Hollywood Elsewhere

I feel hugely deflated by the impending engulfment of Warner Bros. by the streaming oxygen killer and cultural suffocation device known as Netflix. I also feel lucky to have not only lived through but truly experienced movie theatre rapture as only a kid and a younger go-getter careerist could…I was not only gifted but levitated as a 20th Century movie hound …I knew and savored the blessings of that world …I was fortunate enough to have revelled in the golden age of monoculture Hollywood…huge Times Square theatres, glorious sparkling marquees, block-long billboard art, big drive-ins…reserved seats, 70mm presentations, a feeling of excitement and aliveness and specialness…a vibe that will never, ever return. It’s gone, man, and of all the bad-vibe, killjoy forces out there, Netflix has probably done the most to kill it.

Did they not get the memo? Are they under an impression that it’s still 2021? Vampire schlock is vampire schlock. Praising mediocrity is a sin…seriously. Bad for the soul.

What are the positive benefits for film culture in the Netflix-devours-Warner Bros. scenario? I’m not necessarily saying the buy is a bad or unfortunate thing. I’m just asking “what’s the upside?”

I felt the same way when 20th Century Fox was eaten by Disney.

Which senior WB employees are likely to get whacked? Maybe I should ask “who WON’T Get whacked?”

I saw it again tonight, and holy moley…it was shot in 1.66:1. A result of the European sensibility of dp Lucasz Zal (Ida, Cold War, The Zone of Interest). Chloe Zhao agreed, I’m guessing, because 1.66 is an older a.r. (European “flat”, common in France and England in the mid 20th Century) and this seemed to vaguely augment the Elizabethan vibe.

I’ll be very surprised if a single film critic or puff-piece profiler has mentioned this. One reason is that 98% of your mainstream media kiss-assers don’t even know what a 1.66 aspect ratio is.

I was more or less okay with Albert Brooks‘ Defending Your Life (’91) and I’ll always adore the last 25 minutes of Warren Beatty and Buck Henry‘s Heaven Can Wait (’78). Because, deep down, I’m susceptible to this brand of romantic fantasy…fate, happenstance, eternal connections, etc.

But I would never so much as flirt with the idea of submitting myself to an afterlife romcom as obviously puerile and vomitous as Eternity (A24, 11.26).

Which youngish afterlife dead guy (Miles “don’t be a pervert, man” Teller or Callum Turner) should the also-dead-but-reborn Elizabeth Olsen choose for her eternal afterlife partner? Jesus, man…who the hell cares?

Imagine if 2001‘s Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) had realized at the very end of Stanley Kubrick‘s 1968 classic, just he was about to transform into a cosmic star-child, that the only thing that really matters is somehow finding and hooking up with Pamela Byrge, a girl he was head-over-heels in love with in high school, etc.

It obviously required an extraordinary degree of shallowness and not even a glimmering of cosmic consciousness for cowriters Pat Cunnane and David Freyne (Freyne also directed) to dream up this crap.

I noted eight years ago that Turner has eyes like a northwestern timberwolf. This is still the case.

In Alfred Hitchcock‘s Lifeboat (’44), a German submarine survivor, Willie (Walter Slezak), admits that his crew shelled the lifeboats of a sunken British ship. He explains through Tallulah Bankhead‘s Connie, who translates his German, that they were “just following orders” to fire on the lifeboats, even though they posed no military threat.

“This admission sparks a hushed debate among the survivors about how to treat an enemy who participated in such a deplorable act.

“Ultimately, the survivors, driven by a combination of anger, suspicion (Willie is later found to have a hidden flask of water and food tablets that the others lacked) and a struggle for survival, savagely beat Willie and throw him overboard to his death.”

Political cartoon by Nick Anderson:

Make that two figures of speech, and both involving H20. I encountered them earlier today while reading a four-day-old Hamnet review, written by the Daily Beast‘s Chris Feil.

The deplorable terms are (a) “pool of tears” and (b) “puddle of tears.” I’m not saying that Hamnet‘s Globe Theatre finale doesn’t deliver a meltdown. It surely does. I’m saying that any and all allusions to pools or puddles of tears are verboten.

In traffic violation terms, writing “puddle of tears” or “pool of tears” is equal to drunk driving, or perhaps even hitting a pedestrian and leaving the scene with squealing tires and burnt-rubber smoke in the air.

Feil: “The first thing you’ve likely heard about Oscar-winner director Chloé Zhao’s latest film, Hamnet — before even predictions about its Oscar chances — is the degree to which it is leaving crowds in a pool of tears.”

Less than two seconds after reading this sentence, I was telepathically muttering epithets….”You shameless motherfucker…pool of tears?…you craven shoveller… you should be bitchslapped for that”, etc.

Her choice is included in “The 10 Best Movies of 2025“, posted on 12.3.25 at 2:54 pm:

HE disagrees with 16 of Quentin Tarantino’s choices for the 20 best films of the 21st Century — the ixnays are in boldface, the agreements are underlined:

Agreements:

David Fincher’s “Zodiac” (No. 6)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” (No. 5)
Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball” (No. 18)
Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (No. 10)

Nay-nays:

Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” (No. 20)
Eli Roth’s “Cabin Fever” (No. 19)
Prachya Pinkaew’s “Chocolate” (No. 17)
Rob Zombie’s “The Devil’s Rejects” (No. 16)
Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” (No. 15)
Richard Linklater’s “School of Rock” (No. 14)
Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass: The Movie” (No. 13)
Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s “Big Bad Wolves” (No. 12)
Kinji Fukasaku’s “Battle Royale” (No. 11)
Edgar Wright’s “Shaun of the Dead” (No. 9)
George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road” (No. 8)
Tony Scott’s “Unstoppable” (No. 7)
Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” (No. 4)
Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation” (No. 3)
Lee Unkrich’s “Toy Story 3” (No. 2)
Ridley Scott’s “Black Hawk Down” (No. 1)

HE’s Top 25 Films of the 21st Century:

1. Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse, 2. David Fincher‘s Zodiac, 3a. Steven Soderbergh‘s Traffic; 3b. Paul Greengrass‘s United 93, 4. Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children of Men, 5. Spike Jonze‘s Adaptation; 6. Polanski’s The Pianist, 7. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck‘s The Lives of Others, 8. Tony Gilroy‘s Michael Clayton, 9. Cristian Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, 10. Todd Fields‘ In the Bedroom, 11. Joel and Ethan Coen‘s No Country For Old Men, 12. Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker, 13. David Fincher‘s The Social Network, 15. Asghar Farhadi‘s A Separation, 16. Bennett Miller‘s Moneyball, 17. Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, 18. David O. Russell‘s Silver Linings Playbook, 19. Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street, 20. Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave, 21. Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea, 22. Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name, 23.Ruben Ostlund‘s The Square, 24. Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed; and 25. Kent Jones‘ Diane.