In a 1.11 Facebook entry, director Eugene Jarcecki (The King, Reagan, Why We Fight) posts some photos of various West Village retail shops that have shuttered and laments “the lie of a ‘booming’ economy…in Gentrification 2.0, where even the crappy soulless establishments that once replaced the original mom-and-pop places, even these onetime intruders can no longer survive.”
One of the photos was of the recently shuttered Vesuvio’s Bakery (or more precisely the Birdbath bakery inside the Vesuvio’s storefront) at 160 Prince Street. Devastating. I haven’t been to Manhattan since last spring, and had somehow missed the closing last August. Early 20th Century storefronts like Vesuvio’s are the heart and soul of what remains of the old West Village. This kind of thing has been happening in Manhattan for the last 20, 25 years. Earthy single-owner establishments have been dropping like flies, and with them the flavor and character of Sidney Lumet‘s Manhattan.
In ’78 and ’79 I lived a hop, skip and a jump away at 143 Sullivan Street. I was mostly miserable back then, and yet I felt so glad that my apartment was part of a living, breathing neighborhood composed of mom-and-pop businesses, and run by people with pugnacious New York personalities.
Eugene Jarecki anecdote: During the annual Sony Pictures Classics party in the middle of the 2005 Toronto Film Festival, I was talking to Jarecki about Why We Fight, which the festival was screening. We were engaged in the usual party chit-chat. And then I somehow shifted into a testy-bordering-on-hostile discussion with MCN’s David Poland, who was standing right next to me. “Whoa, wait,” Jarecki quipped. “This sounds like a real conversation…you guys actually have something to say to each other!”
I think it’s wrong to compose a Top 32 films of 2018 list without having seen The Mule or Aquaman, but here goes anyway. This isn’t an awards-projection thing but a personal, preferential rundown of films that went ding-ding-ding-DING-DING-DING! Films that felt extra-ballsy or extra-refined, seemed the most beautiful, struck the target dead-center, delivered the most pizazz, generated the most excitement, felt the fullest and most formidable, exhibited the finest forms of discipline, etc. And in this order. BTW: I’m sure I’ve overlooked a deserving title or two…please advise.
1. Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War.
2. Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma.
3. Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book.
4. Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed.
5. Adam McKay‘s Vice.
6. Ari Aster‘s Hereditary.
7. Nadine Labaki‘s Capernaum.
8. Alice Rohrwacher‘s Happy As Lazzaro.
9. Tony Zierra‘s Filmworker.
10. Damien Chazelle‘s First Man.
11. Steve McQueen‘s Widows.
12. Stefano Sollima‘s Sicario — Day of the Soldado.
13. Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise‘s Mission : Impossible — Fallout.
14. Matt Tyrnauer‘s Studio 54.
15. Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born.
16. Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Favourite.
17. John Krasinski‘s A Quiet Place.
18. Eugene Jarecki‘s The King.
19. Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here.
20. Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner.
21. Jonah Hill‘s Mid ’90s.
22. Marielel Heller‘s Can You Ever Forgive Me?
23. Wes Anderson‘s Isle of Dogs.
24. Bo Burnham‘s Eighth Grade.
25. Morgan Neville‘s Won’t You Be My Neighbor.
26. Ryan Coogler‘s Black Panther.
27. Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood.
28. Betsy West; Julie Cohen‘s RBG.
29. Antoine Fuqua‘s The Equalizer 2.
30. John Curran‘s Chappaquiddick.
31. Jesse Peretz‘s Juliet, Naked.
32. Gus Van Sant‘s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot.
Jim Cavender by way of Jim McBride, 11.24 Facebook post: “I suppose it was inevitable, but President Trump got his grubby little mitts on Elvis Presley (and rock ‘n’ roll generally) by posthumously awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for being ‘the true king of rock ‘n ‘roll’ — a phrase he clearly meant as a dig at African Americans and anyone else who may feel otherwise.
“[The] media commentary I’ve run across seems to acknowledge this. It’s also why Trump chose to recognize Babe Ruth and Roger Staubach, as a ‘remember when white people were in charge?’ dog whistle. But I’ve also picked up an undercurrent of sneering contempt that indicates the commentators can’t imagine any other reason for the recognition. I find it bewildering and ironic that Elvis has been turned into this buttress for reinforcing the racial barriers he set out to obliterate. Any thoughts?”
HE to Cavender: It’s a shame that Presley’s memory has been used by Trump as a dog-whistle thing, but remember also that Presley never set out to “obliterate racial barriers,” to use your phrase. Presley adopted blues and gospel singing styles that he picked up in Tupelo, and thereby became the “white guy singing black music” that Sam Phillips, the Sun Records honcho, had dreamt of and was able to sell. Presley’s debt was obviously huge, but he never stood up for the civil rights movement — not even when Hollywood liberals attended the August ’63 March on Washington en masse.
And of course, Presley became a hippie-deriding, protestor-hating conservative in the early ’70s. If he’d lived he almost surely would be a Trumpster today, so Trump’s Medal of Freedom tribute sadly correlates.
This is all in Eugene Jarecki‘s The King, one of the great 2018 docs.
The guy whose memory and legacy I feel badly for is Babe Ruth. He may not have been a paragon of virtue in all respects, but he was still Babe Ruth. Now he’ll be forever linked as a symbol of white pushback.
Before last night’s On The Basis of Sex guild screening I sat down with Bill McCuddy and Neil Rosen of “Talking Movies.” The topic was mainly the Broadcast Film Critics Association documentary awards, which are happening on Saturday in Brooklyn. A few docs that should have been at least nominated were blown off, for some reason. Eugene Jarecki‘s The King, a transcendent doc about Elvis Presley and American culture, was ignored. Matt Tyrnauer‘s 100% brilliant Studio 54 was also given the go-by…why? Ditto a pair of HBO docs — Marina Zenovich‘s Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind and Susan Lacy‘s Jane Fonda in Five Acts. Why didn’t they nominate Divide and Conquer, the phenomenal Roger Ailes doc?
Judd Apatow‘s The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, my absolute favorite doc of 2018 and arguably the best film Apatow had ever made, has been nominated for Best Limited Doc Series. What does that mean? It’s not a series but simply a long film (i.e., 270 minutes).
I was torn over which film to choose in the MOST COMPELLING LIVING SUBJECT OF A DOCUMENTARY category. The nominees are Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, RBG, Free Solo, Bad Reputation, Quincy, Three Identical Strangers, John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection and Filmworker. I kept flip-flopping between Scotty Bowers and Leon Vitali, and finally went with Scotty because Leon wouldn’t answer my numerous inquiries about the 4K 2001: A Space Odyssey doc.
“We cannot afford to mince words.
“Donald Trump is directly responsible for yesterday’s mass murder in Pittsburgh. He is also responsible for the attempted murders by the MAGAbomber across the country. We already know that Donald Trump is a rapacious, violent abuser with no regard for democracy or human dignity. If he is not stopped, either electorally or by a popular uprising, this country will continue its tragic and perilous slide into authoritarian-capitalist fascism, and these horrors will be just a prelude to far greater evils to come.
“The masses of Americans who oppose Trump know that we are in the majority, and that his power is only being sustained by fellow evil-doers from within his minority, to subvert American democracy in order to cling to power at all cost. The problem is that the nation was founded by white men who designed this system to do exactly what it is doing, to ensure minority rule and ward against the danger of real, direct democracy. This reality has been expanded in the modern era by corrupt actors who have found ways to distort the system further. They have rigged elections and districts and obstructed Americans who might oppose them from voting at all.
“We know that this is what a losing minority does when it fears being cast onto the ash heap of history. But we also know that the mainstream Democratic Party has historically failed to protect millions of Americans from these monstrous actions. So we know that only we the people will fix this, by demanding its repair.” — Facebook post by documentarian Eugene Jarecki, roughly 20 hours ago.
Dispensing with any notions of awards or nominations, here are HE’s favorite 2018 films (i.e., a combination of the most artful and emotionally satisfying) as we speak, and in this order:
(1) Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book, (2) tie between Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma and Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War, (3) Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed, (4) Stefano Sollima‘s Sicario — Day of the Soldado, (5) Marielle Heller‘s Can You Ever Forgive Me?, (6) Matt Tyrnauer‘s double-header of Studio 54 and Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, (7) Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner, (8) Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise‘s Mission : Impossible — Fallout, (9) Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born, (10) Damien Chazelle‘s First Man.
Followed by (11) Antoine Fuqua‘s The Equalizer 2, (12) Susan Lacy‘s Jane Fonda in Five Acts, (13) Eugene Jarecki‘s The King, (14) Ari Aster‘s Hereditary, (15) Morgan Neville‘s double-header of They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead and Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, (16) Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here, (17) Tony Zierra‘s Filmworker, (18) Bo Burnham‘s Eighth Grade and (19) Bryan Singer‘s Bohemian Rhapsody (for the Live Aid finale). (20) Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum.
Let’s get something straight right off the bat. Two of the best films of the 2018 summer season were not fucking Avengers: Infinity War or Ant Man and the Wasp…Jesus. The latter was reasonably decent and amusing as far as it went, but it was no Ant Man, and the former was agony to sit through. Plus that ending in which Thanos manages to turn almost everyone into sand and blow them into the wind machine…bullshit. The Marvel franchise has never respected death, and it never will.
HE’s ten best films of the summer (if you define “summer” as May 1st through August 31st): Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed, Bjorn Runge‘s The Wife, Ari Aster‘s Hereditary, Stefano Sollima‘s Sicario — Day of the Soldado, Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise‘s Mission : Impossible — Fallout, Eugene Jarecki‘s The King, Jeremiah Zagar‘s We The Animals, Bo Burnham‘s Eighth Grade, Morgan Neville‘s Won’t You Be My Neighbor, and Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood.
Spike Lee‘s BlackKklansman is a decent…okay, above-average police caper hoodwink flick with a great, balls-to-the-wall, Trump-blasting finale. The general response was thumbs up enough to suggest that Lee might snag a Best Director nomination, and after 35 years of banging out distinctive, high-style movies and many with something to say, he deserves it.
Boots Riley‘s Sorry To Bother You “is a piece of wildly-out-there satire that warrants everyone’s attention and respect. I laughed from time to time and admired the Brittania Hospital-meets-Idiocracy surrealism, but I just didn’t care for the Oakland prison colony vibe (especially after sitting through the tedious, Oakland-based Blindspotting). As much as I got off on Riley’s edge and flamboyance and inventive sidestepping of the usual-usual, I didn’t want to ‘live’ in this film. And that’s a key thing” — from my 8.2.18 review.
Carlos Lopez Estrada and Daveed Diggs‘ Blindspotting isn’t good enough. It over-emphasizes, underlines, over-explains, assumes the audience needs help. Rafael Casal‘s portrayal of Diggs’ best friend, a violent, hair-trigger, gun-wielding asshole who’s always threatening to start shit about the slightest personal offense or otherwise do something that might attract the attention of the bulls, is intolerable. The 32 year-old playwright relies on a broad caricature of Oakland street blackitude — machismo shit talk, constant strut, a mouthful of gold fillings, flashing pistols, drop-of-a-hat hostility, etc.
It’s my view that while the hugely popular Crazy Rich Asians is occasionally diverting (especially during the first 30 minutes or so), it was nonetheless made by and for synthetic money whores. As I said ten days ago, it’s “a satire of the aggressively shallow values of the highly insecure moneyed classes of southeast Asia, but the satire doesn’t cut very deep because the film shares these values and in fact adores them…each and every shot is about showcasing obscenely flush, over-the-top flamboyance (clothes, homes, interior designs), and by the one-hour mark the spirit weakens and the nausea kicks in.”
What did I miss that’s worth mentioning? Even to put down?
Yesterday I posted HE’s latest best-of-the-year roster, which numbered 17 or 18. (I think.) I’ve since added a couple of overlooked titles (We The Animals, Equalizer 2) for a grand total of 21, and in this order:
Tied for first place: Bjorn Runge‘s The Wife (Sony Pictures Classics, 8.17) and Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed; 3. Ari Aster‘s Hereditary; 4. Stefano Sollima‘s Sicario — Day of the Soldado; 5. Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise‘s Mission : Impossible — Fallout; 6. John Krasinski‘s A Quiet Place; 7. Eugene Jarecki‘s The King; 8. Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here, 9. Tony Zierra‘s Filmworker, 10. Andrej Zvyagintsev‘s Loveless, 11. Jeremiah Zagar‘s We The Animals, 12. Tony Gilroy‘s Beirut, 13. Wes Anderson‘s Isle of Dogs; 14. Bo Burnham‘s Eighth Grade; 15. Morgan Neville‘s Won’t You Be My Neighbor; 16. Ryan Coogler‘s Black Panther; 17. Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood; 18. Betsy West; Julie Cohen‘s RBG; 19. Spike Lee‘s BlackKKlansman; 20. Antoine Fuqua‘s The Equalizer 2; and 21. John Curran‘s Chappaquiddick.
Repeating: My three biggest misses so far are Sally Potter‘s The Party, Joel Francis Daley‘s Game Night and Cory Finley‘s Thoroughbreds.
A few days ago Esquire‘s Nick Schrager listed his best-of-the-year-so-far list. I agree with him here and there but some of his other choices…Jesus. The Rider doesn’t develop, doesn’t go anywhere. It’s a movie about waiting for death, about “the thing that you love you can’t do, and so you’re fucked.”
Here’s HE’s latest best-of-the-year roster — a grand total of 21, and in this order:
Tied for first place: Bjorn Runge‘s The Wife (Sony Pictures Classics, 8.17) and Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed; 3. Ari Aster‘s Hereditary; 4. Stefano Sollima‘s Sicario — Day of the Soldado; 5. Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise‘s Mission : Impossible — Fallout; 6. John Krasinski‘s A Quiet Place; 7. Eugene Jarecki‘s The King; 8. Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here, 9. Tony Zierra‘s Filmworker, 10. Andrej Zvyagintsev‘s Loveless, 11. Jeremiah Zagar‘s We Are The Animals, 12. Tony Gilroy‘s Beirut, 13. Wes Anderson‘s Isle of Dogs; 14. Bo Burnham‘s Eighth Grade; 15. Won’t You Be My Neighbor; 16. Ryan Coogler‘s Black Panther; 17. Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood; 18. Betsy West; Julie Cohen‘s RBG; 19. Spike Lee‘s BlackKKlansman; 20. Antoine Fuqua‘s The Equalizer 2; and 21. John Curran‘s Chappaquiddick.
Not bad, liked ’em well enough, half-liked ’em, mezzo-mezzos: Jason Reitman‘s Tully; Andrew Haigh‘s Lean on Pete; Chloe Zhao‘s The Rider; Steven Spielberg‘s Ready Player One; Armando Ianucci‘s The Death of Stalin; Greg Berlanti’s Love Simon; Clint Eastwood‘s The 15:17 to Paris; Samuel Maoz‘s Foxtrot (all from Sony Classics), Ziad Doueiri‘s The Insult (Cohen Media Group) and Alex Garland‘s Annihilation.
Still Haven’t Seen ’em: Sally Potter‘s The Party, Joel Francis Daley‘s Game Night, Cory Finley‘s Thoroughbreds and what else?
I don’t know who “Jake C.” is and I’ve never visited discussingfilm, but he’s posted an “exclusive” about Baz Luhrmann having “officially signed” to direct an Elvis Presley biopic, and to revise a script that Kelly Marcel and Jeremy Donner have previously worked on.
Production is expected to begin in March 2019, according to this report. Collider‘s Jeff Sneider first reported about a possible Luhrmann/Presley biopic four years ago, and apparently the story is half-legit “Jake C.” reports Luhrmann will also produce with Catherine Martin, Lloyd Braun and Gail Berman.
He adds that casting director Kristy Carlson is “looking for two guys to play Presley, one between 18-22 and another around the age of 35.” ATROCIOUS IDEA! Hire one cool dude to play young Elvis and then age him up slightly, which is beyond easy to do. Remember that Elvis didn’t really get fat until he was 40 or thereabouts (i.e., ’75), and that he was reasonably slender and undessicated before that. Elvis turned 35 in 1970, during the peak of his Las Vegas white-jeweled-jumpsuit era. An 18 year-old actor could easily be made to look 17 years older without anyone blinking or doing a double-take.
What’s the point of making a movie about Elvis in his late teens to early 20s (’53 to ’57), or from his Sun/Memphis years to his peak period as the king of RCA Victor ’50s sideburned bop-rock, and then fast-forwarding to the beginning-of-the-end period when he first started to perform in Las Vegas but before he became fat and drugged out and wound up dead on a bathroom floor in Graceland? Who cares?
What is there to say about Presley, really, that hasn’t been said over and over for decades? The man died nearly 41 years ago. Fame comes early to a conspicuously gifted fellow, too early for such a sensitive soul. The pressure warps the frail creative vessel, resulting in seclusion, addiction and early death, blah blah.
Eugene Jarecki‘s The King says it all, knows it all.
Eugene Jarecki‘s The King (Oscilloscope, now playing) “is a nonfiction chronicle of the life and career of Elvis Presley, but it’s really a documentary-meditation-essay-rhapsody, one that captures, as almost no film has, what’s happening, right now, to the American spirit. What’s new — and revelatory — about The King apart from the soulful dazzle of Jarecki’s filmmaking, is that it asks, at every turn, a haunting question: When you take a step back and really look at what happened to Elvis Presley, what does [that] say about the rest of us?
“The King says a tremendous amount. In a way that no film has before it, The King captures how Elvis, while he was blazing new trails as an entertainer, was being eaten alive by forces that were actually a rising series of postwar American addictions.
“The healthy desire to be successful, and even to stay on top, evolved into an over-the-top lust to break the bank. Elvis started as a true artist, but in Hollywood his movies made a spectacle — almost a debased ritual — of commercial compromise. (You could chortle at a cheese doodle like “Blue Hawaii,” but you couldn’t argue with it, because it was the earliest incarnation of The Blockbuster Mentality.) And as an individual, Elvis, even as he remained a superstar, became the ultimate consumer. He ate and drank and ate some more, and sat on his gold toilet throne, and sealed himself off from the real world, like Howard Hughes on a junk-food binge that never ended. High on Dilaudid (i.e., opioids), Elvis shot out his TV screen with a gun. Today, he’d be on an all-night video-game bender.
“[Early on we’re shown] an inky-haired young rebel, who may have been the most handsome man of the 20th century, bring a vibratory erotic-ecstatic energy into the world (he didn’t invent that energy, but he channeled it, blended with it, and redefined it), and in doing so he changes the world overnight. He tilts it on its axis.
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