I wanted to catch today’s 4 pm showing of Edward Norton‘s Motherless Brooklyn, but I couldn’t do that and catch my 7pm flight out of Durango. So I left Telluride around 1 pm. Around 2 pm I began feeling little tugs of sleep, but I resisted them. A couple of times I actually slapped myself to stay awake. Just outside of Mancos my eyes wouldn’t stop closing so fuck it, I pulled over. I crawled into the back seat and slept for an hour. I’m glad I did this. It was the intelligent thing to do.

One measure of a gripping Telluride film, for me, is catching a 10:30 pm showing (and they always start late) and maintaining an absolute drill-bit focus on each and every aspect for 135 minutes, and then muttering to myself “yeah, that was something else” as I walked back to the pad in near total darkness (using an iPhone flashlight app to see where I was walking) around 1 am.

This is what happened last night between myself and Trey Edward Shults‘ Waves (A24, 11.1).

Set in an affluent ‘burb south of Miami, Waves is a meditative, deep-focus tragedy about an African-American family coping with the effects of high-pressure expectations and toxic masculinity.

The bringer of these plague motivators is dad Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), the owner of a construction business and one tough, clenched, hard-ass dude. He injects all of this and more into 18 year-old son Tyler (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), a somewhat cocky high-school wrestling team star who’s looking at a top-notch college and a go-getter future.

Watching on the sidelines is Tyler’s kid sister Emily (Taylor Russell), a quiet, keep-to- herself type. Their stepmom Catherine (Renee Elise Goldsberry) is a gentle smoother-over, and a counterweight to Ronald’s aggressive approach to parenting.

Tyler’s situation is aggravated when he tears a shoulder muscle and is told by a doctor that he has to stop wrestling. Tyler naturally decides to hide this from Ronald. But the real flash point occurs when Tyler’s spunky-hot girlfriend Alexis (Alexa Demie) finds herself pregnant, and announces that she wants to “keep it.” It?

Tyler freaks (sudden fatherhood at 18 being more or less synonymous with economic enslavement and close to a death sentence in terms of college and opportunity), Alexis freaks right back and blocks him, he responds by snorting and drinking and driving off, and then things come to a horrific climax at a party.

And so ends Part One of Waves, which is a cleanly organized two-parter. And then begins Part Two, which is mostly about Emily quietly coping with the aftermath of Tyler’s tragedy, and Ronald and Catherine all but shut down and incapacitated by it.

The bulk of this section is about Emily meeting and then going out with Luke (Manchester By The Sea‘s Lucas Hedges, somewhat heavier and wearing the same tennisball haircut he had in Mid90s and Ben Is Back). They gradually start going on missions together (including a visit to Weeki Wachee, which I haven’t been to since I was 14) and talking about their buried backstories, in particular Luke’s dying ex-druggie dad.

And then finally Ronald and Emily have “the talk” in which Ronald more or less admits that he pushed the wrong buttons with Tyler and that he’s trying to forgive himself, etc.

“Many have asked, and with good reason: Do we need another Joker movie? Yet what we do need — badly — are comic-book films that have a verité gravitas, that unfold in the real world, so that there’s something more dramatic at stake than whether the film in question is going to rack up a billion-and-a-half dollars worldwide.

“Joker manages the nimble feat of telling the Joker’s origin story as if it were unprecedented. We feel a tingle when Bruce Wayne comes into the picture; he’s there less as a force than an omen. And we feel a deeply deranged thrill when Arthur, having come out the other side of his rage, emerges wearing smeary make-up, green hair, an orange vest and a rust-colored suit.

“When he dances on the long concrete stairway near his home, like a demonic Michael Jackson, it’s a moment of transcendent insanity, because he’s not trying to be ‘the Joker.’ He’s just improvising, going with the flow of his madness.

“And when he gets his fluky big shot to go on TV, we think we know what’s going to happen (that he’s destined to be humiliated), but what we see, instead, is a monster reborn with a smile. And lo and behold, we’re on his side. Because the movie does something that flirts with danger == it gives evil a clown-mask makeover, turning it into the sickest possible form of cool.” — from Owen Gleiberman‘s 8.31.19 Variety review.

There are two kinds of movie devotees, and they can be neatly divided by their reactions to the news that Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman runs three hours and 29 minutes. The first group of supposed movie lovers is aghast at this news (“My God, my aching ass! And the bathroom breaks!”), but at the same time they’re totally down for an eight-hour couch marathon watching David Fincher‘s Mindhunter 2. The second group is utterly delighted by the news that a genius-level filmmaker, a half-century veteran whose vision and knockout chops have been hailed time and again, has made a nice, long, super banquet-sized film…”I can’t wait!”

Second group to first group: No good movie is too long, ond no bad movie is too short. Period. End of story. Shut up.

Director Joel Schumacher, who used to pick up the phone when I called during the ’90s, has been interviewed by Vulture‘s Andrew Goldman. In the second paragraph before the q & a portion begins, Goldman mentions six Schumacher films of varying quality — St. Elmo’s Fire, Flatliners, Phone Booth, Batman Forever, A Time to Kill, The Lost Boys. But not, for some inexplicable reason, the one incontestably good, verging on great Schumacher film of his whole career — i.e., Falling Down.

Early on Schumacher mentions that he and Woody Allen are longtime friends, which allows Goldman to ask “what are your thoughts about what’s happened to Woody?”

Schumacher’s reply: “I saw the interview with Dylan. She believes it happened. Her brother certainly believes it. Mia absolutely believes it. And I’m not saying it happened. I’m just saying they believe it happened. But she was so young at the time that I don’t know.”

Correction: Dylan was seven at the time, yes, but her brother Satchel (the one who looks like the son of Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra and is now known as Ronan Farrow), was even younger, as in four and a half. I’m sorry but implying that a boy of that age was alert and catching everything that was going on in the Farrow Bridgewater abode on 8.4.92 strains credulity. Sure, Ronan “believes it” now but that’s not exactly a compelling fact, given what he was able to know at the time or is now inclined to believe, especially given his journalistic brand.

But Dylan’s older brother Moses, who was 14 at the time and therefore more intellectually developed, was also present on that fateful day and emphatically doesn’t believe it, and in fact has offered proof as well as much circumstantial doubt to the contrary.

Lonely, depressed, alone, miserable, haunted…”life is a comedy.” Obviously a tour de force performance from Joaquin Phoenix — instant Best Actor status. The film is basically saying that the cruel world we live in creates the villains that it deserves. And you can’t avoid thinking of the perpetrators of recent mass shootings, and about mental illness and how society so often just looks the other way.

And how ironic is it, by the way, to have Robert De Niro playing a Jerry Langford-like talk host (the character played by Jerry Lewis in The King of Comedy), and this time opposite someone who could almost a kindred spirit of Rupert Pupkin, not to mention Travis Bickle.

The only stumbling block, for me, is that Joker is an origin story about a famous super-villain, and yet portrayed by a guy in his mid 40s — and who easily looks 50 if a day. Who figures out their role in life at the half-century mark? What was happening during the previous 40-odd years? Was he gestating, marinating?

Previously: “Last night I read a 2018 draft of Todd Phillips‘ Joker, written by Phillips and Scott Silver. It’s Scorsese-ish, all right — set in 1981 Gotham, tingling with echoes of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy with a little touch of Death Wish. The basic philosophy is ‘the world’s a venal, plundering place so who can blame Joaquin Pheonix for becoming a killer clown?’ It’s a stand-alone but at the same time it definitely feeds into the Batman legend.”

Focus Features has announced that Todd Haynes‘ Dark Waters, a fact-based attorney-vs.-polluters drama in the vein of Erin Brockovich and A Civil Action, will open on 11.22.19.

November 22nd isn’t too far down the road. In a perfect world it would screen at Telluride this weekend. If they’ve got the goods, the word-of-mouth will follow.

The tale of Rob Bilott vs. Dupont is reported in Nathaniel Rich’s N.Y. Times Magazine story, which appeared on 1.6.16.

The screenplay is by Matthew Carnahan and Mario Correra, and stars Mark Ruffalo (as Bilott), Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, William Jackson Harper and Bill Pullman.

When The Wild Bunch opened it was regarded as the last revisionist wheeze of a genre that had peaked in the ’50s and was surely on its last legs. It was also seen, disparagingly, as a kind of gimmick film that used ultra-violence and slow-mo death ballets to goose the formula. Now it’s regarded as one of the best traditional, right-down-the-middle westerns ever made. This kind of writing, acting and pacing will never return or be reborn. Lightning in a bottle.

“What Citizen Kane was to movie lovers in 1941, The Wild Bunch was to cineastes in 1969,” Michael Sragow wrote, adding that Peckinpah had “produced an American movie that equals or surpasses the best of Kurosawa: the Gotterdammerung of Westerns”.

“After a reporter from the Reader’s Digest got up to ask ‘Why was this film even made? I stood up and called it a masterpiece; I felt, then and now, that The Wild Bunch is one of the great defining moments of modern movies.” — from 9.29.02 article by Roger Ebert.

Vincent Canby on William Holden‘s performance as Pike Bishop, from 6.26.69 N.Y. Times review: “After years of giving bored performances in boring movies, Holden comes back gallantly in The Wild Bunch. He looks older and tired, but he has style, both as a man and as a movie character who persists in doing what he’s always done, not because he really wants the money but because there’s simply nothing else to do.”

Edmond O’Brien: “They? Why they is the plain and fancy ‘they’…that’s who they is. Caught ya, didn’t they? Tied a tin can to your tails. Led you in and waltzed you out again. Oh, my, what a bunch! Big tough ones, eh? Here you are with a handful of holes, a thumb up your ass and big grin to pass the time of day with.”

Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman will open theatrically on Friday, November 1st, and will remain in whatever theatres it will occupy, uncompromised by Netflix streaming, for four weekends — 11.1 to 11.3, 11.8 to 11.10, 11.15 to 11.17 and 11.22 to 11.24. And then, on Wednesday, 11.27, the 210-minute gangster drama will begin streaming on Netflix.

The film will continue to play theatrically all through award season (“an expanded theatrical release in the U.S. and international markets” starting on 11.27), for those who feel that a theatrical immersion with popcorn is the only way to go.

The bottom line is that Netflix and the major theatrical chains (AMC, Regal, Cinemark) were too far apart to come to an agreement. Netflix wanted a slightly-longer-than-Roma-style release (as they’ve just announced) and the exhibs wanted a 90-day exclusivity without concurrent streaming.

It needs to be fully understood that the exhibs were being flat-out unrealistic. They should have admitted to Netflix, themselves and God Almighty that almost ALL movies have shot their wad after six weeks (42 days), and that 45 days of theatrical exclusivity would suffice. 90 days is ridiculous, and they knew it.

All the biggies are getting into streaming. The world is changing. You can’t go home again. Suck it up, do your best and deal with things as they actually are (as opposed to how you’d like them to be).

In Los Angeles, The Irishman will presumably play theatrically in Landmark Cinemas, possibly the downtown Alamo Drafthouse and possibly at the American Cinematheque, but — this is important — Netflix REALLY needs The Irishman to play in the Pacific Theatres-owned Arclight locations. Not being in the Hollywood, Santa Monica and Sherman Oaks Arclight would be a very bad thing, public profile- and Academy voter-wise.

Who knows where The Irishman will play in the New York City area, but probably The Quad, Alamo Drafthouse, BAM Cinema, City Cinemas, etc.

From Anne Thompson’s Indiewire report: “Rooting for Netflix from the sidelines were the studios: At this point, almost all of them are following Netflix headlong into the streaming world and they are desperate for a middleman like Netflix to use its first-mover advantage to break this exhibition logjam.

“Their filmmakers want theaters, Oscar voters want theaters, and if theaters refuse to budge as the world changes, the logic goes, they risk being left in the rearview.

A little less than five years ago, or on 7.29.14, Jeffrey Cavanaugh posted an essay that fanned the flames of nascent Elizabeth Warren enthusiasm. Titled “Elizabeth Warren’s 11 Commandments,” the subhead was “Everybody’s eyes are on Hillary Clinton, but Elizabeth Warren might be the one Democrats should be watching if a golden calf is what they hope to avoid.”

In Cavanaugh’s prophetic calculus Clinton was the golden calf — “the abandonment of the true faith and the elevation of materialist safety” — and indeed she proved to be the terrible dead weight that sank the Democratic ticket and took us all straight to hell.

Posted on 6.13.18: “Every day I wake up shattered by the spreading Trump miasma, but I also curse Hillary’s name — every damn day. She did this to us. She and her centrist, Democratic-establishment cronies.”

But Warren did this to us also. In a way. Because in late ’14 and early ’15 she listened to the Democratic elders who told her not to challenge Hillary. If she’d announced anyway Bernie Sanders wouldn’t have run (he plainly stated that he got into the 2016 presidential race to carry the progressive banner because Warren had opted out) and with the excited women’s vote there was at least a decent possibility that Warren might have won the nomination. Maybe.

If Warren had run against Trump…who knows? I’m telling myself that everyone who voted for Hillary would’ve also voted for Warren, except Warren wouldn’t have had Hillary’s negatives — no secret email server issues, no fainting at any 9/11 ceremonies.

I would have been delighted to vote for Warren three years ago, without the slightest misgivings. Passion, smarts, gutsy, wonky.

I realize that African American voters probably would’ve clung to Clinton like they’re clinging right now to Joe Biden, but Warren had the heat in late ’14, ’15 and ’16…she really did. Read Cavanaugh’s piece — it’s fascinating.

Consider this chart showing Democratic candidate support among South Carolina’s African-American voters. Right now Warren is polling a weak fourth, and poor Pete Buttigieg is doing even worse. Face it — because of tepid black support Warren almost certainly won’t make it. Am I wrong?

Thanks, older voters of color, for your resistance to Warren because…what, because she’s white and position-papery and bespectacled and professorial? Thanks also for your ingrained resistance to candidates who aren’t straight. Because you’re saddling us all with a candidate who gaffes and drools. Thanks so very much.

In the eyes of Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson, Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is the frontrunner to win the Best Picture Oscar next February.

Partly because it’s a better than pretty good film in many respects, partly because it raises a glass to the “old” Hollywood of a half-century ago, partly because it delivers one of the kindest and most welcome happy endings in a dog’s age, and partly because in this era of dominating Disney-owned tentpoles it’s a stand-alone, non-franchise flick that has made a very decent pile of change so far ($123 domestic, $239M worldwide).

Maybe, but I’m of the vague suspicion that at the end of the day Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman (and I recognize, of course, that it’s the height of recklessness to spitball about a film that I’ve only “seen” in terms of having read an early draft of the script) will out-point the Tarantino.

I have six reasons for thinking so.

One, because, given the skills and vision of a director who’s been at this racket since the late ’60s, it’ll probably be “better” and classier than the Tarantino (i.e., more upmarket, more assured, less Van Nuys drive-in-ish) in terms of your basic award-friendly attributes — texture, focus, story tension, dynamic performances, great scenes, technical prowess, color and pizazz.

Two, because it’s a gangster film that isn’t necessarily out to be a visceral funhouse thing a la Scarface or Goodfellas, and is instead a kind of meditative morality play. And is therefore “serious.”

Three, because the three-hour length automatically qualifies it as epic- or Godfather-scaled — i.e., the standard calling card of an “important”, weighty-ass film. On top of the fact that it took years to assemble and cost a tankload of money to produce.

Four, because it’ll be processed by every digital Tom, Dick and Harry as some kind of ultimate statement about the criminal ethos or community by the undisputed king of gangster flicks…a world-renowned maestro who’s made four great ones (Mean Streets, Goodfellas, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street) and will soon deliver what I have reason to suspect could be (and perhaps will be…who knows?) his crowning, crashing, balls-to-the-wall crescendo, albeit in a somewhat sadder or more forlorn emotional key.

Five, because it’ll set new standards for the invisible blending of unvarnished realism and CG wizardry as well as deliver the most visually convincing rendering of the fountain of youth in the history of motion pictures (and tell me that isn’t going to hit every SAG member where they live).

And six…well, this is a bit complicated but I’ll try to explain. The sixth reason is that even the stubborn old Academy farts are starting to realize that there’s no stopping the streaming way of things, and that save for a sprinkling of award-season films released between October and December the theatrical realm has pretty much been overrun by the mongrel hordes, and that other big streamers besides Netflix and Amazon are about to jump into the arena (Apple, Disney) and thereby make things even more exotic and challenging, and that despite whatever perceived threat element Netflix may psychologically present it deserves at this point a Movie Godz gimmee owesie because it’s the only big player (as of right now) that is standing belly to the bar and funding ars gratia artis films for their own merits (like Roma), and because long, ambitious movies Like The Irishman are at a premium right now.

There’s also a seventh factor, and a crucial one at that: Netflix has to cut some kind of deal with major exhibitors (AMC, Cineplex, Arclight, Landmark) in order to book The Irishman into theatres for at least…well, that’s the issue, isn’t it? Potential engagements of 42, 56 or 70 days (or six, eight or ten-week runs)….who knows?

AMC wants something close to a 90-day exclusive theatrical window, even though it was recently asserted by a distribution veteran that “95% of movies stop earning their keep after the 42-day mark.”

The other four Best Picture contenders of note, probably, will be Sam Mendes‘ 1917, Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story, Marielle Heller‘s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women. And maybe Clint Eastwood‘s Richard Jewell. But The Irishman will take it. That’s how I see it right now.