Netflix’s limited theatrical release strategy for Richard Linklater‘s Hit Man is pretty much the same they used last October for David Fincher‘s The Killer, to wit: no major chains, the Paris on 58th, Regal Union Square, various Alamo theatres, the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, etc.

Here’s how I explained the Killer deal on 10.26.23:

Yesterday I wrote that the under-performing of George Miller‘s Furiosa is due to a lack of an unequivocal, no-substitutions Mad Max character in the lead as opposed to a second-banana girlboss figure.

Charlize Theron‘s Furiosa in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road was a formidable, enraged, go-for-broke protagonist, but she wasn’t the lead — Tom Hardy was.

No matter how you slice it Anya Taylor Joy faced a daunting challenge — trying to carry a major action franchise flick when she’s not playing an actual, historically verified lead but a strong supporting character.

The failure of Furiosa was due, I wrote, to “the absence of Mad Max and his being replaced by a girlboss, and a story about a girlboss out for vengeance upon Chris Hemworth’s Dementus — essentially a feminist woke plot (i.e., you go get the evil bad guy, girl). Action bros have never felt much passion or enthusiasm for proverbial girlboss characters.”

The biggest exception to the girlboss rule, of course, is Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in the first two Alien movies. She was unquestionably the lead in both and decisively kicked ass…no question about that.

If you were a senior production exec in a position to make greenlight calls, what would your attitude be about new potential girlboss action projects? Would you be indifferent about what happened to Furiosa last weekend or would you be saying “hmmm…I don’t know”?

Jessica Palud‘s Being Maria was screened last weerk (5.21) in Cannes as an out-of-competition premiere. Based on Vanessa Schneider‘s 2018 memoir “My Cousin Maria Schneider“, it allegedly pushes a contrary viewpoint about the making of Last Tango in Paris and the filming of the anal sex assault scene in particular — contrary in that it argues with statements from its late director, Bernardo Bertolucci.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy, who attended the Cannes screening and is not given to fanciful distortion as a rule, says that Palud’s film “pretends that the rape scene was unscripted. I went into the film not realizing it was about Schneider. What the film suggests is that Marlon Brando and Bertolucci were unsatisfied by a take and plotted to add the rape scene without Schneider knowing it [in advance].”

I wasn’t on the set of Last Tango in Paris and am only going by online accounts, but please consider a piece that I posted on 12.5.16, titled “Bernardo Bertolucci to Last Tango Outrage Crowd: ‘Cool It…You’ve Got It All Wrong’“:

Last Tango in Paris director Bernardo Bertolucci has issued a statement about the anger that ignited after an Elle article summarized comments Bertolucci made during a 2013 interview, specifically about he and Tango star Marlon Brando having surprised the late Maria Schneider with an idea to do a butter-enabled anal sex scene.

The hoo-hah is based on a “ridiculous misunderstanding” of what actually happened, Bertolucci says.

“I would like, for the last time, to clear up a ridiculous misunderstanding that continues to generate press reports about Last Tango in Paris around the world,” Bertolucci wrote.

“[Three] years ago at the Cinematheque Francaise someone asked me for details on the famous butter scene. I specified, but perhaps I was not clear, that I decided with Marlon Brando not to inform Maria that we would [use] butter. We wanted her spontaneous reaction to that improper use [of the butter]. That is where the misunderstanding lies.

“Somebody thought, and thinks, that Maria had not been informed about the violence on her. That is false!”

Bertolucci explained that “Maria knew everything because she had read the script, where it was all described. The only novelty was the idea of the butter.”

This argues somewhat with a Schneider quote given to a Daily Mail interviewer in 2007, to wit: “I felt humiliated and, to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologize. Thankfully, there was just one take.”

I wouldn’t mention this if it wasn’t a thing, but what difference could it possibly make to anyone what kind of lubricant is used in the matter of backdoor action? If Schneider knew what the scene would be about because it was in the script, why would she be alarmed about the use of butter? What’s the issue as long as something was used…right?

Variety‘s Nick Vivarelli reports that when Schneider died, Bertolucci said to ANSA: “Her death came too soon, before I could tenderly hug her again, tell her that I felt close to her like the first day, and, at least once, say I was sorry. The strong creative rapport we had during the Last Tango shoot had been poisoned with the passing of time. Maria accused me of having robbed her of her youth and only today I wonder whether there wasn’t some truth to that. In truth she was too young to sustain the impact with the unpredictable and brutal success of that film.”

“The world has to be reminded that watching a film at home, while scrolling through your phone and checking emails and half-paying attention, is just not the way, although some tech companies would like us to think so.

“Watching a film with others in a movie theater is one of the great communal experiences. We share laughter, sorrow, anger, fear and hopefully have a catharsis with our friends and strangers.

“So I say the future of cinema is where it started: in a movie theater.” — from Sean Baker‘s 5.25 acceptance speech after winning the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or for Anora.

It’s always a little heartbreaking when a special film connects big-time in Cannes, as Payal Kapadia‘s All We Imagine As Light did last week, and then opens in the U.S. to a certain lack of enthusiasm if not shrugs.

Please don’t let this happen to Kapadia’s film. She’s more than just a confident, first-rate filmmaker, but a master of uncanny simplicity, possessed of an Antonioni-like focus — in my view she’s part of that stellar crew that includes Agnes Varda, Jane Campion, Jennifer Kent, Celine Sciamma, etc.

Accomplished Indian social realism is such a rare thing, plus All We Imagine As Light isn’t the least bit anger- or revenge-driven — it couldn’t be farther from the girlboss mindset. Janus Films and Sideshow have the North American rights…here’s hoping it all works out.

I woke up this morning around 3 am…naturally, having operated by a European clock for the last two weeks. Come daybreak I couldn’t do much except sit around and chat with Jett, Cait and Sutton and, you know, do grandfather stuff. And then I crashed for a couple of hours. All to say this is more of a recovery than a filing day.

But I’ll have at least three topics to wade into when I return to Connecticut — watching the original King Kong with 2 and 1/2 year-old Sutton, re-watching the original Ant Man and a rehash of the whole Bernardo Bertolucci-Maria Schneider Last Tango in Paris thing, thanks to Jessica Palud‘s Being Maria, an out-of-competition Cannes film that I didn’t get to but have read about. From what I’ve gathered and have personally been told, it distorts big-time.

NYC transit system to weary traveller upon his return from France:

Welcome back, Chuck, and now the ordeal begins.

Nine and a half hours from Nice Airport take-off at 2 pm (or 8 am by a Manhattan clock) to your JFK 5:30 pm touchdown, you say?

Followed by 170 drag-ass minutes (customs, luggage retrieval, endless walking, Air Train, missing the Howard Beach A train by seconds), topped off by your A train’s sluggish arrival at Penn Station at 8:20 pm, thereby causing you to miss your 8:11 pm Jersey Transit train to West Orange.

I had awoken on Saturday morning at the NYC equivalent of 12:30 am.

London and Nice-area mass transit systems are faster, smoother, more comfortable and less arduous, you say? They actually have escalators everywhere, unlike NYC?

I began my Cannes-to-Nice bus voyage (free voucher supplied by Cannes Film Festival staff) at the NYC time zone equivalent of 4:30 am and finally walked through Jett’s door in West Orange last night at roughly 9:15 pm or 3:15 am Cannes time, or nearly 23 hours later.

What do you do, whine for a living? Are you a baby, some kind of chronic complainer? Are you a man or a mouse? Nine and a half hours of flying plus 14 hours of ground transport and waiting on both ends…par for the course.

…that comes over you or creeps in…after flying nine hours from Nice and then you finally touch down at JFK…I shall be released! Actually not so fast because there’s no available gate so your Delta 767 sits on the tarmac for 35, 40 minutes…waiting, waiting…trying to suppress anger. Really nice.

…that a super-famous person was portrayed by an actor who resembled him/her this closely?

Nobody knows how good Waltzing With Brando will be, but even if it’s only so-so Billy Zane will have landed his catchiest, most attention-getting role ever. Zane hasn’t been on a hot streak since his mid ‘90s one-two punch — The Phantom (‘96) and Titanic (‘97). Everyone loves a good comeback.

…are actually making sense or at least aren’t striking me as wildly off the mark.

Except, that is, for Jesse Plemons being handed the Best Actor trophy for playing three muted, hung-up, blank-eyed zombies in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness. This, to me, is a huge WHAT??

I’m especially pleased that one of my biggest faves, Halfdan Ullmann Tondel‘s Armand, has won the Camera d’Or.

I’d much rather listen to Deirdre’s vocal-free Beatles tracks than think about the dreaded Paul Mescal playing one of the lads in Sam Mendes’ planned quartet of Beatles films. I’m sorry but Jordan Ruimy’s 5.24 post sent me into a black pit.

Okay, I’ve popped for Delta’s onboard wifi…we’re now over the Atlantic (southwest of Keflavik) and the signal is surprisingly strong.

I’m only just starting to monitor ticket-buyer reactions to George Miller’s Furiosa (5.24) and the negatives seem higher than I expected. Many agree with my viewpoint. I called it a visually handsome but unimpressive revenge saga — shallow, overlong — in my 5.16 review.