Sam Levinson, John David Washington and Zendaya meet John Cassevetes, Ingmar Bergman, Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in a prolonged, soul-draining, “you give me nothing but pain and lethargy and despair” fuck-you argument film, shot inside Carmel’s “Caterpillar house” and captured on luscious black-and-white celluloid.

Malcolm & Marie (Netflix, 1.29) isn’t half bad as a penitentiary exercise yard film — a “we’ve got some money and a cool location and nothing else to do because of Covid so let’s shoot this sucker and hope for the best.”

It isn’t bad for a two-hander in which the combatants piss into each other’s souls for 106 minutes as they say (a) you’re an obnoxious asshole, (b) you don’t sufficiently value who I am or what I’m about, (c) life is struggle and toil and trouble, and you’d better man up and get used to that, (d) you’d do well to get past yourself and your swollen bullshit ego, etc. Bitter pissed-off resentful wake up go to hell oh God you’re stabbing me in the ribs and kicking me in the teeth, etc.

Not to sound petty but I lost interest when Washington sat down at the dining table and began to wolf down a bowl of macaroni and cheese. I hate it when people wolf their food, on-screen or at home or anywhere. I’d like to add a new Hollywood Elsewhere slogan — “no wolfing of any kind of meal and especially macaroni and cheese.”

The general rule of table etiquette is “always eat sparingly”. Always little half bites, if that. In fact don’t eat at all. In fact, I don’t want to see anyone in a movie eat food ever.

If Cary Grant had sat down in the middle of North by Northwest and started wolfing a bowl of macaroni and cheese, the movie would’ve tanked and his career would’ve been over.

HE to journo pally: Do I understand correctly that you believe Zendaya is some kind of Best Actress contender? Did I miss something? Is this “Be Kind to Marginally Talented Actresses Who Began As Dancers'” month?

She tries to act but she can’t strike a match. Ingrid Bergman, she’s not. She has glassy shark eyes. She has three arrows in her quiver, three modes within her range of expression. Sarcastic belittling attitude pout. Frosty, resentful anger pout. And silent weeping in the bathtub.

Plus her hairline is right on top of her eyebrows. You know how they used to say Claudette Colbert had no neck? And the same about Mickey Spillane? Zendaya barely has a forehead. Okay, she has one in the middle section but not on the sides.

She’s a flavor of the month-slash-flash in the pan who lucked out when Levinson cast her as a druggie in Euphoria, and then Levinson got the idea that she could handle a Liz Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf-level virtuoso performance. Not on this planet.

Honestly? Washington the macaroni wolfer isn’t that great either. Yes, he’s better than Zendaya but that’s not saying all that much. At least he’s energetic. At least he doesn’t pout.

Did I hate Malcolm & Marie? No, I didn’t. It was okay while it lasted, but it’s nothing to jump up and down about. I occasionally texted while I watched it — I’m just being honest.

I’m reposting something that’s less than four months old, but it has to be re-injected and re-contemplated. The spiritual message herein is like oxygen, like honeysuckle, like the moisture of clouds in Switzerland.

Three and a half months ago a journo pally became alarmed by my anti-Khmer Rouge postings. He wanted to help me adjust and accept. “If you were a driver heading into the wrong lane of the Malibu Canyon tunnel, I’d stop you,” he wrote, sounding like a combination of O’Brien in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Bing Crosby in Going My Way. “If you were a neighbor whose house was on fire, I’d hand you the water hose. If you reported to me at [a publication], I’d steer you toward writing about film and television…writing that called upon your vast reservoir of knowledge, your passion, intellect, savvy — and away from your darker impulses.”

“There’s a way to have fun, serve your readers and steer a sober, responsible business course,” O’Brien went on. “There are ways for you to embrace the changes of our times, to highlight the incredible talents in every creative category of filmmaking, celebrate filmmakers from around the world and in every corner of our country. That’s a much better use of your time and a much better business strategy than [following your present course].

“You wrote a column a while back about reflecting on your life, your feelings, about turning over a new leaf. Do that. Lay down your weary tune. Turn on your love light. Get in touch with your inner Pig Pen. Submit, surrender, get with the program.”

HE to Journo Pally: Wow, thanks. I agree with the positive thrust of the message, but — don’t take this the wrong way — you also sound a bit like Dr. Kauffman trying to persuade Kevin McCarthy‘s Miles to relax and let the seed pods take over.

Dr. Kauffman: Less than a month ago, West Hollywood was like any other town. People with nothing but problems. Then out of the progressive community came a solution. Seeds drifting through space for years took root in a farmer’s field. From the seeds came pods which had the power to reproduce themselves in the exact likeness of any form of life.
Miles: So that’s how it began…out of the sky.
Dr. Kauffman: Your new bodies are growing in there. They’re taking you over cell for cell, atom for atom. There is no pain. Suddenly, while you’re asleep, they’ll absorb your minds, your memories and you’ll be reborn into a simpler, purer world.
Miles: Where everyone’s a wokester?
Dr. Kauffman: Exactly. If you give in, tomorrow you’ll be one of us, and you can become the new Perri Nemiroff. You’ll be happier. You’ll smile all the time.
Miles: I love films by Roman Polanski and Woody Allen. Will I feel the same tomorrow?
Dr. Kauffman: [shakes his head] There will be no more need for Allen or Polanski or any other artist who hasn’t accepted the new reality.
Miles: No more watching J’Accuse or Rosemary’s Baby or The Pianist? No more Manhattan or Crimes and Misdemeanors?
Dr. Kauffman: You say it as if it were terrible. Believe me, it isn’t. We’ve all seen their films. They never last. They never do. Sardonic wit. Love and desire. Intrigue. Betrayal and facing evil. Without their films, life will be so much simpler, believe me.
Miles: You’re basically saying I need to stop fighting the idea that if I wasn’t a huge fan of Little Women, I’m a sexist who doesn’t get it.
Dr. Kauffman: Miles, if you didn’t like Little Women you are a sexist who doesn’t get it. Don’t you understand that?
Miles: I don’t want any part of it.
Dr. Kauffman: You’re forgetting something, Miles.
Miles: What’s that?
Dr. Kauffman: You have no choice.

There are three principal characters in John Lee Hancock‘s The Little Things (theatrical + HBO Max, 1.29), a cops-chase-killer drama set in 1990 Los Angeles.

Denzel Washington plays the wise old cop, seasoned but spooked by some past tragedy that Hancock’s script (written in ’91 or ’92) doesn’t tell us about until right before the end. Rami Malek plays the young cop, a tense hot-dog who wears perfectly tailored skinny suits. And Jared Leto plays the wacko weirdo baddy-waddy with sunken eyes, a pot belly and dirty Jesus hippie hair.

The first hour of The Little Things is all cliched, formulaic character shadings about Denzel’s past (borrowed from a hundred other cop films about a detective who withdrew from active frontline duty but now has has to return and face his demons while dealing with some bad buried business and blah-dee-blah-blah-blah-blah-dee-blah) + the building of trust between himself and hot-dog Malek.

They wind up working hand in hand to try and capture a nocturnal murderer of young women. And I’m telling you straight and true that the movie doesn’t kick in until Leto shows up, or roughly around the 60-minute mark.

I’m not saying if Leto is actually playing a killer or not (he might be), but he’s obviously offering a variation of Kevin Spacey‘s John Doe in Se7en. And he owns the film when he turns that weird shit on.

And then Hancock has the absolute friggin’ nerve to completely duplicate the finale of Se7en except for one or two things — (a) killer and cop drive out to a desert area so killer can reveal something big, (b) killer taunts cop by telling him to dig in three or four different spots but it just stalling, (c) killer taunts cop with knowledge about his own family and his own shortcomings as a dad, (d) cop seethes and seethes some more…

The difference is that unlike Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt in Se7en, Rami and Denzel don’t call in choppers or backup and decide to fix things up. So the bad stuff is handled but destined to linger.

The problem is that we all expect a good cop drama to deliver some form of rough justice. We want things to balance out on some level, What happens at the end of The Little Things is not justice — it’s evasion. Stuff being buried or brushed aside.

Leto gives the movie its only real energy. Denzel is one of our greats, but he really needs to drop 20 pounds. With a little dieting and treadmill action he could get back to where he was in Man on Fire. Malek is okay.

So The Little Things is basically a poor man’s Se7en mixed in with sprinklings from The Onion Field and Manhunter and you-tell-me-how-many-other haunted cop films.

Question: What kind of stupid-ass detective reacts like a nervous rookie because it’s dark out and some woman has rustled some bushes before coming into view?

The period cars and whatnot look good. But there were no hookers on the streets of Los Angeles in 1990. I was here and driving around so don’t tell me.

You have to hand it to Netflix for pulling off a surprisingly effective award-season campaign on behalf of Spike Lee‘s Da 5 Bloods. First came Delroy Lindo and the late Chadwick Boseman snagging Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor trophies from the NYFCC. And then on 1.14.21 Lee became the 34th recipient Of American Cinematheque Award. And now the National Board of Review has handed three major awards to Lee’s film — Best Film, Best Director and Best Ensemble.

Seriously, I’m impressed.

I’ve placed a boldfaced HE next to the NBR Award that I fully support or can at least live with:

Best Film: Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
Best Director: Spike Lee, Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
Best Actor: Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios) / HE
Best Actress: Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman (Focus Features) / HE
Best Supporting Actor: Paul Raci, Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios) / HE
Best Supporting Actress: Yuh–Jung, Minari (A24) / HE
Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Greengrass, Luke Davies, News of the World (Universal Pictures)
Best Original Screenplay: Lee Isaac Chung, Minari (A24) / HE
Best Animated Feature: Soul (Pixar)
Best Foreign Language Film: La Llorona (Guatemala) / haven’t seen it
Best Documentary: Time (Amazon Studios)
NBR Icon Award: Chadwick Boseman / HE

In a just-posted Variety video chat between Promising Young Woman‘s Carey Mulligan and Malcom & Marie‘s Zendaya, Mulligan offers her reaction to Variety management having apologized for a portion of Dennis Harvey’s 1.26.20 review of Mulligan’s film.

Mulligan’s assessment is astute and wise, but the timing of Variety‘s apology is crucial to understanding what actually happened here.

Harvey filed the review during last January’s Sundance Film Festival, but the apology didn’t appear until Mulligan complained to the N.Y. Times‘ Kyle Buchanan in a 12.23.20 profile.

Variety‘s mea culpa: “Variety sincerely apologizes to Carey Mulligan and regrets the insensitive language and insinuation in our review of Promising Young Woman that minimized her daring performance.”

Three important caveats: One, Harvey’s review passed muster with Variety‘s editors 12 months ago and nobody said boo — not until political pressure was brought to bear did they say a word. Two, a trade paper apologizing for a review is bad form and a bad precedent — Variety should have instead posted a counter-review that argued with Harvey. (I personally disagreed with what Harvey said about Mulligan vs. Robbie — his remarks missed the point of the film.) And three, out of respect for Harvey’s years of excellent reviews Variety should have given him an opportunity to explain his viewpoint more fully. Instead they threw him under the bus, and in so doing bruised his reputation.

Variety has devoted a special page to Mulligan’s just-posted remarks about the Harvey brouhaha. Kate Aurthur‘s intro to Mulligan’s reaction states the following: “Though the review…was mostly positive, the Variety newsroom agreed with Mulligan.” 11 months after the fact, she meant to say. After Mulligan complained to Kyle Buchanan and not before. Variety didn’t apologize for jack diddly squat when the review ran a year ago. Let’s make that crystal clear.

If I were voting for the Film Independent Spirt Awards’ Best Feature prize, I wouldn’t think about it twice. It would have to be Nomadland. But the total number of Spirit Award nominations is often a tip-off, and the fact that Nomadland has only five suggests that it may not win the top prize. Eliza Hittman‘s Never Rarely Sometimes Always has tallied seven nominations, including for Best Feature…what does that tell you? I’ll tell you what it tells you. It tells you that Hittman’s film, a respected effort that doesn’t hold a candle to Cristian Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (’07), is the likely champ.

Significant paragraph in THR announcement story, written by Hilary Lewis and Mia Galuppo:

A couple of days ago Josh Dickey, a respected entertainment and social media realm editor (Mashable, TheWrap, Variety) and veteran journalistic presence around town, announced on Facebook that he’s embarked on a new career path.

Dickey is now specializing in HVAC/R engineering, or the installment and maintenance of heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration.

Why is he out of the Hollywood racket? The impression I’m getting is that he’s the wrong color and the wrong age, and is assessing the world in the wrong way. It would appear (and I’m stressing the “a” word) that no matter how smart and highly credentialed they might be, straight, middle-aged white guys aren’t being hired much these days. Especially if the white guy in question is more of a discerning, Bari Weiss-leaning centrist or libertarian than a wokester.

The Khmer Rouge wants to more or less eliminate guys like this, or at least seriously thin their ranks. And if you complain you’ll be laughed out of the room and probably end up in an even worse spot for your trouble.

Here’s how Dickey put it: “Everything you hear about media bias is ten times worse when looking out from the inside, [and] the homogeny of the industry’s worldview had become hostile to my center, libertarian, rugged individualist leanings, a dissonance that was manifesting everywhere I went. ‘They’ wanted me to write about social justice [while] I prefer to seek truth, and so something had to give.**

Josh Dickey, formerly of Mashable, TheWrap, Variety, et.al.

“Not that the media, spattering grease fire that it has become, would have me. I’m not the right make, model and year anymore. That’s not something I’m whining about — it’s just a stone fact. Ten years ago I was beating back recruiters. My resume is a garden of journalistic delights and editorial accomplishments, and I’ll always be proud of those.

But during the past couple of years, I have applied for more than 100 media jobs — roles I was uniquely qualified for — and not a single interview or lead has come of it. I mean crickets, folks. Because, let’s face it, HR won’t look past my LinkedIn profile picture. Not in this climate.”

A year or so ago I passed along an anecdote from an east-coast critic friend who said that a job-seeking colleague had been told point blank by Variety critic Peter Debruge that as far as critic stringer postions are concerened, Variety is looking to only (or primarily) hire women and POCs. When I shared this anecdote with a journo colleague his response was “I don’t know that I trust that story” or “that doesn’t sound like Debruge” or words to that effect.

Today I was told that a rep for another entertainment-industry publication had explicitly stated in an email that their unspoken hiring policy is focused more or less entirely upon women and POCS. Because if it got around that this publication isn’t dedicated to hiring these two categories of job applicants or aren’t giving them full and fair consideration, they’d be DEAD in the Twitter water.

And white guys can’t beef about this because they’ll sound wimpy and whiny and…well, lacking a sense of irony. They’d sound ungracious and entitled. The applicable phrase is “a taste of your own medicine, fuckface.”

Khmer Rouge cadres to middle-aged white guy job applicants: “For decades you and your buddies (not to mention your fathers and grandfathers) were at the front of the line…now you’re at the back of it. It’s that simple And if you don’t like it, tough. You’ll take it and like it.”

So combine (a) the earlier, second-hand Debruge anecdote (however accurate it may or may not be) with (b) Dickey’s statement and (c) what I’ve been told about the hiring philosophy at a certain publication, and you’ve got three blades of grass…three blades that suggest there’s a whole lawn’s worth of attitudes out there…attitudes that basically say “older white guys can suck on it.”

We all want a fair and equal playing field when it comes to hiring, but we now seem to be in a phase in which straight white guys appear to have taken on the status of targeted must-to-avoids — actively discriminated against because they’re not black or female. Or are simply too “straight” or aren’t, you know, gay enough. Or because vaguely centrist or conservative-minded fellows just don’t fit in these days. Or some combination of the above.

As Henry Hill said in Act Three of Goodfellas, “These are the bad times.”

There’s no place for White Guys With Opinions anymore. Unless you’re someone like myself, I suppose, but don’t think things aren’t tough in my corner as well. I’ve been grappling with punitive Khmer Rouge backhands and freeze-outs for a solid three years and counting.

There are certain outfits in the industry that aren’t even trying to hide this bias. If (and I say “if”) someone were to present an email from an entertainment or media-related company that said in so many words that they’re only interested in hiring women and POCs these days, a guy could theoretically hire a labor lawyer and sue. Expressly not even considering hiring a job applicant due to gender and/or skin color…that’s about as litigious as it gets.

But white guys can’t do this because people would say “how dare you? You and your kind swaggered around for decades, and now that the tables are turning you’re upset? Man up, you fucking child. Take a course in sensitivity training, read Robin D’Angelo‘s ‘White Fragility’ and shove it up your ass…you’ve had your day and now it’s time for guys like yourself to step aside and wait your turn.”

** For more on this, Dickey wrote, see Bari Weiss’ brilliant resignation letter.

Last night the New York Film Critics posted a video that saluted the 2020 awards winners and gave them a forum to say “many thanks, deeply grateful,” etc. Hollywood Elsewhere congratulates all the winners and also-rans. And congratulations to longtime NYFCC member Marshall Fine for shooting and assembling the below video — clean, classy, succinct.

But as long as we’re discussing the NYFCC and last month’s award announcements, it’s fair to repeat an opinion that I posted on 12.18.20.

Starting in ‘18 and concurrent with rising wokeness, the NYFCC awards began to move beyond eccentricity and into knee-jerk virtue signalling. In the same way that everyone in the entertainment industry is currently emphasizing the hiring of women and POCs, the NYFCC’s 2020 award choices were mostly at least partly about kowtowing to sacred p.c. cows.

The Best Picture winner, Kelly Reichardt‘s First Cow, is a respected, finely crafted but rather somber mood trip about a mid 19th Century relationship film that…uhm, was faintly gayish but not acted upon? It bears the Reichardt stamp, you bet — quiet, studied, authentic but radiating a kind of chaste, closed-off feeling. I was mystified stunned when the NYFCC chose it above Nomadland, Mangrove, The Trial of the Chicago 7, The Father, Mank, etc.

I also scratched my head when Sidney Flannigan, star of Never Rarely Sometimes Always, won for Best Actress. Flannigan was playing a sadly damaged, extremely stand-offish character, but she barely emoted except in that one scene in which the abortion clinic lady asked those probing questions. Obviously an emotional keeper — it got to everyone — and I fully believed all of Flannigan’s scenes, but I never even considered the possibility of her winning anything, due respect. The last time I checked Best Actress awards were supposed to be about more than just the emotional impact of a single scene.

And Maria Bakalova won for Best Supporting Actress in the Borat sequel because she and Sascha Baron Cohen punked Rudy Giuliani and because her character stood up for herself as a strong and independent thinker? Out of all the worthy Best Supporting Actress performances to be seen in 2020 they chose Baklava’s? The award belonged to Mank‘s Amanda Seyfried or The Father‘s Olivia Colman.

These and some other calls, due respect, struck me as more than the usual quirky elitism. The 2020 NYFCC awards were about members fortifying their progressive credentials and their progressive vision of life (call it a party platform) in 2021.

Da 5 Bloods costar Delroy Lindo gave a vigorous, blustery, scattershot performance. I respect the first 50% or 60% of Da 5 Bloods, but I believe it’s been celebrated mainly because of last summer’s George Floyd tragedy and the subsequent BLM demonstrations, and because of Spike Lee‘s no-brainer decision to blend his story with issues of POC identity and certain ghosts of the past, and what was happening in the streets.

I’ve been saying this for three or four years, but the NYFCC members seem to live in their own rarified realm, and all they want to do is blow people’s minds (or certainly mine). They’ve almost become as weird as the LAFCA foodies Their awards are almost entirely about choosing the most socially deserving recipients. Feminism because sexism must be defeated, and support for black people any which way because of BLM. It’s all political.

When the NYFCC gave the Best Actress award to Regina Hall in 2018’s Support The Girls instead of Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me, I threw up my hands. A day after that awards announcement Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn implored me to watch Support The Girls and I did — it’s a decent little film and Hall is very good in it. But good enough to warrant a Best Actress award from the NYFCC?

Four days ago Ben Kenigsberg posted a N.Y. Times piece about Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder (’59). It praises the Jimmy Stewart courtroom drama, which costarred Ben Gazzara, Lee Remick and George C. Scott. It especially admires Preminger’s willingness to “trust [that] audiences will dwell in gray areas.”

Here’s a passage that made me sit up: “While some other Preminger films of the era (’58’s Bonjour Tristesse, ’59’s Porgy and Bess) used widescreen formats like CinemaScope or Todd-AO, Anatomy of a Murder instead favors claustrophobic compositions that ask viewers to judge several characters’ reactions at once.”

Excuse me but if Kenigsberg had tracked down the boxy (1.37:1) version of Anatomy of a Murder, which is only available on a 21-year-old Sony Home Video 480p DVD, he would have realized that in no way, shape or form is this a claustrophobically-framed film. It’s actually loose and roomy and quite relaxed and laid-back…in my view the exact opposite of cramped and congested. Because it has room to move and room to breathe…because it inhales and exhales that northern Michigan air like a jazz-loving attorney on a fishing trip.

Here’s how I explained it nine years ago:

“Otto Preminger‘s 1959 film looks sublime at 1.37. Needle sharp and comfortable with acres and acres of head space. Plus it’s the version that was shown on TV for decades. It looks stodgy and kind of grandfatherly, true, but that’s fine because it’s your grandfather’s movie in a sense. Boxy is beautiful.

“It is perverse if not diseased for Criterion to deliver their 2012 Bluray version — obviously the best that Anatomy of a Murder has ever looked on home screens — with one third of the originally captured image chopped off. Flip the situation over and put yourself in the shoes of a Criterion bigwig and ask yourself, ‘Where is the harm in going with the airier, boxier version?’ Answer: ‘No harm at all.’ Unless you’re persuaded by the 1.85 fascist cabal that a 1.37 aspect ratio reduces the appeal of a Bluray because the 16 x 9 plasma/LED/LCD screen won’t be fully occupied.”

The above comparison show that cropping the image down to 1.85 from 1.37 doesn’t kill the visual intention. In the 1.85 version Stewart simply has less breathing room above and below his head. But the comparison below makes my case. Consider a scene between Stewart and Gazarra in a small jail cell. The boxier version is clearly the preferred way to go. It feels natural and plain. The 1.85 version delivers a feeling of confinement, obviously, but Otto Preminger wasn’t an impressionist. He was a very matter-of-fact, point-focus-and-shoot type of guy.”

Definitive Bernie mitten, as good as it gets, etc.

King Kong (super-sized, 15 or 20 times bigger than he was in 1933) is regarded as an ally or good guy of some kind because he’s forged a tender emotional bond with a little Asian girl…check. So he’s been brought in by military authorities as a kind of pinch-hitting bruiser who can take on Godzilla…check. On the other hand Godzilla sure can take a punch. HBO Max will begin streaming Godzilla vs. Kong on 3.26.

33 years ago I was poking around Book Soup on Sunset, and I came upon a thin paperback version of Bruce Wagner‘s “Force Majeure“, which I’d been reading about. This was the original novella that was only 80 pages long. But as Hollywood satires went it was one of the tastiest and most downbeat (as in “fuck me, I can’t believe my life is over and I’m not even middle-aged yet”) I’d ever read.

Those 80 pages were honed to perfection. Every line was spot-on, every phrase tight as a drum.

Three and a half years later a much longer version of “Force Majuere” appeared — same author, same Bud Wiggins character, some of the same situations (including that legendary Malibu moment with a powerful red-haired producer blowing Wiggins while The Best Years of Our Lives played on a nearby TV), only this time it was 468 pages. It arrived in Book Soup on 8.2.91.

I didn’t find it as satisfying as the 80-page version. It was very well-written, but with each turn of the page I was muttering “if you can say it in 80 pages why write a 468-page version?”

Today I was searching around for my old, coffee-stained copy of the 80-page original. No dice. So I ordered a used copy on Amazon, for only $13 and change.