On 1.9.16 I wrote that the material in Elvis and Nixon (Bleecker/Amazon, 4.22) seems better suited to a 20-minute short than a feature. Now that I’ve seen it I can repeat that conclusively. There’s not enough here. It’s just a skit, really, about a mumbling, gun-toting, cape-wearing Memphis yokel (Michael Shannon‘s Elvis Presley) who flies to Washington in late 1970 to ask for some face time with President Richard Nixon (Kevin Spacey) and is granted a few Oval Office minutes on the strength of his celebrity. And so Elvis and Dick shoot the shit about how the hippies and the New Left and the Beatles and the counter-culture are dragging the country down. And that’s it — a piece of taffy that’s been stretched and tugged so it’ll run 86 minutes.

The screenplay (written by Joey Sagal, Hanala Sagal and Cary Elwes) is all low-key jokes and jive, and the movie delivers the least convincing White House sets and Los Angeles backdrops in the history of motion pictures. Not for one second do you believe that the film is happening anywhere other than in shitty-ass-substitute Louisiana.

Shannon doesn’t play Presley — he plays himself playing Presley for a paycheck. Yes, he also plays it solemn but he always does that, right? And Spacey…okay, his Nixon is faintly amusing in a Saturday Night Live way but the movie is a wash. Everyone in the cast is trying for low-key laughs (Colin Hanks as Egil “Bud” Krogh, Evan Peters as Dwight Chapin, Tate Donovan as H. R. Haldeman, Johnny Knoxville as another Elvis buddy) that don’t quite land. I felt cheated and I saw it for free.

But you know who’s really good? Alex Pettyfer (whose last big role was in Magic Mike) as Elvis’s real-life pal Jerry Schilling. He’s the only guy in the room who seems to realize that the only way to achieve a measure of dignity is to play it straight. All I know is that his is the only performance that registers.

Lawyer #1: What about you? What sent you to law school?

Lawyer #2: That’s so far back, I don’t think I can remember.

Lawyer #1: Sure you can, counselor.

Lawyer #2: I used to caddy for young attorneys who would play on weekdays. And their wives. I’d look at those long tan legs and just knew I had to be a lawyer. The wives had long tan legs too. (To waiter.) Another martini, please.

Lawyer #1: So we’re not a couple of idealists?

Lawyer #2: Heaven forbid.

From Karl Whitney‘s 4.20 Guardian review of Lee Siegel‘s “Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence“: “I have been a fan of the Marx Brothers since I was a child, in the early 1980s, when television stations used to fill blank spaces in the schedule with Duck Soup or Animal Crackers or A Night at the Opera, and I am as guilty of idealizing their act as anyone.

“But even I can see the plausibility of Siegel’s version of Groucho as not a nice, avuncular figure but rather an asshole telling everyone what he really thinks of them.

“Groucho’s comedy, Siegel insists, is actually radical, nihilistic truth-telling that masks the great comedian’s insecurity; its origins lie in his childhood, with his domineering mother and weak father, and his thwarted intellectual ambitions. A quiet middle child born as Julius Marx to European Jewish emigrants, who lived on the upper east side of Manhattan, Groucho wanted to be a doctor, but instead had to leave school young to join his brothers in show business.

David Spade‘s Charlie, a mousey, married-with-kids bank manager, complains that his life “sucks” and that the joy-and-discovery phase is totally over and that it’s all downhill from here on. HE to Charlie: If you want your life to change try shaving off that awful fucking moustache, for openers. Seriously, when I was young and failing (i.e., before the journalism thing kicked in around ’79) I used to daydream about doing a Jack Nicholson-in-The Passenger and starting all over. What is The Do-Over (Netflix, 7.7) actually about? How white-knuckle terrifying it would be to suddenly swan-dive into a wild-ass life under the guidance of Adam Sandler‘s Max Kesler. In short, it’s a movie that wants to persuade you that your miserable, mousey life isn’t so bad after all.

A24 will be releasing Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow‘s DePalma on 6.10.16. The 111-minute doc premiered at last September’s Venice Film Festival and then enjoyed a follow-up appearance at the N.Y. Film Festival in early October. For some reason it didn’t play Sundance three months ago. I’m hoping/expecting to catch a Manhattan screening sometime during the week of 5.2 through 5.5.

Posted on 9.10.15: “My view is that Brian DePalma was a truly exciting, must-watch director from the late ’60s to mid ’70s (Greetings to The Phantom of the Paradise to Carrie), and an exasperating, occasionally intriguing director from the late ’70s to mid ’90s (Dressed To Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, Carlito’s Way, Mission: Impossible, Snake Eyes).

“But he’s been over for years. I used to love the guy but then he made Mission to Mars (’00), Femme Fatale (’02), The Black Dahlia (’06), Redacted (’07) and Passion (’12)…forget it. Baumbach and Paltrow surely understand this. They surely made this doc in hopes of restoring DePalma’s rep as well as educating Millenials and reminding the old-time fans what a legendary helmer he was in his day.

Apart from the bittersweet, mixed-emotions debut of the One-Eyed Jacks restoration, Cannes Classics will also present the following next month:

Bertrand Tavernier‘s Voyage a travers le cinema français (2016, 195 mins., France). Likelihood of HE attendance: Zero. Who better to deliver “an act of gratitude” for the blessings of French cinema from the 1930s to the present than Tavernier, who’s been around since forever and knows everything and everyone? But I’m not devoting over three hours to this during an already demanding, time-crunched schedule. How about an early-bird screening in Paris, Bertrand? I’ll be there from 5.6 through 5.10.

Cinema Masterclass on William Friedkin: The director of The French Connection, The Exorcist, Killer Joe, The Boys in the Band, Deal of the Century, Cruising and To Live and Die in L.A. will sit down with Michel Ciment on Wednesday, 5.18. Friedkin will also introduce a “restored surprise” film at the Salle Bunuel as well as Sorcerer (’77) at the Cinema de la Plage. Likelihood of HE attendance: Almost zero. I’ve listened to Friedkin talk about everything under the sun at various venues for a good 25 years now. Due respect but doubtful.

Restored version of Frederick Wiseman‘s Hospital (1969, 94 mins., USA). Likelihood of HE attendance: Zero.

Michele Russo‘s The Family Whistle (2016, 65 mins., Italy) — Fawning doc about the Coppola family — their arrival in the U.S., their links with their native Italy and their relationship to music. With Francis Coppola and Talia Shire in attendance. Likelihood of HE attendance: Low but maybe.

Eryk Rocha‘s Cinema Novo (2016, 90 mins., Brazil) — A political/poetic movie essay on a wave of probing, cutting-edge films that came out of Brazil in the ’60s and ’70s. HE anecdote: I sat down for a dinner with Cinema Novo figurehead Carlos Diegues at the Spring Street Bar & Grill sometime around ’79; Fabiano Canosa was also there. My impression at the time was that Diegues was a dead ringer for Phil Foster. Likelihood of HE attendance: Zero.

A little more than a month ago I guessed that the newly restored version of Marlon Brando‘s One-Eyed Jacks (’61), a collaboration between Universal Home Video and Martin Scorsese‘s The Film Foundation, would have its world premiere showing at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. Well, this morning it was announced that this digitally reborn Jacks will in fact debut next month on the Cote d’Azur…hooray!

There is unfortunately a semi-tragic aspect to the One-Eyed Jacks restoration. I was informed this morning that it’ll be screened in Cannes and presented on the Bluray within the dreaded 1.85 aspect ratio. The VistaVision negative offered an image area of 1.5:1 and they couldn’t even master it at 1.78:1, which perfectly fits 16 x 9 high-def screens? They had to slice it down even further to 1.85?

My heart is broken. Think of all that luscious top-and-bottom visual information (all of that sky, all those desert vistas, all of those waves off the Monterey coast) thrown into the dumpster!

“We understand your position,” a Universal source confides, “but we feel that 1:85 is more in line with how Paramount intended VistaVision to be shown and [that going with 1.85] requires the least amount of blow-up and loss of image.” The sides of the frames, he means. The restored Jacks will at least deliver left- and right-side visual info that hasn’t been seen in eons, if at all.

Best laugh of the day: “This aspect of Sad Ben Affleck is not a disposable meme; it’s a modern analogue to the famous image of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’.” Follow-up: “If ‘The Scream’ represents the existential anguish of modernity, Sad Ben Affleck represents the barely suppressed despair of living in a world of way too many screamers, with way too many conduits to scream right in your face. You could, of course, scream back. Or you can just sit, and ride it out, and hope for a better tomorrow, while patiently and stoically enduring the indignities of today. Either way, Sad Ben Affleck, c’est moi.” — posted earlier today by Vulture‘s Adam Sternbergh.

This morning I discussed the 2016 Oscar spitball situation with Award Watch‘s Erik Anderson. We covered a slew of contenders in record time — David Michod‘s War Machine, Tom Ford‘s Nocturnal Animals, Martin Scorsese‘s Silence, Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea, Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation, Garth Davis‘s Lion, Jeff Nichols‘ Loving, Barry Jenkins‘ Moonlight, Denzel Washington‘s Fences, Clint Eastwood‘s Sully, Robert Zemeckis‘s Allied, Pablo Larrain‘s Jackie, Peter Berg‘s Patriot’s Day, etc. Again, the mp3. Sorry for the odd machine-like noise in the very beginning, but it fades away. The chat lasts about 20 minutes, give or take.

“Dark Angels, Black Barranca, Noir All Over,” posted on 4.19.16: “Like a chump or a drunken sailor, I recently bought Criterion’s Bluray of Only Angels Have Wings despite ample warning that it was too dark.

“A DVD Beaver review said it was “darker than the DVD,”and it definitely is that. Like it was shot in a mine shaft. Yes, the blacks are deep and wonderful and portions of this 1939 film look smoother and cleaner than any version I’ve seen before, but my God, man! This Angels is more shadowed than ten Jacques Tourneur and Robert Siodmak films put together. And there’s no reason for it.

“Is this an aviation film directed by Howard Hawks or what? Yes, much of it takes place after dark but this is also a film with a certain merriment and esprit de service and drinks and songs on the piano. Why so inky?

“I lost patience after a while and turned the brightness all the way up, and it was still too dark. I much prefer the high-def Vudu version that I own; ditto the TCM Bluray that I bought a year or two ago.

“Mark this down as a case of Criterion vandalism — it’s just not the film I’ve been watching all these years.”

Screenwriter Vladimir (“Vladi”) Cvetko, the son of HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko, is a writer for the cable TV series Power and Kingdom. Over the last two or three weeks he’s been bopping around Europe. The natural thing would be to cruise chicks and catch rays in a couple of sexy beach towns, and for all I know Vladi got around to this. But he also recently visited a Syrian refugee camp in Idomeni, a village in northern Greece that’s just south of the Macedonian border, and all of a sudden he was no longer some Hollywood dude on the prowl but a photo-journalist in a conflict zone.

Mustafa Alhamoud, face coated in toothpaste to protect against tear gas, had pleaded with the Macedonians to open the border on April 10. (photo by Vladimir Cvetko)

What Vladi saw and heard was newsworthy. Young people in a tough spot, angry, pushing back against closed borders and a growing sense of despair while coping with tear gas. So he took photos and tapped out a 2000-word piece and sent it to the N.Y. Times (no response), the Wall Street Journal (declined) and the Los Angeles Times, among others. An L.A. Times editor liked the article but cut it down (as editors often do) to 900 words. It ran today as an op-ed under the title “Border Skirmishes.”

Excerpt: “I asked the young men who had faced down the troops if they understood what came after Macedonia — more troops, more political resistance and between three and five more border crossings on the way to their preferred destination: Germany. They shrugged. They were focused on the border at Idomeni. No matter how insignificant a step it might be in their journey, crossing would be cause for renewed hope.”