For nearly a quarter-century Michael Mann made a series of intensely male-ish, high-stakes grand-slammers — hardcore films about headstrong fellows forging their own paths, sometimes outside the bonds of legality but always single-mindedly. And man, did they hit the spot!
The hot streak began with 1981’s Thief and ended with 2006’s Collateral, and also included Manhunter (’86), The Last of the Monicans (’92), Heat (’95), The Insider (’99) and Ali (’01) — seven films in all.
Then came the “excellent work but not quite a bell-ringer” period…Miami Vice (’06), Public Enemies (’09) and Blackhat (’15)…movies that registered as ground-rule doubles or triples. Which felt disorienting to Mann-heads given his 23-year home run history.
Now comes Ferrari (Neon, 12.25), which is made of authentic, bruising, searing stuff. In my eyes it’s another grand-slammer but what do I know? Obviously the reaction so far has been mixed-positive — many admirers but also a modest-sized crowd of dissenters.
There’s no disputing that TheIronClaw is coarse, bruising and emotionally shameless — a death-trip family flick with an arch-villain of a paterfamilias (Holt McCallany’s Fritz Von Erich) whose malice is barely addressed by his sons and never confronted.
And all of it colored by the fraudulence of the “sport” of wrestling itself — a rancid charade that makes you want to barf or at least turn away.
And the grotesque, eye-rolling spectacle of one son after another almost comically succumbing to the black void like Radio City Rockettes dancers performing choreographed splits…it’s somewhere between nauseating, hilarious and ludicrous.
There’s another thing that’s beyond dispute, and that’s the fact that those who are earnestly praising this beyond-bizarre, blue-collar soap opera should never, everbetrusted.
I’m dead serious — the critics and HE commenters who’ve given Sean Durkin’s film a gold star and a back rub are dishonestpeople, or at the very least completely unmitigated and certainly undisciplined by what most of us would call “taste”.
For the rest of their lives these knaves, these one-eyed jacks, these human-sized hunks of gravel will have to answer for their praise for this garbage dump of a film…it will stalk them in perpetuity.
Incidentally: Before yesterday’s screening of TheIronClaw I hadn’t realized how short TheBear ‘s Jeremy Allen White is. The guy is only 5’ 7”, or seveninchesshorter than the late Kerry Von Erich (whom he plays in the film) and an inch shorter than Humphrey Bogart.
Back in the mid ’90s I’d have written about that infamous VHS tape showing how The Naked Gun movies copied jokes and sight gags from Get Smart, Sledgehammer and other comedy movies and TV shows.
The VHS video in question (originally mentioned in Spy magazine in July 1993) has been digitally remastered and updated. It now includes David Zucker’s contention he’s only been influenced by his own work. I’m not saying that Zucker is basically a comedy kleptomaniac (I wouldn’t know), but there are those who feel this way.
How odd that Snoopy has suddenly become a thing on two fronts — not just retail shelves but also in Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro or more particularly in that already famous argument scene that happens around the three-quarters mark.
“One of the hottest toys this holiday season has little chance of making it into the hands of children. That’s because people in their 20s, people who are adulting, are grabbing up a toy known as Puffer Snoopy.
“Puff Snoopy Dog is a upmarket version of the cartoon beagle from Peanuts. He wears a puffy pale-blue jacket and a green-and-yellow ski cap.
“Snoopy was selling for $13.99 at CVS until stores sold out. People from Generation Z, we’re told, are posting on TikTok about their frantic searches.”
Something vital would be missing. McCartney’s hair has never thinned out, no bald spots, etc. Imagine if his hair was as sparse as Bob Mortimer‘s….it would be awful.
I own the inmaculate Sony 4K Bluray of Stanley Kubrick‘s Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb, and every so often I’ll rewatch it just to savor those wonderful monochrome enhancements.
And it’s probably even easier to politely dismiss or shoulder-shrug Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things (Searchlight, 12.8), which, for the fourteenth or fifteenth time, is a sexual Frankenstein meets Barbie with the same confident and completist feminist imprimatur at the conclusion.
But like Maestro, Poor Things really gains during a second viewing. I can’t wait for viewing #3.
I hate to say this, but credit is due to Everything Everywhere All At Once (a movie that I mostly hate) for expanding the procedural boundaries of what a Best Picture contender can be. The younger Academy members who voted for it basically said “weird, imaginative, ouside-the-norm surreal content is totally approvable in this realm.” So in a sense EEAAO has done Poor Things a favor.
Time‘s decision to celebrate Taylor Swift as the Person of the Year is, of course, first and foremost a shallow commercial hustle.
The editors are basicallly saying “superfluousness is not a crime…it’s not so bad and in some ways is pretty great…all hail the island of leave us alone, we’re happy where we are, don’t puncture the bubble of insularity that so many millions of women (mostly younger) want to live inside…that bubble of complacency…that temporary (hopefully eternal!) shelter realm…success, simplicity of mind, in some instances (probably more so than we’d like to admit) the shroud of vapidity.
No offense to Taylor herself — she’s smart, capable, knows what she’s doing. But the Time guys are squeaking mice. There are more things in heaven and earth, guys, than are dreamt of in your marketing philosophy.
AI kingpin Sam Altman would have been an unsexy choice, but what he’s helped to unleash is obviously exerting thousands of times more infuence (and an infuential threat) upon our land, culture and souls than Taylor Swift.
If it has to be someone or something vapid in order to make Time into a bigger cultural thing, I would blend Swift with Barbie and Greta Gerwig and call 2023 The Year of of the Self-Celebrating, Wrapped in Commercial Glory Girly Girls Who Have Little Use For Men and Would Pretty Much Like to Cast Them Aside Except For The Sperm Donation Stuff….Barbie, Taylor, Beyonce…the whole commercial and cultural blitzkrieg of it all.
Two days ago Disney CEO Bob Igeradmitted to having read the proverbial writing on the wall and more or less bullhorned the following “whoa, Nellie!” message to Disneywokesters, which I’ve conveyed here in HE-styled rhetoric:
“All right, enough, dammit…we have to face facts…the Critical Drinker has been rightallalong and wehave to acknowledge the state of things, or at least I do…the new Disney law is “nomore wokepropaganda inourmovies”
“We’ve clearly alienated Joe and Jane Popcorn in the parenting community and we really have to get back to being goodoldfamily–friendlyDisney, and in case you’re not reading me, we’ll henceforth be re-assessing the advisability of using LGBTQIA and maybe even progressive femme-bot material in our animated features. We’ll be taking it one step at a time.”
Sidenote: All hail Le Monde’s ArnaudLeparmentier, whose 11.29article laid the situation on the line in a way that Variety or The HollywoodReporter would never do.
I’m not saying that yesterday’ssuddenlossofcontrol of the facialmuscles on the right side of my face and my mouth in particular…I’m not saying I look like Charles Laughton in TheHHunchback ofNotre Dame (‘39) but half of my facial features, which were fairly top-of-the-line when I was younger and at least pleasant in recent years…my looks are prettymuchgonenow, and if I was scheduled to see Sutton today I would be worried about alarming her. In the space of 24 hours I have suddenly become a mildly grotesque figure…I am now RichardIII…dogs bark and howl as I pass by.
Before:
After:
Bonus points for anyone who can identify which film the above monster-in-the-mirror images are from. No, it’s not Martin Scorsese’s TheBigShave.
You go into a Michel Franco film (New Order and Sundown are recent HE favorites) with an understanding that dysfunction, severity and obsession will be served, and that some kind of rug will be be pulled out at some point. Franco doesn’t traffic in compassion and heartfelt currents as a general tendency; he does radical and harsh.
But that’s what I like or at least respect about Franco. He keeps the viewer on edge, and therein lies the tension.
So I was surprised when I saw Memory the other night and began to realize that it would be dealing the cards without the usual “uh-oh…when will the ferocious stuff happen?”
It’s basically a kind of strange-but-tender relationship thing…an acting-exercise drama about two damaged 40somethings — Jessica Chastain‘s Sylvia and Peter Sarsgaard‘s Saul — who probably shouldn’t get too deeply involved with each other because they have turbulent histories and are both too fucked up…Saul especially.
Memory is set in Brooklyn and you can really feel those down-in-the-weeds Brooklyn vibes. It settles into two families for the most part, and nobody’s really happy or steady or swingin’ from a star.
But the acting is so good and true…I felt immediately held and fascinated. I’m trying to think of the last time I saw a sexual relationship drama that had me thinking “wow, this might not end well and neither party seems to understand that…in fact it might end really badly.”
And yet things…I won’t say but this is easily the gentlest Franco film I’ve ever seen.
Sylvia is a cautious and brittle mom who works at an adult daycare center (a gathering of bruised and traumatized types) while raising the teenaged Anna (Brooke Timber).
Sylvia is wary of whatever might be around the corner, and so naturally she gradually gets involved — at first guardedly and tentatively, with Saul, who is clearly a bit weird but not dangerously so — a gentle, socially awkard beardo who’s plagued by some kind of dementia, and can’t seem to remember anything from the past.
Right away you’re wondering what semi-responsible woman (particularly one with a troubled parental and sexual history) would let this guy into her life?
The bottom line is that Chastain and Sarsgaard are quite the penetrators and dig-deepers, and for this reason alone Memory (Ketchup Entertainment, 12.22) is worth a watch.
Question: Why would a film distributor call itself Ketchup Entertainment? What if a similar operation called itself Mayonnaise Distribution? Or Miracle Whip Ltd.? Or Steak Sauce International? Or the Mustard Brothers?
