The trailer that popped on or about 7.13 has disappeared so here’s a new one: “During a Most Violent Year interview last November I asked Oscar Isaac about the HBO miniseries Show Me A Hero, which he was shooting at the time. A period piece (late ’80s to early ’90s) based on Lisa Belkin‘s nonfiction book of the same name, Hero is about white middle-class rage over a planned public-housing development (i.e, non-white neighbors) in Yonkers, and how Nick Wasicsko (Isaac), the youngest mayor in the country, dealt with it. (Curiously, Wascisko committed suicide in ’93.) Six episodes, written by David Simon and William F. Zorzi, directed by Paul Haggis. Premiering on 8.16.15. Again, the mp3.

I’m afraid it’ll never get any better than this for Ben Kingsley. There was his acclaimed debut performance in Gandhi, of course, and his delicious (but curiously buried) performance in David Jones‘ Betrayal, a fierce, above-average performance in Elegy (which I always call The Dying Animal) and his landmark supporting performance in Schindler’s List. But they never came close to pushing the zeitgeist button like Don Logan did. Kingsley is obviously working all the time and hammering away, but effort, prestige and considerable talent aren’t enough. You have to be lucky. The Gods have to be with you, and so far they’ve really and truly had Kingsley’s back only once.

Before last night’s open-air screening of Cop Car at Hollywood Forever, I was strolling around and taking photos of various tombstones and whatnot. It was just past dusk (8:15ish) and everything was perfect — enough light for photos, settled-down vibe, the hot temperatures giving way to coolness, nice grassy aroma. I took shots of a statue/tomb of Johnny Ramone near a pond, and then I noticed a tribute stone to Hattie McDaniel and walked over for a shot. “Sir! Sir!” Some guy was telling me to stop but it felt like the better part of wisdom to ignore him. My big moment with Ms. McDaniel was five seconds away, and I wasn’t disturbing anyone. Leave me alone. “Sir!” It was a tall black security dude in his late 30s or early 40s, standing 15 or 20 feet away with a couple of ladies. “The park is closed, sir.” I changed tack and decided to forget the photo, but I really didn’t get it. The vibe was so cool and soothing before this guy got in the way. The screen area of cemetery was overflowing with people but his orders were to stop people from roaming past a certain pathway. Insurance concerns, he said. Idiocy. I decided to return some day soon and commune with some of the residents there — McDaniel, Peter Finch, Douglas Fairbanks, etc. I’m fairly sure that the Hugo Shields funeral scene in The Bad and the Beautiful was shot there.

Okay, I agree that Jon Watts‘ Cop Car (Focus Word, 8.7) could be more inventively plotted. But the plot that Watts and cowriter Christopher Ford went with isn’t bad — it’s certainly servicable — and I therefore feel it’s really unfair to dismiss a film because the plot points aren’t as clever as they might have been if Watts had listened to this or that critic’s suggestions during early story meetings. They’re good enough, and besides Cop Car isn’t about would-be cleverness as much as high-end craft and sly, sardonic humor that you’ll either get or you won’t.

This is a highly sophisticated, almost-arthouse-level B movie. It’s a popcorn thing, but in a well-ordered, darkly amusing Coen Brothers way. Blood Simple-like. Okay, it’s Coen Brothers light, but good enough for me. It’ll be good enough for nearly everyone, trust me. Don’t listen to the cranky critics who have brought the Rotten Tomatoes average down to 72%.

The basic drill is about two young boys with semi-anarchic attitudes (James Freedson-Jackson, Hays Wellford) finding a seemingly abandoned cop car hidden in a semi-secluded glade amidst wide-open fields in rural Colorado. They eventually goad each other into taking the car for a wild-ass joyride, and then they enjoy some recreational highs with some weapons they’ve found in the back seat. Time of your life…huh, kid?

I was definitely intrigued by this footage of the recent (6.30) Swedish-funded voyage of the Mapheus-5, which was posted on 7.26. Mainly because I’d never seen footage of a real atmospheric re-entry. The larger and heavier the vehicle, the larger the degree of atmospheric resistance during re-entry…I get that. I’m nonetheless presuming that temperatures soared as this little Swedish pod encountered denser and denser molecules, but there’s no visual sense of anything hellish or inferno-like. I’m sorry but that’s a bit disappointing. Remember the re-entry of Ed Harris‘s Gemini capsule in Phil Kaufman‘s The Right Stuff (’83), looking like a comet, engulfed in white molten-like flames? I always suspected that was Hollywood bullshit (I never trusted Kaufman) but now I suspect it even more.

Nobody wants to make too much of a teaser for a trailer, but right away the smug loquacious smartypants dialogue hit me the wrong way. I realize that Ryan Reynolds and director Tim Miller and others have poured their hearts and souls into making Deadpool (20th Century Fox, 2.12.16) after years of delay and deveopment hell, and I realize that Reynolds badly needs this to work to keep his career as a stand-alone “star” going. I’m just saying that it’s not enough for a superhero to just be irreverent and sassy, and that cynicism alone can get tiresome and then toxic if it isn’t balanced out by something…you know, genuine or whatever.

Two days ago it was announced that Hitchbot, the R2D2-sized hitchhiking robot with the GPS-like voice, has been murdered and dismembered in Philadelphia. Hitchbot had encountered nothing but kindness, wonder and fascination during solo trips across Europe, Canada and portions of the Northeast USA — Boston, Salem, Gloucester, Marblehead and New York City. But a Philadelphia animal or two or three (probably 12 or 13 or 14, either stupid or under-educated or both, most likely parentally-abused) decided to clock that robot bitch once and for all. Ain’t that America? Apart from the teenaged-animal element, I’m also sensing a metaphorical linkage between Hitchbot’s murder and Ted Cruz’s machine-gun bacon video. Eating bacon is…well, okay, I’ll eat a little bacon if it’s burnt like a cinder but cooking it with a machine-gun barrel? What kind of deranged beast even thinks something like this up, much less makes a video of it? I’m telling you that the seed of the Cruz attitude was a roundabout factor in the slaying of Hitchbot. There’s a massively ugly metaphor in both these acts that joins them together in infamy. Bill O’Reilly needs to write a “Killing Hitchbot” book…seriously. If he wrote it honestly and reportedly it thoroughly, I would buy it and pay to see the movie.