Day: September 13, 2023

From THR‘s Katie Kilkenny

Friendo: “Poor Things + Barbie = same story. Imagine if Barbie was about a sexual awakening after she gets her VAG.”

HE: “[A critic friend] said Poor Things was like Barbie directed by the Marquis de Sade.”

Friendo: “Okay but I say Russ Meyer.”

This morning I asked World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy about the best films he’d seen thus far the 2023 Toronto Film Festival, and he listed six — Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers, Richard Linklater‘s Hit Man, Cord Jefferson‘s American Fiction, Azazel Jacobs‘ His Three Daughters, Hayao Miyazaki‘s The Boy and the Heron and Kristoffer Borgli‘s Dream Scenario.

HE: “The Holdovers and Hit Man aside, would you describe the other three as triples, homers, ground rule doubles or line-drive singles?”

Ruimy: “I think they’re all triples or homers.”

A couple of hours later Ruimy listed 12 allegedly top-tier films hat he’d seen in Toronto — the above six plus Michel Franco‘s Memory (HE automatically endorses all Michel Franco films), Errol Morris‘s The Pigeon Tunnel (which I saw and loved in Telluride), Kitty Green‘s The Royal Hotel (Australian outback animals making life hell for two female bartenders….forget it), Bertrand Bonello‘s The Beast, Harmony Korine‘s Aggro Dr1ft (forget it), and Anna Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour.

Three days ago (9.10) London Times columnist Hadley Freeman posted a thoughtful, paywalled essay about Woody Allen that’s certainly worth reading. I usually post excerpts from articles that I approve of, but this time I’ve pasted the whole thing.

By striking terror in the hearts of industry cowards and thereby suppressing the distribution of Allen’s Coup de Chance (even as a streaming title), Woody haters are perpetrating a social and cultural crime that is absolutely loathsome and pernicious.

After 31 years of this, it’s really time to back off and let it go. Lord knows their punitive point has been made over and over. They are the witch dunkers of Salem.

And as difficult as it may seem, they all need to once again attempt to understand a basic truth that all mature societies understand. A work of art or art-tinged commerce, like a movie or a play, is one thing, and the private behavior of its creator, however imperfect (and who among us is?), is something else entirely. They are two parallel twains that can not and should never meet.

My Cannes Killers of the Flower Moon review, tapped out on my iPhone 12 outside an old-town eatery, amounted to a B or a B-minus.

What I wrote between bites of pizza and salad under a damp awning wasn’t a pan. I don’t regard Killers as a weak or poorly crafted film (from a technical standpoint) at all. It’s not. I regard it as a solemn, diligent, semi-haunting, very well made film that “doesn’t quite get there.”

Repeating: Flower Moon isn’t a bad film or a failure. It’s somewhere between a B and B-minus. But it never really tags one. Albert Pujols‘ bat never really goes crack. You know that feeling when a film is moving along at a steady professional clip and then the big crescendo is supposed to happen but it just kind of trickles off? A film that rumbles along in a steady, workmanlike and then cruises to the finish line without setting off fireworks? That’s Flower Moon.