Here are HE’s finest films of the first eight months of ’23 — two thirds gone, four months to go.
I’ve given no consideration at all to box-office performance — the rankings are strictly about how successful and satisfying each film is according to its own game and rules, and how thematically fulfilled it feels when all is said and done.
A special demerit system applies in the case of otherwise commendable, first-rate films that delivered (a) manosphere pissnado or (b) caused my soul and knees to ache due to slow pacing and density of dialogue.
1. Tran Anh Hung’s The Pot au Feu
2. Guy Ritchie‘s The Covenant
3. Cruise & McQuarrie‘s Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One (2023)
4. Christian Mungiu‘s RMN
5. Eric Gravel‘s Full Time
6. Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer — first-rate film but I groaned at the one-hour mark, knowing there were two full hours to go…my soul cried out.
7. Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie [manosphere pissnado demerit]
8. Jonathan Glazer‘s The Zone of Interest
9. Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon
10. Matt Johnson‘s Blackberry
11. Ari Aster‘s Beau Is Afraid
12. Ben Affleck‘s Air
13. Celine Song‘s Past Lives
14. Jean-Stephen Sauvaire’s Black Flies.
15. Steven Soderbergh‘s Magic Mike’s Last Dance
16. Nicole Holofcener‘s You Hurt My Feelings
16. Kelly Fremon Craig‘s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.
No offense but I still haven’t seen How To Blow Up A Pipeline.
Twitter/X statement from Jamie, Alexander and Nina Bernstein: “It breaks our hearts to see any misrepresentations or misunderstandings of Bradley’s efforts…it happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose. Bradley chose to use makeup to amplify his resemblance, and we’re perfectly fine with that. We’re also certain that our dad would have been fine with it as well.”
Sometime in the mid ’90s the late Robert Evans shared a biological observation with me: “When you get older your nose gets bigger, your ears get bigger and longer and your teeth get smaller.”
We’ve all sampled food-and-atmosphere moments to die for…perfect transitional serenity…that quietly radiant feeling in which the place and the warmth (and not just the climatorial kind) are so calming and poignant that time itself has seemingly stopped…much more than just sitting at a table…enveloped by bliss and rapture.
Two nights ago I happened upon a brief video of such a moment…12 years and three months ago (late May 2011) on a calm and sunny day in Venice, Italy…placid, a gentle breeze, the faint sound of water lapping at pilings…sitting at an outdoor table at Trattoria San Basilio, a fairly small (you could even call it tiny) restaurant, waterside in southern Dorsoduru…no tourists, no madding crowd…Calle del Vento, 1516, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy.
HE’s director-writer friendo believes that the WGA negotiators are “an ineffective wild bunch — great with threats, terrible with realistic negotiations.”
The three principal hardheads, he asserts, are Patric Verrone (whom he calls “the Iago figure”), David Goodman and “the melodramatic and very bellicose” Chris Keyser.
“WGA leadership wanted a strike the last time their contract us up, but due to COVID couldn’t ask for a walkout,” he says. They’re now asking, he contends, “for unrealistic mandates for a business model that will be marginalized in the future, such as dictating a minimum number of writers hired for staffing. That’s akin to making a one-man show on Broadway illegal, forcing upon the production a supporting cast.
“Whatever deal the WGA winds up getting could have been achieved without a strike,” he states, adding that “the main leverage right now remains the actor walkout.”
“The strike fund is just whispers on the picket lines as many people haven’t qualified for aid, expressing anger at not getting help.
“David Young suddenly having a medical issue last February after leading every negotiation successfully for years…well, that says something as he was a blue-collar outsider with a tougher style than the mild-mannered scribes used in the past. He was a teamster type, a street fighter.
“Verrone led the strike the last time [2007], planning for it long before it was called. One opinion is that he was a little animation guy who wanted to have his roar heard by the studios that ignored him in the past.”
In the tradition of James Agee, Otis Ferguson, Andre Bazin, Francois Truffaut, Andrew Sarris, Manny Farber, Pauline Kael, Penelope Gilliat, Todd McCarthy, Joseph McBride and Owen Gleiberman…kidding.
We may not be talking about empty coke bottle realms, but we’re certainly not talking about much in the way of savvy insight or, like, extensive film knowledge.
Three or four weeks ago the driver’s side window in my VW Passat gave up the ghost. It went down but wouldn’t go up again. The front-seat passenger window worked fine and still does; ditto the two backseat windows.
A broken open window obviously means no protection, so I had to handle it pronto. I asked Vinny, a local mechanic whom I respect, if he could fix it. Sure, he said. The next day I met him at a vaguely down-at-the-heels Bridgeport shopping plaza.
Vinny took the door apart and determined that the electrical mechanism that controls the up-and-down motion of the window had suffered a short circuit. The short was caused by a small pool of water that had collected in the door well. To fix it correctly he’d need to find a new white-plastic window mechanism, Vinny said, but he managed to manually crank the window upward.
It was gratifying, at least, that the window was closed and locked in that position. All I had to do was remember to not hit the down-window switch.
I told Vinny I’d get in touch after I returned from Ontario and would promptly pay him to buy and install the mechanism, etc.
Vinny was buried in another job when I returned but that was okay.
Last Saturday I went to a local car wash, and as I approached the vacuum section a Latino guy in a low-thread-count T-shirt motioned for me to lower my window so we could speak. I was temporarily spacing out or daydreaming, but like a total idiot I unthinkingly hit the switch and lowered the driver-side window…gaaahh! It was once again stuck in the open position, and the car was 100% vulnerable to scurvy, slime-fingered thieves.
I immediately called Vinny and said, “Yo, Vinny…the window is down again. Can you help me today or tomorrow or soon?” He said he’d been sidelined with a bad foot (gout) but that he’d search for a used mechanism and we could hook up the next day or certainly the day after.
The following night (i.e., Sunday) it was lightly raining as I sat in the Wilton Library parking lot. I turned the engine on and began listening to music. I was concerned, of course, about more rain water getting into the car through the open window. My left arm was sitting on the elbow rest but I wasn’t touching any buttons or window switches. I sat and listened to RandyNewman and thought about my life.
And then, like magic, the driver window activated itself….whrrrrrrr. The window went up halfway, stopped, thought about it for two or three seconds, and kept going up until the window was completely closed shut.
My mouth fell open. I gasped. It was a moment straight out of Irving Pichel‘s The Miracle of the Bells (’48). Just like the statues of St. Michael and the Virgin Mary slowly turn on their pedestals until they face the coffin of Alida Valli‘s Olga, the driver’s side window had closed itself…the hand of God or some tekekinetic force had intervened.
Vinny’s foot was still hurting yesterday (i.e., Monday afternoon) but we’ve planned on a Wednesday afternoon meet-up.
And that “thing” is that Maestro isn’t all that focused on Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein. Well, it is to a considerable extent, obviously, but Carey Mulligan’s Felicia has the spotlight. Duhh.
I’ve been presuming all along that the two strikes will slog on and on and ruin the red-carpet aspect of the early fall film festivals and half-destroy award season promotions until they finally end in October or November…best guess.
But then that Guardian story appeared last Saturday, and then last night a director-writer friendo said the following: “There’s been radio silence so that probably means the [Writers Guild] is going to take this deal in principle. [Bob] Iger turned conciliatory and got involved, allowing concessions. The WGA negotiating committee is particularly maladroit (i.e., given to bungling), but Carol [Lombardini] from the AMPTP is skilled and not the heavy here.”
Speaking as a total freak for color snaps of classic era Times Square marquees and billboard ads, I was initially thrilled to find this color shot of the DeMille’s gigantic, two–sided PSYCHO wall promo.
Alfred Hitchcock’s seminalslasherpic opened on June16th, 1960. 63 years ago hit films would play for several weeks or even months on end, but let’s presume this nocturnal image was snapped sometime that summer when interest was peaking.
My spitballs are (a) definitely Mark Meadows, (b) probably Rudy Guiliani, (c) possibly John Eastman. Further speculation?
Oh, and by the way? If I were Fani Willis I wouldn’t entertain ambitions to run for public office down the road. She’s presumably an excellent attorney but to say she has an awkward speaking style is putting it mildly. She reminded me of Tiffany Haddish announcing the Oscar noms in 2018. You can feel her struggling as she reads the particulars.
ESPN’s Michael Fletcher: “[Oher] alleges that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, who took Oher into their home as a high school student, never adopted him. Instead, less than three months after Oher turned 18 in 2004, the petition says, the couple tricked him into signing a document making them his conservators, which gave them legal authority to make business deals in his name.
“The petition further alleges that the Tuohys used their power as conservators to strike a deal that paid them and their two birth children millions of dollars in royalties from an Oscar-winning film that earned more than $300 million, while Oher got nothing for a story ‘that would not have existed without him.’”
In other words the Tuohys are shifty and slippery, baby, and Oher wants a cut of that money, honey.
The classy, movingly scored new teaser for Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (Netflix, 11.22 theatrical) tells us quite plainly that the film is less about the legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) and more about the 27-year marriage between Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Bernstein (Carey Mulligan).
The emphasis, in fact, seems to be 60/40 in favor of Felicia. The trailer suggests, in fact, if it wasn’t called Maestro Cooper could have gone with something like Duet or The Two of Us. They were very comfortable with each other, the footage says…they vibed quite nicely.
While the mixed footage (color and monochrome) and choice editing allude to a difficult, imperfect relationship when Lenny and Felicia hit middle age (there are brief bits in which (a) Lenny hair-strokes a young hawk-nosed dude at a party and (b) Felicia catches Lenny making a pass at the same guy in a hallway) but Lenny being gay…well, it’s there but a trailer can’t delve into the fact that their marriage was based on a sensible and civilized arrangement — i.e., “wealthy famous gay guy married to beard wife for the purposes of public image, not to mention the kids.”
If anything the teaser is suggesting Lenny was bi. (He wasn’t.) That plus “their relationship was fraught and strained but always musical.”
As noted, Maestro will hit theatres on 11.22.23 (i.e., JFK day), and will thereby go head to head with Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon. Can someone come up with a Barbenheimer moniker that blends the two? Okay, I’ve got one: Maestroleon.
Seriously — can someone please get to work on a Maestroleon poster concept?
Maestro will begin streaming on Netflix on 12.20.23. It will probably be given a special premiere showing at the 2023 New York Film Festival…maybe.
