On 2.6.18, I stated a bedrock emotional truth that few others would cop to, which was that white critics were afraid to not praise Black Panther. Ryan Coogler’s 2018 Marvel blockbuster is being celebrated right now as a better film than Wakanda Forever, but don’t forget that the first 75 minutes of Black Panther weren’t all that great, and the final hour was the only part worth writing home about.

My article was titled “Critics Are Tip Toe-ing Around Black Panther Truth“:

On 1.31 I posted a qualified capsule rave of Ryan Coogler‘s Black Panther (Disney, 2.16). More precisely I raved about the final hour while lamenting that the first 75 minutes are largely lacking in narrative tension and are mostly about set-up, diversion, pageantry and obligatory battle and car-chase action sequences for their own sakes. All through the first hour-plus I was worried. I was asking myself “when is this film going to get it together and start moving purposefully in a direction that we all want it to go in?”

And then it finally does that, and it’s all exuberant, pedal-to-the-metal, forward-motion engagement. But you’ll need to scrutinize the recently-posted Black Panther reviews with a fine tooth comb to find even a hint of acknowledgment that it waits and waits and waits to really rev up the T-bird and put the rubber to the road.

Early next year, Roger Durling‘s Santa Barbara Film Festival will present the 2023 Maltin Modern Master award to Jamie Lee Curtis. Not because of her legendary scream queen rep (recently underlined by her starring role in Halloween Kills) but because of her broad performance as a wackjobby IRS agent in A24’s Everything Everywhere All At Once**.

We all respect the endurance (persistence?) of Curtis’s career, but the truth is that Everything Everywhere aside she hasn’t been in any reasonably good films in over 20 years. I’m not being mean — that’s just factual.

Curtis’s peak years were from the late ’70s to mid ’90s, and principally in the ’80s. Her three finest films, in this order, are Charles Crichton and John Cleese‘s A Fish Called Wanda (’88), John Landis‘s Trading Places (’83) and James Cameron‘s True Lies (’94).

Other noteworthy JLC vehicles, listed sequentially, are Halloween (’78), The Fog (’80), Love Letters (’83), James Bridges‘ Perfect (’85), Diane Kurys‘ A Man in Love (’85), Kathryn Bigelow‘s Blue Steel (’90), John Boorman‘s The Tailor of Panama (’01) and Rian Johnson‘s Knives Out (’19).

HE to Durling: The perfect presenter of the actual award would be John Carpenter, to whom Curtis owes her entire breadwinning career.

** The perfect ending aside, I mostly loathed this curiously successful film. but that’s water under the bridge.

All hail the truth-telling, no-holds-barred, non-ass-kissing Scott Mantz…a movie-obsessed Colossus of Rhodes among men!

Mantz #1: “WAKANDA FOREVER isn’t as good as BLACK PANTHER (I mean, how could it be?), but even so, it’s still a mixed bag. The first half is slow, hard to follow and lacks focus, but it gets better as it goes [along], and the last 30 minutes are great with an emotional payoff.”

Mantz gave WAKANDA a B grade but we all know what that probably means, given the usual “let’s be polite since we were invited to the premiere” factor — it means C for “not bad but sorta kinda faintly blows except for the ending.”

Scott Mendelson, Forbes: “WAKANDA FOREVER entertains but spends way too much time setting up future MCU projects and coping with its non-fiction tragedy. It also often feels like a mix-and-match of prior (frankly inferior) Marvel movies. Works best when it’s just allowed to be Black Panther 2”

I’d like to ask the HE faithful a question, and while I understand that wokesters are incapable of actual honesty, I’d really appreciate honest answers from the East Berlin truth-tellers. Are you sincerely interested in hauling your blubbery asses down to a megaplex so you can immerse yourself in “a beautiful study of grief” that lasts 161 minutes?

I was terrified that Pennsylvania’s Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate would make some sort of grammatical mistake or lose his train of thought or something. He stumbled once or twice but he did…well, okay. (Except for the fracking answer.) Anyone who would vote against John Fetterman because he isn’t fully recovered from his stroke has no heart or compassion for those who’ve had to cope with a serious but temnporary medical condition. Fetterman is a soul man and a much better human being than Mehmet Oz, who said last night that he would support Trump in the ’24 election if nominated.

I first interviewed Drew Barrymore in the summer of 1982, when she was seven. It was for an Us magazine cover story about E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial. I ran into her again in ’99 at that Sunset Marquis bar (Bar 1200) — she and Luke Wilson were parked at a table, and I sat down for a chat.

The Drew Barrymore Show has been happening since 9.14.20. I like the red-yellow-green flag game, and I enjoyed this session in particular because Stewart strikes me as a no-bullshit type who has her own opinions and holds her ground when challenged or prodded.

Unlike Barrymore, I should add. During a 5.17.21 interview with Dylan Farrow and during a discussion of Allen v. Farrow, Barrymore threw Woody Allen under the bus. In ’96 Allen cast Barrymore in Everyone Says I Love You, the second best film she made in her life.

Friendo who’s seen Florian Zeller’s The Son (Sony Pictures Classics, 11.25): “So we face madness in this film, right in the eye. It’s like watching a burning house implode. And it’s harder to look away than to stare. Mesmerizing.

“Hugh Jackman is a man with everything — a beautiful, much younger second wife (Vanessa Kirby), a gorgeous new baby boy, a fabulous job, beautiful home, money in the bank. So what’s wrong with this picture? Laura Dern as the first wife — dumped for her younger replacement. And the teenage son (Zen McGrath) who was abandoned like a cold leftover.

“Hugh seems eager to help with his first son’s dark, mute depression at being the starter child left behind, but it’s not until we see Hugh with his own father — Anthony Hopkins in a perfectly chilling single scene — do we understand that the self-serving seed of pure narcissism was sown in Hugh long ago. And that those seeds have already taken root in his first born and will not be torn out without collateral damage.

“I applaud Florian’s bravery in showing what divorce does to children — not a popular topic for your classic self centered American adults. It also takes you a minute to realize that Jackman’s character is a self-centered ass because he seems so (superficially) well intentioned.

“But when you meet his serpent of a father (Hopkin), you realize how screwed up they all are and how this pathological myopia is passed down through the generations. The Hopkins-Jackman scene is short but deadly.

“And it’s hard not to like Jackman because he’s such an affable movie star, while we’re supposed to feel for the kid, who’s kind of a weird anti-social nerd.”

HE comment: I haven’t seen The Son but I already hate McGrath…fuck that guy.

Way back in ’84 (38 years ago) hotshot movie guy Lewis Beale wrote a piece for L.A. Times “Calendar” about his loathing for James L. Brooks‘ Terms of Endearment (’83). The piece isn’t accessible online, Beale explained, but it boiled down to the following:

1. Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) was a horrible (read: headstrong, egoistic) person who treats her daughter Emma (Debra Winger) dismissively or otherwise like dirt, and only becomes involved in Emma’s life when she’s dying of cancer, and because of this we’re supposed to like her because she’s Somebody’s Mother.

2. The film covers 30 years and takes place in three cities, but has no sense of time and place. At all. [HE to Beale: It primarily takes place in Houston and in a mid-sized university town in Nebraska. The New York visit is brief and basically doesn’t count.]

3. Emma whines all the time, then Brooks puts her in a New York restaurant with three or four bitchy career women to make her look good and them bad. [HE to Beale: Emma whines when her husband Flap (Jeff Daniels) starts cheating on her. She doesn’t whine at all when she gets cancer.]

4. Cancer is to the 1980s what consumption was to the Victorians — the province of hacks. [HE to Beale: Cancer happens to unlucky younger people. It’s not common, but it happens.]

5. Sloppy pacing, sitcom structures, characters introduced for no reason (Danny DeVito‘s), etc.

Beale also mentioned that two of America’s foremost critics, Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris, also hated the film.

The piece got tons of negative mail. Beale’s editor Irv Letofsky loved the piece, and the negative reaction.

HE comment: The movie is saved by Jack Nicholson‘s Garrett Breedlove. Without him Terms would have been unbearable.

4.27.06 article fr5om Houston during my last visit there (and probably my last): “There are good people all over this town but with the exception of a visit Wednesday night to River Oaks, where the really rich folks live and where the oak trees are huge and the grass is moist and fragrant, Houston seemed less than abundant with down-home charm. And if you’ve been to New York or Paris or London or Rome, it feels lacking in cultural refinement.

“To me, it’s an arid corporate hee-haw town. Not enough sidewalks. Cavernous malls. Lots of middle-aged guys with monster beer bellies. Expensive cars tearing around like they’re in the Monte Carlo Grand Prix, and all those revolting glass-and-steel towers. Not enough trees. Women with vaguely predatory vibes and long jaws. And the strip clubs — strip clubs! — as prominent and well located as the better restaurants, music stores and markets…nothing covert about them.

“Cherry Kutac told me before I came that Houston is like L.A. but without the soul, and I think that just about nails it.

“Early tomorrow morning I’m going down to the courthouse where the Enron trial is happening. And then I’ll drive by St. John’s, the private school where Wes Anderson shot Rushmore, and maybe visit MacLaine’s Terms of Endearment home.”