David Cronenberg‘s The Shrouds is a brainy, silky, sophisticated, deliberately paced, high-toned “horror” film for smart, well-educated people. I loved hanging with it…hanging in it.
Vincent Cassel, in great physical shape and adorned with a great silver be-bop pompadour haircut, is Karsh, a widower who’s devastated by the passing of his wife Becca (Diane Kruger).
As a way of managing his grief he’s invented GraveTech, a cutting-edge technology that enables survivors to keep visual tabs on their loved ones as they rot in their tombs.
I’m serious — that’s really what it’s about. Watching a loved one’s body slowly rot and decay. I was sitting there going “uhm…okay” and then it was “wait…really?”
I didn’t love the complex, slow-moving story but I adored the Cronenberg-ness…the handsome stylings, the discreet nudity, the sex, the flush vibe, the upscale Canadian atmosphere, the shadowy mood, the smart dialogue.
Cassel, Kruger, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Holt, Elizabeth Saunders…everyone brings their A-level game. That was enough for me.
I sing this with mannish gusto while cruising down the Merritt Parkway, you bet, and as questionable as this may sound, I can sing it as well as Muddy Waters. Really. I also do the “owwoo-yeah!” stuff. Five minutes and 29 seconds of absolute joy. Always leaves me in a great mood. Unlike what you get from Sinners, songs like this are the real thing.
“Waters recorded ‘Mannish Boy’ in Chicago on May 24, 1955. Featuring Jimmy Rogers on guitar and Fred Below on drums.
The second clip, I mean…the one with the Jamaican Jimmy Cliff guy…”I think I can make it now, the pain is gone.” And I’m saying this with a split reaction. If I were locked in a car trunk alongside a highway, the last thing I’d want to be is fucking stoned.
HE to Gavin O’Connor, emailed last night around 10 pm: “Gavin — I’ve just come from a screening of The Accountant 2, and I fucking loved it! It made me feel like I was 15 or 16 and hanging with friends.
“The brotherly rapport, which is to say the low-key, contentious, character-driven humor….the disciplined brainy vibe, the wonderful Juarez prison camp finale, the tabby cat, that icy blonde assassin (Daniella Pineda), the extra-wonderful country-bar dance scene….escapism par excellence!
“I wasn’t sure at first (the presence of J.K. Simmons‘ Raymond King threw me off) and to be fully honest I never fully put together every last plot strand (looking forward to reading a synopsis before seeing it again), but once Bernthal arrived and the humor kicked in, I was in heaven.
“The original Accountant was better than reasonably decent, and I was naturally hoping the sequel would be as good. But it’s five times better! Magnificent job! Had a great time! — Jeffrey Wells, HE (we haven’t seen each other since that party at Brett Ratner‘s a dozen or so years ago).”
Roughly five years after the release of The Accountant (’16) O’Connor announced that there would not only be an Accountant sequel but a trilogy.
“I’ve always wanted to do three because…we’re going to integrate Jon Bernthal‘s brother into the story,” O’Connor said. “So there’ll be more screen time for Bernthal in the second one. And then the third movie’s going to be, I call it, ‘Rain Man on steroids.’ The third movie is going to be the two brothers, this odd couple. The third one is going be a buddy picture.”
Well, O’Connor lied! Or at the very least he misdirected or jumped the gun or whatever. Because The Accountant 2 is, without a doubt, Rain Man on steroids itself…obviously….a brothers-in-jeopardy buddy comedy with lots of wit and persuasive atmosphere and beat-downs and thousands of whizzing bullets and dust and bald bad guys and crash-boom-bang, but always with the dry humor and a wonderful feeling of assurance that neither Ben Affleck nor Bernthal will get killed…pure fantasy bullshit but a total blast.
I felt vaguely miserable after seeing Sinners and then even more miserable after reading all those deranged Sinners raves, but The Accountant 2 put the roses back in my cheeks. Partly because it’s just a fucking good-guys-vs.-bad-guys movie without a political agenda…no instruction!…no fucking gay guys-because-every-movie-needs-to-fulfill-a-gay-guy quota or lesbians or transies…no quota casting at all, no POCs (unless you count Mexicans) and no bold-as-brass, agenda-driven #MeToo Amazons with glaring eyes and flaring nostrils (although Cynthia Addai-Robinson‘s government agent is terrific)…no woke bullshit…thank you!
I was scared when I saw Affleck’s horrific mint-green-and-orange-creamsicle whitesides, and then I realized “oh, okay, he’s wearing ugly nerd sneakers because autistic guys don’t think about looking good…they wear what they wear compulsively” so I let it go, but my blood ran cold when I first saw them.
I loved, loved, loved a dialogue scene shot in a car lot filled with nothing but silver Airstreams…the total banishing of ugly-ass Winnebagos with those awful, blue-collar color patterns…bliss!
Nobody’s talking about Blake Lively-vs.-Justin Baldoni right now — there’s simply no more gas in that tank — but Lively has persuaded everyone in the civilized world that she’s toxic and trouble. Nobody wants to work with her….she’s finished. She and her attorneys need to settle ASAP. Shut it down.
“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,...