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Val kilmer documentary ‘val’: film review | cannes 2021.

This portrait of the actor delves into his voluminous personal film and video archives and follows him in a third act shaped by loss, resilience and reinvention.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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As its title suggests, Val is a first-person chronicle, and one that doesn’t stand on ceremony. That’s not merely because directors Leo Scott and Ting Poo capture the musings of their subject, Val Kilmer , with a sense of unguarded intimacy, but because much of the material they’ve gathered was shot by Kilmer himself. The documentary embraces his many facets: movie star, character actor, cancer survivor, visual artist, writer, spiritual warrior, jokester, proud parent. To that list it adds another crucial accomplishment, the very reason the film exists: cinematographer.

A devoted early adopter in an era of fast-changing technology, Kilmer has been chronicling his adventures at work and at home for decades. “I’ve kept everything,” he says. “And it’s been sitting in boxes for years.” Many, many boxes.

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Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Cannes Premières)

Directors: Leo Scott, Ting Poo

What began as a digitizing project for Scott turned into a documentary filmmaking challenge for him and Poo, experienced editors directing their first film (Scott cut Palo Alto , the 2013 ensemble drama that featured a decidedly indie character turn by Kilmer and marked the screen debut of his son; Poo edited the Oscar-winning short Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 ).

They’ve sifted through a lifetime of memories, recorded on an assortment of film and video formats. There are auditions, home movies from Kilmer’s childhood (predating his own camerawork) and from his marriage to Joanne Whalley, and backstage shenanigans with Broadway co-stars and fellow 20-somethings Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon (in the short-lived Slab Boys ). There’s behind-the-scenes camaraderie on the sets of Top Gun and Tombstone — and, in the case of one notoriously troubled production, there’s commiserating with fellow castmembers and smartass disparaging of the filmmakers.

Long before it was a thing, Kilmer made his own audition tapes — on spec, pitching himself to Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese . Excerpted for the film, they’re bold with a newly anointed star’s ambition as well as his vulnerability. In one tape the close-ups are unburnished, the actor’s youthful beauty breathtaking. These efforts didn’t land Kilmer the jobs he coveted in Full Metal Jacket and Goodfellas , but when it came to the role of Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s The Doors , a part for which he was clearly born, the actor says that “not playing Jim was not an option.” The doc’s helmer-editors intercut scenes of Morrison and Kilmer, to potently confusing effect, and Kilmer admits that his fanatical devotion to the role was “total hell” for Whalley, who would divorce him a few years later.

Given his well-established place in the pop-culture firmament — as Iceman in Top Gun , Morrison in The Doors and Doc Holliday in Tombstone , to name just a few of his most celebrated performances — Val ’s present-day scenes of a longhaired, post-tracheostomy, turquoise-bedecked and collage-making Kilmer are striking in their offhand, non-Hollywood vibe. Even if, as he told Scott and Poo, he considers the documentary “just another Val Kilmer movie,” how many certified movie stars would allow themselves to be filmed so physically altered, and on the inescapable downslope of an A-list career?

Kilmer’s voice has been ravaged by the tracheostomy, a procedure necessitated by the effects of (successful) radiation treatments for throat cancer, a diagnosis he announced in 2017. He explains it all matter-of-factly, and, whether interacting with the filmmakers, fans or his children, he’s unself-conscious about his gravelly delivery (which is accompanied by helpful subtitles).

In the film’s most affecting device, Kilmer’s words are also heard in voiceover, read by his son, Jack, whose voice contains an unmistakable echo of his dad’s. Jack’s role as narrator is revealed in a way that infuses the film with an ineffable loveliness and emotional power. This is heightened by scenes of affectionate silliness between Kilmer and Jack and between him and his daughter, Mercedes. Everyone is playing for the camera, but there’s no denying their mutual adoration.

The interplay between person and performance is one of the ideas at the film’s core — “the place where you end and the character begins,” according to Kilmer, who says (via Jack), that he has long wanted to make a story about acting. His passion for the craft began in childhood and took him to Juilliard while still a teen, making him at the time the youngest student admitted to the school’s acting program.

Val is not concerned with a filmography per se, and though it follows a basic biographical chronology to tell Kilmer’s story, it does so with a keen grasp of the moments and experiences that become driving forces in a life. That story, shaped by the push-pull of many boomers’ formative years, has a quintessential midcentury Southern California quality, a glow and an undertow.

He was the middle boy of three, and his younger brother, Wesley, was a creative prodigy, turning their family’s Chatsworth property (formerly Roy Rogers’ ranch) into a set where he directed his siblings in movies, a Jaws spoof among them. The boys’ delight in their collaborative make-believe is undimmed in the 50-year-old clips.

Speaking of Wesley’s accidental death, Kilmer encapsulates the devastating loss of his teenage brother in terms that are universal in their breadth and understated in their specificity: “Our family was never the same again.” There are glimpses of a guilt-wracked father’s tarnished land-baron dreams and a mother’s resilience — the latter, it seems, consciously emulated by Kilmer or simply part of his DNA.

His emotional strength becomes acutely evident at the halfway point of the documentary, when it begins to follow him on his travels to fan events, where he rasps his thanks to crowds and signs autographs with a smile. There’s a wrenching incident at a Comic-Con in London, when he falls ill — an incident he weathers with admirable lack of to-do, the unspoken emotions deftly underscored by intercut clips of Wesley’s artwork, a source of lifelong inspiration for Kilmer. (A piece of Wesley’s art appears in Real Genius , Kilmer’s second film.)

At a stateside event, in a private moment away from the fans, Kilmer concedes that he’s engaging in what many would deem “the lowest thing”: selling his past achievements and “old self.” The film barely mentions the Christian Science faith he was raised on and still espouses. Whether it or some newer-fangled spirituality is the source of his equanimity, it’s stirring to hear him say that, however tawdry the fan circuit might be in some people’s eyes, it leaves him feeling “grateful rather than humiliated.”

But it wasn’t always Zen serenity. During his Hollywood heyday he was labeled “difficult,” a matter addressed in the film with a two-minute montage that simultaneously acknowledges the accusations and dismisses them as tabloid fodder. But behind-the-scenes footage and audio from the Australia shoot of The Island of Dr. Moreau , a movie that Kilmer says was “doomed from the start,” reveals him lacing into cinematographer William Fraker with utter ungraciousness and challenging director John Frankenheimer. Like any employees in a disastrous situation, he and co-star David Thewlis vent — about the bad script, indifferent direction and a barely participating Marlon Brando. In the cast’s off-hours Brando, supine and mountainous in a hammock, beseeches a giddy, camera-wielding Kilmer to “gimme a shove.” Ah, the glamour.

In the fall, when the doc is slated for release, Kilmer will also be onscreen in the sequel Top Gun: Maverick , reprising the role that made him a star in 1986. He did the first film under contract obligations, not happy about its “war-mongering”; 35 years later, a story of naval aviators feels no closer to who he is. But, after a lifetime of triumphs and misadventures in a strange business, there are practical matters, career considerations, the bond with fans, feelings of gratitude … and, always, acting. All this, in ways both explicit and implied, courses through Val .

But its contemporary scenes look beyond the world of moviemaking, zeroing in on the work that has ignited Kilmer’s passion since his medical ordeal — his painting and exuberant crafting of collages, and his fostering of other artists’ work through a studio and gallery in Los Angeles.

Interweaving these sequences with newly unearthed vintage material, and wisely dispensing with talking-head commentary and interviews, the helmers don’t aim to be comprehensive. They achieve something better: a film that’s agile and alive — fitting for a portrait of a man who is driven to make art, however he can.

Full credits

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Cannes Premières) Distributor: Amazon Studios Production companies: Boardwalk Pictures, Val Art Ltd., Cartel Films, A24, IAC Directors: Leo Scott, Ting Poo Producers: Val Kilmer, Leo Scott, Ting Poo, Andrew Fried, Dane Lillegard, Jordan Wynn, Brad Koepenick, Ali Alborzi Executive producer: Ben Cotner Director of photography: Val Kilmer Editors: Ting Poo, Leo Scott Music: Garth Stevenson

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Review: Turning the camera on himself, ‘Val’ is a revealing portrait of the life of Kilmer

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A movie star’s turbulent narcissism meets a cancer survivor’s vulnerable reflection in “Val,” a documentary about Val Kilmer that is also from Val Kilmer. Leo Scott and Ting Poo are the credited directors of this intimate look at a complicated actor’s bumpy life, but their subject is also the cinematographer — Kilmer having turned the camera on himself perhaps more often than the professional machinery of moviemaking ever did.

From inventive childhood 16mm adventures to behind-the-scenes set chronicles to personal video of home and family, “Val” is both a scrapbook memoir and a narrated tour. But considering Kilmer’s battle with throat cancer, first diagnosed in 2014, the concept of voice here is fragile and layered. With the tracheostomy from his cancer treatment reducing a versatile instrument to a monotonal growl, Kilmer’s words are sometimes read by his son, Jack (now also an actor). Though he says the cancer is gone, it’s difficult to “be understood.”

“Val” is an effort on Kilmer’s part to make being understood literal and figurative. Raised in Chatsworth, steeped in pop culture and trained at Juilliard (purportedly the youngest accepted student at 17), Kilmer was all golden-haired, square-jawed promise when movies came calling in the early ’80s. Iconic roles in goofy comedies (“Top Secret”) and popcorn blockbusters ( “Top Gun” ) built his Hollywood cred but didn’t always align with the “Hamlet”-studying thespian who craved Great Parts and crafted elaborate, unprompted audition tapes for Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese.

The dedication made a difference when Oliver Stone tapped him to play Jim Morrison in “The Doors,” but a year in leather pants (not a joke) obsessively living the ideal role wasn’t so ideal for his young marriage to “Willow” costar Joanne Whalley . When she eventually served him divorce papers a few years into his ’90s leading-man heyday, he was on the notoriously chaotic set of “The Island of Dr. Moreau” — a job whose appeal was acting with hero Marlon Brando — feeling slighted and blighted. (We hear a memorably tense recording Kilmer made from one standoff with director John Frankenheimer.)

By the time he was filming “The Saint,” a master-of-disguise lark that for Kilmer was the ultimate see-what-I-can-do reel, he was the difficult perfectionist who was suddenly off (fired? refused to do?) the follow-up to “Batman Forever.” And yet, as he puts it, there was a stark gap between the grown-up kid who wanted to “be” Batman and what Hollywood required to “play” Batman (thankless role, constricting suit, face covered). Soon, those actorly intricacies wouldn’t matter, because the jobs became what they were to pay bills. Years later, reenergized when a lifelong obsession with Mark Twain became a passion project, the intrusion of his mortality put his life in perspective all over again.

That dance of performance and being — mindsets committed artists don’t always manage smoothly — is what makes “Val” an appealing, at times even touching hodgepodge of the actor’s journey. At six decades, having been through the health wringer, he may not look or sound the same, but the twinkle-eyed self-possession and sense of humor evident from his vast selfie archive is still there in the filmmakers’ vérité present, whether engaging with fans, spending time with his kids (he also has an adult daughter, Mercedes) or diving into new artistic endeavors at his Hollywood artist studio.

In its mix of trials both personal and professional, “Val” is an unusually open trip through the rear-view mirror of showbiz: a cautionary saga about the intersection of imagination, ambition, behavior and celebrity. That its perspective comes from a place of necessary healing for its restlessly dreaming, ever-creating and always recording subject is what protects that inquisitiveness — even when occasionally facile — from being entirely self-serving.

Attuned to what’s raw and heartfelt, “Val” reveals a Kilmer who has managed to process his identity/career not as a be-careful-what-you-wish-for story so much as a be-grateful-for-what-one-has experience. That can be life after stardom, it seems, whether the camera’s on or off.

'Val'

Rated: R, for language Running time: 1 hour, 49 minutes Playing: Starts July 23 in general release; available Aug. 6 on Amazon Prime

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An engrossing doc questions the nature of stardom.

Val is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

It’s hard to sum up the high highs and low lows of Val Kilmer’s career since the early ‘90s, but that’s just what Val, Amazon Prime’s engrossing and insightful new documentary, takes on. Directors Leo Scott and Ting Poo skillfully situate Kilmer’s career choices and trajectory within a larger examination of the very nature of stardom itself, juxtaposing decades of archival footage (amassed by the man himself) against his current situation as he recovers from throat cancer, with a double tracheotomy making it difficult for him to speak in anything past a hoarse croak.

With Kilmer mostly unable to talk for himself, he turned to his son, Jack, to read his narration, and the younger Kilmer’s voice sounds so hauntingly similar to his father’s younger years it’s easy to lose ourselves in the illusion that it’s Val himself speaking to us from across the chasm of time. Walking us through his life and career in linear fashion, the documentary has ample discussion (and footage) of his early years and family life (including the trauma of losing his brother at an early age) before he made the leap to stage and screen.

What's the best Val Kilmer movie?

In hindsight, it’s rather remarkable just how much of his life Kilmer managed to capture on home video, with young stars like Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, and Tom Cruise flitting in at various moments. Long before the ubiquity of cell phones made it practically second nature for many, Kilmer did all this when it actually took effort. And while one could be tempted to say that’s the narcissism of an actor at work, the truth is Kilmer did a tremendous service both for himself and us in capturing small behind-the-scenes moments that would otherwise be lost to the ages.

Things like shooting the breeze with Rick Rossovich between takes of Top Gun, watching Kurt Russell don his Wyatt Earp getup on Tombstone, and rocking Marlon Brando in a hammock on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau are all testament to a remarkable life, something Kilmer himself is acutely aware of, especially given the distance of time. The omnipresent video camera also ended up capturing moments such as Kilmer and actor David Thewlis arguing with the late John Frankenheimer on the famously fraught Dr. Moreau set, with the director finally losing his cool over being constantly recorded.

Given just how big of a star Kilmer was at one time and how many big movies he got to be a part of, these snippets of interaction are obviously exciting for any film buff to witness, but they also offer a useful framework of how he views himself –– then and now.

One of the most poignant found footage moments for me wasn’t from a set at all, though; it was a simple scene of Kilmer putting his son in a coin-operated Batmobile from Batman Forever, the kind you see outside a grocery store, allowing the child to experience the innocent joy of being Batman in a way Kilmer himself never really felt while playing the role. We also get a peek into his romance with ex-wife Joanne Whalley, from their whirlwind wedding to their eventual separation and arguments over child visitation. It can feel uncomfortably voyeuristic at times, but it’s nonetheless necessary if the goal is to take in the totality of the man.

Amazon Prime Video Spotlight: August 2021

In that sense, it’s unquestionably bittersweet to see the archival Kilmer in the ‘80s and ‘90s, speaking so confidently of himself and his craft, and then cutting to him in present day, mostly making do by attending conventions and special events where he interacts with fans and signs autographs. While it’s no doubt rewarding to know your work has touched audiences and continues to entertain them, Kilmer himself seems, if not saddened, then resigned to the reality of his “top of the marquee” days likely being behind him. Of course, that realization also allows him to speak with a candor and clarity about his career that’s refreshing and never catty, guided wonderfully by the directors' steady hands.

Val can be challenging viewing at times. If you remember what a big star Kilmer was at his peak, it’s hard not to be shocked by his health struggles (even as he says he sounds worse than he feels). If one chooses to be cynical about it, there’s a bit of career rehab at play as it attempts to soften his perceived rough edges. But for everyone else, Val is a rewarding experience that will prove both engrossing and emotional.

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Val Doesn’t Know Who Val Kilmer Is, and That’s a Good Thing

Val Kilmer was the first person he knew who had a video camera , and he has been recording his life for the past 40-plus years. As an actor, he appears to have carried his camera everywhere: the backstage dressing rooms of the early 1980s, where fellow up-and-comers like Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon would moon his lens; the drunken parties and trailer gab sessions of Top Gun , during which he and his pals playfully conspired against their co-star Tom Cruise; and the famously troubled set of The Island of Dr. Moreau , where Kilmer clashed with veteran director John Frankenheimer but got to act opposite his idol, Marlon Brando, even though by that point, Brando was clearly a shell of a shell of what he had once been.

This footage forms the backbone of the new documentary Val , which clocks in at just a little over 90 minutes. I’m not lying when I say that I would have happily watched 36 hours of Val Kilmer’s home movies. He seems to have the great documentarian’s nose for sticking his lens where he shouldn’t, and he has a decent eye, too. As it is, the footage of these shoots in Val (directed by Leo Scott and Ting Poo) consists mostly of tantalizing snippets, intercut with glimpses of his life over the years: his audition tapes, his acting classes, his marriage to Joanne Whalley, his divorce from Joanne Whalley, conversations with his now-deceased parents.

The years fly by like pages in the wind, and that’s sort of the point. Val shows us Kilmer’s past while following Kilmer in the present. A bout with throat cancer has robbed him of much of his voice, and he has to press a button on his throat to speak. But he persists, hopping from fan convention to fan convention, working on the paintings that are his current passion, and spending time with his grown kids. As an actor, Kilmer has to live with the image of what he once was, and it’s not exactly easy. At a special outdoor screening of Tombstone in Texas, he gets frustrated that he can never escape these old movies. Then he hears the crowd’s cheers and feels their love, and he is moved. He’s like a prisoner who has to find ways to free his spirit.

That tension between Val present and Val past captures the imagination, because Val past wasn’t exactly a fixed object. Those of us who watched Kilmer back in the day didn’t always know what to make of him. In his heyday, he was never really a leading man; he was more like someone’s idea of a leading man, with his blond hair, strong jaw, big teeth, full lips, and confident blue eyes. But he often gave great performances, especially in parts that played with that idea. He’s perfect as the dim-bulb Elvis clone in Top Secret! Those engineered-in-a-lab looks were just right for Iceman, the Über -mensch pseudo-antagonist of Top Gun . And what’s left to say about his turn as Chris Shiherlis, the romantic second banana to Robert De Niro’s master thief in Heat ? His face busted up, he gets the movie’s emotional climax when his wife, played by Ashley Judd, waves him away from a police ambush with the slightest of hand gestures, simultaneously saving his life and destroying him forever. That was Val Kilmer at his best, a golden god rough and ruined.

Kilmer’s performances got more interesting and compelling as he aged and grew more weathered, so it’s doubly tragic that his medical problems prevented him from working regularly as an actor. At the time of his illness, he was traveling the country doing a one-man show as Mark Twain, a dream project of sorts that he still hopes one day to turn into a film. Kilmer seems healthy today — busy and energetic — but the specter of mortality hangs over the film. Val’s younger brother, Wesley, who was the mastermind behind most of their youthful cinematic shenanigans, died suddenly at the age of 15, and it’s clear that the actor, who was at Juilliard at the time, never really recovered from the loss. (Who would?) At one point, an older Val starts to feel ill after a day of signing pictures at a convention and has to step away and vomit. He is whisked away in a wheelchair to a room to sleep it off. As the camera continues to document all of this, we also see home-movie images of the young late Wesley, almost as if a curtain is being slightly parted into the Great Beyond. Kilmer tells us at one point that he was drawn to Twain’s story partly because of the family grief the author suffered later in his life. Death, it seems, is never far from his mind.

For all that, Val is not a gloomy movie at all. Quite the opposite. It’s vibrant, quick, and alive, and Val Kilmer today makes for an entertaining guide, with his hammy facial gestures now doing double duty since he can’t talk. He also, weirdly, narrates the film: His son, Jack, reads his father’s words in his father’s voice, which creates an extra layer of reflection to the movie, an extra layer of elusiveness. Jack Kilmer sounds a lot like Val Kilmer, but the fact that he isn’t Val Kilmer adds to the slippery nature of the subject. Who is Val Kilmer? Val doesn’t really know. Maybe, the film suggests, being alive simply means being undefinable.

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“Val,” Reviewed: A Val Kilmer Documentary Reveals Thwarted Hollywood Dreams

It’s ineffably painful, in the new documentary “Val,” to see Val Kilmer, an actor still in his prime, enduring the effects of throat cancer. His treatment for the disease, which involved a tracheostomy, led to the extreme impairment of his voice—for the most part, he needs to cover a hole in a small plastic prosthesis in order to speak, and the result is a diminished monotone. (The movie features subtitles when he speaks.) “Val,” directed by Leo Scott and Ting Poo, is nonetheless Kilmer’s self-portrait and autobiography. It is not a great film—its form is less personal than its substance, its revelations and insights come only intermittently. Yet it is, in its key moments, something equally significant: it offers Kilmer a showcase that he has been denied, not only by the ravages of cancer but, long before, by the troubled course of his career and the inherent obstacles of Hollywood filmmaking.

Early in the documentary, Kilmer declares that he had long wanted to deliver his thoughts about the art of acting, which he also knows will be the story of his life. It takes him a while to do so in “Val”—and it’s only when he does, more than fifty minutes into the nearly two-hour film, that the movie takes flight—as he uninhibitedly vents pent-up frustration and disillusionment with ostensible highlights of his career. Up to that point in the movie, the story of Kilmer’s childhood and early career, while filled with heartfelt recollections and reflections of his family life (much of it by way of a monologue written by Kilmer and spoken by his son, Jack), remains somewhat hazy and diffuse—with one startling, anguished exception. Throughout childhood, long before the prospect of an acting career presented itself, Kilmer was not only an enthusiastic and joyful performer but also a moviemaker himself. “Val” is replete with the films and videos that Kilmer made as a child, a teen, a young adult, and a full-blown professional (and also a husband and father)—he has, he says, thousands of hours of videos and films—and it also offers clips from an exceptionally poignant body of work, the short fiction films that he made with his younger brother Wesley. In 1977, Wesley, a teen-ager, drowned in the family hot tub as a result of an epileptic seizure. Kilmer talks of getting the news just before beginning his studies at Juilliard’s Drama Division, and his personal grief had an implicitly public dimension: he considered Wesley to be both his own crucial collaborator, his “confidant,” and an incipient great director (“an artistic genius”) with a major career ahead of him.

Kilmer doesn’t make it explicit, but the gaping hole in his career, as presented in the film, is the absence of Wesley—of a director who would be more than a director, who would be a collaborator uniquely attuned to Kilmer’s fragile and volatile art. As “Val” shows, from the time that Kilmer hit Juilliard, he was more than an actor—a play that he co-wrote, “How It All Began,” was performed while he was still in school and then was picked up by the Public Theater. He intended to make a career onstage; in his memoir, he recalls turning down a role in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders” in favor of a play. In “Val,” he recalls that, when his movie career got under way, with “Top Secret!,” he deprecated it as “fluff.” Yet he hardly managed to shift to his desired path; he didn’t want to do “Top Gun,” he recalls, because he found the script “silly” and “warmongering.” He was frustrated by the roles that were available; he wanted to be in Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” and Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” and made his own audition tapes for them, to no avail. He made one of himself as Jim Morrison, for Oliver Stone’s film “The Doors,” and got the part. He took the role of Doc Holliday, in the 1993 film “Tombstone,” very seriously, and describes the trick that he employed to emphasize the extreme—and real—physicality of his performance.

It is in contemplating that movie’s latter-day legacy that “Val” kicks into high emotional gear. He travels to Texas for an on-location screening of “Tombstone” complete with his public appearance in front of a large and adoring crowd, and it leaves him melancholy, as he says in voice-over:

Sometimes I feel so low and I have the blues really, really hard about having to, you know, fly around the country. I don’t look great and I’m selling basically my old self, my old career. For many people it’s like the lowest thing you can do is talk about your old pictures and sell photographs of when you were Batman or the Terminator. I don’t want to insult any of the other actors that fly around the world, but it enables me to meet my fans and what ends up happening is that I feel really grateful rather than humiliated because there’s so many people.

For Kilmer, the height of his celebrity came with his starring role in “Batman Forever,” from 1995. “By Hollywood standards, Batman is the ultimate leading role and a dream come true. I took the part without even reading the script,” he says. But then he catalogues the stages of his disillusionment: “whatever boyish excitement I had going in was crushed by the reality of the Batsuit.” The film includes an archival clip of Kilmer speaking of the constraints imposed by the suit, and features him now detailing those constraints, which were as physically demanding and as socially isolating as they were inhibiting for his performance. The suit, which concealed half of Kilmer’s face, changed his conception of the part: “I realized that my role in the film was just to show up and stand where I was told to.” He says that he acted in it like “an actor on a soap opera.” What he ultimately realized, he says, is that “Yes, every boy wants to be Batman. They actually want to be him. They don’t necessarily want to play him in a movie.”

Kilmer’s response was to turn down the sequel—in favor of “The Saint,” which, he thought, would offer him a more gratifying role. But the movie that really excited him was “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” because he’d get to act alongside Marlon Brando—and the experience proved to be yet another disillusionment, and a particularly bitter one. That story is the basis for one of two conjoined high points in “Val.” It is five minutes of footage that Kilmer himself recorded, of the cast and crew of “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” and it’s a miniature masterstroke of personal cinema, and of filmmaking about filmmaking. Kilmer delivers, in Jack’s voice, bits of reminiscence to set up the drama: the original director, Richard Stanley, was fired soon after the start of the shoot and replaced with the veteran John Frankenheimer, who, according to Kilmer, in his effort to bring the film in on schedule, “was unwilling to take the time to explore Marlon’s ideas.” As a result, Brando “stopped trying to inject his own genius into the film,” Kilmer says, an artistic turn of events that Kilmer found “devastating.” There was no love lost between Kilmer and Frankenheimer; the actor says, into his own camera, “You know, John Frankenheimer can say ‘Action’ and ‘Cut’ all day long and it will never make him a director.” The longest and most powerful segment of Kilmer’s footage shows their conflict breaking out into the open on the set, when Frankenheimer was preparing to rehearse and Kilmer insisted on filming the activities with his video camera, telling the director, “I need a witness because of things you’ve said.” Frankenheimer demands that Kilmer shut it, and Kilmer refuses, continuing to film by tilting the camera down toward the floor and recording the sound of their bitter wrangling.

A home video that’s placed in “Val” a couple of minutes after the “Island” sequence shows Kilmer chopping off his long hair with a knife while lamenting the toll that acting in Hollywood movies takes on him: “They actually buy your life for a period of time, your experience, your opinions, your soul, in a way,” he says. (One unaddressed peculiarity of the documentary is the provenance of Kilmer’s archival videos. He’s been an enthusiastic home videographer ever since VHS camcorders came on the market, but much of the amateur footage that’s included in “Val” appears to be footage of him, not by him, as if he’d been arranging for much of his life to be documented on video by others.) Interviewed on television by Larry King, Kilmer says, “I’m frustrated because what I have to do isn’t getting filmed, because the director isn’t able to bring it out.” In a home video from 2012, Kilmer says, “I just ended up in, sort of, constant conflicts with people that wanted me to do commercial work,” and discusses his plan to direct a “big American story,” the contentious relationship between Mark Twain and Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science (the religion in which Kilmer was raised and which he practices). He did, he said, a decade of research, and then, to put himself in character as Twain, he wrote a one-man play, “Citizen Twain,” that he took on the road—with success—after selling his six thousand acres of land in New Mexico to finance it. Kilmer had himself filmed—in the costume and elaborate makeup by which he portrayed Twain—on the porch of a beach house, on the beach itself, walking the streets in costume, all the while declaiming and perorating in the character and manner of Twain. He shows himself playing Twain to packed houses and answering spectators’ questions to Twain in improvised riffs in Twain’s voice. The magnificence of these performances, both in public and in private, are the seeming culmination of Kilmer’s lifelong artistic quest. Having wrested control of the acting process, he turns impersonation inside out and inhabits a character with an astounding, uncanny fullness that appears to consume his soul completely while expanding and nourishing it. (It was during his tour with the play, in Nashville, that Kilmer lost his voice, the first sign of throat cancer.)

Of course, the theatrical performance as Twain never yielded the movie that he planned (though he filmed a performance of it at the Pasadena Playhouse and showed it in movie theatres as “Cinema Twain”). But Kilmer’s conception of it amounts to a sort of super-cinema, an expression of the artistry and the total control that lurked behind his frustrated appearances in other people’s movies. The collage of his performances, in “Val,” of the stage shows and the private displays suggests the phantom Twain movie that could have been made, which in turn reflects yet another set of should-have-beens: the career of personal, artistically ambitious performances that Kilmer never got to create in movies directed by his brother. The Twain sequence, and “Val” over all, invokes the spirit—and the absence—of Wesley Kilmer, the director who shared with Val the primal intimacy, unshakable confidence, and absolute complicity with which both would have had good shots at becoming the fullest and most accomplished versions of themselves.

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‘Val’ Film Review: Val Kilmer’s Old Home Movies Are Only Part of This Story

This review of “Val” was first published on July 23, 2021 after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

When a documentary is full of home movies of a little kid who grew up to become famous, the operative word is usually cute . And “Val,” which premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, certainly has lots of cute moments of Val Kilmer and his siblings growing up in Southern California.

But those are the tip of the amateur-video iceberg in this film from directors Leo Scott and Ting Poo. The filmmakers were given access to thousands of hours of Kilmer’s footage, which also includes video of Val horsing around with Tom Cruise on the “Top Gun” set, Val’s unsolicited audition tapes for Stanley Kubrick for “Full Metal Jacket” and Martin Scorsese for “GoodFellas,” and even Val arguing with director John Frankenheimer during the rocky shooting of “The Island of Dr. Moreau.”

But those moments are juxtaposed with modern sequences that bring home the fact that the story is being told by a man whose treatment for throat cancer led to a 2014 tracheostomy that left him unable to narrate his own movie, except in subtitled sequences. One option, which is genuinely affecting when it’s revealed at the beginning of the film, is that Kilmer’s son Jack reads lines he’s written that serve as narration for much of the film.

“I’ve wanted to tell a story about acting for a very long time,” he says early in the film. “And now that it’s difficult to speak, I want to tell my story more than ever.”

Awkward at times and affecting at others, “Val” doesn’t come across as a story about acting – instead, it’s a pretty straightforward tour through Kilmer’s career with lots of mostly mild anecdotes along the way. For instance: “It was fun to play up the rivalry between (Kilmer and Cruise’s) characters, but in truth, I’ve always thought of him as a friend.”

Jack Kilmer’s voiceovers during anecdotes like this, which are touching because they’re necessary, are also odd: Because they consist of one person reading words that another has written, they create a distance you wouldn’t get in a person telling his own story – not that that’s an option in this film.

The result is a memory piece that grows sadder as it goes along, and one where the fun of seeing all that archival footage that’s been sitting in storage at Kilmer’s place gradually fades. “I’ve lived a magical life,” he says early in the film – but over the next hour and a half, what he shows is less the magic than the turmoil underneath it.

That turmoil includes the death of his younger brother – whom he calls “an artistic genius” – at the age of 15, and his father’s failed attempts to become a Southern California land tycoon, which eventually cost Kilmer everything he’d made in his first flush of success because he’d co-signed on his father’s loans.

Kilmer is also open about how he fit the portrait of a tortured artist, whether he talks of being consumed by the role of Jim Morrison in “The Doors” or laments about the wardrobe he had to wear in “Batman Forever.” “Whatever boyish excitement I had going in was crushed by the reality of the batsuit,” he said. “… I realized it was just my job to show up and stand where they told me.”

The memories are intercut with footage of Kilmer in recent years, when he’s been making the rounds of revival screenings and autograph events. At one Comic-Con type convention, he faces a long line of fans who all seem to have the same request: Can he please sign, “You can be my wingman?” (He ends up throwing up into a trash can and being wheeled out of the convention center with a blanket over his head, but he later returns to finish his duties.)

As it goes along, the film gets darker and more melancholy, though sometimes all that old footage pays dividends: A sequence that mixes two car rides, one with his mother as a child and one of him going to her funeral, is genuinely affecting.

There’s also a strange grace to a sequence of Kilmer dressed as Mark Twain on the beach and walking down the street, which is part of a long section in which he talks about selling his beloved ranch in New Mexico to finance a film version of his one-man show “Citizen Twain.” The sequence seems to blur the tragedies of Kilmer, who couldn’t get the film off the ground before throat cancer struck, and Twain, who suffered from depression and experienced the loss of many of those close to him in his final years. There’s still humor in “Val,” but for the most part, it’s a sobering look at a man who’s been forced to make peace with his work and his life. The draw may be a treasure trove of old footage, but the film is really about looking at the past to make peace with the present.

“ Val” debuts on Amazon Prime this Friday.

Check out TheWrap’s digital Cannes magazine issue here . You can find all of TheWrap’s Cannes coverage here .

Read original story ‘Val’ Film Review: Val Kilmer’s Old Home Movies Are Only Part of This Story At TheWrap

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Directed by Leo Scott , Ting Poo

The life you live is the story you tell.

For over 40 years Val Kilmer, one of Hollywood’s most mercurial and/or misunderstood actors has been documenting his own life and craft through film and video. He has amassed thousands of hours of footage, from 16mm home movies made with his brothers, to time spent in iconic roles for blockbuster movies like Top Gun, The Doors, Tombstone, and Batman Forever. This raw, wildly original and unflinching documentary reveals a life lived to extremes and a heart-filled, sometimes hilarious look at what it means to be an artist and a complex man.

Val Kilmer Jack Kilmer Mercedes Kilmer Joanne Whalley Kevin Bacon Marlon Brando David Thewlis Kurt Russell Kelly McGillis Anthony Edwards Oliver Stone Mira Sorvino Madeleine Stowe Fairuza Balk Cher John Frankenheimer Rick Rossovich Tony Scott Adam West Burt Ward Lucy Gutteridge James Tolkan Tom Sizemore Barry Tubb Tim Robbins Oprah Winfrey Jay Leno Jimmy Fallon Joel Schumacher Show All… Sean Penn Jim Morrison Peter Kass Tom Stratton

Directors Directors

Leo Scott Ting Poo

Producers Producers

Andrew Fried Dane Lillegard Jordan Wynn Ali Alborzi Brad Koepenick Leo Scott Ting Poo Lauren Bleiweiss Suzanne Greenfield Mercedes Kilmer Val Kilmer Christopher Noviello Jenny Bright Dustin LaForce Julie Hook Alex Velasco Emily Osborne

Editors Editors

Tyler Pharo Ting Poo Leo Scott

Cinematography Cinematography

Leila El hayani Val Kilmer Ross McLennan Tim Stratton

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Ben Cotner Sarba Das Emily Osborne Thatcher Peterson Scott Friske Lauren Cascio Lauren Bleiweiss

Lighting Lighting

Justin Holdsworth

Additional Photography Add. Photography

Leo Scott Tom Stratton Leila El Hayani Simon Reilly Phoebe Fraser Craig Foster Brandon Gry Gena Fridman Michael Canon Patrick Nissim Justin Kane Adam Leene Randy Kulina Wojtek Kiela Charles Bae Ting Poo José Peña Ali Alborzi Brad Koepenick

Production Design Production Design

Lauren Fitzsimmons

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Dan Fine Raymond Schmidt

Composer Composer

Garth Stevenson

Sound Sound

Michael Haldin Óscar Velázquez Steven Meyer

A24 Boardwalk Pictures Cartel Films IAC Films ValArt Ltd HelMel Studios TwainMania

Releases by Date

07 jul 2021, theatrical limited, 23 jul 2021, 10 dec 2021, 06 aug 2021, 03 feb 2023, releases by country.

• Digital M Amazon Prime Video
• Digital 16 Amazon Prime Video
• Premiere Cannes Film Festival
• Digital 15 Amazon Prime Video
• Theatrical 12A
• Theatrical limited R
• Digital R Amazon

109 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Jim Cummings 6

I’ll keep my mouth shut because the main lesson I learned from this film was how loudly incorrect an audience can be about a public figure, and how we should never treat someone’s silence while being attacked as a confession or detriment about THEM, but us…

Review by davidehrlich ★★★

“It is difficult to talk and be understood,” actor and artist Val Kilmer sighs in the opening minutes of the documentary that Leo Scott and Ting Poo have made from and about his life, which is largely cobbled together from thousands of hours of home video footage that Kilmer has shot over the last six decades. So difficult, in fact, that his son Jack actually does the talking for him. Kilmer has undergone two tracheotomies in the process of treating his throat cancer, and now speaks with a death rattle that makes him sound much worse than he feels.

And yet, the sensitive if frustratingly surface-level “Val” tells the story of a man who’s struggled to be understood since he…

Review by 24framesofnick ★★★★ 2

Very personal, beautiful and inspiring 

I will now film every single second of my life although it might not be as interesting as Vals

Review by theriverjordan ★★★★ 62

We spend our whole lives trying to write ourselves out of the endings that are decided for us. 

My watch of “Val” comes back to back with viewing the Anthony Bourdain post-mortem “Roadrunner.” The latter earns some respect for trying to tackle the legacy of a man determined to not leave one, but finds itself ultimately undermined by its preoccupation with the fantasy of self-destruction. 

“Val,” however, is the work of an author out to inscribe his endowment to art before anyone can compose his eulogy. 

“Val,” narrated by the title Kilmer’s son (who sounds exactly like a young version of his father), is a mosaic of memories captured on video tape. What began as the actor’s hobby for documenting his…

Review by ˗ˏˋ suspirliam ˊˎ˗ ★★★★ 3

didn't know much about val kilmer at all before watching this and therefore did not expect myself to get so emotionally invested but it's honestly such a deeply moving and inspiring journey that i found myself pretty much crying all the way through and now i want to watch all of his movies what a legend

Review by BeHaind ★★★★★ 6

Ich habe oft gelesen, dass Val Kilmer an Sets als schwierig galt. Kollegen und Regisseure sprachen immer wieder über sein herausragendes Talent, über das Potential, welches in ihm schlummert und jeden Film veredeln könnte. Aber Kilmers Persona sei auch „divenhaft“, „widerspenstig“, „konfrontativ“. Und weil Hollywood selbst die größten Talente fallen lässt, wenn sie nicht ins System passen wollen, ist Kilmers Karriere nie in die Höhen von vergleichbaren Hollywood-Megastars vorgedrungen. 

„Val“ tänzelt um die Teile von Kilmers Karriere, die ihn von seiner dunklen Seite zeigen und ihm stets anhafteten, zwar ein wenig herum, aber ich habe nichts davon vermisst, weil ich mir aus all dem was man sieht meine eigenen Schlüsse ziehen kann. „Val“ ist genau deshalb wahnsinnig faszinierend - ein schmerzhaft…

Review by hollie amanda ★★★½ 1

the v in vlogger stands for val

Review by 🎥K ★★★★½

I’m speechless, god bless this man. This was honestly one of my favorite documentaries ever, one of the few that I’d actually rewatch. It hit me in feels multiple times. I find it pretty incredible that he practically filmed his whole life.

Review by matt lynch ★★★½

The work of a free asshole.

Review by alexa🪼🫧🪩 ★★★★½

such a pure genuine soul. val’s love and passion for acting is beautifully shown here. now everyone say it with me VAL KILMER YOU WILL ALWAYS BE FAMOUS!!

Review by Brian Formo ★★★ 7

Who knew that a documentary about Val Kilmer would be a moving experience? But then again, who knew that Kilmer has been filming his life for 40 years, including making home movies with his brother? Or that he helped start a playwriting class at Juilliard and produced the first student-written play at the esteemed acting school? If anything, Val proves that we barely know anything about the movie stars we watch and it reminds us that they're humans first. And perhaps the most important lesson, that no actor should ever desire to play Batman because all you can do is wear a suit but the bulk of that suit prohibits movement, hearing costars, and ultimately just isolates you.

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★ 2

The most surprising thing about this documentary isn't that Val Kilmer consciously directed a visual autobiography about his life before and after achieving his dream of becoming an actor. Not only that, but to document specific moments, such as the lawyer's fight for the custody to see his children.

The most surprising thing about this documentary is not that it unberknownst to many like me, we are unaware that Kilmer to some extent is sort of a method actor, or a huge Stanislavski fan. When he appeared in scenes like "Tombstone", he slept on ice on the bed so that he could feel the pain his character was going through.

The most surprising thing about this documentary is that Robert…

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Val’ on Amazon Prime, a Remarkably Intimate and Artful Biographical Documentary About Val Kilmer

Where to stream:, 'kelce' intercepts 'val' to become prime video's most watched documentary ever in the us: report, stream it or skip it: ‘top gun: maverick’ on prime video, in which tom cruise once again feels the need for speed, how val kilmer returned as madmartigan in 'willow' episode 6, with the help of his son jack, 'willow' stars dempsey bryk and ruby cruz looked to val kilmer and joanne whalley for inspiration on playing madmartigan and sorsha's kids.

Now on Amazon Prime, Val is the Val Kilmer biodoc we probably didn’t want, but definitely didn’t know we needed. Turns out, the eccentric Hollywood star was, and still is, one of those (possibly annoying) people who’s constantly filming himself, and has pallets full of videotapes documenting decades of his life: home movies, audition tapes, stuff from film sets, goofy films he and his brothers made in their backyard, etc. Directors Ting Poo and Leo Scott crafted a portrait of an artist by plucking some revealing, funny, poignant and sad moments from hundreds of hours of Kilmer’s videos, and integrating it with some new, recent footage, which catches us up with the actor after a bout with throat cancer ravaged his voice, mostly ended his career and left him with a new perspective on life. The result is messy but absorbing.

VAL : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The film begins with grainy washed-out VHS footage of Val and his Top Gun co-stars — yes, including Tom Cruise — clowning around in a trailer on the movie set. We then see him at home, age 60-ish, his hair pulled back in a bun, a permanent feeding tube in the front of his neck. He looks older than he is, maybe. The room looks like a cluttered artist’s workshop. His son Jack provides the voice for Val’s first-person narration, which concisely explains the state of Val’s impairment. We see Jack sit down in a studio to record his voiceover, then we get a low angle on young Val driving in a car with the windows down, the wind whipping through his spiked mullet.

Jack/Val explains how he’s spent much of his life in front of a camera, and he’s not talking about being in Batman Forever or Tombstone . He and his two brothers made funny little films spoofing their favorite movies; one is titled Teeth , about a killer shark, shot in the family swimming pool. Val was the first person he knew who had a camcorder. He used it constantly, when he was the youngest acting student in the history of Julliard, when he was visiting his parents, when he was arguing with director John Frankenheimer on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau . He also used it to shoot audition tapes for Scorsese and Kubrick, which didn’t land him roles in Goodfellas or Full Metal Jacket , but the one he made for Oliver Stone got him cast in The Doors — fascinating stuff for pop-culture enthusiasts.

But Val does much more than just chronicle the trivia of his many career highlights. It jumps back and forth from past to present, sewn together with intimate narration about how his family was torn apart when his brother Wesley died at age 15; about his desire to play Hamlet by age 27; about the creative disappointment that came with playing Batman. We eventually hear his voice, a strained croak through the feeding tube, accompanied by helpful subtitles. He isn’t self-conscious about it — he speaks before a special screening of Tombstone , where he’s cheered by hundreds of fans, and gamely signs autographs at Comic-Con. He introduces his daughter Mercedes, who lives in the second unit of his house. His mother passes away, and he travels to her house and weeps as he puts on her bracelets and necklaces. He discusses his obsession with Mark Twain, which became a one-man theater production and a movie that few people saw. Val could’ve written a memoir, sure, but that would’ve made no sense at all for a man whose life is all about moving pictures.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Pair Val with Soleil Moon-Frye’s Kid 90 for more spot-the-famous-person-in-the-home-video footage than you can handle.

Performance Worth Watching: Val Kilmer’s. His vulnerability and humanity are on stark display here.

Memorable Dialogue: “My name is Val Kilmer. I’ve lived a magical life.” — Jack Kilmer, narrating his father’s words

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Funny, how so many famous artists write autobiographies, but those who make documentaries about themselves are so often deemed to be narcissists. It’s the same idea, but a different medium. And that’s what Kilmer is doing here — telling his story in his words with his images. We see him piecing together paper collages in crazy scrapbooks, and that’s the same basic aesthetic of Val , which patches together a dozen different visual textures into a remarkable portrait. Many others of his status might trot out all their celebrity friends to gush and throw around the word “genius” in between all your favorite movie clips, but the way Kilmer does it is right in line with who he is today. That’s his genius.

We likely have an idea of Kilmer as a bit of a kook, the guy who’s publicly shared his odd philosophies (“I don’t believe in death”) and had a reputation of being “difficult to work with” on movie sets. He addresses the latter point by saying he wanted to be an artist, and found himself at odds with an industry that was mostly interested in commercial success. He was a pretty face on screen, but Val is his reality. It’s as honest as it gets. His heartbreak and joy are splayed out for everyone to see, in an old video he made for his kids on Easter because he couldn’t be with them after he and wife Joanne Whalley divorced, in recent footage of him goofing around with Jack and Mercedes. The film is contemplative, indulgent, engrossing, penetrating, amusing, frustrating. Sometimes, it’s painfully detailed; sometimes, it’s annoyingly impressionistic. The contrast between the robust but damaged man we see and the visages of Iceman and Doc Holliday is profound — maybe Val doesn’t believe in death because his movies will live forever.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Val always feels like art, and therefore truth.

Will you stream or skip the intimate and artful biographical documentary #Val on @PrimeVideo ? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) August 8, 2021

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba .

Stream  Val on Amazon Prime

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[Movie Review] VAL

• October 5, 2021 October 4, 2021
• Jessica Scott

Written by Victoria Fratz and Aaron Fradkin, who also directed, VAL tells the story of Fin ( Zachary Mooren ), a man on the run from the police who breaks into the posh home of Val (Reeves), a high-dollar escort who is waiting for her next client to arrive. At first, Val seems every bit the damsel in distress, screaming for help and begging Fin not to hurt her. The longer Fin stays in her home, though, the more he realizes that she is the one with all the power…and that’s before he finds out that she’s actually a demon.

Visually and tonally, VAL is a delight. Val’s home decor and her hair, makeup, and wardrobe make her look like a Gil Elvgren painting come to life. The bright lighting — usually splashed with some devilish reds — makes the saturated retro touches pop. It’s difficult to place VAL chronologically, which only adds to the title character’s mystique and the film’s overall charm. Rotary phones and ancient television sets coexist with references to reality shows and Vanilla Ice. Canted angles and a repeated mirror motif keep the visual interest up even when the plot drags, and the score is marvelous, perfectly threading the needle between modern and retro and between suspenseful and tongue-in-cheek.

There’s not a weak performance to be found in the film, as each cast member fully commits to the cheeky humor, but Reeves truly steals the show. She plays Val as the ultimate throwback, a wisecracking broad worthy of Rosalind Russell and Lucille Ball. When Fin kills Val’s client, a mobbed-up man named Freddy (Erik Griffin) who is fond of crawling around on all fours while Val holds the leash attached to his dog collar, Val scolds Fin for offing her biggest paycheck: “You coulda just told him to heel!” She is hilariously unflappable, remaining in control the entire time as she manipulates the men around her, all while wearing glamorous feathered robes and maintaining her perfectly coiffed hair.

There are a few eerie moments, mostly courtesy of the creepy mannequins in Val’s dungeon, but this horror-comedy leans hard into the comedy side of things. VAL even references Beetlejuice in one of the best sequences in the film, dressing Val in a red wedding dress, placing Fin at a delightfully macabre dinner table, and using music that sounds just enough like Danny Elfman’s score to strike a chord with fans of the 1988 classic. Though the film might rely a bit too much on goodwill for Beetlejuice , the homage feels so affectionate — and Reeves sells it so well — that it will likely earn viewers’ forgiveness.

VAL is a great idea in search of a narrative that maintains momentum all the way through, but it’s still a hell of a lot of fun. The lighting and production design make it an enjoyable watch, and the score is perfectly suited for the film’s devilish humor. The real draw, though, is Misha Reeves as the titular Duchess of Hell. Her entrancing performance is hilarious, bold, and — forgive the pun — heavenly.

VAL  is available now in select theaters and is available On-Demand via DREAD . Want to own a physical media version of the film? The Blu-ray will be available on November 2!

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Val Reviews

It’s a intensely personal film with a deep sense of longing, not so much for a career that once was, but for a chance to finally tell his life story in his own words.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 17, 2022

Getting poor reviews is likely hard for any actor, but Kilmer never let them define him. Nor did he ever let anything stand in his way of being his unequivocal self at every stage of his life, and today, we have the footage to see it all.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 27, 2022

Tiptoes past the actor's fame, falling into autohagiography.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 19, 2022

A fascinating look about the actor whose life and times took a tragic turn.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Apr 13, 2022

Embodies not only the immense talent but also the rare empathy that Val Kilmer brought to his most invested characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 12, 2022

Mr. Kilmer is slated to be in the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick, which was originally slated to be released in 2020. Cant wait to see the Iceman again. He can be my wingman anytime!

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 14, 2022

You grow surprisingly attached to Val Kilmer as this goes along, and prepared to indulge his pretentious side as he grapples for a state of grace.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 7, 2021

Are we to feel bad for him or happy he has kept us so entertained over the years? It's unclear and admittedly, this makes Val even more interesting as perhaps both coexist ...

Full Review | Nov 29, 2021

Val is an affectionate film, and even more, a self-affectionate film. It does just as much obscuring and bending as it does revealing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 27, 2021

In "Val," we see him low and sad and sick, but it's still only the face he wants to put forward. He remains, somewhat triumphantly, off in his own zone.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Sep 20, 2021

It's an experience that is introspective in itself, and in turn forces you to be introspective in the healthiest way possible.

Full Review | Sep 3, 2021

You don't have to be a huge Val Kilmer fan to engage with the documentary "Val."

Full Review | Sep 1, 2021

Sourced from decades of the Hollywood star's private home videos, the new documentary Val depicts the rise and fall of infamously "difficult" actor Val Kilmer with charm and intimacy - even if it's a self-serving portrait.

Full Review | Aug 28, 2021

The new documentary on the inscrutable Val Kilmer is an exercise in distilled subjectivity. There isn't much in the way of breathing room or impartiality since Val exists within its own cocoon - the point of view of Val Kilmer.

Full Review | Aug 26, 2021

The truth is that Val is not self-indulgent at any point in the documentary. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Aug 23, 2021

A beautiful documentary that portrays the humand beyond the actor.[Full Review in Spanish]

[Kilmer] opens up his vault and himself to our gaze and judgment. The film is undeniably compelling as a result.

Full Review | Aug 20, 2021

VAL is such a unique piece of self reflection of an extraordinary artist and a soulful man. What I enjoyed most is the film's authenticity and personal nature, given it contains mostly archival footage he shot himself.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 17, 2021

It's an OK watching, not a fascinating one.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 16, 2021

An insightful documentary for everyone including those who aren't necessarily familiarized with the actor's career.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 14, 2021

81 minHorror -->

• WHERE TO WATCH
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• FILM DETAILS

Find a Theater Near You

Available on Demand

Cast Erik Griffin , John Kapelos , Kyle Howard , Misha Reeves , Sufe Bradshaw , Zachary Mooren Director Aaron Fradkin Producers Caitlin O'Connor , Jeremy Meyer , Jonathan Carkeek , Kevin McDevitt , Paul Kim , Victoria Fratz Writers Aaron Fradkin , Victoria Fratz

‘Wonderwell’ Trailer: Watch Carrie Fisher In Final Role Starring Opposite Rita Ora In Fantasy Flick 06/16/2023

VAL Delivers Colorful Hussy Horror-Comedy 10/20/2021

‘Val’ Director Aaron Fradkin Discusses Rewriting the Script When They Found A Sex Dungeon [Video] 10/20/2021

Devil’s Due: 6 Scary Memorable Depictions of Satan On Screen 10/20/2021

‘Val’ review: Dir. Aaron Fradkin [Grimmfest 2021] 10/20/2021

SALEM HORROR FEST: Val (2021) 10/20/2021

‘Val’ review: Misha Reeves is devilishly good in comedy horror 10/20/2021

[Review] Val (2021) 10/20/2021

[Movie Review] VAL 10/20/2021

Val Movie Review 10/20/2021

‘Val’: Exclusive Clip Teases The Extent of The Demon’s Powers 10/20/2021

18 New Horror Movies and Shows Releasing This Week, Including ‘V/H/S/94’! 10/20/2021

Val Clip Has Criminal Captured By A Demon 10/20/2021

Val clip features a demon escort and her victim – Exclusive! 10/20/2021

“VAL” INTERVIEW | DIRECTOR, CO-WRITER AARON FRADKIN, AND STAR MISHA REEVES | THE FILMCRAZIEST SHOW 10/20/2021

Review: Demonic Comedy ‘Val’ Doesn’t Possess Much Humor 10/20/2021

Watch an Exclusive Clip from VAL 10/20/2021

VAL – Review 10/20/2021

Movie Review: Dread’s Horror Comedy ‘VAL’ (2021) Is Hilarious and Sensational 10/20/2021

Dread presents Val (2021) A Fun Horror/Comedy Tale With Heart And Soul 10/20/2021

Road to Grimmfest: Interview with ‘Val’ Director Aaron Fradkin and actor Misha Reeves 10/19/2021

Trailer for Dread Presents 'Val' 10/19/2021

Trailer for Dread’s devilish new release VAL 09/03/2021

Movie Reviews (Popcorn Frights 2021): “Howling Village,” “Val,” and “The Accursed” 09/03/2021

Eric’s Review: Val (2021 Popcorn Frights) 09/03/2021

Exclusive: 'Val' Trailer for Dread's Horror-Comedy Movie Reveals a Deal With a Demon Gone Hilariously Wrong 09/03/2021

‘Val’ Plays the Games Demons Play in Select Theaters and On Demand in October [Trailer] 09/03/2021

Misha Reeves Unleashes Her Inner Demon in New Trailer for ‘Val’ 09/03/2021

Hell is beautiful in trailer for horror-comedy Val 09/03/2021

[News] Get Ready to Meet VAL On Demand October 5th! 09/03/2021

Hiding Out in a Demon Escort's Dungeon in Indie Horror 'Val' Trailer 09/03/2021

Val Blu-ray

An aspiring influencer's debut horror film takes a chilling turn when a real-life killer starts murdering her cast mates on set.

Documentary web series about unexplained mysteries, urban legends, and unsolved cases

A deep dive into the depths of unsolved murders, mysteries, and myths with narrator Jans Holstrom.

Documentary web series about unexplained mysteries, urban legends, and unsolved cases.

A journalist in Barbados investigates video of a giant creature, what she uncovers is a secret the government didn’t w

During a camping trip from hell, a father battles a murderous cult and a bloodthirsty demon to save his kidnapped son.

Desperate to save his dying wife, Matt turns to The Bag, an ancient relic with dark magic. As his wife heals, Matt's sanity unravels, facing terrifyin

A high schooler on a bowling date from hell teams up with her survivalist dad to fend off a bloodthirsty cult.

A malevolent being known as The Jester terrorizes the inhabitants of a small town on Halloween night.

A lone survivor recounts tales of horrors after police find a house full of dead bodies.

A gigantic and bloodthirsty monster emerges from a lake and unleashes its fury on a small town, leaving a trail of destr

In the aftermath of a deadly outbreak, a brother and sister fight to survive against a vicious landscape..

As the world faces a deadly plague, a scientist on the brink of a cure awakens imprisoned in a metal chamber.

While recovering from an abusive relationship, Joy joins a mountainous therapy retreat, only to face a monstrous entit

A twisted tale of seemingly unconnected strangers caught in a series of bizarre and otherworldly events.

Desperate to escape an overturned ambulance, a group of paramedics discover that they are the victims of an ambush.

On Halloween night in New Salem, Radio DJs Chilly Billy and Paul tell a twisted anthology of terrifying local myths.

A psychologist visits an infamous haunted location known as ‘Howling Village’ to learn about her family’s dark his

When a man desperate to start a new life throws away his childhood plush, Benny, it’s a move that can only end in deat

Kidnapped by a mysterious organization known as Recreation, Mila must fight her unseen captors for control of her mind.

Joy is the new maid of a royal house, whose previous maid disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

According to legend, an ominous entity known as the Queen of Spades can be summoned by performing an ancient ritual.

Inspired by real events. A police officer is trapped by the evil spirits of a cursed house.

While visiting a remote Norwegian Island, a couple are drawn into a sinister cult that worships a sea-dwelling deity.

A sadistic group of clowns kidnap an unsuspecting man, forcing him to play a deadly game in order to save his family.

Rivalries, secrets, and sexual tension emerge when three friends find themselves stranded in the middle of the ocean.

When a local outcast is murdered the night before Halloween, he’s resurrected to seek revenge.

A recently divorced mother and her two teens receive mysterious red letters instructing them each to kill or be killed.

A comic book obsessed serial killer teaches his son how to get away with a series of brutal murders.

An investigative team travels deep into the wilderness after a group of campers are murdered by what may be Bigfoot.

Four teenage astronauts brave the alien wilderness of a distant planet to save the Earth’s President from an assassin.

When 2 sisters go to an isolated cabin to film a passion project, masked strangers arrive to film a project of their own

A devout community suffering from a plague is torn apart by the forces of witchcraft, black magic, and possession.

An elite military unit encounters a supernatural entity that forces them into battle against an army from another world.

A recluse drug addict is terrorized by ghosts, a sheriff & his hallucinations while trying to uncover a murder mystery.

On Christmas Eve, three cosplaying women accidentally unleash Krampus and team up with Santa Claus to save the world!

Sophie's 18th birthday becomes a bloodbath when monsters descend upon her house and start to devour the party guests.

Touring a small-town rodeo festival, a group are hunted down by bloodthirsty cowboys!

A mystical woman must save her village from invaders, but the entity she conjures to protect them is a far greater evil.

Obsessed with horror, a young woman attempts to confront her fears in an extreme haunt where nothing is as it seems!

Art The Clown returns and sets his sights on three young women, along with anyone else that gets in his way.

Two young women go on an exotic vacation and uncover the lair of a killer mermaid hidden beneath an abandoned military f

Two couples, trapped in a mini-van, must use their wits and courage to fend off a vicious assault from a Grizzly Bear an

A horrifying and twisted journey into the world of the paranormal, demonic, and supernatural.

Two brothers intercept 911 calls in a beat up old ambulance to torture and kill helpless victims.

A group of clueless friends become trapped at a baby shower when a sudden zombie apocalypse threatens their lives.

A gothic supernatural thriller about an orphan twin who fights to free herself from a horrid, long-held family curse.

A darkly comic tale of a deceased girlfriend who returns to haunt a young man to sabotage his new relationship. Winner o

Get notified about locations near me or when Val becomes available on demand:

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• © 2024 Epic Pictures Group | All Rights Reserved
• Privacy Policy | Terms of Use

"Intriguing Personal Documentary, but Sad"

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

What You Need To Know:

Miscellaneous Immorality: Val’s stubbornness on how to act makes him difficult to work with and also costs him his marriage.

More Detail:

VAL is a deeply intimate autobiographical documentary on Amazon Prime about longtime actor Val Kilmer, composed of hundreds of self-shot home-movie clips mixed with newly shot footage and with narration written by Val but read by his grown son, Jack. VAL is an intriguing yet sad look at a movie star who had it all but has lost much of it due to the ravages of throat cancer, but there is some strong foul language and references to Kilmer’s belief in the false religion of Christian Science.

At the start, Val reveals he’s been filming himself ever since he was given a camera by his father as a young boy. He also reveals that he now has throat cancer and that it has affected his ability to talk so severely that he has to press his fingers on his throat to even speak with a very hoarse, froggy tone of voice.

While these two facts set up a fascinating and in-depth look at his life, Val refuses to acknowledge the most obvious part of his problems. He is a member of Christian Science, a false religion where adherents believe that they are one with the Divine Mind and that sickness is just part of “mortal mind”, but not Divine Mind, and they do not have physical ailments because sickness is not real. As such, he turned down any opportunity to have modern medicine help him, leaving him in his current ravaged state where not only his voice but his extremely handsome good looks are now gone.

VAL affectingly shows Kilmer as a young boy who lost his favorite brother and creative collaborator to a tragic drowning. This death has haunted Kilmer his whole life, but the movie also shows moments of early creative triumph as he falls in love with acting as a teenager in school plays.

One particularly interesting moment comes as a young professional actor when he wins the lead role in a Broadway play called “Slab Boys” and then is relegated to third lead because young but better-known actors Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn are also cast in the play. Kilmer said that taught him to pursue the most interesting role in a film or other production, not necessarily the lead – and that standard of artistic purity causes people to love him or hate him throughout his career.

The rest of VAL alternates between footage of him in key roles throughout his career, including BATMAN FOREVER, HEAT and TOP GUN, and present-day footage of him attending fan conventions and other personal appearances to make money from his autographs. He shows that he bailed his father out of massive tax debts, losing nearly his own entire fortune in the process and necessitating his taking many lower-quality roles and the fan conventions in order to survive.

One other fascinating part of the story is Val’s passion for Mark Twain, which has inspired Kilmer to tour nationally with a one-man show portraying the famed writer and dream of making a biographical movie about him. However, with his voice gone, it’s a sad reality that there’s no way this show can still work out for him.

VAL has a melancholy tone throughout, with an overwhelming sad undertone due to Kilmer realizing that much of his life’s work has come to nothing. It is a touching portrait of a deeply artistic spirit who just can’t seem to bend his vision to fit the world and show business around him.

VAL is most interesting to those who love showbiz insider tales and as an intimate look behind the façade of a former movie star. However, its somber tone and subject matter makes it aimed squarely at adults, even though it just barely crosses the line into an R rating because of about five “f” words. VAL also contains a couple strong profanities as well as the movie’s aforementioned references to Christian Science. MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution.

Garcelle Beauvais dishes on new Lifetime movie, Kamala Harris interview

Garcelle Beauvais learned how far a Lifetime movie love scene could go while she was on set filming one.

Beauvais stars in and executive produces “Terry McMillan Presents: Tempted by Love” (premiering Saturday, 8 EDT/PDT and streaming Sunday). In the film, the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star plays Ava, a chef who returns to South Carolina from Europe to care for an ailing aunt (Donna Biscoe). When she lands back in the States, she feels a connection with Luke (Vaughn W. Hebron), the driver who picks her up from the airport, who's 20 years younger.

“At one point, my character is undoing Luke's pants buckle and I'm like, ‘Can we do this for Lifetime?’” Beauvais , 57, recalls with a laugh. “It just felt too racy. It didn't end up making it in the movie. But I think we pushed the envelope, and it was steamy and grown and sexy.”

“For me being a woman of ‘a certain age’ as we'll say, it's really cool to have the hope of finding love at any age,” Beauvais says of the movie’s storyline. “And we touch upon really real things: She's a chef, but she has arthritis, she's going through menopause. We didn't shy away from what people think is the uncomfortable stuff. But I think that's what makes it endearing, because it's real.”

It’s hard not to notice that TV has become more inclusive when it comes to older women, whether it's the success of franchises like Bravo’s “Real Housewives” or ABC’s “The Golden Bachelor.”

“I feel like women are looking better than they've ever been,” Beauvais says. “I feel like we're living longer, we're taking care of ourselves. Why put any stigma on it? It's about the spirit. It's not really about the number.”

Beauvais calls herself “invested” in other reality shows like “Golden Bachelor” but admits that she tries to avoid watching reality TV while filming “Real Housewives.” She just wrapped Season 14. The model and actress notes that she’s grown closer with a few of her castmates, including ​​Sutton Stracke and Kyle Richards.

The actress also recently filmed an interview in Washington with Vice President Kamala Harris a few months ago, before she became the Democratic presidential candidate , that was posted online Aug. 10. Besides joking that the Secret Service had her “freaked out,” she enjoyed her conversation.

“I'm a Democrat, and I was nervous because of all the things that I was hearing about President Biden,” Beauvais admits. “But I'm so happy that she's getting a shot that she deserves. This is America, and we've never had a female president? This is our first (female) VP? I mean, come on, we're behind the times.”

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors.

Now streaming on:

When you have a name like Hope Goldman, two words lacquered in shiny aspirational vibes, you probably know it’s ought to be shared with the masses. Indeed, who wouldn’t want someone named Hope to bring exactly that into their lives; their one-way journey towards the inevitable? In frequent music video director Austin Peters ’ nifty and gleamingly cinematic LA exploit “Skincare,” that name belongs to an agile Tinseltown aesthetician played by Elizabeth Banks  and decorates the minimally designed containers of her upcoming skincare line—products that collectively offer a sense of hope for the future. Maybe they’ll give you back that gone-too-soon glow of youth. And if used persistently, they’ll perhaps slow down your aging. You can only hope…

If the splendid cinematic tradition of LA-based movies has taught us anything in the past century, it is that everyone hopes for something grand in the perennially sunny City of Dreams. Hope is no different, after years of building a reliable stable of beauty and wellness clientele in her image-obsessed city of bare-midriffed hikers and aspiring screen sirens. But on the verge of her big launch, she is short on cash (though still inexplicably generous with those full-sized product samples she dishes out to everyone in her orbit), in trouble with her landlord, and increasingly intimidated by that brand-new beauty parlor that opens up right across the street from her shop. Its owner, Angel Vergara (a spirited Gerardo Méndez), seems nice enough at first. But how dare he steal her clients and parking spots and claim something even more miraculous with his products: not just to battle but to reverse the signs of aging on one’s skin.

Steadily, writer-director Peters (along with his co-writers Sam Freilich and Deering Regan ) dial up the film’s sunny noir intentions. Once Hope receives a random text message one day (of a video filmed by someone spying on her), you might wonder if something akin to Michael Haneke ’s “Cache”—a paranoid thriller with a quiet register—is in the cards. Then, Peters reveals he has something else in mind. This lighter psychological Los Angeles caper proves its maker has seen and genuinely internalized some of the greats of cinema with a proud La La Land backdrop where the city plays itself, from “ Sunset Boulevard ” to “ Mulholland Drive .”

To be clear, the contemporary pleasures of “Skincare” don’t claim to be on par with these all-timers. But Peters is nonetheless here to show everyone a good time at the movies, whether you’re a fellow lover (and experienced cynic) of the vast and sparkling movie town he knows like the back of his hand or someone who just grasps that crime stories that track inexperienced criminals with no good options (think, “ Fargo ”) will always yield to something wild and compelling. It’s truly impressive how Peters braids together all the components that make LA great, unique, and sometimes despicable enough to shatter one’s dreams. For every wide-open vista, there is a claustrophobic corner in “Skincare.” For every aggressively sunny day, there is a dark and dingy room with a window placed so high on a wall that it reinforces a sunken feel. And for every wealthy enclave with smooth surfaces, there are those left alone to brave their own wrinkles.

A hardworking entrepreneur who’s well-earned good things for herself and her ambitious right-hand person Marine (MJ Rodriguez), Hope is trying damn hard not to belong to that latter group. But she is left with no choice but to enlist the help of the slimy life coach Jordan (a hilarious Lewis Pullman ) and, on occasion, her smitten mechanic when her email, website, and client list get hacked, with the hacker posting sexual images on her accounts, creating personal ads on her behalf and sending seedy spam to her contacts from Hope’s address. Is it Angel doing all this, or are other forces at play to bring Hope down?

The answer isn’t necessarily that hard to figure out, but that suspense isn’t the ultimate point of “Skincare” anyway. Instead, the film assertively tackles questions around how our youth-obsessed culture aims to rattle the confidence of an aging woman with well-earned accolades in her field of work (that “Sunset Boulevard” reference again) and that there will always be opportunists around to exploit our diminishing sense of self-worth.

The film’s greatest asset, along with a sun-dappled cinematography, Banks is certainly game for every shade of Hope in her journey of poor decisions, escalated by bad luck and an eerie city that couldn’t care less about who falls down or survives the elements unscratched. In that, “Skincare” nails a routine well worth investing in.

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

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‘The Good Half’ Review: Only Half Good

Nick Jonas and Brittany Snow play siblings coordinating funeral logistics for their mom in this drama, a cross between “Terms of Endearment” and a Hallmark movie.

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By Natalia Winkelman

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it,” Joan Didion once wrote. In “The Good Half,” that place is Cleveland, where 20-somethings with names like Renn, Leigh and Zoey frequent karaoke bars and banter about movies.

Renn (Nick Jonas) is a struggling writer in Hollywood flying back for his mom’s funeral. He is prone to avoidant behavior, the screenplay, written by Brett Ryland, shows and tells us, and his homecoming is a big deal. On the plane, he meets Zoey (Alexandra Shipp), a ray of sunshine who likes ’90s action movies and quotes “Scarface.”

In his fourth narrative feature, the director Robert Schwartzman (brother to Jason) takes us deep into young adult land. Over several days, Renn and his sister Leigh (Brittany Snow) coordinate post-loss logistics while rolling their eyes at Rick (David Arquette), their bellicose step-father. Breaking up the sibling repartee are periodic flashbacks to happier times with Mom (Elisabeth Shue).

When, and to which female listener, Renn will confront his demons is the question that drives “The Good Half,” which feels caught between “Terms of Endearment” and a Hallmark movie. Wry gags, like a hoarder priest, butt up against heartfelt exchanges. Snow, as the daughter who always played second fiddle, brings real feeling to her role — suggesting that she may in fact be the good half of this insipid drama.

The Good Half Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters.

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'Alien: Romulus' is another franchise movie that brings more nostalgia than novelty

Justin Chang

Alien: Romulus is the latest movie in the long-running Alien sci-fi/horror series. But it actually takes place shortly after the events of the very first film: Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic, Alien . 20th Century Studios hide caption

If you’ve gone to the movies lately, you might have noticed — or even purchased — one of those novelty popcorn buckets promoting the year’s big blockbusters. Maybe you dug into the gaping maw of a Dune: Part Two sand worm — or, more recently, into the hollowed-out head of Deadpool or Wolverine.

Now, there are at least two popcorn-bucket models promoting the new movie Alien: Romulus . One is shaped like the head of a Xenomorph, that most terrifying of horror-movie demons, though I suspect without the drooling retractable tongue. Another bucket comes affixed with a Facehugger, a skittering critter that’s famously fond of attaching itself to a human’s head and laying an egg in their throat.

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These concession-stand gimmicks may be new, but the iconography of Alien: Romulus could hardly be more familiar. That’s no surprise; these monsters, brilliantly conceived decades ago by the Swiss artist H.R. Giger, have kept this series alive. In recent years Ridley Scott, the director of the unimprovable 1979 Alien , has tried to push the franchise in a more philosophical direction, in movies like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant . By contrast, Alien: Romulus , which was directed and co-written by the Uruguayan filmmaker Fede Alvarez, has no such weighty ambitions. It’s an efficient and reasonably entertaining thriller that, like a lot of franchise movies nowadays, traffics more in nostalgia than novelty.

Álvarez does set his sights somewhat high; he means to take us back to the franchise’s glory days. The story, set in the year 2142, is sandwiched between the events of the first Alien and James Cameron’s hugely entertaining 1986 sequel, Aliens . As in those films, starring the incomparable Sigourney Weaver, there’s a tough-minded female protagonist. Her name is Rain, and she’s played by Cailee Spaeny, the versatile young actor from Priscilla and Civil War . There’s also a friendly, not entirely reliable android sidekick — Andy, played by the English actor David Jonsson. We’re in a period that you might call late late capitalism, where villainous corporations rule the day and Rain, like most people her age, is part of a heavily exploited labor class, working off debts that will never be repaid.

Cailee Spaeny as Rain Carradine in Alien: Romulus. 20th Century Studios hide caption

And so when she and Andy hear of a possible way out, they seize the opportunity along with a few friends — never mind that it means heading up into space and boarding a large rustbucket ship that’s not quite so abandoned as it appears. The ship has two sections, named Remus and Romulus, which partly explains the Roman mythology-referencing title. As for what lurks aboard the ship, Álvarez knows there’s no point in building mystery or suspense, and he unleashes his army of Facehuggers and Xenomorphs almost immediately. His human characters, however, do intend to put up a fight.

Álvarez has a knack for rebooting horror properties, having made his debut with a fresh 2013 spin on Evil Dead . He followed that with the walking-on-eggshells thriller Don’t Breathe , about a group of young burglars trying to rob a blind homeowner. There are actually some amusing plot similarities between that movie and Alien: Romulus , right down to a third-act twist that pushes things into see-it-to-believe-it body-horror territory.

Álvarez is a strong director of action, and he riffs inventively on classic Alien beats. The Xenomorphs, as usual, have corrosive acid for blood — a detail that the movie exploits ingeniously in a suspenseful, gravity-defying set-piece. And there’s at least one memorable moment that reminds us that the Xenomorphs, with their phallic heads and goopy secretions, are among the most psychosexual of cinematic nightmares.

In the end, though, Álvarez’s command of craft only gets him so far. The problem isn’t just that the characters, apart from Rain and Andy, are pretty bland monster fodder. It’s that while the director seems content to update the Alien movies — with young, fresh faces and state-of-the-art technology — he has no apparent idea how to push them forward. His boldest and least successful gambit is to resurrect a key figure from an earlier film — a visual-effects coup that tries to honor the series’ roots, but feels more like a desecration. I’ll never pass up an Alien movie, but I do hope the next one has something more than elaborate fan service in mind. Dwelling too obsessively on the past is no way to guarantee a franchise’s future.

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‘The Deliverance’ Review: Lee Daniels Directs a Demonic-Possession Movie in Which the Real Demons Are Personal (and Flamboyant)

Andra Day plays a tormented and abusive single mother fighting the devil in herself. Then the real one shows up.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

• Will the People Who Say They Love Cinema the Most Come Back to the Movies? 2 days ago
• ‘The Deliverance’ Review: Lee Daniels Directs a Demonic-Possession Movie in Which the Real Demons Are Personal (and Flamboyant) 3 days ago
• ‘Alien: Romulus’ Review: The Primal Shock and Awe Is Gone, but It’s a Good Video-Game Horror Ride 5 days ago

As a filmmaker, Lee Daniels tends to get slagged off on for being flamboyantly garish and over-the-top. Some of that is deserved, but the truth is that when he’s cooking on all cylinders Daniels is a gifted filmmaker. “ The Deliverance ” is the sixth feature he has directed, and I’ve been a fan of three of them: “Precious” (2009), his extraordinary tale of a stunted inner-city teenager’s escape from her domestic hell; “The Paperboy” (2012), a bold and unnerving Southern gothic noir; and “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” (2021), a musical-political biopic that, while flawed, did a superb job of channeling its subject’s complicated ferocity.

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Ebony, whose temper has gotten her jail time, struggles with alcohol but seems, these days, more sober than not. Yet even when she isn’t drinking, we see her smack Dre in the mouth at the dinner table because he spoke up about wanting milk, accusing her of being too cheap to buy it (she says that he’s lactose intolerant but she’s never been to a doctor about it). Is Ebony the film’s equivalent of Mary, the monster mother played by Mo’Nique in “Precious”? Far from it, yet there’s an overlap. She’s a mother who’s been coarsened, at times, into meanness. She’s also quite protective, unleashing her hellion wrath on a teen bully down the block.

What Daniels wants us to see is that Ebony is a conduit for forces of oppression — economic and racial — that have dogged her life and turned it into a daily pressure cooker. The movie makes no excuses for her, but it does show us that her demons overlap with society’s. And Day, with a face of expressive misery and the energy of an imploding firecracker, portrays her as a shrewd fusion of harridan and victim. Mo’Nique is actually on hand here — she plays the DCS officer who oversees Ebony like a prim detective, looking for any sign that she’s messing up and should therefore have her kids taken away.

For all of Day’s searing anger, the showboat performance in “The Deliverance” is the one given by Glenn Close as Berta, Ebony’s white mother, who has come to live with them. Berta is a reformed junkie who found Jesus and is now going through chemo, which has left her head with nothing but scraggly wisps on top. But she wears wigs of showy blonde curls and goes out in revealing tops, flirting like mad. Berta is at war with her daughter, but she also, you know, cares . And it’s fun to see Glenn Close cut loose, in what is actually a rather well-thought-out performance, even if the character makes her Mamaw in “Hillbilly Elegy” look understated.

The kids start doing weird things. Dre bangs on the basement door and then stands there like a zombie. At school, all three engage in a bizarre acting out that involves bodily fluids. Is this a projection of their suffering from domestic abuse? Or are they being taken over by spirits? Yes and yes, and that’s supposed to be the film’s intrigue. But once the devil actually takes over, and an exorcist (excuse me, I meant an apostle , played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor from “Origin”) shows up, all in order to perform an exorcism (excuse me, I meant a deliverance , which turns out to be the exact same thing), Daniels reaches into the bag of levitating, skin-mottling, cracking-spider-limb tricks that have been propelling this genre for decades. The twist is that Ebony ends up squaring off against herself, literally facing down her own demons. But it turns out those demons were only halfway interesting when they were real.

Reviewed online, Aug. 15, 2024. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 112 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix release of a Tucker Tooley Entertainment, Lee Daniels Entertainment, Turn Left production. Producers: Lee Daniels, Tucker Tooley, Pamela Oas Williams, Jackson Nguyen, Todd Crites. Executive producers: Jackie Shenoo, Hilary Shor, Greg Renker, Gregoire Gensollen.
• Crew: Director: Lee Daniels. Screenplay: David Coggeshall, Elijah Bynum. Camera: Eli Arenson. Editor: Stan Salfas. Music: Lucas Vidal.
• With: Andra Day, Glenn Close, Mo’Nique, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Anthony B. Jenkins, Miss Lawrence, Demi Singleton, Tasha Smith, Omar Epps, Caleb McLaughlin.

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Gena Rowlands, acting powerhouse and star of movies by her director-husband, John Cassavetes, dies

Gena Rowlands, acting powerhouse and star of John Cassavetes movies, has passed away aged 94. Her death was confirmed by her son, filmmaker Nick Cassavetes. (Aug. 15)

FILE - Actor Gena Rowlands poses for a portrait at the London West Hollywood hotel in West Hollywood, Calif., on Dec. 4, 2014. Rowlands, hailed as one of the greatest actors to ever practice the craft and a guiding light in independent cinema as a star in groundbreaking movies by her director husband, John Cassavetes, and later charmed audiences in her son’s tear-jerker “The Notebook,” has died at age 94. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

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FILE - U.S. director Nick Cassavetes, son of director John Cassavetes, center back, poses with his sister Xan Cassavetes, from left, his daughter Gena Cassavetes, his mother Gena Rowlands, and his sister Zoe, before the screening of his film “The Notebook” on Sept. 5, 2004, at the 30th American film Festival of Deauville, in Normandy. (AP Photo/Franck Prevel, File)

FILE - Actress Gena Rowlands attends the world premiere of ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 in New York. Rowlands, hailed as one of the greatest actors to ever practice the craft and a guiding light in independent cinema as a star in groundbreaking movies by her director husband, John Cassavetes, and later charmed audiences in her son’s tear-jerker “The Notebook,” has died at age 94. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, File)

FILE - Actress Gena Rowlands and actor Beau Bridges hold up their Emmys for Best Actress and Best Actor for Miniseries or Special during the 44th Annual Emmy Awards in Pasadena, Calif., Aug. 30, 1992. Rowlands received the Emmy for “Face Of A Stranger” and Bridges for “Without Warning: The James Brady Story.” (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac, File)

FILE - Gena Rowlands, left, and Robert Forrest attend the Governors Ball after the Oscars on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2016, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Al Powers/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - U.S. actress Gena Rowlands waves to the crowd as she arrives at the Festival Palace in Cannes Tuesday May 23, 1995, to attend the screening of Terence Davies’ “The Neon Bible” for the 48th International Film Festival. Rowlands, hailed as one of the greatest actors to ever practice the craft and a guiding light in independent cinema as a star in groundbreaking movies by her director husband, John Cassavetes, and later charmed audiences in her son’s tear-jerker “The Notebook,” has died at age 94. (AP Photo/Laurent Rebours, File)

FILE - Actor Gena Rowlands poses for a photo in Los Angeles on Sept. 21, 1957. Rowlands, hailed as one of the greatest actors to ever practice the craft and a guiding light in independent cinema as a star in groundbreaking movies by her director husband, John Cassavetes, and later charmed audiences in her son’s tear-jerker “The Notebook,” has died at age 94. (AP Photo/Dick Strobel, File)

Gena Rowlands, hailed as one of the greatest actors to ever practice the craft and a guiding light in independent cinema as a star in groundbreaking movies by her director husband, John Cassavetes, and who later charmed audiences in her son’s tear-jerker “The Notebook,” has died. She was 94.

Rowlands’ death was confirmed Wednesday by representatives for her son, filmmaker Nick Cassavetes. He revealed earlier this year that his mother had Alzheimer’s disease . TMZ reported that Rowlands died Wednesday at her home in Indian Wells, California.

Operating outside the studio system, the husband-and-wife team of John Cassavetes and Rowlands created indelible portraits of working-class strivers and small-timers in such films as “A Woman Under the Influence,” “Gloria” and “Faces.”

Rowlands made 10 films across four decades with Cassavetes, including “Minnie and Moskowitz” in 1971, “Opening Night” in 1977 and “Love Streams” in 1984.

She earned two Oscar nods for two of them: 1974’s “A Woman Under the Influence,” in which she played a wife and mother cracking under the burden of domestic harmony, and “Gloria” in 1980, about a woman who helps a young boy escape the mob.

“He had a particular sympathetic interest in women and their problems in society, how they were treated and how they solved and overcame what they needed to, so all his movies have some interesting women, and you don’t need many,” she told the AP in 2015.

In addition to the Oscar nominations, Rowlands earned three Primetime Emmy Awards, one Daytime Emmy and two Golden Globes. She was awarded an honorary Academy Award in 2015 in recognition of her work and legacy in Hollywood. “You know what’s wonderful about being an actress? You don’t just live one life,” she said at the podium. “You live many lives.”

A new generation was introduced to Rowlands in her son’s blockbuster “The Notebook,” in which she played a woman whose memory is ravaged, looking back on a romance for the ages. Her younger self was portrayed by Rachel McAdams. (She also appeared in Nick Cassavetes’ “Unhook the Stars” in 1996.)

In her later years, Rowlands made several appearances in films and TV, including in “The Skeleton Key” and the detective series “Monk.” Her last appearance in a movie was in 2014, playing a retiree who befriends her gay dance instructor in “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks.”

One of her career triumphs was 1974’s “A Woman Under the Influence,” playing a lower middle-class housewife who, the actor said, “was totally vulnerable and giving; she had no sense of her own worth.” In “Gloria” (1980) she portrayed a faded showgirl menaced by her ex-boyfriend, a mobster boss. She was Oscar nominated as best actress for both performances.

She and Cassavetes met at the American School of Dramatic Arts when both their careers were beginning. They married four months later. In 1959 Cassavetes used his earnings from the TV series “Johnny Staccato” to finance his first film, “Shadows.” Partly improvised, shot with natural light on New York locations with a $40,000 budget, it was applauded by critics for its stark realism.

Gena (pronounced Jenna) Rowlands became a seasoned actor through live television drama and tours in “The Seven Year Itch” and “Time for Ginger” as well as off-Broadway.

Her big break came when Josh Logan cast her opposite Edward G. Robinson in Paddy Chayefsky’s play “Middle of the Night.” Her role as a young woman in love with her much older boss brought reviews hailing her as a new star.

Nick Cassavetes, son of director John Cassavetes, center back, poses with his sister Xan Cassavetes, from left, his daughter Gena Cassavetes, his mother Gena Rowlands, and his sister Zoe, before the screening of his film “The Notebook” in 2004. (AP Photo/Franck Prevel)

MGM offered her a contract for two pictures a year. Her first film, a comedy directed by and costarring Jose Ferrer, “The High Cost of Loving,” brought Rowlands comparisons to one of the great 1930s stars, Carole Lombard.

But she asked to be released from her contract because she was expecting a baby. Often during her career she would absent herself from the screen for long stretches to attend to family matters.

In addition to Nick, she and Cassavetes had two daughters, Alexandra and Zoe, who also pursued acting careers.

John Cassavetes died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1989, and Rowlands returned to acting to assuage her grief. Between assignments she sometimes attended film festivals and societies for Cassavetes screenings.

“I want everyone to see his films,” she said at the San Sebastian Festival in 1992. “John was one of a kind, the most totally fearless person I’ve ever known. He had a very specific view of life and the individuality of people.”

Virginia Cathryn Rowlands was born in 1930 (some sources give a later date) in Cambria, Wisconsin, where her Welsh ancestors had settled in the early 19th century. Her father was a banker and state senator. She was a withdrawn child who loved books and make-believe. Her mother encouraged the girl’s ambition to become an actor.

Rowlands quit the University of Wisconsin in her junior year to pursue an acting career in New York. Like other actors of her generation, she gained invaluable experience in the thriving field of television drama in the 1950s, appearing on all the major series.

After leaving her MGM contract, she was able to choose her film roles. When nothing attracted her, she appeared in TV series such as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Bonanza,” “Dr. Kildare” and “The Virginian.” One of her career delights was co-starring with her icon Bette Davis on the TV movie “Strangers” in 1979.

Rowlands and actor Beau Bridges hold up their Emmys for best actress and actor for a miniseries or special in 1992. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

Her other movies included “Lonely Are the Brave” with Kirk Douglas, “The Spiral Road” (Rock Hudson), “A Child Is Waiting” (with Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland, directed by Cassavetes), “Two Minute Warning” (Charlton Heston), “Tempest” (co-starring with Cassavetes and Molly Ringwald, in her screen debut) and the mother who wants to do right by her children in Paul Schrader’s 1987 study of a blue-collar family, “Light of Day.”

In middle age and beyond, Rowlands continued playing demanding roles. In Woody Allen’s austere drama “Another Woman” she was cast as a writer whose life has been shielded from emotion until dire incidents force her to deal with her feelings. In the groundbreaking TV movie “An Early Frost,” she appeared as a mother confronting her son’s AIDS.

Rowlands commented in 1992 that her roles remained in her memory.

“Sometimes, those white nights when I have no sleep and a lot of time to think about everything, I’ll examine different possibilities of different characters and what they might be doing now,” she said.

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the television series “Johnny Staccato” and the release year for “Shadows.”

Film Writer Jake Coyle in New York contributed to this report. The late Associated Press writer Bob Thomas contributed biographical material to this report.