I’ve known a meth-head or two in my time. Their churning brains and emotional extremes…truly one of the worst realms ever imagined or created. Run in the opposite direction. Obviously a showy role for Timothee Chalamet, but he’s such a gifted actor so it all balances out. Directed by Felix Van Groeningen, re-written by Luke Davies. Steve Carell, Amy Ryan, Maura Tierney, Timothy Hutton, Amy Forsyth, Ricky Low, Kaitlyn Dever. Produced by Brad Pitt‘s Plan B Entertainment. Amazon will release Beautiful Boy on 10.12.

A half-hour ago I slipped out of a still-running Salle Debussy screening of Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s The Wild Pear Tree. It runs 188 minutes, and I made it to the two-hour mark. I’ve been a Ceylan fan (Climates, Three Monkeys, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Winter Sleep) for years, but this time he lost me. As in “forget it, life is short, this isn’t happening,” etc.

I’ll get around to seeing the final hour later this year, but I knew The Wild Pear Tree was a no-go within the first half-hour.

Set in a mid-size Turkish city (Yenice), it’s a John Osbourne-ish, angry-young-man thing about despair, bitterness, insecurity and festering resentments. The protagonist is Sinan, a would-be writer (Aydın Doğu Demirkol) with an attitude problem. Pissed at his father, dismissive of his friends and the community, a bit arrogant, undisciplined. You can sense early on that he’s his own worst enemy.

I’ve just shared the following with a journalist friend: “The main character, the unshaven and hunched-over Sinan, was just insufferable. In denial, judgmental, dismissive of community locals, a guy with an attitude, indecisive, sullen. Two hours with that guy was more than enough.

“Nothing really happened in the first two hours. No inciting incident, nothing sought or feared except a life of tedium, nothing at stake, no story tension at all, no bad decision or any decisions of any kind…it was just idling in neutral.

“When I saw the body lying near the tree, I thought ‘aah, a suicide or a murder or a death from old age….but at least it’s something!’ It turned out to be none of these.

“If Sinan had only tried to re-ignite things with the pretty ex-girlfriend (the one who bummed a cigarette and was bit him on the lip when they kissed). She was cool, different, contrarian. But of course he didn’t pursue her. Why would he? That would be too interesting.

Earlier this week Emilia Clarke came to Cannes to promote her auto-pilot role (Qi’ra, adventurous love interest of Alden Ehrenreich) in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Anyone would have done the same thing in her shoes. Smart move, paycheck payoff, franchise fame, blah blah.

But it still feels ironic that Clarke went to so much promotional effort over a role and a performance that is overwhelmingly flat and lacking in intrigue when she gave a much, much better performance and in support of a far richer and better-written character in Phillip Noyce‘s Above Suspicion, a brilliant drug-dealing drama that I saw and praised last summer.

Earlier today I finally saw Gaspar Noe‘s Climax. It’s basically two movies, both running about 45 minutes, both scored to relentlessly pounding EDM and both about dancing bodies going to extremes — agile, mad, writhing, flailing around in dark places. And neither, I have to say, amounts to much.

The first half is “wheee!…lovin’ it!” and the second half is about “waagghhh, I’m gonna die!” But they’re both kind of shallow. Energetic, orgiastic, dullish. No dimensionality.

The first half, once it gets going after a 10- or 12-minute long video interview sequence, is far better. Climax is suddenly a wild, breathless, crazy-pump tribal dance flick — three (or four?) longish Steadicam shots of 20something dancers (Sofia Boutella is the only one I recognized), auditioning for a tour of some kind inside a modest-sized dance hall painted strawberry red (which half reminds you of the reddish gym-sized dance hall in Robert Wise‘s West Side Story), going gloriously nuts, letting loose and kicking out.

You could almost describe it as the first-act audition sequence from All That Jazz minus the grace and the dance-school training but set to EDM and with all kinds of push-push improv dancing, sweaty and hot and bursting with crazy legs and arms whirling with helicopter blades. None of it guided by a specific dance style, much less a theme or a structure of any kind, but it’s pleasing to just sink into the tribal throb and just, you know, go with it. Shallow but cool in a frenzied sort of way.

And then comes the second half, which is about the dancers reacting badly and in some cases horrifically to some LSD-spiked sangria.

The problem with this portion is that LSD is presented as some kind of evil-trigger drug, as a loosener of civilized behavior and a portal to hostility. It’s predatory, of course, to slip LSD into anyone’s drink without them knowing, and yes, it’s likely that most people, young or not, would react fearfully and perhaps even with panic. I get it.

But deep down LSD is not some kind of vicious-agitator substance. It’s a Godhead drug, and it struck me as unbelievable that each and every dancer goes a little bit nuts here. Nobody — not a single soul — connects with any form of inner divinity and blisses out. Nobody just stops with the crazy and walks outside barefoot and marvels at the night sky.

In the first half Noe is showing us that these kids are full of ecstasy when they dance, but in the second half he’s saying they haven’t the faintest notion what gentle spirituality is all about when they’re not dancing, and that they have absolutely nothing going on inside that would allow at least two or three of them to cope with the LSD experience in an Aldous Huxley sense.

There’s no question that promotional spending and big-star appearances were sharply down during this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The U.S. film industry investment was the lowest I’ve ever observed, and I’ve been coming here for 18 years. (My first visit was in ’92.). No big press lunches, relatively few parties, a reduction in advertising and signage along the Croisette, and, as noted, relatively few big-name actors.

You could feel it everywhere. The thunder, spirit and steam behind this legendary gathering just wasn’t as strong.

The festival’s hard line in the Netflix dispute was a HUGE mistake. Fewer journalists would be decrying the end of this festival’s heft and influence if Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma, Paul Greengrass‘s Norway and Orson Welles‘ The Other Side of the Wind had premiered here.

Face it — Cannes is essentially reverting to being a prestigious launch pad for the Best European, Middle Eastern and Asian films. With some exceptions, big-time American distributors seem to have more or less washed their hands.

From here on Cannes will be regarded more as a luxury retreat for dedicated cineastes (which is fine) and less of an essential investment for industry-driven columnists like myself. I’m not saying I’m not coming next year, but I’ll be thinking long and hard before I commit.

A rock-song bridge or “release” is when the guitarist, having absorbed the basic energy and thrust of a song, steps up and articulates the essence in some kind of heightened, contrasty way. Chorus-verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus-verse. The best are always short and succinct. One of the all-time shortest begins at the 45-second mark of The Who’s “The Song Is Over” and ends at the 56-second mark — 11 seconds total. One of the longest in this realm — 35 seconds — occurs in “Sympathy for the Devil,” starting at 2:53 and ending at 3:27. Two other perfect shorties — Robby Krieger‘s bridge in “You’re Lost Little Girl” (1:54 to 2:15, or roughly 21 seconds) and Eric Clapton’s in “She’s Waiting” (2:11 to 2:33, or roughly 22 seconds). Others?

I was shocked last night by Seth Abramson‘s tweet that special counsel Robert Mueller is “on pace” to complete his investigation of corrupt Trump-Russia ties in “under” three years. The investigation has been going for a full year now, but no completion until May 2020 or slightly before? That obviously works from a presidential campaign perspective, but somehow I had developed an idea that Mueller would finish sooner. As an actual Trump indictment apparently isn’t in the cards, it’s all about impeachment efforts in ’19 and ’20, which of course won’t happen unless the redhats lose their U.S. Senate and House of Representatives majorities next November.

I wouldn’t call Spike Lee‘s BlacKkKlansman a “black comedy,” as the Wiki page maintains — I would call it a more or less straightforward ’70s police procedural flecked with ironic humor here and there.

And yet a partly humorous approach is clearly indicated in the just-revealed poster art (i.e., hood + soul comb + black power salute). Plus it obviously delivers the basic idea, even if John David Washington‘s Ron Stallworth character never actually dons a KKK hood or physically fraternizes with Klan members. In the film, Stallworth vocally pretends to be a white guy who agrees with and supports Klan goals (i.e., over the phone) while Adam Driver‘s Flip Zimmerman, Stallworth’s partner on the case, handles the actual face-time infiltration.

An additional Director’s Fortnight screening of Gaspar Noe‘s Climax has been slated for tomorrow morning (Friday, 5.18) at 11:30 am. More waiting-in-line torture! Hollywood Elsewhere will be there with bells on, but given what happened last weekend outside the Palais Stephanie ou Theatre Croisette, I’ll have to be there by 9:30 am or certainly no later than 10 am. Standing on a sidewalk for 60, 90 or more minutes drains the soul. I hate it.

5.18, 10:30 am update: I began the press pass line at 10:05 am. I have the #1 position. Press and hard-ticket holders are starting to gather. I’ll finally get to see this! But God, what a pain these Directors Fortnight lines are during the festival’s peak period.

Capharnaum director Nadine Labaki, Zain Alrafeea during filming.

Nadine Labaki‘s Capharnaum will win the Palme d’Or because of (a) the humanist-compassionate theme and (b) the director is female. The statements and actions of the Cate Blanchett-led jury indciates they’re almost certainly looking to give the top prize to a woman-directed film. Before Capharnaum came along I was presuming the Palme winner would be Alice Rohrwacher‘s Happy as Lazarro.

Capharnaum isn’t really about a child (Zain Alrafeea) who files a lawsuit against his parents for giving him birth, as the point is never vigorously or extensively argued in a courtroom setting. It is, however, a deeply affecting hard-knocks, street-urchin survival tale in the vein of Pixote or Slumdog Millionaire.

The IMDB says it’ll be titled Capernaum in the U.S. and other English-speaking markets.

Right away you can tell that this low-key, middle-aged-curmudgeon romance is at least fairly well written. The director-writer is Victor Levin, whose 5 to 7 I didn’t much care for but whose writing credits also include Mad About You, The Larry Sanders Show and Mad Men. Part of the pleasure of this trailer is a notion that Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, whom I’ve recently felt sorry for (especially Ryder), may have lucked into a half-decent film that allows them to play semi-rounded, recognizably human characters. Or so we’re led to presume.

Poor Whitney Houston was found dead in a Beverly Hilton bathtub six and one-third years ago. “It took her many years to get there, but she’s finally bought it,” I wrote that day.

“The specific cause of the pop singer’s death is unclear, but c’mon…this has been in the cards for ages. Houston’s rep as a poster girl for drug abuse long ago eclipsed her fame as a singer. Many people are shocked by Houston’s death, but find me one person who’s genuinely surprised.”

The usual chorus of denial and complacency followed, of course. People always push that stuff away.

Now comes Kevin MacDonold‘s Whitney, an affectionate, deeply compassionate that nonetheless doesn’t play games when it comes to analyzing what went wrong in this troubled singer’s life.

When I read that Whitney was family-supported I presumed MacDonald might have felt obliged to take a softball approach. (An early teaser made no mention of Houston’s marriage to the notorious Bobby Brown, Houston’s husband of 14 years who has long been been regarded as a destructive influence in her life, particularly regarding her substance-abuse issues.) But Whitney is an exception to the rule. It digs right into the marrow and coaxes hard truths out of everyone.

Houston’s drug-use downswirl, the Brown relationship, her closeted sexuality and her daughter Bobbi Christina Brown, who died under regrettable circumstances at age 22 — it’s all there plus a surprise no one saw coming.

At the end Whitney’s aunt Mary Jones, who worked as her assistant (she was the one who found Whitney face down in that Beverly Hilton bathtub), claims that the late Dee Dee Warwick, the younger sister of Dionne Warwick and a blues-soul singer in her own right, sexually abused Whitney as a child, apparently in the late ’60s or early ’70s when the Houston family was living in East Orange, New Jersey.