Jeffrey Wells

I still haven’t seen Barbie, of course, but being reminded yesterday of Greta Gerwig’s co-authoring of Disney’s seemingly woke-as-fuck Snow White bummed me out. This plus her reported interest in directing a Chronicles of Narnia film and her apparent general leanings as a writer-director since 2019’s Little Women, which seemed to signal an ardently feminist chapter…a proverbial turning of the page as she began to swim in a politically ideological stream…

Gerwig is obviously an inventive and visually exacting filmmaker, but I’m less taken with the incarnation that has come to be seen, felt and heard over the last four or five years than who she seemed to be (and with whom I fraternized two or three times) during her Obama-era output…her Greenberg, Frances Ha, Mistress America and Lady Bird period (2010 to 2017) when she was radiating a curiously appealing take on 21st Century life…truly imaginative and wonderfully peculiar…among the most idiosyncratic and organically rooted creative minds out there.

“Antonioni Gerwig,” posted almost exactly ten years ago:

Posted on 11.16.16:

This may sound silly and it probably is, but a voice out of the space-time continuum is telling me that Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie (‘64) can and should be rebranded, rejuvenated and re-culturalized by merging original Marnie poster art with the ironic girlie bullshit kitsch design of Barbie marketing and more particularly “Barbenheimer.”

There’s always been something vaguely suffocating about Marnie; it’s simply a matter of saying “okay, let’s add apocalyptic to suffocating and substitute red for pink and see if the cat licks it up.”

I can’t explain where this idea has come from exactly, and I certainly haven’t worked out any of the thematic details. I only know that in some strange way Barbie and Marnie have begun to bleed together in my mind. I’m 97% certain that Marnie cultists (Richard Brody, Dave Kehr, Glenn Kenny, et. al.) would somehow approve. .

And right in the middle of the Austrian dangling train car scene, arguably the biggest wowser super-climax in the whole damn 27-year-old franchise, a 40something beefalo who’d almost certainly been gulping a 36-ounce soft drink, bolted out of his seat to run to the bathroom. He ran back in just when the last car has fallen and everyone was safe. Brilliant timing!

…at a commercial plex. This has never happened before.

Six days ago (7.2) Variety’s Owen Gleiberman posted his favorable review of Sound of Freedom.

In paragraph #2 Gleiberman wrote that the film “could be seen as adjacent to the alt-right paranoia [over the imagined perversity of liberal pedophiles] that was originally stoked by 4chan and QAnon.”

Here’s the actual excerpt:

Two days ago (7.6) Charles Bramesco posted his grumpy, mostly negative review in the Guardian.

The Bramesco piece didn’t use the term “QAnon adjacent,” but the headline did. Not a felony but deserving of mention.

But this tweet is dead-on:

HE’s favorite Jack Nicholson films are, in this order, The Last Detail, Prizzi’s Honor, Chinatown, Carnal Knowledge, Heartburn, The Departed, Five Easy Pieces, Easy Rider, As Good As It Gets, The Shining, Terms of Endearment, The Passenger.

I wouldn’t complain if someone told me you may never again watch Tim Burton’s Batman (‘ 89). Ditto Milos Forman’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (‘76) — never a big fan of that film.

Everyone is welcomed, embraced and celebrated in Barbie-land. Unless, of course, you’re a white, middle-aged or older cis male like Will Ferrell’s Mattel CEO or, you know, someone like myself. In which case you’re a bit of a problematic life form.

Which is sorta kinda how it works in the real world these days, no?

Now as before, the smart play is to keep your head down and operate within the herd, so to speak. Don’t mouth off or make waves, don’t stand out, conform or be silent. And if you’re an older white cis male, be as invisible as possible. That or get the hell outta Dodge.

…before James Mangold and Timothee Chalamet finally start shooting the endlessly delayed A Complete Unknown or Going Electric or whatever they’re calling it now? Fish or cut bait, cowards.

…who was busted a few days ago for carving his own name and that of his girlfriend (“Ivan + Haley ‘23”) into a Roman Colisseum wall should face two (2) distinct punishments — one for defacing a priceless ancient monument and a second for professing ignorance about the age of the 2000-year-old amphitheater. The guy should definitely be jailed and slapped around.

The already much-celebrated Lily Gladstone performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is rooted in the rudiments of woke representation. She plays the sadly fabled Molly Burkhart, but her arc is solely about being a victim of greed — she mostly just sits (or lies) there and seethes, glowers and casts daggers of suspicion.

Truth #1 is that Gladstone doesn’t really have much of a part. Not much in the way of emotional scope or specificity. Truth #2 is that her supporters will be loathe to admit this.

Native American tokenism (or, in an award-season context, ethnic novelty as she’d be the first Native American actor to seriously compete since Will Sampson) will see her through in the Best Supporting Actress category, agreed, but those who contend for a Best Actress Oscar are expected to qualify with some kind of rip-snortin’, full-bodied, go-for-the-gusto performance, and the Killers of the Flower Moon script simply doesn’t allow Gladstone to do that.