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Lee Isaac Chung‘s Minari premiered during the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. The well-reviewed film has since collected many award nominations, and is finally opening today (2.12). I reviewed it on 10.30.20 — here are portions of what I wrote:

A hard-knocks family drama about a South Korean family trying to succeed at subsistence farming in 1980s Arkansas, Minari qualifies as a “modest” Spirit Awards thing. And yet something about Steven Yeun’s complex character (i.e., Jacob) and performance really got to me.

I’m speaking of a proud, obstinate man determined to make a stand and not be pushed around by bad luck. In moments of stress and self-doubt he’s clearly weighing two ways of responding to the situation. He may have chosen the wrong path, but he’s determined to stick to it regardless. That makes him a possibly tragic figure and definitely an interesting one.

I’m not sure if Yeun’s touching performance will yield a Best Actor nomination, but it could. Or should I say “should”?

A while ago Variety‘s Clayton Davis was all excited about the possibility of Yeun possibly becoming the first Asian actor to be Oscar nominated for a lead role. That’s the wrong emphasis. Yeun has given a very strong and sad performance in a pretty good film, and he might snag a Best Actor nom for his trouble. But his South Korean heritage should be anecdotal, not a cornerstone of his campaign. Wokesters see it differently, of course.

I loved the grandmother (Youn Yuh-Jung) and the two kids (Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho). Especially the little boy.

And Paul (Will Patton), a flaky but good-hearted Jesus freak whom the somewhat insensitive Yeun doesn’t sufficiently respect. I dislike Christians for their evangelical leanings and support of Donald Trump, but if I was acquainted with one and he/she offered to pray for me, I would respond with respect and gratitude. Because such a gesture would mean a lot to them.

Jacob’s wife Monica (Han Ye-ri) is a good person but not exactly a portrait of steadfast marital support. She has this shitty, dismissive “I don’t like this” attitude from the get-go. They’re in a bad marriage.

I didn’t get the water situation. Jacob has bought (or rented?) a place with no water supply or sewage system? Isn’t is super-expensive to install your own sewage system and septic tank? Jacob presumably buys his own water heater, but in one scene he doesn’t have $500 to pay a professional well digger? Jacob has drilled his own well with Patton’s assistance, but the water supply is limited — not enough to nourish the crop and also provide shower water, kitchen water and whatnot.

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Who cares if Bruce Springsteen was arrested in New Jersey last November on suspicion of DUI? I’m presuming he wasn’t totally sloshed and slurring his words and vomiting on the side of the road when he was popped, and that he’d probably had two or three glasses of wine and was moderately buzzed. And so what? Jeep has removed the youTube link to his Super Bowl spot, titled “The Middle.” Big deal.

Driving while impaired isn’t cool, but Springsteen hasn’t lost his authority as a working-class folk hero because of it. I’m guessing that all proletariat salt-of-the-earth types drive buzzed from time to time. Against the law but negotiable.

I used to drive half-slurry during my vodka-and-lemonade days (’93 to ’96) as well as during my Pinot Grigio period. Don’t bring up my Connecticut party-animal behavior in the mid to late ’70s. I drove semi-inebriated every weekend. I used to believe that I was a better driver when I was half in the bag. Obviously not good, but I didn’t hurt anyone. How many times did I get into a fender-bender due to my semi-compromised state? Never — not once. It was only during my Los Angeles vodka-and-lemonade period that I got into vehicular trouble. Don’t ask.

Yohana Desta has written a 2.9 Vanity Fair cover story about the late Chadwick Boseman, titled “Inside Chadwick Boseman’s Grand Finale.”

The article is a smooth conveyance of two ideas — one, that Boseman deserves a Best Actor Oscar for his work in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and two, that “Levee,” the randy, cornet-playing hustler with the cool shoes who suffers a tragic emotional breakdown at the finale, is “the performance of [Boseman’s] career.”

I’m sorry but the performance of Boseman’s career was James Brown in Get On Up. In that 2014 biopic he delivered the same kind of highly-charged, go-for-it quality that defined two previous performances that won posthumous Oscars — Peter Finch‘s “Howard Beale” in Network (’76) and Heath Ledger‘s “Joker” in The Dark Knight (’08).

Everyone knows that Boseman’s “Levee” doesn’t blow the doors off the hinges — not really. It’s a poignant performance (especially during the scene in which Levee recalls a sad episode involving his mother), but the main reason Boseman has been hailed as a Best Actor (and in the case of Da 5 Bloods, a Best Supporting Actor) nominee is because of his tragic passing last August, which broke everyone’s heart.

I understand the sentiment behind giving Boseman a special tribute, of course, but giving him an Oscar for performances that are no more than approvable — good acting but lacking that certain extra-ness or crackling charge — feels like a disproportionate thing to do.

Texting early this morning…

HE: “A deeply tragic turn for a gifted actor and a nice guy, but giving him an Oscar for a pair of okay performances is a stretch. “We all feel really badly that he died so young” shouldn’t translate into a Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Most above-the-line Oscars are about three things — audience feeling, a zeitgeist bull’s-eye and first-rate craft. A Boseman Oscar would be mainly about feelinga of sadness, and that’s really not enough. If Chad’s dying performance had been James Brown, that would’ve been a different deal.

Friendo: “Of course, but during a pandemic people want something to feel good about. Giving an Oscar to a young black actor who just died is too incredible a narrative to resist. Who knows, he might even win two Oscars! He might beat Anthony Hopkins’ masterful performance in The Father. He might beat Riz Ahmed in Sound of Metal.”

HE: “All he does in Ma Rainey is grin and grin some more, and then he talks about his arranging ideas and songwriting plans and argues with Ma, and then he puts the moves on Taylour Paige‘s Dussie Mae. And then he grins some more. And then, at the very end and out of the blue, he loses his temper over the song-publishing rejection and suddenly stabs Glynn Turman‘s Toledo out of a sense of misplaced rage. The killing at the end is historically understandable but feels insufficiently motivated in a dramatic sense.”

Friendo: “He seems to overact as Levee because Ma Rainey is essentially a stage play. Same with Viola Davis’ grotesque burlesque singer.”

HE: “He should just be given a special tribute. A special sad Oscar. But ‘the performance of his career‘? That’s just dishonest. It’s a good performance but it’s not a piece of the constellation.”

Has anyone honestly concluded that Boseman’s Levee is the equal of the performances given by Hopkins and Ahmed?

The packaged food industry has been erasing racial stereotyping in terms of brand names and marketing. Last September Mars, Incorporated changed Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice (aka Uncle Ben’s “Perverted” Rice) to Ben’s Original. And Quaker Oats’ deep-sixed Aunt Jemima pancake brand will henceforth be known as Pearl Milling Company pancakes. Companies keeping in step with the times, etc.

When’s the last time Hollywood Elsewhere ate a breakfast plate of Aunt Jemima pancakes or enjoyed a bowl of Uncle Ben’s rice? Not since I was eight or nine years old, and I really don’t care.

But (and I say this with a slight twinge of trepidation) I have a sentimental attachment to the character of “Gussie”, a black maid working for Jim and Muriel Blandings (Cary Grant, Myrna Loy) in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (’48), and especially the WHAM ham ad slogan that Gussy dreams up at the finale — “If you ain’t eating WHAM, you ain’t eating ham.”

Obviously Gussie is just as much of a woke cultural prohibition as Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben or Uncle Remus from Song of the South. You know that wokester activists would like to digitally erase Gussie out of existence if they could; ditto Hattie McDaniel‘s “Mammy” in Gone With The Wind. But if they did, Mr. Blandings wouldn’t end with that socko slogan. It’s a problem.

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Henry Hathaway‘s North to Alaska, a 1960 western comedy with John Wayne, Stuart Granger, Fabian, Ernie Kovacs and Capucine, ends with a three-minute and 40-second brawl in the muddy streets of Nome.

An outdoorsy action helmer who began in the ’20s, Hathaway wasn’t drawing upon a slapstick comedy background like, say, George Stevens might have, but this fistfight sequence is as carefully choreographed as Victor McLaglan, Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks‘ fight against the thugs in the first act of Gunga Din (’39). Ramming goats, a barking seal, a Salvation Army band…very broad and silly.

There are two accidental bits with Wayne — his hat is knocked off while he’s not wearing his toupee (:10), and then he slides backward through mud and lands under a mule, who starts kicking.

The best bit comes at 2:37 when Kovacs lands face-first into a puddle of liquid mud and then a barrel (apparently pulled along with an invisible fishing line) rolls over him.

Kovacs during liquid-mud pratfall.

After losing two films and being dropped by WME as well as by his personal publicist, Armie Hammer was already bruised, bleeding and on the ropes. And then along came Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson with a coup de grace…”nice knowin’ ya, pal!”…Peter Cushing with a wooden stake and a mallet.

In a piece titled “Armie Hammer Is Expendable“, Mendelson starts with the following: “Armie Hammer is a classic example of a handsome and talented white actor, arbitrarily treated like a movie star despite having almost no hit movies to his name.”

In other words, Mendelson seems to be saying, Hammer was on his way out anyway so no great loss. Wow.

Hammer’s intemperate boudoir behavior caused all the trouble, of course, but what did he actually do, illegally speaking, to deserve a career death sentence? I’m still trying to figure this out.

He was over-zealous in his kinky appetites — I get that part. And he ignored safe words. He allegedly didn’t force anyone to do anything (right?), but women who willingly went along with the games apparently got miffed when their relationship with him ended, and so they decided to “out” him by posting texts. Or something like that. This, at least, is what they were saying last night on Real Time with Bill Maher.

All I can say is that when this town decides to stab someone in the neck with an ice pick, it doesn’t fool around.

Passed along on Twitter by Russell Crowe, re-posted on Facebook by Tim Appelo, and slightly edited by yours truly:

“Christopher Plummer…I worked with him twice. The Insider (’99) and A Beautiful Mind (’01). Good man, fine actor.

“We were sitting on the Beautiful Mind set one day, and for some reason we began talking about Network (’76). Particularly the performances of Peter Finch and Ned Beatty. He told me that in the London theatre world of the 60s that Finch had a fearsome reputation. He’d come to the West End from Australia and had brought with him a certain inability to suffer fools combined with a deep unquenchable thirst the moment the curtain came down.

“Chris was at an actor’s party with a young lady he’d just started seeing. Somewhere far down Kings Road in Chelsea. She had recently broken up with Finch. Peter arrived looking for her and was in a very confrontational mood. Finch followed the couple around the party, making disparaging remarks. Eventually the young woman had enough and told Chris that they should leave. Not a lot of black cabs at that end of Chelsea late on a Sunday night, but luckily the young lady had her own car. So they left the party, Chris feeling somewhat relieved.

“As they got into her car and readied to drive off, the back door opened and Finch jumped in. ‘Take me back to Soho,’ he bellowed. ‘There’re no cabs.’ Thinking acquiescence wiser than confrontation at this point, off they drove. But the journey [was soon colored by] Peter spewing a torrent of abuse from the back seat. About Chris, about her, about trust, truth, love, sex, talent…non-stop.

“As they were approaching Sloane Square the young lady pulled over and ordered both men to get out. “Both?”, Christopher asked. “Yes, both of you,” she replied. So they did and she sped off without looking back.

“So here was Christopher, the young Canadian just beginning his career and Finch — drunken, aggressive, boorish, actorly genius under lamplight. Chris told me he was chilled with fear. Peter had threatened him with physical violence a number of times and he felt for sure he was about to suffer a beating at the hands of someone who’s performances he had admired greatly. Too cruel.

“Finch turned to Plummer, eyes ablaze, and in an instant the anger left his face, and the piercing knives of his eyes resolved into something impish and charming. “Thank fuck we got rid of her” he bellowed mellifluously, echoing off the empty street. He then whispered, “Let’s find a drink.” They [soon] became friends.

“I loved working with Chris on The Insider. He was just so impressive. It was a travesty that his role didn’t receive an Academy Award nomination because everyone talked about and knew that it was [one] of a handful of truly formidable performances that year.

“We worked together again on A Beautiful Mind. Occasionally we would spend time together after work. He preferred one on one — a good drink, not just any drink. I appreciated his candor and wisdom.

“As actors do in the big circles we swing around, and we fell out of touch. I reached out to him in 2012 after he won his Academy Award to say ‘on behalf of Finch and I, welcome to the club.’ He laughed.

“Rest In Peace, Mr. Plummer.”

Yes, I’m still a sentimental physical-media fool. The ardor has cooled over the last five years, but I’m still inclined to plunk down $20 on almost any decently remastered 4K Bluray of a respected, large-scale ’50s film. The key issue is whether or not it was shot in the VistaVision process. Which The Ten Commandments (’56) definitely was. How much better can it look? Will it deliver a significant bump over the 2011 Bluray version? My head tells me “maybe” but my gut says “naahh, probably not that much…okay, maybe a bit.”

Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest and To Catch A Thief were shot in VistaVision — what’s the hold-up? And what about the legendary Ben-Hur (’59), which was shot in Camera 65**? I’ve been “hearing” about a 4K version of William Wyler‘s multi-Oscar winner for several years now. The 60-year anniversary came and went two years ago.

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Hollywood Elsewhere saw Sian Heder ‘s much-adored, Sundance award-showered CODA this morning. It’s moderately appealing and nicely made for the most part. Understand, however, that it’s an “audience movie” — aimed at folks who like feel-good stories with heart, humor, romance and charm.

It’s about a shy Gloucester high-school girl named Ruby (Emilia Jones) with a decent if less than phenomenal singing voice. She’d rather attend Boston’s Berklee College of Music than work for her deaf family’s fishing business, we’re told. The film is about the hurdles and complications that she has to deal with in order to realize this dream.

CODA is one of those “real people struggling with life’s changes and challenges” flicks, but given the fishing-off-the-Massachusetts-coast aspect it’s fair to say it’s no Manchester By The Sea — trust me. It’s a wee bit simplistic and schticky and formulaic -— okay, more than a bit — and contains a fair amount of “acting.”

Emilia Jones in Sian Heder’s CODA.

For my money Jones overplays the quiet, withdrawn, still-waters-run-deep stuff, but it’s an honest performance as far as it goes — she has an appealing, unpretentious rapport with the camera. Eugenio Derbez‘s performance as an eccentric, Mexican-born music teacher is probably the film’s best single element. Bearded, baggy-eyed Troy Kotsur and 54 year-old Marlee Matlin are engaging as Ruby’s live-wire parents.

Matlin and Kotsur are the source, actually, of some clunky sexual humor (frisky parents noisily going at it during the late afternoon, randy Kotsur urging chaste Ruby to make her boyfriend wear “a helmet” during coitus, that line of country). Except the jokes don’t really land, or at least they didn’t with me.

In a phrase, CODA is not a Guy Lodge film.

But CODA is an okay film. It works here and there. It didn’t give me a headache. I can understand why some are enthusiastic about it. It deserves a mild pass. Heder is a better-than-decent director.

Friendo: “It’s a by-the-numbers family romcom with an added progressive-minded openness for the deaf.”

(Posted from iPhone while waiting in line at the Tijuana border, heading back into the States.)

Hollywood Elsewhere won’t be able to stream Rebecca Hall‘s Passing until Wednesday, 2.3. But I’m reading and hearing things. Based on a same-titled 1929 book by Nella Larsen and mostly set in 1920s Harlem, Passing is about a married woman of color — Ruth Negga‘s Claire Kendry, whose blonde hair and half northern-European features allows her to pass for white, which was deemed desirable 90-odd years ago.

Claire’s racist husband Jack Belew (Alexander Sarsgard) believes her to be as white as Calvin Coolidge. This, I’m told by a colleague who’s seen it, is a stumbling block. The story focuses on the reunion of Kendry and Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson) and a subsequent attraction that kicks in and leads to tragic consequences.

Friendo: We’re supposed to believe that Skarsgard, Negga’s very racist husband who uses the N-word freely, is completely oblivious to the fact that his wife may have some black ancestry. He believes he married a 100% white woman.
HE: But Negga, though light-skinned and wearing a blonde wig in the film, is obviously mixed race to some degree. Just ask those scurvy racist crackers in Loving — they did everything they could to break up her marriage to Joel Edgerton. Oh, and I love that Passing was shot in black and white.
Friendo: The film is very well made, but its biggest flaw is the implausibility I mentioned. There is no way a racist husband would not realize that Negga has at least some African-American blood. He even mentions that he hates “them” even if they have a small fraction of non-white DNA.
HE: Jessica Kiang’s Variety review was unqualified in its praise. In her view, the movie is nothing short of heavenly.
Friendo: I assume Coda, Summer of Soul and Passing will all be winning something by the end of the festival.

Tessa Thompson (l.), Ruth Negga (r.) during filming of Rebeca Hall’s Passing.

HE to Demian Bichir (sent on 1.15.21):

Greetings, bruh. Long time, hope you’re good. I was very moved by your sad Deadline essay about poor Stefanie. I’m so sorry for what befell her. Very few of us seem to acknowledge, even privately, how tenuous and fragile our hold on stability or safety is, much less happiness. I’m so sorry.

By the way I liked you a lot in Robin Wright‘s Land, which I saw last night. I’m glad Robin chose you, believed in you. Your humanity came through. I didn’t think it was dramatically satisfying or appropriate for your character to [spoiler info]. I liked your character and valued his presence, and so I felt irked and cheated by [spoiler info].

But I also have to say that while I respect Wright’s attempt to offer some kind of comment about soul-cleansing isolation and to carve out some kind of naturalist ethos, I really didn’t care for her character, Edee Mathis, at all. Robert Redford‘s Jeremiah Johnson was human and relatable — Edee isn’t. What a profoundly stupid, self-involved, slow-to-awaken woman…she loves her isolation and her general disdain for other people too much. She doesn’t even keep her SUV near her cabin in case there’s an emergency? Idiot!

When you and your sister (Sarah Dawn Pledge) found Edee lying on the floor of her cabin, starved and half-frozen and near death…I’m sorry to share this but on another level I’m not. When you found her like that I was thinking “this idiot did this to herself out of flat-out stupidity and arrogance, and so by the laws of nature and natural consequence”…I probably shouldn’t say this but I was thinking that if she passed it would be more interesting than if she’d lived.

There’s a moment in which Edee looks at your character and says with a slight tone of suspicion, “Why are you helping me?” After you and your sister have literally saved her form the jaws of death, she looks you right in the eye and asks why, and with a vaguely snippy tone to boot. When a viewer feels this negatively about the central character in a film…well, it’s not a good thing. Even a nominally “bad” character can enlist audience sympathy if the film is handled right. I felt more emotionally supportive of Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part II than I did for Edee Mathis. I felt more compassion for Boris Karloff‘s monster in The Bride of Frankenstein.

If Edee had died in her cabin I would have said to myself “tough break but just desserts…this is the law of life and survival…now Edee will never have to deal with another human being ever again.”

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Nothing matches the excitement of being half-buried by a perfect white snowscape, and the cozy pleasure of staring at falling snow from inside a warm home. I’m generally less transported when a big snowfall starts melting but until that point, it’s like I’m eight years old again.

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