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I was so disengaged during my one and only viewing of Charlie Chaplin’s A Countess From Hong Kong (‘67) that I can’t remember Tippi Hedren’s cameo performance as “Martha” — her first post-Hitchcock gig.

She had a more substantial role in The Harrad Experiment (‘73) as a married sex instructor, although her cool and somewhat icy manner in The Birds and especially Marnie made that kind of character a difficult sell. Her Harrad husband was played by James Whitmore…go figure.

Speaking of icy I was surprised to come upon this Coppertone ad the other day. I honestly didn’t think the mid ‘60s Hedren, who began as a model, was capable of wearing a two-piece bathing suit, much less posing in one for a magazine ad. The frigid-chilly Marnie persona had really sunk in by that time.

I’m trying to think of another actress during that era who conveyed such anxiety or acute discomfort with any sort of erotic presence or expression. She was like a brittle nun of some kind, tense and guarded and buttoned up.

From Fionnuala Halligan‘s Screen Daily review of Golda (2.20.23):

“When an iconic actor portrays an iconic figure, the success or failure of the project tends to depend on the power of the performance blasting away the wigs and prosthetics. Helen Mirren achieves all that while playing Israeli politician Golda Meir. But, in Golda, director Guy Nattiv and writer Nicholas Martin haven’t quite kept up their end of the bargain.

“Dropping the audience into the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur war with the chain-smoking caretaker premier, the film is a tense story of a woman and her generals around a cabinet table over the course of the conflict. Endless cigarette smoke, overflowing ashtrays, maps, a fat suit, a wiry wig, hairy eyebrows, orthopaedic shoes — but who was Golda Meir? The film prefers to avoid her as a human being, swerving into her politics and replaying the war from the perspective of her military cabinet over 10 charged days.”

Posted on 2.29.16: “In a few days Quentin Tarantino‘s New Beverly Cinema will be screening a beware-of-Ryan O’Neal double bill — Love Story (’70) and Oliver’s Story (’78).

“A little more than 37 years ago I laughed at a defaced version of an Oliver’s Story one-sheet on a New York subway station wall. It won’t be very funny if I use the original graffiti so I’m going to use polite terminology. The dialogue balloons had O’Neal saying to costar Candice Bergen, “I’m sorry but may I have sex with you in a way that can’t get you pregnant?” Bergen answered, “If missionary is really and truly out I’d prefer oral.”

“I was poor and struggling and mostly miserable, but the graffiti made me laugh. It still makes me laugh today. I guess you had to be there.”

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In the wake of Bo Goldman‘s passing I’m fully aware of what I’m supposed to say, which is that his screenplays were wonderful.

Well, I’m sorry but over the decades I never regarded Goldman as much more than a good, respected, dependable craftsman.

That’s not a putdown as very few screenwriters have made their way into that kind of pantheon, but I never thought of Goldman as one of the pip-pip-pips. I’ve understood for decades that everyone thought he was great, and I never offered an argument.

I’ve never mentioned that 34 or 35 years ago I was assigned to write coverage of Goldman’s screen adaptation of Susan Minot‘s “Monkeys“, and I honestly didn’t think it was all that rich or profound or even, to be perfectly frank, good.

Tonally Goldman’s Monkeys reminded me of the fractured and despairing family weltschmerz that Goldman’s Shoot The Moon was consumed by.

The best line in that 1982 Alan Parker film, which I never liked all that much, was when Albert Finney said that “San Francisco could die of quaint.” I also got a huge kick out of Finney destroying Peter Weller‘s backyard landscaping with his station wagon…crazy nuts.

But I loved Goldman’s script of Melvin and Howard, for the most part. And I admire his screenplays for Scent of a Woman and The Flamingo Kid (uncredited).

I never loved anything about Milos Forman‘s One Flew over The Cuckoo’s Nest (’75), Goldman’s adapted screenplay included, and I’m saying this as a guy who once played Dr. Spivey in a Stamford, Connecticut stage production of the 1962 play, written by Dale Wasserman and based on Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel.

Following a special screening of Salk at Manhattan’s Whitby Hotel last weekend, director Christopher Nolan explained why he chose not to show the human-scale benefits of the Salk polio vaccine, which began to be distributed in 1955 and eventually eliminated polio in the United States.

In the recent documentary To Eliminate Polio: Jonas Salk and his Miracle Vaccine, the impact of the innoculations is shown in abundant, upbeat detail. Although the documentary was released in part to drum up hype for Nolan’s three-hour biopic about Jonas Salk‘s heroic achievement, no such footage appears in Nolan’s Salk.

Nolan’s film doesn’t show thousands of children running around and enjoying their lives unhindered by polio, he explained, for a good reason. Salk is strictly a POV film that is centered around Salk’s immediate perspective, and since Dr. Salk didn’t innoculate any kids personally (except for his own three children) and didn’t go on a national goodwill tour to personally observe the vaccine’s beneficial effect upon families with children, it felt like “a reach”, Nolan said, to dramatize the effects of the Salk vaccine.

“We know so much more than Salk did at the time,” Nolan said. “He didn’t personally observe the mass innoculations and only saw them on TV, as he wasn’t exactly a ‘people person.’ He didn’t meet with any children or parents on a random basis, and he certainly didn’t administer the vaccine personally to children outside his own family, and so I decided to focus the film strictly on Salk’s research along with his dealings with scientific colleagues and a couple of government representatives.”

I happened upon these snaps (actually captures from a brief video) on Instagram…@alix_brown via keithmcnallynyc. Right away I was wondering if it’s from a ‘70s French film of some distinction. In and of itself the cigarette is unfortunate, but what the guy does with it is very Alain Delon in La Piscine or…I don’t know, Jean Pierre Leaud in Bed and Board. Back in the day I used to be that guy.

This 15-minute clip from Harrison Ford‘s visit to “Conan Needs A Friend” (11 days ago) is filled with mock taunts and insincere insults, and is one of the funniest podcast discussions I’ve listened to in many, many weeks. Seriously.

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I was too dumb to really enjoy Adam McKay‘s The Big Short when it first came out in late ’15. It made me feel like an ignoramus…my head was concurrently spinning and stalling and slowing down from being covered in liquid chewing gum. But after several viewings I gradually came around, and now I love this fucking film.

It took me three or four years to start watching portions late at night, and gradually enjoying them more and more as I went along. I now like it almost as much as Margin Call.

I still have problems with the opening 25 or 30 minutes (Christian Bale‘s Michael Burry, a barefooted genius analyst who looks stoned half the time, still drives me crazy), but once Ryan Gosling‘s Jared Vennett steps in and becomes a regular presence, it’s all good.

Mervyn Leroy‘s The FBI Story (’59) is a longish (149 minutes), slightly stodgy but moderately engaging programmer about FBI agent Chip Hardesty (James Stewart) and his nearly-four-decade history with J. Edgar Hoover‘s bureau, reaching back to the early 1920s.

Interspersed with Hardesty family vignettes (Vera Miles plays his wife Lucy), LeRoy’s film is essentially a propaganda piece about the FBI’s stalwart and vigilant pursuit of justice and the handcuffing (and occasional shooting deaths) of all manner of bad guys.

I re-watched LeRoy’s film last night to pay special attention to the nearly 20-minute section that deals with the FBI’s Osage Native American murder investigation, which of course is what Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple/ Paramount, 10.6) is about.

Based on Don Whitehead’s same titled 1956 book and written by Richard L. Breen and John Twist, The FBI Story devotes 19 minutes to the Osage murder case (starting around the 37-minute mark and ending at 56 and change).

The FBI investigation was actually led by regional lawman Tom White, played in Scorsese’s film by Jesse Plemons — a plain-spoken, cowboy-hat-wearing fellow in a three-piece suit who leads a team of FBI subordinates.

Hardesty is the chief investigator in LeRoy’s film, of course, but covertly — he arrives in Oklahoma (“Ute City in Wade County”) pretending to be a cattle buyer. Hardesty also has a small team of bureau guys working with him, but they’re also pretending to be something else (a casket salesman, a snake-oil salesman).

The main, historically verified location in Scorsese’s film is Fairfax, Oklahoma.

The intentional exploding of a home belonging to Bill Smith and his wife, Rita, is depicted in both The FBI Story and Killers of the Flower Moon. The explosion happened in the early morning hours of 3.10.23.

One of the Osage murder victims, Henry Roan, is depicted in both films. William Belleau portrays Roan in Scorsese’s version. In LeRoy’s film the character is called Henry Roanhorse, and is played by Eddie Little Sky.

Scorsese’s Osage massacre mastermind, based on fact and David Grann’s 2017 historical account, is William Hale (played by the too-old Robert De Niro).

Hale’s primary subordinate or dupe is his nephew, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Also mired in the mess is Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone), an oil-wealthy Osage woman whom Burkhart has married at Hale’s urging, the idea being to grab her funds in the event of her death or incapacitation. (Mollie is also the sister-in-law of Henry Roan.)

The bad guy in The FBI Story is a William Hale stand-in — a 60ish Oklahoma banker named Dwight McCutcheon (Fay Roope, who played Mexican president Diaz in Viva Zapata). I can’t identity the twerpy actor who plays McCutcheon’s nephew (the Burkhart stand-in), but I know his face like the back of my hand. He’s referred to as “Albert” and not Ernest, and his wife “Mollie” is discussed but not seen.

Anyway, The FBI Story doesn’t begin to explore the many layers and various intricacies of the complete Osage murder tale, but it does manage to acquaint the viewer with the basics and wrap it all up with an arrest in the space of 19 minutes.

Killers of the Flower Moon, which does get into the layers and intricacies of the Osage tale and then some, runs 206 minutes.

“Was the 206-minute length really necessary?” I wrote from Cannes on 5.20.23. “It’s basically a bit more than two hours of scheming and murder and fiendish plotting between De Niro’s “King Hale” and DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart, and a bit less than 90 minutes of Plemons and his FBI team arriving in Oklahoma and getting to the bottom of it all.

“Killers is a good film but it feels too quiet and subdued and even…no, I won’t say mezzo-mezzo. It holds your interest and never bores. But it never really excites either. At the end of the day Killers doesn’t really generate enough juice.”

FBI Story secondary Osage players: Dwight McCutcheon as Fay Roope / Mary Lou Clifford as Indian Switchboard Operator (uncredited) / Eddie Little Sky as Henry Roanhorse / Jim Porcupine as Indian Switchboard Operator (uncredited) / Charles Soldani as Indian on Train (uncredited) / Vincent St. Cyr as Dan Savagehorse (uncredited) / Roque Ybarra as Murdered Indian (uncredited) / Chief Yowlachie as Harry Willowtree (uncredited).

I suppose I’ve no choice but to order the Bluray and hope for the best.

“And I got to really like [Charlton Heston]. A lot of people told me that I wouldn’t like him, but I liked him. And he tried very hard. I mean, Will Penny is far and away the best thing he’s ever done.” — Bruce Dern.

I’m sorry to disagree with the five or six sniping naysayers out there, but HE agrees with Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman and the Critical Drinker about Alejandro Monteverde‘s Sound of Freedom, which I saw last night at the AMC Sono8.

This is an entirely decent, well-honed, approvable, maturely-judged, non-exploitive genre film about a solemn, real-life good guy (Tim Ballard, played by Jim Caviezel) struggling to save kids from south-of-the-border sex traffickers, and two kids in particular.

The mere thought of young tykes being used as sex slaves is obviously enough to make anyone’s skin crawl or stomach turn, but the film doesn’t subject you to anything even semi-explicit, thank God — it’s all implied. (Not that this implication makes Sound an easy sit — it’s not.)

Nonetheless child trafficking is real and widespread and the film (which was shot five years ago) is reflecting statistical reality as far as I’m able to discern.

You don’t have to be a rightwinger to accept or recognize that Sound of Freedom is dealing straight cards, but there’s a tendency, I’ve noticed, among lefty critics to put it down because of the bizarre QAnon associations. I too have a problem with wacko righties and their “Pizzagate” conspiracy theories. But the lean and mean Sound of Freedom feels steady and subdued and un-fraught with cliche. No shoot-outs, only one ultra-violent confrontation, no feeling of any sort of Mel Gibson-like fetish for blood and bruises.

Ballard is easily Caviezel’s best role since The Passion of the Christ (’04), and the basis of his finest performance in 19 years. And Bill Camp has a juicy supporting role as Vampiro, a former bad guy who’s looking to atone for past sins. He’s always smoking cigars and constantly slurping liquor, but his heart is in the right place.

I catch films at the Sono8 from time to time, and one of things I like about going there is that there are almost always acres of open seats. I’ve rarely attended a showing that was even half-full. Except for last night, that is. I attended a 6:50 pm show (the actual film starting at 7:15), and every last seat was filled except for the front-row seat that I’d reserved. This means something.

With this morning’s debut of the grand and stirring trailer for Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon (Apple/Sony, 11.22), there can be no doubt that Dariusz Wolski‘s cinematography (Barry Lyndon-ish, exquisitely lighted, immaculately framed) will be Oscar nominated…no question about it. An absolute visual knockout.

Let’s go for the gusto and predict that Napoleon will almost certainly be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar…look at it! And given this, how could Scott not land a Best Director nomination?

I’m almost disappointed that this trailer has popped online, as I’d understood it would be exclusive to theatres (attached to Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One) for a few days. I bought a ticket to see MI:7 tomorrow evening specifically to catch the Napoleon trailer on a big screen.

As expected, Joaquin Phoenix‘s Napoleon Bonaparte doesn’t speak with a Pepe Le Pew French accent. Nobody in the entire cast does, it seems.

Phoenix will deliver a fascinating performance, I’m sure, but his obviously un-youthful, unmistakably creased, late-40ish features argue that he’s too old for the part.

Phoenix was roughly 48 during filming, and (let’s be honest) looked it. Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise-to-power heyday was between ages 20 and 40, or between 1789 (the launch of the French revolution) and the Battle of Wagram (1809). He met the 32 year-old Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) when he was 26, which was also Phoenix’s age, more or less, when he played the rancid Commodus in Scott’s Gladiator (’00).

Marlon Brando‘s performance as Napoleon in Henry Koster‘s Desiree (’54) was more age-appropriate. Born in 1924, Brando was 29 and 30 during filming.

Oh, and by the way? Catherine Walker‘s presumably brief performance as Marie Antoinette seems perfect. That impudent, fuck-the-peasants expression is just right.