Jeffrey Wells

What does it mean when a plurality of mainstream media types decide that a certain critically lauded, high-profile biopic by a major-brand, boomer-aged filmmaker…a film that Average Joes & Janes are not exactly rushing out to see (the reception so far has been West Side Story-ish)…what does it mean when a film that, by the measure of Howard Hawks, has three good scenes (Judd Hirsch rant, Nazi war film shoot in the Arizona desert, John Ford barks out lesson about horizon lines) and several meh ones…a “good” but subdued Amarcord film that unfolds in a reasonably compelling fashion but isn’t, on its own story terms and minus the Spielberg coat of arms, what anyone would call a fascinating tale…

What does it mean when the go-along media bros decide nonetheless that this is the safest, most reliable, most steady-as-she-goes Oscar pony to get behind?

I’ll tell you what it means. It means that elite brand fortification matters to a lot of people. Speaking as one who’s been proud to self–identify as an honorary Jew since the ‘70s, I understand it all.

The plan is for Jett and Cait to bring one-year-old Sutton into Manhattan this Saturday (i.e., five days hence) with a special interest in showing her the big Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.

In the same sense that kids can’t really appreciate the unique cultural pleasures of Europe until they’re ten or so, tykes probably can’t really “get” the midtown holiday splendor thing until they’re two or three. Plus I’m not looking forward to mingling with suffocating masses of bridge-and-tunnel tourists.

That isn’t stopping us, of course. Sutton might be taken aback at the size of that 80-foot-tall tree or the ornamental lights and whatnot, and the mere possibility of such an impression is enough.

I was three during my first visit to Manhattan. The tree aside, the focus back then was eyeballing the window displays at Sak’s Fifth Avenue and visiting Santa Claus at Macy’s.

The first Rockefeller Center Xmas tree was erected in 1931. It was only 20something feet tall and was paid for, notably, by construction guys who were building 30 Rock.

…there’s no way it was as funny as all that, certainly to go by Marlon Brando and Edmond O’Brien’s half-giddy, half-terrified expressions. Will you look at these guys? Five’ll get you ten Georges Danton wore the same expression just before the guillotine dropped. Please, for God’s sake…turn it down.

Anyone who would wear a walking shoe with this kind of design should be fined and perhaps even prosecuted.

And yet Elon Musk’s assessment of the current state of things (“woke mind virus”) is essentially correct. I wouldn’t say that civilization is edging towards “suicide”, but I know for a fact that the occasional surges of joy and even transcendence that I got from movies for so many decades have become fewer and farther between over the last six or seven years, and that this is largely due to (I need to occasionally refresh my doomsday terminology) the influence of the Maple Street seed pod monsters, and the chickenshit corporates who are afraid to show a little backbone.

It’s an occasion for a kind of mourning (i.e., my own) when a film that sent me fleeing after 90 minutes has bagged $321,770,596 domestic and $279,200,000 overseas for a total of $600 million and change.

I know exactly how it feels when a film is doing everything just right and thereby building trust and affection with an audience. Or at least is up to something exceptional. I’ve experienced it hundreds of times over decades, and the first 90 minutes of Wakanda Forever (I couldn’t tolerate any more than that) definitely wasn’t doing this. A director friend told me “you missed the best part”, ands I’ve no reason to think otherwise. But dear God in heaven…who are we? What is our life when an obviously mediocre film like this is celebrated as a great “success”?

On 12.13.22 a much larger audience will have access to Martin McDonagh’s family-friendly, bloody-finger-stumps drama, and obviously in time for the year-end holidays.

If I were to tell you that this is a nice Anglo Saxon barista who works at a nearby Starbucks, would that be okay? I’m sitting at a Starbucks right now, and the top guy has a beard and longish hair. I don’t know if they have Starbucks outlets in Jerusalem, but if they do I’m certain the guy at the counter wouldn’t resemble a cheerful Connecticut WASP.

I’ll catch an occasional film at a nearby AMC plex, but I never seem to remember to arrive 20 to 25 minutes late so I can avoid the torture of watching bubbly, extra perky Noovie personalities Maria Menounos and Perri Nemiroff, not to mention Nicole Kidman’s “we come to this place” AMC movie spot. Aaaagghh!

Each and every time these three lightweights and their respective shpiels send me into a pit of total depression.

It makes you wonder which paying customers out there are shallow and stupid enough to feel even faintly amused by this crap?

Pet Kidman peeve: “That indescribable feeling we all get when the lights begin to dim…” Indescribable on what planet? It’s easily describable. It’s the feeling of illogical, stupidly hopeful anticipation. Most of us know or at least strongly suspect that whAt we’re about to see will be an overlong, submental piece of shit, but when the lights go down we still revert to our seven-year-old selves and think “maybe…maybe.”

She Said is a very trim, smart, efficient, adult-angled journalism drama in the tradition of Spotlight and All The President’s Men. So what went wrong? Too downish? Joe and Jane don’t care that much about the appalling sins of Harvey Weinstein?

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I’ve assembled this list with full respect and total affection, but here are the nine Scorsese films that have left me feeling at least somewhat gloomy, faintly angry, unsatisfied, vaguely bored, brought down and under-nourished (and not necessarily in this order):

Hugo, Silence, Bringing Out The Dead, Kundun, The Age of Innocence, The Aviator, Shutter Island, Cape Fear and New York New York (“an honest failure”).

All the others are total winners.