Adrien Lyne’s Deep Water (Hulu, 3.18) may be an intriguing sexual thriller, but it seems like an odd yesteryear thing — filmed before almost anyone on the planet had even heard of Covid ‘19, and a full year before Donald Trump decisively lost to Joe Biden in the election of early November 2020. And of course, the Ben Affleck-Ana de Armas affair was just kicking into gear, and Bennifer II was far beyond the horizon.

Due respect and sincere condolences upon the passing of producer-director Ivan Reitman, who was 75. This is a huge boomer death — one that will make a lot of people feel anxious and shaken, and prompt them to take a deep breath and wonder what might be around the corner.

Reitman’s hottest period was between the late ’70s and the late ’90s, and his biggest film, of course, was the original Ghostbusters (’84), which most of the world adored and which I hated from the get-go. And I really, really hated Ghostbusters II.

Reitman made his first big mark as the producer of National Lampoon’s Animal House (’78), which exploded all over — it was the first time the SNL brand (and particularly John Belushi) connected massively in movie theatres.

Reitman was first, last and always a director and producer of mainstream popular entertainments. He always sought to please, his stuff was always audience-friendly, and his instincts were not absurdly anti-highbrow but they were certainly tidy and middle-class. He was a smooth operator (especially from the mid ’80s on) and he knew how to coax and encourage good comic performances, but he never, ever went over any audience member’s head.

Which Reitman-directed films do I think were exceptionally fine or which I at least really liked (i.e., laughed with) and went “wow, that was really pleasurable and a profound home run”? Answer: None.

But early on Reitman made two dopey, infectious comedies of immaturity, Meatballs (’79) and Stripes (’81)…films that had a cool Bill Murray spirit…a stoner feeling, a fuck-it vibe. I was also satisfied by the three Arnold Schwarzenegger films — Twins, Kindergarten Cop and Junior. And I was half-okay with Dave, Father’s Day and Draft Day.

Can anyone name a line of dialogue from a Reitman film that has lived on for decades? I’ve just thought of one from Stripes — Warren Oates saying “lighten up, Francis.”

Reitman knew exactly how to make successful “Ivan Reitman films” but he never directed or produced a truly brilliant or profound knockout, or an emotional powerhouse in the vein of, say, Heaven Can Wait or Groundhog Day or Planes, Trains & Automobiles or As Good as It Gets or Broadcast News.

Okay, I take that back — Up In The Air (’09), which his director-writer son Jason did an excellent job with and which Reitman Sr. produced, was in that elite fraternity.

Reitman’s instincts were kind of Ron Howard-ish, only a bit more anarchic or semi-experimental or stir-fried. He wasn’t really a “heart” guy (not like Howard or Jim Brooks or even John Hughes) except in the case of Junior, a comedy about a guy who gets pregnant.

I’ll say more tomorrow and I’m sure I’ll modify what I’ve just written later this evening. I’m very sorry about Reitman’s passing; 75 isn’t that old.

#RIPIvanReitman https://t.co/fCg4umrYJN

— Erik Childress (@EriktheMovieman) February 14, 2022

This Rear Window fan poster was composed by Jonathan Burton. The immediate question, of course, is why does James Stewart‘s L.B. Jeffries, a Greenwich Village-residing photographer with a broken leg and a wealthy, high-society girlfriend (Grace Kelly)…why does Jeffries have a massive bald spot, partially covered by greasy hair strands? Stewart wore his usual toupee in this 1954 classic. Is he half-bald because Burton himself is half-bald? What kind of illustrator does this? And what’s with the jug ears?

Based on a 1959 Tennessee Williams play, the film version of The Night of the Iguana (’64), directed by John Huston, is rather awful, which is to say dreary and stifled. But I’ve always wanted to visit Mismaloya, the small Mexican beach village (just south of Puerto Vallarta) where it was shot. The main stars were Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon. Elizabeth Taylor hung around during most of the filming. Huston wound up buying a home nearby.

People stopped watching films on VHS when DVDs emerged, or sometime in mid ’97. Pretty much everyone had adopted DVDs by the turn of the century, or roughly 21 years ago. (The first DVD players were priced at $799 and up.) And yet a couple of days ago some ornery old codger posted a photo of his Alfred Hitchcock VHS library.

https://apple.news/IKh3Y9WHmQB6oaC-vJDMyjg

A quality of life statement…Budweiser, which gives you a nice happy buzz as you’re watching the game, believes in its brand and the well-being of horses, dogs and the people who give them food, shelter and love.

What would be the practical point of Ukraine military guys defending their country, if and when Russian forces invade? They’re not going to repel an obviously stronger and superior force. They’ll only succeed in getting wounded and killed + bringing about God knows how many civilian deaths. If the Russkis roll in, surrender.

22 years ago Javier Bardem played Reinaldo Arenas, a gay Cuban poet, in Julian Schnabel‘s Before Night Falls — a performance that launched his career. This year he portrayed another Cuban in Being The Ricardos — the band leader, conga-player and and TV comedian-producer Desi Arnaz, and the wokesters (including Variety’s Clayton Davis) gave him shit for it.

In response to this bullshit, HE hereby approves of Bardem playing any character from any culture in any part of the world who seems to speak with a Spanish or Mexican or any south-of-the-Border accent. He can play Spanish, Cuban, Argentinian, Chilean…he can play a Columbian immigrant living in the Bronx…he can play cops, drug dealers, heads of state, henpecked husbands from Rio de Jainero, a quadraplegic looking to humanely commit suicide…he can play an auto mechanic from Tijuana, a Venezuelan diplomat based in Washington, D.C., a smooth womanizer from Barcelona, drug dealers, arms dealers, a confused poor guy…he’s free to play anyone and everyone, including the voice of God.

I’ve eaten at Lilia, the Williamsburg Italian joint on Union Avenue. Classy but low-key…a loose-hang type of place, and a long ways from “puttin on the Ritz.” So you’re sipping wine and twirling your linguini when in strides the over-dressed Kim Kardashian in an ostrich outfit you need dark sunglasses to even glance at…words fail. And those girlfriend-of-Leslie Neilsen-in-Forbidden Planet space boots!

Accompanied by “normcore” Pete Davidson in a butch haircut (i.e., not even an Aaron Paul-styled “tennisball” coif), baggy-ass hiphop jeans from the ’90s, flannel shirt, wrap-around shades, black sneakers…give me a break.

What is wrong with Davidson? He looks like Matthew Modine‘s “Joker” after emerging from the Parris Island barber in Full Metal Jacket. Who tries to look like a member of an Aryan gang in Attica state prison?

Newsflash: Davidson is 6’3″, or basically a basketball player. I somehow never realized this until recently. The widespread rumor is that he’s hung like Milton Berle.

There are now five opinion-spreaders who’ve argued that Spider-Man: No Way Home should have been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar — myself (two months ago), Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Jimmy Kimmel and Kevin Smith.

In a 2.12 Variety essay Gleiberman has dug into an issue related to the Spider-Man thing. It’s titled “Why Jimmy Kimmel Is Right About the Oscars.”

Key passage: “The Academy Awards, even as they seem to be discovering a new kind of ‘integrity,’ could end up withering on the cross of that integrity.

“Today, the Oscars reflect an increasingly dichotomized thinking: small movies (good) vs. popular movies (not so good), movies that wear their art on their sleeve (good) vs. movies that just want to have fun (not so good).

HE interjection: Since the woke thing took hold in ’17, Academy members have favored smallish films, true, but especially those that seem culturally meaningful (signifying some form of social awareness or advancement) or emotionally touching in a socially-healing way.

The last five winners: Nomadland (dispossessed nomads, living hand to mouth, shitting in buckets), Parasite (rich vs. poor, social hostility, a director of color, wasn’t another Scorsese goombah film), Green Book (a parent-child road movie, racial rapprochement in 1962), The Shape of Water (great fish sex for homely woman vs. Michael Shannon rage and perversity), Moonlight (three stages in the life of a gay black dude + “ohh, that handjob on the beach!”).

Back to Gleiberman: “That thinking is there on the part of both the media and the Academy voters. Even King Richard, one of the 10 best picture nominees (and one that’s likely to bring Will Smith his first Oscar for best actor), may, at this point, be too conventional and wholehearted for the Academy. I was happy to see it nominated (I think, after Drive My Car, that it’s the best film on the slate), but a decade ago I believe it would have won. Why isn’t it being talked about as a contender?

“It’s hard to generalize about the Oscars — whenever you point to a trend, there’s probably some example from the past that can be used to contradict it. But what my gut says, along with Jimmy Kimmel’s, is that what most of the world thinks of as the quintessence of entertainment is starting to be something the Academy no longer trusts.

“If so, that’s a serious problem. As a night of showbiz, the Oscars should be a lot of things: traditional and audacious, intimate and spectacular, frivolous and sincere.

“The one thing they shouldn’t be is alienating.”

Following last night’s Berlinale screening of Sophie Hyde‘s Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, Emma Thompson, who plays Nancy, a 62 year-old woman (like Thompson) who hires a sex worker (Daryl McCormack) to get her ya-ya’s out, discussed performing a full-frontal nude scene.

“It was hard“, Thompson said during a Berlinale press conference. “This is homework for all of you. We’re only used to seeing bodies that have, you know, been trained…I knew that Nancy wouldn’t go to the gym. She would have a normal body of a 62-year-old woman who’s had two children.

“I can’t stand in front of a mirror like that. If I stand in front of a mirror, I’ll always pull something in [or do] something. I can’t just stand there. Why would I do that? It’s horrifying. But that’s the problem, isn’t it?

“Women have been brainwashed all our lives. That’s the fact of it. And everything that surrounds us reminds us how imperfect we are and how everything is wrong. Everything is wrong, and we need to look like this.”

“So you try. You try standing in front of the mirror and don’t move. Don’t move. Just accept it — just accept it, and don’t judge it. That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I’ve done something I’ve never done as an actor.”

HE to Thompson #1: You’re contradicting yourself here. On one hand you’re saying that staring at your buck-naked 62 year-old bod is “horrifying,” but the reason is because of the “brainwashing” that we’ve all been subjected to by advertising, movies and TV shows. I don’t happen to believe that my own bod is horrifying or even distressing, but I can imagine being less than pleased with my physical self 10 or 20 years hence, especially if I stop going to the gym. Most of us understand that bodies which have gone to seed are dismaying all on their own — no “brainwashing” is needed to complete the lamentable fact.

HE to Thompson #2: Nobody who’s seen better naked days ever stands in front of a mirror and just stares…nobody. I didn’t do this even when I was in my absolute prime (i.e., late teens, 20s, 30s). I gave myself a quick glance or two but I never stared…not once. So why the hell would a 62 year-old do this, and why the hell would a director of a movie want an audience to contemplate an older, saggier bod? To what end? Who needs it? Answer: No one.

The trim and tanned Cary Grant was 62 when he made his final film, Walk, Don’t Run (’66). He was one of the best-looking, most-in-shape older males on the planet at that time, and there’s no way he would’ve shot a scene in which he stands in front of a mirror and studies his 62-year-old bod, even if he was wearing swim trunks or gym shorts. No way. Because (again) people never do this, and an audience would rather watch the 50ish Grant with his shirt off in North by Northwest or To Catch A Thief, because he looked better then.

My point, I suppose, is that Sophie Hyde…well, who knows what she was thinking? But if you ask me shooting an MCU of a full-frontal, present-tense Thompson was an act of sadism. To me anyway. Or exploitation. Or even cruelty.