Late this afternoon I saw a great documentary that I can’t talk about until Friday. My Paris flight leaves in less than an hour. I’ll be there at 6:40 am eastern, 3:40 am Pacific. Should be at the pad by 3:30 pm Paris time.  An occasional Percocet is good for the soul.

Yes, it looks like a retread, a Stand By Me ensemble threatened by a demonic Clarabelle. But something tells me that It (9.8.17, Warner Bros., New Line) may be up to something good. I’m basing this suspicion partly on the last two-thirds of the new trailer, and partly on the fact that it was directed by Andres Muschietti, who delivered the superb Mama four years ago.

From Todd McCarthy’s 1.15.13 Hollywood Reporter review of Mama:

“Being sold primarily on the name of its godfather, Guillermo del Toro, this Canadian-Spanish co-production from Universal is refreshingly mindful of the less-is-more horror guidelines employed by 1940s master Val Lewton, not to mention Japanese ghost stories, but the PG-13 rating might prove too restrictive for the gory tastes of male core genre fans.

“In essence, Mama represents a throwback and a modest delight for people who like a good scare but prefer not to be terrorized or grossed out. With fine special effects and a good sense of creating a mood and pacing the jolts, [Andres] Muschietti shows a reassuringly confident hand for a first-time director, pulling off some fine visual coups through smart camera placement and cutting, and not taking the whole thing so seriously that it becomes overwrought.”

The new poster for Sofia Coppola‘s The Beguiled (Focus Features, 6.23) seems to convey a certain agenda. As you might expect, Don Siegel‘s 1971 version of the same Civil War-era tale regarded Clint Eastwood‘s Union soldier character (i.e., Corporal John McBurney) with a faint measure of allegiance, and depicted his fate at the hands of the Southern women (Geraldine Page, Elizabeth Hartman, Jo Ann Harris) as an unwarranted mutilation, however much Eastwood’s character may have tempted fate by being a scamp. Coppola’s version, which I won’t see until it plays at the Cannes Film Festival, is presumably more condemning of McBurney, played this time by Colin Farrell. The pink lettering pretty much says it all. The Beguiled is a movie for girls, and particularly those with no tolerance for caddish guys who fuck around at will.

The other day Patti Lupone dismissed Madonna‘s performance as Evita Peron in Alan Parker’s 1996 film adaptation (which I’ve always enjoyed and admired). “Madonna is a movie killer,” Lupone said. “She’s dead behind the eyes. She couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag. She should not be on film or on stage. She’s a wonderful, you know, performer for what she does, but she is not an actress.” (Lupone’s performance as Evita in the original 1979 Broadway production is commonly regarded as the best.)

No one would argue Lupone’s point, but Madonna was never better than she was in Parker’s film. She wasn’t brilliant or staggering, but she gave it everything she had and this, coupled with the fact that Evita itself was an above-average musical, makes her performance an honorable, good-enough thing. Madonna wasn’t the best choice, agreed, but she was reasonably decent in the role, at least to the extent that she didn’t get in the way.

The lesson is that with God’s grace, even moderately talented, less-than-genius-level actors can briefly rise to the heights. Simply by being lucky enough to find the right role in the right film at the right time. Justin Timberlake in The Social Network. Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love. Sly Stallone in Rocky. What others?

Sidenote: I don’t agree about Hayden Christensen‘s performance in Shattered Glass being a high-water mark. I found his manner in that film oppressively phony and cloying, making it impossible to believe that Stephen Glass‘s coworkers at the New Republic would buy into his bullshit.

I’ve been waiting and waiting for the Russia-Trump election interference story to become the New Watergate. I was elated by the Comey firing because it seemed as if this, finally, would launch this story into orbit. It was Nixon firing Cox all over again…great! But I was also brought down yesterday by a Nate Silver/538 story about how the Russia thing has failed to ignite so far.

Silver: “It’s also possible that Comey’s firing is just the latest in a series of short, exciting bursts of activity that don’t ultimately produce any lasting momentum or do all that much to undermine Trump. This has mostly been the pattern of these Trump-Russia stories so far.” Three spikes — the British pee-pee tape dossier last January, the MNichael Flynn reisgnation in February and now the Comey firing.

Silver’s bottom line: “These [news] spikes have been relatively short-lived, and there has been no long-term increase in public attention to the story.”

Having missed Monday night’s Manhattan all-media of Snatched, the Amy Schumer-Goldie Hawn comedy, I’m thinking of catching a 7 pm show at the Regal Battery Park Stadium. I can only see 90 minutes’ worth as I have to leave for JFK at 8:30 pm (the Paris flight leaves at 11:30 pm) but it’s a flunk — 36% Rotten Tomatoes, 47% Metacritic. The word’s been out on this puppy for months.

From David Poland’s 5.10 review: “The biggest problem is that Schumer is playing dumb…perhaps stupid. And she takes it to a level that doesn’t serve her well. It’s kind of like, ‘If you loved Amy in Trainwreck as a smart but insecure early 30s woman with a fear of commitment who finally gets it together, you’ll REALLY LOVE Amy as a self-indulgent woman/child with a clinging, enabling mother who really learns nothing through the course of the movie and keeps us from seeing her mother fully blossom because she is taking up all the screen time.”