Vertical Entertainment’s couldn’t-care-less theatrical release of Phillip Noyce’s Fast Charlie (12.8) was a reminder that some distributors are actively hostile to the idea of proudly presenting a first-rate film in theatres as a kind of cultural hors d’oeuvres prior to streaming.

Vertical apparently went to some effort to belittle Noyce’s film during its one week of theatrical life, such as limiting its NYC-area exposure to Coney Island’s Kent Theatre (1170 Coney Island Blvd.), allegedly a sticky-floors, hole-in-the-wall viewing experience.

Streaming is Vertical’s basic game plan, but if you’re going to briefly dip your toe into theatrical, you have to man up and summon a little heart and soul. You have show respect and a little caring.

“Yes, Priscilla’s darkly muddy visual palette must be celebrated….not. I felt as if I’d been locked in a realm of relentless gloom — confined like a kind of political prisoner with minimal access to sunlight.

“Director Sofia Coppola and dp Philippe Le Sourd are using oppressive under-lighting, of course, to convey how Priscilla Presley felt during that bizarre confining marriage.

“On one hand this is a respectable aesthetic strategy, but on the other it’s a strategy that punished me, Jeffrey Wells, as I sat there in my AMC auditorium.

“And by the way the under-lighting is evident during Priscilla’s life in Germany with her parents (gloom, gloom) so the visual confinement aesthetic lacks discipline.

“All I know is that Le Sourd’s cinematography made me feel like I was an inmate at Abu Ghraib.”

— response to K. Bowen’s effusive praise for Coppola’s film.

“The Zone of Interest is a highly respectable arthouse horror film with an obvious minimalist strategy, but it’s been boosted in a macabre sense by the genocidal stain of October 7th. Don’t tell me this isn’t a major factor in the minds of critics and industry folk alike — it obviously is. A vote for The Zone of Interest is a vote against that ghastly slaughter at the hands of Hamas. The fact that IDF shellings have also brought about many thousands of non-combatant Gaza deaths since Israel’s completely justified invasion…well, that’s another wrinkle. But don’t tell me that Glazer’s film and the Gaza conflict are unrelated.”

— HE response to “bentrane”’s comment that the current award-season heat behind Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust film “has nothing to do with Zionism.”