Jeffrey Wells

Or do I mean “mainstream kiss of death”?

Answer: That recent Facebook post about Ari Aster ‘s Beau Is Afraid by IndieWire ‘s Eric Kohn.

If you know how Kohn assesses and writes and what his often generous reviews sometimes really signify, reading that sentence was like hearing the sound of a condemned man’s neck snapping.

Honestly? I first smelled trouble when I saw the face of Armen Nahapetian, who plays Joaquin Phoenix’s titular character at age 14 or so, in an early one-sheet. Nothing I could put my finger on, but, to paraphrase Bill Maher, I just knew.

Kohn’s self-description in his Super Mario Bros. review: “An optimist who searches for the potential of movies to thrive wherever they can”

It happened last night, and I, for one, was deeply impressed by the fact that the first knock of the door wasn’t dramatized and was in fact barely shown, certainly as far as the departed was concerned.

And it really held you. It was all about awkward, anxious, dumbfounded, grieving, semi-stumbling reactions. Truly excellent writing and direction. Palpable anxiety, fascinating behavior, etc. And it was only episode 3.

Small side issue: I distinctly recall, in my early to mid 30s, feelings of trepidation and even, truth be told, horror as I began to grapple with facial puffiness (sugar and wine). It’s your body telling you to cut down on the partying and to join a health club.

Last night was my first taste of season #4, and I’m afraid that this syndrome (and I’m not faulting) is beginning to afflict poor Sara Snook, certainly compared to her appearance over the first couple of seasons. Not a tragedy, not a felony, just saying.

…if a gifted, pro-level artist could paint or compose a serious “Meryl Streep and all her significant roles” group portrait — not a cut-and-paste job like this thing but one in all of these Meryl incarnations are freshly considered and re-angled (i.e., not dependent on marketing materials).

I can’t unsee this Psycho set photo, and particularly John Gavin’s man-toes and especially those hush-puppy slip-ons. I’m sorry but the man’s stock has just dropped a few points, and I mean eternally.

BTW: This was shot during filming of the Phoenix hotel room scene, and Janet Leigh’s satin or silk bathrobe is the same one that “Marion Crane” wore just prior to taking a shower in cabin #1 at the Bates Motel.

I’ve watched and re-watched The Big Country since it hit Bluray in 2011, and especially since the much improved KL Studio Classic version was released in ‘18. I know this film cold, every scene and line and Technirama shot, every bridge and stanza in Jerome Moross’s score, etc.

But until last night, I hadn’t noticed a very glaring element in the final shot, the one in which Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons and Alfonso Bedoya ride down a rugged mountain trail and into a large valley below.

Throughout the entire film the dominant outdoor color (aside from the sky) is pale straw…the landscape is seemingly under-watered and parched as far as the camera can see, the dry prairie grass covering the plains and hills in every direction.

And then in the final shot and for the first time in the film, the entire valley is covered in green.

Was this a visual metaphor that director William Wyler decided upon, signifying health and ample water and a happy ending as far as human nature allowed? Or had nature simply shifted gears or seasons by sprouting fresh grass toward the end of principal photography?

I know that I can’t recall another outdoor film, western or not, in which an entire eye-filling landscape changes its mind so completely at the very last moment.

Imagine being so clueless, so bottom-of-the-barrel and perverse in your movie brain that when somebody asks “favorite Gene Hackman film?”, you actually respond “Superman”!

In no particular order: Crimson Tide, The Firm, Hoosiers, Night Moves, All Night Long, Downhill Racer, The French Connection (Friedkin & Frankenheimer), The Conversation, Bonnie and Clyde, Another Woman, Young Frankenstein, Mississippi Burning.

…but wearing a chickenshit mask?

All my professional life I’ve regarded Amy Taubin as a first-rate, tart-tongued Manhattan film critic and essayist. So it came as a mild surprise to read the other day that (a) she was once a fledgling, semi-noteworthy actress/filmmaker, such that (b) casting director Lynn Stalmaster included her among a list of possibles to play Elaine Robinson in The Graduate.

I’ve just read Adriane Quinlan’s 4.7 “Curbed” piece about Paul Schrader’s life these days at The Coterie, a pricey (at least $15K monthly) luxury high-rise for interesting (read: fairly loaded) seniors. It’s called “Paul Schrader’s Very Paul Schrader Days in Assisted Living.”

This is a dry, well-written observational that almost reminded me at times of Didion’s “Play It As It Lays.” But unlike his well-tended wife Marybeth, Paul doesn’t seem to be living “in” assisted living, or at least not according to my limited understanding of that term.

Living in The Coterie is easy and luxurious, sure, but with Paul churning out screenplays, planning to shoot a kind of Ivan Ilyich-type drama with Richard Gere later this year and thinking about visiting a Manhattan dive bar in order to counter-balance a feeling of too much sterility and perhaps keep in touch with the hurlyburly to some degree, he seems to be living in a fashion that’s more adjacent to assisted living (out of necessity for his wife) than “in” it.

Julius Avery‘s The Pope’s Exorcist is obviously garbage, but HE admires the final paragraph in Guy Lodge‘s Variety review.

I tend to avoid or at least suffer through prison movies as a rule. To varying degrees they’re all about yearning for freedom, of course, but they always feel more confining than liberating (i.e., why does the caged bird sing?) and because life itself, for me, has always been about the defiance of suppression, confinement and regimentation so I already knew that tune backward and forward.

I don’t need and in fact have been forbidding the idea of a movie reminding me about these basic terms, and I’ve felt this way since my early teens, which is when I started to understand the degree of dull underlying horror that permeated normal middle–class life. This is how it seemed, at least, in suburban New Jersey (Westfield) and exurban Connecticut (Wilton).

As much as I admire Morgan Freeman’s performance in The Shawshank Redemption, I’ve never been able to derive any real pleasure or payoff from that film. Ditto Papillon, Birdman of Alcatraz, Bronson, Hunger, The Green Mile, Starred Up, Each Dawn I Die, 20,000 Years at Sing Sing, et. al.

Don’t even mention Oz or Orange Is The New Black.

The only prison flicks I’ve enjoyed, unsurprisingly, are about breakouts. Don Siegel’s Escape From Alcatraz (‘79) is the champ. Stuart Rosenberg’s Cool Hand Luke (‘67) is more about the spirit of freedom than escape, but it still qualifies. Ben Stiller’s Escape at Dannemora** (‘18) is an excellent bust-out film. I love the comical breakout sequence in Peter Yates’ The Hot Rock (‘71).

There’s one exception to my rule — a prison flick that isn’t about escape and just says “fuck it — life on the block is what it is” while staking claim to being a serious meditation on morality and jailhouse ethics: Robert M. Young and Miguel Pinero’s Short Eyes (77).

A couple of months ago I visited a friend who lives near the village of Ossining, which is about 40 miles north of Manhattan and is the home of Sing Sing prison. Peter Falk grew up there, and during an interview he recalled that all the lights in the town would flicker and grow dim whenever a guy was getting fried in the chair.

** Escape at Dannemore is actually a limited series so that makes it a whole different bowl of rice!