“I was mildly okay with Ron Howard‘s Rush (Universal 9.20) for the most part, but I haven’t felt moved to review it. I’m still not there. I’m waiting for the insight or ignition. I admired the craft and verisimilitude and the ’60s/’70s vibe, and I enjoyed the visceral vroom-vroom…but it didn’t stay with me, possibly because I didn’t sense much of an undercurrent (or at least an undercurrent that meant something to me personally). Is it because I didn’t care all that much about James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) or Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl)? The former struck me as an instinctual, good-natured, hot-dog libertine with a lion-like mane; the other as an edgy, screwed-down, not-especially-likable hardass.” — from 9.22.13 post called “Waiting Game.’

This has more of a sense of fluid visual grace and…whatever, more of a certain directorial authority and panache and je ne sais quoi than some Liam Neeson paycheck action movies I could point to, even though it’s just an effing Dolce & Gabbana ad. I would have been repelled if McConaughey had made a move on Johansson but he didn’t so we’re cool. “The dress likes you back”?

Marketing-Publicity Department for Major-League Film Distribution Company Seeking Administrative Assistant. Only the most alert, polite, focused and fastidious applicants will be considered. Nice smile, social skills, strong organizational tendencies. Efficient but without any pre-set attitudes or belief systems. We basically want someone who is, to coin a term, “soft clay.” We would prefer a candidate who doesn’t have a college degree in film studies or film criticism. In fact, the less you know (or the less you pretend to know) the better. Absolutely no knowledge of online movie websites or names of significant journalist-critics preferred. Should any journalist-critic happen to call, we would prefer that they talk to someone who has no clue who they might be, who will ask what dead-tree publication they work for, who will ask them to spell their name and the name of their publication or website, and who will also feign total ignorance about anything and everything including whether it’s sunny or raining outside. Long hours guaranteed, but well worth the investment for the contacts you’ll acquire. A minimum of two work-related references required.

The first thing I said as I watched this trailer for Akiva Goldsman‘s Winter’s Tale (Warner Bros., 2.14.14) was “uh-oh…romantic time travel…based on a 30 year-old novel….a cousin of Jeannot Szwarc‘s Somewhere In Time.” (Which I’ve always respected, by the way.) The second thing I said was “who’s the babe?” Answer: 24 year-old British actress Jessica Brown Findlay. Then I flinched when Colin Farrell, marooned in 2013, half-moaned and teared up when he saw Findlay’s photo. Steve McQueen would have never done that — never “show” emotion, always suggest it by covering it up. Another rule of thumb is that any film in which any character loudly yells out “no!” (as in “no, don’t let that happen!” or “no, don’t let him get away!”) is a problem. Winter’s Tale is therefore (and I’m not delighted to imply this) most likely a problem.

Being a youngish guy, Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet seems vaguely invested in geek-friendly movie fare (anything CG-driven or based on a superhero comic-book or franchise of any kind), or is at least more willing to tolerate this crap than I am. So when a guy like Brevet says he’s not that aroused by the latest trailer for Jose Padilha‘s Robocop (MGM, 2.12.14), that could mean trouble. I am personally unable to consider this possibility as I’m a huge fan of Padilha‘s Elite Squad: The Enemy Within. I interviewed Padilha in January 2012 — here‘s the piece.

By giving an R rating to Stephen Frears‘ Philomena, one of the mildest and tidiest movies ever made for the over-35 market, the MPAA’s ratings board has once again reminded the world that they really do live in Bazonkerville. Seriously, who’s their pharmacist? As The Weinstein Co.’s Harvey Weinstein explained a few hours ago on CBS This Morning, the R rating is over a single “f” word as a movie can have one “f” and still get a PG-13. Honestly? It wouldn’t mess with the film’s integrity that much if the second “fuck” were to be over-dubbed. Butter wouldn’t melt in this movie’s mouth. Harvey says he’s worried about conservative-minded audiences in the South and Midwest being spooked by an R, but I suspect he’s playing this up because he doesn’t want urban audiences to think that Philomena is too soft.

In the booklet inside the new Masters of Cinema Red River Bluray there’s an excerpt from a 1970 Film Comment interview with Red River screenwriter Borden Chase. Changes that were made to Chase’s screenplay by director Howard Hawks are discussed with interviewer Jim Kitses. One of these was Hawks’ decision to cut down John Ireland‘s Cherry Valance role, allegedly due to resentment on Hawks’ part about Ireland having scored with a woman Hawks had been having relations with. Hawks dismissed Chase’s account (which came allegedly came straight from John Wayne) in a subsequent interview. He asked if Chase was sloshed when he said it, and said he “was so full of shit.” I don’t believe Chase was fantasizing, but that’s me.

At first I was excited about the Eureka Entertainment/Masters of Cinema Bluray of Howard Hawks’ Red River, which arrived yesterday. That 1.78:1 menu image is what got me — highly detailed, some apparent DNR refinement, deep velvety blacks, that gleaming Ansel Adams quality. Perhaps that horribly depressing 10.18 review by Bluray.com’s Dr. Svet Atanasov was misleading? Perhaps Hawks’ 1948 classic has been bumped up after all and it won’t be covered in an Egyptian grainstorm? 60 seconds after popping the disc in my hopes were dashed. No bump, no uptick, no nothing — to me this new Red River looks exactly like it has looked for decades. The only difference is that now you can see the grain structure more clearly plus it has vertical scratch marks — terrific! Yes, it doesn’t appear to have been fiddled with. Yes, it honestly looks like film, speckles and all. But as I wrote on 10.21, “When I buy a Bluray [of a classic film] I want something better than the last DVD, and if that means a Bluray with ‘problematic degraining’ then please fucking give me that.” Steppenwolf once sang “goddam the pusher man.” Hollywood Elsewhere’s song lyric is “goddam the purist grain monks.”

Default main menu image for Masters of Cinema’s Red River Bluray/.

Everybody loves Bruce Dern, but that’s beside the point when it comes to the Best Actor mosh-pit situation. Dern’s performance as the snarly, checked-out, beer-slurping Woody in Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska has an indelible something-or-other quality that may stick to industry ribs when they see it…or it won’t. But there’s a lot of competition out there so how can the friends-of-Bruce rally round and push him along so that at least he finishes fifth? Because from where I’m sitting the chances of Dern, winner of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actor prize, even being nominated don’t look all that great.

I really hope I’m wrong but if I am please tell me how. Have I posted this riff before? Maybe so but I need to go over it one more time because, you know, the nomination ballots have to be turned in no later than Sunday midnight. Kidding!

A couple of weeks ago I did a phoner with Motel Life star Stephen Dorff, who for my money gives one of the most touching performances of his life as a mentally challenged one-legged loser gimp. Alan and Gabriel Polsky‘s film (Front Row, 11.8) is a gentle lower-depths drama about a couple of brothers, Frank and Jerry Lee Flannagan (Emile Hirsch, Dorff), whose morose, hand-to-mouth life goes from bad to worse when Jerry Lee accidentally kills a kid with a hit-and-run. Dorff and I had a nice smooth chat — he’s one of those guys you can say anything to and he’ll bat it right back without skipping a beat. He gets the cosmic totality of things. Anyway, I edited and converted the Dorff file to mp3 and….I don’t what happened but it’s gone. This hasn’t happened in a long time, but I fucked up and I admit it.

Four or five days ago a Russian-subtitled trailer appeared for Jim Jarmusch‘s dryly perverse Only Lovers Left Alive (Sony Classics, sometime in 2014?), but so far no English-language version has popped up. I realize it won’t open in this country until sometime next year, but obviously a good trailer has been cut together and everyone’s digging it so why not issue a subtitle-free version? Where’s the harm? This is a very droll, no-laugh-funny vampire movie about middle-aged goth hipster musician types — a nocturnal lifestyle movie that Lou Reed would have loved. (Maybe Jarmusch showed it to him before he died?) After seeing it in Cannes I called it “a perfect William S. Burroughsian nocturnal hipster mood trip…I sank into it like heroin.”

The night before last I watched Susan Bellows‘ JFK, a four-hour American Experience documentary that will premiere on Monday, 11.11 and Tuesday, 11.12. How does it differ from the numerous other docs about John F. Kennedy? It’s a bit more candid about some of the dicey personal stuff. Kennedy’s carelessness (and in some instances recklessness) as a youth, the constant lying about Addison’s disease, his many marital infidelities (but none of the sordid details). There’s more of a warts-and-all sense of a man and less of that familiar tribute tone that always creeps in when a beloved figure is examined. Otherwise it reshuffles and deals the same deck of cards. How could it not? As others have, Bellows reports that Kennedy found his footing with the Cuban Missile Crisis and that he was looking at an almost certain re-election in ’64. Death saved him, of course, from having to either extricate U.S. forces from Vietnam (which he would have had a tough time doing altogether) or increase their strength and go down the same road that eventually engulfed Lyndon Johnson. What got me about this doc more than anything else? Those drums again.

I’m actually a little more interested in the Nova “Cold Case” show (airing on 11.13) that will re-examine all the forensic evidence in the JFK assassination by the light of current technology.