Today’s emotional testimony from Isaac Baruch, Johnny Depp’s friend and neighbor, was quite something. Persuasive, I mean. Not conclusively but Baruch’s words got to me. It made me think of Jordan Ruimy’s article about the Depp-Heard libel trial (“Johnny Depp: Innocent #MeToo Victim?“).
Speaking as one who had a vodka-and-lemonade problem in the ‘90s and then an off-and-on wine dependency in the aughts, I think people change when booze gets hold of them during stressful times. Dark stuff comes out. And if you’re in conflict with the wrong kind of person under the influence of alcohol, it can trigger you. With some people alcohol can be a terrible influencer.
A few days ago I heard about a 3.31 Orange County research screening for Peter Farrelly‘s The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Apple +). I heard nothing about how it played. The screening indicates, of course, that the film will open later this year, probably in the fall.
I’ve read Donohue and Molloy’s book, and it’s quite the episodic journey — an apolitical adventure about the Vietnam War and being in harm’s way with Donohue, the lead protagonist (Zac Efron), somehow making his way through all the dangers and red tape and whatnot.
The book reads like a kind of working-class love story — a saga about 20something guys who were serving (or had served) in the Vietnam War during the mid to late ’60s…a time when many in the antiwar left were professing hate or contempt for soldiers for bringing all kinds of horror to the lives of Vietnamese citizens (i.e., My Lai).
If Farrelly’s film follows the tone and attitude of the book, The Greatest Beer Run Ever will not — repeat, not — bear much resemblance to Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Coming Home, Da 5 Bloods or any other high-profile Vietnam flick that comes to mind.
When I think of the Vietnam War, I think of the furies swirling around and howling in the ears of those bigwigs who sent 58,000 men to their deaths. The book certainly isn’t channelling any kind of guilt-trip narrative. It stays with Donohue’s perspective start to finish, and doesn’t really deal with the war in any kind of Oliver Stone sense. It’s about the perspective of soldiers who were just trying to survive, and who probably felt little if any allegiance for U.S military objectives at the time.
Set in 1967 and early ’68, the book is Donohue’s first-hand account (he was 26 at the time) of having decided to use his ex-Marine and merchant seaman credentials to get over to Vietnam and somehow track down his buddies and tell them they’re loved by the gang back home and bring them a case of two of beer as tokens of same.
Donohue’s message in a nutshell: “Don’t let the antiwar left get you down, bruhs. We know you’re living through hell but we want you to know that we care about you, and here’s a brewski to prove it.”
Every three or four years I post the mesmerizing single-shot finale from Michelangelo Antonioni‘s The Passenger — six minutes and thirty-six seconds, slow and deliberate and about as fascinating as this kind of “one-er” has ever been.
I keep posting it because someone who’s never heard of this film might be inspired to watch it. And yet I honestly suspect that your typical Millennial or Zoomer would not have the patience to stick with this 1975 release. Plus it’s a lot less catchy and diverting than Blow-Up, which most Antonioni novices respect and appreciate once they finally sit down with it.
The Passenger is a little tough to watch, and is certainly not a grabber. You have to commit yourself to the whole thing start to finish or it won’t work. It represents a good kind of narrative slowness…thenutritiouskind.
I’ve always regarded The Passenger as a despairing mood-trip thing…end-of-the-road nihilism for people of taste. Like Michel Franco‘s Sundown, it’s a “fuck it” film that stays with you.
An hour ago I happened upon “The Passenger: One Epic Shot,” an ASC 8.24.20 article by David E. Williams. The subtitle reads “How a cinematographic challenge became a sublime piece of production virtuosity in the hands of [dp] Luciano Tovoli.”
The article contains a great shot of the ceiling-mounted camera rig that allowed the shot to happen.
I was all set to attend last Monday’s all-media screening of Mark Wahlberg and Rosalind Ross‘s Father Stu (Sony, 4.13). I was concerned last May (almost a full year ago) when I saw those photos of a fat Wahlberg in a crew cut. (I wrote a riff about them titled “Leapin Lizards!“.) Then I thought a bit about religious inspirational aspect, which doesn’t sit well with mystical types like myself. Especially when it’s coming from conservative types. Then I realized Stu’s story is partly about coping with a degenerative muscle disease.
I wound up missing the screening because of a car issue, but I might have found an excuse to miss it anyway. Not to mention the 44% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Yes, part of the reason Father Stu isn’t doing well with critics is because of the right-wing Catholicism associations, and probably because of Mel Gibson costarring. Critics don’t want to be friendly to rightwing faith movies. I understand that. Then again I don’t like rightwing Catholic faith movies either.
Devoted admirers of John FordTheManWhoShotLibertyValance (‘62) have long acknowledged that the weakest feature is the casting of the 53-year-old James Stewart and the 54 year-old John Wayne as Ransom Stoddard and Tom Doniphon, characters who are (or should be) at least 20 if not 25 years younger. No one disputes this.
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This morning I mentionedThe Godfather‘s second-act beating scene in which Sonny Corleone (James Caan) laughably air-punches Carlo (Gianni Russo). There’s no missing the mistake (between 2:05 and 2:10) because the shot is perfectly positioned to catch it — a nice clean side-angle. And it’s so distinct that it takes you right out of the film.
Not long after HE regular DTHXC_1138 fixed it, and he did so within a minute or two. An hour ago he uploaded it to YouTube. Excellent job! Now it looks right — Sonny is actually punching Carlo now.
The original air-punch is in the second YouTube clip, of course — the one that runs for 3:11. DTHXC_1138’s digital correction (four seconds) is clickable on top.
Michel Franco‘s Sundown has been streamable for a few weeks now. (Apple, Amazon, Vudu.) Surely a few more HE regulars have seen it by now? 2022 is nearly one-third over, and I still think Sundown is the strangest, most unusual, most off-on-its-own-wavelength film of the year so far.
Sundown is basically a drop-out movie like Michelangelo Antonioni‘s The Passenger (’75), but I wish it had less plot, which is to say less motivational explanation. I was wishing it would just devote itself to the idea of pissing off and nihilistically doing whatever the hell. But it’s not, and that, for me, is a slight problem.
It’s about Neil (Tim Roth), a wealthy co-heir to a pig-slaughtering business who’s vacationing in Acapulco with his sister Allison (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her two teenage children.
Allison and the kids pack and leave when news comes that she and Neil’s mother has died. But Neil decides against going — he lies that his passport is missing, and returns to Acapulco, and then checks into a shitty little hotel. And that’s it, at least for a while. Neil drinks a lot of beer, finds a thritysomething girlfriend (Iazua Larios), hangs out and basically does jack shit.
From Anthony Lane’s New Yorker review: “Here, we realize, is that most scandalous of creatures: the human who wants nothing. I’ve seen enough films about people who rush to make the most of their mortal span, ticking off bucket lists and reaping rosebuds while they may, so it’s a relief to come across Neil, the lolling foe of the upbeat. The title of the movie doesn’t do him justice. It should be called ‘The Fuck-it List.’”
Roth’s indifferent, nihilist-minded “Neil” instantly registers as one of the greatest-ever character studies of an older guy who just doesn’t care about anything.
Whatever the actual particulars, that 2016 TMZ tape convinced most of us that Johnny Depp had been exhibiting loutish, hair-trigger behavior — standard angry alcoholic stuff — when his marriage to Amber Heard was on the downslope. In this instance “most of us” would almost certainly include the jurors at the currently underway libel trial in Virginia.
People have been saying this for years, but Depp’s smartest play would be to move on and demonstrate that he’s a changed man and that he wants to focus on the future rather than the past. But of course he’s not doing that. I don’t see how he could possibly prevail against Heard. At best the jury will end up deadlocked.
Bill Maher to Joe Rogan (4.12.22): “We’re both seen as people who are common-sensical, and right now there’s a hunger for that in America, more than anything else. Common sense, away from the extremes.
“People say to me, ‘Don’t you think you’ve gotten more conservative?’ No, I haven’t. The left has gotten goofier so I seem more conservative, maybe. But it’s not me who’s changed. I feel I’m the same guy, but five years ago no one was talking about defunding the police. There was no talk about pregnant men. Looting was still illegal.
“Centrism is such a wishy-washy word, but that’s sort of what it is. I’m always saying to the Democrats, ‘Just don’t be the party of no common sense.’ Avoid that and you will be surprised at the amazing success you will have. As opposed to what’s going to happen, which is that they’re going to get their asses kicked in November.”
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