Variety's Todd McCarthy is the first big gun to
weigh in on
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (20th Century Fox, 6.10), and...let's see, the opening sentence says that "marital therapy acquires life-or-death ramifications [in this] exhaustingly elaborate romantic fantasy actioner." Uh-oh. "Built on the cutesy premise that a great-looking husband and wife are paid killers without the other knowing about it, the at-least $110 million two-hander pirouettes entirely on the script's whimsical approach to serious business and the charm generated by leads Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But it doesn't take long for the souffle to fall."
Yikes...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:58 AM on Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Six or seven weeks ago I
called Hans Petter Moland's
The Beautiful Country (Sony Classics, July 8) "some kind of masterwork...one of the most profound and compassionate and finely nuanced films about the rough-and-tumble, never-say-die life of a roaming, disenfranchised person I've ever seen." Only no one voiced their agreement and I couldn't figure out why because it's an extraordinarily fine film and I know what I'm talking about. But now -- finally! --
N.Y. Daily News critic Graham Fuller has joined forces with a blurb that appeared in 5.29's
Sunday Now...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:26 AM on Tuesday, May 31, 2005
I've never patted or pinched the ass of any unacquainted person in my life, male or female, and if someone were to pat or pinch my derriere the groper would be sorry about this immediately, trust me...unless she happened to be an attractive woman, of course. Why am I talking about this stupid subject? Because there's something bizarre about the following AP news report, which is linked to a front page call-out on the cyber edition of the
N.Y. Daily News: "The actor Christian Slater [now appearing in
The Glass Menagerie...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:46 AM on Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Midnight Hour
I haven't paid to see a midnight movie in a lonng time. I don't even go to midnight madness screenings at film festivals. I don't even watch DVDs at midnight in my crib. But I'm glad they're happening and that people like going to them. If for nothing else than tradition's sake.
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:02 PM on Friday, May 27, 2005
I've run
Cinderella Man tipoffs before, but here's a conservative variation.
National Review and
New York Post columnist
John Podhoretz is calling Ron Howard's 1930s boxing film (Universal, opening 6.3)"a thrilling piece of work. No, more than thrilling. I left the screening room this afternoon exhilarated, moved, excited, stirred and overwhelmed, convinced that
Cinderella Man...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:32 AM on Friday, May 27, 2005
New York Times reporter Laura M. Holson is not Chicken Little. She is, of course, on to something...a turn of the cultural screw that has seemed evident to me for some time...in her 5.27
article...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:04 AM on Friday, May 27, 2005
Richard Linklater is making
Fast Food Nation into a
fictional story? Come again? What's next....
French Women Don't Get Fat as a thriller starring Jet Li? If the hoi polloi who can't be bothered to read and who continue to patronize the sludge peddlers want to remain ignorant, why make a movie just to reach them? I don't get the concept of inventing characters in order to lightly touch upon the ideas so thoroughly explored in the book. Then again, it'll probably still be better than anything from George Lucas.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:13 PM on Thursday, May 26, 2005
Kubrick Taschen
Instead of spending 10 bucks to see Adam Sandler clobber prison guards this weekend, think about dipping into your slush fund and coughing up a portion for The Stanley Kubrick Archives (Taschen). Take it home and bolt your doors and let it seep in, page by lustrous page.
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:51 AM on Thursday, May 26, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:33 PM on Wednesday, May 25, 2005
In a 5.21 Cannes Journal
entry,
New York Times critic A.O. Scott wrote that he was "disheartened" by Anne Thompson's also-recent
Hollywood Reporter column...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:43 AM on Monday, May 23, 2005
It's 2 pm on Sunday afternoon in London, and it looks like it's going to rain. Unusual! If any London readers are in the mood for a pint or two sometime this evening, write me this afternoon and we'll figure something out. I'll be checking mail off and on all day.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:57 AM on Sunday, May 22, 2005
Flash! You're reading it here dead last! The surprise Palme d'Or winner
did turn out to be Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's
L'enfant (
The Child) after all...which I was told might happen just as I was unplugging at the American Pavillion on my final day in Cannes (i.e., Saturday). Hearty congrats to (a) Jim Jarmusch's
Broken Flowers for copping the Grand Prize, (b) Tommy Lee Jones for taking the Best Actor award and Guillermo Arriaga winning the Best Screenplay trophy for
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, (c)
Hidden...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:57 AM on Sunday, May 22, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:48 AM on Sunday, May 22, 2005
Returned...
...to these shores late Tuesday night, and currently putting finishing touches to Wednesday's column this morning, i.e., Thursday. Apologies to those who've come to expect a stricter adherence to the schedule.
Dead Beach
It's straight-up noon on Saturday (5.21), and the aura of finality is everywhere. This is one totally flatlined film festival.
For 94% of the visiting journalists, I mean. Make that 96%. The locals are gearing up for the awards ceremony tonight, which I've never attended and probably never will attend.
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:38 AM on Thursday, May 19, 2005
Do you literally have to live in the U.S. to knock its values or criticize its culture or politics? David Cronenberg, a Canadian whose recently-screened
A History of Violence addresses America's shoot-em-up, fistifcuff tendencies, is
quoted thusly by
L.A. Times critic Kenneth Turan: "Does a fish know about water? Living in a tributary, not the ocean, [Marshall] McLuhan had a different perspective. The insights he had into America would not be possible to anyone living in America. Stepping away has a lot to do with it."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:38 AM on Wednesday, May 18, 2005
A lot of press people in Cannes have been doing their usual ranting against Lars von Trier for making another film critical of the U.S. (i.e.,
Manderlay) without having ever visited American shores. Certainly one needs to absorb a country's culture first-hand to get a thorough understanding of what it's about...but it also seems absurd to insist that a visitation
has to happen before one can render a strong opinion about a country's history with a film like...well,
Manderlay. As von Trier told the
Hollywood Reporter...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:34 AM on Wednesday, May 18, 2005
"The general opinion of
Revenge of the Sith seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes,
The Phantom Menace and
Attack of the Clones. True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion." This from Anthony Lane's
pan in the current issue of
The New Yorker. Hail to this fellow...his review is hilarious.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:26 AM on Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Eight Days In
It's late Wednesday morning, 5.18, and this signifies, among other things, that the Cannes Film Festival started a week ago and there's another couple of days to go before everyone collapses into a heap.
This morning's competition film, Peindre out Faire L'Amour (To Paint or Make Love), did nothing for me or to me. It's another one of those leisurely paced, mezzo-mezzo domestic French dramas about middle-class, middle-aged people, and I'm sorry but I couldn't abide it.
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:24 AM on Tuesday, May 17, 2005
While Tapping...
...out a lead piece about Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers, which everyone saw at this morning's 8:30 am press screening (and which will have its black-tie premiere tonight), I may as well put up these photos from the post-screening press conference, which ended a bit after 12 noon.
I respected and mostly liked Broken Flowers, bit I didn't find it entirely sublime. It felt a bit under-fueled and sketchy at times, but that's Jarmusch for you...he likes his characters...his movies, I mean...cut and dried without any of that emotional backstory stuff.
Broken Flowers...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:20 AM on Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Plantation Blues
Manderlay didn't do it for me, and I'm speaking as a totally ardent fan of von Trier's Dogville, Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves, as well as being a general fool for his bad-boy provocateur routine.
This is a relentlessly talky, intelligent and provocative film that addresses...well, American racism, certainly, but more generally a do-gooder tendency by American governments to try and shape other societies so they more resemble our own (Iraq, Vietnam, etc.).
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:54 AM on Monday, May 16, 2005
The Power of Nightmares director Adam Curtis told me last night (Saturday, 5.14) that Sony Pictures Classics has submitted a bid for U.S. theatrical distribution of his controversial documentary. Sony Classics' Tom Bernard confirmed his company's interest this afternoon ("We want it!") at the American Pavillion.
Nightmares...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:53 AM on Saturday, May 14, 2005
Those who've seen a five-minute DVD reel of David Lynch's next film, called
Inland Empire and starring Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux and Harry Dean Stanton, are describing it as a surreal oddball thing involving people in rabbit costumes (or wearing rabbit
heads). "It's great in a typical dark-weird Lynchian way," said one distributor at Saturday's Picturehouse party. "It feels like a cross between
Lost Highway and
Mulholland Falls," said another. Side note:
Mulholland Drive...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:43 AM on Saturday, May 14, 2005
Picturehouse, that new HBO/New Line Cinema joint venture being headed by former Newmarket marketing-acquisitions hotshot Bob Berney, has, I feel, acted wisely in acquiring Paul Reiser's
The Thing About My Folks. I
wrote about this amiable, family-values dramedy after seeing it at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in early February. The company has also acquired distrib rights to Steven Shainberg's
Fur, a Diane Arbus biopic starring Nicoel Kidman and Robert Downey, Jr.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:18 AM on Saturday, May 14, 2005
That
story that Reuters' Mike Collett-White ran two days ago about the
Star Wars legacy ("Was
Star Wars Good or Bad for Cinema?") has stayed with me. Particularly Paul Schrader's quote that the series "ate the heart and soul of Hollywood," and Peter Biskind's that the rudimnetary good-against-evil storyline of all the
Star Wars films "has become a simplistic prototype for today's blockbuster. Unfortunately, we will be living in the shadow of Star Wars for a long time."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:07 AM on Saturday, May 14, 2005
Death Stars
George Lucas and his digital galactic posse arrived in Cannes today (Sunday, 5.15), and attracted, to no one's surprise, more attention than any other film or team of filmmakers who've dropped by thus far.
Which is symmetrically appropriate, I suppose, since we all realize that Stars Wars: Episode 3 -- Revenge of the Sith will most likely attract more ticket buyers than probably all the other films showing here (including the market offerings) combined.
Star Wars: Episode 3 - Revenge of the Sith...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:56 AM on Friday, May 13, 2005
Match and Set
I'm going to crawl out on a bit of a creaky limb and just say it: Woody Allen's Match Point is his darkest and strongest film -- certainly his most moralistically bitter and ironic -- since 1989's Crimes and Misdemeanors.
I'm not saying it's as good as Crimes and Misdemeanors...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:07 AM on Thursday, May 12, 2005
Cote d'Azurred
Here we are again, Cannes-ing around and dropping pounds from all the walking up and down the Croisette with my black computer bag around my shoulder and saying "hey" to all the (mostly) smiling journalists and publicists who say "hey!" or "hello, Jeffrey!"...the usual traipsing-around bon ami stuff.
The festival's lineup looks pretty good this year. I don't even know where to begin, but there's James Marsh's The King, David Cronenberg's The History of Violence, Johnnie To's Election, Woody Allen's Match Point , Lars von Trier'sManderlay, Martha Fiennes' Chromophobia and Carlos Reygadas' ...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:58 PM on Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Box-office commentator Paul Dergarabedian sums it all up in a much darker way than he (probably) realized in Sharon Waxman's
New York Times story that ran yesterday (5.9). It's about Hollywood suits biting their nails and furrowing their brows over '05's sluggish business so far, and more particularly the underwhelming response to last weekend's openers,
Kingdom of Heaven and
House of Wax. "The marketplace is obviously in a malaise, and it's going to take movies like
Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:14 AM on Tuesday, May 10, 2005
In his
review of
Monster-in-Law in last Friday's
Hollywood Reporter, Kirk Honeycutt called it "a deeply dispiriting movie, not just because it is grindingly bad but because Jane Fonda actually chose this for her comeback after a 15-year absence from the screen." Correction: Fonda didn't exactly select
Monster-in-Law as the very best comeback vehicle she could find. She decided to do it as a fallback thing after (a) she auditioned for but didn't get the Cloris Leachman alcoholic-mother role in
Spanglish...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:43 AM on Tuesday, May 10, 2005
I'm at the Amsterdam airport, my plane for Nice leaves about three hours from now, and writing a WIRED item about this no-big-deal fact is, no argument, lame. And yet...I'm sitting in the "communication centre" on the second floor, and for 10 Euros you can get a wireless hookup for 24 hours, and it's awfully damn nice to plug in right away on foreign soil and use your laptop as a U.S.-based phone. I'm referring to Vonage's
Soft Phone ...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:52 AM on Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Fridays reviews of
Kingdom of Heaven (out 5.6) made it clear almost no one agrees with me about Orlando Bloom's Bailin or Ibelin filling the boots of a charismatic hero type. I know Bloom holds his own in this Ridley Scott film and then some, and I don't need a large crowd agreeing with me on this, but I don't seem to have any allies on this at all. Of all the stuff I've read since Friday, the meanest and funniest Orlando write-off has come from the
Seattle Weekly's
Tim Apppelo. "I know you like
Kingdom of Heaven,...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:29 AM on Sunday, May 8, 2005
All Over Now
If you felt at least somewhat satisfied or soothed by the last two dud Star Wars films...
That is, if rock-like dialogue, mummified performances, crazy-beehive CG action scenes and a general skewing to a twelve year-old mentality hasn't presented too much of a problem, Star Wars: Episode 3 -- Revenge of the Sith probably won't feel like too much of a burn.
For this sixth and final Star Wars feature, franchise creator and originator George Lucas hasn't come up with any fresh surges or inspirations.
Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman in
...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:18 AM on Friday, May 6, 2005
What might have escaped you while watching Kung Fu Hustle is that about 35% of the lines are in one language, and the rest are in another. This is a uniquely Chinese problem. The actors talking to each other in a scene aren't necessarily speaking the same language. Yet, much like Han Solo and Chewbacca, they communicate just fine. Is this found anywhere else in nature? And by the way, the movie is MUCH funnier if you know Cantonese. They have different archetypes. One last thought: I hope Stephen Chow doesn't come to America and start sucking like John Woo.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:01 AM on Thursday, May 5, 2005
Rednecks
Crash (Lion's Gate, 5.6) is worth your attention and respect. It's one of those films that has the Big Picture on its mind. It isn't preachy or assaultive (not to my mind anyway), but it damn sure swings for the fences.
Directed and co-written by Paul Haggis (who also adapted Million Dollar Baby), it's a realistic, nicely sculpted, multi-character thing about racism. L.A. racism, to put a fine point on it, but folks in other regions will relate.
Larenz Tate, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges in Paul Haggis's
Crash.
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:28 PM on Wednesday, May 4, 2005
In a
New York Times piece piece giving various sci-fi writers a forum to trash the
Star Wars series, Henry Fountain writes, "As if hyperdrive rendered historical continuity irrelevant, the first
Star Wars film was actually Episode IV, and the last is Episode III. In the eyes of nonfans, of course, it doesn't really matter where one lands in the saga. After the second film (
The Empire Strikes Back) the whole thing went downhill." Well, yes ...but
Empire was the pinnacle of the series in the eyes of
true fans...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:42 PM on Sunday, May 1, 2005
Of course, if you listen to Kevin Smith (yeah, my former boss),
Revenge of the Sith is "
fucking awesome...the
Star Wars prequel the haters have been bitching for since
The Phantom Menace came out. And if they don't cop to that when they finally see it, they're lying. As dark as
Empire was, this movie goes a thousand times darker...[it's] so satisfyingly tragic, you'll think you're watching
Othello or
Hamlet...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:35 PM on Sunday, May 1, 2005
