Jeffrey Wells

When I first glimpsed an image of an overly muscled-up Dwayne Johnson in a black short-hair wig in Benny Safdie’s The Fighting Machine (A24, 10.3), I immediately tumbled head over heels into a pit of black depression.

Because as much as I respect and admire people who keep themselves in shape, I hate dude bods with swollen, gleaming, well-oiled muscles and bulging veins and whatnot, and especially the sports culture that celebrates this kind of aggressive brawn and pumped-up machismo.

Johnson, a competent actor as far as it goes, is playing former wrestler and MMA fighter Mark Kerr, who peaked in the ‘90s and is now 57. God help me but I’ll have to watch this sure-to-be-bruising tribute film on the Lido.

Peter Yates’s’ Robbery opened stateside on 9.27.67: the San Francisco premiere of John Boorman’s Point Blank happened just over four weeks prior (8.30.67). Hard-boiled and then some.

Posted today (Friday, 8.22) by Politico’s Adam Wren and Dasha Burns:

I respect Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo as much as the next film lover, but the recent IndieWire articles about this shocking, 50-year-old portrait of fascist cruelty and sadism are…how can I put this?…a little diseased and flirting with over–the–top perversity, seemingly at the behest of executive editor Ryan Lattanzio.

I don’t want to ever even glance at another IndieWire article that discusses shit-eating in movies…is that clear? Nor do I want to read about movies that have depicted golden showers in ‘70s gay bars a la Cruising. Ditto the phenomenon of fist-fucking (also featured in Cruising) as well as any mentions of Zoo, that 2007 Sundance film about a real–life guy who died from a perforated colon after getting fucked by a horse…fair enough?

Over-the-cliff woke shit has all but destroyed the Democratic brand among a plurality of voters, as a new N.Y. Times voter registration survey implies. The Democrat registration fall-off is “staggering,” according to Times reporter Shane Goldmacher.

When I say “over-the-cliff woke shit”, I’m partly referring to the purist progressive mentality represented by your scolding, deeply-in-denial Hollywood Elsewhere nutters like Glenn Runciter and Victor Laszlo.

We all hate wokesters and their “white-savior complex” derangement (i.e., all POCs and women are saints) and especially their having cancelled the lives and careers of so many fine fellows and lassies (Sasha Stone among them) between ‘17 and ‘24. We hate the “all white folks are bad” mentality and the disenfranchising of young white males. We hate incessant trans shit and men in women’s sports. We hate that these twisted fucks have been messing around with gender identity issues among minors. We hate drag shows in elementary schools.

Honestly? The best thing for the Democratic Party is to jettison these loons. Should wokesters be exterminated like rats? Or should they be rounded up and thrown to the lions in the Colisseum or, better yet, tossed into Viking-style hunger pits filled with salivating wolves?

All hail sensible liberal-centrist moderates pols. All hail Rahm, Gavin, Pete.

Slight Woody Allen correction: Dracula slept in a coffin on a bed of damp earth, not “in” damp earth, as Woody put it.

In and of itself, the commercial failure of Stephen Frears’ The Hit (‘84) amply illustrates the validity of the below illustration and caption:

Reid Rosefelt on Facebook:

What film, which character said it, who played this character, what was the context, and who wrote the script?

If you don’t answer all five, you’re disqualified.

“Whatever piece of ass you get in this world you’re gonna have to pay for, one way or the other.”

That feeling of hopelessness and bottomless malaise that pours into the souls of trapped highway drivers on a daily basis in the major urban corridors…all I can say is that the gloomy authors and philosophers of yesteryear never knew this kind of anguish…they never knew they had it so good.

Industrial asphalt downerism became an American “thing” in the 1950s, when Dwight D. Eisenhower‘s vast interstate highway system began construction.

One of the first cinematic depictions of this stifling nationwide depression happens in the first minutes of Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (‘62), a mostly middling family comedy with James Stewart and Maureen O’Hara in the leads. Stewart, playing a banker, is trapped in his sedan during a highway commute, and a truck just ahead belches out a cloud of brown exhaust.

But it wasn’t the exhaust and smog that so weighed on drivers. It was the sheer number, the tens of thousands of other commuters.

It would have been so much easier and simpler to have seen Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest three months ago in Cannes, but easy-access press screenings were’t scheduled. Lee wanted the media bounce of a gala black-tie screening but cared not for persons like myself having a looksee, obviously calculating that reviews would be mixed.

I finally saw Highest 2 Lowest last night, and guess what? It’s mildly fine — a smoothly engaging, well-jiggered kidnapping drama for the whole family — a total popcorn movie that’s more or less about celebrating the color and vibrancy and musicality of New York City’s black and brown culture…a Spike joint that, for me at least, never bored or dragged (even during the first plot-light, character-driven hour).

Swanky Brooklyn pad, a high-profile son-snatching, a $17.5 million ransom in Swiss currency, a nifty second-act chase sequence, etc. Whatever, bruh…enjoy the ride.

This is basically a movie about wealth and happiness. Spike is flush, Denzel is bucks-up, NYC looks beautiful. It’s all good. (Did I feel left out because of my own lean portfolio? Yeah, kinda, but I got over that.)

Tightly assembled and visually punched-up (dare I say “balls-up”?), H2L is well-charged fun…panache, pizazz, an emphatically flush vibe (i.e., it’s kinda wealth-porny).

It boasts several fine, filled-out performances by several commanding, good-looking actors (Denzel Washington, ASAP Rocky, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera), plus ample servings of luminous Matty Libatique images. And it begins with a Rodgers & Hammerstein cityscape montage that’s pure emotional pleasure.

It goes down easy, man — schmaltzy, emotionally heightened and made to charm and entertain the popcorn-munching serfs (including schmoes like yours truly).

Akira Kurosawa’s noirish High and Low (‘63) struck everyone as a grim, hard-nosed, visually unengaging downer — Spike’s remake is pretty much a tonal opposite.

Any “100 best films of the ‘70s” list that doesn’t include Terrence Malick’s Badlands, John Flynn’s The Outfit, Mike Hodges’ Get Carter, Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, Michael Ritchie’s Downhill Racer and The Candidate, John Boorman’s Deliverance, Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, Hal Ashby’s Being There and Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye…any such list that ignores these 12 films invites my disrespect.

Plus there’s no way Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman ranks higher than the two Godfather films…get outta town! The IndieWire list was clearly assembled with a diversity mindset…too many diversity picks elbowing aside way too many first-rate’70s films.

(Thanks to Joe Dante for doing most of the heavy lifting.)