Or, if you prefer, Reality Sandwich.

But they’re obviously called “cringe comedies” for a reason, and for this very reason I’ve never been a fan of the sub-genre. But of all the cringe comedies, the one I admire the most is Elaine May‘s The Heartbreak Kid (’72).

The 2007 Ben Stiller remake missed the mark but May’s original holds up. And this January ’23 tribute piece, voiced by CineMollusk, hits the nail on the head.

Carrying the narrative ball is Lenny Cantrow (Charles Grodin), “possibly the emptiest man on earth” and a guy who discovers with a startling jolt that he can’t stand his new bride (Jennie Berlin) as he watches her eat an overstuffed egg-salad sandwich…”a film with “an irredeemably black heart…a relentless examination of an empty world full of empty people.”

My eyes never moistened at the endings of The Iron Giant, Monsters, Inc., The Fox And The Hound, Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, Schindler’s List, The Green Mile, Big Fish, Coco, Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, About Time, My Girl, Interstellar, Up, Marley & Me, Philadelphia, Edward Scissorhands, Toy Story 3, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, Grave Of The Fireflies, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Mulan or Inside Out.

But the Patton ending (“All glory is fleeting”) does it to me every time. Ditto the last five minutes of The Last Temptation of Christ and the last two minutes of Brokeback Mountain….what else?

Posted on 7.15.23:

“While Disney still uses Walt’s name, they’ve all but abandoned his legacy. There’s no better example of Disney’s disregard for its heritage or its audience than its current remake of the iconic Disney story that launched the company into what it is today, Snow White.” -… pic.twitter.com/TmBHZVbgUe

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) October 16, 2023

Riz Ahmed on Twitter: “We are told there are two sides to what is happening in Israel and Palestine. But in my heart, I know there is only one — the side of our humanity.

“What happened in Israel last week was horrific and wrong. The pain and fear so many are feeling is deep and real. [And] what’s happening in Gaza now, and [which] has been happening in Palestine under the Occupation for decades, is horrific and wrong. The depth and reality of this suffering cannot be ignored.

“If we look only in one direction, we will go even deeper into darkness. But that is exactly what is happening right now. We are being asked to look away while the civilians of Gaza, half of them children, are running out of time.

“If we are on the side of humanity we must urgently speak up to try and avert the loss of innocent life. This means calling for an end to the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza’s civilians and vital infrastructure, the denial of food, water and electricity, the forced displacement of people from their homes. These are morally indefensible war crimes.”

Ahmed’s manager should gave taken him aside and said, “In the current climate and particularly since Hamas militants massacred 1200 Israelis in their homes ten days ago, you can’t say that bad things have been happening in Palestine under the Israeli Occupation for decades. It doesn’t matter if it’s true — it’s just something you can’t say now.”

Just after the Toronto Film Festival a journo colleague told me I’d like American Fiction (Amazon/MGM, 12.15). Now I understand what he meant. It’s Tootsie by way of Black identity and psychotic white woke-itude.

Posted this morning by freeek as part of the “Stop Cillian Murphy” thread: “We have officially entered that phase of the year again…that dreaded time when Jeff feels obliged to drag movies or actors through mud to make his favorites prevail.

“Such predictable behavior often translates into pure BS, and the BS keeps snowballing in his head in uncontrolled fashion for weeks and weeks, until this big pile of fabricated arguments feels like pure neurotic hysteria to the innocent bystander.

“What’s that now? Murphy “exhibits aloof-zombie expression” in Oppenheimer? Jesus. Act dilligently and put yourself together, man. There’s a big difference between speaking one’s mind and spurting a stream of stupidities so heinous that you should turn blue in the face.

“Look, Giamatti got robbed for Sideways — I can relate to that. He may be good in The Holdovers and that movie may be one of the best of the year — no problem with that. But any way you spin it, The Holdovers will remain a small movie. Whereas Murphy carries a generational, pure-event movie alone for three hours. The two performances don’t belong to the same conversation.”

HE to freeek #1: You can say that again!

HE to freeek #2: Re-read my takedown campaign articles from five, ten or twenty years ago. They may have sounded a bit extreme in dweeb circles, but what I was saying was actually spot-on.

Alien Andronicus Oppenheimer succumbs to trademark space-cadet stare.

The late Phil Hartman was Phil Donahue.

And poor Jan Hooks died of throat cancer in her late 50s.

A creepy skit that I’d never seen prior to today.

I don’t even know what year this “Women Good, Men Bad” skit happened, but I’m guessing somewhere in the early to mid ’90s.

A federal judge ruled that former President Trump has to cool his Mussolini bully-boy jets even more than he’s already been instructed to do. Verbally, I mean.

Early this afternoon Judge Tanya S. Chutkan imposed a limited gag order on Orange Plague, restricting Trump from making public statements attacking the witnesses, prosecutors (i.e., Jack Smith) or anyone else involved in the federal criminal case in which he stands accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.

N.Y. Times: The order, however, “left Trump free as he pursues his presidential campaign to continue disparaging the Justice Department, President Biden — and even to assert that he believed his prosecution was politically motivated. Judge Chutkan also apparently left Mr. Trump free to attack her.”

Trump campaign response: “Today’s decision is an absolute abomination and another partisan knife stuck in the heart of our Democracy by Crooked Joe Biden, who was granted the right to muzzle his political opponent, the leading candidate for the Presidency in 2024, and the most popular political leader in America, President Donald J. Trump. President Trump will continue to fight for our Constitution, the American people’s right to support him, and to keep our country free of the chains of weaponized and targeted law enforcement.”

There is something truly skewed and bent out of shape about Best Actor contender Cillian “I walked with a zombie” Murphy having more predictive support from your damp-finger-to-the-wind Oscar spitballers (largely due to the fact that Oppenheimer surprised everyone by becoming a huge financial success) than The Holdovers’ Paul Giamatti, who gives a wonderfully snippy, peculiar, emotionally vulnerable, multi-faceted performance that blows the bloody door off…c’mon!

Plus Giamatti was robbed 19 years ago when his exquisite, time-honored Sideways performance as melancholy “drink and dial” Miles failed to land even a Best Actor nomination. How many times has Sideways been re-watched compared to Taylor Hackford’s Ray, in which Jamie Foxx played Ray Charles and was not only nominated but won the Best Actor trophy? Ray is a good film and Foxx (also nominated the same year for his taxi-driver performance in Collateral **) is excellent in it, but in the intervening years I haven’t given Ray a single solitary re-watch. How many times have I re-watched Sideways since the fall of ‘04? Oh, at least 10 or 12 and probably closer to 15.

** Since late ‘04 I’ve rewatched Collateral at least ten times.