Day: July 22, 2015

Don Cheadle‘s Miles Ahead will close the 53rd New York Film Festival on 10.11.15. I don’t know why this film hasn’t been on my down-low list, but it hasn’t been…sorry. I guess it’s because I get a little cautious when an actor directs for the first time. Maybe because I’m sensing an aura of worship. Cheadle stars as the legendary, ass-kicking, Michael Mann-inspiring jazz trumpeter, and co-wrote the script with Steven Baigelman and the legendary, ass-kicking screenwriting team of Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson. And it’s heartening, by the way, to see Middle of Nowhere‘s Emayatzy Corinealdi back in the swing of things. Also costarring Ewan McGregor (as Dave Brill), Michael Stuhlbarg, Keith Stanfield, Austin Lyon.

I used to struggle with film reviews when I first began in this racket back in the late ’70s. I was so intimidated by the great critics of the day (Sarris, Kael, Simon, Canby, Denby, Corliss, et. al.) and so desperate to sound cool that I could barely make a paragraph work after an hour’s toil, and a whole review would take four or five hours and sometimes a whole day. I couldn’t relax or breathe, kept rewriting myself into a stupor. And then one day the clouds parted. I wrote a review of Ettore Scola‘s A Special Day and for the first time, it just flowed right out. I rewrote and refined, of course, but the initial writing was much less tortured than usual. So I’ve always felt a special kinship with this 1977 film (which was actually released in the States in ’78, if I’m not mistaken). And so I’m definitely going to beg Criterion’s p.r. company for a freebie of the upcoming Bluray (due on 10.13).

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A rising politician indulging in sexy escorts is not an expression of his dark side — it’s a symbol of his private side. The only person who needed to be seriously concerned about John F. Kennedy‘s catting around was Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, and it’s been abundantly proven that his sexual escapades never once got in the way of his Oval Office duties or decisions. (On the other hand texting photos of your bulging manhood to an extra-marital interest is proof of idiocy and/or self-destructiveness.) And by the way, I love the fact that Ray Winstone is playing a crafty investigative journalist. Hollywood hasn’t let him play anything other than goons and thugs for the last 20-odd years.

I saw Southpaw a week ago Monday, down at L.A. Live on 7.13, and the best part of the whole experience was eating the popcorn when it was still warmish and buttery and salted. Otherwise I just sank into my seat and toughed it out. It’s been a while since I disliked a lead character as much as Jake Gyllenhaal‘s Billy Hope, who’s basically an amalgam of physical and behavioral boxer traits from other movies turned up to 11 — Jake La Motta‘s tenacious, bore-right-in combativeness, Terry Malloy‘s wounded face (enhanced here with the swellings and cuts and the old watery blood eye) plus the emotional wallow of Sylvester Stallone‘s Rocky with an extra-heavy helping of simian sauce (punchy speech, emotionally primitive, no diction to speak of, barely literate).

On top of which Hope, a light heavyweight champ, spends money like a drunken sailor and lives in an ostentatious McMansion that almost made me physically sick. The guy’s an absolute mutt. I was sitting there going “I’m stuck with this knuckle-dragger for the next two hours?”

And you’re telling me that Rachel McAdams‘ Maureen, who relates to Hope because they both had tough Hell’s Kitchen childhoods, is his loyal wife? No way. She’s way too good for him. And then something awful happens and the pillars of Hope’s life start tumbling and crashing and before you know it he’s down and out with nowhere to go but up. If, that is, he can suck it in and learn from his mistakes and listen to advice from his humble but wisely paternal trainer, played by Forest Whitaker in a Clint Eastwood-in-Million Dollar Baby mode, about how to start boxing wisely and not get hit so much and so on. Hey, maybe Billy can go to a community college and learn how to speak like an educated eleven year old!

And then Billy’s ex-manager, played by by 50 Cent, arranges for a big, career-restoring championship fight with the arrogant young buck who…you don’t want to know. I didn’t want to know when I was watching it. I wanted to bolt but I had to stay. Because I’m a pro and I ride it out.

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You look into the face of Ryan Reynolds and you say, “I like this guy…I want him to win or at least come out okay…give me a chance and I might even admire him.” You look into the face of Ben Mendelsohn and you say, “This guy sweats too much…he might be winning tonight but he’ll definitely lose tomorrow, and he won’t stop smoking those Marlboros…drop him off at the nearest bus stop.” And yet — I’m being serious here — Mississippi Grind (A24, 9.25) is a really well-made film. I knew that right away when I saw it at Sundance. It’s worth seeing, even with Mendelsohn’s b.o. filling up the room.

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42 days ago I asked “what would we lose as a community or a culture if a final, irrevocable pledge was made by producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli to never make another 007 film again, to just walk away and leave it forever?” My answer was “nothing” but the reader response was “everything! We wants our 007…don’t take him away….noooo!” Listen to me: I am sick to death of this franchise detonating explosions around the world. Spectre filmed in Italy, Austria, Morocco and Mexico, and you can be assured that big bluhdooms, the sound of squealing tires and clink of Martini glasses will be heard in each one of them. I’m numb; the novocaine is spreading. There is so much that could be conjured in the way of danger, thrills and suspense, and all the Bond films know how to do is press “autopilot.”