Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant (UA Releasing, 421) was shot a year ago near Alicante, Spain. It’s basically a “do the right thing” rescue mission flick. Recovering from a war wound, Sergeant John (Jake Gyllenhaal) is determined to save a local interpreter (Dar Salim) who once saved John. Somewhat reminiscent of Sam Waterston‘s Sydney Schanberg determined to save Haing Nor‘s Dith Pran in The Killing Fields.

I don’t trust Ritchie but let’s see what develops.

Team Biden apparently waited until the Chinese spy balloon was over the sea (off the coast of South Carolina) to shoot it down.

What I want to know is this — where’s the cathartic Tom Cruise-Jerry Bruckheimer kill shot explosion? I wanted to see the balloon taken down dramatically, and now I feel shortchanged.

For the first time since he was branded as a sexual cannibal-animal and wham-banished from the film business, Armie Hammer has presented his side of the story.

Ignore the Variety summary by Elizabeth Wagmeister because the Air Mail piece is about a lot more than just about the usual contrition and spin (i.e., “I was bad, and now forgive me”). What Hammer contends and what he offers in terms of compelling evidence is highly persuasive.

I’m not going to summarize the main points of James Kirchick’s 2.4 Air Mail article as anyone can read it (it’s not paywalled), but there’s no question that anyone with an open mind will emerge with their previous impressions strongly challenged.

I read the article this morning, and many of the accusations against Hammer look kinda flimsy now, I can tell you that.

At the very least readers will conclude that Kirchik’s piece has downgraded Armie’s status from that of an alleged monster and ruthless rapist-carnivore to the much less odious label of admitted former asshole (an asshole in recovery, I mean) who knows where the BDSM attraction came from (i.e., sexual abuse as a powerless youth).

The article claims that Hammer’s primary sin was using his power as a rich, famous actor in his 30s (“power imbalance” being a major #MeToo felony these days) to sexually overwhelm various younger women and then (this is what really got him in trouble) ghosting them when he decided to abruptly or whimsically end the affairs like that.

Which is similar to what what Ansel Elgort was lynched for also — ghosting the of-legal-aged “Gabby” after being intimate with her a couple of times.

Message to everyone: “Ghosting” a lover really hurts and often leads to revenge moves. If you want to move on, save yourself a lot of trouble by conveying this in some kind of half-considerate way.

We all agree that ignoring a safe word is an awful thing to do, and this charge hasn’t been specifically addressed in the article (or maybe I read it too fast) but the sexual behavior of Armie and the various women who participated, so to speak, is addressed and explained. Hammer raped no one, he says — it was all a consensual game with rules and a particular script laid out in advance.

Hammer seems to be mainly guilty of behaving like a sexual obsessive. He certainly didn’t chew on anyone’s rib or cut off a woman’s toe and put it in his pocket….none of that crazy stuff.

Excerpt #1: “The Hammer case raises questions about the media. Virtually without exception, the press has treated the accusations from Hammer’s professed victims, no matter how fantastical, with utter credulity. As recently as last October, for instance, a story in New York magazine claimed that Hammer stands accused of ‘possible cannibalism.'”

Excerpt #2: “One prominent Hollywood figure has decided to speak out unreservedly in Hammer’s defense. ‘I found him to be so polite and so well mannered and so nice and so funny and so real,” says Howard Rosenman, the veteran producer of Call Me by Your Name. ‘And don’t forget, I spent time with him a lot, both in Crema and on the road, when we were on the Oscar trail. So all of [the allegations are] just pure bullshit, and yes, he deserves a second chance.’

“Rosenman, who is gay and has been involved in some of Hollywood’s most important gay-themed films (The Celluloid Closet, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, Milk), sympathizes with Hammer as someone whose sexuality was once considered taboo. ‘It’s been puritanical,” Rosenman says of the media’s prurient coverage. ‘The kink-shaming is just awful. I, as a gay man who had sex for many, many years with many different kinds of people, understand this better than anyone.”

“In a recent podcast interview, Luca Guadagnino said that he ‘cannot wait to work with Armie as soon as I have a great role for [him].'”

Excerpt #3: “When I ask [Hammer] if he takes inspiration from his mentor Robert Downey Jr., who was arrested multiple times in the late 1990s on drug charges and spent several spells in jail, his answer turns toward the mythological: ‘What I would say is this: There’s examples of people who went through really difficult times and experienced what [the author] Joseph Campbell would call ‘the hero’s death.’ And the hero must die so the hero can be reborn again.’

Then again it’s HE’s sight-unseen view that Cocaine Bear (Universal, 2.23), however darkly funny it may or may not be, is rooted in cruel, callous attitudes about innocent wildlife.

I’m very sorry about the passing of Melinda Dillon, who was quite the vulnerable mainstay in several stand-out films from the ’70s,’80s and ’90s — Slap Shot, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Absence of Malice, Bound for Glory, A Christmas Story, The Prince of Tides. I somehow never read about her having landed a Tony nomination in 1963 (when she was 23 or 24) for her performance in the Sandy Dennis role in the original B’way stage production of Edward Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. This isn’t a profound observation, but the way Dillon called out for her young son (Cary Guffey) in CE3K — “Bahhahhhrrreeee!” — has been lodged in my memory ever since.

My assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of last year’s Best Picture nominees, posted on 1.7.22, didn’t align with the Academy vote tallies. I don’t think I was right and they were wrong — I know it.

Once again: Every year Hollywood Elsewhere subjects the leading Best Picture contenders to the Howard Hawks measuring stick. The legendary director is famed for having said that a good movie (or a formidable Oscar seeker) always has “three great scenes and no bad ones.”

Hawks also defined a good director as “someone who doesn’t annoy you.” I wouldn’t want to sound unduly harsh or dismissive but I’m afraid that Kenneth Branagh‘s direction of certain portions of Belfast and particularly his decision to open with that vibrantly colorful prologue…’nuff said.

How do the leading 2021 Best Picture contender films (numbering nine) rate on the Hawks chart? Here we go…

Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog: I’m sorry but despite the fine performances, the feeling of 1920s open-range authenticity, handsome visual compositions and carefully-honed pacing, this 126-minute film has no great scenes. There are a few intriguing moments, but none I would even begin to call highly impactful, much less “great.” You keep waiting for a killer scene (or two or three) to arrive, but it never does. Dog is more about the overall than this or that peak moment.

Reinaldo Marcus Green, Will Smith and Zach Baylin‘s King Richard: I could go on and on, but this 2021 Warner Bros. sports drama has more than a trio of stick-to-your-ribs scenes. One, the persistent Richard (Smith) persuades elite tennis coach Paul Cohen (Tony Gpldwyn) to check out Venus and Serena’s exceptional skills, and within a couple of minutes Cohen gets it. (“You taught ’em this?”) Two, Richard takes offense when Andy Bean‘s Laird Stabler, a colleague of the cigar-smoking Will Hodges (Dylan McDermott), tells him he’s done “an amazing job” in training his daughters. Three, the kitchen argument scene between Richard and wife Orascene (Aunjanue Ellis). There are at least two or three others (the Oakland tennis match finale, Richard comes perilously close to shooting a Compton gangsta, refusing the initial endorsement deal, etc.).

Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast. Again, a few diverting scenes but none that could be called outstanding or great. Branagh’s real-life dad may have been an appealing crooner who could dance fairly well, but Jamie Dornan‘s singing and dancing scene struck me as cloying and insincere and untrustworthy. It therefore qualifies, no offense, as a “bad” scene.

Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story. One, the opening shot of tear-down rubble and ruination on San Juan Hill, and how that feeds into the brilliant “Jets Song” sequence. Two, Corey Stall‘s dismissive rant about how the Jets represent the “can’t make it and haven’t moved to Long Island” crowd, and that in a very short while high-rise luxury apartment buildings will be hiring Puerto Rican door men, etc. Three, the neighborhood Scherzo sequence as Maria tries to make it seem as if she’s slept all night in her bedroom. If these aren’t great scenes they’re certainly damn good ones.

Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Licorice Pizza has one great scene — the finale in which Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman finally embrace like they mean it. Otherwise the film is a bit spotty and meandering, but I respect the courage that Anderson showed when he included those two scenes involving John Michael Higgins‘ Jerry Frick and his two (i.e., successive) Japanese wives. Anderson knows the climqte out there, and had to realize that wokesters would come after the film for engaging in what some regard as crude racial stereotyping. But Anderson kept it in, partly because he was drawing on his own SFV experience and partly because he doesn’t believe in presentism, or so it seems.

Denis Villenueve‘s Dune. A captivating visual scheme and impressive production design elements do not, in and of themselves, constitute what anyone would call great cinema. Okay, perhaps on an overall aesthetic sweep basis but certainly not in terms of this or that scene.

Sian Heder‘s CODA has two appealing supporting performances (Troy Kotsur‘s randy dad, Eugenio Derbez‘s singing tutor), but no exceptional scenes per se, and certainly no great ones.

Joel Coen‘s The Tragedy gf Macbeth boasts excellent performances (Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Alex Hassell, Kathryn Hunter) and of course an impressionistic sound-stage environment blended with the classic Shakespeare text. At the same time I can’t honestly think of any particularly great scenes in the Hawks sense of the term. It’s an honorable film at the end of the day, certainly, but there’s no ducking the fact that it’s far less of an undertaking than Roman Polanski‘s 1971 version.

Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Lost Daughter falls more under the heading of “highly respectable, especially coming from a first-time director” than “a film which contains three great scenes and no bad ones.” Honestly? The scene in which Ed Harris visits Olivia Colman in her condo but doesn’t say boo about the doll lying on the patio table, except to note that it has water inside it. The missing doll is a huge thing on the island (reward money, posters stapled to trees) so Harris’s curious indifference to Colman being a doll thief is an odd call — I think it’s fair to argue that its a “bad” scene.

In sum, the only Hawks finalists are King Richard and West Side Story.

It is my earnest opinion that N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis used to be one of the very best in all respects. I’m a serious longtime fan, as I first began savoring her critiques when she wrote for the L.A. Weekly. And I still get the tingles when I re-read her N.Y. Times review (8.6.04) of Michael Mann‘s Collateral. But time passed, Trump came along, #MeToo was born, a domestic version of China’s Great Cultural Revolution of the ’60s kicked in, and Dargis turned woke.

I won’t present a chapter-and-verse dossier that shows exactly where Dargis seemed to turn the corner, but it was roughly around the time when the Times seemed to ease up on its commitment to redefining or re-enforcing its sterling Gray Lady reputation and instead became a woke activist newspaper committed to progressive change. The publishing of the 1619 Project, the resignation of James Bennet and Bari Weiss, the firing of Donald McNeil Jr. and so on.

I’m certainly no final arbiter, but to me and others, Dargis (along with co-critic A.O. Scott) seemed to increasingly side with the wokes.

Friendo: “Woke…yup. Her and Tony. And so we no longer trust them as critics. We don’t trust their lists, their reviews, etc.”

I’m mentioning this because eight days ago (1.26) the Times posted a long Dargis essay titled “For the First Time Ever, I’m Optimistic About Women in the Movie World.” It was basically a celebration of the increasing presence of women filmmakers…fine. 12 years ago “women comprised 7 percent of all directors working on the Top 250 films of 2009,” according to an annual report on women in film from researcher Martha M. Lauzen, and now, according to Lauzen’s 2022 study, “women accounted for 18 percent of directors working on the Top 250 films.”

Which is obviously encouraging, although that percentage could and should be higher, providing, I should add, that future women-directed films are at least partly in the region of Kathryn Bigelow‘s game-changing The Hurt Locker, say, and less in the camp of Sarah Polley‘s Women Talking.

But as I read the Dargis piece I began muttering to myself, ‘This is basically a pep-rally manifesto…an article that says “yay team, hooray for our side, we’re gaining in power and influence…representation!’

It felt less like an essay by a brilliant film critic whose primary allegiance was to the Universal Church of Cinema — something personal, soaring, nervy, revelatory, exacto-knifey — and more like an eloquent political pamphlet piece…a political speech that might have been delivered by Dargis at a recent Women in Film gathering, say, or submitted as a possible chapter in an anthology book about the growing community of brand-name women filmmakers.

Do film critics have to constantly criticize or take down or scold? No — it’s not only fine but necessary, most of us would agree, to celebrate what seems like positive or at least hopeful change in the film industry. Same deal if Andrew Sarris or Pauline Kael had written a 1969 Film Comment piece about the exciting new energy coming out of Hollywood since the smash success of Easy Rider, say. All to the good.

But Dargis’ cheerleader piece really didn’t feel like the Dargis of yore. It felt wokey-wokey and perhaps even Elmer Gantry-ish on a certain level. (Not in a hucksterish sense but with a certain fundamentalist revival-tent feeling.)

It almost seemed as if Dargis was saying in subtext, “I’m not just feeling good about the increasing power of women filmmakers, but also…I want to say this carefully…I’m also sensing a primal change within myself. I feel as if I’ve crossed over in a Malcolm X-meets-#MeToo sort of way…I used to be a disciple of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, to to speak, but three of four years ago I began to gradually convert to the Sunni faith, and my spirit has led me in new directions.”

In other words, Dargis seemed to be saying “I used to be a ‘film critic but since 2019 or thereabouts — and I mean this in the manner of Thomas Becket‘s admission to Henry II by way of Jean Anouilh — I have become introduced to greater responsibilities.”

“Hauser vs. Dargis–Scott Eccentricity,” posted roughly a year ago.

Over the last three or four years Dargis and Scott’s critical judgments, to borrow a phrase from Scott’s 2001 Pearl Harbor review, have been “strenuously respectful of contemporary sensitivities.”

Many of the comments about Dargis’s piece were, as you might expect, strident: “Very confused why the N.Y. Times needs to take 2,500 words to tell me I should feel optimistic that ‘in 2022 women accounted for 18 percent of directors working at the top of their field.’ So 1/2 of the population getting to speak for 1/5 of the time gives us the healthiest and most dynamic picture of modern life and reflects a value system we don’t actively have to worry about, for now…forgive me for still being worried.”