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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

Posted from Cannes on 5.21.23: Todd Haynes‘ May December struck me as awkward and even silly at times. Haynes tries for a tone that mixes satiric whimsy and overheated emotional spillage while channeling Bergman’s Persona, but scene after scene and line after line hit me the wrong way.

It’s about a famous actress, Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman), paying a visit to the pricey Savannah home of Gracie Atherton (Julianne Moore), a somewhat neurotic and brittle 60something who runs a dessert-baking business. Elizabeth’s plan is to study Gracie as preparation for a soon-to-shoot film about her once-turbulent life, which involved a scandalous sexual affair with a minor and a subsequent prison term. Elizabeth naturally wants her forthcoming portrayal to deliver something truthful, etc.

For her part Gracie is cool with the arrangement but at the same time a wee bit conflicted and anxious. She’s calculated that she’ll come off better in the film if she invites the pissing camel into the tent**.

Seemingly modelled on the late Mary Kay Letourneau, a former school teacher who was prosecuted and jailed for seduced a 13 year-old boy, Gracie is married to Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), a 36 year-old half-Korean dude who was also 13 when Gracie technically “raped” him while they were working together at a pet store, and with whom they now have two or three kids. (This is one of those films in which the exact number of kids in a given family is of no interest to anyone…zip.)

If I didn’t have a Salle Debussy screening of Karim Ainouz‘s Firebrand breathing down my neck, I would list the eight or nine things that especially bothered me last night. Suffice that my basic reaction was one of exasperation. I literally threw up my hands and loudly exhaled three or four times. I groaned at least twice. I’m pretty sure I muttered “Jesus!” a couple of times. I also recall slapping my thigh.

For what it’s worth Letourneau and Fualaau insisted from the get-go that their relationship was consensual; ditto Gracie and Jo in May December‘s backstory. After serving her prison term Letourneau married Fualaau and soon after had kids with him; same deal with Moore and Melton’s pretend couple.

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.

“I know, I know you’ll probably scream and cry that your little world won’t let you go…”

My Toyota Corolla sound system was blasting song after song as I drove south through New Mexico earlier today. And around halfway through I felt throttled by the chords in a Jimi Hendrix track I hadn’t listened to for years…”51st Anniversary.” It’s only about the chords, man…to hell with the lyrics about old folks celebrating a wedding anniversary.

Anyway it touched a little button inside…a button that gently activated all kind of LSD memories. Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced?” and the Bhagavad Gita were my two initial guides into the psychedelic realm, you see…in a way Jimi and Sri Krishna both held my hand.

After I dropped off the rental car and passed through security at Albuquerque airport, I re-read a Facebook message that I tapped out roughly three years ago (8.19.20). The recipient was Paul Schrader, who had asked his Facebook pallies if he should drop acid, which he never did as a lad.

“When I was in college I refused to take LSD because I was so full of suicidal anger, [and] I feared the drug would unleash self destruction,” he wrote. “That of course was media propaganda. But now at 74 with little left to lose I would like to take a trip. Is it safe at my age? Where can I safely access it?”

I don’t know if Paul wound up dropping or not, but here’s what I wrote:

“I wouldn’t, man. Unless you’ve developed a notion that you’re ready to accept the mystical, which means putting aside the rational and in some cases judgmental constructs that you’ve been assembling for so many decades — all of those structural towers of intellectual, influential, scholastic, explorational and experience-based building blocks of your identity.

“LSD is a potential passport to satori and clear light. It’s all there and quite the wonder-realm, but you can’t really enter the kingdom without letting all that other stuff go…all of that material you’ve been accumulating and evaluating and sifting through since your early teens. None of that stuff really matters in the realm of the mystical. If you think you might be down with this or at least open to the possibility, go with God. But it’s a lot easier to allow this kind of ‘letting go’ transformation to happen when you’re 19 or 22 and made of much softer clay.

“LSD is a key, a door ajar, a gateway into a whole ‘nother territory. It isn’t really about therapy or psychology (sorry, Cary) or this or that terra firma, furrowed-brow examination or rumination. It’s about stepping off a kind of misty, moss-covered cliff or, if you will, deciding that the rules, restrictions and governances that you’ve been living by are just obstructions, and that a blue-sky realm awaits.

“I’m just saying that most (i.e., obviously not all) older people have invested too many decades and sorted through too much stuff to accept this kind of clarity, this kind of spiritual cleansing and refreshment. Some people are better off living in safe, sensible worlds that have worked for them…familiarity, recogn

…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.

It’s 10 am and time to leave my riverside cabin in Dolores, Colorado, and head for the Alberquerque, New Mexico airport, which is roughly a four-and-a-half-hour drive. The National car rental desk closes at 5:30 pm. My La Guardia flight leaves tonight around 11 pm or so. I’ll probably stop in Cuba, New Mexico for a breather and a little filing.

In a THR post-Telluride assessment piece, Scott Feinberg discusses Tran Anh Hung‘s The Taste of Things (aka The Pot-au-Feu), and mentions that :France seems to have a very tough call on their hands, as far as whether to submit Anatomy of a Fall or The Taste of Things as its Oscar entry.”

Variety‘s Clayton Davis said the same thing….gee, tough one.

Well, it’s not. Davis and Feinberg are obliged to equivocate (no favorites, officially neutral), but they know that Anatomy of a Fall, which I saw and admired in Telluride, is primarily an intellectual head-trip courtroom thing, and that The Pot-Au-Feu is a heart-and-soul movie, a truly sublime love-and-food flick that exudes classic French culture start to finish.

And don’t call it “foodie porn” in my presence — it goes much deeper than that.

There’s really no contest, if you ask me. France has no choice but to officially submit the film that resulted in a Cannes Film Festival Best Director win for Tran Anh Hung.

Tony Manero (’08), Post-Mortem (’10) and especially No (’12) made me an ardent Pablo Larrain fan. But Jackie (’16) left me frustrated and dismayed (I much referred Noah D.Oppenheim‘s original 2010 script) and I hated Spencer (’21).

Pablo’s Diana movie left such a bad taste in my mouth, in fact, that I immediately and instinctually decided to avoid his latest, a comedic vampire flick about Augusto Pinochet, at Telluride.

Considering the likelihood that at least a few Venice Film Festival critics have tried like hell to respond as negatively as possible to Woody Allen’s Coup de Chance in order to satisfy the haters, it’s hugely exciting and satisfying to read how positive the overall response has been.

HE loves the idea of the #DeathtoWoody villains gnashing their teeth and muttering “drat! curses! foiled again! “We’ve managed to kill Allen’s domestic career, and now you’re telling us…what, that he’s back from the dead? Well, we won’t have it!! We’ve been terrorizing Hollywood and generally making everyone miserable for the last five or six years, goddamit, and we don’t want this to stop!”

Owen Gleiberman:

The big crescendo of the 50th Telluride Film Festival was Saturday night’s Werner Herzog theatre screening of Poor Things. The energy levels began to lessen the next morning (Sunday, 9.3) — the only screening I caught was The Pot–au–Feu.

Today (Monday, 9.4) is my last and final. Paso Dorji’s The Monk and the Gun at 2 pm, followed by Errol Morris’s The Pigeon Tunnel at 4:30. Then I’ll be driving down to Dolores for a nice cozy night at a creekside motel before driving the next day (Tuesday, 9.5) down to Albuquerque, and then a red-eye flight back to LaGuardia, arriving Wednesday at 6 am.