Among the 2019 Writers Guild Awards nominations, Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed screenplay has been given the cold shoulder — an all-but-unforgivable oversight. Schrader’s morally anguished script, in my judgment his best since Hardcore and one that Robert Bresson would have understood and approved of, has been Best Screenplay-nominated by both the Spirit and Critics’ Choice … Read more
2018 Gotham winners: Best Feature: Chloé Zhao‘s The Rider HE comment: Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed is a fuller, more impactful film with a better ending. Best Actor: Ethan Hawke in First Reformed. HE comment: Deserved. Best Actress: Toni Collette in Hereditary. HE comment: Collette’s performance is top-grade, but I’m surprised they didn’t give it to … Read more
Nobody knows anything except for the fact that Ethan Hawke and Glenn Close are brilliant in First Reformed and The Wife, respectively. I feel like a wuss for allowing Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil to nudge me into making predictions based on almost nothing but gut feelings, intuition, insect antennae vibrations, hairs on the back of … Read more
A24 has moved up the release date of Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed by a month — previously 6.22, now 5.18. As of this morning the IMDB and Wikipedia still had the 6.22 release date. HE to Schrader: It’s been seven months since I saw an online screener of First Reformed (A24, 5.18) and then again … Read more
HE disagrees with 16 of Quentin Tarantino’s choices for the 20 best films of the 21st Century — the ixnays are in boldface, the agreements are underlined: Agreements: David Fincher’s “Zodiac” (No. 6) Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” (No. 5) Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball” (No. 18) Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (No. 10) Nay-nays: … Read more
Critical Drinker: “We have peaked in terms of a common pop culture movie current…a shared cultural experience that we can all get invested in. It feels like we just don’t have that any more. As compared to the days when a movie like The Matrix, say, would come out and everyone would talk about it. … Read more
Never say that IndieWire’s David Ehrlich doesn’t go bold when so inspired. From another angle, he’s basically saying that Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another, which I haven’t seen and which may in fact be everything that Ehrlich says it is, is better, grander, deeper and more super-charged than the following 2010-and-later films…. Roman … Read more
HE agrees with certain choices among the top 20 in that N.Y. Times poll of the finest 21st Century films. But where the hell is Alexander Payne‘s Sideways, guys? I’ve counted through the whole list of 100 and it’s not there. To which I can only say “what the fuck?” I’m enthused or at least … Read more
N.Y. Times staffers are in the process of posting their roster of the 100 finest films of the 21st Century. For comparison’s sake, HE is hereby re-posting its own grand list of the 163 best films of the century. Yes, that’s right…one-six-three. HE’s list is all broken up into sections. It over-emphasizes certain years and … Read more
I’m dumbfounded and in a state of disbelieving denial (not to mention pain) over today’s Paul Schrader headlines. As emails were allegedly involved…I don’t want to think about it. It just doesn’t calculate that a person as obviously wise, seasoned and street-savvy as Schrader could have possibly put his neck into this kind of noose. … Read more
I’m thinking about writing a Hollywood book about the deranged and hysterical media war against Peter Farrelly’s Green Book (‘18), but also about something bigger and broader — how the Green Book maelstrom launched the not-fully-concluded era of the woke baddie-waddies —- the censorious, ultra-sensitive identity fanatics who all but suffocated the film business during the … Read more
Roughly seven months after debuting in Cannes, Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada (Kino Lorber, 12.6) will open theatrically in select urban locations…three weeks hence. Richard Gere plays Leonard Fife, a dying, pissed-off documentary filmmaker who left the U.S. for a Canaadian exile during the Vietnam War. The film is about a no-holds-barred interview that Fife gives … Read more