I don’t care how you try to slice it — a 70 % second-weekend drop is not cause for celebration. It basically means that while a fair-sized percentage of the first-weekend audience was more or less okay with it, a similar-sized percentage was not especially enthralled. That’s what it means.

I don’t know for a fact that Woke Hollywood is unhappy about director Paul Haggis having been more or less cleared in that Italian sexual assault thing, but it’s fair to presume there’s at least a vague feeling of disappointment out there.

Who knows what really happened between Haggis and that 28 year-old British woman who pressed charges? But if I was a #MeToo cadre, I would probably be annoyed by this development, not to mention irked at the woman in question. (Why go to the authorities if you don’t have a steel-trap case?) We all understand that a presumed bad guy getting off scot-free does not help “the narrative.” Especially in the wake of Amber Heard‘s loss.

Woke Hollywood wants convictions, tarnishings.

I’m presuming that the majority of your #MeToo progressives are regarding Haggis’s good fortune as an unwelcome technicality. Because to them what matters is the accusation. The basic rule of thumb is that once you’ve been accused of sexual misbehavior you’re as good as guilty and more or less untouchable in terms of career prospects. Unless, like Louis C.K., you can generate your own opportunities.

Just ask Aziz Ansari, who’s been clobbered twice over complaints from women that involved an idea of bad or inappropriate behavior — “Grace” of Brooklyn accusing Ansari of sexual insensitivity in 2018, and then Keke Palmer‘s alleged complaint about Bill Murray‘s failed attempt at humor on the set of Being Mortal, which Ansari was directing and starring in, terminating the film and with it Ansari’s career re-start.

Basic #MeToo Industry Lesson (repeated for the 179th time): “Older guys who try to have sex with Millennial or Zoomer women are basically ASKING TO BE KILLED. They’re deer and the younger women are hunters. It’s suicide.”

Variety‘s Nick Vivarelli: “A judge in the southern Italian city of Lecce has ruled that there are no grounds to further pursue an investigation into allegations that Oscar-winning Canadian director Paul Haggis had sex with a young woman without her consent.

“The court ruled in favor of Haggis late on Friday, Italian news Agency ANSA reported on Saturday.

“After viewing the evidence and hearing arguments from both sides, the District Court of Lecce, an appellate court with three judges, unanimously rejected a prosecutor’s appeal to have Haggis’ house arrest reinstated,” said Haggis’ Italian lawyer Michele Laforgia in a statement issued on Saturday.

“Haggis was arrested on June 19 in Ostuni, a location in the southern region of Puglia on the heel of the Italian boot, on charges of sexual assault allegedly inflicted to a 28-year British woman over the course of two days in June.

In November 1985, a dead black bear was discovered in Chattahoochee National Forest. Nearby was a torn-open duffel bag that had apparently contained 75 pounds of Bolivian marching powder, and which had apparently fallen out of a smuggler’s plane. (Flown by Tom Cruise’s Barry Seal?) The clueless bear had eaten a good portion of the coke and overdosed.

The guy who found the bear’s ruined body didn’t alert authorities (one guess why) and it wasn’t until 12.20.85 when authorities discovered the carcass. A medical examiner at the Georgia State Crime Lab said that that the bear’s stomach was “literally packed to the brim with cocaine.”

Elizabeth Banks has directed a “character-driven thriller” about the poor bear’s misfortune as well as, one presumes, certain humans who quickly developed an interest in the free cocaine. It’s called Cocaine Bear (Universal, 2.24.23). The film costars Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and the late Ray Liotta.

The title alone suggests that Banks and her producers see the story as an opportunity for bear thrills, or at least partly that.

The body of this poor, poisoned animal eventually found its way to a taxidermist, and is now on display inside the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall (720 Bryan Ave., Lexington, Kentucky). There’s a sign around the bear’s neck that refers to him as “Pablo Escobear.”

In short Kentucky bumblefucks regard the idea of a furry beast dying of a cocaine overdose as a hoot.

HE to Banks and Universal marketing: HE believes that the death of an innocent animal who died of cocaine ingestion is not in itself an opportunity to do “funny” or “thrilling”. It sounds to me like a metaphorical tale about our casual greed and cruelty and indifference to the natural order of things — about the fact that forest animals have a certain nobility while we have none.

If Robert Bresson was still around and Universal had hired him instead of Banks, the film would be called Au hasard, Cocaine Bear — the sad story of a saintly bear who died because he was unlucky enough to cross paths with a duffel bag full of blow.

What kind of evil mind would listen to this story and go, “Whoa, great idea for a fun, goofy movie…a bear with a cocaine problem! Whoo-hoo!”

Respect and affection for the late Nichelle Nichols, 89, whose casting as Lt. Nyota Uhura in Star Trek: The Original Series (9.8.66 to 6.3.69) and beyond, was a huge deal, representation-wise, in the late ’60s. Her big kissing scene with William Shatner (“Plato’s Stepchildren“, 11.22.68) was quite the historical benchmark.

Early last March I reviewed Neil Labute‘s House of Darkness, which had its big debut at the 2022 Santa Barbara Film Festival.

“House of Darkness isn’t that bad,” I wrote. “Creepy, diverting, socially thoughtful — altogether a half-decent sit.”

I described it as “an elevated horror film that uses (borrows?) themes and situations from Promising Young Woman and Midsommar.”

I added that “when it opens, House of Darkness, which costars Kate Bosworth and Justin Long, will probably be attacked as a metaphorical woman-hating horror film. Or a man-hating #MeToo horror film. Or something like that.

“It’s definitely trafficking in social metaphor — #MeToo and #TimesUp and others in the women’s progressive movement looking to bring pain and terror to the male jerks of the world.

“I don’t think House of Darkness does anything phenomenal. All it does is apply the basic LaBute attitude software to Promising Young Midsommar.”

The trailer tries to sell House of Darkness as a reimagining of the classic Dracula tale….except it isn’t. (It’s much more interesting than what that suggests.) The ostensible distributor or at least the producer is Dark House Films, Inc.

Michael Caine‘s Jack Carter is an icy, ruthless bastard in Mike Hodges‘ Get Carter (’71). A real brute and a shit of a human being, and yet curiously emotional in a deeply buried sense. Which is to say a psychopath who cares about “family”, or at least about a certain offspring.

Carter is emotionally enraged, to put it mildly, over the death of his brother and the sexual molestation of his brother’s (or more likely Carter’s) daughter, Doreen (Petra Markham) and yet brusquely efficient when it comes to dispatching certain citizens of Newcastle. Five, to be exact, and none of them assassins or muscle types (like Carter) but basically go-alongers.

What stands out in Get Carter isn’t so much that Caine murders three shady fellows — Ian Hendry‘s “Eric Paice” (whose eyes are like “pissholes in the snow”, Carter observes), Glynn Edwards‘ “Albert Swift” and Bryan Mosley‘s “Cliff Brumby” — but also a pair of youngish, attractive women — Geraldine Moffat‘s “Glenda” and Dorothy White‘s “Margaret”.

These two aren’t killed in the heat of rage or passion exactly, but because of their laissez-faire complicity in nudging Doreen into performing in low-rent sex films. They are disposed of without any feeling, but certainly decisively and with absolute precision. (Okay, Glenda isn’t deliberately killed but she certainly wouldn’t have died if she hadn’t associated with Carter, and her ghastly manner of death — drowning in the trunk of a submerged car — rouses not the slightest emotion on his part.)

What other big-screen bastard has killed two prime-of-life women for what boils down to a moralistic motive — for going along with the corruption of a child? I can think of only one other murderer of this generally cold-blooded sort — Richard Widmark‘s “Tommy Udo” in Kiss of Death (’47), although his victim was an elderly, wheelchair-bound woman (Mildred Dunnock).

Seriously, what other bad guy has iced an attractive younger woman or two without blinking an eye? Caine’s Carter isn’t alone, but the others aren’t coming to me.

Inspired by Ethan Hawke‘s The Last Movie Stars, I finally watched Paul Newman, Stewart Stern and Joanne Woodward‘s Rachel Rachel (’68) last night. Yeah, for the first time.

Why the decades of reluctance? I guess I was afraid of hanging out with a mousey, fearful spinster in her mid ’30s who has little to look forward to and knows it. I was afraid of what I’d been told would be a kind of downer vibe — a death-watch film. Which, one presumes after reading the synopsis, is seemingly emphasized by the fact that Rachel’s deceased dad (played by a 37-year-old Donald Moffat) was a mortician.

I was wrong to presume this. Because the film is more sad than downish, because the screenplay is shrewd and well-honed, and because Woodward’s performance is undeniably moving. Many have called it her best ever, and I’m inclined to agree.

Woodward, also 37 during filming, was nominated for an Oscar**, and won Best Actress trophies from the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics, the Hollywood Foreign Press Assoc. and the British Academy Film Awards.

Estelle Parsons as an outwardly cheerful, inwardly grief-struck lesbian (also a little mousey) is deeply touching as well.

I was struck by the Woodward-like eyes of the eight-year-old actress who plays Rachel in flashbacks, and lo and behold the performer is Newman and Woodward’s daughter, Elinor Teresa Newman.

Newman, a first-time director, wasn’t Oscar-nominated but won trophies from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Hollywood Foreign Press. He and Woodward shot Rachel Rachel in Bethel, Danbury, Georgetown and Redding in August 1967 — two and a half months after the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and smack in the middle of the Summer of Love.

I could have theoretically worn a ballsack monokini (aka a “ballkini“) in my 20s and even my 30s. I was slender enough, I mean. But I wouldn’t have. The idea of a “package” being reduced to the size of a small racquetball or a large golf ball and wrapped in thin, jellybean-colored spandex material…well, it’s fucking humiliating.

I’m not saying that Harry Styles would wear a ballkini, but I can certainly imagine his willingness to consider this. Would Henry Fonda, Troy Donahue and John Garfield have mulled it over? Doubtful. Farley Granger, George Nader and Rock Hudson would have also had reservations. Kirk Douglas might have gone there on a Cote d’Azur beach in the early to mid ’50s. He was vain like that.

The November mid-term elections will be “interesting,” an industry friend wrote this morning.

“Interesting?” I replied. “As you well know the Democrats have all but slit their own throats with (a) the embrace of trans ideology & teaching soft-clay kids (kindergarten to third grade) about gender fluidity plus (b) supporting equity over merit in schools and instructing kids about the inevitable tendency of whites to oppress BIPOCs plus (c) condemning the legacy of Abraham Lincoln by having his name removed from schools plus (d) the fundamental unfairness of Lia Thomas…all of this insane woke shit will likely ensure their defeat in November.

Consider Glenn Youngkin‘s Virginia victory + those San Francisco school board removals and then multiply by hundreds.

“On the other hand there’s the rage over the killing of Roe v. Wade plus the Jan. 6th committee having increased awareness of Trump’s mafia brutishness. That should motivate a lot of fence-sitters and lazy-bone types to get off the couch and actually vote.”

“You are so right about the Dems,” he answered, “although I almost never hear Democratic leaders discussing those issues. I just hear the GOP losing their shit every time a trans athlete wins a race.

“Dems will lose the House almost for sure, but I’m confident we’ll maintain control of the Senate. Because of Trump’s obsession with celebrity and the advancement of laughably unqualified candidates like Herschel CTE Walker and Dr Oz. and JD Vance.”

Keke Palmer came along 13 years after Bill Murray‘s SNL “Weekend Update” interview with Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow.

Snopes says that the “Beaver was killed in Vietnam” rumor became a thing sometime during 1968. It must have lingered to some extent or Murray and the SNL writers wouldn’t have focused on it.

In Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, 87 year-old Judd Hirsch plays an elderly uncle on Michelle Williams’ side of the family. (Or something like that.). We’re already presuming Williams will be a Best Actress nominee, but two viewers believe that Hirsch is likely to become a Best Supporting Actor contender also.

Tipster: “I think Judd Hirsch will probably get a supporting actor nod. He’s only in three scenes (definitely less than 15 minutes total) but he steals the whole film.”

Unless I’m forgetting something, Hirsch’s last Oscar nomination was for his performance as Dr. Berger, Timothy Hutton’s therapist, in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People (‘80).