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When did it begin to sink in that Brendan Gleeson wasn’t just a bearish, flourishy Irish fellow who would always supply a little something extra but a grander lead-actor sort with a fine blend of sadness, compassion and mirth? One of those guys who doesn’t “act” as much as command the room without apparent effort. His voice settles in like a warm whiskey on a chilly autumn day. I’ve been enjoying Gleeson since the early ’90s but the uptick began with his BAFTA- and Golden Globe-nominated performance in ’08’s In Bruges. Most people will tell you Gleeson’s biggest score so far was playing the charmingly corrupt Sergeant Gerry Boyle in John Michael McDonagh‘s The Guard (’11). But then came Calvary, a new McDonagh-Gleeson collaboration that premiered at Sundance ’14. Gleeson won some of the best reviews of his career as a burly Irish priest whose life has been threatened by a man who was victimized by a Catholic priest as a child. The film struck me as being about several social ills affecting Ireland but no one’s obliged to agree, much less listen.

Brendan Gleeson — Thursday, 10.9, 11:55 am.

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There’s a bitchy N.Y. Times critic in Birdman named Tabitha who’s very well played by Lindsay Duncan. During today’s New York Film Festival press conference costar Edward Norton noted (according to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Ashley Lee) that the real-life Tabitha is “Manohla,” referring to Times film critic Manohla Dargis. Costar Zach Galifianakis said he’s “never had a bad review so I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about…it sounds familiar, but I’ve heard people talk about it.”

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Laura Poitras‘s Citizenfour (Radius/TWC, 10.24), the step-by-step story of how Poitras and hotshot journalist Glenn Greenwald broke the story of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, is a gripping, dead brilliant cyber-thriller. It’s a documentary, of course, but I’ve never seen a doc that feels less like one. This is realtime drama, suspenseful as a motherfucker, and with the tonal vibe of a low-key espionage thriller. In short it’s great cinema — riveting, moody, disturbing. And cut and paced like…what, a 21st Century Ipcress File? Something like that.

The surprise is that it’s emotionally engaging. That’s because the affable, quite eloquent Snowden comes across as a good guy with fears and regular-guy emotions and a pair of steel balls — a personable, highly intelligent fellow in a tough spot but with firm convictions and no regrets whatsoever (or none to speak of). He’s not in a serene situation but he’s clearly at peace with himself, and undeterred.

I was so taken by Citizenfour, which I saw last night at the Aidikoff screening room in Beverly Hills (two or three hours after it played at the New York Film Festival), that I’m seeing it again on Monday. I’ve seen certain docs more than once, but I’ve never decided to re-experience a documentary within a week of an initial viewing in my entire life.

My condolences to Life Itself, The Battered Bastards of Baseball, Red Army, Code Black, Last Days in Vietnam, Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, Jodorowsky’s Dune, My Life Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn and 20,000 Days On Earth but Citizenfour is almost certainly going to take the Best Feature Documentary Oscar — hands down, game over, forget about it.

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I’m about three hours away from seeing Laura Poitras‘s Citizenfour, a much-anticipated doc about Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency spying scandal. It began screening at the New York Film Festival about 90 minutes ago, or around 6 pm eastern. The UK premiere happens on 10.17 under the auspices of the BFI London Film Festival. Pic obviously features Snowden and Glenn Greenwald qmong others. Co-produced by Poitras and Steven Soderbergh. I for one have never felt threatened by NSA email-monitoring because (a) I’m sure they don’t give a shit about my eccentric postings plus (b) I’m not into anything dicey. I should be concerned, of course, but I’m strangely not. It doesn’t bother me greatly — put it that way.

There’s an earnest blend of opinion about Michael Cuesta‘s Kill The Messenger — 73% from Rotten Tomatoes, 60% from Metacritic. My own opinion will have to wait as I kept blowing opportunities to see it in New York and Los Angeles. (Focus publicity has been very obliging — it’s my fault entirely.) I’ll pay to see it somewhere this weekend and file when I can. Even those who are mixed about the film are entirely positive on Jeremy Renner‘s performance as the late journalist Gary Webb.

My beloved Box-Office Mojo has been erased, obliterated, wiped off the web. Okay, it exists but it’s been swallowed by the IMDB leviathan so it might as well be toast. Yes, you can find Mojo-supplied box-office data on the IMDB but as far as I’m concerned the site has been eaten. I’m heartbroken. It’s like a friend got hit by a car.

“I’ve seen David Ayer‘s Fury,” I wrote a friend last week. “Rough, harsh, real-deal World War II stuff. Men in a small, smelly, vulnerable tank that they occasionally piss in. Months on end, unshaven faces, scars and body odor, best job they’ve ever had. Rugged verisimilitude as far as the battle sequences go…if you’re not bothered, that is, by the fact that the tracer rounds are green, which was mostly used by the other side. U.S. forces have always used red tracers, or so my research tells me. But that’s a side-issue. Yes, Brad Pitt is suitably gruff and paternal and commanding as WarDaddy. But otherwise forget it.

“Well, I don’t mean ‘forget it’ exactly. It’s a decent enough film and relatively well made, but it’s just a good gritty war movie. Not that profound or touching or even believable at the end of the day, certainly in terms of the finale.”

He insisted it was great stuff all around and I said, “It’s not great. It’s strong when it’s strong, but otherwise it’s…strange? [SPOILERS AHEAD]

“Until the finale Fury always makes you feel you’re in a grim, generally realistic situation. The horror, the horror. I for one couldn’t stand the wimpy, sensitive, candy-assed Logan Lerman and his wide-eyed, open-mouthed innocent routine. I wanted to see him killed every step of the way, and painfully at that — but wimps never seem to catch a bullet in films of this sort.

“In any event Fury has two problem scenes. One, a kind of domestic interlude in which Pitt and Lerman enjoy some chill with two German women (Anamaria Marinca, Alicia von Rittberg) in a small village apartment. It involves a little civilized piano playing and a nice meal and a suggestion of sex and a lot of talk, and it goes on forever. I was wondering if the rest of the movie was going to stay in this apartment with the women getting pregnant and Pitt and Lerman renouncing warfare for fatherhood. Anyway, that’s one problem. The other is that fucking head-scratching finale.

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Today Queen Elizabeth named Angelina Jolie an honorary dame in honor of her work fighting sexual violence and…uhm, for services to Britain’s foreign policy, whatever that actually means. My first thought when I saw photos of the two was “what a formidable, go-getter person Jolie is…seriously. So socially conscious, so talented, so industrious, so rich, so many kids. You just want to get down on your knees, y’know? (Hollywood Elsewhere is already down on its knees, hoping for a substantial Universal award-season buy.) But right now Hollywood is asking itself “what can we and our lowly American culture do to add to the Jolie acclaim in a substantial way? Let’s see…of course! Let’s give her an Oscar for Best Director as a way of honoring Unbroken, which the mainstream default softies want to celebrate anyway with a Best Picture Oscar because…well, because they do. Because the saga of an Olympic athlete who meets Hitler in 1936 and goes on to survive not one but two agonizing World War II traumas has that elemental schwing that says “Oscar! Oscar! Deserves an Oscar!”

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I wouldn’t see Dracula Untold with a knife at my back. I wouldn’t watch if it was offered free on a seven-hour, no-wifi flight and I was dying of boredom. If Universal paid me $50 to see it I’d relent and sit down and suffer through the first 30 to 45 minutes…but then I’d turn it off or start checking my messages when the Universal watchdog wasn’t looking. But Jordan Hoffman is right — the guy who wrote that headline deserves a high-five or a drink or whatever.

Synopsis for Glenn Ficarra and John Requathe‘s Focus (Warner Bros., 2.27.15): “Nicky Spurgeon (Will Smith) is a seasoned con-man, who becomes romantically involved with a young attractive woman (Margot Robbie) while introducing her to the tricks of his con man trade. She gets too close for comfort and he abruptly breaks it off. Three years later, the former flame — now an accomplished femme fatale — shows up in Buenos Aires while trying to scam a billionaire international race car owner. In the midst of Nicky’s latest, very dangerous scheme, she throws his plans for a loop…and the consummate con man off his game.”

A little more than a week ago I ran a piece about how Montgomery Clift, once regarded as one of the three reigning ’50s-era brooders along with Marlon Brando and James Dean, is barely known among GenY types and whose memory is apparently fading in general. Then today I ran across a Rio Bravo vs. High Noon piece I posted seven and a half years ago, and it hit me that these two films — considered by boomer and GenX film buffs as essential, world-class mythical westerns — are probably unknown to most of your GenY moviegoers and Hulu/Netflix subscribers. I’m only guessing but I wouldn’t be surprised to read definitive polling proof of this. Or that The Searchers is also dead to them. If the late Stuart Byron, author of a landmark New York piece about The Searchers, was among us he’d be inconsolable. One thing I know is that GenY considers almost everything made before the ’80s as ancient; I also believe that westerns carry next to no cred with them. With the possible exception of The Wild Bunch almost all oaters are considered “dad” or even “grand-dad” films by anyone born after 1985. Am I wrong?

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