Day: November 17, 2022

Can’t Go Home Again

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Bradley Cooper isn’t terse and taciturn enough to play a reanimated Steve McQueen. And let’s not kid ourselves — Cooper won’t be playing a San Francisco cop named Frank Bullitt, who was modelled after the real-life Dave Toschi. He’ll be playing the Great McQueen, of course, and that shit is over and done with and 55 years old.

Cooper’s Bullitt can’t be some sensitive, lily-livered, kind-hearted detective. Moreover Steven Spielberg doesn’t have the courage or the character to direct a movie about a somewhat flinty loner cop who eats TV dinners and doesn’t know from 2022 woke sensibilities. Which is why they should abandon this project right now. Cooper is too sensitive and teary-eyed, and Spielberg doesn’t do hardball genre stuff…hell, he never has. McQueen is dead — leave him alone.

Okay, this could work if Spielberg and screenwriter Josh Singer decide to shoot it as a mid ’60s period thing.

Hyenas

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I saw Rian Johnson‘s Glass Onion (Netflix, 11.23) yesterday morning. The movie is a “game,” and it’s fine. We all know the form — Daniel Craig‘s Benoit Blanc as a 21st century Hercule Poirot, etc. That happens, of course, although Knives Out felt slightly more…uhm, arresting. But the film is diverting enough, especially if you like the idea of woke bastards being hung out to dry.

When Glass Onion was first described it sounded like a Mediterranean companion piece to The Last of Sheila, and it still seems like that.

The well-dressed Craig is somewhere between diverting and approvable. Edward Norton‘s Elon Musk-styled character isn’t as much fun as Norton was in Birdman. Kate Hudson shrieks too often. I kept staring at the weird ripples and fissures on Dave Bautista‘s shaved head. You know going in that Janelle Monáe‘s Cassandra “Andi” Brand character will turn out to be a fearless, steely-eyed angel of justice.

I hate people who laugh loudly at anything and under any circumstance, and so I had a problem with two loud-mouthed women of color who were sitting two rows behind me. They didn’t just laugh at every single thing that could be called vaguely amusing or triggering or whatever — they shrieked their effing heads off. It got so bad that I literally turned around in my seat and stared at the two of them for a full ten seconds. I knew they would ignore me, and of course they did. Nothing was quietly amusing to these two — they screamed and squealed with laughter. Everyone in the damn theatre was flinching.

Thanks, girls — glad you had a good time.

Gore: Hollywood Still Ignoring Joe & Jane Popcorn

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…and still primarily making films for “the mob” — agenda-driven, social media Zellennial types.

Core message: Stop listening to the woke mob.

Is Thelma and Louise a woke movie? Not in my book. I fell in love with that Ridley Scott film when the rasta man blew marijuana smoke into the trunk that the cop was locked inside of.

Zoomer Critique of “The Godfather”

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Go to Sasha Stone’s Instagram page and watch the clip from The White Lotus‘s second season, episode 3:

Bert Di Grasso (played by F. Murray Abraham): “The Godfather is the best American movie ever made.”
Albie Di Grasso (played by Adam DiMarco): “No, it’s not.”
Bert: “No? Why not? I think so.”
Albie: “Well, you would. [Because of] your nostalgia for the salad days of the patriarchy.”
Dominic Di Grasso (played by Michael Imperioli): “They’re undeniably good movies.”
Albie: “The Godfather is a fantasy about a time when men would go out and solve all their problems with violence. And sleep with every woman. And then come home to their wife, and there would not be any questions.”
Bert: “It’s a normal male fantasy.”
Albie: “No. Movies like that socialize men into having that fantasy.”