In the wake of the first Telluride screening of Jeff Nichols‘ The Bikeriders (Searchlight, 12.1), several critics and columnists who should have known better insisted it was a very cool ride and that they loved it and so on.

Variety‘s Clayton Davis actually wrote that costars Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy “are all putting their stamp on an awards season that will be udoubtedly competitive.” The season will be competitive, as always, but they won’t be — trust me. Okay, maybe Comer will punch through, but her performance is all about her labored street accent. It sounds like she worked very hard to sound just so.

The Bikeriders is piffle…an actors’ attitude movie about studly posturing and leather pants and roaring two-wheelers. And dozens upon dozens of lit cigarettes.

I was so into groaning and rolling my eyes and exhaling with exasperation during the screening that Sasha Stone bawled me out — “You almost ruined it for me!…I’m not going to sit next to you if you do that again!” It’s not me, I replied. I’m just a victim. Blame Jeff Nichols!

Posted from Telluride on 8.31.23:

As I was watching Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, I was telling myself that it’s basically about the inability (or unwillingness) of costars Tom Hardy and especially Austin Butler, playing surly-ass, black leather biker types, to perform a scene without constantly inhaling gray-blue cigarette smoke.

No honest assessment of The Bikeriders will fail to acknowledge that it’s basically a posturing, surly attitude genre flick about skanky vroom-vroom machismo…about sullen Midwest motorcycle lowlifes in the general mold of Marlon Brando’s “Johnny” in The Wild One, mixed with the nihilist biker hooligan aesthetic of the AIP ‘60s motorcycle flicks (The Wild Angels, The Born Losers).

Story-wise it’s about a battle for the soul of Butler’s Benny, a moody, cool-cat rebel straight out of the Shangrilas’ ”The Leader of the Pack.”

On one side is Jodie Comer’s Kathy, who quickly becomes Benny’s girlfriend and then wife in a possibly sexless marriage (nobody fucks in this film). Kathy wants Benny to be his own man and not submit to certain aimless bullshit rituals that come with membership in a motorcycle gang.

Pulling in an opposite direction is Hardy’s Johnny, who wants Benny to succeed him as the leader of the Vandals, a mythical local gang that gradually becomes huge with several chapters around the Midwest.

The Vandals are ostensibly a black leather outlaw motorcycle club in the vein of actual old-style OMCs like Hells Angels, the Outlaws, the Bandidos and the Pagans. The difference is that the Vandals aren’t criminals. They’re just ornery guys who occasionally beat the shit out of other ornery guys. Really — that’s all that happens. Scuzzy, nihilistic, no-direction-home guys snorting brewskis, sucking down cigarettes like they’re in a cancer contest while taking offense at this or that and kicking or pounding the crap out of each other.

The Bikeriders is basically about actors playing with machismo, nihilism, nothingness and swaggering around… about Hardy, Butler and costars Michael Shannon, Boyd Holbrook and Norman Reedus attempting to resuscitate (like I just said) the old AIP biker movie aesthetic except not in California but somewhere in Illinois or Ohio…that surly, unshaven, leather-jacket-wearin’ thang, man…rumblin’ those noisy choppers, man..surly attitudes, beard stubble, greasy hair, tough-asshole posturing, leather jackets with “colors” and insignias, stinky T-shirts and no change of underwear for days on end.

Please see The Bikeriders!! Some of you out there, unburdened by taste, will have a raunchy good old time with it.

This was your mission, Mr. Hunt. You choose to accept it and the fact that it didn’t work out…well, that’s on you.

Yesterday afternoon’s Albuquerque-to-JFK flight (Jet Blue, #66) left an hour late, but was expected to land by 11:30 pm. With my car parked at Jett’s home in West Orange, the plan was to take the Air Train to Howard Beach station and then an A train express to Penn Station and catch the last NJ Transit train to Orange — 12:55 am departure, arriving at 1:30 am. I arranged for an Uber to meet me at 1:35 am and take me to Jett’s — a four-minute ride (if that) that Uber would’ve charged me $30 for.

Flight #66 arrived at JFK at 11:40 pm (hey!), but it took us 20 minutes to unload. Did a 50-minute A train ride between Howard Beach and Penn Station seem reasonable? Maybe not, but at least I had a fighting chance if the Air Train and A Express were moving normally. Alas, the Air Train was on slumber meds and the A train killed me.

Maintenance issues are currently forcing the Manhattan-bound A train to unload passengers at Rockaway Blvd. We were shuffled into a sluggish bus, which drove us to the Euclid Ave. station. We got onto another A train but it was a local (whoo-hoo!), plus it just sat there for 11 or 12 minutes and then creaked and groaned and lumbered its way toward Manhattan, one pathetic stop at a time.

It was hell, but the NYC subway system has been making humans suffer for decades. You think late-night service is this soul-draining in London, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, Moscow or Barcelona?

Ethan Hunt knew he was fucked as far as catching that 12:55 am train, so he cancelled the New Jersey Uber (a guy named Jose) but guess what? A $20 cancellation fee!

Ethan knew he was beaten. He got off the A train cattle car at Canal Street and figured he had no choice but to take an Uber to West Orange, which would cost $110 plus an after-tip. Then he spotted an ordinary Yellow Cab in front of a hotel. The driver told Ethan it would cost $120 but that included tolls plus having to take the Lincoln Tunnel (West 40th) because the Holland Tunnel is closed every night for six hours (11 pm to 5 am). Ethan went for it, the driver drove like a pro and we arrived at Jett’s home a little after 2 am.

JFK touchdown to West Orange, the total travelling time was two hours and 25 minutes.

If Jet Blue, which had cancelled my Tuesday night red-eye (Albuquerque to JFK) and thereby forced me to accept yesterday afternoon’s make-up flight…if Jet Blue hadn’t delayed the Albuquerque take-off by an hour-plus I might have made the last train to Orange and saved myself $80 or 90 dollars. Ethan Hunt and Hollywood Elsewhere are hereby expressing heartfelt gratitude.

Cinematic reference #1: A stressed-out Steve Martin swearing at the car-rental “gobble gobble!” lady in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Cinematic reference #2: A 50something woman barking at Jerry Lewis‘s Jerry Langford in The King of Comedy: “You should get cancer…I hope you get cancer!”

“The studios didn’t invent Rotten Tomatoes, and most of them don’t like it,” says director Paul Schrader. “But the system is broken. Audiences are dumber. Normal people don’t go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do.” — from Lane Brown‘s “The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes,” a 9.6. Vulture article.

Excerpt: “In a recent interview, Quentin Tarantino, whose next film is reportedly called The Movie Critic, admitted that he no longer reads critics’ work. ‘Today, I don’t know anyone,’ he said (in a translation of his remarks, first published in French). ‘I’m told, ‘Manohla Dargis, she’s excellent.’ But when I ask what are the three movies she loved and the three she hated in the last few years, no one can answer me. Because they don’t care!’

“This is probably because Rotten Tomatoes — with help from Yelp, Goodreads, and countless other review aggregators — has desensitized us to the opinions of individual critics.

“Once upon a time, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert turned the no-budget documentary Hoop Dreams into a phenomenon using only their thumbs. But critical power like that has been replaced by the collective voice of the masses. A third of U.S. adults say they check Rotten Tomatoes before going to the multiplex, and while movie ads used to tout the blurbage of Jeffrey Lyons and Peter Travers, now they’re more likely to boast that a film has been “Certified Fresh.”

“To filmmakers across the taste spectrum, Rotten Tomatoes is a scourge.

“Martin Scorsese says it reduces the director ‘to a content manufacturer and the viewer to an unadventurous consumer.’ Brett Ratner has called it ‘the destruction of our business.”’But insiders acknowledge that it has become a crucial arbiter. Publicists say their jobs revolve around the site. ‘In the last ten years,’ says one, ‘it’s become much more important as so many of the most trusted critics have retired without replacements.’

“An indie-distribution executive says, ‘I put in our original business plan that we should not do films that score less than 80. Rotten Tomatoes is the only public stamp of approval that says, ‘This is of immense quality, and all critics agree.’”

“But despite Rotten Tomatoes’ reputed importance, it’s worth a reminder: Its math stinks. Scores are calculated by classifying each review as either positive or negative and then dividing the number of positives by the total. That’s the whole formula. Every review carries the same weight whether it runs in a major newspaper or a Substack with a dozen subscribers.

“If a review strad’les positive and negative, too bad. ‘I read some reviews of my own films where the writer might say that he doesn’t think that I pull something off, but, boy, is it interesting in the way that I don’t pull it off,’ says Schrader, a former critic. ‘To me, that’s a good review, but it would count as negative on Rotten Tomatoes.'”

A few days ago Kino Lorber released a double-disc 4K Bluray of Sidney Pollack and Robert Redford‘s Three Days of the Condor (’75). I’m not sure I see the need. I own the old Bluray from 2009 or thereabouts, and it’s fine.

The wifi signal in Albuquerque Airport is so anemic, so astoundingly sludgy, even slower than a dial-up connection in 1997 — that I can’t even post a link to a 9.2.23 High-Def Digest review.

Condor is a perfectly assembled, deliciously cool and extremely anxious time-capsule capturing of mid ’70s paranoia.

It works as a great companion piece to Alan Pakula and Warren Beatty‘s The Parallax View.

Redford’s “Turner” is one of his career-best performances, and Max von Sydow‘s “Joubert” is so exquisite in every scene…so gentle, settled-in and unmalicious…an almost serene European man involved in a dirty business.

I just wish that Leonard Atwood‘s motive behind the idiotic murdering of seven CIA employees in a midtown Manhattan office made more sense. Atwood freaked when he read Turner’s original “book report”, sent to CIA headquarters, about a rogue CIA operation — Atwood’s — that would’ve seized Middle Eastern oil fields.

Everything about Condor fits into place except for this one ludicrous plot device.

Cliff Robertson to John Houseman: “Do you miss that kind of action, sir?” Houseman to Robertson: “No, I miss that kind of clarity.”

You have to figure that the current 85% Rotten Tomatoes score for Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance (Metacritic hasn’t weighed in yet) would be slightly higher were it not for the fact that a significant percentage of critics are cowards and whores.

Cowards and whores, I mean, even under relatively mild circumstances, but especially so, one presumes, when it comes to a Woody Allen film.

They all understand that approving of an Allen film these days could either cast suspicion upon their values or get them into trouble with editors and readers. Especially when it comes to female critics — a positive Coup de Chance review could result in a woman critic being accused of betrayal from the #MeToo corner.

From a boilerplate standpoint, there’s not much upside to praising Coup de Chance. It’s safer to pan it. Therefore the fact that a significant majority has approved of the film (an HE commenter is claiming it’s closer to 65%) means a bit more.

As of yesterday, the general Venice Film Festival response to Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance had been largely positive. Not a half-hate, half-love thing, but something like an 85-15 or 80-20 split in favor of Allen’s infidelity thriller.

Despite this the N.Y. Times, seemingly aligned with and loyal to the hater camp, has posted a Kyle Buchanan piece that claims the Venice reception was “decidedly mixed.”

This is a fundamentally dishonest reading as any fair-minded assessment of the Coup de Chance response would necessarily dismiss anti-Woody protestors, as they’re basically a fringe hate group.

The response to any film at any major festival is always about what sophistos in the know — critics, fellow filmmakers, industry columnists — are saying. You can’t count what fringe nutters are howling about from the sidelines

I’m just going to cough this up and let the chips fall…

The four finest films of the 2023 Telluride Film Festival — the ones that boasted the highest levels of craftsmanship, and which will really get through to Average Joes and Janes and cause their hearts and minds to snap to attention — are Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers (a ’70s film, yes, but a first-rate specimen of this type), Tran Anh Hung‘s The Taste of Things (i.e., The Pot-au-Feu), Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things and lastly Ilker Çatak’s The Teacher’s Lounge, the official German submission for Best Int’l feature.

Okay, I’ll make it five — Errol Morris‘s The Pigeon Tunnel, a richly visual, beautifully scored doc about John le Carre…enveloping and rather dazzling.

Actually there’s a sixth that got me — Aki Kaurismäki‘s Fallen Leaves, a Chaplinesque, slightly glum relationship comedy-drama. Costars Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen deliver quietly touching performances.

On my last day (i.e., yesterday) I saw and rather liked Pawo Choyning Dorji‘s The Monk and the Gun. I wasn’t floored but enjoyed it for the most part. Set in Bhutan in 2006, it’s an ensemble comedy about the citizens of that land-locked Asian country having their first encounter with democracy. I’ll write about it later this week.

There’s also Justine Triet‘s Anatomy of a Fall — a smart (if somewhat muted) mixture of an investigative procedural and courtroom drama. Fully respectable and recommended, but rather long.

So I saw four big winners, one striking documentary destined to endure, an adult-angled investigative whodunit, and two films that are entirely decent and winning in unusual ways. Eight in all.

None of the other films shown at Telluride really stuck to the wall, and will almost certainly not stir much excitement when they open commercially.

Yes, Poor Things was the biggest conversation flick, but the gymnastic “furious jumping” scenes and the generally bawdy “Bride of Frankenstein” sexuality will probably diminish enthusiasm among older industry audiences. SAG members will nominate Emma Stone for Best Actress, of course, but overall the Poor Things carnality has a vibe that comes close to what used to be called hard-R exploitation, except in this instance it’s very Terry Gilliam-esque. Several noms in various categories are likely, but I suspect that over-40 voters will withdraw a bit.

I felt mildly diverted by George C. Wolfe’s Rustin, but never gripped. The movie is just okay; it certainly never winds you up. If Colman Domingo’s spirited performance as civil rights leader Bayard Rustin lands a Best Actor Oscar nomination, fine. But it’ll be a gimmee…a political gesture that everyone will feel obliged to ratify and approve. If the Obamas were truly enthusiastic about this film they would have attended Telluride, or so my gut tells me. Their absence spoke volumes.

I didn’t see Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Nyad (Netflix), but the general reaction seemed to be that Annette Bening‘s performance is highly respectable but her Diana Nyad is a real bitch. People never just vote for the craft aspect — they also vote the character. If the character is seriously unlikable…

The Telluride foo-foos can enthuse all they want about Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers. It’s a very soulful film, gently haunting and certainly well-crafted in many respects, but I know what older straight guys tend to feel and respond to, and a lot of them are going to quietly clear their throats during the sex scenes, which happen between the talented and genuine Andrew Scott and the hugely annoying Paul Mescal. If Mescal’s boyfriend character had been played by a Brad Pitt-level hottie in his late 20s or early 30s, fine, but Mescal is impossible. You can’t expect older straight guys to feel charged about watching a couple of British guys with heavy beard stubble (and one with a dorky moustache)…enough said.

Forget Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders — it didn’t work at the festival and it won’t happen when it opens. Ditto Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, which is basically shallow, glossy trash. Watching Barry Keoghan play a creep is a chore. I really hated it, and so did a lot of other Telluride viewers.

I didn’t see Ethan Hawke‘s Wildcat, a narrative drama about Flannery O’Connor, but everyone told me it wasn’t very good. I’m sorry but no one spoke up for it.

I also couldn’t fit in Daddio, the dialogue-driven two-hander with Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn.

I watched the slow-moving Janet Planet for about an hour on my final day…not my cup.

…to rave about Errol Morris‘s The Pigeon Tunnel, which I saw yesterday at 4:30 pm. Within ten seconds I knew this polite but persistent interrogation of the late “John le Carre” (a.k.a. David Cornwell) was first-rate. By which I mean fascinating, riveting, even haunting at times.

Perhaps it’s not quite on the level of Morris’s The Fog of War (‘05), but it operates in the same general region in terms of examining notions of moral relativity within the British “circus” and particularly as they existed within Ronnie Cornwell, his con-artist dad.

I adored the Phillip Glass score.