“Uhm, I just wanted to ask, particularly Gabe and Ali, about the amazing, forme, emotionalmoment when, having known about Roy Cohn a good part, part of my life…and believing and understanding that he was oneofthemostreprehensiblehumanbeingsofthe20thCentury, arguably…I just thought the movie does an amazingthing by actuallymakingyoufeelsorryforhim…empathy…when Trump basically screws him over, and I was just wondering if you had sort of tried to build to that emotional moment…whether that was a key strategy on your part.”
AMC's decision to post a trigger warning about Goodfellas was reported last weekend. We all know that the people who push for trigger warnings ("uh-oh, you might be upset or traumatized by something in this film, especially if you're an ultra-sensitive Zoomer #MeToo-er!") are unstable fanatics and Stalinists at heart -- a blight upon our culture.
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Never settle, never surrender. Attack, attack and counter-attack. And no matter how evil or slimey your situation may be, always claim victory and never admit defeat.
These were cherished, deeply-held principles that the late Roy Cohn, one of the most satanic figures of the 20th Century, adhered to during his early ’50s-to-mid ’80s heyday, and they were passed along with interest and relish to the young Donald J. Trump in the ’70s and early ’80s. God help us but Cohn’s lessons of avarice still live in Trump today, right now…fundamental poisons, the devil’s handbook, operational tricks of the trade.
Ali Abassi‘s The Apprentice is the well-told story of Cohn and Trump’s master-mentor relationship, and God, it’s so much fun…so alive and entertaining and popping with the wicked pleasures of an evil life or attitude.
The Apprentice, which I saw late yesterday afternoon. saved me from my post-Horizon depression…a terrible black-dog, pit-of-my-stomach feeling that had taken me down, down, down. And then I saw Abassi’s fast, fleet and grainy tabloid dramedy and I was suddenly pulled out of the pit. I was chuckling and even laughing out loud, which I rarely do, and just fucking tickled to death. Thank you, God.
All hail Jeremy Strong‘s magnificent supporting performance as Cohn — he should definitely win the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actor prize, the size of the role be damned — as well as Sebastian Stan‘s Trump, a note-perfect capturing of this amiable, malevolent psychopath, who apparently exuded a certain naivete and behaved in a semi-understandable fashion and may have been half-human when he was working in a senior capacity for his father’s real-estate company in the ’70s.
But that didn’t last.
Roy Cohn molded young Trump into the fiend he remains today…Cohn was the father, godfather and inspirational older brother Trump had never known while growing up. Fred Trump, Donald’s real-estate-tycoon dad, goaded him to succeed or at the very least bullshit his way through a tough racket but imparted a flinty, ruthless mentality in the process. Thanks, dad…fuck off.
Abassi’s direction is brash and brilliant, and Gabriel Sherman‘s screenplay (which was apparently cowritten by Jennifer Stahl, according to Wikipedia) is a model of no-bullshit economy — it gets right to the nub of things and never loses focus during the film’s 120-minute running time.
We’ve all been suffering through the plague of two-hour-plus films — the art of crafting an effective 100-to-110-minute narrative is apparently dead. But I would have been happy if The Apprentice had been Lawrence of Arabia. Okay, not that long but a 140- or 150-minute version would have felt like a neck massage, like a quaalude high. Keep it coming, feels so good.
The Apprentice has no distributor as we speak but please, please get this film into theatres as quickly as possible, and don’t wait for the fall — open it in July or certainly no later than August. Because it’s a huge pleasure pill that needs to be seen by as wide of an audience as possible. Very few adult films are this much fun. And if it gets seen quickly and widely enough, it might just save this country from four more years of hell. Maybe. Possibly.
There’s a bizarre passage in Tatiana Siegel‘s 5.20 Variety story about the already-infamous rape scene…the one that the late Ivana Trump shared and then denied in 2015 (obviously under pressure from Donald)…the one in which Donald throws Ivana (played by Maria Bakalova) to the ground during an argument and rapes her like a Cossack. As he’s ravaging her from behind, Trump hisses into Ivana’s ear, “Is that your G-spot…did I find it?”
Remember that Peter Coyote line from Jagged Edge when he describes Jeff Bridges‘ Jack Forrester character as “an ice man”? Well, Forrester had nothing on Trump, particularly when the latter began treating the heavily-closeted Cohn like shit when he began to succumb to AIDS symptoms.
Siegel quotes an “insider” saying that “audiences may find The Apprentice to be an oddly humanizing portrait” of Trump. Excuse me? Young Trump seems like a semi-tolerable fellow at first, but he gradually morphs into a toxic fuckhead…a killer. The truth is that Abassi’s film is an oddly humanizing portrait of Cohn as it invites the audience to share Cohn’s sense of betrayal…you actually feel sorry for this icon of evil when Trump gives him the cold shoulder.
Cohn to Trump at film’s halfway point: “You’ve got a fat ass. You should do something about that.” Strong is wonderful!
And by the way, Siegel reported yesterday that Dan Snyder, a billionaire Trump supporter who’s an investor in The Apprentice, is enraged at the damning portrait of Trump.
Variety excerpt: “Sources say Snyder, a friend of Trump’s who donated $1.1 million to his inaugural committee and Trump Victory in 2016 and $100,000 to his 2020 presidential campaign, put money into the film via Kinematics because he was under the impression that it was a flattering portrayal of the 45th president. Snyder finally saw a cut of the film in February and was said to be furious.” Hard to believe anyone could be that clueless, but there it is.
Here’s a nice taste of yesterday’s Apprentice screening.
I’ll be hitting the Apprentice press conference at 11 am, and I may even catch Abassi’s film a second time this evening, just for fun. I also plan to catch Sean Baker‘s Anora at 3 pm today.
I went into this morning’s Horizon screening totally pumped. I wanted to embrace and celebrate a classic-styled American western, which is what the advance-word crowd has been calling it. I wanted to see Open Range 2: Westward Ho The Wagons. Give it to me, bruh…make it happen!
Alas, it pains me to admit that Kevin Costner‘s big-swing western isn’t all that good.
Costner said during today’s lunch-hour press conference that Horizon “is a journey…it’s not a plot movie.” But that’s exactly what I wanted! I wanted a solid, gripping wagon-train saga with a commanding narrative — the kind of movie in which characters say and do what they must because of who they are and what they need and so on. And that didn’t happen, and I’m all but weeping as as result. Seriously…real tears.
I don’t hate Horizon — it just doesn’t do the proverbial thing, and I feel crestfallen about that.
Costner’s 181-minute film is kind of a mess, truth be told. It feels like the start of a ten-part miniseries, and it just feels odd to be sorting through several characters and locales and situations over a three-hour period and asking “when is the actual movie going to start?”
Because this is a Hulu or Paramount Plus or Apple miniseries with a big movie star (i.e., Kevin), and his Gary Cooper-like character, Hayes Ellison, doesn’t show up until the 65-minute mark and he really doesn’t do or say a hell of a lot throughout the whole film except shoot a crazy-evil guy (played by Jamie Campbell Bower) at the halfway mark.
Maybe the “movie” will kick in when Part Two rolls along in August, but with the exception of a couple of rousing action scenes (my favorite is a moonlit horseback chase) the film I saw drifted and meandered and dragged at times. It does a whole lot of talk-talk-talking and scenery-gaping, and I felt kinda trapped watching all these unfamiliar faces rambling on and on. Why am I listening to you guys trying to sort stuff out? Who are you? Why should I care what you think about anything? You mean nothing to me.
You know who’s just as good as Costner, charisma- and authority-wise? Luke Wilson as wagon master Matthew Van Weyden. I was also down with costars Sienna Miller (although she’s really too pretty for the proverbial “room”), Sam Worthington, Jena Malone and Abbey Lee (ditto).
At times Horizon struck me as indecipherable and incomprehensible, due to the yokel accents. What the fuck is that character saying…what?
There are too damn many story lines, and way too much “acting.” And way too much familiar-sounding movie music, I felt. The composer shouldn’t have been John Debney, who plays it safe and square and music-cues just about everything. It should have been the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto, who passed last year.
From Owen Gleiberman’s Variety review: “There’s a hallowed place in cinema for multi-character dramas. But Horizon, simply put, doesn’t feel like a movie. It feels like the seedbed for a miniseries.
“Much of what happens is wispy and not very forceful; the film doesn’t build in impact, and it seldom seems to aim in a clear direction. And [this] feels like a major disappointment. As a stand-alone film (which it isn’t, but let’s pretend for a moment), Horizon is by turns convoluted, ambitious, intriguing, and meandering.
“But it’s never quite moving. It’s too busy laying down narrative tracks and hammering out the minutiae of situations that don’t feel like they’re leading anywhere special.”
One thing I was asking myself over and over was “why is the pacing so leisurely and lackluster?” I know, I know — because the foundational basics need to be established before the dramatic urgency kicks in three months hence. But I kept feeling I was suspended in a time vacuum. Nothing seemed to matter much.
Gleiberman: “Just about every Western of the studio era came in at two hours or less, and so did most of the revisionist Westerns (and some of those were complicated). There’s a reason for that. It’s all the time they needed.”
There’s a degree of irony, methinks, in Demi Moore starring in TheSubstance, a riveting David Cronenberg-ian body-horror flick about the fear of aging among older women and the application of artificial enhancements, when it’s been apparent for some time that Moore herself has been augmenting nature with the usual costly touch-ups.
Not that I have the slightest problem with this. Born during the Kennedy administration, Moore looks great (and I’m saying this as a veteran of three Prague procedures so don’t tell me) but c’mon…her character, an aging actress and workout-show host named Elizabeth Sparkle who injects herself with a radical youth drug, isn’t that far from self-portraiture.
Sparkle’s radical de-aging situation conveys a certain parallel or reach-back to Oscar Wilde‘s Dorian Gray, of course, but I’m also thinking of poor, anguished Norma Desmond. Imagine her post-Sunset Boulevard, non-mental-asylum life with the benefit of today’s plastic surgery techniques. She might not have wound up shooting William Holden‘s Joe Gillis, and he might have become Betty Schaefer‘s permanent writing partner!
(Who speculated that Gillis might have somehow been the father of American Gigolo‘s Julian Kaye? Was it David Thomson?)
Directed by Coralie Fargeat, The Substance is a whipsmart body-horror flick. Urgency, punch and pizazz feeds into this synthetic-feeling, slickly assembled piece of feminist (i.e., male-asshole-hating) agitprop, and obviously with a bullhorn message, to wit: Women, throw off the yoke of male assholery and their imposition of bullshit beauty standards and live for yourselves.
There are only two problems with The Substance.
One, it’s not just about Moore’s Sparkle de-aging herself after being fired from her TV show (i.e, too old) but about being replaced by Margaret Qualley‘s Sue, a 20something who emerges, Cronenberg-style, from within Elizabeth. Elizabeth and Sue have some kind of alternating arrangement in which they take turns strutting around in the big, bad city. And I couldn’t understand the rules…how and why of it all.
And two, the film goes on too long. It wore me down and I started glancing at my watch repeatedly….c’mon, wrap this up already.
The New Yorker‘s Justin Chang is calling The Substance “a shoo-in for the Palme d’Or.” Sure thing. If they gave to Titane, why not?
Either you get with the program and drop to your knees as you enthusiastically agree that Jacques Audiard‘s Emilia Perez is a wowser transgender musical masterpiece, or you’re a sourpuss or a problematic person or worse (i.e., perhaps even a transphobe).
The Croisette cultists have spoken, and Greta Gerwig‘s jury is almost certainly going to go along. What choice do they have? I respect the impact factor — you can sense it, feel it.
And there’s no question that Karla Sofia Gascon, a trans biomale who plays the titular character, will be awarded the festival’s Best Actress prize.
Repeating: “Emilia Perez is certainly a nervy big-swing movie, and I’m certainly giving it points for this…it’s not an altogether fascinating film but is certainly one that fascinates from time to time…it’s up to something fairly novel in a wackazoid sort of way, and in my book there aren’t enough films of this sort so I’m definitely giving portions a solid pass.”
F. Murray Abraham, Paul Schrader, Sharon Stone, Liam Neeson…who else has recently come out and said “it’s time to ease up on Kevin Spacey…stop trying to kill this guy and let him return to work. He’s too good to keep on the bench.”‘
Please try to process today’s Emilia Perez buzz about how mindblowing it is and what a wild and wonderful genre ghoulash it is and so on…regard all that gush-gush blather with a grain of salt because the huge raves are coming from your Cannes Film Festival cultists, which is to say a secular critical mob composed of two co-existing social-focus groups — the woke whoo-whoo gay brigade along with straight critics who are terrified of not sounding like honorary members of said organization.
Emilia Perez is certainly a nervy big-swing movie, and I’m certainly giving it points for this…it’s not an altogether fascinating film but is certainly one that fascinates from time to time…it’s up to something fairly novel in a wackazoid sort of way, and in my book there aren’t enough films of this sort so I’m definitely giving portions a solid pass.
To make things extra clear this is not a pan but a “yes, a good and sometimes applause-worthy film but y’all need to calm down” review.
I was turned on and rather lit up during the first…oh, 35 or 40 minutes, which is when you’re initially realizing that Jacques Audiard‘s film is a few things mashed together…(a) an “all hail the emotional glory of becoming trans and forsaking coarse male attitudes and behavior” soap opera, (b) a tasty Pedro Almodovar-styled musical by way of Dancer in the Dark, (c) a Mexican cartel crime drama (but not a “crime comedy”) that actually only glances at the world of the cartels and particularly the cartel psychology, and (d) one of those crazy stories that’s impossible to believe in but you’re stuck there and watching it so what the hell…go with it.
But after Audiard decides to jettison that feeling that all grade-A films impart, that feeling that says what you’re watching is reflecting a primal, no-bullshit understanding of human behavior that most of us have picked up along the way…once Emilia Perez detaches itself from the world that many of us know and understand, it becomes more and more off-the-planet, which is to say unhinged and wackazoid. But in a way that fleetingly reminds you at times of the mood of ’80s and ’90s Pedro films.
The musical aspects are quite delightful at first…confident, well-choreographed and snazzily delivered until it all goes around the bend at the 40-minute mark, give or take.
Zoe Saldaña, now in her mid 40s, is frustrated and despairing Mexico City attorney Rita Moro Castro. She’s hired by a major cartel monster called Manitas Del Monte (played by transitioned biomale Karla Sofia Gascon) to help him facilitate a final transition into womanhood.
Which right away feels like bullshit. No Mexican drug lord would think “yeah, I need to become a woman and commune with my gentler, more tender and nurturing side”…no way in hell. The macho crust on those psychos is permanent and corroded and damn near terminal. The concept is just absurd.
So it was actually early when I stopped feeling delighted and started to become Don Logan in an emotional or mental-capacity sense….”all right, what’s this?…oh, here come the honorary gay brigade by way of a cooler-than-shit French director with an idea that will inspire druglord fantasies of shooting up mutiplexes when Emilia Perez opens commercially…the idea of a richer-than-Cresus druglord who figures that hiring an Israeli surgeon to chop his dick off and give him bouncy boobs is a viable plan when it comes to scenarios about disappearing from the Mexican drug scene….yeah, that works!”
It’s really crazy, Audiard’s film…”instantly divisive”, as Variety‘s Peter Debruge has admitted…long and nutso and all over the map in an emotionally supportive, left-progressive, let’s-put-an-end-to-coarse-Mexican-machismo fashion.
The good part is that it renounces and condemns ugly male machismo, but it also rejoices in the rebirth of a drug lord after he transitions to female realm…c’mon! It’s feisty and flourishy at first but once the transition occurs it stops being a believable story and you’re left saying “good heavens, bruh…this is turning wacko and I’m pulling back for safety’s sake because I don’t trust this shit.”
But the Salle Debussy crowd whooped and cheered when it ended. It’s right up the trans woke pro-women, anti-brutalist alley….let’s all link arms, girls, and get rid of these toxic ayeholes! An idea, by the way, that HE completely supports in a gay-brigade-meets-Don Logan sort of way.
By the way: Selena Gomez playsJessi, wifeofDel Monteandmotheroftheirtwokids. She’s devastated when the news media falsely reports that he’s been killed, but we’ve also been informedearly on thatJuan has been undergoing standard pre-transition hormone therapy for two years. Are you telling me Gomez hasn’t noticed any changes in her husband over the last 24 months? Hard to believe.
Paul Schrader‘s Oh, Canada isn’t as good as First Reformed, but it’s definitely better than the last two (The Card Counter, Master Gardener), and it surprises a bit by reaching inward and letting go.
It’s basically about the last dying days of cancer-afflicted radical left documentarian Leonard Fife (Richard Gere), and an Errol Morris-type interview he submits to in order to shake it all off and confess (or maybe imagine) as much as possible.
It’s basically a cut-the-crap, take-it-or-leave it, taking-stock-of-the-boomer-legacy film, and kind of an an old-school thing in a good way…very earnest and solemn, carefully and cleanly written, and it gets sadder as it goes along.
Gere’s white-haired, worn-down appearance and performance are riveting and a little startling, especially if you think back to his sexy-cat beauty and swagger in Schrader’s American Gigolo (’80).
Full respect and 90% satisfaction are felt from this corner. Pic hopscotches all over the place but always feel somber, reflective, sincere…a respectable clean-out-the-cobwebs, stop-lying-to-yourself movie for grown-ups.
Excellent supporting performances are given by Jacob Elordi, Uma Thurman and Michael Imperioli.
Early this morning I was late to my 8:30 screening of Emanuel Parvu‘s Three Kilometres to the End of the World, a small-town Romanian drama about homophobia and a hate crime. But I had 15 minutes to make it to the Salle Agnes Varda, a relatively short distance from the pad, and figured I had a fighting chance. I had my laminated pass, my bar-code ticket…this could work.
But I didn’t have a fighting chance…not really…as the Cannes Film Festival security guys have set up too many blocking gates, lines and security checks.
I tried to walk directly to the A.V. from the Place Maritime entry gate, which I’ve done dozens of times in the past. Nope — your press pass isn’t sufficient, go around the Grand Palais, enter from the other side. But after doing that I was confronted by a long, terribly slow, shuffling-nightmare line. After getting through that soul-suffocating gauntlet and climbing the A.V. stairs I was blocked yet again by security staff. After being allowed to pass I was blocked a fourth time from entering the theatre.
And this wasn’t just me — a sizable crowd of credentialed journos had the same beef and were trying to beg, argue and cajole their way in. They all failed.
It was that beefy Place Maritime guard and that long behind-the-Palais line…the one-two punch that killed my spirit and sent me plunging into the pit.
…that women as attractive as Sienna Miller, Abbey Lee, Jena Malone and Ella Hunt were part of the common community of westward-travelling settlers during the Civil War era.
I’m glad they were cast in Kevin Costner‘s Horizon, but I don’t believe that hotties were even dreamt about until much later in the 19th Century and more likely into the 20th.
Nor do I believe that women as attractive as Red River costars Joanne Dru and Coleen Gray were wagon-trainers during the same era. I’m glad Howard Hawks cast them but, etc.
Does anyone have faint memories of Westward Ho The Wagons (’56), a Disney-produced, wildly unrealistic western about covered-wagon settlers heading for Oregon? A family-friendly saga, settlers vs. Native Americans, etc. Fess Parker, Kathleen Crowley, Cubby O’Brien, Jeff York, Sebastian Cabot, David Stollery and George Reeves (Superman’s final feature film).
