We’re all familiar with the cinematic simulation of a punch by having an actor pretend to punch the camera lens. The best-known examples of this technique are in Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest (’59), first when a South Dakota state trooper decks Cary Grant at the end of Act Two, and then 15 minutes later when James Mason does the same to Martin Landau.

It’s been asserted, however, that Samuel Fuller trail-blazed this effect in I Shot Jesse James (’49). It happens when a barroom brawler delivers a right cross at the camera. Jean-Luc Godard reportedly once referred to this visual device as “cinema-fist.”

The problem is that I’ve never seen I Shot Jesse Jamesall the way through. I tried watching the first 10 minutes and gave up. I tried a few years later…ditto. Has anyone?

It wasn’t just members of the AMPAS Directors Branch who blew off Barbie or didn’t feel super-enthused about Greta Gerwig‘s direction. Hillary Clinton has publicly sympathized with Gerwig and Margot Robbie over the snub, but if Barack Obama had done the same he would have looked like a hypocrite.

Doug Liman’s Roadhouse (Amazon, 3.21) is, of course, a remake of that 1989 Patrick Swayze original, directed by Rowdy Herrington and produced by Joel Silver. (Yes, I’m aware that it’s actually spelled Road House but I don’t like that spelling. Some people spell screenplay as Screen Play, and I don’t like that either.)

The 2024 Oscar nominations will be announced on Tuesday morning. But instead of predicting which films and performances will be included or snubbed, let’s try a different angle of approach. Best Picture-wise most Academy members vote for the usual political or social-pressure motives (DEI and merit being the top two) but the bottom line is that movies are voted for or approved of for deep-down emotional reasons.

Mainly because these movies have said something truthful and fundamental about life as we know it. Assessments which many of us have recognized or agreed with, and which have dramatized certain human behaviors which some of us may not approve of but are reluctantly acknowledged to be pervasive and on a certain level profound.

Here’s what the major Best Picture contenders are saying, more or less…

1. Oppenheimer — It’s magnificent to be a super-brainy genius and to apply your gift to the creation of something important or earth-changing, but don’t get so stuck on your particular vision of things that you wind up ignoring basic political realities and thereby self-destructing. And for God’s sake don’t behave like a crybaby when you’re in the Oval Office with the President of the United States.

Basic message: Once the genie is out of the bottle, you can’t put it back in. Take responsibility for your actions, be a man, play your cards carefully, no whining.

2. Poor Things — Bella Baxter calls ’em like she sees ’em, but there has to be more to life than just furious jumping, unless of course you disagree. Don’t take Yorgos Lanthimos‘s weird imaginings too literally. There aren’t enough films that really invest in wackazoid fantasies. Enjoy them when they happen, and please ignore the last 15 minutes.

Basic message: Weirdness can be wonderful.

3. The Holdovers — Life has always been difficult and occasionally punishing, but at least there weren’t any woke fascists or social-media guillotines back in 1970. It takes a lot of work and energy to be a haughty and dismissive scold all the time, and sooner or later you’ll have to give that shit up. Listen to your heart from time to time and maybe things will open up for you…maybe.

Basic message: Don’t be a crabby asshole.

4. Killers of the Flower Moon — 100 years ago Oklahoma white men were very greedy and very foul, and we need to learn from the example of their century-old evil so we can be better people today. In line with this, it would have been very bad to tell a story of Oklahoma genocide with a white FBI agent in the lead role. To have done so would have been obviously wrong and racist. Plus it doesn’t matter if Eric Roth‘s original 153-page script was far superior to the film that Martin Scorsese ultimately made (“who didn’t do it?”). What matters is that Leonardo DiCaprio wanted to play an idiot, and he did that.

Basic message: Don’t be a greedy, homicidal Midwestern white guy.

5. Barbie — Pink is beautiful, misandrist social satire is delicious and all men are pathetic and boastful infants who can be easily manipulated if women are smart about it. Plus (a) it was glorious to wear pink to Barbie screenings last summer, and (b) hooray for Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig making all that dough.

Basic message: Is there one?

6. Past Lives — If a Korean-born woman has been in love with a very special Korean-born man since childhood, it makes perfect sense to try and bring it all together when the guy flies all the way from Seoul to pay her a visit in New York City. And it doesn’t matter (or shouldn’t matter) if the woman speaks Korean to the boyfriend in the presence of her American husband. And a movie about this odd triangle doesn’t have to wrap things up or provide any emotional closure. It just has to speak softly.

Basic message: Don’t marry for friendship, convenience and comfort — you’ll be sorry down the road.

7. American Fiction — White upscale book readers are suckers for street cred and Black authenticity. If you’re a smart writer of color you’ll exploit the shit out of this market, and you won’t sweat the particulars. Unless you’re a man of conscience, in which case you will sweat them.

Basic message: Don’t worry about dumb white consumers.

8. Anatomy of a Fall — Brilliant female writers living in Grenoble need to watch themselves. Because if a certain hetero husband dies from a fall, the legal esablishment will automatically assume that the wife (Sandra Huller) pushed him and try to convict her of this, especially if she’s had a few same-sex affairs on the side.

Basic message: Beware of local male prosecutors with tennis-ball haircuts and cruel faces.

9. The Zone of Interest — The furtherance of evil has always seemed banal on this or that level, and the Nazis were no exception in this regard and especially in the ghastly matter of concentration camps.

Basic message: Read the writings of Hannah Arendt.

10. Maestro — Leonard Bernstein was a gay man who needed a beard marriage to prosper, and yet he cared deeply for his wife of many years, Felicia Montealegre. His intense devotion to music (conducting, composing) resulted in fame, adoration and great fulfillment all around, but what occupied his life and certainly affected his marriage were his relationships with young fellas.

Basic message: Don’t hurt your loved ones by “getting sloppy.”

Josh Margolin‘s Thelma, a Sundance headliner that I saw last night, is a mostly mild situation dramedy about the pitfalls, sadnesses and surprising turn-arounds of a chubby old biddy (the 94 year-old June Squibb, in her first starring role) when the going gets tough.

It makes for a reasonably decent sit, although I didn’t like it at first because of the hugely annoying Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus), who plays Squibb’s flaky-loser grandson.

Squibbs’ titular character is also 90something and, as you might presume, suffering from the usual intellectual and physical diminishments. Sissies need not apply.

Thelma is about the white-haired Squibb getting scammed out of $10K (which actually happened to Margolin’s real-life grandmother), and how she refuses to take this humiliation lying down and soon after becomes a dogged investigator and push-backer on her own steam and tenacity.

The reason I didn’t like Hechinger, whose dipshit Zoomer character has been told by his mom and dad (Parker Posey and Clark Gregg) to look after Squibb and keep her out of trouble, is because his performance had me half-convinced that he was in on the scam. (I hate guys like Hechinger…I really do.)

After going to the cops and getting no help, Squibb locates the post office box address that she sent the $10K to by envelope. (A voice on the phone told her to do so or Hechinger would be in deep shit, and she bought it.)

She makes her way to a nearby assisted living facility to seek the assistance of old buddy Ben (Richard Roundtree), which boils down to Thelma borrowing his mobility scooter, except Ben won’t let her drive alone.

They visit the home of an old out-to-lunch friend, and during this stopover Thelma discovers and pockets a loaded pistol. (Not worth explaining.) They get back on the scooter and wind up at a gas station, but then Thelma forgets to engage the parking brake…

With Posey, Gregg and Hechinger in hot pursuit…Jesus, I can’t do this. What am I gonna do, spill the whole story?

Eventually Thelma and Ben get to the bottom of things, and I was quite amused to discover that the principal scammer is none other than the white-haired 70something Alexander DeLarge.

The situation is resolved a little too easily but by that time I had decided that Thelma is an above-average thing, not quite on the level of Little Miss Sunshine but occasionally so.

Thelma is not a comedy — it’s a half-and-halfer. It certainly declines to go goofy or silly. There are elements of real pain and stress and sadness woven in. Now and then it’s actually touching, which surprised me. I’m giving it a B-plus.

On 1.15.24 Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman politely inquired about whether the Sundance Film Festival has surrendered the danger factor in its film selections. (Answer: Of course it has.)

Today (1.16.24) World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy, in a piece linking to Gleiberman’s column, observed the same thing.

A year ago (1.29.23) former IndieWire editor/columnist Eric Kohn sniffed around and reported the same shit.

Boiled down, they all concluded that potential threats of wokester condemnation had so terrorized filmmakers that they don’t want to take chances. They wouldn’t dare.

And yes, HE said the same thing in a two-year-old HE piece titled “Yes, Virginia…Sensitive Gargoyles Have Ruined Sundance” (12.27.21).

HE–posted on 10.17.16:

Ten minutes into last night’s opening episode of True Detective: Night Country, I was shaking my head, faintly groaning and muttering “nope…me no like.”

Set in the fictional village of Ennis, a grubby blue-collar hellhole in northern Alaska (but filmed in Iceland), it’s about a murder mystery (eight missing scientists) mixed with spooky horror jolts (a human tongue lying on a linoleum floor, a barefoot hippie wacko standing in a snowstorm) or, if you prefer, gulpy, uh-oh, nightmarish pan-flash stuff.

And I didn’t care…sorry. I was frowning. I actually watched episode #1 twice…well, nearly. But good God and Lordy Lordy. I hated the grimness and the gloom, the atmosphere of working-class gunk and chilly vibes, fleurescent lighting and the constant downer vibes…lemme out.

Miserable Me: “Who could stand living in this godawful one-horse town?”

I didn’t like any characters except for Jodie Foster’s “Danvers”, an aloof, flinty, sourpuss chief of police who’s no fan of the Beatles. I didn’t care for Kali Reis’s “Angeline Navarro”…didn’t like her sulking, sullen attitude or her cheek studs. There’s a young, good-looking cop (Finn Bennett) I took a shine to, but within a short while, as noted, I was sinking into a puddle of despair.

My spirit surged slightly when Reis came upon a CG polar bear on Main Street, but then we go in for the close-up and OF COURSE the bear is a bit scary due to a missing left eye. As soon as I saw that gnarly black eye socket I said to myself, “Fuck this show.”

And in fact stood up while doing so. Good souls, all.

I flinch every time I buy Gillette Proshield replacement cartridges. Because they cost too much for what I’m getting.

The first shave is always very pleasurable, granted, but you can feel a very slight diminishment during the second shave — not as sharp or clean. And the third shave is the same or even slightly worse. The fact is that cheap plastic razors (also made by Gillette) work almost as well over the course of, say, eight or even ten shaves.

Why do I keep shelling out for these shitty, over-priced Gillette cartridges that are good for only one great shave? Because I like holding the metal Gillette shaving device. (What should I call it?) It feels good in my hand. I like the weight of it, and the little grooves and micro-bumps allow for a better grip. Otherwise the cartridges suck eggs.