I saw Tom McCarthy‘s Stillwater last night, and except for the “wait, what the fuck just happened?” section during the last 25 or so minutes it’s not half bad.

It’s longish (140 minutes) but not in a punishing way, plus unusual and complex and definitely, absolutely not a “Liam Neeson goes to France to crack heads and get his daughter out of prison” film.

All the critics have said that it’s four or five flicks in one — a criminal investigation thing, a fish-out-of-water thing (muttering, slow-on-the-pickup dad in Marseilles), a family relationship thing, a romantic relationship film, a fatalistic character piece.

But you know what? I liked that it has its finger in several pies and that it’s all over the map. French films follow this meandering path all the time…a little this, a little that, a detour, a change-up, a sudden acceleration followed by a slowdown, a little romance, something else unexpected happens, etc.

What Stillwater is, basically, is a film that says (a) if you’ve fucked up before, you’ll probably fuck up again because some people are just fuck-ups or are simply lacking sufficient brain cells to figure stuff out and do things right, and (b) life is fucking brutal, man.

It’s about Bill Baker (Matt Damon), a somber-mannered, goateed, cap-wearing, flirting-with-fat, not-especially-brilliant bumblefuck dad from Oklahoma, visiting Marseilles for the eighth or ninth time to visit his imprisoned daughter (Abigail Breslin), who’s serving nine years for the murder of her girlfriend. Only this time Bill becomes involved in a long-range effort to clear her name after (possibly) exculpatory evidence comes to light.

He decides to move full-time to Marseilles, and in so doing gets platonically involved with Virginie (Camille Cottin), a theatre actress, and her young daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvaud). And then romance seeps in.

Here’s a Stillwater discussion I had this morning with a friend…

HE: Stillwater is definitely a decent film. Four or stories or movies in one. Then it takes a crazy-ass turn near the end and there’s no trusting it. But it has a good meditative ending on a front porch.

Friendo: Oh, bummer.

HE: It’s not a bummer — it just has a weird third act or final half-hour. It’s worth seeing. It’s a real middle-class movie about human beings. It’s curious and atypical and well acted.

Friendo: So did the daughter do it or what?

HE: My impression was that even though fortune eventually smiles, she might have actually [redacted]. Maybe. Plus Damon’s bumblefuck is a tough guy to hang with and identify with and gradually come to like. Always with the fucking hat and the short-sleeved plaid shirt, always with the fucking goatee, always with the yokel accent, always swallowing his words and vowels. And a Trump voter on top of everything else.

Friendo: Sounds kind of like a ’70s or ’80s movie.

HE: It is, and it’s very nice to see a complex, character-driven thing in an AMC gladiator arena. Stillwater is like a French movie…tedious stuff, surprising stuff…this happens, bad things happen, this or that emotion pops through, then it’s back to an investigation, then it’s back to a family thing, then the cops come and then they leave.

In a 7.29 Medium piece titled “Who Owns My Name?,” the notorious (convicted of murder but later exonerated) Amanda Knox justifiably complains about Tom McCarthy and Matt Damon‘s Stillwater (Focus, 7.30).

Her understandable beef is that the film, loosely inspired by Knox’s conviction for the November 2007 murder of roommate Meredith Kercher (which was later overturned and then invalidated in 2015), has brought renewed negative associations back into her life. Once again she’s being regarded far and wide as an allegedly immoral woman with a shady past.

Even a term like “notorious” (which I’ve just used) is hurtful, Knox is arguing, because it implies there’s something wanton or dicey about her, when in fact she was wrongly accused and convicted by Italian authorities. Kercher’s actual confessed murderer is a sketchy dude named Rudy Guede.

In reviews and discussions of Stillwater, many critics and columnists have mentioned Knox’s 2007 murder conviction but not her 2015 exoneration. You have to admit that Knox has a point.

Medium excerpt: “’We decided [to] leave the Amanda Knox case behind,’ McCarthy tells Vanity Fair. ‘But…take this piece of the story — an American woman studying abroad involved in some kind of sensational crime and she ends up in jail — and fictionalize everything around it.”

“Let me stop you right there. That story, my story, is not about an American woman studying abroad ‘involved in some kind of sensational crime.’ It’s about an American woman NOT involved in a sensational crime, and yet wrongfully convicted.”

I was told the other night that two branches of the ArcLight (Hollywood and Sherman Oaks) will re-open in October. So I asked someone in a position to know everything and he said (a) the Sherman Oaks Arclight has reopened as a Regal theatre (they announced a major remodel but without a firm completion date) but (b) there’s no date in place to re-open the Hollywood Arclight.

HE reaction: The absence of the Hollywood ArcLight and the Dome is a profound spiritual tragedy for Los Angeles movie culture…truly a gaping wound. The failure of somebody or some outfit to come up with some kind of strategy that will allow it to re-open is just…mystifying. How can the industry allow this to happen? How can everyone just wash their hands? It’s so wrong.

I understand and respect the apparent fact that Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow lawsuit against Disney, which was filed this morning, has merit.

Her filing said that her agreement with Disney’s Marvel Entertainment guaranteed an exclusive theatrical release, and that her salary was based in large part on the box-office performance of the film. So Disney’s decision to stream Black Widow day-and-date with theatrical constituted, she claims, a wanton breach of the agreement.

In essence ScarJo was paid $20 million but she wants more. She feels that Disney screwed her out of a lot of dough, and the alleged screwing basically happened because of Covid.

For sure, other big-name qctors whose big-studio films have been (or will be) opening theatrically and streaming concurrently will be looking to see how ScarJo’s lawsuit turns out.

Disney’s response: “”There is no merit whatsoever to this filing. The lawsuit is especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Disney has fully complied with Ms. Johansson’s contract and furthermore, the release of Black Widow on Disney+ with Premier Access has significantly enhanced her ability to earn additional compensation on top of the $20M she has received to date.”

That said, I should probably confess that my interest in financial conflict stories (i.e., “You owe me more money”) is limited.

Jared Leto was almost certainly interested in the role of Paolo Gucci in Ridley Scott‘s House of Gucci (UA Releasing, 11.24) because he wanted to be the total transformation guy — fat suit, shaved head, moustache. His costars — Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons — were almost certainly irked, annoyed, resentful, etc.

Imaginary Irons to Pacino: “Jesus, look at that, will ya?..always something with Leto, isn’t it?…extreme makeup, ‘look at me’, hippie hair, guy never quits.”

Imaginary Pacino replies to Irons: “You wanna talk about never quits, what about Driver? Jesus H. Christ, is there anything he hasn’t starred or costarred in lately? Not to mention that other Ridley movie, the medieval one. And that horse cologne ad….c’mon, man.”

This morning Glenn Kenny tweeted about a Carroll Park encounter with a Black dude who behaved in a way that indicated (a) mental or emotional instability, (b) a garden-variety hair trigger temperament, or (c) a combination of both. The dude in question “feigned” a fall, fell into Kenny’s lap and in so doing squashed a raw egg. The dude apologized, Kenny said “it’s okay, it’s okay” and the dude replied “I KNOW it’s okay.”

My interpretation is that “I KNOW it’s okay” meant one of two things — the dude was/is an asshole who gets into confrontational situations with strangers if he’s in a bad mood (some street wackos are like this), or he meant “you can’t say shit to me…whatever I do or say you have to sit there and fucking take it…new rules.”

If it had been me I would have figured “okay, just another anger-management asshole, New York City’s full of them” and let it go. But Glenn called the fuzz and reported this jerk, and then — here was his mistake – he tweeted about it. Kenny surely understands that white guys aren’t allowed to call the cops in any dealings with any person of color about anything because it…well, doing so might imply something about the way they see the world. Not in my opinion, of course, but in the minds of certain Twitter jackals. So Kenny had to apologize or walk it back or something in that vein.

HE rewrite of Kenny apology: “I, Glenn Kenny, do hereby apologize to the Twitter comintern for not turning the other cheek after that dude fell into my lap. The next time something like this happens, I will smile and say ‘thank you’ and maybe even buy the guy a cappuccino.”

“The current laws of civility mean that no, it can’t be exactly what it once was” — Gawker editor Leah Finnegan, quoted in Katie Robertson‘s 7.28.21 N.Y Times piece titled “Gawker: The Return.”

The nickname for the revived site, of course, is New Gawker, although it’s using the same old gawker URL.

What Finnegan means by “the current laws of civility” is that if you’re editing or writing a gossip site in mid-2021, you have to be really careful. You have to totally tiptoe around everyone and everything and I mean very daintily, with ballet shoes on. You can’t talk shit (i.e., post snarky or even meanish comments) about anyone except for members of that one ethnic group that anyone can take a dump on any time they want — older white guys.

Otherwise our current wokester laws, edicts and stipulations, taken together, constitute a climate that is dead set against even the slightest scent of irreverence.

Finnegan: “We are here to make you laugh, I hope, and think, and do a spit-take or furrow your brow.”

Spit-takes? As in real spit-takes? Not in this Stalinist climate. Either way you can’t go home again.

Friendo: “I predict New Gawker will become another arm of cancel culture. Another megaphone for people who want to amplify targets. We’ll see if [this prediction] turns out to be right.”

Bustle Digital Group’s Bryan Goldberg, who bought the Gawker name three years ago for $1.35 million, quoted by Robertson: “If there is one website that could get me sued into oblivion, then it is almost certainly Gawker. Let’s face it — do we think that Bustle or Nylon Magazine is going to pick a petty and ill-conceived fight with a deca-billionaire? Probably not.”

“Deca-billionaire” refers to Peter Thiel, the powerful Silicon Valley hotshot who became enraged at Nick Denton‘s previous Gawker for mentioning his sexuality and resultantly funded a Hulk Hogan invasion-of-privacy lawsuit, which shut Gawker down.

From last night’s “Sandbag Cosh” post:

“I’ve been shoved from time to time, but I haven’t been in an actual fist fight since my late teens, and the odds of getting into any kind of altercation these days are close to nonexistent. I don’t drink or even ‘go out’ except to films, and I can’t recall the last time I visited a Patrick Swayze tough-guy bar. Plus you never know how hair-trigger crazy a would-be opponent is, especially in these crazy times. Plus I wouldn’t want to risk getting my fingers snapped or swollen, as this would hinder my daily writing. Plus I’m not in good enough shape these days to fight anyone more than 15 or 20 seconds.

“But I like the idea (and I mean the ‘idea’) of carrying a sandbag cosh. The kind, you know, that Tim Roth carried around in Stephen Frears‘ The Hit. As a totem, mind — a weapon I’d almost certainly never use but could theoretically use if, say, some kind of brute threat were to manifest. So yes, I’ll admit it — I like the idea of carrying one of these guys around. And it’s a far less crazy notion that carrying a loaded pistol.”

Tatiana’s U.S. Citizenship exam will happen soon. Oral, not written or multiple choice. Out of 100 sample questions and answers, some immigration officer will ask her ten and she’ll have to answer at least six correctly to pass.

The test site revealed on 2.22.21 the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced it would scrap former President Trump’s revised naturalization civics test**. Starting on 3.1.21, USCIS restored the previous 2008 version of the civics test.

I’ve read the 100 questions and it’s all basic stuff, but you know how Jimmy Kimmel has gone out on Hollywood Blvd. from time to time to ask the tourists some basic geography questions and how most of them don’t know shit from shinola? They wouldn’t stand a chance against 90% of these questions.

** The 2008 civics test requires applicants to study 100 questions about American government and history and must answer 6 out of 10 questions (or 60%) to pass. In the Trump version of the civics test, applicants would be required to study 128 questions and answer correctly 12 of the 20 questions (or 60%) to pass.