The British-born John Irvin (1940-2026) was a solid, respected, craftsman-level director who acquired a prestige-level rep with his restrained, six-episode adaptation of John LeCarre’s TinkerTailorSoldierSpy (‘79), funded by BBC Two and aired stateside on PBS.
Irvin, who began as a documentarian, broke into the Hollywood big-time with TheDogsofWar (‘80), a bracing, character-driven, well-honed action drama that established Christopher Walken as an edgy, angular actor of consequence and which is still arguably regarded as the greatestmercenarywarflickevermade.
Anchored in an aura of studious, low-key reality and always holding itself in check, pic (the full version of which runs 119minutes) costarred Tom Berenger, Colin Blakely and High Millais. It was shot by the legendary Jack Cardiff.
Dogs led to Irvin becoming a top-tier journeyman helmer throughout the ‘80s (GhostStory, RawDeal, HamburgerHill). His finest film of that decade was TurtleDiary (‘85), a quietly luminous relationship drama that costarred Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley; adapted by Harold Pinter.
Irvin died on 8.11.26 (eight days ago). News of his passing was kept under wraps by immediate family members.
…I think less of the film itself, which has a respectable rep, than I do of the brouhaha ignited by Tourette sufferer John Davidson, the film‘s real-life protagonist.
I’m speaking of Davidson blurting out “involuntary vocal tics” — offensive language and a racial slur — during last February’s BAFTA awards ceremony (2.22.26) while Sinners costars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were standing front and center.
Everyone understands Davidson’s unfortunate affliction, but it was embarassing all the same, particularly for the two gents on stage.
A sympathetic counter-reaction apparently kicked in among AMPAS voters, and Jordan, nominated for Best Actor along with Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme), Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another), Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon) and Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent), wound up winning the Best Actor Oscar.
11 days had passed between the BAFTA incident and the Academy’s Oscar voting deadline on Thursday, 3.5.26, at 5 pm.
Before the BAFTA kerfuffle no Oscar handicapper worth his or her salt had seriously predicted that Jordan would take the trophy as his Sinners performance was commonly regarded as sufficient or sturdy but hardly groundbreaking.
Had it not been for Davidson, Hawke — whose performance as Lorenz Hart had been praised as an audacious stand-out — might have prevailed. (Chalamet had taken himself out of the running with that comment about ballet and opera.)
In Woody Allen‘s Crimes and Misdemeanors, we’re told that Martin Landau‘s Judah Rosenthal had been taught as a child that the wicked “will be punished for eternity.” It’s this kind of talk that gives Judah pause when his brother Jack (Jerry Orbach) suggests that Judah’s mistress problem (a foundational blackmail threat from Anjelica Huston) can be “taken care of.”
“But as Jack points out, correctly, there aren’t many more assumptions to be made from the fact that Judah has reached out to his shady brother at this juncture.
“It’s not just that he wants Jack to tell him what he wants to hear; Judah also wants to be properly revolted by the suggestion before giving him the go-ahead.” — Jason Bailey, “The Ultimate Woody Allen Film Companion.”
Friendo to HE: Check out The Rivals of Amziah King. It opened four days ago via Black Bear. You probably won’t like it but I’ve little doubt it will put Matthew McConaughey into the Best Actor Oscar conversation. He’s really terrific.
HE to friendo: My God, that’s an ABSOLUTELY HORRIFIC TITLE for a feature film.
Friendo to HE: No argument about that, but the film is solid, although it does have its faults. Either way McConaughey is definitely award-worthy.
HE to friendo: He’s playing a “charismatic bee-keeper and musician”.
Friendo to HE: Yep. Just give it a shot.
HE to friendo: It premiered at South by Southwest on 3.10.25…17 months ago. Bees and honey, bees and honey. Native American costar Angelina LookingGlass is 22 years old. (Born on 4.1.04.) Descended from Oglala Lakota, Navajo, Seneca and Kiowa Comanche tribes. Basically a younger, slimmer Lily Gladstone.
The instant that I happened upon these light beige Daap shoes for men, I immediately flashed upon those Pan Am stewardess grip shoes from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yes, this dates me.
For nearly 20 years I’ve been grappling with a Ryan Gosling problem….some kind of chemical vibe that clashes on some level with the HE sensibility. Okay, not a problem. Call it a hurdle.
For me, four Gosling performances are delicious — the stoic no-name dude in Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Drive (’10…my second favorite), Jared Vennett in Adam McKay‘s The Big Short (’15…my all-time favorite), Holland March in The Nice Guys (’16) and Sebastian Wilder in Damien Chazelle‘s La La Land (’16).
But almost all of the others have felt annoying or abrasive in some fashion, particularly Gosling’s work in Project Hail Mary, The Fall Guy, Barbie, First Man, The Gray Man, Blade Runner 2049, Song to Song, Only God Forgives, Gangster Squad, The Place Beyond the Pines, etc.
“I stood below the Sunset 5 marquee yesterday evening just before 9 pm, trying to talk myself into seeing Lars and the Real Girl. And once again, for the seventh or eighth time, I said ‘naaah, later.’
“A movie journalist repeatedly missing showings of a respected, well-reviewed film like Lars is obviously derelict, but the truth is that I’ve been avoiding it because of my Ryan Gosling problem, which is hard to describe.
“The general consensus is that Gosling is one of our better younger actors — some have called him the new Brando — and yet there’s something about Gosling’s look and manner that, to me, has always seemed a bit odd in a visitor-from-another-planet sort of way. To me, he’s always seemed distant and self-regarding. There’s no doubting that every performance he’s given is approvable or better, but in my delusional-fan way of absorbing things I’ve never wanted to hang out with the guy. It’s not that I find him dislikable as much as lacking a certain chemical component that I would want in my life.”
Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beloved, a tense father-daughter relationship drama, was easily one of the best films to screen during last May’s Cannes Film Festival. Plus it fits right into the current vogue for the “older white guys are toxic demon seeds” narrative that just about every film these days is showcasing.
I find this totally mystifying. I don’t “think” The Beloved is a gripping, ace-level thing; I know it is. And yet something has obviously muddied the reception among festival chiefs, U.S. distributors, critics. The Rotten Tomatoes rating is an exceptionally high 87%, although The Beloved only managed a 76% rating on Metacritic.
Let no one even briefly dispute that several big-name directors have earned reputations for occasionally behaving in a snippy or bullying manner with their actors and crew, or at the very least exuding crusty impatience, and sometimes even treating them with restrained cruelty.
Fitful, erratic eruptions, I mean…Otto Preminger, David Lean, Eric von Stroheim, William Friedkin, Michael Bay, David O. Russell, Michael Curtiz…allegedly Oliver Stone and James Cameron in their hormonal heydays…ditto John Huston and, on an allegedly random, bad-day basis, John Ford (ask Henry Fonda about the Mister Roberts shoot).
In Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s grade-A, exquisitely acted, brilliantly layered The Beloved, which I was totally wowed by on Saturday afternoon (5.16), Javier Bardem plays such a director…the mid-50ish, Oscar-rewarded Esteban Martínez, who behaved in decidedly loutish or tyrannical ways in his younger days.
Esteban has since mellowed, as older guys tend to do, but with a certain lingering, simmering undercurrent within, especially regarding Emilia (the excellent Victoria Luengo), his somewhat estranged, mid-30ish daughter.
Esteban has hired Emilia for a supporting role in his latest film, Desierto. He’s told journalists and others that she was hired purely on her acting merits, but the real agenda, of course, is that Esteban, who abandoned Emilia and her mother a couple of decades earlier for a new lady or a fresh marriage (or both), is looking to heal or nourish their relationship.
Whoever succeeds Trump on 1.21.29 (almost certainly a Democrat, most likely Newsom or Ossoff), one key decision has to be quickly made and with absolute resolve. A wrecking ball has to destroy the Trump ballroom. Knock it down, trash it, flatten it…and then rebuild the old East Wing in the classic style. Restore it properly, the way it used to look.
Because the more non-pro reactions that come in and stir the soup, and the more people have a chance to really think about Chris Nolan‘s film, the deeper The Odyssey sinks into the soft gooey mud of its own making.
This plus the fact that no one wants Nolan to win another Best Picture Oscar three years after Oppenheimer, much less a Best Director trophy besides. This impressive-in-portions-but-certainly-no-great-shakes film has only one way it can go esteem-wise, and that is down, down, down.
I’m not saying it’s likely to be stopped, Oscar-wise, but people of character and backbone as well as the Movie Godz themselves are certainly aligned against it.
Stop The Odyssey…stop The Odyssey…stop The Odyssey…stop The Odyssey…stop the Nolanoid kiss-assing.
…the first thing I flashed upon was her activist + advocacy footage in Louie Psihoyos and Ric O’Barry‘s The Cove.
I’m sorry…actually I’m not sorry that I totally ignored Heroes (2006–2010), and that I’ve always hated the Scream franchise (2011–2023) with every fibre of my being, and that I also blew off Nashville (2012–2018), the ABC/CMT musical drama series. Panettiere starred or was prominently cast in all of these.
The Cove wound up winning the Best Feature Documentary Oscar on 3.7.10, but it felt like a touch-and-go thing for a long while because a legend had grown that women wouldn’t go see it because of the dolphin-slaughtering footage. HE constantly pushed and pleaded for the Oscar win, and then lo and behold it actually happened.
It took me months to finally watch four (or was it three?) episodes of Ryan Murphy and Connor Hines‘ Love Story (FX, 2.12).
When the nine-episode series premiered last February I watched two episodes and gave up, and then I tried again a month or so later. All I can remember clearly is that I was fast-forwarding. And now that this limited series is being touted as a Primetime Emmy nominee in several categories (Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, Sarah Pidgeon for Outstanding Lead Actress, Constance Zimnmer for supporting) I will certainly watch no more.
Because everything I’ve always read, heard and otherwise absorbed about the abrasive, turbulent marriage of John Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette is that their marriage was a bad idea (Bessette allegedly felt this in her bones going in) and may have been, in fact, mostly hellish after the reality of their mismatch settled in.
So where’s the clear light? Neither were a day at the beach, and both were spiritual lightweights. Life is short.
Sam the Lion: “Her and her husband was young and miserable with one another like so many young married folks are. I thought they’d change with some age, but it didn’t turn out that way.” Sonny: “Bein’ married always so miserable?” Sam: “No, not really. About eighty percent of the time, I guess.”
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