1. Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro
2. Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers (a ’70s character-driven thing, yes, but an absolutely first-rate resuscitation of this type of film)
3. Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things (rousing nutter filmmaking…bawdy, nervy, wildly imaginative and yet a tad over-praised at Venice and Telluride due to the hothouse atmosphere of those two gatherings)
4. Cord Jefferson‘s American Fiction
5. David Fincher‘s The Killer
6. Tran Anh Hung’s The Pot-au-Feu (aka Tbe Taste of Things)
7. Michael Mann‘s Ferrari
8. Guy Ritchie‘s The Covenant
9. Christian Mungiu‘s RMN
10. Ilker Çatak’s The Teacher’s Lounge (official German submission for Best Int’l feature)

11. Jonathan Glazer‘s The Zone of Interest
12. Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer — first-rate film but I groaned at the one-hour mark, knowing there were two full hours to go…my soul softly wept.
13. Aki Kaurismäki‘s Fallen Leaves (Chaplinesque, slightly glum relationship comedy-drama..quietly touching performances from costars Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen)
14. Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie [manosphere pissnado demerit]
15. Cruise & McQuarrie‘s Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One
16. Errol Morris‘s The Pigeon Tunnel (richly visual, beautifully scored doc about John le Carre…enveloping and rather dazzling)
17. Eric Gravel‘s Full Time
18. Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon
19. Matt Johnson‘s Blackberry tied with The Burial, a formulaic but satisfying courtoom dramas featuring Jamie Foxx‘s best performance since Ray.
20. Ari Aster‘s Beau Is Afraid

21`. Ben Affleck‘s Air
22. Jean-Stephen Sauvaire’s Black Flies.
23. Steven Soderbergh‘s Magic Mike’s Last Dance
24. Nicole Holofcener‘s You Hurt My Feelings

Yesterday Deadline‘s Justin Kroll reported that James L. Brooks is planning to direct a new feature — his first since 2010’s How Do You Know, which unfortunately didn’t work out.

The Brooks project is called Ella McCay, and it sounds like some kind of West Wing-y type deal but set in a governor’s mansion. Politics mixed with a romantic current, I’m presuming, Brooks being Brooks.

The titular role will be played by 27 year-old Emma Mackey (Emma, Death on the Nile), whom HE approves of on a primal attraction level. The costars are Woody Harrelson, Jamie Lee Curtis and Albert Brooks. 20th Century Studios will distribute.

Kroll: “The film will follow an idealistic young politician (Mackey) who juggles familial issues and a challenging work life while preparing to take over the job of her mentor, the state’s longtime incumbent governor (presumably Harrelson).”

Take over the governorship at age 30 or thereabouts? How would that work exactly? Maybe the plot will have Mackey secretly take over a la Edith Wilson after Governor Harrelson falls ill. Maybe she’ll assume power after Harrelson is brought down by a sexual scandal (i.e., New York State’s Kathy Hochul taking the reins after Andrew Cuomo was torpedoed)…something like that.

Brooks’ heyday happened during the ’70s on television (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi), and in features during the late ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. Nobody was more in love with the Brooks brand than myself — those brilliant, incisive, emotional empathy scenarios that wrestled with real-life adult stuff. Then again Brooks has been out of the game for 13 years, and his last film was a bust, and he’s now 83.

When you boil it all down, Brooks’ feature film rep rests upon four really good feature films — 1979’s Starting Over (which he wrote and co-produced along with director Alan Pakula), 1983’s Terms of Endearment, 1987’s Broadcast News and 1997’s As Good as It Gets. But really three as Pakula was in command of that Burt Reynolds-Jill Clayburgh romcom.

Brooks’ I’ll Do Anything (’94) was a disaster, and Spanglish (’04) didn’t pan out either. On the other hand he produced Big (’88), The War of the Roses (’89), Jerry Maguire (’96), Riding in Cars with Boys (’01), The Edge of Seventeen (’16) and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (’23). Brooks also exec produced Say Anything… (’89) and Bottle Rocket (’96).

Kroll reports that Brooks will produce Ella McCay along with Gracie Films producing partners Julie Ansell and Richard Sakai.

If and when The Beast persuades Tucker Carlson to become his 2024 vice-presidential running mate, two things will most likely happen. One (and it pains me to admit this**), Trump-Carlson would probably beat Biden-Harris. Especially with RFK, Jr., Jill Stein and Cornel West mucking things up. And two, Carlson would probably mop the floor with Kamala Harris in the vice-presidential debate. She wouldn’t stand a chance.

Maggie Haberman to The Dispatch‘s Jamie Weinstein (11.20.23): “It’s a real thing that I’m hearing as a possibility. The likelihood of it I don’t know. I think there will be a pretty professionalized vetting process. Honestly, I know that might sound unbelievable, based on what we’ve seen from Trump historically, but Trump’s current political team is the best at least as a non-incumbent. There’s just a different level of control.

“I don’t think the Tucker thing is not real. I think the risk with Tucker Carlson and Trump is that Tucker Carlson is a star in his own right, and I’m not sure how Trump would contend with that.”

Cord Jefferson‘s American Fiction (Amazon MGM, 12.15) is a brilliant, perceptive, dryly amusing adult chuckler. Not a “comedy” but a heh-heh-funny kinda thing. I adored the low-keyness of it, and was delighted, of course, by the focus upon the general insanity of white wokeness — the off-the-charts fetishizing of black culture by guilty (wealthy, well-educated) white liberals. So I felt like a pig in shit.

And yet the source novel, Percival Everett‘s “Erasure,” was published 22 years ago, and therefore couldn’t have addressed the woke lunacy of the last five or six years. But Jefferson’s screenplay brings things right up to date. And having seen it this morning, I certainly understand the popularity of the film, starting with the Toronto Film festival debut (9.8.23); ditto those who voted to give it the People’s Choice Award.

Alas, I liked the first 45 or 50 minutes more than the remaining 60 or 65. (The total running time is 117 minutes.) I didn’t find the second section crushing or devasating or anything in that realm, but my hopes had been raised to such a degree…let me try again.

Here’s how I put it to a friend an hour ago: I was IN LOVE with American Fiction for the first 45 or 50 minutes. I adored the scathing criticism of idiotic white people falling all over themselves to praise black grit. I was definitely amused and charmed by it, and was positively swooning over Jeffrey Wright’s lead performance, and I really liked Sterling K. Brown‘s gay brother and pretty much the enire supporting cast (Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Adam Brody, Leslie Uggams).

And then a certain mock-literary hustle takes off and becomes a big success, and bit by bit and piece by piece the film starts to soften. The tension begins to dissipate. At times it even flails around. Less focused, less hardcore.

Please don’t think I disliked the second half because it does work here and there, but the back end doesn’t compare with that first 45 or 50. I thought the film might build into something angrier, more cynical, ballsier, franker.

It’s finally, to my mild disappointment, not much more than a smart social satire. Which is fine in itself but for a while I was yearning for so much more.

I thought Jefferson might go for broke and dive deeper, but he didn’t.

Friendo: “As finely crafted as the movie is, part of the reason I loved the first 45 minutes is the intense hope one has that American Fiction is going to be the scandalous, balls-out satire of white wokeness that we so desperately need (and by a black filmmaker!). And though it certainly nods in that direction, that’s not the film it turns out to be. I would call that a seriously blown opportunity.

“I agree that it’s a very solid and humane movie. But given the limitation we’re talking about, it’s being madly overhyped as an Oscar competitor. Clayton Davis and Scott Feinberg think it’s going to win Best Picture!”

Friendo #2 who’s read “Erasure”: “Everett’s book is harder than the film. [Jeffrey Wright]’s sister is murdered by an abortion protester, and the father may have sired another child with a white woman, etc.

“The movie stuff isn’t in the book but the book has a lot of meta, text-within-a-text stuff so I can understand why Jefferson wanted to transpose those effects into the adaptation.

“The book within the book parodies Richard WrIght and of course ‘Ellison’ is meant to evoke Ralph. There is some Ishmael Reed in the mix too. Everett himself teaches college so I’m sure he has had to endure the same sort of thing hat [Wright’s character] does in the opening scene.

“Wright’s romance with Erika Alexander isn’t in the book either. Everett is an executive producer so I presume he signed off on the changes. And I’m sure he knows no one is in a hurry to adapt ‘The Trees.'”

Sasha and I had to record last night’s Oscar Poker rather hurriedly (I was in a supermarket cafe, she was in a Nebraska hotel room), but we managed.

Again the link.

And you can’t beat that 125-minute running time….seriously.

Oliver Stone‘s head is roughly 50% larger than Bill Maher‘s. Okay, 40%.

Friendo: “I love how Stone smokes a few tokes of Maher’s joint — it loosens him up a bit.”