…but she sorta kinda wishes that David Grann‘s saga had been directed by, say, a full-blood Osage helmer instead…no offense. Martin Scorsese did the best that he could, she’s saying, given his white-guy limitations and the curious focus on Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Ernest Burkhart.
The director of Goodfellas, Mean Streets, Casino, The Departed and The Wolf of Wall Street warrants respect, she’s saying — an A for effort.
“Marty is a titan, but he’s not bigger than history,” Gladstone has toldVariety‘s Selome Hailu.
“He’s a major shaper of it though. It’s the tricky nature of a story like this. You have more representation [in Killers], but coming from somebody who’s not from the community. So you always have to look at it with a different angle. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You just have to be very aware of the film that you’re watching and what lens it was made through.”
Do you want to look at those black, soul-dead eyes for four or eight years? Eyes that would fit right into a Blumhouse horror film? Forget it, man. Manchin doesn’t have it.
I’ve been waiting a long time for the “Princess Diana dies in Paris with Dodi Fayed” chapter of The Crown, and now it’s finally streaming with the towering Elizabeth Debicki in the title role. The first half of it, I mean. The final episodes stream in December.)
The fatal car crash in the tunnel can’t skirt what happened — it has to be real. The ending will presumably cover the same material as Stephen Frear‘s The Queen (’06….17 years ago!) but without Helen Mirren‘s elk moment.
I was working at People magazine when Diana began seeing Fayed in July 1997. Two or three of us were asked to make some calls and prepare a file on the guy. Within three or four hours I’d learned that Fayed was an irresponsible playboy, didn’t pay his bills on occasion, lacked vision and maturity and basically wasn’t a man. And yet Diana overlooked this or didn’t want to know. And that’s why she died. She orchestrated her demise by choosing a profligate immature asshole for a boyfriend.
Fayed was just foolish and insecure enough, jet-setting around with his father’s millions and looking to play the protective stud by saving Diana from the paparazzi, to put her in harm’s way. It all came to a head on that fateful night in Paris. Fayed told his drunken chauffeur to try and outrun a bunch of easily finessable scumbag photographers on scooters, and we all know the rest.
11.16 update: Bradley Cooper’s Maestro will welcomely begin theatrical engagements at two first-rate Westchester County venues before going to streaming on Netflix on 12.20 — Pleasantville’s Jacob Burns Center on 11.30 (or eight days after its 11.22 theatrical debut in NYC and Stamford) and then at the Bedford Playhouse on Friday, 12.8.
Posted on 11.15: Maestro is Netflix’s crown jewel of the ‘23 Oscar season, and there are only three theatrical options in the NYC region between 12.22 and 12.20 — the Paris (cramped but fine), the mildly shitty Angelika plex on Houston (tolerable despite the occasional rumble of the subway underneath) and the storied but generally horrendous Avon theatre in Stamford — smallish screen, shitty sound, dim lamp. Definitely not a state-of-the-set facility.
For the sake of a friend I was hoping that Maestro might be playing at the first-rate Jacob Burns in Pleasantville, which is where The Killer was playing until recently. Alas, it’s not booked there until 11.30.
I’m seen Maestro twice in two first-rate theatres over the last 10 days or so (Dolby 88 and last night at the DGA on 57th), but Netflix is essentially telling residents who live north of the city that they’re out of luck between 11.22 and 11.29. The Avon, trust me, is the pits. (I saw TAR there, and it was hell.)
Out of respect for the great Ridley Scott it would appear that Napoleon (Apple, 11.22) is finished as a would-be Oscar contender, and that Joaquin Phoenix‘s Best Actor chances are not just dead in the water but over the waterfall and banging against the rocks.
Pay no attention to the industry whores who are praising Scott’s film to the heavens. They’re just not being honest. Half-and-half responses are okay however.
The film includes a height joke or two, but very little is made of Napoleon’s short stature (he was somewhere around 5’6″ or roughly Alan Ladd‘s size) or, for that matter, the psychology of the Napoleon complex (i.e., short guys aggressively trying to compensate). The fact that Phoenix stands around 5’8″ doesn’t seem to matter either way.
I’m still recommending that interested parties give Marlon Brando‘s Napoleon Bonaparte a whirl. Henry Koster‘s Desiree (’54) is a mediocre costume epic, yes, but in a certain laborious, stiff-necked way it’s almost more tolerable than Scott’s film.
Trailers for action thrillers have to tantalize genre fans with gunplay and whatnot. I understand that. But at the same time I regret that this new Fast Charlie trailer doesn’t convey more of what I liked about Phillip Noyce‘s film when I caught it during last May’s Cannes Film Festival.
Pierce Brosnan‘s cool-cat bayou enforcer plugging bad guys is fine, but viewers should understand that the actual Fast Charlie body count is four on-screen and eight guys total. I noted several weeks ago that Todd McCarthy’s Deadline review made the film sound like it was competitive with Sam Peckinpah‘s The Wild Bunch.
It was my decision, no offense, to ignore the effing blam-blam while focusing instead on Brosnan’s low-flame relationship with costar Morena Baccarin. Because that’s where the soul and the nourishment are.
Fast Charlie (Vertical, 12.8) is half of a laid-back, settled-down relationship drama between Brosnan‘s Charlie, a civilized, soft-drawl hitman who loves fine cooking, and Baccarin‘s Marcie, a taxidermist with a world-weary, Thelma Ritter-ish attitude about things. And half of a compelling shoot-and-duck thriller.
There’s a suspense scene involving a hotel laundry chute that’s especially worth the price.
Nicely performed by Brosnan, Baccarin, Gbenga Akinnagbe and the late James Caan in his final performance, Fast Charlie is…if you’re willing to ignore the gunfire…a mature, unpretentious, character-driven, action-punctuated story of cunning and desire (not just romantic but epicurean) on the Mississippi bayou. Four adjectives plus gourmet servings.
The Brosnan-Baccarin thing reminds me of Robert Forster and Pam Grier in Jackie Brown. Sprinkled with a little Elmore Leonard dressing. One of those smooth older guy + middle-aged woman ease-and-compatibility deals.
Richard Wenk‘s screenplay, adapted from Victor Gischler‘s “Gun Monkeys,” is complemented by cinematography by Australian lenser Warwick Thornton (director of The New Boy).
A case has already been made that David Fincher‘s The Killer is a stylistic and spiritual kin — a close kindred spirit — of certain other elite crime noirs — films whose basic situations could be described as “solitary hardcase dude not only does it his own way but is seriously effective in the matter of revenge and settling scores and turning the tables.”
The primary examples that come to mind are John Boorman‘s Point Blank, MikeHodges’ GetCarter, Michael Mann‘s Thief, Jean-Pierre Melville‘s Le Samourai, John Flynn‘s The Outfit and Don Siegel‘s Charley Varrick — seven including the Fincher. Agreed?
I know it doesn’t matter to the denialists, but Jenna Ellis having testified that prior to 1.6.21 that a Trump attorney told her “the boss isn’t leaving [the White House and] we don’t care”…excellent.
…about the 2:1 aspect ratio connection between Jurassic Park (’93) and Barbie (’23). On top of which I’d never heard until today that JurassicPark was printed with a 2:1 aspect ratio. I’ve seen it twice theatrically and had presumed both times it was just 1.85 with possibly stringent masking.
I’ve been told by a veteran film guy that JP is, in fact, 1.85. Very confusing.
Movie journalists I’ve spoken to don’t even know the difference between 1.66, 1.85 and 2.39…they just don’t notice it. It goes without saying that 98% of ticket buyers are clueless about this, and that they damn sure couldn’t spot the difference between 1.85:1 and 2.1…not if their lives depended on it.
Collider‘s Perri Nemiroff, one of the smiling-est film commentators on the web, not to mention a Noovie personality, and…
L.A. Times wokester film writer Jen Yamato, still best known for (a) complaining that Licorice Pizza made Asians into a “punchline“, and (b) complaining to Joel and Ethan Coen that Hail Ceasar, set in Hollywood in the early ’50s, didn’t bave enough minority characters (i.e., #WhyIsHailCaesarSoWhite?”
If you ask me Yamato, Jackson and Nemiroff were included to round things out. Stone and Feinberg are the only serious contenders.
With my big, beautiful, elephant-hide wallet having vaporized in midtown Manhattan sometime on Friday, November 3rd (the day I saw Maestro at Dolby 88), I’ve spent more than a few hours trying to re-establish my identity — new plastic, new driver’s license, passport, insurance cards, social security card, etc.
I have high-quality images of the important identification docs on my phone, but they mean nothing to the DMV guys. To them I’m an Afghanistan terrorist. I had just bought a $39 Metro card…gone. The cash is gone.
Early tomorrow morning I’ll be making one last try with the Metro North lost-and-found team plus the Midtown North police precinct on West 54th Street, and then I’ll get into line for the 1 pm Napoleon screening. I’ve got one of those smallish Apple wallets arriving tomorrow night, but my heart is still cracked and aching. That big-ass wallet meant a lot.
