Stephen Frears‘ Florence Foster Jenkins (Paramount, 8.12) is about the willingness of people to tolerate a musical atrocity in the name of kindness and compassion, but mainly because the titular offender — a real-life millionaire socialite (Meryl Streep) who couldn’t sing a lick but nonetheless insisted on performing opera in front of elite audiences from 1912 until her death in late 1944 — was stinking rich.

Because Jenkins was flush her common-law husband, St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), protected her from the truth. Because his lifestyle depended on it and because his attitude was “well, she loves music so where’s the harm?” That’s all the movie is, boiled down — a harmless indulgence. Bayfield indulged Florence, and now you, the audience, get to indulge Florence Foster Jenkins. I’ve seen it twice, and I’m not down on it. It’s a curiosity, and yet nimble and nicely made. Not precisely my cup but not bad. No animus.

The most winning performance is given by Simon Helberg as Cosme McMoon, Jenkins’ patient and compassionate pianist. Rebecca Ferguson, Nina Arianda and John Kavanagh costar.

Streep’s performance is well honed and appealing, in part because she allows you to feel that Jenkins was merely a deluded music fan and not, as I suspect was the case in real life, one of the most arrogant non-singers in world history. Streep will probably be nominated for Best Actress, but Grant almost certainly won’t be Best Supporting Actor nominated, as a Janelle Riley story in Variety suggested earlier today. It’s just too slight of a role.

You could say that Frears’ film is about an extremely perverse definition of love and sensitivity. It basically says that if a woman you care for a great deal is (a) absolutely dreadful at singing opera, (b) unable or unwilling to recognize how bad she is, and (c) insists upon singing for audiences nonetheless, the truly loving husband or friend will not only avoid confiding the awful truth but will do everything in his/her power to allow the singer to live inside her fantasy bubble, mainly by shielding her from honest reactions.

All this week the cool kidz have been flutter-chatting about Barry Jenkins‘ Moonlight (A24, 10.21), which will probably play Telluride before Toronto and New York. A publicist last night after Hell or High Water screening: “Have you seen it?” Me to myself: “No…other journalists have?” (I’m told that a small New York critics screening happened on 7.22.) Is it okay to mention something that the cool kidz would never discuss? It’s not exactly breaking news that the African-American community has been reluctant to offer accepting attitudes toward gays. Especially among males. (The Birth of a Nation‘s Nate Parker being one alleged example.) So while it looks like Moonlight is going to do quite well among the award-season cognoscenti, it may not do as well among non-Anglo, non-industry ticket buyers. I was told last night, by the way, that the standout performance belongs to Naomie Harris.

Todd Philips‘ War Dogs is screening for elite reviewers in Manhattan this evening. Junket critics have already seen it. N.Y. Times profiler Molly Young has seen it. The consensus seems to be that Jonah Hill really delivers but the film is…well, okay. I wish I could attend the L.A. premiere next Monday evening (I’ve pleaded, I’ve cajoled, I’ve emailed), but I may be forced to wait until the L.A. all-media next Wednesday, 8.17. Which of course will be only 24 hours before it opens late Thursday evening. Hey, Todd or Jonah — if you guys are reading this…aah, forget it.  Not that big of a deal.

This is just a rehash piece about the apparent financial disappointment of Ghostbusters. I’m posting because I’m not much of a numbers-cruncher and maybe there’s something I’ve missed…who knows? Paul Feig‘s film opened on 7.15 or 25 days ago. Right now Boxoffice Mojo has the tallies as follows: $118,099,659 domestic, $62,800,000 foreign for a total of $180,899,659.  It’s nearly dead but let’s be generous and say it’ll end up with $200 million total.

On 7.29 a TGG article by Kenay Peterson titled “Paul Feig´s Ghostbusters 2016 flops really hard at the box office” was posted. Peterson quoted an assessment by a reader that seemed valid to him. It seems valid to me also but it would help if other estimates and opinions could be shared.

The basic assessment is that Ghostbusters needs to make between $375 and $400 million worldwide to break even. If it doesn’t get any higher than $200 million it will lose around $200 million, making it “one of the biggest flops since Johnny Depp‘s The Lone Ranger.” Does this sound about right?

Quoting from the article: Production costs are said to have been $144 million. Marketing/advertising/distribution was roughly $150 million, bringing the final cost to around $300 million. A film doesn’t get all the box office receipts. The take is usually between 1/2 and 2/3 of the domestic. If a film makes $200 million, the company actually takes in somewhere between $100 million and $135 million depending on the length of its run, etc.

Why haven’t I re-watched Martin Scorsese‘s The Color of Money in the nearly 30 years since it opened (10.17.86)? Okay, I’ll tell you why. Because it’s not very good, that’s why. Because it’s widely regarded as one of Scorsese’s weakest films. Yes, Paul Newman‘s performance as a graying, moustachioed Eddie Felson won him a Best Actor Oscar, but all I remember are the fake-outs. Ignoring advice about how to lose, intentionally losing, winning too fast or slow, making bets, losing money, trying too hard…God! It’s playing tonight and tomorrow night at the New Beverly, which of course I don’t attend because I don’t like watching movies with aging film bums dressed in Converse sneakers and faintly soiled T-shirts. I like to watch movies with engaged, well-dressed people who wear Italian leather shoes and…you know, people up to something snazzy. So I decided to rent it on Amazon. The very beginning of The Color of Money is the only great moment — nothing that follows measures up.

Hillary Clinton has always brought the mucky-muck. Daisy Buchanan, Ma Clinton, etc. She’ll never play it completely clean, there will always be little shit trails, her enemies will never stop and the investigations will go on, etc. It’s her good fortune that Donald Trump is who he is, and that yesterday he blithely speculated about Second Amendment guys shooting her. Otherwise this would be a big story right now.

I was rather surprised by how much I enjoyed the last half…okay, the last 40 minutes of Sausage Party, which I caught last night at the big Westwood premiere. (It runs 88 minutes.) You’re presumably aware that the title refers to a festive, combative gathering among supermarket foodstuffs that leads to revolution against the humans and finally an X-rated food orgy…hot dogs, buns, pears and tacos harpooning and going down on each other like the friends of Sasha Grey or…whatever, sunglass-wearing actors in a 1950s black-and-white stag film.

Yeah, I know — idiotic and dopey but “out there,” nervy, stoned, spirited, fourth-wall-breaking, committed.

It’s the first non-indie, corporate-funded animated laugher I’ve been more or less okay with since…God, I’ve been off the animation boat for so long I can’t remember. I can’t honestly say that I laughed very much at Sausage Party. But I was more and more impressed by the audacity of it. It’s an original, and you don’t come out of animated films saying that very much these days.

I expected to half-hate it because of the ludicrous premise (packaged, corporate-processed foodstuffs with voices, personalities, emotions, lives, souls, dreams) and the bone dumb set-up about the “Great Beyond”, which is a myth among foodstuffs that something awesome and adventurous happens when food is bought and taken home by humans. The grim reality eventually settles in among the foodies, and then it becomes “are we going to take charge of our own lives and push back against the giants who want only to crush us with their disgusting teeth and jaw muscles and swallow us and turn us to stomach mush and God-knows-what-else, or are we going to fight back?”

It’s completely ridiculous but I went with it. I submitted. And then comes an orgy that might raise the staff of the 87-year-old Radley Metzger, who, yes, is still with us.

“People are playing with fire here, and there is no bigger flamethrower than Donald Trump. Forget politics; he is a disgusting human being. His children should be ashamed of him. I only pray that he is not simply defeated, but that he loses all 50 states so that the message goes out across the land — unambiguously, loud and clear: The likes of you should never come this way again.” — posted late yesterday by N.Y. Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

A first-rate trailer for Denis Villeneuve‘s Arrival (Paramount, 11.11) — clean, concise, intriguing. First looksee three and a half weeks from now — Friday, 9.2 at Venice Film Festival. Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker. Thank God they decided against calling it “The Story of Your Life” — the title of Ted Chiang‘s original short story.

I’m sure Donald Trump will claim later today or tomorrow that he was joshing around when he suggested that some gun nut could put a bullet into Hillary Clinton if and when she becomes President, but he did say that. He was speaking in that free-associative swaggering style of his, but come on. The man is venal. A N.Y. Times commenter named Dennis posted the following around 2:15 pm Pacific: “I’ve noticed that this is a recurring rhetorical technique employed by Trump: say something that at first blush seems incendiary on its face, followed immediately by pulling his punch with a disingenuous ‘I don’t know’ — upon which the dog-whistle crowd goes nuts. Then, after the media picks it up, the campaign offers up an ‘alternative’ explanation for the remarks that is the picture of innocence, but has little to nothing to do with what he implied or his audience actually heard.”

Shooting on Luca Guadagnino‘s remake of Dario Argento‘s Suspiria begins next month in Berlin. Guadagnino says his version will be set in 1977, the year Argento’s cult-classic original was released, and will be about “about the mother, the concept of motherhood and the uncompromising force of motherhood”…whatever that means.

Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn, currently covering the Locarno Film Festival, sat down with Argento and asked for his reaction to Guadagnino’s film. Argento disapproves. The original, he explained, “has a specific mood. Either you do [the remake] exactly the same way — in which case, it’s not a remake, it’s a copy, which is pointless — or, you change things and make another movie. In that case, why call it Suspiria?”

Guadagnino (A Bigger Splash) is doing what he wants because he can, and because the Suspiria rights are secure. He’s at the peak of his powers right now, and there are no rules — he can do anything. And he’s sticking with Argento’s original title, I presume, because it has a certain brand value, and because it sounds cool.

But let’s be honest. Outside of a relatively small community of critics and cultists nobody (Gudagnino included, I’m guessing) cares very much what Argento thinks or wants. I certainly don’t. I respect the fact that he created a distinctive, critically respected Euro-exploitation brand starting in the late ’60s, and that he kept it going into the early aughts. Argento’s style is very much his own. He’s painted his films with a classier and more inventive brush-style than other sex-horror exploitation filmmakers (i.e., his imitators), but Guadagnino strikes me as hipper and more clear-light, and he’s obviously no genre hound.

“A corporate risk-management consultant (Kate Mara) has to decide whether or not to terminate an artificial being’s life that was made in a laboratory environment,” blah blah. What’s Paul Giamatti so hostile about? He’s yelling at the poor “artificial” (Anna Taylor-Joy) ten seconds after they sit down. Trying to antagonize her, I gather, but the trailer doesn’t give you enough information. The thing feels rushed, hasty. Morgan, directed by Luke (son of Ridley) Scott, is based on a 2014 Black List script by Seth W. Owen. I don’t like it. I just don’t like it. It doesn’t feel careful or well considered. Certainly not as represented by this trailer. Costars include Jennifer Jason Leigh, Chris Sullivan, Michelle Yeoh and Toby Jones.