Jeffrey Wells

…and in so doing making it seem as if Focus Features’ decision to announce an early (11.28) streaming date a week and a half after the 11.10 wide-release launch…all I can tell you is that this early streaming detour made me feel badly..

To repeat, Focus will start streaming one of the best-written, best-acted and best character-driven films of the year on 11.28.

Focus platformed Alexander Payne’s universally-praised Oscar contender on 10.27 and then went wide (1478 screens), as noted, on 11.10.

Over-40s showed up (I caught it a week ago at a local AMC plex) but your texting, short-attention-span, snorting-at-rave-reviews Millennials and Zoomers didn’t flock (presumably unenthused about a film set in 1970 and preferring something more personally relatable) and the take so far is a passable but no-great-shakes $9 million and change.

The Holdovers is not a sentimental nostalgia trip. It authentically recreates that 1970-ish atmosphere, but it’s mainly about top-tier chops — witty writing, careful character building, wry humor and Payne’s ultra-refined filmmaking instincts.

Posted today by World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy:

…was a moderate realpolitik liberal by early ‘60s standards, and yet by the measurement of today’s political thinking (and certainly compared to the beliefs of the post-2017 censorious wacko left) he would have to be seen as a centrist and even in some respects a center–rightist.

In terms of lightning vibes, cool glamour and soaring oratorical panache JFK’s only equal was and is Barack Obama.

If George McGovern (the “Prairie populist”) had miraculously been elected in ‘72 he might have become, I believe, an inspirational Democratic president. His voice was twangy and his speeches often sounded platitudinous, but he had soul and integrity.

Or he could have suffered the unfortunate political fate of the recently widowed Jimmy Carter.

Bill Clinton, for sure, was and is another charisma prince and an exceptional wowser speech-giver, but administratively he was more or less an Eisenhower Republican.

…because some of her texts on the Israeli-Hamas conflict have implied an anti–Semitic bias, or so some have judged. And so the In The Heights costar has been jettisoned from the next Scream movie.

It’s fair to observe, I think, that there’s an apparent racial-ethnic factor affecting reactions to the Israeli-Hamas war.

If you’re a fair-skinned American or European Jew (fully or partly), you’re naturally going to feel an allegiance with Israel. If you’re from a culture of color that has experienced white avarice or white colonialism or white racism (Barrera is Mexican), you’re going to identify or sympathize with the Palestinian viewpoint.

There appears to be no way for an entertainment industry person to express limited support or at least compassion for presumably innocent Gaza Palestinians caught in the crossfire without taking a career hit.

You can’t say, for example, that “the 10.7 Hamas atrocity was satanic and that the responsible Hamas fiends must suffer the necessary consequences, but many thousands of non-combatant Gaza residents have since died from Israeli reprisals and many more thousands of non-combatants will die in the coming weeks, and that too is tragic.”

Apparently you can’t blurt this out without being regarded askance or getting dropped or cancelled.

This is what Barrera recently said:

But in other texts she implied what sounded to some like a form of racial bias — feelings and convictions in support of Gaza victims but also against Israel’s “white” government and its defensive (or suppressive) military policies

However unwise from a careerist perspective, what Barrera has said seems fairly close to what Barack Obama said on 11.5, Here’s a portion:

…in early June ‘17.

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…but if Killers of the Flower Moon had resorted to the same dishonest-but-effective Hollywood tactics that Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning deployed (depicting Tom White in roughly the same fashion as Gene Hackman’s charismatic FBI tough guy, well-crafted villain performances, sprinklings of historical bullshit, an emotionally satisfying resolution)…

If Team Killers had adopted an old-fashioned Alan Parker-like approach it wouldn’t have been as virtuous, but the popcorn crowd would have enjoyed it more.

I’ll never watch Killers again (twice was enough) but I could watch Mississippi Burning any day of the week.

White’s FBI team weren’t “saviors”, but they sure as hell busted William “King” Hale and Ernest Burkhart.

…in the sense that I would never, ever wear black schlubbo lace-up sneakers to a post-screening q&a. I would never wear those ugly-ass shoes anywhere. Look at Julianne Moore’s off-white, bubble-wrap, super-spiked heels (don’t know designer) and Natalie Portman’s shiny black uptown pumps with those angel wings-or-amulets-or-whatever-they-are stuck to the sides. Grade-A.

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“Never in human history has age–driven decline reversed itself” — written last night by HE commenter “Correcting Jeff.”

The reasonable and well-intentioned Joe Biden is obviously age-impaired as we speak, There is only one way his 2nd term (1.20.25 at age 82 to 1.20.29 at age 86) can possibly pan out. Slower, weaker, slurrier, droopier, less dynamic. Joe is not a flinty, scrappy, X-factor elder like Bernie Sanders or 93 year-old Clint Eastwood, who’s currently directing Juror No. 2. I’m very sorry but Biden is clearly not the guy he was in ’09 when he talked to Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes…he radiates assisted–living diminishment, and like “Correcting Jeff” has just said…

In any kind of sane and rational world no one would even flirt with voting for a lying, flabby gut, criminal-minded, run-at-the-mouth, saliva-spraying, anti-Democratic, sociopathic authoritarian crime boss for U.S. president, for God’s sake.

Alas, there are tens of millions out there (yokel Christians, intelligent sensibles, gun nuts, sane oldies, scowling old-school ex-liberals, free thinkers, iconoclasts, under-educated mouth-breathers, none-too-brights) who are so freaked out by the insane ravings of your under-40 DEI LGBTQ woke TikTok ideologue wackazoids that they’re actually flirting with certain 2024 political scenarios and options that could lead to The Beast taking power and subsequently perverting, crippling, poisoning and suffocating our democracy in order to weaken these raving woke lunatics.

Don’t kid yourselves about the fact that Average Joes and Janes despise the Tyrannical Woke Left Thought & Speech Police…it’s horrifying but it’s happening, God help us.

Not to mention the independent candidacies of RFK, Jr., Jill Stein, Cornel West and possibly Joe Manchin. Admit it — if Dean Phillips and Joe Biden were to magically switch places by the wave of a wizard’s hand, a lot of this chaos and terror would quickly melt away. Because to most of us the future would suddenly seem a lot more tenable and pragmatic, and certainly less ideological or foam-at-the-mouth. I prefer the idea of HE favorite Gavin Newsom stepping into the breach, but Phillips is cool.

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On top of which it’s more than a couple of days old…a mind-blowing Zoomer blow-up.

…the whore-ish, kiss-ass reactions of the early-bird crowd. I haven’t seen The Color Purple (Warner Bros., 12.25) but if you read between the lines…well, try doing that.

Purple’s Danielle Brooks is a likely Oscar contender and an apparently serious threat to The Holdovers‘ Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

But overall the only reactions you can probably trust are from the hard-nosed veterans, two of whom — Dave Karger and Greg Ellwood — are hilarious in their descriptions.

Ellwood flat-out faults the “script, direction, editing.” When Karger praises the “costumes and the choreography,” you know what he means.