In a 5.22 chat with Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro, Armageddon Time director-writer James Gray delivered a neat assessment of the stink factor in mainstream gladiator cinema.

He basically said that CG comic-book spectacle films are systematically draining the poetry, music and gravitas out of the moviegoing experience.

Once in a blue moon a big franchise film will hit the magic button and deliver something transcendent. One example was last December’s SpiderMan: No Way Home, which I said over and over should be Best Picture-nominated. But mostly they don’t do this. Mostly they just make money.

Gray argues that the big studios “should be willing to lose money for a couple of years on art film divisions, and in the end they will be happier.”

In less extremist terms, Gray is suggesting that the big boys should consider reverting to the ’90s and early aughts system in which specialty divisions made smaller films — films that weren’t expected to bring in huge profits but didn’t necessarily lose money. Which means, of course, that above-the-title talent would have to accept lower fees for making these films. (And there’s the rub.)

HE version: The studios should at least be willing to make smarthouse flicks with a reasonable shot at breaking even or becoming modestly profitable.

Francois Truffaut once said that when one of the films produced by his company, Les Films du Carrosse, reached break even he and his colleagues would pop open a bottle of champagne.

#Cannes2022 ‘Armageddon Time’ Director James Gray On Why Studios Should Be Able To Lose Money On Art Specialty Divisions https://t.co/SgodYB80uM pic.twitter.com/Zno5g6uVQz

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) May 22, 2022

Brett Morgan‘s David Bowie doc seems innately exciting (and how could it not be?); Park Chan-Wook‘s Decision to Leave looks and sounds exactly like a PCW film. Those actors generating those oppressive actorish expressions…God!

Come hell or high water, Hollywood Elsewhere intends to see the following films today (Monday, 5.23): (a) Park Chan- Wook‘s Decision to Leave (Salle Debussy, 4:30 pm); (b) David Cronenberg‘s Crimes of the Future (Salle Debussy, 9:45 pm), and (c) Brett Morgen‘s Moonage Daydream (David Bowie doc, 12 midnight, Grand Lumiere).

Don’t kid yourself — Park Chan-Wook has always been a high-style genre wallower. I was willing to play along with Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, but Stoker is where I drew the line and said “all right, that’s it!…no more!” By the time The Handmaiden came along I was too alienated to respond.

For years I’ve been hoping that PCW would stop playing to the gallery (i.e., sensation-mongers, fans of visual-for-visual’s-sake) and cut the shit and calm down and use his considerable skills to make a real, serious-minded adult film. But year in and year out, he’s refused. He’s now 58 years old — what’s he gonna do, change?