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Meryl Streep is Alice Hughes, a demanding well-renowned writer struggling to complete her newest manuscript. Karen (Gemma Chan) is her young new agent. Desperate to discover whether Alice is writing a sequel to her biggest bestseller, “You Always. You Never,” Karen engineers a cruise for the writer. See, Alice is being awarded the fictional Footling Prize. But the award ceremony takes place in the UK, and for reasons unknown, she can’t fly.

Continue reading ‘Let Them All Talk:’ Steven Soderbergh Lets Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest & Candice Bergen Consider Friendships Lost At Sea [Review] at The Playlist.

Argentinian author César Aira doesn’t work the way other writers do: Most mornings, according to routine, Aira takes a seat at a Buenos Aires café and picks up where he left off, responding to what he sees around him. His is a spontaneous style, shaped by chance or whatever may have happened the day before, or even by what he watched on television. “If a little bird enters into the café where I’m writing — it did happen once — it also enters into what I’m writing,” Aira has explained.

I was reminded of Aira’s method when watching “Let Them All Talk,” an HBO Max original feature in which Meryl Streep plays a novelist of considerable acclaim struggling to finish her latest novel. Her character, Alice Hughes, already has a Pulitzer and is en route to receiving the prestigious (albeit fictional) Footling Prize in the U.K. Because she can’t fly,...

Tensions arise between a writer and her coterie aboard an ocean liner in Steven Soderbergh’s sweet, unfocused drama

There’s an awful lot going on in this new movie from Steven Soderbergh. The title is appropriate: it’s garrulous, elegant, bristling with classy performances from an A-list cast, and Deborah Eisenberg’s screenplay has a theatrical intimacy. It’s loosely and waywardly plotted, perhaps as a result of having gone through many drafts, though maybe not enough. It is slightly unfocused and uncertain as to where its emotional centre really lies – though there is a charm and a big dramatic finale.

The story is mostly set on a luxury liner, , the Queen Mary 2, crossing from New York to Southampton. Meryl Streep plays Alice Hughes, a renowned novelist whose reputation and sales rely chiefly on a sensational early book about the collapse of a woman’s marriage. Her agent (Gemma Chan...