Two days ago I saw Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding (A24, 3.8), and tonight [Thursday, 2.22] I watched Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s Drive–Away Dolls (Focus Features, now playing).

Both are quite dykey — hungrily, aggressively sexual. The Coen-Cooke is mildly crazy in a nervy, farcical way (vaguely recalling the tone of Raising Arizona, the 1987 Coen Bros. film) while the Glass is like a volcano that spews more and more lava. And from my surprised perspective, both are moderately approvable.

This is not what I expected. I was a little bit afraid that both would piss me off in some way or would at least be annoying, and neither did that. Neither film is truly double grade-A but at the same time neither has anything to apologize for. And the Coen-Cooke is often fleet and clever, and it ends perfectly with a reaction shot from a peripheral character…bingo!

Glass’s film, which really uncorks the madness during its final third, is subversive in a way that I didn’t see coming.

The Coen-Cooke is deadpan droll — much lighter and goofier than the melodramatic Bleeding, which deals straight cards until the end and never fools around — although with a fair amount of violence. But you also know it’s basically comedic and is therefore going to observe boundaries.

Maybe it’s me but both films seem determined to be as provocative as they can be with the sex scenes. A lot of slurping and smooching and fingering and muff-diving, and the Coen-Cooke even goes in for sizable wang prosthetics toward the end.

I flinched a bit when the Glass went in for some light toe-chewing — sorry but the toes in question struck me as too thick and knobby. A voice inside went “eeeww, no…too much.”

Call me full of it if you want, but I have this impression that U.S. filmmakers aren’t allowed these days to make sexually graphic hetero-love-affair films. They can only dive into hot sex if it’s from a gay or lesbian serving tray. The prohibiting of Last Tango in Paris-level presentation is understood in every progressive corner of the industry (you certainly couldn’t make a film about a couple of saucy women who love to get fucked by Glenn Powell-type guys and are totally into hungry blowjobs, not in today’s environment) and you can sense that Glass and Coen-Cooke knew they had carte blanche approval and that now (i.e., last year) was the time to go for it and pull out the stops.

Earlier today Google announced a “pausing” of its Gemini artificial intelligence image generation feature after saying it offers “inaccuracies” in historical pictures.

This was a Google-speak response to the AI software having insisted on transforming all historical figures into persons of color. Google has posted an updated statement, saying that it will re-release an “improved” (i.e., significantly whiter) version soon.

May I ask a question? What is the basic difference between (a) black-icizing historical figures via Google Gemini and (b) movies using the presentism aesthetic to assert that people of color were or could, within the realm of our enlightened progressive imaginings, be persons of color in the past, including the British past?

Like the forthcoming Hallmark version of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, say?

Since ’15 or thereabouts we’ve all seen like-minded features, plays and cable series set in the 19th and 18th Centuries as well as Elizabethan England, including Netflix’s Bridgerton, Josie Rourke‘s Mary, Queen of Scots, Lynsey Miller and Eve Hedderwick Turner‘s Anne Boleyn, B’way’s Hamilton, Joel Coen‘s The Tragedy of Macbeth (set well before Elizabethan times) and so on.

The casting of all these productions reflect the woke Hollywood aesthetic known as “presentism“. All Google Gemini did was take this well-established trend and inject into a software tasked with providing historical images.

“A man with faith — that’s a rare quality.”

Last night I re-watched John Carpenter‘s Assault on Precinct 13 (’76). I do so every couple of years. I first caught it at the Museum of Modern Art in ’78 or ’79. I’ve seen it at least eight or nine times since, and I don’t even want to think about the 2005 Ethan Hawke-Larry Fishburne remake.

There are two reasons why I keep coming back to this hardboiled, Howard Hawksian, Rio Bravo-ish seige film, which is basically about nihilistic gang members looking to murder a small band of defenders inside an all-but-abandoned police precinct in the fictional rathole town of “Anderson”, a stand-in for any one of those parched and blighted burghs in South Central Los Angeles that most of have never visited and will almost certainly avoid visiting for the rest of our lives.

Reason #1 is that Carpenter’s film is a much leaner, tighter and more finely crafted film than Rio Bravo (’59) or the other two Hawks films that use the same sheriff-defending-the-jailhouse plot, El Dorado (’66) and Rio Lobo (’70).

Assault is really a masterpiece — taut, tense, boiled down, brilliantly shot and edited, and occasionally quite funny.

Reason #2 is Darwin Joston‘s dead-perfect performance as the terse, hard-bitten and rather romantic Napoleon Wilson, an allegedly dangerous killer on his way to prison who ironically turns out to be a first-rate hombre when the chips are down.

It’s not a rumor: Wilson is one of the greatest tough-guy characters ever created for the screen — calm, steady, sardonic, an embittered philosopher, a tender fellow with a lady (Laurie Zimmer‘s “Leigh”), a soul man with a sense of acrid black humor, and a guy you can totally trust with a shotgun…100% dependable when the heat is on and the odds are damn near insurmountable.

“Got a smoke?”

Posted on 3.27.19:

I’m dead serious here — Napoleon Wilson (Carpenter wrote the character with Joston in mind) is one of the greatest and most iconic action-film heroes ever written or performed, right up there with Al Pacino‘s Vincent Hanna in Heat, Robert Redford‘s Sundance kid, Robert Mitchum‘s Jeff Markham in Out of the Past, Humphrey Bogart‘s classic trio (Sam Spade, Richard Blaine, Fred C. Dobbs), Walter Matthau‘s Charley Varrick and anyone else you’d care to name.

And poor Joston, who passed in 1998 at the age of 61, never landed another role even half as good. Tragic.

A sampling of Napoleon Wilson’s classic lines:

“I believe in one man.”

“Chains is all I’ve got to look forward to.”

“Can’t argue with a confident man.”

“In my situation, days are like women — each one’s so damn precious, but they all end up leaving you.”

“It’s an old story with me. I was born out of time.”

And this exchange…

Lt. Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker): “You’re pretty fancy, Wilson.”

Wilson : “I have moments.”

And this…

Leigh to Wilson: “I’ve never had much faith in anyone coming to my rescue.”

Wilson: “Maybe you’ve been associating with the wrong kind of people.

Leigh: “I’ve worked with police officers for five years.

Wilson: “That’ll grow hair on a rock.” (beat) Still have the gun?”

Commenting about the employment situations in Gainesville vs. Scranton [2:23 mark]:

“I know what I say to my friends and the people of Gainesville. Things may be bad where you live, but I guarantee you it is a paradise compared to the burning coal heap that is Scranton, Pennsylvania. You know that show The Walking Dead? If you went to the lowest circle of hell, you’d still be 45 minutes outside of Scranton. I grew up there, I love it…it’s the single worst place on earth.”

I shook Joe Biden’s hand during a 2008 Democratic party campaign event at West Hollywood’s Pacific Design Center. I waited in line a good 45 minutes if not longer to meet Joe, who was 65 (just shy of 66) at the time and wearing a light silver-gray suit. Joe pressed must’ve pressed flesh that night with over 1000 people, perhaps more. His hands must’ve been numb, not to mention his soul. When the moment finally came, I said “greetings, Senator”. Biden nodded and went “hmmm.” I understood — no worries. But I could feel his vibe, his energy. He was alive and attuned, and that was 16 years ago.

Things change. The body and spirit inevitably decline. You can’t stop the process. I would have the 2012 version.

Posted in the immediate wake of the death of Hal Needham on 10.25.13:

What killed Burt Reynolds‘ career as a top-dog Hollywood movie star? What caused his luck or his string to run out? The main trigger was Burt’s decision to star in a string of lowbrow shitkicker films, most of which were directed by his buddy Hal Needham, who started out in the mid ’50s as a stuntman.

Under Needham’s Lubistch-like guidance Reynolds starred in Smokey and the Bandit (’77), Hooper (’78), Smokey and the Bandit 2, The Cannonball Run (’81), Stroker Ace (’83) and The Cannonball Run II (’84).

It’s generally understood that Reynolds stabbed his career in the heart when he turned down the astronaut role in James L. Brooks‘ Terms of Endearment in order to make Stroker Ace, allegedly out of loyalty to Needham. Yeehaw!

Condolences to Needham’s family and friends, but he was one of the worst directors to ever make a dent in this town. No, wait…I didn’t mean that. Well, actually I did. The Cannonball Run II was one of the most throughly cynical and poisonous films I’ve ever sat through (that Frank Sinatra cameo!), and I actually paid to see the damn thing in a Times Square theatre.

If you’ve ever cared about the wondrous transportation of cinema, the films of Hal Needham will always be a must-to-avoid. But I’m sure he was a nice guy and a good friend, etc. He knew how to kick back, chill the brewskis, fire up the charcoal grill and have a good old time.

If given a choice between leading a Needham-type life and the kind of life lived by Paul Thomas Anderson or Llewyn Davis or Franz Kafka or John Huston, I’m guessing that most Americans would choose the Needham path.

Fool that you are, you suggest a certain film for the evening. “What’s it about, who’s in it, when was it made?” etc. You give her all that. She has a problem with overly theatrical acting styles, she says, and believes that only films made in the ’80s and beyond have genuine, real-deal acting behavior, so you assure her that the acting isn’t fake.

And then you might mention the music or the cinematography or your history with the film, etc.

“How many times have you seen it?” I don’t know, five or six times, ten or twelve times, more than a few. “And you want to see it again?” I can see great films over and over, it doesn’t matter. On top of which it kinda makes it new in a way when you see it with a virgin.

“What’s the title again?” You give her that and after endless skepticism and vague reluctance she says “okay, let’s go.”

And then you call up the stream or insert the Bluray into the tray or you head for the Aero or Metrograph or Film Forum, and then the movie starts and five or ten minutes later she says, “Oh, I’ve seen this!”