Jonah Hill‘s rascally, conniving performance as 20something arms dealer Efrain Diveroli (a real-life guy who is not and never was a fat-ass) is the big reason to see War Dogs this weekend. Jonah, Jonah, Jonah…back in Superbad territory but with less schtick and colder blood. The highs, lows and demonic detours of a sociopathic, three-card-monte hustler! I just wish the film was more about crazy-fuck Jonah and less about Miles “don’t be a pervert” Teller, who’s playing the straight man, another real-life arms dealer named David Packouz.

Not that the film dies or slows down when it’s focusing on Teller — he’s fine, holds up his end. But Jonah is in charge of the surge moments. Half the time you’re thinking “okay, this is good, moving along but where’s Jonah” or, you know, “what’s Jonah’s next big bullshit play gonna be”?

We’ve all read that Todd Phillips‘ film is a tale about actual 20something arms dealers who got rich back in the mid aughts but were then busted for fraud. Diveroli and Packouz ran afoul of the law six or seven years ago for selling crap-level arms to the Afghan army. It’s based on Guy Lawson‘s “Arms and the Dudes: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History“.

Jonah’s Efraim is the kind of guy who’s always performing, selling and scheming. The kind who never deals straight cards but who can usually con-talk almost anyone into saying “yes” or at least “okay, maybe.” Or weasel his way out of a jam. I hate guys like this in real life, but I love watching them operate from a theatre seat.

Since the mid ’80s or thereabouts director Arthur Hiller, who has died at the age of 92, had been derided or dismissed as a mild-mannered, milquetoasty, go-along technician who never pushed for the exceptional because he never had it in him. Well, from 1964 to ’79 that was simply not true. His two finest efforts — the brilliant, bitterly comedic The Americanization of Emily (’64) and The Hospital (’71) — were creme de la creme collaborations with the great Paddy Chayefsky. I don’t care what anybody says about Hiller today, next week or 50 years on — his critics can never take those films away from him.

Yes, the voice was all Chayefsky, but Hiller made those films snap, crackle and dance. He shot and cut them with smooth economy and efficiency and coaxed superb performances out of each and every actor high and low (George C. Scott, Diana Rigg, James Garner, Julie Andrews, James Coburn, et. al.). Hiller and Chayefsky were as one.

And there was also Hiller’s Love Story (deplored by the cognoscenti but a major, culture-quake hit of its time), The Man in the Glass Booth (’75), Silver Streak (’76 — a lightly agreeable comedy-thriller aboard an LA-to-Chicago train which introduced the pairing of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor) and The In-Laws (’79 — just released last month as a Criterion Bluray).

I’ve been dumping on Timur Bekmambetov‘s Ben-Hur (Paramount, 8.19) sight unseen for just about two years now. (The first hit piece, “Ben-Hur Knee Deep in Christian Swamp“, was posted on 9.22.14.) So I guess it wasn’t hugely surprising that Paramount publicists not only didn’t invite me to Monday night’s all-media but ignored my requests earlier that day to allow me to attend. I used the word “please” four or five times. No dice, said their ominous non-replies.

I don’t care, doesn’t matter, I’ll suffer through it this weekend. Critics with a semblance of integrity are panning it, of course — Rotten Tomatoes is currently at 33%, Metacritic at 41%. The $100 million epic opens the day after tomorrow, and all signs point to a financial wipe-out.

The “bad” Ben-Hur is “battling devastating pre-release tracking that [it] may be one of the year’s most painful flops,” Variety‘s Brent Lang reported this morning. “Paramount, which co-financed the film with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, is hoping that the picture can hit $20 million when it debuts across 3,100 locations this weekend, [but] outside tracking agencies are less bullish, pegging a debut in the $10 million to $15 million range, a disastrous result considering the film’s steep budget.”

Yesterday I caught a 6 pm screening of War Dogs, which necessitated a work wind-down around 4:30 pm. The previous eight hours were mainly a Nate Parker whirlpool. A total shitstorm. I couldn’t stop writing, talking and thinking about it. I just kept feeling sad and then sadder. Which is partly why I missed yesterday’s Daily Beast exploration of the whole Penn State mess (“Inside the Nate Parker Rape Case”), reported by Kate Briquelet and M.L. Nestel. Sources, transcripts, recollections, Sex on the Beach, etc.

The August 1999 inebriated rape episode (and particularly the harassment that followed at the hands of Parker and Jean Celestin) was clearly a turning point for the victim, who is given a fictitious name, “Jennifer,” in the article. She was used, plain and simple. But there are indications that the poor woman had issues above and beyond her agonizing Penn State trauma. Most people move on, heal up, acquire a certain crust. She didn’t. She had a kid in ’02, but couldn’t handle the raising. She had a rough childhood, a rough life. She apparently died in a rehab facility. 199 sleeping pills. Seriously tragic.

Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh has just reported a double bombshell — one, that the woman who 17 years ago accused Birth of a Nation director Nate Parker and co-story author Jean Celestin of rape at Penn State University committed suicide in 2012, at age 30, and two, that while there’s no evidence that the woman’s death was directly related to the rape and subsequent trial, her older brother, identified by Setoodeh only as “Johnny,” has told Setoodeh that her downward spiral in life began with these incidents.

Sadly, tragically, the victim’s death certificate, obtained by Variety, says she had suffered from “major depressive disorder with psychotic features, PTSD due to physical and sexaul abuse [and] polysubstance abuse.”

Johnny has told Setoodeh that be believes that the 1999 rape and subsequent rape trial nudged his sister into a downward spiral. “If I were to look back at [the victim’s] very short life and point to one moment where I think she changed as a person, it was obviously that point,” Johnny is quoted as saying. She killed herself with sleeping pills, the article says.

Obviously in basic humanist terms a tragedy of this sort outweighs nominally peripheral, less substantial concerns such as Hollywood community opinions and award-season interests, but if you process this report along with the Oscar prospects of Birth of a Nation — as everyone is definitely doing right now, trust me — this is really bad for Parker, the film and Fox Searchlight, certainly in terms of shorthand understandings of what this tragedy may be connected to.

[Parker’s Facebook statement, posted early Tuesday evening, is after the jump.]

The movie is the movie, Nat Turner‘s life is Nat Turner’s life, and Parker’s personal, legal and ethical issues stemming from a 17 year-old college experience do not, in my view, reflect upon each other or overlap. Except in a moral authority sense, particularly given that Parker’s script uses the rape of Turner’s wife as an instigating factor in the 1831 Turner-led slave revolt. All I can say is that news of the real-life victim having taken her own life four years ago sounds like a loud and resonant tolling of the bell.

What kind of superior alien intelligence lands several super-sized vessels worldwide with benign intentions? A single vessel suggests a non-aggressive attitude — a small armada obviously indicates otherwise. Not to mention a starfish life form glomming onto a murky glass wall…creepy, primordial. Amy Adams is the sensitive communicator, Jeremy Renner is her ally, Forest Whitaker is concerned from a military-strategic standpoint and Michael Stuhlbarg, as always, is conveying the grim, downish, paranoid side of things.

At the very end of this new Arrival trailer, which significantly expands upon the teaser while adding a certain degree of “da fuck?” confusion, Whitaker reacts to a presumably threatening development by saying “run a shish-fail warsh.” I’ve listened to him ten times with earphones, and while I’m sure he’s saying something sensible and specific to the plot, it nonetheless comes out as “run a shish-fail warsh.” It does. Listen to him.

YouTube is swarming with Tim Kaine-playing-harmonica videos, one dating back nine years, but for some reason a clip that popped yesterday is getting extra attention. Not that I care all that much, but this observation from Esquire‘s Sarah Rense got me: “Bald patch gleaming, eyebrows arching, tufts of hair tufting, Kaine performed the crap out of Old Crow Medicine Show’s ‘Wagon Wheel’ in an Asheville brewery. It is mesmerizing to watch. And I thought Joe Biden had a lock on sexiest VP.” I’m waiting for Kaine to play the blues-harp intro to the Rolling Stones‘ “Sweet Virginia.”

Universal Home Video and Martin Scorsese‘s The Film Foundation oversaw the restoration of Marlon Brando‘s One-Eyed Jacks, but Criterion, not Universal, will release the Bluray. The 4K digital restoration will pop on 11.22.

Extras include (a) an introduction by Scorsese, (b) excerpts from voice-recordings Brando made during the film’s production; (c) “new video essays on the film’s production history and its potent combination of the stage and screen icon Brando with the classic Hollywood western”; (d) a trailer, and (e) an essay by film critic Howard Hampton.

Posted from Cannes on 5.16.16: “The first-anywhere unveiling of the restored version of Marlon Brando‘s One-Eyed Jacks happened late last night, and it looked truly wonderful in every respect.

“Yes, that includes the aspect ratio. I’ve been arguing that the restorers, Universal Home Video and The Film Foundation, should have gone with a somewhat more liberal 1.75 or 1.78 a.r. instead of an announced cropping of 1.85. My tried-and-true “why needlessly slice off that luscious head room?” argument was posted time and again.

For whatever reason, The Hollywood Reporter has apparently decided to totally ignore the Nate Parker Penn State thing. News cycles on any given story last 48 to 72 hours, at most, but when was the last time that both Variety and Deadline ran with the same incendiary award-season saga, complete with first-hand quotes and major inside-baseball racial reverberations, that the Reporter completely looked the other way on? I’ve said a couple of times that the 1999 Penn State incident is an old sideline story that has no bearing on Parker’s and Fox Searchlight’s The Birth of the Nation, which will launch its fall campaign on Friday, 9.9, at the Toronto Film Festival. It appears as if Reporter management feels the same way, but it’s nonetheless extremely odd that THR‘s award-season columnist Scott Feinberg hasn’t written a single word about it. Today Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh and Brent Lang ran a follow-up marketing story, asking if Fox Searchlight would be amending its Birth of a Nation campaign strategy in lieu of the Parker hoo-hah. But it seems to be levelling off and perhaps going away right now, due to the combination of the Reporter‘s hands-off attitude plus there being nowhere for the story to advance or develop.

Yes, the reason that Suicide Squad suffered a steep 67% drop on its second weekend is that the second half stinks. Nonetheless a lot of people went to see it, suckage and all. Because some degree of suckitude is presumed from the get-go, especially from the hapless Warner Bros. Right now the worldwide tally is around $465 million with a domestic tally of $222,874,728 + $242.5 million foreign.” If it ends up with $500 or $525 million worldwide, will it be in profit? That 8.3 Kim Masters story in The Hollywood Reporter claimed that Suicide Squad, which cost $175 million to make and a pretty penny to market, has “got to do $750 million, $800 million to break even.” On 8.10 Pajiba.com’s Brian Byrd asked Edward Jay Epstein, author of “The Big Picture” (’00) and “The Hollywood Economist” (’10). “If the film grosses $500 million [domestic], the distributor gets $275 million minus advertising and other distribution,” Epstein replied. “[Those costs are] about $75 million. So it has at least $200 million foreign plus a back end (which will be huge). Ergo, it will be profitable.”

When Randy Newman wrote “I’m Dead But I Don’t Know It”, he wasn’t saying his career was done for. He was saying he’d grown tired of himself and all of his creations, and that he needed to somehow break new ground. I’m not trying to be cruel here but this dynamic obviously applies to movie creatives. Anyone who’s good enough to have made it in a tough industry can always rebound or find a new angle. But now and then we all run out of gas. Which currently working film directors are going through a fallow period? “I have nothing left to say / But I’m gonna say it anyway / Thirty years upon a stage / And I hear the people say / Why won’t he go away?” I could post a long list but I’m not going to. Let’s just say that right now Zack Snyder sits on top.

Honestly? I think I may have watched “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore” maybe two or three times. But I’ve been watching the-next-day YouTube excerpts of everything he’s done or said constantly. He’s a sharp, funny guy — a member in good standing of the late-night family. The way I see it, one good Larry Wilmore joke or moment is worth 10 or 20 of James Corden’s carpool karaoke routines. (Which I hate watching.) So I’m sorry, genuinely sorry, that Wilmore has been whacked. His last show will be Thursday night. I would like to replace him with the “HE Samurai Poet Warrior Hates & Peeves Show” — hating on something or someone in the movie/cable realm every night along with worship of things new and old that are timeless, wonderful and transcendent.