Jeff Wells

I never posted about the extreme trauma that I went through during the Cannes Film Festival, but each and every day I was grappling with daily, crippling attacks from malicious IPs, apparently of a Chinese or Indian origin. I think it was sparked by fanatical woke haters, but I can’t prove it.

Liquid Web techies blocked and firewalled as best they could, but the attacks were unrelenting and the site was unloadable for periods of one to two hours minimum, almost every damn day.

In the midst of this horror the LW tech consultants suggested that I incorporate Cloudflare but that I needed to load new Cloudserver-friendly nameservers. Alas, I couldn’t do this during the festival as a name-server change always shuts a site down for roughly eight to twelve hours, to allow the new name-servers to propagate worldwide. (The Web.com/Network Solution tecchies insisted that full propagation could take 24 to 48….bullshit.)

So yesterday afternoon I followed the advice of my Liquid Web tech advisors and switched out the name-servers. The site went down, of course, but I figured I’d be good by the time I woke up this morning.

But at 6 am, it wasn’t good. Two respected tracker sites (www.dnschecker.org and https://www.whatsmydns.net/#NS/www.hollywood-elsewhere.com) said it hadn’t really propagated at all. The Cloudflare-friendly nameservers weren’t kicking in….disaster. A bullshit suggestion as it turned out.

It took a couple of hours to try to revert back to a generic Liquid Web name-server, and it finally fell into place. But it was awful. Cloudflare is now operational. Who knows what’ll happen when the baddies strike again?

Fake wangs have been peeking through over the last several months, and they’ve all been on the hefty side.

Walton Goggins wore a large dangling sausage in a water-skiing scene in HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones. Jason Isaacs briefly flashed about halfway through Season 3 of The White Lotus. And Joaquin Pheonix is clearly wearing one during a brief disrobing sequence in Ari Aster‘s Eddington, which I just saw in Cannes.

You know right away because Joaquin’s appendage is bigger, longer and thigh-slappier than expected.

Which is why actors are down with realistic bendy-wendies. We’re all in on the game of pretending to have large schlongs, but they enhance an actor’s masculinity all the same.

One thing you don’t want to do is wear an appendage that makes your package look smaller than expected.

Adam Scott did this in Patrick Brice‘s The Overnight (’15). His character was deeply bothered about having a small junk, and so Scott’s character was wearing a small-dick prosthetic. I don’t think it mattered if audiences knew that or not. The fakey-wakey looked like a #2 pencil.

I’d be lying if I said this bizarre scene (Scott and costar Jason Schwartzman dancing nude in front of their wives) didn’t make me feel uncomfortable. Truth be told, it’s one reason why I’ve never wanted to watch Severance. I can’t get rid of the association.

There’s no question that growers who do nude scenes risk — risk, not ensure — career damage. The nude wrestling scene between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in Ken Russell‘s Women in Love didn’t exactly suggest associations with horses or elephants, but the editing saved them. Cillian Murphy did himself no favors when he allowed Danny Boyle and Anthony Dod Mantle to briefly glimpse his package in 28 Days Later.

Guys performing nude should always work up a little heft before the director says “action!” A former girlfriend who used to work for Viva, the women’s magazine that ran nude male centerfolds, once told me that photographers always wanted their male subjects to be in a state of “maximum tumescence in repose.” One way not to look like you’re “hung like a cashew” (a devastating phrase coined by James Ellroy) is to pop Viagra or Cialis. In the military drill sergeants refer to low-level soldiers as “swinging dicks” — said medications actually allow that condition to manifest.

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As good great as he is Sentimental Value, I was trying not to feel distracted (if not distressed) by how frail and withered Stellan Skarsgard looks in Joachim Trier’s sure-to-be-Oscar-nominated family drama.

He’s not that old (born in ’51, turns 74 on 6.13.25) but with his sagging features and most of his hair fallen out, Stellan looks as far along as Michael Caine, who was born in ’33.

At the very least he looks like a gent in his early to mid ’80s, and certainly past his sexual activity sell-by date.

Something’s going on. 73 year-olds are young enough to be fucking the prom queen. They’re not supposed to look like they’re preparing for an assisted living facility. Even Walter Brennan looked younger in The Real McCoys.

We all appear older as the wheels turn, of course, but actors aren’t supposed to look strikingly older than their years. It’s not too late for Stellan to resort to the usual remedies, including HE’s Prague hair guy.

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The seething and loathing in Charles Grodin‘s eyes…the “being pushed to the limit by this godawful kid”…..this is actually funny stuff. And I never even saw Clifford (’94, which was actually shot in ’90 and then sat on the shelf for four years.

In honor of Tuesday night’s Bedford Playhouse screening of Bad Day at Black Rock, HE is re-posting (second time within the last 12 months!) a riff about Anne Francis‘s Liz Wirth character not (heh-heh) getting any, or at least being indifferent to the concept, due to where she lives.

The original HE posting appeared on 11.15.24:

Bad Day at Black Rock (‘55) is a good, strong John Sturges film except for one thing. Nobody in that tiny little desert backwater is doing Anne Francis.

It makes no sense that Francis would even be there, as a woman this fetching would never settle for a grim existence in a dinky little ghost town like this. Life is short — you have to go for the gusto and the goodies.

But even if you accept that Francis’s “Liz Wirth” would be content to live in this dusty hell hole, human nature dictates that someone in that miserable hamlet would’ve stepped up to the plate and said to her, “I’m your man…really. We can make beautiful music together and have all kinds of nice plants on the patio.”

Someone always steps up and seals the deal in these situations. It happened in each and every cave settlement in prehistoric times, in every village in ancient Judea, in every clay-hut, grass-roof settlement in medieval Europe. Not that a knockout like Francis would’ve rubbed shoulders with everyday European villagers or Judeans or cave-dwellers.

The fact that director John Sturges never addressed this reality — Francis not only being unattached but none of the dudes even applying for the position — tells you something about the funny-looking Sturges, who might’ve been an egghead brother of Richard Kiel except shorter, and with a high forehead. It suggests he wasn’t much of a hound in his youth or that he tried his luck with women but wasn’t very successful.

If I was Spencer Tracy, I would’ve sized things up and sauntered over to Robert Ryan or Lee Marvin or Walter Brennan or Wirth’s brother Pete, who works at the hotel, and said, “Are you telling me that no one’s giving Anne the high, hard one, or at least trying to? Because that really goes against basic human nature.“

Anne Francis passed in 2011 at age 80.

Altogether I saw 21 or 22 films** during my 11 days at the Cannes Film Festival, although I tried like hell to see a few more. Within the limits imposed by stress, fatigue and the necessity of eating cheese sandwiches and getting five-hour sleeps, I did my best to cover the whole magilla.

The Venice Film Festival, three months hence, is the next big event. Thanks again to those who contributed to HE’s GoFundMe Cannes/Venice travel fund.

For me and in this order, there were five gold-star standouts in Cannes:

1. Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value, which I’ve written plenty about. (HE review)

2. Richard Linklater‘s Nouvelle Vague. (HE review.)

3. Hasan Hadi‘s The President’s Cake. Pic wound up winning the Director’s Fortnight Audience Award as well the Camera d’Or. (HE review)

4. Thomas Ngojil‘s Untamable. (HE review).

5. Eva Victor‘s Sorry, Baby. (HE review)

For credentialed, non-elite press people like myself, Cannes is quite the aggressive, move-it-or-lose-it ticket competition.

I was basically shut down in trying to reserve tickets for Spike Lee‘s Highest 2 Lowest (which I actually Ubered to see in nearby Cannes la Bocca only to get shut out a second time), Scarlett Johansson‘s Eleanor the Great (waited in last-minute line outside Salle Debussy…ixnay) and Kristen Stewart‘s The Chronology of Water. For what it’s worth none of these films were described in radiant, top-of-the-line terms by critics.

If Lee’s producers and the festival organizers had wanted more people to see Highest 2 Lowest, they would have scheduled a Salle Debussy screening that was concurrent with the black-tie Grand Lumiere screening, or at the very least a next-morning screening at the Salle Agnes Varda. But they didn’t.

HE definitely saw (and in some cases suffered through) the following Competition films:

1. Case 137, d: Dominik Moll.
2. Die, My Love, d: Lynne Ramsay
3. Eddington, d: Ari Aster
4. Fuori, d: Mario Martone
5. The History of Sound, d: Oliver Hermanus
6. It Was Just an Accident, d: Jafar Panahi
7. The Mastermind, d: Kelly Reichardt
8. Nouvelle Vague, d: Richard Linklater
9. The Phoenician Scheme, d: Wes Anderson
10. Romería, d: Carla Simón
11. The Secret Agent, d: Kleber Mendonça Filho
12. Sentimental Value, d: Joachim Trier
13. Sirat, d: Óliver Laxe
14. Sound of Falling, d: Mascha Schilinski.
15. Two Prosecutors, d: Sergei Loznitsa
15. Woman and Child, d: Saeed Roustayi
16. Young Mothers, d: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
17. Urchin, d: Harris Dickinson.

Plus four Directors’ Fortnight films:

18. The President’s Cake, d: Hasan Hadi.
19. Wild Foxes, d: Valéry Carnoy.
20. Untamable, d: Thomas Ngojil.
21. Sorry, Baby, d: Eva Victor.

I really wish I could have seen the Lee, the Johansson and the Stewart. I was really kind of pissed off that I was more or less blocked from seeing them. Didn’t seem fair on the part of the organizers.

I was either forced to blow off (scheduling conflicts) or simply chose not to see the following Competition films:

The Little Sister, d: Hafsia Herzi
Renoir, d: Chie Hayakawa.
The three-hour Resurrection, d: Bi Gan.
The almost universally loathed Alpha, d: Julia Ducournau.
Eagles of the Republic, d: Tarik Saleh .

** 22 films if you count Friday afternoon’s (5.23) empty-Coke-bottle screening of Barry Lyndon.

Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoningopewned three days ago (5.12). So what’s the HE community verdict? C’mon, cough it up.

The Metacritic score (only two-thirds of critics approve, roughly the same in the case of Joe and Jane Popcorn) tells you there’s trouble in River City. (The Rotten Tomatoes 80% score is meaningless — that site is crawling with whores).

Having seen it 11 or 12 days ago and soon after posted my somewhat bewildered review, I’ve been feeling more and more anoyance with Tom Cruise‘s Ethan Hunt having been pretty much deified. Hunt is spoken of and deferred to with the same respect and reverence offered to Angela Bassett‘s U.S. President (former CIA honcho Erika Sloane). He might as well as be Superman in a Warner Bros. D.C. film.

What happened to the idea of major government authorities pledging to disavow any knowledge of Hunt and/or the M:I force if things theoretically go south? Final Reckoning‘s Hunt is completely out of the shadows. He could host his own CNN show, or even run for President himself.

The good news, first and foremost, is that the Cannes jury tonight handed the Camera d’Or prize to Hasan Hadi ‘s The President’s Cake — an Iraq-set children’s drama that HE went totally nuts for several days ago.

But there’s no way on God’s green earth that Jafar Panahi‘s It Was Just An Accident is a better film than Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value. The Trier is unquestionably the shit — a drill-down serving of intimate, soul-flooding cinema. And yet the Cannes Jury has just given the Palme d’Or to the Panahi regardless.

Out of political motives, obviously. They feel compelled to show support for Panahi in lieu of the poor guy having coped with nearly a quarter-century of pressure and persecution from the Iranian government. That’s all it is — a sympathy vote, “you go, bruh”, “we’ve got your six”, etc.

Trier’s obviously superior family drama won the Grand Prix award — i.e. a second prize that was undoubtedly presented in a guilty frame of mind. Jury: “We loved the film, Joachim, but…well, you weren’t politically persecuted so we hope you understand.”

I didn’t see Hafsia Herzi‘s The Little Sister, but this adaptation of Fatima Daas‘s 2020 novel (“The Last One”) is about a daughter of Algerian immigrants in Paris being afraid to tell them she’s a lesbian. Big surprise — Nadia Melliti‘s performance as the daughter won the Cannes jury’s Best Actress trophy, and in so doing beat out Renata Reinsve‘s deepheart, guns-blazing Sentimental Value performance.

I wouldn’t want to presume anything, but what are the chances that gay-supportive sentiments had something to do with Melliti winning? Is this, like, a remote possibility? Whaddaya think?

Kleber Mendonca Filho‘s The Secret Agent, an admirable but overhyped drama about political terror in 1977 Brazil, won a Best Director prize, and the star, Wagner Moura, won for Best Actor. (Here’s HE’s 5.19.25 review.)

Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling (a.k.a. Sound of Movie Patrons Falling Asleep) shared a jury prize because of its feminist credentials — it’s this year’s Women Talking. (Here’s my review.)

Friendo: “The Cannes Film Festival’s politically progressive praise mechanism is a racket. Which is why the Palme d’Or at Cannes — and all the other Cannes awards — mean less than zero. ‘Hey honey, wanna go see Sound of Falling tonight? I’ve heard it shared a major prize at Cannes!’

“When I finally caught up with Women Talking, I was shocked at how bad it was. It wasn’t even crudely watchable, male-bashing propaganda. It was slow-moving drivel in Amish garb.”

Posted on 5.21:

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Why did Kelly Reichardt make a 1970 art heist film?, you’re asking yourself. Or an anti-heist film, which a certain Reichardt cultist is calling it.

Because The Mastermind, which I sat through several hours ago, is basically about a married, middle-class, not-smart-enough jerkoff — Josh O’Connor‘s James Blaine Mooney, or “JB” — being so inept at organizing a theft of some Arthur Dove paintings from a museum in Framingham that he’s unmistakably in the running for the sloppiest felon in motion picture history, and I mean right up there with Al Pacino‘s Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afernoon.

We know going in, of course, that Reichardt doesn’t do genre stuff and that The Mastermind, which is being praised, of course…we know her film will be exploring something else. It certainly isn’t Rififi, for sure. But what is it?

Reichardt is primarily interested in JB’s life being blown to smithereens when the half-assed robbery goes wrong. But why? Is it about JB’s subconscious attempt to punish himself for marrying Alana Haim‘s Terri and having two boys with her and…I don’t know, feeling trapped by this? Is he looking to thumb his nose at his straightlaced parents (played by Bill Camp and Hope Davis)?

It certainly seems to be about a form of convoluted self-destruction.

JB winds up on the run, penniless, scrounging around, snatching an old lady’s cash-filled handbag and finally being arrested during an anti-war demonstration. But to what end?

The Mastermind asks “how would a born-to-lose guy go about escaping from his life?” Suicide would be the simplest way, of course, but JB seems to lack the necessary character and conviction to put a pistol in his mouth. If he wants to join up with some hippies and run away to Hawaii or Mexico or Central America, why doesn’t he just do that? Why go to the trouble of hiring a pair of young fuck-ups to steal the paintings, knowing that in all likelihood one or both will eventually screw up and get popped and rat him out?

All I know is that The Mastermind has a little story tension going on during the first 75 minutes or so, but once the jig is up and JB goes on the lam, it has nowhere to go. The last shot of JB in a police paddy wagon conveys a little something, but the film basically peters out.

I don’t want to say any more. The film isn’t dull or uninteresting — O’Connor is always good in a grubby, glint-of-madness sort of way — but it’s basically a wash. For me, at least, but then I’m not a cultist.

“Rough Draft That Had To Be Tossed,” posted on 7.25.24:

Biden: “There’s no possibility of my being completely candid with you…it’s simply beyond the realm of my own personality and psychological makeup to explain why I did a 180 last weekend by deciding to abandon my presidential campaign…a major pivot after insisting there was no argument or force short of Almighty God that could persuade me to quit.

“How did this happen? Was it my wife, Doctor Jill, whom some of you have compared to Lady Macbeth? Did she keep me in a bubble where I wouldn’t hear more open and honest assessments?

“The truth is that I was determined to tough it out no matter what…I said this over and over in various unyielding, mule-stubborn ways…even if it meant losing and taking the whole Democratic ship and crew with me, all of us swirling down to Davy Jones locker…

“The bottom ine is that I didn’t quit out of selflessness or personal sacrifice or any of that lofty, noble, Patrick Henry stuff…I was finally told there was no path to winning, and was therefore finally persuaded that in the eyes of history my name would be mud if I let that happen…and that was it…in order to save my legacy, to avoid the utter shame of self-ruin I was shoved out, plain and simple…and I fought this like a dying wolverine…snapping and snarling and screaming…I decided to fold my tent only under extreme Irish duress…and I mean I was howling and spitting and punching my refrigerator and baring my fangs and kicking and even shitting my pants. It wasn’t pretty.

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