I’m a little bit afraid of the broad-stroke obviousness of Ken Marino‘s How To Be A Latin Lover (Patelion, 4.28). I realize, of course, that trailers always dumb movies down as much as possible, but this still feels…well, Sandleresque. The most striking thing for me is the fact that Eugenio Derbez, a huge Mexican superstar, bears a modest resemblance to director Alejandro G. Inarritu. (They were both born in Mexico City in the early ’60s, about 20 months apart.) Latin Lover‘s supporting cast includes Salma Hayek, Rob Lowe, Michael Cera, Renee Taylor, Kristen Bell, Linda Lavin, Mckenna Grace and Rob Corddry.

(l.) Mexican comic superstar Eugenio Derbez, star of How To Be A Latin Lover (r.) The Revenant/Birdman director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman has reviewed Kong: Skull Island (Warner Bros., 3.10) without using the term “Apocalypse Kong.” Coined by Hollywood Elsewhere on 7.23.16, it makes perfect sense given the Vietnam War echoes, the 1973 setting and the hat-tip by Kong director Jordan Vogt-Roberts to the “Ride of the Valkyries” helicopter attack sequence in Francis Coppola’s 1979 epic.

Even more oddly, Gleiberman makes no reference to “comic beats“, which I was recently told is “definitely” a part of the mosaic.

Reel-to-reel tape player churning out Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” anthem in Apocaylpse Now.

Nearly the exact same shot in Kong: Skull Island.

Gleiberman: “A King Kong movie should, first and foremost, be a fairy tale of primeval wonder, and this one is. The surprise is that Skull Island isn’t just ten times as good as Jurassic World; it’s a rousing and smartly crafted primordial-beastie spectacular. In many ways, [it’s] a Jurassic Park movie, and if viewed that way, it’s the best since [Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original]. Skull Island is more action-based and less ambitious than either of the “King Kong” remakes: the snarky, overblown, justly reviled 1976 knockoff or Peter Jackson’s good but still not good enough 2005 retread.”

I received this coffee cup from the Middleburg Film Festival a couple of weeks ago, and I’d like to publicly say “thanks, guys…this works for me.” Aesthetically appealing, right size and shape. I wasn’t invited to attend last fall’s gathering but the legendary R.J. Millard brought me here in the fall of ’15, and I had a better-than-decent time. This year’s fest is from 10.19 thru 10.22.

Allow me to use the forthcoming release of The Shack (Summit, 3.3) to reiterate Hollywood Elsewhere’s view that (a) compassionate liberal Christians are cool (Jesuits, Franciscans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians) but (b) conservative hinterland Christians are clueless phonies and sanctimonious prigs whose core values and loyalties are aligned with whitebread Republicanism. That makes them vile in my book, especially with Donald Trump steering the ship. May the earth open up and swallow your flock, just like it did in The Ten Commandments, and may the dogs lick your blood.

In the view of Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman, The Shack is partly “a queasy piece of Christian disaster porn“…”a cautious, squarely photographed bare-bones Christian psychodrama” but mainly “a theme-park ride” mixed with “a Hallmark-card therapy session hosted by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost…who come off, in this case, like the featured celebrity guests on a very special episode of Oprah…the movie’s message is, ‘Have no fear! God truly is right here with you’…all that’s missing is a weekend spa treatment.”

The night before last (Tuesday, 2.28) former Mexican president Vicente Fox tweeted this Chris Britt cartoon in response to President Trump‘s State of the Union pledge that there would be a “great, great wall” built on the Mexican border. And here I am, Mr. Lightspeed, passing it along 36 hours later.

This 2009 Johnnie Walker ad (“The Man Who Walked Around The World”) is one of the greatest single-take pieces of cinema ever captured, hands down. Carlyle’s perfect easygoing delivery (and especially the timing), the various props appearing at exactly the right moment, the muted palette, the bagpipes. Directed by Jamie Rafn. I’m mentioning this now because the 56 year-old Carlyle looks a bit bloated in T2 Trainspotting (TriStar, 3.31), and because the film probably won’t cause much of a stir, and because this is the best time since August 2009 to salute Carlyle’s most stirring turn, his BAFTA-award performance in The Full Monty (’97) notwithstanding.

Apart from the fact that I’ve pretty much had it with whiny, wet-behind-the-ears combatants (“I don’t belong here”) in the odious tradition of Fury‘s Logan Lerman, Fernando Coimbra and Chris Roessner‘s Sand Castle might not be half bad. It has a vibe. Nicholas Hoult‘s Matt Oucre trying to get out of combat by slamming a car door on his hand…engaging! Henry Cavill (i.e., Superman) feels right as Cpt. Syerson, and the buzz cut works. Roessner’s original screenplay is based on his own experience in Iraq. Did anyone see Coimbra’s Wolf At The Door? I didn’t but I read good things. (Coimbra also directed episodes from the first season of Netflix’s Narcos.) Keep in mind that the title is singular — Sand Castle and not Castles.

Sen. Al Franken on Attorney General Jeff Sessions‘ clarifying statement about meeting with the Russian ambassador: “If you don’t remember what you talked about, then you don’t remember if you talked about the campaign. That’s contradictory. [Sessions] certainly, at the very minimum — this just makes common sense — has to recuse himself from any investigation [into this matter] at all.” So in addition to being the highest governmental expression of racist swinery, Sessions is also a proven liar. Plus he speaks with the same backporch yokel accent that various Ku Klux Klan guys used in Mississippi Burning.

Mindhunter = Manhunter‘s darker, stranger brother. Muttered voice-over: “I’m trying to warn you…your attitude is going to bite you in the ass.” Exec produced by David Fincher and produced by Charlize Theron, Josh Donen and Cean Chaffin, Mindhunter is a ten-episode Netflix series that, like Zodiac, is set in the ’70s. Okay, 1979. It’s about a pair of FBI agents (Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany) interviewing imprisoned serial killers to try to solve ongoing cases. Which of course is precisely what Manhunter‘s Will Graham (William Petersen) and Silence of the Lamb‘s Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) did — i.e., interview Hannibal Lecter in an attempt to capture, respectively, the Tooth Fairy and Buffalo Bill. Written by showrunner Joe Penhall (The Road) with the pilot episode directed by Fincher, Mindhunter is scheduled to start streaming — wait for it — sometime in October 2017.

From Guy Lodge‘s T2: Trainspotting review, posted on 2.2.17: “How do you make a sequel to a film that defined a generation, a whole generation later? Do you define that generation anew, through thicker bifocal lenses, or do you pass the baton to a younger one? Both are valid approaches.

“Neither is quite the one taken by T2 Trainspotting, a shinily distracting but disappointingly unambitious follow-up to 1996’s feverish youthquake of a junkie study, which reunites its quartet of older, none-the-wiser Edinburgh wretches to say simply this: Middle-aged masculinity is a drag, whether you’re on smack or off it.

“As a fan-service exercise, Danny Boyle’s itchy, antic caper just about passes muster, reassembling Trainspotting‘s core ensemble, soundtrack cues, and even its seasick camera moves for two hours of scuzzy nostalgia. Yet it largely passes up the opportunity to update the original’s caustic social snapshot of contemporary Britain — a region itself currently preoccupied with the rearview mirror, though the irony isn’t necessarily noted.”

With the world premiere of Terrence Malick‘s Song to Song happening at SXSW on Friday, March 10th and the film opening commercially a week later, it might be time to once again post a transcript of a phone conversation I had with Malick 21 years and 8 months ago. The date was 10.25.95 (or so I recall) around 11:35 am.

I happen to be one of the only journalists to have had any kind of conversation with Malick since he went into his Thomas Pynchon withdrawal phase in 1979 (right after the release of Days of Heaven) and became a phantom-like figure whom journalists couldn’t get to under any circumstance.

In this context speaking to Malick on the phone was like snapping a photo of Bigfoot. It was a half-pleasant, half-awkward, mostly meaningless conversation, but at least he picked up the phone.

Malick had been staying with producer Mike Medavoy, who wound up producing The Thin Red Line, but Medavoy was leaving for Shanghai and Malick would be staying elsewhere, so I called Medavoy’s home to get a forwarding number. A cleaning woman answered and said Medavoy was out, but that Malick was nearby. She asked me to hold…

Malick: Hi.
HE: Hi, Terry. This is Jeffrey Wells speaking.
Malick: Hi.
HE: And uhh…I was just talking to Mike last night and he said, uh, you might be leaving today and I wanted to see if I could speak with you about an article I’m researching. It’s for Los Angeles magazine and my editor…he worked on that piece about ten years ago with David Handleman for California magazine. It was called ‘Absence of Malick.’
Malick: Yeah.
HE: I don’t know if…did you happen to read it?
Malick: No, I…uhnn…
HE: Anyway, I’m doing this piece and trying to sort things through here. About what’s going on with…well, to start with, The Thin Red Line and that rumored BAM stage production of “Sansho the Bailiff” and…I’ve wanted to speak with you about it, and now that I’m speaking with you I feel…well, I feel nervous.

Audiences decide very quickly if a certain actor is an acceptable, believable choice for a certain character. Or not. We’re all familiar with pre-2010 casting decisions that were instantly derided by the planet earth as unpalatable but what are some of the more glaring casting mistakes of the last, oh, six or seven years?

All-Time Classics: (1) Patricia Arquette as an actress pretending to be a doctor in John Boorman‘s Beyond Rangoon (’95); (2) Jack Black as Carl Denham in Peter Jackson‘s King Kong (’05); (3) Seth Rogen as Britt Reid in The Green Hornet (’11); (4) Hayden Christensen as New Republic feature writer Stephen Glass (his college preppie voice and mock-vulnerable social manner were so grating that it was impossible to accept that seasoned journalists would have bought his schtick) in Shattered Glass; (5) Warren Beatty as a thin Oliver Hardy in The Fortune (’75); (6) Gregory Peck as Josef Mengele in The Boys From Brazil (’78); (7) Jamie Dornan in Fifty Shades of Gray (lacking in studly intensity); (8) Denise Richards as an idiotically grinning pilot in Starship Troopers; (9) John Wayne as a Roman Centurion in George Stevens‘ The Greatest Story Ever Told (’65); and (10) Frank Sinatra as a soft-spoken priest in Miracle of the Bells (’48).