Jeffrey Wells

Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ early ‘50s novel that will star Daniel Craig as a “top” roaming around Mexico, will debut at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

I’ve been given a copy of the script but have only read two pages so far — a scene in which Craig’s “Lee” character is fucking a young Mexican lad.

This is why I’ve said Craig is playing a top but what do I know? I know that “Lee” is self-portraiture — a stand-in for the guy Burroughs was 70-odd years ago, presumably after his Junkie period.

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…for HE to post regular recollections of what the film business looked, sounded, felt and tasted like before the terror — i.e., before 2017 but mostly focused on the glorious ‘90s (the indie revolution), the aughts (last stabs before superhero plague) and the early to mid teens (Zero Dark Thirty, 12 Years A Slave, Drive, The Social Network, Moneyball, Carol, Manchester By The Sea).

In other words: rather than overdose on cursing and condemning the present darkness (although I will never abandon this hard but necessary duty) it might be better to invest more energy into shining a light upon the above-mentioned good times (‘90 to ‘17 or just shy of three decades) and thereby possibly inspire a longing for films that aspire to more than just delivering “content” as well as persuading at least some of the fiercely progressive descendants of Maximilian Robespierre and Josef Stalin to possibly ease up on their social justice crusades and just…you know, try to make good movies that are less “instructive”?

Then again I wouldn’t want to descend into the pit of too-much-nostalgia…all right, fuck it, I’m not changing the game.

It’s definitely not welcome news that departing Los Angeles Times film critic Justin Chang is joining The New Yorker as its senior film critic, or at least as a co-senior bigmouth with Richard Brody (i.e., “the Armond White of the far left”).

Chang is a brilliant, first-rate critic who has passed along many valuable judgments and perceptions over the years. But over the past six or seven annums he’s become a bit of a social justice warrior (at least in my eyes) and something of an identity ideologue. Example: Last October Chang panned The Holdovers over a single depiction of racist cruelty between two minor characters.

The Chang hire means two things, and both are breaking my heart.

One, The New Yorker film desk is now doubly woked-up and, in my opinion, half-fanatical. I’ve been an occasional fan of Brody’s essays, but there’s no forgetting that in his 10.13.22 Tar review he actually doubted the existence of wokeism and cancel culture. That, good sir, is fanaticism.

And two, New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane, hired by Tina Brown 31 years ago and one of my absolute favorite wordsmith smart-asses ever since, has been kicked upstairs by editor David Remnick.

Lane will be “expanding to writing [on] a wider range of topics,” Remnick has announced — a polite way of saying that Lane’s senior stripes have been torn off.

This is not the end of my online New Yorker subscription, but Remnick is downgrading and more or less humiliating one of the very few non-woke (or mostly non-woke) critics of a senior status. Not cool and rather shitty in fact.

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For the rest of my moviegoing life I’m going to be stuck with Paul Mescal. Shackled to, besieged by. He’s obviously not going away. My soul aches, churns.

I’m slightly terrified…okay, that’s harsh. I’m certainly concerned about having to watch Mescal’s William Shakespeare, particularly during a tragic episode shared with wife Anne Hathaway (Jessie Buckley) over the death of their 11 year-old son, Hamnet.

Chloe Zhao, the celebrated Nomadland Oscar-winner who suffered brand damage from the generally despised Eternals, will direct.

McDormand, Portman, Blanchett, Lawrence, Collette, Witherspoon…that’s it, just these six. Okay, Morton makes seven.

…life wouldn’t have a great deal of meaning. Okay, it would obviously deliver a certain amount on its own weight and steam, but movies bring it all into focus, if you catch my drift.

This may be the greatest George Lucas quote I’ve ever read. It makes me even more sorry that he’s worn so many godawful flannel shirts.

From Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson’s “Hollywood: The Oral History” (‘22).

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…but this is an interesting photo, and saying this doesn’t make me a terrible person. And look at those hands.

…and probably best forgotten.

A World of Reel commenter named “M” has nailed the basic problem with Leonardo DiCaprio’s dumb-as-a-fencepost Ernest Burkhart character:

Yes, that’s 100% correct. Texas FBI guy Tom White should have been the main character.

I’m watching episode 3 of True Detective: Night Country, and despite my attachment to the legend of Jodie Foster I really am done with it. Just not for me, bruh. It’s too dark, too buried, too “lemme outta here”, too labrynthian, too snowy, too grimy, too scowling, too complex and drawn out…too much of a nativist celebrationist thing, too chanty, too indigenous, too face-painty, too cheek-studdy, too “all the men except one good-looking young cop are appalling or fleshy or ugly rednecks or deep-down diseased”…too rank-smelling, too unattractive, too downish, too frostbitten, too sullen, too grubby, too “ya wanna fuck?”, too haunted and too many hoodie parkas…angry women, bruised women, resentful women, horrified women, dead women, hell-bent women…fine, good, you can have it…later.