I’m not saying this was Donald Sutherland‘s best scene ever, but when I think of his 50-year career it’s the strongest recollection I have. Mr. X in JFK (’91) was certainly his best performance since his exceptional bad guy in Eye of the Needle (’81) and his big-hearted dad in Ordinary People (’80). His greatest period was that ’70 to ’73 four-year streak — M.A.S.H. (’70), Alex in Wonderland (’70), Little Murders (’71), Johnny Got His Gun (71), Klute (’71), Steelyard Blues (’72) and Don’t Look Now (’73). And to think of him lowered by a paycheck role in The Hunger Games! For actors in particular, old age is not for sissies.

Yesterday’s Best Picture assessment riff vaguely depressed me. After I re-scanned the films, I mean, and realized that an apparent majority of them seem to belong (emphasis on the word “seem”) to the pretty-good-but-no-cigar category. Which indicates, at least for now, that the forthcoming six-month award season (Labor Day to 2.28.17) may turn out to be weak or pallid, at least compared to other years. Then I asked myself, “What if this becomes a pattern? What if weak-tea fall/holiday films become the norm?”

With more and more U.S.-based directors and producers talking about how increasingly difficult it is to get funding for quality-level theatrical films because of the usual depressing reasons (i.e., the complete absence of John Calley-level thinking among studio execs, an overwhelming preference for sequels and fantasy films among the big studios, specialty distributors leaning more and more on acquisitions) and with more and more filmmakers (especially screenwriters) moving over to cable…Jesus, I don’t want to go there. Okay, I guess I have to.

All I can say is, thank God for Amazon and Netflix and Megan Ellison because at least they care about the over-30 audience, and because they’re pumping money and feeling into the form, and I don’t mean longform cable. Longform has gone to some stellar places over the last 17 years (i.e., the birth of The Sopranos) but it takes a special gift or discipline to tell your story and “say it all” in the space of 100 or 110 or 120 minutes. People who can do that are still operating on the highest level, I believe.

But with megaplex fare getting critically out-performed and out-pointed by small-screen dramas with increasing frequency, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has to grim up and ask itself a tough question, to wit: “Where, really, is the art of cinema thriving today? Because many of the truly talented people in this town aren’t working on projects that will necessarily end up in theatres, and the day is coming when it won’t be “many” but “most.”

Screenwriter Josh Olson (A History of Violence, Jack Reacher) offers an interesting comment in this 11.15.13 Trailers From Hell riff about Peter Yates‘ The Hot Rock (’72). Noting that Yates film is “not strictly a comedy but more of a caper film with a light touch,” Olson says that these days “Hollywood seems to have a problem with anything that combines tonality.” More than a few critics have the same aversion. Over and over I’ve read the line that “this movie doesn’t know if it wants to be a comedy or a thriller” blah blah. Another thing that’s enjoyable about The Hot Rock is that everyone — Yates, Robert Redford, George Segal, Zero Mostel, Moses Gunn — is working beneath their station. They’re doing paycheck work but giving it their full spirit. Assignment #1: Name a good 21st Century film in which everyone is slumming but fully respecting the job and bringing their A-game, and the movie succeeding because of this. Assignment #2: Name a good 21st Century film that straddles tones or genres, mixing this and that but never quite being one thing.

Tate Taylor‘s The Girl on the Train (Universal, 10.7) is being research-screened on Monday night. I wish I could attend. I’ve written before that I’ve been sensing a guilty-pleasure thing from the trailers. Everybody wants it to be Gone Girl 2. But honestly? I’ve heard otherwise from a guy who’s seen it. He’d never be impolitic enough to channel Lloyd Bentsen in a hypothetical chat with Taylor, but this is what he’d say without constraints: “I’ve worked with David Fincher. I know David Fincher. David Fincher is a friend of mine. Tate, you’re no David Fincher.”

Now that everyone has seen Suicide Squad, what of the majority critical view that David Ayer‘s film exudes soullessness and suckage? I don’t mean the first 40 to 45 minutes — I mean the rest of it. I ask this knowing that over-25s with a semblance of taste and a marketable skill will almost certainly agree that it’s putrid for the most part, and those under 25…well, we know what they’ll say.

What did the room feel like as you left the theatre? Were fellow moviegoers looking ill, stricken, ashen-faced? Did they seem to be questioning their lives or at least their willingness to sit through another piece of shit from the Warner Bros./D.C. Comics kingpins?

“There’s a major disconnect with what the critics are saying and the audience is seeing,” Warner Bros. distribution vp Jeff Goldstein told Variety‘s Brent Lang. “We’re resonating with a younger audience. The younger the audience, the higher the score.”

Lang reports, however, that Suicide Squad dropped 41% between Friday and Saturday, which is a much steeper decline than Captain America: Civil War or Deadpool experienced. It seems likely that Squad will drop around 70% next weekend, which is what the similarly-loathed Batman v Superman managed to do.

Keep in mind the N.Y. Times estimate that Suicide Squad cost at least $325 million to make and market, which means it has to pull down $650 million to move into profit.