I’m almost afraid to watch The Matrix again for fear that it won’t hold up. The double-whammy of Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions was so devastating, and my initial reaction to the original was so positive…just call me superstitious. Perhaps I’d best leave well enough alone, let sleeping dogs lie, etc.

Okay, I’ll risk it: has anyone recently re-watched The Matrix? If it doesn’t play as well, I almost don’t want to know.

“Shoulda Quit When They Were Ahead,” posted on 4.1.14.

“You know, I think I understand what you’re like now. You’re very beautiful and you think men are only interested in you because you’re beautiful. And you want them to be interested in you because of you. But the problem is that aside from your being beautiful, you’re not very interesting. You’re rude, you’re hostile, you’re sullen, you’re withdrawn. I understand that you want someone to see past all that to the real person underneath. But the only reason anyone would bother to look past all that is because you’re beautiful. Ironic, isn’t it?”

Not Jim Harrison, I’m guessing, because he’s not exactly known for writing sharp zingers or stingers or whatever you want to call this kind of dialogue. (I hung out with Harrison one night in ’96, at the Los Angeles premiere of Carried Away.) And probably not Elaine May, because it doesn’t have that neurotic, New York-y, Elaine May-ish seasoning. It feels like more of a guy-written thing, but maybe not. A little voice is telling me it’s not Wesley Strick either. I don’t know anything.

With its frequent descent into a jet-black palette and all kinds of shadowy gradation, Alan Pakula‘s Klute (’71) is a prime candidate for a 4K re-viewing. Not to suggest that Criterion’s forthcoming 1080p Bluray (7.16) won’t look great or that it isn’t worth the price, but an actual 4K Bluray would be that much better. Alas, Criterion doesn’t do those. The copy promises a “new, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by camera operator Michael Chapman, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack.”

Posted on 7.24.14: “I haven’t seen Alan Pakula‘s Klute (’71) since…well, I might have watched it on laser disc in the ’90s or at a repertory cinema in the early ’80s…maybe. But I haven’t seen it on a big screen in eons. Slow burn whodunit + ’70s Manhattan + richly-drawn characters + wide-open emotional exposure + simmering sexuality. Plus a wonderfully inky, occasionally spooky vibe care of dp Gordon Willis (i.e., the Prince of Darkness)

The horrific Columbine high-school massacre happened exactly 20 years ago. It hit like a grenade, of course, and knocked the culture on its heels. And of course we all know the epitaph, which is that (a) mass killings (schools, workplace, bars) have since become commonplace, and (b) rightwing lunatics have refused to allow legislators to do anything about restricting easy access to automatic weapons. Our latest Columbine happened 14 months ago in southern Florida, and the after-shocks are still humming as we speak.

Before Columbine happened I was locked into attending a three-day Stars Wars Celebration in Denver (4.30 thru 5.2), which was basically about hyping The Phantom Menace, which would open a couple of weeks later. The event was funded by LucasArts and organized by Dan Madsen, head of the Star Wars Fan Club, and held at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum.

The Denver weather was chilly and rainy almost the entire time. The descriptive term was miserable, but as a twice-weekly, Johnny-on-the-spot columnist for Mr. Showbiz I felt it was very important to absorb and report on the new fervor among the Star Wars faithful. The unseen Phantom Menace was a hyuuge deal at the time; it was universally derided, of course, once it was seen.

Here are two columns on the Denver Star Wars event — “Fandom Penance” and “Fandom Penance, Episode II“. Thanks to HE reader “Ugly Red Honda” for forwarding.

On the second or third day I was sick of the fanboys and needed a shot of reality. So I got into my rental car and drove down to Littleton, Colorado and parked near the grounds of Columbine High School.

It was still godawful cold and rainy and muddy everywhere. I basically walked around and took snaps and sniffed the air. I just wanted to feel it, taste it. There were other visitors (even a couple of families) poking around. I recall climbing up a slight hill or incline near the school where little memorials for each slain student had been planted in the ground.

My Mr. Showbiz editor didn’t allow me to write about visits to Columbine or any non-movie-related excursion, or I would’ve done so.

Rochefort : I failed. One does occasionally.
Cardinal Richelieu: If I blundered as you do, my head would fall.
Rochefort: I would say from a greater height than mine, Eminence.
Cardinal Richelieu: You would?
Rochefort: The height of vaulting ambition.
Cardinal Richelieu (quickly): You have none?
Rochefort: No.
Cardinal Richelieu (beat, sizing up): Do you fear me, Rochefort?
Rochefort: Yes, I fear you, Eminence. I also…hate you.
Cardinal Richelieu: I love you, my son. Even when you fail.

The tragic but affecting story of Franz Jagerstatter is basically that of an Austrian farmer, spiritual seeker and pacifist who sacrificed his life for his convictions. He was drafted into the German army in 1940, but ultimately refused to fight on conscientious objector grounds. He was charged with an “undermining of military morale” and executed (beheaded) in mid 1943. In 2007 Pope Benedict XVI issued an “apostolic exhortation,” declaring Jägerstätter a martyr.

For what it’s worth, a 1971 film about Jagerstatter, titled “The Refusal“, ran only 94 minutes. We can probably safely presume that Malick’s version is a grander, deeper, more penetrating depiction than this 48 year-old film, but you can’t help but furrow your brow and wonder about the 180-minute running time.

Knowing Malick as I do and the fact that principal photography ended sometime in late August 2016, the first suspicion (or fear) that comes to mind is “sprawling,” the second is “precious,” the third is “whispery”, the fourth is “dandelion fuzz” and the fifth, obviously, is “indulgent.” But maybe not.

“Sam (Andrew Garfield) is 33 years old, unemployed and counting down the days to eviction from his apartment. [His] sense of belatedness feels secondhand. He’s a GenX sensibility trapped in a millennial body, with the tastes and obsessions to match. (Director David Robert Mitchell, it’s worth pointing out, is 44 years old).

“R.E.M. called irony ‘the shackles of youth,’ and Sam drags it around like a Styrofoam ball and chain. Like other guys his age, he feels oppressed by an older generation of guys who lay claim to all the credit, the money, the art and the women, while he is left with a literal and spiritual pile of junk that may not mean what he hoped it would. The movie turns his resentment into a cosmic joke.

“Look, I’ve been there. But I can’t say I sympathize, because there’s no basis for sympathy.

“Under the Silver Lake is less a cinematic folly than a category mistake, taking the sterility of its own imaginative conceits for a metaphysical condition. It isn’t a critique of aesthetic or romantic ennui, but an example of intellectual timidity. As a Los Angeles movie it lacks the rough, naturalistic edge of La La Land, and it thinks it’s so much cooler than La La Land.” — from A.O. Scott‘s 4.17 N.Y. Times review of Under The Silver Lake.