Don’t Tell Me To Calm Down

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I know what I saw. I know what I felt. I know what Marty Supreme is on the surface as well as deep down. It’s an all tap-dancing, all bullshitting, antsy, ping-pong-driven bop-shoo-wop hellzapoppin’. It’s the bolt and the buzz. It got me off in ways that never even occurred to Paul Thomas Anderson when he was making OBAA. It isn’t a “story” or a “saga” as much a nervy, insistent, wild-ass heebie-jeebie ride in a stolen (okay, borrowed) car. I LOVE the early (70-year-old) Scorsese New Yorky vibe. I love that Chalamet is more or less aping or paying sustained tribute to Robert DeNiro’s “Johnny Boy” in Mean Streets. I love the plunging bathtub scene. I love that it’s set in the early ‘50s and uses ‘80s pop music (Tears For Fears) on the soundtrack. I love that scrappy, raspy-voiced Abel Ferrara plays a stand-out supporting role. I love that Gwyneth Paltrow is the ground-zero, cut-the-bullshit, shower-sex center of it all. Kevin O’Leary totally owns and occupies the adversarial but at the same time flabbergasted role of Paltrow’s ornery pen millionaire hubby. I loved the mouthy, pushy, emotionally open-hearted Odessa A’zion. I loved the Central Park necklace-cops-and-cunnilingus scene. I need to see it again right away.

Slick, Stupid, Vile

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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.”

Divine Hyper Hustler Madness

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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.

Needless Takedown Attempt

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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.

Presumably Freaked About Facing The Cameras, Nick Reiner Delays Arraignment

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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.

Giorgio Baldi Haunting

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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.

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Anxiety For The Effing Holidays

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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.