Could the title of Clint Eastwood‘s The Mule (Warner Bros., 12.14) allude to something besides a guy who smuggles drugs? Could it also allude to, say, stubbornness or obstinacy? Right now we’re all saying the same thing to ourselves — we might as lay it on the table. Variety‘s Kris Tapley” believes that Eastwood might wangle a Best Actor nomination — partly for his performance, partly as a Redford-like gold watch tribute. When Tapley muses, the world takes note.

In a recent post about leading Best Actor contenders, I mentioned Christian Bale as Dick Cheney in Adam McKay‘s Vice. My only remark was that “you don’t get nominated for putting on weight and wearing great make up.” A fellow journalist and award-season handicapper replied, “Since WHEN? Don’t bet against him.” HE to handicapper: I only meant that appearance and make-up are icing on the cake, and that a noteworthy performance has to come from the innards of an actor or it be not at all.”

Posted around noon by Vanity Fair‘s Julie Miller.

Sasha Stone‘s Oscar Season Rule #1 states that serious Best Picture contenders have to launch at Venice, Telluride and/or Toronto and then open in October or November, but never December.

[Correction: Sasha’s rule has only applied since the Academy pushed their date back one month, which they did in 2003. Before that late December was when films were released and considered for Best Picture. Now it all happens so fast that a December release can’t build the momentum it needs to win.]

But that sure wasn’t the case in 1979 when Kramer vs. Kramer opened on December 19th and wound up winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman) and Best Supporting Actress (Meryl Streep).

I’m just popping this in as a reminder of how good Hoffman was in his prime. He’s living in an apparent state of seclusion since the #MeToo Robespierres put his name on their Black List after he was nailed for being a little too feely or exploitively gropey-grope back in the ’80s, and I know he’s long had a general rep for being too self-possessed and caught up in his own mythology, but he was worth his weight in gold during the late ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.

What was Hoffman’s last really good film? Meet The Fockers, right? And before that Wag The Dog. He shouldn’t have done Family Business or Hook. His last really, really big movie/performance was Rain Man, and that was 30-ass years ago.

Tamara Jenkins‘ Private Life (Netflix, 10.5) is a New York drama about a 40ish couple (Paul Giamatti, Kathryn Hahn) having fertility problems, and turning to a young niece (Kayli Carter) to step in as a surrogate mom. It’s a decent enough film — alternately intriguing, flinty, sad, trying, amusing, probing — but it doesn’t know how to wrap things up.

Honestly? I saw it nine months ago and I can’t quite remember how it ends. I recall that Carter spoiler spoiler spoiler but I forget why. Something to do with forgetting to take care of herself, something that goes wrong due to immaturity or carelessness. Giamatti and Hahn grim up and spoiler spoiler spoiler or they’re going to keep trying….something like that. I can’t recall.

HE movie-watching rule #17: If you can’t remember how a film ends, it’s the film’s fault — not yours. I think I became so disengaged and so impatient for something to happen that I regarded as fulfilling or satisfying that I just tuned out after a while. I respected it but not much more.

A friend agrees completely. “My recollection is that Giammati and Hahn are just going to keep going after the film ends…they’re going to keep trying to conceive. Which is exhausting to even think about. A good film in certain ways, but sorry, it’s no The Savages.”

HE to readership: Name a film that you admire or respect but you can’t quite recall how it ends. You may have a vague recollection of the finale but not a precise one. Obviously thats’ a significant flaw on the film’s part, but you still think it’s pretty good.

Will Hollywood Elsewhere attend the Hugh Jackman celebration in Santa Barbara on 11.19.18? I’d like to but we’ll see. The star of Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner (Columbia, 11.6) will be the recipient of the 13th annual annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film, which will be held as usual at the Ritz Carlton Bacara.

Some of us are aware of the moralistic undertow in Jackman’s performance as Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart, and the fact that The Front Runner is a highly unusual film for its decision to present a canny, opportunistic infidel as a symbol of ethical decency — a politician with the usual egoistic flaws who nonetheless believes in governmental ideas and visions while keeping libidinal diversions in a box off to the side.

It also portrays the Miami Herald reporters and editors who made hay out of Hart’s mostly meaningless affair with campaign volunteer Donna Rice as…well, fellows who weren’t exactly advancing the cause of first-rate journalism.

It’s a movie that says “yeah, Gary cheated on his wife and so what? Because the real embarassment and the real mud came from what those journalistic bottom-feeders did to Hart and American political culture in the bargain.”

Out of 22 Gold Derby spitballers, why am I the only one who’s listed Jackman’s performance as one of the five most nominatable? I don’t know, but I can tell you for sure that most of the Gold Derby-ites are just following the pack mentality. On top of which a good portion of them probably haven’t seen The Front Runner…who knows?

Alexis Bloom‘s Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes is a frightshow. It leaves you with a shudder and a realization that Ailes, drooling fiend that he may well have been, really was a Luciferian visionary and a dark genius who turned Red America into a Nation of Crazy.

He was the reigning Machiavellian author of big-lie rightwing media for 20 years, the Pied Piper of Rural Dumbshit-ism, the pugnacious fat man who primed the country for the arrival of Donald Trump…a hustler who dipped his paintbrush into an apothecary jar of his own fears and paranoia (and perhaps some festering resentment toward his mother for infecting him with hemophilia as a young child) and embraced anger and aggression as primal fuel and sticking it to the liberal media machine as his guiding mission.

How engrossing is Divide and Conquer? Very. How detailed, probing and well-organized? Same. How depressing is it? Oddly, it’s strangely engrossing because Ailes was a real surface-to-air missile and a deranged motherfucker whose generator was always humming. He was never a dull man, and neither is this documentary. How much does it tell you that you didn’t know? Not that much but I didn’t care. What a demonic and diseased reptile Ailes was…a cookie filled with arsenic.

From “Loathsome Jack Is Dryer, More Meditative Than Expected,” filed from Cannes on 5.15.18: “I’m not saying Lars von Trier‘s The House That Jack Built isn’t repellent in more ways than you can shake a stick at. It’s an odious, ice-cold exercise in homicidal perversity, and one for the record books at that. It should probably be avoided by anyone with a weak stomach or…oh, hell, by anyone who feels that films should exude some form of love or worship or celebration, which probably covers 99% of the moviegoing public.

“I was expecting a diseased horror-murder tale so excessive that it might make me physically sick or prompt me to walk out or get into a fight with one of the security guys. It didn’t do that. It turned out to be more of a meditative guilt confessional — about LVT more or less admitting that he may not be a good enough artist to deliver worthy, lasting art, and that all he really knows how to do is shock and agitate. (That’s what I got from it, at least.) I’m not saying it’s a better film than I expected, but it’s dryer and more meditative and not as heinous as I feared.

“Portions of Jack are awful to sit through and the overall tone may be an equivalent to the professionally distanced, carefully maintained mindset of a psychological counselor in a hospital for the criminally insane. But for all the innate ugliness and sadistic cruelty on-screen, Von Trier is basically analyzing himself by way of Matt Dillon‘s Jack, a serial killer based in the Pacific Northwest, and casting a cold eye upon his shortcomings as a filmmaker.

“Dillon is a would-be architect but is only gifted enough to be an engineer, he gradually admits. This is Von Trier talking about himself, of course — admitting to his audience that he’s ‘not quite Ivy League’, and that after shooting his wad on Breaking The Waves, The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville that all he really knows how to do now is make shock-and-appall movies like this, Antichrist, the two Nymphomaniac films and so on.

I’m not saying Jack gets a pass, but at least LVT has tried to make it into something more thoughtful and meditative than just a series of clinical, cold-blood episodes showing recreations of this and that method of murder. It’s ugly and rancid, but about more than just that.”

IFC Films apparently intends to release The House That Jack Built on 12.28.

I’ve thought and thought about it, and there’s no way award-season handicappers can argue that Viggo Mortensen‘s Sopranos-styled performance in Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book isn’t the current Best Actor champ. Odds-wise, I mean. Or destiny-wise.

Not that anyone is arguing against Viggo, but you get my drift. His amiable goombah guy — a nicely shaded, carefully measured performance that conveys an emotional journey that you can’t help but admire — reaches out and touches. It hits the classic sweet spot. No other performance so far is on this level. Please tell me how I’m mistaken.

Bradley Cooper‘s Kris Kristofferson-like performance as a drawlin’ drunk in A Star Is Born is pretty good, I have to admit. He’ll almost certainly be nominated….right, Bobby Peru?

But Hugh Jackman‘s Gary Hart in The Front Runner is, I feel, more formidable. Watching him play a considerate, highly principled guy who didn’t do anything all that bad or who at least feels that infidelity is a private matter…to watch this decent guy get taken down for no reason other than the fact that tabloid scandals drive ratings and sell newspapers is just tragic. I can’t get his performance out of my mind.

And what has happened, by the way, to general Gold Derby support for Ethan Hawke‘s career-peak performance in Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed? It’s an absolute scandal that he’s not on each and every spitballer’s top-five Best Actor chart right now, as opposed to just lists from Claudia Puig, Timothy Gray, Chris Rosen, ESPN’s Adnan Virk and myself.

As we speak, 17 Gold Derby handicappers are blowing Hawke off. Not because his masterful performance as a small-town minister isn’t a primal, conflicted, straight-from-the-gut vessel of anguish and longed-for redemption, but because A24 released First Reformed last May. By the tired-thinking standards of your go-along, follow-along prognosticator, this means that Hawke isn’t really in the game — respected but an awards-season also-ran. Not because of the quality of performance, but because of A24’s release strategy. Which is absolute bullshit. Shame on those 17.

A lot of people are behind the idea of Willem Dafoe‘s performance as Vincent Van Gogh in Julian Schnabel‘s At Eternity’s Gate. I am among them, but who’s actually seen the film? It played at the Venice Film Festival, will screen at the New York Film Festival on 10.12, and will open on 11.16.

Others are excited about Christian Bale‘s unseen performance as Dick Cheney in Adam McKay‘s Vice, which won’t open until 12.25. My gut is telling me that fat Bale playing a real-life Satan is not going to be nominated for anything. Not in this climate. You don’t get nominated for gaining weight and wearing great make-up. It may be that Bale’s actual performance will turn out to be the real deal, but I’m holding off on Bale for now.

I’ve mentioned from time to time how Tony Gilroy‘s Michael Clayton (’07) has, for me, gotten better and better over the years. And yet somehow I didn’t have the brain cells or cinematic perspective or innate insight to recognize Clayton‘s specialness when it opened 11 years ago. I didn’t realize it was (and is) one of the greatest, most on-target films about big-time lawyering and corporate corruption ever made. In this regard I would call Gilroy’s film even-steven with Michael Mann‘s The Insider.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

From just-posted Indiewire piece, “A Star Is Born Is a Crowdpleaser, But Does That Make It an Oscar Frontrunner?“:

“As the fall season continues to come into focus, A Star is Born remains the one movie with massive commercial potential coming out at the height of Oscar season. But the Bradley Cooper-directed update to this famous rags-to-riches saga has already become an internet meme weeks before its release. As the movie continues to gain traction, there are still many questions about its long-term appeal: Will Cooper’s movie dominate a dense season or is it dwarfed by some of the more audacious contenders?”

HE translation: In the face of Kris Tapley‘s fascinating, almost humorous refusal to walk back his early proclamation about Cooper’s undoubtedly well made crowd-pleaser, Indiewire (i.e., Eric Kohn) feels there’s enough credibility to the burgeoning notion that A Star Is Born has been over-hyped in terms of its Best Picture or Best Director chances…there’s certainly enough cred to discuss and kick it around.

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson says in the below discussion that while A Star Is Born is good for this or that nomination, whether or not it wins “is a whole different discussion.” Kohn claims that in the popular movie realm, Black Panther has a stronger team of horses than A Star Is Born. This may be true.

The first photo of Tom Hanks-as-Fred Rogers surfaced yesterday.  It’s from the set of Marielle Heller‘s You Are My Friend, a Rogers biopic (inspired by the Morgan Neville doc) that will open on 10.18.19.

Fred Rogers, man. What a nice guy. I mean, what a really nice guy…right? Gentle manner, red sweater, blue sneakers, an Eisenhower Republican…what’s not to like? I know I’m sounding a little facetious here, but he was a “nice guy”, and he always will be.

‘

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh tried to defiantly lie and bluster his way through his Senate Judiciary Committee rebuttal testimony yesterday. Any reasonably sane, semi-mature, level-headed person who believes Kavanaugh’s bullshit is either (a) flat-out lying or (b) afflicted with serious deficiencies as a reader of human behavior.

“You can’t kill my life and career over my rapey, blind-drunk high-school and Yale shenanigans…that shit doesn’t count, I was 17 or 18, Mark Judge and I were fucking around…whatever. Oh, and fuck you eternally, Democratic conspirators!”

I’ve run into guys like Kavanaugh from time to time, and they’re mostly about their lack of empathy (“The world is for the few,” etc.) and their like-minded buddy-bruhs and shared hostilities and belief in clubby entitlements. And I hate, hate, hate his crude, vaguely moaning, thick-tongued way of speaking — I loathe and despise the sound of his disgusting seal-bark voice. Ope!…ope!…ope!…ope! And those butt-ugly pig eyes. In a suit. The oinky eyes of a pugnacious Trenton, New Jersey bartender who’s been caught skimming.

Kavanaugh’s sickening testimony followed the obviously truthful, straight-from-the-heart, straight-from-the-pain testimony of Palo Alto psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford. Her words and memories are and were obviously, 100%, drop-to-your-knees lucid and sincere, and shouldn’t be degraded by side-by-side comparisons to Kavanaugh’s Irish-street-punk taunts and rage-bombs.