You can feel the current right away. Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson‘s The King of Staten Island (Universal, 6.12) is first and foremost a New York extreme-behavior borough movie with tattoos and firemen…that much is obvious. And a real-deal movie about flawed or constipated or otherwise damaged or disappointed human beings trying to ignore or work through their histories and hang-ups and trepidations, and being randomly funny or nervy or guilty or fucked-up in the margins but…aahh, what do I know from a trailer? I’ll tell you what I can sense. This film is not smug or lazy or camped out in its own rectum but ambitious and probing…a go-for-broker.
“You make everyone around you crazy…you gotta get your shit together…time is passing by really quickly.”
A month ago I abandoned my Joe Rogan allegiance when he said he’d “rather vote for Trump than Biden” due to concerns about cognitive issues — that was a horrible take, a repulsive thing to say. But his view of the Adele weight-loss thing (a couple of days old) is sensible and straight. Only in our deranged p.c. culture would an obviously healthy thing be responded to with anger and dismay.
Rogan: “If you’re an Adele fan, wouldn’t you want her to be healthier? Yet people are mad…[they’re saying] ‘I don’t want her to be applauded for losing weight.” The below clip was posted earlier today.
Given the likelihood that theatregoing will be a spotty if not verboten activity for the next few months and the Academy’s proclamation that streaming-only films will be eligible for the 2020 Oscars, it seems inevitable that several forthcoming Netflix films (all dated for 2020) stand a better-than-decent chance of becoming hot Oscar contenders, and almost certainly in the case of David Fincher‘s Mank, Ron Howard‘s Hillbilly Elegy, Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde and Edoardo Ponti‘s The Life Ahead.
By my estimation the first four will almost certainly emerge as Best Picture finalists. I know that the Mank script (penned by Fincher’s dad Jack) is brilliant, and that Fincher and Gary Oldman (as Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz) will do it justice. I suspect that Hillbilly Elegy may strike a chord as a kind of “lefty Hollywood reaches out to rural Bumblefucks to try and understand their plight” type of deal. I haven’t read Blonde but I’ve been hearing good things (as in good, crazy, out there) for years. My enthusiasm for The Life Ahead is strictly gut-level.
By the way it’s just been announced that Da Five Bloods will debut on Netflix five weeks hence — June 12th. So where’s the trailer?
Gary Oldman as Herman J. Mankiewicz in David Fincher’s Mank.
This evening I intend to watch Andrew Ahn‘s Driveways (RT 100%, Metacritic 80%), the late Brian Dennehy‘s final film and, to go by reviews, an occasion for one of his best performances.
Set in suburbia (and filmed in Poughkeepsie), Driveways appears to be a kinder, gentler Gran Torino — a relationship flick about a young Asian-American kid (Lucas Jaye‘s “Cody”) and a crusty but benign Korean War vet (Dennehy’s “Del”) who lives next door.
Driveways began streaming today (5.7) on Amazon and iTunes.
From 4.19 San Francisco Chronicle review by G. Allen Johnson: “On its own, Driveways would be a sweet, understated masterpiece, simply told, of human connection. But with the recent death of longtime distinguished stage and movie actor Brian Dennehy, director Andrew Ahn allows us to say a proper goodbye to the big fella, who gets the final six minutes of the movie all to himself.
“Dennehy plays Del, an octogenarian widower and veteran who forms a grandfatherly relationship with the fatherless Cody (Lucas Jaye), the 8-year-old son of Kathy (Hong Chau, Downsizing, Watchmen), a single mother who, one gets the sense, doesn’t really like being a mother.
“Kathy and Cody enter Del’s life when they arrive from out of town to handle the estate of Kathy’s sister, which is mainly the run-down house next door to Del’s.
“After Cody and Del first exchange pleasantries, the standoffish Kathy gruffly warns Del, ‘I told him not to talk to strangers.’ Replies Del: ‘Good idea.’
“But Cody, craving a male figure in his life, is undeterred. With Kathy constantly preoccupied, Del and Cody bond. They talk life, and he even teaches Cody to drive (well, a riding mower). Bingo at the veterans hall is a big ninth-birthday treat for Cody.
“Although it’s not explicitly spelled out, Del sets an example for Kathy, too. She can see the change in Cody, and as she becomes more comfortable around Del, she becomes a better mother. Parenting isn’t her natural thing, but she’s warming to the idea.
Fuckface Von Clownstick obviously told Attorney General Barr to find some excuse to drop all charges against confessed Russiagate liar Michael Flynn, and now it’s happened. This way Trump doesn’t have to pardon the guy.
Not being the least bit stupid or gullible, Megyn Kelly surely understands that Tara Reade is almost certainly a liar and that the facts don’t begin to support her allegation against Joe Biden. But she’s interviewed Reade anyway because it gets her back in the game, and because conservatives will admire her for this. And because she’ll acquire a whole new nationwide fan base of Berners.
If and when The Beast says anything about the 2.23.20 murder of Ahmaud Arbery by suburban Georgia vigilantes, and especially the foot-dragging response by local authorities to an obviously unwarranted shooting by gut racists, it’ll be some kind of Charlottesville statement — i.e., respect due process, “there are many good people in Georgia”, killing is bad but black guys shouldn’t grab a white man’s shotgun, blah blah.
This is obviously Trayvon Martin II. The case blew open yesterday with the release of video of the shotgun slaying.
Boilerplate: “On 2.23.20 Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old African American man, was shot dead while running near Brunswick, Georgia. Arbery was unarmed and running on a road, when he was chased and then confronted by three white bubbas with a pickup truck: Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan. The confrontation involved Arbery trying to grab one of the men’s gun, and resulted in Travis fatally shooting Arbery.
Update: Two arrests (the shooter son and the father) happened today. Earlier: An anonymous YouTube video of the shooting was publicized on May 5th on a radio station website, before being reposted on Twitter by the attorney for Arbery’s family; it went viral. After the video’s release, the presiding prosecutor, Atlantic Judicial Circuit District Attorney Tom Durden, said a grand jury would decide whether charges would be brought.”
Late yesterday afternoon I rumblehogged out to the beachy areas of Venice and Santa Monica. Blue skies, warm air, T-shirt weather. I didn’t walk on the beach but I was close enough to smell the surf, and it was wonderful. But at the corner of Washington Blvd. and Ocean Ave I noticed all kinds of people congregating in groups large and small, lining up for takeout food and licking yogurt cones and without masks or gloves or any apparent interest in maintaining a proper distance.
I was wondering what was up, etc. These weren’t Huntington Beach bumblefucks but (presumably) liberal west-siders in shorts and flip-flops.
I made my way up Ocean and all was well. Maybe a half-block south of Santa Monica Pier I passed by some kind of mid-sized bar or cafe on the west side of the street, and the place was all but packed with rowdy 20somethings. They were happy and standing fairly close to each other and making a fair amount of noise. I should have pulled over and crossed the street and taken pictures of this motley crew, but I didn’t.
The general atmosphere seemed to be one of “fuck it, we’re tired of this COVID shit and we’re gonna see what we can get away with on a casual, fuck-all basis…let’s see if the bulls come over and bust us.”
I had my mask and gloves on and was taking no chances, but the natives were restless. Not everyone but a noteworthy percentage.
I had no problems with Laurent Bouzereau‘s Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind (HBO, now streaming). Never boring or irksome or in any way synthetic, it’s an intimate, considerate, mostly fair-minded portrait of a complex but understandable dynamo survivor who pushed hard during her 25-year peak period (mid ’40s to ’70 or thereabouts), and who had a lot of fire and brass and joy.
Produced by Wood’s actress daughter Natasha Gregson Wagner along with Wood biographer Manoah Bowman, the 100-minute doc is proably the smoothest and most highly polished study of the late actress ever assembled, certainly from my perspective. Bouzereau is a pro-level craftsman from way back, it has a lot of private footage that I’ve never seen before, and it struck me as “honest” and “forthcoming” as far as the terms allow. If you accept the fact, I mean, that it’s a friendly, family-controlled portrait, and that none of the icky or tawdry stuff is going to be used.
The long-rumored assault upon the teenaged Wood by a certain recently deceased superstar at the Beverly Hills hotel sometime in ’55 or thereabouts — this isn’t even alluded to. Wood’s 1964 suicide attempt is briefly mentioned, but her then-current entanglement with Warren Beatty isn’t explored with much depth. Her 11.29.81 drowning death isn’t explored in any way you haven’t heard about or considered before. It was just a tremendously sad tragedy that almost certainly wouldn’t have happened if Wood, husband Robert Wagner and Brainstorm costar Chris Walken hadn’t been drinking so heavily. Wagner’s confession about smashing a wine bottle while arguing with Walken certainly gets your attention, but this is the kind of thing that drunk people do when they’re really angry. Whatever really happened will never surface so let it go.
All in all, What Remains Behind is mesmerizing — poised, exacting, carefully honed and haunting as far as it goes. Definitely worth a looksee. Just don’t expect the moon.
A moment of reverence for Maximilien Robespierre, the godfather and patron saint of cancel culture and punitive wokesterism, who was born on this day in 1758.
