Month: May 2025
Humming Sound of Allied Bombers
I don’t care for stories about kids, but I will always sit up straight for a Fatih Akin film. A child’s tale of World War II, Amrum is based on the childhood memories of co-screenwriter Hark Bohm. Occasional Akin collaborator Diane Kruger costars. Eight years ago she starred in my favorite Akin film, In The Fade (’17) — her performance won her a Best Actress award in Cannes.
“Floating Island of Garbage” Guy
Besides being “offensive”, offensive humor is, on a certain level, good for the soul. Almost on a level of “the more offensive, the better”. Because any jokes that piss off wokesters are, on a certain level, quite soothing. I’m not saying that the actual import of racist humor is literally funny, but the howling and abusive spectacle of it all is, on a certain level….I don’t know what I’m saying.
Insult humor is often funny, okay? To sensible center-left types, I mean. I’m sorry but it is.
We all remember how Tony Hinchcliffe infuriated AOC and many other lefties after trashing Puerto Ricans at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Madison Square Garden on 10.27.24. He described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”, and joked that “these Latinos, they love making babies, they do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that, they come inside, just like they do to our country”.
He also riffed about “carving watermelons with Black people” and “making a rock paper scissors joke involving Palestinians throwing rocks, and Jews “[having] a hard time throwing that paper.”
This Oldie Holds Up
This is still a very catchy and agreeable song….nice harmonies, easy 4/4 rhythm. Primarily written by John Lennon in early ’62, “Ask Me Why” was initially recorded at Abbey Road studios on 6.6.62….with drummer Pete Best.
Sure enough, Best got the axe nine weeks later — 8.16.62. Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison didn’t have the stones to lower the boom directly, so their 28-year-old manager, Brian Epstein, stepped up and did the deed.
“Ask Me Why” was recorded again, along with “Please Please Me”, on 11.26.62 with Ringo Starr on drums.
Best is still with us at age 83.
Is Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” About To Happen?
Cannes Film Festival handicappers have been asking which film in the line-up, if any, will be this year’s Anora…a bracingly honest, non-downish diversion of sorts…a film that might emotionally touch bottom and actually pay off.
I know nothing but my gut is telling me that Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value, which will screen late on Wednesday, 5.21, and twice more the following day…I’m going out on a limb by predicting that this comedy-drama costarring Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Elle Fanning, Inga Lilleaas and Cory Michael Smith might be the shit…I really like and admire Trier and this feels like the right movie at the right moment.
Friendo: “Trier is good. And I think this is his time, his year…you can feel it.”
A Cannes regular is picking up good buzz about Mascha Schilinski‘s Sound of Falling, a German-made Competition film about “four generations of women connected by a farm in the Altmark region.” I’ll see it on Wednesday, 5.14.
Friendo #2: “Sound of Falling has no reason to be in Competition unless it’s actually good. It’s from a second-time, basically unknown German director and no big stars in the cast, so there’s no reason for the Cannes team to program it unless it’s an actual discovery.”
I’m also being told to expect a little something extra from Scarlett Johansson‘s Eleanor the Great, which stars June Squibb. The script by Tory Kamen (daughter of Mark Kamen, who penned Taken and Karate Kid) is kind of like an eldercare American Fiction by way of Alexander Payne.
“It basically revolves around June’s Eleanor Morgenstein appropriating the life story of a late friend who was a Holocaust survivor. Eleanor shares this after accidentally stumbling into a support group for Holocaust survivors and family of survivors. It’s this little white lie that she tells that snowballs and snowballs into this bigger thing, and soon she’s at a loss to stop it because it creates this whole kind of celebrity status for her in her new social circle at the retirement home, and she ends up befriending this college student who wants to write a paper on her, etc.”
The source says if (I say “if”) the movie delivers on the promise of the script, it’s a total award-season role for Squibb. And yet a friend who’s seen it says “meh.”
The other hotties are Ari Aster‘s Eddington, Lynne Ramsay‘s Die My Love, Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, Kleber Mendonca Filho’s The Secret Agent, Sebastian Lelio‘s The Wave, Harris Dickinson‘s Urchin, Kristen Stewart‘s The Chronology of Water, Christian Petzold‘s Miroits No. 3, Richard Linklater‘s Nouvelle Vague, Raoul Peck‘s Orwell, Jafar Panahi‘s A Simple Accident, Oliver Hermanus‘s The History of Sound (12 — 15 counting the top three).
What am I forgetting or unfairly dismissing?
I’m very wary about seeing Splitsville.
HE letter sent to friends this morning:
“I’m not sensing that we’re about to experience a weak Cannes, per se, but that the ‘25 edition may be a bit of an underwhelmer. Who knows? The real goodies, as usual, will show up in the early fall. Apart from the Trier and the Aster and the Jennifer Lawrence going crazy and I’m forgetting what else, have you been hearing any semi-encouraging buzz about anything? Anything at all?”
Friendo #3: “Every May there’s always a gem or two, but Cannes is mostly a bunch of unimportant films that people like Justin Chang and Guy Lodge, doing two weeks’ worth of cartwheels, insist are world-changing works of art.”
“That Aside, What Did You Think of the Play, Mrs. Lincoln?”
Yesterday morning I read a 5.7.24 Richard Brody appreciation of the late N.Y. Times film critic Andrew Sennwald, who served as the paper of record’s senior film authority between 9.18.34 and 1.12.36.
Hired by the Times as a reporter at age 23, Sennwald soon became a top-tier, unusually perceptive examiner of the art and hoopla of film, Brody writes. Sennwald was an ardent admirer of director Josef von Sternberg, for one thing.
I’ve since read a few of Sennwald’s reviews. He wrote confidently and well, and certainly knew the realm.
It’s a shame that this highly respected guy died at age 28 and suddenly at that, and possibly by his own hand despite reportedly being in excellent health, not to mention in the professional prime of his life.
Weird as it sounds, Sennwald died of gas-stove poisoning, apparently or at least possibly a suicide.
On top of which the gas, which Sennwald, being dead, was unable turn off, exploded and wrecked his penthouse apartment at 670 West End Avenue, and not just the penthouse but the top three floors of the 17-story building. Investigators found Sennwald in his pajamas, on the floor of his kitchen.
Was this an accident? Why in heaven would a young man who’d quickly vaulted to a highly eminent position in his chosen field (it doesn’t get much better than being a top critic at the Times), a guy who lived in a fairly swanky abode and presumably had everything to live for…why would he off himself on a Saturday around midnight, and in his pajamas yet?
If I intended to do myself in, I would do so in my finest apparel — silk shirt, knotted tie, spit-shined shoes.
Sennwald’s last review focused on Rene Clair‘s The Ghost Goes West. Sennwald was succeeded at the Times by Frank Nugent.
Sennwald’s marriage to journalist Yvonne Beaudry, whom he met while going for his journalism degree at Columbia University, had apparently gone south. Sennwald’s Wiki page describes her as an ex-wife, although they were reportedly on cordial terms. Beaudry was out on the town when he died.
Sennwald may have been suffering from a serious eye ailment called Uveitis, but there’s not much info on this. He was also an insomniac.
While reporting that Sennwald’s death was seemingly a “suicide”, Brody otherwise focuses entirely on his film criticism. I respect his decision to ignore the curious circumstances that attended Sennwald’s passing, but that’s still one hell of an ignore.
It’s not like Sennwald swallowed some pills and slipped away quietly while slumping on a bench in Central Park. His death triggered a violent spectacle and a major neighborhood trauma — collapsed walls, fellow residents evacuated, a busted water main…bluh-DOOM!!
Brody could have just as easily have written about the Skull Island life of King Kong (wrestling an occasional T-Rex, killing Teradactyls, roaring a lot) and then blown off what happened on his final day of life in midtown Manhattan.
Not to mention the fact (I’ve made this point but indulge me) that a top N.Y. Times critic would never kill himself inside his West End Ave. penthouse at a fairly young age…does this make any sense to anyone at all?
A film critic hypothetically pulls the plug when (a) he/she can’t find decent employment, (b) is past his/her prime (65 or older) and (c) is barely making ends meet in a grubby flat in the East Village.
Reported by The Brooklyn Eagle on 1.13.36:
Choose or Lose: Cannes Day #1 (5.14)
Amelie Bonnin ‘s Partir Un Jour (lowered expectations) at 9 am, the Chris McQuarrie thing at 12:30 pm, Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling at 3:30 pm, ixnay on the Robert DeNiro thing, MI: Final Reckoning at 6:45 pm, Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors at 10:15 pm. Four films. Come hell or high water, I must commit at 1 am eastern, tonight.
91 Years and Counting
In a comment thread following an 11.29.24 piece about an English-subtitled Russian Bluray of Roman Polanski‘s An Officer and a Spy (“#MeToo Suppressionists Are Powerless In This Regard“), the redoubtable Clemmy wrote, “If you financially support a child rapist, you do not care about your granddaughter’s future.”
HE response to Clemmy: “While most many intelligent people support the cinematic art of the obviously gifted and indisputably great Roman Polanski, HE does not and never has supported the notion that anyone proven guilty of sexual abuse or assault should skate. Crimes of the loins have penalties. Nobody’s disputing this.
“Then again are you telling me that Polanski hasn’t been made to suffer and submit to the proverbial lash for the last 47 [now 48] years?
“Are you telling me that Polanski’s kids, Morgane and Elvis, live in a state of perpetual fear about what their allegedly monstrous dad might do to them?
“We’re talking about two twains here, two separate boxes.
“History is flooded with accounts of great artists who didn’t behave well at certain points in their lives, or who behaved abusively or with cruelty toward this or that person. Isolated incidents, I mean.
“Enlightened art scholars have long argued and understood that at the end of the day you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
“#MeToo ideologues will never understand or accept this.”
“You Make Me Feel Valuable”
“I feel this way because I’m a money whore, and you’ve got a lot of money so…perfection, right?” — Dakota Johnson‘s Lucy to Pedro Pascal‘s Harry Castillo in Celine Song‘s The Materialists (A24, 6.15). Okay, this isn’t an actual quote but it might as well be.
I hate this movie, sight unseen.
One of the most withering moments of my life happened in July ’13. I was texting with a lady I’d fallen in love with (i.e., an affair that ran from early May through late October) and in the middle of a discussion about something fairly basic she texted (and I mean right out of the fucking blue), “I’m expensive.”
Whoa.
It would have been one thing if I was a compulsive cheap-ass who was always looking to squeeze a nickel until the buffalo shits, but I was probably more of a give-give-giver with her than I’d been with any other girlfriend in my life. I was very generous and comme ci comme ca about everything. Everything was cool and steady. And yet she dropped that line on me. I’ll never forget that moment for the rest of my life.
The last time I’d heard that line was when Marilyn Maxwell said it to Kirk Douglas in Champion (’49). We all know what she meant, of course. Obviously not just “I’m high maintenance” but “I might be too high maintenance for you, given your apparent income and frugal tendencies. I’m not saying I’m a money whore but…well, you tell me.”
I obviously dip into non-film topics in this space from time to time, but I draw the line at relationship stuff. I’ll allude every so often to something going really well but leave it at that. Boundaries are respected, no telling tales, stays in the box. But I’m also figuring there’s nothing terribly gauche about acknowledging that it’s exhausting to go through a two-hour texting meltdown when things have taken a turn for the worse.
I wonder if anyone hashes this stuff out eyeball-to-eyeball any more. Thank God that iMessage allows you to text from a computer keyboard — I don’t think I could thumb my way through one of these ordeals. Texting your innermost disappointments and lamentations while keeping up your end of the “debate” (which can never be won or lost, of course) is quite debilitating. When you wake up the next morning you feel empty and a bit numb. Is “gutted” too strong a word?
Chicago Pope
The Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost, now known worldwide as Pope Leo XIV, seems like a mild-mannered devotional…sensible, practical, political-minded…a facilitator type…perhaps a Ralph Fiennes-y type of guy. What do I actually know? He doesn’t strike me as a fire-and-brimstone type. He has a face that says “okay, I get it, we be cool.” Willing to forgive.
“At Close Range” Will Always Be James Foley’s Greatest
Confession: I’ve never seen James Foley‘s After Dark, My Sweet (’90), which Roger Ebert insisted was “one of the purest and most uncompromising” film noirs ever, capturing above all “the lonely, exhausted lives of its characters.”
I’ve decided to finally watch this respected but all-but-forgotten film, even though I suspect I’ll probably hate it. (I’ve come to fear adaptations of Jim Thompson novels — brutality and heartlessness are his calling cards.) Why am I catching After Dark, My Sweet regardless? I feel I owe it to the memory of Foley, who died from brain cancer earlier this week. He was only 71.
There’s no question that Foley’s At Close Range, written by Nicholas Kazan, will always be regarded as his masterpiece. It taught me to think of rural Pennsylvania as a place where blue-collar bad guys thrive and ugly things happen at night. Patrick Leonard‘s haunting score + Madonna‘s iconic recording of “Live to Tell”…perfect. Chris Walken‘s demonically twitchy performance as the sociopathic Big Brad is surely his all-time finest. Walken to Sean Penn in that third-act kitchen scene: “You think you have the guts?…to kill?…me?”
Foley’s direction of David Mamet‘s Glengarry Glen Ross (’92) is also top shelf, although nothing will ever touch the original 1984 Broadway play version (which I caught on opening night with all the big-gun critics) with Joe Mantegna, Robert Prosky and the others. I’ve alwaye loved the slogan on the Glengarry film poster: “A film for everyone who works for a living.”