Jeffrey Wells

Live-Blogging “Bad Boys: Ride or Die”

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7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when and how did Martin Lawrence become Oliver Hardy? He’s funny in that bug-eyed, space-cadet way…

7:55 pm: And now it’s all cartel bad guys, ice-cold vibes, hard bullets, bad business, that silver haired sociopath, etc. Not cool, man.

8:05 pm: The Michael Bay cameo was okay, but the shoot-out in the nightclub and subsequent gunfire on the street…very disappointing. Seen this shit a zillion times. Highly-placed corrupted officials in Miami in league with cartel guys? I have to watch this?

8:13: Out-of-control spinning helicopter, etc. If it weren’t for Lawrence’s unhinged-cuckoo schtick (Will Smith is more or less the straight man) this movie would be worthless. People behind me are laughing at / with Lawrence…ooh–hoo–hoo! I’m not laughing ‘cause I’m not a whoo-hoo-hoo laughing-gas type but the guys behind me…turn it down, will ya?

8:24 pm: Smith & Lawrence trying to fool a pair of MAGA redneck yokels by trying to fake-sing a Reba McIntire song…good stuff. Possibly the best scene so far. The forced cunnilingus scene (“licky-licky”) isn’t bad either. Oh, no… more cartel guys with automatic weapons!! Van on fire, squealing tires!! Smith’s son Armando (Jacob Scipio) is cool, good-looking, etc. Cpt. Howard (Joey Pants) is innocent!

8:39 pm: This is slick, punchy, hack-level garbage. Good, high-impact, power-punch direction by Adil and Bilall, but it’s a wank…they’re trying to wank me off but I’m not the wanking type.

8:46 pm: The people sitting behind me won’t stop laughing. They’re easy lays…what can I say? Okay, Lawrence is pretty funny at times. And Scipio has great coal-black eyes, a great sense of implacable cool…he might be my favorite guy in this.

Runner Didn’t Stumble

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I saw Run Lola Run twice a quarter-century ago. Throttled. Last night I re-watched a 4K restored version at a Danbury plex, and loved it just as much. Smart, fleet. metaphysical, and funnier than I remembered.

Plus what an unusual thing to catch a fast-moving flick that lasts only 80 minutes when the average feature running time these days is over two hours.

Minor Anne Thompson correction: Franka Potente, who will turn 50 in July, was born on 7.22.74. Run Lola Run was initially released in Germany on 8.20.98, and, being a warm-weather film, was most likely shot in Berlin the previous summer, when Potente was 23. If she was 21 when she ran through Tom Tykwer’s film, principal photography would have happened in ‘95. I don’t know for a fact when Lola lensed, but a three-year post-production period sounds unlikely.

Lola’s 19th Century apartment building is located at Albrechtstraße 13–14, at the intersection of Schiffbauerdamm — right alongside Berlin’s Spree River, and roughly a five-minute walk from the area of the old Reichstag building and the Brandenburg gate.

Mick Jagger Hate Thread

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Earlier today a few seething Facebook women went on and on about what a vile shitheel Mick Jagger is or at least was in the old days. How he treated certain women badly, etc. Which he may well have. (What do I know?) But I defended him anyway. Kneejerk bro loyalty or whatever.

No Diminishing “Ripley”

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In the comment thread under yesterday’s “Best 2024 Films at Half–Time” piece, “Correcting Jeff” said Steven Zaillian’s Ripley “doesn’t count because it’s television.” The obvious reply is “cinema is cinema, regardless of the platform.” My actual reply expanded upon this:

“Ripley is awesomely moody, eye-bath cinema…a silky monochrome Caravaggio to have and hold or at least stream…an old-world Italian dream trip that’s pure swoon…an ice-cold sociopath creates his own world by way of bashing two fellows to death, and gradually gets even the most discerning doubters to go along with his audacious lifestyle change…one of the most immersive and succulent black-and-white films eyes have ever beheld. Netflix schmetflix…I can’t list 2024’s pick-of-the-litter so far and not include it.”

My Gun Is Quick

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My aching left leg joint no longer aches. Cordless Robocop massage pistol arrived a day ago. It makes me feel like a gunslinger. I decided against ordering an optional black leather holster…kidding.

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The Horror, The Horror

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I’m okay with Harris Dickinson playing John Lennon in Sam Mendes’ forthcoming quartet of Beatles films (due in ‘27), and I don’t know enough about Charlie Rowe to squawk about Mendes having cast him as George Harrison.

But a rumored decision to cast HE’s two all-time biggest pet-peeve actors — Paul Mescal and Barry beestung-nose Keoghan — as Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr is giving me heart palpitations.

I can only hope and pray that Jeff Sneider’s reporting is somehow mistaken or, if correct, is up in the air as far as Mescal-Keoghan are concerned. Please God, I’m begging you…

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Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, Apparently Persuaded That Dad Brad Is Evil Incarnate, Wants To Legally Drop Name

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Brad Pitt has been sober for nearly eight years, but because he lost his alcoholic temper during that infamous chartered flight (on 9.14.16) and was physically abusive to Maddox, one of the six Jolie-Pitt kids…because he was a belligerent drunken dick that one time, at least two of his daughters, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, 18, and Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, 15, are convinced that he’s a living embodiment of Satan and want the Pitt struck from their last names.

Shiloh has in fact filed legal papers to change her name to a Pitt-less Shiloh Jolie. Perhaps Vivienne will follow suit when she turns 18.

We all understand teens who feel estranged from their parents (I was one), but who goes into court and says in effect “strike my father’s last name from my legal history!…he doesn’t exist, his name is anathema!…I judge him damned with the devil and condemn him to molten-lava hell with all the other fallen angels, where he will writhe in terrible pain for all eternity.”

What kind of nutbag daughter thinks this way?

Why is the divorce initiated by Angelina Jolie against William Bradley Pitt still ongoing and unresolved eight years later? Sane exes don’t behave this way as a rule.

Trust me — I’m not the first person on planet earth to rhetorically ask “what exactly is Angelina’s basic psychological malfunction?”

Then again I may be thinking too narrowly. Perhaps Pitt is the devil incarnate, and therefore deserves to be hunted down with clubs and spears and burned like Joan of Arc or Oliver Reed’s Father Grandier from Ken Russell’s The Devils?