Day: November 18, 2018

I’ve seen all eight episodes of Ben Stiller‘s Escape at Donnemara (Showtime, debuting tonight), and it certainly delivers in an unexpected way. By that I mean it does a very unusual and fairly ballsy thing in the home stretch — a move that I totally respected.

It’s an appropriately grim, throughly-delved-into saga of the Clinton Correctional prison break of 2015, and the schemings of convicted murderers Richard Matt (Benicio del Toro) and David Sweat (Paul Dano), and about the help they got from miserable prison worker Tilly Mitchell (Patricia Arquette), a married, middle-aged woman with whom both convicts had a sexual thing with.

Everyone’s read the news accounts and can probably recall some of the basic plot points. Stiller’s film digs into every nook, cranny and orifice, and mines the feelings of lethargy and resignation for all they’re worth.

Escape at Dannemora is composed in spare, straight fashion — utilitarian, not overly shaded and certainly not arthousey, unpretentious. And oh boy, did I feel gloomed out by those bright green walls everywhere. If only state-prison walls were dark olive drab.

Despite suggestions and metaphors contained in the word “escape”, Stiller’s film is mainly about the planning of the break. The first five episodes, to be exact, while simultaneously focusing on Matt, Sweat and Mitchell’s triangulated relationship. Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood‘s Escape From Alcatraz was also primarily about planning, but of course that whole film ran only 112 minutes.

I honestly felt that this portion went on too long — that Stiller was more into keeping me locked up than offering what I wanted from the beginning, which was to savor those little tingles of freedom, however brief and despite the wrong kind of company. We all want to tag along when the door swings open.

The sixth episode is about the escape itself, the seventh episode stops the narrative cold in order to explore Matt, Sweat and Mitchell’s back-stories (i.e., the gutsy strategy that I spoke of earlier) and the final episode is about Matt and Sweat trying to elude a $23 million dragnet as they struggle and scramble their way through the woods, and scrounge what they can in a couple of abandoned cabins.

What is Escape at Donnemara really about? Grim lives and grim fates and how trapped and depressed the lower-middle-class bumblefucks feel, especially by the likelihood that they’ll never climb out of it. It’s nonetheless about people desperate to break out, even if that only amounts to daydreams.

Escape at Dannemora is mainly Arquette’s film (she’ll be nominated for an Emmy) with Del Toro and Dano delivering like the natural-born pros they are every time at bat. The final episode will air on 1.6.19.

Some may recall an early ’60s Lenny Bruce routine about Shelley Berman and the Chicago Shtarkers. It was about Berman performing on-stage at Mr. Kelly’s, a famed Chicago club, and getting more and more irritated by a couple of deep-voiced mafiosos who wouldn’t stop talking and interfering with his act.

Berman didn’t know they were mob guys, but that might not have mattered. In any event he finally blurted into the mike “Jesus, somebody shut these hoodlums up!”

Berman might’ve gotten walloped in a back alley, but the mob goons didn’t “hear” the insult. They may have physiologically heard the words “shut these hoodlums up” but psychologically they didn’t penetrate because “nobody would ever talk to them that way,” Bruce explained. So the taunt bounced off and Berman lucked out.

I’m mentioning because in a certain sense I was a mafia guy this morning as I was planning to attend a 10 am screening of Vice. The emailed invite said it would happen on Sunday, 11.25. (And it still will.) But like those Chicago goons, the 11.25 date (seven days hence, three days after Thanksgiving) struck me as so nonsensical that I waved it off like a house fly.

I did so because Los Angeles journos saw Vice yesterday, and why, I asked myself, would Annapurna delay showing Vice to New York City journos for eight (8) days? Nobody and I mean nobody handles an award-season roll-out this way.

You can’t offer a special peek to the L.A. crowd and then turn around and say to their NYC counterparts, “Just sit tight, fellas…we’ll show it to you next weekend so hold your horses for eight days.”

This isn’t the 1950s. Early showings of big-deal movies are always even-steven or favored-nation as far as the two coasts are concerned. So the date was a “mistake”, I told myself, and so I emotionally and psychologically rejected it.

I can be an occasional ditzoid about screenings, granted, but this was something else.

Herewith is Hollywood Elsewhere’s first flaky stab at a list of adult-friendly, quality-aspiring 2019 films— possible critical faves and perhaps even award-season contenders.

I realize that the market for “adult-friendly films that aren’t aimed at idiots” is getting smaller and smaller as the culture devolves and that the governing motto behind 90% of theatrical fare (or at least films released between January and Labor Day) is “you don’t have to be a drooling moron to enjoy this crap but it’ll probably help.” But we all have to hang in there and hope for the best.

We all understand that limited and longform series on cable and streaming are delivering much of the dramatic satisfaction these days, but nothing will replace top–tier theatrical features — i.e., those films which require a special vision and artistic discipline and have to deliver the whole package between 100 and 140 minutes, for the most part.

Things are always hazy at this stage but here are some 2019 stand-outs listed on the IMDB — listed partly in order of interest, and partly randomly. Please understand that I know nothing — I have double-checked only a few titles, and this is purely a paste job at this stage. Research, commentary, corraboration — it’s a process that will take several days to get right:

1. Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman — A mob hitman recalls his possible involvement with the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa. (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Jesse Plemons).

2. Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — A faded TV actor and his stunt double embark on an odyssey to make a name for themselves in the film industry during the Helter Skelter reign of terror in 1969 Los Angeles. (Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie).

3. Ang Lee‘s Gemini Man — An over-the-hill hitman faces off against a younger clone of himself. (Will Smith, Clive Owen, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Benedict Wong).

4. Jon Favreau‘s The Lion King — CGI and live-action re-imagining of the 1994 Disney classic. (Voice-acting by Seth Rogen, Donald Glover, Alfre Woodard, Chiwetel Ejiofor).

5. Darren Aronofsky‘s Untitled Artificial Intelligence Courtroom Project — Allegedly about an artificial intelligence court case.

6. Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York [in limbo at Amazon, allegedly streaming sometime in ’19)

7. Untitled Harriet Tubman Project — The life of Civil War-era activist Harriet Tubman, who worked to liberate slaves in the American South by developing an a secretive system that allowed them to escape to freedom. (Viola Davis, Mike Gassaway)

8. J.C. Chandor‘s Triple Frontier — Five friends team to take down a South American drug lord. (Charlie Hunnam, Ben Affleck, Pedro Pascal, Oscar Isaac.)

9. Mia Hansen-Løve‘s Bergman Island — An American filmmaking couple who retreat to Faro for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place. (Mia Wasikowska, Vicky Krieps, Anders Danielsen Lie, Joel Spira.)

10. John Crowley‘s The Goldfinch — A boy in New York is taken in by a wealthy Upper East Side family after his mother is killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Nicole Kidman, Sarah Paulson, Finn Wolfhard, Ansel Elgort)

11. David Michod‘s The King — (Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn, Robert Pattinson)

12. Garth Davis‘s A House in the Sky — A young journalist is captured in Somalia and held in captivity for more than a year. (Rooney Mara)

13. Untitled Danny Boyle/Richard Curtis Project — Believed to be musically themed and be set around the 1960s or 1970s. (Lily James, Ana de Armas, Kate McKinnon, Lamorne Morris)

14. J.J. Abrams‘ Star Wars: Episode IX — The conclusion of the new ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. (Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Domhnall Gleeson, et.al.)

15. Marielle Heller‘s You Are My Friend — The story of Fred Rogers, the honored host and creator of the popular children’s television program, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson, Tammy Blanchard)

16. Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse — The story of an aging lighthouse keeper named Old who lives in early 20th-century Maine. (Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe)

17. Pedro Almodóvar‘s Dolor y gloria — A film director reflects on the choices he’s made in life as past and present come crashing down around him. (Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, Cecilia Roth, Asier Etxeandia)

18. Jonathan Jakubowicz‘ Resistance — The story of a group of Jewish Boy Scouts who worked with the French Resistance to save the lives of ten thousand orphans during World War II. (Clémence Poésy, Ed Harris, Jesse Eisenberg, Edgar Ramírez)

19. Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette? — After her anxiety-ridden mother disappears, 15-year-old Bee does everything she can to track her down, discovering her troubled past in the process. (Cate Blanchett, Judy Greer, Kristen Wiig, Laurence Fishburne)

20. Benedict Andrews‘ Against All Enemies — An ambitious young F.B.I. Agent is assigned to investigate iconic actress Jean Seberg when she becomes embroiled in the tumultuous civil rights movement in late 1960s Los Angeles, California. (Kristen Stewart, Zazie Beetz, Vince Vaughn, Jack O’Connell)

21. Armando Iannucci‘s The Personal History of David Copperfield (Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw, Gwendoline Christie, Hugh Laurie)

22. Joe Wright‘s The Woman in the Window — An agoraphobic woman living alone in New York begins spying on her new neighbors only to witness a disturbing act of violence. (Amy Adams, Wyatt Russell, Gary Oldman, Julianne Moore)

23. Pablo Larraín‘s The True American — A Bangladeshi Air Force officer looking to make his way in the United States is shot by an American terrorist out to kill Muslims in the aftermath of September 11th.

24. Scott Z. Burns‘ The Torture Report — In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, CIA agents begin using extreme interrogation tactics on those they think were behind it. (Adam Driver, Jon Hamm, Jennifer Morrison, Maura Tierney).

25. Dee Rees‘ The Last Thing he Wanted — A journalist quits her newspaper job and becomes an arms dealer for a covert government agency. (Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Willem Dafoe, Toby Jones)

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Focus Features is releasing Asghar Farhadi‘s Everybody Knows on 2.8.19. The official trailer popped a couple of days ago. Here are excepts from my Cannes Film Festival review, posted on 5.8.18:

“Everybody Knows isn’t a bust but by Asghar Farhadi’s lofty standards it’s something of a shortfaller, particularly due to how the third act unfolds. It sure as hell isn’t About Elly — I can tell you that. It’s more on the level of The Past, although The Past, which some said suffered from a layered-onion plot that felt too soap-opera-ish, is a more satisfying film. And it’s slightly below The Salesman, and way below A Separation.

“But it’s still a Farhadi film, and that always means a character-rich, complexly plotted, proceeding-at-its-own-pace family-community drama — smartly written, always well acted — in which deeper and deeper layers of the onion are gradually peeled until the truth comes out.

“Set in rural Spain, it’s about the sudden disappearance of a character but it’s not an About Elly-level thing. At all. It’s actually about a kidnapping but that’s all I’m going to divulge. But Everybody Knows follows the Farhadi form by focusing on a large community of family members, friends, co-workers (i.e., a wine farm) and whatnot, and everyone, we soon realize, knows everyone else’s secrets. Well, most of them. And by the end, everything comes out in the wash

“But the story and especially the ending don’t echo all that much in a social-fabric or social-portraiture sense. All the loose ends are tied up for the most part, but it doesn’t quite get there. The film doesn’t expand or begin to play a bigger game.

“If a friend were to ask, I would say “actually it’s pretty good…it’s not Farhadi’s best and is probably his least commanding, but he’s such a brilliant, high-calibre filmmaker that even his second-tier movies are fully involving, always believably acted and quite the meticulous ride.”

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