I’m about three hours away from seeing Laura Poitras‘s Citizenfour, a much-anticipated doc about Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency spying scandal. It began screening at the New York Film Festival about 90 minutes ago, or around 6 pm eastern. The UK premiere happens on 10.17 under the auspices of the BFI London Film Festival. Pic obviously features Snowden and Glenn Greenwald qmong others. Co-produced by Poitras and Steven Soderbergh. I for one have never felt threatened by NSA email-monitoring because (a) I’m sure they don’t give a shit about my eccentric postings plus (b) I’m not into anything dicey. I should be concerned, of course, but I’m strangely not. It doesn’t bother me greatly — put it that way.
Day: October 10, 2014
Renner’s Best Performance Since Hurt Locker?
There’s an earnest blend of opinion about Michael Cuesta‘s Kill The Messenger — 73% from Rotten Tomatoes, 60% from Metacritic. My own opinion will have to wait as I kept blowing opportunities to see it in New York and Los Angeles. (Focus publicity has been very obliging — it’s my fault entirely.) I’ll pay to see it somewhere this weekend and file when I can. Even those who are mixed about the film are entirely positive on Jeremy Renner‘s performance as the late journalist Gary Webb.
Mojo Gone
My beloved Box-Office Mojo has been erased, obliterated, wiped off the web. Okay, it exists but it’s been swallowed by the IMDB leviathan so it might as well be toast. Yes, you can find Mojo-supplied box-office data on the IMDB but as far as I’m concerned the site has been eaten. I’m heartbroken. It’s like a friend got hit by a car.
Olly Olly In Come Fury
“I’ve seen David Ayer‘s Fury,” I wrote a friend last week. “Rough, harsh, real-deal World War II stuff. Men in a small, smelly, vulnerable tank that they occasionally piss in. Months on end, unshaven faces, scars and body odor, best job they’ve ever had. Rugged verisimilitude as far as the battle sequences go…if you’re not bothered, that is, by the fact that the tracer rounds are green, which was mostly used by the other side. U.S. forces have always used red tracers, or so my research tells me. But that’s a side-issue. Yes, Brad Pitt is suitably gruff and paternal and commanding as WarDaddy. But otherwise forget it.
“Well, I don’t mean ‘forget it’ exactly. It’s a decent enough film and relatively well made, but it’s just a good gritty war movie. Not that profound or touching or even believable at the end of the day, certainly in terms of the finale.”
He insisted it was great stuff all around and I said, “It’s not great. It’s strong when it’s strong, but otherwise it’s…strange? [SPOILERS AHEAD]
“Until the finale Fury always makes you feel you’re in a grim, generally realistic situation. The horror, the horror. I for one couldn’t stand the wimpy, sensitive, candy-assed Logan Lerman and his wide-eyed, open-mouthed innocent routine. I wanted to see him killed every step of the way, and painfully at that — but wimps never seem to catch a bullet in films of this sort.
“In any event Fury has two problem scenes. One, a kind of domestic interlude in which Pitt and Lerman enjoy some chill with two German women (Anamaria Marinca, Alicia von Rittberg) in a small village apartment. It involves a little civilized piano playing and a nice meal and a suggestion of sex and a lot of talk, and it goes on forever. I was wondering if the rest of the movie was going to stay in this apartment with the women getting pregnant and Pitt and Lerman renouncing warfare for fatherhood. Anyway, that’s one problem. The other is that fucking head-scratching finale.
Don’t Stop There
Today Queen Elizabeth named Angelina Jolie an honorary dame in honor of her work fighting sexual violence and…uhm, for services to Britain’s foreign policy, whatever that actually means. My first thought when I saw photos of the two was “what a formidable, go-getter person Jolie is…seriously. So socially conscious, so talented, so industrious, so rich, so many kids. You just want to get down on your knees, y’know? (Hollywood Elsewhere is already down on its knees, hoping for a substantial Universal award-season buy.) But right now Hollywood is asking itself “what can we and our lowly American culture do to add to the Jolie acclaim in a substantial way? Let’s see…of course! Let’s give her an Oscar for Best Director as a way of honoring Unbroken, which the mainstream default softies want to celebrate anyway with a Best Picture Oscar because…well, because they do. Because the saga of an Olympic athlete who meets Hitler in 1936 and goes on to survive not one but two agonizing World War II traumas has that elemental schwing that says “Oscar! Oscar! Deserves an Oscar!”
Credit Where Due
I wouldn’t see Dracula Untold with a knife at my back. I wouldn’t watch if it was offered free on a seven-hour, no-wifi flight and I was dying of boredom. If Universal paid me $50 to see it I’d relent and sit down and suffer through the first 30 to 45 minutes…but then I’d turn it off or start checking my messages when the Universal watchdog wasn’t looking. But Jordan Hoffman is right — the guy who wrote that headline deserves a high-five or a drink or whatever.
