Jeff Wells

12 Years Ago, Six Months Sober

by

Thanks to the gracious, good-humored Stephen Holt for conducting this Toronto Film Festival interview in 2012. It’s oddly comforting to consider a 12-years-younger version of one’s self. I had darker sideburns — otherwise I haven’t aged at all. Well, I have but…

Ed Norton to “Apprentice” Avoiders: “You Have Sinned A Great Sin Against The Movie Godz”

by

All hail Edward Norton for praising Ali Abassi‘s under-seen and under-heralded The Apprentice in an interview with THR‘s Scott Feinberg:

Posted by yours truly one week ago (1/4/25): “Industry-ites are afraid to praise The Apprentice because they’re cowards…plain and simple. I’ve been saying for nearly eight months that it’s a truly excellent film with superb performances by Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, but they’re afraid to acknowledge the quality because they don’t want to be seen as supportive of anything bearing any kind of Trump stamp, even though the film’s second half is quite condemning of the former and future president.”

HE’s Cannes review, posted eight months ago:

Richard Brody Is HE’s New Best Friend…For Now

by

I knew less than 15 minutes in that I would loathe sitting through The Brutalist, for right off the top it struck me as a melancholy slog, a swamp thing…a movie populated with draggy characters and a draggier-than-fuck storyline. Lemme outta here.

Silly as this sounds, I came to believe that The Brutalist hated me as much as I was learning to hate it.

I looked at my watch and moaned…dear God, over three hours to go. I was nonetheless determined to at least make it to the halfway mark. I almost managed that.

From Richard Brody‘s “The Empty Ambition of The Brutalist”:

“The Brutalist is [fundamentally] a screenplay movie, in which stick figures held by marionette strings go through the motions of the situations and spout the lines that Corbet assigns to them—and are given a moment-to-moment simulacrum of human substance by a formidable cast of actors.

“The themes [of The Brutalist] don’t emerge in step with the action; rather, they seem to be set up backward.

“[For] The Brutalist is also a domino movie in which the last tile is placed first and everything that precedes it is arranged in order to make sure that it comes out right.”

Brody subhead: “Brady Corbet’s epic takes on weighty themes, but fails to infuse its characters with the stuff of life.”

Not Bad “Havana”

by

Friendo: “Regarding your recent list of the best movies released in 1990, where the hell is Havana? Havana, Jeff! Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack, David Rayfiel!”

HE to friendo: “In my eyes, Havana is a solid, respectable, midrange redemption tale — a flawed character (Redford’s Jack Weil) puts aside selfish tendencies and winds up doing a selfless, noble thing for a woman he loves (Lena Olin‘s Bobby Durán) but can’t have. It left an agreeable taste in my mouth. I loved Rayfiel’s dialogue, shared with Judith Rascoe.

“But over the last 35 years I’ve never rented or streamed Havana, and that means something. My criteria was ‘which 1990 films are still really living in my head 35 years later?’ I remember it with earnest, moderate affection, but not a lot of fervor. It’s a romantic film, obviously, but afflicted with a tone of resignation.”

Too Much To Take In

by

The last time I felt this shattered and emotionally affected by the word “gone” was over a half-century ago when ABC’s Jim McKay reported that every last Israeli athlete hostage had been killed. The Palisades fire deaths have been relatively minimal, thank fortune, but this time the word “gone” refers to the Hiroshima-level destruction of an entire town…thousands of blackened homes, destroyed lives. This was written Thursday (I think) by Holly Korbonski.

What Happened to Poor Michael Schlesinger

by

The first rule of obit etiquette is to never reveal what may have caused the demise of a recently dear and departed. But as I liked and greatly respected Michael Schlesinger, who occasionally shared comments on HE, I asked the other day what had happened.

“Mike had been laid up in the hospital for a while,” a colleague explained. “He checked in feeling weak overall, was admitted, given a room, and then just kept feeling weak. They couldn’t tell him why for quite some time.

“Eventually they diagnosed a cardiac condition. But then it was also discovered he had cancer, and that’s what finally took him out. It’s double awful that he had such a physically painful death, and that he went out without really understanding what had happened to him.

“He was an unfailingly standup guy who did a lot of wonderful work. For years he waved the flag of Budd Boetticher, even as generations of idiot Sony executives asked ‘Budd WHO?’ Eventually he got heard, and the Criterion Budd box is a testament to his perseverance.

“Last night I put on the Criterion Bluray of It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and played his wonderful commentary, just to hear his voice.”

Listen To This Guy Anytime

by

Even in the company of Tucker Carlson.

0:00: How Close Are We to Nuclear War?
12:08: Why Don’t We Know All the Details of 9/11?
25:23: The Nuclear War Chain Reaction
33:29: Warcrimes in Serbia?
37:05: Why Hollywood Exiled Oliver Stone
40:33: The Economic War Between the US and Russia
50:11: Is There Hope for Hollywood?
57:37: The Rapid Advance of Nuclear Weapon Technology
1:12:02: The Shadowy Acts of NATO
1:17:07: The Origins of War Profiteering
1:26:01: How the Democrat Party Became the Party of War
1:32:50: How History Is Rewritten

Rewatchable Ensemble….Over and Over

by

My absolute favorite Best Supporting Actor performance — hands down, no question — is Karren Karagulian‘s Toros in Anora. His signature line, spoken in the 24-hour diner just before they learn that Mark Eydelshteyn‘s Vanya is in a private room at HQ, is “I’m so fucked…sooo fucked!”

Yura Borisov gave my favorite male supporting performance that is actually in serious contention.

I’ll always think of Vache Tovmasyan‘s Garnick as the vanilla vomit guy…sorry.

Forman’s “Amadeus” Didn’t Get It….The Shorter Version, I Mean

by

On 2.25 WHE will release a 4K Bluray of Milos Forman‘s Amadeus (’84).

The Amazon page says the 4K runs 158 minutes, or three minutes shorter than the version that played in theatres 40 years ago.

On 9.24.02 Forman introduced an R-rated version with nearly 20 minutes of restored footage — a so-called Director’s Cut. Since that time or 22 years ago, the Director’s Cut has been the only available version of the film, as the producers modified the original film negative to include the additional footage.

The new 4K is the first time this century that the original theatrical cut has been available on home video. The longer Forman cut will also be included in the 4K package.

“The Tom Hulce Factor,” posted on 11.27.23:

“As much as I respect Milos Forman‘s Amadeus (’84), I haven’t had the slightest desire to rewatch it over the last 40 years. This is due to my profound, never-forgotten loathing for Tom Hulce‘s performance as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Not to mention that awful white lion’s-mane wig that he wore.

But if I could somehow re-experience my viewing of the B’way stage version with Ian McKellen and Peter Firth, I would do so repeatedly.

From “Respect for Milos Forman,” posted on 4.4.18: “Sometime in ’81 I saw Peter Shaffer‘s Amadeus at the Broadhurst, and revelled in Ian McKellen and Peter Firth‘s performance as Salieri and Mozart. It was such a huge, radiant high that I had difficulty adjusting to Milos Forman’s film version, which opened in September ’84.

“It was a handsome, well-crafted thing and a Best Picture Oscar champ, of course, and like everyone else I…well, appreciated F. Murray Abraham‘s Salieri. But Forman’s film just didn’t have that same snap and pizazz, and I hated Thomas Hulce‘s giggly-geek performance as Mozart and flat-out despised Elizabeth Berridge‘s bridge-and-tunnel performance as Constanze Mozart (i.e., she called her husband “Wolfie”).

“Amadeus is a good film but the play was much better.”

Wanted A Cooler, Shapelier Cowboy Hat…Failed

by

I have a black, beat-up Dennis Hopper-on-drugs cowboy hat, but I wanted a classic cowboy hat with nice trim lines…the kind that Hopper wore in The American Friend…the kind that country music stars wear when they perform…the kind of hat that Ringo Starr wears on the cover of “Look Up.”

My mistake was buying an El Cheapo Chinese cowboy hat, which arrived yesterday. The basic problem is that it’s not a cowboy hat, or certainly not my idea of one. The brim isn’t wide enough. It ain’t buckaroo…looks like a modified panama. The Chinese burned me. Tied a tin can to my tail. Humiliating.