John Chu, Lin Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes‘ In The Heights (Warner Bros., 6.10) is good, grade-A stuff — engaging, open-hearted, snappy, well-composed. Chu (the Crazy Rich Asians guy) directs like a total pro. Catchy tunes, appealing performances, razor-sharp cutting. One character-driven vignette after another. Dreams, hopes, identity, hip-hop, neighborhood vibes, community, self-respect…all of it earnestly feel-good.

There’s no fault in any of it except for the minor fact that I was quietly groaning. Okay, not “groaning” but half-in and half-out. Admiring but disengaged. There isn’t a single moment in which I didn’t appreciate the effort, the snappy tunes, the professionalism, the heart factor, Alice Brooks‘ vibrant cinematography…all of it is fine and commendable, and I must have checked the time code 10 or 12 times, minimum.

No question about it — In The Heights is one of the best films I’ve ever felt vaguely suffocated by.

One measure of a fascinating film is that you literally want to live in it. You literally want to leave your seat and drop into the film like Mia Farrow merged with the black-and-white Park Avenue champagne world of The Purple Rose of Cairo….more of this, more of this.

Well, speaking as an ex-New Yorker who grew up in New Jersey and Connecticut, I really didn’t want to “live” in Washington Heights, and I’m saying this as one who felt a certain charged excitement from the town of Montfermeil in Ladj Ly‘s Les Miserables. I loved the Heights characters and community spirit, but the drab and regimented architecture, broad boulevards, stifling temps and struggling, hand-to-mouth atmosphere didn’t attract.

I felt the same way about In The Heights that I felt about Rent when I saw it on stage. Good show, good current, checking my watch.

Anthony Ramos is the appealing lead, a bodega owner named Usnavi de la Vega who’s saving up to move back to the Dominican Republic and open a beach bar. This aside the main story (among many) is about Usnavi being in love with driven, beautiful Vanessa (Melissa Barerra) who works in a beauty salon but longs to be a fashion designer.

Several characters dominate their respective vignettes, each with their own saga.

Ramos and Barrera hold their own and then some. Ditto costars Corey Hawkins, Leslie Grace, Olga Merediz, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Gregory Diaz IV, Lin-Manuel Miranda and L.A. Law‘s Jimmy Smits.

“Some movies are like expeditions,” a friend counsels. “You go to a place you might not want to live in, but you get caught up in the lives of the people there. That’s how I felt about In the Heights. I wasn’t bored. I found some of the music enthralling, [although] it was probably more effective on stage.”

In The Heights is an optimistic, up-with-people film all the way — no villains (except for the handful of white people who fail to show proper respect for the Latino characters), no grave conflicts, nothing boiling in the pot or coming to a crescendo, wokester attitudes. It’s about “all of us want more, want to do better, earn more, pair up with the right person but life is hard and dismissive and the odds are against us”, etc.

My favorite sequence involves “Abuela” Claudia (Merediz), a 70ish, white-haired woman who just before her death dream-trips her way back to the Manhattan of her childhood…an absolutely transporting, first-rate sequence.

I don’t know what else to say except I understand the enthusiasm for this film, and I wouldn’t disagree that it’s probably going to end up with a Best Picture nomination. I “liked” it as far as it went, and I felt more and more supportive of the characters as the film gathered steam. It has a great beginning and a fine finale. Can I end this review now?

I realize that these photos could be justifiably accused of being relatively boring. From a certain perspective. No Cruella stuff, no In The Heights, no Amazon delivery driver, no uppity white lady, no hair-trigger Victor Lazlo intrigues…none of that. But they’re part of what the day has been about.

On or about 5.20 Cannes Film Festival honcho Thierry Fremaux promised that a “planetary blockbuster” would premiere during the 2021 Cote d’Azur gathering (7.6 through 7.17).

The presumption or at least the hope, given Cannes’ rep for (mostly) semi-classy selections, was that the secret film might be the latest Bonder, No Time To Die. Or West Side Story. Or at least something half cool.

Then came Elsa Keslassy‘s deflating, appalling report that the “planetary blockbuster” will be Justin Lin‘s F9…wonderful! Robotic macho muscle-car CG bullshit on the Croisette…just what the movie doctor ordered.

Set to open stateside on 6.25, F9 opened worldwide on 5.19, and has so far grossed $256 million, including $206 million in China alone.

China is the all-time arch-enemy now — creator of the lab-leaked Covid-19 virus that killed millions, and also the huge economic engine that ensures that empty crap movies like F9 will continue to dominate.

From “The Science Suggests a Wuhan Lab Leak: The Covid-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus,” by The Wall Street Journal‘s Steven Quay and Richard Muller:

“Proponents of zoonotic origin must explain why the novel coronavirus, when it mutated or recombined, happened to pick its least favorite combination, the double CGG. Why did it replicate the choice the lab’s gain-of-function researchers would have made?

“Yes, it could have happened randomly, through mutations. But do you believe that? At the minimum, this fact — that the coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, took the rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers — implies that the leading theory for the origin of the coronavirus must be laboratory escape.”

In a 6.6 rave, Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman is claiming that Craig Gillespie‘s Cruella “may be the best movie of the year so far.” Okay, maybe. My dislike of flamboyant big-screen wickedness or perversity is fairly acute; ditto my loathing of origin story films. Hence I still haven’t watched it, and as I sit here I’m dreading the forthcoming experience with all my heart.

On top of which one can’t help but wonder why Cruella has a 74% Rotten Tomatoes rating along with a 59% from Metacritic. Clearly it’s doing something wrong by the sights of several critics.

That’s all I’m able to say at this point. I’m a staunch Gleiberman fan, but in this case my inclination is to trust Anthony Lane more.

By the standards of contemporary or soon-to-occur space travel (including Elon Musk‘s proposed trips to Mars), going on an Allan B. Shepard quickie space voyage (11 minutes) sounds a tad underwhelming. On 7.20 Jeff Bezos will “do a Shepard” aboard a spacecraft made by his company, Blue Origin. No offense but if I were Bezos I would want do a John Glenn — three orbits around the globe, space fireflies, a Pacific Ocean slashdown.

We’re staying at Black Rock Lodge in the western Belizean jungle — a surprisingly affordable three-star luxury hotel in which the most expensive rooms are $120 and change.

A couple of hours ago we were eating dinner on a huge open-air, grass-roof-covered veranda that overlooks the forested cliffs that face the hotel along with the Macal River. It was getting dark and we’d finished the main course when all of a sudden a live something-or-other dropped into my lap. I looked down with a studied nonchalance, brushed it off my lap and it hit the floor. We used Tatiana’s iPhone light to identity what had fallen from the sky.

It was a tiny gray bat that was writhing in some kind of pain. Tatiana nudged it slightly with her foot, and noticed that a trail of blood was pouring out of the little guy.

We did not kill it — nature or God or fate did.

Tatiana now believes that between the snarling pit bull and the bloody baby bat there is a vendetta on the part of Belizean animals to get me, in the same sense that birds were out to murder humanity in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic.

4:45 am update: Around 10 pm last night (Sunday, 6.6) I was sitting in darkness on the outdoor porch of our unit (cabin #16). I was editing something or other when I was swooped or dive-bombed by another bat. No visual confirmation but I felt it — the bat “attacked” my above-the-forehead hair in the same way that Tippi Hedren was dive-bombed in that Bodega Bay motorboat sequence in The Birds. And I heard it, of course — a furious wing-flutter sound, like a loud hummingbird.

This makes three animal attacks within the last 60 hours — Caye Caulker pit bull**, bloody baby bat in my lap during last night’s dinner, and Mr. Dive-Bomb seven hours ago.

5 am update: A Belizean puma just snuck up out of the dark and bit my ankle on the outdoor porch…kidding! Mick Jagger imagination.

But at the same time I am legend — seriously. I eat animal attacks for breakfast. My German genes snort derisively at any potential threat of infection.

This recent beating of a mouthy 67 year-old East Bay woman by a 21 year-old Latina Amazon delivery driver is a woke rage thing — white people need to understand their place and check their attitude, and if they fail in that regard beatings from non-white assailants will be severe — fair warning. Check your white privilege, bitch.

All due respect to ancient Mayan culture and their awesome pyramid structures, which have stood tall for several centuries. At the same time it’s highly unfortunate that Mel Gibson‘s Apocalypto is the first association that comes to mind.

Friendo: You’re going to absolutely hate In The Heights (Warner Bros., 6.10.21).
HE: Why will I hate it? I like the energy in the trailers. Obviously more part of our world than West Side Story.
Friendo: I think you’ll hate it, but who knows! It’s a woke jerkoff fest.
HE: Do you like musicals?
Friendo: I like old musicals like Singin’ in the Rain and The Band Wagon. This is a hip-hop musical
HE: I like good rhythmic hip-hop.
Friendo: There isn’t really a villain in the movie. If anything, the antagonist is “gentrification”.
HE: Okay, so it worships native flavor, identity, neighborhood. Sounds fine to me.
Friendo: I don’t think I saw a single white person. There must be some white people living in Washington Heights, no?

Friendo #1 responds: “In the Heights is fine…exuberant, soulful, compellingly staged. Plus the story of Dominicans or whatever with one foot in each country is valid and moving.

“Okay, it might have worked even better on stage; I’m not sure that they totally overcome the (intentionally) anecdotal structure of it. But any ‘it’s too woke for my blood!’ complaints seem bizarrely misplaced.”

Friendo #2: “It’s about as traditional as movie musicals get — a lot of musical numbers interrupted by lightweight plotting designed to move easily to the next tune. There is even a Busby Berkeley homage here.”

Please name your all-time favorite awful endings. Grease, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Tim Burton‘s Planet of the Apes…you choose.

For me, the conclusion of Steven Spielberg‘s War of the Worlds (’05) is easily among the worst.

Having survived the Martian onslaught Tom Cruise and daughter Dakota Fanning arrive at the Boston home of his ex-wife’s parents, who are annoyingly played by Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, costars of George Pal and Byron Haskin‘s War of the Worlds (’53). The ex-wife (Miranda Otto) is also there; ditto Cruise’s son Robbie (Justin Chatwin), who’d impulsively joined the military in a brutal battle with the aliens and obviously had no chance of survival…and yet there he was. Bullshit. No Sale.

Jett and I saw Spielberg’s film at the Ziegfeld press screening. During the closing credits Jett said, “God, what did Spielberg do that? He had it and he blew it.”

Back in the day Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds was roundly despised for ending without any sort of resolution or catharsis. In so doing Hitchcock was essentially telling his audience that The Birds is an art film, and that it’s saying something about a permanent feature in the human brain — complacency.

I still say that the worst ending of 2020 was delivered by Pete Docter‘s Soul

My original complaint: “Soul betrays its audience by (a) encouraging them to identify with and believe in Joe Gardner‘s long-denied dream about becoming a jazz musician instead of a frustrated middle-school music teacher, only to (b) pull the rug out on Joe’s dream in Act Three and end things with Joe feeling uncertain about what he really wants to do with his remaining time on earth. Possibly jazz, possibly teaching…who knows?

“And what of our jazz-loving protagonist changing his mind at the last minute so he can save Tina Fey’s ’22’? I hated that. A major audience betrayal. I didn’t hate that he cared for and wanted to save 22, of course, but his whole big dream is to escape the perceived mediocrity of being a middle-school music teacher. We’re encouraged to identify with his quest to become a real musician and to share the joy of being in the groove.

“And then, after interminable delays, temporary blockages and goofy complications, he finally gets to play with the hot jazz group. And finally, all is well.
But then Joe changes his mind! He decides to go back to the celestial nether realm to ‘save’ 22 from her hellish deflated existence, and in so doing sacrifices (according to the Great Before rules) his own chance at life.

“And THEN the Picasso-like powers-that-be decide to bend the rules because he’s inspired them.

“And THEN when he’s back on planet earth Joe is STILL not sure what really matters to him. Will he continue to gig with the jazz group? Or will he embrace his full-tine teaching job? He’s not sure, but one thing he’s ABSOLUTELY sure of is that he’s going to treasure each & every day of his life from then on.”