From “Loathsome Jack Is Dryer, More Meditative Than Expected,” filed from Cannes on 5.15.18: “I’m not saying Lars von Trier‘s The House That Jack Built isn’t repellent in more ways than you can shake a stick at. It’s an odious, ice-cold exercise in homicidal perversity, and one for the record books at that. It should probably be avoided by anyone with a weak stomach or…oh, hell, by anyone who feels that films should exude some form of love or worship or celebration, which probably covers 99% of the moviegoing public.

“I was expecting a diseased horror-murder tale so excessive that it might make me physically sick or prompt me to walk out or get into a fight with one of the security guys. It didn’t do that. It turned out to be more of a meditative guilt confessional — about LVT more or less admitting that he may not be a good enough artist to deliver worthy, lasting art, and that all he really knows how to do is shock and agitate. (That’s what I got from it, at least.) I’m not saying it’s a better film than I expected, but it’s dryer and more meditative and not as heinous as I feared.

“Portions of Jack are awful to sit through and the overall tone may be an equivalent to the professionally distanced, carefully maintained mindset of a psychological counselor in a hospital for the criminally insane. But for all the innate ugliness and sadistic cruelty on-screen, Von Trier is basically analyzing himself by way of Matt Dillon‘s Jack, a serial killer based in the Pacific Northwest, and casting a cold eye upon his shortcomings as a filmmaker.

“Dillon is a would-be architect but is only gifted enough to be an engineer, he gradually admits. This is Von Trier talking about himself, of course — admitting to his audience that he’s ‘not quite Ivy League’, and that after shooting his wad on Breaking The Waves, The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville that all he really knows how to do now is make shock-and-appall movies like this, Antichrist, the two Nymphomaniac films and so on.

I’m not saying Jack gets a pass, but at least LVT has tried to make it into something more thoughtful and meditative than just a series of clinical, cold-blood episodes showing recreations of this and that method of murder. It’s ugly and rancid, but about more than just that.”

IFC Films apparently intends to release The House That Jack Built on 12.28.

I’ve thought and thought about it, and there’s no way award-season handicappers can argue that Viggo Mortensen‘s Sopranos-styled performance in Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book isn’t the current Best Actor champ. Odds-wise, I mean. Or destiny-wise.

Not that anyone is arguing against Viggo, but you get my drift. His amiable goombah guy — a nicely shaded, carefully measured performance that conveys an emotional journey that you can’t help but admire — reaches out and touches. It hits the classic sweet spot. No other performance so far is on this level. Please tell me how I’m mistaken.

Bradley Cooper‘s Kris Kristofferson-like performance as a drawlin’ drunk in A Star Is Born is pretty good, I have to admit. He’ll almost certainly be nominated….right, Bobby Peru?

But Hugh Jackman‘s Gary Hart in The Front Runner is, I feel, more formidable. Watching him play a considerate, highly principled guy who didn’t do anything all that bad or who at least feels that infidelity is a private matter…to watch this decent guy get taken down for no reason other than the fact that tabloid scandals drive ratings and sell newspapers is just tragic. I can’t get his performance out of my mind.

And what has happened, by the way, to general Gold Derby support for Ethan Hawke‘s career-peak performance in Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed? It’s an absolute scandal that he’s not on each and every spitballer’s top-five Best Actor chart right now, as opposed to just lists from Claudia Puig, Timothy Gray, Chris Rosen, ESPN’s Adnan Virk and myself.

As we speak, 17 Gold Derby handicappers are blowing Hawke off. Not because his masterful performance as a small-town minister isn’t a primal, conflicted, straight-from-the-gut vessel of anguish and longed-for redemption, but because A24 released First Reformed last May. By the tired-thinking standards of your go-along, follow-along prognosticator, this means that Hawke isn’t really in the game — respected but an awards-season also-ran. Not because of the quality of performance, but because of A24’s release strategy. Which is absolute bullshit. Shame on those 17.

A lot of people are behind the idea of Willem Dafoe‘s performance as Vincent Van Gogh in Julian Schnabel‘s At Eternity’s Gate. I am among them, but who’s actually seen the film? It played at the Venice Film Festival, will screen at the New York Film Festival on 10.12, and will open on 11.16.

Others are excited about Christian Bale‘s unseen performance as Dick Cheney in Adam McKay‘s Vice, which won’t open until 12.25. My gut is telling me that fat Bale playing a real-life Satan is not going to be nominated for anything. Not in this climate. You don’t get nominated for gaining weight and wearing great make-up. It may be that Bale’s actual performance will turn out to be the real deal, but I’m holding off on Bale for now.

I’ve mentioned from time to time how Tony Gilroy‘s Michael Clayton (’07) has, for me, gotten better and better over the years. And yet somehow I didn’t have the brain cells or cinematic perspective or innate insight to recognize Clayton‘s specialness when it opened 11 years ago. I didn’t realize it was (and is) one of the greatest, most on-target films about big-time lawyering and corporate corruption ever made. In this regard I would call Gilroy’s film even-steven with Michael Mann‘s The Insider.

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From just-posted Indiewire piece, “A Star Is Born Is a Crowdpleaser, But Does That Make It an Oscar Frontrunner?“:

“As the fall season continues to come into focus, A Star is Born remains the one movie with massive commercial potential coming out at the height of Oscar season. But the Bradley Cooper-directed update to this famous rags-to-riches saga has already become an internet meme weeks before its release. As the movie continues to gain traction, there are still many questions about its long-term appeal: Will Cooper’s movie dominate a dense season or is it dwarfed by some of the more audacious contenders?”

HE translation: In the face of Kris Tapley‘s fascinating, almost humorous refusal to walk back his early proclamation about Cooper’s undoubtedly well made crowd-pleaser, Indiewire (i.e., Eric Kohn) feels there’s enough credibility to the burgeoning notion that A Star Is Born has been over-hyped in terms of its Best Picture or Best Director chances…there’s certainly enough cred to discuss and kick it around.

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson says in the below discussion that while A Star Is Born is good for this or that nomination, whether or not it wins “is a whole different discussion.” Kohn claims that in the popular movie realm, Black Panther has a stronger team of horses than A Star Is Born. This may be true.

The first photo of Tom Hanks-as-Fred Rogers surfaced yesterday.  It’s from the set of Marielle Heller‘s You Are My Friend, a Rogers biopic (inspired by the Morgan Neville doc) that will open on 10.18.19.

Fred Rogers, man. What a nice guy. I mean, what a really nice guy…right? Gentle manner, red sweater, blue sneakers, an Eisenhower Republican…what’s not to like? I know I’m sounding a little facetious here, but he was a “nice guy”, and he always will be.

‘

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Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh tried to defiantly lie and bluster his way through his Senate Judiciary Committee rebuttal testimony yesterday. Any reasonably sane, semi-mature, level-headed person who believes Kavanaugh’s bullshit is either (a) flat-out lying or (b) afflicted with serious deficiencies as a reader of human behavior.

“You can’t kill my life and career over my rapey, blind-drunk high-school and Yale shenanigans…that shit doesn’t count, I was 17 or 18, Mark Judge and I were fucking around…whatever. Oh, and fuck you eternally, Democratic conspirators!”

I’ve run into guys like Kavanaugh from time to time, and they’re mostly about their lack of empathy (“The world is for the few,” etc.) and their like-minded buddy-bruhs and shared hostilities and belief in clubby entitlements. And I hate, hate, hate his crude, vaguely moaning, thick-tongued way of speaking — I loathe and despise the sound of his disgusting seal-bark voice. Ope!…ope!…ope!…ope! And those butt-ugly pig eyes. In a suit. The oinky eyes of a pugnacious Trenton, New Jersey bartender who’s been caught skimming.

Kavanaugh’s sickening testimony followed the obviously truthful, straight-from-the-heart, straight-from-the-pain testimony of Palo Alto psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford. Her words and memories are and were obviously, 100%, drop-to-your-knees lucid and sincere, and shouldn’t be degraded by side-by-side comparisons to Kavanaugh’s Irish-street-punk taunts and rage-bombs.

Christine Blasey Ford‘s testimony has been quite touching. She was clearly terrified but everything about her — that look in her eyes, the glasses, the vibe of anxious sincerity, her quiet, quivering voice, her body language, that lock of blonde hair dangling in front of her face and that moment when she choked up when Sen. Diane Feinstein was describing her ordeal — tells you she’s not lying. Not to mention the other two accusers and that anonymous woman who, according to her mother, allegedly witnessed Kavanaugh being sexually aggressive with a woman during a 1998 social occasion. How is Brett Kavanaugh‘s Supreme Court nomination not toast?

Five weeks ago I declared for the third or fourth time that Glenn Close is definitely going to be Best Actress nominated for The Wife, and she actually may win this time. Repeating: The Wife is a solid double-A quality package — a tidy, well-ordered, somewhat conservative-minded, theatrical-style drama. Some may say it’s a little too stagey, but it’s as good as this sort of thing gets. It satisfies, add up, delivers. Will the New Academy Kidz fall in line? They should. Brilliant acting is brilliant acting.

Right now 20 out of 22 Gold Derby “experts” (myself included) have Close among their five most likely Best Actress contenders. (The two hold-outs are USA Today‘s Brian Truitt and KPCC’s Claudia Puig.) But what’s the feeling within the HE community? The Wife has been playing in theatres since last month so what’s the verdict? Is Close a lock for a Best Actress nomination or not? The fact that she’s been nominated six times previously is a decisive factor or not?

Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg, from a 9.26 podcast interview with Close: “Is The Wife, a film about an older, smart, accomplished woman who was wronged by a man, but stood by him, and who eventually comes to realize her own worth and stands up for herself, particularly resonant in the aftermath of the presidential election defeat of Hillary Clinton, not to mention the onset on the #MeToo era?”

Glenn Close: “Yeah. What I love about this movie is that what we ended up creating with a very, very close collaboration of all of us, is a highly-complex, very specific relationship. And I think the more specific you can be, funnily enough, the more it can universally resonate with people — they will bring to it and take away from it whatever it is that they have in their life. But it will be an authentic resonance and an authentic emotion.”

46 year-old El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke, currently running against Ted Cruz for a Texas U.S. Senate seat, is the only Democratic rock star around. If he beats Cruz, he could theoretically make a run for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2020. Would Beto be pushing his luck by doing so? Yes. Traditional grooming strategies suggest that O’Rourke will make a big splash at the Democratic convention in July 2020, by which time he will presumably have been serving for a year and a half, and then run for President in 2024. But what if A Democrat beats Trump in ‘2020?

Barack Obama officially launched his Presidential campaign in February ’07, at which time he had been serving as one of Illinois’s U.S. Senate reps for two years. Then he’d been laying the groundwork for months previously. It wouldn’t be that crazy if Beto runs for Prez in 2020; he’d be 48 by then and (if all goes well) a seasoned Washington Senator.

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Are we allowed to talk about this or that actress delivering a certain unzipped quality? Or has that kind of talk been outlawed? I don’t know if I’m any good at describing stand-out, X-factor, special-allure qualities when it comes to actresses, but since seeing Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War last May I’ve become more and more convinced that Joanna Kulig, the 36 year-old Polish actress who plays femme fatale “Zula” Lichon, is the new Jeanne Moreau. Or, if you will, the new Laura Antonelli.

What does that mean exactly? It means that she has a certain irreverent-but-sensuous thing going on. A quality of impudence. Besides being highly fetching there’s something about Kulig that feels a tiny bit bothered or madhouse. In a good way, I mean. Because the slightly crazy ones are always (and please don’t lynch me for saying this) great in the sack.

Moreau wasn’t devastatingly beautiful in a Catherine Deneuve sense, but she had a look on her face that told you she’d been around the block and had known disappointment and unhappiness. Her face had a hard-knocks, downturned-mouth quality. Kulig has this also. There’s something in her eyes and manner that is direct and yet slightly mocking and melancholy. She’s got it, whatever it is. In my book she’s earned consideration for a Best Actress Oscar — no question.

So Michael Avenatti’s as-yet unnamed client, a woman who was “both” a witness and a victim of Kavanaugh’s who “had a number of security clearances issued by the federal government over a number of years,” will come forward…what, later today? Certainly by tomorrow. A friend predicted yesterday that when the “third woman” comes forward, Kavanaugh might turn tail and withdraw himself from the process. That would be Trump’s smart play — cut Brett loose, nominate another anti-choice hardliner. I suspect, however, that Congressional Republicans are so angry and obstinate about what they see as a fiendish liberal conspiracy to destroy a good man (i.e., an entitled conservative cut from their own cloth) that they’re telling each other “damn the torpedoes….we’re pushing Brett through no matter what.”

If there’s one ironclad rule that pretty much every Hollywood-employed director has to follow, especially those working in the fantasy, urban thriller or action-adventure genres, it’s that you have to grab the ADD crowd before their concentration ebbs and they switch the channel.

Which is why almost every film starts with a grabber scene — some jarring activity that seizes the idiots by the lapels and says “wait, hold on, stick around…we know you’re looking for an excuse to watch something else so here’s a little stimulation for your inner 12 year-old.”

Example: Even The Post, an upmarket film about an epic chapter in 20th Century journalism that was aimed at educated GenX-boomers, started with a combat scene in Vietnam (i.e., RAND corporation egghead Daniel Ellsberg embedded with an infantry unit and carrying an M16) with the enemy engaged and tracer bullets flying every which way.

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