Month: February 2025

— from Patrick McGilligan‘s “Woody Allen: A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham” (Doubleday, 2.5.25)

After catching The Substance in Cannes on 5.19.24, I wrote the following:

Now here’s ‘80s Olympic gymnast superstar and biomale-trans-scolding enterpeneur Jennifer Sey more or less saying the same thing in a 2.5.25 Federalist post:

As I said on 1.9.25…

For what it’s worth, I’m no fan of David Hogg either. The Dems need real dudes in charge, not Harvard-educated woke wussies. Okay, Hogg isn’t necessarily a wussie but he’s certainly a skilled opportunist.

What Hogg endured during the Parkland nightmare was obviously traumatic and devastating. In no way have I dismissed or minimized the terror of almost being shot to death by a deranged teenaged maniac.

Nonetheless Hogg DID seize upon and then master and then ride this experience to fame and influence and political glory in much the same way that Audie Murphy rode his WWII combat trauma like a racehorse to become a famous movie actor & a man of property and symbolic power.

Murphy would have been foolish to turn that opportunity down at the end of WWII; the same applies to Hogg in the wake of Parkland.

Hogg may well have had political careerist ambitions all along (I’m presuming that he did), but surviving the Parkland trauma and then railing against the pro-gun lobby served as quite the dynamic springboard.

And here he is now…a political player, a guy with skin in the game, a young establishment Democrat who has risen in the ranks. He’s in a position now to run for a seat in Congress before long or for the U.S. Senate when he’s a bit older, and perhaps even the Presidency some day. He rode that traumatic horse, all right.

HE’s American LAX-to-JFK jet touched down around 8 pm Thursday night. I’m now (10:18 pm) parked on Metro North train to Westport. Public transportation almost always lets me down in some way — this time it didn’t — thank you.

The jig is up for Team Lively. She may as well throw in the towel — everyone despises her — vindication is out of the question. Team Baldoni needs to give in also…please.

Just walk away, and there will be an end to the horror.

The days when an actor like John Lithgow could be shamed into not playing a role over Stalinist trans outrage rhetoric are over. A couple of years ago trans terror was a force to be feared. Not so much these days. In my view J.K. Rowling is a woman of backbone.

Gulf of Emptiness? Gulf of Nowhere? Gulf of Infinite Nothingness?

I’ve always liked the sound of the Gulf of Mexico. Everyone should revert to that when Trump leaves office on 1.20.29. He won’t die in office — of that I’m fairly certain. German genes.

Gulf of Jose Jimenez?

…if I skip this one? Can’t hurt, right? Sorry but I’m 95% sure that I’m not stupid enough to really enjoy it. I know, I know…just sit through the damn thing and then trash it, if you’re so inclined.

This is a life-size mannequin, sitting in the lobby of the AMC Grove, where last night I caught a 7:15 pm screening of Becoming Led Zeppelin.**

** I first saw the Ledzep doc in Telluride in ‘22 (or was it ‘21?). It was 16 minutes longer then. It’s nothing close to a probing documentary — it’s more like a fan-created infomercial.

If you could somehow magically migrate yourself into The Brutalist…if you could somehow penetrate that membrane and suddenly find yourself actually hanging with Adrien Brody‘s Laszlo Toth and all the rest of those miserable characters…if you could push a button that would allow you to actually gain entry to and live in their world…would you?

Answer: Of course you wouldn’t because (a) theirs is a grim, grief-stricken world…a morose “lemme outta here” underland if there ever was one, and (b) the characters aren’t “real” (by which I mean relatable in a recognizable, everyday, human being sense) but Brady Corbet constructs.

Living inside The Brutalist would be, in fact, hellish. That’s precisely how I felt as I watched it…trapped in a cold hell cave.

An HE commenter claimed a week or two ago that I had ranked Emilia Perez among my top five films of ’24. Not true — in my final 12.21.24 wrap-up I ranked it in 15th place.

1. Sean Baker‘s Anora / HE review (5.22.24)

2. Edward Berger‘s Conclave / HE review (8.31.24)

3. Payal Kapadia‘s All We Imagine as Light / HE review (5.24.24)

4. Alice Rohrwacher‘s La Chimera / HE review (4.24.24)

5. James Mangold‘s A Complete Unknown / HE review (12.10.24)

6. Luca Guadagnino‘s Queer / HE review (9.18.24)

7. Halina Reijn‘s Babygirl / HE review (12.10.24)

8. Steven Zallian‘s Ripley / HE review (4.27.24)

9. Robert Lorenz‘s In the Land of Saints and Sinners / HE review (4.5.24)

10. Ali Abassi’s The Apprentice / HE review (5.20.24)

11. Tim Fehlbaum‘s September 5 / HE mini-review (10.24.24)

12. Jesse Eisenberg‘s A Real Pain.

13. Alex Garland‘s Civil War / HE review (4.9.24)

14. Halfdan Ullmann Tondel‘s Armand / abbreviated HE non-review (11.18.24)

15. Jacques Audiard‘s Emilia Perez (audacious but calm down) / HE review (6.18.24)

16. Steve McQueen‘s Blitz / HE review (11.5.24)

17. Magnus von Horn’s’s The Girl With the Needle

18. Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune: Part Two.

19. Coralie Fergeat‘s The Substance

20. Christy Hall‘e Daddio (Sony Pictures Classics, 6.28)

21. Rose Glass‘s Love Lies Bleeding

22. Brady Corbet‘s The Brutalist.

23. Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire‘s Asphalt City (formerly Black Flies)

24. Clint Eastwood‘s Juror No. 2

25. Luca Guadagnino‘s Challengers

26. Ridley Scott‘s Gladiator II.

27. Yorgos Lanthimos‘s Kinds of Kindness

28. Wes Ball‘s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

29. RaMell Ross‘s Nickel Boys

30. Greg Kwedar‘s Sing Sing

31. Zellner Bros.’ Sasquatch Sunset.