Year: 2015

A knockout teaser from David O. Russell‘s Joy (20th Century Fox, 12.25) to start the day! A voice is telling me this is going to be a huge, across-the-board hit. (Okay, maybe not with the Marvel crowd.) The undercurrent, obviously, is about frustration, rage, coping with heavy burdens. The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” says “settle, Zen out, accept life’s natural limitations” but the shotgun finale (which by the way is fanfuckingtastic) clearly says “fuck that Zen.” Jennifer Lawrence is playing the real-life Joy Mangano, inventor of the self-wringing Miracle Mop and Huggable Hangers and a regular on the Home Shopping Network. Featuring the Silver Linings Playbook trio (JLaw, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro) plus Edgar Ramirez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen (finally in another good movie after 11 years of hunger after Sideways!), Isabella Rossellini and Elisabeth Rohm, Joy opens on 12.25. Bring it to Telluride!

Read more

I’m sorry but any film that uses the old “sparks flying out of juncture boxes on telephone poles” effect gets an immediate fail. To me those sparks are a forecast for a thousand hack elements yet to come. A superhero movie has to be whipsmart and dryly self-parodying (Ant-Man) or extra-fleet and super-stylish (the Captain America films) or there’ll be resistance from this corner. The trailer for this August 7th release, which was shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is suggesting the presence of generic goods and numbing familiarity.

Anybody who describes the ComicCon experience in any negative light gets my vote, and so Jesse Eisenberg is Hollywood Elsewhere’s New Best Friend. I got it when he said it was “horrifying” to be “shouted at by thousands of people,” but I didn’t understand his comparing it to “some kind of genocide.” What Eisenberg should have said is that the Hall H experience is some kind of banal. Can we just say he doesn’t like big, emotionally animated crowds and let it go at that?

I know that the people putting Eisenberg down for these remarks need to understand that not all of the filmmakers and actors who come down to San Diego and wave and shout “ComicCon, we love you!” are being 100% sincere. They like the applause, of course, and the fact that fanboy love has always been a bountiful box-office factor, but deep down many of them are circumspect or even sardonic about the experience. It’s a gig for them, an act, a thing they need to do. 

Read more

Mid-July means it’s time to spitball the Telluride Film Festival, which this year will happen later than usual — Friday, 9.4 to Monday, 9.7. A lot of heavy-hitter titles in play so expect a stronger-than-usual slate. We’re talking four categories here — all but locked (i.e., if they don’t turn up I’ll fall over in my desk chair), likely spitballs (playing Telluride would be logical, strategic & smart), bizarros and wishy-wishies.

I know next to nothing in terms of absolute certainty but c’mon…

All But Locked (6): Todd Haynes‘ Carol (Weinstein Co., 12.18), Paolo Sorrentino‘s Youth (Fox Searchlight, 12.4), James Vanderbilt‘s Truth (Sony Pictures Classics, sometime in October?); Laszlo Nemes‘ Son of Saul (Sony Pictures Classics, domestic release uncertain); Sarah Gavron‘s Suffragette (Focus Features, 10.23); John Crowley‘s Brooklyn (Fox Searchlight, 11.6).

Toronto Favoring, Telluride Avoiding?: Thomas McCarthy‘s Spotlight (Open Road, 11.6).

Logical Spitballs (5): Jay Roach‘s Trumbo (Bleecker Street, 11.6); Scott Cooper‘s Black Mass (Warner Bros., 9.18 — only 11 days after Telluride ends); Brian Helgeland‘s Legend (Universal, 10.2 — too gangsterish for Telluride?); Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash (Fox Searchlight, release date unknown); Barry Levinson‘s Rock the Kasbah (Open Road, 10.23 — too much fooling around?).

Read more

A guy who caught last night’s research screening of Danny Boyle, Aaron Sorkin and Scott Rudin‘s Steve Jobs (Universal, 10.9) says it’s an Oscar-level knockout — sharp, fast-paced, whammo. And yes, it brings it home emotionally in Act Three. Best Picture, Best Director (Boyle), Best Actor (Michael Fassbender, who starts off as Fassy, he said, but grows into and physically becomes Jobs), some kind of Best Screenplay nomination for Sorkin (will it qualify as original or an adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s book?). And very high marks for Seth Rogen‘s punchy performance as Steve Wozniak and Kate Winslet‘s as Jobs lieutenant Joanna Hoffman.

The screening at Leows Lincoln Square began at 7:32 pm. Pic ran a bit more than two hours (maybe 128 minutes), the guy said, and it just nails it. A Rotten Tomatoes score in the 90s, he predicted. “The clarity, the lines, the delivery…everything is swift, fast and on point,” he said, “and the whole audience was really laughing. I haven’t seen an audience laugh that much in a long time.”

Boyle, Sorkin and Rudin attended, he said.

Everyone understands by now that the film unfolds in three acts as Jobs is preparing to introduce three revolutionary products — the original Macintosh in 1984, the NeXTcube in ’90 and the iMac in ’98. Boyle told this guy that the ’84 scene is shot on 16mm (really looks like the mid ’80s), the NeXT scene on 35mm, the iMac scene on digital.

Read more

I was seriously impressed by Carey Mulligan‘s Bathsheba Everdeen in Thomas Vinterberg‘s Far From The Madding Crowd (“A woman of passion and steel spine”). I was floored by her sad soulfulness in David Hare‘s Skylight, which I saw on Broadway nine or ten weeks ago. And now I’m feeling a certain gravitas-plus from her upcoming performance as Maud in Sarah Gavron and Abi Morgan‘s Suffragette (Focus Features, 10.23), which will naturally play Venice/Telluride and probably Toronto. It’s her lower-class accent, actually; there’s something almost musical about it. And that rock-steady gaze of hers, those shrewd, evaluating eyes, that patiently simmering undercurrent. I can’t be the only one sensing a Best Actress headwind. If, that is, Suffragette turns out be an 8.5 or better. I don’t know how much campaigning she’ll be able to do considering her pregnancy, but the stars seem to be aligning in her favor.

Read more

“In one single movie, Amy Schumer elevates herself from being a sketch-show maven to a bonafide comedy queen — and this is coming from someone who doesn’t really care for Inside Amy Schumer. Ironically, Trainwreck lets us far deeper into Schumer than her show ever does, and it’s that brutally honest energy that Judd Apatow feeds off of as a filmmaker. There’s nothing better than a mainstream comedy with soul, and that’s what you’ll be getting with Trainwreck — heart and soul. Plus an admirable amount of crude sex jokes, Schumer’s confident sexuality and a Tilda Swinton performance for the ages. I’m not saying it’s the best comedy of 2015, but I am saying there’s a good chance that it will be. And you can quote me on that.” — from a 7.14. review by We Got This Covered‘s Matt Donato.

Read more

A week late to this…

Cruise was cabled in. He wasn’t going anywhere. What could have “gone wrong”? Yes, he was game to do this. Practical effects forever. But let’s not get carried away.

I don’t know which James Stewart-Anthony Mann western was shooting when this was taken, but I’m guessing either Winchester ’73 (’50) or Bend of the River (’52) as Stewart, born in ’08, looks like he’s in his mid 40s. You’ll notice that no less than 14 crew guys are utterly fascinated and delighted with what Stewart is saying at the moment. (Mann is sitting at Stewart’s left.) Trust me, I’ve been one of those suck-uppy guys on a set. I kind of hate myself when I’m beaming at every last quip, witticism, sage observation and smart-assed remark that a big star shares, but that’s the system. If a star farts, every crew member bends over for a good whiff. The star knows this, of course. He/she can do anything, say anything. It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to handle this kind of attention.

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.