The Altmans are a family of Jewish neurotic grown-ups who come home for their father’s funeral in Shawn Levy‘s This Is Where I Leave You (Warner Bros., 9.19). Mom is played by well-tended shiksa Jane Fonda, and the four kids are Judd (Jason Bateman), Wendy (Tina Fey), Paul (Corey Stoll) and Phillip (Adam Driver). Driver obviously resembles no one in the family, and I mean not even a tiny bit. Not with his long John Carradine face and those black-weasel eyes and that huge honker and that tall, lanky, broad-shouldered bod. He doesn’t even look like a cousin. Driver’s lineage is pretty much all English, but he looks part Russian, part Mongolian, part ape and part Jewish Navajo. I didn’t much like the film but every time Driver was on-screen I was saying to myself, “Why was he cast? He’s obviously an alien. If Levy and his casting director decided to go wildly inappropriate, why not cast Tracy Morgan?” The obvious solution would have been to make Driver an adopted son. Two or three lines of dialogue and the problem would be solved. Brilliant, guys.

In the view of Empire‘s Dan Jolin, Scott Frank‘s A Walk Among The Tombstones (Universal, 9.19) is “in many ways the anti-Taken. Matt Scudder, an ex-cop played by a grizzled Liam Neeson, “doesn’t pack heat. Although he throws a mean punch, violence is something he avoids if possible, preferring to talk his way out of tricky situations. His particular set of skills involves wheedling information out of people (without resorting to torture), pounding pavements and having “a strong bladder”. He’s an old-school shamus, suspicious of cellphones and computers. Frank has unapologetically served up something talky, complex, grown-up.

L.A. Times critic Betsy Sharkey believes that most of the offerings from the 2014 festivals (Cannes, Telluride and Toronto) have been underwhelming so far, and that a kind of “void” is in the air — a sense of “movie malaise.” She’s not the only one. I’ve heard “this has been a weak year so far” from two distribution executives over the past couple of weeks, and where there’s smoke there’s usually fire. “There was no Gravity to lift us up” at the end of Toronto, Sharkey writes. “No 12 Years a Slave to leave us weeping. No American Beauty. No Slumdog Millionaire. No Silver Linings Playbook. No handful of movies that you just know will take hold, capture the imagination of filmgoers, if not the awards. If ever there has been a year looking for a dark horse, 2014 is it.”

I don’t know what Sharkey has seen or not seen, but so far this year I’ve been levitated and gobsmacked by Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s Birdman (i.e., “the new 8 1/2“), Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan, Damian Szifron‘s Wild Tales, Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood, James Marsh‘s The Theory of Everything, Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel, Steven Knight‘s Locke, Craig Johnson‘s The Skeleton Twins, Damien Chazelle‘s Whiplash and Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies. They all had their big debuts at Sundance, Cannes, Telluride or Toronto.

It’s Monday morning and everyone needs to calm down about The Imitation Game having won the Toronto Film Festival People’s Choice Award. It’s certainly a classy, highly efficient Richard Attenborough film but there is some evidence to suggest that the Toronto win was pushed through by Benedict Cumberbatch’s hopped-up fan base. Mr. Lizard Face (Cumberbatch has said he looks like “something between an otter and something people find vaguely attractive”) is very hot with women in their 20s and 30s right now, in large part due to the BBC/PBS Sherlock series. On 9.10 Vanity Fair‘s Joanna Robinson reported that during a post-Imitation Game discussion a female audience member asked Cumberbatch if she could “feast on [your] yumminess.” Cumberbatch’s response: “I did not go into this q & a about a gay icon who killed himself at 41 thinking I’d have to answer questions from someone who wants to taste my deliciousness.” There’s no proof that this yummy deliciousness is what led a majority of female and gay TIFF fans to put Imitation Game at the top of the list, but you can’t say that alleged Cumberbatch lust didn’t have at least something to do with snagging the Big Vote.

I can’t think of a single interesting thing to say about A.O. Scott‘s “The Death of Adulthood in American Culture,” which appears in today’s Sunday N.Y. Times magazine. I despise submental, diaper-boy humor in comedies (Zak Galfianakis, etc.) but I’m sick of bitching about that. Maybe it’s best to just re-run an HE piece called “Party On” that I posted in July 2006? Scott’s piece is broader and thinkier but mine addressed similar concerns.

“There’s a trend in movies about GenX guys in their early to mid 30s who’re having trouble growing up,” I began. “Guys who can’t seem to get rolling with a career or commit to a serious relationship or even think about becoming productive, semi-responsible adults, and instead are working dead-end jobs, hanging with the guys all the time, watching ESPN 24/7, eating fritos, getting wasted and popping Vicodins.

“There have probably been at least fifteen or twenty films that have come out over the last four or five years about 30ish guys finding it hard to get real.

“The 40 Year-Old Virgin was basically about a bunch of aging testosterone monkeys doing this same old dance (with Steve Carell’s character being a slightly more mature and/or sensitive variation). Virgin director-writer Judd Apatow has made a career out of mining this psychology. Simon Pegg’s obese layabout friend in Shaun of the Dead was another manifestation — a 245-pound Dupree.

“Prolonged adolescence is an old pattern, of course. The difference these days is that practitioner-victims are getting older and older.

As my first official act upon returning from the Toronto Film Festival, I’m getting rid of my Masters of Cinema Blurays of Double Indemnity and Red River, both of which are all but smothered in grain. I’m trading them in for store value at Ameoba. The Universal Home Video Bluray of Double Indemnity and the Criterion Bluray of Red River are beautiful — full satisfaction. From here on I’ll think twice before buying another Masters of Cinema Bluray.

The 49 year-old Robert Downey sounds like a satisfied, fair-minded guy with a good amount of smarts and self-knowledge in Krista Smith’s interview piece in the current Vanity Fair. But the old truism about a performer’s personal happiness and stability having little if anything to do with how exciting or magnetic their “act” might be still applies. Downey was a fascinating actor for 20-plus years, and then he became a corporate franchise megastar starting with Iron Man in ’08. I really, really don’t care how wealthy he is now (although Vanity Fair‘s editors clearly do) or how close to ruination he was during his druggie period of the late ’80s and ’90s. I only know that my favorite Downey performance was in James Toback‘s Black and White (’99), and that my second favorite was his crime reporter character in David Fincher‘s Zodiac. I also know that talented people leading unhealthy, high-throttle lifestyles can sometimes exude peak-energy highs. From my vantage point John Lennon was much, much cooler when he was struggling with his demons (’64 to ’74) than when he became a happy house-husband. Jackie Gleason and Sid Ceasar seemed much cooler when they were live TV madmen in the ’50s and, from what I’ve read, boozing almost every night in midtown Manhattan. I’ve been told by more than one friend that I was a funnier, more whoo-whoo type of guy when I was drinking…fair enough.

Chris Evans was on my Air Canada flight last night — five and a half dull, bordering-on-miserable hours from Toronto to LAX. He sat five rows ahead of me. He seemed to be wearing the exact same black baseball cap and blue flannel shirt as in the photo below. He had a carry-on bag and a modest 21-inch suitcase that he wheeled off. A big, black, bad-ass SUV met him at the arrivals level so he avoided the mob and the baggage carousel. I was thinking about introducing myself and saying “I didn’t see Before We Go but I’m sorry Scott Foundas called it lukewarm” but I thought better of it.

Pete Hammond‘s rundown of the Toronto Film Festival highlights isn’t too far off the mark. Apart, that is, from his mystifying admiration for Rahmin Bahrani‘s 99 Homes (which I vivisected in a 9.2. post-Telluride review) and his too-kindly assessment of Jennifer Aniston‘s chances of getting into the Best Actress derby with her performance in Cake. Everyone agrees that James Marsh‘s The Theory of Everything achieved the biggest Best Picture splash, and that Eddie Redmayne‘s portrayal of Stephen Hawking is a lock for Best Actor accolades. (I’m not as certain about Felicity Jones for Best Actress but it’s entirely possible.) Julianne Moore‘s Still Alice performance (i.e., first-stage Alzheimers) seemed to generate a fair amount of Best Actress talk toward the festival’s end, but I didn’t want to see it and I still don’t — I’m going to have to force myself. Morten Tyldum‘s The Imitation Game won the Grolsch People’s Choice Winner for favorite TIFF film, but then the rave responses out of Telluride told us it would be a hit with Joe and Jane Popcorn types. So far the preferred Best Picture choice among hipper, more cultivated types is Birdman, of course.

Kino Lorber’s Bluray of Richard Brooks‘ Elmer Gantry pops on 9.23. I don’t know what the aspect ratio will be but I’m guessing 1.66:1, in keeping with the United Artists standard for non-Scope films of that period. (1.85 fascists need to acknowledge the 1.66 masking in the clip below.) If you’re a real movie star like Burt Lancaster was at the time, you can sell this scene. But you need a certain largeness of spirit and stand-up confidence. Who could do this scene today if Gantry were to be remade? Who could generate at least a semblance of this planted, here-I-am energy? Chris Evans? Chris Hemsworth? Give me a name. Update: See? No submissions.

In 2006 Fox Home Video released a Bluray of the director’s cut of Ridley Scott‘s Kingdom of Heaven, which ran about 190 minutes or a bit more than 45 minutes longer than the theatrical version. On 10.7 Fox is issuing a four-disc roadshow director’s cut Bluray that pays tribute to the film’s ten-year anniversary. The only difference is that it runs about 194 minutes due to the inclusion of an overture, intermission and entr-acte music.

Marquee of Laemmle’s Fairfax, taken in early January 2006, where the 190-minute director’s cut of Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven played for a two-week period. This is where I first saw this far superior version.

Here’s the piece I wrote about the longer cut: “It’s not a rumor and there’s absolutely no question about it: Ridley Scott’s 190-minute version of Kingdom of Heaven is a considerably better film than the 145-minute theatrical version that opened in May 2005.

“I saw it yesterday afternoon at the seedy-but-functioning Laemmle Fairfax in West Hollywood. The projection and sound were fine, but why is a must-see, calling-all-cars revival like this playing in a theatrical equivalent of a doghouse?

It turns out I allowed my gushing enthusiasm for Bill Pohlad‘s Love & Mercy, a critical hit at the Toronto Film Festival over the last few days, to muddle my understanding of the likely distribution scenario. There’s no question that Paul Dano‘s performance as Brian Wilson in Pohlad’s film is a staggering, world-class channelling, but that doesn’t mean shit in the larger commercial scheme. Roadside Attractions apparently intends to open Love & Mercy in 2015, and not even give it a one-week qualifying run later this year to attract year-end accolades. Pohlad reiterated this morning that discussions about the release strategy “are ongoing” but I’ve heard elsewhere that Roadside considers it a 2015 release…period, end of story.

A friend says “if they’re smart they’ll release it in the summer…it ‘s the Beach Boys, man!” I said to him, “You can’t be serious. You’re joking, right? Love & Mercy is not about escapism or sunblock or surfboards or Mike Love‘s bullshit view of the world. It’s about the creative highs and personal lows of a fragile, melancholy man (i.e., Wilson) with dreams in his head….there’s nothing ‘Fun Fun Fun’ about it in the least except for one no-big-deal beach scene and one minor sailing scene.” “Yes,” the guy said, “but it can be marketed to the Beach Boys crowd. There are plenty of fun scenes in it.” What Beach Boys crowd?, I asked. Retirees wearing sensible shoes and thinking about moving to assisted-living facilities? “Yes, the crowd that knows about and cares who Brian Wilson is. I went to his concert at the Greek. It was all paunchy stomachs and thinning hair, my friend.”