In a late 1950s, pre-Civil Rights legislation, liberally-endorsed metaphor kind of way, The Defiant Ones is a completely decent film. I’m only mentioning this because the Eureka Classics Bluray pops on 6.11. Notice how I’m conveying a vaguely dismissive attitude? Should every liberal-hearted social-issues film of the prehistoric past be so denigrated? I think it’s because Stanley Kramer‘s earnestly liberal brand of cinema has been put down for so many decades. There doesn’t seem to be any other permissible attitude toward the guy. I’ve always respected his brand while understanding that it represents a certain form of pat, tidy liberalism that was put out to pasture in the late ’60s.
Late yesterday afternoon Tatyana and I were hiking the trails and neighborhoods of Topanga Canyon. The sun was going down and the atmosphere was warm and fragrant and altogether perfect except for the flies, but while walking on Encina Road a couple of weird, vaguely negative encounters with older Topanga women occured.
Encounter #1: We were heading back to Entrada Road when a late 50ish hippie-chick type wearing a half-pound of mascara approached with the oldest and fattest Chihuahua I’ve ever seen in my life. It was as if the poor dog, who appeared to be in his mid 80s in canine years, had been eating nothing but cupcakes and french fries his entire life. I shouldn’t have said anything, but for some reason I blurted something about her dog being in his declining years.
Mascara hippie chick stopped and turned and said, “Why did you just say that?” Me: “Sorry…it was the first thing that came into my mind.”
In fact, I lied — the first thing that came into my mind was that this poor dog would most likely be dead from a heart attack within six months or even sooner, and so I translated this observation into a vague remark about dotage.
“Well, I just got him from the pound,” the woman said with a steely, half-hostile smile, “and my first thought was that he’s beautiful.” I said something approving — “Sounds good!” — and we walked away. God, some people. We all understand love and compassion for mistreated animals, but the dog was clearly withered and not even close to healthy. Some things are better left unsaid. My bad.
Donald Trump’s totally unmitigated bullshit stream is “not a bug — it’s a feature.”
Sam Harris: “In large measure the Trump cult is a response to some of the excesses we’ve seen on the left. I consider myself liberal more or less across the board. But the identity politics and political correctness we’ve seen on the left has clearly created a backlash,” and so Trump and his supporters are basically saying they’ve “just had enough. But in this instance the cure, if you will, is much worse than the disease here. Identity politics on the left is now ushering in a [theology] of white identity politics, not just in America but in many western countries…we need to find some path in which our common humanity is the only basis upon which we reason and decide our path into the future.”
Something in me deflates when I see some younger guy wearing dorky-looking footwear, particularly those awful white-rimmed Nikes that Millennials are so fond of or any kind of half-plastic, half-canvas combo, including gray or loud-color cross-training shoes, atrocious sandals, Crocs, etc.
Do younger GenYs, Millennials and GenZs have the worst taste in shoes in the history of western civilization? That sounds over-the-top but think about it. How many under-40 males wear super-cool-looking Italian shoes (and I don’t just mean traditional leather) on any kind of regular basis? Answer: Almost none. How many hinterland tourists wear X-factor shoes of any kind? Same difference. Whenever I notice someone wearing great-looking shoes I’ll sometimes tell them so, but I can’t remember the last time this happened in Los Angeles.
The only region in the world in which guys wear great-looking shoes with any frequency is Northern Italy, and even then it’s a spotty proposition. Older, silver-haired Italian guys are the standard-bearers. Under-40s, even in Italy, are almost uniformly opposed to what I sometimes call the Daniel Day Lewis or Bruno Magli aesthetic.
If a just-opened film contains a big surprise, critics will usually observe silence until the first-weekend crowd has had a chance to catch it. Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich has thrown that rule out the window. This morning he spoiled the big secret in Baltasar Kormakur‘s Adrift. Ehrlich’s article allows Kormakur to explain his reasons for inserting a big fake-out (“Adrift Director Baltasar Kormákur Explains the Reasoning Behind the Movie’s Wild Plot Twist”).
As long as the cat is out of the bag and presuming that at least some HE readers have seen Adrift last night, what are the reactions?
HE riff, posted a couple of days ago: “You can tell right away that Adrift wants to deliver coo-coo romantic vibes for its target audience (i.e., younger women, couples). Loving currents first and surviving nature’s wrath second. This strategic determination, crafted by screenwriters Aaron Kandell, Jordan Kandell and David Branson Smith and obviously agreed to by Kormakur, results in a significant third-act revelation or confession that reveals their lying, cheating hearts.
“Adrift creators to audience: “We wanted to give you a film about a young, loving, struggling-to-survive couple, and we did that for the most part so too effing bad if we flim-flammed you. Get over it. Life is full of fake-outs and people dealing from the bottom of the deck. We didn’t do anything that bad. Have some more popcorn.”
2018 is one month away from being half done. In my book that’s close enough to compile a halftime edition of the Best Films of 2018, and so here they are — the six best of the year so far, and by this I mean the ballsiest, the least compromised, the most transcendent, vivid and articulate, and the most likely to be remembered at year’s end: Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed, Ari Aster‘s Hereditary, John Krasinski‘s A Quiet Place, Eugene Jarecki‘s The King, Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here and Tony Zierra‘s Filmworker.
Yep, four narratives and two docs. No doubt about it. Most of the shills posting half-year assessments will be putting Ryan Coogler‘s Black Panther in their top five, but I don’t kowtow — it’s half of a really good Marvel flick.
I’m proclaiming this knowing that the current month of June contains, by my sights, only one solid narrative standout (Hereditary) along with a single brilliant doc (The King) and a kind, gentle, congenial heartwarmer (Morgan Neville‘s Won’t You Be My Neighbor). There is also a highly promising trio opening later this month — Brad Bird‘s Incredibles 2, Shana Feste‘s Boundaries and Stefano Sollima‘s Sicario: Day of the Soldado.
The seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth-place finishers are, in this order, Andrej Zvyagintsev‘s Loveless, Black Panther, Tony Gilroy‘s Beirut and Wes Anderson‘s Isle of Dogs.
Working backwards, starting with May and ending in January but without riffs or recaps — most titles link to my original review:
May: First Reformed and Filmworker, in a walk. (The links explain why.) May’s second best doc was RBG — a steady, assured and comprehensive portrait of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I wasn’t all that excited about Jason Reitman‘s Tully when I saw it last January, but don’t let me stop you.
April: A Quiet Place and You Were Never Really Here led the pack, but Tony Gilroy‘s Beirut was a respectable third-placer, and right after that came Sebastian Lelio‘s Disobedience and then John Curran‘s Chappaquiddick. I never got around to posting a Lean on Pete review (apologies) but it holds up pretty well in retrospect. The Rider was an honest, affecting rough-hewn exercise sans charisma or a way out of the mire.
I hated Where Is Kyra?. I Feel Pretty, which I saw late, was an off-tempo reach and an all-but-total wipeout commercially.
“How about we enslave all white people for a couple hundred years. And even after they’re not slaves anymore, still hold them down in society, devalue their existence by comparing them to animals, never apologize, never really make it right, and then after that there will be no more double standards and everyone will get fired for everything they say.” — Michelle Wolf on the alleged double standard re ABC cancelling Roseanne for Valerie Jarrett/Planet of the Apes while TBS hasn’t cancelled Full Frontal following Samantha Bee‘s following “feckless” c-word remark about Ivanka Trump.
“I’m writing a film about [the Harvey Weinstein] scandal, a project I’m talking about with a French producer. My character won’t be named Harvey Weinstein but it will be a horror film, with a sexual aggressor, and it will take place in the film industry.” — Brian DePalma speaking to Le Parisien‘s Catherine Balle in a short q & a posted on 6.1.
The second most interesting quote comes when Balle asks if DePalma has “been offered [a chance] to make movies for Netflix?”, and DePalma replies, “Yes, but I need a big screen because I am a visual stylist.”
I understand what BDP is saying — his kind of movies work better with that swept-along feeling that comes with seeing them with a sharp crowd on a big screen — but a film with a strong visual style would surely be appreciated if it was restricted to home screens. Images are images, style is style.
Variety‘s Dave McNary is reporting that Solo: A Star Wars Story is deader than dead, deader than roadkill, finito, flatline. Tracking forecasts a $28 million haul this weekend in North America, which will translate into a stunning 67% drop from last weekend’s opening of $84.4 million, which itself was seen as shitty.
If this was happening in Japan the Solo team would probably be considering the idea of ritual seppuku. Then again Solo has already disemboweled itself on its own dime. I don’t think it would’ve mattered if Disney had decided to release it next December; I think it still would’ve bombed. The Miller-Lord debacle plus the casting of Alden Ehrenreich as young Han Solo — arguably the stupidest mainstream Hollywood casting decision of the 21st Century — is what did it. Solo almost certainly wouldn’t have bombed so badly they had just hired Ansel Elgort instead.
The person most responsible for this calamity is obviously producer Kathy Kennedy. Obviously we don’t “do” seppuku in this country, but if I were Kennedy or Ehrenreich I would drive out to the desert and lay low for a couple of weeks. Wait until the cloud of calamity blows over.
5:02 pm update: Remember Matt Damon talking about having shot an Ocean’s 8 cameo? Well, he’s been cut from the film over mansplaining. George Clooney‘s Danny Ocean is “dead at the beginning and also the end when Debbie Ocean visits his grave,” a friend says. The only person from the Soderbergh Ocean flicks is Elliot Gould, who appears in just one scene.
Earlier: Manhattan get-around guy Bill McCuddy got me going on a question about the salaries on Ocean’s 8 (Warner Bros., 6.8). It’s a bit of a chickenshit thing to bring up but what the hell. The idea is this: Pay equality is a very big issue these days in progressive circles (i.e., opposition to this or that actor getting paid more than this or that actress on the same film if she has roughly the same billing and screen time), but perhaps the equality thing receded when it came to an ensemble flick about heisting the Met gala?
Ocean’s 8 only cost about $70 million so nobody got any huge prima donna paydays, but I’m guessing that Sandra Bullock was paid the most, followed by Cate Blanchett and Rihanna and then…?
A producer friend: “It’s not in the upfront quote on a film like this. This was probably a lowball favored nations. You can’t make this movie paying each cast member their quote. Crazy expensive. The big money on a picture like this is in the back-end deal. If the movie hits, you make a serious amount of dough. You let go of the big upfront salary and negotiate a lucrative profit participation.
“True story: George Clooney sent Julia Roberts the Ocean’s 11 script with a ten-dollar bill inside along with a note that said ‘we heard you got ten for a picture so we included it with the script. Hope you like it.’ Roberts thought the note was hilarious and said yes.
“The message was that nobody was getting their quote. It’s also in the spirit of being on the team. No prima donnas. Not an upfront paycheck deal. In it to make a movie that makes money at the box-office. That said, I’m sure the profit participation cash deal [on Ocean’s 8] was very, very healthy.”
Bloody Disgusting‘s John Squires is reporting that David Robert Mitchell‘s Under The Silver Lake, which almost everyone hated when it played in Cannes last month, is now a December release. A24 had originally planned to release it later this month (6.22), but the buzz was so bad they obviously got the willies. They’ve almost certainly asked Mitchell to go back to the editing room and tighten up his 139-minute film, and perhaps even do a little re-shooting. The new A24 release date is 12.7.18.
From “Mitchell’s Wandering Fartscape“, posted on 5.16.18: I’m sorry but David Robert Mitchell‘s Under The Silver Lake (A24, 6.22), which I saw early this morning, is mostly a floundering, incoherent mess. Yeah, I know — Mitchell wanted it to feel this way, right? Ironically, I mean. Confusion and mental haziness were part of the impressionistic thrust.
It’s pretty much a textbook example of what happens when a gifted, financially successful director without much on his mind at the time…this is what happens when such a fellow comes to believe that he’s a version of Federico Fellini in the wake of La Dolce Vita or 8 1/2 and thereby obtains the funds to make whatever the hell he wants, and so he decides to create…uhm, well let’s try our hand at an impressionistic fantasia dreamtrip about L.A. hipster weirdness and…you know, dreamy fantasy women with nice breasts and impressionistic effluvia and whatever-the-fuck-else.
Two hours and 15 minutes of infuriating slacker nothingness…everyone’s vaguely confused, nobody really knows anything, all kinds of clues and hints about seemingly impenetrable conspiracies involving general L.A. space-case culture, bodies of dead dogs, cults, riddles and obsessions of the super-rich.
