They got rid of Armie Hammer in Taika Watiti‘s Next Goal Wins (replaced by Will Arnett). But Kenneth Branagh‘s Death on the Nile (.22), being an ensemble piece, had no choice but to keep him.

One problem: The “S.S. Karnak” looks like a CG creation. The cruiser in the 1978 version was “real”, but not this one. Branagh might have shot some footage on an actual floating vessel of some sort, but it doesn’t seem so. In fact it all looks fake, even the ancient Egyptian statues and whatnot.

If you think about it, no previous Batman has had floppy, semi-longish, non-moussed or non-hair-sprayed hair. I love that RPatz’s hair is floppy and free. It’s a signifier of other forms of expressive Matt Reeves-style freedoms. Seriously, it’s a good omen. The Batman opens on 3.4.22 — nine weeks hence.

Almost all emotionally satisfying movies are about three-quarters set-up and one-quarter payoff.

I was explaining this a while ago in response to people dismissing Spider-Man: No Way Home. The viewer strategy, I said, is that you need to focus on the second hour and discount the mechanized, fan-service section that takes up the first 60 to 65 minutes.

“Brilliant way to assess a film,,,just ignore what sucks”, sneered “Michael2021.” To which I replied, “The first 65 minutes don’t ‘suck’— they’re just significantly different, delivery-wise, than the last hour. The first hour or so is all about situational set-up and boilerplate maneuverings.

“Do you like Warren Beatty‘s Heaven Can Wait (’78)? The impact of that film is almost entirely about the last 35 minutes or so, and really the last 20. The first hour is all set-up.

“Ditto Billy Wilder‘s The Apartment — the first hour or so is all set-up, set-up, set-up, and then the payoff happens during the last 30 to 40 minutes, and ESPECIALLY during the last 15 or 20.

“The last 20 to 25 minutes of Jerry Maguire is all payoff, payoff, payoff. Same thing with Almost Famous. How effective would Manchester By The Sea be without the last 25 to 30 minutes? Or the Zero Dark Thirty killshot finale? If you ask me The Social Network works because of that “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” finale.

“Name me an emotionally effective movie that doesn’t wait until the final act to start paying off…they all do this.”

“I’m an LGBTQ ally, [and I’m] sorry, truly sorry that I didn’t consider the hurt this would cause, and the DEPTH of that hurt” — from Patton Oswalt‘s apology to the trans community for having tweeted or Instagrammed a photo of himself and Dave Chappelle, whom he’s been chummy with for 34 years.

Like howling mountain gorillas, the gentle and loving trans community jumped all over Patton for this. Let this be a warning to any and all performers or showbiz types who’ve been friendly with Chappelle in the recent past, or who would like to show affection for him in the future. We will pound your ass into pulp so don’t even THINK about it, bitch.

As we speak, the Rotten Tomatoes audience rating for The Power of the Dog sits at 82%, which is 15 points higher than it was on 12.5.21. 82% is also significantly higher than the current 7.3 Metacritic audience score; ditto the IMDB’s 7.0 rating.

Complicating the equation is the “250 +” audience ratings that resulted in the 12.5.21 score of 67% vs. “fewer than 50 verified ratings” that led to the current score of 82%.

In short, it would appear that the elimination of over 200 verified audience ratings resulted in the higher score. Maybe my calculation is somehow incorrect; I’ve certainly never claimed to be a master statistician.

If someone can explain how or why the current score is 15 points higher than the 12.5 score, please weigh in. I’m all ears.

We’re all accustomed to deepfake tech, and we all know what the game is. I would have honestly been intrigued if Nicole Kidman‘s entire Lucille Ball performance in Being The Ricardos had been deepfaked. I know what the response is — deepfakes are okay for YouTube on laptop and smartphone screens, but the digital seams would show in a theatrical format. I might’ve bought that rationale five or six years ago, but I have my doubts in 2022.

Four months ago Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Lost Daughter played Telluride, and I missed every showing. Weeks and then months passed. I finally caught it last night on Netflix. I was vaguely afraid it would be some kind of opaque feminist downer, but it’s not.

The Lost Daughter is a visually agile, nicely edited, well-detailed grabber, and nothing if not emotionally and psychologically complex (if a bit curious). It’s more than competently directed and certainly well written by Gyllenhaal, who adapted Elena Ferrante’s source novel. It’s one of the best films by a first-timer I’ve ever seen. Hats off.

The core subject is that some aren’t cut out for parenting. Yes, including some moms. Some are simply too selfish or neurotic or sex-starved, or too irked by the endless demands of young children. Some are consumed by artistic visions of one kind or another.

Olivia Colman‘s Leda Caruso, a 50ish professor vacationing on the Greek island of Spetses, is one such mom. She has two daughters in their mid 20s, but it’s clear they haven’t a great deal of rapport with her. Leda wasn’t much for it when they were younger (the 20something Leda is played by Jessie Buckley) and her recollections of that time are stirred by watching young Nina (Dakota Johnson) and her temperamental three-year-old daughter, Elena.

Leda is a bit testy and distant at first, but she and Nina, who has married into a large and somewhat overbearing family, become friendly in a cautious sort of way.

Semi-spoiler: The story-tension aspect is driven by a very strange and perverse thing that Leda does early on. It’s selfish and sociopathic, but also tied into memories of her own young motherhood and the frustrations she felt saddled with.

25 years ago I wrote the following about One Fine Day, the George Clooney-Michelle Pfeiffer parent romcom: “Raising kids can be exhausting, at times even soul-draining…we all know this.”

Joni Mitchell couldn’t hack it — couldn’t surrender to mothering because she had so much in the way of poetry and songwriting inside her, so much raw material to pull out and shape and hone.

When I was 14 or 15 I recall being told by a good friend of my mother’s that “kids are a pain in the neck sometimes, and sometimes we need to escape that…if we’re honest with each other we admit this.”

When my father became an AA guy and was looking to confess his failings to those he’d hurt, he told me he was sorry but was never cut out for parenting. Not everyone is. I heard him, forgave him.

When Jett and Dylan came along I resolved not to be an aloof dad, and that wasn’t easy given that I had to write all the time. But I decided it would be better to err on the side of emotional closeness and leniency. Maggie, my ex, was the cop; I was the adventurer.

Whether or not you can roll with The Lost Daughter will depend on your ability to understand or at least accept the bad parent pathology that it puts on the plate.

Friendo to HE: “Remember this hot babe?”

HE to friendo: “Uhm, no. Remember her from what?

Friendo to HE: “Uncut Gems.”

HE to friendo: “Wait…yes! Adam Sandler’s office girlfriend. The one who got away with the money. Going for the Kanye gold.”

Friendo to HE: “Yup…why not?”

HE to friendo: “You only live once, and more often than not the window of opportunity is very brief.”

Back in the old days (i.e., before the Ricky Camilleri thought police were patrolling the streets with AK-47s) people were allowed to acknowledge the existence of cliched proletariat Mexican accents when it came to speaking English. You could actually refer to this without getting indicted.

I’m speaking of exaggerated or soft rounded vowels a la Elia Kazan‘s Viva Zapata (’52). In the ’50s and early ’60s Bill Dana made an unfortunate comic career out of this way of speaking, as Mel Blanc had during guest spots on The Jack Benny Show. Jack Palance tried to imitate this with more sincerity when he played Jesus Raza, a peasant Mexican revolutionary, in Richard Brooks‘ The Professionals (’66).

This ultimately led to one of my all-time favorite improvs in a Robert Altman‘s The Long Goodbye — a fast, loose, spur-of-the-moment improv by Elliot Gould‘s Phillip Marlowe.

Marlowe is talking to a couple of officials in a small Mexican town about the death of old friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton ), whom Marlowe has always known deep down to be a chilly taker-user-manipulator. Speaking in the above-referenced Jose Jimenez manner, one of the officials says, “You were acquainted with the deceased?” And Marlowe/Gould says, “The diseased…yeah, right.”

Kino Lorber’s 4K Bluray of The Long Goodbye pops on 1.18.22.

“I’ve experienced 2021 as the worst year for movies in quite a few decades. Perhaps if I seriously combed through the 1980s I might find some that were worse, but I nonetheless felt seriously unrewarded for all the hours I put in watching films that simply didn’t rise to the occasion, including some that found significant critical favor with others.” — from Todd McCarthy’s “It Was The Worst Of Times Off And Onscreen In 2021,” Deadline-posted on 12.30.21.

Criticstop10.com has posted a comprehensive list of the most favored 2021 films according to critics**.

Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog — subtly rendered, expertly crafted, relentlessly downish — is the leader, having appeared on 243 lists and listed as #1 on 40 of them.

The runners-up (second through fifth place) are Drive My Car (sensitive three-hour grief monkey film), Licorice Pizza (amiable, meandering), Dune (sand in my lungs) and West Side Story (alive and pulsing). The next five are The Green Knight (pure moisture torture), Summer of Soul (found footage), Pig (quite grim but soulfully so), Titane (metallically perverse) and The French Dispatch (exquisitely composed but infuriating)…good God!

Leos Carax‘s Annette, easily the most hateful film of 2021 and one of the most agonizing sits of my entire life, appeared on 76 Best of the Year critics lists, and was listed as #1 on 7 of them. Think about that.

Hollywood Elsewhere has a certain handicap in this regard. Unlike many critics***, I tend to favor absorbing, well-contoured films about recognizable human beings that reflect (am I allowed to say this?) some aspect of the actual human experience as most of us live it on the planet earth, and so I ended up with the following top 15: King Richard, Parallel Mothers, West Side Story, Spider-Man: No Way Home (because of the final hour), The Worst Person in the World, A Hero, Riders of Justice, No Time To Die, The Beatles: Get Back, Zola, Cyrano, Licorice Pizza, The Card Counter (willfully ignoring the Tiffany Haddish diminishment factor), In The Heights and The Last Duel.