While contemplating the below images, consider “The Battle Over Biscuits and Gravy at the 11-Worth Cafe,” a 9.5 N.Y Times report by Dionne Searcey.

It’s about an old-time Omaha diner for Average Joes that was forced to close a couple of months ago, because of a furor over a gravy-covered sausage patty sandwich called the Robert E. Lee. Wokesters were enraged by the obviously racist allusion and demonstrated against the 11-Worth and its longtime owners, the Caniglia family. The Caniglias apologized and offered to remove the name of the dish, but somehow this wasn’t enough and negotiations broke down. Now the diner is history. A shame — I love unpretentious, down-home eateries like this.

Observation: The tweet from the Washington Post‘s Frederick Kunkle about D.C. wokesters “blocking the media from filming their demonstration, shining lights into a reporter’s face, blocking shots with umbrellas and following like minders” is a strong indication that they know the media narrative has begun to turn against them.

As mentioned, the night before last (Friday, 9.4) I caught a 7 pm Tenet show at a Flagstaff Harkins plex. As the closing credits began to roll I got up and looked around and counted…oh, maybe 75 or 80 heads. Obviously a weak showing for an opening-weekend Friday, but under a pandemic mushroom cloud and especially with New York and Los Angeles theatres dark…not too bad.

Under normal conditions I would presume that the mind-blowing but challenging Tenet would pull in…what, $250 million domestic and maybe $750 million worldwide? (A decade ago Inception earned $292,576,195 domestic and $834,791,961 worldwide.) An exceptionally strong film might quintuple its first-weekend haul, and this is what Tenet will have to do stateside to make $100 million theatrically.

Current trade projections are that Tenet will generate a domestic tally of $20.2 million over the Labor Day weekend. And yet worldwide Chris Nolan‘s time-flipping thriller is approaching the $150 million mark. Around Europe and elsewhere Tenet brought in $78.3 million, bringing the global tally to $146.2 million.

I’ve been a sucker all my life for scenes of long-delayed revelation or confession that are nonetheless inaudible due to directorial strategy.

Two of my top three are YouTubed below. My third favorite is Leo G. Carroll‘s remarkably concise explanation to Cary Grant about the whole George Kaplan decoy scheme in North by Northwest. The all-but-deafening sound of nearby aircraft engines allows Carroll to explain all the whats, whys and wherefores in roughly ten or twelve seconds; otherwise a full-boat explanation would take at least…what, 45 or 50 seconds? A minute or two?

My favorite is the On The Waterfront moment in which Marlon Brando‘s Terry confesses to Eva Marie Saint‘s Edie that he was unwittingly complicit in her brother’s murder. Because it’s not just an admission but a plea for forgiveness with Terry insisting it wasn’t his idea to kill Joey or anyone else (“I swear to God, Edie!”), and that he thought “they was just gonna lean on him a little,” as he says to his brother Charlie (Rod Steiger) in the film’s second scene.

I’m mentioned the Mississippi Burning moment between Gene Hackman and Frances McDormand a couple of times before. It’s arguably the most powerful moment in this racially charged 1988 thriller, which is based on the infamous 1964 murder of three civil-rights workers. A third-act fantasy spin was the main criticism when it opened, but it emotionally satisfied and that’s what counts.

There’s also that Foreign Correspondent moment inside the Butch windmill when Joel McCrea can hear the murmur of bad-guy voices but not what’s being said. Others?

Cary Grant, Leo G. Carroll during the Chicago / Midway airport confession scene.

In ‘Compromised‘ (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 9.8.20), former FBI agent and Chief of the Counterespionage Section Peter Strzok “draws on lessons from a long career — from his role in the Russian illegals case that inspired The Americans to his service as lead FBI agent on the Mueller investigation — to construct a devastating account of foreign influence at the highest levels of our government.”

“And he grapples with a question that should concern every U.S. citizen: When a president appears to favor personal and Russian interests over those of our nation, has he become a national security threat?” (Amazon copy)

Wiki excerpt: “In June and July 2017, Strzok worked on Robert Mueller‘s Special Counsel investigation into any links or coordination between Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign and the Russian government. Mueller removed Strzok from the Russia investigation when Mueller became aware of criticisms of Trump contained in personal text messages exchanged between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein defended Mueller’s response to the text messages.

“On 8.10.18, FBI deputy director David Bowdich fired Strzok for the anti-Trump text messages. On 8.7.19, Strzok filed a wrongful termination suit against the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, asking to be reinstated and awarded back pay. He asserted in the suit that his text messages were ‘protected political speech,’ and that his termination violated the First Amendment. In December 2019, a report by the Justice Department inspector general found that Strzok was not motivated by bias in his work on the FBI investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.”

“The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not in the think of it.” — Stanley Kubrick.

I don’t have much time to write (we have to leave for the airport by 12:15 pm) but Chris Nolan‘s Tenet turned out to be much, much more than I expected.

I kept muttering to myself, “I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.” It’s not intentionally “funny”, of course, but I was smiling quizzically and a few times literally guffawing with pleasure. It’s all but impossible to fully “understand” (certainly upon a first viewing, and even after reading the Wikipedia synopsis I was still going “wait, what?”) but my eyes, mind and expectations were constantly being challenged and blown. Pleasurably, of course.

Nolan being Nolan it’s a visceral eye-bath first and foremost as well as a cool and dry thing, of course, but it’s truly astonishing in spurts.

The important thing is it that it didn’t infuriate me like Interstellar did. Comprehension-wise I was less engaged than I was by Dunkirk, but then Tenet is a deliberate stretch and reach — intentionally designed to expand your boundaries and to some extent leave you confounded and feeling behind the eight ball.

This is a totally riveting, first-class, thinking person’s action film — brilliant, ahead of the curve, every dollar on the screen.

SPOILER WHINER WARNING: There are…oh, God, several knockout action sequences you’ll never forget. Four or five I can think of right off the top. Three of them — the first time-reverse fight scene (which also includes the dumping of gold bars on an airport tarmac followed by the 747 slowly crashing into a hangar), the multi-vehicle highway heist, the big military assault with bombs reverse-detonating and being sucked back into the ground — left me giddy with excitement and awe, and at the same time perplexed.

I understood so little of the dialogue that I threw up my hands about five or ten minutes in. The sound mix is, in a sense, “worse” than Interstellar‘s but this time I had been pre-warned and I didn’t much care. It was so incomprehensible in terms of actual “sure, of course, I get it” moments that I said to myself, “Fuck it…just go with the aural and visual energy of it and absorb what you can and then figure out the particulars when you read the Wikipedia synopsis.”

But after reading the Wiki…well, it helped a bit but if you asked me right now to repeat the plot in basic, high-school-dropout, proletariat-guy language I don’t think I could.

And I don’t want to hear any shit from any commenters about how I’m too slow or how I need a fucking hearing aid or anything along those lines. Tenet is not intended to be specifically understood in the way that 98% of the films out there are. It’s meant to be jumped into, submitted to, absorbed, bounced off, smeared with, drowned in.

And I was hugely impressed with the performances. I was totally flat on John David Washington after seeing him in BlacKkKlansman but he’s been goosed and made over and elevated by Nolan. RBatz “acts” less than he did in The Lighthouse, but he’s completely engaging and agreeable. Kenneth Branagh‘s Russian billionaire baddy-waddy is, by popcorn villain standards, one of the best (i.e., most Shakespearean) I’ve ever seen. And Elizabeth Debicki slams the hell out of her role as Branagh’s angry and resentful wife-mom-victim — in my mind it’s the absolute finest performance she’s ever given.

Branagh: “Perhaps you’ll tell me, are you sleeping with my wife?” Washington: “No.” (beat). “Not yet.” Branagh: “How do you want to die?” Washington: “Old.” Branagh: “You’re in the wrong profession then.”

And I love that Nolan didn’t make us endure even one scene with Debicki’s young son. Much obliged!

Kubrick again: “A film is — or should be — more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning…all that comes later.”

“It’s the ambiguity of all art, of a fine piece of music or a painting…you don’t need written instructions by the composer or painter accompanying such works to ‘explain’ them. ‘Explaining’ them contributes nothing but a superficial ‘cultural’ value which has no value except for critics and teachers who have to earn a living.”

Review excerpt, The New Yorker‘s Anthony Lane:

Friendo: “I read your cowardly praise of Charlie Kaufman’s film, which is awful.”
HE: “My praise of the Kaufman film was cowardly?”
Friendo: “Yes, because it’s a bad movie and no one will say so.”
HE: “No, it’s a nervy, disturbing nightmare vision of rural America and weird parents, and the lingering effect of a dark, suppressive childhood, and a vision of loneliness and despair and the dreams that are set free by returning to the homestead, especially when the music of Oklahoma! is heard along with the dancing of Agnes de Mille…”
Friendo: “Over-indulged, undisciplined navel gazing. The only reason people aren’t giving it proper criticism is the Paul Thomas Anderson syndrome — fear of challenging someone who’s revered. Greta Gerwig, PTA, Safdies and now Kaufman get a free pass from critics. I do not know why.”

David Fincher‘s Mank is obviously something else. Consider the rapier wit, the pedigree, the Erik Messerschmidt cinematography, the yesteryearness. I’ve read an early draft of the script, and I know it’ll be brilliant. And I can’t adequately express how the prospect of spending two-plus hours with the God-like Herman Mankiewicz delights me to the core.

Even merged with the physicality of the puffy-faced, pot-bellied Gary Oldman in those 1940s baggy suits, tent-like dress shirts and fat ties, I tingle like Peter Ustinov‘s Lentulus Batiatus. Seriously.

This might turn out to be one of the greatest “head” movies of the 21st Century, although in a 1960s Bob Rafelson sense. Seeing it stoned may be a requirement.

What I don’t understand is why Fincher didn’t cast Mank with a Hamilton attitude or…you know, with the liberated, cast-off-the-old-ways, rethink-the-musty-past mindset of Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood or Armando Iannucci‘s The Personal History of David Wokesterfield. Where in this old time Hollywood-white-guy realm of are the African Americans, Latinos and Asians, Mr. Fincher? How can we hope to move forward as a culture if we don’t cast period films according to our own present-tense values and determinations?

The problem is not just Fincher but also Joel and Ethan Coen, who notoriously ignored the Khmer Rouge casting philosophy when they made Hail, Caesar!. Just ask Jen Yamato — she explained it fully four years ago.

I’m basically an Amazon Prime, Netflix, HBO Max, Criterion Channel, Hulu, iTunes movies and Vudu kind of guy. Oh, and Apple +. Ixnay to Disney +.

I haven’t basked in the lore of a working megaplex since early March — six months ago. A 7 pm Tenet show begins in six minutes…no, five. A beautiful Harkins plex on Marketplace Drive in Flagstaff. I love the tens of millions of pine trees here, and the nearby foothills and country clubs and whatnot. A nice, polite vibe here. 1/3 liberal, 1/3 MAGA, 1/3 independent. Tolerable traffic, not overbuilt, fresh air, hills. The population of Flagstaff is only 75,000.