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I’ve been attending the Santa Barbara Film Festival since ‘03 or thereabouts, and I really wish I could’ve been there last night. All hail Cate Blanchett!!

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February 11, 2023 12:55 pmby Jeffrey Wells

A while back I tried to sell my Paramount homies on a special Top Gun: Maverick HE advertorial. The idea had already been written and posted on 1.13.23 — I just wanted to repeat it with a little Paramount dough behind me. The piece was titled “A Film That Saved Hollywood Could Also Save The Oscars.”

It seemed like the right pitch, and if you ask me this was underlined by the fact that Paramount recently launched a billboard ad campaign that echoed what my piece said.

At a time when the old energy current between Hollywood and mainstream audiences seemed to be dropping left and right, Top Gun: Maverick had pumped new life into the spirit of things, and should be roundly celebrated for reaching out and connecting…for making something actually happen in theatres at a time when too many films seemed to be limping along.

A Best Picture Oscar for a movie that had not only restored faith in exhibition but in Hollywood itself.

The current Paramount slogan says it all: BELIEVE IN MOVIES AGAIN. Which translates to BELIEVE IN HOW MOVES WERE DURING THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND BEFORE. Which also translates into BELIEVE IN THE FUTURE and the distinct possibility that more films like Top Gun: Maverick could pop the champagne as long as Hollywood takes heed and acts upon the obvious.

Which is this: Joe and Jane Popcorn are sick of instructional woke content (identity politics, progressive guilt-tripping, historical presentism, torture-rack flicks like Last Night in Soho, a general aversion to anything rooted in straight-white-male perspectives, movies that constantly hammer the Millennial-Zoomer BIPOC gay trans #MeToo boogaloo…films that insist that entitled white assholes need to be scolded blah blah).

Joe and Jane Popcorn to Elite Hollywood Wankers: Whatever happened to movies like The Wedding Crashers, Tropic Thunder, Manchester By The Sea, Her, A Separation, Sicario, Leviathan, Hell or High Water, Call Me By Your Name, The Social Network, Superbad, Whiplash, The Witch, etc.? How about unwoke-ing your sorry asses and keeping it that way for the foreeeable future? And making more upcoming films like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon‘s Air? And while you’re at it, fire the Woke Award-Season Mafia goons and all the kiss-asses who keep pushing movies that make people miserable.

Alternate headline: “Make Joe & Jane Popcorn Happy, And They’ll Return The Favor In Spades.”

2nd Alternate headline: “Listen to Barry Diller!”

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February 11, 2023 12:04 pmby Jeff Wells
February 11, 2023 10:37 amby Jeffrey Wells


Malcolm Nance, 61, is an American author, media pundit and a "special executive for counterintelligence, terrorism, revenge, and extortion." (Yes, the same words that formed the acronym SPECTRE, the bad-guy outfit featured in the '60s James Bond films.) Nance is a former United States Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer specializing in naval cryptology, and last November he returned from a ten-month tour service in Ukraine. He joined the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine in March 2022. I really respect the guy.
February 11, 2023 10:13 amby Jeff Wells

The fact that Vincente Minnelli's The Four Horsemsn of the Apocalypse ('62) hasn't been remastered for HD streaming or issued on Bluray -- that should tell you something.
February 11, 2023 9:27 amby Jeff Wells

Last night I finally saw M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock At The Cabin. It’s more of a mystifying situational conceit than what most of us would call a movie or even a campfire tale. It's based on Paul Tremblay's "The Cabin At The End of The World," which I haven't read. But the screenplay, co-authored by Shyamalan, Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, feels like a surreal dream (i.e., arresting impressions minus a compelling narrative) that was never developed into the kind of thing that most films need -- i.e., a story that coheres.
February 11, 2023 8:53 amby Jeffrey Wells

“We’re supposed to hate Jaws now?” He was responding to “Did These Chinatown Viewers Understand?” And I replied by summarizing Peter Biskind’s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” as follows:

The huge primal successes of Jaws (6.20.75) and Star Wars (5.20.77) slowly bland-ified the moody, anti-establishment ‘70s thing that had permeated Hollywood…the New Experimental Anti-Conventional Hollywood Party Era that began with Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and The President’s Analyst (all released in ‘67).

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, the directing maestros behind Jaws and Star Wars, pretty much killed the cool kidz party by injecting (a) a win-really-big greed jackpot virus into the Hollywood bloodstream and (b) a strain of thematic infantilization into movies in general.

These guys didn’t didn’t suck the creative oxygen out of the room deliberately or maliciously, but the massive success of their historic blockbusters gradually introduced the idea of “high concept” and suppressed the commercial intrigue factor among industry folk and audiences alike for adult movies like Night Moves, The Conversation, The Outfit, The French Connection, Z, Easy Rider, Mean Streets, Rosemary’s Baby, Raging Bull, Scarecrow, Get Carter, The Day of the Jackal, Dog Day Afternoon, Godfather I & II, That’ll Be The Day, Stardust, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Chinatown, The Hospital, Network, Prince of the City, The Ruling Class, Quadrophenia, The Last American Hero, Performance, Don’t Look Now, etc.

February 11, 2023 5:34 amby Jeffrey Wells



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