The Evening Star (1996)

The Evening Star is worth your time if you want a grown-up, big-hearted dramedy anchored by a movie star performance that refuses to let grief have the last word. Shirley MacLaine returns as Aurora Greenway with that unmistakable mix of steel and tenderness—funny when she’s sparring, moving when she’s simply enduring—and she gives the film a steady dignity even as life keeps tossing her family into chaos. The tone is bittersweet and bustling, full of sharp dialogue, messy love, and the uneasy comedy of trying to keep everyone afloat when they’d rather sink on their own terms, with Juliette Lewis bringing a bracing, believable edge to the generational clashes. It isn’t as pristine or lightning-struck as its predecessor, and the language and heavy themes can feel blunt, but if you’re on the fence, come for MacLaine’s presence and stay for the hard-won warmth that sneaks up on you.

The Evening Star is clearly trying to give Aurora Greenway a later-life chapter—part grief processing, part messy family portrait, with a dash of romance and sass to keep it from drowning in misery. The problem is it often plays like a string of crises and tragedies lined up to make you feel something, rather than a story that earns its emotions, and the episodic structure can feel meandering and oddly thin for such heavy material. Shirley MacLaine still has spark and there are moments of sharp humor and warmth, but if you’re hoping for the layered, devastating punch of Terms of Endearment, this can come off as a contrived afterthought. Watch it if you mainly want more time with Aurora and can tolerate melodrama; skip it if you’re allergic to forced sentiment, uneven pacing, or sequels that can’t justify their own existence.