Hollywood Elsewhere has never seen a Tommy Wirkola film (Dead Snow, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters), and the odds are greatly against seeing his latest, What Happened To Monday. In her Locarno Film Festival review, Variety‘s Jessica Kiang has described Wirkola’s film as “a ludicrous, violent, amusingly dumb sci-fi actioner…that casts Noomi Rapace as septuplets battling a dystopian regime.”
To which I replied, “There’s NO SUCH THING as ‘amusingly dumb’ in the context of movie attitude or tone. Certainly not if it’s also ludicrous and violent. There’s hilariously idiotic, of course, but…”
Kiang: “Not sure I get the fine distinction between those near-synonymous phrases, to be honest?”
HE reply: “Hilariously idiotic = stateroom scene in Night at the Opera, Woody Allen bits in What’s Up Tiger Lily, etc. Instances in which the filmmakers are definitely in on the joke. Amusingly dumb = lazy-ass fart fungus toenail dead-brain humor…open question as to whether filmmakers are in on the joke, or whether they’re defaulting to sloth-like sensibilities.”
Last weekend two manly, fully mature critics, Joe Leydon and Stephen Whitty, took Hollywood Elsewhere to task for expressing garden-variety hormonal enthusiasm over what I carefully chose to describe as a “hot lesbo” scene in Margaret Betts‘ Novitiate, or more precisely an erotic third-act scene between two lesbian nuns. Echoing the tedious viewpoint expressed last January by Glenn Kenny, Leydon lamented the adolescent associations with the term and more or less said that seasoned, worldly fellows with gray hair and commendable accomplishments should never go there. Whitty said roughly the same, arguing that “thinking like a man” means “not thinking and feeling like a boy.”
They don’t get it. When a truly erotic scene suddenly happens in the midst of an otherwise “decent but no great shakes” film, the blood warms up and the viewer is suddenly awake, alive and attuned. This is what happened when the Sundance audience saw Novitiate at the Eccles last January, and why everyone was talking about “that scene.” Leydon and Whitty can trot out their “tut-tut” and “harumph” routines all they want, but I was there. And if experiencing hormonal surges by way of a film are a mark of adolescent immaturity, and if denial or suppression of same is a mark of seasoned maturity, I’ll take the former, thanks. And if I choose not to mask said surges with harumphy, tut-tut terminology, that’s what many of us would call “acceptance.” Life is short, allow for the occasional gusto moment, let it in, etc.
Final remark to Leydon, Whitty: I didn’t write and direct the third-act lesbian scene in Novitiate — Margaret Betts did. If you have a problem with this sort of thing, take it up with her. I just sat down and watched it and shared what I shared.
If a non-showbiz marriage ends after eight years, it probably means that the parties gave it their all and embraced the right kind of devotional selflessness for five or six or seven years. Marriages usually work out if the husband accepts that the wife is the absolute boss, and if he begins each and every day on his knees, ready and eager to do her bidding. It really is that simple. When marriages don’t work out, it’s usually because the husband has decided to stand tall, look the wife in the eye and speak bluntly. (Never do that!) Or because of infidelity or, as Val Kilmer once said, “not enough steaks in the freezer.” But if a showbiz marriage dies after eight years….well, they did it right for a long while but their careers got in the way. Which is to say the wife’s career surged while the husband’s ran out of gas (i.e., A Star Is Born). Or the other way around (i.e., Chris Pratt and Ana Faris). Another thing that destroys a showbiz marriage is when a movie they’ve made together is critically savaged and then dies at the box-office (i.e., Brad and Angie’s By The Sea). And it never helps if either party has an alcohol issue (i.e., Brad at the time of his split from Angie).
I’m heading out to play badminton so this will have to be quick. It took me forever to see Geremy Jasper‘s Pattycake$ (Fox Searchlight, 8.18), but when I finally did a couple of weeks ago I was knocked over. Yes, it’s pure formula in the mode of Rocky, Hustle & Flow and 8 Mile. But Danielle McDonald is a revelation, or at the very least a superstar of the Jersey ‘burbs. (Even though she hails from Australia.) When someone like myself, a guy who’s repeatedly complained about the spread of burgeoning obesity in our culture and the increasing influence of fatty corporate foodstuffs…when someone like me does a double somersault for Patticake$ I think it means something. Yes, we’ve seen it before but it’s the singer, not the song. All hail Jasper, McDonald and costars Bridget Everett, Siddharth Dhananjay, Mamoudou Athie, the great Cathy Moriarty, McCaul Lombardi and Patrick Brana.
Who remembers Marc Webb and Allan Loeb‘s The Only Living Boy in New York (Roadside/Amazon, 8.11.17)? Did anyone see it? It opened almost seven years ago (i.e., eight months in into the Trump administraton), and a few monthw before the woke plague begqn to infect the urban liberal bloodstreqm. I happened upon my review this morning and was wondering “wow, I wonder if anyone waded into this film….seven yeare ago ie a substantial; block of time.”
I found it The Only Living Boy in New Yorkpretty close to awful. I despised each and every well-heeled, Manhattan-residing character, but that’s a roundabout way of saying I loathed Loeb’s screenplay, which struck me as grating and precious.
Okay, I liked the line about Philadelphia being New York City’s most culturally vibrant neighborhood but that’s about it.
Loeb, remember, wrote the execrable Collateral Beauty, a Will Smith grief-recovery film which was also set in flush NYC environs. That touchy-feely ordeal was enough to condemn Loeb to a five-year sentence on a Southern chain gang, side by side with Paul Newman, George Kennedy and the others. Now he’s earned himself a life term on Devil’s Island with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. The man specializes in manipulative emotional goo.
Callum Turner is Thomas, a somewhat whiny, spectacle-wearing, 20something bore who’s attempting a career as a serious writer and who works as a Rizzoli-like book store to make ends meet. [News flash: No New Yorker can make ends meet in Manhattan on a retail-clerk salary.] Thomas, who bears an extraordinary resemblance to a Northwestern timber wolf, is the son of Ethan (Pierce Brosnan), a mildly imperious book publisher, and a jittery mom, Judith (Cynthia Nixon).
Plus Thomas is in a not-quite-there relationship with Mimi (Kiersey Clemons) who’s pretty and wise but (be honest) chubby and destined for Queen Latifah-like proportions by the time she hits her mid 30s.
Early on a grizzled 60ish alcoholic writer (Jeff Bridges) appears in Thomas’ Lower East Side apartment building and quickly becomes the kid’s avuncular wisdom-dispenser. Typical Bridges dialogue: “Schnorrrr-roar-urp-urp-schnorrrr-roarr-uhhrr,” etc.
A scene or two later Thomas and Mimi happen to spot Ethan having a cozy romantic dinner with Johanna (Kate Beckinsale), an extra-marital lover. Alarmed but also a tad aroused, Thomas begins stalking Johanna. They immediately start fencing and parrying, and before you know it Thomas is putting the high, hard one to her.
Why is Johanna open to going stereo with Brosnan’s son? It doesn’t seem to make sense but she goes there regardless, and without telling Brosnan, of course, and so it’s dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick for this mama-san.
And then in Act Three comes a semi-startling piece of news that alters the dynamic between these completely tiresome characters. You don’t want to know, trust me. My main reaction was “what’s with all the secrecy? Is this a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel in which mothers and wives have to hide secrets and atone for decades or at least carry guilt around for their past sins?”
Until yesterday I’d never even heard of The Fastest Gun Alive (’56), a western programmer with Glenn Ford, Jeanne Crain and Broderick Crawford. But thanks to a YouTube clip of Russ Tamblyn‘s bravura dance sequence, I have now. Itseems to be from a musical but isn’t. A story about a guy related to a hot-shot gunslinger but lacking the skill himself, The Fastest Gun Alive was apparently a blend of Henry King‘s The Gunfighter (’50) and Don McGuire‘s Johnny Concho (’56). I always knew Tamblyn was a gifted hoofer, but until I saw this clip I didn’t realize he was just as good as Donald O’Connor was in Singin’ In The Rain. (Thanks to a Twitter heads-up from Amber Tamblyn.)
In his 6.18.17 Variety review, Peter Debruge noted that Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman‘s Loving Vincent (BreakThru/Trademark, 9.22) “boasts the distinction of being ‘the world’s first fully painted feature film.’
“That means every one of the nearly 65,000 frames in this near-lunatic labor of love (it took seven years to complete) was rendered by hand with oil paints, following a style intended to mimic that of the master. [It] has precisely the effect you might imagine, pulling audiences into the delirious, hyper-sensual world suggested by van Gogh’s oeuvre.
“As lovely as the animated-painting technique is to behold, the approach involves a kind of rotoscoping (where the frames are painted over live-action footage — a variation on the way Richard Linklater tackled Waking Life). Although this technique isn’t ‘cheating’ per se, it shackles the crew of 120-odd oil painters to what the camera sees, functioning as a kind of high-end PhotoShop filter as the individual artists are tasked with applying a van Gogh-like impasto to the underlying reference footage.
“With any luck, audiences won’t dwell on the particulars of how the effect was achieved, concentrating instead on the content of the story, which brings a poetic sense of tragedy to the last act of van Gogh’s life, and fresh insight into the kind of man he was.
“Loving Vincent may exist as a showcase for its technique, but it’s the sensitivity the film shows toward its subject that ultimately distinguishes this particular oeuvre from the countless bad copies that already litter the world’s flea markets. To the extent that van Gogh’s style permitted him to capture a deeper sense of truth, he makes a noble model for the filmmakers to follow.”
“We’re really moving along…we’re bringing back our jobs…we’re making American great again…ending the war on coal…no more easy welfare for immigrants,” etc. What’s a nice, concise term for beyond toxic, world-class contemptible, nauseating, forehead-slapping, rhetorically suffocating?
Last August I reported that Chappaquiddick (dated 5.11.16, 131 pages), a blistering Ted Kennedy melodrama written by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan, would begin filming just after Labor Day. It did so. John Curran directed with a cast that toplined Jason Clarke (as EMK), Kate Mara (Mary Jo Kopechne), Ed Helms (Joe Gargan), Bruce Dern (the immobile Joseph P, Kennedy), Jim Gaffigan and Taylor Nichols.
I figured Chappaquiddick might turn up at Toronto in search of a distribution deal, but it wasn’t included in the first batch of titles. A friend who’s seen it says it’s “good…JasonClarke really captures the Teddy vibe of that era but it’s BruceDern that is the power of the film as father Joe.”
Maybe it’ll be announced as a Toronto title in a week or so, and maybe it’ll open commercially sometime in the late winter or spring of ’18. I know a good script when I read one so here’s hoping.
The other qualifier has to do with Stephen Chbosky‘s Wonder (Lionsgate, 11.17). The trailer suggested it might be a tad cloying, but you can never tell anything from a trailer. I reported on 3.30 that a Lionsgate spokesperson had told the Cinemacon crowd “that Wonder has gotten the highest test scores of any Lionsgate film ever.” And so the original release date, 4.7.17, was changed last February to 11.17.
But that didn’t mean that Lionsgate believed that Wonder has the Oscar nuts. All it meant, I’ve been told, is that Lionsgate knew they had a strong family film and so they wanted to open it near Thanksgiving to capitalize on that. Make of this what you will.
