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…the nutritious kind.

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.

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Whatever the decade, Gilbert Gottfried was having none of it.

This morning I mentioned The 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.

Here are some riffs from 2.11.22 and 2.13.22:

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.

On top of which Heard’s 12.18.18 Washington Post op-ed piece, the focus of the defamation trial, didn’t specifically reference Depp (although we all knew she was alluding to her marital history with him).

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.”

One of the most realistic line-readings in The Godfather happens when James Caan’s Sony Corleone warns the beaten and bloody Carlo (Gianni Russo) to never again brutalize his sister Connie (Talia Shire), Carlo’s wife. What makes it great is that Sonny is so winded from beating up Carlo that he’s forced to take a breath after saying “touch” (beat) and then “…my sister again I’ll kill ya.”

And yet this scene has been blemished for a half-century by a small but memorable error that could have been easily fixed.

“There’s Still Time, Brother,” posted on 9.19.08:

Early this morning HE reader Frank Booth, commenting about the Francis Coppola/Robert Harris restoration of the Godfather films, made a good point about an irritant in the original 1972 film — one that’s been bothering me for decades.

He was speaking of the second-act beating scene in which Sonny laughably air-punches Carlo. There’s no missing the mistake 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. When Booth saw a theatrical screening “it took a minute or so of the Sicilian wedding for the audience to stop giggling,” he says.

And yet despite all the digital refinements and restorations, not to mention that massive re-edit of Parts I and II that resulted in The Godfather Saga in the mid ’70s, Coppola has left that mistake in — minor, yes, but one that slightly interferes with the enjoyment of this film each and every time.

All Coppola would have to do is cut away from the Sonny-Carlo beating for a a second or two and show…whatever, one of the hoods standing nearby, one of the little kids watching the fight, a master shot from a different angle. There must be extra footage lying around. All Coppola would need is 24 to 36 frames.

If you had directed The Godfather, would you want that mistake to remain in the definitive print for centuries to come? I wouldn’t. If George Lucas can make Greedo shoot first, Francis Coppola can fix Sonny’s air punch.