Morbid obesity is just another way of living, eating, enduring, being, suffering. Revolutionary, balls-to-the-wall cinematic maestro Darren Aronofsky opened my heart, showed me the way. (Digital Fraser-esque makeover by “Zak.”)
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Rise up enmasse like the gladiators in Capua, kill the Roman guards, strike terror in the hearts of your captors…and if they try to make you cower and shudder like you’ve been doing since ‘17 or thereabouts, tell them “sorry, buster but the ball game’s over…the sensibles are taking control and the woke wackos are on the run.”
Lila Neugebauer and Jennifer Lawrence‘s Causeway (Apple, theatrical + streaming), is an extremely solemn, snail-paced, drip-drip recovery drama.
Lawrence is Lynsey, a gay U.S. soldier who suffered brain damage during a recent tour in Afghanistan. I saw it last night, and although the running time is 92 minutes it felt like two hours, minimum.
Lawrence is believably plain, but the performance by costar Brian Tyree Henry struck me as actorish and inauthentic.
Supporting players Linda Emond, Jayne Houdyshell, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Fred Weller are good enough.
Among the Thompson-Jones picks, HE has boldfaced the titles of films that are either actually good or are thought to be genuinely good, and which may seriously deserve Best Picture consideration.
In fact, before picking apart the Thompson-Jones calls, here are ten of HE’s Best Picture projections, mostly based upon the fact that the films are (or in some cases are presumed to be) actually good and/or held in high esteem, and therefore deserving of a BP nomination. These are not political predictions as much as judgment calls:
1. The Fabelmans
2. TÁR
3. Top Gun: Maverick
4. Avatar: The Way of Water
5. Babylon
6. Empire of Light
7. She Said
8. Armageddon Time
9. Bardo
10. Close
Thompson-Jones reactions: The letters UL (as in “unfortunately likely”) appear next to films that aren’t good enough but will probably be be nominated anyway. The letters NH (as in “not happening”) appear next to films that haven’t much of an emotional or political prayer. The words FORGET IT are placed next to titles which HE regards as absurd and/or ridiculous in this context.
Frontrunners:
The Banshees of Inisherin / UL Black Panther: Wakanda Forever / FORGET IT Elvis / UL Everything Everywhere All at Once / / UL The Fabelmans Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio / ANIMATION TÁR Top Gun: Maverick The Woman King / FORGET IT Women Talking / NH
We all understand that Brendan Fraser's performance as the 600-pound "Charlie" in Darren Aronofsky's The Whale (A24, 12.9) is going to result in a Best Actor Oscar nomination, and perhaps even a win.
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Whenever someone passes at too young an age or due to some tragic mishap or a stroke of bad luck, someone always says that the recently departed “loved life.” Which I would call a nice but imprecise sentiment. It’s so vague it’s almost meaningless.
HE’s definition of a lover of life would be the Kinks guy who loves living adjacent to Waterloo Station.
I’m actually a lover of the splendor and symphony of all great European train stations. Ditto the great cities and towns — Paris, Rome, Munich, Hanoi, Hoi An, Milan, Prague, Venice, Arcos de la Frontera, Caye Caulker, portions of Key West, the Berkshires, Monument Valley, Lauterbrunnen — and the tens of thousands of beautiful pastoral vistas all over.
Ditto my cats, my granddaughter Sutton and her parents Jett and Cait and Sutton’s UncleDylan, black Volvo wagons, BMW rumblehogs, heavy leather jackets, Indian or Italian dishes, vinyl record albums, cookies & cream gelato, Italian suede lace-ups, etc.
The only negative that comes to mind amidst all this joy and nurture and rapture, the only aspect of life on planet earth that I consistently have problems with and which generally darkens my worldview are…well, people. Not everyone, of course. The majority are fine. I can just can’t with the three-toed sloths.