…I’d be super-down for this…Denzel throws dust into the eyes of a charging rhino!…some other actor (Chris Walken?) saying to 20-years-younger Denzel “you shall be my instrument.” That I could easily go for. That I would delight in.
But I can’t invest in a gladiator flick film starring Paul “weepy dad + milky complexion + greasy whiskers” Mescal. He’s too vulnerable, too meditative, too watery-eyed. Not my kind of alpha male. 24 years ago Russell Crowe had that X-factor, coiled-tension, charging-bull quality, and Mescal is supposed to be his son? Not buying it. Outside of the deranged HE commentariat trolls, relatively few are.
If Ridley had gone with a real man, fine. But the tearful, melancholy, too-quick-to-smile father from Afterburn? Forget it. He’s not good-looking enough. His jaw is too pointy, too Margaret Hamilton.
There’s no trusting a trailer, of course, but I’m sensing that the overall tone of Gladiator II is on the porno-violent side…overly emphasized…more blood, more severed limbs, more howling rage, etc. But at least there’s no more herky-jerky cinematography.
The first Osgood Perkins was, as we all know, a highly regarded stage actor who died in 1937 at age 45. He was the father of the late, great Anthony Perkins, who was born in 1932 and died in ’92. The current Osgood is the son of Anthony and Berry Berenson — the latter was killed on 9.11.01 when her flight, American Airlines #11, slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.
55 years ago Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey‘s Lonesome Cowboys goofed on the idea of Manhattan gay guys pretending be buckskin buckaroos. It was a silly, sloppy mess but amusing here and there. Or so I thought when I caught it in Los Angeles way back when.
To go by SXSW reviewsLukeGilford’s National Anthem is a sincere love story about CharliePlummer‘s Dylan, a straight young guy, falling in love with a trans rodeo performer named Sky, played by Eve Lindley.
I haven’t seen the newbie, and I’m not sure that I need to.
Transcript: “Where is the mighty voice of the Democratic party asserting Americanism? It’s absent, it’s a whisper, it can’t be heard and this is the tragedy. Democracy is collapsing, not because it’s not good but it’s become weak and corrupt, and because fascism is rising in its place as it did almost 100 years ago.
“This is an extraordinary moment, a dangerous one. The leaders of the Democratic party have deluded themselves, lied to themselves, engaged in a game of pretend. They looked away, they wished away what was clearly in front of their eyes and here’s the deal — life does not permit such things, it always catches up.
“This moment requires leadership, patriotism, conviction…it requires on the part of Joe Biden an act of humility, an act of patriotism.
“We should appreciate what we’re witnessing. We don’t have much time left to stop it. In fact there are only 42 days until the Democrats [nominate Joe Biden and in so doing] give away the country to Project 2025 and to Donald Trump and [only a few weeks later] Donald Trump will wait somewhere in a hotel suite, perhaps at Mar a Lago, waiting as the seconds tick down until the networks are ready to make their projections. The difference is that in 2016 the world was surprised, [and] in 2020 we we all saw it happen and knew it was over for Trump. But this time Trump is winning and there won’t be a surprise when ABC News and NBC News and CBS News and CNN and Fox all say the words ‘Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States, is tonight the president-elect of the United States.’
“It will be a moment of immense tragedy…a tragedy that could be seen as far off as any that has ever been able to be seen for it and we will have watched it come down the tracks at us, from the moment the light was just a little pin prick peeking out in the dark until it ran over everything. What a shameful moment for the country, for the media, and for the Democratic party…what a terrible low moment.
“But [our path] can be redeemed. There must be another road taken and what that road rejects is self-interest…what that road rejects is power for the sake of power…what it embraces is duty and honor and sacrifice. It is the American Road and down that road awaits a brilliant legacy for the 46th president of the United States, and on the road not taken something terrible awaits…not just defeat but an eradication of everything that Joe Biden has done. Because the only memory that will remain, the only indentation in the sand that will persist is a legacy of losing to Trump.”
Honest HE rewrite under the eyes of a watchful God: “I can respond to all this by saying clearly and unequivocally: Because my obvious cognitive decline has become the central focus of the ongoing 2024 Presidential campaign (even though Donald Trump‘s authoritarian and fascistic views about presidential power, recently fortified by the Supreme Court, are far more threatening in a general sense), I am all but certain to lose both the popular and electoral vote counts on 11.5.24.
“In short, I am finished. My goose is cooked. But I am determined to run nonetheless because my life-of-Joe-Biden saga has always been about persistence, tenacity and never giving up.
“Will tens of millions of Americans suffer and howl and stamp their feet when Trump is re-elected? Will American democracy as we’ve known it take a spear wound or two and perhaps worse? Almost certainly. But as I said to George Stephanopoulos the other night, what matters in the end is how I feel and whether I’ve fought my best fight.
“’As long as I gave it my all,’ I said to George, ‘and did the best job I know I can do — that’s what this is about.’
“Translation: If the United States of America has to go down with me, so be it.
“So as your president and as a staunch fellow Democrat, don’t fret about Trump’s coming victory. What matters the most is how I, Joe Biden, feel about myself, and how Dr. Jill Biden feels about me and how my eternally disreputable, formerly addicted son feels about me, and how obstinate and mule-headed I’m willing to be. And as your president, trust me, I am more of a mule than Francis! (Go ahead — ask Donald O’Connor. No, wait, he died 20 years ago.)
“My Irish feet, trust me, are set in cement, and Biden cement doesn’t crack.”
After I began to think and write about CharlotteWells’ listless Aftersun, which I saw in Cannes in ‘22 and will never see again, I discovered I was having difficulty remembering the name of PaulMescal, who played the weepy dad.
It wasn’t just that I felt an instant animal dislike for this 20something Irish actor, but something about his last name just wouldn’t stay in my brain. It didn’t sound Irish, for one thing. Too mushy. So I decided upon a word association technique. I thought of him as a form of human mescaline (i.e., disorienting) and it worked. I simply decided that this watery-eyed sedative of an actor was the CarlosCastaneda mescalito guy, even though there was nothing the least bit trippy about him.
…feel like gangbusters if your score it with “We Will Rock You.” Imagine this teaser coupled with “Tomorrow Never Knows“…that would be amazing. Or Handel’s “Messiah“…even better.
In response to HE’s “13 Best Revolution Dramas” (7.5), a journo friend suggested the addition of John Frankenheimer‘s Seven Days In May, which he says is “still unnerving today, especially now and with Project 2025 seeping into consciousness.”
HE response: “Seven Days in May is not a revolution movie — it’s a political suspense thriller about stopping a military insurrection.
“I love this film also except for the IDIOTIC NOTION that letters showing that Burt Lancaster‘s James Matoon Scott had heated sexual thoughts about Ava Gardner‘s Eleanor Holbrook and vice versa…the totally moronic notion that these letters would halt or hinder Scott’s military overthrow plot.
Sample letter: “Ellie — worshipping your pear-shaped ass is more important to me than money, good health, political power…I want nothing more from life than to carnally possess that luscious pear…perhaps after making exquisite love we can go out together for pear cake in the West Village?”
Last night I caught Greg Berlanti‘s Fly Me To The Moon (Sony, 7.12) at a local AMC plex — a ticket buyer’s sneak preview so all embargo bets are off. Any negative reviews or social media tweets you might read are probably harsh and unfair for this is definitely a reasonably decent romantic confection with perky performances (except for Channing Tatum‘s), some agreeably snappy, above-average dialogue and…okay, somewhat clumsy third-act plotting but not in a catastrophic sense.
Written by Rose Gilroy, Bill Kirstein and Keenan Flynn, it’s a lightweight romcom riff on the alleged faking of the 1969 moon landing legend — a decades-old myth — by way of early ’60s Rock Hudson and Doris Day movies.
It has a jaunty, vaguely farcical tone while being both accurate and oddly inaccurate in recreating the America of 55 years ago. But it also offers a slice of that same nostalgic feeling of national pride that Todd Douglas Miller‘s Apollo 11 (’19) conveyed. So it leaves you with wholesome emotions and a nice aftertaste.
I went right home and re-watched Apollo 11 on Amazon….an absolutely first-rate, visually beautiful documentary sans narration or talking heade.
Scarlett Johansson‘s Kelly Jones is the star of the show — glamorously presented, hoarding most of the clever lines, registering serious emotion. She’s a bit like Doris Day‘s advertising executive in Lover Come Back (’61), only much more savvy and Don Draper-ish and therefore more of an exercise in 21st Century presentism as women generally didn’t wield that kind of power a half-century ago.
Jones is hired by Woody Harrelson‘s Moe Berkus (i.e., the conniving bad guy) to commercially market the Apollo program and later to secretly organize the shooting of a faked moon landing in case the Apollo 11 mission doesn’t succeeed or ends tragically.
Channing Tatum‘s Cole Davis is an uptight NASA bigwig with a crush on Jones, a fat broomstick up his ass, acute feelings of guilt over the January 1967 launchpad deaths of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee, and a strong distaste for Jones’ marketing of the Apollo program. He’s basically playing a chump — a secondary character who mostly reacts to stuff that he finds angering, confounding or surprising.
If Fly Me To The Moon inspires you to re-watch Miller’s Apollo 11, as it did me, you might want to play a little game with yourself. There’s a whole lot of pre-launch footage of NASA technicians, VIP NASA guests, and Average Joe tourists waiting to see the launch. The name of the game is “Find the Obese People.” Because in 1969 they were all but nonexistent. You might spot one or two NASA technicians who could stand to exercise a bit more, but no Lizzo or John Candy types.
Among the almost entirely white throngs of Cocoa Beach tourists it’s really hard to find even a moderately fat person, and damn near impossible to spot any serious Jabbas. It’s just the way things were back then.
Apollo 11 is truly great within its own realm — an immersive, suspenseful, larger-than-life, clean-as-a-hound’s-tooth revisiting of a momentous moment in world history. It’s moving and majesterial and as tightly wound as a Swiss watch — i.e., all the boring parts of an eight-day voyage removed for viewing pleasure.
Apollo 11 gets you emotionally in at least a couple of ways. In hindsight it’s almost sad to watch when you consider how good and unified everyone in the U.S. felt when the Eagle landed on the moon on 7.20.69. That feeling is gone for good now.
True, things were anything but peaceful in the summer of ’69 — the Vietnam War raging, the “silent majority” discomforted by anti-war demonstrations and a general loathing of President Richard Nixon plus counter-culture upheavals (pot, LSD, hippies, the Weathermen, Black Panthers, “whitey on the moon”, Woodstock, breakup of the Beatles). So life is never peaceful and strife and discomfort are often the orders of the day.
Nixon was a dark character but he wasn’t MAGA crazy. For all his dark currents and venal determinations Nixon at least understood and respected the system of checks and balances for the most part and, apart from “the plumbers”, generally operated within constitutional restraints. And he did push for environmental laws, a national health care system and the raising of labor wages. Five years ago Noam Chomskyopined that Nixon was “the last liberal president.”
As disturbing and discordant as 1969 was, it was a comparative garden of eden compared to what’s happening now.
Here’s a re-hash of HE’s best 2011 films along with the also-rans and stinkers…if you assemble the best (10), the very goods (16) and the generally approved (23), the tally comes to 49….a damn good year!
HE’s 10 Best of 2011 (in this order): Moneyball, A Separation, The Descendants, Miss Bala, Drive, Contagion, Win Win, Tyrannosaur, The Tree of Life, In The Land of Blood and Honey. (10)
Special “I Don’t Know Where They Precisely Belong But I Like ‘Em More Than Some Of The Others” Distinction (i.e., Close With Unlit Cigar): Attack The Block, Beginners, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, Margaret, Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, X-Men First Class, Captain America, Hugo, 50/50, Young Adult, The Artist, Hanna, The Guard, Bridesmaids, Buck, Page One: Inside The NY Times, Rampart. (16)
Good & Generally Approved With Issues (in this order): Take Shelter, A Better Life, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Ides of March, Midnight in Paris, A Dangerous Method, Albert Nobbs, J. Edgar, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Applause, Melancholia, The Lincoln Lawyer, Another Happy Day, Source Code, Point Blank, Cedar Rapids, The Iron Lady, Happy Happy, Super, The Housemaid, Carnage, Another Earth, Le Havre. (23)
Frosty, Tiresome, Enervatingly Good: Shame. (1)
The Wrong Stuff: War Horse, Tintin, The Lie. (3)
Decent, Not Half Bad: Coriolanus, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, Insidious, The Last Lions, Warrior, Myth of the American Sleepover, Tabloid, Super 8, The Trip, Making The Boys (doc about Mart Crowley and The Boys in the Band), Jane Eyre, Paranormal Activity 3, Restless, Submarine, Take This Waltz, Thor, Meet Monica Valour, Rango. (19)
Approved But Lesser Almodovar: The Skin I Live In. (1)
Lesser Dardennes: The Kid With A Bike. (1)
Lesser Fincher: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Lesser Kiarostami: Certified Copy (1)
Respectable Intentions, Didn’t Get There: Meek’s Cutoff, London Boulevard, Texas Killing Fields, Warrior, Straw Dogs, The Way Back, Like Crazy, The Rum Diary, Sleeping Beauty, The Adjustment Bureau, The Company Men, White Irish Drinkers, The Devil’s Double, The Dilemma, We Bought A Zoo, Wuthering Heights, Anonymous. (18)
Meh, Underbaked, Less is Less, Insufficient: Rubber, Ceremony, Hall Pass, Bullhead, Fright Night, The Help, Magic Trip, Our Idiot Brother. (8)
Most Dislikable Sundance 2011 Film: Bellflower. (1)
Regretful Shortfallers: 30 Minutes Or Less, The Beaver, Higher Ground, Knuckle, Larry Crowne, Limitless, Priest. (7)
Acute Dislike, Blah, Nothing, Stinko: The Big Year, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Arthur, Bad Teacher, Battle: Los Angeles, Butter, The Caller, Cat Run, The Change-Up, Cowboy & Aliens, Colombiana, Crazy, Stupid, Love, Dream House, Fast Five, Final Destination 5, Five Days of War, Footloose, Friends With Benefits, The Green Hornet, Green Lantern, Hall Pass, The Hangover Part II, Hobo With A Shotgun, Horrible Bosses, Kaboom, Machine Gun Preacher, New Year’s Eve, One Day, Paul, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Red Riding Hood, Sucker Punch, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1, Tower Heist, Twixt, Water For Elephants, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Your Highness, The Zookeeper, Your Highness, Miral. (42)
Several years ago I stated that the following 15 films were the best of 2000, and in this order:
Yes, Ridley Scott‘s Gladiator is a worthy, grand-scale film, but I don’t think it was good enough to include among the top 15. I’m sorry but I don’t. Mainly because I found Joaquin Phoenix‘s Commodus an absurdly overwrought villain…a ridiculous man…Snidely Whiplash times ten.
So here are the new rankings…time brings improved perspective…here we go…
1. Kenneth Lonergan‘s You Can Count On Me (contains Mark Ruffalo‘s finest-ever performance — he was playing my late brother Tony).
