“American Dharma is certainly a story about a man who lives in a strange fantasy world. Early Christianity, John Ford movies, nationalist ideologies…an incoherent mess, in my opinion.” — — Errol Morris, director of American Dharma, an exploration of the mind and ideology of Steve Bannon, during a 2018 Toronto Film Festival q & a.

In other words, Morris is no admirer of former Trump administration svengali Steve Bannon, and so American Dharma casts significant doubt upon Bannon’s overthrow-the-deep-state, hooray-for-the-red-hats bullshit. But at the same time it does a curious thing — it presents Bannon as a half-mythical figure, a man of steel and conviction, tough-minded but thoughtful.

If you have a semi-developed brain and at least some analytical abilities, you’re going to recoil in quiet horror at what Bannon is advocating here, but at the same time you’re going to be half-impressed by the way he comes off as a cinematic figure, as a fellow who’s part of a fraternity of strong, square-jawed honey badgers (including Gregory Peck in Twelve O’Clock High, Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai) who don’t give a shit but are determined to get the job done.

Right-wingers may feel conflicted about American Dharma (as I do) but they’re not going to flat-out hate it. Because there’s something faintly (emphasis on the “f” word) attractive about the way Bannon is portrayed.

I agree almost entirely with Michael Moore‘s Fahrenheit 11/9, but American Dharma, troubling as it is, is a more transporting film, certainly in a visual sense.

HE’s 8.29.19 Telluride Film Festival review, and a 9.10.19 follow-up:

I’m sorry but I get a chalk-on-the-blackboard feeling whenever someone uses the word “amazing”. It used to be a semi-legit, non-abrasive term, but over the last decade or so it’s been used and abused and over-used by too many showbiz phonies and wannabes. Especially by actors, producers and directors when they appear on talk shows and podcasts. Especially actors. “Such an amazing experience”…an amazing performer…an amazing film.”

I’m hating “amazing” so much that I’m starting to irrationally flash hostile vibes at people who say it. I don’t hate it as much as people who throw their heads back and laugh loudly in restaurants and bars, but it’s getting up there.

I also hate hearing the words “awesome”, “incredible”, “unbelievable” and “marvelous” (the latter being an elderly person’s word for the most part).

I guess what I’m really saying is that I happen to be at a place in my life in which sycophants who routinely drop to their knees and breathlessly gush over the ecstatic wonder, drop-dead genius and rapturous super-glow of certain people they know and movies and plays they’ve seen and books they’ve read and exotic places they’ve visited…my tolerance for this kind of exuberance is getting lower and lower.

The pornography of praise is something we’re stuck with, of course, especially if you’re hanging with teens and 20somethings, but people need to use alternatives. Next time you feel the urge, go with “startling”, “crazy-good”, “meltdownish”, “throttling”, “mesmerizing”, “totally outside the box”, “bracingly different”, “a singular talent”, “fiercely original”, “exceptional”, “next-level good”, “transportational”, “levitational,” “brilliant”, “expert”, “stunning”, “genius brushstrokes”, etc. But don’t use the word “genius” alone. That’s another baddie.

Just avoid the Terrible Five for starters — amazing, awesome, incredible, unbelievable and, even on an ironic Billy Crystal basis, marvelous.

Along with everyone else, Hollywood Elsewhere attended last night’s Judy premiere at the Academy. Renee Zellweger, Rupert Goold, Jessie Buckley, Rufus Sewell and the gang. Full house, unmistakable emotional reactions, cheers and applause, great after-party.

For what it’s worth both the film and particularly Zellweger’s performance, all but locked for a Best Actress nomination, sank in a bit deeper than during my first viewing in Telluride. Not just the sadness and humor but the vigor of it. I was studying her more closely, and enjoying the flicky facial tics and raised eyebrows and hair-trigger grins all the more. RZ slams a homer!

But in all fairness and as much as Zellweger channels Garland in the final year of her life with remarkable conveyance, we all need to take a moment to remember the great Jim Bailey (1938-2015). His Garland voice, look and mannerisms were more accurate than Garland’s own. Consider the below video. The ’70s and ’80s were Bailey’s peak decades.

Roadside will open Judy on 9.27.

I want to revel in the ongoing whistleblower story (Ukraine, Donald Trump, alleged dirt of Joe Biden, Rudy Guiliani, withholding of foreign aid). I want to jump into it like a swimming pool and go “wheee!” I want to splash around in this story like a toddler in a mud puddle. But it’s a little vague.

Trump was apparently just doing his usual ruthless gangster miasma whatever. No rules, no ethics, shoot from the hip, muscle whomever he feels like muscling. He wanted dirt on Joe Biden, which apparently had something to do with Joe Biden, Jr. Which he could use in the 2020 campaign. But the story hasn’t been phrased in a clear, concise, “talk to me like I’m an idiot” sort of way.

Trump is an animal and a criminal, but we knew that going in. And he wanted something he could use against Biden, fine. But he does this kind of dirty finagling all the time.

Summary from a friend: “Trump has been withholding $250 million in aid to the Ukraine. He told the new PM on a phone call that PM couldn’t have the money until he delivered some dirt on Biden’s son Hunter, who’s had some business there.”

A group of lonely, self-loathing, women-hating incel wackos have committed mass murders (or pledged to do so) over the last five years. A relatively new phenomenon — began with late Obama, has moved big-time into late Trump.

In 2014 Elliot Rodger, 22, stabbed three people near his Isla Vista apartment, and then shot 11 people near the UCSB campus, sending three to God, before killing himself.

From Jennifer Mascia’s Trace article, 5.23.19: “The Isla Vista gunman has been hailed as a “saint” and a hero by other incels, and several American mass shooters have cited him as inspiration.

“The 40-year-old self-proclaimed misogynist who shot six women, two of them fatally, at a Tallahassee yoga studio last year name-checked the Isla Vista gunman in one of his final online posts. The 21-year-old who fatally shot two students and himself at his former high school in Aztec, New Mexico, in 2017 used the Isla Vista shooter’s name as an online pseudonym and called him a “supreme gentleman.” The man who carried out the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon, which left nine people dead and eight others wounded, wrote in an online manifesto that he was a virgin with “no friends, no job, no girlfriend,” and said that he and others like him — including the Isla Vista gunman — ‘stand with the gods.'”

This is not new, much less startling, news to anyone who’s been paying the least amount of attention. And it was surely on the minds of all those Venice Film Festival-attending critics who suggested that Joker might be received as some kind of incel anthem flick.

Cut to Robbie Collin’s 9.20 Telegraph article in which he describes a hotel room interview with Joker star Joaquin Phoenix that went briefly wrong:

“Unlike Heath Ledger’s inscrutable take on the character in 2008’s The Dark Knight, Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, a failed comedian who still lives with his elderly mother, is the horribly familiar enemy within. If the film hadn’t been set in the ’80s he could easily be the latest online message-board extremist to take his grievances murderously viral.

“[And] yet Phoenix doesn’t seem to have considered this kind of question at all. So when I put it to him — ‘Aren’t you worried that this film might perversely end up inspiring exactly the kind of people it’s about, with potentially tragic results?’ — a fight-or-flight response kicked in.

“‘Why?’ Phoenix eventually muttered, his lip curling up at one side. ‘Why would you…? No…no.’ Then he stood up, shuffled towards me, clasped my hands between his, and walked out the door.”

This provides a peek into Phoenix’s mind. The man obviously lives in his own isolation tank. He was right smack in the middle of the Venice and Toronto Joker hoopla with everyone saying “incel wacko weirdo” blah blah…possible echoes and stirring of portents of real-life malice. And yet the whole conversation flew right around Phoenix’s head and into the ether.

Collin has described the Phoenix incident as “my most hair-raising interview yet.”

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson “loved” Ad Astra? You can’t say that. You can like Ad Astra. You can respect it. You can salute the ambition and the FX (except for the refusal of Brad Pitt‘s tears to float around his face). But you can’t say you “love” Ad Astra. Well, you can, but that’s an awfully perverse thing to say. It’s just not that kind of film…c’mon.

She also asserts that Brad Pitt‘s performance as Major Roy McBride is an Oscar-worthy thing. It might be worthy but it’s not going to register with the Gold Derby gang, trust me. Especially after Ad Astra tanks at the box-office.

I for one am….well, surprised that Sasha Stone has sided with the “whoo-hoo!” crowd on JoJo Rabbit, which she saw yesterday on the 20th Century Fox lot. This is a film, remember, that has a 53% rating on Metacritic.

Eric Kohn on Jojo Rabbit and the split between critics and the squealing throngs who gave it the Toronto People’s Choice Award: “The characters of the Nazis are not particularly meaningful…the satire with really broad charicature…consistent work from Watiti…it’s accomplished or risky but not necessarily successful….I’ll be curious to see how Jojo fares as more and more critics see it…Jojo was not a movie that all critics didn’t like…it’s divided…it’s around 50% on Metacritic…on a Bohemian Rhapsody scale of quality, Jojo Rabbit is basically Citizen Kane…I still think that [for a Holocaust comedy] it’s taking some incredibly advanced tonal swings.”

I realize that Clemency won the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury prize at Sundance last January, but how did Alfre Woodard‘s Bernadine Williams, a death-row prison warden, get the job in the first place if she’s the emotionally conflicted type? Don’t prison bureaus usually hire flinty hard-asses for a job like this? People who aren’t inclined to entertain second thoughts as a rule?

Supervising the execution of condemned inmates is not something that most people would want to do. Or could do. Or should do.

I’ll be seeing Clemency sometimes soon, although I don’t like death-row row dramas as a rule. They creep me out. I squirmed through Dead Man Walking, and I hated The Green Mile.

Clemency is being released by Neon on 12.27.19.

Now this is dynamic reporting! Nine days ago (or on 9.10) Peter Bodganovich‘s Paper Moon (’73) was celebrated at a private event at WeHo’s San Vicente Bungalows. Bogdanovich and Paper Moon star Tatum O’Neal, now 55, attended a screening and then a q & a hosted by director David O. Russell.

The basic scheme of Paper Moon (and the basic appeal) is that Tatum’s Addie Pray is at least five times wiser, smarter and shrewder than her ostensible father, Moses Pray (Ryan O’Neal). In the facing of every situation, every challenge and every problem, Addie knows what to do and Moses…well, sometimes he has good instincts but other times she’s way ahead of him. He’s just not that bright and his junior partner is the opposite. You know Moses is a dumb-ass because it never dawns upon him that Addie is the real brains of the outfit, and that if he wanted to really clean up…aahh, forget it.

The Bible-selling clip with the widow and her five or six daughters is probably the best scene in the whole film.

So basically Kent Jones is leaving his honcho position with the New York Film Festival because he and the Film at Lincoln Center board have decided that the optics of his having become a heavyweight narrative filmmaker with Diane while concurrently running a major fall film festival…he and the board have decided that Jones continuing to wear both hats isn’t quite cricket, appearance-wise.

Jones will exit following the 57th New York Film Festival, which runs from 9.27 through 10.13.

Variety‘s Greg Goldstein: “The departure comes as Jones’ feature filmmaking career is taking off. Issues of potential conflicts of interest have arisen as his work has moved from mostly cineaste-oriented documentaries such as the 2015 doc Hitchcock/Truffaut to narrative features including his 2019 drama Diane.”

Goldstein notes Diane’s exec producer and Jones’ friend of nearly three decades, Martin Scorsese, is the director of NYFF’s opening-night film, The Irishman. Which is obviously how and why Jones managed to land Scorsese’s new gangster pic to open the 2019 NYFF on 9.27…hello?

Jones reason for stepping down “is very simple,” he tells Goldstein. “Making Diane changed things — I’ve always written scripts, and I’ve always shared them with friends, among them Marty [Scorsese], Arnaud Desplechin and Olivier Assayas — people I’m really close to, [and] it changes your perspective.

“Watching films by other people — and particularly rejecting films by other people — becomes different,” Jones explained. “After making my film, I guess that changed my perspective.” Read: his NYFF responsibilities became more politically difficult.

Goldstein reports that in Diane‘s wake Jones has written another heavy-ish drama with a female protagonist. No details except for a cryptic Jones remark: “I certainly wouldn’t call it a comedy.”

“At some point when I was pretty young and already deep into movies, the New York Film Festival became a beacon for me,” Jones said. “Throughout its history, it has been a true home for the art of cinema — that was how it began with Richard Roud and Amos Vogel, that was how it remained with my predecessor Richard Peña, and that was how I’ve done my best to maintain it. I thank my colleagues, I thank the board for sticking to the original mission, I thank our audiences, I thank our colleagues in the industry, but most of all I thank the filmmakers. It’s been a joy and an honor to present their work.”

A research screening of Sam Mendes‘ 1917 happened this evening (Wednesday, 8.18) at the AMC Garden State in Paramus, New Jersey, and one guy (whom I know but have had only sporadic contact with) is claiming it’s grade-A and then some.

“It’s much better than Dunkirk,” the guy claims, “and is basically as if the opening battle of Saving Private Ryan was a whole movie. Young British soldiers are trying to relay a message regarding a German ambush, and we follow their mission and race against the clock. It’s not just a gimmick or experience. It actually has character development and first-rate dialogue. Surprisingly emotional since the soldiers have personal family ties. Elements of irony and dark comedy. It’s filmed like Birdman with long takes hidden and disguised as one shot. Brutally graphic, shocking and bloody, lots of dodging of bombs, hiding in caves. Hard R.”

Accept the word “masterpiece” or not, but that’s the term being used this evening. The running time is a little less than two hours — 110 minutes. Most of the film has a professional completed veneer…nearly done. Occasionally funny in an unexpected way. Uses magic-trick editing to make it look like it was shot in a single take. Easily dp Roger Deakins‘ best work.

The next reaction will be from someone claiming that 1917 is not as good as all this — trust me.