This is pretty good. Luc Besson‘s flamboyant attitude is semi-amusing. At first I was saying, “Wait, she shoots four or five guys in two seconds?” Then I saw her pull the bullet out and said, “Yeah!” Boilerplate: “Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is a Taiwan-residing woman forced to work as a drug mule for the mob. The drug implanted in her body inadvertently leaks into her system, changing her into a superhuman. She can absorb knowledge instantaneously, is able to move objects with her mind, and chooses not to feel pain or other discomforts.” Lucy pops on 7.25.

The second I saw the pilot-windshield POV in a plane crash sequence from the trailer for Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken (Universal, 12.25), I knew it had been respectfully stolen from a very similar shot in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Foreign Correspondent (’40). Obviously. Hitchcock achieved the effect of water smashing through the cockpit windshield by sending a couple of hundred gallons through a rice-paper projection screen. Jolie reportedly achieved the same effect in a similar physical manner.

Unbroken ocean-impact shot #1

Foreign Correspondent ocean-impact shot #1

A trailer popping in mid-July for Jean-Marc Vallee‘s Wild (Fox Searchlight, 12.5) tells me it may turn up at Venice/Telluride/Toronto. Based on Cheryl Strayed‘s “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail” and a screenplay adaptation by Nick Hornby, you can tell it’s a stirring, disciplined, well-mounted thing. Thoughtful, internal. A woman in a difficult transition struggling against the elements and coming out of that with…something new. Certainly with stronger leg muscles. Spiritual cross-currents, layered, brilliant editing, etc. The Venice/Telluride/Toronto strategy, if indeed Fox Searchlight is playing that card, will naturally mean the launch of a Best Actress campaign for Reese Witherspoon. But first things first.

You can tell right off the bat that Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken (Universal, 12.25) is handsome, exacting, strikingly performed and generally well made. Obviously. But…Jesus, I’m almost afraid to say this out of fear that Universal marketing execs will take revenge when it comes to Phase One and Phase Two buys. I’ll put it as delicately as possible. While I expect that I’ll probably be genuinely moved and seriously impressed during my first viewing, I’m already getting the feeling that I may not want to see Unbroken twice…no offense. It’s obviously dealing with loads of strife, struggle and pain, and once may be enough. On top of which we’ve all gone through the “alone and adrift at sea” thing twice over the last two years (via Life of Pi and All Is Lost). And we’ve all suffered in various Japanese P.O.W. camps via The Bridge on the River Kwai, King Rat, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and The Railway Man. I’m not saying it won’t be a very good or great film. I’m just saying there’s baggage.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Birdman, or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance (Fox Searchlight, 10.17) will open the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday, 8.27. Which gives Inarritu and his cast (Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts) enough time to fly to the Telluride Film Festival for screenings beginning…oh, let’s make it Saturday, 8.30, so as not to jam them too hard. They probably won’t make the picnic but no worries. Venice runs from 8.27 through 9.6. Telluride runs from 8.29 to 9.1. And the Toronto Film Festival — sloppy Birdman thirds, guys, but them’s the breaks — is from 9.4 to 9.14.

Like everyone else I’ve seen two episodes of HBO’s The Leftovers, and like everyone else I’m just about done with it. There’s something very, very wrong with the idea of people in a small leafy community acting strange and surly and curiously off-balance because a sudden cataclysmic event has proven beyond a doubt that an absolute cosmic authority rules over all creation. After living with uncertainty all their lives about whether or not there might be some kind of scheme or purpose to existence (i.e., probably not), here is a group of people who suddenly know there’s absolutely a plan or a design of some kind, like something out of the Old Testament only scarier and creepier, and that there’s some kind of all-knowing, all-seeing judgment system that resulted in 2% of the world’s population rising up and into the white light…and this is how they respond? I don’t know how I’d react or how West Hollywood or Beverly Hills would react as a community, but I’m 95%…make that 97% certain that the vast majority in my realm would do more than just slouch around and act strange and surly and shoot packs of feral dogs with high-powered rifles and optionally join a spiritual order that requires no talking and smoking a lot of cigarettes. I’m profoundly disappointed with the imaginings of co-creators Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta. My interest in their series has dropped precipitously over the last two weeks. Little Justin Theroux and that morose expression on his unshaven face…silent, stone-faced Amy Brenneman, Liv Tyler being told to chop down a perfectly healthy tree…the dog-shooting guy…you can have ’em. I’ll probably watch this lame-ass series for the next couple of Sundays out of boredom but I’m definitely not into it and I’m just looking around for an excuse to watch something else.

David Mackenzie‘s Starred Up, a father-son prison drama, wound up with a 98% Rotten Tomatoes rating when it opened in England last March. (I naturally missed it when it played Telluride a little less than 10 months ago.) Boilerplate: “19-year-old Eric (Jack O’Connell) is transferred to the same adult prison facility as his estranged father (greasy Ben Mendelsohn)…as his explosive temper quickly finds him enemies in both prison authorities and fellow inmates — and his already volatile relationship with his father is pushed past breaking point, Eric is approached by a volunteer psychotherapist (Rupert Friend), who runs an anger management group for prisoners,” etc.

After some 11 years of being only sporadically viewable at special venues, Thom Andersen‘s Los Angeles Plays Itself will soon be distributed by Cinema Guild, presumably via VOD and (one hopes) Bluray. I missed an American Cinematheque showing of an updated, remastered version last September. Will there be hassles from rights holders about unlicensed clips from God knows how many Los Angeles-based films of the last 70 years? Fair use should offer protection, right?

“Andersen’s new and improved version of his influential, paradigm-shifting and pretty damn funny essay film, Los Angeles Plays Itself, [is about] how the city has been used as both backdrop/stand-in location and as literally itself,” Robert Koehler wrote on 9.20.13.

Before I saw the kidnapping scene in Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Fargo (18 years ago!), I had never heard the word “unguent.” And I haven’t heard it since. If I burn my hand I’ll put vaseline or petroleum jelly on it but the word “unguent” will never be acknowledged, much less spoken. And yet the Coens have some kind of fixation on this word because it’s turned up again on page 50 of their script of Hail Ceasar!, a dryly sardonic period comedy.

Hail Caesar! is actually the title of a Biblical-era film-within-the-film, seemingly based on Quo Vadis. The tone of the Coens’ script is…oh, half Barton Fink and half Burn After Reading…something like that. Pic is currently being cast and will shoot in the fall.

It basically follows the wily maneuverings of George Clooney‘s Eddie Mannix, a real-deal physical production chief and all-around fixer for MGM in the ’50s. Hail Caesar! is set in 1951, and the name of the studio is Capitol Pictures.

Earlier today TheWrap‘s Steve Pond posted an interview with WETA’s Joe Letteri that includes a discussion prompted by (and referring to) a recent HE riff about Dawn of the Planet of the Apes star Andy Serkis deserving an acting nomination. Serkis has stated in interviews that his performance as Caesar is his own and that WETA has essentially provided “digital makeup.” Letteri’s response: “I know that Andy has used that metaphor of digital makeup before, but I think that he was just trying to explain it to an audience that was not technically very savvy. The difference is that makeup is passive. And the more makeup you put on, the more it actually deadens the performance. [Which is why] we sometimes need to enhance the performance. So yes, we do make those sorts of translations all the time. Sometimes we have to exaggerate it so it reads in camera.”

Hilarious! In a very polite and respectful way, Letteri has helped to kill Serkis’ shot at a Best Actor nomination. Serkis to Letteri backstage at an awards event five or six months hence: “Thanks, Joe!” The best Serkis can hope for at this stage, I guess, is some kind of special Oscar nomination.

You can tell right away from the teaser that The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 (Lionsgate, 11.21) is going to suck eggs. On top of which there’s no validity in an all-white production design scenario any more (not to mention the use of all-white Star Wars drone militia). In any event I prefer the same renegade video-cut-in maneuver in Robert Zemeckis‘s Used Cars (’78).

All the Best Picture contenders feel soft on this or that level. I’ve been hearing for a long while that Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman is a stone knockout and possibly the most home-runnish of the pack, but mainstreamers sometimes resist brilliance because…I don’t know, they don’t find it reassuring or something. People are weird. Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken — sure, okay, but it has to be about something more than “my God, he survived…what strength, what never-say-die spirit!” I’m sorry but that sounds like a Gregorian chant or a church hymn of some kind. Christopher Nolan‘s Interstellar seems soft because Nolan makes brilliant-but-cold films as a rule. J.C. Chandor‘s A Most Violent Year seems soft because a 1980s New York-centric Sidney Lumet crime film doesn’t feel Best Picture-ish, or at least “Best Picture-ish” by the standards of the softies who want love, comfort and reflections of their own struggles, longings and fears. Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Inherent Vice…too diffuse, too stoned, too late ’60s, too Lewbowski-like?

I know this is embarassing, scattershot bullshit. Somebody stop me. Naah, too late.

Ava Duvernay‘s Selma…quite possibly but there are 250 ways to screw up a movie about the ’60s civil rights movement, and if DuVernay thought of 175 of them before she began shooting she’s a genius. However expertly it unfolds, David Fincher‘s Gone Girl will probably register as too cold and ruthless for a Best Picture contender. Jean Marc Vallee‘s Wild…maybe but what can happen during a long hike except perseverance and the kindness of strangers? James Marsh‘s Theory of Everything — this year’s A Beautiful Mind. Jason Reitman‘s Men, Women & Children — a little bit of Ron Howard‘s Parenthood mixed in with a sprinkling of Little Children.

The odds favor Birdman ecstasy in Telluride and Toronto, followed by Mark Harris saying “it’s only September, for God’s sake.”