adams

Hillbilly Elegy Review: Amy Adams’ Netflix Movie Misses Point

Based on a memoir by former Marine and Yale Law student J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of Vance’s family, a sprawling clan who live in southern Ohio and also have deep roots in Kentucky. The movie focuses on both Vance’s childhood and his formative years as an adult, with the emphasis on the impact of two women on his life: his troubled, drug-addicted mother Bev (Amy Adams) and his stern, no-nonsense, foul-mouthed grandmother Mamaw (Glenn Close). Directed by Ron Howard, the film is clearly meant to be empathetic to these Appalachian folks even as it studiously avoids any…
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Hillbilly Elegy Trailer Touts a Transformed Amy Adams in the Ron Howard Netflix Movie

Hillbilly Elegy, director Ron Howard’s Netflix-bound next film, makes its Oscar aspirations quite clear upon the release of its first trailer. Indeed, we can already see how an impressive cast complements the clear head-turning moments of Amy Adams transformed before our very eyes as an addiction-addled mother amidst an unstable family dynamic. Howard, the ever-reliable cinematic craftsman and Oscar-winning director of A Beautiful Mind, stepped behind the camera for this movie adaptation of “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” a 2016 #1 New York Times Bestseller memoir by J.D. Vance, adapted as a screenplay by…
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Kings of America: Adam McKay and Amy Adams Reteam for Netflix Limited Series

The creative partnership between Adam McKay and Amy Adams has taken them to Talladega Superspeedway and The White House. Now the pair is set to head somewhere a little more modest: Walmart.  Netflix announced during its virtual summer TCA press tour appearance that it has ordered Kings of America, a limited series about three powerful women and their relationship to retail giant Walmart. Netflix’s official synopsis for the series reads:  “Kings of America centers on the stories of three powerful women whose lives were inextricably intertwined with the world’s largest company: a Walmart heiress, a maverick executive, and a longtime…
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