Middleburg Film Festival attendees were seriously into catching yesterday’s 5pm screening of Meg Ryan‘s Ithaca…long lines, hopped-up chatter. They wanted to see Meg, of course, but this transferred into what seemed to be serious interest in the film. And then Ithaca played and the aftermath was “uhm, okay…ssshhh, keep it down, she’s right over there.” By contrast the pre-screening vibe before the 8 pm showing of Todd Haynes‘ Carol could be described as one of interest but not excitement. The “air” in the room felt settled (i.e., less than fully engaged) when it played, and my sense of the after-vibe was one of respect more than anything else. This is a conservative community, after all — I shouldn’t have expected the same near-euphoria that greeted Carol‘s first screening in Cannes. It played just as effectively for me, I can tell you. Cate Blanchett gives such a glammy actressy performance, so 1950s elegant in so many ways, mannered but vulnerable. And the cigarettes, my God! I was on the verge of coughing just from watching her ignite one after another. And there’s no diminishment from Rooney Mara, who deserved that Best Actress award from the Cannes jury. I understand, of course, the political strategy of running Mara as Best Supporting Actress, but also the irony as she’s arguably playing the lead role, despite what the title implies.

Initial reports indicate no fatalities so far from Hurricane Patricia…thank God. If I were near Puerto Vallarta I’m sure I’d be soaked and stressed. But from a visual entertainment perspective Patricia has been a bit of a ho-hummer…be honest. Turbulent shoreline, sheets of rain, high velocity winds…yawn. It was a much scarier weather news story when the satellite images first appeared than when it actually hit land. The news channels said Godzilla would wreak havoc…nope. Already downgraded, on the verge of being forgotten.

I don’t want to sound mean but Meg Ryan‘s Ithaca, which screened tonight at the Middleburg Film Festival, isn’t good enough to warrant a full review. It was shot too fast (23 days) for too little money in Virginia, and I’m afraid that Ryan’s inexperience sealed its fate. I’m sorry but that feeling when a movie isn’t cutting it is unmistakable. Ithaca lacks tension and at times clarity; it seems under-energized, even amateurish at times. I didn’t care at all for Andrew Dunn‘s cinematography (particularly the framings) and the lazybones editing by John F. Lyons; nor was I taken by Erik Jendresen‘s in-and-out screenplay.

Ithaca director-costar Meg Ryan introducing her film before a Middleburg Film Festival audience earlier this evening.

Set during World War II and based on William Saroyan‘s 1943 novel “The Human Comedy“, which began as a script for a same-titled, allegedly sentimental Mickey Rooney movie which opened a month after the book came out, Ryan’s film is basically about small-town residents coping with war-related death and loss.

It focuses on Homer (the good-looking Alex Neustaedter), a teenager working as a part-time telegram delivery guy in Ithaca, a small town in California’s San Joaquin Valley. If you’ve got a son or husband fighting Hitler or the Japs and you see Homer heading towards your home with an envelope in his hand…watch out! Ryan plays Homer’s widowed mom, Tom Hanks her deceased husband (a cameo-sized role, shot in a day) and Sam Shepard is Homer’s grizzled, laid-back boss at the telegraph office.

If Ryan had been content to shoot it simply like an ’80s TV movie it might have been something, but for my money she tries too hard (which first-time directors often do) and lays on the you-don’t-wanna-know. I’m sorry but it’s…fuck it, I don’t want to cause pain or say any more. HE to Ryan:  It’s very hard to make a good film — I get that.  Try, try again.

Times Square in March 1943 — the sentimental movie version of William Saroyan‘s The Human Comedy with Mickey Rooney in the lead role is playing at the Astor.

“Repressed sexuality is a major undercurrent in John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds (’66), signaling the sexual revolution movement among middle-class Americans in the 1960s. And so it’s easy to see why Rock Hudson, whose double life was a constant throughout his career despite its widespread knowledge throughout the industry, was drawn to a picture about the manipulation of appearances and the denial of one’s inner self.

“Before John Randolph opts into the program, there’s a bedroom scene where his wife makes her way onto her husband’s separate bed. She offers herself up to him, but he remains cold and unwilling, the moment as unsexy a depiction of middle-aged sexuality as ever to appear in cinema.

“Later, after his transformation into Wilson, Hamilton attends the bacchanalia festival with Nora (Salome Jens) and finds himself uncomfortable in his surroundings. Free spirits disrobe to their nethers and gaily dance about, the frantic cutting of the sequence reflecting Hamilton’s discomfort with his own desire to join them. He stands on the margins, watching, enticed and ashamed for it, until Nora strips and leaps into a grape crushing vat along with countless nude others.

“Finally the crowd gathers him and, though he protests, forces off his clothes; he’s plunged into the vat and covered in grape must. Clinging to Nora, he at last lets go and begins to shout with ecstasy and joy. Hamilton’s sexual repression seems cured, a hopeful idea for Hudson, whose secret could not be so easily or publically freed from its constraints at the time.” — from Brian Eggart’s Deep Focus review, posted on 8.18.12.

I’d be giving serious thought to a second viewing Son of Saul at 2:30 pm if not for the fact that the screening is in Upperville, or about eight miles west of Middleburg…later. I guess I’ll give The Armor of Light a shot, but I can’t imagine being the slightest bit interested in a doc about a conservative, gun-owning evangelical minister (i.e., Reverend Rob Schenck) who “finds the courage to preach about the toll of gun violence in America.” (That takes courage, does it?) I also plan to re-experience Todd Haynes‘ Carol, which I haven’t seen since that Cannes screening five and a half months ago.

Five and a half weeks ago I caught a Toronto Film Festival screening of David Gordon Green‘s Our Brand Is Crisis, a Sandra Bullock-goes-to-Bolivia political dramedy, and pretty much panned it. It’ll open on 5.30 in the face of critical disdain — 40% Rotten Tomatoes, 60% Metacritic. Here are excerpts from my 9.12 review:

Excerpt #1: “David Gordon Green‘s Our Brand Is Crisis (Warner Bros., 10.30) transforms Rachel Boynton’s same-titled, decade-old documentary into a Sandra Bullock film in much the same way that the once-austere Gravity became a spacesuit-Sandy-in-peril movie for her fans.

Excerpt #2: “Imagine Michael Ritchie‘s The Candidate with Robert Redford still playing Bill McKay but instead of Peter Boyle as his campaign manager you’ve got the spirited and irrepressible but at the same struggling-with-depression Barbra Streisand (half the way she was in What’s Up, Doc?, and half Kuh-Kuh-Katey in The Way We Were), and that’s pretty much what Our Brand Is Crisis is, except it’s set in Bolivia and Redford is played by Joaquim de Almeida.

Excerpt #3: “Over and over and over Bullock gets her closeups in this thing, and she looks so reliably and relentlessly herself in every shot and scene. She’s playing a brilliant political consultant in a sometimes surly, sometimes pratfally way, but Our Brand is Crisis is mainly about the fact that (a) she looks burnt-out sullen and kind of Lauren Bacall-y with her one-size-fits-all deadpan glamour-puss expression, nicely dyed blonde hair and distinctive black-rimmed glasses, and (b) she has a great-looking ass for a woman of any age, let alone her own.

Excerpt #4: “Before people start calling me a sexist pig, understand that at the climax of a completely absurd mountain-road race between two political campaign tour buses, Bullock drops trou and shoves her creamy biege, perfectly-shaved butt cheeks out of a side window, ‘aimed’ at her political opponents who are riding alongside. (It’s called “mooning.”) I would have respected this scene more if Bullock’s ass (or that of the ass model who was hired for this one bit) didn’t look so CG-scrubbed. It looks like a love-doll ass. (And don’t blame me — I’m just describing what I saw.)

Somebody needs to explain how a boilerplate comedy of humiliation works exactly. A feminized, middle-aged stepdad (Will Ferrell) is intimidated and out-swaggered and constantly humiliated by an edgy bike-riding type (Mark Wahlberg) who’s the ex-husband of his wife (Linda Cardellini) and the biological father of the two kids. What kind of person would actually pay to see this? Would it be…what, women who enjoy watching two guys try to out-man or out-father each other? Or Ferrell-like schlumps looking to laugh about the usual frustrations of any suburban dad? Mystifying. Directed and co-written by Sean Anders (We’re The Millers, That’s My Boy), and being released by Paramount on 12.25.

Right away you can sense that John Travolta‘s inhabiting of former O.J. Simpson defense-steam attorney Robert Shapiro is more than a blithe impersonation, and that Ryan Murphy, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski‘s The People vs. O.J. Simpson (FX, February) will probably be a cut or two above. But the best clip by far is the wake-of-the-murder crane shot in which Nicole Brown Simpson’s pet Akita is reacting to what’s just happened.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s American Airlines flight landed at Dulles around 4:10 pm, and 20 minutes later at the baggage carousel I ran into producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa (Nebraska, Little Miss Sunshine) and Steve Golin (The Revenant, Spotlight) plus four or five industry-related ladies whose names I didn’t solicit or have forgotten — no offense. We threw our bags into a dark-chocolate Middleburg Film Festival shuttle and off we went. (Golin told me during the 70-minute drive that The Revenant has just locked, and that the final running time is two hours and 31 minutes.) We pulled into Middleburg’s Salamander Resort & Spa, which is owned by BET co-founder and billionaire Sheila Crump Johnson, around 6 pm. Ten minutes later I was speed-walking into town (roughly 1/3 of a mile) to pick up my press pass.

At 7:30 pm Tom McCarthy‘s Spotlight screened inside a large Salamander conference room following remarks by Ms. Johnson and Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. It was my third viewing, and I swear to God I could see it another three or four times without blinking. I feel such a bond with Spotlight that I wish it would run longer, or at least that a longer cut would be available some day on Bluray. It’s a seriously moral and compassionate film, almost in a Bressonian sense. Every scene is about good, reasonable-minded journalists doing the best they can without any monkeying around. No screaming arguments (okay, there’s one flash of temper), no drunkenness, no excessive behaviors of any kind, no car crashes or chases. In a way, Spotlight is a film you want to move into and never leave.

(l. to r.) Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday, Washington Post Executive editor Marty Baron, Spotlight producer Steve Golin following this evening’s screening.

Old-world, country-estate library/lounge inside Salamander Resort & Spa.

After it ended Golin and Washington Post executive editor and former Boston Globe editor Marty Baron (who is perfectly portrayed in the film by Liev Schreiber) were interviewed by WashPost film critic & longtime HE pally Ann Hornaday. The film necessarily compresses the story of the Boston Globe Spotlight team’s investigation into sexual abuse within the Boston archdiocese, Baron said, but it tells it skillfully and accurately. And the filmmakers asked all the right questions and double-checked the facts. Hornaday called it “journalist porn” of the highest order.

There’s such a flush and settled vibe here in Middleburg. Acres and acres of sprawling green meadows and wooded areas everywhere you look, and no ugly shopping malls or fat families or Kim Davis types waddling around. An affluent haven. The outdoors smell wonderful — grassy, earthy, a slight hint of horse dung. This is God’s country, or the kind of country, at least, that the well-off tend to cultivate and tastefully build upon with or without God’s assistance. It’s a bit like the English countryside, which I sampled six years ago during a Fantastic Mr. Fox press junket visit to the late Roald Dahl‘s home in Great Missenden. I don’t belong but I’m glad to be here, and am very gratified to wallow in all this splendor and comfort. Thanks again to Obscured Pictures‘ R.J. Millard for inviting me, and thanks especially to Ms. Johnson. And a tip of the hat to festival programmer Susan Koch for choosing wisely and well.

No question about it — the Salamander Resort & Spa has been built primarily for the swells.

I’m on a packed American flight, halfway to Dulles and ultimately the Middleburg Film Festival, the “horsey Sundance” that I briefly described on 10.7. I’ll be there for four days and then it’s back to Washington for 48 hours (including a visit to the Library of Congress’s Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center) and then down to the Savannah Film Festival, where I’ll be for six days…well, five and a wake-up.