Month: August 2017

Newsday‘s Lewis Beale has posted a piece about the biggest winners and losers of the summer movie season, which ends on Labor Day. Two of his losers are Sofia Coppola and Steven Soderbergh, so named because their respective films, The Beguiled and Logan Lucky, whiffed at the box-office. After 49 days The Beguiled has earned a lousy $10,576,669 domestic (maximum theatre count: 941) and $16,656,888 worldwide, and over the last 7 days Logan Lucky has generated a meager box-office of $9,316,933, albeit in three times as many theatres (3,031).

The problem with Beale’s verdict is that The Beguiled was a reasonably decent period drama (I called it a better film than Don Siegel‘s 1971 version with Clint Eastwood), and Logan Lucky is a bone dry, brilliantly fine-tuned redneck caper flick. Both films proved that Coppola and Soderbergh are pros who know their stuff, and it hardly makes them “losers” simply because ticket buyers decided they weren’t interested. If you ask me it’s the ticket buyers who lost.

Was it commercially savvy to re-make a gothic Civil War-era melodrama involving sex and dismemberment but with most of the sex taken out? Perhaps not. Did it make sense to re-make Ocean’s 11 in a bumblefuck milieu, minus the big stars and a Las Vegas setting? Okay, maybe Logan Lucky couldn’t have become a hit no matter what. But Soderbergh and Coppola did their jobs well. They made a pair of engaging, first-rate films. They brought honor upon themselves.

Beale’s other losers: 1. Universal Pictures for the wipe-out of Tom Cruise‘s The Mummy (HE agrees). 2. Michael Bay‘s Transformers: The Last Knight (ditto — HE only saw Cinemacon product reel, decided against attending). 3. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (shitty reviews, $166 million gross vs. $230 production cost). 4. Baywatch (crappy reviews, audiences weren’t sold). 5. Will Ferrell for the embarassing failure of The House. 6. French comic books — i.e., the complete cratering of Luc Besson‘s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. 7. Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Detroit. 8. Halle Berry for the barely noticed failure of Kidnap.

Unless this trailer is highly deceptive, I’m half-convinced that Richard Linklater‘s Last Flag Flying (Amazon/Lionsgate, 11.8) is going to work with both critics and ticket-buyers. It’s a “Last Detail sequel” but with different characters.  (Yeah, I know — go figure.). Bryan Cranston is playing his own Badass Buddusky, it seems, but with his own name — Sal Nealon. (Somewhere up in the hills Jack Nicholson is scratching his head, wondering if Nealon is somehow related.). Larry Fishburne seems to be channeling Otis Young‘s Mulhall (i.e., “Mule”), except his name is Mueller. Steve Carell has retained the quiet sensitivity of Randy Quaid‘s Larry Meadows, but with a different name — Larry “Doc” Shepherd. Directed and co-written by Linklater with Darryl Ponicsan, author of the 2005 source novel as well as the 1971 novel that led to Hal Ashby‘s The Last Detail. All eyes on the 9.28.17 premiere at the New York Film Festival.

Hand of Fate #1: “So you’ve had a bad couple of months. Well, I’m sorry, but I’ll tell you what you need to do and it’s no different if you’re J. Paul Getty or Irving the Tailor — you ride it out.” — Lawrence Tierney‘s “Joe Cabot” in Quentin Tarantino‘s Reservoir Dogs.

Hand of Fate #2: “And what is that, John? What? Bad luck. That’s all it is. I pray in your life you will never find it runs in streaks. That’s what it does, that’s all it’s doing. Streaks. I pray it misses you. That’s all I want to say.” — Shelley “the Machine” Levene in Glengarry Glen Ross.

[Initially posted just shy of ten years ago, on 7.4.07.]

If Fox Home Movies can celebrate the 19th anniversary of There’s Something About Mary, Hollywood Elsewhere can celebrate the 19th of Wes Anderson‘s Rushmore, which opened at the New York Film Festival on 10.9.98. I had just begun my Mr. Showbiz column that month, and boy, was I delighted with Rushmore when I saw it out at the Disney lot one night! I was floating when it ended. Wes, whom I’d known since he hit town with Owen Wilson in ’94, had allowed me to read a copy of the script roughly a year earlier, when I was miserably working at People, and I was pretty happy with it. But the film version represented one of the very few times in my life that a movie turned out to be significantly better than the script. (It usually works the other way around.) When I posted HE’s 150 Greatest American Films list on 7.24.15, I ranked Rushmore as my #8, and I meant it. I still do.

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There was once a literary fiction tradition in which character names seemed to reflect or sound like who they were deep down. In The School for Scandal, a 19th Century play, author Richard Brinsley Sheridan created Sir Benjamin Backbite, Lady Sneerwell, Mr. Snake. Nathaniel Hawthorne did the same in The Scarlet Letter with a physician named Roger Chillingworth. Not to mention Charles Dickens‘ Ebenezer Scrooge, Oliver Twist, Miss Havisham and Mr. Fezziwig.

Flash forward to the early 1960s and the names that screenwriter Terry Southern gave to some of the Dr. Strangelove characters — Gen. Buck Turgidson, President Merkin Muffley, General Jack D. Ripper, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. But my all-time favorite Southern invention was Sid Krassman, a coarse, sexist, ethically indifferent Hollywood producer with endless reserves of hustler bullshit. Krassman was pretty much the main character in Southern’s “Blue Movie“, which I read sometime in the early to mid ’70s. (The other principal character was a director named Boris Adrian, who was a stand-in for Stanley Kubrick.) I’ve never forgotten “Sid” in the decades since. Why? Probably because of the simple sound of the name.

The only character-reflecting names we’ve had since the Southern era are Sammy Stud names — names of macho types with an abbreviated manly sound — Josh Randall, Walker, Bronk, Jack Reacher, Lew Harper, Ethan Hunt, Ram Bowen, etc.

I’m obviously unable to come to any semi-final decisions about which actresses might end up as the leading 2017 Best Actress contenders, but I’d be more than a little surprised if the finalists don’t boil down to the following: (1) Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; (2) Emma Stone, Battle of the Sexes, (3) Meryl Streep, The Papers; (4) Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water; (5) Kate Winslet, Wonder Wheel; and (6) Judi Dench, Victoria and Abdul.

I know next to nothing about Annette Bening‘s performance as Gloria Grahame in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool. Talk to me after it screens in Toronto, but right now my gut says…okay, a definite maybe.

Women under pressure, embarked on life-changing journeys, seeking resolutions and satisfaction. McDormand’s character demanding answers and finding closure. Stone and Streep as famous, real-life women subjected to tests of character and mettle in the early ’70s. Hawkins doing it silently, all with her face and eyes. Winslet going through the pains of hell in early ’50s Brooklyn. Dench’s Queen Victoria bridging culture gaps.

Remember — it’s not just about stirring, eye-opening performances, but the quality of the films that these performances are woven into.

Right now I’m not feeling it as much for Jessica Chastain in Molly’s Game (uncertain fate awaiting Aaron Sorkin’s film + same brittle tough-girl performance Chastain gave in Miss Sloan?); Jane Fonda in Our Souls at Night (out-of-competition slot for Souls in Venice Film Festival creates question mark — undeniable nostalgia factor for fourth Fonda-Redford teaming), Diane Kruger, In the Fade (not happening), Jennifer Lawrence, mother! (Aronofsky doesn’t seem to be courting Oscar voters this year, at least not by the standards they live by); Carey Mulligan, Mudbound (Mulligan is always good but acting-wise the film belongs to Jason Mitchell and Mary J. Blige); Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird (haven’t seen it….zip); Michelle Williams, All the Money in the World (no idea, not a hint).

From 8.23 Washington Post story, filed by Katie Mettler and Lindsey Bever: “At a number of political rallies over the past year, a character calling himself ‘Michael the Black Man’ has appeared in the crowd directly behind Donald Trump, impossible to miss and prompting widespread fascination. Almost always, he plugs his wild website, Gods2.com, across his chest. Variously known as Michael Symonette, Maurice Woodside and Mikael Israel, he’s [a] radical fringe activist from Miami who once belonged to a violent black supremacist religious cult, and he runs a handful of amateur, unintelligible conspiracy websites. He has called Barack Obama ‘The Beast’ and Hillary Clinton a Ku Klux Klan member. Oprah Winfrey, he says, is the devil. Most curiously, in the 1990s, he was charged, then acquitted, with conspiracy to commit two murders. But Michael the Black Man loves President Trump.”

Last night’s screening was Lysa Heslov‘s Served Like A Girl, which did well review-wise at South by Southwest ’17. Five women veterans who’ve endured serious trauma in the military create a shared sisterhood to help the rising number of stranded homeless women veterans, etc. It’s basically about women persevering, surviving and sticking together through thick and thin. Particularly mothers and daughters. Sad but stirring. Edited, scored with spunk and polish. I felt it. It got me.

Lysa Heslov, director & co-writer of Served Like A Girl, flanked by Catherine Bach (Dukes of Hazzard) and daughter following Monday’s screening at the London West Hollywood.

From Shari Linden’s THR review: “Glamorous gowns are definitely involved, and yes, there’s a talent contest, but the Ms. Veteran America competition is no beauty pageant in the conventional sense. The gutsy women who vie for the title come in all shapes and sizes. They’ve served in Afghanistan and Iraq, some have suffered dire injuries, and they’ve all weathered plenty on the home front as well. The participants profiled in Heslov’s documentary are the epitome of resilience, but they’re also disarmingly honest and funny as hell. In a word, they’re irresistible.

“Focusing on seven women involved in the 2015 competition (the fourth edition of the event), Served Like a Girl takes a while to find its groove. But as it sheds light on these women’s experiences and the larger issue of homelessness among female vets, the film grows deeply engaging. Whatever the perceived or real political and social divisions between military families and the rest of us, this rousing nonfiction feature by Heslov, a producer making her directorial debut, suggests there’s far more common ground than many might suspect.”

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