Month: January 2022

I’m not saying that exploratory, real-world, adult-level filmmaking has disappeared altogether. It pops up on rare occasions — Parallel Mothers, King Richard, The Lost Daughter, Drive My Car, The Worst Person in the World, Riders of Justice, Zola, Licorice Pizza, The Card Counter. It just seems that so many films are woke instructionals — movies that seek to educate audiences about how things shouldn’t be and where our brave and gleaming future lies, and how things should have been in the past (i.e., presentism).

Woke Stalinism hasn’t entirely taken over the streaming narrative art form (i.e., movies), but it’s certainly changed the game. The basic idea is to instruct the general population how to think and behave. It’s 1930s social realism with a 21st Century spin. Movies are no longer for the most part about entertainment or transportation or soul-massaging — they’re about lessons from the comintern.

The Power of the Dog instructs all macho stinky gay guys to own their lives and bodies and not devote themselves to making the lives of others so miserable. The Tender Bar instructs us to disregard the fact that young lads who resemble a Jordanian version of a tweener Omar Sharif can easily and naturally grow up to look like Tye Sheridan, or at least that it’s more important to pretend this could happen than to acknowledge biological reality. (While concurrently instructing all film critics to not even mention this aspect of the film, if they know what’s good for them.) Belfast tells us to smile and bask in the warmth of the family unit and the joys of puppy love and karaoke-style singing. (And not so much about “the troubles”, especially considering that Kenneth Branagh‘s childhood family members are Protestant and therefore somewhat loyal to the British.) The found footage of Summer of Soul instructs us to celebrate African-American culture and the joy of great thumpin’ and crankin’ and wailin’ (including the sounds of the legendary Sly and the Family Stone), and to remind industry and press veterans that if they fail to nominate Summer of Soul for Best Documentary then they might be racists, and might therefore have to face appropriate penalties for same.

Posted on 3.22.21: “The bottom line is that the erratic pursuit of sweeping, penetrating, soul-touching art (a rare achievement but one that has occasionally manifested over the decades) has been more or less called off, it seems, because such films or aspirations, in the view of certain #MeToo and multi-cultural progressives, don’t serve the current woke-political narrative.

“There is, in fact, a historical precedent for what’s going on right now, and it’s nicely recounted on page 30 and 31 of Tom Wolfe‘s “The Painted Word“. Because what happened in the modern art world in the 1930s — i.e, the dominance of “social realism” — precisely mirrors what’s going on today.

“For upscale, sensitive-person, social-reflection dramas have fallen under the influence of a new form of ’30s social realism and, it could certainly be argued, are being used to illustrate and argue against social ills that wokesters regard as evil and diseased. The result has been a new form of enlightened propaganda cinema.”

Friendo: “Yellowstone shocked everyone when it turned out to be a huge hit, even though it’s basically hardcore macho men and sexy women. Which is something you never get from movies these days. Everything has been muted, feminized, Stalinized. Putting a female in the lead of a movie like the most recent Terminator…who gives a shit? Wokesters have just spun things out with no real sense of who they are — it’s just ‘knock down the next thing.’ But what they’ve done to film art is crushing, just crushing.”

Jordan Ruimy: “I read your ‘wokeness has taken over American film’ piece (we’ve been saying this since Moonlight / Get Out**). It’s honestly a great reason to just full-on embrace European cinema. They don’t have much wokeness. Cannes and Venice, brah. Very soon our yearly top ten lists will be 90% Euro cinema.”

** HE adds: “And the kowtowing tyranny of Bob Strauss-style critics.”

I always carry around three combs because sooner or later I’ll lose one of them and then I’ll be down to two.

The best kind of comb isn’t too large + has a rubbery, bendable quality. This black comb [below] was perfect — my #1 default. The other two were semi-acceptable but not really — too large, too brittle, one is blue.

Anyway a couple of weeks ago the black comb disappeared. I looked and looked and looked and couldn’t find it — heartbroken. I have five backup combs (right size & bendability) that I keep in a trinket box, but I didn’t want to deplete my reserve. I exhaled and imperceptibly slumped and grumpily resigned myself to the loss of the blackie.

Then this morning I washed and aired out a dark blue couch comforter, and lo and behold blackie re-appeared. It made my day, but this is my life. I lose stuff all the time — combs, chargers, connecting cords. It’s always something. Stressful, anxious, unceasing.

Pretty much the entire cast (significant-name-wise) of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case (‘47), which is partly a courtroom drama but mainly a saga of sexual obsession and unrequited desire that ends in total humiliation. Extremely minor Hitchcock + the Kino Bluray allegedly blows from a perspective of HD quality. Speaking as a Hitchcock completist I’d like to see the Bluray, but something psychological is preventing me. I would rent it in a second, but you can’t.

What needs to be done at this stage in our social-political evolution is an investigation into the possibly racist decisions made by Peter Jackson in the making of his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Why didn’t Jackson anticipate presentism? And why was he so oblivious to the notion of casting actors of color? I don’t want to sound overly scolding or militant, but it might be necessary to haul Jackson before a committee and rake him over the coals.

And why, by the way, couldn’t Denethor (John Noble), Grima Wormtongue (Brad Dourif) and Saruman (Christopher Lee) be gay?

With her wins from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and (today) the National Society of Film Critics, Parallel Mothers‘ Penelope Cruz has now won two major-league Best Actress awards. Plus 13 out of 27 Gold Derby go-along whores have included her among their top-five spitball picks.

HE has never harbored the slightest doubt about the award-worthiness of Cruz’s performance. And yet Cruz isn’t among the six nominees for the Critics Choice Awards Best Actress award. They didn’t even nominate her! And yet it’s been claimed that the CCAs are predictive of the Oscars — sure!

HE also applauds the NSFC’s first-runner-up support of The Worst Person in the World‘s Renate Reinsve (42 votes); ditto handing its Best Supporting Actor trophy to Reinsve’s costar Anders Danielsen Lie (who’s also quite good in Bergman Island).

Otherwise the NSFC went hog-wild for Drive My Car — Best Picture, Best Director (Ryusuke Hamaguchi), Best Actor (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and Best Screenplay (Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe).

Drive My Car is a morose, slow-paced film about coping with grief and long-festering guilt (i.e., the trials and tribulations of grief monkeys). It’s strictly an art-house sauna movie for elite, ivory-tower critics — a respectable effort by any measure, but a movie that resides in its own cave and doesn’t begin to even try to capture or engage with or reflect anything about mainstream life in the years 2020 or ’21. It could have been made in 1957 or ’63 or ’86 or ’92.

NextBestPicture‘s Matt Neglia recently had the temerity to suggest that Drive My Car, having won Best Picture trophies from NSFC, LAFCA and the NYFCC, is cut from the same cloth as Goodfellas, Schindler’s List, L.A. Confidential, The Hurt Locker, The Social Network and Spotlight. Neglia is one of those film nerd types who lives on his own planet, or, if you will, inside his own rectum. There’s no reasoning with guys like this.

Every year Hollywood Elsewhere subjects the leading Best Picture contenders to the Howard Hawks measuring stick. The legendary director is famed for having said that a good movie (or a formidable Oscar seeker) always has “three great scenes and no bad ones.”

Hawks also defined a good director as “someone who doesn’t annoy you.” I wouldn’t want to sound unduly harsh or dismissive but I’m afraid that Kenneth Branagh‘s direction of certain portions of Belfast and particularly his decision to open with that vibrantly colorful prologue…’nuff said.

How do the leading 2021 Best Picture contender films (numbering nine) rate on the Hawks chart? Here we go…

Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog: I’m sorry but despite the fine performances, the feeling of 1920s open-range authenticity, handsome visual compositions and carefully-honed pacing, this 126-minute film has no great scenes. There are a few intriguing moments, but none I would even begin to call highly impactful, much less “great.” You keep waiting for a killer scene (or two or three) to arrive, but it never does. Dog is more about the overall than this or that peak moment.

Reinaldo Marcus Green, Will Smith and Zach Baylin‘s King Richard: I could go on and on, but this 2021 Warner Bros. sports drama has more than a trio of stick-to-your-ribs scenes. One, the persistent Richard (Smith) persuades elite tennis coach Paul Cohen (Tony Gpldwyn) to check out Venus and Serena’s exceptional skills, and within a couple of minutes Cohen gets it. (“You taught ’em this?”) Two, Richard takes offense when Andy Bean‘s Laird Stabler, a colleague of the cigar-smoking Will Hodges (Dylan McDermott), tells him he’s done “an amazing job” in training his daughters. Three, the kitchen argument scene between Richard and wife Orascene (Aunjanue Ellis). There are at least two or three others (the Oakland tennis match finale, Richard comes perilously close to shooting a Compton gangsta, refusing the initial endorsement deal, etc.).

Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast. Again, a few diverting scenes but none that could be called outstanding or great. Branagh’s real-life dad may have been an appealing crooner who could dance fairly well, but Jamie Dornan‘s singing and dancing scene struck me as cloying and insincere and untrustworthy. It therefore qualifies, no offense, as a “bad” scene.

Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story. One, the opening shot of tear-down rubble and ruination on San Juan Hill, and how that feeds into the brilliant “Jets Song” sequence. Two, Corey Stall‘s dismissive rant about how the Jets represent the “can’t make it and haven’t moved to Long Island” crowd, and that in a very short while high-rise luxury apartment buildings will be hiring Puerto Rican door men, etc. Three, the neighborhood Scherzo sequence as Maria tries to make it seem as if she’s slept all night in her bedroom. If these aren’t great scenes they’re certainly damn good ones.

Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Licorice Pizza has one great scene — the finale in which Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman finally embrace like they mean it. Otherwise the film is a bit spotty and meandering, but I respect the courage that Anderson showed when he included those two scenes involving John Michael Higgins‘ Jerry Frick and his two (i.e., successive) Japanese wives. Anderson knows the climqte out there, and had to realize that wokesters would come after the film for engaging in what some regard as crude racial stereotyping. But Anderson kept it in, partly because he was drawing on his own SFV experience and partly because he doesn’t believe in presentism, or so it seems.

Denis Villenueve‘s Dune. A captivating visual scheme and impressive production design elements do not, in and of themselves, constitute what anyone would call great cinema. Okay, perhaps on an overall aesthetic sweep basis but certainly not in terms of this or that scene.

Sian Heder‘s CODA has two appealing supporting performances (Troy Kotsur‘s randy dad, Eugenio Derbez‘s singing tutor), but no exceptional scenes per se, and certainly no great ones.

Joel Coen‘s The Tragedy gf Macbeth boasts excellent performances (Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Alex Hassell, Kathryn Hunter) and of course an impressionistic sound-stage environment blended with the classic Shakespeare text. At the same time I can’t honestly think of any particularly great scenes in the Hawks sense of the term. It’s an honorable film at the end of the day, certainly, but there’s no ducking the fact that it’s far less of an undertaking than Roman Polanski‘s 1971 version.

Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Lost Daughter falls more under the heading of “highly respectable, especially coming from a first-time director” than “a film which contains three great scenes and no bad ones.” Honestly? The scene in which Ed Harris visits Olivia Colman in her condo but doesn’t say boo about the doll lying on the patio table, except to note that it has water inside it. The missing doll is a huge thing on the island (reward money, posters stapled to trees) so Harris’s curious indifference to Colman being a doll thief is an odd call — I think it’s fair to argue that its a “bad” scene.

In sum, the only Hawks finalists are King Richard and West Side Story.

An eight-episode limited series about Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s infamous, illegally obtained sex tape, which they were stupid enough to record and perform for in the first place?

A better title would have been Farewell, Our Dignity. Not just Pam and Tommy’s but everyone’s. We’re all dogs in the dirt.

Posted on 6.7.12: Whether in Prague. Cannes. Hanoi** or Rome, I have my New York attitude about crossing streets. If traffic is heavy and somewhat aggressive then don’t be an idiot. But if you can make it across a street without getting clipped or causing anyone to slam on their brakes, fine. If a car stops to let you cross, fine. If nobody stops and you have to duck and weave and dodge like a rabbit, fine.

I don’t expect traffic laws to protect me because some people are nuts when they drive. I’ll take what comes, play what’s dealt. For I am lithe like a cat plus I tread the line between truth and insult like a mountain goat. And when you know that, nothing else matters.

** Crossing busy streets in Hanoi is actually a whole different deal. You just have to trust drivers not to hit you. Ignore the traffic…just inch your way across. Go slowly, keep a close watch, but keep moving and don’t worry about being hit.

Posted by HE comment-threader “Kit Latura”: “I wish more pedestrians had Jeff’s attitude about this. More specifically, I wish ANY PEDESTRIAN in Los Angeles would have a shred of awareness that “pedestrians have the right of way” doesn’t mean “slow down to a turtle’s pace and make a line of seven cars miss their fucking light so your otherwise active Angeleno ass can walk like a slow-ass JUST to piss off the cars.” Because LA pedestrians ABSOLUTELY do this. They’re just DARING someone to get out of their car and shoot them.”

Two out of the three redneck bumblefucks convicted in the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial — Travis McMichael, 35, and his father Gregory McMichael, 66 — will live out the rest of their lives behind bars without a possibility of parole. 52 year-old William Bryan, the third guilty guy who took the video of the shooting, will be eligible for parole after 30 years, or when he’s 82.

Congratulations to IndieWire‘s Zack Sharf, an obedient soldier for the woke brigade, getting hired as Variety‘s digital news director.

At IndieWire Sharf posted anything and everything that might hurt the Oscar chances of Green Book…didn’t work out!

In August 2018 Sharf jumped into that totally moronic, p.c.-inflamed Good Boys controversy after TMZ posted photos of a stand-in for 11-year-old Keith Williams wearing makeup to darken his skin color. Sharf did his best to further inflame things by getting a cinematographer to say that the practice of applying blackface for lighting purposes was “unorthodox.”

In a 5.4.21 interview with Barry Jenkins, Sharf wrote that “Jenkins’ biggest issue with the gaffe all these years later is that it perpetuated a false narrative that Moonlight only won Best Picture because the Academy wanted to honor a Black film.” Spike Lee to Variety, 6.21.17, starting at :37: “The reason why what happened at the Oscars this year [i.e., during the 2.26.17 Oscar telecast, when Moonlight was belatedly announced as the Best Picture Oscar] was because of the year before [with] #OscarsSoWhite. I mean, that was a bad look for the Academy, and they had to switch up with more inclusion, more diversity.”

In a 6.28.21 piece about The Harder They Fall Sharf was so terrified of using the term “Black western” that he wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. In his riff about a new trailer for The Harder They Fall, he went with Netflix’s term — a “new school Western.”

By the way: Sharf wrote in July 2019 that The Lighthouse will be presented “in Academy ratio,” which would mean 1.37:1. In fact the film was presented in 1.19:1 — an aspect ratio introduced in 1926.