The Housemaid (suffered through during dinner hour) is worse than I feared — phony, empty, ludicrous junk…stunningly hollow, reality-averse, filled with derangement…pure suburban schlock…wealthy-male-despising poison.
Capsule review by Kirk Douglas’ “Colonel Dax”: “Gentlemen of the court, there are times when I’m ashamed to be a member of the human race, and this is one such occasion.”
I’ve only a half-hour before my dreaded 5:15 pm AMC Lincoln Square screening of The Housemaid (okay, 50 or 55 minutes if you count the disgusting shitbox trailers, which I’ve no intention of sitting through) but I recently emerged from a 1:30 pm showing of Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme and it’s way, way better, not just inventively and cinematically but in basic holy-shit-this-film-is-really-crazy terms, than One Battle After Another…way the fuck better! Not to mention at least 10 if not 15 times better than Uncut Gems — it’s a primal knockout thing.
It’s entirely driven by Timothee Chalamet’s amoral, selfish, thoughtless, greedy-as-fuck young guy (but greedy for juice, triumph, acclaim and glory rather than money) who’s a serious go-getter, prick, thief, pusher and hustler, not to mention a gifted ping-pong athlete…a guy who never stops and never hesitates…okay, he acquires a little character and a couple of twinges of self-doubt toward the end, but ladies and germs and all the ships at sea…this is world–class cinema!…an alive, contentious and heavy-chugging run-around and hop-around fever dream that never lets you know what’ll happen next.
Chalamet constantly, compulsively, deplorably and always half-charmingly lies, takes, deceives, uses, goads, wounds, gives head, impregnates, insults, boasts, bullshits…and it’s not about morality or “story” or even who wins the big climactic ping-pong match in Japan, this thing…well, it’s finally about shards of decency and morality toward the end, but Marty Supreme is primarily and gloriously about character…and that’s what’s exciting about it. Character, values (or lack of), choices. Coming aggressively from the gut.
Okay, so Kristen Stewart is no longer a box-office powerhouse, but that’s hardly a felonious offense. Now 35, she’s an indie-brand hyphenate — actress, director, outspoken cultural provocateur — who will undoubtedly…okay, probably keep plugging and choo-chooing for many decades hence. So what’s the problem? Critical Drinker’s critical-rant video doesn’t even mention The Chronology of Water. Or the forthcoming The Wrong Girls.
Greenwich Entertainment posting a new trailer for Michel Franco‘s Dreams goes squarely against their longstanding policy of suppressing awareness of this provocative drama, which premiered in Berlin 10 months ago but has avoided nearly all festival opportunities since (except for a quick peek-out at the Hamptons Film Festival).
Terms like “waste of skin” were dreamt up so that spoiled rotten ego-fiends like Nick Reiner could be correctly described.
The self-loathing, emotionally destroyed, psychologically torn-and-frayed Reiner will face arraignment on 1.7.26.
N.Y. Times shoe-leather duo Tim Arango and Soumya Karlamangla reported around 1:15 pm eastern that Reiner had “appeared briefly in court on Wednesday morning.” The 32-year-old Reiner’s physical appearance in court doesn’t appear to jibe with other accounts, but then I wasn’t there.
When Rob Reiner, Conan O’Brien, Larry David and Martin Short were schmoozing, eating and drinking at Giorgio Baldi back in early ’22, they lacked clairvoyant understanding of what the future would bring. They guessed or suspected this or that but knew nothing. No idea that Trump would be re-elected in ’24, much less that awful tragedy would befall Reiner in early December of ’25.
Life is so much better and more soothing when you’re Giorgio Baldi-ing rather than grappling with the hard, thorny, oh-my-God stuff at home or at work.
I’ve eaten at Giorgio Baldi twice…no, three times. The first time was 15 years ago with Hurt Locker screenwriter Mark Boal (Zero Dark Thirty was years off at the time). Clint Eastwood and Sean Penn were sharing an indoor table. Three or four years later I ate there on my own dime, and then returned again in ’16 or thereabouts. It’s pricey but excellent. The Dover Sole is heavenly — moist and light, bursting with flavor, sprinkled with lime.
But I’ll tell you one thing. If I was rich or famous enough to have a security guy with me, and if he were to gently place his hand on my back as I stepped into the waiting SUV, I would probably stop and turn around and ask, “Why are you putting your hand on my back?”
Security: Sir?
HE: Why did you place your hand on my back as I was stepping into the car?
Security: We’re just here for you, sir. No issues.
HE: What are you trying to do, guide me into the car?
Security: Just an instinct, sir. We’re right behind you.
HE: I know you’re right behind me, but don’t touch me.
Security: Sorry.
HE: It’s okay. Just don’t do it.
Security: Okay. Understood.
HE: I’ve been stepping into SUVs all my life.
Security: Of course.
HE: I’m sure you’re a good man.
Security: I try to be.
HE: And you are.
Security: Yes sir.
HE: Okay, good.
HE has yet to endure Michael Showalter‘s Oh. What. Fun. (Amazon/MGM, 12.3). Dynamic casting (Michelle Pfeiffer, Felicity Jones, Chloë Grace Moretz, Denis Leary, Dominic Sessa, Jason Schwartzman, Eva Longoria, Joan Chen) but saddled with 30something ratings on RT, Metacritic.
Set in Texas but shot in Atlanta, the Wiki synopsis suggests a mulchy, boilerplate, home-for-the-holidays, quirky-family-conflict thang.
We all understand that ensemble family dramedies are politically obliged to include at least one gay couple and at least one ethnic character (and preferably two or three), and so the producers have naturally gone there. Moretz, Pfeiffer’s middle daughter, plays the principal gay standard-bearer, but her latest girlfriend (Devery Jacobs) dumps her halfway through. Chen is apparently the senior designated Asian — her family mermbers include two sons (Michael Lee Kimel, Zac Oyama) and a daughter (Elizabeth Lilyan Wood).
For what it’s worth Pfeiffer, born during the second term of Dwight D. Eisenhower, looks pretty good for her age.
I know it’ll “satisfy” by the usual knockout Cameron standards, but I really, really don’t want the effing Navi re-invading my head just now. Thanks all the same but no thanks. I’m sick of it all.
What’s wrong with this nearly 60-years-old, behind-the-scenes photo of the Elstree Studios filming of 2001: A Space Odyssey?
I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. The padded slipcover of the king-sized bed as well as the fabric upholstery on the 18th Century chair are the wrong color — muddy canppuccino brown. They should be soft green.
One immediately wonders if the Criterion vandal-beast Larry Smith had something to do with this. If it wasn’t Smith himself who injected the brown, it was certainly the fault of what we can now call a Larry Smith virus.
Smith’s legacy is irrevocably that of a visual liar, a flim-flammer — a guy who injected teal poisoning into the general color scheme of Criterion’s 4K Nluray of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.
