I watched Tar again a couple of nights ago. This time for the subtitles — every line clear and fine, no breathy muttering or whispers getting in the way. But this time I was bothered by Florian Hoffmeister’s occasionally under-lighted cinematography. I’d expected Todd Field’s film to look a tiny bit sharper or more vivid on the Sony OLED, and it wasn’t. Every shot seemed a shade too dim and subdued, at times even murky. That was it — my patience was at an end. No more reassessments .
Ask any half-knowledgable film fan about a 15 year-old western called The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, and he/she will say “aces, a classic…an art western that put Andrew Dominik on the map.” But critics were divided back in ‘07, and one critic in particular, the grumpy Lou Lumenick of the New York Post, gave it a lousy one-and-a-half stars. I replied that within the critical community, trashing James was a form of blasphemy.
It took a few years for the smart set to recognize that 2007 was one of the greatest movie years of all time — right up there with 1939, 1962, 1971 and 1999.
Did anyone recognize Kate Winslet in Avatar 2? I certainly didn’t. She plays Ronal, a female leader of the water-soaked Metkayina Navi and wife of big kawabunga chief Tonowari, but c’mon…the character could have been played by anyone. Winslet wore mo-cap gear and performed the part vocally, but who can honestly say they went “yeah, I can see Kate’s face blended with the Navi features” or “yeah, that’s Kate’s voice”? Cliff Curtis played Tonowari — another no-recognize.
“This is a movie that could win Best Picture,” David Poland recently said about Damien Chazellle‘s Babylon (Paramount, 12.23). “It’s about Hollywood, it has two major stars doing major star work, and while it shocks and horrifies in certain ways, it is, more often than not, entertaining as hell.”
I’m a fan of Chazelle’s uncompromised, bold-as-brass approach to making Babylon — you certainly can’t say he holds back or applies half-measures. He really splashes passion paint upon the canvas in a way that Eric von Stroheim would have approved of.
But Babylon, sadly, is not an Academy-friendly film, and Poland knows this. He’s bending over backwards to be as supportive as possible, and I understand the impulse as I feel that bravura filmmaking of this sort, however brash or grotesque or off-putting as it is from time to time, shouldn’t be trashed. Auteurist energy of this sort should be applauded, as least by the standard of “A for effort..”
Poland knows that Babylon hasn’t a prayer of being Best Picture-nominated, much less winning. He knows this, and yet he claims “it could win Best Picture.”
Poland: “When I first saw the film, a few weeks ago, I was overwhelmed by the relentlessness of it, I admit. It felt like being force-fed a 20 course meal… like young geese being stuffed for foie gras.
“I don’t know if it’s Robbie or Pitt’s best work… but you won’t see any work from them that is better than this. Margot Robbie is the Energizer bunny…she will not stop. It’s like watching, in one film, the best and the worst of desperation and manic depression. Stunning performance. Brad Pitt is pretty much the exact opposite, style-wise. His character is already a virtual deity, so the performance is all in his eyes, careful physicality, and in the performance of the script.
“Don’t fear the elephant shit. Honestly, if the MPA would allow it, I’d be doing TV spots with it.”
“White men are being addressed in this feminist environment, [such that] they feel like they can’t be themselves, [due to the prevailing notion of] toxic masculinity.
“We can talk about whether or not that’s true or how big of a problem that is, but what I don’t think is really debatable is that if you look at the net amount of images in the culture, there really aren’t that many portrayals of men right now [in which] men both embody classical masculine traits and they’re also pro-social, like they’re not assholes.
“The only exception is when they’re a superhero with blue lightning coming out of their ass.
“This wasn’t always the case,. If you look back [into film history] you’ll see all kinds of portraits in which men are portrayed in a more nuanced kind of way. And I think there’s an interest in that [right now], a hunger for that.” — Mark Boal, 49-year-old screenwriter of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.
I haven’t seen Mark since the Zero Dark Thirty days, but he looks more bulked up and alpha-male commando-ish these days. Still soft-spoken, but a different look, different vibe.
I’d forgotten that Gabriel LaBelle‘s Sammy Fabelman (aka young Steven Spielberg) conveys a joy face** while twirling around twice.
I’d also forgotten that John Williams‘ score sounds a little too peppy and jaunty — a tad reminiscent of Franz Waxman‘s Rear Window score at the very end.
Honestly? I’m kinda okay with the center-horizon shot. Or at least I didn’t find it “boring as shit.”
The Fabelmans has my favorite ending of the year, the fact that this is verbatim what John Ford said to Spielberg makes it even better lmao pic.twitter.com/28JTdTsbzu
— anish🇦🇷 (@sithshailaRRR) December 14, 2022
** the satisfaction that any fledgling director would feel after meeting and getting instructed by a showbiz legend.
Speaking as a decades-long admirer of James Cameron gutslammers, I need to honestly say that I really don’t want to see three more Avatar films…truly, no foolin’. I decided this after seeing Avatar 2: The Way of Water late Friday afternoon. A riveting experience, for sure, but I realized midway through that I might not want to see it a second time. Because it left me with a feeling of aural, visual and spiritual exhaustion that I don’t want to re-experience.
And given Cameron’s stated plan to churn out three more Avatar flicks between now and 2028 (for a grand total of five), I really don’t want to return three more times to that aftermath feeling of being rocked and jolted and pulverized with little to show for it emotionally.
Because Avatar 2 isn’t Titanic. The first Avatar wasn’t either, but it told a great story (four-act structure) and felt like such a major visual event that it seemed extra-historic. Avatar 2 is more of a power-punch workout that an emotional massager or meltdown. I realize that Avatar 3 is more or less completed and there’s no ducking it, but three will be enough, fellas. C’mon, Jim, let it go…move on to something else.
From Owen Gleiberman‘s “Is James Cameron’s Vision for the Avatar Franchise a Dream or a Delusion?” (12.18):
Excerpt #1: “After the original Avatar, when Cameron laid out his master plan to make four sequels to it, my honest thought was, ‘Has he lost his mind?’ Not because I thought the plan was commercially unfeasible, but because I couldn’t wrap my own mind around why the director of Titanic — a timeless and awesome film, because it was one of the most moving experiences in the history of popular cinema — could be saying, with the power to do anything he wanted, ‘I’d like to spend the next 20 years making Avatar films.’
Excerpt #2: “We already have a movie culture that’s drowning in imagistic sensation and action overload. Cameron, in movies like The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, was one of the virtuoso architects of that blockbuster aesthetic. He’s now competing against the very cinema-as-sensation mystique that overpowered the rest of movie culture, even as he raises the ante on it. I felt a note of magic during the middle hour of The Way of Water, which plunges us into the ocean with a kind of virtual-reality immersion. But the film’s extended action climax? That felt like something out of Die Hard VIII: Die Harder on a Boat, only rendered in 3D. At a certain point I thought, ‘So what?'”
9:40 pm: I tweeted a reply to Zoe Rose Bryant as follows: “Hey, Zoë, I’m a straight white dude, okay, but Jordan Ruimy’s parents are North African so he doesn’t quite qualify. Oscar death to EEAAO!”
Bryant, whose award-season sentiments are basically or mostly “everything is wonderful…every film, every performance…love it all!”…Bryant has bravely blocked me so my tweet doesn’t exist on Twitter. So here it is.
What Zoe meant, in part, is that despite his ethnic heritage, Jordan sounds like a “white dude.” He has that “white dude” attitude. Meaning that he doesn’t seem to understand movies as fully as she does.
Posted 2 and 1/2 years ago, way back in July 2020….time flies when you’re absolutely loving your life. Back then there were assholes commenters (like the late “Seasonal Affleck Disorder“) who kept writing “what will it take to get Jeff to stop posting about this crap…everything’s fine…just write about loving movies!”
“Political Correctness Is The Fascism of the ’90s“, posted on 7.10.20:
Gene Siskel: “You have to summon the courage to say what you honestly feel [about a film]. And that’s not easy. There’s a whole new world called political correctness going on, and that is death to a critic, to participate in that. Wanting be liked is another…forget even the world of political correctness. Wanting to be liked, wanting to go along with the group [is] death to a critic. [Forget all that and] take your best shot.”
Roger Ebert: “When you said the word ‘political correctness’ it made me think of college students working for the student papers or writing papers that are going to be read out loud in class…political correctness is the fascism of the ’90s. This feeling that you have to keep your ideas and your way of looking at things within very narrow boundaries or you’ll offend someone. Certainly one of the purposes of journalism is to challenge that kind of thinking. And one of the purposes of criticism is to break boundaries. But what politically correct students are training themselves to do today is to lie…to lie.”
HE to Siskel and Ebert in heaven: Those politically correct college students of the late ’90s are now in positions of power and running the show. You wouldn’t believe what’s happening today at the N.Y. Times, for example. And that p.c. culture has become extremely censorious and punitive. They’re meting out punishment to transgressors and contrarians, and the ultimate p.c. punishment is called “cancelling’ — they’ll murder you on a digital platform called Twitter and get you fired if you persist in saying the wrong thing…so in the film realm if you depart from the officially sanctified view of this or that topic according to, say, Guy Lodge or Jessica Kiang, you’ll get beaten up by the mob. You could even be forced to drive for Uber or work in fast food if you’re not careful.
And you know what else? Many of the smartest big-time critics are just going along with this. Because they’re mice…because they’re afraid of standing up. It’s not that different from the Commie witch hunts of early to mid ’50s. [Thanks to Jordan Ruimy for passing along clip.]
Ebert text from heaven, just received: “Let’s say, for example, that you’re not as much of a fan of the great Ennio Morricone as others. That might brand you as being less perceptive than you should be, but you are absolutely entitled to say that without dodging punches.”
Stow that shit! And let this be a warning to anyone who’s thinking of sharing a similar reaction.
The spooky closing montage is the crowning crescendo of William Cameron Menzies‘ Invaders From Mars (’53). Without this sequence the film would amount to much less, certainly in terms of present-day esteem. The combination of that eerie choral music (composed by Mort Glickman, orchestrated by Raoul Kraushar) along with those trippy reverse-motion shots still get under your skin.
A huge round of applause to editor Arthur Roberts, and an extra round for Glickman — the choral music delivers the spook and the soul.
The new Ignite Bluray arrived just a couple of days ago, and on one of these video essays Glickman is given credit for the music by Invaders restoration master Scott MacQueen. Joe Dante and John Landis also deliver excellent commentary in the same essay.
Apologies for the crappy video capture — I should have shot it last night.
I was sitting in seat E5 during yesterday afternoon’s Avatar 2 screening. The “show” started at 2:15 pm, but as we all know that meant the film itself wouldn’t start until at least 20 minutes of trailers had unspooled. As it happened the film didn’t begin until 2:40 pm. During the 25 minutes of trailers two seats to my left were empty, but I figured the purchasers would show up at the last minute. They didn’t, and after a while I started to say to myself “hey, this is pretty good…maybe I can move over and stretch my legs.”
At 3:07 pm the seat purchasers finally showed up. 27 minutes after the film had begun. The fact that both were overweight had nothing to do with anything, of course. Avatar 2 seats are expensive, and they had to have reserved them a good 10 days in advance. How undisciplined and chaotic does your life have to be to cause this much delay? This wasn’t just another movie –it was an opening-day showing of one of the biggest films of the year. Did they forget? One of them couldn’t get out of the bathroom? I gradually pushed these thoughts out of my head, but it took a while.
Avatar 2 runs 192 minutes — add on 25 minutes of trailer promos and you’re talking 217 minutes. That’s obviously part of the exhaustion factor — it’s grueling to be bombarded with loud, floor-vibrating, super-sized images for three hours and 37 minutes. Lawrence of Arabia runs ten minutes longer (227 minutes) but that film doesn’t rough you up like Avatar 2 — it’s visually vast and eye-filling, but huge portions are dialogue-driven.