As many of us heard last April, Apocalypse Now: Final Cut is (a) a 4K visual upgrade that’s said to be the best-looking version ever and (b) a 182-minute version that’s shorter than Apocalypse Now Redux by 20 minutes. Two hours from now I’ll be seeing it on a huge IMAX screen. I’ll probably never see this 1979 classic ever again under such optimum conditions. As Peter Ustinov‘s Lentulus Batiatus would say, “I tingle.”
From “Witness to Apocalypse Now: Final Cut,” posted on 4.28.19:
In a perfect world, I would be James Mason and Martin Landau would be the Woke McCarthyites, and the Movie Godz would smile down and approve. But we don’t live in such a realm. In reality I am a blend of Kevin McCarthy‘s character at the ending of Don Siegel‘s Invasion of the Body Snatchers plus Veronica Cartwright‘s character when she comes up to Donald Sutherland at the end of Phil Kaufman’s 1978 version.
Since early summer the word on Amazon’s Seberg (formerly Against All Enemies) has been that Kristen Stewart‘s performance as the tragic Jean Seberg is quite the standout and actually better than the film itself. Stewart’s performance is “extremely understated and internal,” I was told last May. “She never goes too big and plays her cards with acute subtlety.” The film was directed by Benedict Andrews from a screenplay by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse.
The first commercial showings of Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood are happening as we speak. This is the HE forum for early reactions, but please go gently and non-specifically as far as the final act is concerned. I don’t know when it will be fair to start discussing the final 20 to 25 minutes but I would think that an “olly olly in come free” policy could be instituted as of…what, Monday morning? Is it realistic to expect that people will keep their yaps shut any longer than that?
The below paragraph is from A.O. Scott’s N.Y. Times review, titled “We Lost It At The Movies.” I suppose that my beef with OUATIH is analogous to the fact that I’m a much bigger fan of High Noon than Rio Bravo. I’m never been seduced by the laid-back allure of hang-out flicks. I prefer films with real stories — films that convey character and focus upon goals, and are laden with metaphor and teeming with story tension. Tarantino’s latest ends well, but otherwise it doesn’t satisfy the above criteria.
Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York won’t be playing the 2019 Venice Film Festival because — hello? — it’s opening in Poland two days hence (7.26) via Kino Swiat. Which means, naturally, that Polish (and presumably trade) reviews will be appearing on Thursday.
Subsequent bookings: Lithuania (8.2), Greece (8.22), the Netherlands (8.29), Turkey (8.30), France (9.18), Czech Republic (9.26), Italy (10.3), Spain (10.4) and Mexico (10.25). As we speak not a single cowardly U.S. distributor has arranged to distribute the relationship comedy. If nobody steps up, I can always catch it in Tijuana three months hence.
I loved Ruben Fleischer‘s original Zombieland (especially Bill Murray‘s self-portraying cameo). But it opened ten years ago, man. What does Zombieland: Double Tap (Columbia, 10.18) feel like? Honestly? Like a harmless but toothless generic rehash. You can’t just remake the original with cosmetic changes — you have to introduce a new idea or two. Even if you’re making a sure commercial bet, you have to be bold. And that doesn’t mean throwing in an unexpected twist, which any jerkwad can do.
With this morning’s announcement of the 2019 Venice Film Festival slate plus last Tuesday’s Toronto announcements, a good portion of the Telluride rundown looks like this **:
Ford v Ferrari, d: James Mangold
Judy, d: Rupert Goold
Uncut Gems, d: The Safdies
Motherless Brooklyn, d: Edward Norton
The Truth, d: Kore-eda
Ad Astra, d: James Gray
Wasp Network, d: Olivier Assayas
The Two Popes, d: Fernando Mereilles
Portrait of a Lady on Fire, d: Celine Sciamma
Pain and Glory, d: Pedro Almodovar
Parasite, d: Bong Joon-ho
Varda by Agnes, d: Agnes Varda
Definitely not going to Telluride:
Jojo Rabbit, The Goldfinch, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, The Laundromat, Harriet, The Personal History of David Copperfield.
Venice Competition:
The Truth, d: Hirokazu Kore-eda
The Perfect Candidate, d: Haifaa Al-Mansour
About Endlessness, d: Roy Andersson
Wasp Network, d: Olivier Assayas
Marriage Story, d: Noah Baumbach
Guest of Honor, d: Atom Egoyan
Ad Astra, d: James Gray
A Herdade, d: Tiago Guedes
Gloria Mundi, d: Robert Guediguian
Waiting for the Barbarians, d: Ciro Guerra
Ema, d: Pablo Larrain
Saturday Fiction, d: Lou Ye
Martin Eden, d: Pietro Marcello
The Mafia Is No Longer What It Used to Be, d: Franco Maresco
The Painted Bird, d: Vaclav Marhoul
The Mayor of the Rione Sanità, d: Mario Martone
Babyteeth, d: Shannon Murphy
Joker, d: Todd Phillips
An Officer and a Spy, d: Roman Polanski
The Laundromat, d: Steven Soderbergh
No. 7 Cherry Lane, d: Yonfan
Out of Competition – Fiction:
Seberg, d: Benedict Andrews
Adults in the Room, d: Costa-Gavras
The King, d: David Michod
Tutto Il Mio Folle Amore, d: Gabriele Salvatores
Out of Competition – Special Screenings
The New Pope, d: Paolo Sorrentino
Never Just a Dream: Stanley Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut, d: Matt Wells
** per calculations from World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy.
28 years ago James Cameron‘s T2: Judgment Day delivered a classic high-velocity action sequence, set in a Los Angeles riverbed of concrete and chain-link fences, punctuated by shotgun blasts and physics-defying vehicle leaps. Robert Patrick‘s T-1000 in a sheared-off truck cab vs. Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Terminator-on-a-Harley with Eddie Furlong hanging on for dear life. The action pushed the limits of natural law but audiences bought it because it was cyborg vs. cyborg.
In a just-posted trailer for Ang Lee‘s Gemini Man (and specifically between the :04 and :10 mark), there’s a vaguely similar high-speed sequence involving Will Smith‘s Henry Brogen vs. Smith’s “Junior” (i.e., himself as a young man), both on motorcycles and firing weapons at each other. What happens to Junior defies any standard of half-assed credulity, of course — action films have become increasingly hostile to the laws of physics over the last 20-plus years — and this time there’s no cyborg exception. The two Brogens might as well be in a Road Runner vs. Coyote cartoon.
The fact is that CG bullshit is detectable in every standout action moment in the Gemini Man trailer. It goes without saying that Ang Lee is no second-tier genre hack. He’s a serious, grade-A filmmaker, and it follows that I’d like very much to believe in each and every aspect of this visually ambitious thriller. But the trailer is telling me that’s not in the cards.