9:55 pm: Early this evening I bought a $15 ticket at the Hollywood Arclight in order to see the new trailer for Martin Scorsese‘s Silence, which I’d read wouldn’t be online until Saturday. I sat down just before the 8:15 pm show, pulled out my phone and read that Paramount had decided to release the trailer online tonight. Yes, I was surprised and a little pissed, but I’m not sorry I saw the trailer on a big Arclight screen. The film looks wonderful, fascinating, exotic…full of feeling. Ciarin Hinds! I can’t wait to see the whole magila. 5:50 pm: Hollywood Elsewhere will pay to see one of tonight’s pre-holiday showings of Allied so I can see the Silence trailer, which won’t appear online for another three and half days.

Last week’s reviews were accurate: Patriot’s Day works, delivers, does the job. And it’s not a “Boston fuck yeah!” film until the last five or six minutes in a tacked-on epilogue that pays tribute to all the real-life participants, heroes and victims of the April 2013 Boston Marathon massacre. Make no mistake — if you edit out the tribute section and a heartfelt but unnecessary movie-ish monologue delivered by Mark Wahlberg, Patriot’s Day (CBS Films, 12.21) is director Peter Berg‘s best film ever. Really. It’s sharp, fast, crackling and on-target for the most part. Not entirely but close. The 90% that works really works.

The Patriot’s Day highlight is an adrenalized Act Two sequence that follows the Tasrnaev brothers (Alex Wolff‘s Dzhokhar, Themo Melikidze‘s Tamerlan) as they hijack a car and get into a wild-ass gunfight with local cops in Watertown. J. K. Simmons‘ character, Watertown Police Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese, plays a highly significant part in this shoot-out, and J.K. is almost good enough to warrant an acting nomination. Confident as shit. Alas, it’s not enough of a part.

To his credit, Berg tried to emulate the Paul Greengrass aesthetic, and he more or less accomplishes that. (The handheld lensing is by Tobias Schliessler, and the bouncy, brilliant editing is by Colby Parker Jr. and Gabriel Fleming.) Blame the CBS Films/Lionsgate marketing guys for suggesting in their trailers that Patriot’s Day would be some kind of “Boston, fuck yeah” thing. I responded to that suggestion, but now I’m happy to report that it isn’t that until the very end. This is a very well-handled thing — not an AA but a solid A-minus. And that’s good enough.

Ellen DeGeneres began to quake with emotion as she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House earlier today. She smiles, she beams, she starts to tear up, she shakes her head very slightly as if saying to herself “I can’t believe this is happening,” she looks down, the emotion wells a bit more, President Obama looks over to see if she’s okay and gives her a supportive hug, she looks up and glows, and then her eyes water over even more as he attaches the medal ribbon. I felt it. I was right there with her. The full ceremony is after the jump.

In the immediate wake of the announcement of the Film Independent Spirit Awards nominations, the first headscratcher (which a colleague pointed out before I noticed it myself) was “why no Best Director nomination for Manchester By The Sea‘s Kenneth Lonergan?” Manchester is the Big Kahuna of nominees across the board (Best Feature, Screenplay, Editing, Actor, Supporting Actor) with Moonlight the runner-up, so Lonergan’s direction not being singled out seems strange.

The second surprise is the absence of Moonlight‘s Mahershala Ali among Best Supporting Actor contenders. Ali has been the overwhelming Best Supporting Actor pick among the Gurus of Gold and Gold Derby-ites for many weeks now, and keep in mind that the Spirits are totally in the tank for Moonlight this year. (Altman Award actor recipients can’t be nominated, but directors or writers can?) This doesn’t mean Ali won’t snag an Oscar nomination, but an element of doubt has obviously been introduced. Incidentally: A few weeks ago a colleague told me he thinks Hell or High Water‘s Jeff Bridges might have the best shot at a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Except the Spirits have now selected Bridges’ costar, Ben Foster, as their nominee in this category.

Here are my spitball projections of likely winners:

BEST FEATURE: American Honey, Chronic, Jackie, Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight. Likely winner: Manchester By The Sea, especially with Moonlight‘s director-writer Barry Jenkins and the Moonlight cast already tagged as recipients of the Robert Altman award.

BEST FIRST FEATURE: The Childhood of a Leader, The Fits, Other People, Swiss Army Man, The Witch. Likely winner: The Witch because its’ easily the best of the five, although I could see Swiss Army Man sneaking out a win.

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD: Free In Deed, Hunter Gatherer, Lovesong, Nakom, Spa Night. Likely Winner: Hunter Gatherer.

BEST DIRECTOR: Andrea Arnold (American Honey), Barry Jenkins (Moonlight), Pablo Larraín (Jackie), Jeff Nichols (Loving), Kelly Reichardt (Certain Women). Likely Winner: Andrea Arnold or Barry Jenkins, but probably Jenkins at the end of the day. HE preference: Arnold.

I’ll finally be seeing Bridget Jones’ Baby. Missed the all-media last August but screener just arrived. Most of what I heard was “not bad, fairly decent, no harm,” etc. Which is roughly what you hear from a film with a 77% Rotten Tomatoes score. But honestly? My first thought when I opened up the package was the Owen Gleiberman hoo-hah from last July. “My view is that Owen was merely saying that the work wasn’t subtle enough,” I wrote on 7.3. “I think that’s a reasonable thing to observe. You can have all the work done that you want, but you can’t allow it to become a topic of conversation.” The Bridget Jones Baby Bluray/DVD comes out on 12.13. It earned a relatively pallid $24 million stateside, but the worldwide tally was $185 million and change.

Yesterday a video (posted by an Atlantic reporter) showed a nutter alt-right crowd cheering and offering Nazi salutes to Hitler-like statements from National Policy Institute‘s Richard Spencer. A Trump spokesperson offered the following limp-wristed response: “President-elect Trump has continued to denounce racism of any kind and he was elected because he will be a leader for every American. To think otherwise is a complete misrepresentation of the movement that united Americans from all backgrounds.” Translation: “We don’t want to alienate our alt-right supporters by condemning racism or ethnic cleansing. The alt-right understands what we mean. We’re with them but we have to phrase our comments carefully.” The bottom line is that Spencer and his kind would be hiding in the woodwork if Clinton had won, but now they feel free to be “out.”

Why is an all-but-unrecognizable Liam Neeson the central object in this new-one-sheet for Martin Scorsese‘s Silence? All along the expectation has been that Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver are the co-leads. The apparent answer is that much of Silence is about a search for Leeson’s guiding-mentor character, Father Cristovao Ferreira, by Garfield’s Father Sebastiao Rodrigues and Driver’s Father Francisco Garrpe. The inky shadows and gloom tones obviously indicate somber moods and unpleasant fates. Your typical popcorn-muncher is going to take one look at this and say “horror…got it.” Neeson looks like the boogey man. (Yes, his arms folded behind his back obviously indicate a passive, non-aggressive attitude, but don’t tell me he’s a man of peace and clear light, not with those shadows covering him like a shroud.) And what’s with the waves? All along the Silence stills have indicated the locales will be wooded areas, grassy hills, rural villages, etc.