Having missed the Sundance ’15 debut of Robert Egger‘s The Witch, I didn’t see it until a year later. Boy, was I won over! For me, the film’s critical praise and box-office success ($40 million gross vs. $4 million budget) crystalized my understanding that elevated horror had become a thing — a respectable sub-genre as well as an assurance that not all horror films needed to be aimed at primitives.

A year earlier Jennifer Kent‘s The Babadook had defined the 21st Century template; in 2018 Kent’s The Nightingale and Ari Aster‘s Hereditary fortified things, followed in 2019 by Aster’s Midsommar.

I have this idea that elevated horror was launched by the German expressionists (Robert Wiene‘s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, F. W. Murnau‘s Nosferatu) in the early 20s. Was Val Lewton‘s Cat People the first American-made flick to suggest creeps rather than show them? The prize for the best E.H. flick of the ’60s was split between Jack Clayton‘s The Innocents (’61) and Robert Wise‘s The Haunting (’63). The most explosively popular E.H. of all time, of course, was William Friedkin‘s The Exorcist (’73).

Anyway, last night I re-watched The Witch, and this time with subtitles. From my original review: “I’m very much looking forward to the subtitle option when the Bluray comes out. Ralph Ineson, blessed with one of those magnificent deep voices with a timbre that can peel wallpaper, was the only one I fully understood on a line-for-line basis. To my ears everyone else spoke 17th-Century dithah-moundah-maaaysee-whatsah.”

Now that I’ve “read” Eggers’ script, so to speak, my respect for The Witch‘s period-authentic language is greater.

More review excerpts: “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.

“If there had been a bunch of American mothers in the corridor [outside the classroom where the killing was taking place], they’d have been in there right away.” — British author Douglas Murray on last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

Yesterday’s news, of course, but I’ve only just seen this exchange between former TMZ employee Morgan Tremaine and Amber Heard attorney Elaine Bredehoft. Bredehoft tried to belittle Tremaine by suggesting that he was testifying for the Depp side in order to enjoy his 15 minutes of fame, but he turned it right around by saying “pot calling the kettle black.”

In a 6.2 article Rolling Stone ‘s Tatiana Siegel refers to Aziz Ansari’s Being Mortal as “scandal-plagued”. But how is it even remotely scandalous if it all began with costar Bill Murray angering a costar or co-worker (possibly Keke Palmer, possibly not) by inappropriately joking around on the set?

The actual scandal is not so much that Mortal has failed to resume filming after several weeks of shutdown, but that things have seemingly stalled over (wait for it) hurt Millennial feelings. Even in the wake of a sincere Murray apology…not enough!

Has this incident become the all-time winner of the Hollywood Mountain-Out-of-a-Molehill award or what? Hasn’t Palmer-or-whomever’s offense-taking compounded this minor situation beyond any concept of rational behavior or sensible scale?

This, of course, is the famous Few Good Men money scene…the climactic Tom Cruise-vs.-Jack Nicholson testimony dispute that many know by heart, because it’s almost perfectly written and beautifully directed by Rob Reiner.

Except the first 40 seconds are atrocious — a phony-ass tease in which Cruise seems to choking or otherwise freezing up…until he suddenly isn’t.

This same device was used in Shan Heder’s CODA and Mimi Leder’s On The Basis of Sex. No more of this — just saying.

Posted after the August ‘21 release of CODA:

Posted this morning (6.3) by Nellie Bowies, columnist for Common Sense with Bari Weiss;

The third paragraph partly alludes to what intrepid HE friendo Sasha Stone has been going through over the last three or four years. Courage is a rare commodity. Respect should be paid.

Andrea Peyser N.Y. Post column, posted last night (6.2):

Earlier today another Toronto-to-LaGuardia Air Canada flight was cancelled — HE’s second in 24 hours. Over bad weather, they said. And I guess I just snapped. I trudged through customs for the fourth time, found my suitcase and booked myself on a Flixbus — a ten-hour journey from downtown Toronto to midtown Manhattan (10 pm to 7:30 am)