The 2024 woke manual says that characters in mainstream films aren’t allowed to point to negative consequences due to weight issues. Because there are no negative consequences from same — sporting a bulky bod is a lifestyle choice, not a health issue. Such judgments were allowed 29 years ago when Crimson Tide was released, but no longer. Understood?
…I am a confirmed, committed, dyed-in-the-wool upper level guy. I like to glance at the big blue-white sky and the deep blue Hudson as I’m crossing over. The lower level feels too confining.
Friendo who attended last night’s CAA screening of Luca Guadagnino and Daniel Craig ‘s Queer:
“Unless the movie itself doesn’t accumulate sufficient enthusiasm (it’s a pungent, sensual trip movie and anything but bland), it will be hard not to nominate Daniel Craig‘s emotionally vulnerable tour de force performance.”
It’s obviously historical — James Bond going homo. The bravery alone. The audacity.HE will be seeing Queer at the NYFF on Monday, 10.7.
In a post-screening discussion with a Vanity Fair guy whose name escapes, Craig said he’d spent a year getting his mind “wrapped up into the character.”
HE to friendo: “Who was the guy sitting in front of you with the big fat head?”




“Not happening…way too laid back…zero narrative urgency,” I was muttering from the get-go. Basically the sixth episode of White Lotus Thai SERIOUSLY disappoints. Puttering around, way too slow. Things inch along but it’s all “woozy guilty lying aftermath to the big party night” stuff. Glacial pace…waiting, waiting. I was told...
I finally saw Walter Salles' I'm Still Here two days ago in Ojai. It's obviously an absorbing, very well-crafted, fact-based poltical drama, and yes, Fernanda Torres carries the whole thing on her shoulders. Superb actress. Fully deserving of her Best Actress nomination. But as good as it basically is...
After three-plus-years of delay and fiddling around, Bernard McMahon's Becoming Led Zeppelin, an obsequious 2021 doc about the early glory days of arguably the greatest metal-rock band of all time, is opening in IMAX today in roughly 200 theaters. Sony Pictures Classics is distributing. All I can say is, it...
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall's Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year's Telluride Film Festival, is a truly first-rate two-hander -- a pure-dialogue, character-revealing, heart-to-heart talkfest that knows what it's doing and ends sublimely. Yes, it all happens inside a Yellow Cab on...
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when and how did Martin Lawrence become Oliver Hardy? He’s funny in that bug-eyed, space-cadet way… 7:55 pm: And now it’s all cartel bad guys, ice-cold vibes, hard bullets, bad business,...

The Kamala surge is, I believe, mainly about two things — (a) people feeling lit up or joyful about being...
Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner's Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg's tastiest and wickedest film -- intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...