Month: August 2026

[Initially posted on 10.10.14] “I’ve seen David Ayer‘s Fury,” I wrote a friend last week. “Rough, harsh, real-deal World War II stuff. Men in a small, smelly, vulnerable tank that they occasionally piss in. Months on end, unshaven faces, scars and body odor, best job they’ve ever had. Rugged verisimilitude as far as the battle sequences go…if you’re not bothered, that is, by the fact that the tracer rounds are green, which was mostly used by the other side. U.S. forces have always used red tracers, or so my research tells me. But that’s a side-issue. Yes, Brad Pitt is suitably gruff and paternal and commanding as WarDaddy. But otherwise forget it.

“Well, I don’t mean ‘forget it’ exactly. It’s a decent enough film and relatively well made, but it’s just a good gritty war movie. Not that profound or touching or even believable at the end of the day, certainly in terms of the finale.”

The friend insisted it was great stuff all around and I said, “It’s not great. It’s strong when it’s strong, but otherwise it’s…strange? [SPOILERS AHEAD]

“Until the finale Fury always makes you feel you’re in a grim, generally realistic situation. The horror, the horror. I for one couldn’t stand the wimpy, sensitive, candy-assed Logan Lerman and his wide-eyed, open-mouthed innocent routine. I wanted to see him killed every step of the way, and painfully at that — but wimps never seem to catch a bullet in films of this sort.

“In any event Fury has two problem scenes. One, a kind of domestic interlude in which Pitt and Lerman enjoy some chill with two German women (Anamaria Marinca, Alicia von Rittberg) in a small village apartment. It involves a little civilized piano playing and a nice meal and a suggestion of sex and a lot of talk, and it goes on forever. I was wondering if the rest of the movie was going to stay in this apartment with the women getting pregnant and Pitt and Lerman renouncing warfare for fatherhood.

“Anyway, that’s one problem. The other is that fucking head-scratching finale.

“I’m talking about a nihilistic fuck-all finish that makes no real strategic sense, and I mean not even a little bit. It seems inspired on some level by the ending of The Wild Bunch, which I understand Ayer is a big fan of. But there is no Wild Bunch rationale built into the story or the characters so it feels posed and futile.

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I knew this right away because Nicolas Cage‘s appearance in this thing screams “artificially fat”. Obviously. I knew that instantly.

AI sez: “Nicolas Cage did not actually gain weight to play John Madden. Despite viral internet rumors claiming he put on over 50 pounds, he wore a full-body fat suit and extensive prosthetic makeup for the upcoming David O. Russell-directed film.”

Madden opens on Amazon Prime on 11.18.26. Costarring Christian Bale, Kathryn Hahn, John Mulaney, Sienna Miller, Joel Murray and Shane Gillis.

HE is repeat-tributing the utterly fearless Emily Butler….”an overhyped, pretentious nightmare…it feels like a punishment…Christopher Nolan is punishing the audience for paying to see his film…a jumbled, jarring mess…I would go so far as to call it a creative failure…an absolute shambles.”

My review wasn’t as tough on The Odyssey as Butler was. I was mostly negative, but I also cut it some slack.

I honestly don’t see the problem with a boilerplate quid pro quo arrangement between a dishy actress and a wealthy, grandfatherly U.S. Senator. Is someone being harmed here? Not to bellittle Megan Marshack, but her relationship with Nelson Rockefeller wasn’t all that different. Not to mention the liason between the 40ish Joseph P. Kennedy and young Gloria Swanson. Hell, Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Schenck. Big deal.

Senator Harvey Walker was played by William Forrest (Fighting Seabees, Miracle on 34th Street). Forrest was around 54 or 55 when Sweet Smell of Success was before the cameras. He looks at least 20 years older. Darken the hair, lose the moustache.

Manny Davis was played by Jay Adler (The Killing). Born in 1896, Adler was roughly 60 during filming, and more or less looks his age.

Linda James was played by the fetching Autumn Russell, who was no spring chicken at the time, certainly by the standards of the mid ’50s — 36. Russell navigated an underwhelming acting career (1957’s Zombies of Mora Tau) but lived fairly well as far as it went. She passed six years ago at age 90.

When an addicted person throws himself or herself upon the church steps, as Hunter Biden did several years ago, the natural impulse (within most of us) is to cut him/her a break and show a little compassion and maybe a measure of support.

I wanted Maher to ask Hunter why, after the disastrous Droolin’ Joe-vs.-Donald Trump debate…why didn’t he gently counsel his father to man up and face biological reality and do the stand-up thing? Instead he and Jill (Lady McBiden) circled the wagons and insisted that Joe was fit as a fiddle. It took Nancy Pelosi to make it happen.

Here’s a sound assessment from Michael Wolff, although I can’t accept or even consider the idea of Harp having given her “body and soul” to Trump. The body part, I mean. Don’t go there….don’t.

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Give the Clockwork guys full credit. Their strobey new trailer for the fully restored 4K version of Ken Russell‘s The Devils (’71) is quite the freaky, vigorous sell.

The strobe-light effect suggests that on this or that level The Devils isn’t 55 years old, or at least can be processed as a film in the grip of some kind of 21st Century madness…crazy, shrieking, orgiastic.

But of course, The Devils is 55 years old. Start to finish and top to bottom, it plays (and is paced) like a ’70s film. And a magnificent one at that — sumptuously designed (Derek Jarman), eloquent, beautifully shot (David Watkin), deliciously performed (especially by Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave).

The Devils is Russell’s 2nd finest film ever. (Women in Love tops the list, Altered States is third, The Music Lovers is fourth and Tommy comes in fifth). Clockwork’s forthcoming version runs 114 minutes. It’ll have a one-week theatrical release beginning on 10.16.26. I can’t wait.

1. Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo‘s “Il Quarto Stato” (“The Fourth Estate”), used for main-title sequence in a 1976 film that I haven’t seen in ages.

2. Both Discovery guys are still with us, and hopefully in good shape. Keir Dullea turned 90 on 5.30.26. Gary Lockwood reaches the same milestone on 2.21.27.

3. A Robert Wise film I’ve avoided my entire life, largely due to Robert Ryan playing another venal racist. (Right?) A voice is nonetheless telling me I need to get past this and submit.

Matt Johnson‘s Tony (opening wide today) put me into the foulest mood. Most of the trouble stemmed from my discomfort with Dominic Sessa‘s performance as the 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain.

In my 8.5 New York Sun review I said that Johnson had mistitled his film. Tony sounds overly passive, lacks intrigue and assertion. Johnson should have called it Dumb Lying Hostile Ayehole. For Sessa’s Bourdain is a witless, self-deluding jerk from the get-go.

Why do I have a problem with that? Partly because I don’t like hanging with sullen, egoistic shitheads, I guess. But mainly because Sessa’s Bourdain bears not the slightest resemblance to the older Anthony Bourdain…the guy I came to know and like through his writings, interviews and those cable travel shows.

The critics who are praising this alienating film to the heavens are selling you a bill of goods…trust me.

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Word around the campfire is that Florian Zeller‘s Bunker (Sony Pictures Classics), a mostly Spanish-language marital drama (read: psychological thriller) starring Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, works rather well.

Bunker centers on an architect named Miguel (Bardem) who agrees to design some kind of survival bunker for a tech mogul (Paul Dano). As the project unfolds, Miguel’s wife Sofia (Cruz) begins to “reassess” their 17-year marriage.

Bardem and Cruz have also been married for…well, technically 16 years (they tied the knot in the Bahamas on 7.13.10) but close enough. Florian apparently based Miguel and Sofia on Bardem and Cruz. Pic is one of those “blurring of reality and fiction” deals. Stephen Graham and Patrick Schwarzenegger also costar.

Boilerplate: Bunker is a “tense exploration of the personal and ethical strains faced by a couple in an increasingly unstable world, highlighting the inner turmoil and complex decisions of contemporary life” blah blah.

Jordan Ruimy has reported that a Bunker Oscar campaign is being prepared with a year-end qualifying run planned ahead of its early 2027 release.

Regarding the final scene in Bob Rafelson‘s Five Easy Pieces (’70):

Not taking your suede jacket with you as you’re heading toward “colder than hell” weather? The only interpretation that adds up is that Jack Nicholson‘s Bobby Dupea is willing to not only succumb to the elements but possibly die from exposure. He doesn’t have the strength of character to hang or shoot or drown himself so he’s doing it the slow, casual, no-big-hurry way.

It’s an “ending”, all right, but it’s not justified. Dupeau doesn’t deserve death — he just needs to jettison the nihilism, shake off the cowardice and…I don’t know, move to Taos and become a drug dealer or something.

Originally posted four or five years ago on HE Plus:

I’m not talking about Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea abandoning Karen Black‘s Rayette Dipesto at a gas station in rural Washington. This I understand.

Dupea comes from an eccentric family of musicians and, despite his job history as an oil-field worker, regards himself as an intellectual rebel artist of some kind. He’d rather slit his throat than submit to a conventional, middle-class Bakersfield life as Rayette’s husband (and perhaps as a father to their unborn child).

And so, like a chickenshit junior high school nihilist, he decides to escape. This part adds up. Dupea is a tragic figure who’s running away from himself…hell, from everything.

I was almost like this in my early 20s. I was thisclose.

But heading north for seriously frigid climes without even the slight comfort of a jacket is just effing ridiculous.

And the only ones who’ve found this snicker-worthy or appalling or embarassing are your basic Millennial / Zoomer haters. I don’t believe in cheap, nickle-and-dime hate as an end in itself; I do, however, believe in hate with an accompanying aesthetic or social narrative.