I’ve heard talk about Benedict Cumberbatch possibly being Best Actor-nominated for what I understand is some sort of histrionic, Daniel Day Lewis-resembling performance in Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog (Netflix, 11.17).
Back in the old days (a decade or more ago) you could theorize that costarring in a presumably overwrought, animal-friendly popcorn flick a month after your hotshot, Oscar-baity prestige film has opened…you could at least speculate if the latter might somehow mitigate the former.
But nobody cares any more. The degradation effect is everywhere, everyone has their hand out, nothing matters.
The best humor is either the silliest or the cruelest, but let’s focus on the former for now. There are two dumbshit lines that have made me chortle or at least smile for years. (Every so often a guffaw will break through.) No matter how many times they’ve flown in and out of my head, the reaction is the same.
And I’m not mentioning them because I think they’ll “get” anyone else. My point is that we’re all susceptible to dopey chuckle pellets.
Pellet #1 happens every time I visit the default representation site, www.whorepresents.com, and say to myself “yup, whore presents.” The site has been apparently been healthy and solvent for 21 years now.
Pellet #2 is a bit from Woody Allen‘s horribly racist and deeply nauseating What’s Up, Tiger Lily (’66). I’m overdoing the adjectives, of course — I love this dopey film. At the same time you know that if the right kind of Millennial or Zoomer fanatics were to happen upon it, they’d emerge all the more convinced that Allen needs to be triple-shunned, scalded with molten lead and dropped into the hottest cavern of hell.
I’m speaking of an exchange inside an ornate golden palace or temple of some kind. The players are Tatsuya Mihashi‘s “Phil Moskowitz” (amiable zany, lovable rogue) and Tetsu Nakamura‘s “Grand Exalted High Macha of Rashpur.” The subject is ruthless Tokyo gangster and egg-salad recipe thief Shepherd Wong (Tadao Nakamaru).
At one point the GEHMR reaches into a breast pocket and, for Moskowitz’s edification, unfolds a hand-drawn map of a residence. High Macha to Moskowitz: “This is Shepherd Wong’s home.” Moskowitz reply: “He lives in that little piece of paper?”
They dragged me into a theatre and strapped me down with a formidable leather harness. The idea was to force me to watch Shang-Chi: LegendOf The Ten Fiddles…er, PeacockFeathers…Rings, I mean. Just as the lights were dimming, a bulky, snarly guy came over, pulled out a loaded Glock and said “if you close your eyes even once or start humming so you can’t hear the dialogue, I will fire a hot slug into the back of your head, asshole…I’m not kidding.” Me: “Don’t bother with the threats — just shoot me now…just do it, asswipe.”
Pedro Almodovar‘s films are almost always sublime. Especially when focusing on woman and motherhood.
Madres paralelas (Sony Classics, 12.24) focuses on two mothers, Janis and Ana (Penelope Cruz, Milena Smit), who give birth the same day in the same hospital. They’ve both become pregnant unintentionally. Janis, somewhat older, is happy and into it. Ana, quite young, is afraid and anxious. The film follows their parallel child-rearing lives over the first two years.
Pedro’s only serious miss was I’m So Excited (’13) — every gifted artist drops the ball at one time or another.
Pedro’s next is a feature-length adaptation of A Manual for Cleaning Women, based on Lucia Berlin‘s short story collection, set to be his first English-language feature.
…that offering proof of vaccination and proof of recent negative testing should be a requirement for press and public attending their festival. Ahead of the curve!
There are those who continue to insist that Soggy Bottom, the alleged title of Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Hollywood-in-the-’70s drama, is just a placeholder. The real title, which may or may not have more of a poetic ring than Soggy Bottom, will be announced down the road, they say.
But if it is just a place-holder, why did Anderson register the title with the WGA on 7.16.21? [Thanks to World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy for forwarding the screen capture.] Was it because PTA hadn’t yet decided on the real title so what the hell?
What could Soggy Bottom even mean? Some kind of half-assed metaphor for the culture of the entertainment industry?
I may as well be honest and confess right now that I really, really don’t like the idea of watching Benny Safdie playing an L.A. politician based on closeted L.A. City Council member Joel Wachs. Of all the people Anderson could’ve hired to play this character, he gets a fellow director film bruh? Why? I’m generally anti-Safdie since watching the exhausting, anxiety-ridden Uncut Gems, and I didn’t care at all for Safdie’s Lennie Small-like performance in Good Time (’17).
The Hand of the Dog signifies a pair of Netflix films that (a) sound alike, (b) are debuting at the Venice Film festival on the same day (9.2), and (c) are opening within a couple of weeks of each other stateside.
Set to debut in Venice at 4:30 pm on 9.2, Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog will hit theatres on 11.17 and begin streaming on Netflix on 12.1. Screening that same day in Venice at 7:15, 7:30 and 8:30 pm, Paolo Sorrentino‘s The Hand of God will open theatrically on 11.17 and begin Netflix streaming on 12.1.
Adam McKay‘s Don’t Look Up, by the way, will hit theatres on 12.10 and begin Netflix streaming on 12.24.
If you’re up to something shady, the first rule (duhhh) is don’t leave any retrievable record or evidence of any kind — don’t discuss it in a text or email, don’t discuss it on the phone, don’t write anything down, don’t allow yourself to be recorded…keep it on the down low.
Example: There exists no letter written by Vito Corleone on letterhead stationary, and addressed to one Luca Brasi, stating the following: “Dear Luca — This will formalize my request that you immediately fly out to Los Angeles, drive into Beverly Hills and cut off the head of Khartoum, a black race horse that belongs to Jack Woltz, a studio chief. You then need to put the horses’s head into the bed of the studio chief while he’s sleeping. — cordially & warmest regards, Vito Corleone — p.s. Tom Hagen, who is fully involved in this horse murder, tells me that Woltz is an early riser so act accordingly.”
Do the mild-mannered voters in this state realize that if Gavin Newsom is recalled and some rightie like Larry Elder becomes governor, that Elder could appoint a Republican Senator to the U.S. Senate if, God forbid, Sen. Diane Feinstein‘s health were to fail, and thereby tip the balance of power? I dropped my ballot off today — no recall, Newsom stays, don’t be silly.
If they’d used Laurence Harvey crazy-eyes ad art in ’62, audiences would have expected some kind of Hammer horror film. Nowadays people understand weirdness…they know that schizo wacko and subdued freak-outs are commonplace among average people, but they wouldn’t have been able to accept this in the JFK era. The only people who had done acid in ’62 were Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Cary Grant and a few others.
Remember Next Goal Wins, the Taika Watiti-directed sports drama, based on the same-titled documentary from 2014, about Dutch-American football coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) turning the low-rated American Samoa national team into groovers and hot-shots?
Principal photography began in November 2019 (a year before the Trump-Biden election) and wrapped in January 2020 (ten months before same). Then the pandemic hit in March and the train ground to a halt. Then along came 2021 and the glorious vaccines, and the train still didn’t move. It now appears that Next Goal Wins will open sometime in ’22, probably in the late winter or spring.
The only films that Searchlight has coming out this year are Michael Showalter‘s The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Wes Anderson‘s The French Dispatch and Guillermo del Toro‘s Nightmare Alley.
Next Goal Wins costars Elisabeth Moss and…uhm, Armie Hammer.
I like a good come-from-behind sports film as much as the next guy. What’s the problem?
Ryan Reynolds is great at playing glib, lightweight characters who skip across the water like flat stones and never plant their feet. look the other guy in the eyes and tell the truth. Reynolds almost never does that**. He’s a lighten-up guy, an “I just want to make money” guy, a guy who’s terrified of substance and gravitas and real, actual life. Which is why I never even flirted with the idea of seeing Free Guy. Because I knew it would be foam, froth and fizzle.
Update: I’m wrong! A friend calls Free Guy “an enormously clever comedy brilliantly executed that merges laughs and action with romance, heart, and something to say. It crosses Frank Capra populism with the world of a violent video game. It says much about the horrendous need for corporate entertainment to demand sequels and money over all else, and stands with those who shout to the mountaintop about the need for originality and the almost impossible fight to do it. That is what this is about, using your voice and finding a way to do it against all odds.”
“Whither Reynolds,” posted 12 and 1.2 years ago: You have to do more than just sell tickets to be considered a serious heavy-hitting movie star. Every so often (i.e., every three or four years) you have to be in a really good film. And I mean a really good one — not a line-drive single or ground-rule double but a serious triple or a homer. By this standard, or even in strictly monetary terms, how can 32 year-old Ryan Reynolds be considered a star of any kind?
He’s a talented performer, obviously charming and good looking. He seems to be trying to do quality work in ambitious or unusual films. (Whatever happened to Fireflies in the Garden?). And most of his movies have been modestly profitable. And he seems (or it has seemed) as if he might eventually be Robert Redford. Maybe. But this doesn’t seem to be happening.
Where are the super-grosses, the big critical acclaim (why doesn’t he work with AAA-rated directors?), the sense of being part of some kind of special firmament in the universe? When is Reynolds going to catch a really good wave? It’s okay to flip-flop around in your 20s but you don’t hit it big in your early 30s people start to wonder.
You knew Redford was a star he came out in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at age 32, and then Downhill Racer and The Candidate two and three years later. (All parts that Reynolds could have played and done relatively well with.) You knew Dustin Hoffman had hit it big-time when he made The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy and Straw Dogs. You knew Al Pacino was destined for greatness when he turned up in The Godfather ; ditto Robert DeNiro when he starred in The Godfather, Part II. Nothing like this has happened with Reynolds. Nothing even close.
