Month: February 2025

Arguably the best Hitler video in years…best editing, best dialogue…made me very happy, restored my soul.

Everyone knows by now that The Brutalist and Brady Corbet are finished as far as the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars are concerned…nice try, you’re not winning, maybe next time.

What this portends, unfortunately, is that the remaining Brutalist sympathizers will be voting to hand the Best Actor Oscar to Adrien Brody as a make-up.

This is a really misguided idea, of course, as the lead performances by Conclave’s Ralph Fiennes and A Complete Unknown Timothee Chalamet are far more transporting than Brody’s…please, c’mon.

In my book, Brody’s boo-hoo weeping scene at the bus station with Alessandro Nivola…this scene alone requires instant Oscar disqualification.

Sean Baker (1:04 mark): “Writing is the hardest [part of the process] for me. I think it’s…when you’re alone and you’re just breaking [into] a story and you don’t know if it’s something that’ll work…it’s torture, absolute torture.”

And I, the beast of Hollywood Elsewhere burden, endure a form of this torture (obviously not the same as Baker’s but somewhat similar) every damn day. If you don’t think that takes a spiritual toll, think again.

This Scott Feinberg-moderated discussion happened last night in Santa Barbara’s Arlington theatre. The event was called the Outstanding Directors Award Group Discussion & Awards Presentation. Baker, Jacques Audiard, James Mangold, Brady Corbet, Coraline Fergeat.

This SBIFF Virtuosos montage (it unfurled last Friday night) is first-rate, mesmerizing…as good as this kind of thing gets.

On the other hand, Jennifer Lawrence (aka J-Law) was on a fairly hot roll for three years, starting with Winter’s Bone (’10) and cresting with her Oscar-winning performance in the phenomenally on-target and commercially successful Silver Linings Playbook (’12), written and directed by David O. Russell.

But that was it — a charmed career path that lasted three years.

From 2013 onward or over the last 12 years, Lawrence has been more or less plotzing…treading water, in-and-out, hit-and-miss. She’s been in two or three good films, but the lucky-streak period ended with Playbook, her last big critical and commercial hit. She’s been doing “okay” but the career has kinda been poking and lurching along.

The three Hunger Games films were commercially successful but critically loathed. Russell’s American Hustle enjoyed critical and commercial approval but lacked that special euphoric spark. Lawrence’s X-Men films…give me a break. Susanne Bier‘s Serena (’14) was a bust. Russell’s Joy (’15) felt like a miss or even a semi-fizzle. And then along came Morten Tyldum‘s Passengers (’16), which succeeded commercially but was hated by people with taste…a critical Hindenburg.

Darren Aronofsky‘s mother! (’17) was a powerful art-horror film (heartily approved by HE) but almost everyone hated it. Red Sparrow (’18) was a modest hit and a critical flop. Dark Phoenix…later. Adam McKay‘s Don’t Look Up (Netflix) was critically applauded but failed to really catch on culturally or awards-wise. Lila Neugebauer‘s Causeway (’18 — Lawrence’s wokey, low-rent New Orleans film) was critically upvoted but otherwise felt like a whiff.

In my book Gene Stupnitsky‘s No Hard Feelings (’23) was Lawrence’s best comedy since Silver Linings Playbook. Her next film is Lynne Ramsay‘s Die, My Love, a dark comedy.

It’s been 13 years since Silver Linings Playbook connected across-the-board. If she wants to maintain her Lawrence-ness, J-Law needs to hit another homer or at least a triple. She can’t just star in movies that are semi-liked or which perform fairly well. She needs to really tag one.

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I’ve noted before that most name-brand directors, producers and actors enjoy 12-year streaks when everything is cooking and breaking their way. Some directors and actors are lucky enough to last 15 or 20 years or even longer.

Dustin Hoffman is an exception to this general rule in that (a) he enjoyed a serious 15-year hot streak from The Graduate (’67) to Tootsie (’82), and then (b) he kept things going on an in-and-out-basis for another 10 years if you ignore Ishtar (’87) and start with Rain Man (’88) and finish with Wag the Dog (’97).

So if you want to be liberal or forgiving by erasing Ishtar, Hoffman actually revelled in a 25-year hot streak, which puts him alongside Meryl Streep (40 years), Martin Scorsese (half-century), Alfred Hitchcock (23 years), Steven Soderbergh (23 years), John Ford (27 years) and John Wayne(37 years).

You also have to give Hoffman credit for delivering a pair of ace performances in 2004’s I Heart Huckabees and Meet the Fockers.

Hoffman’s initial golden streak contained 11 or 12 really good films: The Graduate (’67), Midnight Cowboy (’69), Little Big Man (’70), Straw Dogs (’71), Papillon (’73), Lenny (’74), All the President’s Men (’76), Marathon Man (’76), Straight Time (’78), Agatha (’79…decent, not great), Kramer vs. Kramer (’79), Tootsie (’82).

The mixed second streak (10 years) contained nine films: Rain Man (’88), Dick Tracy (’90), Billy Bathgate (’91), Hook (’91…REALLY BAD), Hero (’92…problematic), Outbreak (’96), Sleepers (’96), American Buffalo (’96), Mad City (’96) and Wag the Dog (’97)

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I saw Kevin Costner‘s Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 2 last Friday night (2.7) at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

For what it’s worth this 190-minute western feels a tad more engaging than Horizon: Chapter 1, which I caught in Cannes last May. But it’s more or less the same bowl of scenic, big-swing lethargy soup, and that ain’t cause for joyful celebration. I’m sorry but it’s just not.

Seven months ago (i.e., early last July) I wrote that unless Horizon 2 significantly improves upon the sprawling and sluggish initial installment and delivers something that feels whole and alluring and thematically fulfilling, he should probably forget about Parts 3 and 4.

Alas, Chapter 2 makes the same kind of mistakes that Chapter 1 did — it kinda moseys around and half-assedly hopscotches and fritters away story tension. Too damn slow, too clop-cloppy, almost zero urgency in terms making it all come together.

Chapter 2 is mostly about the women — it’s a rough-and-tumble film about open-range feminism. Sienna Miller‘s Frances Kittredge, Ella Hunt‘s Juliette Chesney, Isabelle Fuhrman‘s Diamond Kittredge, Abbey Lee‘s Marigold, Kathleen Quinlan‘s Annie Pine…but for God’s sake don’t ask me to recount their disparate storylines. I don’t want to think about them, talk about them, write about them…leave me alone. It’s taken too damn long to sit through these two films, and I’m damn sure not going to invest even more hours trying to neatly summarize them on the Macbook.

It really and truly breaks my heart to say all this. I love Costner as a man of character, consequence and sincerity, and I truly worship some of the films he’s directed and starred in. Open Range especially.

In my original Cannes review, I wrote that I was so bummed after seeing the first installment that “if a friend had offered a couple of snorts of Vietnamese heroin, I would have followed him right into the bathroom.”

Serious cinema in the classic western mode, especially when you’re talking about two movies running three hours each, is about delivering a solid, well-strategized, self-contained story with emotional currents. It needs to deliver a beginning, a middle and hopefully a bull’s-eye ending. Horizon Chapter 1 didn’t do that, and neither has Chapter 2. They both mainly plant seeds by introducing characters along with the beginnings or continuings of six or seven story lines. In so doing they refuse to deliver a serious, nutritional, stand-alone meal…the kind of thing most of us want to see.

Think of the huge, sprawling, emotional story that Red River told, and it did so in 133 minutes

Costner said last May that Horizon “is a journey…it’s not a plot movie.”

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Sasha Stone and I felt so cranked and elated about Anora‘s recent triumphant double-win (the top DGA + PGA awards on Saturday, 2.8) that we had to talk it all out. And so we did yesterday around noon.

We wondered aloud why every last Gold Derby handicapper but one picked The Brutalist‘s Brady Corbet to win the top DGA prize, and what their blind spot was all about.

I’ll tell you what the GD blind spot is about. The Gold Derby guys are easily intimidated sheep…they sense a certain herd instinct in the wind and vote accordingly. They have no balls, no moxie, no backbone, no critical integrity…they just go “baaaahh!” and let the barking sheep dogs push them around.

I was a huge Anora fan from the get-go in Cannes last May, but I was frankly fearful of what would happen with the DGA and PGA awards. My mood was grim. Either way I generally steer clear of predictions until the guilds start to be heard because what do I know?

As I said the other day, Sean Baker will almost certainly take the Best Director Oscar now. It goes without saying that Anora is currently very well positioned to take the Best Picture Oscar as well.

Favorite line from yesterday’s reaction piece: “Brady Corbet is almost certainly wearing a long face right now. The pot-bellied director of HE’s least favorite film of the year has come up short, and all the angels in heaven are singing a joyful hymn composed by Miklos Rozsa.”

Late yesterday morning (Sunday, 2.9) SBIFF honcho Roger Durling moderated an international directors panel at the Arlington theatre. The honorees were I’m Still Here‘s Walter Salles, Emilia Perez‘s Jacques Audiard (who also wrote and produced), The Seed of the Sacred Pig‘s Mohammad Rasoulof and Flow‘s Gints Zilbalodis (who also wrote and produced).

The combination of Durling’s questions and his guests’ thoughtful, open-hearted answers created an atmosphere of inquisitive calm and introspection. It felt very nourishing…a good-vibe thing.

Here’s my Cannes ’24 review of The Seed of the Sacred Fig.

In his Audiard chat Durling focused on the craft-and-transformation aspects of Emilia Perez. It follows that Durling behaved like a kind and gracious host by sidestepping the recent Emila Perez p.r. catastrophe, or more specifically the Karla Sofia Gascon nightmare about resurfaced tweets.

Stand-out quote #1: “My goal is to create an experience. Music is closer to filmmaking than any other art. It transcends culture. Filmmaking is a language in itself. Images are a language…they are not foreign. I’m not interested in manufacturing emotion.” (Zilbalodis)

Stand-out quote #2: “I’m Still Here is about overcoming loss…The real life Eunice refused to be seen as the victim. I would never embrace melodrama for the sake of theatricality. I would never betray her story. Trust the spectator. The film embraces the fact that we can overcome.” (Salles)

Stand-out quote #3: “When you live in a system of repression and dictatorship then being yourself becomes a challenge. When I started making films the first question I had was, how do I maintain being myself? So I used metaphors to express myself. But after my third film, I realized that metaphors in itself were a form of censorship. I had to turn limitations into solutions. The story began when I was in prison, when one of the officers told me he questioned his life and his job. This story and this chasm highlights the issue between tradition and identity.” (Rasoulof)

Stand-out quote #4: “I have this nostalgia for silent film. Films where there is purely acting and light. What I mean is that I try to escape from spoken dialogue.” (Audiard)

Stand-out quote #5: “I’m more of a literary fellow than a cinephile. I can do without images but I can’t do without words.” (Audiard)

SBIFF Virtuoso headliners, in alphabetical order: A Complete Unknown‘s Monica Barbaro, Emilia Perez‘s Selena Gomez, Wicked‘s Ariana Grande, Sing Sing‘s Clarence Maclin, Anora‘s Mikey Madison, September 5‘s John Magaro, I’m Still Here‘s Fernanda Torres, The Apprentice‘s Sebastian Stan.

I hereby apologize for expressing disappointment that A Real Pain‘s Kieran Culkin and Babygirl’s Harris Dickinson didn’t show up. I really wanted to sample Dickinson’s vibe, but another time. What was important was that SBIFF honcho Roger Durling managed to lasso eight seriously live-wire movie people — seven of them youngish and popping like well-oiled corn kernels over a flame, and the eighth (the attractively-seasoned Torres) was arguably the most ebullient of the lot.

The annual Virtuosos gathering is an elegant, time-honored showcase for this and that brand of talent and charisma, but it’s also a competitive event because when it’s over people always say “who won?” Well, nobody really knocked it out of the park but if you ask me the two standouts were Stan and Gomez.

Stan is currently shooting Fjord, a Romanian-language film for director Cristian Mungiu, and at one point moderator Dave Karger asked him to speak a little Romanian, and Stan passed with flying colors. Plus he amusingly dissected the coarseness and fraudulence of the Trump persona.

Gomez made a vivid impression because of her superior leg sculpture. Before last night I had never really thought of the Emilia Perez costar as a gal with great gams — now I can’t think of anything else.

Sidenote: Ariana Grande‘s Wicked performance as Glinda has landed a Best Supporting Actress nomination. In the film Grande’s wind-up-doll, pretty-in-pink mannerisms are offered as a satire of self-obsessed femininity, but last night….how do I say this tactfully?…she seemed to be playing Glinda as herself. (Or vice versa.) Grande is certainly not a “let it all hang out” fuck-all type. Her way of speaking, her body language…it’s all been carefully rehearsed.

Plus when Karger asked her to recommend a relatively unsung film for people to seek out and watch, Grande either (a) couldn’t come up with one or (b) chose not to for…I don’t know, possibly out of fear of sounding divisive or something. She said that people should watch “everything…all the movies” or words to that effect. She basically chickened out.

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Why did Taylor Swift get booed again? Because she’s rich? Because she’s “friends” with the increasingly toxic Blake Lively?

Are we to presume that Adam Sandler and Paul Rudd are…what? Hood ornaments?

I’ve never once listened to anything by Ice Spice — should I have?