Director-screenwriter friendo to HE: ‘I know you appreciate old-school class, etc. Mister O’s is a retro-designed supper club a la Mad Men and ’60s Rat Pack style in the Valley. Since Universal and other neighboring studios are making it additionally difficult for picketing writers and actors by doing things like cutting down shade trees and blocking sidewalks, this upscale restaurant is offering itself as a cooling station…and it’s a very cool place to hang and cool down.”
Many three-hours-or-longer films reside on my all-time greatest roster — The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, Lawrence of Arabia, The Wolf of Wall Street, Scarface, The Irishman, Barry Lyndon, Ben-Hur, Titanic, The Seven Samurai, Gone With The Wind, Spartacus, etc.
Length, of course, has always been immaterial or irrelevant when it comes to quality — no bad film can be too short, no good film can be too long, etc. There’s nonetheless something a bit more transporting or inviting or impactful when it comes to films that are just a bit shorter — 165 minutes to 180 minutes, I mean.
If you’re talking “long but good movie,” 165 to 180 is HE’s sweet spot. Long but a little lighter, tighter and trimmer…slightly less indulged.
HE’s favorite 165 to 180s: The Godfather (175), Heat (170), Patton (172), The Best Years of Our Lives (170), Saving Private Ryan (169), The Thin Red Line (170), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (174), The Young Lions (167), The Longest Day (178), Beau Is Afraid (179), Dogville (’03), The Great Escape (172), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (171), Braveheart (178).
I even have a certain elveated regard for flawed films in this realm…King of Kings (168), In Harm’s Way (165), The Towering Inferno (165), The Good Shepherd (167), Alexander (175), etc.
All this said, we’ve all become sick of the relatively recent avalanche of needlessly long movies, otherwise known as the Peter Jackson King Kong syndrome….films running between 130 and 150 minutes or longer for no apparent reason other than a lack of basic narrative discipline.
Three months ago I posted a Fred Astaire + Rita Hayworth dance sequence from You’ll Never Get Rich. Yesterday I happened upon a colorized version, and I’m sorry but my eyes liked it better.
“Jeff — I totally agree with Paul Schrader on Oppenheimer — it’s the best film I’ve seen come out of a major Hollywood studio in eons. Really fantastic for the entire three hours. Tremendous.” — gmail message, arrived at 11:21 am eastern.
Okay, that’s it, Paul Schrader oversold it and now the game is more or less over — Chris Nolan’s Oppenheimer (Universal, 7.21) has been given a respectful-but-no-Cuban-cigar review by Variety’s Owen Gleiberman.
Even Nolan’s recreation of the Trinity explosion is a “letdown” Owen says…WHAT??
And then comes the funniest line in the whole review, a casual mention of “that damn Atomic Energy Commission hearing” which Nolan reportedly keeps cutting back to. As I chuckled I could see Gleiberman flinching in his seat: “God, man…enough with the damn AEC hearing already!”
And then Gleiberman really sticks the knife in by calling the second half “a doleful meditation” on atom-bomb morality and whatnot. Aaagghhh!! I’m melting…I’m melting!Cillian Murphy’s titular performance will likely result in a lot of Best Actor talk, Gleiberman implies, but along with David Ehrlich’s backhand across–the–chops reaction (“Nolan’s first biopic feels like some sort of grandiose self-portrait”) you can probably forget any serious Best Picture Oscar headwind. Murphy and Robert Downey, Jr., fine, but that’s where it ends.
Honestly? It isn’t Nolan who’s taken the big hit here — it’s Schrader.
I for one would pay top dollar to see an Elon Musk–vs.-Mark Zuckerberg cage match between World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy and the highly assertive (i.e., trans-agenda-driven) Zoe Rose Bryant.
The dispute is over Barbie, of course. Ruimy first and then ZRB…
Bryant tweet-slammed Ruimy, but she seems to be aiming her slings and arrows at the general anti–woke community of sensible, fair–minded, Kool–Aid-averse centrists, myself and Sasha Stone included.
Amy Taubin’s reaction to Barbie — petulant, enraged — misses the entire point, which is that for better or worse, Greta Gerwig’s film is infused with real–life 21st Century girlboss feminism.
One view is that Taubin is feisty; another is that she’s a snobby, short-tempered know-it-all.
