Jeff Wells

Arguably The Scariest Hitman in Cinema History

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I’d forgotten how effective the finale of To Die For is, and what a collossal dumbass Nicole Kidman‘s Pamela Smart** was depicted as. And especially what a blood-chilling vibe David Cronenberg had. That voice, those executive duds, that smile.

For me the second all-time creepiest movie assassin is that burly, 60ish, working-class Crimes and Misdemeanors guy from New Orleans who knocks on Anjelica Huston‘s Manhattan apartment door and says “flowers!”

Director Gus Van Sant was peaking like a sonuvabtich when TDF opened in October 1995. His greatest ever film, Drugstore Cowboy, which Gus directed at age 36 and cowrote with Daniel Yost, had opened six years earlier. And then came the totally gay My Own Private Idaho (’91). Let’s forget Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (’93), but two years after To Die For Gus directed Good Will Hunting (’97), another major score in terms of box-office and awards.

Let’s forget the misbegotten Psycho remake (’98) and the altogether dreadful Finding Forrester (David Poland loved it!).

But soon after came the brilliant bare-bones trilogy of Gerry, Elephant and Last Days. Paranoid Park was pretty good, I felt, although Gus’s Milk (’08) couldn’t hold a candle to Rob Epstein‘s The Times of Harvey Milk (’84). I never thought Sean Penn was the right guy to play Harvey — he’s way too short for one thing.

So Gus’s peak period lasted just shy of 20 years…commendable.

** The real Pamela Smart wasn’t murdered by a smooth assassin. She’s serving a life sentence inside the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women.

Haunted, Queasy Soundtrack Of My Life

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Countless times in my car I’ve listened to Philip Glass‘s score for The Fog of War (2003). It’s techno that haunts, unnerves, and instills a certain creepy, ominous feeling, and yet is oddly soothing and even moving at times. If you really let it in, I mean.

Two decades ago Morris’s landmark doc won the Best Feature Documentary Oscar. (Technically in early ’05.) But Glass’s score wasn’t even nominated.

Without Glass’s existential ennui The Fog of War, which is entirely about and entirely narrated by former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, who served between ’61 and ’68, would mostly be an arid thing…analytical, data-ish, egghead-ish. But Glass’s music, operating on its own plane, delivers great, twirling, surging, rumbling currents of emotional anxiety, and is the reason The Fog of War won the gold statuette.

The Fog of War is about a brilliant, analytical guy who passed along orders that brought about tens of thousands of bombing deaths in Vietnam in the mid to late ’60s, and was part of a mechanism that fire-bombed much of Japan in the the mid ’40s, and yet it gets under your skin in a very unusual way. It almost makes you cry here and there.

So that’s what I often do when I’m driving around. I listen to Glass’s score and occasionally taste the welling of stuff that’s been churning inside for decades.

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If Right-Leaning, Basement-Dwelling Dudes Thought Getting Laid Was An Elusive Butterfly Before 11.5

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…they’re probably facing an even tougher situation now. Because the pollen from South Korea’s 4B movement — shorthand for bihon, bichulsan, biyeonae and bisekseu, which translate into “no marriage, no childbirth, no dating and no sex with men” — is reportedly floating to receptive American women. Because they really, really want to punish men for voting for Donald Trump.

This sort of thing has happened before, of course — some may have heard of an Aristophanes play called “Lysistrata” — but it’s probably true that liberal-minded women are going to be a lot less interested in any kind of carnal activity, and we all know this was already a low-flame thing, at least as far as lonely, depressed loser dudes were concerned.

@jennyzigrinocomedy Men are about to get way more lonely. #4b #6b #comedy #standupcomedy #election #men #women #dating ♬ original sound – jennyzigrinocomedy

@skynews Interest in a movement called ‘#4B’ surged #online immediately after news broke that #donaldtrump had won the #USelection. What is it and and why are #women in #America joining it? ♀️ #US #Harris #womenempowerment ♬ original sound – Sky News

12.25 Openers Sidestep Christmas Spirit, To Put It Mildly

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Three significant films will open on Wednesday, 12.25 — Christmas Day — minus the sound of jingle bells, joyful carolers and deer hooves on the roof. Which is interesting.

James Mangold‘s A Complete Unknown, first and foremost — Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Dan Fogler, Norbert Leo Butz, Scoot McNairy.

Nosferatu, a jolting vampire film from Robert Eggers and costarring Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin and Willem Dafoe.

And Hailja Reijn‘s Babygirl, an allegedly worthwhile pervy relationship film with Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Sophie Wilde and Antonio Banderas.

That’s a fairly nifty-sounding holiday trio!

Two other noteworthies are opening on 12.25 — Rachel Morrison‘s The Fire Inside, a fact-based female boxing flick with Ryan Destiny and Brian Tyree Henry, and Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz‘s Los Frikis, which no one will flock to.

“If You Don’t Win, You Have Done Nothing”

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Bill Maher: “Losers, look in the mirror.”

I’ve been constantly looking in the mirror since last Tuesday night, and I’m feeling a certain consolation amidst the shock and horror. I’ve begun to realize that the woke psychos are finished…they’re gradually realizing that their era is ending….over, in fact. That’s not a bad thing.

Three and a half months ago Bill Maher offered a rundown on Kamala Harris. It runs from 1:35 to 3:10. From the moment that Joe Biden threw in the towel until the night of Tuesday, 11.5, I thought Maher had been wrong….blind to what so many people loved about her. Now I have a different perspective.

HE’s Heart Goes Out To Escaped Monkeys

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Don’t hang out in the woods near the facility that you escaped from, bruhs! Run for it and keep running!

If I were in the area I’d invite some of you to jump into my car so I could drive you south to Key West. We could listen to music, stop for occasional meals, etc,

The escapees are rhesus macaque primates. They were being held in the Alpha Genesis Sing Sing Primate Research Center in Yemassee, South Carolina.

After Nearly Three Years of Brutal Warfare

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…Ukraine may get thrown under the bus by Trump. In which case Zelensky will most likely have to accept a permanent loss of territory (southeastern Donbas region?) to Russia. Roughly a million souls have ascended since early ‘22 — Ukranian and Russian soldiers including 20K Ukranian civilians. Victory over the Russian invaders obviously isn’t in the cards. The whole thing could have been avoided if the notion of Ukraine joining NATO hadn’t been floated.

Pet Parakeet

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Gary Marshall‘s Frankie and Johnny was released roughly 33 years ago, and I remember quite clearly never wanting to see it. I still don’t. Mainly because I don’t want to settle into a phoney conceit about the film’s glamorous, highly attractive costars who had played Mr. and Mrs. Tony Montana eight years earlier — Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer — living the pale lives of also-rans.

Terrence McNally‘s original 1987 off-Broadway play, Frankje and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, was about a pair of ordinary, middle-aged, worn-down homelies — F. Murray Abraham and Kathy Bates — falling in love within the grim confines of a studio apartme4=nt.

Critic after critic said Marshall’s version was too glammy — there was no way in hell anyone could accept that Pacino and Pfeiffer, aged 40 and 30 respectively, were schlubby, hand-to-mouth types, and that was all I needed to hear.

Movieline’s Stephen Farber: “Michelle Pfeiffer gives a very adept and winning performance in Frankie & Johnny, but she’s simply wrong for the part of a plain, world-weary waitress…anyone as gorgeous as she is has a lot more options than someone who looks like Kathy Bates (who originated the role on stage).”

Pacino fared no better with Washington Post critic Rita Kempley: “It’s just…well, imagine Kevin Costner as [Ernest Borgnine‘s] Marty.”

Casting the right actor or actress, in short, means never going too low or too high. Too much charm or physical attractiveness can throw a well-written, well-directed film out of whack.

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