…that anyone who buys a 4K Bluray of Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey (‘99) is, to put it as mildly as possible, hardcore. I know this film backwards and forwards and have watched it at least 10 or 12 times, and I can’t imagine that any kind of 4K “bump” will be apparent. I just wanted the 4K to have and to hold —- a keepsake. I’ll watch it later this evening.
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert‘s Everything Everywhere All At Once (A24) opened on 3.25.22. It took me nearly six months to finally watch this sucker and get my royal HE hate on — “Frequent Agonies of Everything Everywhere” appeared on 8.6.22. And now, two-thirds of a year after opening, Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman has seen it and shat on it.
Quote #1: “Indeed, just by accident, I wound up discussing [Everything Everywhere] with two pretty solid Academy voters. Their response? ‘We turned it off, and there was good stuff there.'”
Quote #2: The visuals are dazzling, but are put together with some form of ADHD. If there’s a story in the alternate universe, I couldn’t figure it out. This is a comic book movie pretending to be something else — maybe Cloud Atlas, but that movie didn’t work either.”
Quote #3: “So how did this adventure in tediousness make $60 million? It is really a big cult film. The comic book stuff is what sold it to a certain audience, which is fine.”
If Everything Everywhere All At Once was a person napping on a couch in a living room, I would take off my shoes, sneak up and suffocate it with a throw pillow.
[Initially posted on 9.24.20] A couple of days ago screenwriter Daniel Waters asked followers to post four or five films that they deeply admire or feel guilty-pleasure pangs for, but which are generally regarded as insufficiently loved.
Five films, in short, that the hoi polloi never seemed to care very much for (or never knew much about or have forgotten) but which you privately swear by.
Five years ago I posted a list of HE’s 160 greatest all-time films , but none apply here because each is loved and respected. We’re talking lone-wolf, off-in-the-corner films. So here are five…make it six picks:
Sandra Nettlebeck‘s Mostly Martha (’01). Probably the greatest sensual foodie + unlikely love affair flick I’ve ever seen. Martina Gedeck and Sergio Castellitto‘s lead performances are perfection. Scott Hicks‘ No Reservations, an American remake costarring Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhart, missed the mark.
John Flynn‘s The Outfit (’73). A classic hard-boiled revenge film, lean and blunt and crafted in the tradition of Point Blank. Outside of noir cultists and film bums, few have paid much attention. Robert Duvall, Karen Black, Joe Don Baker, Joanna Cassidy and Robert Ryan.
Bob Rafelson‘s Stay Hungry (’76). Love, character, destiny, Southern culture and body-building. Charming, low-key, funny. Arguably contains the most winning Arnold Schwarzenegger performance ever. Definitely my all-time favorite Jeff Bridges film. Sally Field, R.G. Armstrong, Robert Englund, Helena Kallianiotes.
Frank Perry and Thomas McGuane‘s Rancho Deluxe (’75). Another Jeff Bridges film about destiny and character, this time by way of Montana cattle rustling. Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Bright played Curt and Burt, and of course their names are a running gag. Not a lot of narrative urgency, but that’s also the charm of it.
Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero (’73). One of the best redneck flicks ever. Yes, Bridges again. The story of racecar driver Junior Johnson, called Elroy Jackson in the film. Based on Tom Wolfe‘s Esquire piece titled “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson…Yes!”.
Susanne Bier‘s Things We Lost In The Fire (’07). My all-time favorite film about drug addiction, containing my favorite Benicio del Toro performance. Fans were few and far between when it opened in ’07, but I was instantly sold. Alone but hooked,
I half-liked the first John Wick flick, but I hated the two that followed. I might watch John Wick: Chapter 4 (Lionsgate, 3.24.23) because of the locations — Paris, Berlin (including Studio Babelsburg sound stage interiors), osaka and Lawrence of Arabia‘s Wadi Rum.
I’ve just finished reading the delicious opening chapter of Quentin Tarantino‘s “Cinema Speculation.” It’s called “Little Q Watching Big Movies,” and it has a great recollection of what it was like for seven-year-old Quentin to watch John Avildsen‘s Joe (’70), and especially how audiences loved Peter Boyle’s titular character — not loved by way of admiration, but because Joe, low-rent doofus that he was, occasionally expressed popular rage about this and that cultural issue.
I’m going to post a chapter excerpt but first a Boyle obit that I posted a day after his passing on 12.12.06 — nearly 16 years ago.
“Thanks to reader Tommy Matolla for sending along a photo of Peter Boyle as campaign manager Marvin Lucas in Michael Ritchie‘s The Candidate (1972) — my all-time favorite Boyle performance.
“When I heard of Boyle’s passing this morning I thought immediately of how superbly on-target he was as the guy who managed, manipulated and mind-fucked Bill McKay (Robert Redford) in his California campaign for the U.S. Senate. Well-mannered and nicely dressed in a trimmed beard and glasses, Lucas was a sly politico with a cynical heart and a whatever-works attitude, and Boyle’s air of witty refinement surprised a lot of people given his then-current rep as a thuggish meathead type — due, of course, to his breakout performance in John Avildsen‘s Joe (’70), in which he played a hippie-hating blue-collar oaf.
“And yet Boyle also portrayed Lucas with a subtle (and in my view, quietly hilarious) comedic edge. He delivers each line with total sincerity (as far as it goes) but at the same time lets the audience know that Boyle knows that Lucas is partly a practical pro with a job to do, and partly a user-faker. It was this performance, I think, that made people realize he was much more than a one-trick pony. On top of which few seemed to understand when it first opened that The Candidate was a very dry comedy — every scene has an oblique comic thrust.
98% of the public thought of Boyle as the cantankerous Frank Barone in Everybody Loves Raymond, which ran from ’96 to ’05 (while providing Boyle with much financial comfort) but his glory period was from ’70 to ’76: Joe, The Candidate, Steelyard Blues (another hilarious turn), The Friends of Eddie Coyle (as a sinister Boston bartender who handled the hit on Robert Mitchum), Mel Brooks‘ Young Frankenstein (his legendary performance as a randy, tap-dancing, Wall Street Journal-reading monster with a huge schtufenhaufer) and lastly Martin Scorsese‘s Taxi Driver (in which Boyle played Wizard, the loutish, know-it-all cabbie).
He had a good career after this run, but the quality of roles and films for the last 30 years were touch and go. Boyle’s last solid performance in a first-rate feature film was in Marc Forster‘s Monster’s Ball, in which he played Billy Bob Thornton‘s racist father.
In the summer of ’70 or ’71 a guy I used to know ran into Boyle one night at an outdoor bar on the grounds of the Tanglewood Music Festival. After a couple of pleasantries he offered Boyle a freshly-poured brew and said, “Have a Budweiser, king of beers!” — one of the signature lines from Joe. I don’t remember if Boyle accepted it or not, but as he walked off he said to my friend (or so I was told), “Thanks, kid — you’re all right.”
Quentin on Joe and Boyle (and please excuse the two blurry pages….infuriating):
I thought that Rep. Lauren Boebert, the Trump-embracing, pistol-packing Colorado reptile, was down for the count. Alas, she might squeak through.
From Vox’s Li Zhou, posted on 11.9:
