I finally saw Robert Eggers‘ The Witch last night, nearly a year after it premiered at Sundance 2015. It’s easily the most unsettling and sophisticated nightmare film since The Babadook. That’s a roundabout way of saying that the dolts who pay to see the usual horror bullshit will probably avoid it to some extent. Insensitive, all-but-clueless people tend to favor insensitive, all-but-clueless movies, and I’m sorry but The Witch is mostly too good for them — too subterranean, too otherworldly, too scrupulous in its avoidance of cliches. And because it goes for chills and creeps rather than shock and gore. This is the fate of all exceptional, extra-good horror flicks — they must suffer rejection by morons. Just ask Jennifer Kent.

This little creeper (which was projected last night at a 1.66:1 aspect ratio!) is set on an isolated farm in 17th Century New England, when the lore of witches and sorcery was at an all-time high. I was seriously impressed by the historical authenticity and the complete submission to the superstitious mythology of evil in the early 1600s and the panicky mindset of those God-fearing Puritans who completely bought the notion that demonic evil was absolutely manifest and waiting in the thicket. And I was entranced by Eggers’ slowburn strategy, which finally pays off in spades during the final 25 to 30 minutes. And I was fascinated at the allusions to sexuality as a kind of budding demon seed.

The focus is on a farming family of seven — a strong, devout father with a deep resonant voice (Ralph Ineson), a wiry, agitated, asexual mother with a mostly impenetrable accent (Kate Dickie), an intelligent and very hot mid-teen daughter (Anya Taylor-Joy), a younger brother disturbed by sensual stirrings (Harvey Scrimshaw), two toddlers (Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson) and an infant — and one of the most fearsome and persistent threats, never acted upon or spoken of but constantly flowing in the blood, is the animal energy of sex.

A release arrived earlier today about Spotlight’s Michael Keaton being named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in Paris. It’s a legit medal dating back to 1957; past recipients include Meryl Streep, Clint Eastwood and David Bowie. One presumes that Fleur Pellerin, France’s Minister of Culture and Communication, decided to honor Keaton in concert with general interest in Spotlight, which is opening in France and other European regions between 1.27 and 1.29. In any event I wasn’t hugely interested until I saw this photo, which looks like something out of Eyes Wide Shut (shot by Larry Smith) with the gold and blue hues.

Glenn Frey has left the earth at age 67. Cool famous guys (Bowie, Rickman) in their late ’60s are dropping like flies. Everything in its own way and time and all that, but I’m very sad and sorry. Condolences to family, friends, fans.

The writing in LOVE is obviously first-rate (genuine, unforced, not too cute) and the acting seems fine…okay, pretty good. Everything seems right and harmonious except for one small element. In real life Paul Rust would be too dorky-looking to attract someone as hot as Gillian Jacobs. She looks like Kathryn Harrold, for God’s sake, and Harrold was a little too hot even for Albert Brooks in Modern Romance. No offense, Albert, if you’re reading this but you know what I mean. In the late ’70s WASPY, blue-eyed goddesses with killer cheekbones didn’t didn’t commit to anything long-term with clever-funny guys with Jewfros unless, you know, the guys were loaded. It happened, I suppose, but not that often. Once or twice in my observational experience.

Girls like Jacobs know what they have and the kind of guy they can land with a little luck and connivance. If Rust was lucky enough to pair up with Jacobs in real life it would be one of those odd relationships in which both parties realize that she’s doing him a huge favor. These always end sooner or later because the guy starts to feel diminished because he doesn’t feel he has any sense of equality; he feels like a waiter who’s been given an astonishing tip. These things also end because it’s always just a matter of time before she decides “okay, he’s cool and a good soul and not a bad lover, but that beak! Plus he’s neurotic and bothersome in about 17 or 18 different ways, and I know I could do better if I get out there and start sniffing around.”

The geniuses who directed last night’s Critics Choice Awards show refused to project video of the announcers and recipients on two monster-sized screens that hung above the stage. They chose instead to show this footage on four or five smaller monitors in the right rear of the seating area, which were easily viewable by only a portion of the audience. I was sitting so far back in the loser section (table #98) that Amy Schumer looked with a little white push pin with blond hair, and you know what happens? You don’t even listen after a while because the winners are over a football field away and you can’t even see their faces much less expressions, and so you wind up saying “fuck it” and just tweeting about stuff.

Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, Variety/Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg sat way up front and good for them, but table #98 was shit. Every person who sat at that table knew in their heart of hearts they’d been labelled as a temporary second- or third-stringer by the BFCA guys, but we did our best to ignore this. At least in conversation among ourselves. In my own private realm I felt humiliated and shat upon, but I could have rolled with the experience if the BFCA had only shown the faces on the two super-sized screens. But they couldn’t be bothered.

I’ve thought long and hard about the Shiznit’s “honest” movie posters, and the only one I even half-like is the one for The Revenant — not because it’s cool or clever, but because it condenses what a healthy percentage of Joe Popcorn types have been saying about it when they ponder the ads and the general rep. I’ve got the screener and have watched it four times, but I’m still planning to see it again in IMAX at the AMC Century 15. Just one more time for the heavy impact effect with Ryuichi Sakomoto‘s orchestral chords vibrating my ribs and organs.

HBO is airing The Godfather Saga, which is basically a commercial-free version of what was titled The Godfather Saga when it originally aired on network television in 1977, on 1.23. The 434-minute epic (a sequential telling of the Godfather tale ending with lonely Michael in the shadows outside his Lake Tahoe home, or minus the dubious material contained in The Godfather, Part III) is also streaming on HBO Now. Well, I just watched a portion of it and it looks like shit. They may be claiming it’s streaming in high-def, but it’s not. I know exactly how good this footage can look, being an owner of the restored Blurays of The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II, and what HBO Now is showing isn’t even close. It looks “okay” but at the same time drained and fuzzy and almost VHS-like.

A serious Bluray version needs to be prepared and released. It shouldn’t be that hard.

Posted in August 2011: I remember watching the 434-minute Godfather Saga on NBC some 34 years ago. It played four consecutive nights, and I stopped my life to take part in it. I was like a priest doing vespers. I knew I wasn’t watching a “better” version of the first two Godfather films, and that the Saga was just longer (including 75 minutes of previously un-seen scenes) and chronological, etc. But I loved sinking into the all of it, the sprawl of it.

“Most Americans really don’t like Donald Trump,” reports fivethirytyeight‘s Nate Silver, the respected guru of election analysis, in a 1.18 post. “[Despite] Rupert Murdoch’s assertion about Trump having crossover appeal, Trump is extraordinarily unpopular with independent voters and Democrats. Gallup polling conducted over the past six weeks found Trump with a minus 27 net favorability rating among independent voters, and a minus 70 net rating among Democrats; both marks are easily the worst in the GOP field. (Trump also has less-than-spectacular favorable ratings among his fellow Republicans.) As an aside, the only candidate in either party with a positive net favorability rating is…Bernie Sanders.”

Why do poor, underclass people or those of limited means snort coke, shoot heroin, become alcoholics and smoke cigarettes? Because they’re fully convinced things won’t get any better, because they want relief from the pain, and because they believe that “brief vacations” are worth the expense because at least they deliver that thing. I can remember feeling so down and despairing (in late ’79) that I briefly flirted with the idea of some kind of opiate release. I flirted with it. I can imagine being in such a bad place that I might do more than that if there was no let-up for months or years on end.

Spike Lee’s Instagram Explanation About Boycotting OscarsSoWhite: “Mean No Disrespect To My Friends, Host Chris Rock and Producer Reggie Hudlin, President [Cheryl Boone] Isaacs And The Academy. But, How Is It Possible For The 2nd Consecutive Year All 20 Contenders Under The Actor Category Are White? And Let’s Not Even Get Into The Other Branches. 40 White Actors In 2 Years And No Flava At All. We Can’t Act?! WTF!!”

HE Response: Idris Elba or even Abraham Attah should/could have been nominated for Beasts of No Nation — no question. And I wouldn’t have argued if Creed‘s Michael B. Jordan had been Best Actor nominated, no matter how unlikely that would have been given the competition in that category. But what black actor besides Elba was really and truly given the shaft this year? And what was the big fuckover last year? David Oyelowo as MLK? A strong, steady performance, okay, but I honestly didn’t feel that knocked out.

And on the Best Picture front, Academy voters had five slots to fill in. Is it really that much of a surprise that Creed and Straight Outta Compton didn’t occupy those five in sufficient numbers? If there had been had ten choices, they would have ranked seventh or eighth on most ballots — be honest.

Don’t kid yourself — Spotlight‘s ass was saved tonight when it won the Critics Choice award for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Ensemble.

That gut-punch feeling after The Revenant surged the weekend before last (winning the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Drama plus earning a better than expected $39 million when Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s film went wide) was alleviated or medicated away tonight. Not to mention last Thursday’s gulpy feeling after The Revenant landed 12 Oscar nominations compared to Spotlight‘s 6 (Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Film Editing, Best Original Screenplay)…temporarily forgotten. 

As Tennessee Williams once wrote, “Sometimes there’s God so quickly!”

Spotlight producer Steve Golin (l.) and the supporting team (r.).

Spotlight Best Supporting Actress nominee Rachel McAdams, Boston Globe reporter Sacha Pfeiffer accepting the Best Ensemble Award.

The cynical, know-it-all blogaroonies will try to dismiss or minimize the significance of tonight’s Spotlight comeback, and I won’t argue that the real test of the situation will come when the Producers Guild hands out its Daryl F. Zanuck award on Saturday, 1.23. 

If Spotlight takes the top PGA prize, champagne time. If The Big Short takes it, confusion and craziness. If The Revenant wins, back to that feeling of despair and defeatism for the Spotlight-ers. And if Mad Max: Fury Road pulls it out of the hat, whoopee for George Miller along with an even crazier sense of lettuce leaves being tossed in the air and landing every which way.

I’m only telling you that the Spotlight team (Rachel McAdams, Sacha Pfeiffer, producer Steve Golin, Open Road’s Tom Ortenberg but minus Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber and director Tom McCarthy) breathed a collective sigh of relief when they won the Best Picture trophy. The Critics Choice awards have proven a better statistical predictor of the Oscars than the Globes, and there’s nothing the cynics can say that will alter that. 

Cue Elton John‘s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.”

A colleague has responded to yesterday’s post about an alleged edge enjoyed by Charlotte Rampling in the Best Actress race (“Feinberg’s Rampling Pushback…Yes!“):

“Don’t get on his high horse about Rampling. That would be a huge upset as 45 Years only has a single nomination — hers — and those in Best Picture nominees like Brie Larson or Saoirse Ronan have a much greater advantage historically since it is the entire Academy that votes. I love Rampling and have been one of her biggest champions since Telluride, but with not even a BAFTA or a SAG nomination and a movie that will more than likely be turned off by many voters who watch on DVD and won’t go for the slowness of it all, forget it. Many have voted for Rampling in the BFCA balloting to get nominated and now to win. But she won’t. Room, with its Best Picture, Director, Screenplay noms and now a surging box-office, has all the momentum for Larson. Only Saoirse could upset because of the love for Brooklyn.”