In the late summer of 1982 I attended a Bobby Zarem press party for Kirk Douglas at Elaine’s. Douglas was around 65 at the time, and about as gamey and blunt-spoken as they come. We talked about Paths of Glory, which Douglas was naturally proud of, and his sometimes contentious relationship with director Stanley Kubrick, who had also directed Douglas in Spartacus. Douglas respected Kubrick immensely, but that day he called him “Stanley the prick,” in part because Kubrick had been ready and willing, Douglas said, to snag screenplay credit for Spartacus, even though it had been written, of course, by the then-blacklisted Dalton Trumbo. Douglas was incensed that Kubrick would even suggest such a remedy, but he did.

Kirk Douglas, Stanley Kubrick on the set of Paths of Glory.

Who could be pretentious enough to wear this overcoat? The collar is ridiculous.

Anyone who willingly visits a “crazy nine-day festival that only happens every ninety years” and in which the members all wear white and beatific expressions…anyone who joins this kind of eccentric community deserves every weird thing that happens to them and then some. It’s obviously not Burning Man, and probably involves slicing people open and making them scream. Wicker Man plus. If Ari Aster (Hereditary) wasn’t the director I’d take a pass. Costarring Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor Will Poulter, William Jackson Harper, Liv Mjones and Isabelle Grill.

The Triple Frontier review embargo goes up tomorrow morning, and I’m telling you right now that the film doesn’t really get good until the second half, and that’s when things start to go bad for the five commandos. “Eeeeeeee!,” somebody just screamed. “No spoilers until we’ve had a chance to see it! In fact, you’ve already spoiled it by saying things go badly during the second half…say nothing further…eeeeeeeee!” But there’s nothing to write about without discussing the second half, which I would call the Treasure of the Sierra Madre portion. So the hell with it — I’m just gonna post away and may the chips fall, etc. I just tried to use the standard spoiler html coding, and for some reason it doesn’t work.

“Captain Marvel might be the first blockbuster movie whose animating idea is fear. Every page of the script betrays terror of what people might say about the film on social media. Give Carol Danvers a love interest? Eek! No, women can’t be defined by the men in their lives! Make her vulnerable? OMG, no, that’s crazy. Feminine? What century are you from if you think females should be feminine?

“Toward the end of the movie, when a villain preparing for an epic confrontation with Carol, the fighter-pilot-turned-Superwoman, chides her that she will fail because she can’t control her emotions, there is no tension whatsoever. We’ve just spent two hours watching her be utterly unfazed by anything. Giving Carol actual emotions would, of course, lead to at least 27 people calling the film misogynist on Twitter, and the directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck are petrified of that.

“Just to be completely, unerringly, let’s-bubble-wrap-the-universe safe, Boden and Fleck decided to make Danvers stronger than strong, fiercer than fierce, braver than brave. Larson spends the entire movie being insouciant, kicking butt, delivering her lines in an I-got-this monotone and staring down everything with a Blue Steel gaze of supreme confidence.

“Superheroes are defined by their limitations — Superman’s Kryptonite, Batman’s mortality — but Captain Marvel is just an invincible bore. The screenplay by Boden, Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, with a story by the three of them plus Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve, presents us with Brie Larson’s Carol being amazingly strong and resilient at the beginning, middle, and end. This isn’t an arc, it’s a straight line.” — from “Captain Mary Sue,” by Kyle Smith.

I am sick to death of superhero movies and origin stories in particular. I am sick sick to death of superhero movies and origin stories in particular. I am sick sick sick to death of superhero movies and origin stories in particular. Because they’re mostly the same flim-flam — the same synthetic, force-fed oatmeal.

I nonetheless saw a very sizable portion of Captain Marvel last night, and because I submitted for a full 80 minutes I think I deserve a pat on the back. Just as Yeshua of Nazareth so loved the human race that he submitted to their doubts and tortures and finally death on the cross, I sat through Captain Marvel out of dumb allegiance and devotion to the potential of movies to deliver something profound or thrilling or extra in some regard.

“Captain Marvel starts out awfully damn busy and time-shifty and flash-cutty,” I wrote last night, “teeming with characters who quip and deceive and spin riddles with the same dry-ironic, less-than-fully-invested tone that ALL superhero characters and villains have always trafficked in, and at the same time switching allegiances and adopting new identities and shape-shifting with ferocious conviction…where was I? Oh, yes, the subject of Captain Marvel vs. Hollywood Elsewhere.

“It finally settles down by going back to Los Angeles of 1995 (Blockbuster, Radio Shack) as Brie Larson‘s Carol Danvers teams up with a nicely CG youthified Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury (looking 36 or 37, smooth complexion, thinner, full head of hair)…at the same time Larson also runs into a grinning Stan Lee on a bus.

“80 minutes into this Deja Vu on top of another Deja Vu, a feeling of profound spiritual fatigue came over me…a voice that began to repeat over and over, ‘You have sat through this tightly sprung, time-trippy, CG-reliant action film before…well. a close relative of it with slightly less emphasis on progressive feminist attitude..it was called T2 and you saw it with your kids in Santa Monica back in ’91, except James Cameron did a better job with the script.”

This morning I am much more on the side of The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy than Variety‘s Owen Glieberman. McCarthy was basically bored while Gleiberman emerged in a respectful and even enthused frame of mind.

HE to Gleiberman: “The origin story as head game”? “Like someone trapped in a matrix,” Larson’s Danvers is “shaking off the dream of who she is in order to locate the superwoman she could be”?

Is the ability to enjoy superhero origin flicks some kind of hard-wired genetic thing? Were you into Marvel or D.C. comic books as a kid? I read comic books when I was nine, ten, eleven. I can remember my grandfather saying to my father, “It’s fascinating how they read these things…what do they see in them?” But then an amazing, life-transforming thing happened. I discovered movies and said to myself, “Wait…these are much better diversions!”