In Wilton high school there was this luminous, unstable, occasionally excitable Irish blonde named Sally Jo Quinn, whom I had a thing for. Short, slender, magnificent blue eyes, straight blonde hair, smallish feet, slender hands with chewed nails.
No dad at home; just her single mom who worked as an administrative something-or-other at the high school. I can’t recall if the parents had divorced or if the father had died or what.
I never quite closed the deal with Sally but she definitely liked or was drawn to me. I realized her feelings were strong when I ran into her at a summer party. We’d both been drinking but Sally was a little more bombed than I, and as soon as I saw her I didn’t try to chat her up or otherwise occupy her sphere — the opposite, in fact. I played it casual, blase, laid-back. Which infuriated her.
So she ran up to me, shouted my name and slapped me hard. I took it like Lee Marvin did when Angie Dickinson started whacking him in that scene from Point Blank. Sally became even more agitated. “Jeff!” and another hard slap. Wash, rinse, repeat…she slapped me at least three times, maybe four.
“This is good,” I was saying to myself. “She wouldn’t be hitting me if she was indifferent.” I stuck to my low-key Marvin.
Sally had several concurrent boyfriends at the time. I was fourth in line, I gradually learned. (Or was I fifth?) The others included a football jock (since deceased), a wealthy man’s son from Ridgefield (died from a drug overdose) and a local cop in his mid to late 20s. I was strictly backup. Scraps, leftovers. For someone already beset with low self-esteem, this situation fit perfectly.
I’m not saying all high-school girls are fickle and flighty, but a lot of them are. Or they were, at least, when I was an awkward, insecure WASP schlemiel.
Flash forward to the mid ’80s, when I had a brief thing with an extremely dishy lady who was dealing with an unstable ex. So unstable, in fact, that when I visited her one night he called up and came over and rang the bell (she told me to ignore him) and then started pacing back and forth on the front lawn, calling out to her and talking to himself and generally creating a neighborhood spectacle.
Girls sometimes choose badly, some guys can’t handle rejection, and sometimes you have to put up your dukes.
It did occur to me as this psychodrama was unfolding, of course, that anyone with a looney-tunes ex might be a little screwy themselves, or might be a little dishonest or manipulative or flaky. You are who you go out with.
This ex-boyfriend episode wasn’t enough to put me off (she was beautiful and curvaceous and breathtaking in bed), but it did give me pause. I know that if she’d had two ex-boyfriends knocking on the door I would have said “wow, this is really weird” and “something isn’t right.” And if she’d had three guys pleading for forgiveness and restitution I would have said “okay, she obviously likes guys fighting for her affections” and taken a hike.
Stanley Jaffe (7.31.40 – 3.10.25) was a wise, insightful, widely respected, old-school smoothie who knew the film business backward and forward and all the players in town…a good man who dwelled in the quiet corridors of power for several decades.
As a producer Jaffe enjoyed a peak streak between the late ’60s and early ’90s. His proudest producing achievements were Goodbye, Columbus, Bad Company, The Bad News Bears, Kramer vs. Kramer, Taps, Racing with the Moon, Fatal Attraction, The Accused and Black Rain.
Jaffe directed one film, Without A Trace (’83), a drama based on the Etan Patz case.
Tasteful, occasionally tempestuous, go-getter creative producers like Jaffe, Sherry Lansing (Jaffe’s onetime partner), Jerome Hellman, John Calley, Ned Tanen, Robert Evans, Frank Yablans, Richard Sylbert (primarily an esteemed production designer who briefly served as Paramount’s head of production between ‘75 and ‘78), Mike Medavoy, Dan Melnick, Arthur Krim, Walter Mirisch, Tom Pollock, Brian Grazer…an elite yesteryear community who cared about movies like good Catholics…many have left the realm and a few are still with us, but their way of thinking and operating and paying proper respect has been on the downslope for quite some time now. I love/loved all these guys.
Please begin watching this interview between Jaffe and Hawk Koch at the 1:09 mark…pay attention to Hawk’s Fort Yuma story, which begins around 6:30.
..is that an Oscar-winning male guest star will pop up in episode #5 (five days hence) of The White Lotus. I have to respect the embargo, but 12 days ago Reddit’s “Angielincoln” speculated about the guest star’s identity, and I can at least say that it’s not Matthew McConaughey or Adrien “blather on for six minutes” Brody. I’d better leave it there.
In a perfect HE-world, Disney’s Snow White — an anti-traditionalist rendering of the classic fairy tale as well as a militant, storm-the-barricades show aimed at progressive women of all ages — would become an instant tank upon opening Friday, 10.21.
Alas, it’s tracking to earn around $53 million during its first three days — a disappointing tally but hardly the measure of a flop.
Then again the film cost more than $200 million plus the marketing spend will add to that figure significantly, so even if Snow White triples its first weekend earnings…aahh, let’s just wait. Whatever happens, happens.
The fact that Disney is turning down the red-carpet hoopla obviously indicates a certain squeamishness about the general, across-the-board reception.
The script was written by Greta Gerwig and Erin Cressida Wilson.
We are all wicked witches when it comes to Snow Woke…we want this misbegotten film to eat the poisoned apple and collapse into a coma.
Hottest of the hotties: Joseph Kosinski‘s F1, Antoine Fuqua‘s Michael, Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another, Scott Cooper‘s Deliver Me from Nowhere, Darren Aronofsky‘s Caught Stealing, Tom Cruise and Chris McQuarrie‘s Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, Luca Guadagnino‘s After The Hunt, Josh Safdie‘s Marty Supreme, Spike Lee‘s Highest 2 Lowest, Ari Aster‘s Eddington, Paul Greengrass‘s The Lost Bus, John M. Chu‘s Wicked: For Good, Julian Schnabel‘s In The Hand of Dante, Jonah Hill‘s Outcome, Michel Franco‘s Dreams, Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Bride!, Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s Warfare…what is that, 17?
After several weeks of horrid, miserable, bone-chilling cold, it’s wonderful to suddenly feel the coming of spring. Temps were in the mid 60s today. Daylight savings (i.e, more daylight) has done wonders for my general outlook. Could it be that a benevolent God, perhaps even a kindly and gracious one, is watching over me?
I think not. Timothy Ratliff’s life is totally miserable and collapsing…the FBI is after him, his assets are being seized, he’s swallowing pills and slurping booze…the indications that he’s on the verge of commiting suicide are so numerous and relentless that I’m convinced he won’t go down the hole.
The White Lotus character who’s in actual serious trouble is Natasha Rothwell‘s Belinda Lindsey, the chubby spa manager who’s threatened Jon Gries‘ “Gary” character by telling him she’s fairly certain they’ve met before.
I’ve finally gotten Walton Goggins. I’m finally in the proverbial boat with the guy. Before absorbing his White Lotus performance as Rick Hatchett, the sweaty, greasy-haired, anxiety-ridden dude who’s looking to confront a man who killed his father…before watching Goggins dig into Hatchett, I had never been stirred by his acting. I had never felt what he had…never let him in. But now I’m a convert.
Hatchett is some kind of lost soul or blank slate or whatever. Nothing about him is settled, much less serene. Who decides to free a bunch of venomous snakes and let them just slither away? That’s a fairly moronic thing to do. People could get bitten. And yet Hatchett is oddly relatable.
I haven’t seen Goggins work all that much, but my impression is that before The White Lotus he’s mainly played secondary or scumbag roles in crap-level features and whatnot. Hatchett may be his first really well-written role. Is it?
Here once again is HE’s best spitball roster of 2025’s strongest, most distinctive films…40 in all.
This is not about the likelihood of big box-office but about films that people may feel riveted, disturbed, challenged, gobsmacked or turned on by, or might even feel compelled to nominate for awards.
HE readers went to sleep on my previous list of 32 or thereabouts, so I’m giving it another shot.
If I’ve left any seemingly important films out, please advise.
3.10, 9 am update: Having just added Richard Linklater’s NouvelleVague and Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza‘s Warfare (A24, 4.25), yesterday’s list of 38 titles is now 40.
Please consider the 40 and select ten films that you suspect will most likely emerge as the year’s hottest (i.e., well-reviewed, award-calibre, most talked about).
And just for fun, identify the film that seems (emphasis on the “s” word) most likely to win the Best Picture Oscar in early ’26.
1. Kathryn Bigelow‘s Untitled White House Thriller (Netflix), about coping with an incoming missile. Written by NoahOppenheim, pic has been in post since last December. Willa Fitzgerald, Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Greta Lee, Tracy Letts, Moses Ingram, Anthony Ramos, Brian Tee, Jonah Hauer-King, Kyle Allen, Jason Clarke.
2. Noah Baumbach‘s Jay Kelly (Netflix), a coming-of-age comedy-drama, directed and co-written by Baumbach with Emily Mortimer. Costarring George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Riley Keough, Billy Crudup, Jim Broadbent, Isla Fisher, Greta Gerwig, Eve Hewson, Stacy Keach, Mortimer, Charlie Rowe, Patrick Wilson, Lars Eidinger.
3. David Mackenzie‘s Fuze, a British heist film that sounds extra-good. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Sam Worthington, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Saffron Hocking, Elham Ehsas, Honor Swinton Byrne.
4. Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value, a comedy-drama directed by Joachim Trier, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eskil Vogt. Costarring RenateReinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Stellan Skarsgård, ElleFanning, Cory Michael Smith.
5. John Carney‘s Power Ballad (Lionsgate), about a conflict between a rock star and a wedding singer. Paul Rudd, Nick Jonas, Jack Reynor, Havana Rose Liu, Sophie Vavasseur.
6. Darren Aronofsky‘s Caught Stealing (Sony, 8.29). “Burned-out ex-baseball player Hank Thompson (Austin Butler), forced to navigate a treacherous underworld he never imagined”…too wordy. Costarring Zoë Kravitz, Regina King, Matt Smith, Liev Schreiber, Will Brill, Bad Bunny, Griffin Dunne, Vincent D’Onofrio.
7. Scott Cooper‘s Deliver Me from Nowhere (20th Century, sometime in the fall). Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in another boomer nostalgia pic, focusing on the recording of Nebraska (’82). Costarring Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, Paul Walter Hauser, Gaby Hoffmann, Johnny Cannizzaro, Harrison Gilbertson, Marc Maron.
8. Edward Berger‘s The Ballad of a Small Player (Netflix). Synopsis: When his past and debts start to catch up, a high-stakes gambler laying low in Macau encounters a kindred spirit who might hold the key to his salvation,” blah blah. Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton, Fala Chen
10. Joseph Kosinski‘s F1 (Warner Bros., 6.27). Brad Pitt, Damson Idris (black dudes can’t die!), Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Javier Bardem, Kim Bodnia, Shea Whigham.
11. Antoine Fuqua‘s Michael (Universal. 10.3.25). Reportedly sanitized life of the late Michael Jackson. Jaafar Jackson, Juliano Krue Valdi, Colman Domingo, Nia Long, Miles Teller, Laura Harrier.
12. Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another (Warner Bros., 8.25). Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall, Sean Penn, Alana Haim, Teyana Taylor, Wood Harris, Benicio del Toro.
13. Luca Guadagnino‘s After The Hunt (Amazon MGM, 10.10.25). An academic setting obviously indicates some kind of anti-wokester, anti-Zoomer drama…right? Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny.
14. Josh Safdie‘s Marty Supreme (A24, 12.25) — a ‘50s period drama about a ping-pong champ. Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tyler the Creator, Odessa A’zion, Penn Jillette, Kevin O’Leary, Abel Ferrara, Fran Drescher, Sandra Bernhard.
15. Spike Lee‘s Highest 2 Lowest (remake of Akira Kurosawa‘s High and Low, a kidnapping-ransom drama that I’ve never liked). (No date, A24 / Apple TV+)Denzel Washington, Ilfenesh Hadera, Jeffrey Wright, Ice Spice, ASAP Rocky.
16. Ari Aster‘s Eddington (A24). A “contemporary western with a darkly comedic attitude.” Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Clifton Collins Jr.
17. Guillermo del Toro‘s Frankenstein (Netflix, November)….again? Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen.
18. I’m not including James Cameron‘s Avatar: Fire and Ash (20th Century, 12.19) as it’s just another episode in the Avatar series, and is solely about selling tickets.
19. Will Nia DaCosta‘s Hedda, a “reimagining” of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 stage play, be shot as a Victorian period drama or as a contemporary thing? Tessa Thompson, Imogen Poots, Tom Bateman, Nina Hoss, Nicholas Pinnock, Finbar Lynch.
20. Kenneth Branagh‘s The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde…as an ardent non-fan of Branagh’s Belfast, I feel very concerned about any film that he’s directed and written. Jodie Comer, Patricia Arquette, Michael Sheen, Tom Bateman, Vicky McClure, Michael Balogun.
21. Celine Song‘s Materialists (A24, no date). “A Manhattan matchmaker’s lucrative business is complicated when she falls into a toxic love triangle that threatens her clients,” blah blah. Beware!!! Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Winters, Dasha Nekrasova, Louisa Jacobson.
22. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (Sony, 5.9) appears to be a serving of guaranteed agony. The words “American romantic fantasy” are death to me. Directed by Kogonada from a screenplay by Seth Reiss. Starring Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell, w/ Lily Rabe, Jodie Turner-Smith, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Billy Magnussen, Sarah Gadon.
23. Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Bugonia (Focus Features, 11.7)….aaaggghhh! “Two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company (Emma Stone), convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying the earth. Costarring Jesse Plemons, Alicia Silverstone.
24. Paul Greengrass‘s The Lost Bus (Apple TV+). “A bus driver has to navigate a bus carrying children and their teacher to safety through the 2018 Camp Fire, which became the deadliest fire in California history,” etc. Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera, Yul Vazquez, Ashlie Atkinson, Spencer Watson, Danny McCarthy.
25. Wes Anderson‘s The Phoenician Scheme (Focus Features, 5.30). “Dark tale of espionage following a strained father-daughter relationship within a family business beset by morally gray choices”…that’s a mouthful!. Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera, Bill Murray, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rupert Friend, Willem Dafoe, Bryan Cranston.
26. Bong Joon-ho‘s Mickey 17 (Warner Bros., 3.7.25). HE has long had a problem with Bong Joon-ho, and we’ve all heard about the prolonged release-date delays — originally slated for 3.29.24. Critics will cream over it, no matter how problematic it may or may not be. 3.10 update: It stinks!
27. John M. Chu‘s Wicked: For Good (Universal, 11.21.25). Same crew as before — Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, etc.
28. Andre Gaines‘ The Dutchman (no distrib — debuting at SXSW on 3.8). Sexual intrigue between harried black businessman (Andre Holland) and whitey-white chick (Kara Mara). Co-adapted by Gaines and Qasim Basir, based on same-titled 1964 play by Amiri Baraka.
29. Mimi Cave‘s Holland (no distrib — opened at SXSW on 3.9) Small town Michigan woman (Nicole Kidman) suspects husband (Matthew Macfadyen) may be living a double life. Costarring Gael García Bernal, Jude Hill, Rachel Sennott.
30. Julian Schnabel‘s In The Hand of Dante. Synopsis of Nick Tosches‘ same-titled 2002 book: “An interweaving of two separate stories, one set in the 14th century in Italy and Sicily and featuring Dante Alighieri, and another set in the autumn of 2001 and featuring a fictionalized version of Tosches as the protagonist. The historical and modern stories alternate as Dante tries to finish writing his magnum opus and goes on a journey for mystical knowledge in Sicily.” Oscar Isaac as Nick Tosches / Dante Alighieri, w/ Jason Momoa, Gerard Butler, Gal Gadot, Sabrina Impacciatore, Franco Nero, Martin Scorsese.
32. Jonah Hill‘s Outcome (Apple TV+). Black comic satire about social-media harpooning of big movie star (Keanu Reeves). Costarring Jonah Hill, Cameron Diaz, Matt Bomer, Susan Lucci, David Spade, Laverne Cox.
33. Steven Soderbergh‘s Black Bag (Focus Features, 3.14). London-shot cloak and dagger with dry Soderbergh attitude….right?
34. Michel Franco‘s Dreams. Rich Anerican socialite Jennifer (Jessica Chastain) blows off, fucks over her younger Mexican ballet dancer boyfriend (Isaac Hernández)
35. Richard Linklater‘s Blue Moon (Sony Classics, May ’25) — The last few months in the life of composer Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke). Depression, alcoholism, closeted sexuality. Andrew Scott, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale. Opened in Berlin on 2.18.
36. Richard Linklater’s NouvelleVague, a period drama about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (‘60). Linklater will no doubt attempt to replicate the mood and spirit of Godard’s playful zeitgeist–shifter, a relationship piece about a small-time, Humphrey Bogart-emulating felon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and his American-born, pixie-cut girlfriend (Jean Seberg). Linklater’s costars include Zooey Deutch, Guillaume Marbeck, Aubry Dullin.
37. Chloe Zhao‘s Hamnet (Focus Features, no date) — Fictional tale about Mr. and Mrs. William Shakespeare coping with the death of their son. Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson.
38. Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Bride! (Warner Bros., 9.26). Feminist take on James Whale‘s The Bride of Frankenstein. All men are scheming, wounding pigs! Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Penélope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening.
39. Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s Warfare (A24, 4.11). Based on Mendoza’s Navy SEAL experience during the Iraq War in 2006 and shot in real time. Only 94 minutes!
40. Ethan Coen‘s Honey Don’t (Focus Features, May ’25). Another lesbian caper flick a la Drive Away Dolls. Set in Bakersfield, pic focuses on a private investigator (Margaret Qualley), a cult leader (Chris Evans), and a “mystery woman” (Aubrey Plaza).
Beyond a certain age ass-cheeks tend to jiggle when jarred, shaken or slapped. I’m not sure when the jiggle propensity kicks in, but you’ll never see it among young kids or teenagers (unless they’re obese) or 20somethings who’ve kept themselves in shape. It generally tends to manifest in our mid to late 30s or certainly by our 40s.
I myself haven’t had rock-hard buns since my late teens or early 20s…something like that.
I’m talking jiggle cheeks because there’s a scene in Mickey 17 in which a nude Robert Pattinson falls off a platform of some kind, and when he hits the floor his ass briefly jiggles like a sonuvabitch. My immediate reaction was “oh, that’s unfortunate” because it makes RPatz look like a somewhat older dude, which he is, of course, being 38. (He’ll be 39 in May.) It wasn’t so long ago when RPatz was a trim hunk whose ass rarely if ever wiggled, jiggled or hubba-hubba’ed. Ahh, the old Twilight days.
I don’t know for a fact that Pattinson was unhappy with the afore-mentioned jiggle when he first saw Mickey 17, but I’ll bet he probably was. Actors are vain; they like to look good from all angles. I can tell you for sure that if I had been the director of Mickey 17, I would have given RPatz’s ass a nice CG smooth-over in post-production. I would have protected the poor guy from the snickers and carpings of people like myself.
Why didn’t Bong Joon-ho do the right thing? Probably because he personally related to the jiggling; he saw nothing wrong or compromising or distasteful about it. Primarily because Bong is a large, fleshy kind of dude who has that well-fed-and-then-some look. He’s not yet “fat” but is well on the way to Orson Welles-hood. If he’d been a tad more considerate Bong would’ve put himself into RPatz’s head or male ego and decided to spare him the embarassment. Alas, he couldn’t be bothered.
The book is a nonfiction speculation about how the Manson horrors may (emphasis on the “m” word) have been subtly triggered or egged on or possibly even orchestrated by “Jolly” West, an apparently sinister figure with ties to the CIA and the MKUltra project in particular.
The film is basically about the white-haired O’Neill (no, not the squishy Oscar prognosticator Tom O’Neil) trying to sell Morris on his theories and suspicions about West, and Morris asking many, many questions and gradually coming to believe that the West-Manson legend isn’t all that credible.
I feel the same way.
The Manson malice happened in part because of a surreal, over-the-waterfall psychology that took hold among alienated middle-class youths who had sampled psychedelia and took the proverbial cosmic plunge, and especially among a few impressionable ditzoids who populated the Manson family in ‘68, ‘69 and, for a few, well beyond.
Charlie Manson was a crafty, headstrong, drillbit sociopath and a half-decent singer-guitarist who wanted to be a rich and famous rock star, but couldn’t quite pull it off. Manson knew deep down that all of his spiritual guru sermons and posturings were more or less a bullshit side activity.
Late last night I attempted a re-watch of Blake Edwards‘ S.O.B. (’81), which I was amused and moved by way back when. It’s an inside-Hollywood satire that feels somewhat realistic (Edwards seemed to be going for broke with this one) and was stocked with roman a clef characters (Robert Vaughn as Bob Evans, Marisa Berenson as Ali McGraw, Shelley Winters as Sue Mengers, etc.)
From the mid ’60s onward Edwards had been a celebrated slapstick guy, of course. People actually liked the fact that his films were broad and over-performed. But S.O.B.really didn’t work for me yesterday, and I distinctly recall writing a positive review in late ’81 for The Film Journal, for which I was the managing editor. That was then, this is now. S.O.B. is bruising.
HE’s 12.15.10 obit: I’ve always found most of Edwards’ stuff laborious, in part because so many of his films (certainly beginning in the early ’70s) exuded a square establishment sensibility. A respected auteur, surely, but I always sensed the attitude of a schmaltzy, well-paid, Malibu-colony type of guy.
I never sensed, in short, that Edwards’ film were about anything more than (a) the fact that he had a certain instinct for comic timing and orchestrating pratfalls, a gift that arguably put him in the same realm as Mack Sennett (but nowhere near that of Buster Keaton), and (b) that he enjoyed livin’ the high life and therefore felt compelled for some reason to stock his films with evidence or reflections of this. And I always hated the way his films were lighted and shot in a typical big-studio “house” style.
Edwards had a good run with Peter Sellers, of course, but Sellers’ greatest director friend/ally was Stanley Kubrick, not Edwards.
There are only two Edwards films I really and truly admire (as opposed to liking or tolerating), and they’re (a) both San Francisco-based and (b) were released in ’62. Numero uno is Experiment in Terror (’62), a creepy no-frills noir about a terrorized bank teller (Lee Remick) and an FBI guy (Glenn Ford) trying to protect her. The other is the legendary drama of alcoholism, Days of Wine and Roses, with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick.
The Edwards films I regard as “fine,” “okay” and/or “relatively decent” are Breakfast at Tiffany’s (except for Mickey Rooney‘s awful performance), A Shot in the Dark (moderately funny at times), The Party (some brilliant portions), Wild Rovers (decent western), 10 (overrated but funny at times), What Did you Do in The War, Daddy? (’66) and the low-budget That’s Life (Jack Lemmon facing old age and male menopause depression — honest and decent).
