The 2018 Toronto Film Festival has announced a list of North American or World Premieres, none of which will be going to Telluride first. David Mackenzie‘s The Outlaw King…yay. Jonah Hill‘s Mid90s…ditto. Jeremy Saulnier‘s Hold the Dark…no comment. Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book…what about Bobby? Thomas Vinterberg‘s Kursk…son of Das Boot. Paolo Sorrentino‘s Loro…allegedly a problem, I’ve heard. Sebastian Lelio‘s Gloria w/ Julianne Moore. Nick Hamm‘s Driven…no comment. Paul Greengrass‘s 22 July…formerly Norway, allegedly a tough sit.

Mike Leigh‘s Peterloo is listed as a Canadian premiere, so it’s apparently going to Telluride.

A new Bluray of Federico Fellini‘s I Vitelloni, the grandfather of prolonged adolesence hang-out films, streets on 8.27. But for the grace of God I almost became an I Vitelloni guy, treading water and chasing girls in Fairfield County. I finally couldn’t stand it and moved into my first Manhattan pad on Sullivan Street. It took me two years to make it as a fringe-level film journalist, but I finally did.

Originally posted 12 years ago, on 7.6.06: “There’s a trend in movies about guys in their early to mid 30s having trouble growing up. Guys who can’t seem to get rolling with a career or commit to a serious relationship or even think about becoming productive, semi-responsible adults, and instead are working dead-end jobs, hanging with the guys all the time, watching ESPN 24/7, eating fritos, getting wasted and popping Vicodins.

“There have probably been at least 15 or 20 films that have come out over the last four or five years about 30ish guys finding it hard to get real.

“The 40 Year-Old Virgin was basically about a bunch of aging testosterone monkeys doing this same old dance (with Steve Carell’s character being a slightly more mature and/or sensitive variation). Virgin director-writer Judd Apatow has made a career out of mining this psychology. Simon Pegg’s obese layabout friend in Shaun of the Dead was another manifestation — a 245-pound Dupree.

“Prolonged adolescence is an age-old thing, of course. The difference these days is that practitioner-victims are getting older and older.

I’ve been reluctant to buy into Filmstruck / The Criterion Channel for a long time, but last night…all right, fine, fuck it, I bought a year’s subscription. Now I can finally watch a high-def streaming version of Ingmar Berman’s The Silence. And I can easily watch on my Macbook Pro 15-inch or via the Roku player or even on the (still not fully functional) iPhone.

But as long as I’m discussing Criterion, it’s necessary to re-state what a travesty and a desecration those Midnight Cowboy and Bull Durham Blurays are, and that Peter Becker and the Criterion team need to nip this horrific teal-tinted color tendency in the bud.

Speaking as one who (a) loathes the Christian community for its conservative political leanings, (b) feels mostly contempt for faith-based movies, (c) likes Brenton Thwaites and (d) genuinely admires the great David Strathairn, something in me shuddered when I watched this trailer for An Interview With God.

Don’t Thwaites and Straitharn realize what they’re doing to their brand by appearing in this thing?

HE to God: Cosmic design, unity and connectivity are obvious to anyone with half a brain, but as a beyond-intelligent entity do you and your only begotten son feel just a teeny bit responsible for the massive amounts of stupidity, ignorance and arrogance that are directly attributable to religious devotion? Which is partly responsible for destroying the earth as we speak? Are you good with all that?

Also: Do you agree or disagree with Tony Gilroy‘s assertion in Devil’s Advocate that you’re basically an absentee landlord? When I was a kid I thought you were that deep, slowed-down voice in Cecil B. Demille‘s The Ten Commandments; now you’re nothing more than a component in the ugliest political movement in U.S. history.

I barely remember Carl Reiner‘s Oh, God!. Probably better that way.

An Interview With God will be released in U.S. theaters for only “three nights” — August 20, 21 and 22. What, no matinees?

With Joel Edgerton‘s Boy Erased announced as a Toronto Film Festival “international premiere”, it can be presumed that this fact-based Focus Features release about gay conversion therapy will play Telluride first.

Which reminds me, by the way, that I’ve forgotten to review The Miseducation of Cameron Post, the other gay-conversion drama (premiered during Sundance ’18, opened on 8.3). It’s not a “bad” film, but a little underwhelming. It’s basically an ensemble piece set at a Christain conversion camp, and it’s a bit odd in that the titular character, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, is the least assertive or distinctive character of the lot. In scene after scene she expresses almost nothing, and certainly not verbally. She just wants to be left alone to love other women, but she’s a blank canvas. Far more interesting are costars Sasha Lane, Forrest Goodluck, John Gallagher, Jr. and Marin Ireland.

A couple of hours ago the N.Y. Times reported that “a highway bridge in the heart of Genoa, Italy, collapsed on Tuesday, killing at least 20 people as it dropped dozens of vehicles, and tons of concrete and steel, onto buildings, streets, vehicles and railroad tracks below.” The collapse reportedly happened during a violent rainstorm.

I’ve driven across it several times over the last couple of decades. It’s right in the heart of the city; tens of thousands cross it every day. What a horribly violent way to die, sailing into space inside your car, screaming as you plunge toward the ground or into the gray river, sheared and crunched metal, blood and cracked bones…I don’t want to think about it. But I could’ve been one of the “dozens.”

In honor of A24’s new Climax trailer, a re-appearance of my Cannes Film festival review, posted on 5.18.18: Gaspar Noe‘s Climax is basically two movies, both running about 45 minutes, both scored to relentlessly pounding EDM and both about dancing bodies going to extremes — agile, mad, writhing, flailing around. It’s highly charged at first, but goes nuts in the second half and thereby dwindles.

The first half is “wheee!…lovin’ it!” and the second half is “waagghhh, I’m gonna die!” But they’re both kind of shallow. Energetic, orgiastic, dullish. No dimensionality. But at the same time Climax is worth catching. The mad energy is too intense to ignore.

The first half, once it gets going after a 10- or 12-minute long video interview sequence, is far better. Climax is suddenly a wild, breathless, crazy-pump tribal dance flick — three (or four?) longish Steadicam shots of 20something dancers (Sofia Boutella is the only one I recognized), auditioning for a tour of some kind inside a modest-sized dance hall painted strawberry red (which half reminds you of the reddish gym-sized dance hall in Robert Wise‘s West Side Story), going gloriously wild, letting loose and kicking out.

You could almost describe it as the first-act audition sequence from All That Jazz minus the grace and the training but set to EDM and with all kinds of push-push improv, sweaty and hot and bursting with crazy legs and arms whirling like helicopter blades. None of it guided by a specific dance style, much less a theme or a structure of any kind, but it’s pleasing to just sink into the tribal throb and just, you know, go with it. Shallow but cool in a frenzied sort of way.

And then comes the second half, which is about the dancers reacting badly and in some cases horrifically to some LSD-spiked sangria.

The problem with this portion is that LSD is presented as some kind of evil-trigger drug, as a loosener of civilized behavior and a portal to hostility. It’s predatory, of course, to slip LSD into anyone’s drink without them knowing, and yes, it’s likely that most people, young or not, would react fearfully and perhaps even with panic. I get it.

But deep down LSD is not some kind of vicious-agitator substance. It’s a Godhead drug, and it struck me as unbelievable that each and every dancer goes a little bit nuts here. Nobody — not a single soul — connects with any form of inner divinity and blisses out. Nobody just stops with the crazy and walks outside barefoot and marvels at the night sky.