This is what triple-A Bigelow-Boal cinema is like. This.

“It’s an odd thing realizing that you’re seeing a movie that is a step above most of what you have seen in the commercial cinema this year,” MCN’s David Poland wrote on 11.25.12. “My pulse gets faster, I start being a little hyper-vigilant, even though I don’t take notes in movies — at least the first time through — and I start hoping, beat after beat, scene after scene, that the high won’t disappear.

“And that’s what I felt from the very first minutes of Zero Dark Thirty tonight.

“Kathryn Bigelow & Mark Boal are in a kind of sync that is rare in the history of cinema. Boal has raised the bar on the output of Bigelow’s master-level visual skill by giving her material to work with that is seriously challenging and meaningful. She’d make a great Bond movie, I suspect, but that was her earlier career. This is the stuff of Lean and Bolt. Of course, even that relationship had its misses. But this, the second movie for this duo, was ripe to be mediocre or even horrible. So there was enormous pressure to deliver…and in spite of that, they did.

“Comparisons to All The President’s Men are completely valid. But an even stronger beating heart lies beneath this material. B&B personalize the big picture for the audience in a not-so-tricky way…they put us in the room with torture…they remind us of the violence and danger inflicted by terrorists…and they let us experience the ‘it’s a job’ side of life and death. Because the truth of this story…the truth of almost all stories…is the balance between all those truths. ATPM has a lot of that balance too… but in the end, it is still about reporters and The Big Story. The stakes are much higher when lives are on the line in a very human, not movie-like, way. And Jessica Chastain is B&B’s way into that humanity.

“There are some truly great performances by actresses this year. Marion Cotillard is a miracle in Rust & Bone. Jennifer Lawrence is going to be one of our great stars for years to come and her superstar turn in Silver Linings Playbook shows us why, beyond doubt. But Chastain turns the double trick…movie star stuff and the in-your-face character work…and her movie is a more overt heroic tale than either of the other films.

Just getting this straight: It’s a “mafia” thing to lament Telluride’s decision to deepsix one of 2017’s finest films hands down because of intramural film festival politics and elbows and egos?

I saw Rob Reiner‘s LBJ in Toronto last year. I didn’t hate it, but it mostly feels like a dutiful, going-through-the-motions thing. Not bad, okay at times, an in-and-outer. But not as commanding as HBO’s All The Way, and Bryan Cranston performance as the 36th president has more juice and bombast than Woody Harrelson‘s. The best Johnson ever was Randy Quaid in LBJ: The Early Years (’87). You can tell right off the bat that Harrelson’s appearance and accent aren’t right. He doesn’t have that Texas hill country drawl, which had a Huckleberry Hound-like tonality. On top of which Woody sounds awfully similar to Carson Wells, the bounty hunter he played in No Country For Old Men. Plus there’s something inhuman about his features.

Last Sunday I grieved over my inability to give Detroit a positive review. I was ready to sing and shout before seeing it, but after two viewings the best I could manage was a mild pan. But I don’t want Detroit to be hurt during this weekend’s limited break. (The real opening is next Friday, 8.4) It’s a nervy, honorable thing made by gifted people with real passion in their veins. We’ll all feel better if it connects than if it doesn’t. But will it?

Limited platform openings are about connecting with early adopters and getting that social-media buzz going, so it’s probably fair to say that the word in the big cities will either make it or break it. Did anyone catch it last night?

I spoke this morning to an attorney friend who sees what he sees and likes what he likes, and I asked him about Detroit. “What about it?,” he said. Those three words were damning enough, but I asked if he plans on seeing it. Reply: “Uhm, maybe…uhm, actually, no, I don’t think so. Well, maybe.”

I’m a little surprised by the 96% Rotten Tomatoes rating. I know what this movie is, and I know what films boasting an over 90% RT rating generally feel like, and Detroit, trust me, is not one of those down-on-your-knees hail hossanah experiences. It doesn’t have that schwing. Big-city critics want to be as approving as possible, of course. They sure as shit don’t want to go thumbs down. I honestly thought Detroit would land in the high ’70s or low 80s. The 86% Metacritic rating is more reality-reflecting than the RT.

I’ve never been one for cruelty or needless vulgarity, and since embracing sobriety five and a half years ago I’ve even…well, now and then I’ll take a couple of steps back and temper my prose before posting. But as an ex-New Yorker and one who grew up in a semi-tough, white-bread New Jersey town (Westfield) that had its share of coarse Italians, there’s something in me that relates to those profane, pugnacious quotes from Anthony Scaramucci in that Ryan Lizza New Yorker piece.

I talked to a hundred guys like Scaramucci in New York-area bars during my drinking days; that cussy big-mouth thing is a bullshit-blowhard routine they all get into, or a good percentage of them.

I despise Scaramucci’s politics, of course, and certainly his devotion to the most deranged sociopath to occupy the White House in the history of this country. But I understand the patter. He’s a New York bullshitter, and I miss that music from time to time. “I’m not Steve Bannon…I’m not trying to suck my own cock” — c’mon, who didn’t at least crack a smile when they read that? And calling Reince Preibus “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac” — that’s angry, saliva-bomb stockbroker talk.

Seriously — Martin Scorsese would be in hog heaven if he could make a film about Scaramucci in a few years. I want to see that movie…please! Scaramucci is Tommy from Goodfellas in a bucks-up, New York-Washington mode.

And speaking of New York bluntitude, there’s a great Bobby Zarem quote about former hotshot columnist Liz Smith in a 7.28 N.Y. Times profile by John Leland (“The Rise and Fall of Liz Smith, Celebrity Accomplice”). When Leland reached out, Zarem said, “I hope it’s for an obituary.”

I’m not saying that’s an unjustified or overly harsh crack on Zarem’s part, but it’s the kind of thing that only a serious New Yorker would say.  I didn’t exactly love working for Zarem in the mid ’80s, but I love that I did in retrospect.

I chose to drive all the way down to Norwalk this afternoon in order to quickly renew my fictitious business name statement, which allows me to legally and correctly maintain a Hollywood Elsewhere business account. Google Maps told me to stay off the freeways for the most part, presumably because it wanted to spare me the pain of driving in heavy traffic, but the trip took a helluva long time regardless. Upside: For the first (and probably only) time in my life I visited the oldest McDonald’s in the world, located at Lakewood Blvd. and Florence Ave. I ordered a regular small hamburger.

Word around the campfire is that Amazon will self-distribute Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria. (Same thing they’re doing with Woody Allen‘s Wonder Wheel.) I was told last May that this remake of the 1977 Dario Argento classic runs two hours, 50 minutes. (Argento’s version ran 98 minutes.) I’m now told Guadagnino’s cut will run 150 minutes with credits. LG screened it for the Amazon gang at the end of his recent L.A. visit.  He and editor Walter Fasano had applied finishing touches to their erotic witch flick before the unveiling. The costars include Dakota Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, Mia Goth, Tilda Swinton, Sylvie Testud, Angela Winkler, Małgosia Bela, Lutz Ebersdorf and Jessica Harper. Do I know for a fact that everyone gets naked in that big scene I described a couple of months ago? No, I don’t. Suggested alternate title: All Of Them Witches.

I’m sorry but I felt in need of spiritual life support during a Sundance Film Festival screening of Marjorie Prime last January. Or at the very least a large Red Bull. I caught it at the Eccles, watching and drifting and sinking into my seat. I could sense that the audience was experiencing a similar lethargy. Based on Jordan Harrison’s 2014 play and adapted by director Michael Almereyda, it’s about an overly organic hologram named Walter (Jon Hamm) who resembles the late husband of 86-year-old Marjorie (Lois Smith). Costarring Geena Davis and Tim Robbins. The FilmRise release will pop on 8.18.

Tuesday’s Toronto Film Festival announcements did a pretty job of clarifying which fall films were heading to Venice and Telluride, so this morning’s Venice Film Festival announcement isn’t exactly shaking the rafters. In addition to the previously announced 8.30 kick off showing of Alexander Payne’s Downsizing, Venice will also screen the following:

Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, allegedly “a darker twist on Rosemary’s Baby” with Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem (curious Telluride absence); George Clooney’s darkly comic Suburbicon; Guillermo del Toro’s tender-hearted The Shape of Water starring a mute Sally Hawkins; Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri with Frances McDormand (another curious Telluride no-show); Stephen Frears’ Victoria & Abdul with Judi Dench; and Andrew Haigh’s Lean on Pete.

I’ve been to Venice five or six times, but I’ll never attend the Venice Film Festival. I’m a Telluride man through and through.

This morning I sent the following to Amanda Grandinetti, identified on her Facebook page as the food and beverage director at the Chateau Marmont but, according to a longtime Chateau employee who insists that Grandinetti’s Facebook page is out of date, currently the managing director. Philip Pavel, who ran the Chateau for a long stretch, is now the big cheese at the soon-to-open NoMad hotel in downtown Los Angeles:

Amanda,

Mellow greetings, yukey dukey. I’m Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere columnist (www.hollywood-elsewhere.com) and longtime industry reporter going back to the early ’80s. I’m writing to convey a mild form of displeasure about a no-big-deal incident that happened last night at the Chateau Marmont, or more precisely at the outside entrance.

I don’t want to sound like an entitled asshole, but I’ve been attending industry parties at the Chateau for eons (mainly during Oscar season), and every so often I’ll pop by to meet someone for a drink at the restaurant bar, or maybe order breakfast or dinner or whatever. (Svetlana Cvetko and I met Guillermo del Toro there for dinner a year or so ago.) Or I might be with a visitor and just want to show them the Chateau’s to-die-for interior.

This was last night’s agenda — showing the interior to my wife Tatyana, who’s only been in Los Angeles for seven months and has never had the pleasure. But I was told by a polite young lady at the valet desk that we couldn’t enter without a room or dinner reservation. I said we were just looking to order a drink at the bar, no biggie. “The bar is filled,” she said. Obviously she couldn’t have known that. We went back and forth but her mind was made up.

What she meant, I presume, is that she sensed we were riff-raff, and so she was following an instinct to protect the hotel guests from people who might gawk or snap iPhone photos and otherwise generate un-coolness.

I totally get the “keep out the riff-raff” thing. If I was guarding the gate I would actually take pleasure in politely rebuffing any would-be visitors who looked like they’d just gotten off the tourist bus. Overweight types, noisy kids in tow, wide-eyed expressions, low-thread-count T-shirts, dorky sandals and a general approach to attire that’s more suited to a mall in Henderson, Nevada.

Your predecessor Phillip Pavel, who served as the Chateau’s managing director for a long stretch, said it succinctly a few years ago: “The Chateau Marmont has built its success on creating an environment where the privacy of our guests is paramount. Please know that the decision to not allow certain guests in our hotel is based solely on this concept.”

The problem is this: I’m not riff-raff, and I don’t look like riff-raff. I have the snooty cool thing down pat, and I was nicely groomed last night. I was wearing a dark blue Kooples shirt and white pants and shiny black loafers. The beautiful Tatyana was nicely dressed also. Nothing about us radiated “uh-oh…don’t let these chumps past the gate!” Granted, we didn’t arrive in a big black SUV and had just approached on foot, but still…what’s the deal here?

Director George Clooney seems to have found the right material. The dark imaginings of Joel and Ethan Coen + the tawdry realms of James M. Cain + a fleeting fantasy whipping through Robert Aldrich‘s head during post-production on Kiss Me Deadly. Anything but lethargic. The funky sax brings it all together. The only thing that doesn’t feel right is the angry mob. America didn’t do angry mobs in the Eisenhower ’50s, about or against anything. Okay, lynch mobs but they happened in the rural South. “Violence, language, some sexuality.”

Since last spring Zak, my beloved three-year-old ragdoll, has been coping with fungal infections. I’m not sure if his affliction is called cryptococcus or sporotrichosis, but it’s definitely one of these. Last April Laurel Pet Hospital charged me almost a grand to (a) surgically remove the seven or eight lumps on Zak’s body plus (b) supply a prescription for a daily oral medication that would presumably rid Zak of the fungus. That cost another $60 or $70.

The surgery was fine but the medication was ineffective, and so by late June or early July Zak was more or less back to square one. I didn’t want to spend another thousand right off the bat (things are a little tight right now) so I’ve been dabbing Zak’s sores with alcohol and keeping him clean and well-fed and hoping for the best while I gather the courage to spend the next $1K.

Zak roams around in the day and comes home late at night, by the way.

Around 10:30 pm on Monday night a well-meaning fellow with a boyish, high-pitched voice called from the next block over. He asked if I knew Zak was outside (yeah, I knew that), and said that he seemed to be in bad shape. “He’s not in bad shape per se…he just has this annoying fungus thing,” I said. “I’ve had him operated on and have given him special medication and all, but so far it’s not going away.” The fellow said, “Well, he really needs help.” Yes, I agreed, and I’m about to take him back to the hospital for more treatment, but thanks for calling and telling me this. The fellow said okay and hung up.

But he didn’t mean “okay.” He meant “you’re not a responsible parent, so I’m going to be a good citizen and give Zak to people who will presumably attend to him better than you are now.”

Two and a half hours later (roughly 1 am) I was called by a guy who works for the Department of Animal Care and Control. He said a guy had called for assistance and had given him Zak, and did I want to come claim him? “Yes, I want to claim him,” I said, suppressing my growing anger at what the boyish-sounding guy, whom I suddenly realized was a malignant dick, had done. “Where would that be?” Carson, he said — about an hour south of West Hollywood. The address was and is 216 West Victoria Street, just off the Harbor Freeway. Technically in Gardena.