In a conversation with Variety‘s Nick Vivarelli, Venice Film Festival artistic director Albert Barbera has called Todd Phillips‘ Joker “a really surprising film….[actually] the most surprising film we’ve got this year…this one’s going straight to the Oscars even though it’s gritty, dark, violent. It has amazing ambition and scope.”

Really? Okay, but I wouldn’t call the 2018 Joker script I recently read a blueprint for greatness.

Barbera acknowledges that going into Venice competition situation is an unusual thing for a Warner Bros. film, but quotes Phillips as having said “I don’t care if I run the risk of not winning…why shouldn’t I go in competition when I know what we’ve I’ve got on our hands?”

As to Hollywood’s diminished presence this year, Barbera says “there is a strange situation this year with American cinema due to what’s happening in the industry. There’s an earthquake undermining the U.S. film industry as we know it. Disney buying Fox and dismantling it, so that in a while people won’t even remember it existed. Disney has a become such a colossus that it’s even alarming due to its size and its ability to shape the future. Paramount just distributing movies made by other outfits. There is also some uncertainty about Sony and Lionsgate is now on the verge of a sale. [But] fortunately Warner Bros. is holding up.

“The landscape is changing so rapidly that it’s normal for this to impact product [output]. There were definitely less quality [U.S.] titles on offer this year, even though we have no shortage of good movies.”
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“All those scenes of characters driving in Los Angeles were gorgeous — I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. And the Manson girls floating in and out gave just enough of an edge to the proceedings. But judging from the audience reaction in my theater, the crowd didn’t fully embrace the film until the Krakatoa of blood at the end, which was the moment when I lost all sense of engagement.” — HE commenter “Gatsby1040” in yesterday’s OUATIH thread (“Tarantino Spoiler Policy“).

I suspect that ticket buyers everywhere are reacting to Once Upon A Time in Hollywood as I did in Cannes, experiencing a kind of mild, in-and-out, comme ci comme ca satisfaction but not really feeling the heavy current until the finale. What is everyone else detecting? What did the various rooms feel like as people were leaving the theatre?

Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson is sensing that Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is going to earn more than Sony’s projected weekend figure of $30 million. $34 to $39 million, for sure, but possibly as high as the 40s and even the low 50s.

My sense is that OUATIH will develop legs among the 40-plus set. I think it’ll hang in there and become a slow-and-steady earner. It’s not really a film for compulsively texting Millennials and GenZ.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit is reporting that the film needs to earn $375 million worldwide to break even.

Mendelson: “Sure, it’s not as aggressively crowd-pleasing as Django Unchained or Inglorious Basterds, but I think most people walking into a Tarantino movie in 2019 have some idea of what they are in for. The reviews are as positive as you’d expect, and (no spoilers) word will eventually filter out that the movie doesn’t necessarily do all of the things that you [might] be afraid that a Tarantino movie tangentially about the Manson murders might do. Again, no details, but I will argue that the violence is significantly closer in onscreen content to Pulp Fiction than The Hateful Eight.”

As many of us heard last April, Apocalypse Now: Final Cut is (a) a 4K visual upgrade that’s said to be the best-looking version ever and (b) a 182-minute version that’s shorter than Apocalypse Now Redux by 20 minutes. Two hours from now I’ll be seeing it on a huge IMAX screen. I’ll probably never see this 1979 classic ever again under such optimum conditions. As Peter Ustinov‘s Lentulus Batiatus would say, “I tingle.”

From “Witness to Apocalypse Now: Final Cut,” posted on 4.28.19:

In a perfect world, I would be James Mason and Martin Landau would be the Woke McCarthyites, and the Movie Godz would smile down and approve. But we don’t live in such a realm. In reality I am a blend of Kevin McCarthy‘s character at the ending of Don Siegel‘s Invasion of the Body Snatchers plus Veronica Cartwright‘s character when she comes up to Donald Sutherland at the end of Phil Kaufman’s 1978 version.

Since early summer the word on Amazon’s Seberg (formerly Against All Enemies) has been that Kristen Stewart‘s performance as the tragic Jean Seberg is quite the standout and actually better than the film itself. Stewart’s performance is “extremely understated and internal,” I was told last May. “She never goes too big and plays her cards with acute subtlety.” The film was directed by Benedict Andrews from a screenplay by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse.

The first commercial showings of Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood are happening as we speak. This is the HE forum for early reactions, but please go gently and non-specifically as far as the final act is concerned. I don’t know when it will be fair to start discussing the final 20 to 25 minutes but I would think that an “olly olly in come free” policy could be instituted as of…what, Monday morning? Is it realistic to expect that people will keep their yaps shut any longer than that?

The below paragraph is from A.O. Scott’s N.Y. Times review, titled “We Lost It At The Movies.” I suppose that my beef with OUATIH is analogous to the fact that I’m a much bigger fan of High Noon than Rio Bravo. I’m never been seduced by the laid-back allure of hang-out flicks. I prefer films with real stories — films that convey character and focus upon goals, and are laden with metaphor and teeming with story tension. Tarantino’s latest ends well, but otherwise it doesn’t satisfy the above criteria.

Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York won’t be playing the 2019 Venice Film Festival because — hello? — it’s opening in Poland two days hence (7.26) via Kino Swiat. Which means, naturally, that Polish (and presumably trade) reviews will be appearing on Thursday.

Subsequent bookings: Lithuania (8.2), Greece (8.22), the Netherlands (8.29), Turkey (8.30), France (9.18), Czech Republic (9.26), Italy (10.3), Spain (10.4) and Mexico (10.25). As we speak not a single cowardly U.S. distributor has arranged to distribute the relationship comedy. If nobody steps up, I can always catch it in Tijuana three months hence.

I loved Ruben Fleischer‘s original Zombieland (especially Bill Murray‘s self-portraying cameo). But it opened ten years ago, man. What does Zombieland: Double Tap (Columbia, 10.18) feel like? Honestly? Like a harmless but toothless generic rehash. You can’t just remake the original with cosmetic changes — you have to introduce a new idea or two. Even if you’re making a sure commercial bet, you have to be bold. And that doesn’t mean throwing in an unexpected twist, which any jerkwad can do.

With this morning’s announcement of the 2019 Venice Film Festival slate plus last Tuesday’s Toronto announcements, a good portion of the Telluride rundown looks like this **:

Ford v Ferrari, d: James Mangold
Judy, d: Rupert Goold
Uncut Gems, d: The Safdies
Motherless Brooklyn, d: Edward Norton
The Truth, d: Kore-eda
Ad Astra, d: James Gray
Wasp Network, d: Olivier Assayas
The Two Popes, d: Fernando Mereilles
Portrait of a Lady on Fire, d: Celine Sciamma
Pain and Glory, d: Pedro Almodovar
Parasite, d: Bong Joon-ho
Varda by Agnes, d: Agnes Varda

Definitely not going to Telluride:

Jojo Rabbit, The Goldfinch, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, The Laundromat, Harriet, The Personal History of David Copperfield.

Venice Competition:

The Truth, d: Hirokazu Kore-eda
The Perfect Candidate, d: Haifaa Al-Mansour
About Endlessness, d: Roy Andersson
Wasp Network, d: Olivier Assayas
Marriage Story, d: Noah Baumbach
Guest of Honor, d: Atom Egoyan
Ad Astra, d: James Gray
A Herdade, d: Tiago Guedes
Gloria Mundi, d: Robert Guediguian
Waiting for the Barbarians, d: Ciro Guerra
Ema, d: Pablo Larrain
Saturday Fiction, d: Lou Ye
Martin Eden, d: Pietro Marcello
The Mafia Is No Longer What It Used to Be, d: Franco Maresco
The Painted Bird, d: Vaclav Marhoul
The Mayor of the Rione Sanità, d: Mario Martone
Babyteeth, d: Shannon Murphy
Joker, d: Todd Phillips
An Officer and a Spy, d: Roman Polanski
The Laundromat, d: Steven Soderbergh
No. 7 Cherry Lane, d: Yonfan

Out of Competition – Fiction:

Seberg, d: Benedict Andrews
Adults in the Room, d: Costa-Gavras
The King, d: David Michod
Tutto Il Mio Folle Amore, d: Gabriele Salvatores

Out of Competition – Special Screenings

The New Pope, d: Paolo Sorrentino
Never Just a Dream: Stanley Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut, d: Matt Wells

** per calculations from World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy.

28 years ago James Cameron‘s T2: Judgment Day delivered a classic high-velocity action sequence, set in a Los Angeles riverbed of concrete and chain-link fences, punctuated by shotgun blasts and physics-defying vehicle leaps. Robert Patrick‘s T-1000 in a sheared-off truck cab vs. Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Terminator-on-a-Harley with Eddie Furlong hanging on for dear life. The action pushed the limits of natural law but audiences bought it because it was cyborg vs. cyborg.

In a just-posted trailer for Ang Lee‘s Gemini Man (and specifically between the :04 and :10 mark), there’s a vaguely similar high-speed sequence involving Will Smith‘s Henry Brogen vs. Smith’s “Junior” (i.e., himself as a young man), both on motorcycles and firing weapons at each other. What happens to Junior defies any standard of half-assed credulity, of course — action films have become increasingly hostile to the laws of physics over the last 20-plus years — and this time there’s no cyborg exception. The two Brogens might as well be in a Road Runner vs. Coyote cartoon.

The fact is that CG bullshit is detectable in every standout action moment in the Gemini Man trailer. It goes without saying that Ang Lee is no second-tier genre hack. He’s a serious, grade-A filmmaker, and it follows that I’d like very much to believe in each and every aspect of this visually ambitious thriller. But the trailer is telling me that’s not in the cards.

Respect and affection for the late Rutger Hauer, who passed a few days ago at age 75.

A grand, gentle fellow with a flirting-with-extremes personality, Hauer will always be remembered for two iconic ’80s roles — Roy Batty in Blade Runner (’82) and the creepy John Ryder in The Hitcher (’86) — along with his last hoo-hah performance in Hobo With A Shotgun (’11). I’m not forgetting or dismissing his ’70s work with Paul Verhoeven — Turkish Delight (’73), Soldier of Orange (’77) and Spetters (’80) — but the above three are the keepers.

Hauer was taking cigarette breaks when I interviewed him in Park City eight and a half years ago for Hobo. He was 66 then, and we all know that you can’t smoke at that age. If you need to go there smoking is for your teens, 20s and 30s. You have to quit by age 40 — no negotiations.

From “Shotgun Superstar,” posted on 1.26.11:

My Rutger Hauer encounter this morning was smooth and mellow. Hobo With A Shotgun, which I saw directly after, is a relentlessly low-rent Troma splatter film — another ’70s grindhouse flick in “quotes.” (You don’t mind the awful dialogue spoken by the bad guys, right? Of course you don’t!)

But the title and the whatever-you-want-to-make-it metaphor are brilliant, and Hauer, 66, is reaping the benefits. His scumbag-blasting bum is the most iconic role he’s played since The Hitcher (’86), and before that Roy Batty in Blade Runner (’82).

If I was a director-writer, I’d write something for Hauer in which he plays the absolute opposite of an enraged, socially-avenging hobo. I would cast him as a rich, hip sculptor who lives in lower Manhattan — a guy who meditates and writes poetry, knows how to prepare Northern Italian cuisine and has his grandkids over on weekends. I would leave the hobo behind and never look back.

Hauer is gentle, polite, considerate. Being a famous actor he’s used to a certain amount of attention. And (I mean this in the most admiring way possible) he’s a bit of an eccentric. He talks about whatever mood he might be in. He goes outside to smoke. He politely declined to drink Bloody Marys with everyone else. (Discipline!) He wore black Converse lace-up sneakers — very cool.

Two months ago I wrote that I was getting an Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close vibe from John Crowley‘s The Goldfinch (Warner Bros., 9.13). I tend to have difficulty with trauma-recovery dramas, especially those involving terrorism. And I have to be honest — I don’t like sensitive little boys who wear glasses.

Nothing has changed with the new trailer.

Based on Donna Tartt’s 2015 novel and set for release during the Toronto Film Festival. Ansel Elgort, Oakes Fegley, Aneurin Barnard, Finn Wolfhard, Sarah Paulson, Luke Wilson, Jeffrey Wright, Nicole Kidman. I’m sorry but it feels like a no-go.