Jeffrey Wells

Julius Avery‘s The Pope’s Exorcist is obviously garbage, but HE admires the final paragraph in Guy Lodge‘s Variety review.

I tend to avoid or at least suffer through prison movies as a rule. To varying degrees they’re all about yearning for freedom, of course, but they always feel more confining than liberating (i.e., why does the caged bird sing?) and because life itself, for me, has always been about the defiance of suppression, confinement and regimentation so I already knew that tune backward and forward.

I don’t need and in fact have been forbidding the idea of a movie reminding me about these basic terms, and I’ve felt this way since my early teens, which is when I started to understand the degree of dull underlying horror that permeated normal middle–class life. This is how it seemed, at least, in suburban New Jersey (Westfield) and exurban Connecticut (Wilton).

As much as I admire Morgan Freeman’s performance in The Shawshank Redemption, I’ve never been able to derive any real pleasure or payoff from that film. Ditto Papillon, Birdman of Alcatraz, Bronson, Hunger, The Green Mile, Starred Up, Each Dawn I Die, 20,000 Years at Sing Sing, et. al.

Don’t even mention Oz or Orange Is The New Black.

The only prison flicks I’ve enjoyed, unsurprisingly, are about breakouts. Don Siegel’s Escape From Alcatraz (‘79) is the champ. Stuart Rosenberg’s Cool Hand Luke (‘67) is more about the spirit of freedom than escape, but it still qualifies. Ben Stiller’s Escape at Dannemora** (‘18) is an excellent bust-out film. I love the comical breakout sequence in Peter Yates’ The Hot Rock (‘71).

There’s one exception to my rule — a prison flick that isn’t about escape and just says “fuck it — life on the block is what it is” while staking claim to being a serious meditation on morality and jailhouse ethics: Robert M. Young and Miguel Pinero’s Short Eyes (77).

A couple of months ago I visited a friend who lives near the village of Ossining, which is about 40 miles north of Manhattan and is the home of Sing Sing prison. Peter Falk grew up there, and during an interview he recalled that all the lights in the town would flicker and grow dim whenever a guy was getting fried in the chair.

** Escape at Dannemore is actually a limited series so that makes it a whole different bowl of rice!

…that was making my chest ache and keeping me from slumber all last night…whatever it was, it gave up the ghost a couple of hours ago and now I’m feeling okay again.

I’m sorry but it’s time to come clean about those micro-sized Johnsons that Michelangelo painted and sculpted time and again.

I’ve always been uncomfortable with thimble-sized packages. A self-respecting man should always display a little “heft”, as Terry Southern used to put it. It’s just not cool to have a push-pin shlongola, and I’m wondering how and why a gay man like Michelangelo would be down with this.

To this day I can vividly recall the slight feelings of discomfort when I caught my first glimpse of a semi-hefty male organ. It happened in the showers of the Westfield YMCA, and I remember muttering to myself “Jesus, this guy’s bigger than the golden nude male statue (“Prometheus”) at Rockefeller Center.”

Roger Friedman has seen Woody Allen’s Coup de Chance, and is so impressed with the 90-minute, French-speaking noir that he’s suggesting it could end up winning the Best Int’l Feature Oscar next year.

It’s great to hear this level of enthusiasm, and it makes me all the more hopeful that Coup de Chance will play Cannes next month.

It goes without saying, of course, that Allen haters would never allow it to even be nominated, much less win. They would shriek and howl at even the possibility.

And what’s with the 90-minute length, by the way? Doesn’t Allen understand that the average running time these days is well over two hours?

..,last night, and you know that I shouldn’t.

I’ll almost certainly never speak to the great Richard Lester, 91, but if somehow this were to happen, I would begin by praising Juggernaut (’73) and The Three Musketeers (’74). I would also sing the praises of Petulia (’68) — a landmark film. And then…

Humphrey Bogart to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: “There are certain sections of New York, Congressperson, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.”

You’re a legend @MichaelRapaport. 😂

Marjorie Taylor Greene fled her New York protest faster than Josh Hawley ran out of the Capitol January 6th. 🤷🏻‍♂️#MarjorieTraitorGreene #MarjorieTaylorGreen #TrumpArraignment #TrumpForPrison2024 pic.twitter.com/MArpJnY61M

— Ryan Shead (@RyanShead) April 4, 2023

Does Greta Gerwig’s Barbie represent a rebirth or regeneration of Alan Carr’s Can’t Stop The Music (‘79)? Because the male characters in these new Barbie posters are obviously modeled on the Village People of the late ’70s. Actually, scratch that — the Village People guys were mocking traditional machismo, but they were certainly more manly than these Barbie kewpie dolls. No, Klaus Barbie doesn’t fit in, and that’s not even funny. The ‘63 version of Steve McQueen rides his motorcycle into Barbieland in search of the infamous Nazi war criminal, but gets distracted by the impossibly sexy Alexandra Shipp…naah, doesn’t work. I’m totally confused.

Q: Where are the men in this movie? A: What can I do, what can I be…when I’m with you, I wanna stay there.

From “What Is Barbie Going For, Exactly?” by Vulture‘s Jason P. Frank:

“The main issue is that we don’t actually know what the plot of the movie is.

“In the early stages of the film, it was supposed to be ‘a fish-out-of-water story a la Splash and Big, whereby Barbie gets kicked out of Barbieland because she’s not perfect enough, a bit eccentric and doesn’t fit in,’ Deadline reported back in 2018. ‘She then goes on an adventure in the real world and by the time she returns to Barbieland to save it, she has gained the realization that perfection comes on the inside, not the outside, and that the key to happiness is belief in oneself, free of the obligation to adhere to some unattainable standard of perfection.’

“That plot is not out of the question, but the film seems a bit more meta than that description allows for — the teaser implies a specific knowledge of Barbie’s real-world impact, for example. Also, Will Ferrell has been confirmed to be playing the CEO of Mattel, which means that Barbie could gain sentience (??) at some point.

“We do have one other fun clue — Margot Robbie’s Letterboxd account, which was unearthed and then promptly deleted. The category of ‘Watch for Barbie’ included such titles as The Truman Show, Splash, Puberty Blues, The Young Girls of Rochefort and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The Truman Show has an obvious connection to the ‘CEO of Mattel’ situation, but perhaps most interesting is the inclusion of Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, both of which are musicals. Umbrellas is a searingly emotional, entirely sung-through romantic drama, while Young Girls is a musical comedy.

“Given the amount of dancing that is flashed through in the teaser trailer — including with Simu Liu and Margot Robbie in a disco dress — Barbie might be…a musical. Not to mention Dua Lipa, confirmed singer, is part of the cast.

“What is Barbie? So far, it’s a collection of references — meta, esoteric, and pop culture alike — all wrapped up in a pretty pink bow.”

HE: London in November can sometimes be on the mild side, but it’s certainly not T-shirt weather…try again! At the very least it’s jacket weather. Oh, and November leaves have turned orange, yellow and brown and are generally on the ground…try again.

…from a film of this sort are stabs at semi–fresh invention — departures from the usual formula, a surprise or two, unexpected gravitas and a film that basically says “this is a franchise thing, okay, but it’s also 2023 and here we all are, and there’s something about this immediacy that really and truly matters to many of us, and here’s a taste of that.”

Spare us, in short, from the past and the drumbeat of constant Spielberg-Lucas tributes.

HE to Correcting Jeff [posted this morning in “Don’t Lecture Me” comment thread]:

I’ve read and read every day of my life, although to be honest I’m better at reading chapters or portions or halves than entire books. Life often distracts, intervenes. Each and every day I drop a ball, it seems, and fail to catch it on the bounce.

HE’s library list includes John Updike, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, Cormac McCarthy, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, William Styron, Pauline Kael, Daphne du Maurier, Michael Chabon, Chuck Palahniuk, Robert M. Pursig, Michael Herr, Gore Vidal, the collected essays of Otis Ferguson, damn near all of J.D.Salinger, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Conrad, et. al., and some of John Steinbeck.
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I’ve read D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer,” Herman Hesse, Aldous Huxley, Woody Allen’s short stories, Robert Benchley’s stuff, rock legend bios, endless Hollywood histories (David Thomson’s “The Whole Equation”). And occasional throwaway stuff (“The Nine Nations of North America,” Abbie Hoffman’s “Revolution For The Hell Of It”).

I’ve never read “A Tale of Two Cities” but I’ve read “Tom Sawyer” and the Bhagavad Gita (repeatedly) and one or two books by Alan Watts and “The Red Badge of Courage” and “The Final Days” and almost all of Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson.

Why am I taking the time to make the case for my own literacy to a coarse, badgering asshat on a comment thread?

Honest, no–bullshit question: Have you ever read Nick Tosches’ “Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams”? I’ve read that book cover to cover TWICE.

“It’s funny to hear these [mewing little kittens] treating the John Wick flicks like they’re major narrative-driven movies capable of being ‘spoiled.’ I like the new Wick, but neither Wells nor the spoiler whiners seem to understand that a plot doesn’t matter to these movies at all, and [that] notions of death matter even less.” — HE commenter “Chuck.”

“Isn’t the ending of John Wick 4 all over the internet? I haven’t seen the film, haven’t read a single review, have no interest in the Wick films. But I know that Wick dies or probably ‘dies’ at the end of this one. Seems to be an open secret on the web, so calling spoiler in this case sounds a bit like complaining about people talking about Jesus being crucified at the end of a new Jesus movie.” — HE commenter “Renaissance.”

“I wouid have never mentioned the Darth Vader-Luke Skywalker blood relationship two weekends after opening day. That film is sacred and holy, and it would’ve been criminal to spoil it.

“The difference is clear. JW4 is flotsam — a rank and cynical pornoviolent ‘musical’ that pollutes the environment and lowers the spiritual property values in each and every realm with its gross and cynical disregard for life. I spit on this movie.

“I respected the rights of unpolluted viewers for TWO FULL WEEKENDS. What was I supposed to do, wait six months or something? Besides, like I said, it was really Stahelski’s fault.” — Jeffrey Wells, posted this morning [4.3] in response to spoiler whiner kvetching.