Day: March 15, 2018

Best “Christian Nutters Are Crazy” Flick Of All Time

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Three or four hours ago I saw this boldly colored Todd Alcott post on Facebook. I couldn’t remember the last film that genuinely unnerved me, but one of my all-time unnervers is Michael Tolkin‘s The Rapture, which I first saw…God in heaven, 26 and 1/2 years ago. I started to tap something out, and then it hit me that I’d already written a couple of things about it — a ditty in ’15, a few words in ’11.

It doesn’t take much to get me to riff (or re-riff) on The Rapture. A 7.5.15 posting of a Trailers From Hell commentary on the 1991 film by Tolkin will more than suffice. To expand upon the headline, The Rapture is not just the greatest anti-Christian nutter film of all time but the spiritual father of HBO’s The Leftovers and generally one of the creepiest non-horror films over made.

Posted on 5.20.11: “The Rapture weirded me out on a level that I didn’t fully comprehend at first. So much so that I’ve only watched it twice. It’s not what you’d call a ‘pleasant’ film, but it sinks in and spreads a strange malevolent vibe — a profound unease, disquiet — into your system.

“Mimi Rogers hit her absolute career peak playing a telemarketing swinger-turned-convert who (a) sends her daughter to God with a bullet in the head and then (b) tells God to shove it when He/She is levitating Rogers up to Heaven during the finale.

“David Duchovny and Will Patton costarred. I was so taken by Patrick Bauchau‘s performance as a libertine that I sought him out at a party sometime in the late ’90s and wound up interviewing him at his Hollywood home.

“It’s a thinking-man’s horror flick, and one of the most chilling and profoundly creepy films ever — a perfect bitchslap directed at Godfreaks and the religious right.”

Where’s The Footage From Virtual Overlook Hotel?

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From 3.12 Guardian review by Monica Castillo: “While the movie is visually whimsical with its design and neon colors, the weakness of the source material still pokes out. Plot holes remain, despite screenwriter Zak Penn and Spielberg’s efforts to liven up the visuals and punch up the dialogue. I’m not sure I have a great understanding of how the game mechanics are supposed to work. If movement is required to move an avatar in the game, how do people play in the Oasis while standing in their living rooms?”

What’s Up With Cameron Diaz?

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Last weekend Selma Blair was quoted by Metro‘s Katie Bailey saying that Cameron Diaz, who hasn’t made a film since Will Gluck‘s Annie (’14) and whose last good film was Ridley Scott‘s The Counselor (’13), has more or less bailed on her film career.

“I had lunch with Cameron the other day,” Blair reportedly said. “We were reminiscing about [The Sweetest Thing]. I would have liked to do a sequel but Cameron’s retired from acting. She’s like ‘I’m done.'” Blair was presumedly screamed at that night by Diaz and her reps, and so she tweeted the following day (Monday, 3.12) that Diaz “is NOT retiring from ANYTHING.”

Today, or four days after Bailey’s Metro story, People‘s Mike Miller posted a story about how the 45 year-old Diaz “is loving her life outside the Hollywood spotlight.” Quoting “a source”, Miller writes that Diaz and her 39 year-old, tattoo-covered musician husband Beji Madden are “great” and “both very happy living the quiet life.”

Translation: Diaz’s career is in eclipse but she doesn’t want anyone thinking she’s not ready to return if the right part comes along.

Diaz’s career started to lose steam as she got older and her looks started to fade. You can’t say she didn’t appear in better films during the ’90s and early aughts. We all know that actresses often have a rougher time when they start to show mileage. Or something like that. I didn’t invent the system. I deplore it. But that’s how it goes in some cases.

The same thing happened with Brendan Fraser — career peak between ’92 and ’05, and then he began to age out.

If you ask me Diaz peaked from ’94 to ’05, or from age 22 to 33 — from her breakout debut in Chuck Russell‘s The Mask (’94) to Curtis Hanson‘s In Her Shoes, in which she gave her career-best performance.

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Rainy Day In Cannes Needs To Happen

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Yesterday Variety‘s Peter Debruge and Elsa Keslassy spitballed about possible 2018 Cannes Film Festival selections — Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma, Jennifer Kent‘s The Nightingale, Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria, Asghar Farhadi‘s Everybody Knows (in Spanish) and Olivier Assayas‘ E-Book.

Not to mention Jacques Audiard‘s The Sisters Brothers, Paolo Sorrentino‘s Loro, Laszlo Nemes‘ Sunset, Terrence Malick’s Radegund (in German), Matteo Garrone‘s Dogman, Terry Gilliam‘s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and Xavier Dolan‘s The Death and Life of John F. Donovan.

It’s worth noting that Debruge and Keslassy, mindful of antsy industry currents, didn’t mention an especially enticing possibility — Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York, which will probably be dumped by Amazon (those antsy currents!) but which would be a major score for this world-class Cote d’Azur festival.


Timothee Chalamet, Selena Gomez in Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York.

Woody’s films have played Cannes three or four times in the recent past, and a booking of his most recent effort, which partly deals with an inappropriate-age-gap relationship between Jude Law and Elle Fanning, would be a way for festival topper Thierry Fremaux to not only honor a relationship with a still-important filmmaker but declare that Cannes is about cinematic art first and nervous-nelly politics second.

Because you just know that a certain sector of American journalists will freak out if and when the Woody is chosen. Does Fremaux have the balls? Will Allen have the sand to face the Cannes press corps?

Debruge and Keslassy also suggest in their piece that Cannes should adhere to a gender quota system. “From the international success of Wonder Woman to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, the world is a much different place than it was in May 2017,” they remind. “Will Cannes delegate general Thierry Fremaux get with the program and include more female directors?”

I would imagine that Fremaux would indeed want to increase the presence of female directors this year, but HE’s Jordan Ruimy has a response to Debruge and Keslassy that I agree with 110%:

“Cannes is not a quota festival. It recognizes excellence in cinema. If a smaller number of female directors fail to produce excellent movies in a given year, that fault is on those directors, not Cannes. Lowering the bar to meet some dumb quota hurts women, not helps them. Festivals are supposed to be merit-based, and Cannes most of all in this regard.”

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Dreamland

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Greg Berlanti‘s Love, Simon (20th Century Fox, 3.16) is definitely half-decent — an antiseptic, intensely suburban gay teen romance that’s also about coming out. It’s the first big-screen adaptation of a YA novel (Becky Albertalli‘s “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda”) that I’ve actually half-liked, and it is kind of a big cultural deal that Fox is releasing a gentle, emotionally pliant, same-sex love story in 2400 theatres.**

Love, Simon is smartly written (the screenplay authors are This Is Us showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger) and straight-friendly, but — here come the caveats — it feels like a professional sell-job. Like an advertisement for the way things ought to be in Young Gay Utopia. It feels too tidy, too TV-realm, too “produced” and not, you know, laid-back enough. (Like Call Me By Your Name, say — a totally settled, unforced vibe flick from start to finish.)

But Simon‘s heart and head are in the right places, and it’s a whole lot better than Kelly Craig‘s The Edge of Seventeen, which struck me as vaguely similar and which I hated with a passion when I saw it a couple of years ago.

Amiable, mild-mannered Simon (Nick Robinson) is a closeted high school senior living with his parents (Josh Duhamel, Jennifer Garner) and younger sister (Talitha Bateman) in a well-tended Atlanta suburb. But the realm is essentially a blend of Disney World and a 21st Century update of John Hughes Land — an affluent, multi-cultural, progressive-minded hamlet where almost everyone (except for one appalling sociopath, played by Logan Miller, who causes all the trouble) is cool about everything.

Although his parents and friends are fair-minded and accepting of whatever, Simon has decided to wait until college to announce that he’s gay. But then he falls into this anonymous online chat with another gay guy — a local kid who calls himself Blue. The movie is partly about guessing who Blue might be. It’s also about Miller’s batshit-insane character, Martin, who discovers Simon’s flirtation with Blue and uses this knowledge to blackmail him into helping him get together with one of Simon’s close friends (i.e., a girl). I was saying to myself “if this was Goodfellas Martin would get an ice pick in the back of the neck.”

Simon suspects (and we are led to presume) that Blue might be one of three guys — all good looking, one of a POC persuasion and the other two Caucasian, one dark-haired and one semi-blonde. They all seem like good candidates, but I was a bit disappointed when the real Blue was revealed. (Not my choice.) Simon, however, is ready to roll with all of these guys.

Want a better, less conventional ending? Simon is really attracted to A, vaguely attracted to B and not that attracted to C, and then Blue turns out to be C. And Simon says, “Aaah…okay…life is unfair. But it’s nice to know ya, brah. I like what you have to say.” And they become good friends.

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