A Simple Favor (Movie)

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    What ‘It Ends With Us’ Says About the Blake Lively Brand

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    The images onscreen are informed by the actress’s offscreen businesses, making the movie a fascinating study in the uses of star power.Blake Lively’s hair is like a character unto itself in the new romantic drama “It Ends With Us.”Her thick mane shapeshifts with her role, Lily Bloom, a flower shop owner who falls in and out of love with an abusive neurosurgeon. Lively’s hair, dyed a soft ginger, is artfully messy when she gets her hands dirty starting up the store. The camera follows a mass of buoyant curls when she struts into a party dressed to impress the man who will ultimately betray her. When she wakes up post-coitus, her hair is perfectly tousled. When she is sad, it droops as if by magic.You could say Blake Lively’s hair is a tool she uses to sell her performance, but her performance is also a tool she uses to sell her hair. Those who are impressed with her locks in “It Ends With Us” can learn from her Instagram that she recently debuted a line of hair-care products called Blake Brown. (Brown is her father’s last name.)In many ways “It Ends With Us” is a brand-building exercise for Lively. Yes, the film, directed by Justin Baldoni, is an adaptation of a popular novel, meant to lure fans of the best-selling author Colleen Hoover, but it also serves as an advertisement for the world of Lively — not just her talent but her celebrity and her other significant role, mogul, making the film a fascinating study in the various forms star power can take.On the most readily understandable level, “It Ends With Us” makes a convincing case for Lively as an actress. Her particular je ne sais quoi was evident back in the 2007 pilot of “Gossip Girl,” which opened with a tribute to her allure. Her character — Serena van der Woodsen, the rich girl with a troubled past — arrives at Grand Central, back in New York after a mysterious absence, and everyone turns toward her. As she looks around the train station’s vast hall, she looks gorgeous and wistful, every flip of her hair (that hair!) seems imbued with greater meaning.Lively as Serena van der Woodsen in the opening scenes of “Gossip Girl.”KC Bailey/CWLike every young star on that prime-time soap, Lively made a bid for a film career. “Green Lantern” (2011) didn’t win her a franchise, but it did introduce her to her future husband, Ryan Reynolds. The dark comedy “A Simple Favor” (2018), in which she played a martini-stirring psychopath, was a surprise box office success and garnered a fervent enough fan base to earn a sequel. But Lively seemed to struggle to find her niche in movies, and while she received some praise for performances in the romance “The Age of Adaline” (2015) and the survival thriller “The Shallows” (2016), nothing propelled her to the next level of fame on the big screen.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Promised Land,’ ‘Biosphere’ and More Streaming Gems

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      Speculative science fiction, period drama and sly thrillers are among this month’s off-the-beaten-path recommendations from your subscription streamers.‘The Promised Land’ (2023)Stream it on Hulu.Mads Mikkelsen stars in this epic period drama as Capt. Ludvig Kahlen, described as “a presumptuous soldier in a flea-ridden uniform” — and that’s what they say to his face. The sneers and humiliation he is subjected to by the ruling class of mid-18th-century Denmark give the picture its juice; the potent narrative is as much a pointed class commentary as a historical drama, as the poor but dedicated Kahlen tries to build a workable manor out of a barren slab of heath, and discovers that his idealistic notions of honor and hard work won’t get him much of anywhere with these aristocrats. Chief among them is Simon Bennebjerg’s De Schinkel, the most loathsome movie villain in many a moon. And the director Nikolaj Arcel builds up a furious head of steam on the way to an utterly satisfying conclusion.‘A Simple Favor’ (2018)Stream it on Netflix.Paul Feig made his name directing such movies as “Bridesmaids” and “Spy,” uproarious comic gems that provided career-best showcases for their female stars. He shines a similarly flattering spotlight on Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively here, though with a surprising genre shift, eschewing the broad comedy of his earlier work for this stylish, semi-Sapphic neo-noir thriller. Kendrick is a typical suburban mom who finds herself dazzled by (and quietly attracted to) Lively’s sophisticated outlier; their children are schoolmates, but they may as well be from different planets. The twists and turns of Jessica Sharzer’s screenplay (from the Darcey Bell novel) are compelling, but Kendrick and Lively’s swoony relationship, and its spiky playfulness, are what make “A Simple Favor” sing.‘Dean’ (2017)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More