Day: May 11, 2018

Qualifier #1: Even from the fanboys, the consensus seems to be that Solo‘s first act is clunky and that it takes a while (what, 30 to 40 minutes?) to find its footing but once Donald Glover arrives and “the Kessel Run heist plot kicks in, it’s a whole lot of fun.” There’s also agreement that it takes a while to settle into Alden Ehrenreich‘s Han Solo (i.e., mini-Han) but that you just have to accept that the young-Harrison-Ford template is out the window and that Ehrenreich is playing Jake Gittes. Qualifier #2: All I’ve said from the get-go is that Ehrenreich is a bad fit for the part, but I’ve projected nothing at all about the film itself. Qualifier #3: I’m concerned that Bradford Young, Hollywood Elsewhere’s second-least favorite cinematographer for his tendency to make everything look slightly murky and covered in pea-soup, is Solo‘s dp.

Tonight’s big film is the highly regarded Birds of Passage, a Directors Fortnight entry showing at 10:30 pm. Directed by Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego, it’s about “the origins of the illegal drug trade in Colombia in the 1970s” as well as “a family story set within an indigenous community.”

Someone speculated earlier that I might avoid Gaspar Noe‘s Climax. Bullshit — I’ve never sidestepped an opportunity to see a Noe film, ever. Previously titled Psyche, Climax was allegedly “shot in just two weeks, and focuses on an urban dance troupe that embarks on a kind of Dionysian frenzy in an abandoned school.” (Wild Bunch’s Vincent Maraval has said this information is incorrect.) For years Noe has been promoting the idea of his being some kind of sensual Satanic figure. The effort continues.

A few hours ago I was forced to choose between the 11 am press conference for Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War or catch a Salle Bazin screening of Joe Penna‘s Arctic at the same hour. I chose the press conference. It was announced soon after that Bleecker Street has acquired U.S. and select international rights for Arctic.

From Owen Gleiberman’s Variety review: “Five years ago, All Is Lost premiered at Cannes to deserved acclaim. But when it opened later that fall, the film was a noteworthy commercial disappointment (it made just $6 million domestic), and the awards magic never happened for Robert Redford.

“I think I understood why. All Is Lost was ingeniously made, and a true experience, yet the stark fact is that it was slow. Arctic, as effective as it is, may face a similar challenge (at least in the U.S.), precisely because of the rough-hewn, trudging-through-the-tundra, one-step-at-a-time honesty with which Joe Penna works. The movie, in its indie way, is the anti-Cast Away. Yet that’s what’s good and, finally, moving about it. It lets survival look like the raw experience it is.”

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It was reported three days ago that the GOP-led House of Representatives had voted to kill guidance from a consumer protection agency aimed at preventing lenders from charging minority consumers more on car loans — obviously a discriminatory practice. Republicans don’t care, of course; they just want to diminish government regulations. All hail Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., for calling out those who would deny that discrimination takes place in this realm. “This resolution is one part of a widespread Republican effort to make it more difficult to hold financial institutions responsible,” said Waters.

Watch Congresswoman Maxine Waters rip a GOP Rep in half who interrupted her and was being racist: “I do not yield. Not one second to you. Not one second,” Waters said. This is how it’s done. We are done with their BS. No more. Not one second more. pic.twitter.com/vzHlTioSyN

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) May 11, 2018

“This is really a movie about chain of command, and about people diminished and decimated by authority. In this case you have a colonel who’s middle management, and with middle management you can look up or look down. And when you have a system without oversight, about power fortifying itself at the expense of the non-powerful, this is what you get.” — David Simon, creator, executive producer, head writer and show runner for all five seasons of The Wire (’02 to ’08). (Essay posted on 5.10.18.)

In a word, Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War is brilliant — an impressively grim, beautifully shot, wonderfully concise portrait of a compulsively hot if constantly frustrating love affair. Romantic bindings can be fatiguing, turbulent, infuriating, painful or even destructive, but the fires are not easily quenched.

Right now Cold War is the leading candidate to win the Palme d’Or, hands down.

Set in ’50s-era Poland and France (mostly Warsaw and Paris) and spanning about a decade, it’s about a musician-arranger (Tomasz Kot) and a headstrong femme fatale singer (Joanna Kulig) who are drawn to each other but never quite come together or achieve even a semblance of stability, much less synchronicity.

Cold War director Pawel Pawlikowski, actress Joanne Kulig during this morning’s press conference — Friday, 5.11, 11:35 am.

Kot pursues, wins, then loses Kulig, over and over. But she keeps returning, affirming her love then changing her mind and ducking out the side door.

Pawlikowski employs the same glorious black-and-white palette and 1.37:1 aspect ratio that he used for Ida, and it’s just pure dessert, an ice-cream sundae — I was in boxy heaven.

And Cold War is only 84 minutes. I love it when a world-class director reminds us all that narrative discipline and pruning things down to essentials are still active options.