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But Gavin is dead fucking wrong when he says “all this anti-woke stuff is just anti-black…period, full stop.”

HE fully agrees with WaywardGreg: “Being anti-woke isn’t racist. Quite the opposite, actually. People who are anti-woke simply don’t want immutable characteristics being used as a criteria for judging human value.”

HE sez: If you’re black, you’re not necessarily an angel…you might be but not necessarily because of your ethnic identity. And if you’re white, you’re not necessarily a demonic force for racial cruelty…you might be but not necessarily because of your Wonderbread pigmentation.”

…by director Robert Aldrich having told the supporting players to hop up and down and go “whoop-dee-doo!” and “yee-hah!”…it could have been magnificent if the actors had been told to hold it down and act like men and not like five-year-olds, but Aldrich was couldn’t summon the character.

My first viewing of Manhattan was on opening day — Friday, 4.25.79. (Movies didn’t open on Thursdays back then.) I couldn’t wangle a ticket to the big premiere at the Zeigfeld on 4.18, so I saw it at a modest-sized theatre that I can’t recall the name of, but it was located on East 34th street, perhaps near Third Avenue or Lexington but definitely not as far east as Second Ave.

I waited in line a good 45 minutes or so, enjoying the expectant vibe, and what a surge when the crowd finally began to shuffle indoors. The almost quaalude-like high that rippled through the audience during the opening George Gershwin-meets-Gordon Willis montage was ecstatic, shattering — one of the greatest surges of pure cinematic feeling that I’ve ever experienced.

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Please listen to this N.Y. Times Sunday Magazine story by Susan Dominus (10.22.25). It’s about women taking testosterone, and getting high off it. Rhapsodic sexual awakenings! 40-plus women having sex six times a week, and loving it. It’s really well written, and oddly infectious.

From The Ankler‘s Richard Rushfield….

I’m personally afraid (very afraid) of female-created films that appear to be anguish- or pain- or persecution-driven. I’m speaking of a longstanding dread of mute-nostril-agony films that hurl me to the bottom of a terrible black pit. You know…films about this or that woman suffering from this or that oppressive situation a la Mary Bronstein‘s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Mascha Schilinski‘s Sound of Falling, Lynne Ramsay‘s Die My love, Mona Fastvold‘s The Testament of Ann Lee, Sarah Polley‘s Women Talking, Emerald Fennell‘s Promising Young Woman….that line of country.

Does this mean I only want to see buoyant, ironic-happy-face, patty-cake Barbie movies from women directors or about female characters? Of course not. I’m a huge fan of Sarah Gavron‘s Suffragette, Magnus von Horn‘s The Girl With The Needle, Ridley Scott‘s Thelma & Louise, Darren Aronofsky‘s mother!, etc. There are dozens upon dozens more in this vein.

Once upon a time the Manhattan-based Gotham Awards, generally known for their lunatic wokey leanings, were more or less the east coast version of the Spirit Awards, and this meant that eligible films had to have been produced for $35 million or lower. (The Spirit budget cap is $30 million but close enough.) But the Gotham budget cap was removed in 2023 to allow for “a more inclusive submission pool” of potential nominees.

Which is how and why the masssively expensive, progressive-left-leaning One Battle After Another has been nominated for a Gotham Best Feature award. The other nominees are Bugonia, East of Wall, Familiar Touch, Hamnet, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You? (a mute nostril agony film if I’ve ever seen one), Lurker, Sorry, Baby (HE’s personal preference to win!), The Testament of Ann Lee and Train Dreams.

Sessue Hayakawa’s Colonel Saito: “I hate the Gotham Wokeys! They have no shame about praising woke bonafides and identity credentials while giving secondary consideration to achievements in film that are primarily merit-based…no shame about this! In 2023 they gave May December‘s Charles Melton their Best Supporting Actor award because of his half-Asian ancestry (his mother is Korean), and then they lied about this in the aftermath!

“The Gotham Wokey gangbangers are stubborn mules but they have no pride. They endure but haven’t the courage to stand up straight and tall for cinematic art. Plus they’ve blown off gender-based acting categories. I hate them…they’re propagandists!”

On top of which the Gotham Wokeys have failed to nominate Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value for their Best International Feature award…WHY? The nominees are Jafar Panahi‘s It Was Just an Accident (not good enough– won in Cannes for political reasons), Park Chan-Wook‘s No Other Choice, Richard Linklater‘s Nouvelle Vague (this should win!), Mascha Schilinski‘s Sound of Falling (another mute-nostril-agony contender) and Bi Gan‘s Resurrection.

The Outstanding Lead Performance Gotham Award will almost certainly go to Hamnet‘s Jessie Buckley, and the Outstanding Supporting Performance Gothamn trophy should be handed to either Sentimental Value‘s Stellan Skarsgard, One Battle After Another‘s Benicio Del Toro or Jay Kelly‘s Adam Sandler.

And that unalterable fact means that I’ll be obliged — okay, forced — again and again to sit through high-aspiring films that Variety ‘s Guy Lodge will praise to the heavens but which will also try my patience, at the very least, and may, in all probability, compel me to endure serious anguish and perhaps even misery.

The next film by Mascha Schilinski, director of the agonizing Sound of Falling, will probably subject me to great viewing difficulty. The next Park Chan–wook film will almost certainly cause some degree of suffering. Ditto the next cinematically ambitious smarthouse film from Brutalist helmer Brady Corbet, and definitely the next equally ambitious effort from Mona Fastvold, whose The Testament of Ann Lee put me through the ringer a couple of months ago at the Venice Film Festival.

Who are the other guaranteed pain-giving directors? All I know for sure is that they’re out there, waiting to lower the boom. And as William Holden’s Pike Bishop said in The Wild Bunch, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Because grade-A film festivals, of course, are generally dependable forums for the richest, most far-reaching and most delightful films emerging at a given moment. You can’t have one without the other. Suffering and deliverance go hand in hand.

Apologies for failing to quickly acknowledge and suitably mourn the death of Drew Struzan, the celebrated movie-poster guy who passed on 10.13.

I feel especially sorry for anyone who’s had to grapple with the cruel oppressions of Al Z. Heimer….poor fellow. Hugs and condolences to fans, friends and colleagues.

This said, Struzan’s big-studio posters, effective as they were, were solely focused on the mainstream sell. Which is what movie one-sheets are expected to do, of course — instantly sell the movie to the lowest-common-denominator dummies.

And yet the very best ones deliver the sell plus something else…something angular, striking, artful, unexpected. And in so doing they attract moviegoers who are (a) repelled by the generic and (b) looking for something edgy or atypical.

Here are three posters, no offense, that delivered something more…

Written by a good friend (a Los Angeles-based attorney) whom I’ve known since the early ’80s….

“Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere has a lot going for it. It bothered me but in a good way.

“It bothered me to see Springsteen struggling with memories of family dysfunction. The brooding, deeply bruising alcoholic father (Stephen Graham) whose downcast moods seemed to define the household…little Bruce quietly observing and fearing this seething dog of a dad. But after coming off the road and a triumphant tour supporting The River, he seemed barely functional in his personal life. A composite version of a New Jersey girlfriend’s frustrated yearning for a serious relationship with the elusive rock star is a classic example of seeking someone who is obviously unavailable. He isn’t overtly cruel or philandering, just mostly missing in action.

“The muse of music constantly beckons. Springsteen putting together what would become Nebraska in his safe-space bedroom. Jamming with his friends at the legendary Stone Pony in Asbury Park. The sometimes uncomfortable sessions with his musical team struggling to transfer the sound of his home recordings to something that can be commercially released. It shows in miniature the misgivings of the record label and even perhaps his manager, Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong), with this unexpected and seemingly ill-timed musical direction, emerging at a moment when global stardom was in reach if Springsteen would just write some hit songs.

“The tunes that would comprise Born In The USA were mostly in the can but would have to wait a while. The dark themes of Nebraska had to come first as Springsteen needed to exorcise his childhood demons, etc.

“We live in a cynical time. An earnest film about a rock star’s struggles with depression and the release of an acclaimed-but-long-ago album may not resonate all that widely or deeply in 2025. There is also an incongruity in the wide release of a $55 million dollar film where the principals did significant publicity in the service of memorializing a small record by a musician whose mantra for it at the time was: no press, no singles and no tour. Perhaps the movie should have been downsized and followed those instincts.

“Then again, there’s a big difference between releasing a movie into today’s over-saturated media world and releasing a record in 1982 which would get attention just because of the name of the artist and his place in the zeitgeist at that time. We all waited impatiently back then for every new Springsteen record. Bruce’s big era lasted from the ‘mid 70s to the early aughts, and that’s fine. Nearly 30 years. Leave it there. Feel good about that.”

Here’s a starter.

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