I’ve trashed Alexander Moors‘ The Yellow Birds two or three times since I caught it at Sundance ’17. It’s a reasonably intelligent PTSD drama (i.e., Iraq), but it’s slow and never lifts off and I wound up kinda hating it for the most part. If you ask me Alden Ehrenreich sinks it singlehandedly with his sullen, all-but-unreadable performance as a veteran with a gnawing secret.

The two best things about it are the performances by Toni Collette and Jennifer Aniston, as distraught mothers of Ehrenreich and costar Tye Sheridan‘s characters.

After months of silence and invisibility, The Yellow Birds has finally delivered a trailer. It’ll be released exclusively on DIRECTV between 5.17 and 6.13; Saban Films will open it theatrically on 6.15.

Based on a 2012 novel by Iraq War veteran Kevin Powers, it’s about the investigation of the death of an Iraq War combatant named “Murph” (Tye Sheridan), but is more precisely about evasions and suppressions on the part of Murph’s PTSD-aflicted comrade, John Bartie (Ehrenreich), when he returns home.

Murph’s mom Maureen (Aniston) naturally wants to know what happened, and Bartie’s mom Amy (Collette) is seriously concerned about her son’s totally withdrawn, zombie-like manner. There’s also a Sergeant Sterling (Jack Huston) with his own buried trauma issues, and a CID investigator (Jason Patric) with a persistent interest in what happened between Murph and John.

I for one sat in my Eccles seat in a state of numb submission, toughing it out and waiting for something (anything!) interesting to happen. Paul Haggis‘ In The Valley Of Elaah (’07), which uses a similar plot and mood, is far more compelling.

UCLA film professor Howard Suber gives great commentary — sage, smooth, learned, insightful. (Here are a few HE posts about the guy.) Roughly 30 years ago I was especially taken with a commentary track he recorded for a Criterion laser disc of High Noon. Suber persuaded me that this 1952 allegorical western, directed by Fred Zinneman and ghost-written by CarlForeman, was more than just a good sit or a striking reflection of Hollywood cowardice in the face of anti-Communist fervor, but one of the all-time greats.

Last night Suber announced that his High Noon commentary is now accessible (along with the film itself) on the Criterion Channel via Filmstruck. Never before offered on Bluray or DVD, and definitely worth it…trust me.

Once again, HE’s 7.27.09 High Noon vs. Rio Bravo comparison piece:

Talk to any impassioned, ahead-of-the-curve film snob about classic westerns, and he/she will probably tell you that Howard Hawks‘ Rio Bravo (1959) is a much better, more substantial film than Fred Zinneman‘s High Noon (1952). More deeply felt, they’ll say. Better shoot-em-up swagger, tastier performances, more likable, more old-west iconic. Many people I know feel this way. And now here‘s director Peter Bogdanovich saying it again in a New York Observer piece — Rio Bravo is even better than you thought, High Noon doesn’t hold up as well, etc.

Something snapped when I read Peter’s article this afternoon. Goddamn it, the Rio Bravo cult has gone on long enough. Bogdanovich calls it “a life-affirming, raucous, profound masterpiece” I’m going to respond politely and call that a reach. I admire Hawks’ movies and the whole Hawks ethos as much as the next guy, but it’s time to end this crap here and now.

High Noon may seem a bit stodgy or conventional to some and perhaps not as excitingly cinematic to the elites, but it’s a far greater film than Rio Bravo.

It’s not about the Old West, obviously — it’s a metaphor about the Hollywood climate of the early ’50s — but it walks and talks like a western, and is angry, blunt, honed and unequivocal to that end. It’s about the very worst in people, and the best in a single, anxious, far-from-perfect man. I’m speaking of screenwriter-producer Carl Foreman, who was being eyeballed by the Hollywood right for alleged Communist ties when he wrote it, and receiving a very tough lesson in human nature in the process. He wound up writing a crap-free movie that talks tough, cuts no slack and speaks with a single voice.

Take this with a grain, but a day or two ago there was a Los Angeles screening of Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma, and a fellow confides that a person he trusts saw it, and that their reaction was “wow wow wow wow WOW WOW OH MAMA…yesss!!!” Seriously, they said that Cuaron’s black-and-white Mexico City family drama, set in the early 70s, is “beyond great.” And to think, we’d all be seeing it in Cannes next week if not for the Netflix brouhaha. Thanks, guys!

Actions have consequences but…

“The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors met on Tuesday night (May 1) and has voted to expel actor Bill Cosby and director Roman Polanski from its membership in accordance with the organization’s Standards of Conduct. The Board continues to encourage ethical standards that require members to uphold the Academy’s values of respect for human dignity.”

My only comment, which I shared with a friend, was “did they really have to couple Polanski with Cosby?”

To which she replied, “Rapist, rapist. It’s how the Academy sees it and all of the shrieking mob chasing after them.”

And I said, “Okay, but Cosby’s criminality was far more odious. Decades of persistent, diabolical and premeditated rape with the use of sedatives and Mickey Finns. Polanski wasn’t on that level. Not even close.”

Yesterday Netflix CEO Reed Hastings expressed a modest mea culpa about his company’s Mexican stand-off with the Cannes Film Festival. What he said, boiled down: “We’re still not bringing Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma, Paul Greengrass‘s Norway or Orson Welles‘ The Other Side of the Wind to the festival, but we’re kinda sorry we let things get so heated and…uhm, well, that’s it. Maybe next time.”

Actual Hastings statement: “At times we have a reputation as a disruptor, and sometimes we make mistakes. I think we got into a more difficult situation with the Cannes Film Festival than we meant to because, you know, we’re not trying to disrupt the movie system, we are trying to make our members happy. We make our content for them. We love the film festival and we still have buyers going. The festival is very sincere in trying to find a model that works for them and works for us. I’m sure over time we’ll definitely [go back].”

The makers of this obviously ludicrous, video-game-level Robin Hood flick — director Otto Bathurst, producer Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson, costars Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx and Ben Mendelsohn, screenwriters Ben Chandler and David James Kelly — need to walk into the woods, strip themselves to the waist, kneel and submit to two dozen lashes administered by monks.

The idea was to make a bullshit action fantasy in the vein of Guy Ritchie‘s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (’17). Why I can’t imagine — Ritchie’s film was awful, and only made $148 million worldwide. Nonetheless, here it is. Anyone who finds this shit entertaining needs psychological counseling. Summit will release Robin Hood on 11.21.18.

Rudy Giuliani obviously wouldn’t have spilled the beans to Sean Hannity earlier today if he hadn’t previously convinced President Trump that it was better to admit he’s been lying all along about not knowing jack about Michael Cohen‘s payment of $130K in hush money to Stormy Daniels, etc. Better to come clean than Trump and Cohen continuing to stand by an obviously false account (i.e., “Who, us?”).

A startling turnabout in a way, but at the same time who’s even a bit surprised? Trump is a bullshitter, plain and simple — a stone sociopath.

From Michael Shear’s N.Y. Times story, posted a little while ago: “President Trump reimbursed Michael D. Cohen, his longtime personal lawyer, for the $130,000 payment that Mr. Cohen has said he made to keep a pornographic film actress from going public just before the 2016 election with her story about an affair with Mr. Trump, according to Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of the president’s lawyers.

EXCLUSIVE: @MichaelAvenatti responds to Rudy Giuliani claiming Trump repaid Stormy Daniels hush money. pic.twitter.com/d56nAQVKoS

— The Last Word (@TheLastWord) May 3, 2018

Set in suburban Connecticut and based on a same-titled novel by Darcey Bell, Paul Feig‘s A Simple Favor (Lionsgate, 9.14) is a female-angled thriller — marital deception, envy, sexual intrigue, hidden cards. Plot’s about Anna Kendrick‘s Stephanie, a mommy blogger with a child in kindergarten, trying to figure why her glamorous, well-connected friend Emily (Blake Lively) has suddenly vanished.

I’m sensing a blend of Big Little Lies, Gone Girl and The Girl On The Train minus the alcohol problem. More to the point: What’s up with Feig? He was quite the hotshot after Bridesmaids, then he followed up with the less-good The Heat, Spy and Ghostbusters. And now this.

For 40-plus years the Millennium Falcon was a souped-up “bucket of bolts” — a Kessel Run equivalent of a slightly grimy, seen-better-days 1965 Mustang that nonetheless had a powerful engine and could always jump into light speed if things got hairy.

No longer. In Ron Howard‘s forthcoming Solo (Disney, 5.25) the Falcon is new, spiffy and packed with luxury perks. It even has a special Lando Calrissian “cape room”…arrghh! Like it’s been refurbished for Kanye West, Kim Kardashian and the kids.

On top of which Donald Glover pronounces the first syllable of Falcon like Hal Ashby or HAL 9000. Jesus Christ, Howard can’t even get his actors to say it correctly? Harrison Ford, Billy Dee Williams, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and James Earl Jones pronounced that syllable the way Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet pronounced it — like the season, rhymes with “all.”

Reinaldo Marcus Green‘s Monsters And Men is about a Brooklyn neighborhood’s response to an Eric Garner-like killing at the hands of the fuzz. Costarring John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman), Anthony Ramos (Hamilton, Netflix’s She’s Gotta Have It) and Kelvin Harrison Jr. (It Comes at Night), pic uses multiple perspectives to round things out. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, set for a theatrical award-season release via NEON.

Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria is “the most brilliantly scary film I have ever seen,” actress Jessica Harper wrote on her private Facebook page last weekend. “Luca’s Call Me By Your Name does not prepare you for it, but throws into relief the director’s brilliance and versatility,” she added. Harper has a small role in Suspiria, of course, so she’s not processing the forthcoming Amazon release from an impartial perspective.

I don’t disagree with James Cameron‘s recent claim that the science-fiction genre has long been unfairly dismissed by Academy members as “not humanistic enough, not about real people” and therefore not Oscar-worthy.

When he gave this quote, however, Cameron chose to sidestep the fact that movies haven’t really produced a body of films that could be called science fiction, certainly not by the purist or literary definition of that term. What they’ve invested in is sci-fi fantasy, and more precisely CG-driven pulp-popcorn fantasias based on comic-book superheroes and the “hero’s journey” myth made famous by Joseph Campbell‘s “The Hero With A Thousand Faces.”

For the most part this attitude or approach has resulted in populist sludge that hasn’t begun to warrant serious consideration outside of the Saturn awards.

What Cameron really means, of course, is that a once in a blue moon a sci-fi fantasy flick like Avatar is good enough to be nominated for Best Picture (which it was eight years ago), and that his forthcoming Avatar sequels might warrant the same consideration.

Cameron: “All movies are artifice. Movies are innately artificial. The truth underlies the artifact. The truth of what you’re saying is the connection with the audience. Science-fiction can do that like any other genre. There is science-fiction that plays by the rules of good drama and that is important conceptually and that says something about our society and that has great characters. The Academy just has a blindspot about it. They’ll award it technical stuff but not the real stuff, not the acting.”