Jeff Wells

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).

From David Fear’s 11.8 Rolling Stone piece about David Fincher’s The Killer:

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, Mike Hodges’ Get Carter, 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 Jurassic Park 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.

Congrats to the five nominees for the 2023 Publicist Guild press award, listed in order of HE preference:

Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone…a nomination and recommendation that speaks for itself.

THR‘s Scott Feinberg…ditto.

Variety‘s Angelique Jackson, who’s still best known for expressing disappointment over Anthony Hopkins winning Best Actor for The Father and thereby denying fans of the late Chadwick Boseman, whose Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom performance was also nominated, a cathartic moment;

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.

I’ve been a hardcore aspect ratio fanatic my entire life so I when I notice something unusual or striking about the masking of a new film, you can pretty much take it to the bank. I was in a local AMC plex last night, and impulsively decided to pop my head into a theatre showing The Holdovers. Despite having seen it three times (Telluride and Montclair film festivals plus last night) I noticed for the first time that it’s being projected at 1.66:1, or is masked at that aspect ratio.

We all understand that director Alexander Payne has gone to some effort to make The Holdovers look and feel like a half-century-old film, but honestly? 1.66:1 was more in vogue during the ’50s and the early to mid ’60s (at least when it came to United Artists releases). Outside of European projection standards and par-for-the-course 1.66 maskings, 1.85 aspect ratios had become ubiquitous stateside by 1970, the year in which Payne’s film mostly takes place. I nonetheless love that he tumbled for 1.66 anyway.

Nobody loves 1.66 aspect ratios like Hollywood Elsewhere…nobody.

To me 1.66 framings are a special turn-on — a standard of old-school visual integrity that either you’re on board with like a monk or you’re not and you’re lost.

The first three James Bond films use the 1.66 rectangle…perfection. I adore that John Schlesinger‘s Sunday Bloody Sunday (’71) adheres to same. I hated it when Richard Lester ignored the traditional 1.66 framings of A Hard Day’s Night and went instead for 1.75 when the Criterion Bluray version came out…heresy! The late William Friedkin once told me in no uncertain terms that Sorcerer was meant to be shown in 1.85, but he could have kicked back and opened his heart and gone for 1.66 and nobody would’ve said boo. Roman Polanski wasn’t “wrong”, of course, when he stated that 1.85 was the proper aspect ratio for Rosemary’s Baby, but when I saw a 1.66 version in Paris in ’76 or thereabouts, I knew…I just knew.

You can’t instruct a cinematic Philistine to get with the 1.66 program — they either understand or they don;t.

How much joy and rapture can Hollywood Elsewhere stand? Another Marvel movie — Julius Onah‘s Captain America: Brave New World (Disney, 2.14.24) — is apparently in some kind of trouble, which to me is a wonderful wonderful WONDERFUL indication of continuing franchise fatigue and a general belief across the land that Marvel has weakened and broken its own brand and that the party is winding down big-time. Pop the chamnpagne!

Three days ago Jeff Sneider reported that negative test scores have led to plans for extensive reshoots, and that three major sequences will be cut and re-lensed sometime between January and May of next year. Pic costars Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez, Carl Lumbly, Tim Blake Nelson, Harrison Ford and Liv Tyler. I’m feeling a rush of euphoria…the proverbial Wicked Witch of the West is.melting, melting…”oh, what a world, what a world!”

Reportedly Dave Green‘s Coyote vs. Acme will not be tossed into an infinite black hole but acquired by one of the usual suspect streamers, mostly likely Amazon. This, at least, is what Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro reported this morning.

Not since The Revenant…