After debuting at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Christian Mungiu‘s R.M.N. is finally starting to play commercially. It’ll open Friday (5.5.) at HE’s own Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, where I’ll be catching a 7:30 pm show.

From HE’s paywalled review, “Do Bears Shit In the Woods?“, posted on 5.22.22: The meaning of the title of R.M.N., the latest film by the great Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu, is never revealed, or it wasn’t to me during last night’s Salle Debussy screening.

The Wiki page says that Mungiu “named the film after an acronym for rezonanța magnetica nucleara ** (‘nuclear magnetic resonance’) as the film is ‘an investigation of the brain, a brain scan trying to detect things below the surface.'”

So the film is basically about scanning the small-town minds of the residents of Recia***, a commune located in Transylvania, which most of us still associate with Dracula.

But the underlying focus isn’t vampires but racist xenophobes who fear Middle Eastern immigrants and more specifically two gentle fellows from Sri Lanka who’ve been hired to work at a local bakery.

It takes a while for the racism to emerge front and center, but a metaphorical representation is the nub of it — a phantom that lurks in the surrounding woods and more particularly within.

The phantom manifests three times — (a) in the opening scene in which the small son of Matthias (Marin Grigore), an unemployed slaughterhouse worker, is spooked by its off-screen presence while walking in the woods, (b) in the third act when a significant characters hangs himself (also in the woods), and (c) at the very end when four or five bears are spotted by Matthias after nightfall (ditto).

R.M.N. is a meditative slow-burn parable that you’ll either get or you won’t, but there’s no missing the brilliance of a one-shot town hall meeting in which the locals are demanding that the Sri Lankans be expelled from the community.

The shot lasts for roughly 17 minutes, and it’s all fast, bickering dialogue, simultaneously burrowing into the ignorance of the townies while building and deepening and man-oh-man…it’s so fucking great that I said to myself “this is it…this is what my Cristian Mungiu fixes are all about, and thank the Lords of Cannes for allowing me, a traveller from the states, to absorb this in my well-cushioned theatre seat.

The build-up narrative is about Matthias and his mute son Rudi (Mark Blenyesi), his resentful ex-wife Ana (Macrina Bârlădeanu) and Csilla, a passionate, kind-hearted bakery manager and cello player (Judith State) whom Matthias has an undefined sexual relationship with. He never says he actually “loves” her although he keeps returning to her home for solace and whatnot.

Secondary characters include the bakery owner, Mrs. Denes (Orsolya Moldován), and the local priest, Papa Otto (Andrei Finți), and a sizable gathering of anxious, agitated citizens who are basically the local reps of the Mississippi Burning club.

I was going to throw a little snark by alluding to Gene Wilder’s description of the townspeople of Blazing Saddles — “Simple people, people of the land, common clay…you know, morons.”

A certain summer film that I won’t identify has sparked an “uh-oh” research screening reaction. I’m posting only to repeat a reader’s reaction to same. Here’s how the reader, a careless writer and clumsy phraser named “Sandy“, expressed himself:

“I think [for the] first time in my life I am going to do this. If this film gets good reviews, I’ll skip it in theatres and maybe catch it on streaming later. But if it gets [really] bad reviews, I might go to watch it in a theatre just to see how cringe it is.”

Caveat emptor comment from website host #1: “All I know is that the tide has slightly turned. I’ve been noticing more negative reactions than [ones from] the initial first screening back in February. That’s not necessarily saying much as these screenings tend to not always be accurate about a film’s quality. Also, critics and audiences don’t always agree.”

Those last seven words say a mouthful, you bet. These days critics and audiences rarely agree when an allegedly daring, imaginative, high-concept movie comes along. While Joe Popcorn types will say what they say without much pretension or equivocation, Maoist foo-foo critics almost always drop to their knees in praise of the audacity of the creator…the expanding of cinematic or stylistic boundaries, oh joy!

Has there been a time like this since the launch of commercial feature-length cinema 108 years ago? I wonder. The vast majority of professional critics these days (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic) have shown themselves time and again to be tongue-bath whores. 85% or 90%, I mean.

Caveat emptor comment #2: “I’ve noticed, based on these last two reactions I posted, and other people I’ve spoken to, that the film’s progressive themes are layered on a tad too thickly. This is part of the reason why I believe [Maoist] critics might be kind to this film, no matter how messy it turns out to be.”

The 2023 Cannes Film Festival (5.16-5.27) has announced an intention to honor Michael Douglas, 78, with an honorary Palme d’Or. He’s certainly earned the tribute, having been in the game and sought serious accomplishment for the last 45-plus years. How many films has Douglas starred or costarred in that are really and truly grade-A? I don’t mean decent or pretty good or respectable, but seriously important in a lasting cinematic or cultural sense?

If you really boil the snow out and eliminate the fluff, the slick and the chaff, the Douglas list comes to no more than nine films — The China Syndrome, Fatal Attraction. Wall Street, Basic Instinct, The American President, Falling Down, Wonder Boys, Traffic and Behind The Candelabra. Okay, ten if you include One Flew Over The Cuckoos’ Nest, which Douglas produced.

I was thinking about including The War of the Roses, but there’s a reason why I’ve only seen it once. If you don’t want to re-watch an ostensibly strong or important film, there’s something wrong with it.

I’m sorry but Black Rain isn’t good enough to be included.

David Thomson: “Douglas was capable of playing characters who were weak, culpable, morally indolent, compromised and greedy for illicit sensation without losing that basic probity or potential for ethical character that we require of a hero.”

Critic and author Rob Edelman: Douglas has “personified the contemporary, Caucasian middle-to-upper-class American male who finds himself the brunt of female anger because of real or imagined sexual slights…an everyman who must contend with, and be victimized by, these women and their raging, psychotic sexuality.” These themes of male victimization are found in Fatal Attraction, War of the Roses, Basic Instinct, Falling Down and Disclosure.

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Posted, ignored and quickly fire-walled on 8.7.21: It was a warm midsummer evening in the small town of Walton, New York, possibly ’81 but more likely ’82. I was staying that weekend with my dad, Jim Wells, at his country cabin on River Road, right alongside the West Branch of the Delaware River. Jim was an avid fly fisherman, and when dusk fell all he had to do was put on the rubber waders and stroll into the waist-deep water, which was less than 100 feet away. I’m not exactly the Henry David Thoreau type, but I have to admit that the cabin and the surrounding woods and the other atmospheric trimmings (crickets, feeding fish, fireflies) was quite the combination as the sun was going down.

Alas, I was frisky back then and accustomed to prowling. As a Manhattanite and Upper West Sider (75th and Amsterdam) my evening routine would sometimes include a 7 pm screening and then hitting a bar or strolling around or whatever. The “whatever” would sometimes involve a date with a lady of the moment or maybe even getting lucky with a stranger. It all depended on which direction the night happened to tilt.

So there we were, my dad and I, finishing dinner (maybe some freshly-caught trout along with some steamed green beans and scalloped potatoes) and washing the dishes and whatnot, and I was thinking about hitting a local tavern. I wasn’t a “sitting on the front porch and watching the fireflies” type. I wanted to get out, sniff the air, sip bourbon, listen to music.

So I announced the idea of hitting T.A.’s Place or the Riverside Tavern and maybe ordering a Jack Daniels and ginger ale on the rocks. If I’d been a little more gracious I would’ve asked Jim to join, but we weren’t especially chummy back then. Our relationship was amiable enough, if a little on the cool and curt side. Plus the idea of Jim and I laying on the charm with some local lassie seemed horrific.

I wasn’t seriously entertaining some loony fantasy that I might meet someone and luck out, not in a little one-horse town like Walton, but then again who knew? It was the early ’80s, the ’70s were still with us in spirit, I was looking and feeling pretty good back then, the AIDS era hadn’t happened yet, etc.

You had to be there, I guess, but singles had just experienced (and were still experiencing to a certain degree) perhaps the greatest nookie era in world history since the days of ancient Rome. Plus you could still buy quaaludes at the Edlich Pharmacy on First Avenue. It sounds immature to say this, but life occasionally felt like a Radley Metzger film.

Jim apparently had thoughts along the same lines, as he quickly suggested that we do T.A.’s as a team. I immediately said “uhm, that’s okay,” as in “I’m thinking about going stag and you’ll only cramp my style.” I shouldn’t have said that, and if my father is listening I want him to know that I’m sorry. It was brusque and heartless to brush him off like that. To his credit, Jim was gracious enough to laugh it off. I heard him tell this story to friends a couple of times.

Jim had bought the River Road cabin from Pam Dawber, who was pushing 30 and costarring in Mork & Mindy at the time. It was located outside of town about three or four miles. My father would send her a check every month, and was very punctual about it. Walton was roughly a 100-minute drive from Manhattan.

Kelly Reichardt‘s Showing Up (A24, 4.7) “opened” in some fashion about a month ago. I reviewed it at the close of last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Now that it’s out and about it can’t hurt to repost.

My 5.27 review, titled “The Pigeon of Crocville,” began with a riff about Crocs. This triggered a complaint from “Bob Hightower” about the appropriateness of such an approach. HE reply: “Yes, it’s a film review that mentions how Crocs, in a certain light, seem representative of the rural northwestern Reichert universe.”

Actual review: “An awful lot of people (i.e., at least two and possibly three) wear Crocs in Kelly Reichart‘s Showing Up, and I don’t mean the Balenciaga kind. And their presence in this quiet, sluggish but not-overly-problematic film represented…well, a slight problem.

To me Crocs are just bad — bad omens, everything I hate, unsightly, bad all over. And every time I saw one of Reichart’s characters walking around in these rubber swiss-cheese loafers it gave me a bad feeling. I didn’t cringe every time, but a voice inside went “aw, shit.”

Michelle Williams wears Crocs in this thing, and yet (significantly) this didn’t interfere with my liking, relating to and even enjoying her character — “Lizzie Carr”, a 40ish figurine sculptor who lives in a rented home in the Portland area, and who is preparing for a showing of her art in a nearby storefront-slash-salon.

Lizzie regards almost everyone and everything with an air of subdued consternation or vague resentment or sardonic resignation…my general spiritual territory.

I can’t say that Lizzie (or any other character in Showing Up) is involved in an actual story. For Reichart is naturally adhering to her familiar scheme of avoiding narrative propulsion like the plague. She’s into women and laid-back men and mulchy atmospheres and odd, low-energy behavior and whatnot. There are no second-act pivots in a Reichart film because there are no first, second or third acts, or at least not the kind that I recognize.

The only thing resembling a story in Showing Up is the plight of a wounded pigeon. The poor bird is mauled by Lizzie’s Calico cat, and left with a broken wing. Lizzie and her landlord, Jo Tran (Hong Chau), put the pigeon in a shoe box and take turns looking after it. During Lizzie’s art show at the close of the film, the pigeon is unwrapped and set free and off it goes into the wild blue yonder.

The Portland-set Showing Up is, of course, concurrently set in deep Wokeville. To an anti-wokester like myself, it’s like watching a film set in Communist East Germany in the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s. The very notion of a film about Wokeville women and the inconsequential, low-energy men in their lives (ex-husbands, beardos, dads, brothers, laid-back co-workers)…a social satire set in this organic, unhurried, arts-and-craftsy environment could be an opportunity for something alive and biting. But not with Reichardt at the helm.

Showing Up has been described as a comedy, although it didn’t strike me as such. It has a vagueiy slouchy observational attitude. Every 10 or 15 minutes it elicits a subdued titter.

This is because the focus is entirely on vaguely morose Lizzie, whose general outlook is not, shall we say, bursting with optimistic expectation. She’s in a kind of a downish place start to finish. This is partly due to Tran’s lazy reluctance to fix the hot-water heater.

One of the best moments happens when Lizzie, fuming over her inability to take a hot shower, beats up a couple of plants in Tran’s small front-yard garden. Please…more or this! But that’s the end of it.

That’s all I have to say about Showing Up. It’s not bad by Reichardt standards…oh, wait, I’ve already said that.

I feel as if my hair is infested with sand granules, and that I’ll need to take two showers in order to really be free of them. That awful sand-choked feeling…sand in my pants, my socks, my ear canals, my eyebrows…sand in my soul.

We’re talking once again of Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling and Javier Bardem, plus newbies Austin Butler (unrecognizable with shaved head), Florence Pugh, Christopher Walken and Lea Seydoux.

Dune: Part Two pops on 11.3.23. I am completely comfortable with never seeing Denis Villeneuve‘s latest film, ever. No screenings, no streamings….nothing. It doesn’t exist.