Jeffrey Wells

HE decided a couple of days ago that Deepseek, a Chinese AI startup, was the most thorough and dependable of the bunch, including Claude.

Industry friendo: “So why is it so hard to find any AMPAS members, whom I speak with from time to time. who don’t love Emilia Perez? Riddle me that, big boy.”

HE to industry friendo: “I don’t want to sound cruel, but the evidence (including your own testimony) indicates that they’re simply lacking in taste, or the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. I wouldn’t want to call them rubes, but that’s what they more or less seem to be.  

“This is proven by the fact that even in 2025, they’re STILL in thrall to kneejerk wokeism. I sympathize with wanting to tell Trump to shove it, but they’re slitting the Academy’s (and indirectly Hollywood’s) own throat by celebrating a far-fetched, bordering-on-ludicrous, trans-identity musical that 75% of the Joe and Jane Popcorn RT community doesn’t care for very much, and which is pretty much hated in Mexico.  

“To repeat an old phrase, they’re committing cultural suicide.  This is why so many popcorn megaplexers think Academy members have lost their minds. On a raft and heading for Niagara Falls…

“The Academy has to wake up, smell the coffee and stop giving Oscars to woke instructionals that celebrate this or that identity cause. Joe and Jane have have had it up to here with this crap. Anora, A Complete Unknown, Conclave…step back from the insanity brink and embrace the crafty good stuff that is blessedly free of ideology. Okay, two out of three.”

I suffered through a nightmare early this morning. So bad it woke me up, left me with stomach acid.

Detectives knocked on the door of my parents’ Wilton home (which they sold in ‘94), and at 9:30 pm or 10 pm yet. If someone knocks on the door at that hour, you know it’s trouble.

I answered, let them in. The feeling in my chest was terrible…purely about doom The detectives were inquiring about two separate murders. They were maintaining a certain professional cool, but the evidence, they calmly stated, was pointing in my direction.

Even before I opened the door, I knew I was a dead man.

Three detectives — two polite, studiously casual, mellow-as-a-cucumber dudes plus a ginger woman detective (half Rebecca Keegan, half Jessica Chastain) who was giving me a look that would grow hair on a rock. Her eyes weren’t glaring as much as burning a hole.

Obviously a typical nightmare metaphor scenario…a metaphor for something I feel haunted by or am currently fearful of.

As Alannis M. would say, “Isn’t it ironic?”

The Academy created the 10 Best Picture nominee list to include the more commercial films like The Dark Knight (that they passed on nominating) so the Joe and Jane Popcorns of the world would tune in for bigger ratings, which drives their income.

But by inviting all those international filmmakers to become members, the Academy defeated the purpose of the 10 nominees because now those invitees are voting for more int’l films.  Oh man.  What a quandary.  

And here’s the thing: if you’re going to nominate foreign films for Best Picture Oscar, then why have an international category at all?  Just eliminate it or, better yet, restrict any foreign films from competing for the BP category (along with animated films which also has its own separate category).  That way more deserving American films can get in (and British).

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will be able to score very handily now, and a 5 pm “happy hour” inside the Pentagon will become an instant thing.

Personal HE plea to Academy members: Don’t follow through with crowning Emilia Perez. Joe and Jane Popcorn hate this film (especially in Mexico!) and you’ll just be spitting in their faces if you give Jacques Audiard’s film a Best Picture Oscar.

How would you process an Audiard/Netflix win if you were among the Rotten Tomatoes naysayers? “Whee, goodie!”? 70% of the mass audience isn’t feeling the Perez love, and your response is going to be…what, “suck on it because we know better?”

Please step outside yourselves and your identity-above-all, “send Donald Trump a message” agenda…cinematic transportation over wokeism…begging on my knees.

1.25.25 update — posted this morning in comment thread:

The idea behind this post is not hate per se. I was mostly okay with Emilia Perez, remember, when I first saw it in Cannes eight months ago, and I don’t hate it now. But it certainly DOES flirt with mediocrity during the second half. And the bottom-line truth is that if not for the trans signpost factor, Perez would simply not be a Best Picture nominee. This is a plea for Academy voters to emerge from the cultural woke cocoon of the past six or seven years, and to finally put aside sexual-identity or gender issues as deciding criteria. Enough with the social justice warrior crap. Please consider voting for the Best Picture nominee that doesn’t do the woke two-step (please give that nagging “revolutionary” ethos a rest) while actually fulfilling and delivering a kind of high on its own emotional and cinematic terms. Which is what Anora, Conclave and A Complete Unknown manage to do. 

Joe and Jane Popcorn voted for Trump in order to get rid of the wokey or at least tone it down. For the love of God, smell the coffee. The woke point has been made, and now it’s time to set that bird free.

Consider the opening paragraph of David Rooney’s Sundance review of Jimpa. It contains a word that gave me pause. Correction — vaguely pissed me off.

Jett Wells’ Best Picture preferences:

HE’s Santa Barbara crib (2.5 thru 2.12).

Temps below 20 degrees make me miserable. They darken my attitude, lead me into feelings of gloom and nihilism. The blacktop roads turn frosty gray at night, and it just makes you feel godawful.

This is weather that could theoretically kill you. At least it’s not windy…small comfort.

I’d rather be bike riding in Key West or, better yet, Turks and Caicos. Or in Dr. No Jamaica, mon. Or in Montserrat.

Herewith is a spirited chat I had with the cooking-with-gas, bell-bottom-wearing, hippie-haired John Carpenter in either late 1979 or very early ‘80 to promote The Fog (Avco Embassy), which opened on 2.1.80.

It should be noted for posterity’s sake that when I recorded this interview at the Sherry Netherland (I’m fairly certain it wasn’t the Carlyle or Waldorf Astoria) that IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, then a PMK publicist, monitored the conversation.

Inspired by my “Oh, My Beloved” riff about Donald Trump summoning the spirit of Laurence Olivier’s “Mahdi”, I watched the generally tolerable, flirting-with-mediocre, Ultra Panavision 70 Khartoum last night.

Basil Dearden’s 1966 film ends with Olivier reacting with anguished disapproval when his triumphant followers, exuberant after the fall of Khartoum and the death of Charlton Heston’s General George “Chinese” Gordon, arrive at his tent with Gordon’s head on a tall pole.

Brief footage of Heston’s head was reportedly shot and included in the film, but an extremely negative audience response reportedly led Khartoum producers to axe the footage in favor of a quick fade-to-black.

It struck me this morning that the head-on-a-spike fate of Thomas More’s (i.e., Paul Scofield’s) severed eyes, ears, mouth, nose and throat in A Man For All Seasons was also a thing that year.

At no other time and in no other films was the fate of a lead character’s head a topic of interest, but it happened twice in ‘66.

Fred Zinnemann’s film ends with narration that says More’s head sat atop a spike on London bridge before his daughter retrieved and buried it. It would have been vulgar for Zinnemann to show a replica of Scofield’s head in any context, of course, but…well, nuff said.

Khartoum premiered on 6.6.66; AMFAS opened on 12.12.66.