I’m not saying Alex Garland’s Civil War (A24, 4.12) isn’t a first-rate film and I’m not saying it’s being over-praised, but I know one thing for sure and it’s this: Always regard South by Southwest hype askance.

Every now and then the adoring tweets are legit (like with Trainwreck a decade ago) but mostly you can’t trust anyone or anything out of Austin. Just sayin’.

A movie about an American civil war that doesn’t lay the Orange Cancer reality on the line? I don’t like the sound of that.

With Chris Pine‘s Poolman (Vertical) opting for a single-word title rather than Pool Man, why is Doug Liman‘s forthcoming Road House (Amazon, 3.21) not spelled as a one-word thing also (i.e., Roadhouse)?

Pine is Poolman’s star, director and co-writer, not to mention one of its four producers. His costars include Annette Bening, Danny DeVito, Jennifer Jason Leigh, DeWanda Wise, Ray Wise, Juliet Mills, Stephen Tobolowsky and Clancy Brown.

I’m asking myself what dramatic scenario would give me greater discomfort than Todd Haynes‘ forthcoming gay period romance?

C’mon, be honest…what would make me squirm in my seat more than watching a 1930s period piece in which an older, somewhat volatile Los Angeles cop (Joaquin Phoenix) falls into a torrid affair with “a deeply assmilated Native American schoolteacher” (not yet cast but probably to be played by a cute 20something guy) in the jungles of Mexico?

How many thousands of straight guys like myself are waiting for a film like this to come along? Can the number even be quantified?

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy reported yesterday that Haynes’ untitled love story will begin shooting on 7.29.24.

Verbatim: “A brutal, passionate love affair that rearranges their perceptions of the past, the future, and themselves.”

DEI theology plus general progressive support for (or at least tolerance of) trans-gender procedures among minors appears to be weakening and perhaps even coming to a gradual end on various fronts. In HE’s view that’s not altogether a bad thing. One could argue it’s even reason for relief.

Six or seven years of anti-white-baddie thinking among lefties, an elite movement that more or less peaked with the George Floyd protests of May and June 2020, has had its effect. Ditto pro-trans-procedure sentiment among ardent progressives. But now, at long last, a pushback thing seems to be manifesting.

Yesterday 1619 Project author Nikole Hannah Jones lamented the negative effects of last summer’s Supreme Court decision that affirmative action is unconstitutional — a piece that basically conveys an “uh-oh, wait a minute, things are reversing” reaction to DEI wokeism.

Today (3.14) N.Y. Times columnist John McWhorter bravely argued that standardized SAT tests aren’t racist, and thus contradicted long-accepted woke dogma that standardized testing propagates injustice by enforcing white privelege.

A day earlier (3.13) Public‘s Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag posted an article titled “The End of the Transgender Craze Is Near.” The subhead reads “the backlash against ‘gender-affirming care’ and trans-identified males in women’s sports and prisons is accelerating.”

The same day (3.13) an NBC San Diego report about a retail theft ring seemed to indicate that a movement to amend or even eliminate Prop 47, approved by California voters a decade ago to reduce California’s prison population, might be gathering steam. Prop 47’s decriminalizing of retail theft has resulted in mass theft operations like the one recently busted in Bonsall. The bad guys aren’t just the Bonsall couple but the wokey legislators behind Prop 47, which basically said to communities of color and economic deprivation “we understand that it’s hard to survive out there so we won’t make it a felony if you guys want to occasionally rip off retailers.”

Four days ago the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced an astonishing decision to bestow a major-category Oscar (i.e., Best Actress) based upon — are you sitting down? — the merit of a nominated performance rather than celebrating the non-white identity of a competing actress. What could the world be coming to?

Eight months ago an HE piece titled “Dropping Like Flies” (7.1.23) reported that four Hollywood DEI execs had either resigned or been let go; three days later another ankling in this vein was reported.

Last August Deadline‘s Michael Cieply reported that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has quietly stepped back from the absolutism of the 2024 representation and inclusion standards — i.e., “The Maoist DEI virus is weakening and receding.”

What do HE readers think? Are poltical and cultural changes starting to take effect or what? Are the wokeys starting to search around for pockets of tall grass?

A spooky submarine voyage occuupies about a third of Stanley Kramer‘s On The Beach (’59). With most of the world covered in radioactive haze and hundreds of millions dead from this, the USS Sawfish, a nuclear sub based in Melbourne and commanded by Capt. Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck), is ordered to explore the devastation in North America — specifically in Point Barrow, San Francisco and San Diego.

There’s something unsettling and even vaguely horrific about the telescopic periscope footage of the latter two locations. The smoggy-looking air, dead quiet, no humans and everything looking quite tidy and orderly…not even a random corpse or two lying on a sidewalk or a street, not a misparked or abandoned car or commuter bus…nothing amiss.

After the Sawfish arrives in San Francisco a crewman named Ralph Swain (John Meillon) jumps ship and swims ashore. The radiation will kill him within a few days, but Swain is from the San Francisco area and wants to die near his family rather than Down Under.

A few hours later Swain is fishing off a bayside pier, and out of nowhere and right nearby Sawfish surfaces and an unseen Peck, his voice amplified and metallic-sounding, asks Swain how he feels and what’s it like in the city, etc. Swain says it’s quiet and bleak, but imagine the horrific smell of all those hundreds of thousands of bodies…how could anyone stand it? But On The Beach is determined to avoid the gruesome and emphasize the stillness, and something about this strategy gets to you. An eerie feeling.

I’m an especially ardent fan of Giuseppe_Rotunno‘s black-and-white cinematography, which is constantly handsome and well-balanced and curiously soothing for that. Rotunno’s credits include Fellini Satyricon, Five Days One Summer, Carnal Knowledge, Wolf and All That Jazz.

A new 4K restoration of Jean Pierre Melville‘s Le Samourai will have its premiere showing at Manhattan’s Film Forum (3.29 through 4.11). It will open elsewhere on April 5. Who knows when the 4K Bluray will pop?

Jeff is a derivative of Jeffrey, of course, and is not spelled “Jef” by anyone in any country or any planet in the galaxy. So why is the first name of Alain Delon‘s hitman character, whose last name is Costello, spelled with only one “f”? A sickening decision. I hate it.

25 minutes into Some Like It Hot, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis suddenly appear in skirts, wigs and high heels, and somehow it’s not a stopper. They’re dead broke, remember, so how did they manage the transformation? Easy — they borrowed the apparel from one or two of the showgirls they knew.

Months before Tootsie opened on 12.17.82, I did a lot of making-of research for two stories I was writing, and I heard a lot about how difficult it was to create Dustin Hoffman‘s “Dorothy” look. Weeks and weeks of makeup and wardrobe tests, trying on different wigs, trial and error. And yet in Tootsie, Hoffman’s Michael Dorsey manages to create “Dorothy Michaels” within a few hours or at least overnight.

And I didn’t buy this, Right away I was asking myself, “Where did he get the garb and makeup and whatnot?” All director Sydney Pollack had to do was insert a mention of Bill Murray‘s “Jeff Slater”, Dorsey’s roommate, having acquired a closetful of women’s clothing from an upstate theatre company that’s gone bust. Then I would have bought the makeover.

Also: I read a couple of drafts of Tootsie early on, and there was a perfect Act One scene. Michael and Jeff are working as waiters in a swanky Manhattan eatery, and Dorsey is horrified to discover an ex-girlfriend and some rich guy being seated in his section of tables. Dorsey begs Slater to wait on them, but Slater is too busy or hassled about something else. Dorsey has no choice. The shocked ex-girlfriend is embarassed for him but tries to be as polite and supportive as possible — and it’s mortifying.

A great moment, I said to myself when I read it. Excruciating and relatable. And it wasn’t used.

Plus Pollack decided to shoot Tootsie in widescreen Panavision (2.39:1), and that didn’t seem to fit Tootsie, which at heart is an intimate indoor comedy about quirky showbiz types. Why the panaromic aspect ratio? Wrong call, I decided.

Because of these three issues I wasn’t completely in love with Tootsie, I would never argue that it’s not funny or not good enough (it’s fine), but in my mind it’s a 7.5 or at most an 8 — a B-plus effort.