Great achievement in almost any field is always about the forsaking of easy, casual pleasures, and is always the result of fire in the belly, serious devotion, relentless discipline, hardcore thinking, early to bed and early to rise, etc. And if you don’t have those rigors in your own mind and system, you damn well need someone who (a) cares, (b) believes in you and (c) will crack the whip.

King Richard (Warner Bros., 11.19) is the fact-based story of how Richard Williams pushed and shaped his daughters, Venus and Serena Williams, into becoming tennis superstars. The trailer for suggests straight, focused naturalism, which is what everyone wants anyway.

You know Smith will be Best Actor nominated — locked.

The director is Reinaldo Marcus Green (Monsters and Men, Joe Bell). The script is by Zach Baylin.

At age 88, Ellen Burstyn has been a combination class act and locomotive for over a half-century (and over 60 years if you count her TV work). She shifted into a big-time film career after her performance in Peter Bogdanovich‘s The Last Picture Show, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary on 10.22.21, and she’s managed to star or costar in mostly cool, tasteful, adult-angled dramas (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Resurrection, Requiem for a Dream, W., Pieces of a Woman) over the succeeding decades.

And now, God help her, Burstyn has been sucked into costarring in David Gordon Green‘s $400 million Exorcist trilogy.

Not because she’s even vaguely interested in revisiting the character of Chris MacNeil, the Hollywood actress whose daughter turned into a demon in William Friedkin‘s The Exorcist (’73), but because she can’t turn down the huge paycheck. She has to take this gig in the same way that Lionel Barrymore had to allow Edward G. Robinson and his gangster goons to stay in his Key Largo hotel — he couldn’t say no to the money.

Key passage from Brooks Barnes’ 7.26 N.Y. Times story about Universal + Peacock spending over $400 million for three new Exorcist films from director David Gordon Green (“Hollywood Head Spinner: Universal Spends Big for New Exorcist Trilogy“):

“Universal is not remaking The Exorcist, which was directed by Friedkin from a screenplay that William Peter Blatty adapted from his own novel. But the studio will, for the first time, return the Oscar-winning Ms. Burstyn to the franchise. (Two forgettable Exorcist sequels and a prequel were made without her between 1977 and 2004.) Joining her will be Leslie Odom Jr., a Tony winner for Hamilton on Broadway and a double Oscar nominee for One Night in Miami. He will play the father of a possessed child. Desperate for help, he tracks down Ms. Burstyn’s character.”

Odom: “Excuse me…are you Chris MacNeil? My God, it’s you! How are you? Are you good? I’m asking because my daughter’s been possessed by Pazuzu and I’m wondering if you’re up for kicking that demon’s ass like you did back in the early ’70s.”
MacNeil: “I’m fine, thanks, but I didn’t do anything. I persuaded a Jesuit priest named Damien Karras to exorcise the demon, and he asked an older priest, Father Merrin, to help him. I didn’t do a thing. All I did was scream and weep and plead for help.”
Odom: “Yeah but you know all about demons and shit, right? You know how to deal with the moving beds and green vomit and all that. You’re experienced.”
MacNeil: “I don’t know anything. I just went through a horrible ordeal a half-century ago, and now I’m almost 90. Find your own exorcist.”
Odom: “But I need your help.”
MacNeil: “What’s wrong with you? Look at me…what am I gonna do?”

Leos Carax‘s Annette, which premiered almost three weeks ago (7.6) at the Cannes Film Festival, will be given a limited theatrical release in the U.S. on 8.6.21, followed by a digital streaming debut on Amazon Prime Video on 8.20.21.

I watched Annette last night. It’s an arthouse doozy that leaves you stunned and astonished, lemme tell ya. There’s plenty of time to write a proper review, but I tapped out a short riff this morning and shared it with two or three friends.

“Only the most perverse, anti-populist critics will even flirt with being kind to, much less praising, Annette when it opens stateside,” I wrote. “Once you get past the strikingly surreal visual style and the fact that it was, like, made at all, there is only the self-loathing rage of Adam Driver’s Henry McHenry character, a stand-up comedian, and Carax’s seething disdain for easily led-along audiences.

“Annette is ‘brave’ and wildly out there, but this is arguably the most morally repellent musical ever made in motion picture history. Driver’s Henry, an envelope-pushing comedian who performs one-man shows that aren’t in the least bit amusing, is astounding — one of the most flagrantly revolting protagonists I’ve ever spent time with in my moviegoing life.

“Remember the rickety, old fashioned idea of a lead character having some sort of relatable qualities that an audience might bond with? Even Al Pacino‘s Michael Corleone had relatables in The Godfather, Part II, and he was an ice man. Driver is playing a kind of sociopathic Jack the Ripper figure. The movie is mostly about him and barely pays attention to Marion Cotillard‘s Ann, an opera singer who marries Henry (and vice versa), and gives birth to their daughter.”

“Annette is a misanthropic rock opera about rabid egotism, demonic personality disorder, black soul syndrome, rage, alcoholism, murder, self-loathing, self-destruction.”

Critic who strongly disagrees: “For daring, imagination, energy, it’s the film of the year so far. Fuck populism.”

Val Kilmer — haggard and roughed up by cancer but spiritually persistent as far as it goes. He was Mr. Hot Shit in the Reagan, Poppy Bush and Clinton eras (Top Gun, Batman Forever, The Doors, Tombstone, Heat, The Saint), but now he’s the semi-tragic star and cinematographer of Val. I saw this absorbing, dig-down portrait of the 61 year-old actor and onetime superstar yesterday afternoon, and for a while I didn’t know what to think except “uhm, well…”

Be honest — it’s a melancholy sit.

Edited by Leo Scott and Ting Poo, Val is all catch-as-catch-can video footage — stuff that Kilmer shot over the last 40 years, ’80s and ’90s VHS and onward into digital and 1080p. Some of it is just faces and moments and time-grabs, and some of it is steady and gentle and poignant, and after a while it gets you…it’s a serious doc about a serious, intense guy…haunting, intimate and often (how could it not be?) quite sad at times.

“I think of myself as a sensitive, intelligent human being with the soul of a clown…”

You can sense that whomever and whatever Kilmer might have been when he was young and pugnacious and humming with hormones in the ’80s and ’90s, age and cancer have definitely taken him aside and whispered in his ear “time to turn that shit off, bruh…those chapters are over.”

Kilmer has not only modified what and who he is inside but age and disease have molded him into a different physical being — he now looks a bit like Will Sampson from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest only older and grayer. Imagine if Cary Grant had aged into William Hickey in Prizzi’s Honor or Oskar Homolka — it’s on that level.

And everyone had to wonder why Kilmer didn’t show up in Cannes a week or two ago for the Val premiere. It was easily the biggest moment of his life and career this century, and yet for some reason…

You know what Val tells you? I’ll tell you what Val tells you. It tells you that when you grow older, life does not fuck around. Especially when cancer comes along and says “hey man…are you ready for some serious shit in your life? Because I’m about to fuck you up but good.”

There were four…no, five standout moments for me. But before I mention them I should share an opinion, which is that Val would have been a better package if it had devoted, say, 35% or 40% of its running time to professional-grade video interviews with, say, eight or ten talking heads — friends, colleagues, agents, producers, journalists…people with a little perspective outside of KilmerDome.

For me the five most affecting moments are (a) Kilmer arguing with director John Frankenheimer on the set of Island of Dr. Moreau (“Will you turn the video camera off, please?”), (b) Kilmer sitting by a fireplace and cutting off hunks of his long hair with a knife (this was the one sequence that made me think of getting up and leaving), (c) Kilmer and his son Jack dressed in mid ’60s Batman and Robin costumes, (d) a weary Kilmer telling an assistant that he needs to take a break from autograph-signing and fan-greeting, due to some physical ailment, and (e) Kilmer driving through his childhood neighborhood of Chatsworth and muttering “this place is hell…pure hell…I hate it.” (Or words to that effect.)

Paraphrasing a line from a 5.6.20 Taffy Brodesser Akner N.Y. Times piece about Kilmer: We still need to believe that all our efforts weren’t for nothing, that we could — we will — survive a dark moment in our history and that when that happens, we won’t be left without the things that made those moments decipherable and meaningful and therefore tolerable.”

Repeating: what Val finally tells you is that life doesn’t fuck around.

In mid July of 2019 Tatiana and I did five or six days in Prague, took a train trip to Munich and endured a briefly terrifying lost-wallet episode, and then took another train ride and had a couple of relaxing days in Zurich.

Munich nightmare: Soon after arriving in Munich I took an Uber to meet a journalist friend at a beer garden. The Uber driver was a 40ish Greek immigrant named Oscar. Friendly but maybe a wee bit slow on the pick-up. Anyway, I got out and Oscar took off. 10 seconds later I realized my wallet was missing.

Uber’s search engine didn’t give me Oscar’s phone, but it allowed me to write him and report the loss through their relay software. It also allowed me to write management and ask them to reach out to Oscar, etc. Agitated and scared, I sent three identical messages to Oscar and Uber management. Five minutes passed…nothing. Ten minutes. Then I got a message from Uber saying that they’d passed the news along to Oscar, blah blah. But no Oscar reply.

After 20 or 25 minutes I figured it was a lost cause, and so I called another Uber to take me back to the hotel. And of all the Uber drivers in Munich, Oscar answered and said he’d be there in three minutes. “Oscar!” I wrote back. “I left my wallet in your car less than half an hour ago!” Then he pulled up and I jumped in. “Do you have my wallet?” I asked. “No,” he said, and my heart sank. Then he said, “I gave it to the police.”

Tennessee Williams: “Sometimes there’s God…so quickly!”

So we drove to the precinct in question, and sure enough the wallet was there. And the cops were really friendly. I thanked them, and one said, “You should thank this guy,” referring to Oscar. “But of course!” I said. Happy ending! A $40 tip for Oscar, which he wouldn’t accept at first. But I insisted. I should’ve made it $50 or a $100, I know.

Strangely, curiously, there are still those who don’t understand (or refuse to accept) that Tony Soprano was whacked while sitting in that family restaurant booth in the final episode of The Sopranos. I’ve come to understand that these very same people have also fought against the obvious interpretation of the aftermath of that tenement shootout scene in Taxi Driver (’75).

For the 17th or 18th time, here’s the damn explanation (and there’s really no arguing this):

At the end of the Taxi Driver shootout sequence and just after the bleeding and mortally wounded Travis Bickle, sitting on that blood-spattered couch, pretends to shoot himself in the head as he goes “bawshhhh!…bawshhhh!”, director Martin Scorsese switches to an overhead crane shot of Bickle on the couch and the two cops standing at the doorway with guns drawn. Looking downward, the camera slowly tracks along the ceiling, over the cops and down the hallway and into the street.

Most would say this is just a cool overhead tracking shot and let it go at that. But it’s just as legitimat to call it the path of Bickle’s spirit as he leaves his body and prepares to merge with the infinite finality…remember Jeannot Szwarc‘s similar spirit-rising-out-of-the-body shot at the end of Somewhere in Time? Same basic idea.

What half-reasonable person could ever buy the denouement of Taxi Driver? Everything in this sequence screams “this is bullshit!” In what world would Bickle, suspected by at least one Secret Service Treasury guy as a potential assassin (“Henry Krinkle”) who nearly killed Sen. Charles Palatine…in what world would Bickle be portrayed as a hero by the media for shooting a corrupt cop and two pimps in an East Side tenement building? The idea is insane.

And this shooting in some way helps the parents of Jodie Foster‘s Iris to find her and bring her back home to Indiana? (Iris will never be restored as a normal Indiana teenager…she’s been ruined and corrupted forever.)

And then Cybil Shepard gives Travis a come-hither look in the rear-view mirror when he gives her a ride in his cab?

It’s all Travis’s death fantasy…the stuff he imagines would happen in a perfect world as he sits on that tenement couch, bleeding profusely and eyeballing the cops and slowly drifting off the mortal coil, etc. The very last shot in Taxi Driver is of a seemingly startled Travis looking into his cab’s rearview mirror, and then whoosh…he’s gone. No reflection. Because Travis isn’t actually there.

Are there really people out there who think that the denoument is somehow real? Yes, there are.

There were slight concerns about Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth having been turned down by at least one major festival, but now the sun is shining with the black-and-white, shot-on-a-sound-stage version of William Shakesperare‘s classic melodrama of bloody greed and ambition booked to open the 59th New York Film Festival on Friday, 9.24.

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand will play long-of-tooth versions of the titular Scottish character and his scheming “out damned spot” wife. The only costar names I recognize are Brendan Gleeson and Stephen Root.

We all understand that films chosen to open a major film festival are usually audience-friendly, as in a wee bit soft or milquetoasty or at least not overly edgy. It would appear that The Tragedy of Macbeth may be an exception to this tradition, given the NYFF’s decision to apply the term “anguished” in their official description.

NYFF press release: “A work of stark chiaroscuro and incantatory rage, Joel Coen’s boldly inventive visualization of The Scottish play is an anguished film that stares, mouth agape, at a sorrowful world undone by blind greed and thoughtless ambition.”

If NYFF honcho Eugene Hernandez manages to land Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Soggy Bottom, that’ll be two significant feathers in his cap.

A24 will release The Tragedy of Macbeth theatrically before it streams on Apple or Apple +.

Roman Polanski‘s Macbeth (’71) will always be my favorite version.

Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune (Warner Bros., 10.22 stateside) will have its world premiere at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, and not, significantly, as the opening-night attraction (which usually indicates that a film in question is not triple-A quality). The 155-minute Dune will screen on Friday, 9.3, or two days after the festival begins on Wednesday, 9.1.

Dune is playing out of competition, true, but Warner Bros. honchos wouldn’t have submitted it to Venice if they didn’t know for sure that it’s a cut or two above decent. They’re obviously confident that a sizable portion…okay, a majority of Venice critics will approve.

Jesus, I’ve almost talked myself in believing that Dune might turn out well. I might actually like it. Yeah, right.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy has posted a fairly persuasive projection of the 2021 Venice Film Festival, as well as a scoop about Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Soggy Bottom (UA Releasing, 11.21) probably aiming to debut at the ’21 New York Film Festival. A source has told him that NYFF director Eugene Hernandez is close to locking down the world premiere of PTA’s Los Angeles-set period film.

Just to be thorough I checked with Hernandez myself this morning…crickets.

Ruimy is calling Soggy Bottom, which has something to do with a San Fernando Valley high-school student becoming an actor in the early ’70s, “the most anticipated movie of the year, without a doubt.”

Maybe, but I don’t think PTA is cooking with the old high-test these days. To me the PTA show peaked somewhere between Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood and started to gradually lose the mojo with The Master (’12), Inherent Vice (’14) and Phantom Thread (’17).

I’m sorry but we all experience peaks and valleys. Sometimes we bounce back — it happens in rare cases.

Take me, for example. The column-writing is going great, but I sure as shit am not peaking these days in other respects. Not since the wokester shitheads put out a contact on me starting in ’18 and ’19, followed by a special boosted contract put out last March over that idiotic hoo-hah about a single paragraph’s worth of commentary that I didn’t even write.

The only other things that people know about Soggy Bottom is that (a) Bradley Cooper plays a Jon Peters-resembling hotshot (and possibly Peters himself), and that (b) Benny Safdie will portray real-life politician Joel Wachs.

Here’s Ruimy’s Venice Film Festival spitball rundown:[NOTE: IMPROVED LIST POSTING TONIGHT]

Dune, d: Denis Villenueve
Blonde, d: Andrew Dominik
Madres Paralelas, d: Pedro Almodovar
The Power of the Dog, d: Jane Campion
The Card Counter, d: Paul Schrader
The Hand of God, d: Paolo Sorrentino
Spencer, d: Pablo Larrain
Decision to Leave, d: Park Chan-wook
The Eternal Daughter, d: Joanna Hogg
Driftwood, d: Michel Franco
Il buco, d: Michelangelo Frammartino
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, d: Ana Lily Amirpour
Official Competition, d: Gaston Duprat, Mariano Cohn
Freaks Out, d: Gabrielle Mainetti