Alex Garland‘s Annihilation (Paramount, 2.23) is “trippy,” all right — a visually imaginative, microbe-level, deep-in-the-muck monster-alien flick. And it will bring you down, down, down. It will drop you into a stinking, crawling-insect swamp of your own regrets and fears and lethargies and nightmares, and will make you long for the glorious release of shooting yourself in the mouth.

It’s mainly a CG/FX show with creatures and Spielbergian space aliens and dynamic production design. It’s “inventive” in terms of the day-glo tree tumors and in a generally fungal, micro-bacterial, fiendish-mitosis sort of way, but it makes you feel like shit. It’s unrelentingly grim — basically a film about lambs to the slaughter.

Annihilation is based on a trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer that I will never read, but more precisely on the same-titled book that launches the tale.

It’s focused on Area X, a creepy, muddy lowland area somewhere in the Southern U.S. that’s been invaded and biologically inflamed by aliens. It’s surrounded by a kind of psychedelic wall made of some kind of blow-bubble liquid.

Five well-armed soldier women — a biologist played by Natalie Portman plus Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez and Tuva Novotny — enter this realm on foot, hoping to figure out the root of it all and at the same time save the life of Portman’s husband (Oscar Isaac) who has escaped Area X but is all fucked up…lethargic, no memory, spitting blood, ridden with disease.

In the book it’s a team of four, not five, that goes in, and the women represent the twelfth such expedition. The eleven previous expeditions have all ended in death or erasure for all the participants. Who would be stupid enough to join the twelfth expedition under these circumstances?

Annihilation is imaginative in ways that might feel vaguely new if you haven’t seen Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Stalker (’79) or, more to the point, read “Roadside Picnic,” the 1972 Russian horror novel by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky that inspired the Tarkovsky film. Or seen the two American-made sci-fi thrillers — John McTiernan‘s Predator and James Cameron‘s Aliens — that came in their wake.

So it’s not precisely “new”, but it’s definitely a grade-A, above-average haunted horror film for sci-fi dweebs. But Joe and Jane Popcorn? Not so much.

“This is imaginative, that’s imaginative,” I muttered to myself last night. “Not that I give that much of a shit, but it’s imaginative.”

90th Oscar Awards co-producer MIKE DELUCA sitting at his desk in a moderate-sized office. Nicely decorated, delicate delighting, a tropical plant. DeLuca’s phone buzzes. It’s his assistant, LORNA DOONE.

DELUCA: Hey.
LORNA: Mike? Warren Beatty on two.
DELUCA: (beat) Really?
LORZNA: On two.

DeLuca hits flashing button.

DELUCA: Warren!
BEATTY: (To someone else) Hah, okay. (into phone) Mike!
DELICA: So what up?
BEATTY: Look, Mike, I want another shot.
DELUCA: (grimacing) Aww, come on, Warren.
BEATTY: I don’t mean presenting the Best Picture Oscar again. I’d just like to present another award for dignity’s sake. Actually, Faye and I together.
DELUCA: (uncomfortable) I…I don’t know.

BEATTY: We’d just like to come on, present some minor award, clean and neat, a couple of bon mots and exit stage left.
DELUCA: You feel bad about last year. I hear you.
BEATTY: I have almost 60 years in this business, Mike. Faye has over 55. Millennials and GenZs don’t know us, but the over 40s do. Okay, the over-50s. We have some standing in this industry. We just don’t want to go out like a couple of clowns.
DELUCA: I don’t think you flubbed it.
BEATTY: Remember what Kimmel said?
DELUCA: It wasn’t your fault, dude.
BEATTY: Kimmel said, “Warren, what did you dooo?” We just wanna come out and keep it simple and dignified. You and Suzanne can check the copy.
LORNA (obviously listening in) I think it’ll take strain off the show, Mike.
DELUCA: (caving) All right. But no hemming and hawing at the lecturn, Warren!
BEATTY: No hemming and hawing.

In the wake of Kathryn Bigelow‘s Zero Dark Thirty, Jessica Chastain was basking in worldwide praise and a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance as Maya, a CIA officer who was super-focused on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. She was sitting on top of the world. She won the Golden Globe Award Best Actress for this performance, and was thereafter hailed for her strong turns in A Most Violent Year (’14), Miss Sloane (’16) and Molly’s Game (’17).

And now she’s about to costar in a New Line horror film, i.e., a sequel to Andy Muschietti‘s It? If you were Chastain, would you go up against Pennywise at this stage in your career? Something happens to a dramatic actress’s brand when she descends into horror.

Chastain is doing this for the dough, of course, but think of what happened to Vera Farmiga when she switched from sophisticated adult dramas (Down to the Bone, The Manchurian Candidate, Breaking and Entering, The Departed, Up in the Air) to that four-year Bates Motel series and those Conjuring movies and Liam Neeson schlock like The Commuter. She’s in Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner, true, but she’s mainly identified with pulp these days. She’s more or less regarded as a scream queen.

David Hare, S.J. Clarkson and Carey Mulligan‘s Collateral (Netflix, 3.9) is only 18 days away. A London-based crime thriller about an investigation into the murder of a pizza delivery guy. Set over the course of four days, it’s about Detective Inspector Kip Glaspie (Mulligan) becoming persuaded that the murder wasn’t some random thoughtless act.

Boilerplate: “Glaspie is caught up in a whirlwind investigation to track down the killer and uncover the darker underbelly behind the attack. Meanwhile, politician David Mars (John Simm) gets caught up in the drama through his turbulent relationship with his troubled and unpredictable ex-wife Karen (Billie Piper), and vicar Jane Oliver (Nicola Walker) is forced to conceal her affair with the only witness to the crime.”

This sounds potentially awesome. I adore smart and layered police procedurals, especially when written by someone as storied as Hare. And Mulligan just gets better and better — no stopping her.

I’m looking forward to finally seeing Eugene Jarecki‘s The King within the next few weeks. I’ve missed it twice so far — a somewhat longer version that premiered at last May’s Cannes Film Festival under the title The Promised Land, and a tightened version that played Sundance ’18 under the current title. Oscilloscope will be releasing Jarecki’s doc “later this year,” according to Variety‘s Dave McNary in a piece that ran on 1.17.

Jarecki says the Cannes version “wasn’t finished” and that people who’ve seen both versions have found it “hugely changed.”

Condensed logline: “A musical road trip across America in Elvis Presley‘s 1963 Rolls Royce, and a doc that explores how a country boy lost his authenticity and became a king while his country lost her democracy and became an empire.”

Extended logline: “Featuring cameos from the likes of Alec Baldwin, Chuck D, Emmylou Harris, Ethan Hawke and Mike Myers and set 40 years after Presley’s death, the doc is about Jarecki recalling the country Presley left behind. From the deep south to New York, Las Vegas and beyond, a tapestry of luminaries and unknown Americans join the journey, expressing themselves in words and song.”

Excerpt from David Ehrlich’s Indiewire review, filed on 5.20.17: “A documentary as sprawling and brilliant and flawed as the country it traverses, The Promised Land is a fascinatingly overstuffed portrait of America in decline.

“In the process, it’s also (a) a biography of the 20th century’s most famous musician, (b) a story about how a man became king of a democratic nation, (c) a nuanced analysis of cultural appropriation in a multi-racial society, (d) a southern-fried rock n’ roll performance piece, (e) a horrifyingly sober look at the rise of Donald Trump, (f) a closed-casket funeral service for The American Dream, (g) the best recent film about how the hell we got here and more. So much more.

Despite what Variety‘s Kris Tapley posted at the end of a 2.20 piece titled “Oscar Best Picture Winner Poised to Rout History,” Oscar balloting begins today (2.20) and finishes seven days hence (2.27). Tapley wrote that “final ballots go out Feb. 27.” In what descriptive or metaphysical realm are final Oscar ballots going “out” seven days from now? They need to be completed by that day and heading back “in“, no?

Hollywood Elsewhere feels obliged to remind Academy voters that giving your Best Picture vote to a film that doesn’t have the horses to even begin to qualify as the “best” film of the year by any seasoned criteria, despite the emotional chords it managed to strike in your chest cavity, is a perfectly natural thing, and you shouldn’t feel squeamish or hesitant about that.

Especially if you’re among the younger wave of Academy members, numbering 1457, who were invited to join in 2016 (683) and ’17 (774). You have earned your bones, newbies, and have a full and absolute right to get it wrong as much as those Academy members who gave the Best Picture Oscar to all those right-for-the-zeitgeist button pushers (Driving Miss Daisy, Chicago, The Greatest Show on Earth, Chariots of Fire, Crash, Forrest Gump, Around The World in Eighty Days) of the past. There’s no shame in this. Academy members have been embarassing themselves for decades. From time to time, I mean.

I guess I was wrong in stating yesterday that The Shape of Water is locked to win Best Picture. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe the “kooky” (Tom O’Neil‘s term) preferential ballot will allow a popular second-place contender to sneak in and take the prize. The beloved Guillermo del Toro is definitely assured of a Best Director win, and no one will steal pre-engraved Oscars from the four acting lockdowns (Oldman, McDormand, Rockwell, Janney), and the winner of the Best Original Screenplay will be…I’m undecided. Probably Get Out but Sunday’s Best Picture BAFTA win might have given Three Billboards some last-minute momentum. But all hail Call Me By Your Name‘s James Ivory, at least, for his guaranteed Best Adapted Screenplay win.

There are reportedly 6687 Academy members now, and the new crowd (1457) represents…what, 17% or 18% of the total?

I have no problem with 98% of the responses to Black Panther being about representation and what a huge cultural moment it signifies, etc. These reactions are obviously valid. HE totally gets and endorses them as far as they go. But somewhere down the road people are going to eventually step back and address what various contrarians have been saying (like Jordan Ruimy), and perhaps even what I’ve been saying, which is that it doesn’t really find the groove until the last hour kicks in. But until that happens, no worries.

Posted on 11.24.16: Back in my Westfield days there was a big, dark-haired beefy guy named Bob Simon who used to give me all kinds of shit in junior and senior high. I hated him with a passion, and I seem to recall hearing a few years back that he’s dead. God’s grace!

I was once beaten by Simon in the back of a car on a trip back from Staten Island, where’d we’d go every weekend to get drunk as skunks. Admittedly I would act like an asshole after downing four or five cans of beer (“I’m a six-can man!” I triumphantly slurred one night) but that’s a side issue.

The animus between Simon and I began during 8th grade band practice. I played second trumpet; Simon was on the bass drum. During an attempt to perform a marching number, the headstrong music teacher (Mr. Buriss, called “Mr. Bur-ass” by some of his more spirited students) got angry with Simon for repeatedly missing a cue. He lost his temper, whacked his conductor’s stick on a metal bandstand, glared at Simon and blurted out “my God, man…you are thick!”

I told the guys in our peer group about the incident, and for the next few days “Simon, you’re thick!” was a thing. From that moment on I was on Simon’s shitlist. The goadings, humiliations and degradings were constant.

The Westfield high-school climate was hellish, no question. I suppose on some level it sharpened or toughened my game, but I think I suffered from a kind of PTSD for a couple of years after our family moved to Wilton, Connecticut.

I used to hitchhike everywhere in my mid to late teens, and people used to pick me up. There were times when I’d have to wait for 15 or 20 minutes but someone always pulled over eventually. Those were the days. The last time I thumbed a ride was ten years ago in Park City, and the only reason anyone stopped was because the Sundance Film Festival was on and I was wearing a press badge and my cowboy hat and I looked reasonably sane. Otherwise hitchhiking died…what, sometime in the late ’70s?

I was hitching north on Route 7 in Wilton, Connecticut. An old friend who was a girl (as opposed to a girlfriend) was with me, and dusk was starting to settle into night. The cars were whizzing by pretty fast (25 or 30 mph) but I was situated near a big gravel shoulder that made it easy to pull over. So I’m standing there and all of a sudden I was hit in my right shoulder…thunk. Like some boxer had walked up and punched me. It didn’t exactly “hurt” but definitely felt like a blow of some kind. I grabbed my shoulder and felt something gooey. And then chunks of something brittle, like potato chips or pieces of plaster.

That’s right — a guy riding shotgun in somebody’s car had hit me with an egg.

There was a traffic light about 100 feet in front of where I was standing, and that’s surely where he spotted me from. A friend was driving, of course. They must have been shopping at a nearby supermarket.

Imagine how fast the shotgun guy had to react. “Look at that fucking guy!” He immediately dove over the back seat and reached into one of the grocery bags. He ripped open a carton of eggs, grabbed one, rolled down the passenger window and told the driver to slow down a tad. It’s not that hard to hit something from a moving car but you can miss if you’re not careful. Did he throw the egg like a baseball or did he do an underhand lob? Was he aiming for my head?

“The fuck…somebody just hit me with an egg!” I yelled. The girl who was a friend (i.e., Nancy) found this hilarious. Gales of laughter. I was mystified. Why would anyone do that? I was scraping the yolk and the gooey clear fluid off my jacket and throwing tiny gobs of it to the ground. Nancy couldn’t stop laughing.

For whatever reason I’ve never forgotten this moment.

From David Thomson‘s “New Biographical Dictionary of Film (Sixth Edition)“: “Sterling Hayden always looked shy of glossy stardom, more his own master than the smile-flexing Flynns and Powers. At his best, Hayden was solid, weathered and fatalistic: a taciturn, gangling John Hamilton, as calm as a Melville sailor who had seen great sights and was puzzled by the need to talk of them.

“Three times that placid strength was invoked: as the horse-loving perfectionist in The Asphalt Jungle (’50, John Huston); as the stranger in Johnny Guitar (’53, Nicholas Ray), deliberating over the operatic dialogue of that film; as the organizer in The Killing (’56, Stanley Kubrick), finally dismayed by the dollar bills winnowed in aircraft slipstream.”

Originally posted on 11.14.10: “A Wiltonian whom I came to know in the late ’70s, Hayden was a fascinating, hungry, obviously vulnerable fellow, insecure and ridden with guilt about naming names in the ’50s, jolly or surly depending on the time of day, very singular, a great contentious bear of a man, always the thinker, certainly a poet or a man trying all the time to be one, a man of the sea and a boy in some ways.

“There are the rote facts of life, the plain material truth of things, and then there are the currents within. The singing angels, the demons, the fireflies, the banshees, the echoes, the dreams…the vague sense of a continuing infinite scheme and how we fit into that.

Possibly the best sentence I’ve ever written: “We all define our lives as a constant mixing of these two aspects, but the charm and final value of a person, for me, is about how much he/she seems to be dealing with the interior world, and how much he/she comments and refers to those currents and laughs about them, and basically lives on the flow of that realm.

A day or two ago HE’s own Kim Morgan visited the two-story Kensington residence of Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville, at 153 Cromwell Road.

I wouldn’t live there myself — noisy traffic, too many hotels. I’m more of a Russell Square type of guy, or, if you want to be really precise, the corner building at 16 Bedford Way. Has anyone ever strolled around Russell Square on a moderately cool fall day? God lives there.

I would also be okay with living at George Smiley‘s townhouse at 9 Bywater Street in Chelsea.

If you were young when Reality Bites opened on 2.18.94, or exactly 24 years ago, you’re presumably aware that whatever qualities you had that were nervy and attuned and extra-potent in the early Clinton era…well, you know. Time is a killer or at least a diminisher. Everything fades, hairlines recede, midsections spread. The Millennials have already made way for Generation Z. You’ve presumably moved ahead in your field but biologically speaking you’re in the middle of the line, slightly ahead of GenX. Yeah, the boomers can go fuck themselves

Life is generally cruel but especially so in the film industry, and the brutal fact is that two of the principals in this scene are still kicking and thriving but a third is…well, doing okay.

Winona Ryder, who seemed to make a kind of comeback in Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan (’10), was around 22 when Reality Bites was filmed. She’d been a brand-name actress since Beetlejuice and Heathers popped in ’88 and early ’89, when she was 17 and 18. She was great opposite Daniel Day Lewis in Nicholas Hytner‘s The Crucible (’96) but things haven’t been the same since the ’01 shoplifting thing and the four-year-hiatus that followed. She’s doing fine today, but the peak years are memories in a jar.

Ethan Hawke, whose hair is now streaked with gray and whose physique has become pudgy, is my idea of a creatively thriving indie-god hyphenate. His most recent directorial effort was the Sundance ’18 hit Blaze. Hawke is a pusher and a puncher, and seemingly tireless. That final argument scene with Julie Delpy in Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight (’13) was legendary. He was superb in in the 2004 off-Broadway stage production of David Rabe‘s Hurlyburly and staggering in the ’06 Lincoln Center production of Tom Stoppard‘s Coast of Utopia trilogy, which I saw with Santa Barbara Film festival honcho Roger Durling.