If Cameron Had Somehow Brought Navi Warriors To Our Own Blue Planet

…I would have been down for a third installment. I would have welcomed such a chapter, in fact. But as things now stand, I’m truly sick to death of this franchise. May God hear me…I want the Navi to go away and STAY AWAY…eternally.

To me it’s a serious human tragedy that James Cameron, a guy I so deeply respected in the ’80s and ’90s and all the way up to the first Avatar flick in ’09 and his historic Phillipine submersible dive in 2012…it’s emotionally painful that now he’s just grinding these films out like sausage. Not for the vision but for the money.

“But the script becomes lazy, repetitive & exhausting with excruciatingly bad dialogue,” etc.

Profanity = Authenticity?

I think this is AI bullshit, although Sen. Chuck Schumer almost certainly said these words recently. I realize that throwing in an occasional “eff” bomb is a mark of authenticity these days, but I still think it’s fake.

More Trouble For “Marty Supreme”

Friendo: “I don’t know what Joe Popcorn will make of Marty Supreme (A24, 12.25) but I can tell you this: the critics can’t be trusted. Generally I mean but especially regarding this Josh Safdie puppy.

“I tried to watch it last night, but I bailed after the bathtub fell through the roof and seriously harmed the old man and his dog. Two friends who were watching it with me bailed after this scene. It’s not bad, it’s just…I don’t know…frenetic, monotonous, obnoxious…kinda like Uncut Gems.”

By the way: It can at least be said that Albert Brooks‘ performance as a retiring governor (aka “Governor Bill”) in James L. BrooksElla McCay is…uhm, not too bad. A guy who’s seen it says “yeah, he’s not embarrassing. But most of the film is cringe.” The 20th Century release opens on 12.12.

Posted on 9.10.19: “Uncut Gems is a full-barrelled, deep dive into the realm of a manic, crazy-fuck gambler (Adam Sandler), and yes, it ‘feels like being locked inside the pinwheeling brain of a lunatic for more than two hours,’ as Peter Debruge wrote.

“And guess what? It’ll make your head explode and drive you fucking nuts. By the time it’s over you’ll be drooling and jabbering and gasping for air.

“And yet Uncut Gems has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In other words not one person so far feels as I do. And I’m telling you the truth, mon freres. Which is why you can’t trust “critics”, per se. Because they’re all living in their own little fickle cubbyholes while Hollywood Elsewhere is standing tall and firm with its feet planted on the sidewalk and looking dead smack at cosmic reality each and every minute of every day…no let-up.

“Sinners” More or Less Blanked by NYFCC …Yes!

And the one trophy Sinners did win was for Autumn Durald Arkapaw‘s cinematography, which to my eyes was muddy and dreary and indistinct during some of the nocturnal scenes. I literally couldn’t see all that was happening when the Irish vampires were out and about.

Arkapaw did, however, shoot Sinners on 65mm film, using a combination of IMAX 15-perf and Ultra Panavision 70 cameras, which made her the first female dp to shoot IMAX.

Otherwise the New York film Critics Circle gave their trophies to…

Best Film: Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another. HE comment: Fine, whatever…basically a political “yay team!” call. Fuck Joe Popcorn and all the money PTA’s film lost…we know better!

Best Director: It Was Just an Accident‘s Jafar Panahi. HE comment: This is all about the one-year jail term that Panahi was just sentenced to in absentia. Basically a mew-mew, milkbowl-licking political decision.

Best Actor: The Secret Agent‘s Wagner Moura, HE comment: WHAT? Moura is fine in this film, but Leonardo DiCaprio is far more “alive” and striking and penetrating in OBAA.

Best Actress: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You‘s Rose Byrne. HE comment: It was truly punishing to sit through Byrne’s performance, and for that matter the film itself. Kinda ridiculous. Hamnet‘s Jessie Buckley and Sentimental Value‘s Renate Reinsve are far more relatable and affecting.

Best Supporting Actor: One Battle After Another‘s Benicio del Toro. HE comment: Benicio is great as “Sensei”, but you can’t tell me he exudes anything close to the anguished penetration that Stellan Skarsgård delivers in Sentimental Value. And what about poor Adam Sandler in Jay Kelly?

Best Supporting Actress: WeaponsAmy Madigan. HE comment: Agreed — a totally warranted win.

Best International Film: Kleber Mendonça Filho‘s The Secret Agent. HE comment: It’s completely ridiculous to assert that The Secret Agent, a good-but-vaguely-problematic period drama, is more deserving of this NYFCC trophy than Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value. Patently absurd!

Thank God Sinners was trounced in the major categories!

Peak Malkovich (’83 to ’99)

To me, John Malkovich, who will turn 72 a week from now, has long seemed like a fascinating, super-knowledgable, deep-drill fellow, and I’m sure he always will be. Nobody plays droll intelligent madmen better than he.

I was part of a small, very relaxed Malkovich press schmooze at the 2010 Marrakech Film Festival, and I remember gently asking him about cynical paycheck roles vs. the real stuff, and how he was simultaneously a wee bit taken aback and yet cool with the question after two or three seconds. Cool and settled.

Malkovich will always be mythic, but his peak era lasted 14 or 15 years — his Biff in the 1984 B’way stage production of Death of a Salesman (“a 31 year-old, totally-on-fire John Malkovich,” I wrote after seeing the play), Places in the Heart (’84), The Killing Fields (’85), Burn This on Broadway (’87), Dangerous Liaisons (Vicomte de Valmont) and his marriage-shattering affair with Michelle Pfeiffer, The Sheltering Sky (’90), In the Line of Fire (’93), Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom in Con Air (’87), and finally his multitudinous self in Being John Malkovich (’99).

And that, ladies and gems, was one hell of a 15-year peak.

Then Malkovich rebounded in Burn After Reading (’08) — I’ve long felt that his alcoholic, self-deluding, furiously frustrated Osborne Cox, a CIA guy, is not only his greatest-ever film performance, but one of the greatest film performances ever.

Ken Burns: “Disney Stole ‘Sons of Liberty’ Melody From The Iroquois!”

To the best of my recollection Walt Disney and Robert Stevenson‘s Johnny Tremain (6.19.57) is the only mainstream film that ever depicted the Boston Tea Party. Am I wrong? Oh, and the Sons of Liberty were violent rowdies.

Despite the purported semblance of historical realism, Tremain fulfilled a paramount Disney law of the 1950s…the one about always featuring a happy sing-along scene.

Titular player Hal Stalmaster is now 85 years old. Luana Patten was definitely a looker, but she sadly passed at age 58. 19 year-old Richard Beymer (West Side Story) played Johnny’s best friend, Rab Silsbee.

Okay, That’s It — Panahi’s “Just An Accident” Will Take Best Int’l Feature Oscar

When this happens inside Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre on Sunday, 3.15.26, it will be the second time that a political/cultural sympathy vote has bestowed a major honor upon Jafar Panahi’s latest film, the first time occuring at the close of last May’s Cannes Film Festival when it won the Palme d’Or.

Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value, obviously the best film of the 2025 festival, therefore lost to It Was Just An Accident and had to settle for a Grand Prix award (i.e., second prize). If I know anything about the Academy, Value will once again get elbowed aside because of Panahi’s just-announced one-year jail sentence.

Possibly The Most Repulsive Human Trait

It is my considered opinion that emotionally performative people of an insincere bent — i.e., phonies who instinctively laugh their ass off or otherwise show monkey-like obeisance before power whenever there’s an opportunity to back-pat or express any sort of emotional mood support — are among the worst people in the world.

All “performative” people are, by nature, insincere. They’re basically jacking you off.

I understand the basic pleasing impulse as I’ve expressed insincere approval thousands of times throughout my life, but I’ve always tried to avoid bending over or slapping my thighs when laughing uproariously at some shitty joke.

Posted 11 months ago: Nothing uncorks my rage more than people laughing too hard, too demonstratively, giggling like idiots, rocking back and forth, slapping their thighs, covering their mouths with their right hand, going “hoo-hoo-hoo” and “yee-hee-hee”…all of this is truly horrible.

Have you ever seen any serious, heavy-cat comedians laugh like this? Woody Allen will crack an occasional grin or smirk, but never, ever has he yee-hawed in some over-the-top way. People who know what goes never laugh like this. Only shallow gladhanders do. Only the worst people.

12.30.22: “I wear my gracious alpha face all the time in social situations. It’s the only way to be. 99% of people who work in social congregation situations turn on the placid vibes. So much so that it’s fairly freaky, in fact, when certain people (submentals, addicts, sociopaths) don’t turn it on. There’s no earthly reason not to be warm and kind and gracious with people, and I mean especially in Hollywood realms.

“I’m saying this because I wish below-the-liners and set visitors and others who work with above-the-liners would stop saying ‘wow…he/she is so nice!’? How else are they gonna behave? They’re probably nice people anyway, yes, but first and foremost they’re top-level professionals and talented smoothies, and this is how the movie business operates.

“Do you ever hear polar bears saying, “Wow, the snow is so white and powdery, and the seals bark so vigorously when I catch and eat them!” I’m just sick of hearing how nice this and that famous person turned out to be. Turn that shit down a bit.”

By the way: Of all the millions upon millions of faces out there, there’s one that immediately makes me flinch and recoil:

Movie Endings That Say “This Marriage Is Obviously Poisoned With Deceit, and Will Probably Get Worse”

The greatest “holy shit, this marriage is so totally fucked” finale is delivered by Francis Coppola‘s The Godfather (’72), but what are some of the strongest runner-ups?

In the same vein, what are some of the most dishonest upbeat finales in the history of movies about marriages and families? Upbeat endings that you’d like to believe and invest in, but you can’t possibly do so because of all the emotional corn syrup and forced fakery?

It’s A Wonderful Life is surely the fakest of them all, although I’ve always melted (and will continue to melt) when James Stewart cries out “Clarence!…I want to live again!” That’s always moved me, but the happy-schmappy stuff at the Bailey home with all the community joy and donated money…that has always felt to me like happy crap.