until a prison riot, trumped-up lovers' quarrels and a sanctimonious Mrs. Norman Maine speech do a great deal to break the mood. It helps that the stars' roles are tailor-made to their talents, especially Redford's Warren Justice. The very name bespeaks integrity, practically at the Supreme Court level. The veneer is flirty and casually jaded. And the man's history, that of a seasoned journalist and inveterate ladykiller, seems assembled entirely from high points on the Redford resume. Some degree of Forrest Gumpery went into a video clip showing Warren Justice interviewing Richard Nixon, but the still photographs of Redford at the White House (circa ``All the President's Men'') look real. Even Warren's saying ``Your voice is full of money'' to his protegee harkens back to the actor's ``Great Gatsby'' days. Ms. Pfeiffer is just as comfortable with the role of Tally Atwater, putty in the hands of Redford's chino-wearing Svengali. Though everything about Tally is molded by others and steadily refashioned (including her name, which starts out as Sallyanne), Ms. Pfeiffer has no trouble giving this woman a solid core. She seems substantial even when, during the early part of the film, she is scrambling for a job at the Miami station that bills itself as the ``News Heartbeat of the American Riviera.'' It is here that Warren Justice presides, using the term ``Sweetheart'' when he asks Tally to pick up his dry cleaning or fetch his coffee. Warren soon realizes - who wouldn't? - that Tally's gifts are better suited to melting the television screen. (Obviously, Ms. Pfeiffer shares Ms. Savitch's special talent for brightening magically in front of a camera lens.) ``Bet that one's yours,'' observes Joanna Kennelly (Kate Nelligan), the newswoman who is one of Warren's former wives, as she watches Tally blossom under the boss's tutelage. ``You win,'' Warren answers. The screenplay, like Redford's expert delivery, can be beautifully bone-dry. Suspending disbelief, it's easy to enjoy what the film's cliche-happy broadcasters would call Tally's meteoric rise. With Albert Wolsky's costume makeovers for Ms. Pfeiffer almost a movie in their own right, ``Up Close and Personal'' also watches her learn the rudiments of journalism. Creakily indebted to ``A Star Is Born,'' the film has to make sure Warren teaches her every important lesson, but the tone is less patronizing than it could have been. After a few exaggerated pratfalls, Ms. Pfeiffer begins looking as if she can handle her career quite nicely on her own. Actually, she progresses so easily that the film has to work overtime to make this look like anything but a story of trouble-free overnight success. Tally never seems neurotically driven, nor does Warren seem the dangerous, hot-headed maverick he is reputed to be. Even when he finds himself adrift in the job market, Warren remains easily in control. ``He never made the Grenada invasion,'' Warren says about a fellow newsman (as he speaks with the screenwriters' acerbic precision). ``It coincided with an unbreakable periodontal appointment.'' A colleague answers, ``The flossers are in charge now, Warren.'' Maybe in the real world, but in ``Up Close and Personal,'' it's the matinee idols who make the rules. ``Up Close and Personal'' also features an archly fine supporting performance from Stockard Channing as a Philadelphia news anchor who takes one withering look at Tally Atwater and intuitively grasps the future. Her character and Ms. Nelligan's give the story some unexpected toughness and perspective. Joe Mantegna turns up briefly as a television talent agent who embodies the business at its slickest. Also here is Glenn Plummer as the cameraman who miraculously shoots edited scenes from two different angles - with a single camera - in the midst of a fast-breaking crisis. This is the magic of movies, if not of television news. UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL Directed by Jon Avnet; written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, suggested by the book ``Golden Girl'' by Alanna Nash; director of photography, Karl Walter Lindenlaub; edited by Debra Neil-Fisher; music by Thomas Newman; production designer, Jeremy Conway; produced by Avnet, David Nicksay and Jordan Kerner; released by Touchstone Pictures. Running time: 124 minute With Robert Redford (Warren Justice), Michelle Pfeiffer (Tally Atwater), Stockard Channing (Marcia McGrath), Joe Mantegna (Bucky Terranova), Kate Nelligan (Joanna Kennelly) and Glenn Plummer (Ned Jackson). Rating: ``Up Close and Personal'' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes bedroom scenes and slightly stronger profanity than might be expected. Showtimes and tickets from 777-FILM Online

Up Close And Personal Review

21 Jun 1996

126 minutes

Up Close And Personal

Based very loosely on Golden Girl, the biography of NBC anchorwoman Jessica Savitch who was dispatched to the great newsroom in the sky by way of a car crash in 1983, this romantic offering comes not only, one suspects, with much of the truth shaved off, but also advocating the theory that behind every successful woman is a man operating the strings.

Pfeiffer is Sally Attwater, the overly eager, bubbly blonde country girl who lands a job at a local TV newsroom after her demo tape catches the eye of more experienced newsman Warren Justice (Redford). Through a mixture of ingenuity and sheer homespun cheek, she soon finds herself on screen, going from presenting the weather (clad in a sou'wester) to covering local beauty contests, at the same time undergoing a name change from Sally to Tally after an autocue slip. Meanwhile, Justice becomes her mentor, inspiring her to swap her initial automotive presenting style for something altogether more human, and adopting a relationship that spills off camera as rapidly as her career skyrockets.

As you might expect, this is streaked with overtones of Redford's previous romantic foray The Way We Were, with much footage of the couple sharing quality time in picture-postcard settings obviously aimed at the triple-ply hanky brigade. Fortunately, both leads give credible enough performances - Pfeiffer, in particular, reads the news like a natural - to cut through the mire of slush, while a host of supporting players add some much-needed edge, especially Stockard Channing's splendidly bitchy news anchor.

Where the film slips up is in its valiant efforts to spice up what is ultimately a straightforward romantic drama by injecting a vein of social conscience - a lengthy prison riot, for example is dragged out to such extremes that it fails to convince. Ultimately, though, while both Redford and Pfeiffer are capable, they are deserving of stronger stuff than this kind of Sunday afternoon time-filling movie.

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Behind ''Up Close & Personal''

Behind ''Up Close & Personal'' -- The Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford film dramatizes anchorwoman Jessica Savitch's tragic life

Editor-at-Large

It was the perfect pitch. It had sex, drugs, violence, a meteoric rise, and a sudden fall — everything a movie executive could possibly want. Best of all, every word of it was true. But as Jeffrey Katzenberg sat in a Disney suite in early 1989 listening to the story of Jessica Savitch’s tragic life — how she climbed to the top of the TV news business, becoming one of the most successful women of her time, only to be undone by her own inner demons — one question formed in the studio chief’s head: ”Does she really have to die in the end?”

The answer, as it turned out, was no, she didn’t. And Savitch’s fatal auto accident in 1983, when her car ran off a rain-soaked road in New Hope, Pa., trapping her in a muddy canal, wasn’t the only detail of her life that didn’t make it into the final cut of the new Michelle Pfeiffer-Robert Redford newsroom drama, Up Close & Personal (opening March 1). Some of the other little factoids you won’t be learning about the famed anchorwoman: She was a cocaine addict. One of her boyfriends beat her up. Her second husband hanged himself. She was notorious for her off-camera temper tantrums. And she was responsible for one of the most infamous on-air flubs in television news history.

”This movie isn’t about Jessica Savitch,” points out director Jon Avnet, sounding as exasperated as a tobacco executive on 60 Minutes . ”This movie is suggested by Jessica Savitch.”

All righty. In that case, the film Avnet ended up making suggests Savitch as a scrappy but gorgeous newshound named Tally Atwater, who starts out a Miami weathergirl and ends up a network superstar. Along the way she gets trapped in a prison riot, goes through more hairstyles than RuPaul, and falls in love with a handsome newsman given the only-in-the-movies name of Warren Justice. Commercially, the film has tons going for it, including the first-time pairing of Pfeiffer and Redford (as Justice, of course). It also has classy screenwriting credits (husband-and-wife team John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion) and, in Avnet, a director with both a deft, delicate touch ( Fried Green Tomatoes and The War ) and a hard-nosed business sense (he produced Risky Business ).

Still, one can’t help wondering if this is really the same film that was once subtitled The Jessica Savitch Story — the one based on the 1988 Savitch biography Golden Girl . Because after nearly 30 rewrites over six years, any resemblance to persons living or dead has been made entirely irrelevant. In fact, the de-Savitching has been so extreme that even the film’s stars sometimes wonder if things got out of hand. ”There was very interesting stuff about Savitch that I would have loved to have kept,” says Pfeiffer. ”I probably would have liked for it to stay closer to her story. But I guess that would have been just too dark. We really wanted to make a love story.” Redford sees missed opportunities too: ”There was a scene in which my character just hauled off and slugged her,” he says. ”And then she kneed him in the groin. I loved it.” Alas, it too was cut.

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL

What You Need To Know:

(H, PC, LLL, VV, S, N, A) Humanist, politically correct worldview which places getting a story above everything, although honesty is the ultimate virtue; 5 profanities & 33 obscenities; prison riot, beatings, trampling, & shooting; fornication; partial nudity; and, alcohol use

More Detail:

Movies are an emotive medium. Weak movies can succeed if they pull the right heartstrings. UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL pulls the right strings but is extremely weak. The movie recasts a STAR IS BORN in the person of the news anchor wannabee Sally Atwood, played by Michele Pfeiffer. A small town girl from Nevada, Sally fakes her credentials for a video to send to 35 TV markets and lands a job at WMIA, channel 9, in Miami. Her boss Warren Justice, played by Robert Redford, has been at the top, but settled down in Miami after realizing that the news race wasn’t fun anymore. He knows that Sally, whom he renames Tally, faked her credentials, and he knows that she eats the lens, so he shapes her into the Jessica Savitch of the 90’s. They move to Philadelphia and get married. There, a prison riot makes Tally a star broadcaster.

Redford and Pfeiffer are misused in this movie. Redford looks like an aging sophomore, while Pfeiffer tries to look like she hungers after the 60 year old Redford, but there is no chemistry. The sex is obligatory, the plot is tired, the left-wing perspective is absurd, but the movie does know how to touch those emotional chords. This may be the most chauvinist movie since DR. NO, but without the humor.

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Up Close and Personal (1996)

Up Close and Personal

1996, pg-13, 124 min. directed by jon avnet. starring robert redford, michelle pfeiffer, stockard channing, joe mantegna, kate nelligan, glenn plummer, james rebhorn., reviewed by marjorie baumgarten , fri., march 1, 1996.

Why was it that every time I saw the trailer for Up Close and Personal, I felt that I ought to be seeing Jane Fonda's face where, instead, I was seeing Michelle Pfeiffer's? It wasn't wishful thinking, but was it reflections of the young Fonda as the China Syndrome reporter that I was seeing? Or, perhaps, memories of several earlier parings of Fonda and Redford in movies like The Chase, Barefoot in the Park, and the Electric Horseman that I was recalling? Or was it shades of the current-day Fonda as the spouse of a powerful and dashing media mogul that I saw? Well, subliminal cues are one thing, but only a viewing of the movie revealed the heart of my illusion -- the romantic goop at the movie's core. Up Close and Personal is not unlike the last two Jane Fonda movies -- Old Gringo and Stanley and Iris -- in which the exploration of “issues” gets overtaken by a focus on the growing love affair between the film's lead characters. It's that warm, mushy center at what might otherwise be a hard-edged drama that makes Up Close and Personal most resemble the work of the pre-exercise video Fonda. Once upon a time, this movie may have started life as a Jessica Savitch bio-pic; whatever happened along the way, Up Close and Personal is not that any longer. As it stands now, the movie is a fictional romantic drama about an ambitious woman's rise from the trailer park to the network news anchor desk and the older male mentor who becomes her Svengali and lover. In some ways, the story bears a resemblance to last season's To Die For, but this version would instead be called To Live For. In fact, the movie's advertising tagline declares, “Every day we have is one more than we deserve.” Along the way, the story of how Pfeiffer's gawky duckling turns into a sophisticated swan gets sidetracked by a soft-focus love story about the swan's enchantment of the hard-bitten news goose (Redford). Here, the movie, which was scripted by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, turns all lovey-dovey, complete with soft-focus surf shots and other frolicsome reveries. During these sequences, the music swells and you almost expect Barbra Streisand to begin warbling some poignant theme music -- but no, it's Celine Dion. These are the moments that help identify the one movie (or movies, if you count the remakes) that Up Close and Personal resembles more than any other -- A Star Is Born. It's the old story of the male mentor who becomes overshadowed by his star pupil (and wife) and is thereby delivered to tragedy's doorstep. Perhaps that's what makes us anticipate a Streisand vocalization -- she played the swan in the 1976 remake of A Star Is Born. Surely, the reference couldn't be something as academic as the fact the Didion and Dunne also penned that remake. So, where does all this free association ultimately lead? Answer: Anywhere but Up Close and Personal.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

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Up Close and Personal , Jon Avnet , Robert Redford , Michelle Pfeiffer , Stockard Channing , Joe Mantegna , Kate Nelligan , Glenn Plummer , James Rebhorn

PG-13 rated films
Academy Award nominated films

Up Close & Personal

View history

The film began as an adaptation of Golden Girl: The Story of Jessica Savitch , a 1988 book by Alanna Nash that recounted the troubled life of American news anchor Jessica Savitch. The finished picture, however, was greatly altered by commercial decisions on the part of the producers, and bore little resemblance to Savitch's biography. Screenwriter John Gregory Dunne, having spent eight years working on the script with his wife, Joan Didion, later wrote a book describing his difficult experience, entitled Monster: Living Off the Big Screen .

The film was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Original Song ("Because You Loved Me"), written by Diane Warren and performed by Céline Dion .

3 Adaptation
4 Reception
5 Awards and nominations
6 References

Sally "Tally" Atwater ( Michelle Pfeiffer ) is an ambitious, aspiring news reporter, who is hired by Miami local news director Warren Justice ( Robert Redford ) when she sends in a homemade audition tape. He carefully guides her career to new heights, all the while becoming increasingly attracted to her. Tally soon rises through the ranks of network news to become successful, while Warren's once-stellar career sinks into mediocrity. Furthermore, Tally's ascension takes her away from Warren when she is forced to relocate to Philadelphia. Tally struggles at her new post, in no small part due to the hostility of veteran reporter Marcia McGrath (Stockard Channing), who jealously protects her position as the top reporter. Warren turns up to inspire Tally, and the two partners begin a new career together. However, on a routine assignment in a Philadelphia prison, Tally and her cameraman are taken hostage in a prison riot and forced to endure hours of intense violence. Tally covers the groundbreaking story from within the walls of the collapsing prison as Warren looks on from outside, guiding her through her first national broadcast. This incredible act of bravery leads to Tally's eagerly anticipated advancement to a national network newscaster position and the continuation of the dynamic duo's rise to fame - but shortly after, disaster strikes when Warren is killed during an assignment.

Robert Redford as Warren Justice
Michelle Pfeiffer as Sally "Tally" Atwater
Stockard Channing as Marcia McGrath
Joe Mantegna as Bucky Terranova
Kate Nelligan as Joanna Kennelly
Glenn Plummer as Ned Jackson
James Rebhorn as John Merino
Scott Bryce as Rob Sullivan
Raymond Cruz as Fernando Buttanda
Dedee Pfeiffer as Luanne Atwater
Miguel Sandoval as Dan Duarte
Noble Willingham as Buford Sells
James Karen as Tom Orr
Brian Markinson as Vic Nash

Adaptation [ ]

In the spring of 1988, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion began writing the script for a film entitled Golden Girl , based on Alanna Nash's biography of Jessica Savitch. When the film was finally released in 1996, eight years later, it was known as Up Close & Personal and none of the more controversial details of Savitch's private life remained: [1]

Savitch's erratic behavior was supposedly due to continued drug abuse, a theory seemingly confirmed by an incoherent news update in October 1983 that led to a national outcry. [2]
Savitch's second husband (who was homosexual) committed suicide less than a year after they married. [2]
Savitch underwent an abortion procedure, later claiming that she had suffered a miscarriage. [1]
Most notably, Savitch died at the age of 36 in a car accident, an event not depicted in the film. [1]

According to Dunne, who chronicled his experiences dealing with studio executives in his book Monster: Living Off the Big Screen , the majority of these changes were made in order to appeal to a broader mainstream market. Producer Scott Rudin was reported to have said, when asked by a weary Dunne what the film was supposed to be, "it's about two movie stars." [1]

Reception [ ]

The film currently holds a rating of 29% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 34 reviews, indicating a negative critical reception. [3]

Critics largely ridiculed the screenplay for bearing little resemblance to the biography of Jessica Savitch, which was supposed to have inspired it. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times wrote: " Up Close and Personal is so different from the facts of Savitch's life that if Didion and Dunne still have their first draft, they probably could sell it as a completely different movie." [4] Anita Gates in the New York Times wrote that "it all ends up more A Star Is Born than Network ." [5] Leonard Klady in Variety described it as " A Star Is Born meets The Way We Were , and while discerning audiences will turn their noses up, the hoi polloi are apt to embrace this unabashedly sentimental affair and send it soaring into the box office stratosphere." [6]

Desson Howe in the Washington Post was extremely negative about the film: " Up Close and Personal , which was "suggested" by the Jessica Savitch biography, Golden Girl: The Story of Jessica Savitch , starts out with relative promise... but then, the loooove comes through like a bad-news feed, and our marquee lovers undergo one of those unbearable montages. While an insipid, rock ballad covers the proceedings with auditory treacle, Cushion Lips ( Michelle Pfeiffer ) and Armchair Man ( Robert Redford ) walk together, laugh together, frolic in the waves with their clothes on - that sort of thing... In this movie, network executives - who depend entirely on focus groups, marketing and advertisers to inform their decisions - are painted as the moral bad guys, while Redford and the emerging Pfeiffer are the embodiment of integrity... And the fact that this is a Touchstone Pictures production - part of the marketing-obsessed, truth-sweetening Disney empire which just purchased ABC - is far too hilarious an irony to ignore." [7] Time Out called it a "soppy May–December romance masquerading as a deadly earnest issues movie... Blow-dried, bleached blonde-on-bland entertainment." [8]

However, certain critics argued that the film had its merits. Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "Taken on its own terms, Up Close and Personal is a fine movie. Two star images meet and enhance each other. Redford , as usual, plays a rugged, outdoorsy, uncompromising man of unshakable integrity who just happens to be news director at a Miami station. Michelle Pfeiffer , as usual, is gorgeous, pretty, gawky and a lot tougher and smarter than she looks." [9] Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, arguing that the "temptations are great to mock the clichés and melodrama in Up Close and Personal , but the movie undeniably works as what it really is - a love story." [4] Variety praised the "chemistry" of Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford , and the "delicious and brief star turns" of Stockard Channing, Kate Nelligan and Noble Willingham, concluding that the film wasn't "as accomplished as its inspiration but, regrettably, it's the best Hollywood has to offer in the heartstring-pulling genre." [6]

Awards and nominations [ ]

The featured song, "Because You Loved Me", written by Diane Warren and performed by Céline Dion , won the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture or Television, and was nominated for the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. [10]

Stockard Channing won a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Supporting Actress - Romance. [10]

References [ ]

↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Gelbart, Larry (March 2, 1997). " A Beginning, a Muddle and an End ". nytimes.com.
↑ 2.0 2.1 " Jessica Savitch - Internet Accuracy Project ". accuracyproject.org.
↑ " Up Close and Personal Movie Reviews, Pictures ". rottentomatoes.com.
↑ 4.0 4.1 Ebert, Roger (March 1, 1996). " Up Close And Personal :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews ". rogerebert.suntimes.com.
↑ Gates, Anita (March 10, 1996). " Movie Review - Up Close & Personal - As Naval Engagements Go, Not a Classic ". movies.nytimes.com.
↑ 6.0 6.1 Klady, Leonard (February 28, 1996). " Review, Up Close & Personal ". variety.com.
↑ Howe, Desson (March 1, 1996). " 'Up Close & Personal' ". washingtonpost.com.
↑ " Review: Up Close & Personal - Film - Time Out London ". timeout.com.
↑ LaSalle, Mick (September 13, 1996). " FILM REVIEW - TV News Made 'Personal' / Redford, Pfeiffer in a fine romance ". sfgate.com.
↑ 10.0 10.1 " Up Close & Personal (1996) - Awards ". imdb.com.
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Rotten Tomatoes® Score

It is an engaging, almost endearing, film with plenty of issues, but none of those problems generate any kind of animus, just a vague sense of disappointment that it wasn’t ever so slightly better.

Up Close and Personal isn't even a particularly good movie, but it's more revealing than most other films about the degradation of what used to be called "the press."

Is it worse as a love story or as a drama about the sorry state of television news? The answer: It's a tie.

Glitz! Glamour! Love! TV news ethics?

A perfectly respectable effort, but with all the talent involved it could have been better.

Bland TV expose loosely based on the life of Jessica Savitch

Final proof that "based on actual events" means absolutely nothing.

Additional Info

Genre : Drama
Release Date : March 1, 1996
Languages : English, Spanish
Captions : English
Audio Format : 5.1

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Hollywood favorites Robert Redford (Indecent Proposal) and Michelle Pfeiffer (Dangerous Minds) sizzle together in this acclaimed story of heated passion and burning ambition! When aspiring news reporter Tally Atwater (Pfeiffer) tries to break into television, only veteran newsman Warren Justice (Redford) will give her a shot. In time, he teaches her everything she knows about news...and she teaches him how to love again! But with her rise from local TV weather girl to network anchor, Tally and Warren must balance the dream of success...with their desire for each other!

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Up Close & Personal

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eFilmCritic.com Scott Weinberg Final proof that "based on actual events" means absolutely nothing.
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert The temptations are great to mock the cliches and melodrama in Up Close & Personal, but the movie undeniably works as what it really is -- a love story.
TheMovieReport.com Michael Dequina There is no real sexual tension between [Pfeiffer and Redford] from the get-go, so when they finally do get together, it feels forced, ungenuine.
Chicago Tribune Gene Siskel Is it worse as a love story or as a drama about the sorry state of television news? The answer: It's a tie.
Common Sense Media Charles Cassady Glitz! Glamour! Love! TV news ethics?
Film Journal International Daniel Eagan Bland TV expose loosely based on the life of Jessica Savitch
Fantastica Daily Chuck O'Leary A perfectly respectable effort, but with all the talent involved it could have been better.
USA Today Mike Clark This is one of those untaxing time-killers where you spend a lot of time pondering which of its actress's changing hairstyles you like best.
Newsweek David Ansen What Up Close and Personal" is really about is the chemical reaction set off between Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford. In a love story, if your two stars don't click, all is lost. When they do--as they do here--nothing else really matters.

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‘Scoop’ Review: Prince Andrew’s Catastrophic Jeremy Epstein Interview Gets ‘The Crown’ Treatment in Unfocused Netflix Thriller

David ehrlich.

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It makes sense that Netflix leapt at the chance to adapt Sam McAllister’s “Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews,” as the story that screenwriter Peter Moffat has pulled from it feels like nothing so much as an episode from season eight or nine of “The Crown” — the most compelling thing about this film might be the case it makes in support of the streamer’s decision to end that series after season six.

Is this, like so much of “The Crown,” a story about the monarchy’s failure to mature with the times? Is this a “Spotlight”-flavored story about a brilliant TV producer — Sam McAllister herself, played here by the great Billie Piper — who recognizes the gravity of Prince Andrew’s (alleged) misconduct, and wills the other women at “Newsnight” to make him pay for his (alleged) involvement in the assault and sex trafficking of underage girls? Is this a story about how charm, title, and power can blind people to the most obvious forms of moral rot, even when it manifests within themselves?

The call doesn’t come until a few months before Epstein’s death, as Sam — a blustery single mom whose job is to book the kind of guests that other shows can’t — identifies Prince Andrew’s connection with Epstein as a potential “Newsnight” story. Her peers might scoff that it’s too scandalous and trashy for their hard news show, but the program is struggling to balance journalistic integrity with its desperate need for ratings, and Sam is convinced she’s found the perfect thing to split the difference.

So, to the mild chagrin of her editor Esme Wren (Romola Garai) and “Newsnight” anchor Emily Maitlis (Gillian Anderson), Sam begins trying to make inroads with Prince Andrew’s loyal private secretary. Her name is Amanda Thirsk (Keeley Hawes), and she’s a decent and capable woman who refuses to believe the worst rumors about her royal boss, even if she recognizes that his public image is in dire need of rehabilitation — and even if Rufus Sewell, amusingly puffed up inside a simpering layer of entitlement and a pair of thick prosthetic jowls, plays the Queen’s buffoonish charmer of a son as an inbred momma’s boy who loves arranging the stuffed animals in his office almost as much as he loves paying underage girls for sex.

Where McAllister and her colleagues at the BBC were afraid they might become the story if they didn’t finesse it right, this film — naturally directed by “The Crown” alum Philip Martin — is tasked with reminding us that the story couldn’t have been told without them. “Scoop” does what it can to tease some excitement out of the sleepless, 70-hour cram session when Prince Andrew and the “Newsnight” team retreat to their separate corners in order to prepare for the interview, but the most interesting thing about the process is how unseriously the Prince takes it. As Sam tells her tween son, a character who’s shoehorned into this script for the sole purpose of hearing this one line of dialogue: “Most people want to talk and are terrible at listening.” Some of them can’t even hear themselves clearly.

After spending 60 years ensconced in the empire’s tightest echo chamber, Prince Andrew has lost all perspective as to the seriousness of this or any situation, and to how ridiculous some of his answers might seem in light of what Emily Maitlis’ questions will imply. “Scoop” is happy to see Prince Andrew as an easy punchline (his last appearance in the movie finds him standing butt-naked in his bathroom as tweets of doom begin to ding across his phone), but the film is never more textured or humane than when it focuses on Amanda’s dawning awareness of the pathetic man she’s enabled like a duty. This movie needed to have a character who’s effectively hearing Prince Andrew for the first time, because most of the people watching it on Netflix won’t have the same luxury.

Amanda becomes even more important because of how little there is for Sam to do once the interview is confirmed. She’s relegated to the background as the brunt of the responsibility is shifted onto Emily’s shoulders, and whatever momentum the movie has cultivated around her character arc is relegated to the background along with it.

It’s true enough that good broadcast journalism is still an effective bulwark against the vicissitudes of the 21st century, but it doesn’t seem right for “Scoop” to so triumphantly settle on that moral as the big idea that might collect this movie into something more than news media cosplay. There’s no doubt the “Newsnight” team deserved a pat on the back after giving Prince Andrew enough rope to hang himself on national TV, but the victory lap they’re given here is wildly unearned at the end of a film that struggles to find a story beyond its own sensationalism.

“Scoop” will be available to stream on Netflix starting Friday, April 5.

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Entertainment | review: dev patel’s ‘monkey man’ is bloody and political, "monkey man" is most explosive in its blistering first half-hour.

By Jake Coyle | Associated Press

Has there been a more satisfying actor to watch mature on screen in recent years than Dev Patel? The endearingly earnest, scrawny kid of “Slumdog Millionaire” has steadily grown into a singularly intense and sensitive leading man. It’s a transformation that, for anyone who missed “Lion,””The Personal History of David Copperfield” or “The Green Knight,” may be especially jarring in watching Patel’s new film, “Monkey Man.”

Like “Slumdog Millionaire,” the film is set in Mumbai and has a touch of fable to it. But in tone and texture, it could hardly be more different. Bathed in blood and fury, “Monkey Man” is one gory coming out party for Patel, who also directed and co-wrote the film. He kicks so much butt in this movie — at one point he punches a punch — that it’s enough to make you wonder if the search for the new James Bond ought to be redirected.

“Monkey Man,” produced by Jordan Peele, is aiming for something grittier, though — more in Bruce Lee territory or the neighborhood of Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy” — wild, kinetic places to be where martial-arts action turns mythic and feverish. At its best moments, “Monkey Man” does that tradition justice. But at all its moments, the movie is a convincing display of Patel’s still-expanding power and tenacity as a performer.

“Monkey Man” is most explosive in its blistering first half-hour. Patel’s character, credited only as Kid, fights while wearing a gorilla mask in an underground boxing ring. Our first image of him is of his head, in that mask, hitting the canvas hard.

These scenes, presided over by Sharlto Copley’s ring leader, have a masochist edge to them, as does Kid’s corresponding efforts to get closer to a den of power and corruption housed in the high-rise King’s Club. We don’t know initially the reasons for his obsession; he’s a mysterious, single-minded figure compelled by hellbent revenge.

And we watch with curiosity as he works his way into the building as a dishwasher hired by manager Queenie (Ashwini Kalsekar) and, soon thereafter, gains a promotion to waiter to get himself up to the penthouse. His focus is on the police chief Rana (Sikandar Kher) and the build-up to their brutal first encounter is a swiftly edited, kinetic swirl. It fails, sending Kid on a clattering cascade down the building and beyond. Out of the frying pan, into the prostitution den with the ax-wielding maniac.

But while “Monkey Man” is thrillingly enigmatic at first, it’s overly leaden with exposition once it settles in. To its credit, the movie has other things on its mind. It opens with the Hindu epic poem “Ramayana,” in which the deity Hanuman mistakes the sun for a mango and has his powers stripped.

“Monkey Man” is sketched symbolically against the story of Hanuman but set in a sordid, contemporary Mumbai (technically it’s a fictional city named Yatana). The syndicate Kid is trying to infiltrate ultimately leads to a religious leader (Makarand Deshpande). “Monkey Man,” which Netflix dropped before it was picked up by Peele and Universal, is pointedly political in its fictionalized echoes of modern, Modi-led India.

While Kid recovers with the help of the sage Alpha (Vipin Sharma) and a group of transgender women in hiding, these elements are slowly brought from a simmer to a boil. “Monkey Man” makes room for cutaways to TV news reports (some footage comes from real demonstrations) and copious flashbacks to a violent land grab from Kid’s childhood, during which his mother Neela (Adithi Kalkunte) was brutally murdered.

The real-world metaphors and Hindu contexts of “Monkey Man” add to the film’s potency but aren’t always smoothly incorporated. This is a movie that namechecks “John Wick,” too. And it’s more successful in its frenetic fight choreography leading up to a bloody third-act showdown imbued with the rage of class uprising.

But regardless of any incongruities, “Monkey Man” makes for a forceful directorial debut from Patel. More than anything else, he brings a compelling gravity to a film that is quite serious about getting seriously brutal.

“Monkey Man”

3 stars out of 4

Rating: R (for strong bloody violence throughout, language throughout, sexual content/nudity and drug use)

Running time: 121 minutes

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Critics are calling Netflix's 'Ripley' a stunning Hitchcockian thriller. But like its criminal anti-hero, it ends up overstaying its welcome.

Netflix's "Ripley" offers up a fresh take on Patricia Highsmith's famous chameleon-like conman.
The show, which premiered Thursday, has gotten mostly positive reviews from critics.
However, some reviewers have said the series unfolds too slowly and has some crucial flaws.

Netflix's "Ripley" has arrived. The eight-episode series premiered Thursday on Netflix and is a fresh take on Patricia Highsmith's chameleon-like conman, who the world was first introduced to in her 1955 novel, "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

Audiences are likely to be familiar with the overall plot of the series, which has been written and directed by Steven Zaillian, best known as the writer behind "The Irishman," "Schindler's List," and "Moneyball."

Like Anthony Minghella's 1999 sun-dappled adaptation, which starred Matt Damon in the central role, and the French take on the story "Purple Noon" released in 1960, "Ripley" follows the titular grifter (Andrew Scott) as he ingratiates himself into the life of two wealthy Americans living la dolce vita on a never-ending vacation in Italy.

Critics have praised the series, citing its striking film noir visuals and compelling cast performances. But for some, the pacing of the show is an issue; the slow, almost languid nature of the episodes (the longest of which clocks in at 76 minutes) means it's not necessarily one you could — or should — sit down and binge in one go.

Here's a rundown of what reviews for "Ripley" have been saying.

The series is a slow-burn thriller that might not work for everyone.

As many critics have pointed out, "Ripley" indulges in every minute of its almost eight-hour run time. It may take a few episodes to engross audience members, but it's well worth the ride.

The Financial Times' Dan Einav noted that the series "takes its time to establish each location with a scene-setting collage of images," pointing out "wonderful details like the liver-spotted hand of a bus driver shifting gear to climb up towards Dickie's village and the bubbles of champagne in Ripley's glass as he acclimatises to a new life."

"The careful mapping of Tom's every move, whether in furtherance of his deceit or the covering up of his crimes, allows the tension to mount exquisitely," Lucy Mangan wrote for The Guardian .

"This kind of meticulous artistry deserves equally attentive viewing," Lena Wilson argued for IGN , adding: "Despite streaming in full on Netflix, 'Ripley' works best when watched in moderation."

However, Aramide Tinubu, writing for Variety, disagreed, arguing that "the episodes are painfully overlong and full of dead space."

"'Ripley' unfolds too slowly — as the trail of events attracts the attention of an Italian detective (Maurizio Lombardi) — while creating the risk that some people will bail out before the series reaches the good stuff," CNN's critic Brian Lowry stated.

Andrew Scott offers a mesmeric take on a familiar character — despite being much older.

In her review of the series for BBC , Caryn James wrote that Andrew Scott "brings a hum of sinister energy to the role of Tom Ripley."

The New York Times's Mike Hale said the Irish actor "does a meticulous job of portraying Ripley's transition from shifty timidity to insolent confidence, from lost boy to aesthete, through subtle shifts of expression and posture."

"Charismatic and scary in equal measure, Scott has never been better, and he's aided in his exceptional cause by Zaillian, whose writing is razor-sharp and his direction just as assured," the Daily Beast's Nick Schager said in his review.

But, as Daniel Fienberg wrote in his review for The Hollywood Reporter , Scott is "too old" to play the fledgling sociopath.

"It's one thing for Tom Ripley to be an unformed if still protean grifter at 21 or 22, but another thing still to be scraping by without an identity at 35," he argued.

The monochrome palette of the series adds to the unsettling atmosphere.

Zaillian, along with Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit — known for his frequent collaborations with Paul Thomas Anderson, including "There Will Be Blood" and "Magnolia" — has shot the series in crisp, moody black-and-white, a decision that many reviewers praised.

"In an era where huge TV budgets often equate to cheap-looking visuals, Ripley is staggeringly, starkly beautiful," John Nugent wrote for Empire .

Cary Darling, writing for The Houston Chronicle , said that Elswit's monochrome palette is "almost a character of its own, one that throws the story into a sharp, film-noir relief."

Writing for Collider , Remus Noronha stated: "Every shot in 'Ripley' is perfectly composed, worthy of being showcased in a gallery as high art."

Don’t expect similarities to Matt Damon's "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

Ultimately, "Ripley" feels like it has been cut from an entirely different cloth to that of the 1999 film version of "The Talented Mr. Ripley," which is the best-known adaptation. Most reviewers agree that distinction is a good thing.

"The story may revolve around imitation, but 'Ripley' is a show determined to do its own thing," Einav wrote in his review for the Financial Times .

"'The Talented Mr. Ripley' has often been adapted in a way that felt sweaty, hot, and impassioned — this one is ice cold, drained of color and most human emotion. The choice really serves the reading of Ripley as an amoral creature, someone who doesn't cross boundaries of right and wrong as much as he never even considers them," reads the RogerEbert.com critic Brian Tallerico's review of the series.

Instead, it appears to be interested in older cinematic references.

As many reviewers pointed out, Zaillian's main point of reference for the series may have been the work of Alfred Hitchcock, the filmmaker best known for "Psycho," "The Birds," and "Strangers on a Train" (the last of which was adapted from another of Highsmith's novels).

"'Ripley' plays as if it were a Hitchcock series Hitchcock never made," reads the BBC review.

Rolling Stone's Alan Sepinwall called it "a masterpiece of Hitchcock-style suspense."

All eight episodes of "Ripley" are now streaming on Netflix .

Disclosure: Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, is a Netflix board member.

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Personal Care

Solar Eclipse Eye Safety: How to Protect Your Eyes When Viewing Nature's Wonder

Here's what to know about solar retinopathy and why using proper vision protection is important.

Added coconut oil to cheap coffee before keto made it cool.

Three women wearing solar eclipse glasses looking up at the sky

Whether you've traveled to see it or you're one of the lucky ones living in the total solar eclipse's path , protecting your vision is important if you'll be looking up to the sky Monday.

A total solar eclipse happens when the moon momentarily blocks the sun's face, resulting in a cool and arguably eerie darkness. It's the same type of eclipse that happened in 2017; last year's was only an annular eclipse .

Whether you're in the path of totality or catching part of the eclipse, it's important you know the safety guidance and find the right eye protection . Aside from the very short moment of darkness that is the total solar eclipse, the sun will be partially eclipsed on Monday, making special eclipse glasses crucial if you plan to be outside or viewing the sky in any way.

Dr. Ronald Benner, president of the American Optometric Association, told us in October that unsafe viewing of a solar eclipse can cause solar retinopathy, which is a type of retinal damage he compared to sunburn on the "satellite dish of the eye." Failing to wear proper eye protection will let in a dangerous amount of ultraviolet radiation and damage the macular tissue in the retina.

"Once it's burned and scarred, it's a bad thing," Benner said.

Read more: Last Solar Eclipse for 20 Years Is Coming: Here's How to Watch It

NASA's map shows the lucky strip of the US that will be within the viewing area of the total solar eclipse this April 8.

How to find eclipse glasses last minute

Unfortunately, sunglasses aren't going to cut it. Proper solar viewers or eclipse glasses are thousands of times darker than sunglasses, according to NASA.

Both the American Optometric Association and the American Academy of Ophthalmology say to look for glasses that have been given the OK by the American Astronomical Society. The AAS includes glasses that meet the ISO 12312-2 standard. Importantly, counterfeit glasses or those that don't meet safety standards can also claim this or use it as a logo -- so make sure you verify your glasses before the big event . (The AAS notes that if you have glasses from a vendor not listed, it doesn't mean that they're unsafe by default, they're simply not vetted.)

Some brick-and-mortar stores sell glasses in-store that meet safety standards, the AAS says. So if you need a pair last-minute, it's worth swinging by one of these stores to see what they have in stock:

Walmart
Lowe's
Cracker Barrel
Bucc-ee's
Meijer
Menards

If you find glasses at another store that isn't listed above, it doesn't mean they aren't legitimate. They just haven't been vetted by the AAS.

According to information from Warby Parker provided to CNET Sunday evening, the free eclipse glasses Warby Parker was giving away are out of stock at all locations.

In addition to glasses, you can use a pinhole eclipse projector to view the eclipse.

Read more: Want to Take Photos of the Total Solar Eclipse? Here's What to Know

Make sure to check your eclipse glasses

Even if you've done all the right things by referencing the AAS website to find the right glasses or viewers, it's a good idea to give them a test run before the main event.

You can do this by putting your glasses on and wearing them around other sources of light, like street lights or car lights. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, you shouldn't be able to see any light in your eclipse glasses, besides the sun or sunlight reflected in a mirror. If light comes through, Benner said, "they're not good."

For more, follow these tips to see whether your glasses are fake or the real deal .

A person in a yellow fuzzy sweatshirt wearing solar eclipse glasses outside

Solar retinopathy: What happens to your eyes if you look at a solar eclipse

For folks who will be in the path of totality, there is a "brief and spectacular" period of time when it's safe to look at the sky without glasses, according to NASA , but it's crucial to keep them on during the other phases of the eclipse while the sun is still partly visible. According to the National Park Service , the total block lasts only for about 2 to 4 minutes, depending on where you are in the path of totality.

And for people viewing a partial eclipse outside the path of totality, there's never a safe time to view the eclipse without glasses. If the sun is out, even just a sliver, don't look at it without glasses .

Put simply, solar retinopathy is damage to the retina , and you run that risk by exposing your eyes to the sun. Benner said the damage usually takes about six to 12 hours to show up. Common symptoms include blurry vision, blind spots, distorted color vision or otherwise warped vision.

If you notice these symptoms, you should see a doctor right away to pinpoint the source of your vision problems. Many patients will regain normal vision acuity within a few months, though it may be random. Benner added that recovery may take up to six months or a year, and that sometimes people don't fully recover and their vision acuity is affected from then on.

Is there anyone who might be more susceptible to solar retinopathy? No, Benner said.

"Every individual is a unique individual," Benner said, but no one's immune to damage when it comes to the delicate parts of the eye. In other words, don't think you'll be safe to steal a peak because you don't sunburn often.

"When it comes to the retinal tissue, it's so much different," he explained.

There's also no specific amount of time that you can look at the sun before you're at risk of retinal damage. According to the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, even a few seconds can cause permanent harm.

For parents of younger kids, Benner has an extra word of caution: Watch them closely with their glasses, or just keep them in the house to watch it on TV. Us adults know better than to risk looking at the sun, but children may not.

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Up Close And Personal movie review (1996)
"Up Close & Personal" reminds me of nothing so much as those career novels for teenagers, in which a plucky youngster rises to the top, guided by a helpful mentor. The movie could as well be titled, "Tally Atwater, Girl Broadcaster." It tells the story of a poor young woman from Reno with an unhappy background (Michelle Pfeiffer), who fakes her resume to get a job on a TV station, and then ...
Up Close and Personal Movie Review
Kids say: Not yet rated Add your rating. The good news: Up Close and Personal is a sumptuously old-school, glossy, larger-than-life romance that Hollywood does so well. The bad news: It's a sumptuously old-school, glossy, larger-than-life romance that Hollywood does so well -- meshed uncomfortably with portrayals of crusading TV news reporters ...
Up Close & Personal
Audience Reviews for Up Close & Personal. Oct 01, 2013. A little long. The ending was very sad. Show Less Show More. Super Reviewer. Jul 08, 2011.
Up Close & Personal (film)
Up Close & Personal is a 1996 American romantic drama film directed by Jon Avnet from a screenplay written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne.It stars Robert Redford as a news director and Michelle Pfeiffer as his protégée, with Stockard Channing, Joe Mantegna, and Kate Nelligan in supporting roles.. The screenplay began as an adaptation of Golden Girl: The Story of Jessica Savitch, a ...
Up Close & Personal
Up Close and Personal isn't even a particularly good movie, but it's more revealing than most other films about the degradation of what used to be called "the press." Full Review | Dec 4, 2020
Up Close & Personal (1996)
Up Close & Personal: Directed by Jon Avnet. With Robert Redford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Stockard Channing, Joe Mantegna. An ambitious young woman, determined to build a career in television journalism, gets good advice from her first boss, and they fall in love.
Review: Up Close and Personal (1996)
Review. Romantic dramas are a dime a dozen. Good ones are exceedingly rare. Toss in the added frustration of news-oriented plotlines and you have Up Close and Personal, a film that wants to succeed, but never quite figures out how to be great. The story follows a young reporter (Michelle Pfeiffer) as she earns her big break under the tutelage ...
Up Close & Personal
Up Close & Personal. By Peter Travers. March 1, 1996. Robert Redford leads two lives: movie star and maverick. Here's a guy who founded the Sundance Institute in 1981 so that independent ...
Up Close & Personal (1996)
Up Close and Personal (1996): Dir: Jon Avnet / Cast: Robert Redford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Glenne Plummer, Stockard Channing, Joe Mantegna: Meant to be the arrow that Cupid shot but ultimately becomes a thorn in the side of sober viewers. Title is a pun onto itself describing physical affection and two journalists.
Up Close and Personal
Yet ``Up Close and Personal'' still works as an alluring throwback to the days when movie-star romance really lighted up the screen. Its guilty pleasures are ones we all remember and plenty of us miss. ... ``Up Close and Personal'' also features an archly fine supporting performance from Stockard Channing as a Philadelphia news anchor who takes ...
Up Close & Personal
Hollywood favorites Robert Redford (Indecent Proposal ) and Michelle Pfeiffer (Dangerous Minds) sizzle together in this acclaimed story of heated passion and...
Up Close And Personal Review
Read the Empire Movie review of Up Close And Personal. ... Up Close And Personal Review. by William Thomas | Published on 01 01 2000. Release Date: 21 Jun 1996. Running Time: 126 minutes.
Behind ''Up Close & Personal''
Behind ''Up Close & Personal'' -- The Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford film dramatizes anchorwoman Jessica Savitch's tragic life. It was the perfect pitch. It had sex, drugs, violence, a ...
Up Close & Personal
About this movie. Hollywood favorites Robert Redford (Indecent Proposal ) and Michelle Pfeiffer (Dangerous Minds) sizzle together in this acclaimed story of heated passion and burning ambition! When aspiring news reporter Tally Atwater (Pfeiffer) tries to break into television, only veteran newsman Warren Justice (Redford) will give her a shot.
UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
More Detail: Movies are an emotive medium. Weak movies can succeed if they pull the right heartstrings. UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL pulls the right strings but is extremely weak. The movie recasts a STAR IS BORN in the person of the news anchor wannabee Sally Atwood, played by Michele Pfeiffer. A small town girl from Nevada, Sally fakes her ...
Mike Legeros Movie Review
Up Close and Personal (1996) The nicest thing that you can say about this movie is that it's *extremely* easy on the eyes. Robert Redford plays a seasoned news producer, Michelle Pfieffer is his ambitious young protege, and, together, they lend a suitable star power to an otherwise lousy movie.
Up Close and Personal
Up Close and Personal 1996, PG-13, 124 min. Directed by Jon Avnet. Starring Robert Redford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Stockard Channing, Joe Mantegna, Kate Nelligan, Glenn Plummer, James Rebhorn.
Up Close & Personal
Up Close & Personal is a 1996 American romantic drama film directed by Jon Avnet, and starring Robert Redford as a news director and Michelle Pfeiffer as his protégée, with Stockard Channing, Joe Mantegna, and Kate Nelligan in supporting roles. The film began as an adaptation of Golden Girl: The Story of Jessica Savitch, a 1988 book by Alanna Nash that recounted the troubled life of American ...
Up Close & Personal
Purchase Up Close & Personal on digital and stream instantly or download offline. Hollywood favorites Robert Redford (Indecent Proposal ) and Michelle Pfeiffer (Dangerous Minds) sizzle together in this acclaimed story of heated passion and burning ambition! When aspiring news reporter Tally Atwater (Pfeiffer) tries to break into television, only veteran newsman Warren Justice (Redford) will ...
Up Close & Personal
#1996movietrailer #trailers #trailer #movietrailer #previewsFind More @ #cappazack#ROBERTREDFORD #MICHELLEPFEIFFER#STOCKARDCHANNING #KATENELLIGAN #GLENNPLUMM...
Up Close And Personal (1996) Movie
2h 4m. ratings. (188) borrow. Cast Robert Redford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Stockard Channing, Joe Mantegna, Kate Nelligan, Glenn Plummer, James Rebhorn. Director Jon Avnet. Producer Jon Avnet. Hollywood favorites Robert Redford (Indecent Proposal) and Michelle Pfeiffer (Dangerous Minds) sizzle together in this acclaimed story of heated passion and ...
Watch Up Close & Personal (1996) Full Movie Online
Tally Atwater is taken under the wing of Warren Justice in a Miami newsroom and becomes a news star on television. Despite her love for him, she takes the big chance and moves to Philadelphia, and he follows her to rescue her faltering career at the cost of his own - as she rises, he falls.
'STEVE!' review: Steve Martin opens up about life and stardom, then and
Setting poor grammar and punctuation aside, "STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces" joins the recent Paul Simon documentary in providing a big streaming canvas to let a star open up about ...
'Coup de Chance' Is Woody Allen's Best Film in Years
Written by: Woody Allen. Starring: Lou de Laâge, Melvil Poupaud, Niels Schneider. Running time: 96 mins. The film centers on what outwardly appears to be the perfect marriage of Fanny and Jean ...
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A thin but propulsive journalistic thriller about the making of the November 2019 "Newsnight" segment in which Prince Andrew self-immolated on national television while being grilled about his ...
Review: Dev Patel's 'Monkey Man' is bloody and political
More than anything else, he brings a compelling gravity to a film that is quite serious about getting seriously brutal. "Monkey Man". 3 stars out of 4. Rating: R (for strong bloody violence ...
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'Ripley' Reviews: Critics Call Andrew Scott Sensational in Slow-Burn Series
The series is a slow-burn thriller that might not work for everyone. Dakota Fanning, Johnny Flynn, and Andrew Scott in "Ripley." Netflix. As many critics have pointed out, "Ripley" indulges in ...
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Dr. Ronald Benner, president of the American Optometric Association, told us in October that unsafe viewing of a solar eclipse can cause solar retinopathy, which is a type of retinal damage he ...

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