“I’m an LGBTQ ally, [and I’m] sorry, truly sorry that I didn’t consider the hurt this would cause, and the DEPTH of that hurt” — from Patton Oswalt‘s apology to the trans community for having tweeted or Instagrammed a photo of himself and Dave Chappelle, whom he’s been chummy with for 34 years.
Like howling mountain gorillas, the gentle and loving trans community jumped all over Patton for this. Let this be a warning to any and all performers or showbiz types who’ve been friendly with Chappelle in the recent past, or who would like to show affection for him in the future. We will pound your ass into pulp so don’t even THINK about it, bitch.
In short, it would appear that the elimination of over 200 verified audience ratings resulted in the higher score. Maybe my calculation is somehow incorrect; I’ve certainly never claimed to be a master statistician.
We’re all accustomed to deepfake tech, and we all know what the game is. I would have honestly been intrigued if Nicole Kidman‘s entire Lucille Ball performance in Being The Ricardos had been deepfaked. I know what the response is — deepfakes are okay for YouTube on laptop and smartphone screens, but the digital seams would show in a theatrical format. I might’ve bought that rationale five or six years ago, but I have my doubts in 2022.
Four months ago Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Lost Daughter played Telluride, and I missed every showing. Weeks and then months passed. I finally caught it last night on Netflix. I was vaguely afraid it would be some kind of opaque feminist downer, but it’s not.
The Lost Daughter is a visually agile, nicely edited, well-detailed grabber, and nothing if not emotionally and psychologically complex (if a bit curious). It’s more than competently directed and certainly well written by Gyllenhaal, who adapted Elena Ferrante’s source novel. It’s one of the best films by a first-timer I’ve ever seen. Hats off.
The core subject is that some aren’t cut out for parenting. Yes, including some moms. Some are simply too selfish or neurotic or sex-starved, or too irked by the endless demands of young children. Some are consumed by artistic visions of one kind or another.
Olivia Colman‘s Leda Caruso, a 50ish professor vacationing on the Greek island of Spetses, is one such mom. She has two daughters in their mid 20s, but it’s clear they haven’t a great deal of rapport with her. Leda wasn’t much for it when they were younger (the 20something Leda is played by Jessie Buckley) and her recollections of that time are stirred by watching young Nina (Dakota Johnson) and her temperamental three-year-old daughter, Elena.
Leda is a bit testy and distant at first, but she and Nina, who has married into a large and somewhat overbearing family, become friendly in a cautious sort of way.
Semi-spoiler: The story-tension aspect is driven by a very strange and perverse thing that Leda does early on. It’s selfish and sociopathic, but also tied into memories of her own young motherhood and the frustrations she felt saddled with.
25 years ago I wrote the following about One Fine Day, the George Clooney-Michelle Pfeiffer parent romcom: “Raising kids can be exhausting, at times even soul-draining…we all know this.”
Joni Mitchell couldn’t hack it — couldn’t surrender to mothering because she had so much in the way of poetry and songwriting inside her, so much raw material to pull out and shape and hone.
When I was 14 or 15 I recall being told by a good friend of my mother’s that “kids are a pain in the neck sometimes, and sometimes we need to escape that…if we’re honest with each other we admit this.”
When my father became an AA guy and was looking to confess his failings to those he’d hurt, he told me he was sorry but was never cut out for parenting. Not everyone is. I heard him, forgave him.
When Jett and Dylan came along I resolved not to be an aloof dad, and that wasn’t easy given that I had to write all the time. But I decided it would be better to err on the side of emotional closeness and leniency. Maggie, my ex, was the cop; I was the adventurer.
Whether or not you can roll with The Lost Daughter will depend on your ability to understand or at least accept the bad parent pathology that it puts on the plate.
Back in the old days (i.e., before the Ricky Camilleri thought police were patrolling the streets with AK-47s) people were allowed to acknowledge the existence of cliched proletariat Mexican accents when it came to speaking English. You could actually refer to this without getting indicted.
I’m speaking of exaggerated or soft rounded vowels a la Elia Kazan‘s Viva Zapata (’52). In the ’50s and early ’60s Bill Dana made an unfortunate comic career out of this way of speaking, as Mel Blanc had during guest spots on The Jack Benny Show. Jack Palance tried to imitate this with more sincerity when he played Jesus Raza, a peasant Mexican revolutionary, in Richard Brooks‘ The Professionals (’66).
This ultimately led to one of my all-time favorite improvs in a Robert Altman‘s The Long Goodbye — a fast, loose, spur-of-the-moment improv by Elliot Gould‘s Phillip Marlowe.
Marlowe is talking to a couple of officials in a small Mexican town about the death of old friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton ), whom Marlowe has always known deep down to be a chilly taker-user-manipulator. Speaking in the above-referenced Jose Jimenez manner, one of the officials says, “You were acquainted with the deceased?” And Marlowe/Gould says, “The diseased…yeah, right.”
“I’ve experienced 2021 as the worst year for movies in quite a few decades. Perhaps if I seriously combed through the 1980s I might find some that were worse, but I nonetheless felt seriously unrewarded for all the hours I put in watching films that simply didn’t rise to the occasion, including some that found significant critical favor with others.” — from Todd McCarthy’s “It Was The Worst Of Times Off And Onscreen In 2021,” Deadline-posted on 12.30.21.
Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog — subtly rendered, expertly crafted, relentlessly downish — is the leader, having appeared on 243 lists and listed as #1 on 40 of them.
The runners-up (second through fifth place) are Drive My Car (sensitive three-hour grief monkey film), Licorice Pizza (amiable, meandering), Dune (sand in my lungs) and West Side Story (alive and pulsing). The next five are The Green Knight (pure moisture torture), Summer of Soul (found footage), Pig (quite grim but soulfully so), Titane (metallically perverse) and The French Dispatch (exquisitely composed but infuriating)…good God!
Leos Carax‘s Annette, easily the most hateful film of 2021 and one of the most agonizing sits of my entire life, appeared on 76 Best of the Year critics lists, and was listed as #1 on 7 of them. Think about that.
Hollywood Elsewhere has a certain handicap in this regard. Unlike many critics***, I tend to favor absorbing, well-contoured films about recognizable human beings that reflect (am I allowed to say this?) some aspect of the actual human experience as most of us live it on the planet earth, and so I ended up with the following top 15: King Richard, Parallel Mothers, West Side Story, Spider-Man: No Way Home (because of the final hour), The Worst Person in the World, A Hero, Riders of Justice, No Time To Die, The Beatles: Get Back, Zola, Cyrano, Licorice Pizza, The Card Counter (willfully ignoring the Tiffany Haddish diminishment factor), In The Heights and The Last Duel.
Yes, it’s reassuring that 62% of voters would rather see Donald Trump go away and never return and perhaps even die soon. There’s nonetheless a small but significant percentage (presumably including your MTG and Lauren Boebert followers) that wants a fascistic, anti-democratic dictatorship.
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Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account is history for posting Covid falsehoods, resulting in five “strikes.” But to stay in business, so to speak, she simply has to use her official Congressional account, @RepMTG. So all is relatively well from her perspective. She soldiers on.
It’s not a factor as far as vaccines are concerned. Because a shitload of people are getting infected regardless of vax status. And once they have it they’re merely besieged with fatigue, a cough and a head cold for three or four days, and they’re gifted with a serious state of immunity in its wake. So it “counts”, yes, but it’s not governed or influenced by vaccination rates. It’s actually a “good” thing, except for those with weak constitutions.
