Yesterday’s Bernie twitter meme took off because he captured the moment with those mittens. By watching the inauguration solo, I mean, while wearing a pair of those fall-themed, thick-yarn hand warmers. How did we get from there to here?

LOL pic.twitter.com/3pilfxzuo1

— Scott Feinberg (@ScottFeinberg) January 21, 2021

It was four months ago or mid September 2020 when I saw Michel Franco‘s New Order, a dystopian theatre-of-cruelty film that reminded me in some ways (certainly tonally) of Ridley Scott‘s The Counselor.

Neon has acquired it for distribution, but they haven’t announced a release date. I know nothing but I’m guessing they’ll be holding it until the fall. I don’t think it’ll matter when it opens for this is a brilliant but absolutely dead-cold film — a certain segment of the public is going to turn away in horror while the cineastes will show respect.

From my 9.14.20 review: Set in Mexico City, it’s about a violent revolution against the wealthy elites by an army of ruthless, homicidal, working-class lefties. Director-writer Franco (After Luca, Chronic) is clearly tapping into all the insurrectionist anger out there (last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement, last year’s French Yellow Vest demonstrations) and imagining the ante being raised a couple of notches.

Remember those rightwing thugs (“Los Halcones”) murdering leftists during that Mexico City demonstration in Roma? New Order is a roughly similar situation but with the lefties pulling the trigger, and with a lot more ferocity. Rage against the swells.

It struck me as a nightmare vision of what could conceivably happen if the ranks of our own wokester shitheads were to dramatically increase and anger levels were to surge even more.

New Order, trust me, is brutal, vicious and ice cold. But it’s so well made, and so unsparing in its cruelty. Franco is definitely the new Michael Haneke. He’s a very commanding and exacting director, but the film is ferocious and vicious, more so than even The Counselor (and that’s saying something).

I’m figuring that any serious fan of The Counselor would definitely be down with New Order. Especially given its Mexico City location, the fact that it deals with hostage-taking and exorbitant demands, and the fact that it has the same kind of cruel, compositional decisiveness and clarity of mind that Scott’s film had, only more so.

Franco is a very strong but, on the face of it, heartless director. Personally, I’m sure he’s personable and affable and humane and whatnot.

A filmmaker friend assures that Franco “is a nice fellow…he has a very surgical mind and his dramatic construction seems to veer towards the inexorable.”

Variety‘s Peter Debruge: New Order is “a full-on assault on our collective comfort zone while doubling down on the very thing that makes his films unwatchable for so many. Moviegoing is, by its nature, an act of empathy, as we invest in the lives of fictional strangers, trusting the narrative to repay our emotional commitment — and yet, in film after film, Franco challenges that assumption. Perversely, for those who’ve now come to expect that from him, New Order doesn’t disappoint.”

Hollywood Elsewhere is looking forward to what appears to be (and correct me if I’m wrong) the first grade-A urban thriller with charismatic performances from three proven hot shots — Denzel Washington (old-school detective with sharp instincts), Rami Malek (new school, slick-ass, relies on tech) and Jared Leto (crazy wacko).

A (seemingly) classic-styled ’90s movie…thank God! I’ve been choking on Oscar-seeking, virtue-signalling cinema for so many months, and catch as catch can (I’d be happier with Wandavision if it were more than conceptually clever) with the rest. Why doesn’t Neon release Michael Franco‘s New Order?

If I were Joe I would install an anti-Trump, JFK-nostalgia color scheme in the Oval Office — subdued olive-green curtains, subdued grayish carpet with a hint of sea-green, off-white matching couches. A color scheme that (a) soothes and assures and (b) announces that Trump has been totally erased and heave-ho’ed. That means no effing gold.

All my life I’ve been appalled by baggy pants. Especially blowsy pleated dress pants of the late ’40s and ’50s. But also hip-hop homie pants of the ’90s. Anything baggy. I remember being forced to wear a pair of baggy pants when I was in elementary school, and complaining to my mother about them and her saying “we’re doing the best we can, Jeffrey.” My baggy-pants revulsion is so acute that it gets in the way of watching film noirs of the late ’40s and ’50s. Edmond O’Brien, Burt Lancaster or Robert Mitchum spotted in a pair of extra-blowsies…God! William Holden‘s apparel in The Country Wife, blowsies worn by Raymond Massey in The Fountainhead…avert my eyes! It took decades for the dressed-up world to catch up with slim shadeys like myself. Fashion plates like Wes Anderson led the charge.

Need to rest, recline, recharge. Plus I have to take the Beetle to our mechanic — starter button replacement. Plus I have a chiropractor appointment at 3:45 pm. Momma said there’ll be days like this / there’ll be days like this, my momma said.

…how perfectly written this is. Screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg got it exactly right. Once. 13, 14 years ago. Their best shot, never matched it…although they came close once or twice.

Nobody did it better / Though sometimes I wish someone could have.

Eloquence, ace-level delivery, deep vocal timbre…how a newly inaugurated president should damn well look and sound. 35 years younger than our current, soon-to-be-sworn in President-elect. Born on 11.20.42, Biden was 18 on this cold January day.

Atlanta Constitution‘s Mike Luckovitch:

Journo pally on yesterday’s “Gotta Be Mulligan” riff: “I talk to a lot of AMPAS voters including actors, and I keep hearing enormous enthusiasm (unsolicited) for Sophia Loren‘s performance in The Life Ahead. I wonder why she isn’t on any of these handicapper lists? And I haven’t heard anyone mention Vanessa Kirby (Pieces of a Woman) or Zendaya (Malcom & Marie) at all.”

HE to Journo Pally: “You’re mostly talking to long-of-toothers, right? Or are you also talking to the Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill crowd? Loren is excellent in Edoardo Ponti’s remake of Madame Rosa, and it’s wonderful to see her in a good role again. I’m guessing some of them are feeling a nostalgic or generational kinship with Loren. She’s very good in the film — solid gravitas, earnest, compassionate, quietly affecting.

When a well-known actor breaks through with a potential Oscar-calibre performance, it’s either because they’ve delivered the best default performance…the ultimate version of the kind of character they’re strongly identified with (Gregory Peck in To Kill A Mockingbird, Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman). Or because they’ve broken some kind of new ground, and nailed it to boot.

Loren definitely did the latter in Vittorio De Sica‘s Two Women (’60) and Ettore Scola‘s in A Special Day (’77). Her performance in The Life Ahead is not a groundbreaker but a quality-level ratifier of a classic Sophia Loren signature role.

I still say the hottest contenders are Promising Young Woman‘s Carey Mulligan and Nomadland‘s Frances McDormand with Mulligan holding the edge.

Last night I was watching this Crimson Tide scene, which I happen to regard as a thing of beauty. Several Naval officers sitting around a mess table and discussing the nature of war and military command, etc. Sounds academic, right? And it might have been with a less-efficient helmer and a script that hadn’t been written and re-written to perfection by a packed roomful of screenwriters (including an unbilled Quentin Tarantino). It could have played like one of those boilerplate scenes that directors need to include for the sake of basic exposition and defining the lead antagonists, but which are usually dispensed with as quickly as possible for fear of losing tension, or even boring the audience.

Instead director Tony Scott, aided and abetted by dp Dariusz Wolski, editor Chris Lebenzon and Hanz Zimmer‘s subtle scoring, makes this three minute and 33-second scene feel gripping and vital. Because he’s foreshadowing — letting you know exactly what’s coming. During my first viewing I quickly sensed this strategic undercurrent. And I melted with pleasure at the 2:20 mark when Zimmer’s all-male choir began to gently hum as Denzel Washington explains what Carl Von Clausewitz actually meant when he said “war is a continuation of politics by other means,” and that ultimately “the nature of war is to serve itself.”

At this exact moment last night it hit me how much I miss dialogue scenes of this kind — expert applications of exactly the right kind of undercurrent at exactly the right moment. I’m not calling this kind of thing especially deep or profound, but it pushes the pleasure button just so, and makes you feel great. (And yet if the music isn’t applied with just the right emphasis and at just the right point, it can usurp audience trust.) Call it high enchantment or a ring-a-ding-ding effect — a massage-y feeling that gets you in the gut. The best mainstream commercial films often communicate in this fashion. They how to sell themselves like cagey hustlers pulling off a clever scam — they know it, you know it, and they know that you know it and nobody cares. Because you want them to keep it up.

Music-enhanced dialogue scenes that work as well as this one aren’t all that plentiful these days. A lot of directors probably think that Scott is resorting to some kind of sappy, old-hat trick — but it’s not if you do it right. I’m trying to think of an equally affective moment in Nomadland, Trial of the Chicago 7, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Mank, One Night in Miami, The Father, Minari, Da 5 Bloods, News of the World, Promising Young Woman and Soul. Give me some time…I’m working on it.