Month: July 2025

Is it really because of dropping revenues, or is it partly to do with Colbert being a Trump hater?

Connie Francis had a beautiful singing voice…smooth and silky pipes. She knew how to sell a song…she knew how to phrase and breathe just so.

But for the most part, her hit tunes ( “Who’s Sorry Now?”, “Where The Boys Are”, ““Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool”, “Where The Boys Are”) sounded square and swoony.

Born on 12.12.37 and reared by a conservative Italian family in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn and then Belleville, New Jersey, Francis never said, did or sang anything that sounded like anyone’s idea of “hip.”

In 1968 she actually recorded a theme song for Richard Nixon‘s presidential campaign. Not cool! Meanwhile her ex-boyfriend Bobby Darin was hanging out with Robert F. Kennedy during his ’68 primary campaigns.

But Francis popped out of that straightjacket one time, at least, when she recorded Howard Greenfield and Neil Sedaka‘s “Stupid Cupid” (’58), a plastic pop tune that sold pretty well. Because it was about a young woman confessing to being more or less powerless in the grip of sexual attraction.

The way she sang “and I like it fine” made it clear she was a scamp who really liked making out and whatnot. “I like it fine” meant that when the right guy came along, the blouse was soon unbuttoned.

Read more

Besides ignoring the great Dolores Claiborne, what else was I doing in 1995? I’ll tell you what — I was watching all the other goody-goods.

HE’s top five films of ‘95 are Heat, Se7en, The Usual Suspects, Dolores Claiborne and Crimson Tide.

#6 through #10 are Swimming With Sharks, Leaving Las Vegas, To Die For, Before Sunrise and The Bridges of Madison County.

And then, in this approximate order: Leavibg Las Vegas, Get Shorty, Apollo 13, Living in Oblivion, Operation Dumbo Drop, The Brothers McMullen, Casino, Mighty Aphrodite, Sense and Sensibility, The American President, Toy Story, Nixon, Richard III, Dead Man Walking, Empire Records, The Basketball Diaries, Dangerous Minds, Clockers, Kids, Clueless, Beyond Rangoon. (31 films in all)

Braveheart won 1995’s Best Picture Oscar, but I can’t in all honesty call it one of my faves of that year. I haven’t re-watched it once in the 30 years that have elapsed.

“Sometimes bein’ a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to.”

Because I was lazy and cowardly I chose to avoid Taylor Hackford, Kathy Bates, Tony Gilroy and Gabriel Beristain’s Dolores Claiborne back in the late winter or early spring of ‘95. It really wasn’t cool that I shut this worthy film out, but I finally watched it last night and holy moley mother of God…it’s exceptionally good!

Shot roughly 23 or 24 years before the dawn of the #MeToo movement, it might be the best “most men are cruel and abusive animals, and especially the alcoholic ones” movie I’ve ever seen.

I didn’t experience even a twinge of my usual “okay, here we go again with another serving of rote anti-male diminishnent”…I believed every scene, every line, every plot pivot. It may be the best Hollywood-produced feminist film ever made. I trusted every frame.

It’s almost certainly Hackford’s finest effort, and Beristain’s shifting color schemes (Fuji amber for flashbacks, cold grays for present tense) are truly mesmerizing.

Gilroy’s dialogue is so well-honed and soothingly concise and bracingly articulate.

The co-lead performances by the 46-year-old Bates, whose titular tour de force should’ve won a second Best Actress Oscar in the wake of her startling Misery breakout, and the 32 year-old Jennifer Jason Leigh are keepers. Ditto the supporting David Straitharn, Judy Parfitt, Christopher Plummer and John C. Reilly.

Adapted from Stephen King’s same–titled, best–selling 1992 novel, this Castle Rock production is an exceptionally well-crafted melodrama (almost a kind of realism-based horror film) of the highest calibre…you’re never unaware that you’re chest-deep in a totally classy, #MeToo-ish truth testament made by grade-A people. Because the film is so deftly assembled and therefore persuasive and compelling, Gilroy’s altered adaptation (King’s book was one long first-person confession by Claiborne) isn’t as downerish as it sounds on the surface. And yet it’s basically about small-town confinement, suppressive conditions, domestic misery and exceptional spousal cruelty and abuse, dysfunctional family trauma, incest and blessed revenge.

The final half-hour really pays off in a way that top-tier films used to pay off in the old days (i.e., before the horror of Marvel and D.C., before Stalinist-woke narratives, before streaming multi-part sagas for couch potatoes).

As noted, the Venice Film Festival will announce its slate on Tuesday, 7.22. I’ve updated my Venice Film Festival spitball by killing certain titles like Roofman, One Battle After Another, etc. Here’s my take on 26 all but certain, likely, hopeful or potential inclusions:

HE LEGEND: ++ = extra-positive HE expectations. + = mostly positive expectations. X = meh or negative. XX = dread.

1. After the Hunt (d: Luca Guadagnino) Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny. / ++
2. A House of Dynamite (d: Kathryn Bigelow) / ++
3. Jay Kelly (d: Noah Baumbach) George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Billy Crudup, Laura Dern, Grace Edwards, Stacy Keach, Riley Keough. Emily Mortimer. / ++
4. The Way of the Wind (d: Terrence Malick) / X
5. Bugonia (d: Yorgos Lanthimos) / Neutral

6. The Smashing Machine (d: Benny Safdie) / +
7. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook) XX / XX
8. Orphan (d: Laszlo Nemes) / ++
9. The Wizard of the Kremlin (d: Olivier Assayas) / ++
10. Father Mother Brother Sister (d: Jim Jarmusch) / Neutral

11. The Ballad of a Small Player (d:Edward Berger) Synopsis: When his past and debts start to catch up, a high-stakes gambler laying low in Macau encounters a kindred spirit who might hold the key to his salvation.” Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton, Fala Chen. / ++
12. Couture (d: Alice Winocour) +. Angelina Jolie, Louis Garrel, Ella Rumpf, Garance Marillier, Anyier Anei, Finnegan Oldfield. / Neutral.
13. The Cry of the Guards (d: Claire Denis)
14. Chocobar (d: Lucrecia Martel)
15. Sacrifice (d: Romain Gavras)

16. In the Hands of Dante (d: Julian Schnabel) Synopsis of Nick Tosches‘ same-titled 2002 book: “An interweaving of two separate stories, one set in the 14th century in Italy and Sicily and featuring Dante Alighieri, and another set in the autumn of 2001 and featuring a fictionalized version of Tosches as the protagonist. The historical and modern stories alternate as Dante tries to finish writing his magnum opus and goes on a journey for mystical knowledge in Sicily.” Oscar Isaac as Nick Tosches / Dante Alighieri, w/ Jason Momoa, Gerard Butler, Gal Gadot, Sabrina Impacciatore, Franco Nero, Martin Scorsese. ++
17. Ann Lee (d: Mona Fastvold). Amanda Seyfried, Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Christopher Abbott, Tim Blake Nelson, Stacy Martin. / +
18. La Grazia (d: Paolo Sorrentino)
19. An Affair (d: Arnaud Desplechin)
20. Below the Clouds (d: Gianfranco Rosi)

21. Duse (d: Pietro Marcello)
22. Frankenstein (d: Guillermo del Toro) / X

To the preceding I would add “what’s wrong with the following?” and “why not?”

23. Scott Cooper‘s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (20th Century, sometime in the fall). Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in another boomer nostalgia pic, focusing on the recording of Nebraska (’82). Costarring Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, Paul Walter Hauser, Gaby Hoffmann, Johnny Cannizzaro, Harrison Gilbertson, Marc Maron.

24. Chloe Zhao‘s Hamnet (Focus Features, no date) — Fictional tale about Mr. and Mrs. William Shakespeare coping with the death of their son. Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal (!), Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson.

25. Switzerland (d: Anton Corbijn)

26. Fuze (d: David Mackenzie)

Imagine if James Gunn had decided that instead of David Corenswet‘s Superman getting badly beaten up every seven or eight minutes….imagine if Gunn had decided instead to have Corenswet attend a golden superhero award ceremony every seven or eight minutes and be handed a gleaming Oscar-sized trophy…imagine how repetitve and punishing this would be over a two-and-a-half-hour period. But this is what Superman actually does by having Corenswet get walloped this frequently. It drives you crazy. The repetition is insane.

Announcement: I will not be watching Superman. Thank you Mikepic.twitter.com/HyXDEJ6map

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) July 15, 2025

Read more

As I wrote last February, an early draft of After The Hunt “planted expectations that Julia Roberts‘ lead performance might stir convos about a Best Actress nomination and perhaps the ultimate gold trophy itself. She’s playing one of those well-sculpted, sturm und drang roles that older actresses have always pined for.”

From Samantha Bergeson’s 7.16.25 IndieWire story:

Posted on 2.17.25:

Earlier today I read an early draft of Nora Garrett‘s After The Hunt screenplay, a #MeToo rape accusation drama that feels like a splicing of Todd Field‘s TAR, David Mamet‘s Oleanna and Ruben Ostlund‘s The Square.

It’s the basis of an upcoming Luca Guadagnino film that MGM-Amazon will release on October 10th — a whipsmart, dialogue-driven, pressure-cooker thing with Julia Roberts toplining.

Strong supporting performances from Andrew Garfield, The Bear‘s Ayo Edebiri, Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloe Sevigny will presumably round things out.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy recently reported that Hunt had test-screened in early December. He also sketched it out as one of those jarring, controversial, hot-button melodramas that stir the soup among educated audiences.

HE is guessing Hunt will debut six months hence at the Venice Film Festival.

Garrett’s page-turning screenplay (which a friend found on Reddit) vaguely summons the downswirling mood of Frank Perry‘s DiaryofaMadHousewife…if Perry’s 1970 film had been set in the realm of elite academia and concerned a middle-aged female professor (Roberts) on the brink of tenure.

Guadagnino (Queer, Challengers, CallMeByYourName) made some changes to Garrett’s Swedish-flavored scenario before filming it last summer in London and Cambridge.

That’s as far as I’ll go description-wise, but the screenplay did plant expectations of Roberts’ performance possibly stirring convos about a Best Actress trophy. She’s playing one of those well-sculpted, sturmunddrang roles that older actresses have always pined for.

Read more

The Toronto Int’l Film Festival destroyed itself when it began to go wokey–wokey in ‘19 or thereabouts, and then it was further crippled by Covid. I for one was happy to see TIFF gradually slide down the slope…good!

For the last four or five years TIFF has been a shadow of its former self, and everyone kind of despises it for having become a festival of second–tier, sloppy–seconds, Venice–and–Telluride–rejected or leftover attractions.

Initial TIFF 2025 rundown:

Nicholas Hytner’s The Choral

Agnieszka Holland’s Franz

Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet

Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound

Paul Greengrass’ The Lost Bus

Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life

HIKARI’s Rental Family

Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman

Peter Ho-Sun Chan’s She Has No Name

Clement Virgo’s Steal Away

Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Galas (in alphabetical order):

The Choral | Nicholas Hytner | UK

World Premiere | Gala Presentation: Homebound | Neeraj Ghaywan | India

North American Premiere | Gala Presentation: Hamlet | Chloé Zhao | UK

Canadian Premiere | Gala Presentation: A Private Life | Rebecca Zlotowski | France

North American Premiere | Gala Presentation: Roofman | Derek Cianfrance | USA

World Premiere | Gala Presentation: She Has No Name | Peter Ho-Sun Chan | China

North American Premiere | Gala Presentation: Special Presentations (in alphabetical order):

Franz | Agnieszka Holland | Czech Republic/Germany/Poland

World Premiere | Special Presentation: The Lost Bus | Paul Greengrass | USA

World Premiere | Special Presentation: Rental Family | HIKARI | USA/Japan

World Premiere | Special Presentation: Steal Away | Clement Virgo | Canada/Belgium

World Premiere | Special Presentation: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery | Rian Johnson | USA

World Premiere | Special Presentation: The 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, presented by Rogers, runs September 4–14, 2025.

The full Festival schedule will be released on tiff.net on Tuesday, August 12.

Read more

I’ve somehow missed a pair of three–month–old quotes from Marty Supreme dp Darius Khondry, one in which he said that he and director Josh Safdie have “pushed the negative to increase the grain” (i.e. an apparent assurance of an Egyptian grainstorm), and another in which he divulged that Marty Supreme contains “140 different characters”

14 characters means a film will be fairly verbose, but 140? A film with 25 characters means it’ll be a lot like Robert Altman’s Nashville (which has 25 characters) and 50 characters would be Nashville on Adderall. Double that and you’d have Nashville injected with “hoo-hoo!” Daffy Duck serum. Bump that up to 140 and you’d be going beepity-beep-beep and whoa-baby “hoodily-hoo-hoo!” and homina-homina-homina start to finish.

We all know that Josh Safdie is a human pogo stick on speed to begin with, and so what Khondji has conveyed should strike cold fear into the hearts of cineastes everywhere.

This plus a likely prospect of Timothee Chalamet and his 139 costars inhaling and re-inhaling hundreds of billions of Egyptian mosquitoes into their lungs between lines, and I’m scared…genuinely terrified of this film. I’m certainly exhausted just thinking about it.

I thought the whole MAGA belief system was that they didn’t care about Trump being a sociopath and a morally derelict scalawag…that they accepted him as the bully-boy taker and user that he’s always been…so why is the right so cranked up about the Epstein files?

Scott Galloway: “It’s so intellectually or morally inconsistent. If Jeffrey Epstein had invited a bunch of migrant workers to his island, we would have nuked it. But as long as it was just pedophiles? This notion that we’re shocked that a man found liable of sexual abuse, which is rape…that this man [Trump] might be on a list compiled by a powerful man [Epstein] inviting people down to an island with underage women? That’s supposed to be a big shocker? Trump could not be acting more guilty.”

Good Sex Wiki synopsis: 40 year old couples therapist Ally (Natalie Portman), after spending a decade in failed relationships, reluctantly dips back into the New York dating scene.

Costarring Mark Ruffalo, Tucker Pillsbury, Meg Ryan, Rashida Jones and Tramell Tillman. Directed and written by Lena Dunham. Due for Neflix streaming sometime next year.

@alonainthecity Lena is a director of a new Netflix movie “Good Sex” starring Natalie, Rashida, Mark Ruffalo, Meg Ryan and others #natalieportman #natalieportmanedit #natalieportmanlove #padmeamidala #rashidajones #rashidajonesedit #lenadunham #lenadunhamisagenius #blackswan #starwars #celebrity #movieset #setlife #nycblogger ♬ original sound – AlonaInTheCity

This, in my view, is Martin Scorsese‘s best short-burst performance since his psychotically jealous husband-slash-voyeur in Taxi Driver (’76). Which we’re not allowed to mention these days because of the ugly racist current.

What happens between Marty and Seth Rogen in The Studio is lightweight and surface-skimmy, of course, but at the same time…well, it has something because it alludes, at least, to betrayal and soullessness.

Read more