For years I was fortunate enough to stay in a Napoleonic-era duplex apartment in Cannes’ old town section. Not cheap but affordable, and a five-minute walk to the Palais. This year HE and World of Reel have luckily score a reasonably priced pad — $2500 for an 11-day stay, a 15-minute walk to the Palais — except it’s ugly and soul-less. It reminds me of Robert Duvall‘s living space in THX-1138. Otherwise Cannes rents are completely ridiculous. The greed factor has gone through the roof. Especially since the pandemic.

Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland‘s Warfare (A24, 4.11) is just around the corner. Obviously one of those highly-charged, you-are-there tension pounders.

“This visceral, immersive real-time retelling of a 2006 Navy SEAL Iraq surveillance mission gone horribly wrong is as raw and direct as its title suggests. Co-directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza — a former Navy SEAL turned Hollywood stuntman who was present during the events depicted — craft an unflinching, sharply authentic snapshot of combat that’s not about honor and glory, but desperation, fear and survival. It’s not for the faint-hearted either.” — from Nikki Baughan’s 3.28 Screen Daily review.

I’ve twice watched the first two episodes of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg‘s The Studio (Apple TV+), and it felt like a delicious meal. It’s not a great series because it’s going for fast, accessible, character-riffing comedy without delivering a blistering satire of the recent, still-present Hollywood malaise (i.e., audience instruction by way of woke concepts and identity casting) but at least it’s a fast ride in the tradition of Howard Hawks‘ His Girl Friday and Billy Wilder‘s One, Two, Three.

When I wasn’t laughing or at least chuckling, I was certainly in awe of the whipsmart dialogue, rapid-fire pacing and awesome, extended-take choreography. I’m trying not to overpraise, but it’s still the best thing Rogen and Goldberg have ever produced. Okay, their previous product is a low bar to surpass.

Naturally a friend disagrees, and so we got into an argument this morning.

HE: “Rogen and Goldberg are obviously sharp and clever players. The Industry doesn’t even try to address or satirize the general woke malignancy, as you’ve accurately pointed out, but that’s no reason to piss on it or call it evil. It’s descended from the fast-and-furious tradition of His Girl Friday and One Two Three and not all that different from Robert Altman‘s The Player, attitude-wise. Fast, fleet, well-shot, well-directed…tight and propulsive.

“I prefer the first episode, but the second (‘Oner’) is fairly dazzling from a blocking and choreography standpoint. Yes, I also would have preferred something that addresses and laments woke derangement syndrome (and so would average viewers, I suspect) but Rogen-Goldberg were adamant wokeys a few years back and so, realistically, they couldn’t be expected to castigate a social movement that they were very much proponents of as recently as four or five years ago.

“It’s not hateful or venal to make a tight, energetic, hellzapoppin’ comic satire.”

Friendo: “To me it’s not funny. It’s like some lame skit night at the Scientology Center. There is no funny to be had if they can’t tell the truth about what Hollywood has been suffering from. This is not funny rat-a-tat-tat comedy. It can’t be because it is, like almost everything else, the Emperor’s New Clothes. Once you suss that out it’s not funny or even interesting.”

HE: “Agree about the lack of tough satiric observation, but the show is not evil because it ignores woke insanity.”

Friendo: “The second episode is about an ambitious one-take deal being shot near Silver Lake, and of course Sarah Polley is directing and Greta Lee is starring, and the guy who points out Hollywood’s woke tendencies, once, is Bryan Cranston‘s villainous studio boss. It’s scientology. What would be funny is if they were pointing out that they had to hire a female and maybe she wasn’t all that good. If they joked about any of this tippy-toe stuff or acknowledged any of it, it would be sort of funny because at least it would be the truth.”

HE: “I’m not calling it a great series, but I do I love the well-executed FORM of it — the pace, the discipline, the velocity. You’re addressing only the CONTENT.”

Friendo: “The form isn’t all that good either. It’s copycat. Movie nerds geeking on Scorsese. It’s Film Twitter: The Movie. Everyone over-acts. Not one funny actor in it IMO. Not one.”

HE: “Wow, you’re being brutal and unfair.”

Friendo: “And I am personally offended at your comparing it to The Player. That is unforgivable. Altman would never make that pandering sitcom shit.”

HE: “The general tone and attitude of The Studio is very similar to The Player. Why did they choose to call Cranston’s studio chief character ‘Griffin Mill’? Obviously they’re offering an homage — they’re showing respect for that 33 year-old film. I agree that The Studio lacks a socially corrosive viewpoint. It doesn’t even acknowledge, much less condemn, the pestilence of wokery. But it’s still fun to watch and a very commendable stab at a One, Two, Three-like comedy.”

No one will dispute that during his heyday as a powerful Hollywood and Broadway producer, Scott Rudin was often…okay, commonly believed to be an abusive employer. It all came to a boil in April 2021, which is when a Tatiana Siegel THR piece and a subsequent sensitive-wokester clamor led to Rudin withdrawing from the showbiz arena after acknowledging and apologizing for his behavior.

Now it’s four years later, and Rudin, according to a 3.28 N.Y. Times article by Michael Paulson, is looking to do a Louis C.K. and finesse a lowkey return.

Back in the days of peak woke terror (roughly ’18 to early ’24), those guilty of indisputably bad behavior were slapped with one of two kinds of punishments — (a) hangings and beheadings (Polanski, Allen, Weinstein…”go get yourself buried”) or (b) public whippings followed by a finite period of banishment.

When the Rudin thing exploded four years ago, the anger was so intense that I thought he might be the latest member of the Polanski club. Now not so much…sooner or later all things dry up.

I say this having been yelled at by Scott two or three times myself, but you know what? I shook that shit off. Did I like getting slapped around? No, but I didn’t whine or cry or mew like as kitten either. Like Lee Marvin‘s “Walker” might have concluded, I figured there’s always heat in the Hollywood kitchen, and occasionally getting yelled it is just part of the game.

Once upon a time the shouting, volatile, highly-demanding producer or swaggering “boss from hell” was a lamentable part of showbiz lore…Burt Lancaster‘s J.J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success, Alan King‘s Max Herschel in Sidney Lumet‘s Just Tell Me What You Want, the real-life Joel Silver and Harvey Weinstein, Saul Rubinek‘s Lee Donowitz in True Romance (based on Silver for the most part), Kevin Spacey‘s Buddy Ackerman in Swimming With Sharks, Tom Cruise‘s Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder, etc.

None of these characters were pleasant to be around on a 24/7 basis, but, as in real life, they had a dominating brand and tradition that you had to finesse one way or the other.

And then along came the sensitive, safe-space-seeking Millennials, and that Buddy Ackerman shit began to get old right quick.

The private exchange of affection and fluids is no one’s business except for the actual exchangers, and it certainly has no bearing upon the ability of a candidate for high office to serve effectively.

Outside of your #MeToo alarmists and two-faced hypocrite Republicans, who gives a damn if former New York State governor and current candidate for NYC mayor Andrew Cuomo and top assistant Melissa DeRosa had something going on two or three years ago? Or now even? So what?

Nobody knew about JFK’s compulsive womanizing in the early ’60s, and we all understand, of course, that aside from his rreportedly callous attitude about exploiting impressionable young women who worked at the White House, none of this even slightly mattered in terms of his Presidential duties and obligations. And if Pete Buttigieg runs for President in ’28, nobody should say a a single word…’nuff said.

Leave it there.

In the view of a certain HE friendo who’s no fan of the suddenly departed Amazon and MGM Studios honcho Jennifer Salke….

“[Amazon owner] Jeff Bezos was perturbed by the protracted 007 fallout, as well as the cost of buying out Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, but spending that additional billion on severance for the Bond producers as well as the costs of the Salke-approved Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power as well as Citadel ($300 million) finally took its toll on this trillionaire. 

“Bezos finally woke up to Salke’s wokeness (and should have questioned her early on the cost of acquiring Mindy Kaling’s Late Night).  Both Salke and her husband Bert are considered lavishly unqualified for positions they’ve held for too long, and encumbered by questionable taste.”

“When their evil enemy” — played by Sean Penn? — “resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunites to rescue somebody’s” — presumably Leonardo Di Caprio‘s — “daughter”. Whatever.

Thomas Pynchon‘s “Vineland” was set in 1984, of course. But Paul Thomas Anderson‘s film (Warner Bros., 9.26) is set…does it matter?

I’m not feeling this. I’m not sensing an interest on the part of the filmmakers to convey a basic push-pull situation that feels like the basis of a story.

Set in the northwest, One Battle After Another appears to set in the present tense (as indicated by the cars) but the pay phone…are there pay phones anywhere these days? Even in the boonies? The last time I was in rural Colorado…seven months ago…I didn’t see a single one.

The armed revolutionaries are lefties, of course, but what’s the plan or goal exactly? Whoever cut this trailer together doesn’t want us to know. It feels a bit scattered, chaotic. I know there have been screenings here and there, and I’ve read about a three-hour-plus length.

…roughly nine months after The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg reported that Boulder was a “strong candidate,” and seven months after I posted that Boulder was unconfirmed but all but locked.

Yesterday Facebook‘s Mark Harris posted a well-written essay about Arthur Penn‘s Night Moves (’75) — an essay included in the just-released Night Moves 4k Bluray as well as posted on Criterion.com.

This morning I wrote the following to Harris: “You naturally don’t want to ruin your valued relationship with Criterion so you’re not going to mention the appalling orange-teal color scheme (primarily an aesthetic call pushed by Criterion’s Lee Kline* starting in the late teens) on Criterion’s just-released Night Moves 4K Bluray….a scheme that vandalizes the original look of Arthur Penn’s Watergate-era noir.

“I’m not exaggerating. This is apparently a consensus view. The proof is in the pudding, as a recent HE article shows.

“And not only Night Moves but Midnight Cowboy, Bull Durham, Teorema, Sisters — Kline and Criterion have created a cottage industry built upon uglifying the original color schemes of these films…vandalizing them by going way dark and imposing orange-teal hues.

“Orange-teal is nothing less than an obscenity. Criterion’s version of Night Moves isn’t a “distraction” from the horror, as you put it — it is its own brand of home-video horror, and one guaranteed to last.

“I own the 2017 Night Moves Bluray and it’s totally fine.”

* Kline was cut loose from Criterion in late 2022. I don’t know who the new Lee Kline is, or if Criterion’s Night Moves Bluray was mastered three or four years ago when Kline was still running the shop.

HE to Kline in 2018:

Around 6:30 last evening I sat down with Magazine Dreams inside an AMC plex in Stamford. Within 15 minutes I was in a state of twitching animal convulsion.

“Why am I watching this shit?”, I asked myself. “Why am I here? Why in the world would I want to hang with a body-builder as deeply fucked up and rage-consumed as Jonathan Majors’ Killian Maddox, who is ten times more deranged than Travis Bickle?”

I was in that completely empty theatre because some deeply perverse and twisted voices in the HE commentariat insisted that I had to man up and watch this fucking thing…that I would have no street cred if I ducked it.

Well, this is a film that has been carefully calculated to alienate and offend. I’m not surprised to have heard that director-writer Elijah Bynum has been arrested, tried and sentenced to Movie Jail, an actual brick-and-mortar facility located near Bakersfield. Ten years of wearing stripes and breaking rocks in the prison quarry.

Just as it defied credibility that Cybill Shepherd‘s Betsy, a seemingly mature campaign staffer, would go out with the obviously immature and eccentric Travis Bickle in Martin Scorcese‘s Taxi Driver (’76), it makes no sense at all that Haley Bennett‘s Jessie would go on a dinner date with the obviously antsy, deeply insecure Killian. And what a disaster that turns out to be.

Bennett is very good at conveying profound discomfort during that scene.

When Killian does some body-flexing online, some commenters (dudes who immediately reminded me of the HE pisshounds) post demeaning insults…“Incel vibes!…why hasn’t he killed himself yet?” and so on.

Killian is completely untethered to any concept or imitation of emotional health. He’s a time bomb, a lunatic…run in the opposite direction. One way or another he’s going to wind up dead or in jail…something tragic or destructive.

“This film is torture to sit through,” I wrote while sitting in row seven. “I’m miserable.”

That said, Magazine Dreams has four excellent scenes — (a) one in which four white guys, allied with the owner of a paint store that Killian has destroyed, pull Killian out of his car and beat him up badly as one of them calls him an “ape”, (b) a second-act scene in which the principal attacker (the “ape” guy) enters a diner with his wife and two kids, and Killian saunters over and starts verbally intimidating the man and scaring the shit out of the wife and kids, (c) a scene in which he enters a hotel room with a prostitute and then wimps out, changes his mind, and (d) a third-act scene in which Killian, armed with a rifle, slips into the apartment of a guy who gave Killian low marks in a bodybuilding competition, and orders him to disrobe while threatening him with death,

Welcome to the world of a truly ridiculous rage monster. Steroid madness. Boiling blood, smeared blood.

“Body builder collapses on-stage”…who gives a shit?

On top of which Killian fucking eats too damn much. Decidedly gross.

I’ll at least give Bynum and Majors credit for having the balls to make a film that almost everyone who sees it is certain to dislike or more likely hate.