Jeffrey Wells

HE Is Hobbling Around

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A big portion of the HE legend is a simulation of youthful vigor and bopping around like a 37-year-old…on the move, in the groove.

It’s therefore shattering to report that over the last 30-plus hours I’ve become a near-invalid. My left ankle is aching and swollen with osteoarthritis, and I can barely hobble around with a cane.

I started using the cane yesterday, and I could barely sleep through the night for the throbbing ache and discomfort. The first wake-up happened at 2:20 am. Spotty sleep for a subsequent four hours.

Richard Rushfield calls himself The Ankler. As of this moment I have just as much of a claim to that term as he does.

Not my brand, not my style, not how I do things, humiliating, etc.

I really don’t recommend this shit to anyone except my enemies. I haven’t been through this much physical distress since I slipped and fell on the ice in the Sierra Nevadas in mid-February of 2019.

I’ve been in perfect health all my life, and now this.

I’ve bought an ankle brace and gotten a strong anti-inflammatory. I’ll be seeing a podiatrist at 1:15 pm who will give me a shot of cortisone. I really hate this.

HE’s Hey 19

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7:55 pm update: I forgot to include several ’22 films for my primo list — I’ll include them in Tuesday’s bigger, more definitive rundown.

The ones I forgot to mention are Bardo, The Batman, Thirteen Lives, Armageddon Time, Argentina 1985, Apollo 10 and 1/2, Navalny, God’s Country, Watcher and Palm Trees and Power Lines — 10 in all for a total of 29. Okay, if I add Till it’ll make an even 30.

Take that, Jeremy Fassler!

Earlier: Some of these 2022 films (boldfaced) are excellent. I’ll post an expanded rundown tomorrow with a few excerpts and rimshots, but here, for now, are 2022’s finest. Okay, it was a weak year.

Earlier this afternoon HE commenter Jeremy Fassler wrote “hey, man, all you do is piss on everything! If you hate movies so much why do you maintain HE?” Or something close to that.

Every year I come up with a list of least six or seven top-top tier films combined with 12 or 13 good to pretty good ones. This year’s tally came to 19.

Hey, Fassler — have you seen Close or Happening or Vengeance? Have you considered the possibility that your taste in films might be your own and that my preferences follow their own suit?

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Musk’s Replacement Would Be A More Diplomatic Proxy…Right?

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We’re basically talking about a p.r. move. The Elon Musk proxy would essentially be a facilitator, a smoother-over. He/she wouldn’t change the fact that Musk, Twitter’s enfant terrible CEO, wants to bring about the subjugation and, if possible, the ruination of the fanatical wokester left — a cause that in itself exudes a certain honor as wokesters aren’t just culturally suppressive Stalinists but Trotskyites. Alas, Musk has counter-balanced that horror by being impolitic and a blunderer.

Fourth “Tar” Viewing

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I watched Tar again a couple of nights ago. This time for the subtitles — every line clear and fine, no breathy muttering or whispers getting in the way. But this time I was bothered by Florian Hoffmeister’s occasionally under-lighted cinematography. I’d expected Todd Field’s film to look a tiny bit sharper or more vivid on the Sony OLED, and it wasn’t. Every shot seemed a shade too dim and subdued, at times even murky. That was it — my patience was at an end. No more reassessments .

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Across The Great Divide

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Ask any half-knowledgable film fan about a 15 year-old western called The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, and he/she will say “aces, a classic…an art western that put Andrew Dominik on the map.” But critics were divided back in ‘07, and one critic in particular, the grumpy Lou Lumenick of the New York Post, gave it a lousy one-and-a-half stars. I replied that within the critical community, trashing James was a form of blasphemy.

It took a few years for the smart set to recognize that 2007 was one of the greatest movie years of all time — right up there with 1939, 1962, 1971 and 1999.

Spreading “EEAAO” Anxiety

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9:40 pm: I tweeted a reply to Zoe Rose Bryant as follows: “Hey, Zoë, I’m a straight white dude, okay, but Jordan Ruimy’s parents are North African so he doesn’t quite qualify. Oscar death to EEAAO!”

Bryant, whose award-season sentiments are basically or mostly “everything is wonderful…every film, every performance…love it all!”…Bryant has bravely blocked me so my tweet doesn’t exist on Twitter. So here it is.

What Zoe meant, in part, is that despite his ethnic heritage, Jordan sounds like a “white dude.” He has that “white dude” attitude. Meaning that he doesn’t seem to understand movies as fully as she does.

White-Haired James Gunn Era Upon Us…Phooey

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Before yesterday’s 2:15 pm Lincoln Square screening of Avatar 2 they showed the trailer for James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 (Disney, 5.5.23). My spirit sank — another Marvel attitude goofball fan–service comedy in space. The patience of Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill once again tried by Dave Bautista’s Drax the Destroyer…really bad for the soul, man. Pit of depression.

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