Julia Garner names cinema’s only “perfect” movie: “Everybody should watch this”
As far as flawed lead characters go, not many this year are going to rival Julia Garner’s under-fire teacher in Zach Cregger’s staggering horror Weapons.
Blamed and harassed by an entire community after seventeen children in her school class go missing at the same time one night, Garner shows not just vulnerability but also (occasionally alcohol-fuelled) defiance and feistiness that underline her as a superb actor, something she’d already shown in spades in the likes of The Americans, Ozark and The Assistant.
To give too many details away about Weapons would spoil the thrilling experience of Cregger’s ‘Is it a horror, is it a thriller, is it a mystery’ masterpiece, but suffice to say Garner’s character has her work cut out to help solve the puzzle of the creepy kids that vanish in the wee hours of the morning.
Asked by Criterion to select what she feels are the best movies in history, Garner said: ”The first film that I’m gonna pick is my favourite film, All About Eve. Bette Davis is incredible. Anne Baxter, who plays Eve Harrington, is incredible. I watch this movie at least, like, once a year, sometimes multiple times a year. I just think it is a perfect film. And I think everybody should watch this!”
All About Eve is a comedy-drama from 1950, directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz and starring Davis, Baxter and a young Marilyn Monroe. It tells the story of a fading Broadway star and her obsessive fan and swept the board after its release. It picked up some 14 Oscar nominations, a record it still shares with Titanic and La La Land and is the only film in history to receive Oscar nominations for four female performances.
Originally based on a true story, All About Eve replicated the tale of an actress named Elisabeth Bergner who had hired a fan as an assistant, only to see the youngster try to steal her career. She told the tale to a writer, Mary Orr, who turned it into a short story named The Wisdom of Eve to be published in Cosmopolitan. It was there that it was seen by Mankiewicz, who bought the film rights.
Star of the movie, Bette Davis, had something of a polarising character, which led a previous director of hers to warn Mankiewicz that she could cause a lot of trouble on set. But that didn’t prove to be the case; in fact, Davis got on so well with her co-star, Gary Merrill, that the pair fell in love and were later married. Davis herself said of the film: “I can think of no project that from the outset was as rewarding from the first day to the last. It is easy to understand why. It was a great script, had a great director, and was a cast of professionals, all with parts they liked. It was a charmed production from the word go.”
Elsewhere in Garner’s selection were the likes of Warren Beatty’s Shampoo, Spike Lee’s late’80s Brooklyn drama Do the Right Thing, Bong Joon Ho’s twisting 2019 thriller Parasite which won a Best Picture Oscar, and Woman Under the Influence, the brilliant John Cassavetes drama from 1974 starring Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands that won two Academy Awards.
