In a 5.22 chat with Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro, Armageddon Time director-writer James Gray delivered a neat assessment of the stink factor in mainstream gladiator cinema.

He basically said that CG comic-book spectacle films are systematically draining the poetry, music and gravitas out of the moviegoing experience.

Once in a blue moon a big franchise film will hit the magic button and deliver something transcendent. One example was last December’s SpiderMan: No Way Home, which I said over and over should be Best Picture-nominated. But mostly they don’t do this. Mostly they just make money.

Gray argues that the big studios “should be willing to lose money for a couple of years on art film divisions, and in the end they will be happier.”

In less extremist terms, Gray is suggesting that the big boys should consider reverting to the ’90s and early aughts system in which specialty divisions made smaller films — films that weren’t expected to bring in huge profits but didn’t necessarily lose money. Which means, of course, that above-the-title talent would have to accept lower fees for making these films. (And there’s the rub.)

HE version: The studios should at least be willing to make smarthouse flicks with a reasonable shot at breaking even or becoming modestly profitable.

Francois Truffaut once said that when one of the films produced by his company, Les Films du Carrosse, reached break even he and his colleagues would pop open a bottle of champagne.

#Cannes2022 ‘Armageddon Time’ Director James Gray On Why Studios Should Be Able To Lose Money On Art Specialty Divisions https://t.co/SgodYB80uM pic.twitter.com/Zno5g6uVQz

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) May 22, 2022

On 7.19 Kino Lorber will issue a 4K “special edition” Bluray of Delbert Mann‘s Marty (’55). It will include the correctly framed 1.37 version, which Kino issued in 2014, along with an 1.85 version — a political concession to the 1.85 fascists who screamed bloody murder over the boxy.

In a 7.28.14 HE post titled “Marty Is Boxy After All…Glorious!,” I included an explanation from Kino Lorber vp acquisitions and business affairs Frank Tarzi:

“We looked at [Bob Furmanek]’s research and then screened Marty at 1.85, and didn’t like what we saw,” he said. “If I cropped some of the close-up scenes down to 1.85 I would be cropping half of their face off. I could see [going with] 1.66 but I still think 1.33 is better. We got attacked on Home Theatre Forum and Facebook. I couldn’t believe the tone of [some of the posts]. For a two-week period we were being crucified.”

Tarzi says he’s “very happy” with the boxy Marty. “1.85 just would have been too severe, he believes. “We did several tests. There’s one closeup scene in which Marty’s is on the phone, asking the girl for a date…by the time the camera stops getting in tight, the face covers the whole frame. Cutting that down to 1.85 would have been incorrect.”

Today’s trio: Riley Keough’s War Pony (2:15 pm), Ruben Ostlund’s Triangle of Sadness (4:30 pm) and Cristian Mungiu’s keenly anticipated R.M.N. (10 pm).

Didn’t like and therefore haven’t mentioned — Arnaud Desplechin’s Frere et Soeur, Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO.

Can’t wait for Sunday afternoon’s screening of Ali Abbasi ‘s Holy Spider.

On the Cannes red carpet for George Miller’s new movie, the woman in front of me stripped off all her clothes (covered in body paint) and fell to her knees screaming in front of photographers. Cannes authorities rushed over, covered her in a coat, & blocked my camera from filming pic.twitter.com/JFdWlwVMEw

— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) May 20, 2022

Last night Tatiana was fired up by recent contrasting samples of the human character — the odious Charles Bramesco on one hand, and a good-samaritan gummie buyer on another. Here’s her essay, received this morning:

“I guess I am totally addicted to cannabis-infused gummies. No gummies = no sleep for me. Realizing the possibility of going back to Moscow or moving to Paris or London in the near future, where marijuana is illegal, the idea of quitting this addiction been on my mind lately.

“One recent evening, when the 150th container of gummies was empty, I thought: Great, that’s the right moment to start to fight the bad habit! I did my best, but was unable to fall asleep till 4 am. Next evening I thought: Okay, I didn’t sleep enough last night, my body is exhausted and now I will do better. Nope! Awake until 4 am again. So next evening I gave up. I decided to buy gummies but reduce the intake.

I arrived at The Artist Tree on Santa Monica Blvd., 15 minutes before closing. The receptionist always asks for ID and only after that you are allowed to enter the area of buying stuff.

I knew this rule, but that evening I had my tiny Chanel purse, where I could fit only my credit card and iPhone and ten dollars, hoping that the photo of my ID would be fine. But the receptionist said that only physical ID could be accepted. I said that I have been their loyal customer for almost five years, that I am completely unable to sleep without those gummies and maybe they can save me and sell at least two gummies for one night.

“There were three people behind me: a tall, slender, pretty woman in white pants; beautiful hair below her shoulders; she looked like a rockstar to me. And two well dressed and nice looking gentlemen with her. The woman partially overheard our conversation and asked me: What do they want? I said desperately: They want my ID. Then I showed her the empty box from gummies and told her, that I was very unhappy because I am unable to sleep without them. And I din’t have time to walk home to pick up my ID and back then, because they were about to close.

“The tall rock star said, ‘Don’t worry — I will buy them for you.’ I said, ‘No, no, thank you very much, but I have only ten dollars in cash and the gummies cost $27 and I will be fine.’ “But you can’t sleep without them, right?,” she said. “Yes,” I answered, ‘but I will feel very bad that I owe someone money. Unless I can send it to you through Zelle right now.

“It was no biggie, she insisted. No worries at all, it’s nothing. She took the empty box from my hand and asked one of the gentlemen to get them. I didn’t know what to do. I was so grateful to that woman and begged her to take at least ten dollars I had. Looking at my desperation, she took it.

“Three minutes later the gentleman was back with my medication, I hugged her warmly and my heart was about to jump out of my chest. I said that I wish I could do something nice for her. She said, ‘You are very sweet, I am so sorry for your trouble with sleeping. No worries about the money. Go to church, that will be enough.’ I said that I would definitely do that. I left the store and ten seconds later I realized that I didn’t even know her name. I rushed back in and asked her name. It was Janice.

I haven’t been on the James Gray train for years, but early Thursday evening I saw Armageddon Time, his latest, and I was seriously, solemnly impressed. It’s the first really good film of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

It’s a modest little moral tale — concisely written, very well acted (especially by first-timer Michael Banks Repeda plus Jeremy Strong, Anthony Hopkins and Anne Hathaway) and ridden with echoes, laments and (from its 1980 perspective) dark projections.. And it’s definitely a Best Picture contender — of this you can be certain.

Armageddon Time is Gray’s best film — the most unaffected, straight-shooting and plain spoken — in a dog’s age. I was a Gray fan during his peak decade (The Yards, We Own The Night, Two Lovers), which happened between ‘98 and ‘08. I fell away in the 20-teens but now I’m back, as is Gray himself.

Largely autobiographical, Armageddon Time is basically a Queens-based family drama, set in the fall of 1980 and focused on the moral and creative growing pains of 11-year-old Paul Graff (Repeda).

In its own unpretentious, quietly on-target way it grapples with ethics and ethnicism, grandfather comforts, morality, racism, the Age of Reagan and the early seeds of Trumpism, brutal parenting, “life is hard” and “the game is rigged.”

I don’t know why I’ve decided to call it “a modest little Truffaut film,” but that’s the phrase I’ve been using since last night.

It’s a film about a kid dealing with family demands (particularly a brutal father) and being sent to a Forest Hills prep school and absorbing the first whiffs of late 20th Century evil in this country — Reagan, Trump, elitism and the ever-present component of half-hearted, laissez-faire racism.

A friend asked last night if it’s woke and I said it’ll certainly strike a chord with wokesters, but it’s “not really a woke film…it’s certainly not about woke Hollywood lecturing the middle of the country or anything in that vein.

“It’s Gray telling an honest, unpretentious story of his own childhood. It’s simple and real and I believed it.

“Racism and unfairness in life are real — you can’t just swat them away like a fly. It’s not about today’s deranged left. It’s set in 1980. ‘Woke’ wasn’t a thing 42 years ago. It wasn’t a thing ten years ago, and was barely a thing give six or seven years ago.

“Stop trying to define everything by today’s toxic cultural terminology,” I concluded. “Respect this movie for what it does and doesn’t do. It’s not playing any tricky or underhanded games.

Variety‘s Elizabeth Wagmeister, Matt Donnelly and Elsa Keslassy are shocked, shocked to discover that Woody Allen, Gerard Depardieu and Johnny Depp are featured in a celebrity mural on the 2nd floor of La Pizza, a popular eatery adjacent to the Cannes marina.

They’ve co-authored a 5.19 article that basically says “gasp!…why hasn’t La Pizza eliminated these three from the mural, particularly since we — crusading trade-paper wokesters casting a vigilant eye — don’t approve?”

Here’s something that I don’t approve of: Waggy, Donnelly and Keslassy falsely stating that Allen “was accused of rape by his then 7-year-old adoptive daughter, Dylan [Farrow], in 1992.” From the get-go the accusation has been about sexual molestation, not rape, and for three decades there’s been a mountain of evidence and testimony casting doubt upon the validity of Farrow’s claim.

“The La Pizza mural stands in conflict with recent changes trying to be implemented at the Cannes Film Festival,” the trio asserts, “[given that the festival] has attempted to become more inclusive to women and people of color (although progress has been slow). Festival organizers are making efforts to catch up to the industry at large, which has attempted to implement sweeping changes in the era of #MeToo.”

It's always been strange to me that the unofficial "first stop" in Cannes – dinner and Chianti at eatery La Pizza – features a mural of several cancelled men. @EWagmeister @ElsaKeslassy and I investigate. https://t.co/smYcgXhwqr

— Matt Donnelly (@MattDonnelly) May 19, 2022

I avoided watching this Marvel trailer yesterday; today I gave in. I’d rather watch a self-referencing Marvel comedy than a movie that that deals with this central figure (Tatiana Maslany as a female Hulk lawyer) more or less straight. A nine-episode Disney series, She-Hulk: Attorney-At-Law pops on 8.17.22.

It’s taken me nine and 1/2 years to finally get around to buying Richard Crouse‘s “Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils,” which was published on 1.1.12. It’s now in my Kindle archive. I’ve seen this 1971 film six or seven times. I own a British DVD of the restored 117-minute version, but where’s the Bluray version? Why hasn’t Criterion released one?

From Josh Stillman’s 10.1.12 EW review: “The story of 1971’s The Devils‘ is an unpleasant one. Based on Aldous Huxley’s book The Devils of Loudun’ and a play by John Whiting, the film details an episode of alleged demonic possessions and exorcisms — and the innocent priest who was executed for heresy — in 17th-century France. And that’s just the plot line.

“The real story of The Devils took place behind the camera, in the movie’s production process and its reception among censors, critics, and audiences. The intensity of the shoot cost director Ken Russell his marriage and tested the nerves of its stars, British screen legends Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave.

“Later, after facing numerous cuts from the British Board of Film Censors for material deemed inappropriate (or, according to the Catholic Church, blasphemous), The Devils received an abysmal response from critics, was banned in several countries, and basically vanished for three decades.

“In recent years, though, the movie’s seen a bit of a resurgence. Fan sites are popping up and bootleg copies with fewer cuts have surfaced (Russell lamented that a fully uncensored version simply doesn’t exist); critics, for their part, have begun to see the film in a different light, hailing it as a provocative masterpiece in league with A Clockwork Orange.”