The ISIS-supported truck attack in Berlin occured in “my” neck of the woods, so to speak. It happened a bit east of Charlottenburg, or roughly a mile from where I’ve stayed twice (i.e., a friend’s place at Holtzendorffstrasse 29). It’s a beautiful area, full of oldish buildings, stylish shops and highly inviting cafes and restaurants. The classic Zoo Palast cinema is right nearby. Firstshowing.net‘s Alex Billington lives two or three miles to the east. Another horror to add to the list.

“Rex Tillerson, the businessman nominated by Donald Trump to be the next US secretary of state, was the longtime director of a US-Russian oil firm based in the tax haven of the Bahamas, leaked documents show. Tillerson — the chief executive of ExxonMobil — became a director of the oil company’s Russian subsidiary, Exxon Neftegas, in 1998. His name – RW Tillerson – appears next to other officers who are based at Houston, Texas; Moscow; and Sakhalin, in Russia’s far east.

“The leaked 2001 document comes from the corporate registry in the Bahamas. It was one of 1.3 million files given to the Germany newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung by an anonymous source. The registry is public but details of individual directors are typically incomplete or missing entirely.” — from a 12.18 Guardian story by Luke Harding and Hannes Munzinger.

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Allessandro has been speaking with Warner Bros. execs who are (a) upset about the tanking of Collateral Beauty and (b) believe that aggregate movie sites that summarize critical opinion (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic) are largely to blame for killing this grotesquely awful Will Smith movie.

“Critics, more than ever, can dictate the financial fate of a movie, particularly one that’s inherently a crowd-pleaser,” D’Allesandro said in a piece that posted Sunday morning. “Critics arguably have the power to keep them at home, shut down a movie and put exhibition in a stalemate.”

Really? And all this time I’ve been under the impression that critical opinion doesn’t matter all that much with the hoi-polloi — that while moviegoers might occasionally glance at an upcoming film’s aggregate critical score, most of them pay to see a film because of the effectiveness of the ad materials (mostly the trailers) and what their friends are saying about the film on social media, or because of a basic gut feeling.

Critical opinion matters on a mass scale, I think, when it manages to incite or propel the general conversational verdict among ticket-buyers. Otherwise most people despise critics for their foo-foo sensibilities — for their anal-cavity-residing way of processing films (and for that matter life itself).

Favorite HE passage: “Warner Bros. even received sympathy from a rival major studio distribution executive who defended the mass-appealing qualities of Collateral Beauty: ‘Film critics are narrow-minded and have dark hearts,’ the exec said. ‘They prefer something like Manchester by the Sea, which is significantly much darker than this film and deals with a similar set-up: the death of children.”

Wells to quoted non-Warner Bros. exec, D’Allesandro and all Warner Bros. kvetchers: The “critics have dark hearts and narrow minds” remark isn’t 100% untrue, but the inference that they prefer Manchester By The Sea to Collateral Beauty because of their own psychological dispositions is delusional on a Donald Trump level, guys. Collateral Beauty is cloying, sickening emotional goo while Manchester is an honest, artful, straight-dealing emotional masterpiece by a director-screenwriter who knows how to throw fastballs, sliders, knuckleballs and curves like a Baseball Hall of Fame legend and who knows how to tell jokes like an Improv headliner.

Emphatic agreement: Gavin Newsom in 2020. Tall, smart, good-looking guys tend to win elections.

The SNL guys are basically saying that while Dunkin’ Donuts has upgraded to some extent (they have decent wifi, good cappuccino), they can’t shake the fringe-level, low-rent class of customer they’ve been attracting since the mid 20th Century. Dunkin’ Donuts has a nice clientele, I’m sure, but in my mind it’s always been a pitstop for lower-level office workers, storage-facility clerks and meathead wage-earners. DD will never be Starbucks or Coffee Bean. When I think of Dunkin’ Donuts I think of those storefronts in the main Newark airport terminal or on some unexceptional boulevard in North Bergen or Jersey City. And that garish pink and orange design — home is where the heart is.

A grimy, noirish, degenerated social atmosphere — acid rain, steam clouds, digital ads flashing overhead, a general third-world vibe. Plus some Mad Max: Fury Road-meets-The Martian desert colors. Mostly the same basic atmosphere and design that made Ridley Scott‘s Blade Runner a legend, and that’s cool for now. When push comes to shove director Denis Villeneuve will need to deliver more than cult nostalgia, of course, but he knows that. I give up: What’s the big, rusty, half-rotted lightbulb-shaped thing?

Everyone now knows that Passengers (Sony, 12.21) is saddled with a gnarly ethical issue. When engineer Chris Pratt is aroused from hibernation aboard a massive star cruiser in the midst of a 120-year voyage to a planet called Homestead II, he realizes he’s been accidentally revived — the other 4999 passengers will be in hibernation for another 80 years. Faced with a life of absolute loneliness and certain to die before the ship arrives, Pratt decides to wake up journalist Jennifer Lawrence, whom he’s fallen in love with after watching her video profile and reading her articles. On one hand his loneliness problem is solved — on the other he’s a creep and a kind of murderer.

HE commenter “Jeff” has mentioned that in a just-posted Fight In The War Room podcast, Indiewire critic David Ehrlich says that Passengers “would have been better served if Pratt died in Act Three and Lawrence then realized herself that she needs to wake someone up too to avoid a lifetime alone.” Good ending! Another scenario was subsequently suggested by HE commenter “Mr. Sunset Terra Cotta“, to wit: “Even if Pratt doesn’t die in Act Three, Lawrence decides she needs to wake someone else up to have an affair with when Pratt starts wearing thin.” Even better!