Jeffrey Wells

Because they’re all Region 2, which won’t play on my Sony 4K Bluray player.

Certain raving psychos who’ve commented from time to time in this space have insisted that there’s no such thing as Region 2 blockage or non-cooperation on domestic Bluray players. Aahh, but there is.

I’m especially taken with my Region 2 Blurays of A Kind of Loving, Deep End, The Conformist, For Whom The Bell Tolls and Women in Love

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I‘ve always hated guys who wear burgundy or maroon-colored suit jackets. Or burgundy–maroon anything, for that matter.

I’m assuming that the alleged Star Wars: Skeleton Crew gig is a harmless paycheck thing…money to cover expenses while they assemble their next auteur-level annoyance.

Burying visual information in a shroud of unnecessary darkness is not only perverse but diseased. Willfully submitting to this kind of monochrome mud makes no sense, and yet there it is…the only possible rationale for a film-noir lover to buy the new Shout! Factory Bluray of Anatole Litvak’s Sorry, Wrong Number (‘48).

Decades of resentment, irritation, alienation and suppressed rancor fell away today when I paid a visit to my dad’s gravesite. Hillside Cemetery, plot #1522. He’s not actually there but a veteran’s org planted the stone a few weeks after he passed.

I’ve been too critical of him over the years. He was no day at the beach but a decent human being as far as it went. A clever ad man, hard working, witty, thoughtful, well educated, responsible.

The axe-throwing wasn’t so bad. I didn’t want to do it due to fear of failure. But I managed a few decent throws, even a couple of bull’s-eyes.

There are two wood-handled axe sizes —I was happier with the smaller, less weighty one. I tended to lightly lob rather than throw hard.

The baked-in-Bloomfield atmosphere is emphatically lower-middle-class — the Montclair swells keep their distance and then some. But I shrugged it off. We’re all bumblefucks underneath our pretensions.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Lovia Guarkye (spell that last name!) approved in a slightly mixed way, but Variety’s Peter Debruge was 100% sold and the closing-night SXSW crowd was reportedly oogah–boogah and ape-crazy.

HE won’t be seeing Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Alex Convery’s Air until Wednesday evening so all good things in their immaculate time and proper proportion, but thank God something has come along to flush out that horrible EEAAO after-taste. It’s almost like the Beatles arriving in the wake of the JFK assassination.

Two days ago (3.16) I took a shot at listing 2023’s likeliest Best Picture contenders. Nine in all. No hopefuls or maybe-level contenders — strictly serious only, “safe bets,” no pikers, etc.

The following day Variety’s Clayton Davis ran his own ‘23 rundown, generously allowing (as he usually does) for any and all possibilities from the Clayton realm. and that’s fine. Then again including The Marvels, Spider–Man: Across The Spider–Verse and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 speaks for itself.

…it’s no good. I’m sorry but in my book coarse, common, not-quite-there horror has never cut it. It has to be Watcher– or Midsommar or Babadook or Repulsion or Exorcist or Rosemary’s Baby or Lighthouse-level or not at all.

Ixnay to Pearl, Get Out (racially-stamped, hand-me-down Ira Levin), The Black Phone, Knock at the Cabin, Nope, M3GAN, Bones and All, etc. The Menu was and is an approvable half–and–halfer, but no jumping up and down.

I’m sorry but HE knows pedigree like the back of its hand. Martin Balsam’s Arbogast: “If it doesn’t jell it isn’t aspic…”

The five above-the-line Oscars won by Milos Forman and Ken Kelsey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (‘75) need to be rescinded because watching this movie causes pain to wokesters.

One of the unprosecuted charges against Jack Nicholson’s Randall P. McMurphy was statutory rape involving a 14-year-old girl (i.e., she declined to testify). And the film portrays him as a heroic rebel figure? Unacceptable. Plus all the mental- clinic guards are Black — negative stereotyping. And what about those racist Indian jokes directed at Will Sampson’s “Chief” Bromden? Plus all the patients are white.

Attempting to hide the $130K Stormy Daniels payoff was a violation of NY campaign finance laws, and is definitely something that Orange Plague will have to answer for. HE supports any legalistic claim or prosecution that might hurt or deter Trump.

But the Stormy thing doesn’t strike me as all that dastardly or horrific. Ditto holding on to classified documents in Mar a Lago.

Inciting the Jan. 6th Capitol riot, illegally trying to overturn Georgia vote tallies…those, to me, are serious crimes. Ditto raping and slandering E. Jean Carroll.