Review: "The Last Word"

“The Last Word” is the sort of movie that’s made explicitly for an aged screen legend to provide them with one last moment in the spotlight, and maybe a shot at an Oscar. This is Shirley MacLaine’s star vehicle swan song, as surely as “Venus” was Peter O’Toole’s.

I liked the movie, especially MacLaine’s irascible turn as a hateful old woman who’s shown to have inner depths and redeeming qualities.

The role borrows a little too heavily from her iconic portrayal of Ouiser Boudreaux in “Steel Magnolias.” And the screenplay (by Stuart Ross Fink) starts off on an edgy note and becomes progressively more filled with hugs and clichés, right down to the obligatory road trip and chirpy kid sidekick.

Still, it’s a winning turn from a master thespian. Aspiring actors would do well to watch how MacLaine tosses in subtle little expressions and glances that bend the character’s dialogue and behavior into shades of other meaning.

As the opening vignettes make plain, Harriet Lauler is a pill. She seems to have no friends or relations. A wealthy woman in her 80s, all she does is putter around her mansion, waited upon by a team of put-upon servants she deems incapable of doing their jobs. She doesn’t like the gardener’s (Gedde Watanabe, forever Donger from “Sixteen Candles”) clipping of the hedges, so she takes over and sends him home. The cook gets the same treatment.

Then she stumbles across an obituary of someone she knew, and is struck by all the wonderful things people said about the woman. Harriet’s dilemma is clear: What will they say about me? Nothing nice, she’s sure -- because she has made sure.

So the ultimate control freak sets out to have the ultimate last word: commissioning her obituary while she’s still alive, so it meets with her approval.

Harriet seeks out Anne Sherman, the 30ish obit writer at the Bristol Gazette, and orders her obituary -- even providing a list of 200 people to talk to. Harriet can do this because her old advertising firm kept the smallish-town newspaper afloat, and the fumbling inheritor publisher (Tom Everett Scott) complies because he’s… grateful? Afraid? Hopes she can help their bottom line? It’s a little unclear.

Anne dutifully talks to the people, and finds no one with anything good to say. “If I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you,” one former employee quotes Harriet. Forbidden from talking to the ex-husband, Anne seeks him (Phillip Baker Hall) out anyway; he refuses to disavow Harriet’s warts but doesn’t regret marrying her.

When the first draft of the obituary is dead on arrival, Harriet takes her self-dealing to the next level and enlists Anne to help her do some benevolent/interesting things so there will be material to mine.

They visit a program for at-risk kids (“hooligans”), where the keen-eyed Harriet spots Brenda (AnnJewel Lee Dixon), a smart, mouthy girl railing against the stupidity of the Dewey decimal system. Harriet quasi-adopts her as a mentee, though we never really learn more about the girl other than she has plenty of sass and cutes to lighten things up.

Harriet also turns her newly helpful gaze upon Anne herself, asking about the essay book she’s always scribbling in -- but never shows anyone! -- and pushing her toward the hipster-handsome manager of the radio station that plays “independent music for independent minds.” She even dusts off her old record collection, waltzes into the same station and announces that she wishes to be a DJ.

(I found this whole sequence unintentionally hilarious, showing a tiny indie radio station with dozens of on-air talent hurrying about at all hours. Even huge radio offices more closely resemble crypts.)

Director Mark Pellington (“Going All the Way”) keeps things in a nice balance between comedy and pathos, showing us a portrait of a nasty person that we’re going to watch be painted over -- or have obscuring layers removed from -- to reveal a distinct, vibrant human.

“The Last Word” may not be the end-all in character studies, but it’s good enough to hold a place of honor on a legend’s filmography.

Review: "Wild"

 I was surprised to appreciate “Wild” a lot more than I thought I would. The tale of a young woman who sets off on a seemingly random 1,000-mile trek by foot to find herself, it looked like the sort of simplistic, life-affirming pap you often see in cinemas this time of year.

But buoyed by a terrific, grounded performance by Reese Witherspoon, “Wild” is anything but maudlin. It’s a tough, gritty look at a woman at their end of her rope, who sets out on an expedition in which the destination doesn’t matter, but testing herself in spirit and body is the true aim.

She happened to choose the Pacific Crest Trail, a grueling path through the Western mountains and deserts, as her personal crucible. But really, it could have been anything.

Her story is less about going somewhere, and more about finding your own path, and getting started along it.

The quality of the filmmakers behind the project should have clued me in. Director Jean-Marc Vallée was nominated for an Oscar last year for “Dallas Buyers Club,” and also helmed the high-toned “The Young Victoria.” Screenwriter Nick Hornby is known for cerebral material such as “An Education” and “About a Boy.”

The film is based on the best-selling book by Cheryl Strayed, who hiked the PCT through California, Oregon and Washington two decades ago while in her mid-20s. Her marriage had just come off the tracks and ended in divorce, due mostly to her philandering. (Thomas Sadoski has a tidy, small role as her long-suffering but sweet husband.)

On top of that, her beloved mother (a glowing Laura Dern) had died of cancer, and Cheryl was getting ever more heavily into hard drugs. Clearly things were headed in a foul direction.

Instead of hitting rock bottom, though, she came across the idea of traveling the PCT, despite being an itinerate hiker herself. We see exactly how inept she was in the early going, as she struggles to shoulder a pack that is literally bigger than her, and tears her feet to bloody shreds with too-small boots.

Cheryl meets a few people along the way, mostly men, and there’s an explicit threat of assault or rape with many of these encounters, as a young cute blonde girl all alone on the trail. But she proves quite able, and some scary meetings turn out to be friendlier than first blush. (W. Earl Brown turns up nicely as a gruff bushmaster.) Still, a couple of hunters appear to enjoy frightening her just for the sheer thrill of it.

In the film’s most bizarre (but true!) sequence, she is nearly run over by an enthusiastic African-American reporter for the Hobo Times who says his name is Jimmy Carter. Despite Cheryl’s protestations that she’s not homeless, just in between homes, she ends up becoming an unwilling subject for the publication.

Along the way, our protagonist is revealed to be a thoughtful, literate woman – she writes down quotes from famous writers in the trail station journals – who’s simply made a lot of bad choices in her life. Rather than wallowing in self-pity, she hits the road like a latter-day Jack Kerouac, though on her own two feet rather than behind the wheel.

Instead of just flaunting her freedom, though, Cheryl Strayed was seeking inspiration and forgiveness. “Wild” is the soulful tale of how she learned these were not things out there to be discovered, but gifts only she could give to herself.