Profuse apologies for my not posting our latest Substack chat earlier today, but don’t let that stop you.

George Roy Hill‘s Slap Shot (’77) has gotten better with each successive re-viewing. Nancy Dowd‘s screenplay is based on her brother Ned’s rough-and-tumble experience with the Johnstown Jets, a minor-league Pennsylvania hockey team. And yes, in the early to mid ’70s violence was a serious selling point with the low-rent fans.

But the film doesn’t feel “realistic”…not really or fully. It may take a while during your first viewing, but it gradually hits you that Slap Shot is a brilliantly sustained farce — partly a satire of crude, working-class lifestyles and sensibilities, and partly a kind of valentine to same.

Assembled and finessed to a fare-thee-well (dp Victor Kemper and editor Dede Allen are a dynamic duo), it’s a blend of grim blue-collar realism and coarse slapstick. The characters are all trapped in a kind of blue-collar, no-exit hellscape, but only a couple of them (the married malcontents played by Michael Ontkean and Lindsay Crouse) succumb to anything close to lethargy. Everyone else is indefatigable.

And the violence is hilarious. Damn near every line is about making fun of these yokels, and yet Hill and Dowd clearly love them. It’s almost spooky how intoxicating it all is. Except, that is, for the climactic striptease-on-the-ice scene, which I’ve never believed.

Above The Line‘s Jeff Sneider and Perri Nemiroff clash over Women Talking starting around the 53:00 mark. Sneider: “It’s number 10! It will win if every woman in the Academy votes for it. It won’t win because no men in the Academy will be voting for it. This is a bad movie…simple as that.” It gets even better at 56:30: Sneider: “It belongs nowhere near this [Best Picture] race…what a fucking boring waste of time!”

HE to Sneider, Nemiroff: Steven Spielberg‘s The Fabelmans has no chance to win…nobody hates it but nobody really thinks it’s all that great…it’s a semi-agreeable, very broadly acted family film (especially on Michelle Williams‘ part) which contains very little compelling material except for that concluding scene with John Ford / David Lynch. If it weren’t for the kneejerk Spielberg kowtow factor, it wouldn’t even be in the conversation.

HE to readership, Movie Godz, everyone within the sound of my voice: “Watch the skies…no. For the love of God and the betterment of civilization, stop Everything Everywhere All At Once…a grueling, agonizing, interminable piece of medieval torture …a harbinger of cultural ruin and a cinematic apocalypse if I ever saw one…all hail the GenXers and boomers who despise it with every fibre of their being, and there are many who feel this way.”