Last night I watched the second half of Billy Joel: And So It Goes, and honestly? I didn’t like it as much as Part One, which is like the first half of Lawrence of Arabia — troubled beginnings, difficult development, Joel’s relationship with wife #1 (Elizabeth Weber), the gradual finding of success in the ’70s … Read more
An 18-year-old Steve Wonder wrote this song? You coulda fooled me. I don’t associate Wonder with this kind of bluesy downerism. I’d certainly never listened to his original version until today. The Rolling Stones version (i.e., the only one I’d ever listened to for decades) is included on Metamorphosis, a rarities compilation released on 6.6.75. … Read more
Earlier today The Ankler‘s Jeff Sneider announced that one of the gloomiest and dreariest flicks in the history of cinema — Mark Romanek, Alex Garland and Kazuo Ishiguro‘s Never Let Me Go (’10) — is being relaunched as an FX series under the guidance of DNA Films & TV”s Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich. What … Read more
HE’s #1 mantra: If a movie ends well, that’s half the ballgame. Let no one ever argue that Guillermo del Toro‘s Nightmare Alley (Searchlight, 12.17) doesn’t end well. It ends perfectly, in fact. It reiterates the basic film noir theme, which boils down to the main character fatalistically admitting that he’s doomed, and in fact … Read more
Posted on 2.16.05: There are at least three ways to have a depressing time at the movies, and one is worth the grief. One, you can sit through something shoddy, inept and sub-standard, and do everything you can to flush it out of your system when it’s over. Two, you can sit through a smooth, … Read more
The Tijuana dental work turned out just fine. The line to get back into the U.S. dragged on and on — around 90 minutes. Poor people in Tijuana do not fool around — they’re thisfar from living like street rats. It’s rough to take in. Things are so much better as a rule in our … Read more
Posted 15 years ago: There’s no such thing as a very good or great movie that brings people down, regardless of subject matter. ‘Sad’ or ‘solemnly moving’ is not the same thing as “depressing.” There’s nothing lower in the movie-watching universe than the kind of person who sits through Au Hasard Balthazar and comes out … Read more
Year in and year out, Frank Perry‘s Play It As It Lays (’72) maintains its absence as a Bluray, DVD or via high-def streaming. No Amazon, Vudu, Netflix, zip. It aired on the Sundance Channel a few years year and then vanished. Every so often someone will post the film on YouTube, and eventually attorneys … Read more
Corrected with apologies: Birdman falling out of Cannes wasn’t enough. Now it’s all but certain that Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Inherent Vice won’t be going there either. This morning I spoke to an industry friend who’s seen Vice and who thinks it’s brilliant and mesmerizing in an atmospheric, non-linear sort of way. He says that Anderson, … Read more
If I know anything about Joe and Jane Popcorn, they won’t be storming the megaplexes when Scott Cooper‘s Out of the Furnace opens on 11.27. I didn’t want to see it myself. “Who wants to sink into some violent rustbelt melodrama about grimy, morose working-class beardos and hillbilly druggies?,” I asked myself. “Driving around some … Read more
Red Carpet District‘s Kris Tapley believes that The Great Debaters, Juno, The Kite Runner and Once may have an Academy edge this year because their feel-good currents are more instinctually appealing than the rampant downerism of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, In the Valley of Elah, Into the Wild, Margot at the Wedding, Michael … Read more
Whoooo…gloomy Toronto, darkness and shadows, such long faces, etc. What does it say about our times and our culture that a big-deal film festival is in such a downer mood? One of the most despairing movies being screened at Toronto is a real drink-from-the-dregs, life-can- definitely-suck story about post-traumatic stress syndrome, currents of futility and … Read more