Jeff Wells

Hollywood has long practiced the art of conflicted moral messaging, or the pushing of lofty moral or ethical aspiration while simultaneously enticing the crowd with cheap highs and tawdry pleasures.

For decades this was Cecil B. DeMille‘s game, especially with films like Sign of the Cross and The Ten Commandments — give the peons sex, glamour and lavish spectacle while preaching somber adherence to the Old Testament gospel.

Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street employed a similar strategy, revelling in Jordan Belfort‘s lifestyle of drugs, depravity and debauchery while condemning Wall Street’s culture of greed and exploitation.

I’ve never forgotten LexG saying at the time that he liked The Wolf of Wall Street “for the wrong reasons” — i.e., he’d had so much fun with the party-boy behavior that the moral message barely registered.

The latest trailer for Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie seems to be following suit. On one hand it’s clearly a satire of girly-girl shallowness and empty Coke-bottle personalities and pretty-in-pink aesthetics, but on the other hand many who will pay to see it (are we allowed to say that younger women are apparently the target audience?) will be adoring the abundant plastic materialism and smiley-face attitudes that the film is telling its audience to maybe think twice about.

Trust me, there will be millions who will love Barbie “for the wrong reasons.”

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Critic ratings of Cannes competition films rarely (or only occasionally) synch up with the preferences of juries. But if you’re willing to throw caution to the wind for the sake of spitballing, the likeliest Palme d’Or and Grand Prix winners (to be announced tomorrow night) will probably come from six films rated 2.8 or higher.

The highest rated (3.2) is Aki Kaurismaki‘s Fallen Leaves, a tragicomic love story that I wasn’t able to see. Then again HE regulars understand that I have a long record of missing Cannes prize-winner screenings. It’s almost uncanny. I have a special nose.

Todd Haynes‘ May December, which I found grating and at times infuriating, and Justine Triet‘s Anatomy of a Fall are both rated 3.

Four have 2.8 ratings — Jonathan Glazer‘s The Zone of Interest (which I respected more than admired), Wang Bing‘s Youth (which I never even thought about catching), Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s About Dry Grasses (tried to see it, failed for reasons I’d rather not go into) and Tranh Vanh Hung‘s The Pot Au Feu (my personal favorite).

For what it’s worth the derision thrown at the traumatic and walloping Black Flies (1.3) was and is completely off the mark. Jessica Hausner‘s Club Zero, an anti-woke parable, deserves a lot more than a lousy 1.7 grade.

Juries almost always give the Palme d’Or for social-political-moral motives to prove their woke bonafides. This suggests that The Zone of Interest may take the top prize.

I’ll be flabbergasted if The Pot au Feu, easily the most nourishing and pleasurable film of the festival, wins the Palme d’Or.

I’m sorry but I love this oldie-but-goodie — a fraught discussion between Beirut director-writer Tony Gilroy** and Washington Post wokester and representation fanatic Hannah Jewell, which was initially posted a little more than five years ago (4.18.18).

Jewell’s adamant objection (i.e., the film’s failure to include Lebanese characters is racist and Islamophobic) is fairly and thoroughly respinded to by Gilroy with three answers. One, the narrative focuses on various outsiders and invaders because Lebanon itself has long been overrun and manipulated by same. Two, there wasn’t room within a two-hour narrative to include ethnic-nativist characters and atmosphere for their own sake. And three, if a film is set in Florida should only Floridians be cast?

Jewell is a national video reporter for The Washington Post, and author of “We Need Snowflakes: In defense of the sensitive, the angry and the offended.”

I’ll wager that Jewell was dutifully outraged over the June 2022 Dave Weigel sexist tweet episode, and cheered when he was suspended.

** Obviously pre-uncredited rewrites of Woman in the Window, and pre-Andor.

HE is soliciting opinions about South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who’s just announced his candidacy for the 2024 Republican nomination for president. He’s seems like a decent human being and far less psychotic (if he’s psychotic at all) than Orange Psycho, but to me he lacks a certain charismatic magnetism that we all want from a presidential candidate — the stuff that Barack Obama had in abundance.

I’m sorry but there’s something about Scott that says “game show host” or “Orange County preacher” or “high-school basketball coach.” He has a vaguely foghorn-ish, not-deep-enough voice that lacks the right kind of diction. Something in his vibe seems a little more huckterish than most of us might prefer. He seems a little less eloquent than preferred, perhaps a little too goading. Plus he looks like he doesn’t work out enough.

I liked Jim Brown, George Foreman and Harry Belafonte‘s shaved bald heads but I don’t care for Scott’s. The upper half is shaped like a bowling ball.

Meanwhile the presidential campaign of Governor Ron DeSantis has just launched, but it might already be finished.

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In yesterday’s “Worst Ayehole Means Most Infuriating & Obnoxious” piece, I should have mentioned Steve Buscemi‘s uncredited, painfully obnoxious performance in The Wedding Singer (’98), which celebrated its 25th anniversary last February. Buscemi played David Veltri, the black-sheep brother of the groom.

Where would the iconic cinema moments of the indie ’90s be without Buscemi’s characters in Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Living in Oblivion, Reservoir Dogs, Con Air, etc.?

In April ’01 Buscemi, Vince Vaughn and Scott Rosenberg got into a bar fight in Wilmington, North Carolina. They were shooting a Harold Becker film called Domestic Disturbance. Buscemi was stabbed in the neck, and was lucky to escape serious injury.

A few months later Buscemi sat down at a press table at a film junket I was covering, and for whatever reason I told him that if a short film based on the bar fight incident could be made, it might be really interesting, Buscemi was appalled, calling it a dogshit idea and looking at me like I had insects crawling out of my nose and ears.

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filmmaker-author Kenneth Anger (“Hollywood Babylon,” Scorpio Rising) has passed at age 96. He actually slipped the coil two weeks ago (5.11.23), but the announcement didn’t break until a day or two ago.

I first read “Hollywood Babylon” in ’77 or ’78. A flagrantly sordid, occasionally grotesque catalogue of the most sensational Hollywood scandals from the classic era (’20s through ’50s). I suspected right away that it was exaggerated, but like everyone else I found the book darkly fascinating all the same. (A Connecticut friend told me he found it gloomy and depressing — in other words he didn’t get it.) Alas, reputable journalists and Hollywood historians (including Karina Longworth) have claimed that much of it was flat-out fabricated.

The book might be bullshit, I told myself, but I didn’t want it to be, and, as we all found out last year, neither did Damien Chazelle.

Not to mention the fact that “all gossip is true.” (Who said that?) This is Hollywood, sir — when truth becomes legend, print the legend.

To this day I’ve never seen Scorpio Rising (’63), but we’re all familiar with the gay erotic legend of musclebound motorcycle guys in dark shades and black leather jackets…The Wild One, The Village People, Cruising…this is what Anger created or articulated with Scorpio Rising“>this fringey film.

There are three reasons I’ve never seen Lady Godiva of Coventry (’55). One, it’s only watchable via DVD (i.e., no HD, no streaming). Two, it’s apparently a cheesy B movie, as indicated by the fact that audiences shunned it like the plague. And three, for the naked horseback scene Maureen O’Hara wore a flesh-colored body stocking and a ridiculous long red wig, the combination of which didn’t even allow for the slightest anatomical peek.

Arthur Lubin’s film is noteworthy, however, for Clint Eastwood‘s performance as “First Saxon.” Eastwood was 24 at the time. He was also dubbed — that raspy Eastwood snarl wasn’t a fit for the location and time period.

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