…will suddenly happen out of nowhere. In a twinkling of a batted eyelash, they just seem right and natural and immutably decreed.

…considering that it’s AI–generated and all. It’s hollow and inorganic but decent.

Nikki Haley’s statement about pardoning Trump was disgusting. She and Ron DeSantis can go to hell. Chris Christie was the best of them — a blunt-spoken classic Republican who talked straight and plain about The Beast and the horrific threat he poses.

And a tough break for Maestro’s Bradley Cooper, who absolutely delivered a more dynamic, reach-for-the-skies dazzler than…well. Scorsese anyway. KOTFM is a reasonably good film, but it saddles us with an idiot and drags on and on. HE commenter Mike: “Scorsese is [one of the five] because his film is about indigenous struggle.”

May December has been snubbed, snubbed, snubbed by the SAG Awards nominations. It’s not that I’ve been against Charles Melton as much as unable to understand the bizarre enthusiasm for his sufficient but no-great-shakes performance by Gotham Award suck-ups, New York Film Critics Circle, etc. Now, alas, it’s all gone south. No SAG-AFTRA support, no Oscar nom.

…based primarily on merit, depth, artistic distinction.

Please name some films that you really didn’t like during your initial viewing, but which have stuck in your craw and provoked interesting reflections from time to time.

From “Just Call Me Shame,” initially posted on 12.2.11:

It was three long–ass years ago when news broke that Timothee Chalamet would play the creatively transitioning (acoustic folkie to electric poet-with-sunglasses) Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown. Now it’s actually, finally going before the cameras sometime in March.

This is Chalamet’s big chance to step out of the not-quite-happening place he’s been standing in for the last six years (throwing Woody under the bus, Little Women, Beautiful Boy, Bones and All, the Dune franchise, Wonka) and do something cool and provocative for a change. Maybe.

Posted last spring…