A fair number of HE regulars saw Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed this weekend, I’m sure. I’ve been doing handstands since I first saw it last August. “A spare, Bresson-like, thoroughly gripping piece about despair, environmental ruin, moral absolutism and sexual-emotional redemption,” I wrote. “Completely rational and meditative and yet half crazy in a good way.”

The Rotten Tomatoes score is 97%. It would probably be 100% were it not for Armond White’s National Review pan, which Schrader recently called a badge of honor or words to that effect.

So what’s the HE community verdict?

Early this morning I walked around a heavy-partying area of Dublin (south of Liffey river, west of Westmoreland). 20somethings, for the most part. The pubs close sometime around 2 or 2:30 am here, but you wouldn’t know it from all the rowdy pumping energy. In most cities 2 am means things are starting to wind down. Not in Dublin, they’re not.

I’ve long felt a spiritual kinship with Ireland and the Irish. During my initial visit in ’88 (accompanied by wife Maggie and infant son Jett) my first thought was “I could die here.” But I felt a slightly uneasy vibe last night. A somewhat loutish, hair-trigger feeling from some of the guys hanging out in groups in front of pubs and whatnot.

You can usually sense civility in people or a lack of, a current of deference and humility and a basic instinct to be nice or a willingness to take a poke if provoked or fucked with in the slightest way. I was feeling more of the latter last night. Everyone bombed and more than a few on the ornery, rambunctious side.

And then I came upon the strangest, angriest drunken Irishman I’ve ever gotten a whiff of. This guy, 25 or slightly younger, was so stinking and so consumed with rage that he was just standing in front of a Burger King, immobile, looking slightly downward but more or less statue-like, like he’d been carved out of wood or injected with a drug that turned his muscles into stone. “Don’t touch me or come close…fauhhck, man, don’t even look at me,” his body seemed to be saying.

It was eerie. Drunks generally stumble or flail around or lie down or lean against walls. This guy was beyond all that. It was like he was trying to decide who to hit or how to kill himself or what weapon to use.

“Trump has opened up the floodgates, and the poison is coursing through the body politic. Republicans have been cranking up the racist mob for 40, 50 years. The Southern strategy…dog whistle, dog whistle, dog whistle. And then along comes Trump, who throws the dog whistle over his shoulder and picks up a bullhorn. He’s a disinhibitor.”

Filed at 3:30 am Dublin time…later. I haven’t been here since the fall of ’88. The Aer Lingus flight back to NYC leaves tomorrow at 1 pm. Update: In the breakfast room of the Clifton Court hotel (11 Eden Quay), 8:10 am. Leaving for airport in a couple of hours.

Asia Argento remarks, delivered at Cannes Film festival award ceremony earlier this evening: “I was raped by Harvey Weinstein here in Cannes. I was 21 years old. The festival was his hunting ground. Even tonight there are those that need to be held responsible for their conduct. You know who you are. But most importantly we know who you are, and we will not allow you to get away with it any longer.”

Le puissant discours d’@AsiaArgento pendant la cérémonie de clôture de Cannes. « J’ai été violée ici en 1997 par Harvey Weinstein ». 👊💪 pic.twitter.com/Qn1uguRzP4

— Hugo Clément (@hugoclement) May 19, 2018

Palme d’Or: Shoplifters, Hirokazu Kore-eda. HE comment: Why did they give the top prize to a film I didn’t get around to seeing? I resent that. My sense was that Shoplifters had drawn a respectful response but nobody was doing cartwheels. Nobody grabbed me by the collar and said, “Oh my God…you absolutely must see Shoplifters! The cartwheel winners were Cold War, Capernaum and Happy As Lazzaro.

Grand Prix: BlacKkKlansman, d: Spike Lee. HE comment: The Grand Prix being equivalent to second prize, I find it odd that Lee’s film, an engaging ’70s undercover-cop caper film but far from great art, came away with a more prestigious trophy than the one Cold War earned (i.e., Best Director for Pawlilowski) or Nadine Labaki‘s Capermnaum, which took third prize or Jury Prize.

Jury Prize: Capernaum, d: Nadine Labaki. HE comment: At least it took one of the three top awards.

Best Actress: Samal Yeslyamova, Akya. HE comment: Didn’t see it. My money was on Cold War‘s Joanna Kulig.

Best Actor: Marcello Fonte, Dogman. HE comment: Fine performance, mostly unsatisfying film, not my cup of tea.

Best Director: Pawel Pawlikowski, Cold War. HE comment: Approved.

Best Screenplay (tie): Alice Rohrwacher, Happy as Lazzaro & Jafar Panahi and Nader Saeivar, Three Faces.

“In the months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the reporters in the Knight Ridder Newspapers Washington D.C. bureau were virtually alone in their questioning of the Bush Administration’s allegations of links between Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism.

”The team of Knight Ridder reporters, led by Jonathan Landay, Warren Strobel, John Walcott and Joe Galloway, produced stories that now read like a prescient accounting of how the Bush Administration sought to sell the war to the American people.” — from “The Reporting Team That Got Iraq Right,” a 5.25.11 Huffpost story by Max Follmer.

The main culprits who sold the U.S. Congress and the public on the necessity of invading Iraq were, of course, President George Bush, vice-president Dick Cheney, secretary of state Colin Powell and N.Y. Times reporter Judith Miller, who ran a series of exclusives about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, some of which were found to be untrue. Miller’s main source was Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi. In a film about uncovering the chorus of lies used to justify the invasion, wouldn’t you think that Miller would be an important character? In the IMDB cast list there’s no “Judith Miller” character. Chalabi appears in the trailer, but he’s not part of the IMDB cast list either.

For the sheer pleasure of it, I caught Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War this morning for the second time. I sat in the third row of the Salle Deubssy, swooning once again to that velvety, needle-sharp black-and-white cinematography and that boxy aspect ratio that’s been breaking my heart for decades. Every shot is so exquisitely framed and lighted that it brings tears to your eyes. You could blow up any frame from this film and hang it on the wall of any snooty Manhattan art gallery.

And I love how cinematographer Lukasz Zal frames many of his shots with acres and acres of head room above the natural center of attention.

Cold War is so perfectly composed, a masterwork on every level. Pawlikowski’s story-telling instincts couldn’t be more eloquent or understated. Every plot point is always conveyed in the most discreet and understated terms, but you never miss a trick. And the economy! A story that spans 15 years ** is handled within 84 minutes, and you never sense that you’re being rushed along.

If I were deciding tonight’s Cannes Film Festival awards, I’d definitely choose Cold War for the Palme d’Or and Joanna Kulig, the femme fatale songbird whose in-and-out, hot-and-cold emotions propel this tragic love story, for Best Actress.

There’s no better gelato joint in any city or country. It’s so good that I was scared I was hurting myself by visiting so often. Time and again I’d tell myself “no, don’t go in…show some discipline.” I think I had a mid-sized cup every other day. I actually avoided it for a couple of two-day stretches, in fact. (4 Rue Felix Faure, 06400 Cannes.)

There’s a chance that Lee Chang-dong‘s Burning will wind up with a major prize by the end of tonight’s Cannes Film Festival award ceremony. I was told by two or three colleagues that I really need to see it, but I couldn’t make it happen and do the thing that I feel I need to do in my own way. I should apologize for missing it, but every year I always manage to miss a significant Cannes film so why not just own that? I’ll get to Burning sometime in the fall.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy called Burning “a beautifully crafted film loaded with glancing insights and observations into an understated triangular relationship, one rife with subtle perceptions about class privilege, reverberating family legacies, creative confidence, self-invention, sexual jealousy, justice and revenge.”

Oh Jung-mi and Lee Chang-dong’s screenplay is based on “Barn Burning“, a 1992 New Yorker short story by Haruki Murakami (with acknowledgments to William Faulkner).

Bill Maher on the royal wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, which is happening as we speak: “Enjoy the hell out of it tomorrow. Will you watch? Of course you will. A B-list actress marries a man who will never be king” — Harry is sixth in the line of succession to the British throne — “in a country that doesn’t even matter.”

From “I Take Thee, Baldie,” about Prince William and Kate Middleton’s marriage ceremony, posted on 4.29.11:

“The wedding will be a celebration of an exceptionally lame fantasy that tens of millions of under-educated, Sex and the City-worshipping, Star magazine-reading women the world over hold extremely dear, which is that they might one day luck into marrying an exceptionally rich guy from a rich and powerful family and live a life of fabulous wealth and, yes, workhorse duty for the rest of their lives. And have kids who will enjoy the same luxuries and get to to do the same thing as adults-with-their-own-kids when they come of age.”