Except for the fact that Tom Cruise refuses to sculpt his hair with Crew (fiber or grooming cream), much less use hair spray. And I can’t say I’m much of a fan of that rosey champagne-colored golf shirt, and particularly his decision to wear it wide open.
The last time I saw Ving Rhames on his feet and actually walking was in Pulp Fiction (’94), or a little more than 29 years ago. I’m speaking of the scene in which Rhames’ Marsellus Wallace is walking across a street in some godforsaken L.A. suburb (Hawthorne?) and happens to spot Bruce Willis‘s Butch Coolidge behind the wheel of his shitty car, etc. Two years later Rhames gave his first performance as Luther Stickell in Brian DePalma and Tom Cruise‘s Mission: Impossible (’96), and has been with the franchise ever since.
I’m not saying Rhames hasn’t been been seen on his feet or walking in his other film roles (Dave, Striptease, Con Air, Out of Sight, Entrapment, Bringing Out the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry). but I don’t remember any of them. (Sorry.) All I can recall about Rhames is that he’s always sitting on his ass.
I still haven’t seen Barbie, of course, but being reminded yesterday of Greta Gerwig’s co-authoring of Disney’s seemingly woke-as-fuck Snow White bummed me out. This plus her reported interest in directing a Chronicles of Narnia film and her apparent general leanings as a writer-director since 2019’s Little Women, which seemed to signal an ardently feminist chapter…a proverbial turning of the page as she began to swim in a politically ideological stream…
Gerwig is obviously an inventive and visually exacting filmmaker, but I’m less taken with the incarnation that has come to be seen, felt and heard over the last four or five years than who she seemed to be (and with whom I fraternized two or three times) during her Obama-era output…her Greenberg, Frances Ha, Mistress America and Lady Bird period (2010 to 2017) when she was radiating a curiously appealing take on 21st Century life…truly imaginative and wonderfully peculiar…among the most idiosyncratic and organically rooted creative minds out there.
“Antonioni Gerwig,” posted almost exactly ten years ago:
“Not happening…way too laid back…zero narrative urgency,” I was muttering from the get-go. Basically the sixth episode of White Lotus Thai SERIOUSLY disappoints. Puttering around, way too slow. Things inch along but it’s all “woozy guilty lying aftermath to the big party night” stuff. Glacial pace…waiting, waiting. I was told...
I finally saw Walter Salles' I'm Still Here two days ago in Ojai. It's obviously an absorbing, very well-crafted, fact-based poltical drama, and yes, Fernanda Torres carries the whole thing on her shoulders. Superb actress. Fully deserving of her Best Actress nomination. But as good as it basically is...
After three-plus-years of delay and fiddling around, Bernard McMahon's Becoming Led Zeppelin, an obsequious 2021 doc about the early glory days of arguably the greatest metal-rock band of all time, is opening in IMAX today in roughly 200 theaters. Sony Pictures Classics is distributing. All I can say is, it...
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall's Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year's Telluride Film Festival, is a truly first-rate two-hander -- a pure-dialogue, character-revealing, heart-to-heart talkfest that knows what it's doing and ends sublimely. Yes, it all happens inside a Yellow Cab on...
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when and how did Martin Lawrence become Oliver Hardy? He’s funny in that bug-eyed, space-cadet way… 7:55 pm: And now it’s all cartel bad guys, ice-cold vibes, hard bullets, bad business,...
Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner's Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg's tastiest and wickedest film -- intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...