reviews

This morning I finally saw Sean Baker’s Anora, which everyone seems to believe is destined to win the Palme d’Or. I’m onboard with this prediction, and it’ll be doubly satisfying (for me at least) if Baker’s film prevents Jacques Audiard’s audacious but flawed (as in totally unbelievable) trans musical Emilia Perez from snatching the big prize.

I’ve been searching high and low for a Cannes film that would take the strut out of Perez, and now…glory hallelujah!

On top of which Anora isn’t the least bit wokey — no militant trans or gay stuff, no #MeToo currents, no POC or progressive castings, no 2024 Academy mandate inclusions for their own sake and in fact blissfully free of that whole pain-in-the-ass checklist mindset.

Baker’s loud, coarse and emotionally forceful film, mostly set in southern Brooklyn (an area close to Coney Island and Little Odessa) with two side journeys to Las Vegas, is entirely about straight white trash, and yet a certain amount of soul, grace and dignity are allowed to emerge at the very end.

It’s basically a social-conflict, family-values story (written as well as directed by Baker) about money, sex, arrogance, rage, outsider sturm und drang and a truly bountiful blend of incredible bullshit, screaming hostility and straight talk.

The first act is exasperating (mostly vulgar behavior by profligate 20something party animals) but once a certain family gets involved…look out.

The Anora battle is between the cynical, sex-working, Russian-descended titular character (Mikey Madison, who played the hysterical, screechy-voiced Susan Atkins in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) who prefers the colloquial “Ani” vs. a demimonde of vulgar, grotesquely wealthy Russians, principally Mark Eydelshteyn’s Ivan, the wasteful-idiot son of a Russian oligarch, and one or two none-too-bright Armenians.

And yet it ends on a note of honest emotional admission and revelation even. There’s actually a decent dude in this film, played by Yuriy Borisov…a Russian fellow who isn’t a ferociously propulsive wolverine…imagine.

Madison is a revelation — she deserves to win the Best Actress prize. Out of the blue, her career has been high-octaned and then some.

Neon is distributing Anora — easily the strongest film they’ve ever gotten their mitts on.

Friendo on “okay” Emilia Perez: “It feels like AI Almodóvar. It checks 17 boxes, but it’s not moving — you don’t swoon. It’s actually rather conservative when it comes to the trans thing. Ten years from now, it’ll play like a trans minstrel show.”

Never settle, never surrender. Attack, attack and counter-attack. And no matter how evil or slimey your situation may be, always claim victory and never admit defeat.

These were cherished, deeply-held principles that the late Roy Cohn, one of the most satanic figures of the 20th Century, adhered to during his early ’50s-to-mid ’80s heyday, and they were passed along with interest and relish to the young Donald J. Trump in the ’70s and early ’80s. God help us but Cohn’s lessons of avarice still live in Trump today, right now…fundamental poisons, the devil’s handbook, operational tricks of the trade.

Ali Abassi‘s The Apprentice is the well-told story of Cohn and Trump’s master-mentor relationship, and God, it’s so much fun…so alive and entertaining and popping with the wicked pleasures of an evil life or attitude.

The Apprentice, which I saw late yesterday afternoon. saved me from my post-Horizon depression…a terrible black-dog, pit-of-my-stomach feeling that had taken me down, down, down. And then I saw Abassi’s fast, fleet and grainy tabloid dramedy and I was suddenly pulled out of the pit. I was chuckling and even laughing out loud, which I rarely do, and just fucking tickled to death. Thank you, God.

All hail Jeremy Strong‘s magnificent supporting performance as Cohn — he should definitely win the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actor prize, the size of the role be damned — as well as Sebastian Stan‘s Trump, a note-perfect capturing of this amiable, malevolent psychopath, who apparently exuded a certain naivete and behaved in a semi-understandable fashion and may have been half-human when he was working in a senior capacity for his father’s real-estate company in the ’70s.

But that didn’t last.

Roy Cohn molded young Trump into the fiend he remains today…Cohn was the father, godfather and inspirational older brother Trump had never known while growing up. Fred Trump, Donald’s real-estate-tycoon dad, goaded him to succeed or at the very least bullshit his way through a tough racket but imparted a flinty, ruthless mentality in the process. Thanks, dad…fuck off.

Abassi’s direction is brash and brilliant, and Gabriel Sherman‘s screenplay (which was apparently cowritten by Jennifer Stahl, according to Wikipedia) is a model of no-bullshit economy — it gets right to the nub of things and never loses focus during the film’s 120-minute running time.

We’ve all been suffering through the plague of two-hour-plus films — the art of crafting an effective 100-to-110-minute narrative is apparently dead. But I would have been happy if The Apprentice had been Lawrence of Arabia. Okay, not that long but a 140- or 150-minute version would have felt like a neck massage, like a quaalude high. Keep it coming, feels so good.

The Apprentice has no distributor as we speak but please, please get this film into theatres as quickly as possible, and don’t wait for the fall — open it in July or certainly no later than August. Because it’s a huge pleasure pill that needs to be seen by as wide of an audience as possible. Very few adult films are this much fun. And if it gets seen quickly and widely enough, it might just save this country from four more years of hell. Maybe. Possibly.

There’s a bizarre passage in Tatiana Siegel‘s 5.20 Variety story about the already-infamous rape scene…the one that the late Ivana Trump shared and then denied in 2015 (obviously under pressure from Donald)…the one in which Donald throws Ivana (played by Maria Bakalova) to the ground during an argument and rapes her like a Cossack. As he’s ravaging her from behind, Trump hisses into Ivana’s ear, “Is that your G-spot…did I find it?”

Remember that Peter Coyote line from Jagged Edge when he describes Jeff Bridges‘ Jack Forrester character as “an ice man”? Well, Forrester had nothing on Trump, particularly when the latter began treating the heavily-closeted Cohn like shit when he began to succumb to AIDS symptoms.

Siegel quotes an “insider” saying that “audiences may find The Apprentice to be an oddly humanizing portrait” of Trump. Excuse me? Young Trump seems like a semi-tolerable fellow at first, but he gradually morphs into a toxic fuckhead…a killer. The truth is that Abassi’s film is an oddly humanizing portrait of Cohn as it invites the audience to share Cohn’s sense of betrayal…you actually feel sorry for this icon of evil when Trump gives him the cold shoulder.

Cohn to Trump at film’s halfway point: “You’ve got a fat ass. You should do something about that.” Strong is wonderful!

And by the way, Siegel reported yesterday that Dan Snyder, a billionaire Trump supporter who’s an investor in The Apprentice, is enraged at the damning portrait of Trump.

Variety excerpt: “Sources say Snyder, a friend of Trump’s who donated $1.1 million to his inaugural committee and Trump Victory in 2016 and $100,000 to his 2020 presidential campaign, put money into the film via Kinematics because he was under the impression that it was a flattering portrayal of the 45th president. Snyder finally saw a cut of the film in February and was said to be furious.” Hard to believe anyone could be that clueless, but there it is.

Here’s a nice taste of yesterday’s Apprentice screening.

I’ll be hitting the Apprentice press conference at 11 am, and I may even catch Abassi’s film a second time this evening, just for fun. I also plan to catch Sean Baker‘s Anora at 3 pm today.

Roughly two months ago a very early draft of Eric Roth‘s screenplay for Killers of the Flower Moon (dated 2.20.17, or eight weeks before David Grann’s source book was published) turned up on a Reddit screenwriting forum.

Roth’s 153-page screenplay, which arrived in my inbox around 6 am this morning, was posted late last year by “Sheshat the Scribe.”

Anyway I finally read it this morning and holy moley…if Martin Scorcese had manned up and shot this version of the tale Killers would have been a much more engrossing kettle of fish.

No exaggeration — Roth’s early-bird script is approximately 17 or 18 times better than the film Marty finally made. Because Killers suddenly has a central character you can easily roll with (i.e., FBI guy Tom White, who Leonardo DiCaprio was originally intending to portray) as well as an actual point of view.

White isn’t just the resolute, soft-spoken, voice-of-the-prairie hero of the piece but a decent, honorable lawman with occasional moments of doubt and uncertainty, but finally a dude who stays the course, toughs it out and brings at least a semblance of partial justice to a sprawling and horrific murder saga.

In Marty’s film version White (played by Jesse Plemons) is reduced to a supporting character who appears at the two-hour mark.

Here’s how I put it to a screenwriter pally a couple of hours ago: “My God, what a truly compelling and fascinating film Killers of thge Flower Moon could have been. Hats off to Roth for some wonderful writing, sublime tension, terrific structure. It really lives and breathes!

“And what a great, soft-spoken, drillbit character Tom White is! His laconic, man-of-the-prairie dialogue is so spare and true and eloquent.

“If only John Sturges had directed this screenplay in his prime! Or Oliver Stone in the ’80s or Michael Mann, Chris Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson…Sam Peckinpah even.

“If only Marty and Leo hadn’t lost their nerve…if only they hadn’t been so scared of provoking the wokesters and suffering their ferocious wrath, i.e., “We’re done with white heroes! Only racists-at-heart would tell such a tale! And fuck David Grann!”

“My head was completely turned around by reading this, and Roth wasn’t even afraid of including racist cracker dialogue from time to time. (Brave.) And Mollie Burkhart actually conveys a certain gratitude (i.e., a slight smile) to White at the very end. I don’t know if Lily Gladstone even read this version of the script, but if so she almost certainly would’ve hated it.

“I wish I had read this six or seven years ago. It would have clarified a lot of things. Roth and Scorsese went with a woke version of Grann’s tale, of course, but in the early stages Roth truly did himself proud.”

If you weren’t much of a fan of Killers of the Flower Moon or even if you were, please read this early Roth draft — it’s a revelation.

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Frances McDormand‘s Fern was strong but mule-stubborn and at the end of the day self-destructive, and this stunted psychology led to an idiotic ending.

Her old white van was indisputably on its last legs, and 60ish David Straitharn, lonely but harmless, clearly would’ve settled for simple, no-big-deal companionship.

I’m sorry but there’s this notion out there that choosing a healthy or constructive path in life requires (a) not being a stubborn egoistic purist and (b) understanding that opting for common-sense security isn’t necessarily a death sentence or a prison term.

The curious ending of Nomadland refuses to acknowledge this. It basically says “better to die destitute and alone on a two-lane blacktop while shitting in a bucket in the middle of the night than to accept kindness and sensible adult friendship.”

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Can’t decide which performance is better, although I’ve always leaned toward Tina Vitale, her cynical New Jersey moll behind the shades, in the latter film, which opened almost exactly 40 years ago (1.27.84).

The Purple Rose of Cairo opened just over 13 months later, on 3.1.85.

Less than a year later came Hannah and Her Sisters (2.7.86), in which Farrow also dramatically stood out (alongside Oscar-winner Dianne Wiest).

I loved David Fincher’s The Killer (Netflix 10.27)…a great escape film if I’ve ever seen and felt one. It took me out of myself and dropped me into a higher realm, or at least my idea of one. It redefines the meaning of the word “chill” in a way that will either knock you out or, if you’re an ideologue or a shoulder-shrugger or a constipated, closed-off type, leave you with shards.

It’s first and foremost about the supreme comfort of living in a super-clean, perfectly crafted Fincher film, and about the joy of being a ghost and travelling alone like a nowhere man, and about the blissful solitude and curious joy of disassociative technique…about the existential solace and solitude of having a wonderfully endless supply of fake IDs, fake passports and fake license plates, and maneuvering through flush and fragrant realms and the zen of nothingness…about the almost religious high of not giving a single, solitary fuck.

Despite sitting in a too-small Paris theatre seat (I could barely move my legs) and despite Fincher’s film starting almost a half-hour late, I was in heaven start to finish. It’s all about eluding fate and slipping the grasp, about playing a fleet phantom game and, much to my surprise and delight, about chasing down several unlucky functionaries and nefarious upper-caste types and sending them to God.

It’s about a side of me (and of Fincher, of course) that loves being on the move and managing to slip-slide away like Paul Simon but in a GOOD way or at least an extremely cool one…about being blissfully free of conventional entanglements and concerned only with slick stealth and ducking out of sight and, despite suffering a bruise or two, gaining the upper hand.

The Killer is about the joys of living a cold and barren life…it mainlines the hollow but feels like a kind of new-age opiate…it turned me on like Joni Mitchell’s radio, and I’m still feeling the buzz and humming the melody the morning after. I can’t wait to see it another two or three times, bare minimum.

Thank you, Mr. Fincher, for slipping me a great nickle bag of smack and what felt last night like the best meaningless-but-at-the-sane-time meaningful movie high I’ve had in a dog’s age.

Michael Mann’s Ferrari (Neon, 12.25) has turned out to be much better than I expected.

A portrait of aging Italian car magnate Enzo Ferrari struggling to keep his business and family afloat at a highly critical juncture, Ferrari is “better” in terms of recreating the past and a very particular cultural milieu (mid to late ‘50s, northern Italy) and generally radiating a certain textural, visual and emotional verisimilitude that is rather wonderful in its own studious, deep-dish way.

I’ve been reading since last summer that Ferrari is a period racecar drama that doesn’t follow the expected plot contours and certainly not in the fashion of James Mangold’s 2019 Ford vs. Ferrari, another racecar saga which involved the same real-life character (played by Remo Girone) while set in the mid ‘60s, or roughly eight years after Mann’s story.

Ferrari is basically a torrid Italian family drama (Mann meets Luchino Visconti with a splash or two of Douglas Sirk salad dressing) about emotional and financial turmoil afflicting the embattled Ferrari, played by a nattily-dressed, white-haired, slightly paunchy Adam Driver.

Let’s not forget, of course, that two years ago a younger-looking Driver played another head of an elite, world-renowned, family-owned Italian company in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci.

Let’s be honest — Joe and Jane Popcorn are going to say “this again?”

Given the Ferrari-Driver-Gucci overlap, I’m not sure how commercially vigorous Ferrari will turn out to be when it opens in late December. All I know is that despite the vaguely odd-duck, here-we-go-again factor, Ferrari works on its own compelling terms.

Ferrari is about an old man (Ferrari was born in 1898) entwined in a make-or-break struggle to keep his teetering car company afloat while preparing for a climactic, fate-defining cross-country race and while finessing a volatile family situation involving infidelity and conflicted loyalties.

It’s a great time-machine trip, intimate and low-key for the first three quarters but with a serious knockout finale. It’s culturally authentic (you really feel like you’re there) with a sturdy script and several nicely flavored performances…an ensemble piece that pretty much fires on all cylinders.

Ferrari really pays off over the last 35 to 40 minutes, which is almost all racing.

Penelope Cruz’s blistering, tough-as-nails, scorned-wife performance is a guaranteed Best Supporting Actress nomination lock.

Eric Messerschmidt’s cinematography is wonderful — it reminded me of Gordon Willis’s lensing of the first two Godfather films and Part Two in particular.

It’s basically 90 minutes of fractured family drama and a knockout crescendo showing the 1957 Mille Miglia, a decisive, hair-raising event in the fortunes of Ferrari’s precariously financed car company.

The domestic side is basically about Ferrari’s hands being full with Cruz’s angry wife Laura, Ferrari’s mistress Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley), and loads of financial pressure and numerous wolves at the door.

Mario Andretti: “[Ferrari] just demanded results. But he was a guy who also understood when the cars had shortcomings. He was one that could always appreciate the effort that a driver made, when you were just busting your butt, flat out, flinging the car and all that. He knew and saw that. He was all-in. He had no other interest in life outside of motor racing and all of the intricacies of it. Somewhat misunderstood in many ways because he was so demanding, so tough on everyone, but at the end of the day he was correct. Always correct. And that’s why you had the respect that you had for him.”

I can’t think of a kicker ending so what I’ve written will have to do.

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Last night I saw about 65 minutes’ worth of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, which runs 169 minutes. You can’t say I didn’t man up, buy the popcorn and give it the old college try. I didn’t hate it but it didn’t hook my heart or elevate my soul, and the more Swift sang and waved and strummed and strutted around and gave it up for her adoring, beaming and even tearful fans, the flatter I felt within.

As concert films go The Eras Tour is quite the visual power-punch (first-rate photography, editing, choreography, lighting design plus considerable personal charm and audience rapport) but aside from the fan-rapture aspect (95% younger white women) Swift’s act just doesn’t levitate. Or at least it didn’t in my situation.

I swear to God I sat down with an attitude of “okay, I’m here…let’s do it!” But it just didn’t connect.

Swift doesn’t have the greatest singing voice (it’s okay) and her country music origins put a damper on things. Her songs are rather flat and pop–fizzy and lacking in catchy, inventive hooks…they all kinda sound the same…no rivers of soul (not even streams of it)…confessional lyrics (ruptured romances, shitty boyfriends) but rendered without much in the way of edge or unusual style or anything “extra”…imbued with an unmistakably bland, girly–girl current, and a general lack of sophistication or complexity.

Swift is no Joni Mitchell-in-her-prime. Her songs seem to lack depth and intrigue.

I was engaged and studying the spectacle (which is fascinating in some respects) for the first half-hour but starting around the 45-minute mark I began to feel narcotized and then drained.

I nonetheless respect Swift’s energy and verve and swagger, and the Beatles-like following that she’s acquired over the last 16 or 17 years.

I was collecting my reactions in the AMC Westport lobby when a Manhattan-based journalist who’d also escaped at the one-hour mark (he’d been sitting two seats to my left) came over and said howdy. He’d been unable to snag a ticket to any Thursday night Manhattan showing and decided that a show in Connecticut was his best option.

We chewed things over for a half-hour or so. He felt roughly as I did about the film. “What’s the essence of Swift’s appeal?,” he asked. “Power,” I said. “The Swifties relate to who she is and where she’s been, and are really getting off on the bold persona and image…she’s a heroic figure in their eyes. It ties in, I think, with the Barbie explosion on some level.”

He had taken a Metro North train and then Uber-ed to the theatre, but didn’t want to see any more of the film. So I gave him a lift to the East Norwalk train station. Nice guy.

A respectful hat tip lo Eras Tour director Sam Wrench, director of photography Brett Turnbull and editor Don Whitworth.

Shot last August at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium over a period of three nights, The Eras Tour is indisputably a huge cultural and commercial phenomenon. Swift-produced, Swift-starring, Swift-distributed (straight to AMC and Cinemark) and sure to pull down God knows how many hundreds of millions.

Everyone did a great job. It just wasn’t for me.

Friendo: “You’ve offered a reality-based corrective. The media is offering her a rubber-stamp rave. I think she’s got a number of very good songs like ‘Mean’, ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ and ‘Shake It Off’ and — possibly her greatest — ‘Lover’.

“But you have to watch what you say if you have young daughters. You can’t come down on Taylor too hard, but I think her war against men is deplorable. And fundamental to her appeal. But I can’t say that in mixed company.”

HE: “I give her football player boyfriend (Travis Kelce) another couple of months. Okay, five or six months total.”

Friendo: “These men are just momentary accessories to her. Her message is basically ‘fuck men — they suck and we don’t need them’. In that sense, she’s doing her own bit to bring Trump back. All woke behaviors help the other side. Because the majority of people don’t want to vote for psychosis.”

Remember mumblecore? I’m kidding — of course we remember. But there’s an entire generation out there (Zoomers) that has never heard of it and certainly isn’t interested in knowing or asking questions or anything, and are content to just sit on their couches and inhale streaming content. I can’t believe the world has turned out as it has.

Does anyone remember Noah Baumbach‘s Greenberg, which is now 13 and 1/3 years old? Six years ago in Cannes I asked Baumbach about Greenberg and even he barely remembered it. Well, he remembered it but he didn’t really want to talk much about it because it was a huge bomb and because it pissed some people off.

I watched it again, and it’s still one of most daring, balls-to-the-wall, character-driven films I’ve ever seen or laughed with.

On 4.3.10 I posted a piece called “Big Greenberg Divide.” Key passage: “Greenberg is about what a lot of 30ish and 40ish X-factor people who wanted to achieve fame and fortune but didn’t quite make it or dropped the ball after a short burst…it’s about what these people are going through, or will go through. It’s dryly amusing at times, but it’s not kidding around.”

The second half of the article was a Greenberg defense written by HE correspondent “Famous Mortimer”:

“I think it is provoking such strong levels of resentment from viewers because it is a movie very much of these times but not made in the style of these times. It exposes the toxic levels of conceitedness and alienation today with the sincerity and empathy of ’70’s films by Ashby, Altman and Allen.

“First off, it’s a story about people. There is no high concept or shoehorned stake-raising set piece. Viewers either have the patience to connect with the human pain on display or they are lost. Unlike Sideways, there is no charming countryside setting or buddy comedy hijinks to punch up the mood.

“Second, the dialogue is the action. Only when the viewer is willing to think over the dialogue will characters’ seemingly ambiguous motivations and back-stories become clear. There’s no juicy monologue or nauseating flashback to convey these points. Instead, the viewer comes upon them over the course of the film in the form of passing references made by various characters. It is up to us to take these bits and pieces together and unlock the character revelations for ourselves. No more spoon-feeding cinema.

“Third, this film is a labor of love. That means idiosyncratic details are to be found at every level of its making. Only by thinking these details over and feeling the connections between them do we appreciate what the movie is trying to do. It’s a really thoughtful and heartfelt experience.”

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[Initially posted on 7.16.15] This may not pass muster with traditional Western devotees (i.e, readers of Cowboys & Indians) but arguably one of the most influential westerns ever made is Johnny Concho (’56), a stagey, all-but-forgotten little film that Frank Sinatra starred in and co-produced. For this modest black-and-white enterprise was the first morally revisionist western in which a big star played an ethically challenged lead character — i.e., a cowardly bad guy.

The conventional line is that Marlon Brando‘s One-Eyed Jacks was the first western in which a major star played a gunslinging outlaw that the audience was invited to identify or sympathize with — a revenge-driven bank robber looking to even the score with an ex-partner (Karl Malden‘s “Dad” Longworth) who ran away and left Brando’s “Rio” to be arrested and sent to prison.

This opened the door, many have noted, to Paul Newman‘s rakishly charming but reprehensible Hud Bannon in Martin Ritt‘s Hud two years later, and then the Spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone (beginning with ’64’s A Fistful of Dollars) and particularly Clint Eastwood‘s “Man With No Name.”

But before One-Eyed Jacks audiences were presented with at least three morally flawed western leads portrayed by name-brand actors. First out of the gate was Sinatra’s’s arrogant younger brother of a notorious gunslinger in Concho. This was followed in ’57 by Glenn Ford‘s Ben Wade, a charmingly sociopathic gang-leader and thief, in Delmer Daves‘ 3:10 to Yuma. And then Paul Newman‘s Billy the Kid in Arthur Penn‘s The Left-Handed Gun (’58).

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Last night Hollywood Elsewhere sat down with Marc Turtletaub‘s Jules (Bleecker Street), a quiet little fable about a vaguely flaky, absent-minded old guy (Ben Kingsley) who gradually blooms emotionally and spiritually when a smallish flying saucer crashes into his backyard garden and a wounded, pint-sized, shiny-skinned alien (Jade Quon) crawls out and lies on his brick patio, breathing but in need of care.

Kingsley’s Milton, whose longish, carefully styled gray hair looks exactly like a professional-grade wig, is so timid and small-minded that he waits a day to start caring for the poor, dark-eyed thing, who doesn’t seem to have a gender. (Let’s use the female pronoun.) At first Milt drapes a plaid blanket over the little gal, and then takes her inside and begins offering sliced apples for sustenance, and then shows Jules the guest bedroom and invites her to chill and watch TV.

After Milt’s friend Sandy (Harriet Sansom Harris) drops by and begins to warmly relate, the alien is given the “Jules” moniker (as in Jules Pfeiffer or a nickname for Julia). Milt and Sandy quickly become Jules’ parents, and then in short order they’re being assisted by Joyce (Jane Curtin), a vaguely neurotic acquaintance who starts talking to Jules as if she’s her therapist, sharing stories of her colorful youth in Pittsburgh (“I used to be an item”) and, in an odd detour, performing Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s “Free Bird” a capella.

Immediately all kinds of E.T.-type questions pop into your head. You have to assume that with all those consumed apples that Jules would use the bathroom from time to time or at least take an occasional leak outside, but details are never shared.

In no particular order: Does Jules take showers? What does she smell like? She has a smallish mouth plus, one presumes, a tongue, teeth, lungs and vocal chords so why doesn’t she mimic Milt with a little alien English, or perhaps speak in his/her own native tongue? Why was she travelling alone? What was the point of visiting earth in the first place? Is she fundamentally a woke type or does she view the human condition with (God forbid) the mindset of a Trump supporter? Is she broken-hearted over the recent death of an alien husband or child?

All we learn is that the enterprising Jules is looking to repair her spacecraft, and that she needs a few dead cats to accomplish this. We also see that she cares a great deal for Milt, Sandy and Joyce, and woe to any scurvy characters who might threaten any of them (think David Cronenberg‘s Scanners).

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Last night I drove all the way to Pleasantville’s Jacob Burns Film Center (45 minutes) to see Christian Petzold‘s Afire. Then I had to drive back, of course — another 45 for a total travel experience of 90 minutes.

Afire really isn’t worth all that time and gasoline. Because it requires the viewer to spend the entire running time (103 minutes) with one of the emptiest, most self-absorbed, clueless and physically unattractive characters I’ve ever hung with in my moviegoing life.

We’re speaking of Thomas Schubert‘s Leon, a fat, seemingly untalented, self-deluding writer for the first 85 or 90 minutes. And yet following a third-act tragedy that I won’t disclose, Leon suddenly becomes a gifted writer. Quelle surprise!

And so the film, we realize, isn’t as much about pudgy, fucked-up Leon as the difference between spinning your wheels for no discernible reason and writing true and straight about something real. And what improving your game can sometimes involve (i.e., a horrific inferno, the charring of flesh, the blackening of bones, being faced with terrible finality).

So the ending isn’t half bad but the first 85 or 90…God! Immature, pissed off, lost-in-the-proverbial-woods Leon obsessing about the highly attuned, rail-thin Nadja (Paula Beer) and never making any headway because he’s such a fleshy, mopey, self-deluding asshole.

Yesterday’s boilerplate: “While vacationing by the Baltic Sea, writer Leon (Schubert) and photographer Felix (Langston Uibel) are surprised by the presence of Nadja (Beer), a mysterious young woman staying as a guest at Felix’s family’s holiday home. Nadja distracts Leon from finishing his latest novel and, with brutal honesty, forces him to confront his caustic temperament and self-absorption. An encroaching forest fire threatens the group as Nadja and Leon grow closer, and tensions escalate when a handsome lifeguard and Leon’s tight-lipped book editor also arrive.”

If I was a film director I wouldn’t dare make a movie as thin, irritating and lacking in tension as the first two acts of Afire are. I was instantly annoyed and glancing at my watch and feeling sorry for myself, being stuck with this obviously not-very-good film and coping with air-conditioning that was too cold.

All I can say is thank God Schubert never gets naked, and double thank God he and Beers never do the actual deed. (Early on sex happens off-screen between Beer and another guy who’s mainly gay.) That’s not saying stuff doesn’t happen between them, or that their interactions aren’t faintly interesting from a certain perspective.

I was just grateful that Petzold respected the sensibilities of persons like myself. His discretion was gratifying. For he spared me the sight of Leon’s cashew-sized appendage…down on my knees!

In a comment HE reader Canyon Coyote tried to casually normalize beefalo + thin girl relationships, which he says are par for the course in his neck of the woods. I’ve spotted such pairings but c’mon, they were highly unusual before the obesity plague began to encroach roughly 20 years ago.

As I noted yesterday, Schubert is actually a bit heavier than John Belushi in Animal House and not that far from his appearance during his final Chateau Marmont cocaine speedball chapter, and only a few heaping plates of pasta short of obese. Just saying.