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Less than a month hence Oliver Stone’s JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, an in-depth documentary, will be screened and reviewed in Cannes, and we’ll all be obediently diving back into that Dealey Plaza sinkhole once again, for the umpteenth time.

The basic Stone view is that the JFK kill shot came from the grassy knoll, and that the back of his head was blown out with brain matter spilling onto a Parkland Hospital stretcher 10 or 15 minutes later. I’m not doubting what this or that Parkland doctor claimed he saw in emergency room #1, but Hollywood Elsewhere has never seen one glimmer of visual evidence to suggest that the back of JFK’s head was destroyed…nothing whatsoever.

In the Zapruder film it’s JFK’s right temple that explodes, not the rear of his head, plus a split second after the fatal shot Jackie Kennedy‘s white-gloved hand touches the back of his head — how come that glove wasn’t soaked with blood and brain matter?

Oliver Stone to Bloomberg News, 11.15.13 / 2:48: “The evidence in the case…you have to look at the evidence and apply common sense….in my mind the nub of JFK (’91) is that Kennedy was shot from two sides…he was shot from the back and he was shot from the front. And no matter how you fancy up the evidence and talk about gravitational physics and neuro effects and jet effects, it’s all blah-blah-blah.

“The man you see in the Zapruder film and [what] the autopsy revealed [along with] people who saw him right at that moment, right after the death…they all talk about the big shot, the kill shot was from the front. Shot in the front [actually the right temple] of his head, and it blew out the back of his head. It’s what people kept seeing, and they still see it to this day.

“People who were at the autopsy revealed to the assassination records review board that the autopsy photos that are now in the national archives have no resemblance to the head wound that they saw in Bethesda.”

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More and more frank depictions of sex and violence began to manifest in the mid ’60s, but relatively few actors have delivered what I regard as serious authenticity when it came to portraying gangsters, hitmen, ruffians, sociopaths, etc.

Any two-bit actor can wear a hollow, ice-cold expression or radiate animal hostility; the trick is to suggest serious malevolence with as little effort as possible, and particularly with your eyes and manner and body language. Bottom line: If you’re a serious monster, the camera can spot it right away.

In my mind one of the most believable bad guys ever was Michael Caine‘s Jack Carter in Mike Hodge‘s Get Carter (’71).

Please name other movie characters who radiated evil and malevolence without any showy gestures or demonstrations. Like Michael Madsen‘s Reservoir Dogs psycho, for example. Heath Ledger‘s Joker doesn’t count (way too showy); ditto Richard Widmark‘s giggly nutcase in Kiss of Death (too spazzy and cackly).

I’m talking about bad guys who simply are that rancid thing. You look at them, sense their vibe and you know they’re the Real McCoy.

I’m told that yesterday’s HE riff about Morgan Neville‘s Roadrunner (“Obvious Factor in Bourdain Suicide Ignored?“) gets into the whole Asia Argento mishegoss much more than than the film. The
story about Argento having allegedly seduced the 17 year-old Jimmy Bennett is shown in one brief headline. The affair with Hugo Clement isn’t mentioned at all.

There’s nonetheless a weird obsession that pokes through in two reviews of the film — Eric Kohn’s in Indiewire, Matt Goldberg’s in Collider. Both claim there’s something unseemly about the movie trying to “solve” the mystery of Bourdain’s suicide.

Why is it wrong for Roadrunner to examine Bourdain’s suicide and try to figure what happened? Are we not allowed to ask those questions? Or think about them? Are we invading the ghost of Anthony Bourdain‘s safe space? What the hell else is a documentary supposed to do but ask questions and, if possible or reasonable, look deeper?

You really never know where the next stupid woke umbrage is going to come from. The sensitives and their arbitrary dumbshit “moral” rules. This fucking generation of woke idiots is going to kill us.

Collider‘s Matt Goldberg: “A suicide is not a crime to be solved. It’s a tragic circumstance going to the depths of another person’s psyche. You can’t reason it out because no reason will be satisfying. There’s no conclusion where you will get an audience to think, ‘Oh, well I guess suicide made sense in this regard.’ It cannot comfort, and it cannot illuminate. And yet Neville attempts to reason out why Bourdain would take his own life as if that’s a question that needed to be answered beyond anyone’s morbid curiosity.

“This leads Roadrunner down a deeply dark road where the film basically insinuates that Bourdain’s romance with actor and filmmaker Asia Argento was personally destructive to his well-being. If this is a film about Bourdain and his legacy, then why do we need scenes showing footage of an episode directed by Argento that Bourdain’s coworkers felt were not up to the standards they had set? Why do we need talking heads alluding to tabloids that say Argento was cheating on Bourdain and that drove him to despair and ultimately suicide because his personality operated at extremes?

“Even if you have one talking head say, ‘I don’t want to pin a man’s suicide on the woman in his life,’ the fact that Roadrunner is even broaching that as a possibility is deeply gross and incredibly irresponsible.”

Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn: “Roadrunner enters dicey territory during its final act, as it delves into Bourdain’s relationship with actress Asia Argento, who’s absent from the movie as a participant but appears in ample documentary footage.

“By all indications, Argento brought Bourdain to a new plane of happiness in his final months, when he hired her to direct an episode in Hong Kong shortly before his death. It also gave him a renewed sense of purpose as he became a public voice in the #MeToo scandal with Argento’s revelations about being raped by Harvey Weinstein.

“Roadrunner, however, bursts the sunny image of Bourdain’s new partner with claims from his former collaborators that he cut them off in the midst of the relationship; then the movie goes one step further by hinting at the idea that his suicide was an erratic act of revenge as the romance went south. Despite one subject who makes it clear Argento isn’t truly to blame — Tony killed himself, after all — it’s still a queasy passage that comes dangerously close to exploiting the scenario with a murky explanation assembled from secondhand accounts.”

I may have been overly harsh yesterday in my dismissal of the 40-year-old Clash of the Titans. I’m walking it back a bit because the Harry Hamlin vs. Medusa sequence is half-tolerable. There’s no believing it, of course, but it’s spooky all the same. Otherwise the entire film is a tedious, old-hat, stop-motion joke.

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.”

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…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.

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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