Checking out of Placencia’s Cozy Corner hotel at 7:30 am tomorrow (Thursday), and then returning the SUV near Belize int’l airport between 10:30 and 10:45 am. The Belize-to-Houston flight departs at 12:50 pm. LAX touchdown expected around 7:25 pm.

We should allow for extra breathing room by leaving at 7 am…right?

The broadly satiric tone conveyed in the trailer for Michael Showalter‘s The Eyes of Tammy Faye (Searchlight, 9.17) comes as a surprise. I wasn’t expecting a goofy comedy, but that’s what it seems to be. A certain subsection of urban blues will love it, I presume; perhaps even your rural bumblefucks will derive a few chuckles.

Jessica Chastain obviously has a Best Actress nomination in the bag, and perhaps Andrew Garfield‘s Jim Bakker will also become an award-season contender. But right away my attention went to Cherry Jones as Tammy Faye’s disapproving mom and especially Vincent D’Onofrio as Jerry Falwell.

The Guess Who was a happening band there for a while. HE favorite: “No Sugar Tonight.”

…that Steven Soderbergh‘s No Sudden Move (HBO Max, 7.1) will be, at the very least, half-decent.

John Chu, Lin Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes‘ In The Heights (Warner Bros., 6.10) is good, grade-A stuff — engaging, open-hearted, snappy, well-composed. Chu (the Crazy Rich Asians guy) directs like a total pro. Catchy tunes, appealing performances, razor-sharp cutting. One character-driven vignette after another. Dreams, hopes, identity, hip-hop, neighborhood vibes, community, self-respect…all of it earnestly feel-good.

There’s no fault in any of it except for the minor fact that I was quietly groaning. Okay, not “groaning” but half-in and half-out. Admiring but disengaged. There isn’t a single moment in which I didn’t appreciate the effort, the snappy tunes, the professionalism, the heart factor, Alice Brooks‘ vibrant cinematography…all of it is fine and commendable, and I must have checked the time code 10 or 12 times, minimum.

No question about it — In The Heights is one of the best films I’ve ever felt vaguely suffocated by.

One measure of a fascinating film is that you literally want to live in it. You literally want to leave your seat and drop into the film like Mia Farrow merged with the black-and-white Park Avenue champagne world of The Purple Rose of Cairo….more of this, more of this.

Well, speaking as an ex-New Yorker who grew up in New Jersey and Connecticut, I really didn’t want to “live” in Washington Heights, and I’m saying this as one who felt a certain charged excitement from the town of Montfermeil in Ladj Ly‘s Les Miserables. I loved the Heights characters and community spirit, but the drab and regimented architecture, broad boulevards, stifling temps and struggling, hand-to-mouth atmosphere didn’t attract.

I felt the same way about In The Heights that I felt about Rent when I saw it on stage. Good show, good current, checking my watch.

Anthony Ramos is the appealing lead, a bodega owner named Usnavi de la Vega who’s saving up to move back to the Dominican Republic and open a beach bar. This aside the main story (among many) is about Usnavi being in love with driven, beautiful Vanessa (Melissa Barerra) who works in a beauty salon but longs to be a fashion designer.

Several characters dominate their respective vignettes, each with their own saga.

Ramos and Barrera hold their own and then some. Ditto costars Corey Hawkins, Leslie Grace, Olga Merediz, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Gregory Diaz IV, Lin-Manuel Miranda and L.A. Law‘s Jimmy Smits.

“Some movies are like expeditions,” a friend counsels. “You go to a place you might not want to live in, but you get caught up in the lives of the people there. That’s how I felt about In the Heights. I wasn’t bored. I found some of the music enthralling, [although] it was probably more effective on stage.”

In The Heights is an optimistic, up-with-people film all the way — no villains (except for the handful of white people who fail to show proper respect for the Latino characters), no grave conflicts, nothing boiling in the pot or coming to a crescendo, wokester attitudes. It’s about “all of us want more, want to do better, earn more, pair up with the right person but life is hard and dismissive and the odds are against us”, etc.

My favorite sequence involves “Abuela” Claudia (Merediz), a 70ish, white-haired woman who just before her death dream-trips her way back to the Manhattan of her childhood…an absolutely transporting, first-rate sequence.

I don’t know what else to say except I understand the enthusiasm for this film, and I wouldn’t disagree that it’s probably going to end up with a Best Picture nomination. I “liked” it as far as it went, and I felt more and more supportive of the characters as the film gathered steam. It has a great beginning and a fine finale. Can I end this review now?

All due respect to ancient Mayan culture and their awesome pyramid structures, which have stood tall for several centuries. At the same time it’s highly unfortunate that Mel Gibson‘s Apocalypto is the first association that comes to mind.

Please name your all-time favorite awful endings. Grease, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Tim Burton‘s Planet of the Apes…you choose.

For me, the conclusion of Steven Spielberg‘s War of the Worlds (’05) is easily among the worst.

Having survived the Martian onslaught Tom Cruise and daughter Dakota Fanning arrive at the Boston home of his ex-wife’s parents, who are annoyingly played by Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, costars of George Pal and Byron Haskin‘s War of the Worlds (’53). The ex-wife (Miranda Otto) is also there; ditto Cruise’s son Robbie (Justin Chatwin), who’d impulsively joined the military in a brutal battle with the aliens and obviously had no chance of survival…and yet there he was. Bullshit. No Sale.

Jett and I saw Spielberg’s film at the Ziegfeld press screening. During the closing credits Jett said, “God, what did Spielberg do that? He had it and he blew it.”

Back in the day Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds was roundly despised for ending without any sort of resolution or catharsis. In so doing Hitchcock was essentially telling his audience that The Birds is an art film, and that it’s saying something about a permanent feature in the human brain — complacency.

I still say that the worst ending of 2020 was delivered by Pete Docter‘s Soul

My original complaint: “Soul betrays its audience by (a) encouraging them to identify with and believe in Joe Gardner‘s long-denied dream about becoming a jazz musician instead of a frustrated middle-school music teacher, only to (b) pull the rug out on Joe’s dream in Act Three and end things with Joe feeling uncertain about what he really wants to do with his remaining time on earth. Possibly jazz, possibly teaching…who knows?

“And what of our jazz-loving protagonist changing his mind at the last minute so he can save Tina Fey’s ’22’? I hated that. A major audience betrayal. I didn’t hate that he cared for and wanted to save 22, of course, but his whole big dream is to escape the perceived mediocrity of being a middle-school music teacher. We’re encouraged to identify with his quest to become a real musician and to share the joy of being in the groove.

“And then, after interminable delays, temporary blockages and goofy complications, he finally gets to play with the hot jazz group. And finally, all is well.
But then Joe changes his mind! He decides to go back to the celestial nether realm to ‘save’ 22 from her hellish deflated existence, and in so doing sacrifices (according to the Great Before rules) his own chance at life.

“And THEN the Picasso-like powers-that-be decide to bend the rules because he’s inspired them.

“And THEN when he’s back on planet earth Joe is STILL not sure what really matters to him. Will he continue to gig with the jazz group? Or will he embrace his full-tine teaching job? He’s not sure, but one thing he’s ABSOLUTELY sure of is that he’s going to treasure each & every day of his life from then on.”

This is how evil righties could win the ’22 midterms — not with a bang but by leading a “fuck you” charge in a pushback movement against Critical Race Theory fanatics.

Average Wonderbread Joes do not want their kids being taught that white folks harbor an evil racist code in their blood, and yet teaching this to young kids is a solemn priority of wokester hardcores like Anastasia Higginbotham, author of “Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness.”

Higginbotham’s book is part of a children’s-book series called “Ordinary Terrible Things,” which focuses on the root cause of American racism. No one’s disputing that racism is a dark and pernicious feature of American Anglo-Saxon culture, but the assertion that whites are inherently malevolent and beyond redemption except by way of Critical Race Theory teachings…I don’t know, man. If you ask me white demonizing is just as racist as any Jim Crow facet. Putrid water from the same well.

‘
From an Atlantic discussion piece titled “Nobody Wants White Kids to Feel Bad About Their Race,” in which author Conor Friedersdorf discusses the content of Higginbotham’s book:

Higginbotham: “The book I made teaches young children about whiteness — it is not about police brutality. Whiteness is the reason these killings by police happen — the white cultural mindset that tells us white is good and innocent, while Black is bad and dangerous. Whiteness is the reason cops make split-second decisions to fire their weapons into the body of an unarmed person who is Black, while not even reaching for their weapon during interactions with armed and violent criminals who are white.

“You ask what is the appropriate age to tell children about police brutality, but which children do you mean? The siblings, cousins, children, and grandchildren of people whose family members are targeted know about it. You mean white children. When is the right age to tell white children about a system so cruel, we fear it will be traumatizing for them to even find out about it? Yes, I think it’s appropriate to teach my book to white kindergartners.”

“The difference between the civil rights movement and CRT isn’t one of degree or shade. It’s foundational. Proponents of the former believe America can transcend Her flaws and sins, while the latter presents those flaws and sins as a pretext to destroy its liberal soul. One side pursues equality and progress, while the other makes a fetish of oppression and division. It’s easy to see which path leads to a brighter future for our country.”

“”The difference between the civil rights movement and CRT isn’t one of degree or shade. It’s foundational. Proponents of the former believe America can transcend her flaws and sins, while the latter presents those flaws and sins as a pretext to destroy its liberal soul. One side pursues equality and progress, while the other makes a fetish of oppression and division. It’s easy to see which path leads to a brighter future for our country.” — from “No, Critical Race Theory Isn’t a New Civil Rights Movement But The Exact Opposite,” written by Kenny Xu and Christian Watson

It pains me to consider the possibility, much less admit, that the sociopathic Mussolini and would-be Democracy destroyer Donald Trump might have been correct last year when he theorized that Covid-19 originated with a lab leak.

Rightwing nutters are theorizing that Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease guy who curtly dismissed the lab leak theory but has more recently come around, may be half-complicit in the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab-leak error (if it indeed happened). Also that he had “potentially conflicting ties to China’s top scientists and the very lab under suspicion.”

From “Former MI6 chief says any Wuhan lab leak evidence has likely been destroyed,” posted in The Independent on Thursday, 6.3:

“Any evidence of a lab leak that may have caused the Covid-19 pandemic would likely have been destroyed by Chinese officials by now, a former MI6 chief has claimed.

The former intelligence chief, head of the UK’s spy agency between 1999 and 2004, has previously said the novel coronavirus is “far more likely” to have come from a lab than an animal.

Morgan Neville‘s Roadrunner, a doc about the late Anthony Bourdain, will open in theatres on 7.16. The world premiere happens on June 11 at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Posted on 6.8.18: “I am stunned and appalled that Anthony Bourdain, a sensualist and an adventurer whom I admired like few others, a guy who adored sitting on a plastic stool and eating Bun Cha in Hanoi as well as scootering through rural Vietnam as much I have, a late bloomer who’d lived a druggy, dissolute life in the ’70s and ’80s but had built himself into great shape and had led a rich and robust life in so many respects…I am absolutely floored that Bourdain has done himself in.

“Bourdain was right at the top of my spitball list of famous fellows who would never, ever kill themselves because he seemed so imbued with the sensual joy of living, who had found so much happiness and fulfillment in so many foods and kitchens, in so many sights and sounds and aromas and atmospheres, travelling and roaming around 250 days per year and inhaling the seismic wonder of it all.

“Bourdain apparently suffered from depression, or so it’s being said this morning. He was 61, and by all indications was at the absolute peak of his personal journey. Like me, Bourdain’s life didn’t really take off until the late ’90s, when he was in his early 40s. But when everything finally fell into place and he became famous and semi-wealthy, he seemed to revel in the feast but without losing his head. He always kept his sanity and sense of modesty.

“In a perfect world Donald Trump would hang himself in his White House bedroom and Bourdain would go on living and travelling and taping episodes of Parts Unknown until he was 98 and perhaps beyond.

No comment about Amazon’s $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM, which has been a nothing brand for decades. Nor was I particularly stirred by Cynthia Littleton’s assessment of the situation. All I care about is whether or not we’ll soon be hearing the Trump tapes that MGM TV honcho Mark Burnett has been sitting on since ’16 or thereabouts. The rest of the questions will sort themselves out.

What I’m most impressed by right now is the Jeff Bezos roaring lion art by Variety‘s Cheyne Gateley.

HE is attending Cinemacon 2021 (8.23 — 8.26) for sentimental-emotional reasons, whichever matters most.

Because my investment in the theatrical experience, which has been my spiritual lifeblood since I was 5 or 6, has never before felt so shaky or tentative, and I want to somehow support the continuation of exhibition along with the idea of movie theatres as spiritual churches in any way I can, despite the ironic fact that the exhibition industry long ago abandoned the spiritual element.

I’ve attended three or four Cinemacon gatherings in Las Vegas, and they always remind you of what exhibitors value — not the spiritual or transporting nectar of great moviemaking, but the lowest common-denominator-animal stimuli…the slam-wham-BAM-THROMP-CHONK-CHUNK-KAPOW-SPLAT popcorn jizz-whiz distractions that are mother’s milk for the ADD-afflicted.

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson: “Five major studios will be at CinemaCon ’21: Warner Bros. Discovery, Universal and Focus, Disney with Marvel and Lucasfilm, Paramount, and Sony. Lionsgate will also be present, as well as the pending Amazon acquisition MGM/UA.

“On the docket: Showing love to the exhibitors beat up by pandemic shut-downs — and in some cases, the studio’s own screening policies.

“While the studios [have] held back their most commercial titles for theaters, it’s a starkly different summer landscape. Memorial Day had a hit with A Quiet Place Part 2 (Paramount), which will be followed by overseas smash F9 (Universal). Meanwhile, Disney’s recent opener Cruella, like Black Widow and Jungle Cruise, is available day and date to Disney+ subscribers for an additional charge. This is the tough reality exhibitors must swallow.”

Let me explain something very clearly so there’s no misunderstanding. A Quiet Place 2 is a decently made (if less than riveting or necessary-feeling) sequel, but the promotional signals from the others all spell high-gloss CG formulaic d-o-g-s-h-i-t.