Last night’s Outstanding Directors of the Year tribute at Santa Barbara’s Arlington theatre went just fine. 90 minutes, over and out. Moderator Scott Feinberg asked interesting, intelligent, well-phrased questions of Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk), Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water), Jordan Peele (Get Out) and Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread). There were a couple of technical snafus — a Dunkirk clip ran without sound, and a clip that Feinberg introduced was ignored. But overall it was a fine, tight show. At evening’s end SBIFF director Roger Durling sang praises and presented the trophies.
(l. to r.) Feinberg, Peele, Gerwig, Anderson, Nolan, Del Toro, Durling.
Life Of The Party (Warner Bros., 5.11) is the latest comedy from Melissa McCarthy and husband/co-screenwriter Ben Falcone. The trailer is selling another coarse McCarthy vehicle, this one about a klutzy divorced woman who returns to college to get her degree, much to the chagrin of her daughter (Molly Gordon). Everyone’s been referencing Rodney Dangerfield‘s Back To School (’86), about a wealthy but amiably crude fellow who does the same thing, much to the chagrin of his son (Keith Gordon). But the first film to run with this story (I think) was High Time (’60), in which Bing Crosby played a successful resturateur (i.e., hamburgers) and widower who goes back to college at age 51.
In his 30s, director James Foley was in a pretty good groove. I’m talking about an eight-year period in the ’80s and early ’90s. The R-rated Reckless (’84) was nothing to get overly excited about, but then came At Close Range (’86), which I’ve long regarded as Foley’s near-masterpiece.
Next was Who’s That Girl (’87), a mostly misbegotten screwball comedy with Madonna, followed by an edgy, hard-boiled noir called After Dark, My Sweet (’90), which I don’t even remember. But then Foley rebounded big-time with the flinty, hard-boiled, universally admired Glengarry Glen Ross (’92).
Foley directed six decent but mezzo-mezzo dramas between ’95 and ’07 — Two Bits (’95), The Chamber (’96), Fear (’96), The Corruptor (’99), Confidence (’03) and Perfect Stranger (’07). And then he more or less shifted over to a journeyman TV realm. Foley directed 12 episodes of House of Cards between ’13 and ’15, and two episodes of Billions in ’16.
And then — aahck! aahck! — Foley returned to features last year by directing 50 Shades Darker, which no one paid the slightest attention to, and then he doubled down on this dubious association with the about-to-open 50 Shades Freed.
I re-watched At Close Range last year and really re-admired it, and everyone swears by Glengarry Glen Ross. We all have to pay the rent, the butcher and the plumber, but it seems a shame that the guy who finessed these two films and made them into semi-classics is currently reduced to the 50 Shades realm.
So Ron Howard‘s Solo: A Star Wars Story is going to be a kind of goofy adventure romp…right? Clearly, Anthony Breznican‘s EW cover story is conveying this and then some. Solo won’t just be witty or bantery or sporadically amusing but “the funniest Star Wars movie yet.”
Have previous Star Wars films been “funny”? They’ve all been occasionally nudgy or quippy to some extent, and were never 100% dramatic (even The Empire Strikes Back had moments of humor). You could argue that The Last Jedi has been the most digressively humorous of all the installments, but it still couldn’t be called comedic.
Then again a humorous approach was what original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, fired by producer Kathy Kennedy on 6.20.17 and replaced by Ron Howard, had in mind all along…right?
A 6.22.17 Breznican-authored EW story reported that “ever since filming began back in February ’17, Lord and Miller, who are known primarily for wry, self-referential comedies like The LEGO Movie, 21 Jump Street and the pilot episodes for Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Last Man on Earth, began steering the Han Solo movie more into the genre of laughs than space fantasy.”
The presumption was that Howard would be modifying Lord and Miller’s comedic approach, at least to some extent. But now EW‘s cover is all but calling Solo a laugh riot.
Call me a wimp or a candy-ass but I’ve just deleted two posts about Jean-Pierre Jeunet‘s lament about a short sitting-down-dance sequence in Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water mirroring a similar sequence in Jeunet’s Delicatessen (’91). Too many people I trust and respect told me they thought it was dirty pool to bring it up. I didn’t “bring it up”, of course — Jeunet did in a French newspaper. I simply re-posted because Jeunet seemed (emphasis on the “s” word) to have a valid or at least an arguable point. When too many friends are frowning at you, a little red light goes on and you give things a re-think. So I let it go.
A 2.6 Washington Post story says President Trump wants to stage a big, aggressive, Kim Jong-il– or Mussolini-like military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump was inspired by witnessing France’s military parade on Bastille Day, but the primary association is with authoritarian regimes looking to strut and sabre-rattle. A just-posted Slate piece says that “impromptu displays of military might are a sign of deep national weakness and insecurity.”
In what realm does a three-word title — Mission: Impossible — Fallout (Paramount, 7.27) — require a colon and a dash? For years I’ve been profoundly irritated by that absurd colon between Mission and Impossible. It was decided upon as a kind of macho symbol — a decisive mark or manly brand, two studly bullet holes — by TV series creator Bruce Geller.
Normally the noun would follow the adjective (i.e., impossible mission) but Geller switched them around. The colon was pointless, of course, but semi-tolerable, I suppose, as a stand-alone title of the CBS TV series (’66 to ’73). But when you add a franchise title (Fallout, Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation) the marketers were obliged to add a dash, and it’s just not right.
If the Robespierre mob had miraculously mobilized its forces a half-century earlier, they could have put a stop to the destined-to-be demonic career of Woody Allen before anything bad could have happened. Life is really all about timing, isn’t it? I’m guessing that Allen’s Dean Martin Show appearance happened during season #1 (9.16.65 thru 5.5.66). Allen turned 30 on 12.1.65.
A major Santa Barbara Film Festival event happens tonight — Christopher Nolan, Greta Gerwig, Guillermo del Toro, Jordan Peele and Paul Thomas Anderson jointly receiving the Outstanding Directors of the Year award. Each will be interviewed separately by Hollywood Reporter awards columnist Scott Feinberg about, respectively, Dunkirk, Lady Bird, The Shape of Water, Get Out and Phantom Thread. If I had programmed this event Peele would be out and Call Me By Your Name‘s Luca Guadagnino would take his place.
Atlantic critic David Sims posted a rave review of Sean Baker‘s The Florida Project on 10.5.17. He gave special props to Willem Dafoe‘s performance as Bobby, the ocasionally flustered but fair-minded proprietor of Orlando’s Magic Castle motel, in part by saying “it might be the finest role of Dafoe’s storied career.”
A24 marketers promptly made Sims’ quote sound more definitive by removing the “might be,” but they all remove modifiers.
It goes without saying that Dafoe’s lead performance in Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ (’88) is far and away the finest of his career, not to mention his greatest role. There’s not even a debate about this…c’mon. Sims got carried away (as we all do from time to time) but he shouldn’t have even said “might,” which is the same as saying “possibly” or “arguably.” The “father, can you forgive me?” passage at the very end of Last Temptation blows Baker’s entire film to smithereens, and if Sims doesn’t know this he should.
On 1.31 I posted a qualified capsule rave of Ryan Coogler‘s Black Panther (Disney, 2.16). More precisely I raved about the final hour while lamenting that the first 75 minutes are largely lacking in narrative tension and are mostly about set-up, diversion, pageantry and obligatory battle and car-chase action sequences for their own sakes. All through the first hour-plus I was worried. I was asking myself “when is this film going to get it together and start moving purposefully in a direction that we all want it to go in?”
And then it finally does that, and it’s all exuberant, pedal-to-the-metal, forward-motion engagement. But you’ll need to scrutinize the recently-posted Black Panther reviews with a fine tooth comb to find even a hint of acknowledgment that it waits and waits and waits to really rev up the T-bird and put the rubber to the road.
TheWrap‘s Alonso Duraldementions “the film’s occasional pacing lapses” but calls them “forgivable.” Screen International‘s Tim Griersonallows that the story is “a little plodding.” The Playlist‘s Rodrigo Perezsays that while certain “expounding preludes are flat and patchy, once Black Panther [finally] gets out of its crouching position and goes on a sprint, it’s an engaging ride that rarely lets up.”
Alluding to the faintly noddy, waiting-for-full-engagement section, Time‘s Stephanie Zacharekasks, “What would this film have been like if its action scenes had been cut cleanly and clearly, instead of chopped into the usual wasteful, visually confusing slice-and-dice mashup?”
See what I mean? They’re afraid to quibble or complain for the most part. They know Black Panther is going to be super-huge and they don’t want to seem as if they don’t get it or are in any way reluctant to celebrate this. Most critics are cowards. Have I been an occasional coward in the past? Yes. Have I ever sidestepped or diluted my real, deep-gut reactions to this or that film? I regrettably have from time to time. But so far I’m the only one to declare plain and straight that Black Panther, good as it ultimately is, doesn’t really get going until after the one-hour mark.
