A few weeks ago I read an eight-year-old old draft of Bryan Sipe‘s Demolition (10.8.07). Though well written and “sensitive” in the vein of American Beauty-ish (i.e., a guy going off the track, ignoring social norms, following odd instincts), it struck me as a bit too self-consciously quirky — just a little too precious. But the movie reps a significant upgrade of the material, and credit for this, of course, goes to director Jean-Marc Vallee.

Last night I saw Demolition at the Prince of Wales. The fact that Fox Searchlight won’t release until next April has stirred curiosity about what’s wrong with it — why bump it out of award season? The answer is “who knows but it’s not half bad.”

As indicated, it’s about a youngish, day-dreamy investment banker (Jake Gyllenhaal) succumbing to all kinds of weird, self-absorbed behavior as a way of dealing with his wife’s car-crash death. He doesn’t grieve as much go inward. He ignores his job, grows a stubble beard, becomes enamored of fixing machinery and then tearing things down. In so doing he begin to increasingly mystify and then piss off his father-in-law (Chris Cooper). He also slides into a nonsexual but connected relationship with a customer service rep (Naomi Watts) for a vending machine company. She has a somewhat alienated son (Judah Lewis) and a big, suspicious, more-than-a-little-angry live-in boyfriend.

The settled-in acting never feels calculated or pushed or “performed”, and the photography (by Yves Belanger) and editing seem extra-fleet and tight and generally supplies a more sophisticated feeling than Vallee’s Wild or Dallas Buyer’s Club had.

As mentioned on 9.8, Demolition costar Judah Lewis, whose age is being kept hidden for some reason but who seems to be around 14, has a certain je nais sais quoi X-factor “star is born” thing going on. I caught Demolition early last evening, and Lewis’s scenes with Jake Gyllenhaal (i.e., “Are you fucking my mom?”) definitely pop. Edgy magnetism, the camera likes him or something, etc. Lewis plays Naomi Watts‘ son Chris, a bordering-on-too-pretty kid with longish blonde hair who may be gay. Something about his looks and acting style reminded me of Leonardo DiCaprio between Growing Pains and his costarring role in Critters 3. Lewis’s eyes have a certain “extra-alert but masking something vulnerable and uncertain” quality, and Chris has the usual rebellious, cigarette-smoking, rock-and-roll-dancing early teen thing down pat. Whatever “it” is, Lewis has it. With Demolition not coming out until April, Lewis’s first feature will be Ericson Core‘s Point Break (Warner Bros,. 12.25). He should grow his hair longer — he looks and sounds cooler in the film than he did in this red-carpet interview, which was taped last night.

Hats off to HE’s ad guy Sean Jacobs for throwing this together yesterday — the first in a series of many charts that will attempt to gauge sentiments about potential Oscar favorites in the usual categories, Best Picture being the natural lead-off. (It’s included in HE’s first Little Yellow Pill newsletter blast, which goes out today.) I can’t allude to the source but during Telluride I heard second-hand that Leonardo DiCaprio‘s confidence about the quality of The Revenant is through the roof. Do I seriously believe that Son of Saul has a shot? No — it’s a likely Best Foreign Language Feature nominee, but it’s easily one of the ten best of the year and right now there’s no ignoring that fact. Will the same Academy faint-of-hearts who refused to watch 12 Years A Slave screeners watch Beasts of No Nation, much less vote for it? Yesterday I was quoted by a WKYC TIFF poll as follows: “If you want a very good film that some might even walk out on, it’s this one. But it’s almost Apocalypse Now-like.”

The title of Michael Moore‘s Where To Invade Next, which had its big debut last night at Toronto’s Princess of Wales theatre, suggests some kind of satirical jeremiad against American military interventionism over the last six or seven decades. Nope — it’s actually an amusing, alpha-wavey, selectively factual love letter to the kind of European Democratic socialism that Bernie Sanders has been espousing for years. And it’s funny and illuminating and generally soothing (unless you’re a rightie). A distributor I know called it “toothless,” which is arguably true if you want to put it that way, but the film is engaging in an alpha, up-with-people sense. It’s basically an argument in favor of “we” values and policies over the “me and mine” theology that lies of the heart of the American dream.

The primary theme of Sanders’s domestic philosophy is that benefits for working Joes are far more bountiful in many European countries (France, Italy, Finland, Norway, Slovenia, Portugal), and that we should try to humanize American life by instituting some of their social policies. He’s talking higher taxes, yes, but guaranteed health care, free universities, longer vacations (up to 35 days per year in Italy), a far less predatory work environment, better school-cafeteria food, more relaxation and apparently more sex, etc.

By any semi-humane measuring stick this is a much more attractive, more dignity-affirming way of life — imperfect and fraught with the usual problems, but far preferable, it seems, to the ruggedly Darwinian, rough-and-tumble, wealth-favoring oligarchial system that Americans are currently saddled with.

Moore simplifies like any documentarian trying to reach a mass audience. I’m sure there are many, many problems in Democratic socialist countries that he’s ignoring and then some. As Screen Daily‘s Allan Hunter notes, “Some of the people who actually live in those countries might find [Moore’s] views a little starry-eyed and unsophisticated.” But I strongly doubt that Moore has fabricated anything here.

Not that I believe for a second that Sanders will become the Democratic nominee, but if that were to happen you know that Mr. and Mrs. Under-educated and None-too-bright (i.e., the majority) would vote for Greg Stillson hands down.

All I have time for this evening are the two opening-night TIFF screenings — Jean Marc Vallee‘s Demolition at 6:30 pm and Michael Moore‘s Where To Invade Next at 9:30 pm. These plus some running around activities between now (3:15 pm) and 6 pm or thereabouts. Demolition and Invade are throwing after-parties, of course.

“Atom Egoyan’s ongoing search for his own best form makes no real breakthrough in Remember, a state-hopping Nazi-hunt mystery that puts a creditably sincere spin on material that is silly at best. At worst, tyro writer Benjamin August’s screenplay is a crass attempt to fashion a Memento-style puzzle narrative from post-Holocaust trauma. Toggling variables of disguised identity and dementia, as Christopher Plummer’s ailing German widower travels across North America in search of the camp commander he recalls from his time in Auschwitz, the pic is riddled with lapses in logic even before a stakes-shifting twist that many viewers might see coming. Crafted in utilitarian fashion by Egoyan, Remember does little to earn the poignancy of Plummer’s stricken performance.” — from a 9.10 Variety review by the often accommodating Guy Lodge.

The right owns blacklisting, or rather their fathers and grandfathers earned it back in the late ’40s and ’50s, branding it into American conservative legacy like red-hot iron. The idea of blacklisting anyone for their political convictions is reprehensible, of course, but if, let’s say, anyone on the left wanted to play around with the idea of blacklisting a rightie or even flirt with a fantasy along these lines just for amusement’s sake, contemporary righties would have no choice but to take it and like it. They could complain but they have no leg to stand on. Their forebears bought the farm.

I’m sorry but I was listening last night to “Walking In The Rain,” the ’64 Ronettes song that was written by Barry Mann, Phil Spector and Cynthia Weil. And out of the blue the chorus just seemed…well, poorly thought out. I’m not saying it’s on the same level as those King Kong natives building a huge gate in that wall intended to keep all those dinosaurs and giant apes from invading their village, but it sure as hell is illogical.

The lead-up to the chorus goes “He’ll be kind of shy / But real good lookin’ too / And I’ll be certain he’s my guy / By the things he’ll like to do.” And then the mind-blower: “Like walking in the rain / And wishing on the stars up above / And being so in love.”

Has anyone in the history of the planet earth ever been able to look up and see stars in the middle of a rainshower? Ever? Particularly the kind accompanied by thunder, which “Walking in the Rain” producer Phil Spector threw in for added emotional effect?

Obviously one can interpret the lyrics as being about a would-be boyfriend who likes to (a) walk in the rain as well as (b) wish on stars after the weather has cleared, but to the casual listener the lyric clearly suggests that the rainstorm stroll and the star-wishing are happening on the same dreamy date.

It’s fucked up, and to my knowledge nobody has pointed this out in over half a century.

To judge from David Rooney‘s 9.8 Hollywood Reporter review, Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow‘s De Palma, a A24 doc about the once-dazzling auteurist who’s been downswirling for at least the last 15 years, is a lot of fun, or more precisely “a blast.” It’s just played in Venice and will screen at the N.Y. Film Festival…but not, apparently, here in Toronto.

My view is that De Palma was a truly exciting, must-watch director from the late ’60s to mid ’70s (Greetings to The Phantom of the Paradise to Carrie), and an exasperating, occasionally intriguing director from the late ’70s to mid ’90s (Dressed To Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, Carlito’s Way, Mission: Impossible, Snake Eyes). But he’s been “over” in the sense of failing to read or respond to the culture for years. I used to love the guy but then he made Mission to Mars (’00), Femme Fatale (’02), The Black Dahlia (’06), Redacted (’07) and Passion (’12)…over and out.

Non-pros who’ve never attended the Cannes Film Festival won’t care about the following, but a persistent and profoundly irritating sound problem in the Grand Lumiere theatre, the largest inside the sprawling festival bunker known as the Grand Palaix, hadn’t been solved as of last May’s festival, and so this morning I wrote Cannes honcho Thierry Fremaux about asking Boston Light and Sound’s Chapin Cutler to take a look at things:

“Thierry,

“I’ve written you once before about what I and several others regard as a troubling sound issue in the Grand Lumiere. Too much bass and echo, not enough middle-range, and a resulting inability to understand much of the dialogue in certain films. I’m not a sound technician but there’s an acoustical condition called ‘standing waves‘ that may be a factor. Or not — I’m not sure. But I know that the Grand Lumiere’s sound has definitely compromised the dialogue in certain films shown there over the last two or three years, and that a solution needs to be found.

“Last May the dialogue in two films that I saw in the Grand Lumiere — Denis Villenueve‘s Sicario and Justin Kurzel‘s Macbeth — was all but unintelligible. More than a few journalists have reported the same. I can say for sure that in the case of Sicario it’s not the mix. A week ago I re-viewed Sicario in CAA’s screening room in Los Angeles, and the dialogue was fine — I understood every last vowel and consonant.