29 years ago the word-of-mouth on Cutthroat Island was so bad that I never saw it. Never streamed it….nothing. The reason was director Renny Harlin — his handling of Cliffhanger had convinced me he was a flash-banger, and wasn’t very interested in internals. Even now I don’t want to see it.

To Donald Trump, Red Skelton may as well be speaking Swahili.

…by pronouncing it correctly. It’s not PORTO Rico, as so many have pronounced it since last weekend’s MSG MAGA rally. It’s pronounced (tapping this out phonetically for the dumbshits) PuhWEHRTO Rico.

Okay?

And are therefore a joke to Joe and Jane Popcorn. Outside of elite, off-the-planet wokesters, nobody and I mean nobody cares about the Gotham Awards and especially their bullshit, trans-kowtowing, gender-neutral acting categories.

That said, all hail Anora‘s Mikey Madison and Yura Borisov, who have been nominated in lead and supporting, respectively.

Best Feature

Anora
Babygirl
Challengers
A Different Man
Nickel Boys

Best International Feature

All We Imagine As Light
Green Border
Hard Truths
Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell
Vermiglio

Best Documentary Feature

Dahomey
Intercepted
No Other Land
Soundtrack To A Coup d’Etat
Sugarcane
Union

Best Director

Payal Kapadia, All We Imagine As Light
Sean Baker, Anora
Guan Hu, Black Dog
Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw The TV Glow
RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys

Best Screenplay

Between The Temples
Evil Does Not Exist
Femme
His Three Daughters
Janet Planet

Breakthrough Director

Shuchi Talati, Girls Will Be Girls
India Donaldson, Good One
Alessandra Lacorazza, In The Summers
Vera Drew, The People’s Joker
Mahdi Fleifel, To A Land Unknown

Outstanding Lead Performance

Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl
Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths
Nicole Kidman, Babygirl
Keith Kupferer, Ghostlight
Mikey Madison, Anora
Demi Moore, The Substance
Saoirse Ronan, The Outrun
Justice Smith, I Saw The TV Glow

Outstanding Supporting Performance

Yura Borisov, Anora
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
Danielle Deadwyler, The Piano Lesson
Brigette Lundy-Paine, I Saw The TV Glow
Natasha Lyonne, His Three Daughters
Clarence Maclin, Sing Sing
Katy O’Brian, Love Lies Bleeding
Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
Adam Pearson, A Different Man
Brian Tyree Henry, The Fire Inside

Breakthrough Performer

Lily Collias, Good One
Ryan Destiny, The Fire Inside
Maisy Stella, My Old Ass
Izaac Wang, Dìdi Y
Brandon Wilson, Nickel Boys

HE-posted 17 years ago:

I saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind three times during the initial 1977 run, but when I saw it again on laser disc in the early ’90s I began to realize how consistently irritating and assaultive most of it is from beginning to end.

There are so many moments that are profoundly irritating or stylistically affected or impossible to swallow.

The air-traffic controller scene is an exception, and by far the best scene in the film. The opening Sonora desert scene is also first-rate; ditto the mother-ship arrival scene near the conclusion.

Othewise I can’t watch CE3K now without gritting my teeth. Almost everything about that film that seemed delightful or stunning or even breathtaking in ’77 (excepting the scenes I’ve mentioned) now makes me want to jump out the window.

That stupid mechanical monkey with the cymbals.

Those little toys that suddenly activate and start moving around.

The way those little screws on the floor heating vent unscrew themselves.

Bob Balaban deciding to shout out his confusion about the brand new WW II-era planes found in the Sonoran desert…”I don’t understaaaand!”

The elderly couple waiting for the arrival of remote alien ships on the mountain road in the evening…somehow they know the ships are going to fly by! And after the ships appear, Spielberg has the smallest of them flash a light beam at a McDonald’s sign.

The way those Indian guys all point heavenward at the exact same moment when they’re asked where the sounds came from.

Melinda Dillon going “Bahahahhahhree!”

That idiotic invisible poison gas scare around Devil’s Tower.

That awful actor playing that senior Army officer who denies it’s a charade.

The way the electricity comes back on in Muncie, Indiana, at the same moment that those three small UFO drones disappear into the heavens.

The shut-down, mule-like resistance of Teri Garr‘s character to believe even a little bit in Richard Dreyfuss‘s sightings.

It’s one unlikely, implausible, baldly manipulative crap move after another.

The worst element of all is the way Spielberg has those guys who are supposed to board the mother ship wearing the same red jumpsuits and sunglasses and acting like total robots. Why? No reason. Spielberg just liked the idea of them looking and acting that way.

This is a prime example of why Spielberg‘s considerable gifts don’t overcome the fact that he’s a hack. He knows how to get you but there’s never anything under the “get.”

Alexander Hamilton: “If we must have an enemy at the head of the government, let it be one whom we can oppose and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures.”

Or right smack dab in the middle of her peak career period (’74 to ’85).

“If you don’t have Schlitz, you don’t have gusto…you don’t have beer.”

And if you try to get Schlitz fans to try another beer, you might end up like Jimmy Hoffa!

Question: Who’s the neanderthal to Teri’s left? (She sits in his lap at the finish.) 40 years later this guy was cheering Trump.

The career of poor Teri Garr, who sadly passed today at age 79, peaked between ’74 and ’85…roughly 11 years. Garr was 30 when it began, 41 when it ended.

The highlight vehicles were Mel Brooks‘ Young Frankenstein (ditzy, good-sport blonde), Steven Spielberg‘s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the almost villainous, spirit-crushing wife of Richard Dreyfuss), Carl Reiner‘s Oh, God!, Sydney Pollack‘s Tootsie (ditzy actress friend of Dustin Hoffman‘s Michael Dorsey), Francis Coppola‘s One From The Heart (1982), opposite Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom and in Martin Scorsese‘s After Hours. What is that, seven?

Garr’s smallish performance in Tootsie resulted in a nomination for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, but her big signature role…the one we all immediately recall… was the frisky Inga Binga in Young Frankenstein.

Gene Wilder: “What knockers!” Garr: “Oohh, zenk you, doctor!”

Several classic actresses are known for certain signature lines of dialogue. Faye Dunaway…”Christina, get the axe!” or “don’t fuck with me, fellas!” Vivien Leigh…”I’ve always depended upon the kindness of strangers” or “after all, tomorrow is another day!” Ingrid Bergman…”play it, Sam…play ‘As Time Goes By’.” Bette Davis…”what a dump!” Katharine Hepburn…”Mr. Allnut, could you make a torpedo?”

It’s a fact (and certainly not a put-down) that Garr’s signature line is “he would have an enormous schwanzstucker!”** But she had a lot more going on than mere attractiveness and a flair for light, self-deprecating comedy.

** It would have been a funnier line if Garr had said “enormous schtufenhaufer.”

Eccentric, livin’ large fellows who enjoyed drinking, etc.

Posted on 10.7.24: “Queer is a truly fascinating mood piece and space-out…a film has never taken me to a realm like this…an amazing reach, amazing combustion……much more transformative than Call Me By Your Name…it may be Guadagnino’s best film ever, or his most out-there or whatever…I’m not sure how to label it but Daniel Craig’s performance is staggering…purely a matter of heart and spirit and twitchy emotion…all I know is that he’s uncovered something fresh and alive…really something else. Queer is a wake-up thing. It delivers a feeling of inwardness, extra-ness.”

Herewith is a rundown of HE’s drop-out moments (or lack of) as they apply to 2024’s leading Best Picture contenders, of which there are 15 or 16.

It was screenwriter William Goldman (Marathon Man, All The President’s Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) who first explained what a drop-out moment is — i.e., when something happens in a film that just makes you collapse inside, that makes you surrender interest and faith in the ride that you’re on. You might stay in your seat and watch the film to the end, but you’ve essentially “left” the theatre.

The movie had you and then lost you, and it’s not your fault.

HE’s simpler definition: An element or aspect of a film that is so abhorrent or unsettling or indigestible that you can’t help but respond with “okay, that’s it…I quit.” Classic example: I dropped out of Parasite when the drunken con-artist mom lets the fired maid into the Seoul mansion in the middle of a fierce rainstorm.

1. Sean Baker‘s Anora — no drop-out moments whatsoever…holds you start to finish….builds and builds and then settles in for a surprisingly intimate finish. Bull’s-eye.

2. Edward Berger‘s Conclave — I was fascinated from the get-go and by the ending in particular (no spoilers), but others have been calling it a drop-out moment. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but I was totally “wow…talk about pushing the wokey.”

3. Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune II — I wasn’t able to follow the story, but the acting, cinematography, production design, editing and music were such that I was completely enthralled. I read the Wikipedia plot synopsis as I watched.

4. Jacques Audiard‘s Emilia Perez — I dropped out the instant I learned that a drug cartel kingpin, Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofia Gascon), wants to surgically transition into becoming a woman as a way of escaping from his drug-kingpin life. I stayed in my seat and watched Emilia Perez to the end, but I wasn’t the least bit invested. No way would a big-time cartel guy go trans.

5. Brady Corbet‘s The Brutalist — I totally dropped out during an early bus-station scene in which Adrien Brody‘s Laszlo Toth, a Hungarian holocaust refugee, succumbs to effusive, gushing sobs upon being told by his furniture store-owning cousin (Alessandro Nivola) that his wife Erzsebet (Felicity Jones) has survived the Holocaust horrors of Eastern European Jewry. He was crying way too much…stop it! I felt tortured and doomed by the notion of having to hang with this lethargic simpleton for the next three-plus hours….aaaggghhhh!

6. Greg Kwedar‘s Sing Sing. I dropped out roughly 10 or 15 minutes into the film, which is when I realized it wouldn’t be delivering a story of any kind and was basically a documentary-styled acting-exercise movie.

7. Steve McQueen‘s Blitz. I still haven’t seen it, but I dropped out anyway when I read it wasn’t going to debut at the Venice, Telluride or Toronto film festivals. I knew it would be an underwhelmer.

8. Ridley Scott‘s Gladiator II. I dropped out the instant when I read that Paul Mescal would be playing Lucius Verus, the son of Russell Crowe‘s Maximus.

9. Jesse Eisenberg‘s A Real Pain. No drop-out moments. Total engagement start to finish.

10. Jason Reitman‘s Saturday Night. I dropped out when I learned of the basic premise, which was that the 1975 debut episode of Saturday Night Live was a totally chaotic, juggling-balls, Hellzapoppin’ situation, which it actually wasn’t if you listen to Chevy Chase, who should know.

11. James Mangold‘s A Complete Unknown — I haven’t seen it although I’m told a certain former Oscar blogger has had a looksee and that he believes that Timothee Chalamet‘s performance as Bob Dylan will become a highly favored Best Actor contender. I haven’t seen Babygirl either.

12. Luca Guadagnino‘s Queer — No drop-out moments…the entire film is a drop=in…the sexuality is there, obviously, but subordinate to the spiritual current, the exotic atmosphere, Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey’s truly fascinating performances, the nimble editing, the South American jungle scenes….the trippy mystical vibe kinda sneaks up on you…it’s one of the most fascinating, out-there films about vulnerability, transformative intimacy and emotionality that I’ve ever seen…amazing!

13. Ali Abassi‘s The Apprentice — No drop-out moments. A fascinating, first-rate exploration of Donald Trump and Roy Cohn‘s student-mentor rleationshp in the ’70s and ’80s.

14. Tim Fehlbaum‘s September 5. No drop-outs — held me all the way through.

15. Payal Kapadia‘s All We Imagine As Light. No drop-outs.