There’s a general longstanding tendency among film critics to go easy on expensive big studio films. Turn the other cheek, avoid sharp judgments or tough terminology, describe them as half-full glasses of water rather than half empty.

But critics always feel free to say whatever in the case of smaller, indie-level films. They’ll stand back if the filmmaker is well-respected. Or, in today’s context, if the film has the Good Wokester Seal of Approval, in which case everyone puts on the kid gloves again. This is just human nature.

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From late ’80 to mid ’83 I was managing editor of The Film Journal, a monthly exhibitor trade publication. That meant I was regularly invited to long-lead screenings, or screenings that would happen three to four weeks before hitting theatres, and sometimes five or six weeks. And that was a truly beautiful thing because I got to discover films in a relatively virginal condition, before the early buzz had began to circulate.

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“Crossed Swords,” a short item about Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story, posted on 8.21.18:

“I for one am keen to see Noah Baumbach‘s untitled divorce movie, which Netflix will release…you tell me.

“Costar Ray Liotta provided a capsule synopsis in a Business Insider interview that ran a couple of months ago.

“‘Yeah…I’m a lawyer in it,’ Liotta said. ‘Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson‘s characters are going through a divorce, he comes to me and I’m a lawyer who explains all these ways we can get stuff out of her in the divorce, and he’s, like ‘No, that’s too aggressive.’ So he ends up going to court, and there he realizes that Scarlett has a lawyer who’s really aggressive. So then he’s, like, ‘Oh, shit’ and he comes back to me to represent him.’

“That Norman Mailer quote: ‘You don’t know a woman until you’ve met her in court.’

“Perhaps the coolest thing that my ex-wife Maggie and I ever did was not get into a big, drawn-out fight during our divorce, which took a few months from late ’91 to August ’92. I was devastated about her moving to San Francisco with the boys, but I visited them all the time and took them with me to see my parents. And then she and the kids moved back to Los Angeles in ’04, which was great. And then they moved back north, and then to Brookline. But seeing Jett and Dylan was never an issue.”

Principal photography happened between January and March of 2018. Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Merritt Wever and Azhy Robertson also costar.

Marriage Story is the only film being screened at all four early-fall festivals — Venice (debuting on 8.29.19), Telluride, Toronto and New York.

HE’s favorite Coen Bros. comedy, and that’s saying something considering my endless love for Burn After Reading, which I’ve watched at least five or six times. Way better than The Ladykillers, needless to add.

From 8.11 N.Y. Times report by By Katie Benner, Danielle Ivory and Richard A. Oppel Jr.: “Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who apparently hanged himself in a federal jail in Manhattan, was supposed to have been checked by guards every 30 minutes, but that procedure was not being followed the night before he was found, a law-enforcement official with knowledge of his detention said.

“In addition, the jail had transferred his cellmate and allowed Mr. Epstein to be housed alone in a cell just two weeks after he had been taken off suicide watch, a decision that also violated the jail’s normal procedure, two officials said.”

Sunday afternoon N.Y. Post update: “There’s no surveillance video of the incident during which Jeffrey Epstein apparently hanged himself in a federal lockup in Lower Manhattan, law-enforcement officials told The Post on Sunday.

“Although there are cameras in the 9 South wing where the convicted pedophile was being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, they are trained on the areas outside the cells and not inside, according to sources familiar with the setup there.”

On top of the simple, irrefutable “guns are cars” equation, Larry Wilmore brings it home:

"I'm not coming for your gun motherfucker. I'm coming for your weapon of mass destruction." On #LovettorLeaveIt, @larrywilmore talks about why we need to change the language we use when talking about guns. https://t.co/y8eUNQCYha pic.twitter.com/h1pgilPmXQ

— Crooked Media (@crookedmedia) August 11, 2019

Frank Capra‘s It Happened This Morning, as featured in the “Please, God” comment thread:

Children grooving to a violin, the shouting down of Moscow Mitch, or a guy catching a drone before it drowns?

For a year or so IMDb has peen posting screenplay videos, showing the difference between a famous script and how the dialogue finally came out when the actors got their teeth into it. I could watch these all night. I love, love, love Tilda Swinton‘s conversation with Mr. Verne, particularly the in-person one when Mr. Verne suggests “the other way.”

Please don’t permit the selection of a Democratic presidential nominee who will stumble over and over with senior-moment errors and lapses and misrememberings. And please make sure that the person who wins the nomination is smoothly articulate and whipsmart and never misses a trick. Someone, you know, like Pete Buttigieg. I know it can’t actually be Buttigieg himself because of an army of mule-stubborn African-American voters, but a presidential campaign defined by senior-moment gaffes will be devastating. Make that horrific. It’ll just break my heart.

Last month Collider‘s Jeff Sneider tweeted a way-out-there prediction about either Melina Matsoukas‘ Queen and Slim or Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Just Mercy being fated to win the Best Picture Oscar in early 2020. I don’t know about Just Mercy but a couple of hours ago I heard from a guy who knows a guy who’s read Lena Waithe‘s Queen and Slim screenplay, and his assessment was that while this “black Thelma and Louise” reads like a relatively sturdy programmer it didn’t exactly leap off the page or feel like some kind of “holy moley!” Oscar contender. So due respect to Sneider and the Queen and Slim team but I’ve decided to remove it from my Gold Derby Best Picture roster. For now. Sorry.