“The Covid epidemic may be subsiding, but the epidemic that preceded it — the anxiety epidemic — is not, and usually when people drink, it’s too alleviate some form of anxiety. As we reenter society half of America has been saying that Covid was so stressful, they worry they’ll never fully recover. We’re using liquor as a crutch…”

Even during my drinking days I never once sipped wine or beer during a film, or prior to watching one. If anything I would down a strong cappuccino or an energy drink. I want to up my alterness levels during a film, not diminish them.

A 6.25 interview with F9 costar Jordana Brewster, written by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Aaron Couch, made me want to melt and die.

I don’t give a flying eff how Brewster landed more action scenes in F9…even flirting with such thoughts is tantamount to poisoning my being, my soul, the necessary communion with the fundamentals of life on the planet earth…these people — Couch included — are snarling beasts of the forest. Pardon my French, but they make me want to ralph.

“After playing Mia Toretto onscreen for 20 years dating back to the first The Fast and the Furious movie, Brewster knew she had more to offer, so she lobbied director Justin Lin to up her action this time, texting the filmmaker about the action-chops she was picking up as a guest star on the Lin-produced TV show Magnum P.I. and through doing her own training”…I don’t care and fuck Couch for attempting to inject that shit into my head.

“I’ve heard throughout my career that if you want something done, show you can do it. That’s something that is very difficult for me to do. To advocate for myself, but it paid off”….die a slow, agonizing death! Not Brewster or Couch but those who read this and go “hmm, interesting.”

Brewster: “There is…the opportunity to downsize it and go back to our roots with [the first Fast and Furious], where there is a little less green screen and we don’t have to visit as many cool locations, so maybe it’s less of a risk for the studio and we can just make something awesome and run with it.”

In other words, Brewster would like the franchise to cut the bullshit and become a feminist Drive a la Nicholas Winding Refn. Sounds good to me, but it’ll never happen. Because the Fast franchise it run by animals, and it’s about appealing to the taste buds of animals.

“Those improved action chops will likely come in handy down the road, as Lin has two more Fast films he’s directing to wrap up the main series. There are also rumblings of a female-focused spinoff in the works. Though nothing has been announced officially on that front, Brewster wonders if going back to the basics could be a way forward.

There’s something to be said for Mervyn LeRoy‘s direction of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (’44) — steady, workmanlike, no surprises but no potholes either. LeRoy always stayed within his safety zone, but he was a good, reliable “house” director. His best film was They Won’t Forget (’37), a Warner Bros. courtroom drama based on the real-life lynching of Leo Frank in 1915.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was strictly a WWII morale-builder but a better-than-decent one, and a first-rate action film during the final third. You can totally lean on the solid, straightforward performances from Van Johnson (“I lost my ship!”), Robert Walker, Spencer Tracy, Phyllis Thaxter, Robert Mitchum.

I was especially taken by the extra-handsome, perfectly lighted cinematography by Robert Surtees (The Bad and the Beautiful, Ben Hur) and Harold Rosson (The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ In the Rain), and the fleet, finely timed editing by Frank Sullivan. Plus I’d never seen it in HD.

I began watching last night with the idea of being put to sleep. I fast-forwarded through the first half (training, relationships, flyboy camaraderie) but wound up watching the rest. This happens occasionally.

Don Was‘s I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times (LIVE, ’95) remains the best Brian Wilson documentary ever made. Brent Wilson and Jason Fine‘s Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road, which recently played the Tribeca Film Festival and which I saw last night, is okay for what it is but nowhere near as good.

It’s basically footage of Wilson and Fine, a Rolling Stone editor and longtime friend of the 78 year-old musical genius and Beach Boy maestro, driving around Los Angeles and visiting locations from Brian’s past. And what it boils down to is an intimate portrait of a good, gentle soul, but one who is clearly a bit twitchy and beset by unruly currents.

Honestly? Long Promised Road felt a bit exploitive. It made me feel awkward, uncomfortable. I felt sorry for Brian. He’s a good soul but I felt as if he was being subjected to a fair amount of discomfort in speaking to Fine. There was a medium close-up of Brian performing that reminded me that he reads his own lyrics off a teleprompter. It’s good that he gets out and performs, but there’s something creepy about the film. I felt badly for him.

Friendo: “I met Wilson in 1995, and he could barely carry on a conversation — and that’s true in the film as well. And obviously, he can’t sing anymore. But I don’t find any of that creepy. That’s just who Brian Wilson is, and my honest feeling is: It’s good that he survived, and has a life. He hasn’t written a memorable song in decades, but ‘Smile’ — the 2004 version — is one of my all-time favorite records. I think even now, he radiates the energy of a good soul.

HE to Friendo: “Yes, a good soul. A good heart. I’m glad he’s still plugging away. But the doc still felt a bit cruel. Fine is a decent guy but the very act of training a camera lens on poor Brian flirts with heartless exploitation — I was saying to myself, ‘Jesus, they should leave the poor guy alone.’ A gentle soul but quite twitchy. Kid gloves.”

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy is polling critics on the five best films of 2021.

HE’s favorite film of the year thus far, hands down, is Thomas Anders Jensen’s Riders of Justice: A truly original stand-out with a deliciously skewed, deadpan sense of humor. On 5.21 I insisted that violence wasn’t funny or certainly couldn’t be sold as such, and I was dead wrong. Riders’ dry, low-key comic tone is really something. I wasn’t expecting anything as original feeling as this. It’s quite the discovery. I’m actually intending to watch it again this weekend.

My second favorite is Jasmila Zbanić‘s Quo Vadis, Aida?, which played at last year’s Venice and Toronto festivals before opening stateside on 3.15.21. It’s a blistering, horrifying, you-are-there account of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre — 8000 Bosnian men and boys murdered in cold blood by Serbian troops under the command of Ratko Mladic. For me it ranks alongside other Bosnian brutality-of-war dramas like In The Land of Blood and Honey, Welcome to Sarajevo and No Man’s Land. Not a suspense piece or a classic war drama but a mother’s perspective saga that asks “who if anyone will survive the coming massacre?” You can feel it coming from around the corner. Devastating.

Third is Simon Stone‘s The Dig (Netflix, 1.15.21). I called this tale of the famous Sutton Hoo dig of 1939, which uncovered a sixth-century Anglo Saxon burial site, generally pleasing as far as this kind of modest and unassuming British period drama goes. I loved Ralph Fiennes‘ performance as real-life archeological excavator Basil Brown — his gutty working-class accent is note perfect, but the performance is in his eyes…at various times determined, defiant, sad, compassionate. And Carey Mulligan‘s Edith Pretty…talk about a performance at once strong, heartbreaking (as in sadly resigned) and resilient. I admired it despite an idiotic subplot about a married Lily James wanting to schtup the daylights out of a young, good-looking fellow, Rory (Johnny Flynn), whom she meets on the dig.

HE’s #4 is Phillip Noyce‘s Above Suspicion. On 4.1 I called it a jug of classic, grade-A moonshine — a brilliant, tautly paced, perfectly written action thriller (i.e., rednecks, drug deals, criminals, lawmen, murder, car chases, bank robberies) that plays like an emotional tragedy, and is boosted by an ace-level performance from Emilia Clarke. Most people would define ‘redneck film’ as escapist trash in the Burt Reynolds mode, but there have been a small handful that have portrayed rural boondock types and their tough situations in ways that are top-tier and real-deal. My favorites in this realm are John Boorman‘s Deliverance, Billy Bob Thornton‘s Sling Blade, and Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero. Noyce’s entry is the absolute, dollars-to-donuts equal of these, or at least a close relation with a similar straight-cards, no-bullshit attitude. And it revives the strategy of William Holden‘s narration of Sunset Boulevard.

My fifth favorite is, despite its financial failure, Jon Chu and Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s In The Heights. On 6.8 I called it “good, grade-A stuff — engaging, open-hearted, snappy, well-composed, catchy tunes, appealing performances, razor-sharp cutting. One character-driven vignette after another. Dreams, hopes, identity, hip-hop, neighborhood vibes, community, self-respect…all of it earnestly feel-good. There’s no fault in any of it except for the minor fact that I was quietly groaning. Okay, not “groaning” but half-in and half-out. Admiring but disengaged. There isn’t a single moment in which I didn’t appreciate the effort, the professionalism, the heart factor, Alice Brooks‘ vibrant cinematography…all of it is fine and commendable, and I must have checked the time code 10 or 12 times, minimum.”

Michael Cohen: “[Trump is] in trouble, Allen Weisselberg’s in trouble, Weisselberg’s kids, Matt Calamari, Rudy Giuliani, they’re all in trouble. Why? Because there’s documentary evidence that’s in their [prosecutors’] possession.”

“[And they] don’t really need Weisselberg or Calamari, [because] one of them will flip to save themselves. And once you get Calamari you don’t need Weisselberg, [and] when you get Weisselberg you don’t need Calamari. But the truth is, they don’t need either of them because they have the documents to prove exactly the illegalities done by Trump.”

Kimmel: “Have you ever seen Donald Trump cry?”
Cohen: “No, but I’ve seen him get out of the shower with his hair soaking wet”….yaaahhh!

Yesterday I noted how IndieWire‘s Zack Sharf was so terrified of using the term “Black western” that he wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole in his riff about a new trailer for The Harder They Fall. Instead he went with Netflix’s term — a “new school Western.”

The folks at Essence were less intimidated. Their headline for Brande Victorian’s 6.24 article reads as follows: “The First Trailer For The Star-Studded Black Western The Harder They Fall Is Here.” The term “Black Western” is also used in the lede paragraph. Holy shit!

Imagine being Jamie Lee Curtis‘ “Laurie Strode”, the Halloween scream queen from the Jimmy Carter era. Imagine having no interests, longings or intrigues in life other than one thing…recovering from the trauma of having been nearly murdered by psycho-killer Michael Myers in ’78, back in her late teens (actually 22 by JLC’s calendar), and then deciding, 40 years later in her early 60s, “this Michael Myers shit ends now!…I won’t stand for it any longer!…even if the guy who’s been playing him for the last 40-odd years, Nick Castle, is 73 years old!”

Except she will stand for it because Halloween Kills isn’t the end…the finale is slated to arrive in mid October ’22 when Halloween Ends opens in theatres. Except if you know anything about the slithering, salivating paycheck whores behind this franchise, Michael Meyers will never really die.

John Carpenter on the original Halloween: “True crass exploitation. I decided to make a film I would love to have seen as a kid, full of cheap tricks like a haunted house at a fair where you walk down the corridor and things jump out at you.”

That’s actually a dodge, John. The Halloween movies are about jump-boo, okay, but the undercurrent has always been about one thing and one thing only — killing sluts for having sex while saving the chaste virginal heroines (Curtis’s Strode) so they’ll live another day….because sluts need to scream and howl and die horribly. Same difference with the Friday the 13th franchise. I first wrote about the slut-killing meme in my Films in Review review of Halloween, 42 and 1/2 years ago. You’d think this would have subsided or evolved over the decades.

From a 10.22.18 Refinery29 piece by Elena Nicolaou: “The horror genre is saddled with blatant sexism, the focus of which is found in the trope of the Final Girl — and in her opposite. In classic slasher movies, the Final Girl emerges from an encounter with great evil, bloody but unbroken. Her other female friends are usually not so lucky, typically meeting their demise after having sex. As the ‘Sex By Death’ trope goes, if a woman has sex in a horror movie, she’s doomed to die.”

Remember when disappearing from a set was regarded as a Bryan Singer behavior?

Posted on 2.3.21: Hollywood Elsewhere saw Sian Heder‘s much-adored, Sundance award-showered CODA this morning. It’s moderately appealing and nicely made for the most part. Understand, however, that it’s an “audience movie” — aimed at folks who like feel-good stories with heart, humor, romance and charm.

It’s about a shy Gloucester high-school girl named Ruby (Emilia Jones) with a decent if less than phenomenal singing voice. She’d rather attend Boston’s Berklee College of Music than work for her deaf family’s fishing business, we’re told. The film is about the hurdles and complications that she has to deal with in order to realize this dream.

CODA is one of those “real people struggling with life’s changes and challenges” flicks, but given the fishing-off-the-Massachusetts-coast aspect it’s fair to say it’s no Manchester By The Sea — trust me. It’s a wee bit simplistic and schticky and formulaic -— okay, more than a bit — and contains a fair amount of “acting.”

For my money Jones overplays the quiet, withdrawn, still-waters-run-deep stuff, but it’s an honest performance as far as it goes — she has an appealing, unpretentious rapport with the camera. Eugenio Derbez‘s performance as an eccentric, Mexican-born music teacher is probably the film’s best single element. Bearded, baggy-eyed Troy Kotsur and 54 year-old Marlee Matlin are engaging as Ruby’s live-wire parents.

Matlin and Kotsur are the source, actually, of some clunky sexual humor (frisky parents noisily going at it during the late afternoon, randy Kotsur urging chaste Ruby to make her boyfriend wear “a helmet” during coitus, that line of country). Except the jokes don’t really land, or at least they didn’t with me.

In a phrase, CODA is not a Guy Lodge film.

But it’s an okay thing for what it is. It works here and there. It didn’t give me a headache. I can understand why some are enthusiastic about it. It deserves a mild pass. Heder is a better-than-decent director.

Friendo: “It’s a by-the-numbers family romcom with an added progressive-minded openness for the deaf.”

Most name-brand directors, producers and actors enjoy 12-year streaks when everything is cooking and breaking their way. Some directors and actors are lucky enough to last 15 or 20 years or even longer. Your task, should you choose to accept it (and I know I’ve posted about this before), is to list any number of Hollywood heavyweights and when their 12-year hot streaks (or better) happened.

I’m not talking about the ability to work or get work — I’m talking about the years of serious heat and the best years falling into place.

Cary Grant peaked from the late ‘30s to late ‘50s. James Cagney between Public Enemy and White Heat — call it 20. James Stewart between Destry Rides Again and Anatomy of a Murder — 20. Clark Gable’s hottest years were between It Happened One Night (‘34) and The Hucksters (‘47). Humphrey Bogart happened between High Sierra / The Maltese Falcon (‘41) and The Harder They Fall (‘56) — a 15-year run. Robert Redford peaked between Butch Cassidy (‘69) and Brubaker and Ordinary People (‘80) — 11 to 12 years.

Elizabeth Taylor had 15 years — 1950 (Father of the Bride) to 1966 (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf). Jean Arthur — mid ’30s to early ’50s (Shane) — call it 15 years. Katharine Hepburn — early ’30s to early ’80s (On Golden Pond). Meryl Streep — 1979 (The Seduction of Joe Tynan) to today…40 years and counting.

Martin Scorsese is the king of long-lasting directors — Mean Streets (’73) to Killers of the Flower Moon (’22)…a half-century! John Huston had about 15 years — 1941 (The Maltese Falcon) to 1956 (Moby Dick). Alfred Hitchcock had 23 years — ’40 (Rebecca) to ’63 (The Birds). Steven Soderbergh‘s had 23 years so far — 1989 (sex, lies and videotape) to 2012 (Magic Mike) and he’s obviously still kicking. John Ford enjoyed 27 good years — ’35 (The Informer) to ’62 (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).

John Wayne had an amazing 37 years — 1939 (Stagecoach) to 1976 (The Shootist). George Clooney‘s peak period lasted almost 20 years. Tony Curtis‘s hot streak was relatively brief — 1957 (Sweet Smell of Success) to 1968 (The Boston Strangler). Kirk Douglas had about 15 years — Champion (’49) to Seven Days in May (’64). Richard Burton — 1953 (The Robe) to 1977 (Equus) — almost 25.

It’s a basic creative and biological law that only about 10% to 15% of your films are going to be regarded as serious creme de la creme…if that. Most big stars (the smart ones) are given a window of a solid dozen years or so** in which they have the power, agency and wherewithal to bring their game and show what they’re worth creatively. We all want to be rich, but the real stars care about making their mark.

Please supply more noteworthy names and their peak periods.

Jeymes Samuel‘s The Harder They Fall (Netflix, later this year) seems to be a harmless, ultra-violent, all-black fantasy-revenge western — a gang of African-American desperadoes (Jonathan Majors, LaKeith Stanfield, Regina King, Idris Elba, Zazie Beetz, Delroy Lindo, Danielle Deadwyler, Edi Gathegi, R.J. Cyler, Damon Wayans Jr., Deon Cole) holdin’ up trains, settlin’ scores, blowin’ holes in a bunch of white guys, etc.

No harm, no foul…and it’s probably about as good as Antoine Fuqua‘s The Magnificent Seven (’16), which I called “cheap dogshit.”

For me the stand-out element is Zack Sharf’s IndieWire story about same — ‘The Harder They Fall’ Trailer: Netflix Western Unites Majors, Elba, King, Beetz, Lindo, Stanfield — which posted this morning at 8:15 am. At no point in Sharf’s story is there an acknowledgement that this is a western about an all-black gang (or gangs). Sharf notes that Netflix is calling this a “new school Western,” but that’s as far as he’ll go. The implication is that it’s somehow racist (or racialist) to acknowledge the basic shot here. Weird.

Synopsis: “When outlaw Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) discovers that his enemy Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) is being released from prison he rounds up his gang to track Rufus down and seek revenge. Those riding with him in this assured, righteously new school Western include his former love Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz), his right and left hand men — hot-tempered Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi) and fast drawing Jim Beckwourth (R.J. Cyler) and a surprising adversary-turned-ally. Rufus Buck has his own fearsome crew, including ‘Treacherous’ Trudy Smith (Regina King) and Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield), and they are not a group that knows how to lose.”