Michael Winterbottom‘s The Look of Love (IFC Films, 7.5), which I saw at last January’s Sundance Film Festival, is an almost entirely flat thing to sit through, enlivened only by Steve Coogan‘s droll (if one-note) performance as British adult magazine and sex-biz entrepeneur Paul Raymond. An impressive recreation of ’60s and ’70s scenes, styles and mores, it’s a film that basically says that (a) erotic indulgence has its downside, (b) cocaine tends to fuck your life up and (c) it’s not a good idea to treat your daughter like a fellow bacchanalian. Fascinating! It’s reasonably well done but there’s simply not enough good material here for a real film, and what little Matt Greenhaigh‘s screenplay contains is presented by Winterbottom in a rote, almost ho-hum fashion.

I kicked things around this morning with Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino, a longtime Oscar Poker contributor until Sasha Stone suddenly dropped me last October after I wrote about our raging Silver Linings Playbook argument in the parking garage of the Aidikoff screening room (but without identifying her or even her gender), and in so doing threw Contrino out with the bathwater. Phil and I talked about (a) why and how The Lone Ranger has tanked, (b) Cate Blanchett‘s possible award-calibre performance in Woody Allen‘s Blue Jasmine, (c) the possibility that Armie Hammer might be the new Taylor Kitsch, (d) the Weinstein strategy behind their decision to open the Oscar-bound Fruitvale Station in July, (e) Pacific Rim and (f) Only God Forgives. Again, the mp3.

The above title is, of course, presented in air quotes. An allusion, if you will, to the colorful phrasings of Jack Nicholson‘s J.J. Gittes and that scene in Chinatown when he asked Lt. Lou Escobar, “Tell me…you still puttin’ Chinamen in jail for spittin’ in the laundry?” To which Escobar replied, “You’re a little behind the times, Jake. They use steam irons now.” It also alludes to screenwriter William Monahan having gotten it wrong in The Departed when he had Nicholson’s Frank Costello says, “No tickee, no laundry.” Cop-out! I’ve been hearing “no tickee, no washee” since I was a kid.

Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Only God Forgives (Radius-TWC, 7.19) is world-class in its repulsiveness, and it goes way beyond being a time-waster. The fumes from this oppressively violent Asian macho bullshit sword-slicing fantasy will sink into your system and your soul and leave you off-kilter — tainted in ways that may be hard to pinpoint at first but are no less real — for weeks after seeing it. Or months. Or eternally.

I’m feeling a little odd in that I’m finding myself in…well, perhaps not 100% agreement but certainly not strident disgreement with an op-ed about the recent Egyptian military coup by N.Y. Times op-ed columnist David Brooks. His basic point is that it’s at least a half-good thing that Mohammed Morsi is out on his ass. Core statement: “This week’s military coup may merely bring Egypt back to where it was: a bloated and dysfunctional superstate controlled by a self-serving military elite. But at least radical Islam, the main threat to global peace, has been partially discredited and removed from office.

A light dinner last night around 7 pm, and then we schlepped up Eighth Avenue with mobs of people gathered on corners and sitting curbside and on sidewalks in hopes that this would be a good enough vantage point to see the fireworks. For whatever reason the bulls were blocking off almost all side streets leading to the Hudson. The exception was 23rd Street so that’s where we made our left turn. We would up a block or so past 10th Avenue.

That viral video of a Hawthorne cop shooting a rottweiler four times followed by the poor dog writhing in pain…awful. I always thought if you shoot a dog, God forbid, that he’d be out like a light. It was obviously a volatile, hair-trigger thing on the cop’s part, but rottweilers are killers. The video clearly shows that the owner was taunting the fuzz, and if he’d been smart he wouldn’t have allowed the dog to jump out of the back seat by failing to roll the windows up two-thirds. We all know why people own Rottweilers. They want a snarling beast by their side in the event of a home invasion or street altercation of some kind. Eff with me and my dog will take a chunk out of your ass. Yes, the poor dog was only following instinct by trying to protect his owner, but the owner created the hassle in the first place.