
Jeffrey Wells
A Break In The Clouds
A high judicial authority has finally agreed that a certain deranged insurrectionist is disqualified from running for President next year…praise God.





Time To Clean House
All of HE’s woke racist shriekers are getting the bounce today…Seasonal Aflac Disord, OneLastTime, Glenn Runciter…all the toxic ayeholes with their little sharp sticks.
Clemenza: “Gotta get rid of the bad blood, the uglies…this needs to happen every five years…ten years.”
If We’re Talking Outliers
I don’t agree with any of these “best” calls. What these films are is “not half bad in an interesting, arresting way.“
I finally half-liked Munich when I re-watched it a year ago.
Pale Rider is basically Shane as a ghost.
Magnolia is essentially a morose middle-class thing enlivened by Tom Cruise, the third-act musical sequence and the frog finale.
Casino is watchable, but is gradually asphyxiated by Sharon Stone’s noxious self-destruction and Robert DeNiro’s nonsensical attraction to her. And then Joe Pesci and his brother are beaten to death and buried alive in a cornfield.
For me Kathryn Bigelow caught glorious fire as a director when she made The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. Then she got tangled up in the mania of exposing horrible historical truths (i.e., evil white cops murdering victims of color) in Detroit, and the air just whooshed out of the balloon.

Valerie Campbell Isn’t Truthful
She’s flat-out lied, in fact, about what it’s like to be swamped and smothered by hordes of American tourists in Tuscany’s San Gimignano, which Jett and I visited 14 or 15 years ago.
Campbell, a tour guide, has almost certainly decided that failing to mention how never-ending busloads of Aunt Biddies routinely suffocate the medieval vibe…she’s figuring that omitting this horrid fact is necessary to sell the city itself. Plus she misspells it.

From HE’s 5.17.10 Cannes review of Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy (“Dweebie Conforme”):

Beginning of Polanski Thaw?
In late January a restored 4K version of Roman Polanski Oscar-winning The Pianist will have a seven-day run at the Film Forum (1.26 thru 2.1). This will surely be followed by subsequent big-city bookings and a 4K Bluray.
This means something, methinks.
In the wake of the triumphant reviews and Cesar awards that greeted Polanski’s J’Accuse in Europe two years ago, I was told by reps for Bluray distribs and streamers that they wouldn’t dare stream Polanski’s historical thriller over fears of #MeToo protests, etc. Which seemed especially cowardly on their part and profoundly heinous on the part of Polanski’s detractors. The mere streaming of one of Polanski’s greatest films from the privacy of your own home…what kind of rabid fanaticism would forbid even this?
But the Pianist restoration suggests the winds are shifting.

When Was The Last Time
…a presumptive Best Picture nominee was the recipient of this much eye-rolling, disdain and fatigue on Facebook threads?



“I’m Finished”
— Daniel Day Lewis’s final line in There Will Be Blood.
Kang the Incarcerated.


American Beauty
Back in the late Bill Clinton era.

This, No Offense, Is Barry Keoghan
To me anyway. In Saltburn, I mean. I’m sorry but when I came upon this photo…bingo. The gremlin vibe. In every scene he’s the evil leprechaun ogre you need to keep tabs on. A Bond villain waiting in the wings.

Honest Praise Is Fine
…but if you over–splooge without restraint, readers will naturally pull back. I’m a sincere, serious fan of American Fiction but not to this extent.


