Posted three years ago: The realm of Only Angels Have Wings is all-male, all the time. Feelings run quite strong (the pilots who are “good enough” love each other like brothers) but nobody lays their emotional cards on the table face-up. Particularly Cary Grant‘s Geoff, a brusque, hard-headed type who never has a match on him. He gradually falls in love with Jean Arthur but refuses to say so or even show it very much.
But he does subtly reveal his feelings at the end with the help of a two-headed coin. It’s not what any woman or poet would call a profound declaration of love, but it’s as close to profound as it’s going to get in this 1939 Howard Hawks film. If Angels were remade today with Jennifer Lawrence in the Arthur role she’d probably say “to hell with it” and catch the boat, but in ’39 the coin was enough. Easily one of the greatest finales in Hollywood history.
Not the actors, of course — the rural Pennsylvania characters they played. And not back then but now — 40 years older, grayer, heavier and hugely pissed off that the white America they grew up with is a thing of the past. There are very few films that I despise more than Michael Cimino‘s reprehensible, frequently nonsensical proletariat social drama, which I was initially impressed by in some respects (that awesome cutaway from a Pennsylvania wedding ceremony to the jungles of Vietnam) but hated in others. Russian roulette….bullshit. A loving tribute to rural ignorance and delusion that brought a tear to my eye…not.
Yesterday MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace asked whether First Lady Melania Trump and First Daughter Ivanka Trump were “dead inside,” given their support and submission to arguably the worst sexist dog to occupy the Oval Office in the nation’s history, not to mention the most craven, selfish and sociopathic.
The answer, obviously, is that they adore the material comfort aspects of their lives and so they’ve figured a way to “live with” or otherwise ignore the horrendous and malicious Trump policies, not to mention the Caligula-like appetites that would, at the very least, offend any wife or daughter to the very core of their beings.
It’s the same kind of accommodation that money whores the world over have adjusted themselves to for untold centuries. The humiliation that Julius Caesar‘s wife Calpurnia felt when her husband took up with Cleopatra was nothing compared to what Melania is dealing with.
I was gifted this morning with a two-year-old draft of Suspiria. The framework of Luca Gudagnino‘s upcoming film, it was authored by Dave Kajganich and based on the original 1977 film by Dario Argento, which was written by Argento and Daria Nicolodi. Guadagnino’s film is set in “the Berlin” that same year. I love the Joseph Goebbels quote, and can say that a certain World War II history is woven into the narrative.
I am stunned and appalled that Anthony Bourdain, a sensualist and an adventurer whom I admired like few others, a guy who adored sitting on a plastic stool and eating Bun Cha in Hanoi as well as scootering through rural Vietnam as much I have, a late bloomer who’d lived a druggy, dissolute life in the ’70s and ’80s but had built himself into great shape and had led a rich and robust life in so many respects…I am absolutely floored that Bourdain has done himself in.
Bourdain was right at the top of my spitball list of famous fellows who would never, ever kill themselves because he seemed so imbued with the sensual joy of living, who had found so much happiness and fulfillment in so many foods and kitchens, in so many sights and sounds and aromas and atmospheres, travelling and roaming around 250 days per year and inhaling the seismic wonder of it all.
In a perfect world Donald Trump would hang himself in his White House bedroom and Bourdain would go on living and travelling and taping episodes of Parts Unknown until he was 98 and perhaps beyond.
He apparently suffered from depression, or so it’s being said this morning. He was 61, and by all indications in the absolute peak of his personal journey. Like me, Bourdain’s life didn’t really take off until the late ’90s, when he was in his early 40s. But when everything finally fell into place and he became famous and semi-wealthy, he seemed to revel in the feast but without losing his head. He always kept his sanity and sense of modesty.
“Seizer of Days,” posted from Park City on 1.19.18: “I’ve just come from a screening of Marina Zenovich‘s Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind. I was presuming it would be a sad, moving experience going in, and Zenovich hasn’t disappointed. Her film is simple, touching, direct — not a softball portrait that avoids the pitfalls and dark places, but a very comprehensive story of a fascinating whirling dervish and comic firecracker for whom the bell tolled.
Williams’ best films and performances: The World According to Garp (’82), Moscow on the Hudson (’84), Good Morning, Vietnam (’87), Dead Poets Society (’89), Awakenings (’90), The Fisher King (’91), Aladdin (’92), Mrs. Doubtfire (’93), Jumanji (’95), The Birdcage (’96), Good Will Hunting (’97), Insomnia (’02) — 12 in all.
The stinkers included Hook (’91), Toys (’92), Jack (’96), Father’s Day, Patch Adams (’98) , What Dreams May Come (’98), Bicentennial Man (’99), RV (’06) and Old Dogs (’09).
The release date of Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette, an adaptation of Maria Semple‘s 2013 same-titled novel, has been bumped again. The Annapurna release was initially slated to open on 5.11.18, then it was pushed back to 10.19.18 — now it’s been shifted to 3.22.19. A domestic drama of rage and neuroses, pic costars Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup, Emma Nelson, Kristen Wiig, Judy Greer and Laurence Fishburne.
Seven months ago Quentin TarantinotoldIndiewire‘s Anne Thompson that Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, which may start shooting in Los Angeles sometime this month, would be more about hippy-dippy 1969 Los Angeles than the Tate/LaBianca murders by the Manson family. Exact quote: “It’s not Manson, it’s 1969.”
Damian Lewis is playing Steve McQueen, who was invited to drop by the Polanski/Tate home that evening but at the last minute decided to hang with a girl he’d just met.
Emile Hirsch is playing hairstylist Jay Sebring, who was one of the Cielo Drive victims along with coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Folger’s boyfriend Voytek Frykowski and an 18 year-old named Steven Parent.
Tate will be played by Margot Robbie, and Burt Reynolds will reportedly play George Spahn, the weathered owner of the Spahn Movie Ranch who allowed the Manson family to live on the ranch in the weeks and months before the August ’69 killings.
Allow me to start my own conversation about same, and to begin by noting that far too many screenwriters are convinced that third-act twists are essential components for a strong commercial script. What they’ve become, in fact, is a kind of pestilence. The third-act switcheroos on the parts of Woody Harrelson and Emilia Clarke‘s characters in Solo (i.e., “You thought I was an ally but I’m not”) are but one example. That bullshit twist in Adrift is another.
People also need to understand the difference between a twist and a striking third-act plot development. Revealing that the young Charles Foster Kane‘s sled was called “Rosebud” is not a twist — it’s simply a revelation. Ditto Kevin Spacey telling Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman that he visited Pitt’s wife, Tracy, and cut off her head and then sent it special delivery in a box. That’s not a twist — that’s a stunning macabre occurence.
The coolest, most satisfying, top-ten twists in own moviegoing experience, and in this order: 1. M. Night Shyamalan‘s The Sixth Sense; 2. George Roy Hill‘s The Sting; 3. Bryan Singer‘s The Usual Suspects; 4. Gregory Hoblit‘s Primal Fear; 5. Irvin Kershner‘s The Empire Strikes Back. 5. Franklin Schaffner‘s Planet of the Apes; 6. Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho; 7. Alejandro Amenabar‘s The Others; 8. Alan Parker‘s Angel Heart; 9. John Ford‘s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. 10. Neil Jordan‘s The Crying Game.
I purposely didn’t read a slew of Ocean’s 8 (Warner Bros., 6.8) reviews before seeing it Wednesday night. (All the way out in Burbank, by the way.) I wanted to just go in clean and ready for whatever. And honestly? It doesn’t deliver much but it’s not that bad.
This being a chick flick of sorts, I was afraid (and I know how sexist this sounds) that it might lean too much on emotional content. Hugging, crying, hurting…that line of country. But to my profound surprise it doesn’t get into emotional stuff at all. It’s like “emotion who?” It deals almost nothing but dry, droll, mid-tempo cards. And I kind of liked that. Was I knocked out? No, but I felt oddly placated.
The strongest emotional current in Ocean’s 8 is one of revenge on the part of Sandra Bullock‘s Debbie Ocean, a great-looking, zero-drama 40something with an almost icy composure. The revenge is directed at a former male colleague who did an uncool thing, resulting in considerable discomfort for Debbie, and so he must be paid back. But beyond this issue, Ocean’s 8 is almost purely a technical or logistical exercise film.
It’s about Bullock commanding a team of six ultra-confident, super-poised women with no hangups or behavioral issues of any kind (Cate Blanchett‘s Lou, Rihanna‘s Nine Ball, Sarah Paulson‘s Tammy, Mindy Kaling‘s Amita, Awkwafina‘s Constance, Helena Bonham Carter‘s Daphne). The goal is to steal a $150 million, six-pound Toussaint diamond necklace. The job will happen during the annual Met Gala, and the mark will be Anne Hathaway‘s Daphne Kruger, a flush, big-time celebrity.
Ocean’s 8 is also about wallowing in wealth and fashion porn in midtown Manhattan, and about the importance of always keeping your cool and being one or two steps ahead of the other guy. I half-enjoyed the fact that the team looks great, and that their makeup and hair are perfect in every scene. Hell, everyone looks good. Even the late-arriving James Corden, playing an insurance investigator, has been buffed to the max.
That wasn’t a typo about Bullock having six partners for a total of seven. They only become a crew of eight in the third act, and that’s after the job has already been pulled.
Director and co-writer Gary Ross, co-scenarist Olivia Milch and producer Steven Soderbergh knew exactly what they wanted to do, which was to stay on a mellow and even keel. And so Ocean’s 8 just glides along in second or third gear for the most part. Nothing crazy happens, and certainly nothing dark or startling (like, for example, a 2018 equivalent of Richard Conte dying of a heart attack on the Las Vegas strip in the original 1960 Ocean’s 11) or ominous or even a bit sad. It doesn’t get into drama at all. Start to finish, the whole thing is cool, calm and collected. It’s not even that complex or tangled. You can actually follow what’s going on.
