Almost exactly 40 years ago, when Burt Reynolds could do no wrong. His last half-decent film, The Longest Yard, was four years old at the time. His best-ever film, Deliverance, had opened six years earlier. He would star in three more pretty good movies — Starting Over (’79), Sharky’s Machine (’81) and Best Friends (’82) — before his superstar career would begin to unravel and dissipate. If Reynolds had chosen to play Garrett Breedlove in Terms of Endearment instead of Stroker Ace, things would’ve lasted a bit longer.

Let’s get something out of the way: Jonah Hill‘s Mid90s (A24, 10.19) doesn’t re-invent or re-invigorate the subgenre known as the L.A. skateboard culture movie (Lords of Dogtown, Wassup Rockers, Dogtown and Z-Boys, Sweet Dreams, Thrashin’). But Hill is more or less recounting his own teenaged saga here, and he’s honored that straight-from-the-pavement aesthetic by dealing no-bullshit cards, at least by the standards that I understand. Plus he knows how to write a story with a beginning, middle and ending. Plus how to shoot and cut and get decent performances out of non-actors and sustain a certain tone or mood or whatever. And so Mid90s holds its own, and that ain’t hay.

I’m in no way dismissing Mid90s by calling it a fully realized, nicely shaded, highly engaging first film. There are maybe a thousand things you can get wrong when you make a movie, and by my sights Hill hasn’t messed up in any discernible way. By the same token he hasn’t levitated his film off the pavement and into the realm of wild-blue-yonder greatness, but whaddaya want from the guy? Does anyone know how hard it is to make even a mediocre film? Hill has made a perfectly good one, and it must have been a bitch to get there. Here’s to the concept of making films about what you’ve been through personally and sticking to what you know. Hill has stepped up to the plate and swung on a fastball and connected…crack!

“When Jonah Was 13 Or So,” posted on 7.24.18: You can tell right off the bat that Jonah Hill‘s Mid ’90s is an exception of one kind or another. It sure doesn’t feel like just another Los Angeles skateboard flick. You can sense a focus on character and kid culture and ’90s minutiae. Fast and loose and raggedy — the rhythms and the atmosphere feel right.

Pic is set in the lower West L.A. region — Palms, Culver City, Venice — and partly focused on a Motor Ave. skateboard shop. (Born in ’83, Hill grew up in the Cheviot Hills neighborhood or just north of these regions.) Sunny Suljic (The Killing of a Sacred Deer) has a certain X-factor thing going, and I love that Hill has Lucas Hedges playing a domineering-shit older brother instead of the usual gentle-sensitive guy from Lady Bird, Boy Erased and Manchester By The Sea. Katherine Waterston plays Suljic’s mildly unstable mom.

Directed and written by Hill; shot by Christopher Blauvelt (Indignation) in HE’s own 1.37 aspect ratio (boxy is beautiful) and edited by Nick Houy.

I didn’t know what to make of the advance word on Steve McQueen‘s Widows, but it sounded a little hazy and thereby gave me the willies. Well, the word-givers were dead fucking wrong — the complex, Chicago-based, super-riveting Widows is one of the best heist films I’ve ever seen. It grabs you from the get-go and never lets go. Thank God almighty that it’s intensely opposed to the aesthetic of the aggressively empty Ocean’s Eight (i.e., another all-women heist flick) and is much, much better than, say, Steven Soderbergh‘s Logan Lucky, which was diverting but now seems piffly in retrospect.

The basic Widows plot may sound like a lot to swallow (wives of four dead thieves without any criminal experience pull off a difficult robbery) but I believed every minute of it.

I swear to God that Widows is on the level of Rififi, The Asphalt Jungle, Nine Queens, Ronin and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels…that line of country. That’s not an opinion but a fucking fact. McQueen may have in fact been slumming when he made Widows, but he really knows how to shoot gutslam action, and his general aesthetic about setting movies “in the world of real, recognizable human beings” (as quoted in Owen Glieberman’s 9.9 Variety review) makes all the difference.

I don’t have much time to explain as I have to leave for a 6 pm screening of Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk, but Widows is the shit. It’s about protagonists who are scared and desperate (including the secondary bad guys), and is full of echos and currents that reflect the dark urban nightmare of present-day Chicago, and that’s what gives it such a formidable punch.

And I’m dumbfounded, I must say, by Gleiberman’s lament that McQueen might have perhaps played his cards in a “more irresponsible” fashion — i.e., more whoo-whoo escapist. McQueen not doing this is what makes Widows such a real-world, high-voltage thriller. This movie does not fuck around.

The Wikipedia logline for McQueen’s film is incorrect, as it turns out. “Four armed robbers (Liam Neeson, Garret Dillahunt, Jon Bernthal, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) are killed in a failed heist attempt, only to have their respective widows (Viola Davis, Cynthia Erivo, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez) step up to finish the job.” They do not “finish the job” — they pull off another job that their husbands never got around to.

Widows is based on Lydia LaPlante’s Widows mini-series that ran on British television in ’83 and ’85.

Widows also stars Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall, Daniel Kaluuya, Jacki Weaver, Lukas Haas and Brian Tyree Henry.

And yes, no question — Viola Davis is more or less a slamdunk for a Best Actress nomination. She grabs it, takes hold, wrestles it to the floor, opens herself up, toughs it out.

I’m sorry but Felix Van Groeningen‘s Beautiful Boy (Amazon, 10.12) just lies there. It does a good job of pretending to be alive and human as far as the drug-addiction genre allows, but it has no pulse, no campfire-tale hook, no currents that pull you along.

Based on a pair of best-selling memoirs by journalist David Sheff and his son Nic, Beautiful Boy is a sensitive, well-intentioned, steady-as-she-goes saga of meth addiction. But the decision to tell the tale from the elder Sheff’s perspective, or that of Steve Carell‘s mopey-dope performance, was lethal. Because Carell is boredom personified here; ditto the other grim-faced adult characters played by Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan, Timothy Hutton, etc.

The only thing that could have saved Beautiful Boy would have been to shift the POV to Timothy Chalamet‘s Nic — to follow the lead of Otto Preminger‘s The Man With The Golden Arm by sinking into Nic’s secret subterranean life of copping, shooting, evasions, lying, low-downing and evading the law, etc. As is, the camera rarely buddies up with Nic and his girlfriend Lauren (Kaitlyn Dever) and their scumbag pallies, and the sense of fatigue that comes from hanging with dull-as-dishwater Carell becomes oppressive. And then numbing.

I was inwardly screaming last night as I sat in my balcony seat alongside Dave Karger and several other journos. HE mantra: “I’m dying…I’m sinking into boredom quicksand.”

Who thought that making a movie out of these books would be a good idea? This movie is going to expire and disappear so quickly it won’t be funny. Dead, dead, deader than dead.

Yes, Chalamet (whom I ran into at the Soho House after-party…”yo, bruh!”) is very convincing as Nic — he’s a highly skilled and charismatic actor who digs right in — but all you can feel as you’re watching the poor guy is pity. Because he’s trapped in a dull movie, and the only thing that can save him in this context is for the movie to fucking end.

I have an hour to tap out reactions to Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born before my next screening, and I have two basic things to say.

One, Variety‘s Kris Tapley oversold the situation three days ago when he wrote that the Warner Bros. release has “the muscle to win all five major Academy Awards (picture, director, actor, actress, and screenplay)…it’s that kind of accomplishment.” And two, Cooper’s version of this age-old tragic romance (this being the fourth version and the third remake) struck me, no lie, as the most engaging, least problematic, best acted and most skillfully assembled of them all.

That sounds like a contradiction, right? The most satisfying and well-tuned Star Is Born I’ve ever seen that’s nonetheless been over-hyped by a certain columnist?

What I mean is that Cooper’s film is the kind of ace-level production that will seem hugely impressive to Academy members who are pre-disposed to tumble for this kind of thing sight unseen, who love the idea of a swoony pop massage-weeper, and who aren’t cultured or hip enough to realize that as technically assured and emotionally affecting as A Star Is Born is, it’s still a rehash of an old romantic tale, and you just can’t call it crackling or new or reach-for-the-heavens in a 2018 sense. Well, you can try but it won’t sell.

Put another way, A Star Is Born can’t hope to sink into our souls or our anxious, Twitter-jitter, Trump-besieged ADD culture in a way that’s truly head-turning in a right-now way. At the end of the day it’s still a classic cheese casserole, still A Star Is Born, still the same basic sappy saga (alcoholic star launches fresh talent, sinks into worsening addiction, gets in her way, decides to off himself) that was shot and released in ’37, 54′ and ’76, blah blah.

It’ll be Best Picture-nominated for sure, but only the easy lays and none-too-hips are going to say “whoa, Tapley was sooo right!…this is not only the best film I’ve seen all year but it might win five Oscars!”

How good is Lady Gaga as Ally, the new Esther Blodgett? Pretty damn good, I’d say — she gives the kind of carefully measured, open-hearted performance that you can’t help but succumb to. For the first time since she became a major brand, I feel I know who Lady Gaga is deep down.

How good is Cooper as Jackson Maine, the 2018 version of Fredric March and James Mason‘s Norman Maine, not to mention the version played by Kris Kristofferson? Excellent — some have called it his best performance ever, although I have a special place in my heart for Cooper’s unstable, self-deluding protagonist in Silver Linings Playbook.

How good is the screenplay, which was co-written by Cooper, Eric Roth and Will Fetters? It’s very well honed, very believable, often eloquent, nicely understated. A pro-level job top to bottom.

So what am I saying? A Star Is Born is a very well-done musical drama, and will wind up being nominated in a few categories, but it’s not (to use a classic Steve Pond term) “the one.” It’s an expertly assembled film for what it is, but keep in mind that it’s basically big-studio schmalz of a very high, very hip and musically pleasing order.

Kris Tapley wasn’t wrong about a certain kind of Academy member falling for this film, but after everyone sees it they’ll need to step back and take a breath. They’ll need to look in the mirror and ask themselves, “Do I really think that a reconstituted high-end romantic tragedy that works all around the track as far as it goes…do I really think this is the absolute cat’s meow?” Some people will say “yes!” without thinking, but others will think twice.

Said it before, saying it again: everyone needs to calm the eff down.

What grade am I giving A Star Is Born? Somewhere between an A-minus and a B-plus. It’s very good but it’s a remake that throbs with wall-to-wall music, for God’s sake. Control yourselves.

A journalist colleague said last night that “people tend to over-estimate musicals…they don’t often play across the board…they touch people who want to be touched by them, but that’s not everybody.”

From Owen Gleiberman‘s pan of Errol Morris‘s American Dharma: “Steve Bannon can be specific about the things he wants to destroy (like NATO), but if Morris asks him what he wants to build in their place, he’ll cough up a homily about the people taking back their power. He’ll tell you that he’d trust 100 random rubes wearing MAGA hats at a Trump rally to run the government more than he would the 100 people who actually run it. His political ‘philosophy’ comes down to throw-the-bums-out meets Being There.

“Yet Morris doesn’t question Bannon, let alone push him to the wall, on any of this. At one point, Morris says that he thinks there’s a ‘good’ Bannon and a ‘bad’ Bannon, and that the bad Bannon is the one who would let corporations destroy pollution laws. How, Morris asks, does that serve the public? And how does it not serve the elites?

“Bannon never answers him, and this sets up a softball pattern that’s repeated throughout the film: On the rare occasions when Morris gets around to challenging Bannon (once every 20 minutes or so), Bannon ducks the question, and that’s that. He never punctures his freedom-fighter-for-Joe-Sixpack firebrand congeniality, and the film moves on to something else. At one point Morris calls Bannon ‘crazy,’ but Bannon’s discourse is so rational on the surface that it’s never clear if Morris understands what Bannon’s craziness is truly about: his desire for a revolution that he’s the tipping point of. He’s an armchair megalomaniac — an elitist in warrior’s clothing.”

Kris Tapley‘s 9.4 Variety column, “Oscar Voters Are Sure to Go Gaga for Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born,” has left me feeling stunned and a little bit down.

A Star Is Born isn’t just “an across-the-board Oscar contender,” he says, but a film with “the muscle to achieve what only three films in movie history ever have: Win all five major Academy Awards (picture, director, actor, actress, and screenplay). It’s that kind of accomplishment, and even more, it makes you realize what this well-worn, Oscar-winning material was capable of all along.”

I’ve nothing against the idea of Cooper’s film sweeping the Oscars. If a film really works and delivers the goods then so be it. But hearing a savvy industry guy like Tapley say, only four days into September and before the Toronto Film Festival has even begun and with awards season having kicked off only six or seven days ago, that the Best Picture Oscar race is over is…depressing? It’s certainly deflating.

Loads of crappy films have been shot in Monument Valley. The worst are Gore Verbinski‘s The Lone Ranger and Seth McFarlane‘s A Million Ways To Die in the West. The last decent one was Ridley Scott‘s Thelma and Louise. For all their tedious eccentricity and Irish sentimentality, the John Ford films — My Darling Clementine, Fort Apache, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, The Wagon Master, Rio Grande, The Searchers and Sergeant Rutledge — are still the best.

Hollywood Elsewhere agrees with the 44% of critics polled by Indiewire that Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma was the best film of the 2018 Telluride Film Festival, and with the 50% who named Cuaron as the festival’s best director.

I also agree that Damien Chazelle‘s First Man ranked a close second, but I differ from the pack in having chosen Marielle Heller‘s Can You Ever Forgive Me? as the festival’s third-best film.

The greatest performance, hands down, was given by Melissa McCarthy in Heller’s film. I had an amusing time with Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Favourite, and thought Olivia Colman‘s performance as the ailing Queen Anne was Telluride’s second best. I also approved of the Favourite perfs by Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz.

Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner struck me as hugely satisfying in a complex, layered, adultly-seasoned way. I’m sorry I didn’t get to Orson Welles‘ The Other Side of the Wind, and I worshipped Rob Garver‘s Pauline Kael doc. The two biggest disappointments were David Lowery‘s The Old Man and the Gun and Karyn Kusama‘s Destroyer.

I meant to send my answers in to Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn, but I was furiously posting my own stuff between yesterday’s screenings, and then I couldn’t get a decent signal as Chris Willman and I were driving last night from Telluride to Mexican Hat.

Mexican Hat, northeastern gateway to Monument Valley — Tuesday, 9.4, 6:45 am. Nice scenery, okay, but $200 and change for the slowest, shittiest wifi I’ve experienced in years.

I’ve just come out of a late-afternoon screening of Joel Edgerton‘s Boy Erased, and it’s quite good all around — palpable story tension, dramatically satisfying, superb performance by Lucas Hedges, taut script, emotionally affecting, much better than The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Thumbs up, big applause when it ended, good job by all.

The only slightly jarring element (for me, and I say this with discomfort) is Russell Crowe‘s resemblance to Gerard Depardieu, William Howard Taft, Orson Welles and Andy Devine.

But slightly more impressive was Marielle Heller‘s Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Fox Searchlight, 10.19), a real-life Manhattan drama about alcoholism, desperation and forgery that really delivers the goods. We’re talking Best Picture material here. Melissa McCarthy grand-slams as late journalist-author Lee Israel, dealing totally straight cards with zero laugh lines — her greatest performance ever (the highlight is a court scene in which she confesses her sins) and a guaranteed slam dunk for a Best Actress nomination with an almost-as-likely Best Supporting Actor nomination for costar Richard Grant.

HE reader on Colorado Avenue: “How do you feel?” Me: “Fast and loose, man.” HE reader: “In the gut, I mean.” Me: “I feel tight but good.” [Bonus points to anyone identifying what film this dialogue is from.]

Roma maestro Alfonso Cuaron, Boy Erased director-writer Joel Edgerton in Herzog theatre lobby, prior to this afternoon’s Erased screening.

White Boy Rick producer John Lesher. I told John that it takes character and cojones to wear a cowboy hat.

Legendary director Werner Herzog, Alfonso Cuaron prior to Boy Erased screening.

Following this afternoon’s Palm screening of Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me, Melissa McCarthy and Richard Grant kicking things around.

I was hoping that Rob Garver‘s What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael, which I saw three nights ago, would deliver some degree of enjoyment. It’s much better than that. I found it wonderfully alive and attuned, electric, bracingly intelligent, well-honed and about as spot-on as a doc of this sort can be. If you’ve any passion for film or particularly the glory days of personal-vision American cinema (late ’40s to early ’80s), this is essential viewing and a whole lot of fun to sit through.

Filmed four years ago, Garver provides a rush of immense comfort and stimulation with perfectly timed, just-right film clips and talking-head dialogue to explain and depict what was going on in the legendary critic’s life and head over a half-century period. The effect, for me, is ecstatic. Razor sharp and smooth as silk and yet always with a drill bit…it goes right into the whole novelistic tumult and miasma of that wonderful period in film criticism (’60s to early ’80s)…making sense of it, cleaning it up and making it all perfectly understood.

Here’s an excellent review from The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy.

And here are quotes that I typed as I watched it on my Macbook Pro:

Kael: “The world is divided between the people who get deep pleasure from doing a good job, and those who are just trying to get through the day. There are a great many critics who belong to the latter category, who are scared of their readers, scared of their editors, scared of the movie companies and with some justification, but are never good enough to conquer their fears. The point would be really to try and strengthen your own writing style and develop some more courage, because then you’re in a better position.”

Quentin Tarantino: “The way Pauline described Band of Outsiders…she said it was as if a bunch of movie-mad young French boys had taken a banal American crime novel, and translated the poetry they had read between the lines…that is my aesthetic! Right there! That’s what I hope I can do.”

David Edelstein: “I disagree violently with that term…I am not a Paulette.…I am a Paulinista…I have learned from her approach and applied it in my own way.”

Kael: “Every good critic is a propagandist…there’s no other way to play the game.”

Observation: “Pauline was a west coast girl, and somewhat lacking in deference to authority. What she couldn’t achieve in art, she was able to achieve in movie reviews…she said I want to loosen my style, to get away from the term-paper pomposity that we all learn at college…I wanted sentences to breathe, to have the sound of a human voice. [Before Pauline] New Yorker readers were used to this rather genteel rolling prose. Pauline didn’t believe in categories…she was very much against snobbish art-house cinema…she embraced popular cinema…only bad critics impose an academic formula…what Pauline Kael called the gentlemen critics…she wrote like someone who had bought a ticket and found a seat and watched it with a crowd.”