Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash (Fox Searchlight, 5.13) is a noirish Mediterranean hothouse thing — a not-especially-sordid sex and betrayal story that builds so slowly and languidly it feels like there’s nothing going on except for the vibe, and honestly? It’s so lulling and flavorful and swoony and sun-baked that you just give in to it. The undercurrent is…well, gently mesmerizing, and that was enough for me. I can’t wait to see it again, or more precisely go there again. I felt like I was savoring a brief vacation. I’m not saying the dramatic ingredients are secondary, but they almost are.

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The title comes from a David Hockney painting, and that in itself should tell you where Guadagnino is coming from. A Bigger Splash is about island vibes and coolness and louche attitudes and to some extent the splendor of the druggy days, and particularly the legend of the Rolling Stones.

This is Guadagnino’s second collaboration with Tilda Swinton after I Am Love, the Milan-set family drama that opened seven years ago, and the newbie is…I don’t what it is exactly.

In my mind the island of Pantelleria, which is halfway between Tunisia and the southwest coast of Sicily, isn’t just the setting but a kind of lead character. It colors and tonalizes and blows little mood gusts.

Swinton plays Marianne, a late 40ish rock star (a sort of female David Bowie type) who’s vacationing there with boyfriend Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts), a distinctly younger fellow who’s a rock-industry photographer/filmmaker.

So Devin Faraci‘s 3.31 report about Suicide Squad doing extra shooting to add “more humor and lightness” is incorrect, according to a tweet posted by director David Ayer this morning. And yet additional shooting has occured, according to costar Jai Courtney. His comment to Entertainment Tonight: “I wouldn’t say we’re trying to make it funny…there’s some additional action stuff that we’ve been doing that’s pretty dark.” HE comment #1: The Suicide Squad trailer footage has been fairly arch and meta-jokey so it seems unlikely that any kind of additional material would be “pretty dark.” Faraci wrote that “[they’re] not inserting jokes left and right but that they’re beefing up fun character moments and interactions.” HE comment #2: With Suicide Squad not opening until 8.5.16, Warner Bros. will presumably be carpet-bombing with promotional materials for the next five months…right? I’m already half-sick of this thing.

If Bernie Sanders hadn’t decided to run for President against Hillary Clinton, the despair and depression out there right now would be overwhelming. Heroin use would be three or four times what it is now. Sanders will not win the Democratic nomination but he’s ignited fresh political kindling, a communal sense that “the old ways are only going to keep pushing us down so we have to get rid of them,” and a belief in fundamental fairness and corporate pushback that never would have happened if Hillary had run more or less unchallenged. She’s a smart, driven, reasonably decent person whom I intend to vote for in the fall, but she’s a corporate player who is glomming on to the Sanders spiritual wave because it benefits her campaign. God knows what she’d be saying or proposing (or what she’ll try to do as President) if Sanders hadn’t come along. Sidenote: Documentarian Matthew Cooke smiles and nods too eagerly when Mark Ruffalo is expressing a thought. Tone that shit down.

Who will historians point to 100 or even 80 years hence, when the waters of the Hudson and East River will have begun to lap onto the streets of Manhattan, as the most rancid and villainous figures of early 21st Century culture? Indeed, who at the moment of their deaths are sure to be seized by feral, growling, sharp-clawed demons and plunged into the hottest caverns of hell? Climate-change denialists, for openers, but even more deserving of damnation will be the anti-climate-change propagandists. And so I dream of Sarah Palin, naked and howling and roasting on a spit. But with her glasses on. Palin and her ilk just keep coming, keep spewing. Not God Herself nor the wonders of all creation will get in their way.

No offense but I don’t trust Antoine fucking Fuqua — he lacks discipline, he’s popcorn, he’s cheeseball and he damn sure is no Akira Kurosawa or John Sturges. But I still feel a certain lust in my heart for The Magnificent Seven (Columbia, 9.23). Boilerplate: “With the town of Rose Creek under the deadly control of industrialist Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), the desperate townspeople employ protection from seven outlaws, bounty hunters, gamblers and hired guns — Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), Josh Farraday (Chris Pratt), Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), Billy Rocks (Byung-Hun Lee…swords!), Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), and Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier). As they prepare the town for the violent showdown that they know is coming, these seven mercenaries find themselves fighting for more than money.” [Poster image captured at Ceasar’s Palace in Las Vegas by Collider‘s Steve Weintraub.]

For whatever reason the film’s URL is inactive as we speak.

Now that Karyn Kusama‘s The Invitation (Drafthouse) has opened with a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score and done pretty well and has been viewable on iTunes and Vudu for a couple of days, what’s the verdict? I didn’t say a damn thing the other day for fear of giving anyone the slightest hint of what it’s about, but…well, I can say this. It’s an expert slow-burner, and all the more impressive because it’s all about hints…about what you can sense might be happening without anything in the way of precise evidence. But when it all starts to pay off with some third-act violence, I have to say I felt a teeny bit let down. It seemed a little too familiar. But then came the finale and I thought “wow.”

I stopped watching Season #1 of Netflix’s Bloodline after four or five episodes because I couldn’t stand the company of Ben Mendehlson‘s “Danny”, a sweating, slithering, low-rent, cigarette-smoking slug. Yes, I’m aware that Mendehlson will “return” in Season #2 via flashbacks and whatnot, but unlike Game of Throne‘s Jon Snow the guy is really and truly dead. Regulars Kyle Chandler, Linda Cardellini, Jacinda Barrett and Sissy Spacek are being joined by newcomers John Leguizamo and Andrea Riseborough.

I was going to call this post “The Third Man” because the third Direct TV technician arrived today and left without doing anything because he hadn’t been told by Direct TV management to install a 4K-capable genie. He also said I’d need to make a fourth appointment for someone else to drop by and do that. “Actually, I don’t think so,” I said with a smile. “Thanks for your information but this is the absolute end of my 4K dealings with Direct TV. Go with God, have a good Sunday but this is it…I’m done.”

The first Direct TV guy was too hard to understand (thick-as-hummus Middle-Eastern accent) and then he wouldn’t let me talk to his supervisor.

The second Direct TV technician who visited three days ago (4.7) was an emotional infant who left without notice because he didn’t feel sufficiently loved and appreciated and because…what, I wasn’t radiating the right vibes? In fact I was sitting in the lotus position and listening to an Alan Watts CD when he walked in. Plus I was wearing a Mahatma Gandhi diaper and wore a look of cosmic serenity so I don’t know what else I could have done.

And then today’s guy came by and delivered zip…end of story.

I had pre-paid all the fees to the tune of over $400. I demanded and got a total refund today. I’m staying with Direct TV’s cheap-ass basic cable because it’s less than $10 a month but I will never pay for 4K TV service from these guys. The door has closed.

The opening night presentation at the 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival (4.28 thru 5.1) will be “a 40th anniversary screening in collaboration with Warner Bros. Classics” of Alan Pakula‘s All The President’s Men. Who cares, right? Another theatrical screening of a movie we’ve all seen many times. Except it could be a significant deal if TCM and WB Classics are presenting a visually correct version of this 1976 classic. Because it needs correcting. Some of you might remember that ATPM cinematographer Gordon Willis complained about the most recent Bluray version in a 2011 HE interview.

Willis comment #1 about 2011 ATMP Bluray: “It’s all fucked up…all the medium tones [are wrong] and contrast is way higher than it oughta be…it’s overloaded.”

Comment #2: “All they had to do was use the most recent DVD as a reference because that’s fine. They don’t get it. They get on those fucking dials…it’s a disease. Their idea for a Bluray is to make it for guys who are watching football.”

Boston Globe editorial: “At some point, after the election, Republicans will also need to ask themselves some tough questions about how their actions and inactions made the party vulnerable to Trump. After all, a candidate spewing anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, authoritarian rhetoric didn’t come out of nowhere; the Tea Party has been strong enough long enough that someone like him shouldn’t be a surprise. Chasing short-term political gains, the GOP missed a lot of chances to fight the hateful currents that now threaten to overwhelm it.”

HE: The GOP has been winking at racist dumb-shit sentiments and aggressively soliciting votes of unwashed rurals since the dawn of Richard Nixon‘s Southern strategy. The Trump phenomenon is simply a case of the mob getting in front of the strategists, of the rural cart leading the horse.

An AVS forum for owners of the Sony 930C TVs (4K, 65″) describes a firmware/software update (PKG2.197.0010NAB) that became available on 6.1.15. Among the benefits: “Improves Lip Sync for HDMI input.” One, this is an official acknowledgment that lip-synch issues are a concern for owners of this Sony TV. And two, it only promises to “improve” lip-synch issues as opposed to solving or eliminating them. Any and all HE comment-thread bitches who have snickered at my response to this godawful problem owe me a full and complete apology. No discussion, no disputes….contrite, on your knees, head bowed.