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It was announced a day or two ago that Neil LaBute‘s Reasons To Be Pretty will have a month-long run at the Geffen Playhouse (i.e., the Gil Cates Theatre) from 7.29 to 8.31. Nick Gehlfuss, Shawn Hatosy, Amber Tamblyn and Alicia Witt under director Randall Arney. The news naturally recalls my 2009 viewing of LaBute’s play on the Broadway stage, and my initial reaction and then how I got into a rough-and-tumble with a Jezebel editor. LaBute’s play hinges on a guy offering a careless (if not necessarily malicious) remark to his girlfriend, which is that she’s “regular” looking. I wrote an interpretation about how this remark, however tactless, wasn’t mean-spirited. I offered a view that women in the looks realm of A-minus to C-plus are actually more desirable given the likelihood that they’re probably (though not necessarily) more spiritually developed than A-plusses, double As and triple As as a general rule.

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There are two…well, technically three versions of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (Weinstein Co., 9.26) — a Him/Her version (which constitutes two films) and a Them/mashup version. I didn’t see The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her at last September’s Toronto Film Festival, but I know it took 191 minutes to tell the same breakup story from the differing perspectives of James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain‘s characters. Word around the campfire is that Him/Her is a more interesting film than the 123-minute Them, which tells the same tale in a generic, neutral-ish way. In any event I saw Them last May in Cannes, and I can tell you three…no, four things:

(1) Them is an intimately rendered, believably performed adult relationship piece that “does it right,” for the most part. It’s about character and trust and need and longing and trauma, and it deserves all the nice things that have been said about it. As such it casts…how to say it?…a certain favor upon director-writer Ned Benson, at least in terms of how it feels as it moves along during the first hour. Benson is one of the good guys — a smart, mature filmmaker who’s tried to make and in many ways has succeeded in making the right kind of subtle, sophisticated troubled-relationship film;

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Why release another Jupiter Ascending trailer now that it’s been bumped into next February? Who cares? What’s the point? Game all but over.

After (a) persuading six major-league directors (Guillermo del Toro, JJ Abrams, Alfonso Cuaron, Rian Johnson, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Matt Reeves) to sign a letter requesting MGM to allow Robert Harris to attempt a restoration of the 70mm version of The Alamo with outside funding, (b) warranting a mention on the Alamo Wiki page and (c) getting editorial attention from Breitbart.com’s John Nolte, Team Alamo is having a slow second day. The two Stevens (Soderbergh and Spielberg) haven’t responded; ditto Martin Scorsese and David Fincher. I also haven’t heard back from Wes Anderson and Alexander Payne, but give ’em time. I’ve been too lazy to reach out to George Lucas and James Cameron, but a critic friend has offered to ask Clint Eastwood to sign the letter. Who else should I approach?

Tweet #1: Matt Reeves‘ excellent Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (7.11), which I saw Tuesday night on the Fox lot, is the Empire Strikes Back of this franchise — a drizzly, darkly lighted dystopian noir that is nonetheless a remarkably subtle and nicely-shaded film about peace and compassion. Tweet #2: It’s basically a thoughtful and humanistic deal that pays off in dramatic terms (or as much as a middle-act trilogy film can do that, given the restrictions), but has a thematic current that laments the war impulse in all beings and species. Tweet #3: Rather than endorse the original Pierre Boulle idea about all men being violence-prone and all apes being basically peaceful (or at least not as bad as humans), Dawn shows that both species have their warmongers and troublemakers, and that the actions of wiser, calmer peacemakers (i.e., leaders more in the Obama than the Dubya mold) are needed to chill things down. Tweet #4: Dawn has some truly beautiful 3D photography with one exquisitely moody composition after another (when it’s not flat-out nocturnal the movie is covered start to finish in misty rainfall and rainforest fog) and a generally lamenting anti-violence attitude. Tweet #5: I was particularly struck by Andy Serkis‘ remarkably subtle performance as the sad and heavily-burdened Ceasar, which is easily an award-quality thing. Cheers also to Jason Clarke for lending real heart and tenderness to a role that might have felt rote or routine with another actor. Tweet #6: Dawn is a much less predictable and more layered film than I expected.

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I don’t want to know from Michael Bay‘s Transformers 4: Age of Extinction. Nothing…nothing. It’s not playing anywhere, people aren’t going to see it, I don’t know what you’re talking about, it doesn’t exist. After next weekend it literally won’t exist and we can all move on. I just don’t see why any kind of attention whatsoever should be paid. To what end? What good can possibly come? I don’t understand why Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson and Eric Kohn took the time to discuss it.

I saw Steve James‘ warm, amusing, candid and sometimes hilarious Life Itself (Magnolia, theatres/VOD/iTunes, 7.4) for the third…well, nearly the third time last night. It holds up. It will always hold up. They say “dying is easy but comedy is hard” but dying is pretty hard stuff. I was admitting to myself as I watched that I might not have the courage to face up to disease and difficulty the way Roger Ebert faced it, particularly when things got really tough during the last year or so of his life. The man was a bull, and I’m not sure I have even half of that strength. I nonetheless smirked, laughed, felt a little sadness, smiled, felt the fervor, etc. Life Itself is a journey through the realm of serious, devotional movie-worship over the last 45 years or so, and it’s quite a thing to let into your heart. A vital, necessary film for the HE crowd.

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Six weeks ago composer and longtime David Fincher collaborator Trent Reznor told Entertainment Weekly‘s Kyle Anderson that working on Gone Girl (20th Century Fox, 10.3) “has been really fun. It’s been an interesting challenge with some different parameters, and it keeps us on our toes. That’s what makes it good. [But] it’s a much darker film than I was expecting. The book is not exactly uplifting or happy, but it’s a nasty film.” Reznor’s quote would have been just a tiny bit better if he’d said “nasty-ass.”

It doesn’t matter if I’ve ever regarded Taylor Swift as even vaguely foxy (I’m obviously far afield of the target demographic) but I never have. Sharply cut nose, too tall and ostrichy, the bland blondeness…a “pleasant” appearance as far as it goes but a vibe that’s hardly fetching. But her Giver appearance is different. Now she’s got something going. Sometimes when you remove the makeup and darken the hair…I’m sorry that I wrote this because now I sound like LexG. I’m just saying that it works, this thing. I’m going to leave it right there.

All I want from the 2014 Oscar season are a couple of films that end as well as No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man. At least a couple. Is that asking too much? Those Coens, man…they know to end a movie on a cold, bracingly clear note. Think about it, mull it over, let it sink in.

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Honestly? This doesn’t look half bad. A satire of disaster films with at least a semblance of meteorological realism. Who remembers Twister? Who remembers Philip Seymour Hoffman‘s performance in Twister? Who remembers Jan De Bont? Directed by Steven Quale, Into The Storm (Warner Bros., 8.8) has all the basic ingredients plus a self-mocking attitude. You can tell this was at least somewhat influenced by the success of Sharknado, which aired 11 months ago. Are you telling me that the producers of this thing said, “Naah, let’s not go too Sharknado territory here…let’s tone it down and keep it real”?