Jeff Wells

I finally saw Waltzing With Brando the other night. Before opening it had been obvious to everyone that Waltzing was an insubstantial bauble, a cinematic piffle…interesting only for Billy Zane‘s performance as an early ’70s incarnation of the great Marlon Brando.

The fact that the 59-year-old Zane is almost a dead ringer for the Godfather/Last Tango-era Brando…that’s the selling point. He’s certainly striking and actually rather disarming to hang with, which is all the film is basically about…chilling with a whimsical, easygoing, laid-back legend…bask in it!

There are portions of Waltzing With Brando, trust me, in which Zane’s Brando schtick is enough, which is to say pleasantly transporting or at least alpha-vibey. His unpretentious, laid-back, low-key confidence is actually pretty great. I totally bought into it.

And the mid 40ish Jon Heder, whose last big score was the titular role in Napoleon Dynamite, which enjoyed a glorious reception at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival..Heder isn’t half bad as architect and ecological planner Bernard Judge, whom Brando hired to convert Tetiaroa, the Tahiti-adjacent, horseshoe-shaped atoll that Brando bought in 1966, into an ecologically wholesome, self-sustaining haven.

This is what Waltzing With Brando, directed and written by Bill Fishman, is basically about — a South Seas design-and-engineering project with interludes in which Brando hangs out, sips from drinks, charms the womenfolk, talks about what he wants to see happen on Tetiaroa, drops trou without going full frontal, etc.

Judge works for years on end (initially in Tahiti but mostly on Tetiaroa). ’70 to ’75 or thereabouts. No story tension, no dramatic arc, no third-act twist….nothing. Just a lot of engineering details about potable water, building a small airstrip, this and that logistical challenge. Plus Fishman breaks the fourth wall by having Heder talk to the camera when the mood strikes. (The Brando resort wasn’t built until well after Brando’s death in 2004 — it opened in 2014.)

The only thing that “happens” of a dramatic nature is when Judge impulsively decides to cheat (or at least start to cheat) on his 40ish wife Dana, portrayed by Alaina Huffman. The object of temptation is the blonde, 15-years-younger Michelle, played by Camille Razat. But he does so foolishly. Most of the time Dana is back in Los Angeles (they have a school-age daughter); she only visits Tetiaroa from time to time. So when does Judge express a brief interest in ravaging Michelle? During one of Dana’s visits, of course. Idiot.

The only sensible way to discuss One Battle After Another is in a form-vs.-content fashion.

Form-wise it’s obviously quite good — driven, vigorous, excellent at times. The longish length doesn’t feel all that burdensome…really. But the insurrectionist, death-to-the-racist-whitey-bad-guys, eat-hot-lead, anti-ICE, lefty-Antifa-women-of-color content (is there even one female speaking role played by a European-descended paleface?) will prove to be a box-office problem over the next week or two. A problem for Average Joes and Janes, I mean.

The radical political stuff is presumably playing well in the costal blue cities. That plus the “okay, Paul Thomas Anderson, a brand, has earned my ticket-buying allegiance” crowd.

From Owen Gleiberman’s 9.27 Variety essay, “One Battle After Another, With Its Thriller Vision of Authoritarianism, Is the Rare Movie That Could Rule the Cultural Conversation”:

The heart of this rant begins at the 1:00 mark…”looney woke shit“, etc.

One of the main reasons Kamala Harris lost is that she never even began to acknowledge that Average Joes and Janes despise the left for this. She never even alluded to the possibility of this feeling being out there.

Harris: “Looney woke shit what? You’re talking about us? Since when? Whudda-whudda whah?

Stuart Rosenberg and W.D. Richter‘s Brubaker (’80) was a ’70s hangover film. Not a trace of the influence of Star Wars or Jaws. It could have been released in ’74 or ’75 and no one would have blinked an eye.

Robert Redford was 43 during filming in ’79, and he didn’t look a day older than he did in The Candidate, The Sting or Three Days of the Condor.

Morgan Freeman‘s brief performance as a crazed psycho inmate put him on the map, and this was seven years before Street Smart (’87), mind.

Richter’s adaptation of “Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal” was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the ’81 Academy Awards.

Brubaker opened on 6.20.80, three months before the 9.19.80 release of Redford’s Oscar-winning Ordinary People.

HE to commentariat: Who’s the present-day cancelled actor Glenn Powell was afraid to be photographed with? What actor has a totally toxic reputation? Either way, how did Powell, 37, manage to grow this kind of cast-iron backbone?

How would Powell have responded if he’d met Dalton Trumbo at a Hollywood party in 1957?

Trumbo: “Hey, Glenn…nice to meet ya.” Powell: “Dalton! Love your work, man! Kitty Foyle, Gun Crazy, The Brave One, Roman Holiday.” (A photographer comes up, attempts to snap the two of them.) Powell: “Holy shit!”…ducks out of the frame, runs away in a crouch position.

Clark: “Are you a coffee fan, Dr, Ryan?” Ryan: “Yeah, I like coffee.” Clark: “Try the Lindo brand. I think you’ll like it.”

If you’ve seen a film more than 10 or 12 times over the last 30 years, it can be safely stated that you really, REALLY like it.

I attended the Clear and Present Danger press junket in San Francisco in the mid-summer of ’94. (31 years ago and change.) I forget why it happened at the top of Nob Hill instead of at one of the usual venues (the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, etc.) but for whatever reason that was the drill.

I had my 12-minute interview with Harrison Ford, and of course we discussed the Reagan administration’s involvement in the Iran-Contra affair.

I love how Clear and Present Danger doesn’t try to trick or fake you out. It just guides you along, lets you watch, listen and observe, and basically treats the viewer like a smart, well-educated person…it doesn’t play games.

Richard Brooks‘ The Professionals (’66) deepens and souls-up during the final half-hour, agreed, and the only elements that don’t quite work, due respect, are the flagrantly inauthentic, un-Mexican Jack Palance and Claudia Cardinale. Good performances but there’s no believing them deep down.

Brooks, who adapted the script from “A Mule for the Marquesa”, gave Lee Marvin a difficult first-act line. Regarding an old photo of Marvin’s Henry “Rico” Fardan, Ralph Bellamy‘s J.W. Grant says “your hair was darker then.” On the page Marvin’s reply — “My heart was lighter then” — sounds too pat, too written. But Marvin makes it work by muttering the line in a semi-embarassed, self-amused way. This is where good acting and good directing come into play.

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..a bright, likable, interesting, indie-minded director (diligent, spontaneous) who tapped into something fetching and zeitgeisty in the ’70s and ’80s — basically a 16-year, six-film streak.

Let no one dispute that Jaglom was a world-class gabber and bullshitter (I interviewed him at length in the front seat of a car when he was filming Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? in Manhattan, and we could’ve easily yakked for another two or three hours). Plus he fancied himself as a soulful ladies man (his hottest girlfriend was Andrea Marcovicci), and he was a longtime friend and ally of Orson Welles.

He was always cushioned to some extent by family money, although I don’t know the particulars. “Risk is my middle name” was one of his better lines, but family wealth mitigates this.

A freckly, fair-skinned, auburn-haired guy who was shaped by ’60s experimentation and was always the agile, whipsmart social hustler, Jaglom’s run began with 1971’s A Safe Place, and continued five years later with Tracks (Dennis Hopper as a traumatized vet). Neither of these, to my fullest recollection, was all that great.

Jaglom found his groove and arguably peaked with four films released between the early to mid ’80s — Sitting Ducks (his only real financial hit) and Can She Bake A Cherry Pie? (’83), Always and Someone to Love (’87 — his only Marcovicci film).

That said, I’ve always had a thing for Jaglom’s Venice/Venice (’92):

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Instant analysis of yesterday’s ICE shooting in Dallas** led to verbal sniping between JD Vance, Gavin Newsom and Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau. The following is from Jesse McKinley‘s 9.24 N.Y. Times story about same.

** The 29 year-old shooter, Joshua Jahn, was an overweight videogame enthusiast (what else?) who shot himself when the fuzz closed in. One of Jahn’s shell casings had been engraved with the phrase “ANTI-ICE.”

Watching Ron Howard‘s Eden prompted me to wonder about what visiting Floreana (600 miles west of Ecuador) would be like today, and what it might have been like 93 years ago (i.e., 1932), which is when the original German settlers tried to establish a small community there.

If I were to visit Puerto Velazco Ibarra, the one and only Floreana village, located on the island’s west coast — my first question would be “how’s the wifi?” How many bars would I get on the iPhone? Or would I be dependent on the hotel wifi? Any kind of cable or satellite TV? And how’s the water supply?

The movie made me cringe, if you wanna know. My imagination had a difficult time with the grim facts of primitive Florean life.

The cabin-sized homes in the film had tons of amber-tinted candles, so how many wax candles did they bring with them?

What was the situation with ships from the mainland delivering much-needed stuff (canned foods, sugar, flour, rubbing alcohol, fresh underwear, rubber sandals)? Imagine what a freighter would charge for soap bars, for example, if it had to travel 600 miles from Guayaquil, the Ecuador coastal port.

As soon as Sydney Sweeney and whatsisname moved in with their stuff, urgent questions arose. Water being so precious they couldn’t possibly take baths, so they had to bathe in the surf, but how clean can you get without hot water? How many bars of lava soap did they bring with them, and how long would those bars last? Where or how did they take a dump?, and did they bring toilet paper with them, and if so how many rolls? Did they have toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, moisturizer, cologne, scissors, toenail clippers, wipes, dental floss, Aqua Velva, etc.? There was no dentist so if any kind of tooth infection manifested, they were on their own.

It couldn’t have been very comfortable. It might have been agonizing.

Friendo: “One Battle After Another is a beautifully orchestrated film, no doubt, but the sympathetic emotional boost, at least among the big-city critics, comes from the women-of-color costars…Anderson is married to a woman of color, and critics, political animals and certainly no fools, understand the deal or, if you will, the sociological signage…they have to be down with Leo, Benicio and the sisters.

“Now flip the coin and imagine a similar story in which the revolutionaries in question are white militia types…imagine the reviews! Not so friendly!”

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Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another is a high-torque drama set in an agitated culture that’s markedly similar to what’s going on today. The good guys, the film tells us, are people of a rebellious nature…anti-government activists and insurrectionists (or, in the case of Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Bob Ferguson, a former anti-government activist) while the bad guys, so to speak, are ICE-like military guys in starched fatigues as well as an elite cabal of white nationalists called “the Christmas Adventurers.”

The current political atmosphere in this country is not what anyone would call an opportune time to release a “hooray for the good-guy insurrectionists!” action drama.

Within the last two weeks, after all, we’ve had two anti-rightist, anti-government-affiliated shootings by nihilist, insurrectionist, left-leaning types.

On Wednesday, 9.10, the hate-deploring, trans-boyfriend-supporting Tyler Robinson murdered Charlie Kirk, with one of his bullet casings etched with at least one anti-fascist slogan (“hey, fascist…CATCH!“).

This morning (Wednesday, 9.24) some kind of anti-ICE guy shot up an ICE Facility in northwest Dallas (three killed including the shooter), with “investigators stating that anti-ICE language was found on ammunition at the scene.”

Last week I wrote the following: “In the wake of the Charley Kirk tragedy Warner Bros, is releasing a hooray-for-the-left, defy-the-malevolent-whiteys film? A movie that says almost all white people and especially guys in starched military fatigues with close-cropped hair are bad…we get that, this is what Hollywood always does…whitey bad, POCs good…whitey baddie-waddie, POCs are spirit angels and God’s chosen. But the Kirk tragedy has changed the political landscape.”

I also said in my 9.17 rave review that Battle “might run into some trouble commercially as it’s strictly a blue-cities flick from a political-ideological standpoint.

“Form-wise it’s a total homer — a knockout masterwork from a gifted director who knows exactly what he’s doing and how to deliver the right stuff — while the content is so absurdly woked-up in a POC-favoring, insurrectionist-identifying, over-the-waterfall-in-a-barrel way that it’s sure to be hated or certainly hooted at outside the big cities, especially in the wake of the Kirk shooting.

“Average Joes and Janes will say ‘yeah, a really good movie but what’s with the leftist guerilla-revolution jazz?'”

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