Brad Peyton’s San Andreas (Warner Bros., 5.29) is exactly what the trailers have been selling — a serving of stupidly entertaining, over-the-top disaster porn that flirts with absurdity. Yes, everyone plays it totally straight and the script hits the usual predictable beats as the all-but-total destruction of Los Angeles, San Francisco and much of California is reduced to a story of six or seven people who show what they’re made of when push comes to shove. But it’s the very sincerity in which Peyton and his cast and FX team embrace this mudslide of cliches that makes it screamingly funny. Not “wow, these guys are really hilarious” funny but “wow, these guys will stop at nothing…they’ll push any button they can think of.” You just have to laugh or at least chortle.

After it’s all over at the very end we’re shown small groups of survivors holding hands and praying together along with a fence display of paper-mounted photos of possible survivors with messages asking if anyone has seen this or that person. We’re also shown a huge American flag being unfurled from the remnants of the Golden Gate Bridge. “You contemptible whores,” I muttered to myself. “You’re using memories and echoes of 9/11 to augment your finale, which you’re totally ‘sincere’ about. Serious balls, gentlemen…hats off.”

This is an appalling, never-boring, kill-the-world action film — a movie that goes beyond what any reasonable person would call a bogus, full-of-shit dramatic strategy to embrace something crazier and more meta. I’m not sure how to describe it except to say that San Andreas makes Irwin Allen‘s The Towering Inferno look like Elia Kazan‘s On The Waterfront. (If you’re fair about it you’ll acknowledge that Inferno was at least semi-realistic in its use of practical fire-fighting realities.) It’s not so much a “we will rock you” experience as one that says — boasts! — “we are the owners of this bullshit and we will fucking amaze you with our shamelessness.” And I submitted. I had to. I just shook my head and sat back in my 4DX chair and muttered, “Whatever, guys…go to town.”

You can stream Jerzy Skolimowski‘s Moonlighting (’82) but every now and then a Bluray comes along that you just want to own. Because on some level owning this or that title will make me feel good and affirmed. And because I want to re-experience the mesmerizing big-screen impact when this great allegorical film played during the 1982 New York Film Festival. I have it in my head that this British Bluray will somehow deliver a better facsimile than ever before. I love that moment when Jeremy Irons is lying on his bed and staring at a photo of his girlfriend (Jenny Seagrove) and suddenly she seems to come alive within the frame, very slightly and somewhat erotically. I’ve been remarking for years that the world is divided into two camps — those who hear Moonlighting and think of Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepard and those who think of Irons and Skolimowski and that ending with those shopping carts crashing into the wall.

Ridley Scott‘s The Martian (20th Century Fox, 11.25) is about Matt Damon somehow figuring out ways to survive on Mars for months on end despite being stranded with meager supplies of water and food. The film has a healthy roster of costars — Kate Mara, Jessica Chastain, Michael Peña, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels — so it’s not some man-alone thing like Castaway or 127 Hours, but even if Damon’s ingenuity allows him to survive (and I’m presuming it will) I just don’t believe the U.S. government would spend God knows how many hundreds of millions (billions?) to send a rescue mission to save him. I think the powers-that-be would say, “We’re very sorry but every now and then you have to face reality and stand down and let nature take its course.” The film is based on Andy Weir’s book, which I’m not going to read as preparation.

I’ve just finished reading a 5.24 Salon piece about an allegedly strong domestic drama called Bad Hurt, which played at last month’s Tribeca Film Festival but currently has no commercial distributor. Bill Curry‘s article, titled “Karen Allen’s brilliant comeback: A Raiders of the Lost Ark star forsakes Hollywood for a brilliant, blue-collar film,” describes Mark Kemble‘s film, an adaptation of his 2007 stage play called “Bad Hurt on Cedar Street,” as an American kitchen sink drama — “a good movie that felt very real.”

“American cinema never got into social realism,” Curry writes. “Italian neorealists like De Sica, Rossellini and Fellini had counterparts in British ‘kitchen sink’ auteurs such as Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson in new-wave film movements everywhere in the world but here. Such films show people trapped by income, education or family circumstance who don’t get rescued by upward mobility or the kindness of strangers. In America the idea of anyone being trapped in the system is heresy, but after 40 years of political and economic stagnation that may be starting to change.”

With Cameron Crowe‘s Aloha opening three days hence with no buzz and no currents in the wind except those that spell dread, how much worse could the reception be if Crowe and Sony had adopted Hollywood Elsewhere’s pet title for this calamity, i.e., Son of Deep Tiki? Especially with certain native Hawaiians reportedly disapproving of the Aloha title, which they feel is “a disrespectful misappropriation of culture and simplifies a word that’s rich with meaning”? I’m asking anyone with modest Photoshop abilities to take a crack at a Son of Deep Tiki poster. I’ll post the best of the submissions. C’mon…it’ll be easy. The more subversive, the better.

A few days ago and for no timely reason at all A.V. Club‘s Mike Vanderbilt posted a piece about original reactions to William Friedkin‘s The Exorcist, which opened in December ’73. It reminds you how jaded and cynical the culture has since become. The Exorcist gobsmacked Average Joes like nothing that they’d seen before, but you couldn’t possibly “get” audiences today in the same way. Sensibilities have coarsened. The horror “bar” is so much higher.

But there’s one thing that 21st Century scary movies almost never do, and that’s laying the basic groundwork and hinting at what’s to come, step by step and measure by measure. Audiences are too impatient and ADD to tolerate slow build-ups these days, but Friedkin spent a good 50 to 60 minutes investing in the reality of the Exorcist characters, showing you their decency and values and moments of stress and occasional losses of temper, as well a serious investment in mood, milieu and portents. It had the trappings of class — a genuinely eerie score, flush production values and the subdued, autumnal tones in Owen Roizman‘s cinematography. It was only in the second hour that the shock-and-awe stuff began.

The best parts of The Exorcist don’t involve spinning heads or pea-soup vomit. I’m talking about moments in which scary stuff is suggested rather than shown. The stuff you imagine might happen is always spookier.

Such as (1) that prologue moment in Iraq when Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) is nearly run over by a galloping horse and carriage, and a glimpse of an older woman riding in the carriage suggests a demonic presence; (2) a moment three or four minutes later when Merrin watches two dogs snarling and fighting near an archeological dig; (3) that Washington, D.C. detective (Lee J. Cobb) telling Father Karras (Jason Miller) that the head of the recently deceased director Burke Dennings (Jack McGowran) “was turned completely around”; (4) Karras’s dream sequence about his mother calling for him, and then disappearing into a subway; (5) that moment when Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) mimics the voice and repeats the exact words of a bum that Karras has recently encountered — “Can you help an old altar boy, father?” My favorite bit in the whole film is that eerie whoosh-slingshot sound coming from the attic.

One of my early reactions after seeing Todd Haynes‘ Carol was that costars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, who play closeted lovers in this 1952 Manhattan-based tale, are evenly matched in every sense of the term — neither dominates the other in terms of passion or screen time, and both parts are equally important.  But conventional thinking says that the Weinstein Co. campaigning Blanchett vs. Mara in the Best Actress category would be self-cancelling (how could it not be?), and so a theoretical narrative seemed to emerge over the last few days that Blanchett, who’s already won two acting Oscars (Best Supporting for portraying Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator, Best Actress for her lead perfofmrance in 2013’s Blue Jasmine), would be pushed for Best Actress with Mara presented as a Best Supporting Actress contender — even though that idea makes no sense if you’ve seen the film. The argument that Blanchett’s titular character drives the narrative is not an open-and-shut proposition — one could easily argue that Rooney’s character is in fact the lead protagonist. In any event the Blanchett-first scenario has now been upended with Mara having won a Best Actress prize during last night’s Cannes Film Festival awards. Yes, the Weinsteiners can wave this off and still insist that Blanchett is their Best Actress pony with Mara campaigning in a supporting capacity, and that might work if everyone agrees to wear blinders. I only know that after last night there’s a strong argument against running Mara in supporting. There’s no way to kick this around without seeing Carol first, but any way you slice it Harvey Weinstein and his marketers are looking at a tricky situation.

“Pool photo” by Yves Herman accompanied a 5.24 Manohla Dargis N.Y. Times interview with Haynes.

“In 2013, the parents of a five year-old recovering from leukemia asked the Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish Foundation to help him become a superhero for a day. The event’s announcement went viral, thousands of volunteers and well-wishers flooded the streets of San Francisco, and millions more tuned in online — all recounted in Dana Nachman‘s documentary Batkid Begins: The Wish Heard Around the World. Prior to the film’s Slamdance world premiere, Julia Roberts‘ representatives announced that she’s attached to produce and star as one of the event’s key organizers in a feature film version of Batkid’s story. Whether that development will drive theatrical response for this documentary or simply seal the deal for small-screen opportunities, this project might not be the last we’ll hear of the young boy’s heroic exploits.” — from Justin Lowe‘s THR review, dated 1.30.15. The New Line release opens on 6.26.

The basic point is to recover from Cannes by doing almost nothing. Okay, very little. Filing, reading, naps, a nightly two-hour roam-around, screenings (San Andreas, Spy), Tunnel Bear movies on the Macboook Pro. No aggressive sightseeing, definitely no big meals. The temperature is barely 70 now, dropping to 60 or below this evening…curious. Sweaters, jackets, scarves.

These end-to-end capturings of press conferences offer a sense of the vibe and decorum, in large part due to moderator Henri Behar, who’s always been a good friend (and who allowed me to sublet his apartment in Cannes way back in ’92, which was my first time here). Among these five I attended the conferences for George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road and Todd Haynes‘ Carol. (I’m visible taking iPhone video before the start of both, at least as far as the back of my head is concerned.) Having to be at a major screening prevented my attending the Son of Saul conference, which I wanted to witness. I decided against attending the conferences for Sicario and Sea of Trees, no offense, in order to file and also, frankly, because neither film did it for me.

Last night’s Cannes Film Festival awards weren’t just curious in some respects, but almost bizarre. The jury will never cop to their deep-down motives or to the complete political picture, but I know that Cannes topper Thierry Fremaux chose a fair amount of French films to show competitively, some regarded as disappointing or mezzo-mezzo, and the decision to give three of the top awards — the Palme d’Or, Best Actor and Best Actress (or half of it) — to French recipients was, whether the jury admits it or not (or was conscious of it or not), some kind of political gesture of support. A friend wrote last night that this “had the effect of making what was a very bad showing for the French all around, as almost all of their many entries were average at best and sometimes far worse, look pretty good.”

Giving the Palme d’Or to Jacques Audiard‘s respectable but far-from-stellar Dheepan was a huge forehead-slapper. Laszlo Nemes‘ Son of Saul, which won the second-place Grand Prix award, would have been a far more deserving recipient; ditto Todd Haynes‘ Carol, which many fell to their knees over. (A producer pal: “Every year the Cannes critics rave about a film like Carol, so then the Jury goes out of its way to not to give it a prize. It’s as if they have to defy the pure merit of it all just so as to not appear ‘populist.'”)

I’m telling you that nobody and I mean nobody expected Dheepan to win anything, much less the Palme d’Or. In this sense it’s fair to say that the Cannes Jury (chaired by Joel and Ethan Coen) was completely divorced from a perceptual reality shared by nearly every journalist I talked to during the festival. Nobody even fantasized about Dheepan emerging as the Big Winner…nobody.

Journalists: “Dheepan is easily the least distinguished of Audiard’s last three films — a good or even a pretty good film but far from exceptional. At best a modest achievement.” Ethan Coen: “[The jury’s reaction to Dheepan] was swift…everybody had an enthusiasm for it. To some degree or another we all thought it was a very beautiful movie. We’re different people, some people had greater enthusiasms for other things or lesser, but in terms of this movie, everybody had some level of excitement, some high level of excitement and enthusiasm for it.” There was no overlap here. Cannes journalists were on one planet, the jury was on another.