We can assume that “not suitable for general exhibition” was roughly equivalent to what an R rating means today. (Or used to mean). What in Casablanca could have given moral guardians this level of concern? Probably the allusion to sexual relations outside the bonds of marriage between Richard Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). What else could it be?
Danielle Deadwyler’s performance as the late Emmet Till’s grieving mom was seen this morning by NYFF press…
I’ve seen two-thirds of The U.S. and the Holocaust, the six-hour Ken Burns doc that focuses on anti-Semitism in this country during the 1930s and ’40s. It’s a stunning indictment of the way this country used to be, or certainly the way it used to think. And of course, it stirs thoughts of other forms of racial and ethnic prejudice that have permeated U.S. society since the Eisenhower era. I can honestly say that these four hours made me more fully aware of the degree of heartlessness in this country between 75 and 90 years ago. You sit there and listen to Peter Coyote‘s narration and you just feel more and more numb and forlorn. I’ll watch Part 3 sometime this weekend.
With The Association‘s “Cherish” being used prominently in the The Greatest Beer Run Ever, I’m reminded of how this mid-to-late ’60s pop group didn’t fit the mold. ’60s pop groups had to have reasonably good-looking guys — that was the standard set by the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, The Dave Clark Five, etc.
And then along came The Association — a six member group that had two handsome guys and four with the oddest, most homely-looking faces in pop-music history.
The dorkiest was Terry Kirkman, who could have been cast as a college-aged serial killer. Next came Larry Ramos (died in 2014 at age 72), a chubby guy who looked like a typical member of an A.V. Squad. The thick-featured Brian Cole (who passed in ’72 at age 30) looked like a bouncer or a rugby player. Russ Giguere was semi-presentable but couldn’t pass the dishy-pop-star test — too geeky, granny glasses, thin moustache.
Jim Yester and Ted Bluechel were the only ones you could honestly call “good looking.”
Note: I posted something similar three or four years ago but I can’t find it.
Ask any half-thoughtful person if they feel that the post-#MeToo reputations of Harvey Weinstein and Woody Allen are roughly analogous, and they’ll most likely say “hardly…a single, highly disputable allegation is a far cry from several credible accusations of sexual assault and rape.” The fact is that the association persists only in the minds of certain journalists. Claudia Eller’s just-posted Variety interview with Cannes Film Festival jury president Cate Blanchett is a case in point.
Blanchett’s answer to Eller’s tabloid-attitude question (“Would you ever work again with Weinstein or Allen?”) skillfully sidesteps what she seems to actually think, which is “where’s the legal proof in the Allen pudding?” Remember Blanchett’s response to a similar question from CNN’s Christiane Amanpour a few weeks ago? She said that social media is great for raising “awareness about issues,” but it’s “not the judge and jury,” and that if evidence comes to light that warrants prosecution then a prosecution should result, but if the evidence isn’t there…well, you know, maybe the Robespierres should settle down, take a breath and direct their energies elsewhere.
I have no problem with Rege-Jean Page, the 34 year-old Bridgerton and Gray Man costar, becoming the next James Bond.
Well, maybe I do. I wasn’t knocked out by his one-note Gray Man performance, and Page is kind of slender and small-shouldered and lacks the necessary Sean Connery-like brawn, no? If he were to get into a brutal fight with Robert Shaw aboard the Orient Express (Istanbul to Venice), nobody but nobody would bet on him winning. He’s a bit willowy.
Just for the pure euphoria of it, I would love it if they write the next Bond so he’s not in touch with his delicate inner feelings, but would regress into a courtly, well-educated, Connery-like hound. Connery’s Bond was polite and deferential with women, but he was also a caddish, semi-entitled, self-amused sexist swaggerer. Which is what everyone liked that about him.
A friend says “alpha men can’t be eliminated from film or film will die” — it’s that simple.
Honestly? I say put aside the idea of a BIPOC James Bond and cast Jake Picking. You can dismiss the idea but Picking has the goods — 31, good-looking, muscular, big-chested, nice jawline. All he lacks in the British accent, but that can be learned.
And may I say one other thing? The last time I checked James Bond was dead — killed by British missiles at the end of No Time To Die. I realize that at the end of the credit crawl it didn’t say “007 will be back” but that “James Bond will return.” Which made no sense, of course. How would that work unless the Bond films are going to become period pieces, set in the ’60s or ’70s or whatever? What’s the point of killing a franchise figurehead if you’re just going to bring the character back in a couple of years, like nothing ever happened?
In mid 1967, an under-educated, under-achieving alcoholic moron (Zac Efron‘s “Chickie” Donohue) from a Manhattan working-class neighborhood foolishly decides to use his Merchant Marine credentials to travel to war-engulfed Vietnam in order to give beer hugs to his military-serving buddies, but gradually has his eyes opened to the real-life horror and particularly the bullshit that LBJ and General Westmoreland have been leaning upon to justify it.
At the end he returns to his home in Inwood, New York, with a somewhat more mature attitude — “less drinking and more thinking.”
Will someone please tell me what’s so awful about a movie that tells that more or less fact-based story? Particularly if the film in question delivers decent performances, reasonably convincing dialogue, tight pacing, semi-realistic depictions of combat and one absolutely killer line of dialogue?
Here it is: Somewhere in a jungle hell-hole Donohue is about to leave a landing zone on a helicopter, and one of his anxious and exhausted G.I. buddies is regarding him with concern. A fellow grunt notices and says, “You don’t have to worry about him. Every once in a while, you’ll run into someone who’s too dumb to get killed.”
Yes, I’ve finally seen Peter Farrelly‘s The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Apple, streaming on 9.30) and it’s a tolerable sit and sometimes better than that. And there’s absolutely no question in my mind that the current aggregate ratings — 44% Rotten Tomatoes, 35% Metacritic — have been motivated by politics and score-settling. For nearly four years the arch-backed film critic cabal has been dying to punish Farrelly for Green Book having won the Best Picture Oscar three and a half years ago, and now they’re sticking it to him with relish, and to Beer Run for fun.
I’m saying this because I know (i.e., not guessing) that in a fair and just world, Beer Run would be averaging so-so or not-bad scores. Scores that say “this movie has a couple of problems, okay, but not lethal ones…it may not be good enough to be raved about, but it’s a decent try and a moderately passable in-and-outer. In HE’s mind it’s a solid ground-rule double, and in baseball that’s a totally respectable thing. You didn’t whiff or pop out, and you’re in a position to score if the next guy slams a single. But in movies if you don’t hit a homer or a triple, you’ve somehow failed.
A majority of critics are saying Farrelly has struck out or been thrown out at first, and they’re just not being fair or honest. They’re basically saying “because this film isn’t as authentic as it could have been in some respects, and because it isn’t political-minded in a way that we’d prefer and because of two or three aesthetic choices that we disapprove of, and because most of us have been dying to take Farrelly down anyway…for all these reasons we’re going to do our best to kill Beer Run.
“Some of you will pay to see it and find it a decent enough thing, and we don’t care about that. We’re writing from within the social-political membrane of an elite cabal and that’s all your going to get from us…elite cabal viewpoints.”
This is the value of myself and Hollywood Elsewhere — a site that occasionally has the character and the courage to say that a film achieving a level of ground-rule double accomplishment is nothing to be ashamed of, and is certainly nothing to trash or urinate upon. The Greatest Beer Run is what it is, and I know it’s a decent (and sometimes better-than-decent) thing as far as it goes.
I absolutely approved of the central arc or journey of the story, which I summarized above. And yet I gradually understood more and more that, to paraphrase Richard Masur in Risky Business, it’s not quite good enough to be called Ivy League. It might’ve worked but it didn’t quite get there. Perhaps the scope was too vast — a spotty but sprawling Apocalypse Now-ish war flick with a civilian perspective — and it simply exceeded Farrelly’s grasp. Which is nothing to be ashamed of as he clearly tried like hell. And like I’ve said two or three times, a few portions hit the mark, and now and then it surprises you.
I was definitely surprised by Farrelly’s decision to play “Cherish,” the 1966 Association song, on the soundtrack as a suspected Vietcong collaborator is brutally murdered. The song has been set up earlier in the film when Chickie tells his barroom buds that he really likes it, but at the same time a viewer will have to admit that “Cherish” is one hell of a counterpoint, given what’s being depicted.
Late yesterday afternoon I caught Manhattan’s first commercial screening of Peter Farrelly’s The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Apple, 9.30 streaming). It happened at 5 pm on the top floor of Union Square’s Regal plex, and I almost died from watching all the crap-level trailers. (The Black Adam is especially toxic.)
This isn’t about the film (my review will appear later this morning) but about a mentally disturbed guy who talked loudly throughout the entire film. To himself.
Nobody said or did anything to influence the behavior of this horse’s-ass-who-was-off-his-meds, myself included. I should’ve manned up and walked over and offered my usual usual —“due respect, bruh, but would you please shut the fuck up?” But an instinct told me that this erudite 30something skull-capped gentleman might be the hair-trigger type. So I sat there and took it.
Thank you, Regal management. I paid thirty-six bills (including medium-size popcorn and a “small” half-quart-sized drink) to have my Greatest Beer Run experience interfered with by a muscle-bound, brain-scrambled psychopath.